We are born from non-benders. A few unfortunate of us are born from benders. We cry and wail in front of disappointed faces though sometimes happy faces greet us as well. Our parents' tears are a mix of dismay and happiness; in the world we live, non-benders are the lowest of lows; we are transparent, meek, and worst of all, we are powerless.
We grow up like all the other children; with scabs on our knees and firing a million questions in a single breath. Some of us are quiet, some of us are boisterously loud, and some of us know better than to stand out. We start with no hatred in our hearts; rather, the fact that our friend can race rocks across the pavement is a pastime that consumes our afternoons. We like the fact that the girl living across us can water-bend the residues of an afternoon at the river our of our ruined clothes before our mother finds out. Some of us have the unlucky fate to live on the streets, with no food and a constant ache in our tummy; every once in a while though, fate smiles on us when we find the young fire-bender with his brother huddled underneath a cardboard and he offers us the warmth of the fire in his palm.
But our parents slowly plant the seed of malice within us and the community does little to assuage it. Soon, we start feeling envious that our classmates can play with water and fire, we hate seeing the boy get better and better with his earth-bending. When he tries to show us a cool trick ("look, I can make a whole wall of rock rise from beneath our feet!) we give him the biggest look of hatred we can manage (bitterness seethes from us, it seems) and it's the last time we talk to him. By the time we reach adolescence, there is a clear boundary between us and them ("Don't trust the fire-benders," says my mother, "who do you think killed those poor boy's parents on Bei Fong avenue?").
Soon, the council has more benders representing Republic City, with the excuse that well, there are more benders than non-benders. And the seed sprouts, slowly but constantly, with every bit of news from the council and the chatter on the street. The Agni Kai's have begun a turf war again. And again, the collateral damage is us. It's our friend who was caught in between the Agni Kai's fire-bender war with the Triple threat triads' earth-bender. It was our friend's body that was demolished so badly that his family had only an arm to bury. It was our girlfriend's face and neck that got burned when she refused to hand out her money to a fire-bender ("I need this for my mother, please!). It was our son who died when the water-bender kid lost control.
But they don't see that. All they see is the next tournament of Pro-bending, and the amazing feats of the teams as they wield the powers of the Gods themselves while trying to knock each other off the ring. We see how harsh the metal wires from the police force are, the welts they leave on our arms, and how powerless we feel when they take all our competence from us. We are powerless.
'The Equalists'
It's a word that's been going around and it's pleasant to our ears. Equality now, they cry, and though something in the pit of our stomach churns when we see his masked face, we can't help but feel like they're truly speaking to us. We are no longer invisible, no longer the lowest class of citizens. Suddenly, our inability to move the elements doesn't automatically denote us. "Equality now!" We shout.
"Only the Gods deserve that kind of power," our mothers used to say, when we were too young to understand and all we could think about was going to see the handsome young earth-bender while his brother was away, "You understand, Penny? No human should have that kind of power."
And now, as we shout until our throats are raw, we dismiss the fact that we know plenty of benders who we have laughed with, cried with, held, kissed, and even loved. We are doing the world a favor. We are bringing us all to the same level, where no one is superior or inferior. A world where we don't have resentment over our neighbor when his earth-bending makes his field grow faster and far more beautiful than ours. It will be a world where we won't feel resentment when our girlfriend misses our birthday, our anniversary, that special date we planned because she had pro-bending practice to go to. It's a world where the seed will no longer flourish because we will all be equal.
Things will be better, we believe, when the power of the gods belong to the gods and not to them…or to us.
"Equality now!" we shout.