LITERALLY, SET ME ON FIRE —— intro

[ThistleBack]

Jaws wrapped around a stick, bark crumbles and sheds on his tongue. Chewing was a habit, if he didn’t have anything between his jaws and he wasn’t chatting- they gnashed harshly. Nervous twitch? hardly, just a filthy little tick he picked up as a kit that followed him into his later moons. Having had to visit a vet for foreign materials in the tummy you’d think this a lesson learned from a rather intelligent man.

Intelligent just as easily as he was impulsive. Hence his tendencies for broken bones and ratty hair along the shoulders. Rough was a lifestyle lived for him, had wrapped lean muscle under his leathery skin- had nicked his paws and ears to their tatters.

Fleas didn’t even touch him, the smell of rubber and junkyard was him. He had found Skyclan in a time of need- grief was misplaced, wearing a collar with a shade so hideous but bleeding with meaning and the love he had lost. Rhinnon let's not go there- Thistleback didn’t know what to do with grief, so it revealed itself within his odd quirks. Misplaced.

A shadow looms over him as he perches on his hindlegs and bone-haloed belly - gnawing at the stick, metallic eyes lost to the beyond. " evening " he greets the first feline to come close. " fancy a taste of rat- I brought one from the rubbish… bit scrawny but- dead and edible nonetheless... " his harsh voice offers little in the way of his forced smile and twitch of his white-tipped tail toward the tossed-aside rat- which looked more like a bony scrap of brown fur. Face dimpled in a line of greeting he taught his muscles to obey.

" tastes just like squirrel-… rotten squirrel " the daylight warrior cackles lowly to himself with a shrug.

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[VIOLETNOSE]

A peculiar sound is what distracts her from sunbathing. It's grating, an assault to her sensitive ears like claws scraping against stone, and she wants it to stop. Now, she wouldn't typically approach a cat outside of her family without good reason... But this is a good reason, she thinks. With a huff, she rises to her paws and treads towards the noise, her nose wrinkling at the stench of... something, which is akin to the time she'd found a rotting magpie at the bottom of the fresh-kill pile.

Evening, a voice greets, closer than expected. She startles slightly, before relaxing her arched spine quickly after. It's a voice that she is not intimately familiar with, harsh and rasping. She thinks, only for a split second, is that what smells so awful? But the thought is brushed aside once the tom asks if she fancies a taste of rat. She completely misses the gesture towards the discarded rodent. "...Is that what the awful smell is? A rat?" She's heard of rats before, but she's never smelled one, let alone eaten one. And from the way that the tom describes it to her, she wishes to keep it that way. Rotten squirrel? Why would anyone want to eat a rat that tastes like rotten squirrels when they have perfectly good, not rotten squirrels? She blinks, brows furrowing. "...No," comes her blunt response, a smile that seems all too passive-aggressive curving her maw.​

 

[Daisyflight]

"SUREFIRE, YEAH, THE SETTING SUN WANTS COMPANY"​

A wrinkled granite snout made clear her distaste. Rat. A flavour of her past, the scrawny meat always hidden behind a layer of filthy fur. When needs must, she'd bite it down in a heartbeat. But the forest was full of prey- little morsels of joy packaged in a grass fresh fragrance.

At the slight ripple of an arched spine from her daughter, Violetkit, she saw it fit to approach the hunched, chalk-masked feline. Flanking her pewter offspring, the calico let a slit gaze evaluate the oil-scented corpse. Heading bobbing along with Violetkit's refusal, she spoke with poise. "I've eaten many rats in my days, can't say I miss them. I'm not sure if you'll have many takers, unfortunately. Calling their taste similar to a rotten squirrel is a little unfair though." They weren't that bad.

Despite her mildly disgusted endorsement, Daisy Flight gave her daughter a blink of reassurance- 'Don't worry, you don't have to eat it,' she seemed to wordlessly communicate.​

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[TWITCHBOLT]

Could curiosity kill? It certainly smelled like it. As far as he was concerned someone might have died, and he wasn't leaving the nursery to find out.

Well, that was the plan until a chocolate gloved paw prodded him, his mother's fae features decorated with a perfectly pure smile as her honeyed voice asked him to go and grab them a meal. With not a growl of discontent and simply a hum of neutral compliance, Twitchkit pulled himself to his paws and exited the nursery into the daylight, peering around for anything freshly-caught. It only occurred to him that yet again he was the errand boy until he got halfway to the pile.

Conversation nearby snagged his childish attention span, and for a brief moment his purpose for being out here in the first place was cast aside, completely forgotten. Interest was soon replaced by horror, however, as Daisyflight murmured a terrible truth- that she had eaten rats in her time, and so had the domino tom sat with the horrible dead scrap in front of him too! "What!?" he exclaimed, voice shaky with the buildup of panic. "If- won't they make you sick, if they came from the- the rubbish? What if you get sick and- and- die or something, then what?"

Mismatched legs trembled, and the young tom tried to ground himself by collapsing into a seat.​

penned by pin ✧​

 

[BLAZESTAR]

// ninja'd LOL quick edit soz

Blazestar is inclined to say Thistleback is one of their stranger cats, but he has to admit that, truthfully, all of their part-time warriors are odd in ways the non-kittypets in their ranks cannot seem to relate to. Churrodream and her lapses in speech, Harpyfall with his bizarre accent, Pantherpelt and her... everything, and then there's Thistleback. His striped pelt is scented with the bitter harshness of a Thunderpath, and he revels in making others squirm with discomfort.

But the flame point doesn't mind it. Every cat here comes from a diverse background, and he thinks it's one of the things that makes SkyClan unique... even if it's a little much for him sometimes.

Thistleback offers Violetkit a rat, and she scrunches up her face and sharply declines. Blazestar has to hide a smile behind a golden paw. Daisyflight herself comes to join them, stating she's had her share of rats while living on the streets.

Rats. Blazestar's never tasted one, but from the scent -- he's not sure he wants to. Twitchkit, in his opinion, has the right idea -- the jittery little tomkit exclaims that rats can make you sick. He tilts his head. "Is that true?" Are they really so different from mice? They look the same, but he can't deny the scent is darker, danker, somehow more vicious. "I didn't even know cats could eat rats..." He trails off, narrowing his eyes.

A pampered, spoiled thing to say, but an honest one.
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PENNED BY MARQUETTE​

 

[Snowpath]

It would not have been polite to ask why you would eat something so appalling. He remembered Twitchkit describing what an apple tasted like and wondered if this might be what it smelled like as he reflected, nose wrinkling more intensely with each step. Snowkit doesn't know what a rat is, but there's an alarming clarity that strikes him as he examines it from behind the hindleg of his mother; pose resolute and with a look that was not threatening but certainly not as friendly as normal as he squints at the lumpen and horrid brown shape of what was assumedly meant to be eaten. With so much nice and round prey available, why would you sink your teeth into something like this. He wanted to wretch at the thought of it but he would not want to hurt that strange monochrome feline's feelings with his gagging so he held it in. Maybe THEY personally liked the taste, cats could have different preferences and such apparently. Shifting from behind Daisyflight to stand alongside Violetkit, he offered his tail in a neat little curl around hers if she needed any assistance.
Twitchkit's approach and Blazestar's comment had him even more relieved no one had taken a nibble of the offering.
Did most prey not fight back? He wondered if that meant birds were truly as stupid as his mother has explained them being; bird-brained now made a lot more sense.
"What if you wash it? Swish it in a puddle? Would that make it safe?" He was mostly trying to be sympathetic to the cat with the terrible taste than genuinely wanting a solution to eating the rats. That'd be a hard pass from him.


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[ThistleBack]

A light wheeze and a twitching black nose, Thistleback tastes the air and finds nothing. Nose blinded by his moonlights in the twolegplace, the only thing resembling stench was the floral gusts that infiltrated his senses like pepper- initiating a sneeze. " the air is sweet- … your nose is broken " he purrs in response, without proper argument with a child.

The kid in question, wearing a smile " choosy eh. " his grey hues creep back to the kid’s face in time to absorb the fact that she was sightless. " your palate will change " his eyes flick toward the approach of another. The deputy- and if eyesight proved dependable for himself, mum to the little vermin.

" mh- well, more for me then " he hums, considering the possibility of his own broken taste-buds. Another child comes, woes screeched into the air piercing his ears and driving nails into his skull. Thistleback flinched and the stick rolled down his forelimbs in his jolt. nose , eyes, and now ears- so much loss in such a small area

" OI- kid watch it yeah, I’m from the rubbish!… it’s only starved- you’d be to where it came from " Thistleback speaks as though insulted, looking to the rat and considering himself similar. The pale red-tinted leader appears- never having tasted a rat. Even tossing it into question- " anything is potentially food… if I can chew it- i’ll eat it " Thistleback chuckles to himself. The vet had once extracted a rubber mouse toy from his stomach- yes, a whole rubber mouse. " whether it stays down? entirely up to your gut " he adds simply.

" see? this kid’s got the will… where there is a will- there’s a way!… or indigestion- however that saying goes heh heh " he cackles with a gesture toward Snowkit as he offers suggestion, snatching his stick back up. " creatures who- come from the city… are built different than the forest " he speaks with a serious note yet casual shift of shoulders.

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