Littlestorm -- warrior

[littlestorm]

LITTLESTORM
Littlekit/Littlepaw/Littlestorm/Littlestar
"Small, wiry brown she-cat with dark tabby
markings."

NAME EXPLANATION:

"Little-" -for her small size
"-storm"  -for her fierce temper

AGE:

44 moons (almost 4 years)

RANK:

Warrior

EXTENDED APPEARANCE:

Littlestorm’s most distinctive quality at birth remains as distinctive into her adulthood – her size. Small in both height and stature, Littlestorm weighs in at a cool six pounds, dwarfed by a few of the older apprentices. Her body is lean and mean, but the muscle barely bulks her narrow shoulders and sinewy legs. If anything, she is built for sprints and dexterity – nimble as a gnat, she has learned to use it for her own unique battle style. Littlestorm is nothing if confident, however; her presence, at the very least, towers.

Littlestorm carries the scars of a decorated warrior. Her ear is nicked; the very tip of her tail is bitten away; her fur grows short and bristly in places it was torn out; her right leg took a nasty blow that didn’t let her walk on it for a full moon. Most distinctive of all is the mess of scar tissue concealed under the soft off-white fur of her upper throat, where a dog tried – and failed – to perform a killing bite. She feels no shame or insecurity for these scars; the uglier and more brutal marks of the lot are the ones she takes the most pride in.

PERSONALITY:

“And though she be but little, she is fierce.”

Clever – Littlestorm was born with the odds stacked against her, and it has taken more than sheer willpower to turn her physical limits to her advantage. She is innovative and shrewdly clever, forced to observe and thereby exploit the miniscule windows of weakness with her opponents when going head-to-head means sure defeat. Her thoughts can sometimes be outlandish or out-of-the-box, but they come from a very calculating and meticulous brain. That is, when her temper doesn’t get the better of her and unravel all of that careful contemplation….

Temperamental – From quiet and brooding to rude and brash, Littlestorm’s mood changes quickly and unpredictably. It is never certain what might set the little firecracker off, but when one does, they better be prepared for an earful. Even when feeling friendly and mirthful, her voice is loud and assertive, carrying her crude humor to all corners of the camp. She harbors genuine affection and protectiveness for her friends and family, but is more likely to prove it by knocking them about the ears than some sappy speech.

Loyal – Despite her strong words and changing moods, there is no doubt in any cat’s mind that Littlestorm is unflinchingly loyal to the clan. She is always willing to volunteer for the morning patrols and brings in fresh kill for the clan like the weight of their survival is bearing down entirely on her slim shoulders. Though she may be loud and argumentative, she always argues for what she believes is absolutely best for the clan. She has little fear of death; she’d much prefer the martyrdom of being a hero than growing old or wasting her days in the Queen’s den; her loyalty is expressed by the relentless determination to be the best warrior she can, even if she may seem like she only lives to complain.

Stubborn – With all that nice stuff about loyalty being said, Littlestorm can be a little pistol to have a contradicting opinion with. She has no lack of self-confidence, and this self-confidence can occasional manifest itself as arrogance. Once she comes to a decision it is very difficult, nigh impossible, to get her to budge. She can be hesitant to believe things she’d rather not believe true.

Gut Instinct – Going hand-in-hand with her stubbornness is her tendency to trust her gut instinct. It’s not so much that she follows a strict moral code; she doesn’t have laid-out rules or mantras that restrict her actions. She instead makes decisions off of feeling, She likes to think she has a good grasp of character – she trusts the word of her friends but conversely doubts the words of her enemy. Despite the fact that she can come off as “insensitive” because of her rough-around-the-edges personality, this is largely untrue; she is highly emotionally driven, trusting these emotions as “gut instinct” that have served her well.

FAMILY:

Brackentail; father; deceased Tansystripe; mother; deceased
Cedarfur; brother; warrior Barkwhisker; brother; warrior

HISTORY:

Brackentail and Tansystripe were as eager as any young couple to welcome their first litter to the world. It was a good time for the clan; the fresh-kill was aplenty, and if the temperature of NewLeaf was any indication they were in for the mildest of summers. It was a good time to raise kits, to be a mother.

However, there were…. Complications. The first kit, a large brown tom named Barkkit, was brought into the world with little complication. Soon, however, Tansystripe began to falter. The medicine cat was called over immediately to help the young queen, With the help of the medicine cat, Tansystripe shortly after delivered her second kit, a lighter brown tom dubbed Cedarkit. Tansystripe’s contractions did not stop, however, yet it seemed like her body might give out on her at any moment. Her labor stretched an uncomfortably long time, the queen clearly in agony. Tansystripe died shortly after delivering the final kit, a clear runt. Brackentail tentatively named the small she-cat Littlekit, though the medicine cat warned him that she would probably not last.

But survive Littlekit did, even when her surrogate mother had the burden of feeding not only her own two kits, but the three orphaned kittens. This surrogate mother, Hollywhisker, had Littlekit’s interests at heart, however; she always made sure the runt got something to eat and was not pushed around by even her own kits. Littlekit’s condition stabilized quickly, and she was playing with the other kits at the same time her brothers began.

Kits could be unknowingly cruel in their innocence, however, and several of the other kits in the den never missed on opportunity to point out her smallness, however. Perhaps Littlekit may have grown up to be a meek and mild creature had she not had the support of her two brothers; the trio had a healthy sense of solidarity without their queen mother to look out for them, and her brothers – healthy, even larger than average – were quick to put an insolent kit in their place.

That didn’t mean Littlekit liked to sit back and allow her brothers to protect her, however. In fact, she was all but antagonistic to them when she saw them trying to shelter her. She wanted to playfight constantly, but from her ferocity and the leftover sting of her accidentally unsheathed claws, it was sometimes hard to remember that they were just “playing.”

Littlekit soon became Littlepaw and was apprenticed to a senior warrior named Bluefang. If Littlepaw had excepted any of the infuriating babying from her new mentor, her assumption was very quickly corrected. Buefang prided herself on having mentored four apprentices with Littlepaw being her fifth and last before her retreat to the elder’s den; she wasn’t about to have the last little spitfire put a mark on her record.

So Bluefang held Littlepaw to the highest standard, and Littlepaw struggled to reach it, cursing and complaining and insulting all the while. Bluefang took Littlepaw out to the moors of what was WindClan to “patrol,” only to take off and force the apprentice to sprint to follow on her short legs. They practiced fishing in the rivers of RiverClan, yet Littlepaw found herself so stretched to reach for the larger fish in the middle of the stream that she fell in the water from overbalance as often as she managed to catch anything. Bluefang preferred to do battle training one-on-one; instead of sparring with other apprentices who were at least comparable in size, Littlepaw squared off against her mentor and consequently tried futilely to escape from underneath one of the big Russian blue’s paws pressed lazily to her chest. It was shaming; it was cruel. Littlepaw never lost her intensity, despite her continuous failures; if anything, her yowling complaints only grew louder as her resolve grew stronger. Bluefang, seeing the frankly bullheadedness of Littlepaw to succeed, in turn did not reduce the intensity of their training.

So Littlepaw learned to cheat. She learned to nimbly duck and dodge the bumbling big paws of her mentor, diving even underneath the older she-cat to trip her mentor into a tangled heap. She learned to fish not from the shores, but by pointing herself straight as an arrow, gaining a fearlessness for water as she dove towards the middle of the water to catch the larger prey. Her small size made it easy to duck and dance between the thick foliage of the ThunderClan and ShadowClan territories, and in these obstacle-filled areas it was she who was giving Bluefang a run for her money. Over the six moons of her apprenticeship, she grew tremendously because she simply had no choice; Bluefang, seeing the inner strength of Littlepaw, pushed her to the limit, demanding improvisation. By the end of six months, she did not hunt like a large cat, nor fight like a large cat, but could she ever hunt and fight.

The day of her Warrior ceremony, Littlepaw and Bluefang were spending one final hunt together as mentor and apprentice in what was once ThunderClan territory. They had been keeping a wide berth to the loud yowls of two-legs in the forest, but the prey was bountiful and they would bring home a good load for the clan to feast on as celebration for Littlepaw’s ascent to warrior-hood. However, a terrifying and alarming scent soon hit them, accompanied by the growls and booming bark of a large dog. The thick band around his neck marked him as belonging to the two-legs that had tried to stay clear of; somehow, the two-leg pet must have escaped. Pet or no, the dog bolted towards them the moment he caught their scent. His approach too imminent to scramble up a tree, mentor and apprentice grimly faced the hound as he bounded forward, jaws parted and eyes wild.

Mentor and apprentice fought side by side. Bluefang threw herself onto the dog’s back, causing it to desperately try to buck the she-cat while Littlepaw raked her claws along the dog’s legs and belly from underneath it, Littlepaw was then the distraction, dancing around the dog and daring to give only the smallest bite or scratch to keep the creature’s attention averted before Bluefang brought her huge claws along it flank. While distracting the dog, Littlepaw was too slow and got a chunk taken out of her ear for the carelessness. Just when the battle seemed to be going in their favor, Littlepaw tried to rake the dog’s chest from below only to find a massive paw on her chest again, having only a moment to struggle weakly before the dog dove for her throat. Bluefang was there an instant later, using the lowered position of the canine’s head to tear viciously at its eyes. The dog, finally having had enough, released his grip and scampered away, howling in pain.

Though both cats were bruised and bloody, none of their injuries had been life threatening. The dog had barely managed to sink his jaws into flesh before the other feline had caused him pain, forcing him to change his target. They returned to camp, their half-a-hunting-trip clutched in their jaws.

That evening, Littlepaw insisted on going through with her warrior ceremony. With a nip missing from her ear and blood staining the fur of her throat a magnificent red, Littlepaw smiled cockily up at Badgerstar as he granted her her warrior name: Littlestorm.

Since then, Littlestorm has mentored two of her own apprentices: Stormpaw (now Stormclaw) and Sedgepaw (now Sedgetail). She mentored them with the same brutal affection as Bluefang mentored her, and was always sure to send them over to the elder’s den to present her mentor with the most choice bits of the day’s prey...

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