cabbagesforall | LoK AU: Hero-Verse [Open to All! Let's build this verse!]

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korra[au]

LoK AU: Hero-Verse [Open to All! Let's build this verse!]

Legend of Korra: Hero-Verse

The Setting: Republic City, in another place, and a few years ahead of where it normally is...

Once, a long time ago, a normal world gifted the world with something known as Bending - a very rare power to use one's own energy to manipulate the elements. There were many who feared these powers, which came together in him - so he took on a mask and the name of Avatar, becoming a masked hero.

As centuries, and then millennia passed, the mysterious hero's mantle was passed on from generation to generation through reincarnation, someone chosen from each of the Four Nations in turn and from among the very rare ranks of those with the ability to bend the elements.

Flash forward to Republic City, circa the 1930s. For the first time, those who distrust the powers of the benders believe that technology will come to replace them. As the city towers higher and higher, and technological achievement rises even further, it looks like the hero known as Avatar may become obsolete; and there are many sinister forces who are eager to make that tomorrow into today.

Meanwhile, some Benders have taken up mantles of their own - both for good and for ill, while others seek to hide their powers, existing every day with perfectly normal jobs. In the increasingly Art Deco city, there is room for absolutely everyone - and challenges around every corner.

As President Raiko takes an increasingly anti-bending stance, the stage is set for conflicts, challenges, and opportunities to simply erupt...

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

When the grandmother saw what her granddaughter was carrying, she turned pale. "No, don't, he's not worth it," she said, moving to intercept her granddaughter. "Your father should never have taught you the old ways."

The shabby gentleman only had time for a widening of the eyes, a quick glance at the old woman, "Is she--" Then the grandmother had the girl locked in her arms, preventing her from whatever action she had in mind.

"Don't," she said.

And the shabby gentleman laughed. "This is perfect," he said. "Per--"

That was the moment when something big underneath the house gave way.

Iroh found himself stumbling across the porch like a drunkard on the high seas, like a sailor without his land legs, like a newborn deergiraffe trying to learn the use of legs. Nothing he could do but try to keep on his feet, try not to fall into one of the sudden cracks in the floor. A column supporting the roof of the porch cracked and fell toward him. He used fire to incinerate a large chunk of it before it could knock him out; the rest fell in front of him as he pulled the fire back before anything actually caught. Then he had to move fast to escape the collapse of the roof of the porch.

Breathing hard, he looked around and saw the cook had made it out. "Was that earthbending?" he asked her, though she didn't seem in a state to respond. With a sense of dread, Iroh turned back to the house to see -- well, to see what he would see.

There's no time to think, only time for instinct; part of the house is collapsing, and if she doesn't act immediately...

So she moved. Her arms worked in a circle, and a massive funnel of air began to fountain up, catching and lifting debris in a tornado of airbending, sending it up and outwards, to land harmlessly in the street.

Her presence was well and truly announced, now, so it didn't matter if she was subtle, now. With a jolt of fire behind her, she rocketed up out of the basement. She saw the grandmother in the chaos, and wrapped her arms around her, launching herself out through an opening gap in the nearest wall...

At the sight of air and fire working together under the direction of one person, Iroh just stared. He knew that he was looking at the Avatar, and as a bender from a long lineage of benders who hadn't exactly used their powers for good, Iroh had only respect for a tradition with such a stellar reputation. But what was the Avatar doing here?

But he and the Avatar were not the only ones who came from a long lineage. From his travels, Iroh knew that there were many benders scattered across the world, some more secret than others, some more integrated into their communities than others, but all linked together in some way to other benders by the need to learn their craft. There were bullies and isolated mystics, selfless helpers, community defenders, and some very deep secrets.

He had a feeling that the granddaughter might be the result of a very isolated bending lineage. His suspicions were confirmed when the granddaughter emerged in Korra's wake, riding what appeared to be a stone pantherlizard. Iroh had seen that statue in a corner of the parlor and thought it nothing but decoration.

The stone was very dark, some kind of volcanic stone, and the girl appeared to be using bending in a very non-standard way to control the statue, pressed against its back, partially embedded in the stone, twitching and reaching as it clawed its way through the debris.

"No, don't do that, I'm still here, right on top of you!" The shabby gentleman shouted into his radio from a part of the house that had sunk into the earth. The response was impossible to make out, but when the girl saw that her grandmother was safe, she turned right around and went back after him.

"I have a bad feeling about this," Iroh said. It took a lot to force him to run, but for this situation, he ran. And when he came to the remains of the porch jammed in great zigzags into the giant sinkhole, he climbed down and kept running, thundering across the shingles of a section of the roof.

It was more stable than it looked, two great beams jammed into walls of earth to either side. He reached the end and found there was no easy way down, but if there's one thing a firebender can always do when surrounded by wood, it's make a way. He looked around, estimated how things would fall, and set two precisely calibrated fires. As the structure began to shift under him, he certainly hoped he'd gotten it right.

[My thought is that the composition of the rock used to make the pantherlizard statue makes it very difficult to bend by normal means, and the granddaughter is not a general earthbender, her technique is just for this specific rock.]

She didn't have time to think, or assess, which...well, which is what Tenzin had always told her to try and do. There was too much going on in the moment.

The grandmother's safety comes first, and she peers from behind the mask as she gestures the gook over to take care of the old lady. She seems fine, but it's careful not to assume - and then she's off after...whatever that was, and its rider.

She screeches to a halt when she sees Iroh, and is caught on the horns of a dilemma. Information, or action. She's chosen action so far, ok, so, this time it'll be different. She moves closer to Iroh, shouting at him.

"What's your plan?" she called out, doing her best to disguise her voice.

Iroh would like to have a plan, but right now he was just reacting, to having seen the way the grandmother embraced her granddaughter, stopping her from ... something. And to the way the gentleman said "Perfect", and to the knowledge that there was something else down there, something he hadn't seen yet, though he'd heard its voice through the radio.

He'd much prefer to have a plan, not just an inchoate sense of urgency, but what he had, he was willing to share.

"Get down there!" he shouted back, just as his fires burned through, almost exactly synchronized, launching him into a controlled descent, as the roof fell several feet and hit a crumpled wall, tilted and then, instead of continuing, broke in two, leaving him not exactly where he expected but nevertheless able to clamber down through a tilted window into what remained of part of the house.

Light streaked in from above, creating a space of brightness and deep shadows. It took Iroh several seconds to be sure, but it was an empty space, with a large jagged crevice in the middle.

She needed no other prompting, diving straight in and using a gust of air to turn it into a handspring, landing on her feet and coming up in a defensive stance. She frowned at that space - it did not seem right at all. But it looked...

"It's a tunnel!" she called, lighting a fire around one of her hands. "I think they're down it!"

She was off, immediately, trusting Iroh to keep up - so far, he'd been full of surprises. She was certain he could manage at least one more.

Iroh followed more slowly, taking the time to check the tunnel for stability. Without any earthbending, he ran a risk in entering such an ad hoc passage, and he kept himself fully ready -- the right degree of fire could harden the earth, or defend him against whatever he might find, though with the Avatar ahead, he expected to at least have some warning.

Beyond the first few jagged turnings, places where the earth seemed to have ripped itself apart from the stresses to either side, the tunnel widened, into a uniform, though crooked, dimension. It seemed to have been bored through the earth in erratic stages. Occasionally, there were cracks to all sides, which increased Iroh's sense of urgency. He increased his pace to his fastest sustainable pace. The sooner he was out of this, the better.

But even as he sped up, he was aware that he was much slower than Korra, and probably wouldn't catch up with her until she had reason to stop.

He'd get that momentarily as she came to a sharp turn in the tunnel, and had to jump back as a hail of sharp stone pieces came hurling back along the passageway - far too many for her to deflect, and clearly a prepared trap.

She flattened herself back against the wall of the tunnel, waiting for it to abate.

Soon after, Iroh rounded a corner and saw that the way was blocked. Shards of stone hit the earth near him, digging in and embedding themselves, raising clouds of dust and making him cough. It might be temporary, but he'd been keeping track of the twists and the general orientation the tunnel always returned to, and he had an idea.

"Can you try that direction?" he asked the Avatar, pointing at one of the walls where there was already a crack in the direction he thought they should go. Now that he'd caught up to the Avatar and her earthbending ability, he was more bold. "It's a short cut."

"How do you..."

She stopped herself, just nodding. He'd been right so far, after all, hadn't he? Maybe it was instinct, or he knew more than she did - but wisdom was wisdom. She turned to face that wall, taking a deep breath, foot hammering down to the ground as she fell into a strong earthbending stance.

Then thrust her arms forward, fists closed, to widen that crack into an entry way, burrowing forward into the earth.

The trap must have been set near the end of the tunnel, because Korra only had to burrow for a little while before she broke into an open space. Iroh extended his light to reveal a cellar. The area they entered first was filled with dusty wine bottles and ancient, withered root vegetables, but there was an archway to another room, which turned out to be the room where the tunnel entered the cellar.

The first thing Iroh noticed was the stone statue the granddaughter had been riding -- only a statue again -- near the entrance to the tunnel, half buried in earth, and looking a little worse for wear. He hurried over to examine it.

There was also a workshop space, filled with various mechanisms which looked like they'd been flung about in a fight. The laboratory space was further on, near a set of stairs, and mostly undisturbed. There was a bottle of chloroform sitting out on the table, although all the other chemicals were neatly stored on the shelves.

She looked around at all of that when they entered it, and it painted a picture, and not a good one.

"Oh no, oh no..."

She rushed around the lab space, looking at that set of stairs. Where did that lead?

"This is getting very not good."

Iroh poked his finger into a dark, wet spot on the dirt floor, and rubbed his fingers together. It was not blood but mud, a dark mud of a different consistency than the prevalent dirt.

Nodding to himself, he regained his feet, and seeing Korra near the stairs, told her, "I will finish up down here. That trap will be more amenable to disassembly from this end."

Although he was fairly certain, from the lack of any sound from above, and the clear signs that there had been no resistance remaining, that she would find that they had been delayed enough in getting here that the crooks had already fled. "I believe the young girl is alive and not permanently harmed, and there may be a trail. And Avatar, please be careful of other traps. A person who enjoys setting such traps will rarely stick to only one."

As he collected some parts from the workshop -- large pieces good for propping up tunnels -- turning himself into a porcupine of beams and metal until he got them all arranged in a way he could carry -- he said to himself, sadly, "And then someone must deliver the bad news to the good people next door."

She hung her head for a moment before raising her hand. "Let that be me, you're a civilian, nobody should know you're any more involved with this than you are, I can take that. Just...don't spring any traps without me, ok?"

She goes to move her way back up, then looks back at him.

"But...how do you know I'm the Avatar?"

Iroh was visibly surprised; he hadn't expected her to volunteer.

"It would be wise to avoid attention," he admitted after a moment's thought. "But -- forgive me -- is there someone else who can bend so many elements?"

Behind her mask, she smiled.

"Still," she replied, "a lot of people think I'm a phoney. Or just an old legend to try and keep the bad guys in line. You don't even seem surprised."

"My family," Iroh said, mixing simple acknowledgment with the gentle irony of the disinherited.

"For centuries, my family has been exactly the people who make a point of knowing the truth of power. Power, when it is used, always leaves a trail."

She nodded.

"Informative, but cryptic." She gestured over her shoulder. "You're not gonna disappear if I go handle this, right? It's kinda nice having someone watch my back, for once."

Iroh gave a little bow, causing all the things he was carrying to rattle. "I am honored," he said.

Then he chuckled. "I am rather substantial to just disappear," he said. But, seriously, "I'm here to solve a problem. Surely you're here for the same reason. When everything else has been handled, we should compare what we know."

"Substantial is, I think, the right word in a bunch of ways-" she replies, pointing at him, "and I'm not going to insult you by underestimating you. But yes - I'll be back."

She paused, though, about to head up.

"I didn't stop these people when they last turned up. I'm not going to let somebody get hurt this time around."

"We'll do everything we can," Iroh said, and on that note he turned to attend to the task he'd set for himself.

She made her way back up, just in time to see a huddle of worried, confused faces around their erstwhile entrance.

"It's alright, citizens!" she began, putting on her best The Avatar voice. She began to quickly give her reassurances, specifically to the grandmother that her granddaughter would be returned safely to her, and soon.

All the while she kept her ears open for what she knew would be coming - the faint sirens of the Republic City Police.

"Where is she? I saw that young man from next door screeching away. If she-- She hasn't..." The grandmother looked around furtively, saw that many of the people who'd gathered were watching her with various degrees of curiosity, and shook her head, shutting her mouth on what she had been about to say.

"I told her parents that my mother left the island and brought our family here to Republic City for a reason," she moaned instead, just a few seconds later, as if the pressure inside of her was too great to shut down all speech. "I would have told his parents too, if we'd been speaking. Not that it would have done any good. Children...they never listen."

She looked sharply at Korra, and caught her listening, but maybe to something more distant. The grandmother hmpfed, but then a second later inquired anxiously, "Do you hear something? Is something else happening?"

"Just listening for sirens. You're going to have to have a story for the police, ok? Just tell them...mostly the truth. Leave out a few details. But I promise you I'll bring your granddaughter back to you, unharmed. You've got the word of the Avatar."

She can only hope that means something to the woman - it tends to carry more with the older generations to begin with.

"But I'm not waiting for them, and if you read the paper you know we're not on the best of terms, so...maybe you didn't see me, ok? It's your decision, though. But you'll hear from me. Soon."

And she started to make her way back down. Promises made, promises to be kept.

The word of the Avatar seemed to mean something to the grandmother; she straightened up and looked around to make sure that everyone around had seen and noted this sign. "Thank you, Avatar," she said. "I hope that you and the police can resolve your differences, and I--" She pursed her lips. That was more difficult; she respected the authority of Republic City along with the Avatar. "You saved my life, but I have been an honest citizen of this city for most of my life. I will only tell them if they ask."

She glared at the bystanders as if daring them to say anything. The little crowd began to disperse under the force of her personality, now directed toward making sure the police didn't ask about any masked heroes.

Meanwhile, Iroh had entered the tunnel in the cellar only to find it completely blocked not very far in by a large machine, exactly the same diameter as the tunnel. The machine had been rigged to activate when someone got within range on the other side.

It wasn't difficult for him to take apart the trigger mechanism, it was a delicate arrangement that fell apart harmlessly at the first precision blow. But the machine itself was more of a conundrum. In the end, he removed several parts that seemed vital to its operation as well as a radio and took them back to the cellar to examine them in the workshop.

LoK AU: Hero-Verse [Open to All! Let's build this verse!]

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Welcome back, btw. :) Hope all is well!

Thanks!

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