Doi has no choice but to spend all her time dodging. They refuse to use any throws that can be blocked or that can leave them open to her scoring a hit on them, even if that means they have no chance to gain points from her. They don’t care about that. They only want to prevent her from earning any points until she lashes out in frustration and does something rash or injures herself.
When Doi sees that her tactics aren’t working, she begins doing one real riven crane split jump after another, aiming directly for the attackers’ throats to try to force them into engaging her in earnest. The girls around me gasp, not only because of Doi’s savagery, but also because everyone knows that the real riven crane split jump can only be done 608 times in one’s lifetime before the knee bearing the force of the landing is destroyed forever. She’s wildly wasting jumps over and over again, as if we have as many riven crane split jumps in us as words.
Suki and the other attackers still don’t engage her properly and continue throwing fans only in conservative, unblockable formations. The irritation is clear on Doi’s face. She still hasn’t scored any points. What good is a towering Multiplier if you don’t score any points to multiply?
Finally, Doi throws her fan at the attackers. While the fan whips through the air, slicing the billowing clouds like egg custard, she races toward the girls. They brace for her blows in a ten-faceted tortoise wall, but she doesn’t strike them. She skates straight at two of her opponents. As she nears them, she does a strange twisting single-toe flip that I’ve never seen before. She flies up over two of the girls, bunching their lengths of hair together with one hand as she rises. As she pulls their hair taut, her flying fan returns on its arc and slices through the girls’ hair.
Everyone screams. I don’t know if this is an illegal move, but for the House of Flowering Blossom girls, just touching another girl’s hair without permission, much less amputating it, would be a vicious and open declaration of war.
The combat comes alive. Suddenly, the girls are flying at Doi from ten sides, skates, closed fans, and spinning open fans churning like a storm of knives around her. We all scream with excitement as we watch Doi block and dodge and pull and throw and parry and weave, all while stretching the clouds into ribbons and balls that she whips into the faces of her opponents.
The attackers realize that Doi has blocked every one of their strikes and that, during their attack, they have just given her at least eighty points to be multiplied. Suki nods to them to assume a new formation. They skate away and form a ring around Doi.
The girls open their fans, but they don’t throw them. Instead, they all leap up and bring their fans down hard on the pearl. The rush of air goes racing across the pearl, blowing the cloud cover away, tightening in a circle that collides at Doi. The gust shoots straight up her figure, lifting her top pearlsilk garment into the air. Suki leaps to snatch it and flings it over the mannequins ringing the Radial of Mighty Tranquility into the sea. Hateful, vindictive girls! If they can’t beat Doi, they want to humiliate her.
It’s like I’m watching that horrible dream where for no reason, I’m at school naked in front of everyone, except it’s really happening to Doi, and it’s not a dream; it’s happening before my eyes, and it’s happening because she missed the third Motivation, and she missed the third Motivation because she protected me against Suki, and she protected me against Suki because I blew Suki’s pearlflute and lied about it. I want to curl into a ball. I’m unable to watch, unable to turn away.
The ten girls’ fans have swept away all the clouds from the arena. Doi’s standing there, covering her exposed torso with one arm.
The attackers launch their fans at her. The girls throw them at an angle so that the fans don’t arc back. Instead, they travel at twice the speed in a straight line for the girls across the ring to catch and then throw back. The attackers launch salvo after salvo of these throws at Doi. She fields them valiantly, but one of her fans is knocked out of her hand, and it flies off to impale itself in one of the mannequins ringing the court. She’s now fighting with one fan while desperately trying to cover herself with her other arm. I can’t help but fold my own arms across my chest in horror and sympathy.
Then Doi stops resisting. With a stony expression, she takes her one fan in both hands, and from that moment onward, she doesn’t bother covering herself up. She’s completely vulnerable, but her wu liu form is confident. She claps one open palm on top of the other, with the spread fan pressed between them. She spins sixteen and a half rotations and releases the fan straight at Suki.
Suki is prepared for it and is already coming out of her own sixteenth and a half rotation when she receives the blade. They’re engaging in the thousand-tiered pagoda to heaven challenge.
Suki receives the spinning fan but doesn’t stop it. She meets it at the exact speed and arc and, instead of disrupting that force, continues it, whipping it back at Doi but adding the accumulated Chi of her own sixteen and a half rotations, which Doi returns and sends flying back at Suki even faster. The other girls step
