Aschi ScanMee sat quietly and watched as the tiger groomed itself, sprawled happily over one of the thick, low-hanging branches of the local trees. Perhaps it would be best to say that *she* groomed *her* self and she was quite easy to observe as the trees of the area seemed to grow outward rather than upward and her branch may actually have been one of the many trunks which sprouted from the same root system.

In any event, she was a magnificent creature, sleek and shining in the sunlight which dappled her coat. ScanMee's own feline senses were at ease...she felt no danger from her fellow cat...and she would have been content to sit and watch the animal for some time had it not raised its head and turned to stare almost directly at her.

"You don't have to sit there all day," the tiger said. "I don't bite. Unless you want me to." She resumed her grooming.

ScanMee's surprise had been great enough at the sight of the alien landscape and the discovery of the tiger. Now she was simply stunned. "You talk?"

"Doesn't everyone?" replied the tiger nonchalantly as she lay her head on her paws and examined the warrior with amber eyes.

Suddenly, everything fell into place. "You're a player, aren't you?" said ScanMee triumphantly, more a statement than a question.

"Oh! You got me!" wailed the tiger dramatically as she hooked her paw over the front of her chest...a surprisingly human gesture. "Thundera Tiger...do you shake?" she asked, holding out her paw.

"Here I thought you were a tiger...turns out you're a ham," snorted the warrior. Then she relented and shook Thundera Tiger's paw in her own. "Aschi ScanMee."

"Oh that hurts...that really does," the tiger pretended to sulk. "This from Xena of the Cat People."

"That was low."

"I don't bite, but I bite back," replied Thundera Tiger, poking her tongue out from between sharp teeth.

"Put that back in...you look like you're panting."

"So what's wrong with panting?" sniffed the tiger with disdain. "At least I know I'm a tiger...what are you supposed to be?"

"I'm a Thunderian warrior," replied ScanMee hautily. "I might be a mixed breed, but I was bred for battle!"

"Well you have tigery stripes so that's good enough, I guess," relented Thundera Tiger. "Tigers are, after all, the most perfect creatures in the universe."

"And so modest too!"

"Of course! Everything I know I learned from Calvin and Hobbes. Ego-wise I mean. The rest was research and obsession."

ScanMee paused in mid-comment as her ears picked up a slight sound from the underbrush. She turned to mention this to Thundera Tiger and found the big cat already sniffing the air. "What do you smell?" she asked instead.

"Er...latex," said the tiger in a hushsed voice. "But last I heard, latex didn't walk."

Aschi had picked up that scent herself and dismissed it. Now the smell was slightly stronger and definitely accompanied by a sound. She quietly drew her sword part-way out of its scabbard.

"Did I hear someone say something about tigers being the greatest creatures on earth?"

"ARGH! What the hell are you?!?" yelped Thundera Tiger with mock fear. "You don't look much like a tiger..."

"Alright...admittedly I'm more panther-like," said the shiny grey cat with bluish markings as he managed to fight his way out of the underbrush. "But look! I'm striped! I have tiger tendencies. Like finding tigers...I just left Altaica a little while back."

"Who..and what are you anyway?" said ScanMee relaxing a little, but never letting go of her weapon.

"Axecat," grinned the newest arrival. "I'm a balloonie. That means I'm inflatable and my head is full of air."

"You *smell* like a condom," snorted Thundera Tiger.

"I resent that! I'm not lubricated! Yet."

"Okay...that train of thought derails here! This is a *family* game," declared ScanMee.

"Only if there are minors in the scenario," replied Axecat.

"Maybe...but I want to get some fighting in before everyone starts peeling off the clothing. Tiger excepted."

"Thank you," yawned Thundera Tiger.

"Say, if you've been in the game for a while," prompted ScanMee, turning to Axecat, "can you tell us where we are? I got in late and am a little lost..."

"Same here," said the tiger.

"You haven't heard about the map yet?" said Axecat questioningly. When the other players shook their heads, he demonstrated the use of the computer map, time, and other game features. "I'm headed toward the Tower of Omens right now. We shouldn't be too far away."

"Well, I'm game," said Thundera Tiger.

"Haven't quite decided what I want to do yet, but it certainly beats sitting around here!" agreed Aschi ScanMee.

"Great! The trip was getting boring," grinned Axecat, checking the map. "A little further East and we should be out of the woods and the Tower within sight."

Thundera Tiger got to her feet and stretched. "Well, let's do it then...the sun's starting to go down and it would be nice to be there before nightfall," she said as she started off in the direction indicated by the balloon cat.

"Right...shall we?" Axecat inquired, bowing slightly and holding out his arm to ScanMee.

The player gave a mock curtsy and took it, falling into step beside him. "You didn't seem at all surprised that she could talk," the warrior said, jerking a thumb in Thundera Tiger's direction.

"Doesn't everyone?" grinned Axecat.

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

Peachyra mentally fumed a little more. The forest was all beginning to look alike to her and she was hardly amused. She didn't even have the sounds of birds and animals to guide her. In fact, she could hear little or no sound at all. At the most, there was a constant, low-pitched hum in an otherwise oppressive silence.

Every so often she tried to sing a few verses of a favourite song just to distract her, but the words were flat and hollow, muffled by the quiet of the wood. It was so terrible that even the silence was preferable to the sound of her own voice and she did not sing or speak again. What kind of place was this that even the most familiar of sounds was swallowed by the silence?

Peachyra stopped short and, despite the fact that she could not see her own face, gave herself a look of annoyance. *You just answered your own question there,* she informed herself in thought. *Leave it to you to walk into a game and right into the Forest of Silence. There ought to be prizes for the game's worst entrance.*

Of course, she relented, the situation wasn't *so* bad. She was fairly certain that the Forest of Silence lay near Cat's Lair...it was just a matter of finding the right direction and walking in a straight line. This would be difficult without the sun to judge direction by, but Peachyra was sure she could managed. At least she'd have plenty of food.

Her powers were still new, but she had been testing them and was now able to speed up fruit production on some of the more familiar looking trees and bushes. She'd found what looked and tasted like wild strawberries and gooseberries and what appeared to be a wild candyfruit bush. Although most likely engineered by Berbils, the candyfruit must have started as *something* and these had a striped hide and pulpy fruit. They were not as sweet as she'd imagined them to be. In fact they were rather tart, but refreshing.

Without the sound of bodies crashing through the undergrowth, Peachyra did not hear anyone approach until they literally ran into each other while rounding a tree.

The stranger meeped - a sound that might have been a cry of surprise in any other place - and clasped a hand to her chest as though warding off a heart attack. Realizing that Peachyra was just as startled as she, she quicly calmed down and attempted to speak. "Ooo ah ooo?"

Peachyra strained to hear, but the flat sound of the woman's voice drowned out all but the vowal sounds of her question. The Avatar shrugged and looked around her, indicating that it was the fault of this forest. The newcomer looked as though she might try again to speak, but appeared to sigh instead - the sound lost to the forest - and ran a hand through her hair, as she looked around in frustration.

In the meantime, Peachyra examined her new companion. Something about her was familiar. The dark hair with the white fringe...the tawny fur and the jumpsuit with its royal purple wrap and hip drape...

Peachyra touched the woman's arm and pointed down to the ground, squatting close to the earth as she did so. The newcomer followed. Scraping away the top layer of debris, she smoothed out a patch of earth and picked up a blunt stick. Fortunately the forest was too dense to grow grass and she was able to scratch out a message with relative ease.

"M-I-T-T-S-?" she gouged into the dirt? The other woman nodded, pointed to Peachyra and shrugged.

Peachyra bit her lip...she wasn't sure she had room to spell out her name legibly, but she gave it a try. "P-E-A-C-H-Y-R-A" she wrote, once she'd smoothed out the earth.

Mitts seemed to understand well enough and grabbed a stick of her own, wiping out Peachyra's words with her hand. "L-I-S-T-?" she spelled.

*Must mean the fanfic list,* the Avatar decided and nodded. Mitts began to write again.

"G-O-W-H-E-R-E-?"

Peachyra shrugged, but indicated the direction she had been heading. Mitts appeared to snort. It must have been the direction she had just come from.

The conversation was stopped short by a faint rustling...the equivalent of a roar in this deadening silence. Both players turned their attention toward the the whisper of sound as a very relieved looking girl burst out of the bush. Her feline hair was striped and she wore a singularly coloured tunic dominated by green. Peachyra noted that the young cat carried a staff much like her own "Ehl ee..." she seemed to gasp.

Mitts put a finger to her lips. Then touched her ear, and shrugged while looking around to indicate that she couldn't hear, but didn't know quite why. Then she smoothed out the writing surface, touched her chest and spelled out her name.

The girl nodded her understanding and looked on while Peachyra did the same. Then she borrowed the Avatar's stick, wiped the writing surface clean and began to spell out "T-H-U-N-D..." before realizing that she'd run out of room. She smoothed the dirt with her hand and tried again though her results were no better. Finally she shortened her message to "T-C-U-B".

Mitts seemed to instantly recognize her, pointed at herself and made a motion in the air as though she were drawing a picture. Then she pointed to Thundercub who nodded vigourously. Yes, she *was* the same Thundercub for whom Mitts had drawn the pictures!

The meeting was pleasantly exciting, but Peachyra was certain it would be more pleasant if they could chat. Making a motion with her hand to draw their attention, she repeated the "Go where?" message in the dirt.

Everyone paused to consider this. Finally Mitts pointed to herself and back the way she'd come, bringing her arm forward to where they were all gathered together. Peachyra did the same. Thundercub understood that they were indicating the route of their travels and imitated the gesture, pointing back the way she'd come. All three looked toward the last remaining direction and then at each other.

Shrugging, they all stood and brushed off the dirt then headed in what would later prove to be a Westernly direction.

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

It was fortunate that the stun gun came with multiple settings.

The Manticore lunged forward again, its human face grotesquely deformed by the triple layer of teeth in its mouth. Wildcat leapt back and fired on it with his highest setting, but still it did not drop. He'd discovered that Manticores were a bitch to tame and that it generally took three good blasts to fell them. This was the second.

But there was no time for a third just yet. Enraged by the shock to its system, the mostly leonine creature was taking a swipe at his opponent, its deadly claws dripping venom.

With his jacket already scraped and discoloured from just such an attack, Wildcat did not intend to let the beast get that close again and had already retreated beyond its reach. But unless it was immobilized, it would come after him again and the effects of his first two blasts would have worn off. Determined not to let the Mantocore get the best of him, Wildcat turned and lashed at the creature's paw with his whip, the sinuous leather winding itself around the leg and holding it aloft for the few precious seconds it took to fire the pistol and send the beast into dreamland.

And not a moment too soon...any longer and it would have dragged the unfortunate player forward with its great strength and Wildcat would have been gored in moments. As it was, the Manticore only slumped forward, allowing the adventurer to retrieve his whip.

*At least I'm not fighting the Gorgons,* he thought to himself as he turned to help Boron.

Though he was a Lunatak, it was generally decided that until the game could be figured out, a general truce was in order. And fortunate it was for the party too as the Psi Lunatak was in a unique position. Unequiped to properly dispatch of the Manticores, he nevertheless managed to keep them busy while Wildcat dropped them one by one. This involved a delicate balance of striking with his sword and getting out of the way, while distracting any beast that tried to take Wildcat from behind with his powers of suggestion. While on the surface he did not appear to be doing much good in the fight, the activity took a lot of concentration and careful timing and Wildcat knew that they'd all have ended this game a lot earlier than expected without him.

Add to this the thralling of three Gorgon women and you had yourself an indispensible fighter.

Even so, the Psi Lunatak had started on level one just like everybody else and his powers of suggestion were not developped nearly enough. He could not immobilize the Medusa-like creatures who advanced slowly but surely on mbswolf, but he could distract them one at a time. Although the ideal situation would be for Wolf to approah an immobile Gorgon from behind, he had to settle for their distraction which gave him a little extra time to aim. So far, one was down and there were two to go.

The job wasn't easy. mbswolf couldn't look at the creature directly or he would be turned to stone, as the statuary which littered the forest could attest. He could not approach them from the rear because they advanced on him. All he could do was to lift his sword...a properly broad one...and try to fix the woman's location in its shine. Then, with his pistol aimed over his shoulder, he tried to hit them. He had succeeded only once so far...but once was better than not at all and with only two Gorgons to distract, Boron was able to give him a lot more time to prepare.

Taking careful aim, he fired his ray gun once, narrowly missing the monster on his right. Correcting his position while bearing in mind that he was effectively looking into a mirror, he fired a second time and managed to fell the second snake-haired woman. They were not dead...he knew that his ray gun was only on the second setting...but they were down and that was enough.

Meanwhile, Wildcat had managed to get his whip around the final Manticore's neck and was pulling him back away from Boron. It was a pity that their hide was so tough...a little paralysis poison would have helped matters...but now that the deadly creature was temporarily immobilized, it would be nothing to blast him a good three times.

"You got three of them," said Boron suddenly. "This one's mine!"

With the beast's neck exposed, the Lunatak managed to slit its through with his sword...an impossible feat under normal circumstances...and the blood gushed forth, as red as any other's, but bubbling and fizzling where it hit the ground.

Boron cursed. "This stuff's like acid!" he cried in disgust and wiped his sword on the ground. Fortunately, there did not seem to be any damage to the blade.

"A little help here!"

Wolf's demand reminded the Lunatak that he had forgotten about the final Gorgon and he reached out with his mind to stun the Gorgon into confusion moments before she reached mbswolf who was desperately trying to aim over his shoulder.

With no other monsters left to defeat, Wildcat was able to approach the woman from behind and stun her with his own gun. Unlike the Manticores, the Gorgons were not particularly thick-skinned and the single blast was enough to knock her out. She might even have been dead, for all the three of them knew, but none of them cared to check for themselves.

"I vote," said mbswolf, "that we get out of this area as soon as possible. Experience or not, these are *not* the kinds of things I want to be tangling with this early in the game."

"I'm with you," agreed Wildcat. "Someone really needs to check the random placement function of this game. You coming Boron?"

The Lunatak was busilly hacking the paw off the Manticore he had killed. "I'll be with you in a minute!"

"Is that really necessary?" said Wildcat. "I mean, you already killed it."

"Well it was going to kill me!"

"Me too, but it can't help being a monster."

"A *game* monster," Boron reminded him. "It's kill or be killed in these things. Besides, I need to suck up if I'm going to get into Skytomb and a Manticore paw is just the thing I need!"

Succeeding in his task, Boron wrapped the paw in a scrap of canvas from his pack and stored it securely before rejoining his travelling companions.

"I hope that doesn't start to smell..." grimaced mbswolf.

"If I *have* to, I'll get rid of it," Boron assured them. "But until then, it's mine! Besides, it can't be that much longer before we run into either Thundercats or Lunataks and then we'll go our separate ways."

"I'm just glad to get away from those things," snorted Wildcat as they picked their way through the bush. "I definitely wouldn't want a souvenir."

"Just be glad I'm not Knave," grinned Boron. "I'd probably have eaten it..."

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