Putting Training to Use [Finished]

The calico apprentice was training.

Always training. It felt like her whole life was made up of training lately. That and patrols and chores. Dawn Patrol. Get kits food. Midday Training. Clean the dens. Check to see if Eveningblaze needed anything. Dusk Patrol. Get kits more food. Nighttime Training. Dawn Patrol again. On and on and on her workload went. The days all started to bleed together after a while. She had become 7 moons old at some point, some time ago. She thought it was 2 days. It might have been 5 though. Days were so tricky to keep track of. Worse than kits. Kits were so many. So very many. All need food. All need new bedding. All need moss. All need new moss. The sole queen was not enough and Patchpaw was of course willing to help a clanmate but... but...

But I'm falling asleep on my pawsANDLOOKOUT!

The shecat was yanked from her thoughts as she stumbled forward -she had extended her paw swipe too far- and started to fall forward onto the rough, hard, rocks they had been training on. Her brother, Gullkit, caught her by the scruff at the last second and gently let her go when she had regathered her paws under herself again.

Oops. Well, that was mousebrained. Congrats, Patchpaw. You are officially completely incompetent! You can't even handle an opponent that won't hit you back!

The shecat rolled her shoulders to keep them loose and turned back to her brother, trying to ignore how the heat of the sun reminded her of her nest and how tired she was. Gullkit watched her warily. She could tell by the flick of his tail he wanted to stop -he could see how drained she was, but she shook her head, no. They would keep going. Today was a rare day when she had no duties to fulfill. Littleflame had told her that he would be doing all of her chores so would she please stop working so hard and spend some time with her brothers? They did love her after all and she was still an apprentice. She should get play time too!

Naturally, Patchpaw saw this for exactly what it was: An opportunity to train both toms at once. How could she pass that up for something as frivolous as 'play time'? Play brought no prey and did not get her brothers apprenticed! 

She had brought them far out this time, father than they usual went, to the rocky area at the far northwest of the territory where the land was drier and sharp rocks plagued a cat's feet if they were unwary. Patchpaw would not let her or her brothers be crippled by foreign terrain if they ever had to work outside the marshes. Patrols along the Cedar Clan border were seldom on the soggy, soft land the siblings were used to. They had to be ready for anything. Doubly ready!

As the shecat was about to lunge forward in a flurry of swipes, starting up the battle training once more and her grey brother already moved smoothely to the side, she stopped when the sound of kicked rocks reached her ears. She cocked her head, looking around. Gullkit picked up on her changed demeanor in a moment and his nose was in the air and he was scenting. Patchpaw did not even bother. She had a sniffer worse than a drowned rat. If something was nearby, Gullkit would smell it ages before she even had the barest idea. She looked across the landscape, but all she saw was rocks, grass, and more rocks. Gullkit stiffened. Whatever he smelled, it made his ears lay flat and he looked at Patchpaw questioningly. It must be something bad then, but something he did not recognize either. A bad smell was in the air. Well she wasn't sure what to make of that.

She tried to think of what would smell bad to the tom. Both of her brothers could be quite persnickety and she was not exactly alarmed. Yet. The rocks could have been the wind and the bad smell... well Gullkit thought catmint smelled bad, so he was hardly the best judge of a dangerous smell. He just knew he didn't like it. That was all that meant.

Cherrykit might have brought back some cloves. That was probably it. It would figure! She sent that boy out hunting and he got all distracted and-

Patchpaw's thoughts spiraled away as Gullkit was suddenly on her with a fury in his eyes the calico had never seen before and shoved her off their rock to crash into the pebbled ground just a mouselength below.

"Arrrruuggh!!!" She gasped in surprise, maybe yowled even. When she looked back up at him, appalled that he would do such a thing to her, her brain shorted out at what she was seeing. 

There was a big... monster standing on the rock now. It must have rushed up right behind her.

And now it has Gullkit.



The tom started to slide backwards just as Patchpaw was going in to swipe at his paws. He was getting better and better at this, he had to admit. Even if he thought the training was annoying. When his sister froze though, he knew something was different. Maybe wrong even. His keen green eyes fell over the strange landscape, fast and searching. He opened his mouth, drinking in all the scents of this strange place in territory.

The obvious things came first. Sky. Tree. Rock. Wet rock -there was water nearby. Moss. Dirt. Grass. Yellow Grass. A small patch of flowers a several taillengths away.

Then the harder ones. The ones that were hidden. An old mouse trail, long since stale. Voles. Lots of voles. They loved this place it seemed. Gullkit was not overly fond of voles himself so it mattered little to him. There was the sharp tang of snake in the air, two different kinds if he had to guess and-

Fur. Wrong fur though. Ugh. The smell was horrible. Almost overpowering. How had he missed it earlier? Oh, well, duh. His sister had been drilling him worse than if she was his leader! What smelled like that though? It was fur certainly, but not mouse as in Cherrykit was coming back early from the hunting mission their tyrant of a sibling had sent him off on. He was not to come back until he had at least five pieces of prey, something that would keep any cat busy for hours in this wasteland of rocks, but then again- the poor sod had been practicing hunting with Patchpaw nonstop every day from noon until just before dusk for the past moon and a half so it was certainly possible.

But this fur did not smell like prey. Or like cat, at least not any cat Gullkit knew. There was also the smell of rotten meat. Like a cat with bad breath. REALLY bad breath. Not even Duskblaze with all his blood and oozing had halitosis quite this bad. Not yet at least. Eurgh! Gullkit lowered his ears and looked questioningly at Patchpaw, maybe her ears would tell her what it was, but he had nothing. It was something -something he did not like and something he wished would just take it and its stink far away from here, but that was all he knew.

Then the rocks moved.

Gullkit froze, his thick fur bristling. What had that been? Rocks? Rocks had moved? Patchpaw was not watching him now. She was not even looking the right way. But Gullkit was. His sharp green eyes were widening now. They weren't rocks. They couldn't be rocks. It was like a mouse -trying to hide in the dirt with the color of its pelt, but this had not been a mouse. Mice did not come in such pale colors and mice were not that big. Whatever this was, it was big. Big enough that Gullkit knew in his bones he did not want to meet it. But there was no movement now. Nothing. Nothing but rocks. Rocks. Rocks. Rocks. -AND ONE SHARP ORANGE EYE STARING RIGHT AT THEM!

The two creatures locked gazes and moved in unison. The huge monster charged forward. It looked like a cat a bit, but with bigger ears, much longer legs, and a horribly long snout full of dripping yellowed teeth that reached out for Patchpaw's unsuspecting back with a growl Gullkit could not hear, but it made no difference. He shoved his sister out of the way in the nick of time but then the teeth snapped around his tail and yanked him upward into the air.

Gullkit's heart beat frantically in his chest as his was airborne. He looked down and saw the coyote's open jaws awaiting him to snap around his smaller body and crush him with its massive jaws. He could have clawed at the air wildly or closed his eyes, but he knew both would be no use. Instead, he rolled around and unsheathed his claws for the first time in a real fight. He tried to scrunch himself up as much as possible, to keep his vulnerable belly safe, and when he landed he scratched the coyote's nose for all he was worth, shredding the wet black ball with an unheard howl of pain. The coyote's teeth grabbed the fur between Gullkit's neck and shoulder, tearing open the flesh as the beast flung him away to slam numbly against a rockwall and fall to the ground. Everything was a haze of pain but he remembered his training. 

Patchpaw had been a relentless she-demon for the past moon and a half and, if nothing else, she had taught her brother to never go down. He felt the appealing prospect of unsciousness lure him as his body was slung against the unforgiving wall, but he viciously tore himself away from it. When he landed on the ground, it was with all four paws and only a mild stumble. His side hurt. He did not think anything was broken but he was going to have bruises the likes of which he had not suffered for weeks. 

So much for being great at dodging, he grumbled to himself dimly.

His front leg and chest was wet. Gullkit knew blood. He knew what he felt was his blood, pouring down out of the fiery painful place on his neck. He felt something flap against his chest. It was a piece of skin and fur that had been ripped nearly off, but not quite. The grey tom ignored it.

The coyote was rounding on him now. Behind it, he saw Patchpaw had gathered her senses and met her gaze. He knew she was preparing to charge. Gullkit could NOT let that happen. She was bossy, and a busybody, and worked away too much for anyone's good, but she was still his sister and he'd be damned if some nasty smelling cat-on-stilts with a dentistry problem was going to touch a single fur on her pelt! Not on his watch! Gullkit gave sister a brave smile, but that was all he could spare.

The tom bared his fangs and launched himself forward.

Forward into the coyote's waiting jaws of death.