[center][img]https://i.imgur.com/h5xf31C.png[/img][/center][hr][i][b]//Night 0 | Location:[/b] Nameless Forest - Clearing[/i]

[sub][@OwO][@AThousandCurses][/sub]

The initiative was Shun’s now, and she did not hesitate to take advantage of it, her fury and madness, sorrow and rage, all mixing up into her mind and heart and blood as she pounded the Ten-Eyed’s face into paste. Each blow fused gore with dirt further, the choking yelps of the monster weakening with each successive impact. Even through her cathartic violence, Shun could understand that the ground was not a wholly effective weapon to use against such creatures, but it didn’t matter. She had the advantage and the initiative, and an ineffective weapon simply had to be used more times.

The earth became a divot. The divot became a crater. The crater became a grave. Her forearms plunged deep into the ground by the time her emotions were spent. Fur, flesh, bone, and organs had all mixed together into a slurry of ground meat, the entirety of her form so far removed from the child that she had been even just a day before.

Twenty-four hours, that was all it took for Shun to become unrecognizable.

…

Twenty seconds and Shun did not return.

Rin’s fingernails burned still, the froth of the supernatural bubbling up within the surface of her mind. A hollow arc flew out with one hand as the other drew her bullet into existence, but without the presence of another, it was two against one. Terrible odds now that she had shown her own hand, for while humans had their cunning, beasts had their ferocity.

The Long-Tailed charged forth, its blade swinging sharply to clash head-on with Rin’s arc. Mere imposter that it was, the energies composing her feint shattered in an instant, doing nothing to impede the beast’s descent. Her needle shot out next, a penetrating bolt that shot through tail and flesh alike, leaving a hole within the Long-Tailed too, but so what?

It pierced. It did not stop.

And through that pain, through an injury that did not kill it on the spot, the monster’s five-meter tail, craft of sinuous muscle and flexible bone, wrapped around Rin. An instant later, she was lifted off her feet and airborne.

Funny, wasn’t it? What had happened hours ago was happening once more, the sky and the earth reversing at rapid speed as Rin plummeted upwards, her slowed perception of the world only adding to the vertigo and dizziness.

That slowed perception, however, allowed her to at least see the gathering of light once more, a brighter concentration of energy than ever before.

The Long-Tailed had ensured that evasion, defence, and even counterattack was sealed as options, hurling the gear-headed inventor skywards in a way that caused her to [i]spin[/i]. The remaining Ten-Eyed, then, would finish her off, with a beam that would only send her ever-higher if it did not punch a hole through her lungs or heart from the get-go.

But time was still slow. Her mind was still bright.

And her fingers could still move.