Echoes Off The Wall - Warriors.

Chapter Eight

Half a moon later, and Skypaw was still being regularly reprimanded and scolded for "injuring" Wolfpaw, even though he hadn't hurt the apprentice at all - the only thing that he had done was pin him to the ground. Wolfpaw and most of his other littermates ignored him or tried to avoid him - well, all except Bearpaw, anyway, and Icepaw bugged him a lot as well.

Bearpaw would often tease him or threaten to hurt him if he ever laid a paw on any of his siblings again. "Don't worry, I'm not planning on hurting them again. I'm still being scolded. Have you ever been scolded?" Bearpaw was caught off-guard by this question, because it basically just popped up out of nowhere. It was like Skypaw was opening up a whole new topic in this ... er, conversation, if that's what you'd like to call it instead of an argument.

Bearpaw blinked. "Why, yes, I have been scolded, actually. I get scolded a lot, too. By Cherryflower, Loststar, Firehawk, even some of the regular Warri - hey, why are you asking me this anyway? What's it to ya?" Bearpaw questioned, unsheathing his claws and sinking them into the dirt. Skypaw shrugged his shoulders, unsheathing his claws as well. He could somehow sense an unwanted presence somewhere in MapleClan territory ... and he didn't know what it was, but, it was there, and he was sure of it.

"I'm not sure why I even bothered asking that," Skypaw responded, slightly amused. "I was just wondering, I suppose." Bearpaw blinked at him some more, and took a step back.

"You've been acting real different for awhile now, Skypaw," Bearpaw pointed out the obvious. "Why is that? Usually you're so weak and cowardly, you'd run whenever someone provokes you. Now you just stay and fight ... or you, er, annoy them until they give up." Skypaw almost laughed out loud at the last part, though he didn't want to look crazy in front of the whole Clan.

"I'm not sure what's gotten into me, to be honest, Bearpaw," he responded with as casual a tone as possible. Of course, he knew why he had been acting different lately. It was because 0f how regularly he's been visiting the Dark Forest and training. As a matter of fact, he visits the Dark Forest almost every night now, and he isn't so dumbstruck now whenever Honeypaw says something in there that has to do with going against the Warrior Code, StarClan, or MapleClan itself. As a matter of fact, now that he thought about it, he was actually used to her saying things like that, and he almost agreed with her now -almost, but not quite.

And now, he has actually become rather close friends with Ivymist and Fogsecret, but mostly just Ivymist, considering that Fogsecret couldn't talk. Well, either he couldn't, or he wouldn't, and Skypaw wasn't sure which one it was. Bearpaw looked at him weirdly once more, and he was about to respond, when all of a sudden a different voice rose up from the entrance of the camp. "There's a battle happening at the border! Hurry! Warriors and apprentices alike, follow me to the CloudClan border!" the voice belonged to Loststar, and as soon as Bearpaw heard those very words, he raced out of camp, the conversation he had been having with Skypaw forgotten.

Skypaw rushed to go join the fighting Warriors and Apprentices, but all of a sudden, Toadleap appeared behind him. "Oh, no you don't!" he said as he grabbed onto Skypaw's tail, putting him into a halt. For an elderly cat, Toadleap was strong. "You're staying here with me so that you can help to heal the injured cats when they get back!" he ordered. Skypaw hissed sulkily, following the older cat into the Medicine Cat's den.

"Spread out these herbs, Skypaw," Toadleap ordered, pulling a few freshly - picked herbs from the storage that they had in the back of the Medicine Cat's den. Skypaw crankily obeyed, picking up a few of those herbs and spreading them out carefully in front of him. Toadleap turned around to see Skypaw's progress, and he nodded approvingly whenever he saw that the apprentice was doing it correctly. "Good," he meowed.

'Don't listen to the old fool,' a voice whispered in Skypaw's ear. Skypaw immediately knew that it belonged to Swiftstar. 'Hurry, this is your chance to prove yourself. Once his back is turned ... run. Fight like a Warrior, like you should rightfully be.'Skypaw nodded contently, then spread out some more of the herbs, watching Toadleap through the corner of his eyes until he noticed that Toadleap's back was turned.