After they finished their food Ryuu and Ryo decided to go practice together.

They headed to the academy’s training grounds, and found an open sparing platform.

They jumped on to the platform and activated the barrier, as they slowly began to walk in a circle staring at each other.

Ryo focused his qi in to the tips of his fingers and with a flick of his wrist he unleashed a powerful wind blade that flew towards Ryuu.

Just as it was about to hit him, Ryuu widened his stance and struck the wind blade with a palm thrust. The powerful gust of wind dispersed all the surrounding air, destroying the wind blade.

Then Ryuu simultaneously stepped forward with his right foot switching his stance; as he extended his left arm out behind him with his pointer finger and thumb in an ‘L’ shape.

He then ran the palm of his right hand along his left arm, across his chest, and then extended it outwards. With his palm facing towards Ryo he thrusted his palm and unleased a surge of orange and blue flames, all in one quick decisive motion.

Ryo flicked his wrist again, this time making a wall of air from the surging winds. The air blocked the column of fire long enough for him to jump out of the way.

While in air he used both hands to send wave after wave of air blades towards Ryuu.

Not being able to stop them all he jumped in to the air to dodge.

“I got you now, kaze surge!” yelled Ryo as he released a mighty surge of air that washed over Ryuu like a huge wave.

It completely enveloped Ryuu and sent him hurdling towards the ground.

Right as he was going to hit the ground he focused all his qi into his feet and hands. He then released bursts of air from all four of his limbs making him levitate.

He hovered about two feet above the grass. He slowly floated back to the platform and stepped back on.

All of a sudden Ryuu felt like a tornado was ripping apart his soul realm, then right when it was going to burst the tornado suddenly vanished. Leaving Ryuu gasping for breath as he tried to recover.

“I never thought you would be so good at using two elements, you’ve really got the hang of air bending.” Said Ryo a bit surprised

“You think that’s good check this out” yelled Ryuu as he formed a ball of black flames in his hands, he then used his left hand and with a slight flick of his wrist the ball split in to two.

He then threw the cendrillion in his left hand at Ryo, then using the same hand he created a small circle shaped shadow that hovered above his palm.

He then threw the second cendrillion in to the black hole, then the shadow disappeared.

The cendrillion that was about 10 feet from Ryo suddenly spit out another one that was moving a lot quicker.

Ryo quickly put his hands in front of him with his left hand on top, with palms facing each other with about half a foot of space in between.

He then twisted his hands in a clockwise circle creating a small sphere that sucked all the surrounding air in.

As the wind sphere started to pull the cendrillion towards it, Ryo tried to dodge.

But the black ball of flames ripped through the vortex of air like paper mache and headed towards him again.

He then realized that Ryuu could still control and guide the black ball.

Ryo was a little terrified, he had never seen anything like this before.

As he fell towards the ground he used his right arm to create a wave of air behind him, that pushed him back on to platform.

“I was going to save this move to beat you another time when there’s witnesses. But since you’ve been so kind to show me your new techniques, Ill show you mine! Roared Ryo as he spat out an enormous fire ball.

*hahahahaha*

“I win! Oh yeah, how do you like that!” screamed Ryo

“Ohh, so you learned some fire bending, your technique isn’t half bad.” Said Ryuu who was calmly standing behind Ryo.

Ryo froze up and before he could even turn around, Ryuu touched his shoulder then he was suddenly surrounded by complete darkness.

Then another moment later, he reappeared about 20 feet from the sparing platform. As he rematerialized he fell on his butt in the grass, as Ryuu sat on the edge of the platform smiling at him.

“You’ve gotten a lot stronger Ryo, I never thought you would be learning fire techniques. Your bending skills are unrivaled.” Said Ryuu who was still smiling

“Yeah I thought so to, until you used that black magic on me!” said Ryo as he laughed

“Black magic” repeated Ryuu as he laughed uncontrollably.

Ryuu finally got a hold of himself and said “Its not black magic, its the element of darkness.”

“Where in the world did you learn that? Almost all knowledge on it was lost. Not to mention you also got really good at your fire bending and you learned air bending techniques, just what kind of training have you been doing?”

Ryuu just took a deep breath and calmly said “Just a lot of hard work I guess. Tomorrow I’ll bring you some fire style techniques for you to try out.”

“Really, that would be a big help, thanks man.” Replied Ryo as he lightly punched Ryuu’s arm, and decided to not inquire anymore about his training.

Ryuu couldn’t stop thinking about the tornado of energy so he looked up and asked “I feel like meditating for a bit, would you want to join me.”

“Yeah I’m down, lets go to Sakura Pond.” Said Ryo as they started to walk towards the center of the courtyard.

“Alright.” Replied Ryuu

In the center of the court yard is a small hill surrounded by lush beautiful cherry blossom trees. On top of the small hill is a small waterfall about 10 feet high, that flows into a pond filled with large colorful koi fish, everyone calls this ‘Sakura Pond’.

There were many students of all ages who were quietly sitting on the edge of the shoreline meditating.

Ryuu and Ryo found a nice secluded area, sat down and began to meditate.