On a forest on the outskirts of the Earth Kingdom, five young benders took refuge.

One of them is the Avatar – a sixteen year old girl named Young Hee. And as the Fire Nation’s princess as well, she naturally became its main pride and glory. Her elevated status should warrant her advanced skill, and as a matter of fact, the palace had no shortage when it comes to skilled mentors. But Young Hee has always been a free-spirited person, and her training was mostly skewed to her mother element.

She lived a very good life back home and was constantly given favorable reactions by everyone despite her slacking behavior, something she never really understood, until one evening, when her usual castle wandering allowed her to overhear one of her father’s meetings.

There is a plot for war to make Fire Nation as the supreme ruler of the world. And it will be Young Hee’s responsibility to start it all.

Maybe it was her Avatar nature to be uneasy with such a huge threat to peace, that the same night she fled the Fire Nation with her trusted dragon Zhang and her best friend Chan Yeol.

At eighteen, Chan Yeol is a teenager himself, but he took the responsibility of being the Avatar’s adviser and fire bending teacher. A war is not something he supports as well and something he definitely does not want his best friend to be a huge part of. He knew the best course of action was to plan for a resistance, all the while making sure Young Hee still gets her proper training. So, together they traveled the world to find other bending mentors.

But it was just too difficult for Chan Yeol to find legitimate masters that can educate Young Hee in their situation. The Avatar is well known by the whole world so she cannot train in one place for too long and risk getting caught by the Fire Nation. What he mostly got were teens and were not necessarily expert in bending. But he can vouch for these people and never once regretted his decisions.

Suho joined them first, a water bender they met on Serpent’s Pass. He recognized Young Hee at first glance despite her disguise, which freaked the hell out of Chan Yeol at first. He offered Suho almost half their money to keep him quiet, to which the latter declined with dignity. Suho claimed to be royalty since he was third cousins with the Northern Water Tribe’s current princess. Suho’s water bending skills are on an impressive level despite being only nineteen, so Chanyeol, not missing the opportunity, shared their situation and asked him to come along and teach the Avatar the art of water bending. Suho took the offer with pride.

The next one came three weeks later - Se Hun, a feisty air bender nomad who ran away from the Northern Air Temple at a very young age. Like Young Hee, he is also sixteen, and is equally free-sprited. He just liked the idea of travelling the world so he tagged along. He was a good kid and has a contemporary style of air bending, something that impressed Chan Yeol greatly. If only Se Hun place teaching Young Hee as his priority. There was still quite a lot of moments when he and Young Hee play and chase each other around instead of training.

Kyung Soo was the last to join, a 17-year-old boy from Omashu. He worked briefly as a junior architect and had experience in medium difficulty earth bending. He was recruited by Chan Yeol after observing him for a while as he interact with people and do his work. He wasn't very in on the idea of being a mentor, as he was not really confident about his own skill to teach another person let alone the Avatar. But when he saw Young Hee peeking at him from Chan Yeol's back, he found himself already nodding at the offer.

It had been almost half a year since the time Kyung Soo joined them. They have successfully concealed themselves quite impressively – a great feat considering they are teens without formal combat training, and had to mind about safety while struggling to gather resources.

Just recently, everything had been so far so good. Well, except maybe for the earth bender teacher who is currently trying his best to keep his cool.

“It’s not a test of how loud you can grunt, Young Hee. Fix your stance and try again.”

Kyung Soo sits on top of a large spherical mass of mud and rocks, his arms folded in front of his chest. For the last minute he has been ignoring the pleading stare of the young girl below him. It’s already past lunch break but she still cannot move the huge boulder from where it lay since this morning; let alone lift it. She had long dismissed that earth bending is the bane of her existence and hasn’t really shown improvement in the craft since the time she began her training.

But Kyung Soo doesn’t believe she’s “not born to do it” and refused to let her stop trying. Mastering all four elements isn’t a choice but a responsibility for the Avatar, after all. And it’s a matter of pride, also, because he’s beginning to question if he just at teaching.

“But sifu Kyung Soo, I am already hungry,” Young Hee whined in a voice similar to a baby.

“How many times did I tell you to stop calling me sifu?”

“What’s wrong with calling you sifu? You’re the only one who doesn’t like being called sifu. In fact, sifu Chanyeol likes it a lot.”

The mentor’s eyes narrowed ever so slightly.<