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junglecattransformations · 5 months ago

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Battle Cats

As the amberish sconces of torchlight braziers ambiently brandished the clay-stone monoliths that bordered the sparring ring within the citadel-the reign of a victorious imperium had been ushered by a reckoning of tempestuous carnage-bloodshed that damningly veined over Panthera as machinations of titanic supremacy conquered against the galactic inferiority-scourge of unbridled resistance. Evading sentry patrol at the garrison sector, unmovingly, Sabre grounded his impassive poise as the ebony furriness of his razored clawed fingers tensely clutched onto a metallic handle of a javelin-spear with combative-honed readiness thrumming within his veins. Garbed in a leathered tunic that fittingly delineated the corded litheness of his tauter-athletic solidity, tactfully, he adjusted the bronze pauldron on his bulkier shoulder as the mechanized coolness of his cybernetic palm robotically grazed the forged steel, at the second he registered the huffish grunting that resonantly caromed against his twitching roundish ears.

Reactively, his longish furrier tail swayed on viperous accord while his knife-point fangs were menacingly poised against his snarlier breaths, while the diamondlike intensity of grayish-sapphire opals peripherally roved at the wooden entry doors. Growlingly, he remained unshakeable with defensive footing, listening to the lumbering-wobblier hoof-steps heavily encroaching closer. Smirkily, he quirked his furred muzzle with devious-cub- naughtiness, knowing his sparring opponent and stout-hearted friend had accepted the sparring match. "Kinda thought you wouldn't show up..." he murmured in a snarkier pitch, cockily, braced against a rack of javelins. "Usually you're stuffin' that ugly mug of yours until mornin'... " he quipped out, puckishly scrunching his whiskered muzzle with a waggish rapt, evident to his toothier smirk. "Guess it's still early for that, huh..."

Out from the gates a mountainous creature lumbered forward on fat hooves. While other warriors wore sophisticated armor befitting their forms, this creature was garbed in hard leather that clung to a voluminous shape of furry fat and lumpier muscle. A biker-like vest was strapped to a plump abdomen that did nothing to contain the fat bulge of a belly. Spiked gauntlets adorned the wrists while a hog-chain hung from the creature's side. Hog-like grunts came as he breathed and strode forward, green eyes piercing as they gaze upon his feline friend with dangerous excitement. "Gotta keep this powder-keg fueled and ready to dish out punishment," a deep baritone voice said with a jovial pitch.

The creature, known to by the name "Gorge", patted his hefty gut to accentuate his point; his piggish-snout pulled to revealed rows of flat teeth that were less intimidating the his tusks. "Besides, you know if there's anything that can pull me away from a second breakfast, its a good fight. What about you, Kitty, I thought you'd be spending all morning brushing the wrinkled out of that furry mane you love so much," Gorge jabbed with a throaty chuckle.

"Y'know if you're tryin' to hurt my feelings, it's not workin'..." Sabre drawled out, chucklingly as he unwaveringly fixed the steeliness of his whitish-sapphire depths onto the bulbously porcine gladiator who clumsily wobbled onto the stubbier deformity of his cloven-edged hooves without a tracery of conditioned decorum invested with his lumbering advances.

Bolstering his paw-feet onto a slinkier variance of his battle-honed poise, Sabre reservedly waited for the blimpish hog to ploddingly drive his clunkier momentum near the sparring ring as he nostalgically was barraged with callback memories of their brotherly-competitive dynamic-kinship was viscerally inseparable. Being an orphaned cub that was tragically pegged to become a caged drudge for sating a Kree collector's sadistic amusement, he was ferried by piratic Ravagers to Xandar, during a nebula explosion, the cargo vessel was damagingly crashed into sandy dunes of the wasteland-Gorge's mother adopted him to become the newest addition of her chubbier brood-piglets-it wasn't an easy feat raising a hellbent panther cub against trials of survival, most of his siblings were purchased with galactic credits and sold to fatteningly become swell-out drudges within the breeding ranks of Xandarian pens- Gorge was fortunate that his mutative deformity was abomination. Predatorily, his metallic claws gleamingly snicked against the javelin handle, aware of the earth-quaking vibrations that breached his proximity while Gorge had nasally thrust the grizzled pudginess of his jowelly snout with crankier traction. "Besides, I hear you're startin' to look delicious in the ranks, might wanna lose a few pounds, pal..."

Oh, you're just jealous everyone's eyes are on me," Gorge wheezed with a snorting laughter, grunting as he caught sight of the javelins and halted, assessing his opponent and choice of weapons. He let out a boisterous laugh that was cut short by another snort. "You kitty-cats are always crave attention, but we both know you can't handle my piggy style, Sabe." He firmly stomped his hooves into the earth, causing a soft rumble as his mountainous-stature looked about as imposing as a tank coming to run down all in its path. He looked at the feline warrior with both aggression and soft affection, never having cared for many in his life except for the cub he was raised with like a brother. There was no one who understood his look on life and drive towards success like Sabre. But just the same, there was no one he really enjoyed sparring with just as much as the lethal cat who could shred metal with a swipe of his claws. "I'm the king of the pigsty, remember? I'll have you rolling in the mud before you know it." He grinned, revealing a pair of unevenly spaced tusks that curved upward.

Staving down a riotous surge of untrammelled-aggressive ferocity that crescendoed through his veins, intimidatingly, Sabre eased up the javelin with a spear-point challenge that metallically grazed over the furrier bulginess of Gorge's jutted-out girth with coaxing pressure. With swifter graces, he felinely dragged his paw-feet over the dustier ground, snakily arcing his longish tail on defensive accord-mirroring Gorge's poise of counterattack as the hulkish boar rampantly thrusted a spear against his javelin on fiercer succession. Twirlingly, he pivoted on his arched paws, blocking a thrusting strike with cobra-like quickness, aware that Gorge would stomp onto his tail. "C'mon man..." he snarled out, gnashing his fangs, as the battle-hog snortingly emitted a gustier breath vexatiously against his ebony-onyx fur. "That all you got..."

"Hmmph!" grunted Gorge, his breath fogging in the air through his nostrils as if he were a bull. "Just getting warmed up," he met Sabre's thrust with his own spear. The clash of steel sang to him, the vibrations of the impact moving up his muscular arms. He grinned, revealing his tusks. He loved the thrill of combat and all the powerful sensations it brought him. "Yeah, now we're talking!" He put more force into his thrusts, using his size to his advantage as he manuevered himself to block any possible chance of the feline evading him.

He and Sabre continued to clash spears, the force of their thrusts nearly splintering each other's weapons. While Sabre had speed and agility on his side, Gorge's strength and stamina made him unrelenting. Seeing the panther back-track a downward swing of his weapon, his expression turned into one of mock pity. "Oh, you want more, little kitty? You're just not as big and bad as you think you are." He chuckled, then swung his spear around in a wide arc, aiming for Sabre's side. "But I suppose I could make you feel better." He grunted as he swung, putting all his weight behind the blow.

His tusks gleamed in the dim light of the arena. His eyes narrowed as he ducked under another of Sabre's thrusts, spinning around to face the feline warrior once more. The light of the sun reflected off of Sabre's polished armor and into his eyes, causing him to groan and shield his blinded gaze. "Stupid-shiny-HEY!"

Hearing the grumpier snorts boisterously huffed out of his chunkier porcine rival's jowelly snout, growlingly, Sabre torqued his paw-foot with measured traction while hefting the javelin with dead-straight precision metallically against the blobbish furriness of Gorge's tattered shoulder, the robotized servos of his cybernetic arm rigidly flexed with hinged restraint as the battle-hog stumblingly wobbled closer to a spear rack. Against a bone-gripping upheaval of predatory rabidity-bloodthirst that grippingly effused in arrestive fruition, panty, he wavered back at the alarming second his vision intensified with thermic skeins of reddish energy that arrowed over Gorge-a heartbeat of juicier prey. Swaying his lengthy tail, he stuntedly lowered the javelin, doing his utmost to shake off the carnivorous urges- an unstable divergence that warringly ensued a skull-pounding headrush as the frostier steeliness of his wide-blown aquamarine opals roved onto his porkier opponent-best friend. "Still not light on your feet..." he murmured, raspily, glancing at his mechanized claws with a crestfallen grimace over his fanged-muzzle. "Sometimes I think fightin' is all M' ever gonna do, pal..."

His words were a quiet, confiding whisper that seemed to penetrate Gorge's armor as he ducked beneath the swing of the spear and came to a pause. He paused for a moment, his eyes softening, and he felt a pang of empathy for his friend. But then, he remembered the taste of blood, the thrill of the hunt, and the need to survive. "Don't be a drama queen, Sabe," he huffed, answering his spear thrust with one of his own aimed for the feline's exposed side. Sabre side-stepped and growled lowly, making Gorge exhale roughly.

"Look I know what you mean, pal," he said, his voice deep. "I've felt that way too. But sometimes, you just have to find your own peace. Whether its in a sheltered hide-away far from conflict-or even if it's in the midst of battle. We all feel peace differently. You gotta make your own path." He lifted his spear again, his gaze hardening. "And sometimes, that path leads to victory."

"Always gotta put me on the ropes with your great wisdom..." The panther-Centurian quipped with a snarkier drawl, hissingly, scrunching his whiskered muzzle with a derisive rapt as Gorge's javelin clangingly thunked against his metallic greaves that were tightly buckled over the corded-litheness of his muscular calves-he wouldn't be on the receiving end of the battle-hog's jovial-underlying amusement. "Woah...Did you just..." Keeping his measured footing grounded without a fraction of resistance, snarlingly, he grazed his leather-sheathed paw consciously over his scabbard, aware of his sidearm dagger-pugio-clutching onto the bronze pommel with unerring quickness as he twirlingly flipped the blade into a reverse icepick grip, whiplashing his longish tail viperously against the marble-stone wall, and coaxingly dared Gorge into tactical stalemate. Plumpishly the bulgier doughiness Gorge's barrel-sized rotundity saggily jiggled with every hoof-step as he oinkily mirrored Sabre's readied poise in combative-teeming sync."Let's see how intense things will get, tubby..."

"Whoa, lets not get nasty," Gorge quipped with a rumbling chuckle that snortingly turned into a deep bellow. "But have it your way!" He thrust his spear, but Sabre easily dodged, flipping his knife into a reverse grip. It was fast and done with lightning-quick finesse that the mountain hog couldn't help but feel mildly impressed over. He'd never seen anyone in the legion wield a blade with such quick reflexes as if they were an extension of one's body.

Sabre growled, baring his fangs, and lunged at Gorge, feinting with his knife and then thrusting with his shoulder. The battle-hog stumbled back, but quickly regained his footing. He bellowed, lowering his spear and charging at Sabre, who jumped nimbly to the side. The two combatants ducked and pivoted, their blades sparking as they sought an opening until Sabre lunged up high and threw his blade aimed for Gorge's exposed shoulder, only for the blade to be caught in the hog's grip mid-air, much to Sabre's surprise. "Show off," Gorge bared his tusked-teeth in a cheekier grin. "You're not the only one with quick reflexes, pal."

Venting out guttural breaths, chuffily, the Centurian-panther subtly quirked his furrier muzzle into a half-smirk as he glared at the bronze-hilt dagger impressively clutched into the puffiness of Gorge's meatier hand-his efficient-soldiery-prowess never wavered from his battle-tested ferocity. Despite that, he valiantly steered a motley regiment-deviants of honourable Pantherian warriors-brothers-in-arms who adamantly followed him on the province of war-he stowed the rebellious tenacity-defiance that was infectious potency within his conditioned ranks. Flashing the stormier intensity of his bluish ultramarine opals crestfallenly at the rhino insignia emblazon on Gorge's metallic pauldron-the verminous signet of herbivores, growlingly, Sabre eased his tenser footing with hinged restraint, as he tactfully adjusted the buckles his leathered vambrace over his lithe forearm. "I heard the noise that more rebels have been transferred onto cargo ships to Xandar..." The chagrined scratchiness of his whiskey-roughened timbre bitingly reached Gorge's spade-edged ears, evident to the edgier stiffness flexing over his lengthy tail. "Somethin' doesn't smell right...I can't shake this feelin' we can't turn our backs on this one, pal..."

A pondering silence ensued as the two friends struggled with the tension of an unseen conflict simmering so close to home. Pockets of rebellions weren't uncommon but the rate of their consistency had been increasing over the past several months it stood to reason that something was up. Before they could discuss things further, that was when the ox-horn rang out through the training grounds, capturing their attention. What followed was the distant growls of the sentry posts.

"Well s***," Gorge muttered, glancing around uneasily. "That can't be good." He turned back to Sabre, his normally jovial expression replaced with a grim determination. "Come on, let's go see what's going on. We might be in for another tough fight." With a grunt, he turned and jogged off, his massive frame easily moving through the chaos of the camp.

With the battle-honed momentum of his paw-steps, intimidatingly, Sabre advanced to the proximal gates, the steeliness of his silvery-aqueous opals flashed over a chivalric leopard sentry garbed in metallic cuirass that was bucketed onto the golden furriness of his blotched-whip-cord muscles as he grounded his poise with vigilant decorum warily at the entrance of the garrison. "Justus...Report..." he growled out, pressingly, watching the leopard-anthro steadily ease his gauntleted paw in the direction of blackish plumes that smokily enwreathed the market environs. Thrusting up his furred muzzle, involuntarily, Sabre caught a whiff of the sulphurous rancidity - miasma stinkily wafted from a smouldering heap-a ration cart that was evidently torched like a warning beacon."Damnit.."

"Commander," Justus grunted, saluting Sabre with a paw against his armoured chest. His feline-features wore a deep frown that wouldn't leave his face. "We lost contact with Lieutenant Reaver and our caravan as they were venturing through the Bodarian Jungle. We sent a patrol to meet them at the rally-point but only one made it back with this ration cart," he gestured to an unconscious and injured cheetah-antro who laid against the wall. The medicus was attending to his injury with a healing salve. "The others are feared dead or captured."

"What is it? Rebels? Invaders?" Gorge growled, clutching the handle of his chained-hook at his side with anticipation of Kree warriors coming to reap their resources like they'd done countless other planets in their empire.

"We don't know," Justus snarled, his own suspicion not too dissimilar from the hog's.

Scything his vibrainium claws of his forepaw into a defensive arc, snappishly, the panther-centurion jutted out his fangs with aggressive strain as his diamond-edged pupils thinly slit with razored intensity onto the leopard sentry. He wouldn't dispatch more of his ranks for a suicide mission outside their borders-they weren't expandable. The Kree raiders- humanoids were a parasitic scourge of intergalactic empires controlled by fascist-genocidal paragons-extensions of a central-nerve database that was called the Supreme Intelligence who devouringly cleansed planets with slaughterous extremists -Accusers who delivered their apocalyptic reckoning like a sentence of justice. Despondently, against his impassive resolve, Sabre was troublingly aware of his feline-ranks barraged by Kree marauders-he wouldn't turn his back on them. "Nobody makes a move until I give the order, got it...?" Sabre murmured against hitching pants, chuffily. "Gorge, I need you to question the survivors, get information of who attacked Reaver..."

"Your orders, cub?" A cold and authoritative voice cut through the mounting tension as the soldiers felt a chill of dread seep into their bodies. "Need I remind you that in the presence of a commanding officer, you defer to their authority, not to the whims of your own inexperience." Out from the gates emerged a scarred antro-lion with battle-worn fur and silvery-blue eyes filled with contempt. His stature was broad and muscular, yet his gait was slow and creeping like an old predator sizing up any potential insurrection among his pride-mates.

"General Korios," Justus snapped to with a paw to his chest, his eyes darting over to Commander Sabre with unease, already sensing the growing animosity that was ever prevalent. Korios was an old soldier and favored right-hand officer of the Mighty Tygerus-their liege lord and king. Scores of rebellions had been mercilessly cut-down in their height and infancy by the Old Lion's merciless hands and strategic cunning for manipulating situations to his favor. All commanding officers were either appointed by his hand or won that honor by slaying a predecessor in combat. His cold calculating eyes were fixed on Sabre, piercing and searing to the depths of his soul.

"A caravan of our warriors has been set-upon and you wish to prowl into the wild as a one-cat armada? You overestimate yourself, Sabre."

Staunching out dredged-up 'smart-mouthin' cockiness, grudgingly, Sabre whiplashed his longish tail on reactive accord, knowing that he conveyed a riotous semblance of pent-up defiance, he would merit plenty of traitorous insubordination-divested by his prominent-valorous mantle of being a Tribune-Korios was a vulturous-warmongering taskmaster who staked a deadlock foothold of promotional reverence by deceptive machinations-countermeasures of using his ranked legions as expandable pawns for his depraved convenience in the frontlines. As the sandy dustiness of the garrison citadel powdered his obsidian-ebony fur, unwaveringly Sabre torqued his footing inches from the battle-marred General, scrunching his whiskered muzzle staunchily against the vaporous reek wafting off the yellowish griminess of Korios bloodied fangs. "With all due respect, Imperator, I was looking out for my brothers..." he returned against guttural raspiness, tetchily, curbing down his untrammelled aggression while he registered telltale displeasure portentously radiating off the grizzled lion-anthro. Sidelonging a razored glance at Justus who trepidatiously eased into a kneeling crouch on his furred haunches underneath Korios's imposing-malignant shadow-they were leashed drudges to his maniacal will. "I... Uh...wish to accompany the caravan, those battle cats are a part of my infantry...I gotta to have their backs, no matter the cost."

"Pantherian soldiers do not need coddling as if they were meager pups," Korios grunted, his eyes boring into the wounded soldier with a neutral look; his eyes were full of disgust yet his voice contained a measure of pride. "They know the risks, they must either be willing to go into battle and die for the glory of our realm. Should they offer any less they would be better suited in the coal mines where the rest of the dishonoured go to live out their shame." Inching closer towards Sabre, he peered at him with sharp slits, "Their fates are better than those who dare to commit treason by defying their orders. Do we have an understanding?"

Quashing the onrush of unhampered defensiveness that burningly strummed through his veins like a white-hot octane, scowlingly, knowing that discipline would come at him in spades, he wavered back from the brutish lion-anthro with measured restraint as he lasered his grayish-sapphire opals at the metallic ensigns of Tygerus's paw mark that decorated the bronze cuirass underneath a demask burgundy cloak-a valance of tenable-imperious notoriety within the Pantherian ranks. The vicarious credo of receptoral loyalty was exponentially corruptive within his feline-legions-he manipulated hearts of valour to gain cheat-shot prominence. With a tenser flex of his mechanized claws, reservedly, Sabre hinged a vestige of compliance, and rasped out, scratchily. "Yeah, I hear ya loud and clear, Imperator..."

"Good. Prepare to prowl out and investigate this disturbance. Bring your most battle-hardened warriors with you. Make sure they understand that disobedience will not be tolerated, and that I expect results. If they are rebels, decimate them but save one for questioning. If it is invaders, send word to the command post immediately. Prove that you are worthy of your rank, Sabre, and not the soft cub I suspect you are. Dismissed." With that Korios turned and ventured back towards the gates, his retinue of guards following him, some casting malicious looks towards Sabre with cruel grins.

"Well that went well," Gorge grunted.

"Yeah...Guess he was showin' us his nice side..." With chagrined snarkiness gravelly fringed in his murmurous timbre, steelily, he glanced at the rotund battle-hog who braced the furrier pudginess of his gauntleted arms over his barrel-shaped girth that blobbily drooped over his threadbare belt. A naughtier gleam in Sabre's aqueous opal rascally conveyed his tenacious-hellbent spirit as he forcily eased his larger paw onto Gorge's spiked pauldron "When do I ever follow orders..." Quirking the furred curvatures of his sleekier muzzle, toothily, he listened to a grumpier huff snortingly gusting out of his best friend's jowelly-tusked snout. "C'mon it's gonna be one helluva of fight..."

"Just the kind I like," Gorge chuckled. With that, the two friends prepared to march out with their feline-infantry. Over two dozen Pantherians stood in a ranks with their armor covering their muscular physiques. They were battle-hardened warriors who craved combat, their fangs bared, their eyes glowing with battle-lust. As Sabre prepared to lead the column, his ears prickled at the familiar sound of a squabbling creature bounding towards him. A faint smile pulled at his mouth, revealing a sharp set of teeth.

"Stringy. I thought you would leave me to march without my provisions," he rumbled as he watched the ring-tailed lemur race up to him. "What took you so long?" He arched an eyebrow, taking his bag with an arched brow.

"Hah...Hah.. good to see you too, Battle-Cat ..." The scant grayish-white furred lemur jabbed back, sardonically, roving his copper-hazel orbs onto the blubbery-obese hog as he sternously dragged a cloth sack of ripened-delectable plums over the sandy ground with his tinier paws near the Gorge's massive hoof. "In case you were wondering, I enjoyed my orange slices until I heard the horn..." Thrusting up his longish stripped tail, zippily, he bounced on his clawed hind paws like a pogo stick, and placed the heftier sack into the cloven deformity Gorge's flabbier hand. "Don't worry I didn't steal anything...Well maybe my tail did, it does have a mind of its own..." He eased down on his lithe haunches and splayed his paw affectionately over his lankier tail. "Isn't that right, buddy..."

Sabre couldn't help but chuckle at the ring-tailed lemur's antics."Oh, I don't know," he rumbled, eyeing the tail. "Your tail does have a certain...flair for the dramatic. I suppose it's only fitting that it steals a little something now and then." He grinned, baring his sharp teeth. "But just make sure its not something overreaching, will be roasting Lemur tail for dinner," he quipped, slapping his hand on his friend's shoulder. He grinned, baring his sharp teeth as a battle-ready eagerness began to engulf him. "But let's not keep our battle-hardened warriors waiting, shall we? They're itching for a fight." With that, he turned and marched off, leading the column towards the source of the disturbance. "Forward, loyal Pantherians! Be vigilant and unyielding!" There was a chorus of growling roars as the feline-warriors beat their chests and dug their claws into the ground, muscles tensing with the anticipation of a head-long charge into the wild.

Against the blood-pounding surges of his adrenalized-rampageous ferocity that explosively notched with his unstoppable-deadlier momentum, growlingly, Sabre emitted a full-throated snarl, whooshingly he propelled in earshot from the desert garrison as his bionic arm poised for a glorious battle-charge. Every visage of his bestial-predatory rabidity exceedingly intensified in unhampered fruition. Registering the oinkish grunts throttling behind him, gnashingly, he jutted out his razor-edged fangs while his claws gleamingly snicked out as he agilely pounced on a stone-wall, like fluid velvet, his longish tail arced with a commanding gesture to his feline-legion.

"Hold!" He growled out. His squadron reacted immediately as they paused in their advance. Sabre began sniffing the air, stretching his senses amidst the shrouded wilderness they had found themselves in. Nature's scents were thinly mixed with the scent of charred wood, blood and death. He snarled instinctively, his nerves prickling with anticipation. He felt a presence beside him as Gorge lumbered over, grateful for the pause to collect his breath.

"What is it, Commander?" Gorge grunted.

"We're close," was all Sabre said before beckoning the warriors to resume their advance. Gorge released a disgruntled sigh.

"So much for a breather," he began jogging after them.

The column of Pantherians advanced further into the desolate forest, the scent of blood growing stronger with every step. Along the way they picked up signs of dead guardsman and destroyed wagons. The missing caravan. The wind picked up, carrying with it the faint sound of distant battle cries. Sabre's heart raced, adrenaline surging through his veins. His eyes scanned the horizon, searching for any sign of the enemy. "On guard!" He growled.

Twitching his whiskered muzzle, stiltedly, he evicted the jackhammering urges that errantly grappled him into a predatory stupor as the vaporous aroma of blood mist sailing over the forested environs was intoxicatingly addictive; flitting his roundish ears against the cacophonous volumes of javelins of rebel Pantherian insurgents scrapingly clanged over crimson metallic shields-ferocity amplified in defensive succession. Panting out throatier chuffs, blindingly, Sabre vaulted with acrobatic-stealthier- graces over a vine-sheathed branch, the sleekness of his obsidian-raven fur shadowily contrasted against the dense umbra as his voltaic-sapphire opals lasered over decimated remnants of a caravan wagon.

The slaughterous barbarity of the Accuser legions was an infective scourge within Patherian borders-harvesting natural resources of the jungle to revitalize a smog-laden Hela that was toxically entrenched with contaminated-unbreathable air. Thrusting up his furred muzzle, alarmingly, Sabre detected a minter-sandalwood fragrancy-virile scent of a humanoid-Kree- invader smellily wafting around him. "Grah...Kree stink..." he murmured, gnashingly, and dragged his claws over the gnarled branch with vicious tack. "Gorge, advance and search for wounded...Our mission is clear em' out of here..." he commanded out, fervently, glancing at the newest recruits-tawny-golden furred leopard siblings-Rayan and Cato-who brazenly harnessed unorthodox-scampish feistiness as they readily adjusted the metallic bracers against their furred muzzles. "You two, scout the area..."

The two leopard siblings bowed their heads in obedience before darting off into the underbrush. The other warriors surveyed the area, Gorge checking the destroyed wagon. It once carried medicinal herbs and remedies used to treat battle injuries. Whoever attacked had pilfered numerous crates. Discreetly the Hog picked up a packet of leafs and stuffed them into his pocket- "Gorge!" The voice of Sabre nearly had the hog jumping out of his skin as he whirled about, gazing up at him with a sheepish look feigning innocence.

"Ugh, its not what it looks like, I was just um...saving this for a special tea later-"

"We need to find that caravan," Sabre cut through his meek explanation with an annoyed growl. "If the rebels have it, it'll set back our division for months. If it is the Kree, then it could be worse."

"The tracks lead from the west beyond the grove, probably to the river," Gorge said with a grunt. "Could be a diversion-the caravan was due from the south."

"Form up, and follow the trail," Sabre growled, "...and don't let Korious see you with those weeds. He'll have you cleaning the cisterns for months," he warned with knowing grin.

Shifting his cool aqueous opals piercingly at the ratty sack of dried leaves clutched into Gorge's pudgier hand, stiffeningly, with tactful vigilance, he eased onto his metallic-greaved haunches, swaying his lengthy tail on pendulum-hypnotic accord while his satiny obsidian-ebony fur stealthily camouflaged against the obstructive fan-like leaves that vexatiously scuffed over his feline head. Involuntarily, he angled his furred muzzle, sniffily, he caught the saltish-bilous order of canine drool that was undoubtingly a wasteland scavenger. Dragging out guttural pants, Sabre raised his gauntleted arm, readily signalling Gorge to advance near the river-kill-zone. "Stay low..."

"Got it," the Hog warrior replied, steeling himself as he kept one of his massive hands wrapped around the cool link of his hook-chain while the other held a spear in hand. The Pantherians followed, some crawling up along the branches of the trees, their movements silent as shadows, while the others kept formation with their commander who led them through the maze of trees. The tension was so thick it was almost suffocating as their nerves prickled with anticipation. It was almost in unison, but they all felt their blood-flow increase as the familiar cries of battle reached their ears. "Listen!" Gorge grunted, believing the danger was straight ahead. But Sabre's sense of hearing was far too keener than that of his warriors as the panther warrior watched a dark shape hover over the tree above his friend.

With dead-shot precision, blindingly, Sabre flung his dagger into the lankier torso of a mangy-wraithlike jackal as the sluicing noise of gored flesh screechingly resonated with a gasping yelp. The savorous amora of blood mistily enwreathed him at the second the convulsing jackal frantically dropped near Gorge's stubbier hooves with a heart-racking thunk. "You're welcome..." he murmured, starchily, gazing at the dumbfounded hog beadier eyes comically widened at the realization of the ambushing raider's deadly assault as he warded off the full-fledged predacious urges of tearingly gutting the canine husk with his knifepoint fangs-he couldn't become gripped into that savage mania-the corruptive deviance of his battle-honed conditioning. He needed to stow it. "How many is that you owe me..."

"RUN THEM DOWN!" Chaos erupted as the Pantherians engaged a vicious group of insurgents armed with weapons and fury. Sabre fought his way through a line of bull-like brutes barreling through the trees roaring a cry for "freedom". Gorge watched as his friend dispatched one of the bulls with a lethal efficiency that was both awesome and frightening, but his rear was exposed to the impending swing of a war-axe determined to cleave off his left arm. "Tribune!" Unsheathing his hook, Gorge swung his chain and lobbied the hook across the distance, spearing through the bull's shoulder causing him to let loose a roaring squeal. "COME HERE!" Gorge pulled the chain, propelling the bull towards him and into the impaling thrust of his spear in his opposite hand.

Sabre continued to fight his way through as he tussled into a grapple with a formidable feline. "Deserter," he growled once he got a good look at the scarred cheetah. It had the training of the milita but wore the ragtag garb of an insurgent. Anger and indignation rose up within Sabre as he glared into the feline's luminous amber eyes. "You betrayed your brethren! Your betray your Imperator!"

Against the vicious onrush of his bestial ferocity, the marred cheetah-anthro insurgent dizzyingly jerked his feline head as Sabre robotically poised his vibrainium claws on deadlier sync over his leathered tunic, his yellowish-virescent opals lividly gleamed alight with unbidden repulsion. The feverish bleariness of his vision stingily ensued against callbacks of betrayal. "H-He is a damn traitor!" Slashingly, he rented a full-throated snarl, lashingly grazing his fore-claws against Sabre's pauldron anguishedly with defensive strain. Opposing against the imperium was a suicidal gambit-he wouldn't become a leashed instrument of slaughterous drudgery. Hinging a modicum of unswerving valour-loyalty to his Pantherian brothers-cub-mates, he breathily rasped against Sabre's roundish ear with a heart-knifing revelation on desperate tenor. "W-We're just expendable pawns...You are too blind to see it, Commander!"

His words threatened to pierce through the haze of aggression that had enveloped Sabre. The cheetah insurgent's words rang hollow as he shuttered himself from their meaning and focused in on overpowering him with his strength. "No," he growled, hesitating for a moment. "You're the one who is blind! We fight for a better future. For the strength of our people. You have lost your way," he growled, wrestling the cheetah's arm but to his surprise, the rebel moved with his momentum enabling him to slip free from his grasp. Sabre raised his spear expecting him to attack but instead the insurgent began to flee through the trees. "Coward," he began his pursuit.

Gorge, still locked in his own melee with a bull, watched as the life faded from the eyes of one he pierced with his hook-chain. The insurgents, seeing the tide of battle turning against them, began to retreat deeper into the forest. He caught a glimpse of Sabre wrestling with the scarred cheetah, their claws and fangs tearing at each other's flesh. "Sabre!" he shouted, "Get back here!"

Sabre ran, his blood pounding in his ears drowning out the noise of battle as he followed the scent of blood and the vibrations in the ground leading him to another fight looming ahead. He caught sight of a dead jackal on the ground, his head snapped in an opposite direction with a bleeding cut on his brow. Furrowing his brow at the oddity of his demise, he listened, hearing a clanking noise of combat. "What is that?"

Inadvertently, the panther-Centurian became stuntedly floored by an unwarranted alarm to a scything whang of metallic shield that whooshingly boomeranged against the gnarled trees on ricocheting tenor he registered the shockwave of vibrainium kinetically pulsing over the mechanized servos of his bionic arm-a combative fusion that electrifyingly accelerated through his veins. The battle-crazed pandemonium of his infantry cacophonously intensified as if he was trudging over a denotive mine-field-metallic flakes of shattered javelins became a hailstorm over the swampier riverbank with no avail. Scowlingly, he gnashed his fangs and thrusted up his gauntleted fore-paw against a visceral upheaval of dredged-up confusion as he became consciously attuned with a deterred lapse of revamping-fractured memory of unerringly catching the partonic shield on straight-arm reaction like a frisbee. "T-That shield..."

Without wasting a moment, he sprinted through the dense undergrowth, rushing between trees and ducking under low-hanging branches. The noises of combat grew louder as he approached the source of the commotion. He could practically taste the sweat of the combatants on his tongue. When he arrived in the clearing, he was for a moment surprised to see the sight of a human man still locked in battle with the rebel jackal, their weapons clashing against each other in a furious dance of death. The jackal wielding his scythe relentlessly attempted to cleave the small human, but to Sabre's mild surprise, the human was evading and blocking every blow.

That was when he noticed the shield in the human's grasp-a shield that seemed to be giving him an advantage over the jackal as he bashed the surface of it against the rebel's head, causing him to howl with pain. Noticing the colours on the shield, the red, white and blue standing out amidst the monotone shades of green and brown like glowing beacons, caused Sabre to enter a trance, lost in a feeling of utter nostalgia.

"Give me that shield, human!" The Jackal roared as he attempted to wrestle the weapon from the man's grasp.

Against the grislier viciousness of the lankier jackal-anthro thrashingly yanking on the shield, blurringly, Sabre flitted his aqueous opals at intrusive Teran-humanoid who unshakeably grounded into battle-stance as he forcily braced his forearm with Spartan-honed resilence that surged through the corded bulkiness of his graven-edged solidity delineated underneath a tactical garment- ensemble of navy-blue kevlar strikingly decked with patriotic white-red stripes aesthetically contrasting the material of his tauter mid-drift. Leather-buckled straps were fastened over his broader shoulders bordering a chrome star that embossed his muscular chest. Sweatily, tawny-blondish tresses clung over the hard-edged angularity of his boyishly-chiselled features as he fiercely gnashed his teeth with defensive strain. "Remove yourself from the human, filth..!" The snarlier gravelliness of his chuffing pitch roaringly belted over the riverbank as the rogue jackal reactively pinned his canine ears back at the throat-yelping moment Sabre menacingly sashayed on his arced paws with predatory-deadlier advances. "Do it...Now!"

The blonde human looked between his opponent and the newcomer with anticipation, his blue eyes wide with incredulity. He said something beneath his breath as he clutched the shield in his hands with great strength. The Jackal growled with defiance of Sabre's command, his steel gaze landing on the fearsome commander, "I don't take orders from you! Death to the Imperator and all his pomps!"

With a snarl, Sabre lunged forward, his claws extended and ready to strike. The Jackal, sensing the danger, raised his scythe in defense, their weapons clashing with a deafening clang. The battle intensified as the two beasts circled each other, their muscles rippling beneath their fur. The human, caught in the middle, struggled to keep his footing as he watched the two beasts fight for dominance.

The clearing was soon filled with the sounds of clashing metal and snarls as the three combatants continued their brutal dance. The human, seeing an opening, tried to push past them and escape, but Sabre and the Jackal were having none of it. They each grabbed one of his arms, pinning him against a tree. The human did something neither of them expected, he struck their furrier abdomens with brutal front kicks that actually hurt them.

"Rrahh..." The gut-racking pressure of the push-kick kick had vertiginously robbed Sabre's unwavering footing as he gnashingly braced his gauntleted fore-arm tensely against his bronze-plated cuirass while the mangy jackal-anthro screechingly whimpered in high-pitched yelp against the mounting upsurge of combative ferocity that bodily hammered over his marred ebony grunginess that blotchily sheathed his rangier form. Thrusting his whiskered muzzle on the viperous accord, tearingly, Sabre dragged his jutting incisor fangs into a bonier shoulder with ferine abandon, gripping the immovable-traitorous defector into a choke-hold as clotty splurts viscidly oozed from the bloodied gashes underneath his fangs-every heart-thumping pulse irrevocably became white-noise, gutturally he applied bone-vising force that would cripplingly incapacitate without deviance of mercy.

Hinging onto a semblance of warred control, restrainedly Sabre eased his fangs off the jackal's bloodied shoulder as he listened to the heavier-unconscious thump quakingly vibrating against his paw-feet. "Hail Panthera..." he whispered in a raspier timbre, murmurously, edging from the filthier scum, incredulously, Sabre razored his whitish-sapphire opals unwaveringly at Steve who defensively hefted off the circular vibrainium shield over his muscled forearm with adamant-unfaltering vigilance of a soldiery paragon. The stormier intensity of his turquoise-azure ireses fiercely gleamed alight with virtuous-battle-worn resolve that wouldn't be corrupted. Grimancingly, Sabre emitted a cobra-like hiss as he instinctively poised his claws for a throat-strike a breadth over Steve's jugular vein on knifepoint accord, a tremorous deterance of hesitance viscerally suffused him to graze his claws warningly against the red-painted alloy."Grah...M'not gonna kill you..."

But the jackal was in no mood for mercy. With a savage snarl, he leapt forward, his claws extended and aimed at Steve's chest. The human, caught off guard, stumbled backward, barely avoiding the deadly blow. The Jackal, sensing weakness, pressed his advantage, landing another powerful blow on the human's shoulder. Steve cried out in pain, but did not yield. He drew his knees up and kicked out at the Jackal with all his might. The blow connected, sending the beast tumbling backward onto the hard ground. With a hard backward thrust, his shield smacked against the jackal's skull, the clanging echo travelling for miles as the beast finally collapsed beaten to the ground, leaving the human and Sabre the only two left standing.

The human didn't drop his guard, his shield still held at the ready, but the deep in-takes of breath indicated his exhausted state as he held his hands up at the ready, watching as the panther flashed his claws and postured himself. "Don't, just don't. I didn't come here looking for a fight..."

Hearing the choke-off raspiness of Steve's timbered drawl, growlingly, Sabre eased his gauntleted fore-paw against the rampancy of his deadlier attack. "I don't care, human..." he whispered out, gutturally, knowing the protocol of capturing a Kree intruder on Pantherian grounds. "Stand down before I will make you..."

Steve's chest rose and fell with each labored breath. His muscles ached from the exertion of the fight, but he didn't waver. "I could do this all day," he said with a defiant look, demonstrating a unique strength and stubborness that was unlike anything a Kree would express. It was admirable but foolish given the man's apparent state of exhaustion. His eyes were a deep blue that revealed an old-seated wisdom that spoke of decades of experience. A soldier, through and through. But still a tresspasser. The standing orders of the great Imperator Tygerus meant that all intruders were to be detained or killed.

"You must like getting beaten up, human," Sabre said with a drawl that prickled at the edges of his subconscious, causing some odd feeling of nostalgia to creep in on him. This felt familiar.

In that heart-arresting moment of unwarranted reaction, confusingly, Steve pinched his fevered brow on dumbfounded tenor as he stuntedly registered the suaver gravelliness of a whiskey-roughened drawl throatily resonating from the armoured panther Centurian; he gazed at the hard-bone curvatures-angularity that strikingly razored over the broadness of his feline muzzle furrily sprouting with needle-thin gossamer whiskers as Sabre cuffed out a panty breath, not wavering his defensive footing. Staunching down an upheaval of his residual perplexity that inexorably gripped him bone-deep, Steve lowered his forearm as the heated vibrainum of his shield grazed against his kevlar-clad thigh, he fixed the hawkish intensity of his cool azureous ireses squarely onto the panther-anthro's cybernetic arm as golden skeins were aesthetically soldered over the charcoal-ebon plating that was branded with a signet of a paw. "W-Where did you get that..."

But before he could finish his thought, Sabre launched himself forward, claws unsheathed and aimed at his chest, ready to take this human down. Reacting on instinct, Steve raised his shield in defense, meeting the lethal assault with a metallic clash. The force of the impact sent him stumbling backward, narrowly avoiding the follow-up swipe of the panther's other claw. Pain exploded in his side as he hit the ground hard, and he winced, struggling to get back to his feet. The panther, clearly more agile and stronger than the Jackal, advanced on him with a menacing growl. What he felt was the lightning quick clash of the shield smacking against his head. Were it not for his armored helmet, he would have been knocked unconscious. The strength and quickness of the attack still unsettled Sabre who let loose an angry growl.

Steve, however, was quick to counterattack, thrusting his shield at the panther's midsection. Sabre leapt backward, narrowly avoiding the blow. They circled each other before resuming their onslaught. The area was filled with the sound of their clashing attacks, claws against vibranium; Sabre felt like he was in the arena. It was invigorating but also vexing. He couldn't leverage himself against the agile human even with his greater size.

Suddenly, Steve charged forward, his shield held high. Sabre dodged to the side, only to find himself trapped in a twine of branches on the ground. The human's shield slammed into him with bruising force, sending him tumbling to the ground. With a grunt of effort, he struggled to his feet, his head spinning from the impact. Steve held his shield, struggling with uncertainty.

Grounding his combative-adamant poise with defensive traction against the sweltering humidity, pensively, trying his damnest to stow onto vestiges of restraint, Steve braced his shield over his kevlar-clad thigh as he gazed into the panther-anthro's lazurite opals that mesmerically gleamed voltaic intensity was like a bluish acetylene flame as he strained against the heart-razing confusion that rackingly barraged him soul-deep without avail. He wouldn't hesitate to bash the shield into the panther's armoured mid-drift-he needed validity against the revelation that an intergalactic legion of genetically-mutative animorphs captured his best friend. "Where did you get that...?" he demanded with teeth-gritting, breathlessly, roving his blearing azure ireses over the warped bionic paw, detecting the rancid toxicity of despotic-butcherous imperialism that mephitically enwreathed within the humid forested terrain. Unwarranted urgency inexorably torpedoed within his veins as he blocked a mechanized claw-strike. "Now M' only gonna ask once...Where is Bucky Barnes?"

That name puzzled the Commander, feeling as if it were familiar yet ridiculous all at the same time. Wrinkling his whiskered muzzle, he bore his teeth with a defiant growl, feeling the last of his patience begin to fade against this human. "Who the hell is-"

*CLANK*

The sound of a metallic hook smacking against the human's skull interrupted his chain of thought. Sabre watched with mild surprise but also annoyance as the human tumbled to the ground unconscious just as the hook that had struck him was whipped back into the enormous hand of his hoggish friend who entered the clearing. Gorge chuckled, "Since when do you let puny humans get the best of you?"

Sabre growled, "I had him on the back-foot."

Flitting his longish tail, impassively, Sabre eased onto his armoured haunches a breadth at Steve's unconscious form, while the rotund battle-hog gruffly retracted the metallic chain of the siege hook into the stubbier deformity of his gauntleted hoof, blankly, Sabre lasered his whitish-sapphire opals fixedly at the vibrainium shield as he splayed robotized claws scrapingly over the chrome-painted star emblem that metallically adorned the circular shield-a revered signet of valour-liberty. An ephemeral starkness of dredged-up connection-apparitions- viscerally hijacked the recess of his addled mind, while his massive paw shakily traced over the red paint. "T-This looks...Familiar..." he murmured in a throatier undertone, gratingly, and thrusted his gauntlet arm back as if he was electrified by a taser repulsor. "Grah..Probably scrapped trash from a Ravanger..."

"Could be. He's not dressed like any Ravager I've seen before," Gorge grunted, assesing the state of the strangely dressed human laying unconscious. "We don't get too many Terrans in our space sector. He could be a Kree spy, or even a Nova Corps officer." Reaching down he lifted the shield in his arms, surprised by how light yet durable the metal sphere felt in his hands. "This is all he's packing? How did he fend off that Jackal-and you with just this frisbee?" Gorge tossed the shield to Sabre, watching with mild interest as his Pantherian friend caught it flying disk with lighting quick reflex, the digits of his claws scraping against the surface of the object. "Guess you saw that one coming this time. How do you want to handle this, Sabe?" He asked, gesturing to the unconscious man. He was their only lead between the rebels and the lost caravan.

"Commander...Woah...Hold on, sir, " A chirpier pitch speedily blurted from a golden-ombre furred cheetah as he whooshingly skitted on his armoured hind-paws with quick-foot momentum, evading the Centurian-panther's icier glower, he swiftly pounced onto a gnarled branch of acrobatic graces, and unblinkingly roved his inquisitive brownish-hazel opals at the motionless Terran strangely clad in a dark-blue tactical garment. "O-Okay that's bad...Gotta be a Kree infiltrator, right..." he murmured, stammeringly, gesturing his lengthy-spotted tail at the vibrainium shield possessively gripped into Sabre's robotized paw. "You gonna bring him for questioning..."

Sabre regarded the new recruit with a commanding posture, "Centurion Cato. Arrange one of the toppled carts to transport these prisoners. The human is not to be taken lightly." He grunted, watching as Gorge hoisted the unconscious human and jackal off the ground like sacks of fruit and threw one over each of his shoulders. Sabre held the acquired shield still in his hand, for some reason finding the weight of it comforting in his grasp. He cast a furtive look towards the treeline where the escaped rebel had fled. "Any who escaped today won't have anywhere to hide once we get the answers we need."

Some minutes later, a cart was brought into the clearing where Gorge threw the prisoners inside. He looked at Sabe pensively once the prisoners, "you know that Korious is going to want to hear about this." He said, dreading what the Imperator would to learn they found only a ruined caravan.

Scrunching up his whiskered muzzle, derisively, Sabre gazed down at the vibrainium shield fastened over his gauntleted wrist-it was a conductor of a treacherous firestorm-anarchy that would damagingly ignite a revolutionary powder-keg against his tyrannical emperor if Panthera sought this symbol of valour as the matchstick of a calamitous reckoning. Growlingly, Sabre eased the circular shield against his armoured thigh, and his sahaying momentum near his tubbier friend. "Let me worry about that..." he murmured against snarlier breaths, throatily, aware of the penalty of his impetuous disobedience. "Bring em' to the citadel and don't let Korious question this human without me..."

Cato, the golden young cheetah, gave a curt nod, "Sir, yes sir!" He and the rest of the Pantherian guards began to wheel away the imprisoned jackal and human in the toppled cart.

"Somehow I don't think keeping the Old Lion out of this one will be so simple," Gorge shrugged. "All right, let's get moving!" The hog yelled, padding forward to lead the way back to the citadel. As they began to make their way through the forest, Sabre could not help but feel a sense of foreboding as he wondered how the Imperator, and the Emperor himself would react to this. He only hoped that the storm could be withered before it could grow stronger.

The nectarous amora of juicer plums deliciously entrenched over the marketed sector, as draped cloths of merchant tents flappingly billowed against the humid air, twitchily, his furrier tail arced up on mischievous accord while he evaded the stone-faced glower of a hulkish rhino sentry who bulbously grounded his massive hooves near a fruit cart. Rapting his tinier paws, Stripey crouched on his lankier haunches a breadth at straw-woven baskets that were appetizingly heaped with succulent melons."Ooh...I'll take a little bit of these...Maybe some of that..." With quick-paw swiftness, thievishly, he snatched purplish grapes, deceptively, tucking a few into his raggedy tunic. "Why do they always make it so easy for my amazing skills...Like I mean c'mon, I never get caught by old grumpy horn over there..." he whispered, snarkily, hopping off the wooden ledge with evasive graces as he vanishingly scampered into the direction of a pillared archway, only to be deterred by javelin spear that alarmingly grazed his whitish-grayish fur. "Woah..."

Gasping, he looked back to see the javelin tip quivering, mere inches from his head, as the weapon's owner, a massive gray-furred wolf with a scarred snout, stepped closer. "That's close enough, thief," he growled, his eyes narrowing. "You're coming with me." Stripey's heart pounded in his chest, but he forced a cocky grin. "You're probably mistaking me for someone interested in your wares. Gotta say, not very appealing so I was just on my way out of here," he said, trying to act nonchalant as he casually turned back toward the market.

The wolf growled again, more menacingly this time, and Stripey felt a shiver of dread run down his spine. That probably wasn't the smartest thing say. "I'm gonna string you up, skin you and sell you with the rest of my "unimpressive wares"," the wolf threatened. Swallowing hard, Stripey glanced over his shoulder and saw that a rhino sentry was beginning to take an interest in their little exchange. He couldn't afford to draw any more attention to himself. With a sigh, he turned back to face the wolf. "Alright, alright," he muttered, suddenly throwing himself towards the wolf in and hugging him tightly. "Hey relax, pal, you know I was only kidding. In fact, that plum pudding over there looks pretty tasty is that new?" Discreetly he used the distraction to slip a few pieces of fruit into his pouch behind the wolf vendor's back.

Manically, the brutish wolf-vendor flashed his grimier incisors fangs at the lemur with deadlier rabidity- he attempted to seize his verminous drudge with unmerciful precision as he gripped onto a cleaver. "I'm going to enjoy splitting your mangy body into two..." he snarled, evilly, yanking onto Stripey's longish tail while grapes annoyingly pelted his canine muzzle. "Rrahh...You little..."

But just before the grisly strike could come, there was a sudden flash of movement from behind the stalls as a large powerful figure leapt over a table with practiced agility, landing gracefully beside them. His shadow covered them like a cloud of darkness promising a swift downpour of retaliation. "Why don't you pick on someone your own size?" The graveling deep baritone of Sabre cut through the chaos. His ebony-raven fur was bristling with determination and steel-blue opal were gleaming alight with battle-readiness. Sparing the lemur an exasperated look, he focused on the wolf who appeared mildly shocked by his appearance.

The rancidity of corruptive stink odorously wafted off the canine vendor's mangy fur, with a breakneck reaction, viciously, Sabre clutched into his ganglier wrist on bone-crippling accord, slamming the grizzled paw against the wooden ledge as his roundish ears raptly flitted against the full-throated yelp that spasmically resonated from the stunned-thuggish wolf-anthro. Restrainedly, he eased his fore-claws off the scruff of grayish fur as he warded off the bestial-murderous urges that combustively strummed in his veins."Enough of this..!" he railed out, gnashingly, and flashed the icier steeliness of his aquamarine opals unwaveringly at his crafty- kleptic servi. "His services are under my watch, and I will pay what is owed to you..." With an impassive semblance brandished over the furrier contours of his whiskered muzzle, he removed golden Xanadarian units from his leathered sachel, aware of the vendor's glassier yellowish eyes greedily staring at the units. "Yeah...The unmarked currency that I snagged from a Kree infiltrator...These units will get you a fun time at Conjuncton's Casnio ..."

"C-Commander Sabre..." The vendor said with realization. "Your servant has sticky fingers." The wolf vendor, still gripping his cleaver and eyeing Stripey warily, slowly lowered his head in submission once he realized the lemur was in service to a high-ranking Pantherian officer as he judged the panther's armor. He snorted derisively as he shifted his gaze from the lemur to the gold Xanadarian units in Sabre's hand. Greed flared in his yellow eyes. With a growl, he released his grip on the cleaver and stepped back, nodding gruffly. "But fine. I'll take that," he grumbled, snatching the units from Sabre's hand. "But you better not come near by wares again, lemur." He spat on the ground before turning and stalking off through the crowd.

Sabre stared down at his servant expectantly with an accusing raise of the eyebrow, "You just cannot help yourself, can you?" He grunted with a small bite of humor in his voice that indicated he wasn't entirely upset over the situation.

Feigning a waggish smirk deviously over his tinier muzzle against the depth-charge rampancy of his insatiable-notching urges, blindingly, Stripey grabbed a yellowish-decadent plum off the vendor cart with thievish precision, evading the voltaic intensity of the panther's grayish-aquamarine opals that unnervingly straddled him with a trenchant glare, cheekily he dragged his needle-point fangs into the juiciness of his pilfered fruit without a vestige of reined composure. "Whoa...Hold on...I'm the smallest guy on this desert planet, I can faint easily without a good bite of citrus..." he defended against a mouthful, heartily. "Sometimes I even crave ice cream...psst...Whatever that is..." He rapted his grayish-furred paw over Sabre's gauntleted wrist. "Gotta be good right, Bagheera."

The panther let out an annoyed sigh and shook his head. "For one so small, I swear all you think about is food. I don't even want to imagine where it all goes," he replied with a growl, "but you're still going to pay for that plum out of your week's salary," he said, rumbling with amusement as he watched the lemur's ears extend in stunned disbelief. "And don't call me Bagheera when we're in public. It's Commander Sabre." He motioned the lemur to follow him into step as they made their way through the market, his striped friend sputtering in appeasement if only to save his full earnings. Several eyes watched them, some too intimdated by the commander's presence to let their gaze linger too long as he perused some wares. He picked up a rare plant imported from an exotic moon named Zula and inhaled its scent, finding it calming. He tossed a gold coin to the hoggish merchant, embedded with the image of Emperor Tygerus and received his change.

He gazed sidelong at his servant.

"You've been out here most of the day. You know you're paid to do more than lug my supplies around. Have you heard anything useful?" The marketplace was a hub of activity where travellers from neighbouring villages came to the city to sell their wares. Some off-worlders frequented under the watchful eye of the Pantherian guard to ensure they weren't enemy spies.

"There's been some noise about Xander cargo ships loading up with prisoners...Mostly big guys with hooves..." Stripey divulged, whisperingly, twitching his snubbed muzzle with a crestfallen gleam alight in his beadier darkish ireses as he noisily gnawed on another fruity bite. "Happens on the spaceport, lots of security roaming around with taser spears that leave a nasty mark on those who try to escape..." he rasped under a chirpier breath, warily, glancing on the rhino-anthro sentry thuggishly poised near the marketplace gates. "He's a guy to knock out with that cool robo paw of yours if you want answers..."

Sabre narrowed his eyes at the mention of the rebels, shifting his gaze towards the burly-rhino that his friend signaled him to. A deep-heated growl emanated from his mouth, his whiskers twitching in agitation. "Why would they be sending the prisoners off world?" he wondered aloud. "Pantherian law deems them to be either imprisoned, executed or sentenced to the mines." A dangerous edge entered into his voice. He knew that under Korious, the law could be bended but never broken. Whatever the case, he didn't like that certain things were kept from him if it meant this conflict was being prolonged and not ended. His thoughts returned to the strange human he encountered in the forest, wondering how his interrogation was unfolding and if he would find his way onto these supposed ships headed for Xandar. He didn't like this at all. "I need answers..." He debated going to confront the rhino, but before he could decide his next course of action, an ox-horn rang out through the marketplace along with the shaking boom of an incendiary grenade going off at the tower.

On depth-charge succession, the explosive vibrations deafeningly pulsed over the marketplace as remnants of clay-stone dustily rained against the manic pandamonium of alarmed vendors who screamingly fled in unison as the armoured rhino stompingly charged his unstoppable-horn-impaling momentum near the obstructive detritus. With defensive readiness, Sabre unwaveringly lasered the peripheral intensity of his steelier aqueous opals in the direction of the blast, in a earshot, thrusting his whiskered muzzle against the intrusive-ambrosian scent of vanilla-cherry that headily arrested his warring senses-a luscious-feminine decadence that savorously beckoned him to pursue on hungered abandon. Growlingly, he propelled his feline-honed agility over a melon cart, snacking out his metallic claws on predatory sync as he chased the evocative scent. "W-Where are you..."

That was when he spotted a commotion occurring near the edge of the blast radius. While other merchants were either running to or from the explosion in a mad panic, the rhino guards were dutifully maintaining control by guiding them away in an orderly fashion. The sight of a scuffle disrupted the order as he watched a sleek agile shape outpace and attack a trio of suspicious guards. A white furred lioness wearing a hood moved with a lighting quick swiftness that belied her size, her eyes were gleaming with a determined glisten as she raced past the marketplace, her powerful feline-limbs moving unrelenting, her snow-white fur shining like the purest of pearls against the dust-strewn pavement. "Oh no you don't..." Sabre hissed, his mind torn between the primal urge to pursue and the more pressing matter at hand such as the explosion and seeing if anyone was hurt. Yet, there was something about her that called to him, a scent that seemed to linger on the air...

He cursed the rhino guards and their inability to catch a fleeing suspect and looked at Stripey, "Try to keep up, don't let her out of sight." With that he broke into a run, his lemur friend climbing to a roof to follow close-by from the skies.

Harnessing a surge of balletic agility, lithely, she crouched onto her furred haunches onto the clay-stone ledge of a pillared roof, the fieriness of her autumn-brandy opals impishly gleamed with thievish intensity as her whitish-clawed paw deftly gripped onto the golden armlet that was exquisitely adorned with crescent rubied moons-a galactic accessory that was exhibited by the opulent-penurious notoriety of Panthera-bribable senators who gorged on their avarice while turning away from the parasitic installations of syndicated taskmasters. Gliding her claws over the roughness of the stone, tensely, her pinkish nose scrunched as she registered a virile-headier scent that addictively ghosted against the sweetness of plums. Keeping the length of her black cloak draped over her tousled silvery-platinum whorls, she bated out a panty breath, catching a glimpse of a ganglier lemur speedily hopping near her proximity, while deceptively removing a thermal disk from her threadbare satchel with quick-paw readiness. "So...Now I have a monkey chasing my tail..." she purred out, snarkily.

Suddenly, a pair of rhino guards appeared at the edge of the alley, their bulky forms clad in shiny silver armor. They exchanged a look before one of them spoke. "You! Stop right there!" he boomed, his voice echoing through the market. The lioness tensed, her eyes narrowing as she studied the guards carefully. "Or what?" she drawled, her tone laced with amusement. They rushed her, looking to use their burly muscular mass to overwhelm her. The lioness feinted a pounce only to use her swiftness to sweep a trash barrel from the wall and kick it towards them. She masked her next move which was to pounce towards the wall and leap right over them as they came barrelling through. She continued running, her easy evasion impressing the lemur who flew above her.

"She's good." Remembering his goal he spotted his friend and commander racing in the alley opposite, "she's headed just north towards the square," he called out.

"Rrrah...Damnit..." Gnashing his incisor fangs against snarlier pants, raggedly, Sabre propelled his feline-honed agility over the obstructive pillar with unstoppable-acrobatic graces as his mechanized-vibrainium claws draggingly scraped against clay-stone as he penetrated his pugio dagger into a groove of the pillar, blindingly sliding his bulkier form downward with breakneck-adrenalized momentum as his bionic paw forcily hammered into the ground, anchoring his sprinter-poise while gunning for his thievish-seductive prey. The curvaceous exquisiteness of the lady-cat's svelte form implosively stoked a hungrier-ardent ferocity within him-a feverous voltage notching with every blood-pumping rush. "Gotta kitten..." he drawled in with murmurous chuffing, throatily, gazing at the whitish-furred lioness effortlessly perform a backflip over a barricade of melon carts on balletic succession as she naughtily quirked her delicate muzzle into a deviant smirk, while her longish tail viperously roped a melon and explosively flung it with dead-straight precision at him. "Woah...!"

"Sabre, over here!" came the urgent voice of the lemur perched atop the wall, waving frantically. The Pantherian Commander's eyes flickered momentarily towards the lemur before focusing back on his prey ahead of the alley attempting to duck behind cover. He bounded over another cart, narrowly avoiding a flying melon, and raced towards her. As he neared, Stripey jumped down from the wall, heading straight for the lioness. "Now's your chance!" He chirped. Sabre felt his blood-rushing like hot lava, pumping his muscles with relentless energy as his surroundings flew by in his sprint. He could see her straight ahead, the lioness using her own swiftness to pounce towards the gates. Sabre slammed into her, expecting his momentum and larger mass to have her pinned and restrained only to feel her slide right under him before they hit the ground!

"What?!" He growled, whipping his head up to see her paw aiming for his head. He felt the impact of her attack stagger him with surprise. He growled angrily, his instincts sharpening back into focus in time to avoid another hit. He caught her wrist and yanked. She growled and aimed a kick at his side. His armour took the brunt of the attack, and he spun her around bringing her back into his chest. His arms wrapped around her, his deep heavy breath fanning her silken white fur. "Got you!" He growled, his world suddenly engulfed by the lure of her cinnamony fragrance.

Hearing the panty gravelliness of his whiskey-roughened timbre unnervingly ghosting over her roundish ear as he bodily caged her against the graven-corded-hunkier resiliency of his tauter muscles that bulkily flexed against the bronze plating of his engraved armour. Deviously with an underhand swipe of her lithe paw, she clutched into his vambrace gauntlet, arresting his teeming impatience with a distractive grazing of her razor-point claws—not surprising he didn't release her. Curbing down her brazen feistiness to bash her head into his whiskered muzzle, tersely, she eased her fore-paw off his gauntlet."Sorry to spoil your fun, but I have places to go and things to steal..." she purred in a foxier pitch, sassily, angling her furred head against his pauldron on coquettish accord while lingeringly kneading her delicate claws over his roguish tresses with violating ministrations. "Hmm...Or maybe I'll stay for a dance, Panther-boy..."

"What?" He growled. Listening to her cool voice caused a spark inside of him. A familiar feeling struck that he couldn't explain, as if...as if he had experienced this kind of encounter before with someone like her. His brow furrowed as he became lost in a reverie, making him feel like he was back in that forest confronting the strange human. His lapse in concentration allowed her to slip out of his grasp and whip her tail towards his ankles. She pulled his feet out from under him. His instincts were reignited as he pounced back to his feet and lunged towards her. She fluidly evaded his attack as she scaled the wall. He lunged, she evaded. It was like trying to catch water that adapted and flowed in a manner he couldn't grasp. "Oh no you don't," he followed her manuevers, scaling the wall by pouncing between surfaces as she scaled to a roof-top.

Stripey watched this unfold with confusion, "What kind of chase is this?" He wondered aloud.

Gripping onto a clay-stone ledge with her fore-paw with acrobatic-honed graces, bracingly, she flitted her luminous brandy opals at Sabre who growlingly thrusted his larger paw to yank at her whitish tail. "Oh you think I would make it that easy..." she quipped, jauntily, as her plushier underlip played off a naughtier smirk while glancing at a ceramic vase that was a hairbreadth from her paw-the high octane of their chase was exhilaratingly irresistible, brassily, she knocked the vase off the balcony with dead-straight precision for his sleekier head. "Let's see if you can land on your feet..."

A stunned Sabre only had a moment to react as he raise his forearm to his face. Immediately, the vase shattered with a sharp cacophony of clanging ceramic as Sabre's body plummeted downwards. Stripey watched with a mix of horror and surprise, his heart racing as he lunged to catch his friend. He caught the back of his armor-plate but Sabre's weight was too heavy for the lemur to hang onto. Sabre landed with a loud grunt, his paws smacking into the ground causing his muscles to recoil against the strain of collision. Sabre showed no reaction as his piercing gaze watched as the white lioness winked and vanished after dropping a pellet of smoke. "Damn it," Sabre growled, hands balled into fists.

Stripey landed beside him, relieved yet amused by what transpired. "I forgot cats land on their feet. Lucky you," he quipped. His humorous edge sobered as he saw the peeved look on his superior's face. "I guess she uh got away?"

Sabre responded with a grunt. "For now," it was left unsaid but he wouldn't forget this encounter. Not too many eluded his capture, and the lioness certainly got his attention...for more than one reason. Shaking away the spell of his fixation, his mind focused back to the matter at hand. "She came from the Grand Central Keep..."

"Where most of the senators live," Stripey said, catching on, "Whatever she stole must be important."

"We need to head back," he growled, marching past his lemur friend who came to rest on his shoulder. "By the way...this never happened."

He could practically feel the laughter building up inside his small friend's body before it erupted.

"Stripey, I swear if you tell Gorge-"

"Hey, you can trust me, Sabe...This little guy knows how to keep a secret..." Deftly, he splayed his tinier paw over the vibrainium servos that robotically flexed against his featherlight caresses as he, attentively began picking out crumblier remnants of stone that dustily collected into the gun-metal plating. With a chagrined scrunch of his feline muzzle, grumblingly, Sabre veered his intimidating paw-steps with the vigilant decorum of a Patherian soldier, advancing over the pillared dolmens that bordered the market sector gates as Stripey tensely clung onto his armoured back, flicking his ring-tailed vexatiously against his charge's shaggier tresses. Being perched onto the shoulder of the panther-Centurian protected him from becoming a declious appetizer of vulturous-bloodthirsty scavengers-grizzled-snouted hyenas who chucklingly slinked behind the obstructed turn-over carts. "Hah..Hah...Not today fellas..."

"Lemur's not on the menu. Look away if you know what's good for you," Sabre grunted, his sharp eyes glaring at the hyenas who cowardly looked away. Sabre smirked as he patted his friend on his shoulder. "Hope you had fun, because now its time to get back to work." The Grand Central Keep rose before them, a towering monument of white marble dominating the monolithic skyline of the city. It was a symbol of power and prestige, the home to the most influential figures in the Empire who served Emperor Tygerus. As they approached, they could see more guards patrolling the walls and sentries posted at the gates as they combed through the remains of the explosion. "We need some answers," Sabre growled, his sapphire eyes narrowing. "I think I know where to start."

Against the exhaustive throes of bone-deep grogginess that paralyzingly robbed his mobility in fruition, blurringly, Steve fluttered his eyelashes reactively against the feverous haziness as he registered the coiling-taser- restraints fastened over his wrists; the pulsing voltage of the bracer-gauntlet sonically amplified through his veins as he forcily attempted with straining resilence to wrench his fore-arm off the dirtier ground. "Grah..." Vertiginously, he angled up the scruffier broadness of his tensing jaw, staving off a head-rush as he blearily roved his silvery-azureous ireses over the begrimed stone walls that were macabrely smudged with inky blood of Kree infiltrators and globbier remnants of a butchered wormy Sakaaran as maggoty lavra slimily tunnelled into the razed apertures of craved geometric mezzotints. "T-That's not something to wake up to, Rogers..." he drawled, raspily, aware that he was in lockdown of a detainment cell. "Gotta find a way out..."

Centurion Cato shifted on uneasy feet as he stood posted outside the doors leading to the interrogation hall. The sound of screams and vicious growls could be heard emanating down the corridor as the prisoners of the empire were be subsequently "questioned" for information. The young feline couldn't have fathomed why he would be posted in such a position this day. He was too young for such horrors but Imperator Korious had issued a mandate for new promoted recruits to be hardened into merciless warriors by exposing them to the grim realities of war. "Do they ever stop?" He wondered, gripping his spear in his paws as he listened to the chorus of pain echoing down that dim hall. He listened as he heard a shuffle of steps and a door open down the hall. He stood at the ready, hearing the clanking of armor as the imposing form of Commander Sabre stepped into view. "Sir! I mean-Commander! Sir!" He acknowledged with a salute.

Half-quirking his furred muzzle into a toothier smirk at the cheetah-anthro's boyish stammering, impassively, Sabre grounded his armoured-clad paws near the rustier bars that were smearily adorned with intestinal gunk-the carious rancidity couldn't be evaded. Twitchily, his leathery nose rapted against the odorous potency that miasmically sailed over the dirt-pit cells. "Any word from Korious about the prisoner..." he chuffed out, murmurously and lasered the steeliness of his aqueous-sapphire depths at the hulkish rhino sentry unmovingly poised with a taser javelin clutched in his bolder-sized hoof. A kinetic frequency of a thermal detector pulsingly tremored against his furred ears-the guarded cell was hot-wired."He's not the best for gettin' answers...M'gonna pay this human a visit before it's crowded in there, distract the guard for me..."

The young centurion swallowed hard, his eyes wide with alarm and surprise, but he sobered quickly into an obedient soldier. "Y-yes, Commander," he stammered but soon enough, an air of confidence came over him as he smirked with anticipation, "I think I got an idea."

The burly guardsman named Orkos grunted with mild irritation from his post as he brought his cup of Asgardian imported mead to his lips only to find it empty. "Again," he grumbled, his senses already quickly sharpening into focus enough that he could smell the stink of the interrogation corridor suffocating him like a fog. He hated his post more than anything, the only thing keeping him entertained being the occassional dumb prisoner he got the pleasure of gutting in escape attempts, or when it was his lunch-break when the quartermaster brought in the delicacies. His hearing picked up the sound of soft paws trekking close to him, carrying a cup. "Centurion, shouldn't you be at your post?" He grumbled at Cato boredly, as he made to pick up his barrel and refill his keg.

"I thought you might be getting thristy so I thought you'd like something fresh-" The cup was swiped out of his grasp before he could finish. The rhino guards sniffed and wrinkled his horned nose.

"This is water?!" His voice was laced with outrage. Cato grinned sheepishly.

"Isn't that what guards are supposed to drink?" He asked innocently. The rhino guard suddenly looked threatening causing Cato to raise his paws apologetically only to accidentally spill the water across the rhino's chest.

"Idiot!" Orkos growled angrily.

"Look I'm sorry, maybe I should just-" Cato turned around, his tail suddenly snapping against the keg caused the barrel of mead to spill over. Orkos' anger turned to horror as the rhino lunged to the floor to save his precious mead. "Oh, sorry, were you about to drink that? Smells pretty expensive." Looking behind him, Cato gave Commander Sabre a nod to proceed.

With a measure of stealthier evades, cautiously, Sabre braced his armoured back tensely against the eroded-metallic door as he dragged his fore-paw over the hinged latch. Warding off dredged-up apparitions-chimeras of gladiator-like Terans with emblems of red star-loyalty of the Motherland stitched onto their black military garment as they were dormant captives locked into an icier chamber surrounded by electronic machinery-the vomitous-chemical stink of antiseptic effused his senses as he raptly pinched his furred brow with confused strain. "Argh..." Dizzily, he eased up his gauntleted paw over his muzzle, gnashing his incisor fangs against the bone-shuttering onslaught of distorted memories of being cruelly strapped into a robotic chair as a circular headset rotated over him at the second a stone-faced Teran garbed in white pressed a controller. "N-No..." Emitting out a growlier breath, aggressively, he drove his bionic paw into the door with hammering ferocity in the wake of his reaction. "Get out of my head..."

He moved into action to stave off the flow of images and approached the cell-door. Using his own access, he watched as the electronic lock deactivated and the door opened. The stale scent of mildew touched his nostrils as he entered the dark interior. A single sentry light shone down from above highlighting the shackled form of a human man, chained to the floor. Sabre's training rose to the forefront as he maintained an image of unshakable authority. He ignored the itching at the back of his mind that gnawed at his focus, harkening him towards some feeling of familiarity. His jet-black fur shimmered like silk in the bright light, his eyes burning like hot coals as they peered at the human closely.

Steve raised his head, anticipating another round of questions and violent jabs coming from the rhinos that interrogated him earlier. Instead, he met the alarming sight of the one creature that had been on his mind ever since he had woken up. The very creature that now loomed large in front of him like a sentinel of destruction. The posture, the stance, the unflinching gaze made him feel like he was back on the falling Helicarrier years ago, facing someone who both was and wasn't his best friend. "...I-Its you. B-Bucky..."

In that heart-arresting moment of unriddled confusion, viscerally, Sabre became trepidatiously floored by the wheezier hitches of the captive's raspier drawl as his razor-thinned pupils became owlishly dilated against the depth-charge pulse of the callback- reciprocal memory that imploded into his cerebral recesses like white-hot voltage. Staunching down irrepressible urges to abandonly yank the destabilizer restraints of the twangy-haired Teran, involuntarily, he reeled back on clumsier traction, fixing his aqueous- sapphire opals piercingly at the five-pointed chrome star insignia branded on the dark-blue kevlar of Steve's tactical- patriotic uniform. A continuous mantra of a brotherly promise ravaged his thoughts 'M' with ya until the end of the line...'

Those heartened words nostalgically reactivated a mechanism of undeniable trust as he riskily gazed into Steve's mistier azure ireses."S-Stop callin' me Bucky..." A snarlier hiss bitingly railed out of him, as he viciously whiplashed his longish tail against the bars. "M-My name is Sabre..." He lowered onto his armoured haunches on predatory accord, thrusting his bionic paw a hairbreadth at Steve's bruised throat as his vibrainium-alloy claws were readily poised akin to a hammerlock to slashingly deliver a cobra-strike on his captive's jugular vein, only to stuntedly register a vestige of hinged mercy-empathy that he couldn't shrug off. "Grah..." Wrenching his paw back, restrainedly, he streched his furred muzzle and jutted out his incisor fangs against throatier gnarls. "W-Why can't I do it..."

Steve coughed weakly, his body still bruised and sore from the beating he had taken earlier. "B-Because its not who you are-." He paused, his gaze flickering between Sabre's face and the star insignia on his chest. "Maybe it's because of this." He tapped the insignia, a bitter smile playing at the corners of his mouth. "Maybe this reminds you of home." He made no effort to disguise the longing in his own voice, the yearning call of a home far away that he had been plucked from during the heated escalation of their last mission together. Seeing he had the Pantherian's full attention, Steve pushed against the bars, his blue gaze determined. "It means liberty, justice, brotherhood. Your name is James Buchanan Barnes. Those were the things we fought for back home. Whatever they did to you-" His chest tightened as the woeful images of watching his friend, and several other teammates vanish through the Infinity Gate portal they'd unearthed that had pulled them away into deep recesses of the galaxy. He'd failed to catch his friend's hand as he was pulled through. The sorrow etched deep giving him a lasting guilt that couldn't be healed unless he found him-found all of them. "This isn't who you are... really."

"Shut up!" Ramming his bionic paw against the eroded bars with bone-shattering ferocity, Sabre belted out a full-throated snarl against heaving-panty breaths; upheavals of untrammelled skull-vising confusion rackingly barraged him in tenfold as he stumblingly torqued back on clumsier footing, gripping into vestiges of sanity as vivid imagery of a bloodied Teran hand desperately clutching onto a metal rail of a train door alarmingly replayed in succession, he was strenuously reaching over a leather gloved hand against the frostier gusts. "Bucky take my hand...' The railing detachedly snapped off in the wake of a heart-wrenching scream that deafened his ears-he was breathlessly dragged into a snowy abyss by icier tentacles. "Grah..." Rearing up the sleekier angulariy of his furred muzzle, the voltaic heat of his wide-blown aqueous opals stormily electrified with bestial rawness as he unwaveringly razored a dead-straight glare at the chrome star that he would slashingly rip off. With a modicum of warred restraint, seethingly he jutted out his incisor fangs over his furrier underlip, detecting the anguished stink of unbidden heartache that radiated off the captive. "That damn star means nothing to me...!"

Steve's eyes softened, breathing deeply, trying to steady his racing heart. He had seen that look in the creature's eyes before but when he was a man. The desperation, the confusion, the anger. It was like he was a completely different person warring within another, like he had been replaced by someone else. "Let me help you," he entreated. This wasn't the first time he and Bucky had been through this song and dance, and it pained him to see his friend lost. "I'll help you remember, I'll tell you everything you need to know." He watched as the feline in front of him visibly struggled with himself before something must've snapped causing his pupils to dilate and for his paws to slam against the bars, startling Steve.

"The only thing I NEED to know, human, is what you're doing on Panthera?" Sabre snarled, falling into his training to safeguard him from the onslaught of inner-conflict. "Are you with the Kree? Or are you an infiltrator for the rebellion?"

Brandishing a semblance of full-measured trust over the hard-edged angularity of his chiselled-hawkish features, placatingly, Steve mirrored the panther-anthro's inscrutable glare against the fractional viciousness tumultuously revving within the galactic beast-machine. Despite the unbidden onslaught of grevious heartache that he reservedly stowed, he was pegged into an inexorable deadlock of a precarious reality that was heralded by a dimensional-quantum wormhole paradox that A.I.M. generated with cosmic remnants of the Tesseract cube-a transdimensional gateway that heart-wrenchingly stole everything from him when the activated switch was pressed. Dragging out a shakier breath, he remained cool-headed, fostering onto vestiges of hope to reach his tenaciously hellbent best friend-his Bucky. "There was a fight with really bad scientists that believed they held the world in their hands...Everything went south when I made the wrong call and got everyone on my team...Lost." he rasped against a hitching drawl, resigtering the saltier dampiness blearing his vision as he gazed at Centurian battle-cat unwaveringly poised at the bars. "I-It's my fault and M' gonna own that until I get everyone back...Home."

Sabre was frustrated with the lack of direct answers to his questions. But he could sense no lies in the human's words as he unveiled the depth of his remorse and sense of failure over losing his team-members. In a way, he could sympathize with his burden of responsibility having lost a number of his own Pantherian soldiers in battle. He never stopped fighting to save them, even when it seemed their fates were sealed; it was why he would choose to bear the risk alone. Lost in his own turmoil, the Pantherian commander scowled at the human, "You are a long way from home, Terran. If you ever wish to see it or your friends again, you will give me direct answers." When he received no immediate response, he peered at him closer. "You fight with unique skill and grace I've not seen in a Kree soldier. You were able to fend off the strength of a Jackal twice your size using your own. That is no small feat. All lends credence to the notion you are a very dangerous man-"

"How predictable that your rebelliousness steered you to my prisoner, Cub..." The abrasive cadency of the brutish legatus-Korious malignly resonated at the heart-slamming moment the velvety sleekness of his obsidian fur reactively tensed with defensive edginess against the carious potency-the malodorous stink of unquenchable bloodlust entrenched him. Gnashing his incisor fangs against panty breaths, with fiercer variance, Sabre flashed the steeliness of his mesmeric aquamarine opals predatorily at the iron-welded braziers that eerily contrasted orangish sconces over the unkempt grayish-white fur of the warmongering-truculent lion who virulently advanced near the cell with haughtier paw-steps of an imperious mogul. Being a high-ranking general of the Pantherian legionnaires of political-glorious conquest of satisfying his Emperor with indispensable barbarity of his murderous operations, Korious was revered as the iron-booted pillar of combative supremacy against fractious resistance. Scrunching his grizzled muzzle with irate disgust, he gripped onto the leather-buckled straps of the vibrainium shield with a possessive flexion of his gauntleted paw. "It seems this infiltrator has enticed you into his thrall, Sabre, and I must admit that I am disappointed that you violated my orders of visiting this impotent Terran..."

"Cub?" Sabre growled, feeling insulted by his superior.

"Impotent?" Steve chimed in, equally confused if not insulted by the remark. The two exchange a glance with one another before Sabre slams his paw against the bars with frustration. Remembering himself, he salutes Korious with a scowl across his muzzle, his eyes peering into the cold depths of the gray-furred lion with unyielding determination.

"He is my prisoner, Sire," Sabre reminded him. "I captured him, I should be able to question him and demand answers." He ignored the crawling feeling of discontent beneath his fur at the sight of the star shield held in his superior's grasp. It felt wrong for some reason unknown to him. He recalled the weight of it in his hands, how right it felt. It was puzzling yet rewarding of his efforts. He glared back at Steve whose own eyes were fixated on the two of them as well as the shield. "Don't deter me from this," Sabre implored Korious. "He could be connected to the rebellion or even the thief from the Central Keep-"

"Enough...!" Against a throat-shredding roar, callously, Korious scythed his fore-claws lashingly against the bars as Sabre disarmingly pinned his felt-like ears back, unabashedly emitting a guttural submissive cuff while the dreadnought lion sneeringly released his grip on the vibrainium shield. The clanging vibrations were like a kinetic shockwave over his grungier fur "You deliver compassion for this rogue human, a craven frailty that must be scoured by discipline...Return to your obese hog..." he growled out, bitingly, evicting a combustible surge of bestial-alpha hostility as his bulbous-girthed rhino sentry heavily lumbered with a taser weapon. "Remove yourself from my sight, cub..."

Sabre glowered at his superior and then at the rhinos behind him, before turning back to the cell. The human looked back at him with soulful eyes, weary yet equally determined. There was no fear in those depths. It oddly reassured him, but the panther wasn't happy with being dismissed. He knew he may never get another chance at interrogating the human after leaving the room, but there was nothing he could do without risking sedition and imprisonment for refusing a direct order. "Fine," he growled. With one last defiant look at Korious, he spun on his haunches and stalked away, followed by the rhino sentries, leaving Korious and Steve alone.

The Old Lion looked at Steve unflinchingly, his gaze cold and calculating if not unnerving. Steve wasn't sure what to expect, but the words that came out of legatus' mouth made him go still with shock.

"Avenger. Captain America, isn't it?" Korious spoke knowingly.

"Yeah, who are you supposed to be, Mufusa..." Steve quipped with a snarkier pitch, raspily, angling the bristled scruffiness of his clenching jaw up evident with a gleam of defiance burningly alight in his azure ireses as he remained adamant underneath the lion-anthro's imposing shadow. Every spliced Pantherian had a trademark of a deranged-sadistic geneticist-the High Evolutioniary who barbarously played around with coded animal DNA, spawning mutative-beast hybrids-abominations for his morbid fixation with harnessing genetic perfection of his galactic utopia. "Look, I don't know what this planet has done to you or why you're acting like Roman soldiers..." he pressed, inquisitively, shifting a glance hawkishly onto Korious's marred paw-a deformity of scarred gashes-branded loyalty. "Someone is playin' behind the curtain and M' gonna find out by tearing it down..."

There was a soft rumbling as the Old Lion appeared to consider his captive. Korious, however, remained unshaken in the face of Steve's determination; his stoic demeanor was about as solid as the walls surrounding them. Holding the vibranium shield in his clutches, he traced the star emblem, searching for signs of the devastation rumored to have been dealt upon it by the hands of a Mad Titan. "Remarkable as you may be among your kind, Captain, it is clear that like all humans you possess a level of arrogance that I cannot fathom. You Terrans believe you are indomitable. You believe you are so special that you can think you can challenge anyone. That you may peer into the abyss and simply turn away from it without being pulled into its depths." Approaching the bars, Korious' demanor became more aggressive, "Well, Captain. You and your Avengers have peered too far into the abyss you have not yet stopped to realize that you cannot escape it. There are darker things-older things in the deep recesses of space, some as old as time. My Emperor has seen them. He knows all about you and those you once called allies."

Like Bucky. The words were left unsaid but deafening all the same as Steve's own demeanor became hard. "So you know the truth. And you've been lying to Bucky this whole time, letting him believe he's something he's not."

"Upon Pantheria, the past is what we decide to make it, and so is the future. Unfortunately for you, Captain, your future will soon meet a swift end...once the Emperor meets you in person." The doors to the room opened and in walked a trio of rhino-guards. "Make sure he is kept isolated and ABSOLUTELY NO ONE OTHER THAN ME ENTERS THIS CELL!" He roared with fury, marching out the door. Steve watched him go, his hands closing tightly on the bars of his cell.

"Watch your back, Bucky..." He sighed.

'Till the end of the line,..' The mind-razing onrushes of unriddled confusion stirringly intensified against his warring restraint, impassively, he braced his armour-clad back against a clay-stone pillar that adorned the dining gallery as whitish scones of hazier moonlight from the dome ceiling ambiently contrasted over the marble table; platters of roasted chunks of meatier appetizers juicily beckoned him. The societal rites couldn't be evaded. With tactful coolness, Sabre lowered onto a bench, aware of his longish tail viperously swaying like a pendulum against the floor. Deftly on valorous reverence, he unfastened his bronze-metallic gauntlet, slipping the bracer off as his cindery-obsidian fur edgily bristled with hard-pressed tension. Quashing down the gurgling pangs of jacked-up hunger, growlingly, he splayed his furred paw over a greasier platter, avidly clutching onto a hearty piece of mango-glazed chicken. "Mmph...Gotta be on heckuva trick..." he murmured, scratchily, with derisive indignance rapting over his feline muzzle as he tearingly pierced his incisor fangs into the meat. "T-That shield...I held it..."

It had been a day since he interrogated the human, but Sabre couldn't shake the lingering feelings that came with it. Throwing himself into his duties seemed like an easy escape from the frustrations boiling over with Korious' interference, but neither that nor expending his energies in the training courtyard had done anything to alleviate his mood. The one thing that had lingered positively at the edge of his thoughts was the thought of that shield. That damned infuriating disk flashed in his mind's eye and he chewed harder into his meal.

"Just give me the whole tray, why don't you?" The rumbling deep voice brought on a sense of calm as he looked ahead to see the voluminous shape of his Hoggish friend arguing with the cook. "Do I look like a guy who's gonna have his fill with that little itty-bitty platter you use to feed a duckling?" He grunted at the cranky goose who waved his utensil at him with a plate of noodles and spiced meats.

"This is my kitchen, F(atso). If you had your way, you'd eat my entire shop!" The goose, Fong, quacked at the hog irritably. "You want extra? You pay more!" He snapped.

Gorge's annoyed glare became deepened into a scowl, "Maybe I won't eat the whole shop. Just something more specific. Tell me…is goose on the menu?"

Hearing the incessant squawking of the feathery-ganglier shop-keeper ratcheting against his ears, fixedly, Sabre lasered his silvery-aquamarine opals at his paunchy-girthed comrade who gustily emitted a huffier snort in protest of his deterred feast. Smirkily, he quirked his furred muzzle as he watched Gorge forcibly slam down his cloven-hoof against the stone table with teeming ferocity, aware of the battle-hog's unbridled tantrum, decisively, he eased off the bench and rampantly sashayed closer to diffuse the quarrel. "Shoulda figured you would find a way to blow off steam..." he quipped with a starchier drawl, grumblingly, bracing his fore-paw over Gorge's spiked pauldron. "C'mon pal, let's return to my table before you're put on the ropes..."

As they sauntered back to their table, Sabre glanced surreptitiously over his shoulder at Fong, the goose chef, who was still glaring at them before huffing and returning to serve other guests. The small shop wasn't empty as other patrons sat at other tables dining quietly. Gorge grunted as he followed Sabre to his table, "more like I was ready to put him on the menu." He chuckled as he slumped into the seat and allowed his massive hand to slap onto the table. "Good business is good business, I don't see what the issue is," he grunted as he pulled out a pack of credits. Seeing the state of Sabre's plate where a half of cregan-bison had been torn from the bone aggressively, he looked at the panther with bemusement.

"Besides you're one to talk. What did that chewed carcass do to you? Or did you picture it was a certain Old Lion before you dug into it?"

Glancing at the chunkier slab of greasier bison, crestfallenly, Sabre gnawed on his jutting underlip as he clutched onto a metal fork with his massive paw, hinging a semblance of restraint against the heart-notching rabidity- bloodlust that inexorably accelerated through his veins. "Somethin' doesn't feel right in me..." he snarled out, throatily, gauging his claws into a fatty piece on vicious abandon. "Ever since that human with the shield called me Bucky...I feel like I know him..." Swiping his tongue over his incisor fang, grimacingly, he chalked off the visceral urges-the dynamical attachment of brotherly protectiveness fueling his guarded heart. "Why does that name keep rattlin' in my mind...Was Bucky the name I was called before your Ma found me in the dunes..."

Seeing his old friend lost in his own head wasn't a new thing for the hog-warrior who could remember him being conflicted over himself as far back as his cub years. Gorge liked to think of himself as a good listener whenever his friend was down, but he wasn't much of a shrink that could explain how the mind worked when it came to coping with trauma. He just liked to hit things and eat when he was feeling down to take his mind off the worries. "Its not a name I remember hearing before today," he grunted. "I wouldn't give it too much thought, clearly all its doing is making you mope around like a lost-stray." He listened as his feline-friend growled irritably before scarfing down another piece of meat. Gorge shrugged, he really did suck at all the touchy-feely nonsense. Times like this he wished his friend spent less time being a brooding commander and more time trying to find a feisty lioness to help soothe his worries. "Okay, clearly this has you worked up. Did the human mention anything else that felt familiar aside from the name?"

"T-That shield means something to me...I'm not sure if I was exposed to Skrull devices that put these damn memories in my head..." Sabre murmured in a whiskey-roughen drawl, hushedly, dragging his fork against the ceramic plate on trepidatious accord, while listening to Gorge's slobbish mouthfuls piggily amplifying as the plumpish battle-hog devouringly ravaged a heap of yellow-fleshed melons without a vestige of control roping him down. Roving his sapphire-aqueous depths at the droopier bulginess of Gorge's leather-tattered rotundity, waggishly he quirked his whiskered muzzle into a puckish smirk, glaring at the melon platter with dead-straight intensity as Gorge nudged his jowely-tusked snout greedily a hairbreadth at the discarded pomegranate. "Hey, don't even think about packin' that in your big gut, I don't just eat meat here..."

Gorge snorted at that. "Like you're pig out and eat more than plate-you felines are too obsessed with your diet than actually taking the time to enjoy the finer delicacies that get served up here." He pointedly took a big long devouring slurp of the last mellon on his plate, shamelessly allowing the juices to dripple off his mouthy-tusks. The hog enjoyed the burst of flavour while at the same time enjoying the soured look on his friend's face as he unconsciously reached for the pomegranate. "So yeah, I think i'll just be taking this and letting you clean your chops on a big piece of cabbage, Commander Goody-Good-" Gorge was both surprised yet amused when Sabre's paw slammed onto the pomegranate with authority, a challenge seeping into his eyes as he swiped the fruit to devour for himself. "No way," Gorge chuckled.

"Oh M' sorry did you want some..." A cheekier gleam naughtily intenfied in the cool smokiness of his aquamarine opals as he snobbishly gulped down the pomegranate with cub-like brattiness, resigtering the snortier huffiness that gustily blew over his ebony fur. In those fissionable moments of relishing the nectarous-tartier sweetness of the ripened fruit, moaningly, Sabre angled his furred muzzle as his roguish chestnut tresses unkempily clung over his armoured paudron, countering Gorge's brawly-tempered impatience-he was grappled into a hungered mania of addictive decadence, conscious of the obesefied-tubbier boar's stubbier hoof grubbily edging at his platter. "If you want me to share, you're gonna have to say please..." he snarked, jokingly, sliding the platter away from Gorge's reach. "That's an order, big punk..."

"Sabe, don't make me "accidentally" put you through the wall if i try to extend my weight further than the few inches it would take to swipe that plate from ya. That wouldn't look good. Remember the cantina at Nowhere?" Gorge playfully jabbed, his memory of their early years hunting the galactic cesspit of a space-station in search of a Pantherian fugitive had been dull. Were it not for the company of Sabre and a few of their comrades, he would have died of boredom. To say they got blasted at the local tavern before departing was an understatement. In his drunken stupor, Gorge mistook a shove at his back to be from a Ravager only to sheepishly discover it had been Sabre who bumped into him after being pushed by said Ravager. He didn't realize it till he'd already put his buddy through a wall with a simple swat of his arm. The memory caused Gorge to rumble with laughter while Sabre growled irritably. "You must've been really hammered. When I asked if you were all right, you said you needed the nap-time! Hahaha! Good times."

Against the heartened volumes of Gorge's boisterous-snortier jovilaity that chuckingly revamped, moodily, Sabre grazed his metallic claws over a ceramic platter of reddish grapes with vexatious precision."Yeah well, you didn't have all the extra packagin'..." he jabbed back with rapid-fire snarkiness, murmurously, popping a graped into his fanged-mouth as he steelily glancing at the lumpish-blubbery rotundity of Gorge's furrier underbelly that saggily puffed against the battle-dented armor. "Gotta say, you're really carrying a big tub now..."

"What, this?" Gorge shamelessly rested a hand upon his rotund-belly and let loose a chortle. "This is fuel in the tank, Sabey. Fuel for a walking, brawling, hog-machine of destruction," almost on cue, a loud growl erupted from his belly as if it had a mind of its own that agreed with him. "And it looks like its needs another refueling. Stomping those insurrectionist scum-buckets this morning nearly drained me dry." His stomach growled even louder, prompting Gorge to growl and reach for a keg of ale poured to which he downed. He slurped and belched. The other patrons, hearing the noise, shook their heads while Fong paled with dread. "Hey, Goose! Bring around for me and pal, here. And some of those juicy hot bilge-tenders. Don't look at me like that, I know you're packing em." He could practically smell the juicy Vanir imports.

Mirroring the hungered fieriness that burningly gleamed in Gorge's beadier hazel-onyx ireses, toothily, Sabre played off a half-smirk rascally over the furred angularity of his muzzle as the succulent potency of the Vanir tenders arrestingly wafted around the spacious dining hall as the grayish-feathered Chinese goose irascibly waddled on his tinier webbed feet with his feathered wings clingily gripping the heftier platter. Keeping the impassive demeanour of a steel-hearted Centurian, growlingly, he eased up his bionic paw on mechanized accord, flashing the razored heat of his ultramarine opals stormily at Fong who gingerly lowered the platter onto the stone table. "You better head back to your kitchen, Feathers, my tubby pal right here, kinda leaves no stone unturned..."

Try not to eat the table too along with your food!" Fong huffed as he plopped the large tray in front of them. With an irritable quack, he waddled away, muttering under his breath about hiring himself some security. Gorge's senses were engulfed by a succulent aroma that made his mouth water as he beheld the cooked meats and vegetables surrounding them. A feast fit for a king. Licking his chops, he ignored the goose's jabbing retort and shot Sabre a toothy smirk, seeing just how mesmerized he was by the course dishes as well.

"What's got you droolin'? Bet you can't even finish half of that," he motioned towards the tray filled with tenders.

The spicer greasiness of the roasted tenders mouthwateringly wafted off the platter, gutturally, Sabre poised his droolier incisor fangs with a devious stretch of his whiskered muzzle as he was on a unwavering deadlock of the gluttonous-competitive throes of piggish mania. "Don't tell me that you're scared M' gonna beat you..." he quipped, teasingly, glaring at the blimp-sized hog with point-blank intensity against the upheaval of gut-notching hunger tempoing within the bulkier-corded rigidity of his furred abdomen. Pudgily, Gorge thrusted the warty furriness of his elongated snout, huffily gesturing the rapacious challenge. 'Oh, so that's how it's gonna be, huh..." With a lightning-quick swipe of his paw, blindingly he sagged a hearty piece, knowing that once he rampantly scarfed down the savorous Vanir entree there was no turning back. "Try to keep up..."

"Oh, you're on," Gorge growled. The meal soon progressed into a frenzy of competitive gorging, each bite teetering the other's balance between gluttony and self-control. The tenders were succulent, the vegetables cisp, and the gravy rich. Before long, the diner was filled with the sounds of chewing and swallowing, as Sabre and Gorge struggled to fit yet another bite into their gaping maws. Their eyes never left each other, daring the other to slow down, to show any sign of weakness. "Had enough yet?" Gorge taunted, his words ending with a belch.

Sabre felt his sides bulging, his stomach feeling heavier than it would normally, almost stretching. His paws felt weighed down by the sheer mass of food he had consumed. But still, he managed another ravenous tear into the meat, determined to best his buddy. Gorge, on the other hand, seemed to be in a different league entirely. His bulk barely shifted as he shoveled more food into his gaping maw as if it were a garbage disposal.

A few of the othe patrons in the diner were disgusted while others watched the open frenzy with amused interest. Soon enough, bets began to gather as Fong brought a second tray, and then another and another, this one larger than the last. Sabre and Gorge showed no signs of slowing down as they scarfed down a fresh serving of sauced wings. "EAT! EAT! EAT!" The guests comprised of felines, jackals, and a few rhinos beat their fists into their palms.

The competition reached its climax as the duo reached for the final drumstick on the plate. Their muscles strained against one another, teeth clenched, eyes locked in a battle of wills. "Rethink that move, Sabey-"

"Ooh...I hate you..." Hissingly, Sabre quashed down a throatier-hoggish belch that was eruptively teeming within his stuffier mid-drift that weightily bludgeoned against unhampered dregs of his predacious appetite, groaningly, he eased his grease-smeared muzzle over the stone edge on fevered tenor, dishevelledly his chestnut tresses were askew over his furred brow as he attempted to reach for the drumstick, only to register the contractive spasms of the gut-racking onslaught that expandingly increased with the bloated-out heaviness of his swelled girth. Trying his damnest to force himself to snag the final piece of victory, scrapingly, his claws dragged a breadth at the platter-he couldn't budge. "Grah...Fine, you claim the victory..." he growled out, stuffily, bracing his gauntleted paw strenuously over his armoured mid-section. "Can't eat anymore..."

The patrons erupted in a chorus of cheers and some boos as Gorge triumphantly chewed down the last drumb-stick with gusto. "The champion reigns supreme!" The Hog grunted, barely able to so much as shift his posture in the creaking chair that strained under his increased mass. The table was stock filled with trays and empty plates, that could've been mistaken for a party aftermath. Gorge looked at Sabre with satisfaction but also with a hint of astonishment in his deep brown eyes. "There's no shame in losing, pal. Takes years to work up an appetite as big as mine. But i'll say this though, you certainly aint the lightweight I thought you were," he chuckled as he reached for his stein of mead and poured it down his mouth messily, gorging the liquid with long audible gulps. "Ngh, I don't think I can move for a bit," he belched loudly while Sabre picked a tender-bone from between his teeth. "Gotta say, that was kinda fun."

"Commander Sabre...Sir..." Whooshingly, the spunkier Pantherian scout-Cato- accelerated his quick-footed swiftness through obstructive-moronic partons as he swerved into the direction of the ravaged table with earshot momentum as his longish golden-furred tail whippingly arced with his unstoppable paces. Gulpingly, with a sheepish gesture of his fore-paw that underlyingly conveyed 'boyscout' reverence, he dutifully gazed at the Centurian-panther underneath his foppish auburn tresses. Being the 'messager-boy' for the malignant-roughshod legatus wasn't an easy feat to dodge, he admired the ranks of Pantherian superiority and never questioned his orders. Jutting out his lankier muzzle with boyish-cublike tack, he grounded his armoured-greaved paws with decorous poise as Sabre unwaveringly flashed his diamond-slit aqueous opals at him with a stoic rapt moodily twitching over his boxier muzzle."U-Uh...Y-You've been requested for an audience with Emperor Tygerus..." he addressed, speedily.

Gorge spit his drink once the choking shock registered. Sabre went eeriliy still. There was a short moment the duo believed the young centurion was ribbing them but they knew this wasn't something anyone would joke about. The implications were unsettling enough but also confusing. To be given an audience with Emperor Tygerus was something given only to those close to his Inner Circle...or to his enemies. Gorge and Sabre exchanged a look before the feline looked at Cato with a focused look. "The Emperor? Did they say why I've been summoned?"

"I-I received the message from his advisor..." Cato returned against a timorous breath, stammeringly, gazing at Sabre tensely easing off the stone bench with intimidating traction of his defensive footing; harnessing a telltale variance of cautious readiness, the amenable cheetah scout edgily reeled back from the menace-bound proximity of his deadlier Commander who bulkily shadowed his lissom form with gladiator-honed solidity that athletically melded against the bronze plating of his curiass. "I didn't question him, sorry..."

"You did well, Cato," Sabre assured, his tone as reassuring as he could make it. He glanced at Gorge, and then back at the young soldier. "Tell him I'll be there immediately." He watched as Cato saluted him and proceeded to leave as fast as he had come. The levity in the room appeared to have been sucked out as if they had entered a vacuum, but Sabre kept himself reserved, his mind steering him back towards a commander's mindset. Inwardly he was fuming with the thought that Korious was probably behind this.

Seeing his pensive look, Gorge leaned forward. "Getting called up by His Majesty ain't nothin' to scoff at, Bud. You want me to come with?" He asked, cradling his stine of mead with a grim look. He didn't like the thought of his brother going into a lions-den filled with vicious predators led by the most powerful and dangerous one of them all.

"Worried about me, huh, now that's not your style..." Sabre rasped in a gravelly-timbered drawl, murmurously, splaying the furrier velvetiness of his paw deftly over the vibrainium-alloy servos of his bionic arm, guardedly detecting a kill-switch mechanism-a contingency of leashed compliance deceptive welded against the gunmetal plating-amethyst geometric sigils kinetically pulsed against his claws. He couldn't shake off the apparitions of distrust stowed with the despotic-titanic emperor who morbidly cleansed the defilers of Panthera under his merciless paw of imperious supremacy. Harbouring onto restraint, he gave the paunchy boar a sidelong glance, and whiplashed his lengthy tail with viper-strike precision at the heaped platters, knocking them smashingly down onto the floor. "Besides, you'll be busy cleaning up..."

The clattering of dishes caused Gorge to grimace with dread while in the kitchen an angry Goose let loose a string of curses. "You hooligans! You'll pay for all of this! Double your bill!" Fong quacked as he waved his spatula at them threateningly. Gorge looked at Sabre with an exasperated look to which the panther merely grinned at him toothily, knowing he was leaving him to pick up their over-sized tab.

"Sore-loser," Gorge grumbled as Sabre patted his shoulder and proceeded to leave the diner. Gorge took a long swig of his mead. He wasn't too despondant, he just hoped whatever his friend was about to face wasn't worse than the thought of facing a broom to clean up this mess.

The High Palace was an empyrean realm of monolithic obelisks that bordered the Romanesque immensity of the grand vestibule, every marble-stone pillar was impressively carved with Pantherian-feline- sigils as the amberish sconces of torchlight from the iron-welded braziers hauntingly burnished over pristine statues of tigers- sentinels of alabaster ivory that massively adorned the entranceway of advised-imperial senate. Keeping himself grounded with reserved footing, Sabre roved the incredulous steeliness of his grayish-aquamarine opals fixedly at the shimmering reservoirs of the cascading water that rampantly gushed out of bronze tiger-heads eerily mounded on the brick stone walls- a vaunting indulgence that gilt-edged paragons of the illustrious senate assemblage greedily relished, despite that Pantherians longed for pure water instead of mining of the cavernous wellsprings. Voices of revolt were cruelly silenced by the inrush of penalty taxation, straining wages of homesteads and forcing opposers to become obedient drudges to reciprocate their deficits. It wasn't a reality to endure and he couldn't turn his back on Panthera. By the credo of lasting-soldiery allegiance, he was damningly lashed to the sordid will of the emperor.

He felt a ringing in his ears. It came with the feeling of his steps growing heavier the closer he got to the palace, a dread of foreboding creeping into his gut as he stood at the entrance to the grand-foyer. He longed to be anywhere else but here. His sense of duty kept him focused and fearless but his soldierly intuition was shouting at him that something about all of this felt awry. He considered the state of conflict that Panthera was enduring, how each day and night saw his band of brothers fall in battle only for those they'd captured to vanish without facing justice. What was it all for? And then there was that strange human whose name he had not even cared to ask for. Why did he seem familiar? Why did he call him a name he didn't recognize?

The ringing in his ears grew louder and the panther couldn't contain himself.

"Damn it all," he growled, allowing his head to droop as his eyes blankily stared into the cool clear depths of the cascading waters, hoping the soothing sounds would clam his turmoil. He couldn't shake the creeping doubt that festered and dug, allowing the haunting image of a dark-haired human to reflect back at him as he gazed into the waters.

The ringing began to sound like the wailing of a siren. His heart hammered in his chest as he stared at the human visage in a trance. "Winter...Soldier..."

He was torturously grappled into amnesic throes of unwarranted confusion as he gazed into shimmering ripples that arrestingly captured the visage of a roguishly suaver Terran; shakily he eased his fore-paw a hairbreadth at the furred curvatures of his whiskered muzzle, unblinkingly, he gazed at a vein-threaded hand brushingly mirroring his featherlight caress against hard-bone angularity of his razored cheekbones that cuttingly accentuated the scruffier heaviness of his knife-edged jaw as his claws deftly traced the poutier velvetiness of his shapely-wide lips and cleft-dimpled chin notch of his bristly chin as virile beauty hunkily rode over his chiselled-hawkish features. Gripping onto his shaggier tresses, fiercely, he tugged harsher with breakneck force, doing his utmost to purge the chimeral reflection deceptively conjured by hallucination-induced sorcery. "T-That's not me..." he panted against snarlier breaths, as his mesmeric aquamarine opals smolderingly gleamed with the untamed-agonized rawness of a captive soul. "No...Get out of my head..."

"Well, well if issn't little battle kitty..." Hissingly, the raspiness of Texan burr slitherily ghosted against his furrier ears as the venomous potency wafted off razored-thin fangs that drippily oozed against the lengthy sliminess of a fork-tongue jutting out of a reptilain-puckered snout. Chuffing out a guttural pant, defensively, Sabre poised his bionic paw over his leathered belt, his vibrainium claws readily grazing the metallic hilt of his dagger as he maddeningly detected cold-blooded extremities of a pythonic reptiloid. Fostering a modicum of warring restraint, sniffily, he thrusted his feline muzzle, catching the septic miasma of a rancid-poisonous toxin enwreathing around him. "Now, how about we get some pleasantries between us, and be a little civilized before our less agreeable natures take hold, Commander Sabre..."

A sinking feeling of dread entered his gut once he heard the serpentine voice of what could only be the Emperor's cold advisor. "Lord Secundus," Sabre gave a slight deferential bow of his head in acknowledgment. Secundus was a raptor-like hybrid who stood over six feet tall, just an inch shorter of Sabre. Adorned in regal robes of green with trimmed gold, he appeared like a philospher but the sharpened end of his claws revealed how deadly the lizard could be if provoked. Secundus was perhaps the closest thing the emperor had to a voice of conscience when it came to lending down judgment in his decrees. His race were known for their cunning, but also their slithering voices of deception that ultimately were self-serving. Sabre had only met the royal advisor a couple of times in the past in passing, and never alone. Being in his presence didn't intimdate Sabre but it did put him on edge. "I have been summoned?" He asked readily.

Tilting his scalie reptilian head, maliciously, Secundus flashed his silvery-virescent orbs shiftily onto the ebony-furred panther who gripped the dagger with knifepoint tact. "Well now, that's a question that only the great Tygerus can answer..." he drawled out, cavalierly, jutting his fork-tongue snakily against his pointer fangs as sconces burnished over the spikier contours of his raptorial features. Staving down the berserker rabidity that dementedly gleamed in the callous orbs, tauntingly, he edged closer, gesturing the leathery scaliness of his gnarled-ebon claws deathily at Sabre's bronze cuirass. "You think whispers slip past me, kitty, I know you like to break the rules and play down the rebel card behind Korious's back, don't think I can't sniff out your stink of disloyalty unless that's repulsive pig I smell on your fur..."

The taunting words towards his friend caused a spike of anger to pierce Sabre's chest. In a sudden movement he had jumped in front of the raptorous advisor and growled at him with warning. "Leave my friend out of this. The Emperor's second you may be, but you're not the Emperor himself that I need to tolerate such insults from the likes of you or Korious." The words had escaped him before he could reign them. His emotions were a flux of unreleased frustrations and confusion surrounding himself, the state of Panthera and the strange human who sowed a seed of doubt from within. He could see the dark amusement in the raptor's serpentine eyes and looked down to see his claws were extended and ready should he make a move. Sabre stowed his anger, knowing he was treading on thin ice if he made a direct threat, physical or verbal.

He forced himself to remain calm, to maintain the image of loyalty that was to be expected of one of his rank. "My loyalty to the empire has never been in question, Lord Secundus," he said through gritted teeth. "Any supposed actions I take behind my superior's back has always been in the best interest of the Empire and our Emperor."

Flitting his slimier tongue, leerily, he registered the hottish panting of Sabre's growlier breaths fervently intensifying against his scalier fleshiness as the Centurian-panther aggressively scrunched his furred muzzle against a viperous hiss, not wavering his grounded-unmoveable footing. "Well, you sssee, little kitty, I am the devoted confidant of the Emperor, the one he trussstsss in the dark..." An onrush of bone-shunting iciness penetratingly glissaded through Sabre's veins when he caressingly splayed his gnarly claws over the whiplike velvetiness of his longish tail reactively arcing near his bejewelled vambrace, evilly clutching with a possessive flexion. "I can get usssed to feelin' your sssilky fur, mmm...ssso pleasssurable against my uglier deformity, maybe I will ssstrip it off and make a robe out of it once your ussse to Panthera becomes ssspent..."

The not-so-veiled threat pushed against Sabre's disciplinary barrier causing him to reach aggressively as he pulled his tail free of the raptor. "Try it and it will be your scalie skin that gets stripped off and sold for cheap leather!" He growled heatedly, using his towering height to loom over the lizard. His patience was running thin, he felt the longer he remained in the company of the Emperor's lackey, the greater the chance he'd consign himself to becoming "fugitivus" by slaying said lackey in a fit of rage. Days of unspent frustrations still lingered in his being and the commander regretted that he hadn't released those feelings in the training courtyard rather than stuffing his face at the cantina.

With haughtier traction of his scalie feet, imposingly, Secundus, veered near a marble-stone tiger sentinel, dragging the sliminess of his ebon- gnarly claws over the carved head as he grinningly flashed Sabre a toothier smirk. "I may be cold-blooded against your feline senses, but Lord Tygerus...Well...He's a different kind of animal who doesn't play down the mercy card for a little battle kitty who rattles the cages with a Terran..."

The subtle hint in his accusation wasn't lost on Sabre who suddenly felt cold vindication in his bones. Korious had the Secundus' ears, and Secundus had the Emperor's. To say he felt as if he were being conspired against was a vast understatement. The Pantherian Commander knew he was in the cross-hairs and couldn't afford to let any form of weakness show. "I don't care for the gossip of jaded officers," he said, not carrying if he was out of line for insulting his superior behind his back. It was clear Korious had it out for him and Sabre wasn't about to let himself get mauled upon. "If I have been brought here to explain myself to His Majesty, then that is what I shall do." He grunted, posturing himself as the doors to the foyer opened and out stepped a cluster of cheetah-guards adorned in polished-plated armor. Royal guards.

"The Emperor will see you now," the Captain of the Guard, Severus, growled with authority. Sabre looked at Secundus with a hard look, waiting for him to make his move.

With a heartbeat of measured vigilance, cautiously, Sabre advanced his paw-steps into the regal immensity of the High Throne as the headier-luscious scents wafted off scarlet zabutons that palatially adorned the marble steps; the metallic gleam of chunkier-taser restraints were collared onto the lithe furred necks of a harem of champane-blondish lionesses who voluptuously rested onto their bloated-out girths into the dormant-listless throes of inexorably being obedient drudges-broodmares to slake the lascivious delectation of the Emperor. The protrusive bulginess was damningly a telltale revelation that his progeny-heirs of Panthera were incubating within the serviceable-gravid females. Wrestling onrushes of his pent-up revulsion, gnashingly, Sabre emitted a throatier cuff as he grounded his footing tentatively a breadth at the nesting cushions. "This can't be..."

"At last!" A deep foreboding voice boomed across the hall, it nearly shook Sabre to his core to realize whom it belonged to. "The Great Commander Sabre has graced the halls of my palace with his presence," the floor trembled with vibrations as foot-falls descended from behind the dais. What he thought was a towering sentinel was in fact a moving shape that was mountainous in stature and fearsome to all in attendance who watched it move. Sabre looked on, spell-binded but also uneasy as a white tiger emerged from the darkness. His hulking physique was bulging and wide, it could cover two average builds in its shadow. Sparkling golden armor adorned with red-jewels covered the warrior-like shape, a flowing red cape hung from his back. Standing nearly seven feet-tall with a gnarly crown upon his brow, Emperor Tygerus stood tall as he descended the dais with his amber eyes set upon the smaller feline at the center of his room.

"I trust introductions are unnecessary at this juncture," Tygerus growled, his gait confident and smooth as he stood before Sabre, looking down upon him expectantly. Captain Severus, Lord Secudnus and others in attendence bowed indeference.

Against the succession of customary reverence in unison that was akin to an infectious paralytic that entrenched him, reactively, Sabre eased onto his armoured haunches; brandishing the hard-bone contours of his feline muzzle with soldiery compliance as he braced his gauntleted-forepaw over his the medallion-crest that fittingly latched his scarlet cloak draped against his bronze pauldron. Angling his feline head down, growlingly, he panted out like a dutiful servant underneath the hulkish shadow of a dreadnought Siberian tiger-a butcherous warmoger robotically deformed with cybertronic servos melded over his whitish-striped fur. "Hail Tyerus...Hail Panthera..." He detected the nefarious aura of the paunchy-reptiloid questionaries-interrogator's proximity was slimily looming in the bowing throng. A turquoise-virescent scaled bearded- iguana anthro-Insidiatous-the warden of ledgers, grounded his claw-feet at Secundus's lankier side. "I come at your request..."

An assessing growl resonated from the towering feline who looked down upon Sabre approvingly. "With great haste, I can tell," the Emperor could sniff out the lingering scent of mead and freshly cut bilge-tenders upon the commander's form and let loose a rumbling dark chuckle, "feasting away at your leisure, were you? Well, I do hope you enjoyed your meal, and I do appreciate your swiftness. You may rise, Commander." He grunted, watching as the panther rose and gazed up at him. For a moment a beat of silence passed between them, the only communication shared was by the focused stare as Tygerus looked into Sabre's eyes; searching. "Hmm…" He pondered loudly as he shifted forward and looked the warrior up and down. "I have heard much about you, Commander. Both from my trusted counsel and my loyal generals. They claim you are reckless to a fault, head-strong, formidable but also…idealistic."

He shot a look at Secundus and off to the edge of the room stood Korious who stood with his arms folded at his back, nodding mutely. The Emperor growled, "Idealism in support of our empire is not a crime. It is to be commended. And you have served loyally for many years, young warrior. You and your regiment have driven the rebel cells out into the wilderness…" In a sudden jerk, of his head, Tygerus brought his whiskered muzzle close to Sabre's head and growled deeply, "but to kill an infection such as insurrection, isolation cannot be the long-term solution. The infection itself must be eradicated! Wouldn't you agree?"

Staunching down white-hot vestiges of his traitorous resistance against the brutish ferocity that pushed him into a corner-on the ropes, unwaveringly, Sabre responded with a subtle nod as his bionic paw whirred on mechanized flexion-he couldn't allow a glint sentiment-empathy tellingly flash within the iciness of his whitish-sapphire opals, he evicted those heart-vising reservations and poundingly rapted his vibrainium paw on his armoured chest. "Egomet..." he whispered, raspily, conveying full-measured loyalty. "I-I will do whatever it takes by your command, Imperor..."

"Whatever it takes?" Tygerus rumbled, looking between his generals and others in attendance before grinning, "I like that." A cunning yet horrid thought began to form in his mind to test the claim of the young commander against the accusation made by his advisors, while at the same time indulging in his own taste for punishment. "I will have a demonstration from you then." Sabre's expression fell into confusion, but the emperor ignored it as he growled with a commanding gesture and his guards immediately fell into formation, matching to clear a path towards the eastern doors of the throne room. "Follow me," Tygerus commanded as he led the way. Sabre fell into step behind him with Secundus and Korious following at the rear, devious looks were exchanged between them.

They walked down a long corridor with great windows along the wall allowing the day-light to streak through. Tensions rose as they approached an exit leading to the great outdoors, or what looked to be rather, the palace courtyards.

A grevious dissonance of heart-wrenching pleas anguishedly caromed over a phalanx of armoured orangish-furred tiger legionnaires readily poised with arcuballista crossbows that were point-blank with ebon arrows-a murderous hailstorm was seconds from being unleashed as Sabre caught glimpses of shackled prisoners-defilers standing near a stone wall that was smearily adorned with bloodied remnants. Among the execution gallery was the human-Steve-braced against the stone with his unkempt blondish tresses sweatily askew over the scruffiness of his bruised jaw, as oozing blood dampishly trekked down his broader neck. A jackhammering pulse of unbidden heart-razed desperation alarmingly tremored within his veins, gnashing his incisor fangs, Sabre heaved out breathless pants as he registered that visceral callback of brotherly-hellbent spirit. He wouldn't abandon that inseparable connection that was damn real like a heartbeat. "Oh hell, M' gonna do somethin' kinda stupid..."

Sabre was quick to realize what was happening here and what kind of demonstration the Emperor had in mind for him. The dread in his stomach was unexplainable at the thought of these prisoners dying, especially the Terran who felt familiar to him. He fought to convince himself that it was just the disgusting thought of becoming an executioner when he was in fact only a soldier, and not that he felt any kind of sentiment towards these prisoners. But as he shot a look towards Korious, the pompous old lion had an smug look in his eyes that convinced Sabre that this was his own idea.

"Traitors, thieves, rebels and invaders," Tygerus said with a vicious scowl upon his face. His white fur shone like pearls as it absorbed the sun's rays. His red cape billowed in the wind as he marched forwards and surveyed the assembled captives with an air of authority and intimidation that left all of them quivering with fear. All except one-the Terran, who gazed upon the towering white tiger with assessing eyes full of challenge. "Your lot in life was cast the moment you chose to defy the Pantherian Empire and its glory. Let no manner of man nor beast claim ignorance once set upon the soil of my kingdom, that you shall not sow division nor spread the propaganda of tyranny to upset the balance of power that keeps this empire strong and unified!" Many soldiers let loose a chorus of cheering roars, some beating their chests with their paws and others bashing the floor of the courtyard with the bottom of their spears.

Sabre would've given anything to be anywhere else but here as the Emperor set his sights upon him. "Examples must be made against those who challenge us. Praetorian-Commander Sabre. You will demonstrate your commitment to Pantherian justice and send each of these condemned to their deaths!"

With a light-quick gesture of his massive paw, bruisingly, Tygerus shoved the mechanized scorpion crossbow against his bionic paw on possessive accord, forcily gripping him into an inevitable deadlock of heart-racking compliance that he couldn't evade. Hearing the sadistic cadency of his gruffer timbre, mercilessly, worming against his roundish ears, Sabre trepidatiously clutched onto the curvier metallic sleekness of the crossbow into straight-arm poise as he flashed the lazurite-steeliness of his opals' unblinkingly onto the shackled Patherians—disposable collaterals who had become spawned instruments of resistance against the despotical reign of the carnage-reaping Emperor. He was pegged into a suffocating reality of being in a chokehold underneath Tygerus's barbaric heel, while smokescreen installations of mutinous citizens who vented against political oppression were condemned to execution row-becoming white-noise in the ether. One yank of the bow's trigger-lock and he would damningly scythe out the heartbeats with fur-piercing termination-slaking Tygerus's homicidal bloodthirst. Justice wasn't retractable. Gnashing his incisor fangs with anguished strain, he aligned the spikier ebon arrow with headshot precision over Steve's drooped head. "H-He goes first..."

"This should be interesting," Korious murmured offhandedly to Secundus beside him. The raptor grinned with anticipation, tasting the sure arrival of imminent death for the prisoners or satisfying humiliation for the Pretaurion Commander should he fail to live up to the task. The courtyard was silent with tension following the Panther commander's strained words. Tygerus grinned maliciously as he watched Sabre take aim. The other prisoners shifted restlessly in an attempt to free themselves of their bonds, neither of them eager to wait to be next after the human was executed. The human, however, stood calm but his fair features were marred with a sorrowful frown as he stared down the end of the crossbow held in Sabre's hands. His blue eyes were bright and searching-hoping for a sign of the man he knew as his old friend inside of the feline ready to end him.

"I'll always be your friend, Bucky...No matter. Till the end of the line," he said, ready, whatever the case, should he be forced to meet his end here, he wouldn't beg for his life nor would he lay the blame at his friend's feet. He was always ready, no matter what, to fight on. But he also knew when it was time to be patient or to lay down and rest. He wasn't counting on that day being today. As he gazed into Sabre's eyes unflinchingly, he held his stare latching onto it like a life-line as he pulled him away from the darkness he had been trapped in. "I'm with you." He swore.

Sabre's eyes closed, a tear of remembrance streaking down his furry features, his grip on the crossbow shaking. "S-Steve..."

Gaspingly, he panted out choked-off heaves against the heart-razed onslaught of the mortified revelation that irrevocably denoted within the cerebral recess of his addled mind; the dilated intensity of his razor-slit pupils owlishly became wide-blown as he blearily gazed into the cool azureous ireses of his best friend-Steven Rogers that shimmeringly gleamed with valorous defiance-hope. The vibrainium servos fused over his bionic paw rigidly tensed with underlying reluctance as he warred against the catatonic throes of amputated memories. Fostering onto a teeming measure of warred restraint, stumblingly, he reeled back as depth-charged shockwaves of digitized-artificial vestiges of being an orphaned cub nestled into the wreckage of a Ravanger vessel anguishedly rode through his feline skull. "Graggh..." Pinching his eyelids shut against the dredged-up imagery of the runtish-gaunt-faced Terran with foppish twangy-blonde hair exhaustedly poised with wobblier footing in a rundown alleyway with a dented trashcan lid clutched into his bonier hands as he determinedly braced over a vicious punch.

Against the wheezier breaths that chestily strained up his lankier throat, unwaveringly, the puny Brooklyn scrapper grounded his unshakeable footing a breadth near a wooden-plank fence as his bone-railed fingers gripped into the rusted handle of a trashcan with a vestige of his adamant tenacity-he wouldn't become shoved onto the ropes by a pimpy-faced lunkhead-jock who bullishly got his daily kicks of pulverizing him with cheapshots into a Flatbush alley. Warring the gawkier traction of his defensive footing, Steve flashed the rascally intensity of his turquoises-azure ireses daringly at the jerk-faced chump who quirked his toadyish lips into a fiendish smirk as he intimidatingly cracked his meatier fist with thuggish readiness. "Gotta say, shrimp you never know when to quit..." he snorted out, gruffly, stomping his clunkier boots with boorish paces closer to Steve without a glint of mercy alight in his raven-black depths. "Where's that pretty boy of yours...Buck-Tooth Barnes..."

"This isn't gonna go well…" Steve said with anticipation in his gut. The bully's cruel smirk only stretched further into a wide grin.

"Yeah, for you!" Seizing Steve by the collar of his shirt he all but pulled the small blonde completely off his feet and prepared to take aim with his fist. As he brought his fist down, instead of feeling the satisfying crunch of the scrawny kid's nose, he felt his fist meet cold hard metal as a trash-can lid was brought between them. "YAAAAAAAHH!" He screeched, letting Steve go as cold searing pain lanced through his forearm.

"Looking for me?" A cool youthful voice said. Steve looked to see Bucky between them, holding the dented trash-can lid in his hands. "I'm like a bad-penny, I'm always bound to turn up." The bullies looked apprehensive by his sudden appearance. Steve, following Bucky's example, picked up a trash-can lid of his own and held it protectively at his front as they stared down the cowering punks. "Now would be a good time to beat it, before my buddy here really makes you regret coming after him." He said, looking at Steve with an encouraging look.

The bullies, like a pack of hyenas, tucked tail and ran, leaving the two Brooklyn teens to bask in momentary relief. "You should probably carry one of those on your back every day, Stevie." Bucky gestured to the trash-can lid and chucked the dented one away. "Because you just can't help getting into trouble," he teased.

"Y-You always pull me off the ropes, Buck..." Dragging out a throat-rattling breath, wheezily, Steve glanced up at the suave-faced Brooklyn kid who starchily quirked his full-bow lips into a toothier smirk as he exhaustedly bolstered his knobby-rangier arm groaningly against the cement brick stone, doing his utmost to stow down an upheaval of his asthmatic defect as Bucky tentatively clamped his vein-threaded hand over the loose-fitting material of his collared shirt with brotherly pressure. "How many do I owe ya now...?" he quipped, sheepishly, caressing his tinier hand against the blondish tresses askew over his bruised temples. "Well, at least I didn't my bell rung by that meathead..."

"Unlucky for us, there's too many meatheads like that out there," Bucky said as he and Steve made their way out of the alley, their jovial bond brightening despite everything. "We might be outnumbered against them, pal. But together, we'll never be outmatched."

Coming back from the memory caused Sabre to smile somberly. "Y-Your name is Steve…"

Confusion among those present as they listened to the exchange. But the atmosphere shifted into shock as Sabre took aim with his crossbow and with a precision shot, fired the bolt towards the shackles holding Steve in place. The locks snapped open and Steve's wrists were freed from his bonds.

"Traitor," Tygerus growled with rage. Flicking his gaze towards the rhino-jailers he pointed at them commandingly, "seize him and the Terran!" The rhino's lifted their clubs. Sabre was quick to shoot out the remaining locks holding Steve in place before dodging a downward swing of a club aimed for his head. Sabre rolled along the ground, using his quick agility to toss a rhino off his back and dodge another attack. The swing of a club missed its mark and struck the shackles of an imprisoned minotaur. The rhino's fell still with dread as the massive prisoner fought to free himself. Sabre meanwhile looked at Steve and cried out.

"RUN! I'll hold them off!"

With quick-hand swiftness, blindingly, he clutched onto the metallic hilt of his pugio dagger at the explosive second a bulkier raptoriod guard whooshingly propelled his scalie-clawed feet into the air with a jump-kick, torquing back near a clay-stone pillar, Sabre angled the knifepoint glare of his blade as he reactively braced his cybernetic elbow against the lashing assault that scrapingly grazed the vibrainium plating. Anwswrring the beastlierrabidity, Sabre flipped the dagger with knifepoint precision, stabbingly, he drilled the leathery fleshiness with corkscrew pressure, detaching the hyoid bones with throat-sluicing viciousness as greenish splurts of blood viscidly trekked over the ashen scales.

"Guards!" Korious roared commandingly, "contain the beast!" The Legatus pointed towards the massive tank that was a feral taurus with red glowing eyes. A monstrous beast that had rampaged through the eastern-valley was an escaped specimen condemned to execution. His eyes were furiously locked onto Sabre, unsurprised but satiated to see his suspicions towards him were proven true. As a regiment of Pantherian guards moved to stun the Taurus with their shock-staffs, the Old Lion had become the prime focus of a certain Terran who stared him down challengingly. "Bold of you to linger and squander your opportunity for escape." Korious taunted.

Steve raised his chin, "I want my shield back. It needs to be cleaned," he said jabbingly, watching as Korious lifted his "trophy" from off of his back.

"I will use it to remove your head and that of your dear friend," The Old Lion growled. Steve fearlessly lunged and fiercely engaged the Pantherian officer.

Sabre felt like he had just crossed a line he could never come back from. The shock was stowed away by the adrenaline of combat as he fought against the rhino guards that were determined to beat him to a pulp. The rest of the security teams were pre-occupied in trying to reign in the beast he had intentionally thought to use as a distraction against the overwhelming numbers. He tried to hold himself back, some lingering sense of Pantherian loyalty still controlled him as he loathed the idea of killing any of the guards and soldiers he fought with. But as he watched Steve engage Korious, he remembered why he was doing this. He and his friend had to get out of here before-

*WHAM!*

Sabre's distracted thoughts obscured his senses until he felt the fist of the escaping Taurus smash into his side, sending him crashing into a pack of centurion guards like a bowling ball knocking over pins. The Taurus roared and beat its massive fists against the ground causing the courtyard to shake. Many rhinos were immediately crushed under its attacks while others pierced its legs with their blades. The beast roared and struck back. Sabre felt a blade jam into his side and growled chokingly, looking down to see that Secundus had snuck up on him.

"I told you I would gut you," the raptor slithered. Sabre retaliated by headbutting the raptor, biting into his arm. The lizard hisses as its blood spilled. Steve pivoted and ducked beneath Korious' attack, and used the Old Lion's momentum to throw him off his back. Trapping the Legatus' cape, he bashed his head with a haymerk causing him to growl angrily. A test of strength ensued as they gripped the shield, trying to wrestle it from the other. Their eyes were locked on, furious and unrelenting. The feline's teeth gleamed with hunger as he attempted to sink his jaws into Steve's arm. Steve, taking a trick out of Natasha's book, brought his foot up and in between the lion's legs. Korious' eyes grew loud as he howled in agony. Steve pried the shield free, watching as the legatus fell to his knees. Steve bashed him with his shield.

"I'll be taking this," he said.

Gazing at Steve acrobatically surging his breakneck momentum over the legatus's immobilized form with effortless graces, Sabre half-quirked his whiskered muzzle as he slashed his vibrainium claws into the predacious advisor's scalie arm, leaving a branded gash of his errant retaliation onto the bloodied leatheriness, knowing that he crossed the inevitable threshold of treachery-dishonour. In an earshot, viperously his longish tail frisked over Secondus's lankier neck with no avail, while he quashed down the murderous-bloodthirsty impulse to aggressively sink his incisor fangs into the reptile's throat with bone-vising chokehold."S-Stay there..." he growled, raspily, feeling the slimier fork-tongue dampishly jutting against his ebony fur. "Urgh..."Underneath his shaggier chestnut tresses, peripherally, his sapphire-aqueous opals roved back onto the valorous Terran-Steve as he viscerally registered the dymanical heartbeat of his brotherly spirit that he wouldn't abandon. Staving the insuppressible urges to vanishingly bolt into a fugitive-run, against the rampant gravity of his votive surrender-defeat, involtionairy Sabre tossed his dagger onto the sandier ground, and panted out, roaringly. "Go...Steve..."

"Not without you!" Steve shot back, feeling himself pulled back to a moment in time where a great chasm of fire stood between him and Bucky. His friend wouldn't leave without him, and Steve couldn't bring himself to do the same. "Come with me! We can find-" Before he could beckon the panther to him, the area was shook as the rampaging Taurus charged free from the marauding reinforcements beginning to enter the courtyard. His massive size caused an enormous hole in the wall of the courtyard, scattering rock and debris everywhere. It was like watching the Hulk in action.

Steve felt hands latch onto him in the dust-swarm and a soft youthful voice spoke urgently. "Come with me, I'll show you the way out." Steve tried to fight off the unseen person but was taken over as a pack of escaped jackals pushed him towards the hole in the wall. He was like a log being swept away in a river. "BUCKY!" Steve cried out in vain, his voice growing further away.

Sabre felt relieved to see Steve away from the chaos. But his tranquility was shattered as he felt a gargantuan hand wrap around his neck. White fur obscured his vision until he met the piercing amber gaze of the furious Emperor towering over him. "You will not escape," he growled.

"Argh..." The bone-clamping pressure of Tygerus's bionic paw squeezingly amplified on merciless tenor, desperately, against thoat-retching heaves, Sabre dragged his claws over the whitish-striped fur as he locked into a straight-armed chokehold; the rabid-deadlier fervency exponentially coupled with the momentum of back-slamming force. "D-Didn't plan on it..." he rasped, snarkily, thrusting his whiskered muzzle up as he caught Emperor's roundish ear against his incisor fangs. With a vicious yank, tearingly, he chewed off a furrier piece that bloodily clung to his razor-edged fang-he wouldn't surrender to the ropes-not without a fight. Spitting out the glob of mauled fur, panty, Sabre flashed the prodigious despot a toothier smirk. "H-Hail Panthera..."

Tygerus reared himself back with a roaring yelp of pain, eyes wide with disbelief as he touched his ear. The sight of blood staining his white fur was a shock. One that soon evaporated as he released a sadistic dark chuckle at Sabre's audacity. "Stand down!" He immediately shouted at the advancing group of centurion reinforcements who were prepared to skewer the renegade commander with their spears. Tygerus removed his cape and cast it aside, allowing his powerful form to be seen and free to flex into battle-readiness. "I will deal with him myself," he said, removing his crown of spiked jewels and setting it aside. A recovering Korious and Secundus spared seething looks, each of them longing to taste Sabre's blood upon their mouths as they watched him take a fighting-ready stance against the Emperor. The height and size difference was noticeable, but those who had witnessed or fought alongside the commander knew that he had faced larger foes successful. But the Tygerus was a different specimen entirely. His amber eyes gleamed with malice, but there lay a calmness and cunning that spelled trouble for any on the receiving end of his fury. "You have disgraced yourself and my insulted my rule, Commander. There is only one punishment befitting this betrayal." With a mighty roar, Tygerus pounced at Sabre with lightning quick attacks.

Sabre was alarmed by the speed and ferocity of his larger opponent, his armor doing little to stifle the pain of his punishing fists that cracked into his torso. The commander fell to his knees but was unwilling to let-up as his reflexes became more attuned to the speed of his opponent, giving him time to swiftly dodge a lunging kick, but only just barely. Sabre lashed his claws, feeling them scrap against the reinforced plating of the white tiger's greaves. "Too slow," Tygerus grunted, catching Sabre's forearm and bringing his elbow down on it. Sabre roared with agony, only to receive a head-butt that had him seeing stars. "Too weak," Tygerus growled, wrapping his digits around the leather harness of Sabre's b***-plate, he tore the armor from the commander, then delivered a punishing fist to his stomach. Sabre gasped, blood traveling up his mouth. Letting his opponent collapse to his knees, Tygerus kicked him onto his back, driving his foot down on his chest, pinning him to the ground. Sabre tried and failed to push his foot off, but each moment of struggle cost him more air. The timber of the Emperor's growls was dissonating as he loomed low, so low his face hovered over his own. "You are nothing but a gnat beneath my boot...Sergeant Barnes." He grinned as he watched Sabre's eyes widen with shock.

In that soul-careening moment of insurmountable-floored confusion raiding through his veins, hissingly, Sabre punctured his vibrainium claws into the leather-clad boot that crushingly hammered against his chest-plate; every vestige of his combative resistance was being divested against the brutish onslaught that excruciatingly grappled him into collapsing dregs. Every concussive onrush imploded against the heart-jolting revelation that his memories were exorcised by Skrull lobotomic device-radio static that muted the volumes of resistance. Throttling out guttural pants, consciously he jack-knifed his furrier mid-drift off the ground, forcing Tygerus to clumsily stagger back as he viciously latched onto the Emperor's hind-paw with full-fledged aggression, not letting go. A saltier bleariness dampishly robbed his vision, achingly, he gnashed his fangs, and railed out a full-throated snarl. "W-What the hell do you do...Answer me!"

A thrusting kick against his midriff nearly took him completely off of the floor as Tygerus resumed his furious onslaught. "I took a weak and broken excuse of a Terran soldier and sought to mold him into a perfect warrior to serve my empire!" Tygerus growled, picking up Sabre off the ground by his neck and holding him in a choking hold off his feet. "You are one of many, but I had hopes for you. You were a born killer, bred to follow orders. But even now, this lesser version of you bleeding through the cracks seeks to corrode the visage of perfection I created." Bringing Sabre down, he slammed him to the ground, watching as the stone cracked beneath the weight of the impact. "I have dreamed of an eternal empire, one destined to expand beyond the scope of this system. Imperfections such as you will not be tolerated."

Against the bone-racking onslaughts excruciatingly intensified within his receptor extremities, breathlessly, Sabre gagged a choke-off- salivating heave as droolier wetness reddishly daubed over his armoured chest while he was crushingly being power-slammed into the ground. Harnessing onto a warring modicum of resistance against the exhaustive strain, draggingly, Sabre raked his claws piercingly over the bulkier rigidity of Tygerus's gauntleted forearm on the defensive accord, scrapping deeper akin to a knife-gouging assault. "Y-You not gonna win...Rargh..." he growled in a scratchier undertone, gratingly and thrust his sleekier hind-paws bodily into Tygerus's broader muzzle, as his paws slashed with viperlike quickness, stingily blinding the dreadnought feline with his untrammeled viciousness. "P-Panthera will fight...You."

Darkness took him into unconsciousness as the pain of his injuries became overwhelming. Those watching licked their chops with the thought of being the one to finish him off. Severus, Captain of the Elite Guard, stepped forward brandishing his lethal spear in hand. "With your permission, Your Excellency, I will put this traitorous dog out of his misery." Tygerus flicked his gaze towards his guardsman and grunted with refusal.

"No. This one, I will make an example of personally," he looked to the rhino guards, many of whom were injured or killed as a result of the Taurus' escape along with that of the prisoners. Those who still lived stood at ready as Tygerus commanded them. "Take him to the cells." The rhino's bowed and moved to collect the fallen commander. "Secundus, fetch the medicus to see to the injured."

The raptor said nothing but gave a short bow, his own injuries stifling his movements. Korious approached the Emperor with a grave expression. "What of the escaped prisoners, my Emperor? No doubt they will rally and formulate some form of counter-offensive. And the Terran, he knows too much about our methods of…recruitment."

Tygerus snapped his gaze to Korious, anger burning in his amber gaze. "Hunt him down and kill him. Kill all of them."

Eviting the riotous impulse to stealingly infiltrate a domus homestead of a dissolute-penurious senator of the syndicated Pantherian counsel ensemble, bracingly, she grounded her whitish-lithe paws against a clay-stone pillar as her autumn-brandy opals fixedly roved over a delivery wagon that was temptingly heaped with rolls of luxious silk-seric cloth-a trade-off bribe to stake down political security-rapacity against a mutinous hailstorm. The banking installations were the engine of the allocation of the Pantherian warmongers-soldiers were dispensable pawns to retain order against galactic invaders, she discovered the reality of the empire's true alliance with Xander-enslavement. After receiving a radio transmission recording off Nowhere from a confidential backer that was a manifest over a cargo vessel, she had the evidence card to deceptively place on the bartering table. Adjusting the velvety material of her cloak's hood over her smokier-whitish tresses, devaintly, she quirked her delicate-whiskered muzzle into a coquettish smirk as she clutched onto an EMP taser disk-a little accessory to kickstart an effective distraction. "Well, I guess it's playtime..." she purred in a huskier undertone, breathily, gazing at the handcart's driver-a fluffier ram-anthro wobbling on his stubbier hooves as he tactfully pulled onto the silk rolls. "Now, that's just too easy..."

The clanking foot-falls of encroaching steps turned her focus as she realized she wasn't alone. Her battle-honed instincts flared as she prepared to have a run-in, hopefully, with that fun Panther she had a thrilling chase with a week ago. But years of practice had taught her how to register the signs and she could practically feel the clumsy vibrations in the ground that could only belong to a certain young cub of a soldier. Centurion Cato arrived, almost appearing out of breath. There were few Pantherian soldiers that made her feel at ease, it just so happened the young feline was one of them. "L-Liva!" He greeted her, speaking in a hushed voice. She regarded him warily, wondering if he had been followed. "You shouldn't be sneaking into senate houses right now. The whole palace city is on high alert!" He said with a desperate hitch.

"Well, I guess you should dodge the noise, Spots..." Liva murmured in a snarkier pitch, registering the jacked-off urgency against Cato's boyish stammer as he twitchily rapted his longish-spotted tail against the pillar, conveying his trepidatious uneasiness that coupled with a rampant heartbeat. Aware of the cheetah-anthro's spunkier resilence, she eased her lithe paw brushingly over the golden-brownish furriness of his boxier muzzle with pacifying-featherlight ministrations as she riskily glanced at the high-class domus that was repellingly adorned with the burgandy pennants of the iniquitous senate. Unabashedly, Cato wavered on her armoured paws, brandishing a timorous semblance of an undersized cub-mate against her exquisitely vixenish proximity-their sibling dynamic gave him a sense of protection-family-against the hard-straits of being a orphaned cub, she wouldn't allow him to blindingly race into the rigged crossfire-alone. Tamping off her 'big sister' protectiveness, offishly, Liva quirked her delicate muzzle into a jauntier smirk. "You can stick with me, kid, I know how to keep a low profile..."

Cato's heart sped rapidly as his unique intuition detected an encroaching threat. Without warning, he whisked Liva out of the room and behind a marble column. Her confused protest vanished when she too heard the stomping march of rhino sentries being led by a Pantherian guardsman. "There is no one here! How could there be?" The jaded voice of a pompous jackal senator rang out in the distance of the estate, the owner not having been aware that not only was there a thief in his house but centurion guardsmen conducting a house-to-house search of the city. "I am a most loyal subject of Emperor Tyg-"

"Can it, old dog!" One of the rhinos grunted, in no mood for niceties after having his arm broken by the escaped Taurus. "Emperor's orders. Each house is to be searched for the escaped rebels and any caught giving them sanctuary will be dealt with severely." Listening to this conversation unfurl, Cato spared Livia a dry yet desperate look as if it say "told you so".

The searching continued and Cato felt Liva tug on his arm to lead them out an open window. "Wait, through there?"

Aware of his sheepish reaction, balletically, Livia crouched onto her shapelier haunches over the stone ledge of the arched window, detecting that sentry installations of the bulbously girthed rhino squad were effectively mobilized in the streets to locate the fugitive Terran-countermeasures of deadlock vigilance that she needed to evade. "Can you save the questions for after, Spots..." she deadpanned, brusquely, glancing over her lithe-curvier shoulder at the valiant-steadfast cub who edgily mirrored her poised readiness as he speedily romped onto the ledge with a variance of hesitation, while he gulpingly flitted his brownish-hazel opals at the rhino guard stompingly barrelling his massive-leathery form near a melon wagon with horn-ramming momentum. With coaxing pressure of her daintier paw against his armoured shoulder, Livia waited for the lug-head to veer his brutish intrusion from the senator's home." We move in three..." In an earshot of her acrobatic graces, breathlessly she dove out the window, harnessing her feline-honed- exquisite agility, landing on the cart with a kitten-soft pounce. "Well, don't keep me waiting, kid..."

Cato spared a frantic look over towards the sounds of approaching steps headed them then back towards the open window. "I hate when she does that," he groaned. With practiced ease he raced across the floor and leapt through into the outdoors. The rhino and senator entered the room, wondering why there was an open window.

"Check it!" One of them grunted. Down below in the courtyard, Livia and Cato hung back against the wall beneath the view of a rhino who stood gazing outside. "There's no one out here. Continue sweeping the area!" He called those inside.

The cheetah and tigress let loose small breaths of relief, but knew they weren't out of the clear just yet. "This way," Cato said, leading her down a secluded path that would lead them back onto the streets. In the distance they could hear the wailing zoom of city guard transports moving through the streets, no doubt forming a perimeter as they hunted for the escaped prisoners. Once they were in the clear, Cato turned to Livia with an urgent look. "You need to get back to the Sanctuary while you can. If anyone suspected of-"

"Okay, mind telling me why those horned boys are chasing your tail, Spots..." A tartish breath underlyingly fringed against her sultrier undertone as she impassively braced her svelte form against a sand-wall, gazing at his boxier muzzle quirk up convincingly into a boyish smirk. Within the marketplace arcades, she registered the cacophonic frequency of betrayal that deafeningly amplified in the direction of the garrison sector-a high-gambit stunt of insurgency against the Pantherian despot."Oh don't play the sweet card with me, I heard the noise coming from the garrison, sounds like a prisoner escaped under the Emperor's nose..."

The young centurion wasn't sure how much to share after everything he'd witnessed, and some of which he'd learned from second hand accounts from the other guards called to the Emperor's palace. For years he'd worked as an informant for the Resistance inside of the Pantherian army, doing what he could to deter the legions away from safe-zones the rebels would use. His cover was essential in the long run if he were to ascend the ranks. But he also knew that word would more than likely get out about what had happened at the palace.

"Not just a prisoner. Prisoners. Including a Taurus, Janus and a few other criminals," Cato said. Though he and Livia felt relieved to know that Janus, one of the Resistance's intelligence agents, had been freed, it worried him to think of the damage the rampaging Taurus would do across the valley. Especially to the other Pantherian soldiers encamped in the area. Seeing Livia's confused gaze, he continued. "Apparently the Emperor wanted to test Commander Sabre's loyalty by having him execute the prisoners. But he refused!" He said, his voice somehow jubilant despite himself. "Sabre freed the prisoners and even fought the Emperor…but he was defeated." He said somberly.

For years he had admired Commander Sabre since he was recruited into the legion. Though he felt remorseful at the thought of the commander serving a tyrannical dictator, he had hoped Sabre was somehow different. It seemed his hopes were confirmed, but at what cost?

Unwarranted apparitions of warring heartache rackingly glissaded through her veins against the urgent rampancy that she wouldn't staunch out. Using her thievish calibre to lock-pick the bone-tasering shackles that restrained the panther-Centurian was a traitorous gamble, she reminded stealthily undetectable from Tygerus's carnal-lascivious radar, breaching the dungeon chamber would damningly throw her into the crosshairs, Tersely, Livia saddled him a point-blank glare, as she caught a glimpse of unspent desperation in his brown-hazel opals. Against a tractable onrush of stark conviction, she ruefully gnawed on her delicate underlip, and whispered out, hushedly. "I'll help you get your friend back...We need a good distraction to cover our backs, kid..."

"I'm not so sure its going to be that easy, Livia," he shrugged. The notion of freeing the imprisoned commander had sat in Cato's thoughts along with the idea of seeking help from some of his friends. But he didn't know if they would be as sympathetic to his plight or if their loyalty to the emperor would outweigh it. Cato wasn't sure why the Commander had refused to execute the prisoners, whether it was out of a sense of sympathy towards the rebellion or if he was simply goaded by the Legatus into being disobedient. But he did know that once someone was imprisoned for treason, their odds of survival would plummet the longer they remained in captivity. Prisoners were never heard from again. But if they could somehow get the Commander on their side? The rebellion could stand firmer than it had ever been. An idea slowly crept into the youth's cunning mind. "Commander Sabre's is going to be heavily guarded, but I think I can get to him. If you want to cause a distraction that can help, you should find this Terran that escaped. He's the reason that the Commander refused to obey. I don't know who he is or what their connection is. But he wields a special shield. Get him to cause a distraction, maybe it'll force them to drop their guard around the prison and I can free the commander."

"Well to make things interesting...You'll need this..." With a quick-handed swipe, fluidly, Livia eased her lithe paw over her leathered sachel, removing a shard-like vibrainium pin that was aesthetically etched with purplish tribal- geometric sigils with featherlike deftness of her snicked-out claws; it was an effective tool she had inventively utilized when thievishly raiding corruptive senate mogul's estates-ones who deemed the lower-class of Panthera as verminous-craven inferiors that needed to become scoured against the dynastic prominence of the Empire. "Use this little toy to unlock the cell door, remember to turn it clockwise just in case the lock is rigged..."

Cato took the pin without question, a sense of purpose fueling him with the thought that a solid plan had been devised between them. He reached to his side and pulled out what looked to be a locket of some-kind. It looked like a Terran relic. A time-piece? "Use this to track the Terran. They confiscated it from him when they captured him. You can pick up scents better than anyone." He said. He knew that Korious would be eager to claim the item and have his own trackers use it to s*** out the escaped Terran. That Cato had managed to secure it from the storage unit before anyone else could had been a stroke of luck and good-timing on his part.

With an incredulous gleam deviously alight within her brandy opals, fixedly, Livia studied the warcraft spoil-relic that was a tracking device to guide the holder into a lensatic direction; with cautious ease, she flipped open the device and gazed at the grainy newspaper clipping of a beautiful Terran woman-a cherishable memory that was heartily kept close to vest. "Anything can always be used for a trade..." she purred, tersely, watching the spinning needle magentically land onto the letter n-north. "Usually this charity thing isn't my style, but I'll bring this rogue Terran to our place..." With a tenser flex of her paw, she clutched the relic, and whirlingly pivoted onto her delicate-arched paws. "Don't be late."

"I'm never late," Cato replied with an upbeat grin, "they won't know I'm there. I'm fast as a cat and sneaky as a spider," he pounced away, scaling the wall of the nearest building with ease before vanishing from sight. He left Livia to ponder what had transpired. Unease coursed through her with the feeling that whatever was about to happen, for better or worse, Pantheria would never be the same.

The dripping of a pipe kept his mind alert, anchored to the here and now. Sabre would've found the noise to be oddly assuring were it not for the grim reminder he was locked inside a dank dark cell. The noise was a maddening titter tatter of liquid against flat stone somewhere in the hollow corridors that was beyond his reach. It never stopped. Though the sound was about as tame as a whistling wind, it rang almost like a siren as it echoed loudly, preventing him from getting any sleep. Sleep was almost a welcome escape from the aching pain that lingered in his body. The pulverizing might of the cruel emperor was just as real as all the stories he'd heard about him. Breathing felt as painful as a blade digging into his lung, nausea festered in his stomach as the stench of vomit assaulted his senses.

"Gnah!" He grunted, trying and failing to lift himself off the ground and towards the back-wall of the cold empty cell. He felt like he'd been run over by a Prowler, every bone as brittle as glass that could shatter at any moment under his straining movements. He cursed and growled, fighting through the onslaught of pain as the taunting phantom of a cruel laugh that came to him in his nightmares. A small ugly Terran with glasses, calling him the Fist of Hydra. Sabre shuttered his eyes, "I'mm that guy…Im…B-Barnes…" He realized. It hadn't been a dream. Everything in the courtyard-the prisoners, the Emperor's test, his failure. Steve… "Steve…" He closed his eyes, for the first time in so long, feeling too tired to fight the wave of memories washing over him that felt like someone else's-not his own.

"I'm that guy…I'm that guy," he repeated to himself, breathing deep and heavily, struggling to stay focused as his vision blurred. "B-Bucky…Barnes…"

The heart-stunting revelation of his identity-humanity exponentially surged through his veins with torpedoing force as he thrashingly strained against the clunkier restraints that vertiginously anchored him like deadweight against the muckier wall. Rearing his feline head back on bone-wrenching traction, gutturally, he panted out anguished breaths that scratchily frayed against his throat. "I-I can't be this..." On mortified accord, he scraped his vibrainium claws blindingly over the dirtier ground, warring against vestiges of lucid sanity that impolisvely depth-charged within the recesses of his addled mind. "Arghhh..." he railed out, screechingly, unaware of the encroaching-haughtier paces of a slithery reptoid nocuously advancing closer to his electrified cell.

"Awake at lasssst, are you?" The slithering serpent's voice crawled into his cell like a viper ready to sting its prey. Sabre braced himself against the wall, glaring balefully at the bars where the shape of Secundus crept towards his cell. "I wasss afraid you had perisssshed after my liege had beaten you into the dirt! Yet sssstill you cling to life?! How interesssting, yet unfortunate for yourssself! I alwaysss knew you would be too headssstrong, too sssoft to properly sssserve the empire!" The raptor laughed with a vexingly cruel tone, his amberish-green eyes peering at him with sadistic hunger. "Tell me, Ssssabre, wasss it worth it? Conssign yourssself to a traitor."

The churlish malignancy of Secondus's taunting cadence vitriolically whipsawed against his riotous heart, growlingly, Sabre resigtered his unspent bestial ferocity menacingly strumming over his tauter-corded rigidity that furrily sheathed with ebony velvetiness underneath his armoured curtiss; against his sweatier chestnut tresses that grungily clung to his whiskered muzzle, his dilated silvery-aqueous opals unwaveringly glared at the nefarious advisor who reptilianly darted out his forked tongue, hungrily sampling the reek of defeat. With fang-gnashing strain, hissingly, Sabre emitted a snappish cuff, rampantly easing his forcily shackled fore-arm off the wall. "M-My loyalty is to Panthera...Nothin' else..." he rasped in throatier pitch, aggressively. "You just like watchin' good people die...You can't help it because that's your damn nature..."

The green-scaled raptor's laughter-mockingly cruel-filled the dank air, echoing off the stone walls. "Ssssabre, your wit and sense of honor did you no favors. Itssss a ssshame. You had potential-the ssskil and ssstrength to become greater than any sssoldier in the legion. And now look at you. Beaten, broken, and at my mercy once more. It's almost poetic, don't you think?"

Before Sabre could respond, the impact tremor of encroaching footsteps shook the room. The feline emperor, Tygerus, stepped forward, his massive form casting a shadow over the bars of Sabre's cell. The tiger's eyes were a cold, emotionless yellow-boring into the panther. Sabre felt a chill of foreboding run down his spine. "Well, well, well," the emperor drawled. "Look who has now awoken from the dregs of total oblivion. The lost human turned killing machine. Has your nightmares revealed to you the true depth of your pit of sorrow?" His voice was soft, almost purring, but there was an undercurrent of menace that sent shivers through the panther's body.

"Or has the pain numbed your senses?" He taunted, running a hand across the cut left upon his face by the feline. "I will confess, it has been some time since someone has left their mark upon me in combat. Don't count on such a thing happening again."

Jutting out his incisor fangs against the insurmountable repulsion that burningly knifed through his veins, defensively, Sabre yanked against the metallic chain that kept him cripplingly floored him into throes of submission as pent-up viciousness revamped on fiercer accord; he wouldn't a dormant pawn of morphic compliance while Tygerus sanguineously amputated every installation of Pantherian resistance. He needed to detachedly sever off the infectious tentacles that morbidly grappled him into a chimeral-dimensional reality. Staving off a pukish breath, exhaustedly, he attempted to heft up his vibrainium paw with strenuous traction, only to feel the bone-numbing voltage of the restraints sonically razing out his tenacious heartbeat. "Grah...Y-You did this to me...Why?"

A cold frown was worn across Tygerus' features. The white tiger's eyes, for a moment, took on a distant look as if he were lost in a moment in time that none could see except for himself. Once his pupils returned to their natural shape, an also maniacal grin stretched across his muzzled lips. "Why not?" He growled, "if power exists, it is meaningless if it is not used. And put it to good use I did, with this," a sickly green glow suddenly filled the corridor as a bright-gemstone attached to a scepter was revealed. Held tight in the emperor's grasp, he slammed the bottom of the staff to the floor, dimming the vibrant glow that contained a mystical power from within. It reacted to his will, his own eyes having taken on an emissive shade of emerald.

"You were not the first…James Barnes, and you certainly won't be the last. Unlike you, I began as something less, something broken and lost. When my kind were subjected to the Mad Titan's planet cleansing crusade decades past, Pantheria had no hope of recovery. Near to extinction, I knew the only solution to bring our kind back was to sacrifice the few for the many. The power of our collective mages molded into one. With it, Pantheria rose back stronger than ever! We repelled invasion after invasion and even began to conquer in response." His teeth revealed into a snarl, "there were those who resisted-those who believed in the old ways-the weak ways. Freedom is an illusion that separates rather than unites. Recruiting both enemies and traitors had never been so simple with this," he held the scepter pointed towards Sabre, smirking shrewdly. "All I needed were the perfect soldiers to instill my rule-and you and many of your friends fell right into my lap, Winter Soldier."

Against his deadened mobility, scowlingly, Bucky flashed the voltaic intensity of his razor-slit aqueous depths onto the runic sceptre that was grotesquely embellished with a skeletal tiger-head-socerous conductor that portentously ushered morphic witchery as vaporous glyphs of hexagon mandalas eldritchly radiated from the malachite gemstone on telekinetic fruition. Shudderingly, his resistance was hijacked by pulsatingly onrushes that irrevocably amplified with heart-stunting exhaustion as Tygerus malignly arced the demonic sceptre over the eroded bars with scything precision, sneerily conveying his psychopathic-homicidal tantamount of malefically eradicating oppressors-traitors of his war-world empire-dystopia. "Y-You took the lives of good people from my world so you could rule em' like a space Ceaser...?" he drawled out, croakily, as his feverous vision bleared when he dizzily glanced at his longish-ebony tail. "Change em' back..."

Tygerus scoffed, "Why undo perfection? Those who cross the boundaries of my empire, willingly or not, are mine to do with as I please. They will remain useful to me so long as they remain in the blissful ignorance of an existence I have created for them. The moment that truth is shattered…" He exchanged a look with Secundus who grinned knowingly. Tygerus chuckled darkly, "they are of no further use to me. YOU are of no further use to me. I will not allow you to run amok and risk the desecration of my vision." Aiming the head of his scepter towards the shackled feline, he focused his will as the gem began to once again glow with a foreboding pulse of magical energies. "In time, you will be but a distant memory, Commander Sabre, like all others who sought to defy me before you."

The pulsating virescent energy telestically gleamed in his silvery-aquamarine opals, impudently, Sabre quirked the hard-edged sleekness of his whiskered muzzle into a toothier smirk as his velvety nose scrunched with rapt of 'Brooklynn boy' defiance; a growlier breath resonatedly emitted out his furrier throat as onrushing-suffusive vestiges of being torturously anesthetized into cryogenic dregs within a Siberian missile-silo gatecrashed the recesses of his gutted-out memories. Loyalty was a murderous price of blood-stamped ledger that was unforgivingly branded with the crimson star of Russia-he was the robotized sniper wraith-a muzzled phantasm-that complied with directives-kill-orders of elimination to remove expandable pawns-traitors of HYDRA with his dead-shot mercy.

Now, he was roped into the disposable throes of being traitorous collateral-a loose end that would be severed. Bracingly, against the heart-slamming onslaught of unbidden defeat, Sabre resigtered the pukish sludginess of rancid bile gushing up his throat as the vitreous aura of the gemstone blindingly intensified against the white-heat of unriddled agony, he was being morphically divested into a pathetic drudge of Tygerus's unquenchable amusement. "Hrggh..." Stuntedly, he became aware of every corded-graven thew of his athletic-lithesome solidity chunkily expanding with lumpier-rubberized as pudginess that blobbishly glozed against the mutative -obesifying strain raiding through him on protrusive succession. He was condemned into the porcine dregs of enslavement-a girthier-fattish boar would profitably fare galactic credits on Xander. Gnashing the curvier deformity of his jutting incisor fangs, snortily, he grunted in a Russian undertone."Pust' imperiya padet(Let the empire fall)..."

"Hmph!" Tygerus grunted, not quite sure what was said. His cold gaze was focused solely on the image of the younger feline, once a proud and promising soldier in his militia but now a failed venture among many others who'd met the power of his scepter. The magic engulfed the shackled panther like a blob of slime, seeping into the furry flesh of his form like a parasite eager to cause destruction from within. Like those who came before, Sabre resisted; his innate stubbornness only exemplified by what remained of his Pantherian vigor as he fought against the spread of the magical wildfire in his veins. Tygerus watched keenly, both with anticipation and fascination as he beheld Sabre's willpower to stave off the flow of his transformation.

"Your will is impressive," he commended, "but pointless. Fight as you may, my will is stronger," he focused his power until his eyes were a glowing shade of emerald. Secundus stepped back, uneager to be caught in the crossfire of his emperor's onslaught as the magic bore down upon Sabre until the feline was on his back writing in pain. His once powerful muscular physique was twisted and stuffed with ballooning fat, his paws once deadly and sharp were now stubby hooves. His feline muzzle extended into a porcine snout. "Now you will now the true cost of treachery, and the true meaning of helplessness, Bucky Barnes." Tygerus watched as the spell full consumed his captive until nothing remained of the pantherian warrior who entered the cell. All that remained was a shackled and groaning fat hog.

"Urgh..." Against the porcine scrouge that inexorably robbed his wobblier mobility, huffily, Bucky thrusted up the jowelly pudginess of his elongated-tusk snout as he consciously bolstered the droopier rotundity of his barrel-sized girth against the grimier wall, only to feel the weightier heftiness of his Centurian armour-mantle restrictedly grounding him with no avail. With a modicum of his irrepressible stubbornness, thumpingly, he stomped down his stubbier-cloven hoof against the rusted chain, lasering his beadier grayish-aquamarine depths at the predacious reptoid slimily darting out his fork-tongue, demonically evident to a sinstirous gleam in his cold-blooded orbs. "Y-You won't...Win...This fight...My friend Steve will doesn't quit..."

Tygerus' scowl twisted into a feral grin as he beheld his handiwork, the ominous glow of his sceptre dimming to inaction. "Your friend will not last long out in the wild. No matter where he runs, we will find him and finish what you failed to do." Approaching the bars, the Emperor's loomed forward, fixing the diminutive hog with a piercing look, "as for you. You are no longer befitting of the name "Sabre". The honor and respect that was bestowed upon you is stripped with that of your form and title. You wished to be as insignificant as you were before you arrived here? Now you are less than ever before! Lay in your squalor, James Barnes. Reflect upon what you have cast away, and know that your suffering is only just begun." Tygerus stepped away until he turned and marched off, his cape billowing behind him.

"Well ain't that disappointing, little piggy..." Serpentinely, the advisor eased up the lankiness of his scalie hand against the eroded bars as his quicksilver orbs trickily fixed onto the blimp-sized commander who slouchily wobbled on exhaustive traction, attempting to pathetically evade a derisive-nauseatic barrage of humiliation while he quashed down a nasally snort. "The unbeatable paragon of soldiery valour is now just a worthless chubby porkier who grunts out the voice of resistance, well, except no one in this stink hole will hear you..." he drawled with a raspier snicker, waspily, gazing at Bucky who sulkily pivoted on his stubbier hooves. "It doesn't matter, you'll be ridin' with the fattening defilers of this glorious empire to Xandar to feed Nova Corps like every grunter we ship out..."

"I-I know how to get off the ropes..." the Centurian-hog emitted a snortier rebuff, chestily, brushing the pudginess of his jowelly-tusked snout cushily against the stone-brick wall, harnessing a defensive vestige of untamped stubbornness that was anguishedly channelling within the blubbery rotundity of his droopier girth. Thrashingly, he yanked against the hoof-vising restraints on clumsier traction as his corkscrew tail wiggily rapted against his chunkier backside on vexatious accord; he wouldn't give the viperous parasite the satisfaction of being humiliatingly morphed into a porcine drudge-collateral.

Against the mephitic dominance of a tyrannous despot who scythed out the installation of resistance within the environs of Panthera, she detected volumes of hope ratcheting beneath her lithe paws as political-corruptive machinations of the imperial senate were inexorably pegged into a deadlock after the clamorous noise of the fugitive Teran riotously heralded over the marketplace. Using the accessory Cato slipped in her paw, measuringly, Livia was in pursuit of the battle-honed Terran, evading the burly-horned rhino sentry's who unnervingly paroled the entryways, with taser javelins activated with bone-stunning voltage. Jutting out her whiskered muzzle, instinctively, she caught a whiff of a mintier-virile fragrancy that was coupled with feverish-bloodied sweat. "Hiding are we, Soldier boy..." she purred in breathier undertone, snarkily, flashing her tigerish-brandy opals at the silk cart vendor obstructing a bazaar arcade. "Interesting..."

If the unique scent wasn't enough to attract her tracking senses, the sight of a cloaked tall merchant pulling the silk cart caught her eye. There were many hawks that operated within the city as members of the city-watch. Some who would keep a vigil upon the outer-walls for signs of threat and invasion. She had an inkling of suspicion, knowing that the rebellion had at least one friendly hawk in the Emperor's militia who had been imprisoned months ago. Cato did say that certain someone had managed to escape in the chaos. The feathery merchant kept his head low, leading the cart away. She could see a faint impression in the back of the wagon filled with merchandise. A subtle shift of movement and the scent grew stronger. She followed along, watching as the cart reached a somewhat secluded alley and made her move.

Screechingly, with razored vigilance teeming within the feathery litheness of his peregrine form, the stealthier goshawk raptorially scraped his dagger-like talons against the stone ledge as his grayish-white plumage readily tensed with predatory-honed ferocity when his obsidian-silvery orbs piercingly fixed onto the vendor. Being a chastened sky-watcher for a tenebrific-murderous Empire was suffocatingly agonizing, he backstabbed innocent citizens of Panthera, ushering them into dregs of enslavement because of his dubious-cheapshot loyalty for survival. Bobbing his sleekier head, the feathered operative, unwaveringly drove his peripheral vision over the bazaar tents, resigtering a familiar heartbeat of indomitable-soldiery valour that beckoned him. "Uh...Let's get this over with..."

He registered a unique bird-call noise that his "cargo" had insisted he use to indicate the coast was clear. Said cargo made himself known by removing the flap covering the rear of the wagon. A Terran human emerged briskly, giving a sideways glance of his surroundings before sliding off the edge of the cart. "What now?" Steve Rogers asked his feathered-companion. Someone he knew very little about except for the fact that like him, he was a wanted fugitive for some tyrannical empire of feline warriors. Steve had seen many forms of intelligent animal-hybrids since waking up on this strange world, but the hawk was unique to the individual in front of him who eerily reminded him of a certain friend back home.

"Now we change carts and disguises. If any Rhino sentries notice us, they'll be thrown off the scent. Too many of them don't care enough to look beyond what they can see or smell," lifting a faded blue robe off a vendor stall, it smelled of sandalwood and berries. He tossed it to Steve, chirping with affirmation, "put that on." It would cover the musky stench that humans seemed to exude out in the sun. The stench was off-putting but the skywatch-hawk had smelled far worse in his tenure in the Emperor's service.

"Why did you help me?" Steve wondered aloud, throwing the robe on with the hood covering his head. "You could've left me to get trampled by that mob in the courtyard. But you didn't."

"Yeah," the hawk sniped, offering nothing beyond vague acceptance. "I'm still trying to figure that out too. Just seemed like the right thing to do."

"Well…thanks for that," Steve ignored the feeling of familiarity in his gut, knowing he was stuck in a fortified city of sentient animals-hybrids that reminded him of Ancient Rome with a futuristic twist to it. He knew he had to find a way back home, but he also knew he couldn't just leave his friend behind. "The Commander-Sabre. What will they do to him?" He was almost afraid to ask, but he needed to know. He had to know how much time he had to act.

With a sombre bopping of his feathery head, expressively, the sky-hawk rapted his talons leadenly over the wooden pole of the cart; the escalation of imperious supremacy was hinging against united resistance in grevious succession. He wouldn't become perched over the battleground while Tygerus bloodthirstily decimated Pantherian inhabitants with his barbaric devices of execution. Restrainedly, Janus, puffed up his feathered-sheathed girth, as he mirrored the stormier intensity of Steve's cool azureous depths, the warranted mission to get him out of the dodge was suicidal against his calibre of hard-core stealth-he was edging into a threshold of deliverance. "Commander Sabre will be at the receiving end of punishment for his disloyalty...He took the fall to save your ass because he believes in Panthera...Whatever happens to him can't be undone..."

Steve became visibly frustrated, his composure threatening to waver as the sum of the past several weeks of isolation upon this world without a plan or back-up began to catch up. After uncovering the truth of what happened to Bucky, he wondered if the same fate had befallen his other friends and allies who had been caught in the blast-radius of their previous mission that saw them get scattered to the cosmos. Bucky, Clint, Scott, Peter and so many others had arrived to lend their assistance. Steve was the first one to fall into the portal, the others came after. He couldn't remember anything before waking up in a jungle. He wondered if he had been spared Bucky's fate because he was just that lucky.

"I can't just leave him there. H-He's my friend. What they did to him-what they probably did to the others. We just-" He was silenced when his feathered companion raised his taloned hand in a halting gesture. Steve looked at him confused, but the hawk had his eyes peered. "What is it?"

Against a strumming heart, reactively, Janus flapped his sleekier wings on defensive sync, aware of an intrusive-feminine proximity that clashingly robbed his unshakeable vigilance as his tinier head jutted out, the delicious-headier amora of cherry-vanilla maddeningly entrenched him as he incredulously caught a glint of whitish-platinum fur blurringly contrasting within the shadowy ambiance of bazaar tents. "Move..." he squawked out, edgily, rapting his wing against Steve's leather-clad gauntlet. "I'll keep her distracted..."

Steve wasn't sure what the mystery hawk meant, but he knew there was no time to question a directive when dealing with an imminent threat. "We can deal with this together," he lifted his shield from the wagon and held it at the ready. He would lead further back, their plan was to head to the "Badlands" where Janus had a hide-out they could lay low in, but before he could respond, their tracker leapt towards from the shadows. Janus cawed like a bird of prey, using his swiftness of speed and winged arms to ascend up towards a higher-ground, dodging the whipping strike of a feline's tail. Steve held his shield up, thrusting his weight as a balletic figure used her greater agility to leap onto the domed sphere before crawling around his back. His super-enhanced strength kept him vertical as she wrapped her body around him, her voice growling into his ear with warning.

"You need to stop with the chase..." With a kittenish smirk quirked over her furred muzzle that delicately ghosted against his ear, Livia scrapingly gripped her knifepoint claws into the dark-navy blue kevlar that hunkily sheathed his broader shoulder as she remained lithely straddled onto his muscled back. Gnashing his teeth, blindingly, Steve propelled his momentum back with measured traction of his reactive footing against a stone pillar, readily attempting to shake her off as she balletically angled her curvier mid-drift against the Spartan rigidity of his bulkier torso-she didn't ease her predatory-honed grip. Bracing her gauntleted arm fervidly over his throat into a rear-chokehold to immobilize him, grittily, Steve jerked his head on breakneck accord against her muzzle, as his twangy-blondish tresses sweatily clung against the silkiness of his whitish fur. "N-Now listen, I'm not here to dance with you..." she hissed in a terser pitch, brusquely keeping him captive in her arm-lock. "A speedy friend of mine needs your help to get this grumpy panther-boy out of his cage..."

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