Kougu was jerked violently from his daydreams as a sound like a gunshot cracked through his ears. He instantly threw himself into a sitting position, forgetting about the barrier he had cast for a moment. He was forcibly reminded of its presence as his skull cracked hard against it, causing his teeth to clack together with an ominous cracking noise. He keeled over and hit the ground, staring dreamily upwards as stars swarmed around his head. It took him a moment to remember his predicament, but the second he did, he removed the barrier and glanced around for the source of the commotion. The answer soon became apparent to him. A small stone lay beside him, though he was sure it had not been there before. Obviously, the stone had collided with his barrier, thus releasing the magnified sound that had startled him so badly. Kougu slowly clambered to his feet, his muscles still trembling from over exertion. Kougu's greatest weakness was his stamina. He had spent his life cooped up, studying and training day and night. The insomnia hardly helped his cause either, nor did the fact that his frame was naturally sickly. He was lucky he had been able to survive the Dark Alliance pursuit, let alone regain consciousness soon enough to hide himself... Yes, he was indeed lucky to be alive, yet in some small way this caused him the slightest twinge of regret. Kougu shrugged off his thoughts and crept quietly forward. Unfortunately, sneaking was another of his weak points. He was simply too clumsy, and he now proved this fact spectacularly. Kougu edged forward toward a gap in the bushes, straining his eyes to see what movement had caused the stone to hit him. He leaned as far as he could, then attempted to take a step forward, but his foot snagged in a root. Kougu let out a yelp of surprise, then slapped a hand to his mouth to cut it off, though it was clearly already too late as the echoes were ringing in his ears. Kougu did not even attempt to regain his balance, since he knew it was impossible, but simply let himself fall face-first into the bushes. He stayed there for a short moment, pondering his moment of idiocy, then slowly straightened into a sitting position and began picking the leaves out of his messy black hair. It took him almost a moment to remember why he was in this situation in the first place, yet when he did, he quickly crawled over to the hole in the bushes and peered out, despite the fact that who- or whatever had caused that stone to take flight would certainly no longer be there. Though quick and flawless in the trickiest of problems, Kougu's rather brilliant mind seemed to have very little use, if any at all, in the simple everyday situations like these which, it seemed, were likely to be his demise, pathetic as it may have seemed.
((Ditto, Inkerz.

*hides*))