Raava Academy

Open Wounds

I'm about five minutes late for the evening lesson - weapons and martial arts - hosted in the sports hall with Bumi Rosenberg, Tenzin's older, and far hairier brother. He's gesticulating his arms, explaining some crazy story to Yena and Sen who're both looking at him as though he's nuts. Usually it'd amuse me, but today, everything is making me feel exhausted. I nod, greeting Bolin, Mako and Dayla - another friend of mine from cube five, though we only really hang out in this lesson, being pretty well-matched sparring partners and all.

I look around the hall, at my classmates. They're clearly still bummed out about Jonas. I know I am. Now that I think about it, he was actually quite good at sword fighting, and kicked my ass a couple of times in this lesson, though we're not doing weapons training today. Bumi has this system where we'll train with weapons one week, and hand-to-hand the week after. In either case, there's no bending allowed, at least not during the actual sparring matches. Whilst we're not allowed to use bending in sparring, we are sometimes shown impressive ways to combine weaponry with bending... Bumi had everyone wide-eyed when he demonstrated exactly how Tenzin does his air-blade manoeuvre. And then Mako once singed his eyebrows off when he tried to fuse flames with a blade. Hah, that was too funny; it took him weeks to grow them back.

"Sorry I'm late, sir," I drawl the words as I walk past, sounding as enthusiastic as a lesbian at a male stripper club.

"No problem, kid. You up for some awesome sparring today?" He asks, punching his fists into the air and winking. Sometimes I wonder if he's actually on some kind of drugs, since he's constantly buzzing with energy, yet he's over fifty years old.

"Yeah. Sure," I lie. I would actually rather spend some alone time in the gym, especially since she's in the room. I glance out of the corner of my vision, noticing that the vampire in question is mingling with Yena and Sen. She's also chatting to Lianne - a short, brown-wavy-haired girl I don't speak with much - and... they both just burst out laughing. I shrug to myself, turn away and bump shoulders with my spar-mate, Dayla.

"Hey, ready to kick my ass again?" I smile, as we walk away from the others, the whole class splitting up and getting ready for what comes next.

"Always a pleasure putting the avatar in her place," Dayla chuckles. She's dark-skinned, athletic, and comes from the northern water tribe, which is probably why we're a good match. Her hair is a shade darker than mine, a hell of a lot longer, and two tails frame her face, tied at the end in small, white bands. It's probably the same length I used to have mine, before I sliced it all off with a scalpel someone left by my hospital bed, the day after Mey was murdered.

I remember it well. The doctors freaked that I'd gotten hold of a knife, they thought I'd slit my wrists or something. Sure, maybe I'd thought about that, but dead people can't get revenge, and that's what kept me going, kept me alive. I told them I wanted to keep the hair I'd cut, and I tied it together with the same blue ribbon Mey would always use on my braid. Once I could walk again, I stormed straight to the graveyard and left my sheared hair secured by her tombstone - where it remains to this day.

"Hope you like it, Mey," I whisper to myself, fiddling with the ends of my now shoulder-length hair. She always wanted me to cut it, after all.

"Hey, earth to Korra, come in Korra! What are you muttering to yourself?" Dayla waves her hand in front of my face, her bright, blue eyes dazzling in amusement.

"Sorry, just lost in a memory," I smile, feeling a lump in my throat, "are we starting yet?"

No sooner have I asked the question, than Bumi blows his whistles, "Begin! And no face shots!" he commands. He tends to just launch us straight into things, says that warm-ups are for 'pussies', and besides, it isn't realistic to expect you'd enter a fight already limbered up. Gotta admit, he kind of has a point there.