Breaking the Game
An Avatar the Last Airbender and Danmachi crossover
by
EvilFuzzy9
for
Sokka The Man
Rating: M
Genre: Adventure/Fantasy
Characters/Pairings: Yue, Sokka, Bell, Hestia [Sokka x Harem, Bell x Harem]
Summary: She is the moon, faithful and resolute, ever dutiful. With her rising begins the time of rest, and her descent the time of labor. This "game" has gone on long enough, and she will end it even if she must break it over her knee. Her friends will do what mere "pawns" cannot. [crossover, lemons, polyamory] [a commissioned fic]
WARNING: This fanfic depicts activities of an adult nature between fictional characters. The author of this fic strongly discourages minors from reading this, and also from participating in any and all such activities until they are at the age of majority/consent as defined in the laws or customs of their state or principality.
(...)
The yawning abyss of time eternal was a thing unknowable to mortal men. It was vast beyond measure, continuing even when all was dust and cold, when all collapsed after a hundred billion trillion years into a single infinite mote of potential, when new life and force and energy poured in from beyond and kindled anew the expansion, the growth, the evolution of worlds and stars.
Years meant nothing on a cosmic scale. They were a purely mortal measurement, a conceit of tiny creatures like specks of dust on a pebble washed about in the vast and stormy seas of the universe, orbiting a meager spark cast from the anvil of reality by the hammer of divine will. And the Time since she had measured time by such a scale had passed very, very long ago. So long indeed that there could be no measure, if only for the inscrutable span of that starless one-ness between the death of one universe and the birth of the next.
It was hard to remember one's name across such a vast time, even when one was not alone but accompanied by many others of like nature. When all potentialities were exhausted and the kaleidoscope of worlds collapsed in upon itself, much that had far diverged was thrust together in a single knot. Even spirits—even gods—were not free from the inexorable pull of this calamitous reunion, the final gravitation of infinite singularity triumphing at the end over all else, even entropy.
Even death.
She had been given many names by mortals. Hanwi, Metztli, Chang'e, Huitaca, Kaguya, Selene, Arianhrod, Ka-Ata-Killa, Sinhivala, Dae-Soon, Silewe Nazarate, Mayari, Gleti, Arawa, Yemaya, Lona, Hina, and so many others beside. But one name in particular was hers, a name she clung to through all the endless ages, held close to her bosom in the heart of her being.
The figure for it, the symbol such as had been used in the days of her mortal life, was clear and crisp in her mind.
月
A simple figure it was, a crescent moon pictogram worn down through centuries of use and simplification into a shape only just resembling what thing it represented. Less still did it resemble her, save in deeper senses of meaning.
Yue.
That was her name, the name her parents had given her. But it was a name long forgotten, and one that few now remembered.
She tried not to think about how long, immeasurably long ago that her parents and everything else she once known had died and ended and been forgotten by nearly all save herself. It would drive her to madness if she contemplated for too long.
Among her peers, the deiwos as many mortals of the world had once called them, there were too few like herself, too few who cared to recollect the worlds from which they came in times before times. Many were jaded and dispassionate, merely seeking entertainment from humanity. Most of the rest were too concerned with their sacred duties to bother with contemplation of their pasts.
Yue was goddess of the moon, but not the moon itself. Her duties were less than those of other gods, at least in this iteration of reality. Here at least the moon was a physical existence that did not depend on spiritual support, though it could be moved or changed in accordance to her will. She had time to spare, time to ruminate.
Perhaps it was because she was of mortal origin, because she remembered a mortal life, that she felt a bond with mortals still, and one far beyond the mere attachment of a child to their playthings. Frankly it revolted her that so many of her peers viewed their existence as a right to endless privilege, to amuse themselves with no care for their responsibilities, for their duty.
Yue was not like them. Her duty defined her. Her duty was what had led her in that time beyond nearly all recall, obligation and the understanding of sacrifice what guided her to forsake her mortal life, to depart from the trappings of existence, from her people, her family, from the man she loved—all to save them, to save the world itself. She was a woman of stern will beneath her kindly and gentle nature, possessing a spirit of upright and resolute morality.
Frankly speaking, she was a serious person who did not do things lightly. Not if it meant abandoning her duty, forsaking the role she had sacrificed everything to assume, a mantle she took not for her own ambitions but because someone had needed to take it and she had been the only one worthy and able. It had been a painful but needful choice, and she had made it for the sake of everyone, abandoning her self to the highest cause she could imagine.
And because she made that sacrifice, she still remained when nigh all else of her world had passed beyond this existence. A part of her bitterly rued it, but the rest of her was firm and would never recant, never turn her back on everything in a mere fit of fancy. Only for a very great cause would she ever think to depart, even for but a little while, from the station she had held for what might as well have been eternity.
Which brought her to her present contemplations.
This 'game of the gods' had gone on for much too long. She had been willing to indulge her fellows at first, knowing that she herself sometimes wished that she could have a meaningful rest from her duties, from her endless laboring for so long as the world should be. But it had been too long now, by mortal measures, and more importantly the shirkers showed no sign of wanting to leave.
Of those who remained without the world of the men, there were slowly coming to be more and more who grew impatient with their absent fellows. For some it was that the departed had forgone their holy duties and cast aside their responsibility, in such a manner as was no god's right for so long as there was light and life in mortal realms. For others it was that the departed made a mockery of mortal existence, treating it all as a game for their own amusement. For others still it was that the departed took all the love and admiration of the mortals onto themselves, accepting reverence and devotion which a significant number of them no longer deserved.
Yue herself was concerned more with the first two than the third, but all three were in her mind nonetheless. She had been among the first to tire of this childish amusement, to grow weary at the absence of their fellows, and to speak—patiently and with all natural willingness to forgive, of course—against the foolishness of their deeds. And it was to her that many now turned, seeking answers to the vexing problem of their absent fellows.
They hoped for her to bring back the departed, the shirkers who had strayed from the path of divinity, to bring an end to their play and remind them of their duty. Was there any in their number more suited to such a task?
This was to be an intervention. A divine intervention.
Yue was one of the chief deities. She was 月. She was the moon. She stood high among their number, among those who had remained without, and to carry out this task she was permitted a great liberty of action. It was not an enhancing of her intrisic powers, but rather a formal endowment of authority, granting her the right to take such unilateral action as was rarely allowed in the pantheon.
Life she was permitted to restore. Dead souls of a world long past she was allowed to gather and embody and empower as much as would be needed.
Less change did she have to make than some might have expected.
They were strong, the ones she brought back. They were dear to her, known to her from the time her mortal life might have encompassed. And they trusted her, respected her, even the ones who knew her only by reputation.
The hunter, the warrior, the earth, the waters, and the inner void.
Sokka, Suki, Toph, Katara, Ty Lee.
They looked upon Yue and greeted her. Even Toph looked, for blindness meant nothing to this power, and her body once such afflicted was long since reduced to less than even dust. They were made anew, embodied as they had been in the primes of their lives, or even a little before, younger than some would have chosen to make them, but full and fit and endowed with the breath of life and spark of soul.
Yue smiled, that girl turned spirit turned goddess, and she gathered them up into a bosom of silver light. This too would be her duty, and for this she would leave aside her former role, leave it until she could fulfill her task and return to her station.
She would need only be careful that the temptations of the fallen did not snare her as well.
So Yue descended, and the "endgame" began.
A/N: Here's the prologue for a fic commissioned by Sokka The Man. Maybe a bit more serious in tone than the rest will be, I dunno yet.
Updated: 9-11-16
TTFN and R&R!
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