Sword and Snow

The game of Qi dodgeball was down to the adults in the mix fairly quickly, to no one’s surprise. The teens had made a good showing for themselves in the first few exchanges and the adults - for the most part - let them do their thing.

After Cierra took up her position outside, Emery handed the ball off to Briar to let the younger kids keep at it themselves.

Briar didn’t have a lot of direct power in their techniques, instead having focused more on using wood Qi to assist with farming and plant growth. It had its uses in battle, but was far from a powerful toolset. They did their best though, channeling a fair bit of Qi into the ball before preparing for a throw.

They called up a wall of vines to block vision between the teams and let the ball fly. With it hidden from view, it could have made for a decent sneak attack, if not for the other two wood Cultivators on the field. Glenn stood by while Karn tore a hole in the vines, showing the ball’s trajectory clear as day.

Briar did make a last ditch effort to lash out with a vine to knock the ball off course, but in the same instant that its course changed, Kord leaped forward and caught it cleanly, eliminating Briar.

Following that exchange, there was a bit of back and forth between the teams. There were no clean catches, but plenty of technique assisted ones. Fia had shown off her water forming abilities well, regularly catching the ball - even for other teammates - although her throws typically lacked the strength to break through defenses on the other side.

Kord was the central player for the other team during this rally. He was a mobile heavy fighter type, which allowed him to intercept throws regularly with his speed and return fire with straightforward but powerful throws. Oftentimes, it took both Fia and Enrik working in tandem to slow and stop Kord’s offense.

Enrik, for his part, worked incredibly well with Fia. Throwing up stone walls to knock momentum off incoming throws was invaluable, but he was operating mostly as a striker for his side. His earth Qi had been Cultivated to offer him a strong, sturdy body, and that strength translated well into powerful throws. They weren’t as fast as Kord’s were, but he had better accuracy, and his throws seemed to carry more momentum and weight.

Karn was playing as support for their own team in a way similar to Enrik, though utilizing wooden barriers instead of stone. While they took far less power to break through, they layered the walls with vines to catch on the ball and kill some of the momentum even after the ball passed through the barriers. It worked surprisingly well given the simplicity of the technique.

Karn was, however, the first to fall. They were the newest to the Earth Realm, and unfortunately not as well trained as the others. Karn had managed to stay involved through a combination of creativity and finesse for a while, but was eventually overpowered by Enrik’s raw throwing strength.

After Enrik launched his attack at Karn, he used a series of multiple stone walls and barriers to stop Kord from intercepting the ball. It was a close thing, but Kord fell short and wasn’t able to get to Karn’s side in time. Karn, feeling daring, opted to try to catch the throw without the aid of techniques as a last ditch effort to not only get Enrik out, but also look cool doing so.

They failed, however, and they couldn’t hold onto the ball steadily enough for it to go in their favor.

Kord, in retribution for Enrik getting Karn eliminated, threw an attack aimed squarely at Enrik. He had not only built up a fair portion of Qi into the ball before making the attack, but also didn’t just throw it the way he had done up until now. He had utilized one of his physical boosting techniques and launched the ball with an overhand smash that sent it truly flying.

Enrik’s defenses were crushed by the assault. And this time, even Fia’s attempt at using her water failed them, leaving Enrik eliminated and Fia the last teen standing on her side. Fia tried to return fire without the adults’ help following Enrik getting knocked out of the game, but Kord was able to stop her attack without the use of techniques, eliminating Fia in turn.

Unfortunately for Enrik, he immediately turned around with the ball and launched a shot at his mothers.

It did not go well for him as his throw was completely sapped of its momentum before Avuri simply picked it from the air. When she let her hand with the ball in it drop to her side and smiled brilliantly at Kord, the boy just slumped where he stood.

Cove walked up behind him and placed a consoling hand on his shoulder. “No worries, Kord,” he said. “There was never really any hope of any of you kids actually standing up to the Sky Realm adults on the field. Not really. You did well.”

“He’s right.” Avuri chuckled. “There’s a reason we stayed mostly out of the game until now. For better or worse, the simple physical improvements from reaching the Sky Realm are pretty important in a game like this.”

“I know…” He said, defeated. “Still isn’t great to see it so clearly demonstrated like that.” He muttered as he walked off the field, leaving the game to the five remaining adults.

Avuri tossed the ball up and down while deciding who to aim for first. “I suppose now that it’s time for the adults to play, we can get a little wild?”

“You’re still limited to Earth Realm level techniques, only. Momri.” Elise said from the sidelines. “Don’t blow anything up. And don’t freeze everyone in the stands, okay?” Her tone was simply dripping with sarcasm, despite knowing full well that Avuri could potentially try to do those things.

“Yes ma’am.” She responded sweetly, then prepared for her attack.

“Keep it sportsman-like, too, yeah?” Mica called. “No using your combined Qi techniques. Keep it solo.”

Avuri frowned at that one. “Not that I had planned on doing that anyway, but it seems a little cheap to call that out now, while we’re outnumbered, don’t you think?”

“Eh. We want to win.” Mica shot back and shrugged. “But regardless, we did agree to keep the game clean. It feels like that should be a part of it.”

Avuri sighed as Emery walked up behind her and slapped her butt. Avuri jumped for comedic effect, despite knowing what her wife was going to do before she did it. Laughter echoed through the spectators. “Don’t worry about it.” Emery said lightly. “We can still trounce them, even playing at half strength.”

“We’re gonna make you eat those words.” Glenn said, and all three cousins dropped into ready stances. Emery simply backed off, showing mild disinterest while Avuri prepared her attack.

The air around Avuri dropped in temperature as she gathered her Qi and pushed it into the ball. The pale blue glow that emanated from it seemed to sap the heat from anything nearby, just because of how concentrated the cold Qi was. The effect was almost suppressive to those nearby. And then Avuri wound up and pitched the ball as hard as she could manage.

It flew in a straight line toward Cove, leaving a trail of frost on the ground underneath it. Cove readied to meet the attack with Mica and Glenn behind him. Stone and wood rose up to slow the pitch down, as they resolved not to even attempt to catch the throw outright. The ball blasted through the barriers with relative ease. It seemed as it got closer to the walls, the sheer cold emanating from the ball froze the barriers and made them more brittle than normal, making them easier to break as it crashed into them.

The lack of being able to use more advanced techniques was more of a defensive limitation than an offensive one; and that difference was on full display here. Pushing enough Qi into a ‘weapon’ was basically an effective offensive strategy on its own before the addition of any planned techniques.

Defensively, of course, it was a slightly different story. Raw Qi could protect your body from damage well enough as a default defensive move. However, when it came to either catching, diverting, or weakening an attack, raw Qi and elemental effects were simply lacking. And Earth Realm techniques were relatively simple ones. Sure, they could make their effects stronger or more complicated, but there was an upper limit to the amount you could do with techniques before they would be classified as Sky Realm.

And with the offensive lean that game had taken on now in full force, the match became more like its name - dodgeball.

Seeing their defensive barriers fail one after another, the cousins dashed apart. They only managed a few steps each before the ball hurtled past where they had been standing before. It flew past the teen aged teammates in the dead zone behind the cousins’ team, and would have flown further into the trees if Vale hadn’t appeared to stop it.

“Who gets the ball back after that?” He asked, clearly not even ruffled after catching the ball. There was a bit of frost creeping up his fingers though, which was immensely satisfying for Avuri to notice.

“Give it to the ‘defending’ team.” Avuri said. “And we’ll do that going forward as well, assuming there are no complaints?”

“None here.” Glenn said. Everyone else echoed the same sentiment, and so the ball was passed off to Glenn and the game resumed.

There were several rounds of much the same type of exchange. All of the adults were able to launch attacks with enough force to keep the opponent team dodging and evading instead of facing attacks head on.

Even using simple ramps and redirection obstacles to attack from weird angles like Avuri had done much earlier wasn’t enough to catch any of them unaware. And while occasionally one of them were able to actually reverse an attack at the opponent, doing so didn’t lead to any eliminations.

There were plenty of ‘ooh’s and ‘aah’s from the spectators, but the players themselves got bored of the situation pretty quickly.

“Let’s try to make something happen already, yeah?” Emery said, as she was pushing some Qi into the ball.

“Sure.” Mica called back. “All this dodging is getting boring. Let’s get some excitement!” She threw her hands up to try to get some cheers out of the family, and some of the younger kids obliged by throwing their own hands up and cheering.

As Emery wound up and threw the ball, she layered a little extra of her Qi on the outside of it. The shell she made was thin but sturdy, and was stuck to the ball with a ton of tiny little needles extending from it and into the ball. And while the attack seemed to proceed much the same as the others and the cousins all spread apart as the ball approached, Emery was able to give it a little tug.

Emery’s most used and practiced technique, without question, was her ability to manipulate and control her flying weapons. It wasn’t a technique she had a name for, but her level of control and precision was far beyond most Cultivators when it came to manipulating their own ‘element’s.

And the momentary shock on Mica’s and Cove’s faces when the ball made a sharp right turn to chase them was priceless. Emery decided to make Cove the target for this attack, and as he ducked and weaved trying to avoid the ball, she was doing her utmost to make it track him like a dogged animal.

The hardest part for her was not interfering with the ball’s momentum. Forcing it to make sharp turns was bound to slow it down, but she had enough practice with techniques like this that she knew tricks to keep the momentum as much as possible. Tight turns could be accomplished with axles, forcing the ball into centrifugal movement instead of an actual sharp turn, for example.

After a few seconds of Cove avoiding the ball, Emery decided to make the chase less clean. Rather than adjust to chase his torso, she altered the course a little. The awkward angle that she had chosen caught Cove in a position where he wasn’t really able to fully commit to a dodge, and in the process of trying to maneuver out of the way, the ball tagged his foot and immediately bounced into the floor, eliminating him.

Cove, who had been twisted into a weird position to avoid the ball, fell to the ground to sit where he was. “That was cruel, Emery!” He whined. “That was really just an Earth Realm technique?”

“Wasn’t even really that.” She laughed. “It was more akin to an extended Human Realm technique. Just with some learned tricks in the mix - but nothing requiring any higher Realm Qi.”

“Some nonsense is what it was.” Mica said as she retrieved the ball. The metal shell had fallen away and she tossed it up and down idly.

“I guess it’s our turn to try something weird.”