I apologize for the wait! Thanks for all the love. Do you like the new cover?

Today: Willowpelt, the female record-holder for number of mates (3, including her brother because she was that desperate)

Next: Dovewing and Why She's A Mary-Sue And Doesn't Deserve Sweet Bumblestripe

-Mossy

-chapter fourteen-

"I just don't think these are suitable questions," protested the smoky-gray she-cat. She picked up the next note card, Leafpool's, and scanned it, frowning. "And again, I must disagree-"

"Look," growled the green-eyed white she-cat standing on the other side of the executive desk. "If you don't like, then don't stay. We'll find another co-host if we must, in a snap." She snapped her "fingers", and then pointed with a shining claw toward the door. With a sigh, Darkheart walked out of Half Moon's office.

Down the hall, Leafpool and Feathertail were waiting for her. "Well?" demanded Feathertail, clearly frazzled and impatient from the long wait. "Is she going to let us write our own questions and jokes now?"

Darkheart shook her head in defeat and sighed, leading the other she-cats to the front stage. "I just don't get what her problem is. I suppose she feels she's only useful in writing what we say, even though what she writes is terrible."

"She's in denial," agreed Leafpool. "She refuses to believe she could possibly produce something not worth millions. I know she's already disappointed in the show, but it's not our fault... it's her."

o3o

"Please put your paws together for our guest, Willowpelt!" Leafpool meowed. With a flourish of the curtain, a pale gray she-cat appeared, padding across the stage until she could sit in the fourth and final armchair that had finally arrived yesterday.

"Thanks for having me, ladies," Willowpelt mewed. "So ask away. I have three mates to take about, and I even shared the same parents with one of them. I also have four sons and a daughter for you to ask about."

Feathertail nodded, her lips pressed together. She stared down at her card, sighed, and then mumbled, "What's... oh, do I have to..."

Leafpool kicked her under the coffee table.

Wincing, the gray tabby choked out, "What's your favorite food?"

Willowpelt smiled nervously. "Umm... tacos?"

Darkheart heaved a sigh, looking repulsed as she blinked down at her card. "What's your favorite animal?"

Again, Willowpelt looked extremely confused as she answered, "Uh, cats, of course."

Leafpool looked down at her card, and then promptly began to laugh hysterically. Feathertail snatched Leafpool's card from the wheezing tabby and began to giggle herself. Finally Darkheart took a look at the card, and fell off her chair in a fit of laughter.

Willowpelt pushed the coffee table aside and peered down at the three she-cats rolling on the floor. "May I ask-" she started, but cut off as Darkheart jabbed her arm out at the pale gray warrior, the card in her grasp.

Willowpelt took the card and then read it. She read it over and over. Then she meowed aloud, the tiniest of smirks on her face, "This appears to be someone's grocery list." She skimmed the list again. "With some... very strange items on it."

"FOX DUNG!"

The yowl came from backstage, and heartbeats later Half Moon exploded from behind the curtain, leaving the torn red cloth (the curtain was one of the last things still in need of repair in the ancient studio) rippling fiercely. The white she-cat ran straight up to Willowpelt and nabbed the card from her paw, replacing it with a fresh card filled with decent questions.

Leafpool, Feathertail, and Darkheart were still too busy laughing on the floor, so Willowpelt turned to face the audience and camera and began to read aloud question by question, answering each one in between.

"'What are your mate's names?' Tawnyspots, Patchpelt, and Whitestorm. 'What are your kits' names?' With Tawnyspots, I had Darkstripe. With Patchpelt, I had Graystripe. And with Whitestorm, I had Rainwhisker, Sootfur, and Sorreltail. 'Favorite mate? Favorite kit?' Tawnyspots was a handsome old man, very sexy despite his age. But he was weak and sickly. Admittedly, he seduced me when I was an apprentice merely because he was deputy. He was desperate to have some offspring to pass on his 'charm', and though I gave him a son, Darkstripe unfortunately didn't have any kits of his own. But then there was Patchpelt, my brother, lonely for some love. He was my older brother, though, not my littermate brother Redtail. I actually like Redtail better because he didn't force me to interbreed (fine, I wasn't forced. I liked it. Heh). Then Whitestorm- I guess he was my favorite. As for kits, Graystripe because he lived the longest..."

She droned on and on, talking over the hosts' laughter. By the time Willowpelt had gotten through all of the questions, Half Moon was out on the stage again, yelling at the foolish cats she'd hired.

As the argument grew worse, Willowpelt casually slunk off to the side of the stage, past Ashfur, down the stairs, and right out the door. The audience barely noticed; they were focused on the public fight between a manager and her hires.

"You're all being obnoxious! What was on my grocery list is not funny one bit!" Half Moon snarled, spit flying in Leafpool's face. The hosts had finally reduced their bellows to tiny chuckles every now and then.

"But that's not even stuff you get at a grocery store," Darkheart murmured. Feathertail nodded in agreement.

"It was something private that you weren't supposed to read," Half Moon growled, muttering, "I didn't even need it anyway. I already got the stuff." With that, she tore up the card; the audience watched as the tiny white pieces fluttered to the floor like snow. There was a collective sad groan: it was obvious everyone had been hoping they could get their paws on it to read or frame and hang in their living room for their grandkits to see.

It was clear that Leafpool, Feathertail, and Darkheart just weren't getting it, and Half Moon had had enough. She stamped her foot and shrieked, "This is the last straw! I know you all think I'm the one destroying this show. Well, guess what? You won't have to worry any more. Because I..."

All three hosts leaned forward in anticipation, just knowing she would say "I quit".

But nope. That would be too easy. "... I'm ending the show!" Half Moon announced without a grain of remorse in her huge green eyes. "You're all fired, and therefore jobless. Now there's no one to mess up the show, because there is no show." She stalked off the stage for a moment, then returned with a familiar-looking contract. "Recognize this?" she taunted Leafpool. "Our contract for forty episodes. Well, it was all worthless garbage anyway. Say goodbye," she purred before pulling a lighter out of nowhere and igniting a flame at the end. She touched the flame to the paper, but it didn't catch fire. Then the white she-cat remembered; "Dammit," she cursed. "Non-flammable paper." She threw the lighter over her shoulder and instead tried to rip the contract apart, destroying it the old-fashioned away. But that didn't work either; "Crapmuffins... tear-resistant paper."

Leafpool leaned forward and took the contract from her grasp. She jerked her head at Feathertail and Darkheart, and the two she-cats took off running. Leafpool put the contract in her jaws, pretending they were paper-flavored herbs, and then ran out after them.

Half Moon didn't even bother to chase them. They could take their contract and eat it, for all she cared. After all, that kind of paper self-destructed immediately following contact with stomach acid.

See you at the next update~