Moving on

The training mainly consisted of getting to know your pet/pets and seeing what tricks you could get them to do. Nothing serious or major happened.

As for the events that transpired, Cyrus mainly fed his Zebra some herbs from his hand while grazing his hand upon its fur. Edith felt the need to comb her giraffe's fur all over its body. It enjoyed having its fur brushed but there was a lot of fur including the neck. Edith let out a *sigh* knowing that she would need to climb another tree to reach all the parts of the neck.

Vito had been training with his tiger. He had fed it some meat and was playing around with it with the small ball that he carried.

'Turns out that all members of the cat family like playing with balls. Guess big cats are only different because they are deadly,' he thought.

He would try and get it to climb on trees like it did last time and sometimes it would listen and sometimes it would continue playing with its ball. But more times than not, it listened.

Terra was throwing meat around at all of the lions and having them jump in the air to catch them. There was no training of any sort, just fooling around and having fun.

At one point though while Terra was throwing meat in the air, one of the lionesses tried to sneak behind him to steal some meat from the other cooler that was on standby behind him. Its large foot pads cushioned the sound of its footfalls essentially making it a silent hunter.

There was no sound or any loud noise made but before it could even get within 3 feet of the cooler Terra turned his head and looked at it with a side glance. It slowly backed away from the food and the leader of the pack who was by Terra's side was smiling at the sight of this.

As for Dawn like a sloth, he was hanging by the side of a tree branch that was slowly being torn off of its tree. The reason was that the hippo that was with him was yanking on his T-shirt trying to pull him off of the tree.

John face palmed himself for witnessing this sight of Dawn being afraid. He already explained how the animals weren't trying to kill them but to communicate with or test them.

Mainly it was up to Dawn to get the attention of the hippo but the fact that the hippo was the one making the effort instead of Dawn was a tad disappointing to see. Especially after witnessing Vito punch a tiger the other day.

'Well, I can't blame him. He is not Vito so he won't act the same way. Still, shouldn't he have some backbone? I'm not one of the chosen individuals and yet it's still not hurting me.' John laughed about it for a little while before deciding to help Dawn get down.

It looked like they would be spending a lot of time working together.

After training with John, the crew came back to the base. Edith went to go and see her father and Vito and Terra went to go and train with Alex and the tree.

The tree welcomed them by shaking its leaves in a type of *rattle* sound.

So far they had both been able to feel the sense of lifeforce in the air. It was an easy task to do in a place such as this that was untainted by manmade designs and only consisted of organic life. The more natural the area was, the easier it was to concentrate on lifeforce energy within the zone.

The two of them relatively finished at the same time and were both able to sense it.

Alex was proud of how quick they were to learn it. They had barely been practicing and yet they made it seem easy. This was truly a talent.

"Alright then, for your next training, I want you to try and gather up the life force that is in your body into one spot that is in your stomach. Try and do that," Alex said.

Terra raised a hand to ask a question and Alex nodded.

"Why the stomach and not the chest? I would feel like the chest would be the best area to gather it. At least it feels like it would."

"Well Terra, that is because I want it closer to your certain than your heart. You can feel free to gather it in your chest but you brought it further down to the stomach." Alex gave his reply.

The two of them started practicing but it was a little harder than it was to accomplish henceforth they both failed in this regard. But they felt close.

****

Waking up, it was now the next day of missions with John, Edith had returned waving at everybody as she walked in with her brand new red clothes.

It consisted of a red hat, sweatpants, an unzipped jacket, and a white shirt with white shoes.

They all greeted her but she was expecting a little more enthusiasm when she got back.

"What are you all bummed about? We all said hi," Cyrus asked as she took a seat next to him.

"Well I just got back, so I expected a few more cheers than that when I got back," she pouted as she crossed her arms.

"You were gone for a night. A night." Cyrus reminded her.

"Still more, the least I wanted was for someone to notice my new clothes," Edith mopped to herself.

Later on, as John was getting ready to take them out, Vito walked past Edith and said, "Cute Jacket, it looks good on you," as he got ready to go through the portal.

Edith turned to look at him and smiled brightly when he said that and an audible *gasp* was heard.

No sooner after, Terra walked by and said, "I like what you did with your hair, how it's leaning towards the side. It's a good look for you."

Edith was now standing upright, she was smiling with joy that they took their time to come and compliment her outfit choice that took her an hour to come up with. Just then she heard someone else coming up from behind her.

She couldn't believe it, did these mad men somehow convince Dawn of all people to come up and compliment her too? Even though Dawn wasn't that attractive in the first place, to her eyes, of course, it would still be heartwarming to receive a compliment of some sort from someone.

The person was further back than the two and when he suddenly got closer he said in a low and soft voice, "Edith, you are going to need to change out of those clothes into the standard uniform for our trip to Africa. We can have you getting hurt from the lack of a proper dress code."

"And don't forget to wear the heart."

Suddenly Edith forgot all of the compliments she had received and was left sitting there more salty than she was when she first arrived. She had just now realized how pointless it was for her to dress up if she was going to change anyway.

It made her feel like she wasted time.

As everyone was getting ready to leave Dawn walked up to her and said, "Nice shoes," with a thumbs up.

He wasn't sure why everyone was complimenting her but was worried he might have been left out of something that would bite him back later. 'Maybe it was her birthday?' he thought. 'If so I would like vanilla cake.'

Of all the compliments he could give this one didn't make Edith feel any better and she almost wished he didn't compliment her.

****

After Edith had changed, John decided to announce that today would be a joint mission. Each and every one here would pair up with somebody else and train their animals with each other.

It was a pairing exercise.

The groups were paired based on the similarities of the animals at hand. 

Vito with Terra and Edith with Cyrus.

Dawn and John would be working together again separate from the other teams.

This was because Dawn was still having difficulties taming the hippo. It wanted to befriend him but he just kept denying it when it tried to get close with him.

He would always do the bare minimum to interact with it but would then pull away when it tried to interact with him more.

John was starting to wonder if this habit of pushing away at those trying to befriend him was a mental issue. He decided to relook into Dawn's past a little more to find out a way of solving this.

The group split up as usual but this time in their newfound pairs.

On Edith's side, she was trying to get Cyrus to brush her giraffe and in exchange, she would brush his zebra. 

He refused this immediately.

"Please Cyrus, let's trade, don't you want to brush this poor giraffe's fur? Look at it," she said as it brought its head low and for her to hold next to her chest with puppy eyes on her.

"I kindly refuse, I have my Zebra. Thank you though," he said.

"Well at least just do the neck. If you do that then I will brush half of your zebra," Edith said.

Cyrus stopped to think about this for a moment.

"Alright, I'll take care of its neck but in exchange, you will have to brush its entire body and legs," he said.

"What!? That's not fair!" she yelled.

"Well I won't do it then," Cyrus said.

"Alright but at least don't include the legs," she asked nicely.

"No. I won't settle for less," he said standing firm.

"ARGHHHHH! Fine." She spoke reluctantly as she almost rolled her eyes out and turned her neck. At the very least she was glad that Cyrus would be the one climbing the tree instead.

Cyrus walked up to the giraffe and looked up at how tall it was.

"Down," he said and the giraffe knelt down for him with its neck stretched out near the ground.

"WHATT!?" Edith Exclaimed.

"That's not fair!! You can't do that," She shouted.

"Of course it's fair, how else was I supposed to reach its neck, I wasn't going to go climb a tree," he said while smirking.

Edith had had it with Cyrus, he kept on outdoing her in everything she did and she was sick and tired of it. She decided she wasn't going to talk to him for the rest of the day so she turned away from him with her arms crossed.

"Oh, by the way, that outfit you were wearing was very well picked. I could tell that you haven't worn it often so it's still new and that side sweep hairstyle you were going for was quite nice. Most women wait to have longer hair but I think you managed to pull it all nicely. I can tell you put a lot of effort into it, so I really liked it," he said while brushing the giraffe's neck.

"Y-you really think that?" she asked still turning her hand from him.

"I do," he said.

"T-thank you, Cyrus."

Cyrus didn't need to see her face to know that she was smiling right now. He could read her like a book.

****

Vito had taken out his tiger for a ride to train with Terra in his location but when he got there, his tiger had started acting strange.

He had already gotten off of it but was wondering why it was growling lowly. Then when Terra's lions came in it became apparent why it was acting like this.

The lions didn't bother growling at the tiger when they first met in the center of the large field where John was because that wasn't their territory, this is! And the fact that John was there must have calmed them down seeing as how he was confident he could handle all of the creatures there at once.

The lions and the tiger continued to growl at each other as they were about to attack one another, Vito moved onto the scene to come between his tiger from the lion's view and when it saw him it calmed down a little bit but the lions behind Vito were still growling.

Vito was worried that an all-out confrontation was unavoidable, he could hold back his tiger but there were six lions, Terra couldn't possibly hold each one in place and if worse came to worse then he would possibly have to punch a lion in the face too.

If he could at least take down the alpha no matter how stupid it sounds, then he might stop the other's from attacking. No matter what he wouldn't let his tiger fight this battle alone.

As the lions got closer to Vito and his tiger, Terra who was standing behind said out loud to the lions, "Lay down."

At once all 6 lions lay on the ground. Their eyes were still on the tiger but they weren't growling anymore and they completely stopped their advance.

"What was that about?" Terra asked, "They seemed fine when they saw your tiger the other day. Are they being territorial?"

As Vito watched Terra pet the leader of the pride in front of him he only had one thought in his mind, 'Is this the difference between us?'

'Looks like I have a lot of catching up to do,' he smirked.