Master Yourself (Private/Training)

Kuzon wandered in the desert of the Earth Kingdom. The heat from the sun beating down on his bare upper body, his tanktop wrapped around his head as a turban to protect it from the direct radiation from the sun. He wandered with no real goal in mind, this was just further resiliency training, wandering through the desert. He was thirsty though, moreso than he had ever really been. Concentrating and moving his arms in a flowing manner, he managed to draw what limited moisture was in the air into his mouth. The cool liquid touched his tongue and relieved his entire being as it travelled down his throat. Looking to the horizon, he could see something traveling his way at high speeds. Multiple somethings. After a few moments, he had three metal cars circling him, kicking up high amounts of dust and debris. Once they stopped, around ten men got out wearing masks, each holding an electric prod or electric gloves. "Look, you really don't want to do this." Kuzon raised his hands in a placating manner. One of the guys let out a short laugh, "Heh. You bet your ass we do. Bending scum." The man was obviously well versed in combat,
Three of them lunged at him, he blocked their open palms by pushing them to the side, causing one of them to electrocute the other. One of them came from behind and managed to electrocute him which only served to anger him slightly. Suddenly, they all found themselves encased in sand. "Listen up, I will NOT stand for this sort of blatant terrorism on the people of the earth nation. Oh, and don't worry, I'll send the proper authorities to collect you." As he said this, the sand surrounding the men hardened into solid rock. He then continued his trek into the desert.

He could see Avatar Kuzon from a distance, but his presence was concealed. Zach gave one of the metal cars a mighty pull of magnetic force. If Zach was anchored to something, it would have been enough to bring the car hurtling at him. However, since he was so much smaller and lighter than one of the cars, he was pulled. His body hurled toward the car at blinding speed with the momentum of the weight of the car many fold on his body. What resulted was simple. The car did a full flip from the initial force, but then Zach hurtled toward one of the people who were attempting to assault Kuzon. A drop kick with the force of many tons struck the individual on the chest just before he was wrapped in sand by Kuzon, and without restraint, the force of the kick would have blown open his chest cavity. Instead, Zach performed a powerful magnetic push on the car, causing it to flip again, and the result was something similar to a big brother pulling his punches. The man was hit with enough force to go flying into the car behind him, but not enough to do lethal damage. Meanwhile, as a result of his push, the car flipped once more, the opposite direction this time, and Zach performed a graceful back flip midair landing next to Avatar Kuzon.

"Ah, Avatar Kuzon. Seems you did not need my help after all!" Zach roared with laughter, performing a small victory dance at which he was actually quite adept. "I apologize for that. I've been tracking them for a few days now to try and find the heart of their organization. Had I seen a bystander, however, I would have taken care of them beforehand. But ah! No matter. We'll just interrogate them the old fashioned way and perform some good ol' police work. Anyway, how are you? What are you doing out here?"

Kuzon watched the grand entrance of the Dai Li's head honcho while he wrapped up his would be attackers. With a wave of his hand and a slightly significant amount of mental concentration, he moved all of the stone coffins in a line in front of him, each with nothing but a head showing. "Ah, Lord Zach, I didn't expect to see you out here either! I was simply getting to a safe distance from the city, I'm going to be attempting some dangerous training soon and I didn't want to cause unneeded damage. But, yes, beforehand we can interrogate these men." He would turn his gaze to one of them, hardening his eyes, needles made of water would form around the mans head, simply an intimidation tactic, but he could always drown the man if need be. 

Looking to the captain, he would nod that he was ready to begin with their questioning.

Zach seemed rather cheerful on the somewhat dreary occasion that this was. "Ah! I get to show the Avatar how the Dai Li perform interrogations huh? Even better! And here I was thinking I'd just transport these guys back to Ba Sing Se... No, no! This will be much more fun!" Zach winked. He acted this way for two reasons. The first was because it was just who he was. An energetic young man who loved to meet people. The second, however, was calculated. If he made it appear like he was desensitized to intimidation tactics, or even torture, it tended to make his subjects more... malleable. "Now, Avatar Kuzon, first, you mentioned dangerous training, so... you know what they say, I'll show you mine if you show me yours?"

Kuzon shook his head some at the antics of his new partner for the day, "Sure, though, I may kill you. Ahh, I'm sure it'll be fine!" He said this nonchalantly, barely showing a care for the fact he just said he may kill the other man. By now, the criminal was crying, obviously afraid for not only his life, but probably the lives of his family. He seemed to have hoped the Avatar would be able to spare him of this rather morbid fate, but the very symbol of that hope was now taking part in his torture.

Looking to the man he sent the water into his nose, mouth and ears. It was obviously an extremely painful process, but after around thirty seconds, Kuzon pulled it back out. It was tinged pink with blood however. The water then dissipated. "I have severed several important veins and organs inside your body. For each honest answer you give my partner here, I will heal one of them. But, for each lie, one of your friends here will die. And trust me, I'll KNOW when you're lying." The man looked afraid, but seemed fullhardy. "You won't do anything! You're the avatar!" Kuzon simply looked at him, his eyes flashing white as he fired a blast of pure spirit energy into the thug on the far side, vaporizing his head and the top half of the boulder he was sealed inside. The glow faded from his eyes and he looked at the man, who was now quivering.

Zach looked at the remaining two thugs, an expression of pure enthusiasm. Did he want to vomit slightly? Oh, certainly, what he was doing was horrible. But, well, he was used to having to do things like this all the same, and his expression showed no trace of his horror. In fact, he seemed to be downright thrilled to be taking part in such shenanigans. "Well now! What an exquisite show of power put on by our own Avatar Kuzon! Here I was thinking the Avatar would stop me doing what I wanted to do to you... but he's worse! Who'd've guessed?" Zach laughed slightly manically before continuing his sentence. "Now, now, now... I only have two of you left, so don't go daring him anymore... I need at least one of you. But on with the questions, no? We'll start with an easy one." Zach feigned an expression of thought for a few moments. "Okay, alright, how about this? There's clearly some organization here... are you guys led by someone?"

Kuzon paid no mind to the charred remains of the man he had just killed in really, cold blood. He had killed before, he would not stand for someone to call him a liar to his face. Listening to the leader of the Dai Li ask a question, he would look to the man. "Y-yes... But that's a-all I know! I swear!" The man stuttered his response. Kuzon gave him a solidly cold look, one that was reserved for someone who lied to him. "That's strike one." Was all he said as he place his palm on the face of the next in line and began applying direct heat to the man's face. "Now, i'd say you've got around 45 seconds to tell the truth before I melt your buddies face off." He said over the screams of pure agony that permeated the air. 

Kuzon hadn't stopped to think about what sort of effect his methods were having on his colleague, but he didn't really care if the man approved or not. The man in question quickly spoke back up, "Okay, Okay! His name is A-Amon! He goes by Amon!" Kuzon would let go of the mans head, he wasn't dead but he would now be permanently scarred and had passed out from the pain. "Was that so hard?" was all the slightly psychotic Avatar said in return.

Zach rocked back on his heels, exhaling deeply. "Ahhhhhh... the smell of truth! Now, now, you know the drill! I have more questions." He glanced at Kuzon playfully. "Alright, hmmm.... what's next? Maybe a slightly harder one? Where do you meet Amon?" Zach would pause here for Kuzon to wiggle the truth out of him before continuing.

His questions continued over the next few minutes, each time waiting politely for Kuzon to reach the truth by whatever means were necessary. In fact, if Kuzon decided to kill one of the remaining, he'd unflinchingly continue his onslaught of questions with whoever was left. "Where is Amon now?"

"Where is he usually?"

"What is his schedule like?"

"Are there more patrols?"

"Are you all responsible for the anti-bender propaganda, or a result of it?"

"How many others are there?"

His list of questions would probably continue past the Avatar's patience, but he'd continue even past these and ask more and more, coming up with as many as he could. Usually, these people killed themselves before Zach could get his hands on them, but the Avatar's immobilization must have prevented that. If the Avatar's unrest were made apparent, or he ran out of questions first, whichever was first, he'd turn to Kuzon. "Well, that was fun! Very key information. Now, hopefully your training doesn't kill me so I can write a report, no?" He'd chuckle. It was about then that he'd start becoming giddy and excited again. He wondered what kind of training the Avatar of all people would consider to be so dangerous.

Kuzon would look at the man as Zach asked his next question. "I don't know!" Kuzon sighed, "He is telling the truth." He would then hold his palm on the face of their current, well, now past interrogation target. Pulling his hand away from the man's face, one would notice a feint movement in the air coming from it. The man would then make gasping sounds before inevitably dying from lack of any air in his body. Looking to the remaining man, well, the one who wasn't unconscious, Kuzon would ask him the same question. The man gave the same reply. Kuzon simply sighed. "Useless." As he spoke, the earth around the thugs would turn back to sand and would grind whatever was left of their bodies into dust in a whirlwind.

Turning back to Zach, Kuzon would nod, "Well, I'm going to learn to tap into pure cosmic energy!" He said as he plopped down on the sand and began to meditate, letting the energy of both the physical and spirit worlds intermingle in his body. He had been in this state before, and he felt the underlying ability to enter it ever since he learned energybending. After several minutes of sitting there, he would open his eyes, they were now glowing with pure white energy.

Zach would sit down in front of Kuzon when he sat, partly because he didn't want to stand there awkwardly when Kuzon was just chillin' on the ground. He sat and watched intently after he did so however, realizing Kuzon had started to meditate. Just before Kuzon opened his eyes, it would dawn on Zach. "Ahhhh... the Avatar State, that's what you mean by pure cosmic energy... that must be what the spirits were talking about that one time..." His face lit up, visibly excited, and that was when Kuzon opened his eyes.

Immediately, Zach was somewhat intimidated. He had not seen the Avatar State, nor had he any idea what it did other than making someone stronger. "But what does it do...?" It seemed the Spirits were attracted to this cosmic event. Zach could feel their presence on the Astral Spiritual Plane, and could feel that they were just as excited as him. So... they're connected...? But he wasn't one to let his intimidation show. "Alright. Let's train." Now, he stood and readied himself.

Seeing the change of persona from Kuzon, Zach immediately sprang to action, ready to defend himself. It was no surprise then, that he was able to act in time when the metal vehicle projectiles were slung at him. His first instinct was to push back on them to deflect them, but he learned very quickly that this was far beyond the abilities of a typical bender. The result was the shurikens having more forward force than he, and opposing magnetism compounded with the force of an Avatar in the Avatar state pushing on them sent Zach hurdling hundreds of feet into the air, possibly faster than he has ever gone. By his perspective, Avatar Kuzon became little more than a dot. "Ahh... so that's what it does..."

Now, however, with this newfound force given to him, he pulled on the shurikens in the ground. He pulled hard, as hard as he could, and he lurched to a stop. The next sequence of events was rather odd. The shurikens lurched in the air toward him, and he toward them. It was the strongest act of bending that Zach had ever made, because it added the force of his bending, the avatar's, AND the force of the weight of the shurikens all together. That Avatar floated between he and the Shurikens, and they would strike him from below as Zach began his downward dive.

Upon his target launching into the air far, far above the big bubble he had made, he would launch it up towards him. Then, once it got close, he would shoot a massive bolt of lightning right into the water. This would cause arcs of said lightning to dance around the massive orb that, once it reached its peak, above where Roku was, it would break apart and begin to rain down electric raindrops. Kuzon himself didn't even need to focus on them as they simply were automatically bent around him. He then rose into the air to meet his quarry. He was running on pure instinct, but once he got higher into the air, he would pause and clutch his head. He was fighting to control himself, but at the moment he was running on a pure instinct, pure and primal. The avatar state was used to defend the Avatar in times of trial and personal danger, so, that's what it thought it was doing.

Looking down at his now adversary, Zach's heart was gripped slightly with panic. A sandstorm was brewing. He theorized that it had something to do with the Avatar State and the sudden concentration of energy. It must have disturbed the pressurization of the air in the surrounding area and well... things about to get dangerous. But for now, he had to avoid Kuzon's attack. Seeing the orb of water hurled at him, Zach pointed both arms and feet out in front of him and forced out as much energy as he could muster in the form of fire. Being so high in the air in the desert with the lack of moisture caused a very powerful effect, one he was not used to, and he propelled himself away from the orb.

As the orb of water exploded into electrical rain, Zach flipped himself over, spewing his torrents of flame both above him and at the Avatar, timing it with his hesitation at moving. Normally, water beat fire - however, water evaporated much more quickly in arid landscapes, and with the heat of the fire that Zach had produced, the rain that was immediately above him would evaporate before it could hit him, and leaving the lightning without a medium, he'd avoid that danger too. He used these flame jets to propel himself - you guessed it - directly into the sand storm.

The avatar would follow his target into the storm, using sand bending to control it to move around himself. He had lost the first mental struggle to regain control. He just hoped he managed it in time, before something awful happened. The sandstorm that was beginning to brew was still small when compared to most storms in the desert here, but it was sizable enough to hide a person and/ or cause damage to those ill-prepared. Kuzon in his frenzied state simply followed his target, using his connection with the sand to sense where the man was going. He would then coat his body in constant, massive arcs of electricity. The lightning arcs would then spread through the sandstorm around him, giving it a good extra 20 to 30 feet of reach than it was getting normally. Kuzon wasn't in sight of Zach, but he was surely gaining on the man. He fought against himself though, harder than ever, hoping he'd break free in time.

When Zach entered the sandstorm, he was surrounded by the immense power of a natural phenomena. He knew little about science, and what he did know was simply taught to him by various tutors, and only because they related to the elements he learned a bending mastery of. Beyond that, he knew little, but the topics fascinated him and he hoped to learn more once this anti-bender menace was dealt with. It was about time he counterattacked with his own lightning. So, he extinguished the flame jets coming from his hand, and he reached in his pocket and put a coin in his mouth. Next, now slowing down substantially because he was operating with only the jets in his feet, he had to prepare his move.

Zach began gathering lightning, first produced from his own body, but then it grew beyond. Lightning could occur naturally in sandstorms, and he was counting on the hope that the Avatar did not know that, consciously, because of the internal struggle he seemed to be facing. It was a similar process for how it occurred in clouds, as the dust particles that water clung to to form the cloud bounced off of each other in low pressure systems, building up energy before it was discharged. The same happened in low-pressure sandstorms. Though it took a lot of energy to manifest a lightning strike, more than this storm could produce in a single place. Zach drew that energy in, all of the static electricity throughout the entirety of the storm, using both his electromagnetism and his lightning abilities to harness the power of mother nature.

His moving through the storm at such massive speed is what allowed him to do this, and the fact that lightning was drawn to lightning - the reason that metal rods are used to ground electricity for lightning rods. Just as Zach was about to hit the ground in his swan dive, he spit his coin from his mouth and repelled it with his magnetic abilities. He had to push hard, but it reversed his momentum like a slingshot, and flipped his body around, hurling him back toward where Avatar Kuzon must be. Then, as the light from the Avatar's lightning began to pierce the sand, Zach unleashed pure power at the man. It was a massive feat of stunning beauty, something that more than quadrupled the strength of what Zach would naturally be capable of producing. He did not know it, but Kuzon could easily overpower this if he had mastered his Avatar state, but seeing as he had not yet done so, Zach would be able to pull this off.

The result, unless somehow interfered with, would be the collision of Zach's lightning (plus that of all of the static electricity in this storm) and Kuzon's lightning. It would be a massive explosion, repelling all of the sand nearby, but Zach would be horrified as he lost control. Though he repelled enough lightning to stop an unfortunate death, he was electrocuted badly, with enough damage to put himself into a coma for months. If caught in the blast, Kuzon would be significantly injured too, but due to the resiliency of his Avatar State, would perhaps be able to maintain consciousness.

If he did, and he did not gain control now, he could coupe de grace Zach right now with no resistance.








He'd die.

The power that struck at Kuzon was nothing less than a force of nature. The massive blast would have surely been enough to kill a normal human, but, luckily he was in the avatar state. This state allowed his body to naturally react to the situation to defend himself slightly against the shock. His arms instantly moving, his own lightning stopped and his arms would bend the incoming lightning around himself. Not only this, but his body became encased in spiritual energy, the blue energy covering himself as his eyes continued to glow a pure white color. With the blast, the storm was totally blown away, or at least, it centered the two benders in the calm of the storm they had created. Both falling from the sky. Kuzon raised his hands above his head, which meant they were facing the ground, and summoned sand to catch both of them in a form of cushion. 

Once he landed, he would slowly stand up, the spirit energy having protected him from most of the landing. His body having returned to normal, he weakly limped over to Zach's body. Kneeling next to his broken form, Kuzon would briefly activate the avatar state again, but in his mastered form, his eyes only flashed white for a moment before he drew water from the sky and used it to surround Zach's body. The now floating bubble began to glow as it healed his wounds slowly. Once this finished, Kuzon would release his hold on the bubble as he collapsed. Unconsciousness taking him over. Zach would wake soon enough, he was fully healed after all.

Zach awoke as he inhaled a bit of sand, choking himself awake. Opening his eyes, he saw that the sand storm had largely abated, and he marveled at the power of Kuzon. The man was indeed powerful enough to cause a natural phenomena, and he simply smiled, impressed. He stood, walking over to Kuzon, wondering why he felt so little pain, and he wondered for a brief moment if he'd been healed. He wondered for another moment how he had manifested so much unadulterated power as well, counting himself lucky that his quick thinking allowed him to do so. He wasn't really able to fight back at the avatar, but he was impressed with himself that he even went mostly unscathed until the end, when truthfully, he just couldn't outrun him anymore and was forced to counterattack.

Zach walked over to Kuzon, and throwing him over his shoulder, sent out pings with his magnetic fields, locating the metal cars. Once he did so, he pulled, hard, and hurtled toward them, impressed at the improvements he'd been making at the range of his magnet bending. It was, perhaps the skill he was most adept at, and he'd created it himself. He sat Kuzon in the seat of one of the cars and himself in the driver seat, wondering how in the hell he was supposed to operate these vehicles.

Kuzon woke slowly as he was placed in the metal contraption. Taking a moment to gather himself, shaking his dizzy head. Looking over at the man who was looking confusedly at the mechanics of the moving machine in front of him, Kuzon would chuckle slightly before holding out a hand. The car would lift into the air and begin moving towards the Earth Kingdom. "I thank you for assisting me in that endeavor. I do apologize if I caused you any unneeded duress. But, I have now gained a oneness with the universe I had not had previously." He would smile serenely, it was an amazing feeling, to be so connected with everything as he now felt. He knew little of what would be happening in the future, but he knew that now he could handle anything. He only had a few more things to work on from now on. 


Namely, a few new techniques he had in mind, but first, "I believe I shall repay you when we get back to the kingdom. It is only fair after all." He said this somewhat cryptically, as it was quite obvious he didn't value material items, and it was clear to most that he had not many funds, so many assumed he had little to offer in the terms of gifts. Checking back over himself, it would seem his body had not been too damaged from the fight, just his bending, but with his new connection to the Avatar State, it allowed his Chi to recover quickly too.

Once they had arrived and moved inside the courtyard, Kuzon would stop, thinking for a moment and then nodding to himself. "If you would be so kind as to step in front of me, I will offer you your gift." He spoke calmly, even though he wasn't entirely sure what he was doing would work. If Zach moved in front of him, he would place a thumb on the mans forehead, and then one on his chest, right above the heart. His eyes would then glow a brief flash of golden before Zachs too would flash in color. Once it was done, both would feel a wave of exhaustion rush over them, as though they had just finished jogging full tilt for over three hours. Panting, Kuzon would explain himself, "That.. Was my gift. You are a Sand Bender now." He would continue to pant as he waved over his shoulder, off to take a well deserved bath and nap.