A Willow Tries to Wrestle the Moon [Closed for Training]

Willowpaw grumpily washed his pelt with his tongue, grimacing as he tasted mouse bile from this morning's fantastic episode of pulling ticks off of the elders' pelts. His paws ached from one particularly nasty thorn that had snagged into crevices of the now cracked pad- the elder's bedding had been unforgiving on the gray and black-striped apprentice more than ever. The coltsfoot Rabbitfoot had put on his wound stuck uncomfortably and only seemed to worsen his mood.

As he licked his wounds, he fervently wished for the good-old days of being a kit. Back then, no one made him clean anyone's bedding. Back then, he sneaked out of camp whenever he wanted to from his secret way out. But then Rosepaw, his annoying sister, had to rat it out to everyone she met and go all, "Oh look, it's my brother's secret escape route! Isn't this great, now the one time he was actually trying to be nice doesn't matter at all!" Plus, then she had the gall to disappear after pulling that stunt. Yeah sure, their father Rippedsky was still mouse-brianed enough to make him an apprentice somehow after a moon or two of punishment, but now it felt like the punishment was never over.

Sitting in the clearing, Willowpaw waited for his mentor to appear. He only had once chance to make one good out of becoming an apprentice. If there was anything he was set on doing, it was to be so awful that Moonlight would be too scared, intimidated, or annoyed to  keep him in check. He was not going to have two Rippedskys throwing him around.

In all honesty, Moonlight wasn’t that used to deal with though apprentices, so even if she had an idea of what she was going to be facing according to what Rippedsky had told her when she was assigned as Willowpaw’s mentor, she would be lying if she said she knew she was prepared for it, It was almost clear that her usual method of training wouldn’t work this time, so this was going to learn from this just as much as she hoped Willowpaw was going to learn from her.

Moonlight approached her apprentice with a calm smile and steps full of the confidence that only those warriors who had been involved in fairly important and even crucial battles had. She was just as determined to find a way to turn Willowpaw into a respectable warrior someday as he was to try to spoil her training to let him be free, so it was going to be quite the competition between the two to see who achieved their goal first “Greetings Willowpaw, are you ready to start your warrior training?”.

Willowpaw turned to give a nice scathing retort, but stopped short at the aura of importance and confidence shining around his mentor. The ugly words he had in mind stewed in his throat, yet refused to come out. His instincts screamed at him that she wasn't someone easy to mess with. The gray and black-striped apprentice's blue eyes narrowed slightly as he profiled her before relaxing, making the quick decision to play it carefully.

"What are we doing?" He fished for something to be irritable at.

Moonlight chuckled softly, barely noticing the real intentions that the apprentice had behind his question, and if she did she simply shrugged it off “Today I’ll teach you the basics that every clan cat must know if they ever wish to become a warrior. However, I’ll leave up to you what you want to learn first, battling or hunting. Think about it while we reach area I choose fur our training session today” As she said the last words she got up and made him a quick signal with her tail for him to follow as she walked out of camp. She took a couple steps away from the camp entrance before turning back to see if Willowpaw was following her or not, after all, she had guessed she would need to keep her guard high and be ready for nearly anything after the warning the deputy had given to her after assigning Willowpaw as her apprentice.

(OOC: Sorry for taking so long, I just got back from vacation! I'll be on much more now:3)

Willowpaw didn't want to, but he reluctantly padded a few fox-tails behind Moonlight out of camp into the forest. She was too calm for him to deal with ease, even calmer than his father. The she-cat had left him little safe options, nothing easy to verbally prod at with his razor-sharp tongue. If Willowpaw was going to get this cat to do what he wanted, he probably would have to get much, much more annoying.

"What if I don't want to be a warrior?" Willowpaw asked, "I'm not a mouse-brained kit that thinks that being a warrior is all sunshine and rainbows," he snorts.

Moonlight raised her ears, rather surprised by Willowpaw’s words. This was the first time she ever heard of someone not wanting to become a warrior. However, she allowed the apprentice to finish speaking before finally stopping dead on her tracks and turning around to face him, a calm loo on her face “You’re right, Willowpaw. Being a warrior is not all sunshine and rainbows” She started with a calm, yet understanding voice “By taking the path of a warrior you’re not only walking a path of glory and victories, but also one plagued of sadness, loss and pain” She lowered her head, eyes grazing at the ground before her “I had lost a lot of loved ones and friends in this path, sometimes even watching them bleeding to death in the battleground without being able to do anything to help or even comfort them on their last moments before joining StarClan, seen warriors having to be carried to camp because a wound they got is so serious that it may cripple them for life…I have seen and experienced so many things that I wish you never ever have to go through, more things than your father himself, Willowpaw” She allowed some seconds to pass by so her words could be fully processed by the apprentice.

She took a deep breath before raising her head, a serious expression with the eyes of a cat that had seen so many things an apprentice like Willowpaw couldn’t even try to understand or imagine “If you don’t want to be a warrior, you can try the medicine cat path, but if you simply don’t want to because you decided that you don’t feel like helping your clan, then shame on you!” Her voice had turned dead serious, just like her expression “The path of a warrior is hard, yes, but you’ll find out sooner than later that without their warriors a clan is doomed. Without warriors to hunt, we all would starve to death. Without warriors to protect us, rival clans or predators would be able to invade our territory and kick us out, leaving us homeless, or worse, kill us”.

To his complete annoyance, Willowpaw realized he bit more than he could chew as soon as Moonlight stopped and turned at give him a response he just...couldn't retort against. She wasn't just another Rippedsky- she was worse. The senior warrior knew exactly what to say to make him look horrible. The grumpy apprentice felt her words pierce through his facade, feeling a heaviness in the pit of his stomach that he hated right away. He was not going to let her make him feel guilty.

He had to look away, eyes facing with frustration towards the trees. "I know that," he grumbled, "Can we just go already?"

Moonlight serious expression returned to her soft smile as she stood up with her apprentice’s words, turning around and making the same signal for him to follow her as she resumed walking towards the chosen area, which luckily wasn’t that far from where they had stopped to have a small talk. She could easily tell that training this apprentice wasn’t going to be as easy as she would’ve expected, so she was going to need to keep her guard as high as possible and be ready for whatever he could potentially throw at him.

“Did you think about the kind of training you would wish to have first like I asked you, Willowpaw?” Once they had reached the small clearing she turned around. Waiting for her apprentice’s decision.

Willowpaw didn't like that smile that crossed her face after he said what he said. 'You haven't won yet,' the old apprentice thought angrily, 'That wasn't me giving up you mouse-brain.' His paws prickled with irritation as he followed Moonlight's annoyingly totally-cocky tail flick. As they walked in tense silence, Willowpaw wanted nothing more than to cuff the senior warrior around the ears. He wasn't below her, and today he was going to prove that.

When Moonlight stopped in a clearing, Willowpaw went to stand a few fox-tails away from her. And no, he wasn't intimidated. He listened to her question with a scowl. She was treating him like a kit. "I remember," he spitted sharply with blue eyes flashing, "And you're the mentor, aren't you supposed to figure that out yourself?"

Moonlight raised an eyebrow at his rude question. However, she once more allowed the rudeness to slide and focused only on the question that the apprentice had made “While I’m your mentor you must remember that this I our first time together. There are kind-hearted cats that desire to learn how to hunt before fighting, brave warrior that want to learn how to fight those that dare to threaten their clan, or even explorers whose wish is to know every blade of grass, tree and rock that their territory may have. How do you expect me to know which one of these you are, especially when you work so hard to not let me get to know you?” She titled her head as she sat down, curling her tail over her front paws as she waited for her apprentice’s answer once more.

Her intention wasn’t to make him feel like she was an enemy he had to defeat, or a rival he had to overcome. However it was proving to be a task harder than she anticipated, as he appeared to have already forced that role upon her without granting her a chance to do anything about it. Maybe, just maybe, one day she would be able to understand his position or at least the reasons behind it.

Willowpaw felt like he was forced into a corner by her logical response, nothing he was throwing her way working to keep her out of his head. She just didn't get it, did she? There was no way Willowpaw was going to let any cat tell him what to do or how to act. He couldn't let her do this, he couldn't let her just be rational and miss the entire point-

Frustration rose to dangerous levels in his heart. With it unleashed things that the apprentice only wanted to forget. The image of his father looking down at him with disappointment forced its way to the front of his very reluctant mind. It made him conjure up thoughts about his siblings, forcing him to shudder through bile-dripping words about how most of them were warriors already, Bubblemist's kits rising into his conscious, realizing with a painful jolt that his sister even had her first litter-

'No,' Willowpaw retaliated against himself. He had to stop. 'You're not going to let them make you feel bad.' He was fine. They were wrong, wrong about him, wrong about everything. No one understood him, the apprentice that should've been a warrior ages ago-

He was finished letting his mentor get into his head.

"You want me to decide?" Willowpaw's blue eyes hardened, nerve struck. "Is this a joke? I don't have a choice. How can you expect to get to know me if you can't-" The old apprentice stopped himself with exhale of frustration. "You know what, forget it. Just let me hunt."

Moonlight tilted her head at Willowpaw’s reply. She was trying really hard to understand this tom, she really was, but when she thought she had finally placed a piece of the puzzle on its place five more popped up out of nowhere and she had no idea of where she was supposed to put them.

“There are always choices you can make, you simply still don’t know where to look to find them” As the apprentice finally settled down with the idea of hunting she nodded calmly, stepping back to give him some space “Show me your basic hunting crouch, unless you still don’t know how to perform one?” In all honesty she wouldn’t be surprised with either answer. Some kits were curious by nature and would pick up bits of info of clanmates around them, or even just naturally talented, but at the same time not all kits were that way and needed a step-by-step guidance to learn how to perform certain actions from the very beginning.

All the time she kept her eyes on the apprentice, though her inquisitive gaze never turned into a stare. She was simply a bit confused with how he acted and the half-finished sentence he had thrown at her didn’t do much to make her situation any easier. The only reason she refused to show this right away was because of Rippedsky’s warning towards his son, as she still wasn’t sure if she could drop the strict method she decided to use on him without any kind of negative repercussion.