Persussy

This stemmed from a conversation I had with a friend while half asleep so don't judge. Feel free to lmk if you want a part 2 by leaving a like or commenting, because I have a lot more where this came from.

Imagine this: You've just been hit by a speeding truck. Now, you're in the world of Avatar the Last Airbender, with bending powers! Great! But, you don't want to be bored. hell, you want to cause some chaos. Get in a bit of trouble. So, here are some recomendations on what to do depending on your bending style. Have fun. :)

WATER

So, obviously, there's the option of blood bending. That's like... the simplest answer, because in Korra it's already illegal, but, I'll have a bit of fun with it too. I imagine that you'd have a giant garden full of a bunch of incredibly deadly and poisonous plants. You may be thinking "Hold on a second, plant bending isn't a thing, and even then, it's a little unoriginal, you're just copying the benders in the swamp", but HEAR ME OUT. These plants contain pollen, so, you specifically chose plants where the pollen is the deadly bit. And the pollen contains moisture. So, you just like... surround yourself with this giant field of super deadly pollen. Like, anybody within 10 meters just dies. Or, if you want, your water supply can just be poison. Think Percy Jackson in Tartarus. Just like... forcing poison into somebody's throat.

AIR

Once again, this has a obvious answer, that I will ignore. While suctioning the air out of areas or compressing it is a really creative idea (thank you atla team) this is for completely original ideas. This stems from the fact that 'air' bending is never really specified as to what the air it's bending is. Is is the specific combination of gasses that form our atmosphere? Or is it just gasses in general? I doubt it's the prior because of one detail: Aang was trapped in an iceberg for 100 years. Even though the world of ATLA isn't nearly as industrial as our own, they still have large industries. And I severely doubt that over 100 goddamn years they haven't developed enough to even slightly shift the ratio of gasses in their atmosphere. So, I have a couple ideas for this one, but I'll just do one for now. I'm sure you've noticed that whenever you get an injection, the person prepping the needle will always make sure there's no air in there, right? That's because lots of gasses in your blood stream is a biiig no no, medically speaking. Those air bubbles stop the blood flow, and damage your tissues. I'm sure you can guess where this is going. See, on a normal scale, this doesn't do much, but, if, per se, an air bender was to rapidly expand the oxygen in your red blood cells, that would form thousands of air bubbles. All cutting off the victims blood stream, and leading to, what I can only assume to be, a slow death.

FIRE

This idea was developed in partnership with my one of my friends, R (hidden for her privacy, love you babes). This comes from the fact that in practice, fire bending is more similar to heat bending- it's just superheating the air to create controlled flames. Where the thermal energy comes from, god knows. Maybe it's why meat is so popular in the Fire Nation. But, anyways, the idea of this has to with pressure in a container. You probably already know this, but I will refresh the memories of those who've been out of school for a while, or haven't learnt it yet. When a container is heated up, the air particles inside gain thermal (heat) energy, which is then transferred into kinetic energy (movement). The particles, with the kinetic energy move faster, and reduce the density. They gain energy, and crash against the wall of the container faster, and with more force, increasing for as long as it's heated, until, eventually, there is too much pressure, and the container explodes. Well, guess what. Your head counts as a container. And the thing is, with a fire bender doing this from far enough away? By the time you realise it isn't just a headache, it's too late for you.

EARTH

Okay, so for this scenario, imagine this: it's during the time when the fire nation's trying to take over a major city. You're a (fairly) experienced earth bender, and Fire Lord Ozai has just paid you whole ton of money to weaken the city to take it over. So, you get your way into the city, and you need a way to weaken them. What do you do? You can't fight them head on, it'd be a 1 v like, 1 billion. So, you come up with a plan: you ruin their water supply. But, in a way that you can't be detected in. See, I assume that earth bending applies to all minerals, due to (and I may be misremembering, but) Toph's explanation of metal bending- finding the minerals in the metal and controlling those. And a type of mineral are nitrates. Nitrates are one of the most creative ways to ruin a water supply. See, algae love nitrates. An excess of nitrates causes large amounts of algal bloom, which means that all that algae? It sucks up all the sunlight, so all the other plants can't photosynthesize. This already wrecks the ecosystem, and it only gets worse. All those micro-organisms- think single cellular bacteria- will feast on all this algae, using up a bunch of oxygen in respiration. Now, not only is this city's water supply packed with algae and micro-organisms that are almost definitely not safe to drink, but it's also low in oxygen. This'll weaken people so much- either from dehydration, or diseases from the algae and micro-organisms- to the point that the fire nation gets in, and you get your paycheck.