Virtue looked around after the weird face in the tree disappeared. Honestly? She really didn't care about anything related to protecting it. She only cared about getting her job done, and her own survival. She grabbed her dagger, and walked around asking some of the smaller cats if they wanted to spar with her.
"Uhh no?"
"Sorry, I already got a partner. Maybe next time."
"I planned on exploring, if you wanna do that with me."
"Who are you?"
"Go bother someone else."
With each rejection, she felt her anger growing. How would these idiots ever learn how to defeat their 'enemy' if they didn't want to fight with the most experienced one here. She wasn't even sure if the army the tree spoke of was the enemy.
She quickly left the group and went into the forest. If nobody wanted to spar, then she would fight the trees. She made sure to steer clear of the Trinity Tree, as some of the cats were beginning to call it. Eventually, she found herself in a small clearing. Perfect for practice. She laid down all of her weapons, one in front of each tree. She practiced the same move ten times with each weapon, before starting the circle over again and doing a different move ten times. The best way to practice something was to make it a habit, so that's what she did. She made sure everything she planned on doing in the near future was a habit for her. Eventually, she got tired out. She packed up all her weapons and decided to head back out to where everyone was, in hopes of finding someone to spar with now that the dust had settled.
When she reached the Trinity Tree, she saw that everyone was split into two groups. The huge cats, and the normal cats. She decided to join the group of normal cats, and saw that this appeared to be some sort of fighting arena. She was excited. This is what she'd been waiting for ever since she stepped through that portal. When the fight was over, she quickly volunteered to be one of the next competitors. The referee randomly chose an opponent for her, and oh. Oh no. It was the stranger she saw in the woods.
Admittedly, she was slightly taken aback when she saw him, but quickly put it behind her and got focused on fighting. Drawing her dagger, she got into a fighting stance. The stranger copied her action, only he didn't appear to have a weapon. Come on, why didn't anyone besides me bring a weapon? No one had any idea what was gonna be through that portal. She thought, but she shook her head to clear those thoughts from her mind as the ref called the match to start. She leapt at her opponent, now seeing him as nothing but a target. With one key difference. She couldn't kill him. Or anyone else here, for that matter. That did put a slight damper on her mood, but it got pushed to the back of her mind as she tussled with her opponent. She sliced her dagger through his shoulder, and jumped back. She charged at him again, this time sliding under him and shoving him into the air, jumping up and landing on his back when he hit the ground. She easily pinned him down, and the ref called the match.
Standing up and letting him go, Virtue stalked back into the crowd, eager for another chance to fight later.
"Hey, wait up!"
Confused, she turned around and saw that the stranger was running to catch up to her. Against her better judgement, she waited for him.
"I'm sorry I didn't get the chance to introduce myself when we first met. I'm Vice." He said.
"Well, Vice, I'm Virtue," She said, before continuing back into the crowd. As annoying as she found him, she must say it was nice to get some sort of closure from him. At least she knew his name now. Vice kept following her, even as she left the group in order to get him off of her tail. Eventually, she sighed, "What do you want?"
"Well, I wanna talk to you," He said, "We didn't get much of a chance to, and I haven't been able to get you out of my head since I saw you."
At that sentence, she felt her heart flip. It was going against everything she'd ever learned, but she enjoyed the fact that he hadn't been able to stop thinking about her either. Blushing, she looked away and glared at the ground.
"Yeah, well, you should probably start trying," She said, "I'm not really someone you wanna hang around."
Vice looked at her, tilting his head in confusion. "Why not? You seem alright to me."
"That's because you don't know anything about me," She said. As cliche as it sounds, she's not wrong. This is the first time the two of them have ever spoken to one another.
"So tell me about yourself," He pushed.
Virtue sighed in defeat. "Ok, what do you want to know?"
He thought for a moment, "Let's start simple. What do you do?"
"I'm an assassin," She responded.
He looked slightly taken aback, but just continued on, "Not what I expected, but alright. How about your favorite food?"
"Hmm" She mused, "Probably fish."
He made a face at that, but said nothing more on the matter.
This went on for quite some time. Vice kept asking Virtue questions about herself, what she does, where she came from, and all sorts of stuff. And, as much as she denies it, Virtue found herself growing quite fond of him. When Vice finally ran out of questions to ask her, she found herself asking him questions. At first they were fairly simple, like his favorite food, or what he likes to do. But eventually they grew much more meaningful and personal. This was to be expected, since that's how his questions progressed.
Eventually, when all possible questions had been asked, the two of them curled up under a tree, not touching, but as close as two cats could be without.
1008/1000 Words