Avatar the Last Air Bender: The New Generation

Chapter 2: Into the hills

POV: 3

I awoke at sunset draped over Hymn's back, we appeared to be some distance from the great city of Ba-Sing-Se, but far off its looming walls were still visible. I sat up, and stretched my right arm. I sighed and glanced again at the stump where my other should have been. I was accepting the fact that I was now crippled.

But just because I 'm now lame doesn't me that I was going to become that way! I still have my sense of humor, so I'm gonna figure things out…somehow.

I got to my feet, and noticed some meters away, a group of three female travelers, all crouching by a tepee of kindling. They were arguing in hushed tones, the small girl between the other two, trying to break apart the dispute. As I approached, I heard the tallest one say,

"Well I'm sorry that I didn't bring my spark rocks Pearl! But you happen to be a water bender, so I suggest you shut your watering hole before I plug it up for you!"

Pearl opened her mouth to retaliate, but then she noticed me, skulking in the background.

"Oh!" she shouted in surprise, "It's you! You're awake now! How do you feel? Does your…um…injury still hurt?"

"A bit." I replied, sitting down in the grass. I crossed my legs, and looked around at the three girls staring in my vicinity, all purposely avoiding my gaze, but shooting glances at my missing limb. I watched as the tall girl furiously tried to light the kindling with two quarts fragments. "I'd offer you a hand," I said lightheartedly, "But I think I'll be needing this one for the time being." Pearl and the other girl smiled and laughed, but the tallest girl seemed to be tuning us out.

"Ugh!" she spat, flopping down in the grass. "I give up! No fire for tonight! Sorry guys, we'll have to eat berries or something until we can get new ones somewhere."

"No we don't." I said louder than I had meant to. The tall girl shot me a withering look. In response I held up my right arm, palm pointing directly at the fire, and shot golden orange flames into the bare wood. All the girls gasped in astonishment, the tallest girl actually jumped to her feet, a look of mingled shock and alarm on her face.

"You're…you're a fire bender?" She forced out, looking from me to the crackling flames, dancing around the kindling, licking each person with warmth against the cool night.

"Well I was…" I said, looking down at my shoes, "but now…without this," I nodded at my useless shoulder, "I don't think I can fire bend well anymore…"

"But! But! Kollora! You said that she was a water bender!"

"I am." I replied simply, picking the caked dirt of my shoes. "I'm me; Leona. Just…I'm a water bender, and a fire bender. But now…I don't think I'll be able to do either…"

"A double bender…" the tall girl said, not in a tone of disbelief, but in one of speculation, like she had suspected and known as much before.

"From your tone it sounds not unheard of to you. Perhaps you too have something you'd like to share?" I said.

"No." She said quickly, but was stopped when she was sent a knowing look from Kollora, and surprisingly, from Pearl as well. She sighed, and said heavily, "Yes. I do." She took a deep breath and said, "I'm too tired to explain… so just look."

She raised her arm and a column of rock jutted from the earth, then slashing the same arm diagonally, a thin sheet of air sliced it cleanly down the middle.

"I see we posses similar gifts." I said, "You're both an earth bender, and an air bender. Polar opposites; a deadly combination...or so I've been told. You should be careful with those kinda powers, it's how I lost my arm."

"In a double bending accident?" The girl asked anxiously.

"Nahh. I lost it when some villagers found out what I could do. They thought I was too dangerous. I barely escaped with my life, but they got a crucial part of me. Bastards."

"About that." Pearl said, speaking for the first time that night. "I had an idea…"

The metal arm lay on a rock in front of us, light from the fire dancing off its rough steel plates. It was beautiful; intricately carved, but hooked, spiked, and lethal. Kollora had found a reserve of ore near the camp site, and I, using my fire bending, had crafted it into a new limb. Now, the problematic part remained in the fusing it to my body.

"Are you ready?" Pearl asked, fear in her voice, but her face remained determined and set.

"Are you really sure that this is going to work?" The tall girl, who had let slip that her name was Zo, asked.

"Thank you for the kind words of comfort." I said sarcastically, but mentally braced myself for the forthcoming pain.

"On five then." Pearl said holding the arm up to my shoulder, the place where it was going to be attached. "Five…"

"Make sure you put it on the correct way," I warned, "I don't want two right hands."

"Four."

"I believe the expression is two left feet." Zo remarked. Kollora was using part of her long cloth skirt to shield her squeamish eyes.

"Three."

"I really don't know about this!" I said, starting to panic.

"Two."

"Oh sweet Avatar." I moaned, and set the end of the arm alight. Molten ore dribbled slowly down the metal work.

"One."

Agony. That's all I can remember, for I must have passed out again, but when I regained consciousness again, I saw the face of Pearl alight with a strange sapphire glow. She was healing my scorched flesh, soothing it with remedial waters. I opened my mouth to thank her, but she pressed a cool finger to my lips.

"Just a couple more seconds, then I'll be done…okay! There you go, one metal arm, custom made."

"Thanks…?" I got up, trying to move the artificial appendage, but to no avail, the metal would not budge. Suddenly a thought crossed my mind; a crazy, nearly impossible idea, but those were always the sort that produced the best result. I concentrated my yang energy, what I used to draw my fire bending from, out of my shoulder. Then, I condensed it, making it weaker, and turning the joints of the metal arm to a bendable consistency. I focused, and my arm moved forward, then back. I could bend the molten metal! I wiggled my fingers one by one; I balled them into a fist, and punched the air.

Predictably, my arm fell off. I had used too much firepower, and had melted the metal too high of a temperature, so that the fixture could not support the weight of the appendage; this was going to take practice. In fact, I was going to have to relearn fire bending altogether. Resentfully I picked my new arm off the ground, and with my right hand, remoltenized the metal on the top. My shoulder still had its original cast of metal sealed to my skin, so now reattaching my arm was simply an unpleasantly searing affair.

I tried again and again, but the sun had set, and my fire bending weakened at night, as my water bending was a disciple of the moon.

"Need anything?" A voice behind me asked, and I turned around to see Zo, peeking her head out from her sand bender style tent.

"Yeah" I said, "a training montage."

She laughed, but got to her feet and walked up the hill behind our campsite, when she was about halfway up, she realized I wasn't behind her, and gestured for me to follow. "C'mon! I wanna show you something cool! And it's just over this hill!" I followed, staggering over the new imbalance my metallic arm created. When I reached the top of the hill, Zo was waiting for me, back turned.

"Zo?" I called to her, but she didn't move. Cautiously I grasped her shoulder, and slowly she turned her head to face me, an expression of utter horror frozen upon her sharp features. She looked back at her red gloved hands, which in this light looked…like blood. No…it was blood, and it was flowing fast. A thick brownish stain plastered the ground around where Zo sat, shaking. Without thinking, I ran down the hill screaming Pearl's name. She rushed from her tent, braid undone and eyes wide.

"What's wrong?" She called frantically, "did something happen with your—"

"No I'm all right! But you have to come quick, its Zo! I-I, blood. She's bleeding…a lot."

Pearl said naught another word, but grabbed her canteen and ran up to the hill that I indicated. Her speed outclassed mine, even with a 10 pound sack of water, and I finally caught up to her, gasping heavily, kneeling next to Zo on the top of the hill.

"I-I can't find where she got cut!" Pearl gasped, wiping her tear streaked face, "At this rate…she's going to bleed out!"

I stared, frozen uselessly on the hilltop, at my newest friend dying right before my eyes. Then, a new figure came bowling over onto the threshold, Kollora had arrived, chest heaving, and cheeks scarlet.

"Pearl!" she shouted, "She's a hemophiliac! The place where she got cut will be minuscule! so look to where the blood is most concentrated!"

"Her hand!" I shouted, pointing to a tiny gash on Zo's palm. I looked down to see hundreds of sharp fossilized canines and incisors, embedded in the dirt.

This is what she probably wanted to show me…a fossil bed, earth benders really do love their dirt and rocks…

Pearl, as quick as a wave, whipped out her canteen, and drew the purified water from its depths. She bended it with a clockwise twist of her wrist, so that the water encased Zo's injured hand. Pearl shut her eyes, perspiration beading on her dark temple. Suddenly, the water began to glow with a bright cerulean light; as her healing powers took effect. I flopped down on my back, remembering to breathe after those tantalizing moments of shock, Kollora sat down next to me, wrapping her sleeved arms around her knees. A howling wind blew from the north, and Kollora and I shifted closer for warmth.

We sat in silence for some time, while Pearl continued to heal Zo. For such an insignificant wound, the blood loss was nearly fatal. But hemophilia…suddenly my affliction looked absolutely inconsequential.

No wonder she had been so frightened of my injury; she must have assumed double bending was the perpetrator.

We all helped Pearl carry Zo into her tent, which she had set up during my operation, and laid her on top of her sleeping bag.

"Why don't we all take watches tonight?" I said, "To make sure she heals up alright, and to make sure…we weren't followed by any party."

"Good idea." Pearl said, and without volunteering, immediately positioned herself outside Zo's tent, watching the distant plains that wrapped around the ring of Ba-Sing-Se. I watched as Kollora said goodnight, glanced nervously over her shoulder back at the city, and headed off to bed. I assured Pearl that I would too turn in for the night, and confided her that I would get a good night's sleep, and my life free of stress and over excursion for the next fortnight.

After an hour of grooming Hymn in my tent, I pocked my head outside to see if the coast was clear. Pearl had become less wary, as no one had ambushed us of yet, and had settled into a more relaxing position; cheek lazily resting on her water pouch.

I left my tent noiselessly, though it was already on the outskirts of our makeshift camp. Hymn stuck his roan head out of the back flap, looking up at me reproachfully, like he thought I was trying to abandon him.

"No Hymn, you can't come with me!" I whispered into his fox-like ear. He whinnied and nudged his head into my chest, pushing my heels into the mud. "No Hymn! I'll be back soon." I pushed him off and closed the tent, and stalked away down the hill, following the sound of the distant river that flowed away from the city.