-Tomkin's Cruelty—

Weeks. Months. Maybe years had gone by. Korra no longer had any sense of time beyond knowing when a day ended. She tried to keep a calendar going, but after about three weeks she found she no longer had any strength left in her at the end of the day to write anything or do anything that was not sleeping.

Up at sunrise, completely dead by dusk. Korra recored 24 days. It may have been another week or two after that when Tomkin started caring less and less about the water Korra brought to him. He would pour it all out, even if she was fast enough. She asked why, and he said he didn't need it. Still, she continued, but soon he just kicked the water off her shoulders and attacked her. Of course, Korra was defenseless after going up and down those steps all day, so in seconds she was in pain on the ground.

"If I say I don't need something, then why do you keep getting it for me?" he asked.

"You never told me to stop, master. I did not know," Korra barely made out.

"There is no need to get me something if it will not be used. Take it as training or as simple common sense. Now get up and orient yourself."

Korra would begin to miss the days of carrying water to Tomkin as she moved into her next phase of training which involved physical combat. She found herself getting knocked onto her ass for eight hours a day as Tomkin tried to train her his ways.

Korra began the day practicing her form by doing intervals of different combos that Tomkin taught her. Then four times a day she had to spar with one of Tomkin's former students, Zheng, who easily wrecked Korra and continued to beat her even after she fell, then proceed to have a nice conversation over tea with Tomkin as Korra rotted in the yard, struggling to move.

Her father was right. She never experienced soreness like this. Korra found herself crawling to her room, and on the days when she demonstrated poor performance when fighting Zheng, Tomkin wouldn't even allow her to come inside. Feeling sympathetic, Korra's twin cousins would give her a blanket to sleep in when it got cold outside at night. Korra couldn't even thank them, she just lied there contemplating the terrible training regimen she had decided to undergo. She wanted to quit. She hated Tomkin. He wasn't teaching her anything, he just enjoyed watching her get punched and kicked by this guy Zheng. She had never fought Tomkin, but Zheng seemed to move in a way that was so foreign to Korra.

Zheng's movements were unpredictable, but he always was at least one step ahead of Korra. Korra felt that even the smallest movements, her eyes moving or her breathing, Zheng sensed it. He used this to his advantage. He sensed something Korra could not. She tried to figure out what it was. Zheng was not a bender at all. He had no connection to the elements, so how was he so powerful? Tomkin berated her for being unable to anticipate Zheng, and told her she was pathetic for giving up since Zheng was going so easy on her. Korra hated him, and she hated herself because she could not seem to get what Tomkin was trying to teach her. These practice exercises did nothing for her, and she was just scared everyday whenever her session with Zheng approached because she knew the outcome.

Weeks and months went by. Korra couldn't even tell if it had been a year until the one day came where her frustration seemed to burst in a release of fury. It began as a regular day. Tomkin placed himself on the porch to watch the fight between Korra and Zheng commence while he commented on how Korra never improved. Korra came to the usual point in the fight where Zheng was crushing her head underneath his boot and laughing at her.

"These fights have become a joke to me now, you know? I kind of just come out here and weave around your silly attacks, you just make it too easy for me. What have you been doing since you've been here? Are you the untrainable worthless student that Tomkin and I have been looking for?"

He laughed and spit on Korra and began to walk away. Korra only saw white rage after this demeaning act. She rolled forward and was able to barely wrap her legs around Zheng and tripped him. Korra's excitement blinded her from the sight of Zheng landing on his hands from this fall and springing himself backward. Korra received a hard kick to the face and was nearly knocked out cold. She looked up and saw stars and waves that she shouldn't be seeing. Her face pulsated in pain. Zheng laughed.

"Almost, Avatar. That was good, but you got a long way to go."

It began to rain, and Korra slept in the mud that night.

The next day Tomkin taught her a new exercise, this one involved a sword.

"Why I am learning something new? I did not even get anywhere with the last things you taught me."

Tomkin slapped her in the face. "You don't question my ways, stupid girl. Was it ever my purpose for you to master anything yet? This fighting should mean nothing to you. All fighting means nothing until you learn what the art depends on. You know bending depends on the elements, and so bending gives immediate gratification. But what do the elements depend on? That is something bending won't show you, but this will. You must have these forms down to memory. You must know it backwards and forwards. Only then will the next phase make sense, and you will learn the knowledge that this fighting style depends on."

Tomkin began her training with the blades. Her sparring sessions became less dreadful since the time she almost tripped Zheng. This gave her confidence. Maybe she wouldn't know what the fighting depended on, but perhaps this was the way to learn. She could always see Zheng. She could always hear him too, but that wasn't enough. The moves she learned, it did not matter what her senses told her. If Zheng was blindfolded and deafened, she knew he would still take her down as easily as he had before.

So Korra began doing her exercises without relying on her eyes or ears. She began anticipating Zheng's movements without watching or listening to him. She failed more horribly than when she used these senses, however she knew this was the only way to get further. In her matches, she plugged her ears shut. She blindfolded her eyes.

She continued using these handicaps in her battles. Soon, Korra began to hear things even with the plugs in. And after a while, even with the blindfold on, Korra started seeing things as well. It was at this point that Korra thought Zheng had been having too much fun with her for too long.