[Fawn]

Name: Harekit -> Harepaw -> Harestrike
Age: 19 Moons
Gender: Tom
Clan: LightningClan
Rank: Warrior

Description:

Harestrike is built exactly like one would expect a LightningClan cat to be like, with his thin, wiry muscles and his slender but strong legs built for hairpin turns and long chases across the moorlands. Predominantly white with a tabby mantle and blanket, white fur splits up the dark tabby coloring on his face (leaving a blaze of brown on his nose, the leather of which is salmon pink, lined in black with a few speckles of color on his nose and whiskerpads closest to his mouth).

His whiskers are long and white, having none of the ridiculous curl some cats' whiskers do. There is a slim half-ring of brown fur that sweeps down from his ear to just under the chin, not fully formed across his entire throat. Harestrike's legs are white with the exception of his front legs, which have two matching tabby patches on the front that curve around his wrists like socks. His feet are white and compact, designed for speed and stability on LightningClan terrain.

Covered in a fine, dense, silky coat, Harestrike despite being a fighter at heart and in form, gives off a silky appearance that nods back to both of his parents (Peregrinewing's coloring with his mother's beauty). The fur length itself is semi-long, growing a little longer in the cold months but otherwise staying short and feathery in the warm ones. His tail is thickly furred, though nothing so heavy as his long-haired Clanmates. Even his pelt makes him ideal for life on the moorlands, a perfect all-weather coat that he makes full use of during any moon. Though a pain to keep clean, because of his brown tabby markings, he can get away with a little dirt. It won't make him look any less attractive.

He has no scars to speak of yet, but he is hoping to change that soon. Harestrike devotes a lot of time to battle-training, so though he is a lean, mean speed machine, he's stronger than he looks. A fact of which comes out both in hunting and in fighting.

Description Summary: Sleek, lanky tabby-and-white tom with light-green eyes and semi-long fur.

Personality:

Negatives: Cocky, Evasive, Volatile, Pushy, Childish
Positives: Creative, Loyal, Extroverted and Honorable

Harestrike has the kind of personality that makes its presence known very very quickly. A cocky young warrior, he's too old to be confined to camp like an apprentice and too young to really understand how dangerous the world can be. With a long streak of successes under his belt, Harestrike strides through camp like an accomplished war veteran, though his eyes are full of a hunger for battle seldom-seen in others.

Though he has various other talents to his name (as if his parents would allow anything else), Harestrike's true moments to shine always comes in the form of his creativity in battle. Inventing his own signature moves that combine his hare-quick speed and feline reflexes, he's made himself a force to be reckoned with, a strong contender in any fight—mock or otherwise. He is admittedly overconfident, but until someone knocks him from his first-place pedestal, he's not going to come to grips with the fallibility of being a mere mortal feline.

Heavily spoiled from an early age, Harestrike is a pushy, childish belligerent feline whose immaturity has diminished in recent moons but he's still young enough that his kithood personality can rear its head from time to time. If he is quickly ridiculed, this either makes his behavior worse or he closes off, becoming evasive under criticism if it comes from a cat he actually respects (this is a short list).

He does a poor job of confronting his own negative feelings, preferring to bury them deep rather than face them. Harestrike suffers from the feeling that his mother does not truly love him unless he continues to be her champion, continues to win; he fears failure, and that is a powerful motivator to someone so deeply family oriented and loyal.

Loyalty must be earned every single day if it is to be kept. His relationship with Larkfeather as a result is rather sad, as far as siblings go; he knows his parents care very little about her (or they seem to anyway), because apart from her beauty she tends to be extraordinarily average in a family that doesn't accept such low marks.

Rather than stick up for her like a better tom would have done, Harestrike threw her under the bus, preferring to let her be the scapegoat so he and Thrushwhisker could continue shining in their parents' eyes. It's a rather toxic relationship he has with Morningfrost, and whether she pushes him too far or he inevitably buckles under the pressure of trying to stay in her good graces, only time will tell.

Despite having parents who set a poor example of what true affection and loyalty look like, Harestrike is actually quite honorable. He's popular and extroverted, athletic and dedicated to being the best he can be, even if his motives aren't always so healthy.

Harestrike, unsurprisingly, has something of a temper, being rather volatile in nature. He's less of an arguer and more of a 'I'll hit you until you agree with me' kind of cat, though obviously he would never strike someone younger than him (unless they really deserved it) or risk causing a scene that would embarrass his parents. Unless it's justified, of course.

Good friends with Blazefang and Sunblaze (best friend and mentor, respectively), Harestrike is aiming for the title of 'best fighter' in LightningClan, and he's set his sights on both of these cats as well as anyone who calls themselves a serious threat on the battlefield.

History:

Harestrike is the eldest son of Morningfrost and Peregrinewing. Born into a litter of three, he was first born with Thrushwhisker (a tom) and Larkfeather (a she-cat) born soon after.

With a name like Morningfrost, you just knew she had to be cold, bright and beautiful. And she was. Harestrike’s mother was a stunning she-cat in youth, and her looks have not faded with age. She comes from a family of arrogant (and much of the Clan can begrudgingly understand why, given that looks and talent don’t just run in this family, they gallop), almost aristocratic LightningClan warriors, and she rules over the family with a keen eye and sky-high expectations.

Peregrinewing, the highly competent mate of Morningfrost, encourages his sons to succeed though he doesn’t hold his affections and approval hostage like their mother. Easy to get along with, Harestrike is closer with Peregrinewing now than he was as an apprentice, where their mother took over most of the parenting whenever the opportunity presented itself.

She plays favorites, and Harestrike, the oldest in the litter, is easily in first place, winning the competition for ‘most talented offspring’ with occasional upstarts by his brother, Thrushwhisker.

According to him, anyway. Hard to notice everyone else when you're only interested in crossing the finish line first. Despite Morningfrost’s parenting style incorporating sibling rivalry like it was family tradition, Harestrike is close with Thrushwhisker, and doesn't mind so much if his brother upstages him in hunting; better him than some other cat.

After a short and blissful kithood, Harestrike was given to an older warrior to mentor, a golden-and-brown tabby by the name of Sunblaze. They got along famously, sharing a thirst for battle and a fondness for shredding their opponents that made them as thick as thieves. There was another cat that caught Harepaw’s attention; Blazefang. The tom had just been made a warrior right as Harepaw had entered in apprenticeship, but that couldn’t stop him from forming a rivalry with the warrior.

They butted heads often, forming a friendship through their sheer belligerent enjoyment of beating the snot out of each other. They got along well enough even outside of the battlefield, Harepaw enjoying Blazefang’s crass, blunt personality while providing his own steady stream of snarky commentary. When so much grief happened in Blazefang’s life, and the tom himself went missing, Harepaw didn’t know what to make of it.

He sulked for a few days, evading any serious conversations with anyone as he struggled to come to grips with his best friend’s disappearance. Was there something he could have done differently? It was a stupid way to die, getting suffocated by snow, and Harepaw vowed to honor his friend’s memory by not dying quite so foolishly when it was turn to go.

That time almost came sooner than he’d expected.

At 11 moons, Harepaw was given the scare of his life when a loose dog went after the hunting patrol he’d been a part of. Fighting alongside Sunblaze and Ivysting, the three of them were able to severely injure the dog, with Harepaw teasing and tormenting the beast until Sunblaze could latch onto the dog’s throat and end it.

He was named Harestrike for his speedy strikes and battle instincts. That was 8 moons ago and plenty has changed since then; though still close with Sunblaze, his best friend Blazefang has come back, though not the same as before. Perhaps almost as upset about Blazefang’s leg as Blazefang, Harestrike visits him from time to time, afraid to ask the question of whether or not Blazefang will fully recover.

Battle-hungry in the extreme, Harestrike bemoans his missed opportunity to fight in the battle of sun stones, envious of all the other participants (especially Batpaw!), and he’s been working hard at his warrior duties in an attempt to catch Firestar’s eye. Next big fight that happens, there’s no way he’s going to miss it.

History Update (2019)

Now at senior warrior status at the age of 46 moons, Harestrike's life up to this point has been nothing if not eventful.

Newleaf & Greenleaf #4 were marked by she-cat troubles both at home and across the border. Early in the spring, as cats often do, Harestrike and the beautiful young warrioress Dovecloud began a little courtship dance. She was breathtakingly beautiful, the kind of she-cat any tom would be hissing with envy over, when they saw who she had chosen. In the beginning, she flattered his ego just as much as he flattered hers.

It only made sense that they got together. It only made sense that he, from a prominent family, and she, from one of LightningClan's most prominent family trees stretching back to the early days, become the progenitors of a mighty legacy.

At the insistance of his mother, Morningfrost, (whose harsh approval meant everything to him) Harestrike and Dovecloud became mates by the middle of Newleaf.

However, a relationship built on status, shallow attraction and selfish was bound to have some... problems.

Dovecloud was pushy and spoiled, constantly testing Harestrike's patience with her fussiness, wounding him by her increased interest in his brother, Thrushwhisker.

After a heart-to-heart with Dovecloud's older sister, medicine cat Kindleflare, Harestrike did the only thing that made sense at the time; he spoke to Morningfrost about breaking things off with Dovecloud. Rather than take his side, however, Morningfrost, who had recently given birth to Eaglekit and Dawnkit a season before, chastised him for having any complaints about Dovecloud at all.

“You just don't understand life from the perspective of a she-cat, dear."

Morningfrost's words were as cold as her namesake, and it drove him to try harder for fear of losing her approval. Yet so much toxic pressure, it was bound to result in some mistakes.

In Greenleaf #4, Harestrike started an affair with a TreeClan she-cat by the name of Maplebrook.

There was no love there either; in truth, Maplebrook had been an escape, a foolish way to rebel against a life he felt like he had no control over. The expectations of his mother to start a family with Dovecloud, and Dovecloud's constant back-and-forth between him and Thrushwhisker made the guilt a little easier to ignore.

The affair carried on through to early leaf-fall, with the weather and the side effects of moorland fires putting an end to their meetings at the border. But Maplebrook wasn't entirely out of his life; at the beginning of leafbare, when his relationship with Dovecloud had grown to such sourness, the two could hardly stand to be around each other, Harestrike's life took a turn for the more dramatic.

Maplebrook sought him out, telling him the words no cheating, irresponsible tom ever wanted to hear.

She was pregnant with his kits.

(WIP)

Other: Adopted from Zeneka!
Songs: Remember the Name (Fort Minor) & Planetary (GO!) by MCR.