"Yes?"
"It involves… Moving around."
...Surely she doesn't look
that decrepit, does she?
Azula's facial expression doesn't change. That doesn't seem to be making her interviewer any more confident in his position.
"Like… Jumping and.. stuff?"
Brat, she could tumble
rings around you. After all, she must have learned
some tricks from Ty Lee.
"'Stuff'."
"Okay, so, how about I…" He looks around and spots a stack of the clay discs which the earth benders use as ammunition during sport bending matches. He jogs over, picks a armful up and then returns to Azula. "Throw some of these at you, so that you can get a feel for it?"
Heh. Oh, he is going to have to pick his jaw up of the floor when he sees this.
"That's fine." Azula walks towards the nets which the gymnasium uses to catch misses and the larger fragments of clay which explode off when the discs are destroyed. She adopts a loose stance, her face still stationary.
"Uh…" Bolin takes his own more solid stance next to the stack of discs, then hesitates. "You're not a water bender, are you? Because not everyone wears 'national dress' and I got really confused when-."
That is an interesting aspect of the culture of the 'Avatar' world. Each of the four nations do seem to have a certain palette of colour and styles for their clothing, even now. Rarely do you see anyone with bending skills who doesn't wear the appropriate 'look'.
"No."
"O-kay. Here.. we.. go." He gently stamps his right foot, the uppermost discs jumping a few inches into the air. Then he weakly swings his right fist, the disc flying like an arthritic frisbee through the air towards-.
Don't insult her by going that easy on her. Unless you want a spanking for insolence.
BOOM!
Blackened and melted fragments of disc explode across the room, Azula's right fore and middle fingers pointing exactly at where the disc used to be.
Ooh, Lightning-bending. One of the things she's
very good at.
Bolin blinks, his eyes slightly widened.
"Oh. So, you're a.. fire bending master? Like a… Real one? Because my brother can bend lightning but I've never seen him do it that fast bef-."
Another amusing aspect of the setting: The hyper-specialised skills of Fire- and Earth-bending had become so
commonplace just eighty years after they debuted... Hell, Metal-bending took someone like Toph, whose blindness allowed her to sense the imperfections in the metal that allowed her bending to interact with it, to
invent.
"Yes."
"Okay, well, that's… Ah, good?" He raises his hands into a semi-defensive, kneading-the-dough-of-his-thoughts sort of way. "But the thing is, lightning bending isn't actually allowed in Pro Bending?"
Same as Air-bending, though in the latter case, it's because at this stage, only one family has
any. And only one member is over twelve.
"Fine."
Azula takes a slightly more orthodox stance, though now a few of the other benders in the gymnasium are taking an interest.
I rather think having her casually lightning-bolt the pigeon would
naturally get some attention.
"Because it's about bending fast and often and we're not actually trying to kill each other-."
"Again."
Honey, she could set the whole place on
fire and not even be breathing hard.
"Yesm'm." This time he gives the ground a more solid stomp and swings his arm in a more solid punch, though he's clearly aiming to miss-.
CRACK!
The disc explodes with only a little less force than the first time, Azula's signature blue fire hitting the disk and eating through to the centre before releasing its heat and superheating the clay surrounding it. Azula calmly returns to her original pose, face unmoved.
And that's going to get even
more attention. Most firebenders have reddish-orange flames. The lower temperature kind. It takes
focus to burn
that hot.
She was interested to find out what new innovations there had been in bending since she left. But while improvements to communications technology have allowed more people to learn lightning bending, the fact that the intervening decades have been relatively peaceful has really cut down the rate of innovation in combat bending. Bolin's brother might technically be able to bend electricity, but that's probably something he's done firing electricity into a step down transformer in one of Republic City's power plants, not something he's skilled enough to do in combat. She found the innovation in earth benders controlling metal more interesting because the Republic City police department can definitely bend metal in combat, but that's not something she can use herself. And I don't want to encourage her to 'try re-fighting the Great War properly', something she suggested doing in our earlier sessions.
Well, glad you talked her out of world conquest via Power Ring.
"Hey Bolin." One of the other fire benders nods at Azula. "Your grandma's pretty good. Why'd you pick Mako over her last year?"
"Ah-." He glances at the crowd. "Ah, she's not-." He takes a deep and calming breath. "Okay, I'm going to go a little faster now? If you want me to stop-"
If you don't get the joke: Bolin and Mako are the children of a Firebender family and an Earth-bender one. Hence their mixed skills.
"I won't."
"-then just let me know." He hesitates, then goes to pick up another armful of discs on a path that lets him pass by me. "Is she always this intense?"
...You should have seen her years ago. This is her being
mellow.
"Yes, always. Literally always."
"Okaygreat!" He smiles broadly as he tops off his pile and resumes his stance. He stamps harder, two discs rising into the air as a left and a right combo send them flying towards Azula in different speeds and from different directions.
I suppose having the 'old man' there watching is making him even more nervous.
CRACK-CRACK!
Two tiny jabs from Azula turn them both in to dust, more efficient blows than she used for the previous one as she gets a better handle on how much force she needs to use to destroy them. Somewhat reassured that she can handle a basic attack, Bolin begins increasing the speed of his assault, stamping and swinging at a rate which I suspect is closer to what an actual practise session is supposed to look like.
I get the feeling that even if multiple earth-benders tried to barrage her like this, she wouldn't even be
challenged.
Azula gradually shifts away from her classical form in favour of something that allows her to better make the small and fast gestures that more efficiently dispatch the clay discs. Not something appropriate to actual combat, where most combat earth benders are going to use considerably more mass than a small clay pigeon, but just the job here.
And now I picture her just doing little sassy hand-flicks, not even bothering to take a stance...
The fire bender who implied that Azula was Bolin's grandmother sidles up to me.
"She's really pretty good for an old lady. Are you joining the Fire Ferrets too?"
...Because if the team gets someone
that good on it, they're gonna have one hell of an advantage.
"Oh, no. I'd need to be a water bender, wouldn't I?"
He immediately starts losing interest. "Yeah, that's-." He frowns, and stares at my grey and orange robes. "What's.. required."
Heh. Not far off the traditional colours of Air-bender robes. They were a bit more saffron yellow, but still... I foresee some
confusion ahead.
"And I'm not, so I can't. Azula, I'll meet you for dinner!"
She doesn't take her eyes off the incoming targets, but she does give me a small nod. I give the curious fire bender a polite nod, then turn and head out of the gymnasium.
Heh. I wonder if they know the rule: Do not be
incautious when dealing with smiling old men...
I'm not.. sure how useful participating in sports bending will be for Azula recovery. But…
But I'm not the only enlightened Lantern any longer. And now there are a few more of us, the Corps has a rough idea of the mental transformations a Lantern needs to undergo to achieve this rarefied state. Except Azula's tried all of those, and she's still… She's very good, but she hasn't got that… Spiritual unity that we have.
Unsurprising, she was never the most stable person in her youth. I doubt that's changed that much even after most of a century.
Once she regained her sense of perspective with a little help from my counselling, she also regained her dedication and focus and has become an exceptional Lantern. Not the most spiritual, but she desires to master everything that she sets her mind to, and her command of constructs, strategy and tactics raised her above her contemporaries.
Not quite an Illustres-tier, but pretty likely an Honour Guard Lantern.
And with Dox retiring...
And in a few months she probably won't have the time to devote to self-reflection. She's going to become Clarissi, which isn't something I saw coming when I recruited her. And Clarissi is a full time job. She asked me if I had any ideas on how she could make a break through, and coming back here and confronting the things she felt conflicted about was the best idea I had.
I didn't expect her to be that
interested in that sort of administrative-level position. Then again, she
was trained to rule from a young age, and that involves management and bureaucracy...
Visiting her old prison didn't really trigger anything. It's actually a spa for stressed aristocrats now. She did splutter with laughter when found out what they think happened to her, a surprisingly unguarded response from her. But that was all. Visiting her father's grave didn't trigger anything, and visiting Ty Lee's grave only made her angry. Which might be useful, if she'd really been carrying that for seventy years.
Not the sort to have had the popular romantic view of the duo, then. Or perhaps she was frustrated at missed opportunities.
But it's not what she wants. And I want to help her get what she wants.
I've got some thinking to do.
Like ultimately working out what she
really does want. Breaking through self-deceptions like that probably contributes to
Enlightenment, I bet.
