She strode regally, as rain washed off her pelt. The time for the Final Hunt was nigh.
The grey of her territory faded into the green of the Wild, concrete blurring away leaving grass and dirt and trees, and she prepared herself for the Final Hunt. One prey, a Dragon, the same as the Prey-That-Lived. Strong prey, nothing less for the Final Hunt, yet watched over by weak prey. She recalled her youth, in the Land-Beyond-Peaks. There, the prey worked the same way, many small ones, barely even kitten prey, that stood sentry. In a large enough nest, some larger prey, not worthy of her time, but perhaps worthy to train cubs with. And in the middle of it all, her real prey. In the Land-Beyond-Peaks, it was a pair of brown legged snakes, today, in the Final Hunt, in the Wild outside her territory, the Dragon was her true prey.
She was loath to do this, but her Cub had asked it of her. Work Up. Strength and anger and hate surged within her. Nasty Plot. Her mind focused, the Final Hunt was written, she just had to follow the script. She stalked into the forest, familiar yet alien. It was time to begin.
Rain continued to pour around her as she entered the arena, the ground long turned into mud under a downpour unlike anything she had encountered before. Her pack would have struggled here, sinking under their own weight, their powers unable to give form to liquid earth. But she was different, her kind had hunted in these lands for generations, the rain was not a real obstacle, merely an annoyance.
One. A pathetic weakling, dispatched before it could call its pack out. She continued forwards, hunting the pests by instinct, the hunt too trivial for her to pay any attention.
She thought back to how it all began. When she met her Cub, he was nobody. Young, before the age humans began collecting their pack. But she saw, despite his youth, he was no kitten, he was a cub. She chose to take him, and from that moment on he was her Cub, and she was his pack. Together, they wandered the land, as he built his pack, the cub she had seen within him grew. Two. Together, they had led their pack to greatness, and the Final Hunt was the culmination of that, to create a better land for her Cub's kitten, a world where the cub within that kitten could reign.
The first was the Brute. A gift from his mother. The beginning of their journey. Three. An idiot in every sense when they first met. He was perhaps her greatest work after her Cub. A reckless rock head, he knew only how to charge straight ahead, a mindless battering ram, knowing not how to turn nor what to do with the foes he left on either flank. Four. She had sculpted rock into a fortress. Foes came to him, funnelled through walls he made, battered by stone he wielded, straight to his front to be slaughtered.
Then came the Pair. They had always confused her. Together since they joined, yet they never had any kittens, and after the loss of the Male, could never have any. Perhaps that was why the Female had taken her Cub's kitten as her own. She herself had many litters, each with a different mate, as her Cub searched for the best for her.
Five, Six, Seven. They were all disappointments. Each litter filled with only kittens, but no cubs. She nursed for a moon before abandoning them. The first, Persian like her, yet so far beneath her. She had expressed her displeasure, and her Cub had punished his owner for it. Then came the fire changeling, who burned hot but dimly. Another disappointment. Eight. The Persians unlike her, dark and steel, one brain with no brawn, the other brawn with no brain, and neither could compare to her. After came the electric lion, the moon wanderer, the dark thief, the frozen changeling, the shadowed flame. Yet all were lacking, one way or another, and their litters reflected that. Disappointments that she let her Cub trade away a moon after birth, unworthy of her attention. Nine. The mystic changeling came last. Part of her cub's mate's pack. She knew it was her last chance. There were five in the litter. Four kittens, abandoned after a moon. But in the last one she saw, the cub beneath the kitten. The only one she kept, to train, to prepare, to sculpt. To take her place, as her Cub's kitten would take his place, in the world this Final Hunt would create. Ten.
Another pest fell to the ground, Cut in half with the slightest of effort. Red washed off her pelt as she refocused her thoughts. A leap. Eleven. The Elder came next, a snake of rock, then one of steel. Somehow both the wisest and the most lacking simultaneously. He had been conscripted through a chase, the best at running, but when he ran out of room, completely incapable of putting up a fight. He needed her, to sculpt rock into steel, to turn him from the hunted to the hunter.
Then came the Orphan. Twelve. Perhaps her Cub's greatest work. She had been nothing. Weak discarded trash. Crying perpetually, she had gained immunity to tears before her first litter. An all-around annoyance. Thirteen. A lost cause that her Cub fixed and turned into a warrior, moving earth like water. The perfect example of what she saw in her Cub at the beginning, capable of performing miracles, creating a predator from a kitten.
The Anchor came next. Her species as common as pebbles on the ground. Fourteen. Her Cub had gone through them by the dozen. Each as useless as the last, useful only as kamikaze fodder. As dull as they appeared, entirely talentless aside from their capability for Explosion, which her Cub had used liberally. Fifteen. Then they found the Anchor. She was different. Where the rest of her species was dull, untalented, lacking, she was brilliant, talented, capable. None before her could stir up even the slightest wisp of the Sandstorm her Cub preferred, but she weaved Sandstorm that the rest of the pack could not begin to wrestle control over. She spun quickly like the wind, manipulating stone with ease only the Orphan could match with her foci, while the others of her kind stumbled with the simplest Rock Throw. Sixteen.
Last was … The last obstacle. An inferior Prey-That-Lived. A Dragon Snake. A Dragon Ball. Perhaps something worth training cubs on, but mere fodder for her. A final warm-up before the Final Hunt. She blurred as they rushed towards her. Under and Slash. The Snake Cut in two. Snarl, Uproar to push them away, then Thunder roared from the skies. The Prey-That-Lived now died, charred black. Taunting the Ball, she watched as it stumbled towards her with a Roar. She waited, and waited, and waited. Then she struck, Impacted into the Ball, sending it crashing into the human that led them. A casual Slash of Mystic split the Ball's guts from its underbelly to match the mess on the top of its shell. Barely a warm-up, a disappointment, just like the cub from her first litter that never grew fangs. Content to stagnate in mediocrity. A waste of space. She was finally done with them. Now only her true prey remained.
Her prey stood alone, in the centre of a clearing, in the eye of the storm. She stalked forward, the howling rain abruptly becoming a light drizzle. It was the same as the Prey-That-Lived. Her pack had failed in that hunt, forced to flee, leaving prey behind. The pack had torn the earth apart, she had sniped the remnants, Hyper Beam leaving them headless. But one had escaped. That cub's pack had perished defending their cub, years before they were ready to face her pack. Dragon torn to shreds, she had ensured the Dragon Snake's corpse wrapped around the Protect erected by the Prey-That-Lived around their cub, before her pack had to flee the foe that approached. It was time to right that wrong, to make amends, to hunt the Prey-That-Lived.
Her gem pulsed as she began with Hyper Beam, white spiralling with Thunder, with Shadow, with Mystic. It burned with power, bursting forward as it always did, seeking to kill as it had before. But her prey was worthy, her prey was not mere fodder, her prey was like her, a Champion. The drizzle disappeared into a shield of water, shining a greenish blue. She pounced, gleaming a brilliant white, Slashing at her foe. She barely managed a scratch on its hide before she had to evade a torrent of water. The eye grew, eating into the torrential rain behind her.
Water swirled around the clearing, lashing at her in whips, blasting at her in pulses, surrounding her in whirlpools. But all she needed to do was dance, landing a thousand small Cuts as she weaved around her prey's Water, sparks of Thunder launched at her prey from afar, a gash filled with Mystic left on its side when she managed to get close for longer than a moment. The downpour grew ever distant, the light drizzle stretching deep into the woods.
Then an opening emerged. Her gem pulsed, Water a fraction too slow to surround her, to protect her prey from her claws. She pounced, bleeding Thunder, Shadow, Mystic, tearing into her prey's back, its death within her jaws. The drizzle roared into a downpour one final time, before lightening forever more. Her claws met not flesh but Steel. And Water exploded, sending her flying back. Victory snatched away just as she could taste it.
She rose from the wreckage, trees broken beneath her, and the dance began once more. Her prey fought properly now, pulses of Dragon shooting at her, Ice Beams flying towards her, Water flowing around the battlefield, alternating between trapping and blasting her. She took a moment to breathe, to Work Up. Her coat was littered with cuts, her back bruised from the impact, her hind legs sprained, pain fuelling her fury, her hate, her strength. Her gem pulsed as she Slashed with claws of Shadow and U-turned away, sparked Thunder, Snarled and spat Toxic, with minimal effect, blocked repeatedly by the swirling Water, with the remnants falling on the green shields of Protect.
Once again, she leapt. Water dispersed by a pulse of Shadow, her claws shattering the shield with a Feint, bringing her inches away from her prey. Her claws bright purple, swirling Mystic pink as she Slashed at her prey's throat. The blow landed on Steel. Her prey's snout glowed Dragon blue, and then she burned. She Screeched a final yowl as the Meteor dragged her upwards, light slowly faded from her eyes and her gem pulsed a final time.
As she was carried up into the sky, her eyes closing for the final time, her Hypnosis finally broke. The last thing she saw, in the ever-growing distance, was the Mole, digging a Sucker Punch into the wound she left on her prey's back. Her eyes shut at the same time the bisected halves of the prey landed on the ground. The Prey-That-Lived was dead, her pack had won.
