In other news: Writing bad Mungojerrie & Rumpleteazer accents makes Ekwy's brain hurt...
Seventeen: The Very Big Question
The smell wouldn't go away. That was the worst part, that she still smelled of strawberries even a week after the Incident. Joanna had tried everything to get it off, but nothing had made it better. If anything, it had helped the smell to evolve into something closer to a pink glow, radiating from her skin and clothes.
Fortunately, she wasn't alone with this. The "healthy, pink glow" came from a lot of students, and the campus air was thick with the sweet stench of strawberries. It was nose-numbingly strong, and almost all Jellicles, canons as well as students, walked around the area with large clothespins to block their sensitive noses from it. This made it somewhat difficult to understand what any of them said, so lessons became harder than before.
Mungojerrie and Rumpleteazer however were much too busy to be bothered by the smell. They had probably smelled worse thing in their burglering days, and cared little for the students' moans and groans.
"Hullo!" said Rumpleteazer cheerfully as the entire student body of OFUC slowly made their way into the Jellicle Junkyard for the weekly seminar. "Today we're goin' to talk about us! Isn't that great?"
Even though life at OFUC was considerably harder nowadays, most students perked up at this. They remembered the calico's promise at the first day of school.
They would finally get to know the answer to the most important question of all: Are Mungojerrie and Rumpleteazer siblings or mates?
They all hurried to sit down.
Rumpleteazer clapped her paws together. Next to her, Rumpleteaser and Rumpolteaser the mini-Pollicles did the exact same thing.
"All righ', first we want you to sit inna circle, an' then we can discuss the fabulousness of us!"
"C'mon now, we haven't got all day!" barked Mungojerrie. "Jerry, Jarry and Jerri, would'ya mind gatherin' them for us?"
Mungojerrie's three minis (he was obnoxiously proud that he had more than Teazer, but since having minis was generally considered a bad thing, no one actually knew why) barked merrily and ran off to bite the students in the behinds until they did what the Jellicle had told them.
They sat down in a wide circle on the ground, with the calicos in the middle and the five minis pacing calmly behind the students, to make sure that they were behaving.
"We're gonna play a li'l game, we are," grinned Mungojerrie. "'S called 'What Are They Sayin'? Teazer an' I are gonna say things to each other, and you're gonna guess what it is!"
The calicos sat down in the middle, turned towards each other.
Rumpleteazer went first. "'Ey Jerrie, whutcha doin'?"
"Oi'm sittin' an' watchin' them stars, they're shinin' broigh' tonoigh'."
"Alroigh', I wus jus' wonderin'. 'Ey, Jerrie?"
"Yeah, Teazah?"
"Whoy do we 'ave these outrageous accents?"
"'Coz we're Cockney, Teazah. An' some wroiters think tha' they hafta wroite us this way, or them readers won' unn'erstan' tha' i's us."
"Tha's silly."
They both turned to their students again, grinning.
"All righ'," said Mungojerrie again, no longer speaking in his heavily exaggerated accent, but more in his normal and rather pleasant-sounding voice. "Learn some moderation 'ere, people. Now 'ere are some pointers for writin' an accent that won't make your readers cringe." He cleared his throat. "One: If possible, use abbreviations such as 'hafta' instead of 'have to,' 'gonna' instead of 'going to' an' 'wanna' instead of 'want to.' Like so." He made a gesture to Rumpleteazer.
"'I wanna piece of Jennyanydot's mouse-cake," she said softly, sounding much like a stewardess, or one of those fabulous commercial ladies on TV. "I hafta steal some. I'm gonna do tha' now!'"
"Two," continued Mungojerrie as the students giggled a bit. "Stop puttin' 'o's into every single word. Jus' 'cause we're Cockney doesn' mean we should be bloody impossible ta understan'! Remember, doing that not only makes the text diff'cult ta read, bu' it's also hard to take ya seriously when your text's full of 'Oi'm a very noice Jellicle, all roight?' It disturbs the flow of the story, an' it gets hard to con'ntrate on the plot."
"Amen!" cheered Rumpleteazer, before remembering that she was supposed to be a cool and composed accent instructor. "I mean... Yeah. Exactly. Spot on. Your readers already know our accents. They don' need it to be shoved down their throats."
Mungojerrie grinned. "Now three. Letters to drop can be: T's at the end of the word..."
"'All righ', Macavity should show up abou' now...'"
"H's at the beginnin' of words..."
"''Ere's tha' rubber mouse I was lookin' for!'"
"The D's an' the G's a little as ya please." Mungojerrie smirked. "I wrote that rhyme meself."
The Mungojerrie Appreciation Club (which unfortunately, due to its abbreviation "MAC," was often attacked by Macavity's minis, since they went for anyone that had anything to do with their namesake) sighed adoringly at their Lust Object's superior rhyming skills.
"'I'm walkin, an' I'm talkin', an' I'm feelin' fine,'" said Rumpleteazer calmly, caring nothing about the foolishness of her brother/partner/whatever's fangirls.
"Yeah," nodded Mungojerrie. "Sooo... that's that abou' the accent. Moving right along to characterization. Now. Let's do a li'l exercise..."
Gamivair raised her hand. "Please... can't we know the answer to the question instead?"
Mungojerrie and Rumpleteazer simultaneously raised an eyebrow. "The question?" they repeated.
"If you're, you know, siblings or mates."
Rumpleteazer grinned slowly. "Ah. I suppose none of ya are gonna leave us alone until we tell ya?"
"We're not gonna leave you alone no matter what you do!" exclaimed Kara and Richard cheerfully from their places as close to their idols as possible.
Lately, they both had begun to stalk the calicos, perhaps in the hopes of becoming parts of the two-person group and steal things. Mungojerrie and Rumpleteazer were flattered of course, but so far Kara and Richard's attempts of becoming real "Horrible Cats" had failed rather miserably.
They didn't stop trying, though.
Mungojerrie sighed. "Fine. Jus' you remember, that things differ a bit from performance to performance, an' from actor to actor. Not two shows are alike, so you can't base canon on how Jellicles act in any of 'em. Let's just take up some things from that bloody DVD that so many of you lot fancy."
"Exhibit A," chirped Rumpleteazer and showed off her multi-coloured fur. "Our coats are very similar. Almost identical, in fact. This indicates us bein' brother an' sister."
"A very rare brother an' sister," added Mungojerrie snobbishly and grinned. "You know there's 3000 female calicos on every calico male?"
"Don' get cocky, Jerr," muttered Teazer. "No one likes a bragger."
"I do!" squeaked Chelshastin and blew a kiss to Mungojerrie. "I love you, Jerrie!"
Said Jellicle coughed politely as his minis head-butted the fangirl and began to chew happily on her feet.
"However," he said then. "Our coats are not the same in every production. I've heard that mine's darker than Teazer's in the US tour, indicatin' tha' we're mates rather than siblings."
"Nect thing," said Rumpleteazer. "We live in the same house in Victoria Grove. This is, combined wi' our similarities, evidence for us bein' siblings. What's more probably, tha' the fam'ly we live with kept a pair of kittens out o' the same litter, or tha' they just 'appened to buy two almost identical cats from two diff'rent places?"
"It could happen!" huffed Gamivair.
Teazer nodded. "Granted. It could 'appen. Again, these rules only applies when we look alike."
"You hold hands at the Jellicle Ball," pointed out Misty. She was sitting with her legs crossed, her tail waving lazily behind her. "And you snuggle up together a lot through the show."
Mungojerrie turned to Rumpleteazer. "These people really do remember ev'ry single detail, don't they?" he mumbled.
"Sorta tragic, really," agreed the queen. "But yeah, we do snuggle and hold hands. Not really signs of everlastin' love, bu' yeah..." She shrugged. "Ya can interpret things as ya like."
"I have a friend who played Mungojerrie in the Spanish version of CATS," said DemiGold proudly. "And he said that you guys were siblings."
The Jellicles shrugged at the same time. "Then, in that performance, by that director, we probably were," said Mungojerrie.
"Can't you just tell us, please?" begged Joanna and tried her best Jemima-look.
The calicos looked hesitantly at each other.
"Fine," said Mungojerrie, and told them.
"Ahh..." chorused the students, nodding amongst themselves.
"Well, that wasn't really a surprise," said Misty. "We should have been able to figure that one out for ourselves."
"Indeed you should've," agreed Rumpleteazer. "Now if we could get back to the characterization..."
She stood up, squeezed her way between Arakasema and Karlitio (both looked like they might faint out of sheer bliss from being so close to her) and went to pick up a pile of papers from the hood of the TSE 1. Then she returned to Mungojerrie's side.
"This is jus' for practice," she said, starting to hand out a sheet to each student. "We want ya ta write this text into somethin' tha' Jerrie an I would actually say, an' with a workin' Cockney accent. We'll go through it later."
There was a sudden burst of activity as the students frantically started to search for a pencil, and then a moment of serenity as they each received a paper and began writing.
Joanna looked at her paper.
"Hello, Rumpleteazer," said Mungojerrie. "What are you doing this fine day?"
"I am doing nothing, Mungojerrie," answered Rumpleteazer. "Did you want anything?"
"Well, I did find this lovely necklace in a charming little boutique at Oxford Street," said Mungojerrie. "I thought you might fancy it."
"Oh, that was very generous of you! I simply adore it!"
It went on like that for a bit. Joanna sighed and grabbed her pencil. It was going to be a long lesson.
"Get it!"
"Out of the way!"
"Stop pulling my tail!"
The pink pile of goo, now only about two feet tall and not as intimidating as it had been, gurgled something close to a laugh and dived into an old washing machine. There it resided, making a purring sound. The Jellicles following it (Alonzo, Tumblebrutus and Electra) stopped in front of the machine, tails lashing. The chase. It was all about the chase.
Alonzo dove forward and slammed the door shut, trapping the little Jellice Monster. "Gotcha!"
"Good work," panted Ekwy and stroked back a sweaty strand of hair from her face as she jogged up to the young felines. "It's a fast little devil, that one. Thanks for the help, guys."
Alonzo grinned. His eyes were still gleaming after the chase. "'S nothing. Now the problem's just how to get it out of there and back to the Twins."
"How did this one get out, by the way?" asked Electra curiously and tried to peek through the glass and see the Jellice Monster.
"No one knows." The Agent sighed. "It probably slithered out somehow. I doubt that the Twins would've let it go for a walk on its own. Not after the Halloween party."
Tumblebrutus nodded. "They're still embarrassed, huh?"
"They sent the killed students baskets of pink-removing shampoos and things," said Alonzo. "Dunno if it helped, but... Yeah, they're really sorry about the whole thing."
"Personally, I find it irresponsible to make a dessert come alive in the first place," muttered Ekwy and picked up a broken broom to see if she could try and poke the Jellice Monster with it until it came out by its own accord. "I really don't know how they did it, and I'm not sure I want to either. This little creep really freaks me out. I cannot for the life of me understand how Gecka can think it's cute."
The miniature Jelllice Monster purred contentedly and attacked the broom, breaking it in several places. Ekwy groaned and let go of the mauled cleaning equipment.
"I give up. It can sit there for all I care. I'll get the Twins to come and get it instead, maybe they know how."
She closed the door to the washing machine again, and then she sat down on top of it to take a breather.
A wind blew her right in the face, and she shivered and pulled her thin jacket tighter around her.
"We're going towards winter, all right," she muttered. "Bloody weather." She looked at the closest ball of blue light, which was growing stronger now that the nights had become so much darker. "I wonder how things will go once the snow comes."
"Ah, you probably don't have to worry about that," said Alonzo and shrugged. "Miss Minnaloushe'll take care of it. Or Mistoffelees will. One of the two will make sure that we don't freeze to death, or have to teach our classes in three feet of snow. Besides..." He smiled a little. "It never snows in London."
Oh, how wrong he was...
A/N: It's my birthday in two weeks. If you really want to make me happy, then I would love you eternally if you'd send me some fanart of OFUC. Come on, I'll even make a contest out of it! The winner gets a dance with his or her Lust Object in a later chapter!
I came up with some rules. They're in my profile. (And Mystitat, could you be a darling and put them up on the OFUC website as well?)
Answers to Reviews:
Tera Earth: Wow, that's a lot of questions... First, a huge resounding NO, no cat will fall in love with Joanna. She won't switch fandom, she's still into CATS. Hopefully she'll just write goodfic instead when she gets back home... She still has a huge crush on Mistoffelees, but you can be a fangirl without writing Mary-Sues with the poor tom. And the left-overs costume comes from "Casper, the Friendly Ghost." A very sweet movie, that.
Eponine: Hm. Sounds somewhat interesting... Let me know once it's up somewhere, I'd really like to take a look. :)
Korora: Yes, arrangements have been made so that the people at home won't wonder why their CATS fic-writing relatives and friends have suddenly disappeared. I'll get to that eventually, don't worry. And thanks for little Qmélie, she's adorable...
TamerianRaven: Unfortunately, you were one of the students that died. Terribly sorry about that.
all hail OFUC: :blushes:. Thank you very much. You screenname is teh spiff.
Roman de la Croix: Oh. Okay, then. .:puts a mop on her head and hold a puppet in one hand:.
Ratha Ryou Aree: Yeah, that's a little bit strange... But so what? Strange is good. :)
Jemima-luvah: .:purrs:. Loved that short story. So you live in the TSE 11? Fair enough. .:makes a note out of it:.