Chapter 81

She inhaled sharply, pulling a visible cloud of steam into her mouth with her bending, cooled it, and then breathed out a cloud of icy mist so blisteringly cold that it chapped her lips.

The move caught Tanya by surprise and struck her in the shoulder before she could fully retreat, ripping a large hole in her red robes and leaving a nasty patch of blistered, frostbitten skin.

...

"Damn cheerleader, credit where it's due, you really have gotten good." Tanya snarled sarkily as she backed away.

"But you realise that it isn't enough, right? It's undeniable that you've spent a lot of time practising, but there's a world of difference between the training matts and the battlefield. Bloodlust, fear, raw instinct… These are things you can only learn on the battlefield. Things you've yet to know."

Katara replied by snapping another water whip at her, making Tanya hop to avoid it.

"I'm more familiar with them than you might think." She shot back icily.

Tanya's lips peeled back into a toothy, wolfish grin. "Is that so? Let's put them to the test then, shall we?"

In a burst of movement she sprinted forwards, coming in for another attack. Wary of letting Tanya get too close again, Katara lashed out with a wave of water to drive her back with. Tanya's feet alighted once again in her signature jet technique to soar up and over the wave.

Only to be swatted from behind by a second wave.

"Wha-…" Tanya grunted as the water splashed her against the wall with considerable impact. Where had that attack come from?

The answer revealed itself when she spotted the splintered wreckage of one of the wooden barrels scattered across the floor. Ah, so that's what they were for! The rebels had taken barrels of water from the kitchens and dotted them around the room to give Katara an advantage. Clever, but a one-time only trick now that she knew about them.

Katara obviously agreed, because with a grasping motion she shattered the other water barrels as well, drawing their contents towards her. The ring of water around her swelled and began to morph into a new shape under her guiding gestures, separating and spreading out into a set of eight large tentacles, like the limbs of a gigantic octopus.

It was at times like this Tanya wished she could shoot lightning. A large body of a conductive substance was just begging for a shock or two. Sadly that aspect of firebending had always proven to be difficult for her, and eventually she'd given up in favour of studying techniques that came more naturally. She was regretting that decision now.

Pulling herself out of the wall and hovering back up into the air, Tanya observed Katara's technique. It was an ingenious design; able to flow at a moment's notice between a strong offence and a solid defence, but like everything it had its limits. That much water was bound to be cumbersome, so agility wouldn't be its strong suit. An idea popped into Tanya's mind, but she needed to test it first.

Cautiously, at only about half the speed she was capable of, Tanya flew towards Katara, and unsurprisingly the moment she was in range the nearest tentacle lashed out to meet her. Immediately Tanya swerved away and backed off, then circled around Katara and, at a seemingly random point, dived forwards again. Again Katara's water tentacle lashed out, and she immediately retreated outside its range again, like a fly darting away from a hand trying to swat it, and continued circling.

Again and again she repeated this process for the better part of a minute, testing the range of movement and attack angles of the tentacles. Dive, dodge, circle, repeat; over and over again as she built up a mental map of the various attacks paths Katara's creature could make.

Of course she wasn't the only one learning: Katara could tell that something was up, but she allowed it to happen as it gave her the opportunity to study Tanya's jet technique.

She watched each swerve and dive, noting the instinctive movements that Tanya made each time she avoided an attack, and piece by piece put together a profile of how she moved in the air, allowing each snap of her tentacles to grow just a little closer before Tanya could avoid them.

It was an arms race to get a read of the opponent first, and it was neck-and-neck.

After minutes of testing the waters, the pace suddenly ramped up again when Tanya rocketed towards Katara at maximum speed. Katara, her instincts now better honed to Tanya's reactions, lashed out with the nearest tentacle, letting out a meaty thwack as it batted Tanya away with a heavy blow.

But Tanya had been prepared. She'd curled up into a ball before the strike hit, bracing her body as best as she could for the impact and letting the force of it carry her away. It stung something nasty to let herself tank such a powerful hit, but sometimes sacrifices had to be made for victory.

Like a human tennis ball she sailed backwards, twisting and spinning to position herself in just the right way, and unfurled at just the moment she came to impact against the wall so that her feet were planted first and her knees could absorb most of the momentum.

For a brief moment the force of her velocity kept Tanya suspended standing sideways against the wall, like some kind of spider-themed superhero, before her feet exploded into flames and she pushed off again, charging back towards Katara with maximum thrust.

An average bender might have been taken aback by the swiftness of Tanya's recovery, but Katara was not an average bender. The first tentacle was still out of position from its own momentum, so without a second's hesitation she switched to a second one, curling it forwards with a twist of her arm to slap Tanya down to the ground.

Yet again Tanya braced herself and tanked the impact, letting herself be smacked down to bounce off the floor like a pinball before immediately breaking out of her defensive shell again and charging a third time.

Katara switched to a third tentacle, and again swatted Tanya away, only for her to bounce back again with unnerving eagerness. Yet it was as she swung the fourth tentacle that something changed.

Rather than tank the blow again, Tanya stuck out both hands and blasted jetfire out of them, propelling herself wildly to the side so as to avoid it. In terms of technique it was an awful move: the sharp change in direction threw her off balance and left her wide open for an attack. It was the aerial equivalent of tripping yourself up.

But Katara didn't press her attack. She couldn't. Tanya had bounced back from her previous attacks so quickly that she hadn't had time to draw the four heavy tentacles in front of her back from their strikes.

She reached her arms back to take control of the remaining four behind her, but no matter the training, the human body was designed to face forwards, and achieving the graceful dexterity needed for high-level waterbending was difficult with your arms turned backwards.

Katara was quicker than the vast majority of other waterbenders would have been, but that still wasn't quite quick enough against someone as spry as Tanya. By the time she'd been able to bring the water behind her surging forwards, Tanya had regained her balance and blasted forwards again, bringing her up close and into Katara's guard.

Despite the power of the raging water coming up behind her, Katara could instinctively tell that it was too slow to help. The time it would take her to bring a crashing wave down upon Tanya's head was just a split second slower than the time it would take Tanya to blast a fatal stream of fire straight through her torso at point blank range.

She had just enough time instead to curve the current around herself in a protective shield rather than launch it forward at the she-devil.

Rather than thrusting her palms out towards Tanya, she twisted them in and downwards, as if try to hug herself, and a waterfall-like wall of water crashed down upon her just in time before Tanya planted her feet, extended both arms forwards and unleashed a roaring cannon of fire directly at her stomach from no more than an arm's distance away.

The water glowed a frightening, angry orange as blazing fire fought to drill through a torrential river. A few times stray flickers of flame managed to push their way through, licking out to singe Katara's cheeks.

So intense was Tanya's attack that her shield began to bubble and hiss, like a kettle on the verge of boiling. Realising that she'd either run out of water or be boiled alive before Tanya let up on her fire blast, Katara let her knees fold and allowed the current to sweep her away, washing herself to safety along the floor.

Yet to her horror, Tanya had predicted her actions. Before she could begin to scramble to her feet again Tanya fell on her back, one arm coiling around her neck from behind to put her in a choke hold.

Katara thrashed about like a beached shark, desperately trying to loosen the smaller girl's surprisingly tight grip or knock her away, but the she-devil would not relent, and pinned down awkwardly as she was there was no way for her to move fluidly enough to bend water with any more ferocity than a splash. Darkness began to creep around the edges of her vision as unconsciousness came to claim her.

"I'll hand it to you, I'm impressed. Few have given me such a challenge before, especially after such a short time of training." Tanya hissed in her ear, her own breath sharp and laboured. "But you aren't in my league just yet!"

"Master Pakku, I'm so sorry." Katara thought to herself as her vision began to dim. "I couldn't avenge you! I-…"

Her head slumped forwards onto the floor as consciousness abandoned her.

...

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