The next day, Zahid asked Peter to accompany him and his siblings to a museum downtown.
"You're always the one paying for things," Zahid told him, as they neared the entrance, "but today is on me."
"Isn't today one of those free admission days?" Peter asked.
Zahid smiled broadly. "So, how did your date go?" He asked, switching the topic.
Peter grinned involuntarily. "I think it went well. She said she'd be willing to have another one."
"What are you going to do for the second one?" Zahid asked. "I assume you have to top the first."
Peter sobered. "Shoot. You're right. What do I do?"
"You could always take her here," Zahid suggested, "and show her your extensive scientific knowledge."
"Ha, ha," he pretended to laugh.
Zahid thought a moment while Hassan, Ahmed, and Yara ran straight for the dinosaur exhibit.
"How about you start with what you like about her," he suggested. "Is it for shallow reasons like because she's pretty and popular?"
"Of course not," Peter attested. "I like how she's confident."
"You could challenge her to a competition," Zahid joked.
"I like when she smiles," Peter continued.
"Bring her to a dentist!"
"I like how she's always thinking about people in need. Oh, hey, I think I have an idea."
They both stopped in front of a fossil encased in glass.
"So what are we looking at here?" Peter asked.
"This is the Anchiornis huxelyi," Zahid answered plainly.
"You say that like I should know..."
"They used this fossil to extract the color of its feathers using a new method," he explained. "Now they're trying to find the color of other feathered dinosaurs. It revolutionized paleontology."
"Oh," Peter nodded. "And here I thought it was a rock with a picture of a bird on it."
Zahid held onto Peter's shoulder. "Repeat after me," he said, "'Welcome to Value Mart. Can I help you with anything?'"
Peter pushed him playfully, laughing. Then Peter's phone buzzed with a call from Sensei Rob.
"Hey, Sensei," he greeted, walking away from Zahid. "What's up?"
"Peter!" Rob sounded frantic. "Where are you?"
"Downtown," Peter answered. "Is everything okay?"
"I'm hurt. Really hurt. It was an asura. I need your help."
"Why didn't my deva call me?" Peter wondered aloud.
"This asura was too strong," Rob said. "I don't know if I'm going to make it. I've lost a lot of blood."
Peter pictured Sensei Rob passed out in some alley. He imagined Charlie's reaction if he died. The entire studio would be devastated and the whole town would be overrun with asuras without Rob.
"Calm down," he told Sensei, though he didn't feel calm at all. "Where are you?"
"A couple blocks away. In the alley at Thirteenth and Sunvale."
Peter excused himself from Zahid and rushed off.
His desperation gave him an idea. He centered his thoughts until he felt Anuvata's presence. Then he applied a blast of wind behind him, thrusting himself forward, faster than he could normally run. The people around him seemed shocked, but he imagined their minds would explain it away.
In his gut, he felt a sense of urgency from Anuvata. He knew he needed to have his guard up, but he blasted forward without a plan. He didn't know what to expect, but he had to protect Sensei Rob.
He arrived at the alley and looked all around. But Sensei was nowhere. Peter started panicking, wondering if the asura had come to finish him off.
Then he felt a disturbance in the wind from behind him. He dodged, just barely missing a brick that smashed into dust against a wall.
Behind him stood three people, all possessed. The first was a woman in a business suit with her hair pulled into a bun. She looked like she was about to give a presentation or fire someone.
The second person was an older man who wore a fancy suit with a handkerchief in the pocket, jewelry, and slicked silver hair.
The third person was a young man with rock star style. He wore ripped jeans and a tight sleeveless shirt. His hair was long and wild and his sunglasses looked expensive. He was holding a second brick.
In an instant, Peter remembered the trick with the phone call from the pishacha at the nursing home. He felt like an idiot for falling for the same trick twice.
"Sensei's not here, is he?" Peter realized.
The asuras laughed through their victims.
Peter's mind locked up in desperation. All three had dark auras, but none vibrated. None wanted to be free of the asuras. He had to figure out how to run away or trap them.
"Relax," the older man said in an asura's gravelly voice. "We're here with a peace offering from the boss."
"What boss?" Peter asked.
"The head honcho. Mara, the King of the Desire Realm."
Peter controlled his face, though his heartrate picked up.
Mara? he thought.
"We come to offer power," the female said. "Power, fame, and money beyond your wildest dreams. You wouldn't have to worry about doing the bidding of some boring spirit. You wouldn't have to meditate or build up good karma."
Peter had to admit that sounded kind of tempting.
"We've helped lowly people achieve their own powers countless times," the rock star guy said. "We can give you the gift of flight, withstanding fire, or psychic powers."
"Let me guess," Peter finished dryly. "All I'd have to do is fight on your side."
"No," the older man said. "You'd be free to do whatever you want with the powers. They'd be yours to command."
"Nice try," Peter said sarcastically, "but you really expect me to believe you're such Good Samaritans? I'll stick with the spirit I've got."
The rock star guy snickered. "Maybe you need a demonstration."
He slammed the brick into the concrete, shattering it and leaving a crater. He kept his hand on the pavement and the ground started shaking. At the same time, the older man breathed fire.
While Peter dodged and tried to get his bearings on the quivering alley, the businesswoman stared intently at him. To an outsider, it would have looked as if she were doing nothing, but Peter's mind was filled with forceful thoughts that threatened to take him over.
The thoughts rambled nonsensical logic:
"Up is down. Black is white. Everything is just a dream. Your mind exists, but it doesn't exist."
On an on, the thoughts prattled, driving him crazy. It was similar to hearing someone recite random digits while you tried to work a math problem. He struggled to hang on to some semblance of logic while dodging the blasts of fire in the quaking alleyway.
He held out both hands and conjured a blast of wind that knocked all three of them back. When the ground stopped shaking, giving him relief, he leapt into the air, flipping over them, and ran from the alley.
The woman, old man, and rock star guy were behind him in an instant. Peter dodged the people on the streets as he darted through the crowds, but the asuras simply held out their hands and the people were shoved aside by invisible forces.
Peter bent the wind behind him to propel him upwards as he jumped onto a trashcan, then an awning, then sprang to the narrow ledge beneath the second story windows. He ran along the ledge and the asuras followed, climbing up the building like spiders. People gasped at the sight, and Peter wondered what they would convince themselves they were seeing.
He ran out of ledge and jumped back to the sidewalk. Again, the asuras were right behind him. He ran into the street, thinking they wouldn't follow for the danger, but he was wrong.
HONK!
An oncoming car honked. Peter ran toward it and flipped into the air, using the currents to make sure he stayed airborne over it.
People nearby cheered as if it were some kind of performance.
The asuras tried to dodge the car, but the older man's body was hit. He rolled on the pavement. The car screeched to a stop and people all around rushed to help him.
Peter's heart ached. He wanted to stop and help, but the other two were on his heels. He had to think of a way to stop them, preferably without hurting anyone else.
The other two asuras caught up with Peter in a large flat field at a downtown park. The woman ran straight at him. He ran toward her at the same time, bent low, and grabbed her around the waist. Using his momentum, he flipped her backwards, up and over him. She landed a few feet away, unharmed. A crowd had gathered and was applauding the impressive move.
The rock star guy and the woman ran at Peter from opposite directions. He jumped and flipped over the woman and they ran into each other.
The crowd laughed.
They recovered quickly and ran toward him again. This time, Peter ran at the rock star guy, dropped his shoulder into the man, and flipped him up and toward the woman. A chorus of approvals rang out from the crowd.
But Peter's adrenaline and stamina were dropping. He was panting. He didn't know how much longer he could go on.
He surveyed his surroundings and saw that he had run back to the museum. The outside of the building had a series of windows, drain spouts, and ledges. He raced across the park and street, toward the building and – using Anuvata's wind – propelled himself from foothold to handhold until he reached the flat roof.
He bent over to catch his breath. He was at the tail end of his endurance.
Just as the two possessed people were scrambling over the edge, Peter used all his strength to shoot Anuvata's wind underneath him. He hovered in the air, out of their reach.
"This isn't over yet!" the asura in the woman threatened.
Then both asuras shed their borrowed bodies like snakes shedding skin. The man and woman fell limp to the roof and two dark clouds of smoke hovered midair.
Before Peter could react, the clouds solidified into abnormally large crows. One grabbed his arms and lifted him higher into the air, piercing his skin with its massive talons. The other pecked at his neck.
Then they dropped him.
He hit the roof.
THUD!
Still on the ground, he took a deep breath.
"SABBE SATTA AVERA HONTU," he chanted, hoping to clear his mind.
SCREEECH!
He couldn't raise his head to look at the birds, but he imagined they were about to attack.
Still, he chanted.
"SABBE SATTA AVERA HONTU."
And Anuvata's wind pushed from beneath him, raising his body until he was back on his feet.
SCREEECH!
The crows dove towards him.
"SABBE SATTA AVERA HONTU."
The air around him spun in a huge whirlwind that trapped the bird-asuras. They tried to break through, but the wall of wind was their prison. Then, in one final effort, Peter clapped and the whirlwind collapsed inward.
The asuras were banished.
***
Peter found his way back to the ground floor and cleaned off his wounds in a bathroom. After that, he stopped in the gift shop and bought a hoodie to cover his injuries.
"Where were you?" Zahid asked when they met up again.
Peter avoided the answer by saying, "I bought a hoodie."
He thought he was getting good at avoiding the truth without lying, though it didn't feel like the best karma.
"Tell me the truth, Peter," Zahid said sternly.
Peter held his breath.
"All this nerdy stuff was too much for you, huh?" Zahid said. "You had to go and cry over your inferiority complex?"
He slapped Peter on his shoulder, right where one bird-asura had grabbed him. Peter controlled his reaction, though the pain burned all up and down his arm.
He forced a laugh. "Believe whatever you want, man."
Yara tugged on her brother's shirt. "Can I have a hoodie, too?"
"Me, too! Me, too!" Hassan and Ahmed shouted at once.
***
Peter stumbled into his house that evening, anxious to bandage his wounds. He hoped they wouldn't get infected. He also worried about the victims he had left on the roof and the one on the street. He hoped their injuries would heal quickly. And that they would break free of the asuras sometime soon. He vowed to perform Tonglen for them that night.
Maybe I'll do some community service, too, he thought.
"Hey, honey," his mom greeted from where she and his dad were watching the evening news on the couch. "How was the museum?"
Oh, you know, he thought. Dangerous, life-threatening, traumatizing...
"I saw a bird fossil that was apparently important," he replied.
"Did you see the street performance?" his mom asked.
"The what now?"
Peter looked at the TV where shaky and blurry phone cameras depicted some of his fight in the city.
"It was the coolest flash mob!" an eyewitness was raving. "Or maybe it was a promotion or something? I'm not sure, but it was cool."
"Hm. Interesting." His dad scratched his chin and pointed at Peter. "That brown-haired kid kind of reminds me of you."
Peter froze.
Maybe it was the exhaustion of having to fight three supernaturally-powered humans, but he regretted the numerous times he had deceived his parents. Even if he had done it without technically lying, he still knew that he ought to tell the truth.
"Mom, Dad?" he said. "That is me."
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