Full Metal Bitch Prompt Mini-Meme
Nov. 18th, 2010 10:30 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lavanya_sixFor those of you who aren't familiar with the fic, Full Metal Bitch is an in-progress AtLA Alternative Universe fic based on one simple change -- When the Gaang encounter Toph in Season Two, she is not twelve, but twenty-two.
RULES
1. Each commentator can submit up to THREE PROMPTS, of which I will pick ONE to fill. Note: You must be signed in to receive a fill. No anonymous requests.
2. All prompts must be set in the FMB!Verse.
3. In addition to writing "missing scenes" from Full Metal Bitch, I'll also do AUs to the fic if requested. Please remember that the more specific/complex your request, the harder it will be for me to write and thus the less likely I am to fill it.
4. Please do not request anything set at any point in Season 2 between episode 2x07 ("Zuko Alone") and episode 2x20 ("The Crossroads of Destiny") All that will eventually be covered in the actual fic itself.
Requests Made: 4/5
Requests Filled: 3/4
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(no subject)
Date: 2010-11-18 01:24 pm (UTC)5. Let's call this at a maximum of five prompt requests.
? Little confused, are we supposed to submit 3 prompts or 5?
Is that "each person gets three prompts, 5 people total"
Or was is supposed to be "minimum the prompts, 5 total"
(no subject)
Date: 2010-11-18 01:24 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-11-18 10:11 pm (UTC)I'll edit the post to just delete that rule completely. I'll just close the meme once I get five people making requests (not that I think I'll get that many, as this is a pretty quiet blog).
(no subject)
Date: 2010-11-21 06:41 pm (UTC)1. I'd be very interested to see what would Toph act like in a romantic relationship (pairing up to you).
2. Toph on the wall, when Ba Sing Se is besieged - part of how she evolved into the BAMF she is when she meets Aang & the Gang would be awesome.
3. Toph interacting w/Ozai in some manner (it doesn't even have to be physical fighting but some kind of verbal smackdown would be totally epic)
But Teach a Man to Fish... [1/2]
Date: 2010-11-22 05:59 pm (UTC)If the Fire Nation took away spicy food for her permanently, then she'll have to make sure Fire Lord Azulon died extra slow from the boot she'll put up his ass. But before she can do that, she needs to teach his son a lesson...
"Good morning!" Toph says, limping into the hall. The assembled earthbenders and craftsmen quiet down. She heads toward a stone replica of her old metal suit that stands at the far end of the hall. "The Council of Five has granted you poor bastards the privilege of being my peons until the Dragon's cock stops shrinking in the cold. That means we have two, three months together." Toph suppressing a sigh of relief as arrives at her destination. The stitch of pain running up her abdomen is unbearable, but cringing in pain would hardly bolster her reputation of being indomitable. "Before be begin, are there any questions? I see a hand in the back."
That produces a few titters. The woman who raised her hand shrinks down from the attention, but still preserves enough nerve to ask, "Yes... um... what exactly are we doing? No one told me."
"Or me."
"What? You too? I thought I was the only one!"
The hall breaks out into chattering as everyone had to have their turn stating the obvious.
Toph thumps her cane on the floor twice. Her audience shuts up. "You weren't told because this is a secret project. That's why were based in the eastern ass-end of the Outer Wall, facing the Endless Ocean, instead of near the Fire Nation's base where any half-blood colonist could blunder inside."
"But," said the original woman, "I'm not a soldier! I'm just a tailor!"
"Which is perfect, before our project is to make some nice suits." Toph gestures with her cane, pointing to stone replica of her bitch's armor (as her teammates called it). "An earthbender can lift dozens of times their own weight in earth elements, meaning someone wearing this sort of armor is stronger than any human being. An armor user is also basically fireproof outside of a few weak spots. Even I need to breathe, sadly." No one laughs at that, but Toph hopes there are a few weak smiles at least. She continued, "So, you're asking yourselves, if this stuff is so great why don't we outfit every earthbender in the whole damn army with rock armor?
But Teach a Man to Fish... [2/2]
Date: 2010-11-22 06:05 pm (UTC)"Which is why we're going to make it so they don't have to bother learning."
* * *
Toph leads her project group down to the base of the Outer Wall. What she shows them there sends their jaws to the floor. "Yes, that is a Fire Nation ship. Yes, it is buried inside the Outer Wall. No, your eyes are not devicing you. Forty years back, a hurricane shipwrecked this baby on our coast. The army salvaged the wreck and moved it in here for study. Everyone pretty much forgot about it until I started asking around for some quality steel to make coat my rock armor.
"When I first toured that ship, I realized something amazing. It's probably the greatest thing the Fire Nation has ever invented." Toph flashes her best show-woman's grin and pulls a modern marvel out of her uniform's pocket. "Don't you agree?"
One of the peons asks, "Is that a bolt?"
"It gets better," Toph promises. She sets her cane against the railing overlooking the drydock, pulls out something else from her pocket, and holds it up for everyone to see.
"But... that's just another bolt."
"Just another bolt? Just another bolt?! Are you sure I'm the blind one here? These bolts are exactly the same. Anywhere that a bolt screws in on that ship, I can put one of these babies. The same goes for every screw, rivet, door hinge and lighting fixture. Any piece can swap places with the same sort of piece because they were all build exactly alike. The firebenders have a word for it. They call them interchangeable parts."
Toph tosses the bolts up into the air, then excitedly snatched them on their way back down. It is a trick that never fails to impress people who are stupid enough to be amazed a blind woman can dress herself without help. "You all want to know what our project's goal is? These bolts show it. We're going to design a standard set of rock armor for the Earth Army, sized for various heights and builds. If one piece breaks or wears down -- like, say, a helmet or a boot -- it'll be replaceable with an identical part. This will make training in how to fight in rock armor a shitload easier because everyone will be working with the same equipment. Yours truly will be checking for product quality, but the rest of you bastards will be designing it so that even a drunk hogmonkey can put it on. And once we have the prototypes ready..."
"Ma'am?"
"That brings up another lovely Fire Nation term." She grins wolfishly. "Have any of you ever heard about something called 'mass production'?"
Re: But Teach a Man to Fish... [2/2]
Date: 2010-11-22 07:28 pm (UTC)Thank you so much this is an incredible drabble :D
Re: But Teach a Man to Fish... [2/2]
Date: 2010-11-22 10:03 pm (UTC)(Toph was also inadvertently creating an arms race, but that'll be dealt with directly in the fic.)
You should take a crack at that brainworm. Aang dealing with a socialist peasant's rebellion in Ba Sing Se would interesting, especially since he hobnobs with royalty and nobles.
Re: But Teach a Man to Fish... [2/2]
Date: 2010-11-22 10:09 pm (UTC)re: the brainworm- I'd love it but I have like no writing skills- would be totally fabulous though.
(no subject)
Date: 2010-11-22 12:39 pm (UTC)2. AU. Ice cold Bitch (& lone wolf). It's not Toph's family whose aged, it's Sokka and Katara's. Keep the general bitter/badass tone though.
3. Darkfic. Toph takes a second "son" from Iroh.
It's not Toph's family whose aged, it's Sokka and Katara'. [1/1]
Date: 2010-11-23 11:59 pm (UTC)They left her behind, at first.
The survivors would return from battle covered in blood and burns. Katara did important work with her healer's hands, saved men's lives from death or debilitating injuries. She practiced the other uses her waterbending had but Dad and Sokka refused her utterly on that matter. It wasn't that she was woman, they said, it was that her healing ability was irreplaceable. Fathers would live to see their families because of her. How could she risk that?
But nothing in war goes according to plan. One night a platoon of firebenders attacks their beachside camp, setting fire to their ships, hoping to press the Southern Water Tribe against the waves and destroy them. They don't count on Katara having the ocean at her disposal. She saves the ships while the sands run red with icewater mixed with blood.
Katara isn't left behind after that.
But she's still never quite one of them, either. While the other warriors talk around the campfire about their absent families or memories of home, she stays silent. Katara misses the beautiful desolation of the South Pole, sure, but she comes to realize a part of her would be perfectly fine with never going back. It's not that she loves war. She hates it, loathes it in the way only a battlefield healer can. But Sokka and Dad are with her, and wherever her family is... that's home.
Katara has no one waiting for her back at the South Pole.
Even accepting the attrition the menfolk faced because of raids, finding a husband had been harder than Katara had ever expected. Not that she'd given it much thought. Katara had just assumed she'd find the right man, that she'd just look at him and know he was the One.
Being a chief's daughter probably wouldn't have hurt either, she once supposed, considering how many girls had courted Sokka for an alliance between their respective tribes. Yet no parents wanted Katara as their daughter-in-law. People, she eventually learned, steered their sons clear of her.
Dad might have been an important chieftain but Katara had a single, overwhelming mark against her: she was a waterbender.
Any children she bore would have a fair chance of inheriting of her gift, which made them and their home village a potential target for Fire Nation raids. Without any mastery of her waterbending she didn't offer any 'benefits' for the danger involved in a marriage match, as Gran-Gran had bluntly put it.
While she had gone unwed even at 24, Sokka had fathered twin daughters with his wife Corazon when they were both seventeen. Their girls were waterbenders. Katara sometimes wondered what Sokka and her sister-in-law thought about their children's future, but they'd never broached the subject so she respected that silence.
Sometimes, in her quiet moments, a tiny voice nagged at Katara that the only reason Dad had allowed to come to war was so his granddaughters would have potentially an experienced waterbending teacher.
Re: It's not Toph's family whose aged, it's Sokka and Katara'. [1/1]
Date: 2010-11-24 05:42 pm (UTC)She'd probably try to take Aang alone. Justifying it because she's teaching him, but it's really a sort of petty revenge. Look at me, I'm teaching the Avatar, he's going to save the world, don't you wish you'd paid attention to me.
Which probably means she's going to act one of those pushy soccer moms from hell. As Aang's value reflects on her. Of course, it might throw her for a loop when he shows he's a lot wiser than she thinks.
Re: It's not Toph's family whose aged, it's Sokka and Katara'. [1/1]
Date: 2010-11-24 05:45 pm (UTC)Re: It's not Toph's family whose aged, it's Sokka and Katara'. [1/1]
Date: 2010-11-24 06:46 pm (UTC)There have been a few "Aang doesn't get unfrozen" fics, but I don't recall one that ever addressed the issue of Katara marrying. Usually she's just single and that's never remarked on. I figured that in a Fire Empire world, marrying an untrained waterbender wouldn't look like too attractive an option. (Meanwhile, in such fics, Sokka seems to always end up with Suki or Toph.)
I figure Aang would probably be freed by Sokka's daughters, assuming the stations of the canon are in motion. Originally I was going to work Aang in by making Sokka take Bato's place in "Bato of the Water Tribe" at that nunnery. Katara would have stayed behind to monitor his recovery. But I just did a drabble with a similar set-up in "That Father Lost, Lost His" and didn't want to repeat myself.
>Also, finding a husband is going to suck for her. There are no 17-30 year olds in avatar, at all. I honestly cannot think of a one. It's the kids/early teens, then come adults, then the old guys. But between early teen and adult, there is zip, nadda, nothing.
Not only that, but she's hardly in a position to romance any of the eligible bachelors among the war party with her Dad (the chieftain) and overprotective brother running interception.
The lack of visible 17-30 year olds in Avatar is something I always chalked up to the war's attrition. All the people in that age group? They're either civilians or army mooks. That's why you only have teenage prodigies (Katara/Toph/Azula/Sokka) and old masters (Pakku/Bumi/Iroh/Piandao). If the teen prodigies aren't good enough or lucky enough, the war cuts them down before they reach middle age. Then they spend twenty years raising children and recovering from the horrors of war.
In FMB proper, Toph is one of those teenage prodigies who barely managed to make it to adulthood. While the war's crucible made her a frighteningly skilled earthbender, it also messed her up in the head pretty badly. If the Gaang hadn't stumbled across her, she would have ended up either drinking herself to death or she'd have turned into the bastard child of Jeong-Jeong and Howard Hughes.
Re: It's not Toph's family whose aged, it's Sokka and Katara'. [1/1]
Date: 2010-11-25 12:43 am (UTC)Re: It's not Toph's family whose aged, it's Sokka and Katara'. [1/1]
Date: 2010-11-26 03:39 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-11-26 02:10 am (UTC)2. AU. It is a Hard, Harsh World. It's not just Toph's family whose aged, it's the whole main cast. And the years have not been kind to them
3. Top having a problem with powering her growing industries
Sorry
Date: 2010-11-26 02:45 am (UTC)Watch this space...
It's not just Toph's family whose aged, it's the whole main cast. [1/14]
Date: 2010-11-29 08:09 pm (UTC)The
World
of
Broken
Glass
. . .
"Watch and learn, Kanna. This is how you catch a fish."
"Nuh-huh! You're doing it WRONG, Hama."
"No," said Hama. "I'm not."
"Yeah-huh!"
"It's only wrong if you're a dumbass."
"Well double-dumbass on you!"
"Kanna! Hama!" Corazon snapped from the head of the canoe, hoping to disrupt the girls' latest tiff before they started throwing around water with their bending. "Don't call your sister bad names."
"But the other day," said Kanna, "you called Aunt Katara a--"
"And that was wrong," Corazon insisted, cheeks heating in spite of the numbing cold. Thank goodness that know-it-all bitch is on the other side of the world, or Sokka would never hear the end of it if that got back to her.
Corazon didn't mind her sister-in-law minding the twins -- spirits knew they drove her insane often enough -- but Katara always had to second-guess every decision she made. Unlike her husband, who could brush off the henpecking with the forgivable viciousness of siblings, Corazon's couldn't argue with Katara without cursing up a storm.
Belatedly, Corazon added, "And double-dumbass isn't even real word, Kanna."
"Ha!"
"Shut your face, Hama!"
"Mom! She called me a yerfaze!"
Corazon buried her face in her mittens.
"Did not!"
"Did too!"
"GIRLS!"
But from there it devolved into a hair-pulling match between the nine year olds. Corazon, struck at one end of the canoe, was unable to move over to her daughters without maybe tipping them all over into the frigid waters. Yelling didn't slow her girls down. The twins were too into their spat to even notice the water growing choppy around them from their combined bending, or the icebergs around them quaking with each hair loopy pulled.
And then, before anybody lost an eye, an iceberg exploded.
The World of Broken Glass [2/14]
Date: 2010-11-29 08:10 pm (UTC)Ty Lee's three eyes slammed open.
The whole southern horizon was afire. It was an aura like nothing she had ever seen, one beyond color or words, bursting out of nowhere. It stole her breath. Even after it faded away several seconds later, she continued to sit in the lotus position and weep at the memory of it.
Eventually she pulled herself together and went to find her teacher.
"It's him," she said. "I know it. I do!"
"Then it is time for you to leave this place, my student, and teach whom I could not."
Ty Lee wanted to argue, to plead that she had so much more to learn from him, but she understood the wisdom in her teacher's words. The spirits and ancestors were so often vague that such an unambiguous clarion trumpeting could not be ignored.
That understanding didn't stop her from pouncing forward and tackling her teacher with a hug. "Goodbye, Guru Pathik."
Her teacher laughed. "I'll miss you too, Guru Ty Lee."
The World of Broken Glass [3/14] - Zuko
Date: 2010-11-29 08:11 pm (UTC)Mind reeling, Zuko barely felt the old woman break free of his hands and flee. Standing in the middle of the Water Tribe village was a man garbed in Air Nation saffron robes. The airbender clutched a war glider in one hand. He even had the ancestral full-body tattoos of his barbarian people, the symbol of him gaining mastery of airbending by having taken another's life.
This man was no chicken-hawk airbender cowering behind Omashu's walls with the last remnants of his people. This one stood tall, shoulders squared, with an air of the heavenly raiders of old.
Yet those details paled before the burn scar over the left side of the other man's face. His left was narrowed in an perpetual glare, one that formed a lopsided expression when paired with the unexpected friendliness painted on the unmarred portions of his face. While it was widely known that the long-lost Avatar had possessed a facial scar, its exact description had been preserved only by the Fire Sages. Long had that secret knowledge filtered out pretender and false Avatars.
"You. You're him. Avatar Ong."
Distantly, Zuko heard the villagers gasp in shock.
"Aang," said the Avatar. "It's pronounced 'Aang'."
Zuko thought his heart would burst out of his chest. He'd trained for years for this day, practiced and mediated and pored over dusty anti-airbender manuals. As much as the surge of hope inside his breast invigorated him, he couldn't ignore the reality before him. He had only found the Avatar. He hadn't captured him yet.
"If I go with you peacefully," the Avatar said, summoning a flame to his open palm to suggest the alternative course of action, "will you promise to leave everyone here alone?"
Zuko straightened his shoulders. "Yes. You have my word."
The Avatar dispersed the flame and surrendered his staff.
Once they were aboard and the Avatar manacled, Zuko directed Lt. Jee to set a course for the Fire Nation. He then contemplated the prize accompanying the Avatar. "This staff will make an excellent gift for my father. I suppose you wouldn't know of fathers, being raised by monks."
Calling the Avatar's expression in response 'venomous' barely did it justice.
"Take the Avatar to the prison hold," Zuko ordered. It was only once the scarred man was out of sight that he allowed himself to feel fear.
The World of Broken Glass [4/14] - ????
Date: 2010-11-29 08:11 pm (UTC)At first they were inconsequential incidents that only in the context of later events merited alarm: hallway lanterns springing leaks, doors not being sealed properly, an arctic fer-rat apparently chewing through a bag of rice in the hold.
A week after the South Pole's ice finally disappeared behind the southern horizon, Ensign Wen fell down a staircase and broke his neck. It was, everyone agreed, a tragic accident. The emotional high the crew had been riding since the Avatar's capture deflated. Some men grumbled the apparently ageless airbender was to blame, but Zuko had made sure the Avatar was under round-the-clock guard and observation.
"I was raised to believe that all life was sacred," the Avatar insisted under questioning. "I only use violence for necessary defense. And even if I didn't, I gave my word to go with you peacefully."
Zuko's uncle limped out from his cabin for the first time in weeks to conduct the funeral rights. Once Iroh had conveyed the majority of Ensign Wen's ashes to the seas and winds, he interred a small portion of the remains in a sealed urn for Wen's family. Zuko spent two days writing and revising the condolence letter, not sure how to offer any comfort for a senseless death.
Zuko was almost ready to consider Wen's death a bizarre coincidence when the rations were poisoned. During the night, someone broke into weapons locker, stole blasting jelly, and then slathered it over all the foodstuffs. What hadn't been irreparably poisoned was a potential danger if cooked, inviting an explosion that would destroy only the kitchen if they were lucky.
His uncle agreed with him. If the Avatar wasn't responsible, and he didn't appear to be, then they had an intruder. Zuko organized a systematic search of the ship. Uncle, meanwhile, conducted searches of a more spiritual quality. Zuko could only trust his uncle was correct when he said he turned up nothing pointing to malicious spirits.
"We'll need to stop in port soon," Lt. Jee reported after conducting a review of their remaining supplies. "We won't have to make it to the Fire Nation without starving halfway there."
"No. We'll make it up in other ways. Fishing, maybe. I won't risk losing the Avatar to some greedy admiral!"
But things only grew worse from there. The crew reported hearing laughter in the night, voices that moved about the halls too quickly to be human. Knives were left in bunks as macabre presents. The seat in the head was layered with glue.
Finally, Zuko had enough.
"I know you're responsible," he told the Avatar, speaking through the bars of the airbender's cel. "I don't know how you're doing this, but it has to stop. You gave me your word of honor. I held up my end. Those villagers were left in peace."
The Avatar stared at his bare, shackled feet. "I know. And I'm sorry about Ensign Wen. I am. But I didn't do any of the things you're talking about."
A rush of air slammed Zuko against the brig's wall. Dazed, he dropped to the floor. He could offer no resistance as the cell keys were taken from him.
The last words he heard before slipping into unconsciousness was the Avatar sheepishly adding, "My wife, on the other hand..."
The World of Broken Glass [5/14] - Suki
Date: 2010-11-29 08:12 pm (UTC)History, Suki felt, would ignore the way the Avatar and his wife Malu had descended ravenously upon the wares of that poor cabbage merchant who'd been wandering by the docks.
By virtue of being the leader of the Kyoshi Warrior -- which nowadays consisted solely of her and the teenagers like Koko she was rushing through training to replace the honored dead -- the privilege of hosting the pair fell to Suki. She did everything possible to make them feel at home, including offering her and her husband's bed. They declined, preferring a simple guest's futon.
The thinness of rice paper walls was something neither children nor visitors to Kyoshi Island tended to appreciate. So it was that Suki, after corralling her nosy children back to their bedroom, accidentally overheard a conversation between the couple while she was returning to her own bed. Suki was fully prepared to intentionally ignore whatever they said for the sake of their privacy when the Avatar's wife said something that stopped her cold.
"Do we really have to keep pretending to be married?"
What, thought Suki.
"I don't think talking about the selfishness of tying yourself to one person will go over any better in the Earth Kingdom than it did ninety-four years ago," the Avatar replied.
Bitterly, Malu replied, "Let's just not say anything. It's not like people will ask who Tenzin's father is anymore."
There was nothing more said after that. Suki waited, frozen in fear that the pair had caught onto her eavesdropping. A few moments later it became clear they had not.
Suki crept back to her bed, leaving the weeping couple in peace.
The World of Broken Glass [6/14] - Toph
Date: 2010-11-29 08:13 pm (UTC)Had she been a seeing person, Toph would have blinked in shocked. Instead she just shouted, "What the--?! What are you doing in my bedroom?"
The man prostrating himself before her said, "I, uh, already said--"
"The walls are solid steel! It's an underground bunker with no door!"
"Oh. That." He shrugged. "Small controlled demolitions. I thought the lingering smell of blasting jelly would've given that away."
Toph was at a loss for several seconds. "Okay. First? I'm firing my house guard because WHAT THE FUCK?! Blasting jelly goes off under their feet and they don't know it?!"
"Small controlled demolitions. Like, teeny-tiny boom booms."
"Second, I'm going to kick your ass for trespassing!"
"Wh-what?!"
Toph tapped her upper lip. "Wait. You're right. I should kick your ass first and then fire my guards. Gotta prioritize."
"B-but this was the only way I could talk with you! Your guards turned me away at the outer perimeter!"
"So you broke into my bedroom?! How'd you even do that?!" Because he probably wasn't an earthbender, judging by all the whale bone weapons he had strapped on. The vibrations of that Water Tribe crap were unmistakable.
"Oh, no digging. I just stole a delivery man's uniform, walked in through the front door, and then burned a hole through the floor of a storage room down into this place."
Toph reached out with her senses. Sure enough, the ceiling had a man-sized hole that had been knocked out. "...all right, that deserves a drink."
"And no ass kicking?" Sokka asked hopefully.
"We'll see."
The World of Broken Glass [7/14] - Sokka
Date: 2010-11-29 08:14 pm (UTC)"You gotta understand," the blind woman said, "I just make swords. I don't fight with them. I'm just an earthbender. All those stories about the No-Eyed Sword Maiden are just that -- stories. Just between you and me, I sure ain't married but the hell if I'm a maiden, yeah?"
Sokka's shoulders slumped.
She reached across the kitchen table and slugged him in the arm. Considering how burly she was from part-time blacksmithing, it wasn't a girly tap. "Don't beat yourself up."
"...owwww."
"Wuss." Bei Fong slammed back another serving of baijiu. "I wouldn't take you on as a student even if I did know swordfighting. I haven't taught earthbending in years. I'm just a merchant now."
Sokka rubbed the tender spot on his upper arm, wondering how bad the bruise would be. He'd catch hell from Bato and the other men if he came back with bruises and no good explanation for it other than a freakishly tall blind woman pushed him around. Somehow they always managed to suss out his lies. Sokka blamed his Dad for using all the good ones years ago.
He said, "Could I at least maybe, er, buy a sword? Pointing out a hole in your security should totally be worth a discount."
"Maaaayyybeee." Bei Fong's lips hovered over the rim of her latest cup. If those milky eyes of hers could said to hold any expression whatsoever, now Sokka would call them glassy. "You ever been to Kyoshi Island, sailor man?"
"I've heard of it." Mostly the drinking songs, which was appropriate despite their bawdy lyrics being entirely inappropriate. "Why?"
"I gotta an old buddy there. From the Wall. Other day she wrote me and told me something amazing. You'll never guess what."
"What?"
"Chicken-hawk butt!" Master Bei Fong sniggered, nearly collapsing onto the kitchen table. It was a good two or three minutes before she had recovered. "Hoo! But yeah, where was I?"
He said patiently, "Your friend from Kyoshi Island."
"Right! Suki! Anyway, she said the Avatar's back. Since she's preggers again she can't go with me but--"
"Wait." Sokka held up his hands... then realized he was gesturing to a blind woman. Feeling foolish, he dropped his hands. "The Avatar?"
"Yeah! Ong the Liberator, man! Turns out he and his old lady had been frozen in an iceberg for the past century."
This was when Sokka decided Bei Fong had finally drunk too much.
"It's a great story," Bei Fong said, adding another drained ceramic cup to the neat stack on the tabletop. "Apparently he suckered this Fire Nation prince into giving him a ride off the South Pole after these twin waterbenders woke him up."
Sokka blinked. "Wait. Did you say twins?"
The World of Broken Glass [7.5/14] - Sokka
Date: 2010-11-29 08:14 pm (UTC)Bei Fong ignored him. "I'm gonna hire a playwright to write it up. I'm gonna hire Pu-on Tim! Or whatever Omashu knockoff Pu-on Tim I can hire if he ain't willing to whore himself out." She rubbed her nose. "I need to sit down."
Sokka was completely lost. Bei Fong sat down on the kitchen floor.
"Um," he said, "my discount?"
She nodded drowsily. "Yeah. Hold on a sec. XIAOTUI!!"
A guardsmen in a uniform with a flying boar insignia rushed into the kitchen. He looked at his employer on the ground, then at Sokka, then back at the ground. His lack of follow-up reaction either informed Sokka that the man was completely incompetent at his job or that working for Toph Bei Fong meant dealing with too many bizarre scenarios to react on reflex alone.
"This man," Bei Fong said, pointing over the tabletop at Sokka, "broke into my bedroom after sneaking through security. Gather all the guards together in the courtyard. Full dress. Five minutes.
"Sokka," she said, "ever heard of Master Piandao's legendary fight with one hundred men?" When he cautiously nodded, she added, "Well, I only got about forty guards working for me. Beat 'em all up without killin' 'em and I'll make you the bestest sword in the world! Then we can go find the Avatar in Omashu and you can make more controlled demolicious... damocles... something..."
"Demolitions?" he provided with a squeaky voice.
She snapped her fingers. "Demolitions! Oh, and Xiaotui? Anyone knocked down by Sokka is fired. Whoever knocks Sokka out gets the be captain of the guard. So if you want to keep your job... well... do I have to draw you a picture?"
"N-no, ma'am."
"Awesome."
Xiaotui fled the kitchen.
"On second thought," Sokka said, "I'm fine without a new sword."
"Yeah, you shoulda thought about that before you blew a hole in my ceiling."
"Drat."
The World of Broken Glass [8/14] - Mai
Date: 2010-11-29 08:15 pm (UTC)Mai dressed herself.
Her household budget could only afford two servants, a maid and a cook. Styling her own hair and picking out her own clothes was something beneath even minor nobility, but Mai didn't mind. Accepting one's place in the world was necessary.
She had other duties, once. As a lieutenant of the Fire Nation. As a princess-consort. The kind of positions other people might have called special or important. After Ba Sing Se, she'd been a heartbeat away from being Fire Lady.
For a while.
Everyone in the inner circle had dealt with Prince Lu Ten's death and the siege breaking in different ways. General Iroh had gone into a self-imposed exile, walking the earth on some spiritual quest until his health had deteriorated. Mongke had taken his Rough Rhino and rampaged through the western Earth Kingdom, leisurely raping and burning his way back to the western seaboard. Jee had cut his topknot and never grew his hair out again, wearing his dishonor for all the world to see.
She and Zuko, now poised to inherit the throne, had finally stopped delaying having children. She left the military as a lieutenant while he continued on as part of his princely duties.
The carriage that takes her down to the dock was a plain black affair. Back home, it could have belonged to any family living in the capital. Here on Whale Tail Island it was a symbol of unrivaled luxury.
Zuko's ship was docking even as they arrived. The smoke from its stack was a clean white. They were use firebenders to power the boilers instead of burning coal. Despite the ship's strange and battered appearance, Mai breathed freer at the sight of the royal flag flying at full mast.
Zuko was alive. As long as he was, her family's exile was bearable.
The World of Broken Glass [9/14] - Katara
Date: 2010-11-29 08:16 pm (UTC)I told Master Bei Fong that I'm writing this letter to invite you to meet us in Omashu at the Dog-Cat Pound Inn at month's end. That's just an excuse, HINT HINT, but she bought it because she can't read this letter since she's blind and kinda drunk right now. But mostly blind.
See, it turns out that not only is the No-Eyed Sword Maiden not a sword-fighter like everyone says, instead SHE'S NUTS!! COMPLETELY OUT OF HER GOURD!! She made me fight FORTY-THREE ARMED GUARDS (no joke!!!!) and THREE APOLOGETIC MAIDS and an OSTRICH-HORSE after I broke into her bedroom (even though I made sure to be polite about it and everything). I got a sweet sword out of the deal with a cool wolf's head pommel BUT THAT'S NOT WORTH MY FREEDOM!! Master Bei Fong is high on something and claims that the AVATAR IS ALIVE and we have to catch him in Omashu to teach him all the new combat earthbending forms that were invented since he got frozen in his iceberg (don't ask, it's too stupid). I told Master Bei Fong that you know tons of super WHAM-BANG-BOOM waterbending moves and that you could help him brush up.
Sis, I need you to rescue me from the woman who's kidnapped me.
Please don't tell my wife.
Or Dad.
Or any of the men, honestly. I'll never hear the end of it.
.
P.S. I'm totally serious about being kidnapped!!!
Added below that, in ideally rendered characters so crisp and clean Katara couldn't even spot the slightest hint of hairs from a brushstroke, was the following:
P.P.S Actually, I can read what he wrote. All my household ink has iron salt (an earth element) added to it. That's how a blind earthbender can read and write, and how I know what the contracts I sign really say. And I'm not that drunk right now.
P.P.P.S. Sokka wishes to add an "Oh shit."
The World of Broken Glass [10/14] - Iroh
Date: 2010-11-29 08:16 pm (UTC)"I know." Despite those words, his nephew couldn't bring himself to stand. Zuko could only stare at the four candle set out on his meditation table. It was childishness, this sulking, and Iroh had thought his nephew had long ago outgrown it. Yet his reaction was understandable, no man could take the thought of failing their wife or daughter lightly.
Iroh closed the cabin's door. Leaning forward with both hands on the golden dragon's head knob of his cane, he took care to enunciate each word properly as he spoke, "What happened could have occurred to anyone holding the Avatar captive, Prince Zuko."
Once, Zuko might have given into rage at that reminder of his personal failing. Now he merely closed his eyes in shame. "The Avatar was in control of the situation all along, Uncle, even when he was in chains. How am I to defeat a man who has mastered himself, let alone the four elements?"
"By mastering yourself first, which you have," Iroh said. "A lesser man would have carried out the order to send the 41st division to its annihilation. You recognized a way to win the day with less bloodshed and to honor the trust of the men under your command."
"I might not have been able to live with myself for dishonoring those men's trust in the Fire Nation," Zuko said, "but at least that punishment would have hung around my neck."
"You don't mean that."
Zuko stared blankly ahead at the unlit candles. After a few moments, he sighed and stood. Iroh smiled, the fullest effort of his face's right side not quite rising to match the left. "Never let fear and guilt steal you from your family, nephew."
"I know. Thank you, Uncle."
The World of Broken Glass [11/14] - Aang
Date: 2010-11-29 08:44 pm (UTC)After...
After what happened happened, Aang didn't sleep for two days. There was too much to do and not enough hands left. The wounded needed their bandages changed and burns salved. Rubble had to be sifted for bodies and, rarely, survivors. Funeral rites were observed for friend and foe alike.
Aang wasn't sure when he blacked out. The last thing he remembered was Monk Gyatso pushing him down onto a chair and forcing a moon peach into his hand to eat. When he woke up in an dining hall cot -- the sleeping cells were purged alongside the nursery in the opening attack -- thirty-odd hours later, Aang felt every year of his thousand lifetimes.
But some monks were alive and the Fire Nation hadn't attacked again.
Against that, the burn on his face was nothing.
There was a gap in the Patola Mountain Range, dozens of miles in diameter around the Southern Air Temple. Where towering, angular mountains had stood for eons now there remained only low, jagged fields of boulders barely discernable in the valley mists below. Aang can't resist the nagging idea that the landscape resembled the rictus grin of a skeleton, shy some teeth.
Aang did that.
Several times he found himself walking toward the sky-bison stables only to stop and remember that all that nothing living would be found there. There were one hundred and eighty-seven monks left in the Southern Air Temple. Even cramming them in on the sky-bison remaining, that still left half the monks (many of them injured) with no means to escape from the ruined temple.
Messenger hawks were sent out to the three other air temples. None of returned. One of the five remaining sky-bison were sent out to contact Omashu. The messenger fled back to the temple mere days later, claiming a massive invasion force was making a landing on the north coast. There were even dragons.
So Aang and his fellow monks abandoned the Southern Air Temple for a long, meandering evacuation on the ground, using their bending to stay ahead of the horde, hiding in the valley mists. The road was long, hard, and several of the most injured monks perished.
Aang never stopped walking. Not for a hundred years.
Re: The World of Broken Glass [11/14] - Aang
Date: 2010-12-04 01:10 am (UTC)Re: The World of Broken Glass [11/14] - Aang
Date: 2010-12-04 05:52 am (UTC)I gotta finish the last three parts first, though. Bumi and Azula still need their chances to shine.
Re: The World of Broken Glass [11/14] - Aang
Date: 2010-12-07 07:32 pm (UTC)Re: The World of Broken Glass [11/14] - Aang
Date: 2010-12-07 07:46 pm (UTC)Sorry the last three parts have been taking so long. I've been trying to work out how to get all the characters together in one scene and have it been appropriately ridiculous.
The World of Broken Glass [12a/14] - Bumi
Date: 2011-01-07 03:27 am (UTC)Bumi's seventeenth spring saw the return of his friend Aang, scarred and thin, at a column of four hundred young boys and elderly monks. With them had come word of the genocidal attack on the Southern Air Temple. Omashu had quaked with rumor and gossip for months afterward; wondering with newfound fear what would have happened had the city walls fallen on the Day of the Great Comet. The idea of every man, woman, and child he'd ever met being burned to death had been too awful for Bumi to contemplate.
Rather close-minded of him, in retrospect.
It had been the start of the six most important years of Bumi's life. Being a friend to Aang in the early, dark days of the war as the world threatened to crush his spirit. Teaching Aang earthbending. The Second Siege of Omashu. Their flight across the Earth Kingdom under the White Lotus' protection. The fall of Taku. Kuzon. Being lectured by a giant owl about proper midwifing practices while he was up to his elbows in placenta. Founding the Heavenly Air Temple. All culminating in that terrible fiasco at Crescent Island...
...which turned out not to have been the end, because Bumi's one hundred and twenty-second winter saw the second return of Aang. And by golly wasn't it a kick that Pathik hadn't been talking out of his bony rear end for once.
A lifetime of mad thinking had given Bumi a certain appreciation for the world that he found his peers -- or whatever term everyone else in the world wanted to flatter themselves with -- lacking. Even keeping that in mind, Bumi wasn't sure which was stranger, seeing how their descendants were reflected in his friends' features, or standing with them around Tenzin's grave with them and nine of their grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
That evening Bumi threw them a private feast, with the best vegetarian dishes the palace kitchens had to offer. The conversation was meatier.
"Pathik? I haven't seen that old gasbag in years. He'd probably hanging out with lion-turtles and other things better lost to time."
"He's only thirty years older than you," Malu noted.
"Twenty-eight years older," Bumi correct. "But who's counting?"
"You are."
Aang, who'd neglected to master of table manners alongside the four elements, spoke around spoonfuls of red bean soup. "I talked with Monk Yangten earlier and he said the elders there might be able to help me unlock my chakras."
Bumi tore off a strip of white meat from a chicken leg. "I seem to remember you trying that shortcut before," he said, stuffing the length of chicken into his mouth. "Didn't work out too well."
Aang run a hand over his bald dome, doubtlessly remembering the sensation of thousands of acupuncture needles being jabbed into his skin. "We unstuck them eventually. And my people have written a lot of new philosophical texts over the past hundred years. The solution might be in them."
To this, Bumi said nothing. Mastering the elements was simple enough. A firebender might spend a lifetime mastering their emotions or an earthbender strengthening their willpower, but the martial aspect was consistently simple. Not easy, but certainly simple. There were only so many ways to bend each elements and those moves were almost entirely exclusive to each style. It was simply a matter of forcing the body to memorize the proper motions. By comparison, mastering Avatar State required a bunch of spiritual nonsense that was clearly flim-flam.
If some guru had the audacity to tell Bumi he needed to abandon his lover and their newborn son in order to achieve enlightenment, Bumi would have drop-kicked said guru over the Great Divide.
"Sir?" A messenger to his back said. "Master Bei Fong of Gaoling has arrived and wishes to speak with the Avatar."
"Avatar?" Bumi glanced over his shoulder, then looked around the open-air rooftop dining table. He'd had it built to enjoy a good komodo chicken wing and watch the sunset. "Hmmm... I don't see any Avatar around here, just a couple of airbenders enjoying a romantic moonlight dinner with me. Tell Master Bei Glug Glug to check back a hundred years ago."
The World of Broken Glass [12b/14] - Bumi
Date: 2011-01-07 03:27 am (UTC)After the toady shuffled back downstairs to deliver the reply, Aang said, "Gaoling, huh? Gossip really travels fast in the future."
"The potatochokes are plumper too," Malu added appreciatively, moments before the stone floor next to their table exploded upwards.
"OH YEAH!" crowed the giantess, rising up on a pillar of bent earth. "Smell that fresh mountain air!"
The Water Tribe man cowering at her side held his hands up. "I'm not with her!"
"Excellent entrance scene," muttered the plumper man that rounded out the trio of intruders. Bumi recognized him as Pu-On Tim. He scratched something into a tiny notebook. "I can work this into the play."
"Play?" asked Malu.
"Hell yes!" said Toph Bei Fong. "We're all invited to posterity!"
There was a polite clearing of one's throat. Bumi glanced over his shoulder to find a demure young Water Tribe woman walking up the stairs, a guard frozen to the ground behind her. "Excuse me? I'm looking for my brother."
"Katara! Thank goodness you're hear! We got to Omashu too soon and she started dragging me to all these crazy underground bars with spider-donkey shows!" He paused. "Please don't tell my wife."
"You know," Bumi said to no one in-particular, "I'm beginning to question the quality of guards in this place. Someone should really complain to the king."
Bei Fong punched her apparent kidnapping victim on the upper arm. "Your sister is here! That's great! Now Ong can brush up on his waterbending skills too!"
"Another character?" Pu-On Tim sobbed into his hands. "I'll have to revise everything to include the relevant backstory! All that additional exposition will put the audience to sleep! My first act is ruined! RUINED!"
Sokka patted the weeping playwright on the back. "Hey, it's okay. You're laying the groundwork for act two, right?"
"The audience won't stick around unless there's a hook! People meeting around a dinner table might work in art school, but in the real world people want thrills! A sense of adventure! Something!"
And on that note, the Moon turned to blood.
(no subject)
Date: 2010-11-26 07:08 pm (UTC)2) Toph meets Bumi.
3) Azula & Toph: BFF's
(no subject)
Date: 2010-11-26 07:09 pm (UTC)Pre-IM Tony and Aang, Respectively; or, Bubblegum <s>Crisis</s> Avatar
Date: 2010-12-03 03:19 am (UTC)The Fifth Wonder of the World, people called it. Korra agreed.
It would almost be a commendable achievement to human ingenuity if not for the fact that over eighty percent the world's weapons flowed from the Tower's forges. Nothing could parry a Bei Fong blade, and the tanks and aeroplanes and submarines spilling from its factories were bought up by every army on the planet... except the Fire Nation. Even with Republic City being a tariff-free zone of free trade, the Metal Matriarch saw that only the Earth Kingdom and Water Tribe owned her newest stock. The Fire Nation, once the world's foremost military power, had to make due with homespun shabbier copies and obsolete surplus purchases from the other nations.
And the forges had only been working since Korra's birth.
That was totally a coincidence, she was sure.
Now that the Earth Kingdom and Water Tribes were finally pulling ahead of their old enemy, there came dreams of revenge and 'justice'. The work of Korra's predecessor was being undone by a bitter old woman that nobody outside the BEI FONG Corporation's board of directors had seen in twenty years.
It didn't matter. Whether Toph Bei Fong was alive, or if she had the audacity to carry out her vengeance from beyond the grave, Korra wouldn't let the old bitch get away with starting another world war. This she swore to Avatar Aang and his son.
Re: Pre-IM Tony and Aang, Respectively; or, Bubblegum <s>Crisis</s> Avatar
Date: 2010-12-04 01:19 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-12-04 01:18 am (UTC)Now I want to see Evil Toph versus Anti-Hero Korra. Whoever wins, we lose. Maybe I'll write that someday. :D
(no subject)
Date: 2010-12-04 05:46 am (UTC)The idea for this drabble actually came from an old plot tribble I had written up on the Spacebattles forum, with an elderly Sokka and corrupt Toph waging a private little war for control of Republic City while still carrying on their friendship on the side. It meshed pretty well with the FMBverse. http://forums.spacebattles.com/showpost.php?p=5002825&postcount=5697
(You should totally write that! Once we actually know something about Korra, that is...)