A/N: Next chapter!

Chapter Five

The large orange tom seemed to find Sparrowpaw's situation highly amusing.

"Well, Shadow," he purred, baring his fangs slightly at the large black tom, "if such a small tabby queen can give you trouble, maybe you should head back to the 'yard," he mocked; the black tom, Shadow, snarled at him.

"Shut up, Maximus," he hissed; the white tom snarled at them both, never letting his eye leave Sparrowpaw. "And you too, Winter!" The white tom ignored him, though, and Maximus turned his gold eyes back to Sparrowpaw as well, taking a step towards her and earning a snarl, her back instinctively arching as she spat at him warningly, earning an amused look from the massive cat as the three Rogues (no doubt from their strange names) watched her.

"Come now, little queen," he purred, leaning in closer, but staying just far enough away that she couldn't hit him with her claws unless she stopped protecting Nightpaw. "We've no quarrel with such a pretty young cat." His gold eyes narrowed faintly, and he bared his fangs at her; Sparrowpaw shrank back from him a bit, laying down closer to Nightpaw, who was softly mewling in fear and pain beneath her. "Of course," Maximus continued, dropping his eyes down to the cowering Nightpaw, "if you've already mated with that poor excuse of a tom, well, we might take exception." Sparrowpaw recoiled at both the accusation as well as the insinuation that he would be a better mate for her, and swatted at him instinctively when she realized he'd slid forward a little bit.

"Come now, little queen," Shadow spoke up as Maximus obligingly stepped back a bit, and Sparrowpaw was desperately trying to keep her attention on all three of the males, snarling at the white cat, Winter, when she noticed he had used her distraction with Maximus to sneak forward. "We don't want to have to hurt you. You're rather valuable to us, after all," Shadow purred; Sparrowpaw hissed at him too, fur slicking down with fear as all three males slunk closer.

"Go," Nightpaw hissed under her, voice tight with pain; Sparrowpaw growled.

"No," she growled back, flinching instinctively when Winter swatted at her back hip, yowling at him in an almost immediate, maternal action, as if she was a fully grown queen protecting her kits.

"The Clan comes before any one cat, you mouse-brained fool!" Nightpaw managed; Sparrowpaw shook her head, and jerked around when Shadow lightly racked his claws against her side, only to yowl when Maximus did the same from her other side.

"Shut up, you stupid, pellet-eating kit of a-!" she didn't get to finish, because Winter had lunged, slamming her off of Nightpaw and to the side. Sparrowpaw screamed, enraged and terrified as she saw Shadow leap for Nightpaw, struggling desperately to get away, to help her Clanmate. As Nightpaw tried to fight back, and Maximus started to pad over to where she was thrashing in Winter's grip, a sound echoed from the bushes, and the familiar forms of Stonefang, Rabbitfoot, and Deputy Foxtail leaped at the interlopers, yowling their battle cries as they were followed by Sunpaw and Grasspaw.

Winter was ripped away from her by Foxtail's lung, the two cats snarling and hissing furiously as they rolled. Stonefang had taken Shadow down, before being jumped by Maximus, leaving Rabbitfoot to attack the stunned black tom. Sunpaw and Grasspaw sped forward, and Sparrowpaw managed to meet them at Nightpaw's side, the black tom gasping for breath and covered in blood.

Rabbitfoot yowled and Sunpaw didn't hesitate to launch himself onto Shadow's back, while Grasspaw darted in and out of the fight, helping where she could while staying close to the injured. Sparrowpaw once more took her place standing protectively over Nightpaw, occasionally leaning down and licking at one of his wounds, trying to both stop the bleeding and comfort him.

Several minutes pass, and warning yowls nearby alert Sparrowpaw and her Clanmates of a WoodClan patrol coming to investigate. All the Rogues hear is reinforcements. With a loud caterwaul, they disconnected from their individual fights, Winter and Maximus coming out of theirs with nasty wounds but otherwise whole, while Shadow left with a crippled leg and both his ears ripped almost clear of his head. Unheeding the scent line, the three badly injured Rogues lunged over the Border and disappeared amongst the pines and aspen trees.

Moments later, six WoodClan cats appeared, the average for a response to a disturbance. Four took off after the Rogues immediately, while the remaining two, a large queen and an apprentice tom, stayed behind. Sparrowpaw didn't move from standing over Nightpaw, instead shifting her weight and attention to the two WoodClan cats, not snarling at them, but continuing to growl and protect her injured Clanmate. The queen was all gray, with a splash of white speckles along her plume of a tail and chest, her gold-green eyes bright, pupils wide. The apprentice (hers?) was a dark gray tabby with thick black stripes, blue eyes wide and pupils small, mouth open to scent everything around him better.

"Deputy Foxtail," the queen meowed cautiously, tail twitching anxiously as the apprentice shifted on his paws, staring, wide-eyed, from Sparrowpaw and Nightpaw, to the bloodied Warriors. The MeadowClan Deputy nodded her head sharply to the queen, licking blood from her muzzle.

"Ashtail," the Deputy greeted cordially, glancing at the apprentice silently; Ashtail nodded faintly.

"My Clanmate's apprentice, Rockpaw," she mewed; Foxtail gave him a stiff nod, and he ducked down a bit, nervous as he nodded back respectfully. "Can you tell us what happened?" Foxtail turned a sharp look on Sparrowpaw, who understood the unspoken order and carefully moved from over Nightpaw, who was immediately scooped up by Stonefang who took off running, Grasspaw on his tail.

"Nightpaw and I were hunting here," the young brown tabby explained. "We were trying to see who could catch the most prey before we would head back. Nightpaw said that this was where a lot of the bigger prey hid, but, if they had, they were chased off by the scent of a recent WoodClan patrol," she gave a small nod to the Warrior Queen so she would know that Sparrowpaw wasn't slighting her Clan, and Ashtail nodded back in acknowledgement. After all, it happened often enough, there was no point in trying to start a fight over it.

"I could barely even smell myself," Sparrowpaw admitted, and pinned her ears back, ashamed, now. "We decided to continue anyway, because it made the challenge more difficult." The harsh hiss this earned her from the Deputy made her flinch and crouch a bit, wincing as her shoulder wound ached fiercely. Sunpaw slid up on her other side and licked at her head comfortingly, and Sparrowpaw continued softly. "I-I saw black fur from the other side of the bush I was hunting under, but I just thought it was Nightpaw, because that's where he'd gone. It wasn't until he yowled that I realized something was wrong, but I still couldn't smell anything besides the marking scent!" She shook her head, pinning her ears back tighter against her head and shivering faintly.

"I couldn't get around the bush fast enough, so I jumped over it," she meowed. "I landed over were Rabbitfoot is right now," she nodded at the gray queen, who was busy licking her wounds. "There was a big black tom on Nightpaw, a stranger, and I didn't think, I just reacted, because he was tearing into Nightpaw, aiming to kill him." Her tail lashed as she growled faintly at the memory. "I surprised him, got him away from Nightpaw, but Nightpaw was too injured already, he couldn't even stand." She shook herself once, sharply. "I stood beside him, at first, between him and the stranger, because I couldn't tell if he was from a Clan or a Rogue or anything, the scent was too well-hidden. I warned the tom he was trespassing, and told him to leave before a response patrol came for him. He refused, and the other toms came through." She shuddered and crouched a bit, eyes wide. "I couldn't smell them, or hear them, they were moving like Clan cats and I couldn't tell." She shook her head, and, this time, Foxtail's eyes narrowed for a completely different reason.

"I only found out they were Rogues when they called each other by name," the young tabby queen meowed. "The black tom was Shadow, the orange Maximus, and the white Winter. They were a group, and knew each other well. Maximus kept trying to get me to move away from Nightpaw, kept saying they had no problem with me, that I was valuable to them because I was a queen." She shivered, and, this time, Sunpaw snarled, and rubbed himself against his sister protectively while the other cats growled. "He got very threatening and wanted to know if I'd mated with Nightpaw." She snorted, and Sunpaw licked her head. "The three of them kept moving closer, and it was very hard to keep an eye on them all. Finally, Maximus distracted me and Winter tackled me. They were going to kill Nightpaw when you all got here," she whispered, and slumped down to lay on the ground momentarily. Movement in the grass warned them as WhisperStar and a tall, thin gray tom with one blue eye and one green (Windclaw, Sparrowpaw recognized. Nightpaw's mentor) slid out of the grass.

"Windclaw, take Sparrowpaw back to camp," WhisperStar ordered; the tall tom nodded seriously, and grabbed onto the exhausted apprentice's scruff, lifting her into the air, making her feel tiny as she was pulled straight off the ground. Instead of complaining like she would have if she'd been uninjured, she curled her body up tightly, just like when she was a tiny kit and her mother would move her to a different part of the nest. Windclaw turned away from the group, and dove through the grass with an enviable speed. They arrived at the camp, and Sparrowpaw noted absently that all the queens with kits were in the Nursery Den, while the Elders were lying in front of it, eyes wide, ears twitching, and mouths open, ready to protect the kits in case of an attack.

A clear yowl cut through the air from behind them, and Sparrowpaw realized that her brother and Grasspaw had followed them. The cry warned Rainstorm that an injured cat was being carried in, and Sparrowpaw found herself carried into the Medicine Den and set carefully on a nest. Rainstorm barely paused long enough to make sure she wasn't going to die right away, before turning back to the unconscious form of Nightpaw, swiftly placing dozens of wads of cobwebs to stop the bleeding. Sparrowpaw was exhausted, but she forced herself up, carefully grabbing some cobweb and starting carefully press them into her Clanmate's wounds, earning an approving nod from Rainstorm as the black tom continued to do the same.

By the time they'd finished with Nightpaw's wounds, Sparrowpaw was ready to curl up and go straight to sleep. Instead, she stayed awake long enough to thank Rainstorm when he'd finished covering her wounds, and in time to see that the rest of her Clanmates from the response patrol had returned safely. Then, and only then, did she let herself curl up and fall into a deep sleep.

A/N: Ugh, I'm horrible at Confrontation scenes… Meh…

Review!