Full Metal Bitch Prompt Mini-Meme

[lavanya_six]

So I've hit a bit of a dry spell in my writing. NaNoWriMo (i.e. the rest of Full Metal Bitch) has petered out these past few days due to plotting issues and my complete inability to construct a decent fight scene. As a way to get me back into things, I'm going to throw FMB to the wolves the masses as a way of getting used to writing it again.

For 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

Comments

The World of Broken Glass [12a/14] - Bumi

[lavanyasix.livejournal.com]

A/N: Sorry it's taken so long. I'll be wrapping up this fic over the next day or two.

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

[lavanyasix.livejournal.com]

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.