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Bryce Kiley
2011, January 15: Brockton Bay, NH, USA

I ducked under a sloppy palm strike and flowed into Sabah’s guard. Before she could center herself, I jabbed her in the armpit and throat. At the same time, I leaned forward, stepping on her leading foot with my own.

“Eep!” she yelped, more in discomfort than pain.

She tried to pull back but my foot kept her in place. In the end, she could only move her back foot a little, which allowed me to step on her forward knee and flip over her.

I palmed her head, pressing her dandy hat over her eyes. I landed with my forearm on her left shoulder, hand curling around her throat and collar. My other hand was on the small of her back. Then, using my momentum, I pulled with the former and pushed with the latter, flipping her ass over teakettle.

She landed with a dull thump. Had she been in her civilian clothes, the rotation and subsequent slam would likely have bruised, but she wore her costume still. Though we’d tossed our shield modules aside for this, the Germa fibers were more than sufficient to absorb this level of shock.

As it was, sweat beaded on her face and she heaved to catch her breath. We’d been at this for just fifteen minutes but she was already exhausted.

“This is so unfair,” she huffed in annoyance. “We have the same specialization. How come you’re better at weird kung fu than I am?”

“I’m more physically fit for starters,” I replied with a smug grin. “It doesn’t matter if you know the same moves I do because that knowledge is like reading a manual or watching a demonstration. It’s not experience or muscle memory.” 

“You don’t have kung fu baked into your muscle memory, either.”

“No, but I’ve been practicing my own blend of muay thai, capoeira, and aikido for months now. It’s not the same, but some basic principles like good balance, muscle conditioning, and timing are constants.”

“In other words, you can actually do all the silly flips. Well, fine, Bryce. My arms are noodly. I get it.”

We were in a section of the ship I’d set aside as a sparring hall. While I’d yet to build the fortress proper, several of the interior rooms that I considered vital had already been made. Or rather, they’d been designated as such after looking at a layout of the ship.

This hall, mostly used by SAINT and I to blow off steam, was the oldest of such rooms. Even before Air Gear, we used to play tag here using pokemon moves only. Over time, the entire surface had been coated in seastone, making it damn near indestructible. With some decent soundproofing, it was the ideal place to test the majority of our gear.

Sabah made no move to get up. Instead, she reached into an expanded pocket and pulled out a water bottle before dumping it on her head. She let out a satisfied sigh as the cool water splashed her hair. “I’m done, Bryce. You’ve worn me out.”

“Aww, what happened to learning kung fu?” I asked teasingly. I tossed her the shield module again. “Didn’t you want to try to pick up the qi half of this specialization too?”

She clipped it back onto her belt buckle, eager to have it back. “I did, but I just remembered that I’m allergic to exercise.”

“Fine, fine, you really should work out more, though, Sabs. Stick with it. If your Shard really is looting things from my power, it might give you the potential to unlock your qi.”

“Even if it doesn’t understand all the magical stuff?”

“Even then. Shards are fascinated by data. Just because they don’t immediately understand something doesn’t mean they won’t try to collect information about it.”

“Which means the qi stuff might work for me too, assuming I go through the training.”

“Yup.”

“But… I’m already stronger than grown men thanks to my costume. I also have a force field and I can teleport. Is martial arts training also necessary?”

“Better to have it than not. For example, if you ever need to restrain someone without revealing that you’re Maven, or get caught out without your costume.”

“If I ever get into a scrap in my civilian life, I’m going to run like the little girl I am, then call the police. Or you, as appropriate.”

“I’m not saying you need to get good enough to do all the flips and fancy spin kicks, but learning how to throw a punch wouldn’t be a bad idea. Besides, weren’t you the one who wanted to see some of the xiaolin techniques in action?”

“I did, fine. They’re… unexpectedly effective,” Sabah admitted grudgingly. She pulled out a water bottle from a hammerspace bag and took a long drink. “I still call bullshit on the names.”

That got a laugh out of me. To be fair, she was right. Xiaolin Showdown was not a series that took itself seriously. “What? Was ‘Monkey Painting House’ not a majestic-enough name for you? Do you prefer my ‘Duck Flipping Hamburger?’ That was the last move I used, by the way.”

“That makes no sense! If anything, it should be ‘House Painting Monkey!’ The house is the object! The subject is the monkey!”

“How do you know? Maybe in their world, houses have autonomy and they can paint monkeys.” The withering glare she shot me gave me the warm and fuzzies inside. “Alright, fine, mystical, kung fu monks are bad at English grammar.”

“I’d be less annoyed if they were consistent. You have normal, martial arts-y sounding names like ‘Mantis Kick’ and ‘Lotus Strike,’ then ridiculous stuff like ‘Cat Playing Fiddle’ or… ‘Butterfly Fools Moth On Cypress Tree.’”

“I think that last one might be a line from a poem…?” I said unsurely.

“Maybe, but ‘Quoth the Raven’ doesn’t become any less stupid as a technique name just because Poe wrote it.”

I stood and yanked her to her feet. “Come on, it’s dinner time. Let’s go grab something to eat.”

“You know what? Dinner sounds good. Let me go take a shower. Where are we going?”

“No clue. I was just going to walk around and see what calls to me.”

“Alright, cool.”

We ended up at a small Jewish deli near the Boardwalk. It was one of those mom and pop shops that gave out enough meat for three sandwiches, with homemade rye bread and pastrami. The only reason it could remain open in a city with the Empire was its proximity to the PRT headquarters.

I completely forgot I couldn’t have meat anymore until I got there, to Sabah’s glee and my annoyance. They did make a really nice potato knish so I wasn’t out of options, thankfully.

The spar, if it could be called that, had been fun. It was a nice way to limber up from hours of meditation in the morning. That said, it reinforced the idea that I simply wouldn’t get much out of Xiaolin Showdown’s kung fu, at least on the physical side. I simply didn’t have the time to achieve Omi's level of mastery, never mind real experts like Master Monk Guan or Chase Young.

I was already agile. I already had perfect balance. Integrating a fighting style that revolved around a shen gong wu, such as Omi’s Orb of Tornami sounded nice on paper, but I wasn’t even planning to build a relevant elemental wu to begin with.

After much thought, I’d come to the conclusion that there were two wu I absolutely needed after the Eye of Dashi, and I was willing to toss aside the chance to build every other wu to get them. Unfortunately, they were on the more complex side so I expected making them to take a lot longer than the Eye. But, so be it. If I got to make extra wu, great. If not, I’d be happy with just those three, maybe four.

There was, however, one minor benefit to xiaolin kung fu I discovered: Weight distribution.

A gravity child had perfect balance. Always. We literally had an organic gyroscope embedded in our skulls. Because of this, it didn’t matter how I distributed my weight distribution; I always landed on my feet, no different than a cat.

I hadn’t realized, but I’d been shifting my weight in minute ways with each adjustment to my loadout. My center of gravity changed, and so my form suffered. I compensated intuitively thanks to my internal biomass gyroscope, but compensation did not equate to optimization.

It was only when viewed through the lens of a martial arts master that I realized my flaws. By integrating some simple adjustments, such as when to inhale and exhale mid-stunt, I learned to make the transitions between each movement smoother. My “fangs” were a little more fluid now, a simple quality of life change that I was happy to adopt.

After dinner, I went back to meditating while Sabah poked her head in at the hospital as Maven. The city hadn’t seen any parahuman violence, but that didn’t mean Brockton didn’t have more than its share of injuries.

She also said something about wanting to build a few things from Jack Spicer’s tech tree. The show definitely focused on the wu, but he was the self-professed Evil Boy Genius. And, in all fairness, he did live up to that title.

X

2011, January 16: Brockton Bay, NH, USA

I was on patrol to clear my head and get some fresh air. The Eye of Dashi was about a third of the way to completion. I figured that at this rate, I’d finish sometime Monday.

Hopefully, once I finished and could use the Eye to power the alkahestry circle, it’d also solve the energy conversion issue I’d been having. Then, I could make this a passive process and let the shen gong wu help make other wu for me.

Some were simple, like the Third Arm Sash. I could probably make that one in a day or two even without the Eye. Others had serious conceptual implications that I wasn’t sure I fully grasped even with Dash’s archive in my head. The Yin-Yang Yoyos came to mind as a pair I’d never bring to the light of day.

As I skated around the city, I heard someone call out to me. “Creed, Creed!”

I descended to find a boy who’d been hanging out with friends at a park. His friends were tossing a basketball around but he sat on the side, one foot held in a cast. They looked like they were in middle school.

“Yes? What’s up?” I asked, though I could guess. Amy still got the occasional request out in the wild, even years after she’d made her policy clear.

“You’re a hero now, right?”

“Right. But if you want that foot healed, you really should go to the hospital, not flag me down when I’m on patrol.”

“Why? You don’t go to the hospital. What’s with that? Didn’t you say on PHO that you’d pop in?”

“I did,” I admitted. “Unfortunately, there are projects that I can’t get away from.”

“Can’t or won’t? What? Are you making some kind of death laser?”

“I wish, kid. Lasers are easy. Make a prism to focus light. Add a strong enough  esoteric energy source. Calibrate the right frequency until stable.” I took out my new gun. It looked a lot like my Walker Pistol, just with rotating cylinders of energy cell types rather than bullets. “This is the Composite Variable Energy Pistol. It shoots five different flavors of ‘laser.’”

“What other kind of laser is there?” one of his friends asked. They’d stopped their pickup game when I arrived. “It’s like plasma, ain’t it?”

“I have the standard plasma pulse, freeze ray, electricity, nova cannon, and something else I’m keeping under wraps,” I told them. The shrink ray was best used when no one knew I had one.

“Aww, why can’t you tell us? I bet it’s something super dangerous.”

“It’s not. You punching your buddy would do more damage than the last one. But, again, as much as I’d like to visit the hospital more often, I haven’t been able to.”

“W-Well, can you still fix my foot?” the first kid asked.

“Depends…”

He dug around in his pocket and pulled out a crumpled ten dollar bill. “Uh… This is all I’ve got.”

“No, not that. I don’t need your pocket change. I mean that unlike Panacea and Maven, I can’t see biology. They can touch you and instantly know what’s wrong with you. In my case, I have a big, complicated scanner called the Pledge Regalia that does this for me.” Well, at the moment, it looked more like an electric guitar than a scanner, but I still hadn’t brought it with me.

“Oh, so you can’t fix my foot?”

“I didn’t say that. Is this a broken bone or a bad sprain? Nothing more complicated than a torn tendon, right?”

“Uh… I think? I broke it when I was skateboarding.”

“Luke slammed his shin onto a park bench like a spaz,” his friend chimed in.

“Shut the fuck up, Mike!” Luke shouted, face flushing red.

“Good, that’s good,” I said, forestalling an argument. “You should thank your friend. You wouldn’t lie to a doctor about how you got hurt, right? Same thing. The more I know, the easier it is to help you.”

“Wait, you can fix this still?”

“Yeah, a broken leg is easy enough. If it’s more complicated, I need the scanner or a medical report. It’s why calling me out while on patrol isn’t always going to be helpful. I don’t mind helping out in this case, though.”

“Sweet!”

I froze his cast and shattered it so I could get a good look. Kids being kids, they made exaggerated complaints about the smell. It wasn’t that bad, definitely much better than the blood and piss and shit in Damascus.

Making sure I had on the right glove, I held his leg and disconnected the nerves to spare him some discomfort. I then made small, piecemeal changes. It did look like a clean break, but I wasn’t sure I trusted the kids’ diagnosis. This way, I could do a quick checkup after each step to make sure everything was working right.

Fifteen minutes later, I was off. Technically, I wasn’t supposed to do that. Minors weren’t legally able to give consent but I found it hard to care. It was a nice chance to cultivate positive karma and it wasn’t as if I was a Protectorate hero anyway.

I moved on. Over the next hour, I stopped a gas station robbery and kept someone from being dragged off and drugged by a Merchant. Each time, I waited for the cops and gave them my number so SAINT could provide my helmet cam footage upon request.

I was about to return to my base so I could work on the Eye again when I saw Aegis fly by above me. Curious, I skated along behind him. 

“Hello, Aegis,” I called. “What’s up?”

“Creed? Oh, fuck,” he swore under his breath.

“Rude. I heard that.”

“Ah… You don’t have your fart gun, do you?”

“It’s in my dimensional pocket. Oh, and I’ve made fart rounds, too. They’re .50 cal cylinders filled with enough compressed gas to make an elephant regret breathing. Why? May I interest you in the Geneva Checklist?”

“God, that really was a war crime,” he shuddered. “Circus still flinches when anyone makes a farting sound near her, you know.”

I shrugged unrepentantly. “She pulled out the gas weapons first.”

“There are rules, Creed.”

“Is ‘No fart guns,’ one of them? I don’t recall.”

“It should be.”

“So, what’s up? Why the rush?” He was flying fairly quickly towards a suburb.

“Gallant and Clockblocker are taking on Uber and Leet,” he responded, shooting me a glare of annoyance. “Those two idiots are robbing a Jiffy Lube because someone announced a grand prix.”

“In my defense, I got approval from the only authority figure I recognize. Besides, the race works out nicely for our plans.”

And, it did. I hadn’t planned it this way. I hadn’t told anyone about a course yet because I figured it should be a surprise for everyone, Sabah included.

But now, I had Xiaolin Showdown. It was… oddly perfect.

“And those are?”

“Confidential. Obviously, keeping secrets is part of my creed.”

“Of course it is. We'll talk about this later.”

We arrived. Sure enough, I saw the pair of video game-themed streamers duking it out with Aegis’ teammates.

I didn’t recognize the game they were supposed to be “advertising.” At first, I thought it was God of War because Uber was shirtless, with a leather strap around one shoulder. He had a pair of curved swords connected by a chain. They glowed orange with “ancient script,” which I was pretty sure were random letters of the Thai alphabet. That couldn’t be it though. Leet was in full-on power armor that reminded me of Trainwreck.

He was wearing a rusty, bulbous diving suit that looked like something out of Bioshock. It made him taller, about eight feet total with his domed helmet, and came with a rocket claw that was tethered to the suit’s wrist. His other wrist had a harpoon gun that crackled with electricity. 

On his back, he had a giant, copper cylinder I was pretty sure was supposed to be an oxygen tank. Except, as I watched, he crammed random car parts into it. Its top opened in an eye-watering distortion of physics to swallow parts that were far too large for the container. So, some kind of hammerspace bag like mine.

There must have been a Bet-only game that I didn't know about, or maybe they were cramming two series into one heist. Either way, they were better equipped than normal.

All around, I saw a group of minions in various states of “barbaric” undress similar to Uber’s. Lots of leather. Lots of metal spikes. They wielded primitive-looking clubs that nonetheless crackled with electricity and were grabbing everything that wasn’t nailed down.

Clockblocker tried to touch Leet’s rocket claw to freeze him in place, but Leet withdrew it too quickly. Leet retaliated with a shot from his harpoon that the Ward barely dodged. Judging by the way the harpoon crackled, it’d knock Clock out a lot longer than his power would affect Leet.

Still, at least Leet and Clock were in a stalemate. Gallant had no way of taking down Uber and it showed. Gallant’s emoti-beams weren’t fast enough to do much to the combat thinker and Uber could break the boy over his knee even without whatever those swords did. He had no choice but to run from the sword-wielding villain like a pig fleeing the butcher.

Aegis saw this and dove in with a shout. He went for a classic, Superman-esque double-fisted punch.

Uber saw him coming. Whatever else could be said about the cosplaying weeb, he had the skill to match his various characters. He used the chain between his swords like a lasso and wrapped around one of Aegis’ arms as he flew by. Then, he spun and redirected Aegis’ flight directly into the pavement, much as I’d done when we first clashed.

I considered what to do. Uber and Leet were robbing a Jiffy Lube, an auto repair shop, because I challenged them to a race. No doubt that Leet planned to make a supercar with this, and in only six days. It was a tall order for anyone, tinker or not.

I didn’t want them arrested, at least not yet. The race was meant to be a distraction while I spread the Mimic Network across the city and reached out to Dinah. It’d also give me a chance to test something very important that might play a role later.

And, truthfully, I just plain wanted the race. It sounded hilarious, a relatively low stakes encounter between heroes and villains with minimal collateral damage. It’d be nice if it helped set the tone for Brockton Bay’s hero-villain dynamics in the future, but I wasn’t terribly concerned about that. As Amy said, not everything needed a deep, profound reason.

That said, I was a hero. I at least needed to make a token effort. And it wasn’t like I’d shed any tears if they got themselves locked up before the race, either.

I followed Aegis down towards Uber. I considered freezing Leet in a small iceberg but decided against it. Leet and the minions were the ones stealing, and he was likely the one with whatever getaway gadget they planned to use, so I’d give Uber the chance to buy them time like he clearly was supposed to. That seemed like a fair compromise to me.

I aimed a kick towards the villain, who caught Crown Chimera on the flat of one shortsword. He parried perfectly, redirecting the force to his left. Simultaneously, his other sword lashed out towards my throat, noticeably more aggressive than he’d been with Gallant.

I appreciated it. He was treating me with the same respect he gave to Aegis, the flying brute. It was an unspoken acknowledgement and I found it stroked my ego just right.

“What the fuck, Creed?” he shouted in alarm as I flipped away from his retaliatory strike. “Why are you attacking us?”

“You’re robbing a store,” I replied dryly. “What do you mean, why?”

“You son of a bitch! You’re why we’re doing this in the first place!”

“Don’t use me as an excuse to do dumb shit; there are ways to get parts without robbing an auto shop.”

“You started a race, asshole!”

“That’s that and this is this. I promised not to arrest you during the race. How you go about gathering materials will obviously result in the appropriate response.”

“Fuck you! Your stupid race is why we’re here! You should be helping us get away!”

He swung his swords in crossing arcs. The “runes” glowed orange and formed blades of fire that careened towards me. I wondered how a Shard squared the obvious “magic” weapons with their understanding of physics, probably something about condensing gases in preset dimensional layers.

I laughed and curled my torso in the air. The sudden motion changed my center of gravity and vector, a classic “Cheetah Leaping Tree” according to Omi. Not that cheetahs usually did much pouncing from trees… and I certainly didn’t know of any trees that leapt over cheetahs…

Monks were not zoologists. Or good at English.

I ignored the oddities of magic kung fu nomenclature and continued my attack. Like a big cat, I twisted and pounced in a single motion. This let me bring my foot down with enough centrifugal force to crush boulders.

My Crush Claw exploded against Uber’s slashes, erupting in a cloud of steam and force that launched us both away. I spread out my arms and declared grandiosely. “Then come, Uber! Show me the strength of your resolve! Fight me!”

He growled and charged me. Gallant tried to shoot him in the back, hopefully with something debilitating like depression or delirium. If I remembered right, he was the guy who decided shooting Bitch with rage was a good idea in canon. I liked Dean, he was a bro, but I didn’t have much faith in his combat-intelligence.

Either way, I never got to find out. Two of the barbarian-esque mooks tackled him to the ground. Their electrified clubs smacked into the boy’s armor. And while I had no doubt Armsmaster could make a shockproof hardsuit, he clearly hadn’t bothered with Gallant’s.

The Ward yelped in pain as the two continued to shock him intermittently. So long as they stuck around, he was out of the fight. That left Aegis free to assist Clockblocker against Leet.

Aegis, freshly recovered from getting slammed into the pavement, flew towards the supernerd, but Leet’s boots glowed with an eerie navy-blue light. He then floated into the air as if we were underwater. Aegis’s punch seemed to lose momentum as he approached, much as if he’d suddenly been plunged underwater.

Leet’s armor held against the brute and the tinker was rotated by the momentum, nudged along on the “waves” of his gadget. He used that chance to grab something else with his retractable claw. This time, a stereo system. I was honestly curious to see what he’d turn it into by Saturday.

Clock got the bright idea to set obstacles in his path. He picked up a pile of mops and umbrellas being sold in one corner and pointed them vertically before freezing them in the air. He wasn’t very fast, but then again, neither was Leet.

I ducked as Uber’s sword cut through where my neck had been. Uber was a great benchmark in my mind. He wasn’t just a joke villain. He was, quite literally, the best a human could be in this world.

Granted, only one thing at a time, but his power could be a great way to see where I stood. No guns or Pokemon moves, just my suit’s basic enhancements and Crown Chimera’s movements. If he could proc my shield, I’d consider it my loss.

We began to trade blows. Uber was fast, far faster than I’d ever expected from a “normal” human. No, that wasn’t quite right. It wasn’t that he was faster than me; he was perfectly efficient to the point that it scared me.

Everything he did was optimal, or as optimized as a pair of nunchuck-swords could possibly be. Each cut was executed with perfect body alignment. He started at the feet and leveraged his greater height and weight to deliver cuts that came fast and sharp.

His swords glowed red, amplifying each strike with heat and kinetic energy so that I could feel them even through the raid suit. I remembered Leet. He could make anything, but only once. The more similar each creation was to something he’d made before, the more likely it was to misfire or malfunction. He learned this a little too late, and scrambled for different iterations of video game tech that could keep him effective.

I couldn’t remember if he’d ever made what amounted to enchanted weapons before. He usually leaned into sci-fi, or things that could loosely be called science. Which meant that I was likely seeing what his perfect, first iteration tech could be like. Uber wouldn’t be cutting through my shields and raid suit anytime soon, but I was impressed, both with Uber’s skill and Leet’s tech.

I ducked low and darted in. That chain that connected his two hilts should have gotten in the way. I did manage two swift jabs to his body, but he let go of one sword and used the chain to wrap around my arm, yanking me aside. That same pulling motion led perfectly into a rising knee into my floating rib.

I allowed myself to collapse around his knee and roll forward, below a followup swing. As I sprang up, I twisted and launched a kick up from behind and below his guard.

The unexpected strike caught Uber off guard and he clutched his kidney in pain. He took a knee as he gasped to catch his breath.

That actually threw me off; I hadn’t expected him to go down that easily. Sure, I blended muay thai and capoeira, but it wasn’t as if I was a master of either. And while I was stronger and faster in my raid suit, he’d been keeping up with me well enough a second ago.

He did recover quickly for someone who just got kicked with boots made of seastone. Snarling, he thumbed a switch near the edge of his swords and came at me. Fighting Uber like this, in a martial arts duel, was weird. He would strike with perfection, only to stumble against the unexpected or move in a way that reminded me of children play-fighting with towel-capes wrapped around their necks. 

It was his power. I realized now that I’d overestimated him somewhat. He could be perfect at something, but he didn’t get the associated skills that came with years of practice and gradual, iterative improvements. Each attack was mechanically flawless, but he lacked the experience, awareness, or reaction time to respond when I did something unexpected with the raid suit.

I hopped back as he used one sword to swing the other like a flail. It was a great way to make distance, kind of like the world’s most dangerous nunchucks. Such an unorthodox weapon and fighting style seemed to translate well for his power.

“Uber, abyss gate in four!” Leet called. Even his tech was named after things inside video games.

I looked around and found that Clock had somehow managed to freeze Aegis. With Gallant still weighed down by mooks, he didn’t have much chance against power armor by himself and he was being herded away with the mooks’ electrified clubs.

Uber didn’t acknowledge his partner but disengaged anyway. He spun his red-hot swords to keep me away and I realized my little fun time was over.

I snapped my two pistols to my hands and took aim. I’d already loaded both with the goop and freeze ray respectively. If they got away, fine. If they didn’t, that was also fine. Shells of fast-hardening goop and bolts of blue filled the air.

Uber ducked under the freeze ray and used the free-flying end of his silly swords to cut a goop shell mid-flight. It was genuinely impressive, the kind of bullshit, action movie feat that just had to be Shard-assisted.

The joke was on him, though. The shell exploded and showered his arm in an expanding gel. It wasn’t flammable so it didn’t catch from his swords or anything, but it suddenly weighed down his arm. The sword, still spinning, whipped around his torso and he smacked himself with its guard.

He stumbled with a curse, but I was kept from following through. Many of the mooks pulled something off their clubs and threw them at me. At the same time, Leet’s oversized harpoon shot towards me.

I couldn’t dodge all of them so I hunkered down behind my shield to avoid being electrocuted. A staccato of crackles rang out as the improvised grenades and harpoon met my shield. On my HUD, I saw the force field ticking down.

Finally, Uber reached his partner. He and the mooks gathered around Leet. Then, the floor rippled like a whirlpool. With a final, victorious cackle, Leet and his team sank into the “waves.”

I smiled. A promise was a promise, even if in my own mind. Leet had found a second wind. I was looking forward to our race.

Author’s Note

I low-key loved Xiaolin Showdown’s fighting move names. Really, I love shows that strike a nice balance between stupid humor and good storytelling. A part of it is definitely the rose-tinted goggles, but XS ticks all the right boxes for me.

No, I’m not telling you what Bryce’s favored wu are. No, they are not the Golden Tiger Claw, Wuya’s puzzlebox, or the Lunar Locket (as hilariously world-ending as that one is). This is one of those “I have a plan” moments.

And yeah, as funny as karma-swapping the Simurgh via the yoyos would be, no. Not doing it. Maybe for an omake or something. It’s another one of those “too many implications” things I don’t want to touch. It only worked in XS because the show’s so cracky most of the time.

Animal Fact: The more I learn about sunfish, the more I realize that they’re the koalas of the ocean. Their value as a species is highly suspect.

To start, like koalas, they are smooth-brained. Their brain size is also miniscule compared to their bodies (about the size of a walnut). They literally are incapable of anything resembling higher brain functions. The sunfish also has a relatively thin spine, so you know those neurons aren’t doing too much work.

Their defense mechanism is being too disgusting to eat. Not only are they riddled with parasites, they do not have fish scales. Instead, their skin is rubbery and coated in a jelly-like substance that is unappetizing to most predators. Occasionally, they flip on their sides on the surface. This allows birds to peck at their bodies for parasites while fish do the same below. 

Oh, and their organs. Some predators do eat the organs, like sea lions. That said, their organs are small and near the center of their bodies. This is why you can see sunfish with huge chunks missing from their bodies, yet seemingly swimming along fine: Their vitals are unhurt.

Sometimes, sea lions will eat a sunfish’s organs, then find the rest of it too disgusting to bother with. They will then play with the sunfish carcass, flipping it between themselves like a frisbee.

Sunfish compensate for their lack of… everything… by having a massive brood size, up to 300 million per female each spawning season. The vast majority will not make it to adolescence, never mind adulthood. But the ones that do see the biggest growth spurt among vertebrates, from .1 g as a larvae to 2,000 kg as adults. That’s like a human infant growing to the size of an aircraft carrier.