I Promise I've Improved

(October 29th. Open to Mooch and Annette.)

"RRRRAHR!"

Mooch slammed against the side of the posts in the training ground. His shoulder broke through the air, his teeth gritted together. Mooch refused to use his teeth as a default. He was supposed to protect the deer. Not harass and scare them. His thick paws helped him land on the ground but he still wobbled. He let out a snarl as he rubbed his head with his giant paw. "Ugh. Can't even bark right."

He cleared his throat. He spent most of his time growling on the farm, not barking. Sheepdogs barked to herd the sheep. Mooch didn't herd sheep. He was too lazy. Now his vocal chords were sore with misuse.

"Rrrrruff! Rrrrruff! Ruff!" He groaned. "Ugh. Don't even wanna talk about this bull...stupid...shouldn't have to bark...damn Bambi..."

"Oh. It's you."

Any harshness the words might otherwise have carried was, at least for the moment, absent from Annette's tone. The cocker had heard someone barking from her tent nearby, and with little better to do, had decided to come and investigate. Of course, she recognised the sheepdog instantly; Scamp's friend, and the dog who had flirted with her the first day she had arrived in camp, though his name wasn't one of the things about him that she recalled.

"Are you actually doing anything out here, or just making a lot of noise?" she asked, eyeing him critically.

(ooc: short, sorry ^^")

Mooch stopped mid-pathetic bark to hear the shrill voice of the cocker female.He rolled his yellow orbs back and forth before turning to face her properly. What a way to great someone, Mooch thought bitterly. He hadn't seen the girl since the war started it seemed. He couldn't remember which one of Scamp's sisters she was; he knew he had three and only two were heroes. What was her name? Annie? Annabelle? Something of that nature, he mused. He stretched to his full adolescent canine height and tilted his head to the side.

"What's it to you, fluff ball?" he asked. A sense of thrill echoed through his body. The bully part of him was bleeding through and it felt spectacular. "I'm barking. Don't you know what a bark is, princess? Woof. Woof."

"Well you're not doing that well at it," Annette replied shortly. She'd forgotten how much she hated this guy's attitude, but was quickly being reminded of it. Why had she thought it was a good idea to approach him in the first place? The cocker scowled to herself. "The way you're barking sounds like you've got a sore throat," she pointed out distainfully.

Turning, she padded away from him a small way, walking along the perimiter of the training ground, though she still kept an eye on the larger dog. If she didn't think highly of him, she certainly didn't trust him. "I'm going to assume you were training as well, not just giving your vocal chords a work-out." Though that might be giving him too much credit. But since dogs didn't use weapons, there wasn't much in the way of evidence one way or another, so Annette was willing to give the grey-furred canine the benefit of the doubt this time.

Training, at least in self-defense, was something she maybe ought to invest some effort in too, Annette reluctantly thought. That she had been unable to lift a paw against the Outlands monster that had gnawed on her shoulder was a source of personal embarassment to the cocker. She had trained a little at the beginning of the war, but then organised training sessions seemed to have stopped, and so she hadn't bothered to keep up visiting the training grounds after that. It was a mistake she really ought to correct.

Besides, my fur can't get much dirtier by doing that than it is now, can it?

“Oh screw off.”

Mooch’s tone was sour and pain filled. The male didn’t like it being pointed out that he didn’t much sound like a real dog. It was like being stabbed. Not a deer, not a dog. Some kind of hybrid in-between mutant creature. His eyes narrowed as he answered the rest of her question. “Yeah, I was training. Gotta get stronger somehow. Not like I have antlers or something.” He grumbled the last part before shaking his body a little.

“Because your barking would be so much better,” Mooch scoffed, scratching behind his ear, “It’d probably be all yippy.” He hadn’t heard Scamp bark but imagined it had to have been better than Annette’s.

"Antlers."

There was an incredulity to the cocker's tone, one that suggested that in spite of herself, she was puzzled by the larger canine's words. What did the sheepdog want with antlers, of all things? Quite apart from the fact that he would look ridiculous, Annette couldn't imagine how Mooch's scrawny body would be able to support the weight like a deer's did. He did know that a dog's primary weapon was his teeth, right? Annette shook her head, not bothering to give voice to the thought.

"There's nothing wrong with a yippy bark," she replied, managing to sound both dignified and defensive at the same time. Fact of the matter was, she liked her bark; maybe it wasn't as intimidating as a big dog's, but it suited her a lot better than any other sort. For a sheepdog like Mooch, though, not being able to bark right was a little pathetic.

"And how did you expect to train properly without an sparring partner, anyway?" she asked abruptly, eyeing the otherwise empty training ground. Not that she was volunteering, of course; of all the people she least wanted to train with, Mooch would be very near the top of that list. He'd probably focus on getting her fur as dirty as possible just to spite her. Her criticism of the older dog was more a release of tension that felt as though it had been building up for months - it felt oddly good to have someone she could act this way towards.

"I meant...you know what I meant." Mooch scowled, shaking his fur violently as he ran his tongue over his jaws. He was trying to ignore her to the best of his abilities but part of him was also curious. Why was she even still there yelling at him? He fixed his paws into the ground, head lowered as his sharp yellow eyes flashed at her. He rolled those same eyes and shook his fur again.

"Okay miss high and mighty," Mooch clucked, "So I don't know how to bark. So what? I never did my job at the farm so why should I bother learning to bark?" Her next word intrigued him so much he had to grin and laugh.

"Oh yeah, fluffy?" He scoffed, pressing his nose threateningly in her personal space around her own nose, "You wanna spar do ya?"

"So if you don't care about learning to bark, why were you making such a racket with trying?" That had been what had first brought her over, the fact that his would-be barking had been disturbing her, and she had to admit to wanting to find out why he had been. She wouldn't have bet against it being having been just to antagonise her, except that Mooch had seemed as surprised to see her as she had been to see him.

She scowled darkly as Mooch shoved his nose practically up against her own. Without even thinking that he might take it as a challenge, Annette reached up a paw and shoved the sheepdog's muzzle away. "With you, not especially," she replied dismissively. She did need to train and learn how to spar properly, she knew it, but with Mooch as her partner... no, Annette didn't think she could do that. If she knew anything about the sheepdog, he would be much more rough with her than she could handle, and she wouldn't learn anything except new ways to get landed flat in the dirt. Her fur already had more grime in it than she even wanted to imagine... she inwardly shuddered at the thought of it getting any worse.

"And I've got a name, and it's not fluffy," she added irritably.


(pst, Mooch, if you want to get her sparring with Mooch, then go right ahead; don't let her preferences stop you )

WHAP

Mooch's eyes widened as Annette batted his nose away. He snorted. It didn't hurt...not physically anyway. He sniffed at the shorter pup. "Cuz," he said, "What if you're fighting a prey animal? Scar's got plenty of 'em. Barking might scare'em away." He raised his eyebrows. Of course she didn't wanna spar with him, she'd get her butt handed to her! She was some kind of fluffy small dog, he was a dog bred for speed and agility. He raised his head and scoffed.

"Aw all you cockers look the same," Mooch said with a wave of his paw, "Only your brother got the unique looks in your family." Truth be told the male seriously was lacking knowledge in which sister was which in Scamp's family. "And too bad, fluffy. You started it. Now you're gonna finish it!"

He woofed, leaping over her and landing behind her.

In a very convenient mud puddle.

Splatter.

Annette had turned to keep Mooch in her sights just in time to get a faceful of mud. For a long moment, the cocker seemed stunned to speechlessness as the liquidous substance ran down her face, getting in her eyes and mouth, and dripped from the tips of her ears and her collar. Annette blinked furiously, pawing at her eyes until she could see again.

And she fumed. He was acting JUST like Scamp; and if her brother had splashed her so deliberately, he would NOT get away with it if she had any say in the matter.

She should probably turn and walk away. Annette wasn't an idiot; she could tell when she was being goaded, and she most definately was being now. But even as dishevelled as she had been looking lately, Annette was much too proud of her lovely soft fur to let such an insult go unpunished.

And besides, as she had noted earlier, she did need the sparring practice.

"All right, you asked for this," she fumed, grimacing around the taste of mud that refused to leave her mouth. She bounced lightly from paw to paw for a second, and then lunged forward, seizing one of Mooch's long ears between her needle-sharp teeth and yanking hard. Her feet slipped, struggling to find purchase on the muddy ground, but Annette doggedly kept on pulling, determined to make Mooch regret muddying her coat.

(Don't I know how sharp those teeth are now XD)

"YEEEEOW!"

Needle like was an understatement as far as Mooch was concerned. The pain radiated through him as Annette's teeth made contact with the thin membrane of his floppy notched ear. In shock the male slid into the mud himself, side smacking against the mud and making an awful lot of disgusting noise. He turned his large nose up at her, letting out a growl. Mud now caked his coat just like hers.

He let out a pathetic bark as lifted his thick paw to bat at her face hoping she'd let go if he hit her in the snout.

Annette looked supremely satisfied as Mooch yelped and fell over into the mud, even if that did slop more of it across her coat. She needed a bath urgently after Mooch's first attack, so what was a little more mud until then?

The satisfied feeling ended a moment later as she recieved a smack across the nose. Unwittingly releasing her opponent's ear, the cocker reeled backwards a couple of steps, her nose twitching slightly. Still, her point had been made; Mooch didn't look anywhere near as tough as he thought he was now. "Maybe next time you'll think twice before splashing mud over someone's coat," she warned, trying uselessly to brush some of the substance off her fur. No good; she definitely needed a proper bath.

(ooc: I apologise for shortness)

Rubbing the side of his head with a paw, the male turned with a growl at Annette. He turned his head to the side. "You're really grumbling about the mud out here? Have you ever BEEN in a battle before?"

His eyes widened. Maybe Annette really hadn't been in a fight before in this war. Boy, would that have given him the edge over the smaller dog. Despite the fact his ear was starting to spot with blood where she'd bit him, he ignored the metallic scent on the air and lifted up as high as he could above her.

"Yeah! Have you ever actually been in a battle before?"

"Well..." for a moment, Annette faltered. She hadn't really, had she? Not as in, on a full battlefield with enemies on every side. Not so much out of cowardice, as Mooch was probably thinking; they were simply much too unladylike affairs for her taste, so she tended to keep to the camp whenever she heard of a battle on. Besides which, there was no point getting herself all bloodied up for nothing, since none of the fights ever actually seemed to accomplish anything other than giving guys like Mooch a chance to flex their muscles and pick up some new scars to boast of.

Speaking of scars... well, where was the harm in bending the truth a little?

"Of course I have," she replied sharply, using her right paw to indicate her mangled shoulder and scarred back. "Where do you think I got wounds like these, just from staying around camp? I've seen a few fights." Admittedly, she'd lost both of those fight very badly, but what Mooch didn't know wouldn't hurt her. "I just happen to like to keep my fur clean; that's not a crime."

Mooch grinned until she brought up her shoulder scars. He snorted, lifting his head. He'd seen death, a few scars weren't going to shock him. "Yeah? What battle?" He said in disbelief of her story, "Did anyone die? Probably not. You probably just FELL." Mooch shook his ears free of mud, pushing back on his flat paws.

"Out here it sure is," he said with a cluck, "You wouldn't last a day in battle, would'ja? Huh?"

(short post is short, I'm so sorry)