"It was hot all that day, the sun blazed down from a cloudless sky at evening there was a thunderstorm, and when at last the sun rose, it shone through a thin veil of clouds, crimsoned and inflamed." - H.G. Wells, The Star.
Littlestar woke up with a hot, sweaty headache that brought back old memories. Everything felt sore as if her body were covered in a large rash. It hurt to open her eyes as if she had just died, and she felt her fur thin and plastered to her body. The curly fur around her scruff stung—not all from the last moonrise's activities—and a profound ache beat through her chest.
So Littlestar, who had not gotten this far without trusting her instincts, immediately knew something was wrong.
She pried her sticky eyes open, feeling the sting from insufficient sleep, and began the process of disentangling herself from Russetfur. The dark-gingered deputy had wrapped Littlestar in a cocoon, a level of intimacy that Russetfur would permanently deny in public, but now it was a great labor to slip out of her mate's grasp without waking her. Bits of moss and mud clung to Littlestar during her great escape, but seasons of being small and nimble paid off as she successfully wormed her way out of the she-cats grasp.
Underneath the oak tree, Littlestar licked the top of Russetfur's head and then walked outside on shaky and inflamed legs. It was early dawn, meaning everyone had just gone to sleep, excluding the vigil guards, so Littlestar basically had the camp to herself. The area was still lightly covered in mud. Littlestar's experiments with written language still scribbled wildly near the medicine cat den. Runningwind would be working most likely, but Littlestar had no desire to converse right now, intent on finding the source of her ills.
She prowled the scene like a fox. Haunting storm-grey eyes raked the camp, looking for… something. Her eyes peeked into the warriors' den and spotted the empty nest where Tawnyspirit usually slept. It was a reminder that the twolegs would be coming soon, but it wasn't what she was looking for, so she turned away and left her warriors to their well-earned rest.
Instead, she stepped out of camp, passing through the thorn tunnel. She paused just outside the thorns, alone, seemingly speaking to no one: "I will be leaving for an early-dawn patrol by myself. Everything is fine. I may or may not be disguising myself, so passwords will be in effect if any mud-soaked strangers try their luck. If I'm not back by the sunhigh, raise hell."
There was no reply. Good. She breathed deeply, and if she didn't know what to look for, she would've never known that Kinkfur and Nightwing were nearby.
Littlestar took her brown socks and skedaddled.
She wasn't sure what she was looking for in her swamp, but instinct took her north and east. She passed the pines, cold bare dirt beneath her paws, not seeing anything amiss, and then, with quiet confidence, stepped into the swamp proper. She took one last glance at herself: brown socks, dirty white fur, curly scruff, brown tipped tail, and a brown columbina mask across her face. Mud water came up to her underfur, soaking her belly. Then, nervous through her pounding headache, she let herself fall sideways into the muddy water. It soaked her down to her undercoat, and when she emerged, all traces of her were gone. Left behind was a nondescript, unlucky stranger with no scent other than muck—a monster that fit perfectly into ShadowClan nursery rhymes.
With her new disguise, Littlestar moved and reminisced. She wondered how Ravenflight was doing. Hopefully, Firestar had taken her advice and information into consideration. She hadn't seen any of her old friends in moons, at least not in a serious capacity. ThunderClan would have to survive on their own now without her. She wanted to reminisce more, but even with the cool mud on her pelt, the headache did not abate, some great beast gnawing at her insides.
Maybe her instincts were wrong this time. Perhaps she was just hungry. She and Russetfur had burned a lot of energy last moonrise, absolutely ravaging each other—
She heard it. The grand silence of the cat about to pounce that she had missed earlier was shattered with the wet sloppy sound of vrrrrrk-sluuuuurk-sluuuurk-vrrrrk-sluuuurk then the great crash of crrrnnkk-chunk-clank!
Littlestar ducked, ears tight to her head as her wits abandoned her. With a great scream, the forest came alive – the cry of birds rapidly flying into the sky – the mad rush of a lonely beaver – trees falling in ear-shattering, mind-blowing awesome sound. Littlestar recovered and slid across the swamp floor, barely a shadow in the madness.
"There," a familiar voice whispered.
Littlestar turned to look. Past what she now saw as an upturned flower bush – she didn't know its name, that information was a lifetime ago – was a great bulldozer, alive and turned on. It shredded the pines, big and yellow and monstrous. It pushed forward, forcing Littlestar to skirt around it, and as it passed, she imagined a hundred cats being crushed beneath its wheels. Nearby, she saw the source of the vrrrrrk-sluuuuurk sounds. A large hose fed into the mud water, sucking it up as the twolegs cleared the standing water for their stinking roads.
"Watch Littlestar. You must prepare ShadowClan," whispered the voice.
Littlestar followed her StarClan guide. Nightstar led her – the smallest part of his essence inside her guided her through the madness. With the mud disguise, she was practically invisible to the crawling twolegs, and she watched them dump what looked like cement into her swamp. Other twolegs laid down large swathes of strange fabric that she didn't have a name for, and her eyes widened dramatically when she saw what she identified as dynamite being packed into holes. The red sticks were so alien to her that it took her tired brain what felt like minutes of blankly staring to identify them.
The twolegs garbled nonsense, and then one of the dynamite packages nearby ignited. The explosion – that is what it is, an explosion – shot dirt and rocks into the sky, shattering the tree stump nearby. The earth heaved, and Littlestar imagined bones being unearthed.
It only got worse. She saw twolegs digging with shovels, building trenches. On the outskirts of her territory, Littlestar saw trucks in the dozens parked with gravel and dirt, and when she returned to the undergrowth, to her horror, she saw controlled burning of vegetation. Smoke filled the sky, and the sky started to bleed red as the sun rose—the world stank of what Littlestar was distantly realizing was chemicals and poisons.
All thoughts of returning to her nest to maintain her nocturnal schedule were banished.
Another pine tree fell and almost crushed her as Littlestar explored the carnage. Pine needles flew in the air, and Littlestar wrinkled her nose on the verge of vomiting. Had they moved in overnight? Where had all the twolegs come from and so quickly?
She knew intellectually that this would happen soon with Tawnyspirits group gone to find Midnight—that hadn't changed despite all of Littlestar's actions since coming to this world—but seeing it? Smelling it? Hearing it with the cat's ear? It was like the world was coming to an end.
Fuck them. This was her swamp.
She had fought for it and bled for it. Nearly died for it. It was home, more home than any home before. There was history here! Generations upon generations of Warriors had given their lives for this piece of land! She had left her friends in ThunderClan and sacrificed almost everything for this land! Now the twolegs—fucking Erins—were just supposed to rip it all to pieces for new real estate? The Clans were supposed to move on? Pack their bags and say, "So long forest! Thanks for having us!"
It was a frog-dung! It was snake-tongue! It was, pardoning her language, a bunch of bullshit.
Still invisible to the twolegs, she watched as a great bulldozer came to a grinding halt. The lights dimmed and then turned off as the twoleg stepped out. The big, lumbering creature pulled a pair of keys and unlatched the large compartment to the engine. She watched them pull out some finicky part – she was never a car girl - and watched him reach back into the bulldozer, pulling out a replacement part. Drops of oil messily dropped over the swamp floor because the twoleg was a fuck, and then the twoleg slotted the new part into the engine. He checked the piece of machinery, still wafting heat that Littlestar could feel from a reed-length away, but Littlestar's thoughts were elsewhere. She was spiraling, her mind fuming.
Time passed while Littlestar fumed, her fear scent filling the clearing over the smog. Eventually, the bulldozer moved again, beginning its terrifying destruction of the forest again. With the monster coming to life, Littlestar returned to herself, glancing sickeningly at the destroyed section of ShadowClan's territory.
The solid resoluteness and loyalty to principle that had gotten her past Tigerstar and Brokenstar also returned to her. Her mind stilled and then began to scheme. Fight smart, not hard. That was her motto.
She wouldn't wait for Tawnyspirit's group to save them like a distressed damsel. She wouldn't give up the land.
She would stop the twolegs herself.
You'll Never Save The World is a pre-written, completed story. A chapter will be posted every day until its completion. Pending unexpected interruptions, the journey will last a week. You'll Never Save The World contains a shameless OC-SI character who bears little resemblance to my real-life self, a lesbian romance, a crack premise taken seriously, preposterous action sequences, and a protagonist speedrunning their way to lose all of her nine lives.
Now, with the standard disclaimer out of the way. A long-time friend has encouraged and needled me to write a Self-Insert story on and off for years. This is partly their fault. You know who you are.
As of the time of writing this, I am currently ensorcelled with a long-term writing project for the Wings for Fire fandom. It is shaping up to be the longest and biggest story I have ever written, and once a bolt of lightning, the project has become a multi-year writing project. I doubt I will be publishing it for many years, depending on where inspiration and life take me.
In the meantime, the Warriors fandom gets this. I almost didn't publish You'll Never Save The World; this one gives me an acute sense of embarrassment whenever I reread it, but I decided in the end that the Warriors fandom has seen much worse. Thankfully, You'll Never Save the World was a short story I enjoyed writing.
I hope everyone finds some enjoyment out of it as well.