The Epic Crush of Genie Lo (The Epic Crush of Genie Lo 1)

Quentin glanced at Red Boy, his eyes full of worry for me. But he nodded.

The barrier above us broke. Quentin jumped straight up and met Erlang Shen halfway. This time he got a good grip. I could hear him whoop with glee at finally being

able to lay his hands on that bastard. The two of them tussled in the sky, zigzagging over the hills.

I ran in front of Red Boy, placing myself right in his path. Even through the time bubble I could detect the spark of recognition in his eyes. He knew that in seconds I’d be taking the full impact of his speed.

I slammed my right foot down, embedding it six inches deep into the solid ground.

The smug air around Red Boy’s face disappeared. Now he saw, like I did, that the next few seconds also meant that he was a sitting duck. A nice fat pitch hovering over the plate, and me with plenty of time to tee up.

It was time for drastic measures. Something I’d never done before.

Scratch that. I’d done it once before.

I thrust my arm at Red Boy, reaching out five feet, ten feet, twenty feet. Just like in the library with Quentin. I could feel my limb rubber banding, but it was merely reaching states that were perfectly natural to it. My arm was remembering.

I kept stretching it out, picking up more and more speed to the point where my hand was now a projectile. My palm strike smashed into Red Boy’s torso, knocking the wind out of his lungs, and my long fingers wrapped around his body, hog-tying him.

The time bubble popped. I screamed from the pain of the True Samadhi Fires surrounding my prey, but I held my grip, and I kept flinging my arm forward. There were no brakes on this train.

Red Boy’s aura hit critical mass and flared outward. Only it didn’t reach me. I was carrying him away far enough and fast enough that I was safe. My arm was a pair of tongs, and the faster I stretched the less it hurt. My growing limb distributed the heat over a wider area.

Localized laws of physics are still laws of physics, I thought as I clenched my teeth. Dickhead.

I slammed his back into the hillside, squashing the remaining air out of him. But I wasn’t done, not by a mile.

My arm went on, diagonally down, plowing Red Boy deeper and deeper into the base of the hill. Bedrock and boulders gave way to me as easily as the crumbling foundations of a sand castle. If he’d said anything or done anything before he disappeared under the rubble, I’d missed it completely.

Once it felt like I’d gone deep enough, I unclenched my hand and withdrew it. The impromptu mineshaft I left behind glowed orange, then red, then white. I threw myself to the side just in time to dodge a knot of flame so concentrated it looked like a giant worm escaping the molten core of the Earth. Fire in the hole.

Once Red Boy’s detonation subsided, the mineshaft collapsed, bringing the surrounding earth down with a mighty whump. Some seismologist was going to have a confusing time working out what had happened.

As far as I was concerned, it was okay to leave Red Boy where he was. If he wasn’t dead, he couldn’t be sent to Hell where he might escape. And with an entire mountain crushing him, he wouldn’t have any air to power his fire breath. If this kind of prison was good enough for the Monkey King, it was good enough for him.

My dust-covered arm slurped back into my body like a strand of extra-long linguini. The sight was nauseating. I should have kept my eyes closed like back when I was on the school roof.

Quentin slammed into the ground beside me, landing on his back. He scrambled to his feet.

“Son of a bitch keeps running away from me,” he grumbled.

I looked up, visoring my eyes from the sun. Erlang Shen was conjuring up something big, gesturing at us with his hands, and I finally remembered that he was a rain god.

“I, uh, think he only wanted a clear shot,” I said.

Two manhole-diameter jets of water stomped us flat like elephant’s feet. The Hoover Dam had opened a valve above our heads.

I knew how dangerous high-pressure water was. It was how they cut titanium. But still, I was surprised how hard the impact was. On a scale of one to Baigujing, this was like eating a dozen of her haymakers all over my body at once.

Quentin might have shouted after me but his words were lost amid the roar of the water. He was a flat blur. Neither of us could lift ourselves off the ground.

The downpour continued unabated. If we didn’t do something fast, we were going to drown eight hundred feet above sea level.

My body screamed at me as I ran out of oxygen. It was screaming a message I’d been doing my best to ignore since I was young, if not little.

Grow.

I finally gave in to it.