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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Truthfully, Nightclan had been the worst possible choice for Mothscatter to settle down in. And though it held charm in their strange ways of life, entertainment in the violence that had only grown since he wandered into the pine forest, and the only cat he took the time to talk to — Silksiren — his paws were itching to get out. It struck a nerve. He had come there to settle down, at least a little, to dwindle some time away before he eventually moved on (he always did, there was no staying in one place for long, not with him), and yet escaping was near impossible. Someone always seemed to be watching, listening, waiting for the moment they could bring something back to their superiors just to throw them on the interrogation stand. Mothscatter didn't want to be next, as much as he was sure he could wiggle his way out of it. He wasn't unaccustomed with being on the bottom, he had lived the impoverished city life, been the beggar, the worker, the thief, talked to those who were on his level but in denial and those above him. It had been a lonely life, he thought he might have left it behind, but he was on the stage once more, performing on instinct. He hadn't heard wind of the clans around them, though he knew they were there, but from personal experience he was sure they were the same.
Mothscatter liked altitude. He liked the feeling of being high up, of being so close to the sky he could breathe it in. The tree house became like a second home due to its location. The caves creeped him out. Either creepily open or painfully tight, and he hated feeling trapped. An inescapable maze. He wondered why he was there in the first place. What had Nightclan done for him? He should leave. He would, eventually, sooner than expected, though not now.
He jumped down the last prong of the ladder, landing amidst the growing ferns and pine needles that marked the base of the tree that the treehouse sat in. He expected a simple waltz back to camp, or perhaps a detour to some interesting, unknown part of the territory, or maybe his paws would carry him to the border against his will. Wherever the wind took him. He almost gave into the idea before a figure caught his eye, and he let out a silent groan. Every time. It was like they could all read his thoughts. His mood soured, but he walked towards the cat anyway, putting on his best relaxed, lopsided grin, something close to charming but not quite.
fox this was supposed to be like two paragraphs shorter DKJFKD
Ever since the cat-hunting patrol, Leveretpaw had been walking on eggshells. He'd already been nervous about putting a paw out of line, about ending up on trial — but that had been just childish anxiety; he hadn't had any real reason to worry. Now, he did. And nothing had happened. He hadn't been arrested yet, hadn't been given any reason to worry — Snowblister was as gruff in her classes as she always was, and he just sat there anxiously beside Oleanderpaw being a know-it-all and tried to disappear; Kier was as friendly and deliberately charming to him as he was to all the apprentices, doting attention and inside jokes on the new generation to make them feel included, to make them loyal. Nothing was wrong. He was silent with Snowblister, but he always knew the answer, quiet and mumbled, when she called on him; he was just as quiet with Kier, smiling like it was painful to do so and casting glances up from the ground to the leader's mismatched eyes until it was safe to scuttle away. He was good.
But it was coming.
The leader and deputy never gave anything away until it was too late. They liked to let you wonder if you were safe, if they'd turned the other cheek, if they remembered the infraction at all. You didn't know until you were up on the podium. It was sick.
He was out by himself, grateful at least for this privilege of being a Reporter: to breathe the fresh air, to be alone with his silence. And then it was disturbed by a figure pushing his way through the ferns.
"Oh—" he exclaimed in a panic, fumbling backwards. "Sorry! I didn't know anyone was here — I'll go." He turned to do just that, even got a few paces in. But then the full weight of his training sank down into his legs like poisonous lead and stilled them. For a long moment, he stood there tortured. And then, finally, he slowly turned back to look at him, looking like he were no more than a puppet with his strings lost beyond the tops of the pines. "You..." His voice was quiet, guilty, like he was ashamed to even say the words, however merciful his softening of the script drilled into them in their classes was. "You're an Inferior, aren't you? You really shouldn't be out of camp by yourself. It's against the..." He looked down, brushed his paw against the earth, like he couldn't look at Mothscatter when he said the final words. "Against the laws." Technically, despite their difference in age, Leveretpaw was his superior; that strange responsibility curled and roiled in his gut — he should reprimand him, should take him back to camp and report to Kier, to Snowblister. But his paws stayed still; his expression remained anxiously indecisive. Miserable. Mothscatter would have once outranked him, when being a warrior meant anything at all. But it didn't anymore. Leveretpaw didn't want to report him — he'd only made sure he was assigned to Reporter Class because Oleanderpaw was in it and he wanted to be with her.
He could tell the kid ('kid' as if Mothscatter was ancient compared to him, as if he wasn't just a kid himself) was hesitant, reluctant, as he turned back around, but he couldn't help the twinge of annoyance that throbbed just behind his temples. He kept it to himself, of course, smile twisting ever slightly into a darkly amused one, as if he dared Leveretpaw to go on. You're an Inferior, aren't you? His face dropped as he let out a sigh, something akin to an irritated groan. He had entirely forgotten all about the law, or perhaps it was intentional carelessness, because despite the fact that he was content to roll if someone said roll, if only for his own gain, he was a free spirit above all else. If it didn't benefit him, he didn't get too wrapped up, he could let loose and ignore things.
"Don't get too hung up on that nonsense," he waved the apprentice off with a simple motion of his paw, "relax a little. You look like you're about to crawl out of your skin." His expression softened, became more sympathetic — he could almost relate, though he was sure their circumstances were different, and he could see how such an environment may affect the youth of the clan. He hadn't spoken up about it, of course, had hardly been concerned until he was faced with Leveretpaw (it was normal for all he knew, it was clan life), but now his perspective shifted. The air felt suddenly awkward, constricting.
Moth moved closer to him, wrapping an arm around his shoulders and pulling him closer, "listen, if you forget this I'll. . ." he blanked for a moment, "I'll show you something cool. I don't know, not really," he let go, scooting away. He'd never been fond of much physical contact. "As much as I think being put on a podium and told to dance to defend my 'honour to Nightclan'," he put on a mocking voice, "I haven't particularly been in the mood lately, so it would be nice if we kept this on the downlow, alright?" He gave a small, faint laugh just to ease some tension.
The reassurance didn't comfort him; if anything, it made everything worse. Leveretpaw eyed him with a look of pure, uneasy terror on his face as the tom talked, mouth slightly open and turned down. "That nonsense," he replied, and for the first time he sounded something like a grown-up — albeit a terrified one. If Mothscatter didn't understand the gravity of the situation, it was his duty — desperate and fearful — to make him, to protect him, to force him to see reason: this wasn't something flippant to brush off, to laugh at; this was very real and very deadly. He took a small step forward, eyes not leaving the Inferior's, but he wanted to step back. His voice shook with fear, but there was something else there, too — conviction. That this was the way it was and there was no use torturing themselves wishing it wasn't; no use making the hurt greater by dreaming of other places, other things. They had to comply; it was the only way to survive. And Leveretpaw had become a guilty survivor made sick and tearful by his own submission. "Is the way the world is now. Getting hung up on it," and now he sounded slightly hysterical, "is the only option there is."
When Mothscatter looped his paw around him, Leveretpaw pulled a startled, uncertain face and pulled back, though that didn't do anything to dislodge him. His eyes flicked up to him in wary, tortured confusion. And when the other tom's charm deflated and he moved away, that uncertainty only grew on Leveretpaw's face; he didn't move from where he was still leaning slightly back, eyeing him like he was about to do something else bold and inexplicable. In a world of fear so constant that the feeling of anxious sickness never left you, you got used to the mediocrity of terror — to be faced with something new amid it all had startled him more than executions did. Maybe it was that foreign, tucked away hope being scratched at. That almost-forgotten feeling of normalcy. "You think I would report you?" he asked at last, eyes wide with horror like he'd just worked out what Mothscatter was getting at, like that wasn't in his very title. And now he became desperate to separate himself from the terror of his Class. "I wouldn't — I would never. I'm—I'm probably lined up for trial because I won't. Don't worry about you having to dance to defend your honour — I think you'll get to watch me do it." He laughed, lips tugging back slightly in a pained smile that felt unfamiliar after all these moons, but it all just looked and sounded agonised, fearful, unpracticed. Like a ventriloquist's doll whose face had cracked from disuse. But else was there to do but laugh about it?
Well, he didn't laugh about it, really — he was more of the lie awake from dusk to dawn in terror about it type. But begging wouldn't help, not till he was on trial — if you tried too soon, Kier would just give you a blank look and a harmless, frowning smile and ask, whatever for? So he had to laugh. He had to laugh or he'd go insane waiting. He almost wished it would just happen so at least he'd know. That was half the reason they did it, he'd thought, lying awake wide-eyed and miserable while Oleanderpaw snored beside him in the dreary light of midday. They were so manic with fear by the time they put them on the podium that they'd confess out of pure relief to finally be there, to finally have it all out in the open. The trial became an exhalation. And once you started talking, it was so easy to babble your way to confessing to something you didn't do, to dying for something you weren't guilty of, because it was too late to backpedal, too hard to do so once your mind was all twisted by confusion, too bewildering when Kier was giving you that smile; all because of that bit of relief. It was crueller torture than the bloodletting, so innocent and so easy to deny. We never did that, they could say, and you couldn't say they did. Maybe you were mad.
Still, Mothscatter tried to brush it off, if only to ease the apprentice's anxiety — which, to be fair, he should have noticed by now that it was only making it worse. He shrugged, "I guess so, back there," but the words weren't particularly sincere. "But right now, just. . . calm down. It's only me here." He looked around as if making a show of proving his point, turning back to Leveretpaw with a touch of sympathy.
I would never. He wasn't sure why the kid was so. . . offended? by the suggestion, it was supposed to be his job, after all, was it not? Mothscatter tried not to dabble in it much at all, even though he was technically supposed to, despite his Inferior title, or whatever it was called. It would move him up, he knew, but truthfully he preferred minding his own business over anything else. He gave an amused twitch of his whiskers, unfitting for the situation, "I'm sure you'll be fine. But, hey, we've got a deal, yeah? We won't tell on each other?" He laughed this time, "tattling. Like kits. But let it be known that my sister was the tattletale, not me."
Sitting back, he let his shoulders relax, tried to make himself as nonthreatening as possible — Leveretpaw was so high strung, he almost didn't know what to do — and gave a faint smile. "Mothscatter." Though he expected their conversation to come a close any moment now, the interaction had solidified the fact that, despite being able to fit into the crowd if he so pleased, he didn't have the energy to do so. Retirement. Who said it would be so messy.
As Mothscatter tried to reassure him, it only seemed, for a moment, to make it worse — Leveretpaw looked agonised, like any second he was going to turn and bolt into the undergrowth. But then, slowly, he settled, his shoulders visibly, painfully relaxing and a breath wisping out of his mouth. His heart kept pounding — he didn't feel safe — but he forced himself to breathe, to calm. Tattling. Like kits. He let out a light laugh, relaxing further — and then immediately looked guilty, fearful. "Y-you have a sister?" he finally managed to ask, the words coming out sounding squeezed and physically painful.
Glancing over his shoulder, Leveretpaw suddenly shot forward like he'd seen something in the shadows and bounded past Mothscatter, haring up the swaying wooden footbridge of the treehouse and disappearing into it. A few moments later, his head reappeared over the side of the wooden slats, looking down at Mothscatter with guilty embarrassment. "I'll feel better up here," he explained sheepishly, barely raising his voice despite the distance between them. "No ears in the trees. Probably." He let out another weak laugh and looked around uneasily at the pine trees, just to check. Then he disappeared back over the ledge. "Oh!" He reappeared. "Leveretpaw. You probably don't know, 'cause I was a kit until recently and I only really hang out with Oleanderpaw. Do you know Oleanderpaw? She always tells me to go away 'cause she wants to be popular and the popular ones like Ratpaw and Bumblebeepaw," he let out a high, fearful sound that might have been a laugh, "don't like me so much — but I think I'm still her best friend." He suddenly frowned, looking into the middle distance like he was trying to work out why he was telling Mothscatter this, and then made to disappear again. Before he did, he suddenly jolted to a stop, called down again, "Leveretpaw," and then vanished, quietly muttering, "did I say that already?"
Y-you have a sister? He shrugged, admittedly a terrible response. "Somewhere, yes." He stopped as Leveretpaw shot past him, changing course from where he would have left to stare up at him in the treehouse, head tilted for a moment. Mothscatter climbed up after him, slowly and leisurely, meeting him at the top with a grin.
"I don't mind, I like it up here. I was just here." He sat down, extending a claw to graze it across the wooden floor idly, making messy shapes that didn't exactly make sense. "No idea," he shifted to lay down, continuing his drawings, "doesn't sound like much of a friend though." His words held a slight humour to them, though he gave the apprentice a brief, indiscernible look. He could see the cogs turning behind his eyes, the realization that he'd foolishly overshared, though Mothscatter didn't particularly mind. He found it entertaining. One wouldn't catch him sharing anymore than he needed to — except he hadn't really told anyone in Nightclan he had a sister before, and he hadn't exactly. . . meant to. He supposed they were in the same boat, then.
"Mothscatter. Did I?" He reintroduced himself, tossed the question back at him as an answer in and of itself. "Leveret. Like the baby hare? What happens when you're an adult? Doesn't seem very fitting." His words were lightly teasing.
Leveretpaw didn't reply to the disparaging comment about Oleanderpaw, feeling faintly defensive of her, faintly irritated — not for himself, but because no one knew her, no one knew that the cat she was when no one else was looking was... Well, still quite mean, but less so. She wouldn't beat up a Superior for him, or an Executioner, or a Reporter, but she might go for an Inferior. Maybe. It didn't matter — he liked their strange friendship. And he didn't need to explain that to someone who wouldn't understand. He lay down a little way from Mothscatter, looking slightly more awkward and a great deal more boney. His knees stuck up in the air from where his hindlegs were folded, all knobbly and bony. He was taller than Bumblebeepaw, taller than most of the other apprentices, but that height made him self-conscious and hunched, and he was similarly delicate-looking to Bumblebeepaw.
"Yes, like the baby hare..." He replied, and it was the closest to snapping that Leveretpaw would come, his ears flicking slightly back. But he settled guiltily a second later, his ears rising and his voice softening again. "Oh, well, my birth name was much worse," he explained, touching his forepaws together with soft little movements and looking between them and Mothscatter. "It was very..." He looked for the right word. Feminine wasn't it. "Cutesy," he finished at last, and, if it weren't for the vaguely sick expression on his face, he would have sounded pleased. "I don't want to... You know, I didn't want to completely abandon the—the—is there a name for rabbits and hares? Like, like how we're felines? Are they related? Anyway, my mother chose that name so I didn't want... And Leveret was close enough. Sounded more..." He looked down, embarrassed shame creeping over him as he brushed his paw round and round on the dusty wood, forming a pattern. "Manly." He was silent for a little while. "It's the 'v' sound, isn't it, you hear it and you go, oh yes that's masculine. Sharp sounds." He made a 't' sound against the roof of his mouth, still not looking at Mothscatter but sounding a little more confident. "Sounds like velvet, really. I think that's what most people think it means. Something with velvet. Leverets are very velvety. But it's—" He shrugged, slightly self-conscious again. "I like it."
