The Blade

The Feliner touched down in a haze of sediment kicked up by its powerful vertical engines.  The landing claws had barely touched the ground below when the canopies sprang open and Lion-O and Tygra leapt from the ship.  Lion-O surveyed the devastation.

The Berbil Village, he noted, had exactly two modes of existance.  The usual mode was sickenly idyllic, complete with chirping birds and multicolored fields of fuzz that somehow produces edible fruits.  The other mode always included fearful Berbils rushing about in aimless agitation as their homes burnt to the ground.  There was no in between.  But nature had made the
Berbils very industrious, and Lion-O had noted that even if the entire village had been wrecked, inevitably by the next morning everything had been rebuilt and restored to pristine condition.

Today the village was in the latter mode.  Two huts had been blown apart, and a third had detonated just as the Feliner touched down.  But there had been no visible beams or point of attack, which made Lion-O's brow furrow.  Lion-O looked through the crowd of animated, aimlessly scurrying hordes of the tiny aliens until he found the figure he had been looking for.  "RoberBill!" he hailed.  "What in the name of Jaga is going on here?"

As if a switch had been thrown, RoberBill stopped his panicked wailing and looked up to the massive feline.  "Ooooh Lion-Ooooo," it drawled in its strange mechanical monotone.  "Thank goodness you're herrrre."  They had tried
everything that they could thing of (wailing and scurrying about aimlessly), and none of it had prevented their huts from exploding.

Tygra came to Lion-O's side and knelt down towards RoberBill so they were face to face.  "Tell us, RoberBill, exactly what has been happening here?" he coaxed.

"It staaaarted two days ago, Thuuuuundercat.  We noticed an explosion in the hills.  Then yesssterday there were two explosions on either side of our hoooomes.  We had hoped it would passsss in time."

That was when the Feliner detonated.  Both Lion-O and Tygra were knocked flat by the concussive force from the blast and rings of metal and flaming shards from their former spacecraft blossomed out through the air like the petals of some deadly flower.

"By Jaga!" exclaimed the prone tiger, covering his head as debris showered down around them.  "What on Third Earth is going on here?  Some sort of bizarre natural phenomenon?!"

"I doubt it," hissed Lion-O.  "Sword of Omens, give me Sight Beyond Sight!" he exclaimed, and before he had even finished the command the hilt of the Sword of Omens had writhed in his hand and reshaped itself according to Lion-O's will, the crossbars curling like serpents.  He saw.

He saw Vultureman, in the hills to the East.  He had a machine, it looked like some sort of heavy rifle, only it was strapped to his waist.  There was a computer monitor on the rifle, and Vultureman was adjusting two knobs on it, cackling gleefully.  He could see the monitor.  It showed what he believed were numbers, he couldn't be sure, since he didn't read Plundarrin.  Whatever the alien characters represented, they were changing.  There was something else on the monitor as well, an infrared viewing screen of some type.  It was displaying two prone figures and a Berbil--

"Oh hells!" yelled Lion-O, leaping up off the ground and charging towards the hills.  He paused for a moment and tried to reconcile his vision from this perspective with what he had seen through the Sword's eyes.  He was surprisingly good at it.  He spotted Vultureman's position and brought up The Eye to fire a blocking beam from The Sword.

"HO!"  Fiery red energy leapt from The Eye at Lion-O's command, flaring out towards the hill like a solar flare.  The beam fired from the hill was all but invisible.  There was just the barest distortion, almost like a heatwave, along its path.  Lion-O braced himself for the violent collision of the released energies as one beam intercepted and blocked the other.  It never came.

The slender beam of distortion cut right through the leaping energies of the Sword of Omens as if they weren't even there.  Lion-O gasped and felt an itching feeling in his broad chest as the beam hit him...and passed right through him.

There was an explosion behind him that knocked him onto his face.  He pulled himself up from ground in a daze.  "Tygra...Tygra?  Are you okay?"

"Ho, Lion-O," came the weakened reply.  Lion-O looked back to see the tiger on the ground, a thin smattering of blood covering one side of him.  Whether it was his own or RoberBill's Lion-O couldn't determine.  Where RoberBill had
been, all that remained was a blast crater and a rising plume of smoke.  Lion-O bared his fangs in rage.  "Seek cover, Tygra!"

Both Lion-O and Tygra scabbled behind different huts, crouching down and peering around the sides of the round structures at the far away hill top. "What is it, Lion-O?" called Tygra, clutching his arm.

"Some kind of rifle!  Vultureman built it, whatever it is.  The attacks over the last few days must be some sort of infernal test run!"  Lion-O paused as The Sword growled.  That distinctive sounds meant only one thing, a Thundercat in danger.  He didn't have time to confirm using Sight Beyond Sight, nor did he need to.  "Tygra, jump!" he commanded.

Tygra jumped, and seconds later wall he had been hiding behind exploded, taking the jolly, multi-colored hut with it.  Stone chips from the structure burst out and scattered across the area.  The wave of force from the explosion slammed the leaping tiger into the ground.  Lion-O wasted precious seconds looking towards his fallen friend.  He was breathing.

Lion-O refocused his attention back on the situation.  The enemy had a weapon of tremendous explosive power, and it couldn't be blocked, it couldn't be hidden from, and no amount of cover could protect one from it.  Lion-O did the only thing that made sense.  He jumped out from behind his cover and ran screaming towards the hill.

It was a long ways off, a good thirty second run at least.  That would mean about two or three clean shots from the rifle judging by the rate of fire it had already demonstrated.  Lion-O didn't swerve, or leap, or make any defensive movements at all.  He sprinted in a straight line towards the distant hill as fast as he could.

He caught sight of the distortion, and felt the itching sensation again as the beam sliced harmlessly through his skin.  He was already braced for the explosion that detonated behind him, and continued his scramble for the hill with renewed confidense.  He had guessed right.  It detonated at a fixed range, and it took time to adjust that range, as long as he was running straight at it fast enough, Vultureman wouldn't be able to adjust the range fast enough to compensate for the closing distance...

Vultureman had come to the exact same conclusion, and with a worried squawk he had turned to flee back to his flying machine before the enraged Thundercat could get close enough to engage.

Lion-O gritted his teeth and his nostrils flared as he pumped his legs as fast as he could, eating up the ground between himself and the vulture in a frenzied sprint.  He was so close!  He had to prevent Vultureman from escaping, the potential tactical threat that weapon posed was unimaginable. Lion-O could see the flying machine taking off...

Close enough, he declared to himself.  Panting heavily from the exertion of the sprint, Lion-O planted his feet and braced the Sword of Omens before him, aiming The Eye at the flying machine.  One massive burst of energy and then they would all be safe!  "HO!" he commanded, calling forth the deadly stream of energy.

He felt a will colliding will his own, and The Eye rumbled and closed.  The Sword whithered down to its relaxed size in his hand.  There had been no destructive blast.  "No!" screamed Lion-O.  He could swear he could hear Vultureman laughing as the flying machine sped out of sight.  Lion-O turned in tight-lipped anger to confront the man he knew was responsible.  "Jaga, why?"

"That blast would surely have killed Vultureman, Lion-O.  Thundercats do not kill.  The Sword can not be used to kill," said the grim faced spectre, who had not been there a moment ago.  He was slender, but everything about the ghost evoked a sense of power, from the pointed beard, to the battle armor he wore, to the penetrating eyes.  The keen look of stern disappointment he shot Lion-O made the young lord shrink back and whither as quickly as the Sword of Omens had.

"But Jaga," he started, cringing at how much like a young boy he sounded as he said it.  A young boy who had been caught doing something he wasn't supposed to, and was now trying to explain his way out of it.

"No buts, Lion-O!  Thundercats do not kill!  You do not kill!  No exceptions!" exclaimed Jaga with an angry flourish.  "Under any circumstance! The Code is still The Code, Lion-O," he finished, and disappeared into his cape, which then faded out of sight.

"Gods Damn it!" exclaimed the young lord in frustration, dashing the Sword of Omens to the ground.  After a few moments of heavy breathing and silent swearing, Lion-O recovered from his outburst.  With a guilty look he knelt down and picked up the Sword of Omens, brushing the dirt off it.

Lion-O set his jaw, sheathed The Sword, and headed back towards the remnants of the Berbil Village to check on Tygra and to call the others.