It was Speedypaw’s— correction: Speedyraptor’s; thank you, ladies, please form an orderly line to the left — first night as a fully fledged Royal Guard member, and he was thriving. He was on top of the world. The world was quite literally his oyster, if the world were a dimly lit cave in a just as dimly lit forest ruled by a tom with a severe Napoleon complex and a she-cat he wouldn’t mind being stepped on by, and he was at a loss as to how he’d achieved this good fortune.

Well, not really — he’d earned this. If you took away the fact that there were dozens of competent, intelligent, vicious, resourceful apprentices in the Clan, and it was really just luck of the draw that he’d been promoted to warrior sooner than any of the others, because he happened to have already just started his apprenticeship before the ascension so he was in this precarious position of being either NightClan’s first shining pupil or a danger just old enough to be rooted in the old ways, and so of course he’d had to work twice as hard to prove himself and separate himself from the other, younger apprentices who didn’t have that pressure because this was all they’d ever known — and if you took away the fact that he was deeply insecure and riddled with imposter syndrome because it was ridiculous that he he had been chosen, when he wasn’t the strongest nor the fastest nor the most quick-witted, and surely any second they were going to realise their terrible mistake and pad across the cavern to say, accusingly but with such fake, fawning humility, ‘I’m sorry, Speedyraptor, but we must have said the wrong name — and, speaking of, we’ll be needing yours back’, and the title would instead go to Bumblebeepaw or Oleanderpaw or anyone but him…

But if you took all that away, then he’d utterly earned it.

And what he lacked in pure talent, he more than made up for in pure zealotry — always the loudest at trials, always the most enthusiastic and bloodthirsty, even when he really had no quarrel with any one of them and had to tell himself they’re enemies of NightClan; they’re enemies of us. And he didn’t have a problem believing any of it, because he did believe it — fully, truly, unapologetically. Even if sometimes he was kept up at night by confusing feelings that anyone else would have identified as guilt.

But that’s irrelevant. On this — this great night; his first night as a Royal Guard — he was thriving. He was rearing to go. He was ready. He just didn’t know where to go. He just didn’t know—

“Hey!” he snapped to a passing Inferior. “You!” They stopped and looked at him warily. “Yeah, you. My bedding needs changing.” He said ‘bedding’ with a wry, triumphant sort of smile and an upward tilt of his head, like he’d stumbled upon the perfect show of his new power. What it really made it seem like, though, unbeknownst to him, was an innuendo, like he wanted the Inferior to meet him in bed in five minutes. But he didn’t realise that, and so when the Inferior scuttled off, looking terrified, he just turned away with a victorious snort and a new cockiness to their demeanour. “Oh, yeah,” he purred to himself, giving his shoulders a little wiggle and his front claws a conquering little twitch as he began to pad slowly along, “you got it, Speedy.”