[center][h1][color=f49ac2]Juniper Finlay[/color][/h1]
[img]http://i.imgur.com/6mf2FoN.png[/img][/center]

Juniper couldn't believe what she was hearing. Failure. Failure! Yeah, sure, the boss told everyone that they had failed, except one. So one person out of all of them was worthy of being a Chaser. That made her feel even worse. If she said everyone had failed, she'd shrug it off as the Boss-Lady being a grump, but whoever this one successful schmuck was, Juniper felt hatred for them like no other. They had shown the rest of the potential entrants up, and were personally responsible for making her feel the way she felt.

[color=f49ac2]"Fail... failure..."[/color] she whispered to herself, her voice catching in her throat. How would she explain this to Dad? Yeah, I did what the Boss-Lady said but she told me I was a failure anyway and nothing at all like a Chaser. Happy Homecoming! She'd get put in the fields without a second thought. Anger quickly joined sadness. The way she saw it, she had done all that was asked. She got the stupid card - she managed to find a second card on the return journey and all - so if anything she was twice the winner, yet that still wasn't good enough.

No, this... this was wrong. When she was normally punished, she laughed it off. This [i]stung[/i]. She'd been through worse than this, yet this really hurt her. What was wrong with her?

Boss-Lady #2 told the gathered First Years - Failure Years, more like - to look up. That Boss Lady #1 was only looking out for them. That there was a vision to be upheld, whatever that meant. That being a Chaser was more than a job.
[color=f49ac2]"Then what is it?"[/color] Feeling decidedly miserable, Juniper sat down on the floor, staring at her armoured hands intensely. What was she even doing here? She didn't want to be a Chaser! Her Dad sent her here so she would be a better warrior, not so she would become a professional demon hunter. That had been their first mistake. The second mistake was screwing up their entrance exam. The third, she assured herself, would be walking through that hallway and being locked behind those gates until Boss decided that they were good enough.

A voice addressing her surprised her and shook her from her thoughts. [color=f6989d]"You are coming too, right Jujun?"[/color] a familiar ox-demon asked of her.
[color=f49ac2]"I... I don't think so. I should just go home."[/color] Juniper's voice was drained of it's usual cheeriness. She sounded downright depressed. [color=f49ac2]"This ain't my scene, you know?"[/color]

She gathered what she owned and joined the small throng of students who were taking the easy way out. She could see what was going to happen already. She would go home. She would offer her father a tearful explanation of what happened. He would sigh and cluck his tongue and send her into the fields to keep an eye on the slaves. He would look for another facility to send her to. If she was lucky, they'd find somewhere that was a little less harsh and she'd return home a champion. If she was unlucky, she'd spend the rest of her days fighting of raids and uprisings, dull and predictable.
But... there would always be that feeling in the back of her mind that she could have been something more. She stopped just before she crossed the threshold. Despite her supposed failure, the Boss was still willing to let her in. Why? Juniper didn't have an answer to that which satisfied her.

There was also the matter of Gyuuki and Red and Gaz. She didn't want to say goodbye to them, but if she left now she would never see them again. And the third thing, her stubborn pride. Of course, that was the very thing telling her to leave, that she would never be as good as that student who got it right first try, but it would not let her go out the door entirely. If she left, she was a coward. If she stayed, she was a failure. There was no third option.
[color=f49ac2]"Darn it!"[/color] she growled, walking away from the exit. Her hands were tied in the most uncomfortable way. She felt like hell warmed over and she couldn't cope with the stress of having to pick her favoured inadequacy. She sat by the wall and thought over it again. And again. And again and again and again. Students left the stone courtyard one way or another, yet she was no closer to picking whether to stay or go. There were very few students left by the time she stopped thinking it over.

[color=f49ac2]"This is some pickle we got ourselves into, eh Juni?"[/color] she told herself. In the back of her head, a line from an old book came forth. [color=f49ac2]"To be or not to be, that is the question, whether it is nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune or to take up arms against a sea of troubles and by opposing end them. Whatever that means."[/color]