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On the edge of IceClan's territory stood an old barn, wood rotting away as it had been abandoned for a very long time. Rain water had fallen through holes in the roof and formed small puddles in the sunken-in ground, moss growing around the edges. Fungi crawled along the walls, giving the place a bedraggled and eerie look.
Stormpaw thought the fungi looked eerie anyway, his brothers didn't seem to care at all, confidently striding into the barn like they owned the place. They'd all been coming here to play for a few moons now, away from the prying eyes of the warriors. Well, Stormpaw usually only tagged along to keep his reckless brothers out of trouble, they just couldn't seem to help themselves. The gray tom was just waiting for the day one of them would fall off of the wooden beams they kept prancing on, he'd already imagined running into Doveshadow's den to tell the medicine cat what had happened multiple times.
Speaking of being reckless, Antpaw had apparently decided it was a good idea to stick his head into a random hole in the wall, seemingly not caring about what could be lurking in there. With a sigh, Stormpaw marched up to his brother and pulled him away from the splintered opening, uncaring about the tom's protests as he pushed him further back to the old barn's entrance.
"Could you please not act like a complete mouse-brain every five seconds I'm not paying attention to you?" He hissed, tail puffing up when he noticed that Antpaw looked as non-bothered as he could possibly be.
The ginger tom lightly pushed Stormpaw away from himself, shaking his fur out with a huff and a mischievous glint in his eyes.
"You should stop worrying so much, like, what's the worst that could happen? It's just some old barn, we're not running around on the Thunderpath, are we?" While talking, Antpaw's gaze was already wandering to other places in the barn he could make trouble in, like the stack of dirty hay that looked fun to jump into, "we'll be fine, we've been here so many times before and nothing has ever gone wrong."
"That doesn't mean that today will be the same, we have to be careful," Stormpaw's words fell on deaf ears as Antpaw took a running start and dove head-first into the hay stack, sending bits of hay flying off into the barn. Goldenpaw sneezed as some landed on his nose before shaking his head and leaping after Antpaw, the two ending up in a mock-fight on the floor.
A disappointed Stormpaw sat down and watched his brothers roll around on the ground like oversized roly-polys, getting small bits of hay caught in their fur. They'll have to clean that out themselves, the tired tom decided, or face having to eplain where all the hay came from to the rest of the Clan without Stormpaw there to help them.
Perhaps they'd finally learn something if they actually got in real trouble for the stunts they pulled but Stormpaw was probably just giving himself false hope. He sighed, turning around to leave his brothers to their squabbles and prodded suspiciously at one of the fungi with his paw. It released a small cloud of dusty powder, slowly falling to the floor and making the tom sneeze, his whiskers twitching as the foreign substance made contact with the sensitive hairs.
Shaking his head, Stormpaw decided to walk far away from any more weird mushrooms and other plants, plopping himself down in the middle of the broken down barn while he waited for his brothers to finish their games. Hopefully the powder wasn't anything poisonous.