Ignite (a bender tale)

安全 safety

The music aboard the Avalon is lousy, Kai thought as he focused his wandering eyes out the glass window. All the top borders had gone to a meeting while their kids were left to their own devices. 

It still boggles Kai's mind why he chose to go to the music hall of all halls perhaps it was some form of self punishment. This morning, he had been in the study with his father while he worked. According to his father his constant questions were less than satisfactory so there had been a little tiff between them the whole day. But not to matter now anyway he thought as his father was caught up all day in board meetings. 

Kai listened to the shaken violin notes and it seemed to him that they were taunting him with every string plucked by musicians' bows. His sister was in front of him with Chen from the Hoi family chatting rather flirtatiously, it made Kai sick just watching.

His sister Indra was 13 going on 14 and she liked to consider herself a fully grown adult. Everyday she would stride into his room to tell him rather pointedly what his assignment was, almost like she was a sergeant. He knew his assignments anyway, she just liked to assume that her lazy brother was incompetent of simple tasks. Here Indra was now, her fingers twirling at her curls, fluttering her eyelashes at the much older Chen Hoi. He was about Kai's age and she had been obsessed with him as soon as Kai's dad appointed him second in line after Kai for his commander position. 

It wasn't only Indra that thought Kai to be a fool, his father did also, which explains why he appointed Chen as insurance that his legacy will be continued. Everyone on the Avalon knew this though, so Kai was treated rather rudely in retrospect to his father's public disgust of him. He pretended not to care about what everyone thought but If he was honest with himself it cut deeper than any wound. He had been invited to a few meetings in the past before he was banned for speaking out against them, you see his father and his comrades were not the type to be told what to do especially by a dumb boy. But what he had heard was that they, along with all other tribes, were on the hunt to find and kill the avatar. 

There hasn't been any sighting of this avatar before but boy had there been rumours. One was that the avatar could travel through and possess your body like a ghost, another was that he fed on souls of the dead to use his powers. Bending had been banned for almost 20 years already and there hadn't been any sight of him, perhaps he was scared Kai theorised. I mean you'd have to be if the whole beings purpose was to use the magic that was banned for over a decade. People of all tribes tend to blame things like tsunamis and earthquakes on the avatar, some saying he is coming back to take back all bending. 

That theory scared Kai the most, His father had told him that bending was the devils work, he told him that humans shouldn't possess supernatural powers otherwise they would not be let into heaven. It's rather strange to think that for all these years past the revolution bending was a natural thing that people used to survive. Nowadays they get around by machine and pure human might, as Kai's father would say. 

However the convicts in the ships belly would say otherwise, he had seen a few before lighting fires to the fire places, breaking rocks for materials and such, but he had never interacted with one because they were dangerous. Each and everyone of them were criminals, using their bending for evil, so the government decided that if they wanted to use bending then they could, but only for good. Their devil born skill was put to great use on the Avalon being the very thing that kept it running, even Kai had to admit that much. Kai's family the glades were decedents from the northern water-tribe, sometimes Kai would watch the slave benders from the water tribes work with the water, it almost always gave him the hebegebees

The flirting attempts of his baby sister were becoming too much to bear for a Monday afternoon. So Kai removed himself from the commotion of whiny violins and back to his quarters on top deck. 

His tumultuous fears of benders of all sorts came true as he walked into the living room in which a little fire bending girl had accustomed herself too as if she belonged. She had such pale skin as if she hadn't seen the sun in years, maybe she hadn't. She was wearing the grey slave uniforms that they are issued to wear during their sentence on the Avalon. Kai hadn't been to visit the basement of the ship in years so he wasn't so sure whether sunlight could reach it or not but alas he had no sympathy for the little criminal and her deep brown eyes. Her hair was cut in a short messy bob, jet black other than the two blonde strips at the front.

She was fiddling with the picture frame on the mantelpiece, the picture was of Kai's family, it was taken pretty recently when they were banked at Gaoling. That day Kai's father was lecturing him on the importance of power. Kai never cared much for his father's lectures let alone when he was supposed to be on break. One does stop caring so much when your teacher is constantly telling you that you will fail so that is exactly how Kai remembered that day: A bore.

"What are you doing here?" Kai said as strongly as he could manage.

The girl turned to him with wide eyes and smirked a little as if she expected him to be there. Kai was usually a composed kid but that smirk, well it just set him over the edge.