"Then by all means fight! Defend! Defy! I respect it. But I'm not running anywhere, and I'm not telling anyone shit. The Royal Surveyor? Ha!"

This is a vision of loveliness. Her mask glitters in the sunlight, blinding flares as tactical as they are gaudy. Her fur luxurious and her muscles sublime, every piece of her a love letter to the ideal form even where the flesh is overtaken by metal and her breathtaking curves leave behind the realms of men and enter something much like a god. She smells of silver and of harsh, chemical cleaners. She is pure. Divine. One of the five loveliest visions in all of Bitemark. 

Mosaic smiles, a thing of genuine love and vicious intent both. She wears no cloak she can discard to reveal her glory in greater heights. She wields no sacred transformation or a weapon she can brandish beyond the flicker of her claws and the burning of her skin. But her blood quickens with the thrill of the hunt. Her tail thrashes with the force of a gale behind her back. Her breath falls calm and even, the predator hidden in the brush before the kill. 

There is no sound when she moves. There is the sensation of squeezing, of bones and muscle and organs being compressed into a space the size of a bottle, and then she is gone. The breeze sings its battle song, hollow and uneven. The flowers sing their battle song, fragrant and laced with the pheromones of half a dozen Servitors prepared to perform the sacred dance of war. The earth sings its battle song, patient yet groaning.

Mosaic sings her battle song, the barking laughter like gunshots and a whistle worthy of the kind of movie you might call the greatest ever written. She descends from on high. She rushes from a boulder on the right. She springs up from the gravel underneath the jaguar's feet. She comes all of these ways at once, and more besides, and where her claws pass the air itself wails in pain and terror. The force of her hand is crushing, all consuming. The twisting winds that pass in its wake are enough to tear a large gouge in the jaguar's death mask, but the feeling of the full blow is a tale that only the mountain can tell. 

Her fist sinks into the stone. She splits the earth beneath her like a fault line as she plunges her entire arm up to the triceps in rock and dirt and sweet smelling minerals. The impact shivers through her bones. The sting in her fingers is heaven. Shuddering, shivering, sharpening delight. Her tongue darts from her mouth of its own accord as she tenses her legs and leaps back into the air, wrenching her arm free in a sleeve of stolen mountain stone. 

She punches the air and it snaps. Shards of shrapnel rain down against that thin and perfect armor and accomplish little beyond adding a percussive beat to the symphony of their building fight. Mosaic smashes her feet back onto the ground as more stone splits and shatters all around her. Her spine crunches and pops with the relish of uncurling, of unfurling, of rising once again to her full height (which is no less impressive for standing in the middle of a crater that she's created). 

She tilts her head to look over her shoulder. Her purple eye is fixed with red, and fixes directly on her gorgeous, perfect dance partner. 

"If the Skies are going to fall, let them fall. If the price of stone needs paying, then pay it. Nobody asked me to come, but I'm here. So boast, little kitten. Mew your threats and show me your claws. But do me a favor and leave the Royal Surveyor's name off of my lips. I would much, [i]much[/i] rather have yours, instead~"