A/N I don't own this story or characters; I only own Sophia.
Mirage1234: Thanks :) Yeah, it was kinda boring, especially since I didn't write Bluebeard's POV when he was going through Joker's house. But I DID try to spice it up a bit, especially with Sophia's part of the story.
The next morning, Sophia was walking around the neighborhood, keeping an eye out for the killer. She was especially cautious because of the comment Bluebeard made the previous night. Now that she knew the killer had no qualms with killing any gender or age of cat, everyone, including herself, had to stay on their toes.
As she trotted along the sidewalk, she heard rustling in the grass. Freezing, she sniffed at the air. The scent was cat, and was very vaguely familiar. Scowling, she slowly walked down the sidewalk, listening carefully. The rustling seemed to be following her.
Whipping around quickly, Sophia leapt into the bushes, tackling another animal. After they tumbled away a foot or two, and they landed to where she was pinning him down, she realized it was the sandy-colored cat she had met twice before.
"So, you found me." He said. "Of course, you probably heard me behind you."
Sophia simply scowled down at him. "Who the hell are you?!"
"Ah, so you do speak. Let me up, and I will tell you."
Sophia tentatively backed off of the cat, still glaring at him. "Now then, my name is Chrochoch."
"And what exactly are you, Chrochoch?"
"A new breed of feline…yet old. Old and new."
"What on earth does that mean?"
"You're a smart female, Sophia. You figure it out on your own."
"How do you know who I am?"
"That, I cannot tell you."
"Are you here to try and discourage me and my friends from finding the murderer? Because we are nearly there."
"I suppose you are still insistent on finding the murderer. I applaud you and your friends for your perseverance and determination. You and your friends are quite intelligent."
"I've heard that before." She scoffed. "And don't try to butter me up with flattery. You've still been obscure enough that I suspected you of—"
"Being the murderer? I'm afraid you have the wrong cat, my dear." Chrochoch smiled. "Of course, with your intelligence, you shouldn't have trouble finding the actual murderer."
"I can't solve the mystery on my own. Francis is the one who is closer to finding the murderer anyway. Especially with the few clues your friend left him."
"My frien—oh! Nhozemphtekh, you mean?"
"…I don't know. She didn't tell Francis her name."
"She mentioned meeting him in his garden."
"Bluebeard also told me about your kind." Sophia curled her lip. "Especially that you are much more wild than us."
"Is that bad?" Chrochoch raised an eyebrow.
"Only the fact that I fear you, or your mastermind, may try and choke us domestic cats out of the neighborhood, if not out of existence entirely."
"You don't trust me?" Chrochoch purred, beginning to circle around Sophia.
"Not in the slightest." She sniffed. "I wouldn't trust you, or any of your kind, if you were the last cats on earth. Thank heavens you aren't."
"You don't even find me a bit…attractive?"
"There's a slight appeal to your appearance, I'll give you that. But being that I and my breed aren't the most glorious cats, I've learned to look past appearances, and look more into a person's personality."
"Your one-eyed friend has a certainly…interesting personality."
"He may not be the most polite or sensitive sort, but his heart is in the right place." Sophia turned away, flicking up her tail. "If you'll excuse me, I must return to my walk."
"…Good luck, Sophia."
That evening, Pascal and Francis gathered almost every cat in the neighborhood to the second floor of the latter's house for a meeting. Joker was still missing, so he didn't come.
Pascal and Francis sat on the electricity-creating machine, which had been turned off, while Bluebeard and Sophia sat on the box nearby.
"My friends," Pascal said to the huge crowd. "We thank you that so many of you were able to attend this meeting."
"You better have a good reason for this, gramps!" Kong snapped from the back of the room. "Otherwise, someone's gonna pay dearly for making me miss my favorite TV show!"
Several cats, including the Hermans, laughed. Sophia hissed loudly, making everyone freeze. "Kong, you pea-brained, idiotic rhinoceros!" Francis scowled. "Don't you care that we're trying to find the one who murdered Solitaire?! Who you say you 'loved'?"
Ouch. That's quite a burn.
Shaking with anger, Kong growled, "I'll catch the bastard sooner or later anyway!"
"You won't catch anyone!" Francis countered. "Do you really think he'll someday find you and beg for your forgiveness?"
"I was just joking." Kong mumbled.
"I don't care. What I do care about is that the killer doesn't have the same sense of humor as you or I."
Pascal took over, "Francis and I looked over the computer data, and have discovered something: the murderer hasn't claimed seven lives…but rather four hundred and fifty!"
Everyone in the room gasped in horror. Even Sophia, who hadn't been around when they made the discovery, shuddered. Four hundred and fifty dead souls?! No wonder Jesaja's home is basically decorated with bones and corpses!
"These murders—these murders!" Pascal shouted briefly, silencing the crowd. "They are more than likely connected to the ghastly secrets of the criminal Preterius's laboratory long ago. Horrible experiments were conducted on many of you, though you may not remember it."
Looking around, Sophia noticed a lot of the chattering cats had some sorts of disfigurements or scars. Looking to her left, she noticed Bluebeard examining his mangled paw with a thoughtful expression. She patted his right paw with her own left paw, smiling sympathetically.
"Quiet!" Kong yelled, silencing the crowd. "Haven't any of you wondered exactly why a lot of us crawl or hobble around the neighborhood like wrecks?! So, be quiet, and let him continue! Perhaps he can present us with the murderer."
"No, I'm afraid I haven't drawn that conclusion yet." Francis shook his head. "But I may be able to reveal some truth." He glanced among the crowd, continuing, "I know a great many of you, fellow brothers and sisters, pay homage to the passed Claudandus, who suffered the worst torment in Prof. Preterius's labo—"
"He didn't die." A small voice said.
Everyone in the crowd turned to a small, light-gray female cat with pretty light-green eyes. "And why do you think that?" Francis asked.
"Great-Grandfather told me so." The young cat said.
"And who is your great-grandfather?"
"Father Joker." She answered.
Francis's ears perked up curiously. Sophia glanced at Bluebeard in surprise, who shrugged. "Tell us more, please." Francis said.
"He told me that Claudandus escaped and challenged the monster to a fight, and won, killing him." The small cat continued.
After a brief pause, Francis said, "My friends, the only one who could tell us what Claudandus looked like, and could lead us to him, is Joker. But Joker is dead—"
"Gone!" Pascal interrupted with a surprisingly harsh expression. He turned to the confused crowd and continued, "If you ask me, Joker has assumed the identity of the prophet. Claudandus is dead. No one could have survived such torture, I assure you. But Joker lives, and has run. Thanks to brother Francis, his sinister plans have been foiled!"
Sophia scowled at Pascal. Not because he gave sole credit to Francis; she no longer cared about that. It was because he had been so quick to blame Joker on the deaths that it made her suspicious. Especially with the story the young cat had told them. If she knew anything about children, they believed anything their family told them. After all, why would Joker lie to his great-granddaughter? Unless what he told her was the truth. In that case, we really need to find Joker and get this mess straightened out.
Shaking his head, Francis leapt off of the generator and left the room, followed by Bluebeard and Sophia. "Bluebeard," He whispered as the other cats passed them by. "I want to go to Joker's house. I know you already searched it, but I feel that Joker couldn't truly have left. Something happened to him."
Sighing bitterly, Bluebeard said, "All right, I'll take you there later."
"I already told you two I searched the place, bottom to top." He later said when he, Francis, and Sophia arrived at Joker's house.
"Exactly!" Francis said. "You were always looking up. You couldn't see the top of the shelves."
"Too lazy to climb, Bluebeard?" Sophia chuckled.
He simply rolled his eyes with a grunt, leading them to the doorway he had used to previously enter the house. But now it was boarded and nailed shut.
Pawing at the boards, Bluebeard asked, "What now?"
Looking around, Francis spotted a tall tree, with strong branches near the roof of the house. "Well, I guess we'll have to do this the hard way." He sighed, approaching the tree.
"Shall I climb instead?" Sophia asked. "I think without my fur, I'm a bit lighter in weight. Besides, I've climbed trees numerous times in my life."
"If you'd like." Francis shrugged.
"Just don't fall." Bluebeard said.
"I'll try not to." She smiled. Taking a deep breath, she began climbing up the tree, digging her long claws into the bark. She gasped when her paw slipped.
Down below, Francis and Bluebeard gasped as well. The Manx groaned worriedly while the black and white tom watched the Sphinx closely, ready to pounce and cushion her fall in case she slipped and fell.
She soon made it to the thickest branch that also lead to the roof of the house. She hugged the branch and inched along it like a caterpillar. Unfortunately, the snow made it slippery, and she screamed as she slipped off, barely managing to grab the branch with her front claws.
"Soph!" Bluebeard exclaimed, jumping to his feet.
Francis held a paw in front of him and yelled, "Are you all right?"
"Piece of cake!" She scoffed, climbing back onto the branch. "I'm all right!" Under her breath, she mumbled worriedly, "Oh, I'm gonna die." As soon as she was sure she was secure, she glanced at the ground, gulping nervously when she saw how small Bluebeard and Francis were on the ground.
Taking a deep breath, she ran along the branch and leapt onto the roof, sighing heavily with relief when she sank into the cold snow. She found a window that looked inside, covered with frost. Wiping it away with her paw, she peered inside, finding a room full of china and statues of cats. Among them on the top shelf, curled up, was Joker. From what she could tell, his throat had been slit, and his blood coated his chest and forearms, and dripped on the shelves and pottery around him.
"Well?!" Francis called from down below. "What do you see?"
Sophia turned around and poked her head out from above the roof to see Francis and Bluebeard. "You were right, Francis. Joker was murdered. But this one was different: he allowed it."
"You mean he was executed?" Bluebeard asked.
"But why would Joker have allowed himself to be killed?" Sophia wondered out loud, climbing back onto the branch. "What secret did he have to keep and take to the grave?"
"Claudandus!" Francis exclaimed. "His great-granddaughter was right: Claudandus is still alive!"
"How're you gonna get back down, Toots?" Bluebeard asked Sophia, who was against the trunk of the tree by now.
Thinking briefly, she smiled, "Easy. Easy-peasy." She sunk her claws into the bark of the trunk, and began slowly climbing backwards and down the tree. About halfway down, however, her hind feet, which had merely been braced against the tree, slipped. With a scream, she fell all the way down and into the snow.
Francis and Bluebeard ran to her. "Are you okay?" Francis asked.
Sophia poked her head up and shook the snow off. "Like I said, easy-peasy."
"Yeah, 'easy-peasy.'" Bluebeard scoffed. "Ya almost gave me a heart attack!"
"I didn't mean to slip several times." She shivered as a breeze blew by as she stood back up.
"Let's go back to my house and regroup." Francis suggested. "We could get warmed up, food, and try to think."
"You had me at 'food,' Smartass." Bluebeard remarked, following Francis away from the house.
"Surprise, surprise." Sophia shook her head with a smile, following the males closely.
A/N We're getting close to the ending. I'm still figuring out how to write the ending. Like I said, I want to write Sophia into it, but I don't really want her replacing Francis's part in discovering the villain, since I'm afraid people would find this cliche and mary-sueish. Plus, though I didn't say before, I also want Bluebeard more involved in the final part than he was in the movie. He wasn't even as involved in the plot in the book as he was in the film.
Like I also said previously, I wanted to involve the mystery cat some more, who finally has a name. Mirage1234 suggested Chrochoch, who was a canon cat in the book, though wasn't mentioned much, to my knowledge. I haven't read the book the movie was based on, though I wouldn't mind reading it someday. I figured it would be interesting that Chrochoch (which, according to Google Translate, is pronounced kreh-chotch [you can click the volume button in either translation/translated box to hear how it's pronounced]) would show some interest in Sophia, like how Nhozemphtekh potentially did with Francis. Unfortunately for him, Sophia's not interested.
Even though I don't want Sophia replacing Francis during the climax of the film, I figured it wouldn't hurt having her climb the tree to investigate Joker's house instead of him. Plus, Bluebeard technically reacted the same way to her climbing as he did to Francis originally climbing, minus yelling Sophia's name, of course. BTW, her answer to Francis when he asks if she was okay while she was climbing the tree was borrowed from Ice Age.