Fangelsi Academy. A paradise for the intellectual youth of the world. Right, more like a prison camp; where the best and brightest of the last three generations have been brainwashed into service for the powers that be. How else to control a world peacefully then by turning the future leaders into placid little dogs, all under the guises' of nurturing their great and invaluable potential. Yep, a camp for the mega minds that would one day be the puppet slaves to the real leaders.

Houjin hated every minute he was forced to be there. See, he'd discovered a very long time ago that the very knowledge that was supposedly instilled in this place was the very thing that kept him immune to the brainwashing. He was one of the rare student-cum-prisoners that was both resistant to the techniques, and had enough common sense to realize before it was too late what they were doing. Now, Houjin himself was nothing exceedingly special in the brains department; he was smart enough, above average easily; but nowhere close to the top 1% of society represented by the vast majority of the other students.

He was there for another reason. His unique 'skills' made him worthy for an entirely different reason. See, Houjin was one of the few 'elite' among the 'special'; better known as a prodigy amongst prodigies. Just what was his specialty you might ask?

Houjin was a fire bender.

The best in the school. Far better now, after 3 years of solid instruction by a renowned fire bending master, then anyone that had ever come before. In fact... he was better than his master. He was just modest, and smart enough, to keep that a secret. If he'd even hinted to his level of competency at his bending... they would have shipped him off for total reprogramming inside of an hour. The teen rather valued his free will, thank you very much, so he kept his abilities secret, only showing a muted level of his power just to keep up appearances.

To the 'regular' students, he was one of the strange, but highly privileged and therefore 'cool' group of oddballs that all seemed to have a strange fascination with one element or another. These outsiders had no idea just how deep the attraction ran. The very elements this group gravitated towards where their respective lifeblood. Fire. Water. Earth. Air. The four major elements. This was what made those like Houjin special.

There where ten of each element at the school, 40 total. Add in the 4 element masters, and the director for their program, there were 45 benders on campus at any time. Enough to wipe out a small country, given the amount of talent they all possessed.

And they were all supposed to do just that; be the super soldier sent in to decimate an opposition army. Even with all the technology of the world... an earth or water bender could destroy a regiment of tanks, air benders scatter ranks of troops; fire benders turn entire battle fields and cities into flaming wastelands and hellish death traps. They were amazing weapons in the wrong hands.

Mostly though, they wished to go home; while they still remembered having homes to go to. Very, very few volunteered to attend the academy; most were kidnapped from families that had no idea how to handle the powers growing within them. Or else grabbed right off the streets because their families had left them behind, unwilling to deal with what they were. Tragic... but the fate of many of the newest generations of bender. The old bloodlines had thinned, nearly become extinct. Knowledge of the past and the times when benders where respected and common was rare and difficult to come by; guarded jealously by the few families that retained it.

In this respect Houjin was an even rarer specimen. His family was indeed one of the old bloodlines; not of royal decent, no; but equally ancient. Not a child born to his family in forty generations had been denied this knowledge, nearly all where indeed benders of some degree of skill. And indeed he was an inheritor of that long line of power and skill; he was the first since the Forgotten Times to be born with the golden eyes that once marked fire benders, indeed the first in his family's recorded history to have the flaming hair that once marked those who were considered to be 'kissed by the dragons flame'. In the Forgotten Times one such as him would have been whisked away to the Temple of the Fire Sages and trained to be the grandmaster he or she was destined to be.

In this day and age however, there were no more Fire Sages, no more temples to be trained at. If you were lucky, you'd find someone that was like you, could train you to control your powers. If not... you either trained yourself and escaped the watchful eyes of the Recruiters, or you were taken to a 'school' like the Academy. Houjin had been unlucky; he'd been spotted heating up his lunch at school one day and reported to a Recruiter. He'd been taken from class and was on the way to the Academy not an hour later. That was nearly 4 years ago now.

Houjin lay alone in his room; his roommate of 3 years was spending the next three weeks in the infirmary under observation while his shattered leg and third degree burns healed. Poor Natsuru; whatever sadistic fuck decided that pitting an air bender against a fire bender as aggressive as Lon Feng needed to be removed from the gene pool. While he did enjoy the silence the time alone granted, he was starting to miss Natsuru's constant banter. The male was a chatterbox when he wasn't meditating, the type to not care one iota that Houjin was ignoring every word he said. It was his coping mechanism for this place; fill in the silence with cheer to remind him of home. That was one thing Houjin had in common with Natsuru, they both remembered that a home existed for them outside the Academy. A loving, warm place where they wouldn't have to fight all the time, friendships meant more than 'Well, I won't hit you from behind but I'm still planning to kill you now.' See the sun, feel its warmth, enjoy a warm summer breeze. A place where the water wasn't rationed to keep them under control, rooms weren't nearly freezing to subdue their fire, the ground was more than just steel and metal everywhere but the combat arenas.

Yep... Houjin absolutely hated this place. His time in the prison from hell was nearly over too. He'd made his mind; there was no turning back. Soon enough they'd realize he'd managed to smuggle a scrap of flint cloth from the arena, and once they did he was a dead man. Rule number one for the benders: You are allowed the tools for your bending only while in the arena. Any bender caught in possession of contraband of this type outside of designated areas or times will be punished. Severely.

Otherwise interpreted as: Do it, we kill you on sight.

It had happened once during Houjin's tenure. A water bender had managed to collect and save several gallons of water over the course of nearly a year and had almost made it out. He was nearly though the gates when a blast of lightning from the headmaster stopped him dead. Literally.

It a brutally effective way of drilling just how serious they where into the student's minds.

Just another reason the handful of benders that weren't utterly brainwashed hated the place.

All roughly 5 of them. All completely outclassed if it came down to a battle of numbers. Even with the top air and fire benders in the school in their ranks... they where boned if they tried to move as a group. 5 against 40 were impossible odds. Even the legendary Avatar of old would have his work cut out for him with those odds.

Alone... that was the key. A single person could move far easier, nearly undetectable if they knew what they were doing. Houjin was no fool; he understood the risks and knew he was no master of stealth. He was relying on a hopefully accurate mental timetable of the guard's rotation and schedules, a mental map he'd honed to perfection, and his flint cloth to get his fire going until his body had warmed enough to conjure his weapon on its own.

He settled deeper into the extra blanket he'd swiped off Natsuru's bed, relishing in the extra warmth, sighing softly, "Soon..."