Weakling - Warriors Fanfiction - :CO:

“Ashkit! Get back!”
Ashkit felt her body stiffen slightly at the sound of her mother’s scream cutting behind her, tiny white claws sinking into the soft, cool sand of the ground. She wanted to scuttle back to her mother. She had no reason to be here. She needed to head back! Why was she just standing there?
But despite all the reasoning that flashed through her brain, she couldn’t tear her eyes away from the uncontrollable violence occurring right in front of her eyes.
Crimson blood was splashed across the ground, painting it an ugly malevolent shade. Cries and wails of warring cats cut through the air like a piercing set of claws, the noise pounding against her ears, making her heart pound heavily, the vibrations electrifying her bones.
So this was what a battle was, huh? It was much different than the play fights she and her best friend, Greykit would play outside in the nursery. There were no sheathed claws and hokey acting. There was no giggles. Cats weren’t pushovers like Graykit was sometimes. There was nothing resembling any of that. This was real, and it was violent.
Not that she had expected anything different. Her father, Graystrike, had taught her the ways of battle. Even though she was a kit now (but to be fair, she was almost an apprentice now), he was teaching some of the most essential skills in battles, despite her mother, Sweetfur’s concern.
The training sessions had started out as a joke. Her father had just been playing with her and Graykit to watch them fumble their own feet as they tried to perform the tactics. And Graykit had provided him with just what he wanted. But she… she had been a different story.
Of course, she had been a little awkward at first, but she had been determined and had actually provided some good forms for a kit anyway. Her father had been surprised and while Graykit had quickly given up and went to do something else, he had taught her a couple other moves.
Some of them she had performed extremely well for her age. Most were awkward and clumsy though, as expected. One moment when she was striking the pose he wanted her to make, she would be too stiff. Then when she would whip it out the second time, she would tumble over her own paws and slam into the ground rather painfully.
But despite the fact that she wasn’t flawless, she had a certain determination to her, at least according to her father, that could make any warrior jealous. Eventually, he started practicing some with her on their free time, which she was always eager to partake in.
Her aspiration to be the greatest warrior there ever was in her heart when she practiced, and here she was, getting the chance to be taught early by her father, one of the fiercest fighters in the battlefield. She loved the training sessions, but her mother usually cut him short.
She would always be reluctant and peevish about leaving training early, but she knew better than to talk back to her mother and complied. She had one time heard her mother and father bickering with one another when they thought she was asleep.
“I don’t like you teaching, Ashkit this early. She’s supposed to be a kit for StarClan’s sake. She has plenty of time to learn how to fight when she is an apprentice, Graystrike. This whole thing reminds me way to much of that legend of the Clans past.”
Ashkit had a vague recollection of what she was talking about. One of the elders, Rockhare had told her and Graykit about the Clans in the way, way back days. Apparently there was a cat named Brokenstar or something who killed kits…
She couldn’t remember. She didn’t particularly care for story time. Stories were stuff Graykit liked listening too. Not her. She just wanted to learn how to fight.
She was really cursing her mother now, as she was now stuck in the middle of a violent fray, with no way of defending herself. Okay, so she knew even if she got a little extra practice from her father, she would’ve probably still been stranded, but she wanted someone to blame.
That’s what you did when you were miserable right? You wanted to blame your misery on something or someone. Never yourself though.
Ashkit flinched at the feeling of a cold, wet raindrop splashing down on her back. Shrinking back, she shivered, noticing more heavy droplets suddenly beginning to drop down. They were moving slowly at the moment, but Ashkit knew they were going to increase, and fast.
She wanted to whimper, but swallowed it down. She, admittedly, always hated rain. The sound of thunder and all of the dangers a bad storm held was too much for her. The river by their Clan could overflow when she just happened to be near it. Lightning striking a tree and setting the forest ablaze. A weak branch falling off the tree and snapping her spine in half.
She had no control over the rain. No warrior did, much less a tiny scrap of grey fluff.
She regretted going outside in the first place. Granted, she hadn’t known that StreamClan was going to start an ambush brigade down on their Clan that night. She knew that StreamClan and RockClan had been tense over territory, but still.
All she had wanted when she went outside was to get a quick drink of water from the pool of water in the middle of the camp.
She had awoken from a ominous nightmarish-like dream that she couldn’t remember, before this all had happened, her mouth parched and thirsty. Normally, she was supposed to ask her mother when she needed to get something at night, but she knew it was late and she hadn’t wanted to bother her mother.
So she had simply crept out of the nursery, exposing herself in the middle of the camp. Once she had reached the puddle of water, she had greedily lapped up at the water and had thought she was done. She hadn’t really heard anything suspicious when she had gone out. A few rustling here and there, but nothing to horrible. She had thought it was merely invisible mice or lizards scooting the leaves around as they scuttled on their linear path.
But these were no mice, nor were they lizards.
The minute Ashkit had been about to return back to the comfort of the nursery so she could snuggle next to her mother’s warm, soft belly fur, she had heard a wild screech. Whirling her head around, she had saw the sentry guard that night, Tortoiseswipe, come rushing through the entrance, her tail up with alarm, dark amber eyes wide with alarm.
She had mewed questioningly, but her answer had been answered when she heard Tortoiseswipe screech out to all of the Clan, “Ambush! Ambush!”
Almost immediately after Tortoiseswipe had sounded the alarm, a sea of StreamClan cats seemed to pour into the camp like a giant wave of malevolent water. Flashes of different colored pelts swarmed past Ashkit’s vision, all of them erupting out of a nearby bush like a volcano, all screeching and hissing.
The amount of brute force and how fast they swarmed the Clan was surprising to say the least.
All Ashkit had wanted to do was get a drink of water. Now, that drink might’ve been the final thing she would be left doing now.
Turning her head around, she wondered where her mother was. She was supposed to save her! She loved her right! Desperation was coiling tightly in her stomach like a snake, making her weak-legged and feel even smaller than before.
But when she turned to face the nursery questioningly, he saw exactly why.
She saw that her mother was trying to squeeze in a panicky frenzy out of the entrance nursery, her pretty honey-gold eyes never leaving Ashkit’s tiny form. But a large StreamClan warrior was mercilessly blocking her path, slashing and clawing and hissing.
All of a sudden, all the fear that had once filled Ashkit’s tiny form suddenly seemed to disappear with one fatal swoop, tiny claws springing out of her paws and sinking into the now dampening ground. The rain was starting to fall faster and in smaller drops.
What a fox-heart! Even as a kit, she knew the Warrior Code and she knew that attacking queens was one of the things that was taboo. For him to do this… he was proving how pathetic he was. He was weak. A coward. Picking a fight with those not meant to fight!
The grey and white cat blocking the entrance showed no mercy either to the smaller calico queen. Screeching and snarling loudly, like some deranged creature, the grey and white cat was tearing into Sweetfur, claws tearing through soft skin and teeth sinking into flesh.
Granted, her mother was not taking any of this lying down. Sweetfur was also biting and scratching madly at the StreamClan cat in order to get free, but with her trapped slightly under the low ceiling of the nursery and the lack of mobility/awkward angle her mother was fighting in, she was not inflicting as much damage as the StreamClan cat was.  
“Mama!” Ashkit squealed out loudly, tearing towards the nursery without another thought. She didn’t know what she was going to do when she got there. What could she do? But she couldn’t just stand there and watch this fox-heart rip her apart.
She suddenly felt herself lose her footing on the slick muddy ground, the rain beating the moist dirt into mud, her jaw slamming into the ground, causing her teeth to rattle. Dizziness immediately set in, the breath knocked out of her. Blood spurted out of her nose painfully, a throbbing sensation taking over.
A large blitz of lightning flashed across the dark sky, blinding her for a moment before letting out a booming crack, causing her body to flinch. Rain swarmed harder, the screeches of the battling cats becoming drowned out and muffled.
She knew that any other kit would of simply whimpered and just lied there on the ground, hoping for this nightmare to end. Hoping that someone would save them and their mother. Where they would just let StarClan decide their fate. But she was not like other kits. She was deciding her own fate tonight.
True warriors were never weak. True warriors never backed down. True warriors fought to the very end. They persevered. She might be just a kit, but she still had warrior blood in her. She was the son of Graystrike after all, the greatest warrior in RockClan.
Growling a low growl out of the bottom of her throat, Ashkit shakily pulled herself up on shaky knees, her teeth gritting. The fall had made her body feel somewhat sore, but despite that, she forced herself to dart onwards, quickly darting in between the gaps of the warring cats.
Her paws threw up wet mud and she was being soaked to the core as the rain grew stronger, a nastily cold wind blowing through the air and chilling her to the bone. Huffing in air to her lungs, she quickly made her way to the nursery, coming to a halt when she finally reached there.
The large grey and white tom and her mother were still going at it viciously, screeches and blood flying to the ground. Drips of blood were falling to the ground more profusely as the two cats tore wounds into one another, the blood shrouding in with the mud and rainwater. Hair flew in the air, eyes lit with rage. Like her, they were soaked to the bone, which exposed more bare flesh for the other to tear into.
Although her mother was losing, Ashkit had to admit, for a queen, her mother fought quite well. Too bad the circumstances were against her.
Ashkit watched in horror as suddenly the tom lunged, pushing his large grey paws into her mother’s chest, knocking her mother off of her feet, her mother landing with a heavy thud on her side. Ashkit saw her mother’s head collide with the wall of the den rather hard and managed to hear Greykit’s terrified squeal in the den through the rain.
“Momma!” she squeaked, flying towards the tom and taking a large bite out of the warrior’s exposed tail, ripping into the flesh like she did with a piece of fresh-kill. Unfortunately, her small teeth didn’t get far in this mission, but she was satisfied when the tom looked over her way, clearly distracted. She could even taste a few droplets of blood falling into her mouth.
Well, she was satisfied until she saw the grey and white tom raise one of his paws, his dangerous, blood-stained claws glimmering malevolently even in the rain  and immediately slice them downwards.
Ashkit let out an ear-piercing screech as pain suddenly stung her face with an increasing force, immediately freeing the tom’s tail. Her eyes were clenched tight, not entirely from pain, but at the feeling of her own warm sticky blood and rain spilling over them. She gagged and cough as the watery stuff was inhaled into her nose. It hurt so bad. Her eyes were flickering with pain as the wound sent waves of pain across her face. She felt herself stumbling back despite herself, struggling to keep her balance, even with the slippery wet ground beneath her.
She knew already that the wound was deep. The cat had hit her, and he had hit her good. She quickly began swiping at the blood on her face, trying to get the stuff out of her eyes so she could see. For all she knew the cat who had scratched her was right above her ready to finish her off. Or she was about to bump into another group of flailing cats.
“Ashkit!!!” she heard her mother yowl loudly. She couldn’t see her mother, but she knew that her pretty calico mother was probably in a state of shock and horror. Ashkit hissed in pain a little. She suddenly heard two bodies colliding and heard a series of hisses and snarls. She then heard the sound of tearing flesh and a heavy thud a few seconds later.
Braving to peek one eye out, she squealed in horror at the sight in front of her. Right in front of her, her mother was laying, eyes closed and milky, not even blinking when blood from a scratch on her head was seeping down on her face, close to her closed eyes. Somehow, her mother had managed to get out of the den with the cat pushing her back… but… this was not what Ashkit wanted.
Her mother’s body was limp, like she had no weight to her whatsoever. Her mouth was gaped open, a trickle of blood escaping through the lip, her tongue slightly lolled out. Her whiskers were drooped and she wasn’t getting off of the ground in a hurry. Her beautiful coat seemed duller… more, ugly now that she was on the ground like that.
Ashkit had found herself frozen for a moment, wondering what had just happened and why her mother wasn’t getting up. But with sickening horror, her green eyes drifted over towards her mother’s neck, which had a large tear cutting into it. Her tail and ears drooped immediately, her body stiffening.
Blood seeped out of the wound and trickled onto the muddy floor, its usually slower pace quickened with the rain intermingling into it and mixing with the puddles of rain on the ground in shrouded wisps of color. It didn’t take Ashkit a long time to put two and two together.
She didn’t want to believe it at first. Taking a small step forward, Ashkit looked at her mother’s cold body before she collapsed and dug her face into the side of her mother’s face, the body wet and cold. A stark contrast against her mother’s normally soft and comfortingly warm fur she was used to feeling.
She wanted her mother to wake up and lick her face like she always did. Ashkit usually hated when her mother did that. But now, all she wanted was for her to do that to her right there and now. She wanted her to comfort her. To tell her everything was alright. Ashkit just wanted her to get up.
“Mother…” she whispered hoarsely, a small fragile hope still in her heart that her mother would respond, but her wish wasn’t granted. She knew she was only fooling herself to think otherwise.
She suddenly heard a loud screech beside her and looked up to see Graystrike tackling the cat who killed her mother. The cat was screeching with terror and pain as he desperately tried to fight back, but to no avail. Her father had him by the neck after all and had his back legs pinned to the ground to enable escape. She noticed then just how big her father was. He overpowered this cat from sheer weight alone.
She could see the fury and grief in her father’s eyes as he mercilessly sank his claws into the cat’s fur, his moves brutal and aimed to cause pain. He was continuing to hold onto the cat’s neck tightly… and Ashkit could tell his teeth were sinking into flesh.
“Please! Don’t-” she heard the cat sputter out, but her father wasn’t hearing none of it.
The fight didn’t last long, one sharp shake and the cat soon stopped kicking, his own eyes fading away. Blood seeped from the wound in his own neck and eventually, Graystrike figured out the truth and dropped him. Ashkit watched the cat’s corpse fall to the ground heavily right in front of her, morbid horror creeping up on her spine.
She almost wished she could feel the slightest bit of sympathy for the cat, but seeing her mother’s body right in front of her kind of made sympathy hard to come by.
She saw Greykit beginning to creep slowly out of the den, obviously weary of the warring cats outside and frazzled from the recent trauma she had just went through. Ashkit noticed a scratch lacing up her friend’s small back from where she had probably been in the wrong place at the wrong time when Sweetfur and the cat had been fighting.
Ashkit quickly turned her head to the ground as she heard Greykit stare at the two bodies with horror, her big blue eyes wide. Ashkit saw shivers wrack her friend’s body before she squealed, “Sweetfur!”
Ashkit didn’t look up. She didn’t care. She didn’t want Greykit to see her so sad. She was the strongest warrior in the world after all in their plays. How pathetic would it look if the strongest warrior looked broken in front of weaker adversaries?
Her grey companion raced over towards her side and went towards Sweetfur’s body, shakily asking, “Is she….” She didn’t finish. Ashkit could tell that she didn’t want to speak the last word. No one really did. She decided she didn’t feel like saying it either.
“Yes.” she rasped out brokenly, looking up finally to see her friend’s face. Greykit nearly fell back from what seemed like shock. Ashkit flicked a questioning ear and head Greykit sputter, “Your… your face.”
Oh, right. Blood was still oozing out of the wound, but the sting of the wound didn’t even compare to the thorn drilling into her heart at the moment.
Ashkit felt her father pad up by Sweetfur’s body and heard him whisper, “Sweetfur… oh dear StarClan, I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.” It was the first time Ashkit had heard her father sound so small, so broken. She clenched her teeth, ignoring the flares of pain shooting off of her face at the action.
She had been weak. Too weak to save her mother. To weak to perhaps call for help for her mother. But even with her own self-deprivation running through her mind, she knew who the real weakling was.
The StreamClan warrior who had attacked her and her mother. He was to weak to face up to other warriors, so he went against those who couldn’t fight. He played dirty. Went against any code of the warrior. He had killed her mother. Might of killed Greykit and her too if he had the shot. He was weak.
Ashkit couldn’t stand weak cats.
Turning her head towards her father’s hunched over form, she noted her mother’s cold, pretty body lying on the ground and the deep scratch on Greykit’s back, still bleeding. She felt the painful sensation of her own wounds running down her face. All this pain in one night. All because of one filthy excuse for a cat.
Turning her head to look at the StreamClan cat’s body, she felt hatred burn in her cold green eyes. She padded over stiffly towards the dead cat and lowered her head to hiss in his ear, “Weakling.”