After Leo ran about a mile away, he stopped and turned around. Hiro was surprised that Leo was able to outrun him without even using a movement technique. He used muscle purely to exceed him in speed.
Hiro executed his Yellow Flash Step. Hiro coated himself in lightning, and his body was blasted forward.
Seeing the man surrounded by lightning dive towards him, Leo took up a defensive posture. Leo channeled mana into his foot and stomped onto the ground causing several Earth Spikes to protrude from the field to deviate Hiro's movement.
This slowed Hiro down enough for Leo to surround Hiro in a Buffalo Cage. "Tombstone!" Closing his right hand, the walls surrounding Hiro closed in on him.
"Hiro, let's stop this fight. You were once my team leader. Act like it."
*Kaboom!*
The stone that collapsed in on Hiro was blown away, and Hiro dashed out of it towards Leo. "We are long past talking things over, Leo." Performing a round kick when he was less than a few feet away, Hiro landed a Kaze Kick launching Leo into a nearby rock.
"Ahh." Leo breathe knocked out of him, but he looked at Hiro and recovered quickly due to his newly remodeled body. Circulating mana throughout his body, Leo was back to normal.
Hiro was hoping to catch him off guard and dashed towards him. Little did he know Leo was already recovered and waiting for him.
"Yellow Flash: Thunder Strike!" Hiro released his sword drawing technique upon Leo.
"Stone Statue." Leo covered his body entirely with rock making him look like a complete statue. Leo threw out his right hand and caught the blade coming at him. Gripping Hiro's katana, blood dripped down from Leo's hand.
"This traitor stopped his sword." Hiro thought to himself. With his non-sword hand, he punched out with a Lightning Fist. Leo let go of the blade and leaped back onto the rock behind him.
"Take this!" Punching down with his bloody hand, Leo connected with the boulder below him and shattered it. Several Rock Shards was projected towards Hiro.
Activating his Kaze Screen, Hiro diverted the shards and retreated a few feet. This fight was reminding Hiro of his many losses with Alice. The elemental disadvantage of lightning vs. earth and Leo being more proficient in his element, Hiro was losing this confrontation.
"I'm sorry you feel betrayed, but they're also my comrades."
"Those monsters invaded our planet and killed our people, but you don't care about humanity. You didn't care about us." His anger blinded him. To Hiro, it was either him or them, and Leo chose them. Deep down, Hiro related to Leo and his tragic past. He even liked him as a brother would.
"RAIKEN!!!" Channeling all of the lighting mana he could muster, Hiro released a massive wave of lighting onto Leo.
Erecting back to back Buffalo Walls, the attack collided with the lighting and dust and dirt went everywhere.
Leo leaped out of the cloud cover and activated his Mirror Bracer releasing a miniature version of Raiken at Hiro. Leo used the stone walls to weaken the attack to absorb it.
Seeing his attack fired at him, Hiro was stunned for a second. He then shook it off and released another Raiken to combat the one shot upon him. Once the two collided they dissipated in thin air. Looking around Hiro noticed Leo vanished.
Hiro started to get flustered until he realized this was what caused him to lose most of his duals with Alice. He took a deep breath and calmed down. Then he focused his mana on the fluctuations in the air to see if he could find Leo.
Running at Hiro from behind him, Leo launched an uppercut. He shed his stone skin to move quickly to catch Hiro off guard.
Sensing the air movement from behind, Hiro spun around with Leo a foot away and slashed at him with his sword. "Kaze Slas..."
*ROOOOAAR*
Leo released a King's Roar disrupting Hiro focus causing him not to finish his move and only being able to swing the blade at him. Leo's fist then burned with yang mana and hist Ascending Sun collided with Hiro's katana.
The attack's momentum and force blew Hiro away slamming him into the ground and sliding a few feet. Hiro picked himself off the ground and dusted himself off. He looked at his now cracked katana. Without him re-enforcing it with mana it became a simple metal sword.
Frustration and inferiority replaced Hiro's anger temporarily. "Is he stronger than me?.... No. I will use the one thing I have that he doesn't." Hiro began releasing a lot of mana. If he wanted to blame, he would have to accept Leo as a formidable adversary.
"You have got better at fighting, but you are still not at my level." Hiro knew he would have to use the raw power of his larger mana reserves to overpower Leo.
Hiro slashed out with over twenty Kaze Raikens. These powerful waves of energy surround Leo. Throwing up both hands, Leo had a Buffalo Cage surround him. The first few blasts destroyed the cage and Leo had to erect one after the other.
Seeing Leo building wall after wall around himself, Hiro launched several more Kaze Raikens.
Controlling earth was never tricky for Leo, but to form hard stone out of dust and dirt drained a good bit of mana. After he transformed over eight cages, his mana was running out quickly.
He looked through the dust with his mana sense and saw a massive energy blast land a direct hit onto Hiro's back. This blasted him down, and Hiro slid a few feet from Leo.
"Shadow?" Leo Wondered.