trans_9 | In my element [Open]

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In my element [Open]

After all, here was where water was plentiful, and she had lots of space to move. The past few days had been amazing of course: she got to know several different people and experience certain parts of their world. If anybody stepped in here though, they would know the part of Katara's world she stopped being a child. Her inquisitiveness was a way she coped with a truth she knew, and was sure some of the other "kids" shared: certain experiences were adult, and they called for adult action.

She had her hair free, and was breathing a little to ready herself. She'd already flexed and stretched enough: she planned to get a workout. She entered the nearest Sensorium and closed her eyes.

"The Earth General who went too far," Katara said, and the world materialized: there were the Earth Nation banners towering, and there were members of the Dai Li, coming at her full force. This was of course not accurate: there WERE no members of the Dai Li when they approached earth general Fong that attacked Aang in order to force him into the Avatar state. Still, Katara wanted them a part of this program anyway: it would be harder to get to that Earth general.

First they erected the rock pillars, like the day they'd uncovered Lake Laogai. That was fine: Katara knew what move would come after. There were fifteen strong: seven at the back and eight at her front. They hovered on the rock, waiting a moment, and then the ones at her back slid down quickly, the rock hands coming for her, the ones in front following suit.

She froze the hands first, then crouched down and arose with water tentacles. Katara hadn't gotten her octopus water attack down just yet then (that would happen when she fought Azula) but she did now, and the several tentacles went toward those at her back, knocking three down. Katara jumped up from that formation and rode a wave from the lake nearby, going to meet with the front attack of the Dai Li. She met them with a tidal wave and froze them all for several seconds before thawing, and the men, in a state of shock, fell uneasily to the floor, cold and beaten. Katara turned to the four remaining Dai Li and took them out with a far reaching water whip. Once they'd fallen, she turned her head toward General Fong and rose with a wave again. He looked shocked for a moment, then came at her with a rock pillar aiming toward her head.

"HA!" Katara grunted and split the rock easily in two: she'd learned a thing or two from Toph, a true Earthbending master. She flung her whip to the ground beneath the kings feet and froze, making him slip and ruining his stance. Katara was there in an instant, outstretched hand to his neck, her face grim with determination.

"You lose," the girl said, and froze the bottom part of his body. He growled and tried to free himself, but could not, of course. This was how Katara would have like their terms to end. In reality, General Fong had caught her by surprise and used her to push Aang into the Avatar state against his wishes.

If there was one thing Katara hated, it was being a victim. If there were another thing...it was being used to hurt Aang.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"I've been looking around," Roxie says, hands still in her pockets. "There's all kinds of interesting things in the city. It's like a collage except with neighborhoods. You fight well," she adds in a disrinct non sequitur, steppping forward to look around the simulation a little more. "It's almost like watching a performance."

Katara nodded. "I've only visited the city once so far with my friend Luna. It was just a ruin, but I think it was some kind of ruin. I'd definitely be interested in exploring more of it though."

Katara looked a little pleased. "I haven't been able to practice in awhile. Those two were our enemies a little while ago, and they're really fast! I'm just glad I've gotten that good. Master Pakku would be pleased."

"It's like a museum." Roxie thinks. "I wish I knew if it was supposed to be used or not. But it would be too late to stop anything if not." She pulls her hands from her pockets, folding them together in front of herself. "Maybe people lived there once upon a time."

She steps forward a little farther. "Could I try something like that? I don't fight so neatly, but I'm olay at it..."

[OOC: I meant Katara to say "It was just a ruin, but I think it was supposed to be some kind of church." Sorry!]

"Yeah, I got that impression too. I wasn't quite sure what other purpose it could serve on this ship though, or why Stacy would have it here in the first place. But what I'm really curious about are the restricted places that we can't get to so far."

Katara nodded. "Sure. I've been curious about these cho you've talked about, and how you fight them."

(No problem!)

Roxie nods just a little. "I guess I just have to..."

The scenery flickers and changes in a rolling wave, becoming an inner-city street well after dark. Obelisks of brick and steel buildings rise up on all sides, and aside from the unfamiliar stars, only a row of dim, evenly-spaced street lights give any illumination. A few rows down, an old homeless man sleeps against one of them, wrapped in a number of dirty, torn coats. The air is more chill than is comfortable, but not freezing. A few spare bits of rubbish decoeate the sidewalk where an over-full steel trash can has lost some of it contents.

Roxie is dressed in overalls, a battered t-shirt, and boots under her jacket. Smoothly, she pulls a circlet of pressed silver and bone-white from inside her jacket and slides it into place on her head, and the brass ring now on her left index finger momentarily catches the light.

"Stay quiet," she murmurs. "It's here somewhere."

"Right," whispers Katara, although she has to suppress a small gasp at her own clothing. she is wearing a white Kangol hat with her hair in a ponytail, jeans and a blue tank top, nothing she would wear in her world. Still, she kept quiet and crept along with Roxie.

The place was unfamiliar, and resembled the city on Stacy's ship more. Katara was fascinated, but she knew everything came second to the danger. Luckily, she was very light on her feet. She leaps up a street lamp in several seconds, trying to spy anyone, and then comes back down as quickly as she climbed up.

"Anything?" She whispered.

Up top, the view is... Not much different. Nothing moving in sight, just shuttered or blank windows and dreary sky and slate-grey roofs. This is not a happy place, the surroundings seem to say. All the angles seem a little subtly wrong, like crooked picture frames.

Roxie holds up a hand, palm open. Her attention is focused on the sleeping man, and she pads slowly towards him, withdrawing a carpenter's hammer with a gleaming silver head from inside her jacket.

Katara follows Roxie. Unlike her movement around the ship or the city, here she walks with barely an audible step, and she is poised for an attack. At her hip is still a container for her water, and her eyes are steeled toward the homeless man. It is seldom ones sees Katara like this: the only one who has, really, is Zuko, when she was looking for her mother's killer.

"Whatever happens, don't interfere unless you're attacked. They're not safe to be near when active." Roxie moves with a firm, quiet poise. Quiet enough to miss, maybe, but not intentionally so. As she reaches the man, she raises the hammer up. Her face is cold and cruel, her glasses shining with the light of the lamps like burning mirrors. One might wonder, as she starts to swing, if she's judged this right. The man doesn't look inhuman. Filthy, maybe, but old and weak and harmless.

The hammer sinks into his chest with the sound of shredding bone and tearing muscle, and lodges. The force is enough to back-spatter Roxie with blood.

A breath passes, as she tries to wrench the hammer free.

And then the man's eyes open, bone-white from edge to edge, and he casually backhands Roxie harshly enough to send her skidding into the street.

Every ounce of fiber in her being was telling her to push Roxie back, that this was just a harmless old man trying to sleep. But it was HER simulation, and in her world, Roxie would know better than her. She watched Roxie's form as she approached the man, anxious to see how she fought in her world. Her face, she was sure, matched her own when it came to situations like this: her enemy WAS that, capable of anything, willing to strike given the opportunity. Katara was unfamiliar with this kind of enemy though, and so she was perfectly willing to follow Roxie's instructions.

The blood splattered, and Katara's eyes reflected a horror she bit deep into her chest. Please let him be an enemy she thought.

And then the backhand came, and Katara only saw a man hitting a little girl as if it were nothing. Katara's sympathy was gone now, and the water she had at her disposal became ice, ready to fly at her opponent.

Roxie is already scrabbling to her feet as soon as the skid ends, yanking the silver bell from the chain around her neck. Smoothly--dreamlike--it resizes, going from a piece of jewelry to the size of a fist. The girl's fingernails trace around the edges of the bell, the metal letting out a low-but-building resonant whine.

"You will be judged for your crimes," the white-eyed man hisses. "Murderer!" He pulls an ivory-white revolver from inside the coat and fires. The bullets hit--midair, a foot from Roxie, somehow, and the brass ring on her outstretched hand burns with an inner fire. As the bullets impact, they ignite in scarlet fire that flares past her at an angle, following the line of the momentary invisible wall.

And at that, everything goers wild. Katara is glad that Roxie is in her element, because she's definitely not used to fighting quite like this. Roxie regained herself fairly well, and Katara, despite knowing this is a simulation, forces herself to wait and see what will happen. She has yet to see Roxie in action, and she's been curious. She has to admit, she can see why the girl at times can seem so closed off: this isn't work for the faint of heart.

She waits to see what will happen, because this enemy is a new one. Still, there is a weapon Katara has that right now only Sokka has even seen. Zuko has to, but not the one here now. Katara has it at her disposal, so if things get out of hand, well, she'd be ready.

There's a momentary detente as the man keeps firing (far past the six shots the cylinder would allow, though Katara probably won't realize that). They can't really hurt Roxie as long as she keeps deflecting them—but she needs a free hand for that, so she can't keep working up whatever charge that bell is building up. That doesn't stop her from slowly advancing, though, and so the man snarls, turns, and tears the lamppost from the ground. (The hammer is still sticking out of his chest through all this.)

He swings. Roxie's ring deflects it upwards, but this is clearly stressing to the edge of what it can take—the post grated only an inch or two past her face in the process. This has left the man open for a moment, though, and she charges, slamming into him like a linebacker at the same time as he drops the lamppost, grabs his gun again, and fires. Fire flares through and out the back of one of her shoulders in the blink of a moment before her disproportionate momentum has propelled them into a side alley.

If anything's the most disturbing part, it's that it's all so... quiet. The sound of the impacts and weapons, sure, but neither of them personally made a noise at all through the whole exchange.

And there's a weird, winding buzzing noise in the background, from somewhere behind Katara. Nothing in sight that could cause that, though.

Katara rushed near them, and she is still forcing herself not to interfere. For sure, the ability to fire weaponry from a projectile is not something Katara is used to, but she figures its a more sophisticated form of a bow and arrow anyway. The damage it does is far more intense, as she sees what it does to Roxie's shoulder. Still, Katara can also see that the young girl has the upper hand, and that she should stay and wait to see what else will come of their fight.

The enemy is STRONG, far stronger than Katara had even thought. It had taken everything not to get involved in this fight, because her weapons were at the ready, all she needed was a sign that the younger girl needed her help.

There was a sinking feeling in the waterbender though, as of she's forgotten something, or something is happening that she's not entirely ready for. She's certain that isn't the case, but still felt apprehensive.

In the alleyway, the fight has turned into a momentary slugfest. No elegance, no style—just punching and kicking each other, barely even trying to find openings. Roxie gains a momentary advantage, though, when she slams the man into one of the walls, and then the other, back and forth at least three or four times, and then grab the handle of the hammer jutting out of him, kicking him solidly to tear it away. The blood dripping down her face already, and now the spray from that, make her look like some demented monster. Weirdly, though, the glasses remain perfectly clean and intact—though there's a big hole through her jacket and her shoulder, red blossoming out from that but much less than it should be.

That sound from behind Katara gets a bit louder. Huh.

Katara followed them and so did the water, making sure she watched exactly how Roxie took care of business. She was not quite prepared to see what Roxie had to do to take out a cho: in fact, it was pretty gruesome. The only thing that had been worse was her showdown with Hamma, and that was the part of her bending she wished she hadn't had to learn. Worse still was the time she actually used it, a memory she would eventually have to face on her own.

The cuts looked bad, but Katara knew they were only for show: you couldn't really be hurt in Sensoriums and Roxie could heal herself anyway. That didn't change the fact Katara felt a little responsible for letting her fight this thing even if it wasn't real. She resolved herself to watching over the girl if they were ever on the same team together, despite the present fact that Roxie was able to do what Katara couldn't, especially looking at her now.

And what was that sound?

Roxie whips around, looking Katara's way. For a just a moment there's a hint of peace in her eyes, then—

"Katara, JUMP!"

The sound turns, very suddenly, into a high roar, as blinding headlights come into focus and a gleaming monolith of a car (http://i26.tinypic.com/2drun89.jpg) shrieks for the entrance of the alleyway.

The car wasn't the only thing that shrieked. Katara took one look at the moving machinery that didn't exist in her world and let out a scream that could wake the dead. Roxie needn't have told Katara to jump though: the girl lept high, her water momentarily becoming a wave she knew wasn't strong enough to support her.

That was fine though. Katara just needed a moment to keep her composure.

The next had Katara's brow furrowed in concentration as she made the former ice crystals into egg shaped hail stones and had them rain down hard on the car. They weren't going to last long but it was just as well: Katara wanted to see how much damage they would do, if any.

The stones just glance off, as if they weren't there at all.

The speeding car slams into the corner of the building—and through, crashing through the brick like a hot knife through butter, ricocheting off the other wall, and roaring down the alley.

As Roxie scrabbles towards the wall to climb up, the white-eyed man grabs her leg and pulls her back, slamming her against the ground. He laughs, shrieking, and then the car hits them.

THUMP THUMP BANG THUMP and it's gone, hurled down the opposite street like a lightning bolt, and Roxie and the man are lying crumpled and broken. But she moves, crawling inhumanly like a poorly-controlled puppet, and brings the hammer enough to smash into his skull before he can recover. And again, and again, and again...

She slumps, staring up blankly at the sky as her joints and tendons start to pull back into place with disgusting popping noises. She looks... well, like someone who just got run over by a car, and almost all of her except for her glasses is at least lightly spattered with blood. It's horrible.

There were no words. Katara seriously had no words. The car came and went, Roxie and the cho were run over, and Roxie finished the job. It was over before Katara even had a chance to do anything, and what she just witnessed is nothing short of horrific. Katara falls to her knees, and breathing in hard, and closing her eyes.

When has she felt like this? When has this happened before?

Twice. When Aang was in the Avatar state, and Azula hit him in the back, almost killing him. That had been a moment where Katara's sanity danced on the edge of a knife. There was only one other time she felt that way, where the world was full of wickedness and no redemption.

The time she was too late to save her mother.

Katara was quiet, but the tears fell anyway. Roxie wasn't dead (how could she be?) but that had been enough. Now she knew that if it had been real, Roxie might be seriously hurt now, or Katara at least WOULD be dead. Either way, Katara saw a moment of clarity and pain mixed together.

"So that's what your world is like," Katara said, wiping her face. "They are lucky to have you."

Roxie groans her way to her feet, one arm still hanging loose. "End simulation," she hisses.

The surroundings vanish, leaving only the two of them standing on a dark, TRON-like plain. Much of the blood does, too, though Roxie's shoulder is still injured. She pushes the hanging arm back into place (it pops and schlurps as the muscles start to reknit properly) with a wince. "I wasn't expecting the Driver," she says, voice harsh—but at herself, not Katara. "I should have. He's set up distractions like that before to try and catch me down a blind end." She breathing heavily, the usual calm gone from her face and replaced by a twisted, festering anger.

Katara stared off into the distance. The colors were a little much, brighter than anything Katara had in her own world: in fact, the only time she remembered such a blue was when Aang channeled that spirit at the North Pole. So they'd been set up: of course they had. Why wouldn't an enemy try that kind of trick? She should have programed that into her own simulation.

Katara understood now. She'd been dealing with a situation she could win. What good would that do? She needed to bring up an opponent she couldn't beat easily, one that posed a serious threat. She needed to be ready for a time where she might really need to hurt her enemy or be killed.

"An enemy," Katara said, her face no longer looking saddened or fearful, but full of purpose. "A true enemy that could kill you at any moment. You've been fighting those."

Katara looked down. "And in the end, that's what we're preparing to fight, isn't it?"

"That's what I am to them, from what I've been able to tell," Roxie says quietly. "The bogeyman that comes out of the dark to kill unsuspecting cho. I wouldn't be comfortable leaving them alive, not with what they do, but..."

She doesn't like to think about it much, but it's ground at her pretty harshly when she has.

"Taking human bodies for their own and YOU'RE the bad guy?" Katara scoffed. "Then you're a pretty selfless bogeyman. that sounds exactly like the kind of Fire Nation propaganda they'd use to get people to hate us. If predators need to be stopped and you have the ability, you have to try. Otherwise its only a matter of time before you're the next prey...or already were."

Katara's eyes darkened at the thought. Hamma would be a simulation, definitely. But it would be her nightmare opponent that would be the hardest.

"It's still hard to think about," Roxie says a little more cooly, reaching up to bump her glasses up a little with a knuckle. (Her fingers are still slowly wrenching back into place.) The glasses... well, they're the only part of her that isn't spattered with blood, really. It's kind of disturbing how clean and uninjured they are, and she clearly got hit right in the face a few times...

Gingerly, she works the scraps of the shoulder panel of her jacket out of the wound. She has to tug hard enough to suggest that her insides there are already starting to seal up.

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