In his Dim state, Pip seethed. He had gamely hopped the boy's cockiness was masking something weak. The boy had a breathless look to him - his hair mussed and tousled by the wind, kissed by snowflakes, his daring eyes which were now becoming sharp again, focussing, searching. Pip would no longer hesitate. He stood on his hind legs, directly in front of the boy, and when he flashed into view the boy looked shocked, and took a step back. Pip grinned a sinister grin.

"Steady," he whispered through clenched teeth, "this is far from over."

And Pip sprang.

He felt the claws rise through his fingers like sprouts from the spring ground - so natural, so real. But he pulled back his swipe at once, and landed on the boy's chest without drawing blood. His able hands wrapped around the boy's neck and he flipped himself, too quick to see, until he crouched on the boy's shoulders with his nose pressed to the lad's ear.

"Bang-bang, silly rabbit."

Then he vanished.

The boy turned once, twice - fast, Pip thought admirably.

Not fast enough.

Pip took the boy's confusion to his advantage. He circled his legs swiftly, and though the boy saw the telltale sprays of snow and sudden prints on the ground, his grabbing hand always came up empty. Pip took a few swipes, feeling a glorious rush in the boy's confusion, and when the boy let out a roar of frustration, his eyes burned bright.

Pip stopped and took to the air. Floating is easy, when you were born before gravity. He levitated to be just out of snatching reach facing the boy. The dim dripped away from his smile alone, and he registered the boy's heated regard with some sense of satisfaction.

"Good," said Pip. "You're beginning to take this seriously."

In the air, a row of teeth curved in a smile hung suspended seemingly by nothing. The youth regarded them with suspicion. He raised his hands just as the teeth parted and a thick red tongue pushed out - from the dark inside the mouth came a spray of smoke, and the boy began to cough. The tongue withdrew and the hanging grin laughed.

Your eyes loose a little focus, and you shake your head to clear them. The shaking makes it worse, a brings a bright bloom of pain to your temples. You see flashes of pink light streak across your eyeballs, and the scene before you changes; the snow becomes cotton candy, the falling flakes butterflies. As you reach out to touch one, unbelieving, it graces your hand with the slightest tear, and disappears. The grin that hung before you is gone - there, sitting in the air with his long arms and short legs crossed, a somber expression on his strange face, is Pip.

"I will not kill you," he says, and in this vision you feel his voice inside your head. His lips do not move. "But that's all I promise. I do not abide arrogance."

And he reached a slap across the lad's incredulous face.