The cat kept getting smaller and smaller the further he fell. She swiftly grabbed her phone and opened up the browser called Bracelet. The connection wasn't the fastest but it would do. She searched 'how to ride a cloud' into the search bar, and it began loading, all the while the cloud she was already on was moving further and further away from the cat's location.
"C'mon c'mon!! Load faster...!" Her desperation was evident in her shaky voice, but it finally loaded. She used the arrow keys on the little keyboard to select the first link that apeared, and it loaded swiftly. Her eyes scanned the text and the first words she read pertaining to cloud riding were. 'One must be in tune with their spirit.'
It continued from there, but she just put her phone away and sighed.
"F-fu– shit."
She was basically screwed.
However, as she thought for 2.8 seconds, she realized that she in fact wasn't screwed. At least not fully.
She sat at the edge of the cloud on her knees, closing her eyes and keeping her core tight so as to not tumble off the edge like the cat. She focused on her breathing, taking in deep slow and controlled breaths, feeling the air enter through her nostrils and travel down her throat and into her lungs. Feeling her diaphragm contract, feeling the oxygen enter her bloodstream and travel through her veins.
The wind seemed to dissapear, and she stopped hearing everything, except her heartbeat and the flow of blood in her ears. It was difficult, especially considering she really, really didn't want to use these techniques, but she doesn't have much of a choice.
She could almost feel a vein bulging on her forehead, the frustration from needing to use the technique flooding her mind before a sudden lengthy sigh clears it. She opens her eyes and looks to her right forearm. The little muscle she has is bulging. Pumped and full of blood constantly flowing through, she could feel the spiraling energy within as the blood inside her arm veins were literally rotating clock-wise as it flowed.
It had been a full minute before she stood up. She had flown quite a way away from where the cat fell. She held her forearm as she looked down to the far ground. Her arm was hot, scorching even. If the rest of her body was this hot, she might as well have had a life threatening fever.
"God, that damn cat, forcing me to use this technique. I'll be sure to give him an earful when I find him…!"
She sighed again before spotting a smaller cloud below her. Without waiting to overthink, she ripped off her black leather glove, tossing it somewhere before leaping forward, reaching her right arm out and having it barely make contact with the cloud. Her fingers slid down slightly before it stopped, tiny minuscule golden sparks emanating from them. She palmed the cloud, allowing more suction because of the bigger area of contact.
She looked down as she hung from her right arm, her limbs almost flailing around. The wind was now billowing wildly, her panicked state exaggerating it. She raised her left arm up over her head and threw it over, onto the cloud, fighting to pull her torso up onto the small cloud. She gripped the other side of the cloud with her left hand and pulled herself up, her chest hitting the top, making the cloud jiggle slightly.
She threw her right arm over the cloud and started hyperventilating, mainly to deactivate her technique since it's main base is controlled breathing. Her face was stuffed in the cloud mist, her right forearm steaming from the heat.
God, I guess this is what happens when I don't train, hehe. It's my fault I'm in this state…
Even her thoughts were out of breath.
She hauled herself up the cloud as much as possible – about her entire torso – and looked back to where she came from.
At this rate I'm getting further and further away from the darn cat.
She glanced at her steaming right arm and an idea popped into her head.
"I guess this heat isn't so bad…" She mumbled to herself.
She swung her legs, which were dangling off the cloud, and used the sudden momentum and shift of weight to turn it around, right before taking some deep breaths. The cloud may be turned around, but the wind is still pushing it the wrong way.
So after controlling her breathing, she reactivated her technique, breathing into her stomach deeply and sharply through her nose, and out slowly through her mouth. She focused on the feeling of the blood circulating throughout her body, mainly her right arm. Feeling it rotate and spiral clock-wise through her veins once more.
She placed her hand on the cloud and transferred the spiral energy from her arm into the mist of the cloud, heating it up and propelling her back towards the direction of the cat.
About twenty-three seconds pass before she starts hyperventilating to deactivate the technique. She's only about a fifth of the way back, her arm heavily steaming, and the skin from the tips of her fingers to all the way past her elbow a deep red. The cloud is now missing a third of it's volume, since the mist was turned into steam and used as propulsion. Luckily though, the leftover momentum keeps her moving forward for a couple more seconds before slowing down to a stop before moving in reverse again, due to the thrashing wind pushing her back.
She gets her breathing under control once more and starts frantically looking around for another cloud. She looks in front of her, hoping that one will blow her way. But instead, she feels her cloud come to a sudden stop, almost sending her off of it. She looks at her cloud and sees it merging with another cloud of similar size, practically doubling it. She pulls herself onto the cloud fully before stuffing her steaming right arm into the cool cloud.
"This is good, but... How am I going to deal with my arm?"
She pulls our arm out and notices that it's stopped steaming, but the skin is still red and very tingly. She rolls her sleeve back down before looking around again. Her cloud, now with it's increased size, is moving slower, but still in the wrong direction. She glances at her arm again, knowing that she needs to get her power under control. She then glances at her non-steaming arm, and at the cloud that cooled it.
And a light bulb idea formed.
She rolled up her sleeve, then stuffed her arm in the cloud and started her controlled breathing. Her arm started heating up as blood flowed through her veins intensely. The combined heat mixed with the spiral energy propelled her forward at a decent pace. She got closer and closer as the seconds passed, but at the same time her arm got hotter and hotter. She dug her arm deeper, rolling her sleeve up higher all the way to her shoulder as she pushed her arm in. Sweat was dripping down her face from her hairline to her chin, and her clothes were soaked, her body temperature rising.
"Oh goodness, I'm concentrating the spiral too much on my arm…" Her voice was shaky as she tried to maintain her breathing, but after enduring for a minute and forty-three seconds, she couldn't take it anymore. She deactivated her technique by hyperventilating. She then extracted her arm from the cloud suddenly. and it was dripping. Not only with sweat, but also with the water vapor from the cloud. And the color – it was a deep bruise; purple starting from her fingertips, turning red as it travels up her arm, ending at her shoulder. Her eyes widened, and a gasp came from her mouth as she eyed the damaged carefully.
Her arm shivered heavily, the water slowly dripping onto the cloud. Her skin had little tears that leaked blood, along with her right arm being almost twice as big as her left, due to the muscle being absolutely teeming with blood.
Crap crap crap crap. "Why am I focusing all the energy into my arm…?" She argued with herself over the power. The very fact that she's using it is hurting her not only physically, but mentally. "Argh I need to calm down. It's alright Shōko. Just forget about them, you'll be fine…"
She analyzes the cloud and sees that it's only got about half it's volume left, and she's only got two thirds left to go before she's at where the cat fell. Her cloud started to slow down. And she noticed, panic overtaking her once more.
She stabilized herself and took a deep breath. "Okay Shōko, focus on your whole body. Not just your arm, you dimwit…"
She closed her eyes and started breathing. Into her stomach through her nose and out through her mouth, feeling the oxygen merge with her red blood cells and travel through her veins. Her blood started spiraling clock-wise but instead of it being in just her arm, it's her entire body. She used her teeth to pull off her left hand glove, stuffing it in a coat pocket right before rolling up her left sleeve up to her elbow, and placed both arms into the cloud at elbow depth as well. She focused on the feeling of her blood spiraling through her arms and her entire body. She opened her eyes and focused the energy into her arms, letting them heat up and start steaming the cloud. Her right arm starts tingling painfully, but she grits her teeth to ignore it. She starts speeding up once more as the cloud loses it's mass.
After about a minute, the cloud only has a third left, and she's hanging off the edge, using the spiral energy from her right arm to hang on, while the spiral energy from her left propels her forward, her body sweating heavily from the extended use. After another minute, she's completely hanging from the cloud, her hands above her head in the small collection of mist. She glances down and sees the tall drop with no nearby clouds in sight.
She feels her hands slipping and swiftly flicks her head upwards, and realizes that there's no more cloud, and that she's falling.
"Ah—! Goddammit!!!"
Her dress flies upward, knocking into her torso, her tired arms flailing above her as she plummets downward. She starts panicking, her mind racing with possibilities to escape the situation unscathed, but comming up blank.
"I'm gonna die I'm gonna die I'm gonna dieeeeee!!"
She grabs the ends of the dress and pulls it down and out, creating a makeshift parachute to slow her fall, however slight it may be. She looks in front of her and sees the cliff‐faces, jagged rocks constantly changing in front of her. She doesn't seem to slow down, and just when she thinks she's about to splat somewhere on the dirt and rocks…
Splash!!!
She makes contact with a water surface. First her feet, then her legs, waist, and torso. The impact of the water was sudden and brief as the water surrounds her, soaking her clothes and wetting her skin. She sunk down, her feet hitting the bottom of the shallow body of water, due to the force of the dive. The sound of bubbling water overwhelmed her ears, and the water burned her eyes. She coughed and immediately began swimming up, the adrenaline coursing through her blood masking any and all pain.
She broke through the surface and gasped for air, throwing her head around before spotting the lake's bank, and lazily swam over to it, pulling her heavy, water-soaked body out of the water and onto the sand. She coughed profusely, leaning on her left arm for support.
She reached up to the top of her head with her right arm and pulled off her head scarf tossing it aside, then tried to stand up, her legs shaky, and her right foot aching. She unbuttoned her grayish-brown coat, then tossed it aside swiftly before using all her strength to pull her large dress off of herself, the weight of the water soaking it making it very difficult.
After a bit of struggling, she manged to succeed, pulling it off and tossing it aside, leaving her in a simple long-sleeve shirt and puffy pants. The sound the dress made as it made contact with the ground was a weird squelching sound.
She fell onto her butt, her chest heaving, her arms shaking, and her foot aching. She leaned back on her arms before collapsing onto her back. She lied there, her breathing naturally slowing down, as well as her heart. As the minutes passed, she couldn't help but think back to her teachers, Tadashi Kagari and Misato Kurosaki. Tears ran down the sides of her face as the memories flowed through her.
But why? She hated them, hated what they did. The legacies they left behind were all tarnished, their reputations ruined and for what?!
But she had no reason to keep thinking about what they did as it would just worsen her mood.
"Dammit...!"
Despite her hate of them, she kept thinking about them – about what they had taught her about her power, specially the different techniques, which are five in total. Spiral, the technique she used to control the cloud, is one of them.
"Gosh, what was the other one? I know it'd be useful to fight with about n-now but... I… can't seem to r-remember. Shit...!" She tried to remember the techniques but came up blank. It makes sense though, as she had repressed all memories relates to her teachers.
Her breathing continued to slow as the adrenaline exited her body. This, in turn, also revealed the masked pain in her body, especially her arms. Her right one is now fully purple, while her left simply aches, as well as her legs and feet.
"Hah! My right foot feels broken but I can't tell. Not in this state, at least..."
She tried to sit up to reach her foot and examine it, but her body was fried, blasted, totalled. Her eyelids and chest felt heavy as slumber started to overtake her. She fought back, knowing that falling asleep in this place is not the best idea, but without the technique there was nothing a young girl like her could do. Her body had been pushed to it's limits.
And as the minutes passed, sleep had taken her…