Ace in the Hole
Eurwen de Vrill
Chapter Four: Battle Plans
It turned out that lighting up a tree and almost starting a forest fire was a definite one-time thing. Yin could barely scrounge up a flame to light a candle, never mind an entire forest.
The same problem applied to Kaiya, who was still in shock from her waterbending and was leery of trying again. At her friends' insistence she halfheartedly tried to control the water in the cup to her satisfaction, but barely caused a ripple.
"Alright, listen up. I made a list." Bentley waited until the others were gathered around the bed to continue.
"Lists," mused Talin. "I like lists. Lists are nice."
"They are, aren't they?" Even Bentley's smile was strained. The girls had trooped back into the abandoned house in somber silence as the grim reality of their situation finally sank in. They were stranded in a world they barely knew, they had no money, and they had no idea where to even begin with their respective bending. "Anyway, I made a list of what we need. Food and decent clothing, but to get those we need money."
Water wasn't a concern for them, as they'd discovered a working pump at the back of the house. There was also the possibility of Kaiya developing enough control over her bending to pull drinkable water out of their surroundings.
"There's also Lui's... gift... to us. We don't know what it is, and I don't trust him very much."
"Agreed." Yin gazed at the small flame flickering atop her fingers. Though a long way off from achieving the same feats the original characters of the show had displayed, she was nonetheless getting a grasp on this firebending business with considerable speed. Then again, Yin had the tendency to plow full steam ahead with single-minded intensity not uncommon in charging bulls once she deemed something worthy of her attention. "For all we know he might have cursed us, that asshole."
Talin, who had been sitting quietly with a look of deep contemplation on her face, raised her head. "Do we know what currency these people use? Obviously they don't use dollars or euros, and I can't imagine them using rubles."
The thought of an entirely different currency hadn't even occurred to them, though in hindsight it should have. The Avatar series was largely based on ancient Asian cultures and the dollar was a purely American invention.
Bentley scrubbed her face with her hands and sighed. "And there's that. But we'll cross that bridge in a bit. For now, I want us to focus on our bending."
Yin leaned against the wall and turned her head, staring out the window. "Are we going to find someone to teach us, or is it self-study?"
"Self-study. We can't risk drawing attention from other people yet."
"If not now, then when?" Talin rocked back on her heels, head tilted toward the ceiling. "We need to find a town to stay in, preferably a small one. That way we can observe other people and learn the ways of this world while staying clear of the Fire Nation."
"Bending first," Kaiya interrupted. "Yin's and my bending was triggered by our emotions - she was angry, and I was desperate. We can't risk accidentally doing the same thing in front of other people; we need to get it under control first."
Bentley nodded to her. "I agree with Kaiya. What happens if something surprises us while we stay at a town? Yin might set fire to something and Kaiya might do what she did today. Same goes for Talin and me. No, we need to practice until we get the hang of this thing before we go anywhere."
"Good thing we're in the middle of nowhere, then." The fire was snuffed out, and tendrils of smoke curled from Yin's fingertips. "'Cause I've got a feeling this isn't going to be pretty."
Two weeks passed in the blink of an eye.
The girls' training had been full of rocky starts and cringe-worthy mistakes, but through sheer effort and trial and error, they had gained a sliver of control over their respective elements. Talin had been the first to control her element consciously and had spent a good portion of her time puzzling out how to send blasts of air from her limbs. Her cheerful demeanor had resurfaced during moments of great success, but much to the others' worry the lighthearted madness that had been so characteristic of the girl had all but disappeared. This seemed to have affected her bending prowess in some way, because though she'd initially been the most talented, her progress had stagnated. Talin could be seen struggling to scrounge up enough control to create a breeze when she thought no one was looking. Her friends didn't say anything but did send her concerned looks over the days.
Yin had thrown herself into firebending with a motivation previously unseen from her, defying her usual lazy nature and propelling her forward in achieving success. The occasional accident happened, resulting in a burned ghost house or two, but overall she had gained enough control over her fire to be able to call forth flames on demand. She had been pleased to see that her body had taken to firebending especially well, given the years of training she had undergone since childhood. Evidently, it paid off to have martial arts instructors for parents and grandparents. The other girls had benefited from their own training, seeing as they'd all met and befriended each other at the Fei martial arts center, but weekly lessons didn't exactly measure up to twelve years of getting the snot beaten out of you.
Kaiya, once she had overcome her initial hesitation, had taken to her element like a duck to water. Calm and highly adaptable by nature, she had found familiarity in the flowing movements required to direct water and could create not unimpressive waves and shapes from the liquid. She and Yin had taken to testing out their control against each other, which was always a sight to see since water negated fire but flames hot enough could vaporize the liquid. Contrary to Talin's declining mood, she enjoyed a more optimistic view on their situation, going along with the general flow of things and quickly finding her balance in the strange new world they found themselves in.
Earth had taken Bentley a while to understand, but sooner or later she began to get a grasp on how to bend it. After so many years of playing mediator in their little group, she had subconsciously begun to look for the path of least resistance in everything. Though this was incredibly efficient most of the time, with earthbending she couldn't afford such a passive manner of thinking. Earth was hard and required force, strength of both mind and body, and she had slowly rebuilt her thought process into one where she hit the problem directly head-on. Her steely determination to see things through and unshakable nature served her well in the end and she too was able to control her element well enough for a novice.
They had all found some semblance of footing with their bending, but no one doubted that they were next to nothing in comparison to a real bender with real training. At this stage in time they were comparable to toddlers beginning to walk without crumpling to the floor every two steps, while experienced benders were giants looming over their heads. They had a long way to go.
After dinner, which consisted of roasted mammal (they weren't sure what it was, but it resembled some kind of cross between a pheasant and a rabbit), Bentley pushed away her cracked plate and looked around the small circle with a sober face. "I've got something to say, and don't interrupt me until I'm done."
Kaiya looked up uneasily. Yin and Talin had yet to see it, but she had heard the undercurrents of... something... in her voice and was steadily growing more alarmed. Whatever Bentley had to say, she wasn't going to like it.
She didn't. "I want us to split up."
Yin leaped to her feet. Her abrupt motion sent the clay cup clattering onto the floor, but no one paid it any mind. "Have you lost your mind?"
"No." There was cold steel in every line of Talin's body. She looked as close to furious as they'd ever seen her. "We're not splitting up. Not yet."
"Not yet?" Kaiya echoed in disbelief. "Not ever! How is splitting up going to help us?"
Throughout this uproar Bentley had remained calm and unruffled. Now she leaned forward, eyes serious. "We're cut off from civilization here," she argued. "We don't know what day it is, where in Earth Kingdom we are, or anything else we need to know. The war might end and we might not even know. There's nothing more for us here - we need to find other people."
"And why can't we do that together?" Yin demanded. "We have less chance of starving to death or getting lost or running into enemies if we're in a group. Why split up?"
"You're a firebender! Kaiya's a waterbender, I'm an earthbender, and Talin - Talin's an airbender, who are all supposedly dead. How on earth -" Bentley broke off and ran a hand through her hair, frustration clear on her face. "Look, we're in the Earth Kingdom. A firebender isn't exactly going to be welcomed with open arms, and as an earthbender I have to avoid areas under Fire Nation control."
"Which, since the series hasn't started yet, is Ba Sing Se and Omashu. Maybe even Toph's town, but we don't know where that is." Kaiya lapsed into silence, brows creased as she tried to recall if the name of the place had ever been mentioned.
"Why can't we hide our bending? Why not pretend to be war orphans, wandering the country for a place to live?" Talin challenged. "Why do we have to separate?"
It was unnerving how much Talin had changed in the span of a few weeks. They'd seen her more serious and focused in fourteen days than in an entire year, and though they'd often talked of bringing her down to earth, now that it happened Kaiya wanted their old friend back. The old Talin would have meandered away to watch the clouds or chase after shadows, laughing like a lunatic. This Talin was... She didn't know how to describe it. It was as if the childish innocence had drained out of her, leaving a weary, hardened woman. They were all like that, but not as much as Talin. Perhaps the genius had realized something that none of the others had yet to see.
Out of the corner of her eye Kaiya spotted Yin regarding the airbender with a look of quiet dawning. Yin saw her looking and tilted her head once, wordlessly promising to share her thoughts to her later. Satisfied, Kaiya turned back to the argument at hand.
"Not yet," Talin was insisting. "Not so soon. We need more time."
"We've had two weeks - "
"What I want to know is why we have to split up in the first place," Kaiya interjected.
Bentley heaved a sigh. "We need to master our bending, and we can't do that alone. We need to find people to teach us, though I don't know what Talin's going to do. The one person who can help her is currently frozen in an iceberg."
Kaiya opened her mouth to protest, but Yin nodded slowly. "We'll need cover stories then. We're going to have to blend in, stay in the shadows until we have an idea as to what to do. Right now we're as good as dead if we walk into a city."
"War orphans," Talin repeated. "We're four war orphans from a small, isolated Earth Kingdom village, and the war hit us hard. It cut off our food supplies and people starved to death before the town was destroyed by a disease. We were the only survivors."
"Yin and I look similar enough to pass off as family," said Kaiya. "Cousins, maybe. We don't look alike enough to be sisters, much less twins."
This was true: the two girls had dark brown (bordering on black) hair and brown eyes, but where Yin was pale, Kaiya sported a glowing tan. The waterbender boasted a curvy figure that made her friend resemble a stick when placed beside her. Yin was all sharp angles and deceptively frail-looking limbs while Kaiya was soft and feminine. There was no way they'd pass for sisters, and even claiming cousin status was a bit of a stretch.
Yin took a moment to eye the other two contemplatively. "We're lucky you don't have blond or red hair or something like that. Except for Yue, everyone in the show had dark hair. Your eyes though, we can work with those. "
The earthbender thought of her own green eyes, looked at Talin's pale gray ones, and hoped they didn't nearly look as exotic as Yin made them sound. Toph had green eyes in the show (blindness ignored for the moment) and Aang himself had gray eyes... though they probably weren't as pale and piercing as Talin's were, as if they were twin pools of silver under moonlight. At least they both had brown hair.
"Bentley should be from a nearby village that was also destroyed. I'd rather not have all of us from one small town that was supposedly ravaged by war and disease alike. Four healthy survivors, all sixteen year old girls, won't make it realistic enough." Talin rubbed her chin in thought. "I could say I'm from a traveling nomad family that was caught up in the disease. I met up with you three when I went to look for my family after I stayed with my grandmother."
Bentley nodded. "That's fine. I don't think we need to worry about last names, since there weren't any on the show. But just in case, can you tell us any common Chinese last names?"
Yin shrugged. "Chen, I guess. I doubt you'll need it though. But speaking of names, you're going to need new ones. Bentley is too exotic for this place, it's not Asian enough. Talin might work, but if she wants she can go with something else too."
Bentley looked affronted. "I don't need a new name!"
"Yes, you do, shut up." Yin eased back on her hands and released a soft sigh. "I have an aunt named Lifen, so that should do, the 'Li' part sounds close enough to the last half of your name. Lifen, Bentley. See what I did there?"
"You're so clever," Bentley replied wryly. "Alright, fine, I'll be Lifen. Better safe than sorry."
"And what about Talin?" Kaiya's lips quirked up mischievously. "How about Mulan? You always did like that movie - "
"No." Everyone blinked, thrown by the curt refusal. Talin's face looked as if it had been carved from marble. "I'm using my name. I'm Talin."
Yin pursed her lips and nodded, but Kaiya and Bentley looked at the airbender as if seeing her for the first time. All three of them had thought the normally drifting girl would have leaped for the chance to give herself the name of her favorite Disney princess. And she would have, only a few weeks ago. Now they weren't sure if the hard-faced girl in front of them was the same lunatic they had become so fond of over the years.
"Then it's decided," Yin said, swiftly changing the topic. Her warning glance quelled any questions that played on her friends' tongues. "We'll stick together and head for the closest village. We're going to need new clothes -" (she plucked at her dirtied yukata with distaste) " - and find some way to earn money."
"We're most likely heading to a poor Earth Kingdom village," objected Bentley. Her gaze lingered on Talin but she refrained from commenting on her strange behavior. "It's more than possible that they won't have enough to give us, even if we work. But since we need a place to stay we could do odd jobs around the town and maybe get ourselves somewhere to sleep."
"Sounds good to me." Kaiya stretched and rose to her feet. "I think it's time to sleep. Tomorrow we're going to hit the road; we need as much rest as we can get."
AN: Another chapter! Trouble amongst the girls, it seems, with Talin acting strangely...
So far things have been moving pretty slowly, but now I think things will pick up soon. Eh. Depends on what hits me next.
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