cabbagesforall | 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...

Threaded | Flat

In this incarnation, much like The Phantom, the mantle of 'Avatar' is passed down from generation to generation. The costume changes, as does the personality, but the core remains the same - a simple oath to protect those who need protection, and to keep the world in balance, safe from the perils of the dark. Trained by a knowledgeable mentor, the secrets have been maintained a long, long time - but so many want to find them out.

And it's a lot harder from a girl fresh from the Polar sticks, as it were, just trying to make her way in the big city. While by night she's a mighty hero, mild-mannered Korra is, in daylight, just like anybody else. She takes her responsibilities seriously, but she also wants to be a normal, every-day girl living in the city and all its lights. In her years of secret training, after all, nobody told her about dancing and the pictures...

She's even found somewhere to live - an apartment in the basement of her new job at the city's biggest newspaper - where she works as the janitor. Everybody wonders how she gets the whole building sparkling like she does, but gosh it's easy to clean those floors when you can waterbend.

Edited 2021-03-02 23:51 (UTC)

Wu loves benders. He loves everything about them. Sure, he's a non-bender, and he's supposed to be suspicious of benders and everything they represent, but he can't help himself. They're just so cool. They can bend elements like it's no one's business, and so many of them are just trying to do good in the world! Wu has been enamored with them ever since he was a kid, enshrouded in the riches of his family, old money built on the non-bender world.

He was supposed to follow in his father's footsteps and work for the family company, Hou-Ting Inc, but he was never very interested in business. So, with the family credit account and his expensive camera, Wu managed to get a job with the paper under a pseudonym: Wu Ting (not the most imaginative name, but, hey, who would think that the son of the most prolific anti-bending family would want to photograph benders for a living?).

He works his days at the paper, and spends his nights on the town, eating at the best restaurants and rubbing elbows with the rich and famous of Republic City, but all he wants to do is meet a bender, a real bender. Maybe even one of the heroes who he photographs for a living.

Mako, as a rule, is bad at keeping secrets.

He's been told he has an honest face, has worked most of his life to try and change that but has never managed it.

Which is really a shame, because he has a big secret to keep. He throws himself into his work to avoid thinking about it, and that mostly works except when his work intersects with what he's trying to hide. It happens more and more these days. In his beginning days as a reporter on the beat, he'd mostly covered crime, the doings of various Triads in the city, the kind of sensational stuff that sold papers and got eyeballs on pages, but ever since Avatar showed up in the city he's been covering more and more of her stuff, and that's dangerous, especially since his boss told him to try and figure out who exactly is behind that mask. His work is getting a little too close to home.

Still, he gets the stories because he's good at what he does, and he likes the work. Mako knows there are stories out there no one is telling, voices that aren't being heard, and he doesn't have delusions of grandeur or anything like that but he'd like to make a difference and get paid doing it. He likes being good at things.

Who cares if, technically, he's a bender?

Nobody needs to know that. All they have to see is Mako, reporter, trying just like everyone else to get a byline and a bit of notoriety.

[Wrong time, wrong place, but since it's an AU I thought I could just AU him in. Hope this is okay!]

What was a generally law-abiding tea shop proprietor to do when he overheard some of his patrons plotting something that did not sound at all law-abiding?

As a suspected firebender, Iroh had a small record with the police, not enough to interfere with his business so far -- it was so nice when those with power saw the reason of his situation, helped along by a few free cups of tea and pastries -- but enough that he knew it wasn't wise to draw attention to himself. Therefore, he'd decided not to bring the matter to the authorities. Since he couldn't simply stand by, he would just have to handle it himself.

First step, check the archives at the newspaper. He thought he remembered seeing a picture of one of his suspects in the paper...a year ago? Two? Long enough that the memory was dim, and by the time he emerged into the atrium of the newspaper building his eyes were smarting from peering at so many pictures and smudged print, but he was clutching a sheaf of notes that he thought would help him.

It was careless of him not to notice that the floor of the lobby was wet, hurrying forward in his eagerness to get back to his tea shop and mull over what he'd found over a nice cup of tea... But he slipped, tripped, fell forward, windmilling into save on one knee at the last moment, instead of flopping like a beached whaleturtle. "Oooff," Iroh said.

And, "My notes!" The papers had scattered and one particularly unruly piece had skimmed across the room all the way to the door.

Korra - the Hero known as "Avatar"

Wu - the intrepid photographer

Mako—the reporter with something to hide

Iroh - the tea shop proprietor with a problem