[Open] The Lonely Sand Bender

[Zemin Dao]

No matter how one looked at it, Zemin wasn't happy. Any other citizen of Republic City would have been at least content sitting in the park, their feet soaking in the clear water. For Zemin, this didn't seem right. Nothing about this city had ever seemed right. It was humid here, but it was also hot like home. Home. The thought of the word crossing his mind would throw him back to his years in the desert. He thought about how him and his father would propel their sand-sailer across the shifting terrain. He remembered the trades, the hunts, the adventures... Now, he was just miserable. Four days without work had left him starving. The humid weather left him sticky, and this stupid water left his feet pruned.

He got up angrily and kicked the water, sending ripples and noise cascading across the pond. He snorted and stalked off. He figured it would help if he had someone to talk to, but that was unlikely. Everyone in this stupid city either seemed bigoted, stuck up, or both. He sat down on the nearest bench and bended some sand out of the bag he wore at all times. He blasted the water off of his feet then carefully collected the sand and placed it back in his pouch. He wrapped his feet in sand bender rags and continued his walk.

[Kiyei Zhayuk]

The general concensus in the city seemed to be that today was too fine a day to be stuck inside. So, instead of doing her studying in the quiet halls of the Republic City Library, Kiyei had checked out her reading materials and instead traipsed down to the city park to do her work. Normally Kiyei was not a creature of the daytime; her fair skin burned under the sun’s harsh rays, but Kiyei sought shade beside some hawthorn bushes under a laburnum tree by the river’s flowery banks. Besides, now would be a good time to get some waterbending practice in, and when one’s income depended upon one’s healing ability, such practice was crucial. So, Kiyei drew a small stream of water from the surface of the river and fiddled with the liquid as she read.

However, after about half an hour of reading her medical textbooks, Kiyei’s mind was beginning to drift, and she gazed out across the park and the people strolling lazily by. After making the water do a few loop-the-loops around her palm, she shot the water back out into the river and eyed the riverweed clinging to the banking.

Her grandfather on her mother’s side had been from the Foggy Swamp, and plantbending was a small but important part of her heritage. Her mother had taught her the sub-skill when she’d left the North Pole and since learning it she had found little reason to use it beyond growing the herbs she made medicines from. So, outstretching one hand towards the surface of the river, Kiyei formed the riverweed into a small column of greenery and made it do a little dance across the grassy bank.

Her hand fell, and the riverweed collapsed into a heap nearby.

Kiyei shut her textbook and sat up on her heels, now focusing on the pile of green mush. After cracking her knuckles, she tried again, this time forming the plant matter into a rough human shape and making it cartwheel out into the park path, laughing at the shocked expressions of pedestrians as they saw it spin past.

[Zemin Dao]

Zemin was beginning to calm down some when he noticed the water bender. She was thin and pale, which made Zemin think that she was out of place here in the park. To him, the park seemed like a place for homeless veterans and vagabonds who had no where else to go. He noticed that she was reading, something that he never learned to do. In the desert, you don't learn to read, you learn to survive. In reality, there was no reason for Zemin to approach this woman at all, but something about her intrigued him. Water bending had an eerie similarity to sand bending. Maybe he cold learn something from her. He decided to approach.

As he got closer he noticed her doing a form of bending that he had never seen before. At first, she was only bending the river weeds into a tight wad that danced, but now she even had them doing... cartwheels? He went up to the bench the girl was sitting on and silently began to bend sand out of his bag and onto the ground. He made a little house. His fingers moved over the air like he was playing the piano as he kept the sand house erect. He looked at her invitingly, as if he wanted to play a game.

[Kiyei Zhayuk]

With one hand she quickly moved the textbook on her lap aside and set it atop the stack on the bench beside her, whilst controlling the riverweed doll like a puppet with her finger movements. She made it run back and forth along the path through pedestrians’ legs and back towards her across the grass again. It was then that she saw the trail of sand slithering through the grass and collecting in a pile nearby. Then, as she watched – losing concentration a little so that her plant-puppet began to slump – it reformed itself into a little house. She followed the trail of sand with her eyes back to the young man who was bending it out of his bag, and she smiled to herself.

So he was a sandbender huh? It was safe to say that you didn’t see many of those about Republic City. Sandbending, due to the loose nature of the grains, was more like waterbending than earthbending, and her own plantbending, due to the more fixed nature of the plant matter than water, was a more rigid style rather like earthbending. Their techniques, then, met in the middle between earthbending firmness and waterbending fluidity. His fingers looked like he was playing an instrument; hers looked like she was pulling strings on the riverweed man.

It would be interesting to get tips from someone with such a similar technique; waterbending scrolls were hard to come across and plantbending scrolls simply didn’t exist. It wasn’t a widely known bending practice. However, Kiyei had always used neutral jing in her fighting style, just like earthbenders did, but her waterbending style wasn’t so good when she was trying to plantbend things with less water content that leafy weeds.

Manipulating the weed puppet into a hearty jig, she made it hop into the house and tried to get it to close the little sand-door behind it.

[Zemin Dao]

Zemin was pleased that he had met someone who was willing to bend with him. He often felt lonely being a sand bender in the big city, and finding someone else who could manipulate the elements with some level of creativity was always a treat. He smiled a little bit, revealing the tips of his crooked teeth as he watched the little plant man walk into his house. Zemin's eyes wandered over to the girl's hands, and saw them controlling the plant man as if he were a puppet. He chuckled, "Clever..."

Suddenly he twisted his hands so that the palms faced upwards, and at that moment the house collapsed onto the plant man. Some of the sand dispersed back into the bag, but the majority of it remained. It had taken the form of a snake that began to slither around the plant man. Zemin chuckled and winked playfully at the girl next to him. As the snake's movements around the plant man continued, Zemin's movements became more fluid. He moved his twiddling hands around in a figure eight motion.

For once, Zemin decided to think ahead, which was a big deal for him. Usually he was to daft to ever consider what his opponent might or could do. Thinking that he might need more sand for what ever this chance encounter could bring, he shifted his feet so that little sand particles in the dirt began to collect at the base of his rags. By pulsating his lower leg muscles, and then flexing his upper leg muscles in turn, he was able to guide the newly connected sand into his bag for proper use.

[Kiyei Zhayuk]

Kiyei let the riverweed drop when the sand house collapsed on top of it. There was plenty more where that came from, and if she wanted to get more advanced she could use the hawthorn bushes around her. It wasn’t as easy to bend what had less water content in it, but Kiyei had been doing this for years, and she knew her way around most plants by now. In fact, she used plantbending to help grow her herbs.

When the sand withdrew, the limp, sand-crusted form of her plant puppet remained, and a snake of sand slithered circles around her fallen puppet. The man hadn’t been doing any traditional earthbending, only that with the sand. Maybe he didn’t know how to bend solid earth, and he’d only learned to sandbend in the desert. Judging by his rags, that was where he came from.

Kiyei put her hands on her knees and stood up, chuckling to herself with a small smile to the sandbender. It seemed that he wanted a friendly bending showdown, and Kiyei was happy to oblige. She firmly rooted her feet, a more solid stance than waterbenders usually used. Then, with her back to the river, she outstretched her arms. In one fluid motion she drew all the riverweed from the depths of the section of river behind her, and, pushing forward her hands, made it slither forth around her ankles onto the grass and reform into two larger plant-puppets.

"Okay sandbender, let’s see what you’ve got."

[Zemin Dao]

Zemin was pleased to see that the girl had accepted his invitation, and that see was skilled in her water bending. Plant bending was something that he had never seen in person before, and had only heard rumors about before hand. He didn't know the limits of this bending skill, but he was sure of his own limits. He could probably make two figures that could rival the plant puppets, and in that scenario, it would be a coin flip as to who would win. He figured his best weapon was surprise. The girl seemed intrigued by his sand bending, meaning that she hadn't seen a lot of it before. He would use that to his advantage.

Zemin stood up, took his bag off of his back, and emptied the contents onto the ground. He then spread it around so that he was standing on a thin layer of sand that extended for a foot around him. He stealthily moved his left foots heel in an arc, feeling for any more sand in the ground. There was some, but it would be draining to pull out. He decided to use that as a last resort.

Zemin smirked as he put both of his hands out and began bending a sculpture of a scorpion, a large scorpion. It was about as tall as the water bender's weed puppets, but much wider and more detailed. The tail seemed to be the most animated of the scorpion's parts, and Zemin's right arm was arched back like it was, directly controlling the movements of the beast's weapon.

Zemin smiled and through both of his arms back, launching the sand scorpion at the right weed puppet. As it jumped, Zemin used his feet to cast up a small sand storm, obscuring the view of the battle field somewhat.

[Kiyei Zhayuk]

He worked swiftly, and Kiyei had never seen anybody bend like this before. The way that he had a finite amount of sand, and he carried it around with him was like how Kiyei carried a water pouch at her hip and could only use that water in most situations. The styles were very similar. With plantbending, however, she could use the water in the vegetation to stimulate rapid cell reproduction, meaning that she could grow more plant matter if she wished. His sandbending was limited to how much he had with him right now. She, however, could grow as much riverweed as she could control.

His scorpion construct was a beautiful thing, as though handcrafted by an artist. The grains of sand glittered in the sunlight, making it look like a shifting topaz.

She raised her hands, and in a swift few striking motions of her fingers a few branches of a nearby hawthorn bush broke off, flew towards the plant-puppets, and merged with the insides of them, where the thorny branches would act like a skeletal structure for the muscle-like weeds to loop around and attach to.

Now that her puppets had structural integrity, she was ready. He attacked first. When he kicked up sand to obscure her vision, Kiyei narrowed her eyes. She, too, could lower visibility by using river water to form a mist over the area, but if this was a bending battle using only their elements’ sub-skills then using proper waterbending was a bit of a cheat move.
Although he obscured her vision of what he was doing, Kiyei could still tell what was going on with her plant-puppets, being able to sense the water content inside them.

Holding her hands aloft like a puppeteer, she directed both puppets to strike out, the left with one arm and the right one that the scorpion was charging at with both arms. The limbs elongated like rubber as the riverweed rapidly grew to increase their reach. They aimed for the body of the scorpion, to loop around both sides of the sand shell so that when they pulled back the structure could be torn apart.