x___I'm falling.

[Soulless]

[Open to anyone. ^^ Cinder-luff had Barbwire age, so I though it fitting all the kits to have aged. oO]

Soft white fur tainted by dark gray tabby markings flowed over her slender form as the kit padded out of the nursery. Although she’d never been told anything about her past, about where she came from she knew she was the odd one out here.

Soulless had seen the way some of the Risingclan cats had looked at her. And it hurt, especially since no one ever told her what was the reason behind those looks.

‘What did I do wrong?’

Her pure blue eyes, inherited from her mother, scanned the camp ground as she moved fully out, sitting fully out of the den. Her tail flicked, as her gaze continued to roam.

‘Am I different somehow?’

What could be different? She had four paws, a nose, two ears, a tail.

Just like all the other cats.

That couldn’t be it.

Seeking to understand, the small kit moved, padding silently into the middle of the camp – seeking Kestrel, or one of the other warriors to ask her questions.

If not for Kestrel she would have not likely lived. Soulless had been so small as a newborn, so weak, she might’ve likely died back in Boneclan had the Risingclan leader not saved her.

But she didn’t know that. Soulless knew of Boneclan, yes, heard the murmurs of the war to come.

Btu not what had instigated the war. Not that.

Maybe she was too young. Still too small. But little Soulless was maturing much quicker than most kits; not quite so innocent anymore now that she started questioning herself.

[Kestrel]

You'll never ^take _me alive

Kestrel padded silently through camp, her mismatched eyes flitting from place to place, smoldering with chained passion and intelligence.
When her fierce, hawklike gaze full upon the kit, they softened marginally.

Soulless. Kestrel had carried out the raid herself; she had crept close to that warm den, where the BoneClan she-cat had just given birth; she had stole inside while the mother was away and carried away one of her kits.

Soulless.

She, too, had seen how some looked at that innocent kit. It angered Kestrel, put a spark in her that threatened to boil the blood that ran like fire through her veins.
Kestrel was young yet, she had travelled a ways, and if there was any one thing she had learned, it was that all cats bleed, and that it was always red.

Blood was blood, simple and clean. It meant nothing.

Kestrel could see the kit was troubled. Drifting closer, she meowed softly, "Soulless? What is bothering you, young one?"

Somehow, she was pretty sure she knew what.

^I'm alive

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[Soulless]

Pained eyes lifted, to look at leader directly in her mismatched ones. Pretty eyes, the color of spring sky, untouched by clouds.

“I have four legs. Two eyes, two ears. A nose. A tail. But…but why am I different? Am I different? Others…there are others who have looked at me so. Looked at me as if I had done something so bad that I can’t ever repay it.”

Now, that was a way to put it. Maybe there was something about kits, and the view they had of the world. Most spoke or asked things so clearly, so purely…it was as if maybe there still was innocence.

And maybe proof that Bane was wrong.

Blue hues blinked, as confusion joined the pain.

“What did I do? What can I do to fix it?”

There was a plea, in that soft young voice. Soulless had always looked up at the young leader, felt closer to her than to even the she-cat who nursed her.

Maybe even looked to Kestrel as the mother she didn’t know.

But Soulless trusted her, completely, fully, and the words she dreaded yet longed to hear would be best heard from her, and not another cat.

[Kestrel]

You'll never ^take _me alive

Kestrel sighed. "Somehow I knew this is what you wanted to know," she meowed softly.

She watched Soulles with compassionate mismatched eyes. She had always loved kits -it was probably a part of being a she-cat- but she felt particularly close to this one; perhaps she felt responsible for her.
After all, she did remove her from her home with her own paws.

"You can not fix it," Kestrel said abruptly. "They look at you like that because of something you can't help and can never change."

She met Soulless' gaze directly. She deserved the truth.

"You do not know why the war began, do you?" she asked. "How it really started.

It was you, Soulless."

Kestrel began to pace, tilting her head back at the sky. "It was Bluerage who first suggested we steal a BoneClan kit," she meowed. "I was almost against it for moral reasons, but I though about what a BoneClan kit becomes-- another bloodthirsyy BoneClan murderer." She nodded slighly, agreeing with herself.
"So I agreed to the motion. Me and a few others, under the cover of the storm, slipped into the BoneClan camp, to the nursery.
Where a BoneClan queen had just given birth. She was Heartless, who killed and ate her own kind. The father of this litter was Goldenblaze, a tom who left TreeClan in favor of BoneClan.

I myself entered the den while the kits were left alone. I myself lifted a kit, a she-kit, from her nest and carried her away."

Kestrel snapped her bright gaze back to Soulles, deadly serious. "We made our escape. The kitten was passed off to Burningflower to raise." She remembered sitting Soulles, barely past a newborn, between her paws as the storm raged, addressing her Clan.

"Everyone knew what I had done," Kestrel went on. "BoneClan too. In due course, they came to collect what was theirs.

We refused. I had made myself a promise to care for the kit, to raise her as one of RisingClan and teach her the morals and decency she would never learn in her birth Clan."

Kestrel padded closer, tapped Soulless comfortingly with her tail. "The kitten was Soulless, of BoneClan decent," was what she said.

Tell it like it is.

^I'm alive

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[Soulless]

Silence.

Wide blue hues stared at Kestrel, stunned into an uneasy silence by the words she said.

She, Soulless, was…she was a Boneclan cat? That….that made more sense than it didn’t. It certainly explained the way the others looked at her. As if shamed, the young kit looked down, at her white paws.

“Do…does that mean I’m evil?”

Her young voice was almost a mere whisper, but then the kit shook herself, strength suddenly burning within her eyes.

“No! No! I don’t wanna be evil! I don’t wanna be a bad cat! I wanna be good, fight for my clan, protect those I care for, protect those who are innocent!”

Maybe it was a little unnerving, how Soulless stared at Kestrel with the same fire that her own father had, so recently, been staring at her.

But Soulless had chosen.

She had picked her path.

“E…even if I cannot change the blood I was born with, it doesn’t make me that kind of cat…right?”

[Bluerage]

<sub>Of course not, young one. said a mild voice somewhere from Soulless's flanks. Hearing her name, Bluerage padded silently up to her leader, seeking a mission. Seeing none offered, she merely sat down and looked calmly down at Soulless.

I am an assasin, but that means not that I am evil. Correct? She nodded her head to the young kit, tail flicking. She looked to Kestrel, closing her eyes. Perhaps you may have been better off away from Boneclan, as you are now. Perhaps you'd have been better off there, but who knows. You're parents, your blood, does not decide a cat. It is merely your decision and yours alone which alliance you decide, and all in all is the only thing that matters in the long run.

She soothed her fur down with a calming lick and looked to Soulless with an almost motherly expression.

If you wish not to be here, then it is my fault and my fault only that you are unhappy here. She seemed undaunted by her words. Although she seemed... troubled, she did not seem unhappy about being here.

She gave a toothy grin. If you have ANY troubles about discrimination against your background, tell them that it is your true choice to be here, and this is your upbringing; not boneclan.

..

... Or you can ask me to beat them up for you, of course. She gave a cheery laugh, one of the few she ever let escape her maw. For she was a serious cat, and last time she double checked, Assasins did not laugh.

But after this conversation, perhaps it was alright to bend the rules.

For Soulless already had.</sub>

[Kestrel]

You'll never ^take _me alive

Kestrel did something odd: she laughed scornfully, not at Soulless but at whoever had created that blood stereotype.

"Blood is blood," she mewed mirthfully. "It does not define you. Who your parents are doesn't make a damn difference; you are who you are."

She tipped her head to one side, a more warm, sympathetic look coming to her mismatched eyes. "I have traveled everywhere," she meowed, her word mirroring her recent thoughts. "And I learned this: every cat bleeds, even Bane, and it is always red."

Kestrel unsheathed a single wickedly long and sharp claw and touched it to her right front leg. Instantly, as if by some malignant magic, her skin sprang open. A line of red swelled slowly and blood trickled down her leg.
"Always red," she repeated softly. "See?"

"You don't bleed black, Soulless. You're your own cat."

She gave one of her faint half-smiles. "And I trust you. Any cat who says something to you about your decent gets a scar; I won't have such discrimination in my Clan." A very subtle, cold anger hardened her voice near the end, and her eyes flashed. Yes, a scar on the ear; a 'v', to mark those indulging in the shameful act of discrimination.
Her claws were terribly long and sharp, weren't they? Just a poke and the blood ran.

"I took you from your den; I ran you here myself. You cannot be blamed for this."

^I'm alive

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[binx]

OOC: This is after you did the shouting thing with BoneClan, right? XD Do you want to bring Undead in, Umber?

Juniper hobbled up with her odd, swinging gait. Indeed, the medicine cat said, It isn't your fault, and it never was. She sat slightly awkwardly beside Soulless and Kestrel. Why just look at me; when I was born, my clan wanted to kill me because they thought my legs, she gestured backwards with her head, were signs of bad blood. It was only when I was able to quickly save a sick cat that they let me live to be a healer. It was my parents' first litter, but they and my siblings were killed. Because of this so-called bad blood. she shook her head, and turned to Kestrel. While you were away, we had a visitor. I think you should meet her.

[Soulless]

Bluerage. Kestrel. Both these cats were so vital in the shaping of young Soulless.

Even Juniper’s words touched her young soul.

But the small kit didn’t really understand that quite yet.

“Even…Bane bleeds…”

The small one looked down at her pure white paws, a shiver flowing down her intricately marked spine.

“I’ll never betray that trust!”

Fire illuminated her eyes again, as her gaze snapped up to look between the two strong, noble cats.

“You can count on me!”

Ah, the fire of youth. Soulless wasn’t even apprentice age yet, but what a warrior she’d turn out to become!

[Undead]

Speaking of clinging…

A small, apprentice-age ball of calico fluff followed behind Juniper, matching the larger she-cat’s odd gait easily, close enough so that she couldn’t bee see at first. When the she-cat stopped, speaking to the gathered group of cats, young Undead peeped her head around Juniper’s body to look at them with wide emerald eyes.

Juniper now had herself a furry attachment.

[Kestrel]

You'll never ^take _me alive

Kestrel looked down fondly at the young cat, the hard knife-edge sharpness gone from her eyes.

"I know I can," Kestrel said softly, though with great conviction. Conviction to move mountains, to bind together a Clan, to win a war.

Ah, what an apprentice, what a warrior this young cat would become! Kestrel would teach her herself, for she had been the one to carry her home, and she was responsible.

For a moment, Kestrel's eyes clouded -an almost unheard-of occurence- and a voice echoed from down the years, through the dark, cobwebbed passeges of her mind, her memory:

Who carried the kit home through the rain?

And Kestrel heard her own voice answering, with pride, her strong and sure: I did.

Who will guide the kit?

Again. I will.

Who is responsble?

I am.

The voice pressed on, a dusty, creaking voice that was the voice of someone she thought she knew:
Who risked war and will risk war for the kit?

I have, Kestrel answered, and now her voice was growing uneasy.

Who will fight the war?

We will.

And who will shed blood in the defense of the kit?

Kestrel so badly did not want to answer this one; something about it seemed dangerous, in ways she did not understand. The rough beat of terror thundered through her, silent to all but her; oh, how she did not want to answer--
But she did. I will.
And her voice was strong. Has she spoken an oath? Made some sort of promise?
It seemed she had.

And the voice retreated, down the arches of the years and into the shadowy corners of her lost memory.

Kestrel's eyes sharpened, somehow quickened. She felt slightly dazed. Had that voice been some ghost, a forsaken piece of her past calling back? An echo of the insanity that she had felt long ago, that screaming terror of her first real memory? Her subconscience speaking, her memory whispering words?

It did not matter.

I will.

Kestrel turned to face the newcomer, her confusion forgotten for the moment. "Who is this?" she mewed in a friendly way, watching the young kit Undead but speaking to Juniper.

^I'm alive

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[Soulless]

Seeing that Kestrel had turned her attention to the newcomer and Juniper, Soulless dipped her head respectfully in farewell and bounded off. Not only had Kestrel, Bluerage, and Juniper giving the small she-kit much to think of, she knew her foster mother would be looking for her about now.

[And to the ‘Life with Risingclan’ thread she goes.]

[Undead]

If anything, the young calico she-cat looked even more terrified that she had been seen Undead was normally such a bright, exuberant kit…however events that had transpired had made her warier than she had been before. Her patched coat fluttered as she hid behind Juniper once again, keeping close. Her heart, beating rapidly, ached – being frightful was so difficult to the once innocent kit who had approached all strangers with such a cheerful air.

Would the be lost forever?

[Juniper]

OOC: We've pirated the thread. HAARRGH! ^^

Juniper studied Kestrel's face carefully as the other kit bounded away. A brief clouding of her leader's face concerned her, but the medicine cat decided not to push it as Undead peered around her. Juney gently nudged the kit a little with her tail, having seen and been touched by her fear. Don't worry, little one, she said gently. Juniper turned to Kestrel. She stumbled into camp while you were turning BoneClan away. Kestrel, meet Undead. Undead, this is Kestrel. She is the leader of RisingClan. The purple-gray fela felt proud, but of what? Undead? The fact that she had been the one to find her? Or did her promise to the sleeping kit still ring in her heart? Juniper leaned forward and spoke quietly to Kestrel, so as not to alarm the kit further. She and another kit wandered into BoneClan territory, she explained, Shocky was his name, and apparently he was a RisingClan kit. He hasn't turned up yet.