Chapter 3

Dark clouds loomed ever distant all throughout the evening. Slowly, the cats roused and began to go about their business. Darkwood assigned scout patrols and hunting parties, the apprentices looked after Graveltail, Rainstep, and the elders, and a few cats managed to snag some leftover meat from the pile of prey bones.

Vinepaw, face buried in a thick clump of grass, was determined to ignore it all. Her voice muffled, she said, "I don't want to come."

"The Clan's going," said Bulletpounce, voice soft. "Where are you going to live if you don't come with us? You going to go live with a human?"

"No. They suck."

"Are you going to stay out here in the field?"

"No."

"You going to try and find your way back to the old camp?"

"No!"

Though she couldn't see the black she-cat, she could sense her mentor nod. "Okay, so until you decide what to do, think you can stay with the Clan?"

Reluctantly, the dark tabby apprentice pulled herself backwards and opened her eyes. Blinking and swiping debris from her muzzle, she turned to face Bulletpounce properly. Though she wasn't much taller than Vinepaw, she was strong and sturdy, and her emerald stare glittered in the light of the rising moon.

"Fine."

"Thank you. I'd worry if we had to leave you behind." She reached down, slowly to give Vinepaw a chance to withdraw, and gave her a lick on the head. "Why don't you carry one of the sponges we use to collect water? It'll give you something to do that nobody can find an excuse to complain about."

"Warriors seemed a lot… nicer when I was a kit."

"If anyone bothers you, just come get me and I'll deal with them," said Bulletpounce rather than acknowledge the topic. "For now, you just find something to carry. And stay close; we're going into that City tonight."

"I know," she said, rising to her feet. "I'll go find something."

#

Shadows fell across every inch of the City untouched by neon lights. The roads were still busy and would be for a few hours still. A dark feline with faint Bengal spots peered out at an alleyway, scanning it long and hard before emerging from the boarded-up building where she'd spent the day.

Tripwire sat in the darkness and started to give her fur a wash. Grime filled up her mouth almost instantly, but she was used to it, and her mind wondered idly about the possibilities of the night splayed out before her. Something clattered on the other side of the fence. She froze mid-lick until she saw a cat she recognized jump up to the fence's edge.

"Rat's tongue! Don't jump scare me like that," she snapped at her brother, an all-black tom with a yellow stare matching hers. "Not now. Not with the way things are here lately."

Dart slid off his perch and landed soundlessly on the jagged stone. "Whatever. You joining the Hunt tonight?"

"That blasted hunt's what's got us all in trouble."

"This again?" He rolled his eyes. "Everything's gonna be fine, Trip. The humans are too busy with… whatever it is they do, to really come after us."

"They would be if you and the others would give up your stupid game."

"What else is there to do? With everything they throw out, we've got enough to eat. There's enough quiet spots to sleep and for the mollies to hide kits. The freaks out in the woods might think we've lost our heads, but face it, Trip: we've got it made in everything but fun."

"Is fun worth your life?" asked Tripwire flatly. "Is it worth everyone else's?"

She rose and crossed the distance between them, bringing her muzzle uncomfortably close to his. She may have been smaller than her littermate, but she made up for that with a glare sharp enough to send dogs running. It wasn't lost on either one of them that she was the oldest and most powerful of the whole batch. She was the reason that almost all of the family had survived after their parents disappeared.

"It's just… we're bored. We're so bored, Trip. What are we supposed to do all day?"

"Something other than set the humans off. You heard Pixie at the last meetup; the Hunt's caught us all kinds of attention we don't need."

"The humans aren't gonna do anything," he started, his tone intense and borderline pleading. "They never do."

She was silent for a moment. "You're right. They never do."

Dart's flash of celebration barely had the chance to cross him.

"Unless something happens to threaten their control."

#

It was easy to tell where the patch of untamed land ended, and this City began. Before they grew anywhere near to its towering structures, the cats' ears filled up with noise so loud and convoluted that half of them were well and truly overstimulated by the time they could see the border.

And "border" was the most fitting word to use here. The ground was mottled with bits of colorful trash, glass and twisted plastic, and stains from dyes that really shouldn't have been able to stick like this. Running along the edge of a great mar in the earth was a rusty fence where all the debris seemed concentrated the most. Strange melodies and blazing lights beckoned the Clan onward like a poisonous flower.

Some weird birds fluttered by overhead.

"Go help the elders," Hawktalon told her, snapping Carmen out of her head.

It had been easy enough to get past the fence. There were several places where it was too bent and mangled to keep anything out. To cross the dried-up riverbed before them wasn't going to be so simple. Graveltail was tired from managing her litter, Rainstep had one of her own on the way, and the elders' bodies didn't work as well as they used to. Windfang, otherwise a capable warrior, still had a bad shoulder from that fight where the dog had thrown her. Even Darkwood was struggling to navigate in recent times. It was getting harder not to notice those pale strands of fur on his muzzle.

"They're fine," she said distantly, voice nearly lost in the looming cacophony.

"Excuse you?"

There was a time not long ago that the massive warrior's ire would have frightened her. Carmen had spent her whole life before this without a care in the world, up in a den in a tower of stone. Her mother had told her stories of the mongrel cats who lived on the streets and liked to spill Purebreds' clean blood. Meeting the Clan had been akin to meeting a storybook monster to her. Now, she couldn't help but have bigger things on her mind.

"… can't even- Carmen, are you listening to me?" He stepped in front of her and lowered himself to face her nose to nose. "What is wrong with you tonight?"

She stared through him, and it took longer to speak than either of them were comfortable with. "Nothing."

"Good. Then you won't have any problems with helping the elders get across."

"Right. Yes." She stood and shook herself off. "I can do that."

She walked away from him, mumbling to herself. "I can do that just fine. No problems. No problems at all. I'm-I'm special. I'm important. I'm… royalty. I'm… I'm the chosen one. StarClan's chosen cat. That's how special I am. I'm a Purebred. The best Purebred anyone's ever seen. That's why they picked me; because I'm just… that… special."

For the first time in her life, she really wished she wasn't.