Before Yara had time to take a closer look at her brother's mind, the tunnel bucked, and she was forced to get creative. Although it was inadvisable, she took down the defenses on her second mind to help with the main. An airball wrapped out Harlan’s neck head, and she started to drain the oxygen from his lungs. It was not enough to kill him, but it was enough to render him unconscious.
As his eyes rolled to the back of his head, he muttered. “He had me.”
Dread filled her as he hastily tried to restore her protection technique, but it was too late.
Paku’s presence slammed into her with the weight of a mammoth, sending her crashing to her knees. She gritted her teeth as she pushed back. Blood leaked from her mouth as he bit into her tongue.
"GIVE IN, YARA,” the voice commanded. Each syllable carried a fresh wave of pain, but she held on with every last ounce of willpower she could muster.
--
Zuko did a fair job of keeping back the tide of possessed soldiers until he didn’t. The widest blast of flame he’d ever seen whizzed past, slamming into the tornado King Bumid dutifully maintained.
It’d happened so fast that even the most talented Earthbender in the world did not recover in time. The tornado unraveled, and the hoard poured in.
Zuko froze when the saw the wave. A mass of puppet men fueled by rage and the desire of their master alone.
‘Was this the power of a traveler?’ Corrupted or not, this was beyond him.
“Look Alive!” King Bumi as he came riding a wall of stone that slid in front of Zuko. He leaped down and pulled it until it segmented most of the western side of the battlefield, then raised it.
“Your Uncle will never forgive me if I let his favorite nephew die.”
Bumi’s proud declaration brought him back into the moment. “Where do you need me?” he asked.
“Southern side,” Bumi said. “The Soldiers will be trying to go around with this path cut off.”
“On it,” Zuko took off, his head and heart drumming. With the world shattering around him, common sense dictated he should be running away from trouble not towards it, but Zuko was not one to ever run from a fight. He’d already made his peace with that when he sided with the Phantoms.
Zuko let out a roar and unleashed a powerful wall of flame that zoned off the charging soldiers. One in five of them were benders, nearly evenly split among fire and earth benders. The move bought him a single moment, and he made the most of it by rapidly firing fireballs that set dozens of unsuspecting men on fire. He leaped into the air and was about to come down with a brutal axe kick when he felt something slam into his consciousness.
An ancient voice.
“GIVE IN.”
His newly created sub mind sprung automatically, pushing back the presence, but the sheer weight of it still overpowered him. Zuko drifted into unconsciousness while he was still in mid-air.
---
Aaron recognized his Grandfather’s spiritual signature the moment it brushed up against his mind and rolled forward the sub mind he’d prepared to trap him. It struck like a cannon. Aaron stumbled forward, nearly overwhelmed by the sheer weight of his presence, but the scream that ripped from the old man’s throat brought him right back into the moment.
Mark was hunched beside him with a nosebleed, and with not so much as a look, they sped off in the direction that the voice had come.
As soon as Mark spotted his silhouette, He summoned his great sword. It swelled with Chi for three seconds before rocketing forward like a ballista bolt. Grandfather, who was hunched over from the sudden assault, barely raised half a dozen walls in time. The sword shred through most of them before colliding with the final one with a loud clang that sent the old man flying back.
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Aaron roared as he shot forward, Chi and spirit reinforcement burning. Now that his third mind was free, he spun that up and set it to weaving secondary commands.
He slammed into Grandfather’s waiting sword with a boom, driving the man back several paces. His face was covered in bruises, and his hair was disheveled, but he remained as calm as ever.
“I’ll shed no tears when you die, old man!”
“I haven’t come this far just to lose to a whelp," Paku barked back.
Paku’s blade suddenly buffeted with the wind as he disengaged and slipped under Aaron’s cut with ridiculous skill, opening up his side as he wheezed past and sending a battery of wind blades behind him to finish the job.
A dome of compressed air whirled around Aaron, soaking in all of the wind blades, and amid the cacophony, Aaron felt the ground beneath him shift and then explode with activity.
When the windscreen came down, Aaron saw Grandfather falling to the ground with a dozen metal blades whirring after him, the ground around them in absolute disrepair.
Aaron blitzed towards the Paku to end the fight, not even pausing to tend to his wounded side, but he changed directions mid-air with a precise fiery jet followed by a wide spray of water spikes that seemingly materialized from mid-air.
Aaron raised another wind-curtain, which only kept a handful of attacks back this time before he destroyed the rest stingers and wind blades.
While Paku was busy, Mark struck again by slamming into the ground and forcing dozens of spikes to emerge from the ground. Grandfather leaped to avoid them and slammed into the earth as he came down, forcing those spikes back at him at greater speeds and lengths. A sudden stab left a dent in Mark’s armor and sent him flying, but not before his sword struck from behind where it’d been lying fallow.
Somehow, Grandfather managed to raise a wall in time to slow the attack, but not before it took a chunk out of his hand and sent him stumbling forward. Aaron was on him before he could regain his balance, swinging at near-impossible speeds, yet he managed to parry the attacks with one arm broken, his mind healing from a mental attack, and the majority of his energy and focus on infiltrating the gamer system.
‘He’s unbelievable…’ Aaron gasped in utter awe, but that didn’t make him want to kill Grandfather any less.
Aaron dodged wind bursts and flame strikes and leaped off the ground when a patch of earth became muddy. They’d been fighting for only seconds, yet Grandfather’s versatility was soaring to new heights, as was Aaron. He changed directions mid-strike with an air burst and increased the power of each swing of his blade by increasing the torque of his body with the wind.
They reached a stalemate of sorts until Aaron attempted something he’d gotten inspiration for by perusing the Old man’s mind. He dodged the old man’s latest fire burst by twisting and stepping
to Paku’s left.
A giant wind blade suddenly whipped out of his frame and bounced off Paku’s waiting spirit shield. It shattered from the force of the blow, leaving him open for a step and thrust carried by the two energy sources swirling around in his body. Aaron’s mind struggled to keep up with the sudden speed and acceleration. Still, Paku caught the blade, his lips curled into a triumphant smile.
“It was a good attempt, but you’re nearly not strong enough.”
The look of certainty never left Aaron’s eyes, though. His mid-section suddenly lit up with energy as he let off what he’d been preparing. A spirit blast that ate up three-thirds of his remaining spirit energy. The blast sent both of them tumbling in two separate directions. Aaron caught the briefest hints of a surprise on the old man’s features before the bolt of white light speared through his midsection. And Aaron understood the look on his face all too well. By all counts, what he’d done should’ve been impossible at his level, but with multiple minds working in tandem and the memories of a century-old master to guide, figuring it a Spirit Blast only took a fraction of the time it was supposed to.
"Think you can take him on now?" Aaron called out to Mark as he stepped back to replenish his energies.
Mark took over for Aaron in his most aggressive performance yet.
He leaped at Paku with dual batons drawn while metal bits flew in from random directions.
The Old Man dodged it all with a pronounced snarl on his face.
Just before they clashed, Mark swung out his baton pre-emptively, sending one of his two weapons, whizzing forward at near super-sonic speeds. Paku batted it away with a dexterous parry whilst sending a particularly powerful wind blade at Mark. The boy readily ejected himself from the ground to avoid it as he summoned a pane of thickened metal that he looped Paku while he was still in the air. With a flex of both of his wrists, needles rained from the heavens as he emptied his gauntlets. The needles struck from every which angle.
Flakes of white light began to pool up from the Old man's body before he started to move at near-blinding speeds. He dodged all of the attacks with an unnatural ease and mixed in a counter-attack that would've surprised anybody. A dozen earthen drills sprouted from the ground before targeting Mark. The boy had to cover his body in the floating metal platform he kept around him to survive the barrage.
With the time he bought himself, the Paku surrounded himself with an earthen dome, from where he summoned several more grooved spikes. Some of them were aimed at Aaron this time, but he was not worried.
Before they went off, however, Grandfather was sent flying from his dome in an explosion of metal. Grandfather landed on his feet, eyes slightly wide with shock, while red chi bubbled forth from his many wounds.