Penka:
The sound of the alarm clock cut through the silence like a knife. High and shrill, it was the only thing that could rouse Penka from her sleep. She groaned and looked around her, not that there was anything to see. Everything was dark and cool and quiet. It made her want to stay in bed instead of turning on the invasive light. She wanted to sleep and never to wake up. To let her warm bed devour her and give her proper rest for once.
She forced her naked legs out from under her blanket into the shocking cold air. She groaned even louder as the rest of her body slid off the bed with her. Her bones were sore and out of place, her neck kinkier then a girl with daddy issues. Before turning out the lights she looked around. Her small one room apartment had no windows and all the lights were off, but there could always be somebody watching. She stood erect as she had been taught by her grandmother and felt the earth within her. Her neck straightened out and she shook it a little bit to be sure she hadn't made a mistake.
Blood bending had become mainstream. Everybody knew it and almost every water bender down town practiced it, but bone bending was still a secret that Penka was not eager to give up. She fumbled in the darkness for the light switch until she found it and flooded the room with light.
"What's on the list for today?" She sighed to herself.
She knew what was on the list, same as everyday. Do her meaningless job making Satomobiles,eat her meaningless meals, come home, sleep.
"If it weren't for the stupid punch clock system I could just stay home and collect my paycheck by mail." She mumbled to herself as she slid on her big thick overalls.
After putting some change in her pockets and grabbing a coat she set out into the dense fog of an early republic city morning.
Kato:
Morning came as a great relief to Kato. Just as the sun began to peek over the ocean onto Yue bay Kato began to pack up his station and head for his home.
"Going home already, Kato?" Asked a gruff sounding voice he recognized as his super visor.
He forced himself to turn around and look him in the eye.
"Well I wasn't going to the south pole." He growled.
His super visor loved to keep him late, or early all depending on how you see it.
"There's the sun right there!" He said as he pointed to the small white crescent rising from the deep, "That means it's time to go home."
"That aint the sun!" The super visor howled, "Why that's the moon! And it means get back to work!"
The plump earth kingdom man leaned up against the railing staring at Kato. His dark green eyes bored into Kato, challenging him. Kato wanted to blood bend. He wanted to blood bend more then he ever wanted to before. He wanted to make the man suffer and fear him, like he had done to the bullies of his childhood. He wanted him to die screaming.
Kato caught himself. No. He told himself. You can't think those things.
"Fine." Kato said as he returned to his station, removing the boxes of silver ware from the barge.
He hated doing this. Being a mindless sheep one thing after the other. He knew he was special, he was better then the rest but if he ever showed it, well he didn't like to think about that. If anybody found out his power to blood bend at any time of day or month he knew he would be killed.
Rho:
"Kill the light's Reggie!" Rho moaned from her bed, "I'm trying to get some sleep here!"
"You sleep more then enough." He said simply. "How you make your part of the rent each month is a mystery to me." He shrugged.
She snorted. If only he wasn't too busy to know exactly how she made her money. Every afternoon as soon as the casinos opened she would saunter in with the casual confidence of an action movie hero. She would sit down at the Pai Gow tables or the Fan Tan tables and order a drink while she waited for the rest to come in. The first to come would be easy prey. Desperate people with next to nothing to lose, people struggling with a addiction to the rush that came from putting it all on the line, and kids who wanted to play hookie. They were small money and showed most of their choices on their face. Once again, they were just practice. Next the big fish would start to come in. The millionaire playboys with a model on each arm, the business men slowly becoming more confidant and intoxicated, and big gang bosses who wanted to turn their money stolen into money won.
Rho would beat them all. The guards always watched her carefully but she made sure to make rounds of each casino before returning to one. She was never caught cheating because the way she cheated could not be seen. Every time some one has a good hand they send certain electrical impulses from their brain, and every time they have a bad hand they send different electrical impulses.
Rho, being a skilled fire bender, could feel these impulses and tell them apart. After a while she began to differentiate between more feelings and impulses other then positive and negative, more specific. Down to the point that she could tell exactly what some one was about to do right before they did it. After three years of this she could read these impulses deftly and thoroughly and could even sometimes influence them.
She had practiced with Reggie some times in his sleep. She would make a few sharp movements with her fingers and his body would twitch to respond to the false impulses she had sent. She had never taken her power beyond Reggie in his sleep for fear that it would be found and classified the same as blood bending like Yakone. Even though it had happened before she was born she still lived in fear of the ability to remove some one's bending.