#important plot stuff

Hydro groaned softly as he booted up, his optics taking a second to adjust to the bright light above him. Once he could see clearly, the first thing he noticed was that he was no longer near the shore he ran out of power near. In fact, he wasn’t in water at all. “Wuh...” Hydro attempted to sit up, only for a familiar hand to gently push his chest back down.

“Don’t get up just yet, Hydro.” Tundra said to his brother. “Your self-scan may have read green, but I want to run my own.”

“Tundra?” Hydro was surprised to see his brother. It could only mean that he had managed to make it home after all, even if the currents had to take him the last bit if the way. Unless... “...this is home, right? I didn’t wash up in the north pole or something?”

“This is the foundation, Hydro.” Valte rose from his seat next to the workbench Hydro was laying on and patted the waterbot’s pauldron. “You gave us all quite the scare. We were afraid the worst had come to pass, and I don’t mind saying I’ve lost enough Prescotts for one lifetime.”

“Hydro, I couldn’t help but notice that you’ve been heavily modified since you were last here.” Tundra said as he looked over Hydro’s body. “What happened to you?”

“Oh, you noticed the new look, eh?” Hydro chuckled softly as he gripped his hands. They were still there, much to his relief. “It’s...kind of a long and crazy story. Actually, can I tell everyone at once? Figure it’d be easier than repeating myself a half-dozen times.”

“Of course. They’re on the other room, and just as curious as I am.” Valte said as he went to open the door.

Tundra tapped Hydro’s shoulder to get his attention. “Hydro, Mr. Valte wasn’t exaggerating when he said how worried everyone was. Don’t be surprised if the other’s get-” The snowbot was cut off by Burrow and Bouquet running over and jumping on Hydro to hug him. “...emotional.”

Hydro had no time to brace himself, and the kids all but tackling him caused a generous OOF. “Heh...hey now, don’t be so down. I’m back in one piece, right?” He would only get tears and blubbered questions in response. “Oh boy...someone wanna give me a hand? I’m getting kinda soggy...”

“You’re on your own. Frankly, I hope you rust.” Scimitar frowned, her eyes a bit puffed from having cried while Hydro was offline. “It’s the least you deserve for scaring us like that...”

“Missed you, too...” Hydro rolled his eyes as Beetle lifted the kids off of him.

“We all missed you, Hydro.” Beetle assured. “Like she said, we were all scared. For all we knew, you were dead.”

Hydro gave a bit of a shrug at the notion. “Well technically, I was for about a week.”

“Hydro, that isn’t funny.” Beetle would only get a raised eyebrow in response, which eventually connected the dots. “...you’re not joking are you.”

Hydro sighed before shifting on the workbench. “I guess that’s as good a segue as any to explain the new body.” he said. “Okay, everyone pay attention and hold questions for the end. It all started the first day I was gone. It was pretty normal until the harpoon...”

. . .

It took about fifteen minutes for Hydro to finish his tale, and everyone in the room was left rather dumbfounded by its end. “...so does that mean you’re a zombie now?” Burrow finally asked.

“No, I’m not a...actually, wait a second.” Burrow raised a good point. Hydro was dead, but now he wasn’t. By his understanding of the word, he was technically undead.

“That isn’t important.” Scimitar cut in. “If this Pirate Man went through all the trouble to rebuild you, why didn’t he bring you home himself? Seems rather odd for him to put all that time in just for you to wind up out of power under the docks.”

“Yeah, about that. He was going to, but...well...” Hydro paused a bit, rather embarrassed about how he ended up off of Pirate’s boat. “Remember Splash? Well one night after Pirate turned in for the night, she and I got to talking...”

“So. How are you feeling?”

“Hm? Oh, I’m okay. To be honest, I thought I’d be a little more freaked out about having died, but so far…nothing to write home about. So either it hasn’t really hit me yet, or I’m emotionally jaded to, frankly, an unsettling degree. You?”

“I’m just glad that you made it at all. You were in pretty bad shape when I found you, but it looks like you’re doing alright now. Dad really knows how to bring dead robots back to life! Even if he won’t let them actually live after...”

“...uh...this might be a little invasive of me, but...are you okay with how protective your dad is?”

“...not really. I get why he’s like that, but I’m not dumb enough to make the same mistake twice.”

“Mistake?”

“Nevermind. Just know that I’m really glad to finally be around a guy who’s not dad or a Joe...actually, speaking of which, I think you and I have some unfinished business...”

“Hm? What, you wanna do some more training.”

“No, silly. Don’t you remember what we were talking about when we first met? Before dad interrupted us? About being more than friends?”

“Oh...OH. Uh, look, I’m flattered, but Pirate was pretty clear about-”

“I don’t see dad anywhere. Do you...?”

“Well, no, bu-MM!”

“The man saves your life...and you make out with his daughter.” Scimitar pinched her brow in frustration. Clearly, death had not changed her embarrassment of a brother in any way.

“Hey, she kissed me. Let’s get that straight right now.” Hydro quickly defended himself. “I was ready to treat her as off-limits. In fact, I would’ve told her that, except...”

“GET YER HANDS OFF ME DAUGHTER YA MANGY SARDINE!” “Gah! It’s not what it looks like!”

“Dad, I thought you were asleep!”

“Ungrateful little barnacle! I’ll blow off every last part I put into yer perverted hide!!!”

“I wanted to explain things to him, but that’s when he started shooting depth charges at me.” Hydro recalled. “I just jumped overboard and started swimming for my life. Last thing I heard was him screaming about gutting me next chance he got...”

“Hmm...sounds like you should stay on land until he cools down.” Valte pondered. “Just as well. Not like you’re going to be able to leave the Foundation anytime soon.”

“Wait, what!?” Hydro yelped.

“You said yourself, Pirate Man rebuilt you as a weapon.” Valte explained. “Unless you let yourself be rebuilt, I’ll have to re-register you with the state as a combat robot.”

“Rebuild nothing! I’ve tasted life with hands, there’s no way I’m going back!”

“I figured as much. It’d probably be faster than rebuilding you anyway. Until you’re legal again, you’re not to leave the Foundation for anything. Understand?”

Hydro sighed, but then nodded. “Fine...anything’s better than going back to a hook and a stump.”

“It’s okay Hydro!” Bouquet ran up and patted her brother’s arm. “You can help me in the garden until you can go outside again!”

“And I can teach you to play video games!” Burrow added.

“Well, at least I won’t be bored.” Hydro chuckled as he patted both their heads. Bouquet’s fro was bouncy and slick to the touch, just like the Hydro always thought it’d feel like.

“Alright, I think that’s enough excitement.” Valte chimed in. “Come on, kids. Let’s all give Hydro some space. Tundra needs to finish examining him anyway.”

The DPNs headed out of the lab, though Scimitar and Valte lingered outside the door.

“I still can’t believe he’s back.” Scimitar said to Valte. “It’s like his being gone was just  a nightmare, and we’ve all finally woken up...”

“I know...” Valte sighed as he turned away. “And once Alex is back, we can wake up from the bigger one...”

It is the time of Warriors once more.

i recently finished reading through the new prophecy, and. yikes. it was actively a chore to read a lot of the time, especially in the later books. a LOT of the plots and decisions the authors and characters made were frustrating and just bad. there were things about tnp that i liked, but they were heavily outweighed by my irritation at everything else.

before i go into it, i just want to say that this post will not be going into the tribe of rushing water and the racism and native american stereotypes present there. those are very important issues, which i will be delving into in a separate post.

first of all, i know a lot of people do not enjoy the earlier travelling books and the amount of walking happening in them. honestly, that didn't bother me too much. i felt like they did a decent job of having enough interesting character moments and interactions that i wasn't really paying attention to it.

crowfeather is one of my big issues with tnp. as a character, i think he's interesting and mostly well done, if a bit annoying sometimes. i wish they had explored his motivations a bit more. however, as a part of two separate romances that i either don't care about or actively dislike, i'm not a fan.

crowfeather and feathertail are one of those couples that are honestly just there. i think you can read interesting things into their relationship if you consider feathertail's experiences in a shadow in riverclan, but as they are in tnp they're just kind of boring. they're a device to make us care about each of the characters more, and to make it more tragic when she dies.

they're also there so stormfur can be mad at them and get over it because he has a crush of squirrelflight that comes out of nowhere and immediately disappears a couple chapters in to his pov. for some reason. this is an especially stupid plot that i think is absolutely pointless. it does nothing for his character and makes us dislike him for being mad at feathertail for no reason, and then immediately becomes irrelevant when he meets brook two seconds later. they didn't even have any weird love triangle or even any conflict with brambleclaw and squirrelflight, either.

stormfur and brook are also a couple that just exists so that stormfur has a love interest and a reason to stay with the tribe. she has zero personality besides "cute" and "interested in stormfur" and contributes more to the native american stereotypes (which, again, i will get into in another post). she does become slightly more interesting in the later books, but it would have been nice to see something else in the earlier ones as well.

back to crowfeather, it would have been a fine end to his arc to grieve for feathertail, name himself after her, and have to readjust to clan life. however, leafpool needs her forbidden romance (for some reason. please please please erins can we just have one prominent medicine cat who doesn't have a secret affair? yellowfang was the og and the only one that was fine, it got old immediately after that and just continues to be worse) so she gets shoved together with him. they have literally no chemistry. the only times they interact before getting together leafpool is annoyed by him and has zero romantic feelings of any kind. the only thing even resembling buildup is cinderpelt warning leafpool about him on a couple occasions where she genuinely was not interested in him and/or wasn't even looking for him. then crowfeather confesses to her and she's immediately in love with him?? like what?? their relationship after that isn't even shown on screen at all. the only scene we get of them being together and in a relationship is in leafpool's wish. after the entirety of tnp is already over. it's ridiculous.

one thing that i do think was done well about that situation was leafpool feeling isolated and left out by the couples and romance around her. that was actually interesting and good setup, but i think that would have been much better suited to be taken in a different direction. leafpool could have thought she was in love with crowfeather because of her desire for romance and affection, or that he was her only chance to get any of those things. she might have realized when they left the clans that she doesn't actually want this, or crowfeather might have pressured her into leaving so they wouldn't be found out. that angle would be significantly more interesting than their pointless and boring romance that we don't actually see any of. i also think that in this scenario, leafpool would be aromantic, and might just be sexually attracted to crowfeather and mistaking that for romance.

the other option i see is for leafpool to run away with mothwing instead, or at least have a forbidden romance with her instead of crowfeather. they have so so so so so so so so so much more chemistry, and an actually established relationship with on-screen time together. even if mothwing wouldn't abandon her clan, leafpool might have gone to riverclan and midnight could have come there to get help or warn them about the badgers.

my biggest issue with tnp is brambleclaw. in the earlier books, he's fine. he's a pretty standard protagonist who does pretty standard things, like argue with someone who he thinks is annoying and doubt everything he's ever known because he's in warrior cats and that's what they do to their protagonists. i don't really like the way he treats squirrelflight, but she's usually just as much to blame for their trouble as he is.

however, the moment that hawkfrost is introduced, he becomes unbearable. he doubts squirrelflight's intentions and constantly blames her valid concerns on his dad, when she has never and will never think that he's evil because his dad was evil. he does not listen when she tries to talk to him about hawkfrost like a normal person, and dismisses her attempts to make up or start a conversation about it. once he has decided that their issues are her fault, he becomes incredibly awful to her at every opportunity, taking out his power as a warrior when she's an apprentice and his assigned deputy powers once she becomes a warrior. he constantly harasses her and ashfur, when he is just trying to make sure brambleclaw isn't awful to her every second of every day.

even when hawkfrost is part of mudclaw's coup and mudclaw tells him what hawkfrost's intentions were, even when he literally trains with him under their evil dad, brambleclaw trusts his half-brother he barely knows over his best friend/love interest who he's known literally his whole life and went on a life-changing journey with. he also. trains with his evil dad. when the whole time he's been accusing squirrelflight, baselessly, of thinking he's like his dad. and somehow thinks that it's fine and harmless???????? even when tawnypelt tries to snap him out of it????? he is ridiculous and stupid and downright abusive.

on top of all this, when he and squirrelflight finally make up, he never apologizes. never! not once. they have a whole thing where brambleclaw is like "i'm glad we're so close again that we just know the other so well we don't have to apologize or even talk about our previous mistakes or acknowledge that they happened at all", which is patently stupid and and horrible to squirrelflight, again. no wonder squirrelflight doesn't trust him enough to tell him about leafpool's kits. also the fact that firestar forgives him for almost being influenced into murdering him so quickly is ridiculous. he should not go unpunished for that, let alone be allowed to continue to be deputy!

first of all, i will not be keeping the reincarnation thing. i think it's stupid, has no point, and is not something that literally ever happens again. it causes unnecessary conflict for her and between starclan, who acts incredibly stupid about this whole situation, and jayfeather. the one thing it sort of does is create interesting conflict between jay and leafpool, which i'm willing to ditch/try to find another reason for but could honestly just be solved by having her be named after cinderpelt and get the leg injury. she doesn't have to be the literal reincarnation of cinderpelt to bring up bad memories for leafpool. it also kind of implies that her life was not fulfilling because of her injury, which is just blatantly untrue and also rather ableist. she may not have gotten to be a warrior, but she still had a full life as a medicine cat and it wasn't worthless just because she didn't get to be a warrior. it feels slightly like an attempt to make up for forcing her into the medicine cat role for her disability in the first place, but is very botched.

it also exacerbates the extremely stupid conflict between her and lionblaze, who otherwise have an interesting dynamic and relationship, about them not being able to be together. it drags on for far, far too long despite tiresome and boring from the very beginning.

soooo, in order to fix that, i'm totally throwing it away and giving them a new reason to have conflict!

cinderheart's main role in this arc is no longer as lion's love interest, but as ivypaw's mentor. she's still his love interest because i do think their dynamic is actually interesting and improves the otherwise quite boring character of lion, while giving us actual interactions and a female love interest who gets to have agency and her own personality! however, their big conflict for this arc is not over the prophecy, it's over how lion treats ivy, cinder's apprentice.

before cinder knows about the prophecy, she likes lion but she sees him constantly giving dovepaw special treatment, and she also sees how that affects ivy. she tries to ask about it but he dodges all questions on the matter, and eventually they start to train their apprentices more separately. cinder can tell something is up with ivy when she starts visiting the dark forest, but she also knows her apprentice and knows that she will not answer cinder if she asks about it, and will probably trust cinder less for asking. so, she just tries to do her best to make ivy comfortable around her, and make sure that ivy knows she's doing well. she tries to encourage dove and ivy to bond still, and ivy to not compare herself to dove, but it's a struggle. this whole time, she still hangs out with lion, but doesn't really think he's cut out to be a mentor.

then, ivy and dove finally make up and ivy learns about the prophecy and agrees to spy for the dark forest. ivy is stressed out of her mind, coming to terms with being manipulated all this time, trying to repair the relationship with her sister she damaged so much, and trying not to give away anything to the dark forest, all while still trying to keep up with her apprentice duties and normal life. eventually she bursts, telling cinder everything that's happening, and cinder is so, so angry. how dare lion and jay put her apprentice through all of this? she is a child! she starts to understand why lion treats dove the way he does, but that is so outweighed by the fact that he and jay are making her apprentice train with and spy on cats who could kill her at any moment.

in the moment, when ivy breaks down and tells her everything, cinder does nothing but comfort her. she knows ivy doesn't need rage right now, and she's proud, both that ivy found the strength to tell her and that cinder herself was able to foster that trust in the first place. she immediately adjusts to ivy, easing up on battle training and making sure she has time to rest during the day. even as she still trains her, she makes sure to take both her and dove (who she's now realizing has had an enormous amount of pressure on her too) out on fun trips and do things with them to make sure they still get the chance to be kids. if other people comment on her and ivy's weird habits or training patterns, she's ready with a reply and will defend ivy to her last breath. when whitewing comes to talk with her about her daughters, she talks to her and assures her she's doing everything she can to make sure they're doing well.

after ivy tells her, though, she cuts off any relationship she had with lion. she's mad at jay, too, but lion's the one who's a mentor, who should understand that it is their responsibility to make sure their apprentices are okay and doing well. she confronts him about everything and he only tells her that they all have to make sacrifices to prevent what's coming, dove and ivy included. she refuses to talk to him after that.

it takes a long time for them to repair their relationship. lion still thinks that he did what was necessary to save the clans and fulfill the prophecy, but he understands why cinder is upset, while cinder comes around to understanding the urgency of the issue, but she will not believe that putting dove and ivy in danger was the way to fix it. after they're no longer mentors, and the great battle, and a long road of working on their issues, they get together again. cinder has her doubts about lion being a parent, but she loves him and wants kits. she lets him know, in no uncertain terms, that if he treats their kits like ivy and dove, she will not let him be a part of their lives.