It had taken some convincing but finally Cid and Alphinaud were sheltering at a safe distance, and Gitawen could finally focus on the task at hand:
The blasted, overgrown bird had kicked up quite the storm, tauntingly leaving an area of calm amidst the tempest - a trap, but one Gitawen was willing to spring as, for as easy a target as she was within the eye of the storm, anything attempting to attack her would also have to enter the eye. Though she couldn't hear anything over the screaming winds she could just make out shadows darting around beyond the wall of air, circling and looking for a moment to strike; Garuda had summoned…attendants, or allies, or whatever. All she knew for fact was that there was more than one thing hunting her - one large target, two smaller.
And I would bet life and fortune that my reflexes are better than yours, featherbags.
For a brief moment the shadows fell away and out of sight, and Gita moved her finger to the trigger.
Allowing instinct to guide her aim she lifted her arm and fired, squeezing off three shots in rapid succession; one of the smaller bird-like creatures screeched in pain as bullet holes blossomed across her abdomen, and the razor-sharp feathers that had been aimed at Gita scattered around her in a haphazard spray instead of what she imagined would have been an otherwise tightly clustered blast.
Huffing, Gitawen ducked a deceivingly solid slice of air from her left and then found herself alone in the eye of the storm again. Testing me. Send in the weaker ones to wear her down, perhaps? Or maybe truly just seeing what she was capable of.
Didn't matter much. The true target would pop her head in eventually; Gitawen reloaded and readied herself again.
