The Bunny Kid Who Wants To Become The Strongest

The torches along the Smokeline had burned low by the time someone dragged the television up onto the Table.

It arrived on a wooden cart, pushed by two boys who nearly dropped it twice, and it was old enough that half the settlement had never seen one work.

Elder Hagan settled onto an upturned crate at the platform's edge and planted his cane between his knees — the Table roofed but wall-less above him, the way it had always been built, so that whatever happened here happened in view of anyone who cared to see it.

Farmers stood with their arms folded, carrot-dirt still under their nails from the day's rotation.

Children sat cross-legged in the sand.

A blacksmith still wore his apron, hammer tucked through his belt like he'd stepped out mid-swing and decided the forge could wait.

Somewhere behind them, the last of the evening's welcome-smoke still drifted out over the water, thinning into the dark.
"Turn it up, lad," Hagan said.

The boy at the front twisted the knob.

The picture stuttered — snow, darkness, more snow — and then the screen cracked open and swallowed everything in static.

Then he appeared.

Tall.

Completely still.

A top hat throwing shadow across half his face, a coat moving softly despite no wind.

He held a cane loosely, the way men hold things they don't need.
When his gaze found the camera, the crowd felt it settle on them like a hand on the shoulder — unhurried, deliberate, already knowing what it would find.
"Hello, hello there, viewers~"
Nobody moved.

A woman near the back gripped her prayer necklace without knowing she'd reached for it.

A guard's hand found his spear.
"I have hacked everyone's TVs." A beat. "And I mean... everyone's."

Even here — on an island three days by ship from the nearest mainland port, where the most advanced piece of technology on the whole Smokeline was currently propped on a cart — those words landed.

The crowd felt the size of the world press in around them.
Whatever this man had done, he had done it everywhere. All at once. To everyone.
"You're probably wondering who I am."
He smiled.
It wasn't warm.
It was the smile of a man who had been waiting a long time for this particular moment and found it exactly as satisfying as he'd imagined.
He twirled the cane once and let it rest on his shoulder.
"I am the strongest man alive."
Silence.
Pure and total.
The baker's loaf hit the ground.
Neither he nor anyone beside him moved to pick it up — which, on any other night, would have been its own small scandal. Nobody wastes a bowl of food on Pork Island.
Tonight, nobody noticed.
"And I want to be beaten."
Murmurs broke like a wave.
The blacksmith's son pulled his fist tight.
A cloaked traveler near the treeline tilted his head slowly, like a man recalculating something important.
Elder Hagan's grip tightened on his cane — not from fear, but from something older and more careful than fear.
The man on screen leaned forward.
"It has been, what — a month since the Supreme Council officially recognized me as the strongest?" His voice dropped, not to a whisper but to something almost intimate, like a confession made to a close friend.
"And let me tell you." He paused. "It has been boring."
Nervous laughter scattered through the crowd.
Warriors straightened without meaning to.
"I won't reveal myself. I won't say where I am. But here is all you need to know."
He looked directly into the lens.
The effect was immediate — half the crowd took a step back without realizing it.
"Whoever defeats me, kills me, or makes me surrender will be rewarded." He raised one gloved finger. "One trillion gold. The finest sky ship in existence. Mythical weapons. Magic scrolls containing spells that died with their last users."
The grin widened.
"And best of all — the power to carve your own domain from this world."
Silence.
Then chaos.
"Is this a trick?!" a merchant shouted.
"He's mad," someone said. "He has to be mad."
But some people at the Table went perfectly still.
The ambitious ones.
The hungry ones.
The ones who heard opportunity in places where everyone else heard lunacy.
The man on screen straightened. Composed again. Unhurried.
"Invitations have been sent across all worlds. Know this, if you accept: the Supreme Council will come for you." He let that sit for exactly one second. "But that's fine, isn't it?"
He chuckled, the sound lingering a moment longer than it should have.
"Anyway. I must go." He tipped his hat. "I wish you all luck."
The screen went black.
Silence.
Then, from further down the Smokeline — a crash of fist on wood and a roar of laughter: "A trillion gold?! A sky ship?! I'M IN!"
The settlement split in two, right there on the sand under the Table's roof.
Those trembling and those grinning.
Both sides felt, in that moment, that the world they'd woken up in that morning was already gone.
---
In a small stilt-house at the Smokeline's quiet end, the television had gone dark.
Half-eaten bowls sat on the table — carrot stew, mostly finished, a heel of bread left for manners rather than hunger.
A single candle burned low.
On the floor — legs folded, enormous ears angled like antennae locking onto a signal — sat Eleo.
Eight years old.
A bunny kid built like a question mark that had recently learned to throw a punch.
He was not, technically, supposed to be on the floor. He'd migrated there sometime during dinner without anyone commenting, pulled toward the screen by the same gravity that had pulled half the Smokeline down to the Table.
In his lap was a crumpled sheet of paper covered in badly drawn stick figures, each labeled in careful, deliberate letters: ME and STRONGEST GUY and, at the bottom in the largest handwriting he could manage: I WIN.
Beside him, in a creaky rocking chair that had survived several wars, sat Grandpa Gou.
Old.
Weathered.
The kind of face that had seen so much it had forgotten how to be surprised.
He'd sat on the Supreme Council once, before he decided fishing off the Smokeline docks was more honest work.
His hands were folded over his stomach.
His eyes were half-closed.
The screen stayed black.
Eleo's nose twitched.
His ears swiveled.
He looked at his paper. Looked back at the screen. Looked at his paper again.
"GRANDPA GOU."
Gou opened one eye.
"I WANNA BE THE STRONGEST."
The eye closed. "Boy."
"I'm serious! Did you hear what that man said?! Whoever beats him—"
"Gets hunted by the Supreme Council." Gou's voice was flat. "And killed."
Eleo blinked.
His ears drooped slightly.
Then they shot straight back up. "PFFT. I'll just beat them too."
Gou's rocking chair stopped moving.
He looked at his grandson — this small, ridiculous, completely earnest creature with buck teeth and a hand-drawn battle plan in his lap — and facepalmed so hard the chair rocked backward.
"You can't just beat the Supreme Council," he said, through his hand. "They're the Supreme Council."
"So? I'll train harder."
"They have thousands of members."
"I'll train way harder."
Gou lowered his hand and looked at Eleo with the expression of a man who had been at sea too long and started talking to fish. "Boy. Do you have any idea how strong the weakest member of that council is?"
Eleo tilted his head. "...Stronger than me right now?"
"Yes."
"Okay, so I'll just—"
WHAM.
Gou's fist crashed into his face.
Clean, unhurried. The way a man swats a fly he's been watching for a while.
Eleo flew back into the couch. His legs stuck straight up. The crumpled paper floated down and landed on his chest.
He lay there for a moment.
"...What was that for?" he said, from the ceiling.
"Language."
Eleo sat up slowly.
WHAM.
This time, Eleo moved. Both feet, simultaneously, square in the center of Gou's face.
The old man's chair tipped. He slid backward across the floor and came to rest with his back against the wall.
He sat there.
Wiped his nose with his thumb.
Looked at the blood on his knuckle.
Then he grinned.
"Heh." He looked up at Eleo, who was standing on the couch looking equal parts triumphant and terrified at what he'd done. "You made me bleed." The grin widened. "I'm proud of you, boy."
Eleo beamed — his whole face lit up, buck teeth and all. "YEAH! I BEEN TRAINING WITH MASTER KUMA!"
"I can tell." Gou cracked his neck, climbing to his feet with the ease of a man who'd taken far worse. "You hit like a malnourished squirrel." He paused. "But it's something. Carrot-strong, at least — you don't quit."
Eleo's ears twitched. "Wait. What's a squirrel?"
Gou stared at him.
The candle flickered.
He crossed the room slowly, placed one large hand on top of his grandson's head, and patted it twice. The way a man comforts himself.
"Not a single working brain cell," he murmured. "I raised you right, and you came out completely empty."
Eleo gasped. "WAIT. I HAVE A BRAIN?!"
Gou closed his eyes and said a short, private prayer — the kind you send toward Zarukhan's grove without needing to walk all the way to the Plateau to say it.
He stretched. Joints popped. "Alright. I'm leaving tomorrow."
Eleo's ears dropped. "Already? You just got here."
"I know." He started toward his room. "You've got Abby, haven't you?"
Eleo groaned. "Abby's no fun. She always tells me not to punch stuff."
"Good." Gou paused at the door. "Maybe it'll stick this time."
He glanced back — his grandson still standing on the couch, crumpled battle plan in hand, chin set like a declaration.
"Get some sleep," Gou said. "Big ideas need rest."
WHAM.
He punched Eleo into his pillow, tucked the blanket up with one smooth motion, and walked away.
From the pillow, muffled: "Whyyy?"
Gou chuckled, already gone. "Told you to sleep."
Eleo lay staring at the ceiling. He smoothed out the crumpled paper on his blanket and studied it for a long time — the stick figures, the arrows, I WIN in shaky letters at the bottom.
Then he folded it carefully and tucked it under his pillow.
"When I wake up," he said quietly, to no one in particular, "I'm gonna be the strongest."
Outside, the Smokeline was still buzzing, voices carrying through wood and woven palm, everyone deciding what to do with the world they'd just been handed.
Inside, a candle went out.
A bunny kid closed his eyes.
He was asleep in seconds.
---
Morning came the way it always did on Pork Island — salt air off the water, birds going at it outside the window in the calls locals could half-read, the welcome-smoke already curling up from the first lit cooking fires down the row.
Pale light cut through the curtains at an angle that made the whole room look gold.
Eleo woke up with his face pressed into his pillow, one ear folded under his head, and the immediate certainty that today was going to be important.
He scrambled upright.
Grabbed the folded paper from under his pillow.
Tucked it in his pocket.
Gou was already at the table when Eleo reached the kitchen — travel bag propped against his chair, eating without hurry.
He looked up when Eleo appeared in the doorway: sleep-messed fur, ears at different altitudes, shirt on backward.
"Sit down," Gou said. "Eat first."
Eleo sat.
He ate his stack of carrot-flat pancakes in approximately the time it took Gou to finish one.
Then he sat watching his grandfather pack the last of his things with the quiet efficiency of a man who'd done it many times before, in many different places, and had stopped thinking about it.
"You're really going," Eleo said. Not a question.
"Said I was." Gou buckled his bag. He stood, crossed the room, and put a hand on top of Eleo's head. Not a pat this time. Just weight. "Keep that dumb smile of yours, alright?"
Eleo grinned, because he couldn't help it. "OKAY!"
Gou snorted.
He picked up his bag, headed for the door, and paused with his hand on the frame. He stood there for a moment — the way people do when they're deciding whether to say one more thing.
He didn't.
He walked out.
The door clicked shut behind him.
Eleo sat at the table.
Outside, footsteps on the path, then nothing.
The birds kept going.
The light through the curtains shifted slightly.
Then his brain caught up.
"OH — MASTER KUMA!"
He was out the door at a sprint.
---
The Iron Fang smelled like sawdust and old beer and the particular kind of laughter that meant someone was about to do something stupid.
It sat at the rowdier end of the Smokeline — raised on stilts like everything else, open-walled the same way the cooking houses were, so the noise had somewhere to go instead of getting trapped.
It was the rowdiest establishment on Pork Island, which was less of an achievement than it sounded — Pork Island had two other bars, and they were technically the same building.
But The Iron Fang had a reputation.
The kind earned over years.
The kind that came from being the place strong people chose when they wanted to drink somewhere their strength was understood.
Eleo loved it.
He burst through the door at a dead sprint, having run the whole way from home, having also knocked over a man on a donkey somewhere along the Carrot Flats (an accident, and he'd apologized, though the man hadn't seemed to hear him over his own yelling).
He weaved between tables, ducked under a tray, hopped a barstool, and landed at the biggest table with both hands flat on the wood.
"MASTER KUMA!"
At the bar, Lucy — fox ears, orange fur, the calm authority of someone who had seen everything twice — continued sliding drinks down the counter without looking up.
At the biggest table, Master Kuma looked up.
He was a bear.
Enormous, broad-shouldered, built less like a creature and more like a structure that had simply decided to sit down.
He wore a simple kung fu gi that had survived considerable punishment and held a wooden beer mug that looked small in his paw.
Beside him, sipping juice with the focused energy of someone maintaining patience through great personal effort, sat Abby.
Kuma blinked at Eleo.
"Did you hear?!" Eleo grabbed the table's edge. "The broadcast! The strongest man! Did you—"
"Yep."
Eleo grinned so wide his face barely contained it. "THEN YOU KNOW I'M GONNA BE THE STRONGEST!"
Kuma set his mug down.
Calmly.
The way very large people do things when they have decided not to hurry.
"Boy," he said, "you ain't ready."
Abby nodded, solemn. "He's right, Eleo. You'd have to be extremely strong."
Eleo puffed his chest. "I am strong! Stronger than you! All you do is sing."
The bar went quiet.
Not dramatic quiet. Just the specific silence that falls when everyone in a room arrives at the same thought at exactly the same moment.
A single drop of beer fell from Kuma's mug.
Abby's eye twitched.
Her hand shot out.
"YOU WANNA SAY THAT AGAIN?!" She had Eleo's ear between two fingers and was twisting with the focused intensity of a scholar in pursuit of truth.
"OW! OW! OW!! ABBY, STOP—"
"Abby," Kuma said. "No hurting Eleo."
"I'M NOT HURTING HIM." Twist. "I'M DISCIPLINING HIM."
"Mhm."
Eleo flailed, suspended entirely by his own ear, legs kicking at nothing. "KUMA!! HELP—"
"Nah." Kuma sipped. "You earned this, boy."
The bar erupted. Someone spilled their drink laughing.
Abby released Eleo eventually — with the quiet dignity of a woman who had done what needed doing — and Eleo dropped into a chair, rubbing the side of his head and sulking with his entire body.
Kuma watched him.
There was something in the old bear's gaze — not soft, exactly, but attentive. The way a craftsman looks at raw material he hasn't decided about yet.
"You really think you can be the strongest, Eleo?"
Eleo looked up.
The sulk was gone.
In its place, something else — something simple and clear and entirely without doubt.
"No," Eleo said. "I know I can."
Kuma held his gaze for a long moment.
Then he smiled — slow, broad, a little dangerous.
"Then let's see." He set down his mug. "Training. Now. Green Break."
Abby pressed her palms together and looked at the ceiling. "Here we go."
---
The dojo clearing sat deep enough into the Green Break that the Smokeline's noise didn't reach it — just the close, tangled quiet of jungle that outsiders found disorienting and locals found like home.
It held maybe thirty people today — Iron Fang regulars, mostly, who'd followed with drinks in hand and the anticipatory energy of an audience that already knew the show would be worth watching.
Kuma stood at the clearing's center.
Relaxed.
Mug still in paw.
Eleo bounced on the balls of his feet, ears up, tail moving.
Across the clearing, Abby cupped her hands around her mouth.
"You can do it, Eleo!"
He turned and grinned at her. "Thanks, Abby!" Then he pointed at Kuma. "Alright, Master! Let's—"
"You're more impatient than a starving wolf at a feast," Kuma said.
"Yeah, yeah — BEGIN!"
Eleo charged.
Fists clenched, feet churning up dust, a war cry that sounded more like excitement than fury.
Kuma yawned.
Scratched his belly.
Eleo's fist connected with his chest.
Boop.
Like punching warm upholstery. Like hitting a wall that hadn't noticed.
Eleo blinked. He looked at his fist. He looked up.
Kuma blinked back.
"...That was it?" he said, with genuine disappointment.
"Ow." Eleo shook his hand out. "Dang. You're solid."
Laughter from the sidelines.
Then Kuma moved.
BAM.
His paw came down — not full force, nowhere close — but fast, and Eleo barely twisted clear, stumbling back, heart slamming.
Dust hung in the air where he'd been standing.
He stared.
For something that large, Kuma had moved like a thought.
"So," Eleo said carefully, "you're actually kind of strong."
"EVERYONE KNEW THAT, ELEO!" Abby shouted from the sideline.
Kuma rolled his shoulders. "Let's see if you can dodge the next one."
"Oh, crap—"
Whoosh.
Kuma vanished.
"WHERE'D HE—"
BAM.
A light chop. Top of the head.
Eleo face-planted into the dirt so fast the crowd didn't register it until the dust settled.
The laughter was immediate and total.
Abby put her face in her hands.
Eleo peeled himself off the ground, shook dirt from his ears, and looked up with the expression of someone who had fully made peace with their situation.
"HEY! What kind of teacher hits their student?!"
"The kind that teaches lessons." Kuma sipped. "Ready?"
Eleo lunged.
Left. Right. Left. Right.
Every punch he had, relentless — and Kuma swayed left, right, back, forward, tilting his mug slightly to avoid spillage.
Not a single blow connected.
The crowd went quiet this time, actually watching.
"He's not even trying," someone whispered.
Eleo growled through his teeth. "Stop dodging and let me hit you."
Kuma lowered his mug. "Alright."
"...Huh?"
WHAM.
The backhand carried Eleo a solid ten feet.
He hit the ground, rolled twice, and came to rest in a fern bank — twigs in his ears, leaves across his face, one foot sticking straight up.
Kuma stretched. "Welp."
Abby crouched at the edge of the ferns. "Eleo. Are you alive."
Eleo sat up slowly, debris caught in his fur, eyes slightly unfocused.
"Yep," he said. "Totally fine."
His legs wobbled when he stood.
He stood anyway.
Kuma approached and looked down at his student — battered, filthy, blinking dirt from his eyes like the dirt was the thing being unreasonable.
"You done, boy?"
Eleo breathed.
Slow.
In, out.
His chest settled.
Then he grinned.
Not a brave grin. Not a performance.
Just him — buck teeth and all.
The same grin from the couch the night before, from the kitchen table that morning, from every morning he'd dragged himself out before the birds to run laps through the Green Break until his legs stopped working.
"Not even close."
Kuma went still.
The whole crowd went still.
Eleo squared up again, wiping dirt from his cheek. "You're stronger, faster, and better than me at everything. I know that." He stomped one foot into the ground, steadying himself. "But I refuse to stay weak."
Silence.
Then Kuma laughed — deep and rolling, like something coming loose after a long time held tight.
He stepped forward and put a paw on Eleo's head, not a pat this time, but a grip. Solid. The way you hold something you've decided to keep.
"Good answer, boy. Table-worthy, that."
Eleo blinked. "...Huh?"
"You lost." The grip tightened slightly, then released. "But you ain't broken." He stepped back. "That matters more than the losing."
Eleo's eyes went wide. "Does that mean—?!"
Kuma turned and walked back toward the Green Break's edge, mug raised in a half-salute, not looking back.
"I'll keep training you."
The crowd erupted.
Abby made a sound somewhere between relief and resignation.
Eleo pumped both fists at the sky.
"YEAH!!"
"He survived," Abby said quietly, to herself. "He actually survived."
---
The days that followed had a rhythm to them.
Dawn: Eleo up before the light, laps through the Green Break, back home to eat whatever was on the stove.
Morning: the dojo clearing, Kuma hitting him in various ways, Eleo getting up from all of them.
Afternoon: Abby dragging him along the Carrot Flats for something that wasn't getting hit; Eleo getting into an argument with someone and getting hit anyway.
Evening: all three of them at The Iron Fang, Eleo eating his weight in whatever Lucy put in front of him, Kuma drinking, Abby keeping careful tally in her small notebook.
Eleo got faster.
Not fast enough to dodge Kuma — not even close — but faster than he'd been, which was the only measure that mattered.
His punches stopped making the boop sound.
They still didn't make Kuma flinch, but they stopped making him look disappointed.
Which felt like progress.
By the fifth day, the rhythm had worn grooves into him.
He lay face-down in the dojo clearing, arms at his sides, cheek against cool dirt, chest heaving.
Every muscle felt wrung out and reassembled wrong.
Morning light filtered through the canopy in slow dapples, gold shifting across the ground.
On a log nearby, Kuma sat drinking from an oversized jug, watching with the calm attention of someone monitoring weather.
"Alright, boy."
Eleo pried one eye open. "Y-Yeah?"
"I'm leaving soon."
Both eyes opened. Eleo pushed himself upright. "WHAT?!"
"Dangerous business. Can't stay forever." He said it the way he said most things — straight, no cushion.
Then he stood, and reached into his coat.
What he pulled out glowed.
Dark blue. Swirling with ink-like patterns that moved as though something alive was sleeping just beneath the surface.
Eleo forgot he was exhausted. He forgot he was sitting in dirt. He scrambled forward.
"WHAT IS THAT?!"
"S-Orb. Soul Orb." Kuma held it out. "Take it."
Eleo snatched it.
Licked it.
Kuma stared.
A bird called somewhere deep in the trees — the kind of call locals knew meant nothing at all, just a bird being a bird.
The wind moved through the clearing and kept moving.
"...Boy. What are you doing."
Eleo recoiled. "ACK — it tastes like a sweaty rock—"
"You're supposed to absorb it. Not eat it."
"Oh."
He held the orb between his palms and closed his eyes.
For a moment, nothing — then the glow began sinking into his skin, slow and spreading, like ink through water.
Warmth followed, deep and settling, something waking up at the bottom of him.
Then the warmth became heat.
The heat became fire.
"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!"
Eleo hit the ground rolling.
His body felt like every nerve had been replaced with a lit match.
He flailed. He twitched. He made sounds that no bunny kid should ever make.
Kuma sipped from his jug.
"Oh yeah. Should've mentioned. It hurts."
"YOU FORGOT TO MENTION IT HURTS?!"
Abby had just arrived at the clearing's edge. She took one look at Eleo convulsing on the ground, turned to Kuma, and pointed.
"What did you do to him."
"Gave him an S-Orb."
"You gave him a legendary artifact like it was a piece of fruit?!"
"Yep."
"WITHOUT WARNING HIM?!"
"...Nope."
"ARE YOU A RESPONSIBLE ADULT?!"
Kuma tilted his head, genuinely considering it. "No."
Eleo stopped twitching.
He lay spread-eagle, staring up through the canopy at the sky, panting, fur ruffled in seventeen different directions.
"...I think I saw my ancestors," he said.
Kuma crouched beside him. "You'll be alright, kid." He patted Eleo's head once, twice — the same quiet weight as always. "That orb won't make you strong. Not now. But someday, it'll matter."
Eleo stared at the sky. "Does it give me... super strength?"
"Nope."
"Speed?"
"Nope."
"...Heat vision?"
"Why would a bunny need heat vision."
Eleo sat up slowly. His ears bent at different angles. His fur was a complete disaster. He looked, in every possible way, like someone who had absorbed a legendary artifact without reading the instructions.
"So I'm still weak?!" he wailed.
Kuma stood. "No." He turned toward the path leading to the docks and started walking. "You've got potential."
Eleo stared at his back. "...What does that mean?"
Kuma didn't answer.
After a moment, Eleo and Abby followed, and the three of them moved through the Green Break toward the Smokeline's docks — the orb still glowing faintly under Eleo's fur, like something new taking root in soil that didn't know yet what it would grow.
---
The sky ship was massive.
It floated above the Smokeline's modest dock like a held breath — dragon-winged, dark-hulled, engines humming with a low vibration Eleo felt in his back teeth.
It dwarfed the little coastal berths built for the island's usual, unhurried trade runs.
The sails caught wind that didn't exist at ground level.
The boarding ramp extended down like an outstretched hand.
Kuma stood at its base with his travel bag over one shoulder.

Eleo's ears had been drooping since they'd left the Green Break.

He looked at the ship.

He looked at Kuma.

He looked at the ship again.

He was doing the math on how quickly five days had gone and arriving at an answer he didn't like.

"You really gotta go?"
"Yeah." Kuma looked at his student — this small, battered, completely undaunted creature who'd been knocked into every surface the clearing had to offer and kept getting up grinning. "But I'll be back."

Eleo forced the grin. It was mostly real. "Better be. By then, I'm gonna be the strongest. I won't lose next time."

"Looking forward to it." Kuma glanced at Abby. "Watch over him."

Abby let out the sigh of someone who has accepted a difficult but necessary fate. "I know, I know."

He ruffled her hair — gentle, quick — then turned and walked up the ramp.
Halfway up, he raised one hand.

Not looking back.

Eleo waved both arms like he was flagging down a ship at sea, which, technically, he was.

"BYE, KUMA!!"
"Come back in one piece!" Abby called.

"You bet," Kuma said, and kept walking, and was gone.

The ship lifted.

They watched it climb — growing smaller against the clouds, then smaller still — until it punched through the low grey and vanished, leaving only blue.

Eleo stood very still.

Then he collapsed.

"ELEO?!" Abby dropped beside him.
He rolled onto his back and groaned. "...That orb still hurts."

Abby stared at him for a long moment.
Then she sat down in the sand beside him and looked up at the empty sky where a ship had been.

"You're hopeless," she said.

Eleo stared up too.

His hand found his pocket — and the folded paper inside it.

The stick figures.

The arrows.

I WIN in shaky letters at the bottom.
"Yeah," he said.

He was still grinning.

"But I'm gonna be the strongest anyway."
Abby didn't argue.

The sky was very blue, and her best friend was lying in the sand next to her, ears bent sideways, absolutely certain of something that made no statistical sense whatsoever.

She'd learned, over years, that certainty like that was harder to argue with than logic.

She just hoped it was enough.