Weng Bu
I am Weng Bu, I normally go by Bu for short. I once bet a bird that could talk, I asked for its name but I think it prefers to stay hidden. The bird did, however, tell me to follow its instructions carefully, and it wanted me to find a guy with scraggy black hair and glasses, and when I do, offer him wine and bread. The bird said, “If he declines the wine and bread, and asks you to teach me ‘it,’ then know he is talking about your specialty, earth manipulation.” It seemed crazy to me at first, but when the scraggy guy did come along, he did all the things the bird said he might do, so here I am teaching August, how to use the earth. We first went to my backyard and he kept looking so worried, when we arrived he was astonished that it was messier than where he lives. Then I got curious and asked, “Where do you live?” and he replied with,
“In Complexed village.”
“But where specifically?”
“That's personal.” I decided to not ask him about his house. At first, he seemed as if he was completely new to ki, so I thought we would go over the basics first. “Ki is something everyone is born with, I believe you're aware that others have larger ki pools with others. With larger ki, people use more abilities than ones who have smaller ones, or people who can’t use them at all. Every use of ki is different, but the same concept eventually, the four main uses of ki are fire, ice, earth, and wind, the rest are just based on them. Take lightning, for example, it's just an extension of fire because to use fire you must put extreme heat up to your body you want to use fire with, lightning is the same, but you must go further beyond just heat as if your bodies are actually on fire. That means..?”
“Fire and lightning users are more powerful when they have fevers or when they’re burning up.”
“Exactly! Earth, the trait I’m going to teach you, makes you use your ki to not heat yourself up but to pressurize the body, which is why we earth manipulators, have such buff and tough bodies, but it doesn’t look like your buff much so I suspect the most you can handle are the basics.”
August
I felt pretty bad not telling Bu that my ki pool hasn’t grown but I just went along with it. We first tried moving the rocks from his backyard with my ki, and I was really starting to get worried, so Bu said I should just practice putting pressure on my body first. He taught me that I want to make my ki flow through my body to where I want to pressure it, which is essentially the arms, and I was sure I was going to fail, but miraculously I pressured it so much that Bu had to use his own ki to stop me. How can I do this? I kept wondering, but this wasn’t the time to just sit and think, I was ready to try moving the rocks in his yard. As we practiced, I used my ki to put pressure on the arms and Bu instructed me to slowly lift my arms, imaging as if the rocks are on them, and what happened was amazing, I couldn’t believe my eyes, I'm lifting those rocks! This has never happened before in my 15 years of living, but here I was manipulating the very earth! I got too excited and tried throwing the rocks, but because my arms can’t take the pressure, I stopped my blood flow and my arms went numb. After I got feeling in my arms again, I told Bu I was ready to master the basics, and he exclaimed, “It's going to take 3 whole days with no rest at all to do that!” that's when I thought rest wasn’t such a bad idea. I woke up from my sleep and woke Bu up, and he said that today, I’ll learn the most basic move he knows, shaping rocks into pointy little spears and extending them. He told me that to do this, I’ll have to squeeze my own arms into pointy things with ki, I tried it and boy, it didn’t feel good. I tried this and the rock did mold into a pointy shape but my arms were screaming in pain asking to stop, but Bu persisted me on, and the rock moved slowly, it was huge for me but Bu was a little disappointed. That night, I didn’t sleep, I just practiced that move over and over until I would be still moving my arms even after nothing was left to put pressure on. I decided to wait until my arms could actually move, and then I tried something new, instead of using all my ki to shape them, what if I extended them first and while it was extending I sharpen it there? It was crazy but I had to try it. I extended them, which didn’t take much ki and then I molded them, and because the first thing went smooth, my arms felt rather relieving, like a massage, when I shaped the spear. I had done it! I mastered the most basic move, yet also I could now defend myself with it and I could potentially keep myself together like this. I was happy, but then I remembered how my black middle finger was snapped, and it seemed like it gave me powers, I tried snapping again. As I snapped, it was like I was also just snapped back into consciousness, and my mother was pestering me to go down to the fountain to wash up and walk to school. I washed up and went to the school for all children, which had a poor education, but great people there. I met up with my friends Luke, with blonde hair with shining blue eyes, and Templeton, almost as tall as me with blackish-brown hair and brown eyes. Unlike me, they were both able to use ki, but they were so bad at it that it’s almost as pathetic as me. Templeton asked, “So I heard you did the best on that quiz yesterday.” Yesterday? But I was training with earth yesterday… Then the school bully, Richter, a guy who looked bad from the start with red hair and matching red eyes to go with it. He came along and he just started stomping on Templeton, Luke was brave enough to at least try his ki but Richter was the star student here, he used his ki for whips made of ki, and he vigorously grabbed Luke, and now I was the only one left. This was infuriating to watch, another scene where the richer and more powerful bullied the weak and poor, I got so angry that I wasn’t even remembering anymore, I tried using my ki, closing my eyes, as I did in my dream, knowing it wouldn’t work but I did feel my arms being pushed down, I opened my eyes to see that my rock had pierced Richters clothes and now the rocks were holding him, just barely missing him and penetrating him.
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