Chapter 1: Refugee
AN: This is my first fic. It's more of a plot bunny that run away from me than a structured story.
Don't expect much.
It's just an excuse for me to write a pure power fantasy mixed with judicious amounts of SCIENCE!
Keira, so far, had an uneventful yet busy life in a small village in the Southern Water Nation.
Born to an Earthbender father and a Waterbender mother, she had somehow won the genetic lottery and was able to ben both elements. They taught her the very basics from the very young age of two, her adult mind being labelled as a prodigy. She would be a bridge between the two nations, they said.
Her father was a harsh taskmaster, but was gentle outside of training, her mother must have been the cause. He had a strong jawline and nose. Vibrant green eyes, pitch blank hair and eyebrows.
He was a stoic man, the hard lines of his face and permanent scowl was broken only when showing love for his family. He was cut from stone, big, imposing, muscular.
Only for his bulky figure to crumble before his wife. Rigid features smoothing into gentle smiles and soft laughter. He might have been a tall mountain of a man. It didn't matter before the compassion of her mother.
Her mother was a gentle soul. Kind, loving, caring. Her body slim, flexible. But not without muscles and curves. A pure swimmer's build. Gorgeous white hair framed a heart shaped face with deep blue eyes, her pale white body contrasted well with her husband's tanned form.
She looked like an angel.
She wasn't as innocent as she looked however, she had a fierce temper when set off. Keira found that out when her father stumbled home one night, shitfaced, from a night out with the lads. The poor sod was in a sorry state the next morning.
With a blend of their features, Keira is growing up to become a rare beauty. Her snow-white hair, behind long black lashes hide her icy cyan-blue eyes, her sweet smile and pert nose is framed with a sharp jawline and high cheekbones, her perfect black eyebrows and average forehead complete the picture for her.
She knows she's a cute kid now. She understands she'll be beautiful in the future.
This will attract attention. In her old world this would be mostly good, in this violent one, it could mean very, very bad things for her. Attention draws danger after all.
Her mother was the one that noticed her advanced intelligence. That's not to say her martial minded father neglected her, but her doting mother noticed.
She always knew her daughter was different, special. She knew she would attract attention if she was shown off, so she sheltered her daughter. Politics would have no bearing on her life, not while her mother still drew breath.
Eventually her mother told her father just how bright his daughter really was, evidently this caused conflict. Her father didn't want a harsh life for her, to be fair neither, did her mother. In the end though they both knew her intelligence would draw eyes and with attention came danger.
So, they decided to train her, earthbending through mornings and early afternoons with father and waterbending in the late afternoon and evenings with her mother whilst her father worked as a guardsman.
The training of her tiny frame had to start early. Earth bending was like that, you see. It was rigid, unmoving.
She had to build a hard-core foundation, a strong endurance, in order to achieve the resilience needed for the long katas. The movements were mechanical, slow, and efficient.
She had to be too.
It was painful and unending. The training was structured around endurance, being able to weather whatever came her way, a mountain baring the hammering of storms without faltering.
Unbowed, unbent, unbroken.
It reminded her of the Invictus perk from Worm fanfictions she used to read. She had to be determined and resolute in her focus. Her conviction unyielding before adversity.
In contrast her waterbending training was positively relaxing. She had to be flexible and lithe; able to flow and move gracefully.
The forms involved a lot of stretching and working out locked up muscles from earlier in the day, it rounded her out, gave her speed and dexterity while the earthbending gave her strength and vitality.
Water, and therefore Keira, had to flow freely, from one kata to the next. The style had rhythm; it was fluid.
It could allow her to draw out offense and defence, flowing between dodging, blocking countering and going on full out offensives as necessary.
Learning two separate styles simultaneously was hard. Incredibly hard.
She was sure the only way she got so far was due to her young neuroplasticity meshing well with her capable adult mind, her complex problem-solving skills and experience aiding her well.
The tiring days of training often blurred together; she could sometimes hardly tell the difference between the two styles.
It startled her when she kept making mistakes in her lessons. Something had to give, chances were, it wasn't going to be waterbending.
She didn't want that. Couldn't stand giving it up. It was a part of her now and she wouldn't let them take it from her, so she acted first.
Late one evening she brought up the idea of blending the two styles together and working with both at once, making her style new, untested and completely different.
She could feel it in her gut she was right, her father disagreed. Instead she learned how to use waterbending to heal and clean, using it for utility, giving her skillset versatility. It still rankled, but she couldn't deny the usefulness and it wasn't like she didn't want to learn how to heal.
She still felt it was wrong to deny a part of herself, so she trained in private, reading ahead in her parents' scrolls to give her an edge in her self-studies.
Slowly, in her free time, she started to blend the two styles of training together, in manners that may only work for her, using earthbending styles to bend water and vice versa.
The sheer potential when she achieved things like making earth ripple like waves, shaping water into hard edges and making armour with it after doing the opposite lit a fire in her that she had missed from her past life as a university physics student.
The passion for learning and her curiosity burned bright within her. She always loved learning and had a hunger for knowledge. There was always more to learn about the world around her. Even now, living in huts and shitting in woods did the call for learning drive her.
Learning basic survival techniques so she could hunt animals, find food, water and shelter, make traps and more, all so she could survive if she ever got lost in the wilds.
Learning how to predict the weather and find her place in the world through astrology helped her so she could find her way and stop being lost in the first place.
She had gained back her direction, for now only a small step, but she knew that advancing techniques and experimenting with her unique style of bending was the way forward.
She would see just how far her experimentation would take her in time, for now she had the goal of learning the core tenets of both styles before getting creative.
Time passed quickly for the young girl in the tight-knit community.
It was a day like any other when 5-year-old Keira of the Southern Water Tribe found herself running. The idyllic river village was burning. Her rudimentary healing skills weren't enough for her to stay and help, she rationalised to herself.
There's nothing she could do; her young body wasn't strong enough. Her old soul and vast reserves of spiritual chi notwithstanding, she lacked power and experience to use it in proper combat anyway.
Realistically, it was the lack of any meaningful connection to these people that let her flee without remorse.
Her new parents were already dead and burning.
It wasn't her fault. The tears streaming down her face begged to differ.
The travel pack she made up with what dried foods and water she could get her grubby little hands on were almost all she had left at this point. Besides the scrolls she salvaged from the burning wreckage of her home.
She was in the world of the Avatar. A world of war, strife, slavery and death.
She needed a direction besides escape, luckily, she had already scavenged (stolen is more like it, she snorts) from the empty houses of her neighbours that were busy fighting and dying to buy time for the others to flee.
So, flee they did. She just happened to choose a different route.
It wasn't her fault they decided to stick together.
It wasn't her fault that they could be tracked easier. Their larger and numerous footprints were easier to follow, easier for them to be tracked and cut down before the invaders.
The small pair that she left were easily lost track of in the chaos. Her escape didn't make the pain any easier.
The smell of blood in the air, the thick smoke clinging to her body. The choking, the clashing of blades, the screaming and yes, the dying of the only people she knew in this world wasn't any easier to bear. No matter what logic she threw at it.
Her heart was gouged open and bleeding. This world was harsh and unforgiving. She already knew this but now she felt and understood it too.
She knew that she would have eventually leave the small town, from what little she knew of Avatar anyway. The currently attacking Fire Nation soldiers cleared that decision up.
She just thought she'd have more time. Time at least to say goodbye.
But no. There was no time for that. It was only waking up to screaming before her mind kicked in and now, she's running.
From what maps she's seen, the others are headed towards either Earth Nation, or up north to the other water tribe. It's best if she doesn't think about it, they flee one invasion only to be caught in the next.
Keira, on the other hand, is on her way towards an unsettled region of land, on the far end of the border between Earth and Water. There's a river flowing between the two that starts in a mountainous valley before ending in the North Sea.
It will be a long trek for her, but it's better than the alternative.
It'll also be difficult, in many ways, living on her own, but she thinks she's ready. She has basic survival skills and she'll learn the rest as she goes.
She has to be ready. Her village dies with her if she isn't.