Chapter 1:
Of all the days that it could have happened—
And Fennelkit never really meant to slip, it just happened because some cats thought it'd be a good idea to play tag right after it rained
—she'd had to get dirty right before she was made into an apprentice.
"Hey, it's going to start!"
"Sorry about your fur, anyway!"
And they left her, standing open-mouthed with perfectly ruined, perfectly white fur turned brown.
How could one puddle have so much mud anyway?
"Come back over here!" she called out furiously. "You're the ones who ruined my fur! How am I supposed to clean all of this up by myself?"
When they didn't answer, she charged up the slope where they were probably waiting, laughing at her...
So maybe it didn't matter if she only slipped five times, the last time being when she reached the top and crashed into Mintkit, sending him crashing into Silverkit, which unsurprisingly meant that all three of them lost their balance and fell, and rolled and jostled back down the long, rocky slope and ending up in a dazed heap at the bottom.
And covered in mud, you could never forget that.
"Ha ha! Stagpaw, look at the dung-covered weasels I found having a wiggling contest!" A golden brown she-cat with shimmering green eyes strolled cheerily down the slope towards them, easily avoiding the puddles of mud that littered it.
Mintkit spat out a clump of mud, glaring at the she-cat as she reached the bottom. "Go away, Heatherpaw. No one has wiggling contests unless their newborn kits, which you and your lackey brother may as well be. And Fennelkit, why did you have to get me so dirty? Our ceremony is today and this mud is so sticky, now we have to show up like—"
Ah, brother Mintkit. He's usually calm but can never take an insult nicely, especially after being pushed down a hill of mud... but maybe he went a little to far when first the clump of mud landed on Fennelkit, and then he had to try and smart-ass her for doing something he first did to her. Fennelkit was not pleased, and when she wasn't pleased she blew up, sue her for being like spoiled kit, but Fennelkit was not in the mood to show up to her ceremony only a bit later on with mud covering her, either.
"Look, you dumbasses," she started. "I was only—"
"So what happened over here?" Rudely interrupting her was Stagpaw Heatherpaw's brother. "How'd you all get so dirty? Isn't your apprentice ceremony starting right now?"
Stagpaw was dumb as a rat and his tact wasn't much better either. But before Fennelkit could yell something furiously in response, a horrified voice broke in.
"My kits! Where have you three—" Cue the gasping. The footsteps that signal that now you're in big trouble as your mother screams something intangible and runs down-hill, the dread that says what if someone sees me like this, and finally the tongue that seems to want to torture the hell out of you, pushing you everywhere yet always managing to find you in all the places.
Heatherpaw gave one last smug glance before walking daintily away, Stagpaw trailing behind her.
...Today was not Fennelkit's day.
"I can't get it off, it's stuck and already dried!" Rabbitnose cried out as she harassed Fennelkit, stray tail smacking Silverkit's nose.
"Ow!" Silverkit, the quiet but pretty one of the three, reeled away in alarm. She gave Fennelkit a look that said seriously this is kind of annoying, its going to get more annoying when more cats come, and its also kind of your fault and Fennelkit glared back, good as she could glare, silently daring Silverkit to make a comment.
"This tastes like rain," Mintkit said, trying to lick the mud off his pelt, but Fennelkit could see that, yes, it was too dried and thick to get off. Even the mud on Rabbitnose's paws didn't seem as thick as the mud that caked the fur of Silverkit, Mintkit, and Fennelkit... just great.
"Of course it tastes like rain, it's from a puddle," Fennelkit rolled her eyes in response.
When she suddenly heard the pounding footsteps, Fennelkit assumed that it was just someone else come to yell at them for getting dirty. What she didn't assume was a very tired, panting Willowwhisker and Smokebreeze that ran down the hill from its other side, seemingly unaware of nothing but running, running fast. They reeked of fear so strong, it was enough to make Fennelkit shiver and Rabbitnose to look up in alarm.
"Badger!" they shouted.
Badger? As in badger from the stories the elders tell us?
"It's coming this way! To camp! We tried to delay it, but it pushed right past us," Smokebreeze gasped out.
"It was, too strong, we had, no choice but to outrun and! Warn camp!" continued Willowwhisker, in short breaths. "Came from, over there!" He pointed his tail vaguely to a spot where the sun was setting.
Where there was a huge black and white badger over there... but it seemed to be lumbering causally across the rolling plains, and more than a couple tens of foxlengths away. The two warriors had no visible fresh wounds.
Well now it might as well be know who the life kissing cowards are.
Rabbitnose gasped. "You two go warn the camp, fast; I'll guard my kits and take them back behind you."
And they all resumed happily minding their own business. Now the WindClan camp was only a hill's roll away and to trouble for the two warriors and our mother to get to, but the thing is, its kind of hard to walk covered head to toe in sticky mud that dried in an alarming pace.
So Fennelkit found out when she and her littermates couldn't move a muscle to save their own lives, and the badger in the distance seemed to be closing in faster, and Rabbitnose was forced to have to carry them up, one by one, up the hill to the camp. Oh, she got help all right, which could only be gotten not by screeching loudly in panic because by now there were screeches of panic coming from inside the camp, but by actually going inside and getting attention (it couldn't be called physical harm of other clanmates if you were trying to protect your kits).
...But Fennelkit was the only one sitting up the slope by WindClan camp entrance when the dreaded creature arrived. Big beady black eyes, a large body rippling with muscle that was way stronger than any WindClan warrior she had seen, white snout and large jaws. She recalled the terrifying stories she heard from the clan elders about the badgers that killed just to kill, and about how long ago a group of badgers would have wiped out ThunderClan if it hadn't been for WindClan coming to their aid, and how there was one right about three tail-lengths in front of her littermates.
She wanted to scream. Couldn't her mother and the cats in the camp see that the threat was right there? But it was getting closer, she couldn't, wouldn't let it harm them, no matter how annoying the mud situation was.
Guess what she did next?
No really, guess what?
Guess what?
Alright fine, you're probably done guessing.
"GET AWAY!" the six-moon old kit yelled as she tumbled down the slope towards the large badger. Sliding quickly down the puddles lying on the hill, she felt her pent up fear being released.
"Fennelkit!" Silverkit gasped in horror, her attention averted from the badger that had been stalking towards them, that seemed to almost recoil as mud covered Fennelkit rolled down.
"No, don't!" Mintkit had said at the same time Silverkit yelled, but his warning came too late.
In a chain reaction (that seemed oddly familiar), Fennelkit hit Mintkit, who hit Silverkit, who hit the badger.
Then it went black.
Just black.
"Hm, this could be interesting. Where did you say you found them?"
"They were lying beneath the owl tree when my hunting patrol came across them, Bluestar. All three of them. They had no scent or trail of any clan I know except for on the ground they were lying on. They were unconscious when we first found them... and now, well..."
"Let me go, lemme go you stinky cat! I don't belong here!"
Sounds of struggles and scuffles, and then a muffled sound. And also... a familiar voice, wasn't it?
She was groggy, an undeniable fact after going up and down that hill multiple times. Why did she go up and down that hill multiple times?
Oh, yeah!
"Badger! Silverkit! Mintkit!"
The screech must have been sudden and loud, because suddenly all the noise ceased and Fennelkit, for the first time, got a look at where she was. There were trees, so many trees. There were cats she had never seen before, big cats that looked strong and smelled strange. There were bushes where more cats crouched under, and where older cats shoved the smaller ones underneath prickly bushes.
Talk about akward, as she had no idea whatsoever what anyone was doing here.
Yet it reminded her of WindClan camp.
But... where was the badger? Where were the rolling hills, where was her mother, her littermates?
Was everything okay?
"Fennelkit!"
Aha, there was Silverkit being held in the scruff of a mousey brown cat, her hindlegs barely brushing the ground, fur all ruffled (Fennelkit guessed Silverkit had made the racked earlier). Fennelkit breathed out a sigh of relief before rushing towards her sister, and promptly getting lifted off the ground by strong, firm teeth.
She got lifted up at the same time as, "It's okay, we're all here, Fennelkit. Oh, watch out behind you!"
Mintkit's warning, though late, at least assured her that he was alive so she decieded to forgive him this once.
"Just! Freaking! Let me—"
"Hey, Fireheart, these kits bite," said an unfamiliar voice among all the other unfamiliars. It was a gray tabby cat, and his voice sparkled with amusement.
Then Fennelkit twisted, got a better look at the cat that had lifted her up.
Fireheart, the gray cat had said.
Fireheart had a pelt of flame-like orange and bright green eyes.
She swiveled, remembering something she had heard before.
Bluestar was standing on a large rock overlooking the camp.
And.
Graystripe was giving her a strange look.
Fennelkit completely blanched. It just wasn't possible; one part she was next to WindClan camp, next blink she was in ThunderClan, all the way in the past. Because she remembered these cats, remembered them from the stories the WindClan elders had told of ancient ThunderClan, before the famous battle with BloodClan, before the clans moved to the lake, remembered them from before the battle with the Dark Forest.
And why did she and her littermates have to be transported to ThunderClan of all places?
...Today was definitely not her day.
AN: You're probably wondering why you just read this, what the hell I just did (which can basically apply to anything I do on fanfiction) to the kits, and why everything in this story is so erratic and makes no sense at all. Don't worry, I have lots of terrible explanations to suit you all.
This traveling to the past thing and to a different clan? It's because of the mud that clung to them. Really. See, the world can be run in a million different ways, there are a million possibilities on how things turn out, and these possibilities are like parallel universes. They were transported to a universe where Ravenpaw died, was killed by Tigerclaw when he found out Ravenpaw was living with Barely, killed somtime around when Rising Storm occurs. This would have an impact on Graystripe and Firestar when they invaded River/ShadowClan territory in The Last Hope to retrieve the 'half-bloods', since Ravenpaw wouldn't be with them (not to mention the emotional effects and grief Ravenpaw's death would cause) and while invading, Firestar and Graystripe are busted and executed by Tigerstar... and you can basically tell that in the war with BloodClan the clans are pretty much annihilated. Afterwards Sitting in StarClan, however, Ravenpaw is bitter that he was killed by Tigerclaw and that the clans didn't survive, so bitter that even when StarClan is forgotten after a long long time he is still there. But after many years, even he can't sustain his body so well, and is transported to the clouds, where he drifts between the universes and finally rains down on the future of the world that's in the main warriors series, way after the battle with the Dark Forest. And tada, his will is transfered into the rain that turns into mud and basically the kits soaked up all of it (that sounds kind of pedo like) and are sent to the past. I didn't say it was going to be a good explaination. Even if they do manage to prevent Ravenpaw's death in this timeline, there will still be trouble because they've made their own little ripples that will affect everyone's future.
Did I manage to give you a massive migrain, for those of you who actually read that clump of text above? alright, that's nice
As for the kits seperate thoughts on the situation, Mintkits the smart one with more info on the past, Silverkits the shyer and quieter one, Fennelkit's the brash and outgoing one.
And the badger was Midnight, somehow appearing on WindClan territory like somewhat 50 years after the end of The Last Hope. I guess she was too surprised at WindClan's erratic behavior to actually tell them that one badger wasn't there to kill them all.
But if you were wondering why I haven't been on fanfiction lately, let me tell you, I'm feeling very sleep deprived and tired right now and getting closer to the end of my AN and frankly it doesn't matter that much. Though I am super sorry that I left you all without leaving a note or anything.
Also, REVIEW. This might seem very sudden. If you're a visitor passing by (like me), one of those anonymous stalker types (like me), or an author with an account (like me), it cant be so hard to type in guest and then what you wanna say... well actually it can be hard, but ANYWAY. Review because I;m pretty sure I screw up alot when I write, like grammar and not making sense and stuff, and there should probably be someone to tell me where (at least where the important ones are).
Toodles