Post by hanabi on May 10, 2008 15:02:18 GMT -6
Hanabi stroked her chin in deep thought to the question, but her answer she knew was simple enough, yet complex. Hanabi had an almost Feral grin.
"Well, I started my life learning from my father in the west, but before I could ever have a home I mistook his criminal twin brother, my uncle for my father while I was training and he abducted me." She smiled as she started thinking back on her early life when, Zhifu, her father by birth right had raised her and taught her how to bend, tell she was seven, then her uncle had flown into her life swooping her away from the pastoral fields of the fire nations lushest retirement spot where her father had lived.
"I traveled with him and he taught me to fight while fleeing with me southwards heading along the coasts of the Earth Kingdom, I don't remember how long it lasted, but the sun rose and set many times, not once however without training." Her eyes flickered in the flame as she remembered the hellish training, how she had resented him tell he had saved her life and she learned that he had truly cared for her, her uncle Goh'Zhan whom she honored as a father.
"We eventually hit the coast and took a ship, it sailed southwards tell we marooned at the base of the Abandoned Southern Air Temple. I lived the majority of my life there, training with my Second Father, and practicing what my First Father taught me, never giving up, always practicing, always fighting in some way or another." She smiled grabbing a rock in her palm, tossing it hand to hand setting it at the edge of the fire, "The training was the most brutal in the world, my Second Father was kind, yet cruel, his lessons stressed the limit of my body and every night I would nurse bruises, cuts, wounds, broken bones. Yet not once would I ever be allowed to give up, every dawn I would awake anew, and again learn."
"I learned how to climb there, the place said to be impossible to climb, after a while I trained on climbing, solidly, scaling cliff faces flat and jagged, waterfalls that had to be traversed horizontally, and years passed learning how to climb it, when I was about to reach the top however I plummeted downwards, breaking my left arm when I crashed over a hundred feet into water that was only a few feet too shallow. I had to learn to bear pain and swim up, or drown in pain on the bottom of a shallow lake." She smiled remembering those days, how simple it was, how easy it was then, it had been just her and the mountain, both unwilling to budge.
"It all changed when my Second father, Goh'Zhan saw a ship in the distance, and I was forced to give up on a reattempt to climb to the Summit of the Abandoned Temple. We set sail again back towards the earth kingdom where we fled into the desert, to a town that both Fathers knew well." Hanabi paused thinking about it, "My second father had ruined my first fathers life, and same other way around, because my first father Zhifu was responsible for his brother Goh'Zhan being imprisoned and loosing close to thirty too fifty years of his life." Hanabi frowned, "Had I been stronger I could have probably stopped the turn of events that led them towards the end."
Hanabi frowned, "When they finally met, I was asleep, still recovering from my broken arm and totally unconscious, they fought over my head for... I dunno how long, a while I'd wager considering the two, but when I came up, my birth father, Zhifu saw me for the first time in years, but it had come at the wrong time, in the middle when he and Goh'Zhan where attacking each other." Hanabi's expression was rather somber and she continued to speak, "Goh'Zhan's blade stabbed into Zhifu, and I could only watch him find relief in his face that I was okay, that I was alive, even as he died. I not able to cope with it, fled like an idiot into the desert unprepared, I was trained for a lush mountain, not a Barron desert."
Hanabi looked thoughtful yet again, "At the same time, an assassin had come, I know not why myself, probably revenge for something that Goh'Zhan and Zhifu had done when they where younger. I wandered until, in a cave I laid on my back exhausted from the heat considering what I was going too do to escape the madness, when the said assassin found me, being trained as I was, I was able to defend myself to a degree, but exhausted and fighting an enemy with a poisoned blade, I had little match. That part to me is mostly a blur, but Goh'Zhan saved me, injured as he was from fighting his brother, and selflessly throwing his own life away to defend me, blocking a strike that would have killed me when the mad assassin stabbed at me, he impaled Goh'Zhan through the heart, and the edge of the assassin's blade raked my left eye light as a tiny cat scratch."
Hanabi's eyes where no longer on Haru, but the fire, "I was going to kill the assassin, I had every intent to do so, but Goh'Zhan threw me back not wanting me to become a killer, and even as he died, even as his last breath fled him, he slew the assassin and himself died. Leaving me orphaned."
Hanabi's flexed her arm, "I was still in a desperate shape, and passed out, but a Sandbender who called himself by the title 'Dune Hunter' found me, extracted the poison from my eye while I slept allowing my left eye, despite it's appearance to still work to a small degree. When I awoke he helped my bury my fathers and at there graves I mourned for a small while, but the Dune Hunter said to pass my own life away on grieving for the fallen would dishonor the fact that they died for me. the Dune Hunter taught me how to tell what is poisonous and not, how to find and make water where there is none, with only a water resistant peace of fabric and a bowl, how on the sea to get myself pure water without having to light my boat on fire. Then one day like the wind, I woke up and he had gone, just as he had come, without announcement."
"I not knowing much decided to retrace my journey and sailed back to the base of the abandoned Southern Air Temple, and scaled up, day in and day out, nothing but climbing, lodging myself at awkward angles to sleep, and climbing when I awoke, until I arrived at the Summit, the first person to have made the climb into the air temple without the use of a flying device or air bending. All I found where bones, and the signs of battle, and a box of trinkets, given to whoever buried the bones of the monk who had owned them in life. I at the time didn't think much of trinkets, but, I buried the monks bones, understanding the painful cost of war, and being left out for all time. I took the box, and with nothing left there, I began my arduous climb downwards. Towards my tiny two man ship." She smiled leaning back looking at the sky, laying on her back as she remembered the beautiful and solitary climb up and down the air temple, and the eerie feeling akin to having the eyes of ghosts on you.
"I'm no sailor, but I knew enough to get a ship into water, and how to get it going a general direction, and I sailed back towards the mainland, or what I thought was the mainland, and crashed on the shore of some islands, destroying my shoddy, time eaten ship. There I met a stranger who helped me for a time, never saying his name, leading me northwards away from the islands setting me north again, I had came and went from Kyoshi Island, in less then two days, and I wandered again through the desert of my fathers' demise, and kept going until I reached another port, and another, and Finally arrived in the Fire Nation." Hanabi looked ponderous now as she sat looking at the fire, she after a moment smiled and started to laugh.
"There I met a couple of oddballs, I don't remember there names, but I remember my barbaric nature, bad manners and violent fighting style put the guards on edge and made one of them cry, I 'practiced' too hard, to seriously, despite being my age they... lacked my training, but somehow we stuck together. I made some good money in a few illicit bets and bought a new ship, and crew, and cannons, and ammo. This time deciding if I was going to have a ship I didn't know how to use, that I was going to have a crew who could use it for me." Hanabi sounded proud of herself as she said this, leaning forward. "Sucks for me though, I got washed off of the ship when I was sailing back towards mainland, and I got washed down the streams, until you found me. So my ship is probably somewhere out there, somewhere. if it didn't get destroyed in the storm."
Hanabi pointed at Haru, "If not for you I might have drown in the river, or got washed into a Dam and crushed." Hanabi smiled at Haru, grabbing her meat which was now done perfectly off of the fire crushing some garlic over it, biting into it like a Barbarian, "Where do I come from? I come from the road traveled by warriors, I come from the raising of two fathers, I come from the Summit of the air temple with the blessing of dead monks, I come from the sea down the river ways. I believe I have answered your question."
Hanabi held the whole dead and cooked animal in one hand taking a humongous bite out of it, chewing loudly, grease dripping from the meat down her chin and hands as she gnawed on it, "Sho- 'ere 'o you, 'ome from?" she asked, speaking with her mouth full. A bit curious as to Haru's story, this meal tasting so good to her.