Fire and Blood

The Bandits

Aera turned to Han and placed her hand on his arm.
"Enough about me. How about you and Taena? Still fighting?"
He nodded as he combed his fingers through his shoulder length black. By the dictation of logic, as a consequence of all the times he did that to his hair, it should never be tangled.
"Yeah, but she doesn't seem to want to make it work. Think I might be cut loose." Aera scoffed.
"You? Cut loose? No. She should be the one getting cut... that spiteful little monster." Han have her a warning glare.
"She's still my girlfriend."
"And you're still my best friend, Han. That creature needs to be sent away. She's lucky I haven't frozen the blood within her."
Han looked at her funny. "You can do that?"
"Sure I can. If I learn how to bend blood- which I never will."
"Why not?" His voice was low and serious, therefore warranting a serious answer.
"Because it's wrong!" she whispered. Was he kidding? No one was allowed to bend the blood within another living organism... No one. That form of bending was the worst in terms of morals. It shook the ground of ethics. That horrid and disgusting act.
"But you should still practice though. It's important."
Aera stood and shook her head. "Goodbye, Han," she said, taking her brown hair from its ponytail. "Happy Avatar Day. And good luck with Taena. I hope you two work out." She moved down the knoll to the bank and picked up the bucket and spear.
"Aera..." he pleaded. "Come on..."
"No!" she shouted from the bank. "I was making a joke and you turned it to become serious! I told you I hate it when people see me as a bloodbender!" The racism was unbearable in the Fire Nation. She knew first hand that ever waterbender was subject to the discrimination of being a vile bloodbender. It was abhorrently demeaning.
"At least let me walk you home," he said, standing up as she trudged past him.
"Don't bother. Your protection is useless to me." And she kept forward, moving her feet to the beat of the rhythmic drums.
Clang. Bang. Ching. Gong. Boom. Sounds of Avatar Day, and now, irritating. She just couldn't stand the noise. But as she came over the knoll and to the edge of the town, it became significantly louder.
Why did the even celebrate the Avatar? It wasn't fair that only one person in a generation got all the power the world had to offer. So why celebrate that? And all that talk of Raava or whatever it was. The notion sounded ludicrous and confusing.
Aera came to the empty streets of the town and soon trekked into the heart of it, feeling the clouds begin to weep on her shoulders.
The town's square had a bronze statue of Firelord Zuko erected within it. His fists pointed to the heavens and bronze vines curling at his bare legs. She always wondered whether the vines wrapped at his feet were there steadying him... Or there to drag him down. Either way was how Aera interpreted it as.
With the heavy bucket weighing her arm down and the spear planted firmly within its contents, Aera stared. In the past fifty years, they didn't put up Izumi's statue. Nor Iroh II's, nor the usurper Zolung's. But that sat well with Aera. Having the usurper's statue in her town could have sent her wild, let alone Hamara.
Hamara, though old, was still her carer. The aged firebender was dying now, but she still kept her loyalties to the rightful heir to the throne... Aera.
She wasn't sure if it was truly a fact, but Hamara was relentless in reinforcing that Aera, who was now orphaned, was daughter to Princess Aenagi and a common Southern Water Tribe man.
Aera still doubted her legitimacy as royalty, but the facts over the years, when logically compiled, made a stunning sense. Aera was royalty.
She had to remind herself of that every day. Even now she did as the light rain began slightly stronger.
When that fat man cut her in line to the fruit stand, she whispered "I am royalty." And when that unbearable Taena insulted her- what she thought to be: incredibly well-crafted eyebrows, she whispered "I am royalty."
Reminding herself as that gave her the unfounded ability to transcend all of life's ups and downs as the town's residential waterbender.
But being the daughter to Princess Aenagi- who was by the history books, sister to Fire Lord Iroh- was not enough. She was fuelled by the idea of having a reason to hate the current Fire Lord, but she wanted to know that her father too was royalty. Like some sort of prince of the Water Tribe, but when Aera asked of such, Hamara merely shook her weak head.
"Aera!" Han's voice in the distance shook her from her trance. She didn't want to talk to him, but she so wanted to. She wanted to ignore him, but she wanted to slap him. She wanted to bitch about him, but she wanted to apologise for her unreasonability. It was so hard when it came to Han. But it wasn't hard to see him emerge from the alley of houses bearing impossibly red firelillies.
Aera laughed and the rain hardened its precipitate.
"I'm sorry!" he shouted, running toward her.
Aera put down the bucket and withdrew her hand from the handle only to find her appendage numb an unresponsive.
When he got to the statue, he leapt onto its stand from where the bronze vines began, and gracefully twirled off it to the ground before her, kneeling.
"Han..."
"I know what you're going to say... And yes, I forgive you."
Aera laughed again. "Thanks." She got down to one knee as well and looked him in the eye. "I too accept your unspoken apology." And from that, they made up.
It was because of their similarly unbearable pride that disallowed them to vocalise apologies, but it was that same pride that compelled them to assume the other actually felt remorse.
"Where'd you get these from?" she asked still on one knee and getting wet from the rain pouring from above.
"Old Man Jushu's garden," he chuckled.
Aera laughed yet again, but this time, he laughed with her.
Amidst the thudding of hard rain and happy chuckling, a catastrophic blast broke in the distance.
Aera ascended, dropping the lilies to the ground and searching high above the rooves of the town. The blast happened again, sending smoke into the dark grey sky, but this time faint screaming and shouts filled the rainy evening.
The blast happened again, yet this time, the sound was closer, louder and scarier.
Aera was scared.
When the blast happened yet a third time, the wind of the impact of the bomb swept the town's square.
Bandits.
Aera ran in the direction of the explosions, ignoring Han's shouts of protest. He didn't have to come if he was scared. It was her who would therefore fend off the bandits. His sloppy firebending was unneeded anyway.
She sprinted through the rain, only wearing her thing white linens wrapped and knotted beautifully around her. Hamara did it.
She stepped in puddles and witnessed the smoke spiral ever higher through the air. All of it... It was all things she knew she would remember forever.
Last time the bandits came, they took Meeka, the other waterbender. And that child was only twelve. This time, the bandits would take nothing but the heads in their hands back to where they came from.
She followed the faint shouts, endeavouring to weave her way through the town to let the shouts become stronger and louder. Aera rounded corners, weaved town animals, jumped a crate or two and finally came to here their distinct angry barks.
"Where is your other waterbender!?" She heard. She did not see him, but her fury did. He was only around the corner.
She raised her hands and gathering the water that fell, clumping all the raindrops in a pool above her head. And she leapt into the new street and sent the pool as a powerful stream in the way of a red clothed man, who was gripping, surprisingly, Old Man Jushu's shirt.
The current hit him hard, sending him to the ground, but Jushu copped a portion of the water. But Aera did not care. The bandit's apprehension was more important than Jushu's safety.
There were three of them still standing, and they, the firebenders, rained their own weather on her. A rain of fire.
Aera bent all the rain around her to become a strong spherical film around her, shielding her from flame.
Keeping a frontal protection with her hand, with the other, she bent a puddle of dirty water into the eyes of one of the firebenders. Stunned, he fell back, and his uncompromising friends watched him stumble. Bad mistake. Aera took the same film of water and inverted it around the the third victim's head, freezing it over. All the while kicking up a current of water and bending its path into the fourth's face with her foot.
With the single bandit's head covered in ice, Aera bent the block of ice encasing his head and smashed it firmly to the ground, incapacitating him indefinitely.
The first bandit was up, kicking and punching balls of fire at her. Aera picked up a wave from the ground whilst dodging his attacks and sent the water toppling him over. She surfed across the water to the dirty faced man and bent a sharp icicle from the ground and planted it deep and firmly into his armoured belly, feeling the ice crunch through his flesh and make contact with the brick ground.
She couldn't tell which one of them had stood up in the corner of her eye, but with the same technique as the previous, she bent a wave from behind her and sent him crashing into a brick wall.
It was over in hard, silent, sharp, fast moments. Aera didn't have time to analyse her feelings. She knew previously that she had been scared, but after that, she felt nothing.
It was only fury that she had a taste of.