Summary: Bending. What's that? There was no such thing. Until now. Recently, Ozai, a scientist that researches supernatural controls of the elements, discovered four teenagers who were gifted with such powers. Zuko – a teen who discovers he can bend flames to his will. Katara – a teen that discovers her powers over the oceans, rivers and lakes a little too late. Aang – a teenage monk who discovers he has the ability to control air. Toph – a blind, yet powerful teenager who possesses the mastery to manipulate the earth as well as having the aptitude to sense even the slightest seismic activity.
Disclaimer: I do not own Avatar: The Last Airbender.
A/N: Heyy guys! Thank-you to all those of you who reviewed! And to answer AmayaNight's question (since you turned off PM) – Ozai has no relation to Zuko whatsoever. In this story, Zuko's an orphan and his guardian is Iroh, who he always thought was his father. He is, however, almost old enough to look after himself. And for anyone who's wondering, Katara is Sokka's long-lost sibling but I might not actually put that in the story. Review and tell me what you want! I'm sorry for not posting earlier. I did say 5 reviews but I was busy. Next chapter will be posted on the 13 review mark – which is only 5 reviews away! I hope I will get the next chapter up soon. =)
So thanks for reviewing everyone and I hope you enjoy this chapter!
Bending Origin
Chapter 2 – Day One at the Institute
By xAvatarLovex
Zuko stirred and woke up to a strange and unfamiliar, yet luxurious, bed. He yawned and slowly opened his eyes. Bright light shone on his face, causing him to close and scrub his eyes. He then reopened them to find himself in an extremely large bed. Zuko then remembered. He was at the Institute of Supernatural Powers and today would be his first day. He groaned and turned around to face his clock. It was 7:40am! He had overslept his alarm that went off at least half an hour ago. Shit! He thought. Breakfast was at 8:00am and he was still in bed! He shot up, collected his school uniform and dashed into the bathroom. He hated being late to breakfast and hate the school uniform even more. It consisted of a lemony-yellow over blouse, grey shorts, black, leather shoes, deep red/scarlet striped socks, deep red/scarlet diagonally-striped tie and a deep red jacket with the school emblem printed on the left chest on top of the chest pocket. In winter, the grey shorts would turn to grey pants. All items of clothing, except shoes and tie, had the school's emblem on it. He quickly showered and changed, quickly tamed his hair to no avail and ran down the stairs. BAM! Just before he turned the corner he bumped into a certain tanned girl. He fell back and blushed. Blushed! Since when did he EVER blush? "S-s-sorry…" Zuko stammered. Stammered! Since when did he EVER stammer?
"No, no, it's my fault. I wasn't looking at where I was going," Katara replied, embarrassed.
"I was rushing. I should've gotten up earlier," he argued, trying to blame himself. Blame himself! Since when did he EVER try to blame himself? This girl was melting him. Zuko tried to regain composure but lost hope after a few seconds. "Umm… I better get down to breakfast before I miss it altogether," Zuko muttered before excusing himself and hurrying downstairs. He felt a slight blush on his cheeks on the way down and an odd feeling inside of himself which he had only had once before and that was when he realised his love for his girlfriend, Jin, which he had long dumped after finding her cheating on him. He realised that he had feelings for Katara. But she seemed so close to Aang, he thought. He made a mental note to himself to ask Aang if they were together and if they were he would hold a permanent grudge against Aang. He liked that girl! He quickly walked to the dining room and found himself 5 minutes late but there was still plenty of food. He sat down and greeted everyone before helping himself to two slices of pancakes, a glass of milk and three scoops of scrambled eggs as well as a half of a mango. He then quickly dashed upstairs and packed his things just in time for Sokka to drive him and the others to school. When he arrived he followed the others to class as they all had the same classes.
At break, he stayed with the rest of the group. They seemed popular as people kept coming up to 'the new kids' and asking for their backgrounds ad they would just say, "We're from out of town and only here temporarily because they were doing something here," but they were not often believed, therefore leaving the students of the school to come up with their own reasons – none of which were close to the real reason.
"Heyy, I'm Abigail but people call me Abby," one of the girls said to Zuko.
"Uh…hi, I'm Zuko," he replied in an even, expressionless tone.
The girl ran back to her group, screaming, "AAHHH! The boy talked to me!"
Zuko, who was familiar with how girls would want to flirt with him since he was new boy quite a lot due to his frequent travels, had not expected something like this to happen. Sokka, who had attended this school prior to now, was really popular since he was known as 'the new kids' friend.' Sokka, although was popular when hanging out with the new kids, liked to sometimes just hang out with his friends from the school and whenever he did, he would be impossible to find. Sometimes, Zuko would wonder where he had really gone, since even searching every inch of the school grounds could not seem to find him. However, he always appeared right before the next class or break before going off again. Sometimes, this seemed somewhat suspicious.
Every afternoon, Sokka would be found in his car ready to leave. The Gaang would be driven back to the Institute – although would be followed occasionally, causing Sokka to have to take unnecessary turns and double back a lot – and when they got back, they would have time to shower and change before having to do some testing. Situated on the kitchen bench were a series of snacks for afternoon tea for all those who wanted one – which included all the boys and no girls. Sokka decided that it would be appropriate to eat at least five times more than the others although he was their leader and supervisor and should be the sensible one. At precisely 4pm, Sokka called everyone into the lab. Zuko had expected a large, metal building with lots of machinery but instead of that he saw something else. There were several bowls of water, presumably for Katara, a few boulders, presumably for Toph, all the windows were opened halfway, presumably for Aang, and a lit fire torch close to the window to prevent the room to be filled with lots of smoke.
"Katara, you will practice your waterbending with the water provided, Toph-do the same but with the boulders, Zuko-torch, please try not to burn down the Institute and Aang-whatever air you can find. I will be coming around to check you guys and ask questions as well as possibly asking you to perform certain things for me to see. Ozai will be coming here in the next hour or so, so make sure you're not mucking around," Sokka said, seriously and started towards the bowls of water. Everyone else walked to their respective spots and started doing what they were supposed to. Katara, who was known to have healing abilities as well as her ability to control water was looked at first by Sokka but since they were about the same age, so nothing felt awkward. Katara stared at the water for a second before moving her hands in a way you would see people do Tai Chi Chuan- which is a Chinese form of martial arts that feature slow and elegant movements- and the water followed her hands but never once touching any part of her body or the floor. Sokka stared in awe, as he had never seen anything like this before. After about a minute, Katara directed the water back into its respective bowls and breathed in deeply. "My waterbending is at its peak at night time, especially when there is a full moon. You may test me again then if you wish," she stated.
"Umm…okay. I'll talk to Ozai about it. Now, is it okay if you show me some healing? I just hurt my thumb – paper-cut," Sokka replied.
"Uh sure, I guess. I've never really tried healing that much before so I might not be able to though."
"Doesn't matter, it's an experiment and research, not a test."
"Okay, here goes…" with that, Katara raised just enough water to coat her hands in water to make it look like she was wearing a water-glove. She wrapped one hand around Sokka's thumb and the water started to glow just as she was losing hope. As the water glowed, Sokka smiled. This felt good, he thought. However, he instantly snapped back out of his trance when Katara removed her healing glove and placed the water back in to its bowl. Sokka examined his thumb and found that there was not a single trace of a cut of any sort on it. He smiled, "Nice job. Keep working and you'll be pro in no time!" With that, he walked over to Toph to test her ability, then Aang's and then finally Zuko's. Sokka was quite pleased with the day's testing. Exactly an hour after testing started, Ozai walked in through the door and hung up his coat before going into the testing lab. As he entered, Sokka walked towards him and spoke to him softly before showing him the data he had collected while explaining it in a much louder voice. Zuko started to grow slightly suspicious. After all, what was there to hide? What had Sokka been saying? Everyone here had seen everyone else's tests and anything secretive would have been easily seen, so what was he hiding? He could not tell but gave himself a mental note to investigate. And soon.
At the end of testing, everybody went to dinner except Ozai who left immediately after dinner was going to be served. At dinner, it was most definitely a lot less formal than the first dinner. The table had no tablecloth, the cutlery was plastic and the food was just in small containers that looked disposable. Zuko sat down with everyone else and dug in but found that he was not particularly hungry, well certainly not like Sokka anyway. Sokka was literally gulping down the food without chewing, or attempting to chew, it. He picked up chicken wing and chicken drumstick after each other and tore off the meat without a second glance. He was eating as if it was the last day of the world! Zuko quickly ate a little and excused himself although nobody but Katara paid any attention. He walked back to his room to find his animals all making a lot of noise and realised that his room had a sound-proof barrier since he could not here any of this racket before he entered. He thought about why his pets were making so much noise and realised he hadn't fed them since before they arrived in Australia yesterday. "Oh crap!" he cursed and quickly went to start rummaging through one of the cupboards that contained the food for his pets. After searching for a while, he finally found a few large bags of food for his pets. That was pretty lucky too, because his animals were getting extremely restless. After taking a while to locate all the food bowls, he quickly poured some food for each animal which finally calmed them down. Zuko sighed heavily and flopped onto his bed. He turned his head to check the clock to find that it said 7:10pm. OMG! I took 45 minutes feeding my pets! He thought to himself. He lazily got up and fetched his homework from his school bag and laid on his stomach of his bed pondering on whether to do his math homework, his English homework or his science assignment first. After a few minutes, he decided to do his math homework because that would take the longest. He reached over to his bedside table to grab his iPod so he could put on some tunes but it was not there. He got up and frantically searched in every possible and impossible place it could have been but could not find it. He knew that he had it at school and that he placed it into his pocket. He then took it out and put it on his bedside table just before he went into the shower. Since then, nobody could have possibly been in his room except Sokka who, he just realised, had arrived a little late to the testing. Everybody assumed that he had just been stuffing himself full while everyone else went to the lab, but what was he really doing? Was he in Zuko's room? What else had he stolen?
A/N: Heyy again guys! Thanks for reading and still following although I may not be constantly updating coz I'm busy. Hope you enjoyed the chapter and tell me who you think is the mystery thief! This may not be revealed until further chapters-possibly even up to chapter 10 where all the action starts. Or maybe not that far away ^_^
Please review and tell me what you think and what you want to happen! Do you think Sokka and Katara will find out they are related? Who's the mystery thief?
I don't know, you tell me!