Tiěrén Man
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On the horizon, the rising sun glinted red over the tropical sea, silhouetting an immense, flat-topped shape that glided low over the water, almost unnoticed, wafting smoke from it's side.
A dark haired, harried looking woman had appeared, squinting wide blue eyes at the light in her face. She held silent, nodding to an unheard voice, before speaking;
"Paul, the situation on the ground here is a state of…'organized chaos.' While the military mission on station has been overshadowed by humanitarian efforts for, what I'm told, is the largest refugee transit ever recorded, coalition forces are still committed to maintaining the UN interdiction through the Indian Ocean. The Madripoor boatlift has mostl—"
The high shriek of engines interrupted, drowning out her speech, chased moments later by a hard, rapid double drum-beat from somewhere skyward, loud enough to rattle the camera.
"...'m standing in the 'special legation,' the so-called 'Camp Cape,' and as you can see, it's really no less busy than the civilian processing areas at the harbor…there's just a frenetic level of activity on the ground—"
"E'scuse me…" A ragged bunch of youngsters—too young. Just kids.—in blue and gold uniforms crossed in front, stumbling. Some of them, like the scorched-furred girl hefted in a fireman's carry, must have looked only marginally human to begin with. But the reporter didn't even bat an eye.
—"but this is probably the least occupied part of the atoll, aside from the base runways. Superh—everyone's moving, people are coming as fast as they're going…" A burningly white woman with blood red hair, wearing scaled armor scarcely protecting her modestly, let alone her vitals, passed behind; with a spidery-looking cameraman and a sullen, black maned giant of a man following close on her heels... "—we're not permitted to film aircraft taking off from the base, but coalition and Force Works spokesmen have informed us they are supporting operations beyond the Kulan barrier, though for operational security, cannot give any details about destinations or specific teams involved…"
Another long pause, nodding, and then—"at the moment it's quiet, but there's been a nightly bombardment from Selenian-held territory, on Genosha or the continent. But air defenses are keeping everything pretty far away—last night, I and the other journalists counted no less than, ah, sixteen Patriot or Jericho launches, and there's been a near-constant fighter patrol—" she absently twirled her non-microphone hand around in a dome shape in front of her, obscured somewhat by the banner of TRISH TILBY, DIEGO GARCIA (LIVE) superimposed over her visage"—around the island airspace itself to intercept incoming thaumaturg—
"Mute."
The sound died, obediently. Aang sighed, heavy, letting his forehead plop to a rest on the cool glass surface of the table.
His arms dangled weedily at his sides a few moments before he puffed a breath out the side of his mouth, towards the wall sconces.
Nothing. He tried again, frustration billowing up into a small gale, before he caught himself.
He let the wind die. "Lights, please."
There was a sickeningly pleasant chime, and the light faded. "Thank you, JARVIS."
A voice purred from the building. "No thanks are necessary, sir. As I have said."
Aang hrrrmed a reply, preferring to devote himself to the calm black inside his eyelids…
Which wasn't black…in the middle of the night.
He peeled one eye open, let it swivel sideways towards the window.
A white-amber glow, from a million different spots, not one of them a star. The faint lazy trails of white and red streaming from the ground…and, Agni, Buddha, and all their wacky cousins help him, he could even make out the red-yellow-red they were shining on the Empire State Building this week.
He groaned again. He could get used to the thinking machines; to the moving pictures and the flying machines and the people lifting buildings with their thoughts and talking in your mind…
But he was NEVER going to get used to all this light.
Aang rubbed a hand over the side of his poor head, prickled by his scalp. He could use a shave…
The thought panged him with guilt. His friends were on the other side of planet—he could see them—in trouble. Along with so many other people that he had trouble even imaging the number…
And here he was, sitting on his rump, struggling with homework, feeling tired. He didn't have the right to feel tired, not with the world depending on hi—
He caught himself. This world. This world depended on him. He still held on to the distinction. He had to.
He had to…
But he pushed down the unsettling germ of a feeling again—it was neither here nor there, he told himself. And it made no difference. He had work to do.
Aang pushed himself back up in the chair, blearily stretching his arms over his head, starting off a chain of cracks.
He let his head straighten up, blinking heavily as he focused on the glowing characters on his screen:
GRANITE
Worldwide average of chemical composition, by weight %:
SiO2 — 72.04% (silica)
Al2O3 — 14.42% (alumina)
K2O — 4.12%
Na2O — 3.69%
CaO — 1.82%
FeO — 1.68%
Fe2O3 — 1.22%
MgO — 0.71%
TiO2 — 0.30%
P2O5 — 0.12%
MnO — 0.05%
He felt his eyeballs start to itch.
"JARVIS," he slurred, "…could you, maybe, tell me where some more of that Assam is? Uh, if there's any left? Please? I'll get the water going…"
"I'll just have a fresh pot sent up, sir. If I may take the liberty. Milk or sugar?"
Aang slumped back in his seat. "Sugar please. Thank you."
He shifted his gaze over to the chunk of rock sitting on the table—the da—darned bright screen display leaving an obscene afterimage in his eyes.
'Elements.' He counted…eleven? Of them, in that little rock alone. Out of more than a hundred…not counting different compounds, isomers, isotopes…and the atoms they were made of, which started seeming simple again, and then what the atoms were made of, which got complicated again fast, and worse…
Which was ignoring "states" of matter, which was closer to what he was actually trying to figure out…sort of. Kind of. Maybe. After a fashion.
Which was trying to move—just do something with—a stupid piece of rock.
With no one in the world—this world—to teach him.
So he was working it out himself. This time, by pure analysis.
And he was failing.
Why was he even surprised? Everything else had failed. He'd failed at everything else, so far.
And he thought he'd tried it all, the last few weeks. Meditation, mysticism, medicine, a whole marvelous house of other "M"s, bargaining, cross-training through the other bending arts—the hopeful flash had occurred to him that, hey, a lot of that rock was oxygen, just like lot of water, and that was like Air, so maybe the other bending forms were just degenerate versions of Airbender…but no, he shot it back down just as fast. Stupid. Obvious, simplistic, inaccurate, and beyond arrogant—though something still buzzed about that tack in the back of his mind, not that he could put a finger on it…
He was still the only one in the world who'd have to master them all. At least back home there would have been someone to teach him. Unlike with Water and Fire, no one here had been able to help, try as they might.
He'd never felt so alone.
There was a pleasant chime from everywhere at once; at the far wall, a line of light split the surface, widening silently as it shone into the dark room with a wisp of steam.
Aang duly plodded over to it as the building spoke again. "Your tea, sir."
"Thank you, JARVIS," he answered, blearily tapping his knuckles to the edge of the dumbwaiter. The tea service inside was a neat, perfectly traditional setup. Aside from being seamless chrome. Etched with the perfect, alien script.
One cup was already poured. Aang wondered when any of it had last been touched by a human being.
As he added extra sugar to the cup, he grimaced—"human being." It was bad enough, thinking like that, but it wasn't even inclusive enough. Not anymore. Now he knew plenty of people, plenty of friends, who were in no way shape or form 'human'…
Aang stirred the sugary slurry with a fingertip, lazily. His world had become so d—darned complicated. He smiled, sadly; heck, even the tea. Besides the delivery of this pot, he could picture all the different ingredients in the stuff that he'd never known existed, before…polyphe-whatsisis, the beloved caffeine, oils, sugars…he chuckled. Lots of chemicals in just a little cup of hot water. And just…
He froze, followed by the liquid in the cup. Chemicals. Just two in the water itself—making the water. Probably the most common substance in the world.
The last of the cup's steam dissipated into the air as he watched. Air…really a mix of chemicals, but mostly just two of them. And then still only in one "state"...
Aang whipped back to the terminal, wide-eyed, searching the screen as if the texts might have changed while his back had turned. They hadn't.
"Rock" was lots of chemicals. It was practically all metal, not that you'd know it. Even…he scrambled to call up a different article, getting it on the third try. Yes! Even soil—dirt, Earth—was mostly rock, when you got down to it. Rock and worm s…spoor. Scat. Fewmets.
He shook his head. Whatever. But even those weren't always that different, deep down, on a chemical level. A lot of those chemicals were metals.
There were no metalbenders. Aang had never even heard of one, much less seen one. But he had met his share of Earthbenders. And every single one he'd seen bending had been…heavy. Rooted. They grappled their element, like a Bökh wrestler. It had always seemed so…alien to him; like they thrived on conflict with their element.
Like they depended on it...
Aang chewed on a knuckle, eyes fltting in thought. Maybe the actual "chemistry" part wasn't simply "it,"—he was almost sure it wasn't. Hoped it wasn't; it felt like sucking the spirit out of the world.—maybe it was competing "kami" natures, or he and the world were half-mad and everything was really made of tiny alfen faeries (the thought made him shudder). But the fact was that "Earth" was many things joined into one thing. And if Earthbending had been based around that…
Maybe it only worked by analogy. Maybe he was all wrong…but he could find out.
He'd really have to do it properly, he decided. 'Best way to be sure. Like how Reed had said…how did the 'method' go, again? Ah, right…
Question—'had that; Observation—'had enough of those rattling around in his head; hypothesis…Aang scanned frantically around the desk before remembering there wasn't a sheet of paper in the entire room, probably the entire floor, let alone a brush. He decided to sc—skip it, he didn't really need to write it down. And with the idea put before him, he was too excited to slow down and do it. The next step…
He could test it.
"JARVIS!"
"Sir?"
"Do you have any metal I can use? Like, right now?"
There was a pause. "I am fairly confident that something can be arranged. Did you have something specific in mind?"
"Ah, hows'about an ingot of…" Aang buzzed through a different screen, over a gallery of atomic structures. He picked one, more-or-less at random—he just liked it, a perfect grid, like a Pai Sho board. It very much felt right. "…Gold," he finished, the unfamiliar name rolling in his mouth. "As pure as possible."
"…are you sure you wouldn't prefer a few billets of Platinum, sir? Perhaps a whole brick?"
"No, thank you, just the gold, please…" Aang paused, considering. "Actually, better make it two." He'd need a 'control'…
"Yes, sir. Right away—sample arrival in one minute. If I may ask what you intend to use it for…?"
"Oh, just a little…" his cheeks widened in this first genuine smile he'd had in weeks. "…experiment."
"Sir," the voice had taken a note of concern, if not outright alarm. "there are a number of properly outfitted workshop nodes at your disposal in the tower, if you'd prefer. They might be less…fragile, for your purposes?"
Aang barely noticed the pleading, and paid it no mind, sweeping the desk clean of dead tablets. "No thank you, 'won't be necessary. I promise it won't be anything…dangerous." He squinted, framing the tabletop with his hands. 'Should be enough room…
"Yes sir, so I have heard before," the room speakers sighed, deep enough to rattle the windows. "For the record, may I note exactly what you have in mind?"
"I…am going to make an idea take a test."
"Sir?"
"Earthbending. I'm breaking it down—and bootstrapping myself up from the beginning." If it works...
The walls chimed again. Aang hopped off the the table, excitedly pouncing to the dumbwaiter as the doors opened.
"Sir, those samples..."
Two unmarked bars rested inside, each as long as his forearm, glinting a warm yellow in the light. Aang eagerly grabbed both, turned back to the desk…and yelped, nearly wrenching his arms out.
He dodged the one ingot he'd managed to move as it clattered heavily to the floor. "…weigh almost fifteen kilograms apiece."
Aang winced, muscling his left shoulder back into it's d-darn socket. He croaked a "thank you" as he tried again, gingerly hefting the metal onto the desk. The edges of the ingots were noticeably warm, as if they'd been fresh cut.
He centered one on the glass, sliding the other a few inches further down towards the length of the table. He eyeballed it again by a few hairs, back and forth, before pushing it all the way down to the far edge. Aang nodded, satisfied.
"All right…first attempt…"
Aang popped back, taking position before his work. He needed to start from the basics; the barest bones, from the ground up.
Start with the feet. He slid into the "en garde" stance he'd learned, inhaled deep, closed his eyes…and stopped. Waited.
The elemental "feels" were all different, he'd found. The invisible nothing and-everything of Air that he'd been born to; the constant wax and ebb of Water, the bird's heart flutter of flame…but "Earth" was silent, stubborn. You listened for it, waiting, like a devil in the dark.
He'd learned that much of Earthbending; through trial and error, mostly error; through study; through dozens of surprise lessons with his new friends—his heart hurt at the thought; he tried to lay it aside—he'd learned enough that he could feel it; could listen to the solid "Earth" almost well enough to walk around the room blind.
As Aang did it now, it seemed somehow…clearer. The room was still a vibrating chaos of substance, but it almost seemed to make more sense—like there were ghosts of patterns to the madness. Every solid a hundred tiny echos, at a hundred different pitches.
But what he had to do was concentrate on one. That one element on the table. Focus without eyes on the echos of the oscillations, letting the thunder reach him…
A timeless interval passed before…he had it.
He was sure—a black, cold hum of space ahead of him, where he had left it.
The next step…he had to reach out for it. Easy, now that he knew—he thought—the shape to bend.
The trick would be to bend himself into the shape.
He wanted to start big, he wanted to jump, but he throttled the impulse down.
Keep it simple, keep it basic, keep it direct. Keep it small. Keep it something you can control. And examine.
It was aggravating. Like balancing grains of sand. But it was the way to do it…
Slowly, groping like blindfolded, Aang "felt" his way around the metal the few feet distant. Got the impression of how the stuff "wanted" to move. How it didn't want to move. And how it could move.
He could do it.
He would have to improvise a sort of kata himself—just directing the minimum of energy in the simplest, most direct way. But he could do it.
He would.
Here goes…
He let his arms move almost on their own direction, pecking out the form by feel, like water filling a cup,
Right arm out, aligned with the shoulder, angle down, forearm up, right hand up, half-turn, half clasp, hold; left arm out, straight, and back, fingers splayed, wheel arm forward, slowly—slowly—elbow crooks, arm pulls back slightly as hands pass, almost facing each other, arm pulls back more, wheel slows, stops—he could feel it, almost ready—left arm lock back, forearm bend completely forward, left hand over heart, fingers ready—this was it—go. GO! In one sweep, he finished the motion, arcing his forearm down and back, like he'd cut a string.
The thunder reached him.
And a crash. A magnificent light show danced across his field of vision—which he quickly realized had something to do with his skull bouncing off the floor as he hit the ground.
Daylight flashed over him again. Through a daze, Aang thought he could hear a voice calling out o him through the clouds as they passed.
Strange…had clouds always smelled like Halon?
"…sssssssssssssiiIR!"
Aang started, cross-eyed, before he realized where he was again.
Dizzy, he huffed away the wisps of gas trailing from the ceiling as he struggled to get back on his feet.
"Are you all right?"
"Jus'…just fine, JARVIS," he said, patting his torso down, hoping he wasn't lying. So far, so good—no sudden subtractions or additions. "Wha…what just—?"
"Unknown. There was a room electrical spike and sensor whiteout—as have been known to happen during 'experiments,'" the voice dripped. "Need I call the paramedics?"
"I'm really fine, I only—" Aang stopped, mid brow-wipe. He'd finally remembered to check how badly he'd ruined test area with his own eyes, as the last fog cleared...
The desk was still there. What was left of it.
Someone had taken a hammer to it, it seemed. The glass hadn't shattered, really, just sort of…marbled. Crack-laced, like it had frozen as it broke. He seemed to dimly recall hearing that they made glass that did that, here. That was amazing in itself, but on the desk...
A vein of it had impaled the terminal, now sparking, half-dead, dangling in the air, but the bulk of the metal had flattened, cast along where he'd set it. The opposite direction than he'd tried moving in, oddly enough.
Odder still were the four distinct rivens on the far end of the mass, clawing into the desktop, and filled with solid metal. Aang hesitated, thinking, and checked the along the side of the gouges.
Sure enough…on one side, just far enough back and the right size, was a nub and curl, the impression of his own thumb. Cast in shining gold.
Aang forced himself to breathe. Sheer, dumb wonder. He crept forward, peering closer at his—his work.
Between the laces of the spiderweb cracks, the glass had discolored. Foggy, and with a faint rainbow blotching, like steel put to heat.
He frowned. Could he have just melted it, by accident? It had been catastrophe enough when he'd tried to firebend, the last time…if he'd done it without even trying…
It was almost too horrible to consider. He had to find out.
Cautiously, he reached out towards the golden heap, like he would around a sleeping tigersnake. His fingertips dabbed the edge of the mass.
Solid. Solid as a rock. And ice cold.
"Tā mā de..." He drawled, "…wǒ MÁNGMÙ!"
"What...was that, sir?"
The Avatar blinked, twice, at the machine's voice, jarring him back to reality. "I…said that I think I'll need another pot of that tea. Please." He felt his cheeks widening with an involuntary grin, matching the gleam in his eyes he could see reflected in the mirror-smooth puddle.
"…and some more metal!"
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Inspired by (and with permission of) Lavanya Six' "Captain America's Second World War," from her (excellent!) ongoing shorts collection "The Fun and Perky Warrior's Wolf Tail." Check it out.
I just hope my first attempt at writing a story outside my own quirky fandom isn't too horrific.
And again, I must apologize for my usual habit of horrible, horrible puns and in-jokes. (It's a pain that never ends, but it's cheaper than crack)