Chapter 2: The New Benders

About a year after the death of Avatar Korra, reports of Equalists going into town and villages and into the homes of any known Earth Benders, grew at an alarming rate. One of those teams sent out from Republic City found themselves stationed in a small town in the Earth Kingdom where the tree line meet the tundra. The town was so isolated from the rest of the Earth Kingdom that the only way in or out was by a small trail during the summer, or by airship or bi-plane during the winter.

The town was called "Tree Line". Not much thought was given into naming it. The only real featured that distinguished it from any other town in the kingdom was that the town was built have south of the tree line and had a vast forest of large ancient pine trees around it. The other half, the one north of the tree line was out on the vast open snow tundra that went all the way into the ocean and then north into the land controlled by the Northern Water Tribe. The town of Tree Line was founded a decade after the Hundred Year War by settlers from both the Water Tribe and the Earth Kingdom. People who could water bend, lived right alongside those who could earth bend. Those who were non-benders were always helped by those who could bent the elements. The town made a law stating that any aggression by a bender to a non-bender or vice versa, was punishable first by fine, then by jail, and lastly by banishment to either the woods of the taiga, or the barren wasteland of the tundra.

The team of two Equalists who were stationed in the town found this rule quite nice. it promoted true "equality". These two people however, were ordered by their superior to live in the town and not let anyone known why they were truly there. The team of a young husband and his wife were to only be known to the locals as non-bending medical practitioners who wished to lend their medical skills to the town. They arrived with little in the way of possessions but had a good amount of money with them and settled down to do their job...follow secret orders given to them by "The Doctor".

The two Equalists alerted the town about their expertise in the medical field the positions of two doctors in the town's small clinic. Anyone who needed medical treatment in the whole region came to that clinic...including expectant mothers.

In the span of a year one of those mothers would give birth to the next Avatar...it wasn't expected because Avatar Korra was still alive, why would a new Avatar be born?

To the female doctor/equalist, her job as a midwife was simple. Help the mother give birth and then secretly use techniques she was taught to identify newborn benders and then return the newborn to its mother. Later she would write a report on the child and reference it later as the years went by until one showed signed of being able to bend more than just one element. Along with not only a good paycheck waiting for then in the bank back in Republic City. The two of them had been married a year before Avatar Korra's near death attack, and decided to begin raising a family.

Their hopes and dreams of returning to the Equalists as rich and famous, was destroyed one day the following spring. The female equalist gave birth to her own child. She never thought of testing her own child for bending, considering the fact that both she and her husband were non-benders. She did write a report but said that her son, Tal, was a non-bender. She was surprised months later when her toddler son earthbended while throwing a tantrum. He stomped his foot on the ground out back in their yard of their home in the forested part of Tree Line, and the large decorative boulder in the year shout out of the ground, flew ten feet into the air and then slammed down back to the ground.

Tal's mother ran from their home to the clinic to find her husband treating a logger for a large cut on his leg from a large saw. She ran into the examination room in a panic and told the love of her life what had happened. He calmed her down, called another doctor to finish the treatment of his patient and then he escorted his wife back home telling her she must have dreamed it. They found their son still in the garden, sitting on one of the two dozen short stone columns he had made since his mother left and he had discovered that stomping his feet could do such a marvelous thing.

Tal's parents could not believe it, their son was a bender.

The mother sent her son to his room to take a nap while she and her husband discussed around a hot pot of tea, about how to deal with this discovery. Death was out of the question and so was injury, he was their son. Adoption was next, but that too failed to progress. Then the two of them finally came to what they fought was the unbelievable:

Betray the Equalists.

The Remote location of Tree Line made betrayal of those who were far away very easy. Every couple of months Tal's parents had to call by phone to their superior and relate any report on the number of benders being born throughout the world. The reports for the next 10 years were always the same, many new benders. Many so called new "potential enemies". Other teams had been recalled back to Republic City by then and now only a dozen teams were left. Tal's parents were one of them. But they did not mind being stuck in Tree Line, it was now home and they had a family, and they did not just have Tal. They now also had twin daughters, who were also born as benders. The girls were completely identical except for two traits, one had blue eyes while the other had amber colored eyes. But they two, could also bend, one fire bended while the other water bended.

One might have thought that two equalist parents would have gone insane having bender children, but now the two of them had fully giving up on the radical idea of "equality" but they did teach their children that the town's idea of helping one another, bender or non-bender was the right idea.