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+--- Thread: To Find Something Worth Fighting For (/showthread.php?tid=895)
To Find Something Worth Fighting For - Drogon - 02-08-2015
Aang flew through the Nexus on his signature whirling ball of air. His spirits were back up after cooling off for a bit and then talking to some of the people who happened to be hanging around; He had learned at least a little bit about each of the 8 verses, and realized that each held the most exciting of adventures for him when he was ready for them. He did, however, notice a pattern in such suggestions, in that most of the pedestrians had noticed his confusion and had told him to check out either Coruscant or Camelot, which seemed to be the lands most hospitable to the newer "Primes." The gates, he was told, were also right between those to the Ashen Steppes and the one he had been heading towards for a while after his first concussive encounter.
Arriving in the general vicinity of one of said portals, Aang noticed there was quite busy traffic compared to the other gates he'd seen, including an oddly high percentage of moderately suspicious, shifty characters. No men covered completely in white armour, though, so this one must be for Camelot. Good. Aang didn't particularly feel like navigating a huge city at the moment; In fact, the sameness and continuity of the Nexus had made him homesick for his old world, full to the brim of open fields dotted with small, cozy villages coexisting peacefully. It was obvious that this wasn't quite an achievable circumstance in this violence-ridden place, but as far as verses went, Camelot seemed it would be the closest, at least in appearance.
Hopping off of his air scooter, Aang took the last few meters to the gate slowly. He felt as though he were getting into something bigger than himself - As soon as he stepped through this gate, he would be accepting his banishment to the Omniverse, and a new life as a different sort of nomad.
He was ready. Aang stepped forward, and through the gate.
He could tell immediately when he hit the border. A sudden comfortable warmth intertwined perfectly with a cool breeze. The light backdrop of flitting birdsong and distant joyful yells meshed perfectly to create an atmosphere of utter tranquility. Aang was smiling even before his eyes opened and saw the idyllic backdrop surprisingly reminiscent of a semi-coastal Earth Kingdom countryside. A thin, twisting dirt path lead onwards, bordered at irregular intervals by rolling green hills on both sides. Aang jumped into the air, pulling out his glider, and then made lazy circles in the air as he took in his surroundings. A few miles off to the right, he could spot a village, perhaps a bit more advanced than the average town of his memories, but close enough to put at bay any homesickness still remaining with the boy. Far off to the left, on the horizon, was a larger, more pristine-looking city, glistening in the sun in powerful contrasts of black and white. This must be Minas Tirith, the layered capital of the verse, and also strangely reminiscent of Omashu, the home of his Earth kingdom friend Bumi.
Landing gracefully on the ground and resetting his glider back to the appearance of a simple staff, Aang holstered it on his back and began to walk along the dirt path. It didn't seem it would lead to the capital, but that was okay - Aang wasn't really looking for a huge center of civilization, but rather something more akin to a friendly group of travelers to join, or perhaps a family of simple folk to stay with and perhaps feed for the night with his newfound powers of food generation. It would probably be faster and more efficient to scooter down the path until he found someone, but Aang was really in the mood to relax and take everything in, so he settled for a lazy walking pace.
About an hour passed, and Aang grew tired of walking. He found a nice, soft patch of grass a few meters off from the road, lay down, and began to nap.
Re: To Find Something Worth Fighting For (Open) - Drogon - 02-10-2015
Groggy. Aang felt groggy, there was no better word for it. He slowly sat up, taking note of his mildly ruffled-appearing demeanor and - whoah, was it already dark? And it had been for a few hours now, too. So much for finding a place to stay the night. He'd been dreaming, too, and not a normal dream, or he would've woken up sooner and wouldn't have still felt quite so tired. He felt torn from the dream, like something had been trying to hold him there...
Which meant something had pulled him away.
Suddenly fully alert, Aang leaped to his feet, proceeding to hunch over and keep perfectly still, listening in the wind for the perpetrator of the abrupt end to his extended nap. There was a brisk breeze, but he didn't care - he WAS an airbender after all. It did, however, cause quite a rustling in the grass, masking anything of note from outside of his earshot.
And then it was gone. Now, he could hear the stifling lack of bug noises in the air - Though, did this verse even have ladybug-cicadas for that, anyway? No. No distractions. A couple more seconds, and he heard it. Certainly a woman's voice, and a harsher one at that, to his right. Aang began to slowly creep in that direction, and inadvertently caught more and more snippets of a conversation... "h-here, I don't..." "That's not... it, is it? I... of it! You're hiding some!" "N-no, I swear..." "I know where your family lives!"
Aang began to run in their direction. "No, no! Don't do anything to them!" Both female voices. "Heh. Yeah, you wouldn't want anything like that..." A third voice. Male. Gruff. Somehow familiar.
A shadow flitted into the small clearing lit only by moonlight, from the same rustling grass that had impeded it earlier. It was obvious, now, who was the assailant, and who was the victim - A young girl, even younger than Aang, for some reason alone, on her knees and in tears, facing a surprisingly buff woman with VERY long claws and a smile that glinted wickedly in the sparse light. From one claw dangled a cutesy coinpurse, bedazzled and all, and from her mouth, a surprisingly unlit cigarette. On the opposite side of the clearing on a stump sat a similarly detailed man with his head down and... fit arms comfortably displayed upon his spread legs.
His head moved, and his eyes came up to meet Aang's. His cover was shot. Time to take action. A visible stream of air came to life behind the man on the stump, quickly rising to pummel the back of his neck. Surprised, he barely managed to catch himself with his elbows. The airstream then whipped around to the woman, uppercutting into her jaw with a sickening crackle. The girl started, then glanced up to see Aang catching the baggie as it fell from the woman's hand. Understanding came across her face, and she grabbed his sleeve, pulling him in the opposite direction he'd entered the clearing from. As they exited the clearing, the stump man pulled his head up and looked directly at Aang.
It was the concrete man. The man from the Nexus, who had helped him get his bearings from the start, and who had seemed to helpful and jovial before. Aang let in a short intake of breath in surprise. "Wait!" the concrete man yelled. "I can explain, you're making a -" But whatever he had to say was cut off as the girl pulled Aang into the dense growth of shrubbery and tall grasses, forming a sound-breaking wall between the young duo and the adults in the clearing.
The two of them continued running for a good 15 minutes until they finally reached the end of the head-high grasses, coming upon a large, open, hilly field, much more akin to that of the entrance of Camelot from the Nexus. The girl let go of Aang's sleeve - Wait, had she been holding it this whole time? - and then spun around in front of him, facing him as she slowed to a sort of backwards skip, letting Aang walk. "Thanks for helping back there. How'd you do that?" Her voice was surprisingly low, considering her age and slight demeanor.
"Oh, you mean my airbending?" Aang's trickster grin kicked in as he held up his right hand and began forming a small whirling ball of air. "Whoaah!" The girl stopped skipping for a second, nearly tripping over her own feet as she admired the basic exercise. She continued walking, moving to Aang's side to continue observing more comfortably. "That's soo cool! So you're like some sort of wizard then! C'mon, you've GOT to show my dad, we're almost to my house, c'mon! Oh, uh, you can probably stay the night too, if you'd like, it's pretty late."
"What's a... Well, I suppose I can ask when I get there. Let's go then!" Aang jumped in the air, tossing his now-formed air scooter under him as he went. Emitting a wicked cackle, he sped ahead. "Heey! That's cheatiiing!" Aang looked back to try and toss her a devilish grin, but almost instantly hit a wall. A real wall, this time, embedded in a hill, as opposed to a now-morally-ambiguous jolly strongman like before. This time, it was his newfound companion's turn to give a chortle as she jogged up from behind.
It took a minute or two for Aang to get over what could technically have been his second concussion in half as many days, and for the girl's giggling to calm down a bit, though not quite entirely. "Yup, this is my house. C'mon, I'll let you in." She walked over to a few feet from where Aang was laying on the ground, and began stomping, causing far more noise than it seemed it should've. "Daddy, I'm home!" Her voice was suddenly much higher than just moments before, Aang noticed, and closer to what he had originally expected.
"Diane! I was worried!" The trapdoor the girl - Diane? - had been stomping on suddenly popped open, and with it came the head and arm of a very pale man with thick glasses and an equally thick moustache. "Yeah, come on in, don't forget to close the door on the way." His head again disappeared below the ground. Diane grinned and hopped into the hole. Aang cautiously followed.
Re: To Find Something Worth Fighting For (Open) - Drogon - 02-14-2015
The first thing Aang realized upon landing in the well-lit hobbit hole of a home was Diane's hair color. He hadn't been able to tell in the sparse moonlight, but it seemed vaguely purple, which was odd as he had only ever seen... Well, NORMAL hair colors back at home. It would seem there were more oddities here to get used to than he had first imagined. The second thing he noticed was her father glaring at him suspiciously as Aang gawked at his daughter, and the third thing he noticed was DIane doing the same.
"Oh, uh... Sorry 'bout that. Purple hair. New to me. I'm new, here, to the Omniverse I mean, uhh, what's your name?" Aang stuck out his hand to the not large but still somehow intimidating moustached man in front of him, who he noticed had a less unusual black shade of hair.
A few seconds passed, and the two hosts burst out into laughter. "It's fine, kid, we're used to it. Browning, the name's Don Browning. And I suppose you've met Diane, or you wouldn't be here. Wait, how DID you meet Diane?" Mr. Browning and Aang turned to face the girl again, who had been slowly retreating towards a door on the other end of the room. She froze, then sighed.
"Yeeeah, uhm, I was out again with Joe and Briette..."
"You were WHAT!? Di, I know you think well of them, but I told you, they know now and they can't be trusted anymore! Any anyway, you were supposed to deliver it to Iwanoko and return here as fast as possible."
"Yeah, I sort of ran into them on the way. They tried to take it, but... This guy" - (she made a sweeping gesture over to Aang - Had he still not introduced himself yet?) - "came along and helped me get away. Actually, you got my bag back, right?"
Reaching into his baggy monk's garb and not immediately feeling the pink coinpurse the he'd barely retreived not half an hour ago, Aang had a short-lived panic attack until the bag plopped to the floor, falling out of an upturned shirt pocket. Don snatched it up, and then opened it and poured the contents onto his hand. There sat a silver ring, carved in a manner both beautiful and slightly unsettling and possessing of a beauty that told Aang it was surely hand-carved, if not completely handmade altogether. Seeing Aang's inquisitive eyes going over the resplendant item, Don cleared his throat, then put the ring into a coat pocket at his breast. "It's a family heirloom, my mother gave it to my wife when I married, and I've kept it ever since... Well, you don't need to know that story yet. Either way, it's said to bring good luck to the holder, apparently one of my great grandparents bought it off of a homeless witch. I was GOING to have Di here bring it to my master over at the Mages' Guild to examine it after all these years, but he had left to attend some party in the Pale Moors, 'For Primes and Nobility Only.' Pff."
After a bit of confusion wherein Aang made Don explain some of the terminology, such as Mage, Wizard, Witch, and Magic that he'd never heard before, and subsequently had to be informed that the Bending he promptly demonstrated was likely just a regional variant of said magic, causing a bit of a temporary internal breakdown, he offered to provide a meal in exchange for the hospility of the family that had taken him in for the night. Focusing for a moment, Aang attempted to summon up a full (though vegetarian and simple) meal in the adjacent dining room, and while it was less exceptional than what he'd hoped for, he managed to fill all of their bowls with an astoundingly well-seasoned potato soup and the central platter with a small assortment of various greens. As they all ate, they discussed Camelot, the Mages' guild, and various innocuous inconsistencies between this world and the one Aang was used to. It was the first time in a long time Aang had truly felt at home again.
"Kid, you're at least a bit interested in the Mages' Guild here, aren't ya? Don't suppose you have the time to do me a wee bit of a favor and get in good with one of the established members of the Guild, would you?"
"Aang! My name's Aang. I can't believe I still haven't introduced myself yet. Anyway, yeah, that actually sounds right up my alley. I'm not exactly on any sort of quest yet, I mean, I just got to this... place... today. Or yesterday, I guess. What would you have me do?"
"I told you that friend of mine with the Guild wanted to take a look at my ring as soon as he could get his hands on it, but he'll be in the Pale Moors still for a little while yet for that Masquerade I mentioned earlier. Perhaps you could go ahead and take it to him? I... Well, I trust you enough because you protected my daughter and got her home safe to me. Also, this is just too convenient to pass up - Primes get in to the party for free, which is part of why he's there in the first place, and since you're new here, perhaps you could use the occasion to catch up on the multiverse as well? I'd have you come back here with or without him afterwards, too, to ensure to me that you were at least successful in delivering the item. So... What do you say?"
"Huh. A party? Sounds like fun, count me in! Uh, what's the guy's name, and how do I get there?"
Pulling out a crumpled invitation from his pocket, Don handed it to Aang. "There should be directions and such here. The receptionist I spoke to at the Guild when I went looking for Faren told me this was where he'd gone. He's quite tall and probably will be wearing purple, he loves that color for some reason. Just tell him Browning sent you and give him the ring." He returned the ring to the bag the girl had been keeping it in, and handed it over to Aang. "Well, you can sleep here tonight if you'd like, but it'd be best to make your way there in the morning, it's quite a trek."
"That's fine, I slept through most of the afternoon anyway, I'm not really tired. I actually could go ahead and leave now, now that we're done eating." Aang turned towards the trapdoor exit and made his way across the room to the instant protests of both of the other inhabitants of the cozy bunker. "I'll be back soon enough, and with information on the ring too! Don't worry, I really am kind of ready to go," he yelled over his shoulder.
As he pushed open the trapdoor, Don and Diana wished him farewell, and his goodbyes were said as it closed. Aang began to stride quickly away, then hopped onto his air scooter and started down the path back to the Nexus gate. He had a purpose now, a task (other than reuniting with Appa, that is), and while he had the energy he'd put his all into finishing it promptly for the nice family that had taken him in. A friend, an ally of any sort, in this world seemed potentially difficult to come by, and he'd to all he could to ensure he didn't lose any.