obedient . compassionate . fearful

from early on in his life, hazelbush learned that following the rules set by his clan is the easiest way for him to avoid needless pain. if only his sister hadn't sneaked out as a kit, she would be alive now, and not claimed by one of the twolegs' monsters.

after his father, owlstar, mysteriously passes, he becomes a warrior under the tyrannical stonestar. he does his best to be a code-abiding warrior. he follows the code word for word, to the point that he tattles on his clanmates' mistakes, causing them all to avoid him.

one snowy day, hazelbush finds a kit in the freezing cold, and takes him back to the lightclan camp, to be cared for by the medicine cat. stonestar orders the warrior to kill the kit, as they can't afford more mouths to feed. hazelbush argues with the leader, but ultimately loses and is forced to end the kit's life. he chooses to fake the kit's death, and to take it far from lightlcan, where he knows it can be safe, but tells no one of it, save from his brother reedshade.

the clan now views hazelbush as a killer, as well as a puppet, but hazelbush has learned that perhaps the leader's word should not be the warrior code. with a heavy heart, he decides to aid tallcloud of darkclan and dawnsky of moonclan in their plan to take down stonestar, his medicine cat mooneyes, and their other followers in lightclan.

he never tells the clan what he did with the kit, though they learn of his fate by simply seeing the now grown up cat wandering around, safe and sound with his adoptive family.