The Iron Sole Alchemist in the Benders' World (Chapter 3) Jinora's Training and Korra's Warning
by Howlin
(Disclaimer: I don't own any rights to any of the universes, places, or characters, and only claim the protagonist, Sloth, and Loki as my own creation. This is fan fiction, and I don't profit from it. Please don't sue me.)

Air Nomads were strict vegetarians, which might've presented a problem for Loki if he'd been a normal dog, but his modified digestive system was robust enough to handle much the same range of foods humans could without significant worries about malnutrition. Breakfast consisted of fruits, pastries, and eggs, all wonderfully prepared by the temple's head cook.

Once we'd finished eating, Sloth and I ran to the cliff edge on one side of the temple and jumped off. Loki followed us over the edge. Popping open our staff gliders, Sloth and I soared back up to the surprised oohs and aahs of the people there. Loki formed a set of midair footholds out of condensed spirit energy and bounded after Sloth and I, his tongue lolling out as he enjoyed the new game.

After zigzagging between the temple's spires, the three of us came in for a landing in the courtyard. Most of the crowd cheered, though Tenzin was turning colors as he approached us.

"What were you two thinking going off on a glider like that without any training?! You could've been killed!"

"First off, we couldn't have," said Sloth. "Greed and I? We're immortal. Cut off our heads, we'll grow new ones. Falling off a cliff won't even slow us down. Secondly, we mastered air bending last night."

"I saw the ritual they used," said Kaya. "Some sort of spiritual ceremony that let them learn from every past master that taught here."

"Is that something you can teach me?" asked Jinora. "There's so much that was lost. If grandpa Aang didn't learn something there was no one else to teach it."

"Eventually, yes," I promised. "We're going to want to wait until you're properly bonded with your zanpakto before we get into that one, but I have plenty of more basic techniques to get you started on in the meantime."

"Are you gonna teach Jinora to grow her head back? How long does spiritual training take? Does this mean you don't need my dad to teach you anything after all?" asked Ikki.

"Growing back your head isn't a spiritual technique, mastering spirit energy can take years or even decades, and while we don't need an air bending teacher, we were still hoping your dad would teach us about the local spirits and spiritual realms," I replied.

"Huh, that makes sense," said Ikki.

"When did you want to start teaching me about spiritual powers?" asked Jinora.

"You're an advanced air bender, right?" I confirmed. "Your dad is going to be teaching a big class the earliest basics. I figured while he was doing that, I could start teaching you."

"We're going to get started in about an hour," confirmed Tenzin. "Come see me afterward and I'll go over what I know about the spirit world."

"Thanks, daddy," said Jinora, giving her father a hug.

"What do we do?" asked Meelo looking at Ikki.

"Did you want to go looking for flying lemurs with me?" offered Kaya.

"You're the best, Aunt Kaya," declared Ikki.

"If we have an hour, that means we can still get in a quick game of air ball," said Sloth. "Come on."

Moving her hands in a circular pattern, Sloth created a tight ball of rapidly spinning air, set it on the ground, and hopped on top of it, crossing one leg while balancing on the other with her fists together in front of her for balance. The technique was called the air scooter and could be used to travel quickly from one place to another by riding the spinning ball of air. She took off toward the air ball court. Ikki, Jinora, Meelo, and I created our own air scooters and raced to catch up, Loki trotting behind.

Air ball was played on a field covered in wooden pillars of varying lengths. The players use air bending to send the ball down the field toward one another's goal. Bouncing the ball off pillars with varying levels of spin let you send the ball toward the other team in a way they hopefully wouldn't predict thanks to the angle of the bounce.

The game was fast paced, with the ball rocketing back and forth across the field as both teams intercepted their opponent's shot and tried sending it right back. I was teamed with Ikki and Meelo while Sloth was with Jinora. It was remarkably close. The first goal of the game was scored thanks to a wild shot from Meelo I was sure hadn't been deliberate.

Soon, Kaya arrived to take Ikki and Meelo off our hands. Sloth excused herself, heading back o our room to unpack and lay down some basic privacy and protection wards. Spirit energy wasn't really her thing anyway. Jinora and I headed out to the garden for our lesson. Loki laid down at the sidelines to watch.

"I see you've been keeping your zanpakto with you like I asked. Good. Have you felt anything from it yet?"

"No. I mean, I can feel a kind of energy from it, but that's been there from the start. There's no... presence like you described. Nothing like a person or a spirit."

"That's all right. The time it takes to bond is different for everyone. Eventually, it will awaken and you'll hear its voice."

"You have a zanpakto, right? I don't see you carrying it and you don't have any luggage."

"There's a technique for hiding a zanpakto inside your body. Since it's bonded to your soul, it would only become visible if you leave your body."

"I understand," said Jinora.

"We'll start by going over some of the basics," I said, settling in to my planned lesson. "The soul reapers, the people who invented the zanpakto, are a martial society, focused on fighting a never ending battle against corrupted ghosts called hollows. Soul reapers divide their techniques into four broad categories. Zanjutsu is swordsmanship and the use of the zanpakto. Hakudo is an unarmed combat style for fighting spiritual beings that only rarely take on human form. Hoho is a set of techniques to improve one's mobility in battle, including the ability to stand in midair, move faster than the eye can see, and leave afterimages of yourself to confuse your opponents. Finally, Kido is the term for general spell casting, shaping spirit energy into a wide variety of effects through the use of chants, incantations, hand signs, and gestures.

"I'll be teaching you all four, but for the first lesson, we'll focus on zanjutsu." I transmuted a pair of wooden training swords and tossed her one. "We'll start with the basics of swordsmanship and move on to meditation with your blade so you'll be ready to communicate with it when it awakens."

Jinora's air bending training left her used to martial instruction. She hadn't trained with swords before, but some of her training with the air bending glider staff applied. After a couple hours going over the basics, I called a stop.

"You can get away with sing your zanpakto like an ordinary sword against weaker spirits, but against stronger ones, you'll need to understand spiritual pressure," I explained. "Ordinarily, your spirit energy leaks out of your body at a slow, steady rate. That baseline level of leakage is what makes it possible for you to harm spiritual beings with less spirit energy than you using your zanpakto or your bare hands.

"By concentrating your spirit energy, you can increase your spiritual pressure. A person with greater spiritual pressure can win a fight against one with greater total spirit energy. We'll work on your spiritual pressure later, but I wanted to give you an early introduction to the concept, since it's so important in zanjutsu."

"It's sort of like a water hose," mused Jinora. "It sprays harder if there's a nozzle that restricts the flow."

"Exactly," I said. "For now, let's meditate."

She sat cross legged and I helped her arrange her sword on her lap in the traditional pose. Mediation was already a big part of Air Nomad culture, so Jinora was proficient in the basics. I introduced her to the concept of an inner world where her sword spirit would manifest and could be communicated with. While Jinora looked within herself for that place, I sat down and meditated as well.

I was well practiced at this form of meditation and found myself in my inner world almost immediately. My inner world consisted of a flat, featureless plain with a maze of bookshelves laid out containing the sum total of my knowledge. The Gate of Truth, which contained all the knowledge in the universe and which served as the source of my alchemy abilities loomed over the library, making the vast collection of tomes seem small and insignificant by comparison.

Tsumi no Rensa, the spirit of my zanpakto, was there when I arrived. The sword spirit looked like a man dressed in socks, sandals, pleated black pants, and a black vest. He was about my height, but more broad shouldered and thickly muscled. His brown hair was spiked up like mine. The chains he wore as a belt, bracelets, and headband were the true form of my sword and far deadlier than any mere blade.

He was leaning against a bookshelf and had a book opened. "The meditation space sounds lovely," he said. "While I'd never tell you to stop seeking new powers, I am disappointed in how long it's taking for you to develop your bending to the point you can use your spirit energy safely."

"Kaya gave me a recommendation on where to go for water bending," I said. "I thought it was pretty clever using Book of the End to speed things up."

"I'm not criticizing your progress. I'm just disappointed you can't use external manifestation to let us see the temple in person instead of having to read about it."

"I'm criticizing your progress," said Araña. My inner hollow, Araña, looked exactly like me except for coloration. His skin and hair were chalky white. The whites of his eyes were black and his irises were yellow. He was dressed in a white uniform of Amestrian design with black trim.

"If you've got a better idea, let's hear it," I said to the personification of my baser instincts.

"Stab Korra with Book of the End," said Araña. "She's already mastered the elements, so if you trained with her the whole time, you'd have mastery in one step."

"I'm not using Book of the End on people unless it's an emergency," I declared. "My plan won't take that long, then I'll be able to manifest you again without risking collateral damage."

"There may be a way to access your spirit energy safely before you master the elements," said Vaccine as he hopped down from his perch on top of one of the bookshelves. The avatar of my quincy powers, Vaccine, was a tall, middle aged man with a mop of thick black hair and a five o'clock shadow. He wore tinted sunglasses and an amorphous black overcoat that billowed as he hopped down.

"What have you got?" I asked.

"Nothing certain," admitted Vaccine, "but the people of this world have been dealing with bending for a long time. It's possible they know a way to safely disable a person's bending temporarily." Vaccine took a book off the shelf and consulted it briefly before adding, "When Korra explained about Amon, she emphasized that his removal of bending abilities was permanent. If there is a way to temporarily disable your bending..."

"I'll look into it," I promised. "I should head back and see how Jinora's doing."

I opened my eyes in the outer world, ending my meditation. Jinora was still meditating. To my surprise, Sloth was there. She was sitting next to Loki, stroking his head with a worried look on her face.

"What's up?" I asked.

"I unpacked the foeglass we keep on our night stand," said Sloth. "We have enemies."

I took a different foeglass from one of my belt pouches. Two distant, indistinct figures were reflected in the magic mirror. The nature of the foeglass is that your enemies grow closer and clearer in the foeglass as the enemy's plans come closer to fruition. At this point, all I could say for sure was that one of the figures was human and the other was a strange tentacled creature who's species I didn't recognize.

"Based on the image, I figure it'll be a month, maybe two, before whatever they're planning gets close to completion," said Sloth.

"I guess that's my deadline for getting my powers working right," I said.

After Jinora finished meditating, we called it a day on spiritual training. Sloth and I headed out to one of the gardens to try and get a better idea what was coming. We'd set up a table with tarot cards, astrological charts, crystal balls, burning braziers, and a tea pot. Sloth was reading tea leaves and I was laying out a tarot card reading when Bumi came by.

"I don't think I've seen this much fortune telling equipment since I helped relocate a small Earth Kingdom town that had been built at the base of a volcano," said Bumi.

"One of our dark detectors indicated an enemy'll be making a move in the next couple months," I explained. "We're trying to work out more details."

"Most folks don't put a lot of stock in fortune telling," said Bumi, "but between the stories dad told us growing up and some of the things I've seen serving with the United Forces, I think there are some people who can pull it off. What've you got so far?"

"Korra's at the center of it," I summarized. "The enemy is someone related to her, either physically or spiritually. Maybe both. And if things go badly enough, it could mean the end of this world."

"That sounds pretty serious," acknowledged Bumi. "Is there anything I can do to help?"

"Is there some way to get a message to Korra?" asked Sloth. "We mot have much to go on yet, but at least we can warn her something's coming and that she should keep her eyes open."

"All the air temples have radios for communicating with each other and the outside world," said Bumi. "You'll want to talk to Tenzin about sending a message."

"Other than that, I do't suppose you know of a way to temporarily disable a person's bending, do you?" I asked.

"You mean something like chi blocking?" asked Bumi.

"Never heard of it," I replied.

"Well, it's a kind of martial arts that focuses on striking pressure points that disrupt the flow of chi in a person's body. They can use it to shut down a person's bending or paralyze selected limbs. It wears off after a few minute to a couple hours depending on exactly what they did to you."

"That's perfect," I said. "Do you know a place where they teach it?"

"As a matter of fact, I do," declared Bumi proudly. "A lot of places have made chi blocking illegal, but the warriors of Kyoshi Island have been making it a part of their training regimen ever since the end of the Hundred Year War. In fact, Kyoshi Island isn't that far from here. We'll be flying right over it when we got to the eastern air temple in a few weeks. You should be able to convince my baby brother to stop off on the way long enough for you to do that ritual of yours."

"That sounds like a plan," I said. "Thank you, Bumi."

"I should be thanking you," said Bumi. "Now that I'm an air bender, I can do my part to help preserve dad's legacy."

"We'll let you know as soon as we have more information about the threat," said Sloth.

Tenzin was more skeptical of the value of divination than Bumi was, but he agreed to help us use the temple's radio to contact the Southern Water Tribe and pass on our warning. Unfortunately, Korra wasn't at the Southern Water Tribe. She'd gone out on an expedition with Mako, Bolin, her father Tanraq, Chief Ulanaq, and Ulanaq's children Eska and Desna.

"We could leave a message with someone," suggested Tenzin. "Korra's mother Senna's still in the city."

"Our information suggests she's going to be betrayed by a relative," I said. "Is there anyone else?"

"There is Asami," said Tenzin. "Asami Sato, head of the manufacturing corporation Future Industries. She worked with Korra to take down Amon and the Equalists. She was at the south pole to negotiate some sort of business deal."

"That sounds good. Let's try to get in contact with her," I said.

After a few minutes, we were connected with Asami. She promised to relay the warning to Korra as soon as she got back from her expedition.

For the moment, that was all we could really do.

Author's comments:
Bumi is a worldly traveler who's been all over and has plenty of stories to tell. That aspect of his character didn't get nearly enough emphasis originally.