The climate was odd in this corner of the Spirit World. In truth it was odd everywhere; the Spirit World was a realm of abstraction, and things that were impossible in the physical world were everyday occurrences here, and vice versa. Earth's understanding of geography, time and space had no bearing on the Spirit World. The two magnetic poles were right next to each other at the world's center, and the enormity of the endless plane extended forever outward like the physical universe, ever expanding from shapeless energy and abstract thought, solidifying into places and creatures.
Out there in the vast wilderness, where the aurora of creation could be seen surging and pulsing on the horizon for infinite miles, was the place from which the moon had fallen to the earth, and here dwelt a colony of jackalopes.
Reiji's eyes flickered open, but he was no longer Reiji. He remembered well his own appearance; his light skin, copper and honey eyes, and long, midnight black hair that curled at the ends. His face was small and soft, and he was so slight that he looked like a young girl, a fact which irked him somewhat. At the moment, he wished nothing more than to have that face back.
This was not Earth, after all, but a realm of the mind and the spirit. He knew at the exact moment that he awakened that he had changed, left his physical body behind and taken on the form of a spirit. He was a jackalope, big as a dog and covered in long, pearlescent white fur, his three point antlers gleaming like moonlight.
And he was surrounded by jackalopes. At least they looked like jackalopes. They were similar in build to angoras, with heavy faces and floppy ears that almost dragged to the ground, but they were different. Each and every jackalope, and there were thousands of them, was about the size of a dog, and completely hairless. They were all rubbed raw and pink, and their eyes were inflamed and sad. Their antlers were not the pearlescent white of his own, but discolored with black, brown and sickly yellow, like stained teeth, and many were broken or cracked. Reiji felt a sense of weightless motion and rocking, sobbing and screaming, but it was distant and disconnected. Probably, he reasoned, something happening to his body; if he'd brought it with him, he would still be human.
The biggest jackalope shuffled to the front. He had visible claws on his paws, and Reiji tilted his head. He wondered if that was a particular feature of these creatures or if he just never paid attention to 'real' jackalopes. "Welcome to Chang'e," he said with an air of self-importance. "I am Yutu."
Reiji introduced himself. "What is Chang'e?" he said, looking around. He was in the courtyard of a ruined temple, seemingly carved entirely from rich, dark green jade, from the floor tiles, to the upturned corners of the roofs. And absolutely everything was pitted and dimpled in a way that Reiji had never seen jade. Some of the larger holes had little flakes of grey inside.
A ways away a statue of a creature, part woman and part fish, lay toppled near a hole in the ground about fifty meters across. It sloped gently down for a few yards before sharply dropping…or perhaps not, it was difficult to tell, but the hole was too black, too starkly impenetrable to be simply empty space. It was more like something so dark that light could not escape its surface.
The jackalopes were already hopping away, their heavy feet thumping audibly on the ground. "Come," said Yutu, "it's going to rain." Above, the sky seemed impossibly high, and was boiling in a thousand distinct yet dark colors, like an artist flushing his paints in disgust after contaminating them all with black. A drop of violent, glowing red fell from the sky and sizzled, pitting the ground before fading to grey. Reiji's ears perked up and he ran after the other jackalopes, padding along awkwardly like a wounded dog. He heard snickering; some of them had stood on their hind legs to turn and watch him, clearly amused. He growled at them, and grudgingly imitated the sickeningly sweet hopping of his new peers. Thunder crackled, accompanied by an angry violet light. No, Reiji corrected himself, it did not quite rumble or crackle; it was more musical than lightning on earth, like a string of deep tones from some impossible bass instrument.
The lightning-tones signaled the beginning of a deluge, and suddenly drops of molten lead were falling from the sky in force, splashing against his skin, singeing and burning.
"Lady Tui fell to earth here, eons ago, since beginningless time," Yutu called from beneath a pagoda, liquid metal sluicing from the sharply curved and angled roof like a waterfall. Reiji and the other jackalopes caught out began to run towards Yutu and his retinue, steaming as they sprinted. "Now a darkness hangs over our land," he intoned, as if reciting a ritual. The other jackalopes jumped through the curtain of burning rain and emerged on their leader's side, largely unharmed though looking painfully inflamed. Reiji hesitated, and each drop of rain burned his skin and sliced off a hank of his beautiful, silky fur, the color of moonlight. The others looked at him expectantly. Yutu's eyes were irritated, his ears drooping nearly to the floor. With a last mighty leap, Reiji dashed through the metalfall, and it cleanly scalded off every single strand of his fur.
The jackalope spirits gathered around him, touching his scalded skin with their noses. "You're moon jackalopes," he said wonderingly. The name of Tui had just now struck a chord with his mind. They nodded sadly. "Have you been like this since she went away?" He asked, confused. It was all starting to come back to Reiji from his tutelage, yet he was certain that Guru Apep would have mentioned if Tui's Jade Palace was a hellish realm of leaden rain.
"Only for the past, oh, five generations," said Yutu. "But we moon jackalopes don't live very long. Who knows how much time that is in human years?" The heavy jackalope turned to head inside.
"How do you know I'm human?" Reiji asked.
"You smell human," Yutu answered. "Though you are shaped like a jackalope. Well, Lady Tui does as she wills. You must have been sent for a reason."
Reiji nodded. "There must be something I can do…" But what?
"Sorry, we've been talking all this time and you still don't have my name," said the fey young man standing in front of her. "The Honorable Adlartok Blackstone Moon-Varrick, of the Republic City Moon-Varricks." He was definitely handsome, with big, liquid aqua colored eyes and a coffee-and cream complexion. He had dapper hair, strong features, a pointed chin and fine cheekbones that gave him an aristocratic look and despite being an obvious teenager his mustache was not a terrible scrap of nonsense like most other boys that age. She'd seen the boy around school, and had toyed with the idea of approaching him someday and asking him to watch a mover together, but had decided he wasn't her type. Yet here he was, and Ch'unyan was almost tempted to return his obvious advances. He leaned right over and took her hand, and kissed it. "And you are?" he asked.
"Ch'unyan," she giggled, "E.L." The boy nodded. Her name was a colonial word from the Hundred Year War; upon the founding of the United Republic, any mixed-race citizen of the former colonies who wished to return to the Fire Nation had been granted the title "Empire Loyalist," to be passed down through all the generations of their family. There were precious few E.L.s in the world; the rank had a bit of prestige in the Fire Nation, a sort of symbol of cultural superiority, and Chun's family had used it to get her into a good school.
It was that school she had to thank for her current romantic setting. They were on a class trip to Yurishima, the island of the fire lilies, a tiny mote of ash in the northeast of the great Fire Nation island chain. The pair of them were only a few yards away from the main group, but separated by a hill. On their side, it was a path that snaked through rolling plains, filled to the brim with brilliant, bloody red fire lilies that rippled and flowed in the oceanic breeze as far as the eye could see. Far, far overhead, a silvery zeppelin left behind twin trails of cloud, the only sign of human life beside the two.
Adlartok righted himself and gave Ch'unyan a kiss on the cheek, and she stiffened. The salty wind stung her red cheeks.
"So…" said Adlartok, his voice silky smooth, "are we gonna do it now?"
Ch'unyan sputtered. "…what," she said, as flatly as was humanly possible.
"You know…" Adlartok continued, sounding confused, "do it."
Ch'unyan balled her fists, furrowing her brow. "I don't understand, be more clear."
Adlartok gestured wildly, frustratedly, fingers curling into claws, "The thing! Now we do the thing right?"
She had no choice but to hurt him.
Ch'unyan's mother had been a Yuyan archer, and her father a renowned swordsman. There had never been benders in her family, but that did not mean that she was unable to defend herself. "What century do you think you're living in!?" she snarled, grabbing the boy's nose and forcing it up until he lost his balance. "I'm not some fair maiden you can charm, and no one is going to be kissing any part of me without my permission, got that?" She snapped.
Adlartok nodded, or at least tried to nod. He was bent away from her like a bow, and standing on the very tips of his toes. Ch'unyan acknowledged his submission and let go of his nose, and Adlartok fell to the grassy floor like a sack of potatoes.
She could hear him grumbling something as he stood up behind her, but Ch'unyan chose not to listen. She would never get used to this sort of attention. It had been easier when she was little, and everyone just dismissed her as the fat pale kid, but then puberty struck, and horror of horrors, she grew into her weight. Now she had curves, and people (boys) were being nice to her (hoping to get some), and she had gained a reputation for cruelly spurning their advances (breaking the bones of anyone who tried to sexually harass her). "Life would be so much easier as a boy," she muttered angrily to herself, pulling on her long, chocolate colored braid as she crested the hill, leaving the field of fire lilies behind her.
"Well," said a silky smooth voice from her left, "it is and it isn't. In a lot of ways boys are just as trapped as women are, but on the whole at least the average boy can walk around at night."
The voice belonged to her friend Xochilt Soriya, a sun warrior girl who probably represented the platonic ideal of 'devastatingly pretty'. That ancient tribe had come out of hiding in the past few generations, and sent one of their princesses to learn and be a representative of her people. Xochilt was slim as a rake and somewhat muscled from years of martial training, but the fire nation respected strength regardless of gender. Her long chocolaty hair was gathered into a ponytail high on the back of her head, held in place with a thin red-gold tube instead of a ribbon or cord. She wore a thin, somewhat clingy blouse, a burgundy wrap around her legs secured with a saffron sash, and mountains of gold. On her neck was a heavy, intricate torque that became a web of spearlike rays over her shoulders and chest, which angled to penetrate an angry, square face atop a tiny ape-like body just below her collarbones. Her delicate nose was pierced through the left nostril, and a red-gold chain connected it to a piercing in her left ear. Her outfit was a stark contrast to Ch'unyan's own; a smart black vest that flared out daringly towards the bottom yet was uncomfortably snug around her ample chest. It had a stiff red collar, fastened almost to her chin and fringed with gold, all over a plain grey skirt; the summer variation of their school's standard uniform. Xochilt pouted prettily and exhaled, a puff of flame forming in front of her mouth like a cold breath on a winter day, soon dissipating to nothing. "Or at least walk around in the daylight unmolested." A spark of lightness caught on her face and ignited into a smile. "Do you want me to kill him, Chun?"
"No thanks," Ch'unyan said, smiling slightly, a touch of her usual levity returning at the joke and use of her nickname. "Let's just go get some fireflakes." She stuck out her elbow, and Xochilt linked her arm with Ch'unyan's. Together they walked into town.
It was a small village, its primary source of income being tourism. They kept it looking small and traditional, with packed dirt roads, short, wide houses with striking red gabled roofs, and wooden food carts pulled by hippoxen instead of Satovans like in the city. Of course, the snack stand still had a portable telebox tucked in the back behind the cook, blurrily transmitting a newsreel from Republic City that looked and sounded more like a dull snowstorm. "What can I get you girls?" he asked politely; he was an old man dressed in a white apron and poofy red hat. He had very few teeth and a glorious, long mustache. "I make the best picken dumplings on the island," with a wink and a flourish he leaned in, whispering, "I actually make the only picken dumplings on the island!" He let out a thick guffaw that soon became a hacking cough, and the girls stepped back. The hippox hitched to the front of the stall opened its enormous mouth, easily as big as the stall itself, and yawned, the air rippling around its throat.
"You know what," said Xochilt, "I just want some fireflakes."
Chun bit her lip and considered a moment, before saying, "I'm actually kind of hungry, I'll have two picken buns."
The old man snapped his fingers and turned around, folding a large, paper cone and filling it with the steaming, sticky, red flakes. They almost seemed to glow. "I make them myself, in the old fashioned way," he said, handing it over to Xochilt. "They're a bit soggy like this, not crunchy like the bag ones, but a thousand times better." Xochilt did not need to comment; she took a single taste and the expression on her face was enough proof of their quality.
"Let me just get your buns," he said to Chun with an inclination of his head. He turned back around and lifted the lid to a pot; a cloud of steam instantly bellowed out. The old man reached to the left, where a pair of tongs was hanging from a nail, but then noticed his telebox was blurry. "Stupid modern technology," he snapped under his breath, "Varrick Global Industries has always been worthless," he said, as he pounded on the box once with his fist. The screen instantly cleared itself of static, a perfectly crisp, if monochrome, image sprang to life; the sound returned as well.
"After a two day siege, the swarm of pentapii was returned to the aquarium without further fatalities," the newscaster's voice was calm, deep, and avuncular.
His much younger female co-anchor laughed. "Goro, it's actually 'pentapuses', flip open the Associated Press Stylebook sometime!" She took off her glasses and grinned cheekily. "Does an old fossil like you even know what that is? A book I mean?"
Goro Shinobi furrowed his brow at her. "I helped write the stylebook and six people are dead, Hua."
"These two always crack me up," said the food cart owner, handing Ch'unyan a little cardboard tray lined with napkins, supporting two huge, slightly orange buns, the tops crimped into an almost floral pattern. "That's twenty ban," said the old man, "or are you paying separately?"
Xochilt crisply reached out and handed him two burnt-orange bills, both featuring the face of Firelord Zuko in profile. "Worth every ban," she said with a smile.
"In other news," Goro Shinobi hissed from the telebox screen, "terrorist leader Mazuo Simha continues to evade capture." Chun turned her head to focus on the screen, a bit too quickly. She inwardly snapped at herself for showing worry so publicly.
An image of a powerfully built man who still wore his hair in the old topknot style, with no mustache but a long beard and pointed sideburns flaring out from his face like an inverted lion's mane replaced the two newscasters on-screen. He wore a monocle and a military dress uniform, covered in United Republic medals. It was not a still image; Mazuo was talking, a snide look on his face, mouth twisting into shapes that dripped with venom, though the newscasters were still talking, creating an odd sense of dissonance. Xochilt laughed. "He looks ridiculous. Like a mover villain, not a person."
The female reporter spoke. "Since being dishonorably discharged from the United Forces and stripped of all ranks, professional cartoon character Mazuo Simha has been wreaking havoc across the northern regions of the United Republic and adjacent Shokomin Colony." She shuffled some papers, in an obvious move to appear busy instead of bored. "It's not the position of Republic International News to transmit fear mongering, but all you fine flaming Fire Nation folks ought to keep your doors locked and weapons loaded in the next few weeks if you know what's good for you~!" She winked over her pair of glasses, and Goro stood up with so much force that he knocked over his chair.
"I quit." He said, with an air of finality and wretchedness, "I hate working with this woman and I don't care whose daughter she is, either she goes or—"
The sound suddenly became a single tone, like from an unhooked telephone, and the screen was replaced by an image of an eaglebear's anatomical diagram, with the profile of a Sun Warrior in the bottom left corner and the RIN logo on the bottom right.
"What an enormous waste of time," said Xochilt, licking the tangy sauce off her fingers.
Chun grumbled, looking down at her shoes. She hated watching the news, but had gotten into the habit of doing so lately, and what she saw troubled her. She watched RIN in the afternoons and the local channels in the morning, right after breakfast, before they started getting into the human interest stories and entertainment news. She gave zero craps about the Ember Island Players doing a revival of a two hundred year old opera, but there were stories about inexplicable deaths and strange animals everywhere. She'd had to call her mother to make sure everything was alright after hearing that the corpse of an unagi, somehow half turned to quartz, had washed up on Kirachu, just miles off the coast of her home province Hira'a. "What?" said Xochilt, looking sideways at her friend, "don't tell me you're afraid. I thought you were a proud Fire Nation girl, who eats flashpowder and pisses thunder."
Chun snorted with laughter, relief washing over her like bubbles of levity scrubbing her clean of worry. She'd been stupid to even—
The earth shook, and a sound pierced the air, like the cracking of some monstrous bell, or the snapping of a titanic shamisen string. The ground cracked, and an ugly violet light poured out into the world.
Reiji stood at the lip of the huge crater, gazing down into the blackness. It was a true barrier, and yet it was not solid. It was a wall of nothing, a shell of the abyss separating Reiji from the human world.
"Right," he said, slapping one of his floppy ears away from his face. It draped itself over an antly uncomfortably. Spirit lightning chimed above like the tinkling of a million glass shards. "Since the moon fell to Earth here, then obviously this is a portal back to earth. I just need to unseal it." He stood awkwardly on his huge hind feet and stuck out a forepaw. He had absolutely no grace in this form, he lamented. In the human world, he was like a dancer. Reiji closed his eyes and tried to feel along for a pulse, a thread of energy in the air. He brushed it with his claw, and it rang like a silver tube struck with a tiny mallet, filling his inner eye with an impression of crimson. He inched his paw along the thread of power, his jackalope claws teasing increasingly sound from the thread like a bow from the strings of a violin.
Yutu approached. "Bending does not work in the spirit world, child."
"I know," said Reiji, popping open an eye. "I'm not bending, I'm an onmyoji. I study spirituality and natural science. On earth we're pretty powerless compared to benders, but here…"
He closed his eyes to concentrate again. The jackalopes gasped in awe as the leyline Reiji had found solidified in the air, becoming a golden thread as bright as fire and hard as steel, fading into existence somewhere in midair and terminating inside the black thing in the hole. "Hold that!" said Reiji, ducking underneath the thread and running to another seemingly random spot. Yutu ambled over to the thread and tapped it with his claw, just as Reiji had.
The once-human nodded, as well as he could with his rabbit neck, and got to work on another thread,
One by one, he activated the leylines, calling over another jackalope to keep the strings all tuned in harmony, some sliding their claws along the strings, some gripping them with their teeth, and some even tried to play the string with their antlers, their heavy, raw faces brightening into smiles at the image. In addition, jackalopes are clumsy beasts, and there was some dissonance, and soon the whole of Chang'e was ringing and humming like the beginning of an orchestra, when everyone is tuning their instruments and it almost hurts the ears. The sound is anticipation, a heightening tension that will soon be broken by the overture.
Within a few minutes, thirty two leylines had been strung between the moon jackalopes and the edge of the black thing. Their colors cooled as Reiji went around the circle, from gold to orange to crimson, deepening to violet, until the very last string was an indigo so deep it was almost black.
"What now?" said Yutu, stumbling on his rear paws a bit, dragging his claw over the line and making it twang painfully.
"Do we have any way to make fire?" Reiji asked, hopping from jackalope to jackalope and helping them with their strings. Then, he found a dimple burned into the ground by the lead rain, as wide across as his fist (when he was human) and scratched at it with his claws and big front teeth. After a second he worried free a chunk of lead about three inches long and thin enough to slip between the toes of his forepaws. Reiji experimentally scratched it on the ground, leaving faint, grey streak. "Nevermind," he said, as the spirit thunder chimed overhead, deep as a gong this time.
He sprinted all around the circle, scribbling as he went, leaving twelve characters scratched in the jade around the hole in the spirit world. The churning of the clouds above intensified and the thunder came in quicker, louder bursts. "Here goes nothing," he whispered, as he crossed the last line on the last sign. Not quite calligraphy like he was used to doing, but it was a start.
"Will Lady Tui be there?" asked Yutu hopefully. Before Reiji could answer, a beam of purple light fell from the heavens, straight as a lance, ringing like some cosmically huge bell, striking the black void.
It exploded, and blackness washed over the gathered jackalopes like a tidal wave of corruption. Reiji's last thought before the dark tide took him was something to the effect of "well that didn't go as planned."
Dark shapes erupted from the ground in front of Chun following the purple explosion. They were wispy and transparent, huge and black streaked with purple. Their long, slender, snaking bodies were topped with heads, tapering and sharp, with glowing violet eyes like points of fire, trailing enormous ears like streamers and crowned with a thicket of antlers.
Then the light disappeared, and the they were gone, leaving nothing but a hole in the ground, its bottom filled with molten glass.
The food cart man was screaming, and his hippox was lowing very uncomfortably, the sound rippling the air around its face.
"Today's just full of surprises," Xochilt said, her eyes wide, normally unflappable demeanor clearly quite flapped.
The sound of shattering wood tore the air, accompanied by the sound of screaming students and villagers.
Xochilt threw Chun to the ground, sheltering her from a rain of wood splinters. The hippox had kicked free of the foodcart and smashed it to pieces, the old man running for the flower fields. There was a black cloud over the animal's face, hissing angrily like a swarm of moth hornets. It forced its way inside, slipping through the animal's massive nostrils and mouth, and it choked, coughing and hacking with its huge lungs. Then, it stopped. The hippox's eyes caught fire, becoming purple flames. A crown of antlers sprang from its head, and its skin became pitted and burned. It turned to face the girls, its ears elongating before their eyes, and pawed at the earth, its forehoof becoming more clawlike by the second.
"Spirit possession," said Chun. She reached out, for just a second. She'd read about it, but never thought she'd live to see it; a living creature's flesh rearranging itself to resemble the true form of the spirit inside.
Her musing was interrupted by Xochilt springing to her feet and setting off a bolt of lightning. Everything blazed blue for a second as the air crackled with power, lightning joining her outstretched fingers to the possessed animal like a chain.
It fell heavily on its rear, looking a bit like a sitting dog. Its eyes were smoking craters; whatever had taken the beast was gone. Chun got up and dusted herself off.
All around, similar scenes were playing out as jackalope spirits took possession of people and animals. Bursts of fire and lightning spouted wildly into the sky as the benders tried to defend themselves, but the spirits were too strong, too many and too sudden. "I think we should go join the old man, yeah?" said Chun, shifting her weight to turn and dash.
Xochilt nodded, and both girls set off for a sprint—
Or were about to. Looming ahead of them was the lanky form of a possessed human, his limbs extended to monstrous lengths, fingers tapering to shadowy claws. Half his face had been converted to a jackalope form, its skin burned and scarred, one enormous ear flopping down like a scarf, antlers rising from the scalp like a blackened sapling. The other half of the face was wrinkled and dark, and completely human.
"I'm sorry girls," it said with two voices. "Where is Lady Tui!?" it shouted, with one. Its eyes caught fire. The creature raised a hand, deep purple patterns dancing across it. It extended two fingertips, like a firebender creating lightning, and fired a hot, pink beam; a sound like a trumpet beaten from swords filled the air.
Chun and Xochilt dodged to opposite sides. Across the village green, the beam struck a house and it exploded. No, it shattered, like a glass breaking from a soprano's voice.
Ch'unyan noticed a heavy meat cleaver lying in the wreckage of the cart, buried under a load of spilled, sticky fireflakes, and sprinted towards it. She heard the whooshing of fire as Xochilt fought off the beast with her bending, the angry scream of the jackalope spirit, both human and not-human, the eerie sound that rabbits make when in pain. Ch'unyan picked up the cleaver. It was almost as big as a sword, with a big rectangular blade and a handle long enough for her to grab it with both hands. the size was similar to a longsword, but the weight and overall shape was more suited to the longsword style. She twirled it once, to get a feel for it. Definitely a swinging weapon.
She sprinted for the jackalope creature, watched it fire off another deadly burst of light and sound at Xochilt, who was too fast for the monster, faster than anyone Chun knew, and she kicked off into a jump just a yard away from it; Chun was on the short side of average and the monster was tall, and this gave her the leverage she needed to put all her strength and weight, with the help of gravity, right into the edge of the cleaver, and put that edge into the monster's head.
She decapitated the creature.
Xochilt let out an ululating battlecry, a keening shriek that put everyone nearby, human and spirit, on edge. Chun just smiled. Now that they'd taken down two of the creatures, it seemed that the impromptu battle could actually be won.
Then a cloud of white and gold struck her in the face. I'm sorry, said a voice in her head, gentle, boyish, but this is all my fault, and I need to borrow you for a minute. I can fix this!
Ch'unyan screamed as the thing forced itself down her throat, her nostrils, her ears and even tearducts, and took away her will.
Notes:
Ooooh, a story about the next avatar, how original *rolls eyes*
This idea came to me in a dream and it was so vivid and so entertaining that I had to write it down, I mean come on it was amazing. The actual dream involved watching this episode on TV with a bowl of chips, then texting commentary to my best friend and my girlfriend because I'm that kind of guy…
Xochilt by the way is pronounced "So chilt". If it helps you remember, it almost rhymes with "so chilled" because she's cool as fuck.
Oh right, strong language...I am from the homestuck fandom first and foremost, so fuckwords may grow here in the notes like fire lilies on Yurashima! *bows in apology*.