"HA!"
Cait threw a fist forward. It hit the light projection – which depicted a gruff, mean-looking man in his thirties, armed with nothing more than his own body – in the face.
"His" head rocked back, and Cait stepped forward to press her advantage, sweeping her leg under his.
He landed on his back and flipped to his feet, throwing his own punch forward, but Cait blocked it with her arm and retaliated.
This time he was knocked flat on his ass, and Cait jumped into a nasty kick that connected squarely with his jaw.
She dropped to the ground as the hologram burst into motes of light, signifying her victory.
Cait threw her head back, panting lightly as her thoughts raced with all sorts of things. She had been hung up on the same few subjects for hours but had decided that sitting around thinking wasn't going to do her any good.
So, she activated the training hologram and channeled her feelings into fighting.
This was already the thirty-fourth hologram she had beaten these past three hours, but she still wasn't satisfied. The blood in her veins still ran hot, leaving her light brown skin a shade darker as adrenaline and the primal urge to dominate demanded her attention.
Seeing as she was alone, she let her fox tail hang free.
Her tail was about average for a kitsubus in terms of shape and length, being two feet long and just bushy enough that you couldn't fully wrap your hand around it.
It was the same dark brown color as her hair and ears, and greedily sucked in the Mana around her to fuel her expedition, flooding her limbs with strength and stamina that made her feel like she could take on the world.
She wore only some comfortable sweatpants and a black sports bra, revealing her toned stomach and arms. Her arms were muscular, but not overly so; the muscles of a laborer, not a bodybuilder or fighter.
Her sweaty, glistening skin was on full display for a nonexistent audience, the usual baggy robes doing nothing to hide her compact and powerful physique.
Of course, there was Pospo, but she didn't count. That lazy cat didn't care about human males, much less females.
'Lazy?' Pospo's voice, which was that of a mature woman and would have been motherly if not for her unending boredom, spoke into her mind. 'I'll have you know I'm doing very important work.'
Begrudgingly, Cait acknowledged that to be true. While the cat appeared to just be laying on her stomach, she was actually watching Cait's fighting form. With Pospo's second perspective, along with her feline insight, Cait could spot her mistakes much easier.
It was this tactic, along with her constant training, that allowed Cait to improve by leaps and bounds compared to the others in her class. Well, that and the fact that the martial arts she was learning were made by and for Fox kitsubi.
The discipline was called Fox's Fang, and dated back to the Assimilation War between the humans and demons.
It was this fearsome martial art that won the respect and terror of humans and was what allowed the kitsubi and fregog to merge with human society as equals.
Fox's Fang had two branches: Pouncing Fox and Stalking Fox.
The first relied on overpowering opponents with a Fox kitsubus' superior speed and strength, ending fights swiftly. A user of Pouncing Fox saw injuries as necessary, and removable, costs of victory.
A Fox kitsubus could heal from a broken arm or a torn stomach mid-battle, but humans couldn't.
The second used a Fox kitsubus' strong healing factor, dulled sense of pain, and deep reserves of stamina to outlast superior opponents, minimizing damage to one's self, exploiting weaknesses, and using perfectly-executed yet scarce feints.
Every minute one didn't defeat a user of Stalking Fox was another inch one sunk into metaphorical quicksand. The few hits they'd manage to land would be quickly swallowed up by the healing factor of the kitsubus as more and more damage accumulated on themselves.
Each form, or what she had learned of them, already felt second nature to Cait from her relentless training. Every stance and move was repeated again and again through restless afternoons and sometimes sleepless nights until she could flow from one to the next without thought.
She still had much, much farther to go to be considered a master, however. But her form, while something she was paying attention to, wasn't what she was thinking about.
As another hologram appeared, taking the form of a thin, wiry man that was quick on his feet and quicker with his hands, all Cait could see when she looked at the blue face before her was that of Fate's.
Half of her couldn't let go of the shared language between the two of them, a language that should've been a mysterious clump of garbled nonsense to everyone on this rock but her.
There was no explanation. Even the more absurd ones she thought of didn't make sense.
Was it fate? Destiny? She didn't believe in either of those, yet they were the only things that could explain away this anomaly.
But the other half, the half driving her fist forward again, just wanted something to punch.
Uncle Travis and her father were the only men in this world she could trust. Partly because they were family, but also because she knew they wouldn't try anything because of those same familial ties.
Every other man she had met and exchanged more than three sentences with wanted to get in her pants. How did she know? It was easy, even without her desire sense.
The miners in the town she grew up in, Fonford, were men and women she and her father had worked side by side with for years. They were very open and expressive because they knew a cave-in could kill them any day, or a mugger could take their hard-earned wages at any time, leaving their corpse to rot in an alley.
This looming dread resulted in the men being a little too forward with her, grabbing at her ass or "seductively" touching her arm whenever they pleased.