#sorry for making the kits a po3 the three au

[morningmask27]

Hawkfrost X Whitewing?

WhiteHawk three au. Birchfall pulled a Thrushpelt. Ivy is the actual third, and a bio whitebirch kid. (Yeah plant 3 with neglected bird sister this time <3)

Fennelrush (Lionblaze) is strong and stubborn and a great fighter. He still has his canon powers and he's not going lightly with them. He definitely has killed a few cats accidentally during fights. He's a meathead, but in Very Rare occasions he makes a good decision. He has anger issues though. 

Flaxroot (Jayfeather) still blind. They're smart and cunning and have a position between warrior and healer. They do patrols and hunt and have trained as a warrior apprentice, but since fights are slightly too much for them they usually (read Usually) avoid participating in them. They also have a huge knowledge of herbs and are thus a sort of extra healer for the clan. They still have their canon powers and they don't use them sparingly.

Falconstrike (Hollyleaf) is the one training in the dark forest. Falcon is obsessed by the code. She wants to be the strongest warrior of the clan too, she wants to be a respected warrior and maybe even leader, who knows, it's an interesting position. She's also very motivated by the kin of tour kin prophecy, she's special, guys, she's special! Right? She trains with Hawkfrost because he promised her the keys to becoming a strong and respected warrior. 

White has her kits right after Hawkfrost died. She's having a mental breakdown when Birchpaw finds her and after Whitepaw explains the situation, this young kiddo proves how he has a heart of gold by suggesting he pulls a Thrushpelt and say he's the father of the kits. White accepts and yeah. Some cats still judge them for their "accident" bit it's better than half clan prejudice. White and Birch raise the kits together and the two start to become quite closer romantically. When the three are nearly warrior aged White is expecting kits again, this time from Birchfall. These are Dovewing and Ivypool. 

While the three are apprentices, Flax, like in canon learns of the kin of you kin prophecy. Flax understands quickly it talks about them and their siblings. Falcon tries very hard to find her power, but fails to do so. 

The three are amazing older siblings to Dovekit and Ivykit, but one night Falcon overhears White and Birch argue over if they should ever tell the three that Birch isn't their bio dad. White doesn't want to tell them, but Birch kinda does want to. Falcon is very shocked by that and then her dark forest mentor, Hawkfrost, taunts her, making her go mad. She's angry and confronts White and Birch in presence of Flax and Fennel. The two brothers are horrified. White confesses to everything, the three are furious. 

Falcon also fully learns that she isn't a part of the prophecy, but Ivykit is. Having inherited Dovewing's canon power. This makes Falcon become even angrier and she threatens Dovekit and Ivykit to punish White. (keep in mind Dove and Ivy are about 4 moons at that point and realize very well what's going on). Eventually she breaks and runs off. 

"little" drabble of the story, all in Whitewing's PoV.

I knew I should never have hung out with Hawkfrost. I knew he was a terrible cat and he didn't care about me, but he was the only cat I felt free around. My parents are amazing, but I have to be perfect around them, and they had their own problems in their relationship then and I didn't want to be involved. Hawkfrost gave me a way to escape the situation. He was funny and witty and never coddled me. He challenged me and laughed when he lost, he complimented me. Most cats in ThunderClan did, but these felt real, realer than any repetitive statement about a good catch by a clanmate, even though I knew he didn't feel anything for me. 

I knew things would go wrong. I was still a -paw. Not that I was too young, I was barely a few moons younger than Hawkfrost, but the destruction of the forest had delayed my warrior ceremony and then, I decided to wait until Birchpaw was ready too, to not leave him alone in the apprentices den like I had been. That status of -paw did definitely make things complicated when I discovered it. 

It was shortly after Hawkfrost had been found dead by the border, a foxtrap bored through his neck. I had to pretend very hard it didn't affect me. Why would it? He was a cat from an enemy clan, why would I be sad about his death? I felt sick. I had trouble doing my work because of how weird my belly felt. I thought it was because I mourned him. 

I would have never thought it was because I was expecting kits. Leafpool was surprised, but I was horrified. I quickly escaped the den after begging Leafpool to not tell anyone. I ran into the forest and found a quiet spot. I began crying. I couldn't believe how badly those meeting with Hawkfrost ended. I knew it was him, I wasn't close to any other cat, but I still somehow hoped it wasn't. 

StarClan must have heard me and felt pity because Birchpaw found me. Usually he can't find a mouse when it's right in front of him, so StarClan must have definitely sent him my way. He saw my tears and became worried. And asked what was wrong. I like Birchpaw, but I wasn't about to tell him what I had just learned, but he kept on asking. He wanted to know if I at least could tell someone, which I knew I couldn't, so I began crying again. 

He silently pressed himself against me and let me cry. When I had ran out of tears he asked if I was ok again. I wanted to stracht his ears of, but his worried eyes made me decide to keep that for another time. He waited in silence for a response. I felt doubt tugging at me, but I told him anyway. I told him everything. From my parents to the meetings with Hawkfrost and the kits I was expecting now. I broke down crying twice while explaining everything and wondered why he was still there. 

When I was done he silently nodded. I had never seen him so contemplative as that day. He was deep in his thoughts for a few heartbeats before looking at me. Determination visible in his eyes. 

"We can say the kits are mine." 

I was taken aback by what he had just said. 

"It would still be awkward to explain, but at least some of the problems would be fixed, right? If the clan knows both parents, they're less likely to be prying." 

I had honestly underestimated how smart Birchpaw could be sometimes. I thought about it for a very short moment. It was the most sensible option. The kits would be treated as fully clanborn kits and everything would be fine, but I needed to be sure about one thing. 

"Would you genuinely be ok to be called the father of kits that aren't yours?" I needed to know. It all depended on him. If he was ready for this charade I'd go along, but he would have to play along. 

"Yes, and I'd even love to be involved in taking care of them if you're ok with that." 

He looked at me with such kindness. I then knew I had found a cat I should treasure. 

—

"What do you think about Flaxkit for the white and cream kit?" He asked me. I nodded with a smile. 

"It fits them." I answered. I then looked at the gray and white kit. It looked like it'd be a strong cat. 

"Would Fennelkit suit the gray and white kit?" I asked. Birchpaw had jokingly suggested having a theme for their names, but I liked the idea. 

"It is beautiful." He answered, adorating brimming from his eyes. 

"Then Fennelkit it is." I affirmed. We stayed silent for a while. Neither of us really daring to say anything about the brown and white kit. I had seen the faces my parents had made when they saw it, I had seen Firestar himself flinch. I know brambleclaw looks a lot like his father and I know that kit looks like brambleclaw a bit. All that didn't change the fact this kit needed a name. 

"Is Falconkit too close?" Birchpaw softly asked. I looked at my kit. This brown and white kit that had an uncanny ressemblance to one of the most feared and hated cats, whose son had fathered these kits. 

"Falconkit would definitely suit them." I agreed. It would just be a name, nothing more. Their brown fur could be explained by Dustpelt, it was going to be fine. The kits would be fine. 

—

"You know I can also stay in the nursery." I said. I looked at Birchfall, who had just recently gotten his name. I had gotten mine as soon as the clan knew I was expecting. It was mostly to not have a -paw in the nursery, but it was still very awkward. The clan had looked at me so weirdly. I didn't dare to look anyone in the eye that day and nowadays it's still hard sometimes. 

"It's fine- oomph-" he was cut short by Fennelkit and Falconkit running into him. The three kits were growing every day. They were definitely going to become strong and big cats. 

"As I said," Birchfall began after extirping himself from the two kits, "I like spending time here with the kits." I smiled again as I watched Flaxkit jump on Fennelkit's back. The two rolled until they hit my paws. They looked up and smiled at me. I smiled back and helped Fennelkit on his paws. 

"Thanks mama." He mewed. 

"If you're so sure." I answered. I couldn't help but smile as the kits swarmed him again. 

"We got papa!" Flaxkit yelled. 

—

I felt weird again. I thought I recognized the feeling from somewhere, so I went to ask Leafpool and Honeypaw about it. I was pregnant again. This time I was surprised, but also so happy. 

Birchfall and I had been growing closer since we raised Flaxpaw, Fennelpaw and Falconpaw together. They have grown up so well and I'm very proud of them, but I was also excatic about the idea of having kits with Birchfall. I knew they'd grown up wonderfully too. 

—

"We can't keep it a secret from them eternally" Birchfall stated. I felt my fur bristle. 

"We raised them together to protect them from having to know it." I argued back. 

"I had suggested this to protect them from the Clan judging them, I never thought you'd also want the kits not to know the truth." Birchfall lashed his tail as he spoke. I cringed unintentionally. What if they don't take it well? What if they hate us for having kept this a secret for so long? What if they want to learn more about Hawkfrost? I surely can't give them more details, but he definitely isn't a good cat? How would they feel of they learned that? I kept wondering. Birchfall looked at me expectantly, waiting for an answer. 

I shook my head. "Sorry Birchfall. I don't think it'd be a good idea. They might want to know who their father is and become angry." 

"What? Do you mean I would not be their father if they learned the truth?" He tensed up, his claws flexing repetitively. 

"No, you wait, that's not what I meant-" I tried to reason, but he was already walking away. 

"I'll be taking care of my kits if you need me." He said. 

I stood there and watched him leave. I heard some faint rusting from behind me, but I only looked in front of me, to where Birchfall had left. 

What have I done?

—

"Tell us who it is!" Falconstrike yelled. She had her fur fully bristled out in anger as she looked at me. I couldn't more, not only because my kits were looking at me, but because I knew I had to say something. 

"Tell us, now. Tells us who our father is!" She approached her face scarily close to mine, snarling from disgust as she looked me in the eyes. 

"Falcon, I-" I stammered. How could I explain this without hurting them? How could I feasibly explain that their father is dead and from another clan?

"What do you mean from another Clan?" Flaxroot asked incredulously. They stared right at me. Fennelrush and Falconstrike looked horrified. 

"Uh, yes. Your birthfather isn't Birchfall. He raised you and loves you three so much, but his blood isn't in your veins." I began explaining. 

"Then who is it?" Fennelrush asked. He looks so much like Hawkfrost when he thinks like that. 

"You weren't going to tell us our dad is Hawkfrost, right?" Flaxroot exclaimed. Their eyes were wide. How can they know all those things? I took a deep breath. 

"Yes, your dad is Hawkfrost, but he has nothing to do with you three. You are still my and Birchfall's kits. We love you. We didn't tell you to protect you from how the clan would react." I pleaded. 

"How could you love is if you lied to us all our life? We didn't even know who we are!" Flaxroot snided. 

Falconstrike growled. "you lied to us. You broke the code and we are born from a crime and you never told us. We should have never been born, but you should have never even been allowed to approach us." She approached me again, slowly and with her claws out. She growled again and lifted a paw to hit me. 

Fennelrush pushed himself between us. "Falcon, don't do this!" Falconstrike's hit deflected weirdly. Not hurting Fennelrush at all. She landed clumsily on the ground. "she might have lied to us, but you can't just attack her like that." He stood in front of me, but mostly paid attention to Falconstrike. She glared back at him and growled. He didn't move until she stood up and didn't make another attempt at attacking. 

I watched horrified as my kits fought each other because of me. I never wanted any of this to happen to them, why couldn't they just live a happy life? 

— 

"I can hear a cat yelling." Ivykit said. I worried a lot about her lately. She often heard things that no-one else could and loud sounds overwhelmed her terribly. 

"They're in need of help!" She yelped. "We need to go find them!" She looked at me desperately. 

"Sweetie, are you sure you heard things right?" I asked, hoping she'd tell me it was a lie or something. 

"No, mama, this cat needs help!" She stubbornly responded. She looked a bit further away and saw Flaxroot passing by. 

"Flaxroot! Flaxroot! Please, I need help to help a cat!" They stopped in their tracks as Ivykit ran to them. I followed her hesitantly. I knew they were still angry at me and I didn't want to make things worse. I prepared to scoot Ivykit away, but Flaxroot asked Ivykit. 

"What do you mean by a cat needs help?" They looked at her. 

"A cat in the first is yelling in pain, we need to help them!" She responded hurriedly. 

"Ivykit, please-" I tried to keep Ivykit from bothering her sibling. 

"No, you, stop." Flaxroot snapped at me. I shut my mouth immediately and looked at what was happening. 

"Tell me more about that cat, Ivykit." Flaxroot gently nudged her. 

She stood confidently. "a cat in the forest needs help. They are in pain, we need to save them." 

"Do you know who that cat is or where they are?" Flaxroot asked. 

"I- uh. I can hear water not too far from them?" She tried. 

Flaxroot narrowed their eyes while Ivykit was lost in her thoughts. At this point a patrol emerged from the entrance. 

"We need a healer!" Brackenfur yelled, "a WindClan cat, Heathertail, got attacked by a fox by the stream and no-one knows where Kestrelflight is!"

Flaxroot immediately turned their head towards the patrol. "Leafpool and Honeypaw are out gathering herbs, but I can grab some and go with you." 

Brackenfur hurriedly nodded. "yes, please, she's been at the stream for a while, I don't know how long she still has if her wounds aren't treated soon." 

Flaxroot nodded. Before they went to the healers'den they turned their head to Ivykit again. "We will be talking again after this is done, okay?" 

Ivykit happily agreed. 

—

"Falconstrike, no-" I exclaimed. I tried to get closer to where she was standing with Dovekit and Ivykit, but when I tried she just pressed her claws deeper in Ivykit's fur. Ivykit let out a pained squeak. 

"Don't. Come. Closer." Falconstrike slowly threatened. I obeyed her, but kept my eyes focussed on Ivykit and Dovekit. Dovekit was cowering from behind Falconstrike's legs and Ivykit was pinned on the ground by one of Falconstrike's paws. 

"Please, Falconstrike, why are you hurting your siblings?" I asked. I hoped it at least make her reconsider, but she just spat at me. 

"Those aren't my siblings, I don't have the same blood. Because of you!" She yelled. The two kits peeped in fear from Falconstrike's anger. "you broke the code and that caused us, and then you believe you can just have better kits after that? These kits don't deserve to live, just like we shouldn't have been born!" She yelled.

"Falconstrike, this isn't true. Please, don't take out your anger on these kits, they are innocent. If you need to punish someone, it's me. Hurt me if you need to, but leave the kits out of this." I bowed my head down. Please let this work, please, Falcon let the kits go. Falconstrike looked hesitantly between me and the kits. She didn't move and furrowed her brows. 

Ivykit let out a small cry while she was thinking and Falconstrike broke out of her thoughs. "oh, shut it, you worthless kit!" She hit Ivykit on the face. Ivykit yelled out in pain and covered her face as well as she could with her paws. I briefly saw red, this was too much. I sprang on Falconstrike, pushing her off Ivykit. Dovekit ran to her sister and dragged her away, out of me and Falconstrike's path. 

We rolled over the forest ground until I had her pinned under me. She struggled to escape, but I had more experience and kept her stuck on the ground. She eventually gave up after a long struggle. 

She let herself go limp. "come on then, finish this. You brougt me here, so now finish me." She blankly said. I stared at her in pure horror. How could I ever hurt her? She's my kit and I love her. 

I let her go as I said: "Falconstrike, you are my kit. I can't kill you, I love you too much for that, no matter what happened." 

She stood up and glared at me. "No matter who my father is, huh? Is that why you replaced me and my siblings by these two worthless spawns?" She raised her voice again. "I- I-" her voice broke. She fought back against tears as she looked at me. I tried to comfort her, but she pulled away from me. "don't touch me!" She yelled. She took a step back and then turned around. She ran off. I watched her leave. When I knew she was gone I slowly turned around to find Dovekit and Ivykit. They need me right now. But so does Falconstrike. How could I mess this up so badly?

[maplemouse-warriors]

For the anon who requested Leafpool x Stormfur for the hypokits, tumblr fumbled your ask so sorry about that!

When I rolled my d4 to determine how many kits to put into this litter, I rolled a 3. So this turned into more of a hypoparents AU than some hypokits. I did make some art though!

Leafpaw takes Squirrelpaw’s place on the journey to the sun-drown-place. She and Stormfur fall for each other as they travel. Feathertail doesn’t die in the mountains, but falls in love with Brook and elects to stay in the mountains when the Clans pass through during the Great Journey. Squirrelflight and Crowfeather spend time with each other on the Great Journey and have a fun fling, but after the WindClan coup, neither is willing to compromise for the relationship, and they messily break up. Leafpool learns she is pregnant, and tells Stormfur; he decides to leave RiverClan and move to ThunderClan. Squirrelflight is also revealed to be pregnant around the same time, and the three decide that Stormfur will move to ThunderClan ‘for Squirrelflight’ and he and Squirrelflight will raise both litters together.

Later, on a cold winter night, Squirrelflight gives birth to Featherkit and Shrewkit, and Leafpool gives birth to Streamkit, Stonekit, and Cinderkit.

Streamfur (Hollyleaf) is a black molly with green eyes. She is one of the Four prophesied cats, with her powers being very spiritual. She is able to see ghosts/spirits, and can visit StarClan at will. She is mentored by Brackenfur.

Stonespark (Lionblaze) is a thick-furred gray tabby with amber eyes. He is one of the Four prophesied cats, with his powers being centered on the physical. He is strong and durable, practically unable to be injured. He is mentored by Ashfur, and later mentors Bumblepaw. He still ends up with Cinderheart.

Cinderwing (Jayfeather) is a pale gray tom with blue eyes. He is one of the Four prophesied cats, with his powers connecting him to the minds of others. He has the ability to enter the emotions, thoughts, and dreams of other cats. He is mentored by Brightheart (with help from Longtail), although gets frustrated with how the Clan at large treats him due to his blindness. He later mentors Blossompaw in both the waking world and the Dark Forest. He and Poppyfrost become mates.

Featherfoot (Dovewing) is a pale ginger molly with green eyes and dark paws. She is one of the Four prophesied cats, with extended senses. She is able to see, hear, and smell things very far away. She is mentored by Sorreltail, and later mentors Briarpaw. She moves to ShadowClan post-OotS to be with Tigerheart.

Shrewfrost (Ivypool) is a gray tabby molly with blue eyes. She is not one of the Four prophesied cats, but she has a connection to the Dark Forest. For a long time she believed them to be StarClan spirits, and became a medicine cat to foster that connection.

A summary of major changed events in Po3 and OotS are below the read more!

Power of Three Four

Streampaw starts as Leafpool’s apprentice (she’s ambitious, and likes the idea of the power and responsibility being a medicine cat will give her, but doesn’t enjoy healing); Shrewpaw starts as Brackenfur’s apprentice (she enjoys warrior training, but is curious about healing, and is being singled out by ‘StarClan Warriors’.)

After Streampaw has a conversation with Brook, who has been staying in ThunderClan with her mate Feathertail, she decides she wants to be a warrior. Shrewpaw has a similar conversation with her mentor Brackenfur about his littermate Cinderpelt, and decides she wants to be a medicine cat. The two soon switch mentors.

Stonepaw and Breezepaw are competing in the Daylight Gathering; Featherpaw hears the collapse, and gets Shrewpaw before leading her - along with Squirrelflight, Leafpool, Crowfeather, and Nightcloud - to where the boys are. Shrewpaw is able to heal them, solidifying herself as a Medicine Cat, but realizes that Featherpaw should not have been able to know about the collapse, and is a bit suspicious of her littermate.

Shrewpaw is told about the prophecy (there will be four, kin of your kin) by a Dark Forest cat; they twist it to demonize the Four

Cinderpaw learns about the prophecy in Firestar’s dreams, and realizes that he is one of the Four.

Stonepaw begins meeting Heatherpaw in the tunnels connecting WindClan and ThunderClan.

Stonepaw and Cinderpaw begin training in the Dark Forest. Stonepaw is convinced to train by the Dark Forest warriors taking advantage of his anger and ambition. Cinderpaw is convinced to train in the Dark Forest due to feeling as though ThunderClan doesn’t take him seriously as a warrior.

After learning that three WindClan kits have gone missing, Stonepaw, Streampaw, and Featherpaw enter the tunnels. Between Featherpaw’s hearing and Stonepaw’s knowledge of the tunnels, they are able to find the kits. Unfortunately, they find the kits at the same time as Breezepaw and Heatherpaw do. The five apprentices must then figure out how to escape the tunnels as the water is rapidly rising. After they escape, Heatherpaw and Stonepaw agree to stop meeting.

Three Tribe cats arrive in ThunderClan to ask Feathertail and Brook to return to the Tribe. Stormfur and Brambleclaw want to journey to aid the Tribe. Leafpool asks that Squirrelflight be sent in her place, since as the only fully trained medicine cat she cannot leave the Clan. Brambleclaw says that Stormfur and Squirrelflgiht’s kits should be able to journey as well; Leafpool agrees. All five apprentices (along with Breezepaw) are sent on the journey. Brambleclaw does some math in his brain while seeing Crowfeather and Stormfur interact with the five apprentices, and figures out what’s happening here, although he does not mention it to anyone.

After the fight with Flick’s Group, Cinderpaw reveals the prophecy to his siblings. Shrewpaw seems shocked, but keeps her concerns about the Four to herself.

When Sol takes over ShadowClan, Shrewpaw encourages a mentality within ThunderClan that ShadowClan doesn’t need aid or rescuing, as they were not strong enough to remain as a Clan. She is neutral on Sol himself, while the other four think he may be the key to understanding the prophecy.

Streampaw, Stonepaw, Cinderpaw, and Featherpaw fake a sign from StarClan with the help of Tigerpaw, Flamepaw, and Dawnpaw. Featherpaw and Tigerpaw notably get along well. They do not include Shrewpaw in their plan due to her being outspoken against aiding ShadowClan.

Cinderwing does some time travel as Cinder’s Glow. Cinder’s Glow has a sibling, Stream’s Flow, that reminds him of Streamfur. Their mother, Feather Fall, looks just like Featherfoot does; their uncle Stone Spark couldn’t be more like Stonespark. He is delighted to learn that reincarnation is real.

Ashfur corners Streamfur, Stonespark, and Cinderwing as they attempt to escape a fire in the ThunderClan camp. Squirrelflight claims she is not their mother in order to allow the three to escape. Cinderwing determines that she’s telling the truth with his powers.

They tell their littermates this immediately.

Streamfur kills Ashfur; Leafpool knows it’s her after finding some of her fur in Ashfur’s claws.

Ashfur haunts Streamfur, taunting her about being a murderer and a mistake.

Stonespark stops training in the Dark Forest, realizing how they are using him and trying to make him worse. He asks Cinderwing to stop training there as well, but Cinderwing believes he can learn the valuable information the Dark Forest warriors have without being corrupted, similar to how smart people get sucked into marketing schemes. Stonespark is frustrated by this, but the two agree not to speak of it.

Shrewfrost, believing they are one litter, determines their mother is Leafpool after investigating some stories about mixed up herbs.

Streamfur confronts Leafpool, thinking she will know who their mother is, and Leafpool confronts Streamfur about killing Ashfur. Leafpool then confesses she is the mother of Streamfur, Stonespark, and Cinderwing, and then reveals that Shrewfrost and Featherfoot are a different litter, and Squirrelflight is their mother.

Featherfoot, horrified, overhears Streamfur and Leafpool’s conversation.

Stonespark and Cinderwing confront Stormfur, thinking they will be revealing information to him, but he confirms that he already knows, and that he is their father.

Before the siblings have a chance to pool their knowledge together, Streamfur reveals that Squirrelflight isn’t their mother at a Gathering, naming Leafpool as their mother. Leafpool steps down from her position, and claims all five kits as her own, attempting to save Squirrelflight from the fallout of having a half-Clan relationship.

Stormfur stands to declare his love for Leafpool and claim all five kits as his as well, standing with his mate.

This throws the Gathering into such chaos that Streamfur can’t reveal Squirrelflight’s part in the deceit, and Streamfur runs away, followed by her littermates and parents.

Ashfur’s ghost disappears now that the secret has been revealed.

Streamfur, chased by Cinderwing, Squirrelflight, Stormfur, and Stonespark, runs into the tunnels. As Stormfur enters the tunnel, the entrance collapses, partially burying Stormfur and leaving Stonespark behind. Streamfur stops running in order to help Squirrelflight and Cinderwing dig him out, and then the four begin to attempt escape. They discuss the truth while they are underground, with Cinderwing and Streamfur learning about Stormfur and Leafpool’s relationship, as well as Squirrelflight and Crowfeather’s relationship. They are led above ground by Fallen Leaves, whom only Streamfur can see. Stormfur learns of Ashfur’s threats to his family.

Above ground, Shrewfrost confronts Leafpool, and tries to force her to eat deathberries; Leafpool refuses, and tries to comfort her apprentice. They are interrupted by Featherfoot, who bursts in with Stonespark to tell them about the tunnel collapse. The four, led by Featherfoot, begin to try and find the other members of their family. As they search, Leafpool tells them about her relationship with Stormfur, as well as Squirrelflight and Crowfeather’s relationship.

Everyone is overjoyed when the tunnel group escapes. The kids reveal their powers and the prophecy to their parents. The siblings are not friendly with their parents, but are trying to be understanding of the difficult decisions their parents had to make.

Omen of the Stars

Featherfoot realizes that the beavers are causing the lake to run dry. In order to convince Firestar that they need to address the problem, she convinces her siblings to come clean to him about being the Prophesied Four.

Feather and Stream go with cats from the other Clans to destroy the dam. Streamfur displays a lot of self-destructive tendencies on the journey, eager to die in service to her Clan. However, Rippletail’s sacrifice hits her hard, and she realizes that she must live with her actions, and work towards being better.

Featherfoot and Tigerheart spend plenty of time reconnecting on the journey, and begin meeting in secret once they return to the Clans.

Poppyfrost, very pregnant with Cinderwing’s kits, decides to sneak out of camp and travel to the Moonpool, as she misses her siblings and wants to see them again.

Streamfur follows her, arriving in time to save her from an attack by Breezepelt. Streamfur then realizes she is also fighting a ghostly Brokenstar, but thankfully a ghostly Honeyfern helps even the odds. Cinderwing is so stressed when they return to camp.

Tigerheart is revealed to also be training in the Dark Forest. Cinderwing’s apprentice Blossompaw is brought into the night training as well, and Cinderwing does what he can to aid her.

StarClan calls for the medicine cats to be separated; the Dark Forest encourages this for Shrewfrost, saying that they will guide her. She realizes that she is not meeting with StarClan, but believes the spirits to be helpful and have the Clans’ best interests at heart.

Featherfoot hears a tree begin falling into the camp. She is able to warn the Clan in time for the camp to be evacuated, but her apprentice, Briarpaw, re-enters camp with Longtail. She is horrified when Longtail dies and Briarpaw is injured by the tree finally falling into camp, feeling as though she should have been able to prevent it. She is a strong supporter of her former apprentice.

Shrewfrost is told by the Dark Forest that ShadowClan is looking to gain ThunderClan’s land; she lies to Firestar about having a dream indicating they must attack. Firestar reluctantly agrees.

During the ensuing battle, Stonespark accidentally kills the elderly Russetfur while protecting Firestar. Stonespark is shocked and horrified, and Shrewfrost, looking upon the carnage on the battlefield, realizes that she is communicating with the Dark Forest, and they are angling for the destruction of the Clans.

While playing games on the frozen lake, Flametail falls through the ice. Streamfur does everything she can to save him, but is unsuccessful. Flametail then begins haunting her, with both of them being unsure as to why he cannot enter StarClan.

Cinderwing and Stonespark journey to the Tribe in order for Cinderwing to investigate strange dreams he’s been having of Cinder’s Glow. While in the past, Cinder’s Glow is introduced to his new cousin, Shrew Foot, who reminds him of Shrewfrost. Stonespark is able to find a bit of peace with Russetfur’s death during his time in the mountains. Leafpool and Stormfur join them, and must endure Feathertail teasing them the entire duration of their stay.

Cinderwing learns that there will be a Fifth cat. When he returns and tells his siblings, they all believe this cat to be Shrewfrost, despite her insistence that she isn’t.

Streamfur realizes that the reason Flametail cannot get into StarClan is that because it's so divided it is beginning to decay. She enters StarClan and manages to drag Flametail in behind her, and the two set about uniting StarClan.

Cinderwing realizes that the Dark Forest is amassing an army of living cats; he realizes that he was tricked into this, and begins spying on the Dark Forest.

Featherfoot realizes that the strange whispers she has been hearing are WindClan cats in the tunnels, working with Sol to attack ThunderClan. ThunderClan begins preparing to fight back, with Cinderwing helping to train the other warriors to fight in the darkness of the tunnels.

As a test of his loyalty to the Dark Forest, Cinderwing is told to kill the WindClan cat Antpelt. In order to be able to continue spying - and to avoid being killed himself - he complies.

Shrewfrost comes clean to her siblings about being misled by the Dark Forest. Stonespark comforts her, and tells her that as an apprentice he was also misled by the Dark Forest. He glares at Cinderwing until he also reveals that he also was being misled by the Dark Forest. The two are loved and supported by their siblings.

Streamfur isn’t killed during the Final Battle.

Featherfoot moves to ShadowClan to be with Tigerheart with her parents’ blessing.

Leafpool returns to her position, and begins a campaign to remove the rule that medicine cats can’t have mates, with Shrewfrost’s support.

[troutfur]

(Ashfur's Tigerkin kits AU, idk what else to call it. If you have a better name lemme know, Trout)

Wouldn't the kits Mentors get them higher standing in the clan compared to the three's canon mentors? (Except for Leafpool.) Ashfur isn't high up in the clan, While Sandstorm is a respected senior warrior and mates with Firestar. Squirrelflight is younger but is Firestar's daughter and one of the journey cats, and Brackenfur is extremely trustworthy and distinguished.

Regardless of what the mentor choice would be for the Ashkits in this hypothetical I'd still want the Po3 kits to be in a position where they can lord over a higher social standing.

(Sorry I completely derrailed from the AU in question but I feel very much the need to lay out my vision since you got me on this.)

As I've ruminated more on the Po3 storyline (what draws me to it, what aspects I find most entertaining, what I think makes for a more cohesive whole out of the narrative, etc) and proceeded to write my own stuff, particularly Augur AU, I've developed a pretty particular opinion on what would make the most effective rewrite of the story. And a key component is always, always the idea that Jay, Holly, and Lion are very much elitist and entitled, often to the point of being insufferable.

Their story is all about being born into a position of esteem and privilege. They're the children of two journey cats one of which is deputy, the grandchildren of a modern legend, and rising prodigies. Their narrative of self importance is one which the world then proceeds to reinforce and reassure them every step of the way, inflating their ego ever more.

And of course the bigger they come, the harder they fall. Once the fire scene happens they are fueled by a biting desire to keep it all underwraps lest their fortunes completely reverse, a paranoia that is of course completely vindicated once things get out of control and the 180° turn indeed happens.

And with all this compounding upon them, come Omen of the Stars Jayfeather and Lionblaze lash out and become prime targets of recruitment by Tigerstar and his allies.

I think this not only helps immensely in preserving what's supposed to be the tension of the Po3-OotS arc in the ambiguity of the powers but to me seems like the most realistic emotional outcome given their position and how I like to write about this society.

[transparenthologramrebel]

My po3 OFTS au is a thing now (Chapter 2 electric boogaloo)

Chapter 2

Hollyleaf POV

“Thornclaw, take Bracken fur with you to collect some moss for bedding. Brambleclaw organize a hunting patrol, we lost all of our prey in the fire. I don’t want the queens and elders going hungry tonight.” Firestar instructed as he walked through the camp assessing the damage. Hollyleaf was working with Cinderheart on dismantling the burned parts of the warriors den. Hollyleaf and her brothers found Thunderclan sheltering in the old two legs nest on the far side of the territory. Thunderclan sheltered in the nest for the night and returned to the ruin camp at early sunrise. The camp was now bustling with activity as cats worked to clear the debris left behind and assess the damage. Hollyleaf watched as Brambleclaw nodded to Firestar before taking Berrynose, Honeyfern, and Sorreltail out of camp. The reunion had been brief with Brambleclaw when the three returned to the clan. Not that Hollyleaf could look at him the same after the revelation on the clifftop.

“Is he really like Tigerstar? Is he just waiting for Firestar to pass so he can take over?...Is he really cruel to Squirrelflight?” Hollyleaf thought as she watched him leave. She had heard tales of infamous fights between her former parents, but she had never witnessed it herself. She wrinkled her nose in disgust at the mere thought of the word ‘parents’. Squrrielflight had returned safely to Thunderclan as well, but Hollyleaf and her brothers refused to acknowledge her. Hollyleaf’s shock and rage from the night before had sat with her throughout the night and now turned to bitter anger and disgust. She doubted she would ever speak to Squirrelflight again after her betrayal. 

“Hollyleaf are you alright?” Cinderheart’s soft voice broke Hollyleaf out of her mind. 

“Huh..uh yes...I’m fine…” Hollyleaf said, beginning to strip the warriors' den again. Cinderheart ran her tail down Hollyleaf’s spine reassuringly. 

“I can tell when something is on your mind, you know.” She said with a purr. 

Hollyleaf sighed heavily, knowing her best friend was right. She had always struggled to lie to her. She spotted Ashfur who was busy helping Ferncloud repair the nursery. Her fur prickled with anxiety and rage. 

“I wished the flames had consumed him! He’s a traitor to the clan and the warrior code!” she thought angrily, as the memories of last night filled her storm filled mind. 

“Hollyleaf?” Cinderheart chimed again.

“I...uh..yes...sorry..I’m just...last night was a lot...we almost didn’t make it.” Cinderheart stared at her, her eyes soft with empathy.

“I know, I was so scared when you, LionBlaze and Jayfeather weren’t with the clan. I thought you....” Cinderheart's voice faded into a whisper and she pressed her head under Hollyleaf’s chin. “I’m so glad you’re alright.” Hollyleaf’s chest rumbled with a purr as she rested her chin on her best friend’s head. 

“I’m glad you’re alright too.” 

“How is Lionblaze? I...I haven’t been able to talk to him last night. I want to make sure he’s alright.” Cinderheart asked as the two friends once again returned to her work. 

Hollyleaf blinked as she pondered the question. Lionblaze...why was she asking about Lionblaze specifically? As Hollyleaf thought about a good way to respond, the answer to why Cinderheart was asking hit her like a monster.

“Dear Starclan, she has a crush on my brother! That’s the last thing we need right now!” Hollyleaf thought, feeling her emotions in a whirl.

Hollyleaf grunted as she struggled to pull one of the branches off the den, she was too wrapped up in her mind. 

“Here let me help,” Cinderheart grasped the branch in her jaws as well, and they pulled it off together. Hollyleaf dropped the branch, licking her paw and ran it over her muzzle.  

“Lionblaze is alright. We’re all pretty shaken up.” She finally squeaked out. 

“I’ll have to check on him later. Perhaps I can go hunting and bring him back a fresh vole.”

Hollyleaf stared at Cinderheart who was now staring at her brother across the camp. Cinderheart quivered with a nervous yet steady purr. Her eyes were half closed with contentment. Hollyleaf felt slightly envious. She doubted she would ever find a mate or even find a time in her life to. She was part of the three, she had a larger destiny and that also included becoming leader of Thunderclan one day if she had the chance. 

Lionblaze now having taken notice of the two she cats trotted over to them. 

“Hollyleaf, Jayfeather needs us to go with him to find herbs. A lot was still destroyed in the fire,” he said before turning to Cinderheart. “I’ll try to bring back some prey for you while we’re gone.” 

Hollyleaf felt herself roll her eyes so hard they would pop out. 

Cinderheart purred as she ran her tail over Lionblaze’s shoulder.

“Thank you. You should go Hollyleaf, I’ll get Foxpaw to help me finish with the warriors den.” Hollyleaf nodded following her brother over to Jayfeather who was already waiting for them at the now cleared tunnel. 

The three siblings headed out into the forest. The scent of smoke and fire hung heavy in the air, the trees were blackened and their bark crumbled at the touch. Even the dead leaves that had littered the forest floor had turned to nothing but soot. Hollyleaf sighed, heaviness hung in her chest as she lifted her paw that was now blackened. 

“Everything is destroyed. It’s going to take a long time for the forest to heal. Is Thunderclan going to make it?” She wondered, continuing to follow after her brothers. 

“We need to talk about what happened last night.” Jayfeather finally spoke, as they were now far out of earshot of other cats. 

“Agreed.” Lionblaze chimed in. “First things first we need to stop Ashfur from telling the clan.” Hollyleaf rolled her eyes.

“I doubt that fox heart will do anything. He got what he wanted… he hurt Squirrelflight by making her tell us the truth. He’s torn our family apart.” Hollyleaf growled her ears pinned back. She wished Ashfur was in front of her now so she could tear his pelt off. Lionblaze scoffs at his sister. 

“Do you really think that? You saw him last night! He was willing to let that fire kill us! I’m sure he would have! You don’t know Ashfur like I do! He was my mentor and let me tell you he will do anything to hurt Squirrelflight!” Lionblaze snapped, his claws flexing digging into the soft sooty earth.

“Perhaps we should let him tell the clan.” Jayfeather muttered. Hollyleaf spun looking at her brother letting out an astonished gasp.

“Do you have bees in your brain!?” she growled at him.

“Squrrielflight already let the truth out. The consequences will come no matter what….its just a matter of time. Besides what will Ashfur say? That he threatened to let us burn to death all over his inability to let Squirrelflight go?” Jayfeather’s voice was very matter of fact. “He will be exiled or even killed, but I doubt he’s thought that far ahead. He’s too blinded with rage. Squirrelflight could possibly be exiled, but I doubt Firestar would do that to his daughter.”

“What about us?” Hollyleaf quickly reminded him. “Thunderclan will turn on us if they find out the truth! What will our clan mates think, even if we aren’t exiled...wait...if we’re not Squrrielflight’s kits are we even the three…” Hollyleaf’s voice trailed off into a whisper. Her stomach felt like it was in knots, her legs felt like they would buckle, as she struggled to breath.

“Starclan how could we be so mouse brained! There’s nothing special about us!” Hollyleaf wailed. “Of course Jayfeather can see into dreams he’s a medicine cat! Lionblaze you’re just a warrior any cat could fight as well as you with practice...and I’m just ....” Hollyleaf wailed, her voice trailing off into a whimper. Hollyleaf had always wondered when her power would appear. Jayfeather and Lionblaze had always seemed to have had their powers since kithood, yet she had been left behind. Now she knew why, they were ordinary cats. They weren’t chosen by Starclan if anything Starclan hated them! 

Lionblaze stepped closer to his sister running his tail down her spine. Hollyleaf sighed heavily leaning against her brother, taking comfort in her brother. 

“I don’t think that's true...we have to be related to Firestar in some way!” he reassured her. 

“But we aren’t! There’s no possible way! The only way we could be related to Firestar is through Leafpool and she’s a medicine cat! She can’t have a mate or kits!” Hollyleaf growled. Her tail lashed as her fur bristled standing on end. She felt like she couldn’t breath, her whole world was collapsing in on her and Ashfur had been the one to take it away. Hollyleaf bared her teeth, scrapping at the dirt with her claws sending chunks of earth behind her.

“We should kill him...that would silence him forever.” she hissed. Her brothers looked at her bewildered. 

“Hollyleaf we can’t do that...if we did we would actually be exiled then!” Lionblaze spoke, his voice lowered in bewilderment. Jayfeather calmly laid his tail on her shoulder. Hollyleaf turned and looked at him, as she did she felt her rage beginning to cool. Jayfeather’s face was soft with reassurement, but also filled with extreme worry. 

“Don’t worry we’ll find a way to stop him. I’ll walk in his dreams, maybe the threat of the wrath of Starclan will be enough to scare him into silence.” he said, his voice a bit more chipper, hopeful even. Hollyleaf’s fur fell flat and she sighed.

“We should still keep the secret to ourselves....after we stop Ashfur from ever speaking about this we need to find who our parents are.” she planned. Her brothers nodded in agreement. As the three went to finally find herbs and prey Hollyleaf made a promise to herself.

If Jayfeather couldn’t stop Ashfur, she would in any way possible. 

[sunspot-illustrations]

More stuff about the green rose au?

Of course!

Spottedleaf ends up living a lot longer than she did in canon, I wanna say until Tigerclaw's raid or the fire in camp, but I'd also like to see her replace Brindleface's fate in A Dangerous Path cause Tigerstar specifically seeking her out to get revenge seems fitting to me? Spottedleaf and Mousefur are also mates, thank you~

Tawnypaw is Sandstorm's apprentice!! She ends up staying in Thunderclan and becomes Ferncloud's mate! Brambleclaw (called Brambleflower in this au) gose to Shadowclan and becomes mates with Rowanclaw. They both have a lot of kits and I love them all.

Swiftpaw is also Tigerclaw's son, making his death much more painful for Goldenflower.

The New Prophecy road trip group has,,,,a lot more cats in it now. Whether by Starclan or just nosy friends, there are now 8 members instead of 6~ (I know its Tawny, Squirrel, Crow, Night, Rowan and Bramble but I'm still debating the Riverclan options cause like,,,I want Mothwing to go but also,,,debating between Feathertail, Stormfur or Hawkfrost)

Also SquirrelCrow is canon~ Nightcloud ships it (debating if Breezepelt is also a SquirrelCrow kitten or if he's still just Nightcloud's, either way Nightcloud raises Breezepelt as her own and loves her poor damaged boy)

The Po3 prophecy isn't from Starclan and they're freaking out a lot so they're constantly trying to either win over or screw over The Three. They almost got Hollyleaf but,,,you know,,,Dovewing and Ivypool are also very stressed beans I'm so sorry girls

Ivypool has a power and is the fourth cat in this au! She has Jay's Astral Projection power and her flower meadow was a place of her own creation instead of a trick made by Hawkfrost. So she can go to and from both Starclan/Dark Forest/Her Meadow/Dreams at her own will when she gets a handle on her power

There's a LOT more LGBTQIA+ cats! Like,,,,a lot more,,,,

[birdsong-warriors]

Wait so, in the swifthawk au, leafpool had a thing with hawkfrost instead of crowfeather??? Does squirrelflight still take them as her own, and tell brambleclaw that they're his? Do the three look different bc of hawkfrost being their dad instead of crowfeather? Do hawkfrost and leafpool still love each other?? Is there anything else that's majorly different that you haven't mentioned yet?? I'm really loving what you're doing with this au!! (Sorry if that's too many questions, got curious lol)

Yes to all! If you want more details on Hawkfrost x Leafpool, I'd highly suggest you go pester my friend, @talkingtalltales! They came up with the initial idea and have more details on it! ;u;

The basic changes to the Swifthawk AU are as follows:

Swiftpaw survives (and becomes Swifthawk, hence the AU name). He suffers severe brain damage.

Swifthawk revolutionizes the way the handicapped are treated in ThunderClan. Part time warriors become an important aspect of the Clan.

Snowkit survives, and becomes Snowfall, mentored under Brackenfur.

After the events of BloodClan, medicine cats, elders, and kits are given their own unique warrior lessons just in case of an emergency. Kits are only trained as a relaxed game starting at four moons and it isn't taken very seriously, just very light lessons.

Swifthawk, Dustpelt, and Ravenpaw are Tigerstar's sons.

Sasha names Hawkfrost after Swifthawk and the two are close in the beginning, but eventually have a falling out.

Leafpool falls for Hawkfrost instead of Crowfeather, thus making The Three descendants of Fire and Tiger. Brambleclaw is let in on the secret. Swifthawk knows due to his close ties with Hawkfrost.

Swifthawk apprentices Jayfeather, and is close with all The Three.

Crowfeather, Tawnypelt, Stormfur, and Brambleclaw all become deputies between TNP and Po3. Generally, the leaderships of the Clans are changed pretty drastically.

Some of these are kind of spoilery, but it'll be quite a while before Swifthawk's Chance starts (beginning of next year at the soonest), I'm not too worried about it at the moment. I hope this helps! ;u;

[fencesandfrogs]

some thoughts on dovewing and hollyleaf

so i was like 1k words into my au for dovewing where she’s cloudtail and brightheart’s daughter and it was really good and then i lost it because tumblr doesn’t understand the concept of “are you sure you want to navigate away from this page?” and i can’t tell you how sad that makes me but i’m not going to despair, because i think the world needs this.

[1.5k words. 5 minute read. wall of text.]

right. so. basically. dovewing is going to be born to cloudtail and brightheart. i have Thoguhts on what other things could be changed in po3 but this isn’t about that.

also ivykit is red now sorry i don’t make the rules. (brightheart OR dovewing are now tortie to compensate for the change in genetics, not that warriors cars about that, but i do. cloudtail inherits brown from his mother and ??? from his father because i haven’t traced all of their litters, but i don’t see why dovekit couldn’t be grey.)

so cinderheart gets dovepaw because dovepaw is anxiety child. lionblaze gets ivypaw because that’s going to be a drama engine when he’s obsessed with her sister(’s mentor, but ivypaw doesn’t know that, also later it is dovepaw bc propehcy)

cloudtail and brightheart and cinderheart work out some Sensory Blocking skills. beavers happens. dovepaw, who spent most of her time as dovekit hiding in big fluffy father’s fur because Sensory, takes one look at big and fluffy and kind tigerheart and says: yes, he is safe. i will be his friend.

(i’m a fan of tigerheart and dovewing don’t @ me, they are the cutest, and after everything bramble and squirrel put me through, i deserve some pure kind love.)

anyway lionblaze figures out dove is 3rd cat, jayfeather is like “oh sick my sister’s back” dovepaw is anxiety child, everything is fine.

nothing happens in omen of the stars i stg

tigerheart and dovepaw continue to meet up. ivypaw goes from “sister worshipped i am unloved” to “sister fragile. must protect. (also i am unloved)” bc skirmish on border patrol and dovepaw just...can’t.

everyone is kind of wondering if dovepaw should maybe be med cat? i mean she has a good ear for prey, but she can’t really catch it, and, like, she’s weird.

she’ll mention snippets of information she shouldn’t know. she knows what you were coming to talk to her about before you get there. she’s never surprised, by, like, anything far away, but she barely notices if you sneak up on her.

something is not right about her.

but dove doesn’t really want that (reminder: tigerheart and her are still flirting-friends. he’s aware that she’s got some kind of, well, problem seems cruel, but what else should he call it?, and wants to help her, but has no idea what to do), and so cinderheart is like “well. we can do this. we can.”

idk filler stuff. ivypaw finds out about dovepaw and tigerheart. like, she knew something was up, but she gets explicit confirmation. ivy gets very protective of dovepaw, dovepaw is like ‘ur not my mentor’ ivypaw sees tigerheart in the dark forest, and she goes all

bluefur being like “snowfur ur bf has rabies” in bluestar’s prophecy

and it goes about as well now as it did then (altho tbf dovepaw is more close to being in the right than snowfur was.)

ivypaw and dovepaw now aren’t speaking. cinderheart is trying to get some space from lionblaze because dovepaw is anxiety child, training with ivypaw isn’t helping, and lionblaze needs to focus on ivy dammit.

anyway yeah in this ivypaw, after dovepaw’s initial success hunting, quickly surpasses her sister, and continues training in the dark forest because must protecc also need affection

(ivypaw is very pro dovepaw be a medicine cat. the fact that it keeps her away from tigerheart is a major bonus.)

cinderheart doesn’t know what to do. finally someone is like “hey what if we go to the tribe.” because the tribe deserves to fix clan problems for once.

the tribe is like “yeah the world sure is a big place with a lot to look at. that’s why only half of us look.” (i know that’s not exactly how cave guard’s work but close enough.)

cinderheart is like “hm. what if, dovepaw, just a thought, what if you just, you know, avoid battles? i know it’s part of clan life but judging by the two souls crammed into my body, i’d say there’s been very few major conflicts over this and, reasonably, you should be able to avoid being chosen for battle control.”

dovepaw says, “but cinderheart, i’m a main character! unless i’m being punished or taught a lesson about duty, i’ll be automatically registered for every battle patrol until i die!”

cindheart says, “you’re right, i’m so sorry. hey ivypaw, [whoops yeah ivy and lion are here too sorry i forgot to mention that] what if you two learn to work as a team.”

dovepaw says, “i don’t want to work with her.”

ivypaw says, “that’s a great idea.”

because dovepaw talks very quietly (she forgets not everyone can hear as well as her), ivypaw wins.

they work out their issues, return to the clans after quite some time.

(this also gives dovepaw a good memory for a long time in the future when shadowkit is born. i don’t actually know when that happens because i just finished tigerheart’s shadow and it’s not there, but i’ll find it eventually)

anyway dovepaw and ivypaw haven’t settled their differences, but they have a peace treaty. no one is sure how to integrate the team style in most effectively, but with her senses dampened from the tribe, dovepaw gets a bit better at hunting.

she’s also now 200% anxiety, meaning she’s basically vibrating all the time, but at least she’s learning. and she’s got the technical skills, too, she just couldn’t focus on applying them.

so dovepaw gets to really earn her success.

alright they become warriors, the battle is approaching.

this is like at least 3 books worth of content when you consider that jayfeather and hollyleaf are alive and hollyleaf is kind of, either dead or alive, tunnels or not, on top of shit in this universe. she knows shit gon go down. she’s going to be ready.

anyway right so dovewing and ivypool. that’s pretty much it except dovewing is more useful during the final battle. i’m not sure how i just know she is.

alright now i’m very tired and wanted to be done half an hour ago but here’s most of an au for you.

i came back like ten minutes later to add: the later three books would focus more on ivypool, hollyleaf, and jayfeather. dovewing is off in the background flirting with tigerheart. she and lionblaze have like one and a half brain cells between them. ivy holly and jay are the brains of the operation, and everyone knows it.

so they’re making plans and preparing and dealing with trust issues and lionblaze is like “what if? cinderheart. who is the best cat. what if she and i. had children. would they be. the best cat. squared?”

and dovewing, thinking of tigerheart, is like “no you idiot bestness is additive. that’s why my kits with tigerheart would be at least two times better than any other kits.”

*to be clear, kits are here the figurative marker of a relationship since warrior cats don’t have marriage. dovewing is basically like the fifteen year old doodling her name with tigerheart. she’s not serious about having children with him (yet), but it makes a tangible concept to picture their relationship in.

and meanwhile ivy is like “so if xyz is a taitor, that means i have to win over birchfall to make sure our numbers are evenly matched,”

(dovewing. i lovewing the dovewing, but she’s, well, not that smart.)

so yeah i think book protags would go:

dovepaw (i’d like to save her for later but unfortunately i think we need her deep characterization to provide context for her and tigerheart and sensory overload), ivypaw secondary

lionblaze, hollyleaf secondary (this is kind of a filler book while hollyleaf is set up as not a permanent resident of background character hell so lionblaze is just interpersonal drama moving the plot forward and filling in propechy info)

cinderheart, lionblaze secondary (i want them to be sorted faster, and dovewing’s second book needs to be later for tigerheart drama)

hollyleaf, jayfeather secondary (transitional book in focus, sharp narration turn because i have this working as 2 3 book arcs with a weaker overall arc, and since this is about dovewing i focused mostly on the first)

jayfeather, cinderheart secondary (dove+ivy need to close the arc together, also, cinderheart is like a central character to everyone else here, so she can sustain a whole lot of b plots)

ivypool, dovewing secondary (sisters, also, in this ivypool is far more important in the battle tha dovewing is. i mean sure dovewing is doing something, but the whole success of the battle hinges on ivypool, and everyone knows it.)

*in case I post more about it this au is tagged cloudtail's daughter. I already found calico dovewing that's gorgeous.

[disgruntleddemon]

warriors rewrite

so like i’ve said a million times i’m bitter about the writing and plot in warriors.

i might reread the new prophecy to refresh my memory but here’s the gist of my idea from what i remember of the books lol

so the big thing for the new prophecy is gonna be a code rewrite and the clans changing to permanent allies. if you’ve seen moonkiti’s video on the clans joining it would be something along those lines.

the new prophecy would be the perfect place to start. for the rewrite Brambleclaw, Tawnypelt, Feathertail, and Stormfur act as older siblings to squilf and Crowpaw. Feathertail is no longer Crow’s mate/crush. instead she’s a big support to him. she’d honestly act much the same as she did in the book ngl. 

Storm and feather as half clan cats already find the clan system to be a bit oppressive. i mean hell, they were almost killed for being half clan. Bramble and Tawny are similar in that regard as they’re close but separated.

for this rewrite Crow and squirrel end up together. that along with the groups mutual friendship is where the frustration with the clans begins. the group itself is much closer here, slowly forgetting borders n stuff.

feather’s death has an even greater impact. squirrel and Crow get together after that since they become big supports to each other. Storm is especially affected. he sees cats from other clans grieving for his clanmate too. it really strikes him that they’re honestly no different from each other.

 on the journey home he starts to talk to them about the clans becoming sort of permanent allies. after all that’s happened, they’re not that opposed to the idea. Storm is the big driving force for a lot of this. he feels it’s what his sister wanted. Crow, who was also very close to her, is the same. Crow gets a character arc a bit bigger than the others. he really has to unlearn clan prejudice.

 the lake journey only emphasizes the need to join together. this time other cats start to see that as well.once they get there, Squirrel and Crow have secret meetings almost off the bat. in fact, the original journey cats meet up as well. (separate to the squirrel and crow one.)ash still asks Squilf out and she still turns him down. she also still has a falling out with Bramble about Hawkfrost. she knows a little about how shitty he is from Leafpool.

Bramble ends up telling Hawk about the gangs’ ideas of the clans joining. i mean hell, he’s got three siblings in other clans. Bramble actually befriends Mothwing in this rewrite. i always found it ridiculous he only acknowledges his brother and not his sister.

Moth loves the idea. as a med cat the clan rules are a bit different so she was already more open to the idea.Hawk uses the multiclan idea as part of trying to convince Bramble to kill firestar. in the rewrite tho, Moth confesses about how shitty Hawk’s been to her and storm. Bramble pretty much cuts contact with him and Tigerstar. the firestar trap scene does still happen tho.

in this rewrite squilf ends up pregnant and asks Bramble to pretend to be the father. they’ve patched up their relationship by now and he agrees. squilf tells leaf about it first. Leaf knew about them being mates and had been jealous.

not of squirrel, but their relationship. i mean her main friend in the new prophecy started to drift away cause of a relationship too. she agrees to help Squirrel however she can tho. she connects more with Moth cause of her jealousy.

a lot comes together with the original journey cats, Leafpool, Mothwing and Graystripe. the big climax is them at a gathering trying to convince the clans to join together. Squilf reveals she’s having Crow’s kits there. Bramble and his siblings stand united. (hawk’s been killed by now)

Storm points out how they all had to work together with the badgers and that the clans do better working together then apart. 

Leafpool makes a big selling point. the clans are together in starclan, why can’t they do that now? how many half clan relationships reconnect there? starclan can’t find it THAT bad if it’s allowed there.

the cats mostly argue that the clans should stay individual, but together. allowing for halfclan relationships and working together through hardships.

the clans agree at the end of the arc.

Po3 is mostly buildup to the dark forest. the three are working through their odd relationship with their father. breezepaw doesn’t exist. the tensions with the clans joining are also high. cats like Dustpelt or Spiderleg don’t like it at all.

everyone’s a little snippy with each other. gatherings are still a thing to help maintain relationships. there’s always a lot of bickering here though.

Jay still becomes a warrior. he, Crow, and Squirrel talk to firestar about him being treated better and how they can help him out. Holly still becomes a med cat. she’s not great with herbs and she’s better at fighting but she wants to be higher in the clan. she says leaders are seen as highest but she belives med cats are more important. 

Leaf loves her to bits.

the fire scene also happens. Squirrel pushes Ash into the fire. she ends up permanently disabled cause of it tho. (in the book Ash had to help her move the log as she was still recovering from a major injury. i wanted to use that for the rewrite. pushing him in messes up the injury and messes her up real bad.) 

omen of the stars is mostly more darkforest buildup. the dark forest cats try to isolate the clans again and turn them against each other. a lot pf the plot is about the three trying to keep everyone together. hollyleaf is the third cat in this au.

might have Dove as the mysterious 4th cat or somthing. maybe i’ll have her move to shadowclan and Ivy feels bitter and like she was abandoned.

anyways, the clans really get tested in the battle. it’s much longer in the rewrite. i felt like the battle was too short in the original. Holly is still killed. Ivy kills Hawk.

Storm, Bramble, Leaf, Moth, Cinderheart, Mothwing, Willowshine, Tawny, Crow, Squirrel, Fire, Ivy, Jay, Lion, they all mourn her. cats actually have and retain friendships in this rewrite. for instance, Lion and Heather get to stay friends. 

everyone expects them to become mates but they never do. they’re just good friends.

anyways, i always thought Bramble was a dick in the books. maybe not abusive per se but he was just a jerk. he’s stern but kind in the rewrite. he had so much of his character be about not becoming Tigerstar n stuff. idk i feel like he should have stayed consistently nice. squirrel still becomes his deputy, not as a sign of forgiveness like the books, he just genuinly trusts her.

also we get Tawnystar cause that’s what she deserves.

that’s what i’ve go so far! sorry if u had to read all that lmao! this is just somthing i’ve had in the back of my head, feel free to suggest stuff for it as it’s not too complete.

[the-dumbest-po3-au]

part 4 - the dumbest po3 au

its been. nine. montsh im SO SORRY GUYS LMAO

for those of you who dont know what the dumbest po3 au is, click this link

for those of you who have not read the summaries for power of three, part 1 - part 2 - part 3

alright!!!!!!! dovewing time

the fourth apprentice

the book opens w/ ivykit and dovekit in the nursery. ivykit suggests going out to explore the territory and dovekit is like “wow. that sounds like a fantastic idea ivykit you are so smart"

whitewing says No Absolutely Not, and leaves at some point to go make dirt. they sneak out and not 5 minutes later they get lost. dovekit gets blames ivykit for suggesting it and they get into a fight. they both get really mad & dovekit runs off. because shes like a stupid 2 year old gets distracted, rams her head into a rock and passes out. rip dovekit. she wakes up and sees a fox kit coming towards her. she screams.

her head hurts and shes tired and now shes going to die. out of nowhere a huge cat beats up the fox and scares it away. dovekit passes out (again)

when she wakes up, she is next to a cat messing with a bunch of weird plants. the cat sees that she woke up and introduces himself as littlecloud. he asks what her name is. “dove… dove…?? i dont know” says dovekit.

he asks her how she got there, and if she has any family. she does not remember. so littlecloud tells her she’s gonna have to stay here for the time being. he asks her if anything hurts, and dovekit says she thinks may have hit her head.

he gives her some of the weird plants and she goes back to sleep. when she wakes up her head has stopped hurting and she feels a lot better. she gets up to go walk around and is immediately introduced to the tawnyspawn.

tigerpaw is stupid and friendly (and hellbent on being her future best friend). dawnpaw is obnoxious and a bit (read: extremely) condescending but interested. flamepaw is nice and also the only one with half a braincell.

they take her around and introduce her to the rest of the clan. she sees blackstar and is like. “im pretty sure thats my dad” tigerpaw gasps. flamepaw and dawnpaw are like. “What.” “he saved me from the fox im pretty sure thats my dad,” says dovekit

they go harass blackstar. dovekit follows him around like a puppy and the tawnspawn follow her. he has this train of literal 2 yr olds trailing after him and is wildly unhappy about this development. russetfur is also definitely siccing the kids on him to make him mad.

dawnpaw gives dovekit a passionate speech about the clans, but mostly how evil riverclan kicked completely innocent shadowclan out of their home, and how shadowclan has to set everything right and deliver justice to those cringe fail fishheads, or something.

a few days later the tawnyspawn are off doing their own thing and dovekit goes to see whats going on. dawnpaw tries to shut tigerpaw up but he spills the beans anyways. “we’re going to attack riverclan on a Secret Mission so that we can win back shadowclan’s honor and become WARRIORS so you cant tell anybody”

dawnpaw sighs. “dovekit this is for Big Kids Only, so you cant be here.” flamepaw is trying to talk tigerpaw out of doing this in the bg but tigerpaw is being stubborn. dovekit is sad about it but goes back to sulk in camp (and to harass her new dad).

a few hours later tawnypelt runs over to blackstar and is like. “blackstar my children are missing nobody knows where they went”

"oh!! they went to go attack riverclan to get back shadowclan’s territory!” informs dovekit helpfully.

“what.” says blackstar, tawnypelt, and russetfur in unison. the sky immediately opens up and starts Pouring. tawnypelt freaks out. dovekit is like “why cant we just follow the sound of their voices??” but everyone ignores her bc they think shes just being stupid.

“Fine!! ill just go find them on my OWN” says dovekit, following them by the sound of their voices (theyre proally arguing over something stupid).

now four of shadowclan’s children are missing. “you brought that kid here so you get to deal with her,” says russetfur. blackstar sighs dramatically and goes off to find his new child.

dovekit runs into an old man cat. “whatre you doin here??” says old man cat. “im looking for my friends!! whats your name :0? im dovekit!!” “my names purdy!”

blackstar shows up and is like. who tf are you. “this is my new friend purdy!!!” says dovekit. blackstar doesnt even know how to respond. “look we’re going to go back to the camp right now and we’re not taking this dude with us.”

dovekit is like “??? no??? we have to get my friends theyre right over there??” she says pointing in their direction w/ her tail. blackstar is ready to cry. so blackstar and purdy follow dovekit as she leads them closer to riverclan territory where they hear the tawnyspawn screeching like banshees.

they run over and find several cats w/ the tawnyspawn who are pinned down. “if you breathe in my direction ill kill all three of these children,” says a snotty dude.

“who tf are you” says blackstar

“im darktail you insolent snot,” says darktail.

one of his cats grabs dovekit and blackstar snaps. he lunges at darktail while purdy beats up the dude who snatched dovekit. the tawnyspawn take advantage of the moment, escape, and dogpile the other cats. its a disaster.

darktail swears revenge on blackstar till his dying day or something. nobodys really paying attention to him at this point. he runs off w/ his crew. “alright then” says blackstar. this has been a really weird and long day for everyone. blackstar wants to leave purdy but all the children immediately start crying. they bring purdy home.

“holy crap!!! purdy!!!!!” says tawnypelt. “why are you here??” but then she sees her children. she and rowanclaw give them a very stern lecture about Not Running Off Without Telling Anyone (in which tawnypelt is a massive hypocrite but to be fair god told her to)

in the meanwhile, blackstar asks dovekit how tf she knew they were there. “i could hear them, Obviously. ???? cant u not???” blackstar just looks at her. dovekit realizes that probably not everyone shares this ability. blackstar shoos her off and calls a meeting w/ the senior warriors.

dovekit goes off to bother purdy for stories and play w/ the tawnyspawn. nothing particularly interesting happens. blackstar and russetfur call her over later and start assessing her abilities. its only slightly a disaster because shes wildly distracted 80% of the time and her powers are unwieldy bc shes a kit.

cue training. there is a lot of trial, error, and tears (on both sides) but it works out in the end (mostly).

time skip. its been a few months. dovekit becomes dovepaw and blackstar mentors her b/c of her powers. at this point shes gotten control of how to pick out numbers, locations, troops, etc. basically she is a living radar.

blackstar calls another meeting w/ the senior warriors and afterwards calls a clan meeting. “alright losers we’re going to take back our territory and kick riverclan’s butt”

they go over the clan w/ all the cats and begin the trek home. another time skip because that takes a while and nothing particularly interesting happens.

when they get back, the clan stays outside the border while blackstar has dovepaw do a sweep of the territory. she finds a patrol led by a black cat named reedwhisker. blackstar picks a patrol out and they go to ambush the riverclan patrol.

the shadowclan patrol takes reedwhisker + the patrol hostage, but lets one go to tell mistystar. mistystar takes a patrol and comes over. “if you dont give us back our territory i will kill your son” says blackstar. mistystar is like “bro. i dont even want your stupid crusty territory anyways. screw you.”

she takes her son and the rest of the patrol and leaves. another win for shadowclan, obviously. maybe they have a party idk. end of book.

fading echoes

cinderheart has not been doing well. she’s been doing really badly, actually. her best friend died and she blames herself. she’s still grieving and continually lashing out at everyone around her. poppyfrost and honeyfern attempted to be there for her but after the continual rebuffs they decided to just give her space.

unfortunately cinderheart. doesnt have any other friends in thunderclan, so the only person she can talk to is lionblaze. unfortunately theres only so much he can do from windclan, so mostly shes been just been going into a downward spiral.

ivypaw hasnt been doing great either. she feels extremely guilty because she thinks its her fault that dovekit ran away, and when dovekit is never found, it gets 50x worse.

but she also doesnt want to say anything about her involvement in fear of getting punished. as time goes on, she starts getting babied by the clan (almost like leopardstar when she was a kid) because her sister disappeared and she took it really hard.

and like on one hand, she likes the attention, but on the other hand its too much a lot of the time. she starts adopting this “stop babying me!1!1!!!”/kinda edgy persona. the clan takes it like shes grieving, and she’ll grow out of it, so they dont say too much.

so the book opens w/ ivypaw and fernpaw’s apprentice ceremony. brief context about how fern was recently found by the thunderclan border w/o parents and taken into the clan. fernsong is apprenticed to brightheart. ivypool is apprenticed to cinderheart.

firestar probably thinks that they might be able to bond/break through to each other because they recently lost a sister/adjacent sister. neither of them are particularly enthusiastic about it.

cinderheart isnt particularly invested in ivypaw’s training. ivypaw can tell and gets rightfully frustrated, bc brightheart and fernpaw are getting along great and making lots of progress, while ivypaw is falling behind becuase cinderheart is being a terrible mentor.

ivypaw starts fighting back (disobeying, talking back, etc.), partially because this is the only time she gets paid attention, and partially because shes just mad, which makes cinderheart mad, which then makes ivypaw fight back more. this causes cinderheart to become more and more distant. in short: ivypaw’s apprenticeship is a disaster.

at some point during training, theyre practicing climbing trees and cinderheart tells ivypaw to do something. to spite her, ivypaw does the opposite and ends up falling, dislocating her leg. cinderheart panics and cinderpelt emerges.

cinderpelt basically possesses cinderheart and relocates her arm. they go back to camp and take ivypaw to the medicine cat den, gives ivypaw some poppy seeds and ditches.

“wow um. wtf was that” says cinderheart. leafpool is like, “hahaha………… about that. you’re um… cinderpelt reincarnated.”

“what.” says cinderheart

“CINDERHEART IS CINDERPELT REINCARNATED???” screams foxleap at the top of his lungs in the middle of camp. whatever was left of cinderheart’s life shatters.

so now instead of ignoring her, the entire camp won’t leave her alone - except now they just treat her as they would cinderpelt. “hey cinderheart remember when [enter something that happened in the old forest here]??” “hey cinderheart can you fix my paw??” “hey cinderpelt-” “are you going to become a medicine cat then??”

to pour more salt into the wound, cinderheart now gets a free commentary on everything in her life!! (this definitely includes lionblaze) there used to be sort of a barrier between cinderheart/cinderpelt but since cinderpelt emerged/took control, it shattered.

so between cinderpelt complaining about all the terrible decisions she’s made and the entire clan pretending that she’s cinderpelt instead of a Completely Different Person, when hawkfrost shows up w/ an invite to fight club on the weekends cinderheart is more than happy to take him up.

sure hawkfrost is wildly annoying and clearly hates her guts for some reason (no matter how hard he pretends not to whenever tigerstar is around) but this is great for three reasons.

1) nobody in the dark forest has any idea she’s cinderpelt. 2) warrior training!! emphasizing she is a Warrior not a medicine cat. 3) time away from cinderpelt!! they arent the same soul so they cant read each other’s thoughts (unless theyre trying to communicate) and cant share dreams

so she might be purposely oblivious. whatever. she doesnt even know who hawkfrost is b/c anybody outside of riverclan immediately forgot about him because he really was not very effective at all. and its not like hes about to start spilling the beans until shes ready to be indoctrinated w/ dark forest propaganda.

meanwhile, tensions between shadowclan and thunderclan have been rapidly rising. again. prey is being stolen, scents are on other territories, patrols get into skirmishes often.

firestar is hurt because he was trying to get mistystar to lay off on the territory and blackstar is mad because they literally Just got back and thunderclan is ALREADY trying to reinstate old rivalries.

cinderheart really isnt paying attention to what’s going on cuz shes. more than a little wrapped up in her own problems. until it turns into a war.

this battle feels way more vicious than normal. cinderheart tries to recall how this whole thing started and realizes she has absolutely no idea what tf is going on???

throughout the fight she notices weird stuff happening. mousewhisker and redwillow nod to each other. ratscar + blossomfall swap glances. applefur pulls snowbird off thornclaw’s back. literally wtf thinks cinderheart

and then russetfur takes a stab at firestar. out of nowhere, thornclaw goes for her throat. cinderheart barely saves russetfur in the nick of time - the injuries are bad enough that she is forced to retire.

“screw literally everyone in thunderclan except u” blackstar says pointing @ cinderheart “and i hope the rest of you rot in the dark forest.” he rounds the rest of shadowclan up and then leaves.

“well that was weird” says cinderheart. she goes off to find ivypaw and realizes that shes. not responding. oh thats a lot of blood-

cinderpelt pops up again and works w/ cinderheart to patch up ivypaw until she’s stable. they bring her into the medicine den together and let leafpool look her over. she says that they made it in time and ivypaw will live. she leaves to go look after the other patients, leaving cinderheart with her apprentice

cinderheart realizes that this is her fault. had she actually paid attention to ivypaw and given her proper training, this wouldn’t have happened. she resolves to try a lot harder to be a good mentor for ivypaw’s sake.

cinderpelt approves and apologizes for being so intrusive on cinderheart’s life. she really doesnt want to be in here either - this was a decision the idiots in starclan forced on her. she was taking it out on cinderheart, which wasn’t fair for her.

cinderpelt promises to try to give cinderheart as much privacy as she can (while trying to figure out how to get out of her brain). cinderheart thanks her. there’s a brief bonding moment.

cinderpelt says that since ivypaw seems stable she’s going to go to sleep now, since she exhausted herself earlier.

just as cinderpelt goes out to the back of cinderheart’s mind, blossomfall comes storming in about how cinderheart messed the plan up and how cinderheart screwed everything up for everyone & she’s a traitor to the cause, Honestly cinderheart you’re so useless-

“literally wtf are you talking about” says cinderheart

“you saved russetfur,” blossomfall says. “if we take out the leaders and deputies, we can destabilize the clans enough that taking over will be a piece of cake. are you a dark forest trainee or not, cinderheart?”

end of book

[raggydraws]

Gotta see what you got for my main girl squirrelflight

Squirrelwife for life anon. Honestly anyone is good for Squirrel as long as they aren't Ashfur or Bramblestar. I don't really have ship for her, I mean, I love NightSquirrel just as much as anyone else and ShrewSquirrel is also really cute but, I headcanoned Squirrelflight as aromantic for the longest time for a reason~

But because I love her, and Nightcloud deserves a girlfriend, NightSquirrel it is!!

Squirrelflight

Squirrel is trans! MtF, trans girl, I love her and no one should've been bothered by her kits not being her biologically!! All of the end of Po3 makes me angry!! The Three 👏 are 👏 her 👏 kits👏!!

Also the fact that she took all that sh*t laying down is so out of character for her, like, she didn't let anyone talk down to her even as an apprentice and the fact that she let people try and drag her sons into it is b*ll!! I want her to yell at people like "THEY HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH THIS! LEAVE THEM ALONE! LEAVE MY SISTER ALONE! IT WAS MY CHOICE SO BE MAD AT ME NOT THEM!" Also Brambleclaw raised them and rejected them if that isn't a tigerclaw ass thing to do I don't know what is. This turned into a rant. I'm sorry.

Squirrelflight willing takes Jay Holly and Lion and I will die with this headcanon.

NightSquirrel

Unlike how the NightLeaf headcanons went Nightcloud is aware of Squirrel's advances just cause she much less subtle and much better at it than Leafpool.

Ok so, in the GreenRose Au I have a much, much bigger New Prophecy road trip gang that includes Apprentice!Nightcloud. She and Squirrelpaw get along like a house on fire! Much to Crowpaw's dismay cause he's their favorite target. Honestly when they all join forces the rest of gang is in for a bad and or entertaining time cause they roast anything and everything they see. Purdy adored them.

Also, quick Nightcloud headcanon, she was adopted into Windclan after the battle with Bloodclan! She was a kitten from one of the alley cats who was oppressed under Scourge's rule, Tornear adopted her as his daughter and since Mudclaw was Torn's brother they were all very close. Squirrel being so open and ready to befriend Nightpaw made her feel very welcomed unlike how Windclan did sometimes. Night very quickly devolved a crush and so did Squirrel. They were subconsciously seek each other out whenever bad things happened on the journey, both back to the old territories and the new ones, and instead of LeafCrow happening it's NightSquirrel!

Nightcloud already felt so out of place and the death of her uncle hit her hard. Squirrelflight is constantly in fights with Ash and Bramble and is just done with everyone! She and Night met up and very hastily make a decision to run away together if more bad things start happening. They do, same time as LeafCrow did, and when they run into Midnight Nightcloud is very reluctant to go back. She's a hero but she's also an outcast given both her past and her siding with Mudclaw's coup, if she went back after this they'd never forgive her!

Squirrelflight goes back without Nightcloud while Midnight talks some sense into her. Nightcloud eventually runs after her mate with Midnight and she makes it just in time to see the badger that kills Cinderpelt going into the nursery. She, without thought cause this is Nightcloud, rushes into the nursery and attacks the badger with Cinderpelt. So Cinder lives! Cinderkit is named after Sootfur instead (cause, come on Sorreltail your brother died too I don't see any legacy naming for him).

After the battle Firestar sees how close and sad looking Nightcloud and Squirrelflight are and he offers Night a place in Thunderclan! She immediately says yes! Power of Three would the follow the 3 as Night and Squirrel's kits!

Wow this is long!

[fencesandfrogs]

cloudtail’s daughter — worldbuilding & logistical things

so i've been working on an au re. dovewing being the direct child of cloudtail and brightheart. check out my cloudtail's daughter tag for more info, because i'm basically just jumping in this time with minimal context.

that said, i think this is relatively self-contained. it's mostly thoughts about the world of warriors, lumped in with specific changes for the au purposes.

[3.8k words, 14 min read. section headers, very long paragraphs. paragraphs in parathesis and italics are sidebars that can be skipped. a lot of spelling mistakes because my grammer checker cuts me off after like 2k words. sorry.]

section one: po3

so i've said before i want to minimize the changes made specifically in po3 for the purposes of this au. a) because that means i only have to keep track of 6 books worth of content (i've given myself through bramblestar's storm to get to the point where it could mostly fit into canon, but for reasons that are obvious re. my dovewing/tigerheart take, tigerheart's shadow would be a little weird, but not out of canon. anyway we don't get any tigerheart pov in this so who knows what he's thinking.)

anyway, hollyleaf plays a significant role in the ending three books of the rewrite, getting her own pov in book 4 the forgotten warrior. so she can't go exactly the same way it happens in po3. i need her back in thunderclan by book 2 for beavers, not book 5. also, she still needs to end up mates with fallen leaves. because changing that would count as a major series change that could have an impact on the future continuity and this series rewrite is intended to be fairly self contained.

right. so hollyleaf has her shit a bit more together, but she still kills ashfur and goes into the tunnels. the difference is we're ignoring the entire hollyleaf's story novella. don't get me wrong, it was a really good novella, but she doesn't have that much time. i'm not interested in figuring out the details of what happens, but she returns to the clans either before book one or in book one, i haven't decided. she continues to see fallen leaves fairly regularly, though, including spending irregular nights with him. everyone just kind of...accepts hollyleaf's ghost boyfriend, because no one wants to upset hollyleaf again.

lionblaze's personality is not entirely nonexistant in po3, contrary to popular opinion, but he does have to support an entire book in this rewrite, and it's the weakest book in the arc, so he's gotta have something. i've nudged him to be a bit gregarious and open. you know, big and friendly and warm. terrifying in battle though.

jayfeather ends on much better terms with brightheart. i know he doesn't really end on a bad note with her, but this is also to help story flow a bit.

other changes will, i'm sure, crop up here and there, but those are the three major ones. i've got tonnes of changes i'd like to make, but i'm keeping it minor. (notably, if it were up to me, jayfeather would do his back in time sequence once, not twice, and it would be in omen of the stars. hollyleaf's ghost boyfriend would add more solid ground to it, and that would be established in book 2, but as i've decreed the rules, it is not up to me.

also, dovekit and jaykit would be siblings, and dovepaw would become the medicine cat dovefeather, and jaypaw would be the warrior jaywing. that's a bigger change though for a different au.)

section two: family dynamics & a bit of genetics

so one thing i really like in omen of the stars is how close dove/ivy/white are. it's really cute. cloudtail and dovekit are super close in the first book, and brightheart, dovekit, and ivykit are going to stay close throughout their lives. (cloudtail will also stay close with his daughters, but dovewing and ivypool consistently look to whitewing for support, and brightheart is good for that too.)

i have whitewing as still existing because age wise, i think it makes sense for brightheart to have her younger litter at dovekit and ivykit, than for them to be her first litter and for amber/dew/snow continue to exist. (in my hypothetical jaywing/dovefeather au, this is reversed.)

i'm not keen on her being close with her younger sisters. i do think, for future story purposes, whitewing and birchfall would have amber/snow/dew. this is a super unimportant change because the only part of that litter that matters is that lilykit is fostered so that lilyheart can then foster twigkit and violetkit, and there's 0 reason that whitewing can't be responsible for that.

(be honest, did you even remember that chain of events? did you even remember who raised lilykit? did you even remember sorreltail was her birth mother who died? yeah, that's what i thought.)

anyway, i've danced around the specific genetics of how we get a grey dovekit from a white cloudtail and a red brightheart, and you may think, "matthew, one paragraph isn't dancing around it," and that's because you have no idea how much i care about this and how much i have to say about this. if you don't want to read 1.3k words about cat genetics, skip to the next section. the last two paragraphs is the only part that's even kind of important.

so. i've put a whole lot of thought into this. because obviously dovekit is responsible for being grey to make the whole bit work about her, you know, being dovekit, and dovekit must be dovekit for dove's gentle wings to work. so this is important.

i'm going to walk through the two options: tortie brightheart and tortie dovewing. (*technically, calico brightheart and either for dovewing, but i'm keeping it brief.)

(an aside that's totally skipable: so there is a gene on the extension locus E/e which causes cats born black to turn to amber, which definitely could be brightheart, but it's pretty rare, so i'm sticking with my calico assumptions. that said, in brightheart's official art, there is a black ring around her nose, implying a very specific silver tabby to amber deal. given her kit coat isn't described anywhere i can find it, i'd say it's actually the best description of brightheart. that said, best description is not the most likely. anyway, if this were the case, i wouldn't need all of this write up. so know that there's an easy solution, but i'm choosing to ignore it because of its rarity and because i don't want to check if brightheart could have inherited the silver genes she would have had to for this to work. it's definitely possible, given that frostfur has the same deal as cloudtail, see below, and lionheart could be golden --- as in the formal word for a cat with certain genes, a color linked to silver, but, well, i just can't find it likely. i'll add a short description of how it would work at the very end of this though.)

in either case, cloudtail is the same, so i'll address him first.

so, cats have four genes on the white allele, Wd, Ws, w, and wg. Wd is dominant white, and it could be what cloudtail has, but since he has blue eyes, it would be likely for him to be deaf, and, because it's dominant, there's a low chance that neither dovekit nor ivykit inherit it. is what i would be saying if whitewing wasn't his first daughter. she is also solid white with blue eyes, so to me, that makes me thing he has Wd- (as in, any other gene.)

the other option, Ws, requires him to be WsWs to be fully white, and brightheart to be either WsWs or Ws- for whitewing to inherit WsWs. given that ambermoon and dewnose are not fully white, it seems that brightheart is Ws- and cloudtails is Wdw (or Wdwg) in order for their theoretical image to be correct.

(an aside of even less importance: ambermoon's father was not cloudtail. the short explanation is that she shares one X chromosome with princess, who was XX --- see my discussion of tortoiseshells below, we know princess wasn't one, so she can't be XXo --- and one with brightheart, who's XXo or XoXo. therefore, ambermoon and princess cannot both have accurate canon descriptions because one of them needs to be a tortie. i think it's more likely she was sired by a red tom. yes, it is possible for kits in the same litter to have different sires, and yes, that is necessary, because no one else has dominant white in thunderclan AFAIK. this means making her birchfall and whitewing's gives a bit more wiggle room in all this. a bit. she could also have the same thing covered on brightheart in the above slide, but that's complicated for other reasons.)

brightheart is almost certainly Wsw or Wswg. they're not both wgwg because that leaves no options for ambermoon, who i'm interpretting as not having any white. cloudtail inherits from princess wg because of birman gloving demonstrating on her white paws (there are other ways, but given her description, which fits it almost identically, i'm going with that.) so for white, we have Wdwg for cloudtail and Wsw for brightheart.

ivypool inherits Wswg so she can have her inconsistent white, and dovewing inherits wwg.

now, we don't know anything about cloudtail's father, except that he's white too (or cloudtail couldn't be white.) princess is light brown tabby, which is something i'm having a hard time deciding her genetics for, so we'll work back to that (neither of the obvious options leads to a cat that looks like princess, because of how tabbies work, the combination is likely not to be obvious anyway) if i decide we need her genetics.

right so for dovewing to be solid grey, two things must be true: cloudtail and brightheart must be either Dd or dd (dilution). brightheart, i don't believe, is dilute, because i've seen cream on cats and it's far closer to sandstorm's color than brightheart, so i'm calling her Dd. cloudtail can be either.

dovewing is dd, and so is ivypool. that's how you get light grey.

now, either cloudtail or brightheart have to have a B- black phenotype. (special case included, if you read the aside) and i think it's more likely to be cloudtail. then, brightheart can be blbl, which is cinnamon, and would help hide her tortie-ness. (we're covering that later.)

at this point, dovewing is more or less settled. if you're comfortable with this type of genetics, you can probably work it out. dovekit inherits B-/dd/wwg, and she's everything we need. the fact that she's not a tabby does kind of matter, but not really, because the nonagouti gene is recessive so even if cloudtail was a masked tabby, he can still be Aa and brighheart can be Aa, so she won't show. that makes dovewing B-/dd/wwg/aa, for those following along at home.

ivypool is a tabby, so she'd be B-/bb/Ws-/A-.

okay, we have the core of them settled down. there's a lot more that goes into types of tabbies, but that doesn't really matter here. the last bit that matters is the tortie issue.

as is a somewhat commonly known fact, tortie cats are almost always female, because the phaeomelanin (red pigment) gene in cats is sex linked to Xo (vs X for eumelanin, the black gene). this is expressed as O/o when discussing the specific gene, but since we only care if its dominant, the XO/Xo distinction is slightly faster to type if X means black and Xo means orange.

anyway, these are codominant, if a cat has two, they'll be expressed at random. that's how tortie cats exist. since for the vast majority of cases, only female cats have two X chromosomes, only female cats can be XXo.

(as an aside, that's another reason for the clans to find sol strange. i know the clans have a lot of male calicos, but sol was the most distinctive one, since redtail died in the prologue and i can't recall any others off the top of my head.)

anyway, dovewing needs to inherit XX to be fully black (grey), so brightheart needs to be tortie to pass on one to her and remain orange. alternatively, brightheart is XoXo and dovewing is a tortie. i'm sticking with brightheart tortie because that's actually how i pictured her, so i like it better, but it doesn't really matter, since the cream on dilute torties is actually rather subtle.

ivypool is the same as dovewing, although she could be a tortie if dovewing isn't and brightheart is, something i quite like the idea of.

now, for option 3, the cryptic option in the aside. basically, to summarize, you can get black cats who turn orange over time. the end result is a cat who looks very much like brightheart if they start silver tabbies (like ivypool could be), up to the black ring around her nose in the official art. that makes it the best way to describe brightheart.

however, it's pretty rare, so i chose to ignore it for my analysis. if brightheart did have this gene, then nothing would change about dovekit and ivykit from their canon descriptions, nor would her's change, except for her apprentice art, which would need to be updated as spreading orange over silver.

this is also the only option that gives us fully red ivykit, something i have decreed adorable.

over 1k words about cat colors later, here's my take: dovewing and ivypool with somewhat mirrored tortie spots (they'll never be perfectly mirrored, both because ivypool has white and because its entirely random) is cute and adds something extra to all of that art where they're mirrored.

i'd rather have straight red brightheart because she's got so much art very clearly not calico, and i'd rather have the two sisters match each other for cinematic drama than change brightheart. the accurate thing to do would be calico brightheart because it could be easily hidden by the right genes on the B locus, but i don't want to do that. so. i hope this was illustrative.

section three: clan culture

this here has no impact on plot but i've read a lot of worldbuilding stuff developing distinct cultures for the clans and honestly, that's why i'm so sad book 6 takes place with two shadowclan narrators. unfortunately, dovewing and ivypool are, like, crucial to the success of the clan cats, so they need to be there.

that said, were i to write this, i would certain write novellas for lionblaze and jayfeather.

anyway, i'm going to take what we've come to see as "standard clan culture" as thunderclan culture. they have a good deal of contact not with twolegs but with kittypets (compared to the opposite for riverclan) in the old terretory, so it makes sense they developed a more rigid, militeristic life, less free and less spiritual than the other clans necessarily. they're trying to be tough in front of the kittypets.

riverclan is just kinda...chill. they like flowers and shiny things. they copy twolegs because its fun (cats irl do this because they want to be like you --- being like you seems safe to them, but these kitties do it because its fun.)

so they make, not flower crowns because, no thumbs, but certainly weave flowers into den walls and leave petals places. (to everyone who keeps putting things on cats heads, please try doing that with the most patient domestic cat you know, and then i'll let you quietly correct yourself. i mean, continue doing it for fun, but if you seriously think that's possible...)

i do like the idea of them making wreathes its just, like, no opposable thumbs guys. maybe the medicine cats do it for religious holidays.

anyway, they have patrols far less regularly than thunderclan. they're also the most true to real cat schedules: most active at dawn and dusk. that's when fish are active.

so they're not lazy, sleeping all day, they get up earlier than all but the earliest risers in thunderclan and shadowclan. (windclan wakes up early too, we're getting to them.)

they also make shrines, but they don't really have a ton of weight to them. they're copying what they see.

when cats die, however, the trinkets lining their nests are dispersed to their loved ones, and one or two are added to a collective pile/arrangement somewhere. riverclan has been pretty clear their nests float (although i can't tell you why, considering they just evacuate when that happens and have to rebuild), so the most useful thin i can think of is to preserve the trinkets.

they also are one of the two clans to celebrate proper holidays. there's not a good sense of order to them, but when a celebration is needed, a celebration is had.

that said, unlike thunderclan, the warrior vigil does remain strong in riverclan. this is because twolegs are far more common in their territory, and so learning to be quiet when necessary is important, and the vigil reinforces that. riverclan cats are also really good at sitting still: you have to, to be able to catch fish.

shadowclan is pretty serious, but unlike thunderclan, they're serious about religion. being a medicine cat in shadowclan is a pretty serious deal. they tend to die young. (i'm stealing this mostly/entirely from warrior cats redux because i can't get it out of my head.)

they retain bringing apprentices to the moonpool in the new territory. it was always an important deal for them, whereas in thunderclan it's kind of like "oh yeah make sure that happens," like a mastery project in high school or a first year seminar in university.

they also care a lot about their ancestors. i believe blackstar is the one who called the names of the fallen during every gathering? yeah. that's because remembering the dead is really important in shadowclan.

they've got a lot of nursery tales about ghosts who grew vengeful once their names were forgotten, fading from starclan but not allowed to fully die. so. when everyone dies real fast like that, carving their names into everyone's memory is super important.

(if it wasn't blackstar who did that it is in this au.)

anyway, they've got a good amount of order to their life, like thunderclan, and the camp is also a lot quieter. in thunderclan, kits are under a good amount of danger from badgers and foxes and hawks, oh my!, but pine forests are a bit safer, since foxes are the only serious predetor.

i mean, it's complicated, and i can't really figure out what biome to base this analysis on, but i'm sticking with "foxes are all shadowclan really has to worry about" because it works for me. so shadowclan kits are allowed (suprivised) out of camp much earlier.

i know this contradicts tigerheart's shadow, and my choice was either "shadowclan: militant about protecting kits" or "shadowclan: dgaf" and i'm going with "after brokenstar, they did get real protective of their kits, which is when tigerkit was born and raised, but over time, they've relaxed back to their natural state of chill"

anyway, they're probably the most similar to thunderclan, but dovewing vibes there so much better because there's a real sense of order for purpose, not just because. so there's less shouting about who is going on patrol and who's hunting. the dawn patrol is leaving because if you're up at dawn, you need to secure the territory. etc.

and while she's part of a prophecy, shadowclan revers the prophecy itself, not dovewing. dovewing is not special for being a part of it, she's just doing her role for clan life. her role happens to be different than the usual, but so what? she's just a cat.'

also, they have holidays. namely, the new moon is a big celebration night, but they also celebrate the seasons, and new life. this is part of why tigerheart gets so homesick: even dovewing, his wife, doesn't share this part of life with him, and he misses it.

finally, windclan. i don't know honestly what to do with them. they're supposed to be the most spiritual but that's not reflected in how they're written, even in like tallstar's revenge, so i don't know. i think they're the calm riverclan crossed with the more focused on protocol of clan life thunderclan.

they rise early because rabbits, and their hunting patrols are smaller and less organized. based on the books, they just run full wild after rabbits most of the time, which means they scare off the other ones for a while, so it makes sense to have a mentor and apprentice go out every hour or so during the waking day to grab a bunny or bird than for a bunch of cats to feed the clan for a day.

they do have a lot of respect for medicine cats and leaders. starclan isn't seen as something the average cat has any connection at all with. i have a hard time keeping track of who complains about what in the broken code and avos, but i feel like windclan gets angry at some point about shadowsight's visiosn.

anyway, so a cat like jayfeather is like "oh he real cool" and that's fun for jayfeather. everyone expects great things from him. because, you know, medicine cat and in a prophecy? can you imagine i mean shame he came to be via crowfeather and leafpool but you'd be a fool not to admit he's a credit to his parent's names.

they're also pretty proud. and private. very private. no one knows at all what goes on in windclan. i'd not put it past them to have a secondary camp to move to if they get uncomfortable with so many people knowing where their camp is.

i mean, how else do you explain them keeping the tunnlers secret for so long? i mean, like completely secret, no one else knew about them secret, we found out about them in a super edition secret for so long?

section four: medicine cat shit

this is a short section, but i want there to be the idea, especially in shadowclan and windclan, that medicine cats are really important to the integrity of a clan, so they need to be spiritually pure. this doesn't mean they can't have been warriors, but they can't break the code.

that's why thunderclan and riverclan medicine cats share herbs so much more than the others: if windclan and shadowclan leadrs say no, medicine cats are risking a lot by disobeying.

this is also part of why leafpool steps down when the truth comes out. what she did is bad enough, but it will be far worse for crowfeather if she doesn't step down, and shadowclan and windclan will come for her head.

nightcloud and breezepelt are also angry because not only did crowfeather have kits out of clan, but it was with a medicine cat. that's like having sex out of wedlock with a nun.

and that's pretty much all i have for this. most of it was taken up by cat genetics, because integrity matters to me.

[fencesandfrogs]

cloudtail’s daughter: lionblaze

continuing on with my journey of writing a whole au a posteriori of po3 so that omen of the stars isn't so trash, next character on our list to tackle is lionblaze.

since lionblaze is a fully grown adult by the time omen of the stars starts, i expect this to be much shorter than dovewing, because we had to go dovekit to dovewing (IV). actually, we're skipping straight to him becoming the mentor of ivypaw. because before that it's just him being cold to hollyleaf and mooning over cinderheart.

anyway, if you don't know what i'm rambling on about, this is an au where cloudtail and brightheart have dovekit and ivykit instead of whitewing and birchfall. see my cloudtail's daughter tag for more from this au. this is probably the least self-contained post about it to date since i'm skipping a lot of the first book/lead in to the first book and some major changes happen in there.

section one: mentoring ivypaw, pre-beavers

(i'm dropping the dovekit/dovepaw I, II etc thing because he's always lionblaze)

okay, so basically, ivypaw is a good apprentice but a lil angry, and lionblaze is just a golden retriever. he's just bumbling and loving and unaware of his own strength. (this is definitely tweaking lionblaze's character a little, but...he needs to sustain one and a half books. what do you want from me?)

so mostly he blunders on oblivious until cinderheart is like "hey uhh maybe make sure ur apprentice isn't plotting to murder anyone i gtg my apprentice is seeing things ttyl bye ily"

and as she leaves lionblaze is like "wait did she means she loves me loves me or was it an accident" while ivypaw slowly rips dovepaw's nest to shreds.

section two: dovepaw is away

ivypaw is basically angry all the time. lionblaze is like "huh this is a problem" and actually works with her in a productive way instead of just...aggresively emoting at her.

look, he's not good with emotions, he just thinks he is.

but ivypaw starts to trust him. he really does care about her and he's happy to see her getting better. he's like "huh i didn't teacher those moves" and then he's like "jayfeather! i found the third cat" and jayfeather is like "i literally was treating her scratches ten minutes ago she's just a good student."

am i good teacher?, thinks lionblaze.

no, says jayfeather. but you're not bad.

lionblaze continues to mentor ivypaw. she starts to make friends with the Bs (Blossom, Bumble, and Briar, who are Basically in Background character hell until they're needed), idk. lionblaze starts to talk to hollyleaf a little. jayfeather feels betrayed by this.

lionblaze goes about his life. again, his content is all 50% someone else max, because he just...doesn't get up to much. cinderheart and hollyleaf carry his books. it's not that he's unimportant, it's that ivypaw's drama is what's important, and he's kind of slow about that stuff.

section three: ivypaw and the tribe

so lionblaze's progress with ivypaw is pretty much aborted when dovepaw gets back. both because she's purposely messing up, preventing her from taking her warrior assessment, and because she's all angry and sullen again.

so he volunteers them to go to the tribe with cinderheart and dovepaw. it is only 75% because he wants to spend time with cinderheart, and that overlaps with 75% because of ivypaw. he does think cinderheart will be a good influence, that's the overlapping 50%.

anyway, when ivypaw starts looking less tired, lionblaze cottons on to what's up with the dark forest and is like "yeah that sucks. i can't get you out of this, i'm sorry, but that sucks." and ivypaw? she starts to get better.

lionblaze is proud of his angry little bean. she's growing up to be an angry medium-sized warrior.

section four: love is in the air

lionblaze and cinderheart are mates. they don't have kits yet. that's it.

see this is why his books are early. even though they're kind of boring, his life doesn't get interesting until later, and at that point there are like 14 other more interesting things to be thinking about. sorry, lionblaze. maybe i'll write lionblaze's vacation about you chilling in riverclan for like a month.

section five: riverclan

so after the prophecy is revealed, lionblaze goes to riverclan with, like, idk. blossomfall? bumblestripe? it's not really important this is about lionblaze chilling out see.

lionblaze is kind of like. weight-of-the-world on my shoulders kind of guy. he's always trying to be chill and cheery because he feels like he has to set basically a "good example" and to do that he needs to be positive but then riverclan just is chill and positive.

he's not nearly as useful for fishing as he is hunting, but he does learn to swim pretty well, and he gets a moment saving an apprentice. that's cool. that's a real thing he did that made someone life better. so that's cool.

he enjoys holidays. he just, like, has the time of his life while everyone else is prepping for battle.

see, this is why he doesn't get a book. outside of the militaristic structure of thunderclan, he kind of. turns into a lionblaze colored pile of chilling out.

section five: the rest of lionblaze

it's in canon go read that.

but yeah shortest post in this series to date coming in at under a thousand words which means it's not even getting tagged as long. god bless lionblaze.

[fencesandfrogs]

cloudtail’s daughter au

so i decided to do a full write-up of this au instead of doing a second post to cover books 4-6 and then everything will be self-contained.

the essence of this au is pretty simple: dovewing does not, imo, fulfill the prophecy by being the granddaughter of firestar’s nephew, because that’s at least 3 “kin” away from him. so while i think she’d actually have to be princess’ daughter to fit, i’ll let her be firestar’s grandniece and call that “close enough” because it’s better.

anyway, there’s no real reason for this to change anything, but i think given who cloudtail and brightheart are, and how close dovewing and ivypool are to whitewing, it would probably change quite a few things.

[4k words. 15 minute read. proper section headers.]

this is a big summary so i’m sure i’ll forget things, i’ve already had to add in the events caused by the dovewing/tigerheart romance/conflict that carries through the first three books, and that cloudtail being an atheist has a major effect on ivypaw. i know i wrote a detailed summary of the first arc, where i didn’t forget any of that, but nothing exists for the second arc. anyway this au is tagged cloudtail’s daughter and apparently i have a lot to say about it so i’m sure if you click on the tag you can find info about it. assuming this isn’t the first thing i post. which it might be.

section one: things that don’t happen

so i don’t want this to be a po3 rewrite, which means i’m going to take a moment to explicitly discuss what doesn’t change.

first, po3 stays pretty much exactly the same. i want jayfeather to be a warrior too. i also want him to be dovewing’s brother. but the au where brightheart gives birth to dovekit, anxiety child, and jaykit, blind, and feels like a failure despite the fact that its not like her half-blindness is genetic, is not this au. that is another au.

anyway, hollyleaf does keep herself more together, because she needs to be alive for some family drama. she’s in background character hell (BGCH) for a while, though, especially the first book.

she still goes to the tunnels, mind, she just comes out sooner.

but otherwise, despite my personal tastes, i’m not changing po3 very much.

section two: brightheart’s litters

okay so cloudtail and brightheart have four children, i believe, and my choice is either to replace whitewing, or to replace the others. now, i don’t particularly care for either of these options, but i’d rather they have their second litter younger, so we’re replacing amber/dew/snow. this still lets you have old queen drama, but not so much that you’re like “brightheart how on god’s green earth did you have 3 children with no issues”

instead, she’ll have dovekit and ivykit at about the same time whitewing had them.

now, for complicated cat genetic reasons, cloudtail could have been a black cat. now, here me out: what i mean is, if he wasn’t white, he could be black. basically, white is a masking color in cats, it goes on top of whatever pattern they would have displayed. both he and brightheart would have to inherit one dilute gene (princess was not dilute, so she had to carry it), and then either dovewing or brightheart are tortie, and that’s the best i can do for keeping dovewing grey.

i, personally, lean towards tortie brightheart, because i always pictured her that way, but i have seen some pretty cute tortie dovewing.

ivykit inherits red from her mother, and is tortie either way, because tortie ivypool is cute.

in fact, i’ve been tinkering with the idea that ivykit and dovekit have kind of mirrored grey and cream spots. not, like, perfectly mirrored, because that’s not how tortoiseshell/calico (they would technically be calico, since they have white) works, but close enough to be cute.

section three: arc one (summary)

these books are going to have six protagonists (dovekit, lionblaze, cinderheart, hollyleaf, jayfeather, ivypool, in that order) with a secondary character who gets less chapters but the most important b-plot (ivykit, hollyleaf, lionblaze, jayfeather, cinderheart, dovewing).

arc one focuses on “two braincells” i.e., dovewing, lionblaze, and cinderheart (sorry bb, ur not like the other two, but i’m putting you somewhere) and the main theme is dovepaw learning to manage her power. it’s a tug and pull between dovewing: glass canon, and dovewing: can’t do shit.

cinderheart and lionblaze also have a romance going on, which irritates ivypaw, who has a bit of a catalyst with the dark forest in the middle/end of the arc (like in the original). we only get this through external perspecives, though, because when this happens, lionblaze is in the secondary position.

one of the ways to fix this book series is to decouple it from ivy and dove, much as i love them. both the beavers and the dark forest make up a b-plot in this arc, while the quest for the third prophecy cat, as well as growing tensions between clans, take center stage, and lionblaze and cinderheart work in the second and third book to give us the adult perspective of the tension that dovekit and ivykit can’t in the first book.

mostly, this is fairly low stakes. part of that is because characters are having stakes appropriate for them, rather than smeared around in a book. (looking @ u, flametail buddy). so dovekit/paw spends her first book worried about apprentice things and doesn’t get to narrate again until the end of the series.

section four: book one — growing shadows

i think the fourth apprentice is a stupid name, okay?

so book one is dovekit and ivykit, for pretty obvious reasons.

although actually i’m pushing off the beavers in this to book two or three. i’m not 100% sure where i want that, yet.

so anyway, dovekit is born and wow is she anxiety child. (i call dovewing anxiety child a lot, because, well, she is? i feel like it’s sort of implicit in the books and i’m making it explicity.) anyway, she’s in sensory overload like 100% of the time. see, she was born late, and so she didn’t have her powers kick in over time like lionblaze and jayfeather. nope. she got the adult version right away.

so she spends a lot of time hiding with cloudtail because he’s big and fluffy and not complicated to look at. cloudtail and brightheart are understandibly pretty worried about her, because no one really knows what to do about it. she’s skittish and distractable and extremely sensitive. she hates going out in the rain, hates bright sun, etc.

(side note: dovekit’s powers extend to pretty much all her senses. she can see, hear, and smell much farther than she should, and she can taste and feel much more strongly than an other cat.)

ivykit doesn’t feel unloved, but she does know her sister is getting more attention, and that always kind of hurts, even if you’re understanding.

cloudtail and brightheart work to try to help dovekit get on her feet, but they’re not super successful. she learns to cope enough to be able to function as a kit, but she’s always kind of a strange, quiet kit. she doesn’t know how to talk about seeing too much because she doesn’t realize its too much.

dove is given to cinderheart, because lionblaze is a terrible mentor for small anxiety child, and ivy is given to lionblaze. this will also create drama later, just wait.

so the main plot of this book is keyed into dovepaw learning to hunt. the stakes are pretty low, honestly. they’re mounting around dovepaw and ivypaw, but the girls are too young to properly understand everything.

dovepaw is initially successful hunting due to some luck and being good at spotting prey, but she can’t replicate it. ivypaw only trains with her a bit at first, and she sees this success, and feels like her parents’ attention on dovepaw made dovepaw better than her.

this gets ivypaw into the dark forest. this is the b-plot: ivypaw training, realizing she made a mistake, and not knowing how to get out. plus, she doesn’t have to mind her sister. (ivypaw is raised by an atheist, so while she’s smart enough to eventually work out that these cats are evil, she doesn’t have a sunshine and rainbows view of starclan. that’s the only way i can justify her not being smart enough to nope the fuck out of there, even if she is really young and really angry.)

in clan life, ivypaw knows she needs to look out for dovepaw. she doesn’t mind, but she gets to experience a life without that in the dark forest.

dovepaw does mind how everyone treats her like she’s made of glass. she sees cinderheart talking to brightheart and jayfeather and firestar and feels like everyone thinks she’s useless. so she decides to go out on her own and prove she can function.

dovepaw starts sneaking out at night and she finds the tunnels. her senses dampened, she panicks, running deeper and deeper, getting lost. fallen leaves will find her, and help get her strength up and then get her out. kind of like with hollyleaf, who is out of the caves by now.

ivypaw sees everyone searching for dovepaw and starts to feel guilty about wanting more attention, and the fact that part of why she wants dovepaw back is so people pay attention to ivypaw again. she also feels responsible for this.

cinderheart is distraught, because she really did care about dovepaw, and it’s been three days, her scent tracked to the tunnels but it was raining and no one has seen her since, so she’s probably dead.

ivypaw, grieving, refuses to accept that dovepaw is dead and she hunts outside the tunnel mouth until she thinks she hears something.

dove and ivy reunite and return to the clan. ivypaw’s convictions that dovepaw needs to be protected are strengthened, and dovepaw knows she failed in her goal. everyone is happy to see them.

we get some fretting about how washed out everything is, how the rain didn’t even stick because the soil is so dry. that’s a cue to the drought, which will be a bigger deal next book.

section five: book two — fading echoes

honestly i’m not attached to book titles, but this works here too.

so this book is split between lionblaze and hollyleaf. i’m pretty sure hollyleaf is out of the caves by now, but i haven’t decided if she’s rejoined the clans. she feels strongly for fallen leaves: they’re listed as mates on the warrior cats wiki, and if hollyleaf and jayfeather are both going to have ancient dead ghost mates, she’s at least going to visit hers. her end goal is to get him to starclan so they can be together after her death.

anyway, this is beavers book. i don’t have a ton to say about it because it’s pretty much the same, except hollyleaf goes with dovepaw and cinderheart and she’s our pov as dovepaw falls for tigerheart because (and this is my understanding of her logic in the books to begin with): “big fluffy tom is safe fluffy tom.”

lionblaze feels the disconnect between him and ivypaw, but he can’t help that cinderheart is away. ivypaw is clearly preoccupied, but he can’t tell with what. his larger conflict is in finding the third cat.

this isn’t a filler book, per say. the tree falls and that happens, and lionblaze gets thrown into rebuilding camp. ivypaw feels doubly abandoned. lionblaze tries to win her affection, but he doesn’t know how.

beaver crew gets back. dovepaw has stars in her eyes. ivypaw is close to passing her warrior assessment, but lionblaze can tell she’s holding back because she doesn’t want to leave dovepaw. dovepaw can hunt by now, but she can’t really split her attention.

she’s scared of going into battle.

after a border skirmish where dovepaw just freezes, ideas of her being a medicine cat are raised.

ivypaw sees tigerheart in the dark forest, and she goes all bluefur being like “snowfur ur bf has rabies” on dovepaw, who is not happy with this. ivypaw pushes dovepaw to be a medicine cat because of this. the sisters are squabbling and barely talking.

book ends.

section six: book three — distant whispers

again not 100% sold on the names.

so this is cinderheart’s book, and she’s going to figure this out, because dovepaw and ivypaw are falling apart, and dovepaw deserves to be a warrior. so she convinces firestar to let her and lionblaze take ivypaw and dovepaw to the mountains. she believes, well, i’m not sure i haven’t worked that part out.

anyway, they go.

the tribe is like “yeah the world sure is a big place with a lot to look at. that’s why only half of us look.” (i know that’s not exactly how cave guard’s work but close enough.)

cinderheart is like “hm. what if, dovepaw, just a thought, what if you just, you know, avoid battles? i know it’s part of clan life but judging by the two souls crammed into my body, i’d say there’s been very few major conflicts over this and, reasonably, you should be able to avoid being chosen for battle control.”

dovepaw says, “but cinderheart, i’m a main character! unless i’m being punished or taught a lesson about duty, i’ll be automatically registered for every battle patrol until i die!”

cindheart says, “you’re right, i’m so sorry. hey ivypaw, [whoops yeah ivy and lion are here too sorry i forgot to mention that] what if you two learn to work as a team.”

dovepaw says, “i don’t want to work with her.”

ivypaw says, “that’s a great idea.”

because dovepaw talks very quietly (she forgets not everyone can hear as well as her), ivypaw wins.

they spend at least a month in the tribe, maybe longer, i’m not sure. eventually, they decide to go back. dovepaw is never happy in the tribe, it’s way too loud all the time, but she does manage to sort out her hunting issues, and so fighting is left.

so there’s still a big push for dovepaw to consider maybe being a medicine cat.

but that is not this au. this is the jaywing/dovefeather au where they basically switch roles. there’s a really good fic where dovepaw goes to riverclan for a while that i love and anyway this au is a as-close-as-possible to canon au for me to rectify my issues with dovewing in canon (nominally, i don’t have any, but i think her character was displayed…curiously, and i’m mad about the prophecy.)

ivypaw is team medicine cat. cinderheart and lionblaze are struggling. cinderheart eventually teaches dovepaw an extension of the techniques of the tribe, and they work out that dovepaw can kind of, track the cats she’s with to anchor herself in battle. this means dovepaw no longer is tied to ivypaw for her success, and so they both become warriors.

while they’re still in the tribe, ivypaw has time away from the dark forest and lionblaze finally puts two and two together, and that basically makes up the b-plot for the back half of the book, lionblaze trying to get ivypaw to admit what’s going on and then trying to help her.

dovewing’s senses begin to return but since they come back slowly she’s able to manage them. so she quickly excels in hunting.

ivypool cottons on to the dark forest breeding loyalty between its members, not to their original clans, and realizes that this is going to threaten all four of the clans.

end book with a bang, end first arc. we will now turn to the actually-have-more-than-two-braincells crew (sorry cinderheart, you don’t deserve to be in this group, but your prefix doesn’t end in -y, so you can’t be with jay/holly/ivy in the brainy crew.)

section seven: arc 2 (summary)

so this arc is when the main conflict (dark forest battle) becomes obvious. dovewing’s problems have been sorted out, so she’s pushed into BGCH for a little bit while the smart adults sort things out.

book three ends with ivypool realizing the dark forest isn’t a personal problem, but a clan-group (like, all of the clans together? not sure how to call it) sized problem. ivypool, jayfeather, and hollyleaf together manage to sort out a lot of the dark forest’s eventual plan, and they try to sort out a way to solve it. then the battle happens. that’s basically the summary?

in here, the clans start working together way sooner and the prophecy comes out way faster.

section eight: book 4 — the forgotten character

alright, hollyleaf is liberated from BGCH. actual title is still the forgotten warrior.

hollyleaf and ivypool start to bond, and hollyleaf is convinced all the clans need to know about what’s up.

ivypool disagrees, and they talk about it like rational people.

hollyleaf and fallen leaves are still cute.

jayfeather has his timetravel thing in this book so he can do flametail’s job in the next book. he gets to talk to hollyleaf and fallen leaves about it.

i don’t think i’d mess with jayfeather and briarlight’s relationship in this au, because i think it’s sweet in canon as is, but you know i have thoughts about half moon and briarlight. anyway, jayfeather gets his book next, this is about hollyleaf.

fallen leaves helps hollyleaf learn to control, idk, spirit dream travel? jayfeather helps with this too. hollyleaf has to share extra hard with jayfeather because she took up a disproportionate amount of time in lionblaze’s book.

so anyway, hollyleaf is learning to travel into the dark forest. similar to the way dark forest cats leave it? but in reverse. this is the main plot.

like the second book, it’s not really filler, so much as lower stakes, and like the second book, i don’t have a ton to say about it because the plot is self evident. unfortunately, hollyleaf has the two “chill” books. sorry bb.

anyway, this is building into jayfeather going all angry old man yells at sky at starclan next book, so the biggest conflict in this book is hollyleaf realizing she can just, leave. she can go back in time the way jayfeather did, but on purpose, save fallen leaves, and they can be alive.

i mean, that wouldn’t actually work, not the least because i’m not keen on hollyleaf being a reincarnation, espcially in the reincarnation-lite universe, but also because she can’t save fallen leaves, then he wouldn’t be a sharpclaw, not really, and like a whole host of other issues but anyway

at the end of power of three, hollyleaf runs away from her problems. this book is about her standing up to defend them.

i don’t know if she explicitly breaks up with fallen leaves, but they have a falling out that won’t get resolved until after the great battle. this is a mutual/not mutual thing where they both know that fallen leaves is stopping hollyleaf from fully committing to helping her clans now, but they love each other.

relationship conflict that isn’t forbidden romance.

speaking of, ivypool getting close to hollyleaf means that the two of them start to reconnect with their siblings. hollyleaf’s actions alienated her from jayfeather and lionblaze and she kind of just was sad and apologetic but they didn’t want to forgive her.

(sorry hollybush, says jayfeather,

that’s not my name, says hollyleaf,

oh, says jayfeather, guess i forget. well anyway, i have a new sister now. her name is dovewing.

dovewing?, says hollyleaf. but you don’t like her.

it’s okay, says jayfeather, she never tore my family to shreds and then abandoned me to deal with the fallout.)

(jayfeather and hollyleaf always seemed closer to me than lionblaze and either of them, until hollyleaf’s whole event. anyway he remains petty about everything and lionblaze stands by him because, well, he’s not wrong, also dovewing is important to cinderheart so he feels like he should be on her side on this which means jayfeather’s side. even though cinderheart is friends with hollyleaf look i said lionblaze is a loveable dumbass already, didn’t i?)

so anyway hollyleaf is sad and ivypool sees that and is like “hm maybe i shouldn’t be a petty bitch for no reason” and this is fine until after this series is over when dovewing and tigerheart are like “bitch we gon b together”

dovewing’s emotions get jayfeather to, well, not go back on his actions, but recognize hollyleaf is the most effective person to work with. because lionblaze and dovewing are just. so dumb.

and yeah this book ends with things feeling almost hopeful.

section nine: book 5 — sign of the moon

i cannot overstate how little i care about the titles of these books.

anyway, jayfeather and cinderheart.

i don’t have a ton of thoughts about this one. jayfeather reunites starclan, cinderheart helps convince ivypool and dovewing to work together. this is the book where clans find out about the propechy but not the dark forest that is for next book

they know something is coming, but everyone agrees not to give ivypool away yet. they like her, you know, alive.

anyway, i don’t have much to say because it’s pretty obvious what happens, because this is just a bunch of events from other books crammed into this book, now, and they’ve been written and i don’t see the need to make many changes.

cinderheart and lionblaze have kit drama, maybe? cinderheart counsels dovewing about tigerheart, maybe? my point is it’s not super important.

the book ends with the two warriors to every camp. and dovewing, jayfeather, and lionblaze, are going to get split up.

this is my biggest change so far imo because it’s the most plot relevant.

dovewing is going to shadowclan with ivypool. jayfeather is going to windclan with…i’m not sure yet? i don’t want him going to riverclan because leafpool has ties to riverclan and, well, i want jayfeather to get a chance to stand on his own. and lionblaze goes to riverclan, with either cinderheart or hollyleaf.

jayfeather is super grumbly about this, but admits that it’s important as a show of unity, and also, he’s pretty functional in wind clan? like they’re all playing to their strengths.

jayfeather learns to navigate pretty quickly, dovewing appreciates quiet and also not being that-strange-cat who everyone is super careful around, and lionblaze is big and gregarious and enjoys riverclan being chill and friendly. so yeah, people get a chance to chill and be happy.

ivypool is in position to be angsty next book.

end book.

section ten: book 6 — the last hope

despite my claim that the biggest change is sending the three to different clans, i don’t have a lot to say about it.

basically, well, okay

first, we see ivypool and dovewing again. reminder that last time we were in one of their heads, they were apprentices. in book one.

dovewing couldn’t even hunt last time we had her pov.

so there’s a few chapters to some characterization that happens. dovewing is no longer anxiety child. she’s somewhat shy, she’s soft spoken, but she’s not skittish. you can’t surprise her. and she’s intense. she’ll just stare at you with wide eyes if you come talk to her until you say something she wants to respond to.

ivypool sees why dovewing and tigerheart are good together. she’s still not supportive, but, like, he understands her. he doesn’t treat her like she’s fragile, but he also is kind and forgiving and soft to her.

plus he’s a total simp for dovewing. that helps.

anyway, ivypool gets along fairly well in shadowclan. i don’t have ton of thoughts about this.

ivypool, hollyleaf/cinderheart, and jayfeather’s companion, as well as half of the other cats away on missions, are acting as messengers between their host clans and their home clans. that’s how ivypool gets to find out about info. they meet on the island every morning. or something.

anyway, this bit is where i most hate the set up of this with two pov per book hard cap because it’d be cool to see into everyone else’s head but that’s for novellas and side stories.

the battle happens.

everything sucks. dovewing has basically committed to tigerheart, but bramblestar’s storm messes with the timeline.

and that’s pretty much it.

section eleven: what’s next?

so i swore i wasn’t starting new fic and then i thought of this and now i do want to write it so, maybe?

the most important thing is:

tl/dr: the reason dovewing shouldn’t have been a prophecy cat is because she’s not the kin of firestar’s kin.