the thief and the airbender

street smart

[post-book3]

{for Lilyflower}

Suddenly, Jinora gripped Kai's arm and he felt his face go hot because she was touching him and her grasp was tight but her hand was so soft and she was touching him with her newly tattooed arm and-

"Kai, did - did I just see someone airbend?"

He took a moment to collect himself, (it helped that she had let go of his arm now) and squinted over to where she was pointing with her other arm. A gust of wind shot into the air; airbending. But none of the airbenders that had come with them were over there, so someone else must have been airbending. But who? Maybe they could convince whoever it was to join the Air Nation. Better late than never.

"Looks like we should check it out," he decided. They opened their gliders and took off into the sky. It didn't take long to locate the source of the airbending; there was a small circle of people, everywhere from preteens to young adults, blasting air at each other. "Whoa, you guys are airbenders too?"

One of the tallest boys, with messy black hair, stepped up to them - obviously, he was the leader of some sort. "Sure am." He took in Jinora's tattoos, and Kai didn't like the frown on the boy's face at all. "You guys are Nomads, right? The 'traditional' type of airbenders?"

Kai raised an eyebrow. "What exactly do you mean by traditional? What other type is there?"

The boy shrugged his shoulders. "Our type - street airbending?"

Jinora's eyes widened. "Street airbending?" she repeated. The boy nodded, and gestured to one of the airbenders behind him. The airbender did a spiral move that wasn't so much an airbending move - it looked a like more like a variation of an earthbending form. But it was still really cool, Kai had to admit.

"We didn't want to leave our lives behind," the boy explained, giving Kai a quizzical look. "But we got airbending and had to deal with it somehow."

And he was impressed that Jinora lasted roughly 15 seconds before blurting out, "Can you teach me the forms? Uh, us the forms?"

The boy looked at her, confused, for a second. A traditional airbender wanted to learn street style? "Sure." He smiled. "Master," he added.

Headcanon dump below, you are warned:

Okay so I've thought a lot about this. Like, airbenders that didn't join the air nomads creating unique bending styles, based on waterbending and firebending and especially earthbending (because I'm assuming most of the new benders live in the Earth Kingdom) forms because air nomad knowledge is pretty much all gone. And them having their own subculture and when air gets added to pro-bending it's street style VS street style most of the time but sometimes it VS someone of the new air nation and the audience loves it because it's so different and so similar at the same time. And the subculture grows as the street-style airbenders have kids and they learn this airbending style and just... Kai and Jinora running into them when they travel the world and learning new forms even though they're Masters and although there's tension first they all become really good friends and in turn teach the street-style more traditional things and just... AIRBENDING.

RollingUpHigh, your request is next. I'm so excited to do it! :)

Today's also a sort of important day for me: my 3rd year anniversary of being on fanfiction *cheering* Today is the day that led to the downward spiral into fandoms and crying over fictional characters all the time - NO REGRETS.

And book 4/Kainora is coming closer and closer so there's that the celebrate too.

(if you're not reading "To the sky and back" by amillionsmiles lemme just tell you go read it & die from the cute. I speak from experience.)

Sorry for the long author's note, love you guys! :D