Roun nodded internally.

"I'll need some time to gather the energy for another run, in the meantime, let's focus on staying alive." He replied before refocusing himself on the battle at hand.

With this, he allowed the spiralling flames of Synchros to subside, dispersing them in a bright flash that saw a sharp fall in the amount of energy that he was producing. In their wake, the green flames of veranos slowly emerged, dancing softly on his skin before they intensified and rose higher into the air above him. Much like his Synchros, these green flames also adopted the spiralling motion of his aesis energy-type, creating a smaller green vortex than the gold one that had previously enshrouded him.

As veranos now emerged from his body, he watched as he opponents became more frenzied. Initially, he assumed that their increased enthusiasm came as a result of his fallen energy levels, but given the way that they had been referring to the energy that seemed to characterise his family, he was beginning to suspect that their frenzied state was a bit more than simple enthusiasm. In fact, their frenzied state seemed almost ravenous, like the proverbial bull seeing red.

Roun's gaze just narrowed at the response, watching as these energetic wraiths now closed in on his location. All rhyme and reason seemed to leave them, replaced now with only hatred and rage. All he would do was raise an eyebrow at the inexplicable reaction, but he unfortunately had little time to ponder the oddity. Instead, his eyes widened as Blitz appeared before him, his body now warping wildly as he did. Instinctually, Roun leaned backwards to dodge an uncontrolled right-hook; barely making his way out of the path of the attack in time.

It didn't take much more than that to realise just how much his reactions and physical speed had decreased as a result of him switching off his Synchros augmentation. Unfortunately, this was a necessary move as it allowed him to more quickly gather the energy required to hopefully end this fight. So with that in mind he resolved to do his best with what he had at his disposal.

As he watched Blitz's fist sail past his face, he bent his knees and initiated a backwards somersault. Midway through the manoeuvre however, he extended his foot to deliver a flash-kick to Blitz's chin and prevent a follow-up attack. The result was staggering, stopping the haima'sa speedster in place and sending him into a painful recoil state as Roun touched down just a few feet away. Without hesitation, he charged the green flames of veranos into the blade in his right hand, but before he could capitalise on Blitz's stunned state, he felt his feet being dragged out from underneath him. Roun cursed lightly as he now noticed that his energy was being drained from his form; the result of one of Shade's annoying tendrils that had managed to latch onto him at the end of his backflip.

"Damnit!" He cursed as he found himself being dragged along the ground on his stomach.

Tightening the grip on his summoned blade, the youngster now did his best to twist his body, putting himself in a better position to severe the tendril -- but Shade was already a step ahead of him. As he managed to manoeuvre into position, the tendril hoisted him into air. Roun growled, only managing to sever the energetic leech after he was tossed. Now, he found himself spinning and unable to get his bearings before a massive forearm abruptly stopped his momentum. This attack was more than enough to stun the youngster, leaving him helpless as Roc now planted him in the ground beneath his feet.

All Roun could do was activate his silhouette slide and clear the area, reappearing a few metres away just before Blitz made a crater at his previous location. What had been an easy battle under Synchros' influence had quickly gone downhill in the absence of the guardian's power.

"How much longer do I need to keep this up Synchros?" He inquired.

"Not much longer Roun." Came the reply. "Just continue to hang in there."

This was much easier said than done however, and required a change of strategy. Once again, Roun's energy levels fell as he resorted to his aesis energy type for the remainder of this battle. Unlike veranos, which essentially doubled his energetic outputs, aesis had very little effect on his direct strength and served more to diversify his abilities. What he was most counting on however, was a much more cosmetic feature of the energy. While veranos and synchros manifested as flames, aesis existed merely as a luminous glow. This prevented him from casting shadows that Shade could easily manipulate into tendrils to trap him. This energy, which was also almost photonic in nature, also granted him a slightly higher top speed than the 'heavier' veranos. This added speed made dodging Blitz's incoming attack just that much easier, allowing the youngster to take to the sky as he silhouette slid directly upwards.

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Once again, Blitz made a crater at his previous location, but Roun managed to take some solace in the fact the suppression of his veranos core seemed to at least have calmed his opponents somewhat. The result was a slightly more relenting assault, but even that change was only marginal. As he came to a stop, he took advantage of aesis' more efficient energetic form, allowing him to easily maintain the almost weightless state and practically hover in place as he planned what to do next.

On the ground, Blitz was glaring upwards at the golden glow that denoted Roun's position, while Roc waited patiently for his next move. Shade on the other hand was charging a mysterious attack. Roun just paused and waited, falling ever so slowly as he weighed his options. Within seconds, Shade unleashed his attack, a miasma of dark energy that seemed to radiate upwards from the darkness on the ground. The shadows of the trees in the small woods that lined the road seemed to reach out, stretching forth to pluck Roun from the sky. However, what made it worse was the fact that Blitz took this opportunity to mask his approach. Only at the last moment did Roun catch the blue-haired speedster emerging from the hazy cloud to deliver a powerful, magically infused kick to his gut. There was no way that he could avoid it by then, and the attack now left him doubled over and struggling to maintain his energetic state. Blitz grinned at the sight, charging the chaotic red energy that powered his brothers and himself, and which now allowed him to grab Roun in his energized state. Next, he pulled the stunned young channeller towards him, before somersaulting in the air and delivering an axe-kick to Roun's head, launching him down into Shade's miasma.

Unlike the shadowy tendrils, the miasma did not seek to siphon Roun's energy, but instead began corroding his already battered braver-form. As he hurtled towards the ground, he could feel himself flickering between his powered-up and unpowered-up states, struggling to maintain the energy that he would require to finish this particular battle. Fortunately, however, as he careened towards the ground, the familiar voice of Synchros rang in his ears.

"I'm ready" was all Roun needed to hear, powering his form back up with veranos to double his output before he allowed Syncrhos' energy to erupt from that. Almost immediately, the powerful cyclone of golden flames once again engulfed his body, creating a potent blowback that dissipated the vast majority of the shadowy miasma of Shade.

"Roc, to me!" Shade yelled, prompting the massive bruiser to once again insert himself into the path between Roun's location and Shade's.

Unfortunately, he was too late. This time, not even Blitz could track the youngster's movement, all he could see was a path carved through the corrosive energy of Shade, past Roc's now occupied location, through Shade's location and which stopped some distance behind him. This path was marked by spiralling flames and ended with Roun's form that was in the process of rematerialising. Outside of Roun's body slowly solidifying, it was as if time had stood completely still. However, after a moment the effects of Roun's ability could been seen. Much like the tears in space that manifested when these haima'sa powered up, Roun's motion also seemed to create a bridge between Terra and some other plane. Blitz was certain that it was not Oya, the source of his magical abilities, but beyond that certainty he had no idea as to what it was that he was witnessing. All he could see was that whatever this alternate realm was, it seemed to leak raw 'code' into the environment and this code seemed to follow Roun's path. This 'code', the information that defined how their supernatural abilities worked, manifested as gibberish to the haima'sa speedster -- but its effects at least were unmistakeable.

Roun's theory was right; these haima'sa soldiers were not much different from his own channelling abilities. They were fundamentally the execution of ethereal code, the commands that governed the physical properties of zeta, Ki and in their case magic. This 'wild-type' code that Synchros allowed him to tap into flooded into his target, corrupting it before washing it away completely.

Blitz watched with a bird's-eye-view as Shade's miasma dissipated completely, before the rest of his energy followed suit. It wasn't long before even his body began to dissipate, returning to the latent magic from which it was formed. The code that comprised Shade's true self was no more, washed away in Roun silhouette flood to functionally kill the strange wraith. Blitz eyes widen at this revelation, before his consciousness returned to processing time at a regular rate. All of this had happened within a fraction of a second of Roun once again manifesting the flames of Synchros. As a result, the entire process had taken place unbeknownst to Roc, who was still awaiting Roun's attack to impact his body. By the time he noticed Roun however, even the traces of the rift between Terra and the odd reservoir of 'code' was no more. So in his perception it was simply as if the young guardian host had vanished and then Shade died. A terrifying experience.

"Blitz, fall back." Was all he could muster as Roun turned his attentions towards the massive bruiser of the team.

"You don't have to tell me twice." The speedster replied before abandoning his corporeal state and releasing himself to the latent magical energy, which permeated the air.

Roc soon did the same. Roun just smirked as they vanished. He'd been struggling to hold his braver-form together in the wake of the attack that he'd executed on Shade. Between the damage that he'd sustained, the stress of the attack on his own body and the sheer amount of energy that he'd commanded, reversion was imminent. So as the last traces of their energy dissipated, so did Roun's powered-up state, leaving the youngster to collapse onto the ground in exhaustion.

"You've done a good job Roun." Synchros' voice assured him, but at this point he could do very little other than lay there quietly.

The sound of Zadavia leaving the betchnar and rushing to his aid was the last thing he heard as his grasp on consciousness loosened and his drifted off.