A/N: You honestly think I'd kill Mistoffelees? .:shakes head:. Sss...

Thirty-One: Explanation

Joanna made a sound, something between a gasp and a sob, and she was not alone. The students that had seen what had happened screamed, and in the next moment the battle had started.

Ekwy, looking every inch as shocked as the others, waved her toasting fork at the mirages, but the weapon merely went through them without causing any long-term damage. She and Gecka leapt into the mission of getting the other Jellicles away from the scene as quickly as possible, but that was much harder than it appeared. The mirages were suddenly everywhere, circling the canons that tried to back away but also seemed hypnotized by the light. The mini-Pollicles tried to bite them, but there was no point as their teeth only sank right through them. Instead they whined and backed away uncertainly.

Misty stared at the Headmaster. "Did you know this would happen?"

"I did." His voice was calm and collected.

"Then why didn't you do anything! They're, they're..."

"Dying?" The Headmaster looked at her in surprise. "Is that what you think is happening?"

Joanna felt tears prickling her eyes. The conversation around her was growing faint. She stared at the fallen Mistoffelees and reached out to touch the mirror's cold glass to try and wake him up, before she realized that it was only a window to make her see other than the real thing.

She had not noticed she'd been rocking back and forth in her unability to understand what was happening until the Headmaster placed an aged hand on her shoulder. It smelt strongly of tobacco.

"Do not worry," he said. "They are not dying. I take care of mine."

"Then what is happening?" asked Misty and flinched as Tugger fell to the ground.

"They are being upgraded."

There was a pause as Joanna and Misty looked at the mirror, and then at each other, and then at him.

"What?" they both said at the same time.

"They are being upgraded." The Headmaster lit a new cigarette. "Would you like to hear the explanation for all this?" He caught their worried glances at the mirror and added: "Not to worry. Your little friends will not be hurt more than we can make right again. There is nothing you can do at the moment. This must happen. If it was to be stopped, the strain on this world would rip it apart."

"Then I... I suppose we'd like to hear it," said Joanna. She was still trembling from the shock at seeing her Lust Object fall. "But shouldn't miss Minnaloushe..."

"Miss Minnaloushe will hear it in due time. And I trust you will spread the story?"

They nodded simultaneously.

"Very well, then." He leaned back and blew a smoke ring. "I trust you are familiar with computers? Of course you are, how foolish of me. If you hadn't, you wouldn't be here." He shook his head at himself. "I'm growing old. Now. These mirages, they are nothing more than... programmes, I guess you might say. They contain new information that the Jellicles must have, information hailing from even the smallest High School performance of Cats. They are the small changes in canon. Do you understand?"

Joanna and Misty nodded again.

"When a canon is upgraded the changes tear a lot on the fabric of reality," the Headmaster continued. "The crossovers were taken here, not to fight as many thought, but as a side-effect to the arrival of the mirages. I think that they might also have softened the impact on this reality. Since there were so many of them, the junkyard was affected just enough to let the mirages through."

"And the quakes?" wondered Misty before she could stop himself.

"The mirages way of making certain we knew they were coming. A knock on the door."

"What's going to happen to Misto?" asked Joanna and blushed a little. "And the others too, I mean."

"They will awake in a few hours, perhaps a little bit wiser." The Headmaster chuckled, which soon turned into a cough attack. "But you needn't worry. They are perhaps more alive now than they have ever been."

"Good." Joanna took a shaky breath and looked into the mirror again.

The crowd of mirages, before a thick silvery cloud of mixed features, had now thinned out noticably. So had the number of Jellicles still standing. To their girls' surprise many crossovers had disappeared as well, apparently no longer needed now that the mirages had successfully crossed over to OFUC. Miss Minnaloushe was still only half aware of what was going on around her, but Kihr had hurried up to her and tried to help her the best he could. The Agents were still trying to fight, alongside with most students, but it was more and more despairingly as they noticed that what they did had no effect whatsoever on the mirages.

"It is over soon," said the Headmaster.

The three watched as the last mirage made the last Jellicle faint. There was a long moment of silence.

"What do we do now?" asked Poe, looking at the Agents.

Ekwy, who was breathing heavily as she was exhausted from the battle, ran up to Munkustrap and felt his pulse.

"He's alive," she said, and Joanna could hear the relief in her voice. "Good. Okay. It will be okay now." She stood up, a new look of determination on her face. "Listen up everybody! Is anyone hurt?"

Around ten students that had been thrown aside in the same way as miss Minnaloushe but not nearly as hard, let their voices be heard. Ekwy quickly took inventory of the damages. A few of them were disoriented and seemed lightly concussed. Indes had been bitten by a confused mini and her bleeding hand would probably need stitches. Otherwise the injuries seemed to be bruises and cuts, in various degrees of seriousness.

"All of you unhurt, help me carry the canons and miss Minnaloushe to the infirmary!" Ekwy called out and gave the fic-writers a warning look. "And if anyone tries to cop a feel on the Jellicles, trust me, I will notice. Move it out!"

The writers groaned and muttered curses under their breaths, which was a surprisingly normal sound at OFUC. It made Joanna feel calmer. As long at the students were complaining, things would be all right again.

"You should leave and help now," said the Headmaster. "The exit is right behind you."

Joanna and Misty looked up from the view in the mirror. They had almost forgotten they were not there themselves.

"Thank you," said Joanna. She was not sure why.

The Headmaster merely nodded. His features were impossible to read.

Joanna and Misty left the office through the door that had suddenly appeared behind them. It led out to a trash corridor near the junkyard and vanished after they had both passed through. They looked at each other, uncertain for a second. Then they hurried into the area and helped Lyra and Tabby to carry miss Minnaloushe.

The Agents had medical training and could manage well enough in tending the respective wounds of the students, but it was still a relief when Jennyanydots woke up a few hours later. She didn't seem too different, although there was a strange look in her eyes, as if she'd seen new things and had begun thinking about matters she hadn't paid much attention to before. Joanna caught her smiling to herself more than once as she helped disinfecting a minor cut on Snowie's leg.

The other Jellicles soon came after Jennyanydots and woke up. They were a bit more quiet than usual, even Etcetera seemed thoughtful, though that soon changed when Tugger decided to grace them all with his conscious presence. Then they recognized their little hyper fangirl again.

Miss Minnaloushe drifted in and out of conciousness. She had taken a big blow to the head and broken one wing, and it took her two days to fully come back. The first thing she did was asking about the canons' safety, and she relaxed visibly when she found out what had happened. She also made a short trip to see the Headmaster, even though Jennyanydots strongly objected to it, and when she came back she called for Joanna and Misty.

"I heard that he spoke to you two," she said as she sat up in her sickbed and let Jennyanydots fluff her pillows. "What did he say?"

Misty answered. "He just... explained everything to us, miss. Told us what had actually happened and why it had happened."

"How did you find his office?"

"We didn't, miss," said Joanna. "I think it... well, we wanted to find it really badly because we thought the Headmasters could help us with what was happening, and then we were just there."

Miss Minnaloushe opened her mouth to say something, but at that moment Jenny brought her her painkillers and she had to pause to swallow them.

"Thank you, Jenny. Now please, for Heaviside's sake, stop fussing over me. I keep telling you that I am quite all right now."

"It was a nasty blow, miss," said the Gumbie Cat sternly, "and I plan to keep on tending it, no matter how often you tell me you are fine. You may run things around here, but as long as you are in my infirmary, you answer to me."

Miss Minnaloushe looked a little annoyed at being spoken to like that in front of students, but gave up to Jenny's resolved face. Her attention snapped back at Joanna and Misty, who were both standing nervously by her bed waiting for her to say something.

"Our old Headmaster is a strange man," she said finally with a little strange half-smile. "Why he does some things I will never know. But I hope you two feel honoured that he spoke to you. He's usually very secluded and keeps to his office. Why he chose to bring two students there is... well, I'm certain he had his reasons." She moved slightly and flinched when she accidentally graced her broken wing. "You're excused."

"Why do you think we were allowed to speak with the Headmaster?" Joanna asked Misty as the two returned to their car. "I mean, he's a very important man... I'm pretty sure he only speaks to miss Minnaloushe."

Misty shrugged. "Maybe he was bored and wanted someone to talk to. Maybe he wanted to calm us down since we were so frazzled about what had happened to miss Minnaloushe. Maybe he had some other weird reason that is beyond our mere mortal comprehension. How should I know? What's important is that things are going to be okay now. Soon classes will start up again and we'll be back to normal."

"True. As normal as we can be." Joanna groaned as she remembered something.

"What's wrong?"

"Nothing, really. I just realized that with everything normal, we'll be back to impossible homework, long lectures and minis looking for every opportunity to chase after us."

"Wow. Where's an invasion of creepy ghost-like intruders when you need one?"

Joanna's prediction proved to be somewhat inaccurate. Of course the teachers were still trying to give them as difficult homework as possible (they blamed it on the recent events that had come in the way of schoolwork), and the minis were as snappy as ever, but still there was a certain... calm over the campus. The tension was released, and they could focus on other things. It was nice, for a change.

The students went back to their regularly scheduled lusting, which became apparent when February arrived. The faculty area was completely covered in heart-shaped cards, single-handedly composed love poems, and flowers. Karlitio tried to present Rumpleteazer with a box of chocolates, but the gift was hastily confiscated due to the danger it posed to the minis.

"Dogs must not eat chocolate," as Ekwy proclaimed with her mouth full of nougat. "Therefore we gracefully sacrifice the slimness of our hips and thighs to save the poor little dears. May I have the last marzipan?"

The snow began to melt away as the weather grew warmer. Soon Mistoffelees no longer had a need to keep up the protective shield over the classrooms, which he found an immense relief. He was too busy running away from spring-crazed fans to bother with it anyway.

Indeed, springtime had come to OFUC, or at least that was what the students wanted to think. They basked in what little warmth the scarce sunlight would give and eagerly went looking for spring signs between classes. To their delight wildwood windflowers and hepaticas began sprouting in the corners of the corridors, few in the beginning but soon enough to create what looked like carpets of white and blue flowers, that they had to tread carefully around so that they wouldn't crush anything. At first Kihr tried to weed them out to keep the university tidy, but he gave up somewhere around the beginning of March when they seemed to take over the entire campus.

"They'll probably freeze to death soon anyway," he muttered while glaring venomously at a group of daffodils. "It's too early for spring."

But OFUC was not like other places, and he was wrong. There were nights of frost, but the sun was resilient and refused to give way to the cold again. The flowers survived, and soon came the most clear sign of all that the winter was over: the students saw miss Minnaloushe take flight and ascend until she was nothing but a little black dot against a clear blue sky. Ekwy told them that it was an Ironwing tradition, the Spring Flight, and that now they could be sure of warmer weather.

Yes, life at OFUC seemed to be looking up, if it hadn't been for the lessons.