Warriors: Clockwise

<------ Chapter Twenty-Eight ------>

Jayflight wasn't quite as lucky, slipping down a step or two before lashing her tail around a railing pole.

Hero winced. That looked painful.

"Everyone alright?" he called. He might have seen them fall, but it never hurt to make sure.

"We're fine," mewed Swiftstorm.

"Me too," called Jayflight, uncurling her tail from the bar. "Though my tail feels like it was run over by a monster." She tried to flex it and winced.

"Ok," Hero replied. "Let's just be super careful now."

Thankfully, they made it down the rest of the stairs without any more tremors, and Hero took a deep breath and exited the doorway.

Waiting there, Hero found Tags, who looked suitably relieved to see him there. 

She opened her mouth as if to cry in excitement, then seemed to remember herself and simply greeted him with a dip of her head. "So, you survived, Timekeeper."

"Indeed." He paused. "So, the rest of--"

Hero's statement was broken as the ground suddenly trembled violently. Instinctively rolling to the ground, he shivered as a slab of a something landed with a crash beside him.

He looked at it and shuddered.

The object had managed to crack the concrete.

That would not have been good for my health.

"Hero? Hero? You alright?"

Hero spat out a clod of dust. "Yeah, I'm fine," he mewed, shakily getting to his feet.

"Thank StarClan!" cried Snowfeather. "We don't need to lose another....cat...." His voice trailed off awkwardly.

No one wanted to think about Lilypool.

A silence followed, and Hero was, of couse, smothered with thoughts of Lilypool-- thoughts of the beautiful she-cat who'd died before him. It was typical, of course. As soon as you tried not to think of something, it was the first thing on your thoughts. 

It always happened to the things you really didn't want to think about, too

Lilypool's death was definitely not something he wanted to think about.

He swallowed hard and forced himself to look at Tags. "We're going to get more cats out of this..." He gestured with his tail. "This...hell."

It seemed an appropriate word to use, now. He was acutely aware of the smoke rising from many of the buildings and chocking his senses, and the tumbling streets and buildings were demons in their own right.

Demons of fire and stone and metal.

Metal...the heat of the fires suddenly him. Hero sliced off his armor quickly, letting the suddenly red-hot piece of metal clatter loudly on the ground. He winced as the cats behind him did the same, the rattling, clanging noise sending an instant message to his brain.

The fire, the weapons...

They needed to get out of here.

But all those cats...

Hero's fur stood on end when he heard a long screech of pain somewhere to his right. For a moment, he could have sworn it was someone he knew, but then he dismissed it.

It's probably not.

Probably.

In fact, the most likely chance was that it was an enemy cat.