Chapter 4

"The next year and a half were wonderful. The number of people in the gang was growing, conflicts with other groups arose, but... they were mostly kids, teenagers, and it was easy to intimidate them, and if they remained stubborn, I took care of them. Waterbending is great in that the element itself changes a person, making us calm, mostly fluid, smooth... and that allowed me to quietly reach my goal, silently killing it, and sometimes leaving behind works of art that would shock many people. And all without any weapons! A flask of water and there you have a universal weapon! In six months, I managed to become the main authority, if you can call it that, although such things always amused me. What authority could I have when I had just turned fifteen? However, now I had a bunch of people under my command, each engaged in their own thing. By the way, I not only managed to subdue thieves. Basically, any teenager in the city paid me a part of their earnings for work. A portion, of course, went to the other leading members of our teenage gang, but most of the money was mine. I quickly bought myself a house with a basement, furnished the house, and spent most of my time in the basement. I had learned my lesson, bending and I, that's what was most difficult to take away from me, so both needed to be made as strong as possible so that no one could covet it, and if they did, they would quickly pay the price. Waterbending training is very easy to combine with physical training, you know! In my past life, I had a huge amount of martial arts training. I even tried to learn some. Karate, Aikido, Sambo, once even went to a wushu class."

"What's that?" Second asked me.

"Names of different martial arts. I told you. Want me to repeat?" I asked the voice.

"No, go on."

"I didn't become a master in any of the disciplines. And I didn't really aspire to that, to be honest. At least not at first. Later, when I turned twenty, I decided to do something where the goal was not fighting, but development and mastery. The choice fell on Wushu again. I practiced for three years before I died and was born again in this world. However, there, in the basement, I remembered all my Wushu training and started repeating it, simultaneously adjusting waterbending movements to my movements, and where the movements were too sharp, I replaced them with smoother ones myself. Waterbending almost literally helped me smooth out the rough edges of my skills, which were almost nonexistent. But gradually I remembered and repeated everything I had learned, all the movements and Taolu (the equivalent of katas for Wushu), gradually adjusting all this to waterbending. I didn't know then if this could be classified as martial arts, but I was getting tired and after a couple of months, for the first time I decided to look in the mirror made of ice, and saw myself. Muscles were growing, body flexibility too. In general, with desire, probably any bender can become very flexible, strong, and so on, but for waterbenders, flexibility becomes almost the best. Bending greatly helps in physical development if you set your mind to it. And water also helps to recover faster. Also, by the way, an interesting thing. At some point, when my whole body hurt terribly, covered in bruises, I was lying in the bathtub full of clean cool water, and with all my heart I wanted it all to go away quickly. What do you think happened? Right, I felt itching in my body and in the places where I had bruises. And when I looked at myself, I saw how the water literally healed all that I had talked about, all the injuries. But what didn't get into the water, alas, didn't heal, so I submerged myself several times, holding my breath. You know, after that, it became easier to train, because every evening I took a bath and fully recovered, shaking off the fatigue of training."

"But where did the bruises come from?" Second asked me.

"Where from? From the other guys I fought with during training. Without bending, they would defeat me quite quickly, but over time I became faster and stronger, the training was not in vain, I eventually started feeling like some kind of acrobat. Maybe I couldn't walk on my hands on a ball, but I started jumping to greater heights, performing acrobatic flips in combat... over time it became easier for me. Imperceptibly, I was getting stronger. This also applied to bending. In my basement, I trained most of the day, practicing both bending and Wushu. I learned to incorporate bending into hand-to-hand combat and combat with weapons. As for weapons, well, ice served as a weapon, but still. In the meantime, various things were happening in the world. There were rumors of some military campaign in the Southern Pole, even before me there was information about constant military clashes across Earth Kingdom territory in almost every Earth Kingdom province. Ba Sing Se was under active siege, everyone thought there was very little left and the great city of the Earth Kingdom would fall to General Iroh. All his campaigns were successful, and it was believed that this one would end just as successfully. I was making money and was ready to leave at any moment. I felt a little bit of trouble brewing with the little experience I had gained over this time."

"Let me guess, they started?"

"Of course, they did. I couldn't live peacefully for so long just like that. So, problems started soon. General Iroh lifted the siege from the main city of the Earth Kingdom."

"I thought all the other nations were supposed to be happy about this event.

"I couldn't care less, really. I had enough funds to buy a house in some city, even in Yu Dao, the Fire Nation colonies. Rumors had it that it was nice there. The main thing was that they didn't interfere with my training. But after the siege was lifted, a huge number of soldiers began to move towards safe lands, the number of Fire Nation soldiers in cities and on roads increased... in short, the number of problems multiplied many times over."

"How did it interfere with you?" Second asked.

"Because, for my searches as the Elusive Joe, they started with much more enthusiasm and in much greater numbers. I had to leave a little money for the guys as a farewell and flee with the rest. It wasn't easy to do it quietly at first, a couple of times I stumbled upon Fire Nation patrols, each time I had to kill them and leave my long-standing pyramids of sliced bodies."

"Yes, just after the siege was lifted, rumors about you started spreading again. There were many assumptions about what was going on."

"Oh yes, I tried. Then I decided to head further west, on the border with the desert. I really didn't want to go into the desert. There's almost no water there, and it's my main weapon. So I walked along the border, often along the riverbank. Oncoming Fire Nation patrols were also destroyed by me, if there was an opportunity, or I simply didn't come across them at all. My journey was long, you can't say anything about that. I walked very slowly, only about three hours a day, the rest of the time training and recovering in the waters of rivers and so on. I aspired to develop, but I couldn't figure out where to go next. However, soon I came up with a simple idea — ice, it's one of the aggregate states of water, solid. Water, on the other hand, is a liquid aggregate state. But there's also steam — the gaseous state of water. And I heard that waterbenders can extract moisture directly from the air. So why not? And then I started learning to control steam. After all, it's still water, just in another state. However, the other state also made itself felt, and it was very difficult to control it."

"But it didn't stop you, judging by the fact that there are rumors about you spreading even more in the population."

"Hmm. Persistence and hard work will crush everything, so soon I finally managed to gather moisture in the air, control steam, convert water or ice into steam, and use it. Steam, if used correctly, is a powerful and terrifying weapon. Not the most destructive, but enormous."

"Yes, your attacks became even more terrifying afterwards. You simply destroyed camps, buildings, large squads of Fire Nation soldiers. People died from steam explosions or received injuries incompatible with life."

"Yes. Steam is a dangerous phenomenon. But there are even more dangerous phenomena. Much less destructive, but much more eerie, terrifying, bone-chilling!"

"What do you mean?" Second asked me.

"Doesn't matter," First answered him, "it doesn't matter. He's here now, and his bending isn't a helper here!"

"Hey, don't you really know why I'm so exceptional, why they keep me in such conditions? Why I'm given water in minimal amounts, less than what any human needs to survive, why I'm kept over lava, why it's strictly forbidden for anyone to approach my stone cage, and even you are strictly prohibited from approaching my stone cage?" I asked, rising and approaching the thick stone grille.

"No. I wasn't told. They only told me the rules and that's it. They didn't tell me the reason."

"Really? Hm... hey, First, maybe you'll tell him? " I asked First, but didn't hear his answer. "You don't want to? Well then, I'll do it myself. Hey, Second. All this is done for the simple reason that I am the only known master of bloodbending..."