The Hipster Who Leapt Through Time (The Hipster Trilogy Book 2) by Luke Kondor Page B

lines across his face, parallel, equidistant. He’d been marked by a fellow cat. A fight for dominance perhaps. A fight Moomamu was sure he’d won. The cat was a giant. He had a head like a boulder, was twice the size of the other cats and had a hundred claw marks covering his body.
    Moomamu looked out at the audience. The sun was rising behind their heads and shining down onto the Scrapping Grounds, a perfect spotlight for what was about to come. He looked to where the loud shouting cat was standing. It was in a box that protruded from the rest of the sitting places. It was standing next to what looked like the royalty — a kitten, bored, completely hairless. Its skin like pastry folding over itself. It licked its paws between yawns. Its eyes still much bigger in its skull compared to an adult's, still with the glaze of blue — so vivid, Moomamu could see them all the way from the grounds.  
    Moomamu thought about what was about to happen. The alpha guard, Snuckems, had told them that they would kill each other. He had told them that they would be made to fight. What chance does a Thinker have in a battle like this? A Thinker isn’t made for battle. It’s made for thinking.  
    “I’m a Thinker, not a fighter,” he said under his breath.  
    No one heard.
    “I’m a Thinker!” he shouted. The crowd quietened somewhat, the focus suddenly on him. “I’m a Thinker,” he shouted again. “I’m an ancient space-being, lost in time and space, trapped in the body of a human. I don’t belong here.”
    “Quiet,” bellowed the shouting cat. “In the presence of cats, you look and smell like a human, and shall be tried as such.”
    “But I did no crime,” Moomamu shouted back. His voice was weak and it broke a little mid-sentence. It had been a long time in those cells without talking. He was out of practice. “I didn’t wrong you. You have no right to keep me prisoner.”
    “Guards.” The shouting cat waved to Snuckems, who walked over to Moomamu, thump-stick in hand.  
    “No, wait, no,” Moomamu tried to say as the thump-stick cracked him in the back of the head and he fell to the floor, dropping his blade. As he tried to catch his breath and make sense of it all, he saw one of the strays reach over and steal the blade, taking away Moomamu’s only weapon.  
    Snuckems stepped over, knelt down, and whispered, “One more word and we’ll cut your throat.” His rancid breath was warm and moist against his ear.
    “No crime?” the shouting cat said. Not to Moomamu, but to the audience of cats around him, who were all now hissing with such violence that Moomamu could almost feel the spittle leave their mouths. “This human has done cats no harm?” The audience were bouncing in their sitting places, so angry they looked ready to pounce, storm the Scrapping Grounds, ignoring the fight completely and skipping to the kill, but the shouting cat waved them down. Now he looked at Moomamu and spoke quieter, as if talking only to him, his calm whisper travelling from the box all the way to his ears. The crowd were quietly listening in. Even the prince looked up from his perch. “It wasn’t so long ago that the cats of the Kingdom of Minu had a truce with you humans. We shared resources and knowledge and travelled between the worlds with the star-doors, now sealed and closed by law, and it was even a shorter time ago that you humans betrayed the cats. You took us for fools and stole from us. A crime that will never be forgotten. Yes, you may not be the same human that committed those crimes, but you were born of the same litter, and you will be tried the same as your brothers and sisters before you.” He pointed to the other human. “You will be killed, I don’t doubt it, and your remains will be ripped apart and dragged throughout the capital, and we will revel in whatever atonement your flesh provides.” The shouting cat stood straight and looked to the audience. “Enough of this. Time for the