The blizzard hisses outside the den like an angry cat. Or maybe that was my trainer I was hearing.
"No, no, no! You got it all wrong." The scruffy black cat shoves his son out of the way to demonstrate. His eyes are blazing, furious, so furious at me. A front paw cuffs the side of my face. "First, distract your opponent like this--" In the following move, he rakes my underbelly with a single claw. "so you can slash at them like this." His whiskers twitch in frustration. "Curse your size." Night Sky turns back to his kid, who towers above me, four times my size, and repeats the move on him. He yelps. "Think you can handle that?!" He snaps, and I nod, too scared to say anything. Night backs back into the shadows, while his son turns to me with a deep scowl, sour because he ended up punished because of my stupid mistake. As a reply, I smirk up at him and attempt the move, working my hind legs to stretch up to his face and then quickly dropping back onto all fours to slide under him and slice his stomach. My kitten claws barley reach under the skin. My face falls. My opponent whips behind a paw and pushes me out in front of him and holds me down with five razor sharp claws with eyes glittering malice with a cruel sneer and he's going to hurt me again he's going to hurt me I know it. Night Sky barks out something, and I'm saved.
"Poison, what are you doing?! You know she needs to learn this stuff, and she can't do it if she's shredded to ribbons."
"But father I can't go easy on her! You said it yourself, to fight rough you need rough training!"
"Yes, but this..." Argue, argue, snipe bite yell argue. I roll my eyes and bend down to lick my slit belly when I hope nobody's watching. It tastes like I'm bleeding metal. About three assaults later, the attention is focused back on me and now they want me to try the limb weakening hit. I don't reach their standards because my age limits me and one scowls, the other grins because he's 'so much better than me' and I'm forced to try again and again before Night Sky finally snaps.
"This is ridiculous!" He yowls. "No one's ever going to take you seriously in battle! I've tried thousands of times to teach you, but that has proved impossible. You're untrainable and of no use to me. Poison..." Night's eyes are stone-hard. "do what you will with her. I just need you to get her out of my sight."
Poison River's face lights up in sick enjoyment, and a heartbeat later I'm being smashed down against hard stone with claws tearing up my skin.
I'm untrainable.
And I'm going to pay for it with my life.
