Author's notes: I want to say up front that this story takes place at an earlier point in the series continuity (if it has any), shortly after volume 2 of the webisodes. Also, I don't consider the CGI specials cannon, so there's that.

….

After school one day, Spectra had sent texts to the fearleading team saying that she needed to speak with them in private.

"We're here now, Spectra," Cleo said the ghostly gossip. "What's this about?"

"I have a confession to make," Spectra began. "I've kind of been friends with Toralei since before I met you."

There was an awkward silence as Cleo, Frankie, Draculara, Clawdeen and Ghoulia processed this.

"Have you told her anything personal about us?" Cleo asked accusingly.

"Nothing I haven't shared with the rest of the school," Spectra clarified. "Now you're probably wondering why I'm just now mentioning this."

"Among other things," Clawdeen added with a glare.

"Well," Spectra began, "Purrsephone came to me and said that she was going to tell you about my connection to Toralei so she gave me the chance to expose myself."

"Why is it so important that we know about you and Toralei?" Draculara asked.

"I'm not sure," Spectra answered. "All I know is that she wanted me to reveal that and then give you this note saying that she wants to….. well, just read it." Spectra pulled a piece of paper out of her purse that Cleo eagerly grabbed.

Dear everyone, the note began. I imagine you're all practically drooling in curiosity to know what the hell this is all about. Well, to put it simply, Toralei has been treating me like crap lately and I want to defect to your group. I am willing to offer gifts and information to affect your decision, but I want to talk about this in person before we go further. Call me to set a meeting if you're interested.

The note ended with Purrsephone's cell phone number. There was yet another awkward silence as the fearleading team took this all in.

"So," Spectra interrupted their musings. "Where do we all stand?"

"I would like to point out," Frankie began, "that we never told Spectra that she couldn't hang out with Toralei."

"That is true," Cleo said as she grabbed her chin in contemplation. "We'll need to think about that some more Spectra, but we've got something else to worry about right now." She then turned to her fellow fearleaders. "What are we going to do about Purrsephone?"

"I say there's no harm in hearing her out," Draculara said. Ghoulia and Frankie nodded in agreement while Clawdeen didn't.

Cleo took out her phone and dialed the number in the letter.

…..

"You have no idea how happy I was to get your call," Purresphone said with a wide grin after she had been given a ride to Cleo's place. Purresphone then took a bag she had brought with her and placed several DVD cases on a table in between her and the fearleaders. "These are the first seasons of some very good TV shows. These are just for letting me plead my case to you guys."

"How generous of you," Cleo said with a grin, pleased that the werecat was so eager to win her over.

"Let's see what you've got her," Clawdeen said. She may not be interested in giving Purresphone the benefit of the doubt, but she was interested taking her no-strings attached gifts. She looked at the DVDs and saw that they just had plain covers with the names of the shows on them.

Frankie started reciting the names of the shows aloud. "Rook, Grizolli and Biles, Storeroom 17, Disgusting Canadians, Immodest and Bowman."

"These are fake, aren't they?" Clawdeen asked.

"No," the werecat answered. "The discs contain which shows the covers say they do."

"But you didn't get these in any ways that involved money changing hands with the copyright holders, did you?" Clawdeen clarified.

"In that case, yes: they are fake," Purrsephone admitted. "But if you're not interested," she said as she went to grab the case containing Grizolli and Biles that Clawdeen was looking at.

"Now I'm not saying that," Clawdeen said as she pulled the case towards herself. "I just want you to be straight-up with us."

"I would not recommend Bowman to any of you," Draculara said. "I watched it with Clawd a few times and I could never get into it. I lived through the period it's supposed to take place in and the show makers are incredibly lazy about letting modern touches in."

"I'm pretty sure it's supposed to take place in its own universe that's a mix ofa bunch of different points in history," Purresphone explained.

"Oh," Draculara said. "That would explain why the characters had clothes from the sixties, cars from the seventies, computers from the eighties and modern cell phones. But that doesn't change how the main character is such a douche."

"We're getting off topic here," Clawdeen said. "What is it you really want, Purresphone?"

"I want to be on the fearleading team," the dark haired werecat said.

"I already see a problem with this," Clawdeen said with a glower. "To let you on the team, we'll need to trust you. That's going to be a real problem, at least for me, because every word out of your mouth is like a tiny lie."

"Now I will admit," Cleo began, "that we should not immediately trust Purresphone, but that seems a bit much."

"Not really," Purresphone said. "She's thinking about an incident between us a couple months ago."

….

(Begin flashback)

In the halls of Monster High in between classes, Clawdeen saw the werecat twins away from Toralei. She decided to go up to them and voice her opinion on something she'd been meaning to talk to them about for a while.

"Hey you two," the werewolf fashionista said to the twins. "Look, I have no idea why all I see you two do is stand behind Toralei and not say anything, but you can do more than that."

The twins just looked at her blankly and Purrsephone started making random movements with her hands that Clawdeen mistook for sign language.

"Oh," Clawdeen said with an embarrassed expression. "That's why you two never talk: you can't. "There was an awkward silence for a moment. "I have to….. go be somewhere else. Bye."

The two werecats giggled to themselves as the normally composed and fierce werewolf walked away so flustered.

(End flashback)

…..

"That was fun," Purrsephone said with a grin as she finished describing the incident. Her grin faded when she saw Clawdeen giving her the stink-eye. "This is what you tried to talk me into, Clawdeen: I'm trying to get away from being under Toralei's thumb. Now, I know you wished that I'd tried it sooner and without making you think my sister and I are mute when we're not and I am sorry about that."

"Is there a reason we haven't we heard you talk before this?" Frankie asked.

"Because I've never had anything to say to any of you before now," Purrsephone explained.

"Clawdeen does bring up something important," Cleo said. "Specifically, trust issues. For all we know, you're trying to infiltrate our group for Toralei."

"Or maybe this is just a hair-brained scheme to differentiate myself from my sister in the eyes of the school. Why isn't that an option?" Purrsephone angrily countered and finished by slamming her fist against the table.

"Okay," Cleo said slowly as she thought about how to proceed. "We'll come back to that later. I have two other questions: why was it so important for you to expose Spectra's connection to Toralei and why do you want to turn on her all of a sudden?"

"First," Purrsephone began, "I wanted to expose Spectra to make you reconsider issues of trust and improve my odds of you taking me on."

"You choose very poorly to do that with Spectra: I never trusted her very much," Cleo said and her friends glared at her. "What? It's not my fault that she embellishes her stories so much that she should have her artistic license revoked."

"Moving on," Purrsephone said. "I have been getting fed up with Toralei treating me like her servant for a long time and it's been building up. More importantly, I'm doing this now because my sister is going to be out of town for over a week. Mom needed to take one of us to help with a family emergency on our uncle Jerry's emu ranch in the Canadian Rockies and Meowlody lost rock-paper-scissors so she had to go."

"And with her gone, you only have to worry about an angry Toralei," Cleo said as she put her chin in her hand. "Smart."

"I know," Purrsephone said with a self-satisfied grin. "Now here is the specific deal I want: you will let me on the fearleading team and I will share some interesting facts about Toralei with you. I would also like to point that if you take me on, it will really piss off Toralei but she'll only be pissed at me so you won't have to worry about payback."

"Just to be clear here," Clawdeen began, "you want us to trust you because you are selling out someone who's been your friend for we don't even know how long. Do you see a problem with that?"

"I do," Purrsephone said. "But that's mostly because Toralei hasn't been a great friend to me. My biggest problem with her is that after fearleading Mashionals, I tried to convince her that if we – her, me and my sister – really wanted to get back on the fearleading team, then we should try diplomacy and build on the good will from that one, beautiful moment when we all hated Nefera more than each other. But as usual, Toralei wouldn't listen to me and decided to keep going with pranks against you even though she admits that the amount of long-term success we've had with that can best be described as 'depressing'. And things only got worse when Toralei got her motorcycle last month. Have you girls seen it yet?"

Ghoulia moaned something in response.

"Someone's gonna have to translate that for me: I don't speak ug ug," Purrsephone said.

"She said," Cleo began, "that she got a good look at Toralei's motorcycle when Toralei used it to run donuts around her scooter when she tried to leave the school parking lot."

"Oh yeah. That happened," Purrsephone said with a slight grin. "Anyway, since Toralei was the first of us to get her own vehicle, we've been getting around on that and since Toralei won't get a sidecar, it's a very tight squeeze to get all of us on there. It's especially bad for me because Meowlody makes me go in the middle and Toralei doesn't want to help me change that because she says it's a family matter."

"So anyway, that's where standing by Toralei has gotten me: on a road to nowhere, riding on a cramped motorcycle between two other ghouls with my twin sister's tits pressing against my back," the werecat concluded.

"That's awful, Purrsephone," Frankie said sympathetically. "Especially that last part."

"Yeah, I didn't need to hear that," Cleo added disapprovingly.

"Sorry about that," Purrsephone said. "Anyway, in response to Cleo's earlier question about how can you be sure I'm not a infiltrator working for Toralei, I have three reasons to defect: to get back on the fearleading team for status purposes, to get back at Toralei for not listening to me and to differentiate myself from my sister in the eyes of the school, although I already brought up that last one. So do we have a deal or not?"

"I'd say yes but first I need to see what everyone else thinks," Cleo said and looked at her friends. Frankie, Draculara and Ghoulia all nodded yes. Clawdeen paused for a second before nodding in agreement as well.

Cleo extended her hand for so she and Purrsephone could shake on their agreement.