Nightpaw Assessment

A white tabby stood resolutely at the edges of the territory. Her blue eyes watched for movement in the dark burrows around her as she waited for her apprentice to join her. Whether Nightpaw could make use of the territory below would be a good indication of whether she was ready to serve her clan or not. The she-cat had hesitations considering how her niece seemed to be disgusted by the Dark Forest, but deep in her heart, she too had doubts.

Perhaps this balanced view would make her a good warrior.

After grooming her fur until it was spotless and then fixing and cleaning her nest on the apprentice’s den, Nightpaw finally walked out and went to where she was supposed to meet Saltpelt today. Most cats usually thought that she was just doing things that any organized and well behaved cat would do, but deep inside she knew that she was doing this only to delay her training sessions with her aunt as much as possible. She knew that if she was a bit more dedicated to her training she would be a warrior by now, but she couldn’t help it.

Most of her patrols, if not all of them were carefully planned ahead in such way that she knew that joining would be hard for Saltpelt, and hopefully the other Dark Forest followers as well. She never said this out loud, but the once prankster she-cat had been using her previous abilities specifically to avoid them as much as possible. But this time she had no other choice, and that made her be in a fairly bad mood. She would do anything to delay or even skip this time she knew that she was going to spend alone with her, but doing so would not only be a clear clue to the Dark Forest followers of where her loyalties really laid, it would also make the other cats stop seeing her as a hard-working apprentice as they found out that she was purposely delaying things when she made it seem that she was busy with chores.

After some walking she finally spotted the white tabby, and she had a hard time to keep a calm expression and her fur flat against her body to not give out any clues of how unpleased she felt to be there with her…with the traitor and usurper.

She quickly shook those thoughts away and padded towards her, politely nodding as a greeting but saying nothing, before getting at her side. She was wondering what her aunt had in store for her that day. Training, patrol, hunting?

"You're late." Saltpelt commented drily, the white tabby's tail flicking from side to side with both anticipation and concern. Whilst Nightpaw did quite well to mask her dislike of her, Saltpelt was well-versed in seeing hatred, mistrust, loathing on cat's faces that she saw through any veneers. Ever the opportunist, she kept this to herself, the Dark Forest gave her power thus she respected it, but she wasn't quite at the point of sacrificing apprentices to die at the hands of the more brutal cats of the Dark Forest. Sandstrike, Icestep, Thicketpaw and many other Dark Forest cats had proved themselves to be cruel without being provoked, she wouldn't toss her niece to them, Morningstar had made it clear that he would not tolerate dissent. The fate for traitors seemed to be a bloody end.

"This will be our final time together as mentor and apprentice, should you pass this assessment. Hunt well and gather as much prey as well as you can. I trust that you don't need more explanation?" Considering how Nightpaw had been avoiding her, she imagined this would be a delight to hear.

Nightpaw listened to Saltpelt’s words and a visible expression of surprise quickly made its way to her face. After all this time of delaying her training over and over again she had even started to wonder if she would get an assessment at all during the next several moons. She was happy to know that this whole hard-working act would soon come to an end as she became a warrior. Yeah, she would still need to work as a warrior for them, but once she hit that position she wouldn’t need to be as sneaky. She could just go out of camp, stay around the territory during the whole day and say that she was patrolling when she returned at night. Nobody would suspect a thing as long as she chased off intruders and brought prey for the fresh-kill pile.

She listened to what would work to prove that she was ready to receive her new name…hunting. Well, not her strongest point, but she wasn’t that bad at it as well, so she shouldn’t have that much trouble to come out successful, even if she arrived late…as long as Saltpelt didn’t considered that the amount of caught prey was too low, of course…she would need to act fast to avoid that undesirable result.

OOC: Should I just post all catches or go one by one?

OOC: All at once would be faster, then you can ask for your Warrior Ceremony from Ashstar once the gathering is done ;)

"Go." Saltpelt commanded from her place on top of the Lone Stump. She'd be watching from afar, seeing how her apprentice would use the territory to her advantage. She had high hopes for Nightpaw, the she-cat was a determined one and patient, good qualities in a warrior. Maybe she'd survive everything and be a better cat than she was.

Nightpaw nodded, eager to complete a task given by Saltpelt for the very first time since she had taken over the clan under the orders of a fox hearted ghost.

Her ears moved constantly in an attempt to catch even the smallest sound, her nose trying to catch the scent of prey that could be nearby aided by her tongue as it tasted the air. She couldn’t be happiest of how well timed her assessment was, usually finding prey on the moors was challenging, but Greenleaf was making her task a lot easier.

It didn’t took long for the dark apprentice to find and track down the well-known scent of rabbits, the most common piece of prey that WindClan had. They were fast and always had their guard really high, so she would need to be careful, and if necessary faster in case that something blew away her cover before time.

Careful to have the wind on her favor so her scent wouldn’t reach the desired targets, alerting them of her presence, she walked towards them and only slowed down once she decided that she was too close to just keep going like this. It was then where her experience as a prankster that had a special liking on startling her clanmates showed up, lowering herself enough to not be seen over the tall grass but not to the point where her movements would become slow or clumsy.

The grass wouldn’t give her as much coverage as the shadows casted by the darkened night skies or the bushes that the forest had, so she couldn’t make a single mistake here, not if she wanted to pass her assessment on time. Her muscles tensed as soon as the small fluffy animal raised its ears, after all she was really close now, and then acted like a spring loaded mechanism, allowing her to pounce, her claws hooking themselves in the fur and skin of the surprised rodent. The killing bite was delivered as soon as the neck of the animal came in contact with her fangs, just because this was a prey for her it didn’t mean that it deserved to suffer before its death.

Nightpaw quickly buried the rabbit near to a rock that she would use to remember exactly where it was when she came back to retrieve it and also as a temporary scout point to once again try to track down another piece of prey.

It took her a bit longer this time to know where she was supposed to go, though she was patient and carefully made her way to where the next piece of prey would be located instead of rushing towards the place thanks to frustration. She knew that her time would run out if she didn’t act quickly, but she wouldn’t just scare away all the prey of the area by running straight to them without thinking first.

She was slightly surprised when she saw the field mouse looking for food on the ground, this wasn’t a prey as usual as the rabbit, and though it was smaller it would still count. Given her focus on trying to find the smell of rabbits she accidentally had gotten a bit too close to the mouse, what caused it to notice her before she got close enough to do a flawless pounce and start running.

Nightpaw wasn’t discouraged though, and gave chase to it with the idea in mind to just let it go if it put her chances of finding more prey at risk. She, however, was lucky enough to be able to reach it after a fairly short time of running and kill it swiftly. Once she made sure that it was dead, she placed the mouse down, trying to catch her breath when something near to her caught her attention.

It was a hole in the ground, hidden so well that she wouldn’t had been able to notice it at all if the mouse hadn’t guided her straight towards it and barely big enough for a cat to crawl in. Being cautious, she smelled the dark place before even daring to get any closer, not wanting to find herself in a dangerous situation if she just went on to see what was inside it. It smelled like rabbit.

Quickly hiding the mouse near to the entrance so it wouldn’t be taken away she carefully stepped in, having to crouch a bit thanks to the small space. She didn’t know if she would even find a rabbit here, but in her current situation she couldn’t just decide to not take a chance.

She was gladly surprised when she found not only the rabbit that she had been hunting, but what appeared to be a couple of them with three smaller rabbits that she guessed were their offspring. A family of only five rabbits was a bit small, or she at least thought that, but it was still an incredible chance that she wouldn’t let just pass, immediately starting to battle them on the narrow tunnel that was their burrow. She wasn’t surprised when they fought back, after all, what other option they had now that she had managed to corner them?

It took her longer than she originally expected, but in the end she dragged the five rabbits out of the burrow, one by one, and added them to her catch list. As expected from such complicated fight she got some scratches of her own, luckily she had avoided the bites, but she really didn’t care, those would heal quickly and wouldn’t leave scars behind.

After licking the scratches she picked her catch, silently thanking StarClan for her sudden hit of luck, and not without trouble carried the rabbits to where Saltpelt was waiting, as well as retrieving her first prey and the field mouse. Hoping that it would be enough to pass the assessment.

OOC: Hope this is good enough XP