Hisako pushed herself upright to sit on her legs.
She took catalogue of herself, taking in all the pains and aches critically.
She gently brushed over her body with her hands. Her whole body ached something horrible, but with some pressure, she felt a familiar creak and sharp pain in her ribs. She took a deep, pained breath and confirmed it: she'd probably re-broken a few ribs.
Her body was also covered in slashes and welts from falling through the layers of foliage, but the bleeding was sluggish and didn't concern her.
What really concerned her was that she couldn't see her sword anywhere, and she couldn't tell if it was because she'd fallen too far away or if the canopy of leaves and branches was too impenetrable. The tiger also concerned her, of course, but that was why her sword's location was so critical.
She wouldn't have to worry about much, especially in her condition, if the tiger found her before she got her weapon back.
She pushed herself to her feet, feeling the strain on her body at the action. She wouldn't be worth much in any following fights.
She imagined adrenaline would save her muscles from the jellylike feeling she currently had, but it wouldn't save her from the damage limiting her abilities.
She reached out for her door, but found she couldn't. Like when she'd reached for her ability, it was just out of reach.
She looked around, shuffling about the ground a bit while peering up.
She could see the broken branches from where she'd fallen. She traced it back, using her arms to help herself over large roots and through tangled foliage.
She crunched loudly through the jungle until she reached the point where the damage her fall had caused stopped. She drifted in a tight circle, looking up through the cracks in the canopy.
Hisako had no doubt the tiger would be able to find her, quiet or not. The animal was part of her.
And she sensed it.
It was a prickle on the back of her neck.
"Like a knife of ice, where my spine met my skull," her grandfather had whispered, pointing to the spot. "Like death had touched me."
All she could see back then was the liver spots and farmer's tan, but now she understood all too well.
Her heart immediately kicked in, thundering in her ears and hammering in her chest. The pain went away, and the fear sharpened into something blazing in her mind, refining her thoughts into pure instinct.
A desperate, weak gust of wind pushed at her palms. She turned so fast she nearly fell, and sprinted as quickly as she could.
The moment her foot left the ground, a massive shape launched out from a low tree. She released a scream strangled in her throat, and suddenly running was a lot less straining.
A few meters into her dash, her mind returned to her.
She would not outrun the tiger, nor could she out-climb them.
Her grandfather survived through luck and the bayonetted rifle he bore. In the jungle, all alone, he was not the apex predator, and neither was she.
Alone, he'd been the ideal prey for the maneater. He hadn't had the choice not to be alone, but she did.
All she had to do was believe in the breeze. She could feel it again, a cool whisper of air gracing her as she made her mad dash.
The tiger recovered from their rushed pounce and began smashing through the growth to her. She could hear their growled breathing and the thump of their heavy paws as they bounded towards her.
She felt the prickling on the back of her neck intensify, like getting skewered through her bones, and she dove. She went nearly headfirst through a bush, barely getting her arms out to brace her fall before she snapped her neck.
The tiger flew overhead with a sudden snarl of surprise.
Hisako clawed at the ground like a hare, catching traction and taking off in another direction. Around a particularly beefy tree, she booked it back in the correct direction. A paw nicked the back of the leg she was pushing off of, then another on the next bound. She grit her teeth, bearing through the pain.
She knew she'd have to turn and fight eventually, but she wanted to do it at the very last second–the moment just before complete failure. A moment coming soon.
She bounded with the tiger breathing on her heels for several more meters. In her desperate dash, the world felt a lot simpler. It was just her, the ground below her, and the tiger.
She didn't need the chimes nor the wind to guide her–her feet followed the line they needed to be on. It was a pure existence–thump thump thump, her feet flew, her lungs breathed, her eyes blinked.
She leaped over a root, and she threw her hands out to balance her, but she also felt the touch of her power. With a gentle push, her leap turned into a flying bound.
Her momentarily relative "down" being skywards propelled her gently up and over in a superhuman jump that came down gently as the power rolled in waves. She nearly brained herself on a branch, but she managed to confuse the tiger, and it was a lovely taste of control for once.
She giggled hysterically, winding herself, and did it again. She hurtled down at a pace she could actually handle. On the ground again, she experimented. She reached out, threw herself forward, and the world pulled her.
It wasn't something so complex as gravity, she began to realize. She laughed, a bubbly sound in her wheezing, rough throat.
She controlled her directions.
She reached out to where she wanted to go. That would be down. She was the static center of the world, and she could rotate it around her.
She jumped, and the world carried her. It was falling all over again, her body carefully splayed in the same position when she'd been dropping from the sky.
Hisako yelped in surprise when she nearly hit a tree going far too fast to be safe, and she let off the "gas" on her power, letting her scrape the ground and then touch down in a reckless sprint. She slowed down to a more controlled sprint, and the treeline broke.
The gloomy darkness of the forest quickly switched to the bright grassland, momentarily near-blinding her, save for a strange glint of raw light a few meters ahead of her.
She dropped to the ground out of sheer instinct, and a lash of razor-sharp water cut the grass a foot over her head, where her neck had been.
A roar of pain sounded behind her, and she heard the grass snap and creak as the tiger backpedaled through it.
She bounced up from her baseball dive into another sprint.
The second she was up high enough to see over the grass, she saw Amajiki, a look of near-amused shock on his face, trident still in hand, and Sasaki looking at Amajiki in horror.
"D-did you know I was there?" Hisako shouted.
Amajiki's scrunched, apologetic face gave her her answer.
"Amajiki-san!" she cried.
She raced to them and slid to a half in line with them.
"Your sword?" Sasaki asked.
Hisako shrugged as her chest heaved to catch her breath.
"Amateur hour," Sasaki bit, but it didn't sound as mean as it had before.
Hisako couldn't be fazed.
She was back on top of the world, now that she had a bit more of a grasp on everything. Her power coiled around her fingers, like spiderwebs at dawn. She summoned her door, and it appeared for her.
The tiger crouched powerfully in the grass, molten eyes glowing as they watched from the golden-green sea.
The hilt of the blade slid out next to her hand, and she barely had to move her hand to reach it. She grabbed it, and her sword thumped against the ground heavily as the door disappeared.
Amajiki smiled back, with less nerves than when he'd nearly decapitated her. "You're a quick learner."
Sasaki snorted before she could accept the compliment. "Anyone's a quick learner when it's 'grow or die'."
"You're starting to sound a bit fond," Hisako teased, eyes tracking the tiger.
The tiger stared her back down.
"You're starting to sound a bit comfortable," Sasaki countered.
Hisako smiled, finally looking at her and Amajiki. "Of course. I'm not alone anymore."
Amajiki looked at her, searching. When he found what he was looking for, he smiled warmly. "Of course not. Never."
The tiger seemed to put together everything Amajiki did. They snarled horribly and charged ruthlessly, gunning it right for Hisako.
Amajiki stepped forward and slashed with the trident, loosing a sharp ribbon of water. The tiger danced through it, staring down Amajiki as they continued to charge, even with Amajiki in their way.
Amajki waited until the last moment to raise the trident, intent on skewering the beast on their own momentum. The tiger changed direction midair, swinging their massive tail around and twisting their hips powerfully.
Amajiki had waited just long enough to surprise the beast mid-air, and just too late to give himself time to adapt should the impossible happen.
The impossible happened.
Hisako's brain distantly fed her a silly internet video Kohaku had shown her of a cat falling backwards from a great height, yet landing on their feet. She remembered the cat's tail helicoptering like the tiger's was now.
She pushed forward powerfully on her heels, raising the blade and bracing herself against the flat.
The tiger slammed into Amajiki, but before they could bowl him down and rip out his throat, she slammed into the tiger.
She would have to name the blade, she thought happily as the tiger separated from Amajiki with ease. She skidded to a halt after she was certain she'd slammed the tiger with her full momentum, and lowered the blade to check.
To her awe, Sasaki was already on the tiger before they could recover. The tiger was sprawled on their side, and Sasaki had both hands raised, clasped together, ready for a monumental strike.
Hisako pulled Amajiki back onto both feet, giving them both a perfect view for the attack.
Sasaki's face was the image of perfection: her expression was pure concentration, and her eyes were onyx, narrow daggers, locked onto the tiger's chest.
Her body twisted down impossibly, back and hip flexing with all her weight. Her hands flew down in a double hammerfist strike.
At the moment of impact, a burst of water exploded outwards, like a massive raindrop connecting with the ground and shattering. The fine mist on the edges of the blast hit Hisako–it was ice cold, instantly making her break out in goosebumps.
The tiger had a more negative reaction.
The blow itself drove them into the ground hard enough for the shockwave to momentarily flatten the grass around them and shake the earth so hard that the drying mud jiggled. The tiger themself opened their maw in a breathless roar, eyes rolling backwards in their skull.
The water doused the tiger and began to freeze their fur, faster than any ice should form, and more thickly.
Sasaki leaped back the heartbeat after the blow landed, and Amajiki was slicing water blades at the tiger a moment later.
The first few hit, then the tiger rolled up enough to throw themself out of the way. In a beat before the next round of attacks, Hisako saw that the tiger was unable to use their front left leg; the ice had formed and locked the limb up, growing thicker and more expansive as the blood from the wounds froze too.
Their eyes, once burning embers deep in a blaze, were duller now.
Hisako froze.
"Wait," she whispered.
Amajki stopped. Sasaki hung back.
Hisako stepped towards the animal. They seemed small–tail curling close, and body hugging the ground, protecting their soft stomach.
Her grandfather had told her about this, too.
"Animals bite," he'd said simply when she'd asked why. "A jungle full of men with guns and bombs killing each other? Killing their prey and destroying their home? The tiger must've thought we were a danger to them. Wouldn't you? Tigers don't have people to talk to–they're solitary animals. Sometimes, when you're all alone, you get all twisted up inside your own head."
Animals bite. People fight.
The tiger was already so wounded, like her.
She approached it, sword low but still caught tight in her grasp.
She didn't know how to approach a scared animal. Was she meant to bare her throat to it or drop her weapon? Should she hold her hands out empty or make herself small?
She did nothing of the sort. She just approached quietly and slowly.
She knew she wasn't supposed to make eye contact with wild animals, but there was something about the tiger's returning gaze that made her disregard the advice.
This tiger wasn't a real tiger. They were the tiger her brain has spun up, made from a million anecdotes and videos about the real thing.
But they also weren't a tiger. They were a Doorwalker.
Her Doorwalker, in her Door.
She reached the tiger, just in reach of a dash and a swipe or a swing of her blade.
The tiger looked at her, and she looked at the tiger.
"It's alright now," she whispered. "You can't win. You can rest."
The tiger stared, then lowered themself onto the grass comfortably, never breaking her gaze. The wounds were sobbing blood openly, and the ice was encroaching with a vengeance.
Was this the compromise? The animal would not die on their back, but they would give up on their belly. She gave them the dignity of an ending witnessed and an existence acknowledged.
The ice beat the blood loss. Quickly enough, the tiger was encased in ice.
Frozen solid, Hisako assumed.
She pulled her blade forward and tapped the cat gently.
The ice and the tiger shattered into a million little pieces.
"How anticlimactic," Sasaki muttered, just loud enough to hear.