After Thundera Tiger formally christened her series, I began looking for a way to, er, complicate things :)

This was a little tribute to our fearless leader, RD Rivero...see how many titles you can pick out! Even I don't know how many there are ;P

To set the scene, RD and his faithful caninoid Fianna have been captured by those pesky good-niks, Team Tiger. Locked in the dungeon of Cat's Lair, waiting for rescue, I decide to give RD a little break from TT's treatment of him...

"A Brief Aside"

"Eh? What's this? I feel different, changed, altered at some fundamental level! My mental faculties are returning, my articulation is restored! And once more evil thoughts of mayem and tiger torture swell my black heart to bursting!"

"But how? What could account for this transformation, this metamorphosis, this..." Then RD noticed his large green cell mate, busily tapping away on a small gray palmtop computer. "Oh, it's you," he said.

Fianna closed his Osaris with a click and leand back on his bunk, favoring Rivero with a sloppy canine grin. "You're welcome," he said brightly. "I thought you might like having your 'evil genius' persona restored for a while."

RD suddenly focused in on the caninoid's hand. "You have your palmtop!"

Fianna shrugged. "I had it all along. Losing it was just a facet of Tiger's, um..." Fianna halted when he realized RD was ignoring him, digging through the pockets of his housecoat feverishly.

"MWAAAHAHAHAHAHAH!!!" RD roared in triumph as he pulled a small notepad and pencil from within his robe. "AT LAST! AT LAST THE WORM HAS TURNED, THUNDERA TIGER! TURNED TO DINE ON YOUR LIFELESS EYES!!" Giggling like a schoolgirl, RD sat down on his bunk and began to write.

"Uh, RD?" Fianna said. "There's something I need to tell-"

"SILENCE!!!!"

"Never mind," Fianna sighed.

*******************

Thundera Tiger fled, fled fast and fearful, though all the hounds of hell beat happy at her heels.

"The horror! The horror!" she cried as she fled through the twisted, the misshapen, the torturously contorted trees. Even now, Tygra's desparate cry of "Don't open the bag!" rang in her ears, propelling her, forcing her to run faster, ever faster.

"Why?" she wailed. "Why did I ever want to vacation on this small planet, this miserable third planet from the sun? Now I must return to tell them, to tell them all of the destruction of Tygra and the tragedy of Panthro, Thundercat!"

She broke through the forest and into the broad, the expansive, the somewhat-largish clearing. Cat's Lair stood lonesome in the moonlight, like the last Thunderian. She charged up the stairs and inside, racing through the corridors, searching desparately for room 218. At last she found it, burst inside, and was falling, falling, falling...

She awoke strapped to a table, her limbs bound, constricted, afixed, attached, entangled, snarled by sturdy ropes.

"Ah, you awaken! Are you enjoying your adventure in Cat's Lair?"

"NOOOOO!!!" Thundera Tiger shreiked as RD Rivero came into view. Behind him came two more figures, his Mary Sues Cue and Professor Etreum. In Etreum's bloody hands was an object she could not make out.

"What-is-it?" she cried. "What-is-it?"

"What indeed, dear Tiger," RD mocked, then took it from the Proffessor and set it on the table. It was Tygra's severed head, the gaze frozen forever in wrenching, tearing, rending terror.

"MWAAAHAHAHAH!" RD laughed as the tiger wailed in grief. "Now it is nearly time."

"Time for what?" Tiger cried.

"Time for your sacrifice to the undying source of all evil, Mumm-Ra! Cue, bring the elixer!"

Tiger struggled mightily but was no match for the power of RD Rivero as her poured the disgusting solution down her throat. As the tiger gagged and retched, there came a noise from upstair, a crash from above, a bang from the hinterlands of the upper end.

"Etreum!" RD barked. "Go after them. Wilykat and Wilykit must die!" Bowing, the mad scientist rushed to comply.

"Don't do this RD Rivero!" Tiger cried. "Please, I beg for mercy!"

"You'll find none here, my doomed mastermind!" Rivero scoffed. "Soon you'll be pushing up daisies in Mumm-Ra's Happy Garden! Now come, my good Cue! Thundera Tiger is overdue for her interview with the mummy!"

Cue drew near, a massive set of garden shears in his hands. Rivero grabbed Thundera Tiger by the tail and pulled it upward.

"Let's start here," he laughed as Thundera Tiger screamed in terror. And soon, Thundera was dying.

***************

RD looked up from his feverish efforts, to find himself still in his cell. "WHAT THE HELL?!" he roared.

Fianna jolted awake on his bunk, tumbling to the floor. "Hey, watch the volume, will ya? I'm right here!"

But Rivero was distraught. "What's this, what's this? Why did it not work?! Why is Thundera Tiger not reduced to table scraps on the altar of my evil?!"

Fianna sat back up on his bunk. "I tried to tell you. This is an 'aside'."

Rivero blinked. "A what?"

"An 'aside', a little viginette. We can do anything we like here, except fundamentally alter Tiger's story. Think of it as taking a break from her reality, but when it's finished, we have to go back to work on her project."

"So all that work, all that effort, all that evil was...was..."

"Wasted?" Fianna offered.

"NO!" RD roared. "It's never wasted! I will triumph! I will destroy those damnab..damn..duhhh."

Fianna waited a moment, then Rivero said, quite mildly, "What was I saying?"

"You were bemoaning that fate cursed you with the power of the snarf."

"Oh, oh yes, that's right." Rivero sat back down on his bunk and began to suck his thumb.

Fianna was suddenly overcome with a wave of lethargy. He felt his Osaris pouch go light, but noticed a pad and paper on the floor where RD had dropped them. As he picked them up, the writing there faded away.

Shrugging, he slipped the items into his jumpsuit pocket, irritated to find his chainmail gone again, then lay back down on his bunk. Behind him he heard Rivero begin to sing in a voice that would have made Axel Rose wince.

"Nobody knows the trouble I've seen..."

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