The sands of the Si Wong desert stretch in endless waves, winding in a luscious kingsgold velvet that drowns every root that dares to grow in it's unforgiving air. Hundreds of miles from the Earth Kingdom's nearest true settlement, seemingly nothing but the occasional lonely cactus bloom sticks from Si Wong's skin...and yet, three trails of fresh footsteps are found snaking through the dunes.

The Prisoner trudges along, head conservatively wrapped in a black and silver face-shielding hijab veil. Thick, rusty chains clang along with her, loosely binding her arms and ankles as they push through the sand with each step. Converging at her little neck, the chain forms a long embarrassing leash held by the hands of one of her captors, a Si Wong Rebel, who marches ahead of her in the heat.

The Rebels had certainly made a name for themselves in the Earth Kingdom already; just last week, car bombs had detonated in both central Omashu and at a shopping bazaar just outside of Republic City limits, terrifying the locals and vilifying the press: The SI WONG TERROR! The Sandbender Scum!

The Prisoner glances over at her captor, noting the rather thin wrists that held her chained leash. Is there a food shortage in their bunkers? Those are surely not the thickened forearms of an earthbender, she ponders.

Beside him rides a round and lanky camelephant, stomping through the sands slowly and carefully with the sway of it's two-ton weight. Riding it's hump is another Rebel, bearded and dressed for the sun. He shields his eyes from the relentless glare in hopes to sight the Rebel compound sooner rather than later.

With the approaching sound of an overhead drone, a pair of striped buzzardbees fly past the gang with a FLASH, heading straight ahead towards the seemingly unending horizon. Their campground must be close.

As she watches the two birds disappear into the distance, a familiar feeling suddenly strikes down over our Prisoner. One of prudence. Of satisfaction. She has to make her move now, to continue her mission. And it was either now, or never.

She stops in her tracks, letting her feet plant deep into the familiar sand. The Rebels continue their walk forward, unaware.

The slack on her leashing silver chain begins dancing about as it starts to stretch straighter and straighter, echoing the slight ring of a broken dinner bell. Seven feet, eight feet, nine feet, chiming out like an uncoiling platinum bracelet in the hands of a jeweler's clumsy child. Unafraid, the Prisoner remains still and solid as she watches it tighten, grounding her stance and bracing her muscles tight, until...

CLANK!

Confused, the walking Rebel glances back to find the Prisoner stopped dead in her tracks. His brow furrowed with annoyance; shock. He pulls at the chain, at first gently, as if to wake our prisoner from a standing slumber. Still unafraid, she stands her ground and doesn't move a muscle. The camelephant lumbers on ahead of them.

"Move it, prisoner dog!" He shouts in his native Si Wong tongue, "Move it, or no more water for you!"

She remains still, frozen in the warmth of the sand. Noting the commotion, the bearded Rebel balks his camelephant and calls back to his conspirator.

"What's the hold up here?" he angrily asks, "We'll be losing sun soon!"

The first rebel YANKS on the chain again, jerking at the Prisoner's neck. Still unafraid, she remains solid on her feet, her trust laden in the silks of the earth. She drowns out the sounds of his shouting and draws in a deep breath.

Slowly clenching up her sunburnt hands into a tight fist, the sand beneath her feet flutters awake, like a wolfhound beckoned to the call of it's name. It begins to gently crawl to the Prisoner's will, stretching up from it's bed in the ground to wrap around her little ankles. With another slight squeeze of her knuckles, the sand tightens strongly around her, securing her to the earth like nerves to a spine. The Rebel's eyes widen.

"You will not want to play these games, little girl." He tightens his grip on her chain as he shouts, "Move! Or you will regret!" He jarringly YANKS on the chain again, but she does not move. Her eyes lock with his, defiantly. The heat between them rises into the air, the arid open sky watching them with curiosity. "Very well."

Taking in a shallow breath, the Rebel grunts loudly and throws out his hand to conjure his angry element: A glowing fireball springs out to life on his palm, angry and dancing inside his clawed fingers. His other hand grasps firmly onto the leash, it's metal chainlinks glowing orange with the conductive heat.

"RAH!" He bowls his arm forward along the length of the chain, sending the fireball whisking down towards the Prisoner in a thunderous rage. Sparking and flaring, it bounces furiously in the blinding heat as it rolls toward her.

But the Prisoner was unafraid. She watches with the great patience she was taught for the fireball to approach her, and just as the warmth began edging up to her stone-still body...

WHOOSH! The prisoner STOMPS forward with a mighty rumble from the sand. Just inches from her toes, a great and narrow sandstone pillar launches up from the ground with the sound of a dry avalanche.

SLASH! CLANG! The pillar crashes into the taught chains, breaking her free from his leash. With no more track to follow, the fireball dissipates in the open air with a crisping flash. Watching it dissolve, the Prisoner retakes her Hung Gar stance, the pillar collapsing back into sand and sinking into the ground as a dusty pile. Remnants of the long chains hang from her arms like great silver lassos.

"You said she wasn't a bender!" The second Rebel shouts, dismounting from the camelephant, "Get her! Now!"

With a one-two punch, the first Rebel wildly launches more fireballs. Dodging them swiftly, she swings her free arm above her and begins whipping the loose chain over her head. The sand begins to follow, lifting from all around her and swirling up into the current of the spinning chain.

Continuing an onslaught of fireballs, the Rebel furiously punches them out one by one. To his shock, the fireballs begin curling up into the swirling sand current, only adding a layer of red heat to the growing twister. The sand-filled wind begins BLARING with the sound of a nearing freight train as it gains speed, growing taller and taller until it dwarfs even the prisoner beneath it. Her baggy hijab and hooded silks whip wildly in the wind as her legs remain welded to the ground.

With a great LASH of the chain, the Prisoner sends the sand launching out toward the Rebel in a great whipping tornado, towering over his body and quickly closing in around him. Hands up, eyes focused, she shapes the sandy current from afar with her careful fingers. Currents from faraway dunes begin to join in as she conjures the desert to her will.

He shoots a last-chance blast of his fire up to break the current, but it is no use; the sand encloses him and begins to stick on hot like burning sugar to a pot. Nowhere to run—her sand promptly buries him in a mountain of his own foolish impudence, right up to his chin- leaving him shocked, immobile; gasping for air.

Her eyes spot the bearded Rebel, who ignored his accomplice's dilemma to take his own fighting stance. His fist raised by his ear, they stand silently in the heat, eyes locked, the sliding beads of sweat as their only common ground.

"You think yourself a brave bitch, don't you?" He spits with arrogance into the dirt. "I'll drag you back to the camp by your hair after this. First you try to rob us, and now this foolishness!"

The prisoner narrows her eyes to study his stance. This was one of the first things taught to her in the early Dai Li training days- to identify the enemy is to identify your victory. It certainly wasn't a sandbender stance, nor fire bender...

"GIVE UP! SURRENDER!" He shouts, a nervous string woven in his words now. She sees it now; the shakiness in his knees and the rigidness in his spine...

He was no bender at all!

A flash of heat engulfs her; a feeling of light and warmth and serenity as something SHINES over her eyes. Was it a glare? The blinding desert sun?

Stepping forward to clap her wide arms together, she creates two large dune waves on either side of the bearded Rebel. With the flexing wave of her knuckles, the dunes undulate like an angry ocean and sweep him right off his feet.

"NO!"

She does not spare him. He sinks like a rock into this ocean, arms flailing, the consistency suddenly changing to quicksand as he struggles to keep his head above to the air. Crashing and crashing again, the waves of sand bury him as it did his accomplice, as if the moon's tide was pushing and pulling each tiny grain. The Prisoner stands taller and tightens her shoulders, again squeezing her wrists as the Rebel begins to SCREAM for mercy.

"No! Stop! I can't...move! Stop!" His entire body underneath the dunes current, he desperately looks around only to witness the sand slowly freezing into concrete, locking his body in and rendering him immobile in the dirt, like a fossil in a long forgotten quarry. It had coated his mouth and locked him right up to the bottom of his ears; he could only look around in horror as the storm suddenly...stops. The Prisoner, ending her terrifying onslaught, stumbles out of her stance. A wave of nausea washes over her; her hands find her knees as she attempts to catch her breath; What the hell was that?

She glances up to see her destruction. The Rebel moans, half in fear, half frustration. Only his eyes and nose were visible now and the whipping sand kept nearing his already coated lashes. The prisoner shrugs; maybe her sandbending is just more powerful out here in the desert, she ponders. She was closer to her home tribe than she had been in years, after all. After all this time on the beat, working the streets of the lower ring of Ba Sing Se, and endless shifts along the palace garden walls, the job had finally brought her so close to her birthplace.

The rebel's peeking eyes follow her as she begins to walk toward him. She steps around his now-mountainous body and carefully approaches the camelephant, who was completely apathetic to the battling as it basked in the sinking afternoon sun. Reaching up into his saddle, she retrieves two jugs of water and removes the veil from her face to reveal: Evera, rookie Dai Li agent and daughter of the desert. Her shining green eyes catch in the lowering Si Wong sun, her toasted olive skin boasting a spray of sunkissed freckles that dot across the bridge of her nose in a familiar constellation.

Evera's infiltration mission was only half-over. Now, she thought, comes the hard part.