- How do you like the princess?
- Honestly? Between us? Fucking bitch!...
***
Two people on the deck, standing opposite each other, looked carefully into the eyes of their opponent. It was a guy standing in a cloak and holding a strange sword on his belt with both hands: one the scabbard, the other the hilt. Slightly tilting his body, he carefully followed the movements of his opponent, ready to break into battle at any moment. The girl opposite, in turn, stood in a standard stance for Fire magic, also ready to start throwing fire at the slightest provocation.
No one was in a hurry to take the first step and waited for the opponent's move.
***
-...but strong! An incredible combination of strength, talent and arrogance...
***
The girl could not stand it first and, taking a step forward, blew blue fire directly at her opponent. The same one sharply pulled out his strange sword and with it he cut a stream of fire, jumped towards his opponent, trying to reduce the distance between them.
The same one, without hesitation, carefully moving to the side, began to throw fireballs and jets at the guy in the cloak moving towards her, sometimes launching horizontal ones, trying to reach the swordsman across the area.
***
"We'll swallow Uli's shit with her, oh, we'll swallow it," said the slightly rumpled guy, sitting in the captain's cabin. In some places it was scorched, in others it was simply scuffed, and the scabbard was empty. And, in principle, his appearance expressed complete dissatisfaction.
"I think you're a little biased," Uli chuckled, "Aki, of course, I understand your loss, but...
***
At one point, the girl's attack exceeded all speed limits and her opponent stopped having time to fight them off and began to dodge. But apparently the guy, and it was Akimaru, was tired of just fighting back and the sound of clicks began to undress one after another on the deck at a decent speed. Following which, with a millisecond delay, fireballs of blue flames flew towards Princess Azula.
And this time she had to dodge and twist and turn, showing off her stretching and acrobatics. At one point, Azula once again dodged the flames, but miscalculated a little and the blue ball burned her hand and while the princess was disoriented for a couple of seconds from pain, Akimaru was already next to her, attacking with his sword.
The princess clearly had less experience in such close combat, especially considering her opponent's unusual weapon, but nevertheless she deftly tried to maintain the distance, fighting back with fire and dodging with various acrobatic tricks.
At one point, when Akimaru again began performing his standard movement, which the princess copied last time, Azula very deftly fit into her opponent's movement and knocked the rapier out of the guy's hands with a beautiful kick. Unfortunately, she flew overboard, splashed into the water and quickly sank to the bottom.
***
"It was a weapon forged by me personally!" My weapon, Uli! I went through thick and thin with him, captivity and a whole lot of other things! And then the little, arrogant bitch was able to knock him overboard!
"That's why you're biased!" - Uli Maurer, the one and only captain of the ship on which Aki and Azula are now sailing to their next point in the plan, interrupted the speech of his comrade, "the princess has a lot of positive qualities and you just need to take a closer look...
"Yeah, knowing you, the positive qualities that you noticed are a firm ass and a pretty face," muttered Aki.
***
Perhaps Azula regretted a little about her rash decision to disarm her bodyguard in this way, but only a little when Aki hovered, literally for a second, realizing the loss and furiously went on the attack, throwing fire and trying to get closer to the enemy.
At one point, the princess was thinking how to counterattack and was already thinking about going straight, not caring about defense. A fairly popular fighting style among two fire magicians, most often this is used on Agni Kai: the magicians throw away all defense except return fire, and simply begin to compare who has the stronger flame.
This is a rather dangerous style, this is how most people get their scars, including post-mortem ones, but it was the only way to respond to such fire throwing, at least that Azula saw.
But it was at this moment that the opponent, as if sensing the princess's plan, finished and said:
"Now we need to stop by my master on the way," said an almost completely calm voice, "I need a new rapier."
- Hmm, you fell for this trick yourself! - as if the princess was trying to justify herself a little.
"I don't argue," Aki answered and, without saying another word, he went to the captain's control room. He needs to mark the death of a fallen comrade.
***
- Well, she even seemed to try to apologize!
- She's an arrogant bitch, Uli, and I won't change my mind for anything.