Sorry for the wait compared to before. I just got distracted.

Tell me what you think! And thanks for reading!

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"Ha! We caught the bastard! Nice job, now just head over to the other side and my guys will help secure him."

June was silently repositioning me to lay across the saddle between them with surprising ease as he spoke.

As soon as I was balanced, she gave another command and suddenly Xun's words became mangled in his failing mouth, and he collapsed on top of me. This animal was impressive. "Your friend doesn't have a bounty so I think I'm just gonna drop him off here. You don't mind, do you? He did just fuck you over, and he was about to do the same to me. Isn't that right?" Xun whimpered lightly before She tossed him off the shirshu and into the water.

Once back on land she clamped metal cuffs around my wrists and ankles while I hung from the saddle.

"You're probably wondering what happened, huh?" She paused for a bit before continuing, as if she were answering to my reply. "That Xun guy has been watching you for a long time. He's a really careful person, and he knew he wouldn't be able to bring you in. So he came to me because of Nyla. Of course I was skeptical. But I accepted after he showed me your bounty. He had a few people waiting on the other side of that lake to ambush you, and then me. Why split the bounty four ways when I can take it all?" She laughed lightly "I wish I could see the look on their faces when that piece of shit washes up on shore." She glanced back at me. "What were your charges? One of them was using the army's bending form, I think. But you don't look like an army boy? Oh, sure you use their form, but you're nothing like any soldier I've run into..." she gave shrug, like I was choosing not to talk to her. "Doesn't really matter, just trying to have a conversation."

June rode back much more gently than she did on the way to the lake, which I was thankful for. The only thing I could control we're my eyes and diaphragm. Lying on my stomach as I was, a rough ride could make it hard to breath. The slow riding also allowed me to wiggle various body parts as I regained control.

Eventually I could feel the power returning to my muscles. It was guess work though, I could only test my dexterity by flexing muscles that she couldn't see.

I thought i must have been resistant to the shirshu's toxin, or maybe the beast just hadn't injected as much as it normally did. Because if June were the least bit competent, then she would know the length of effect of her greatest weapon's poison.

I wouldn't curse my fortune though. I had a chance to escape.

I waited for a few moments to take deep breaths, then rolled off the beast's saddle.

I landed roughly on the ground behind it because the beast flicked it's tail up when I rolled down it. Despite the throbbing, I laid stil, waiting for June to put me back on the saddle. I was in my element now. Even if I was cuffed, I was confident. I could feel the earth beneath me ready to obey.

I watched her pull nyla back and as soon as the animal was facing me, I kipped up onto my hands and buried them into the ground. A pillar of earth shot out of the ground and into the shirshus chin with a double kick into the air. I heard a growl cut off by the animals mouth snapping shut and a shout from june when she was thrown off the saddle. The stone around my arms crumbled with a thought and I fell back into my feet.

The shirshu was rearing back, dazed from the blow it took. And June lay on the ground at its side, trying to get her bearings, Before either could recover, I raised a pillar in front of me and shot the top segment at the animals head. She fainted when the stone shattered on her forehead.

"Nyla!" June recovered just as her shirshu collapsed. "Oh you bastard!" She took a whip from a hook on the side of the saddle and swung it at me. She was pretty skilled with it, but I had fought against whip users before. They were great for taming an animal, but terrible in a fight. I caught the whip around the chain holding my wrists together, planning to tug it out of her grip. But it grazed my cheek and the familiar loss of control spread throughout my body. She had coated her whip in the shirshu's toxin...

I was draped over the shirshus saddle again. This time my cuffs were tied by rope to either side of the saddle. We had maybe an hour until the village, and I had been discretely working on loosening the wropes. I was convinced even more that she was fairly incompetent. She was terrible at tying knots and correctly timing her strongest weapon. Her idea of securing was three grandma knots, all of which were falling apart at my tugging. Her fame probably all came about from her shirshu.

Just as I was about to make an attempt at escaping again, the shirshu stopped moving. It let out something between a growl and a whine and 'looked' back at june. With a sigh, she pet the animal before paralyzing me again with a small knick of a knife and untying my ropes. "Nyla can't make it any further because of you. So you're going to be spending the rest of the day with your arms and legs bound on the floor. Hope you're happy"

I was tossed to the side of the path, thankfully on a soft patch of earth, and June led the animal beneath a tree by hugging it's snout.

The poison felt like it lasted much longer with the third dose, and power returned to my arms much slower than before. But it returned. The problem was that June sat resting on Nyla with her whip at the ready, the beast was only asleep, and I wouldn't be able to get into stance quickly enough to bend anything significant. I closed my eyes and took deep breaths, thinking of how I could get out of the situation. Meditating, essentially, minus the posture. I could feel the earth under me, still ready to respond to my will. It felt terrible having my greatest weapon so close and ready, but being unable to use it. If I could get the cuffs off then I would be able to make an escape no problem, and I knew exactly where the key was. If I could look directly at it without being suspicious, then I could bend it towards me somehow.

Maybe I could bring a stone up out of ground very quickly and snap the chains. But if that didn't work then my wrists would break and I would be in even worse of a situation. If I could even look down then I could make an attempt at picking them, but again, I was paralyzed as far as June knew. I took another deep breath to calm myself.

The chains clicked against each other when I took a deeper breath than normal, and I felt something very familiar in the metal For a very brief moment.

I focused on that something as hard as I could, and with the smallest of movements, tried to bend it to my will. I heard another clink.