It was debating what to do. No more sitting around and relaxing, no more taking 3 cycle long naps, no more pretending to be training and doing nothing after all, Beta needed to make up for all of its lost time. It couldn't go back home until it had improved, even just a little bit! Well, no, if it had only improved a bit, then Vargas would most surely deem them a failure. It was no longer a funny concept, because it was no longer something in the distant future - it was a burning reality that was not only possible, but quite plausible, should it return to Tunnel P in this state.

No. No. No, it was going to hunt more. It would find more opponents to knock to the ground. It didn't care who it was, as long as it was target practice. As long as it was something.

It looked down at its feet. Bones, bones everywhere. Huh, it had wandered into Canis. It shouldn't go farther, then - any close to Tunnel P and one of them might see. It could probably find someone here. Wheels were turning in its head as it figured out a plan. A little mindlessly, it threw itself forward, digging into the pile of bones, loudly scattering many of them to the side, making quite a ruckus as it dug down. Perhaps someone would think there was a fight going on over here, from the amount of noise it was making. It dived down into the bones, pushing the pile so that all the rocks and remains tumbled down and covered most of their body. They hoped that it would be good enough to hide them.

Beta was still, listening carefully as someone came close. They sounded young, very young, or at least foolish, nosing through the bones. The light appearing was a bit of a bad sign - they wouldn't be able to rely on the darkness. Okay, switch tactics, then. No more grabbing her when she gets close - if they posed as wounded, as she was obviously looking for (and, obviously, it was, wound on the shoulder), then maybe this would work.

They shifted and let out a low moan, trying to sound convincing enough to get whoever was there over to its location. To hopefully get her to come rushing over to tend to the oh so poor wounded. But the sound wasn't loud enough to get her turning around. But when it tried again, it heard her voice retreating. Shit, it was already screwing this up.

Dammit, she was moving away. How did it mess that up? Whatever, it wasn't over yet. She still wasn't too far, she would still be able to hear it. So Beta took a deep breath and put on its best groan of pain, shifting the bones as well, causing a few of them to clatter and fall. Its injured shoulder throbbed as a bone smacked against it. It hoped it had started bleeding a little more, to make it more convincing.

Hopefully, she'd be fooled.

Perfect, she was doing just what Beta wanted. But as soon as bones began flying out of the way, it paused. Damn, she was a magic user too. They were always dangerous, because you never knew what they were going to pull. It was quite annoying, but Beta couldn't wait to try and figure out what kind of spells she knew. It had to strike, quickly.

While she was working, Beta dug around beneath the bones, covering it up with another shift and a moan, until they felt their claws hit something powdery. Dust, dirt, or ground up bones, whatever it was, it would work. And as soon as the last bone and rock had been flung off of it, it flipped over, hurtling the pile of dust right into the cat's face.

It didn't know how she'd gone from screeching and shocked to perfectly calm in just a couple of seconds. That was incredible, but Beta wasn't going to just wait for her to fully recover. The point of this training was to practice their ability to assassinate - not just sneak up on a target, but neutralize it too. It needed to get her under control.

Beta lunged forward to get at her, maybe to slam its paw down on one of her legs and get her to stop moving, but it stumbled getting up from the bones and didn't land its hit in place.