BatFam to BatClan, haha, get it?

by LollingCat

Summary:

Short story in which the Batfamily is turned into cats and transported into the Warrior Cats universe, and, to his family's amusement and Damian's horror, they have to rely on Damian's knowledge of the Warriors series to get them through not being mauled by the fighty-murder-cult cats who have been through, well, as much drama, bloodshed and confusing plots as the Batfamily has. Damian would really appreciate it if his family started taking this a little more seriously, and stop talking about toe beans and whittle whiskers and pink noses when they weren't teasing him for reading kids' books about cats. Perhaps they'd realize that this series isn't as kid-friendly as they realize, and that there's a reason Damian secretly likes the books so much despite his outward protests against them.

Note that this was written before Light in the Mist + Starless Clan came out, so it takes place more in a limbo area after the book, The Place of No Stars.

Excerpt
“This even more idiotic imbecile-” Sue him, he was getting a antsy and was taking it out on Drake. “-is-” And Todd had taken the name Damian planned on giving Drake. “-Duck.” The satisfaction he felt as Drake’s face fell was immeasurable.
“It was one time!”

Notes:

This will mostly if not always be from Damian's PoV so he refers to his family by their last names most of the time :)

Chapter 1: Just Another Day for the Batfamily Honestly

Damian had a splitting headache and it was annoying because for the life of him he couldn’t recall why or how he got it. He vaguely remembered being angry at Todd or maybe Brown, probably Drake too as he always was, and fighting beside Grayson and Father against some villain although he couldn’t recall who exactly even though he remembered thinking they were pathetic and weak, but he thought that of all villains. And then a white light and an infuriating headache.

 

He had been through way worse, so, of course, he wouldn’t complain. This was nothing compared to having a sword impale your heart! But it was still annoying. Like Drake. In fact, he would blame that imbecile for it, because everything was always his fault some how.

 

Damian let out a hiss- that sounded more like an actual cat’s hiss than normal- as he struggled to pry open his eyelids. The harsh sunlight clouded his eyes and everything around him was too blurry, but the greens and browns told him he must be outside- a forest, most likely. The world was spinning and he rapidly blinked his eyes in an attempt to rid himself of the whorling trees in his vision.

 

When the world finally calmed down and shapes began to make sense again- definitely in a forest- he finally noticed the giant cats lying motionlessly in front of him. Instinctively he tensed and jerked backwards, but found his body uncooperative, instead having his hands slip out from underneath him when he tried to push himself up and flopping onto his side with a soft groan. Instead of crashing onto the hard forest floor, his head had hit the soft pelt of one of the giant cats- short-furred, black and white. The cat stirred beneath him, making Damian hold his breath, but it did not wake.

 

His hands twitched, fingers brushing against another cat’s pelt, and he glanced down.

 

Only to find his hands to be absolutely nowhere.

 

In another panic he jerked his- phantom?- invisible?- missing?- arms to his body, only to instead see the small paws of a cat move towards him. His body jerked again in confusion and panic, his mind scrambling for an answer that soon came crashing down on him as he saw the cat’s body follow the exact movements he was trying to do-

 

He was a cat .

 

With this newfound knowledge, he managed to jump up onto his paws, wobbling, but spreading out his four legs to support him. He glanced at the slumbering giant cats around him and realized they weren’t giant, but normal-sized, and that he was simply their size. He took deep, steadying breaths, reminding himself he had dealt with worse and weirder. Being a cat wasn’t the strangest thing to ever happen, and by far not the most dangerous. In fact, hadn’t he often dreamed of being a cat, and to be able to understand Alfred (the cat, obviously- he had no problems understanding his butler and pseudo-grandfather)?

 

He tentatively took a few steps in his new cat body, glancing behind himself and watching his tail sway, realizing he was in control of it and his bristling pelt. He took a deep breath and willed it to flatten itself out, and was startled when his fur started to smooth down.

 

He was a dark-furred cat. His first guess was black, but as the sunlight hit him, he realized he was more of a very dark dark gray, with hidden black tabby stripes on his pelt. Short-furred as well, but with a tail fluffier than Alfred the cat’s thin one- not as fluffy as a Maine Coone, of course, but it was notable. The animal-loving human side of his brain desperately wanted to pet the tail and also cuddle the cat, but he was the cat, so that wouldn’t be possible any time soon. Also he would never stoop as low to cuddle a cat. He did not cuddle. Merely respected the animal for what it was. And sometimes pet it. And hold it close.

 

He shook his head of those thoughts furiously. No time for distractions. He had to find out where he was, why he was a cat, and get home to Father, where they could surely undo this strange magic. He turned back to the bodies of cats around him, wondering if they were normal cats or if perhaps others had gotten caught in this magic as well. He hoped normal- he didn’t particularly want to deal with any panicked civilians, especially since he wasn’t sure if he would introduce himself as Damian Wayne or Robin in this situation. What if they magically got turned back to humans, and had introduced himself as Damian but was in his Robin uniform?

 

His train of thought broke off as the lighter brown tabby cat curled at the edge of the pile groaned and rolled over. Damian tensed, feeling his pelt hairs raise once again against his will even as he fought against the instinct. He could see his whiskers twitch and move in the edges of his vision, which was disturbing, as he kept thinking they were bugs of some kind, and then his whiskers would twitch more to get the bugs away and-

 

His brain was far too scrambled right now. He hoped he didn’t have a concussion, that would be annoying to deal with, now that the headache had started to fade. The brown cat slowly raised itself, looking far too bewildered for a cat to just be a cat. Damian cursed lightly under his breath, and, to his surprise, it came out as a hiss. The other cat startled, jerking its head up to stare at him, its blue eyes- a strangely familiar hue of blue that Damian couldn’t quite place- widening as they locked onto his own eyes. Its ears pricked, and they both stood staring at each other for far too long.

 

Another groan made both of them switch their gazes to the black and white cat laying beside Damian. The cat wiggled before putting its white-toed paws over its ears, nose pressed to the ground and eyes tightly shut. Damian’s tail twitched at the uncharacteristic cat behavior. Definitely human. How irritating.

 

“Uh,” a voice said that immediately confused Damian’s senses as it hit his ears. That was a meow . A real meow- he could hear it- just like Alfred’s meows, and all of Selina’s cats, and every other cat in existence- so why did he hear words in his brain ? “Hi?”

 

And why did the voice sound like Timothy Drake ?

 

“ Drake ?” he hissed in disbelief, his fur bristling again and his tail raising in confused alarm.

 

The pale cat startled, ears going backwards. “Damian?! Why are you a cat? ”

 

“Why are you a cat, imbecile?” Damian growled, and Drake glanced down at himself as though re-remembering his prior discovery. Idiot.

 

‘Mouse-brain,’ a slightly amused and intrigued part of his brain whispered that he thoroughly ignored.

 

“What-” Drake began only to be cut off by a grumbling whine.

 

“Shu’ uuuup ,” the whining voice said, from none other than the black and white cat. “M’ head huuuurts.”

 

Damian exchanged a quick look with Drake, both of them coming to the same conclusion immediately. Damian shoved the black cat roughly, slightly uncoordinated, with his paw. “ Grayson ! Wake up this instant! This is no time for sleep.”

 

Meanwhile, Drake had begun politely nudging and prodding the cats around him, those who were slower to wake. Most of them grumbled or hissed or flinched, but one, when touched, let out a sharp, vicious growl and leaped to its paws, startling Drake into stumbling back pathetically onto his haunches. It was clearly disoriented, though, as it wavered and nearly fell to its side.

 

“ Don’t- ” the voice roared halfway before obvious surprise spread across its face and it crossed its legs in an attempt to stay upright, before giving up, and letting itself fall. It pushed itself back up, staring at its paws in disbelief. “The hell?”

 

Drake’s whiskers twitched in what Damian would place as amusement. “Good morning, Jay.”

 

The long-haired dark brown tabby cat gazed with bright bluish-green eyes at the smaller cat in front of him. “Tim?”

 

“That’s me.” Drake nodded.

 

The second most inferior Robin blinked dumbly. “What in the fuck?”

 

“My thoughts exactly,” Tim responded.

 

“Woah, what?” the perplexed voice of one Richard Grayson reached their ears as the black and white cat stared up at them with wide blue eyes. “Tim? Jason?” He glanced at Damian beside him. “...Damian? Why are you-” He looked down at his own white paws. “-we, cats?”

 

“No clue,” Drake answered, glancing around them. “I think- we were fighting someone right?”

 

Grayson nodded as he hesitantly stood up. “Some- huh. I can’t remember a name. But they were… it was someone new?”

 

“Maybe.” Drake shrugged, except the action looked extremely silly on a cat since it was pretty much impossible, and Drake frowned at himself, trying to glance at his shoulders, puzzled, before giving up.

 

“I remember being very angry,” Todd growled, tail lashing behind him. “At multiple idiots.”

 

‘I do as well,’ Damian thought but didn’t say.

 

“You’re always angry,” a new voice piped up, and Damian groaned as the pale, sandy-colored cat pushed herself up with bright and blinking blue eyes. Damian was starting to feel like an outsider- the only one with green eyes, but at least Todd had mostly green eyes, even if granted to him by the Lazarus Pit. Speaking of, even as a cat, he had a white stripe on his forehead, starkling apparent on his dark reddish-brown fur.

 

“So we’re cats?” the sandy cat questioned, although it was more statement than question as she glanced around. “That’s new. Cool.”

 

“Hey, Steph,” Grayson greeted, tail raising in a kinked way that Damian assumed he didn’t even know he was doing. Cat behavior 101- a raised, kinked tail was a friendly tail, like a greeting. “Seems like it.”

 

Brown nodded, glancing at the three cats still unconscious around them. “So, how much we wanna bet that those are… Bruce, at the very least, and I’m gonna guess Cass.”

 

“And Duke, I’d bet,” Todd added, nudging the chocolate brown cat laying on his side. The cat twitched, but didn’t wake. “I think I remember him being…” He frowned. “There. Not sure where there is, though.”

 

“How do we get them awake?” Brown asked. “Just start punching them?” She glanced at her paws and watched, partly awed, as claws slid out. “ Clawing them?” She reached a paw out to the brown cat that was maybe Duke Thomas, but Grayson jumped forward to swat her paw away.

 

“No, don’t claw him,” he meowed. And that was still disturbing, how all those meows now meant something to Damian’s brain. “You don’t know how to use those things- you might go deeper than you intended.”

 

Brown frowned, but nodded, sheathing her claws. She glanced at the long-furred black tabby cat curled up against a larger gray cat. She surged forward, tail curling up. “Guess I’ll just have to jump on them!”

 

Right as Brown was about to jump, the black cat raised her head, brownish eyes (cats didn’t have brown eyes- yet, somehow, the weird dark amber shade had translated into brown) locking onto the pale cat. “I'm awake.”

 

Brown startled, coming to a halt in front of her, but her back paws hit her front paws and she tumbled onto the ground with a thud that made the gray cat jerk awake, light blue eyes- ‘ Father’s eyes,’ Damian recognized immediately- wide.

 

Brown groaned. “Aw. I totally thought the black cat would have been Bruce…”

 

The gray cat- Father, that was Father, it was so strange to think that- glanced around, bewildered at the scene, and watched as the final cat, Thomas, slowly woke up too, blinking at his surroundings.

 

Father glanced down at himself, twisting a paw to stare at the pink paw pads- if Damian had been a human right now, he would have found those pink paw pads (or whittle pink toe beans, as Brown idiocally would have called them) adorable (and totally not squishable- shut up voice that sounded suspiciously like both Brown and Grayson). Then he stared back up at the cats watching him.

 

“Kids?”

 

“Hey, B.” Grayson grinned, fangs showing, which was really weird, because a cat shouldn’t be able to do that- baring teeth was a threat to most animals, and yet it somehow radiated Grayson’s normal amicable energy.

 

“Bruce?” Thomas said, perplexed as he glanced around at all of them with those same weird brown-amber shaded eyes that Cain had. At least Damian was no longer the odd one out in terms of eye color. “What the- are we cats? Why are we cats? Where are we?”

 

He stood up and walked in a small circle, staring around at the forest, his eyes wide. Damian, too, glanced up, seeing the blue sky between the dappled leaves. A chill ran down Damian’s spine despite the warmth of the sun- the trees seemed so much larger and menacing as a cat. It definitely didn’t help that Damian was most certainly the smallest of all his turned-cat-family. At least Drake only seemed to be about two inches taller than him, although his legs were longer and sleeker, more like the lanky limbs he had as a human. Cain, despite her fluffy fur, seemed roughly the same size as Grayson, Brown and Duke. Father and Todd seemed to be the outliers. Where all the others were rather close in size- save annoyingly for Damian- Father was definitely bigger- older- and Todd was far, far too big, awkwardly so- bigger than Father. But Damian would contribute half of that to his long, spiky fur, tufted ears, and bushy tail.

 

Now that Damian was studying them, he could see notable markings on them- mostly on their chests. It was most obvious on Grayson. He was mostly a sleek black tomcat, but his toes, chin and tail tip were white, alongside a patch on his chest that was undoubtedly the Nightwing symbol. Similarly, the others had their symbols on their chests, less defined and not as eye-catching. They didn’t have the stark contrast of black and white- instead, the symbols were a lighter or darker shade of their pelt colors. Damian glanced down at his chest, the angle odd, but saw a patch of darker fur on his lighter chest fur- a small, encircled R.

 

Well. At least they would be able to convince people they were the Bat vigilantes, if they needed to.

 

“What does everyone remember?” Father said commandingly.

 

“Uh.” Thomas glanced at the others. “Mostly just a bright white light and a headache and some kind of fight?”

 

The others nodded their agreement, with Brown adding, “I can remember, like, this morning and what I ate for breakfast- waffles by the way- but it starts to get fuzzy the harder I try to think further down the day.”

 

“Yeah,” Drake said. “I think I remember getting ready for patrol and then… it’s like looking through really dirty glass that hasn’t been washed in a thousand years.”

 

“I can remember this morning perfectly,” Damian stated. “Annoying as it was with Todd and Drake there.” He cast a glower at them. “And school as well.” His lip curled up in disgust at the thought of that obnoxious place. “Patrol… I remember thinking it was a normal patrol, but, clearly, it was not. Everything is blurry, Father.” He dipped his head to the gray cat. “I can see vague shapes, and remember the adrenaline of a fight, but I cannot remember who we were fighting, where, or why.”

 

The others let out small murmurs of agreement, and Father tilted his head to the side contemplatively, eyes narrowed.

 

“I assume none of us have any of our gear,” he said.

 

Todd snorted. “Obviously not.”

 

“Just our claws,” Brown said, experimentally sheathing and unsheathing her claws curiously. Damian glanced at his own paws and did the same, watching in fascination as they responded to his thoughts and he felt the muscles move to slide his claws out, before he reprimanded himself for getting distracted by something so ridiculous.

 

“Then we’ll have to find out where we are and get to the Manor on foot,” Father continued.

 

“On paw, you mean,” Grayson said, whiskers twitching as he smiled.

 

Damian scoffed, sending a glare his older broth- mentor’s way. “This is no time for jokes, Grayson. A serious threat could be lurking anywhere.”

 

“We’re cats, Damian,” Brown said, voice amused. “Cute whittle kittens with tiny toe beans and adorable noses! How can we take this seriously?”

 

Damian’s pelt bristled. “We could have been turned into cats so someone could attack Gotham without us to defend it!”

 

“True,” Brown admitted, although she still didn’t seem all that concerned. “But there are others in Gotham, you know. Like, Batwoman, Hawkfire, Bluebird, and I don’t see Babs with us here, so I’m guessing Oracle’s still active and can call for help if she needs to.”

 

Damian subsided with a grumble. He supposed that was true. But it didn’t feel right to leave Gotham unguarded by himself and his father. They were Batman and Robin! How were they supposed to fight crime as cats?

 

“Let’s not waste any time,” Father rumbled, padding towards the edge of the small clearing they were in. “We’ll need to get out of this forest first, find civilization, and go from there.”

 

Damian quickly joined his father’s side, glancing at Grayson as he took his time to do the same. The others followed as well, but they didn’t seem to understand the urgency. Brown was showing off her ‘toe beans’ and claws to Cain and Thomas as though she hadn’t seen them on a hundred cats before. Damian’s pelt prickled and he huffed in annoyance at his sibl- fellow vigilantes’ idiocy. Did they not have any sense of duty? They hadn’t been turned into cats for fun . It had been a malicious attack! A purposeful move to disable them from protecting their city! Gotham could be under the clutches of some new, powerful supervillain by now.

 

“Wow,” Grayson meowed conversationally to Damian with a smile. “Being turned into a cat. That’s a new one, huh?”

 

“Nothing out of the ordinary in our line of business,” Damian shot back, picking up speed when he realized his shorter legs were causing him to lag behind his father even more so than they would when they were humans. His tail lashed frustratedly behind him.

 

“I guess not,” Grayson said, whiskers twitching. “I’m a bit disappointed you're not smaller.”

 

Damian’s fur puffed up as he spun his head to snarl at Grayson. “Why would you want me to be smaller? ” He would be as big and tall as Father one day, so it was annoying whenever one of his wretched adopted siblings commented on his small stature. He thought Grayson would be above that, but of course he couldn’t seem to ‘resist’ the ‘temptation’ of ‘brotherly teasing,’ as he called it.

 

“Well,” Grayson began, unaffected by Damian’s anger. “Wouldn’t it be fun if I could pick you up by the scruff, like mother cats do to their kittens?”

 

The image immediately popped itself into Damian’s mind, and a small, tiny part of himself was tempted by the image before he burned it with the hellfire inside him . He would not be mocked !

 

“I’m not-”

 

But Brown’s gasp behind him cut him off. “Oh my gosh! That would be so cute. I bet you can still do it- maybe Jason could?” She sent a contemplative glance the large tom’s way.

 

Damian hissed loudly at the same time Jason snorted.

 

“Please, the demon spawn would claw out my eyeballs if I even thought about doing that,” Jason said. “I’d rather keep my eyeballs, thank you very much. I need them to see. You’re welcome to try, if you’d like.”

 

Brown eyed Damian like she might just try, so Damian immediately whipped around and shot a paw out at her nose. She jumped back as his claws whizzed past. “Hey!”

 

“Damian,” Bruce reprimanded, sending a stern look back at them.

 

Damian huffed, glaring at Brown as she just grinned at him. “You’re not worth it,” he decided, turning back around and dashing to his father’s side.

 

“Not worth what? ” Brown meowed, offended.

 

“Literally anything,” Damian answered plainly, then internally winced as he used the word ‘literally.’ It seemed Brown’s vocabulary was starting to infect him like a parasite. He needed to limit the time they spent together, although it was getting increasingly harder at her incessant need to show him reality TV dramas and other various idiotic shows.

 

“Wow, way to make a girl feel loved,” Brown grumbled, before turning to Drake and whispering something that got him to snicker. Damian’s ear flicked backwards, trying to pick up what they were saying, slightly paranoid he was being made fun of, but then a smell hit his nose.

 

His nose wrinkled instinctively, and he saw Father and Grayson’s noses do the same, tail tips twitching at the strange scent. It wasn’t foul smelling, exactly, but it was definitely different from the forest scents around them. Strangely… rock-y? Even though rocks didn’t particularly have a smell? Like, the open air, and the scent of being high up. And… like birds? Damian didn’t exactly go smelling birds enough to be sure... And there were so many other things he couldn’t put a name too but- it almost smelled like Alfred’s litter box when it was neglected for too long (not that Damian ever purposely neglected it- but whenever he was out of the Manor, his idiotic siblings sometimes forgot).

 

“ Ew ,” Todd commented. “What the hell is that?”

 

“It’s making my nose hurt,” Thomas added, shaking his head like that would rid him of the smell.

 

“Should we turn the other way?” Brown asked, glancing around warily as their pace slowed. “I’m not exactly eager to spend the rest of the day smelling this.”

 

“It’s getting less strong the further we go,” Grayson said. “It must have just been a… I don’t know, some animal’s marking?” That would make sense, especially since it smelled like urine.

 

“Gross.” Brown faked a gag.

 

“Your face is gross,” Drake said.

 

Brown glared at him. “How mature.” She grinned and raised her head. “And I’m a cat right now, and we all know no cat can be ugly, so, actually, I’m beautiful and adorable.”

 

“Shouldn’t we be worried if that was some animal’s marking?” Thomas said logically, his brown pelt pricking as he padded up to Father’s other side. “We’re in its territory, what if-”

 

“That you are,” a new voice hissed, low and threatening, and all of them jumped back and bristled, claws sliding out and fangs bared.

 

Silently, so silently it startled Damian, because he and his family had been walking over twigs and crunchy leaves without care, four cats slipped out from around the trees, stepping around bushes effortlessly and gracefully. Their eyes were all narrowed at the family, their claws sharp and well-used.

 

The short-furred, long-legged brown tom with yellow eyes stepped forward, the presumed leader of the cats. He raised his head with an air of command and power, and Damian realized that the tom could easily defeat them, if he wanted to. They were in bodies they were unaccustomed to, no idea how to use their claws and fangs. These four cats all seemed ready to tear their pelts off their bodies, skill recognizable in the way they held themselves.

 

‘They’re like warriors,’ he thought, but quickly dismissed the ridiculous, strangely hopeful thought away. That is, until the tom continued:

 

“Now who are you, and what are you doing on SkyClan territory?”

Chapter 2: Just Another Day for the Clans Honestly

‘SkyClan.

 

‘SkyClan. That’s SkyClan.

 

‘Those are warriors.

 

‘Warrior Cats. Legitimate warriors. Of SkyClan.’

 

A strange, perplexed yet excited, hopeful thrill ran down Damian’s spine, making his claws twitch as they retracted back into his paws in surprise.

 

This was SkyClan. They were on SkyClan territory. From the Warriors series by Erin Hunter. They weren’t just cats . They had been transported to a completely new universe. Where cats were the main characters, not humans. Where cats lived in clans and hunted and fought together, and lived by the Warrior Code, and worshipped StarClan, and-

“What’s SkyClan?”

 

-the idiots around him had no idea what they’d just stumbled into. That their problem had just gotten much bigger, from a simple animal transformation into alternate universe travel.

 

As the four cats- warriors- hissed, low in their throats, clearly slightly offended that the trespassers didn’t even know of them and their grand clan, Damian quickly darted forward, bowing his head down. He couldn’t let his family make a mockery of themselves with their ignorance.

 

“Our apologies,” he meowed quickly, and he could practically hear his family’s startled looks as Damian al Ghul Wayne of all people apologized. “We aren’t familiar with clan borders.” They had passed a clan border earlier. Damian had never imagined they’d smelt so bad and strange, despite the books’ descriptions of them. He supposed it made sense, since they were marking with urination and rubbing their scent glands on trees and rocks.

 

The brown tom narrowed his eyes. “That much is obvious. What is a group of cats as big as yours doing so close to clan territories?” He flicked his tail and the three other cats started to fan out around them.

 

“We-...” Damian’s pelt prickled as his mind scrambled to come up with a good excuse. He couldn’t just say they got lost . They were, technically, but not in a way these cats would understand nor accept as a valid reasoning. They were… wanderers, yes, like the Sisters, minus the whole spiritual and sexist aspects. That could work. The clans would be more familiar with something like that-

 

“We’re lost,” Drake offered before Damian could say anything, and Damian hissed at him. The light brown tom frowned at him, studying Damian with a curious and confused gaze. Damian’s pelt prickled self-consciously.

 

“Lost?” one of the other warriors- a white molly, or she-cat, rather, with a black chest and paws- questioned, amber eyes slitted as she prowled around them. “Where were you trying to go?” The disbelief was obvious- what else could a cat be looking for around the clan territories? The Tribe of Rushing Water? They lived in the mountains. And, if Damian remembered the map of the Lake Territories correctly, if they were approaching SkyClan from their open border, then they were heading from the large twolegplace that held the Guardian cats, not to it.

 

“A place named Gotham?” Grayson tried, and Damian nearly smacked him for his stupidity.

 

“We’re wanderers,” he quickly cut in, desperately trying to resurrect the situation his siblings were digging them into. Again, he felt his family’s questioning stares on him as he spoke. “We travel from place to place. We wanted to return home, to this ci- twolegplace cats call Gotham, but it seems we’ve taken the wrong path. We made sure not to cross clan territory last time we were here.” He dipped his head respectfully again. “We mean no harm.”

 

Now curiosity lit the gazes of the warriors around them. That explanation was more believable than the random scraps his siblings had thrown out, hoping something sunk. Of course, they weren’t going to pat them on the back and send them on their way home, but at the very least their suspicion that they were secretly enemies here to destroy clan life was dissipating. They had good reason to- after BloodClan, Sol, Darktail and his Kin, and so much more. He was surprised the clans still trusted outsiders enough to let kittypets and former Guardian cats in after what they’d been through.

 

“Is that so?” the white and black she-cat said, taking a step closer to Todd, who raised his head defiantly, not willing to be intimidated by the smaller cat.

 

The golden tabby she-cat slipped up next to her clanmate, only slightly smaller than the other molly. Now that Damian could study the warriors more, she seemed much more nervous and wary than her clanmates, her ears pricked and tail twitching too and fro anxiously. But her eyes held curiosity as she stared, wide-eyed, up at Todd.

 

“Is he a Sister?” she whispered to her clanmate. “He’s big.”

 

Damian could see the confusion seep into all of his family as they frowned and traded glances. If anything, they must think the cats were referring to nuns, and not the group of giant she-cats that had the power to talk to and raise dead spirits during cultish, singing rituals.

 

The white warrior flicked the younger she-cat over her ears with her tail. “He’s a tom,” she said. “And the Sisters’ tomcats don’t live in groups.” She paused. “Except for Tree, of course.”

 

‘Tree.’ Damian’s own ears pricked at the familiar, albeit ridiculous name. If the mediator was in SkyClan, then he could surely help them.

 

“But they are wanderers,” the last warrior, a reddish-brown tom with a torn ear, commented as he stood on the other side, watching Thomas and Cain warily.

 

“We’ve met the Sisters,” Damian meowed, latching onto the story the clancats were creating for them. He flicked his tail towards Todd. “That’s where we picked him up from. A long time ago,” he added, just to make sure they wouldn’t go asking Tree if they’d ever seen or heard of a tom like Todd.

 

Todd frowned at him, looking upset and perplexed at the sudden, random backstory Damian had given him. “Yeah. Long time ago. Barely even remember it,” he said in a slow drawl, clearly trying to figure out what Damian’s aim was. At least he recognized that Damian knew more than him.

 

“Do you know Tree?” the white she-cat asked curiously, her aggression starting to fade. “He’s my father.”

 

A jolt ran through Damian as he placed a name to the cat- Needleclaw. Daughter of Tree and Violetshine, named after the ShadowClan warrior, Needletail, and presumably her mentor, who was Reedclaw if he remembered correctly. So far, she hadn’t shown any spirit-based powers like her brother and father had in the books, but these weren’t the books anymore. He was in real life Warrior Cats right now. Unless this was some really vivid and realistic-feeling dream.

 

“Uh.” Todd glanced at Damian, startled, and Damian tried to shake his head as subtly as possible. The SkyClan warriors were watching Damian with the most intrigue after Todd, seeing as he had spoken the most to them. If they thought Damian was feeding them lies- well, it wouldn’t end well. “No. Haven’t heard of him. Sorry.”

 

“He went by Earth before he named himself Tree,” Needleclaw added hopefully.

 

Todd frowned further, scrunching his nose at the strange names. “No.”

 

“Ah.” Needleclaw’s tail drooped and she resumed padding around the cats. “Well, it’s nice to meet kin. Are any others of you related to the Sisters?” She glanced at Cain and Brown, but seemed to quickly dismiss them because of their small sizes compared to Todd, her gaze locking on Bruce instead.

 

All of his family glanced at Damian for the answer. Which totally wasn’t suspicious at all. He felt the fur on his spine rise in frustration. “No.” ...But he could keep giving themselves credibility. “But we’ve lived with the Guardians before. Have you heard of them?”

 

The warriors exchanged glances.

 

“The cats that Tigerstar and Dovewing lived with?” the first brown tom questioned with a small frown.

 

“Blazefire and Cinnamontail were Guardian cats,” the other reddish-brown tom said. He dipped his head slightly, gazing at the ground. “Antfur was too- he was a great cat.”

 

The other warriors all nodded, sadness in their gazes. Damian himself barely remembered who Antfur was- not Antpelt, the WindClan warrior who trained in the Dark Forest… Was Antfur the one cat who got sick and died under Shadowsight’s care? What had happened to him? ...He must not have been very important to the plot if Damian couldn’t remember.

 

On the flipside, he saw his family exchange puzzled and slightly amused gazes, and saw Brown mouth, “Cinnamontail?” to Drake, obviously mocking the ridiculous name. Damian felt his fur bristle further, feeling oddly offended even though he knew, logically, that they did kind of sound silly.

 

‘They’re warrior names!’ he thought. ‘They have great meaning behind them! It’s an honor to earn one.’

 

He caught Grayson’s curious gaze, and the black and white tom smiled. There was a knowing look in his eyes that told Damian cogs had started turning in his mind, putting puzzles into place. Damian’s skin felt hot underneath his fur as he realized Grayson had probably remembered the few times he’d caught Damian reading Warriors or when Damian had felt comfortable enough to share his interests criticize the writing and continuity of the ‘dumb cat books.’

 

‘I don’t like them!’ Damian wanted to yell at his older brother’s dumb smirk. ‘I just- the writing is all over the place and there’s grammar mistakes everywhere- and the continuity and character consistency is awful - Of course I wouldn’t like dumb kids’ books like those!’

 

He just found himself drawn to reading them when he was bored. That’s all. Everyone had their “I’m-bored-and-have-nothing-else-to-do” things. Like Brown’s horrible TV shows.

 

“What are your names?” the brown tom prompted after a moment of silence had passed for the fallen warrior.

 

‘I’ll need to check that strange Wiki later to remember who that Antfur was,’ Damian caught himself thinking and then immediately mentally slapped himself. No he would not! It was bad enough that he read the books. He didn’t need to associate with what Drake and Brown would call ‘the fandom!’

 

Damian raised his head and tail, drawing everyone’s attention to him. He couldn’t have his family screwing this up. He didn’t want to be known as a kittypet to these warriors- their strange ‘human’ names would make them less willing to trust them, as well as give them material to mock them with.

 

“I am Robin,” he introduced himself proudly, letting the ego-boosting feeling that he always got from that rush over him.

 

Grayson bounced up beside him, and immediately ruined the moment with, “And I’m Nightwing!”

 

Damian hissed, twisting his neck to glare at his absolutely moronic mentor-slash-brother. He was going to introduce him as Night! Nightwing was a warrior name ! He needed a loner’s name, not something glaringly suspicious like that . He wondered if Grayson had introduced himself as so because he thought Damian was simply going by their codenames, or if Grayson had recognized that Nightwing was a warrior name and thought it’d make him more familiar to the clancats.

 

The warriors’ ears pricked and whiskers twitched at the warrior-like name, but the brown leader’s gaze had moved to Damian when he hissed. “Does the kit speak for you?” he asked, tone friendly, but amused in that way that was clearly meant to be a jab at them.

 

“ I’m not a kit! ” Damian’s fur fluffed out and he whipped around to snarl at the warrior, realizing how much he had to strain his neck to stare up at the taller cat. ...He was at least apprenticed aged, wasn’t he?

 

“Sure you aren’t,” Needleclaw meowed, tail waving back and forth as her eyes gleamed, watching him puff up like a dandelion.

 

“I’m-” How would he translate his age into cat years, or, more specifically, warrior cat moons? ...He wasn’t a kit, but he wasn’t a warrior, either, that much he could admit, so he growled, “Nine moons.”

 

“A bit small for nine moons,” the torn eared warrior commented, studying him. The golden tabby had retreated to his side now, and she seemed to puff out her chest and raise her chin when Damian stared at her, like she was trying to emphasize that she was bigger than him too.

 

“So, does the nine-moon-old kit speak for you?” the brown tom asked again.

 

Damian growled, but realized the warrior was purposefully trying to get under his skin, so he forced his fur to lie flat and then turned to his father. Around him, his siblings did the same. The large, light gray tom straightened, chin high as he studied the warriors around him, impassive, calculating.

 

‘They could never imagine he was the feared and respected vigilante known as Batman,’ Damian thought of the clancats around them. ‘They could never imagine our world like we imagined theirs.’

 

“He has spoken for us so far,” Bruce meowed steadily, ever the commanding figure Damian thought of him. “He can continue to do so.” He glanced at Damian, and Damian realized his father knew that Damian knew more than all of them did- that he was trusting them to guide them in the right direction. And then, of course, question him later on how he knew all this. Although Damian was sure, despite how much he tried to hide the books, his father had at some point noticed his growing collection of them. It wasn’t his fault there were so many darn Warrior Cats books!

 

The warriors around them’s eyes narrowed on Bruce, clearly recognizing that he was their true leader (even if Damian’s idiotic siblings would have something to say about that), but that for some reason he was letting a kit (which Damian was not ) speak for them. Perhaps they thought it was a sort of training- like how the Tribe’s Healer chose a kit and trained them to be their next leader. If that was the case, then the warriors were now suspicious that they weren’t just simply loners, but a group of cats with some kind of hierarchy, which made them a potential threat, considering what the Kin had been with their leader, Darktail.

 

“Very well then.” The brown tom nodded, gaze going back to Damian. He flicked his tail. “Continue.”

 

Damian raised his chin, taking a deep breath. He flicked his tail towards his father instead of raising a paw like he wanted to. “This is my father, Bat.” It felt wrong to leave ‘-man’ off of it, but these cats had no idea what a man was- to them, it was a twoleg, or a housefolk, or an upwalker or whatever else they were called. He watched his family’s eyes go calculating when he said that, working out why he’d leave it at Bat. That one, Damian hoped, would be easy to figure out. “And my sister, Black.” Cain hadn’t annoyed him recently, so she earned the right to be called his sister.

 

The tabby she-cat smiled and bounced a few steps forward until she was beside Bruce, then dipped her head. Warriors didn’t seem to care much about biology and genetics, so hopefully the warriors wouldn’t question whether or not Cain was biology his father’s or not. And if they did, well, hopefully they were more okay with a tom adopting an infuriating amount of kits than they appeared to be in the books, considering the whole Squirrelflight-Leafpool debacle as well as Fernsong being the only ‘nursery tom’ ever.

 

He angled his tail towards Thomas next. “And that is-” Signal wouldn’t work. Light? Because he controlled light and shadows? But didn’t he have that one name- “Lark.”

 

Thomas’s ears flicked up in surprise, his head raising. Not a good reaction to have when told your own name, but hopefully the SkyClan warriors wouldn’t comment on it.

 

He turned to Todd next, who narrowed his eyes challengingly at him, as though he thought Damian couldn’t possibly find a ‘cat’ name for him even though it was glaringly obvious what his would be. Damian raised his chin, shoulder fur bristling slightly. “And this imbecile-” Damian cursed himself inwardly. He should have said mouse-brain. Did warriors ever use imbecile in the books? He couldn’t recall.

 

In Damian’s moment of hesitance, Todd quickly cut in, mostly likely irritated by the unneeded insult, saying, “Is Red H-”

 

“Fox!” Damian blurted out, increasingly annoyed by his siblings’ attempt to sabotage the perfect story he was crafting around them to keep them safe . “Red Fox .” Luckily for him, as he glanced at the warriors, they seemed more amused, like they thought it was cute a kit was trying to be the leader.

 

Newly named Red Fox raised a brow. “I thought I got to choose my own name, as a… Sisters’ tomcat?”

 

“Shut up!” Damian yelled, panicking. What was he doing?! Did he think this was a game? There were four highly trained warriors around them. Their human training meant nothing as cats! Even Damian knew and was willing to admit that . “You-” He had to say something that’d make sense to the clancats, that would explain his anger in a way they could understand. “You already chose your name, mouse-brain.” He tacked on the insult with a hiss, knowing the familiar language would comfort the warriors, who had turned slightly confused and wary.

 

Todd stared passively at Damian, as though still unconcerned, but his ear twitched when Drake leaned over to Brown and whispered, in perplexed amusement, “Mouse-brain?” Todd’s own lips curved upwards into a smirk.

 

Shoot. He hadn’t thought of what his family might think of the nickname. His ears folded down against his head, trying to push away the embarrassment. This was serious! He was the only one who could keep them safe, with the knowledge he held.

 

‘Although I wouldn’t mind if they clawed Todd, Drake, and Brown’s faces,’ he mused to himself darkly. ‘Left them looking like Brightheart.’ It was a shame he wouldn’t get to meet the ThunderClan warrior, though, seeing as they were in SkyClan territory. ‘And Ivypool. All of the cool warriors are in ThunderClan or ShadowClan,’ he thought glumly before scolding himself. He was thinking like some fangirl!

 

Damian’s tail lashed behind him but he turned abruptly to Drake. “This even more idiotic imbecile-” So sue him, he was getting a little antsy and was taking it out on Drake. What was new? “-is-” And Todd had foolishly taken the name Damian planned on giving Drake- Red. “-Duck.”

 

The satisfaction he felt as Drake’s dumb cat face fell was immeasurable.

 

“It was one time! ”

 

Todd barked out a laugh while Brown crumpled over with a shrieking bout of laughter. Grayson and Thomas chuckled too, and Damian couldn’t help but puff out his chest in pride at the reaction he had gotten. But then the confused faces and exchanged glances of the warriors around him reminded him of what he was supposed to be doing. He straightened himself out and nodded to Brown next.

 

He opened his mouth, ready to name her Brown, before he realized that Stephanie was a sandy, pale ginger color, like Sandstorm, and not, well, brown, and that it wouldn’t even make sense. He rapidly searched for another name- Spoil? Purple? No- “And she’s Eggplant.”

 

The way Brown’s entire cat body jolted and stared at him in startled surprise was, again, amusing, but definitely not good for their observers. He flicked his tail tip and contained a smile, even as he wondered if he should have just gone with Egg. There was a SkyClan warrior named Egg at one point, if he remembered correctly. But he had been thinking of the color, which also passed as a plant, not that the clancats had ever encountered an eggplant…

 

With a shock down his spine, he realized Eggplant could technically be a warrior cat’s name. Egg plus plant. ‘Just like Garfield and Mountaindew,’ his mind whispered traitorously. ‘And Smokeweed…’ He clamped down on those images, willing himself to forget he ever saw them. Stupid Tumblr-whatever memes. He stumbled upon those by accident!

 

...They were kinda funny though.

 

“Greetings to you all, then,” the brown tom said as the introductions finished, but his eyes were narrowed. “Do you have any… group name? Something you call all of yourselves?”

 

‘BatClan.’ Damian’s mind, again, betrayed him with a thought he had totally never thought before. ‘Batfamily. Superheroes. Vigilantes. All words you know nothing about.’ Which was… strange to think. Because who didn’t know them? But this was an entirely different world. A world of a book series that Damian was familiar with, which was suspicious. How had they gotten to this world? What series of events led them here? Why couldn’t they remember it?

 

Bruce stepped forward, startling Damian. He stepped slightly to the side to let his father stand beside him, glancing up at him curiously. His father met his eye with a calm nod before turning to address the brown cat.

 

“Some call us the Bats,” he meowed. “But we don’t go by any… clan name.”

 

The golden she-cat murmured into the reddish-brown tom’s ear, “...like the Tribe?”

 

“The Tribe?” Bruce questioned curiously, tilting his head.

 

The golden tabby fluffed her fur, obviously startled at being addressed. It seemed Damian’s father still held an air of respect and fear about him even outside of their own universe, and as a cute, fluffy cat.

 

“The Tribe of Rushing Water,” she rambled, turning her head to stare behind and upwards, towards where the mountains would be. They weren’t visible due to the canopy the trees created though. “They live in the mountains. Each new leader renames themselves, uh, Teller of the Pointed Stones. Or- or Stoneteller, for short.”

 

“Hrmm,” Father said, thoughtful. “Perhaps we’ll visit them, as we are… wanderers.” He glanced at Damian, and Damian nodded. At least someone was taking this seriously. “We do apologize for not noticing your… border. We aren’t familiar with them.”

 

Needleclaw snorted. “Most loners aren’t.”

 

“If it’s not much trouble, we’ll be on our way,” Bruce continued. He glanced at Damian again, and Damian realized what his father’s aim was. He wanted to leave clan territories so he could ask Damian what he knew about the clans- and if they’d be able to help them return to Gotham. “We do need to get home.”

 

“Oh.” The tom’s eyes narrowed. “About that.” He raised his tail straight up, and the other three warriors went rigid, claws sliding back out. They had them surrounded on each side, ready to fight. “You’ll be coming with us to see our leader. She will decide what to do with you.” The brown tom took a dangerous step forward.

 

Cain moved forward, her own claws out and her eyes partly panicked as she glanced at Damian questioningly- fight or run? Stay or go? He wondered if she could read cat body language like she could humans’... Probably not. Around them, his siblings and Father bristled too, glancing warily at the warriors boxing them in.

 

“You have a choice: come easily.” The tom’s voice lowered. “Or come with a few new scars.”

Notes:

For the most part, they'll be referred to be their (last) names in Damian's internal monologue and such, but the warriors will refer to them as Robin, Nightwing, Bat, Black, Lark, Red Fox, Duck, and Eggplant. All pretty easy names to follow imo!

Chapter 3: Entering the Only Sensible Clan Left Around The Lake

Damian kept his posture as calm as possible even as his siblings hissed and lashed their tails around him. He made sure his claws were sheathed and his fur was flat, even though it wanted to bristle, as his father stared at him. His father’s own shoulder fur fell as he saw his son’s calm demeanor, and Damian willed him to realize going willingly with the clancats was the better option.

 

‘Leafstar is the most sensible leader around the lakes right now,’ he thought. ‘And Tree is literally the mediator- his entire job is to keep the peace, even though he kind of sucks at it.’ A frankly useless role if nobody listened to the cat’s advice.

 

Bruce turned to the brown-furred tom. “We’ll go with you.” Damian’s siblings glanced at their father, startled.

 

“We will?” Drake questioned. Needleclaw took a step closer to him with a low growl. “I mean, we will!”

 

The brown tom narrowed his eyes, studying them all before he nodded. “Very well. Follow me. Needleclaw, Kitescratch, bring up the rear.” He turned around, flicking his tail. “Don’t try anything, or you will regret it.”

 

‘Kitescratch.’ Damian pricked his ears, watching the torn-eared reddish-brown tom move to the back beside Needleclaw. If any warrior cat had a ridiculous name, it was him and his sister, Turtlecrawl. But there was an odd fondness to it- SkyClan was full of unique, puzzling names like that, due to their strong kittypet heritage and former daylight-warriors. ‘He bullied Rootspring, but joined the rebels against Ashfur.’ There wasn’t much else Damian knew about him. He was pushed to the side after the first two books of The Broken Code . But he remembered liking the tom and his sister as characters, despite how they treated Rootspring.

 

His gaze turned to the other two cats as the younger she-cat moved to stand beside the long-legged brown tom, glancing back at the strangers in their territory warily. Who were they? There were too many cats in the books now to possibly be able to guess, plus they had only ever been words indicating description to him- he couldn’t imagine what characters he thought he had a good mental image of looked like here.

 

“ Kitescratch? ” he heard Brown whisper to Thomas. “What does he do- scratch kites?”

 

Damian’s fur prickled in annoyance. Sure, he agreed the name was idiotic, but it was still a perfectly fine warrior name!

 

“And I guess she has needles for claws?” Thomas whispered back. Damian glanced at the SkyClan warriors, hoping they weren’t picking up on their murmurs. If they were, they didn’t show it.

 

“Actually,” Drake meowed quietly. “That kind of sounds like a crazy Gotham rogue- an insane doctor with medical needles instead of fingers that he stabs people with.”

 

Brown groaned. “Don’t jinx us. If we get back home and there’s a villain running around named Needleclaw, I’m blaming you!”

 

‘I’d be more worried about a villain named Tigerstar,’ Damian thought, but didn’t say. If the warriors heard him say that , they wouldn’t think they were your average loners anymore. ‘Or Ashfur, assuming we’ve been placed into the books during The Broken Code .’

 

“Hey,” Brown meowed, voice loud, and Damian let out a low hiss, annoyed. What idiocy was she planning to spout to their feline captors now? “We introduced ourselves- sort of, anyway,” she said with a glance at Damian, “So can you tell us who you are?”

 

The golden tabby molly glanced back at them, her own fur prickled and her eyes wide even as she announced, “You’re our prisoners! You don’t need to know our names.”

 

The older brown tom flicked his tail over her mouth as they walked. “Shush. They’re not our prisoners. Not yet, anyway,” he added with a light glare at them all. Damian could tell none of his family was at all phased by it. They’d faced down the Joker, Darkseid, and much, much more terrifying villains- a cute whittle kittycat glaring at them? It was so adorable that their only threat was exploding from cuteness overload. “My name is Rabbitleap. Kitescratch and Needleclaw are behind you. And this is Wrenpaw.” He nodded to the she-cat beside him.

 

Damian’s ears flicked in surprise. ‘She’s an apprentice? ...I imagined them smaller. Perhaps that’s why they think I’m a kit… aside from simply using the term to mock me, of course.’

 

She puffed out her chest. “But I won’t be a ‘paw for long, so don’t think you can mess with me!” For some reason, she sent a not-at-all-intimidating glare Todd’s way.

 

‘Ah, right,’ Damian recalled. ‘She’s Bellaleaf’s kit- the one Tree traumatized by telling her her dead siblings still walked beside her. She wouldn’t be a big fan of any of the Sisters and their spiritual powers.’ Perhaps that was the one downside to claiming Todd was of Sister blood… But SkyClan had the closest connections to the Sisters, so it was a smart move on Damian’s part. Todd could deal with a kitten being scared of him.

 

His family were scrunching their noses and exchanging puzzled but amused glances again. “A ‘paw?” Cain asked, tilting her head curiously. Brown snickered when Drake whispered something in her ear and Damian’s tail tip twitched in annoyance.

 

He huffed. “An apprentice .” It was a very simple rule- all apprentices’ names ended with -paw.

 

And then everyone, his family and the warriors, stared at him, and he remembered he wasn’t supposed to know that.

 

‘I blame Drake,’ Damian immediately thought. ‘Because he and Brown should shut their mouths and stop making comments.’

 

Rabbitleap’s eyes narrowed. “How do you know that?”

 

“Err-” His tail tip twitched as he rapidly thought of explanations as to why he’d know that that fit with the backstory he’d crafted themselves. “The Guardian cats talked about it somewhat.” How much did the Guardians know about clanlife? Tigerstar (the second, not to be confused with the first, aka the villain), Dovewing, and their kits hadn’t stayed too long with the Guardians. But on their journey back- “And we met a cat named Buster-” If that wasn’t the ShadowClan-turned-kittypet’s name then he was screwed . “-who told us about the clans.”

 

“Rippletail?” Rabbitleap murmured, his ears pricking. “You met him? Is he okay?”

 

Damian nodded. “He likes life as a kittypet.”

 

“Kittypet?” Needleclaw’s voice meowed suspiciously from the back. “Most loners call them housecats.”

 

Damian shrugged, trying to appear nonchalant. “He called himself a kittypet.”

 

“Hm,” Needleclaw said, ear twitching, but she said nothing else on the matter.

 

“ShadowClan will want to know Rip- ah, Buster, is well,” Kitescratch said.

 

“We can tell them later,” Rabbitleap said, raising his voice. “For now-” Powerful scents reached Damian’s nose, like he smelt at the border, but lacking the urination smell. Immediately, he knew what they were nearing, before Rabbitleap said it. “We’ll let Leafstar judge these cats.”

 

Excitement pricked unwilling at his pads, and his ears and tail went skywards, his cat body responding to his eagerness. His mind was humming, ‘The camp, the camp, the camp- You’re going to see SkyClan’s camp!’ even as he tried to clamp down on the strange joy bursting inside him.

 

‘You’re not a kid, you’re not some obsessed Warriors fan, and you are not excited to see the inside of a clan’s camp !’ he scolded himself harshly. ‘This is serious- I’m lost in another universe that just happens to be from a book series I’ve also just happened to have read once?’ Multiple times actually, but nobody needed to know that. And he didn’t reread everything, that was ridiculous. Just- the cool scenes. Like The Fire Scene™. And Scourge killing Tigerstar (the first, the villain). And the Great Battle. And Mapleshade’s Vengeance was a good read- weirdly he thought of his mother, Talia, when reading it, even though his mother was nothing like Mapleshade. Aside from being a little bit evil. If anything, she was more like Star Flower from Dawn of the Clans! ...Damian didn’t like that comparison either. And his mind was starting to think of other bad mothers of Warriors so he quickly crashed that train of thought before it could go further down the rail.

 

Rabbitleap slowed as the scent got stronger, and light murmurs of cats meowing reached Damian’s ears, smothered by the wall of the camp that began to show itself. Damian wouldn’t have noticed it if he hadn’t been looking for it- the thickets and bracken were so expertly woven in between the trees they appeared like large bushes between the trees. And then the entrance appeared, a gap in the wall, an arch of the thicket. One cat sat right beside it, staring boredly at their paws as they batted a ball of moss between them. The fawny gray tabby she-cat leaped to her feet when she saw the intruders, her fur spiking out, eyes wide.

 

Rabbitleap nodded to her, and she nodded back. “I’ll fetch Leafstar,” she meowed, immediately whipping around and darting inside the entrance.

 

Damian’s family had gone quiet behind him, their ears pricked and eyes wide as they felt the apprehension fall on them. Cats that could build walls and had a clear guarding system were most likely not what they were expecting from the fuzzy adorable kittens, despite the claws and fangs the warriors hadn’t previously shown them. Rabbitleap flicked his tail at Wrenpaw, who paused at the entrance, standing still to guard the entrance.

 

“Follow me,” he told the vigilante-turned-cats, then slipped into the entrance. Damian let his father follow first, but quickly darted in after, right before Cain. His paws sunk into the well-worn ground beneath him, and he glanced up and around at the thicket around him, trying to memorize it all. As a cat, the roof felt far above him, yet he knew it wasn’t as high as he thought it was. Todd would have to duck his head to fit, due to his large size. Bruce’s ears already brushed the top.

 

And then he appeared on the other side of the entrance, his paw briefly trembling before he made the step and he gazed, wonder-eyed, at the camp swarming with cats around him.

 

‘This must have been how Firestar felt when he first entered ThunderClan camp,’ he thought, recalling how the first protagonist had entered the camp in the old territories. In terms of cat years, that was forever ago. Firestar was no longer alive, but his legacy lived on in all of the clancats, but SkyClan especially. He had ‘saved’ the clan by rebuilding it, after all.

 

The camp was- Damian didn’t know how to explain it- it was somehow both what he expected and not at all. When reading, he always had a sort of bird’s eye view of the camp, and even then, details were vague, seeing as only the ThunderClan camps had ever truly been described in deeper detail. But now he was from a cat’s point of view, and the camp was not as flat as he imagined it. Instead, the land slowly rose to semi-ledges, with dens bursting out from the camp walls, curved thickets structured with strong branches and holes filled with bracken and moss. Plants and flowers decorated the dens as well, adding color and design to them, much to Damian’s surprise. At the very opposite of the entrance, the land rose another ledge, placing it at the highest point to peer over the camp. At the top sat a tree stump, and Damian would place good money on that being leader’s spot for clan meetings. Wasn’t SkyClan’s called the Treestump? Very unimaginative. A small stream of water trickled through camp, no bigger than Damian’s own paws, and disappeared under the wall. Even the fresh-kill pile, tucked in a corner on scraps of bark, didn’t seem as he thought it would. It was well-kept, and a bramble roof had been built over it to keep rain off of their prey.

 

He sucked in a breath, gazing around, amazed.

 

“Wow.” Grayson brushed against him, smiling. “For cats, this is really impressive.”

 

Damian nodded, too stunned to say anything.

 

Until Brown ruined the moment beside him, squealing, “Oh my gosh, they’re all so cute!”

 

Drake moved to place a paw over her mouth before wobbling, unbalanced, casting a startled glance at his paw as he realized it didn’t have the same flexibility of an arm, and instead gave Brown a steely glare, shaking his head. Thank God, the imbecile was finally having some common sense.

 

Unfortunately, Damian silently agreed that the cats were cute. Most were lazing about, the sun high in the sky, as they chatted and licked each others’ pelts- ‘Sharing tongues,’ Damian remembered. It had been so long since the books had actually mentioned that tradition that it was startling to suddenly see it in real life (‘Is this real life?’ he wondered. ‘Or some hallucination brought on by drugs?’ It was a possibility they couldn’t cross out, knowing Gotham’s rogue gallery).

 

But the longer Damian observed the cats, he saw tiny nicks in their ears, scars here and there, both fresh and old, marring their pelts, mostly hidden by their fur. These were warriors, not well fed, pampered housecats like Alfred. And the way they stopped what they were doing immediately, jumping to their paws or narrowing their eyes with hisses as the strangers entered the camp was a telltale sign they were prepared to defend what was there.

 

“Are those dead animals?” Thomas questioned, staring at the fresh-kill pile, his shared joy with Brown at the cute kittens fading as he stared at the dead mice, squirrels, voles, and birds.

 

Damian’s whiskers twitched. “What else did you expect them to eat?” He kept his voice low so the warriors wouldn’t overhear them.

 

“I don’t know,” Thomas said. “But I didn’t expect them to keep it in a… pile. That’s kind of… creepy.”

 

“It’s not creepy- it’s smart,” Damian defended, fur bristling again. “They have a supply for those who can’t hunt for themselves.”

 

“Who are they?” a voice yowled from the warriors. “They don’t smell like any clancat!” A mostly white tortoiseshell she-cat was padding back and forth unhappily on a ledge near the stream.

 

“Are they rogues?” another voice asked.

 

“Have they come to steal our prey?” another hissed, and a tabby tom unsheathed his claws with a lash of his bristling tail.

 

“Are they- I mean- they’re not spirits but- are they friends of the imposter?” This voice drifted off into a soft, scared hush and cats around them gasped and growled.

 

“If they are, they’ve made a mistake coming to SkyClan!” a tomcat announced fiercely. “I’ll claw their ears off!”

 

“A missing eye might remind them not to cross us!”

 

“Jeeze,” Brown murmured, head ducking slightly as she stared at the hostile cats. “I know cats are always hissy, but it’s another thing to actually hear them threatening me.”

 

“You are a cat right now,” Bruce reminded her. “Remember to act like it.” Damian nodded, raising his chin and staring the slowly circling warriors in the eyes. He wasn’t afraid of them. He didn’t want to fight them, but he wanted them to know he wouldn’t go down with a fight.

 

The snarling cats quieted as the fawny-gray she-cat who had been on guard led a dappled brown-and-cream tabby she-cat from a den behind the Treestump. A dark gray tabby jumped up to the she-cat’s side, who she acknowledged with a nod. Similarly, a light brown she-cat with darker flecks, a black-and-white fluffy tom, a huge golden tabby tom, and a smaller white-and-black she-cat moved to walk beside the leader. Damian immediately recognized the large tom as Tree, and he guessed the she-cat beside him was his mate, Violetshine, aka the former Kin spy. He couldn’t place the other three cats yet, but the dappled she-cat was obviously Leafstar, just by the proud and noble way she held herself.

 

“Thank you, Plumwillow,” Leafstar told the gray she-cat, who dipped her head and darted to join her clanmates. Leafstar and her council walked until they were in front of the strangers, and Rabbitleap. “Who are they?” she asked the tom.

 

“Trespassers at the border,” Rabbitleap meowed with a twitch of his tail. “Claim to be wanderers travelling back to their home.”

 

“Gotham,” Brown piped up unhelpfully. Damian glared at her just so she knew how absolutely unhelpful she was.

 

“They walked so loudly they scared half the prey away!” Wrenpaw complained as she moved from behind the strangers, coming to stand beside her mentor.

 

“Wrenpaw,” Rabbitleap warned politely. The apprentice silenced herself with an apologetic duck of her head. Damian self-consciously felt his pelt prickle. He hadn’t been thinking about it, but he and his family had stepped on just about every twig they could, hadn’t they? The warriors walked so silently, Damian’s new cat ears couldn’t even pick it up.

 

“The large tom claims to be of Sisters descent,” Rabbitleap continued, pointing his tail at Todd, who raised his head, just as willing to show himself a fighter as Damian. “And they claim to be friends of the Guardian cats Tigerstar and Dovewing stayed with, and to have talked with Buster."

 

"Hmm." Leafstar's eyes narrowed, studying them. "A lot they have claimed, then?"

 

Damian felt a prickle of unease and worry run through him. Would she find it strange they knew all of the clans' allies? Perhaps he should have feigned ignorance instead and called themselves simple loners. He had created too much of a story- now he had their intrigue.

 

"They're not claims," his father lied calmly. "They're truths."

 

Leafstar eyed the gray tom, tail tip twitching. "Yet we have no way to confirm them."

 

"That much is true," Bruce continued. "But we promise we don't mean any harm to your clan."

 

"Many cats say that," Leafstar said. "And yet it has rarely been true."

 

"What if they're like Sol?" Damian heard some cat whisper to their clanmate. "He was so nice to us- but do you remember what the other clans said about him?"

 

"Cats like Sol and Darktail have ruined the clans," another meowed. "How could we trust any outsider?"

 

"Ashfur isn't an outsider," someone pointed out. "He was from ThunderClan, but look at what he's done to us."

 

"StarClan is silent."

 

That whisper sent a chill down Damian's spine. They had entered the books right at the tail end of The Place of No Stars , it seemed. Because surely StarClan would be back by the end of the last book of The Broken Code's arc. Which meant the clans were at their least trusting, aside from perhaps the time during Omen of the Stars when even StarClan was divided.

 

Leafstar raised her tail, and the cats around her silenced. She turned to the large golden tom. "Tree?"

 

His whiskers twitched, before he took a step forward with a warm smile. "What are your names, strangers?"

 

"I am Bat," Father introduced himself. He raised his tail, waving it in a hesitant gesture to point at the cats around him. "These are my kids- kits,” he corrected as though it was a simple stutter of the mouth. “Robin, Nightwing, Black, Red Fox, Lark, Eggplant, and Duck.” Damian didn’t miss the small quirk of his lips as he said the last two names.

 

“He keeps calling me his kid,” Brown said in a huffy voice, completely ignoring the whole ‘kid-kit’ thing with what zero self-preservation she had. “But I’m not! I’m like the family friend who never leaves.”

 

The clancats traded frowning looks, and Leafstar tilted her head. “They’re all your kits?”

 

“How many litters did that tom have ?” he saw a white she-cat with brown patches murmur, slightly horrified, to a tom beside her. “None of them look like they’re from the same litter.”

 

“Not bio-” Bruce paused, then rephrased, “Not by birth. I-”

 

“Have an adoption problem?” Brown mumbled under her breath to Cain, who giggled (but it came out like a strange, bouncy, quiet purr). Damian hissed under his own breath, desperately wanting to claw his not-sister’s ears off with his new claws. But Bruce spoke over her, so hopefully no cat heard or questioned her stupidity.

 

“-raised them, from kits, when I found them,” Father said. “When they didn’t… When they lost their parents.”

 

Sympathetic murmurs broke out among the clan, and they turned to each other.

 

“I remember when Alderheart and Needletail took us in,” Violetshine said softly. “We wouldn’t have survived without them after our mother died…” The dark gray tabby tom on the other side of Leafstar sent the she-cat a loving but broken look, and Damian realized that he was Hawkwing, the deputy of SkyClan, and the father to Violetshine and Twigbranch. And the mate of the sadly deceased Pebbleshine.

 

“Hawkwing helped raise my kits when Sandynose was missing,” Plumwillow added to the whispers around the clan.

 

Positive murmurs swarmed the clan, but one skeptical voice from a gray tom with a lighter underbelly rose above the rest, “We all know what happened with Squirrelflight raising Leafpool’s kits, though. If anything, their drama is why we have to deal with Ashfur and his ghosts.”

 

“That’s different and you know it, Harrybrook,” a ginger tabby and white she-cat protested. “And you have no right to speak- I remember you supporting the imposter against the codebreakers.”

 

“Makes sense- he was named after Sol, after all,” some cat snarked in the crowd while Harrybrook leaped to his feet, pelt bristling with a furious hiss. Damian had nearly forgotten that small fact, that Sol had once been named Harry, and that Harrybrook had been named after the tom by his mother, Leafstar, after Sol had rescued them. It wasn’t all that important, after all. Sol was a rather weak and cowardly villain in the long run.

 

“Nobody knew Bramblestar was possessed !” Harrybrook spat. “And it was the codebreakers fault anyway. We have rules for a reason!”

 

A gray and white patched she-cat lurched forward beside the ginger she-cat, snarling, “Oh, so I guess we just gotta kick out every cat who’s ever forgotten to, say, pray to StarClan when catching prey? Or every cat who’s ever accidentally crossed the border?”

 

“I didn’t say that!” Harrybook took a step forward, claws sliding out. “I mean every cat who’s ever had a mate outside their clan, or given prey to another clan, or-”

 

“Are you accusing my son?!” Violetshine suddenly hissed, whipping around. Harrybrook startled, leaping backwards, and even the two she-cats seemed fearful at the mother’s rage. Tree laid his tail tip on his mate’s back comfortingly, and her claws slid back in with a deep breath.

 

“I-” Harrybrook started defensively.

 

“ That is enough! ” Leafstar roared, glowering at her clan, who all sunk beneath her stares. “Now is not the time for petty squabbles. We are a clan of warriors, not rogues, and we will act like it.” She lashed her tail once, and then her pelt smoothed as she raised her head, voice calmer yet colder as she spoke, “Now. Harrybrook, Pigeonfoot, for your apprentice-like behavior, go collect moss. You’ll have time to cool off and do something productive for your clan.”

 

Harrybrook ducked his head, ears folded stiffly backwards, looking rightly ashamed at being scolded by his mother and clan leader. Pigeonfoot looked like she wanted to protest, before the gray and white she-cat nodded instead.

 

“Sorry, Leafstar,” she mumbled. She and Harrybrook quickly made way for the entrance, their heads down, but they took the time to glare at the Batfamily as they passed by.

 

”Woah,” Brown said under her breath, leaning towards Thomas. “Cats got drama.”

 

“Were they talking about Among Us ?” Thomas whispered back, his brown cat body shifting nervously. “Why do they have an imposter among them?”

 

Brown snickered and Damian hissed, glaring at her. She rolled her eyes at him, and if Father and Cain weren’t between them, Damian would have launched himself at her.

 

“My apologies,” Leafstar meowed, turning back to the cat-Bats. “Tensions have been high among the clans right now. You must excuse us for our tempers.”

 

Bruce dipped his head. “Apology accepted. I imagine it can’t be easy with strangers in your camp?” At least Father had the brains to play his role correctly, Damian mused with another glare at Brown.

 

Leafstar smiled pleasantly. “Now, where were we? You and your cats were only here because you were lost on your travels, correct?”

 

“Yes.” Father nodded. “We never meant to cross into SkyClan territory.”

 

“Very well,” Leafstar said. “Then you’ll be escorted back to the border, and you can continue on your journey from there. I urge you to stay away from any other borders- WindClan or ShadowClan might not be as forgiving.” Damian noted with a whisker twitch that ThunderClan wasn’t included on that list, despite being right next to SkyClan. And of course, RiverClan was forgotten. They seemed quite hostile under should-definitely-be-dead-by-now Mistystar’s rule.

 

Every cat in camp seemed to startle at Leafstar’s easy dismissal, warrior and vigilante alike.

 

“We’re just letting the intruders go?” Wrenpaw mewed, puzzled.

 

“They could be enemies!” a pale brown tom said near the back. “Scouting out our territory.”

 

“If they were enemies,” Leafstar began evenly. “Then they’d act like it. We have the imposter and the disappearance of StarClan to deal with right now, we don’t need to worry about strangers in our camp who merely misstepped over the border.”

 

“We can’t just let them go ,” another warrior murmured, but it seemed half-hearted.

 

“They will be escorted,” Leafstar reassured her clanmates. She turned her head to Hawkwing beside her. “Hawkwing?”

 

The dark gray tabby tom nodded, turning to his clanmates. “Mintfur, Sunnypelt, Sagenose, come with me to escort these cats.” Said cats started moving towards them obediently.

 

Meanwhile, panic shot through Damian, and he turned to his father, to find him with a slight frown. His siblings around them turned to each other, confused but not all that worried. Grayson nudged Damian’s shoulder with his nose and shot him a smile when Damian turned to look at him. His brother got a big grin on his face.

 

“It’s alright,” he whispered. Then he turned to the clancats and announced loudly, “Wait.”

 

The warriors paused, perplexed, staring at the black and white tomcat.

 

“Do you think we could stay with you, at least for a day?”

 

Shocked gasps and hisses erupted from the clancats, and the vigilantes gave Grayson questioning looks.

 

“I thought you wanted to leave? ” One of the cats that had been called to escort them- Sunnypelt, Damian assumed, seeing as the cat was a fiery ginger color- hissed. “To go to your home?”

 

“Yeah,” another cat called jeeringly. “Gotham, or whatever dumb kittypet name you called it!”

 

Leafstar raised her tail, and the clan silenced, peering at the strangers with untrusting eyes once more. “Explain yourself.”

 

Grayson smiled. Even as a cat, he somehow retained his Dick Grayson charm. “You see,” he began. “When I was a young kitten-” Damian shot Grayson a look, both for calling kits kittens- ‘The clans don’t do that’- and because he couldn’t figure out where Grayson was going with this, and it worried him. “-I heard tales of cats living in the forest, in these clans or tribes or whatever.” Warriors narrowed their eyes at his casual, dismissive tone. “And I thought, as a young-... kittypet,” he tested the word on his tongue, yet said it in a confident way. “That they were the coolest! I even named myself after them- Nightwing.”

 

Intrigued murmurs slowly worked themselves around the clan, eyes trained on Grayson.

 

“After my parents’ death,” he said slowly, pausing a little bit to let it sink in for pity points. “I sort of forgot about those tales. But when my little brother came along-” He reached a paw out to Damian, presumably to try and wrap it around his neck, which definitely wouldn’t be comfortable or natural for either of them, as cats, so instead he ducked with a hiss, swatting his paw out at Grayson, who just gave an amused purr. “I told him about these tales, and he really, really liked them. He’s been obsessed with them ever since-”

 

“ Am not! ” Damian hotly protested, fur bristling. He could tell from Grayson’s teasing gaze that this wasn’t just about getting SkyClan to let them stay. But he wasn’t obsessed ! He read them because he was bored and nothing else! A minimal enjoyment at best!

 

“-And he’s clung to every tale we could get from cats on our journeys,” Grayson continued breezily. “When he realized we were passing by clan territories, he wanted to go closer, but we never planned on actually entering your territory.” He dipped his head apologetically. Damian let out another low growl to show his displeasure. “But now that we’re here… do you think you could fulfil a kit’s dream, and teach him about warriors?”

 

“I’m not a kit,” Damian grumbled, but let it trail off despite his anger, realizing that Grayson was trying to use Damian’s young age and small size (cuteness factor, he was sure Brown would call it) to their advantage, as well as play into Damian’s previous knowledge of the clancats.

 

The warriors of SkyClan were silent- no whispers had broken out by this announcement. Whiskers twitched and ears swivelled as they exchanged glances until one by one they all turned to their leader with erect ears, waiting in anticipation as to what she’d say.

 

Leafstar slowly blinked, and Damian briefly wondered if she was merely thinking or doing the cat-patented ‘slow blink-’ a sign of trust among cats. Most likely the former.

 

“We cannot spend time we could be hunting and protecting our clan with telling tales to fulfill a kit’s dream,” Leafstar spoke slowly, calculated. “We don’t turn you away because of cruelty in our hearts, simply because of necessity. We have kits of our own to feed, apprentices to train, and borders to guard.”

 

The rejection burned inside Damian for some strange reason, and he blurted out, “We can hunt!”

 

“Uh,” he heard Thomas meow, before Todd swiped his back with his tail, making the shiny brown cat jump. Todd fixed him with a glare and a slow shake of his head that Damian was silently grateful for- not that he’d ever admit that, least of all to Jason Todd of all people.

 

Leafstar blinked slowly again, and Damian realized it had been the ladder, not the former. She was slow blinking to show she meant no hard feelings, although she most likely didn’t even realize she was doing so.

 

“That does not change the fact we can’t spare our time watching you, to make sure you truly are who you claim you are,” Leafstar stated, and Damian was beginning to hate how logical she was. Why did she have to be the most reasonable leader around the lake?!

 

Damian’s claws dug into the earth below his paws unknowingly, frustrating itching at his pelt. What could he say? Was it even worth trying? Perhaps they could try another clan- ThunderClan, of course, was Main Character Central- but this was The Broken Code , not literally any other arc, and ThunderClan was currently- well, if Todd was to describe it in his crude way, then it was a hot pile of dogshit. Their leadership was all over the place, cats were leaving left and right, and fights broke out seemingly daily, or whenever it fit the plot.

 

“We can help,” Cain suddenly meowed, voice soft yet distinct, staring straight at Leafstar. Leafstar turned to stare at her, tilting her head. “You have… problems. That worry you all. You need them fixed. We are good at helping. Cats.” She flicked her fluffy black tabby tail at her family. “That is. Why we wander. Yes?” She glanced at Damian, and he eagerly nodded, trusting his sister. “We wander but we always return home. We can help you?” She tilted her head at the leader.

 

Leafstar narrowed her eyes thoughtfully, tilting her head to the other side as she considered Cassandra’s words. Murmurs had started among the warriors again, and Damian heard disbelief but intrigue in most of them.

 

“I think we should give them a chance,” Tree meowed, stepping forward.

 

Leafstar blinked, surprise in her amber gaze. “You do?” She glanced at Todd, specifically, and Damian wondered why for a moment before recalling that Tree didn’t have the best relationship with his former family, the Sisters, even if it had been somewhat reconciled before but mostly after his mother Moonlight’s death.

 

“There is something about them,” Tree admitted as he gazed at each of the vigilante-cats. “It’s… I don’t see any spirits around them, but it’s almost as if I can feel a whisper of them.”

 

Out of the corner of his eye, Damian saw Wrenpaw tense, fur rising, as she glanced at the vigilantes, terrified, before darting behind Rabbitleap.

 

But mostly, he was focused on what that could mean, if Tree was feeling spirits around them. Spirits of what? Warrior cats or… people from Damian’s universe?

 

“They do seem… strange,” the freckled brown cat told Leafstar, and Damian found himself offended even though they probably were very strange to the clancats. “And the world has been really strange now. Perhaps they could help.”

 

“They know nothing of us,” Hawkwing protested. “Except for nursery tales.”

 

“And we can’t just take in every group of strange cats and hope they’ll solve our problems,” Leafstar added.

 

”Throw enough burrs at a cat’s pelt, and eventually one will stick,” the freckled cat murmured to the leader, and Damian realized she was probably SkyClan’s medicine cat, Frecklewish, which would make the silent but fidgety black and white tom beside her, well, Fidgetflake, her apprentice but now full-fledged medicine cat alongside her. “We have nothing to lose from trying.”

 

“Except what we have left,” Violetshine murmured darkly, ear twitching. Tree brushed his shoulder against hers.

 

“Rootspring will come back,” he said softly. “Bristlefrost and Shadowsight are trying to save him.”

 

The council of cats exchanged worried, conflicted looks.

 

“Let us try,” Cain meowed sincerely, in that way only his sister could do, dipping her head down while staring intently into Leafstar’s eyes.

 

Leafstar held her gaze firmly.

 

And then she broke it, closing her eyes with a head dip of her own to Cain. Leafstar took a deep breath before raising her head high, announcing to all, “Very well.”

 

“Bat.” She turned to face Bruce, whose gray tail had curled around his paws. “You and your cats may stay in SkyClan.”

Chapter 4: The Struggle to Explain Warrior Cats is Real

“We can’t let them stay!”

 

“They’ll take all the prey for themselves!”

 

“They’re rogues ! What if they hurt our kits?!”

 

Yowls of protest rang out immediately at Leafstar’s announcement, but the leader calmly raised her voice, stating, “They will earn their own, and hunt enough for the clan and themselves while they are here.” Uneasiness spread in Damian. Could any of his family hunt? As humans, sure. But as cats? Thomas was probably too queasy, judging by his distaste at the fresh-kill pile. Brown as well, and probably Drake, knowing how inferior he was. “And if they cannot help us like they claim, then they will leave, by force or otherwise.”

 

“They better not be sleeping in the warriors’ den!” a she-cat hissed viciously, tail lashing.

 

“We don’t have enough room for them,” another warrior called out, sounding more worried than angry.

 

“They will sleep in the den the Sisters stayed in when they were here,” Leafstar meowed, flicking her tail to a neglected den, tucked in the corner.

 

“The prisoners’ den?” a younger, tan-colored cat questioned.

 

“Haven’t had any prisoners to keep in it,” an older cat murmured.

 

“Until now,” the third cat, lying beside the other two, spoke.

 

“They’re not prisoners,” Leafstar said. “But they’re not guests either. A warrior must be watching them at all times, but we will not treat them with disrespect.” She raised her head. “My word is final. We have duties we can’t neglect, which you are all dismissed to continue. Hawkwing, organize a border patrol to the border Rabbitleap’s patrol was supposed to mark. If you meet any other clans on patrol, inform them of our newcomers.” Hawkwing nodded. “When Harrybrook and Pigeonfoot return, tell them to give the new moss they collected to the queens, and take any of their old but clean bedding to the guests’ den.” Leafstar turned back to the vigilante-cats, and addressed Bruce, “I assume you would like a moment to talk to your cats?”

 

Bruce dipped his head. “Yes.”

 

Leafstar nodded, then raised her voice. “Senior warriors, medicine cats, Tree. Come with me to my den to discuss the newcomers. Palesky, Nectarsong, and Reedclaw, keep an eye on them for today.” She turned and waved her tail, and the council around her moved with her, except for Violetshine, who hung back, watching them go. She was far from a senior warrior, although the gaze in her eyes told Damian she wanted to follow after her leader, father, mate, and clanmates. A few other warriors slipped from the crowd and followed after Leafstar, up to the Treestump. At Hawkwing’s meow, a few cats slotted together and hesitantly left the camp, passing by the vigilante-cats warily.

 

Three cats approached them from the crowd, before two paused, watching them with narrow eyes, and the last continued approaching them. The small, pale grayish tabby she-cat raised her tail in friendly greeting.

 

“I am Reedclaw,” she introduced herself, speaking in a clipped, but polite, tone. “If you need anything in camp, you may ask me. Your den is this way.” She padded towards the direction of the old den. “It might be a bit tight, but it should fit all of you.” She glanced at Damian. “But you might convince Leafstar to let your younger cats sleep in the apprentices’ den.” Damian’s pelt prickled, but he quickly smoothed it out.

 

‘Being an apprentice would be a dream come true,’ his mind whispered before he forcefully took a sword through that thought and threw its mangly corpse off a cliff.

 

She paused in front of the den, and Brown jumped forward. “Thank you! So you guys-”

 

“Eggplant,” Bruce quickly cut her off, and Brown looked startled for a moment before she remembered that was her name with a small glare at Damian. “In the den. So we can discuss.”

 

Brown sighed, rolling her eyes, but said, “Yes sir” a bit too mockingly in Damian’s opinion, slipping into the den with a flick of her tail. They all followed after her with polite nods or mews to Reedclaw, and Todd entered last. He used his massive cat body to block most of the entrance to keep others from looking in.

 

Damian felt dread rise inside him as everybody turned immediately to him. Only Father looked serious- everyone else wore smirks or curious looks on their faces. But Grayson’s was the worst of all, with his big, dopey cat grin (the fangs made it look ridiculous and yet somehow disturbing).

 

“So,” Grayson began, purposefully dragging out the word.

 

“Quiet,” Damian snapped furiously, but knew it was of no use. Nothing could stop Grayson when he had a whiff of good brotherly teasing.

 

“It’s the cat books right?” Grayson said. “What were they called? Warriors ? The one with that fire cat you talked about for like an hour?”

 

“I did not!” Damian protested, fur bristling. His tail tried to lash, but stopped abruptly when it hit Thomas instead. He felt far too trapped in the den, with his family surrounding him in a rather menacing circle.

 

“Warrior Cats?” Drake meowed next, because of course he did . “Damian reads Warrior Cats?” He glanced at Damian with intrigued eyes, the kind he used when he was studying a person to figure them out.

 

“Do you? ” Damian hissed, ignoring the small hopeful part of himself.

 

“No,” Drake said, immediately crushing the small shimmer of hope Damian absolutely had not had at all. “But I’ve heard of them before. Aren’t they kids’ books?” His expression shifted into a smug grin.

 

Brown immediately gasped. “They’re kids’ books! I never thought Damian would stoop as low as to be a child ,” she said mockingly.

 

“I don’t read kids’ books!” Damian growled, whirling around to be nose-to-nose to her. “And if I did, I certainly wouldn’t enjoy them!”

 

“Wait, so what happens in the books?” Brown asked, completely ignoring Damian and turning to Drake. “They’re a bunch of cute cats living together in the wild?”

 

“It sounded like they were really angry at some imposter?” Thomas added, torn between being amused and knowing this was a serious matter.

 

“Yeah, how the hell do cats have an imposter among them?” Brown’s whiskers twitched as she said this, a smile on her. “Do they have to vote somebody out of the clan?”

 

Damian hissed. “It’s not that ridiculous game! The imposter is an evil spirit possessing a clan leader.”

 

Brown sent him a smug look. “Oh, I thought you didn’t read the cat books?”

 

Damian’s skin went hot under his pelt. “I don’t! I just- it was context clues! They were talking about spirits and…” He trailed off, trying to remember what the clancats had said specifically.

 

“Yeah, sure,” Brown rumbled, grinning. “So, remind me again, what’s a ‘paw?”

 

Damian glared at her with all the fury he could manage, which was a lot.

 

“Enough,” Father said, but not in a stern voice- he sounded too amused for Damian’s liking. He was supposed to be on Damian’s side! “Damian, explain to us what you know about these cats.”

 

Damian dug his claws into the old moss bed beneath his claws, hesitating. If he admitted to knowing a lot about these cats, then his siblings would know the extent to which he enjoyed the Warriors books (which was none ). But it was pertinent that Father knew about what was happening, so they could determine how to handle it, and how it could help them figure out their predicament.

 

His pride would have to suffer for their safety.

 

Damian took in a deep breath, then slowly admitted, “We appear to be in a universe like the Warriors series by Erin Hunter. The story follows cats living in groups in the wilderness, focusing mostly on the group known as the clans. The clan we are in right now is SkyClan, led by Leafstar and her deputy Hawkwing.”

 

“We could figure out all that based on context clues ,” Brown mocked him with a smirk. “Give us the juicy stuff! Why are they freaking out over ghosts and imposters? And, more importantly, why are their names so weird?”

 

Damian hissed. “They’re warrior names! They signify nobility and loyalty to their clans! It’s an honor to earn one.”

 

“ Kitescratch is a noble name?” Thomas meowed skeptically.

 

“It is!” Damian snarled. “And kite refers to the bird , not the toy, you imbeciles!”

 

“Is this why you named me Duck?” Drake cut in, sounding a bit bitter. ‘Good,’ Damian thought, satisfied. “Because Tim isn’t an animal, so it can’t be a warrior name?”

 

“I was going to call you Red,” Damian huffed. “But then Todd-” he sent a glare at the large tom. “-idiotically started to introduce himself as Red Hood before I fixed the situation. I merely followed the same naming strategy I used for him on you. A todd is a male fox just as a drake is a male duck.”

 

“You shoved a whole backstory on me,” Todd said with a glare of his own. “And whatever the hell a Sister is, it made that Birdfoot-”

 

“Wrenpaw.”

 

“-cat stare at me like I was going to put a gun to her face.”

 

“Cats don’t know what a gun is,” Damian said drily.

 

“Like I was going to claw her face off, then,” Todd corrected himself.

 

“A fate not uncommon to warriors.” Damian felt his pelt rise higher at Todd’s dismissive tone. “One they’d sooner do to you than them.”

 

“Boys.” Father moved his tail in-between them. “Calm down. We’re working together, not against each other. Explain to us what a Sister is, and why you found it important to call Jason one.” He stared honestly at Damian, and Damian took a deep breath to calm himself.

 

“The Sisters are a group of she-cats known for their power to see spirits of dead cats,” Damian explained. “They are allies to the clans, having helped them connect with their warriors who have passed.”

 

“So are they going to expect me to suddenly conjure up some dead cats?” Todd said. “Because I can’t do that, demon brat. Your lie is going to fall flat on its face.”

 

Damian’s pelt bristled. He hadn’t thought of that, but he wasn’t about to let Todd know that. “They already have Tree and Rootspring for that! They don’t need you .”

 

“Who’s Rootspring?” Grayson asked curiously. “They were talking about him earlier. Also, why is that cat’s name just Tree, and not, like, Treeclaw, or something?”

 

“Because he chose to keep his loner name,” Damian explained, exasperated. “And Rootspring is his son.”

 

“They are worried for him,” Cain meowed lightly. “Why?”

 

“He must still be trapped in the Dark Forest,” Damian replied. ‘And if Bristlefrost and Shadowsight went to save him, then we really were sent here at the end of The Place of No Stars .’

 

“The what-now?” Brown questioned, blinking dumbly at him.

 

Damian narrowed his eyes, even as he ground out his next words in a simplistic language he knew Brown would understand, “Cat Hell.”

 

“ Cat Hell? ” Brown repeated, eyes widening. “Holy shit, these cats got demons?”

 

“No,” Damian hissed. “It’s where the villains go after they die, instead of StarClan.”

 

“They talked about StarClan a lot,” Thomas piped up. “They said they couldn’t speak to them anymore, or something? Is StarClan their cat Heaven?”

 

“Yes,” Damian answered curtly, while his mind tried to figure out how to explain the conundrum that was The Broken Code .

 

“Wait, so who's their cat God?” Brown asked.

 

“Is it the fire cat?” Grayson meowed. “I bet it’s the fire cat.”

 

“No,” Damian growled. “Fire star was the first protagonist. They have no cat gods.” He hesitated. “Although I suppose you could consider the clan founders as ones. And perhaps the mythological clans.”

 

“The what clans? They have fake clans?” Thomas said.

 

“There are many kinds of fake clans,” Damian replied, thinking of WarriorClan, BloodClan, and DarkClan. “But I was referring to their mythology. They tell tales of clans with lions, leopards and tigers instead of domesticated cats to their kits. Some believe they are descended from those big cats.”

 

“Wow,” Brown meowed. “Cat religion. Who woulda thunk it.”

 

“StarClan?” Cain prompted before Damian could claw Brown’s nose clean off. He put his raised paw back down, reluctantly sheathing his claws.

 

“StarClan are the clans’ deceased ancestors,” Damian explained. “When a cat dies, they go to StarClan.”

 

“Or the Dark Forest,” Grayson interjected. “If they’re evil. Why isn’t it called DarkClan?”

 

Damian’s ear twitched, recalling the DarkClan created as a kits’ game between Lionblaze and Heathertail. “I suppose they don’t think cats as rotten as them deserve any resemblance to the clans.” He’d never really questioned why it was called the Dark Forest before. Or the Place of No Stars. He did question why it had two names, though. “And not all villains end up in the Dark Forest. Evil cats can worm their way into StarClan. Case in point: the imposter.”

 

“Among Us!” Brown immediately yelled, and this time Damian didn’t hesitate to launch himself at her. It didn’t go as smoothly as he planned, as he more crashed into her than the elegant pin-down he was aiming for. She yelped as she was pushed back into the thicket wall.

 

“Ow, ow, ow, the walls are spiky!” she complained, pushing forward against Damian. He faltered over his own legs, finding himself with not enough space to right them. He stuck out his tail for balance, but eventually accepted defeat and let himself fall down and rearrange his legs from there. He snarled at Drake when he snickered at him.

 

Well. That certainly wasn’t how he imagined his own Warriors fight scene.

 

Not that he’d ever done that, of course. No, that was downright childish, and he was not a child.

 

“Who is this imposter?” Bruce asked, all business. Mostly business. He looked faintly amused at his children’s antics, but Damian was just grateful he was taking this seriously. And not teasing Damian about his liking of Warrior Cats. Not that he actually liked Warrior Cats, but it was going to be difficult to get that into his siblings’ thick skulls.

 

“A former StarClan cat by the name of Ashfur,” Damian meowed.

 

“His name is Ashfur?” Thomas said. “That’s not very scary. I was thinking it was gonna be like… Killerclaw, or something.”

 

Damian gave him his best unamused, irritated glare. “That is an even more ridiculous name than Ashfur. Who would name their child Killerkit?”

 

“You mean Killerclaw?” Drake said with a frown. “Or, no, wait- they change their names all the time right? Like how what’s-her-face who said she was a ‘paw?”

 

Damian huffed. “ Wrenpaw .” How hard was it to remember one cat's name? ...To be fair, even he did mix up some characters. But there were two Frecklewish’s, four Robinwing’s, a Stonefur and Stormfur who were both half-RiverClan, half-ThunderClan, and a million other names, so it wasn’t really his fault. “And yes. When they’re born, they’re given a prefix along with the suffix ‘kit.’ When they become apprentices, the suffix is changed to ‘paw,’ and, if they earn their warrior name, they get a specialized suffix fitting their character. For example, Rabbitleap would have been Rabbitkit, then Rabbitpaw, and now, of course, he is Rabbitleap.”

 

“Oh,” Brown said, eyes lighting up. “Ohhhh! Okay, that’s actually kind of cool. I dig it. Wait so- non-clankitties don’t do that? Like… the Sisters?”

 

Damian nodded, relieved they were starting to understand this. “Yes. Loners and rogues have singular names, like Lark and Bat.” He nodded to Thomas and flicked his tail at Father. “Kittypets have whatever name their twoleg gave them.”

 

And then they all stared at him. Brown squinted her eyes. “Uh. Explain all of those words you just said, because I understood none of them.”

 

Damian’s pelt prickled. His mind kept slipping naturally into Warriors language. “A kittypet is what they call a housecat- you already know that, or you should , if you had been paying attention .”

 

“I was distracted by cute cats,” Brown defended herself with a smile. Beside her, Thomas nodded.

 

Damian hissed, “This is serious .” Brown looked at him like it was not at all serious. “...And twolegs are humans.”

 

“Well,” Drake said slowly. “I guess we do have two legs.”

 

“So they know a bird is named kite, but not that humans are called humans?” Brown raised a brow with a smirk.

 

Damian bristled, but he honestly had no clue why the cats didn’t know what a human was, so he just said, “That doesn’t matter. What matters is we need to figure out how to get home.”

 

They all finally turned serious at that reminder, trading stern and worried glances.

 

“We still have no memories on how we got here or who we were fighting?” Bruce asked. They all shook their heads and murmured affirmative ‘no’s.

 

“Somebody who has the powers to send us into alternate universes, obviously,” Grayson said.

 

“Or make us believe we’re in a different universe,” Brown countered.

 

“Coincidentally,” Drake began. “Also a universe one of us has extensive knowledge of.” Damian hissed when Drake looked at him.

 

He had base knowledge! Not extensive knowledge! Because only someone who was obsessed with Warrior Cats would have extensive knowledge, and that was not him!

 

“Bright light,” Cain meowed. “Hit us all. Or only hit one of us.” She nodded to Damian.

 

“You think something hit Damian that would have transported us into a book series he read?” Thomas said with a frown.

 

“Not the most far-fetched thing we’ve ever suggested or had happened to us,” Grayson replied. “It does make sense- it could have sent us all into Damian’s favorite series.”

 

Damian fur fluffed out more than it ever had as he spat, “It’s not my favorite series! I’ve barely even read them- I would never lower myself to read such garbage!” Kind of hard to deny that he hadn’t ever read them at this point. “This is just common knowledge!”

 

Grayson’s whiskers just twitched as he smiled at Damian. “So what’s your favorite book series, then?”

 

Damian opened his mouth, then shut it with a snap. He glowered for a moment, then huffed, “I don’t find any books not beneficial to bettering my skills particularly fulfilling.”

 

“On the other hand,” Thomas slowly meowed, and Damian glared at him, expecting him to say something ridiculous to try and mock him. But instead, he suggested, “Maybe it’s not Damian, but the villain. Maybe they like Warrior Cats.”

 

“Maybe,” Drake agreed hesitantly. “But it seems too coincidental to me. Plus, what’s the likelihood of a villain not only liking Warrior Cats, but basing themselves upon it?”

 

‘Quite high, actually,’ Damian thought privately. ‘The Warriors fandom is much bigger than one would think- Not that I care. Because I am not a part of it. At all. Or ever.’

 

“I mean, we’ve seen some pretty specific villains out there,” Grayson said. “Like Calendar Man. Or the Condiment King.”

 

“And we have plenty of book-related villains already,” Todd said. “Queen of Fables and Bookworm, for example.”

 

“But they haven’t been active in a long while,” Bruce stated with a swish of his tail. The tip twitched in frustration.

 

“Maybe,” Cain started gently, a thoughtful look in her eyes. “We help cats, we help ourselves.”

 

“It could be one of those situations where if we help the people- cats- of this world, then we find the way home,” Drake agreed with a nod. “That’s happened before.”

 

“Since we don’t know what happened to us,” Bruce began. “But we do know what’s happening here-” He glanced at Damian, who flicked his ears back, torn between embarrassment and pride at being the only knowledgeable one. “That would seem like the logical choice. Damian, how do we help this SkyClan?”

 

Damian jumped slightly at being addressed, even though he knew it was going to happen. He frowned, claws twitching to dig into the moss again. He didn’t… The current arc wasn’t even finished! Not until November 9th of 2021, when A Light in The Mist would be released. Hesitantly, he admitted, “The book that would show how Ashfur is defeated hasn’t been released yet.”

 

“But you must have ideas,” Bruce prompted.

 

...An idea that would be acceptable to the Warriors universe, but not to his father’s ideals. Damian shifted his weight from paw to paw. There wasn’t any way to defeat Ashfur without killing him. No way to take away his power source (that Damian knew of, anyway). And Ashfur had his power because he was dead, anyway.

 

“You have one,” Cain meowed, staring pointedly at him. “Tell.”

 

“In this universe,” he started nervously, not looking at his father. “The villains are always defeated by killing them, with only a few exceptions. I believe they plan to kill Ashfur, and I… agree that, logically, it would be the only way to defeat him.”

 

He flicked his eyes to catch his father’s expression turning into a frown with narrowed eyes. He shouldn’t have said he agreed- he didn’t kill anyone anymore! Unless they really, really, really deserved it. And Ashfur really, really, really deserved it!

 

“Isn’t this Ashfur guy already dead?” Todd questioned.

 

“Ironic coming from the dead Robin standing,” Damian snarked, raising a brow.

 

Todd shrugged. “Didn’t know Warrior Cats had a Lazarus Pit.”

 

“They don’t,” Damian said, then paused, remembering how Tigerstar (the second) had been chucked (yeeted, some would say, but not Damian, because he wasn’t a cringey teen) into the Moonpool and revived. “Not exactly, anyway. And Ashfur is dead, but his spirit can be killed as well. Then he’d be gone from this universe forever.” Or that was the assumption, anyway. Tigerstar (the first) hadn’t exactly popped up since his death as a spirit.

 

“We aren’t killing him,” Bruce said, which is what Damian knew he would say. Which made everything ten-times more difficult.

 

“I don’t exactly want to kill a cute, fuzzy kitten either.” Brown frowned.

 

Damian’s pelt bristled again. “He’s not some cute kitten! He’s a full grown warrior who tried to date his half-niece, threw a hissyfit when she didn’t like him, attempted to murder her father and adopted children, possessed her husband after his death, nearly murdered her real daughter, chucked her off a cliff, manipulated young children into betraying their clanmates, basically murdered a medicine cat, banished cats from the clans, destroyed the clans connection to their ancestors, dragged cats into cat Hell, and now is controlling the spirits of the cats he killed!” Ashfur’s list of crimes was so incredibly long it was hard to fit it all into one breath- but Damian managed to do it in about four. Excluding the specifics of some, and he probably forgot some minor things here and there.

 

His siblings blinked at him.

 

“And this is a kids’ book?” Brown asked, glancing at Drake, who just did his strange cat shrug.

 

“The villain is an incel,” Thomas added. “Didn’t expect that. So he’s doing all of… whatever you said, because the girl he liked- his niece- didn’t like him?”

 

“Incest is prominent in Warriors so the niece part isn’t really a problem,” Damian explained. “But yes.”

 

“Wha- the incest is- and this is a kids’ book?” Brown tried again, squinting incredulously at him.

 

“They also portray multiple pedophilic relationships,” Damian said. “But only acknowledged one of them- the rest are accidental on the authors’ parts.” He shook his head. “But that isn’t the point! The point is, Ashfur is a real villain to these cats, not some adorable little cat who will roll over if you give him treats! He’s not going to go down just because we asked nicely. He has control over a whole army of dead cats.”

 

“Last I heard of Warriors ,” Drake started with a blink. “It was just some cat joining the clans because he didn’t want to lose his balls, or something.”

 

Damian glared at him for that crude description of why Rusty joined ThunderClan and eventually became Firestar. He wasn’t wrong, not entirely, but still. “That was the first arc,” Damian said. “The first arc was normal. The further down the arcs you go, the more nonsensical and bizarre the story gets.”

 

“Not wanting to lose your balls is normal? In Warrior Cats? The kids’ book?” Brown said, tone disbelieving.

 

“I don’t think anyone particularly wants to lose their balls, Steph,” Todd chuffed with a grin.

 

Brown nodded, smirking. “Yeah, I’d hate to lose mine. Guess we gotta stay in this clan then, huh?”

 

Todd laughed while Drake, Thomas, and Grayson all chuckled, and even Cain smiled.

 

“Focus,” Bruce reminded them all. “What else can Ashfur do?” It felt weird to hear his father say that name, much less in the context he was. They were going to fight Ashfur. Of Warrior Cats. In Warrior Cats. While they were cats.

 

(Oh, how easy it’d be if they could just put a gun to Ashfur’s head.)

 

“He’s been able to drag cats into the Moonpool,” Damian started. “That’s a holy body of water they use to contact StarClan. When they’re dragged in, by a spirit, they’ll appear in the Dark Forest. He also traps spirits of cats who have died on this island in the Dark Forest, surrounded by dark water. Once there, he takes control over their mind. It hasn’t been explained how, exactly.” He paused, thinking of Ashfur’s abilities… The books hadn’t clearly described what he could do, leaving it wrapped in mystery and terror. “He can also possess bodies of those who have died, but, presumably, only in the case of leaders.”

 

“Why only leaders?” Grayson asked curiously when Damian didn’t continue.

 

“They have nine lives,” Damian answered. “Bramblestar- that’s the ThunderClan leader- lost one life, and Ashfur possessed his body before his spirit could return, forcing his spirit out to wander alone.”

 

“Damn, hardcore,” Brown said, and Damian swallowed a growl.

 

Bruce cocked his head to the side. “Do we know of any weaknesses-”

 

“Bat!” a voice yowled.

 

All of the vigilante-cats jumped (so much for being vigilantes), startled, and Todd hit his head on the roof of the den. He hissed, but shifted away from the entrance to let them see Reedclaw pad up to the den with a warm (forcefully so) smile.

 

Bruce turned around, awkwardly trying not to bump into Todd in front of him and not fall on Grayson behind him. “Yes?”

 

“Leafstar wishes to speak to you and your cats.”

Chapter 5: The Moral Conflict of Killing a Mouse

“Leafstar wishes to speak to you and your cats.” 

 

Reedclaw said the words firmly, but paused, then continued hesitantly, “The… Bats… you liked to be called?” She shot a confused look back, towards where Rabbitleap was sitting with Wrenpaw, watching them closely.

 

“The Bats is fine,” Bruce said as he slowly stepped out of the den and over Todd’s tail. “What would she like to speak to us about?” Damian already had a few ideas. After all, what wouldn’t she want to speak to them about?

 

Todd inched out of the den after their father and Damian quickly shoved himself out, using his small   average size to his advantage.

 

“Speak to Leafstar and find out,” Reedclaw told them, swishing her tail behind her before turning around and padding towards where the SkyClan leader was approaching them, her typical council of Hawkwing, Tree, Frecklewish, Fidgetflake, and Violetshine following her. Less cats were in camp now, but all that were had their eyes locked on the vigilante-cats, or the Bats rather, as they moved. It was kind of eerie, not that Damian was at all disturbed. Or anxious. Nope. Not him. He was a proud vigilante, heir to the Bat and the Demon! The world was his canvas!

 

(Speaking of which, he was definitely drawing and painting every warrior he could remember when he got home so he knew perfectly how to imagine them in the books. Not that he would be reading them after this, of course. Just in theory.)

 

Reedclaw dipped her head respectively to her leader before jumping up onto a ledge and sitting beside Rabbitleap and Wrenpaw. Nearby, Damian caught the eyes of Nectarsong and Palesky watching them more intently than the rest of the warriors. He wasn’t sure which warrior was which since he hadn’t particularly remembered who the two warriors were. Palesky was one of the kits from the family that had originally been separated from SkyClan, that he knew, but he had no clue who Nectarsong was, although her name was aesthetically pleasing.

 

“Leafstar,” Bruce greeted respectfully, his tone not quite taking on that growly, deep Batman voice he used with the Justice League, but getting closer to it. He sounded more like a toned down CEO Bruce Wayne, ready to secure a business deal.

 

“Bat,” Leafstar replied back, the same tone replicated. “We have decided you and your cats will be staying in SkyClan for as long as it takes you to help us.” Her amber eyes narrowed. “Or until you cannot help us any longer. You will be treated with hospitality, but any aggression will not be tolerated. For today, since the sun is still high,” she pointed her nose up at the sunny orange-blue sky, “you and your cats will be assigned to hunting patrols. You will hunt for SkyClan, meaning all prey you catch must be given to the clan before yourselves. When the entire clan is fed, then you may eat.”

 

Damian could feel the tension without even glancing back at his siblings. His own shoulders felt tense. It wasn’t that they felt threatened- no, rather, it was the simple fact that they didn’t know how to hunt. Damian was sure he could at least manage to catch a mouse, using his knowledge of how warriors hunted, but his family? Bruce could hunt and roast squirrels and deer effortlessly, but that was when he was stranded in the wilderness as a human . Grayson, Damian hoped, was smart enough to fend for himself as well, and begrudgingly he admitted the same was probably true for Drake. Although the inferior Robin was most likely far too squeamish about it. Speaking of squeamish, Brown and Thomas were sure to be the most incompetinent when it came to hunting. Brown might find the mouse too cute, or the squirrel’s tail far too bushy and fluffy to harm, and Thomas… Damian wasn’t sure he had a bone in his body willing to hurt an innocent animal. Damian- while in his younger years during the League of Assassins would have had no problem- would have enjoyed it even- but now he found he had to fight against the morals in his body telling him not to hurt innocent creatures too.

 

But they would be killed for a purpose. To keep the clan from starvation. To keep them strong and healthy for any attacks against them. Damian had to remind himself that. He wasn’t hunting without purpose- he knew, and even his father knew, that in the wilderness, one must kill to survive.

 

If only his father could extend that ‘killing animals to survive’ rule to people, and apparently cats, because then it would be far easier to solve this Ashfur problem. And the Joker problem, while they were at it.

 

“That is fair,” Bruce meowed, whiskers twitching even as he bowed his head in agreement. Damian could see the stiffness of his shoulders, the way his tail tip twitched, and the light rise of the hair on his neck. It was harder to hide your emotions in a body you weren’t used to.

 

Right as Leafstar opened her mouth to speak, a soft voice cut in with, “I don’t hunt.”

 

Everyone snapped their gaze to the unassuming black tabby cat named Cassandra Cain, the girl raised from birth knowing nothing but body language and how to kill, not that the cats from Warriors were aware of that. Damian had forgotten how his sister now followed a no-kill rule almost stricter than his father (although she never blamed others when they killed- if they weren’t a villain or criminal, of course. That lack of judgement was something his father didn’t have that he knew both Todd and himself appreciated). He had never thought it would extend to animals, even if he knew his sister had never willingly harmed an animal in her life.

 

“You don’t hunt,” Hawkwing repeated, suspicion and incredulity dripping obviously off his voice.

 

“I don’t kill,” Cain corrected smoothly. “Anything. Big or small.”

 

Shocked murmurs and growls echoed through the camp. “Doesn’t hunt ? Then how does she survive?”

 

“She plans to eat our catches and not do anything in return!”

 

“Just like a kittypet!” a rather bold voice yowled as a gray tom stepped forward.

 

Right next to him, a sleek-furred black and white tom whipped his head around, glaring. “Excuse me?”

 

The gray tom’s ears flattened and his gaze dropped to the ground shamefully. “Sorry, Macgyver.”

 

“I can help,” Cain continued, unaffected by their jeers and hisses. “Many ways to help besides hunting. I can still fight. I can still protect. I can still care.”

 

Leafstar’s eyes were still narrowed, the most unfriendly Damian had seen the she-cat. “Without prey to eat, our clan cannot grow strong. If you refuse to hunt-”

 

“Now wait a minute, Leafstar,” Frecklewish meowed, politely stepping forward. Her eyes were trained curiously on Cain. “Perhaps Black- was it?- can still be useful. There is more a cat can do than just hunt and fight.”

 

Leafstar’s eyes begrudgingly moved themselves from Cain to look at her medicine cat. “What are you suggesting, Frecklewish?”

 

“Fidgetflake,” Frecklewish flicked her tail to her apprentice, who looked slightly nervous at being addressed, “was going to collect herbs. Perhaps Black could accompany him? The more herbs the better prepared we are for sickness and wounds.”

 

Damian’s own ears flicked up in surprise. His badass ninja sister as a medicine cat? He hadn’t ever thought of that before. ...Not that he had imagined his sister as a Warrior Cat at all. Certainly not. Only someone who actually enjoyed the Warriors series would do that.

 

Leafstar frowned, but Cain spoke first as she tilted her head. “Herbs? Is that your word for medicine?” Damian tensed at Cain’s blatant question that a cat would know, but, to his surprise, Frecklewish just nodded.

 

“Yes. We use plants to heal our wounded and sick, in a clan,” Frecklewish explained, then smiled. “I know some housecats rely on their housefolk to take them to a vet, but out here, in the wild, we must rely on each other and the wisdom of StarClan to guide us.” A few unhappy whispers were traded at the last point, and it wasn’t too hard to guess why they were unhappy, considering this was a time when ‘StarClan had abandoned them,’ however unwillingly.

 

“What’s a vet?” one young cat that Damian realized must be a kit asked in an attempted but still too loud whisper.

 

The cat that was either Palesky or Nectarsong (Damian was leaning towards Nectarsong based on the brown pelt) put a tail to their mouth. “Shush. A vet is a kittypet word for the Cutter.”

 

Damian blinked. He knew that, but he hadn’t even realized Frecklewish was using ‘kittypet’ words- but that was right. Frecklewish had been a daylight-warrior, a warrior by day and a kittypet by night, before she had been a full-fledged medicine cat of SkyClan. In fact, most of the older cats in SkyClan had kittypet roots, or loner blood, within them. A good clan to enter and not be judged, although it seemed the bias and xenophobia was seeping into the younger generations. But if any of his family slipped up with their ‘human’ words- the warriors would just dismiss it as a ‘kittypet’ word.

 

“I will help you,” Cain meowed. “Collect herbs. I wish to help. Your clan.” Damian could tell Cain was starting to get frustrated with speaking so much- it wasn’t like she could just switch to sign language, considering she no longer had hands- so he touched her leg with his tail tip in what he hoped she would know was a comforting gesture. Cain smiled at him, so he knew she did.

 

Frecklewish smiled. “Great. Then you may go with Fidgetflake. He will show you which herbs we need.”

 

Leafstar’s whiskers twitched, but she didn’t contradict her medicine cat. Instead, she said, “Nettlesplash, accompany Fidgetflake and Black.” It was clear she meant ‘guard Fidgetflake from being attacked from Black’ but Cain just smiled and raised her tail, friendly, as Nettlesplash, a pale brown tom, padded down to join them.

 

“Uh, hi,” Fidgetflake meowed to presumably both Nettlesplash and Cain as he edged his way towards the camp entrance.

 

“Hello,” Cain meowed back affably as she trotted after him.

 

Nettlesplash’s whiskers twitched as he stepped beside Cain. “So, were you born a kittypet? You don’t look like it…” Nettlesplash’s curious voice faded off as the three left camp, and Damian was suddenly struck with anxiety- no, not anxiety, anxiety was Drake’s idiotic thing, and Damian was nothing like Drake- he was simply… overly worried and paranoid something bad would happen.

 

Without Damian there to check and correct Cain’s story and language, what would she say? What if she contradicted the story Damian laid out for them? What if she said something, and then one of the Bats contradicted her ? What if Nettlesplash suddenly decided Cain was an enemy because of what she said? He didn’t seem all that hostile towards her, but that didn’t mean anything. Damian couldn’t recall exactly who Nettlesplash was, another faceless name to him among the hundreds of Warrior Cats.

 

“The rest of you will be assigned to hunting patrols, unless any others of you have something to say.” Leafstar waited with narrowed eyes, but when the Bats didn’t respond or shake their heads, she continued, tension relaxing from her shoulders, “Hawkwing will sort you. My warriors will be watching you, remember.” She stepped back with a flick of her tail, letting Hawkwing step forward. It was the deputy’s duty to sort patrols, after all.

 

“Bat, Duck,” Hawkwing began, and Damian allowed himself to revel in how Drake scowled at the name. “You will be on a patrol with myself and Violetshine.” He flicked his tail to his black and white daughter who moved to stand beside him. Damian squashed the flicker of annoyance (and totally not jealousy) that Tim Drake of all people got to be on a patrol with Violetshine, the former spy to Darktail’s Kin. Drake would never be able to appreciate what she had done for not only her clan, but all five clans. Another twinge of annoyance reminded him that Ivypool and Bristlefrost, the respective spies on the Dark Forest and the imposter, and even the rebel Spotfur, were all in ThunderClan.

 

‘All the cool cats are in ThunderClan,’ his mind whined childishly before he could stop it. ‘And the one cool cat of SkyClan is being taken by Drake !’

 

“Red Fox and Nightwing will be with Macgyver and Bellaleaf,” Hawkwing continued. Damian held back a hiss- hopefully his older brothers would refrain from asking why Macgyver didn’t have a warrior name, and why Bellaleaf was named Bellaleaf, seeing as Damian had earlier told them warrior names had to include animals, and implied that it had to include plants, or nature, or colors, or whatever else. He had forgotten that SkyClan was the outsider to this rule- they had plenty of warriors who kept their kittypet names and combined them with warriors names. Bellaleaf, Billystorm, Rileypool, and Snookthorn came to mind, although three-fourths of them were dead by now. Damian, personally, found it an interesting concept that made SkyClan more unique from the other clans. Normally, an outsider’s name was changed to fit the clan’s names- such as Rusty becoming Fireheart, or Frankie becoming Stormcloud.

 

“Eggplant and Robin will be with Rabbitleap and Wrenpaw,” Hawkwing said, and Damian straightened up when he was addressed.

 

‘Not Stephanie, ’ his mind hissed, already feeling the irritation rise at being stuck with Brown. He would even take Drake over her! At least he could take this seriously… He supposed he could better keep Brown in check from saying something that would blow their cover. But if she said one more thing about Among Us, Damian wouldn’t hesitate to rip her ear off.

 

“And Lark,” Hawkwing started. Thomas stiffened, eyes wide, clearly unsettled by being the last cat and being separated from the rest of the Bats. But then, Hawkwing continued, “will stay in camp.”

 

“What? Why?” Thomas blurted out, blinking.

 

“We can’t overhunt the forest of its prey,” Hawkwing mewed. “In fact, Bat and Duck, our patrol will be leaving later, when dusk begins.” Bruce gave a small nod to show he understood, eyes flicking upwards to the sky. It was sunhigh- or in human speak, noon.

 

Damian narrowed his eyes. Duke Thomas should at least be going on Father’s patrol if what Hawkwing said was the case. Yet they wanted him to stay in camp all day. Why?

 

The answer came immediately. ‘So we can’t all decide to run away when we’re outside of camp. So that way we have to come back- for him. And,’ he thought, glancing at Thomas’s nervous fidgeting. ‘Because he’s outwardly the most nervous one. The one they can pressure information from the easiest.’

 

“Macgyver, Rabbitleap,” Hawkwing called and the two toms came strutting down. “You may lead your patrols.”

 

Macgyver- the black and white tom from earlier- approached Todd and Grayson with a nod, Bellaleaf- a ginger tabby and white she-cat- right behind him. Macgyver just flicked his tail, a signal for the Bats to follow, but Todd and Grayson traded confused looks at Macgyver and Bellaleaf’s lack of greeting. But when Macgyver paused and looked back over his shoulder, the two quickly ran after the warriors.

 

“Hey!” Grayson said, greeting Macgyver since he hadn’t greeted them. “So you’re a warrior right?”

 

“Yep,” Macgyver replied, turning back around and leading his patrol out of camp with Grayson already beginning to chat his tail off.

 

Damian inwardly groaned. He could already tell that line of questioning was leading to Grayson asking why he didn’t have a warrior name.

 

Rabbitleap was walking towards them with Wrenpaw closely on his heels. She looked nervous, but less so, now that Todd was out of camp.

 

“Since you can’t smell a border,” Rabbitleap started. “I can’t imagine how you’ll smell prey, but let’s see how you do, hm?” His whiskers twitched, and Damian couldn’t quite tell if his tone was friendly-challenging, or hostile-challenging. Perhaps a little bit of both.

 

“I’m sure the- uh- prey smells way better than the border,” Brown meowed, matching his tone, in response. She had a smile on her face, but a conflicted look in her eyes.

 

“I think the border smells fine,” Wrenpaw meowed, looking a bit defensive. “You should smell ShadowClan’s border! They smell like rotten crowfood.”

 

“Crowfood?” Brown frowned.

 

“Yeah!” Wrenpaw said, apparently not realizing Brown had been asking the meaning of the word. That was good, anyway. “ThunderClan’s border isn’t much better, but they at least smell more familiar than the other clans’.”

 

“Let’s get moving,” Rabbitleap ordered, but he looked fondly at the apprentice. “We can chat later. Remember, you must be quiet or the prey will hear you.”

 

Wrenpaw’s whiskers twitched. “I know that!”

 

“Wasn’t talking to you,” Rabbitleap murmured with a playful flick of his tail over her ears, but a warning glare towards Brown and Damian. “Come on.” He started moving to the camp entrance. Brown glanced at Damian, but he had already turned towards Father, Drake, and Thomas.

 

“Stick to the story,” he hissed a low voice to them. “Don’t say anything a cat wouldn’t know.”

 

He turned quickly after that, not wanting Leafstar to get suspicious. His pelt prickled with unease as he followed Rabbitleap and Wrenpaw out of camp, Brown following closely behind him. It felt less awe-inspiring to leave camp than it did to enter it. He slowed down to stand side-to-side to Brown, especially as she immediately stepped on a cluster of crunchy leaves.

 

“Watch where you walk,” he growled at her. “Be quiet, and don’t let your tail touch anything either.”

 

“Okay, bossypants,” she mumbled with a roll of her eyes, but she raised her tail and didn’t immediately step on the twig in front of her, so that was a good sign. Although she looked ridiculous holding her tail up like that.

 

Did he? He glanced back at his own tail, finding it raised the same way she was. He glanced ahead to Rabbitleap and Wrenpaw. The warriors’ tails were kept low, but curled upwards before they could touch the ground, and they didn’t sway them around. He copied their tail posture, looking back until he was satisfied. Brown seemed more concerned with where her paws were going (and occasionally looking at her paw pads and whispering, “Toe beans…”) than to worry about how her tail looked.

 

But they were rapidly falling behind Rabbitleap and Wrenpaw, so he sped up his pace, taking leaps instead of calculated steps. He whacked his tail against Brown’s face as he moved ahead, both because he wanted to, and to make sure she followed after him.

 

He heard her startled mew before she bounded after him. He heard her step on two leaves and one branch, but that was better than he’d thought she’d do. He winced when he stepped on a twig of his own, slowing down as he caught up to the warriors.

 

Then Rabbitleap flung his tail out to the side, and he and Wrenpaw both halted so suddenly that Damian nearly ran into him. He dug his claws into the ground, pricking his ears and trying to hear anything over his pounding heart.

 

‘I hope I don’t have fear scent,’ Damian thought nervously. Then sharply added to himself, ‘Because I’m not afraid!’ He had no reason to be afraid. He could catch a measly mouse!

 

“What do you scent?” Rabbitleap asked, and Damian wasn’t sure if he was asking Damian and Brown, or his apprentice, because he didn’t turn around. But Wrenpaw’s tail twitched nervously, and her ear swiveled, glancing back at them, so he assumed them.

 

Tensed, Damian took in a deep breath, trying to scent for anything- but all he could smell was the forest around them, and the strange SkyClan scent of the warriors. He couldn’t even tell the difference between Rabbitleap and Wrenpaw’s scents, nor the difference between the flowers and plants around them. How could he smell a mouse or a squirrel? What did they smell like, to a cat’s nose? He couldn’t recall any descriptions beside ‘tangy’ and ‘sharp’ but nothing was smelling particularly sharp-

 

‘You’re going to fail your first hunt,’ a voice stuck itself into the back of his head and refused to leave. ‘You’re going to mess everything up. You’re going to embarrass yourself.’

 

His pelt prickled uncomfortably as his skin went hot underneath it. He could do this- he was trained by the League of Assassins and Batman, he could do anything! Just- ‘ Smell something! Anything!’ he yowled at his brain.

 

“Uh,” Brown said, taking a few steps forward, completely oblivious to Damian’s panic. “Mouse?”

 

Damian jerked his head to stare at his moronic not-even-adopted sister. She couldn’t have-

 

“Correct,” Rabbitleap meowed, clearly surprised as his ears flicked upwards and he turned to look at her. “We’ll split up. There’s a den of them that way,” he pointed with his tail, “but I saw a plump squirrel earlier.” He flicked his tail and Wrenpaw scrambled after him.

 

“Gotcha,” Brown meowed, unconcerned and awfully smug while Damian stared at her like she’d sprouted another head.

 

“How did you-” And then Damian realized she hadn’t scented a thing and that she had completely guessed a random animal off the top of her head. He snapped his open jaw shut, scowling. “You can’t guess blindly!”

 

Brown shrugged with a grin. “Seems to have worked perfectly fine.”

 

“Well, go find that mouse then!” Damian spat at her. “Since you’re so perfectly good at guessing.”

 

“Why don’t you?” Brown meowed with a smug smile, tail swaying behind her and brushing against the ferns around them. 

 

Damian stared at her for a long while, as she stared back, before he huffed, lashing his tail behind him. “Maybe I will!” He stormed off in the opposite direction Rabbitleap and Wrenpaw had gone, before realizing that’d probably just scared off the prey, and instead stormed quietly .

 

He heard Brown laugh shortly before following loudly after him. He hissed under his breath, tail lashing again before he winced as he heard it thwap against the undergrowth. He put it back in the original position he had copied off of Rabbitleap and Wrenpaw, but could still feel it bristling and twitching. He flared his nostrils- and opened his mouth after a moment, remembering reading about warriors teaching their apprentices that- and desperately tried to scent anything that seemed different from leaves and trees and cat scents. Was that sharp scent a mouse, or just a flower? He couldn’t pinpoint where it was coming from.

 

He carefully stepped over a patch of ferns, recalling last second he had to be quiet. How did warriors do this- watch their footing, scent for prey, keep their ears alert, and ignore the annoying cat on their tail? He knew it was instinctual for them, but he thought it would be easier.

 

And then his eyes caught on a small, pale gray blurr darting between tree roots, and he came to an abrupt stop, muscles tensing. Brown stumbled into him with a startled mew. “What are you-”

 

“ Shush ,” Damian hissed, slapping his tail over her mouth. Brown only hesitated a moment before she tried to lick his tail and Damian immediately retracted his tail with a glare at her. She just grinned.

 

A part of him wanted to say, ‘If you get a hairball, that’s on you’ but there was a mouse- no, two mice- in front of him and he couldn’t scare them away! This was perhaps his one and only chance!

 

He crouched down, eyes and ears locked on the two mice nibbling away at a nut and his tail stiff behind him. He felt a prickle of guilt run through him- these mice didn’t deserve to be killed. They were just eating a nut! They might have mice pups in a den somewhere. And look at their little ears and whiskers! That one just ran its paw over its face! How could he, in his right mind, kill that?

 

‘I sound like Brown,’ he growled internally. ‘I need to hunt these mice for my clan- for SkyClan,’ he quickly corrected himself, so used to reading those words in the books that they automatically filled themselves in, ‘or else SkyClan may starve. And also we’ll be thrown out and possibly trapped in this world forever, and then I’ll have to kill a lot more mice anyway, unless we all decide to settle down and become kittypets.’

 

Which, knowing his family, would most definitely not happen.

 

With a steady breath- as steady as it could be, he slid a paw forward. And then Brown stepped forward carelessly and he slapped her with his tail this time to get her to stop. One of the mouse’s head shot up, little ears twitching, and Damian, and thankfully Brown too, went as stiff as rocks. After a moment, it seemed to believe no danger was nearby, and happily returned to munching on its nut, moving closer to its friend.

 

‘So cute,’ Damian’s mind thought before he banished it. Prey could not be cute or else he’d feel even guiltier about killing it.

 

“Don’t step with your paws,” Damian hissed to Brown in the lowest voice he could manage. He recalled all he could when he read about mentors teaching their apprentices to hunt. “Glide them across the ground, so the mouse can’t feel the vibrations. Actually,” Damian said instead. “Just stay still. Let me hunt these.”

 

Brown rolled her eyes but nodded, and Damian, relieved, started forward, sliding his paws forward again. He ignored the beating of his heart, and the way his legs shook because of it, and focused on not touching any leaves. A few fox-tails closer and he would have those mice…

 

‘Like a real apprentice!’ he brain exclaimed excitedly, and a tremble ran down his body at the thought. Adrenaline pushed him forward into a leap, anticipating the hunt, and he realized far too late that he had jumped far too early. Both mice’s heads shot up and then bolted. Damian yowled as he landed on empty space. He shot after one of the mice, paw slamming onto the ground, but the mouse had already darted into a tiny hole beneath a tree.

 

With a furious hiss, he launched himself at the tree roots, digging his claws into the soil and tugging viciously at it even as it hurt his claws. He ripped clumps of grass and dirt away, enough to shove his paw in as he swiped for the mouse. But his claws caught nothing .

 

He couldn’t- he’d failed- his family- the clan- he could do this! One mouse could not best him! Well, two, but- URGH!

 

“Damian,” Brown’s voice cut in sharply.

 

“ WHAT?! ” he hissed out, twisting his paw and pushing in further. Just a squeak! Anything!

 

“Stop. It’s gone-”

 

“I know,” Damian spat angrily, lashing his tail.

 

“Then why are you still digging?”

 

“Because I can’t- I need to- I can’t…” He trailed off weakly, irritatedly. “If I don’t catch anything…”

 

“Then B or Dick or Jay will catch something,” Brown said, brushing her pelt against his as he slowly pulled his paw out of the hole. “Tim too. There’s more mice in the forest.”

 

“They don’t know how to hunt!” Damian growled, claws digging into the soil and wishing it was a mouse, even as his heart clenched at the thought of hurting an animal. But he needed to- swiftly, so the animal wouldn’t feel much pain- but he still needed to. Hunt something, anything.

 

“Neither do you,” Brown pointed out. “You’re a cat. I’m a cat. I think none of us have experienced being cats before.”

 

“But I’ve read-” He snapped his jaw shut, ear tips going hot.

 

Brown’s whiskers twitched, but she didn’t smirk. “Read the cat books? Yes, you have. Read them. But you still haven’t been a cat, doofus.” She raised a paw to gently swat his ears, and he ducked his head with a low growl. “Did you really expect to catch something on your first ever try, on your first ever day of being a cat?”

 

Damian’s ears twitched as he kept his gaze firmly on the ground. ‘Yes,’ he thought, but didn’t say. ‘I thought I’d be good enough.’

 

“Besides,” Brown added, a teasing tone seeping into her voice. His eyes flickered up to see her grin. “You said you didn’t read the cat books that much , so surely you don’t have all their little hunting techniques memorized?”

 

He didn’t actually, even though he should , because apparently turning into a Warrior Cat had been a path his future would take, as though he ever could have predicted that. He should have. Maybe he could have. The villain that’d transported him here- what if he knew them, or had a heads up about them, that he simply couldn’t remember? He should have been good enough to know, to realize, to plan, prepare, defeat .

 

Damian al Ghul Wayne was not worthless. He was the Son of Batman, grandson of the Demon’s Head, heir to the League of Assassins, and, most importantly, he was Robin .

 

But he was feeling oddly worthless, which was a very Drake-esque thought, so he needed to banish it immediately. He was not the inferior Robin. No, he was the best Robin. The best Robin that couldn't catch a measly mouse .

 

Brown sighed, an annoying, long sigh, that made Damian want to claw her face because she wasn't helping. But Brown raised her head, sandy-colored ears pricking and pink nose twitching. "You know," she began, a playful tone to her voice. "I think I can smell more mice."

 

Damian snapped his head up to glare at her, growling, "You can't smell anything , you liar. You don't even know what a mouse smells like."

 

"Hmm, I dun no ," Brown drawled out, taking a few steps pointedly around, her nose raised in the air as she took obnoxious sniffs. "I think my little kittycat nose smells something. Very mouse-y smell to it."

 

Damian lashed his tail, sending one last look at the tree hole before padding vexedly after her. "Do not call it that. You sound like a five-year-old child. And you cannot smell anything, I know that for a fact." 'Because I can't smell anything.'

 

"But I found those mice," Brown pointed out haughtily, her tail raising. "Smelt 'em just like a warrior kitty."

 

"Warrior Cat ," Damian corrected with a hiss as he followed Brown in whatever random direction she had chosen. "They do not call themselves kitties. It is an insult to them. And you didn't find them. You stumbled into the correct answer, just like you stumbled into being Robin, and stumbled into being Batgirl."

 

Brown rolled her eyes. "At least I- wait." Her tail shot out to the side just like Rabbitleap’s had as she froze and Damian paused, frowning at her.

 

" What ."

 

"Oh my God. I am The Chosen One," she whispered, in complete awe of herself.

 

Damian's lip curled. "Get over yourself, Brown. You are nobody of significance." He moved to peer around her, and found her gaze locked on a brown little mouse washing its ears with its paws, sitting politely on an old leaf, presenting itself uncaringly to the world and any cats that might be lurking around.

 

Damian's heartbeat immediately sped up. He dropped down into a crouch, stalking forward and appreciating Brown's silence. 'Don't screw this up, don't screw this up,' sung in his head. 'You are not Drake. You are not Brown, or Todd. You are not the screw up of this family.'

 

He was so close, and the mouse was so cute, and he really didn't want to kill it but he had to. Just one mouse. Well, more, actually, but if he could just catch the one-

 

He pounced.

 

He hadn't even thought about his shadow, but he realized his shadow didn't immediately fall over the mouse like it did with the other ones, and he realized that was where he went wrong the last time. Along with the wind, most likely. He should have been downwind, so his scent was blown away from the mice-

 

His front paws slammed down on the brown mouse right as it tried to scramble away. It squeaked loud, and panicked, and repeatedly, and Damian instinctively jerked one paw backwards, wanting to help the small creature, protect it and relieve it of its pain.

 

'It sounds like that squirrel Titus caught, the one I couldn't save from his jaws,' he thought sadly of his dog. After that, he had instilled in Titus the obedience not to kill animals. Chase them, but never to lock his jaws around them without command.

 

He realized his mistake and slammed his paw back down on the mouse before it could run away. And then nearly did it again when the mouse squeak-screamed again. He was hurting it. He didn't want to hurt it, just hunt it. Quickly, he unsheathed his claws, but a wave of nausea hit him as he felt his claws dig into the flesh of the mouse.

 

'I have killed before,' Damian shouted at himself. 'I have killed countless times and without mercy. I felt the blade slide through bodies without a thought towards my victims. This is no different.' Even if now he upheld (mostly) to his father's no-killing rule, and was an avid vegetarian and animals' rights activist.

 

But his claws retracted and the mouse wiggled away from him with a sorrowful squeak. Damian wasn't sure what shot through him then, but the thought of losing his prey and upsetting SkyClan came down hard on him, and his head shot downwards, and his jaws were suddenly snapping around the mouse's head and neck.

 

The mouse didn't even squeak this time as his fangs dug into its flesh and snapped bones.

 

He dropped the mouse and physically jumped backwards, taking a deep breath as the mouse laid there, limp and lifeless. It wasn't even bloody. A few scratches on its sides, yes, but it was nothing horrific, especially compared to what Damian had seen.

 

Yet his insides still felt twisted and nauseated and sick.

 

He shook himself, letting his black fur fluff up. He was Damian al Ghul Wayne. He would not be sick over killing one mouse.

 

"Uhm," Brown said hesitantly, stepping forward and looking at the mouse like she was going to be sick too. "Nice catch?"

 

Damian glanced back at the mouse. The more he looked at it, the less sick he felt, strangely. He was okay, he reminded himself. The mouse was dead now, and would feed a SkyClan cat. Perhaps a kit or an elder would not die because of his catch. He was okay.

 

He glanced upwards, at the blue and white sky between the canopy of the trees. Should he pray to StarClan like they did in the books?

 

But why, if StarClan was not his gods, and he didn't feel quite that thankful for catching the mouse?

 

But he did it anyway, a quick, 'Thank you, StarClan, for this prey,' that left him feeling strangely melancholy as he remembered that, right now, StarClan would not be answering his prayers.

 

'Thanks, Ashfur,' Damian's mind grumbled, but it was more humorous if anything.

 

"Come on," Damian said, tail swishing behind him. "We need to catch more."

 

"Is one not enough?" Brown pouted, but there was wary hesitance in her eyes as she stared at the mouse. Damian himself tried not to think of the dead body at his paws.

 

"Did you see how many cats there were?" Damian snapped. "A mouse this small could not even feed a kit."

 

Brown subsided with a grumbly sigh. "Fine. But… yeah, okay. I'll let you know if I smell any more mice." She grinned playfully at him.

 

Damian growled at her antiques, but turned to the mouse. He knew he had to bury it- that's what warriors did on their patrols- but he didn't quite trust his ability to be able to find it later, so instead he grabbed the mouse- with his mouth, and desperately tried not to think about it- and placed it next to a tree and covered it with leaves. He slashed a clawmark into the tree, hissing as the bark tugged and stung at his claws. But it was identifiable, now, and hopefully they wouldn't stray too far.

 

So they continued hunting. You can make an educated guess how it went- Not well. Damian managed to catch another mouse (alongside another wave of nausea when he felt the fur press against his tongue and heard the small bones crack) and added it to the pile, but he missed what felt like a million more. And Stephanie…

 

Brown crashed into a tree as the vole (not mouse, as Brown insisted on calling it) darted the other way. She groaned as she stepped back, her tail lashing behind her. "Come on! Why is this so haaaard ?"

 

Damian watched the vole disappear underneath a cluster of ferns, frowning. He glanced upwards. The sun had begun it's descent downwards. Father and Drake's patrol would have left by now, which meant Rabbitleap would soon come looking for Damian and Brown, and they would only have two paw-sized mice to show for their hunt.

 

"Perhaps if you didn't yell every time you failed, we would have more prey to hunt," he snarked, tail tip twitching. "You're a sorry hunter."

 

"Oh, and just 'cause you caught two mice you're any better." Brown rolled her eyes. "I'm trying, okay! It's just- difficult!"

 

" You're difficult," Damian growled and Brown glared at him.

 

And then bushes rustled, and they both whipped around to the source of the noise. Damian's heart raced as he assumed Rabbitleap had come for them.

 

But it was just Wrenpaw, with a red squirrel dangling from her mouth. She dropped it at her feet, glancing between them both with wide eyes. "Uhm-..."

 

"Oh, hi Wrenpaw!" Brown meowed, tail raising in greeting subconsciously. "What's up? We're totally catching all the mice in this forest as the skilled hunters we are."

 

Damian hissed and shoved his shoulder against hers, but Brown just grinned.

 

"Rabbitleap sent me ahead, to, uh, check up on you while he dug up our kills," Wrenpaw explained. "And to practice my tracking skills. Which I don't need to! Because I'm very good at them." She puffed out her white chest before deflating a bit. "So, uh, where did you bury your catches? So we can get them. Before Rabbitleap comes." She glanced between them warily as Damian felt himself tensing and Brown looked down at her paws with a frown.

 

"This way," Damian meowed briskly, turning around and trying not to think about how he'd only caught two mice. That was good, right? Maybe for an apprentice, or during leafbare, but for two loner cats? No. Definitely not.

 

He located the tree with his clawmark and pushed the leaves and moss away, grabbing the two mice by their tails. He fought against the way his stomach flipped as the mice dangled from his mouth.

 

Wrenpaw stared at the mice with a frown as she placed down her squirrel again. "Just… two field mice?"

 

Damian's pelt prickled self-consciously and defensively. But Brown spoke before him, rushed, "I couldn't catch anything. Sorry. I'm not… the best hunter."

 

Wrenpaw blinked at Brown's admission and shamefully ducked head. "Oh." Wrenpaw glanced down at her squirrel. "Uhm." She fidgeted. "Well." She glanced behind herself before she suddenly pushed the squirrel towards Brown, practically kicking it. "You can have that."

 

Damian and Brown startled, sharing shocked glances with each other. "What?" Brown meowed, flabbergasted. "Why? You caught that. It's yours."

 

"Yeah, but…" Wrenpaw shifted nervously again. "I'm almost a warrior anyway, so I don't really need to prove myself to the clan, but, uh… you do. And Rabbitleap doesn't know I caught that one- I caught it on the way here." She flicked her tail and glanced behind herself, nose twitching.

 

"Oh." Brown said dumbly, blinking down at the squirrel.

 

"I already caught a vole and a bird anyway," Wrenpaw added in a rambling voice. "And Rabbitleap caught a squirrel- he helped me with the bird- so, uhm. This is actually a really good haul, for a four cat patrol… even if the mice are kinda small."

 

Damian felt his ear tips burn again.

 

"I don't need the squirrel," Wrenpaw continued. "Really. You can have it."

 

"Well," Brown said, glancing at Damian as her lips (cats don't have lips, but what else would he call them- her muzzle?) slowly twitched into a smile. "Thank you."

Notes:

Damian: i can catch a measly mouse!
Damian: *catches not one, but /two/ measly mice*
Damian: i fucking suck

Chapter 6: You Know You Want a Cute Kit Scene

Damian trotted right behind Wrenpaw as they entered camp, his two mice dangling from his mouth unpleasantly. Beside him, he could see Brown’s blatantly displeased face, scrunched up and gingerly holding onto “her” squirrel with her fangs. Her disgust and unease was obvious, so obvious that Damian knew Rabbitleap and Wrenpaw could both see it. Luckily, aside from narrowed eyes on Rabbitleap’s part, they didn’t comment.

 

As they stepped into camp, Rabbitleap turned to them, and said around a mouth full of squirrel, “We put our prey in the fresh-kill pile. You will not eat from it until Leafstar or Hawkwing allows you.” He flicked his tail to the alcove in the corner of camp before padding that direction, a thrush lazily sprawled across his shoulders, yet it never slipped off once. He dropped his squirrel and bird on top of the plump mouse and what Damian would guess was a shrew that were already on the fresh-kill pile. Brown quickly darted after him and dropped her squirrel carelessly on the pile with obvious relief. She winced when the squirrel pushed the thrush off the pile and grinned sheepishly when Rabbitleap glared at her. Wrenpaw and Damian followed more leisurely, and Wrenpaw gently set her vole down and Damian did the same. His whiskers twitched and his nose scrunched as he caught the heavy scent of dead animal. Nothing he hadn’t smelt before and worse, but it still didn’t feel right.

 

He shook his pelt, turning around to face Brown, but she was already darting towards where Thomas was by their den.

 

“Robin!” the voice of Grayson happily called out, and the tuxedo tomcat ran towards Damian, his tail high. Damian’s tail automatically shot up before he forced it back down, feeling ridiculous.

 

“Nightwing,” he replied calmly even as his brother headbutted him in the shoulder with a purr.

 

“So? How did it go?” Grayson asked with a swish of his tail, eyes bright.

 

Damian hesitated, glancing back at the fresh-kill pile. “Well, I suppose. I caught two mice and…” He saw Wrenpaw’s fur fluff up anxiously from the corner of his eye as she and Rabbitleap walked past. “Br- Eggplant caught a squirrel.”

 

“Oh, wow!” Grayson’s ears pricked in surprise. “Jay- err, Red Fox and I only managed to get a squirrel because I chased it to him.” He smirked then, casting a glance back to where the two kits from earlier were seemingly pestering one catified Jason Todd, darting around him and mewling questions out rapidly. “He chickened out on killing it, instead just pinned it down so I could kill it.” Grayson’s happy demeanor dimmed a moment, tail dropping and a clear shiver running down his spine. “That was, uh… not a fun time, but I think I killed it pretty quickly, and I mean, the, uh… queen? Seemed to like it?” His face scrunched up, perplexed, and Damian found himself too. Todd refused to kill something? When he still killed criminals? Hypocritical of him… except. Todd never hurt innocents, nor children (seeing as he hadn’t yelled at the kits swarming him yet), and Damian supposed ‘innocents’ extended to animals. He’d never heard of Todd advocating animal cruelty, after all.

 

“A she-cat with kits,” Damian clarified Grayson’s unspoken question. “A nursery queen.” He paused, recalling Fernsong. “One tom has been a nursery queen before, but the clans can be a bit sexist in that regard.”

 

“Ohhh, gotcha.” Grayson nodded. “I mean, I thought that, but I was super confused because- queen? I thought that meant the leader- Leafstar?- at first.” Speaking off, Damian could see Leafstar sitting beside her son, Harrybrook, and another tortoiseshell warrior, chatting quietly, although her gaze was focused on Todd and the kits, before turning to Rabbitleap as he approached her. “You should come meet the little kittens! They’re so cute, and totally you-sized!”

 

Damian’s pelt bristled as he hissed, “I am not a child!” But Grayson just took off running towards the kits, laughing. Damian growled but chased after him. The two brown kits immediately locked onto Grayson and Damian as they approached. One of them, the brown and white patched tabby she-kit, leaped over Todd’s large, fluffy tail and puffed out her fur.

 

“Halt! Who dares approach the Great Sister!” she squeaked out as her brother ran up beside her, fur fluffed out cutely too. Damian was uncomfortably aware that he was eye level with the kits, but he fiercely told himself he was at least a whisker taller than them. ...He didn’t look like that- like a little dandelion in the wind- when his fur bristled, did he? It was so cute it was insulting.

 

Grayson obligingly bowed, his chin touching the ground and his butt raised ridiculously in the air. “It is I, traveller from strange lands, the Nightwing!”

 

“Hrmm,” the she-kit said, squinting her eyes at him. Then she whipped around to face Todd. “What say you, o’ Great Sister!”

 

Todd’s whiskers twitched, but his blue-green eyes narrowed and he said, “He displeases me. Dispose of him.”

 

“You heard him!” the tom-kit yowled. “Attack!” Both he and his sister leaped at Grayson, who dropped down onto the ground as the two landed on him. He ‘oof’ed and Damian could see the air leave him for a second- the kits may be kits, but they were still fairly big. They were shoulder height to him, after all, even though it felt weirdly smaller from a cat’s eyes.

 

“Kits-” Damian heard one she-cat, Nectarsong, say, jerking a limb forward worriedly, before Grayson rolled over and the kits hopped off him.

 

“Rawr!” Grayson yelled. “You’ll never defeat me!”

 

“The Great Sister has declared your spirit evil! ” the she-kit meowed back. “We’ll defeat you, just like Rootspring would!”

 

“Yeah!” the tom-kit agreed, jutting a paw out to scrape Grayson’s shoulder, who pretended to be wounded, lifting his front leg up with a pained yowl.

 

The kits swarmed Grayson again and Damian’s whiskers curled, uncertain if he should find this incredibly adorable (which he didn’t- he wasn’t Stephanie nor Richard, after all) or offensive that his mentor indulged these future warriors so.

 

‘If he knew what a badger ride was,’ Damian thought. ‘And if those kits wouldn’t crush him if they tried, I’m sure he’d give them one.’ The image of cat-Grayson trudging around with kits clinging to his back sat peacefully in Damian’s mind for a moment before he shook it away, because he totally hadn’t imagined himself as one of those kits. Nope. Never.

 

“Guess your Sisters story worked in some ways,” Todd mused, and Damian glanced at him with a half-glare. “Whatever-paw hates me, but the kittens love me. The other cats are on the fence.” He turned his gaze to where two warriors were whispering to each other, but clearly staring at Todd with frowns on their faces. Todd’s eyes narrowed dangerously, and the two cats paused, their shoulder fur raising. The three were locked in a staring contest before the gray warrior huffed and whipped around, moving towards the fresh-kill pile. The brown tabby warrior- Kitescratch, actually- slowly followed after his clanmate, glancing at Todd warily.

 

Damian hit Todd’s shoulder with his paw, hissing, “Stop it. We need them to like us, not think you’re going to murder them in their sleep.”

 

Todd snorted. “Isn’t that the plan for the imposter-whatever?”

 

“ Be quiet! ” Damian hissed again, glancing at Nectarsong nearby, who was watching her kits with a worried frown. “We aren’t supposed to know about that yet. And no, it’s not. He’s already dead, and as far as I’m aware, spirits don’t need to sleep, so we can’t just kill him in his non-existent sleep.” He hesitated, then added, “And Father doesn’t want us killing him anyway.”

 

“Thought he was already dead and in cat Hell,” Todd said, raising a brow. “So would it even matter?”

 

Damian’s tail twitched as he paused, thinking, ‘Did it really?’ before he recalled Spottedleaf. “Yes. It’s more of a death than their actual one.” When they died in the real world, they at least had the spiritual world to look forward to. But dying- or ‘fading’- in the spiritual world, be it as a ghost, in StarClan, the Tribe of Endless Hunting or otherwise, resulted in simple nothingness. No spirit lasted forever, and when their memory in the real world faded, so too did they. StarClan was supposed to be an afterlife of peace, juvenility, and love, yet everything Damian learned about them by reading the ‘cat books’ only made him believe it was the opposite- the afterlife was just another real world, full of angry and judgemental and idiotic ancestors claiming wisdom but only spewing hypocrisy, and all you had to look forward too is that you’d inevitably ‘fade’ away again, only this time you’re dying because everyone alive forgot you.

 

Cat religion was just as convoluted and twisted as human religion.

 

“Huh,” Todd said, twitching an ear, but his gaze turned to Grayson and the kits as the tabby tom-kit pinned down Grayson with a victorious yowl, his paws on Grayson’s chest, right on the white-Nightwing-symbol.

 

“I’ve been defeated!” Grayson crowed as he flopped his body limply to the side. “By two great warriors of SkyClan!” Damian’s whiskers twitched and he forcefully stopped his lips from curling up into a smile.

 

"That's right, rogue!" the she-kit meowed. "Stay down!"

 

"Blargh." Grayson closed his eyes and let his tongue loll out and the kits giggled as the tom-kit removed his paws from his chest.

 

"You're fun, Nightwing!" the tom-kit announced, tail high.

 

Grayson popped one eye open and grinned. "More fun than Red Fox?"

 

The two kits glanced contemplatively back at Todd, who raised his head and swished his tail back and forth. The she-kit looked like she wanted to pounce on it.

 

"Hmm," she said contemplatively. "Maybe, but not as cool!"

 

Todd smirked but Grayson huffed, pushing himself onto his paws. "You want cool, I can give you cool! You wanna hear about the Bat and the Robin?"

 

Damian's ears twitched, and he shared a glance with Todd, wondering what their brother was aiming for. The fur on Damian's back raised, wary that Grayson would say something he shouldn't.

 

"The Bat?" the she-kit meowed, tilting her head. "Isn't that your father?"

 

"And one of you was named Robin, right?" the tom-kit added, glancing back at Damian and then at where Brown and Thomas were chatting beside their den.

 

Grayson moved a few pawsteps to nudge Damian with a grin, and Damian hissed at him in response. "This is Robin!"

 

"Hi, Robin!" Both of the kits immediately greeted, bouncing forward to stay beside Grayson. "I'm Beekit!" the she-kit introduced herself, then flicked her tail at her brother. "And this is Beetlekit!"

 

Ah, right. The kits that liked the Sisters and wanted Rootspring to mentor them. ...Damian only vaguely remembered them. It was a shame the kits didn't get as much of a focus in the series anymore, past always starting off the first chapter or two with kits that then become apprentices. They were incredibly adora- No. That sounded too much like Brown and Grayson. They were not adorable. Merely interesting to read about. And even more interesting to observe in real life. They provided a certain commentary to clanlife that Damian appreciated.

 

"Greetings," Damian meowed stiffly, eyes briefly flickering to their mother, Nectarsong, watching them all warily.

 

Grayson grinned before lowering his voice, stating, "He wasn't the first Robin, you know."

 

"Nightwing-" Damian cautioned, but his brother shot him a smile, blue eyes gleaming in a way that told Damian Grayson knew what he was doing.

 

Beetlekit gasped. "He got rebirth -ed?" Damian wasn't sure exactly what he was going for, but he assumed he meant reincarnated. As far as Damian was aware, the fact that Lionblaze, Jayfeather, and Dovewing were reincarnations of the ancient cats Lion's Roar, Jay's Wing, and Dove's Wing wasn't public knowledge, and was also probably forgotten by the cats themselves, as well as the authors. But he couldn't exactly remember who did and did not know that Cinderheart was the sorta-confusingly-reincarnated version of Cinderpelt. Was that public knowledge, or only known to a select few ThunderClan cats? The timeline of Warrior Cats moved so quickly, that the whole Cinderpelt-Cinderheart plotline felt like a distant dream, even if it was only… 3-4 arcs ago. Did that happen in Power of Three or The Omen of the Stars ?

 

In the end, it didn't matter, but it frustrated him not to have his information straight. Not that he cared. Because he wasn't that invested in the cat books, no. Of course not. That'd be ridiculous. He had much better things to do. Like protecting an entire city from criminally insane villains with oddly specific themes. One villain of which had sent him into said cat book world.

 

And great. Now he was calling them cat books like Stephanie would. How annoyingly infectious her teasing had been.

 

"Nope," Grayson purred. " I was the first Robin."

 

It was now Beekit's turn to gasp. "Possession! Like a ghost! Like the imposter! "

 

Damian tensed as he saw Nectarsong's amber eyes narrow as she raised herself into a sitting position, and a few other warriors nearby turned to stare at Grayson and his 'storytime.'

 

But Grayson just laughed, unworried. "Nope. You know how you're Beekit right now, but one day you'll be… What was it, Bee paw ?"

 

Beekit nodded eagerly. "In just a half-moon! I'll be an apprentice!" She puffed out her chest proudly.

 

"Right," Grayson meowed, smiling. "So think of the name Robin as an apprentice name, just like 'paw."

 

"So does that mean Robin is an apprentice?" Beetlekit asked, glancing at Damian questioningly.

 

"Yep!" Grayson purred, sending a teasing grin Damian's way. Damian scowled back at him.

 

"But I'm practically a warrior already, considering my skills," Damian huffed, raising his chin, and trying to ignore the fact that he only caught two mice. And the fact that one (vigilante, not Warriors ) patrol a week ago, he failed to catch one of four burglars (he caught the other three, and they found the other one the next day, but still , he should have been better ). And a week before that, he foolishly let a Two-Face goon get the drop on him and had to nurse a wounded arm, benched from patrol. And before that-

 

He cut his thoughts off with a silent hiss at himself. He sounded like Drake, listing off his insecurities and failures. He sounded like Todd too, although he'd do it in a 'I'm-angry-at- you- for-my-failures' way. Father had that same anger, but in a strange guilt complex way. And, come to think of it, Grayson could be the same as Father, but he always managed to reign it in and smile ( even when it was fake ) and-

 

Urgh. Rabbit holes. His whole family was messed up, so what. Nothing new. He wasn't like them. ...Maybe a little bit.

 

"Does that mean you're gonna get a new name soon then?" Beetlekit inquired with a cute little tilt of his head, bringing Damian out from his thoughts.

 

...And straight into a new one. What would his name be, after he was done being Robin? If he ever was? But he couldn't be Robin forever. He had always believed he wanted to be Batman- and of course he would, that was his birthright! - but his father wasn't retiring anytime soon, even as he got older. He was too stubborn to, a trait inherited by all of his children. Which meant Nightwing wouldn't be an abandoned mantle either.

 

"One day, he will!" Grayson meowed, sending Damian a half-smiling, half-'you okay?' glance. "But every apprentice needs a mentor, and do you know who a Robins' mentor would be?"

 

"The Bat!" both kits guessed, leaping on their paws with barely contained energy.

 

"That's right!" Grayson praised them. "The Bat trains us-"

 

"Is that why you're called the Bats?" Beekit interrupted, wiggling on her haunches. "Because whoever's your leader is called Bat?"

 

"Kinda like the Tribe?" Beetlekit meowed, tail tip twitching. "'Cause the Tribe's leader always has the same name?" Oh, so that's what Wrenpaw meant back when she mentioned the Tribe. Damian hadn't been too sure where she'd gotten the idea that the Bats were sort of like the Tribe.

 

"That's kinda confusing," Beekit said. "How do you know which leaders which!"

 

Grayson twitched, sending a slightly confused glance at Damian. "Well, there's only ever one Bat and one Robin at a time." He paused. "Usually, anyway."

 

"Usually?" Beekit parroted, tilting her head. "When has there been more? Isn't that just super confusing?"

 

"For us, no," Grayson said, then grinned, fangs and all. "But for our enemies? Yes."

 

The kits gasped, and Beekit excitedly went into a crouch, tiny claws out. "Enemies?! Who were they? I bet you clawed their pelts to shreds!" Damian had a feeling if Warriors could swear, she would have just said, "I bet you kicked their asses!"

 

Grayson's purr rumbled, deep in his throat, amused. "Oh, we did-"

 

He cut off when the entrance of camp suddenly rustled, and a yelp echoed through camp. A very Drake-esque yelp. Followed by a polite but amused meow of, "Yes, the walls can be spiky."

 

Everyone's attention turned as ‘Duck’ slipped into camp. Backwards. Damian’s lip curled as he thought of how Drake never ceased in making them all look like a mockery. But then he realized Drake was only walking backwards because he was dragging a very large dusty-brown rabbit- practically the size of him. And following that was the gray pelt of Bruce, who had a hold on the hindleg of the rabbit, helping Drake drag it.

 

Hideous jealousy and a sense of inferiority at being one-upped by the absolute worst Robin ever, to which Damian would never admit these feelings, curled inside him heavily. ‘Drake managed to catch a rabbit? How! Rabbits should be rare on SkyClan’s land- they’re all the way over in WindClan’s territory! No way he could have possibly caught that, much less having been okay with killing it. And with no injuries? Longtail was permanently blinded by a rabbit, and he was a gifted and spry ThunderClan warrior in his prime! Drake is a bumbling idiot .’

 

Hawkwing and Violetshine followed after them, but Violetshine only carried a small red squirrel in her mouth and Hawkwing had nothing. Damian and Brown had stumbled upon plenty of mice, so it wasn’t like the prey wasn’t running well. He frowned, confused that he had somehow done better than the SkyClan deputy but somehow worse than Drake.

 

Hawkwing bounded over to Leafstar as she stood up to meet them, Tree and the tortoiseshell warrior at her side while Harrybrook moved to sit beside two warriors Damian knew were Needleclaw and Plumwillow. Violetshine guided Drake and Bruce over to the fresh-kill pile, setting down her squirrel and mewing, although it was a bit distant seeing as Damian was on the opposite side of camp (it was bigger than he imagined the clan camps), to them that they could leave the rabbit there- that warriors would feast upon it soon. Drake, obviously relieved, dropped his hold on the rabbit and craned his neck up, stretching.

 

“How did they do?” Leafstar asked her deputy. “Rabbitleap and Macgyver reported that the Bats on their patrol did… well.” Her eyes narrowed, and Damian felt scolded and ashamed even though she wasn’t looking at him and it wasn’t even necessarily an insult.

 

“I couldn’t assess their individual skills,” Hawkwing began. “Seeing as we scented a rabbit, and we all hunted it together.” Oh. So Drake didn’t hunt the rabbit by himself. Of course. That had been a ridiculous thought. Even the best warriors needed help cornering and killing a rabbit. “But their teamwork was excellent, even if they could stand to learn what our tail and ear signals mean.” His tail curled while a warm-hearted purr rumbled from his chest.

 

“We couldn’t hunt anything because the rabbit was so big,” Violetshine meowed as she padded up beside her father. She gave Tree a gentle headbutt even as she continued speaking to Leafstar. “It took forever to drag it back.”

 

“Our clanmates will feast tonight then,” Leafstar announced, voice louder, even though everyone had already been listening anyway. Appreciative and excited meows erupted throughout camp. “In the meantime, Tree and I will travel to Moonpool.” And then the excitement turned into worried whispers and scared murmurs, the threat of Ashfur still lurking darkly over their heads.

 

Leafstar approached Bruce, inclining her head downwards but not dipping it completely. “Your cats have hunted excellently for today. You will be allowed to stay in camp for tonight. We will discuss what you can do to… help us, tomorrow. For now, defer to my deputy, Hawkwing, if you need something that would fall under my jurisdiction. And if any of your cats get injured, feels sick, have strange dreams, or see spirits-” she glanced at Todd for that one, “-you may consult our medicine cat, Frecklewish, or her apprentice, Fidgetflake, when he returns with Nettlesplash and Black.”

 

“Of course,” Bruce replied, doing the same inclination of his head. “Thank you, Leafstar.”

 

Leafstar slow-blinked before she walked towards the camp entrance, and Damian felt a strange buzzing inside him as he blurted out, “Wait- could we come with you?”

 

Leafstar paused, and every warriors’ gaze whipped around to stare at him, mostly with narrowed eyes. His pelt prickled uncomfortably, but- with a glance at Beekit and Beetlekit and the thoughts of dandelions- he quickly forced it to smooth down. “No,” she said firmly, one word, and started to turn back around, but Damian continued.

 

“If we see the M- problem,” he wasn’t supposed to know what the Moonpool was, “then we could better help you solve it.”

 

Leafstar’s eyes narrowed again. “The thought might be noble, young Robin, but we would not trust possible enemies with our secrets so easily. You have earned our trust for tonight, but not our trust to see our sacred grounds.”

 

Damian opened his mouth, but then realized he didn’t even really know what he was arguing for anyway. It wasn’t like he could just step into the Moonpool and magically appear in the Dark Forest, despite how Ashfur made it seem. A spirit would have to drag him in. Secretly, a small part of him knew he just wanted to see the Moonpool in all its glory. So he dipped his head down, and Leafstar gave him one more look over before leaving camp, Tree right behind her, although he threw a thoughtful look back at Damian.

 

Hawkwing addressed the vigilante-cats next. “Since you hunted well enough to feed most of the clan,” he started. “You may take what’s left off the fresh-kill pile.”

 

Normally, one would be grateful and relieved at the prospect of food- Damian’s stomach felt rather empty, after a long day (night? He patrolled at night, yet woke up- as a cat- during the day). But instead, a new pit just opened up in his stomach as he gazed at the pile of dead animals.

 

He was vegetarian.

Notes:

Damian: *kills two mice*
Hawkwing: k now you can eat them
Damian: ...but im vegan

Chapter 7: That Moment When You’re Vegan

Notes:

Content Warning: Detailed descriptions of eating/dissecting dead animals. If you wish to skip, then CTRL+F search for the sentence: “He definitely did not jump when he heard the camp entrance rustle.” and continue onwards!

Damian stared at the mouse- the very one he had caught earlier- as he delicately poked its side with his claw. Nearby, his fellow vigilantes shared concerned looks over their chosen prey. One squirrel to be shared between Bruce and Grayson, another for Brown, Drake, and Thomas, while Todd had chosen the shrew. Brown was the most clearly disgusted- lip curled and ears flat against her head as she stared at the dead squirrel in open aghast- so much so that Damian wanted to slap her again for being so obvious. If anyone questioned it, he supposed he could go the ‘spoiled kittypet’ route for her that Frecklewish had sort of provided for them.

 

Damian’s pelt was prickled in apprehension as he kept glancing around at the warriors around them. Surely they would take note of the Bats' hesitance to eat the prey soon. Only kittypets refused to eat prey, or held any sort of distaste towards fresh-kill, and the alibi Damian had provided so far implied that most of them held no kittypet background, especially Todd. Speaking off…

 

The red-brown tom-cat was glaring down at his shrew, tiny compared to his large size. The kits had stopped bothering him, having been corralled into the nursery to sleep by their mother, Nectarsong, and a gray tom that Damian assumed was the father. Cat genetics definitely didn’t support him being the father, but Warriors cared not for cat genetics, with how many fertile male tortoiseshells existed.

 

Grayson had said Todd got squeamish when he had to kill the one squirrel they’d managed to catch. If Damian had to guess, he supposed Todd’s apparent anger at the shrew he had chosen to eat was masking his true uneasiness underneath. Todd’s long whiskers twitched (and Damian’s mind totally didn’t scream about how cute that was) before he glanced up at the SkyClan warriors sharing the rabbit Bruce and Drake had caught. The warriors were glancing at the strangers in their midsts, but Damian mostly caught whispers of, “Do you think the imposter-?” and “Perhaps the Sister tomcat can help us but-” and “What if Ashfur still has control over Bramblestar? How can we trust ThunderClan?”

 

But whatever Todd heard- the Sisters one maybe- pushed him to shut his eyes and lurch his head down, ripping a chunk out of the shrew’s hindleg. Todd’s pelt rippled and his muzzle scrunched before he forced himself still and slowly chewed on the chunk he had taken. Brown stared back at Todd with furled lips and horrified eyes before Drake smacked her shoulder and murmured something in her ear. Tentatively, Drake leaned down to take a small nip out of the squirrel while Brown and Thomas just stared with wide eyes. Father, at least, as Damian had expected, was brave enough to take small bites out of his squirrel, although he seemed to refuse to look at the squirrel as he did so. Grayson chattered on beside him, as though if he kept talking he would have a reason not to put squirrel in his mouth.

 

Damian hated the way his stomach flipped, seeing the ripped skin, blood, and even the small white of a bone from the place Todd had ripped into. He had seen far, far worse, and he had watched Alfred the Cat eat a mouse once anyway, so, truly, this shouldn’t be as difficult as he was making it.

 

Just. Eat the mouse. That’s all he had to do. In fact, he could do it in just a few bites- two, if he stuffed enough inside his mouth-

 

Stuffed enough. Organs. Flesh.

 

A shiver ran down his spine against his will. It truly wasn’t as bad as he was making it out to be- cats eating small creatures was never gorey, and this mouse was small, so he had nothing to fear if it was blood and organs making him queasy. In fact, he had to sift through human organs before, feel and study them, and know which to hit to kill a person instantly, in the League of Assassins. He was raised in bloodshed and organs. He had no problem with looking at organs.

 

He had even eaten animals in the wild after hunting them, during League training! Sure, they had been cooked over a fire, but he had to eat raw too, as part of his training. When he was barely five-years-old too!

 

This! Was! Nothing!

 

With that in mind, he forced himself to sink his fangs into the haunches of the mouse, only to feel another wave of nausea run through him and make him pull back immediately.

 

He killed that mouse. In the mindset that it would go to a hungry elder or kit, or even just a warrior. Instead, it was at his paws, and he was going to eat it. He didn’t eat meat . Not anymore. He didn’t kill for sport. He didn’t kill for food when he didn’t need it. Humans were omnivores, and could survive on a non-meat diet. But he wasn’t a human right now . So he needed to eat the mouse. Or he’d starve.

 

He bit down onto the leg of the mouse and ripped it off, ears folding against his skull as he heard the quiet rip of flesh and crack of bone. He hated the way his teeth sank into the flesh and bone, the taste tangy and warm on his tongue, and the smell of dead animal nearly enough to make his eyes water. And the warriors enjoyed this? When Firepaw had his first piece of fresh-kill, he had been overjoyed with how great it tasted, and yet, Damian didn’t want to take another bite. The crunching of bones and muscles in his mouth was extremely unpleasant- both the sound, texture, and feeling, and it would haunt him back into their human world.

 

With great effort, he swallowed the chewed-up leg bitterly, far too aware his face must look exactly like Stephanie’s. And she still hadn’t even taken a bite. Drake hadn’t gotten that far either, a few little nibbles taken- mostly hair. Thomas was just… sniffing it and looking like he might throw up. Todd had finished all but the head, and, though he tried to keep his expression cool and angry, Damian thought he looked like he wanted to throw up too. Father had taken more bites than Drake had managed out of his squirrel, but still not much, and it seemed Grayson was unhappily chewing on a chunk of squirrel, reluctant to swallow.

 

This part of being a Warrior Cat had never crossed his mind before.

 

He stared down at his meal, knowing he should force himself to eat it before he could think more on it, like Todd had, but instead his claw poked the strip of flesh that had pulled off of the mouse’s belly when he had bitten the leg off. He could see the top of the red-yellow intestines. He had dissected plenty of organisms before, so of course the organs themselves didn’t bother him at all, but… the prospect of eating them… with his little kitty mouth.

 

Cats ate the prey whole. They didn’t worry about the intestines and stomach and bladder. It was all just food to them. If he ate the middle of the mouse in one bite, he should have no problem. He just shouldn’t think about the organs, even though they would squish and pop and slither with each bite. And now he was thinking about it. Far too much.

 

Would the bladder and rectum even taste good? Surely not. How could any Warrior Cat think that?

 

And the liver? Full of bitter bile-

 

Bile.

 

Damian paused as a shocking thought went his head.

 

‘Mousebile. Bile from the mouse. The bile used to kill ticks and fleas on elders. Mouse’s bile.’

 

Produced by the liver and stored in the gallbladder of a mouse. How had he never realized before that mousebile came from the bile of a mouse? Had his superior detective skills really failed him so hard?

 

He stared curiously at the SkyClan warriors sharing tongues and prey, but none of them were eating mice- only the rabbit and the thrush. With a new train of thought, he tentatively pulled back the flesh of the mouse with his claw, ignoring how his paw shook unsteadily and not at all from disgusted nervousness. Cutting the skin of the mouse with his claw was just the same as slicing through a human’s body with a sword. He didn’t flinch when he saw the shiny organs still warm from a death not all too long ago, but he did flinch when he thought about how they’d feel and taste in his mouth. When he’d killed humans before, it’s not like he ever had the thought of eating them . 

 

He stopped when he reached the end of the pinkish liver. As gently as he could, he prod the liver upwards, ignoring the small trickles of blood coating his little kitten paws. That could easily be washed off- licked off, even, although Damian wasn’t eager to do so. He saw a flash of the yellowish gallbladder underneath, and jerked his claw. He hissed when the liver flopped back down and he ended up cutting a thin line on the glossy stomach instead.

 

Harder to dissect with cat paws than with human hands and tools designed for the job.

 

He stuck his claw in between the liver and the hard flesh- diaphragm- and attempted to cut the liver out. He hissed softly when it failed to succeed, and he felt his own stomach flip as he leaned down to wrap his fangs around the liver. He didn’t allow himself to breathe in the scent as he jerked his head back up, satisfied that the liver went with him, before a wave of ‘I HATE THIS’ hit and he dropped the liver, gagging slightly at the thought of eating it. It was nauseating and would taste awful.

 

He shook his pelt as he prod the liver, flipping it over to see the gallbladder. Did he… rip it off…? But what if he accidentally poked a hole and released the bile? ...That would taste awful…

 

He definitely did not jump when he heard the camp entrance rustle. Luckily, he saw his family do the same, heads whipping towards it as fluffy pale brown tom padded in, a smile on his face as he said something to the cats following him. Behind him followed the even fluffier black-and-white medicine cat, Fidgetflake, and cat-Cain-aka-Black, and Damian remembered that the brown tom was Nettlesplash.

 

“You can take the herbs to Frecklewish’s den, Black,” Nettlesplash was meowing kindly, green eyes bright. “I’ll check in with Hawkwing.” He waved his tail as he ran over to where Hawkwing was sat beside his daughter Violetshine, and granddaughter Needleclaw, as well as the orange cat Damian thought was Sunnypelt and the gray she-cat, Plumwillow.

 

“Cas- Black!” Brown leaped to her feet excitedly, and definitely relieved at an excuse not to eat the squirrel. While she bolted over to Cain with a purr, Damian snatched the liver in between his teeth and ran to Fidgetflake. The young medicine cat clearly didn’t expect Damian to approach him, as he jolted backwards and his fur fluffed up more when Damian paused in front of him instead of continuing to where Brown and now Thomas were using Cain as a distraction.

 

Around his herbs, he squeaked, muffled, “Uh-uh, he- hi? What can I, uhm, do for you, ah- Robin?” He placed the herbs down and stared at Damian with puzzled pale yellow eyes.

 

Damian gently placed the liver down and nudged it with a paw. He felt faintly embarrassed at his odd suddenness- perhaps warriors didn’t actually use the gallbladder of mice for mousebile. “Could this-... be of any use to you?”

 

Fidgetflake blinked, tilting his head as he stared at the liver. “Oh! Mousebile.” Relief spread through Damian immediately, his pelt and muscles relaxing. “Yes, yes- thank you.” His whiskers twitched. “Although, I wouldn’t recommend carrying it in your mouth like that. Here-” Fidgetflake turned and ripped a patch of moss from the ground beside the camp walls. He plopped it on the ground next to the liver, and then nudged the organ onto it. “We wrap it in moss, so when we pop the little yellow sac, it soaks into it, instead of into our pelts.” He smiled. “I did that once as an apprentice- I smelt and tasted bile for days!” He purred, and Damian found himself smiling at the story as well. Fidgetflake had been another one of those personality-less background cats, but he seemed a lot more humorous and kind once you got past his initial nerves.

 

Fidgetflake turned his head and called out, “Wrenpaw!”

 

The golden tabby she-cat leaped to her paws from beside her mother, Bellaleaf, and mentor, Rabbitleap, and quickly raced over, sending a curious look Damian’s way. “Yes, Fidgetflake?”

 

“Some bile, for Fallowfern’s ticks,” Fidgetflake said with obvious amusement in his tone.

 

Wrenpaw groaned. “I’m always cleaning her pelt! Can’t some other cat do it?”

 

Fidgetflake flicked his tail with a smile. “You’re the only apprentice until Beekit and Beetlekit are apprenticed. Have fun!” he meowed as he picked up his herbs and trotted past the two young cats towards the presumed-medicine cat den.

 

Wrenpaw sighed, but grabbed the moss gingerly, nose wrinkling. She glanced at Damian with wary eyes before padding off into a direction. Damian jolted into action when she moved, walking after her. “Wait- I can- I can help you.”

 

Wrenpaw blinked at him. “Oh… Uhm, you don’t have to-”

 

“I’d like to,” Damian said, far too eagerly, but his mind was screaming, ‘Apprentice task! It’s an apprentice task! You can be a real apprentice!’ Which was ridiculous. Because he didn’t care about being an apprentice in the Warriors world. At all. Only an idiotic fangirl would.

 

Wrenpaw glanced behind them. “But your mouse- you didn’t finish it.”

 

“Oh.” The mention of the mouse dampened his mood immediately, but he continued on, “I’m not that hungry. Besides… I kind of ruined it getting the- uh, mousebile.”

 

“Well,” Wrenpaw said slowly. “Uhm, we still shouldn’t let it go to waste… Why don’t you get it and we can give it to Fallowfern? I’m sure she won’t mind if it’s a little messy.”

 

Damian nodded and trotted back to his mouse. Grayson perked up as he passed. “Making friends?” Grayson called in a teasing voice.

 

“Shut up,” Damian grumbled. “Better to make allies than enemies.”

 

Grayson let out a sort of chuffing, laugh-purr noise. “True.”

 

Damian paused in front of his mouse, staring down at it and it’s missing leg (now in Damian’s stomach, he recalled unpleasantly) and the ripped-open belly. It wasn’t that gorey compared to things Damian had seen before, but it left him saddened to see an animal in such a way, and disgusted at himself for putting that animal, however necessary, into that situation. “You should eat your squirrel,” Damian called back to his brother as he leaned down to pick up the mouse. “Or the clancats will get suspicious.”

 

Grayson’s whole body curled up at that. “But it’s so wrong ,” he meowed. “And it tastes awful- all hairy and crunchy and-” He gagged, and Damian himself nearly did too at the reminder of what it felt like to eat fresh-kill. “Besides, it doesn’t look like you're eating yours. What are you doing anyway?”

 

Damian strolled past him, flicking an ear, as he tried to figure out how the warriors managed to speak around mouthfuls of prey and herbs.

 

“Nightwing,” Father said, his tail curled around his body, and his paws tucked under his big, gray body, and it was just so cute- but no. No it wasn’t. That was his father . “Try to take another bite, so you have some energy.”

 

“But it’s ugh ,” Grayson complained, sticking his tongue out to mimic the real gag he had done earlier.

 

“I know,” Bruce replied, ear twitching backwards with a frown. “But… we have to.” The red squirrel laid at their feet, random bites taken out of it. They had avoided the head, tail, and belly, taking chunks of flesh from the back and the limbs instead.

 

Damian padded away from them, with a completely necessary glare at Drake because he felt like it, trying not to think about the fact he had only managed to swallow a leg and nothing else. It seemed even Drake had managed two full bites, which was irritating. Was he trying to be better than Damian? Because he wasn’t! Inferior Robin…

 

Well. Brown and Thomas hadn’t eaten anything, and Cain had yet to either, so Father couldn’t get too angry at Damian for eating so little, anyway.

 

Damian caught up to Wrenpaw as she waited in front of the elders’ den. She nodded at him as they both entered. The den was more spacious compared to the “prisoners’ den,” and various flowers like lavenders decorated the walls, giving the den a nicer smell. One pale brown she-cat laid in the middle of the den, on her side, sides gently rising. She opened a light blue eye when they entered though, and purred briefly.

 

“Hello, Wrenpaw,” Fallowfern meowed softly, voice raspy. “Back again so soon?”

 

Wrenpaw ducked her head to the elder respectfully as she padded closer, before placing down the moss. Her voice was strangely loud as she said, “Here to do your ticks and fleas. And Robin brought a mouse.” She flicked her tail at Damian, and he quickly ducked his head too, nervously approaching.

 

“Not much ticks to do- I keep my pelt clean!” Fallowfern purred proudly, before she shuffled into a more upward lying position, staring curiously and warily at Damian with wide eyes.

 

He set his mouse down in front of the elder “My apologies, it’s half-eaten…”

 

Fallowfern tilted her head. “Hmm? What was that?”

 

It was then Damian remembered that the elder was losing her hearing- that it had caused a conflict between SkyClan and ShadowClan for… some pointless dispute or another, probably border or prey related. He raised his voice as he repeated, “I’m sorry, the mouse is half-eaten.”

 

“Ah, that’s alright,” Fallowfern meowed kindly, but there was a hesitance to her voice as she eyed Damian. “You’re… you’re one of the new…”

 

“Bats,” Wrenpaw supplied.

 

“Right.” Fallowfern frowned. “I… couldn’t quite catch what was going on… but, you seem like a nice, young cat. Are you and your… family joining SkyClan?”

 

Damian shook his head slowly, although a foolish pang in his heart wished he could nod instead. “No. We’re… here to help, if we can, with your… StarClan problem.”

 

Fallowfern tensed. “Ah.” Her ears twitch after a moment of silence. “Well, alright. Better get on with my ticks, right?” She flicked her tail as her muzzle morphed into an affectionate, playful smile.

 

Wrenpaw groaned. “Yep.” She squashed the moss with her paw before dividing it into two. “Do you know how to remove ticks, Robin?”

 

Damian hesitated. “...Yes. Put the mousebile on the tick, and then pull it off?”

 

Wrenpaw nodded and pushed him one half of the moss. “Tastes disgusting.”

 

“But my pelt feels wonderful afterwards,” Fallowfern purred as she leaned down to take a bite of the mouse, completely at ease and normal with it, unlike the Bats.

 

Damian grabbed the bile-soaked moss with his fangs and wrinkled his nose at the sharp, sour smell. He moved a paw to Fallowfern’s shoulder and gently began running his paw through her fur, searching for a bump to indicate a tick or flea. Wrenpaw did the same on her haunches.

 

Fallowfern flicked her tail. “I know one just grabbed my tail earlier today, right where I can’t reach it.”

 

Wrenpaw nodded and moved to the base of her tail. Damian felt a prickle of- excitement? Apprehension? Mild displeasure?- run through him as he felt a small, round bump underneath his paw pad. He paused, then used his paw to push the fur away until he could see a tiny but plump dark green tic sitting in between Fallowfern’s shoulder blades. It reminded him of when he found ticks on Alfred, and had to remove them, except this time, he would be using his mouth instead of tweezers.

 

Rather unhygienic.

 

With a twinge of nervousness, he pressed the damp moss against the tic and rubbed it against it for good measure before plopping the mousebile down. With rising disgust, he leaned his head down to grab at the tic. He made sure not to accidentally pop it- he could do without the blood and tic juice, thank you. And then he realized he had no idea what to do with the tic. So he stood there. Awkwardly. Glancing around, because did he just… drop it…? But no- it wasn’t dead, just upset at the awful bile. So did he have to bite it, or…?

 

It took Wrenpaw a good moment to notice his panic, before she looked up and purred quietly. “Put it in the mousebile and wrap the moss back up, so it can kill it. We’ll toss it into the forest and wash our paws afterwards.”

 

Damian quickly did so, placing the tick and watching it wiggle its little insect arms around. He flipped one part of the moss over, wrinkling his nose again at the smell, before he picked up the moss and repeated the process of searching for a tick.

 

“Well,” Fallowfern said as she finished off her mouse, leaving nothing left. She even licked her maw as though it was enjoyable. “It’s nice to have some new blood in camp, at least.” She smiled pensively at Damian.

 

Damian’s ear flicked backwards, feeling a bit hot under his pelt. He knew she didn’t necessarily mean it that way- but it almost implied they’d be staying long enough to have kits. SkyClan definitely appreciated new blood, as in, new warriors, as a clan that had to restart fresh from kittypets and loners- Fallowfern herself was once a loner. It wasn’t the smallest clan, he didn’t think, though. That honor went to either WindClan or RiverClan.

 

...SkyClan was definitely the clan with the least amount of incest, considering their ‘new blood.’ In fact, Damian could only recall Hawkwing and Pebbleshine being related off the top of his mind, meanwhile he knew thousands of ThunderClan mates who were related, be it distantly or not so distantly.

 

Warriors was a bit of a incest-pit, but, people often joked Gotham City was too, considering no one ever really wanted to move into Gotham, what with the high crime rates and all. And for some reason, nobody ever left Gotham either, too stubbornly loyal to a city that only ever hurt them.

 

A surprising pang of homesickness hit Damian right as he found another tic. As much as he loved this Warriors world (which was not at all, for the record), he worried for the safety of his city. His home. What had become of the villain that had sent them here? Did another Gotham hero handle them, or perhaps Superman, Supergirl, or one of the Superboys had flown in (even though it was not their city )?

 

Or was their city under siege without the protection of their vigilantes?

 

“I think I got all the ticks on my side,” Wrenpaw meowed after a long silence, whiskers curling at the stench of mousebile. “Do you have any left, Robin?”

 

“Uh.” Damian hovered his paw over Fallowfern’s pelt. It seemed smooth. “I think so.”

 

“I feel better,” Fallowfern mewed, stretching an arm out. “Like there’s less blood bein’ sucked out of me.” She grinned at Wrenpaw, who smiled back.

 

“Then let’s go wash off, Robin,” Wrenpaw said, grabbing her moss with a scrunched up nose. “This smell will haunt me for days .”

 

Fallowfern barked (meowed?) a laugh. “Apprentices.” She shook her head fondly, then gazed at Damian, whiskers twitching. “Thank you for the mouse.”

 

Damian nodded as he walked past her, moss hanging from his mouth. His skin heated underneath his pelt again, despite the coolness of dusk, but this time it was because he felt… proud? Embarrassed-proud? Was that an emotion? It just felt nice to be considered a Warriors apprentice. To imagine one day being a warrior, proud beside his clanmates and-...

 

No. No. Absolutely not. He read the books, but that did not mean he fantasized about them. Nope. No way. Being a warrior? Not cool. He was a vigilante and superhero, Robin of Gotham, partner to Batman. That was, arguably, way cooler.

 

He followed Wrenpaw as they trotted over to the stream, but he noted that all his family had vanished, save for the imbecile Drake, who was chatting quietly with Reedclaw, beside their den. All their prey had vanished too, but there was no way they had eaten it… Damian found one grey squirrel in front of Needleclaw, Kitescratch, and a tortoiseshell that Damian was going to guess was Turtlecrawl.

 

Wrenpaw placed the moss down in a pile with other discarded, smelly moss before dunking her paws in the water, so Damian did the same. Wrenpaw wrinkled her nose as she stared at the pile. “I’ll have to take that out of camp tomorrow…” There was a tone at the end of her sentence that Damian couldn’t quite identify, and she looked at him expectantly.

 

Damian’s whiskers twitched. “I can help you.”

 

Wrenpaw beamed, ears flicking forward. “Thank you.” Nearby, Damian saw two warriors watching them- or Damian, more specifically- exchange looks and murmur something to each other. Right. It was good to build up a reputation of being helpful- that was his intention. Yes. Not just to do more apprentice things. Of course.

 

“Robin!” the irritating voice of Drake called as the light brown tabby padded up to them.

 

Damian flicked his ear back, frowning. “What?”

 

“We’re in the den,” Drake meowed, stupidly, as usual. Drake glanced up at the darkening sky. “Since it’s getting darker and… we should probably…” He glanced at Wrenpaw, before continuing, “Get some sleep.” Or, talk about what they should do.

 

Damian huffed. “I could have figured that out myself, Drake . I don’t need your help.”

 

Drake just rolled his eyes and sighed, as expected, but then Wrenpaw spoke up. “Drake?”

 

Damian and Drake both tensed, as Damian quickly corrected himself, “Duck.” He latched onto the first excuse he could think of. “Drake was- a former name of his.”

 

“Oh…” Wrenpaw tilted her head thoughtfully, rather than suspiciously, which let Damian breathe out a sigh of relief. “I overheard Nightwing tell that story to the kits… So if Robin is like an apprentice name, and Bat is the leader name, then is Drake like the kit name…?”

 

Damian shook his head. “No. We each had different names as kits- names given to us by someone else, be it our parents, ourselves, or twolegs.” He nodded pointedly towards Drake at that last part, just so Wrenpaw would know he was implying strongly that Drake was a lowly kittypet. ...Although, perhaps since Wrenpaw’s mother was once a kittypet, she probably wouldn’t see it as an insult…

 

Wrenpaw nodded. “That makes sense…” She lifted her paws out of the stream and shook them off. “Well, I better go get some sleep myself… Uhm, it was nice talking to you, Robin, and, uh, Duck. See you later?” She glanced expectantly at Damian again, and he nodded. She raised her tail slightly with a smile as she walked past them, to the apprentices’ den, which was the den nearest their own den.

 

“What were you even doing with her anyway?” Drake asked, as he and Damian headed back to ‘their’ den. “That stuff smelled bad.”

 

“It was mousebile,” Damian replied stiffly, raising his nose into the air haughtily. “We cared for the elder of the clan, Fallowfern, who deserves the utmost respect as such.” It wouldn’t do good to have Drake insult the clan elder.

 

“Cool cool,” Drake said, in a tone that implied it was not ‘cool cool’ but ‘whatever whatever.’ 

 

Damian let out a low hiss, but let it be as they both slipped into their den. Todd shifted out of the way before Damian could (totally not on purpose) step on his tail, and Drake squeezed into his spot between Cain and Brown. Damian situated himself in the center mossbed, laying himself down on it so he wouldn’t take up as much space, and completely ignoring Brown’s coo of, “Awwwww, so cute! Whittle loaf cat!”

 

“So,” Grayson began with a giant, white-fanged grin. “We’re totally going after Leafstar and Tree-cat to the Moonpool-thingy, right?”

Chapter 8: Death is the Easiest Way into Cat Hell

“So,” Grayson began with a giant, white-fanged grin. “We’re totally going after Leafstar and Tree-cat to the Moonpool-thingy, right?”

 

“Absolutely not!” Damian snapped immediately, tail fluffing behind him. He briefly lashed it before it whacked against Father and Cain behind him. “Are you brainless? Do you want to ruin what little trust we have with these warriors by stalking off after their leader into their sacred land?”

 

“I dunno, they seem to trust you well enough,” Grayson pointed out, smiling.

 

“That’s because, unlike select individuals here, I am not a mouse-brain ,” Damian hissed, ears flat against his head.

 

“Mouse-brain,” Brown repeated in an amused tone. “What is that? You and the kittycats keep saying that.”

 

“An insult to your intellect , obviously,” Damian snapped. “One of many traditional insults among the clancats. And they’re warriors , not kittycats , so stop calling them that. That is also an insult to them of the highest degree. ” He thrust his nose to hers with curled lips showing his fangs. “ You are the reason we’ll lose their trust and earn their suspicion.”

 

“Hey,” Brown protested with twitching whiskers. “The Wrenpaw cat seemed to like me. She gave me her squirrel!”

 

“Out of pity,” Damian growled.

 

“Macgyver and Bellaleaf seemed nice too,” Grayson added. “Bellaleaf was kind of quiet-”

 

“Didn’t like me,” Todd added in a low grumble, shooting an angry look at Damian.

 

“-but Macgyver was really sympathetic. I guess because he was an outsider to the clans once too.”

 

“Violetshine harbored a distrust in us,” Bruce continued. “But she and her father, Hawkwing, were courteous with us.”

 

“An outsider to the clans destroyed her life as a child,” Damian murmured, ears flicking as he recalled Violetkit being ripped away from her sister by Rowanstar, then pressured to join the gang called Darktail’s Kin just so she’d be able to stay with her older-sister-slash-mother figure, Needletail. And, of course, having to watch Darktail drown Needletail. Not a pleasant start to one’s childhood.

 

Damian would know.

 

“They talked with me when you guys were gone,” Thomas piped up. “I didn’t tell them anything past that we, like, weren’t from around here, that we wanted to help, and, uhm…” He glanced warily at Damian. “That Robin was a big fan of the clans.”

 

Damian hissed lightly. “I am not a big fan . I am merely aware of the book series existence.”

 

“I was too,” Drake pointed out with a raised eyebrow and a slight smirk. “But I didn’t know shit about ‘clan culture’ and ‘cat Hell’ and ‘mouse-brains.’”

 

Damian glared darkly at him, searching the depths of his memory for something embarrassing he knew Drake enjoyed, but unfortunately, Grayson stopped him before he could say anything, meowing, “You know, Dames, it’s okay to like Warriors- ”

 

“ The point remains ,” Damian stressed, speaking right over Grayson, who only looked slightly upset, so Damian didn’t feel too guilty. “That we aren’t going after Leafstar and Tree. It would be far too reckless and unwise.”

 

“Why though?” Brown stated. “I mean, if we just sneak, it’s not like Leafstar will know we ‘broke her trust.’”

 

“You think.” Damian stared straight into her eyes with an absolutely unamused, deadpanned face. “You can sneak past a clan leader. With nine lives. In their own territory. Who has been a cat, for their entire lives , when you have been a cat for less than a day , and couldn’t even catch one mouse.”

 

“Well.” Brown blinked before cat-shrugging. “When ya put it like that…”

 

“You could though,” Drake suggested, staring at Damian in a way that made him conflicted. On one hand, it was great that Drake was acknowledging Damian’s obvious superiority. On the other hand, he hated that he was acknowledging that the superiority in this situation came from knowing the Warriors universe. “You know this territory, right?”

 

”Oh, like I have the entire map memorized,” he snarled, rolling his eyes as his claws dug into the moss bedding beneath him. “Besides, I couldn’t just stroll through ThunderClan and WindClan territory without being attacked.”

 

“Man,” Grayson huffed. “It’s times like this that I hate being a cat.”

 

“How often have you been a cat?” Todd shot him a look with a raised eyebrow.

 

“Oh, just this once,” Grayson said. “But I have been turned into a monkey before.”

 

Damian growled. “Enough of your idiocy. We don’t have time to waste. Who knows what’s happening back in our world.”

 

“Exactly,” Thomas interjected. “We can’t waste time, so shouldn’t we follow Leafstar anyway, just to see if the Moonpool can help us get home faster?”

 

“Yeah,” Brown agreed. “The Moonpool is their connection to cat Heaven, and, like, cat Heaven should be super powerful right? They could send us back.”

 

“ No ,” Damian growled, thoroughly annoyed. “Their connection to StarClan is cut off right now. That is quite literally their main problem! That’s what we agreed to help them with. Defeat Ashfur, get StarClan back.”

 

“Okay,” Brown continued easily, not at all affected by Damian’s harsh tone. “So we go to the Moonpool, enter cat Hell instead, defeat Ash-cat, and then StarClan can help us?”

 

Damian opened his mouth to protest, before realizing that… Stephanie was technically correct. “A simplistic version of events,” Damian admitted hesitantly. “But, yes, that would appear to be the plan.” He glanced at his father behind him. ‘Although, how we defeat Ashfur if murder is off the table is unknown to me…’

 

“Okay,” Thomas said slowly. “So why can’t we go to the Moonpool right now then?”

 

“Because there is no way we’d make it there!” Damian yelled, fur bristling as he leaped up before ducking back down when his ears brushed against the den’s roof. How many times did he have to say this until his idiotic siblings- not siblings- listened?! “Logically, how do you think we are going to get there? Even if I did know the map of the lake territories well enough, there would be know way to know for certain if I was heading in the correct direction, plus we would have to walk straight through ThunderClan and WindClan’s territories, and right now, those two are the least friendliest clans! And when we get there, there will be other warriors there who will not be so happy to see strange cats walking upon their holy land, and will not be afraid to claw us to pieces!” He sucked in an angry, deep breath, before continuing, just as angrily, “ Plus! Plus, if we somehow managed to avoid their wrath, there would be no way we could actually enter the Moonpool without a spirit able to drag us through, and all spirits are controlled by Ashfur right now!”

 

His fellow vigilantes stared back at him, cat pupils wide and round, and Todd glanced behind him, outside of the den, as though afraid some cat would overhear Damian’s angry tirade which… Fair. Damian shouldn’t have let his anger get the better of him in a way that could reveal their secret. Damian forced his fur to smooth but his claws remained snuggly dug into the moss and his tail wouldn’t stop twitching.

 

“Damian is right,” Bruce spoke up after a moment of silence had passed. “He knows this world better than any of us- if he says it’s not possible, then it’s not possible. We’ll have to find another way.”

 

“How many ways are there to get into cat Hell?” Drake mused, tilting his head. Damian’s head shot up, ears erect, as an idea flashed into his head. But... 

 

“Guess we gotta kill Jason again.” Brown smirked, sandy-colored tail tip curling.

 

“Stephanie,” Bruce scolded, frowning at his sort-of-daughter-sort-of-son’s-ex-girlfriend.

 

But Todd just snorted. “I haven’t committed any cat crimes as far as I’m aware. But according to the demon brat, you have, Steph.”

 

“Hey!” Brown protested, pouting. “What did I even do? Call the cutest cats ever kittycats or something? How’s that a crime punishable by death!”

 

“Damian,” Cain spoke softly, but her voice still cut through Brown’s loud, whining voice and Todd’s deep, rumbling one. “You have an idea?”

 

Damian frowned as his family all looked at him with pricked ears and curious eyes again. He was certain his idea wouldn’t work, but… It was better than leaving camp and chasing after Leafstar and Tree. “Before this arc,” he started slowly, not sure how to explain his thought. It didn’t help that he wasn’t even sure how it worked- the books had a habit of contradicting themselves after all. “Cats could enter the Dark Forest when brought there by a spirit while asleep. Some managed to get there without a spirit, merely willing themselves there… That has occurred in the current arc as well, but the threat comes with Ashfur or one of his allies being able to intercept your call to the Dark Forest, instead using it to ambush and kill you and make you a part of his zombie-spirit army…” He shifted his paws uncertainly. “The medicine cat of RiverClan, Willowshine, died this way, but two cats- Bristlefrost and Shadowsight- managed to will themselves into the Dark Forest without dying, so it is possible.”

 

“What’s the point of the Moonpool if they can just be dragged to cat afterlife in their dreams ?” Brown whispered to Drake, as though he would have the answers.

 

“If the Moonpool is blocked or destroyed ,” Damian hissed, annoyed. “Then StarClan cannot contact or even see their descendants below. And when it’s not, StarClan only ever contacts medicine cats and prophesy cats via dreams when necessary.”

 

”Ohhhh, okay, so their cat religion controls the cat magic, got it.” Brown nodded faux-seriously.

 

“Prophesy cats?” Thomas meowed curiously. “What, like, fortune tellers? Future seers?”

 

“No.” Damian lashed his tail again, but kept it closer to his body this time. “Cats who are a part of a prophecy. Basically the Chosen Ones, in simpleton language.” He huffed. “For example, the ‘fire cat’ Firestar, was a part of multiple prophecies, and he was contacted in his dreams by a deceased medicine cat named Spottedleaf.”

 

“So we’re like the Chosen Ones right now, aren’t we?” Brown mused, ear twitching thoughtfully. “Then maybe this Spottedleaf could contact us.”

 

“Except the Moonpool is blocked,” Cain reminded her with a slow blink. Damian would have preferred clawing Brown’s whiskers clean off, but his sister’s calmer way worked too to remind Brown of what he literally just said .

 

“And Spottedleaf is dead- dead,” Damian added with a low growl. “Or faded, as the Wiki would call it,” he added in a mumble.

 

“Wiki?” Drake repeated, ears pricked.

 

“Nothing!” Damian quickly hissed, not willing to admit he’d browsed the Warriors fan Wikia a few times. More than a few times. Whenever he forgot a little piece of Warriors plot. But definitely not because he was actually interested in the Warriors books. Just because he hated not understanding something. “Faded means she was killed as a spirit, which means she’s permanently dead, even to the afterlife.”

 

“Hope that doesn’t exist in our universe,” Todd murmured with a scowl.

 

“I mean, it probably does?” Drake scrunched up his little kitty nose- and no, that was absolutely not cute. Damian’s inferior quote-on-quote ‘older brother’ was not cute. He was a nuisance and a disgrace to their father’s legacy. The opposite of anything cute.

 

But Brown was already squealing before Drake could continue his thought. She reached out a paw to touch his nose as she crooned, “Oh my gosh, look at your whittle nose! It did a whittle scrunch and it’s soooo pink!” Drake flattened his ears and looked properly unsettled-slash-embarrassed at Steph’s idiocy. He moved his head backwards at Brown’s approaching paw before swatting it away with his own. Brown seemed to find that just as endearing as she gasp-squeaked again, eyes bright as she stared at their ‘toe beans.’

 

“Focus,” Bruce commanded.

 

“Sorry,” Brown said in a voice that sounded not at all sorry. “It’s impossible to concentrate when we’re all such cute kitties.”

 

“Do you think we’ll be able to enter the Dark Forest, Damian?” Father asked, staring directly at him. Domain raised his head and curled his tail around his paws as he thought with a frown.

 

“Perhaps… But it takes knowledge of the Dark Forest to enter it- you all will not have as apt a description as I do,” Damian stated, before inwardly regretting his small admittance. “Without knowing where you’re trying to go, it could be dangerous…”

 

“But you could still make it there?” Drake said.

 

Grayson added with a frown, “We aren’t sending Damian alone to cat Hell. He said cats have died that way.”

 

“I could make it,” Damian protested firmly. “I know what- and who- to avoid.”

 

“We aren’t risking you dying , brat,” Todd said with a small glare. “Even as a cat.”

 

“Like you care,” Damian growled, the fur along his spine raising as he glared back.

 

“You’re pushing it,” Todd growled back.

 

“Boys,” Bruce said warningly, tail raising. Todd subsided with a scoff, and Damian continued to glare at him, but said nothing else. “Since we’re at an impasse… I suppose our only choice left is to wait for Leafstar to return and convince her to take us to the Moonpool.”

 

“Sleep?” Cain meowed.

 

“Yes,” Father agreed.

 

“But-”

 

“No, Damian,” his father said with a stern glare. “We aren’t risking any one. We don’t have the means to protect ourselves in a fight as cats. We’ll sleep in shifts.”

 

“I’ll go first,” Cain said.

 

“Same,” Brown meowed, stretching a bit. “That squirrel messed up my stomach- I don’t think I can sleep.”

 

Damian nearly huffed in another protest, to demand he get first watch, but then a thought came to his mind… His family couldn’t stop him from entering the Dark Forest if they didn’t know what he was doing. So instead he clamped his jaws shut and glared at his family as they traded a few more words. Todd shifted away from the entrance to let Cain and Brown replace him. Grayson grabbed Damian by the scruff- to which he hissed and clawed at- and nudged him over so he could curl up in-between him and Thomas. Father and Todd- much to their displeasure- ending up beside each other. Both seemed much less enthusiastic about getting ‘kitty cuddles’ from each other, unlike Grayson, who was adamant that Damian, Drake and Thomas curl up right next to him.

 

In his words, “How often are we going to be able to cuddle as cats? This is a once in a lifetime opportunity!”

 

Damian let Grayson do whatever as he shoved his head in his paws, scrunching his eyes and trying to think of every description he had ever read of the Dark Forest. A shadow-infested, muddy, dark, gloomy forest with sharp thistles and an unwelcoming atmosphere. The trees were twisted and tall, desaturated in color. Deadly water, sluggish, dark and deep, of both a river and a lake, known to drown cats. Many damp caves and tunnels to get lost in and-

 

Damian hissed as someone’s paw thumped into his side. He whipped his head around to glare at Drake, whose ear flicked back with a frown as he settled down beside Grayson, who was already purring. His back was warm and soft against Damian’s, pelt both fuzzy and sleek. It reminded Damian of petting Alfred the Cat and Titus back home…

 

He furrowed his brows. Thinking of home was the opposite of what he wanted to do.

 

He wanted to enter the Place of No Stars. The place where Ivypool trained under Hawkfrost- where she murdered Antpelt twice, where Crookedstar was manipulated by Mapleshade, where Brambleclaw foolishly trusted his father, Tigerstar the First, where Snowtuft had himself nearly ripped in half at Hawkfrost’s orders, where countless cats have trained and been killed by demons. A place so evil, it was said to poison your very thoughts (although Damian didn’t quite believe in that newest description the books were using to describe the Dark Forest).

 

A place now devoured by fog and mist, and infested with lifeless, white-eyed spirits, mind-controlled by a cat who refused to see ‘no’ as an answer. Once great warriors- or simply background cats- now reduced to mindless pawns. Rosepetal- no, he couldn’t think of them. Thinking of them called them to him, and then Ashfur would be aware of his plans to enter the Dark Forest. That was what got Willowshine killed.

 

A shiver ran down his spine at the thought of meeting Ashfur. A villain that Damian honestly wasn’t that scared of- at the end of the day, they were always fictional cats in a book- now held real power over him. Did he truly exist in this world right now? Damian was truly here, in The Broken Code , and going to meet the mastermind behind it all?

 

Why was he here? Who brought him here? Was it the villain’s fault or… his?

 

Why couldn’t they remember anything that happened?

 

Damian felt something brush against his flank, and opened an eye to see Grayson’s white-tipped, thin black tail laying over it. He pressed against his older brother’s side, turning so he could shove his nose against his brother’s black-furred shoulder and block out the scents around them. His ears were flat against his skull too. The less he could feel of the real world, the better chance he had of staying in the Dark Forest.

 

Crooked trees. A starless, black void of a sky. Water just as black. The softness of grass replaced with nothing but slimy mud. Cold air piercing his skin- his pelt. White mist eating the black, brown and red of the forest…

 

...was that a flicker of a forest in his vision?

 

Damian tensed, and the faintest outline of tall, thin, twisting trees vanished with it. He let out a breath to calm himself, ignoring the tremor in his paws at the thought of entering the Dark Forest. Was that excitement? Or fear?

 

Stronger, he thought of every event he could remember in the Dark Forest- from Mapleshade training or tormenting cats like Crookedstar, Goosefeather, and Thistleclaw (who deserved it), to Tigerstar training his sons and then Lionblaze, and to Hawkfrost tricking Ivypool, and to Tigerheart (aka Tigerstar the Second) defending his brother, Flametail, from being killed by Ivypool, and to Beetlewhisker being murdered when he tried to leave, and to all of the clancats unknowingly being prepared for a battle against their very own clanmates. And of course, to Ashfur-as-Bramblestar dragging Squirrelflight into his tainted world, and to Willowshine’s spirit dragging Rootspring into it too, and Bristlefrost and Shadowsight following, aided by a Dark Forest warrior named Snowtuft.

 

The forest appeared more firmly in his vision, but Damian dare not hope or believe it was the correct place, nor just a hallucination of his own making. He didn’t breathe as he thought fiercely about the Dark Forest.

 

Darkness, blood, terror, rigorous training every night, leaving you with scars-

 

‘-the League of Assassins-’

 

-learning to kill, being drowned in a river, watching the life drain from bodies over and over, feeling nothing as you slaughtered again and again, tasting blood in your mouth and not knowing if it was your own or another's ( it was always another’s ), the feeling of dragging a sword through a body with no effort at all, Grandfather staring down at him with disappointment, or pride, depending on how well he killed, he could do better, and Mother, with a gleam of affection in her eye, but emotionlessness and obedience to Grandfather consuming her, making her more and more distant from him, leaving him craving her warmth, her comfort, and he’d kill as many assassins and servants and civilians as it took to get her love and Grandfather’s approval, and he would kill whoever came in his way of his Father’s love- of Grayson’s love?-

 

He would do whatever it took.

 

The ground beneath Damian was suddenly cold, wet, and slimy. He leaped to his feet as the ground squelched beneath him. He blinked, confused for a moment, as the visions of his time in the League and his early days with Father vanished. Had he been dreaming? They were so vivid and now he was-

 

In the Dark Forest. Right where he wanted to be.

 

A chill ran up his spine, making his fur fluff out as he walked hesitantly in a circle, staring out at the forest around him. It was just as he had described, and more. The stench of blood and death and rotting corpse hung in the air, as though there had been so much it could never fade away. And the mud was deeply unpleasant underneath his paw pads, sticking in between his toes and dragging him down with every step. It felt more like quicksand, except he was never actually getting sucked in, despite how it felt. And the air was even sharper and colder than he’d thought, making him tremble. A phantom warmth rested against his side- ‘Richard?’

 

The thought made the world around him flicker and fade, and he quickly dug his claws into the mud, reminding himself that he was here , and not in his mossy nest, snuggled against his brothers, anymore. His body may physically be there, but he was here in the Dark Forest in every other way.

 

He took in a deep breath, staring out into the endless forest of shadows. He had no way to know how to get to the island that Ashfur held his prisoners on, but he would try. The Dark Forest was supposed to be smaller anyway, as the strange mist covered it, and ‘ate’ anything living or dead inside it.

 

He paced a few steps forward when he felt a sudden wet chill against his tail. He shot forward, alarmed, and glanced back to see a wall of gray-white mist, as though it had been summoned just by his thoughts. Without another thought, he bolted as quick as he could on his kitty legs. He wasn’t sure what happened when one was caught by the mist, but he had a good idea, and he wasn’t going to confirm it. No doubt it would be painful- but perhaps quick- or horrifying and slow, like a twisted version of fading away.

 

He darted around countless trees and thistle-bushes, slipping once from the slimy mud beneath him. The mist had slowed, but he could still see it in the distance between the trees, swirling in the blackness of the shadows, it’s shiny whiteness contrasted against it and far more terrifying than the darkness.

 

As a Bat, he knew just how welcoming the darkness could be, and how terrifying the light could be. There was safety in the shadows, where no one could see you.

 

He glanced behind him again, and when he turned his head back around, he couldn’t bring himself to a stop quick enough before he slammed painfully into a black and white cat. The both of them yowled as they tumbled to the ground. Damian quickly raised a paw, claws unsheathed, ready to claw their face off, but his eyes widened as he saw-

 

“Richard?!”

Chapter 9: Welcome to the Hotel Dark Forest

Notes:

You can check in anytime you like, but you can never leave.

“Richard?!”

 

“Damian?!” Dick Grayson yowled back in response, pupils so wide they nearly consumed all of the blue of his eyes, and his ears were flat against his head. His chest fur was fluffed up around where Damian’s paw had him pinned, and his breathing erratic from the sudden jumpscare of his baby brother slamming into him. “What the- Where are-”

 

“The Dark Forest,” Damian hissed as he scrambled off his mentor. The tuxedo cat rolled over, slowly pushing himself onto his white paws, utterly baffled.

 

“What, but- I thought-?” Dick said, bewildered as he stared around them. He raised a paw and shook it, but the dark mud clung stubbornly to him, and the rest of his pelt too. Damian flicked his own tail uncomfortably, but only a droplet of mud actually flung itself off. Damian unconsciously followed it’s path, and startled to see the silver mist creeping up between the trees.

 

“Run!” he snapped at his brother before bolting. The first Robin startled, leaping into the air like a cat startled by a zucchini. Owlish eyes stared back at the mist before Grayson darted after Damian.

 

“What the hell is that? Is that fog? Why is it moving so fast? ” Grayson stumbled over the root of a tree, yelping as the mist was still right hot on their tails. “Is there some fog-villain in Warrior Cats I should know about?!”

 

Damian ducked under a low hanging branch and leaped into the air much like a startled-zucchini cat himself when his paws touched the slimiest, thickest water he had ever felt. He didn’t spare himself anytime to ponder the dark water of the small stream, quickly hopping to the other side. He paused, glancing back as Grayson struggled to keep up with him, dragged down by the heavy mud on his pelt and the strange cat-limbs he’d only had for a day. He waited for Grayson to reach the stream, which he crossed with ease- it was not a full-blown river, thankfully- Damian knew exactly how that would have ended for them. They both ran forward again, stride-by-stride, before Damian paused, glancing backwards at the mist.

 

It had stopped exactly at the edge of the stream, sitting there calmly as though it had not just been rapidly advancing on them. After a moment of silent deliberation and heavy panting (who knew how hard it was to sprint as a cat when you’d previously never run on four limbs before ), Damian cautiously approached the mist, crouching down and sniffing at it.

 

For all intents and purposes, it just smelled like a wet day.

 

“Damian, seriously, what the hell- actually, no, what in cat Hell , was that?” Grayson asked, panting just as hard as Damian as he padded up beside him, fur prickled as he stared wide-eyed at the mist.

 

“Just mist,” Damian replied, frowning, feeling the adrenaline rush inside him as he stepped backwards, eying the mist warily.

 

“ Just mist does not fucking chase you at twenty-five miles per hour, Dames,” Grayson argued. “You wouldn’t run from just mist . Is it sentient?”

 

Damian’s tail waved behind him, wanting to lash even though he wasn’t irritated. Just. Full of energy that came with almost being devoured by mist. “No. It’s consuming the Dark Forest and anything else caught in its wake… Presumably, it’s using what it’s consumed as a sort of power source.” That’s what Damian guessed what it’s purpose was, from reading the books. Eating up the Dark Forest so Ashfur could use his still unexplained possession powers.

 

“Oh, great, cool,” Grayson commented. “So what’s it powering? No, wait, lemme guess- evil cat magic.”

 

“Yes,” Damian replied, turning around, even as he stared warily back at the mist. “We better get far away from it before it decides it needs more power.”

 

“Fine by me,” Grayson agreed, trotting after Damian. “So, we’re in cat Hell?”

 

“Yes.”

 

“I thought you said we couldn’t get into cat Hell, but it sure seems like we’re both here. In cat Hell. What’s the crazy cat logic behind that?”

 

“Stop using cat as an adjective to describe everything,” Damian hissed. “It’s rather infuriating.”

 

“Well, I need to discern between our world’s logic and Warrior Cats’ logic, don’t I?” Grayson mused, whiskers twitching, even as he sent a paranoid look back at the still wall of mist.

 

“Context clues could provide that distinction,” Damian responded. He glanced behind again, pleased to see the mist hadn’t followed. He flicked another glob of mud off of his paw. “How did you get here?”

 

“Uh, you’d probably know better than me,” Grayson replied, tail flicking behind him. “I was basking in the glory of cat cuddles, drifting off to sleep and then… Suddenly I was in a spooky forest and had a face full of Dami-cat.”

 

“Do not call me that,” Damian growled, turning around a thin, silver-y tree into a clearing. The ground was, thankfully, less muddy. “Did you imagine any type of forest before you slept? Any dark thoughts?”

 

“Uhhh.” Grayson blinked as he considered the question. “I was surrounded by my little sibs as kittens, so, no, not really any dark thoughts there.”

 

“I had plenty about Drake,” Damian mumbled, fur prickling. “But that doesn’t make sense. If you weren’t thinking of the Dark Forest, then how could you possibly be here?”

 

“That’s what I’d like to know.”

 

Both vigilante-cats leaped into the air, fur fluffed, claws unsheathed and teeth bared as a voice suddenly spoke in front of them. Directly in front of them sat a reddish-brown tom with a white stripe on his forehead and narrowed green eyes, fluffy tail wrapped delicately around his large paws.

 

“Jason?!” Grayson exclaimed. “We are in an open space- ” He gestured wildly to the clearing around them. “Where did you come from?!”

 

“Nowhere,” Todd idiotically replied. “I opened my eyes and suddenly you two assholes were here.” He glanced uninterestedly at the towering trees and shadows around them. “Is this the spooky hell forest? I thought the brat said we couldn’t get here.”

 

“You shouldn’t be able to.” Damian’s gaze darted to every shadow and bush he could see around them, searching for the sign of any other cats, specifically, a spirit cat. But there were none. “And there’s no one here that’s able to drag you or Grayson into this forest, so it doesn’t make sense .”

 

“Are we going to run into the others soon, then?” Grayson meowed, walking a circle with pricked ears, staring out at the forest surrounding them. “They’ll just magically appear in front of us?”

 

“It’s likely,” Damian murmured, ear flicking backwards. “But surely if you two imbeciles are asleep, the others would be by now, and they would have appeared here.”

 

“Maybe they appeared in a different part of cat Hell,” Todd suggested, flicking his brush of a tail and curling his lip at the mud stuck to it. “I imagined burning fire and searing heat- not an icy chill and annoying mud. Cat Hell is lame.”

 

Damian hissed, defensive. “It is a proper punishment for the cats that end up here- with nothing to hunt, they eternally starve, and the mud dirties them to appear just as filthy as their souls.”

 

“Wow, poetic,” Todd mused, in an uncaring tone of voice that ticked Damian off further.

 

‘Perhaps if I killed him here, he could decide whether he liked human Hell better than cat Hell.’ Damian considered the dark idea for a moment before throwing it away with all his other ‘I-Hate-Todd’ thoughts.

 

“Hey, there’s mist that tries to eat you here too,” Grayson said in a playful tone, sitting on his haunches and raising both paws, claws unsheathed, as though trying to mimic the stance of an older brother telling cliche scary stories to his younger siblings. “So be wary.”

 

“The mist is not normally a part of the Dark Forest,” Damian meowed. "But it is dangerous. We should distance ourselves further from it… And find the one important place in this forest."

 

"Which would be…?" Todd prompted, tufted ears flicking forward and brow rising.

 

"Ashfur's island," Damian replied, already padding forward, back into the dark undergrowth. He didn't look back, but he could hear his brothers trudging behind him, mud sloshing. "Where he imprisons the souls of dead cats."

 

Todd snorted. "Ashfur. Still can't believe that's the Big Bad's name. It sounds so fucking stupid."

 

" Red Hood would be a ridiculous villain name to them," Damian hissed back, tail lashing. "And my apologies we didn't end up during Brokenstar's reign. I'm sure his name is much more villain-esque to you."

 

"Yeah, actually," Grayson interrupted before Todd could retort. "Brokenstar could probably be a villain's name in our world, even."

 

"What would he be? An evil Starfire?" Todd commented with a swish of his fluffy tail.

 

Grayson shook his head. "She already has an evil sister- Blackfire. Brokenstar would be a-"

 

"And how would you know who Brokenstar is, outsiders," a cold voice hissed from behind them, right as a twig snapped, and the vigilante-cats all swung around, fur bristling.

 

Prowling from the darkness was a lithe black tom with splotched dark brown patches all over his pelt, and notable scars on his cheeks. But the most notable thing about the tom, of course, were the eyes as white as snow staring blankly at them, even as its muzzle was twisted into a snarl.

 

"Zombie cat," Damian hissed, voice low as his claws dig into the mud. "And where there's one-"

 

From their sides two more cats slide out of the shadows, one leaping down from a tree. That one was a long, matted haired pale gray and white tom, with powerful muscles in his large limbs. The other was a skinny, long-legged and smooth-furred gray she-cat, as tall as Todd but not built with power, strength and fluff in mind.

 

"There's others," Damian finished in a growl. "They're controlled by Ashfur."

 

"Ooo, that is creepy," Grayson commented with a flick of his tail tip, taking a nervous step back as he stared into the white void of the she-cat's eyes.

 

"We've seen plenty of white eyes before, Nightwing," Todd murmured, crouching down but in an awkward way, like he wasn't quite sure if he was doing it correctly. "And they had knives, guns, and bombs to boot- these are cats."

 

"You can make this easy on yourselves," all three cats spoke at once, startling the two unsuspecting Bats while Damian just flattened his ears against his head. "Come with us, and you won't get hurt. Or… resist, and die."

 

"Ha," Todd snorted. "Like hell we'd just roll over at that. Little kitties like you aren't scary, you're cute." The three hissed in unison, taking a few threatening steps forward. Before they could speak, Todd snarled, "Let's skip the banter, shall we? This'll be easy."

 

"Todd-" Damian started, cursing his acclaimed older brother's idiocy as the large brown tom surged forward, towards the gray and white tomcat. Did he not remember he was a cat himself? He had no idea how to fight as a cat, much less as a warrior! And if they followed the possessed warriors, then they would lead them to the island!

 

Idiot!

 

Todd leaped forward, claws outstretched for the tom, but the gray and white cat just narrowed his white eyes, raised a paw, and then slammed it into Todd's side right as his claws barely grasped the dead warrior's fur. A few strands of white chest fur caught in Todd's claws as he was pitifully swatted away, landing onto the slimy ground with a painful thud. The tomcat moved effortlessly forward, placing his paws on Todd's shoulders and digging his claws in, to which Todd gave a loud hiss.

 

"Easy, you said?" the tomcat spoke. "Quite."

 

And then he sunk his fangs into Todd's scruff and tossed him as though he weighed nothing.

 

"Jason!" Grayson yowled, jerking towards his adoptive brother's direction before he was barrelled over by a fast dark gray blurr.

 

Damian nearly reprimanded him for codenames, but he, too, was slammed into. Damian yelled into the air as he was flipped over, rolling like a wheel, in a way that definitely hurt his neck. Paws slammed into his shoulders and pinned him down on his back. Damian spat on the tortoiseshell's face.

 

'You aren't even biologically possible!' Damian hissed mentally at him. 'A cat cannot be black and brown, unless they are a chimera, or their ginger patches are dark enough to be mistaken as brown, but that would mean you were a tortoiseshell, and the probability of a male cat being a tortie is just as rare as being a chimera!'

 

Damian flailed his paws, attempting to swipe at the tortoiseshell's chest, or preferably the scars on his cheeks, to reopen the old wounds. Eyes would be even better.

 

"I'll pummel you, scum!" Damian snarled, brain automatically switching into the mindset he had fighting criminals- angry, righteous, powerful.

 

The tortoiseshell above him curled his lip as though in disgust or disbelief, and raised one paw. Damian quickly tried to jerk forward, claws brushing the soft underside of the cat ( 'Rabbit kicks! I should be doing rabbit kicks,' his mind thought, too late). Without any worry at all, the tom slammed his paw into the side of Damian's head. Damian was ashamed of the short sharp, wheezy yelp that erupted from his mouth in surprise and pain.

 

While his head rang and throbbed, claws dug into the fur around his neck, quickly finding flesh. Damian gasped and struggled, one leg feebly kicking at the belly of the possessed cat.

 

"Time to be trapped here forever," the cat whispered, leaning close to Damian's face, breathe on his whiskers. Suddenly, the cat's body shuttered, and the eyelids flickered, and bright, sunset orange amber eyes stared down at him, full of misty despair. "Like me."

 

Fear shot through Damian's body like an arrow, making him go limp as he stared into the eyes of an innocent, loyal warrior, forced to betray and kill his own clanmates. The amber eyes were white in the next moment, and claws sunk further down into Damian's neck.

 

"Antfur."

 

The cat above him froze, head rising to stare back into the forest. Damian's eyes flickered in that direction, trying to see the new speaker. He could see thistles and brush move as the faint glimmer of orange and faded white brushed past.

 

"Dapple-whatever and… WindClan cat," the voice spoke, feminine but sharp, angry, and… Like a Karen's voice, is what Brown would say the speaker sounded like. "I thought that StarClan freak controlled you, so why in the Place of No Stars are you killing these maggots?"

 

"I do," the three voices all hissed in sync, tails lashing. "I am busy."

 

The cat above Damian blinked, but the eyes remained white. Antfur, Damian realized dully- that's who he was. The dead ShadowClan cat. "He must attend to more important things. And I was only going to kill this one- isn't that what she wanted?"

 

What? Damian's body tensed in alarm. Who was she? And why did she want him specifically dead? Ashfur would obviously want him dead, if not for any 'from a different universe' reasons, but simply to expand his army of zombie cats. But now there was a new player in the ring. From Warrior Cats? There wasn’t exactly a wide range of female villains in Warriors .

 

"By her own claws, of course," the other voice answered with a slight purr, as though approving. There was a moment of pause, and the voice spoke, voice lowered thoughtfully, and perhaps a bit threateningly, "It seems you aren't all omnipotent."

 

"I am more powerful than you," all three voices hissed again, and Damian felt the claws sink back into his fur, as though unintentionally out of irritation. "Powerful enough to give you what you want, remember. Now, take them to the island."

 

The she-cat snorted. "Fine. But what I want better come soon, or you'll be sorry."

 

Ashfur didn't respond through his possessed cats, who remained still as stone.

 

"Get up," the she-cat snarled. "And don't try anything. I saw how these mindless ghosts defeated you without even upsetting a whisker."

 

Antfur moved slowly off of Damian, but he rolled over and jumped swiftly to his paws regardless, fur bristling along his spine as he snarled defensively. His eyes flickered about, noting where his brothers were, standing up from where their assailants had them pinned. There were two new players on the field, a large mostly ginger she-cat with a few black spots and a white muzzle, chest, and underbelly, as well as a fully white tail. But she was so faded it was difficult to truly see her, the trees behind her more visible than her. Beside her stood a less faded silver-gray tabby tom with similar stature to the dark gray she-cat, albeit with spikier fur. The tom's tail lashed back and forth, and his whiskers twitched constantly, as though agitated.

 

"Now, these are our newest bothersome batch of flies, hm?" the she-cat said, prowling forward with her white tail swaying behind her. "Not much, are you?" She strolled past Damian, eyeing him like he wasn't much. He was sorely tempted to leap at her if he didn't already know what a mouse-brained idea that would be.

 

"And who might our new 'captors' be?" Todd spat, fur puffed up so much it made him look twice as big, although every cat in the clearing now knew he lacked the bite to back up his bark.

 

The she-cat paused, then circled back around to stand in front of Damian. She stared down at him condescendingly, with a small smirk. "She said you'd know who I am, kittypet."

 

Damian tensed when he realized he did . Of course, how could he not? "Mapleshade," he hissed.

 

"Ah, my reputation exceeds me," she purred with obvious delight. "Although how a worthless kittypet somehow knows about me despite having only been in the clans for… Well, they've only been there a little while, haven't they?" She glanced back at her non-white-eyed companion.

 

The silver tom did a cat-shrug. "I don't know. We can't see below, and the she-cat didn't tell us anything useful." His ears twitched as he looked at Damian with intrigue. "Do you know who I am?"

 

Damian frowned, glancing warily around. So much for not knowing anything about Warriors . Somehow the villains knew he knew. Who was this 'she-cat'? "Thistleclaw?" he guessed.

 

The silver tom's lip curled in immediate disgust, body recoiling. "That kit-lover? Rotten crow-food, no. I'm Silverhawk." Huh. Glad to know even some Dark Forest cats hated pedophiles.

 

"Doesn't ring a- Doesn't sound familiar," Damian corrected himself, glancing back at his brothers, who were as tense as springs, watching the interaction with erect ears and focused eyes.

 

"Don't worry," Mapleshade meowed with a pleased smirk. "Nobody knows him anyway." She flicked her tail dismissively and Silverhawk bristled. Mapleshade padded past Antfur and Damian. "Come along now. I'm sure you all must want some answers. Well, the truth is just this way."

 

"You gonna lead us across a river?" Damian muttered under his breath as he hesitantly stepped after her, glaring at Antfur as the tom stuck right beside him, eyes blank.

 

Mapleshade halted abruptly, and Damian knew, right in that moment, he fucked up.

 

"What. Did you just say?"

 

Grayson and Todd's eyes both went wide, casting each other confused glances before staring worriedly at Damian. Grayson attempted to take a few steps forward before the gray she-cat (the WindClan cat? Wait, Breezepelt's daughter? Smokehaze? That was one of the dead WindClan cats, right? What a shame, she had such a cool name) blocked him.

 

Damian should just shut his mouth. But Silverhawk was eyeing him curiously, and then the Dark Forest tom's eyes narrowed when he was silent, as though thinking Damian was too chicken to do it.

 

'This isn't like egging on Drake,' his mind tried to warn him, but the dark thought of hitting Mapleshade where it hurt overtook him, and he snapped coolly, "Are you going to lead us across a river, to the 'truth,' just like your kits? Only for us to die like-"

 

Mapleshade let out an enraged screech that Damian had never heard from a cat nor human before as she whipped around with such ferocity that Damian knew he, again, fucked up. He jumped backwards, pelt bristling and claw coming out to swipe at her as he saw Todd and Grayson burst forward to help him.

 

But Mapleshade had already barrelled into him, chucked him into a tree, and pinned him down by the time they were halfway to him. And then Damian stared up into her furious, frenzied eyes and the black void between the leaves of trees behind her transparent pelt, as her arm came racing down.

 

Claws seared across his throat and he jerked with a yowl that never left his throat as hot pain sunk its fangs into him. The corners of his vision swiftly turned black, cutting out the forest at his edges, then Grayson's horrified face, and then it swallowed his vision completely, erasing Mapleshade's snarling face above him.

 

Pain followed him the entire way as he gasped for breath.

 

And then suddenly the fluffy cat face of his sister, Cassandra Cain, was in front of him, the leafy roof of a den behind her as she stared worriedly down at him.

Series this work belongs to:

• Part 4 of Batfamily Fluff and Stuff