Dreadnaught paced behind Firedrinker as they hopped across Twoleg nests. The eerie, unnatural glow of the metropolin cast a faint beige onto everything. Dreadnaught did wonder what Firedrinker looked like before the incident, and looking at the faint luminecense on his skin, Dreadnaught couldn't help but wonder about the tom in his youth. The image of a cream, graypoint tabby was much too easy to imagine, the cat surely as graceful and slender then as the sure-footed tom now, a petal of some flower mistakenly blown into this industrial hellscape, but still dancing with a fleeting wind and serene tranquility divine to the rest of us.
"HEY FUCKSKIN," Dreadnaught heard Firedrinker shout to an onlooking patroller, "If you can find the bird that's been shitting up this rooftop, bring him to me so I can stangle it with its own dick!" Dreadnaught couldn't help but interject, "What if there's more than one?" Firedrinker chuckled, "Then we'll tie them all together, neck-to-dick, and and use them to make a bridge across this fucking Thunderpath." This genius is clearly why Firedrinker was leader.
Well... not yet.
As they approached their final stop, Firedrinker wasted no time using a fire escape to traverse the descent. Dreadnaught hesitated, partially from caution, but mostly to rake in the scene. This was his first visit to the Corpse Cave, a sacred place where DeathMetalClan cats communicated with StarClan, usually when promoted a rank because the walk was simply that long and boring.
Firedrinker nudged into the giant plank entering the Twoleg nest guarding the site. The two paced along a ground made from some strange substance Dreadnaught once heard called "wood," behind several alien structures with nipples and purtrusions which Dreadnaught could barely comprehend (he had heard legends of the "fire plateau" and the "lake-generating crevice"), none of it phazing Firedrinker, who pushed his way into another plank, this one made of the cold steel Dreadnaught knew like a mother's embrace. And cold it was, for a blast of arctic wind ruffled the cat's pelt as he followed behind, into the cavern.
It was the most beautiful thing Dreadnaught had ever seen.
Dangled by their hind legs were uncountable amounts of corpses from several types of beasts large enough to devour him alive, many of them larger than the Twolegs. Even if he knew the beasts in life, he would be unable to recognize most of them, cleaned of their hides and carved up in a bloody mess, the artificial claws and blades placed neatly along the cavern's walls, walls caked with the blood of butchered animals no doubt more ancient than Dreadnaught's great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandmother. A cavern decorated with death. A cavern where the dead went to be destroyed further, and all semblance of life went to fade away into little meat tubes for Twoleg consumption.
"It's beautiful," Dreadnaught purred.
Firedrinker meowed, "Come. We must bite off the flesh of one of these beasts, then sleep under the stars in order to embrace our new ranks." Dreadnaught nodded, scoping out several targets in contrast to Firedrinker's focused pacing. "This pig," he meowed, as he waved his tail for Dreadnaught to stand beside him, under a large flayed beast. Dreadnaught needed to stand on his hind legs to bite into it. A beautiful moment where a boy became a man.
The next few moments were spent on auto-pilot for Dreadnaught as the two scaled the Twoleg nest, as he was lost in euphoria of how much he was going to laugh in Warpaw's face about how he got to visit the Corpse Cave. But first, sleepy time.
Firedrinker took a spot tucked away on the rooftop. Even if the weather was nice, the nearly-hairless cat was surely worried about the wind. Just to be a little more considerate, Dreadnaught curled up beside the soon-to-be leader. "I'm not gay," Firedrinker sleepily rumbled. Dreadnaught nudged away. That wasn't what he meant, but no point in making things more awkward.
Dreadnaught opened his eyes to fire. Lots of fire. He looked over and saw Firedinker there, staring intently, before realizing that both of them were falling down a chute of fire. A mad cackling startled him. Dreadnaught turned, realizing that a horse skull was staring at him, laughing, "Hey shitbreath, you're booked for the Rock and Roll's hotel. There's always a vacancy, the pool of blood's open for swimming, but the blowjobs always have teeth. Welcome to Hell, fucker!" Dreadnaught meowed, confused, "Don't you mean 'StarClan?'" The horse skull laughed. Firedrinker purred, "Oh, he's a joker. Nevermind him." Dreadnaught was scared and confused.
As they reached the bottom of the chute, Dreadnaught and Firedrinker broke fall into the soft stomach of a gigantic obese Twoleg woman with seven tits, each of them ending with the gnawing, lashing teeth of wild hounds. In front of them, warped creatures stood strung about in stages of fire and bone, smashing each other with blunt instruments and making the most beautiful grindcore that Dreadnaught had ever heard.
Dreadnaught thought he heard the song "I Lit Your Baby On Fire" by Anal Cunt, and started to sway a bit. A soothing lullaby from the choir.
The ground parted, felling several of the abominations. From within the fissure, a serpent erupted its head, peeling back the flesh on its face to reveal a rather phallic structure. And from the smegma of that phallis, a cat walked out. "Deathstar!" Firedrinker approached the tomcat. The tabby carried himself with a regal pretentiousness, just slack enough to be approachable, but stiff enough to let you know just how much he was aware of his godhood. And yet, he touched noses with Firedrinker like an old friend. "Give me my lives already you rancid old bastard," Firedrinker meowed.
"No." Deathstar meowed with a smile. The type of smile that says 'yes, I do pee in the shower.'
"What?" Firedrinker's meow was restrained by his own confusion. He didn't need to impore further before Deathstar meowed, "I already had the tech crew lined up to give you lives, Firedrinker, but the name 'Firestar' is already taken. Do you not remember that prophecy?" Firedrinker stepped back. He knew the rules. A DeathMetalClan warrior's name was like a band name. It didn't matter if two nobodies running a gig in their garage happened to call themselves the same shit, but if you came on after an act already made famous, you needed to change. Dreadnaught noticed the confusion morph into determination. Firedrinker belonged entrenched in StarClan's blaze. Firedrinker survived the explosion of a Twoleg monster.
He would be Firestar, and no hackjob from somewhere else was going to take it from him.
Dreadnaught stared at the two cats, meowing "why am I here?"