[ti]Private[/ti]Gently Down the Stream

[Fireflake]

Pebbleshade padded through the woods, weaving into the evening shadows whenever possible, and as long as doing so didn’t make him look like a panicked mouse trying to find an escape route. He stopped in front of a particularly large tree. This is a good place, he decided. It was closer to IvyClan’s border than he would have liked, but maybe it was good to be active around that border now that they were the only clan not right under MistClan’s noses. Pebbleshade glanced at Foxeyes in an effort to gauge his opinion.

They grey warrior himself was mildly pleased he'd even managed to get Foxeyes to train out in the woods with him, where he could be under the cover of the trees. There was a perfectly good field not far away, but Pebbleshade had never felt very comfortable out in the open like that, and especially not now that the heat of Greenleaf had turned quite literally scorching hot. His fur bristled at the thought of the fire and the clouds of smoke that had gathered in the sky. Cats had been streaming into MistClan's camp like...

Pebbleshade tried to suppress a shiver. The thought of the flood haunted him in his sleep already, so there was no point thinking of it even when he was avoiding his nest. There were far too many bad memories clogging up his head now. Still, he couldn't help it. Disasters melded into each other in his mind. The dead Tribe cat landed by MistClan's camp, the Tribe came to the Gathering, RootClan came to the Gathering, camp was flooded, RootClan came to MistClan's camp...

It felt like life was dragging him along for a ride, carrying him down some path he didn't recognize and didn't want to be on, so this was a way of seizing some control. Some might have called it hiding, with his repeated attempts to avoid MistClan’s camp and the strangers that had been filling it, but Pebbleshade didn’t think of it that way. At least, he didn’t like to. He didn’t like to think too hard about anything these days. The warrior crouched halfway to the ground. "Ready?" he asked, trying to shake the bad mood as he braced himself for an attack, just in case Foxeyes didn't feel like giving verbal confirmation first.

[mewmehh]

Foxeyes had followed Pebbleshade aimlessly, feeling just as uncomfortable as his mentor with having Rootclan and Mothclan in their camp. Honestly, it annoyed the young warrior to no end. Against the rules his clan so cherishes and supremely stupid. Now if either of them ever decided to attack, they knew exactly where to go!! Cursing under his breath, he barely paid attention to the older tom swimming through his own thoughts.

However, at the gray warrior's first breath, Foxeyes zig-zagged forward and slammed directly into Pebblestream's chest just as he finished speaking. The rufoused warrior's muscles were lean and tight as they rippled beneath his sleek pelt from the clash. Foxeyes' gaze was level and his breathing was slow. Deliberate. He moved in a graceful, but meaningful manner as he strafed left and ducked to nip at Pebbleshade's underbelly in one flawless move. It appeared to be a technique beyond Mistclan's classic teachings.

[Fireflake]

Pebbleshade felt the air sharply knocked out of him before he could take another breath. His defenses would have held up fine to a direct attack, but Foxeyes' zig-zagging had left him unsure where to throw his weight, so that the blow itself left him swaying. Swaying, but at least not on the ground. He'd hardly had time to recover before the Foxeyes' teeth were at his belly. This was almost an advantage when he hopped to the side, away from the other tom's bite, though he suspected it would have sent a less cautious cat rolling onto their back.

Pebbleshade was somewhat distracted by the move itself, though. A quizzical look flickered across his face as he responded by sending out a forceful forepaw to hopefully collide with Foxeyes' head. Truth be told, it was more of an instinctive move than a carefully planned one. Pebbleshade seemed to lack the confidence to do much more than follow his reflexes and the basic counters that everyone knew. Granted, he'd always been better at responding to an attack in a fight than at launching his own, but that mostly applied to the conventional ones he'd been trained to expect. "Haven't seen that one before," he commented, fully expecting to be interrupted this time.