Chapter 2 - Beginning

Plato walked quickly to his den, Tumblebrutus trailing close behind. Pouncival, on the other hand, kept looking over his shoulder, taking big, obvious steps, as though he were sneaking into something. He then proceeded to flatten himself against a smooth surface, as though someone had just passed by, and he had to strain to make himself invisible. Once the supposed danger was gone, he continued his way into the den.

Pouncival took his sweet time entering, looking back out the entrance to make sure they weren't followed by his invisible adversaries. Once he finally decided the coast was clear, he slowly sat down, his ears up in attention, still looking outside, completely serious about the whole affair.

Plato rolled his eyes, glancing over to Tumblebrutus, before turning back to Pouncival. "Are ya done?" he asked curtly.

Pouncival snapped out of his imaginative state and saw his two friends staring at him, with that look they often gave him - Such a kitten… He sat bolt upright, reminding himself of why they were really there, rather than the game he had invented for them in his head. Clearing his throat, he deepened his voice and straightened up. "So…what are we going to do?"

"Not yet," Plato said sternly, while handing the toms two blankets, and nodding his head to the den opening. Taking the cue, Pouncival and Plato draped the blankets over the den opening, fastening them in place, before sitting on either side of the white-faced tom. Then Plato took out some stray leaves of paper from a box in the corner, as well as a small pencil humans often used on golf courses or in libraries. "Now," he began. "Who knows how to write?"

Tumblebrutus frowned. "Why do you have paper and pencils if you don't know how--"

"I'm a cat!" Plato defended. "It's not exactly on my list of things to learn! Come on, one of you has to know how to write. You have humans; I don't. Pouncival?"

"Me!" squeaked the tom. "Who do I look like, Sagwa?"

"Tumble?" Both cats turned to the tom. He frowned, flicking his tail.

"Alright," he said, grabbing the pencil and paper from Plato's paw. "But don't tell anyone. My reputations on the line, otherwise…" He dragged the box Plato had been using to keep things, like, oh, say, paper and pencils that he never planned on using himself, and used it as a make-shift desk. Putting the lead to the paper, he waited for instructions. Plato smiled wickedly.

"Now, what queens are you talking about, Plato?" Pouncival asked.

"Write this down," Plato instructed. Tumblebrutus' pencil began moving like mad as Plato recited the list. "Bombalurina. Cassandra. Tantomile. Demeter. Rumpleteazer. Exotica." After he was done, both toms turned to stare at Plato.

Pouncival grimaced. "Do you honestly think those queens would have any interest in us!" he bellowed, his paws rising in the air animatedly to emphasize his point.

"We're still kittens to them, Plato," Tumblebrutus pointed out, albeit more calmly.

"That's the challenge. Each of us will have one queen to try and win over."

"When you say win over…" Tumblebrutus asked wearily. "What exactly do we have to do to--to them…in order for us to win?"

"Get them to go out with us. Just once. Away from the junkyard. On a real date." After Plato finished, he gave Tumblebrutus a look of reprimand for thinking anything more than that.

Pouncival sighed. "I don't think that's gunna work. I mean, don't they all have mates?"

Tumblebrutus' face lit up. "No! The only queens who are officially mated are Jenny and Jelly! And we wouldn't include them. Not at all!" He stuck his tongue out at the thought.

"No, they're mated, aren't they?"

"No," Plato said. "Bomba and Tugger, do you honestly think those two would settle down? Cassie and Alonzo are sweet to one another, and there might be something going on there, but I don't think either of them want to be mated. Tantomile is only ever with her brother--"

"Which is weird in itself," Pouncival interjected.

Plato continued, ignoring the comment. "Demeter and Munkustrap…let's face it, those two have no idea whether they're coming or going, let alone being mates. Rumpleteazer… well… I don't know what's going on between her and Mungo. But they don't seem like mates, right?"

"What is up with them?" Tumblebrutus wondered out loud. "For the longest time I thought they were brother and sister…"

"So did I!' Pouncival exclaimed, glad to know he wasn't the only one who had those thoughts.

"Ahem…" The two cats calmed down and looked back to Plato. "And no one really knows anything about Exotica, so she's fair game, right?"

After this, the three bi-colored toms sat and thought about the prospects of what they were about to take on. It was possible. And they wouldn't have to necessarily do anything outrageous. The biggest obstacle they would have to face would probably be their status in the tribe. They were still considered to be really young, if not simply called kittens, and dismissed from anything important in the tribe. Up until now.

Tumblebrutus was the first to break the silence. "You know, we probably shouldn't include Cassandra. I mean, we want to get on Alonzo's good side, right?"

"Good point," Pouncival agreed, complete with exuberant nodding.

"Fine," Plato agreed, a hint of a smile crossing his face as the two took to his plan whole-heartedly. "Cross her off the list." Tumblebrutus shook his head, but did as he was told. Pouncival, on the other hand, was grinning from ear to ear. Plato frowned. "What?"

"I was just thinking," he said. "I want to take Bombalurina."

"No," Plato said immediately, moving his paw in indication for Tumblebrutus to take her off the list as well. Pouncival's smile fell. Before he could ask why, Plato sighed and leaned towards the tom. "It would be too easy to get her to go on a date without winning her over. It would be too hard to tell whether you won or not."

"Oh, come on!" Pouncival glared. "This can't be completely fair, now can it? I mean, anyone who gets Demeter would have the toughest job. She hates toms!" He waited to see if she would get crossed off the list. Tumblebrutus looked to Plato. The white faced tom shrugged in response, and her name was crossed off the list.

Tumblebrutus looked at the names left on the list. "And how do we expect to do Tantomile? …well, not do Tantomile, but I mean…well, you know what I mean. Stop laughing, Pouncival." Tumblebrutus glared at the patched tom, who did his best to stifle his giggles, before continuing. "Tantomile's some kind of a mystic, or something, right? Especially with her brother around all the time? She would know what we were up to right away, and then where would we be?"

Pouncival sighed. "Maybe this is a bad idea." Plato glowered at him. He hated being told he was in any way wrong.

"No," he said. "We're just going about this wrong. Let's work under the assumption that Tantomile wouldn't find out. And we have to make sure that we give the queen to the tom according to the tom's specialty. Like…um…" He turned to Tumblebrutus, who had thrown out his previous list and made a new one. "Tumble, here, is rather shy, right? So, what queen is the most outgoing?"

"Bombalurina!" Pouncival nodded his head in triumph.

"Can't you get her out of your mind?" Plato shook his head. "No, it's Rumpleteazer!" Tumblebrutus' eyes widened at the thought. He looked to Pouncival, trying to laugh off the suggestion, hoping his friend would back him up on it. But Pouncival seemed to be considering it.

"Yeah," Pouncival agreed. "They're so different! That would be a real challenge for him."

"Wait!" said the tom whose future was quickly snowballing out of control. "Mungo is my friend. Do you really want me to try and steal Rumpleteazer away from him?"

"They're not together," Plato said, though unsure of the facts.

"Whatever they are, they're joined at the hip!" Tumblebrutus corrected. "I can't just go waltzing in there and taking away his queen. What kind of cat would I be to do that to a friend?" Plato twitched his tail. Tumblebrutus' mouth opened to take back his statement, but upon Plato raising to his feet, he went silent, looking to Pouncival for support. But he was on his own.

"What kind of cat would do that to his friend?" Plato repeated, his eyes boring into Tumblebrutus. "Well, maybe the magical kind, I don't know. They think they're above it all, and as long as the queen is intrigued by his magic, he can do whatever the hell he pleases and take her as his own. Maybe that kind of a cat would do that to his friend!"

Plato caught his breath, his two friends looking at him in shock. He looked away, remembering where he was. "Anyway…" he finished softly, "you're not that kind of tom. And you don't know he's with her. And you're working from scratch. No history between you and her. You'll be fine." He sat back down, looking to the side, too embarrassed to look at the others.

Pouncival cleared his throat, making his way through the tense air in the room and sitting next to Tumblebrutus, looking down at the list. "That leaves Tantomile and Exotica…"

Plato looked to Pouncival. "You take Tantomile," he said instantly. Pouncival's jaw dropped. "You two couldn't be any more different."

"What!" Pouncival screeched. "Fine, then!" He snatched the list out of Tumblebrutus' paws and looked at the queens listed there. "You have to take whoever I tell you to, then!"

"There's only one left," Plato said, looking at his friend as though concerned with his extremely short-term memory.

"Oh, no," Pouncival said, shaking his head. Then, muttering under his breath as he moved his paw down the list, he said "You and Exotica are probably in a club for cats that are moody and like to be mysterious to their friends. I'm not letting you take her, nuh-uh…no way." Plato slowly looked over to Tumblebrutus.

Tumblebrutus smiled uneasily. "He's your friend." Plato's glance seamlessly fell into a glare, and Tumblebrutus looked away, in an attempt to avoid the searing look he was receiving. But that was proving to be impossible…

He was saved when Pouncival's paw fell on a name on the list, and a smile crossed his face. A smile that could wordlessly call the attention of his two friends. "Plato, you have charm. You have looks to back it up. A show of strength, too. You could probably get any queen you wanted with just a wave of your paw if you wanted to. Just like Tugger!" Plato eyed him suspiciously, but the tom continued grinning. "So any queen on here would be like pairing you up with Bombalurina! Too easy. At least, I think so. So I think the perfect queen for you would be--"

"Demeter!" Tumblebrutus finished the thought. Plato's eyes widened at the suggestion. But Pouncival didn't have time to revel in the other tom's reaction. He was too busy crumbling up the paper and throwing it at Tumblebrutus.

"You took my moment!" he yelled.

"You took too damn long!"

"Wait a minute!" Plato yelled. The other two looked at him, almost as though they were challenging him to say he wouldn't do it. And what could he argue? What they had said was remotely true, and he wouldn't deny it if it weren't. He did have a certain know-how when it came to charming people into doing things. And after he had made his other friends take on queen they would rather die than try to flirt with, he could only have one answer to their suggestion.

"Done." Pouncival and Tumblebrutus smiled to one another at their success. "Now…we need rules."

At this, the three toms gathered close, handing Tumblebrutus more paper, feeling the thrill of their kittenhood games coming back to them. They all had to agree on the rules of play before they could start. Always. There had been too many fights when adding rules in randomly in the middle of play. (Though they never seemed to learn from past mistakes, and would end up having the same problem over and over again.) So the spark returned to each one of their eyes, as their not-so-distant youth once again rung through.

"Rule number one!" Tumblebrutus announced, commanding the attention of the other toms. "The first week, we must only observe the queen we are assigned to. And no interaction can happen between said tom and said queen. Otherwise, the tom would be considered to be cheating."

"Write it down!" Pouncival said in almost a panic, and Tumblebrutus fumbled with the paper and pencil to begin scribbling it down. "That is, if you can remember all those saids you put in there." Tumblebrutus stole a moment away from his writing for the ever important task of whacking Pouncival upside the head.

"Rule number two." Plato smiled. "Absolutely no kissing, hugging...hell, no touching of the queen, not even to give her a comforting pat on the back or anything, unless you manage to go out with her. This has to be done by charm alone."

"That's a good one." Tumblebrutus wrote quickly. "How many l's are there in hell?"

"Rule number three," Pouncival chimed in. "No talking to another tom's queen about said tom, under any circumstances."

"In other words," Tumblebrutus said. "No sabotage?" Pouncival nodded fervently, though seeming more contented with his version of the rule. (It had a said in it, and he thought it was rather clever.) Tumblebrutus added that to the list. "That sounds like the basics, right?"

"We can write the rest as we go along," Plato nodded. "But for now…lets go celebrate!" Plato got up, Pouncival gladly following, muttering a tune of, "mouse cakes, mouse cakes," under his breath. Tumblebrutus folded up his list and hid it under some old books Plato had in his den; books that the tom would never read, but made his den look 'smart'.

"We're celebrating already?" Tumblebrutus asked, following the toms out the den. "But we haven't even started yet!"

"This celebration will be for our brilliant plan," Plato said.

"And great friends," Pouncival added, trotting after Plato, giddy as can be.

"Sounds good," Tumblebrutus agreed. They made their way to a pub that Gus had told them about in one of his stories when he had still been alive.

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Demeter walked up to Bombalurina, who was lounging on the old tire, looking up towards the sky. The red queen took a moment to look Demeter over before laughing to herself. "What's with the puffed out fur, Dem? See a ghost?"

"No," Demeter said, trying to flatten her fur. "Ever get the feeling someone was talking about you?" Bombalurina just smiled, then continued gazing at the stars.