Avatar The Last Airbender Fan Fiction ❯ AVATAR: The Legend of ❯ Book 1: Fire, Chapter 1 ( Chapter 1 )
[ Y - Young Adult: Not suitable for readers under 16 ]
By: Persona Ohnlyne 
First chapter of the story.
Non Anime: Avatar The Last Airbender Fan Fiction | Genre(s): Adventure | Type: Continuation | Uploaded On: 09.16.2012 | Updated On: 11.23.2012 | Pages: 2 | Words: 3.4K | Visits: 186 | Status: Completed
First chapter of the story.
Non Anime: Avatar The Last Airbender Fan Fiction | Genre(s): Adventure | Type: Continuation | Uploaded On: 09.16.2012 | Updated On: 11.23.2012 | Pages: 2 | Words: 3.4K | Visits: 186 | Status: Completed
Sahara was standing in the Si Wong Desert, moving her hands in a circular motion one over the other, a small sand whirlwind was starting to form right in front of her, but soon it got out of control and sand flew all over the place. “Why can’t I do this? What am I doing wrong?”
“Your stance is too rigid Sahara,” said Sahara’s mother, standing next to Sahara. “This is sand, not some rocks, but small sand, its so light that wind can move it, but so rigid and relentless that it can erode the hardest of stones.” She explained.
Sahara’s mother then proceeded to move her arms in a circular motion, but keeping the flow of movement much more open, much more flexible. Her feet, while firmly set on the sand were also flexible with her knees as well. “Don’t fight the wind using the sand, Sahara, move along with it, use it, make it an extension of your Sandbending.” She said as a perfect sand whirlwind formed in front of her.
Sahara looked at her mother, then again tried to form the whirlwind of Sand, this time her movements were much more flexible, much more fluid, not as rigid as Earthbeners from the rest of the Earth Kingdom, but more flexible, more free. This time, the sand whirlwind formed and it was maintained perfectly.
“Yes! I did it! I did it!” said Sahara happily, she turned to look at her mother, “did you see that mom? HUH!? WHAT IS…!?”
Her mother was not there anymore, instead Ken Genseki stood towering over her, the sun was gone as well, as it was now nighttime. Ken did not say anything, he just laughed, a cruel, heart piercing laugh. Sahara looked all around her, men wearing strange electric gloves, and Earthbenders were slaying the Sandbenders of the Hami tribe.
She panicked and started running away, all the while the laugh of Ken and the cries of pain from the Sandbenders all around her pierced her ears.
“AAAHHH!” Shara sat up on the wooden planks of her sand-sailer, she was covered in cold sweat. She looked around. It was night, she was alone in the desert resting on her sand-sailer… well, not alone, her cat-lizard Bastet was lying right next to her.
“It was a dream…” she said to herself. Only that is was not a dream, that had happened… She remembered everything, she remembered the attack, her mother’s death, all the Sandbenders of the Hami tribe dead… she was alone, the only place she had ever called home was taken away from her.
Sahara laid down again, raised her legs and hugged them, staying in a fetal position as she cried openly at all that she had lost.
Fire
Air
Water
Earth
Only the Avatar can master the four elements and bring balance to the world.
AVATAR: The Legend of Sahara.
Book 1: Fire
Chapter 1
Sahara’s sand-sailer sped through the desert sand, as Sahara used her Sandbending to create a sand whirlwind to move it, she had been traveling the desert, alone except for her cat-lizard Bastete, since the attack on her tribe, one day ago. She traveled all day after wards, and only after night fell did she stop. It was now the day after her first night alone, the first time that she actually remembered her dreams.
So much had happened. Sahara didn’t know what to make of it. She was sure she had used firebending to defend herself from Ken Genseki, the Avatar… but she also remembered that he was wearing some strange device under his clothes, that allowed him to look like he was firebending, and airbending, and waterbending, when he really was not… and then that vision she had when she escaped…
Sahara tried to stay focused on what she needed to do. The first thing was to escape, not just from the Hami Tribe lands in the desert, but from the whole desert. She had to get away, she knew that Ken Genseki and his men were going to find her if she stayed.
Finally, after hours of travel, she saw in the horizon what she was looking for, the Misty Palm Oasis.
The place had changed, a lot, for the last years. The ice that once was there had almost completely melted away, but the place was still throbbing with activity. Being the only “town” that was settled in the whole Si Wong Desert, and since the Si Wong Desert had, apparently, the biggest reserve of oil in the world, the Misty Palm Oasis soon became a place where different corporations built facilities to manage their oil operations, store it, and transport it out of the Si Wong Desert and to whatever place they refined it into gasoline. Thanks to technological advances that were able to keep an ambient cool using some sort of “air conditioning” machine, people could actually live very comfortably there.
Sahara had never gone to the Misty Palm Oasis, or Misty Palm Town as it was called now, but knew that it was her only chance of getting off the desert safely.
She stopped her sandbending, causing the sand sailer to stop altogether, a good safe distance from Misty Palm Town. She had to attract as little attention to herself as posible, and the Sand-Slider was not going to help with that.
Sahara got out of the sand-slider, and checked her gear. She fixed up her turban and scarf to protect her head and face from the scorching sun, and also placed her wooden glasses to protect her eyes from the intense sunlight. She also tied her Sandbag-rope, a small leather bag, filled with sand and tied shut with a rope that was several foot long. Sandbenders all over the desert used it as both a weapon and a trapping device to capture animals, the sand inside the bag allowed them to use Sandbending to control it better.
“Okay Bastet, get out of the sand-slider.” She said to her cat-lizard, the small animal obeyed.
Sahara hesitated for a minute, that sand-slider was the last thing she had left from her family and tribe… could she do it. She realized that she had no choice, she had to hide it.
Sahara moved her hands, then lowered and twised her fingers. The sand below the sand slider suddenly began to sink, as she used her Sandbending to turn that part of the desert into quicksand. The sand-sailer started to sink into the quicksand, until it was completely buried, then Sahara stopped her Sand-bending.
She looked down at her cat-lizard, “Okay Bastet. This is it, no turning back now.” then Sahara turned towards the former Misty Palm Oasis, now Misty Palm Town. The cat-lizard meowed back, and followed her owner.
It took Sahara quite a while to reach the town that once was the small Misty Palm Oasis.
She didn’t get into the town through the main entrance, that would actually make her more noticeable, it had been years since Sandbenders were seen in the Misty Palm Oasis, there was just no more “room” for them there anymore. The only link between Sandbenders and the rest of civilization were the beetle-headed merchants, that bought and sold things to the different Sandbender tribes.
Instead, Sahara found a secluded place around the small wall that surrounded the town, and using Sandbending, she “burrowed” into the sand, under the wall, and back out on the other side and into the city, all the while holding Bastet so the cat-lizard went with her.
Once into the town, Sahara found herself in a small alleyway, between what seemed to be two warehouses. It seemed she had entered the town at the warehouse district. This was all for the better. If what she heard from beetle-headed merchants about this place the few times she had heard them talk about it, then next to this place was a thing called a “runway” where “cargo biplanes” came in and out of the town with supplies and goods, and oil extracted from the desert.
If she could find one of this “cargo biplanes” maybe she could sneak inside, and use it to leave the desert. Where? She didn’t know or cared at the moment. She was on the run. The first thing to do was to get as far away as possible from this place.
“Okay Bastet,” said Sahara to her cat-lizard, “Lets find a way to get out of here.” Sahara took off her wooden sunglasses, and she carefully walked over to the edge of the alleyway, and peeked her head to take a look. She saw rows of warehouses on either side, all of them numbered. Suddenly, she heard a sound that she knew very well, the sound of Jeep-mobiles coming her way.
She turned to look, and was surprised to see that they were the same Jeep-mobiles that had found her tribe the night of the attack. They were the same men, and even Ken Genseki, the Avatar, was riding in the passenger seat of the front vehicle. Apparently he had spare robes, because the burn on his sleeve that she had made the other night was nowhere to be seen. Ken looked angry and serious, his arms closed.
Sahara hid as the jeep-mobiles passed the alleyway she was hiding in, then made a turn and entered on a nearby warehouse.
While her common sense was telling her that she should get away from there as soon as possible, something else deep inside of her knew that there would never be another chance to find answers to the many questions that she had since the night of the attack on her tribe.
She looked up, and noticed that there were some windows high over the wall, she could probably look into the warehouse from there. There were some beams that held out the roof of the warehouse, sticking out of the wall.
Not wasting any time, Sahara untied the rope holding her leather bag filled with sand. “Wait right here Bastet. I’m going to take a look inside.”
The cat-lizard meowed in response, as Sahara started to spin around the rope with the leather bag filled with sand tied at the end. Then threw it up, and using Sandbending with the sand inside it, she made it reach one of the beams sticking out of the window, and spin around it a couple of times, securing the rope to the beam. She then used the rope to climb up, until her face was at level with the little window at the side of the warehouse.
Inside, she saw how the men in uniforms, along with their leader, Ken Genseki, were getting out of the Jeep-mobiles. The window was open, so she could hear perfectly everything that was being said and done inside the warehouse. Some of the things inside were things she never saw before, at least not up close. She had seen this flying machines, this “biplanes” flying above the desert before, but there was a big one now right inside the warehouse! It had the Genseki corporation logo drawn on its side and wings. There were also more of those vehicles “jeep-mobiles” and several unopened wooden boxes, all of them with the Genseki corporation logo painted on them.
“I can’t believe it! How did she get away so fast! We searched, and nothing, not even a trail!” exclaimed Ken Genseki to his men. Sahara smiled, she didn’t just use Sandbending to escape in the sand slider, but also used behind her as she went, to erase the trail of the sand slider from the sand and cover her tracks.
“It’s a big desert boss. There wasn’t enough of us to search for just one Sandbender in the middle of the night. And she probably knows the desert by heart, she could be anywhere. We should wait for a search party to get here tomorrow from Republic City by biplane.” Said one of Ken Genseki’s men.
“If we wait one day, we have to find her, and we have to find her now!” yelled Ken Genseki back.
“Are you sure she threw the fireball back at you? Maybe she didn’t firebend, maybe the flamethrower of your suit malfunctioned or something?” said another one of Ken’s men, trying to calm down his boss.
“I know what I saw, that Sanbender girl used Firebending to repel a fireball! And she looked to be the right age too. I’m telling you, she’s the real Avatar!” replied Ken Genseki.
Sahara almost lost her grip on the rope, but recovered just in time. Did she hear him right? What did he mean by real Avatar? Wasn’t he the Avatar? What is going on here?
“Well boss, we just got back here, we need to resupply if we are going back into the desert to search for her. What should we do then?” asked one of Ken’s men.
“We knew that this day would come, the day that the real Avatar would appear.” Replied Ken, “For starters, recall all of our secret agents around the Earth Kingdom that had been searching for the real Avatar for the past year. Call them back and tell them to come here. No point of them searching for the Avatar if we know she is a Sandbender in the Si Wong Desert.” Said Ken to his men. “Let’s try stay keep positive about this. It’s actually better that I found her just here in the desert, and not in an actual civilized city or town, like Ba Sing Se or Omashu. She’s just a Sandbender in the middle of nowhere, and nobody will believe she’s the Avatar. But we have to find her and silence her for good, we can’t take any chances.” He added. “Nobody except for us knows that I’m not the real Avatar and that all my bending powers, except for my Earthbending, comes from my secret power suit under my clothes, and we have to keep it that way.”
Sahara gasped, Ken Genseki was not the real Avatar! His bending was fake! So that was the hoses and buttons she saw on his arm the night of the attack, it was some sort of fake-bending device! But was the other thing he said true? Was she really the Avatar? Could that be the answer behind those dreams that she could not remember, the firebending she did, and that weird vision she had?
Sahara kept listening to Ken talk to his men. “It doesn’t matter if she learns to master all four elements. We have to keep her from being found by anyone else, nobody must know that I’m not the real Avatar.” Ken explained to his men, “The plan of Genseki Industries is going just as planned. Even finding the real Avatar was planned, its just that it was not under the circumstances that we had planned, but we cannot let that stop us.”
Ken kept talking to his men, “We all know the way the world is today, after the 100 years war ended, after Avatar Aang and Fire Lord Zuko created the United Republic and Republic City, after the technological boom started, its all different. The power of the Avatar does not come from the power to bend all elements, or even from being the link between this world and the spirit world. No, the real power of the Avatar comes from his title, he is the Avatar and that makes people listen to everything he or she says. They don’t question the Avatar, because he is the Avatar. He is in charge of keeping the world in balance. That is how Avatar Korra kept the technological expansion from getting out of hand after more and more technology became available after the Equalists uprising in Republic City happened and all the technology they used was then turned to the United Forces, as a sign of goodwill from Future Industries. Even after Genseki Industries got hold of several of those things, and were able to reverse engineer them,” he said pointing at the biplane in the warehouse, and the electric gloves some of his men were wearing.
Sahara kept on listening, as Ken kept talking to his men, “Being the Avatar, just that, is what gave me the edge over other corporations, its what gave us the advantage in seizing natural resources in all the different nations, coal, oil, trees, defense and private contracts… everything that made Genseki Industries the most powerful corporation in the United Republic and the whole world, it came because everyone thinks I am the Avatar, pure and simple. And if we want to keep it that way, we must find this Sandbender girl, and end her, before anyone else finds out she’s the Avatar. Now get moving, we are going back to the desert as soon as we resupply and get the fuel tanks on the jeep-mobiles full again. Go, go, go!” he ordered to his men, who scrambled to obey Ken’s orders.
Sahara had heard enough, she climbed down the rope and back to the ground, using Sandbending to make the leather bag full of sand untangle the rope from the beam it was secured on. Her cat-lizard was waiting for her on the ground. She silently fell to her knees.
“He is not the Avatar?” she said to nobody in particular. “I am the Avatar?”
She turned to look at her cat-lizard, “What should I do now Bastet?” The cat lizard just meowed back and licked her owners hand.
“You’re right,” said Sahara, “first I’m going to get out of here, and I’ll get to the Fire Nation. If I’m the Avatar, then that’s as good a place as any to go to, and maybe find a firebender to teach me.”
Sahara quietly walked again to the edge of the hallway formed by the two warehouses. “I know you can’t actually talk Bastet. But it helps me think to pretend that you do.” She said smiling. The cat-lizard just meowed again.
“Now, we need to find the place where this ‘biplanes’ get out of here, and sneak inside one. I’m sure one of them is to go to the Fire Nation. But which one?” said Sahara as she looked at the other side of the complex of warehouses, there was a long runway there, and several big cargo-biplanes.
Without being seen, Sahara sneaked past the warehouses, Bastet following her, and made it to the runway. There were several boxes on one end of it, with forklifts loading and unloading them inside and out of different cargo-biplanes.
She spotted one box that read “Destination: Fire Nation”, and watching closely she saw which biplane it was being loaded into. Being careful so as to not be seen, Sahara and Bastet went into the cargo door of the biplane, just as the cargo crew of the runway was closing it.
Sahara and Bastet hid away between the many wooden boxes inside the cargo biplane, and waited. Soon the machine’s engines started up, and the biplane took off.
“Okay Bastet,” said Sahara to her cat-lizard, “Next stop, the Fire Nation.”
However, when she got into the airplane, Sahara failed to notice the markings on the wings and sides. The markings of Genseki Industries.
To be continued…
“Your stance is too rigid Sahara,” said Sahara’s mother, standing next to Sahara. “This is sand, not some rocks, but small sand, its so light that wind can move it, but so rigid and relentless that it can erode the hardest of stones.” She explained.
Sahara’s mother then proceeded to move her arms in a circular motion, but keeping the flow of movement much more open, much more flexible. Her feet, while firmly set on the sand were also flexible with her knees as well. “Don’t fight the wind using the sand, Sahara, move along with it, use it, make it an extension of your Sandbending.” She said as a perfect sand whirlwind formed in front of her.
Sahara looked at her mother, then again tried to form the whirlwind of Sand, this time her movements were much more flexible, much more fluid, not as rigid as Earthbeners from the rest of the Earth Kingdom, but more flexible, more free. This time, the sand whirlwind formed and it was maintained perfectly.
“Yes! I did it! I did it!” said Sahara happily, she turned to look at her mother, “did you see that mom? HUH!? WHAT IS…!?”
Her mother was not there anymore, instead Ken Genseki stood towering over her, the sun was gone as well, as it was now nighttime. Ken did not say anything, he just laughed, a cruel, heart piercing laugh. Sahara looked all around her, men wearing strange electric gloves, and Earthbenders were slaying the Sandbenders of the Hami tribe.
She panicked and started running away, all the while the laugh of Ken and the cries of pain from the Sandbenders all around her pierced her ears.
“AAAHHH!” Shara sat up on the wooden planks of her sand-sailer, she was covered in cold sweat. She looked around. It was night, she was alone in the desert resting on her sand-sailer… well, not alone, her cat-lizard Bastet was lying right next to her.
“It was a dream…” she said to herself. Only that is was not a dream, that had happened… She remembered everything, she remembered the attack, her mother’s death, all the Sandbenders of the Hami tribe dead… she was alone, the only place she had ever called home was taken away from her.
Sahara laid down again, raised her legs and hugged them, staying in a fetal position as she cried openly at all that she had lost.
Fire
Air
Water
Earth
Only the Avatar can master the four elements and bring balance to the world.
AVATAR: The Legend of Sahara.
Book 1: Fire
Chapter 1
Sahara’s sand-sailer sped through the desert sand, as Sahara used her Sandbending to create a sand whirlwind to move it, she had been traveling the desert, alone except for her cat-lizard Bastete, since the attack on her tribe, one day ago. She traveled all day after wards, and only after night fell did she stop. It was now the day after her first night alone, the first time that she actually remembered her dreams.
So much had happened. Sahara didn’t know what to make of it. She was sure she had used firebending to defend herself from Ken Genseki, the Avatar… but she also remembered that he was wearing some strange device under his clothes, that allowed him to look like he was firebending, and airbending, and waterbending, when he really was not… and then that vision she had when she escaped…
Sahara tried to stay focused on what she needed to do. The first thing was to escape, not just from the Hami Tribe lands in the desert, but from the whole desert. She had to get away, she knew that Ken Genseki and his men were going to find her if she stayed.
Finally, after hours of travel, she saw in the horizon what she was looking for, the Misty Palm Oasis.
The place had changed, a lot, for the last years. The ice that once was there had almost completely melted away, but the place was still throbbing with activity. Being the only “town” that was settled in the whole Si Wong Desert, and since the Si Wong Desert had, apparently, the biggest reserve of oil in the world, the Misty Palm Oasis soon became a place where different corporations built facilities to manage their oil operations, store it, and transport it out of the Si Wong Desert and to whatever place they refined it into gasoline. Thanks to technological advances that were able to keep an ambient cool using some sort of “air conditioning” machine, people could actually live very comfortably there.
Sahara had never gone to the Misty Palm Oasis, or Misty Palm Town as it was called now, but knew that it was her only chance of getting off the desert safely.
She stopped her sandbending, causing the sand sailer to stop altogether, a good safe distance from Misty Palm Town. She had to attract as little attention to herself as posible, and the Sand-Slider was not going to help with that.
Sahara got out of the sand-slider, and checked her gear. She fixed up her turban and scarf to protect her head and face from the scorching sun, and also placed her wooden glasses to protect her eyes from the intense sunlight. She also tied her Sandbag-rope, a small leather bag, filled with sand and tied shut with a rope that was several foot long. Sandbenders all over the desert used it as both a weapon and a trapping device to capture animals, the sand inside the bag allowed them to use Sandbending to control it better.
“Okay Bastet, get out of the sand-slider.” She said to her cat-lizard, the small animal obeyed.
Sahara hesitated for a minute, that sand-slider was the last thing she had left from her family and tribe… could she do it. She realized that she had no choice, she had to hide it.
Sahara moved her hands, then lowered and twised her fingers. The sand below the sand slider suddenly began to sink, as she used her Sandbending to turn that part of the desert into quicksand. The sand-sailer started to sink into the quicksand, until it was completely buried, then Sahara stopped her Sand-bending.
She looked down at her cat-lizard, “Okay Bastet. This is it, no turning back now.” then Sahara turned towards the former Misty Palm Oasis, now Misty Palm Town. The cat-lizard meowed back, and followed her owner.
It took Sahara quite a while to reach the town that once was the small Misty Palm Oasis.
She didn’t get into the town through the main entrance, that would actually make her more noticeable, it had been years since Sandbenders were seen in the Misty Palm Oasis, there was just no more “room” for them there anymore. The only link between Sandbenders and the rest of civilization were the beetle-headed merchants, that bought and sold things to the different Sandbender tribes.
Instead, Sahara found a secluded place around the small wall that surrounded the town, and using Sandbending, she “burrowed” into the sand, under the wall, and back out on the other side and into the city, all the while holding Bastet so the cat-lizard went with her.
Once into the town, Sahara found herself in a small alleyway, between what seemed to be two warehouses. It seemed she had entered the town at the warehouse district. This was all for the better. If what she heard from beetle-headed merchants about this place the few times she had heard them talk about it, then next to this place was a thing called a “runway” where “cargo biplanes” came in and out of the town with supplies and goods, and oil extracted from the desert.
If she could find one of this “cargo biplanes” maybe she could sneak inside, and use it to leave the desert. Where? She didn’t know or cared at the moment. She was on the run. The first thing to do was to get as far away as possible from this place.
“Okay Bastet,” said Sahara to her cat-lizard, “Lets find a way to get out of here.” Sahara took off her wooden sunglasses, and she carefully walked over to the edge of the alleyway, and peeked her head to take a look. She saw rows of warehouses on either side, all of them numbered. Suddenly, she heard a sound that she knew very well, the sound of Jeep-mobiles coming her way.
She turned to look, and was surprised to see that they were the same Jeep-mobiles that had found her tribe the night of the attack. They were the same men, and even Ken Genseki, the Avatar, was riding in the passenger seat of the front vehicle. Apparently he had spare robes, because the burn on his sleeve that she had made the other night was nowhere to be seen. Ken looked angry and serious, his arms closed.
Sahara hid as the jeep-mobiles passed the alleyway she was hiding in, then made a turn and entered on a nearby warehouse.
While her common sense was telling her that she should get away from there as soon as possible, something else deep inside of her knew that there would never be another chance to find answers to the many questions that she had since the night of the attack on her tribe.
She looked up, and noticed that there were some windows high over the wall, she could probably look into the warehouse from there. There were some beams that held out the roof of the warehouse, sticking out of the wall.
Not wasting any time, Sahara untied the rope holding her leather bag filled with sand. “Wait right here Bastet. I’m going to take a look inside.”
The cat-lizard meowed in response, as Sahara started to spin around the rope with the leather bag filled with sand tied at the end. Then threw it up, and using Sandbending with the sand inside it, she made it reach one of the beams sticking out of the window, and spin around it a couple of times, securing the rope to the beam. She then used the rope to climb up, until her face was at level with the little window at the side of the warehouse.
Inside, she saw how the men in uniforms, along with their leader, Ken Genseki, were getting out of the Jeep-mobiles. The window was open, so she could hear perfectly everything that was being said and done inside the warehouse. Some of the things inside were things she never saw before, at least not up close. She had seen this flying machines, this “biplanes” flying above the desert before, but there was a big one now right inside the warehouse! It had the Genseki corporation logo drawn on its side and wings. There were also more of those vehicles “jeep-mobiles” and several unopened wooden boxes, all of them with the Genseki corporation logo painted on them.
“I can’t believe it! How did she get away so fast! We searched, and nothing, not even a trail!” exclaimed Ken Genseki to his men. Sahara smiled, she didn’t just use Sandbending to escape in the sand slider, but also used behind her as she went, to erase the trail of the sand slider from the sand and cover her tracks.
“It’s a big desert boss. There wasn’t enough of us to search for just one Sandbender in the middle of the night. And she probably knows the desert by heart, she could be anywhere. We should wait for a search party to get here tomorrow from Republic City by biplane.” Said one of Ken Genseki’s men.
“If we wait one day, we have to find her, and we have to find her now!” yelled Ken Genseki back.
“Are you sure she threw the fireball back at you? Maybe she didn’t firebend, maybe the flamethrower of your suit malfunctioned or something?” said another one of Ken’s men, trying to calm down his boss.
“I know what I saw, that Sanbender girl used Firebending to repel a fireball! And she looked to be the right age too. I’m telling you, she’s the real Avatar!” replied Ken Genseki.
Sahara almost lost her grip on the rope, but recovered just in time. Did she hear him right? What did he mean by real Avatar? Wasn’t he the Avatar? What is going on here?
“Well boss, we just got back here, we need to resupply if we are going back into the desert to search for her. What should we do then?” asked one of Ken’s men.
“We knew that this day would come, the day that the real Avatar would appear.” Replied Ken, “For starters, recall all of our secret agents around the Earth Kingdom that had been searching for the real Avatar for the past year. Call them back and tell them to come here. No point of them searching for the Avatar if we know she is a Sandbender in the Si Wong Desert.” Said Ken to his men. “Let’s try stay keep positive about this. It’s actually better that I found her just here in the desert, and not in an actual civilized city or town, like Ba Sing Se or Omashu. She’s just a Sandbender in the middle of nowhere, and nobody will believe she’s the Avatar. But we have to find her and silence her for good, we can’t take any chances.” He added. “Nobody except for us knows that I’m not the real Avatar and that all my bending powers, except for my Earthbending, comes from my secret power suit under my clothes, and we have to keep it that way.”
Sahara gasped, Ken Genseki was not the real Avatar! His bending was fake! So that was the hoses and buttons she saw on his arm the night of the attack, it was some sort of fake-bending device! But was the other thing he said true? Was she really the Avatar? Could that be the answer behind those dreams that she could not remember, the firebending she did, and that weird vision she had?
Sahara kept listening to Ken talk to his men. “It doesn’t matter if she learns to master all four elements. We have to keep her from being found by anyone else, nobody must know that I’m not the real Avatar.” Ken explained to his men, “The plan of Genseki Industries is going just as planned. Even finding the real Avatar was planned, its just that it was not under the circumstances that we had planned, but we cannot let that stop us.”
Ken kept talking to his men, “We all know the way the world is today, after the 100 years war ended, after Avatar Aang and Fire Lord Zuko created the United Republic and Republic City, after the technological boom started, its all different. The power of the Avatar does not come from the power to bend all elements, or even from being the link between this world and the spirit world. No, the real power of the Avatar comes from his title, he is the Avatar and that makes people listen to everything he or she says. They don’t question the Avatar, because he is the Avatar. He is in charge of keeping the world in balance. That is how Avatar Korra kept the technological expansion from getting out of hand after more and more technology became available after the Equalists uprising in Republic City happened and all the technology they used was then turned to the United Forces, as a sign of goodwill from Future Industries. Even after Genseki Industries got hold of several of those things, and were able to reverse engineer them,” he said pointing at the biplane in the warehouse, and the electric gloves some of his men were wearing.
Sahara kept on listening, as Ken kept talking to his men, “Being the Avatar, just that, is what gave me the edge over other corporations, its what gave us the advantage in seizing natural resources in all the different nations, coal, oil, trees, defense and private contracts… everything that made Genseki Industries the most powerful corporation in the United Republic and the whole world, it came because everyone thinks I am the Avatar, pure and simple. And if we want to keep it that way, we must find this Sandbender girl, and end her, before anyone else finds out she’s the Avatar. Now get moving, we are going back to the desert as soon as we resupply and get the fuel tanks on the jeep-mobiles full again. Go, go, go!” he ordered to his men, who scrambled to obey Ken’s orders.
Sahara had heard enough, she climbed down the rope and back to the ground, using Sandbending to make the leather bag full of sand untangle the rope from the beam it was secured on. Her cat-lizard was waiting for her on the ground. She silently fell to her knees.
“He is not the Avatar?” she said to nobody in particular. “I am the Avatar?”
She turned to look at her cat-lizard, “What should I do now Bastet?” The cat lizard just meowed back and licked her owners hand.
“You’re right,” said Sahara, “first I’m going to get out of here, and I’ll get to the Fire Nation. If I’m the Avatar, then that’s as good a place as any to go to, and maybe find a firebender to teach me.”
Sahara quietly walked again to the edge of the hallway formed by the two warehouses. “I know you can’t actually talk Bastet. But it helps me think to pretend that you do.” She said smiling. The cat-lizard just meowed again.
“Now, we need to find the place where this ‘biplanes’ get out of here, and sneak inside one. I’m sure one of them is to go to the Fire Nation. But which one?” said Sahara as she looked at the other side of the complex of warehouses, there was a long runway there, and several big cargo-biplanes.
Without being seen, Sahara sneaked past the warehouses, Bastet following her, and made it to the runway. There were several boxes on one end of it, with forklifts loading and unloading them inside and out of different cargo-biplanes.
She spotted one box that read “Destination: Fire Nation”, and watching closely she saw which biplane it was being loaded into. Being careful so as to not be seen, Sahara and Bastet went into the cargo door of the biplane, just as the cargo crew of the runway was closing it.
Sahara and Bastet hid away between the many wooden boxes inside the cargo biplane, and waited. Soon the machine’s engines started up, and the biplane took off.
“Okay Bastet,” said Sahara to her cat-lizard, “Next stop, the Fire Nation.”
However, when she got into the airplane, Sahara failed to notice the markings on the wings and sides. The markings of Genseki Industries.
To be continued…