To all my dear readers-happy holidays!

Even though it may be a little late, this is a Christmas/Hanukkah/Kwanzaa/New Year/whatever-else-you-celebrate gift to you!

This is my second SecretClan challenge, but I decided I would incorporate some holiday cheer into it. It's my first attempt at parody-hopefully it meets your expectations. I tried to make it funny, but I don't know if I succeeded or not. I thought it was pretty good. :P

Please review and let me know what you think of it! :)

Disclaimer: I do not own Warriors, all characters belong to The Gone Angel; I own only the story.

The sun shone brightly in a clear blue sky. Fluffy white clouds floated peacefully in the sky, casting shadows onto the dark brown bark and thick green leaves of the trees in the forest. It was a beautiful day for the cats of MarshmallowClan.

Of course, the trees didn't talk nearly as much as Rantingmaster, who was complaining, as usual, about the sun being too bright.

And the clouds weren't nearly as fluffy as Cupcakeflower, who was bored out of her mind, sitting and listening to Rantingmaster rant.

And even the sky wasn't as dumb as Deadhead, who was glaring at Cupcakeflower's fluffy pink tail, evidently thinking it was her head.

Yes, just a normal day in MarshmallowClan.

"…can you believe the nerve?!" Rantingmaster was saying. "I mean, even StarClan knows that the sun is too bright! Why do you think the stars only come out at night? And then the sunlight-"

Deadhead took that moment to ram his thick head into Rantingmaster's side.

"Cupcakeflower!" Deadhead snarled. "Why'd you do that?"

"Do what? I didn't move! You must be mistaken." Cupcakeflower twittered in an impossibly high falsetto.

Rantingmaster glared at Deadhead. "Now look what you've done!" he yowled angrily. "You're going to leave a bruise! It's going to go all purple under my fur and then it'll hurt for days whenever I press it-"

"Rantingmaster!" came the loud voice of Marshmallowstar from across the clearing.

Rantingmaster rolled his eyes. "What, Marshmallowstar?"

Marshmallowstar sashayed out of her den. "Bam bam buh buh bam BAH! Bam bam-oh yes, I was going to say something, wasn't I? Hmmm…" Marshmallowstar froze in place. Her eyes glazed over, and she curled up into a ball, looking eerily like a puffy little marshmallow.

The cats in the clearing waited patiently. Rantingmaster was about to start on an extra-loud rant when Marshmallowstar unfroze.

"Right!" she grinned, oblivious to the twig sticking out of her ear and the sprinkles caught in her pelt. "I was going to tell you to stop ranting! You'll bore the reader to death!"

Deadhead tilted his very heavy head. "Whaaaat's aaa reeeeaaaadeeerrrr," he slurred, slumping down onto the ground. There was a very dull thunk as his head hit the ground.

Cupcakeflower sighed sweetly. "I wish you wouldn't do that, Deadhead," she trilled, nudging him off the ground and onto his feet. "You don't have the wits to spare."

Deadhead leaped back to his feet. "Unpaw me, you vile annoying she-cat!"

Then he frowned. "Wait, you are a she-cat, right?"

Rantingmaster opened his mouth (again). "I told you, Deadhead, you shouldn't do that!" he growled. "Now you're the one who'll have a bump, and then your head will hurt for days, and you'll be lying around the medicine den eating the prey that we catch, and then you'll come out of the den even dumber than you went in and-"

"Silence!" Marshmallowstar yowled, attempting to sound loud and in control. What she actually managed to do was squeal in an ear-shatteringly high voice.

Snickers erupted from the nearby cats.

Winnerclaw strutted out of the warrior's den. "I'm going to go beat some ChocolateClan cats up!" he yowled proudly. "I have a prophecy to complete!"

Marshmallowstar chose that moment to gasp. "I have had a vision!" she proclaimed. "A prophecy!"

Winnerclaw rolled his eyes. "It's obviously about me," he purred.

Rantingmaster turned on him. "YOU THINK YOU'RE SO SPECIAL BUT YOU'RE NOT, YOU'RE JUST A SMELLY OLD STUCK-UP FLEABAG WHO DOESN'T DO ANYTHING EXCEPT COMPLAIN AND PRETEND TO WIN FIGHTS AND FINISH PROPHECIES! LET US HAVE A PROPHECY FOR A CHANGE OR ELSE I'LL-"

Winnerclaw shoved his tail-tip into Rantingmaster's mouth. "Stuff it," he snarled. "The reader's eyes are going to hurt from trying to read all those capital letters!"

Rantingmaster tilted his head in confusion. "What are you talking about?"

"Toms!" Marshmallowstar interrupted, waving her fluffy marshmallow tail in annoyance. "Let me tell you the new prophecy!"

"Fine," Rantingmaster grumbled. "But don't come running to me if you can't handle it!"

Marshmallowstar stood straight, cleared her throat, and closed her eyes. In a scratchy voice, she announced the prophecy.

"The master of ranting must celebrate the Twoleg holidays, or else the Clan of the Marshmallow will never find peace!"

Cupcakeflower shrieked in fright and fainted dead away.

While some cat no one knew the name of dragged Cupcakeflower away to the nonexistent medicine den, Rantingmaster, Winnerclaw, and Marshmallowstar debated about the meaning of the prophecy.

Which meant that Winnerclaw gloated that it would be his 34th prophecy, while Rantingmaster ranted about the prophecy being extremely unclear, and Marshmallowstar freaked out about the sprinkles in her fur. Deadhead just sat there, asking dumb questions.

"…and now StarClan is talking about the master of ranting. No cat has the faintest clue who the master of ranting is, and now we won't find peace, StarClan has-"

Winnerclaw puffed out his chest. "It's obviously me! I mean, how many times have I completed prophecies? This is just another one for me!"

"Sprinkles take forever to get out of your pelt," Marshmallowstar fretted. "And what in MarshmallowClan's name is a Twoleg holiday?"

"I think a holiday is when you don't have to do any work," Deadhead meowed, frowning a little.

The other cats stared at him.

"What?" he defended himself. "I'm not completely stupid!"

Rantingmaster snorted under his breath. "Just most of the time?"

Deadhead didn't notice.

Just then, Chocolatestar of AwesomeChocolateClan staggered into the camp. "Marshmallowstar…" he groaned, collapsing on the ground.

Marshmallowstar shrieked and rushed to his side. "Oh, no, my mate," she sobbed dramatically. "Please don't leave me!"

Chocolatestar lifted his head and looked at her indignantly. "What're you talking about? I'm not going anywhere! We have a date tonight, remember?"

Marshmallowstar perked up. "Oh yeah!"

Rantingmaster exploded. "YOU BROKE THE CODE! MARSHMALLOWSTAR, THE WARRIOR CODE IS THERE FOR A REASON! YOU TOOK A MATE FROM A-"

Cupcakeflower poked her head out of thin air. "Illegitimate relationships are not a surprise, Rantingmaster," she chided. "They probably happen more than legitimate ones."

Rantingmaster nodded thoughtfully. "Good point," he conceded.

Deadhead passed out from the brain overload from Cupcakeflower's use of several long words in two sentences.

Chocolatestar waved his tail. "Hello-o-o! I came to give some information that StarClan has granted me!"

Winnerclaw settled down on the ground. "Let's hear it, then."

Chocolatestar cleared his throat and began to speak in a deep, mysterious voice.

"Long ago, the Twolegs started a strange tradition. They cut down pine trees, and took the holly berries from the forest! StarClan watched as the Twolegs took the trees into their nests, stood them up, and put the holly berries all over them. Then they used strange, brightly colored balls and stuck them up somehow as well. They celebrated a holiday like this. The Twolegs called it…" here Chocolatestar paused dramatically, "Christmas!"

Winnerclaw frowned, puzzled. "What's that got to do with anything?"

Chocolatestar rolled his eyes. "They did this in the winter! The holiday is today!"

Marshmallowstar gasped theatrically. "The prophecy! We must celebrate the Twoleg holidays today or else we will never find peace!"

She swooned against Chocolatestar, who licked her ears comfortingly, murmuring that she tasted amazing, like marshmallows.

That's when Winnerclaw had a brain flash.

"The prophecy said the master of ranting!" he cried. "The master of ranting. The ranting master! RANTINGMASTER!"

Rantingmaster nodded solemnly. "I must find a tree and some holly berries and bring them back so we can have peace AND DON'T YOU START THAT AGAIN, YOU CAN'T BE THE STAR OF EVERYTHING!" he added as Winnerclaw began to sob.

Tears poured down Winnerclaw's face. "All I ever wanted was to be in every single prophecy that StarClan ordained! Is that too much to ask?" he bawled.

Rantingmaster was about to rant at him again when a fluffy pink tail-tip stopped him from speaking. Cupcakeflower padded calmly out of the nonexistent medicine den and over to Winnerclaw.

"There, there," she soothed, wrapping her tail around him. "Everything's okay."

In a side whisper, she hissed to Rantingmaster, "For StarClan's sake, go get the tree!"

Rantingmaster nodded and raced out of camp, still debating about whether or not to rant at the infantile Winnerclaw when he got back.

Rantingmaster padded through the pine trees, scrutinizing them carefully. "Hmm…" he mused. "No, not this one, it's huge, this one's got beetles, that's nasty, this one's a sprout, nope, that's catmint…"

Finally, just as he was nearing the AwesomeChocolateClan border, he found the perfect tree. It was a slender sapling, with bristly needles and a fragile trunk.

Rantingmaster grabbed a candy cane that he had retrieved in Twolegplace and broke the trunk clean in half. He broke the candy as well, but he didn't care. There were loads more in Marshmallowstar's not-so-secret stash.

Now, for the holly-lolliberries. They were a curious breed that only grew in the two CandyClans' territory. A careless kit had once planted a lollipop that it's mother had stolen. The lollipop grew into a bush, which then became a holly-lolliberry bush. The berries, instead of being poisonous, would give a cat a catmint-level high, and they were as big and red as lollipops.

It was Rantingmaster's aim to bring many of those back to the camp to decorate the tree with.

"Though," he silently fumed as he carried the tree on his back, "we are not Twolegs. We are warrior cats! We do not 'celebrate Christmas' as the crazy Twolegs do! StarClan's gone mad! Dead cats these days, they have no respect for the living! Why, if I were in StarClan…"

Luckily for Rantingmaster, he literally ran into a huge holly-lolliberry bush not too far from camp. Still ranting in his head, he bit off several young branches, heavy with holly-lolliberries, being careful not to accidentally eat a berry.

"I'll end up like that perpetually-sugar-high Marshmallowstar back at camp if I eat these," he thought savagely, gathering the twigs in his mouth.

As the sun moved in the sky, he trotted back home, weighed down by the tree on his back and the tempting holly-lolliberries in his teeth.

When he burst into camp, no one noticed. Marshmallowstar and Chocolatestar were dancing around the camp, singing sad, romantic songs (as much as a cat can sing, anyway). Cupcakeflower was still comforting Winnerclaw, who wasn't crying anymore, as Rantingmaster could clearly see. Winnerclaw was just faking it to get Cupcakeflower's attention (he had a Clan-sized crush on her). And Deadhead was still passed out in the sprinkles on the ground.

Rantingmaster angrily lugged his holiday gear to the center of the clearing, driving the tree's trunk firmly into the ground. The holly-lolliberries lay in a sugary pile next to him, ready to be stuck onto the tree.

But no one had noticed Rantingmaster's return.

So Rantingmaster did what he did best-ranting.

"YOU ALL SEND ME TO DO YOUR DUMB QUEST AND FULFILL YOUR PROPHECY BY CELEBRATING A TWOLEG HOLIDAY, FOR STARCLAN'S SAKE, AND THEN WHEN I COME BACK WITH ALL THE BERRIES AND A TREE, YOU IGNORE ME AND LEAVE ME TO DO THE WORK? I'M DOING THIS FOR THE ENTIRE CLAN SO WE CAN HAVE PEACE! HELP ME TO DO THIS BEFORE-"

By this time, the entire Clan was staring open-mouthed at him.

No, not at him, at the pile of holly-lolliberries next to him.

Within a moment, they rushed at him and managed to control themselves long enough to stick the berries onto the needles of the yellowing pine tree.

They stepped back, surveying their work. The tree actually looked pretty good, with bright red, juicy berries speared on green and yellow pine needles.

Evidently StarClan approved too, because a blazing star shot across the sky as the cats enjoyed a warm sensation of peace.

It didn't last long.

Instead, the party began.

The cats (even Rantingmaster) attacked the holly-lolliberries, cramming their mouths full with the sugary berries, pulling them off the tree until there weren't any left.

Of course, this gave them all lolliberry highs.

Chocolatestar and Marshmallowstar danced crazily around the clearing, singing a strange mix of jazz and Taylor Swift that rose higher in pitch every moment. Cupcakeflower rolled in the sprinkles on the ground, laughing hysterically. Winnerclaw leaped around from den to den, cackling, finally landing on the tree, then falling down and beginning again. Deadhead busted out a secret stash of soda and candy canes, which were demolished within seconds. Rantingmaster twirled around the tree, a candy cane in each ear, mouth crammed with holly-lolliberries, spouting ridiculous jumbled rants that spanned from StarClan (they didn't party enough) to the sugar levels in donuts (they weren't high enough).

Their frenzied partying lasted all afternoon.

As the moon rose, the cats finally crashed, lying around the clearing, exhausted, some still randomly babbling about pine trees and soda. But one thought was clear in every loopy mind: THAT WAS AWESOME.

When the cats had regained their senses, they decided that it was so much fun to go hyper on holly-lolliberries that they would celebrate "Christmas" like that every year. Maybe the Twolegs had the right idea, after all.

The trend became legendary-the only way to party was to eat lots and lots of those lovely, sugary berries and dance around a tree.

And that is how MarshmallowClan learned to celebrate the holidays.

That, my friends, is my very first parody. Jeez, these are fun to write! XD

Reviews are appreciated. ;)

Happy holidays to all!