Chapter 97: CAN BE SKIPPED)

As was so often the case with him, it was Akash that ended up making the first move. 

Thick vines made out of tree roots erupted from the edge of the craggy clifftop and launched themselves across the open air straight toward Xyalla. 

But the rotund alien wasn't going to allow any attacks to hit them that easily. Xyalla knocked one vine whip away with a telekinetic blast that sent it crashing back down into the rocky cliff face before dodging the second with a dip and a dive. Their flight was scarily fast. 

After their dodge the shimmering power around Xyalla became even more visible, until it coalesced down their freakishly long arms and into their hands as two glowing balls of pink energy. Xyalla smushed the two glowing pieces of energy into one another and began to rub their palms together in circles until it was flattened out into a disc. 

With another dive to dodge the vines once again, Xyalla waved the disc in an arc. It cut the two vines in half, sending the jagged ends down into the chasm below. That wasn't all, either. The pink energy from the saw leapt into the vines and travelled down along it, cracking and corrupting the wood until it came apart and disintegrated into a light pink ash. 

I turned my attention back to Akash. He had ripped the two vines up and out of the ground, and just before the pink rot managed to reach all the way to his wooden body, he threw the afflicted roots far away, until they too fell down the chasm. 

<If he'd allowed the energy to reach the forest, it would have consumed all the wood and left him with no more resources,> BB explained. <Xyalla's manna work is truly something else.>

It was rare to hear BB so awed. The only time I'd really heard him talk like that was in the times before Lara had turned on us all. 

<Game respects game,> BB said simply, and I had to agree, Xyalla's manna work was definitely putting anything I could do at the moment to shame. If we had been sticking around, I probably would have asked the alien to teach me a few things. 

Akash absorbed two more trees, and a twin pair of launcher tubes emerged from his back. I'd had no idea that he could manipulate his body in more ways than just the shift into his battle form, and I almost felt a little bit disappointed that he hadn't been pushed further against me in our conflicts. 

He anchored himself into the ground and launched to massive orbs, which looked like they were made from leaves. As the leaf bombs reached their absolute height they broke up, revealing two sets of at least a hundred sharp twigs, that began to hurtle back down toward Xyalla. 

Surely he couldn't think that twigs were going to be able to hurt his opponent where his massive vines had failed?

Out of nowhere the twigs sped up to the point where I could no longer see the moving, and Xyalla moved in turn. 

The aliens hands blurred into a massive circle above themselves, which shortly became peppered by explosions. Clearly, they had been more than twigs, they were more like manna missiles. But Xyalla had managed to avoid the onslaught, creating some kind of incredibly strong manna shield above themselves with their psychic powers. 

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So far it felt like the two were merely testing one another. Xyalla was testing how strong Akash's attacks were, and Akash was testing how strong Xyalla's defences were. So far it looked like Xyalla had the upper hand in the conflict. 

I turned my attention back to Akash once more and was even more surprised by what was happening. Pieces of wood were falling away from the alien until eventually, his battle form had come apart completely. But the wood disintegrating didn't stop there. For a brief moment, I was worried that my friend had been caught up in Xyalla's previous energy attack, but that didn't seem to be the case either. 

It was a new form, lithe and dangerous. 

Akash had transformed from his big and bulky state to a much thinner and more streamlined appearance. He looked more like a championship sprinter, complete even with a domed head that had a pointed end just like a cyclists helmet. Everything about this form was built for speed. 

Akash took off so fast that a sonic boom tore apart the ground he had previously been standing on. Within moments he had cleared the distance to the craggy cliffs and had launched straight off of it. 

He was faster than anything I'd ever seen before, faster even than me with my propulsion turned up to the max and my gravity fields enabled. 

As he reached Xyalla the other alien tried to dodge, but Akash's vines whipped out and wrapped themselves around the portly alien. There was no chance. Akash was simply too fast, and this speed blitz was way too powerful. 

Akash threw Xyalla as hard as he could toward the cliff face. While he was now faster, it looked as if he was also still incredibly strong. The alien shot across the cliff and collided into the ground so hard he made a crater in the rock. 

Xyalla wasn't moving. 

"Akash is the victor, after that incredible display of body morphing and speed, Xyalla just couldn't keep up!" Belana bellowed over the speakers. 

The white light took them away from the battlefield and back to the medical bay once again. 

This time Akash stayed there, allowing the medical bot to run its scans over him. With a staticky scraping sound and a flash of blue laser light, the medical bot had constructed a large wooden log. Akash reached out a tendril and wrapped it around the log, absorbing it into himself so he could once again return his base form. 

I was realising there was a lot I didn't know about either of my friends fighting styles, they were both a lot more dangerous than I gave them credit for.

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