Note- Toms can be very stupid. I don't own CATS. Long periods of writer's block plagued this part.

----

5

"Does it hurt if I do this?"

"Ow! Idiot, you just punched me in the arm!"

"Really? Does it hurt if I do this?"

"Ow! Plato?"

"Yeah?"

"You see the spots where it's gone all dark under the fur, kind of like a bruise?"

"Yeah?"

"Don't hit them!"

Plato sniggers. A few feet away, Bombalurina rolls her eyes back so far in her head it hurts just to look at it. Jennyanydots rushes in, throwing her paws up and telling Plato if he's not going to stop bothering her patient, would he please just leave her infirmary? This, for no reason apparent, causes both Plato and Admetus to crack up, and I, leaning on the wall, have to clamp a paw over my mouth to stifle a snort of laughter.

Bomby just sighs disgustedly and rolls over on the metal floor, muttering something about toms.

In the corner, the Tugger casts a sobering chill over everything, causing every cat in the oven to almost instinctively avoid glancing towards the back, where I had him put.

Later, the twins are going to come and look at him. It's possible their mind-magic, or whatever it is they call it, can do something for his apparent psychosis.

A thin straw. We're grasping at a very thin straw here, and we all know it.

The only one to really mourn for Mungojerrie was Rumpelteazer- the poor girl is still with Cassandra, confusing my girlfriend beyond belief, because she knows no more in the way of what to do for a hysterical teenager than I do.

Oh, not that we didn't feel it. It was sad, and I don't think anyone will be able to look at Rumpelteazer mooning along without her brother with a dry eye for a while, but almost no one really knew them, and even fewer trusted them.

Take Bomby. As far as I can tell, she used to date Mungojerrie (but is there any tom she didn't used to date?) and her only reaction to his death was shock, followed by anger. And it wasn't even new; it was her leftover fury from the death of Munkustrap. It seems to be her way of dealing with things.

"Does it hurt if I do this?" As Plato twists the bruise on Admetus's arm in a pinch, the other tom waves his paws up and bats his friend away.

"Stop it, dorkus!"

"I swear, if all you two are going to do is this all day, just get your visitor out of my infirmary, mister Admetus!"

Both of them open their mouths to respond, and I tune them out, drifting over to where Bomby lays on a blanket haphazardly spread over the steel, doing something like sulking. She doesn't notice me at first, because she's busy being disgusted with my friends, but after a minute, she turns to glare at me. There's force enough in that look to cause me to doubt my sanity briefly, and I'm fairly sure trying to hold that gaze is doom.

To look down, or not to look down? In the end, my instinct for survival takes over, and I drag my eyes to the scraped oven metal.

"Well, what do you have to say for yourself?"

I snap them up again, startled. "What do you mean, what do I have to say for myself?"

Her own eyes narrow. "I'm not going to say this is your fault, but you know, it could have been avoided if you'd actually been in the junkyard. You were supposed to be there anyway."

I've nothing to say to that, mainly because it's true, so I just stare, and try my hardest not to look down again.

"You know Munkustrap would have broken up the fight himself."

Saying the words, "I'm not Munkustrap," in the most level tone of voice I can manage, I turn to go, mainly because I don't know what else to say. Her voice follows me out, and still echoes in my mind as I lean on the oven just beside the door, then slump down to the dirt, letting my head loll back. For no reason, the urge to cry washes over me again, and I lean my head forward into my hands, fighting the ache out of my throat with every ounce of my willpower. Across from me, the broken car makes a yellow and red stain on the lightening haze of morning in the city.

Behind me, the oven's aluminum cave warps and twists the sound of Admetus and Plato being told off into something like an alien invasion.

A car whirrs.

A bird trills for the morning.

A shrill bark breaks the stillness to the west, but it settles back in like a cloak.

The stillness falls uneasily over us all, muffling the kittens, some of who are still sobbing, thrumming with anti-life, making the air heavy and slow and sad.

It creeps into the oven and settles over Demeter, Admetus, Bombalurina, Plato and even Jennyanydots, caressing the statue that is Tugger, seeming to say 'See? Look what has become of you...'

As the dawn inches into view above heaps of trash, this kitten finds it a fresh reason to cry.

"Mungojerrie" her voice trembles out a tune that suddenly sounds forlorn, "and Rumpelteazer... We're notorious..." it cracks, and then crashes to the ground. Though she squeezes her eyes shut determinedly, telling herself to be brave, a teardrop glistens sinisterly as it oozes its way out. Then one crawls from her other eye, slicking down her fur as it runs down her cheek, and another, and another, until there are just the tears, and nothing more.

How long has it been since I last ate or slept? Bast only knows. As the twins examine the statue that was Tugger, I pretend to stand still and at attention, but inwardly my stomach walls are slowly collapsing upon themselves, leaving a horrible empty feeling behind.

"-would be impossible without a total memory wipe."

Watching them move and speak kind of creeps me out, though not as much as a glimpse of the crazed, frozen statue that I constantly dodge my eyes around.

"Even if we could do that-"

"He'd have to learn everything again. Everything."

"From singing to walking to talking."

They are never in each other's way, avoiding the other like dancers. Each picks up the other's sentences perfectly, by way of something much stranger than mere intuition. She moves forward, he moves back. He moves right, she moves left. It's demented. And scary. All of a sudden I see why so many cats tend to avoid them, because they send chills inching up my spine.

"Alonzo? Are you listening?" Tantomile seems the most vocal.

"Of course." I'm listening. I wish I wasn't but I am.

A sigh escapes from Coricopat. "We wish it was not like this-" his voice is whisper soft, as if from disuse.

"-but it is." Hers is businesslike, reminding me of a school's principal, or maybe an especially strict teacher. "The kindest thing you can do for him is a quick, clean death." With that, she turns on her heel and walks, no, stalks away as if it bothers her to be in my presence. An apologetic shrug on his shoulders, he follows, and I find myself struggling to quell hate rising like bile in my throat.

Are they going to go tell the junkyard that Munkustrap's brother is gone too? Or merely leaving the job to me, and getting their clean, magical paws away from us common cats.

My lip curls up in a snarl, and I lean back against the outside of the oven for an instant, then flip, letting the feel of cool metal against my forehead batter my rising temper. I will keep calm. Probably.

She sits down dejectedly on the tire, tears still flowing like a river from her eyes. But like a bad silent movie, she makes no noise, merely flashes her saffron fur against the night... alone.

She wants to stop crying nearly as much as she wants to keep it up forever, and drown the junkyard, no, the entire world with her tears. Nothing is right anymore.

It's too cold. Icy winds she hadn't noticed last night blow right through her, freezing the kitten to the bone. It is evident that she is a kitten now, barely still one, but one nonetheless.

The night is blacker, sucking all emotion but emptiness up into its unforgiving void. The stars are duller, as though they are victims of the vacuum of dark, and the junkyard is forlorn, with few cats in sight.

Desolate. Empty.

All alone.

The inside of the oven is much warmer, shielded against autumn winds, and the little light that Quaxo made bobs happily up and down, giving everything a cozy glow.

The old Gumbie cat bustles around her patients, serving tea and bringing blankets, and on occasion, trying to engage the curled up form of Demeter in conversation to little or no avail.

She tries not to show that she's worried, with a determined smile lighting her face, but it doesn't reach her eyes, and her hand shakes as she changes the bandages on the pair she calls 'such brave cats'.

Bombalurina stares at the ceiling, and, occasionally, at her sister, a cloud of worry drifting in front of her own eyes. The only sound that the black and gold queen has made all night was a quiet moan when they brought the Tugger in.

Now she is a lump of fur in the corner, lying and facing the wall. She hasn't eaten since yesterday, she spit out the mouse that they gave her today, and the most motion they have coaxed out of her, was to pull the blanket that Jenny dropped on the floor beside her over her head, like a three year old hiding from a bogeyman.

Bombalurina's lips part in a barely audible sentence. "Keep living, sister."

And then her eyes begin to close drowsily, and her mind spins in circles until her consciousness melts away into the darkness of a dreamless sleep.

It's three in the morning, and I'm slumped against the oven, my eyes glazed over as I stare at the sky.

The sounds of the city are still unchanged, but I can no longer immerse myself in them. They and I are a separate world now, and their once comforting noise is distant and muted, as if heard through bulletproof glass. In fact, the entire world has gone blurry again, and I draw deeper and deeper into myself, away from the constant beat of traffic and humans and life going on but leaving me behind.

The noise I just let out is not a sob. It's a breath. A very ragged, sudden breath.

Trying to blink the blur from my eyes, I wonder where Cassandra is now.

(Should she go down to the junkyard? She doesn't want to. She wants to stay in her human's house, where it's safe.

To stay in the prayer room, kneeling before the great icy statue of Bastet.

And she would. But as she looks up at the cat goddess, and her elegant marble face is unchanged, uncaring, she feels terribly, terribly small and alone. In an instant, the universe she knew is flipped to a great, cold one that doesn't know or care if she lives or dies, and her heart turns to ice and drops into her gut.

Now, as she staggers out of her house, she heads for the 'yard, to find there the security her gods would deny her.)

Probably praying to her gods, safe and warm. I hope she finds the answers that she searches for with them. I can't imagine what she'd do without them. Or what I'd do without her.

In the darkness, he smiles.

The news has just reached him, and he couldn't be more pleased. It has worked. It has worked very well.

He stands up, and slivers of light slanting through slats of wood play over ginger fur, then nothing as he moves away from the room's only light source.

Wood creaks beneath his paws, marking his progress around the room.

All is well and good, then.

It would have been better, if he had thought of this initially, but simple revenge had been on his mind back then. But this is so much better.

He thinks of his agents, stalking the streets like shadows of the apocalypse. He thinks of the fate of Rum Tum Tugger, a touch he wishes he had thought of himself, but one that delights him nonetheless. The junkyard is weakening by the minute. Munkustrap, soft fool, could not have chosen a worse heir.

Still, it couldn't hurt to help things along. Especially if the idiot began to show signs of competence.

He extends his paw, and a spark flickers into life. A rough voice rolls out of his mouth, and the spark sucks it up like a vacuum. "Ombre. I have a task for you..."

The cat on the other end listens silently as this mad, sane cat unrolls the job he has thought up, then with a brief word of acknowledgement, sets out. The ginger cat's fist snaps shut around the spark, and in the darkness, he smiles one more time.

"Jenny?" Three fifteen. I want to be under the car, safe and learning once more to be one with the darkness. Instead, I'm running away from it like a child.

"Yes?" Her voice is cheerful enough to make me wince.

"Can all of the Jellicles be around here by," quick mental calculation, "four thirty? I need to talk to them."

"Certainly." She sounds so old, so quickly. "I'll go round them up myself, shall I?"

For a minute I stare, then the sarcasm in her tone cuts through my barrier of exhaustion and hunger, and I stammer out an apology. "I didn't mean that. I mean, I didn't, I can go, I just-"

"Shhhh." Gently, she hovers her paw over her mouth. "You'll wake the patients. Alonzo, you're asking the wrong cat, that's all. Go find-"

"Quaxo," I sigh, "right?"

Jenny raises both eyebrows. "Well, yes. It shouldn't be too hard, I think that he's still hanging around the junkyard. You know, in case-"

"In case someone needs him." Massaging my temples with my paws, I mutter some sort of thanks and stumble out of the oven, thinking about sleep.

Still angry for reasons that do not come to her easily, Tantomile stalks across the night. Her brother tries, but it hard-pressed to keep up the pace at which she walks, his own mind still rebounding with confusion.

When they reach the car trunk, she settles herself delicately in place, and closes her eyes, breathing in and out slowly. For once, Coricopat does not follow her example, but lets his eyes wander up to the heavens, taking in thousands upon thousands of shining stars.

At least they are always there. As long as there is a sky above for him to watch, and the earth below for his sister to tune into, everything will be alright.

As often happens, his breathing begins to slow, to match his sister's and the stars fuzz gently in and out, as she pulls him into her soft meditation.

He lets his eyes drop shut, to see what she sees, feel what she feels. Rust beneath her, air flowing around them both, whirling and dancing invisibly. Follow the nearest current on a whim, as it playfully dances in and out of countless wrecks, crushed bicycles, rusted appliances, wires and pieces of metal bent and twisted into shapes so alien that they become impossible to identify. But you can feel what they once were, because they remember. They remember very well.

Out the fence, down the street, into the alleys, into warehouses, where cats walk, fight, where shadows gather and people die...

As one, their eyes snap open, their heads whip around so that they stare each other in the face. Both of them know what the other knows, and both of them feel what the other feels...

(Fear.)

It's not a pleasant emotion.

Tantomile is the first to speak. "I'm going."

Almost instantly, he objects.

She counters.

Though they exchange words outwardly, most of their argument takes place on the inside, a clash of knowledge and feelings.

"If you go, I'm going with you."

"No, you're not."

She's already won the argument. Almost always, she wins. He struggles with this, but it's out of his hands, and he can't do anything about it. So he stops trying. Instead, he takes his sister's hands in his, genuine fear reflected in his eyes. "Be careful."

Both of them know what is left unsaid between the siblings who have been close enough since birth to be almost one. There is no need even to think it, and then she's gone.

(Are you tense when you sense-)

He watches her go.

(-there's a storm in the air?)

A kitten crawls out from under the car, and he doesn't even notice. In her way, she watches him curiously for a minute, as every hair on his body silently stands on end. It scares her, but she doesn't run, or even back away. Because she saw nothing and heard quite a bit, but this kitten thinks a lot about what she hears, and comes to her own conclusions.

"Coricopat?"

He doesn't move a muscle, not even to twitch. "What?"

"Is there a storm gathering?" Her eyes are kittenishly innocent, but a sparkle in them seems older than she could possibly be, and if he was looking at her, he would wonder what she was thinking.

Instead, he continues to stare and responds in a word, "Yes," though even a kitten can see that there is not a cloud in the sky.