Chapter 3

Hana

I arrived at school just in time. My first class was History. The first part of the lesson we discuss events that happened in the Northern Water Tribe, and then we talk about how it affects the rest of the world. We hardly ever learn about the Southern Tribe so when we do its always exciting. Just a few days ago, we started learning about the Great Civil War. This was when there was only one tribe at the North Pole, then a rebellion started up and eventually the rebels left and created the Southern Water Tribe.

Mr. Zhen our teacher was going on and on about certain generals leading attacks against the rebels in a very flat, boring voice and I drifted off into a daydream.

In the dream, I saw a Water Tribe temple with the spire glowing bright blue. All of the sudden, I was at the Northern Tribe's capital and it was snowing; only the snow was black. Then there was a red flash and the sky turned red and so did the moon. Then a meteor fell from a black sky and landed in a forest with a large explosion. Suddenly I see my home, Hydronia in ruins. Then a figure in chains in a metal cell, his head bowed so I couldn't see who it was. Then there is a very large castle next to a lake, it was on fire and was surrounded by black smoke going everywhere, and there are cries of a battle and flashes of light everywhere. Then a very large statue of what looks like a Fire Nation man. The statue is in the middle of a large body of water and there are two dragon statues on each shore. Then the statue of the man is surrounded by black streams of smoke and there are flashes of multi-colored light and the statue crumbles.

I woke up covered in sweat, realizing I fell asleep, but luckily no one noticed. I was recovering from my crazy dream when I heard a voice in my head, "Be wary, young one. Soon everything will change." I jumped as that has never happened before and a few kids look at me weird.

As Mr. Zhen, a fairly large middle-aged man, was saying something about a rebellion in the Lok Wa Isles, Koluk came in late and out of breath.

"Ah," Mr. Zhen began, "So glad you could join us Koluk. Could you explain why you were late?"

"Warrior training," Koluk said still out of breath and he handed Mr. Zhen a note.

"Warrior training ends 15 minutes before school, so how are you 15 minutes late?" he asked.

"Some idiot gave a seven year old a spear. It wasn't sharp but he could still do some damage with it," Koluk explained.

"Ah, I see," Mr. Zhen said, "and it also says here you were injured in the groin, oh my. With the blunt spear?"

Koluk nodded with a painful expression. The class laughed.

"So how did they get the spear from the child?" Mr. Zhen asked.

"Hyriu's younger brother actually," Koluk answered and pointed at me, "he climbed a building and jumped on the kid from above. Then he snatched the spear and swung it toward the kid's legs knocking them out from under him, causing him to fall. It left him dazed. It was pretty impressive considering Hiko is only nine years old."

"Yes it does sound very-" Mr. Zhen started but I couldn't hear him because someone around me said something.

"Pft, you hear that Hyr-o? Your own brother is even better than you," a kid named Taruk said. He pronounces my name wrong on purpose just to annoy me. He only said it loud enough for the kids around us to hear. Some of them snickered. "You know what he would do if he faced a seven year old with a blunt spear?" he asked looking at the kids around us, an evil look entering his eyes, "he'd go running to his mama." He let the insult sink in. All the kids around us paled, it was well known that my parents died when I was five and that Master Wei was my guardian.

I clenched my fists. I wanted to do some serious damage to him with some water bending but I held back. If he knew how powerful I really was, he wouldn't dare say anything like that to me, but to keep a low profile I had to pretend to be horrible at water bending, which sucked.

I just ignored him and kept looking straight ahead. Koluk took a seat next to me obviously seeing me upset.

"Hey, what's wrong?" he whispered.

"Nothing. Tell you later," I answered trying not to move my lips when I talked so Mr. Zhen wouldn't notice us talking. It didn't work.

"Hyriu. Koluk. Is there some thing you'd like to share with the class?" he asked us.

"Uh…." I started to say.

"Um just telling Hyriu here that I haven't fully recovered from my 'injury'," Koluk answered quickly.

The whole class laughed even Mr. Zhen managed a smile. "Well you can talk about your pain all you like in your own time. Now let's get back to the rebellion in the Lok Wa Isles. Hyriu, you couldn't tell us which general stopped that rebellion. Could you?" Mr. Zhen said as he directed his attention at me.

"General Koluk, sir," I answered with out hesitation.

"Very good Hyriu," he said, "You always seem to know everything to do with the Lok Wa Isles. Or perhaps it's because the answer is sitting right next to you."

He went on with the lesson and I glanced at Koluk and he mouthed to me "General Koluk? Nice", I laughed. I heard Taruk say something, but I just ignored him. The rest of the class went on like that, Taruk saying insults toward me and me just ignoring him. Luckily, I had no more crazy dreams but the one earlier troubled me a lot. Finally, a loud bell rang out.

"Class we will have a quiz tomorrow on the Battle of Lok Wa, you will need to know the name of the Earth Kingdom general who-" Mr. Zhen's words were lost in the chatter of kids.

Koluk caught up to me, "Hey, what did Taruk say to you?"

"Just something about my mom." I answered bitterly.

"What?!" he shouted so loud nearby people looked at us, "I can't believe he said that. No, I can believe it actually."

"Yeah, and there's something else. I had this weird dream thing." I said.

"Sorry but we'll have to talk about it later, I got to go. See you later." He said.

"Bye," I said. My next class was Astronomy where we learned all about the spirits we see at night in the sky.

I walked into the Astronomy classroom. All the seats were taken except one by my second least favorite person, a girl named Hana; Taruk was number one on that list. She was fourteen and had brown hair that came a little past her shoulders. She had dark blue eyes and was not as tan as me but still tan. She got a huge smile on her face when she saw I had to sit next to her.

I had several reasons of why I didn't like her. First, was that she was a know-it-all. Second, she is a snotty brat. Third, she was ALWAYS right, even when she was wrong. The main one though is that she has the biggest crush on me. That sounds bad but she is obsessed with me. She follows me everywhere and constantly talks to me, even when I make it clear I don't want to talk. And the worst part about it is she thinks I like her back, but I don't I'm just being nice to her.

She used to treat me like an outcast like just about everyone else. Then three months ago, she went to the Training Arena to wait for her younger brother to come out so they could go home, but he was taking a long time so she went inside and sat in the stands. Koluk and I were sparing with each other and since we thought we were alone I went all out on him. I didn't bend of course, but I still used all of my fighting moves that were way beyond the normal level for my age. She saw Koluk and me fighting, and she saw how good I was. At school, Koluk is the best warrior in all ages, everyone knows that, or they think they do anyway. I fight well at school but nothing great. And not only did she see me put up a fight, but she also saw me beat Koluk, which no one has ever done at school, no one even comes close, not even our instructor. So of course she freaked out and has liked me ever since.

I sat down next to her and she scouted closer to me.

"Hi, Hyriu. How was your morning?" she asked.

"Hi, good, and yours?" I said back without looking at her.

"It wasn't great, but that's fine now that you're sitting next to me," she said.

'Ugh this is going to be a long day,' I thought. The rest of the class went on with her making little comments on how good I look, which gets really annoying after awhile. Except today she seemed less annoying than normal, and I found myself laughing and talking to her more, which was very weird.

At the end of the class she said bye to me, smiled, and waved which is normal but this time I did it back and I saw a glow light up in her eyes.

The rest of the morning was uneventful up until Myths and Legends, which was my favorite class.

I sat down next to Fai and Lina, two of my good friends. Fai was very tall with very broad shoulders and was incredibly clumsy. He had black hair that was in a typical water tribe style wolf tail. Lina was not very tall and was very thin, like a twig. She had dark brown hair that came below her shoulders and was in a braid down her left shoulder.

"Hello Hyriu, how are you today?" Lina asked.

I cracked a smile and glanced at Fai who was also smiling. We had an on-going joke about how Lina always talks so formally.

"I'm good, you?" I said still smiling.

"I am gre-," she noticed us smiling, "Oh come on, that was not too formal, was it?"

"'Hello Hyriu, how are you today,'" Fai said in a horrible impression of Lina.

"Oh be quiet," she said and playfully pushed him.

We all laughed. Mr. Hui walked in and the class quieted down.

"Okay class," Mr. Hui began, "today we will begin with a new legend. It is one many of you have heard of before, I'm sure. However, I doubt that very few of you could go into detail about it.

That got the class's attention. We would be learning about a legend we've heard of, but hardly know anything about.

"You are of course going to finally learn about the Legend of Beifen." Mr. Hui finished dramatically.

Gasps were heard throughout the class. This was the legend about me, where Roku came here with the jar full of spirits and the great darkness coming and all that. Lina glanced at me. She knew that I'm the person from the legend, but Fai didn't. Lina only knows because I give her personal warrior training lessons. She was saying one day that she wanted to be a warrior really bad, I even saw her begging Instructor Chen to let her train, but he said it was against our customs. I disagree with that custom and thought it was unfair. So I offered to train her and when she asked what I would do if I was caught I said "What are they going to do to me?" then I told her everything.

Mr. Hui started a long lecture on spirits and the Spirit World, which was new to everyone else but I already new a whole lot about the Spirit World so I tuned out. I made sure not to fall asleep though, I didn't want any more crazy dreams.

The bell rang just as Mr. Hui was getting to spirits in the physical world. It was time for lunch and Fai went on ahead of us yelling how he missed breakfast. Lina and I were in a deep conversation about the Spirit World when we sat down next to Koluk and Fai. Fai was eating like a starved platypus-bear, so I turned to Koluk who was studying a pile of scrolls.

"Hey what's up?" I said.

"Huh? Oh hey," he said barely looking up from his scrolls.

"Um, what are you doing?" I asked.

"I forgot about the math test today," he answered.

I cursed I had forgotten about it too.

"Ha ha, at least I won't be the only one that fails," he said.

"That's what you think, I'm a fast reader. What about you Lina, did you forget?" I said as I got out my math scrolls and read at a ferocious speed.

"No, of course I did not forget. I studied last night for four hours," she said laughing at us both. Fai started laughing too but that resulted in food flying everywhere from his mouth which ended Lina's laughter very quickly.

I glanced over at my food to eat when I saw Hana approaching.

"Oh Spirits," I cursed.

"What?" Koluk asked following my gaze, "Oh it's just your girlfriend."

"Shut up," I said back.

She sat down next to me, "Hey Hyriu, Koluk, Lina and…Fai," she said Fai's name disgustedly because chewed up food surrounded him and covered his face. He also seemed to be trying to eat his chopsticks but when he noticed she was sitting with us he stopped.

"Hello Hana," Lina said.

"Hey," Koluk said.

Fai looked like he was going to say something but seemed to think better of it and remained quiet.

"Hey Hana," I said.

"So Hyriu, I was think we should hang out some time," She said.

"Oh…uh, really?" I said caught off guard. Poor Fai was laughing so hard that he had to go run off in search of a trashcan, Lina was trying to hide her laughter but wasn't doing a good job, and even Koluk started choking on his food. They all new about her being obsessed with me, but Fai didn't know the reason.

"Yeah, how about today after school?" she asked.

"Oh, today," I said, "I'm actually busy today after school."

"Oh," she said clearly let down.

"Maybe some other time," I said trying to cheer her up even though I'm not supposed to like her.

"How about tomorrow after school?" She asked.

"Um sure, I guess," I said.

"Great!" She said and walked off with a spring in her step.

"Hyriu's gotta date. Hyriu's gotta date," Koluk began singing.

"Hey Hyriu why are you here today? I thought your water bending test today?" Lina asked and Koluk stopped singing.

"Yeah it is but Wei told me to come to school and to meet him at the Plaza Square after water bending practice," I answered.

The bell rang and we gathered up our scrolls, trying to read them all at once while Lina laughed at us.