Seven: Maritza Chin Smaragde
Soon enough, Joanna found something resembling a routine at OFUC. It wasn't hard. As long as she didn't over-think things, as for example the fact that she was actually on the Jellicle junkyard with a bunch of fictional cats, she just had to keep in mind that she was also in a school. A school with a lot of extremely hot teachers, but still a school.
She found herself settling in rather nicely. After all, how many could say that they had actually talked to the Magical Mr. Mistoffelees in real life? (All right, so she hadn't exactly TALKED to him. She had squealed and thrown herself at him, but it was the same, basic principle.)
Over the following days, Joanna tried to concentrate on her schoolwork. She had never realised how difficult it could be to write fanfiction. On the other hand, she had never really cared much about her fics, just writing what came to her. Now she was forced to think more.
It was because of her hard work that she barely noticed that the first two weeks of term went flying by. It was by that time when something happened, something that would change the otherwise not-so-monotonous life at OFUC.
It was a Thursday when they first saw her. They were walking together, a whole bunch of students in a surprisingly good mood, on their way to Being the Villain I Am Not Misunderstood, the close study of Macavity, when suddenly an extremely beautiful Jellicle queen stood before them.
Richard, who was walking arm in arm with Kara Sakuya at the front, was the first one to notice her, and he stopped abruptly. This of course caused some commotion as the people walking behind them crashed into the pair, thus started to curse repeatedly. They however stopped right away as they saw her.
She was... well, gorgeous. Her fur seemed to shimmer in silver, a result of the black tip of each white hair in her long coat. Her eyes were huge and emerald green, and she looked at them with a mix of confusion and contempt.
"This is the Jellicle junkyard, right?" she asked, and her voice was as clear as silver bells, as melodic as the song of nightingales, each syllable beautifully pronounced and a delight to listen to.
"Yes..." said Tabis the Tabby slowly, frowning. "Err... Who are you?"
The strange queen struck a pose, as if a hidden camera was filming her as she spoke. "I am Maritza Chin Smaragde," she proclaimed. "I am the long-lost daughter of Old Deuteronomy, and I have returned to the Jellicle junkyard after many years of being separated from my family. I am in search of my true identity, and my true love!"
There was a pause. Someone giggled slightly. Another paled, and someone else simply looked extremely confused.
"We should go and get miss Minnaloushe," mumbled Zazzie as the pause had ended, her tail twitching slightly. "She'd... sort it out."
"Good idea," agreed Kara, and grabbed Richard. The two turned around and hurried away in search of the course coordinator.
"Eh," said Tabis, turning to Maritza Chin Smaragde once more. "So. Old Deuteronomy's long-lost daughter, you say?"
"Yeah," sighed the queen dramatically. "It was so tragic. I was abandoned as a small kitten by my mother, Grizabella. However, a kind old queen took care of me, and I loved her like the mother I never had." A tear trickled down her cheek, and she sobbed a little. "She died just a few months ago, and so I came here to..."
"Yes, you said. To find your true identity." Tabis looked at her companions. "What in Heaviside are we going to do with her?"
They didn't need to worry much, however. Maritza Chin Smaragde was quite capable of keeping herself busy. Once she had opened her mouth, there was no stopping her from talking.
"I am a Chinchilla Persian," she said snobbishly. "We're a very luxurious breed of cats. We're also called Silver Persians, because of our gorgeous fur. Don't you think it's pretty?" She didn't wait for an answer. "I think it's very pretty. But I'm not saying that just to make myself sound important, oh no, you will find me to be extremely modest. I am also sweet and kind and very caring. That's why all the toms adore me." She batted her eyelashes prettily at the small group of fanboys, mistaking their shocked stares for admiration. "Don't you, darlings?"
Nix - the Mistoffelees and Rum Tum Tugger fanboy - , exchanged an amused grin with Josh - the Skimbleshanks fanboy -, while the remaining guys (who actually lusted after the females of the show), blushed deeply and looked away.
"Too bad that I shall forever be faithful to my Mistoffelees," sighed Maritza. "Or Tugger. Or Munkustrap. I haven't really decided yet." She smiled sweetly, not hearing the growls from the gathered fans.
They would probably have attacked her for daring to speak that way about their Lust Objects (only they were allowed to say such things), but then Richard and Kara came back with miss Minnaloushe.
Following the course coordinator were two young women, both dressed in black. The oldest one, with wild brown hair thatw as mostly hidden under a blue beret, unsheathed her weapon, a toasting fork, and made her way through the crowd.
"Coming through, coming through!" she bellowed with authority. "The PPC official business. Outta my way!"
The younger, who had dirty blond hair and was waving a carving knife dangerously close to Jessedandle's face, started glaring at the fic-writers, one after the other. Joanna noticed that Chelshastin was squirming, as if uncomfortable, but the girl said nothing.
Joanna was fairly certain that she knew those two young women. They were Ekwy and Gecka Fields, Agents for the PPC (whatever that was), and they were holding the GrammarBootCamp at OFUC. She still didn't know exactly what GrammarBootCamp was, since there still had been no notice of how or when it would happen. She had over the past two weeks received it as a punishment five times, and still there had been no word from the administration. With a little luck they had forgotten all about her, but Joanna was too jaded from previous experiences at OFUC to know that its staff rarely forgot anything involving the punishment of students.
Ekwy, having made her way over to Maritza, now grabbed the queen's paw and calmly poked her hard in the arm with the toasting fork.
"Ow!" howled Maritza and glared at the Agent. "Hey, what's your damage?"
Ekwy, ignoring her, inspected the wound, and then turned her head to look at miss Minnaloushe. "No blood," she reported. "Just this glittery stuff. It's a Sue, alright."
"Fabulous," replied miss Minnaloushe, with the tone of voice that clearly said that someone was going to suffer for this. "A Sue at my University. Fantastic."
"You took the wrong turn on your way to the junkyard, didn't ya, poppit?" Gecka cheerfully called out to Maritza Chin Smaragde. "Mistake!" She grinned widely and then returned to glare at the students.
"You want to take her out, miss?" asked Ekwy politely. "It's your place, after all."
Miss Minnaloushe smirked. "It's been a while since I killed something..." She sighed. "Alas, I'm not permitted to. When I decided to become a course coordinator, I promised to stop killing things. It wouldn't look good on a resume, you know. Besides, it is your job. Stealing it from you would be such bad form indeed. Please, you do it."
Ekwy shrugged. "You're the boss." And she reached out a hand, placed it on Maritza's head, and with a twitch of her shoulder she snapped the Sue's neck.
Maritza fell to the floor with a thud, and the closest students shrieked and backed away. Ekwy bent down and pulled up the dead Sue, throwing her over her shoulder.
"I'll give it to the Rumpus Cat," she mused. "The mini-Pollicles are going to get a little treat tonight!"
"Splendid idea," said Gecka, who had stopped with her Glare O' Death. "And now I need some assistance."
Miss Minnaloushe looked at her students, her wings raising up in the air behind her head and their shadows seemingly engulfing the cowering fic-writers. "Now," she said silkily. "Which one of you did it?"
"I tried my patented glare," sighed the younger PPC Agent. "But I get the feeling that you are so much better at that than little 'ole me. So knock yourself out, with all due respect, miss."
"One of you did it," purred miss Minnaloushe, not noticing Gecka. "And I will find out. Sooner or later. You're making it worse by holding it secret to me. Come on now. One of you wrote a Mary-Sue, even though you KNOW it is forbidden here. So, which one of you REALLY disappointed me?"
"She's dangerous when disappointed," Ekwy informed them gleefully. "Not that she isn't always, but you know what I mean."
It was eerily quiet. Someone shuffled their feet, but no one dared speak up.
"Very well," said miss Minnaloushe and smiled it that creepy way that always made Joanna very, very nervous. "I'll just have to get the Twins, then. They'll see right through you in a second. Every little, tiny thing in their brain, every embarrassing detail of every humiliation in your life from the day you were born until now, they will see. And they will tell me, and I will write a looong article about it, and it will be in the next edition of The Junkyard Lantern. Trust me on this. There will be no mercy for the little fic-writers." She looked over the crowd, who had paled miserably.
Joanna noticed Chelshastin, who was trembling all over. Her face was basically green with terror, and she looked like she was going to be sick.
Miss Minnaloushe's steel-grey stare landed on the girl and her eyes flashed in red for the flicker of a second. "Ah," she smiled. "There you are."
Chelshastin squeaked like a trapped rat as the course coordinator towered over her, seemingly growing to twice her original length. A finger, slightly greyish in colour and with a blood-red nail that mostly resembled a claw, shout out and tickled the fangirl's throat ever-so-slightly.
"So, miss Chelshastin," smiled miss Minnaloushe. "Did you by any chance have a partner in crime?"
The girl swallowed, her eyes darting around the place as if trying to get help from her classmates. They were much too scared of doing something.
"Yes..." she whispered finally, her voice shaking.
"I thought so." The finger with the claw-like nail was withdrawn, and Chelshastin could again breathe. "These things always come in pairs. So, my dear one, do you want to tell auntie Minnaloushe who your friend is?"
"Brz."
"Sorry, I didn't quite catch that."
And then, something snapped inside the poor fangirl. "Brize!" she howled. "We wanted to write something good for the Lantern, miss, and we got this idea for a fic, and we wrote it down, and how were we supposed to know that it would come true? Things don't usually happen after you've written them down!" She looked pleadingly at the course coordinator. "And then that, that THING just showed up! We didn't mean anything by it, miss! It was just something silly that we thought up, we'd never ever even put it up on the 'Net if we had written it back home!"
Brize, the mentioned partner in crime, ran up to stand by her friend's side. "It's the truth, miss!" she said seriously, even though she was also pale as death. "We meant nothing by it, we promise!"
When the two despairing fangirls had quieted, and their cries had subsided into slightly hysterical sobs, miss Minnaloushe cleared her throat. Joanna saw that there was something in her eyes that hadn't been there before. A look of... pity? It was something like it anyway.
"Well," she said. "I am very pleased to hear that you are sorry for what you did. Yes."
She seemed at loss for what to really say, it was as if the air had gone out of her. She definitely didn't tower over the students anymore, which was a relief. However, seeing miss Minnaloushe without words was almost as scary as seeing her royally pissed off.
She cleared her throat again. "There will be... reckonings for it even so," she said. Her voice was slow, as if she weighed every word before saying it. "Detention. For both of you. First with the Rumpus Cat and the minis for a week, and after that you will be writing lines with Old Deuteronomy. A thousand times: "I Must Not Write Mary-Sues." Yes. I think that will do."
And with that, miss Minnaloushe turned and walked away majestically.
Ekwy hoisted up the body of Maritza Chin Smaragde and gave the fic-writers a nod. "Congrats, you two," she told Chelshastin and Brize. "She hasn't been this quiet for a long time."
"Not since she got the job," Gecka informed them. "She was way quiet then. For a week, I think. They're like that, her people. They think things through a lot."
"What is she, anyway?" asked Misty suddenly. "Miss Minnaloushe, I mean."
Ekwy smirked a little. "Weeell... Technically she shouldn't exist yet. She belongs in this continuum just as much as you guys do. She's an Ironwing. Her story hasn't been told yet. Perhaps one day it will be." She gave her sister a nod. "Gecks, come over here and help me with this stupid corpse. It keeps slipping."
Gecka chuckled, and thereby breaking the mood. "Sure thing, sis. See you guys at GrammarBootCamp soon enough."
The Agents left with the body, leaving the fic-writers alone to think about what had been said.
They didn't get the chance to, though. For merely seconds after, Macavity's minis (he had three now) came running up to them, their eyes blazing and teeth glinting dangerously.
"We're late for class!" wailed Ralli. "Macavity's gonna KILL us!"
The students started running towards the classroom. Joanna groaned. Getting back to reality again really sucked.
A/N: Sorry if this wasn't as funny as they usually are... I'll try and do something about that.
Answers to Reviews:
Jemima-luvah: Different lyrics say different things about the spelling of "Heaviside." However, after a Google search, I have to say that Heaviside with an I seems to be the most common, and I also found it in a fair few dictionaries on the 'Net as Heaviside. I would say that "my" spelling is the correct one. Thank the Everlasting Cat... Otherwise it would have been very embarassing indeed. /
Ralli-Rah: Your review made me almost hysterical. I WANT TO SEE IT LIVE NOW! I want to travel somewhere where Cats is still playing, and I want to see it live. And then I want to see it again. Damn and curse the fact that I wasn't even born yet when it still went over here! Stupid Sweden.
Roman de la Croix: Ah, your question takes me back about a year and a half... I was a young girl (well, younger than I am now, anyways) and I had just recently discovered this wonderful thing called fanfiction and reead basically anything I could get my hands on. I didn't care if it was good or not, I was just so relieved to have found something that I could amuse myself with while waiting for the real thing to come out. This was in the Harry Potter fandom, a place which is unfortunately drowning in Mary-Sues as we speak. Type. Whatever. So, one day I stumbled across a story called "By My Side," a blatant Mary-Sue with little to no regard for canon, multiple punctuation errors, and Improper Use of Capitals. I read it, and I ADORED it. I wasn't very picky back then. How the hell was I supposed to know that the main character was the spawn of Satan and the author was an idiot?
Not very long after that, I found the PPC. I learned about Sues, and was so embarassed when I saw what I had loved so much. So, to rid my self of the humiliation, I started to PPC things. The first one to go was of course "By My Side." It felt nice.
When I later met and fell in love with Cats, I read a parody story by Eunike about a Mary-Sue. It was bloody hilarious, so I decided to try it on my own. It worked out rather nicely, don't you think?
Zazzie: I recieved your enrollment, just so you know. My e-mail is a bit weird, so I can't e-mail addresses ending with aol dot com. Why? My e-mail don' need no stinkin' reasons! So anyway, I got it, and you're in. Just wanted you to know, just in case you didn't spot your cameo in this chapter. :)
.:hands out Jellice to all her reviewers:. There you go, my pretties!