Story #3!
I was never a smoking tom, it's a disgusting habit that really makes no sense whatsoever- this coming from a tom who lives and breathes useless habits!
Every morning I stretch for ten minutes before getting out of bed. I make three tours of the junkyard: one to wake up, the second to make sure I got a good look at everything, and third to find breakfast. At noon I sit in fifteen minute intervals around the clearing and after a couple hours of this I run to the pond and back. I talk to the same cats in the evening and in the same order. Three more tours of the junkyard where I will find my supper. Interval shifts at various posts for the first half of the night until I'm relieved. I knead my bed for about three minutes, circle clockwise four times, and settle for sleep. Repeat.
Pretty useless, huh? Just like smoking except I get to eat, I'm kept safe, and I get to socialize. Smoking is just making yourself into a living chimney.
So it is very fair of you to wonder why I'm spending the better part of my evening in a seedy club wearing a suit that's been recently dry-cleaned, fondling a stack of poker chips I couldn't possibly have paid for, and puffing on the end of a big fat cigar. Oh yeah, and there's a stripper (yes, an actual stripper! No, she doesn't have a penis) waiting for me to finish my round for a private dance in the back... prepaid.
I'm a pretty lucky bastard, aren't I?
"I'm out," calls a fuchsia fedora fiasco sitting at the end of the table. Funny, I hadn't realized he was playing.
"That's the cue."
I smirk at the cards in my hand. It's utter garbage. "I'll raise you," I grin and place a small stack of chips down. The stripper has since taken an interest in the table and sits too close beside me, her breasts cradling my arm.
"Someone's approaching you, Munkustrap."
"Female. Short black and blonde fur. Coming from behind."
I can't help but chuckle; I'm in a club in a probably expensive suit, of course there will be people approaching me. But still I nudge the queen beside me lightly. "Take care of it," I hiss just low enough to go undetected by my fellow players.
The stripper stands and- I can only assume- takes care of our guest. And everyone knows what happens when one just assumes:
They end up dead... and make an ASS our of U and ME. Har har.
"Munkustrap!? What the hell are you doing here? What are you doing?" a terrifyingly familiar voice demands. I don't even dare look behind me, I'm too focused on on the growing look of realization on my competitors' faces through the thick smoke.
"Holy mother of fu-" Shut up for a minute.
"Who's dis?" asks Sergionne, or, the tom I'm actually supposed to kill in fifteen minutes when we celebrate our big win on Britain's homeland security hack with some hot dames in the back. He's looking at the cat who has just outted me but after a moment he's pointing at me, his "partner in crime." "...Munkustrap? Like, from da Jellicles or somethin'?"
"GET OUT! GET OUT GETOUT GETOUTGETOUT!" With pleasure.
In a flash my chips are flying at his face and I pitch myself at him to slam the thug's face into his silly girly appletini. He swears in a puddle of alcohol. "Fucking kill him!"
"GO!"I scream over my shoulder before hopping up onto the table and slamming the toe of my reinforced shoe into the wrist of a waiting gun. Then I kick the face attached to the wrist and wrench the gun from him to shoot the tom right between the eyes. That's for the last hand.
Guns all around the room erupt into the song of their people, bullets zipping left and right in some macabre ballet... well...more like a hoedown.
Through the haze I spot the stripper rising from behind the bar with the biggest, most ridiculous machine gun I've ever seen. A flash of gold disappears down the stairway behind the bar and I know this is the end of my fun.
"There's too many agents on the floor."
"I have a couple runners heading out the backstage-"
"—Munkustrap, where's the target?!—"
"I need backup, now!"
I jump the bar with practiced ease and land just in time to grab a steak knife from the cutlery tray and plunge it into the idiot who followed me towards the machine gun. I shove him hard until he topples backwards off the bar.
"Everlasting Cat." I turn around and spot a Jellicle huddled against the under-bar dishwasher. It's not the Jellicle I'm expecting which means that probably more than three followed me here. "Y-you just killed that guy."
My stomach drops and I suddenly taste something sour in the back of my throat. "Tugger..."
"I'm opening fire!"
"...Three in the V.I.P lounge..."
"Get out!" screams the stripper over her shoulder at me before unleashing mayhem on the club patrons, her breasts straining hard against her girdle as she handles the gun with all her strength.
I reach out and tear Tugger from the dishwasher to the stairs and all but chuck him down. He does the work and rolls down the entire flight until he hits the plush carpet with a strangled groan. I jump over him and pull him to his feet hoping he'll regain his balance soon. The light here is poor but my aim is still perfect if someone follows us down here.
We round the corner and I see the other Jellicles he came with. I'm a bit disappointed to see only two cats banging at the emergency exit. "It's locked," I bark and the shorter one whirls around to throw a piece of PVC piping at my head. The only thing it manages to damage is my pride as it sails over mine and Tugger's head and skips cross the carpet; is this really the best my tribe can do?
"Demeter," I groan. "It's just us, calm down."
"Where are you!?"
"CALM DOWN?! Are you out of your batty little mind?!" She lets out a rabid scream and hysterically claws the door. At her side I see the Jellicle responsible for starting this chaos: Bombalurina.
And she's bleeding. "You've been shot?"
Despite the pain (which maybe she doesn't fell just yet) she lets out a pretty impressive snort of laughter. "If I'd have known, I would have brought my bullet-proof vest."
"Two are headed into the basement, Munk."
"I'm not deaf," I sigh and turn around in time to spot the two crooks in janitor uniforms and shoot them both in the chest before they find a way to hurt themselves with their guns.
Demeter and Bombalurina shriek so loud they make my ears ring for the first time tonight. Tugger, ever the proud tom, screams "Bloody hell!" and stumbles onto his rear at my feet.
I lose it, it was the greatest thing I've ever seen him do. My laughter is shared with no one.
"Who's laughing?"
"The stage is clear- is someone laughing?"
"Bang."
"Munk- LOOK OUT!"
"Bang." I straighten up and follow my eyes down the poised barrel of my gun where the cat who managed to sneak up on me stands smiling. "Bang! What are you going to do with that, I wonder."
It's the first face I'm actually pleased to see tonight. Relief relaxes the muscles in my back and I use the barrel of the gun to rub away the tingly feeling. "Probably take it out to a nice dinner, maybe a romantic stroll along the canal-"
"Who- who is this now?" Demeter demands, eyeing the gun in the stranger's hand warily.
The tom, an impossibly tiny tuxedo cat who acts at least twice my size, glares back with just as much caution. I see a glitter of mischief in his eye as he responds; "I'm his life-partner, who are you?"
That's my cue to jump in-
"Anyone want to answer me, or am I just going to have to start streaming porn until you guys are done with your reunion?"
"Please do."
I thrust my wrist up to my mouth and speak into the cuff of my sleeve, "We're in the basement... with a couple friends."
"I'm glad you won't be alone forever. Now let's regroup and head back to base."
"Um, okay," I begin and am suddenly hit with a sack of realizations. This is the first time any Jellicle has witnessed me killing another cat, I'm wearing town clothing (As opposed to none), and I'm standing and chatting amicably with a tom they've never seen, both of us wielding guns.
For the very first time I have to mesh the two identities I've kept completely and inexorably separate my whole life together. I turn to the Jellicles and swallow back the bile. "Bomba, Deme... Tugger. This is my partner, agent Mistoffelees. Misto, these are the Jellicles."
They stare at each other in utter shock. More-so Mistoffelees who knows each of these cats solely on my relentless stories; he looks like he's meeting his long lost family for the very first time, one I've taught him to both love and despise. I counted on them never meeting. I don't think the others have even the slightest clue as to what's going on.
"...They're a lot taller than I imagined." Mistoffelees eventually shrugs and nudges past the four of us to the locked exit door, excusing himself as he passed. With a booming thud the door gives under his foot and swings open to a busy carpark full of Agency vans. "This should be fun," he mumbles and leads us into the crowd.
Mumbling! That's another pointless habit!
Waitaminute! That's not a Mistoffelees story; it's a schizophrenic Munkustrap story. I thought I'd be a little unpredictable and throw you guys a little curveball there!
Summary: Munkustrap is a pretty quiet and unassuming tom, which is why no one thinks to question his long absences from home, his skill and dexterity in fighting despite the lackadaisical lifestyle of any other cat, and the quiet secret knowing he shares with his father Old Deuteronomy. That is, until The Rum Tum Tugger, Bombalurina, and Demeter decide to question his extracurricular activities and follows him into town one evening. Now Munkustrap has to deal with the sudden colliding of his polar opposite identities, explaining the strangeness of his life as an agent for a high-security international army as the Jellicles he's so desperately been protecting get sucked further into the wrong side of his life. With a whole other family, personality, and big secrets, it's a roller coaster of dodging bullets and revelations when the Munkustrap they know peels away to reveal a tom beyond recognition.
