Prepare yourselves, readers, for you have no idea what you're about to read. -nods wisely-

"Idiot! Unbelievable moron!" Thistleclaw's unsheathed claws clicked loudly on the cold stone boulders outside of the ThunderClan as he paced, his mind burning with anger. "Stupid she-cat! What's she playing at, not making me deputy? No cat deserves to be deputy more than I do!" He raked his claws down a swath of moss, feeling a prickle of satisfaction when the green plant ripped easily under his blow.

"Redtail," he spat. "Why would anyone pick that little runt for their deputy? He's only been a warrior for four moons, for StarClan's sake! He's still training his first apprentice!" Thistleclaw growled, baring his teeth at no one. "I trained Tigerclaw to be a great warrior! Why shouldn't I be the next one?"

Thistleclaw narrowed his eyes in fury as he remembered the past few moments—how that lame-brain Bluestar had picked her first deputy.

"I have gone to the Moonpool and received my nine lives as leader!" Bluefur—now Bluestar, he corrected himself grudgingly—stood atop the Highrock, her blue eyes fierce as she stared down the Clan.

A chorus of proud yowls went up around the clearing. Thistleclaw didn't join in.

"I have thought about this matter on the way back from the Moonstone, and have decided to make Redtail my deputy." She nodded to the tortoiseshell tom, who was sitting in the shadow of the Highrock. His face was a blank mask of shock.

Thistleclaw was on his paws in an instant, his lip curled, revealing his sharp fangs. "What?" he demanded, his claws curled into the soft ground. "He's barely a warrior! He just got his first apprentice a moon ago!"

Fuzzypelt, an elder just moved into the den, got to his paws and glared at him, his pale eyes narrowed. "Watch your mouth, Thistleclaw," he growled.

"Why should he?" Adderfang shot back, his claws unsheathed. "He can speak his mind! Bluestar." He turned to address the new Clan leader. "Are you sure you've thought this through enough? Redtail has earned his warrior name, true enough, but do you really think he's ready to lead?"

Bluestar's eyes sparked. "Why don't you ask him yourself?" she said calmly, flicking her tail towards where Redtail sat, his green eyes passive.

Adderfang's fur bristled along his spine. Thistleclaw watched his old mentor back down with a sense of disappointment. "I apologize, Redtail," the old tom mewed.

Redtail nodded slowly, showing no anger towards Adderfang.

Weakling, Thistleclaw snarled internally. "Why do you think you'll be such a great leader, huh? Surely there are more well-trained,"—he drew the word out—"warriors to choose from."

"Like you?" someone muttered in the back, but when Thistleclaw turned to snarl at them, the cat had receeded.

Bluestar's eyes were carefully guarded. "I think I've made the best choice for the Clan," she answered slowly, her eyes darkening.

Furious, Thistleclaw took a step forward. "What makes him qualified to be leader?" he demanded Bluestar. "I've trained the best warrior in the Clan!" He lashed his tail towards Tigerclaw, who sat half in and half out of the shadow of the warriors' den. The dark tabby pulled back obliquely when his mentor gestured to him, lowering his head humbly.

Thistleclaw's jaws dropped. You too, Tigerclaw? he thought darkly. "Does everyone agree with this? This decision?"

No cat spoke up. An uncomfortable silence fell over those watching, and Thistleclaw knew he had no choice now but to back down.

But he wasn't going to do it willingly.

"Fine!" Thistleclaw snapped. "Fine, pick him. See if I care. Don't expect me to go along with any of his decisions."

"You're out of line, Thistleclaw," Bluestar warned.

"Out of line?!" he shrieked. "I'm out of line? I should have been the deputy before you, you foul excuse for a leader!"

Redtail stepped forward, his eyes narrowed. "Cut it out, Thistleclaw. You need to calm down."

"I'm perfectly calm!" Thistleclaw hissed, not wanting to spend a moment more in the presence of this runt—the runt that Bluestar picked just so she couldn't pick him. We'll see who comes out on top, won't we? Spinning around, he stalked across the clearing, ignoring the scorching glares of his Clanmates.

Rosetail shook her head sadly as he walked out. "Please, Thistleclaw," she whispered.

"Why should I do anything to help them out?" he spit out, not looking at his sister. "I should be the deputy." He hated how whiny he sounded, like he was some bratty kit begging to be an apprentice.

"Just give it a chance!" the red-tailed queen pleaded. "Please."

Twisting his head away sharply from her, he stomped out of the clearing and up the ravine.

Pulling himself back to the present, Thistleclaw seethed silently, cursing himself for allowing his control to slip in front of the Clan. "You need to be more careful," he ordered himself quietly, turning away to clear his head with the clean, fresh scents of the green-leaf breeze. "You have to keep your head—you can't be blowing up like that."

As he clambered out of the rocky ravine, Thornclaw decided his name is Thistleclaw, and thereby, couldn't exist with himself. So, upon this discovery, he wailed, "Noooo! I've been living a liiiiie!!"

Rushing through ThunderClan territory, Thistle/Thornclaw came upon a rogue, named Killer Ape!! "What the heck are you doing here, man?" Killer Ape demanded, his fur on edge and his teeth glittering like a thousand sun-lit daggers and his face twisted in a scornful mask of pure and unadulterated hate.

"I'm going to find myself," Thistleclaw shrieked, doing a back flip out of pure anger and rushing at Killer Ape with anger and rage and sorrow and hatred and amazement and anger and sorrow and ripped his fur into two pieces, wearing one on his head as a trophy of his amazing talents. "Ha ha ha hahaha," Thistleclaw yelped happily, and then he died.

Suddenly, quite out of nowhere, Chrono showed up in his rad-awesome demon form. "Oh, so you're dead, huh?" he intoned mysteriously. "I guess that means I can turn you into a hat!"

"NOOOOOOO!!!!" Revived from the dead in an amazing show of spectacular magnificence, Thistleclaw leapt to his paws, screaming, "I'M A HAT TO NO ONE!!!!!"

Chrono smirked evilly. "You will be my hat, my pretty, and your little apprentice, too!!"

Thistleclaw sat down abruptly. "I don't have one," he informed him smartly, adjusting his glasses with one paw and rapping his blackboard. "You see, my apprentice is now a warrior—Tigerclaw. Soon to become the most EBUL cat in the forest and the enemy to all of Firestar's kin." He nodded.

Chrono pulled out his TI89 and calculated the chances of Firestar ever becoming something better than a Mary Sue. "Man!" he exclaimed. "Even my advanced technological advances can't help me solve that problem." With a pointed glance to the audience (Audience? WTF?), he announced, "Firestar is SUCKISH."

Fangirls all around the world—or at least, reading this extremely long AN—gasped. "Why do you hate perfection?" they sobbed raggedly. "What about Bella and Edward? Aren't they perfectly amazing and sparkly? Do you hate them?"

"They, quite simply enough, SUCK," Thistleclaw railed, snapping his hugely amazingly vast jaws at the fangirls.

"Wait," Chrono interrupted, his face drawn seriously. "How could we have missed such a crucial error?!"

Thistleclaw looked up in shock and surprise. "What?"

Chrono fell to his knees, gripping the sides of his head as he yelled, "No one's made any "aaws" at me in the past paragraphs! If no one says how cute I am...then who am I!?"

Thistleclaw got to his paws, whipping out his trusty fire poker from nowhere and jabbing it at Chrono. "Go back to your own universe, you cat-hat-wearing creeper."

Chrono—still in his rad-awesome demon form, mind you—whipped his bone tail...thing at Thistleclaw, knocking the gray-and-white/dark tabby off his paws. "Watch yourself, kitteh!" he snapped dangerously, his red eyes narrowed dangerously, and his bone tail whipping dangerously. "Or the Erins' will swap your gender, too! You'll end up like that ShadowClan cat that no one gives a crap about."

"You mean Rowanclaw?" a random fangirl piped up.

"Yes," Thistleclaw sneered, curling his lip. "No one cares about him. Just like Willowclaw, Pouncetail, and Whitewater."

"Who are they?" another fangirl asked.

"No one," Chrono answered bluntly, closing his ruby-red-blood-red eyes. "No one loves them. Not even their non-existent mothers and fathers. They were like, the unwanted ratty kits."

Thistleclaw raised a tissue to his eyes, wiping away the tears that so many fic authors like to pretend cats can create. "That...that's so sad."

"Yeah, well, you die in the series," Chrono laughed darkly, flaring his sharp pointy wings poignantly. "And so will all of them will they fail to gain the fans' adoration."

"Well...that's it. Go on, and review." Thistleclaw's voice was snide and amazing and lame. "Shadow must be feeling not-so-right in the head to write this crap."

"Fwirl, too, don't forget," Chrono put in. "She's the one that brought me into this." He stared pointedly in the direction of wherever the heck Fwirl is/was at the moment.

"And to think, all this started when Shadow put 'Thornclaw' instead of 'Thistleclaw,'" Thistleclaw noted. "And sure, Fwirl's craziness only accentuates Shadow's."

Then from on hiiiiiigh, somewhere iiiiin the distaaaaance, there's a light that calls, "Shut the heck up you loser characters and don't ruin my amazingness~!" Shadow—referencing herself—now said, "Thank you, Bryan Adams!" :D

Cringing away from the anger of the tired and sugar-high authoress, the two characters and the random mob of unexplainable fangirls pulled out their invisibility cloaks and made themselves scarce.

So, writing things with friends are a lot more fun than by yourself. Fwirl and I have come up with a much better ending to this fic, doncha think? Please excuse my randomness and possible insanity, and remember that it's 1:49 here, and Fwirl and I have been eating 1000 Grand bars.

So, basically, I made a typo, and we started to crazily make up these random things out of the depths of something that was going to be truly depressing. So, go and read Fwirl's Judgement, too, so you can see the full scope of our craziness.

I'mma post the real one later, so be on the lookout for the real Malice. :P So, flame if you want. I just wrote this for kicks. ;)

Shadow