章 14: Chapter 14: Lavabending
Waking up in the early morning the next day, I restarted my daily exercise, since Katara had healed my arm yesterday. Though, there is still a scar on my forehead above my right eye and my right arm.
I earthbend some dumbbells and start lifting, then I work on my grip strength to exercise my ligaments too.
After that, I start experimenting on how to lavabend, since there is no metal around. I need to expand my arsenal. One of the lessons I've learned after fighting Azula is that I need something she can't just kick to the side like the rocks I've been throwing around.
However, it was never really explained in the shows how to bend lava.
Since it's liquid earth, maybe learning waterbending techniques will give me some sort of hint.
I'll have Katara either teach me or borrow her waterbending scroll.
"Today's the day! I'll finally get to earthbend! Isn't that great, Sokka?"
"Yeah, yeah...*grumble*"
"Oh, you're still sleeping."
Suddenly, Toph's rock tent exploded open.
"Good morning, earthbending student!"
The ruckus awakens Sokka again, and he grumbles to both of them.
"Alright, sleepyhead, we'll do our earthbending quietly."
Toph pranks Sokka by earthbending up a rock just under Sokka, sending him flying into the air.
Sokka complains to them again in his unintelligible grumbles and hips off in his sleeping bag.
I walk up to the noisy duo.
"Morning, Toph. Aang."
"Good morning Lu Chen! I'm gonna learn earthbending today!"
"Mornin' Lu. Had a good sleep?"
"Yep, sleep was just fine. Since you two are gonna be training, today, I thought I'd get some training in too. I hope I see you earthbend by the end of today, Aang."
"I will!"
I make my way to where Katara is.
"Hey, Katara. Sleep fine?"
"Oh, hey Lu Chen. Yeah, I slept pretty well. You need something?"
"Uh, yeah. I got this idea in my mind for a new 'technique, and it might need your assistance."
"What do you mean? What kind of technique?"
"Well, you know how earthbenders bend earth, right?"
"Yeah..."
"I was just thinking if I can bend everything earth, doesn't that mean I could bend, say, liquid earth? Like lava."
"Really? ... It does make sense... Is that why you need me? Because I'm a water bender who can bend liquid?"
"Yeah. Waterbender can bend anything that contains or is water. Like vapor, or ice. It's all just water. I was just wondering if you can teach me some waterbending moves I could use to help me turn solid earth into liquid earth and back."
"Sure. I have no problem with that."
"Thanks, Katara."
After explaining to her, Katara and I go a few meters away from camp to start training.
----------
Only a few hours later, after learning what moves are used to turn ice into liquid and back, did I manage to turn a few small rocks into molten earth.
"That's amazing! You turned the rock into lava!"
Katara looks at me in amazement while clapping.
That was easier than I thought. I was prepared to spend a few more hours trying to figure it out.
I say nothing and look at the ground to the side of me.
I take a small jump forward and bend the ground using a water-style move while still thinking as an earthbender.
I then raise my arms, my hands forming a fist.
A vertical line of earth immediately turned into lava and was raised a few meters high and thrown forward.
"Wow! It's almost like your bending water! It's kinda weird to look at..."
"Haha, it kinda feels weird to use a waterbending style to bend earth."
"Hey, Lu Chen, while I was watching you train... It got me thinking. Do you think I can bend stuff similar to water too?"
"Yeah... you should be able to. Like maybe plants? Plants are reliant on water, so maybe you can move them around when there is no water around, or maybe suck out the water from them. Why don't you try it?"
"Yeah... like those swamp people."
"Oh! Another idea."
"What is it?"
"You know how in some places it's real humid? Or foggy? That's water too, isn't it? Just in a vaporized state. If you can turn water into ice, you can just turn vapor into water."
"Oh, like clouds! I've bended clouds before, but I didn't think to turn it into water directly. Your pretty smart, Lu Chen."
"Thanks."
"Well, I better check on Aang. See how he's doing in his training."
"I'll come with."
Katara and I head to where Toph is training Aang.
Katara sees that he's struggling and gives some advice to Toph on how she trained Aang.
Toph does her thing and trains Aang roughly.
Aang loses his motivation and Katara offers to practice waterbending with him.
---------
Sokka had left to hunt for food.
I don't feel like interfering with Aang's training, since I'm not much of a teacher. I'll leave finding Sokka to Aang so that he stands his ground against the Saber-tooth Moose-Lion and attains earthbending.
While the training is on pause, I head over to Toph.
"Hey, Toph. How's the training going?"
"Ugh, bad. Aang's such a wimp! If he continues this way, he'll never grow a backbone and learn how to earthbend. It's getting on my nerves."
"Hey now, you gotta be patient. Air should be the opposite of earth right? If you were the Avatar, and you had to learn airbending, you'd have a hard time adjusting to some inner peace jargon."
"Yeah, I guess your right. Maybe I'll just try doing what Katara suggested. Giving him positive reinforcement... but I'll do it the earthbender way."
"That might just work. Aang's a positive kid, himself."
"Yeah... So, what have you been up to? I felt some weird earthbending coming from your direction."
"Oh? 'Spying' on me while you teach Aang? Don't you get enough of me already?"
I decided to tease Toph after what felt like a while.
"...no... *mumble*."
Toph turns her head silently away and whispers her response.
"What was that? You say something?"
I sit down beside her and lean in.
"... I said no..."
Toph's cheeks start to redden as I get closer and whisper with my lips a few inches away from her ear.
"I can't hear you~."
"I said I can't get enough of you! You rock for brains!"
Toph turns her head to me, grabs my shirt collar, and kisses me.
She sure loves grabbing my shirt when she kisses me.
She's getting more aggressive with these kisses. I guess girls really do go through puberty earlier than boys.
After a few more kisses, Toph calmed down and leaned on my shoulder while we sat on the ground against a rock.
"So, what did you do earlier? It felt like you and Katara were messing around with heavy... water? Mud?"
"I was learning how to use waterbending styles from Katara."
"You were learning... Waterbending styles? What for?"
"For lavabending."
Toph separates herself from me and gives me a blank gaze.
"Really? That's so cool! Show me!"
"Alright."
I get up and show the excited Toph what I learned.
She was excited at first, but once she got closer to the lava pool I created and tried bending it, she just stepped back.
"Uh, this is really cool and all, but I don't feel that comfortable with liquid earth. It's kinda like sand to me. I can't see well when I'm standing on sand and my senses are all fuzzy. I'd rather learn something more... solid."
"Yeah, I guess it's understandable. You can't see the lava, and you can't attempt it, since you'll just severely hurt yourself if you just stood on lava."
Seems that Toph isn't willing to learn lavabending.
"How about we figure out another type of earth you can bend?"
"Sure. You got any ideas?"
"Crystals? Those come from the earth."
"Yeah, like that's very useful. Crystals aren't very strong."
Oh, never actually bended. any, so I wouldn't know the difference.
"Then, how about... metal? There's a lot of metal around and the Fire Nation uses a lot of metal in their society. It'll be very useful against them."
"Metalbending... that doesn't sound too bad..."
Toph looks down and smiles with her hand to her chin in thought and continues.
"But where are we gonna get any metal now? I'll probably need a lot to be able to train with it."
"Yeah, there aren't exactly a lot of metal in the camp, and Sokka wouldn't appreciate us bending his weapons."
"Yeah, your right. I guess it'll have to wait."
We sat there together, talking about nothing until Katara and Aang appear.
"Have you guys seen Sokka? He's been gone for hours.
----------
After Aang had found Sokka, he managed to earthbend at the last second.
Toph congratulates him and rescues Sokka from the while he got himself into.
I show Aang the fruits of my training as well.
" So cool! You can turn earth into lava! I thought you had to be The Avatar to be able to do that?"
"Well you definitely need to be powerful to bend lava, but it wouldn't make much sense if I can't bend earth, even in its liquid form."
"That's true."
We ended the day by showing more of my lavabending to Aang, and he gets so excited he tries to bend the lava I produced.
He somewhat succeeded. He managed to lift a portion of the lava a few feet, but that's about it.
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