Chain 033: Avatar: The Last Airbender

Chain 033: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Location: Deep Trouble (Ba Sing Se)
Age: 12
Identity: Nomad (Fire Nation)
Drawbacks: None
(Abilities: Savant; Regeneration; Hyperkinesis; Achron; Dedicated Training; The Stars Shine Upon Me; To Truly Live; Waveform Anatomy; Hybrid; AT Field Mastery; Secondary Field; Light of the Orokin; Meltdowner; Premonition Precog; Tall; Earthbender; Bending Genius)

[50/1000]   Sense of Humor
[200/1000]  Spiritualist
[300/1000]  Bending Arts: Fire
[900/1000]  Bending Genius
[1000/1000] Meteoric Ingot

On a scale from one to ten, being in Ba Sing Se some years before anyone finds the Avatar (and being a firebender to boot) ranks somewhere up about oh fifteen. While being able to earthbend is enough to get suspicion off of me, it also meant that I was effectively drafted into their army, and no one really took my desertion well. They took it much less well when I got sloppy and did some firebending to get myself out of danger - which would have raised any number of eyebrows if they didn't have a war to fight.

But it was enough to get rumors going, even if no one really gave them any credit.

The end result was pretty much the same, though; Prince Zuko had his face nicely scarred and was exiled to find the Avatar, his journey was just a little more complicated. Partially due to one of his soldiers getting sick before departing and some other slightly-young-but-helpful fellow offering to take his place who just happened to be a low tier firebender, one that got to watch Zuko train with Iroh often enough that he could figure out the details from there fairly well. One that made sure NOT to slip up and get caught bending the wrong element.

One that kept tabs on them in various situations and tried to make things a bit easier for the exiled prince where possible and keep collateral damage down, while decidedly not going out of his way to help capture the Avatar.

Plans got complicated later, as they always do; when Iroh and Zuko were running about without their military escort, I had to get more creative to follow them, not to mention the Avatar's slowly growing coterie. All would have been well and good - after all, disillusionment charms are remarkably handy when it comes to getting around - but while I was tailing the Avatar crew, I had completely forgotten that Toph didn't need to see to know where people were. Invisibility is pointless when you can't see in the first place, and sound muffling charms don't stop vibrations from going through the earth. And so I abruptly found myself up to my neck in stone. She was extremely perplexed as to why it felt like I was laughing like someone had told the funniest joke ever, while she couldn't hear anything.

The others were equally confused, as it didn't look like anything was there. Well, until Sokka waved his hand to show there was no one there, and ended up slapping me upside the head. And since I didn't exactly put a lot of effort into it, that also dispelled the disillusionment charm. Not the muffling charm, though, so I was still sitting there laughing in silence. Also, talking to them in silence, because I'd forgotten the charm for a few moments.

After dismissing it, I explained a little bit. That I'd been one of Zuko's soldiers until he was exiled (and the stone around me tightened a bit; thanks ever so much Toph), that I had deserted... and when something didn't seem to match, because the human lie detector detected something, I told them that the truth would be too unbelievable but that I'd tell Toph, and only Toph. And once there was distance from everyone else... I used earthbending to free myself, made sure to cast a charm to keep anyone from eavesdropping (to Sokka's audible displeasure), and told her everything. And I do mean everything, from the very beginning to now, even if it was the cliff's notes version.

She told me that I was absolutely nuts, of course. And while I agreed and said no one else would ever believe me, I insisted that it was nonetheless the truth. I gave her the ingot of metal that I'd obtained earlier, that I'd practiced a bit of earthbending on, and told her that she should consider turning that into some armor for herself; when she insisted that was the most ridiculous thing she'd ever heard, I pointed out that I knew she could do it because I'd seen her do it decades from now. After all, wasn't metal from the earth? Well, maybe not THIS metal, but...

We continued talking for a short bit, before the charm was dismissed and we walked back to her compatriots. By then, she'd gotten the metal to form a glove that covered to the elbow, and was just having fun with it. I gave a much more toned down explanation of things - unusual abilities that were magic, in addition to bending, but definitely not the Avatar so please don't freak out too much when I bend both fire and earth.

>"Wait, what?"

I probably should not have said that.

Meanwhile, the timeline was already corrupted, I just didn't know how, but it was absolutely hilarious; shenanigans ensured that Iroh got a dose of the longevity vaccine (but not a full one - he died shortly before Korra's birth, as it turns out), and a chance encounter saw Zuko make his heel-face turn a lot earlier than expected. And from there... well, things were what they were.

(Toph refused to come with me, when the time came. I should not have expected otherwise. She never stopped calling me crazy, but... I was her kind of crazy.)