Jingyi Bo sat on a low bench in the training area, a little confused.

“Izumi, it’s a perfectly clear day - how am I meant to see lightning here?”

“Just wait a moment, would you? They’re coming!” With no further warning, Izumi stuffed a book into Bo’s hand and suddenly became hazy - if she stood perfectly still, it would be impossible to notice her unless you were looking. Bo’s natural defense was being extremely plain and uninteresting to look at.

Suddenly left ‘alone’, Bo collected herself and looked at who exactly ‘they’ were. Everything clicked into place as she saw Lee Jia arrive - her friend An Eui in tow, as well as Takeda Rika. A flickering of motion was visible out of the corner of her eye: Izumi was risking her invisibility to write notes. What was the point of even going invisible if you’re just going to draw attention like that?!

Lee Jia’s lightning was legendary across the campus. She had defeated Yan Zhihao in a duel with an almighty bolt, and there was even a rumour going around that she had personally killed him with one. Not that anyone really knew what had happened up on that mountain - Izumi only had gossip, and there was some kind of story about a demon. Bo thought it made more sense that they had clashed again, and the instructors didn’t want to lose such a star pupil because her duelling partner had underestimated her. The idea that there was some horrifying demon out there was just a little too much for her heart to bear.

Lee and Takeda began sparring. One thing became immediately apparent - Jingyi Bo had no idea how to keep track of the action. They were both so fast! She wasn’t an awakened omnidisciplinary cultivator for nothing, but her cultivation was so far behind theirs that she may as well have been mortal. Takeda had some trick of bouncing off of nothing to redirect her attacks, and all of Lee’s moves were fast as lightning. It was, Bo thought, a little bit frightening.

She tried her best to keep up, focusing intently whenever sparks crackled out of Lee Jia, but it wasn’t terribly helping her understanding. Their motions were simply too fast to keep up with, and it was honestly starting to hurt Bo’s self-confidence to watch the display. She sighed in relief when the pair decided they had had enough, giving a small bow. An Eui came out of her spot in the shadows and started using some kind of healing technique on the pair.

Wait a second, that’s Wood! Perking up a bit, she watched through her mana sense as the wood qi circulated around their wounds. It made Bo think of a poultice of moss, or a heaping of fertiliser - matter decaying to grant new life. She had this weird feeling there was an opposite side to that technique that did the exact opposite, not that she wished to ever see such a thing in practice. However, the experience did earn her some understanding of the element of wood - and also, apparently, a glare from An Eui.

“Psst, you’re staring too much! The book, the book!” Izumi’s voice sounded hazy and distant, but it was enough. Quivering a little bit with worry, Bo averted her eyes and stared down at the tome. After reading several paragraphs about the will-they won’t-they relationship of a pair of overly dramatic Yamato noblemen, she felt the weight of impending demise lift and chanced a stare back up.

“Howdy there! Aren’t you Lee Jia? Y’mind if I test somethin’ with ya?”

Bo’s jaw nearly dropped. Hizashi Kokoro had walked up to the trio, bold as a sunny day, and started talking to them. To her immense surprise, she wasn’t shot down. An didn’t seem capable of standing that close to the sun, making an excuse to stand off to the side, and Takeda seemed more than happy to bask in the rays. Lee seemed a little confused, but after an explanation that Bo didn’t quite catch, they agreed to a kind of spar on the condition it would make good practice for both parties.

Both stood at a slight distance from each other, maybe five or six paces away. Hizashi stretched her arms up before spreading them out wide. As she did, an aura of shimmering Light ki covered her body like a blanket.

“Go fer it!”

“Okay, if you insist!” Lee’s distance suddenly made sense as she pulled out a small stack of cheaply-made talismans. She stood there like a swordsman readying to eviscerate a foe foolish enough to stand before her. Without a moment’s warning, she suddenly started firing. Bolt after bolt, Jia was evidently practicing firing off her talismans as fast as possible. For every movement of her hand, another arc of lightning shot out of her clawtips, though occasionally a poorly-made talisman would fizzle or spark out the wrong way, or the speed would cause her to misfire and simply ignite the paper.

On the other end, Bo watched with immense worry as Hizashi was being used as target practice. Her form seemed to blur and distort, like looking at her through poorly blown glass, causing most of the bolts to bend away from her into the dirt. Some were simply absorbed, dissipating into the shimmering field around Hizashi’s body, though a worrying number got through. Bo could barely tear her eyes away as little scorch-marks blistered across Hizashi’s skin and robes.

The whole thing took barely a handful of minutes, Lee Jia throwing away every talisman she cared to keep for practice. Those minutes had felt like an eternity, and all Hizashi had done was endure. However, nothing could dim the light of the sun - stepping out of the circle of scorch marks and dropping her shimmering field, she stepped forward with a smile on her face. Pressing a stack of blank talismans into the smaller girl’s hand, the two shared some light conversation.

“Jia could’ve beat her, easy. What a waste of time.”

Bo nearly fell out of her seat. Looking to her side, she came face to book-covered face with An Eui. The girl didn’t seem too pleased, that rat-like tail whipping about angrily. Cold eyes fixed hers. An didn’t need to say anything - Bo read her loud and clear. I saw you staring at my girl. Back off, or suffer the consequences! She gave a nod, which only seemed to confuse An Eui. With narrowed eyes and a groan, the half-spirit girl left to Lee Jia’s side. The gloom was quickly replaced with a slightly-dimmed sun.

“Whew! Who woulda thunk gettin’ hit with lightnin’ would hurt so much?” Hizashi sat down by Bo and gave a bright smile. “Did’ja get a good look at it?”

“W-Wait, you took a bunch of lightning bolts to the face so I could look at them?!”

“Heh, you wish! Had t’test out my abilities ‘gainst somethin’ with a bit more kick! Though, I did think Izumi was a bit nuts fer suggestin’ I just get Lee Jia of all people to throw bolts at me. Hi Izumi!” Hizashi waved at the rippling space next to Bo, and Izumi dropped her technique.

“I saw a chance to help you both and I took it. Well?” They both looked expectantly at Jingyi Bo, who felt suddenly put on the spot. I was too busy panicking to really think about it at all!

“G-Give me a second, I gotta meditate on this.”

Closing her eyes, Bo focused on Lightning. The easy part: Lightning is a tertiary element, composed of Air, Fire and Yang. It’s tangible, in that it corresponds to an identifiable real-world thing, but it’s too volatile to handle normally. It’s unpredictable, jagged, fast … but what does it mean?

Lightning was, in Bo’s mind, powerful. It struck suddenly, unexpectedly. In that sense, it was quite fitting of Lee Jia - the rumours abound that she was an unawakened mortal when she arrived, and like a bolt of lightning from a cloudless sky she was contending with the best of them. When lightning flashed, all the creatures of the mortal realm took notice. It was a powerful, terrifying energy, but it had a kind of majesty to it. It was a respectable force that had an all-or-nothing demeanour - a bolt of lightning didn’t pull its punches, as Bo could see with Hizashi’s wounds.

Was that what Lightning meant? It felt almost like she had to confirm it to herself - the image in her mind had become entangled somehow with her image of Lee Jia. A girl standing alone in a storm, silent and still until she needed to roar. An unexpected power … but not unpredictable. That was the one last missing piece that she had been stumbling on.

What use would Lightning be to anyone if it was unpredictable? Its jagged arcs and speeding energy weren’t random events - they were influenced by the world around them. Lee Jia would not have been the way she was if it wasn’t for the world she lived in, for better or for worse. Lightning was the same, each arc imperceptibly shifting in response to the environment. It all began to make more sense now. Bo could feel something in her change - she had satisfactorily understood Lightning.

Opening her eyes, Bo held out a hand. The other two girls watched, fascinated, as tiny sparks danced in the air. Each one got more and more intense until--

“Ouch!” An arc of electricity shot back down into her hand, leaving a nasty burn across her palm. “Ouch … ouch ouch ouch! Why, lightning?! I thought we had an understanding!”

“Obviously not enough understanding, but you did manage to make a bolt.” Izumi pulled out a handkerchief with one hand and grabbed Bo’s hand with the other. She pulled it up to her face, and blew a small cloud of cooling mist. Bo blushed as she wrapped it up - Hizashi looked delighted.

After a few minutes making sure Bo hadn’t done any further damage to herself, the group was about to leave when they heard a series of explosions. It was An Eui, throwing knives at a set of rocks. Each one crackled with unnatural power and exploded as she played with the timing and charge. To everyone else, it was a fascinating spectacle and little more. To Jingyi Bo’s mana sense, it was Destruction. If ever there was a more volatile element, so dangerous as to be largely impractical for anyone to use and so unusual as to be never seen in nature, it was Destruction. Bo looked down at her wrapped hand - attempting to make such an element without true understanding would do more than burn her palm. She watched those knives exploding, and wondered what kind of damage it might do if she accidentally let that energy go in her meridians.

---

“So you figured out Lightning?” At Saoka practice, Chao was the first to ask how it had gone. “That’s super cool, Senior Bo! I’ve been working hard too! Watch this!”

With a wave of his hands, several small twisters appeared and whipped around the group. Gathering dirt, dust and fallen leaves, the whirling Air qi deposited the detritus into neat piles before dissipating. Everyone gave a polite clap - cultivating to become the ultimate janitor wasn’t exactly standard practice, but Jingyi Bo wasn’t in a position to talk.

The group played Saoka. It turned out, having everyone in the second stage made it quite a lot more intense. Hizashi’s light-bending martial arts made it hard to predict exactly which way she was going, and both Amai and Hoshikawa had discovered a way to make only one part of them heavy at a time to increase the strength of a blow - having them kick a goal from the other side of the pitch was making everyone consider making the thing bigger.

Chao and Wang stuck together like glue - it seemed the more progress Wang made in his art, the more he spent time with Chao. Sometimes it even seemed like Wang was mimicking his friend, moving the same way he did or making the same facial expressions. Bo quietly wondered if there was a personality that truly belonged to Wang, or if he had entirely consigned himself to be Chao’s body-double.

Bo found herself outmatched at nearly every turn. The game was amazing practice for the speed of her abilities, the Endless Sprint technique growing better with every game. Unfortunately, her ponderously slow, methodical approach was pointless when everyone else could just walk around her, leap over her, shoot wind blasts or heat waves towards her. If she didn’t figure out her awakening soon, the rest of the group was going to leave her behind.

It wasn’t until a couple hours in that Jingyi Bo had an idea. Why try and match everyone’s speed when there was no way she would win? Instead of focusing on going fast enough, Bo would simply need to be better prepared.

“Guys, I’d like to guard the goals for a bit.”

“Ah, I guess, but aren’t you a little … ?” Small, is what Chao wanted to say. Or slow, or weak. Chao had made a great goalkeeper so far, being tall and with a technique that could push things away. Every time Bo got the spot, it was free goals for the opposition. However, the poorly-hidden grin on her face won Chao over and he handed over the place.

Now in place, Bo thought about her recent lessons - Mist and Lightning. She wasn’t exactly ready to start flinging lightning bolts around, but she was ready to consider the meaning of the thing. Mist could hide things, keep them safe, or confuse a foe. Lightning was sudden and unexpected, striking where it was needed and no more. With these ideas in hand, she got to work.

“Keep them off me for a bit!”

“W-What?! Guard the goal, Senior!” Chao quailed as he saw Bo drop to her knees and press her palms to the ground. It still stung a bit where she had zapped herself, but she worked through the pain - Okay, mild discomfort at best!

It wasn’t clear to anyone else what she was doing, but the other team saw the goal was wide open and went straight for it. On her side was Chao, Wang and Youni, with Tatsumaki in the opposite goals, and Hoshikawa, Amai and Hizashi against them. It was a somewhat lop-sided setup, but it forced both sides to get used to facing off with a different kind of cultivator. Unfortunately, the team full of martial artists were more than capable of taking advantage of a weakness by rushing in.

Chao’s gang played defensively - Chao and Wang both blasted the area with wind, blowing away the ball back into the other half of the pitch, while Youni’s tendrils of miasma whipped freely about to tie up space. Everyone here had felt the curse of the miasma tendrils, and knew it took days to get the smell out of robes, hair and even skin. Even with the focus on defense, they knew they couldn’t keep up - led by Hizashi, the martial artists were creeping their way in one step at a time.

Suddenly, a fog burst from the ground, startling everyone. The ground felt soft and marshy, causing Amai and Hoshikawa to sink whenever they tried to increase their weight, and Tatsumaki’s general bulk was making it difficult to stand still. Hizashi wasn’t terribly perturbed - she had the grace of a dancer, and running over difficult terrain wasn’t an issue. When she suddenly tripped face-first into the mud, she reconsidered her confidence.

It was hard to see in the fog, but Hizashi looked down to see she had caught her foot on a well hidden root. Hopping to her feet, she flared with light to see that she was surrounded by these roots … and that they were moving. With every passing moment, the fog seemed to grow thicker, making it hard to see them. Still, the terrain was hindering both sides! Chao and company were finding it difficult to see the other side or the opposing players, and their ability to play defence was thoroughly stifled.

“Senior Bo! I don’t think this is helping very much!” Chao’s shouts sounded distant in the fog, but the panic in his voice was obvious.

“I think she’s helpin’ quite a bit!” Finding her feet (and the ball), Hizashi danced her way past the rest of them. Leaving her light off and relying on her senses, she twirled and jumped between the languidly lashing roots towards the goal and gave an almighty kick. Her confident smile faded in the clouds as she saw what Bo had really done.

The mist began to dissipate just in time for Hizashi to stare awkwardly into Tatsumaki’s equally confused eyes. The ball sat a couple of metres behind him - through their goal. Looking back at the pitch, she realised what had happened. When she had tripped, Bo had altered the shape of the ground. Every time she landed after jumping over a root, she had been turned around slightly - she could see where she had fallen down the first time, and the curved path she had taken to arrive back at her own goals. All the players were scattered and confused, and all eyes turned back to Bo.

“YES!” The diminutive woman leapt to her feet and jumped for joy. “Own goal! I figured it all out! Haahaha-- oof!”

A root grabbed her by the ankle and slammed her down into the mud, just in time for animated vines to turn back into the clay they had been formed from. Traitorous plant! I’m so tired after all that … maybe I’ll just take a nap here.

The group carefully lifted an unconscious Jingyi Bo out of her mud puddle and put her off to one side. The pitch was a mess - the rest of the team decided that maybe they would just go home. Izumi Makoto offered to stay and watch over her.

It didn’t escape anyone’s notice how happy she was to do so.