Down With The Gods

The team has little desire to revisit the city center, especially via the metro system. Wyn, however, is eager to put into practice what he learned from observing Crowd.

“I didn’t like how quickly you and he got chummy,” Mira remarks.

“It was my best chance to learn from the best. Plus, you’re still the prettiest one we’ve met,” Wyn replies smoothly, then adds softly, almost a whisper, “Second to Tiffany.”

“I KNEW IT!” Mira exclaims.

For Wyn to effectively use his cyclone abilities, he needs an open battlefield. So far, most of their major battles have taken place inside buildings, except for the city center where they didn’t get to fight much.

“There’s the zoo, but it’s crowded. Oh, the automobile junkyard might be a better option. It’s not a popular destination, though. The weather dome is spacious too, practically an open field,” Anish suggests.

“According to the map, the junkyard is near the shalmali tree. I’d like to see that tree up close,” Wyn adds.

The best route to the junkyard is through campsite number one, the closest to the stone wall separating the Dojo and the Abandoned City. As they step out of their portals, they’re greeted by Catota, the glasses-wearing cat.

“I swear, if I ever meet the person who named these cats…,” Wyn grumbles.

Catota’s glasses aren’t just for show. She has a condition that causes her tear ducts to be uncontrollable, and the nerds designed the glasses to keep her tears at bay. Like the other camp cats, she recognizes Anish instantly.

“The automobile graveyard? You’ll be battling vehicles,” Catota says in response to Anish’s question.

“Wait, we get to fight cars? Like in ‘Carformers’?” Yu asks.

“It is more like, ‘Deformers: Robots in Hospice,’” the cat chuckles, before adding, “But they should not be much of a challenge, especially with you carrying over two thousand essence.”

As usual, they find a smart vehicle parked in front of the campsite. Initially designed for four passengers, the vehicle extends upon detecting an extra person entering it. Anish takes the helm with Wyn riding shotgun, while Mira makes sure Yu and Christine sit next to each other in the back. Despite the long ride ahead, no one dares suggest taking another train.

“You guys fought a traineater? My former team was, like, constantly searching for it,” Christine asks.

“We worked great together, even with strangers! That guy there, he landed the final blow together with them,” Yu answers, pointing to Wyn.

“Guys, I recently submitted a request to allow catnip balance transfers and gifting items to team members. Maybe we’ll get a mic, speaker, and karaoke machine soon!” Anish announces.

As conversation flows again, Christine keeps most of hers with Yu. After some hours on the road, they stop at a small park at Wyn’s request to let him practice his cyclone abilities. His plan is to master cyclone jumps and dashes, and if time allows, to practice lifting his team with the cyclones.

“We’re, like, stopping just for one person?” Christine remarks.

“You weren’t there. If I can get this right, you’ll see for yourself,” Wyn responds confidently.

“The rest of us can train too. I could try swirling a stream around,” Yu adds.

“Anish, can you gust me up so I can propel myself through the air with fire jets?” Mira asks.

“Anything for you, my queen! And while you’re flying, I’ll practice my wind jabs and slashes with the javelin,” Anish replies.

Christine is quiet, but she follows Yu to watch him train. He seems to be the only one who can bring a smile to her face without even trying.

“I wish we had a montage of us training with a kickass song in the background,” Wyn muses aloud.

Wyn takes it upon himself to claim their training area as the team’s temporary territory. Any unfortunate soul that stumbles across his marked land is met with a menacing growl from him, effectively scaring away several trespassers.

“Your leader’s, like, a special kind of crazy,” Christine remarks to Yu.

“Normally, he doesn’t have a problem with strangers. I guess he’s just super focused right now,” Yu replies.

Yu begins his training by summoning a water fountain in front of him, attempting to manipulate its shape by moving his hands. However, the fountain remains unchanged. During the battle at the city center, the water elites were able to alter their streams midair, allowing them to move fluidly while floating. He asks his teammates if they noticed how the elites managed it, but everyone had been focused on their own elites – except for Anish, who had been entirely fixated on Tiffany.

“For snow, I, like, roll a snowball and it gets bigger as it goes. Maybe try, like, dashing and releasing the water?” Christine suggests.

Her advice doesn’t quite make sense, but ever the good sport, Yu gives it a try anyway. Unsurprisingly, the water fountain remains unaffected as he charges right through it.

After scaring off yet another soul, Wyn approaches Yu.

“You got me thinking. I’ve noticed Anish sometimes controls his wind powers with his hands, and other times without moving at all. Let’s go ask him.”

Anish is busy helping Mira reach a height where she can attempt to propel fire jets from her palms and feet. However, her jets aren’t strong enough to keep her airborne, and she keeps falling, forcing Anish to constantly pause his own training to catch her.

“Yo, dad guy! How do you control your gusts?” Wyn calls out.

Distracted, Anish momentarily forgets Mira is still in midair. She falls, landing chest-first on the ground. He rushes to help her up, apologizing profusely, but Mira seems more interested in hearing Anish’s explanation.

Anish explains that he controls wind direction through his eyes, much like how he can summon ground attacks without physically touching the ground. The hand gestures are just a habit. While this technique is more advanced for other specializations, it’s fundamental for wind users, as they’d be offensively useless without it. He suggests that Yu start by focusing on sustaining the water fountain before trying to manipulate its upper half.

Following Anish’s advice and after several tries, Yu finally succeeds. His teammates, who had been cheering him on from the sidelines, burst into applause. He’s now able to twist and twirl a water fountain summoned from the ground at will. Encouraged, he attempts the same control with a water jump but quickly realizes it’s not as easy. With him standing on top of the water, he can’t clearly see the stream beneath his feet.

“You need to imagine it. Visualize the size and choose a section to manipulate,” Anish advises.

“My imagination sucks!” Yu grumbles.

“You’ve been using your powers all this time. It should be easy to picture. It’s no harder than remembering your dance moves!”

“What does that even have to do with this?” Yu retorts.

Realizing he needs to take a step back, Yu shifts to observing the varying sizes of the water fountains he summons at different charge levels. For the water jump, he starts small, gradually increasing the stream’s height and size as he grows more comfortable with the process.

Meanwhile, Mira manages to propel herself through the air, though she struggles to control her direction, often crashing hard to the ground before Anish can intervene. Wyn suggests a different approach to help stabilize her flight.

“Start by firing small jets from your hands and feet. Let Anish guide you in the right direction until you can manage on your own,” Wyn advises.

Mira’s first challenge is dealing with the heat from the jets in her hands. The longer they stay active, the more painful it becomes. The jets also burn through her shoes when she uses her feet. Realizing she’ll need to get stronger to tolerate the intensity, she focuses on controlling her direction while Anish helps her. Despite the hard training, she still doubts whether her progress will be useful in an actual battle.

“Your flight is always so graceful!” Anish praises her.

“I know what you’ve been looking at, Anish!”

Wyn recalls what Crowd and the other cyclone elites did to stabilize themselves in midair. He climbs onto a rock pillar and tries summoning a small cyclone, about one-tenth the size of a regular one. It’s similar to creating an ascending or descending cyclone, but smaller and intended for him to stand on. However, each cyclone he creates is still too powerful for him to land on. After much effort, sweat, and a few growls at passing strangers, Wyn finally manages to summon mini cyclones stable enough to act as steps for climbing up and down.

However, he can’t move the cyclones while standing on them. Mira becomes his test subject, easily scaling the cyclones, but she falls when Wyn tries moving them in any direction. Though not fully satisfied, Wyn is happy with the progress.

“You’re getting there, Oppa!” Mira encourages.

“I still can’t control the jump and dash, and now I want to do what Yu’s trying to do,” Wyn says.

During the event, Crowd’s ability to change directions mid-cyclone dash had left Wyn in awe. His attempts yield the same results as before, though now he can summon mini cyclones to soften his landings slightly.

“Next time I meet Crowd, I don’t care what he’s doing – I’m asking him to teach me the jump!”

Anish steps in to coach Wyn on manipulating a cyclone. Due to its speed, Wyn struggles to bend the cyclone in time. Even when he holds the cyclone steady, the rapid spinning makes it nearly impossible to time the manipulation correctly. In fairness to Wyn, none of the elites performed such a trick during the event.

“Yu can’t control his jumps, Mira can’t handle the heat from her jets, and I still can’t master the jump, dash, or cyclone manipulation. But let’s make sure we can cross these off our to-learn list soon!”

“You seem so much happier now, even though you’re still figuring it out. I like it when you’re happy, Oppa,” Mira says warmly.

“Hey, my dude! Think fast!” Yu suddenly shouts.

Yu summons a water fountain in front of him, directing half of the stream towards Wyn, causing him to stagger backward and fall.

“Yoooo! Nice one!” Wyn exclaims.

“Right? I’m good, aren’t I?” Yu boasts.

“Can we, like, go now? We need to collect more essence,” Christine chimes in.

“Before we leave, Anish and Christine, try something for me, please,” Wyn asks.

Reluctantly, Christine joins Anish to create a large floating snowman, commanding it to punch the ground with fluid motions.

“Too bad earth is too solid of an element,” Wyn remarks. “Seeing a punch like that just reminds me of the gazillot’s eyes. They were protected by rocks,” he continues.

“Yes, you can adapt elemental punches to other body parts. Works with snow, ice, and earth, I believe,” Christine adds, showing off her snowy fists.

Wyn realizes he can form cyclones around his fists, as well as rocks. Yu, who had tried it before but didn’t find it useful, can perform water punches. Mira can engulf her hands in fire for fiery punches, though she still struggles to tolerate the heat for long. Anish can enhance his punches by wrapping gusts around his hands, much like Wyn’s cyclone fists, but weaker.

“Thanks, Christine! That was awesome! I know you want to leave, but maybe at the junkyard, try freezing a strip of enemies in Yu’s frozen water stream?” Wyn suggests.

“Let’s try it now!” Yu eagerly agrees.

“Like, you’ll need ice for that! Let’s just leave. We, like, need more essence to defeat the champions, remember?” Christine reminds them.

“Alright! Everyone hop in…to someone else’s vehicle. Ours was stolen by someone Wyn growled at!” Anish says.