The Gathering rolled around pretty soon, in two quarter-moons actually, and it was relatively uneventful. Leopardstar nearly flipped her shit at Blackstar when he gloated just a little bit about how much territory we took, but a few glares from Onestar was enough to make her calm down.

During the end of the Gathering, I found myself chatting with Hollypaw. She seemed a little more at ease with my youth but almost flipped out when I mentioned taking Twoleg things to conquer territory. "But that's supposed to be against the warrior code!" she screeched.

So I recited the warrior code from heart. "There's nothing in there about not stealing guns from Twolegs and using them to shoot RiverClan." I pointed out.

"You almost killed Blackclaw with infection from those things." Mothwing pointed out, coming up behind us, and I nearly jumped seven feet in the air. (Thank StarClan I didn't, because that would make me a Gary-Stu. Powers, yo.)

"He deserves it, considering how bigoted he was towards ThunderClan in the first series arc." I pointed out.

They both stared at me like I had bees in my brain.

"Welp, I'm going back to camp." I swung around in the direction of the fallen tree. "See you around, fellow medicine cats!"

And then I tripped and fell. Rocks dug into my side, and with a hiss of annoyance I sprung up, blood flowing from my side. Bending down to lick it, I grazed my tongue on a piece of rock and swore loudly and profanely. "You've got to be kidding me. I'm a goddamn prickly pear." I said in a perfect combination of Nick Cage and that captain guy from World War Z's voices.

Everyone stared at me.

"Well, this is awkward." I sighed. "Now would be a perfect time for Ashfur to spontaneously combust."

And then there was a shriek and flame burst upward from the edge of the clearing.

"Called it!" I shouted.

Unfortunately, Ashfur didn't die. He just was a little singed.

Therefore, I don't have powers. If I did, he would have died there.

And now I'll do a timeskip because let's face it, you don't really want to hear about a boring two-moon-long period in which absolutely nothing happened, except for that daylight Gathering thing, and that was practically identical to canon except some RiverClan warriors weren't there because they were wounded.

C'mon, seriously, nothing happened. Besides, I wasn't there, and seeing as this is told in first person I'd only be able to relate what my newly-apprenticed sister told me. At any rate, that was only Redpaw whining that she didn't win anything.

A few days after the daylight Gathering, I decided it was time to pioneer another innovation and asked Blackstar to call a Clan meeting.

It didn't take long to explain the concept of writing to everyone, although explaining the alphabet was a little harder, and eventually I decided to simplify it by doing away with capitalization, combining "c" and "k," and getting rid of the "u after q" rule. Since I was somehow writing in perfect Comic Sans, that made everything look even worse.

No, that doesn't mean that the rest of this story will be with no caps and bad spelling. I won't give you opportunity to poke fun at this anymore than you already do.

Anyway, although the elders didn't seem too interested (but when does anything except food, sleep, and mouse bile interest those geezers?), some of the younger warriors like Smokefoot seemed interested, as well as all of the apprentices except one.

Bet you can't guess who.

Yes, it was Redpaw. I seriously think she was contemplating urinating on my diagram, but seeing as she didn't want to urinate on any cats she stormed off to the dirtplace instead.

In recent quarter-moons, Redpaw had grown jealous of my innovations, quick apprenticeship, and reverence by practically the whole Clan. I realized that she just wanted to be "special" like me, but c'mon, Ivypool and Hollyleaf took the news that they didn't have powers fairly well, and Redpaw was just acting like Dovewhine II, except said annoying she-cat wasn't born yet and wouldn't be if I had a say in the matter, so... Yeah, I'm rambling again.

The point is Redpaw hated me and my inventions.

I taught the alphabet to most of the interested cats before sunfall, and the next morning most of them had remembered it. It took about a quarter-moon to teach everyone in the Clan except the elders, and during this time Littlecloud and I went to the Moonpool again and Raggy and that white she-cat were a little angry at me for spreading more Twoleg stuff. Oh, well, you can never have everyone like you.

The main reason I introduced writing was so that we could record history and thus learn from our mistakes without having the tales of the past distorted by moons of being retold and exaggerated, although I also had plans for a postal system working through underground pneumatic chutes. It would also make it much easier for the cats building some of my bigger projects since I could just draw a blueprint or write instructions.

Anyway, after the cats I taught all aced their literacy tests, I got Blackstar to ask the other Clan leaders if they'd be fine having ShadowClan cats teach them how to read and write. Leopardstar was still butthurt about the Battle of Alsace-Lorraine Minor (see Chapter 8: Heil Snakekit!) and refused, but Onestar and Firestar both tentatively accepted on the logic that one cat wouldn't be able to learn much about the territory or launch an attack by themselves.

Another moon passed. ThunderClan and WindClan returned the cats we had leased them with high praise for our program, and Leopardstar finally grudgingly agreed to have her Clan be taught to read and write. Firestar himself said that from now on he was going to be incorporating reading and writing into the apprentice training program from now on.

Although my first few tests sending pneumatic chutes from one side of the territory to the other only gave me ideas for new explosives, I finally managed to send an intact capsule containing a letter (which had been written on a leaf with a burnt stick in lieu of a pencil and paper) from the exterior of the territory to the camp.

My triumphant laughter echoed throughout the camp.

At the next Gathering, Blackstar proposed that tunnels be dug for these chutes to pass through. Firestar was all for it, while Onestar was a bit iffy about it until we assured him that cats wouldn't be able to crawl through them for an invasion plan. Leopardstar, still butthurt about the annexation by ShadowClan, said a very naughty thing which I had accidentally said at the last Gathering, and it seemed that it had even spread into RiverClan despite their new hatred for anything and everything ShadowClan.

It's no wonder Blackstar asked me to help him with invasion plans the next day, although I told him we should wait until after the tunnels were dug and then attack them by forging evidence for prey stealing, and he saw the logic in that.

Anyway, that's about the end of this semi-time-skip thing, because soon things are gonna get REALLY interesting.