By RD Rivero

December 16, 2000
 

The sun hovered precociously over the horizon, rising steadily and in its wake sweeping long shadows across the land, about the face of Third Earth. The sky was thick with massive, low-hanging clouds, tinted in the electric red of the emerging dawn. The trees in the forests shivered alarmingly, rubbing their leaves and branches together in a grand symphony of nature.

Only gradually did the birds and animals come to life from their fitful slumber.

Small, rounded mounds, rocky and lifeless, sloped gently in an uninhabited clearing. The vast field was covered in a brown, brittle sand. Large craters, full of noxious, red liquids, dotted the lunaresque landscape. By the shadowy opening of a deep cavern, a rusted shovel lay on its side, smeared with traces of that broken salt plain. Footprints, colored by strands of orange fur, led from the subterranean chambers under the ragged cliff, to the east where the profile of Cat's Lair loomed above the leafy, shaky tree-line.
 

[Part One]

The slight humming of mechanical grinders filled the stale, hot air of Tygra's makeshift laboratory. The room's only two windows were bare and unobstructed, letting in ample slants of light - and yet the lab retained an ominous shade of abject darkness. Tables were littered with devices on, off, or broken in scattered pieces. Cabinets held time-worn books, withered with crumbling pages. The floor, too, was replete with used articles, dusted in a glimmering, brittle sand and, in the corner, hidden under toppled stacks of oft-read manuals, was a rolled-up blanket and a pillow.

The tiger was slumped over a workbench while a heavy beater vibrated under his folded arms. He pressed it firmly down upon the tabletop, keeping it from sliding off. A dense, yellow ooze was whipped in its metal bowl - tiny bubbles of air were dissolved in the aromatic goo in a kind of froth. With a free hand he sprinkled the brown salt into the mixing concoction and watched patiently while the granules vanished in the churning action.

He unplugged the machine and removed the canister.

"WileyKat!" a sharp-tongued, female voice shattered the stillness of the air. "WileyKat, stop it!"

He had heard only snatches of the heated conversation through the walls - but he was not eager for more. He refocused his attention back to his work - he stepped before a window and, basked in the daylight, he poured the substance he had labored on that night into a larger, glass jar. The voices of the kittens again shocked him unexpectedly and he sighed.

The door to his laboratory opened - he looked around to the side. His eyes squinted but he could not see who it was that stood under the frame. Curious, he stepped closer to the unannounced intruder.

"Thundercats, HO!" WileyKat shouted, thrusting his arm up in the air in a familiar gesture.

"You better stop that before he finds out," his bossy sister chided him.

The boy laughed, his sister turned about and scurried down the hall into an adjacent room.

"Tygra?" WileyKat asked. He poked his head into the chamber, his face tilted slightly to the right. His roaming eyes found the tiger by a bookcase.

"Yes?" he spoke, gently shaking the glass bottle - its glossy lid tightly capped. "Yes, WileyKat?"

"Um," the youngster stammered - Tygra was not usually patient with children except for WileyKat. He stood upright in an attentive posture. "You didn't come to breakfast this morning."

"I know -" Tygra said without thought - his reserved tone masked a deep-seeded resentment aimed not at the boy but at those with higher positions, greater responsibilities.

"You didn't come to dinner last night either." The boy approached the tiger cautiously - lately Tygra he had been rather testy, temperamental.

"I know - I've been busy," he cut off WileyKat with an air of superiority. He approached the boy shyly.

Again he stammered, visibly uncomfortable: "Liono was worried -"

"Liono?" the tiger glanced up at the ceiling, amused. He placed the heavy jar on the table, letting his weary limbs relax for a brief stretch.

"HO!" the boy shouted again, again thrusting his fisted arm into the air.

Tygra smiled.

"What are you working on?" the kitten asked, confident he had broken the ice.

"I'm working on a machine - a time machine," he answered matter-of-fact-ly, his eyes never left the sparkling, amber contents of the jar. "They can see me," he spoke softly, under his breath, "they stare at me."

WileyKat looked at the jar once - he saw tiny, little bubbles rise up through the dense liquid painfully slowly to its flat surface. His eyes continued to roam around the lab, from the tables to the cabinets, from order to chaos - to a bundled stash of papers. All that he could see of what was rolled within were green leaves, sharp and serrated. Suddenly, he was hit by an odor, the smell faint but familiar, recognizable - a burnt fruit -

Tygra saw recognition in the boy's eyes and acted quickly. He reached down to grab the papers. He shoved them into a trash can. Oddly and much to his dismay, his harshness had only let the boy see more of what he so desperately wanted to hide.

"The stuff in the jar's part of what I've been working on," he said, trying to refocus WileyKat's attention.

"What is it?" WileyKat asked, coming toward the table.

"It's an organic polymer -" from the boy's blank expression he could tell he needed to say more. "It's how the time machine works."

The kitten laughed. "You don't have a time machine!" Again he stared about the cluttered room - Tygra took advantage of the boy's distraction and took the trash out of the can in a black bag, tied it and set it by the open door for Snarf to dispose of later.

"You don't believe I made a time machine?"

"Of course - you've got nothing in this room but books." The youngster did not take Tygra's uncharacteristic and almost immature insistence seriously - he had an uncanny intuition at times.

The tiger scoffed - "That's because it's not here - it needs, special conditions." He took the glass container in his hands, peering deeply into the mixture within. "This much was the last of it - do you want to see it?"

Disconnected for a fleeting, childhood moment, WileyKat aped his leader: "Thunder! Thunder! Thundercats, HO!" he shouted, violently waving his arms as though he held the Sword of Omens in his hands.

"Come with me - I'll show you."
 

[Part Two]

WileyKat and Tygra walked west of Cat's Lair. The youngster would have preferred to have used the hover-boards or the Thunder Tank but the tiger wanted the time to lecture to his young apprentice - and he did not want the others to know, or to suspect. Alerting them of his unplanned field trip was out of the question.

Again, WileyKat's moment of intuition returned: "Why don't you want the others to know about your time machine? Why don't you tell Panthro or Liono?"

"I, I," he struggled, having been caught off guard. "Why bother them for no reason? I really don't know if it works myself, that's why today is so important."

The downhill trek was eased by a trail, carved into the ground by numerous trips from the Thundercat base to the salt plain and its caverns. The boy wondered how long the tiger had been working on his latest invention, how often he had snuck out at night or during the day, invisible and unbeknownst to the others.

"Liono has, other things on his mind. Panthro's too busy working on the Feliner," Tygra continued but by then he was talking to himself. WileyKat wished he could turn tail and run back home but by then it was too late.

The sun beat down on their heads while they treaded about the cratered scene. The stench from the red ponds was overwhelming. WileyKat gagged but Tygra was thoroughly unaffected. The yellow ooze in his glass jar glimmered in the bright, unrestrained light. Above, the clouds had thinned into violent mists, the heavens were still gray but blue patches were beginning to break through.

Tygra led the boy into the shaft. The walls were flat, images were engraved in the rock. The youngster ran his fingers across the rough surface of the bass reliefs of the drawings. He looked back one last time to catch the looming profile of Cat's Lair, its head searching the panorama before it with glowing, red eyes.

Steps evolved under their feet. The tiger turned on a lamp but he did not let go of the glass container for a moment, not for a moment. Deep in the subterranean vaults, the ornate designs of the passageway remained but the carvings were incomplete - the outlines had been adequately prepared, even colored in, but the artisans had put down their instruments hastily and had never returned.

"This place was once a tomb of a pharaoh of Egypt," Tygra began and sensing a morbid fear in his young apprentice he continued undaunted, "but it's been robbed and looted ages ago. There's no sarcophagus here, there's no mummy around anymore." He smiled, the boy nodded. "I stubbled upon this place by accident. I began to explore and, after I had learned from Mumm-Rana how to read and understand hieroglyphs, I analyzed the writings and inscriptions on the walls and learned the secret of time travel - the true treasure of this crypt. Not gold, not earthly treasure - it was the knowledge and understanding of the times, the totality of science that the ancient First Earthers had amassed over the course of a thousand years."

He stopped - he gave WileyKat the lantern for a moment and, with his free hand, he opened a wooden set of doors that led to deeper, cooler hallways - a labyrinth of unimaginable proportions, whose walls were decorated with an encyclopedia of the macabre.

"The eyes, the eyes," he spoke to himself, distracted - he shivered in horror, lost in a plethora of unpleasant thoughts. His breath emitted a faint smoke, a misty haze in the cold dampness.

"The secret of time travel?"

"Yes," he answered, taking the lantern back. "A certain kind of time travel."

The two continued their walk - the boy was struck by the smell of burnt fruit. He snuck glances to the sides, taking in the pictures and ideographs that surrounded him. He saw herbs and flowers, medications and even hints of surgical operations - but no where did he see machines, no where did he find the suggestion of what the tiger had eluded to. Again his suspicions heightened, again the tiger continued his story.

The tale he had perfected in his mind earlier: "The Ancients realized that they could not bring their bodies backward or forward in time as easily as they could move their conscious minds. They could imagine themselves a hundred years into the past or they could have seen things the way they would have been - or could have been. I pondered their theory and science and after careful consideration I realized how to improve their method."

One last set of door remained in their way - iron doors, bolted with numerous locks, recently welded into place. Tygra gave WileyKat the lamp and kicked open the barricade. A large room was thrust into view. Its high ceiling was formed from dark, withered granite and supported by unnumbered rows of thick cedar logs. Columns, arranged in semicircular patterns, helped to hold up the roof. The walls themselves were distant and cast in perpetual shadow for the torches were not attached to them but to the columns. In several, random locations fires raged from shallow pits dug out of the stone floor.

WileyKat saw other doors and hallways emerging from that vast chamber, leading to yet deeper and indiscernible parts of the crypt. A blue, smokey haze poured out of those orifices along with a hot, stale air. The dancing, flickering flames swayed in that dull current.

Tygra continued to babble but his words were meaningless, lost to the boy's distracted mind. He was led by the hand to the center of the room, to a large vat that rested before engraved statues of dark onyx. The tub was made from tempered glass, held in place by a shiny, metal framework. Within it was more of that yellow ooze. Above it, dangling from a rack, was a face mask and breathing apparatus. Around it were other machines and contraptions, whose purposes were equally incomprehensible.

The tiger opened the glass jar - for the first time the boy realized where the strange odor had come from. He poured its dense liquid into the tub. It had the consistency of honey and he spoke while it flowed slowly.

"The recipe for this liquid was written in the carved texts of the crypt - but this particular batch is my own improvement. To the Ancients it was the substance that made time travel possible - and to me it will recreate a body for use in my exploration."

WileyKat stepped closer - he was timid for the room and its master were deadly frightening.

"What happens if something hurts that body?"

"What do you mean?" Tygra set the empty canister aside. Recollecting his thoughts, he continued: "If the body is damaged or killed I'll just return here, to the present though nothing had happened."

"Will you feel it?"

"I suppose - but then I've never used it before," he dunked his finger into the vat, smearing his hand with its substance. "I don't know what might happen."

"Where will you go?"

The tiger was silent.

"Tygra?"

He looked down on the boy and with his dripping finger he pressed it upon the youngster's mouth, driving his tip in between his teeth to his tongue. Silently, he turned to the back of the columns and activated the equipment. The chamber was aglow in an eerie light - the ground began to rumble. He laughed while he stripped and approach the large vat - his hand was clear, having already licked his finger clean. In his palm he cupped more of the yellow concoction and pressed it to his own lips - his eyes rolled over in sordid pleasure.

WileyKat stepped back, horrified. He looked to the side briefly. On the floor were broken stems, replete with fresh, serrated leaves - he knew he had seen it before already.

Tygra ascended a small ladder and then immersed himself in the tub. He placed the face mask around his head and then lay on his back. He floated in the goo, three feet below its surface, flat and motionless. Tiny bubbles of exhausted air seeped out of the seals of the breathers around the contours of his face.

WileyKat took the lantern and sprinted out of the chamber into the dusty, cobwebbed halls and passages. The ancient, encrusted air tortured his lungs. The unfinished, generic forms and figures on the walls seemed to move and follow him with their eyes while he ran through the winding caverns. His legs tired - he felt himself rising up to the surface from the murky depths. At once blinding daylight broke through the shadow and darkness. He was outside, on the salt plain - the teaming, red lakes in the way of his path.

He wondered if Tygra was not just playing a joke on him - a time machine, after all, was nonsense. Panthro always said so. Even the capsule Liono had found was not a true time machine but a holographic projector.

No, he convinced himself in adolescent vain, Tygra was only making fun of him, in his own, strange and elaborate way. The tiger had been acting weird lately, distracted and disconnected. He wondered why adults acted dumb and stupid at times.

"A time machine," he said aloud and pondered the possibility for a moment or two.

He was overcome by an electric and staggering sensation. When it passed he spit and then vomited on the broken ground next to the shovel. He ran his hands around his dripping mouth - the last of the yellow ooze the tiger had smothered him with was still stuck to his lips and to the fur around his cheeks. It had made his heart race when he tasted it - it had heightened his senses and even outside he could see things, strange things. He knew he had to get back to Cat's Lair. 
 

[Part Three]

Tygra floated effortlessly in the goo, suspended by the fluid's intermediate density, its high viscosity. It clung to his fur, painfully, stretching and pulling his hair all over his body. Damped in that medium, confined in that enveloping vat, he was tranquil and serene, as safe and comfortable as in a womb. His only, distracting connection to the outside world was the mask around his head and its segmented hoses that arched upward, to the ventilators that hovered over his body. Staring at the contraptions, his mind wandering ill at ease, impatient, the effects of his latest experiment would have to take time to come to fruition.

His eyes, that were open to a world colored in yellow, he closed shut to a void of blackness - he let the humming mechanics of his gyrating, convulsing instruments lulled him to sleep and in a short, all too short period of time the universe was silent and still.

A scream followed, the scream of a thousand, pent-up voices, howling in terror - a terror collected through untold ages but released at once. It was the horror of his own birth recreated - at once he burst forth in flood of bright, blinding light. His eyes were open and, rushing through massive, gray clouds, he could feel the great mass of the earth pull him toward its center. Gradually, beneath him, he saw how the world began to take form: blue oceans foaming and uneven - rivers sparkling, winding and spreading forth in arterial grander - mountains looming before vast and fertile plains, white-capped and gray - green forests steaming, intermingling with orange deserts.

The details formed themselves out of the misty nothingness of time at an accelerating pace. His heart raced palpably, unnaturally for he sensed his own, impending death. He yelled, he shouted yet no sound came out of his quivering lips. And then it dawned on him - he had no lips, he had no body. He was mind only, consciousness, awareness and, relieved, he ended his struggle, he gave in to the absolute reality of his condition.

Tygra studied the geography of the emerging planet. Its landmasses were distributed unevenly - uncountable islands were scattered everywhere, forever. He recognized the landscape, he realized where he was headed.

Again the world went black, silent - time had become meaningless. He was lost, he was nothing - the idea of his existence had been forgotten. He did not feel terror, he did not feel the horror of his personal limbo. A thought passed his lips - if only he still had them - a memory was soon dredged up from oblivion. He saw colors: red and black, yellow, a pale yellow. Sensations, he had sensations and for a brief moment he felt himself rise almost up from the air itself - a strange, alien pressure permeated his head, his face.

Brightness again - but not as intense as before. He was no longer in the air falling but rather he was in the area by the foot of a circle of rocky hills overlooking a sandy coast, hovering above the glimmering waters of a wide bay. Behind him was the clear and unobstructed entrance of a deep cavern. Before him, in the faraway distance, were the brown and green faces of flat-peaked, conical mountains.

Tygra noticed then that he had a problem. He could not move, his mind was stuck in place - until he began to remember. He remembered a foot and a foot formed itself. He remembered a leg and a leg grew out of the exposed ankle - bones sprung up, ligaments and blood vessels wrapped around the skeletal structures, rippled muscles and tight flesh coagulated and then at last his striped fur was excreted from pores and follicles. His body and head developed at the end - he saw himself materialize from nothing until he was fully-formed - his features had returned.

He swam across waters of the gentle bay to the shore, to the beach of brown sand. He found a still pond, surrounded by loose rocks from the nearby hills. On its still waters he stared at his own reflection - the body was his own but wildly distorted with imperfections, deviations - it was the best that it could be and no more. He was confused for he felt like himself but not like himself at once.

Tygra sobbed into his contorted hands, his fingers short and stumpy - he had lost his senses.

A bird called, a screeching wail echoed in the trees. He stood on shaky feet and, undaunted, he turned to face the imposing line of the primeval forestry. He walked awkwardly - it seemed odd to him that he had maneuvered much better in the water than on the land. Yet the thought was fleeting, momentary.

Afraid, he trembled upon entering that alien environment. He stepped forward, almost falling on his face. He arose slowly and only with the aid of a tree. He sighed and caught his breath - for the first time he realized how uncomfortable it was to stand, to walk erect. He had never known that strange discomfort - except, perhaps, from his days as a cub, when the best he could do was crawl.

With his arms firmly around the bark of the tree, he kicked a foot forward and pressed his weight down on the spongy soil - the clamoring earth seeped in between his toes. He let his other foot follow. He let go of the tree. Again, he fell - he was completely and totally uncoordinated. He did not understand why it was happening to him but then, in a flickering moment, he was puzzled no longer. Instead of struggling with his fate, we succumbed to his condition and went about on all fours - as though it was second nature.
 

[Part Four]

WileyKat stumbled into his bedroom and, confident that he was alone, he fell to the floor, crouching, sitting just under the golden knob. He dropped his head in his hands and cried - his face was still sticky with that goo but the tears did much to wash it away. His stomach knotted, he clenched his arms around his abdomen, holding back the pain the best he could. The churning of his intestines subsided and he resumed his sobbing.

A noise grabbed his attention and he looked forward, his eyes peeking through the gaps between his fingers. The room he shared with his sister was dark and cluttered and had an air of impersonal foreboding. One of the Venetian blinds hovered precariously in the air, caught in the wake of a cold breeze and when the current died at last it crashed back upon the frame of the open window, jiggling and vibrating wildly.

He shivered but was then overcome by a strong flash of heat, feverish heat. He stood and ran to the bathroom - his gait was erratic, his mind was disoriented. He reached the sink and could hold it back no longer - he vomited in the basin.

The youngster sat on the covered bowl of the toilet, shaking, trembling. He had cleaned the mess that he had made of the sink and had given himself a new set of clothes to replace the tunic he had soiled irrecoverably. He tried to calm himself all the while thinking of what had happened that day. He thanked Jagga no one had noticed him returning to Cat's Lair. His sister was out with Cheetara shopping in the Berbil village. Snarf was too busy doing chores. Panthro was in the garage working on the Feliner. And Liono - 

"Liono," he spoke under his breath, globules of spit were ejected from his lips to splatter on the tile floor.

Rapidly, the boy internalized his terror. He wondered if Tygra had made a time machine - or if it was a hoax, a sick, elaborate hoax. In the past he had fallen victim to many painfully horrible jokes, always played at his expense, aimed at his innocence. Lately, his sister, too, had joined the fray. He blamed Liono for starting it, but he had no proof - other than his inner voice - that the Lord of the Thundercats had anything against him - indeed, the lion had always been too playful around the kittens even after he had mysteriously turned into an adult, he continued to practice what Cheetara would call 'his unmanly behavior.'

Now Tygra, the only one he ever looked up to and respected, now he, too, did not like him. He was sure of it, nothing else could explain it, but he hoped it was not so. Determined to find out for himself, he decided to look through the tiger's lab for evidence.

"I don't much like this stretched of our adopted planet," he said, wagging his finger in an exaggerated, adult tone.

Unlike his lab, Tygra's room - the room in which he entertained friends - was kept neat and tidy. The windows were covered with thick, red-orange drapers - WileyKat pulled them aside to reveal an overlook view of the world around the base. His eyes roamed about the tops of the trees, scoured the banks of the rivers and ended on the salty plains and the gray-face mounds - he squinted his eyes, aware of a certain disturbance in that faraway, uninhabited scene, but he was too distant to tell what was happening in that unbearably familiar area.

Back to his self-appointed mission - he rummaged through the drawers of desks, under the bed, in closets. He found journals and diaries, photographs, scraps of paper with scribbled notes. The handwriting was atrocious and almost entirely illegible. He sighed, utterly disappointed - he had hoped answer would be in that room and not scattered amidst the chaos of the lab.

He did not want to search the lab.

About ready to give up, he realized he had not checked the drawing table.

"Please, Alluro! I need it!" he growled, his intuition turned on its head - attached to the board were two sheets of paper. One, colored in a powdery, red chalk, was a rubbing taken of a mural from that deep, secret, subterranean cavern. Jackal-headed figures and ornate hieroglyphs stared back at him in reverse print. The second was the translation - written in a flowery script, a female hand.

WileyKat held the heavy parchment in his shaking hands. The language of the transcription had been taken literally and was hard to understand except for the casual phrase here and there that caught his attention.

"Menses, the Second, son of Seti the Fifth, ascended to the throne at a young age upon his father's untimely death," he read following the words with his extended forefinger. "Seti instructed the learned men of his day to construct a vehicle by which he could travel through time," it said, "so that he might see how the fruits of his labors would flourish and how his greatness would endure after him."

He removed the page from the draft table and approached the brighter light of the window.

"The philosophy of the mechanics were thought flawless by the priests of the high temple - but the effect on the spirit was unexpected, unforseen and ultimately the endeavor was a failure. This testament is to serve as a warning that while travel through time is possible, the mind is too frail to survive the effect."

Red notices were written along the margins, again in that ornate lettering - they were asides, explanations: "The theory was wrong, the philosophy was flawed." Another: "It was not the 'mechanics' of time travel that was at fault." Yet another: "You, among the Thundercats, should not attempt this. You, like Seti, are far too prone to -"

The boy dropped the thick parchment - his eyes widened, his mind struggling to understand.
 

[Part Five]

A wide river snaked across Tygra's path - it was an eerie blue, sticky to the touch. He lapped a sample of it into his mouth noisily with his tongue and quickly spit it out. The taste was unpleasant, the stinging flavor lingered in his dripping mouth. The back of his throat ached and he began to vomit in a painful coughing fit. Still, he had to get to the opposite bank to explore the rest of that world.

He dunked his front legs into the currents cautiously. The river was warm and it flowed softly, gently. He let the rest of his body follow in short sprint, splashing the strange coagulant ooze in the air. The tiger floated easily in that bluish liquid - it was not water entirely, but it seemed able to support life never the less. Large fish passed under him, brushing against the fur of his limbs. The sensation was different, frightening, but in time it no longer bothered him. Branches and fallen leaves rushed by his head and face with his every stroke. The sharp debris truly irritated him, poking him with jagged edges, but even that, too, he found a way to ignore.

Only in passing did he recall a fear of water and when the thought came to him it was in relation to the deep, the abysmal blackness just under the rhythmic sway of his swimming. He stopped - his heart racing - he held his breath and dunked in completely. Beneath the littered surface angled slants of light broke through the river's interface for about fifty feet. Beyond that he saw only an impenetrable wall of gray, a cloudy, vaporous gray.

His destination was in sight and, with his lungs full of air, he dashed across the currents to where he saw a gnarled, decaying root. He reached out for it, he could see his fingers wrap around it, but he had no grip. Again he attempted, again he tried once more but his hands had lost their dexterity. He swam the few feet that separated him from the dry land, lifted himself from the gooey river and washed up on the glossy pebbles of the great, reed-filled bank.

Trees and flowered vegetation, overgrown and crowded, were displaced in the harsh conditions and spread onto the top of the river. Vines and thin, leafy shoots swayed in the glittering currents, the gentle ripples of the water. The sun was high in the sky and its radiant heat permeated the sprawling forests, the vast jungles. Clouds of mist and vapors steamed in the canopy.

Tygra found a thin trail, etched into the earth after millennia of use. Odd that it felt familiar but he did not let that affect him - the memory passed in a fleeting moment. He continued on along the course.

Covered in the shade of a large boulder, he paused, wondering who he was, what he was doing - and then his stomach churned in hunger.

A large spider crawled over the cavernous face of the rock. His eyes followed it tightly, its red back betraying its every move. It dragged along its way a shiny, whitish filament that it produced from rotating spindles at the end of its abdomen - large globules of venom were stuck to its length. The limber arachnid tattered around encrusted soil and then quickly vanished under a mass of dead, brittle leaves in the underbrush.

Just at that moment he heard a ruffling come from nearby. It was not from the wind and instinct told him to seek cover. With his face hidden in a patch of tall grass, he watched patiently while a small, pig-like creature appeared on the beaten path. Covered in furled, flaxen clothes, it lumbered its heavy weight about sluggishly. Alone, it wandered aimlessly.

Again his stomach cramped. He could not control his animalistic urge, he could not hold back any longer - he jumped out of cover and tackled the interloper. It shouted and in its dying breath it almost seemed to speak. Tygra tore into the neck with sharp, wet teeth and bit off a chunk of flesh. Blood fountained out from the severed vessels - the head fell back, detached from the body, its snout open in an inaudible scream to last eternity.

The tiger ripped open the denim clothes with his eager claws. Naked and exposed, the body lay motionless on the ground. The hide was tough and dry and he tore at it, ripping the sunbaked, stringy flesh, opening into the softer fats and reddened muscles below. The taste of blood and flesh, fresh and raw, was insatiable. It drove him into an orgasmic frenzy, an ethereal pleasure feeling the meat dissolve in his mouth.

The organs he left alone and after feeding his fill he left the carcass on the trail to continue his exploration. Already circling vultures and carnivorous insects had swarmed down over the head, rolling it across the rocks. A large roach crawled out of the ruptured eye socket bathed in blood and loose chunks of brain matter. The body, too, was not left alone for long - it was devoured by small animals that only then crawled out of the woodwork.

After what must have been hours of walking the forests acame to a small, tranquil clearing. The tall trees that surrounded it gave the flat, grassy plain a cool, permanent shade. The land had been grazed on regularly and all around the tufts was the telltale evidence of it - fresh droppings swarmed by buzzing flies. 

Tygra had been attracted to the scene - far astray from the trail by almost half a mile - by the sounds of laughter and giggling. Frolicking in what appeared to be children's playhouses were young girls, maidens a tad larger than the pig-creature he had dined on earlier. He approached unprotected in clear sight for the grass was trim and short. 

The women were not startled by his presence and allowed him to come closer. They petted him gently, stroked him softly. They wrapped their arms around him, his head and neck but he did not feel threatened. He wanted to speak but only a low, guttural noise came out of his throat.

Friendly and remotely familiar, they let him play with them.

The area seemed to be a recreational park but the fixtures were tiny - even the maidens dwarfed the houses, doors, windows. Gangways attached to trees a couple of feet over the ground led from one tiny home to another. He saw, in astonished amusement, how ten of them fit comfortably inside one of the huts - a box-framed bundle of wood and straw not more than four feet tall. He looked into the open window - the girls had shrunk accordingly but grew back to their normal sizes as soon as they stepped outside.

He was drawn by the openness of the women, by their sweetness, their constant attention until at last he felt a new urge, a strange desire, equally as powerful as his hunger.
 

[Part Six]

Tygra's mood and personality had changed in the course of recent weeks. He was disinterested, distant - and even long-standing habits had been broken, forgotten. Before, WileyKat had gone in out of curiosity, justified by a genuine concern for his hero, his beloved Thundercat, his only friend, but after, what he had seen and come to know that day, the very idea of revisiting that cluttered, chamber of horrors made the hair on his neck stand on end. It terrified him, yet he could not resist - an unquenchable, inner drive forced him to enter the laboratory once more.

The knob was unlocked. The door opened easily in his shaking hands. The boy stepped inside. The room was exactly as he had left it hours ago, Snarf had done nothing to disturb it, other than his taking out the trash bag.

"The Keystone!" he gasped, his stuttered syllables echoed about the unkept lab. He feared that the recipe had been in the garbage, hastily discarded, but what instinct he had left told him otherwise. The ingredients of the yellow, aromatic ooze was what he was after - he needed it or the rest would not believe him.

"Where would he hide it?" he asked.

He scoured the bookcases. The shelves were overstuffed with decaying tomes of physics and chemistry mixed with articles of fiction gathered from ruins of First and Second Earth libraries that through the years the tiger had deciphered and translated. Layers of dust attested to the undisturbed and unused condition that the books were in. Silverfish crawled in the shadows between the aging, crumbling spines, moths devoured stray and exposed pages, discoloring the rest with excrement.

He looked at the tables. They had no drawers or spaces under their flat surfaces to hide documents. The machines that populated them were bulky and difficult to move. He peeked into the thin gaps under them between their metal frames and the tabletop but again found nothing but fluttering insects reveling in the dark.

"Why do I never get things right?" He stomped on the ground and kicked a table leg. The padding on his brown boot dampened the blow but nothing could soften the pain of what he felt inside. He was a failure, he was sure of it: "If my sister was here I'm sure she'd have found it already." He chided himself, tears dripping from his bloodshot eyes. He was alone, surrounded by cold shadows, haunted by painful memories of torments past.

"Rules are only meaningful when people follow them," he said softly, turning his face upward to the window. High in the heavens, violent clouds swarmed in the gray sky. His eyes adjusted and refocused and he was uncomfortable for a moment, sensing motion where there was none. Seeing himself in the darkness, he stepped forward.

On the floor, next to his feet, was Tygra's rolled up blanket and pillow. A current of air, an unseen hand unfolded the articles, exposing the torn interior, shredded involuntarily by nightmares. Faint odors of dry fluids - not all bodily - emanated from its convoluted interior. Slowly he knelt over it and explored it with his hands for there was very little light. He pressed a fist into the dent of the pillow and felt a soft sheet of paper. He removed the sheath and there at last was the object of his search.

WileyKat read the parchment. The recipe consisted of two lists: the left had the original ingredients with the archaic names, the right had the modern equivalent complete with the relative amounts needed for mixing. Water, sucrose, nitrate and mercury were familiar elements he had learned from Tygra himself. What caught his attention were those items written in red, bold letters: morphine, opiates, THB and another ingredient listed only as 'fruit.' The names that remained were unspeakable both in nature and in origin.
 

The main door of the control room was precariously open - a flood of bright light emptied out in the dim hall. WileyKat approached on tiptoe, carrying several documents in his hands. He was about ready to enter when he heard Liono and Snarf talking. He decided to eavesdrop for a moment or two.

"Where is Tygra?" Liono asked, rubbing the short stubble on his chin with his thumb and forefinger. "I thought I sent WileyKat to find him."

"I haven't seen that boy either since breakfast," the screeching voice rang through the corridor. "I worry about those two - Tygra and WileyKat -"

"You worry about everyone, Snarf."

"Someone has to! Snarf, snarf! Tygra's been acting weird, ever since he went to see Mumm-Rana for Jagga knows what reason."

Liono laughed, the youngster approached the door holding the parchments up against his face, just under his eyes.

"And WileyKat -"

"What about WileyKat?"

Moving shadows danced across the kitten's masked face.

"Snarf, snarf. That boy needs help - a lot of it - if only you guys would give him a decent chance. Tygra we can't change now I'm afraid, but at least the boy -"

"You leave him to me -"

The words that followed were low but tense - and though he was only a few feet away from the two he could catch only unrelated, unattached fragments of words.

And then: "What? Are you serious? Are you imagining it?"

"No - I found it in his trash when I entered that lab of his the smell was so bad it made me tipsy. Snarf, snarf. I opened it and found it rolled into used papers."

A pause.

"Ash, too," the small creature whispered, "and bits of broken glass, too, that cut my fingertips."

"It explains it, doesn't it?" Liono said, stepping noisily about the well-lit chamber. A large, wall monitor displayed an ever-changing panorama of Third Earth. Buttons on keyboards in consoles blinked feverishly, casting multi-colored slants of light across the metal walls.

"Tygra is prone to -" the lion turned around, aware at last of WileyKat's presence in the room. He looked stunned and ill at ease, as though he had been caught in the act of something secret, something sinister. He stepped back in horror. "WileyKat?"

Well in the room, the youngster looked right to left but he could not find Snarf - only a door behind an unused chair that swung freely too and fro without noise.

"Tygra's done bad."

"Bad?" the Lord of the Thundercats repeated.

"I found these -" WileyKat showed him the documents.

Liono took the sheets in his uneasy, sweaty hands and perused them lightly. He saw the Egyptian work - his eyes widened. He looked at the boy once more: "Where did you get these?"

"I found them in Tygra's room and lab. He got them from a cave -"

"A cave?"

"A tomb of a pharaoh - they're the instructions and recipe for a time machine."

He stood motionless for a dramatic pause, trying to make sense of what the boy was telling him. His lips moved in speech but his words made no sound. His eyes agitated along an outline of an object that only he and he alone could see.

Liono was about ready to cry: "I have no control," he lamented, having recovered his senses. "I have no control." He stopped. "Where is Tygra?"

WileyKat eyes the Sword of Omens briefly, he was about to answer but just then the control room was ablaze in sirens and alarms. Liono rushed to the keyboard, dropping the papers - the youngster picked them up attentively, the sheets crumpling in his stout fingers. He typed several codes and the world inside Cat's Lair was silent once more - although Panthro could be heard rushing up the stairs from the garage - he turned around and addressing no one in particular he announced an emergency at the Warrior Maiden's village.
 
 
 

Liono left Snarf behind to tend to Cat's Lair. He, Panthro and WileyKat boarded the Thunder Tank and set off at once to the sight of the distress. For a time, at least, the question of Tygra and what was to be done about him was put aside for the greater good of rescuing valuable allies. Yet in the down time the long trip afforded, the lion sat up front, reading the occult and alchemic documents of either genius ro deranged origin.

"I don't understand what this means," he said, his eyes pointed at his lap where the papers rested. "What does Mumm-Rana mean?"

"Maybe we should find her after we're done with this," the panther turned to the side for a moment. "What exactly is the problem?"

"Willa didn't say," Liono answered quickly.

The fast-moving vehicle passed a large, rough boulder at the roadside. Without warning they hit a slight bump on the weather-beaten trail. The jolt upset everyone inside and displaced a flock of vultures outside that then swooped and swarmed up in the air, fleeing the guilty scene.

His hands firmly on the wheel, Panthro looked back but found nothing out of the ordinary until a large, melon-shaped object was ejected from the axle where it had been lodged and smashed against the windshield. It splattered apart in a sea of red and gray. Maggots squirmed in the mess. Roaches, that were crushed but still alive, aimed their twiddling, dying legs to the sky. The thing, what ever it was, fell back onto the path - aside from the goo, it had left no scratch or crack in the glass, much to the panther's relief. He turned on the wipers and after a few strokes the last traces of its having been were gone.

"Don't you get it?" WileyKat asked, poking his head forward. "He built a time machine. I saw it, I told you, I saw it in the cavern -"

"From ancient, First Earth technology?" Panthro scoffed. "Impossible! What you saw was a sensory deprivation tank, complete with narcotics."

"It's madness, absolute madness. It's a high machine, WileyKat," Liono added, flexing his ill wit.

Panthro laughed: "Poor guy. I thought with Bengali around that he'd have someone to - well, you know."

"Doesn't Bengali go out with - Pumyra - oh," the lion said, realizing the irony.

"He's still got WileyKat, though."

Panthro laughed alone and realizing that he stayed silent for the rest of the drive. Liono looked back on the boy, concern painted on his face. "Don't worry, we'll get to the bottom of this. I'm sure what ever Tygra's done - there's a clear and perfectly logical explanation for it - what ever that might be."

"You're going to put him in the room, too?" he asked already knowing the answer.

"It's for his own good - until he's back to normal again."

The youngster nodded - he knew what that room meant, he knew what normal was. In his mind he could see the tiger chained to the stuffed, rubber walls of the room drooling and unconscious. WileyKat wondered if that was what he looked like when he was kept in that horrible room, away from the others those three years.

"What a fine figure of a Thundercat," he said, returning to the shadows of the Thunder Tank.

Liono put the parchments under the seat - they had arrived at the village. It was startling and unnerving how deserted the settlement was. The huts, the gangways in the tall trees still swayed - the small of something, something fruity permeated the air in a way that was entirely unnatural.

The three stepped out of the vehicle and walked to one of the large, wooden platforms - claw marks and spots of fresh blood marred its well-smoothed surface. The only sounds were of their own footsteps and the occasional birdcalls from the trees.

"What must have happened here?" Panthro looked about the emptiness, his stomach knotted in ulcerous pain.

Upon closer inspection the Thundercats realized that there was more, much more than met the eye. The huts had their windows smashed, their doors broken, torn to pieces. The moist ground was carved by wild, chaotic footprints.

"Oh!" a female voice called from behind. "I knew you'd come."

The three turned around to see Willa running toward them on the open stage.

"What happened?" Liono asked. "You were incoherent on the radio."

"We've been attacked by -" her strange accent coupled with her rushed tempo made her words unrecognizable.

"By what?"

"I don't know what it was - we thought ti wasn't -"

Again no one could understand her but no one needed to know the particulars. The Queen of the Amazons had visible, bleeding scratch marks across her face, arms and hands. Her clothes were disheveled, torn and missing.

"WileyKat. Take her to the Thunder Tank - she's injured." Panthro said, holding the small-framed woman in his massive hands.

"Where are the others?"

"It attacked us all - we tried to fight back but it didn't seem to feel pain. It chased the rest of us into the trees."

Panthro let go, WileyKat supported her by the arm, her bare breast touched his flesh but he felt nothing. She, however, noticed the worn traces of smears across his face - she ran her hand through what remained of the sticky goo, she stepped aback in realization. A smell was coming off the boy - faint and indistinct it was almost unnoticeable but familiar for it was the same scent that - 

Another pair of women came out of the wilderness. Nayda and an unidentified Amazonian who was naked and battered approached Willa. WileyKat took the women into the safety of the vehicle.

"Come," he said, leading them. "What happened to her?"

"The creature ravished her," Nayda said. "We tried to fight it off but we were too late."

The youngster looked at the small woman from behind - her bare back was covered with deep gashes and claw marks, the flesh shredded beyond immediate repair.

Willa stopped midway, she pointed to the distance. The underbrush ruffled: "There! There! It's there!" she shouted.

Eyes turned and watched in horror while a ghastly figure made its way out of the cover the shadows of the forest.
 

[Part Seven]

He was alone in the forests - hot, steaming vapors arose from the moist, vine-covered earth, from the glimmering dew on the heavy leaves on branches, from the rippled surface of blue-green ponds overgrown with lilies to the dark, green void of the upper canopy. Around him echoed the panicked cries of the fleeing women. He was confused, his mind amiss in utter chaos. He could not remember who he was, what he was doing. He moved down to the water's edge and glared at his reflected image. He grunted - a faint cloud of gray evolved from his glaring nostrils.

Tygra could not recognize himself.

A spark of instinct brought him back to reality - or at least the reality that he had grown accustomed to. At last he remembered - his mate had been taken from him by the other maidens forcibly and far too soon for his purposes. He saw them again, in his mind, grabbing her from him, beating him back into the underbrush. He roared aloud in anger and sniffed the air, desperately trying to glean her location.

He set off at once, tripping on loose soil, dodging over rocks and boulders, heading through fields of tall grass. He could fell her near, coming closer and closer with every sprint. And then he sensed a new odor, an ashy, burnt smell he had become so used to that he could not detect it about his own body anymore. He recognized it at once - it was another one of him, of his kind, what ever it was. He had inadvertently stumbled upon a new mate and doubled his efforts to reach his beckoning source.

Oddly, he seemed to be getting back to that idyllic clearing. He stumbled upon a ridge of dense vegetation, old trees and entangled bushes decorated with open flowers. The foliage spread apart before him, trumpeting his advance.

Shouts of horror grabbed his fleeting attention - he was exposed again in the heart of the clearing of short grass. He angled his head about to take in the panorama of the scene. He saw a pair of strange men standing near the small homes he had crashed on violently in his search for a mate among the young women. The glint of shining metal - a strange vehicle rested in the silent guise of a sleeping monster at the opposite edge of the shaded flat land. The women were gathered under it along with a young boy.

Tygra snarled and inched forward. He could see the strange, new interlopers but he could not recognize them exactly. He could not see their faces, he could not distinguish their forms - fuzzy and indistinct. He had failed to notice it but from the moment he had found himself in that alien world his vision had faded and degenerated. He could no longer see colors and only when objects were moving could he follow them.

The women pointed at him, the boy, too, lurched back in horror. It was him, the youngster - the smell of burnt fruit was coming off of him. He paused again in confusion - confronted by that unexpected dilemma, he decided at the last moment to turn to comfort from the one more familiar, the one more like himself.
 

The onlookers stepped aback in slight shock while a large, misshapen tiger came out of the surrounding forestry. It had red and black stripes, its undercoat was white with a hint of yellow. Its frame was massive, its bulk was twice that of a normal, representative animal.

Quickly it sprinted toward the Thunder Tank and the innocents huddled in the vehicle's protective bulk. It seemed to ignore Panthro and Liono while it sniffed and stalked it helpless prey. It roared only yards away from the shaking kitten - the Warrior Maidens were already safely within the vehicle.

"Get in the Thundera Tank! Get it now!" Panthro yelled at WileyKat. He had his red and blue weapons in his ready hands, pointing them at the menacing beast.

Liono went for his sword immediately. He wrapped his grip around its cold hilt but the blade would not unsheathe. He looked down in disbelief - even the Eye of Thundera was shut, silent. It did not growl even though by then the snarling tiger was at striking distance from the boy. He looked up in horror - the beast had its mouth wide open, whiskers curled inward, sharp, wet teeth glistened.

"What's the matter?" the panther asked him. He stole a glance to the side at the lion.

"The sword wont respond," he said at last, "I don't know what to do." At that point Liono could not tell what was more dangerous: the tiger or Panthro. He dashed forward, waving the claw shield before him, the Sword of Omens still attached to it. He managed to distracted the large carnivore long enough for WileyKat to jump up to the roof of the vehicle. The women inside, tending to their injured, had shut the door and it would have been a waste of time to have them open it in haste.

Not about to be outdone, Panthro followed on the heels of his leader. He fired blasts of pulsating energy from the end of his numchucks but the beams were deflected. Frustrated, he tried again and again his dead-on aim was in error.

The two were before the tiger, drawing a line on the earth, as it were, keeping the beast from advancing any further. Liono began to circle it while Panthro stood his ground, determined to be avenged for his embarrassing show of inept marksmanship. Both began to notice that the beast was not right.

The limbs were an odd fusion of human and animal physiology. Only the flattened paws appeared to retain cat-like structure but even they were unusual in that they had elongated, chubby fingers. The head was flat-faced, the muzzle did protrude sharply but at an angle and with a noticeable chin. The nose was shaped like a man's and the brown, orange eyes were closely spaced, again like a man's - one in particular came to mind.

Willa came out of the back of the Thunder Tank and climbed up to the roof, aided by a nervous WileyKat. She had her bow ready in one hand, her other busy grabbing an arrow. She shouted for the others to get out of the way. Liono ducked to the side, Panthro crouched down on the ground. The spinning shot whizzed through the air and pierced the mutant tiger in the shoulder.

The creature yelled out in pain - a sound that could have easily been mistaken for human. It lunged forward, toward the vehicle - WileyKat looked down upon the injured beast. Willa took out another arrow from her quiver, licking its feathered end. She noticed for the first time a sordid kinship between the boy and the tiger - that particular odor seemed to come from them both.

Injured and sensing eminent mortal danger, the beast mustered its remaining energies for one last stand. The animal arose, almost completely on hind legs, and sprinted across the field, over Liono, toward a large tree. The tiger began to climb, stabbing sharp claws into its brittle bark. Above, long horizontal branches hovered dangerously over the ground - it was desperately trying to reach those outstretched limbs.

"WileyKat?" Panthro asked while he helped Willa come down from the vehicle. "WileyKat what are you doing?"

The boy did not answer - rather he boldly followed anthropomorphic tiger while the others were only beginning to regroup their efforts.
 

Tygra was stuck a dangerous height above the hard, stony earth. He knew he could not hold on for much longer. The arrow that had pierced his flesh remained in his body, just under his shoulder. He could feel the serrating pain of the rod - it had broken in half inside him after his exhausting run and climb.

The thick, strong branch was only inches away from his hold. He reached out but he could not grab on. He tried once more, thrusting his great weight forward until at last he had his upper body almost wrapped around the limb's knot. With what little security that new, precarious position had afforded him, he shifted his balance to let him angle the rest of his body onto the relative safety of that ledge.

Immediately it began to buckle under him.

A pitiful call came from below and he looked down. The same youngster from before stood at the base of the tree - the others were far behind, by the large, metal contraption. He felt a welcome closeness and for a fleeting moment he was not afraid although the pain continued undaunted. He turned around a bit to get a better look.

A crack began to form along the seam joining the branch and tree. The tiger's vision was too weak for him to see it and too much noise was coming from the clearing for him to hear it. He dropped an extended arm as if to touch the boy's head - the young kitten was the only thing in that exotic world remotely familiar to him and he hopelessly tried to latch on that.
 

WileyKat stood by the gnarled, exposed roots of the tree, treading closer to where the strange tiger was perched on the limb. The boy thought it was odd that the wounded animal was not bleeding even though the arrow was still protruding from its back. The beast followed him attentively with unfocused eyes.

"Get back! Get back from there!" one of the adults cried. He could not tell who it was exactly, his mind was elsewhere.

"WileyKat!"

He stopped and looked around - Liono was running at him, waving the claw shield in his extended arms. The sword was still in its holster, the sound it made while it cut through the air was a deep and penetrative throb. The lion swooped down and grabbed the boy around the waist.

The tiger up the tree roared - the other adults were already close, too close to the boy for the animal to bear. The kitten tried desperately to break free from the grip of Liono's bulging arms. The beast heard its cries and once again arose on its misshapen paws.

The slight crack on the branch deepened without warning. The limb drooped at a steep angle, continuing to fall under the tiger's enormous bulk. In an instant it snapped, dangling only by the thinnest threads but the beast had lost its balance and fell headlong onto the earth, thrashing its arms and legs about violently.

It remained on the ground, motionless, while the horrified onlookers crowded around its broken body. A freed WileyKat was the only one brave enough to come closer to it, kneeling over its up-turned head. It continued to move its limbs but slowly, its pain undeniably evident in its gasps for breath. Before their eyes the it began to transform - fur and skin peeled off of the body in the action of the gentlest breeze, spreading the decayed dust across the air.

"Tygra," he boy said, leaning above the body.

"It's him," Liono said, running his hands through his red mane, "but, but. I don't understand - I mean -"

"Look," Willa pointed. "It's still transforming."

"By Jagga!" Panthro covered his wide, open mouth with a clenched fist. The sight disturbed him utterly but he could not turn his eyes from it, he could not look away.

"Tygra," the youngster whispered, reaching out weakly, in disgust.

What was at the moment Tygra's face looked up at WileyKat in answer. While its mouth was vanishing its lips were moving, uttering the word 'failure' repeatedly. It continued to dissolve, its features lengthening, distorting wildly while it - that what ever it was - steadily melted into a puddle of dense, yellow goo, until at length the parched soil soaked down the quivering mass of vile liquids, leaving not even a strand of fur behind only the strong scent of burnt fruit.
 

[Part Eight]

Under Nayda's guidance, the Warrior Maidens regrouped and began to tend to themselves: their hurt and injured came first, their ransacked village and homes came second. The tiger had done little physical damage, but the Amazonians were greatly relieved to know that it was gone. None had been told what it really was or what ultimately happened to it since neither Liono nor Willa understood themselves.

Only WileyKat had the slightest idea what was going on. Once the Thundercats had made sure that the situation at the village was normal and properly settled, it was his solemn responsibility to show the adults just what Tygra had done. Up front, in the Thunder Tank, he directed the route to Panthro by instinct - although the trail through the wilderness was stark and unfamiliar, he could see what was behind every corner even before they had reached the bend.

The boy's mind was focused yet ill at ease. He sat on a pile of crates, his face up against the glass windshield. For a brief moment he turned to face the panther and spoke though no one heard him: "When I build them they don't dare break down."

The Thunder Tank was parked before the arc of ragged hills and without prompt the weary passengers got off amidst that alien and unfamiliar landscape. Liono gave WileyKat a flashlight - he kept the other so that he and Willa could read the confiscated documents in the cavern. He hoped that she could make sense of them, having more knowledge of ancient history.

WileyKat showed them the easiest way into the oblong-shaped entrance. Fresh tracks lead from the gapping darkness to the hot, baking sand flats. A shovel lay on its side, rusting unmolested. He went in, Panthro close behind. Liono and Willa followed at a slower pace, lagging a good ten or fifteen feet.

The boy kept his lantern low - he did not want to see the engraved images on the walls, the roaming eyes looking at him. One set of massive doors came after the other, after the other endlessly, each of them fell to floor a heat of twisted metal in the wake of Panthro's impatient rage. He did not bother to wait to have them unlocked, rather he kicked them down, the noise alarming the deeper parts of the labyrinth of their approach. Liono began to worry about that - it occurred to him that the crypt was not entirely stable in its age and manhandling it that way might not be a good idea. Yet he said nothing, he did not want to chide the panther out fear of what might happen in his agitated state.

At last they came upon the heavy set of iron doors. Odd that the wind had not shut them but then, WileyKat realized, the currents were never that strong anyway. Panthro spread the dividers apart - the gates that were not part of the original construction. With relative ease the four found themselves a the heart of the complex, face to face with Tygra's latest invention.

"So that's what a time machine looks like?" the panther asked, sarcastically. He held his hand over his mouth, gagging for the room was engulfed in the over-powering stench of that burnt fruit - they had all been smelling it earlier in the caverns, but in faint whiffs only. Now they were right in the source.

"Yeah, right," WileyKat answered in a smooth, even tone - Panthro turned to face him, noticing it for the first time.

"A time machine, but not the sort you're thinking of, Panthro," Willa began. Although she, too, was repulsed by the odor it did not bother her as much as it did the others. "From what I've read it seems obvious. It took his mind and transformed it into something older, primitive - something that a tiger would have been countless of millions of years ago. With the improvements he made, the machine then created a body - one that would go along with the less-evolved brain."

"That thing we saw at the village," Liono interrupted.

"Yes. So you see - it is time travel, but not in the usual sense."

"We killed the body!" Panthro shouted incensed.

"That means his mind returned here," he answered the engineer in a way.

"Yes, that's what this paper says," Willa added.

WileyKat, who had broken from the group, walked about the scene, bolder then than he had been before. The place was exactly as he had last seen it - except for the over-abundance of the smoke that came from the far away corners of the vast chamber and for the floor that was unusually and unexpectedly sticky.

"If he went to the past and that turned him into an animal, what if he goes to the future?" Liono asked.

"He becomes a -" Willa was about to speak but she was cut off by the cries coming from the youngster.

WileyKat pointed to the vat - the others, whose attention he had grabbed, rushed to the boy's side. He kept his finger pointed to the large. Tygra was still in it, the face mask over his head, seeping gas bubbled into the ooze. The left, glass wall had been smashed out by a swift kick, spilling the vile fluid onto the floor. Blood and tufts of orange-black fur remained stuck to the jagged edges of the shards, glued by the dried, yellow concoction.

"He doesn't look like a god," Panthro said coldly. He tried to pry open the lid with his hands but the sheet of metal appeared to have been welded in place and only very recently for the edges were hot to the touch.

"He must have kicked out the glass when he fell from the tree," Willa said. "If we pull him out we'll put an end to this. Can we take him out through the gash?"

"I think so," Panthro answered, "but the fluid in the tub - I don't trust it, it has mercury and -" he pulled back large sections of broken glass, spilling out even more gallons of that concoction of narcotics.

"MWAHAHAHAHAHA! HAHAHAHAHAHA!" a hideous laughter echoed from the recesses of the crypt, the uncharted, cavernous depths below, from the very bowels of the earth itself.

Panthro stood back from the vat, wiping his sticky fingers on his uniform.

"Tygra," Liono said, arching his head up, recognizing the booming voice.

"HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! MWAHAHAHAHAHAHA!" the cackle responded accordingly.

"We must destroy the papers," Willa shouted, "the plans - no one must ever make a machine like this again." She tore the pages asunder in her shaking hands, letting them fall to the ground.

Cold bursts of air shot through the room, ruffling the torn parchments, killing many of the bright fires, the hanging torches, plummeting them into near, total darkness.

"BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!"

"WileyKat! Lead the others out," he commanded the kitten.

"What about you?" Panthro protested.

Shadows moved steadily toward them, shadows that gradually attained form - eyes, blinking eyes following their every move.

"Just go," the lion shouted, waving his arms, pointing with his sword to the iron doors that were then beginning to work themselves closed, shut. "It's an order!" he barked his last command.

Panthro, Willa and WileyKat ran to the back, to the only exit. The panther stopped the boy with a firm hand on the shoulder, the Amazonian followed suit. He regretted then not having busted that last set of doors down when he had had the chance earlier.

"HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! HAHAHAHAHAHA! HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!"

The spreading darkness avoided WileyKat and those around him while they attempted to flee - instead it lingered around Liono, who was busy cutting into it with his fully-extended sword in his hands. Frustrated, he shot a burst of energy at the ceiling - the chamber rocked violently, little pebbles and large chunks of rocks fell from the arched supports of the top of the cavern. Clouds of dense, arcid dust swirled in the air around him, torturing his lungs and further obscuring his already hampered vision. His attacks did nothing to halt the advance of the encroaching shadow or to silence the ragging laughter.

At the same time, Panthro reached out to the heavy doors just in time - he jammed a fist through the shrinking crack and pulled violently toward him. He tore the flesh of his hand in his rough action, splattering blood onto Willa and WileyKat's faces - they, too, helped to push the doors back. The Panther did not scream in pain - he spoke only to order them through when the quivering opening was big enough again for them to pass through. He was the last to leave and as he rushed forward he gave one last look back - Liono was almost completely enveloped in the fog, only his lamp and the bolts of lightning from his sword gave his position away.

"Go!" the lion shouted at no one in particular.

WileyKat and Willa pushed Panthro through the rest of the way and with that the doors sealed themselves permanently, binding the Lord of the Thundercats within forever. The panther shouted obscenities and pounded on the heavy, immovable frame. He looked to the side - to the others - promising under his breath that he would be back and not so easily defeated again. He put a strong hand on the boy's head, petting his mane gently, spreading blood and torn flesh from his broken fist into the soft strands of fur.

Alone in the chamber, Liono fired erratically - he could almost hear the laughing tiger's both trying to speak. He realized too late the only way to stop Tygra - Tygra, his friend turned madman. Untrustworthy and dishonorable, a maniac so perverted by his animalistic lusts that he could never be a Thundercat any more. Although it pained him beyond words, for the tiger had been his friend, mentor and right hand in all matters, he was the Lord of the Thundercats and had to destroy him for the sake of the greater good. Quickly, for he judged he had little time left, he fired into the time machine itself, destroying its vast array of equipment.

The vat exploded in a dense mist of yellow-gray vapors. The sparking of millions of volts of electricity from the dying demolished engineering lent the chamber an eerie, mystic glow. At last the laughter ceased - only to be replaced by the persitant shout of "NO!" screamed from powerful, heaving lungs. A scream to last an eternity, it shook the cavern to its foundations.

His ringing head in his hands, Liono looked up - a giant boulder on the ceiling was then dislodged and steadily began to drop to his head.
 

"AHHH!" a shout, a scream in a fleeting moment of conscious awareness, echoed through Cat's Layer before quickly dying and fading away into a hollow silence.

The sun broke through the thinning clouds of the afternoon, spreading its ebbing, red light across the valley. The sky was darkening in the somber shades of gray while the cold, autumnal air shook the leaves of shrinking flowers. A fine drizzle sprinkled against the windows of the lair - the frosted panes vibrated in its insecure frames.

The mood in the small, padded cell was no less foreboding. A slight chill permeated the scene, colored by the clanging of chains. A single, handing bulb dangled form the tiled ceiling, connected to the support hook by thick, white plastic cords, pulsating with energy.

Snarf lamented cruel fate in soft but audible murmurs. He approached the fallen Thundercat as though his greatly developed body, slumped over itself on the floor, was the site of a horrible tragedy. Tenderly, he brought the prostate figure's head up to face his.

Liono drooled - large droplets oozed from the corner of his lips, from his open mouth where it gurgled under his tongue. Deep in his throat random words rang up from oblivion. "Tygra! Keystone! Silky. Please, Alluro, I need it. Tygra. Keystone." He turned his head slowly from side to side then sulked back into his earlier, comatose and unresponsive state.

Snarf looked down on the lion's naked body, heaving in discomfort for its every breath.

Tygra and WileyKat stood together in a corner, watching the melodrama unfold. Panthro was irate, he wrung his hands together in anger, fresh blood oozed from the partly-healed wounds of his hands that then re-opened. The cuts on his hands he had received while working on the Feliner that fateful day when Liono fell victim to himself, to his own inner demons.

"He had always been a shy cub, too shy," the panther thought, recollecting fonder memories of his fallen leader.

The boy looked up at his mentor - the Eye of Thundera seemed to growl in the tiger's hands but in time it would come to know its new master.

Panthro walked out of the room and stormed back to the garage - the loss of Liono was too much for him to bear. Like the others, who where at the Tower of Omens, he was set to cope with what had happened in his own way.

Snarf wept, pressing his eyes on the lion's shoulder: "If only he hadn't gone into that cave. He wouldn't have ever taken the Keystone."

Tygra inched forward, lightly rubbing his body against the youth's: "It's not your fault."

"Of course it is - it was my responsibility to raise him."

WileyKat: "You worry about everyone."

Snarf: "Snarf, snarf. Will he ever recover?"

Tygra: "Pumyra and I aren't sure - we don't know what that Silky fruit overdose may have done to this brain." The tiger approached the door - loud tolling came up from the machine shops below.

WileyKat: "We'll leave you two alone," the kitten wrapped his arms around Liono's neck in a tight embrace. He looked out by the corner of his eyes to see that Tygra's back was to him. Into the fallen Thunderian's ear he whispered: "I know what he's done to you, I know how he changes things now - but after all that you and the others have done to me, do you really think I'd -"

Tygra called to him - he kissed his one-time Lord on the check then left the room whose door slid in place, leaving the grieving Snarf inside alone with his beloved child.