The Fiction Games

Chapter Twenty-Eight - Ascension

Water seeped from a flower bed and hovered in the air for a moment, then Katara pushed the substance into an inferno. A plume of smoke shot out, but the fire increased to flourish from bush to bush, seeking to wipe out the entire forest.

"Whoever thought of taking water from plants," Percy panted, "is a genius." He willed the inside fluid of a tree to spring from its pores and shower on the fire. It was feeble effort, but it contained the fires from spreading faster.

"There's no use," Annabeth said. "We have to fight those automatons. Do you think the Gamemakers stole two of them from gods' junkyard?" 

"I haven't seen automatons shoot lasers from their hands," said Percy. He ran to another tree to extract a few more gallons. "We aren't making a dent, Katara!"

Aang's staff transformed to his glider. "I'm going to try to knock him down."

"Wait!" Katara broke her concentration from the fire. She caught a glimpse of the avatar before he whisked away above the forest. "Aang!" 

Collecting enormous altitude, Aang skyrocketed to the sentinel's eye level. Wind bounced of his glider as though he was the master of the current, not the Gamemakers. He taunted the sentinel by circling it like a vulture scrutinizing his prey. From the corner of his eye, he saw the robot twitch as it tried to follow the airbender's path. It raised its arms to launch a missile. 

Katara clenched her fist, "What are you doing, Aang?" 

"TERMINATION," the sentinel's voice box said. Eyes matching the white-hot beam on its palm, it targeted Aang in mid-flight.

"NO!" Katara shouted.

But the avatar had something else on his agenda. Instead of embracing the warm light that devastated everything it touches, Aang closed his flight in a tight circuit. Whipping round and round, the wind changed its direction according to him. Soon he no longer needed to airbend; a tornado formed in a matter of seconds, and the beam lost its power in the vortex.

The tributes on the ground saw the airbender shoot out of the tornado on his glider. The sentinel cooled off to blast a second beam, but the tornado traveled toward it. As if releasing all of the power the winds could muster, the tornado burst on impact, and the sentinel dropped to its knees. Grounded tributes had to shield their eyes from specks of the tornado falling from the sky.

Aang landed on two feet next to Katara.

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Officer Rick Grimes was given savory moments to take a deep breath. Scorches seared off his arm hair and nearly engulfed his pants, but he managed to escape his death. He tossed the Blaster aside, the pistol out of juice. 

The sentinel took two more steps before his palm glowed fiery white. Aang's tunnel of wind had no affect on its armor. Rick beckoned the rest of his strength to keep running out of the robot's gaze. The energy seeped out of his body with the last narrow escape. He clawed the earth to get on his knees, then planted both feet on the ground. Taking a deep breath, he took two steps then fell on his hands. Rick could hear the air around the sentinel fizzing with heat.

His first instinct was to jump. Knees bent, body tensed, Rick released himself into the air, covering much of the forest as he could. For a second, his feet did not touch the ground, and he traveled to the right instead of straight. Chunks of debris soared across what little vision he had left, and his world was soon showered with dust. 

The sentinel had blasted off a section of the forest to Rick's left, the force of the explosion propelling him yards away. His flight through the air was cut short when he met a tree trunk with his back. All the air he had stored now expelled, and he was left wheezing.