5 Chapter 5 : Timeskip and Exposition

*12 years later*

*Republic city, Hanzo's private clinic & massage parlor, 2nd floor*

Standing in a steaming hot shower I look down at my arms full of small scars all over and reminisce over the last 12 years.

After becoming Toph's apprentice, things picked up quickly. Every day was a living hell, I got beat up until falling unconscious only to wake up the next day to repeat it all over again. She thought everything she knew about bending from traditional earthbending and her own style to metalbending. Not to mention her seismic sense.

Oh! Did I forget to mention that I did everything with a blindfold!? From my bending training to everyday tasks like making food and brewing tea to relieving myself. And sometimes I had to wear a blindfold for as long as a month.

But the training was very effective, she basically hammered the knowledge into my body. Plus I can't say I didn't enjoy my time, after the initial month I was finally able to fight back for a few minutes before getting knocked out.

This led to an interesting discovery. I Am a battle junkie. Fighting a worthy opponent made my heartbeat in excitement like nothing before. The adrenaline in your system, the life-threatening decisions you need to make in a split second, the feeling of victory over your opponent, or the crushing defeat that drives you to improve.

Besides that, in my free time, I worked on my personal projects. Well, I say free time, but it was actually time dedicated to letting my body heal, but that doesn't matter.

Anyway, my first project was the chi flow technique, while impressive it was impractical. The movements were slow, obvious, and non-combat-oriented. Besides that, the chi consumption was monstrous, for extended use anything short of the Avatar in Avatar state was useless.

The worst part, the technique wasn't even completed! I only mapped only the most obvious chi channels. This led me to a lot of pointing and prodding to find all the chi channels. And each new discovery led me to recreate the technique to suit the new channels, only to discover that each iteration was slower than the last.

By the end of the first year, I scrapped the idea of using the technique for anything even remotely connected to combat. But it was good for two things and that was training the body and increasing chi! At first, it wasn't noticeable, even after months of continued use, but eventually, I did notice and even then it was only because of my perfect memory helping me.

I'd like to say it's like those techniques in cultivation novels but unfortunately, it's nowhere close. To notice the effects you need years and to feel them, at least a decade. Still, my perfectly sculpted body speaks for itself, my muscles have muscles, and my chi reserves and regeneration dwarfs everyone besides maybe only an Avatar. Of course not in an Avatar state.

The chi flow technique basically became extreme yoga with the addition of releasing chi without actually bending anything. That didn't come without consequences, unfortunately. Toph kept on calling me a circus girl for weeks!

Even after explaining the effects and how to do it! Although after that she kept on disappearing for an hour every other day. I never caught her as she never explained how she hides from seismic sense. Still, we all know what she's doing even if I never got a confession out of her.

Besides extreme yoga, I opted to learn sandbending but Toph could only teach me bare basics as she herself wasn't very talented in the art. Fortunately, she knew the trick to sandbending was water bending and suggested I ask for help from Foggy Swamp tribes waterbenders as their way of waterbending was more rigid and similar to earthbending. That was the missing piece in the puzzle.

The tribesmen after finding out that I was the reason why Toph stopped coming to 'exchange bending tips' were more than happy to teach me anything they could. As a bonus, I got to learn about poisons and healing herbs.

With everything in place, I finally became a proficient sandbender. Still not a master but it was enough for the time being. Sandbending did open the doors to my real goal. Lavabending.

Probably the coolest sub-skill of earthbending branch, or is it the hottest? Doesn't matter!

You see after asking Toph and reading books on the subject I found out that most lavabenders had fire and earthbender ancestry meaning it was hereditary. But that was it, most but not all.

Extremely talented earthbenders who elevated the art to what we know now we're able to do it. So with all the chess pieces in place, I was ready to put my theory about lavabending into practice.

Applying sandbending technique on a small patch of earth, I moved it in that way to create friction and with it heat. Before long I became a lavabender!

Later in the day, Toph rushed to my location after a disturbance in her seismic sense only to find me laughing like a maniac throwing lava in every direction. No need to mention that I got an extra beating that day for scaring her like that, lavabending or not. Although I swear I saw a genuine smile right before blacking out.

And as much as I liked lavabending, my skill in it was only a little better than my sandbending. To become a real master I needed the original waterbending style, not the Foggy Swamp version, in addition, I desired to learn from real sandbenders.

So six years after arriving at the Foggy Swamp my time to leave finally came.

Toph already taught me everything she knew on bending and encouraged me to get some fighting experience. She gave me a golden token with a picture of a flying boar and enough money to last a while as a goodbye gift.

Of course, I tried to hug her as a goodbye but she blocked my way and told me. 'You want to hug something, go hug a tree.' I did get a fist bump though.

By age of twelve, I set out to one of the most lawless, dangerous, and unwelcoming places in four nations. Si Wong desert. Good thing it's not as dangerous with sandbending on your side.

On my way there I stopped by Omashu to check on the orphanage and catch an airship heading to Si Wong desert. Everything looked fine and dandy at the orphanage front so after shortly catching up with Nana I continued my journey.

Arriving the next day I gathered information on the sandbending tribes living in the desert in legal and not so legal ways. Let's just say some child traffickers found themselves ten feet under the sand.

My target was the Liusha tribe or the flowing sand tribe. The most lawful tribe in here, meaning I should watch my back. Their symbol is a sand shark and you can find them on the west side of the desert.

Before heading out I bought a sand skiff to get around. It didn't take more than a few days to run into a scouting party consisting of three sandbenders, two to propel the skiff, and one to steer.

At first, they mistook me for a rival tribal party, but after clearing that up I told them I have an offer and want to meet the chief. They might have robbed me if not for me, a 12-year-old child doing a job of three grown men.

My offer to the chief Shinshashu was simple, in exchange for teaching me their style of sandbending I will teach Them mine. Shinshashu agreed with the condition that I don't teach my style to any other tribe and that we combine the styles together.

I spent one year with the Liusha tribe. The end result was that I became the first sandbender master. You see, the title of a master is not easy to acquire especially in a sub-skill. There are no rigid rules to becoming a master but you know when you see one, like Pakku for example.

The tribes never had a complete art, just a skeleton of it, as any other competent bender with 'fuel' could fend them off. Anyway, the combination of our styles created a full art with an official Move set. Firm handshakes all around.

Besides sandbending I learned about local poisons and healing herbs, fascinating subjects really. In the world of Avatar alternative ways of healing are actually effective and not a scam, so I made it my hobby to learn the subject.

With sandbending done and lavabending well on its way I needed more fighting experience, so I turned to bounty hunting. I get to hunt down bad guys and get paid for it? Sign me up! The Liusha tribe set me up with some of their contacts and so my four-year journey began.

I was a picky bounty hunter, I had to be. Although the work was legal for the most part a good bit of jobs involved capturing falsely accused innocent people. Before taking any contract extensive research was needed, but as a result, I did become a decent detective.

The killing was only reserved for the scum of the earth, you know the type r*pists, child traffickers, slavers, that sort of people. You can do things out of desperation but you don't do this sort of stuff out of desperation.

But that's beside the point. My contracts were always completed one way or another. People started calling me Vulcan for my liberal use of lavabending, so a cool name acquired.

The job took me all over the four nations. From Si Wong desert to the capital of fire nation, from south pole to north pole and everywhere in between.

On the journey, I acquired the northern and southern ways of waterbending and became a master lavabender. Additionally, I kept on learning about poisons and medicine from all over the world.

Still, those were not my biggest gains, my biggest gain was creating a new bending sub-element…

Bonebending