Dedicated to Shark...I hope he wasn't serious...

Cat's Lair was bustling with activity as the authors from Thundera Tiger's "Thunderballs" epic made ready to depart, and the
Thundercats made every effort to speed them along.

Tiger's new work, another Mel Brooks spoof, was set partially in the Warrior Maidens' forest, and the entire group was packing
for an extended on-location slugfest between Team Tiger and the Anti-Tiger Base.

Interestingly, the battle lines were being redrawn as several members of each side were changing alliegance to better suit their
personal provclivities.

RD Rivero would not be changing anything. The dreaded Master of All Evil walked briskly down the corridor, his vision obscured
by a large box containing CD ROMs from the "Evil Scheme of the Month Club." He whistled merrily as he contemplated his latest
plot.

Tiger penis soup sells for 250 dollars in China, he thought. A typical tiger penis is two feet long and good for several hundred
bowls of soup. Ah yes, my dear Tigie, this time your sweetheart is going to be hung like a

"Oof!" he grunted as he crashed into a wall. Then he realized there wasn't supposed to be a wall there, knocking several disks
from the top of the pile to the floor.

"Fianna, please watch where you're going," he said testily, setting the box down. He straightend up and was instantly seized
around the throat and lifted from the floor.

RD found himself staring into a set of dark red eyes, glaring above a sabretoothed snarl. "You're not Fianna..." the evildoer
wheezed.

"Where is he," the newcomer rumbled. He had a voice like an earthquake and breath like an explosion at a brewery.

"H-H-Who?" RD gasped as his air supply dwindled.

"Fianna," came the reply.

"Third door," RD wheezed, sticking his thumb over his shoulder. "Right side."

"Thanks," the stranger growled, then threw RD behind him and down the stairs.

Fianna stood in the middle of his room, trying to figure out where to begin. As usual, the green caninoid and notorious
nincompoop had procrastinated, and now had to get all his things packed and vacate Panthro's room by sundown.

Finally he decided, and slid a 400 pound keg of Panthro's home brew beside the door. He was walking towards the closet when
the door slammed open behind, making him spin to confront this new foe.

"FIANNA!"

"THUNDERWOLF!"

"So you think you're gonna put me in a headlock, huh?!" the famed insane lion roared. "No chance, punk! I'll kick your ass across
the table, drink you under the table and kick your ass again down there!"

After this pronouncement, Thunderwolf tore the door from it's hinges and broke it across his knee. With a bellow, he threw one
half across the room and smashed the dresser to fragments. He hurled the other piece out the window, filling the air with a
deafening crash of shattered silica.

Fianna watched this display impassively. Thunderwolf raised a powerful fist to destroy the keg, then realized what he was about
to do.

"Hey, is this yours?" he asked mildly.

"Yes, it is," Fianna replied.

The lion grinned. "Not anymore," he said, and drove his fist through the top of the keg. As beer sprayed forth, Thunderwolf
hoisted the keg into the air and began chugging it loudly.

When the container was empty, he lowered it, crushed it to pieces between his hands and said, "Alright dogbreath. Your turn."

Thunderwolf took a step towards the caninoid, then stopped. He shook his head a moment, wavered, then pitched forward onto
his face, unconscious.

Thundera Tiger, Sher Kahn, Shark and Panthro examined the last of Tiger's things that needed to be packed into the Thundertank.

"...that didn't hurt..."

Kahn's ears pricked up. "Did you guys hear something?" he asked.

The others stopped to listen. They detected a faint thudding sound for a few seconds, then a hoarse voice said, "That didn't
hurt..."

Perplexed, they moved towards the stairway. The thudding increased further in volume, and again came a cry of "That didn't
hurt!"

Then RD Rivero tumbled to the bottom of the stairs, a mass of abraisions and bruises. He struck the concrete floor of the lair with
a painful thud.

"That hurt." he squawked, his injured throat giving him a high-pitched reverb that sounded almost exactly like Bobcat
Goldthwaite.

The others dashed to his side. "RD! Are you okay?! What happend?" Tiger said anxiously.

"ArrrrThunderwolf-ah-ah-ah," RD croaked. "FiAAAAnna."

"OH NO!" Shark exclaimed. "I told him Fianna was just teasing about the headlock! TW must be upstairs beating the Irish out of
that nincompoop right now!"

Just then, they heard the first crash from upstairs, and set off as a unit up the steps, taking care not to step on RD as they went.

"Didn't...any...of..you...geniuses hear of elevators?" Tiger wheezed ten minutes later as they reached Fianna's floor.

"Talk to your boyfriend," Panthro growled. "He designed it, I just built it."

They reached the doorway of Fianna's room and ran inside to find the nincompoop reclining on his bed, reading a paperback
called "Mondo" and chortling to himself.

"I oughta write a book," Fianna said, dogearing his page and setting it down. "If this tripe can get published, I know I could!"

"MY DOOR!" Panthro yelled. "MY DRESSER!"

Kahn leaned over to Tiger's ear. "Obligatory closet joke in three..."

"MY BOYFRIEND!" Shark yelled. Already the ichthyoid had deduced that whatever the battle, Fianna had been the winner.
"Where is my boyfriend, dog-breath!"

"Two..."

"He was being unruly, so I put him in the wardrobe until he simmers down," the caninoid said, standing.

"One."

"I am not even going there," Shark growled. "Let him out of the 'wardrobe', before I give you a chomp you won't soon forget."

"Damn, you're good," Tiger whispered to Kahn.

Fianna walked to the closet door and opened it. "Relax, he's fine. In fact, I saved his life; he downed a keg of Panthro's homebrew,
and it probably would have killed him if I hadn't been here to shove some anti-alchohol pills down his throat."

"Anti-alchohol pills, Fianna," RD creaked, rejoining the group. "Isn't that a little contrived?"

"I got them from Lady Thundera's medicine cabinet, next to the bottle of Cat-Grow," the caninoid snickered. "Now then..."

Fianna reached into the closet and pulled out a long, free-standing clothes rack. Three struggling forms dangled from the metal
bar, bound, gagged and duct-taped to coathangers.

Fianna slid the first captive to the end of the rack. A female felinoid clad in the garb of an egyptian queen, she struggled mightily
against her bonds while glaring balefully at the others with luminous green eyes.

"If that's who I think it is," Tiger whispered to Kahn, "Maybe we should keep her tied up. Copyright issues, ya know."

Next came a snarf, his prehensile tail taped to a thirty pound weight to prevent it's use. He thrashed wildly against his bonds,
swearing so loudly through the gag that what could be understood made even Panthro's ears turn red.

Fianna slid the snarf to the right, then pushed over the next occupant, a young, attractive Thunderian female of the Wildcat Clan.
Her eyes above the gag never wavered from casting their warm gaze over the invective-spitting snarf.

Finally the caninoid straightend up, scratching his head. "He's not here," Fianna said.

In that instant, a set of muscular tan arms struck out of the bowels of the closet, siezed the caninoid by the neck, and yanked him
inside so fast, the vacuum generated by his passage slammed the door shut.

The racket from the closet was horrific. There was crashing, roaring, furious barking, growls and swearing. The doors shook as a
picture of a fluffy white poodle came loose from the wall. The dog was smiling when it fell, snarling by the time it hit the floor.

The tigers darted forward and grabbed the rack, pulling the captive authors and artist to safety. As soon as they were clear, the
closet doors exploded open and two struggling forms charged out.

Fianna had finally gotten his long-awaited headlock, wedging Thunderwolf's head firmly in his armpit. The lion had responded by
hauling the caninoid into the air and attempting to ram him into the opposite wall. At the last possible moment, Fianna kicked his
legs and twisted the two, putting Thunderwolf's head into the wall instead.

There was a loud crunch as the stone gave way and both combatants went through it and into the empty air on the opposite side.
The others dashed to the wall and looked out at the figures dropping hundreds of feet to the moat below.

"AAAAAAaaaaaaa..." they heard, followed by a distant splishing sound.

The remaining authors turned back to find Panthro looking around his room in horror.

"Look on the bright side," Shark said, clapping a flipper on the panther's back. "It could have been the garage."

RD had already begun untying the captives. "And we have a gaggle of new characters," he said, his voice returning to normal.

"And we have a nice new source of protien," TT purred as she and Sher Kahn began to circle the new snarf.

The new snarf smiled broadly. "Yeah, I bet it's a real help. Now personally..."

He whipped a pair of Browning nine-milimeters with laser sights from behind his back, training a red dot on the forehead of each
predator.

"I like tiger meat," he said, and opened fire. Bullets ricocheted and careened around the tigers as they roared in suprise and raced
out the door.

"All that firepower and you never hit either of them," Shark commented as the snarf author allowed his weapons to disappear.
"You're getting rusty, Fuzzy."

"If I'd wanted them dead, they'd be dead," the snarf returned without rancor. He began to walk towards the Thunderian female
when RD Rivero stepped up behind him and coughed.

"You want something?" Fuzzball said, turning to face the evildoer.

Rivero smiled."You mentioned a taste for tiger. I wanted to talk to you about a little business venture I have in mind..."