Lightning flashed across the sky as the rain pelted his stubby arms. Zhong glared at the older man standing across the grounds from him. His master was aging, grey hairs in a well kept braid that ran down his back. Zhong had similarly braided hair, but he didn't care to maintain it in such conditions. He stomped his feet in the muddy ground and clenched his fists.

"It's too wet out!" he shouted to his master. "We can't train like this!"

Master Li laughed and launched another rock into the air above his head. "Are you joking? We can't afford not to train like this!"

Zhong growled and prepared himself for another attack. After ten years of training with Master Lan Chang, it seemed odd that Zhong's parents had been so willing to replace one master with another. Master Lan had been a great instructor, and Zhong couldn't think of anything that would have made his parents dislike him. Besides, Master Li pushed too hard. And for what? So Zhong could be a better earthbender?

Soon the two of them were flinging muddy rocks at each other. Zhong's hair was already plastered to his face, and his messy braid clung to the back of his black vest in sticky strands. His pants were coated in mud, as were his bare feet.

Zhong hated going barefoot.

Master Li tried to soften the already muddy ground beneath Zhong's feet, but the teenager hardened a spot next to himself and sidestepped the sinkhole. He quickly stomped forwards and yanked his hands back, catching the master from behind with a well placed boulder. Master Li was flung forward and landed face first in the mud.

When he got up again, the older man raised his hands in surrender. "You got me. An old man should be able admit defeat when faced with it."

Zhong stood at ease, clearing his upper body of some of the mud with his earthbending. "Are we done now?" he asked. "I'd really rather not catch pneumonia. Or get hit by lightning."

"Fine," Master Li said as he approached his student. "Let's both get inside before we catch our deaths. Besides, I have some work that needs to get done."

The two of them trudged across the estate in silence. Zhong never felt he had anything to say to his new master, and Master Li seemed to spend an awful lot of his time examining his student. If student was even the right word. Zhong was pretty sure he surpassed Master Li in both power and skill, which made it even more baffling that his parents at let the man replace Lan for a whole month now.

Zhong huffed as they climbed the steps to his front door, but Master Li quickly clamped a hand on his shoulder. "Best clean ourselves up before going inside. I'm sure your parents wouldn't want us muddying up their halls while they're away at work."

"My mother's an earthbender. If she hates it so much, she can clean it up herself." But even as he complained, Zhong shucked what was left of the mud covering his clothes before stepping through the front door into the main hall. There was nothing he could do about the water though, and he found himself leaving a trail as he trudged up the stairs at the end of the hall towards the bedrooms. Master Li had melded into another part of the house, and with any luck, Zhong wouldn't see him for the rest of the day.

The young earthbender grabbed a towel out of his en-suite and ruffled it through his hair before changing out of his wet clothes. His room was still a mess from earlier when Zhong had lost track of his pocketphone and had turned over every piece of furniture in search of it. It was now sitting on his desk, on top of a large pile of long-forgotten homework. Once changed, he grabbed the phone and slipped back down the stairs to the main floor.

Zhong continued down the back hall, past the dining room and kitchen, and slipped out a back door, where he found sheltered steps leading underground. He followed the steps into a carved out tunnel, lit by sparkle lights he'd hooked up to a generator further down the hall. This was Zhong's earth den: a home within his home he had made long ago and had somehow pressured his wealthy parents into keeping powered.

When he reached the end of the hall he was greeted by a large, black nose poking him in the chest. He pushed it away in annoyance, before giving into the insistent nudge and patting the nose affectionately. "Okay Digger, give me some space."

He looked into the sightless eyes of his badgermole friend and smiled, remembering when they had found each other in the Avatar Aang Zoo in Ba Sing Se. She had only been born a month before his visit, and had followed him back and forth along the glass until he eventually convinced his parents to let him take her home. "A badgermole is not a pet," his father had said. "It's a wild animal." But Zhong didn't consider Digger his pet. She was his friend.

Zhong walked past Digger and grabbed the remote for his TV off of a table he had shoved up against the wall next to the grumbling generator. Digger curled up on the ground, her warm side facing the TV in just a way that Zhong could lean against her and watch TV with his feet propped up on a small mound of earth he'd constructed. He flipped through the channels for a bit before settling on a cartoon with talking robots.

Cosy against the fur of his badgermole friend, Zhong pulled out his phone and switched between casually watching cartoons, and texting his girlfriend, Ning.

Ning: Li still overly enthusiastic?

Zhong smiled. He'd kept Ning updated on his new teacher over the past month and she was just as baffled about him as Zhong was.

Zhong: Sure is. Just had us practicing in the rain for a whole hour.

Ning: You won't come down with something and miss the game tomorrow, will you?

Ning was an airbender on her school's bending games team. She was a strong athlete, and it was one of the things that he admired so much about her. Zhong loved watching his girlfriend play.

Zhong: Even if I come down with something I'll still be there.

Ning: Good :)

Zhong continued to text Ning well into the night, ranting about his bending frustrations, and listening in turn to his girlfriend's coach troubles. Eventually he ran out of cartoons to watch and he retreated back into the house, ready to turn in. But his parents had returned at some point while he was in his den and they were talking with Master Li in the sitting room off the side of the main hall.

Zhong didn't even hesitate to listen in. His parents had been really weird about Master Li and it was about damn time Zhong knew what was going on.

"I've had plenty of time to study his skills and I would have to agree. Your son has all but mastered earthbending. I'm not sure there's anything for me to teach him." Zhong nodded. Damn straight.

"Are you sure. Nothing at all?" his mother asked. There was something in her voice. Fear maybe?

"I'm afraid not. It's time for Zhong to move forwards. I believe he would be a good candidate for metalbending."

Zhong heard his mother sigh in relief. "There's a metalbending school in the upper ring. I can arrange for him to begin classes-"

"No."

There was silence in the room for a moment. "What do you mean, no?" That was his father.

"The avatar needs a master. The metalbending school will not give him what he needs."

Zhong's breath hitched. What did he just say? The avatar? Who was the avatar? Not Zhong, surely. He couldn't bend anything but earth. He'd heard Avatar Korra could bend all the elements except air by the time she was four. But... who else could they be talking about? They'd said his name. He was the only other person in the house.

Zhong felt lightheaded and backed away from the sitting room door. He stumbled into a table, knocking over the glass stereo system they had set up in the main hall. He couldn't breathe and barely registered the shards of broken glass on the floor beneath him, or the shocked voices of his parents as his eyes rolled into the back of his head.

"Zhong!" he heard his father call.

"He heard us..." said his mother. And that was the last thing he remembered that night.

Feinting when he found out he was the avatar was not one of the things about Zhong that would go on to be put in history books, but the fact was that it came as a shock to him. He'd done his studies, which unfortunately focussed an awful lot on me, Avatar Korra, and Zhong didn't feel he fit the bill. He didn't feel a connection, much like I didn't with Aang. In truth, we were more similar than he realized. It would just take him time to figure it out.