The moment Dolly closes her eyes, the world shifts. Her ears twitch; the hum of a local insect almost drowns out the sound of the rickshaw slowing. The air is warm, almost uncomfortably so, but a cool breeze whips along her back, stirring her fur, kissing the tips of her ears.

She’s a Hunter. This isn’t what she was born to do, but it is what she was chosen to be. That means she can do it. In this moment, she can be a Hunter. She has the weight of the caster in her hands, she has put herself in the perfect position, she can’t miss.

But she closes her eyes anyway.

Behind her lids, she can see Angela sending Ksharta sprawling as she dives out, grabs the ladder, scales it using those incredible arms, straining, as she frantically reloads, winds by hand to avoid a jam, swings it up, but Angela’s already closed the gap, pushes the caster to one side, shoves Dolly down, and even though she could run, she wouldn’t, because she’d be caught, and Angela’s shirt would be clinging to her, and this wouldn’t be like what happened at the fashion show, this would be different, visceral, punishment…

But she’s not going to miss. She already knows it as she pulls the trigger, and she can’t take that back as the caster’s tension snaps and sends the bolas hurtling around Angela’s torso, pinning her arms in, throwing her off balance long enough for Ksharta to turn around and pounce. And the pull of the trigger is a rush of adrenaline, like piloting Jade’s idol, the heady high of power under control, of being the fulcrum point. The hunt is sacred, isn’t it? And Jade partakes in it just as much as Dolly does, as goddess and as huntress, a pair lost in the swell of the hunt.

Angela’s yelp sends a tremor through Dolly, eyes still closed, and she almost sways. She doesn’t give a name to the feeling in her teeth, her stomach, her toes.

[i]”There we go,” Jade says, in the dark, eyes closed, ears drinking in the delicious sound of victory. “Good girl.” She caresses the softness of Dolly’s upper arms and revels in the tremor. What’s done is done, and her glory is her glory. And Angela will be so, so indignant.[/i]

Dolly’s the one who moves first, eyes only half-open by the time she’s bouncing off the awning, and she lands perfectly on her feet. And like this, from this angle, it’s easier to see that underneath her fluff, she has the muscles and thighs of a temple dancer. When she stalks forwards towards Angela, it’s not on Jade’s strings.

But she does have to swallow before she can get the words out.

“Fancy seeing you here,” she says. [i]Jade can feel the tensing of her gut, the nervousness racing through her.[/i] She straddles Angela’s legs, pins them down for Ksharta. “Out here on the frontier. Wild. A big lady like you might get in trouble.”

Swallows again.

“Are you— I mean— you’re our trophy, tonight, but you, it’s your choice whether you’re an [i]offering,[/i]” she stammers, and flexes that glove, a threat, an offering. “Jade would like that a lot,” she blurts out, and then squeaks, and just like that, she’s no longer the cool huntress teasing her quarry, she’s a flustered girl unable to look the girl she’s flirting with in the eyes.

“…but we [i]are[/i] carrying you,” she manages to add. “That’s part of the [i]experience.[/i] We’ve got a pole and, maybe, if you ask nicely, we won’t walk you down the big roads to Keoni’s, the ones with lots of cameras~”

She wiggles in place as Ksharta cinches Angela’s ankles together. There’ll be a lot more coming when they need to secure Angela to the pole; it needs to be direct, because letting her dangle from her limbs would put her spine at risk, being such an oversized creature. But, stars above, the thought of her hair dangling down as she’s carried off like a prized catch has Dolly’s stomach doing somersaults, to say nothing of the sounds she’ll be making…

“So. Gosh. Angela, any… I can say it, I will! [i]Any last words,[/i] Angela?”

[[b]10[/b] on Defying Disaster. What a lucky kitty!]