looking for trouble

It hadn't been long at all since the Tribe cats had allowed the ThunderClan, RiverClan and ShadowClan cats to stay in their cave, and quite frankly Batpaw was already tired of it. It was exciting at first - a cave, which was something she'd only seen once before, and never one so big, she couldn't help wanting to explore it - but she quickly learned that there wasn't all that much to see. It was already becoming difficult to find new ways to pass time, and she was avoiding her Clanmates at present. Not because they'd done anything in particular, but because if she pretended they were all just busy (and, she knew, at least some of them were) she could pretend that Leopardstar and Copperheart and Lynxtail were just busy, too. She'd see them again soon.

So, with her ever-present worries and loneliness pushed into the back of her mind (at least for the moment), Batpaw was on a mission. There was one thing, no matter the situation, that had never failed to make her feel just a little bit better: playing tricks and pranks on other cats. And it was with that thought in mind that she approached a random nest with the bugs she'd spent a short while gathering as inconspicuously as possible. At last, she started carefully placing her catches in the nest, doing her best to keep them from being immediately visible. If she hadn't been so busy purring at the fact that her success was practically guaranteed, however, the small black she-cat might have noticed that she wasn't quite as invisible as she believed.

ooc: mobile

Ferretpaw was beginning to feel the effects of the flood on her body. She had been coasting on adrenaline for quite some time, but all of the pain and suffering she watched her Clanmated experience bogged her down. She hated knowing that she could do nothing. These mountains were strange, and StarClan felt absent. Nevertheless, she kept herself busy. She found a pile of rocks that she had been practicing climbing on. She was not the most agile ThunderClan cat; Ferretpaw had short legs and heavy muscles. Her vision, being half blind in one eye, didn't help. Apprentices had much to do, and she didn't have much free time to accustom to her surroundings.

That was another thing! Her apprenticeship was dragging on because of the flood. She didn't mind all that much, but she longed to join the warrior's den as her peers had. She made a mental note to remind Pricklebush of her ceremony. She was finally off-duty for the day, so she decided to try and find him. When she found herself by the apprentice nests, Batpaw's distinctve black fur was buried in Ferretpaw's own comfortable spot. The tabby smiles to herself a little as the moss and leaves rustled under the black cat's paws. Ferretpaw, desperate for a break, decided to humor her a little while. "Batpaw," she called out cheerily, "how are these mountains treating you? Glad to have a break?"

Batpaw's intense focus on her current task was broken with two short sentences. She froze in place. She knew that voice. What was Ferretpaw doing here? ...Wait, was this Ferretpaw's nest? She hadn't been paying attention. Oh, StarClan, where were her brothers when she needed them to have some good excuses? Right. They were StarClan-knew-where, and she was here, left to explain herself to one of her fellow ThunderClan apprentices.

"Batpaw, how are these mountains treating you? Glad to have a break?"

"Hi, Ferretpaw," she said cheerfully, acting like nothing at all was out of the ordinary. "Oh, you know... It's big and boring. And the Tribe is different and interesting but they also seem to be busy all the time. So I'm just... Fixing the nests." Yeah, that made sense. It wouldn't be entirely strange for her to be doing something like that. "Not much else to do around here." Finally finishing her task, burying the little things in the moss, she moved onto repeating the motions with the nest next to it - this time without the little bugs. "What about you?" She was hesitant to bring up training, or how long both of them had been apprentices, so she didn't. "See anything interesting around here? Please. If you do, tell me. I need something to keep me from losing my mind. Look at me! I'm doing things," she said dramatically, gesturing to the nests with her tail. "When no one told me to!"

"Oooo, is this what the Clans do to make their nests more comfortable?"  From behind the two she-cats on the other side of the nest, Chirp's bubbly voice rang out a bit louder than probably necessary, as she delicately prodded the nest the black-pelted molly had just been inspecting.  With a purr, she lifted her brow a bit skeptically as she looked up, meeting the gaze of Batpaw; "I don't know why cave beetles would make it easier to sleep though...one time when I was a kit, I found a whole nest of those little guys!  Of course, I tried to play with them, letting them crawl on my paws and stuff...but then, they wouldn't come off!  It took my Mama forever to hunt all of them down and pick them off.  I wasn't in any pain but...ha, it did kind of tickle!"  Smiling, she stepped around the nest, still oblivious to possibly interrupting or causing any problems, and extended her forepaw in the Tribe's traditional greeting.  "I'm Chirp, a to-be!  Are you two to-be's too?"

Ferretpaw's eyes went wide with surprise. "B-beetles?" she guffawed. The short-statured apprentice tore through her nest and, lo and behold, her nest was crawling with winged critters! Ferretpaw wretched and kicked them desperately to the side. The shock and disgust did not last long, as she found it quite difficult to feel anger toward Batpaw at the best of times. Batpaw's pranks and jokes always made her laugh, but she never thought herself to be a target! Her wrinkled nose melted into a playful grin as she chucked a fat bug at her clanmate. "I ought to knock your ears off, birdbrain!" she cackled.

Turning to face Chirp, she felt foolish. How rude of me! Unsure of how to respond to the outstretched paw, she gingerly bopped her paw to the tribe cat's. "You just saved my fur, Chirp. I'm Ferretpaw. I guess you could say we're to-be's. You cats are so different than us, you could say you eat rocks and I'd probably believe you."

"Well, you weren't supposed to find out about it until I was gone!" Batpaw told her Clanmate, and tried to shake off the beetle Ferretpaw sent her way. "I would've left and then I'd pretend I was somewhere else the whole time!" Admittedly that was giving away more about her pranking methods than she probably should, but she didn't really care at the moment. When shaking failed to get the beetle off her fur, she decided to just be grateful that her fellow apprentice didn't seem all that upset by it instead of pushing her luck any further, and resigned herself to her fate for the foreseeable future. "Hey, look, I'm ready to be a warrior," she joked. "They can call me Beetlefur, and instead of hunting prey I'll hunt bugs!"

Then, turning her attention to Chirp, she thought she heard her say 'to-be'. While she still didn't really understand the Tribe cats' way of life, she thought she was starting to understand some things. "To-be? Those are... Cats that are still training, right? We're apprentices, and we're training to be warriors." From what she'd gathered, the Tribe didn't even have warriors. They had cats who either hunted or fought, like half-warriors, which didn't make much sense to her, but then she didn't live in the mountains. Ferretpaw's casual comment sparked something in her thoughts, though, and she knew she'd never be able to live with herself if she didn't ask the question she was thinking. "Wait, do you eat rocks?"

Against her best interest, Chirp felt herself begin to dissolve into giggles as the two Clan she-cats playfully fought, a beetle flying through the air and landing in the black-furred to-be's fur.  At the name Beetlefur though, the young molly could no longer hold back and burst out laughing.  "Ahahaha, your Tribe name could be Beetle that Crawls through Pelt!"  Grinning from ear to ear, Chirp was a bit surprised by Ferret Paw's reaction to her greeting but took it in stride, purring as their paws connected in a funny way.  Head tilting at their questions, the calico let out a mrrow of amusement; "No silly, we don't eat rocks.  We eat prey, just like you guys! Cool huh?  Though, sometimes prey-hunters will roll in mud to disguise their scent...but that's different. It sounds like apprentices and to-bes are alike to me, I'm training to be a prey-hunter, just like my mom and dad and grandma!  What do warriors do?  Do they hunt, or fight?  I thought I heard someone say they do both...that's super cool!  When Tribe cats are born, Stoneteller decides what role we'll be in when we grow up, it's tradition.  I love being a prey-hunter, it's fun!  What do you two like to do, as apprentices?"  Her tail waving excitedly, she leaned closer to the two cats, awaiting their responses.