| By Neo Bahamut | Genre | Rating | Reviews | Updates |
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Memoirs[]
"Thanks again for bringing your tribe to help us," Roatha started to say, turning only to see the sand sailer on its side, the sandbenders surrounded by tanks and ostrich horse cavalry, led by a sneering bloodbender with silver hair.
As scenes of the battle came rushing back to him, so too did the blood red cloud the sandbenders lured their attackers into. A monster, they'd said, new to the Si Wong. Devouring the mercenaries in a flash, it seeped into Roatha's pores, crimson lightning exploding out of him as he turned his blade on a fleeing Senthose, blind to all the friends he nearly cut in the process.
Act 1[]
When Roatha's eyes finally snapped open, he could barely see the room around him, and trying to stand met the fierce resistance of leather bonds. The creaks they made when pulled suggested he was tied to a large board. His scream was muffled by a rag stuffed into his mouth, lightly damped to snuff his fire breath. What's happening—was I captured by Senthose?!
"I see you're awake," Thiera's voice echoed at his side, hollow and tear-strained. In the glow of the healing water she pressed to his head, he could just barely make out the texture of an adobe hut surrounding him. "There's definitely a foreign chi in your mind, but I can't expel it. It resembles a parasite, but I can't feel anything physically there...." Fixing a skeptical glare on him, she asked, "Have you come to your senses now?"
He gave a confused nod, and she angrily wrenched the gag from his mouth.
"What was that for?!" he asked, incensed.
"You go berserk, almost destroy us all, and you have the nerve to ask that?!" she shot back, springing to her feet.
"What are you--?" he started to ask, before images entered his mind. Fractured scenes he couldn't discern as reality or nightmare. The desert bathed in red. Aroma unconscious, maybe worse. Jagged shapes springing from his fingers to claw down his enemies—very nearly his friends too. Calming down, he changed course. "Thiera...I swear to you, I don't remember what happened but...I get the feeling it was bad...."
"You killed the soldiers," she said stiffly, moving the cloth to his forehead. "I suppose that was inevitable...but your rage was clearly out of control. It was like you didn't even recognize us."
"Did I...is Aroma okay?"
"I was able to treat her wounds on the way back. She stopped you before you could do anything stupid. This—" she tapped the board he was strapped to, "Was the only way the sandbenders would allow you into their village. We need to prove to them that you have control over—whatever this is."
Nodding, soaking it in, he said, "I need to talk to Euryale."
She left him in silence, save for a faint whispering in the back of his head, too quiet to make out the words—but somehow he knew there were words. He couldn't even be completely sure they weren't his own thoughts, disassociated from him by the stress or the head trauma that still throbbed at what Thiera called his "Occipital bone."
Finally, Euryale entered—he just noticed the girls were now wearing sandbender dresses—and immediately guessed, "It was a dark spirit, wasn't it?"
To his questioning stare, she asked, "What else could it have been? Certainly no animal. Thi thought it might've been a cloud of tiny bugs, but she didn't see it shoot lightning like we did."
She sat on the floor as he filled her in on what happened from his perspective. "So I guess I was able to use what you taught me, but not in time. I think part of it is still in there."
"Yeah, that sounds about right," she agreed, resting her chin on her hands. "The only other Spirit Hybrid alive right now is Senthose, but there are legends about the possessed gaining strange abilities, at the cost of madness and mutation. In fact," she added, mind on the titanic wall she raised against the bloodbender years ago, dwarfing the steel mill where they fought, "I once had personal experience with that kind of power."
"Do you have any idea what it did to me?"
"Just a guess: If what we saw was some kind of storm spirit, maybe its powers combined with your firebending to create something new—lightningbending, if you will. And when you pulled your sword toward you, we think that might've been magnetism."
"Does—does that mean I can't firebend anymore?!" Roatha asked, alarmed.
She shook her head uncertainly. "We need to convince the sandbenders to let you loose as soon as possible, so we can test it. It's too hot right now, but I'll try to get permission to take you into the desert for a practice session later this evening. No, in fact, I know I will."
"How can you be so sure?" he asked as she stood.
She stared down at him with an unreadable expression. "Roatha, if my theory is right, you have the most powerful bending ability in the world right now—at least with the Avatar out of commission—you could very well be the key to saving Ven's tribe from Sekhmet. But if you can't control it...."
"I'll just be the one who destroys it...," he finished for her as she was swallowed by the blaring sunlight, wiping her face.
He spent most of the time after that sleeping. Though the accommodations left a lot to be desired, when Euryale was finally allowed to tie him to a rickety old sandbender with Ven along as a witness, he got a decent look at the village on their way out. It was indeed composed of a series of small huts covered in fox iconography, though here and there were metal tools, thermoses, or other signs of trading with the outside world.
Most of the village remained very traditional, a small windmill having been erected to help pump water from somewhere underground. It was also used by the village's elderly as a base to work fabrics, though there were various other racks just for that. A few actual foxes wandered the streets, occasionally stopping to dig up some pest to eat. The whole settlement was swathed in shade, swaddled by awnings that kept out the sun's cruelty, though something about the fengshui seemed adept at cycling cool air.
They passed beyond a surprisingly high circular wall, which seemed more for keeping out sand than enemies, and Roatha passed the time between water breaks by trying vainly to spot features on the horizon.
"...This looks like a good enough spot," Ven at last relented, stopping at an arbitrary stretch of desert.
"Good to know, ‘cause I seriously have to use the bathroom," he remarked dryly.
"Make sure to blast the sands to scar off any scorpion snakes first," Ven warned.
Unstrapping him was laborious, but they let him disappear behind the nearest dune—after all, where else was there to go—and eventually he returned, feeling refreshed. In fact, he'd never been so charged with energy his entire life—not their first Pro-Bending match, or victory, not even recently as he battled Senthose, inches from the end and literally racked by electric charges.
"So...what exactly am I supposed to do?" he asked as they motioned for him to stop several dozen paces away.
"Anything, I guess," Euryale shrugged.
With a sigh, he pointed into the sky, ordinary blue lightning flying from his fingertips. Next, he formed a fist, firing instead a stream of flame. "Everything feels normal." Holding out pairs of lightning fingers, he touched their tips, creating a loop stretching from one end to the other.
And then he did the unthinkable.
Slowly but surely, as if he were doing something as mundane as basket weaving, he shaped the lightning into a vertical ring, gently pushing it away from his body. Closing his fists snuffed it out just as easily. A luminescent orb appeared in his hand and he knelt down, tossing it between his legs with perfect control, even throwing it in the air and kicking it like a ball, before crushing it in his hands.
"It's exactly like firebending," he murmured. "I wonder if I could—" And so he opened his mouth, spitting out a bolt of lightning. "Probably shouldn't," he concluded, rubbing his aching teeth as spots crackled in his eyes.
"I guess I have full control over—" he turned, smile wiped from his face as a chunk of sandstone slammed into his stomach, doubling him over.
Euryale glared at him with her fist outstretched, and he snarled right back, the sand rising around him with a bloody glow as his voice warped. "Why do you still treat me like dirt, you rotten b--!"
"Calm. Down." She ordered. "I knew power like that came at a price. You need to control your anger, or else it'll go out of control." When he continued to stare mutinously at her, she added, "If not for us, then because every time it happens, the spirit will get closer to overtaking and destroying you."
He closed his eyes, breathing deep. His hair fell back, the sand with it as the charges evened out. He soon rose to his feet, dusting himself off, and flinched when Euryale stepped toward him. "Hey, don't make any sudden moves, last time you threw a rock at me!"
"I don't think the villagers will be happy to know the only thing keeping them from destruction is a few breathing exercises," Ven said warily.
"Do we really have a choice? That was just a scouting force we happened to run across. Sekhmet is way too strong for you to fight alone. And on our end, we still need a guide. If we separate now, we'll probably just all die."
He released a breath he didn't know he was holding when they packed up the binding board, allowing him to sit on the sand sailer as they drove it in shifts, the other keeping a lookout as her partner relaxed.
"I understand. I forgive you. I am grateful for your help." Ven was predictably taciturn in responding to his attempts at conversation.
When it was Euryale's turn to keep watch, he scratched the back of his head, looking off at an indistinct mirage. "So, I'm sorry about what I said—er, almost said."
"No offense taken. You weren't yourself."
"Yeah, well...in the interests of keeping my anger in check...I don't think I ever really cleared the air between us."
"Are you mad at me?" she asked, turning to him in surprise.
"No...at least I didn't think so. Why shouldn't I be over what happened between us?"
"Do you think about it often?"
"Not until you attacked me," he admitted.
She nodded. "Sometimes unexpected turmoil brings up problems deep below the surface. That's why it's so important to clear your chakras." When he squinted at her, she pointed to his stomach, and then his chest. "Like when shame gives you a stomachache, or you feel your grief in your heart. That's negative chi building up in your chakras, blocking the flow around your body. There are 7 chakras in total—"
"I appreciate the help, but before we get into this, I just want to say—actually say it in words—that I value our friendship. Y'know that rock you gave me on our first date?" When she nodded, he explained, "I put it with the Pro-Bending Cup. Throwing it away didn't feel right, so I wanted to change its meaning to something that represented all of us...I don't know, now that I say it, it seems kinda stupid."
"It is pretty corny," she laughed as he looked away. "But also pretty touching...you feel any better?"
"Yeah, actually," he admitted. "Lighter, even."
Patting her stomach, she smiled, assuring, "And just like that, you've unlocked the Fire Chakra."
Act 2[]
"So just unlock all the chakras, and I should be able to control the power," Roatha summarized as they dragged the sand sailer the rest of the way into the village. "Easy peasy."
"Don't get cocky," Euryale warned. "Unlocking chakras isn't easy, and few people free them all even in an entire lifetime. The Thought Chakra is particularly hard. I only unlocked it when I accepted I was about to die."
"You look pretty alive to me."
"When we reach our lowest point, we're open to the greatest change. In my case, my spirit guide came to my rescue. But...sometimes things can get messy again. That's when Senthose became a Spirit Hybrid, and we haven't spoken since...."
She trailed off as Roatha stared at her blankly. "...Okay, I really regret not letting you tell me this story back when we were dating."
She smiled, scanning the crowd for Stheno. Finding her next to a conspicuous Water Tribe girl with dark hair, she approached, leaving Roatha and Ven to reassure the gaggle of villagers ranging from curious to furious.
"Is Aroma still resting?" she asked, glancing at the hut.
"Yeah," Stheno answered, tugging anxiously on her ponytail. "Listen, I know she's been through a lot, but I still think she's getting tired too easily. Maybe she should do some training with us?"
She pointed to a sandstone octagon with painted zones, pitted with cracks and debris from battles past, which Euryale recognized as being modeled after an old school Pro-Bending ring. A ring of muck surrounded it, and her nose wrinkled as she traced the source to the animal pens, where a camelephant was currently being washed.
"...Yeah, I don't think she'd like that very much. How're things going with you two, by the way?"
"Yong's pretty upset Chief Beifong didn't send him with you," the other girl chimed in. "But she says the city's safety comes before ‘personal matters.'"
Euryale detected the bitterness but couldn't blame her now they knew Senthose was here, of all places. The man already took so much from their family, let alone had the gall to threaten them again during his prison escape. "Anyone would want payback," she assured, putting a hand on her shoulder. "I assure you, we'll bring him back to justice."
"I know that's what I should want...but it's just so hard," she admitted, at which point Stheno put a hand on her opposite cheek, nuzzling her face with her own.
"I know, Ama," the officer said with a nod. "He's brought so much pain into the world already, and it seems like he'll never stop. But he can't run forever."
"What if he doesn't want to run?" Stheno asked, question tinged with the ghosts of nightmares she'd had for years after unknowingly playing children's games with the killer.
Her sister gazed out in the direction where she was told the mercenaries loomed, though she could see nothing from this distance. "We desperately need a plan," she acknowledged. "The power of lightning alone won't be enough to defeat a fully stocked army. Hopefully Ven's airbender can supply us with more information."
"Oh yeah, the jarheads were asking about that," Ama added, ignoring the redhead's admonishing look. "They might know something helpful," she finished, pointing out where she last saw them.
She hated to admit, but as she walked up, their helmets did look a bit like upturned vases. Noah broke this thought with a salute, Luna and Nero falling in line behind him.
"Anything to report, Detective Euryale?"
"My theory about Roatha was correct," she answered, returning the gesture. "But it's too dangerous for him to draw on the spirit's full power. Luckily, proper mindfulness will keep it at bay. How ‘bout you? I'm particularly interested in hearing about that airbender."
"Well," he began as they returned to ease, "Nobody around here knows much, but we were able to secure the name of the tribe she's currently staying with. The chiefs assure us Ven will be able to guide us there, which is fortunate, because young Nero has been unable to get a signal out to anyone."
She shrugged. "I guess they don't have radios."
"Yes, but more than that, we believe we're being jammed." Anxiety cracked his rigid composure as he finished, "If worse comes to worst out here, we won't be able to call for backup."
"If what we need is enough power to win, then I'll just make sure I have enough," Roatha announced, having finally picked his way through the crowd.
"Do you really think you can take on a whole army by yourself?" Luna scoffed.
"I'm not by myself," he answered, spreading his arms. "I've got all you guys with me. Listen, if the airbender can't help us, we've got a tech guru--" he gestured to Nero, then to Euryale, "And a metalbender with the seismic sense. Not to mention an airbender of our own, plus the smartest, most beautiful woman on the planet."
"What does her appearance have to do with anything?" Luna asked again.
"I was just trying to be roman—look," he waved her off impatiently, before clenching his fist for emphasis. "The point is I'm sure we can whip something up if we need to! You've taken these guys before, and they've gotten stronger since then, but so have all of us!"
"I like your moxie," Noah replied with an approving nod, "But there's still the matter of the Red Lotus. If they're involved, they're surely contributing their own spy network, which has gone undiscovered for decades."
"Oh yeah...," he trailed off, awkwardly lowering his fist, "I forgot that part...." Struck with sudden inspiration, his head shot up. "Wait, they meet in the Spirit World, right? Euryale, if you could go in, you could see if they're up to anything in there!"
"That's actually a really great idea," she acknowledged, crossing her arms and tilting her head in thought. "...But I know enough not to go in alone. It's pretty easy to take Aroma into the spirit world these days, but I'd feel better if more of you could do it." Looking sidelong at him, she concluded, "We'll have to make that part of your training. You have spirit powers now, so it should be easier for you."
"That's perfect!" he yelled with a clap. "And maybe something there will help Thiera learn how to spiritbend too!"
Noah nodded. "Then we'll prepare for the voyage while you take care of that." As they set off, Nero flashing his friend a thumbs up, he chuckled to himself, "Gotta keep busy, else someone might be coming for my job."
"I don't think we're ready to retire yet, Sir," Luna whispered back, defiance blazing through her features.
"...What?" Roatha asked, noticing Euryale staring at him with a great big smirk.
"Oh, nothing," she replied airily. "Just thinking you remind me of back when I had a partner."
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