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| - S U R V I V O R S 🍁 episode 7 To say the Trackers weren't happy would be a massive understatement. First, Iris, dead at Waller's Trench. Now Blake, killed by Union soldiers after being hunted down in the marsh. And the other four cadets in terrible shape, cut up and looking like someone had injected pure fear into their veins, eyes haunted. Casper sat in the leader's den, carved into the highest spire of Mudpoint's arrow-shaped towers of rock, and contemplated throwing himself off the top. He had set the time of the meeting for sunset, figuring that would be plenty of time for him to come up with an acceptable speech to give to the Trackers. It was now an hour till sunset, and he still had nothing. "Knock, knock." Hyacinth's voice made him jump. "Why do you bother? You're already here, you always barge in whenever you please," he said. She winked at him. "I try to be as polite as possible." He frowned at her. "That is one of the most blatant lies I've ever heard. Are you here to help me, or to distract me?" "Cheer you up, maybe. Your face is sadder than a crushed bug." He crinkled his nose at the analogy, but the truth was, Hyacinth's presence was enough to cheer him up. A tiny bit. It still didn't magically give him a speech, though. "Okay, how is this: Dear Trackers, this is your leader speaking. I'm sorry about Iris and Blake. But frankly, I still have nightmares about Waller's Trench and seeing Iris gutted on the ground, so could you quit your whining, because apart from Terrence, Finn, and Hyacinth, none of you were actually there, you whiny, annoying pack of babies?" She tilted her head to the side. "It's exactly what I would say if I were leader." He groaned. "So in short, completely rude, unhelpful, and obnoxious." "Yeah, and insensitive," she added. "Plus you said variations of the word 'whine' twice, which is just tacky." He gazed out the gap in the rock wall of his cave, through which he could see the grassy area surrounding Mudpoint, and in the distance, the bleak sands of Bone-place. The idle chatter of his compatriots drifted up to him. Well, perhaps not idle; voices were a lot tenser than they usually were, and the absence of high-pitched laughter and squealing told him that the cadets were still gathered around Blake's freshly-dug grave. He felt a pang of deep sorrow for the Trackers. He'd never thought about being a father--never been able to picture having a mate, settling down, being the kind of tom who was reliable and steady and worthy of that kind of love--but he imagined that this deep-seated protective instinct was similar to what fathers felt for their kits. Iris's death, Blake's death... Even after everything he'd seen, it was the death of his own Trackers that buried in his heart like the sharp end of a claw-sheath. "I never wanted to fight in a war." "Fighting in a war is easy. You don't have to bear any guilt: it's just live or die. Dying is kind of easy, isn't it? It's the living part we have to worry about, yet for some reason people insist on focusing on death. Having any sort of power in a war, deciding who lives and who dies..." Hyacinth gave a long whistle. "I don't envy you." "How helpful." "You're welcome." "I miss the days before the war." Like he'd had no problems before the war. His parents, the Raids, Maverick... "We weren't even best friends then, though. Your life was nothing before me," she said smugly. He glared at her. "Technically, I didn't have a life before you--wait, that came out wrong. I mean, we were kits at the same time, we've grown up together." "Yeah, but we haven't been best friends for as long." That much was true. Before he'd gotten separated from the Trackers and stayed at Drurray Way, he and Hyacinth rarely talked on their own. Mostly--though he had never admitted this to her--because he used to have an immense crush on her when he was little, and his tongue would tie itself in knots whenever she was in the vicinity. He could hardly be blamed; Hyacinth had always been beautiful, skipping right over that awkward, gawky phase that most cats go through during adolescence. If he told her that, she might explode from the size of her ego, so he kept it to himself. He'd gotten over his infatuation, sort of how you got over a rose when you cut yourself on one of its thorns, but it wasn't until after Drurray Way that they had really gotten to know each other. They were brought together by their mutual hatred of Maverick, and their refusal to comply with his more brutal requests. Also, he had stopped Hyacinth from talking back to Maverick one too many times and getting herself killed. And then in return, she'd helped him kill Maverick himself. It was the sort of thing that made you best friends, no matter what. He remembered the fight in flashes; the struggle, the taste of dirt in his mouth, Hyacinth shouting his name. Being pinned and then pinning, losing and then winning. The look in Maverick's eyes--not betrayal, exactly, but a quiet sort of surprise. You, Casper? To betray someone is a betrayal of your own heart. Be careful as to which way you point your daggers. The last words Maverick said to him, before Casper buried his claw-sheath deep into his chest. Maverick. He was reminded of the Trackers' old leader at the strangest times. On his darkest days, in his moments of doubt, the dead tom's voice seemed to whisper in his ear. Dark truths, sinister suggestions. Bringing up what he'd done to get where he was, and what he might have to do to stay there. What most cats didn't know, or conveniently decided to forget, was that Casper and Maverick used to be... close. Until that little problem where Casper had killed him. Maverick had been a mentor to him. Cruel, yes. Always relentlessly pushing for more. There was no soft place to turn when you were with Maverick, and never had Casper better realized how essential vulnerability was in getting to know a cat then when he was with Maverick, who was impermeable. But that was what had made him a good leader, a good guide, too. Casper was the cat who was closest to him for a long time, his right hand. Yet there had always been that distance, unbridgable, evident in the coldness of Maverick's eyes. It was what made it easier to kill him. "Casper?" Hyacinth said. "You'd better get out there." "Hyacinth, do you ever think I can't do it?" "Do I ever think you can't do it? What, do you think I spend all my time thinking about you?" He gave her a dry look. "Very funny. I'm being serious." "So am I. Listen, no one cars if you can do it or not. They just care that you do it." "The sun's setting. Like you said, I should probably get out there." His paws felt leaden, as if someone had shackled him to two-ton weights. She moved to block his path. "Do you know what you're going to say?" "Yes. I'm going to say that I quit. Then I'm going to throw myself off the top of Mudpoint while yelling like a banshee." Hyacinth raised one eyebrow. "You and your flair for the dramatic." "You know me so well." "In any case, too late for that. You should've let me kill Maverick. Let me be the leader of the Trackers. But you didn't. You know why?" He hesitated. Was this a trick question? Hyacinth was skilled beyond belief, there was no denying that, but as for her leading the Trackers-- "Because there'd be nothing left of us if I did. Casper, I'm amazing--" "Oh, for the love of--" "--but I'm not you," she finished. "You know you're a much better fighter than me--" "Yes, that's true," she agreed immediately. "And better-looking, less socially awkward, more charming, et cetera. But that's not the point. The point is that you are leader of the Trackers because you're the only one who can be. Other cats love to point out that you're young, or inexperienced, or anything else they can convince themselves is a problem with you. But you were born to be a leader. Leadership is the worst thing in the world, you know. Worse than being a Redscout, worse than being a Renegade living on Isle Moormount. The world is full of followers, and the worst part is, they're hardly even capable of following. They gripe, complain, whine, criticize, and pretend they could do better." He couldn't help but jibe, "Sounds a little like you." "Oh, shut up. The point is, they could not, even for a second, hold the weight of the world on their shoulders. That's why you've got to do it. The only alternative is letting it crush them." She gestured to the opening of his den. "Look at them. They're annoying, sure, and they blame you for things you couldn't have helped. But you love them. You wouldn't let the world press them to the ground." He swallowed. "No." "So? Go out there and do what you've always done. Be a hero." Not a hero. He wasn't a hero, not by a long shot. But he saw what she was saying. "Thank you." * * * "Are you a criminal?" asked Merry. She and Sunny were nestled together in the corner of one of Drurray Way's many chambers, watching Larksong with meditative eyes. Larksong had spent the entire day with them, trying to gauge how traumatized they were by what they'd witnessed: the death of a young Tracker cadet, Blake. She was rather uneasy about what she'd observed so far. They hardly seemed bothered. No, that wasn't quite right. She was just looking for the wrong things. She expected tears, hysterics, but instead she was met with stone-cold faces and eyes like burning coals. Sunny was quiet and withdrawn, staring off at nothing in particular for far too long. Merry, on the other hand, was unsteady and passionate, her words coming in hot bursts of fire, her eyes restless and roving. Mumbles, who hadn't been with them when they'd left Drurray Way, was sitting distinctly apart, looking forlorn, clearly wanting to help his sister and Sunny, but confused as to what had happened. "I feel like it's my fault," Larksong said quietly. Merry cast her a sharp glance. "We knew you'd say that. Don't. It wasn't. We went looking for you, but that was our choice. And the cadets had nothing to do with you at all. Every single one of us was wandering through the marsh out of our own volition. This was all on us." That, Larksong realized, was exactly it. For the first time, these two cats were facing the full consequences of their actions. How in this twisted world, even the most innocent ideas could spawn darkness quicker than roaches bred under rocks. She thought of the Massacre. Her parents, dead. Her brother, dead. She thought of the merciless torture Panther had subjected her to. Life had been bitterly cruel to her. She could curl up under the dirt and never raise her head again. But she knew that would be unforgivable--in her own eyes. She wanted to tell what she'd learned to Sunny and Merry: getting knocked down was one thing. You could always get back up. If you lowered yourself, that was when there was no going back. You took hits, you crumbled and broke--but you never surrendered. Yet she knew it was something they would have to learn on their own. She excused herself, leaving the two she-cats with Mumbles in the hopes that they would feel more comfortable opening up to him without her. She found Tildie out in the hall, mixing a poultice of sharp-smelling herbs. "What's that for?" "A poultice for Captain Briggs's muscles. I don't know if they hurt anywhere near as bad as his complains warrant, but I figure the best way to shut him up is to fuss over him. You know how toms are." Whiskers twitching, Larksong said, "Certainly. I'll leave you to it, then." "Are you all right? What did the Council want?" Shifting uncomfortably, Larksong mumbled, "General Leopardfur thinks I'm a traitor." Incredulous, Tildie said, "You can't be serious. Where does she think you've been for a year, on vacation?" "Plotting with Lord Vector, maybe." She shrugged. "Not being held captive?" Tildie's eyes flashed dangerously, out of place in the rest of her kindly, wrinkled face. "Ozzie's promised to tell me if he sees them coming. He can't risk his position and do anything else, but I'll get out of here as soon as he raises a warning. I won't have the Council police storming in here again." "Nonsense! We're here to protect you. We're your family, Larksong." We go into battle together. We're your family, Larksong. Images blurred in her mind's eye: her father, claw-sheath glinting in the darkness of Drurray Way's tunnels, her mother, her face beautiful as carved marble as she prepared to fight. To go forward, she would have to go backward first. The day her family had been betrayed, the day she'd been taken, the day hell's door had fallen open beneath her and sent her freefalling into the descent. It was true. She regretted it deeply, but... it was what she'd heard all her life. Brackenface disliked RockClan and LightClan cats (except Cherryclaw) but he absolutely hated non-Clan cats--Negoui, Redscouts, Trackers, and anyone else who wasn't planning on being a warrior. Worst of all, she hadn't really questioned her father's prejudice until Drurray Way, hadn't even realized how poisonous his hatred was. She stifled a cringe as she thought of her old self--a snobbish, priviliged little brat who didn't understand the first thing about the real world. But she was no longer a kit. The cats she'd befriended at Drurray Way, from gray-muzzled Captain Briggs to teeny tiny Mumbles and Merry, were as much her family as Brackenface and Cherryclaw, and she wanted to fight to defend them as well as her Clan. Clans. Whatever. "The message." Eagleclaw pointed towards something on the wall, a series of scratches. Shooting him a glare, Eagleclaw said, "It is obviously a bird." Larksong's eyes flew open. She was sprawled on the hallway floor of Drurray Way, ears ringing as if the force of her flashback had torn a path through her brain and knocked her over. The tunnel was silent; the rest of the inhabitants must have gone to sleep already. What had she been doing? A symbol burned against the insides of her eyelids. Diagonal scratches, wings... a head, a body... She had seen it. In the cave where she'd been held. She remembered Panther's voice, on a day the she-cat had gotten particularly angry with her. The guards had come in and thrown her to the floor, but before the door closed behind them, the light it let in had fallen on something on the wall. It hadn't struck a chord then, because she'd been a little busy screaming from pain, but it had embedded itself in her subconscious, and now it rose to the surface like driftwood bobbing to the waterline of a clear blue lake. The marks, unmistakable, distinct, carved into the dirt walls of her prison. What would Eagleclaw's symbol, the bird, be doing in a torture chamber? She remembered what she'd told Casper, that she'd heard her brother's voice during her exile. That he'd kept her alive, the notion that she might have some family left putting fire in her cut-up veins. Maybe she wasn't wrong. Casper had said Eagleclaw was dead, but he hadn't seen it happen. Eagleclaw was alive. He had to be; she needed to believe it. And she had to find him. * * * "That was a good speech," Casper congratulated himself. "Only ninety-percent of cats were giving you death glares, and some of them stopped halfway through." He was still a long way from soothing and reassuring his Trackers, he knew that. But he had to start somewhere; to knit them back together, he had to make them realize that they needed each other. He was ambling along a fair distance from Mudpoint; he'd asked Hyacinth to come on a walk with him, but she had point-blank refused to get out of her nest. Ordinarly he didn't mind being alone, but right now he had a distinct feeling of being watched. He stopped walking. "Hyacinth? Is that you?" Pawsteps. Gaining momentum behind him. He whirled, but was knocked to the ground before he could see who it was. A foul-smelling leaf was pressed over his nose. "Your days are over, Casper of the Trackers," a husky voice breathed in his ear. He struggled furiously, though already it felt like a fog of delirium and discord was descending over his brain. "Who are you? Why are you doing this?" There was no answer, only the call of soft earth as he fell face-forward onto it, blackness claiming his vision.
- Treachery is an action card found in the Tycho Deck of the Penny Arcade CCG.
- Treachery is the 324th chapter of Akira Amano's Katekyō Hitman Reborn!
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