Nine: To the Heavyside
The first problem the fic-writer faced the following day was the fact that Nix flat-out refused to get on the Floating Tire.
"I'll fall down!" he insisted. "No way! No way times infinity!"
"You won't fall down," promised Lolita, a fellow slasher, and tried to pry his fingers away from the washing machine that he was desperately clinging to. "We'll hold on to you, won't we?"
"Of course!" said Misty, and Joanna nodded eagerly.
They threatened with getting miss Minnaloushe, also something that Nix was afraid of, and for a moment the fanboy pondered what exactly he feared the most. Then he decided that the Tire probably couldn't use him for target-practice when throwing feather-knives, and thereby closed his eyes and allowed Lolita to escort him up on the black rubber-wheel.
Agent Gecka Fields sat comfortably on one side, wearing a blue stewardess hat and smiling brightly.
"Welcome to Jellicle Airlines," she fluted. "We hope your journey shall be a pleasant one, and that no one falls down from the Tire and hits the ground and cracks their heads and that their brains won't make a terrible mess aaall over the junkyard."
Nix whimpered. Josh patted him absentmindedly on the shoulder. Gecka's smile widened a little, a slightly disturbing sight.
"Unfortunately, no canons will join us on this little trip," she continued, still with her perky stewardess-type voice. "They are busy rejoicing at the sight of their junkyard without its students. I think that they are planning a small party this afternoon, while you're away."
The class groaned at these news. They would much rather have stayed and attended that party. The eyes of a few of the Mistoffelees fangirls glazed over at the thought of seeing their beloved Misto dancing, and then they sobbed slightly when they remembered that they wouldn't see it. Life was indeed extremely unfair.
"Where are we going, anyway?" asked Karlitio.
Gecka raised her eyebrows. "Didn't miss Minnaloushe tell you?"
"No," mumbled the students.
The young Agent was about to tell them, but at that moment the course coordinator showed up. She smiled courtly and gave them a nod.
"Good, you are all here," she said. "Now. Do any of you know where we're going?"
The students all simultaneously shook their heads.
"Marvellous," said miss Minnaloushe. "Then we'll make it a surprise. Old Deuteronomy, if you'd be so kind?"
She looked at the old cat, who was standing right next to the Tire. He nodded at her, and raised his arms up in the air.
And the air brought memories of a song with them, a song that was echoing through the junkyard and into the hearts of everyone living there. "The mystical divinity of unashamed felinity..."
Slowly, the Tire started rising. The students murmured amongst themselves, hurriedly clinging to the sides of the Tire so that they wouldn't fall off. (The students that is. The sides of the Tire were rather firmly attached to the... well, the rest of the Tire.) White mist formed out of nothing, nearly blinding them. It wasn't unpleasant, just strange.
Soon, the junkyard had vanished beneath them, hidden by the swirling mist.
"Guys?" mumbled Joanna nervously. "You think we're going to the... Heaviside or something?"
"Almost!" called out Gecka cheerfully. "But you're still wrong. Have you seen a gigantic paw coming out of the sky yet? No? Well, then it ain't the Heaviside."
It started to get colder now, and the students huddled together to keep warm. The Tire floated higher and higher up, and the mist grew even thicker. Soon, the students couldn't even see the people sitting opposite them. The world had turned into a cool, white fog.
"Don't worry," they heard miss Minnaloushe's stern voice say from somewhere next to them. "It is only temporary."
It was. Not three minutes afterwards, they broke through the clouds and were looking out over a magnificent landscape of fluffy white overcast. The sun was shining brilliantly as it rose, colouring this foreign world in a golden autumn. It was a wonderful sight, although the crispness of the air made the students shiver with cold.
"We'll be there soon," said Gecka calmly, looking over the clouds with something dreamy in her eyes. "It will get warmer then. No point in letting you freeze to death, is it?"
Joanna, who was squeezed in firmly between Misty and Eclectica, didn't mind the cold that much. Both her neighbours were Jellicle students, and their fur stopped the worst of the chill. She wouldn't mind it if they would get there soon, though.
About ten minutes of flying later, the Tire stopped in the middle of the air. It was sudden, as if it had hit something invisible.
"And we're here!" announced miss Minnaloushe. "All right. Get off the Tire in pairs; I don't want anyone falling down. Once you get off, please remain calm. Don't go running off somewhere, you hear?"
"Yes, miss Minnaloushe!" the students chorused.
"Good. Now off with you!"
Joanna took a firm grasp of Misty's paw-like hand and hold onto it until her knuckles turned white. She really didn't want to fall. The pair jumped off the Tire and found that they were standing on solid ground, even though they couldn't see it. They could see the clouds whirling around in their eternal dance beneath them, but it was as if they were standing on a glass-floor. However, they didn't much feel like running around to explore this new world.
When everyone had jumped off, miss Minnaloushe arranged them in a neat line with herself at the front and Gecka at the back, and they began to walk. The surroundings changed for every step. The clouds whirled around, forming strange shapes that collapsed within a second to form others.
An odd sort of archway formed in the air in front of them. The closer they got to it, the more solid it appeared. Soon they saw that it was closed with heavy wooden doors, coloured in a eye-hurting shade of purple. Next to the archway stood a desk in green marble, and behind the desk stood a Jellicle. Her fur was light pink, her eyes were cerulean, and her smile almost hysterically wide.
"Welcome to the Heavyside Layer!" she chirruped happily as the students came closer and gathered around the desk. "Keeping deceased CATS Mary-Sues since 1981! How can I help you?"
Miss Minnaloushe, who's eye was twitching ever so slightly at the sight of the Secretary, spoke up: "Good morning. We are from the Official Fanfiction University of Cats, here for a school trip. I believe that we had booked a tour of the place?"
"Certainly, ma'am!" said the Secretary, and it was a wonder that her face didn't split in two from the smile plastered on it. "Hold on just a minute!" She leaned over to press a button on the desk. "Mimosa, can you be a darling and come to the desk at once? We have guests!"
"I'll be right there!" came a voice from the apparent communication radio, and then there was a faint click.
The Secretary made a gesture at a cloud nearby, and it formed into a neat row of couches. "Please, sit down," she offered. "It will take just a second or two."
The students sank down on the couches. They were so soft that they almost sank right through them, and it took a certain amount of will-power to remain in a seated position. The Secretary smiled benevolently, but her eyes gleamed with glee. Joanna immediately felt a surge of loathing rise up in her throat, and she glared at the Secretary.
The pink Jellicle didn't seem to care very much. "Can I get you anything?" she asked kindly. "A cup of chocolate, perhaps? Tea? Coffee?" "No, thank you," said miss Minnaloushe shortly. "We don't want anything at the moment."
"Speak for yourself," muttered Misty in Joanna's ear. "I wouldn't say no to that chocolate..."
"Miss Minnaloushe probably knows what she's doing," said Joanna calmly. "I don't trust that secretary myself. She really creeps me out."
"I know what you mean," said Jessedandle. "There's something really... unreal about her. Like she's not really here."
"Bloody Suvian," mumbled Agent Gecka. "If she comes too close to me, I'll snap her neck, I swear to the Everlasting Cat."
Joanna felt a sudden relief that Gecka was, temporarily at least, on her side. The look in the Agent's eyes when she glared at the Secretary was intimidating, to say the least.
After a short wait, another Jellicle came out to them. Thankfully, she wasn't pink. Her fur was a bright ginger, and it was rather tufty and uncombed. She was tall and lanky, and the only real beautiful thing about her were her large, blue eyes. She smiled somewhat shyly at them.
"Hello," she said. "My name is Mimosa, and I'm going to be your guide through this place that they call the Heavyside Layer. If you have any questions, I'm the one to ask. So go ahead. Ask."
A number of hands shot up in the air. Mimosa looked confused for a second, and then nodded towards Jinzatti. "Yes?"
Jinzatti, a bluish black tuxedo with a black patch over one eye, cleared her throat. "Yes. I want to know where the hell we are, if it's not too much trouble."
A few students giggled, but quickly shut up when miss Minnaloushe gave them a Look.
Mimosa raised an eyebrow. "You are in the Heavyside Layer, silly. Or, technically, right outside it. The tendency you have to spell it 'Heavyside' created this place, and now it is where Mary-Sues go once they've died tragically. We have a whole bunch of them here, including the Secretary you met before."
"I have you know that I am a very original character!" huffed the Secretary, crossing her arms. "Everyone's always teasing me because my fur is naturally pink! Besides, you're totally a worse 'Sue than I am! At least I'm not the daughter of Macavity!"
Mimosa blushed slightly. "Yes, err... I was hoping that we wouldn't get into that." She cleared her throat. "Anyway. Any other questions?"
Jemima-luvah raised her hand. "Pardon me for intruding or whatever," she said hesitantly, "but I know I've seen the 'Heavyside' on copyrighted lyrics. How do you know that it's correct to spell it with an I?"
Miss Minnaloushe coughed. "Technically we don't," she said. "The two versions are both spread across fandom, but the I is most common. Since we don't know absolutely one hundred percent for sure, both names has a mini-Pollicle back at OFUC, even though Heaviside is a bit shy. You haven't seen him just yet. This place, the Heavyside, also has a neighbouring world, inhabited by... other things. You'll see what I mean soon enough."
Mimosa nodded. "Yes, indeed. All right, you lot, are you ready to walk inside?"
The students mumbled nervously amongst themselves, but nodded. The ginger Jellicle queen smiled kindly.
"Don't worry, you'll do just fine," she said. "Just keep away from the..."
"Hush, Mimosa," interrupted Gecka. "Let it be a surprise for them."
"Oh. Right. Well then, Secretary, could you be a sweetheart and open the doors for us?"
The Secretary smiled. "Certainly, my dear."
She pushed a large, pink button. The purple doors through the archway slowly opened... Before anyone could stop it or had even figured out what was going on, a small, sparkly thing came out from the Heavyside. It was hard to see exactly what it was since it zoomed around at the speed of lightning. It vaguely reminded Joanna of a fairy that she had seen in a movie once, except that instead of sounding like the gentle tink-tink of a small bell, the thing laughed a rather nasty little laugh.
It hold up for a moment, as if deciding which student it was going to go for. A heartbeat later it seemed to have reached a decision, and it went straight for Joanna. The thing flew right up to her, she could see its face with the delicate features and the fair hair, how it got closer and closer, how the petite mouth opened to reveal razor-sharp teeth...
She felt a brief sting as the thing bit her, and then a hard blow in the stomach as it rammed into her at full speed, knocking the wind out of her. Joanna gasped for air, she suddenly felt light-headed, and oh wouldn't it be nice to lie down for a while?
The fic-writer blinked sleepily. And then she fell, backwards and not very gracefully, down from the cloud and kept falling.
A/N: Yes, this is a plug to my other story: Father of the Year, where you can read about Mimosa. I am proud over her, so if it wouldn't be too much trouble, it would be nice of you to give it a looksie. :)
Answers to Reviews:
D0uble-Tr0uble: You're starting a OFU of your own? That's great! Let me know when you get it up, if you get permission from the Almighty Miss Cam, of course. :) Hopefully I'll know the fandom...
DemiGold: I am so stupid... I know that Jellicles hug! I know, I know, I know... So why didn't I write it? I'm a little less lenient about the kissing, though. Hugging, I can get, but kissing? No. There is just something wrong about that. Anyway, I'll try to think of something else that they Don't Do, and thanks for reminding me!
Mystitat: The pronounciation of "Ekwy" is... "Eck-wie." Sort of. I'm not really sure myself. ;) Neither the one or the other spelling is in Eliot's poems. Too bad, really. It would have settled the whole thing.
Lolita: Extra Jellice for finding the almost-Pythonism. :)
Airmid Star: Yes, I think I read that somewhere... Anyway, I know that green and red are a usual mix-up with colour-blind creatures, so I think my point was made anyway...
Eponine: I come bearing news from Mystitat. She says that you're welcome to post your fics on her website, isn't that nice? You can probably leave a little comment in her guestbook, and the URL to said site can be found in her profile. Good luck!
Jemima-luvah: Sorry that I couldn't do what you suggested. I really couldn't change this chapter, and I hope the explanation given by miss Minnaloushe will do?