The Chronicles Of Kaurava: Part 3
A Confrontation With Destiny (Full Scene)
Continued directly from last chapter's dialogue.
Aang did as he was told and readied his weapon, a versatile quarterstaff which doubled as a glider. Solemnly, he held it in his left hand, and pointed it skyward.
In response, Krishna used his unique Firebending techniques to shape a 12-foot long guandao polearm made of plasma-hot flame. He seemed not to feel the heat at all, though, as he stood so still, he might as well have been carved from stone.
His words were also hot with hatred, too. The Primarch really did want the current Avatar dead, and wholeheartedly believed that his methods were unfit for establishing and maintaining balance and peace in the world.
"How symbolic. I will cut down the last known Airbender in the Four Nations with a type of spear made infamous by Firebenders. So enjoy these final moments. And may the afterlife be merciful to you, Aang."
Aang gritted his teeth, holding back his own rage, which was a good thing. Making the first move without focus against a foe this powerful would be instantly fatal.
A brief moment passed, which seemed like an eternity to the two seasoned apex warriors... before Krishna struck first and swung his plasma guandao with enough strength to cleave Ba Sing Se's mountainous walls in two.
The Avatar just barely avoided the ferocious attack, harnessing the wind to backflip out of the way at the last moment, something that no one else in the world would be capable of.
Then, just realizing that the fight could cause considerable collateral damage to the Earth Kingdom's capital city, he filled his lungs with air and exhaled a gust of divine turbulence, which sent Krishna flying far away from the outer limits of Ba Sing Se.
Aang rapidly accelerated towards his distant opponent with the turbulent speed of a jet plane, but by the time he got to Krishna, the Primarch was already up on his feet and ready to make a counterattack.
He swung one of his colossal, metal-coated earthbending fists at the Avatar, and sent him careening into the side of a 5-mile tall mountain, which was reduced to rubble by the unimaginable force of the impact.
When the dust finally settled, Aang was seemingly dead, buried under what remained of 800 billion tons of rock, and Krishna thought his work was done... but the pile of rubble then EXPLODED with the force and heat of a nuclear bomb, and out from above the pyroclastic blast came Aang, soaring high above his enemy with his master-forged glider, hovering in the sky and patiently waiting for Krishna to make a mistake in his onslaught of attacks.
Not fazed by the unexpected surprise of his opponent surviving being thrown hard enough to destroy a mountain, the Primarch kept up his relentless assault by using the waterbending techniques he learned under Sifu Reika's tutelage to cut giant razor-sharp ice chunks off of a vast glacier, and lob them in Aang's general direction. He also shaped a pair of katanas made of rock-solid water that glittered like diamonds in the afternoon daylight, in case the Avatar chose to swoop down and attack from above.
Several minutes went by in a flash after the cryogenic anti-air barrage. Aang was nowhere in sight, and not even Krishna's godlike super-senses could pinpoint his exact location. The Primarch knew though, that his enemy was still present, and watching his every move, presumably from high in the upper atmosphere. His eyes were firmly fixed on the sky, paying no attention elsewhere... a critical error.
Suddenly, the Avatar reappeared and rushed at Krishna from an unexpected lower angle, riding a ball of supersonic wind, before launching himself into an acrobatic kick, a move he learned from the Kyoshi Warriors.
The Primarch narrowly caught the blow on his makeshift glacial shield, and tiny fragments of ice scattered like locusts in swarming flight. He countered by swinging one of his hoarfrost katanas, which narrowly grazed Aang's monk robes, and the Avatar responded in kind with a chi-blocking backlash strike, rendering Krishna's bending temporarily useless.
It infuriated him, to say the least.
"You dirty coward! I've felt this before! Do you really think deactivating my bending will stop me? I am the chosen savior of humanity! You are nothing but a false prophet!"
Aang wasn't exactly astonished by Krishna's ego. In fact, it was perfectly expected. He had dealt with opponents who had a similar sense of vainglorious pride, most notably Fire Lord Ozai.
But then again... if the Avatar's only job was to keep balance and peace in the world... wouldn't that make him nearly the exact same as this murderous newcomer?
After all, Avatar Kyoshi was known for being very bad at diplomacy, and didn't hesitate to kill any criminal or villain that posed a serious threat to the freedom, equality and well-being of society.
In spite of this paradox... the battle raged on.
"Careful," Aang replied. "I could take away your bending permanently. That way you won't be able to wage your campaign anymore and hurt people in the name of your fatally flawed, hypocritical greater good."
"GO AHEAD AND TRY IT, THEN!," Krishna roared, as his bending swiftly returned to him, and he spewed a sizzling shower of flame and electricity from his mouth and arms like a dragon.
"You asked for it!," Aang shouted in return, spinning his arms around fast enough to create tornado force winds that uprooted nearby trees and lifted iron-rich boulders into the air, before using the raw kinetic energy to hurl himself at the Primarch like a living lightning bolt.
Hard and fast the blows came, from high and low, from right and left. Each one was blocked by Krishna, whose unusually thick skin felt like hard iron to the Avatar. Not even chi-blocking moves could completely nullify the Primarch's bending abilities... being an alien to this world, he likely wasn't impeded by the same rules as other users of the elements.
Getting impatient at this point, the young demigod snatched a boulder which had been tossed by Aang's storm winds, and shaped a ferrous stone club from it, while the Avatar was on the ground, exhausted from the fight.
Krishna swung his weapon with titanic impetus, and Aang nimbly leapt out of the way- only for the shockwaves of the club's impact to knock him over and leave him on the verge of unconsciousness.
The Primarch slowly approached his defeated rival, and gloated while preparing to finish off the last Airbender.
"Time's up, Avatar. Your pathetic ideals have failed countless times, history's vicious pattern of conflict, tyranny and division has proven it. Perhaps some of your other incarnations would agree with me, if they were still alive today... but that doesn't matter now, because it's time to say GOODBYE. And don't worry about your closest friends and allies... because THEY'LL BE NEXT!"
Krishna raised his frost katana to decapitate Aang... but right before he could do it, the heroic monk's eyes opened, and they began to glow with pure white holy light.
"No... Today, it is YOU who shall know the error of your ways, and PAY THE ULTIMATE PRICE FOR YOUR SINS!"
A blast of hurricane winds threw Krishna off his feet, and Aang ferociously assaulted him with all four elements, fueled by the godlike power of his past lives combined, while using legendary bending techniques that were centuries old.
Avatar Kuruk's narwhal lance savagely penetrated Krishna's chest, going through his ribcage, while Avatar Kyoshi's minute meteors pelted him from all directions, sundering his flesh. Avatar Roku's dragonskull flamethrower turned the Primarch's rapidly healing wounds into lingering, excruciating black lesions, and to complete the beatdown, Avatar Yangchen's divine sandstorm caught hold of his limbs and ruthlessly slammed him against various background objects, including big trees, glaciers and canyon walls.
When Aang's rampage finally came to a halt, Krishna was nowhere to be seen. The dirt had drank his blood, and an icy stalagmite had gone through his torso. Surely no one could have survived that!
Then, the Avatar heard something he never thought he would hear- the Primarch himself, sobbing like an abandoned child.
"Please," Krishna rasped, hanging off the edge of a cliff. "I'm dying, I'm burned. Help me. Someone help me," he was crying.
Aang looked at him in astonishment.
"He's crying like a little baby... I thought his sense of pride would have made that impossible!," he thought. "I can't just leave him hanging here, though..."
And, in an act of mercy, typical of him, Avatar Aang saved the life of his most formidable enemy, pulling the young demigod up onto solid ground and preventing him from falling to his demise.
"Why in the world did you help me?," Krishna asked, bewildered by this choice his clearly victorious opponent had made. "You were triumphant. You had proven me wrong."
Aang shook his head.
"All life is valuable... even the lives of my enemies, who can think very differently from me. I didn't kill the last Fire Lord, Ozai, of all people, so why would I kill you, or anyone else? And for the record, I wasn't entirely trying to prove you wrong. Your country's philosophy and ideals make good points. But you can't prove philosophical arguments in a duel to the death. You must learn to seek more peaceful solutions. Starting with this lesson."
Aang touched the exhausted and wounded Krishna and tried to remove his bending, but as soon as he attempted to channel the energy, a jolt of agonizing pain shot through his body, preventing him from completing the process, as if an unknown power or external force was protecting the Primarch from additional harm.
"So he really is something else, aside from his obscene size and height," Aang said in his mind. "Chi-blocking and energybending have almost no effect on him. If he's not of this world, then where is he from? Are there others like him somewhere out in the great beyond?"
Ignoring the troubling thoughts in his head, the Avatar proceeded to give Krishna a warning, in case he ever tried to continue waging war by doing it himself, or actively helped the Hidden Valley to achieve its goals of world domination:
You have permission to leave alive and well, Krishna of the Hidden Valley. Know this, however:
"I am well aware of your secretive nation and its insurgent plot, and that scheme needs to end, as soon as possible. Contact your masters in the shadows and declare a cease-fire, and once things settle, do not resume your campaign of destruction and violence... or I will have no choice but to put an end to your destiny, therefore violating my moral code. Understood?"
"I understand. In the unbreakable terms of an oath to keep, a promise to make, and a cause to be loyal to."
Krishna walked away, his wounds already beginning to heal, while his specially made samurai armor and steelweave cloak was battered, torn and broken from all the action.
But before he began his long journey home, he gave the Avatar a warning of his own, an ominous truth that the world would have to learn sooner or later:
"Before I leave, though, there is one last statement of wisdom I must make, something I've been trying to tell you this whole time, Avatar Aang."
"As humans, we are doomed to live on this world together. One day, there will come a desperate time when we will have to make one of two choices: Learn to coexist as one species and civilization, or perish in the flames of division and chaos. An attempt at true unity, violently forceful or not, is the only way to save ourselves from the inevitable."
PART 3 END
I tried my best to make a really good fight scene, pitting two saviors of mankind against each other, with all types of element bending and their fighting styles being utilized. Do you agree with Avatar Aang being able to beat a powerful, but inexperienced Primarch? Let me know in the comments and reviews!
Stay tuned for the next chapter... the Hidden Valley's finest warriors will be facing off against the valorous members of Team Avatar, in an over-the-top battle of the elements!
Also: This skirmish in the next chapter is part of what was happening in the Fire Nation, in the ongoing war with the Hidden Valley, while Krishna and Aang were fighting and talking. The end of Part 4 will have a shocking plot twist... what that'll be is up to me, but it's inevitably going to be the first time in this crossover that something from the Warhammer universe will make a major impact on the world of Avatar. The moment of worlds colliding.
The reason this chapter took so long, much like the last one, is because I'm focusing on writing down lots of other fanfic ideas for possible later use, notably including a May The 4th revival of my Disney Smash Bros fangame from a few years back, as well as tinkering with my own original superhero comic book story concept, something I call "The Limit Breakers," which I came up with after watching Invincible, My Hero Academia, and The Boys (the latter was too edgy and repulsively graphic even for my tastes.)
I also got tooth surgery in my real life, which certainly didn't help either.
But thanks for sticking around for these semi-regular updates. It really brightens my day!
Once again, feel free to leave constructive criticism or story idea suggestions in the reviews section! I'm getting really close to the point where the Warhammer elements of this crossover begin to get substantially involved, after all.
