The next time the sideways pull caught it, the Echo did not fight it.
It opened its wings and leaned into the push instead of against it. It let the force throw it, and used it. Its path bent through the air in a long curve that did not go where the American had sent it, and came round toward him from the side where he had no slab.
The American pushed it back with gravity.
The Echo slowed down.
But it kept coming.
He pushed harder. The air in front of him went thick and wrong, and every loose stone between them was blasted away across the court, and the Echo leaned into it with its wings back and came through anyway.
It reached him.
At the last instant the American shifted his own weight in the air, pulling himself a metre sideways, and the first punch did not land clean. It caught him on the edge and still threw him across the arena like a kicked bag, and the slab he had been standing on burst into gravel behind him.
He hit the ground and rolled.
**[EagleEyeTX]:** GET UP
