On the east side of Titan City, Leon‘s training is proceeding in a rather eccentric way. All he has been doing for the past couple of weeks is meditating—apparently, that is Maven‘s tutelage.
Every morning, he meets her by the lake, sits on the grass cross legged, closes his eyes, and has to stay in that exact position until Maven finally says, “That’s it for the day.”
To make sure he is not slacking off, Maven sometimes activates her Heat, Holy Blades of the Divine, to the very brink of manifestation just to check his reaction. If his body violently jerks, his eyes snap open, and he hyperventilates, it means he had fallen asleep. If he simply twitches or opens his eyes calmly to assess the threat rather than reacting in shock, it means he is awake and alert.
The only reason Leon is still putting up with this odd type of training is because, in his gut, he knows Maven can actually teach him something that no one else can.
Perhaps it is his warrior’s instinct choosing a worthy master.
On one such usual morning, Leon asks, “How many more days of this? Sitting still, doing nothing?”
Maven asks back, “What do you feel?”
He says, “I want to spar with you, or at least show you what I can do, so that you can show me how to perfect it.”
Maven actually does what she tells Leon to do; she sits directly in front of him and meditates herself as long as Leon does. When Leon asked the question this morning, she was in a deep meditative state. She opened her eyes only to ask her counter-question, and then she closes them again, slipping back into her own serene form, saying, “Then many more days, I suppose.”
Back on the Titan City grounds where the brutal fight between Jarrod and Leon took place—an event that now feels like millennia ago—Jarrod is practicing his Heat. He is actively finding a way to fly, using his magnetic Push against the ground or using Pull on the walls and nearby heavy structures to evade attacks and swing through the air. But unlike before, where he relied on both hands, this time he is using a single arm to bear all his weight, lifting himself up or pushing off structures.
While Lesca is at the beauty salon getting a facial and Friling is busy with his duties as the Head of Titan City, JDen walks onto the field. Leon‘s former follower has fully recovered from the beating he took from the mercenaries that came with Taglia, though his confidence remains fractured. Even when Leon was around, JDen was always the sheepish type.
He stands at a safe distance, watching Jarrod float, land, swing his arms to stretch, and launch into the air again. Spotting him, Jarrod stops his training, walks up to JDen, and greets him in a warm, friendly tone. “You were with Leon. Sorry, I don’t know your name, but good job defending the city that day.”
“JDen…” he replies quietly.
Jarrod nods with serious, genuine appreciation, taking a brief pause before asking, “…So, how can I help you today?”
JDen is used to people asking him, ‘What do you want?’ not ‘How can I help you?’ After a moment of contemplation, he says, “Bro is gone. I don’t know for how long. I need to stand up for myself and this city because he said it’s up to me now. So when he comes back, he gets his throne back.”
Jarrod flashes a wide, bright smile. “He is lucky to have you.”
JDen hesitates, then adds, “When Bro left, he said Titan City now has you, too.” He points a finger at Jarrod, whose eyes widen slightly as JDen continues, “You won against Bro… he is… was the strongest for a long time.” JDen rubs his hands together nervously. “Can you train me a little?”
Jarrod doesn’t ask anything else. He simply says, “Come on, then.”
As Jarrod walks toward the center of the training ground, a wide-eyed JDen quickly follows. Once they reach the center, JDen, hoping to describe about the nature of his Heat to Jarrod, tries to speak. “My Heat, I—”
Jarrod cuts him off with a grin. “Don’t tell me. Show me.”
JDen smiles, takes a deep breath, and roars, “FLESH EATER’S INSATIABLE HUNGER!”
In an instant, his skin, his clothing, his entire body violently breaks down. It is as if his body dissolves into thin air, instantly replaced by a massive swarm of buzzing, palm-sized dragonflies. JDen is gone, entirely replaced by what looks like hundreds of dragonflies.
Jarrod is genuinely surprised, his mouth falling slightly open. He is about to say something when the dragonfly swarm charges forward. Just before impact, the flies suddenly condense together, forming the shape of a massive fist, and punch Jarrod directly in the right oblique.
Jarrod gets thrown several feet into the dirt, completely taken aback. As he recovers, balancing himself on his knees with one hand, he aims his left palm toward the incoming flies and uses Push, fully expecting to blast the swarm away. But the swarm disperses in an instant, effortlessly dodging the Push effect. The individual flies instantly regroup directly at Jarrod‘s back, form another fist, and land a crushing hit. This time, Jarrod only stumbles a few steps forward; he does not get thrown.
Jarrod is already adapting to JDen flies fighting style.
Jarrod jumps onto the balls of his feet, grinning. “This is getting good.”
As the flies charge toward him as a united swarm again, Jarrod simply uses Push against the ground to evade the direct clash, launching himself over the swarm. When he is directly above them in mid-air, Jarrod executes the exact trick he had been training for: he maintains his hovering using his right arm, but aggressively thrusts his left hand down to Push the flies directly into the dirt.
Caught off guard, a large chunk of the swarm is literally flattened against the ground as Jarrod lands smoothly a few meters away.
The swarm is buzzing erratically in place. Jarrod realizes the biological rule of JDen’s Heat: even though there are hundreds of them, they share a single conscious mind—JDen‘s—and they require the entire swarm to coordinate and move. This is why as the large chunk of the swarm is still recovering and getting up from the ground, the other chunk is hovering right there not making a move towards Jarrod.
Out of courtesy and sheer excitement, Jarrod doesn’t make a follow-up move, waiting to see what JDen will do next.
As the flattened flies peel themselves off the ground and take flight again, the swarm opens up wide, spreading out like a massive fishing net, and chases after Jarrod to capture him entirely.
Jarrod smirks. “Going for the kill, are we?”
He knows that given their sheer numbers, if the net actually falls on him and envelops his body, his localized Push/Pull won’t be enough to tear them all off.
So, Jarrod extends both of his arms toward the center of the grounds and uses Pull. He rips two massive chunks of solid earth out of the ground, hoisting them into the air on both side of the incoming swarm. He prepares to violently clap the boulders together using Push, when the swarm is between them, like humans kill a mosquito or a fly.
But just before he can slam the earth together, the swarm halts mid-air. Before flying into the kill zone Jarrod had prepared, the flies gather safely to the side. Slowly, the flies gather together like its a beehive and a humanoid form is formed. JDen appears, dropping to his knees, huffing heavily as he cancels his Heat.
“I surrender,” he pants. “I can’t go on anymore.”
Jarrod smiles and cancels his Push, letting the massive earth chunks drop harmlessly to the ground with a heavy thud. He walks over to JDen and offers a hand. “You are strong and strategic. That net idea was really good.”
JDen looks up at him, wide-eyed. This is the first time anyone has ever complimented his combat tactics.
Meanwhile, in the Savanna, Leon suddenly jumps up from his meditating stance without breaking his posture or opening his eyes. “I got it… I got it.”
Maven opens her eyes. “What do you get?”
Leon simply stands up and starts pacing in small circles. “Nothing… I get nothing. All the noise, the urges, the voices, and the feeling of being in a hurry… they are all gone. I can feel my breathing.”
Maven smiles knowingly, breaks her stance, gets up, and says, “Good! You think you can hold onto that feeling? The feeling of your breathing?”
Leon nods confidently.
Maven, trusting him, says, “…Then let’s fight.”
Leon runs backward to create some distance between himself and Maven.
Maven whispers, “Holy Blades of the Divine,” and her Heat releases. Five glowing blades manifest in a crescent moon formation over each of her shoulders.
Leon roars, “Weapons of Doom!” He starts in a calm state, focusing strictly on his breathing, and actively chooses to channel the Arrow stance—superior speed, inferior strength.
He launches toward Maven, his strategy against her is crystal clear: “Maven is unbeatable when it comes to long-distance strikes, but if I can close the gap in the shortest amount of time, she won’t be able to move the blades closely around her own body without hurting herself. I will have the advantage.”
Sensing his approach, Maven sends two blades from each side to intercept and slow him down.
Seeing the four blades coming toward him, while in mid thought Leon panics because he cannot take a hit head on in Arrow state, and those four blades cover a lot of area he has to turn to evade. He tries to violently pivot to his right, but his sheer momentum throws off his balance entirely, and he violently trips, crashing face-first into the dirt as the four blades pass by and hover harmlessly in the air at the point from where Leon pivoted.
Maven calls out, “Come on. Don’t doubt. Don’t focus only on one thing. Try to see the battlefield as a whole.”
Leon huffs, spitting out dust as he scrambles back to his feet. With a subtle twist of her fingers, Maven sends those same four blades curving right back toward him.
But the failure to execute his attack, combined with the humiliating fall, has completely overridden his mental clarity. He instantly reverts to his default state: rapid breathing, a pounding heart, and pure, thoughtless adrenaline.
He channels the Hammer stance—pure durability and strength, low speed. The blades hit him dead-on, but because of his sturdy muscle mass, he simply slaps them off and they fall onto the ground or fly away a few feet.
However, the only reason he survived the impact is that Maven didn’t send them at full speed in the first place.
Believing he has successfully tanked four of her blades head-on, Leon immediately shifts to the Axe stance—great strength, moderate speed—to close the final gap and land a crushing blow.
Seeing Leon charging at her like a wild animal, Maven simply gives him a defeated smile. She sends four more of her blades directly at his chest, but he arrogantly punches them away like before as he sprints toward her. He laughs, genuinely thinking he has won. She only has one blade left on each side; even if she sends them, he will simply knock them aside. He has finally figured it out.
He is close enough to land a punch that will throw her across the Savanna.
Maven, her breathing as perfectly even as it was at the beginning of the fight, keeps her arms at her sides. She simply flicks her left wrist, and her two remaining blades snap in front of her, creating a perfect interlocking vertical shield.
When Leon‘s heavy punch lands, it slams into the block of blades, not her body.
Simultaneously, Maven flicks her right wrist. The eight other blades that Leon thought he had deflected and dispersed suddenly rise from the dirt, hovering and rushing toward him from behind, perfectly encircling his neck.
Leon freezes. He knows he can’t move forward, backward, left, or right; if he flinches, his neck will be pierced from every angle.
He finally takes three slow steps backward the blades following him like living creatures, raising his hands in the air, he huffs “Fine. I surrender.”
As the sturdiness of his muscles relaxes, he cancels his Heat.
The blades dissolve into the air as Maven softly sighs.
Leon drops to the ground, sitting with his head buried between his knees in sheer frustration. She calmly walks over to him, kneeling beside his sitting form. “Not bad for a first time. Now, let’s continue this until you can maintain that calm for a full day.”
Leon raises his head slightly. “What do you mean?”
Maven looks at the torn-up grass around them. “You started off good, closing the gap… but then…” She looks him dead in the eyes. “You saw point-blank incoming blades, completely forgot your strategy, and went straight for pure offense. Didn’t you?”
Leon finally raises his head completely. “How do you resist it? The urge to just react? How do you just… flow?”
Maven sits on the ground crossing her legs, staring deeply into his eyes. “The reason I was making you do absolutely nothing for weeks is so that you can master Zen.”
“What the fuck is that?” Leon asks, exasperated. “Sounds passive.”
Maven smiles gently. “It is passive. But not in the way you think. You see, when we fight, we usually only use our eyes—one of our five senses. But true warriors, even when drowning in a state of pure adrenaline, can keep their minds clear enough to use their other senses. Hearing. Touch. Taste. And Smell.”
Leon‘s eyes widen slightly. He has never heard of this concept, let alone considered trying to apply it in the chaotic, high-stakes tension of a real fight. “Can you do it?”
Maven offers a light chuckle. “I try my best.”
“So… if I learn to do this, I will get stronger?”
Maven leans in slightly closer to his face. “You will be sharper.”
Leon gets up with a determined nod. “Okay.” He immediately turns and starts walking away.
“Where to?” Maven asks.
“To meditate,” Leon replies without looking back.
Maven watches him go, a proud, knowing smile resting on her face.
Back in Titan City, the spar between Jarrod and JDen is over for the day. Both are covered in dust, sitting at the edge of the training grounds, leaning back against the concrete wall.
“JDen,” Jarrod asks, looking at JDen to his left, “How did you and Leon meet?”
“We were always together,” JDen says softly. “He was my senior in school. He was this loud, completely unfiltered guy whom everyone hated because of his sheer arrogance. But I loved it. I mean, how many of us can be so unfiltered, right?” JDen looks at Jarrod with a small smile. “I certainly cannot. So I chose to follow him, to learn to be like him. Initially, he refused, thinking I just wanted something from his fame. But as the years passed, we just kind of became this unspoken duo, and he let me hang around him. That is how I learned about his warrior’s heart and his respect.”
JDen looks up at the darkening sky. “He cannot always express what he is feeling, so he uses fights to show respect. It is his core motto that if you lose, you are dead, and if you win, then you are everything.” JDen chuckles softly. “But he also has this fierce protectiveness he showed toward me, and even for this city sometimes. I just could never imagine this world without Leon. I mean, he makes it bearable, you know?”
Realizing how much he just revealed, calling Leon by his actual name instead of ‘Bro,’ and trailing off without a real conclusion, JDen looks down at the dirt, thoroughly embarrassed.
But Jarrod listened to every single word. He looks up at the dusky sky and says, “He is the hero of this city, right?”
JDen looks at Jarrod, his eyes wide and hopeful. “Exactly!”
Jarrod turns to him, placing a firm, reassuring hand on his shoulder. “Don’t worry, JDen. He is definitely coming back. He has you, and this beautiful city, to protect.”
JDen‘s eyes grow glassy with unshed tears. “And you, too, are important to him. You are one of the very few in his life who made him do something against his wishes, and he actually did it. He will never admit it out loud, but he sees you as his equal.”
Jarrod smiles, a profound sense of peace settling over him. “The feeling is mutual, JDen. He also taught me to be clear about my choices… to actively choose humanity and its messiness as a whole. Because that messiness is a part of me too, even though I sometimes hate that about myself.”
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