trans_9 | 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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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?"

Katara shook her head. "Where I'm from is the South Pole, where there's only water and ice, so that's why its waterbenders. The North pole is the same too. But in the earth kingdom there are Earthbenders, and in the Fire Nation, there are Firebenders. Its all specific to locations. There were air nomads too, but they're all extinct now."

He leaned back, enjoying the breeze while he thought about it. "We can shove water and air and rocks around with the Force, and there are some Force users that can electricity," he said, "but I've never heard of anyone doing it your way."

"It's one of those things that are specific to my world," Katara said, "but the ability doesn't stop there. Like I said, it really depends on how far you can go with your ability. I learned, by force, a way to control the water in people's bodies too. It can only happen during the presence of a full moon though, and it isn't something I like to think about. With each bender and their ability, it depends on how far they progress. My friend Toph is an earthbender, but she is so good she can actually bend metal too, since it also is nothing more than purified earth anyway."

She rolled a wave back. "Your force ability sounds remarkable too. I've met Luke, as I told you. He's one of the most centered people I've seen on the ship. I know my teacher would have learned much from him, but it is Obi wan that is teaching her. He taught Luke too, didn't he?"

“A long time ago,” Ben nodded, “when my dad was a few years older than us. Back when he was a lot less centered, to hear Aunt Leia and Uncle Han talk about it.”

Katara grinned. "Well, everybody has those times. Before I traveled and became a master waterbender, I was pretty bad at doing simple things at first, so my bending would get a little out of control. Whenever I got mad, anything with water or ice would start to crack! I'm sure your power was a little hard to control at first, wasn't it?"

He shrugged. "When I was little, I didn't use it at all."

"Oh?" She floated on the water a moment, looking at the boy. "Then when did you start to learn?"

"I was nine. My cousin came back from a trip and got me to open up."

"Your cousin?" Katara said. "Somebody on the ship?"

"Not exactly -- not from the right time."

"You were lucky...I actually had to travel halfway around the world to learn from a master Waterbender. Wouldn't even teach me at first either, because I was a girl. In the Northern Water Tribe, women are only supposed to use it for healing."

He couldn't help laughing at that, just because the idea of his mother, Jaina, Aunt Leia, and half the Order being stuck in the medbay was so ridiculous. "Just before I got dragged here," he said, "dad and I were on a planet called Dathomir. Until a few years ago, it was filled with women riding ten-meter tall reptomammals and shooting lightning at each other while men cleaned the tents and took care of the kids."

Katara shivered a moment. Only one woman came to mind when she thought of someone shooting lightning, and it wasn't exactly the warmest of memories right now. "That is pretty hard to believe. The only time I ever saw women as warriors in charge was on a remote island farther off from the Earth Nation."

Though it did sound pretty interesting, minus the throwing of lightning.

"It's a big galaxy," he said, unsure where her flash of concern had come from. "You travel far enough, you'll find pretty much anything."

"I still have a lot to learn about different galaxies," Katara admitted. "Our world hasn't gotten as far as star ships, like some of the other people I've met on the ship. We can really only stay within our world. The only real way of breaking through that is the spirit world, which is really as much a part of our realm as what most people consider the real world."

Basics

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