Return of the Unagi

In through the nose, out through the mouth... Kano thought to himself over and over again, focusing on his breathing with every fiber of his being. The Air Nomads might have liked their mountain tops, but they'd perfected the art of meditation long ago. It was a simple thing, but it gave a bender incredible power. He was happy to have found a manuscript on the discipline.

The day had dawned early. When he had finished his morning run along the wall, Kano made his way down to the shore. He had found a nice little spot on the water that was great for meditation in the morning. It was right on the water and provided a splendid ocean view, not to mention the fact that the easterly sun shined down on the spot quite warmly. It was perfect.

As he sat there, focusing on his breathing, he could hear the water before him moving in and out with his breaths. It had started small, just ripples on the surface like a gentle breeze over a calm pond. Twenty minutes on, however, the ripples had swelled to foot-tall waves.

He was just beginning to settle into the calm of the meditation when he felt an incredible surge in the water. It was nothing of his doing. On the contrary, it felt agitated and violent. It was coming from deep beneath the surface. Kano opened his eyes and surveyed the calm water. His little waves had vanished. That was the last thing on his mind, however. He had a feeling that trouble was brewing here and he didn't like it one bit.

Suddenly, a great swell of water broke the surface, making Kano raise himself onto one knee, staring at the spot, watching for any evidence of what had caused it. Suddenly, a massive creature emerged, spitting beams of water furiously. It's roar sent a chill up Kano's spine. He leaped to his feet and dived out of the way as one of the beams blasted his new favorite perch into a million little icy pieces.

"What the...?!" he said, looking around at the beast. He'd never seen anything like it. It was like a snake or an eel, only massive in size. It could have wrapped itself around a Water Tribe ship several times over... the long way.

The creature reared back, preparing to take another shot at him. Kano reached out and brought a huge wave of water over the edge of the shore, erecting it into a sturdy wall of ice just in time to intercept another blast. This time, it was his turn. Liquefying his ice wall, he reformed the water into a series of massive icy spikes and then shot them at the creature. Two of them missed as the beast undulated back and forth. The third landed true. Unfortunately, it shattered upon impact. This creature, whatever it was, had seriously thick skin. Before it could attack again, he sent jets of water, bent razor thin at it. They traveled across the water. Some struck the beast, others passed.

Furious, the beast flailed it's head around, firing it's beam of water in every direction. The beam swept around and hit a nearby iceberg, shattering large sections of it with ease and breaking even larger pieces from the whole. To Kano's horror, he noticed a small boat bobbing in the water near the berg... a single occupant aboard.

Tag Chase

Kano watched as the figure in his tiny boat worked. He wasn't sure what the figure was doing. It looked like they were... trying to catch it. Kano shook his head. He didn't need to worry what they were trying to do at the moment. He had his own end of this fight to worry about. The beast seemed to be making up it's mind as to which of them to attack. Kano was not going to wait for it to decide.

He summoned all the strength his legs had to offer and darted toward the water, leaping from the shore into the the sea. He bent water into an icy platform and urged it forward. He tore across the water, riding his icy disk like a surf board. As he went, he sent more blasts of water at the beast, freezing every third or fourth into an icy spike. This thing had weak points. It was just a matter of finding them.

Unfortunately, his attacks were being ignored. His Water Tribe brother had found one of the thing's weaknesses -- it's mouth. Even more unfortunately, it's mouth was less a weakness... more a trap. As his fellow tribesman was ripped from his boat, and dragged into the water by his own weapon, a hook-ended chain which was obviously built with waterbenders in mind, Kano urged his platform forward, reaching down with one hand to grab his fellow from the water while simultaneously raising a barrier of steam to mask their movements from the beast.

"Grab hold!" he called as he quickly approached the fisherman.

"Kano of the Aowaka School." Kano said, nodding to his new comrade in this fight. "Pleased to meet you."

He took special care to keep their little platform moving. The creature had started taking pot-shots into the mist with it's water beam. It was landing them pretty close, too. When the beast roared, he was able to guess at it's general direction and turn them away from it, speeding toward the far edge of the cloud he had summoned. When it's boundary was not forthcoming, he bent an opening in the cover.

They found themselves at the base of a massive iceberg which dominated the field to which it belonged. It looked as though it was tall enough to give them a height advantage even over the beast. If there was one thing he had learned about strategy from his father's teachings, it was that controlling the high ground was almost always a decisive advantage.

"You're a bender, right?" he said, looking around at Chase, stripping his parka off as he spoke. He remembered seeing him bend the water out of his clothes. "Take this platform and attack it from below when I bend the steam away. I'll hit it from above..." he pointed up the cliff-like wall of ice that towered over them. "As for weaknesses..." he smiled, pointing at his eyes with his index and middle fingers. "Hit 'em hard."

He folded up his parka and bent water up around it, freezing it solid before dropping it in the water. The thing might keep him warm, but it also slowed him down and restricted his movements. He'd have to make due without it and as an ice cube, it wouldn't get far. He bent a walkway out from the base of the berg and leaped from his little floating platform onto it.

Kano watched Chase go and then turned his attention to the near vertical cliff in front of him. It had been some time since he'd used the technique he was about to use, but there was really no better way up. Drawing in a huge breath, feeling the icy air filling his lungs, he ran straight at the wall and planted one foot on it before proceeding to run straight up the wall.

Kano was quick on his feet, he could run like the wind, but even so, he wasn't able to mount a sixty foot wall without help. Every time his foot landed on the ice, he'd bend the ice around it to keep himself from falling. It was a difficult task to keep himself from bending over backward, literally. Last thing he needed was to be found iced by his feet to the side of an iceberg, his back broken. It was an exhilarating feeling, nonetheless. The cold air on his bare arms and face, the wind rushing through his hair, the roar of the beast, and the ever-intensifying altitude. If you didn't feel alive at a time like this, you never would.

By the time he reached the summit of the iceberg, he wasn't about to run. He skidded along the ice as if he was riding a surf board, bending it beneath him to move him at an incredible speed over the surface toward the rearing figure of the creature ahead. When he reached the edge of the formation, he didn't even bother stopping. He kept on, bending a bridge out over the beast so that he could jump down and take it by surprise. He took notice of the fisherman's chain and hook and smiled.

Perfect. Kano thought as he landed on the creature's head. Chase had made the right move. Keeping the creature as stationary as possible was the best thing he could have done.

"Sorry, pal." he said, straightening up. He pulled some of the water down from the bridge and formed it into a spear, taking the icy weapon in both hands and holding it over the beast's eye, looking down at it with a determined glare. "I can't let you threaten the tribe."

His hands tightened around the icy shaft of the spear. He was just about to drive the weapon downward when he noticed something red flowing out from under his boot. His grip on the spear slackened.

"Blood?" he said, his brow furrowing.

He lifted his foot. He was standing on the end of a scar. When he had landed on it, he had apparently split it open again. He looked around. The poor creature's entire head was covered with scars. They continued all the way down it's body.

"What the hell?" he muttered, his brow furrowing. The spear he had crafted melted into liquid, his focus on keeping it solid waning. "What happened to you?"

He looked back down at the beast's eye. It was looking up at him with fear, not anger in it's eyes. It wasn't attacking them... it was defending itself. Kano was willing to bet that whoever had done this to it had been a waterbender. No wonder it attacked... it sensed him waterbending and tried to protect itself.

It was one hell of a hunch, but he pulled down some more water from the bridge and encased his hands in it. The water began to glow and he knelt down on it's head, passing his hands over the bleeding wound. Instantly, it began to heal, knitting and closing entirely. The moment he did it, the beast stopped struggling against the hook...

"This thing is hurt!" Kano called back down as he continued healing down the immediate length of the scar. It looked like it continued down a pretty lengthy strip of the creature's back. "Is there some way you can get that hook out of it's mouth?!"

"That's it..." Kano said soothingly as he passed his hands over more of the scarred area. With the hook out of it's mouth and nothing keeping it still, the creature still didn't move. It floated there, stationary as it could, basking in the relief it was being offered from it's pain.

Kano looked around again. He was fairly certain that these wounds ran the entire length of it's body. He couldn't help but scowl. What waterbender would be so cruel? He needed it to get out of the water. He needed it somewhere where he could get at the bits of it that were beneath the water's surface. One glance at the shore told him what he had to do.

Slowly, carefully, he climbed down onto the beast's muzzle, looking into one of it's massive eyes. He had no clue what he was doing. This was crazy to say the least. There was no way this was going to work.

"There." he said as firmly as he could without sounding aggressive, pointing at the large, open ice flat bordering the shore. It was more than enough room for the beast to beach itself and allow them to finish their work. "There." he repeated, this time a bit more forcefully. The beast didn't seem to understand.

But it didn't really matter. There was one thing that could lure this creature onto the shore and it wasn't words. Kano stood and walked to the tip of it's nose. With a graceful leap, he sent himself off the end of it's muzzle and dove into the ocean below. Within seconds, he had resurfaced and made himself a new ice platform. He was quick to bend the water from his clothes as well. It wasn't good to have water that cold in contact with one's skin for too long. Of course, it wasn't good to be bare-armed or without a parka in the north either, but those ships had sailed.

Steadily, he led his little ice platform to shore, and the beast seemed to understand. It followed along slowly, looking down at him in an almost quizzical way. It shocked him sometimes how expressive even the most vicious beasts could be. He turned to Chase.

"We'll have to beach him." he called. "I think if we heal him, he'll go on his way."

It was a fair enough thought, considering the beast was no longer trying to blast them to smithereens with high pressured water. At least it was calm, if only for the moment.

"Then we lift it." Kano said, determination etched into his every feature. Even the tone of his voice was defiantly refusing to accept anything less than success.

As his little icy raft bumped into the shore, Kano hopped off. He examined the terrain. There were some imperfections in the plain, imperfections which would be uncomfortable for the beast. He quickly smoothed the area using bending and them melted a large area into a shallow pool, just a foot or so deep. If this thing was anything like other sea creatures, it needed regular hydration.

"Chase." he said as he finished preparing the area. "You know how to perform co-operative bending?"

Kano nodded.

"It's fairly simple as a concept." he said. "The two of us will use the Swell simultaneously, bringing water up over the shore and carrying the creature onto solid ground. It's important that we both perform the motion in unison so as to properly amplify the force of our waterbending. It will make us much more powerful than we normally would be. We should be able to bring it ashore."

He demonstrated the move as he spoke. Though he wasn't channeling any chi into his arms, the water still churned around at his movements.

"Remember." he said. "We must act in unison. You ready to give it a try?"

"It's all in the scrolls." Kano said, nodding. It was a favorite term of his, meaning that study and practice were the keys to just about everything. He moved toward the great beast as well while the mass of water flowed away from it back into the sea. He bent up some of the liquid and formed a giant sheet of water before placing it over the beast's most severe looking wounds and starting to heal.

It truly was an incredible creature. It was at least three times the size Kano thought it was. How anything could be that big. It took quite some time to address the wounds most troubling. By the time Kano had moved on to the lesser injuries...

"How could it get hurt like this?"

It was a waterbender. There was no doubt about it. And it was a powerful one at that. This poor beast had been tortured with bending. He had no idea why, but there was no mistaking the effect. There was simply no way any other weapon or power could have achieved those twisting and turning cuts, those perfectly straight slices. But this thought was interrupted by what Chase said next.

"So, where'd you learn to be such a master bender?"

"Master?!" Kano laughed openly. Chase couldn't possibly know, but the idea that Kano was a master was to any Aowaka simply laughable. He was barely a quarter through his training. He had decades ahead of him. The simple fact of the matter was that many people who were so-called masters simply weren't, even if everyone in their circles claimed they were. True power in bending took many, many long years. What Kano knew was barely more than a scratched surface. His grandfather could have skinned this creature with it's own blood and boiled it in the ocean without breaking a sweat. Still, he took Chase's meaning.

"My family has a long heritage of waterbending." he said as he healed a particularly deep wound. "I'm the son of Master Tako of the Aowaka School. He's probably one of the most powerful waterbenders in the north. He's certainly one of the most experienced."