Azula vs. Cinder Fall.
The courtyard of the ruined palace was cold, but the temperature quickly rose as two formidable tacticians faced each other, both radiating an intense, aggressive heat.
Azula stepped forward first, a cruel, mocking smile dancing on her lips. With a sharp flick of her fingers, she ignited a bright blue flame, its unconventional hue crackling with intense energy. She took a fluid martial arts stance, her movements precise and completely under control.
Cinder Fall smirked in return, her singular visible eye narrowing with malice. She raised her hand, summoning a pair of obsidian blades crafted from heated glass, while a deep orange flame began to lick around her boots.
Without a word, the exchange began.
Azula lunged, unleashing a rapid succession of blue fire punches. The azure blasts roared across the stone tiles, forcing Cinder to leap backward. Cinder swung her glass swords, throwing arcs of orange fire to intercept the blue flames. The collision of opposing elements created a loud, concussive boom, throwing smoke and heat in all directions.
"You're sloppy," Azula taunted, dodging a flying shard of superheated glass with a sharp tilt of her head. "A true prodigy doesn't rely on raw power."
Cinder's smile vanished, replaced by an expression of cold rage. She tossed her swords aside and hovered slightly off the ground, her maiden magic flaring as she unleashed a massive torrent of fire directly at the Fire Nation princess.
Azula didn't look worried. She dropped low, using her firebending to spin herself out of the direct path of the blast. As she slid across the stone, she brought her two pointer fingers together, generating a bright, snapping charge of pure lightning. With a sharp thrust, she sent the electric bolt streaking through the smoke straight toward Cinder.
Cinder barely conjured a hard-light shield in time. The lightning struck the barrier with a deafening crack, shattering the construct and throwing Cinder back against a stone pillar.
Cinder recovered instantly, landing on her feet with her dark hair falling over her face, her eyes glowing with a renewed, dangerous heat. Azula stood her ground, her blue flames swirling around her fists, ready for whatever came next.
Cinder didn't give her opponent a moment to relish the hit. Hovering off the ground, she raised both hands, conjuring a massive array of obsidian arrows that superheated in the air before raining down on the courtyard.
Azula reacted with flawless agility, vaulting backward across the broken tiles. She spun through the air, using her blue fire to deflect the incoming projectiles, creating a series of sharp, glassy explosions behind her. Landing in a low crouch, she propelled herself forward using fire jets from her boots, closing the distance in a fraction of a second.
She drove a rapid-fire sequence of blue flame strikes aimed at Cinder’s guard. The sheer velocity of the martial arts combinations forced Cinder to bring up her arms to defend herself, the blue fire singing her dark clothing.
"Is this the power of a maiden?" Azula scoffed, executing a sweeping kick that sent a crescent wave of azure fire crashing against Cinder's feet. "I've seen peasants with better form."
Cinder's eyes blazed with fury. Unleashing a shockwave of pure thermal energy from her body, she blasted Azula backward. As the princess skidded across the courtyard to maintain her balance, Cinder summoned her heavy obsidian bow, notched a massive arrow of superheated glass, and fired.
The arrow whistled through the air, aimed directly at Azula's chest.
Azula didn't dodge. Instead, she performed a fluid, circular motion with her arms, channeling the kinetic energy of the attack. She caught the tip of the arrow with her firebending, redirecting its trajectory into the stone floor at her feet, where it shattered uselessly. Without breaking her momentum, she ran her fingers through the air, separating the positive and negative energies once more.
The air grew thick with tension as blue sparks danced across Azula's armor.
Cinder noticed the movement and flew directly into the air to avoid a ground attack, but Azula tracked her perfectly. With a sharp, piercing snap of her fingers, she unleashed a bolt of lightning that tore through the sky, heading straight for the airborne maiden.
Cinder reacted with absolute desperation, using a violent burst of fire from her feet to warp her trajectory mid-air. The jagged bolt of lightning missed her chest by inches, grazing her shoulder armor with a deafening crackle and sending a sharp shock through her system.
Staggering as she touched down on the ruined roof of the palace overhang, Cinder clutched her shoulder, her breath coming in ragged gasps. Her eyes fixed on the courtyard below, wild with an aggressive heat.
Azula stood perfectly poised in the center of the broken stone tiles, her posture formal and unbothered. She raised a single hand, casually extinguishing a small blue ember on her fingertips.
"You fly well enough," Azula called up, her voice dripping with royal disdain. "But a bird in the air is still just a target."
Cinder didn't reply with words. The grim arm beneath her sleeve pulsed with a dark energy, and she extended her hand, conjuring a massive, interlocking wall of superheated glass blades that she launched downward like a guillotine.
Azula watched the incoming wall of obsidian. Instead of retreating, she ran forward, using her firebending to slide across the slick stone. She dipped beneath the first layer of blades, her movements a fluid display of high-level martial arts. As she cleared the obstacle, she propelled herself upward into the air using a powerful concussive blast from her feet, aiming a dual-fisted strike of azure flame directly at Cinder's position on the roof.
The blue fire impacted the overhang, shattering the stone structure completely. Both fighters tumbled back into the dust-filled courtyard, their flames illuminating the haze as they hit the ground and instantly reset their stances, neither ready to concede the field.
The dust from the collapsed overhang hadn't even settled before Cinder lunged through the gray haze. Abandoning her glass weapons, she extended her shadow-like Grimm arm, the dark appendages stretching forward to seize Azula by the throat.
Azula’s eyes widened slightly, her martial instincts overriding any surprise. She dropped into a low split, letting the dark hand pass harmlessly through the air where her head had been a fraction of a second prior. Utilizing her momentum, she pivoted on her palms and delivered a sharp, sweep kick infused with a crescent of blue fire, striking Cinder squarely in the shin.
Cinder grunted, her Aura flickering slightly as she stumbled back.
Azula scrambled back to her feet with perfect balance, her posture immediately resetting into a precise stance. "An interesting toy," she remarked, her voice sharp and devoid of fear. "But a beast's limb doesn't make up for a lack of discipline."
Cinder's remaining eye burned with a volatile fury. "I am a Maiden!" she roared, her voice echoing off the palace walls.
She slammed her hands into the stone floor, unleashing a continuous wave of orange thermal energy that erupted from the ground in a straight line toward the princess. The intense heat cracked the remaining tiles, turning the courtyard into a furnace.
Azula sprinted sideways, using short, calculated bursts of blue fire from her boots to outrun the advancing fissures. The sheer velocity of the thermal blasts singed the edges of her Fire Nation armor, but she didn't lose her footing. She moved in a fluid, circular pattern, drawing the kinetic energy of the heat around her body, separating the internal forces with absolute focus.
As Cinder pressed the assault, expecting her opponent to be overwhelmed by the raw volume of the flames, Azula stopped dead in her tracks.
The air pressure dropped instantly. Blue sparks began to crackle wildly across Azula's fingers as she extended two pointed fingers directly at Cinder's chest. With a sharp, piercing snap that broke the roar of the fire, she discharged a blinding bolt of lightning through the smoke.
The blinding bolt of electricity tore through the heat haze, moving too fast for human reaction. Cinder, relying on the primal instincts of her Maiden power, threw up a massive barrier of hardened obsidian glass just as the strike connected.
The collision was deafening. The sheer kinetic force of the lightning shattered the glass shield into thousands of superheated fragments, sending a violent shockwave through the courtyard. Cinder was thrown backward, her body skidding across the fractured stone tiles before she managed to dig her dark Grimm claw into the ground to halt her momentum. Her Aura flickered violently, struggling to absorb the residual voltage.
Azula didn't wait for the smoke to clear. Using fire jets from her boots, she propelled herself through the debris, clearing the distance instantly. She descended on Cinder with a relentless barrage of blue flame strikes, each punch and kick delivered with a precise, military rhythm.
"You call yourself a god," Azula hissed, parrying a desperate swing from Cinder's re-summoned blade and driving a blue fire palm strike into Cinder's midsection. "You are nothing but a thief playing with toys you don't understand."
Cinder bared her teeth, the impact forcing the air from her lungs. Driven by pure survival, she unleashed an omnidirectional blast of orange fire from her core, forcing Azula to flip backward to avoid the inferno.
As Azula touched down, her boots sliding to a halt, Cinder rose into the air, her dark hair whipped by the thermal updraft. The air around her began to shimmer with a volatile, aggressive heat as she gathered every ounce of her Maiden magic, determined to reduce the entire palace to ash.
Cinder hovered high above the shattered courtyard, a silhouette of pure, volatile destruction. The air warped and shimmered around her as she manifested a massive, churning sphere of orange flame, the sheer volume of the heat crackling as it expanded to fill the space between the palace walls. With a roar of exertion, she drove both hands downward, sending the massive inferno hurtling toward the earth.
Azula looked up, the brilliant orange glow illuminating her pale face. Her eyes remained fixed on the descending threat, sharp and completely analytical. She didn't try to run from the blast radius. Instead, she deepened her stance, planting her feet firmly onto the fractured stone tiles.
As the massive fireball reached her, Azula moved her arms in a fluid, sweeping motion, performing a high-level firebending redirection maneuver. Rather than fighting the raw power head-on, she caught the outer edge of the vortex, spinning her body to channel the kinetic energy around her form. The orange flames roared past her in two massive torrents, scorching the walls behind her but leaving the princess entirely untouched in the center of the wake.
Before the dissipation was even complete, Azula utilized the intense residual heat, drawing it inward to accelerate her own internal energy. She ran her fingers through the air, separating the forces with cold, absolute precision.
Cinder dropped back toward the ground, expecting to see a blackened crater, but instead met Azula’s piercing gaze.
The air pressure fell to zero. Blue sparks danced violently across Azula's shoulders and down her arms, concentrating at the tips of her fingers. With a sharp, decisive thrust of her hand, she discharged a massive, concentrated bolt of lightning.
The white-blue strike tore through the remaining smoke, hitting Cinder squarely in the chest before she could form a barrier. The impact was instantaneous and deafening. The electrical discharge shattered Cinder's remaining Aura with a violent flash, sending her crashing hard into the stone floor, where she lay motionless as the last of the blue embers flickered out into the night.
Azula stood perfectly still in the quiet that followed, her chest rising and falling in a steady, controlled rhythm. She did not lower her guard, keeping her eyes fixed on the fallen Maiden as the last of the smoke cleared from the courtyard. The blue fire around her knuckles gradually dissipated into faint wisps of heat, leaving the air smelling of fried stone and ozone.
A low groan broke the silence.
Cinder stirred, her fingers twitching against the cracked tiles. Her armor was scorched, and the dark Grimm arm lay limp at her side, the black energy pulsing weakly as it retracted back beneath her sleeve. Slowly, painfully, she pushed herself up into a low crouch, using her one remaining glass blade as a crutch to steady her trembling frame. Her singular eye flared with a desperate, wild malice, but her body refused to follow her command.
Azula took a slow, measured step forward, the soles of her boots clicking sharply against the stone. She looked down at Cinder, her expression devoid of anger—there was only a cold, regal indifference.
"You fought with everything you had," Azula said, her voice cutting through the stillness like a blade. "But a crown built on stolen power will always fall to a true ruler."
Cinder bared her teeth, gathering a tiny, flickering spark of orange flame in her palm, but before she could throw it, Azula raised two fingers, blue sparks instantly dancing across her knuckles. The message was clear. Any further resistance would be met with an immediate, lethal strike.
Cinder's hand dropped, the spark dying out. With a bitter, venomous look, she gathered a burst of raw thermal smoke around her feet, collapsing the broken tiles beneath her to drop into the catacombs below, escaping into the darkness.
Azula did not pursue. She simply turned her back on the escape route, smoothing down the front of her Fire Nation armor and adjusting her topknot with absolute poise. The palace was in ruins, but as she walked away into the night, the blue embers at her fingertips illuminated the path of a victor.
