||The Legend of Taavi ||

|the final battle|

            As Taavi leapt from tree to tree on her course home, she felt a nagging feeling of dread poking at her chest. She blamed it on her fear of Kerchak, but very suddenly, it felt as though the air had been sucked out of the entire jungle. Not a single creature was in sight, and she could hear the birds abandoning their nests and flocking to the skies. Taavi cocked her head to the side, closed her eyes, and concentrated hard on her hearing.

Then she heard her mother scream.

Without any thought, Taavi took off into a run, leaping from one tree to the next, tearing through the leaves and ignoring the scraping branches. She tore through the brush like her life depended on it, her chest heaving with every breath, and her legs pumping through their soreness. The branches became increasingly familiar, and she focused on steering herself in the right direction to her home. The screams of her group were getting louder, and more frequent. And then she heard a dominance ape cry, and a pained growl.

Sabor.

Heat rushed to Taavi's face. The color red flashed through her mind as her anger grew in her throat. Just up ahead, she saw her family fleeing the spotted beast, and she let out a roar that caused even Sabor to pause in her tracks.

Taavi judged by the blood-stained foliage that not every ape was lucky to leave the fight without a scratch. She instantly scanned the area for her mother, and saw her holding her bloody arm, but otherwise safe. She couldn't find Kerchak in the millisecond that she spent searching, but Terk was safe up in a tree. Good, she thought to herself, they're safe. Then, she set her eyes on Sabor.

The leopard's teeth were free from blood, which meant she hadn't landed any kills, but her claws reeked of liquid crimson. Taavi knew she was in it deep when she realized she hadn't any weapons with her, not even her arrowhead. She brought that with her everywhere; how stupid could she be? Stop it, she told herself, now's not the time.

Once the apes were successfully evacuated from their nesting grounds, Taavi faced her opponent. Fire burned in her cheeks as she caught the hollow eyes of the panther. She had had this fight one too many times, and it was time to end it...for good.

Just as they always did in their battles, the two began their death circle. It was almost like a waltz: rehearsed, repetitive, and very much strategized. Taavi kept low to the ground, her knuckles supporting her torso, and her back arched into a dominant gorilla stance that Kerchak often used. They circled each other, maintaining icy eye contact, waiting for each other to make the first move.

As always, Sabor made the first move, launching herself at Taavi with long, nearly talon-like claws. But before the feline made it to the human, a deafening roar came from the bushes, and Kerchak made his appearance. Beating his chest, and practically snorting out steam, he charged at Sabor and took her to the ground. Taavi knew their connection was broken, and their fight was caught off.

"No!" she screamed, and then realized that neither her father nor Sabor had any idea what she had just said. Luckily, they hadn't heard her protests over the sounds of the gorillas screaming their support from the trees, cheering on their leader.

Taavi could do nothing but watch as they fought, she knew that getting in the middle of their battle would be the end of her. Kerchak was stronger than any creature in the jungle; that was true. But mindless anger and violence was nothing compared to the clever, nimble, and lightning fast reflexes of a panther. In no time at all, Sabor had analyzed Kerchak's fight pattern, as she did with all of her victims, and dodging the giant gorilla seemed like a hobby to pass the time. After thirty seconds of bounding around the enraged primate, she became bored, leaping and scratching him across the chest. It wasn't deep enough to kill him, but just deep enough to keep him out of the game. That was a play that Taavi knew Sabor calculated; everyone knew she came here for Taavi.