Mousepaw’s Training

[Seamrog]

To do list:

Mandatory:

Land and water hunting
Battle training
Swimming

Selection (x2)

Night hunting
Tracking/stalking
Water combat
Advanced land combat
Tunnel navigation
Basic first aid
Advanced swimming

@zozelen (putting this here so I can just cross things off)

[Seamrog]

"So Mousepaw, you said you've practiced a little bit of fighting and hunting before? We'll start with fighting training." Duskleaf said, he was interested to see how well Mousepaw performed at it. "Right, attack me." He instructed.

@zozelen (Sorry this took me so long by the way!)

[zozelen]

"O...Okay?", Mousepaw mumbled, feeling kind of reluctant. He was supposed to attack Duskleaf? Like, right now? Maybe his mentor was planning on picking at his mistakes once Mousepaw actually showed them to him. Well, it just seemed kind of nerve-wracking when he put it that way.

No, Mousepaw would be fine. Duskleaf probably wasn't expecting him to be perfect already. All he had to do was NOT do something super embarrassing, like trip and fall on his face. Which had kind of happened once in front of Branchpaw, ugh he didn't want to think about that. Anyways, battle training was important! Like, he could beat the other apprentices in sparring, and hopefully not die right away in a fight...

Trying to focus, the tiny apprentice's tail swished back and forth, and his eyes narrowed as he did his best to look serious before attacking his mentor. He just had to land this hit.

(mousepaw rolls a 2!)

After getting a jumping start at Duskleaf, Mousepaw gravely miscalculated and landed too early, kind of wobbling off to the side as he felt his paw twist painfully. Oww... He didn't even hit his mentor! At all! Had any other apprentice even failed on their first move before??

"That... doesn't usually happen," he meowed weakly, flexing his paw to make sure it still worked. "I can go again. Or you can attack me first, maybe..." Mousepaw didn't want to tell his mentor what do, he just was unsure whether Duskleaf wanted him to try again, or if he wanted to correct Mousepaw's posture or something first...

@Seamrog (i didn't think it took long, no problem!)

[Seamrog]

"Are you alright?" Duskleaf meowed concernedly after seeing Mousepaw's hard landing. "Ehh don’t worry about it, nobody gets it right on their first try anyway, I didn’t!" He sniggered a little remembering his own apprentice days.

"One of the most important things to remember is to always try to land on your feet, use your tail to help you balance. That way you won’t hurt yourself when you land." He decided to show Mousepaw what he meant, climbing on top of a nearby boulder, he jumped high into the air, then when he started to come back down, he used his tail to help balance before landing on his paws. Then he looked over towards Mousepaw.

"Like that!" He meowed, walking back over towards his apprentice. "Could you try that?" His eyes scanned the area around them, he didn’t want Mousepaw jumping from the same boulder he did, it was fine for a larger cat like himself, but he didn’t want Mousepaw to injure himself. Then, he spotted a collapsed tree nearby, and an idea came into his mind. "Climb onto that collapsed tree over there and copy what I just did. I think the boulder's a little too big for you at the moment, you'll get a chance to jump off it at some point when you’re a little bit bigger."
@zozelen

[zozelen]

"Y-Yeah. I'm fine," mumbled Mousepaw, shaking his paw a little more like he was trying to get the non-existent dirt off. Maybe his lingering embarrassment. He didn't think everyone failed their first time, especially like he did, but he knew Duskleaf was trying to make him feel better.

Well, now Duskleaf was teaching him how to not fall and hurt himself. Looks like Mousepaw had veered the lesson off-track. Still, he watched as Duskleaf jumped onto a boulder and then back down again- the warrior seemed to have no trouble at all.

"Sure," Mousepaw replied to his question, trying not to bristle at the implication that a rock was too big for him. Fine, maybe it was, but Mousepaw wasn't that small! Probably! Not like Mousepaw was in any position to argue, though... he hadn't done anything to impress Duskleaf yet. He'd just do what his mentor asked.

His eyes focused on where he wanted to land, the old bark of the fallen tree. Maybe the warrior was trying to show him some elaborate technique earlier, but to Mousepaw it just looked like jumping, so that's what he'd do.

(mousepaw rolls a 15!)

Without any trouble, Mousepaw hopped up onto the log. That wasn't too hard. He briefly glanced over at Duskleaf before jumping back down again, sending a dull pang to the same paw he had twisted- Ow. There. Done.

@Seamrog

[Seamrog]

(I made that last post first thing in the morning (I’m the furthest thing from a morning person) so now I’m having to try and make sense of my morning nonsense XD)

Duskleaf watched Mousepaw's landing, and smiled before speaking. "Great!" He said. "Right, so there’s two reasons why I asked you to do that, I wanted you to jump so you can understand how important a cat’s tail is for balance. And I also want to show you how you can use that in a battle." Duskleaf walked a fox length or two closer to Mousepaw so he wouldn’t have to raise his voice very much, before sitting down. He didn’t really like raising his voice so much, he didn’t like a lot of noise, plus he knew Mousepaw would listen to him. "So, in a fight, there are a few things you can do, you want to have as many advantages as possible during a battle. You can grab your opponent’s tail, if you yank their tail with enough force, you can mess up their balance. I don’t think we need to practice that one so much, the other one is more important but we can go back to it at some point if you want to try it out."

Duskleaf stood up, and turned side on so that Mousepaw could see his entire body. "Ehh actually I’ll turn to the other side so you can see my good ear." He realised that his already half-missing ear wouldn’t be great for visualising what he was about to say. "Now, another thing you can do during a battle is to grab onto your opponent, get a good grip with your teeth, and unleash hell with your claws. You can do it with their tail, legs, ears or the scruff, it also limits their ability to move, if you go for the ears or scruff, they won’t find it easy to fight back. How about we have a go? I’m sure I don’t have to tell you this but uhh…don’t bite too hard."

Duskleaf then turned his head to face Mousepaw. "Okay, attack me."
@zozelen