Lols, yesh, so: I am entering Prin Pardus's 100 OneShot Challenge! ^.^; Call me crazy if you will, but I really need something to occupy me this summer~! XD

Some of these may be two- or three-part oneshot story thingys, simply because I'm lazy and I don't want to make the chapters too long to read - they need to be at least 1500 words, right? ^.^; Well, along with that, for this chapter, it kind of got random and disturbing in the middle, M-rated innuendos, nearly, and, well... yeah. I'll continue this later, okay? XD

Anyways! ^.^; I woke up this morning to find the cat in the hamster's box, pawing around! O.o; Of course I grabbed her, threw her out of my room, and closed the door... XD

I'm not very proud of this chapter, but as lately my OCD has been kicking up again and I've had some disturbing thoughts, I've kind of made the character of Cal Lightman from Lie To Me (he's Light ^.^;) have these thoughts about a strange case... :3

But I like the start and finish of it! ^.^;

Injured

Light padded through the forest calmly, feeling confident. He knew this territory. He knew this place. He knew it better than anyone else.

He was carrying two mice and a vole; that'd do. Back at the agency he knew his friends were waiting; they were waiting for him to get back from his lone hunting patrol so they could all eat and plan together what to do about their next case.

Light blinked thoughtfully. This case was a tricky one. Housecats back in the human town were being picked off one by one, and not a single scent was left behind. This made it very difficult to find out who it was, and everybody was doubtful that it was even to be found out at all.

I will find out who's murdering those cats! Light vowed. No cat should be killed!

It was an easy vow to make, but a very difficult one to keep. They had first been alerted of it after Rosie, one of the housecats that lived down near the human soccer field, had witnessed her other friend, Sunflower, who lived in the next house, being attacked viciously.

"I didn't see who it was," she had told Light and his little group. "All I know is that I heard Sunflower screaming, and I jumped onto the fence, yowling out a battle cry. Whatever was attacking her disappeared the moment I got close." She paused. "We… we were lucky. Sunflower was very badly injured. It was lucky that I was able to get my humans to investigate. We were luckier still that we were able to save her at all."

"She's telling the truth," Light said, looking around at Foster. Foster was studying Rosie's face, too.

"Yeah. She's telling the truth," he agreed, nodding slowly.

"So, will you help us, then?" Sunflower asked hopefully. "I heard that it was happening to some other cats, too."

Light glanced around at his companions; then, he nodded and said, "Sure. We'll help you."

"Oh, thanks!" Sunflower gushed.

Light mulled over this carefully. So, it wasn't just an isolated incident, as he had figured out already. But Sunflower, upon further questioning, had not been able to tell them of any scents, things that she saw, or anything. The strange animal in question streaked under the fence, and she hadn't seen it since.

They had asked Rosie, too, although they'd only gotten a chance to once because she was never outside anymore. It took a lot of coaxing from Sunflower to even get her close to the door, and even more to get her under a bush where the humans wouldn't see them, but they could question her thoroughly.

"So," Light said flatly. "You're sure you didn't see anything."

"N-No," Rosie said, her voice trembling. "Y-You…. You're really going to help me?"

"Yes, we are, Rosie," Eli said comfortingly.

Light sighed. Even Eli hadn't been able to drag anything out of the poor cat…. He sighed. She was traumatized.

He walked more slowly now, his senses alert. He was suddenly feeling rather paranoid, and he wanted to make sure he was on top of things. He knew that when he reached the camp he would be safe, but for now…. He shuddered. He was at the mercy of whatever might decide to attack him, specifically if it was the creature that had attacked Rosie.

Boom. Boom. Boom.

His heart thudded in his chest.

….

Time seemed to slow down.

Crackle! Snap! Scritch!

Branches were broken loudly beside him and under his pawsteps.

Suddenly, every single noise in the forest seemed to be dangerous. His heart beat fast as he spun around, trying to pinpoint the sources of those noises. The forest seemed… alive.

He shook himself. This is silly! Calm down! Light told himself. But it didn't work. You're not normally like this!

He started running. All of a sudden, he slipped on a branch and, while fumbling to retrieve his footing once again, thought he saw a pair of red eyes in the bushes. That was the last straw. He was trying to stay silent, but he shrieked as he slipped on something yet again and was thrown into midair, landing on the branch again with a sickening crack. Surprisingly enough, he didn't feel any pain… and when he looked down at the branch, he laughed in relief. Oh! I just cracked the branch! Thank God!

He shook his head, getting up, feeling stupid now for having panicked earlier. He was a trained detective. Why did something like this cause him to lose his head quite so easily? He'd seen far scarier things in his job, and he knew it. His body and mind both knew it… so what was with the panic attack earlier?

He sighed, walking slowly back towards the camp. I'll ask Eli when I get home. That's the least I can do. She'll know how to help me.

He took his time, mulling over what he had seen.

Did I really see that? Light wondered. Could it have been a ghost? Or could it have been the thing that attacked Rosie? She wasn't able to describe it….

And, yet, it was gone so fast that Light wasn't even sure that he saw it himself. He kept mulling over this, but eventually the disturbing thoughts he'd been trying so hard to get away from came back and he stopped. He remembered some of the imaginative stories that Sunflower had been told by a city rogue and that she had told him. He shook his head. Such a poor, innocent cat…. She hadn't understood the meaning of it—she had never been around these things. He had. He knew that these were stories about rape. He knew that he shouldn't have to put up with these things. Yet… why did he?

"Anyways, and then she went on with, 'Then the cat worked up a rhythm. I went with him, too, my paws kicking as he thrust,'" Sunflower told him.

Light's eyes were wide. "Umm… interesting."

Sunflower looked proud of herself. "Isn't it great that I can remember so much?"

"Err…. Yeah, yeah," Light murmured.

Once that story was over, she launched right into another one.

"And she also told me this one: 'So, I was down at the city arena the other day, and I saw cats there! I decided to check it out. I noticed cats torturing each other! Or was it fighting? I couldn't tell. I couldn't tell anything anymore. After that brutal raping by all those tomcats, I smacked my head so hard that I got amnesia. At least, that's what I had been told had happened after I woke up. I couldn't remember anything… not even my own identity…. Of course, later I was able to. But for then, I couldn't….'" Sunflower trailed off.

"Err. Sunflower. Did this cat tell all these stories in first-person?" Light inquired.

"Yep!" she said proudly. "What interesting stories! She said that they all happened to her, too." She nodded vigorously.

"Sunflower, have you ever gotten it in your head that these may be disturbing?" Light asked.

Light had politely listened to the stories. Some got much worse; some were far more descriptive. He could tell by studying her face that she truly didn't know that these stories were a bad thing; she thought they were cool and, quite frankly, were the hardships of a true warrior. He had found out that the cat's name was Suncloud, and that she had been attacked by toms during a mating contest. It had gone on until nightfall, and it was a wonder that she'd survived at all.

Light shuddered. Why do I think about these things? For the past five months or so, the thoughts kept cropping up—especially the one sentence, 'my paws kicking as he thrust'.

He wondered, How the hell would a cat's paws kick as a cat thrust? Unless they were mating belly to belly? How does that even work? He shook his head. Obviously, there was a lot he didn't know. He wasn't too interested in knowing that, though, so….

He'd also heard a few cuter stories, from another cat, Sunflower had told him.

"And this cat told me next, 'Dreamkit! I thought. That's my name. I opened my eyes and looked around,'" Sunflower recited proudly.

"Cute," Light murmured. "Any other cute things?"

"Hold on!" she purred. "I'm not quite finished yet."

And so it continued. She told him a bit more.

"A while later, I had finally gotten the hang of walking, Gentlegaze took me outside.'" Sunflower recited this story rather proudly, too.

"Is it one of your favourites?" she asked him later.

"Hell, yes!" he confirmed, nodding quickly.

"Well, it's one of mine, too," she told him.

Light sighed. The stories about the kittens were cute, and Light wondered where the names had come from. He heard, however, that the names were 'Clan names'—cats who lived in groups with a solid hierarchy.

He preferred living with just his little group. But now was not the time to think about it—the camp was right up ahead! He happily hurried through the camp entrance and into the clearing.

"Hey, guys!" he called. "So, what's up? Eli back yet from her hunting?"

"No," Emily told him, looking up from her vigorous paw-washing.

"Yes," Eli called loudly, trotting into the clearing beside Light.

He glanced at Eli. "Hey. Hunting?" He eyed his prey scrutinously. "You didn't bring back much."

"No." Eli said it in a matter of fact way. "I… something else…. Well, I think I was chased by it, all right?"

"Chased by what?" Light asked.

"You know. That. You know it perfectly well; you knew what I was talking about the moment I said the word 'chased'." Eli's tone was very much accusatory.

"Well." Light sighed. "Now you can read my mind, too? I wasn't expecting that." He shuffled his prey around with his paws before saying, "Did you get a better glimpse of it? I kind of saw its eyes and then I ran…."

"You totally had a spaz attack, too; just the way you say it gives it away," Ria mentioned from the other side of the clearing…. Well, she used to be there; now she was in front of Light and Eli.

Light rolled his eyes. "Okay. Enough of the 'I know what you're thinking because of my superbly specially awesome face-reading skills. Now. What did we all see? What are we going to do?"

"Correction," Ria put in. "Only you and Eli saw it. The rest of us did not."

Light rolled his eyes again. "Fine. Whatever. So, how are we going to eradicate this, er…." he glanced uneasily into the bushes around the edge of the clearing. "….thing?"

"Well, first, what is it, exactly? How did it move?" Emily inquired, coming up behind him and looking up at her father when he turned around.

Light's gaze was faintly amused. "Emily, I thought you never involved yourself in a case."

Emily rolled her eyes. "Well, you're talking about it all the time, and there's nothing else to do! Duh! Of course I'm involving myself in the case!"

"Okay, then. So, what did we all… wait. Where's Agent?" Light asked, looking around.

Ria stopped washing herself. "Wasn't he here a second ago?"

"Was he?" Emily asked.

They all stared at each other in horror.

"Good Lord!"

"What if a fox got him?"

"What if the…." The speaker trailed off, as if unable to go on.

"What if the thing who attacks us got him?" someone else cried.

"Whoa! Wait! Calm down!" Light ordered over his companions' cries. "We must go out and look for him." He got up, shook out his fur, and started walking casually out of the camp entrance.

Ria, Foster, Eli, and Emily clustered around him as they all walked through the forest.
"Listen for any moans or anything," Foster hissed. She had the best hearing out of all of them. "I'll keep a lookout, too, but I can't do it all by myself, you know!"

"Shush!" Emily quieted her. "I think I hear something."

The moonlight shone down in a scattered way through the clouds as the five cats stopped, letting the white light dapple their pelts. Light's pale brown-gray pelt looked like a stormy night sky with white clouds zooming across it.

He pricked his ears. What will it be…? Light wondered. Moaning….?

He suddenly realized, that, yes; he could hear moaning!

"Help… uhh… ugh… help…?" the voice muttered.

Agent! Light realized.

Emily was first through the bushes. She stopped beside Agent.

"Are you okay?" Light heard her ask.

He stepped through the bushes. He gasped. "Good Lord! What happened to you, Agent?"

The tom's body was covered with lacerations and scratches. One of his legs was sticking out at a weird angle, and one of his eyes was swollen and stuck shut.

"I…. I…," he panted, obviously exhausted.

"Rest," Ria said gently, patting down the fluffed up fur on his head.

"Some… creatures… attacked me!" he managed to get out. "Black… fast… didn't see 'em coming… attacked me and left…."

Light and Foster exchanged worried glances. "Could they…," he began.

"….Have been those creatures that attacked the housecats?" Foster finished. "Well, maybe."

"Hmm." Light looked down at Agent. "Let's carry this injured cat back to camp, all right? Maybe we'll figure out more once he's healed."

So, with that, they all picked up Agent—except Emily, being too small—and started back to camp, Ria running over how to fix him up, and Light hoping that they'd find those killer cat things—whatever they were—soon.