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Okay, wow, that owl just totally blown them off. Just because a few people had actually had the courage - idiocy? - to question what was looking increasingly more like their only way out of here. For a moment Leo wanted to howl, to scream at the morons who'd blown their only chance at getting home because what, they had trust issues? This was not the time for trust issues, obviously, couldn't they have seen that? Surely it was not so very hard to hand over the fragments and go home, re-assume their normal bodies and happily go on with their lives.

Except, apparently, for some people it was. She was angry. She was mad like she'd never been before, ready to hiss and spit at the fools when a peculiar pink pony stepped up. With a cloak. What kind of pony wore a cloak? This was enough distraction to still her for a moment, and she almost missed that the pony was actually talking, cryptic words about punishment - for the hunters or all of them? - and paths, stuff that made no sense. And just as the owl was about to take flight and she was about to pitch a fit for real, then--

Something changed. It took her a few moments to locate the change, and when she did she really wished she hadn't found it at all. That was a frutten. That was... an extremely familiar frutten, only the colours weren't right, it was the soft blue of Leo's fur somehow distorted into a disconcerting cyan colour. And the miasma... she definitely didn't have that.

But the way the thing moved, the little tell-tale signs, it was all her. She knew it, even without having been able to observe herself as a frutten.

But the thing was wrong. There was something off about it, something wrong, sinister. As if the dark miasma swirling around the Leo-creature wasn't a good enough hint...

And then it spoke.

"Wha... I have no idea what you're on about!" Leo bristled, fur standing on end. "You're crazy!" Honestly, what was the thing even going on about? Power? Her? How silly. And then it'd started going on about how useless and weak she was, and well, that was more up her lane. That she knew she could ultimately ignore, no matter how deep it cut at the moment. So yeah, she was occasionally - read: all the time - pretty useless and yes, she'd been absolutely no help when it came to battles in her natural form, but surely she wasn't that weak. She was still alive, wasn't she? So obviously she was doing something right. Honestly, Leo felt the thing might be exaggerating just a bit. It wasn't like she was the smartest or the most confident out there, but she was pretty jacked sure she could work hard and get better at the things that stumped her. And who was this thing, this parody of her, to make fun of her, to make light of all her efforts?

"Oh hell no. You go burn, you, you b***h!" It was possibly the first time she'd ever used language like that against another, but surely it didn't count when the other party was a poorly made copy of yourself.

Okay, so perhaps she shouldn't quite have underestimated the thing. It'd struck fast, faster than Leo thought she would be able to, and grazed her side. Well, grazed - more like 'cut open'.

But she wasn't a FEAR healer (would FEAR healing even work in this form??) and there wasn't much she could do about her wound now. It'd be best to take down the enemy now, before it managed to do more damage.

She lunged at the creature, desperately attempting to reach it with her teeth. She did. She felt her teeth sink deep, deep into frutten fur and flesh - deeper than the thing had managed to scratch her.

Leo gurgled, left for a terrible moment with her throat ripped open before--

Everything made sense. The shards, their pull, the thing that wasn't her and its words... it all made sense. How could she not have seen it? Not have known? It was a warning, so strong and profound and yet she'd totally missed it. The thing, she'd thought it must have been something the owl had conjured up, a way of getting back at them for not handing over their fragments, but now... now she knew better. And then her mind flashbacked, only it wasn't any of her flashbacks - it was someone else's, she was sure of it, because she'd never experienced anything like this, this ancient power and continual struggle and hatred. Leo had never hated anyone, not really, but this, this was true, awful, bone-chilling hatred that stayed with her after the flashback was over. And then she felt it, that whatever this adventure had been, it was now over and she could go home, finally, and she saw it: a burst of colour in her mind. She opened her eyes, and the thing that wasn't her was gone, and there, right in front of her, was the way out of here she'd felt in her mind.

And gracelessly Leo stumbled over and into it, and again there was the feeling of being unnaturally moved before the cold floor of the locker-room met her exhausted form. She could feel her legs and her hands, everything in-between, and finally, finally she was home and she was Leo again, back in the body that was hers and always had been.

[END]