Echo

If one were to pick out the most threatening Scavenger, Echo would definitely not be among their ranks. Never has she ever had enough bulk on her small frame to seem as though she was truly a threat to anyone. Short dark gray fur covers a lean body that, more often than not, seems only skin, muscle, and bone. As such, her image is that of the stereotypical Scavenger: thin, slightly ragged, and far more likely to flee than to fight. Regardless, she carries herself in a rather imperious manner that demands respect, with her head high and pelt always well-groomed. Pale green eyes, never ceasing in their movement, peer out at the world from an angular face that seems stuck in an unreadable, neutral expression. Echo moves with the natural elegance of someone perfectly comfortable and confident in her own skin.

In two words, Echo could be described as ruthlessly pragmatic, and she would idly point out that that is perhaps the most complimentary description one that might give her. Certainly others think less highly of her, for her enemies vastly outnumber her friends. Ambitious and driven, this she-cat craves power and success, and to her, the end can justify any means. She has no qualms about using others to accomplish her goals, for she lives in a world where there are only cats and mice; there are those who have dominion and those who do not, and weakness belongs nowhere except at the feet of the powerful, of whom she is perhaps the most dangerous.

Hiding like a snake, she cloaks herself in a thin veil of civility, a charade just normal enough to toe the line between exile and remaining a part of the gang. Others see her as ruthless and efficient, always decisive and never hesitant where it really matters. Icily elegant, she is the epitome of self-control. Every move is calculated, and every sentence is part of a bigger plan. Manipulation is her language, and information her currency. In a manner that makes her seem omniscient, she makes a habit of knowing everything about anyone and anything; after all, she needs to be aware of the situation to make her puppets dance. Echo is the queen of an empire that trades in secrets, and she sits atop a throne beside piles of silver and gold. This cunning she-cat has always had a talent for discovering exactly what she was never supposed to know, and she has since refined this skill into the sharp weapon that has earned her the majority of her enemies. Wielding this sword indiscriminately, she has made an art form out of figuring out others’ weaknesses and secrets, and her shrewd mind has mastered the science of using that knowledge to her advantage. Her own self-interest is ultimately her top priority, and with the wisdom of a natural-born predator, she knows when it would be better to wait until threatened to lash out, while the mere threat of exposure can keep others in line.

Wise are the cats who do not allow her into their confidence, for she is not particularly trustworthy nor has she ever pretended to be. She might hold up a pretense of affability, but never has she pretended to be everyone’s friend. Rumor has it she trades in secrets, and while she has neither confirmed nor denied the claim, she certainly seems omniscient. She knows exactly how and where to push to get what she wants, and it not afraid to exert a little pressure to get her way. A powerful ally and a dangerous enemy, she is confident in her ability to weasel out of any tight spot and fears very little. Death has never scared her, and should she be targeted, she has ways to ensure that her attacker will end up in another grave right beside her. Like a virus, she can slip beneath the skin and never truly leaves, even after the initial infection fades.

She has a network of eyes and ears spread throughout the city, and she rules her empire with an iron fist, demanding, if not love, then at least deference from her subordinates. Better to be feared than loved, and it is so much easier to surround herself with those whom she can control. It is lonely at the top precisely because she trusts no one, but she has long since become accustomed to that particular sting. Empathy is not an advantage, and surrounded by her kingdom of ice, she cannot afford to have such a weakness. Flying high above the rest and keeping her own secrets close to her heart, she has turned her blood to ice and her bones to steel to remain untouchable.

Born and raised a Scavenger, Snatch was only following in the steps of many before her when she chose to have kits with Iron. Theirs was a mating born from convenience, not love, and the desire for offspring was driven more by ambition than a genuine desire to raise kits. Both Snatch and Iron were past their prime, and in previous times, both had entertained the prospect of success and fame. Neither accomplished their dream, but they thought, perhaps, that if they had kits, they could live vicariously through them. Love did not draw these two felines together – ambition did, and although the new parents got along well enough, the emotional distance between the two of them was not conducive to the formation of a particularly loving family.

Their first litter consisted of two sons and a daughter, of which the latter was the eldest. Two of the three were similar in hue – a dark gray-brown that resembled their father’s solid pelt – while the third, the youngest son, had the Snatch’s lighter fur. It became evident that this youngest kit was also the runt of the family, for he was smaller than his two siblings. Snatch creatively named him Small, while his brother was dubbed Dark and his sister was named Murky. Of the three of them, Murky was the most observant, and she would often eavesdrop on the conversations that floated through the air around her. She established herself as the leader of sorts of the trio, for although the three kits tended to stay together, the she-cat would often be leading the group. All in all, they had a relatively uneventful childhood, though it did not take any of them long to learn that theirs was a dog-eat-dog world. Weaker cats without powerful friends were at the bottom of the totem pole, and Murky was determined to never find herself among their number.

Moons passed, and she became an apprentice under the tutelage of Pine, a former Guardian who defected during his Test of Conviction. Strict and stern, he had a reputation for being a particularly hard mentor, and time and time again, she found that this was true. Relentlessly expecting nothing but the best from his apprentices, he pushed Murky to exceed, and as she began to develop her own work ethic, she learned some lessons from him that he had never intended to teach. Though the number had shrunk considerably, there were still a few cats who questioned Pine’s position in the gang, even though he had shown his competence more than enough times. They did so on the basis that he was once a Guardian, and their foolishness was so complete that some aspect of it had to be genetic. Those that thought him weak soon learned otherwise, however, and his young apprentice learned that reputation and appearances matter. If she did not want to end up at the bottom, she did not necessarily have to be the strongest – she just had to make herself seem like the strongest, someone to not mess with.

Even as she showed progress in her training, her brother Dark saw no such thing. Small was the best at hunting, but it became clear that he lacked the ruthlessness of his siblings. There was no question that his brother had a conniving mind, and Murky herself had begun to consider everything through the lens of someone who wanted to twist every piece of knowledge to her advantage. Occasionally, Pine would unintentionally drop a little fact about the Guardians or offer a different perspective about another gang (or even sometimes their own), and she realized the opportunity that she had. Knowledge meant power, so the apprentice began collecting these tidbits of information whenever he would offer them.

Then the young she-cat wondered why she settled for waiting for this knowledge instead of actively seeking it herself. Murky had always enjoyed traveling to different parts of the city, but her explorations began to gain a purpose. Often appearing open but composed, she began to meet the many loners who lived in the area, and a relationship grew from their interactions. Already partial to Scavengers, the lone felines were no strangers to what was at its most basic a business partnership. Murky would offer not only company in a harsh world with little place for such softness but also extra bits of prey; in exchange, they would be her eyes and ears across the city and keep her updated on the goings on. As time progressed, she got to know them, and they got to know whatever she wanted them to see of her. Despite the façade of friendship that draped over their interactions, she kept herself emotionally distant, which was not a hard task for someone who had never been ruled by her heart, from these loners. However frequently they met and however much she learned about them, they were not friends and nor would they ever be.

As a result of these extra explorations, she was very familiar with the layout of the city by the time she took her warrior test and had no trouble passing it. After renaming herself Echo, she continued to nurture her growing network of loners, adding to the ranks and solidifying the relationships that she had already formed. One loner in particular, a young tom named Milo, caught her eye. Compared to the rest, he was relatively useless, but even a kit would have been able to notice his love for her. Echo understood neither the depth nor the reason for such strong devotion, but she could not escape the thrill of a first love, one-sided though it might have been. They became close – closer than she had ever let herself become with any of the other loners – and she realized that while she could never match his love, she certainly felt some fondness for him.

It was his innocence, she realized, that drew her to him. With a golden heart and no ulterior motives, he had somehow managed to remain genuine and optimistic in a way that very few could. Milo was painfully easy for her to read, and it did not take her long to find out his secret: he adored his late mother. She had died giving birth to a second litter, and he irrationally blamed his younger siblings for her death. Echo played the sympathetic ear and offered the words of comfort that she knew he wanted to hear.

It was that leaf-bare that she ended up pregnant. It never should have happened, and she knew that she was exposing herself in a way unlike any she had ever considered. Never had kits been on her radar; she knew that her own self-interest came first. And yet, as she saw the excitement in Milo’s eyes, she cautiously allowed herself to be pleased at the prospect of raising a family. He had tempered her somewhat, part of her acknowledged, but was that entirely a bad thing? She was certainly happier than she had ever been, despite the one point of contention that had risen between the two of them. Clearly driven by some sort of paternal urges, the loner wanted to join the Scavengers to help raise his new family. Echo, however, refused to let him. She knew that he would not last, and she liked him precisely because he was not like anyone in her gang. It was selfish, but she did not want him to change.

In the end, it was for the better. That winter was harsh and unforgiving. Prey was scarce, and on one milder night after a streak of particularly frigid days, the young she-cat lost her kits. There were two partially formed kits. Brothers. Echo was devastated. In that abandoned building, she spent the night curled around their cold bodies, shivering as the world seemed to fall apart around her. The hope and happiness that she had so cautiously and reluctantly allowed herself to feel was ripped away, and she found herself wondering when it had grown so much. She should never have let it so close that its removal caused her so much damage. It was dangerous, and there had been a reason that she had never factored a family into her plans: loving was a trap – a weakness – so obvious that she thought she would have seen it coming from a distance and know to steer clear.

That night, the winter froze her heart, and the ice in her veins never thawed. When the sun rose, she rose with it. She rebuilt her walls and pieced her armor back together. It was for the better anyway, she told herself. Kits would only interfere with her ambitions, and this was neither the proper place nor time to be worrying about feeding extra mouths. It would not be fair to kits if she copied her mother’s parenting techniques – or lack thereof.

Milo, of course, was equally shattered when she told him. Having repaired her shell, Echo worked to keep herself emotionally distant once again, and to prove to herself that she could do it, she lied to him. She told him that the past few moons had been the best of her life but that they could not be romantically involved anymore. She fed him the lines – told him that it was her problem, that he had done nothing wrong, and that this experience with the kits had made her realize that she was not ready to be a mother. He had a hard time accepting her decision, though he was as understanding as ever. Cautiously, he asked about their late kits. She told him that there had been two, a brother and sister, and that she had named the she-cat after his mother. Ever trusting, he bought the lie, and Echo left before he could see through what felt like the gaping cracks in her façade.

All in all, they had parted on decent, if not sad, terms, and she tried to harden her heart and forget him. Time healed the wound, and she learned to not think about it. Almost as if nothing had happened, she returned to life as a Scavenger, though she was perhaps a little more ruthless and a little more cold. Echo had firsthand experience at the unfairness of life, but instead of wanting to ensure that no other felt that kind of pain, she rejected that inherent weakness. She grew to feel nothing but disgust toward the weakness she had shown that winter night, and she wanted to destroy the unforgivable fragility that had threatened to hold her back from everything that she had ever, truly wanted.

"My my, look what crawled out of the sewer."

The voice, with which she was - regrettably - familiar, had her stopping mid-stride and wondering exactly when her brother had become so at home among the shadows. But then, he had never seemed to feel as comfortable in the sunlight as she. Along her spine, the fur prickled as she felt his unblinking gaze latch on to the back of her head. The silence, broken only by the steady drip of water down the side of the abandoned tunnel, stretched on until, slowly, she blinked and pale green eyes rotated upward, as though asking some non-existent entity for equally non-existent patience. It seemed as though he was in the mood to bother her. Turning her head slightly to the side, Echo acknowledged the tom with a slight nod, peering at him out of the corner of her eye.

"Brother, dear. A pleasure as always. It's been too long."

There was a quiet snort from the shadows, and she became keenly aware of his shifting presence behind her. Paw steps so quiet that she would have missed them had she not been listening confirmed that he had chosen to approach her, and her lips curled upward ever so slightly in a predatory grin. Chin lifted ever so slightly, Echo turned entirely now to face him head on, pale green meeting a deeper hue. Any outsider would have been able to see their relationship, for both stood proudly, silhouetted against the lone, flickering light that threatened to leave them in darkness at any moment. His tail curled lightly through the air behind him as his sister recalled that that particular action had always been an odd little quirk of his. For one who understood just as well as she the threat in utter stillness, he certainly seemed less keen than herself to utilize that knowledge.

"Do you have something you would like to tell me, Rat, or would you just like to stare at me?" As she spoke, her voice took on a biting tone that rarely appeared in the presence of any other cat. The impenetrable walls that she had built around herself never seemed to extend to those of her blood, and much to her irritation, her younger brother seemed to know it. He was different than the rest - more intelligent, yes, but also the one cat who stood the most chance of truly hurting her. Such a vulnerability put her on edge and made her voice sharp when she would have preferred to keep it dull.

Rat seemed to consider her words, ears flicking as he tilted his head slightly to the side. "Only, perhaps, that you ought to be more careful in the future, dear sister," He elaborated as he drew closer, eyes never leaving hers. "The walls have eyes, and who knows what they see."

A warning and a threat. Stiffening slightly, Echo drew herself together, her own eyes narrowing slightly. He was playing a dangerous game in her area of expertise, and she would not be outdone. Like a spider, she had webs all over the city, and from her position at the center of everything, she knew exactly when an insect blundered into her trap. "They most certainly do. But they have ears as well, and they never forget what they hear." It was her turn to draw near, a predator all but circling her prey. "You would do well to remember that yourself. We all have our little secrets, after all, and some have more than others." The shark-like smile remained fixed upon her lips as she studied him a moment longer. She could not say that she particularly cared for either of her brothers in any normal definition of the word, but theirs was never a normal family. Where others might make declarations of love, they spoke in lowered tones and murmured threats.

Confident that he had received her message, she turned away in a single, fluid moment. Rat was no concern of hers; he would tell no tales so long as he believed that she had equally damaging knowledge about himself. Putting him out of her mind, Echo continued down the abandoned tunnel, gray fur blending into the shadows. She had business to attend to.