This is a kit challenge for DarkClan, based on (or just including) the quote "This is why kits should stay in the nursery. Otherwise, they cause a lot of trouble."

A small downpour overshadowed the formerly bright day, which had just begun to bloom in the morning. Dawnkit sighed. She'd really been looking forward to the mock fight she would've had with Beetlekit and Otterkit.

"Ooooh, wow!" Otterkit yelled now. Dawnkit's sister's slit eyes reflected the massive thunder clouds mounting above them. "Mama, where does rain come from? Is it really true that StarClan cries? But what could they be crying for? It's gotta be perfect up there when you're dead!"

Ferretfur sighed. "Dawnkit, Otterkit—come inside now. I don't care how much fun you're having, you'll catch a cold if you stay in the rain for much longer. And Otterkit, who knows where rain comes from? There is a myth involving StarClan's tears, yes, but I don't believe much of it."

Otterkit shrugged indifferently."Yeah, whatever." Then her face went to its protesting state. (How Otterkit had so many personality changes, (I am so confuzzled with the "that's" and "that was"'s in past tense. Anyone care to explain? *tosses cookie around*) Dawnkit would never know; maybe it was that Otterkit spent more time talking than sitting.) "But, Ma, I don't wanna go back to the stuffy hot nursery! I still haven't caught a single raindrop on my tongue yet!" Otterkit said.

Dawnkit rolled her eyes, getting some beads of rain there in the process, but she barely felt the slight sting. For by then she had noticed it there, so red against the feeble splashes it was making, so beautiful through the blur of Dawnkit's eyes.

She couldn't help walking over to the stream in which there was a mottled red and black ladybug, its body almost completely submerged inside flowing water that churned its spotted wings to and fro, to and fro, to and fro... The rhythm was so mesmerizing and capturing, it wasn't until the ladybug lost its balance in the water, wildly flapping its wings and its head falling underwater a little, that she realized Ferretfur was calling her back into the nursery.

And that too had melted into the background, because at that moment, she saw that the ladybug wasn't swimming; it was drowning in the floppy stream it must have accidentally fallen into. At first she was shocked; how could such a creature be fluttering inside its own peril? Then one thought forced its way out of the water in her own mind. She knew she had to rescue the ladybug out of the stream—

Or else it would die. Die, like how her father had done when he fell into the thawed border river. Die, like how a bug struggles feebly and merges with the water, never to draw in air again.

"Hey, Dawnkit! What're you doing, looking at that puddle with your eyes so wide?" Otterkit had come padding up.

Mother must have sent her to fetch me, Dawnkit thought. but I'll be back there in a minute.

Out loud she said, "Look, Otterkit! It's a ladybug! It's so pretty, isn't it? But it's drowning, we've gotta save it!"

Otterkit frowned, leaning over the pool. Dawnkit saw her sister's gaze trace and lock on to the small ripples in the stream. Then Otterkit recoiled back, as if the bug was poisonous."You're not serious, are you? That thing's disgusting! The water around it's probably turned even dirtier now! No way am I touching it!"

"Oh, come on! It'll die if we don't do something!" But when Otterkit still didn't respond, Dawnkit sighed. "I guess I'll just have to rescue it by myself." To be truthful, Dawnkit wasn't looking very forward to this ride. Risking her own paws in the high stream, just for a small ladybug, suddenly seemed more outrageous than before. But her eyes met with those of the drowning ladybug, and her decision was made for her.

She waded into the stream. Water pulled at her flank, and the oncoming rain did nothing to help her keep balanced. Several times she stumbled, and at last she managed to reach the place where the ladybug was struggling, a bit more downstream, its head still bouncing on the waves, to keep afloat. Dawnkit gulped. She'd never touched something so small and delicate before. She gathered up her wits and raised a claw beneath the ladybug's body. It seemed to be afraid of her, and began flailing at a faster pace than before.

She lifted her claw—slowly, slowly, slowly... And there it was, a small red spot sprawled on the back of her paw. Gingerly, she hobbled out of the stream and gently sandwiched it between two large green leaves.

"C'mon, Dawnkit, hurry up! Mama's gonna get mad if we don't go back to her quick... Oh, no! Here she comes! Look what's happened now! She'll never tell me where that special trout is!" Otterkit mewed, now beside Dawnkit. Dawnkit looked up from her leaves, busy pushing them into a couple of ferns. True to Otterkit's words, Ferretfur was stomping towards them, with what looked like the 'mother's protectiveness rage'. As soon as Ferretfur came within their earshot, the words in her mouth came tumbling out in an avalanche.

"Otterkit, Dawnkit, what did I tell you? Hurry up, follow me, get inside! Otterkit—oh, look what you've done! You've caught yourself a cold! I don't care whose fault it is, just both of you come into the medicine den now! Wait—what, Ferntail? You say you're out of them? But Otterkit needs those healing herbs immediately! Yes, you do, Otterkit! Oh, StarClan, I knew it! This is why kits should stay in the nursery. Otherwise, they cause a lot of trouble. Now come on, kits, we're going back into the nursery."

Treading through puddles of water that lapped at her shins, Dawnkit could feel almost sure the ladybug's dark brown eyes were fixed on her retreating form.

Major 6-moon time skip!

"Oh, please, can we come? Just this once?"

"I'm sorry, Otterpaw, but you can't, you're not old enough. Maybe next time." The last of Goosefall's flickering tail disappeared into the waving reeds.

"Hmmph! It's not fair!" Otterpaw said. "How come Beetlepaw gets to go and we don't? He's only one moon older than us! I want to see what ThunderClan camp looks like!"

"Well, we're not allowed to go in battle yet, so let's just make the best of it, and hunt instead." Dawnpaw tried to reason with her sister.

"You're no fun, Dawnpaw! Don't you want to fight for RiverClan?" Otterpaw said. Then she lowered her voice into the faintest whisper. "Hey, I know! Let's sneak into the battle and watch it!"

"What? We can't do that, because-because—"

"Because why, Dawnpaw? You know you want to! And it's not like we're breaking the warrior code or anything just by watching the fight. Besides, we only have to intervene if RiverClan gets in really big trouble, and if you know Lilystar, that won't happen. So nobody will even know about it!"

"I do like to look at new places..."

"Then it's decided."

"Ow! That's my paw you're treading on!"

"Sor-ree! When's this forest ever going to end?"

"They did say that ThunderClan camp was a long way off, you know."

"Well, it shouldn't be this far!"

"I think the battle's started now, I can hear the screeches."

"Then hurry up—ack, curse these roses. Wait... what if we climbed a tree to get a better view?"

"Great idea! Let's get on this one, it looks both sturdy and tall."

Dawnpaw grappled on to the tree's bark, unsheathing her back claws and digging them in. I won't fall. She thought she'd never been more grateful to all those tree climbing lessons her mentor, Stonebrook, had given her. The faraway yowls of her clan-mates seared her flesh as she climbed, but she finally reached a place high enough to see the ThunderClan camp. With its high, jagged walls, and cats roaming all over the place, she thought the ThunderClan cats' home looked like a large burrow that somebody had struggled to dig up.

"There!" she mewed. "There it is! Let's go that way. It doesn't look like anyone's winning yet, we should hurry and get a closer look." She looked down, and saw Otterpaw only beginning to reach the branch she was perched on.

"Okay, okay," mewed Otterpaw."but first let's get down from this tree. Truthfully, I don't know how we managed to get up here, now we have to get down. Whoa, that's high."

Dawnpaw followed her sister's gaze and was intercepted by a far ground below them, which would surely result in a hard fall. Just thinking about it made her dizzy and terrified. She dug her claws harder into the tree bark, feeling like gravity's pull had suddenly become stronger. Jerking her head back up to meet Otterpaw's terrified gaze, she said, "Umm... Do you remember how to get down again?"

"N-no, you're higher, you should know!" Otterpaw's voice was rising; Dawnpaw knew her sister was near panic. And Dawnpaw felt absolutely the same.

"Umm... So, what do we do now? We can't just wait for someone to find us!" Dawnpaw mewed. But just then, she spotted something small flying up towards them fast, dodging branches as it went.

"What's that?" Otterpaw, it seemed, had also spotted the fly, which was getting nearer to them by the second. "Get it away, get it away! I'm scared!" she shrieked.

Dawnpaw flicked her tail to silence Otterpaw. The bug had landed on the branch adjacent to Otterpaw, and now it was flying down away from them, but on a different path than it had been going before. She heard Otterpaw sigh in relief, but that didn't reassure her. She felt as if she was missing something important, because just then the bug came hovering back up. She was not paying any attention to Otterpaw's gasp this time. She had just realized that what she had at first presumed to be a regular forest fly was actually a ladybug—a ladybug, which on a closer look she recognized to be the one she had rescued so many moons ago as a kit.

Now it was her turn to gasp. "Otterpaw, look! It's a ladybug! The same one I rescued as a kit! Y'know, the one that was stuck in the fast stream?"

"What? I don't—" Otterpaw started to mew, and then Dawnpaw saw realization dawn on her eyes. "Oh, I remember now! But how do you know it's the same one? And why d'you think it's flying back and forth, up and down?"

In the time that had passed, the ladybug had gone up to them and then flew back down, using the same routes. Dawnpaw knew that there was something missing, she knew the ladybug was trying to tell or show them something, and that something probably had to do with the time when she'd pushed it out of the stream... Or maybe it was a kind of repayment...

"Oui! Otterpaw, it's trying to show us a way down the tree! C'mon! We've got to follow it!"

By now, Otterpaw looked as if she would do anything to get down. Her voice was quick and even higher pitched than before. "Okay! Whatever you say! Just lead the way!"

So they followed the path the ladybug indicated, Dawnpaw in the lead, keeping her eyes on the small, beaded body of the ladybug. She found that the forest floor didn't seem as high anymore. When they were finally within reach of the ground, Otterpaw jumped to safety, a branch ahead of Dawnpaw. "Whew! Land, at last! Now, c'mon, Dawnpaw, let's go to the battle—that way, I remember!"

But Dawnpaw lingered for a moment longer. She bent down to her ladybug friend sitting on the branch, and whispered, "Thank you, ladybug. From when I lifted you out of the puddle, I always felt you were there for me."

The ladybug seemed to buzz in reply, 'And now my debt is repaid.' (yep, all oneshots totally need these spritual one-lined-paragraphs at the end. and mine's really bad, I know)

Yeah, I know that Dawnpaw acts three quarters Mary-suey. And the reason I didn't use semicolons (isn't it so annoying when you want to type in a apostrophe, but get a semicolon instead?) is because you can break writing rules inside dialouge. SO AWESOME!

I'd had this idea for a story already, so I just combined the DarkClan challenge with it, by the way.

And since I've finished it... ice cream for everyone! Unless you're allergic to it, which sucks for you (Mwahahaha!)*

Question: Was the beginning boring? Be honest!

*That's a joke, okay? Okay, you understand, so good for you.