Steven groaned as he came to. He felt achy, almost on par with the morning after his breakdown- and that was saying something. He peeled an eyelid open, only to squeeze it shut faster than it'd taken to open it as his eye was assaulted with a bright ray of sunlight. Hissing, he rolled over, scrambling for purchase against soggy, rained-on grass. His body oddly lacked the comforting weight his pajamas held, but guessing by how heavy his limbs felt, he was covered in something at least.

Why am I outside? He thought, gritting his teeth as he struggled to shove himself up onto his hands. Why do I feel so weird? Standing up should not feel this impossible. Making sure his head was tilted downward, he cautiously squinted one eye open, and, when it wasn't meant with stabbing light, he blinked the other open too. They still felt groggy with sleep, but the hybrid had already spent who-knows-how-long sleeping who-knows-where. Judging by the sheer amount of light that'd seared into his eye earlier, it was already late in the day-

Panic stabbed suddenly into his heart. I was supposed to call Connie today! I slept in! He cursed inwardly, the sudden adrenaline fueling him to push himself to his feet. He yelped as it didn't work too well; his limbs sunk heavily into what must be mud and he went tumbling into the freezing cold ground face-first. Steven made a strangled noise of discontent and confusion, struggling to right himself. He gasped as he pulled his head from what he realized with discontent had to be snow, desperately trying to shake it from his face.

"What-?" he started, reaching a hand up to brush the cold from his nose. Steven startled as his very-clearly-not-a-hand came into his line of sight. His mind froze as he stared at the rose tinted, brown fur coating his paw, before yelping. "It's catfingers! It always comes back to catfingers!"

Hurriedly, he slammed his paw into his mouth, willing his spit to water away the catfingers before it could consume him. Pulling his hand out of his mouth, he positioned it in front of his face again. To his dismay, it was still all furry and feline in nature.

Okay- unsurprising, considering I'm literally soaked and that didn't do anything, but still disappointing. Steven thought, dabbing his hand-paw into the rain-soaked grass a few times for good measure.

Steven frowned. "Well," he said, "if shapeshifting was the cause of this, then shapeshifting will get me out of it!" He blinked his eyes shut, willing with all of his might for it to work. He focused on his gem and the feelings that came when he usually shapeshifted. However, there was no familiar chime from his gem, nor was there any tell of his form changing.

Frustration piqued at his mind. I thought I'd gotten control over my shapeshifting, he whined internally. His body shook with the weight of his tail whipping back and forth. He-

Wait. His.. tail? Steven's breath hitched as he slowly turned to look at his backside. His heart dropped as he saw that it wasn't just a paw- fur trailed all along his back, to his back paws and to his tail. It wasn't catfingers; he'd literally transformed into an entire cat. And, with a few more tries, he realized that his shapeshifting stubbornly continued to not work.

"Great!" Steven muttered, swallowing the dread that welled in his throat. He allowed himself to take a few calming breaths, closing his eyes. After a few moments, he opened them. It made sense, now, why trying to stand up like a human hadn't worked. With his newfound knowledge, he pushed himself carefully onto his paws, standing up shakily. His bones protested the movement and he had to be careful to keep his paws where they wouldn't slip, but beyond that, his body was pretty okay with his new sense of balance and gravity and.. yeah, that tracks. He'd never had much of an issue adjusting to his shapeshifted forms once he got control over it; it was just a gem thing.

"So. I'm a cat, in some forest stars-know-where. The Gems probably don't even know I'm gone and I can't shapeshift back." Steven outlined for himself aloud. "Sure. Sure! Might as well happen."

He paused.

Do I still have my gem?! He panicked, looking down. Being met with a chest of dark, curly fur made it very clear that he wasn't going to be able to see his naval that way. Steven circled himself, a near mirror image of when Lion was chasing his tail which, under different circumstances he'd pause to smile at the mental picture. Shaking his head to clear his dizzying vision, he slowed to a stop and instead settled for pushing himself onto his haunches. He wobbled, but, craning his neck, he was able to see his belly better now. And, with a sigh of relief, he realized his gem was still there and still intact, just a tad hard to spot through all of his belly fur. He sighed in relief, lowering himself back onto all fours.

It's there, he reaffirmed, so why aren't my powers working? There it was; the age old question. The one that always came to cause trouble, just when he thinks everything is fine and dandy. He dug his claws into the ground, feeling his claws sink into the mud. Anger burned beneath his fur- his fur!-, so overwhelming, so consuming, so- so-! He snarled, releasing his pent up frustrations with a short yell and a considerably small pink shockwave. The wake of his outburst had him panting, anger slowly being replaced with a feeling of helplessness; the pink glow he hadn't even noticed emanating from his gem began to fade. The surprise of his gem's panic response actually working jolted him from his overwhelming thoughts, just in time to hear a loud crack from above him grabbed his attention, and he looked up to see the shockwave from his yell had snapped a few large branches, sending a wave of debris raining down on him.

Steven choked on air, scrambling to get out of the way, to do something-! Desperately, he tried to summon a bubble, or his shield, but his gem spluttered and flickered at the effort. Distantly, he likened it to when he'd been hit with Spinel's rejuvenator, but for now he had bigger worries. He squeezed his eyes shut, bracing for the weight to slam into him, burying him underneath branches and leaves and splinters and snow, under which he'd never be found again and the Gems wouldn't even know where he'd died and-

His spiraling thoughts came to a halt as he felt the impact. A heavy weight slamming into his side and pushing him out of the way. He yowled in surprise as he and the newcomer were sent rolling, paws over tail over paws across the small clearing until Steven's back slammed into a tree, and the newcomer into his ribs, winding him. He wheezed, collapsing forward in a sad pile on top of the stranger.

The two of them stayed that way for a few moments more, catching their breath and calming down from a near disastrous situation. The cat underneath him didn't say anything as Steven leveled his breathing, wincing with every breath. While his body had been aching before, it was even more so now coupled with the stabbing pain from having his back slammed against a tree. That'll take a good hour to walk off, he groaned, before remembering his company and scrambling to let them up.

"Sorry!" Steven gasped. "Thank you." It was added as an afterthought, suddenly coming to mind that this stranger was the one who'd saved him from harm.

As the cat straightened up, giving their chest a few licks to smooth the ruffled fur, it was easy to see that the cat was just as big, if not bigger, than Steven, with brilliant yellow fur. That explains why he was able to tackle me, he thought, though admittedly I'm not in best shape to be standing solidly anyways.

In the moment he'd taken observing the cat in front of him, the cat's gaze had shifted from his fur to Steven, who blinked at realizing he was being watched back. Where Steven's gaze was curious, thankful, thoughtful, the tom's own eyes held amusement.

"You're welcome, stranger," he said. "You're not from around here."

Steven froze. It was a combination effort between realizing that the cat in front of him spoke, and he understood it- and the sudden ominous statement that had his brain shut down for a moment. Can it tell I'm not actually a cat? What does it- he?- want from me?

".. No, I'm not." He sat down heavily, not wanting to stand on unsteady paws a second more. As an afterthought, he added, "Could you tell?"

"Any cat could. Well, any cat with a solid sniffer," the friendly tom's nose twitched, which Steven felt compelled to mirror, "but, if I'm to be honest with you, us outsiders tend to be able to tell a Clan cat from any other."

"Ah." Steven stared. Because he totally understood all of that, that the cat in front of him somehow found a common link between the two, something that a Clan cat doesn't share. He understood absolutely everything. "No, actually, what-"

And for the second time in under ten minutes, Steven felt a weight barrel into him.

Unfortunately for the newcomer, this time Steven was a lot more grounded, and the newcomer had a lot less weight behind their paws. What he was getting at was that, aside from staggering a bit, nothing effectively happened. The newcomer's tail curled in surprise as he forced himself to follow through by leaping over Steven's back to avoid bouncing backwards. The half-gem's pelt twitched, shivering at the sensation of his fur being dragged out of place by the stumble.

"Who are you?" the newcomer shoved his nose just in front of Steven, the resemblance between he and the first cat startlingly clear at such close proximity. His nose wrinkled as if he caught a bad scent, and he jerked back a tad bit. Before Steven could even open his mouth, the cat opened his and continued, "And you, Tree. What do you think you're doing?"

The first cat- Tree, apparently- arched his back in a stretch. "Saving cats from snowy peril." He yawned, flopping to his side in the snow. His tail dragged patterns into it as it curled, his ears twitching suddenly. "Ohh, I see. Yes, this is the part where I'm supposed to ask this fearsome troublemaker what he thinks he's doing smothering himself in SkyClan territory, isn't it? What say you, foe?"

Tree's attention was back on Steven, but the other cat's wasn't. Though he maintained a fierce stare, keeping Steven in his peripherals at the least, his pelt rippled in embarrassment as he angled his head to hiss at his companion.

Through gritted teeth, he hissed, "Can't you take anything seriously?"

"I'm taking this very seriously, Rootpaw," Tree blinked owlishly in return, before dropping the false innocence, "you know very well I don't see the need in aggressively forcing boundaries. Besides, I can't mediate with dead cats. Did you want me to let him get hit?"

His tail flicked towards the pile of branches and snow, small trails of powder white still trailing from the tree every once in awhile, shaken loose in the first fall.

"You mediate with Clan cats, not kittypets," Rootpaw's tail twitches. He looked for a moment as if he were going to continue, but glanced fully back at Steven, deciding better than to discuss personal matters in front of an outsider. "You're trespassing on SkyClan territory. Why?"

Before Steven could help himself, he found himself responding weakly, "To be tackled by cats." And isn't that something he never thought he'd have to say.

Tree snorted, but Rootpaw didn't seem to find it nearly as funny.

"This land is off-limits, every kittypet in the area knows better than to step foot here." He meowed, moving out of Steven's personal space to stand stiffly a foot away. A foot, as Steven was learning, was a lot less personal in essence when you were cat sized.

"I'm not a kittypet, I don't even know what that is," Steven snapped, "but I didn't step foot anywhere. I woke up under that tree. Wherever we are."

"You woke up here," Rootpaw stared at him. "And did you.. Go to sleep here?"

"No!" the half-gem's tail lashed.

Rootpaw huffs.

"Anything is possible," Tree cut in, having gotten to his paws and coming to stand by Rootpaw- and, really, the two couldn't have been anything but relatives- "cats waking up is hardly the least believable thing."

"Waking up in enemy territory?"

"Sleepwalking is a serious affliction. Cats deal with it all the time."

Steven really empathized with the incredulous look Rootpaw leveled his Clanmate.

"Then he can sleepwalk in his own forest! Preferably before a patrol shows up." And assumes I'm just calmly talking to a trespasser. Like Tree. Rootpaw thought. "You're leaving."

Steven felt a trill of panic shoot from his nose to his tailtip. Suddenly pressed against on his side in an escorting manner, he tries to calm his racing heart. "Wait! I don't know where I am, or how I got here, or-" he cuts off with a dry swallow, "you can't just make me leave. I need to-" to what? There was arguably nothing here for him. Not even a friend, or a gem, considering he had been alone beforehand, and alone when he woke up.

Rootpaw's resolve wavered, eyebrows furrowing for a moment before the tough act was thrown back up. No, even moreso than that, he seemed to tense worse than before, ears swiveling and nose twitching as he caught a scent on the breeze. His eyes widened, sharing a meaningful glance with his relative. "If you really didn't purposefully trespass, then you need to show that by leaving. Right now."

"You'll find your way," Tree offered as he stepped up to Steven's other side, walking him towards the edge of the treeline with Rootpaw, "you seem like a strong cat. Just stay away from any Clan borders next time you need a napping place. This bunch is testy."