The Iron Sole Alchemist in the Benders' World (Chapter 9) Mastering the Four Elements
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.)
The technique Korra and Jinora used to enter the spirit world left them still connected to their bodies on some level, so they were able to snap back and wake up back at the air temple. After quickly confirming everyone was all right, the two of them told the story of their journey into the spirit world.
They'd gotten separated early on, with Sloth having managed to keep hold of Korra, but Jinora having been swept away by a whirlpool. Korra had a bizarre experience where she reverted to a child, met a wise old man, had a tea party with spirits, and learned how her emotions could effect the spirits and the spirit world for good or ill due to her connection to Raava.
Jinora found her way to a great library with the help of a spirit guide. The proprietor of the library, an owl spirit named Wan Shi Tong, betrayed her to Ulanaq, willingly supporting freeing Vaatu without having been corrupted into a dark spirit himself. He'd apparently developed a grudge against humans for misusing the knowledge in his library and thought ten thousand years of darkness would be a fine thing, since the immortal spirits would be around after but the humans would have died out.
As their story came to a close, Sloth, Loki, and my soul arrived at the temple, having decided to cover the distance overland with flash step. We would have apparated, but the only one of us trained in apparition was also the one who'd never been to this particular temple. My homunculus self and my soul merged and synchronized our memories. Once or memories synchronized, my soul separated from my body again, a hard look in both mes' eyes.
"Greed, what's wrong?" asked Sloth.
"Homunculus Greed can fill you in," said my visored self as I snapped my fingers and tore open a hole in the air, revealing the swirling black garganta between worlds. "I have a loose end to tie up."
While my homunculus self explained, my visored self stepped through the garganta into the spirit world. It didn't take long for me to find the building Jinora described. Massive towers extending down as the great library hung upside down in the canopy of an enormous forest. I formed footholds of compressed spirit energy as I walked in midair up to the nearest entrance. Gravity reversed as I stepped inside, orienting with the building. Fortunately, my footholds worked just as well in any orientation, so I avoided falling. Hopping and doing a flip in midair, I landed on the floor and took a look at the spirit library. There were books and scrolls and bits of pottery everywhere. Shelf after shelf, wing after wing, the sheer amount of accumulated knowledge was staggering.
As I looked around, a large inky black creature flew overhead. It had a long, sinuous body like a serpent and supported itself on feathered wings. As it landed, it seemed to pour itself into the form of a white faced barn owl.
"Wan Shi Tong, I presume," I addressed the spirit.
"Why have you come to my library?" asked the spirit.
"Do you recall a human girl named Jinora?" I asked. "Brown hair, about eleven years old, air bender clothing?"
"What of her?" asked Wan Shi Tong imperiously.
"You betrayed her to Ulanaq, who tried to murder her," I said. As I did, I adjusted my spiritual pressure. Wan Shi Tong collapsed to the ground, unable to remain upright in his owl posture and pressed flat in his winged serpent appearance.
"What... did you just do?" choked out the spirit, barely able to breathe.
"Ordinarily, my spiritual pressure is so high that it becomes imperceptible to most souls and spirits," I explained. "I've deliberately lowered my output to a level you can perceive. I've avoided crushing you entirely so we can have a little chat before you die."
"You may be powerful, but you are clearly ignorant of the spirits," declared Wan Shi Tong, trying to regain some of his dignity though eh still couldn't raise himself off the ground. "Spirits are immortal. You cannot kill us."
"It's a rare art," I admitted, channeling my spirit energy through the five barred quincy cross on my left wrist and forming a solid long bow that was white with blue markings. "An arrow from this bow will destroy you utterly. I already had Avatar Korra test the technique on Vaatu."
"Why are you doing this?"
"I already told you. You betrayed a human girl to a man who tried to murder her. No spirit is so powerful or important that they can get away with that." I drew my bow, forming a glowing blue arrow from the ambient spirit particles in the air, then released. The arrow struck Wan Shi Tong's head and the spirit was unmade.
A group of fox spirits crawled into view when I let my spiritual pressure return to normal.
"Did you hear that? Did you understand?" I asked. They nodded their heads. "It would be a shame if the other spirits didn't hear about Wan Shi Tong and made the same mistake."
The fox spirits scattered. Glancing around the empty library, I checked the number of red stones I'd brought with me. I touched a bookshelf and used the red stones in my pocket to absorb the knowledge in these books directly. I burned through a lot of red stones consuming Wan Shi Tong's library, but I had come prepared and had plenty to spare.
One wing of the library had been burned to ashes, the wing focused on the Fire Nation. There was a time such a sight would have filled me with despair for all the knowledge lost. Now, I had the power to restore it. I contained the entire wing inside a translucent, orange, cube shaped barrier and used the space time reversion kido I'd learned fro the visored Hadji to turn back the clock inside the barrier to before the books were burned. After assimilating the newly restored wing's knowledge, I opened a garganta and returned to the air temple and my body. I put my bracers back on.
"Wan Shi Tong is dead?" asked Tenzin.
I nodded. "With the portals open and spirits and humans living alongside one another, they need to understand they can't harm humans without consequences."
"I thought you couldn't deliver the killing blow," said Korra. "That's why we had to wait for Sloth to show up with that bracelet."
I took out my zanpakto and said, "Bind, Tsumi no Rensa," transforming the sword into a length of chain. "Each link represents someone I've killed. Each link can temporarily transform into the person it represents. That's why I didn't dare bet he one to kill Vaatu. This link is Wan Shi Tong."
"That's a pretty morbid ability," commented Korra.
I sealed Tsumi no Rensa back into sword form and said, "There's a lesson to it. I have to reconcile with my enemies sooner or later, and usually killing isn't worth it. Eventually, I'll have to come to terms with Wan Shi Tong. I can delay it, but I can't run away from it."
"What happened to his library?" asked Jinora.
"It still stands," I verified. "I assimilated all the information in it, but the process was nondestructive. All the books are still there without a letter out of place. I even restored a section that'd been burned before I left."
"Anything good in there?" asked Sloth.
"Tons," I affirmed. "Histories spanning tens of thousands of years, details about the spirits and spirit world it would take lifetimes to discover, instructional manuals for bending styles no one has practiced for centuries. The zoology texts covering anatomical details of all the hybrid animals in this world are giving me so many ideas for improving chimera creation and even giving Loki some upgrades. Here, let me give you an imprint."
I clapped my hands then touched the oroboros tattoo on Sloth's back. The mark glowed blue for a moment and Sloth smiled.
"You weren't kidding about how much was in there," she said. "And you threw in the water bending skills you picked up at the North Pole. Nice."
"If you have all those bending manuals, why are you still wearing your bracers?" asked Bumi.
"I could probably work out the styles by performing the exercises in the manuals, but that would take time," I explained. "I did work out the next two stops I need to make. Unfortunately, neither of them are on the way, so I'll need to wait until after we finish our tour of the air temples."
"You don't have to come," said Korra. "I can go with Tenzin and finish granting air bending to the Air Acolytes."
"I appreciate the offer, but I still need to finish teaching you and Jinora the basics of spiritual combat. This trip is a good time for that," I said. "Besides, now that I can access my spirit energy safely, it's a lot less urgent that I master the elements."
We spent about a week at each of the remaining air temples. Korra and Jinora both managed to pick up basic spiritual pressure sensing as well as basic flash step. After a lot of meditation, Korra realized that Raava had merged with her zanpakto spirit. Her shikai was a luminous blue white whip in the form of one of Raava's tentacles.
My inner spirits got to come out and see the beauty of the air temples now that I knew how to do that safely. When I wasn't training Korra and Jinora or just relaxing and taking in the scenery, I was working with Sloth on the best way to improve Loki's chimera form.
Our changes were subtle. Slight improvements in bone and muscle density, adjustments of a number of joints, and some small metabolic tweaks. The result, however, was to eliminate the strain and discomfort of his chimera form that meant he only used it for combat. The trigger remained the same, transforming him when he had his hackles up, and changing him back when he relaxed, but the experience should be less uncomfortable, and it wouldn't be a problem if battle damage to the array tattooed beneath his fur and scales left him mode locked for a prolonged period of time.
On the day of harmonic convergence, we were at the Western Air Temple, the final stop on Tenzin's planned journey. All of t he work that I needed to do was done, and I was enjoying what I planned on being my last day here with a friendly water bending spar with Korra. My technique was better, but Korra had access to her spirit energy, giving her better strength, speed, and reflexes, largely evening us out.
I'd just raised a wall of water and hardened it into ice to block one of Korra's water jets when I felt the planet's energy shift. The shift supercharged Korra's spirit energy and her jet shattered my ice shield and slammed me hard against the far wall. I had a couple of cracked ribs from the hit and some small cuts where ice shards hit me, but I was still conscious.
"Are you okay?" asked Korra, surprised at the force of her own blow.
"I've been hit with worse,: I said, bending a blob of water out of the fountain we were using as our source and wrapping it around my hand.
"That was harmonic convergence starting, wasn't it? I can feel my energy being multiplied."
Faint blue light emanated from the blob of water in my hand as I applied water bending healing techniques. I rubbed the glowing water over my cuts and they vanished. "My spirit energy's getting the same boost. Doesn't mean anything with all the seals I'm using, but I can definitely feel it too."
"I guess you're gonna have to drop those seals if you wanna keep sparring," said Korra smugly.
"Like I'd need to," I said with a confident smirk. I'd pressed the water blob against my side and could feel my broken ribs mending and internal damage vanish. "Your boost caught me by surprise is all."
I stepped up my game to prove I wasn't bluffing, opening our next round with eight ice tipped tentacles attempting to spear her from different angles. After dodging my onslaught, she wrested control of one of my tentacles and used the end closer to me to try and cut me. Her high pressure water knife was too fast for me do dodge physically, so I iced the floor under my feet and yanked myself along it. I raised a vision obstructing mist then zigzagged on fresh pathways of ice to confuse Korra on my location. She forced the mists to precipitate and clear just in time to see my water jet rocketing in at her stomach. It was a clean hit so we both stopped fighting and shook hands.
The energy from harmonic convergence faded after the planets moved out of alignment. That excitement over, Sloth and I thanked everyone for having us, unfolded our gliders, and headed out with Loki. Our destination was the birthplace of earth bending, the ancient city of Omashu.
Sloth, Loki, and I had been traveling for half a day when we landed to set up camp for the night. We'd chosen a nice spot on the beach on the Earth Kingdom's west coast. After transmuting some grass and leaves into food and a tent, I decided to use water bending to get us something o drink. I shifted the state of a portion of ocean water from liquid to gas, causing the dissolved salt and impurities to precipitate out. Then I shifted the now purified water vapor back into a liquid.
"Always playing with your new toys," said Sloth with an amused smile.
"Yep," I agreed shamelessly, returning her smile.
"So, now that we're away from Korra, Tenzin, and the others, what's our plan for blood bending?"
"Blood bending was developed relatively recently, and Wan Shi Tong stopped noting human innovations in his library during Avatar Aang's time," I summarized. "It was developed by a Fire Nation prisoner named Hama originally from the Southern Water Tribe. The practice was outlawed quickly and it was never taught openly."
"We have the general gist of what's involved," noted Sloth. "Using water bending on a living creature to control their body like a puppet. We could re-derive it from first principles."
"Hama's version required the full moon to work. A handful of people could do it without the full moon, all part of the same family, but whether that's because of a freak mutation or just because they were the only ones who tried to train and refine it is an open question. It can't hurt to spend full moons working on it ourselves until another opportunity presents itself."
"We do have an advantage no other water bender has," said Sloth, taking out her pocket watch. "They only get three days a month of full moons to work on blood bending. We could make the full moon last as long as we want until we're expert blood benders."
"Good point," I acknowledged. "The next full moon is a couple days after we visit Omashu. From there, we'll be island hopping to the Fire Nation. We should find plenty of animals to practice on when the time comes."
We made good time, arriving at Omashu a couple days later. Wan Shi Tong's library had pictures and descriptions, but it couldn't compare to seeing this marvel of engineering and urban planning for ourselves. The city was structured like an enormous pyramid with heavy stone carts constantly running along tracks between levels with the aid of earth benders. The carts served a sophisticated mail delivery system that allowed the city's various businesses to coordinate better than any city on the planet, and had made the city an economic powerhouse for centuries.
"State your purpose in the city," instructed one of the guards as we approached the gate.
"We're pilgrims, come to visit the birth place of earth bending," I said.
"You may enter," he said after glancing over the three of us.
We stepped through the gates into a bustling, thriving metropolis. A large number of street vendors were concentrated near the gate and immediately called out to us hawking their wares. One vendor called out to Sloth.
"Little girl, try some jenomite. Best rock candy in the Earth Kingdom. One piece will last you a lifetime."
The vendor's cart was filled with blue and green crystals. He was holding out a fist sized blue crystal, and we saw it grow before our eyes, adding a full inch to its length.
"How does it do that?" asked Sloth. "Is it pulling water vapor and carbon dioxide from the air to make sugar the way plants do? Is it really some kind of plant? Even if it is, how does it grow so fast?"
"The books mentioned jenomite was called creeping crystal because of its extraordinarily fast growth, but I thought it would need a specific environment," I said. "I didn't think it would grow like that just sitting in your hand. We'll take one of each color."
"A wonderful decision, sir," said the candy vendor, taking out two small crystals. "That will be fifty yuons."
"I don't have any local currency," I said. "Will you accept the candy's weight in gold?"
He happily accepted my gold bar and gave me some coins in change along with the jenomite. The books were clear it was safe to eat, despite its odd properties, and licking it tasted just like sugar. The thumb sized crystals had grown to the size of apples by the time we'd wandered our way to the oldest part of the city where I'd need to perform my ritual to master earth bending.
"It's not drawing in heat. It keeps growing even when I keep sunlight off it. The only thing that stops it from growing is pressure. It won't push things aside to grown, so even a thin paper bag can keep it contained to a certain size," Sloth reported on her experiments with the crystal.
"The mass and energy have to be coming from somewhere," I said as I set out my pensive, substitute soul reaper badge, and wand.
"They don't," said Sloth. "I'm not saying it's likely, but we know from how Soul Gems work, there are exceptions to the law of equivalent exchange. I don't know whether I'd laugh or cry if I found out the key to reversing entropy was being sold by a street side candy stall."
I performed my ritual, removing my bracers, turning my badge into a sword that I stabbed the ground with, creating a false past, using my wand to draw out the memories of that false past and leave them in the pensive, stabbing the ground again to unmake the false past, returning the memories in the pensive to my head, then putting my bracers back on.
"We'll look into it in detail while we travel," I said as I gathered up my things. Then I clapped my hands and patted her on the back, causing her oroboros mark to glow briefly. "How, you're a master earth bender."
"Only one element to go," said Sloth. "Can I guess where you want to go for it?"
"The Lost City of the Sun Warriors," I said as we walked. "Supposedly home of the First Fire, the same flame kept continuously burning since the discovery of fire itself. They may have died out, but they were the longest continually active group of fire benders in history."
"And Wan Shi Tong's maps show us right where the 'lost' city is," said Sloth smiling.
We'd only just started walking down the road away from the city, intending to hold off on using our gliders until we were out of view, when a group of five men came out of hiding among some rocks at the side of the road.
"I get the feeling someone who slaps a gold bar on a candy counter and doesn't bother to count the change probably has more than one," said the man in the center of the group. "Hand over what you're carrying if you don't want to get hurt."
"Bandits," I said with a smile glancing down at Sloth.
"Just our luck," she said, returning my smile with a smirk of her own.
"Let's make this at least a bit of a challenge," I suggested. "Just earth bending. Loki, stay."
"No area effects either," stipulated Sloth. "We have to take them down one at a time."
"Hey, are you listening to us?" demanded the bandit leader. "Hand over your valuables now!"
Sloth used her glider staff to open things up by affixing a softball sized rock to one end, spinning three hundred sixty degrees, and launching the rock into the leader's stomach, doubling him over and knocking him out. I vanished into the ground, popping up at the bandits' flank. As I came up, I levitated a torso sized boulder with one hand and sent it flying at one of the bandits with a punch from the other hand. He didn't see it coming and was bowled over, taking him out of the fight.
The remaining three bandits, recognizing they'd underestimated us, all hurled boulders, two at me and one at Sloth.
Sloth did a simple dodge, popping onto, then out of, the ground before gesturing with one hand to cause the earth to swallow her opponent up to his neck. I blocked the boulders aimed at me with two simultaneous wrist strikes that reduced them to powder. At the same time, I stomped, causing a column of earth to emerge from the ground at a forty five degree angle and hit one of the bandits in the bread basket, deflating him and causing him to collapse doubled over on the column.
The remaining bandit tried to turtle up, raising earth walls on all four sides. Sloth and I shared a look and used earth columns to launch ourselves over his walls to drop down inside his shelter from above. He tried to knock one of us out of the sky with a baseball sized rock, but I put it into orbit around me and launched it back at his head. He was staggered from my hit, and Sloth punching the ground upon landing to make it quake finished the job of knocking him on his ass.
"I surrender!" he called out, holding his hands up over his face as if to ward us off.
I levitated some pebbles and fused them into a pair of manacles to bind his hands behind his back as I said, "That was fun."
"This is what I was looking forward to on our vacation," agreed Sloth, taking down the walls. "Helping with the spiritual stuff was important, but this is way more fun."
We gathered up our defeated opponents, bound them, and marched them back to the city. Thee guard at the gate looked over our prisoners as we approached.
"These men tried to rob us," I explained.
"You've done the city of Omashu a great service," said the guard, taking custody. "If it were up to me, we'd pay you a bounty for helping protect our roads like this, but the Earth Queen's taxes barely leave us enough funds to run our city government."
"We're just glad we could help," I said, waving him off.
We set out again, and I looked down at Loki trotting at our side.
"You wanted to join in, didn't you, boy?" I said. "We got you spirit energy so you wouldn't get left out and now the same spirit energy means you're so strong you can't help against normal people. Don't worry. We'll fix that."
Creating a new collar that sealed Loki's spirit energy like my bracers sealed mine was the work of a couple hours that evening after we set up camp. The tricky part was working out a way to turn it on and off so Loki could access his spirit energy in an emergency. In the end, I settled on a voice control, with Sloth or I able to release or reactivate the seal with a simple command. On Loki's side, two yips in his chimera form would release the seal and it would automatically reactivate when he returned to dog form. Loki was a smart dog. Teaching him how it worked was simple.
We continued to travel mostly by glider, unlocking Loki's powers while in flight so he could follow us using flash step. I roughhoused with the dog a little when we stopped for meals and rest, making sure he had a good feel for his abilities in various states. Again, Loki was a smart dog and picked it up quickly.
Finally, it was the night of the full moon. We'd stopped on a lush island just off the coast of the Earth Kingdom. As we planned to stay here for a few days, I transmuted a comfortable long house with dozens of beds for us to sleep in.
Sloth used the power of her Soul Gem to create a small pocket dimension. It was a featureless, white void that served our purposes as an experimental space. I layered several barriers and conjured up tanks for our experiments to take place in. The interior of the tanks were perfect vacuums, with the barriers cutting off them from any interaction with the outside world. No energy, matter, or even gravity would effect their contents. Each tank had a small piece of jenomite placed inside to test the possibility that this tasty bit of rock candy really was capable of producing matter and energy from nothing.
When we stepped out of the barrier and back onto the island, future versions of us were everywhere. The present Sloth and I began by hunting down some small animals to work on. Sloth turned the dial on her bracelet to water bending and we got started.
Blood bending was conceptually simple. Living things were made mostly of water and bending that water could let you control their actions like a puppet. Putting that theory into practice was unexpectedly easy. The way water moved inside a living creature made it inherently difficult to establish a grip, but three nights of steady practice and experimentation were all it took to get the trick.
It shouldn't have been surprising. Between our extensive water bending training courtesy of my fulbring, our ability to work openly without fear of discovery, and us already thinking of living things in terms of separable components like water thanks to our alchemy training, we had plenty of advantages over Hama, who took years to develop the technique inside a fire nation prison. After we had our initial blood bending grip, Sloth and I used the time turners hidden inside our pocket watches to go back to the beginning of our training on the first day of the full moon to refine our control.
Over the course of several cycles, Sloth and I refined our skills. We could freeze them in place, lift them off the ground, and move them bodily around almost immediately. It took practice to get to the point of moving individual limbs, more practice to do it smoothly as though the animal was moving naturally, still more practice before we could use blood bending without the animal panicking and screeching in pain, or at least attempting to.
Happy with our abilities under the full moon, Sloth and I started practicing in the daytime. Without the boost to our bending the full moon provided, establishing a blood bending grip was harder, manipulating the animal using it was clumsier, and it generally felt like we'd been set back weeks in our training. The mere fact that we could blood bend in broad daylight without the full moon at all was encouraging, and w stuck with it until our daytime control and precision matched our nighttime efforts.
In all, Sloth and I were on the island for a subjective month. In real time, only three days had passed. Before we set out again, the two of us reentered the pocket dimension where we'd left our jenomite experiment. Cut off from every known form of energy and hanging weightless, suspended in a vacuum, the pieces of jenomite had grown exactly the same amount as the control samples we kept outside the sealed pocket dimension.
"This might be real," said Sloth as we looked over the samples. "I am going to strangle Kyubey if this is the counter to entropy it looks like it is."
"Even if jenomite doesn't exist in his world, it'd be proof there was a way to do it without using magical girls at all," I agreed. "Next we ought to work out its exact structure and composition. See if jenomite we transmute from scratch has the same properties."
"We'll do the analysis after we master fire bending," said Sloth. "We were pushing things doing this experiment on the road. I just needed confirmation."
"That sounds like a plan," I said. "Once fire bending training is done, we'll pick a comfortable place to settle in and do our tests."
A couple more days of glider flight eventually brought us to our destination. Hidden in a largely inaccessible valley, the ruins of the ancient city of the Sun Warriors had been lost for hundreds of years. The Sun Warriors had built their city to last. Aside from some overgrowth, the buildings and roads looked remarkably intact, at least from the mountain top we were looking down from. We quickly hopped down for a closer look.
As we got closer, signs of recent habitation revealed themselves. A small section of buildings was free of vines and overgrowth. Most of the farming plots laid fallow, but a handful were carefully tended with neat rows of staple crops and no weeds mixed in. All signs pointed to a civilization who's population had contracted, but hadn't died out entirely.
The mystery of where the people were was soon answered as the doors to a large community building, possibly a church, opened up and people began filing out. They were dressed lightly as appropriate for the equatorial climate. A subset sported ritual facial tattoos and wore identical uniforms with a collar, headdress, and loin cloth. On sighting us, this group moved to place themselves between us and the civilians.
"Why have you come to this place, outsiders?" asked one of the warriors.
"We've come to learn fire bending," I said. "Everything I've read says the Sun Warriors were the first to master the art."
"It has been many years since outsiders came seeking to learn our ways," said the warrior. "We will present you to the fire bending masters, and if they find you worthy, you will be allowed to study here. However, you must swear to never reveal that our people still live. We have hidden ourselves away from the outside world by choice, and we wish it to remain that way."
"We understand," said Sloth. "Your secret's safe with us."
The warriors led us to another part of the city. Built into the side of a cliff was a massive hearth sheltering an enormous bonfire from the elements. I gaped in awe at the carefully tended hearth.
"Is that what I think it is?" I asked our escorts.
The warrior who'd been speaking with us beamed with pride and said, "This is the first flame, gifted to humanity by the dragons before recorded history. Our people have kept it burning all this time."
"I never expected to see it still alight," I said.
"You will each take a piece of the first flame and present it to the fire bending masters at the top of those stairs." He indicated a flight of stairs carved into the mountain. Then he reached into the bonfire and scooped out two torch sized flames, holding them out to Sloth and I.
"We don't know how to fire bend yet," I said.
"It's a test," he replied. "If it was something easy, there'd be no point doing it at all."
I thought through the thousands of texts on fire bending in Wan Shi Tong's library. I steadied my breathing and accepted the offered flame. It was very basic fire bending, but could provide the energy to keep the flame burning in the palm of my hand without consuming fuel. Sloth likewise managed to take hers in hand and we began to climb the stairs. I ordered Loki to stay at the base of the steps for now.
The point of the exercise was balance. Feed too much power to the flame, you get burned. Too little power and the flame risked flickering out in the increasingly strong winds as we climbed higher. I accepted a few burns as the price of passing the test. I could heal later.
Sloth had much the same idea and we both reached the top with our pieces of the first flame still burning. The two fire bending masters emerged from nearby caves. They weren't human. Both were enormous, serpentine dragons, one red and one blue.
We held out our offerings to the dragons, who flicked out their tongues as they passed, taking the flames from us. Then the dragons began circling around us, rising and falling, weaving around one another. I recognized the pattern they were flying in from one of the scrolls in Wan Shi Tong's spirit library. The scroll described one of the oldest fire bending forms, dating to the time of Avatar Wan, the Dancing Dragon.
"They're inviting us to dance with them," I said. "Do you think you can manage the form?"
Sloth nodded and we performed the form. Passing through the stances and striking in sync with the dragons weaving around us, we finished the form right next to one another. The dragons hovered in place and breathed on us. Sloth and I were surrounded by a swirling vortex of multicolored flames.
The flames burnt out and the dragons retreated to their caves. Sloth and I climbed back down the stairs. The Sun Warriors were waiting for us.
"Masterfully done," said the one we'd been speaking to. "Congratulations. Now that the masters have accepted you, you're welcome to study fire bending with us."
"I've seen dragons before, but none that impressive," I said. "It wasn't just the size either, but the precision control of the temperature of their flame breath to produce that kaleidoscope of colors."
"I can hardly wait until we can do that," said Sloth.
"I'm afraid that's a long ways off," said the warrior with a chuckle.
"Not really," I said. "Bring us to the training grounds and I'll show you a trick."
He obliged and I performed my ritual. Once I'd put the memories back inside my head, I didn't put my bracers back on. I flicked my thumb up and created a small, candle sized flame, proving to myself that I had the control to use my bending safely even with access to my spirit energy. Not really needing my spirit energy, I put the bracers back on, retrieved my things, then imprinted the knowledge onto Sloth through the oroboros mark on her back.
"You think you're a fire bending master now?" verified the warrior.
I breathed fire on him, carefully keeping the flames from touching him as they swirled around him, and modulating the heat to produce the kaleidoscope of colors the dragons had shown me.
"So, I think our next stop should be the Fire Nation capital," said Sloth. "We're pretty close, and we ought to pick up lightning while we're here."
"Sounds good," I said. "We'll head back to Republic City to see about learning metal bending after. Their police are learning it somewhere."
Unfolding our glider staffs, Sloth and I took to the air, leaving the dumbfounded sun warrior behind.
Author's comments:
Jenomite doesn't get much focus in the Avatar fandom, but it's properties are actually pretty amazing. It counts as earth for earth bending, it grows exponentially, going from a tiny ring to covering a person entirely in a short period of time, and it's a tasty candy snack. I think with the properties I've described, Sokka and Katara were safe from being covered by the candy's growth, since the pressure of their breath was keeping their faces safe from being grown over. Bumi was a little crazy, but he was never malicious, after all.