The randomness returnsIt's a long chapter, as I said. But I updated! Be happy or Bluey's gonna get'cha!

Chapter Five: Of Tigerclaw and Audubon

Mudpelt brought his flea-infested henna paw over his shredded ears several times, before he realised it was pointless to do it without licking his paw first. Well, the tortoiseshell was old. He cast an amber glare at the younger cats and said in a gruff mew, "Uh… the end." He proceeded to yawn a wide yawn. The kits' eyes each other nervously. Turtlekit nodded to Saberkit; green eyes locked for a minute but they all knew who would say it.

"But Mudpelt," Saberkit said in the special whine of kits, "It can't be over! Firepaw hasn't killed anything yet."

"And where does Darth Vader, evil Twoleg and original caretaker of Rusty, come in?" Bluekit added. The kits nodded wisely.

Mudpelt sighed. He, as a storyteller, owed them nothing but complete honesty. "I have a confession."

Rosekit gasped in a collective manner, Turtlekit narrowed her eyes to sea-green slits and Inner Saberkit was yelling, There's a lull now! Tell them how you really feel about their aggressive actions and tell them you love them anyway! Quick!

"I-I-I'm," Mudpelt sputtered out breathlessly, "I'm a tortoiseshell male. I defy the laws of genetics."

"Mudpelt, wrong story," Rosekit informed with a not-so-nice expression on her face. "And that would be a story that I would never read despite how pretty the cover is."

"Redtail's a male tortoiseshell," piped up Wolfkit.

Silence.

"Uh…anyway, it's not the end," Mudpelt admitted. The kits showed no surprise but listened with rapt attention. "This is the first lesson Firepaw had…"

…………………………………………………………………………………………..

"Firepaw, from this moment you will be known as—"

……………………………………………………………………………………………

"WRONG PART!" the kits screeched.

"Oh yeah," Mudpelt murmured. He had actually been hoping to finish the story and be cheap, but… he twitched his whiskers and continued, "Ahem, his first lesson started like this…"

……………………………………………………………………………………………..

Birds chirped, unaware of the petty problems of the cats who shared the forest. It was a busy morning—the ferns ruffled in the quivering breeze and a sweet scent promised greenleaf was not so far away. The ThunderClan camp was already awake, with warriors out towards the horizon, a sky drenched in rosy hues. In ShadowClan, Brokenstar was thinking up something devious that would show all the Clans to make fun of him and his weird tail. But more devious than Brokenstar was young Graypaw. Within the ferns, he managed to dodge the half of the nest claimed by Sandstorm and managed to get close to Firepaw's mossy nest.

"Firepaw!" he yowled, his gray fur erect. "ShadowClan is attacking! StarClan is walking among us and they are VERY shiny! A warrior spy is attacking Sandpaw!" The long-haired gray tom then closed his amber eyes and looked for "the shiny within." And then, he realised the pure shininess of Firepaw's tail and bit down hard. Firepaw's green eyes were open in a flash. Graypaw lumbered up the Sandy Hollow while pawing at shiny things while Firepaw blindly launched himself towards Sandpaw's pale ginger form. She screeched as Firepaw sliced at dark tabby fur. "I'll save you, Sandpaw!"

And the unfortunate brown tabby Dustpaw, whose fur grew sparse by Firepaw's suicidal courage, turned his head to look at the red tom with a look of so many emotions Firepaw started thinking about cupcakes. Sandpaw, who wasn't having the best week, shrieked, "DIE!" That day, flame-coloured fur decorated the ferns.

An aeon or so later, Firepaw missing almost all of his dignity and most of his fur stumbled across the ravine as white clouds raced across a powdery-blue sky. He followed the sure scent of Graypaw—a smell akin to fire—to the training hollow, where Tigerclaw fumed. "I'm going to cut off your last shred of dignity just because you're late!"

Firepaw was seriously considering getting up and jumping Graypaw to kill him, but the gray tom was dying of laughter anyway. Lionheart promptly mewed, "Tigerclaw is right, Firepaw. Even if my speech took all the time to four minutes until dawn to finish there's no excuse for oversleeping."

"By the way," Tigerclaw growled, thinking about how he could murder Lionheart so he just wouldn't have to put up with Lionheart's speeches (which were really a better tranquilizer than anything else in the world). "Bluey's too lazy and wants to sit around at camp and complain to the elders, so me and Waxwhisker here are going to share your training."

"I starch them, not wax them, and there is a very big difference!" Lionheart spat back indignantly.

Before Tigerclaw could roll his eyes, sirens rang out through all of ThunderClan. Graypaw's hackles were raised and his long gray fur was fluffed out. More importantly, his paw was on a loudspeaker, which was set on "Make-loud-and-extremely-annoying-siren-noises Mode." At once, Graypaw was nose-to-nose with Tigerclaw, his amber eyes flaring. He produced the speaker again and screeched: "This is Graypaw, part of the elite Grammar Police! 'Me and Waxwhisker' is a severe violation of the 37th section of the Literacy Movement, as referenced in Article 784! The punishments for such actions are—'' Lionheart was nodding and smiling, nodding and smiling, for that crazy cat to go away.

"Anyway," Tigerclaw growled, inching back with everyone else from Graypaw, who was engraving the report he was going to send to the ministry on his Nobel Peace Prize, "We're going to walk around the territory so when I'm out singing about my angsty childhood, you'll—you didn't hear that!" As soon as the word "sing" had come into their hearing, they had begun down the Twoleg path.

Tigerclaw stopped at a clump of ferns. He paused and picked up one of the spray-paint cans by them, shaking it with his tail. In gangster-type font, the brown tabby sprayed the clump of ferns:

TigerclaW Wuz HeRe!

The red letters shone in light enough for Graypaw to be distracted from his report and he went over to poke the shininess. Tigerclaw bitterly complained under his breath, "Spottedleaf shouldn't be allowed to make Clan policies."

"Firepaw, what do you smell?" Lionheart asked.

"I smell myself… and mustard. Y'know, from the gallon we chugged here yesterday?" Graypaw looked genuinely curious, but Lionheart kept walking into some pines. Before Firepaw could get high off the spray-paint fumes, he was pushed by Tigerclaw into the woods.

"Twolegs planted these," Tigerclaw explained, nodding towards the needled pines that towered far above them. "At least that's what my mentor told me. I wasn't born to see these trees' planting.

Everyone, even Lionheart, swung their heads towards him.

"Hey, I'm not that old!" Tigerclaw insisted. "In fact, I think Goldenflower and I might be getting somewhere." Firepaw desperately tried not to think about it, and all of the party started to quicken their pace to get farther from the SENIOR warrior.

"Like I was saying," Tigerclaw mumbled, his Inner Self crying, Why don't they believe me any more? I'm an emotional being too! The Equal Rights Movement rocks! It makes me want to sing when I go out to angst on the borders! "The Twolegs plant these trees as a sacrifice to their deity, the tree-eater. That way, the trees are used instead of the wood from old-growth forests, thus protecting hundreds of endangered Spotted Owls—I do not have a subscription with Audubon or the World Wildlife Foundation!" he added hastily as Firepaw began to narrow his eyes. So that was why Tigerclaw never ate birds.

The ginger tom tried to hear the deity. Graypaw, using his little-recognised mind-reading powers that he obtained from winning the Noble Peace Prize (why else would anyone want one? For world peace, you say? HA!) said, "The deity only comes during greenleaf. That's because the deity is off punishing idiots who don't have proper grammar all the other seasons, and it only has time to attack everyone here during summer. I've been hit twice now." Graypaw's voice was filled with adoration as he cast a loving glance back into the pines. It was pretty apparent where Graypaw had been ran over, and what it had done.

They continued on. Lionheart nodded of towards Twolegplace. "That's where you used to live. But if you don't remember that, I would be very afraid. So, to not face your evident mental illness, we will keep going to RiverClan." He slowed to catch up with Firepaw and added in a low whisper, "It's okay—I know all about mental illness."

"Oh, I'm sure you do," Firepaw muttered as they crossed a Twoleg path and made it to some oak woods.

"RiverClan," Graypaw mewed, accidentally swinging his muzzle into very sharp rocks. And that was how, through a flurry of—erm—colourful language Firepaw learned they were at Sunningrocks.

Lionheart stopped at a rock. It was both flat and gray. Unknown to the cats, it came from NASA's failed attempt to bring back a fossil found on Mars:

"Gee, Charlie, do you reckon this rock is worth anything?" Nathan Collier, the world's foremost expert on fossils asked as he took the Martian fossil from a bag called "Rocks for throwing at windows."

"I doubt it," replied Charlie, an expert astronaut and rock collector, who was watching the World Cup on the portable TV during the company picnic. "Will you get me a Cherry Coke before you go off to throw that rock at cats?"

"Breathe, Firepaw," Lionheart said. "You keep forgetting to. We're on the RiverClan border. RiverClan owns the river and the land up there. Obviously."

Firepaw took his first breath for a long time. The buzzing in his head stopped momentarily. It restarted as a new scent blasted the roof of his mouth. The scent of RiverClan was almost suspicious—yes, even fishy—in comparison to the warm, soil-scent of ThunderClan.

"This is where the warriors of RiverClan have their river dances, and where they key the gates to Atlantis," Tigerclaw's eyes glazed over and the faint murmur of "Cupcakes" slipped from his maw. Ravenpaw was not the only one to have learned drama from the late Redtail.

Tigerclaw went on to spray another Martian fossil, more recently lost when NASA hosted their rock-skipping contests. In the same twisted font, the words shone:

TigerclaW Wuz HeRe! He HaXes youR cupCaKeS.

"Let's head off to Fourtrees so when I come back I can tell how Firepaw tragically fell down the hill, being saved by me, impressing Bluestar like nothing I've ever devised before!" Lionheart roared, prancing off

"What's Fourtrees?" asked Firepaw.

"There are four trees there," Tigerclaw answered. It was one of those days.

The travelers crossed a stream to get to the ravine; it mocked them as they crawled up six hours since beginning their trek. It really did mock them. Six hours to get to Fourtrees the long way!

"The Clans gather here so the leaders can complain to each other," Lionheart explained, nodding to the ugly Great Rock, surrounded by the four oak trees, which were just unfurling green leaves. "WindClan isn't very smart, so they decided to live in the gorses in the worst hills. And ShadowClan is so cool; they live where the cool winds of the north blow them over in the dark forest-marshland. We're really prejudiced, so just because something in relation to darkness is in ShadowClan's name, they're evil. Got it? Good. It's on my reputation."

"Four Clans," Firepaw said solemnly. Clouds appeared out of nowhere and lightning hit the ginger tom, scorching his fur black.

"FIVE Clans," the clouds roared. Firepaw managed to shake off the worst of the electricity. The other cats looked like it wasn't the first time they had seen it happen. And Tigerclaw looked like it had happened to him—twice.

"Anyway, our leaders are greedy fat-heads, so we protect our prey," Lionheart mewed.

"That's almost as if Graypaw made that rule up!" Firepaw gasped. "Why not just share the land!"

There was silence as the cats realised how stupid they had been all that time. Tigey felt rather inspired… but this is Tigerclaw we're talking about…"I'm going to mercilessly discriminate your lowly origins now for no apparent reason. Uh… You're a kittypet! It's gonna make you a traitor at the time of attack! And you had the collar… Uh…" Tigerclaw, like Longtail not long ago, was desperately trying to think of something bad to say about collars.

"He speaks from the almightiness of The Obvious," Lionheart mewed calmly. "It will prevent him from being chased into gorges with a pack of dogs behind him. I hope."

"Gatherings are held every full moon. There's a truce then because everyone is immobilised from the sound of so much complaining."

"There's one tonight," Firepaw said in a flat, all-knowing tone. "This is getting thick."

"Der… Clan loyalty?" Tigerclaw piped up.

They crossed the stream, the sun set, Redtail wrote up a new play in StarClan, and the scent of ShadowClan blasted the top of Firepaw's mouth. He knew it was ShadowClan because it wasn't explained that long ago. Then they made it to the stony Thunderpath. In the same flat tone, Firepaw meowed, "Thunderpath. WoOoOooOoOOOoOoooo."

A monster passed by, its paws rumbling the foul ground, its maw widened! Red eyes were slits as it turned, instantly turning Firepaw and his friends into pancakes before tearing through all of the Clans and killing everyone! The End! HAPPY END!

……………………………………………………………………………………………..

"'HAPPY END!'?" Turtlekit mewed with her face screwed up in confusion. Mudpelt nodded. "What in StarClan is a 'HAPPY END!'?"

"Meh thoughts 'xactly, young gal," a croaky voice rasped. In the darkness of the den was Foxfur, a red long-haired tom with a single golden eye. "Tell 'em the truth, Muddster."

"Why don't you? Always throwing your problems on me," Mudpelt murmured darkly as he brought the remains of his fresh-kill closer to his sides. "And if you want any—you can't have any! HA!"

"The one-eyed look's in style," Saberkit muttered under his breath as he looked at the single gleaming eye of Foxfur.

"Anywho, wutevah," Foxfur said in that gruff way of his. "Here's it go…"

…………………………………………………………………………………………

The monster flashed by, leaving Firepaw's pelt on edge from the blast of heavy metal music that the driver had been listening too. Firepaw had also learned many more colourful words Graypaw hadn't mentioned at Sunningrocks.

"Let's go home," Lionheart meowed. "I have to starch my whiskers for the Gathering."

"What about Snakerocks?" Tigerclaw asked in a devious tone.

"Remember what happened last time?"

-----! FLASHBACK !-----

(Note: Slightly inaccurate.)

"I like cheeses!" Tigerclaw mewed on top of a sand-toned rock. Suddenly, a horde of meatballs hit him on the head and Tigey fell. "Oh noey! Who shall saveth me!"

Snakes the size of Colby cheese wheels started to dive-bomb out of the rift in the sky that led to Atlantis. They hitchhiked on a plane. A passing producer gasped and said, "Snakes on a Plane!"

The pilot of this plane was none other than Lionheart! He swooped down and saved the brown tabby. The orchestra that always followed Lionheart began to play. Yes, the First Chair Comb-and-tissue-paperist began playing the 1812 overture as the First Chair Pen Clickist joined in astonishing harmony. In a great explosion of randomness, the snakes became stiff and were cut up to be sold as microchips. Thus, computers were born and Lionheart gained billions.

On the other paw, when an unsuspected meatball was thrown at him Tigerclaw, he lost his sense of taste. This lack of taste is still seen in him today. HAPPY END!

-----! END FLASHBACK !-----

And so, the cats padded back to camp. Then Firepaw and Graypaw ate, Sandpaw was Sandpaw, Dustpelt was just there, and Firepaw snuck away to get back to sleep since he wasn't chosen for this Gathering. He collapsed in his ferns to get back to that dream he had left so reluctantly that morning—the one when he was saving Sandpaw from a ShadowClan warrior.

And then there was a Gathering of absolutely no consequence to the fate of the Clans.

The next morning, just as hot as the next, Firepaw was able to reluctantly wake from his "I'm Sandpaw's hero" dream when a strange sort of wheezing screech raked his ears, which were still ringing from the blast of heavy metal yesterday.

"You fell in love with a RiverClan cat!"

He blinked to see Spottedleaf and her cobweb-covered accordion by the moving lump of fur that was Graypaw. "Got it? RiiiivvvverrrClan caaat!"

"Uh," was all Firepaw said as he cast a confused gaze on the snoring Graypaw.

Spottedleaf gasped, drawing her accordion closer. "No—you ain't part of the Brotherhoodly Sisterhood of Thy Twoleg Deity! Ya don't got the bling, dawg!" Just under her paws, Firepaw could see gold letters announcing 'Spot's got the Bling yo.' "You've intercepted my ritual for the hood, yo!" Spottedleaf pulled out a pineapple from the darkness and placed in on her head as she muttered, "Yo, StarGang, don't be the Bromeliad upon my h to the hizzle head." With that, Spottedleaf was off to her den, ranting about falling in love with RiverClan cats.

Graypaw awakened after her paws were back to where she had been performing illegal surgeries on Ravenpaw's innards. He yawned and thought for a moment how nice RiverClan cats and pineapples were. They were all so shiny. Without a word, the two set off along with a very frail-looking Ravenpaw to the Sandy Hollow. The black cat with only a dash of white on his tail decided to angst away on the other side of the hollow.

"Don't go emo on us!" Graypaw blurted out. "Or Goth… But I guess couldn't help being Goth…"

"Tigerclaw…" he kept muttering, along with stunningly accurate information about his unrelenting desire for cupcakes.

About five minutes later, Lionheart and Tigerclaw came in arguing about Whitestorm/Bluestar shipping. Then Tigerclaw, growling that it was quite obvious Bluestar was in love with herself, snapped towards Ravenpaw and added, "Say one thing pertaining to your injury and I'm going to kill you."

"Okay."

"I'm going to kill you!" Tigerclaw said, leaping literally at the opportunity. He unsheathed his claws but a rogue meatball (from one of Whitestorm's combination of time probability and catapult experiments) hit him between his ears, thus crushing him into the dust.

"We're going to be cheap and practise stalking," Lionheart mewed. "Now, there's a big difference between stalking on the Internet and stalking a mouse and rabbit. Why?"

"Mice are capable of chasing you down and pinning you. Thus, you have to crush it back on the way down," Graypaw answered.

"So you'll have to…"

"Step lightly to attract them, and then when they start fighting, crush all of their bones on the way down?"

"Right! Go into a hunting crouch so Tigerclaw can comment on how badly you're doing—I mean so I can evaluate your progress and slightly exaggerate it when I tell Bluestar and thus impress her further."

Graypaw and Ravenpaw, despite the fact their training had been anything but sane, went into decent crouches. "Graypaw's got awesome form. And he is fat enough to crush even a kitten on the way down," Lionheart said proudly.

"I am not fat! Just fluffy," Graypaw protested.

Lionheart was already nodding and smiling, his golden mane bobbing up and down as well.

"Duckbutt!" Tigerclaw spat at Ravenpaw. "You're like half the population in their attempts to do push-ups! Firepaw, you crouch so I can belittle my apprentice some more."

Tigerclaw's pale amber eyes almost became a death glare so Firepaw crouched to avoid his full gaze and proceeded to inch away. "You look just like the fat, lumbering kittypet you are! D'you think the prey's going to jump into your parted jaws? Well, I got news for you—they only do it on Canada Day!" Tigerclaw's scarred nose was now touching Firepaw's.

"Don't do that Tigerclaw; your odour is unpleasant," Lionheart mewed. Tigerclaw self-consciously pulled back and sniffed his tabby fur. "Firepaw is pretty much balanced to avoid the way the air is bringing your stink to him."

"Unlike Duckbutt of the left!" Tigerclaw added.

"He's injured is all!" Firepaw meowed. "Both physically and emotionally from verbal abuse from a cat he trusts (in this specific case, his mentor) which significantly reduces self-esteem and self-image, leading to an increase of serotonin in the brain, which could possibly fray the dendrites of the neurons that release such chemicals (for more information of this, search for an entry on synapses). Such could mentally scar his life decisions, leading to drug abuse, suicide, nerdiness, perfectionism, obesity, development of a violent complex, depression, anorexia or other eating disorders, schizophrenia, paranoia or even an unprecedented fear or garden tomatoes. The major effects of these are kidney failure, heart attack, stroke, lung cancer, death, boringness, cult-forming and/or joining, a refusal to start certain tasks, a refusal to marry, self-denial, weight gain, infanticide, fratricide, first-degree murder, death, self-mutilation, extreme weight loss, a lack of appetite, hearing voices, listening to voices, doing what the voices say, developing shuddering habits, or an absolute rise in blood pressure whenever a tomato in even thought of. It may also lead to extreme sleeplessness, and serial killing." Everyone just stared at Firepaw. Even Lionheart hadn't the time to begin nodding and smiling.

"If Ravenpaw were like you, he'd be getting college credits rather than being a humiliation to me," Tigerclaw sputtered.

"Just because I'm a kittypet doesn't mean I haven't taken any classes at Harvard," grumbled Dr Firepaw darkly.

"Hey look! I'm breaking the tension!" Graypaw broke out of his crouch to become a pose strikingly similar to Lionheart's. "Here's my impression of Lionheart!" He primped up his whiskers and began licking his long-gray fur madly, as if it would never get clean. "Oy, you, Firepaw, you're relax-scent is making me look bad. Oh StarClan, here comes Bluey!" Graypaw was suddenly flatly on his hind feet, jabbing at the air as he yelled, "Ravenpaw! Go hunt for the day at Snakerocks. Whitestorm, Runningwind, Mousefur—you're all lazy—go patrol the RiverClan border. Spottedleaf—step away from Ravenpaw and find one of the elders to… contribute to your music-playing skills. Graypaw, fetch me a mouse! Bossing around cats and grooming in excess is a difficult job! I'll go boss my prey to death."

"Graypaw, don't make me use your flamethrower against you because I am not afraid to start flamethrowering you!" Lionheart growled, although "flamethrowering" is yet to be added in any English dictionary. "Why don't you pretend you're intelligent, productive apprentices and go stalk something?"

All of the apprentices turned brightly towards the golden tabby. Graypaw had a light bulb pop over his head.

"Oops, sorry about that—shiiiny…" Graypaw dreamily pawed the bulb until it turned into a golden donut.

"Ravenpaw, go to Owltree."

"Try to get eaten by the owl," Tigerclaw added brightly.

"Graypaw, there might be something in that bramble thicket."

"Entangle in it and die!"

"And Firepaw, follow the rabbit track to the dry bed of a winter stream."

"May rain come from nowhere and drown you."

The apprentices launched away, mainly because Tigerclaw was scaring them.

Firepaw followed the unmistakable trail of rabbit footprints up to the top of the rise that started the dry creek—one could tell because a yet to explode half-sunken H-Bomb was safely in the bed.

He snaked down the bank, his thoughts focused on cheese and its relevance to social disorders when mouse-scent suddenly hit the roof of his mouth. He used his exquisite hearing to capture the impulses of a rapidly beating heart, of whiskers twitching, of feet lightly stepping across the cold, wet ground. Firepaw stepped forward. His prey was looking in the wrong direction. This would be easy. He launched from his hiding spot among the ferns, his fore-claws outstretched as the feeling of something very soft, like a ball of fluffy white dandelion seeds, was now safely in between his padded feet.

"Do you not agree that the killing and devouring of mice is both vulgar and cruel?" the rodent asked in a high-pitched voice.

"What else am I going to do?"

"I know a lobster…"

"Keep talking. You might have a deal here."

-----! ONE FANFICTION LATER !-----

Firepaw dropped the red arachnid at Lionheart's and Tigerclaw's feet. "It's a lobster of the sea," he explained. "They say they have many traits common with spiders."

The two mentors, too proud to admit their ignorance murmured, "Okay" and "As long as it doesn't move too much." Firepaw was a truly dorky ThunderClan apprentice at last.


The next chapter is really short, so hopefully I'll get that up soon. I'm also making a website for FACSOC! Watch this story!