First appearance: S4E13 — Swole — Storm on the Horizon v Grug the Wizard · watch it on YouTube
Storm on the Horizon was a snow leopard monk with ten knives growing out of her four feet, a fondness for black coffee and a deep, sincere wish to be friends with the man she was trying to kill. She was pulled into The Void to face Grug the Wizard during the reign of The Shadow King, and she won by fooling him again and again. Her prize was a victory lap that carried her out of the sky and into the cold, where she died thinking of the family she had spent her life searching for.
Story
Storm stepped out of a blue portal in The Dread Fortress, summoned by the Grandmaster, who clenched the amulet around her neck until it sliced her fingers and drew blood. Henrietta the Goblin offered her a cup of black coffee, and she downed it in one go. When the Shadow King asked whether her knives were strapped on or real, she rolled onto her back, stuck all four legs in the air and let them slide out with a “shink.” “Do you not know how cat work?” she asked him. “You’ve never met cat before?” She then asked whether the Fortress’s Chinchillas were snacks. They are not: they are pets, emotional support animals and an army with a very strong union. The Grandmaster mentioned that a champion who survived might get a chinchilla pile-on as a reward.
The arena was a peaceful meditation valley with a babbling stream, and the Grandmaster told the champions to destroy it. Storm struck first, throwing her boomerang at Grug’s forehead, then hit him with it again while he was busy powering up. The second throw left a mark that matched the first, giving him an equal sign on his forehead. Grug was a muscle-bound barbarian cursed to believe he was a mighty wizard. He shouted spell names as he punched, hugged and threw books, and Storm found she adored him: “I love Grug. I don’t want to fight Grug. I want to be friends with Grug.” She made herself small, widened her eyes and did “the big blinky,” and the sight was so adorable that Grug’s next “spell” faltered. He went in for a hug, missed, and tenderly embraced the rock beside her instead.
When a siren in the stands sang “Chicken wing, chicken wing, hot dog and bologna,” Grug wandered off entranced. Storm stood firm, though as a cat the pitch pierced her ears so badly she had to cover them. She then walked up to The Box of Chaos and coughed a hairball into it, much to the dismay of the soul inside, which the Shadow King had wrung out of the Acolyte Iron Trout “like a wet towel” (“Wait, wait… Don’t do that”). The Box answered with a much bigger hairball harnessed to a flying chariot, white and fluffy like a cloud. From her new perch she kept Grug at the end of her long iklwa and landed a natural 20. When Grug offered to make her his familiar, with a magic tower and “wet food all around,” she lied sweetly about wanting treats, and soon after landed another natural 20: “My deception pays off real good.”
Grug’s posing pecs blinded her, and the Grandmaster herself dive-bombed Storm with a metal chair as part of a “family activity” with the Shadow King. When the Shadow King’s own chair came down on Grug’s head, Grug answered by blasting a beam of radiant light out of his ass into the sky. Storm, still unable to see, followed the sound of Grug’s gurgling and the clang of the metal chair and crashed the whole chariot onto him. He teleported into the one-seat chariot with her, nose to nose. “Eskimo kisses?” she asked. “That’s not how babies are made.” Tangled in his vines, she lied to him once more about surrendering. Then she stunned him and unloaded a storm of blows. She finished with what she called “the Kill Bill, five fingers of death,” a slow-motion shove that sent Grug falling from the sky to his death, smiling.
The Grandmaster declared, “Storm on the Horizon, you have swept through this arena as if it is your own,” and presented her to the Shadow King as champion. He answered with a spectral falcon that took over her chariot and whipped it faster and faster around the arena. “Rise high, champion,” he said. “I’m just cat,” she replied. The chariot climbed through the atmosphere and into space, where she began to suffocate and freeze. Storm had been separated from her whole tribe as a very young cub. She had spent her life searching for them, growing stronger and seeking enlightenment as a monk. The creeping cold woke her last childhood memory of her family, which was full of snow, and it made her feel at home and happy.
“When she closed her eyes for the final time, she imagined that she was right next to her tribe again. So she just went home.”
Personality and Abilities
Storm spoke in a soft, broken cat-speech and was relentlessly kind, even mid-fight, cheering her opponent on with lines like “You are doing a wonderful job” and “I’m proud of you, Grug.” She liked treats, took catnaps, drank her coffee black and had always wanted to be Cheetara of the Thundercats. Under the sweetness she was a skilled liar. She fooled Grug with the same familiar promise more than once and called herself “a little cruel.”
Her signature weapons were the ten organic knives on her feet. She also fought with a boomerang (“that slightly bent stick”), an iklwa with a long reach, and her claws. She moved with a monk’s agility, threw rapid flurries of blows and could stun a foe with a single strike. She also cast a thunderclap she called the “Fist of Four Thunders,” named for her four knife-feet, and a shattering burst of sound. Her flying hairball chariot from the Box of Chaos gave her the high ground for the rest of the fight.
Relationships
- Grug the Wizard: her opponent, whom she adored, wanted to befriend, tricked repeatedly with promises to be his familiar, and finally shoved out of the sky.
- The Shadow King: asked about her knives, then sent her victory lap into space, where she froze.
- The Grandmaster: summoned her, hit her with a metal chair (then tossed her two little blue pills “for that”), and named her champion.
- The Box of Chaos: accepted her hairball sacrifice and gave her the flying hairball chariot.
- Henrietta the Goblin: served her a cup of black coffee before the fight.
- The Acolytes: cheered her on with little scratching motions in the sky.
Memorable Quotes
- “Do you not know how cat work? You’ve never met cat before?” (S4E13 — Swole — Storm on the Horizon v Grug the Wizard)
- “I love Grug. I don’t want to fight Grug. I want to be friends with Grug.” (S4E13)
- “Eskimo kisses?… That’s not how babies are made.” (S4E13)
- “Maybe this is how familiars act. You’ve never had one before.” (S4E13)
- “I’m just cat.” (S4E13)
- “Is helpful to have knives for feet.” (S4E13)