Not ANOTHER Truth or Dare!
Disclaimer: I do not own Warriors, Tanfeather, Owlspirit or Shimmerkit.
Hey everybody! This is a special treat for those who stuck by for the months that I was too 'blocked and just downright lazy to update. Yes, this is in fact that rare creature known as a bonus chapter.
These chapters will pop up every now and then if I haven't updated in too long, I don't have nearly enough dares/truths to continue, shortly after a chapter that I took a ridiculously long time to write, when I want to have a story arc, or just whenever I feel like it. ;)
Also, the rules have been moved to the first chapter, as I stated in the previous one. Now, on with the fic!
4:30 A.M., Horseplace, Second Moon of Leaf-fall
"GET UP, YOU LAZY BUM! GET YOURSELF SOME BREAKFAST! TAKE SOME TIME TO FEED YOUR FRIENDS AND FAMILY TOO, YOU JERK!"
Darkstorm opened his eyes blearily and looked at his alarm clock. It had a figurine of an angry-looking monkey in a classic Broadway suit and top hat, waving a cane and screeching angrily. Darkstorm blinked in confusion, not to mention exhaustion. His alarm wasn't supposed to go off at four-thirty. He'd probably have to get it checked out in Dwarfstar's magic workshop.
For now, he'd just have to get up and go on with his morning like usual. Dwarfstar had enchanted all the crew's alarm clocks, so that they would only stop screeching once you got out of your nest and showed that you were moving around and awake. Then, if you tried to get back into said nest, it would immediately start shrieking and, if you stayed long enough, cursing.
Oh well. At least he'd have three-and-a-half hours to himself, to do whatever he wanted without having to dodge camera crews, bossy set organizers, and hyper chatterboxes who try to make your day better by talking your ear off, but only succeed in annoying the living crap out of you.
As he tumbled out of his trailer, leaf-cup of morning coffee in paw, he suddenly remembered that they were supposed to welcome the new arrivals. Of course, the fact that there were three cats in the middle of the circle of trailers he didn't recognize, and the toy wagon taken from a Twoleg trash heap being pulled by a badger with a stolen construction worker's hat strapped to its head, worn old bulb serving as headlights, with several wagons latched behind it in a caravan with a bunch of luggage piled into them certainly had nothing to do with his sudden enlightenment. Nothing at all.
One of the new arrivals, a tiny black she-kit, bounced towards him, a peculiar glint in her eye. He stared for a moment, wondering why she was so energetic at this ungodly hour, when suddenly Wavepelt shrieked from her position next to the wagons, "NO! BAD GIRL! DON'T STAB THE CREWMEMBER!" He noticed a gleam of moonlight on steel near her paw. So that was why she was so energetic. In that moment, Darkstorm did what any sane, normal cat would do; he shrieked like a kit and took off running in the other direction.
However, in his current zombiefied, half-awake state he probably wouldn't have made it far if one of the strangers hadn't pounced with lightning speed, ripped the knife off of her paw (she had it taped on--cats can hold cups, barely, but they can't hold knives), and pinned her to the ground. "It's okay!" he heard a young voice yowl. "I got her!"
At Darkstorm's current inertia, it took him about 4 seconds to stop and looked in the direction of his rescuer. What he saw was a tom, an apprentice about four moons out of kithood, sleek and lithe, standing with one paw on the belly of the black she-kit, who was writhing and yowling furiously. "You BUTTFACE!!" she screeched. "I had 'im! You just cost me the easiest kill of my life! You better make sure I never find out where you sleep, because if you do it won't exist, because you'll never sleep again! You little ba--"
Wavepelt clamped a paw over the kit's mouth. "I'm so sorry!" she gasped, struggling to keep her murderous charge under control. "When it said in her profile she had an evil personality, we thought she was just a generic 'mischievous' character, not a homicidal maniac!" Coalfur darted over and stuck a syringe into the kit's front leg. After a couple seconds, her movements slowed, and the shrieking and cursing became a muted torrent of babbling. Wavepelt sighed and dropped her to the ground. "Well, we can't really send her back, and we can't exactly keep a bloodthirsty nutcase around camp." The dark-gray she-cat shrugged. "I guess keep her in confinement for now, and talk with Dwarfstar about it later."
"Oh, Dwarfstar's here, but she appreciates not being hunted down to talk about these things." Darkstorm, Wavepelt and Coalfur nearly jumped out of their skins when Dwarfstar calmly strolled up beside her friend. Darkstorm glared accusingly.
"Hey! Why didn't you just magic the knife out of that crazy kit's paw and knock her unconscious?" he yowled. "What were you doing, scratching your butt?!" Dwarfstar calmly laid her tail on his shoulder.
"Don't worry, I got here about the time you pumped her full of my homemade sleeping potion." She pointed to the unconscious kit. "Anyway, now that you've met Shimmerkit, you should meet the others. Hobo, or should I say Silverpaw?" She threw a front leg around the shoulder of the skinny Siamese apprentice's shoulders proudly. "Yep, Silverpaw was raised by moi and Nukefur." Dwarfstar jabbed a paw in the skinny brown tom's direction. "And the rest of my brothers and sisters, and my mom and dad, but mostly me! Now, Silverpaw, honey, do you think you can put her in her trailer? But first make sure there aren't any sharp objects in there or things she could use as a weapon." Silverpaw nodded and trotted off, dragging Shimmerkit behind him.
"Well, what are we going to do about her? We can't take her on the show, she'll kill everybody! And we can't just send her back, not yet!" Darkstorm said, hysteria creeping into his voice. "And we can't just sedate her all the time, or, or--"
"Relax." Tanfeather walked up and laid her tail on his shoulder. "Me, Dwarfstar and Nukefur have got it all worked out. We'll have her be the guard. Any foxes, badgers, or other animals that haven't been tagged as ours and with hostile intent are hers to deal with, however she wishes." Wavepelt stared at her in disbelief.
"When were you gonna tell me?!" she burst out. Dwarfstar cleared her throat.
"Actually, me, Nukefur, and Tanfeather decided on this while you were meeting with the caravan, as we unanimously agreed that she would have to be controlled somehow, and that was the best method that came to mind."
"But how did you know she would be a maniac?"
"Because the author's twisted mind made it that way."
"Author? What author? What are you talking about?!" Wavepelt asked frantically, her eyes wide. An intermission ensued during which the holes in the Fourth Wall were repaired, and she had only a foggy recollection that something didn't quite ring true about Dwarfstar's explanation. She had no time to think on it, though, as Dwarfstar caught the shoulder of one of the strangers as he passed by.
"And this," she said cheerfully, pointing her tail at the big, muscular black-and-white tom, "is Sirus, or Snowfleck. He's Noname's friend, and quite a bit of the reason he's here. Flecky boy here--"
"Actually, I prefer Sirus."
"… Anyhoo, Sirus here is actually a Fandom Traveler." At her crewmember's questioning looks, she hastened to explain before the fourth wall cracked again. "Let's just say he's a veteran." Sirus pulled away and trotted towards his trailer, grumbling something about 'darn kids'. Suddenly, Coalfur darted over, slipped Dwarfstar a piece of paper, and started whispering urgently in the tabby she-cat's ear. Dwarfstar frowned, nodded and dismissed him with a flick of her tail.
"Hm, it seems we have an unexpected crewmember to arrive in about an hour. Name, Spottedpelt, gender, she-cat, tortoise-shell with white tail and paws, green eyes with amber flecks, and…" She squinted and peered at the page. "Apparently she has a little flirting problem." A feeling of foreboding settled over all the toms in the vicinity. Before anyone could say anything, however, there was a sound of old, rusted metal bumping and squeaking nearby. Suddenly, another, significantly smaller caravan of toy wagons pulled into camp, bearing a single cat and lots of baggage. As the badger drawing the caravan slowed gratefully to a stop, a slender, beautiful tortoise-shell she-cat bounded off the one in the front. She padded over and sat next to Sunheart, who was cooking sausage in a pan over the fire, which was rather hard to do as he had to tape the handle to his paw, smiling and coyly fluttering her eyelashes at him. When he didn't even look up, she turned and bumped his flank. This time he did look up, shocked.
"He's taken," Wavepelt said flatly, moving over to wrap her tail around her fiancée's shoulder. The strange she-cat's smile stiffened a bit. Then she shrugged and began walking toward Dwarfstar and company. Said company, sensing disaster, had bundled into an almost-circle, with enough space for two in between.
Unfortunately (for Darkstorm), the gap happened to be right next to the huge tabby warrior. Before the stranger could sit next to him and leave the space next to Tanfeather empty, Coalfur darted in next to Darkstorm, a mischievous gleam in his reddish-orange eyes. The heavily perfumed she-cat gave him a withering glare and sat down, trying to stay as far from him as possible, while also trying to stay as far as possible from Tanfeather, who was smacking one paw into the other in a threatening gesture, a menacing grin on her face.
She smiled and stuck out a paw. "Hi, my name's Spottedpelt," she said, in a heavy, seductive voice, "and I believe we're going to be working together." As soon as she spoke, creepiness forgotten, all toms within earshot (and some out of) began drooling, glazed, slack-jawed expressions on their faces. Until Wavepelt went and slapped them all soundly upside the head. (How she did this with paws, I'll never know.)
Ignoring Wavepelt's icy looks, Tanfeather's grim, evil smile, and the tom's collective drooling, Dwarfstar smiled, reached out and shook Spottedpelt's paw heartily. "Dwarfstar, Host 1! Welcome to the crew!"
"Hey guys, 'sup?" called a tom's voice. Tanfeather's smile changed from sinister to positively wicked as Owlspirit strolled up, and she slowly began to reach for the can of Ultra-Super-Powered Mace that she had found lying around Dwarfstar's workshop.
"Nobody calls me a--" she muttered under her breath; fortunately for Owlspirit (and unfortunately for the next poor soul to annoy her with a full can of pepper spray), a shadow fell over the group. No cat noticed at first, as it was at the crack of dawn and as such a shadow would be quite hard to see, but it quickly grew larger and darker, and every cat heard the sound of feathery wings beating. Suddenly, something happened that nearly made most of them crap themselves (don't ask about the others).
A white cat with black stripes and almost glove-like markings from his elbows all the way to his strange, unnatural talons landed right in the middle of the circle, nearly knocking everyone over. The very fact that he had human elbows at all, as well as the rest of his strange body structure, nothing at all like a cat's, set him immediately apart from the other crew members. That, and his small, feathery, black-edged wings that fluttered slightly as he landed before folding back behind him. Everyone stared at the odd black markings on the top and bottom of his disturbingly wide-open, unnerving amber eyes in his wide, flat face, almost as if some enemy had scored a single claw vertically across said eyes and left two odd-looking stripes instead of scars. In fact, only the basic structure of his muzzle, his slitted pupils, his tail, and the pointy, black-tufted ears, twitching slightly, gave him the slightest semblance of a cat.
"Dwarfstar?" he asked in a surprisingly normal voice, except for the slight raspiness that edged it. "I heard someone say they were called Dwarfstar. I'm supposed to meet them here."
Dwarfstar looked up from where she was still shaking Spottedpelt's paw. "Wha? Oh, that's me!" she cried, running over to shake the creepy cat-thing's talons, leaving a relieved Spottedpelt to give her numbed paw a little shake. "Dwarfstar at your service!" she said, grinning a bit too enthusiastically, the kind of enthusiastic that makes you wish you hadn't sold that old shotgun in a garage sale. The cat-thing gave a polite smile, which looked a bit odd on his wide-set, perpetually grinning mouth, and quickly pulled his talons away.
Wavepelt looked at him from her position next to Sunheart, tail wrapped protectively (and probably a bit too tightly) around him, and asked warily, "And your name is?…"
He looked over and smiled wider than normal if that was possible. "I don't have one, but you can call me Noname." Upon being greeted by a flat stare from Wavepelt, who was of the (rather correct) opinion that Noname is no name for a cat…ish…thingy (pun intended), he bowed to Spottedpelt and Tanfeather. "At your service."
Owlspirit chose this moment to pipe up. "And I'm sure they're at yours, Spottedpelt in more ways than one." Tanfeather smiled stiffly and playfully smacked him a bit too hard on the shoulder with her tail. So hard, in fact, that everyone stared, aghast, at the poor tom, who was huddled against the side of a trailer where he had been thrown, and at Tanfeather, who was smiling contentedly as if she hadn't just thrown her fellow crewmember against the side of a metal automobile with an unearthly blow that really shouldn't have been possible seeing as to how cats don't really have very strong muscles in their tails and I'm just going to shut up now.
Everyone goggled in horror for about twenty minutes, before giving their respective heads a shake and looking around confusedly. During this time, Darkstorm had apparently taken time out and headed to the Screaming Mouse, a snack shack with a rather grisly full-color sign on the front depicting a cat eating a screeching mouse, according to his tracks. Spottedpelt had slipped away also, presumably to arrange her trailer and get some sleep. Following her tracks were a trail of small paw prints that looked suspiciously like Coalfur's. Maybe he was just returning her wallet or something…
As Tanfeather, Wavepelt, Sunheart, Owlspirit, and Noname looked around, blinking dazedly, Dwarfstar took this chance to go behind Tanfeather and Owlspirit, and nudge them forward a bit. "Well everyone, this has been an eventful morning, but I think we should all get to sleep before we drop dead and rise up in the night to devour the living in their sleep."
The rest of the crew agreed heartily. As Tanfeather headed towards her trailer, Dwarfstar laid her tail on the bouncy she-cat's shoulder. "Hold on a minute, Tanfeather. Silverpaw can't really stay awake all night watching Shimmerkit, and you've been showing disturbingly homicidal tendencies for a while now, so I'll need you to keep second watch." The dark tabby she-cat pushed a protesting Tanfeather into the front door of Shimmerkit's trailer. Apparently it was a bit more disturbing in there than Dwarfstar had thought, because she got a glimpse of Tanfeather's frightened-looking face, which had gone pale beneath her tan fur, before the trailer door slammed shut with an ominous snapping noise that sounded disturbingly like bones breaking.
The tabby host stared at the door for a moment, wide-eyed, then shrugged and walked back to her trailer.
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Wow. Three and a half pages. Now that's just pathetic.
-clears throat and resumes happyness façade- Hey guys! Hope you liked the bonus chappie (although personally I didn't like it that much)! What? I didn't put up the Allegiances? Oh. Well, when I wrote that bit I wasn't planning on doing any bonus chapters, so from now on, I'll only do Allegiances in chapters where there are shows.
M'kay! Here's a few new rules that I forgot to post last time, as I was very rushed to finish the chapter (stupid 1-hour computer turns):
Rule 4: Please don't send any really nasty dares. An example would be to have Hollypaw mate with Jaypaw fifty times, name all the kits St00pidkit, make them warriors three seconds after they're born, then eat them in front of all the Clans at a gathering (sadly enough, I did see a dare almost exactly like this once). That's nasty and horrible, and you won't find it in my fic. Stuff that isn't make-out/havesex dares (that includes rape dares) or Dead Baby Comedy dares (see example), is A.O.K by me (within reason, of course).
Rule 5: Please don't send in generic or impossible characters. Generic includes stuff like 'shy until you get to know him/her, s/he is really sweet until you set of his/her temper' or 'feisty and rude to everyone except those close to him/her'. That kind of stuff. Please try to make your characters as original as possible, or I'll 'flesh out' the character in a way you almost certainly will not like (as you can see with Shimmerkit). An example of an impossible cat would be Moonbeamdagger, the cat who glows neon pink in the morning, bright yellow by full daylight, dark red in the evening and dark purple at night, or Mustangchance, the cat who has rainbows on his flank, or Freedomgalaxy, the cat who changes gender and glows with the light of a thousand stars. Names that normally wouldn't be found in the wild mainly because cats wouldn't know what they were (Phoenixtail, Dragonheart, Velvetpelt, etc.,) are allowed. I mean, hey, look at Dwarfstar, Coalfur, and Nukefur.
Well, it's time for some last few note before I wind it down.
Spottedpelt of ShadowClan: Don't worry, your character is not going to be the witch with a capital B, as my sister says it. I've never done a flirtatious character before, and I'm still trying to find the balance between completely normal (and therefore uninteresting) character and total hoo-- well, you get the picture, so bear with me here. Besides, if you don't mind, I've got some big-time plans in place for her and Darkstorm… ;D
Be warned people, there will be pairings, however light some may be, so if you don't want your character paired to anyone (that includes other submitted OCs--just look at Tanfeather and Owlspirit. Sorry Glaciershine and Storyman3000!), say so when you PM me. And yes, I do mean PM, not review. Unless you have no account and don't plan on getting one, please send me your dares (which I am in desperate need of) and characters in a PM. Thanka much!
Well, that's about it! Goodnight, everyone!
Ciao,
Dwarfstar
P.S. You can send in dares for hosts and submitted original characters too, you know…
P.P.S. Go on my lookup and vote for your favorite TOD character! Now I say! -pushes you in that direction-
