[Fate Admin]

Frogpaw had done quite well in her battles against Palepaw and Blackpaw. Whether she won or not was not what Ravenstar had been looking for, but simply how she handled herself, the techniques she had used, and especially how she would handle two battles where the other apprentices had only the one. Winning was just a bonus when demonstrating your abilities against your own Clanmates. If you won, that meant your Clanmate lost… which meant in a real battle they could be dead. One could not judge a practice battle the same way as one would judge the real thing.

This would be Frogpaw’s final assessment before becoming a warrior. Ravenstar had led her apprentice to the branch trail to assess her ambushing skills. It was a signature NightClan skill, much more so than in the other Clans. It made the others hesitant to invade, knowing the enemy could be lurking anywhere, ready to strike at any time out of the shadows. Some called it a cowardly way to fight, but Ravenstar rather thought it was because they didn’t realize how much went into the skill. Disguising your scent and finding a place to hide amongst the sparse undergrowth or relatively bare branches of the pines.

TreeClan could perhaps relate a little. Dropping from the trees onto your opponent’s back without them ever knowing you were there was a skill they practiced as well, but they never seemed to disguise their scents before they did so one who was a master at ambushing could still detect them. It probably worked well enough against the other Clans, but Ravenstar was confident any NightClan cat would spot a TreeClanner lying in wait.

A short distance away from where the branch trail began, Ravenstar paused and turned to look at Frogpaw, “I will wait here for a time while you go on ahead and choose a hiding spot. I will come in and try to find you in a little while. Be quick, but thorough. Disguise yourself well. I do not want to hear, see, or scent you until you are upon me. Attack me as though I were an intruder… but keep your claws sheathed.” With that she sat and curled her fluffy tail around her paws to wait until she thought Frogpaw had enough time to stage her ambush.

[Fawn]

FROGPAW!

“I will wait here for a time while you go on ahead and choose a hiding spot. I will come in and try to find you in a little while. Be quick, but thorough. Disguise yourself well. I do not want to hear, see, or scent you until you are upon me. Attack me as though I were an intruder… but keep your claws sheathed.”

Despite the tall order Ravenstar had presented her with, the uniquely marbled she-cat dipped her head in understanding and chose to slink away as soon as possible, trusting her leader-slash-mentor to stay where she said she would. Given more than enough time to get herself farther away and properly hidden, Frogpaw mentally attempted to tackle the issue of disguising her scent. This should be easy, she inwardly jibbed, poking fun at her own name, I'm a frog and this is NightClan territory - easy as catching blind mice! Though the branch trail was not what she would have chosen for terrain if she had gotten the choice - the Ambush Pond would have been her preference - Frogpaw did well to attempt to adapt to the situation. The best possible location to hide would be near the base of the trees, where the roots stuck up from the earth and tangled overtop one another, creating shadowy pockets that all sorts of animals made their nests in.

Before she picked a location to hide in, Frogpaw went about disguising her scent, looking for something not too pungent that would put the edge off her own familiar fragrance. It wasn't until she stepped onto a particularly moist part of the trail - where the snow had melted into a half-frozen muddy mess at the base of one tree - that Frogpaw decided she'd have to do something a little...unsavory if she were to attempt to trick Ravenstar's superior sense of smell.
"This isn't going to be big on dignity," she murmured, but rolled around anyway in the stale, slightly smelly mudwater not once, but two or three times, until her coat was tight against her frame from the weight of the liquid.

Resisting the immensely powerful urge to shake out her fur, Frogpaw kept her ears tuned for the sound of Ravenstar's approaching pawsteps, whiskers twitching as she checked out one such dark pocket that had caught her attention earlier. After determining nothing lived there - or at least wasn't home - Frogpaw crawled in on her belly, turning out with slight difficulty until she could face the entrance, her fur darker due to the water and now looking almost black in the leafy, earthy shadows under the enormous tree root.
And now I wait.

As an extra precaution, she laid her tail over her mouth, and listened.