Chapter 8: Sons of Steel

The sound of clashing blades was not unfamiliar to Yakkul's courtyard, but there had never been a cacophony of steel quite so energetic. Ada brought a peculiar determination to the table, unmatched by any of Yakkul's other students.

Many of the amateurs in the school had given up on sparring with Ada. She had been left with fewer and fewer willing opponents, much less worthy ones. Kunik, at least, was always eager to spend a little time sparring with Ada, even if he was frequently distracted.

Kunik's skill with a blade was considerable, if not impressive. Ada supposed that to some people he would seem very capable, but compared to Ada, he wasn't much. He was consistently on the defensive, always on guard against Ada's relentless offensive. He managed to hold his own in that regard, but he never really went on the offensive. Ada was usually left disappointed by their sparring, but she never stopped.

"Watch on your left," She advised. While some might have used that as a feint to strike to the right, Ada continued her attack from the left. Kunik took her up on her advice but still only just barely managed to block her strike.

"If only all my opponents could be so courteous," Kunik jested. He was sweating visibly from exertion, but that would never stop him from cracking jokes.

"Everyone tells you what they're about to do," Ada said. "They just say it with their body instead of words."

For example, Kunik's body said that he was about to take a quick step forward and thrust his blade. Ada leaned to the side to avoid it, then swatted his blade aside. She struck out with her elbow, hitting Kunik in the chest.

The duel ended, as it almost always did, with Ada landing the final blow. Kunik took a step back and relaxed slightly. His consistent record of defeat hardly bothered him. He was a classic womanizer: anything that put a smile on a pretty girl's face was worth his time. Ada smiled quite broadly while she was fighting, usually.

Lately, though, Ada had taken on a look of grim determination whenever she was fighting. Something was haunting the back of her mind, darkening her bright smiles and hampering her enthusiasm for battle.

"Is there a problem, Ada?"

"Only with your guard," Ada said. She was being unusually critical as well. "You need to grip your blades tighter when you're defending. You're holding it, not hiding behind it."

"I don't recall telling you to boss my students around," Yakkul said firmly. He walked down the stairs to the practice area with a stern look on his face. Kunik raised an eyebrow. Yakkul was almost never stern.

"Kunik, go drill the beginners," Yakkul commanded. Kunik saluted and ran off, leaving Yakkul and Ada alone.

"For the first time since I've met you, I feel a lecture coming on," Ada said.

"It's a rare occurrence. You might want to get a camera," Yakkul said, letting some of his usual levity shine through. He crossed his arms across his chest, trying his best to look judgmental.

"Why did you start learning swordplay, Ada?"

"Canto suggested it," Ada said. "It's a long story. Kind of mushy. I don't think you want to hear it."

Ada wasn't fond of talking about her homes or her relationships. Not only did it make her a little more homesick, it just made for awkward questions.

"Good call. Is that the only reason you practice? Your boyfriend suggested it?"

"Well, no," Ada continued. "I kept doing it because I liked it. It gave me focus. A way to put all my energy and strength into something."

Yakkul rubbed his chin and began to pace back and forth slightly. He eventually shrugged his shoulders.

"I worry about you sometimes, Ada," He said. "You're toeing a very fine line when it comes to your aggression."

"I've heard it before," Ada said. "It seems like everyone I learn from comes to the same conclusion."

Sorikami, Aquila, and now Yakkul had all raised the same concerns. Even Sen had been concerned about Ada's violent tendencies. They had never gotten out of control, however, and Ada had no reason to suspect they would in the future. She trusted herself enough for that.

"I wasn't concerned about it before," Yakkul said. "You had energy, enthusiasm, but lately you've been looking like a storm cloud. What's going on, Ada?"

Ada rubbed her hand across the pommel of her sword and bit her lip briefly. She figured Yakkul of all people would understand.

"It's Rahm," She mumbled. "Ko Rin told me recently –Rahm found someone. One of the people we tried to warn didn't go into hiding, or Rahm found him somehow, and he…"

Rahm was still wandering the world, unchecked, hunting down his so-called traitors. Ko Rin and Ada's fellow agents were doing the best they could to hide the subjects of the General's wrath, but they weren't perfect. Rahm was resourceful and relentless: he found his mark eventually.

"I understand, Ada," Yakkul said. With Rahm, there could be only one outcome. Yakkul sat down on a nearby bench and pressed his palms together.

"But why are you letting this affect you? Why the sudden intensity?"

"Because somebody has to stop him," Ada objected loudly. "We're going to have to face him someday, Yakkul, and I need to be ready."

"You're flattering yourself if you think you could even come close to being Rahm," Yakkul scoffed. "You've seen him. You know what he's capable of. Do you really think you could match that?"

"With enough training and preparation, I could-"

"Annoy him slightly before he swats you like a bug," Yakkul said harshly. "I'm not trying to insult you, Ada, just be realistic. He was single-handedly slaughtering combustion benders while you were still learning to read, and he's only gotten stronger since."

Though Yakkul had never personally fought alongside Rahm, he'd had the misfortune of several lengthy conversations with the General. Rahm had actually been interested in learning more about swordplay, instead of leaning on his metalbending as a crutch.

"So what do we do about him, then? Wait until he decides to stop massacring?"

"In the best case scenario? Yes, exactly that. Rahm is a one of a kind monster, Ada. I wouldn't even recommend that Sen face him. Rahm has a kind of power that no one else does."

Ada looked away, towards the room where Sorikami's broken sword was enshrined. She was briefly weighted down by thoughts of Rahm's incomparable power. Over time, however, her mind drifted to the broken sword, and the last time she had seen it whole.

"Did you always know that Rahm could bend metals that nobody else could?"

"Some of us did," Yakkul said. "The United Coalition wanted to keep it secret while the war was on, and after the war…well, nobody wanted to talk about Rahm at all."

"Did Rahm ever talk about it? How he could do it?"

"Not in depth," Yakkul said. "All he would ever say is that his mind was stronger than the metal."

Ada sheathed her blades and walked away, looking contemplative. Yakkul suspected that she was up to something. She had a look on her face of intense contemplation.

Suda's bones ached and his muscles burned. He had been at the hospital for hours, working himself to exhaustion. Yoguda Hospital was still dealing with the aftermath of the factory collapse, and Suda had been on hand to make sure everything went as smoothly as possible. It was a lot of work, but Suda felt intensely satisfied. It wasn't quite a perfect feeling, but it was close.

Limping up to the gate, Suda politely asked the gatekeeper to be let in, as he was far too tired to do it himself. Kunik obliged.

"Why are you always watching the gate, anyway?"

"Pretty girls walking on the streets," Kunik said.

"It's freezing outside."

"I am nothing if not tenacious," Kunik replied with a wink. He then returned to his post.

"Ada was looking for you, by the way," He said. Suda was not surprised to hear that. "She's waiting in the room with the broken sword."

Now that was a surprise. Ada had said next to nothing about Sorikami since they had discovered her former master's fate. None of them had ever particularly liked Sorikami, but her untimely passing was still regrettable. Suda picked up the pace slightly. He was dead tired, but he always had a little energy to spare for Ada.

Ada was found right where Kunik had said she'd be, in the small room that held Sorikami's shattered blade. Ada was looking at it intensely. The dim light of the windowless room cast strange shimmers across the two halves of the blade. The set of the broken sword showed that it had recently been moved and then put back. Somebody had been examining it very closely.

"Do you remember the night Sorikami and I fought?"

"Of course I do," Suda said. "I was terrified. If I'd been slower-"

"That's the thing," Ada interrupted. She remembered watching Sorikami's sword come to a sudden halt, stopped dead by Suda's will. "It shouldn't have mattered how quick you were. You shouldn't have been able to do that at all."

Suda paused. Ada walked away from the broken sword. She had a stressed look on her face, as though she had been thinking for a long time.

"We didn't even think about it, because I was hurt, and then Sen and Miyani argued right afterwards…"

She placed her hand on her chin contemplatively. It had been a busy night for them all. Certain strange events had been overlooked entirely.

"I don't get your point," Suda said. He had been too focused on saving Ada to notice anything else. Ada was not surprised that he'd not yet seen it. It had taken her this many months to even think of what had really happened.

"You stopped her sword," Ada said, looking over her shoulder at the shattered blade. On that night it had been whole, and aimed at Ada's heart. It had never reached its mark, thanks to Suda.

"Sorikami was terrified of metalbenders," Ada continued. "Why would she have a sword that could be metalbent?"

The broken halves of the blade shimmered slightly as the light shifted. Suda stared at the blade that he had once controlled. Ada stepped towards her closest friend.

"I've examined every angle of that sword," She said. "The alloys, the purification –everything about that sword says it should be impossible to bend."

Ada finally stopped in front of Suda, looking up at him. Was face was far and away, contemplating the outlandish idea that Ada's theory had put in his head. He could not believe it.

"But you did it."

Suda shook his head.

"That can't be it," Suda said. "There has to be some kind of mix up. It was a different sword, or-"

"Do you think I don't recognize the sword that went through my arm," Ada said. "That's the same sword, Suda, the same sword that you stopped."

"Well it can't be, Ada, because I can't do that! We've seen it before, I'm not that strong!"

The only person who could bend such heavily purified metals was Rahm, and Suda was no Rahm. He had tried and failed to bend the impossible before, and it remained impossible. Suda was skilled, perhaps one of the greatest metalbenders of his generation, but he was not even half the bender that Rahm was.

"You tried it as an experiment, just to see if you could," Ada said. "You had no motivation, you didn't have all your willpower focused on one thing. When you had a reason, when your mind was completely focused on saving me, you could do the impossible."

"Okay, so let's say that's the case," Suda said, almost sarcastically. "Do you plan on jumping in front of a sword every time we need some extra metalbending power?"

"No, Suda, of course not," Ada said, getting slightly aggravated. "It just proves that you did it once, so you can do it again."

"If I did it," Suda corrected.

"Why can you not just say that you did it?"

"Because the only other person we've met who can do that kind of thing is Rahm," Suda shouted back. "And I am not a genocidal maniac!"

"You don't have to be! Power is power, Suda, it doesn't make you a monster," Ad a groaned. "I mean look at Miyani. She's not like Gohrman, or P'Li, but she's still powerful. You don't have to be like Rahm to do the same things he does."

Suda drifted away from Ada and went to look at the broken sword. He knew that what Ada was saying was true. He knew for a fact that he had bent that sword, even though it should have been impossible. He wanted to deny it, though.

"There's some things about bending that you don't understand, Ada," Suda began.

Ada shrugged her shoulders. She'd read books and studied the arts, but at the end of the day she was still a non-bender, and she lacked a fundamental insight into the bending arts. Suda continued.

"It's not all about the stances, how you move your body," Suda explained. He moved his hands oddly as he searched for the right words. "It's just as much about how you feel –your thoughts, your attitude. If you don't have the right mindset you can't do it at all."

Ada nodded. They had all seen that firsthand while Sen was learning Airbending. He'd been inflexible and unwilling to compromise, so he'd been completely unable to airbend. She still didn't quite see the relevance to Suda and metalbending, however.

"There's not just one way to think or act when you're bending," Suda continued. "Earthbending can be stubborn or proud-"

Suda looked sadly at Sorikami's shattered blade.

"-or angry."

His broad shoulders tensed nervously as he remembered for the first time exactly what he had been feeling that night, so long ago, in Gai Zhu.

"Metal is hard, and cold, and unyielding. You can't control it with something as soft and gentle as love. You can do it with determination alone, but to go further, to do things people think are impossible –that's hatred. Raw, burning hatred."

Suda turned around and gave Ada a hollow, almost apologetic look.

"I couldn't stop the sword because I cared about you," Suda admitted. "I could do it because I hated Sorikami, for trying to hurt you. I hated her so much. To be the kind of bender you think I can be, to do the impossible –I'd have to be furious like that, all the time, never feeling anything but hate. I'd have to be like Rahm."

Suda sighed and his shoulders drooped wearily.

"I can't do that," Suda moaned.

"I'm sorry I brought it up," Ada mumbled. She had never considered any of that. She'd been so enchanted by the idea of power, of having strength to rival Rahm's, that she had never considered what kind of price that power could come with.

"It's alright," Suda said. "You were just trying to help."

Suda was too tired to carry on this line of thought. He said goodnight and left to rest his tired body and spirit. Ada stayed and watched the broken sword for a while longer. Eventually she shook her head and left the sword behind. That was all in the past now, and it should be left there where it belonged.