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I dangled sideways, helpless, until Princess Iron Fan’s attack subsided. With the air still once more, this was our chance to fight back. But instead of getting a unanimous rally from our side, I had to bear witness to one of the most disheartening sights I could have imagined.
Erlang Shen, the god who’d nearly destroyed my world and my life, had dropped to the ground and was crawling away on his hands and knees as fast as he could. He was so desperate to stay low and out of sight that he was practically huffing the earth like a pig, scraping the gravelly sand with the side of his head.
After his big to-do about his restraints, I had expected more from him. Hell, I’d expected more from Erlang Shen as an enemy in general. It felt like his cowardice reflected poorly on me, the person who’d handed him his biggest loss.
At least Guan Yu was still game. He stepped up, pointing his blade at Princess Iron Fan. I was worried he was going for a too-obvious bull rush, but his motions took on a delicacy I hadn’t expected from the burly god.
“Have a taste of your own!” he shouted.
With
a clean stroke that started from the soles of his feet and flowed all the way through his perfectly synchronized joints, Guan Yu slashed the air toward the yaoguai. A green, crescent-shaped slice of energy flew out of the guandao’s cutting edge. A laser bolt, curved sideways.
Princess Iron Fan wasn’t impressed by the mimicry of her technique. Right before she was eviscerated, she batted away the visible light with a flick of her wrist, using a cushion of air to avoid contact. The glowing slash went angling off to the side the same way Guan Yu had deflected her long-distance blades of air.
I detected a faint, mocking smile on her face. Anything you can do, I can do better.
Guan Yu didn’t quit. And he never stopped the motion of his weapon. He sent a barrage of projectiles at Princess Iron Fan, each one culminating from a different point in the smooth, almost artistic form his motions produced. The yaoguai was forced to use both hands now. She parried the attacks left and right until the ground around her had been slashed to ribbons.
A bloodcurdling war cry sounded behind me. At first I thought a sound as frenzied and hungry for battle as that could have only come from Quentin, but it was Nezha, his eyes glowing with eagerness to fight. The young god stamped his heels, and two spinning rings of fire, spoked like chariot wheels, sprouted from his ankles, elevating him into the air. He clapped his hands together, and when he pulled them apart, a long, deadly pointed spear appeared out of nowhere like a magician’s scarf. Nezha arced skyward and couched his lance at the yaoguai.
“Genie!” Quentin said. “Give me a bump!”
We’d talked about this maneuver once before. As a joke. On a lazy afternoon, not too long after we’d saved the city from Red Boy and were still drunk and infatuated on the fact that we’d gotten together, the two of us had snuck up to the school roof for a cloud-watching session. With my head in Quentin’s lap, my lips still warm from his, I’d posited that as high as he could jump on his own, he could get still more power if I gave him a boost from the ground.
I set my hands. He backflipped and landed with the balls of his feet on my laced fingers, and for the first time, I felt the true massive weight of the Monkey, born from a stone. Quentin was a friggin’ tank.
I hurled him sideways, straight at Princess Iron Fan, at the same time as he kicked off my hands. My move would have been an illegal carry in volleyball, but it turned Sun Wukong into a cannon shell.
Nezha whooped again and dive-bombed the enemy, his spear pointing the way. Guan Yu sent a fresh volley of laser blades at Princess Iron Fan. Every attack was going to hit her at the same time.
Princess Iron Fan took in the entire scene and decided she no longer wanted to bother. She spun around on a pointed toe, the prima ballerina demonstrating her grace, and a tornado followed in her wake.
? ? ?
The air that hit me from the side scooped me off my feet so precisely that it felt like telekinesis. Guan Yu was sucked up by the raging wind as well, the god’s massive strength rendered meaningless with nothing to hold on to. He tumbled helplessly end over end, a dust bunny of beard and flapping robes.
I was spinning around like Dorothy’s house, watching familiar objects fly by. Bushes. Rocks. Oh hey, the Great White Planet, wide-eyed with fright, clutching his staff as if it were a pool noodle keeping him from drowning. I’d wondered what had happened to him.
A sense of order began to form out of the debris. The struggling gods and I came to float in a rough line, held still by roaring pressure differentials. We could flail all we wanted, but there were no solid surfaces to push off against.
Princess Iron Fan did not suffer from the same problem. She floated up through the center of the storm, supported by pillars of wind. Seeing her lean against nothing, anchored like a kite, told me what to do. Grow, I said to myself. Or stretch. Just reach the ground somehow to gain traction.
Princess Iron Fan shook her head at me.
Before I could change more than an inch in size, she slammed me forward and back against the sides of a clear cage of air. She rattled me like a bug in a jar. I lost focus as my head bounced around, and I tasted blood from my nose and mouth. Only the sight of Quentin trying to reach me kept me from blacking out.
Once she’d knocked the ability to concentrate out of me, Princess Iron Fan examined her captives. Nezha was farthest to her right. She beckoned at him, and he slid over to her as if he’d been mounted on rails.
“What do you want?” he yelled, writhing helplessly in her invisible grasp.
“I want the strongest,” she whispered.
I was concussed, without a doubt. But I could still comprehend why, despite the howling wind, every word she spoke was perfectly clear. If she controlled air, she controlled sound. That was how she’d taunted me from such a distance.
Princess Iron Fan used her invisible grasp to stretch Nezha out like a rack, cutting off his cry of pain. She inspected him from both sides, head to toe, searching for an answer until she found it.
“And it’s not you,” she said to him.
