95 One On One.

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(Aden's P.O.V)

My surroundings changed as the boom tube spat me out into the fire elemental plane. Oppressive heat and warm air hit my lungs as I took a deep breath in. My Aerokinesis was immediately suppressed, leaving me with just my physical strength, skills and Firebending to call on. 

I looked around, sending my awareness of the plane out. The dragons inhabiting the dimension were circling around something a few hundred meters away over the closest mountain to me. Just out of sight. Superboy registered in my senses, leisurely sitting on a boulder while watching the fantastical creatures flying above him in a hypnotic dance. He was waiting. Waiting for me.

My senses speared through the land of flames, giving me a general update on everything that was going on in the full elemental dimension. I had sent the villagers to the safest island I could think of, one close to Sanctuary but far enough that they couldn't get there. The island was full of fresh fruits. Variations that they had never had before. And it looked like Mammon's spell or whatever it was had ended. The able bodied elders had started forming shelter for the women and the children. A good strategy. 

The other thing I felt was a deep pulse that registered as foreign to the dimension, coming from a few thousand Miles away from Sanctuary. Further delving through my senses, showed me Miner, the Alien pod I had recovered from the cave after my fight with Mnemoth. Although I couldn't understood what was happening, I could feel it. Feel as it's inner mechanisms shifted in an effort to repair it's systems. What made me frown in confusion was the tendrils it had sprouted from under it's body. It was… stealing energy straight from my dimension to heal itself. No, not stealing… borrowing. I promised myself to look more into that later and added a mist surrounding the island and several more near it, to hide it from view. Who knows, someone could be scrying into my dimension. It was better to be safe than sorry.

Meanwhile, I had a fight to get to. A fight that would take everything I had to win. I was so outmatched and outclassed it wasn't even funny. And worse of all, he knew it. I felt him stare through the Mountain at me. Despite the fact that this shit was serious…it was also an opportunity. And that opportunity was the reason, I didn't send Superboy to the Air Elemental Plane. I'm smart enough to realize that fire would not hinder Mammon at all. But this fight would give me the opportunity to fight at my absolute peak of physical strength and Firebending. I couldn't pass that chance up.

The first thing I did was mentally command all the dragons in the vicinity to leave. Now, due to the fact I was connected to everything in this pocket dimension, I could order any of the creatures native to the dimension to do anything. The fight was about to get messy and I didn't want any of my creatures to get hurt. Not that I didn't know what Dragons were capable of. In fact, I doubted I could take on a mature one in a straight Firebending fight. I had the power sure but they had everything else backing them up.

Steam escaped my mouth in that familiar way I used to access my firebending. I took a deep breath and felt the fire get stoked, running rampant inside my body, flushing my skin. I tore off remnants of the trench coat, leaving me in my regular suit minus the visor. And then I bent my knees. A simple push off the ground and I was off like a speeding bullet, fire raging out of my feet like the tail end of a falling meteor. 

I flew over and above the mountain, headed straight towards the Kryptonian/Demonic opponent calmly waiting for me. A fight greater in proportion than I had ever been in was about to occur. My eyes shone with excitement as I could finally and properly go all out without a fear for destroying my surroundings. My moves down on earth had been confined to the most efficient attacks to get rid of Mammon due to the time limit but…the mission had ended in success. I could see numerous prompts minimized at the corner of eyes, just waiting for my perusal. Right after I was done handing this demon his ass.

I screamed as I pushed myself faster, the flames growing larger and more violent. Superboy, his normal blue eyes now a black pool of light devouring organs smiled maniacally and jumped towards me as well, maintaining a collision course. We didn't speak. Only Dragonball Z like shouts of effort escaped both our mouths, the second before we ploughed into each other. 

Our fists met in the air and a shockwave blasted out. I felt the impact of the fully charged Kryptonian punch and was thrown back towards the mountain, managing to catch my unsteady and uncontrallable fall through my legs. The Jet like fire propulsion skill working in tandem with my superior body control to reinforce my coordination. 

A split second later, another massive fist barreled straight through where my head had previously been. I dodged, then blocked a telegraphed strike that made my bones sing with pain. I withdrew, leaning away from a haymaker that sent a violent wind blowing away near my face. I slapped a fist to the side then planted a punch onto his neck. It felt like I had punched a wall. Superboy pulled away and kicked at me. I crossed my hands infront of me, taking the full force of the kick. My hands shook in pain as I grunted. Fire escaped my feet and shoulders throwing me forward faster than he had expected. I slipped through his guard and delivered mountain shaking strikes to his body. Targeting all the weak spots.

I was more skilled, but Superboy was more mobile in midair. A concequence of losing access to my air bending. We fought for a few minutes in close combat. A slug fest that left me with a broken nose, a cut above my eyebrow and numerous bruises. In comparison Superboy looked like he could go on for days. I was losing badly, something needed to change. There was the option to use chi-blocking on him but having tried it before on Connor to little success, I didn't think it would work that well, now that he was juiced up on some Kryptonian bullshit. God there's a reason they have such an effective weakness, otherwise Kryptonians would be hax.

Resolved to shift the way the battle was going, I pulled in close, grabbed the offending limb and threw him down over my shoulder. He flipped in the air with more ease than I had and dashed against me once more only to eat my own fully strengthened punch to the face. I shouted, exerting all the force I could. I felt my knuckles crack painfully but held on. Another explosion of shockwaves was born from the contact and the mountain peak below us was dismantled, sending pieces of rocks raining down the mountain side. 

I was shocked. The punch had packed every ounce of strength I had, but had barely moved him. A smirk slowly appeared on his face.

"I am liking this body…a lot."

I grabbed his face in between my hands. My mouth opened and a stream of red hot fire poured out onto his face like a scene straight out of dragon movie. I kept the stream up for about a few minutes. Finally letting loose and allowing the fire to burn with wild abandon. 

I stopped a few seconds later. The T-shirt the Kryptonian clone was wearing was now reduced to ash, revealing his upper body to the world. He disengaged, grunting in pain as he covered his eyes with his palms. From what I could see, there wasn't a single burn on him. But having light shoveled into your eyes like that, especially with superior eyesight might have hurt. I spun, reared my leg back and round kicked the boy on the side of his head. This time I sent him hurtling down through the mountain peak, breaking through it and permanently shaving off it's height. 

His body dug a groove through the ground as I followed after him. Even that was barely enough to keep him down for long. I grabbed the huge piece of rock from the destroyed mountain peak and flew into the air, straining at the 100+ ton weight of the whole thing. Superboy looked up just in time to see a shadow appear above him. The huge rock smashed onto his body, leaving a cloud of dust rising up in the wake of the impact. 

Time to put him down for good. I landed on the ground and stepped forward with my right leg. Now that I was on a stable medium, going through the forms of Firebending was much easier than being in mid air. I wound my hands around my body, tightening the fingers into fists and bumped both hands into one another, I dragged my leg back closer to my body, before my hands, suddenly spread to the side, winding up in a circular motion that ended with both my palms facing the sky, one above the other, held closer to my solar plexus. I spread both hands to the sides again, palms still open and facing the sky. A variation to the normal forms of Firebending I had come up with to compress my flames for one devastating attack. It was a move that needed time to prepare.

I took a deep breath, feeling the normally intangible and light energy turn viscous and run up from above my groin to my two hands. Twin rotating balls of fire appeared above the palms, easily over 20 meters wide in diameter. The heat around me picked up immensely to the point even I could feel it. I raised my palms up to the sky, feeling the strain of channelling so much energy through them. I hadn't channeled this much before, wary of just how much destruction a single ball would cause, so the move had remained seen practical application. This was it's debut. 

The ground rumbled aggressively below me. Uh oh. The rock I had slammed on top of Connor glowed red at one point, before a massive explosion rang out and pieces of stones pelted the area and dust covered the scene. My gaze speared through all that to establish eye contact with a red-eyed gaze. Superboy flew into the air effortlessly, staring down at me like a god. Oh shit! My technique wasn't complete! The fuck was I going to do?!

I absentmindedly took note of the fact, that the d.n.a suppressing patch on his upper arm was nowhere to be seen, which meant that Mammon was accessing all of Connor's Kryptonian abilities. Most probably through mystical means. Scary.

"My turn."

He stated, the glow in his eyes intensifying. 

"Aaargh!!"

The twin beams exploded out of his eyes, burning a path through the air towards me and my own attack. If the heat beams landed, I wound lose control of the only move that had a possibility of hurting this guy. 

'Fuck', I sighed. Finally understanding I wasn't at the level of the elites. All this had been a test to see how I measured up currently and even with Airbending…I couldn't see myself taking on Superman if this was how strong a normal Kryptonian was. Of course the comparison was not that accurate due to Mammon being a demon inside Connor but it was a clear indication I was still lacking in some ways. 

I guess this leaves me no choice but to cheat. 

Time instantly slowed down to a crawl. Using my full administrator privileges, I could basically control everything in the pocket dimension. I couldn't interfere directly with the elemental alignment of each individual elemental plane due to the risk of destabilizing the whole dimension but anything else was fair game. Time and space meant nothing in here when I could shape existence like putty. It also guaranteed that anyone fighting me inside the dimension was fucked. But…not everything is good news. It was such an obvious function to take advantage of, that down the line, I was sure the Avatar System would find a way to restrict me from taking the easy way out in every fight. Judging from how it had acted so far, the system encouraged individual power progression, tackling my own shit head on. No shortcuts. Which meant I would only get so many free passes.

But for now, I was going to enjoy this. I instantly combined the two balls of flames into one, a perfect rendition of 'Cruel Sun' . The eye beams were slowly cutting through space, heading towards my position. The combined ball of heat energy shrunk down as I compressed it. Then compressed it some more, leaving it the size of a tennis ball. I took a leap and appeared before Connor, pushing my hand towards him as his reaction speeds finally caught him up to what was about to happen.

The black eyes widened minutely just as I pushed the ball of fire on to his chest and whispered,

"Boom."

The sky shone with the light of the sun.