There was a stunned silence that fell thickly over the watching crowd. No one shed any tears; Ember had not been the most well-liked of all of the kings that the kingdom had had. Although, there was an extreme sense of sadness in the air. The cats knew that they had been defeated and that they were now at the mercy of Slate and his ruthless guards.
Jade looked horribly insane; grinning crazily, standing over the body of a dead king, splattered with scarlet droplets of blood, eyes sparkling with a bloody craze. The enemy cats were unarmed, their weapons in a heap guarded by Sparrow, Cinder and Ash. Ginger and Fleck held them at gunpoint, and they were soon joined by Jade. Ember’s cats knew that the three wouldn’t hesitate to shoot, especially as after they had seen what Jade had done. The followed but in a kind o daze. Fleck could tell that they though for sure that this was the last day of their lives.
“Move along,” Fleck growled, prodding a few in the bock with the nozzle of her weapon. “Hurry up, now.”
When only a few of them responded, Jade snarled loudly, “Yeah, we don’t have all day! Or do you want to act like your trigger-happy friend over there?” Jade gestured bluntly towards the rise upon which Ember still lay.
The cats hurried up, casting nervous glances over their shoulders at Jade, who never failed to grin back at them with her bloodstained teeth.
When they had all reached Slate’s empire (which happened far more quickly then Fleck had thought was possible, thanks to Jade), they went directly to the Commoners grounds. Then they got all of the Commoners to go into their homes or to pile into the street’s shops so that they wouldn’t get in the way. Ginger advised them to steer clear of the windows with a devilish grin directed towards their trembling prisoners.
Fleck leapt up onto the hollow ash tree where Slate always made his announcements. She looked down upon the prisoners--who Ginger, Jade, Sparrow, Cinder and Ash were still holding at gunpoint.
“Now, I want all of you to listen up,” Fleck shouted in a clear, ringing voice laden with threatening menace. “You make any wrong moves or say any wrong things, and we guards’ll blast you ungrateful little head off. I’m going to pick out some of you to become guards, some of you to become Commoners, and the rest of you to be killed.” Fleck narrowed her eyes and smiled darkly at the cats below her.
“Wait, why would you want to kill us?” One of the cats spoke up, sounding extremely frightened.
“Well, if I decide that you are to disloyal and rebellious, then I’ll have Ginger or Jade shoot you,” Fleck replied with an evil grin.
“Yeah! Awesome!” the two she-cats cried happily, pumping their fists and arguing about who would get to do it first. Even now the thought of he two best friends being so happy to kill made her feel uneasy.
Fleck gestured towards Ginger and Jade. “You see? Face it, kids. You’re lives are in our paws, now. Which means that your chances of seeing the next sunrise are getting pretty slim.”
She had done what she had been hoping to do. She had scared the daylights out of the prisoners. Then she continued to talk. “You cooperate and your chances of living grow by a degree. You should just give up any hope of escaping and rioting or rebelling now, else I’ll make sure every single one of you involved pays the price. You could coexist with us in peace, if you’d like. Who knows, we could even become friends--”
“That’s not very likely,” one of the members of the crowd, a black tomcat, shouted up. “Friends? With scum like you? I’d rather die.”
“Then you get you’re wish,” Fleck said simply. “Ginger, will you do the honers?”
“Is that a question?” Ginger asked sarcastically with a dark laugh. She took careless aim at the rebel with a practiced air and a lazy look and he was dead before he even knew it.
“Aw, come on,” Jade whined. “How come Ginger got to kill him?”
Ginger playfully stuck her tongue out at her friend. “Because you got to kill the king. It was my turn fair and square.”
As Jade continued to pout, Fleck resumed speaking. “If you rebel in any way, even just mentally, you will end up like him.” Fleck gestured to the fallen cat. “Have I made myself clear?”
There was a generally unsatisfied grumbling of agreement from the cats below.
“All right, then,” Fleck said happily, rubbing her two front paws together. “Let the judging begin!”
And so they did. In the end it turned out that two other cats followed the black tabby, four toms and three she-cats joined the guards and the rest of them were deemed Commoners.
“Sparrow, I want you to tell Slate every detail of the battle, including Jade being the reason why we won and you and the twins taking away the prisoner’s weapons and all of that jazz.” Then Fleck turned to the Commoners. “You all go out and hunt. A third of you to the forest and the other third to our new territory. Cinder, you guard the ones in the forest and Ash, you guard the ones going into the new territories. The other third will take care of those guns that are all piled up by the lake and take them to the underground store. Ginger and Jade, you guard them. Make sure that they’re all old Commoners. Meanwhile, I’ll take our new possibilities of guards and see if their worthy of becoming guards.”
Everyone quickly dispersed, following Fleck’s orders to the word. Then she turned to the seven cats that stood before her and said to them bluntly, “First of all, I’ll need you to tell me your names.”
A stout black tom with earnest brown eyes stepped up first and said timidly, “My name is Coal.”
“Nice,” Fleck intoned, although she didn’t entirely mean it. “Next.”
“I’m Lark,” snapped a moody, disrespectful golden tabby she-cat with fierce green eyes that reminded Fleck of Jade’s.
“I go by the name of FireClaw, if you must know” said a dappled orange tomcat with such dark brown eyes that they were on the verge of being black. He said this as if he were in a daze. “And for whatever reason I seem to vaguely recognize you from something... I just can’t put my paw on what...”
“I don’t remember you,” Fleck spat impolitely. “But then again, you don’t have a very remarkable face, now do you?”
After an awkward pause, another cat spoke up. He was a brown mackerel tabby cat with one orange eye and one golden. “My name is Thistle,” he said simply with a small nod of his head.
“I am named Blizzard,” a large and well-muscled white tomcat with steely blue eyes pronounced, puffing out his well-groomed chest.
“I am called Storm,” said a light gray tabby she-cat with lighter paws and a white muzzle and mesmerizing gray eyes.
“And my name is Cherry,” the last cat, an orange-black-and-white calico she-cat with burnt-orange eyes said, a snooty look on her dainty little triangular face.
“Well, then, why don’t we begin training now that I know all of your names, we can do some training,” Fleck began importantly. “Oh, and by the way, my name is Fleck. What we will start with is you each fighting each other. Whoever ends up winning will be personally trained by me. Whoever loses the worst may be unable to become a guard. Storm, you’ll fight Cherry and whoever wins that will fight Lark. Thistle will fight Coal and FireClaw will fight Blizzard. Then the victors of each of those fights will battle, and the winner of that fights the female winner.”
It ended up that Storm won against Cherry and Lark. Thistle won in his fight with Coal and Blizzard won against FireClaw. Then Thistle won against Blizzard. Storm won the final round.
“Okay, then,” Fleck said. “I’ve figured it out and I will teach Thistle and Storm, Ginger will train Lark and Cherry, Jade’ll be FireClaw and Blizzard’s mentor and Coal, you get Sparrow. I decided to keep you, FireClaw, even though you definitely got off the worst. Now first you’ll lear the basics, like hand-to-hand fighting and hunting and using daggers and swards and things like that. Then you’ll go on t--”
“Quiet!” Slate shouted as he dragged his waitress, Lyla, out of the hallow tree, a befuddled sparrow on his heels. “I have a cat here that I need one of you guards to execute!”
“What?” Fleck asked, pretending to be shocked. “Why?”
“I tell you it wasn’t me!” Lyla screamed desperately, eyes wide with fear. “How many times do I have to say it... I was framed!”
“Ha!” Slate scoffed, enraged. “You knew that they were going to be there, but how?” Before she could answer he continued. “And you also knew that my guards were going to be ambushed by Ember and his army, but you decided to leave that particular bit out, didn’t you?”
“I didn’t know!” Lyla shouted. “Just ask her!” She pointed angrily at Fleck with a scowl. “She’s the one who told me about Ember and his cats going over there! It’s true! She’s the traitor! She’s the one you want!”
“Oh, is she?” Slate questioned threateningly. But it was more directed at Fleck then it was at Lyla.
“I--No!” Fleck said in her defense, eyes darting fearfully. “How could I have gotten that kind of information?”
“Well, how could Lyla have?” Slate asked menacingly. “By being a spy. It all makes sense now. You told Lyla the false information while you were guarding me during that one breakfast a while ago and she relayed it back to me a moment later. I knew that I had a spy among my guards.”
It was right then that Ginger and Jade arrived, both carrying weighty armloads of weaponry. “What’s going on?” Ginger asked the moment she set eyes upon the cats in the training grounds.
“Fleck here is a traitor!” Slate spat, gesturing towards her. “She was the one that planned the ambush!”
“That’s a lie!” Ginger snarled, immediately leaping to Fleck’s defense.
“Yeah, she was the one who gave me the orders to kill Ember!” Jade hissed, ears back. “You’ve got it all backwards. She wouldn’t ever be able to end the war in her enemy’s favor!”
“I sentence her to death!” Slate shouted, completely ignoring Ginger and Jade.
“And I won’t go down without a fight,” Fleck snarled.
She snatched up her gun and Slate readied his and they prepared for battle. “Then let us fight,” Slate sneered. “To the death!”
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-KittyLover8
© 2013
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