Recap: Oak found out Az was only really a spy, and that she was relaying everything he said back to Miss (bummer). Cue angsty Oak and the Bad Escape Plan.


The voices behind him all sound like hers. It's all reversed; he is no longer the predator, the hunter with a hungry leer. She's the enemy, just as she was when he chased her through the pine forest, eons ago, but now he's the unwilling prey, and at last he knows it. Azazel, however, may as well be another species. They're vastly different, unsuitably matched, and this is why: Oakpaw will not get caught, not again. The slow and soft decay of his body, of his principles, has ended. He thrums with a purpose, a new and raw score to settle.

Oakpaw flees, inches ahead of death, and is glad for it. Death is familiar. Death he knows. He can no longer be sure of anything behind him, boundless, infinite, and cold. The city rises up around, bleakly grey and labyrinthine. Khia is out there somewhere, the curious and tiny oddity he's become bizarrely linked with, running for her life in the concrete maze. He'd been moments from bringing up their likely connection, the ties and blood that inexplicably link them. He'd wanted to. How did you know them? she'd asked, practically brimming with insatiable curiosity. He wonders if it was slowly dawning on her, if she had any clue at all. Oakpaw has already decided this isn't true; her thoughts must be concentrated on her brother, her real brother, the one she lived, breathed, and grew up with. The one she wants.

Conscious of the loud footfalls and heavy breathing behind him, Oakpaw makes a quick turn onto a busy street. He's almost overwhelmed by the sleek metal monsters that thunder across the road, abjectly alien and awesome in their speed and sonance. The dilemma of his situation fails to amuse him; righteous zealots at his heels, relentless metal beasts inches from his nose. The figments of his nightmares would quail here.

"Stop!" someone commands, imperious conviction in their resonant voice. Oakpaw throws a glance over his shoulder, knowing innately that he shouldn't, and sees that Emory has joined the chase, hungry for the blood of this lone defector. He manages to sneer in the vague direction of his pursuers, all the while ignoring what he knows he must do. The wide avenue stretches, languidly, as far as his eye can see, twisting and twining amongst cold buildings of steel and glass. Oakpaw steps out with barely a look, into the path of swift metal death and the reek of gasoline. He thinks, as he runs, that being crushed to death by the impassive monsters around him would be better than suffering any fate in the clutches of the monsters he has already escaped.

A gust of stale wind bowls past his tail; he swerves behind a sleek silver beast, tasting the fumes it spills in its wake. Oakpaw catches a claw against the grey, unyielding concrete, and feels a sharp sting as it's torn from its sheath, but he can't pause to lick his wounds. In halting, unsteady leaps, he makes his way to the other side, intent on its mythical promise of freedom and safety, one he's entirely unsure will be kept. He reaches the footpath in a matter of seconds, though his mad dash has taken years off the longevity of his life. His muscles tremor- he wants to collapse, and perhaps bask in his unlikely success- but he runs on, the heat of Emory's malignant glare burning against his skin. They'll try to follow him, he knows, and the sparse trail of blood from his mildly injured paw. He'll be angry about that later, but thoughts of home fill his mind- the cacophony of the forest, the unending, obdurate river, the cats he unwittingly left behind. Cloudpaw, Emberpaw, even Strongclaw. They probably think Oakpaw is dead, a fact which might yet become true.

Oakpaw presses on, taking a sharp right; he watches the sun, and pretends he knows how to follow it. The faintest hint of fresh air lingers before him, and he follows that too, ignoring the dull ache in his leg and the sting in his paw. He wants nothing more than go home, after weeks locked in the dark, subjugated by cats who would rather see him dead than alive. Oakpaw knows, too, that he has a duty to PureClan, and an unavailing responsibility to warn them of the doom marching straight to their door. With the right preparation, he's sure, they can overcome anything.

As he walks, he wonders how things have changed; Peppermask's abrupt and unexpected arrival at the warehouse had stupefied him, and he's still not sure how he arrived in the city in the first place. Is there a raid? Was he exiled? Have they sent out a search party in the hopes of Oakpaw's safe and triumphant return? He contemplates darker things, of course; perhaps he no longer has a Clan to return to. Bleak scenes unfold in his thoughts: plague, disaster, sedition. He puzzles over the Peppermask problem as he walks. The tom had always been secretive, he knew, and Iceface had already set a precedent of betrayal back in the forest. He could even be a spy, of course, if Morningstar could relinquish her pride for long enough to send one. Oakpaw wanders, and thinks, until the sun slips into the horizon and shadows swallow the streets.

He knows he's lost, and Khia's lost to him, but he has no idea how to remedy this. His leg hurts now, as it has been for hours, but Oakpaw encounters a severe lack of solutions. Emberpaw would escape. But she wasn't stupid enough to chase a fleeing rogue into their own domain.

Oakpaw snarls and kicks a pebble with his paw, though his leg cramps and protests. It flies over the gutter and skips across the empty street, halting, in a mellow cacophony, against a far wall. He does not think twice about the motion, the movement, until his eyes alight on a ripple of shadow, a patch of dark disturbed. Without thinking, he darts away; his instincts have cowed him, made him a coward, but he would rather be alive and craven than dead and brave. The collective scent of the warehouse cats is suddenly present in the air, and only affirms his need to escape.

"Wait!" a voice yowls; it belongs to some young tom, strained with adolescence and the adrenaline of the day.

Oakpaw has heard that line before.

The imperative command spurs him on, but his leg falters, and he falls. His pursuer does not leap on him, as he had expected, but slides to a stop in front of his nose, panting with exertion.

"Oakpaw, stop," the voice says, in a tone of uncertain gravity. Blinking dust out of his eyes, Oakpaw looks up. The figure before him is young, undeniably, as he'd first thought, but it's clear he's not one of Miss' right-hand brutes. He's slim, with pale cream fur, and an oddly kinked tail that hangs, cheerfully, over his back.

"Get back," Oakpaw spits, struggling to sit up. Just because he's not part of Miss' inner war circle does not mean he's not here to bring him back in.

The tom skitters back a step or two, obediently. "Calm down," he says, in a manner clearly designed to placate him. It's come to be, as Oakpaw has uncovered, a tactic cats employ in lieu of outright killing him. "I'm not here for you," he says, perplexing Oakpaw with a mere five words.

"What?" he wheezes, pulling himself into something akin to an upright, well-balanced crouch. The tom has a pleasant smile on his face, something that seems almost customary, but there is no warmth in it.

"Not. Here. For. You," he repeats slowly, keeping a wary distance between them. "You coerced someone to leave the warehouse with you, and now I see you've abandoned her. Where is she?"

Oakpaw shakes his head, trying to recall his last minutes inside the warehouse. He'd snuck away with Khia, of course, and with the exception of her lanky, golden friend, no one had seen them do it. This observant oddball hadn't even been in the picture.

"I didn't abandon her," Oakpaw snaps back, feeling almost fraternal. "We split up. It was the safest thing to do, with those goons on our tails. We'll meet back up before we get to the forest."

The rebel shakes his head and tsks softly. "Why would she go to the forest with a Clanner? That's asking for-"

He pauses suddenly, unorthodox, an unclean break in his mechanic reproach.

"I'm sorry you're not privy to our plans," Oakpaw says, a bitter taste on his tongue, "but that's hardly my problem."

The pleasantness on the tom's face is losing its mild edge. Oakpaw finds his feet and hides his pain. He does not have another seditious warehouse to hide out in until his ailments deem themselves cured. Here, he looms a head above his adversary, and the familiarity of the position puts him at ease. He has not loomed for a long time.

"What is your plan?" the other snaps back, curtly. "Get lost in the city? Get hounded by the rebels? Frankly I can't see the point."

Oakpaw is bristling now. Khia's friend, whoever he is, is immoderately altruistic. It's not a trait he favours. "Our plan," he replies, unrepentantly harsh, "doesn't involve you. Clearly. If she wanted you here, she wouldn't've left you behind."

"What is she to you?" The tom narrows his eyes in some unspoken declaration. Beside them, impervious to their enmity, their shadows stretch and warp against the pavement with the truant afternoon light.

"She's more to me than you are to her, apparently," Oakpaw says, shrugging, pointedly careless. "And she's not much to me at all." He goes to move on then- he has much ground to cross, and he's not entirely sure his caravan of pursuers have given up the chase- but the tom remains in his path.

Oakpaw snarls, "Leave me alone." It seems mostly ineffectual. He begins to walk anyway, cataloguing the nature of this pain in his leg and what it might mean. It is sharp and spry and all-avenging. The other tom reaches out, perhaps to tap him on the shoulder, strike a blow to his ribs, rip out his throat; Oakpaw sees it all, and, like the PureClan warrior he may never become, acts accordingly. The pain, pushed from his mind, does not bother him in the slightest as he throws the other tom to the ground, rips his claws down his chest, grips his foreleg in vengeful teeth and bits down. Oakpaw loses another claw in the tumult.

The tabby is yowling in pain, but Oakpaw only relishes the sound. It's been too long. He steps back and spits blood from his mouth. "Leave me alone," he says, again, desperate in some way to make any point of this.

The tom's crooked tail lies in an odd contortion on the pavement, creeping from behind his back. All at once Oakpaw feels satisfied and afraid, as though this is something he should not have done. But he's done it anyway. The only thing to do now is leave.


His sleep that night is awkward, full of tremors and trepidation. He curls up in some unclaimed alley behind puddles of shattered glass and odd scraps; the unclean ground riddles his fur with grit and dust, but it is his first night of freedom, so he makes his bed and savours his freedom. Long may it live.

His leg, in odd and lengthy intervals, dithers between feeble cramps and halting paresthesia. The cold concrete, at least, is a welcome relief.

Despite the forcefulness of his relief, of his unsubstantiated hopes of freedom, he's paranoid that Emory will walk right up to his hiding spot at any moment. This time he thinks, there will be no cosy hole in the wall, no pretty jailor to console him. He thinks, despite it all, that he is lying in his grave.

But he is not.

He wakes after the dawn, deafened by the suspicious rattlings and cacophonous inner-workings of the city. It is a hellish place. He decides to leave as quickly as possible. Oakpaw leaves that alley far behind him, although he can't shake its smell from his fur. Once again, he follows that merry breath of clean air, the tangible promise of the city's end. He thinks about Khia again- if she got away, if she is waiting for him. He can only hope that she is. He, after all, was their primary target, the asset only acceptable dead or enslaved. He has many things to tell his Clan, and the rebels can't have that.

The freshness of the air is suddenly unopposed, and he no longer needs it as his guide; he can see, behind the uniform rows of bleak buildings and outcrops, the greenness of the wild beyond. Oakpaw begins to run.

There are the fields he has longed for, the smudge of forest on the horizon he has missed. There is even the river in the distance, far to his right, and it's a beguiling, welcoming sight. Oakpaw sees, then, that he's too late. He's missed his chance. He's not alone in these fields.

The rebellion has marched from its dark doors within the city, has slunk from street to street, has formed indistinct domino lines on the wide ground before him. With one dark figure at its head, the army of the rebels marches to its death.


hello there

um yeah here's a chapter, oak is actually my fave and i am not sorry. i'm nearly finished with this semester, which is strange, so there might be like, one more update before christmas. after THIS chapter we're kinda headed towards the endgame. thanks to Icyycle for your reviews and motivating me to get this chapter finished. reviews always inspire me!