[fancypost bgcolor=; border:0;width:430px;text-align:justify; font-size: 8pt; line-height:1.4]
/ relatable, sorry everyone
For all the times that Perseus ends up rebuking Marauder for something or another (stop being a jerk, don't scare them, smile more, answer my questions), he's not sure that he could ever allow someone else to do the same. It wasn't even that he saw his guardian figure as perfect or something like that. He wasn't. He was rude and prickly and he was sarcastic too much and sometimes he was a little scary. But even if he liked Batpup a lot, Marauder was the best thing since sliced bread, at least to him. You know, he couldn't even say that the caracal was the only person to put up with him or something. In ShadowClan, lots of people had been nice to him, and Marauder wasn't even one of them. He tried to push him away a lot (had done so physically, once, though it was gentle) and didn't like his questions. Why had the child stuck with him? Because he was interesting. Because he pretended that he couldn't hear him when he was stuck in a tree, and wore jackets so worn down that maybe they should just be thrown away (he would never think to say that, of course), and because not many people bothered to see his light.
He was rude and prickly and sarcastic and scary, but he liked to read and he made sure that good people were safe, in his own weird way. He never let you rest peacefully with what you think was right, and he puts other people before himself. Even if he does it in a very grumpy fashion.
"He's like you," the boy answers without thought, paws kneading idly into dyed fur for a short moment. That phrase doesn't really make sense. The best thing since sliced bread. Sliced bread had always been around, right? You probably sliced bread to eat it, unless you just sorta tore the loaf apart. Perc would think about this later. For now, he has a caracal to look after. "You hafta waste time if you're gonna be nice." It's nice to meet you, how do you do? Perseus likely has fewer manners than the older of this particular dynamic duo, in all honesty, but he's nice. Accidentally rude, like asking what sort of thing someone was, or why they had the face that they did. Marauder was intentionally rude. (That was okay, though.)
Muddy blue eyes drift to the jaguar as the approach, and he finds himself oddly delighted to find someone else with spots. It's a weird thing to miss, in a land of giant lizards and things with floppy ears, but stripes or flat colors seemed to be all the rage in the animal kingdom, and the clouded leopard scrambles a bit higher to get a better look, thankfully just in time to also bat at dark ear tufts again. "Stoppit," the boy says with an exaggerated sigh, like he was the tired parent here. They were both annoying in their own way, though. Perc talked a mile a minute and Marauder threatened anything that breathed. They balanced out, sorta. But honestly, as a combination, they were both just more annoying. Compound annoyingness. He likes that. "Hey, you look kinda like me." His voice is kind of delighted after the strange cat accepts them. He's bigger than both of them combined, but Marauder could still beat him. (Spoken like a child with a hero, right?)
He's always been safe with Marauder around, but the child still kneads his paws anxiously against him at the idea of being intentionally scarred. He already has one of those, at an oh-so-ancient four months old, and the bite mark on his hindquarters is not something he wants to repeat anytime soon, intentional or not. But he said no, anyway, so Percy tries to distract himself with one of his usual questions, this time murmured towards the caracal. "What's a tipi?" Marauder didn't seem to like that idea much, but as long as it looked cool, he would be okay with it. The need for strong walls is something that the younger half is learning to share, but anything that could be considered a shelter is appreciated by someone who spent almost a month without much of one at all. At least his guardian figure is calming down now, not as angry. Not as... Fighty? Perseus didn't have a word for what he was, but he was fighty. A weird mix of angry and sad. Mostly angry.
The same distraction takes the attention of both joiners at the same time. The shadow surprises him first, and he watches it overtake both of them before lifting his head in surprise. Tall things are nothing new, but this is a weird tall thing. "What're you," he asks with obvious confusion. "Where are your toes?" He looked sort of like a deer, which Perseus had only seen once, in the hunger games, but he hadn't gotten a good enough look at the thing. This one didn't have antlers, though, and it seemed pretty colorful for a deer. So not a deer, maybe? He stares at the stuff adorning the creature and then kneads another confused, anxious circle against Marauder. "So... Not Seabiscuit?"
They did make a weird little pair, Perseus and Marauder. The boy was stuck between believing everything and nothing that the older feline said, and doing what he said and exactly what he said not to do, but he was safe and good, and it was nice of him to do things like this. Let Perc sit on his back and talk his ears off, make sure that every place is safe before they stay there, which is especially nice because for how brave he wanted to be, he was at the point in healing where everyone he didn't know made him nervous. The kid was with the asshole because he was safe, and both of them had ended up wandering half the world to get that back. Marauder may be kind of arrogant, in that weird defensive way of his, but he didn't have any demons in him. "You don't have shoes, Marauder," he points out with a dip of his head towards very shoeless paws and then a glance back up to Emmanuel anyway. "He didn't mean that. Thanks though. Don't need anything."
[fancypost borderwidth=0;width:430px;background:linear-gradient(to right,#fff,#9CEF82);height:1px;padding:0px;margin-top:8px;margin-bottom:8px;][/fancypost]
[align=center]uncolored links are empty / please do not promote / speech