Agni-Kai (AtLA Quest)

TheNine · Feb 25, 2022

As a member of the Fire Nation, you had always been rather unusual with respect to your love of the cold. The average temperature in most regions of the Nation was 26 Celsius, hotter than even most of the Earth Kingdom, so it stood to reason that most of the Nation's citizens would grow a thick skin with regards to the heat, and be comparatively unprepared for cold weather.

But every rule has its exceptions, and in this case, that meant that every now and again one could find a Fire Nation citizen who found the cold more refreshing than uncomfortable, and who enjoyed an occasional break from the beating sun. If one went looking for such a person, a good place to start that search would be on the route up one of the Fire Nation's few mountains tall enough to have ice-capped peaks, such as the towering Mount Yama, the chilling cliffs of which you currently straddled.

However, there are limits to all things. The cold is nice, but when a sudden biting wind cuts straight through your layers of clothing to send a chill directly into your bones, you find yourself reconsidering your opinion of it. The thrill and exercise of climbing a mighty mountain peak is a terrific opportunity for self-improvement, but when the icy ground and whipping wind threatens to send your improved self sliding directly off of a sheer slope, you can't help but wonder if you should have stuck to your firebending forms for your daily workout.

With a grunt of effort, you swing your pick into the icy stone of the mountain's face, hoping to gain enough purchase to keep yourself safe for a few moments. Once you're confident you aren't mere moments from being hurled to your premature fate at the bottom of an uncaring mountain, you can focus on the (slightly) less pressing issue of the rapidly lowering temperature. Catching your breath is difficult when the air is thin, its chill filling your lungs with what feel like icy barbs each time you inhale, but after a few moments of focus and concentration, your breath is well enough in control that you can conjure a healthy flame in your hand, holding it close enough to your chest that you briefly worry you may ignite your coat.

Thankfully, as the warmth from your flame warms your core, the very act of firebending sending a pleasant heat through your entire body, particularly through your deep chi channels in your stomach and lungs. You sigh in relief, as although the cold wind still chills you to the bone, it no longer feels like a legitimate threat to your health. Still, the weather only seems to be getting worse, and in this cold and thin air, your firebending is weaker than ever- as you continue to warm yourself by your open flame, whipped violently around by the ever-increasing wind, you begin considering your path back down to Mount Yama's base.

After a few moments of consideration, though, you feel like something is off somehow. You glance around anxiously, not sure what's triggering your instincts, until you notice something- your right glove, the one you're holding your climbing pick in, is wet. Your eyes slowly rise from the darkened, wet glove to the handle of your pick, down which you can see water flowing freely. As confusion twists your stomach, your eyes rise higher, up to where the pick is embedded in the mountainside- and where the ice it's stuck in has begun to considerably melt from the heat of the flame in your other hand, blown directly into the cliffside by the violent wind.

Panic rises into your throat as you realize that your pick didn't actually gain purchase in the immovable stone of the mountain, and is instead only lodged in a swiftly-melting layer of ice. Reflexively, you close your left fist, snuffing the flame in it, and move your feet to stand somewhere more solid, knowing that you can no longer trust your pick's grip on the mountainside. Unfortunately, it seems that your foothold couldn't be trusted either, as the moment you move your feet, the ground, now slipperier than ever thanks to the liquid water flowing across it, immediately banishes any hold your boots had on it, sending your feet out from under you. As the weakened ice around your pick gives way and you feel yourself begin to slip down into the seemingly-infinite void beneath you, a scream attempts to rise from your throat, but is interrupted as your chin clatters against what a moment ago was your foothold.

Stars fill your vision as you fall, making the first split-second of the plummet almost completely unconscious, but by some miracle you regain your presence of mind before you have time to pass the point of no return and fall inevitably to your doom. You swing the pick that you had somehow kept a hold on into the cliffface as you rapidly fell past it. Again, it makes purchase only in ice, but you hope that'll be enough to arrest your fall. It is, but to your misfortune, it arrests it too quickly. You're not a small man, you weigh at least 70 kg, and the force involved in suddenly stopping the fall of a body that size is simply too much for you to be able to keep a hold on your pick, and you lose your grip, watching as your precious handhold rises higher and higher above you.

In hindsight, you'll never be positive if you pass out from the fear, or from the impact.

Regardless of if you landed before or after you were unconscious, you definitely didn't land nicely. The first thing you notice as your body is slowly lit with the flame of consciousness is the pounding pain in your head, and the second is the bitter cold. You open your eyes to darkness- is it night? You grip the back of your head in reflex, and pull away from it in pain, your gloved fingers coming away wet- in the dark, you can only hope they're wet with melted ice, but you're not hopeful.

As you try to sit up and stand, your body screams in protest. Your splitting headache preventer you from noticing at first, but your entire body feels like you were on the wrong side of a fight with a rhinobear. Of course, you were on the wrong side of a fight with gravity, which if you're being honest might be worse. In spite of your intense soreness and probably-broken bones, you force yourself to stand and take deep breaths, each one making your ribs beg for mercy as they grind against one another.

The ground beneath you feels solid, neither wet nor icy, so you don't worry about repeating your near-terminal mistake in melting your own foothold as you take one step, another, and finally one more, directing your chi into your fists to release a burst of flame.

The sudden explosion of light relieves you of your concern that hitting your head may have blinded you, but only adds a new one- somehow, you're inside a cave of some sort- how had you gotten here from falling down the outside of a mountain? There's nothing here to light to maintain a fire, but in this enclosed space, the flame you're bending rapidly warms up the area, relieving you of at least one of the many sources of your discomfort.

Once the air around you begins to feel warm, you lower your output of flame to a controlled fire between the palms of your hands, granting light and warmth without using too much of your already-taxed energy. In the light, you see that the fingertips of your glove are stained blood red, and resolve to not think too hard about how bad your head injury might be- it's not like you could do anything about it even if you knew.

Looking around, you direct the light in all directions. To your left, solid stone. To your right, the same. Ahead of you, a great block of ice. Behind you, the same- and also a twinkle of sunlight. Looking up, you can see your cave, good Spirits be blessed, isn't fully enclosed. The exit to it is high above you, up a slippery slope of wet ice, but you now know both how you got in and how you'll get out. Obviously, your unexpected trip down express path to sea level had been interrupted by you somehow sliding into this hidden cave, and you can just climb up and out the way you came- up 10 meters of sheer rock, covered in ice, without a pick. Somehow.

Sighing and trying to ignore just how screwed you are, you turn around to examine the rest of the cave, which seems to be mostly just a solid block of ice. Raising and slightly intensifying the flame in your hands, you make out what looks like a solid shape in the transparent ice, and you look closer. The shape has two spindly shapes like legs, which form into something like a torso, from which sprout two more shapes like arms, and… a head…

Oh.

TheNine · Feb 25, 2022

Well, I'm back at it again, this time with an idea that's inspired me since I finally finished AtLA for the first time since I was a kid- what if Aang had gotten his silly ass frozen somewhere other than the North Pole?

I currently only have very loose ideas for the plot, so once I open voting with Chapter 1, this should be a Quest very strongly driven by the choices of you, fine reader(s).

As for the general rules of the Quest, it's pretty simple- you guys won't die unless you do something blatantly suicidal or set yourself up for an important plot-death. We're working mostly by AtLA rules, so bad things happening to you are less bad ends, and more just setups for another "episode." Light metagaming is fine since that's borderline unavoidable, but once we've built up a character for our intrepid protagonist, don't go breaking that character just to hang out with your favorite Avatar character or something, and remember that IC, you don't have omniscient knowledge of past, present, and future like you do OOC. Of course I don't need to tell you this, statistically-average reader, this statistically won't be your first Quest by a long shot.

Last things last, if you have any questions or comments before I post Chapter 1 (hopefully tomorrow,) hit me with them, I survive purely on other peoples' reactions and bone marrow, and you can only (willingly) give me one of those.

Birthday · Feb 25, 2022

So... Unless the geography has changed wildly in the past century, we've wildly diverged from canon already. How the heck did Aang freeze himself inside a freaking mountain of all things?

ElenaIsCool · Feb 25, 2022

TheNine said:
If one went looking for such a person, a good place to start that search would be on the route up one of the Fire Nation's few mountains tall enough to have ice-capped peaks, such as the towering Mount Yama, the chilling cliffs of which you currently straddled.

This answers it I believe :0

TheNine · Feb 25, 2022

Your breath catches for a moment as you stare at the still figure in the ice, the flame in your hands wavering. Soon, though, you gather yourself and gain control of your breath, bringing the fire back to life and getting you a better look at what may well be a truly ancient corpse. It is unusually pale, thin, frail-looking. The size of a child. In here, you imagine, a body could be preserved virtually indefinitely, so there's absolutely no telling just how long it's been here.

You gather your chi in your stomach with a deep breath, moving your body as you exhale to increase the intensity of your flame, enough to chase away the cold from your extremities, to send droplets of sweat down your hands and face, and most importantly, to give you a nearly daylight view of the boy in the ice, and what you now recognize as another frozen figure, enormous and blurry through layers of ice, behind him.

Upon closer examination, as drops of water begin to slide off the mass of ice, the boy is wearing unusual clothes that are unfamiliar to you, loose orange cloth that frankly looks rather comfortable. He has some sort of staff or rod with him, but it's difficult to make out. Most notably, though, you can see some sort of blue marking on his head, in the shape of an arrow. On closer inspection, it appears similar markings can be found on the back of his hands. They look like tattoos, but you've never seen anything like them. Again, you raise your flame, the sweat dripping from you matching the water dripping from the ice.

"Where did you come from…"

You can't help but ask the question aloud. You're in the heart of Fire Nation territory, and this weird character doesn't look like someone you'd find in the Fire Nation, not even in the distant past. He doesn't look like any member of the Water Tribes or Earth Kingdom that you're aware of either, though, which piques your curiosity- could he be an ancient Air Nomad, frozen here since before their disappearance at the start of the War?

A crack runs through the entire chunk of ice, with a suddenness that makes you start, memories of your recent misadventure with breaking ice flashing rapidly through your mind, and you dim your flame, fearing you may somehow reduce the cave's integrity if you thaw the ice. You don't have the motivation or the guts to try to extract this ancient corpse, and you don't know anyone else interested in mountain-climbing, let alone doing it to extract the body of some-

You blink, confused. Did something move within the ice, or were you just misled by dripping water sliding down its face? Your fear compels you to take a step back, but your curiosity forces you to lean your head forward, making both moves redundant. After a moment, though, you shake your head, laughing at your own foolishness. Obviously if anything moved in the ice, it wasn't the centuries-old corpse.

The next time the centuries-old corpse moves, locking eyes with you, there's no denying it. You can't equivocate as those eyes begin to glow a bright white, followed soon by his arrow-shaped tattoos. You can't deny it. Somehow, by some means, whatever is in the ice is alive. Perhaps it's an impossible miracle, perhaps it's a spirit masquerading as a human, or perhaps some other supernatural impossibility, but you don't have time to hypothesize.

You leap backwards into a fighting pose, fists raised and smoking with the promise of a gout of flame at the your convenience. The frozen figure shifts slowly as it turns its head to watch you, as if movement is laboriously difficult.

You grit your teeth as you back into the icy face of the cave entrance, bemoaning your odds of escaping.

[] The boy in the ice must be a human who miraculously survived, frozen and dormant for Spirits only know how long. He's waking now, and his life is in the balance. Help him by firebending away his icy prison.

[] Human or spirit, you can't help that you're trapped in here with it, and you'd rather prioritize your own safety over any danger it may hypothetically be in.
- [] Keep your distance and observe, keeping your guard up. If it escapes, it escapes. If it attacks, you fight back. If it dies, well…
- [] Try to escape the cave, climbing your way out somehow. Whatever the conclusion of this supernatural event, you'd rather not be stuck in a cave to watch it.

[] You may not know what manner of being this boy in the ice is, but you do know one thing about it- it's a threat. Use your firebending to melt the ice and then immediately attack to preempt any attacks on the boy's part.

ElenaIsCool · Feb 25, 2022

[X] Keep your distance and observe, keeping your guard up. If it escapes, it escapes. If it attacks, you fight back. If it dies, well…

While we all know Aang is harmelss, not sure if someone from the Fire Nation would, considering that they were brought up learning that the Air Nomads had an army and are therefore dangerous. Watching for now seems to be a good plan. Also this is a kid we're talking about. I don't know what our age is yet but I don't think going around attacking kids unprompted is a good idea

Derpmind · Feb 25, 2022

[X] The boy in the ice must be a human who miraculously survived, frozen and dormant for Spirits only know how long. He's waking now, and his life is in the balance. Help him by firebending away his icy prison.

It's our new BFF. We should try to make a good impression.

Silor · Feb 25, 2022

[X] The boy in the ice must be a human who miraculously survived, frozen and dormant for Spirits only know how long. He's waking now, and his life is in the balance. Help him by firebending away his icy prison.

Fanhunter696 · Feb 25, 2022

[X] The boy in the ice must be a human who miraculously survived, frozen and dormant for Spirits only know how long. He's waking now, and his life is in the balance. Help him by firebending away his icy prison.

SpacePaladin · Feb 25, 2022

[X] The boy in the ice must be a human who miraculously survived, frozen and dormant for Spirits only know how long. He's waking now, and his life is in the balance. Help him by firebending away his icy prison.

MaximumTrekkie · Feb 25, 2022

[X] The boy in the ice must be a human who miraculously survived, frozen and dormant for Spirits only know how long. He's waking now, and his life is in the balance. Help him by firebending away his icy prison.

TheNine · Feb 26, 2022

You clench your fists tight enough that your fingers, stuck between burned from your flames and numb from the air, press violently into your palms. In spite of your body quite violently screaming at you to run, hide, or fight, you know you couldn't forgive yourself if this boy died just because you were too afraid, apathetic, or selfish to help him.

With two steps forward, you shift into a different firebending form, one that allows you to fire off streams of flame at a distance, each one sizzling and popping as it strikes the already-melting ice. As the inside of the cave begins to grow hazy from steam, another crack runs through the entire chunk of ice with a noise that again makes you flinch. This time, though, your reflexive reaction was the right one, as a split-second later a high-pressure burst of air blasts out from the ice, sending your own flames, steam, and chilled air from within the ice directly into your face, again striking you with a not-inconsiderably confusing sensation.

Thankfully, you manage to raise your guard and stay on your feet despite yet another simultaneous assault of heat, cold, and force. Once the burst of wind has taken its leave, you wave your hand to clear away the steam, but it isn't necessary to light a fire to let yourself see- the boy's glowing eyes and tattoos produce enough light that it's as if this dark cave is being watched over by the full moon itself. With the steam cleared, you see the boy take a step toward you, his shoulder bumping into a chunk of unmelted ice. With a noncommittal wave of his hand, the ice not just in his way, but indeed the entire frozen mass, melts into water faster than you could have hoped to with your most powerful firebending.

Returning ice to water? Is he a waterbender?

You stand firm, the water filling the cave now ankle-deep and soaking your boots, as if the cold, burns, and blunt force trauma weren't already bad enough. The boy, completely free from the ice, stares you in the eye with such intensity that you find it difficult not to avert your gaze. He takes one step toward you. Another. A third. He raises his left leg for a fourth, but his right buckles and he falls to a knee, the bright light wavering. He looks back up to you, looking almost slightly pathetic as the light in his eyes flickers, but he has time to direct one more steely glare in your direction before the light fails completely and he falls on his face into the puddle of water.

Only a moment later, you're at his side, one hand providing flame by which you can see, the other pulling him out of the water so he doesn't drown. Your finger moves to his carotid, feeling his pulse. Slow, but steady.

"Kid. Kid? What in the world just happened?"

With a few pitiful coughs, he finally begins taking deep breaths, and his eyes open, still unfocused and half-lidded.

"Are you OK? Can you hear me?"

He opens his mouth, his lips moving as if to speak, but no sound emerges. He gasps, groans, inhales deeply, and then sneezes violently in your face, blasting you with a mix of snot and the 100,000 year old cave water he'd just been inhaling. Although you can't hold it against him, seeing as he'd just passed out face down in freezing water, you can't keep yourself from recoiling to wipe yourself clean, dropping him in the process. Thankfully, he's conscious enough to hold himself upright without your help, although his eyes and arrow markings were no longer glowing.

"Oh gosh, I'm sorry!"

He leans up and pats half-frantically at your shoulders, trying to wipe off any remnants of snot you hadn't managed to expunge yourself already. "I would have covered my mouth, except it just kinda caught me off-guard."

You shake your head, standing up out of the reach of his arms in hopes that he wouldn't keep trying to pat-dry you. "Don't worry about the sneeze, kid, there is way more confusing stuff going on here! What were you doing frozen in a block of ice in a cave on a mountain?"

He looks up at you, then glances about as if to confirm that he was, indeed, frozen in ice in a cave on a mountain. "I… don't know. You found me in here?"

You nod, not fully credulous. It was borderline unacceptable that after this entire mess, the boy doesn't have an answer for you. Speaking of "the boy…"

"Uh, what's your name? You remember that, right?"

"Oh yeah," he grins, his face brightening as he thrusts his hand out stiffly for a handshake, "I'm Aang!"

Awkwardly, you accept. "Shuji." You glance askance as he holds your hand, neither of you knowing when to let go.

"I'm gonna be honest, when I saw you frozen in that ice I thought you were toast- or, well, whatever the opposite of toast is. I'm glad you're… not."

He giggles, as if such a life-threatening situation is hardly a daily hassle. "Me too! Either way, thanks tor finding me and helping me out, there's no telling-"

His train of thought, and your heart, are both interrupted by a loud groan from what sounds like a monstrously-large beast deeper in the cave, and you're suddenly acutely reminded of the great, unclear shape you saw behind the Aang in the ice, and the texture like a sopping wet white carpet you can see flickering in your flame.

A far cry from your gripping anxiety at the sound of a monster growling mere meters away from you, Aang leaps in joy as he hears the sound, finally disengaging from the handshake in a way that would have relieved you if it weren't for these specific circumstances.

"Appa!"

You flare up your flames as he disappears into the darkness, and the better view is as confusing as it is terrifying. Aang clings to the dripping-wet back of a beast the size of twenty or thirty men, a shaggy monster that lazily opens an eye to shoot you what's less of a glare and more of a slightly disapproving glance, before halfheartedly shaking its head and closing its eyes again, all while its slightest movements sent an also-soaked Aang slipping across its back.

"That thing is yours!?"

Aang looks at you, cocking his head. "Yeah, if you wanna put it like that. I like to think of him as a friend, though, not a pet or anything." He slaps the side of the creature, sending a splash of water flying off of its fur as if he'd smacked a countertop with a wet towel. "This is Appa, my flying bison!"

You blink, feeling like your brain is running at 35% capacity at best. "Flying, huh? I assume that's, ah, some sort of metaphor, for how they fly across the plains."

The confusion is still clear on Aang's face as he stares down at you, and even Appa peels his eye back open to give you more stink-eye.

"Uh, no. Flying Bison don't live on plains, they live on hills and mountains. And the flying isn't a metaphor, they just, uh, fly."

30%. Tops. You're currently feeling that precious remaining brainpower escaping from you as quickly as your body heat is. Those things may be related. Thankfully, Aang seems to have a similar issue in mind.

"So, how do we get out of here? It's really cold, and wet, and dark- no offense to your fire, but it looks like it doesn't work super well when it's so wet."

None taken. You have been feeling pretty sputtery, and more smoke is pouring from the flame in your palm than you're usually comfortable with.

You turn and point a thumb in direction of the ever-weakening beam of sunlight pouring in past the impromptu ice slide that you came down here on. Aang, for his part, leaps with an almost supernatural agility off of Appa's back and wanders over, staring up at the darkening sky. "We're pretty far down here, huh?"

You nod. But wait? Aang is a waterbender, you saw him melt the ice earlier. He can use those same powers to bend handholds into the ice, which you two could use to climb out! Appa can… fly out, apparently.

"Right, can you use your bending to get us out?"

Aang grins, slapping his forehead as if he's embarrassed he didn't think of that himself. "No problem! Hold on tight!"

You blink. "Hold on wha-"

Before you can finish, a violent air current rises from underneath you, sending both you and Aang into the air, screaming with equal volume but for very different reasons. A moment later, he lands, perfectly balanced on the edge of the tunnel, while you slide a few meters down on your butt before you can get a safe foothold on a solid outcropping. However, under the circumstances, that harrowing experience was the last thing on your mind.

Aang just airbent, meaning your initial hypothesis about him being an Air Nomad was correct, but you also absolutely saw him waterbend when he emerged from the ice.

An Air Nomad, who was encased in ice for who knows how long, who can airbend but also waterbend. Add to that the weird spiritual-looking tattoos, the magical beast, the apparent immortality, the weird glowing, there's only one explanation. Sozin's name be blessed-

[] You're the Avatar!

[] … you're an Airbender?

[] …
- [] If he wanted to tell you he was the Avatar, he would. Obviously, he doesn't remember waterbending in front of you when he was all glowy, and if he hasn't told you yet, he probably has a good reason.
- [] The Avatar… right here, standing next to you, an oblivious child. If you captured him, you could curry favor with the Fire Prince and the Dragon of the West, who both seek him to regain their honor- or you could even give him directly to the Fire Lord and perhaps even gain a seat in his council- you need to develop a plan to incapacitate and capture Aang.

[] Write in…

Silor · Feb 26, 2022