A/N: Many thanks to Attila the Conqueror for letting me use her suggestions on what a plausiable Jellicle High might look.
Thirty-Two: The Good, the Bad and the Tugger
"Good morning," said the Rum Tum Tugger and waited for the excited squeals to calm down with a grin on his face. "Today I'm filling in for Skimble because he's away somewhere doing something very important that I couldn't care less about. He told me what we're supposed to talk about today, though, so pick up your pencils and take notes." He coughed to make sure all eyes were on him, which was a bit of a waste of time since the fic-writers had ben unable to stop staring at him the moment he walked into the classroom. "Today, we're going to discuss plotlines. Can anyone tell me something that you've read many times?"
Lu raised a hand. "Isn't 'How-Quaxo-Got-His-Powers' pretty common?"
Tugger nodded. "Indeed. This is not necessarily a bad thing. Everyone has their own version of how things happened, and the right to tell it. This is the case with many overused plotlines. Another one is the ever-popular 'Demeter-Gets-Kidnapped-by- Macavity-And-Munkustrap-Has-To-Save-Her-Because-She's-Just-Too-Much-Of-A-Sissy-To-Do-It-Herself.'"
The Munkustrap/Demeter 'shippers sighed dreamily.
"However," Tugger continued, "there are a few that you should really consider before sitting down and typing out your story. And the most common one of those is the plot not-so-affectionately known as 'Jellicle High.'"
He waited until the cries of outrage from the Jellicle High-writers had quieted down, and then he kept on going.
"The Jellicle High is as far as I've gathered a story taking place in an Alternative Universe where your favourite cats go to school. The adults are teachers and/or family members, and the kittens are students. And yours truly is the handsome jock who has a sordid affair with Miss Bombalurina, the new English teacher..." He licked his mouth as he pictured it and then shook his head. "No sorry, that was my idea. Don't write that down!"
He said the last part to Kristine and Chimalmaht, who had started to scribble down notes like mad. They blinked innocently at him and put down their pencils. Tugger returned to his lesson.
"The real plot of the Jellicle High is vague, if it exists at all, and the characters might as well have been cut out of cardboard. Now I have no idea how this trend started or which writer thought it was a good idea to begin with, but one thing is certain." Tugger tapped a claw against his desk. "And that is that the Jellicle High plotline is bloody near impossible to make something good of. It is simple writing for lazy writers that don't have any original ideas."
"Hey!" protested someone. "What's so wrong about Jellicle High?"
Tugger shrugged. "It serves no real purpose. You have simply taken the names of the Jellicles and pasted them on to two-dimensional characters that act out a scene from your local high school. What is the point? What are you trying to figure out?"
No one answered.
"I'm sure it's possible to make it an interesting read," said Tugger. "You just have to keep in mind that the Jellicles aren't humans, so they shouldn't act like them. What is a cat going to do with English Literature 101? Instead of Jellicles studying human subjects you can have them taking Dealing With Pollicles, Mouse Hunting 101, or How To Choose a Human Home. These things apply to cats. These things makes your story plausible."
He nodded seriously and paused to allow the writers to note this down. A few students rolled their eyes, while others looked embarrassed at their mistakes.
"I still don't get why we can't write them," muttered the person who had spoken before.
Tugger coughed. "Because it is not real fanfiction. The characters may be cats, but they act as far from Jellicles as you can get. If you want to write about teenagers and their wacky hi-jinx in school, then write about the Sweet Valley Twins instead. Leave the Jellicles alone, we don't deserve it. Thank you!"
To the delight of his fangirls the Maine Coon began to pace the classroom as he spoke. Joanna noticed how Eclectica leaned back in her seat as far as she could to admire Tugger's behind as he passed her and was caught by Charlicopat the second before she lost her balance.
Tugger pretended not to notice the commotion he caused, but he had a very smug grin on his face as he continued.
"Moving on. Now I'm going to give you a little exercise. Turn to the person next to you and try and figure out plotlines you've never heard of before. They can be anything. A pairing you've never read, whether it's slash or het, or a new situation you'd like to see the characters in. You may begin."
Joanna turned towards Misty, who was fighting to keep her eyes away from Tugger. "Hi there."
"Hellu. Okay, what do you want to start with? Pairings or situations?"
"Pairings are more fun." Joanna paused to think. "I think I'd like to see a story with... Cassandra/Alonzo. There aren't many of those." She wrote it down in her notepad. "All right, what about you?"
"Um, I don't know. Maybe something like... Jenny/Jelly slash. Wouldn't that be cute?" Misty grinned. "Just imagine, two older queens sitting together, they have both had relationships with toms in the past, and now they don't dare to really touch each other because they are afraid of what they feel, and what will their kittens think, and how will the tribe react..." She steadied her head in a paw and got something dreamy about her face. "They have to hide their feelings, even though it just tears them up inside, but they sit there, together, just enjoying the company and talking about stupid things like kits and Jenny's students and all the other problems going on at the junkyard. Lots of angsty inner monologues..."
"Misty..."
"I just want to be near her, hear her voice and her laugh, she feels so warm next to me. What can I do? What will they say? Does she feel this too? She must feel it, how can she not? It was never like this with..."
"Misty..."
"Everlasting Cat, is there even a word for this? The way she nuzzles up against me on really cold nights; I can smell her breath on my face and I know I hear her purring..."
"Misty!"
The Jellicle flinched and blinked. "What?"
Joanna nodded at the notepad. "You should write it down. It sounds really good."
"Hm? Oh. Oh yes. Of course." Misty looked a little confused, and then she shook her head. "Sorry. I guess I rambled a bit there. Jenny/Jelly slash. Angst. Got it." She underlined the word "ANGST" a few times and stared at it for a moment. Then she shook her head again and looked at Joanna. "Did you say anything?"
"No, nothing." Joanna frowned. "You okay?"
"Yeah, I'm just... Yeah. I'm fine. Just... a lot of ideas at once." Misty smiled weakly. "I've never experienced it quite so strongly before. Kind of a rush." For a second she looked worried. "You don't think there's a Jellcile about, do you? If it turned out to be a bad idea, it would really suck."
Joanna looked around, but didn't see any of the little winged critters about. "I think we're okay."
"Good." Misty returned to the exercise. "Any other pairing you can think of?"
They worked for the entire period, jotting down short summaries and bits of dialogue that they connected with the plots, and finally they had several sheets of paper filled with text. Then Misty took her pen and drew a stickfigure with cat-ears, whiskers and a tail in the margins while waiting for Tugger to talk again.
After having walked around, causing fainting spells and uncontrolled drooling wherever he went, Tugger returned to the head of the class.
"What you've just done is called brainstorming, which I'm sure a lot of you already knew," he said. "Your homework is to choose one of the plot ideas you came up with today and write a story around it. 3000 words at the most, 500 at the least, to be handed in next week. Class dismissed."
Very slowly, the class got up and left. Joanna basically had to drag Misty away from there, as did the friends of other Tugger Lusters.
They had a ten-minute recess before The Naming of Cats class started, which they spent looking through their homework. It was an entire chapter of Goethe's "Faust," where the demon Mephistopheles tempted a German scholar with everything he desired in exchange for his soul. It was not the lightest reading in the world, but the writers knew there would be a pop-quiz on it, and most of them really wanted to impress Mistoffelees, who of course was holding the lesson today. Therefore they sat in silence, reading as intently as they could.
That was why they were so surprised when they suddenly heard the sound of someone running towards them at high speed, shouting something in a loud voice as they approached.
It was Tumblebrutus. He paused for a second to catch his breath, and then he looked right at Joanna and Misty.
"You two better come with me," he said. "There's been some stuff going on at your car."
He wouldn't say anything else, so the two girls looked at their classmates in confusion, shrugged, and followed him back to the TSEs. There stood Ekwy, Admetus and the mini-Pollicle known as Damets, all three of them peeking in through the doors of number four with worried looks on their faces.
"What's going on?" asked Misty as soon as they reached the car.
"Damets was patrolling the area and noticed that you've only got one Jellcile on your premises," said Ekwy and looked sternly at them. "One of them has escaped. Have you been sloppy with putting the lid on the cage?"
"What?"
Joanna hurried to open the car door and look at the aquarium in the front seat. In her half of it sat Polly, who looked up without much surprise at Joanna. The other half was empty. Joanna looked at Misty.
"It's Alida," she said. "Yours is gone."
"That's not possible!" Misty was in such a hurry to see for herself that she pushed Joanna out of the way. She stared in shock at the empty cage. "But I'm sure I put the lid back on after giving her breakfast this morning..."
"Well, you can't have secured it properly," said Admetus solemnly and pointed at a place where the net above the cage was torn and frizzled. "This is how she got out."
Ekwy had gotten out her walkie-talkie. "Gecks, it's confirmed, we've got a pixay on the premises. I say it's egg-time. Over."
"Copy that," said Gecka's voice from the other end. "Try and seal off the area. I gather the minis and see if we can find it. Over."
"Okie-dokie. Over and out." Ekwy clicked off the walkie-talkie and stuck it on her belt.
"Egg-time?" repeated Misty nervously. "What does that mean?"
"It means you did good, kiddo," said Ekwy and gave her a half smile. "Your Alida has scampered off to lay her eggs. You've created a safe enough environment for her, and now the time has come. Now all we have to do is find her and, if possible, move her eggs to somewhere where we can control the offspring. Newborn pixays aren't... that much fun. We want to make sure they don't cause any damage, and it's easier to do that once they're still in their eggs."
"What about Alida? What's going to happen to her?"
"Don't worry about Alida. She'll be fine. Eventually. We just have to find her first, which hopefully shouldn't take long. Minis have an excellent sense of smell."
"Baff!" barked Damets proudly with his tongue hanging out of his mouth.
Alida was found a couple of hours later by Skimbleshanksa and Grizobella. Misty was excused from class to be there, and she later told Joanna about it. Alida had been hiding in an empty soda-can in the junkpiles north of the TSEs, where she had made a nice room for herself and the three eggs she'd laid. The eggs were light pink and slightly transparent; and they were also empty.
"They are not fertalized yet," Ekwy, the leading expert of the ways of the pixays, had explained. "Alida is going to go into a pupal stage and develop male reproducing organs while her eggs wait for a male to come along. Then he'll... do his business, so to speak, and he'll care for the eggs until they hatch, and raise the offspring after that."
"We're going to take the eggs to the Heavyside Layer," Gecka had said as she put on a pair of sturdy leather gloves. "There they'll receive the best care possible. The researchers there have not given up on breeding more well-mannered Jellciles, and this can really help them. They haven't had the opportunity to have eggs of Jellicles raised by humans before. You might have made a positive influence on them."
She'd gently picked up one egg after another and placed them in a padded bag where they'd be kept warm. Then she had looked at Misty.
"You should tell your classmates to prepare for their Jellciles to fly away as well. It's very possible that will happen soon, and it's better that they know so that they don't worry. It won't matter how tightly they secure the cages; Jellciles in heat will find their ways out anyway. You got that?"
And Misty had nodded and understood perfectly. She'd then been allowed to take Alida back to the car and return her to her aquarium. The Jellcile was not nearly as aggressive now that her mission was accomplished. She had done what she was supposed to do, and now there was no reason to be so snappy anymore. Instead she began to weave herself into a cocoon of silk, just like Ekwy had said, and there she remained.
The news of Misty's Jellcile being on the way to transforming to a Pollcile spread across campus like wildfire. Suddenly every student began taking extra good care of their pixays, out of fear to be the only one left with an unevolved specimen on their hands, or paws. The students began comparing diets, habits and preferred games like parents discussing their children. Joanna was no exception, and she slowly but certainly drove Misty to the brink of madness with her constant talking of Polly's successes and failures.
"You sound like my aunt Jean," she said one day when she finally had had enough. "She breeds poodles."
They sat basking in the warmth on the roof of their TSE. It was afternoon, and they had an excellent view over the other cars that made up the student dormitories. Joanna had brought Polly up with her so that the pixay would get some light, even though the Jellcile was safely in her glass-jar, which was still used when Joanna needed to transport her.
Joanna half-smiled apologetically. "Sorry. I'll change the subject." She nodded towards the notepad in Misty's lap. "Have you written any more of the Jenny/Jelly idea?"
Misty perked up at the mentioning of her story. "Oh yes. I think I might make it my end-of-term paper."
"Got an ending yet?"
"Not yet. But I've got a pretty good idea." Misty purred and bit the end of her pencil. "I won't tell you, though. It might spoil it."
"I understand."
Joanna leaned backwards and closed her eyes. She was a bit jealous of Misty since her friend had her idea of a fic already thought out. Joanna hadn't found hers yet. She had bits and pieces of an original character in her head, but was too frightened that she'd make her a Mary Sue to dare develop her more. She carefully picked up the jar with Polly and regarded the elfin face of her pixay. Polly tilted her head and poked her tongue out at her. Then she giggled soundlessly and started spin around and around, her arms stretched out so that they almost touched the ends of the jar that surrounded her.
Joanna sighed. In her mind she was wondering if Polly would ever turn into a good idea. There was something childish about her still, something that other pixays had ceased being a long time ago. She remembered that Gecka and miss Minnaloushe had told her that Polly was a romance fic when Joanna received her. "An implausiable pairing, or even a Mary Sue." Joanna thought those options were a bit intimidating, and wished that she'd gotten another pixay... but it was too late for wishes.
Polly lost her balance as she spun and fell on her behind. She looked surprised at this new turn of events and remained sitting on the glass floor while her head stopped sprinning. Then she opened her mouth in a cute little yawn and looked at Joanna, who nodded.
"Time for Polly to sleep," she told Misty and made her way down from the car roof. "Coming?"
"Be right down."
But Misty didn't come inside until very late that night, when the very last sunbeams had finally disappeared and taken away the light. She carried a vast amount of notes on her arms and looked very pleased with herself.
Joanna noticed her coming into the car, but didn't comment. Misty's arrival had woke her up, and Joanna still lay awake underneath her blankets after her friend had gone to sleep. She was thinking about her idea that would not come, and it took her many hours before she could fall back into blissful oblivion.