Disclaimer: This chapter contains under-aged drinking and implied threats towards a minor.

Dani Mite: I am writing Quaxo/Misto as being on the autism spectrum in some capacity. Since Quaxo is a bit older now, he'll be getting more POV chapters that deal with him coming to terms with it.

All things considered, Quaxo was a solitary cat. He could spend the whole day just reading or dancing or singing or cat watching. He didn't mind being alone. Actually, he preferred it. Being alone meant that there was more time to think and imagine and create. Being alone meant that there was nobody to touch him or to make loud noises. Being alone meant that there was no one to hurt.

What most cats didn't understand, however, was the fact that there was a difference between being alone and being lonely.

He hated the feeling of loneliness, of isolation. No, he didn't feel particularly inclined to partake in whatever hairbrained scheme Pounce and Tumble have cooked up this time, nor did he want to gossip about the different ways of styling his fur with Cettie and Electra.

But the thing was, the option to socialize was at least open to him. He might prefer being alone, but he could never say he was truly lonely.

Until now.

Wherever he ended up t-e-l-e-p-o-r-t-i-n-g to, there wasn't another cat in sight.

Okay, so what was there to work with then?

Quaxo walked slowly, silently, looking for any signs of movement. Of life. As luck would have it, his search didn't take long.

He soon came across...what were they called?

H-o-u-s-e-s? The nests that h-u-m-a-n-s lived in.

H-u-m-a-n-s!

There were so many of them! Big ones and little ones and medium ones all walking around.

Oh no. This was very bad. Quaxo dropped to all fours, knowing that this is what he had to do around humans. They must not see him standing on two legs. His burned paw ached terribly as he scampered to what looked like an alleyway where he could hide in.

Making himself as small as possible, the young tux contemplated his next move.

What should he do? He couldn't t-e-l-e-p-o-r-t home, there was something preventing him from entering the junkyard that way. Not to mention he was all out of magic. It wouldn't take long for the power to rebuild within him, maybe a couple of hours, but a lot could happen in a couple of hours.

He was...stuck. And completely out of options.

Quaxo tried not to let fear permeate him, but the longer he stood here, the harder the task became. Luckily (or maybe not so lucky, given the situation) he didn't have enough magic to start producing sparks, which tended to happen if he was nervous. So what now?

There was a pipe looking thing on the side of one h-o-u-s-e. Maybe...maybe he could climb to the top? At the very least, Quaxo would have a good view of where he was. Maybe he would see something he recognized if he was high enough up.

The adolescent tux nimbly inched his way up the side of the h-o-u-s-e, being mindful of his injured paw, before leaping onto the r-o-o-f. He carefully peeked down to see the c-o-m-m-o-t-i-o-n below him.

Wow, there were a lot of h-u-m-a-n-s.

Was this normal?

They were dressed strangely too, he noted. Not that they weren't always dressed strangely, but this time was a bit different. One human kit looked like he was wearing a white s-h-e-e-t over his whole body with some eyes cut out. Another human kit was wearing a...a...what was it called? Some kind of hard green covering over his face. And another human girl was wearing a sparkly yellow d-r-e-s-s. Actually, a lot of the human girls were wearing d-r-e-s-s-e-s. None of the boys though.

H-u-m-a-n-s were...strange.

They were all carrying bags with them in all different shapes and traveled to different h-o-u-s-e-s in small groups. The boy with the s-h-e-e-t had a bag that looked like a p-u-m-p-k-i-n, in which the h-u-m-a-n at the door deposited some items that Quaxo couldn't quite make out inside of it.

Quaxo looked back up again, having had enough of this strange sight. Maybe he was too hyped up on adrenaline before, but it was now that he was beginning to notice the chill in the air. Actually, it was very cold outside, wasn't it? It was currently autumn and soon there will be snow again. He really needed to find a way to get home before he froze to death, and sitting on top of the house was not helping him. Quaxo was straining his eyes trying to find something familiar in the skyline, but came up short.

He sighed, slipping down the pipe again. There must be another way.

Next came the walking – no, wandering - as he had to consistently remind himself to stay on four legs. He was more tom than kit now, and had gotten used to standing on two legs as the adults tended to do. This task, however, was even more difficult with his burned paw that led him to walk with a rather awkward looking limp that did him no favors other than to slow him down. Quaxo couldn't quite keep track of time out here, and before long his search for other cats became instead a search for water. He was very thirsty now - and very sweaty - the only thing the young tux could think about was trying to quench that immense thirst.

He found himself near some...were they more h-o-u-s-e-s? He couldn't quite tell anymore. But he could hear noise and if there was noise then there must be h-u-m-a-n-s and if there were h-u-m-a-n-s then there must be water to drink.

Every instinct told him to not go inside. What if he couldn't get out? What if the h-u-m-a-n-s found him and hurt him or…or what if they locked him somewhere or petted him a lot and grabbed his fur or…

In and out. In and out. In and out.

He must not lose focus. He needed water, and he needed it now. Somewhere in the h-o-u-s-e there must be water. There must be.

It took another minute of deliberating before his parched throat overrode any previous indecision.

He was going in.

Quaxo slipped through the open window with ease and-

Oh.

There were so many h-u-m-a-n-s.

So very many h-u-m-a-n-s.

They were older h-u-m-a-n-s and they were all moving and jumping and rubbing up against one another and...and...

Everlasting it was loud!

He hated the loud. The noise was defeating and there were so many lights...bright lights that flashed many colors. The humans weren't bothered by it though.

They seemed to...like it?

They were smiling and dancing and k-i-s-s-i-n-g each other and there was so many of them.

And it was so so loud.

He skidded through the h-o-u-s-e, trying not to be seen. One of the h-u-m-a-n-s had shut the w-i-n-d-o-w and he couldn't go back the way he came. Quaxo ducked under many tables and chairs, trying to block out the noise and the lights and all of the funny smells. There was luckily another window on the other side, or at least he thought it was a window. Or was it a door? It was big and see-through and the humans were walking through it to the outside.

Quaxo dashed as quickly as he could, slipping through the gap in the strange window-door, and made it to a grassy fenced in area in the back of the h-o-u-s-e. Finding a safe, unoccupied patch of grass, he stopped to catch his breath.

It was much less loud outside, and there were less humans as well. He wondered if perhaps this was a celebration, like the Jellicle Ball. Did the humans have a Heaviside layer? The young tux couldn't help but notice all of the p-u-m-p-k-i-n-s and spiders and weird green faced people with pointy h-a-t-s. Was this some sort of ritual?

How p-e-c-u-l-i-a-r.

Maybe he will find a book to read that will explain these strange h-u-m-a-n traditions. They didn't look terribly old, he realized. Older, perhaps, than the h-u-m-a-n kits that he had saw earlier, but not nearly as old looking as some of the adults. They didn't dress up like the h-u-m-a-n kits though. Actually, the h-u-m-a-n females were wearing very little clothing. Weren't they cold?

It was at that moment, however, that Quaxo had spotted what he was looking for.

Water!

Or, at least he thought it might be water. It came from the spout of some strange looking metal contraption, which the h-u-m-a-n-s poured into their c-u-p-s to drink.

Quite fervently drinking, he might add.

Quaxo waited in the corner, watching as a h-u-m-a-n female grabbed the arm of the h-u-m-a-n male, presumably trying to get him back in the h-o-u-s-e. The male placed his c-u-p on the grass and followed the female inside.

Perfect.

Quaxo skidded to the c-u-p and grabbed the top of it with his teeth as he dragged it back to his hiding place. He tried to get a good look at the liquid inside, but the darkness was making that task rather difficult. It...looked clear...maybe? Was it slightly yellow-ish? He hesitated, but any safety precautions were soon pushed aside when he thought apart how terribly parched he was. This might be the only time tonight that he would have access to any liquids.

And it couldn't be poisonous if the humans were drinking it, right?

He dipped his tongue tentatively in the c-u-p, analyzing the taste. It was...watery? Like water but kind of bitter and...well he couldn't really describe the taste very well. It didn't taste good but it didn't taste particularly bad either. And that was good enough for him.

He dove back in with much gusto, lapping up the contents of the entire c-u-p.

It felt...nice. No, he felt nice. Warm and fuzzy and...well, a little dizzy actually. But he found he wasn't nearly as cold as he once was.

In fact, he didn't feel cold at all!

Just...nice.

Nice and funny.

He pushed the c-u-p aside and stumbled through a hole the fence that led him back onto the street. Perhaps his exhaustion was messing with his coordination a bit?

Regardless, Quaxo found that his nerves had died down as he gazed at the crescent moon that hung so beautifully in the sky.

Maybe...maybe he would be okay out here. Life was good. Actually, life was great. And who cared about his powers or Macavity or having friends or...or...

What was he doing out here again?

Before he had a second to contemplate his last thought he ended up slamming into a wall of fur and ended up sprawled out on the sidewalk.

"And what do we have here?"

Quaxo blinked hard, trying to get his bearings. Was that voice aimed towards him?

He felt a paw nab his arm and yank him up.

It was...a queen, it looked like. Many toms and queens, some old and some young. And they were all looking intently at him.

"You have a name, kitten?" the orange tabby queen asked, her paw still wrapped around his.

"Uh..." he blinked again, feeling very dizzy. "Quaxo."

"Quaxo? What an interesting name…" the tabby queen purred, circling him. "What are you doing out here all on your own?"

"Got lost..."

"I need your help!" he wanted to say. "I want to go home. Will you help me find home?"

But the words were stuck in his throat. These cats didn't look like nice cats. They had the same look in their eyes that Pounce did right before supper.

"Oh, really?"

The other cats came closer...sniffing at him and touching him and they were all talking at the same time.

"Leave 'im alone, Jass..."

"...how old is he?"

"He's a tuxedo...don't see them around these parts often..."

"Look at 'im! He's shaking..."

"...probably never been touched before..."

"Fresh as a daisy…"

"...oh, he's positively ravishing..."

"Leave him alone," a new queen hissed.

Quaxo blinked hard again, trying to clear the fuzziness in his head. He didn't like these weird queens and they were all touching him and he hated being touched and...

"I should expect better from you all," the new queen continued angrily. "He's just a kitten..."

"I'm not a kitten," Quaxo mumbled, trying to stay upright.

If this queen heard him, she didn't acknowledge it. She looked older, maybe Jelly's age, and was grey all over. She looked as though she might have been a black cat when she was younger, but living on the streets have her a rather bedraggled look. She continued to yell at the other cats for a bit longer before ushering Quaxo to go with her.

"I'll take you my den," she said gently.

All of his senses said that he should not trust strangers, especially a stranger who was touching him, but Quaxo felt too fuzzy and tired to protest as this strange queen took him away from the mean looking cats.

#

She led him to what could only be described as a tribe of cars.

Very old, broken down cars that the humans couldn't use anymore, and were just sitting in some lot where they were now being occupied by various furry creatures to nest in.

Her car was smallish and blue with a broken...what did she call it?

Windshield.

It could get rather cold at night, which was why she slept in the trunk, she told him.

"Up you go," she said gently, guiding through the broken window onto one of the soft seats in the back. Quaxo didn't know where she disappeared to, but she came back a second later with a bowl of...was it water?

"Drink it," she said gently, and Quaxo immediately complied.

Yes, it was water!

"Tastes good," he mumbled as he lapped the cool, clear liquid.

She chuckled.

"It'll help you in the morning, I promise."

He stopped, glancing up at her.

"With what?"

"The hangover."

He frowned.

What was a...

H-a-g-n-o-v-r

No...

H-a-n-g-o-v-n-e-r

Wait that didn't sound right either.

"What's that?" he said weakly, feeling a bit too fuzzy to spell correctly.

"Oh, dear," she murmured, taking the now empty bowl away from him. "You really are an innocent one, aren't you?"

"I'm not innocent," he pouted. "I know a lot of things. I know that the we travel 'round the sun and the sky is blue because light is r-e-f-e-l-e-c-t-d...wait that's not right..."

"Are you...spelling? Out loud?"

Quaxo shrugged.

"I do funny things. It's why I don't have friends."

She laughed, sitting down next to him.

"Join the club, kitten."

"You mean those queens out there weren't your friends?"

She shook her head.

"More like coworkers. My friend...my best friend...she's gone now. And it's just really been me since."

"I'm….sorry."

She shrugged.

"It was a long time ago, kitten."

Quaxo began to claw behind his ears again before remembering that his paw was burned and it hurt to move it.

"I don't have friends because all of the kittens think I'm weird and Jelly says that I don't understand social cues and I guess I don't really because I talk too much sometimes and other times I don't talk at all and...and... no one understands me."

He dropped his gaze.

"Tugger and Vicky are my only friends but Tugger doesn't live in the nursery anymore and Vicky spends all her time with Plato now and..."

The grey queen's eyes widened.

"Tugger?" she whispered.

Quaxo looked back up at her.

"You know him?"

"You're...a Jellicle?"

"You know us?"

She gave him a wry smile.

"I should have known," she murmured, eyes travelling up and down his body. "You have the figure of a dancer."

Quaxo blinked hard, trying to figure out what to say next. But his thinking process was muddled and fuzzy and he was so very tired that he just remained silent as the queen continued.

"How did you get all the way out here?" she asked.

"Got lost..."

He paused.

"Munkus is gonna be mad at me."

"Is Munkustrap...your father?"

He shook his head.

"No but he kinda acts like it..."

Wait a second...

"How do you know his full name?" he asked, trying to look her in the face...or faces, because his eyes were making out two heads right about now.

She didn't answer him, looking rather lost in thought.

"Are you okay?" he asked weakly.

She exhaled, shaking her head.

"Come," she motioned, helping him back out the window. "Let's get you home."

"You know where I live?"

"Unless you switched junkyards, then yes."

He narrowed his eyes.

"Who are you?"

She chuckled softly.

"Probably someone you won't remember in the morning."

She led him down some roads, then down some more, and if Quaxo was feeling normal, then he probably would have filed them away in his mind for future reference. But if he was feeling funny before, then he was feeling downright awful now. He didn't remember how he ended up in the s-e-w-r-e-s or how this grey lady queen ended up carrying him most of the way even though he told her that he wasn't a kitten, or how he might have a-c-i-d-e-t-l-y fallen asleep through part of it...

Wait, why was he out here again?

"Are you doing okay?" she asked after some amount of time.

"I don't feel so good."

"If you're going to be sick, the underground would probably be the place to do it."

He responded with a groan, pressing his face into her fur. She continued to walk, humming some song that Quaxo vaguely recognized but couldn't put a name to.

"You have a pretty voice," he mumbled, trying not to fall asleep again.

"Thank you," she said in return.

"My mother has a nice voice too. She used to sing to me every night. Ac'tly most cats in the junkyard have nice voices. But yours is really nice."

She let out another chuckle.

"I thought so too."

"You should sing p-r-o-f-e-s-o-i-n-l-a-l-y."

"What?"

Quaxo frowned.

"Professionally," he repeated.

"Oh. My spelling is a bit rusty, mind you. And I did want to be famous. I strove to be famous. It's what I lived for, really."

"What happened?"

She sighed, gently placing him down on the ground.

"The world is large, kitten. And full of talent. There will always be another cat out there that is better than you, that is a fact. I just didn't realize that until it was too late."

"Munkus says it's never too late," Quaxo mumbled, eyelids heavy.

She gave him a small smile.

"Munkus…" she murmured. "Are you close with him?"

"With Munkus?" Quaxo asked confusedly.

"Yes."

"I…uh…yeah. He saved me and he understands me and lets me sleep in his den sometimes. Well not much anymore 'cuz Demeter lives there now so…." he trailed off, rubbing his eyes. "Why do y'wanna know?"

She smiled.

"That sounds like him. Always looking out for others, never for himself."

"Huh?"

"I have done so much wrong in my life," she continued softly.

"What wrong? Do you know Munkus?"

She didn't answer, looking lost in thought.

"How…"

"Right," she cut in, pointing into the distance.

"It's a straight shot from here. Maybe five more minutes of walking, then you'll end up in a pipe that should lead you to the center of the junkyard."

"Aren't you coming?"

She shook her head sadly.

"This is as far as I'm willing to go."

"But I'm sure Munkus will..."

"Please," she interrupted, "don't tell him how you got back here, okay? It's...better this way."

"I don't understand."

She sighed, sadness etched all over her features.

"Maybe one day I'll come back," she murmured. "One day. But I must leave you now. I've been gone long enough as is."

He could only nod, feeling a strange ache as he watched the grey queen leave in such an abrupt manner.

Would he ever see her again?

The young tux struggled to get to two legs, but immediately recognized that walking straight wasn't really an option. He collapsed back onto all fours, hissing at the pain in his paw and slowly made his way through the very dark and scary and bad smelling s-w-e-w-e-r.

Did she say five minutes?'

Quaxo couldn't even remember where he was five minutes ago.

He was in pain and he felt sick and there was c-o-t-t-n in his head and where was he again?

And then he felt it. The uncomfortable sensation in his stomach turned volatile, and he dropped down as his dinner was forced from his throat, the bile burning his mouth.

Is this was death felt like?

He groaned, slowly getting back onto his paws. He wasn't about to die in a smelly s-e-w-r-e-r. No, he had to continue.

Quaxo spent the last minute dragging himself along until he reached what must have been the end, but instead of the junkyard he ended up hitting...what was it?

A grate?

He could see his home through the slits, the TSE car, the oven, the tire, but he was stuck in the pipe. Did the grey queen know about this? How long was the grate here for?

Maybe...maybe if he had his magic he could make himself walk through the metal bars but he couldn't do anything now.

He was...useless. In the morning, perhaps, when other cats were awake they would find him and help him. But he didn't have the energy to yell, to scrape, to...to think.

All he felt was sick and cold and tired and empty.

He pressed himself against the grate, curling up in as tight a ball as possible.

It was so very late now.

And he was so very lonely.