TW: Death Closed BET YOU THINK YOU'RE SO COOL // monster & battle

[COLT.]

The chaos roils around it. It's teeth, not yet stained with the blood of another, snap towards anything that gets too close. Its eyes, green like poison, hold position to every moving body that lunges and cries. Its child whines by its legs, remaining in the protective housing that is its strong stature. A parent; a parent is what it is. One who would damn itself and drown in blood to ensure its lonely, plucky little child survives. It will do everything necessary to ensure its daughter thrives.

Perhaps its a push and a shove, perhaps its intentional. Colt grimaces as a force barrels towards it, its sheltered daughter, and it reacts. Paws, big and calloused and useless with lost claws, thrum against the crown of its attacker, and it launches away from its prize, following the flow of the battle.

[ @monster ]

 

[MONSTERGROWL]

Monster watches Colt with a predator's precision, his sharp amber eyes dissecting the parent's every move. The protective stance, the way Colt positions itself as a barrier between the child and the world's violence—it speaks volumes. To Monster, it is both a strength and a glaring vulnerability. His mind, always calculating, churns through possibilities. He doesn't fight for brutality's sake; he fights for Hawthorne's cause, for the vision of control and order that this chaos must ultimately serve. The battle churns around him like a living, snarling beast, but Monster moves through it with unsettling purpose. The moment Colt strikes back, a paw slamming against his head, he stumbles but doesn't falter. Pain blossoms, sharp and immediate, but Monster has learned to wield pain as a tool rather than succumb to it. His lips curl back into a cold, humorless grin.

Colt launches away, retreating instinctively with its child pressed close. Monster follows, his movements fluid and deliberate, a shadow clinging to the edges of the melee. He doesn't rush—he doesn't need to. Patience is a weapon as sharp as claws, and Monster wields it masterfully. "You're brave," he mutters under his breath, his voice low and steady, words drowned out by the din of the fight around them. It's not a compliment, not really. Brave doesn't matter. Smart matters. Ruthless matters. Brave gets you killed. He circles Colt, studying the rhythm of its movements, the instinctive shifts of its body to shield the child. A parent's love—a force as fierce as it is fragile. Monster knows something like it well enough, though he would never admit it aloud. That buried part of him—the part that knows what it means to protect something with your entire being—tries to claw its way to the surface. He crushes it without hesitation.

Colt's desperation is palpable, a fire that burns bright and reckless. It fights with everything it has, but its strength is uneven, its strikes wild and poorly aimed. Monster sees the cracks in its defense as clearly as he sees the bloodstained ground beneath their paws. Every lunge, every misstep, is another thread unraveling. He lunges forward, testing Colt with a sharp feint to the left, in a move to force it to overcommit its weight. His claws swing to rake across its shoulder—not a killing blow, but enough to stagger and weaken. The child lets out a sharp whine, and for a moment, Monster's gaze flickers toward it. A fleeting hesitation, gone as quickly as it came. "This isn't personal," he says, his voice cold as steel. It's a lie. Everything in this battle feels personal, from the weight of his own cause to the blood that will inevitably stain his paws.

 

[COLT.]

It slicks blood off of its shoulder, the gash of skin and fur stolen from them now stinging with indomitable pain. Eyes focus to the beast attempting to poach its littleling, to steal life from it and force the child to watch as it bleeds out. "This isn't personal," he says, and in a rare moment of verbal reply, it responds: "You've made it this way."

Those who follow Hawthorne, who do not see that his weakness is what drives prey from the forest - that their multitudes of hungry maws do no good for the land they inhabit. Run or die. Those are the only options, and Colt has already subscribed to one to lend a fate better to its child. Filly bleats like a fallen lamb behind it, crying for another body crumples nearby, blood spraying from wounds. Colt turns, looking down at its weak, spindly legged child - it does not realize how close Monster has approached in the moment.

 

[MONSTERGROWL]

Monster sees the opening the second Colt glances back. It is instinct more than calculation now—a rare moment where strategy dissolves into something more primal. He moves without hesitation, his body a swift, decisive force as he lunges. Colt barely has time to turn before Monster is upon it. His claws sink deep into the already wounded shoulder, dragging Colt down with a brutal, unrelenting force. Its body jerks, muscles straining in desperate resistance, but Monster's weight crushes against it, pinning it beneath him. The fight is already slipping from Colt's grasp, and they both know it.

The child wails behind them, high and trembling, but Monster doesn't allow the sound to shake his focus. He locks eyes with Colt, green meeting fiery amber, and for a moment, there is something almost like understanding between them. A warrior's acceptance. A parent's final realization. Colt struggles, but the strength is waning, the blood loss stealing its ferocity. Monster does not speak this time. No taunts, no final words to mark this moment. Just action. Just the swift, necessary motion of his fangs sinking into Colt's throat. The resistance is weak at first, then frantic for a few agonizing seconds—muscles tensing, paws scrabbling at his sides, a final, instinctive fight for survival. Then it fades. Colt stills beneath him, the breath rattling in its throat before stopping altogether.

Monster exhales sharply, his grip loosening only once he is certain there is no life left in Colt's body. He steps back, letting the body slump to the dirt, its eyes dulling, its protective stance permanently broken. The battle still rages around him, but in this moment, it feels distant. His gaze flicks toward the child—Filly—who stands frozen, her small frame trembling, her eyes locked on the unmoving corpse of her parent. Monster doesn't move at first, his gaze locked on the kit as she lets out a muffled, broken sob. For a fleeting moment, he feels something unfamiliar twist in his chest, a sensation so sharp and foreign it almost startles him. It isn't regret—no, he doesn't regret killing Colt. The other had posed a threat, to ThunderClan and to him personally. Elimination was a calculated, necessary move. But this—this—he hadn't accounted for.

The kit's cries cut through the cold logic of his thoughts, piercing and unrelenting. Her grief is palpable, a raw wound laid bare before him. He steps closer, the blood still wet on his muzzle glinting in the dim light, and she flinches, shrinking back against the roots of a nearby tree. Her small frame is curled defensively, her body language screaming fear and vulnerability. Monster stops, his paw hovering mid-step. He tilts his head, studying her with a calculating intensity. She's young—too young to be any threat to him or anyone else. Helpless, in fact. And yet, there's something in her eyes, even through the tears—a spark of something unbroken. That spark is what makes him pause, what makes him consider.

He could leave her here. It would be easier. The forest is cruel, and kits don't survive long without protection. Her death would be inevitable, just another casualty in a world that doesn't care. But as he looks at her, another thought creeps into his mind. She could be…useful. Not immediately, of course, but in time. A life shaped by him, molded to his will. Monster nods, as if sealing some unspoken pact. "Get up," he says, his voice devoid of softness but not unkind. "You're coming with me." She doesn't move at first, her small body still trembling. But something in his tone—or perhaps the sheer inevitability of the command—compels her to her paws. As she stumbles toward him, Monster glances back at Colt's corpse one last time. His thoughts are sharp and deliberate. She's mine now. My responsibility. My creation.