Author's Note:So, this chapter is a little bit sloppy and I apologize for that, but I couldn't find many elements that really went well with where I was wanting it to go, so I just got it as close as I could. Please review! Let me know how you like the story so far and what you think of Tobias. Don't get too attached though, in the next couple chapters you might not like him as much. As always - I don't own cats...only Tobias. He's my boy.
Chapter Three – Set In Attic / Visits A Doctor / Search For Something
Victoria's POV
It was still dark when Tobias finally came to a stop in front of an old house. Slowly she looked up and almost wanted to run away…and she hadn't even been inside yet. "You live here?"
It was a run down, Victorian style home, with two stories, and what looked like a large attic. The siding was falling off, the paint was chipping, windows were busted out, there was yellow tape like at police crime scenes surrounding the place, but they said "DANGER – KEEP OUT" over and over again. She was more than willing to abide by the suggestion.
Tobias, on the other hand, seemed happy to have made it back. "Hey, Kid, don't judge a book by his cover. It's actually a really neat place. Come on."
Tobias pulled her gently around to the side of the house where there was a busted out window. It was low, easily low enough for cats to jump up onto, but she was wounded, and she wasn't sure she could make it. She was about to say this when Tobias suddenly pushed her up onto the windowsill and she all but fell over to the other side.
She shook her head as she started to rise, but stopped when she saw Tobias, at least she thought it was Tobias. He looked different. He was no longer a feline, walking on four legs. Now he looked more human than anything else. He had a human's face, and arms, and legs, but still had ears and a tail. She tried to scoot away from him but felt herself hit a wall.
Tobias laughed, "Hey, Kid, it's alright. It happened to you too."
She looked herself over, and he was right. She had the same humanoid figure, with the curves to match. She looked up at him, "What? How?"
He shrugged, "I don't know Kid, it happens to everyone. I think it's something the Boss controls, but I've never asked him about it."
She tilted her head, which felt awkward with the new humanoid neck, but somehow natural too. "Why?"
He hesitated, "Sometimes it's just better not to know I guess."
She didn't say anything to that, but slowly stood up, a little wobbly on two legs, but she found that it didn't take long to get used to it. "Now what?"
He smirked, "Now, we take you to the doc. Gotta get that head checked out."
She nodded and let him lead her around the corner to a particularly creepy set of stairs. They started up and with every step the stairs creaked. "Well, there's no sneaking up on your guys is there?"
Tobias chuckled, "That's the way the boss likes it. He's really paranoid, always worried about this tribe of cats that live in an old junk yard across town. Why anyone would want to live in a junk yard is beyond me."
She had to agree that sounded disgusting, although, it didn't sound that much worse than this creepy old house, but she chose to keep those thoughts to herself.
At the top of the stairs he went over to what looked like a closet door, and opened it, revealing yet another set of stairs. At least the other stairs had been open; these stairs were crowded by walls on either side. She felt like she was ascending into a prison. Maybe she was?
She paused at the bottom the stairs, and watched as Tobias moved up. He seemed to notice she wasn't behind him, and turned. He saw her watching nervously and sighed, holding his hand out to him. "Come on, you can trust me. Come with me."
Something inside her screamed that she shouldn't, that she didn't know him, but she had already come this far. She cautiously took his hand with a nod, and let him pull her up the stairs.
Upon reaching the top, she looked around in curiosity. The first thing she noticed, was that whoever had lived here previously had obviously not bothered cleaning out the attic. There was old furniture, and chests, and desks, and all sorts of other things. Some of them were covered in blankets, some of them were still full of cobwebs. No, this certainly didn't seem much better than a junk yard. The second thing she noticed, which perhaps should have come first, was that there were about fifteen cats (could she even call them cats? They were all in the same humanoid figure she was…) of all sorts of colors. But none of them looked very nice. In fact, many of them looked rather mean. Most of them were scared up from fights.
One in particular caught her attention the most. He was huge, and was bright red with black stripes. His face was horrifying, dark red with black marks that she assumed were scars. His whole body was covered in scars. And his hair! It was mangy and knotted up, and she wondered if he had ever brushed it. But then he looked up at her, and if looks could kill then she knew she would be dead on the spot.
"What is SHE doing here? Why did you bring her here!?"
Tobias shrugged, "I found her on the side of the road. She got hit by a car, lost her memory."
The giant ginger cat seemed to think about that. His gaze turned to her, "Lost your memory, eh?"
She took a step behind Tobias, whoever this cat was, she didn't like him. She nodded.
"Speak to me when you answer!"
She quickly did as she was asked, "Yes sir! Yes, I…I don't remember."
He smirked, obviously he was pleased by something. "What's your name?"
She looked up at Tobias, but the large cat growled, "Does he answer for you?"
She shook her head, then remembered he wanted her to speak, "No! No, he doesn't. I don't know. I don't remember…"
He smirked. "Wonderful."
Wonderful? Why was it wonderful that she didn't remember her name? Or anything? He seemed to be overly excited about it and that made her nervous. Tobias even seemed to be on guard. "Wonderful sir?"
The large cat nodded. "Wonderful."
It didn't escape her attention that his entire attitude had changed. He was smiling, and although it seemed honest enough, it still didn't quite fit his face, so it was hard for her to get comfortable. "Well, we'll just have to find you a new name now won't we? Let's see. You're a lovely white thing, surely we can come up with something."
He stood there thinking for a moment, and then shrugged. "Eh, we'll think of something before long. Tobias, take her to Doc and let him look her over. Then bring her back to me."
Tobias nodded and led her through the crowd of cats to an area where stuff had been cleared away. There was an older white cat sitting on a box in a corner, and when he saw her he smiled, "Well, aren't you a pretty thing. What's happened?"
"She got hit by a car, lost her memory." Tobias had answered for her once more.
The white cat, Doc she assumed, nodded, "Ah. I see. Well, let's have a look at ya."
Nearly thirty minutes of "does this hurt?" and "how does this feel?" and any number of odd questions and requests, Doc finally sighed. "Well, from what I hear, you're lucky you got out with just a bump on the head."
She nodded, "Yes, that's what I understand."
He smiled and pet her shoulder. "Well, just rest up. I can't promise you'll ever get your memory back, but your body needs to recuperate."
She gave another nod. "Alright."
Tobias offered a hand to help her stand up, "Come on Kid, Macavity still wants to see you."
At the name she stopped in her tracks. In the back of her mind, bells were ringing. She didn't know where she'd heard the name before, but it definitely struck a chord. "Macavity?"
He nodded, "Yeah, that big cat from earlier. He's the boss around here."
She tilted her head slightly, "I recognize the name…"
He laughed, "Well I'd be surprised if you didn't. Everyone knows that name. Now come on, Kid."
She followed him back to where they had seen Macavity earlier. He smiled when he saw her, "Well, hello there. Now, I've been thinking about what to call you. How do you feel about Arwen?"
She stood there staring at him, "Erm.."
"Great! Arwen it is!" Macavity clapped her on the back with enough force to nearly knock her over. Tobias reached out to steady her, and she gave him a grateful look.
"Arwen." She tested the name, she really didn't like it. She sighed, didn't look like she had much choice at the moment.
Quaxo's POV
They had come straight back to the junk yard, and immediately woken everyone up. Now Munkustrap stood up on the great tire, and everyone in the tribe was gathered around ready to help. Quaxo sat below him and listened as the Jellicle Leader spoke. He had been talking for the past few minutes, explaining to everyone the situation. "Now, I've already said this once, but it's worth repeating. We don't know what condition she is in. She may be fine, she may be hurt, she may be any number of things…so it's important to be prepared for anything."
Quaxo sighed for the hundredth time that night, and looked out at the faces that had gathered to support and help them. His eyes landed on the psychic twins, Coricopat and Tantomile. He narrowed his eyes at the pair, why hadn't he thought of them sooner? He slid off of the tire and made his way over to them, as always, they sensed his approach and moved slightly away from the group so that the three of them could talk more privately. "Coricopat? Tantomile? Do you know anything?"
The twins shook their head in unison, "Afraid not."
Quaxo sighed, that wasn't a good sign. "Nothing? At all? Isn't that a bit unusual?"
The twins nodded and again were in perfect synchronization. Coricopat spoke first, "We know that she is alive."
Quaxo was about to say something when Tantomile interjected, "However, she is very confused."
Coricopat nodded and the two spoke as one again, "The confusion is very confusing."
There was silence for a moment, and Tantomile sighed, "Quaxo, we are trying. But it is very difficult to get a handle on her."
Coricopat nodded in agreement, "We believe she is having some sort of problem with her memory."
Quaxo thought on that for a moment, "That could explain why she hasn't come home."
The twins glanced at each other then back to Quaxo. "We will keep trying Quaxo, we want to help."
He gave a small smile. "Thank you, I appreciate it. I'm going to go talk to Munkustrap about it."
He touched each of their shoulder in thanks, and then made his way back to the Great Tire to stand beside Munkustrap. The grey and black tabby looked at him expectantly, "Did the twins have any information?"
Quaxo sighed, "Not as much as I would have liked. They know she's alive, but for some reason she's really confused. They think she lost her memory somehow."
Munkustrap nodded, "If she hit her head during the accident that's not at all surprising. It would also explain why she didn't just make her way home."
"But that means she has no idea where she is. She's out there alone, and scared, and doesn't know who to trust. Everlasting Cat, what if she doesn't remember us?"
Munkustrap put his hands on Quaxo's shoulder, "Woah, Quaxo. You need to take a breath. Calm down. I doubt she's that bad off, although perhaps we should be prepared for that. But stressing about it isn't going to help us find her."
Quaxo only nodded slowly, and Munkustrap turned back to the group. "Alright everyone, we need to break off into groups. If we do it right, we can search the entire town over the next couple days. If she's out there," Quaxo cleared his throat at the "if" but Munkustrap ignored him and continued, "We'll find her. Alright, everyone break get into groups of three to five, minimum of one male per group please, and let's decide where everyone is going."
The next five minutes went by slowly for Quaxo. It took a few minutes for the cats to get themselves organized. Many of the kittens wanted to go together, but Munkustrap had to put them in other groups because "they needed adults with them too" or something like that. Quaxo hadn't been paying much attention. Quaxo did figure that it probably would have been faster if Munkustrap had just told everyone which group to go in. But that wasn't always his style.
Finally the groups were complete. The two sets of twins formed one group. Mongojerrie, Rumpleteazer, Coricopat and Tantomile, and then Admetus was also in that group. Quaxo figured that they would have an interesting day. They were to go search through the historic district, which was the favorite haunt of Macavity, and Quaxo prayed that they wouldn't be the ones to find Victoria. He didn't want to think about what Macavity would do if he ever had her again. She'd already had to deal with him once.
Other groups were Alonzo, Cassandra, and Exotica who would search through the park. Skimbleshanks, Jennyanydots, Etcetera and Electra would be searching through a few of the suburban's outside of town. Tumblebrutus, Rum Tum Tugger, and Plato would be searching through the east end; that was a rough part of town so Munkustrap had allowed it just to be the guys. Bombalurina, Jellylorum, and Asparagus were going to look around Victoria's old neighborhood, where she had lived before coming here. If she lost part of her memory, it made sense she would try to go back there. Then there was Quaxo's group; Munkustrap, Demeter, Jemima, Pouncival, and himself. They would be searching downtown.
Finally Munkustrap stood atop the Great Tire once more, "Alright everyone. You have your destinations and objectives. We all need to be back here by sunset! We don't need anyone else getting lost. Anyone have any questions?" There was a moment of silence as everyone looked around, and Quaxo was glad to finally be on their way when Munkustrap finally said, "Alright then. Let's move out."
The sun was just starting to peak over the horizon as all the cats left the junk yard.
Chapter Four Preview:(Rumpleteazer's POV)
The two queens looked at each other, then moved forwards. Victoria and the tabby had dgone up to an old torn down house, and in through a broken window. Teazer looked over at Tantomile, "I'm goin' a li'tle closer. I wanna see wha's goin on 'ere."
Tantomile nodded, but stayed where she was, "I'm going to let Coricopat know we found her."
Rumpleteazer watched as her friends eyes glazed over, and she couldn't help but roll her eyes. She was glad she wasn't psychic. It was just weird.
She crept closer to the house, and managed to peak in a window. They were in Jellicle form! Which could only mean Macavity was nearby, and that wasn't a good sign.
Victoria was giggling, "Tobias, that was so much fun! So exciting!"
Teazer watched as Tobias ran up to Victoria and wrapped his arms around her, "Arwen! You're brilliant! I've never considered that approach before!"
Rumpleteazer's eyes widened. Arwen? Why was he calling her Arwen?
He picked her up and swung her around in a circle, Teazer's eyes widened even more as she watched Victoria laugh, "Thanks Tobias. I wasn't sure if it would work, but I'm glad it did."
He set her back down, but didn't take his hands off of her sides, and Teazer watched as Victoria looked up to see him staring down at her. Teazer couldn't believe what she was seeing. This was just wrong! Victoria was with Quaxo! She loved Quaxo! This tabby tom cat "Tobias" leaned down and pressed his lips to Victoria's. And Victoria didn't fight him! What was wrong with her!
Rumpleteazer hissed, and then regretted it instantly. Both of them broke the kiss and looked directly at her. Victoria gasped, and Tobias bolted towards the busted window. Teazer looked at Victoria once more, but there was no recognition at all in her friend's eyes, so she was forced to run. She ran back to Tantomile, and paused only long enough to pull her friend along. "Tell tha boys we ar' comin to them! And we 'ave got us som comp'ny."
