Warrior Cat Clans 2 (WCC2 aka Classic) is a roleplay site inspired by the Warrior series by Erin Hunter. Whether you are a fan of the books or new to the Warrior cats world, WCC2 offers a diverse environment with over a decade’s worth of lore for you - and your characters - to explore. Join us today and become a part of our ongoing story!
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The newly christened Kier-kun was out wandering the borders around the League for the first time since he'd arrived. For the first time in his life, he was surrounded on all sides by what felt like thousands of eyes, of ears, of beating hearts, all warm and living. Sleeping surrounded by so many other cats in the Mansion was proving difficult, but not precisely because he was uncomfortable and overwhelmed by being touched by so many slumbering bodies - it was more because he was just so alive. His eyes couldn't stop staring and darting around in the dark, at all the chests rising and falling and the snores dragging from cats' open mouths. Most nights he'd leave his brother and sister and go perch on a windowsill, silhouetted against the moonlight, just looking down at them all. All his life, it had only been the four of them. Different places, certainly - moors, forests, barns, the occasional edges of Twolegplaces - but the same horizons, the same skies, and one bale of hay comes to smell very much like any other.
Here, though... All his nerves felt like they were firing off a hundred thousand different signals, like every accidental touch of another cat, horrible as it was, set him on fire. His eyes, ordinarily so narrow, had never been wider, like he was taking in everything, everything, everything. He had dived into the life of a League cat, pledging himself to a District at random because his huge ears had been listening to so many sounds at once that he'd hardly heard what either of them was. He wanted to learn everything, to be everything. For the first time in his life, there wasn't just his brother and his sister and his father - there were other cats, other things he could do, things that weren't just about them. He followed his mother around most of the time, of course, and he still saw his family often, but more and more regularly he was going longer and longer without seeing them. All the siblings had adapted to life in the League in their own ways, but Kier's had perhaps been the most fanatically devout. He had never thought there would ever come a time where he could be something seperate to his family, something important in his own way, of his own merit. And yet here it was.
So that evening, with the sun just beginning to sink lower in the deep orange sky, Kier was slipping like oil through the shadows of a treeline just this side of the SummerClan border. He was still trying to wrap his head around all the names of the Clans and all their different scents - there were so many, more than he'd ever thought could possibly exist - and was, though he'd never admit it, fairly lost. It didn't matter particularly - his family wasn't apt to worry, the League didn't have a curfew, and, in any case, he'd made such a point of making himself known intimately to the Internal Affairs Proxy that she'd given him special dispensation to do absolutely anything that meant he wasn't anywhere near her, go start a goddamn war for all I care, that would be better for me than one more second around you. So, Kier just continued to slip silently through the darkness at the edge of the trees, confident that if he met any cat he could just slip away unseen into the gloom.
However, it was just his luck that he'd happened to stumble across the Clan most filled to the brim with flowers. Kier, allergic to just about everything on planet Earth, suddenly stopped, faltered for a moment with his paws backing up blindly and his eyes beginning to water - "oh, dammit," he muttered in a high, strangled voice - and then started to sneeze uncontrollably. His sneezes were high-pitched and kitten-like, cute enough to aww at, or cute enough to laugh at and mimic if you were his brother and sister. He rubbed at his nose desperately with one paw and stumbled blindly into the darkness of the woods.
Foxpaw, too, had had a major dislocation in his last few moons. Just as the tom had gotten used to the night, made his friends by the path of the stars, his mother informed him that it was time to retreat into the sun. At first, he had not understood why; it was supposed to be a vacation. He was supposed to meet his family, and then go back to his home. It had been a week since he had learned that revelation, that NightClan would never again be his home. In that week, the tom's life had completely changed. No longer did he sleep next to Rosypaw, his tail looping with his training partner casually. No longer did he wake up as the sun set to train with his father. He was distraught by the change, the realization that sometimes, there could be no good in a cat. Oh, how he had put Phantomfox on a pedestal. His father had been a king in his eyes, but his betrayal had left Foxpaw lost.
Lost was a good way to describe the tom. Not physically lost: Rosethorn and his cousins had made sure that he knew every last bit of the territory like the back of his hand. Eveningpaw and Cinderpaw had taken him on a grand tour the first day they visited, and every day of the last moon, he had found himself wandering to familiarize himself with his new home. No, he was lost to his mind, lost freefalling through an existence that had gone so unexpectedly not according to plan. This sense of lost-ness was only amplified the first afternoon he was supposed to have warrior training. The tom was nearly done with his training, but trying to work under a cat who was not Phantomfox proved to be a searing iron branding his skin. He had left that session crying, nearly inconsolable. By the next morning, he was a garden keeper apprentice. It was not the life he always imagined; he had imagined himself in NightClan, a warrior, not here, a cat who liked plants. But, his demons were still too strong for the tom to be able to face.
The sun beat on his shoulders. This, too, was something he was unfamiliar with. He was used to the crisp coolness of summer evenings, was used to the starlight bathing his fox-colored fur a muted silver. The sun was something NightClan cats avoided at nearly all costs. Adjusting to late afternoon strolls, the sun hot in the sky, was something the tom was still trying to do. The tom let out a sigh, before he heard something in the distance, something that he was uniquely familiar with...
Was that a sneeze ? Not just one sneeze, was it multiple sneezes ?
Curiosity piqued the tom's gaze; this would be something to distract him from the turmoil that burbled in his mind, wouldn't it? Turning towards the sound, Foxpaw picked up his pace, calling out, "Hello? Is someone there?"
As soon as Kier heard the voice and the pawsteps quickening towards him, he sucked in a breath and tried to stifle his sneezing, his face all scrunched up and his eyes watering. He’d backed against a pine tree and was standing in its shadow, chest aching for air and throat fizzing with the need to sneeze. Finally, he couldn’t stop one and whipped his forepaw over his nose, letting out a miserable sneeze. An involuntary tear spilled over his cheek and left a track through his short black fur that glistened in the orange sunlight slanting through the darkness of the towering trees and dappling the pine needles. When still he heard the cat coming closer, he let out a frustrated curse under his breath and, after gathering himself - eyes closed for a second, a breath sucked in, a little shake of his shoulders, a paw wiped over his cheek - slipped around the tree trunk.
“Hi,” he greeted sheepishly, sounding all stuffy from his blocked nose. He took that split second to look at the cat - oh, good, he was apprentice-aged, a little older than him. Sickly, by the looks of it. Friendly. Lonely, if he’d come over so hopefully. He could work with that. Keeping his voice stuffed and soft, tripping over his own tongue, he babbled shyly, “I’m sorry - I don’t mean to be here, I was just exploring and lost the way. I’m from Primal Instinct, but please don’t worry,” he added in a rush, brows knitted together anxiously as he took a little step closer to the young russet tom. “We’re not scary, I promise. At least I’m not.” He ducked his eyes down self-consciously, letting out a soft breath of laughter and brushing his forepaw from side to side across the ground nervously. “I’m Kier,” he told the apprentice quietly, raising his eyes again while his head remained slightly bowed. “Kier-kun. It’s a new name. I keep forgetting it. I haven’t been in the League long. My father brought me there from my old home. I didn’t really want to come.” His voice faded to a faint mumble at the end, his eyes falling with it.
By Janus, just a bit longer of this and then he’d be able to scuttle away home. Whatever their closeness in age, Kier didn’t particularly want to be battered by someone he could only assume was far better versed at fighting than he was, however unassuming the tom’s appearance. Kier had been raised to hunker down and take a beating, not to fight back; he was genuinely worried that if push came to shove, he’d simply go limp and quiet and let them do their worst to him, as he always had before. It was a difficult habit to break.
Well, back to business.
“Please don’t tell anyone I was here,” Kier suddenly blurted out, voice that special brand of soft that only a lifetime of terror could give someone, snapping his head up and fixing the apprentice with a wide-eyed, panicked gaze. His legs began to tremble, his ears pinning back.
The long-legged tom smiled kindly at the other. It was unexpectedly genuine, unexpectedly kind, or at least, it should have been. There was no reason for him to be anything but abrasive to this tom. Yet, Foxpaw looked at him as if they had been friends for a lifetime. He smiled at him with the same fond intimacy one smiles at the kittens in the nursery who were promoted to apprentices with you, the same way he smiled at anyone. It was that unique quality, the soft friendly kindness, that set Foxpaw apart from his peers. He was friendly to everyone, but not at all in a self-serving way. He had no desires for others to like him, nor did he act out of obligation. No, Foxpaw was just a genuinely good boy, soft. Phantomfox couldn't take that away from him. His father could uproot his whole life, cheat on his mom, abandon him, but he couldn't take away that selfless spark of kindness that drove Foxpaw forward. Foxpaw wouldn't let him.
"It's nice to meet you, Kier-kun," he meowed, sounding absolutely as genuine as his smile appeared. "I'm Foxpaw." He was about to say more, to tell him that he, too, knew exactly what it felt like to be forceabley removed from your home, when he noticed the other's legs tremble. Mortification was clear in his gaze. "Oh, oh, you don't think I'm going to hurt you, do you?" There was a slight squeak of anxiety in his voice as he went through a checklist of any signs of aggression he might have shown. Had his fur raised? He didn't think so. Claws? Still sheathed away....
"I'm not gonna, I promise. I won't tell anyone, either, okay?" the tom meowed as he moved his tail to touch the other's shoulder comfortingly. "You don't have to shake, okay? Everything's gonna be alright, I promise. Between you and me, I don't believe in fighting, not to hurt anyone. It seems silly. Unless you believe your life is in danger, there is absolutely no reason to unsheathe your claws." He spoke with a deep dedication to his words. His philosophy wasn't quite the same as Kier-kun's. No, the sickly tom knew how to fight and he would if it came down to it. It was hard to tell if this was his devoted goodness, or simply just symptomatic of the tom's condition. After all, fighting took expendable energy, and Foxpaw was acutely aware of how little expendable energy he had. Either way, his commitment to non-violence did not mean that he would back down from a fight, just that he wouldn't start one. "It's not like that here."
Still hunkered down nervously, Kier craned his neck up to meet his eyes and smiled back at Foxpaw, mimicking the softness of it. He was about to say pretty name or something sweet like that when he watched the apprentice's gaze drop to his legs. Oh, they were still shaking. When Foxpaw raised his eyes again, Kier met his gaze with that worried, quiet hope that came of not daring to believe in someone else's kindness. He held his gaze as the ginger tom moved closer, forcing himself not to tense at the touch of his tail and to instead mimic what other cats who weren't sickened by things like that did, softening his body and leaning slightly into him. Well, there were worse cats he could have let touch him. At least this one was warm and soft, and he smelled sweet, like syrup and pine bark. Only then did Kier drop his gaze, bowing his head like he was ashamed, or guilty, or hurt. One of those - he never could quite tell apart the finer differences. "Thank you," he replied, and his soft voice was little more than a whisper. With his head dropped like this, he could see Foxpaw's toes flexing for a moment as he went through his mental aggression check. The corner of Kier's lips twitched into the smallest of smiles at that.
As Foxpaw told him his innocent philosophy, he couldn't have known Kier was listening quietly and filing it all away. Absolutely no reason to unsheathe your claws... That inadvertently touched on the half-formed seeds that had been growing slowly in Kier's mind, ones that leaned away from the unpredictable hassle of physical violence and gravitated towards the subtle surety of poison. Well, subtle to a certain point. After that point, it became a mad dash for air, for ground, for words. He liked that part. Where it all fell apart and he could stop waiting. Where he could suck in a quivering breath and relax for the finale.
"Cats aren't like that in the League," he told the other apprentice quietly, sitting down and darting a quick, nervous glance over his bony shoulders. He looked back at Foxpaw sheepishly, lowering his ears and feeling his cheeks flush in a slight blush. Well, that was a nice touch, he thanked his own body. Very helpful. "I wish they were. They're violent and cruel. I don't really have many friends, because they don't want to play, they just want to impress the older hunters." He brushed his paw over the pine needles as he spoke, eyes downcast and voice soft and sorrowful. He was aware of how his own ribs stuck out and was thankful for how pitiful they made him look at that moment. Kier was sickly, too, but in a different way to Foxpaw: in the way a dogged survivor was sickly, malnourished and bony and with their stomach on fire, but oh, god, they would keep dragging themselves along until they or everyone else was dead or conquered, whichever came first.
He looked up shyly. "Would you mind if I stayed a bit longer here before I went home? My dad won't care either way. You could- you could show me around, maybe." He smiled, small and soft.
"Oh," he meowed in response, tilting his head. "I guess that isn't too surprising to me." It wasn't. He'd heard the same things about the League as any other good clan cat did, although his parents both tried to shield him from the reality that not all clans were nice for as long as possible. "They were like that in NightClan, too," he then added, his tail twitching at its tip. "They all wanted to be at the top of the world, kicking out as many cats from under you as you could. There are better paths to what you want." He loved NightClan, and to an extent, he missed being there sometimes, but he much preferred the SummerClan cats. In NightClan, the fact that he didn't strike first would be seen as a weakness. They were soldiers there. Foxpaw was not a soldier. No, even now, although his full warrior training had been mostly done, he had given up the idea of fighting. The garden keeper apprentice's tail flicked.
At his request, any hint of anxiety that had still rested in Foxpaw's eyes were gone, replaced instead with a shining silver. "I thought you'd never ask," he meowed with a nod. The fact that Kier-kun wanted to spend more time with him suggested that he, in fact, had not been too up front. This put his mind at ease. No longer worried that he had overstepped, he relaxed back into himself. "There are lots of places that I can show you, as long as we keep kinda quiet about it. I'm ... sure this isn't supposed to be happening right now, but a lot of things in my life aren't supposed to be happening right now, but they are, so I don't really care. So, as long as you're okay with that, I can show you all the places that my cousins showed me the first day I was here! They really are quite beautiful, even this late into the year." He seemed to be babbling, but he tended to do that sometimes. "This way," he then meowed, before slipping deeper in the territory towards the garden.
"What brought you all the way from Primal Instinct?" he asked curiously, his voice lacking any hint of suspicion.
For a moment - for one brief, strange, confusing moment - Kier felt overwhelmingly sad. Grief-stricken, like his chest was too small to hold enough air and his legs were going to give out and everything was utterly, suddenly meaningless. He had a flash of a different life, one in a place like SummerClan, where he didn't have to be this, where he could heal and get better and stop the ceaseless march having the wrong cats for siblings and an enabler for a father had set him on when he was just a kit. Where he could be safe, where he could pry open his ribcage into something kinder, softer, prettier. Where the pain he was in every single day of his life, the desperate agony, would soothed and finally be stopped. Where he could be a friend to someone like Foxpaw, where he could live safely and happily, where he could feel the sun and smell the flowers and-and fall in love, maybe, one day.
And then Kier's hatred crashed down upon the grief, the daydream. All the softness of the young tom was set upon with savage teeth and subdued, muzzled, threatened with being torn apart. He wasn't one of them. He never would be. He was darker; there was no sunshine inside him the way there was in Foxpaw. (There was); there wouldn't be soon. "I agree," he replied in that quiet, breathy voice.
I thought you'd never ask. Kier beamed a smile, raising his head slightly like he was daring to let himself relax, to be hopeful, to be happy. But they are, so I don't really care. He filed that away; defiant. "Of course!" he said excitedly, a little too loud and a little too eager. His ears blushed red. "I mean, of course, if you want," he repeated a little more calmly, ears falling back in embarrassment. He smiled. When Foxpaw began to lead the way, Kier bounded after him, falling in beside him and looking around at the dark territory with wide eyes.
"Oh, I was exploring," he explained happily, drawing a little more out of his shell. "It's so easy to just get sucked into life there, y'know, and I don't want that - I wanna see everything else. I don't want to... to just blindly believe everything they tell me. I wanna see it for myself and make my own decisions about things. They wanna tell you that-that mouse is bad or something, you know, but I don't wanna believe that until I've tried it for myself. I wanna see all the Clans before I just believe that they're all meant to be my enemies, or that we're better than them. I wanna see all the flowers and trees that they tell me makes you weak for liking. I wanna- I wanna see everything!" He did a little skip in the air, and then realised how excited he sounded, how much he'd been rambling. He ducked his head, cheeks hot and ears pinning back. "Sorry," he told Foxpaw softly. "Do you... Does that make sense?"
