I'm probably going to rewrite everything one day because I'm reading over this and cringing at myself. Ughh. (':

Alone in the forest, I started to check over myself. I was so sure I felt the hard points of claws, and how could it have not left a mark behind? Tears threatened to spill over again in frustration and I cursed myself for my poor ability to hide my upset.

"Oh, I'm sorry, Dawnkit," cooed a voice and Larkpaw wound her way into the little clearing I was in.

I hissed. "Go away," I snapped.

Larkpaw hummed and watched as a small songbird came fluttering out of the bushes. To my immense shock Larkpaw became a blur, leaping up to pin the bird down to the ground in one solid movement. The bird lay struggling in the same claws that almost hurt me earlier while Larkpaw only tutted. "The weak ones die," she said simply, dragging a sharp claw up and down the creature while it chirped and cried in her grasp.

"Stop it!" I shrieked, mortified.

Larkpaw raised a paw lazily, one of her claws glinting dully with the red of blood. "It's going to die eventually. Might as well do it now," she said, and batted it in my face. When it fell to the ground, it was dead.

"There. Bring it to the camp, it'll show you're not completely useless." She turned on her heels and padded away into the trees like Cloudfang had done moments before while I stared into the bird's dead eyes.

When I buried the bird under the leaves and went to catch more prey, they all ended up running away, and I screamed, wishing they were all dead.

Larkpaw has powers.

"Who spit in my nest?!"

I cringed in the new nest I had made. How? How in StarClan does she know?

Larkpaw's green eyes were laced with murder as she started to demand answers out of the other apprentices though she probably knew it was me; it was all for show.

"N-no, I didn't do it," said Beetlepaw, ears turned back but his lips turned up in a nervous grin.

"Why in the Clans would I do something like that to you?" Blossompaw asked, but the falseness in her sincerity nearly made me gag.

Heatherpaw looked like a second Larkpaw, mutinous as she looked at the perpetrator.

It left only me.

"It was you, wasn't it, slinky Dawnkit?" Larkpaw towered over me, her lips curled upward but her eyes still carrying that eerie glare.

I didn't want to shrink back, but I did, feeling the brush of bracken under my belly. "So what? I'm sure Beetlepaw over there can make you a new one," I sneered, but I was shivering; since when did I become so weak?

The first blow made me grunt.

"You think you can make yourself better than me?" Larkpaw spat, but I felt the note of hysterical pleasure in her voice. "Because you'll never, ever be better than me. What are you? I am the best, and I will always stay on top!"

Beetlepaw was watching with his beady eyes. Blossompaw snorted and pretended to look away. Heatherpaw looked satisfied and lapped at her pelt once more in long licks.

Somehow, this hurt more than the beating. Did they not care that she was doing all of this?

"Look at me when I'm speaking to you, Dawnkit!" This time I felt claws against my skin and I gasped, instinctively batting out with one of my paws. Damn, damn; why couldn't I have learned more combat?

Larkpaw pinned me down against my own nest so I couldn't retaliate, a paw shoved over my mouth as she traced a scratch down my belly like the bird I saw before. My screams and swearing were muffled by her paws as I struggled against her form, but she was too solid, too heavy -

And then the weight was gone.

"Have you learned your lesson?" murmured Larkpaw, and grinning, she raised the paw to lick over the blood covering it. I grimaced in revulsion, and nausea bubbled in my stomach.

I've never lost more blood in my life, and it was like a waterfall of blood was trickling slowly on the ground; steady, but always moving. It brought a metallic tang to my nose that only fueled my disgust. "Do you think they won't know?" I gasped. "What would the Clanmates see the next day? These won't heal in one night! They'll know it's you, or anyone else in this den, it smells like blood in here, and they'll figure out!"

Larkpaw made another awful humming noise again. "I knew you would say that," she said, and flicked her head upward.

When she flicked her head up it was the strangest thing; blood started to curl back into my body as if it was a water spring in reverse, dark liquid seeping back from where it once came. Scratches knitted quickly and meticulously before my eyes as if little kits' paws were sewing them back together. Bruises felt like they lifted from my skin, leaving no pain behind. I gaped as I stared back into Larkpaw's face.

"Now they won't have to know," she simpered, snatching up part of the nest I had made and replacing the soiled part of her nest with that.

Please, I want her to die, something painful, something horrible, but I never want to see her face again. I repeated those words, any variation of them in my mind as if I'd need them to survive. I sobbed the rest of the night.