Chapter 2: Avatar

The Beaker Hall orphanage never had quite enough food for everyone. After the Harrowing of the Lotus twelve years ago, orphanages had been swarmed with a sudden surge of abandoned children as cowardly parents rid themselves of children who might one day become the Avatar. Many orphanages had been unwilling to keep the same children out of fear of the Energybender, and so the abandoned generation all came to rest in a few highly secure facilities inside cities like Ba Sing Se or Omashu.

As mealtime began, the horde of sixteen year olds ate in silence. As the world resented them, they resented each other. Everyone knew that only one person, the potential Avatar, was to blame for their condition, everyone else was suffering for no reason. It was difficult to make friends when one day you might wake up and find out your best friend was responsible for every bad thing that had ever happened to you.

Two of the orphans in the corner got into a fight over more food. The argument eventually devolved into a fistfight. If there was anything the people in charge of this orphanage were thankful for, it was that everyone was too afraid to even attempt bending. If you could bend, that meant you were more likely to be the Avatar, and people hated you even more.

The fight was broken up, and oppressive silence returned to the dining hall. This was a joyless place, quiet and drab. Children their age were meant to chat and boast and flirt with one another, but the Avatar had robbed them of that chance. There were no friends or lovers in this place; only enemies.

Then the door slammed open. The kids put their heads down by instinct. Every few months someone barged in to yell at them, and they'd learned how to deal with it. They had been suffering like this for twelve years.

The Headmaster wasn't the most caring person in the world, but he was decent enough to try and shield his wards from random attacks. He stormed down the stairs and confronted the intruder.

"Just who do you think you are, barging in here like this? You think these kids haven't put up with enough already."

"Relax," the brutish intruder said. Several of his compatriots came through the door. "We aren't going to break anyone permanently. "

Suddenly outnumbered, the Headmaster became much less protective.

"And what do you intend to do?"

"We plan on saving these kids," The bandit said sarcastically. "We find the Avatar here, we'll sell them to the Energybender, and all these kids' worries disappear."

The bandit had no idea if the Energybender actually had a bounty on the Avatars head, but if he was capable of wiping out one of the most powerful organizations in the world, he was capable of paying out for a prize as valuable as the Avatar. If nothing else, he'd get on the good side of the most powerful person in the world. He turned to address his backup.

"Club 'em," he commanded. "If their eyes start to glow, they're ours."

His compatriots started running down the lines of teenagers, slamming them with heavy clubs. A few of them bothered to resist, but most of them just took the blow and let the bandits move on. Struggling wouldn't help much. They had all given up a long time ago.

The ringleader went down the middle of the room, staring at the kids. He'd repeated this process several times with no luck. He was running out of orphanages to beat up. It was a good thing the authorities didn't care much about these kids, or they'd be in serious trouble. Movement caught the corner of his eyes, and he pointed his club at the target.

"You! Cut it out!"

The teen moving along the lines froze in his steps, trying to look innocent. A few of the people near him rolled their eyes. He had a reputation.

The bandit called him over, and Hanjo answered. He strutted over to the bandit.

"Who are you?"

"Hanjo, sir, professional orphan."

"And what are you doing?"

"Stealing fruit, mostly. I figured some of my compatriots wouldn't miss it, them being unconscious and all."

The bandit didn't have any patience for cheekiness. He raised his club.

"Wait wait wait wait wait!" Hanjo panicked and threw up his arms to defend himself. He dropped an armful of stolen fruits and berries. "I already got clubbed! No glowing eyes, see, no Avatar!"

Hanjo turned and pointed to a deep purple bruise on his forehead. The bandit lowered his club. With a heavy sigh, Hanjo ran an arm along his forehead.

His bruise got smeared. Berry juice didn't dry very fast.

The bandit slammed Hanjo in the chest with a club, knocking the wind out of him. His companions stopped to watch the beat down. The bandit struck out at Hanjo again, striking him on the arm.

With his other arm, Hanjo flicked his wrist. A brick sore out of the wall and hit the bandit on the head. Hanjo's reputation at the orphanage was as one of the few to embrace his bending rather than reject it. He figured if he had a chance to be the Avatar, he might as well be a good one.

The brick didn't do much damage to the bandit, but it gave Hanjo some room to move. He backed away from the bandit and tore loose bricks from the walls, surrounding himself with hovering stones. The bandits' friends tore themselves away from their merciless beatings and backed him up.

"You must be a real idiot," the bandit shouted.

"Not as dumb as you," Hanjo shouted back. His voice was still hoarse from the hit to the gut. "Find the Avatar by turning on the Avatar State, brilliant plan."

One of the attackers rushed forward and Hanjo hit him in the face with a brick. That halted any other attacks for now. The bandits remained motionless. The ringleader even dropped his club.

The other orphans watched in awe. They all disliked each other, and Hanjo was the least liked of all, but for now they were all united in admiration of him, except perhaps the ones he'd stolen berries from.

The Bandit ringleader flexed his arms, and bricks tore themselves from the wall in a shower of dust and pebbles. Beams of light pierced the holes in the walls and caught the airborne dust, creating spotlights throughout the orphanage. One of them fell quite dramatically on Hanjo's face.

Unfortunately, the sudden light made him blink, and bandits have a knack for capitalizing on even the smallest weaknesses. A flurry of bricks hit him in the chest, one after the other, and he lost all focus, dropping his own ammunition to the ground.

"This one seems promising," the leader said. "Hit him hard!"

The bandits fell on Hanjo, slamming him with clubs and stones. Grunts and moans of pain echoed through the dining hall.

"Come on, Avatar Hanjo," The leader taunted. "Show us some Airbending!"

"Hey, that reminds me," one of the lackey bandits chimed in. "I heard some guru fella say that Air comes from the chest, or something."

"Yeah, that's called breathing, idiot."

"No, it was a bending thing. Something about nunchukras or what you call 'em. Said airbending came from the chest."

"Sounds like a plan," the leader said. Warping stones to his will, he bound Hanjo to the wall by his arms, exposing his chest. He shattered bricks into small stones. "Let's see some air!"

One of his shattered stones struck Hanjo in the chest. When Hanjo failed to show off any airbending, he hit Hanjo in the chest again. Then again. Then a third time.

His fellow students had let go of any admiration for Hanjo and were now cowering behind upturned tables and chairs.

"It'll all be over soon," one of them, a boy named Sen muttered. "It'll all be over soon."

He was lying. He knew bandits liked to draw these things out for their own amusement. This could go on for hours if they felt like it. The authorities didn't care about these kids enough to respond in time, and no one here was strong enough to do anything about it. Hanjo was the only one who knew anything about bending.

But that was all that had to happen, wasn't it? Hanjo could deal with this, they just had to give him some time to recover. The orphan pressed his fingers against the dirt floor. Sen had always felt the connection, knew what he was capable of, but he'd denied it out of fear. He knew he was an earthbender, but he'd never practiced. But now was as good a time as any to start.

Rolling out from the cover of his table, Sen slammed his hands into the ground, opening himself to the spiritual connection he felt with the stones. A shockwave travelled out towards the bandits, and the ground underneath them churned and cracked. It put them off balance, and the bandits stopped their attack on Hanjo for a moment.

Hanjo was already unconscious. He'd taken too long to act. All he'd done was aggravate the bandits.

"There's one," the ringleader called out. "Get him too."

"No, I just wanted to," The orphan began, but couldn't bring himself to finish. "This is a mistake!"

The bandits drew in, wielding clubs and hovering stones. The ringleader let Hanjo fall to the ground as he turned all his attention, and his barrage of stones, to a new target.

"Get away!"

The first stone flew towards Sen. He put his hands forward, trying to shield himself, trying to deflect the stone, trying to do anything to stop it. The flying rock changed direction, shooting back where it had come from, striking the bandit ringleader in the eye. He fell to the ground with a shocked scream as the stone dug into his eye.

His companions spared a moment to look at their fallen leader before charging forward in a vengeful attack. They stormed the orphan with clubs high.

Sen panicked, flailing his arms and sending a scattered cloud of pebbles flying at them, slowing them only briefly and depriving him of any useful materials. The bandits closed in.

"Stop!"

With nothing left to do, the orphan threw up his hands to shelter his face with his arms. The first club hit his arm, connecting with a heavy crack.

A surge of air came from below, knocking the attacking bandits off their feet. Those few orphans who were still watching gasped in shock.

Hanjo had regained consciousness just in time to watch Sen awaken as the Avatar.

9Three weeks later, the Energybender arrived. The city guards had mustered just to make the civilians feel safe, but as he walked towards the Beaker Hall, they backed away slowly and silently. The man in the grey hood walked to the door unimpeded. The Headmaster had been expecting him, but he was not a brave man and he fell to his knees nonetheless.

"We didn't know, we couldn't know, and he isn't here anymore, we are so, so sorry."

"I believe you," The Energybender said. The Headmaster briefly stopped trembling.

The Energybender knelt down, until he was on level with the cowering Headmaster. With a flick of his fingers he forced the Headmaster to look at him. The Headmaster began to shake again, but even trembling eyes could make out the sharp, defined features of the man staring back at him. His eyes looked back with rugged grey irises, surrounded by unnatural grey circles on the skin.

"Tell me everything about him," The Energybender commanded, "And I will consider you innocent of the heinous crime of sheltering the Avatar."

The Headmaster began to say everything.

"He's a young man, sixteen years old, he has black hair and dark brown skin and his eyes are green. He's about five and a half feet tall and he's very scrawny. He left three weeks ago heading east, and he took another orphan named Honjo, I mean Hanjo, it was Hanjo, with him, and Hanjo was wounded so they can't have gotten far."

"You're forgetting something," The energybender said.

"What, what am I forgetting, I told you everything I know!"

"You didn't tell me his name," The Energybender hissed. He placed his hand flat on the Headmaster's chest. The Headmaster soiled himself.

"I don't know his name! I never asked! He never made trouble, never helped, I never bothered to learn his name!"

The Energybender's grey eyes glared down at the filthy Headmaster. He was a deplorable man. He briefly considered using Energybending on him as an example, but decided against it. The cost of Energybending was too high to waste on wretches like this, even though he'd found a way to prevent the damage that had destroyed his grandfather, father and brother before him.

"You are innocent," He said. The Headmaster fell to the floor in a shivering heap.

Without another word, the Energybender departed, travelling east. Crowds split as he walked, no one daring to come within arm's reach. For more than a decade they had been dreading his return, and now he walked among them. Now, he was on the hunt.

They'd made their introductions on the road. His name was Sen.

They'd never really noticed each other before. Hanjo did too much and Sen didn't do enough for their paths to ever cross. Nobody would have guessed that they'd be fugitives together. Hanjo had always sort of wanted to be a fugitive, but the massive bruises and possible broken ribs were putting a damper on his enthusiasm.

Sen hadn't said much since he'd told Hanjo his name. He was focused on moving, getting away from the orphanage and anyone else he might put in danger just by being around them. They had to stop at some point, though, and the setting sun was as good a reason as any. They took shelter behind a large rocky overhang, away from the main roads. Hanjo carved them a small hole in the rock to shield them from the weather, and there they stopped.

"You'll have to learn to do that too, soon," Hanjo said. They needed to start talking.

"Why?"

"Because I'm hurt," Hanjo began. "And also because you're going to have to save the world."

Sen was silent.

"Look, Avatar," Hanjo began. Sen had to get used to being called that. "Everybody back at Beaker Hall had to put up with a lot of crap, and none of it was our fault."

"It was mine."

That caught Hanjo off guard. He'd had a whole monologue ready to go and now Sen had thrown off the pacing completely.

"Not my point," Hanjo said, trying to get back on track. "The point is, sometimes things happen, and even if they're bad, you have to do the best you can with what you have, and you, Avatar, have so much more! You're the master of all four elements!"

"I can barely Earthbend!"

"Correction," Hanjo said, poking Sen in the forehead. "You can barely Earthbend and Airbend! You're two kinds of amateur, which is better than just one kind."

Hanjo scooted around until he was next to Sen. He wrapped a bruised arm around his travelling companions shoulder.

"Look, you have nothing to be afraid of. I'm going to get you started on Earthbending until we find you a real master, and then one for Fire, and then Air, then Water, and suddenly you're a full avatar! Just like Korra!"

"Who's going to help me? Everyone's afraid of the Avatar!"

"I'm not," Hanjo said. Sen fell silent.

"I'm just a mediocre Earthbender, and I'm willing to help, right? There's got to be at least four Masters out there who'll help you, right?"

Sen stared at the ground. Hanjo figured he was gaining ground, and it was time to make the final push.

"I know a good place to get started on our search. I'll lead the way. You focus on bending."

"Where should I start?"

"I don't know; spell your name with rocks or something. I'm going to bed."

Then Hanjo went to bed, and Sen managed to spell half of an S, which is just a small C, before giving up.