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End Game

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Written by Arian Mabe (Amethyst Mare)

Commissioned by Meeper

_ _

_ _

Legoshi grunted, the wolf hunkering down low as he scented the air. His nostrils puckered and flared as he dug through the myriad of scent trails and tastes that lingered in the air, even on the rocks of the game arena and in the dirt itself. There was a lot that came along with being a wolf, though not even Legoshi would ever have expected or anticipated being stuck in the arena with all his adult classmates, stripped down to their underwear and forced to fight one another in a battle royale of predator against prey.

It was exactly the kind of thing that he had been seeking to improve when it came to predator and prey relations and there were some higher powers, officials set nicely elsewhere where they couldn't reach them in the dome, that were determined to see that stripped down. He shivered, the wolf's toes flexing and curling down into the dirt, his claws digging into it to leave tiny cuts in the soil. It was hard-packed there, though still no defence at all against a wolf's claws. Legoshi was forever going through pairs of shoes when his claws ripped them up, though the wolf didn't want to keep them trimmed as short as some did.

He supposed that was his own doing.

After being taken to the arena, with a huge, domed roof and forced into the games of predator and prey against one another, they had all tried to make their own way through. Some had succumbed to base instinct; others had fought against it. Some others still had fallen to fear, trying to find a way to get through without getting hurt. They all knew, or had been clearly shown, what the consequences of any rebellion or push back from any of them would be - and the officials, whoever they were, had all of their families and loved ones, whether or not they were related, threatening them with execution of the Cherryton students did not go along with their plan.

Legoshi almost didn't want to know what those anthros had in mind, why they were so caught on recording everything that happened in the dome, even drones hovering around them while they were going through fighting bouts. He, at least, had managed to not hurt anyone, though he was not sure that others had been so lucky.

The scent of blood, however faint, on the air worried him, a deep sense of unease twisting in the pit of his stomach. Animal instinct rose, that age-old howling of a wolf, urging him to follow it, to seek the trail. And yet that was not something that Legoshi, as a carnivore, could ever undertake.

He was better than that. He was stronger than that - and had already proven so. Now, it was all about maintaining it.

And getting everyone at Cherryton out in one piece...though Legoshi was not so sure why he had stepped up, leading those that chose to follow. Maybe it was just an aura that he had about him, though Louis had a similar feel about him. The students would have done better, in Legoshi's opinion, to follow the stag.

He left Pina, of course, in one of the cages, hopefully safe. Turning his head, Legoshi perked up his ears as he approached a tight copse of trees that appeared so bunched up all together that it would have been hard for anyone to get through them, let alone to hide in them. The leaves rustled and Juno appeared, the wolf waving her hand to get his attention, even though it was already on her.

"Legoshi!" She exclaimed, her voice a little loud for the circumstances as she bounded down a slight incline towards him. "I thought I would never find you!"

Legoshi grimaced, though he wasn't sure where that had come from. Her brightness did not quite match up with the seriousness of the situation that he thought was well at play. It was not the wolf's place, however, to tell Juno to change. He knew that he too was handling things differently than he would have normally. The battle against carnivores and prey was not something that anyone there could have anticipated in the slightest.

"Hey, Juno," he said more softly, his ears flicking as he encouraged her to match her energy to his and to lower her tone. "Come... We can't stay out in the open like this."

As wolves, Legoshi and Juno could, at the very least, move silently, their bare feet folding over the ground, creases and wrinkles smoothing out as they stepped down. They climbed down a rockier section of the dome that neither of them had been in before, though it seemed like it was a quarry of some sort, where materials would have been mined. At least, that was the vague appearance that it gave with the sandy-toned rock, everything with smooth edges, as if it had been designed for deliberate use in the arena.

"How are we supposed to get out of here, Legoshi?" Juno asked, her ears flattening a bit as her tail drooped. "I thought that someone would have won by now, that we would find out, at least, what was going to happen next."

Juno did not say that she hoped it would be her who won, so that she could impress Legoshi and show him exactly how important he was to her. Legoshi, however, never quite seemed to have eyes for her. If she won the games, however, fighting by his side, the wolf would have to notice her!

It may have been a small thing in the grand scheme of things, but their species was well-used to using those small things to carry on. Juno wanted a mate, her body told her so, and she wanted the companionship of the biggest, strongest wolf on campus too, even before they all headed off to college and the next stage in their lives. Legoshi's jaw strength had grown impressive and, even in the bouts of fighting, she had found it difficult to concentrating on bringing down her own opponent when they had fought in the same area as one another.

"I don't know," he whispered, lips barely moving, though Juno's sensitive hearing caught everything. "It's... This isn't anything like we could have predicted. If everyone is knocked out, bar one, we will be helpless."

Juno swallowed, eyes softening.

"Then...we will never know which carnivore will win the games."

She slipped up there, assuming that it wouldn't be possible for a herbivore species to win, though Legoshi clearly chose not to comment on it. Juno shook herself lightly, smoothing the hackles back down on the back of her neck.

Concentrate!

_ _

"Maybe..." She said, dragging the word out to buy herself time. "We can find a weak spot somewhere. This arena was used for other things before this, I'm sure. I remember a track being here, when the long-distance running herbivores needed a safe place without triggering the hunting instinct of carnivores."

Legoshi pressed his lips together.

"It may work...but they have spent so much time on this arena that I doubt that things have not vastly changed since then."

He was calculating when he had to be, going through his options mentally as if he was running through a list. Sometimes, that was all a person could do - and Legoshi had been in difficult situations before.

There was nothing obvious, however, as they made their way down a track at the far end of the quarry-like area, not hearing any other sounds, even with their sensitive hearing. The path cut through the sandstone walls as if they were walking down a small canyon, hackles up and bristling, the hint of a snarl ready on their lips.

Legoshi inhaled carefully, ears picking up.

"I smell...someone near."

The scents, however, were muddled, even though he was sure, before, that he had been able to tell every one of his classmates - those that he was around more frequently - apart by their scent signature. Juno licked her lips, moistening her nose.

"Herbivores, definitely," she growled, eyes alight. "Oh, Legoshi, they might be coming to attack us!"

Even though Juno did not really want to fight her classmates and those that she had been working together, even in the acting club, for so long with, she would never have denied to herself that she wanted another chance to impress Legoshi. She was nothing if not resourceful.

The wolf sniffed again, taking in more of the scent, though it still did not reveal any further information to him, which was a shame. The objects of his scent-tracking, however, paced together up on a small ridge, one considerably shorter than the other...

Louis and Haru walked side by side, the forest bordering them on one side and a steep drop-off into a sandstone-like area. The bunny skittered away from it, worried by the close confines, even though there was a small part of her that appreciated just how burrow-like it was too. It would be just like wriggling through the winding twists and turns of a warren. If only she wasn't concerned about being come-upon without warning by a carnivore.

"I don't want to just get out of here without saving the others," Haru said, her hand twitching as if it wanted to go to her hip. "I know you are thinking about getting the carnivores out too, but you can't do that all by yourself, Louis."

The deer frowned minutely, though barely showed any emotion on his well-schooled expression otherwise. That was something that he was used to, hiding what he felt. It was one reason he was such a talented actor, calling on the emotions that best served him in exactly the moments that they were needed. But the stag would never have said that out loud. It simply wasn't necessary.

"If we locate the officials," he said quietly, though he would never know if there was a microphone or anything nearby, capturing his voice, "then we can incapacitate them and safely transport everyone out. The authorities will want to know about this."

Haru scoffed and waved her hand.

"And you think they're going to help us?"

"If we are out, we will be able to help ourselves," Louis continued. "It is being trapped in here that allows them to pit us against one another, like we are nothing more than passing entertainment to them."

He was acutely aware of the fact that everything that they did in there, in particular the fighting bouts, incorporating various martial arts, wrestling and general, rough fighting moves they had been taught, was being recorded. It was what those recordings were being used for that interested Louis more than anything else.

The stag did not think, however, that he was going to get an answer on that one, not anytime soon, if ever. Maybe it wasn't something that he wanted to know, considering the number that remained on his foot, the memory of it locked in forever.

"We need to turn our attention to the cameras," he said. "Draw them out... But how?"

It was hard to think through a plan when his skin was prickling, even the base of his antlers itching as if it was shedding season already. When the new ones grew in and the velvet peeled off, that would be just as uncomfortable, and the stag was acutely aware of where one of his antlers had broken off part of a tine during the last fight. It left him with more weight on one side of his head than on the other.

Why would Cherryton do this to us though? Louis thought, his ears twitching, catching every sound around them, though there were no natural sounds winding through the trees. We are just students and we are leaving soon... Surely a criminal organisation would simply be able to take carnivores and herbivores from the streets to play cruel games like this?

_ _

He trembled, hand balling into a fist.

They captured their loved ones, all those that they cared about, he thought, seething inwardly, only a tiny twitch of his lips betraying just how he really felt about all that. That cannot stand. No one deserves to have to go through that, knowing what will happen to their family if they do not play along.

_ _

Not that he had had all that positive of a family before, of course. But he would see that those who had kind families got the help that they needed too.

At the end of the sandstone area, a path rose. Louis halted, head high, as two figures appeared from the depths of it. When they had been down in the dip, he hadn't heard them coming.

Legoshi and Juno.

The female wolf's eyes locked onto his and something that the deer could not explain twisted in his chest. Attraction? Fear? Instinct? There was an intrinsic part of him that would always want to run from the threat of being devoured, yet Juno should never have been a threat of that kind, not to him. They had acted together - and yet everything in the twisted game had changed everything that he had thought he had known.

However, the wolf looked up to Legoshi and the taller, male wolf was at least one that she could look up to.

Legoshi drew himself back, shoulder blades pushing back and away from the stag - but it was too late for all of them to pretend that they had not seen each other, the perfect quad for the drones to circle. In an instant, four circling drones surrounded them, one for each of them, the little lights flashing and blinking to show that they were recording.

"Ah... Hell."

Haru's ears twitched, standing up tall. The bunny was savvy to the world around her, having faced some of the worst of it too - though sometimes it seemed as if those there struggled with things time after time again. There was no one, truly, with a perfect life and a perfect story.

She wasn't sure whether she wished it was so.

Other students who were awake still, a couple of foxes and a hawk, a rat and a possum - amongst others - shuddered and flung out their arms the ground shaking under them. The rumbling groan cut through the dirt of the arena as if it was going to open up and swallow them all down hole, a deer hiding in a cave, dirt covering her fur and her undergarments.

Whether they were hiding or fighting, everyone felt the shift in the arena, something changing, tension crackling in the air. Or maybe it was an electrical current as a huge motor forced the ground to open up, a huge chasm appearing in the middle. Yet it only gaped wide enough to reveal a large screen, so big that it should have been used to display sports matches and the like on it for a large audience, rising higher and higher. Some stopped their fights to watch it ascend all the way to the top of the dome, where it could be seen from every point in the arena. Others carried on, pressing chloroformed rags to the muzzles of opponents, taking every tiny advantage that they could in the games that had spiralled out of the control of anything they could have before imagined.

On the giant screen appeared an image of Legoshi and Juno, the two wolves that everyone at Cherryton knew, standing directly across from Louis and Haru. There was little distance between the carnivores and the herbivores, Haru settled into a light fighting stance that would let her bound at any moment. Whether the rabbit would have leapt forward into the fray or back and away from it, however, was another question entirely.

The team leaders facing one another. Everyone knew that when the leader of a team was defeated, the other team would automatically win. And what would that mean for the rest of them? For no one was so foolish as to think that they would simply be permitted to head home and back to their final year of schooling there, as if nothing at all had happened.

It was not the way of it, despite everything that they had worked for, all the strides that had been made in carnivore and herbivore relations.

The speaker crackled, a deep note, designed to gather their attention, emanating from it.

"Attention all students," a voice boomed from it, deep and rich, as if it came from an anthro and not machine generated. "Continue with your matches, if you do not wish for your families to die. We are now entering a leader against leader battle, matched up well against one another."

The deer hidden in the cave shivered, pressing her hands over her ears. All she wanted was to be home, just home.

"I am sure we need not remind you what is at stake here but, just in case..."

The disembodied voice paused, a sense of deliberate grandiose effect hanging in the air. Legoshi's lips turned down in a small frown that would have been obvious to those close to him, but not quite picked up by the drones streaming to the big screen.

"Your families will die if you do not obey and fight, until there is a victor. And all of your friends and classmates, the ones that you have so willingly put into cages, will die too. With you watching every death."

Louis sucked in a breath, though he didn't know what else to do in the moment. They had sincerely upped the stakes but he was unsure if they wouldn't have planned to do that anyway. The carnivores and herbivores, really, were just fighting one another to buy themselves time. But it was not the sort of arena that was easy to get out of, no exits visible except for the way that they had come in.

One way in and one way out... But the smooth, metal walls, even where rocks and crags had been built in, all to try to make them blend in a little bit more, had to have a secret door in them somewhere. There was no way that there was nothing there, no possible way for anyone to get down to them in there. Louis refused to let his mind go down the track of wondering just why they would need to get into the dome with them. It could only be for a bad reason.

"Oh... And if you four refuse to fight," the voice added, an obvious smirk in it. "Those still awake will die also, after watching the caged ones die. Such a shame to waste such good carnivores and herbivores but needs must... That is, if you refuse."

Those still awake flinched and jolted back, backing out of their fights and looking uncertainly between one another. For there was something in many that told them to keep going - yet how could they with small barrels with purple markings emerging from the ground around them? They had been concealed in the trees and the rocks, almost in plain sight, the poison darts merely waiting to incapacitate them when the time was right.

And it was then that Louis knew that no one would have ever entered the arena while they were awake, oh no. And he was not under any illusion at all that the darts would merely knock them out, but would end them for good.

Legoshi thought quickly, frantically, the pounding of his drumming heartbeat resounding in his ears. They couldn't be serious, could they? Oh, but they were, even as he thought and thought and thought, the palms of his hands sweating, trying to find a way, any way, to get out of it. He had to get them all out of it, with the others, though the darts pointing at them too were hardly any encouragement to keep fighting.

He didn't see Louis and Juno facing one another behind him, the stag and the wolf knowing, without saying it out loud, just what had to be done. His tail stiffened, lifting higher in response to the threat, though he didn't know what else he could do, frozen in indecision.

They had to fight...didn't they? And, of course, it was Haru right there before him, sweet and innocent. Okay, well, the bunny was not as innocent as some others made her out to be, considering the kinds of things that she got up to back at Cherryton, but there was something about the pure white of her fur that would always make him think of innocence.

Haru sighed and puffed out her cheeks with air.

"Ah, so it's all come down to this, has it?" She quipped, though her light tone did not let on what was really going on in her heart, the driving beat of it making her feel quite as if she was running away, far, far away. "Now, what are we... Hey!"

For she had not noticed the deer and the wolf facing off against one another until Juno lunged with a feral snarl, showing her teeth. Yet the moment was not sweet, not like when she had shown Legoshi her mouth (oh, Haru had teased the wolf for his innocence on that whole matter!) but savage. It was raw and it was carnal, but not in a way that would have anyone coming back for more. A carnivore and a herbivore simply could not relate in that way.

Louis met Juno halfway, his body moving before his mind had even caught up with what was going on. The stag tilted his head as if he was about to use his antlers, making the wolf hesitate for a fraction of a moment and jolt to the side - but it was just a feint. He brought his hands up in time to grab hers, locking their bodies together in a wrestling grapple.

"Unff..."

Louis grunted, clenching his jaw, a muscle jumping in the corner. He had to calm himself, had to think only of what was needed, the wolf before him. The carnivore who could rip him limb from limb - though he was powerful too. A deer had a different power, agility, strength, even the ability to trample opponents. Yes, Louis was well-aware of the kind of creature that his species had originated from, though he had never thought that such a raw need to survive had been ingrained inside him.

He'd thought he was better than that, controlling himself, his emotions. But, when it came right down to it, he was just a herbivore like the rest of them, losing his sense of self as he slipped into the fight, the dance between life and death that carnivores and herbivores would forever be wrapped up in.

"You're...not going to win, Louis!"

Juno growled, her lips rippling as she forced out her words, though they were barely intelligible around the growl. Her tongue flicked out against her dark lips and pulled back into her mouth quickly.

He was strong though, when he was standing. Once, Juno had pinned him in the theatre room where they practised acting and the crew trained to do the background stuff (that had never really interested the wolf). That had been for another reason, to tell Louis that Legoshi was all hers, but the stag was taller and had the grace of leverage on his side, leaning over her as he forced the wolf to bend her back away from him.

She was elegant, even then, even as her muscles trembled and she tried to pull her power against him, though Juno was not in a good position for that at all. Not as her arms shuddered and buckled, allowing Louis to come in even closer to her, closing the distance shove by shove, the wolf's feet skidding back a little in the dirt.

Her heart sank. Legoshi couldn't see her like that!

"We have to make this fight good, Juno."

His lips barely moved, but she picked up on what the stag was saying. Huh? What did he mean? She quirked her eyebrow, lips slightly parted, acutely aware of just how close Louis was to her.

Oh, it was hard to think with him near sometimes, though her heart, of course, would always belong to Legoshi. Only Legoshi.

His fingers tightened on hers as he came in even closer, though put less pressure on her through the grapple.

"Juno..."

"Yes, I get you," she hissed back at him, trying not to move her lips too much as the drones closed in, up close and personal. "But...why? To keep...the drones busy?"

Her tail stiffened, straight out behind her, but she didn't let up, huffing and grunting as if she was really pressing in through the grapple. It was a show, wasn't it? They were just there on display, something for someone far richer than any of them to watch and find some kind of sick entertainment in.

The notion cemented what she had to do in her stomach.

"Yes, that's right," Louis said. "We've got to make them look at us... Give the others a chance."

She nodded minutely, though flattened her ears and made it look like she was snarling.

"I hope you're ready for me then, Louis!"

He didn't know what she meant, not at first, his eyes widening slightly, the crease at the corners smoothing out just a little more. He had her bent back, though something shifted in her stance a second before Louis realised that the show was just beginning.

Juno ducked, taking back control and pulling the stag in close to her. It was in that moment that his eyes widened, realising that she had found a way to use his size against him, even though she was a smaller opponent.

Clever carnivore.

_ _

Juno huffed, sweeping her left leg out to knock both of Louis' out from under him, though that was not all there was to the move. The leg sweep caught him off-guard - and the hip throw followed through, turning as she grabbed his left arm and yanked him to her, using her strength to hurl him over her right hip. The twist of her body followed through with the full movement as Louis went flying.

BAM!

"Oof!"

Louis came down hard, hitting and rolling, trying to turn it into a recovery. His antlers, however, hindered him from effectively rolling, which was a problem in itself as the wolf followed him closely, pursuing the attack. He had not considered Juno to be all that much of a threat, even then, but he had a fresh respect for her the moment the attack hit.

He rolled - straight into the pushes, antlers tangling, rustling and catching as sticks and thorns pulled at his skin, hair and his underwear. Louis swallowed a grunt, trying to recover, his side hurting more than it should have, though the deer had no clear memory of just how he had come down on it so violently. Everything happened so quickly and he tried to think only of coming through it, getting up again - all to meet the wolf who was already rushing him.

It was enough to get the drones closing in on them, however, focusing on them wholly, even spinning around. Louis would have been concerned about one of them accidentally hitting a drone if he hadn't already seen how near they could be while still staying out of the way. There had to be some kind of sensor on them that kept them back out of harm's way. In a sense, the drones were probably more valuable than the students that were being forced to grapple and wrestle in the arena.

The drones were far enough away for them to talk again, Juno barrelling Louis over the back of the bush while the drones tried to see what was going on. She grabbed at his wrist, pinning him with a snarl, though words slipped through too.

"We need to fight long enough to come up with a plan," she hissed. "We can't just leave it to Legoshi! And Haru..."

She still wasn't at all sure what she felt about the bunny, even if Haru had been useful in the school at some points too. Best not to think about that at that time as they scrambled up and out of the bushes, some kind of frantic agreement, at the very least, set between them. It was the best that the stag and the wolf could do, anyway, with the drones circling them again, so close that they would catch their conversation if they dared talk again.

They didn't honestly know whether the drones had already picked up on what they were saying, but they had to carry on as if the drones, recording everything, didn't know what their plan was. There was no time for them to talk openly and the problem there was that the drones were so close, that time was limited, that they still had to put on a show for the cameras. As carnivores and herbivores, they didn't even have the luxury of being able to more accurately read each other's body language. When it came to species, they were different and would always be different.

But they could still find ways, some ways, to communicate and make sense of each other.

Juno leapt back from Louis, the two of them facing off against one another, though it was more performative - as if they were back on stage all over again. Oh, that had not been all that long ago and yet it felt quite as if it was a lifetime as the stag lunged with a forward arm thrust, aiming for Juno's shoulder. The wolf, however, spun away from him as if she was a dancer, her jaws parted, the white of her teeth flashing in the moderate light of the dome, though there was no spotlight there for Juno that time.

She brought her own spotlight.

The wolf ducked, trying to go in a bit lower as if to grab Louis' arm and throw him over her shoulder, in a move taken from judo, but the stag whirled away, taking his weight from his right foot to his left and allowing her to slide past him. Their fur barely brushed and the deer sucked in a sharp breath as the warmth of her body soaked into him, however brief it was.

Even then, the nearness of a carnivore, any carnivore, took his breath away.

The drones hovered as Louis brought up his hands, together, to block Juno's spinning kick with her right foot, though the impact still reverberated through him. He parted his lips in a smile, daring her to do more, though his eyes caught the whirring, blurred propellers of the drone as it sailed past him.

WHAM!

It happened in a flash: the deer brought his hand up and back in a reverse punch, his arm making a right angle, or close enough, where it bent at the elbow. And the drone had been right in the way, just as the stag had known it would be, smashed and knocked off-course as splinters raced across the camera.

Juno grinned, catching onto what Louis was doing, though she lunged and pressed the "attack" even though she was not intended to put the stag on the back foot at all. They had to play back and forth, to really look as if they were entranced in the fight between carnivore and herbivore, that they were in it, truly, until the end. Her left foot came up and she tensed her glutes to balance herself as she moved into a spinning kick, sweeping across Louis' chest - but then sliding her foot off to the side.

BAM!

Her foot sailed straight into another drone, though she was careful to not let the propellor blades, spinning furiously, catch her. It sent the drone spiralling off-course and straight into a rock where it whirred for a moment, crumpled and broken, before the operating system fizzled out in a dying spark of electricity.

In a similar fashion, the stag and the wolf took out the other drones, using their feet, hands and even their elbows and knees to slam into the drones.

But they made it look like it was an accident. Truthfully, the drones made it kind of easy, as they were circling so closely around them that they were almost in the way.

POW!

Juno's knee came up into another drone, looking as if she was trying to drive it into Louis' stomach to wind him. While the other drones were pressing in, focusing on Juno, Louis grabbed another drone and hurled it off into the bushes where it tangled into the undergrowth, the blades caught so that it was no longer of any use to anyone.

WHAM!

Louis and Juno grappled, their hands locked, the wolf baring her teeth at him. But they were just holding out, pretending to bear one another back, neither gaining any ground - not until they broke with a snarl and a flick of antlers.

KA-BAM!

Together, they crushed another drone, going for each other at the same time, a kick from the deer coming up as if he was trying to slam up into the underside of Juno's chin while Juno brought her fist down in a short, sharp chop. The camera didn't have a chance, shattering across the lens as the wings folded and crumpled in. Even then, the tech that they had chosen to record everything in the arena seemed to be fragile and low quality.

Maybe the drones had never been meant to survive, as disposable as the people that they pitted against one another, carnivores and herbivores. Yet there was no way to tell, not in that moment, and Juno and Louis still had to keep up the pretence.

The wolf had sat down on the edge, trying to not draw attention to himself, trying to think. He rubbed the back of his head, a growl pulling from his lips. There was no simple answer, though it was not as if, surely, they had ever been meant to escape from the dome.

"How can we get everyone out?"

Legoshi flinched, the bunny close to him, touching his elbow.

"Let's wait for Louis and Juno to take out most of the cameras," he said softly. "Hopefully, they will then draw out any other cameras that they have in store, so they won't have eyes on us."

Haru nodded, yet the bunny fidgeted, eager to get going. Truthfully, Legoshi was just as eager, though bunnies had a lot more nervous energy about them than wolves. Wolves were used to being patient, waiting for precisely the right moment in which to strike.

"We can't go up," Legoshi mused. "And those that aren't good at climbing will struggle..."

"What about down?" Haru suggested. "There's many that can go through tunnels, if they are dug big enough."

Legoshi sighed.

"Yes, but where would we go? The arena didn't seem to have anything extra at the sides... And there's nothing above. We can't go back to the doors where we came in, as we'll be spotted..."

It made sense about the digging, though it was likely that there were other digging species left in the arena who may already be going about that.

"We'll have to find them, but...just wait a bit longer, let them think that things are ending between Louis and Juno."

Haru exhaled, puffing out her cheeks as she did so.

"I understand."

Her haste came from being a rabbit, always being in motion, active, running, hiding, working away at the mere act of survival. Even though they had evolved, as anthro species, that did not mean that those old instincts were still there, not buried as deeply as anyone may have liked at all.

They needed to work together, even though neither of them could actually talk to Juno and Louis at that time. They would have to trust that they knew one another, that they had worked together for long enough at the theatre club to understand all those little quirks and nuances of each other.

Louis followed Juno's smooth, flowing movement as she leapt and pounced, going for the stag's shoulders. Even for him, it looked real, as if the wolf was truly going for Louis' throat, though Juno would never have allowed him to flip her backwards over his head, grabbing and then throwing her bodily as her smaller, lighter weight sailed over his antlers and head. The wolf turned in mid-air, though didn't quite manage to land on her feet, rolling onto her hip and flipping back up once more as she got her feet back under her.

"And you think it will be that easy, Louis?"

Juno challenged him, on the edge of the trees, her tail flicking, drawing the deer's eyes down as she challenged. Sure, she knew that it was a fake fight, one that was being put on quite like a show, but she knew Legoshi was watching too. Her Legoshi! Her heart would have brimmed over with pride, flowing through and lifting her up, if she had not had to focus on the stag, on the tiniest shifts of his muscles and the tip of his antlers. She couldn't let Legoshi see her fail, even though no one would know, not quite yet, who was going to end up as the victor and who the loser.

It had to be her, though she took a moment to lunge, pushing her shoulder into the centre of his chest, though the stag had a better grounding than her, his centre of balance holding him firm. Louis panted at the weight of the carnivore against him, though the stag had to trust that she wasn't going to use her teeth and resort to underhand tactics against him.

What he didn't expect, however, was the wolf dropping to the ground, sweeping his legs out from under him, from left to right. Louis dropped to his knees heavily, tipping forward, though Juno was swift to go behind him, locking him into a chokehold with her left arm across his throat, applying pressure while she bore down.

However...he knew she was faking it, even as his hands automatically came up to grip her forearms, trying to hold on to her, even though she was not actually putting all that much force down on the pressure points in his neck. The points were meant to cut off the blood flow and force unconsciousness, though the stag wasn't light-headed at all and suppressing the urge to smirk as he leaned back against her.

"Make it look like we're struggling."

He breathed the words to her, twisting his body back and forth as the wolf came along with him, her jaws open and his antlers clocking her on the side of her muzzle. Her head bumped back but there had not really been all that much intent behind it, more of an uncomfortable, awkward bump than anything else. It was not something that either of them were bothered about as they made it look like the heat between them was ramping up, that the fight was turning in Juno's favour. The drones, at least, came in closer, dropping a little lower too, as Juno and Louis were not moving as much as they had been before.

Louis caught Legoshi's eye, the wolf crouching, his tail swishing faintly, a look of intent in the carnivore's eye. They knew one another, even though there were many others that didn't know what they had been through together, and Louis nodded faintly, a short, sharp dip of his snout.

It was all Legoshi needed.

As the stag broke free from the chokehold, tipping forward and throwing Juno, once again, forward over his shoulder, forcing her to recover herself, Legoshi made his move. Juno and Louis, however, did not have any idea at all what was going on there, only knowing and understanding their part in the show.

It was all they could do, especially as Louis took the lead in the attack, pretending to pause only for a moment to collect his breath and shake his head, as if the blood flow was returning to all the right parts of his body against. There was no lingering feel, in all honesty, of the wolf's arms around his neck, but he knew just how to get her down to the ground. And the deer would not even feel bad at all about dropping her.

Her hands went for his shoulders and she nodded, though Louis would never quite know if she had worked out what he was going for, the two grappling, as if they were trying to throw each other off-balance from there. Yet he turned so that he was facing more in the same direction as her, sliding his right leg forward and then back as he yanked her into the force of it.

WHAM!

Juno grunted, blinking, hardly able to believe that the deer had performed an inner thigh throw on her. that was why his leg had briefly gone between hers, yanking her into him, flipping her, as if her balance and stance on her own two feet had not even mattered in the slightest.

"Unnngghhh..."

She groaned, down on the ground, her back aching, though she was only a little dazed when it came to everything above the shoulders. Louis laughed and held out his arms to either side of his body, his palms facing up. It was as if he was taunting her, testing her resolve in coming to get him as a carnivore.

Despite knowing that the stag was doing it all for the cameras, to keep attention on him, a growl still curled along the edges of the wolf's lips. How dare he do that to her? And in front of Legoshi too!

She didn't know that the wolf's attention was taken up by more pressing matters, his nose twitching as he sifted through the scents in the air, checking out where others were in the arena. Legoshi, as always, had his eyes on what mattered the most to him - and that was protecting those around him who may well could not protect and look after themselves.

She did allow Louis, knowing what had to be done, as much as she didn't like it, to draw her onto her stomach, though she scrambled and snapped, acting as if she was kicking back at him. Her feet did not connect, however, not as she clumsily kicked and snarled, and Louis skilfully hauled her into a Boston crab hold.

"Unff..."

Juno shuddered and groaned as he took her left leg and hauled it through his arms, her foot kicked out under his arm, facing away from her. He crouched and applied a knee to her back too, just to increase the pressure, though the deer's legs trembled as he held the position, not applying too much strain.

He'd never thought of wrestling like an act of any kind before, though it strained his body more than going through the moves completely would have. His heart surged as the wolf howled under him and Louis wondered if that would have been the moment that he should have taken on some kind of victory pose. But maybe that was just his mind running away with him, telling him he was supposed to be playing up to the cameras next, doing those very poses.

They had so quickly managed to twist his mind and sink their claws into them, though there was nothing there that Louis could give up to them.

He growled the best that he could as a deer, pulling her leg up more, though he was careful not to jostle Juno. The wolf did well, however, howling and scrabbling, making it look as if the deer was doing far more than he actually was.

"Unff... No!"

Juno twisted, wrenching her body out of the Boston crab hold, though Louis tipped to the side, as if she had jerked him completely off her back and away. He landed hard and then the wolf was on top of him, her legs going around him and closing around his neck.

A rush of panic clawed at his stomach but, as he had done too many times over, Louis forced it down. Even though he was a herbivore, he could not let instinct get the better of him as she pushed down on her instep, the wolf's hold tightening around him. However, it was up to Louis to really sell it, which struck an odd sense of unease into the pit of his stomach. Something was different there, something had changed, and he was forced to hold back, to fight his natural need to twist and wrench, even pushing into the pressure in an effort to dislodge Juno. After all, if a carnivore sank their teeth into him, he would not be able to rip himself away, or else their teeth would cut through his flesh.

"Unnf... Herbivores will never submit to carnivores..." Louis huffed, eyes rolling back, her grip tight but not enough to cut off the blood flow to his head and brain. "No wolf...will best me."

The lines were cheesy, yet they could only hope that they were enough to convince the drones. Juno let out a low, calculating laugh and the stag could only imagine the look in her eyes, how dark and seductive and dangerous that particular stare would have been. It both struck fear into him and a twisted admiration, which had grown in him for the wolf over time.

"Oh, fawn," Juno said, as if she was slipping into another persona, tipping forward a little and giving another squeeze around his neck and head, her legs wrapped around. "There's nothing you can do here. You can squall and squawk...but you're going to fall before me, just like any other herbivore."

He almost believed her, though he gripped her legs, his lips parted, gasping, eyes rolling, putting on a show. She was a better actor than she had been when she had first joined the drama club, that much the stag had to admit, though it was good that things were coming together at that point.

However, the drones had closed in again, their backs to Legoshi and Haru, and the others there could not linger for a single moment more. The time was right and Louis understood that he would be left with Juno if Legoshi and Haru went away.

As always, the show had to go on, whether he was the one performing or the one saving. Everyone there had their part to play.

---

"Haru, Haru..."

Legoshi slipped in alongside Haru, ducking down and hiding by a rock so that the drone cameras would not so easily capture him. As long as all attention was on Louis and Juno, they had a chance, but they needed at least something of a break from the spotlight being on them. If all those in charge and power cared about was a show, they had to take every moment that they could.

The bunny's ears twitched as she glanced up at the wolf who was still taller than her. He nodded, setting his jaw in a tight, hard line.

"We've got to go now, it's time," he whispered, though his voice still seemed too loud, much too loud. "They'll have enough of a distraction there for us, don't worry..."

Haru smiled, small and confident, ears perked.

"Oh, Legoshi, I am never worried."

Maybe that was why she had got into so much trouble before, with others taking advantage of her and her proximity to privacy up in the gardening club. She had always kept herself safe but, sometimes, the rabbit had perhaps never quite known how close to true danger she had been.

Yet she could not live her life in fear, no, not at all. She was a herbivore, but there was only so much that she could fear in life when she was living the best life that she could.

And no one was going to take that away from her.

Haru bounced up alongside Legoshi, getting away from the spotlight as Louis and Juno performed their fight, hopefully convincingly enough to keep all eyes and attention on them. It was not as if any of the others had been encouraged to fight or put on a show, after all, and there were no more of the flying drones as the wolf and the bunny raced into the trees, seeking out survivors.

No. Best not to think about them like that. Though thinking of them as "those who were still awake" still had a fatalist ring to it.

"Here - Legoshi!"

A mouse that Legoshi had known from one of his exercise classes (they had been ridiculously agile) waved him over, though the wolf was embarrassed to admit that he did not know their name. Mice were strange too, often classed as a herbivore but more omnivorous, naturally consuming at least insects under most historical records. Even there, the lines between carnivores and herbivores were blurred.

"We've dug a tunnel, trying..." The mouse panted, his pink nose twitching furiously. "There seems to be...a tunnel down there."

"Huh, so they were digging a tunnel," Haru mused, rubbing her jaw. "There must be no other ways out..."

And digging was the obvious choice for those faced with soil that, at the very least, could be scooped away. In the process, the carnivores and herbivores who had worked their way down had not uncovered a solid barrier but a tunnel that branched off in two directions from the main way below them.

While they dug, the fight between Louis and Juno raged on, though it was perhaps a good thing that Legoshi and Haru had not been there to see everything escalate. It was, of course, nothing beyond anything that had taken place in the decrepit arena so far, yet it was a fight that had turned the tide between them, chests heaving as Juno turned and tried to grab for the deer's arm, to hurl him into a judo throw.

She was too slow, however, not quite up to speed on how everything had shifted, as Louis grunted and grabbed her around her waist. His arms encircled her entire body in a bearhug and he hauled her up, the wolf facing him as she instinctively, without even thinking about it, grabbed onto him for leverage.

"Agh!"

He spun, his grip on her holding her fast against him, fingers digging in, his eyes narrowed. The scent of carnivore flooded his nostrils and Louis' heart beat faster and harder, reminding him of the time that he had been in a den of carnivores. It felt like that all over again, despite him knowing Juno, despite everything that they had gone through.

And maybe, even then, that was the entire purpose of the arena: to break them down until they were nothing more than what they had been born to be. No more choosing and forging their own destinies and paths in life, no. No more casual, friendly relations between carnivore and herbivore. Just the battle, the tug back and forth of life and death, of prey and sustenance.

Of fighting merely to survive.

He squeezed hard, crushing the air from her, though he was not an anthro who typically used brute power most of the time. He wanted to be more refined and elegant and a clinch hold was not something that he would have chosen if he had been thinking more rationally about the artistic appeal of the fight. The pressure of his arms around her waist eased up to her chest as the wolf dropped a little lower, squirming and wriggling so much that he could barely hold her.

POW!

And then Juno got her arm free for an uppercut to the underside of his jaw that would have impressed the stag if not for the situation that they were in. His head snapped up and back, though he was fortunate that it was not all that hard of a blow, considering how close the two of them had been at that time. He was, however, forced to drop her as the wolf lunged with both hands, going for a flurry of feints and jabs, swapping from a side kick with her left foot to a roundhouse punch with her right arm.

WHAM!

BAM!

She struck home on his left hip and his left shoulder, a punch and a kick combo throwing him off his stride. Yet for the next forward punch, slamming her clenched fist directly out in front of her, at his chest, the deer snapped both of his arms up together, blocking the wolf with his forearms.

POW!

He smirked, letting her spring back and away from him, though he didn't think that he would get in close enough to her to grapple again. No, he would have to go for a throw, something to get her on the ground and at a lower position.

So, the fight was not merely a performance for both of them, not as the stakes ramped up, breath caught in their throats, and the true dance of carnivore and herbivore locked onto Louis and Juno. Even though they were two who knew that they were friends and didn't at all want to hurt each other...they still fought.

WHAM!

Their punches landed harder, their kicks struck with more force. Juno growled, tongue lashing out against the outside of her muzzle in a carnivore quirk that Louis would have been a fool to miss.

He lunged at her, grappling, his arms around her - but, as he'd thought, she slipped away quickly from him. Instead, he barrelled into her and knocked her off-balance. It was a dirty trick indeed for Louis to play but it was time that he set his sense of fairness and propriety aside, considering all that was at stake. Even if the stag didn't want it to be at stake.

He grunted as he grabbed her, dropping her backwards as his right arm went around and under her head to lock her in position. Her left arm came up instantly, but he used that to his advantage as he completed the shoulder drop, bringing her down heavily with him on top of her, straddling her hips and utilising his own weight against her. Every little advantage counted as he dropped her head to pin her arm, grasping his left bicep with his right hand and then, finally, bringing his left hand up, on the same side of his head, to grasp his head and the base of his antlers.

It locked her down in the shoulder drop, though, of course, the wolf would not let him simply get away with that. Not even as Louis squeezed around her, putting more pressure on her neck than he would ever have been comfortable with before, only thinking of holding her there, of ensuring that those sharp, gnashing teeth didn't come anywhere near him at all.

Before, however, the stag could dismount from the hold and flatten out over her, the wolf got free. Her fur was too slippery and she kicked up, hurling herself into him as she hooked a foot over his ankle. It allowed her leverage, though Juno didn't go far, not as she wrenched him around, pinning him back to her in a head scissor hold with his head on her crotch. It was awkward and it was ungainly, yet their fight had slipped from the elegant dance that it had been not so long ago.

"Unff!"

She squeezed, panting heavily through an open mouth, though Juno should not have been so furious that Louis had been able to, at least in a small way, get one over on her. She squeezed hard with her thighs, though could not be as accurate on the pressure points of his neck as she would have been if she had had him in a sleeper hold, pressing down and down and down, the tension building.

The wolf sweated, though the deer held fast. He didn't hold his breath but was savvier than Juno, still wriggling and fighting, even if he made it look like more of a show. Panic tried to drag him under, those instinctive reactions that, in a way, were supposed to keep him alive: and yet the stag had to think more carefully and clearly, even as her thicker thighs closed around his head.

Even then, he was aware of the proximity of her crotch, how the back of his head was drawn in against her, the tension of her muscles around his neck something that could have been enticing under other circumstances. Any sensuality was stripped in that moment, however, as he tried to resist, the heat of the wolf sinking into him.

"Unff..."

He would have twisted, but Juno had his head in too tightly, grunting, panting, imagining her eyes to be unfocused even in that moment as if she could not keep her energy up to such an extent. The hold was intimate, too intimate, and yet it was all a manner of fighting, even though the thick power of her thighs was impossible for her not to take note of in that moment.

It was not quite tight enough, however, as if Juno had not practised the move enough. A tine of his antlers prodded her abdomen and he caught the suck of breath from the wolfess, struggling not to show her vulnerability. Louis pushed back, pressing both of his feet into the ground, and threw his weight against her, moaning as he strained his lower back.

Not everything was easy and it was something of a scramble, messy and lacking in poise, as he twisted around and got on top of her. He could have gone for the same move, but, well...no, that wasn't quite what he was looking for. Kicking away from her, he used his longer legs and locked them around one of hers, crossing his ankles and viciously tightening his grip in a leg scissor hold.

"Unff..."

Juno whined and groaned. She'd hadn't thought that she had him with the head scissor hold but, well, she'd thought that she would have kept him there for longer than that. The drones were still there and one looked like it was zooming in on her, Juno wavering, once again, between treating the fight exactly as what it was, a fight, or as a performance.

"Nnngghhhh!"

Juno groaned, shaking her head slightly, though she could not curl her torso up enough to sit up and get her hands down near him. There were nerve pinches and holds that she could utilise and yet...to make it a show...

No. She resolved right there and then not to, not when it looked like he was doing better than her, the competitive spirit of a beast rising inside her. Juno growled, twisted, though she couldn't worm her leg out of his leg scissor. There was a better hold than that, though she considered it for a moment, letting her leg slide up higher, towards his inner thigh.

The stag flinched and she took advantage of that. Sure, it was a dirty trick but Juno had to take any advantage that she could glean. When the tale of the fight was recounted to Legoshi, after all, she had to be shown in the best light possible.

Louis relaxed at precisely the wrong moment and Juno got free of him, her chest heaving, though the wolfess did not mind her state of undress. One thing she knew was that Louis most certainly was not looking at her in that light, no, not at all. The stag only had eyes for his work and she doubted he had ever had open relations with anyone back at the school.

Her eyes were for Legoshi and Legoshi alone, of course. That would never change.

"Give up, stag," she taunted him with a smirk. "You know this isn't a fight that you are going to win..."

Louis narrowed his eyes, though only minutely. He would have given away too much through his expression otherwise. Before she got the chance to get back to her feet, he knocked her down with a sliding leg sweep, letting his left leg complete the kick, even though he let his body follow through.

WHAM!

Unorthodox, yes. But it let him flow forward and follow through, sliding into her as he grappled her around so that he was on her back.

"Oof!"

The wolf groaned as he took the chance to wrestle her into a camel clutch: a move that would display her body nicely to the cameras. Not that he was interested in her body in the slightest, of course, but the cameras may well have been. His muscles ached from the already strenuous fight, and all the others that he had been in so far, though Louis, as ever, remained a performer at heart.

He had been performing, after all, since he had been very, very young. And that was never going to change.

In the camel clutch, he grasped under her chin and forced her head back and up, even though he could not squat quite low enough, with his long legs, to pin her with more of his weight on her back. His tail twitched and the stag's toes curled into the dirt as he growled, though Juno's sharp cry, twisting her head to the right, cut through.

"Agh!"

She was not a wolf that liked behind handled roughly at all, Louis was sure of it. And yet there was something, even to him, about having a carnivore under him that made the move alluring. In a power dynamic kind of way, of course, nothing else, for he did not see her that way.

Her long, lean body resonated with power and Louis sucked in a breath, the deer marvelling, if only briefly, at the fact that he had overpowered her. It would never cease to amaze him when he came out on top yet again. Though it was not something that the deer could ever, not even the once, let go to his head.

His knees pressed forward as he squatted over her, though Juno was wriggling too much for the stag to keep her there. Louis sat back, pulling her through his legs and flipping her legs out, not allowing her to get her feet under her. It was easier that way as she huffed and struggled to regain herself, not letting her get her claws out, even though most carnivores at the school were forced by regulations to file them down. It all depended on their records.

Regardless, he drew her into the head scissor hold that she had not been able to effectively pin him in, finding it a much stronger hold for him to lock her into. With legs closing around her neck, pinning her head, face first, to his crotch, he crossed his legs too for leverage, bearing her head all the way down against his lower abdomen.

"Unnggghhh..."

"This..." He growled, though his voice did not hold the true ring of a carnivore, of course. "This is how you do a head scissor hold!"

It was a way in which Juno could have avoided his antlers if she had been a little more practiced, although the fact of the matter there was that he could still have used the natural feature of his antlers against her by tipping his nose down in that scenario. There were still nuances of their species that they could both utilise. It would be down to that, strength and stamina, to determine which of them won in the end. For the fight could not go on forever, no matter how much Juno and Louis wanted to drag it all out, to ensure that eyes and attention was on them for as long as possible.

Oh, but it was a humiliating position for Juno to be in! The wolf squirmed and heaved, the deer's sweat sinking into her, though she didn't like being in so close to him one little bit. A part of her bore back against the tight muscle of his thighs, quadriceps bulging through how hard he was contracting, but the deer put a hand on her head, right in the centre, to keep her in place too, almost as if he was taunting her without saying anything.

And to think that he had said that that was the proper way to do a head scissor hold! The stag lay back to drag her along with him and the wolf huffed, straining back and up away from him, though his legs were bent and tight around her neck, pinning her head there. If only the narrower point of her neck did not allow him to lock in there so easily!

Her ears twitched as she growled, though Louis was not so easily put off. Down on the ground, they both were on evener ground, but the stag had forgotten that there were pressure points in his legs that she could use to get him off her. Juno would not have minded one bit being able to knock him out and pose on his body in that moment, however...

"I'm not...giving up!"

Juno exhaled in a hasty puff of breath, the wolf's eyes determined - and she wrenched herself free, despite the blistering ache in her neck. There was no break to rest as she tried to turn the advantage back to her, rolling with Louis as his antlers bounced off the ground. The jarring moment had him gasping and she used her hands to shove them up between his thighs, prying them away from her neck as she pulled away. To freedom!

The wolf needed to secure a position over him, however, and lunged, springing from a crouch as if she really was attacking a herbivore. Louis gulped and rolled onto his side, yet not even he was quick enough as she pounced.

And her arm was around him, crossing the other over his neck, pulling him into a full nelson - and a body scissor combination move, using her legs to lock around his torso rather than going for his legs that time. Juno took no prisoners, squeezing hard, bearing down and down and down on the stag's neck as she tried to apply the most pressure to the sides, where the pulse points were. Cutting off the blood supply to the head was imperative... But his antlers!

As Louis tried to knock his head back into Juno, the wolfess acted swiftly, changing the position of her hands as she dug her heels into him with the body scissor, squeezing hard. By hooking her arms around his and forcing his arms straight up over his head, she pressed her hands to the back of his neck instead, together, holding his head slightly forward and away from her, so that she could control exactly where the antlers went.

Juno's heart surged and, even then, she could not resist letting out a whooping laugh of triumph. Those antlers! Ah, but she had Louis down and she even chanced a smile at the cameras, her tail swaying gently, a little dusty after all the grappling and rolling around that they had been doing. Her crossed ankles came down between Louis' legs, past his crotch, as he was forced to splay them a little, gasping as the wolf applied more and more pressure. It was a different hold than any other that they had tried on each other so far, the stag trembling against her. A muscle even jumped at the corner of his jaw as if she was really pushing him.

Juno, however, was not done with him yet. The show had to go on and that meant showing her supremacy, once and for all, over the stag.

"Ahhhhhhh!"

Though it was not high-pitched, the strangled shriek that ripped from Louis' lips spoke of another time when carnivores went for the jugular of prey, seeking only to sustain themselves. Forcing down her instincts, for it was not the time to feel her mouth salivating like that, Juno squeezed and squeezed, locked into the combo move and watching the antlers shudder with the force she was exerting on his body.

Of course, Louis would get out of it, for they needed to get the fight going - but Juno would tell herself, then and later, that she let the stag do it.

All for the performance that had to be made.

With Legoshi and Haru, five others gathered around the hole in the ground and Haru waved over a fox and a lion too, the latter of whom had always had a soft demeanour, for a carnivore. Legoshi grinned, trying not to show too much of his teeth even then. He didn't want to threaten them.

"Great work," he growled, his tone low and hushed, though his tail was stiff with excitement. "Let's go!"

They had all who were still awake, though there seemed to be more herbivores than carnivores, which matched up to the usual ratios in the school quite well. The tunnel seemed to be lined with big, metal plates, drilled and riveted into place, the floor cool and smooth. His nose twitched as he checked it out, ducking his head down into the tunnel and then swinging down to land in the darkness. To a wolf, of course, that was not a problem, though there were some motion activated lights that fizzled and crackled to life along ancient lighting strips, dimly illuminating the near area. It could have been an early warning, to someone else, that they were coming, though there was no other choice for any of them down there.

They had to try, one way or the other. Everyone was in their underwear still as they slipped down into the tunnel, though Legoshi shook his head and pointed the others towards a direction that he scented fresh air coming from.

"Go that way," the wolf said, ushering them away from him, taller than everyone there except for the lion. "Get out, get help... Haru and I will see what's really going on here."

"What, you don't want me to go too?" Haru teased, her head cocked and her hand on her hip. "It's as if you don't like me!"

Legoshi would have huffed and rolled his eyes if Haru wasn't so endearing. Yet it was the wrong moment for that.

"I know you want to see this through too. Would you go if I told you to?"

The bunny grinned.

"Not a chance!"

At least the others, Legoshi thought, would be able to follow the scent of fresh air to an exit of some kind. The tunnel seemed old, judging from how badly the lighting strips had been maintained, though it was only slightly too small for him, forcing him to bend over a little. Of course, Haru didn't face any trouble there at all as they hastened cautiously along their way.

"Let's try this."

The bunny, as bold as ever, bounded up a metal ladder, only briefly testing it with a shake for stability. She scurried up, light and nimble, and Legoshi followed, albeit more carefully with more weight to potentially break the ladder. Parts of it were even rusted and the wolf moved swiftly and decisively, not wishing to linger there.

The room that the ladder brought them into didn't seem to be on ground level, still underground, and they entered through a hatched door in the floor of some kind. Either way, it hinged up for them to enter easily enough, though blended back into the floor as soon as they lowered it back down again.

"This is strange..."

The wolf inhaled deeply, checking for scents, though only the smell of old books and musty folders tickled his senses, the room filled with them. Shelves upon shelves of folders lined the walls and Haru wasted no time at all in flipping through them, sliding sheets of paper out.

"Huh... Oh, Legoshi..."

Even that shocked her, the rabbit's ears folding back for a moment, taking in what she had found. He picked up another folder, an image of a dome, much like the one that their students had been trapped in, on the front.

"These..." His muzzle wrinkled in distaste, lips turning down. "These are other schools, other domes... Other fights! Have they actually gone through with harming families? Surely not everyone could have gone along with this?"

Haru shrugged, though her nose twitched a bit more slowly than normal, betraying the unease she felt.

"I don't know, Legoshi," she said with a sigh. "There's... There's a lot a creature will do when they are faced with an inescapable choice. You saw for yourself how some behaved in there. Herbivores think they can take the chance to best carnivores and carnivores, surely, want to live out what their species was meant to do."

Legoshi pressed his lips together. He'd felt that too, though it was a notion that mostly resided in the back of his mind when he was close to a herbivore. Still, it was always there, in the back of his mind, when he had someone locked in a chokehold with his arms around their neck, applying stress to the pressure points of their neck. He could salivate, he could open his jaws, he could do what his species was designed to do.

And yet, he did not. Because Legoshi knew he was better than that. It was why he had trained so hard and so long to protect those who could not protect themselves, to make sure that he could always be the advocate that he wanted to be for carnivore and herbivore relations.

He didn't comment further on Haru's words, delving into the folders and ripping some covers apart in his haste to get at the contents. They documented the entire proceedings of other school fights around the world, where carnivores and herbivores, in every case, were pitted against one another. There were no instances of carnivores being set against carnivores, for example, though some notes suggested that carnivores had turned on each other when things had been more stressful. It was hard, just from reading the reports, to tell how much stress the students had been under before a certain event happened, though knockout gas had been used multiple times to restore order before harm was caused.

It looked like the students, the adults nearing the time that they would leave the schools, had been observed after the fights in the domes too. Some were reported to having returned to their studies in school while others carried on with going to college afterwards. Some didn't return to their studies at all and were documented in jobs, whether they were low-paying or high-paying, the trajectory of their lives, in some way, changed. Legoshi could not think of a world in which he would carry on with life as normal after being in the dome, though he almost didn't want to imagine how it was going to change him, from that point on.

Carnivores and herbivores could never live together in peace when they were battling one another for the entertainment and research of someone else, someone with great power. Though that was of no surprise at all to Legoshi, considering that he had already dealt with some of those powers in the nearer vicinity surrounding the school. There would be even worse out there and, as it was seen, in other countries too.

Nowhere was safe.

"Hm... This doesn't help much," Haru said, breaking into his thoughts as she passed him a folder. "I was checking these out, it seems to be finances. If they are going from place to place, they must bring all of these along with them. Maybe there is only one copy..."

She shrugged and shook her head, her white ears bouncing from side to side.

"Either way, there's a mysterious anonymous benefactor funding everything. Even those that are organising this..."

Legoshi swallowed a curse.

"They are just pawns."

Haru nodded.

"Everyone in this plan is just a pawn."

So, who knew if those that they were going to go after were going to give them any leads? Legoshi gulped. Who did he think he was to be able to stop them? Oh, it wasn't worth thinking about, a carnivore's mindset locking him into what he knew he had to do.

"Come on, Haru," he said, opening the door and checking that the coast was clear into another hallway, metal-lined as before. "Let's go. There's nothing there that will help us save anyone."

"Only stop this happening to more carnivores and herbivores."

He caught what Haru muttered, but understood why she reacted that way. But they couldn't do everything at once and, honestly, he didn't want to leave her behind on her own. The bunny didn't have all that much of a sense of self-preservation, always thinking herself a loner before. He'd hoped that would change, though it was difficult to see into her mind.

Legoshi's nose twitched and he cautiously slipped into a room that was only lit dimly with an old lighting strip along the far wall. There was no scent, but something clinical, something clean, something that set his hackles up.

Before them, in the dim light, sat everyone's families, the wolves and the shrews and the rabbits and the foxes and everyone. Tied up and with blindfolds over their eyes, they were silent.

Yet there was no smell.

"Oh!"

Haru's hands flew to her chest and she leapt forward, though Legoshi was quick to stall her.

"Wait!"

"What are you doing?" She spat, eyes flashing. "You won't stop me going to my family!"

Legoshi, however, gripped her left arm, fingers curled around her bicep. He was only cautious of his claws.

"Wait..."

He picked up a small rock, that lay as if it had been scattered there, by the entrance, where the clinically clean scent ended, and tossed it, cautiously, at the other anthros. He didn't know what he had expected, but the rock went straight through them, the image of their families flickering and jittering for a fraction of a moment.

Haru stiffened.

"Holograms!"

Legoshi shook his head.

"Of course... I didn't think they would be here but...maybe they were expecting some of us to find this tunnel."

He could only hope that the others had managed to get out the other end, that there was a hole in their grand plan that, in some way, he had managed to break through.

He hoped he was not too late.

Back in the arena, Louis and Juno fought desperately, though they were tiring a little more with every minute that passed. Neither were the kind of creature that was built for endurance in fighting, as wolves preferred to take down weaker prey, naturally supporting the ecosystem by not targeting the biggest and the strongest. Deer were built for endurance for long walks, short bursts of speed, perhaps a light, ground covering jog. Needless to say, being engaged in hand-to-hand combat was not something that Louis was designed for physically.

Still, Louis did not give up, setting his jaw as he jabbed a punch straight out at Juno's shoulder, five drones still circling them, all trying to get the best angle. They had not taken out all of the drones, as satisfying as it had been to wreck and destroy them, as they still needed to have eyes on them. Even if they wanted to make sure that it was as difficult as possible for anyone else to be looking at whatever Legoshi and Haru were up to, they didn't want anyone growing suspicious.

Juno lunged at him, their hands together, grappling, though they were weaker than they had been before. They had slowly put more and more effort into things, though they knew that, if they were to keep attention on them, they couldn't actually knock one another out. Yet they had not been able to verbally communicate that to each other, which meant that things were even more stressful and strained.

She was a wolf and Louis would never truly believe that Juno was on the same page as him. That was where she differed, in his eyes, to Legoshi.

"Give up, Louis!" Juno snapped, her eyes shining in a way that showed the truth in her words. "Herbivores will always be weaker than carnivores!"

She knew her words were harsh but she wanted, so very badly, to make the stag slip up. She just wanted Legoshi to be proud of her, to admire her - was that so bad too? No, no... No, it was not wrong to want one of her own species, a strong, powerful wolf, to look at her with the same look in his eyes that she knew was in hers.

Yet the wolf's thoughts were not coming fluidly as she ducked and went for a headbutt, slamming her head into his jaw. The stag gasped, not having been expecting that, and went down heavily, grunting as he hit the ground.

She should have been impressed with how he held back his pain, how he made it look like he was okay, though she knew that his own weight had come down against him as he fell. She lunged for him and grappled, rolling and twisting, until she got her legs around his neck again. In a scissor hold, Juno growled, her lips rippling along the line of her sharp, fearsome teeth, bearing down much, much harder than she had before.

Louis gulped and gasped, clawing at her legs, even as the wolf tightened the grip of them around his head and neck, tilting his head to the side. The stag scrabbled, kicking out with his feet, but couldn't get his balance there, his buttocks on the ground and his torso tipped up a bit where her legs wrapped around him.

"Unff... Gnnngghhh..."

Louis groaned, though the stag had to keep fighting, had to keep struggling. There was a part of him that knew that he could have given in and, one way or the other, accepted the consequences. It was that helplessness of prey, the sense of knowing when to give up, not to prolong their stress and strain for any longer.

Yet the part of the stag that wanted to fight was much, much more powerful as he twisted, pressing back against her and jabbing his left antler into her thigh. It was not something that Louis had had to do before, when they had been putting on a performance, though the stakes had raised and their exhaustion rendered them a little clumsy, less thoughtful about what they were doing to one another.

Or maybe both of them, in one way or the other, had something to prove. It would never be known, but not because either would be harmed irrevocably.

As the wolf muttered a curse under her breath, Louis scrambled up to his feet, curling his toes into the dirt, letting it root and ground him there. The connection with the ground, barefoot, was an important one, his chest heaving, sweat darkening his coat.

"Wolves do not need to always come out on top, Juno..." He panted, though his words lacked power behind them, even if there was a due amount of conviction there. "Herbivores have a reason to fight too."

She scoffed and darted for him, recovering from the jab to her thigh, trying for an uppercut with her left fist. It was slow, however, and weak enough for Louis to dodge.

Juno growled at herself mentally, knowing that she had got complacent. They would never have fought for so long if they had been training and exercising at school, not even when they were being tested on their physical prowess. Her mind wavered, dipping back and forth, though the wolf dug down, finding an extra layer of resilience, despite how her legs ached and trembled. Juno had not known it was possible for her legs to be as sore as they were in that moment but it was only going to get worse from there.

Briefly, she considered going for a neckbreaker, but she was too close in against the stag to really get the momentum and position correct. Even then, she didn't want to really hurt him - and it was a move that took a lot of care behind it. Juno was still glad to have it in her arsenal of moves, in the back of her mind, in case she needed it.

Still, she would have liked very much to see the stag dropped to the ground once more, scraping and heaving for his victory, slipping away through his grasping, wriggling fingers.

She'd have to be more careful of his antlers next time.

Instead, she snarled and leapt back, coming down on her right foot and bringing her left up - straight under his chin. Louis grunted as his head snapped up and back, staggering and losing his balance, though, unfortunately for Juno, the deer recovered himself too quickly. He shook his head, eyes narrowing a little, and came for her more quickly than Juno could have imagined.

Louis went for a side sweep, lunging out with his left leg and aiming to sweep it from the left to the right, all to take her own legs out from under her. Juno jumped, though he still clipped her and made her stagger, coming down on a knee.

That was his chance to gain the advantage, regardless of how tired he was. It was not something that he would have gone for before their fight turned more serious, though the stag wasn't playing around anymore. If it was a dance, it was one with real stakes that time.

Grabbing her, he hooked the wolf's body up and over his head and antlers, settling her behind his neck and across both shoulders. Juno gasped and twisted, but Louis was too quick for her. Holding her only briefly in the rack, he lifted and hurled her, dropping her heavily in a backbreaker.

WHAM!

"Oof!"

Juno gasped as the air left her lungs, her whole body reverberating from the force of the impact. It was not anything like how she had imagined winning the bout, no, and most certainly not as Louis followed up swiftly, not allowing her a moment in which to recover.

Dimly, the wolf knew she had underestimated him, that she had grown overconfident in her own abilities, as he wrestled her into a grappling hold. Getting behind her, he dragged her against him, squirming until they ended up face down with Juno on the bottom. She yelped and snapped but couldn't get her jaws close to him to warn him off as both of the stag's arms tightly encircled her right arm, tucked up into the armpit, bringing them back up and together at her neck.

Juno gasped, eyes rolling back in her head. There was too much pressure! It was just like when she had applied the scissor hold to his neck with her legs, applying as much strain as she could on his body. And he was just paying it all back to her in kind with a full nelson, squeezing hard as Juno got a knee under her, half pushing them up.

Yet trying to counter his hold wasn't working as well as she had hoped, her eyelids fluttering, a little more of her strength leaving her body. She kicked weakly with her right foot, on her left knee, though the stag was canny enough to use his weight against her, letting her take his weight, as well as her own.

However, Louis took advantage of the position to turn her over onto her back, going to pin her - though they should have both known that it wasn't going to end like that. As he tried to move her into position, a little too carefully and considerately, she kicked out and twisted, wrenching herself free by pushing herself back up and into his body.

"Oof!"

She came around and slammed down with the palm of her hand, though Juno had weakened from his full nelson. To the wolf's horror, she stumbled and came down on her knees again, unable to get her legs back up and under her in time. Her kneecaps blistered with pain, merely from the impact, and Louis landed a solid kick between her shoulder blades, knocking her forward to the ground.

WHAM!

"Unff..."

Dazed, Juno blinked, trying to regain her senses as the deer moved over her.

"I wouldn't want you to think that carnivores will always come out on top, Juno," Louis said, his voice taking on his old velvety air, like the velvet that coated his fresh antlers when they were growing again after the shed. "We are equals here, you and I. That is what they wanted to see, why we ended up as the leaders."

Juno gulped and gasped as he sat on her back, his hands around her neck to clasp under her chin. Wrenching her back with all the energy, or so it felt, in his body, he hauled her bodily into a camel clutch, even as her arms flailed back, trying to shove him off. It was just one of those instinctive reactions that she couldn't stop herself from twisting through as she fought, fingers grasping and grabbing. Yet Juno couldn't manage to get her fingers into any pressure points, not as the position strained her back: she howled.

A camel clutch should have been easier for her to bear through, as females often had a little more flexibility and less muscle bulk than males, though it was only a slight difference. Juno gasped and held back the watering of her eyes the best that she could in the hold, Louis grunting under his breath. He was tiring too and it was not as bad as it could have been, even if the edge of raw desperation that undercut everything made the moment far more dangerous than it should have been.

"As much as I respect you, Louis," she panted heavily, her words barely even coming out as a low hiss. "This is for...Legoshi!"

She brought her arms down against the ground and used the leverage, her palms flat against the soil, to push back savagely, heaving with a grunt that felt as if it had used up every drop of her energy. The stag juddered, not having anticipated that, and she hurled her torso to the left, his hands slipping as she jammed her fingers into the fine bones of his wrists. Where the gaps between them lay resided extra sensitivity and not even Louis could stop himself from letting out a sharp yell as pain, abruptly, shot up his arms.

In such a manner, she got out of the camel clutch and hurled herself at him, not even giving them a moment in which to rest and come back to themselves. She had to have him, had to take him down, even though he had the advantage of height and weight over her. The antlers too made getting him into certain headlocks more difficult - so she barrelled him down to the ground again and locked her legs around his body instead in a body scissor hold.

SQUEEZE!

She may not have been at her full strength, yet there was something in every creature, regardless of whether they were a carnivore or a herbivore, that let them pull on something a little more when they were truly in dire straits. Something that let them dig a little deeper, that clawing, snarling, kicking need to survive so very stubborn, not letting go.

"Unff..."

Juno grunted, holding her legs tightly around him from behind, the stag's back pressed to her chest. However, she hooked her arm around his right antler and wrenched his head off to the side so she could better control him, even if it meant that she had to slightly modify the body scissor move to do so. Her ankles crossed in front of his body as she wrestled with him, though the deer was not going down gently as he thrashed and hauled himself about, even as her arms came around his head and neck more firmly.

Striving to get him into a sleeper hold, Juno focused every shred of her attention on him, the tiny pulses and twitches of his body - all those small things that could have possibly given away his next move. The sleeper hold did not force him against her enough, however, not as he hurled his body entirely to the right, knocking her off him, even though they were both scrabbling still on the ground.

Juno growled without thinking, showing her teeth, but Louis was too quick for her. He lunged and grappled, rolling with the wolf across the ground, not at all fazed by her flashing show of teeth. It was all instinctual anyway. He had her on the rocks and the deer held his resolve as he grabbed her with his legs, sliding one of his through so that he could grip onto her leg at the knee and lower thigh, as she bent her leg instinctively, in a figure-four leglock.

"Aaaahhhhoooooooo!"

Juno howled, not having been expecting the pain, though the pressure of the stag's legs around hers infuriated her. The wolf's brow furrowed, clamping her jaws shut, and she tried to buck up against the pressure, half on her side, propped up with her hands as if she was going to drag herself away physically from him. But that was not the action of a wolf; that was the action of a prey animal seeking retreat! And she was never going to give in to Louis!

No... No, I have to do it, all for Legoshi. To keep him safe, to keep the fight going.

_ _

She was not even sure if the stag would let the fight continue if he got her into a position where he could win, especially when they were so tired. Just how long, anyway, could the two of them keep the fight going and going, despite everything else seemingly spiralling out of control? She had no idea where Legoshi and that little rabbit girl were, though it was not as if there was anything she could do to speed them up.

The leglock tightened around her as she scrabbled, raking claw marks through the dirt. Juno yowled and tried to kick back against him, but the stag held her tightly, a look of pure, dark intent in his eyes that struck a chill into the pit of her stomach, as if she had swallowed a lump of ice.

She didn't want to know what that look meant. Not as the leg scissor hold, the figure-four leg lock to be precise, tightened, squeezing, pressure biting into her calf muscle and the narrower point of her quad too, just above her kneecap. Juno trembled and yelled, though they did not stop. That may have been the point at which they would have stopped if they had merely been wrestling in a training session or exercising but...the stakes there were much higher.

It was wrong to feel so helpless as a wolf, wishing so very desperately that she had her "pack" there to help her, even though she wanted to prove herself too. Louis' eyes bored into Juno's as he held her there, his grip bearing down and down and down, squeezing as he showed off just what a deer's legs could do.

Juno, however, still had a trick or two up her figurative sleeve. A leglock could not be escaped merely by lying there and she twisted violently onto her right side, forcing the stag to twist along with her. All it took was a moment and she leaned away from him, kicking back the moment that he relaxed his grip a fraction. It was enough for her to land a blow to his thigh and score the muscle there with her heel, even if it would not have really hurt him if they had been upright and fighting with blows and kicks.

"Oof!"

Louis groaned and the two of them got back to their feet to continue the dance, eyes warily locked onto each other, the moments stretching on as they took stock of the aches and strains in their bodies. Tiredness seeped through and they were acutely aware of just how long they had been fighting. Muscular fatigue sank into the stag's thighs and Louis sucked in a tiny breath, knowing that he should not have had to release Juno from that leglock. That should have been enough to keep her down and where he wanted her, even if she had wormed her way, like an eel, out of the head scissor.

Her tenacity was impressive. Yet, even then, they tired.

Yet their attacks grew weaker and weaker, launching punches and kicks at each other as they slowed down more and more. They were too evenly matched when it came to the wrestling holds in particular, both using different ones so that they could better gain an advantage over the other - yet not quite getting there. Even when Juno's head had been on Louis' crotch, squirming and twisting in the head scissor hold, neither had truly gained any meaningful advantage.

Such was the way of carnivore against herbivore and vice versa... It would have been a very different final fight if they had not known one another so intimately too.

"Oof..."

Juno struck Louis' gut with her fist, an underhand punch, but it was not even hard enough to drive the air from his lungs, as much as the stag was already grunting and heaving. His kick slid past her into the open air, throwing his centre of balance off as he stumbled to the side.

Too weak. Too slow. It would all come down to luck for them both, tiring similarly, straining to win, to keep attention on them.

Yet there was one more thing that the winner could do to keep all eyes on them, the eyes that counted, even when their opponent was down and out.

It was Juno who did it. She brought her knee up sharply, rocking back onto her left foot for balance as she did so, drawing on a tiny reserve of strength that she had not even known that she'd had in her. Her foot slammed up, however, not her knee, directly into Louis' nose as the deer lost his sense of self.

He didn't have any control at all over his own body as he twirled, spinning on the spot as his head did the same, though he remained standing. With his ears ringing and his vision blurry, he tried to focus on Juno, but she came in close and dropped him down to a knee, her arms coming around his head and neck from behind to lock him in a sleeper hold.

With her arm across his throat, her arms crossed to apply more and more pressure, preventing the blood flow from reaching his head. It had the added effect of closing in pressure upon his windpipe too, wheezing and gasping, his breath coming more and more faintly.

"Unff... No..."

No, that wasn't the way that he wanted to go, no, not at all, not as he slipped down more and more and more. Louis struggled, kicking out, twisting, grabbing at her arms, though it was all to no avail.

Juno leaned in close to him, her ears flattened, breath tickling his ear as if in the tease of a lover's kiss.

"Go to sleep, Louis. You've fought well."

He knew he had, though that didn't make it any easier as he slipped down more and more, everything about his body becoming heavier and more difficult to move. His chest heaved and shuddered, juddering sharply, though it didn't feel as if he was getting anywhere near enough air into his lungs.

He wasn't easing lower down to the ground, yet it felt like that was where he belonged. The stag blinked furtively, doing his best to focus on something, anything, something that would keep him grounded in the moment, though he could not. The trees wavered and even the scent of the wolf's fur, so close to his nose, was too much for him, soft and yet the muscle beneath the source of his discomfort.

It was not a failure, however, to fall to a carnivore and it was a good thing that Louis understood that too. Even as he exhaled and didn't bother inhaling again as deeply, his fingers and feet twitching, feeling like he was struggling a lot more than he actually was. In his mind, he was thrashing and fighting back valiantly while, in reality, the wolf already had a hold on him in the sleeper hold and was taking down her prey.

Well done, Juno...

_ _

She had done what she set out to do and Juno smiled faintly, glancing up at the drones. Would she be able to get a recording of her victory? She would so very much have liked to show Legoshi...

That wasn't a thought, however, which should have crossed her mind but it wasn't as if others hadn't done things in the dome that they were not proud of too. She thought the stag was unconscious, the dead weight in her arms getting harder and harder to hold up, but it was not to be so, not as he coughed and twitched a little more, his eyelids fluttering.

"You are a difficult one to send to sleep, Louis..."

But using the sleeper hold to render him unconscious was all that Juno had at her disposal, ignoring the screaming pain of the muscles of her arms and the strain across her shoulders. She came all the way down to her knees too as she pushed him down with the pressure, feeling his pulse jump against her flesh. It was hard, sometimes, to tell what was just the deer's body twitching down closer to the ground, due to gravity, and what was him fighting back.

He still surprised her by getting a second wind at the moment that she was sure that his lowered eyelids meant that he was gone. The wolf wished she had chloroform there with her, for then she could have made sure that he was good and out and it was not as if she was not exhausted too. Maybe that was why it ended up being such a strained process, dragging on and on and on?

She could not know and it didn't matter anyway. Not as she forced him through getting his second wind, his struggles ceasing all over again as Louis slumped against her. Juno bared her teeth, though it was merely an instinctive reaction and she didn't actually intend to hurt him in any way, no. Not like that, she just had to knock him out as she squeezed, bearing down more and more and more.

Louis simply couldn't hold on, no matter how hard he tried, not as he slipped away from consciousness. The world didn't feel like it was hospitable to him anymore, not as his breath tickled his tongue and lips, leaving his body. He would be able to breathe more freely again, of course, once Juno released him, so he was not all that worried, no, not in the slightest.

It was just a low point to lose to her, regardless of how he rationalised it all. But he could not fight the weight of his eyelids, how he couldn't even keep his eyes open anymore, how his fingers stopped twitching, his head wanting to slump forward more and more. He panted lightly, though there was still a minor bit of airflow there, nose twitching while he strove to breathe.

The pulse of blood faded, no longer delivering what it needed to his brain, what kept him conscious. With a dullness entering his body, what he "saw" with his eyes closed faded to grey softness, falling and fading, finally going completely unconscious. And it was at that point that Louis finally succumbed to the uncomfortable bliss of the unconscious world.

Juno kept a good hold on him until she was completely sure, especially after the earlier incidents, that he was knocked out. Then and only then did the wolf lower him down to the ground, checking him over, from his slowed pulse to under his eyelids.

"Can't make a mistake here..."

Juno sighed, her fur damp with sweat and matted uncomfortably. It was so awkward to do things like that and the novelty of fighting was already wearing off with her as she picked up Louis' arm and let it drop to the ground.

OOMP.

It landed with a heavy thump, confirming it for her. He had to be unconscious and she laid him out gently on the ground, glancing up at the drones.

It was weird to do it with no one else there, though it was no time at all for the wolf to be self-conscious in the slightest, no. And that was exactly why she stood tall and put her foot on Louis' chest.

She wanted Legoshi there to share in her win, but the wolf was having an even bigger win for himself, she knew. And she had to be strong enough to let him go and do that, not to always think that he had to be there, with her.

Her toes flexed as she positioned her foot directly across the stag's chest, careful of the short, filed claws, letting his broad chest take her weight. There was muscle there and his fur was a little coarser as Juno rocked her foot back and forth experimentally, only then remembering that she was meant to be posing too.

"Oh, um..."

Juno went for a typical victory pose first, raising her hands together, triumphantly. They came up on either side of her head and then higher still, holding them up, looking at the drones, her ears perked up. Someone was looking at her, someone was seeing her victory, and she smiled faintly, despite the trembling lines of exhaustion aching deeply through her body. Even then, all Juno wanted was for it to be over. Was that really too much to ask?

For her second pose, she stood with her left foot on his stomach, though it was at a slight angle, neither directly across his body nor pointing up towards his chest. The softer flesh of his stomach still had hard abs underneath, which she could feel as soon as she put any manner of weight on the deer.

"I...Juno...am victorious!"

She flexed her arms out to either side, curling her hands into fists and making her biceps pop out, though she still had a feminine figure and was not overly bulky when it came to muscle. Still, she was a pretty sight with her brown-grey fur, that hint of rose in her colouration setting her apart from every other wolf that she had seen at Cherryton. With her muscles flexed, she exhaled softly, allowing strength to flow through her, showing off her body, her prowess, how she had defeated Louis when they had been so evenly matched for so much of the bout.

It was something to be proud of and yet there was no one there to cheer her on, no one at all to congratulate her. Juno breathed in and out slowly, smiling widely, trying to look as if she was pleased with it, though the seconds dragged on and on and on.

She didn't know what would happen, after all, when she completed every one of the victory poses, so she had to make sure they were long and slow, letting everything happen patiently.

And, still...even if Legoshi was not there...was it so bad to want to show how strong she was? That she was powerful, that she was so very much a wolf worthy of the name? As she flexed, Juno's arms trembled, still extended out as she showed off her raw power, her tight, lean muscle giving her far more than often met the eye.

She just wanted the fighting to stop. Yes, she had been victorious... And yet it needed to end, all of it. It was not how they had done things at the school and, at the very least, she had been watching Legoshi, especially how he interacted with herbivores.

She wanted to be like him, even if she would not emulate every last thing that he did. Yet her body ached fiercely and, while she stood there, holding the pose for longer and longer, she had to fight to remain upright.

No more fighting. Not between carnivores and not between carnivores and herbivores either.

It all needed to stop.

She rocked her foot back and forth on the deer's stomach, pressing down into the hard muscle beneath her foot and curling her toes down into his shorter fur. It looked like Louis had to be in his summer coat, for it was not as thick with an underlayer as his winter one. Juno didn't pay all that much attention to prey, in all honesty.

Finally, she moved to her final victory pose, laying her foot across his face. She rolled the stag's head to the right, so that his right cheek pressed into the dirt, a little dust clinging to her foot, despite Juno's best intentions. It could not be helped as she stood tall and proud, her hands on her hips, cocky and challenging as if she was already ready to take on the next opponent.

His face was not easy to rest of her foot on, however, his antlers stopping her from turning his head all the way to the side, a little rock left there, and the wolf frowned minutely. It was not something that she could let pass on to the cameras, however, fully aware of just how much of a show she needed to put on.

Juno had not realised how exhausting all of that was in the end. Yet it was not something that would make her reconsider her passion for acting, even if it had been Legoshi, initially, who had drawn her to the drama club.

There, with five drones hovering before her, taking in her body from every angle as she celebrated her triumph and curled her fingers around her hip bones, Juno held her head high. Regardless of what happened in the arena, she had played her part and done it well. Sometimes, that was all that someone could hope to do.

Whether they were a carnivore or a herbivore.

The monitor, which had been showing the rest of the supposed fighters in the arena what was going on with Juno and Louis, flickered, changing to show Legoshi and Haru. Juno gulped and stayed where she was, her heart hammering, though she was too tired to do anything, to even think of fleeing. What if they had been caught? Who was showing the video feed of them?

Too many questions and some there too that the wolf wouldn't have wanted answers.

On the monitor, she watched Legoshi and Haru check the hologram, easily showing it to be false. Yet Juno's tension was short-lived as another camera showed them going down a long hallway with a light at the end, and a phone.

Juno stepped back from Louis, trembling.

It was almost like they were meant to find the phone.

It was almost like they had all been set up.

It was almost like...there had been a single outcome to the fight in the dome.

Regardless of what any of them had or had not done.

However, the end for those in the dome was as gentle as it could have been. Legoshi and Haru got to the phone and immediately called the authorities, while those that they had sent down the underground tunnel to fresh air and freedom had been trying to get through the dense woodland to someone who could help. They were rounded up and brought back by the authorities, solely so a medical team could check them over.

It all happened as if in a dream, everyone present detached from the situation, Louis waking up again with Juno by his side, kneeling there primly and offering him a drink of water. It was hard to be rooted in reality when everything that had happened seemed so unreal and Legoshi, in particular, floated through it. Where scents should have grounded him, he found they swirled and changed too much for him to hold onto, to sift through, and there was no information that he could glean from them.

It would have been frustrating if he didn't ache all over and if he didn't want to make sure that everyone was okay. Even if it was not his job, the urge to do it was still there.

Medical teams and law enforcement flooded the dome, the doors opened and the students sitting together, allowing themselves to be bandaged and patched up. The cages snapped open with a clang of metal on metal and Legoshi worked with a few of the other larger carnivores, who were not all that injured and sore, to get the inhabitants out. It didn't take too long before they were awake again, blinking back to reality, though the medical teams were there to stop them from getting up too quickly, asking them questions like what their names were, what day it was. It seemed silly to Legoshi, as dates and names could not possibly even begin to encompass the enormity of all that had taken place in the dome.

Like what had happened with the other schools that Haru and he had read about in the folders, it was something that would change all of them, in different ways, forever.

The best thing that he saw was everyone being reunited with their families - families that, of course, he had never seen before. There were so many there, sobbing and crying, expressing their fear and their joy in the same way. When it came to relief, it appeared to very much be a common sentiment amongst carnivores and herbivores, though the carnivores were a little quieter. After all, they didn't often like to show signs of weakness either.

He had his time too, though he waved off those who asked after him, professing that he was glad that they were okay, even if it was not possible, for him at that time, to put into words just how glad he was that all had gone well, that they had gotten everyone out. Not a single soul had been lost and he had truly feared at several points through the multiple fights that there would be an end to the story of that day that he would never want to recount. He was not one to recount tales of power and valour and triumph, but explaining what had happened there and how carnivores and herbivores had been forced to break down relationships between one another was a story that needed to be told.

He needed to be one of the ones to tell others and to show them that things didn't have to be that way. Even though others were trying to regress relations between them.

They had to fight - but in the right direction.

The folders, however, were left behind. Their presence remained the only hint that those who had orchestrated the whole ordeal had had to leave in a hurry, though the students were not allowed to look at them. They were immediately confiscated and the area cordoned off for inspection, for, apparently, it was a section of the arena that was accessible from the exterior too, through another corridor.

It was not for Legoshi to worry about, quite honestly - at least, that was what he was told, though he said nothing in return, looking forlorn and beaten. Yet that was typically how he looked always - even if he was mulling things over in his head, observing and calculating, always thinking. Others had underestimated him before due to that too and the wolf doubted very much that it was going to change there.

If no one thought he was actually interested in the folders and the details of why what had happened there had gone on in the first place, the wolf was more than happy to fly under the radar. It was better than something worse happening to him, being locked up somewhere, for how could any of them know who to trust from that point on?

There was someone out there, the masterminds behind the ordeal and so many others, who wanted carnivores and herbivores to be pitted against one another, to forget all that they had spent so many years working towards.

Louis, Juno, Legoshi and Haru, quietly but surely, disseminated the details of what they had found and learned in the tunnel and room of folders to the students, knowing that it would spread. It was not something that should ever have been covered up.

"You can't let this change you, Jack," Legoshi said softly, helping his friend sit up, though the canine was covered in bruises under his fur and rather sore. "It's what they want. They want base instincts to come out, to fight, to flee, to be less than we are."

"Well, some definitely acted like that," Jack groaned, rubbing the back of his neck and turning his head from one side to the other as if he was trying to work out a kink in it. "Oof... This is going to take...a while."

He meant more than his physical aches and pains from being in the tickle fight, of course, but Legoshi nodded anyway. It was something that they would all have to deal with. Jack was only lucky that he had not had to really fight, even though he was not a carnivore who really had to deal with things like running barefoot and the like. He was a soft soul.

Those who orchestrated the fight were not found, which Legoshi expected too. If they were easy to locate, they would not have been able to continue running their terrifying fights in the domes they had built all around the world for that one purpose alone. But he hoped that something would happen, just to put them in a place where they could no longer come up against one another and no longer force herbivores and carnivores to regress to a baser state of mind.

Several months later, at a school in Sweden, the adult students of the last year headed out on a field trip, laughing and acting fools in the bus. It was one of the last times in their lives that they would be able to be that open and carefree, though they did not know that yet. They were merely living in the moment and doing all that they wanted in the moment, as if they though that there were going to be no more times like that for them. Herbivores, instinctively, tended to live that way, feeding their needs, but carnivores could have more of an air of invincibility around them.

It was the way of it, even as the bus pulled up at a dome, which had some of the students pressed up to the windows, curious as to where they were.

"Hey, is this some kind of botanical garden or something?"

A stoat stood up, his tail flicking back and forth behind him, though all would be revealed in due course. For, as the students were ushered into the dome, they paused, noses twitching, a sense of distinct unease settling over them, even though they were surrounded by lush undergrowth. It could have very well have been a normal place where they could have been taken for a trip...and yet it was not.

Near the entrance, a rack of deadly weapons, from blades to maces to more violent means too, had been set up, poised and ready. A sheep awkwardly let a bleat escape her lips.

The organisers of the dome fights, after all, had learned their lesson from the last time.