Dry Ice Airbending Part 1
Continuing on from my previous post, I described some of the uses and techniques I thought about when it comes to using Dry ice with cold airbending. I had mentioned the effects on the body like causing Dizziness, Panic, and suffocation with how CO2 replaces and competes with oxygen in the body, and being a fire suppressant like a fire extinguisher.
Another use I can imagine is using the rapid expansion of gases by changing the temp back up on dry ice (you could also do this with liquid air as well). The rapid expansion exerts a strong amount of force. Enclosed containers without an exit point easily become an explosive as the dry ice returns to ambient temp and sublimates from a solid back into a gas. As you’d expect, directing all that expansive force in single direction like with a kick would be quite powerful. Comparatively, much more powerful than a normal air kick. Here I have shoes that hold onto dry ice in the soles for uses like this.
The shoes are there to protect the feet from direct contact with dry ice when standing on it.
This could also be used for mobility, like rapid dashing and propelling even faster than using normal airbending. I’d imagine this would take gliders and glide suits to a new level of aerial agility and speed when combined with this technique.
The ferocity and direct approach of using airbending like this is not unlike the way firebending is used. It’s a bit of a departure from the circular movements of traditional airbending, but I think it makes sense considering that the OCs I have in mind haven’t gone to train traditionally with the Air Nation and learned by imitating the other elements around them. (Random thought: You’d think Aang or Korra would’ve used their firebending to jet boost while on their glider since they can use more than one element at the same time, but I haven’t seen either of them do that to my knowledge)
The shoes obviously have a limit of how many uses before running out and then having to rely on regular, but that’s a nice thing about airbending, air exists in abundance. Just needs a tiny bit of time to gather more CO2 from the air into dry ice.
(I used pink in the shading for dry ice clouds and the dry ice itself because I wanted the visual language to be clear it wasn’t just any old cloud or mistaken for water ice or water mist. I was thinking about yellow, but I didn’t think it would work since earthy dust clouds and sand bending are yellow already.)
Another use is coating or buffing objects with dry ice to strengthen/ protect an object and make it easy to manipulate and wield. I’ll talk about that in the next post though