>>5997196Zuko takes a deep breath and begins the duel, he throws punches forward, which spawn fireballs that head straight towards you. You block them directly, and stomp on the ground to reinforce your strong stance, and reply with your own firebolts. Your fire, a blue hue mixed with red and yellow, flies towards Zuko. With this stance, the fire is stronger, denser, it sears Zuko’s clothes as he blocks it and makes it fade away.
But you know the weakness in this stance.
Uncle watches Zuko’s replies, he is not able to make you budge, instead you use the moments when you block to move about, planting your shoes on the ground almost as strongly as a firebender would. “Prince Zuko. Strong branches come from strong roots!”
You being stomping forward, more and more firebolts, sometimes indistinguishable from waves of fire, fly towards Zuko. He dodges a few, but as you get closer, he is forced to block, and he almost falls from the last hit, you can see his seared skin under his charred clothes. His expression is half panicked and he doesn’t seem to concentrate.
“Prince Zuko! You must remove the roots!” Iroh yells.
Zuko looks all over you and his eyes lock with yours, still confused.
Your eyes dart down for a moment, then back to Zuko, and his own eyes open wide, his mouth slightly agape as he realizes.
You stomp forward once more ready to deliver a strong final blow, but Zuko ducks, letting your fire wash over his back ever so slightly, ever so painfully, and as he ducks, he sweeps his right foot into your left foot. You feel your whole stance break as it loses its roots, and you are unable to recover, you fall down to the side, then out of pure instinct you quickly spin yourself up and redress yourself into a regular stance, ready to continue. But Iroh stops the fight for the moment.
He puts a hand on Zuko’s shoulder. “Good job, Prince Zuko.” He then looks to you. “Thank you, Princess Azula, you have served as an excellent example of a brash firebender.”
You nod and smirk at your brother. Uncle doesn’t know you gave him a helping nudge with your eyes, but that’s between Zuko and you.
Iroh then imitates your stance. “I was good friends with Zhao’s former master, Jeong Jeong. He told me that Zhao lacked much discipline, even though he is a powerful firebender, he only focused on destruction and never on finesse, leading him to use this stance almost exclusively.” He fires bolts with the wide stance, his fire is harsher and greater than your own, it seems Iroh has mastered this stance among all the others he has shown you so far. “It is strong, but it depends far too much on overwhelming the foe. If the opponent can stay calm, they can find a weakness swiftly and act upon it.”