[There's a big black sky over my town] GingerxRain

[glowlynose]

Gingerstar was acting very strangely. Rain wasn't sure if he liked it or not. The way he saw it, since she hated him, she shouldn't want to be physically close to him, and yet here she was invading his personal bubble! She seemed to be enjoying it too. This was not okay. The look in her eyes was sending an army of ants down his spine; the intensity unnerved him, and he bet she could see it too. Great. Just great. A cowboy wasn't supposed to back down from anything, and here he was ready to shy away from a she-cat just because she got a little closer than normal.

So what did he do? He got closer.

Yeah, that should work! He smirked and stared right back at her regal, uppity face. It was a small triumph, but a triumph nonetheless. He smirked and he stared and he felt very accomplished. It almost reminded him of the very first argument he and Analucia had gotten into. No! No, Rain, don't think about her anymore. She's gone. She might as well be dead. Stop dwelling on things that once were and live now. A very peculiar thing happened just then. He noticed that Gingerstar had a spattering of little tiny orange dots across her muzzle, almost like somebody had shaken a bottle of cinnamon at her face and it had stained the pristine white of her muzzle. Gingerstar had freckles!

"Hey Spice, y'know you got some freckles on that face of yours?" He grinned, stepping back a bit so he could see her entire face now. He wanted to see her reaction to this! "Hey, maybe I should just call you Freckles now! Whaddya say, Illustrious Leader? Will it be Spice or Freckles?" Rain twirled around once, chuckling to himself. "Or should I even give ya a choice?" He was clearly enjoying himself.

"And as for the one more time, it all depends on what you wanna do." Rain knew that she would probably insist on another fight, and would not give up until he'd surrendered completely this time. His little tirade was likely to bring upon her anger, or at the very least make her annoyed. She had so many buttons that it wasn't difficult to find one to push.

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[Whiskers]

He got closer and Gingerstar almost...almost flinched. If Rain's eyes had been trained on her paws, he would see the tremor there, would watch as her claws seized the dirt in a spastic, desperate way, once again depending on the soil for her anchor. But this instant of weakness was not allowed past her trembling claws, and her eyes were hard, absorbing all of Rain's attention. She would win this game that they were playing. It was just a matter of control-- she had plenty of that-- and stubbornness. Who could be the more hardheaded of the two? Ask anyone in this forest and they'd all point to her, seconds flat.

But Gingerstar knew that she wasn't really prepared for his type exactly, which was proven when he went all...sparkly. He grinned and giggled and twirled and called her-- Freckles! And pointed at her freckles! She had freckles? No she didn't! Well, maybe she did, Gingerstar wasn't vain enough to stare deep into a stream and concentrate on the minute details of her face. She still felt suddenly very violated because of this, like he was making fun of the way she looked. Freckles, after all, weren't leaderly features. They were cutesy, they were for those she-cats who fawned over toms like him, who gossiped and giggled and had litter after litter. She was anything but one of those she-cats, and yet he had the nerve to...! In a twisted way, she felt like she was being called cute.

She didn't like being called cute. It was....derogatory. It was...patronizing. It was disrespectful to her status as leader of Pineclan. It was humiliating.

She blushed furiously, her fur prickling, her whiskers vibrating (her freckles, no doubt, twitching) and her anger filled her eyes with red.

She flew at him. Even in a rage, though, Gingerstar was all about precision. Her move wasn't blind. She knew where to hit cats and so the force of her attack was aimed at his neck, so he would topple over, gasping, choking, flailing, and she could easily smash his stupid loner face into the stupid ground.

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[glowlynose]

Rain really should have known better than to make Gingerstar angry. He really should have. Unfortunately, his better judgment had lapsed (really, it had just completely phased out) and he'd been stupid enough to tease the testy she-cat. He now realized what a stupid idea that had been. Maybe he'd keep it in mind next time.

As things stood right now, he was absolutely terrified out of his wits. Gingerstar was flying at him in a rage, and it looked like she was going to smash into his neck or his side or his head. In any case, it would hurt. It was not going to be pleasant. He could practically feel the jerks of pain as her paws connected with his vertebrae.

And now his face was in the ground. Again. He'd been thrown completely off his paws and was laying pretty much on his side with his neck twisted and his face mostly buried in dirt. Rain, or should I say Rainpaw was not happy. No, sir, he was not happy at all. He tried to move his neck so that he could get up, but Gingerstar's paws were crushing his windpipe, making it very difficult to breathe, much less move. The next time he tried, all that happened was that his neck popped. Yay.

"Thanks, Freckles, guess I needed my neck ta be popped," he wheezed, trying to choke out a laugh and desperately failing. "You uh... you wanna get off of my neck now? Please? Breathing is, y'know, nice. Good move, by the way."

Rain kept struggling to get out from Gingerstar's grasp, though it was in vain. Eventually he just gave up and lay flat and still. His breathing was shallow, barely providing enough air for him to remain conscious. He'd just have to wait on Gingerstar's mercy now. Training was probably going to end up like this a lot, he realized.

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[Whiskers]

For a blissful moment, it was nothing but energy. Air, then claws, then fur, the heat of battle, the coursing of blood, the pounding of bodies. Gingerstar slammed into Rain and she smashed him sideways into the ground. She held him there, her front paws pinning his head and neck, her back paws digging into his flank...just in case he tried to wiggle free, just in case he tried to say something so insulting to her again. Her chest rose rapidly up and down as her lungs tried to take in as much air possible, to make up for the burst of power Gingerstar had just exerted. It wasn't long until her breath returned though, and with it, so too did her wits flit back as well. In fact, that wonderful, pulsing moment of claws and bodies and bliss was pretty much gone. The exhilaration was spent. It had been much too easy this time, to brutally and efficiently pin Rain down, but that's because she had rage hurtling her toward him.

No one calls her Freckles. Ever

The red rage cleared from her eyes and she blinked down, properly, at the writhing figure of Rain. She could feel his rapid heartbeat through his throat, pulsating against her paw. That was interesting. She had never stopped to really feel something like that before, but there it was, beating frantically, begging her to release Rain as much as Rain himself was begging her to. She was really tempted to just sit on his face actually, when he called her Freckles again (she'd do it, just watch) but she knew that was irrational-- his face wouldn't be comfortable, after all.

Actually, she needed to get back to her Pineclan and make sure it hadn't fallen apart under the paws of Aspenheart. IT was the first time all day that Pineclan surfaced in her brain. She had been out here...an hour. Two hours. She tried to calculate it, even looked to the sun for a time, but she couldn't really make sense of it. Basically, she'd been out here too long. It was time to return back to the real world.

Gingerstar leaned down onto her haunches, increasing some pressure on his neck slightly. She leaned until her mouth was right by Rain's ear, before letting her message slide out of her mouth, a quiet, deadly hiss.

"My name is Gingerstar. I am the leader of Pineclan and all my moves are good ones."

She got up then, eyes still angry, and trotted away from the loner, too irked to train him anymore. She had better things to do. She did, however, pause at some bushes and turn back, hissing one final thing before slipping away.

"Don't return to camp until you've caught something. It's time to pull your weight, Rainpaw."

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