Omashu
"Hah!" The loud noise was released when Sha Li stamped her foot on the dusty ground. The grass had long since been worn away by similar stampings. A huge piece of the earth jutted out of the ground three feet from where she stood, angled diagonally toward one of the many wooden posts placed around her.
"Gotcha." She muttered and with a quick flick of each wrist, she sent two rocks the size of her head to finish off the 'enemy'. The wood splintered all over the ground and the rocks slammed to the dirt, making the earths tremors travel up her legs.
Sha Li took a few seconds to catch her breath and took a drink from the water in her hip flask. She glanced around to make sure noone was watching her and flattened the earth she used back to it's original resting place, covering the wooden splinters with some casually placed rocks.
"Hey! Li-li!" A yell came around the boulder she was behind. She spun around in surprise, glad that she had already covered up her mess. Just as she turned, a woman with tightly coiled braids and bright green eyes rounded the boulder. "What are you doing way out here so early in the morning?" Mi Shang asked.
" What does it look like I'm doing?" Sha Li asked calmly and used her left hand to wipe the sweat from her forehead.
"Looks like you're doing something you shouldn't be." Mi Shang said, her arms folded in front of her chest. Sha Li's breath hitched for a moment and her heart began to speed up but she overrode it and slowed it down to average speed like she'd trained to do. Mi suddenly grinned and burst out laughing.
"Right! Sha Li Wong, eldest daughter of the new kings advisor, doing something against the rules? Ha! I'd say don't make me laugh but I already did! And it was my joke." She snorted in a few more laughs and then finally calmed down and walked up closer to Sha Li. "So? We gonna do the usual?"
Sha Li started to relax at Mi Shang's words and nodded. "I want to work on kicks today. High kicks." And then she got into a sparring position.
"You got it!" Mi got into a similar stance as Sha Li. Mi Shang Zhan was the Captain of the Warriors who now patrolled the safe streets of Ba Sing Se but she was originally Sha Li's childhood friend. When Sha Li heard of Mi's fighting skills, she convinced her parents to let her be taught by the best. They'd already been training for almost two years and Sha Li was nearing the level of the Warrior. They began to circle one another, Sha Li's eyes never looked away from Mi. Her bare feet were planted firmly to the earth, Mi's slight footsteps and movements sending telltale vibrations across the land. Sha Li could've defeated Mi with her eyes closed and ears plugged but that would be too obvious and not very smart for someone hiding things.
"So, I was sneaking around your place yesterday and I heard your parents talking while you were in town." Mi said as she lunged toward Sha Li, her foot arcing through the air an inch in front of Sha Li's face. Sha Li knocked the foot away with a quickly raised arm and then swung her foot out and hit Mi on the thigh. She spun into the kick and flipped in the air, landing 5 feet from her original place.
"Yeah, and? Am I meant to chastise you for eavesdropping? Because I honestly don't care one bit what my parents say at any point, or who hears." Sha Li said unemotionally. Mi ran toward her and thrust a punch at Sha Li's face. Sha Li ducked and while in a squat, brought one of her legs straight up and hit Mi in the chin, flipping her up and away from her.
"Uuhf!" Mi grunted as she hit the dirt on her back, her breath knocked out of her. She took a second to regain her breathing and then chuckled. "You're particularly brutal this morning. Do you already know what I'm about to tell you and you're trying to shut me up?" Mi asked as she stood up, rubbing her chin.
"I'm sure that I have no idea what you're talking about and just as I said before, I don't care one bit. I'm just fighting with intent, like you taught me to." Sha Li spoke calmly and then ran the three feet between her and Mi, kicking toward the side of her head. Mi dodged and sent a pirouette kick at Sha Li's diaphragm. Sha Li spun away from it and flipped back onto the boulder near the edge of the cliff.
"I think you will care about this particular conversation." Mi smirked.
"And why do you say that?" Sha Li asked.
"Because it was all about you." Mi said proudly, as if Sha Li had originally sent her to gather the information.
"Me? What, were they arguing over which wealthy merchants son I should be married off to?" Sha Li asked with a scowl. She really wished that her parents would stay out of her life. She was old enough to not even stay home all the time but her parents said that it was inappropriate for her to go anywhere outside the city because she had everything she could possibly need in Omashu. She hated being stuck in the Wong estate everyday and her only escape didn't even earn the title because it was just a stroll around the city, and even then she wasn't free of her family because there were guards ordered to follow and 'protect' her when her parents knew very well that she could defend herself.
"I thought you weren't interested?" Mi asked with a mischievious grin.
"I'm not, because I'm sure it's just a trivial issue like the one I just mentioned." And then she lept off the boulder and launched a flying kick at Mi, aimed at her right shoulder.
"But you're wrong." Mi said and sidestepped the obvious kick.
"Really?" Sha Li asked skeptically when she landed in front of Mi.
"It's about how they are disappointed in your boyish ways of fighting and interests in battle and they have plans to send you off to the Ba Sing Se School of Aristocratic Ladies." Mi said this strongly, knowing it hurt Sha Li.
"What? You're lying. They're the ones who agreed to let me train. If they didn't want this then they should've just said no!" Sha Li said, her temper raising.
"Well, would you have listened if they told you no?" Mi asked, crossing her arms.
"Of course not." Sha Li said, scoffing at the dumb question. Mi knew how serious she was about fighting.
"And that is exactly why your parents are making this decision. They knew that you would do it anyway but they thought it would be easier to help and then you would get over this 'phase'. Only, they've finally realized that it's not a phase." Mi said matter-of-factly. "The plan is for them to tell you at dinner tonight and send you off in three days, me as your personal escort and chaperone."
Sha Li just froze. She was near catatonic. Her parents planned to just get rid of her? She was their eldest, the one who had held their family together for the past 10 years. It was rare that she ever got angry but her shock quickly turned into rage.
"No! You're a pathetic liar! My parents need me here and they love me. You're just jealous that I have a family around me and yours is small, insignificant and hundreds of miles away!" Sha Li shouted at Mi and clenched her shaking hands into fists.
Mi's expression went from a friendly kind of seriousness to one of anger.
"You know better then that Sha Li. You've known me for 18 years and you know I'm not like that." Mi said this with total faith in Sha Li.
"People change. And apparently, living with the wealthy changed you into just another conniving girl setting up tragedies. You sicken me!" And then she launched herself at Mi. She knew better then to attack a skilled fighter in anger but she hadn't completely harnessed her temper and she just snapped. The kicks and punches were easily avoided and each time Sha Li hit empty air, her anger boosted.
"Sha Li! Stop it! This doesn't even have anything to do with me! I was just trying to warn you." Mi yelled in between ducks and dives.
"Liar! You want to seperate me from my family. You know we have these problems but you just can't let it be. I always knew you were a gossip but this is going to far." Sha Li growled.
"You're being irrational! I have nothing to do with your parents heartless ways. If their love isn't strong enough to trust and love you the way you are then they mustn't really love you and they definately don't deserve this kind of reaction from you." Mi yelled back. She was beginning to get tired from Sha Li's adreneline powered attacks and she was glad when Sha Li just stopped. She was weary of the sudden change, but grateful for the break.
Sha Li just stared at Mi with wide, disbelieving eyes. The grey irises looking like the moon with the pupil so tiny, like a crater on the moons surface. Her hair was the only thing that moved, its long, black entirity was pulled up into a ponytail, drifting in the breeze. Mi was just beginning to think that Sha Li had realized how irrational she was being and that she had ran out of steam, when she saw Sha Li's right foot turn slightly and her fingers began to curl like claws.
'What is she doing? Is she planning on attacking me again? I never taught her anything like that...' Mi thought to herself. Then Sha Li's right foot lifted and at the same moment it slammed into the ground, her arms spun and formed a tight angle.
Mi barely had time to think an astonished 'No way!' before a huge piece of rock morphed from the ground and slammed into her chest. Her breath was immediately knocked out of her and she had no choice but to wait a few seconds on the ground, a good 10 feet away from where she had been standing, to get it back. But these seconds weren't in her favor because she saw,through watery eyes, 4 rocks the size of temple bricks floating in the air toward her. She scrambled up and tried to run.
'I can't believe she can bend! And so well! She must've been practicing long before I came to train her. But she's using it for all the wrong reasons. She shouldn't even be using it at all!' Mi thought all of these things as she raced through the trees toward the Wong home. As long as she got in sight range of the guards, Sha Li should stop for fear of discovery. 'Should' was the operative word but it didn't even matter.
Still 100 yards from the nearest guard post, Mi was tripped by what she percieved as a harmless pebble. She sprawled forward on her face but quickly rolled over to face Sha Li. She couldn't see her childhood friend but she came face-to-face with the four rocks. She never got a chance to escape again because the rocks came down hard and heavy, one each for her hands and feet. She screamed as her bones crushed beneath the unbelievable weight of the stones. Blood poured out from beneath the rocks and was quickly soaked up by the dry dirt, creating a red mud. Sha Li came into sight just as Mi passed out from the tremendous shock and pain of the loss of her appendages.
Sha Li stood over Mi's limp body, glaring down at the innocent woman that she had just devastated. Almost as soon as the anger appeared, it vanished, leaving Sha Li with a expression of pure horror. She barely had time to take a step away from Mi before she was vomiting in a bush, last nights dinner and this morning breakfast all being poured out on the very earth she had used to attack a friend. "Oh God..."Sha Li muttered, her eyes squeezed shut tight enough to start making her head hurt. She dry heaved a few more times and turned to look at what she'd done. Having nothing left in her stomach, her eyes took over the purging process and tears began flowing.
'I have to leave. My parents' reputations will be destroyed. My father will lose his job. I'll be thrown in jail...' Sha Li couldn't believe how quickly her life had changed. One minute she was just doing some harmless bending-illegal-but harmless and the next she had killed someone. No wonder the King had declared that no woman was to bend! Look at what came of it. "Oh, Mi Shang. I'm so sorry. How could I have thought those things about you, my best friend?" Her tears began to mingle with the red mud as she hunched over Mi's body, her torso convulsing with the vicious sobs being wrenched out of her. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry." She sat there for another 5 minutes, hating herself and wishing she had more to puke up.
"I have to go, Mi. I have to go, or they'll catch me. I can't go to jail. I can't, Mi. You know how I am with people, I just can't. You understand. Of course you do." Sha Li rambled on as she stood, hysteria taking over her mind. "I'll come visit you later, when they've stopped looking for me. It may be awhile, but I'll visit. I promise. Pinky swear." She even bent and made an attempt at making a 'pinky promise' but when she realized that there was no pinky, she just stood and walked off into the forest.
She walked and walked, far past the border of Omashu and on toward Ba Sing Se. She had no idea where she was going but she knew she had to get as far away from her parents and Mi Shang as she could. She was so wracked by grief and hysteria that she didn't pay attention to how her bare feet were being torn up by rocks, or how branches were smacking into her and tearing her skin and clothes.
Eventually, nearly an entire day later, she grew too exhausted to keep going and just fell over in the dirt. She had made good distance and was actually only a few days away from Ba Sing Se, which is how someone came by her before she starved or was eaten by a platypus bear.