This piece was my big project of 2001 (similar to the Jowana piece from the year prior), so as cheesy as it is now, I'll put it up here for the record.

For those who are curious about the meaning behind the piece... oh boy. Lengthy explanation to follow:

Several years before I conceptualized Through Death & Love (AKA The Leopard Sun), I already had a different story in the works (this was back in 5th grade, so... around 1994?). Back then, my primary interest lay in sci-fi and military drama - Michael Crichton and Tom Clancy novels being my obsessions at that time. You see, my father had taken me to a large book expo when I was in 3rd grade, where I picked up Jurassic Park and The Hunt for Red October - the former because it had a dinosaur on the cover, the latter because I saw the film adoptation in 2nd grade. I became quite insatiable - it was like discovering a whole new continent:"Whooooa books for adults are so cool and full of technical details I love!" And so I bought many more books by those two authors (let's not go into whether or not The Patriot Games was appropriate reading for a 10-year old).

During that same year, I was for the first time exposed to a "cool" anthropomorphic character (not counting all the cutesy anthros from children's cartoons) - the black panther from Golden Axe III. What made him stand out was that he behaved in a very animalistic manner - the way he runs (on all fours), jumps (a very graceful somersault; he can also pounce - in true catlike manner - from midair), and all of his attacks (all teeth and claws - also using his tail to trip enemies). Something about that really tickled my imagination.

The combination of my interests in wildlife, sci-fi, and military drama resulted in a story with the basic following premise (subject to changes):

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An eccentric billionaire entrepreneur (an alternate version of my future self) working on a privately-funded project to terraform Mars to serve as a wildlife sanctuary was assassinated by a collection of rival groups (including several governments) who have their own interests and plans for the colonization and commercial exploitation of the planet. Unknown to them, however, the man they killed had a contingency plan put in place in the case of his premature death, and he was brought back by the biotech division of his company as a genetically-enhanced creature with superhuman abilities. The creature - with the outward appearance of an anthropomorphic black panther - takes on the name "Bagheera" - the name of the panther from Rudyard Kipling's famous 1894 book, The Jungle Book.

In The Jungle Book, Bagheera convinced the wolves to spare the man cub's life by offering a freshly-killed bull. In this sense, Bagheera may be regarded as nature's mercy. Men, however, had not been kind to nature - and the Bagheera in my story is not an agent of mercy, but of wrath and vengence.

Bagheera began his existence with a series of gruesome murders - killing the executives of the rival corporations responsible for his assassination. When this was done, he went into hiding in Africa, where he began to ruthlessly kill poachers and other humans that encroached on the land (regardless of their circumstances and motives) in a self-righteous private war against what he considered the root of evil in humanity - greed.

Meanwhile, with the "official" death of Bagheera's former (human) self, the spaceship under construction by his company for the purpose of terraforming Mars was sold off by his successor (who was unaware of his resurrection) to the US government, who - having gathered some intelligence on the genetic experiment Bagheera's company conducted, and having correctly theorized Bagheera's true identity - began using the ship's extensive DNA database and facilities to conduct its own experiments in secret (beyond the reach of international regulations), in the hopes of creating super soldiers with enhanced abilities. Unable to duplicate the experiment performed by Bagheera's corporation (transforming an existing person genetically via engineered retrovirus), the US government's experiments required nurturing genetically-modified embryo to maturity. The creatures engineered by these experiments were therefore born, raised, and trained on the ship - cut off from the rest of humanity.

It wasn't long before the creatures realized their superiority over humankind - growing weary of the extensive tests and mistreatment subjected to them since the day of their birth, they rebelled and seized control of the ship. The ship, equipped with a prototype particle cannon (for manipulating Martian gravity by injecting dense matter into the planetary core), and since its acquisition retrofitted with an array of experimental weapons as a testbed, was capable of endangering human existence. Wishing to resolve the matter silently, the US government sought out Bagheera for help - under the condition that if the crisis could be averted, the ship would be returned to him.

Bagheera boards the ship with a special forces unit, but they failed to neutralize the hostiles. The genetically-engineered creatures, under the presumption that Bagheera was the result of a government experiment like they were, did not kill him, but instead tried to persuade him to join their cause: They wanted to wipe humanity out, for the only side of humans they knew were hideous and cruel.

Having seen humanity stumble and fall repeatedly throughout history, Bagheera was tempted into joining them, and as a symbol of trust handed over the encrypted digital key to unlocking the ship's central computer (which he kept hidden inside a pendant given to him by his long-dead love). As the key was inserted into the ship's console, the nature of the key was revealed - it was the recording of a song sang by the last whale on Earth. It was then Bagheera remembered the hopes he once had for humanity - the hopes he once shared with his wife (who ran an oceanography research institute, and who made the recording of the whale song).

Taking advantage of the distraction caused by the gravity cannon being readied to fire, Bagheera turned on his fellow brethren - the tragic orphans of human territoriality and aggression - and in an ensuing broadcast from the ship, revealed to the world the entirety of the twisted tale.

With the ship back under his control, and humanity's sentiments now on his side, Bagheera set off on a long voyage to carry out what he had always wanted to do: To start the world anew.
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The world Bagheera ends up creating was originally named - due to my childish stupidity and lack of English knowledge - "Bio Union". Yes, terrible isn't it. xD That explains this picture, anyhow, which used to act as the homepage portal on my old website.

All of that said, the story stuck around - and though it is not nearly as well-developed as The Leopard Sun is (having been on the backburner all these years), it has undergone many changes and improvements regardless (for one, the world has since been renamed "Valinor", drawing an analogy between the relocation of the Earth's creatures with the exodus of the elves. The ship, carrying both the biological diversity of Earth and the sum of human knowledge - has since gained the name "Hypatia").

Bagheera's story, though not directly-related to The Leopard Sun in terms of narrative, is technically set in the same universe and will therefore be written under the same series title, Twilight & Shadow. Two stories are planned for him (one aforementioned above, the other I will discuss at a later date), currently tentatively titled The Last Whale and The Shores of Eternity.