Forbidden | Avatar the Last Air Bender

Chapter 28: Battle Techniques

"Oh," Aang said, drying himself up with a huge gush of wind. "I guess you should really train a bit."

"Yeah," I agreed, nodding my head. "I'll go practice some moves by myself now."

"Alright!" Aang beamed, showing his signature smile.

After a few moments of resting and recovering from the shock of my previous downfall, I stood up and proceeded to the shallower part of the lake where I could practice some of my water bending moves. It still came as a shock to me how come I wasn't aware of the incoming attack from Aang.

I raised a small blob of water and made it circle around me slowly, as I practiced my own water bending stance. Maybe I was being too aggressive in my stance that I forgot about protecting myself? Or maybe I raised my arms wrongly? Or maybe-

"Hope you're paying attention!"

Someone yelled at me from behind. As if on instinct, my body naturally moved my itself and created a water shield behind me. A loud splashing sound was heard shortly after that. Clueless, I bended the water shield back to the lake and spotted Katara behind, looking very pleased.

"Good job!" She clapped her hands. "That was a great defensive move."

"Thanks," I nodded slightly at her, finally realising that it was Katara who was trying to do a sneak attack on me.

"Shall we have a friendly duel?" Katara offered. I shuddered at the thought of the last time I fought her, but I brushed it off.

"Okay," I smiled, changing into battle stance. "Give it all you got!"

I charged forward, repeatedly sending spirals of water towards Katara. Katara managed to deflect my attacks all to the side and then throw a fast moving wave of water towards me.

I jumped above it and moved my arms around in circles, causing the water to fly to Katara in a mini water tornado.

Caught unaware, Katara got enveloped by my attack. As the water settled down, I found Katara choking and gasping on her knees.

"You okay?" I asked, still unsure why a powerful water bender like her wasn't able to bring me down, but Aang could.

"You're good," She complimented, still catching her breath and standing up. "I'll be taking a break now."

"Thanks... And okay," I replied, looking over to my side to see Aang playing in the water with Momo and Appa. I really wondered how powerful could that guy get...

Aang seemed to have noticed that I was looking over, and waved to me. I smiled back in response. He then jumped over some rocks towards me.

"You ready for another round?" Aang said cheerfully. I nodded my head.

I readied my stance. "This time, you attack me, Aang."

I wanted to see why I couldn't deflect away his attacks, but I could for other people. I couldn't tell for sure how good - or terrible - I was as a water bender as I had no rough gauge of what a good water bender should attack and defend like. I just hoped that I wasn't losing any of my touch at water bending.

"Ready or not here I come!" Aang started to form a water octopus around him, and I readied my defensive stance.

Aang threw some water whips to me, and I almost got hit by them.... narrowly, since I almost lost my balance.

He then used one of his octopus arms to throw a frozen shard of ice towards me. I managed to catch it on time before it hit me, but I was caught up in catching that shard of ice that I was unaware that Aang had prepared to hit me with even more of the same things.

However, the moment I realised that, it was too late. I suddenly felt that I couldn't move my body and all I could do was just stand there helpless, awaiting the impact of the ice shards into my body.

It was like a slow motion picture as the attacks slowly hit me, and I was slowly flung back forcefully by the impact. I felt my head hit something hard, and I groaned in response.

"Ouch," I muttered, holding up my head.

"Are you alright? I didn't mean to hurt you again!" Aang yelled from where he was, before leaping towards me.

"I think I'm okay," I slowly got up. "I'm just wondering why is it that I can't attack you, and only be attacked by you, but I could attack Katara so easily, and defend her attack so quickly? It's like there's something going on with me being your guardian."

"I'm not so sure about this," Aang started, helping me up to my two feet. "But I read somewhere when I was back in the Air temple that the guardians of all the previous Avatars were invincible to other attacks, but very vulnerable to their own master. That means that whenever you try to attack me, you cannot do so no matter what you do... And when I attack you, it gets easy for me. So that's why you seemed untouchable when you were battling Katara, and could bring her down with one move."

So this confirms my suspicions then... It is true that I couldn't seem to attack Aang at all, but he could possibly kill me with a few simple attacks.

Oh well. Score 1 for trying to find out more about being the Avatar's guardian.

"That's good to hear," I let out a sigh of relief. "I won't even want to turn my back on you ever now."

Aang laughed. "You wouldn't even wanna try."

"Of course."