"Oh darling," Mosaic's grin splits her face in half, "I already have."

Tension in the air, a taste like chili paste. Heat without the need for fire. The pressure of that gun barrel is like a tidal force, pulling, pushing, crushing, then pulling again. The polychromatic flare of its charge up sets the hairs on the back of Mosaic's neck to full standing. There is danger here.

But she stays standing tall and proud and planted, regardless. Her spine is straight, her shoulders set, her arms relaxed, her claws still covered in mountain dust: the only kind of blood she'd come to shed. Feline eyes meet feline eyes, pride glaring into pride, and no one watching could say which was lesser. 

All the same. The tension shifts; the air turns sweeter, as if some mischievous demigod or another had crept into the battlefield just to dust everyone with confectioner's sugar or honey. The jaguar draws a breath, and her finger twitches over the trigger instead of pulling straight away. That is the margin of victory.

Mosaic's foot crushes down on the stone beneath her. The mountain groans, briefly, and then it roars. The earsplitting snap of stone shearing along fresh fault lines echoes down the valley for minutes all around, as earth rises in columns and then falls, and rocks large and small go tumbling down the side. The place they had been standing on shifts, and then it falls. It jostles the barrel of the great, strange rifle, only enough to turn a perfect shot into one with a whisker's width of error. Mosaic steps into that margin with her fist in front of her.

She hits like a thunderbolt. The gun falters, bones and armor both wince and roll away from her, the mountain yields. With a whoop of victory, Mosaic sets her feet in a surfer's stance and rides the great slab of stone down, down, down, down, back into thicker air and safer territory with elated laughter building in her throat as she descends. She turns and offers a wave and a bow to the stone tribesmen above her, and as she dips her tail flips playfully across the jaguar's chin. 

"Sorry friends, but my need was greater! Remember, war favors the prepared! Next time have a plan, and better yet have twenty warriors ready for me!"

She snorts and turns to face the direction of her momentum again. Her body shifts perfectly along every little bump and jostle, feet never leaving the "ground" even when it hurtles into the air for fifteen meters at a time when it crashes into a large tree and trades shards of rock for freshly cut lumber (imperfect and mangled though it is). She pays no attention at all to the cacophony all about her: her ears are bent solely toward the companion riding down the mountain with her. Her face is calm, amused more than exhilarated, and in her eyes there is no readable intention or desire to pounce again. She has won. She is queen, here, until the ride ends. The whipping of her hair in the fierce wind that buffets them on the way down is the only indication she is not somehow living inside a tiny, invincible shield bubble.

"Not that I'll be back up this way any time soon," she calls over the noise of her escape, "Much too much to do, and it's no fun to take what I don't need besides. Hey. You any good at construction, friend? I kinda suck at it myself, which is a damn shame because I've got maybe a night and part of the morning to turn all this crap into a new neighborhood. Gotta move quick before those poor dumbasses get their requests denied. 

"But no, what do you care right? Your pledge is back up there. No worries, I'll help you pick a path back up if you want. I think this one's getting a bit too dangerous for travel, ha!"

Her arm's find the jaguar's shoulder, and then her waist. Four paws, lifted from the ground. Together they fly, before their sled can crush them against the trunk of an ancient tree. Mosaic smiles as she sails through the air and lands as lightly as if she'd hopped down a single stair. Her heart is calm. Moments like this are a treasure beyond any depths that meditation could bring her.

(Finish with Courage: [b]14[/b])