Aloha, y'all! I own nothing.
Her feet were bleeding. The sharp stones underfoot cut into them, slicing open the skin, and she barely even noticed. She just kept running, gasping for breath and dodging the random piles of trash and boxes, everything the city didn't want.
So, she thought philosophically, it made sense that she should be here.
Her own ragged breathing was loud in her ears, and she desperately wished she could stop panting so hard. Spirits, they were going to catch her if she wasn't quieter. For the umpteenth time in the past few years, she wish she still had her glider.
Of course, it wouldn't do her much good, without her bending, but she still knew how to use it as a weapon.
She finally chanced a glance behind her and saw no one, but that didn't mean anything. These people were experts.
She leaped over an old chair with a missing leg, and the second she touched the ground her foot refused to move; it was encased in stone. She fell forward with an involuntary cry, hearing a sickening crunch but feeling nothing. She lay unmoving on the ground, her ankle twisted in a way it was never supposed to be, and she didn't make a noise. When she was a child she was taught that she should always make as much noise as possible when something bad happened, to scream and cry and run, and that would draw a crowd.
She had learned differently in the past two years. The crowd was never on her side.
She closed her eyes, and suddenly felt a slight tremor through the earth, and the rock encasing her foot sunk into the ground.
Benders, she thought faintly, then felt rough hands pulling her to her feet, and she looked up to see narrowed green eyes staring at her. She sobbed in relief, realizing only then that she was crying.
"I thought you were leaving the city!"
"I can't!" she gasped. "They're everywhere! I can't get out! You have to help me."
"I can't risk it," he snarled, giving her a little shake. "I've got the others to worry about."
"Please," she whispered. "I can't bend."
"Then what do you have to worry about?" he asked, his grip on her shoulders tightening. She slapped his hands away and wanted to scream.
"When I have children they'll still be airbenders!" she hissed through clenched teeth.
Realization dawned in his eyes. "He wants you gone."
"He already got Ikki and Meelo," she whispered. "I don't know about Rohan..." She hesitated, then said what she knew they were both thinking: "I'm the last."
She heard a shout from behind her, and the two of them automatically dived behind a pile of garbage.
"Oh, spirits, they found me," she whispered. She grabbed his arm and said pleadingly, "The airbenders have been facing extinction for nearly two hundred years. Don't be the one to finally let it happen."
He stared for a moment, then nodded. "All right. I'll take you to base. I'll get Kippy to look after your ankle. Duck."
She did so without a second thought, and the next thing she knew the pile of trash next to her head exploded, shot into the air by a giant rock beneath it, and then he grabbed her hand and she was sinking through the earth, and she wondered when she would see the sun again.
But for now, at least, she was safe.
