/The/ R.a.v.e.n in the {B}oneyar{d}

[Kestrel]

x.// And I believe this may call for a proper introduction

The sky was deepening to a bruised purple and the sunlight of the day was long forgotten. A crisp coolness flavored the breeze that stirred the grasses. There was a snap in the air that suggested oncoming cold weather; a cold snap. They could happen in any season, and sometimes they were only false alarms.
In the thickening gloom, a shadow drifted silently, a pair of ice-blue eyes flashed.
In the last of the waning light, a she-cat could be seen. She was large and moved boldly through BoneClan land, utterly fearless.

If one looked closely at this cat, you could see the shadow of beauty on her blue-black face, but it was marred by the scars that crisscrossed her entire body. A pair of trailing scars reduced one eye to an icey slit, blind to the world. Another deep scar bit into her throat, almost deep enough to kill; the fact that any cat could survive such a wound was a miracle.
She moved gracefully, seemed to float across the grass. When she walked like that -like dancing- it seemed like some kind of sick joke: that perfect, striking beauty such as hers could be stolen away by a hard life.
She paused at the crest of a rise, her ears up, one ear swiveling. The other remained stationary; many deep scars had damaged the muscles behind that ear too badly for it to move.

This battered soldier knew exactly what she was doing, wandering into BoneClan land. She just didn't care. In the twoleg City where she had grown up, danger chilled the air, lurked around each corner, struck with deadly speed. She had fought harder than any other in that place, earned herself a name to be feared. There, life was harsh and cold. She was forced to move twice as fast to accomidate her ruined eye, was forced to strike three times harder to make up for the ear that -no matter how hard she pushed the torn muscles- would not swivel to detect an approaching enemy.
She had been just a kitten, not just pushed into that cruel world but hurled into it.

Raven-Li, she was called, and like the dark-feathered raven she wandered BoneClan's meadow, her blueblack fur melding with the shadows.

x.// Don't you see, I'm the narrator, and this is just the P R O L O G U E

[Lucky]

(/)Darkness lives here...(\)

A Golden cat shivered within the cold, the climate very different from the tropicle place from which she had stayed. "Darkness lives here..." she sobbed, "...I am deffinetley in the wrong place. Where are the Clans that I heard so much about? Where is TreeClan that I feel my calling? I sure hope it is warm there with all their trees." She padded along, not knowing that it was a Clan's territory, and that she might be being watched...

(/)...I am definetley in the wrong place...(\)

[Kestrel]

x.// Repress the weak and the strong A L I K E

Raven-Li glanced down the hill to see another cat.
This cat was sobbing words that the blueblack she-cat could not hear, and it was obvious that she was not a BoneClanner. Raven-Li knew enough about the Bone cats to realize that; the cat below her seemed weaker, afraid.
Raven-Li snorted in faint disgust but continued to watch the she-cat from her high perch, for lack of anything better to do.

x.// They have no business living in this cruel w-o-r-l-d

[Lucky]

"Oh great StarClan!!!" Lucky cried, "Direct me to TreeClan before I freeze!!!" Then she lowered her voice. "Though I know you will not do that, for I am lucky... Oh, I am so hungry, I might faint!" The she-cat padded along, before she plopped down and started dragging herself along.

[Kestrel]

.x// Tsk, tsk, little k-i-t-t-y...don't you know it's dangerous out here?

Raven-Li, with her sharp city-trained ears, could hear each rasp of the weak cat's breath.

"Oh great StarClan, Direct me to TreeClan before I freeze!"

As the unknown she-cat below suddenly raised her voice, Raven-Li sighed and shook her head. Pity darkened her cold blue eyes, and, scowling, she turned and vanished into the trees.

Minutes later, she emerged once more, grasping an unusually fat vole in her jaws.
She jogged down the hillside, her eyes sparking in irritation.
As she reached the lost and hungry she-cat, she threw down the vole. "You better eat this quickly; I doubt you have long bfore you die." she meowed.
"Damn mousebrain," she muttered, turning away. Her disgust was obvious; what kind of fool would wander so far into BoneClan land...or any Clan's land? It was obvious this cat was no clanner, soft as she was.
This was no place for the weak.
"TreeClan is that way," Raven-Li said, gesturing with her tail.

Must I a-l-w-a-ys save the weak?

[Lucky]

Lucky nodded her head in thanks as she gulped down the vole. "Thank you kind cat," she said before padding in the direction she showed her. Then she turned, "Is there a way to get out of this land though? It smells of blood, death, and dispear, and with my nose twitching like it is," Lucky said pointing her nose with her tail, "A death happened quite recently."

[Kestrel]

Too true

Raven-Li looked toward the horizon, utterly unconcerned. "Of course there's a way off this land. Pick any direction and go that way and eventually you're out. But I suggest you take the swiftest route to TreeClan and avoid other cats. If you go around moaning and complaining like you were, a BoneClan cat will find your for sure, and those Bone cats won't hesitate to rip your fur off."

With a snort, she added, "And around here, death is like rain-- it happens all the time, and there's nothing we can do about it. Also like rain, it gets everywhere. No place is untouched by their corruption." Her tone was flat, matter-of-fact, though her blue eyes flared.

"Too bad for their last victim," she muttered, scenting blood on the air with her keen nose.

Too bad, too sad, sad, s-a-d

[Lucky]

Lucky nodded her head and raced off, waving her tail in goodbye. She didn't get very far before she started to scream!!!!!!!!! "THERE'S A CORPSE ON THE GROUND!!!!! THERE'S A REDISH-ORANGISH-YELLOWISH CORPSE ON THE GROUND!!!!!!!!"

[loutuskit]

(( ok and Phantom is starring over the corpse....whom I guess is Ray...so me little Phantomeyes should comey iny?))

[Lucky]

ooc: Yes! Comey iny!

[Kestrel]

x.// Fear is for failures

Raven-Li padded to Lucky's side and looked down at the corpse impassively. "Hmm, so there is," she said simply.
Her offhand manner may have astounded the cat beside her, but to Raven-Li it was just a corpse-- just a shell. It was once alive but now it was just a great hunk of meat.
Such hunks of meat were seen often in the City.

Raven-Li threw Lucky an amused glance. "You want to join a Clan, but you're afraid of corpses?"
The laughter in her voice was obvious. "Let me spell this out for you-- the Clans live rough. They hunt on their own and fight for their land. Quite obviously, you can't hunt or fight. As you are, you'll only be a liability for the Clans, an extra mouth to feed, useless to them. So if you want to join a Clan, toughen up or run back to wherever soft place you came from." Near the end, the laughter turned to scorn.

Turning away, Raven-Li scented the air. Death. It was an unpleasent smell, but she was used to it.

x.// And running is useless

[/center]

[Lucky]

Lucky hunched her hauntches. She was mad now. "First of all," she growled, "I'm used to living on a warm island! Second, I know how to hunt, just not this type of pray! I'm used to snakes and fish! Third of all, I know how to fight! Lucky hissed, making sure to put imfaces on fight. Raven-Li was sure barking up the wrong tree. Lucky was a force to be reckoned with.

[Kestrel]

Raven-Li neither balked nor looked at all surprised. Had she been human, she would have raised one eyebrow. "You can fight, eh? Then why did you squeal like a kit when you saw a corpse? And why were you crawling around, pitiful as anything I've ever seen, moaning about how hungry and tired you are? That doesn't make you sound much like a fighter at all." Her voice sounded neither angry nor mocking, only quietly amused.

"And as for hunting," she went on, "If you see prey, hunt it. If you don't know how, figure it out. It's not hard."
Her gaze became sly. "Or eat crowfood. It's gross but any mousebrain can eat it."

She took a few steps away, shaking her head. Why do cats insist on taking their luxuries for granted? Raven-Li could gurantee that she had lived a far tougher life than this cat-- hunting bone-thin rats, scraping up crowfood off the streets to survive, tangling with dogs, rogues, and twolegs every day...the city she had been born in was a thousand times crueler than this world.

[Lucky]

Lucky was now even madder since it was like Raven-Li wasn't listening to her. The walked towards her, growling. "It's cold here! Didn't I say I'm used to living on a warm island? And I can learn how to hunt soon enough. Thanks to watching you, I at least know how to hunt one thing. Got it!?" she growled, "Don't you cross me again Raven-Li!" Lucky hissed, spitting.

[Kestrel]

|ooc| o.o How did Lucky know Raven-Li's name?

Raven-Li's expression hardly changed at all. Her eyes betrayed a flash of bemused, amazed amusement, but that was all.

"I was used to living in a twoleg city north of here. It was far colder than this place can ever be. Each day was a fight to survive. I was forced to eat crowfood just to keep breathing. In the wintertime, everything froze, including the prey...and cats and dogs, too. Even twolegs. Often, I'd turn a corner and find a body laying in the street or in an aleey, in any time of year. The twolegs hated the cats, the dogs hated the cats, and the cats hated each other. Cruelty, greed, blood-- that was the City."
She met Lucky's gaze, her ice-blue eyes burning. "Feel lucky. And if you're gonna learn to hunt, learn. Keep your fighting skills sharp in this land, easy as it may be compared to where I came from. Be careful here, 'cause the BoneClanners are some seriously tough fighters, good as any I've met in the City."

She added that last bit of advice in her offhand way.
She padded away, but paused and looked back over one blueblack shoulder. "And by the way, I'll cross you whenever I feel like it. No cat tells me what to do or say, whether they're a snot-nosed kit or the killer Bane himself."

[loutuskit]

Phantomeyes was standing over the body. Then she swung her head to the two.

"Don't talk about Bane like that!"

she snarled. She let the fur lay flat again.

"Sorry. I'm in a very bad mood..."

she meowed then she leaned over.

"...I never wanted to kill him..."

she whispered to them.

"Well off with that! what's your name?"

she asked.

[Lucky]

Lucky spun around. "Ya'll evil BoneClanners!!!" She stared hard at the she-cat standing over the corpse. "I'll deal with you later," she growled deeply, before spinning around to pounce on Raven-Li.

[Bane]

"And...stop."

The voice was angry, frustrated - cold. He'd had enough of pathetic cats just wandering into his territory as if there were a sign saying "Come on in, we love pathetic cats who have no idea where they're going and deserve to be mauled." The shadowed tom was sat behind the she-cat, as if he'd been there all along - he'd in fact been there a while, but he was talented enough not to have been seen until now. He judged that the she-cat he was behind - Raven-Li - would be able to dodge nimbly out of the way with no trouble, leaving himself face to face with the idiot who had stumbled onto his land.

"You'll only be lucky to get out of here alive, you pathetic excuse for a cat."

Venom dripped from his fangs - his eyes glowered with pure malice, anger, fury.

"Can some one tell me why the hell it is that idiots like this keep walking into my damn territory!? Can't they smell the borders? Are you blind, kitty? Can't you see that a clan lives here? Can't you tell that Satan himself embraces this land within his taloned fingers? StarClan does not bless my land, Death does. So why, tell me why, do you still insist on coming here?!"

A step forward. His tail lashed angrily. His eyes bore into the she-cat's skull, as though if he looked hard enough her skull would split in two and blood was spatter the floor - already stained a crimson red from battles and deaths. He kept his glare upon the trespasser, a low growl rumbling in his throat like a tiger or a lion - and then his gaze suddenly turned to the other she-cat, Phantomeyes.

"And you. I told you to take that damn corpse and take it to Heartless. Or are you beginning to go soft? You acted on impulse, you killed the pathetic tom, and now you're beginning to regret it? I have no place for idiots like you in my clan - either you change, or you'll go in a worse fashion than your male-friend went. Just seeing you makes me cringe."

Bad day to cross Bane, my ladies. His growl grew louder, awaiting a response and wanting one quickly and to his liking else someone else would be dying today. He had no time for idiots - only time for those worthy of a place in the clan.

Mama, we all go to hell

[/size]

[Kestrel]

x.// Foolish, foolish, little kitty

Raven-Li turned her ice-blue eyes on the newcomer. The killer, eh? Yes, indeed, it seemed that this cat had killed the unfortunate soul that was the corpse Lucky had been to terrified of.

Speaking of Lucky...

Raven-Li's ears twitched, and a few hairs rose along her spine. She was turned away from that blasted she-cat at the moment, but some deep filament of her being, honed by years of hard life, began to shake within her. Her blue eyes narrowed, and she knew in an instant that Lucky had done something very foolish.

With a sigh and an irritated roll of blue eyes she stepped calmly aside, sensing at the same instant -and instant before Bane drew in a breath to speak- that he was there.

She turned to face him, her many scars rippling across her dark fur, though the scars on Bane's pelt were equally impressive.
Her ice-blue eyes -freezing as winter, calculating and emotionless- showed not the faintest spark of surprise or terror. Bane may have been surprised at her lack of fear, since fear was usually a cat's first emotion upon meeting the famous killer.

She knew instantly who it was, and stood boldly. She had heard of his black heart and his fighting prowess, but she still stood boldly-- for she had seen sights in the city that would drive many cats from this place mad. Sights that may make even BoneClanners balk.
The city had hardened her, formed her into an elite fighter who could be a challenge even to Bane.

Without sparing a glance to Lucky, she mewed, in a voice accented with contempt, "'Deal' with us? Cat, this is the land of BoneClan. They are killers, twice the fighter you will ever be, I'm sure. This cat -who I've never seen but know to be Bane- speaks the truth. This land is Satan's playground, so you better take my advice and run...because I've heard Bane's cats are cannibals, and I guarantee at least one of them is hungry."
She smirked, hoping this foolish cat could get away -she disliked killing- but knowing that if she didn't, not a paw of Raven-Li's would be lifted to help her -she just didn't give a damn-.
She had brought it upon herself.

x.// Don't you know this p-l-a-c-e is death?

[Lucky]

Lucky slowly turned her head. "Aww, I wanted to kill him so badly!" she hissed under her breath. Lucky turned all the way around and looked Bane in the eyes, not even flinching. She couldn't because StarClan seemed to embrace, she had no fear of Death or Satan. "Excuse me b****, but I know where I'm going. If you excuse me, I'll be heading there now..." she said cooley but nastily shoving passed him.

Ooc: enough time here, i'm going to go do what i need to.