Soma's Cloudbank

The least favourite part of Soma's training list. Easily.

But at this point, Yggdra really didn't give him a choice.

"How could you be so fragile?! You're covered in armor! It shouldn't take one measly mumpy-bump to crumple it like foil! This is pathetic!" Saying that, she began to lob rocks, which he occasionally got pelted by, but mostly dodged. 

Soma really didn't want to admit she had a point! Getting hit hurt, right? Then doesn't it make sense that you avoid it, not stand in the middle of it and get hurt?! What do you mean, getting hurt trains things up?! That doesn't make sense!

The following argument spanned days. Surprisingly, Soma stood his ground. In a way, he felt that he gained some mental defense out of it! Yggdra then promptly smacked him out of it, frustrated to boiling point.

"If you hate getting hit so much, then figure out a way to improve your defense without getting hit, then! I'm done, and not helping you!"

Saying that, she stormed off. Soma, on the other hand, was left deep in thought. That would be right, wouldn't it? If his armor plates were too weak--

Perhaps he could forge them to be stronger? Looking at the new ferrowood plants and their unique capability of being malleable, his visor gleamed...

Remember when Soma was thinking about ferrowood and how to forge them? It... didn't go so well.

Sure, the experiment worked! The armor plate that was coated became both flexible and also tough! It was hard to prevent it from getting warped or cracked at first, but Soma had begun to experiment with interlocking plates and meshes, as well as gel coatings, and had come up with several solutions. Whether it was coating only the upper layer with interlocking plates and leaving the bottom malleable, or meshing up everything and giving the plates the ability to compress, Soma thought he'd had it solved.

So, he'd happily poured it over himself and decides to call it a day. Good, right? No, wrong.

You see, he'd forgotten to take into account the WEIGHT of the mixture, and here he is, as immobile as a rock, stuck to the earth, with a bumbling Terreden slowly lumbering towards him because wow he must smell like a clod of ferrowoody planty dirt right now.

Scrabbling, he tries to rise up and evade, but no, the creature continues to approach. He can only watch as the Terreden stoops down, ready to take a big, juicy chunk out of him...

With a grievous effort, he whacks it in the pink nose.

The Terreden rears back in surprise, kicking out! Armor plates screech in protest and crumple as Soma is sent rocketing away, rolling and bumping into boulders as he skids across the ground. 

"...Ow! Owwwww! Why..."
 
Whining, he lays down, defeated. Tearing up, he bemoans his fate and accepts it. The road to being a successful chemist is a long and hard one, after all. 

Oh well. At least-- the Terreden is gone. There's no longer any danger of death by Terreden Chow. 

The favourite part of Soma's training list-- uncontested. He doesn't quite like the feeling of exhaustion, usually. He just feels content when he's spent a full day working on his projects, and flying is the odd one out in that it's the only physically taxing activity which he feels the same for.

At first, he'd been glad to hole up in the thermal springs, being isolated and away from everything else, his instincts telling him that it was the way to remain safe as a smaller blobling. When he'd been forced out by Themis, oh, he'd been mad.

But now, he's actually kind of grateful for the experience. You see, if Themis hadn't chased him out from his previous hideout, he'd never have had the idea to make an atelier in the Onyxia sanctuary. And of course, if he hadn't been there early enough, he wouldn't have been able to secure a top floor with a place for a blobling to launch themselves out to the sky.

That was when Soma had realized that he didn't like being isolated-- he just liked to be free. Being able to watch people move by below made him... content. It's not like he felt prideful about status or anything-- it was just, the feeling of distance that pleased him.

That was when he'd decided to remodel the floor plans and focus on spaciousness as a theme, fitting in mirrors and giant glass panels, and he'd felt more content and ever-- daresay even safe. He liked this.

That was when he'd known that his hypothesis had been correct.

Soma likes the top area the most, simply because it leads to the sky. The big, open sky.

In the sky itself, there was nothing to hold him. Without true obstacles, he'd felt freer than ever. But flying in a straight line could only get you so much! Eventually, he began to do tricks, and realized that he liked challenging himself when there was no harm like this. Soon, he began to seek out maneuvers that challenged him further and further, and realized he was wrong.

Obstacles? Of course there were obstacles! Weren't the clouds perfect obstacles? Wasn't altitude limits perfect obstacles? He sent himself spinning through a lump of clouds, grinning as they reshaped themselves into a ring from his wake. He could make as many as he wanted here, and do what he liked here.

This was bliss. He spun, weaved, danced through the clouds and sky, playing with the stars as hopscotch and clouds as lava. When he grew tired, he hovered and left himself in a slow glide, rising up on warm thermals.

Training?

This wasn't training. This was fun-- Soma thought, smiling from ear to ear.

After achieving maximum velocity, the next task, quite obviously-- was to further increase his speed in close quarters. Sure, going faster helps, but Soma doesn't think it'd help that much if he hit things.

Hitting things is painful. Also, things hitting him is painful. So this time, he's taken a trip down to Yggdra's, who rolls her eyes as soon as he explains his request. "Well, this I can actually help you with. You do like dodging things so much." She scoffs.

She leads him to a pen with a wicked-looking Carnivian leering at him just inside.

Yggdra answers Soma's startled look with a smirk. "This is what happens when a Carnivian's tasted blood. It's claws get tipped with diamond, and it becomes reaaaal nasty. I can't keep her with the others-- she'll rip anything apart that gets close enough to her feet."

"Be careful there. Those legs lash out like springs."

swip

Soma pales as he barely dodges the feet-swipe it's taken at his head. Point taken, he thinks. He's not even in the gates, yet!

He leaps them, bouncing on his feet lightly as he considers the Carnivian. The other stalks, head cocked, wings fluttering with deadly grace. The two circle each other.

The carnivian attacks. In a blur, it flies towards him, hop-skipping with its wings flapping to give it speed, feet sprung out to claw at him. The fence behind him cracks, a visible crater in the hardened mud resulting. But it's not done, as a long gash appears in the mud after, the carnivian pivoting to swipe at his head once again. It drags its feet in a deadly crescent, hopping once with its other foot, and then the claws lash out again in a vicious stab.

Soma can't help but gulp as he jerks his body around with the field he's barely learned exists. He's never been gladder to figure out that the vents and thrusters on his torso work both ways, or he'd be skewered three-for-three.

What even does Yggdra feed this thing?! Every movement it has is full of malice. At the same time, however, he can't help but realize Yggdra's wisdom-- it fights with speed, in bursts, and--

Soma lashes out with a kick with a tipped foot after a duck, springing out at the Carnivian in a golden flash. Sparks fly. The bird stumbles back, visibly ruffled.

--Has nearly the same weapons he does. In a way, their fighting styles would be similar, and so would their mobility be. The Carnivian's simply just way more offensive than he is.

A wise choice, if he was to learn.

The next step, really, happens next. Surprisingly, Yggdra's actually pretty happy about Soma's progress in dodging. The Carnivian lies on the other side of the fence, face down, completely exhausted. Soma looks at it with a great deal of pity. He'd tried to not hit it too hard, so it's mostly just out of energy.

"Maybe you could be useful after all." Yggdra had noted. "Still gotta learn how to take a hit, but I'm impressed. Still, there's a lot of things out there, and learning how to dodge all of them needs you to learn them."

She smiles, pointing a wing at the back. "Good thing I have most of them right here."

She was right. Soma hadn't considered dodging water, and he learns this firsthand with the Canimu and Smuck that Yggdra throws at him. How she'd managed to even provoke the canimu into doing so, he's not even sure how she did, but being splashed in the face, with that being used as cover to land a punishing smack to his neck had been a learning experience. Not to mention the smuck's gummy and slowing effects, which had been particularly effective against standard thruster maneuvers. Yggdra had informed him after that debacle that the best way was to flare up at once and burn off all the goo off him.

He'd managed after some coaching. Having many engines helped for it, and Soma had even gotten some ideas for his next evolution out of it after Yggdra had brainstormed with him about a central core that he could overclock.

Then, she'd gotten him to try out the rest of the creatures. Soma's stridor was too lazy to attack him, but she'd given him a tour of the Sourglow swamps to find a feral one.

Boy, was that a trip. Suddenly, he'd realized why the rest of her creatures were so... violent. The feral bloblings harassed them to no end, and so either Yggdra or her own livestock would have to be hardy to live in the sourglow swamps. That was when Soma learned one new thing-- how to defend himself against multiple attackers.

You see, Yggdra's livestock had learned an important lesson: that which is dangerous is in numbers, and therefore had promptly learned to gang up on an aggressor. Soma was chased around the fence several times before he learned how to slowly evade their multitude of fang, claw, and bite.

And then feral bloblings, which had been attracted to the furor joined in. Quite quickly, the whole thing had descended into a bloodbath, and Soma now found himself on the side of Yggdra's animals. Yggdra, naturally, had also joined in, and that was when Soma learned how to dodge large, blazing streams of fire alongside water.

Hey, on the good side, it looks as if Yggdra's livestock had all learned that lesson! And surprisingly, they all seemed to be on better terms with him once the bloblings were repelled.

Soma supposes that being in battle does foster ties, after all.

Still, it worries him, these ferals. He was right to shore up on his training.

Soma's next thing to do on his to-do is slightly less fun than free-running or free-flying. Still, he thinks that he can make it fun, since technically it would be more of the same. This time, it's balancing exercises!

Soma actually doesn't weigh all that much, despite the armor he's taken on. Sure, it'd had gotten heavier with the addition of more defense, but perhaps it was Soma's wishes during evolution, or his prior knowledge from the world before that lead him to remember vague things about balance and structure. He's sure he didn't get any of the specifics right, but he does remember the hollowbone lung structure that birds had-- it was so unique he couldn't help but remember it.

It's also why he's seriously considering it for his next evolution. It turns out not only fish have gills.

That's what he thinks-- only to fall over in surprise as he accidentally overbalances off the rock he's trying to perch on. Ow.

Well, perhaps that's item number two-- figuring out how to fall gracefully. He knows that rolling really helps disperse impact, so he should try that! He has sloped armor plates and a tail, he can roll up like an-- ow! Alright, perhaps it might take some effort to handle.

Huffing with annoyance, Soma hoists himself back up on the rock, trying to balance with his tail. When he's too bruised and frustrated to continue, he instead practices by balancing in the air, with imaginary perches and cliffs. He tries this out with the clouds in particular, where he can see how he disturbs the air with his movement. He tries to replicate the trails of vapor they leave behind, controlling the force he exerts.

Yggdra's the one who said this. She said something about how hitting things was more fun than trying to be hit by things. Balance is all well and good, and it'd helped out work out kinks in his movement after getting his speed up to-- well, speed (heh), but there's only so much improvement he can gain over his limbs, because he's so used to them anyway. It's not like he can prevent himself from exercising his limbs when he flies, or walks, or anything else, and even the lost balance from getting heavier is quickly going away.

So now is practice with... hitting things. He's trying it out in the most fun way he knows: dropping things from a height, then racing them and trying to hit them. He also has some balloons for this, which he's filled with hot air (and attached a small tray of kindling underneath). Unfortunately, that one doesn't go too well, so he ends up with a basket of paper planes instead.

This... this goes well. Really well, in fact. The only issue might be littering? But it's not like anyone would find them in the same place anyway!

Either way, he scoots all the way up into the troposphere, all the way into the mesosphere, and begins throwing planes. Then with a whoop, he dives after them, over and over again, trying to hit them with his tail, with his wing-blades, claws, and feet. Catching air to do all those maneuvers makes him happy, and he can bet he looks hecka cool while doing them, too.

He begins the next batch by going higher, and higher, reaching the lower stratosphere. Here, the airplanes glide smoothly, and Soma finds the layer oddly peaceful. He catches the planes with ease, and realises that maybe he should try the balloons here.

They strangely enough-- work! Where the planes would dip because of lack of air, the balloons continue to rise. Curious, Soma follows them, until they level out and begin to fall again. Then, he swipes them out of the air with whatever he can. He even jokingly begins to throw planes and aim for the falling balloons...

He's having way too much fun with this. Maybe.

He should probably come another time with rocks instead-- then he could make an excuse of improving his accuracy by rock-throwing. Yeah.