Sprawled on her side with the grey still crowding the edges of her sight, Juna kept turning the fight over in her head. She had known going in that she was the stronger of the two, or at least she had thought so.

Nothing in this gate had put up a real fight so far, all of it cut down by Loccy or the rookies while she waited her turn. This was the first one her master had finally let her take, and she had expected it to fall just as easy.

Then the rabbit showed her those eight shards, and the whole picture flipped over. She had only ever felt power like that once before, back in the gate with the Beast King.

The rabbit across the pit now sat somewhere in that same range, which should never have been possible in a place like this.

Just remembering that fight settled something cold and tight in her chest. Her master had thrown everything he had at the Beast King, and even then he barely crawled out alive. His ribs had been caved in, his legs shaking under him by the end of it.

’If a monster on that level nearly killed him,’ she thought, ’what chance do I have of putting one down by myself?’ By every measure she could think of, she should have been terrified.

Instead, somewhere under the fear, she caught herself wanting to get back up and have another go at the rabbit. If anything the ache in her ribs read more like a challenge than a warning, and that scared her worse than the eight shards had.

She knew exactly where all of that came from, and it annoyed her more than she cared to admit. ’This is his fault,’ she decided, ’I have spent too long watching that man throw himself at things he has no business fighting.’

Her master treated a losing fight like the best part of his day, and that habit had bled into her somewhere along the way.

’Such a pain,’ she thought, since it meant the smart move and the one she actually wanted were never the same one anymore. 𝒇𝓻𝓮𝓮𝙬𝙚𝒃𝒏𝓸𝙫𝒆𝙡.𝓬𝓸𝒎

So she got up anyway, rolling onto one elbow and dragging herself upright one slow inch at a time. The silver in her wings flared back to life as she rose, brighter than it had burned all day. More of her power bled out into the air around her, well past anything she had let the rabbit see so far.

A warm thread of mana wrapped around her wounds before she was even fully upright, knitting the worst of it shut.

"Geez, you’re as bad as he is," Vella called from the treeline, one hand outstretched toward her, "at least try not to die out there. I am not the one who has to explain that to him."

Juna pushed all the way to her feet and rolled the stiffness out of her shoulders. A grin tugged at her mouth, one that looked far too much like her master’s.

"Don’t worry about me," she said, glancing back at Vella, "I was only warming up."

Over at the treeline, Cassie heard that and nearly choked on it. ’Warming up my ass,’ she thought, both hands knotted in the front of her shirt.

She had written the fight off the second Juna hit that wall. Just looking at the rabbit set a tremor in her hands that she couldn’t stop. If a monster like that could swat Juna aside so easily, there was no winning this for anyone.

Juna turned the glaive over in her hand once, studying the silver edge of it, then let out a quiet breath. It was sharp and it hit well, but one fight with it was all she needed to know it wasn’t for her, at least not for now.

"Yeah," she muttered to no one in particular, "this just isn’t my style."

The glaive broke apart into motes of silver light and was gone, unsummoned back to wherever it had come from. She dropped onto all fours instead, both palms pressing flat on the ground.

Then she let the rest of it out all at once, the change rolling through her where she crouched.

Her hair spilled longer down her back as she changed, the silver bleeding out of it and running gold from root to tip. The same gold caught in her eyes, then poured down through her wings as her tail stretched out longer behind her. The fur along that tail darkened to match, and thin lines of light began to surface across the rest of her.

Patterns curled up her arms and throat, spreading over her shoulders like markings that had waited under her skin the whole time. Her claws came in last, sheathed in dense gold mana that hissed faintly in the air around her.

By the time she lifted her head, almost nothing about her looked tame anymore.

Across the pit, the rabbit’s easy grin finally slipped, and she shifted her weight onto the balls of her feet.

Over by the trees, Vella let her healing hand drop, the easy boredom sliding off her face. ’What is this,’ she thought, her eyes tracking the gold burning across Juna’s frame, ’since when could she do any of that?’

She had not been with this group long, but she had a decent read on what each of them could do. Whatever was pouring off Juna right now tore that read straight to pieces.

It pushed against her senses the way she imagined a Beast King’s would, far too big for the body it poured out of.

’Just how much stronger did you get when none of us were looking?’ Vella thought, and the lazy answer she had for most things didn’t come this time.

A low growl rolled up out of Juna’s chest and carried across the whole clearing. She kicked off the ground, crossing the pit in a single bound with one clawed hand cocked back and trailing gold. The blow came down where the rabbit stood, and the whole pit went white with the explosion that followed.

When the smoke tore away, the rabbit was still standing, both arms crossed in front of her face, heels dug a foot back into the ground. The strike had not put her down, but it had moved her, and the surprise on her face said even that was new.

Then she pushed off the wall with a laugh and came at Juna head-on.

This time the speed ran both ways, and neither of them was holding back. Juna met the rabbit’s first kick with a forearm and answered with a claw across her side, gold light spraying where it bit.

They traded a dozen blows in the space of a breath, neither giving an inch, the floor of the pit cracking apart under their feet.

A clawed swipe opened the rabbit’s guard, and a counter-kick folded Juna back across the clearing. Both of them hit the ground hard and came straight back up, neither one anywhere close to finished.

Juna dragged the back of her hand across her mouth, her eyes never leaving the rabbit.

"You know," she said, "I was saving this form. I wanted to surprise Master with it later, just to see the look on his face."

She rolled her shoulders loose, the patterns down her arms flaring a shade brighter.

"You went and ruined that for me. So now you’re going to pay for it."