[Insidious]

P I K E K I T
- - - - - -

He would never understand why he was expected to sleep when he wasn’t tired, but perhaps, with time, the others would learn that it would take more than their words to put him in his place and keep him out of trouble. Having let his eyelids flutter closed with all the innocence and the fatigue of a kitten back from playing, he feigned a light, rhythmic rise and fall of his chest until Roselight rested her head, satisfied, and went to sleep, unsuspecting that her mischevious son would dare to deceive her and scramble out of the nursery the second that an opening was presented.

The older cats were easily fooled, and it did little to quell the tiny kitten’s already formulating sense of self, tail arched proudly over-top his black furred spine as he trotted away from the camp. The fact that he was expected to stay inside of the nursery at all times, sometimes having the privilege to play outside with his sisters, only increased his desire to disobey. He didn’t like the rules. He didn’t like their strictness. He especially didn’t like that he was actually expected to listen to them. With everyone fast asleep, nobody could tell him that what he was doing was dangerous, and he took that as permission.

Away from camp, everything somehow seemed so much bigger. The kitten’s eyes were round with awe, unaware that his paws were leading him towards the border with NightClan, his sense of smell not yet attuned to the way that the scents differentiated around him. Only when it began to feel a little soggy underfoot did he realize that he might have traveled too far, and maybe even gotten himself a little lost, but he, of course, was too prideful to admit that he might have made a mistake, and so he pressed onward with renewed determination.

Until he couldn’t press onward anymore.

He nearly face-planted into the disgusting muck when he tried to lift his paw, his limb sucked right back into the sludge, not nearly strong enough to dislodge himself from the mess he had gotten himself into without some assistance. Pikekit glanced around cautiously, torn between calling out for help, as was the sensible thing to do, or holding his breath and trying to free himself on his own. It would be so embarrassing if someone had to help him; he couldn’t imagine what his parents would say when they found out, or what they would do to him later when they woke up and he wasn’t where he was supposed to be. That was all the encouragement he needed to make the wrong decision, reluctantly pulling at his limbs and only making a bigger mess of things in the process, the rest of his body succumbing to the sludge and causing him to sink a little farther than was comfortable. The kitten arched his neck, nose wrinkling in distaste, his pinkish underside now coloured a gross shade of blackish-brown.

No matter what. No matter what he would not ask anyone for help.

- - - - - -

Tags: Fawn
Word Count: 510.

[Fawn]

[smear:663399]Hollykit[/smear:e61985]
3 Moons. She-Kit. NightClan.

I got the eye of the tiger, a fighter, dancing through the fire

---

As a general rule, Hollykit did not leave camp by herself. It wasn't the absence of bravery, or the obeying of Clan Law, it was simply a matter of numbers; Hollykit did not like being the sole guilty party if she was committed to breaking a rule, she preferred to have accomplices. Though she could take credit for being the ring leader (as if she could be a follower), the black she-cat wouldn't go down alone. This adherence to the phrase 'misery loves company' hadn't gone amiss all of a sudden; in fact, Hollykit had gone out this morning with the full intention of sticking with a group of patrolling warriors, managing to creep along like a tiny ownerless shadow in the wake of Nightpaw, her father's student, and Hollowcry, her father's friend, for lack of a better word. Her vocabulary wasn't sophisticated enough to understand the concept of and utilize 'frienemies' in a sentence.

Unfortunately, Hollykit hadn't considered how difficult it would be to keep up with the fully formed patrollers, with four long limbs propelling them forward at a rate that seemed strenuous for Hollykit to keep up with after more than of fox lengths. Slow down! She remembered resisting the urge to screech at them from the wet, low-growing vegetation to the point of biting down on her tongue, having to creep along in their wake was making her already slow progress even slower.

It wasn't long before she lost the group entirely, the hum of insects heard instead of the faint, sucking tap of paws traipsing through the murkier parts of NightClan's territory. Just then, the 3 moon old kitten was given a sense of smallness, as if by finally noticing just how large her little corner of the world was, she felt tiny by comparison. What was it her father said when things didn't go his way? Oh, right. Foxdung. It was a dirty word, but this was a dirty place and she was in a foul mood, if ever there was an appropriate time to use it, now seemed like that time.

"Foxdung." Mewed Hollykit, exercising her right to curse without reprimand as she glanced around in all directions, looking for any kind of familiar, floral marker. Territory tours were given to apprentices only, and her excursions beyond the camp had been literally just outside of camp, in full view of the medicine cat's den, Hollykit had overestimated her own attention to detail. None of this looked familiar.

Well, that wasn't necessarily true. Everything looked the same; the mud puddle here was the same as the one back in camp, and that clump of lichen strangling that rock over there wasn't particularly unusual either. Without any way of knowing which way was the correct way, Hollykit chose at random, reasoning with herself that if something else didn't find her first, she'd likely wander into another border patrol. Just go where the scents are strongest... This was difficult for the untrained kitten, but she wasn't going to simply sit around and pout until Daddy came to rescue her; walking without direction but with purpose, the black she-cat ran into unexpected company.

Her eyes widened like a moth stretching out its wings after a rainstorm, Hollykit freezing. Who was THAT? The paralysis of shock wore off as she watched him struggle unsuccessfully against the muck, a mrrow of laughter bubbling up from her chest and was let out loud and clear, not unlike the pockets of swamp-stink he was releasing each time he struggled. "You look stuck, need any help?" Green eyes met the defiant bluish-green of the stranger, hers glinting with undisguised mirth at his expense.
He looked so funny!

---

'Cause I am a champion and you’re gonna hear me roar

Word Count: 627 Words
Tags: Insidious

[Insidious]

P I K E K I T
- - - - - -

Sinking a little farther into the sludge with each struggle, a little deeper with each attempted flutter of his trapped legs, on the verge of dying before he even got to experience what it really meant to live, he found himself feeling overwhelmingly bored. There was no greater inconvenience for the blackish-pink kitten than being stuck in one place; he didn’t know how much danger he was putting himself in by squirming, and nor did he care, which was made clear when he continued to squirm, and therefore continued to sink, with absolutely no regard for the fact that in a matter of minutes he would no longer be able to breathe once his mouth and nose had successfully been submerged.

The sound of a kitten’s laughter, meant to mock him, surely, likely hadn’t intended to be the one thing that could save him, but there wasn’t anything else in this world that would have been quite so quick to make Pikekit stop in his tracks, vibrant eyes wide in search of the source of the creature that dared to make him the subject of their entertainment. There was nothing funny about him, or anything that he did, and he’d make sure that his unexpected company recalled that single piece of information even before their own name. At least, he would if he could actually move his paws.

Her slick coat of black was hard to pick out in the dark, but he wouldn’t have missed her eyes which he held onto with an edge of accusation in his own, as if somehow it made sense to him to blame her for all of this. If their positions had been reversed, then he would have been overjoyed to make a joke at her expense, but their positions sadly weren’t reversed, and that meant that he wanted nothing more than for her to shut her mouth and help him without needing to be asked. Stubbornly, Pikekit tilted his chin towards the evening sky, refusing to look at her for a second more until she wiped the contemptuous look off of her face. “As if you could be any help at all.” He had meant for his words to sting, to make him out in her eyes as someone that was better left alone, but underneath that there was the undeniable truth of his challenging her ability to be even the least bit useful.

- - - - - -

Tags: Fawn
Word Count: 402.

[Fawn]

[smear:663399]Hollykit[/smear:e61985]
3 Moons. She-Kit. NightClan.

I got the eye of the tiger, a fighter, dancing through the fire

---

“As if you could be any help at all.”

What? Hollykit's eyes rolled as if the entire weight of her sudden irritation towards him could be embodied in a single gesture, a flick of her tail striking the air as though to knock a fly out of the air. Her expression was clear, who do you think you are, stranger? the entitled she-kitten having met her match in the rude tom stuck in the mud and unaware of how treacherous his situation actually was. Tapping into the same vein of meanness that had apparently been transferred genetically from her father, Hollykit considered raising her tail like a banner, turning around, kicking mud on him and sauntering back the way she'd come with a silky little 'See you later, then~' every intention of letting him wallow and think about his actions. However, Pikekit's challenge had not gone over her head, and this resulted in a narrowing of leaf-green eyes and a careful step closer, Hollykit turning her gaze upon the stretch of muck he had fallen into - noticing with a hair-rising thrill on the back of her neck that he was sinking a little too quickly.

"Stop struggling, frogbrain! You're going to die!" Whether these words had quite the dramatic effect she was hoping for (perhaps his jaw would drop and he'd start groveling, maybe even apologize for being such a rude little bonehead and then proceed to beg her for assistance), Hollykit didn't stick around to find out; with a light, quick step, the black kitten darted into the foliage, reappearing with a wide strip of almost smooth, curving bark, flicking her jaw into the air as she gave it her best toss. It landed close enough to him while still near enough to her that it could act as a stepping stone; her nose wrinkled at the smell, now that she was close enough to get a full-blown whiff of it wreaking havoc against her scent glands. Hollykit crouched, sprang, and landed with almost perfect precision, but the edge of her foot got caught on the cold, gelatinous black ooze of the swamplands, a wet sucking noise produced as she yanked the limb free. "Yuck."

Turning haughty eyes upon the stranded kitten, Hollykit savored a few heartbeats of inactivity to gloat, and, her ego sated, she leaned forward to grasp onto his scruff with her teeth, intending to pull him onto the bark beside her; for all her noble intentions, however, the bark could not sustain her weight for very long, and she found herself sinking too, the dark sludge pooling around her paws and beginning to weigh her down. Hollykit gasped, letting go of Pikekit, her claws having gripped onto the bark with alarm.
"F-Foxdung," her ears flattened, eyes wide. Pikekit may not've known what all the fuss was about, but sinkholes was very much a fundamental part of any NightClan kit's education. Unfortunately, Hollykit could not remember how to get out of one, or if there even was a how. All she could remember was what would happen to them if they couldn't.

---

'Cause I am a champion and you’re gonna hear me roar

Word Count: 521 Words
Tags: Insidious

[Insidious]

P I K E K I T & R A Z O R S T A R
- - - - - -

He should have been able to admit to himself that a part of what the she-kitten had planned on doing was smart, but should have was a lot different from going to and so he regarded both her and the piece of bark in her mouth with little more than a curling lip. He hated accepting help, but he wasn’t quite so fish-brained that he’d let himself drown, so although as of now he refused to whisper any thank you’s or look at her like she was anything more than a major inconvenience, there was a little bit of excess hopefulness in his greenish-blue eyes that he wasn’t so quick to erase that she wouldn’t have been able to see it.

The fact that she would take the time to gloat while he was in a situation like this made his skin burn, and he had been on the verge of parting his tiny jaws to say as much until she moved to grab the scruff of his neck. He may have just been a kitten, but he had developed a big enough sense of manliness from his father that the idea of someone else (a female no less) that wasn’t his mother grabbing him around the neck, even to save his life, wasn’t something he would allow without showing at least a little of his discomfort. Having thrown the black kitten’s warning to the wind, trying to lift one of his paws so that he might smack her approaching mouth away from his neck, he had done nothing for himself but cause even more sinking which, he acknowledged with very mild regret, hadn’t been the most intelligent of ideas now that his saviour’s log was no longer a safe haven for her. She started to sink, and even though there was nothing good about what he had gotten himself into, and had dragged her into as well, he had been able to overlook their impending doom for the briefest of moments in which the expression on his face had been nothing short of smug because, even though they would both have to die because of it, he had been right in saying that she couldn’t have been any help at all.

“W-who’s that?” In the midst of their dire situation, Pikekit had taken it upon himself to take one last look around him, hoping that maybe he’d be able to memorize this place and take the picture with him to StarClan, but it was not just trees and vile mud that filled his vision, but instead a much larger cat with fur as black as his counterpart’s trudging towards them at a speed he couldn’t help but find a little intimidating. That was the same moment that another cat arrived and, to much of Pikekit’s satisfaction, it was someone familiar.

The smile on his son’s face was short-lived once he saw just how angry he had made Razorstar, the RainClan leader marching forward with no regard for boundaries or his equally angered nemesis coming up on the opposite side, meeting Blackwolf’s bi-coloured eyes long enough to utter a cold, disgusted snort before he latched his sharp teeth around Pikekit’s neck - a little tighter than was probably necessary - and dropped him at his paws, safe from the mud but now facing an arguably worse threat. Of course, his son had been his priority, and he had pulled the blackish-pink kitten of his from the mud with absolutely no acknowledgement of the black shape that had been closeby. Sporting the same black fur, Razorstar could mentally tie the she-kitten to the NightClan warrior that he despised so much with relative ease, and though it had been Pikekit’s fault that both of them were now standing on NightClan territory, no part of him felt the need to offer apologies. “We’ll talk about this in camp.” Was all the Clan leader offered to his son, voice just grim enough that Pikekit knew better than to complain. He had no intention of saying anything to Blackwolf, ushering his son in the direction of RainClan with purposeful shoves of his menacing paw, but he knew chances were slim of them going their separate ways without Blackwolf having something to say about this, and all Pikekit could do was glance around Razorstar’s paw helplessly, catching a small glimpse of the black kitten that had tried to help him before his eye-contact with her was cut off by his father’s looming shape.

- - - - - -

Tags: Fawn
Word Count: 745.

[Fawn]

[smear:663399]Hollykit[/smear:e61985]
3 Moons. She-Kit. NightClan.

I got the eye of the tiger, a fighter, dancing through the fire

---

Hollykit scented him before she saw him, but it was the sight of Blackwolf charging towards them that sent pulsing waves of relief and fear straight through the kitten's heart. Would he be upset with her? Well that was a frogbrained thing to even ask - of course he would be, but at least he'd get her out of this muck! Hearing the note of apprehension in Pikekit's voice, she had turned her head to mew smugly that her father had come to save them, but the presence of a tall, brown-jawed warrior stalking towards them had her quelling down instead. Who in the name of StarClan is THAT? It didn't take a cat with half a brain to make the connection between Pikekit and the furious looking warrior looming over him, and she chose to keep her mouth shut - just as Blackwolf's teeth dug into her scruff and she was hauled bodily onto a dry patch of grass.

Anything she might've said to her father died in her throat, caught and killed by the look in his eyes that spoke of so severe an agitation, Hollykit ducked, shoulders hunched, to make herself smaller before him in a look of deepest apology. That must be that kit's father... They didn't look very similar, but it wasn't a stretch of the imagination to picture them related - the way the cat had glared at the black and pinkish-furred kitten wasn't at all unlike what she was receiving from Blackwolf at this very moment. Eager to get home so this little voyage could be over (but not looking forward to the punishment she was absolutely going to receive - oh no, what if he delayed her apprentice ceremony for this?), feeling worry claw it's way up her heart like a frightened squirrel did a tree, Hollykit spoke with as much dignity as she could, though her voice quavered anxiously.
"I was just trying to help him!"

"You slipped out of camp." Growled the jet-black tom, clearly any acts of charity she'd been trying to perform were overridden by her insubordination, and he would not forgive the one just because she'd unsuccessfully tried to do the other. Hollykit kneaded the earth, resisting the urge to glance back at the retreating duo; stupid furball got me into trouble! And she didn't even know his name. Blackwolf seemed to be making an effort to ignore the other warrior, though she watched her father's eyes slide towards Razorstar with loathing in his eyes the likes of which she hadn't seen before (unless Blackwolf was directing his gaze at Ratfur when the unlucky warrior returned from a patrol); just when it looked as though Blackwolf might say something, she watched him snap out of his intense stare, said something about 'Ghostlight being furious' and scooped her up again. Hollykit's ears burned with embarrassment, watching the ground dissolve under her paws as she swung from her father's jaws, tail tucked under; knowing that complaining would only make things worse, the black kitten held her tongue.

---

'Cause I am a champion and you’re gonna hear me roar

Word Count: 496 Words
Tags: Insidious