The leopard that killed Misato's clones didn't wait for us to form a plan.
It lunged.
The thing covered thirty feet in a single bound, paws the size of dinner plates leaving craters in the soft earth, and the only reason it didn't bisect Charles Leone on the first pass was because Hikaru's Phantom Edge carved a line through the air that forced it to twist mid-leap. The invisible slash opened a cut along its flank that would have gutted a normal animal, but this creature's hide split and sealed almost immediately, dark blood welling up and then stopping like the wound had decided to close itself out of spite.
"SCATTER! FORMATION BREAK!" Misato's voice hit a register I'd never heard from her before. Not anger. Not command. Raw survival instinct translated into words.
The jungle exploded into violence.
