After about five minutes of dread-filled silence, Akilah stood up.
"Alright, everyone up." Akilah dusted her clothes up and signaled an up motion with her hands.
Kai and Taro groaned.
"Your girlfriend is too strict." Taro said to Kai as he reluctantly got up.
"I'm not his girlfriend!" Akilah screamed. Taro tried to hold in his laughter.
Hendrix got up and then turned towards Vida, who was still laying down.
"Do you need me to carry you?" Hendrix put his hand out.
Vida blushed and nodded bashfully. Hendrix picked her up and put her on his back, still oblivious to the reason why Vida was so awkward.
The group made their way up to floor five.
The floor looked almost identical to the last, with some minor differences in the amount of broken cubicles and shattered windows. Then they looked up.
"Ok what the fuck is this?!" Taro looked up at an extensively high ceiling. It seemed that the next five floors were hollowed out, leaving bridges of plank wood and rudimentary ladders made of scrapped metals.
"We're supposed to climb this?" Vida asked while still hitching a ride on Hendrix's back.
"I think so." Akilah answered swiftly.
"Hold on, Vida." Hendrix held his arms out and attempted to shoot his guitar strings from his forearm, like usual. After a few seconds of silence he began to slap his arm like a dad trying to fix a static TV.
"What happened?" Vida looked over Hendrix's shoulder.
"Am I out of Spirit too?" Hendrix asked the group.
Akilah channeled her Spirit into her brain, which worked perfectly fine. She looked around the floor, noticing subtle waves of Spirit coming from outside the corners of the floor. She went over to check where they were coming from.
Akilah laid her eyes on an orb-like device hanging from a thin steel pole attached to the building. These were placed at every corner of the five story vertical drop.
"Whatever's going on with your strings, it's probably something to do with that." Akilah pointed at the orb, the rest of the group crowded around her to have a look.
"Can anyone get that to turn off?" Hendrix pointed at the device.
"Not unless you want to drop five stories. That steel beam doesn't look sturdy enough to hold a toddler." The group looked down at the tiny dots that they could make out to be Bloom and Alex, with Alex giving a thumbs up to the kids.
"Man, Milo really went all out with this plan, didn't he?" Alex held both of her thumbs up towards the fifth floor.
"Yeah. As much as he's petty towards the kids, they really do inspire him." Bloom smiled as she looked up at the kids.
"Then why does your thing work?" Kai pointed at Akilah's eyes, which had just shut off their purple light.
"Hmm." Akilah thought for a second, wiping her eyes off to try to ease the pain.
"The only difference between my Mode and Hendrix's is… His is outward?" Akilah thought she found a solution.
"Hendrix's Mode deals with manifesting outwardly. My Mode channels Spirit while keeping it inside my body. That explains why it's not weakening our Spirit flow inside our bodies." Akilah pushed her glasses up in intellectual victory. The group nodded in agreement.
"So our only option is…" Taro looked up.
"Wait… If you said it doesn't change Spirit inside our bodies, then me and Taro good?" Kai said with a smile.
"Well… Yeah I guess-" Akilah's words were interrupted by a blur of speed. Kai attempted to run up the intact windows, but failed miserably. It was so sudden that the rest of the group failed to realize what he had tried to do. Kai fell onto his behind.
"Damn it. Still not as fast as Bloom." Kai gave the floor a frustrated tap, just fast enough for no one else to notice.
Taro knew his brother too well to not see the signs of frustration. He walked over and stuck his hand out to help Kai up.
"You'll get it with time, bro." Taro helped Kai up.
"Shall we get started?" Akilah looked at the rest of the group. They nodded their heads in agreement.
"Uhm… You can put me down now." Vida whispered over Hendrix's shoulder.
"You need to rest. Just hold on." Hendrix smiled back as Vida rolled her eyes jokingly.
The group began to climb. Taro and Kai were able to keep a headstart because of their Modes. Hendrix was able to keep a close third, while Akilah kept last.
"I really should've invested my time in lifting weights." Akilah sighed as she thought over her mistakes.
"You need any help-" Kai's question was interrupted by Akilah.
"I'm fine!" Akilah rolled her eyes, continuing her slow and labored pace.
The group passed a section of rudimentary ladders, which led to the next section. This part of the vertical exercise was made of a maze of wooden planks, all very narrow.
As Hendrix climbed up the last set of ladders, Vida began to look at the tattoos on Hendrix's arms.
"I still can't believe that goof went and got this many tattoos… Now that I think about it, when did he get so muscular?" Vida thought to herself. She began to examine Hendrix's body as he climbed, before snapping herself out of it.
"C'mon Vida, what are you doing?!" Vida shook her head violently.
Vida's shaking knocked Hendrix off of his balance. The two of them swayed on the ladder as Hendrix held onto the ladder with one arm and held onto Vida with the other.
The rest of the group watched with concern, but were unable to do anything, as they were also stuck on ladders themselves.
Hendrix was able to catch his balance quickly, but the ladder continued to sway for a couple minutes after. Hendrix sighed as he turned to Vida, who was clutching onto his back much tighter than before.
"You alright?" Hendrix turned around as he began the section of wooden planks.
"Yeah, there was a fly on my face." Vida smiled through her awkward thoughts. Hendrix chuckled.
The five teens had more trouble with the plank section. They had to go slower so as to not lose their balance and fall 2 stories.
Akilah was once again in the back of the group when Taro and Kai finished the section.
"If you want I can-" Kai's words were once again interrupted.
"Shut up!" Akilah rolled her eyes again.
The last section was a mixture of the last two, some wooden planks and some scrap metal ladders.
After going through most of the physical exercise already, the group was able to get through this stage with relative ease. Once Akilah got up to the lip at the top of the section, they all sighed in exhausted relief.
"That was SO stupid." Akilah removed her glasses to wipe off the fog from her sweat.
"I do admit they lacked creativity while creating this part." The group looked towards the center of the floor they had just entered by completing the last section.
The whole floor was as dark as midnight. The windows seemed to be blocked out by metal scrap.
Akilah channeled her Spirit into her brain to see who had spoken. It took her a second, but the combination of the sarcastic voice and the Spirit flow made Akilah sure of her answer.
"Milo?!" Akilah exclaimed. The rest of the group looked in shock.
"Um, yeah. Who do you think would have made that cool ass robot? Now are you guys ready for a boss fight?!" Milo asked the group as whizzing and whirring similar to that of the robot on the fourth floor could be heard throughout the room.
Instead of the sounds coming from one spot however, the sounds were coming from multiple areas throughout the room. With her Spirited vision, Akilah was able to spot a dozen, no… Two dozen of some kind of robot, not like the one before.
"Oh god." Taro rolled his sleeves up, getting ready for the worst.
Back at the compound, Jessica sat in front of the couple that got left behind.
"You're not getting hungry?" Chase tried for the one millionth time to get Jessica to take her eyes off them.
"For the one hundredth time, I was tasked with watching over you two. You specifically, Chase. I'll take care of myself later." Jessica went back to reading the book Bloom had let her borrow.
Jessica's words didn't stand for very long. After thirty more minutes of silent repetition training for Amora and Chase, Jessica had fallen asleep in her chair.
Chase got up from his seat and waved his hand in front of Jessica, his weird version of making sure someone was asleep.
After making sure that she was indeed knocked out, Chase grinned mischievously at Amora.
"Whatever you're gonna say, no." Amora shook her head and went back to channeling her Spirit.
"C'mon, babe. I love you but I wanna see what everyone else is doing. I know I messed up the last time I used my Mode but I KNOW I'm ready now." Chase whined. He held up a fully working rifle, modeled after the rifles in a random movie he watched from Milo's stack of tapes.
Amora wanted to join the training too, but the faces on Alex and Bloom's faces if they got caught were at the forefront of her mind.
"We'll get in trouble! Don't drag me into your mischief-" Amora's words were interrupted.
"I'll pay for an extra can of apple juice tomorrow at lunch." Chase pulled his verbal trump card.
"Alright. Just don't do anything too stupid." Amora said as she got up from her seat.
Chase excitedly grabbed her hand and they made their way out of the gymnasium.