GET DOWN WITH THE SICKNESS
"Looking at my own reflection,
When suddenly it changes,
Violently it changes,
There is no turning back now,
You've woken up the demon in me!"
His face was in the cold dirt. In fact, it wasn't cold. It was warm and wet, not cold and dry. The taste in his mouth wasn't grimy dirt, it was iron. Blood. Whose blood was it? His? Someone else's? He didn't know.
Graystripe weakly lifted his face from the puddle of blood, allowing it to stain his fur. He could hear the awful sounds of calamity and discord ringing in his ears; cats yowling and screaming; the barking of dogs; blood spilling and flesh tearing.
Everything had been a blur. They had been taken by surprise in the dead of night. There was no warning, no cries for battle before the fight. Who had done it? Tigerclaw? But he had been exiled and the dogs he used had been killed.
There were unfamiliar and horrid scents in the air; death, bloods, dogs, rouges. Rouges. So this was not Tigerclaw's doing. He would never work with any cat without Clan blood in their veins. It was a smart and vicious group of rogues.
Graystripe saw, out of the corner of his eye, Whitestorm fending off one of the rouges. A stand out feature of the rogues were the bands around their neck. Normally, those were a sign of the cat being a kittypet, the property of twolegs. But here it showed how savage they were with the teeth of StarClan knows what protruding from said bands, like trophies.
The rouge's savagery was no match for Whitestorm's training and they were quickly defeated. The senior warrior rushed over to him, "Graystripe!" he yowled, helping him to his paws. "Thank StarClan you're alright, I'm not sure how many of us are left!" he exclaimed.
Graystripe's heart sank into his stomach, weighed down by his feelings of hopelessness. "Wuh-what?" he sputtered, "how?"
"The dogs, Graystripe! He's using the dogs!" cried the senior warrior. He frantically looked around, eyes widening as his eyes fell on the corpses of friends and family. He turned back to the younger warrior, "we have to get rid of the dogs! We won't survive if he keeps using them!"
The ThunderClan tom needed Whitestorm to calm down from his hysterical state. Yes, the situation was terrible - and the senior warrior's anxiety was beginning to affect him - but they were to panic then they would die. A shriek of agony pierced his ears along with the growls of a dog. He had to ignore it, no matter how intense the desire to aid the cat was. They were gone now. "Who, Whitestorm?" demanded Graystripe, "who are you talking about?!"
"That would be me." a voice responded. It made both warriors shiver, sending chills down their spines. While it was calm and collected, it was dripping with malice. Somehow, Graystripe felt like he knew this cat - or that he was supposed to. Their voice felt perverted to him, a dark parody of what it was meant to be.
Both toms faced the cat the voice belonged to. The owner of the voice was tall with a fit build. Like the majority of the rogues, he was skinny. But he was not sickly thin unlike most, rather he was healthy. The tom had a dark, flame-coloured pelt and dark tabby stripes. His muzzle, throat, and belly were a pale ginger. His green eyes held the same animosity his voice did.
One thing stood out about this cat; the dog teeth did not jut out from a band around his neck - but rather his flesh. At first glance it seemed as if he was some monster posing as a cat, but wounds around the areas the teeth resided showed that wasn't the case. Still it made Graystripe queasy to look. Was that self-inflicted?
"Let's get acquainted, shall we boys?" the nefarious tom smiled. Again, the gray cat shivered. He felt helpless before this cat, like a fly trapped in a spider's web. This spider was mocking him with his mannerisms. "My name's The Firestarter. I'm here to take what's yours,"
"If you think you can kill ThunderClan, you're sorely mistaken," growled Whitestorm.
The Firestarter gave a curt roll of the eyes, like he was talking to a kit who couldn't fully grasp what he was saying. "You'll find I already have. Look around-" the tom spoke, his condescending tone grating on the white cat's nerves, "-does this look like a Clan that's winning?"
The cat looked around, surveying the destruction. "what I see is a Clan on its last legs. You have no leader, you have no deputy, and you have no medicine cat. Maybe that's because they're in dog stomachs. Or a vomit pile. My poor dogs have trouble with chunky food," he chuckled.
Whitestorm growled, his teeth bared in rage. Graystripe was unable to prevent him from darting towards the rouge. "Monster!" he bellowed. The senior warrior was intercepted by a dog, it's jaws closing around his throat. Neither Whitestorm nor Graystripe had time to react before the canine was viciously mauling him.
"Drop, boy." The Firestarter meowed. At his words, the dog dropped Whitestorm. His neck now greatly contrasted from his fur, a deep shade of crimson compared to the pristine white fur. Whitestorm only took shallow breaths, his eyes were fixed on the tom before him and full of rage.
The ginger cat crouched beside him, "did you have some attachments to them, hm?" he inquired, "you have eyes like your leader. Not the same colour, obviously, but-" The senior warrior spat in The Firestarter's face. "That's rude." the tom growled. "Get 'im, boy." on his command, the dog gripped the dying cat in his jaws and walked off.
"No!" roared Graystripe. He bowled The Firestarter over, the tom grunted as his neck sat awkwardly against the ground, the dog teeth in his collar propping him up painfully. The ginger cat shoved him off. "Why us!? If it's territory you're after ShadowClan's is twice as big!" demanded the gray tom.
"This isn't just about territory, I told my Clan that - a little white lie wouldn't hurt them. If it was I would be over there right now. Want to know what this is really all about?" The Firestarter sneered. As the warrior attempted come for him again he dodged, raking his claws down the cat's side and making him topple over. "It's about absurdity,"
Graystripe glowered from his position in the dirt. This cat had proven himself to be completely unhinged. What kind of reasoning was 'absurdity' for slaughtering his Clan? "Shut up!" he spat. He pounced on the ginger cat. Both cats stood on their hind legs, locked in a struggle for dominance.
"You don't get it, do you?" The Firestarter grunted, attempting to overpower the warrior in their struggle. "For ThunderClan, this whole genocide just happened, didn't it? You got no warning, it just happened. No reason, either." the ginger cat finally managed overpower him, throwing him to the ground. "Would you call it absurd? I would,"
Graystripe swiftly recovered, "are you trying to talk me to death?" he then leaped at the tom.
"Actually-" The Firestarter mewed, letting the warrior pin him down just to throw him over him with his hind legs, "-I was trying beating you to death." he hissed. "But I want you to understand something first. I came here as a kit cause I was curious about the big bad wild cats and I met one called Darkstripe,"
The ThunderClan cat haphazardly got back to his paws, "so what? You got chased out and now you're angry? Give me a break," he snarled. Out of the corner of his eyes he could see his clanmates defending the nursery. And another dog with half its body in the elder's den.
Dear StarClan.
"Angry? I'm furious!" The Firestarter exclaimed, "I think you'd be too if you were mauled to near death." he spat, "I was in the wrong place at the wrong time and I nearly died because of that. I could barely process what happened, it was all so sudden and confusing. I bet that's how you feel right now, isn't it?
"Shut up!" Graystripe screeched, slashing across The Firestarter's neck. Dog teeth went flying in response as the ginger tom stumbled back with his neck craned back. The ThunderClan warrior mentally cheered. The nightmare was over. His Clan had won!
The cat's neck returned to its regular position and Graystripe found his feeling of triumph dying. "That was close. Thank goodness for my collar," The Firestarter grinned. The tom could see clearly now that the dog teeth weren't digging into his flesh, like he first thought, instead they were part of a raggedy old green collar.
"Now that-" the ginger tom purred, removing the remains of his tattered collar, "-that's liberating." he purred. Without his collar, a sickly wound underneath was revealed. In some areas was tender, inflamed flesh leaking pus. Others were ugly scabs and scars. "I couldn't get it off as kit with a dog tooth, it got stuck in. I added more because it was intimidating. It helped when I started outgrowing it too. But it was so sore. It actually kept me up at night,"
"Do you ever stop talking!?" Graystripe swiped at The Firestarter. He was hoping to slit open his now vulnerable throat, instead the tom caught him in the shoulder as he moved. The ginger cat grunted in response.
The Firestarter landed a vicious blow to the side of the warrior's head. "I am now." the tom replied. He distanced himself from the downed Graystripe, "why? Because I've won. You're the only surviving cat from ThunderClan." he spoke.
The warrior looked around, finding that he was surrounded by the rouges and their dogs. All were bloody, covered in their own and that of his Clan's; claws, paws, faces, muzzles, legs. It was everywhere. On everyone.
ThunderClan was dead.
The leader looked upon Graystripe with pity, even if it was only a sliver. "You're a strong warrior. I could use a cat like you, so how about you become one of us?" The Firestarter proposed, "join BloodClan."
Graystripe despite the numbness inside him, the hopelessness and the despair, felt cold rage inside him like a wild storm. Glaring, he responded, "over my dead body."
"That can be arranged." The Firestarter grinned. BloodClan began closing in on the surviving warrior, then pounced. Graystripe did not resist or cry out as he was torn apart, his blood seeping in to the dirt where he stood and staining the cats who killed him.
The Firestarter watched as his Clan pulled back, revealing the bloody butchered corpse of the last warrior. ThunderClan was no more. No warriors, no apprentices, no queens, no kits, nothing. He let loose a caterwaul of victory, soon joined by the rest of his clan and the howls of his mutts.
Blood would rule this forest.
So this was the first in a (hopefully) long series of oneshots set in dark alternate universes.
This was probably the bloodiest (no pun intended) of the bunch I have planned and, in my own opinion, a pretty common AU though it's usually swapping Scourge and Firestar's places. Seriously, there's fanart that's how popular it is.
Speaking of which, where is Scourge in this AU? I don't know, do you? Honestly, there's not a right answer for that question, whatever you think happened to him happened to him because, hey, it's an AU think whatever you want.
Now the next oneshot planned is The Lighteater: Fear of The Dark. What's it about? Feel free to speculate.
Until next time.
