A Dedication-This fanfic is dedicated to musicgal3, for being supportive all the way through the time I have been on , and for reading eveything. THANK YOU! It means so much to me, it really does.

Disclaimer- CATS belongs to TSE, ALW and RUG, the great trio of acronyms, not me. All cookies promised by my are invisible and therefore inedible. Alexander (see the actual fic) doesn't exist.

Chapter One – Starting Something

It's all over.

They've got out. We've been trying to keep them in for years, nearly eighty of them if my memory of the files was correct, but they finally did what we never expected. They broke out of the lab.

You, sitting there, reading this, you're probably confused. More than likely you've picked this up from the ruins of this building. You don't even know what happened.

And why would you? Only we know the truth. We know everything.

Well, sit back and let me enlighten you. The facts behind the monsters. Heaven knows, the world needs to be told.

My name is Eric Miller. This is the story of the Jellicle Takeover.

In the 1920s, a man and great poet called Thomas Eliot lived in England. And, around that time, he started to have strange dreams. Recurring nightmares about a creature that was half cat and half human. He didn't tell anyone about this at the time, for fear of being considered insane. But he still had the dreams. Once a night, every night. Sometimes, he would hear a snatch of a song or a line or two of poetry, but nothing more.

Eliot had a friend, a very close friend in fact, who was a scientist, and one day this man turned up at his door looking excited. When Eliot quizzed him, Alexander (for that was his name) just said that he had something to show him, something that was odd and related to his work. Why did he show Eliot and not another scientist? I don't know. But bear in mind that Eliot and Alexander were very close, so maybe he just wanted someone to see it before he showed it to any official.

So Eliot invited him in and helped him to set his equipment up in the centre of his living room. What Alexander wanted to show him was an experiment with Radon, which is where we get radioactivity. To this day, we don't know what the original experiment was, for at that moment one of Eliot's cats, known as Tantomile, walked into the room and knocked over part of the equipment.

A green glow surrounded the cat, and before the astonished humans eyes she began to grow. Her fur crackled blue and green, and she looked down at herself, surprised. Her front paws lifted off the ground, as she stood solely on her back legs. Her face, still covered in fur, looked more human. She was tall, taller than both humans, about seven feet high. She no longer had paws, but fur-covered hands and feet that ended in claws. The thing was a half human, half cat mix.

But it didn't stop there. As Eliot and Alexander watched, the rest of the cats that lived with Eliot entered the room, and Tantomile turned her attention to them. A blue bolt shot from her paws, and the other cats began to mutate as well, until a group of seven mutants was standing in Eliot's living room.

Eliot knew that this was what he had been dreaming about for weeks. He knew that what was standing in front of him, meowing and hissing, was an entirely new species, and something that had never been seen before. The only problem was what to do with them.

Well, Alexander took care of that. He was on the telephone in a flash, and the half cats were on their way to a laboratory within three hours, for testing.

It turned out that Tantomile contained something not many cats possessed. A different gene, causing the magic in the cats, christened 'Jellicles' on Eliot's request. These Jellicles were left in the care of a research team, who thought that once the first Jellicles died, the problem would be eliminated. Unfortunately, that was not the case. Several litters of half-human kittens later, the scientists gave up any attempt at researching the Jellicles, and set about containing them. They thought that if the Jellicles believed that they were the ones in control of their home, an abandoned junkyard, then they would be happy.

In the meantime, Eliot had been inspired. By the 1930s, he had published, Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats, a collection of poems about the Jellicles that he had seen created. He didn't use any existing Jellicles apart from Jellylorum, however.

Alexander thought that the book would give away the secret of the Jellicles, for nobody that wasn't working on the project knew about them, but if anything it convinced the public that Jellicles were not real, and the rumours they had heard were just publicity. So the Jellicles remained a secret, hidden away and oblivious in their Junkyard.

Not even the musical adaption of Old Possumin the 1980s exposed them. In fact, hundreds of people knew about the Jellicles, and are even fans of them, but as a story, as something untrue.

That is, until today. Today, they seemed to know we were watching them. Today, they broke free.

I don't know how. And I don't know why. But I do know this – those cats are dangerous. So the human race had better beware, or it may be our necks on the line.

Yours,
Eric Miller, Scientist on the Jellicle Project.

Earlier that day, Jellylorum and Tantomile sat together in a small shed. The pair were firm friends, and had been for a long time. Since 1920, in fact. They were the original Jellylorum and Tantomile, T. S. Eliot's cats who were the first ever Jellicles.
Endless years of death and rebirth had left them in the here and now, together in a corner of the Junkyard.
"Look at them!"
Jellylorum looked up from her knitting, and turned to face Tantomile, who was glaring out of the window as if she wanted to kill everyone outside it.
"Look at what, Tanto?" she sighed, putting down the needles. Outside, the rest of the Jellicle tribe were relaxing in the September sun. The kittens were playing and running around by the tire, and the adults were lazily watching them, occasionally stepping in if one got too over excited. All in all, a normal day.
"Them!" Tantomile turned from the window, disgusted. "They think they're so clever. They think we're actually outsmarting the humans!"
"Well, what's the point in telling them otherwise?" Jelly asked, with the air of someone who has had this particular argument before. And she had – a thousand times over the years.
"Because they're prisoners, Jells. We all are."
"Well, I know that and you know that, but we don't need to rain on their little parade."
"Why though, Jelly? What could you possibly need to hide?"
"You know that as well as I do, Tantomile. They will be more than a little freaked out if they discover that we're older than Deuteronomy."

She couldn't deny that one, no matter how much she thought. All of the others thought Deuteronomy was so old. They didn't know he had only lived through two lives! Not like them. Angry, she yelled the first thing that came into her head.
"Jelly, fate wants us to tell them. Remember Eliot's book? And the musical coming to life at the last Ball? It's like this was all planned, Jells. I can feel it. We need to tell them now." She blinked, not quite sure where that had come from. Despite being a mystic, Tantomile didn't believe in fate, and she'd never even thought about the book or musical before.
Jelly looked at her long and hard, as if she was considering the matter very hard. Finally, she shook her head.
"No, Tanto. They're not ready. They wouldn't believe us if we told them, you know that. And what's easier to believe, that this," she gestured down at herself "Is a normal cat and everything's fine, or that we're mutant freaks being secretly experimented on by the humans?"
"True." Tantomile scowled. She wished Jellylorum didn't have such a good point. It was true; none of the Jellicles would believe their story.

Tantomile wished she could remember more about being a normal cat. Her memory was fuzzy before she had become a Jellicle, which was probably something to do with the intelligence that had come with her human side.

Most of her Jellicle experiences up until the end of her third life were in white rooms, with scientists in lab coats staring at her. It was alright for Jelly, they'd not done anything to her after her first rebirth, but if they found out a cat was magical then that cat would vanish into the labs, for testing, for experiments, and never to be seen again by the rest of the cats. Tantomile had been a mystic for all of her lives.

White walls, white floors, white lab coats, white masks, needles poking and prodding at her, being linked up to different machines which made strange noises, tests, pain, being forced to swallow drugs and various different coloured liquids...that was her first two and a half lives in a nutshell. They did the same things to her, again and again, just because they didn't realise she was the same cat being reborn.

Tantomile wasn't quite sure how the whole Heaviside thing worked, but she was sure something was wrong with the way it had happened for her and Jelly. The two friends had been resurrected a year after their deaths each time, while their old friends from when they were normal stayed with the Everlasting Cat. Well, mostly – Pattipaws turned up in her fifth life, but she was lost, confused, scared. Tantomile thought she remembered being normal, and it made her more than a little bit mad. She hadn't seen any of the others since her first life. Of course, they may have come back and not remembered the past, which seemed likely. Again, Tantomile and Jellylorum could remember every detail of their other lives, something that made Tantomile curious. She wanted an answer. And the question was 'Why us?'

No cat apart from them could remember having a past life, apart from Old Deuteronomy. And he was too young to know where they came from.

It was just her and Jelly now. The only two Jellicles who knew the truth, the whole truth.

And it was driving her insane.

Coricopat sat by the tire, wondering where his sister had gone. She had been doing this a lot over the past few weeks, disappearing at random times to Heaviside-knows-where, and returning alone, looking more and more troubled each time.
He looked over to his left, spotting her sneaking in as always, but instead of heading over to him she walked towards the other side of the Junkyard. She looked angry, which was always a bad sign, but he ignored it.
What's up? He asked psychically, frowning at her. He heard her sigh.
Nothing, Cori. Like yesterday, like the day before that. Nothing. Now do me a favour and leave me alone!
He rolled his eyes. Every day he asked the same question, and received the same answer. Well, today he wasn't going to stand for it.
No, Tanto. Something is wrong; you're just too stubborn to admit it. You've always told me everything, ever since we were kits, so go on. Spill.
Tanto stopped in her tracks, looking as if she were considering it. He urged her on in his head, willing her to just own up and tell him what was wrong.

At last, a devilish grin spread across her face, and a note of defiance crept into her thoughts.
Okay, Cori. I'll tell you exactly what's going on. But before I do, I'll need to see Munkustrap. To, er, tell him as well. And maybe Old Deuteronomy? Scratch that, I need to tell everyone. It's important.

Ten minutes later, Coricopat had gathered the cats she had asked for in an old, disused den. All of them were baffled, but they sat up and listened as Tantomile prepared to unleash her great secret on them.

"I have something to tell you all." she began. "A secret that I have kept ever since my first life, years and years ago. We-"
"Tantomile, what in Heaviside are you playing at?!?" Jelly's livid tones came from the shed. She stormed into view, eyes blazing with anger and possibly a little fear.
"What did I tell you? Not to mention anything. And what do you do?"
"We had to tell them at some point, Jelly. It's eating me alive, and I know it's eating you too." Tantomile replied, to the confusion of the other Jellicles. Tanto and Jelly hadn't seemed to even know each other before; they were hiding their tracks so well. No Jellicle had ever seen them acting this close.
"In any case," she added, picking up on the emotions of the group. "This lot are confused enough already."

Jellylorum closed her eyes, wondering what they should do. Automatically, Tanto reached out to her psychically, reading her mind and sensing her emotions.
It's no good. Jelly was thinking. They'll never believe us, Tanto's wasting her time.
But what if they do believe us? What if she does tell them?
No, it'll never work, that's just stupid, why should we even try?
You know you can't keep secrets, eight and a half lives and all the time you just wanted to scream it out, to tell them all, just do it, just tell them.
Yes. Tantomile thought to her. We should.
Jelly blinked, startled, before rolling her eyes.
That's rude, reading other cat's private thoughts.She thought rudely. Tanto ignored it.
So? Yes or no?
Jelly sighed, giving in. For the first time in all of her lives, she was giving in to Tantomile.
"Yes, Tanto. It's been too long. They should know. They have a right to."
Tantomile grinned.

One lengthy explanation later, the Jellicle tribe was still sceptical of its oldest members.
"So, you're saying that we're not normal cats?" Etcetera asked, looking more lost than usual.
"You're trying to tell us that humans created us by accident? How stupid do you think we are?" Cassandra scoffed.
Jelly shot an I-told-you-so look at Tanto. She knew that something t[like this would happen. As she glanced across, however, Tantomile was smiling, as if she had a plan to prove that they were telling the truth.
"What if we showed you normal humans and normal cats? What if we actually went outside the Junkyard?"
"That's impossible. The humans never let us." Tugger said, frowning.

"I doubt that they could say no to a magical cat..." Tantomile grinned again, making a blue spark flash across her paw. Yes, she had a plan alright, but it didn't stop at proving their innocence to the Jellicles. Tantomile wanted revenge on the humans, for experimenting on and imprisoning them. She wanted them to have a taste of their own medicine.

And she knew exactly how she would go about it.

Author's Note- So there's Chapter One. If you have any comments, criticism, or thoughts for me, click the Review button. Remember, feedback gets cookies! =D (See disclaimer =))
Chapter Two will actually document the Takeover and its effects. See you when I post it!