She continued spraying, resisting the impulse to venture towards the alluring empty spaces, and keeping a watchful eye on the direction the clouds were rolling towards. Some of them were lolling around, being drawn towards the ebb of gravity, while others remained stagnant. Beyond those, it was difficult to tell whether there was a clear path ahead or not.
The only way to tell was to stand in the middle of a relatively stable Gravity Zone, and hope that the spray ahead didn’t wind up crushing you. In essence, she was standing in the middle of a foggy spot, and releasing more fog in the hopes that the fog ahead would stay foggy, and not clear up. This system which had seemed so promising at first now showed some glaring faults.
To make matters worse, her grip on her can was beginning to loosen given the amount of moisture gathering around her. And soon, the can became too slippery to get a direct hold, and it fell out of her hands. She tried to catch it before it hit the ground, but the resulting fumble from her arms knocked it towards one of the danger spots. In desperation, she kicked it away, and watched in horror as the cylinder rapidly made its way through multiple Gravity Zones. She tried to catch where the can was going, but it was moving too fast for her to see, let alone tell which spots were dangerous or not. Ultimately, the Weather Can’s rapid transit culminated in being ejected overhead in the open sky, where, upon reaching a mass Gravity Zone, spontaneously burst apart, expelling a vast amount of the contents within its tiny frame.
It was amazing how much was contained within such a small container. Half of the expelled fog was instantly flattened into a fine mist on the massive Gravity Zone on the ground below. The remainder kept spraying, zipping along the roller coaster of conflicting centrifugal forces, blanketing further cumulus mist onto the field, because the laws of physics hadn’t finished catching up enough to cast inertia on the can yet.
That’s what happens when you deal with Lawless Lands.
She’d only meant to use localized spray here and there, but now the zone was filled with a mixture of self-contained windswept water that blanketed the field with more clouds than ever. Some of these clouds started condensing, creating rainfalls that splashed in multiple directions at once, some downwards, but also sideways and upwards as well. It was now incredibly difficult to see anything in front of her now, and the pitter-patter of wayward raindrops wasn’t helping matters much either.
The Girl looked in her bag for something to help her, but had neglected to pack an umbrella. In her haste to leave, she had neglected to organize everything in a coherent manner, figuring she’d sort it all out later. That procrastination, like her haphazard jumping in with minimal planning, was starting to bite back at her.
Even so, an umbrella wouldn’t have been much help in this situation. The water was falling in all directions, which would’ve made it easy to get wet from wherever wasn’t being guarded. Okay, so she lost her trusty Weather-in-a-Can, but she had the fortitude to bring more than one. She rumaged around, looking for her spare, which would’ve been easy to - how much stuff was in there? Did she really need all that crap? A quick skimming of the pages ahead would suggest yes.
As if the current situation wasn’t difficult enough, the surrounding clouds made it hard to see what she was looking for. She started taking some stuff out to get to the supplies buried near the bottom. This was risky, because the swirling water was starting to make it very windy even within her current safe spot, and were in danger of being blown away. Not to mention that the ground wasn’t exactly level. While the place she was in looked like a safe spot, that was an illusion. It was subtle, but her supplies on the ground kept sliding towards the left.
So she was huddling around her bag, holding onto multiple hygiene products while ALSO holding her nose to keep the smell out. If she’d thought about it, she could’ve simplified her dilemma by wearing one of the surgical face masks currently sitting on her lap. But even all alone, she was too stubborn to ever admit she’d done anything wrong, and wasn’t going to admit defeat this early in the game.
Besides, she didn’t want to cover up her pretty face. (Which wasn’t very pretty right now) And she might need those masks later.
With the the background uncomfortably resembling her mental state, she decided to use her flashlight to get a better look. Fortunately, the batteries were working, which was some small relief, since she wasn’t entirely sure where those were either. She poked around in her bag again, when she suddenly had a thought enter her head. Experimentatively, she swung her beacon towards the direction of the Gravity Storm. Looking closer, the path of light shining through was warped across the affected areas, clearly showing where the forces of Gravity was affecting the area.
She should’ve done this in the first place! The fog and sideways rain made it doubly difficult to see clearly ahead. Before venturing further, she brought her flashlight back inside her bag for one more item.
Just having one source of light wasn’t dependable enough. With all the water flowing around, there was very real danger of being fooled by refraction. So, she brought out a laser pen to differentiate between two sources.
Now properly armed, she got up after dumping everything back inside her bag to be sorted later. One hand held the laser light, the other held the beacon. With two different light sources, she could differentiate the spatial difference between her, and avoid the massive Gravity fields that threatened to crush her. Furthermore, seeing the flattened beams of light was much easier than paying attention to the droplets of water lying squashed on the ground.
Slowly but gradually, she managed to make her way through the constantly shifting region. She had to double back a few times due to coming across several dead ends, but made faster progress compared to earlier, and the Gravity-blown clouds paradoxically helped give her some sense of where she was within the otherwise empty landscape.
Only when no light distortion showed up ahead did she allow herself to relax her guard. Of course, venturing through the Gravity Maze was no small feat - that was the easy part. The HARD part was coming up next.
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