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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11.06.2022 The site has been transformed into an archive. Thank you for all the memories here!
Here on Classic we understand that sometimes life can get difficult and we struggle. We may need to receive advice, vent, know that we are not alone in our difficult times, or even just have someone listen to what's going on in our lives. In light of these times, we have created the support threads below that are open to all of our members at any time.
When he'd been tasked with a job, it was always the same routine; he would sneak into his target's most private recesses, slit their throats however he could, and start his next mission with nary a second thought about what he'd just done. Borders were something to be broken into, not something he had a duty to uphold.
But now Cradlegrave had responsibilities, and he couldn't very well be walking all across the forest and turning SwiftClan into a Clan of war criminals. Which was a shame, because he rather liked all the walking he was doing. He'd excused himself from his Clan for a few days on the grounds of scouting for potential new territory; in truth, he'd just wanted a little taste of the good old days, exhausting himself until he could see each rib thorough his pelt, feel the pads of his paws burn from overuse. It was working out...alright, he would say.
Before, he'd always travelled with a purpose in mind. Now, his travel was exactly that—travel for the sake of travel, and nothing more. It cleared his head, but made the memories clearer too.
@ian how many more threads can i name after lyrics from the hit broadway musical chess without getting a callout post
bold of you to expect anyone to recognize the lyrics as from chess
Aspenstar also enjoyed wandering, which often left her out on her own. The stresses of NightClan often meant that she just wanted moments where she could think to herself, without the pressing stress of the rest of the group. It wasn't that the leadership was weighing on her. In fact, she was quite happy with how things were going with the clan. With a deputy in place, there was a whole lot less of her running around. Still, she enjoyed her moments of quiet, particularly right as the sun set over the horizon. Despite being fully nocturnal, there was something about the day fading into the night that renewed her strength.
She glanced at the sky once more. Golden hour had been eclipsed into a soft grey, the last bits of light barely hanging on. She found herself smiling slightly; once again, the cold day was once again settling into night.
It was then that she noticed an unfamiliar scent, and she let out an irritated sigh. Hopefully this wouldn't be another cat falling from the sky. She couldn't do that twice in one week. The scent was towards the rogue border, too, which meant unfortunately, she had to deal with it quickly. Her pace quickened until she reached the border, from which she could see the outline of the feline. She drank the air deeply, before flicking her tail.
"I haven't seen a SwiftClan cat out this way in a while," she called to him. Well, really, she hadn't seen a SwiftClan cat anywhere lately, but that was neither here nor there.
Cradlegrave looked up to see who was calling out to him. Back when he was still a newbie in SwiftClan, he would’ve frozen up at the thought of a conversation that he hadn’t already planned through in his head. Now, he understood the benefits of being open with one’s peers, Clanmates or not.
“We’re comin’ back soon enough,” Cradlegrave replied, dipping his head and padding closer. “Not sure where, but back to the forest. Sorry ‘bout this, but news ain’t exactly in the habit of travellin’ fast when we’re so far out. You’re the NightClan...” Leader, he wanted to say, but her name escaped him. Nice one, Cradlegrave. Way to make a great first impression.
"Well, you may offer Beestar," she meowed, emphasizing that she knew the fellow leader's name, despite the fact that SwiftClan had been so far away (probably because it seemed like Chim had connections just about everywhere), "my welcome back to the forest. If you need a place to stay for the first few days back in the forest while you find a permanent home, you are welcome in NightClan." It was mostly an empty promise, but she would be interested in meeting SwiftClan.
"My name is Aspenstar," she meowed, her tail flicking casually across the ground. "If you've come all of the way from... whereever you've come from, you must be tired. Care to join me? I was just about to hunt, I can get you something if you'd like.....?" she meowed, hoping that he would offer his name.
"Who's Beestar?" Cradlegrave asked. Then he remembered that probably wasn't the best thing to say to a NightClanner who likely had no way of knowing the SwiftClan in-jokes, so he muttered a quick just kidding under his breath and cleared his throat. "SwiftClan'd be itchin' to take you up on the offer--well, probably not, actually," he said, "since we're comin' from the other side, 'n all that. Still, offer considered." His throat itched, as did the resulting silence. This was the most he'd said to anyone in over a week.
"Wouldn't mind joinin' you on your trip, though," he said a little too brightly, "if the offer's still standin', I mean."
She raised a brow at the tom with a tilt of her head. She opened her mouth, but she found it closing slightly after a moment. She probably shouldn't ask, it was probably better not to know. After a moment, though she nodded. "Offer's still standing. What suits your fancy? General forest animals around here, and maybe I could catch a fish? Probably not, so maybe we shouldn't even try with that one."
Cradlegrave nodded. “I ain’t never seen a fish before I came here, you know that?” he said. “Being from the desert ‘n all, I s’pose the fish don’t like it there much. Ain’t no one in this whole forest worse at catching ‘em than me, so don’t worry ‘bout it. That said, anythin’s fine really.”
There was a brief silence for a while, before Cradlegrave spoke again; usually he wasn’t particularly eager to fill up a nice, comforting silence with awkward niceties, but apparently the majority of these forest cats actually preferred the niceties, and Cradlegrave wasn’t about to take any chances. “This is a real lovely home you got here,” he said, and only half-sounded like he was lying—which was good for him. “Heard you guys are...nocturnal? Used to do a bit of that myself, sort of.”
cradlegrave’s accent-not-accent is genuinely awful LMAO I’m not ‘murican enough also should something more interesting happen in this thread i don’t have any ideas but so far we have getting attacked by a violent chimp and exploring a haunted house and unleashing tarantula hell on the nightclan camp
Aspenstar smiled at the admission. "Now, I feel like I have to prove you wrong," she meowed with a slight smirk. The last time she'd been fishing, it had been with a warrior, and she'd almost promptly fallen into the water. Perhaps she'd make a similar mistake this time. It would be entertaining enough if she did. "The water's this way," she continued, before taking the lead and going deeper into the territory towards the waterfall, one of her personal favorite places in the whole land. It was calm, the water burbled but did not scream as it fell across the rockfall. The water river connected to it was probably the best spot in the territory to fish, if you knew how to fish. "Fishing's all about patience and quick maneuvering, neither of which I'm particularly good at," she meowed to him before sitting along the waterside.
She then smiled. "Thank you, Cradlegrave," she responded, her eyes flashing momentarily with pride. "It isn't much, but it's all I've ever known." She then glanced back to the water with a nod. "Most of us are, yes. Occassionally, someone breaks the tradition, but it isn't common." Aspenstar shrugged. "Sort of?"
"Well, I got the patience part down," Cradlegrave murmured, mostly to himself. He was fine with waiting out a cat with a bounty on their head, but doing it to a fish seemed...cruel, in a certain way. Cats could be evil. Fish never were.
...Why was he thinking about this?
"The day gets hot in the desert," he explained, "so sometimes it's better to travel in the night, if you wanna avoid heatstroke. I used to track cats for a livin', so I would keep goin' through the night to catch them up." He looked around. "You guys aren't livin' in a desert though, so I guess this is all kinda pointless talk."
She flicked her ear at his response about patience. He was an odd fellow, she was deciding as they interacted more. She supposed she couldn't blame him, though; she had always been a bit... peculiar herself.
They neared the river, and she waved her tail for him to sit as well. "Ah," she meowed. "I've always wondered what a desert would be like. The closest thing I've ever seen is SummerClan, and that's not really anything close. I guess when SunClan burned their whole territory down like the lot of idiots they are, that was close to a desert because it was an ashen wasteland, but not quite the same." She chuckled a little to herself, athough she was fully aware that she had no idea what his political leanings were in terms of one of the powerhouses of the forest.
"Tracking cats, means your nose is strong, no?" she asked, before glancing at the water. It rippled slightly, although she didn't see any fish quite yet. "Must be useful in SwiftClan, to be able to tell where you've been and where your going, no?" She was... stunningly bad at small talk.
"As strong as I could get it," Cradlegrave shrugged, watching the surface of the water ripple. "To be honest, we're not doin' a lot of movin' these days. Think we're movin' somewhere else soon, though. Oh, is that--a thing?" he asked, reaching out with his paw and pointing to a small fish darting through the water, coming their way.
Her ears perked and her mismatched gaze focused intensely on the water. "See, this is the part I'm no good at. You've gotta strike at juuuuuuuuuust..... the right......... time!" she meowed as she sent her paw in the water. It wasn't quite curled enough, though, to cuff the fish out of the water, and she felt its scales glide by her paw pad. She let out a sigh, before glancing at him. "Maybe you'll be better? I didn't get it until my fourth time, and obviously, still not too consistent."
"Mmm." Cradlegrave gave a noncommittal grunt. "Doubt it." Still, he let his body still for a few seconds as he saw another fish swimming their way. In a few flashes of movement, the fish was caught. "Huh," he muttered, holding it in place on the riverbank with his paw. "Guess I stand corrected."
Aspenstar might not have beat herself up for her inability to catch the fish if he, too, would have struggled. She could have commiserated with him about how irritatingly difficult it could be to get the timing just right. Unforunately for her, that was not at all what happened. Heat flushed through her cheeks. He'd been able to do it so easily...
Oh for StarClan's sake she thought, now I have to catch one.
Famous last words... or... well... thoughts.
"Good job!" she choked out, before alerting her gaze back to the water. There was no time to spare, and soon, a very large fish approached. It was much larger than the other, and if Aspenstar couldn't catch the first one, it was probably a no brainer that she wouldn't be able to catch this one. Still, she tried, and with a grunt, she sent her paw flying towards it.
Except... it was stronger than her, and she felt herself being dragged into the river as it tried to get away.
Cradlegrave blinked, watching the leader of the esteemed NightClan get dragged into a river by an oversized goldfish. "Oh, hell," he muttered, and wished he was anywhere but here--not just because he was now obligated to help, but also because he knew he would never be able to meet Aspenstar in the eye after this. "Grab onto my paw," he grunted, reaching out an arm.
She was eager to take the paw, although part of her thought drowning in the river right then and there would save her from mortal embarassment. Her instincts prevented her from doing that, though, at least not yet, if only because she knew if she let herself drown to save face she would only have eight more lives to live with the shame of a fishing accident being what took her out.
Poor, poor Aspen. The worst case scenario was definitely in her future. However, for now, she was able to find her way to the surface to cling onto Cradlegrave. "I can't.... get a grip... with my back paws..." she coughed, demonstrating that she'd already gotten at least a mouthful of water.
Cradlegrave pulled with all his might, and eventually succeeded in doing something; perhaps it was a little too much force, because he suddenly tumbled back with Aspenstar on top of him. The pair rolled like that for what felt like forever, eventually landing in a heap of limbs an embarrassingly far distance away from the riverbank. Cradlegrave groaned and laid his head back on the grass, shutting his eyes. How was he even supposed to face Aspenstar after this?
She sputtered the water out of her lungs as she collided into the earth. Her chests heaved as she tried to un-drown herself, something she did with only questionable success. After a moment of hacking and ejecting as much water as she could, she let out a loud groan. "You should have let me drown," she meowed in a weak but still indignant voice as her ear pinned to her head. "Would be better than having to look you in the eye right now."
Cradlegrave rolled over to the side, trying to avoid Aspenstar hacking up the entire river. "I could've done that but I don't think your Clan would appreciate me much," he muttered, shaking the moisture out of his fur as best he could. "Might get put on a list or something." He was quiet for a few more seconds, gaze darting over to the riverbank. "I think the fish I caught found its way back to its home," he noted, eyeing the empty spot where his fish had once laid, "so I guess we're even stevens on successful fish-catchin's."
