Rating: PG to T
Summary: How Alonzo came to the Jellicles.
Disclaimer: CATS is not mine.
---
“What the hell are we doing out here?”
“Looking for the Tugger.”
Alonzo huffed as he followed the smaller tux, feeling as out of place as he did when surrounded by the Jellicles. At least in the junkyard he could duck into his den and ignore the fluff and goodwill that floated around the territory as if the chain link fence had completely isolated the junkyard from all outside influence. The naiveté that permeated the tribe disgusted the patched tom, and he wondered-- more than once-- how it had managed to survive with an absent leader and an idiotic guardian. Then he normally bumped into something if he was walking; this time, he meandered straight into the small tux he had been following.
It had been bordering on dusk when Mistoffelees had slipped into his den and told him that they were going for a walk. Bored, confused, and more than a little wary of the tux, Alonzo had refused outright and pushed the small cat out the entranceway.
“Why do you need me?”
“You’re a street cat,” Mistoffelees spoke as if Alonzo’s question had been pointless. “And we’re on the streets.”
Alonzo resisted the urge to bristle and settled for flicking his ears as if listening to the varying sounds of the traffic rather than entertaining thoughts of mutilating the kitten. “That doesn’t mean I know all of the city. Or where Rumsy would have wandered off to.”
“Didn’t wander.” The tux turned down an alley, sniffing at the air.
Alonzo found that the alleyway was vaguely familiar, but it may have just been the taste of water coming from the streets it connected. “What?”
“He didn’t wander. He went off with Bombalurina.”
The name was almost as familiar as the scent of water and fish wafting through the air. “Red queen? Flirty?”
Mistoffelees nodded, “Working with Rumpelteazer.”
Now that name was familiar and Alonzo’s fur did bristle. Every tom on the street knew Rumpelteazer and her brother, and to stay the hell away from them unless they wanted to be the target of misdirected jealousy or get into direct contact with Macavity. “Not my problem if Tugger’s stupid enough to follow that queen.”
“Mungojerrie told me to look for Tugger.”
“You always do what you’re told, Tux?”
Mistoffelees beamed, looking more like a kitten in that moment than he probably should have. “I’m getting candy if I find Tugger.”
“Candy?”
“Candy.”
“You’re a fucked up kit, you know that?”
“Yup.” Mistoffelees paused, stopping at the opposite mouth of the alley as if afraid that he had turned himself around in the short amount of time and now faced the wrong way. “Is it this way to the docks?”
“Yes,” Alonzo pushed past the smaller tom and examined the streets beyond the alley. He thought for a moment-- plotting his escape route should the need arise-- before he turned left and started walking. “What am I getting for all this trouble?”
“An evening of exercise.”
“Doesn’t seem fair,” the patched tom muttered, resigning himself, at least temporarily, to the role of guide to the tuxedoed cat. He really did not care as to why the small cat was out on the streets, or why they were looking for a tom stupid enough to get himself into trouble, but he was ready to run if anyone so much as looked at him oddly.
It was easy for two black and white cats to slip through the streets, and while they were in their own little world the streets buzzed around them. Humans, coming late from work at the docks and storefronts, made up quite a bit of the evening traffic. Rolling past in large cars capable of crushing any cat in a moment of carelessness or arrogance, or more easily avoided bicycles, the humans were as oblivious to the feline traffic as the cats pretended to be of theirs.
Set in predictable patterns, the world of cats followed much the same roads as the humans. Barring a few detours through the alleyways and crevices accessible to the smaller species, they would often find themselves underfoot and scrambling out of the way. Dusk was too early a time to be out wandering, and almost and idiotic as travelling at noon.
There was a yowl somewhere to their right, a few streets over and closer to the water, but nothing else worth investigating yet. After nearly thirty minutes of simply avoiding humans and other cats, Mistoffelees pulled Alonzo to a store’s front steps. It was the kind of store converted from an old residence, complete with porch and ornate, period woodworking, and flaking paint.
It took Alonzo a moment to realize that the small tux wanted to wait out the traffic. “What if Tugger is dead by the time we find him?”
Mistoffelees shrugged and picked at a brick by the store’s doorway with a claw until crimson flecks crumbled off. “Not my problem. I get my candy either way.”
“You’re a pretty heartless tom.”
“I just don’t see the point in worrying over cats who don’t give a fuck about me.”
Alonzo’s ears flicked in surprise; that was the first time he heard the kit curse. “Law of the street. Thought you never left the junkyard.”
“Two places at once.”
“Eh?”
“I can be in two places at once. Or at least look it.” Mistoffelees moved on to peeling away the still clinging, dried ivy tearing the building apart. “Throw my voice, misdirection, whatever.”
“So you do go on the streets.”
“Know that pipe? The one I stay in?” Mistoffelees waited until he saw the confused nod from his companion, no doubt that Alonzo thought he was insane. “It’s a storm drain. It leads to the gutters and streets, and eventually the river.”
The patched tom nodded again, understanding how the kit did it. Rather than risk the week’s worth of scolding and lectures he would receive from the tribe’s guardian and elders, the small tux continued unknown exploits through uncommon means. “You sneak out.”
“No, I go into my den and spend time on my own.” Mistoffelees smirked. “It’s not my fault they haven’t figured out that pipes have two ends.”
Alonzo shook his head and relaxed, grooming out fur ruffled by the trip so far and rather enjoying the notion that not all the Jellicles were mindless.
---
The room was dark. Not that it actually mattered, but it tended to hinder attempts to see what kind of damage was done when the room was devoid of light. But if that was the case, then it also must be devoid of reflective surfaces, and that, thought the Tugger, was really annoying. He wasn’t flexible enough to see just what kind of damage was done to his back. When light did flood the room, it was because the velvet cloth strung up like a doorway (must be scrap from a theatre, was Tugger’s thought) was loosened from it’s clips and pushed aside.
Bombalurina still looked great. Unharmed save for a few ruffled patches of fur and dried blood that had yet to be groomed out, the scarlet queen looked rather well given the circumstances. Rumpelteazer was in much the same way, but her fur had been ruffled in a different manner, Tugger guessed.
“You bitches.” Bristling was not the most dignified position when bound, and it was not the most eloquent thing he could of said, but Tugger thought his little display got the point across rather well. “What the hell is this about?”
And in a second it was smoothed over. Eyes narrowed to challenging slits, and fur still raised around his ruff and tail (making it twitch erratically), the Tugger calmed himself enough to realize that there was a familiar tom behind the queens.
“Such language to such lovely ladies,” Macavity drawled, slipping between the queens with ease. “Really, do they not teach you manners in the tribe, brother?”
“Fuck you, Ginger. What’s this about.” It was a snapped, curt question, one not really expecting an answer.
Macavity smirked and crept forward. “All in good time, Rumsy. All in good time. But right now, I need to ask you something.”
Deciding that he was safe enough for the moment, the Tugger sniffed and drew himself up as much as the leash around his collar and paws would allow. “Ask away, luv. Got nothing but time.”
“Excellent.” Macavity stroked a paw through the other tom’s mane, loosing the tangles that hid a few small trinkets. Items for good luck, he guessed, they chimed uselessly as they struck the cement floor. “First, do you know how much money you’ve cost me with your little games?”
Tugger had to bite back a purr at the “grooming” to his mane. “No idea, pet. But I reckon it don’t matter since cats don’t use money.”
“I do.” Claws sunk into sensitive flesh below the long fur. “It’s really quite useful, this human currency, to get what I want. And you’re taking it from me.”
A hiss and a sudden jerk away from the claws sent pain shooting up the tom’s side where he had landed in the docks. “Just the shinies, Ginger.”
“That are supposed to be sold through this marvellous invention called the ‘Internet.” Claws refused to allow the other tom to draw away so easily. “Or left as bribes or tools for other jobs.”
“Not my problem.”
“Oh, but it is.” Claws sunk in again as Macavity pulled the Tugger to him, relishing the warmth of blood rising up to react to the tearing flesh even if the tom refused. “Because you’re putting quite a twist in my plans. And I don’t appreciate that.”
The Tugger winced, feeling pulled and trapped and in no small amount of pain. Enough to make him think that the ginger cat was up to some old magic tricks. “Aw, but Ginger, I’m family.”
“Doesn’t matter.” With a sharp movement, Macavity threw Tugger back and stepped away. “I’ll leave you in the capable hands of these two lovely queens. Demeter seemed to have shown them some tricks of her own since she was last here.”
The Tugger shifted, trying to draw himself up to his feet. “Ladies… Let’s talk about this.”
---
Alonzo found that he did not like wandering around Macavity’s territory aimlessly. When he worked for the ginger tom, he came and went as he pleased, often avoiding trouble. But now, walking through the heart of the tom’s territory had him at edge.
Mistoffelees was loving every moment of it.
“Seven…”
“What the hell are you doing, Tux?”
“Counting how many times you jump at nothing.”
Alonzo muttered something unflattering about the kit’s family and lineage, trying not to start as a stray, scraggly and deranged, fell from the lid of a trash can into an alleyway. “I’m not jumping at nothing, Tux, I’m staying alert.”
“Paranoid.”
“Alert.”
“Macavity!”
The patched tom jumped, bristled, and searched the area before his eyes rested on the only familiar cat in the street. “I. Hate. You.”
Mistoffelees smirked, and turned down the docks to a less stable, creaking set of planks strung together with tarred hemp and a few rusting nails. “This way.”
“To what?”
“A pipe.”
“Oh goody.”
“Sarcasm doesn’t suit you.”
Alonzo had his doubts, but followed the smaller cat beneath the creaking wood. He made a vague, wordless noise of disgust as he slid through an unidentifiable-but-gooey substance; while it stank of old fish and rotted food, he hoped it was only decomposing seaweed or algae. A glint of light off metal took his attention away from the goo underfoot and the shape of a pipe, propping up the far half of the docks. “I’m not going in there until you tell me where it leads.”
“Okay,” the tux started towards the gaping mouth of the pipe. Netting and rotting cloth hung in jagged strips across it, creating the mage of teeth that had Alonzo on edge (more so); like a warning that it would lead to another maw willing to tear him apart. Mistoffelees did not pause as he walked through, tail disturbing the cloth “teeth” as he passed under them.
Alonzo hesitated, not missing the movement of other cats he had not noticed earlier, just beyond the shadows beneath the docks. A muttered expletive and he tore through the goo better left unmentioned, chasing after the tuxedoed cat and feeling that he was being led into a trap. It was not that he couldn’t fight-- he was actually rather good at fighting-- but it was dark, he was too nervous, and the slimy underside of the old docks was not the ideal location to have a standoff.
---
Pain was a peculiar thing. When you felt it, all you wished was for it to go away, to never return; for everything to be healthy and healed again. When it was gone, you wondered if you were alive, and only the reappearance of pain reassured you that you were, in fact, not dead, and quite vibrantly alive.
Tugger wished he wasn’t so vibrantly alive right now.
Throbbing pain that had once been isolated to his side and a few scrapes and cuts, now radiated across his body. Rumpelteazer looked as though she had been finger painting, and if he hadn’t been so sure that it would result in the loss of a limb, he would have cracked a joke about it. Instead, he drew himself up and out of his ball, what was left of his tail tucked close to his body, and he spat out blood.
“Didn’t know you had it in you, ’Teazer.”
Bombalurina had left early, leaving the dirty work to her colleague. Rumpelteazer sat back, gingerly flicking and grooming blood from her claws. “Nothing personal, Tugger. But orders are orders, and I owe Mac big.”
“That you do.” The heavy velvet “door” was pushed aside, shedding proper light on the Tugger’s state. The ginger tom looked over the fluffy cat with amusement, rather pleased with the work Rumpelteazer did. “And now you can go, dear.”
The queen did not hesitate, leaving before the term of endearment had left her employer’s mouth. She did pause once by the doorway, smiling back at the Tugger. “Sorry, Rumsy.”
“Now that you are properly paying attention,” Macavity crouched in front of his sibling. “We’re going to chat, you and I.”
“Interrogation?” Tugger tried, unsuccessfully, to pull himself together, pain shooting through him at the slightest movement. He pulled bloodied mouth into a smirk, mantra of “I’m a tough cat, I’m a tough cat” running through his head to at least remind him of the confidence he was famous for. “Going to torture me for information?”
“I could, if you’d prefer.” Macavity pushed the tom against the wall, holding him up. Smirking with sadistic glee as a grimace of pain overtook the smirk and reminded the other tom of just who was in charge there. “But torturing you to death would end my fun to soon, now wouldn’t it?”
“D-damn,” Tugger spat, spitting blood and pretending to look shocked, as if he had meant to turn his head. “Oh, sorry, Ginger Fluff.”
Macavity’s smirk did not falter as he dug claws into the other tom, a soft growl bubbling up his throat and ears flattening, disappearing into the mess of his fur. For a brief moment, he wondered at the possibilities, the reactions that could happen. What would the Tugger look like strung up outside the junkyard? Or as a bloated corpse in the river?
But those were endings, and the ginger tom had plenty of time before then. “We should play, Tugger. Like we used to. Remember that rain barrel?”
If possible, Tugger shrank, blanching beneath his fur.