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The twoleg garden Runningnose normally got catmint for ShadowClan in suddenly didn’t have any anymore, as the twoleg in question was sick and tired of stray cats tearing up their garden. When told this, Brokenstar demanded to see for himself, and was duly lead over to the house in question. Now rather annoyed, the pair went down house after house looking for a yard with catmint, and finally came across one: Rusty’s house.
Rusty had heard about the ‘wild forest cats’ from other kittypets, and knew from Smudge having an unfortunate encounter at the forest’s edge that they didn’t tolerate trespassers. And yet here were two of them, thinking they could just waltz into his yard and steal his housefolk’s catnip?
Rusty refused to back down even though he was scared out of his mind, and got into a rather one-sided battle with Brokenstar. Bloody and beaten, Rusty heard Brokenstar murmur that for a soft kittypet, he had fire in his belly. Then the cat turned to Runningnose and ordered him to grab the catmint, while he grabbed ShadowClan’s newest apprentice - Firepaw.
Brokenstar took the newly named Firepaw as his own apprentice, tearing off his collar as ‘twoleg filth had no place on ShadowClan warriors’. While there were some initial protests about a kittypet warrior, Brokenstar shut them down with the simple statement of, “Have you forgotten, that one of the most important tenets of the Warrior Code is that the leader’s word is law?”
While the apprenticeship initially got off to a rocky start, for obvious reasons, the pair eventually hit their stride. Brokenstar demanded a high level of performance, one Firepaw worked hard to meet first out of survival, and then out of a genuine desire to please his mentor. He’s not really aware that Brokenstar’s idea of training was much, much harsher than that of the average clan cat. Given that Firepaw was actually six moons and counting, Brokenstar’s training regimen wasn’t the same nightmare it was for kits, and with a new apprentice of his own the focus on training kits lightened somewhat. Kits were still being apprenticed too early, but kits not yet apprentices weren’t being taken out of camp to train as often.
Things changed, however, during a routine hunting patrol. Firepaw heard the creaking of wood, and looked up in time to see a tree bearing down on him and Brokenstar. With a shout of “Look out!”, Firepaw bodily shoved him aside, and then the tree came down on top of him. Brokenstar freaked, running as fast as he could to grab Runningnose and several warriors to get Firepaw - who was still alive - out from under the tree and to the safety of camp.
While Firepaw survived, his left shoulder - which took the brunt of the impact - was never the same afterward. While it didn’t look outwardly wrong, the impact of the tree made it so he couldn’t move it very well, and walked with a pronounced limp. Unable to be a warrior, much to Brokenstar’s dismay, Firepaw was apprenticed to Runningnose to train as a medicine cat, with Brokenstar telling him to become a medicine cat ShadowClan would be proud of. And when he finished his training, Firepaw was given his medicine cat name before StarClan: Firestep.
Impact:
While Yellowfang was initially driven off from ThunderClan territory, spying Clawface and Blackfoot sneaking onto said clan’s territory made her suspicious, and she followed them. Seeing them kill Spottedleaf to go for the kits, she intervened, forcing them to drop the kits and helping ThunderClan to drive them off. Due to Yellowfang being a medicine cat and Spottedleaf dying without an apprentice, she was taken into ThunderClan to fill in that role, as they really didn’t have a choice otherwise.
With or without canon Firestar, Bluestar was still determined to bring WindClan back to the forest, and sent Graystripe along with a different warrior to bring them back. However, even though WindClan was returned to the Forest without him, there was nothing to stop Tigerclaw from murdering Bluestar in secret and taking over ThunderClan. What he didn’t anticipate (but really should have) was StarClan knowing what he’d done thanks to Bluestar, and while they had to give him his nine lives, they were able to withhold one: the life traditionally handed down from the former leader to the new. Tigerstar returned to ThunderClan with only eight lives, determined to take that fact to the grave.
Because of this, Cinderpelt was never injured in a trap meant for Bluestar, Swiftpaw and Brightpaw never had any reason to go after the dogs in a misguided attempt to prove themselves, and Brindleface wasn’t murdered as bait. So while ThunderClan still had issues they were eventually able to deal with them, leaving those four to live long and happy lives: Swiftpaw as Swiftheart, and Brightpaw as Brightfang (Cinderpelt keeps her canon name).
Cloudtail though never joined the forest clans. For Princess, everyone thought Rusty had been killed and carried off to be eaten or something thanks to all the blood in his yard, so she never had any reason to take her oldest kit to the clans. Cloudtail instead grew up a kittypet like the rest of his family, never knowing the life he could have had otherwise.
BloodClan never had any reason to appear in the forest, and so Tigerstar survived what to him was just another ordinary day, when in another time it would have been his bloody end. Ironic, that the Tigerstar without his full nine lives survived longer than the one who did. But there was one thing no cat could stop from happening: the destruction of the forest territories by twolegs. Without Squirrelflight, a different cat is chosen instead to go along to search for Midnight to fulfill the fire and tiger prophecy (which, since it was Yellowfang seeing it, was interpreted correctly): her would-have-been father, Firestep.
Seriously, the traveling cats needed a healer, and ShadowClan still had Firestep’s mentor, Runningnose, so it wasn’t like they were being left in the lurch or anything.
Given that Brokenstar is on his last life at this point, it’s either during the journey or shortly after that he dies and his deputy Blackfoot becomes leader. Brokenstar still goes to the Dark Forest however, though a bit less twisted than he would have been. When given his nine lives, Blackfoot is told that normally, the former leader would give the ninth life, but for his crimes against kits, elders, and the Warrior Code, Brokenstar would never walk with StarClan. They advised Blackfoot, now Blackstar, that unless he wanted the same fate he should fix that, which he did immediately as soon as he got home. Unlike Tigerstar, Blackstar came home with nine lives, as just because Brokenstar wasn’t there to give the final life didn’t mean another cat couldn’t give it in his stead. And while Firestep is hurt to learn that his former mentor and leader is banned from StarClan, he knows in his heart that Brokenstar wasn’t, well, that he’d earned it. He only had to look at how half the kits made apprentices never made it to become warriors, or how those who were supposed to be respected for serving their clan for moons on end were instead cast out to fend for themselves. And that was on top of how he’d come to be in ShadowClan in the first place, even if he wouldn’t change it for the world.
It’s Firestep’s guilty secret that sometimes, he walks the Dark Forest in his sleep, sharing tongues with Brokenstar. That for the night, he can put aside everything that’s happened, and just spend time with his former mentor again.
