江 Xiu 秀 Jiang Zhu

Age: 17
Gender:Female
Height: 5’4”
Weight: 125 lbs
Eye color: Crystal blue
Hair: Mahogany
Nation: Northern Water Tribe
Style: Basics of Tai Chi (Water bending basics.) unwittingly, balance and body placement of classical ballet. (Not in existence.) Incorporation of sand bender techniques. We’ll call it Xiu Fu.
Condensed History (Bending style explanation.): Born to the Northern Water Tribe, Xiu is no exception to the iron fisted traditions upheld by the tribe the young girl was born into. Since a young age she showed talents in water bending, as well as an obvious knack for a mind that could easily be steered to think of military tactics. She often loved to play games like Pai Sho, or King of the Snow Hill, and would spend a good portion of the game sitting and thinking before executing the ideas that would eventually come to mind. Unfortunately, despite that with proper training she could have been an excellent addition to the military forces of the Northern Water Tribe, her talents went more-or-less unnoticed for one simple reason: Xiu was a female, and according to traditions she was not allowed to fight.

Though stubborn, her need of bending coerced her to learn the art of healing, but the simplicity of the task made it something she easily mastered by the age of ten, becoming the Healing Hut's star pupil. It just didn't give her a water bending fix, she wanted to know more, be able to do more, to expand her skills to heights that not even she knew of yet! Boredom caused her to seek out training in fighting technique, but of course he request was instantly denied by any man she asked, even her own eldest brother out of fear of Master Pakku's retaliations. Though defeated, any water bender knows that the art flows within their veins, that the need to bend never leaves them despite how much it was ignored, and soon she became dissatisfied and restless. She would use her water bending for the most menial reasons just to feel the control of water in her hands, but the flow of water in her own veins was too much to resist. She began to sit, look and think how she could possibly learn water bending without anyone else noticing. After all, wasn't the way to win not always physically beating her opponent, but outsmarting them?

Soon she began studying her brother who often practiced the basic movements of water bending right in their own home. Growing up beneath the guiding parental hands of one of their tribes own Generals, their father always stressed the importance of basics and with the idea of General floating in his young mind, he practiced his movements diligently every evening after his advanced instructions. Though he didn't know it, every evening when Xiu sat and admired the skills her older brother was perfecting, she was studying each of his movements with hungry eyes, running them over and over in her young mind until she could close her eyes and feel the movements in the darkness. Nightly, she practiced in the light of the moon and expected her movements in the reflection of the ice walls just to watch again the next day to continuously perfect her nights work. Soon she had mastered the techniques of basic fight.

Being of sound mind, she knew that the basics would certainly not impress Master Pakku to an extent that he would take her as a pupil. She had no other choice; at the age of 11 she stowed away on a lost Earth Kingdom fishing boat and began to look for another teacher within the refugees of the Earth Kingdom. After all, she could only reach her own resources too far before they were tapped, and she could never excel the distance she needed unless she could seek out a master willing to teach a dedicated female.

Throughout her six years in the Earth Kingdom, she manages to stumble across the Foggy Swamp tribe, extending her style of bending a little further. In the meantime she studied the movements of other styles of bending and researched them for her own knowledge, noting the use of balance in each technique and how one always seemed to directly contradict the other. Wandering more, she ended up finding the Sand Benders in the desert and notices immediately that, despite being an extension of Earth Bending, they moved particles of sand much like the water tribe moved water, the desert being nothing more than an ocean of sand. Practicing their techniques with the use of water, she mastered how to make effective vortexes made of water, learning highly sound mastery of swirling water as an effective fighting technique.

Xiu did not learn just by being influenced, but also by her own experimentation. She found that her bending became stronger the more fluid her movements became, and soon began incorporating the art of dance into her movement. Balance also became her focal point, noting that in order to balance on her toes her body had to be in perfect position, from the tips of her toes to the top of her head, for precise and accurate bending. A crazy idea, but she soon experimented making shoes that made her able to stand on the very tips of her toes, training her body into positions where her accuracy is almost unmatched. The shoes also made her able to learn how to use her legs as another extension of her body, and use pointed toes to control the flow of water as well as her arms, as well as the balance to be able to  spin several times in succession while controlling water to create a powerful shield.

Despite her discoveries, Xiu has done nothing more than create her own style, and despite all that is absolutely wrong with it when compared to regular water bending, she has mastered her own style and made it effective through her own knowledge of it. Though creative, she has many flaws that she wishes to fix, such as not being able to control large amounts of water nor extend her attacks like long distance whips. Where she has deficiencies, she makes up in tactic and idea.

Xiu moves towards the Earth Rumble VII tournament in hopes of proving that she is ready to face Master Pakku, travelling with her recently acquired comrade Jae who seems to have just as many stupid deficiencies as she does. She and Jae both hope to see their own types of benders in battle in order to better understand and further their own self taught bending techniques.

Personality info: Xiu, though highly intelligent, is the exact definition of a space case. Apparently the only thing that fits between those two ears are things that are tactically important, and nothing else! She has one of the worst memories possible, and it could take her up to five or six times asking just to remember what someones name is unless it really matters. Xiu and Jae make their own little team, since Xiu is always misplacing everything that she touches and can never seem to find where she set them down, and Jae is already used to babysitting young kids who misplace things constantly.

Overall, Xiu is a real sweet heart when it comes right down to it, always smiling and joking around even in the middle of battles. She doesn't see why they should be such a serious affair, since she finds the challenges so enjoyable! But she is highly competitive, and doesn't take well to sexist comments, which tend to make her step up her game and aim to humiliate.

She uses tea leaf readings as a scam to make money, and used this tactic to con her way into living in Jae's house. (Water bending results that people would obviously want to get them to come back.) Throughout the months they had spent in each others family, Jae has become as good as a blood sister to Xiu, despite that she misses her family she is more than content with the companionship of Jae. Even though the girl is much larger and seems more equipped to handle brute force than Xiu is herself, she treats Jae like both an older and a younger sister, watching out for her and asking to be watched out for.