trans_9 | Basics

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Basics

There was a time to get sick. There was a time to bemoan the things that seemed like empty spots in her head. and there was time to sleep and dream of times that were better (or have nightmares of worse times too). But when these times passed, and eventually that was the case, there was nothing left to do but go back to what you were best at, and refine it to make it your own. Going to the podpop had been a start, and Katara capitalized on it the next day. A visit to the Sensorium and the scenery changed: she was at the desert lands they'd been left to brave after the library sunk and Appa had been captured. There was no gang here though, just miles and miles of sand and heat bearing down on her. To Toph and Aang, she was sure these circumstances were unpleasant, but to her and Sokka specifically, it had been alien and frustrating (it had helped Sokka that he was strung out on Cactus juice and she was fixated on keeping the group together at the time). She had also made sure there would be no water nearby, and so her pouch was also gone.

The morning was spent in quiet meditation on the sands. Her mind was full of questions and brimming with thoughts, but she momentarily displaced them from her mind. She was uncomfortable, sweaty and hot, but stayed in deep meditation, moving from time to time so she wouldn't cramp up. Once she'd seen the sun position itself to indicate noontime, Katara rose, and her attire was that of her firebending disguise: she would need it.

The exercising in the Weirding way, however, required targets, so the desert was now strewn with several dummies. Here Katara incorporated her Bene Gesserit martial art with that of the training she'd practiced in Will's gym: she catapulted herself upward, struck with deadly precision and then rolled into a new defensive stance, ready for the next attack. It had been awhile since Katara incorporated her waterbending flexibility with the Weirding way, and truthfully it was seldom Katara practiced the art, fully aware (thanks to deadly robots) how damaging it could be. She bent her legs a bit and brought her arms up again, using her force against the dummy and knocking it backward with what looked like minimal effort. She knew it would be awhile before she was an expert in the Weirding Way, but that was more than reason to practice, with all they had encountered.

When she had worked up a definite sweat, she went back to the flexibility part: she flipped, jumped, turned several times in the air and, on her back, curled her legs upward and leapt back to position. She was stinky and definitely perspiring, but that was easily taken care of if she decided to turn the Sensorium into a spa, not that she was in a big hurry to do so.

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He nodded. "Something like that."

He seemed to be very quiet now. "What are you thinking about?"

"About how the ship chooses the crew," he lied casually.

Katara, though she could not remember the name of her teacher, had learned from her the notice ques from people, especially when they were lying or scared. When he answered, she made a face.

"Who can tell. But is that really the truth?"

He smiled. "To dust off a cliche -- sure, from a certain point of view."

Katara looked at him warily. He was a really...strange kid, and not a straightforward talker as much as his father.

"Why wouldn't you just say what you mean?"

The full answer would have been something along the lines of because my dead mother is here, but for some reason the ship pulled her from back when she didn't get along with my father, so the Force knows how she'll think about me, and also have I mentioned that there's a lump in my throat because I've spent the last two years missing her more than anything else? But he wasn't lying when he offered a simple: "We just met."

"I see," Katara said. That would make sense: it wasn't like he was going ton go confide all of his secrets to her upon their first meeting or anything. Whatever he was going through and what he was thinking about, it was probably his own private thoughts.

So how would she proceed to make things less awkward?

"Hey...do you ever go to the beach where you're from?"

He cocked an eyebrow at her. "Not really. Coruscant's one big city, and we haven't set the Shadow down near the ocean since we started traveling."

"Well, would you like to? I've seen a few nice ones...and considering the circumstances, it might be nice to take a dip, don't you think?"

He grinned. "Done with the desert so soon?"

"The desert was for training," Katara said, sticking out her tongue. "nit exactly where I go to unwind. Unless you have a better suggestion."

He shrugged. "Sure. How do you change the room?"

"You pretty much put the idea in yoiur head of the place you want to go, and it recreates the rest. It helps to have a really good memory. but usually the Sensoriums are very good at that."

"Then go for it," he said, wondering how it would feel to have a world change around him.

Katara closed her eyes, and though mos of the sand disappeared, a bit of it still stayed, shifting under their feet for the looser bit of sand that was in Ember Island, the place that housed Zuko and hi s royal family om certain family outings. It was where the gAang had trained to ready their big fight in the Fire Nation, and that was where they had also began to unwind and really get to know each other. Looking at it now, one would hardly guess that farther off from this place a war that would shake the very foundation of where they all lived would take place. Katara's outfit changed, and she now had on her underwrappings. Ben could decide what he wanted to wear: she knew little about what inter-dimensional boys wore when they went swimming.

"This all right?" She asked, winking.

The room cooled, and the dry, dusty desert air was swept away with a rush of sea breeze. It had the clean, fresh smell of a world without galactic industry.

"Fine," he said, smiling. "You did a pretty nice job with this place." He stripped off the top half of the plantsuit, tying the arms around his waist as though he were a maintenance worker on a short break. "Anything hungry in the water?"

"Thanks!" Katara said brightly. "No, there's was nothing at our spot in Ember Island. If we'd landed on Kyoshi Island, it'd be a different story, but i don't think either of us want to deal with the Unagi."

Had it not been for memory of something that was gone now, Katara wouldn't have thought much of Ben with half the plant suit suit off. But thanks to puberty and a certain situation, Katara realized that Ben was both near her age and fairly good looking. That, however, was all Katara was allowing herself to think, refusing to stare except for a sidelong glance, and turned to the water.

"Race you to the next wave!"

Ben had been taken from a book written by Aaron Allston rather than Troy Denning and therefore had zero hormones when primarily concerned with fighting evil and whatnot. It was an occupational hazard of being a relatively new character in a round-robin series. Narrative abuse of the fourth wall aside, the water looked perfect after the heat of Katara's desert practice area. "You're on," he smirked, and, with a Force-assisted boost, dashed off the sand and into the water.

"Cheater!" Katara said, giggling. Well, she could cheat too: she hadn't learned her training for nothing. Where it had looked as if he'd gotten a head start, she suddenly matched him, grinning. They both reached the water at the same time, but Katara gathered the water up and propelled herself forward, surfing on it lightly, laughing.

"It's my element!" She said, rising in the air and falling again.

Ben paused in the surf to watch her. "Your element?" he echoed, filing this away under both people to never swim a race against and other people's Force traditions do interesting stuff but none of them get to use a lightsaber.

"Yes," Katara said, taking a swan dive into the water again, and using the water to bring herself right up again. "I'm a waterbender, so I can use water to do almost anything!"

To prove her point, she froze some of the water below her and made a makeshift surf board. She grinned at him, and motioned for him to join her on the board. "Think you can keep your balance?"

He jumped out of the water, using the Force both for extra power as he leapt and to soften his descent, so that he landed lightly in front of her on... more water. It was holding its shape like a block of ice, but it was exactly the same temperature as the rest of the sea. "I can handle the balance part," Ben said, with a confidence born of training with a monastic order of gymnastic space wizards, "but how are you doing that?"

Katara grinned, using her hands to propel herself forward. "I'm a waterbender. Some of us are born with the ability, but how it progresses is up to the person. In my world we had a war to contend with, so I had to learn to be a master waterbender very quickly. I learned through scrolls, a master bender, and some things I had to learn on the fly since we were always being chased around. Things like balance, movement, concentration: that comes with being one with your element if you want to be really good at it."

She grinned. "But I could ask the same for you, you know. I knew the force was powerful, my teacher told me so, but I never got to see it applied before."

"We'd say our balance, movement, and concentration comes from tuning into the Force," he observed dryly, turning around to face her, "but running around obstacle courses helps, too. What I don't get is how you're connected only to water. Is it like that for everyone?"

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Oh, how I hate you LJ

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