26 First Flame 4

There were two routes we could go to reach our destination. We could wind around the mountain path to Gaoling and retread the path we took to follow Aang and his group of friends originally, or we could take the short cut and make a straight beeline for New Ozai by taking a short cut through the Si Wong Desert.

Ty Lee, ever the adventurous one, decided it would be more fun if we travelled through the desert since she'd never been in one before.

"Faster! Faster!" Ty Lee cheered from where she now sat atop the head my newly tamed saber tooth moose lion pet, holding onto one of his – because it turned out he was male – antlers.

His huge powerful, and now fully healed legs pounded through the sand dunes, sending glittering flakes of it flying through the air as he passed through.

Simba as I'd named him, was moving way faster through the sand than I thought he would, and we were making amazing time. That was partly because he was already massive before, so the sand didn't slow him down as much as it would Mong and his shorter legs. But there was also the fact that, Simba was actually quite a bit bigger now than he was previously.

When I tamed Simba, he was maybe around fifty five feet tall standing up. But now..he was closer to to around the sixty range. I can only assume it's because of my beast tamer skill empowering anything I tamed by one point two times.

He was an absolute mountain of muscle now, granted he already was but he's now one a bit bigger! Faster, stronger and even more durable than before. Admittedly, he'd still be easy pickings for any fire bender of my level or above just because of how big of a target he was, but people like that were outliers.

Sadly, I couldn't check his level to see just how strong he was when I tamed him, never mind now. I can only assume that since Mong was level twenty, then Simba had to be at least over level thirty.

Holding onto his fur as I relaxed on his back and stared up at the sky, I wondered, 'Can that lion turtle give bending to animals as well?' it would be amazing to be able to tame it. But even if not, if I could get it to pass fire bending on to Mong and Simba, that would be awesome. A fire bending saber tooth moose lion? People would shit their pants.

Some may call fire the most basic bitch power of all, even amongst the standard elements. But, I'm a simple guy who likes simple things. And fire is simple, alongside being simply badass awesome.

I lifted my hand into the air, flame sparking in my hand rippling back, to contort around my fist. The very basis of my signature technique. Using the principals of compressing the flame to make it stronger from the flame stream technique and the flame channelling technique to form it around the shape of my fist. But, it wasn't complete with just that. To use it as a projectile technique the way I wanted, I needed to use the flame shaping technique, to create an arm and fist within the already shaped fire, to help it keep its form and make it have some more weight to it.

With the principles of the flame stream, it was a simple compression technique at the basis that allowed me to pump more and more chi into it to make it larger without having to worry about the control. But the secondary part using the flame shaping technique was just as important, because it was used to keep the shape itself. However much chi I pumped into the attack, I needed to use a quarter of that amount of chi extra to keep that shape with the flame shaping. So if I pumped say two thousand chi points into the attack, I'd need to pump another five hundred to keep its shape. Expensive chi wise, but made up for with just how much chi I was capable of pumping into it without blowing it up in my face.

It was a very simple, very stolen technique from an entirely different world. And perhaps my most favourite fire attack I've ever seen.

I let go of the technique, letting the flame flow backwards up into my palm and form back into a pulsing sphere of flickering orange and yellow. The way it it moved in my palm, reminded me of a heart beat.

I focused on the flame, letting my chi flow out from my body into it. I could feel the flame, the heat it gave off, every pulsing movement it made as if it were a limb I'd had all along. I willed my chi into it, and the flame grew larger in my palm. I mentally commanded the flame and it floated up higher into the air and began orbiting around me like a planetary ring.

As long as it was within range of my projected chi, it seemed as if I could control it.

I zoned out.

I only zoned back in when a pair of soft arms wrapped around me, and when I came to fully, I noticed the sun that had still been in the process of dipping down below the horizon..had disappeared from view and darkness settled over the sandy dunes.

"Finally back with me huh?" Ty Lee mused.

I blinked, looking at her in confusion.

"You've been playing about with that fire ball there for hours, you didn't even notice me shouting back to you a few times," she pointed at the fire ball floating in the air by my side with a giggle, "You were totally out of it."

I swallowed, noticing that my throat was dry. Jeez, how long had I been doing that. "Sorry..I didn't even mean to do that."

"It's fine, you probably needed some rest anyway considering how little sleep you got when you were driving the tank train constantly," she waved me off, "I woulda let you keep at it, since I was having fun anyway with Simba...but we've kind of got a problem."

I sat up from my laying position on the back of my giant tamed beast and raised an eyebrow at her, "What kind of problem?"

Ty Lee shrugged helplessly, "Well..the that kind." she rose a hand and pointed behind me.

Following her finger, I turned around and looked at what she was pointing at. There was a billowing cloud of sand being kicked up by the weight and speed of Simba's charge...and scything through it and the sand dunes...was a massive brown dorsal fin.

The kind of fin you saw sticking out of the water of the ocean when there was a shark about.

"Oh..." I noted very intelligently.