Chapter 3: Dawgpaw, Gpaw and Strangefoot
Rusty slept his usual forest dream. He sat, ready to pounce on the rodent about two tail-lengths away. Then—
"Yo, how's it going, dawg?" Spottedleaf spontaneously yelled with her accordion in her paws. It was playing some weird kind of sound which made Fire—I mean Rusty want to roll over and die.
"I like to move it move, I like to move it move it, I like to move it move it… I like to… MOVE IT!" she screeched in the most horrendous voice to suit her prim spotted tortoiseshell paws before the mouse ran off with a sign that, if Rusty was able to read, read: 'I don't like to move it!'
Rusty woke up. Weird, was really the only thought he had about the dream as he looked around the kitchen. It really was a great kitchen. Where else could he lap up coffee, soda and eat ice cream when no one was paying attention? Yeah, he was sure going to miss the kitchen. Ignoring the fresh pellets and water, Rusty pulled himself up to the poorly guarded leftover pizza in the fridge before walking out the cat flap.
He sniffed the air, looked both ways, and threw his rubber mousy under the mat. No one would ever think to look under there. Then he went back in, stole his Twolegs' car keys and put them in the gutter before hopping up on the fence.
"Hi Rusty!" Smudge greeted as he materialized from Book 6. "You were right—that new replacement she-cat was way better than you!" Rusty was about to remind him he never said that, even in a normal world, but Book 6 Smudge disappeared before he could let out a single meow. Almost as randomly, Book 1 Smudge came up on the fence, giving a small greeting. "There were birds out today," he said.
"There are birds every day," Rusty pointed out.
"Oh… yeah… Well… I already ate!"
"Sure," Rusty said, remembering to not wish him luck when that new she-cat came.
"You woke up late today," Smudge added dully. "You would've caught some birds if you hadn't. Punctuality equals Clan loyalty, you know."
"Hey…"
"Well, you guys were practically yelling it all over the place! Like you want some passing Twolegs to think, 'Hey that's an idea, let's make a two-authored 6-book series about it and then make another one when they start talking again.' Honestly, it was like there was a flamethrower there or something!"
"Emmy!" Rusty cried. "I admit! I didn't get the Emmy!"
"In that case, let's spend one more day together before you join the Clan!" Smudge replied as they went off to say bye to their lazy kittypet friends.
And then Smudge left. Many a storyteller has left the leaving dialogue blank. This is due to two things; it's never really mentioned before and we storytellers are lazy. And so, we assume they had this really big farewell party and then Rusty went back to the clearing, drunk on artisan cheese. However, we can never really know.
At that, Mudpelt stopped thoughtfully. "The next part always makes me hungry… Anyone want to get me fresh-kill?"
There was a cricket chirp as Saberkit coughed twice.
"Let me change that," Mudpelt said. "Get me fresh-kill. NOW."
Once again, there was some more crickets chirping, but Bluekit coughed.
"Kits," Mudpelt murmured before running out taking some prey out of the pile and returning.
"When does Tigerclaw come back in?" Saberkit asked.
"That's not till a little later," Mudpelt replied with a mouth filled with bloody guts.
"What's a flamethrower?" Turtlekit piped up.
"I think it's kind of fish, found only in southern waters," replied Wolfkit knowingly.
Turtlekit thought about it. That made sense to her.
"Done," Mudpelt said as he finished his fresh-kill. "Rosekit, why are you looking at me like that? Hungry?"
"Yep," Rosekit answered. "But I want to hear the rest of the story first."
"I want to beat up everyone, destroy the forest, rebuild it and have a never-ending supply of fresh-kill, but you don't hear me complaining about it," Saberkit said disapprovingly.
"Saberkit?"
"Yeah."
"Shut up. AGAIN."
"Double ownage," Mudpelt jeered before adding, "Back to the story!"
Rusty sat in the middle of the clearing, wishing he had an Emmy. He could smell ThunderClan cats, but he could also smell that particular scent of a potential arsonist (aka Graypaw). He sighed and looked into the bushes. It was already sun-high, and Rusty's fur felt heavy with the summer humidity.
Suddenly, two green eyes were staring back into his own from inside the bush. Rusty blinked. "Let's see… You could be Spottedleaf, myself, or… that other guy…"
"I am Lionheart!" Lionheart declared with full authority as he pranced majestically into the clearing. "I have been charged to bring you to camp. My extreme punctuality will impress Bluestar!"
"But you're late…" Rusty murmured.
"Silence, INFERIOR!" Lionheart growled. "I am not late! Instead, you will have been a slight burden with us on our way back, so we can make up time for this happening."
"We?" Rusty questioned.
"We, as in plural, refers to Lionheart and I." Out from the clearing came a pure white cat. His eyes were supposedly the color of sun-baked sand, but it has been told later on that his eyes were blue. Which meant that later, he had resorted to contact lenses. But for now, his eyes were the yellow of sun-baked sand, framed by huge nerdy glasses. "I am Whitestorm, and I would like to tell you about my Ph.D."
"Ignore him," Lionheart whispered into Rusty's ears. "Nod and smile, and he'll usually go away." Thus, the golden tabby put on a grin and began to nod his maned head as Whitestorm continued to talk—"My best background work is with phi (not to be confused with pi) and its correlation to the universe, spirals and Fibonacci numbers"—
Lionheart eventually looked up at the sun and snarled. "Whitestorm, you idiot! Now we'll have to tell Bluestar that Rusty was extremely slow! I certainly hope my apprentice isn't captured by Twolegs so that I have to take a bad-reputation apprentice!"
"And Graypaw has a good reputation?" Rusty pointed out.
"Hey, he has a Noble Peace Prize," Lionheart pointed out. "Yup, where would he be if I hadn't told him the answers…"
Whitestorm looked like he was about to rebuke that in a paragraph proof, but Lionheart already left for the ThunderClan camp.
Rusty followed. At first, after wading through swamps, romping through the forest, and climbing over logs, Rusty was sure they were just trying to get to camp. But later, after running through burning hoops, jumping over alligator-filled pits and being forced to chug mustard, Rusty just wasn't so sure.
But they managed it to camp, and that was what mattered. Rusty was kind of expecting neon lights into ThunderClan, feeling a tad disappointed as Whitestorm suddenly stopped, pulled up his round glasses and said, "Tell me, using the South Texas K9 Scent Theory, what you can smell using your smell receptors and Jacobson's organ."
Rusty sniffed. "Smells like cats to me."
"That works," Lionheart said in a rushed manner, breaking through the undergrowth and into the sunlit camp. "Welcome to ThunderClan!"
It would have been a Photoshopped masterpiece to any Twoleg. Sunlight fell in all the right places, especially on two cats who were closely grooming each other.
"After sunhigh, we share tongues," Lionheart explained.
"Ew…" was all Rusty could muster. Whitestorm rolled his yellow eyes and muttered something about domesticated kittens before pulling out a graphing calculator in order to determine the beginning of time.
"Over there's the nursery," Lionheart went on. "Kits are nursed there. Or something. I'm not queen, how would I know?"
"Well—'' Whitestorm began, but thought better of it and began erasing his equations. "Anyway, the care of all our kits depends on every queen. They work together in order to make less work for themselves. It also bonds the she-cats together—'' Lionheart smiled and nodded before sniffing the air.
"Bluestar's coming," he said. "Tell me, is there anything stuck between my teeth?" He swirled his extremely sharp pearly whites towards Whitestorm, who cringed back.
"I'm blinded!" he screeched. "The light—the light!"
Lionheart was about to turn and blind Rusty with his shininess when Bluestar came in, blinked and sat down. Rusty could not help but notice how much Lionheart puffed up at the she-cat's arrival.
"So what do you think?" she asked diplomatically.
"He delayed us nine degrees from the sun's original position," Lionheart replied smartly. "If he had chugged that mustard faster—I mean we should still give him a fair chance," the warrior corrected as he watched his leader's position become confused, then normal again.
"Then we're taking him in?" Bluestar asked. Whitestorm stopped twitching to meet his companion's eyes before they both turned their heads to Bluestar and nodded. "I'll give him his ceremony then," Bluestar said, trotting to the Highrock. "Let all cats… forget that. Just get over here."
Rusty stayed where he was, partially watching the gathering cats averting their gaze to Rusty and partially watching Whitestorm roll back up into a sitting position. He saw Graypaw, and Spottedleaf, and a gray tabby with darker stripes that brought words like Traitor-then-not-tratiorfoot to mind. But he remained quiet.
"See that cat?" Bluestar meowed. "He's a kittypet. But now he's a kittypet apprentice. Worship him."
Instead, a tabby yelled, "Let's mercilessly discriminate his lowly origins!"
There was a wail of agreement as several cats began muttering unkind things about Rusty, just because they felt like it. After all, they were Clanborn, not some kittypet like Rusty.
"He has a collar!" the tabby went on. "I'm going to think of something witty and derogatory about it!" And so the tabby began to think of witty and derogatory somethings about the collar.
"He's Longtail," Lionheart informed. "You're starting to make me look bad."
"Uh… You're collar has a bell!" Longtail jeered.
"Why is that bad?" Rusty asked.
"Whitestorm answers those kinds of things," Lionheart replied. "You're ruining my reputation with your relax-scent."
Rusty rolled his eyes and jumped Longtail. Longtail had been busy trying to think of something bad about collars, so he hadn't really been paying attention. Rusty felt bad for himself as Longtail sliced the part above his eye. Things weren't looking good for Rusty.
"Shiny!" Graypaw suddenly yelled, pulling out his flamethrower from behind Spottedleaf. He started it up, shot it at Rusty, and watched it miss perfectly as it burned Longtail. "Yay!" Graypaw cheered, watching the fire grow as Longtail quickly stopped, dropped and rolled. "Hey, more shiny!" Graypaw came up to Rusty and bit his bell until the collar snapped in two.
Bluestar stepped up. "It's a sign I tell you! StarClan wishes him to train with us!" She turned to Spottedleaf and murmured, "What are we calling him?"
"How about Dawgpaw?" Spottedleaf whispered back.
"That won't work," Bluestar hissed.
"Then, Gpaw, maybe?"
"No, no."
"Then at least Gangsterpaw. Or maybe Ghettopaw?"
"Actually, Ghettopaw sounds good enough," Graypaw mewed.
"Forget you guys," Bluestar murmured. She looked at Rusty, who had become the world's best scene, despite the burning Longtail behind him.
"In honor of Longtail's flaming coat," Bluestar announced, "This apprentice will be known as Firepaw until he earns his warrior name."
"Yay! Firepaw!" Graypaw ran over to his friend. "You beat Longtail!"
"Actually—''
"And you're modest too!" Graypaw blurted out. "Since you have one extremely insignificant cut, let's go to Spottedleaf so I can admire her accordion-playing skills!"
"Greetings Firepaw," a silver tabby mewed as he randomly appeared around the corner. "You're lucky that fire started when it did."
"Darkstripe, something tells me you're going to betray ThunderClan and join TigerClan," Graypaw predicted.
Darkstripe lifted his brow in apparent confusion, before turning to get his copy of Self-management for Dummies.
"He's just jealous that he doesn't have accordion-skills like Spottedleaf," Graypaw explained.
"HIYuh gUYS!" Firepaw swung his head to see a ginger cat with green eyes.
"Who's that?" Firepaw asked Graypaw. The newcomer was banging his head on the ground while singing that he was a little teapot, short and stout.
"Strangefoot," Graypaw murmured. "Spottedleaf said he had problems."
"He doesn't smell like ThunderClan," Firepaw continued. "Where'd he come from?"
"Beats me," Graypaw admitted. "He sort of showed up one day and then we couldn't get him to leave."
Suddenly, a slim cat burst into the clearing. His pelt was black, save his white tail tip, and his green eyes were clearly frightened. "Thouest Bluestar!" the tom yelled. "News of greatest importance must be bestowed to thee!"
"He's Ravenpaw," Graypaw said offhandedly. "Just seeing him makes me want to bat his shiny white tail. Wonder where Tigerclaw is. His eyes are really shiny."
"Tigerclaw?" Firepaw asked.
"He's Ravenpaw's mentor. Although no one's quite sure how Ravenpaw got that funny Shakespearean accent. Maybe it was from Redtail; he does drama sometimes. They were all out patrolling RiverClan's border today."
"Redtail?" Firepaw persisted.
"He's our deputy. I think. I keep thinking that it's Lionheart, Tigerclaw, you, Whitestorm or me for some uncanny reason." Firepaw edged a little away, but looked up as Bluestar made her way to the ebony apprentice.
"What has happened?" She meowed. "Where are the others?"
With the full majesty of a seasoned actor, Ravenpaw placed a forepaw on the top of his head, fell to the ground beneath Bluestar with a terrified expression before yowling as clear as day:
"Good deputic warrior of thy greatest ThunderClan has been slain!"
"What does that mean?" Graypaw asked Firepaw as Ravenpaw gave a dramatic wail and fainted in an even more dramatic way, if it were even possible with a deep dramatic sigh.
"Redtail died," Firepaw translated.
"Oh," Graypaw said. "I wanted to do that!" Firepaw looked at Graypaw curiously before the apprentice suddenly exclaimed, "Wait a minute! That's bad!"
And as Ravenpaw continued to convulse in full acting mode, the clearing became silent to hear the whole story.
The plans for Chapter 4 are looking good ;) Thanks for reading! I'll update whenever I can! W00t for this glorious piece of crack!
