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C-O-R-P-S-I-N-G
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Confused, she did nothing more than blink at first. She was sitting in an interrogation room faced with what should be a fictional character. And…
One look at her hands confirmed it.
What the...
Different skin tone. This was definitively not her body.
Her eyes were wide. She could hear a high pitched ringing in her mind as her adrenalin levels soared.
She'd been accused of many things in her life — being lazy, forgetful, clumsy — but one thing Diana Belikova was not, was slow to the uptake.
Having read enough stories about people mysteriously ending up in fictional worlds, it was easy to realize what had happened.
What the fuck what the fuck what the fuck what the fuck what the fuck WHAT THE FUCK JUST HAPPENED—
No, she told herself. Calm down.
"You need to push your emotions away and hide them until no one can see them, Diana. The bullies are looking for a reaction, so don't give them one. Panic is useless. When you feel scared, push your emotions away and analyze the situation. See what's wrong and find a way to make it right again. Be calm and cool. Don't let anything show on your face."
Her mother's words.
Luckily, it seemed Lin Beifong hadn't noticed anything unusual. She continued scolding the girl whose body Diana was wearing, happy to rant.
The woman was interrupted by one of her policemen, who had come to announce the arrival of an old man. When the old man in question entered the room, Diana recognized him as the airbender that had been introduced earlier in the episode. What was his name again? Tenzai? Tenzo?
Ugh. She was awful at remembering names. She'd probably forget Beifong's too, in a few minutes. There was a reason her friends always joked that she was afflicted with Alzheimer's Disease, and it wasn't a particularly flattering one. Maybe her bad memory was a sign of an unreliable brain, and could explain why she was seeing things that weren't making any sense.
She was trembling. The emotions were so powerful that she wasn't sure if they were fear or shock.
You need to push your emotions away and hide them until no one can see them, Diana.
She had to remember her mother's lessons. She coudn't afford to have a panic attack here.
Had she taken leave of her senses? Yet, if she had gone insane, then wouldn't be asking this question, right? Insane people did not question their sanity, did they?
"Lin," said the airbender, "as beautiful as ever."
Beifong's glare could have boiled him alive. "You can't weasel out of this with a compliment, Tenzin."
Right! Tenzin was the man's name.
Diana wanted to laugh hysterically. She hadn't remembered that name, so did that mean her brain was not making this all up?
Tenzin had noticed something was amiss—he'd stopped glaring at Diana (no she's supposed to be Korra) and was looking ever so slightly worried.
Diana straightened up and all traces of emotion left her face.
"Repress, repress… You're cool, calm and collected. Nothing fazes you. Put your business face on and go win some new clients!"
"You're Diana from Audit, confident and strong, not Diana the nerd, weak and emotional. You'll be the best in your department one day."
"Why is the Avatar here?" Beifong continued. "She's meant to be training in the South Pole. And you were supposed to be there too and mentor her."
Well, Diana was quite confident that she'd be training in Republic City. Or at least, Korra would be. That was what the first half of the first episode had been building up to. However, while Diana had always secretly wished to be a protagonist of one of those fanfictions in which someone got to travel to their favourite fictional world, she was severely disappointed by what she'd been given.
If she'd been given a choice, she would have gone for the fictional world of Harry Potter by J K Rowling. Maybe even Naruto by Kishimoto or Worm by Wildbow if she were feeling particularly adventurous.
She wouldn't have chosen Legend of Korra, mostly because she knew nothing about the show. She'd been half-way through the first episode when the 'dimension travel' took place, and the only things she knew about the series came from promotional posters and an AMV of Legend of Korra she'd once seen. And some fanfiction, too.
So she had no knowledge of the future like a proper SI was meant to have, and Korra's body hadn't even had the courtesy to give her memories of how to bend the elements. As soon as Tenzin or anyone else realized their Avatar was ignorant of anything related to bending, there would be heavy suspicion falling on Diana.
Why did she have to end up as Korra?
Honestly, Diana was still half-convinced she was imagining everything and had simply fallen asleep on her sofa and starting dreaming about being the Avatar. But everything felt too real.
Either she'd gone insane, or this was real. The second possibility felt much more appealing.
She'd always dreaming of adventure, something more than her stressful job in audit and her dusty, empty apartment. When presented with such a dream, was it surprising Diana wanted to go along with it?
Tenzin was speaking. "—and I had to come back to Republic City." He frowned in Diana's direction, who didn't look as guilty as the real Korra would have. "However, the Avatar will be sent back to the South Pole. Immediately."
Diana twitched.
She'd only watched one episode of the series, but she was pretty sure Korra was to stay in Republic City for the duration of the plot. Sarah, the woman who'd recommended the show to Diana, had given her a quick summary of the plot—Korra is the Avatar, a position that makes her the world's peacekeeper and gives her the ability to control four elements when most people only control one, and the antagonist of Season One is some masked dude called Amen or something—and had shown Diana a promotional picture featuring the main cast. The cast in question consisted of Korra, two teens called Bowling and Mark, and this gorgeous young woman most of the internet shipped Korra with. Sally? Sammy? Her name was something along those lines.
Basically, all Diana knew were the events of episode one and the appearance of some key characters whose names she hadn't bothered to remember. What she was sure of was the fact that Korra was meant to spend several episodes in Republic City, where the antagonist was. Diana had no idea how long she'd be stuck in this body, but if Korra came back, she needed to be in Republic City for the plot to happen properly. She needed to convince Tenzin to let her stay.
"Lin," Tenzin continued, "if you would be so kind as to drop the charges against Korra, I will pay for any damage she may have caused."
Diana perked up, the beginnings of a plan forming in her mind.
"I suppose so," said the policewoman with a sigh. "Very well—"
"I refuse."
If I go to the South Pole then the people who grew up with Korra will notice I'm not her.
Beifong frowned and looked over at Diana, while Tenzin's expression grew quite exasperated.
"Avatar, are you suggesting you don't want the charges dropped?" asked Beifong, incredulous.
Diana nodded with a hint of a smile. "You just scolded me for using my title as the Avatar to get out of trouble. You were right, you know. There shouldn't be exceptions to the law, and you shouldn't be playing favourites because I'm the Avatar. If you commit a crime, you have to face the consequences. If you use your rank to get out of trouble or if someone else assumes the consequences"—she nodded at Tenzin—"then you'll never learn from your mistakes."
There was a small amount of pride showing on Beifong's face, though it was briskly replaced with her usual stern mien. "While it's… admirable of you to say so, I highly doubt you have enough money to pay for the damages you have caused."
Diana knew the true Korra had no money, but that did not matter, as her plan involved… something a little more subtle which would allow her to remain in the city.
"I don't have that kind of money," said Diana, "but I'm willing to do community service to make up for what I did."
And to do community service, she couldn't exactly return to the South Pole, now could she?
Unfortunately, Tenzin caught on immediately and protested. Loudly.
"No, Korra. You will be. Going. Back. Home."
Scheiße. The plan had failed. How had the canonical Korra managed? Or might Diana be wrong, and were the events of the series meant to happen in the South Pole? But then, why introduce the City of the Republic if it was of no relevance?
"And whoever heard of an Avatar doing community service?" Tenzin scoffed. "The citizens' first impression of you will be that of a common criminal responsible for destroying their property. The only way your reputation could sink lower is if you were in jail—"
"I'm already a common criminal!" exclaimed Diana, attempting to channel Korra's temerarious personality. "I wrecked an entire street while I was trying to catch those men! And now you're attempting to use your power to get me out of trouble! That looks worse than me doing community service! In one case I'm owning up to my mistakes and in the other you're shielding me from consequences through nepotism!"
"N-nepotism?!" the man spluttered, face red.
"Nepotism is when someone in power favours their friends or family," Diana continued, "and that's exactly what you're doing by asking Misses Beifong to forgive my mistakes and not let me atone!"
Beifong was leaning against a wall, arms crossed as she listened. She was not getting involved in the argument.
As for Diana, she was rapidly running out of arguments to convince the airbender to allow her to stay. Hopefully he would give in soon, or she would have to resign herself to heading to the South Pole, which was full of people who had grown up around Korra and would realize immediately that she was an impostor. It wasn't hard to imagine how badly they'd react when they realized.
"When your children break something, do they face consequences and get punished, or do you let them get away with it too?"
There. She had him. She could tell by the way his shoulders slumped and his face grew weary.
"Very well." He massaged the bridge of his nose. He looked over at Beifong. "Lin, if you could ensure this doesn't spread? I would like to keep the Avatar's presence in the city a secret for now."
"Why?" asked Diana.
"Because the last thing we need," said Beifong, "is for the gangs to know the Avatar's in the city. Every time we send more men out to patrol the streets, the criminals fight back. If they think the Avatar is coming after them, they'll feel cornered enough to mount a large attack. We don't have the numbers to deal with that."
The old man—Tenzo? Tensai?—looked like he half expected Diana to suddenly announce she didn't fear any gangs and would in fact go beat them up right now. Since Korra and Diana were not the same person, Diana did not react as expected and instead remained perfectly still.
"I'll have Saikhan give you some work," continued Beifong, her expression much less stern than it had been at the start of the interrogation. However, Diana was still wildly uncomfortable with the situation she was in, and was pretty sure she was in shock. "Come over next week. It'll give him time to create a schedule for your community service."
Diana blinked. Her chin was trembling ever so faintly and she was doing her best to avoid catching sight of her hands. They were dark and rough, so different from the elegant and manicured ones she was used to. "Shouldn't a judge be deciding that?"
Beifong shook her head. "Putting you in front of a judge would mean giving out your identity. Everyone would know the Avatar's in the area within a few hours."
"I'll have her brought back Monday morning," said Tenzo. He looked at Diana. "Korra, we're leaving now."
Diana nodded and turned to Beifong. "Thank you for everything." She paused, gnawing on the inside of her cheek as her adrenalin levels spiked again. "Do you have any toilets here?"
The woman pointed at the door. "Go to the end of the hall and turn left. The lavatories are the first door you'll see."
Diana gave a bland, polite smile. "Thank you. I hope next time we meet will be under better circumstances."
"Agreed," said the policewoman.
Diana followed Ten-whatshisname out of the room, and then sped ahead of him.
"Korra, wait!" he shouted.
But she was already throwing open the door to the washroom and entering the first stall in sight. She could hear Tenzo following her.
Diana got down on her knees and finally allowed herself to vomit.
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Seeing Diana throw up had softened Tenzo's disposition. He held her hair back (Korra's hair) while she expelled a mix of fish meat and bile, offering meaningless reassurances in a soothing tone.
"I should have known something was off," he said. "You looked out of it but I thought Lin was the reason why. I should have remembered that you don't get intimidated easily."
He was rubbing her back in a comforting manner. The kind of fatherly behaviour Diana hadn't witnessed in years, back home. She'd been an office worker, only social when it came to clients and colleagues, and even then it was feigned, a mask to hide her natural introverture. She wasn't used to being soothed like a child. In public it would have been patronizing, but as it was she didn't mind relaxing and enjoying it while there were no witnesses.
Diana dry-heaved a few times, her stomach desperate to push out contents that were no longer there.
"It'll be all right," Tenzo (Tensai? Tenzin?) was saying. "Shhhhh… Shhhhh… That's it, nearly over."
You could tell he was a father.
Still, as soon as she felt better, Diana pushed his hand away. She was an adult and capable of taking care of herself, thank you very much. While she didn't hate physical touch, she was uncomfortable with such behaviour from a complete stranger. (Even if to the real Korra, this man was not a stranger.)
"Come on," said the man, helping Diana up, "Let's find Naga. Then I'll take you to the compound for some food and rest."
He politely pretended to not notice how quickly she shrugged his hand off when she was standing.
"Thanks," she croaked, face still white and sickly.
"Don't thank me yet," he grumbled. "I haven't forgotten the stunt you pulled back in there. Nepotism, really? Did you swallow a dictionary on your way here? Lin may be inclined to believe you, but I've seen you try to weasel your way out of punishments before, Korra. Don't think I won't send you back to the South Pole as soon as you're done with your community service."
He saw through me. Greaaaat.
"You're too smart for your own good, Tenzo," said Diana unhappily.
"Tenzin," he corrected pointedly.
Diana couldn't help it - she tensed. He noticed my mistake. I'm done for.
Tenzin clearly wasn't suspecting a body-snatcher from another dimension, because all he did was put his hand on Diana's forehead.
He frowned.
"Hmmm… No fever, but you're clearly sick and not behaving quite right. Let's get you back so you can have some rest."
He was such a dad. It almost made Diana long for her childhood, when things were simpler.
As it was, she simply relaxed, happy he wasn't demanding to know who she was and what she had done to Korra.
Tenzin kept his hand hovering near Diana's back as they went to the pound to retrieve Korra's dog, ready to intervene if necessary. He was so caring it was almost surprising. Diana couldn't remember the last time someone had behaved like that with her. For years she'd been such a workaholic that friendship or romance was pushed to the side, until she had trouble making any real friends, too busy to maintain new relationships.
Tenzin had still not realized Diana was not who she appeared to be.
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Naga, the strange hybrid of a dog and a polar bear that served as a pet and companion for Korra, didn't notice anything was wrong either. It wasn't surprising, considering dogs used primarily their sense of smell, and that was the only thing Diana's presence in Korra's body had not changed.
Fear, however, was something Naga could detect. The dog (Bear? Hybrid? Man-eating beast?) made constant little whining sounds after being released from the pound, rubbing against Diana.
Tenzin didn't say anything — he must have assumed the dog could sense Korra's 'illness' and was trying to comfort her.
Diana was not a dog person. The only thing she did was scratch Naga's ear and then stay still as the enormous beast whined at her, showing off its large fangs. The size of the dog didn't help Diana's stress at all.
She was in a strange city, in a strange body, with a strange old man and a strange breed of dog.
The whole situation was making her anxious.
After going to the pound, they all went on a ship to head over to Tenzin's home. Republic City was set next to a large body of water. It looked like it had been built on a bay, though Diana couldn't tell if it was set by an abnormally large lake, or by a sea or ocean. There were two islands from what she could see — one held a large statue of a bald man looking over the city in a way that reminded her of the Statue of Liberty, and the other island was where Tenzin's home was, a large compound the size of a small university campus.
When they arrived, the were immediately greeted by three cute children and a pregnant woman.
Right, those people had appeared at the start of the episode. They were Tenzin's children and wife, weren't they? Well, Tenzin looked a bit old so maybe the three little ones were his grandchildren.
Ugh. She would have been taking notes during the episode if she'd known she would need the information.
"Korraaaaa!" the three children shouted gleefully, running at her.
The bald boy threw himself in her arms with such strength that she staggered, and the two girls came to hug her waist. All of the momentum slammed into her at once, and she fell down on her backside with a grunt of pain.
Did these infants not know the meaning of moderation?!
With a smile that did not reach her eyes, Diana attempted to play her role. "Hello childre—"
"Did'ya sneak out to come see us?!" the little boy yelled. "Are you gonna stay with us forever?!"
"Did Father change his mind about training you?" one of the girls asked.
"D'you wanna come see my room?" the other one asked.
They were all assaulting Diana with questions to the point that her eyes were starting to twitch.
"Diana, honey, will I ever have any grandchildren?"
"Probably not, mum."
"Whyever not, dearie?"
"Because dumb, rude children that scream all the time are not what I see in my future."
"Surely you don't believe that. Having children is such a gratifying experience."
Diana was beginning to have violent thoughts about these three annoyances.
"Well," she told the children with the same smile she used to win new clients, "I came to the city because I really wanted to learn airbending. It seems so impressive, you see, and when Tenzin said I couldn't I decided to take matters into my own hands."
Tenzin was looking a bit surprised.
Shit. Act more like Korra and less like me.
"And no one tells me want to do!" she exclaimed, puffing out her chest and trying to look like a shonen anime protagonist. "So now I'm here and I'm gonna learn how to be the awesomest Avatar ever!"
It was physically painful for her to say 'awesomest', but it made Tenzin's suspicious glance disappear, so it was worth it. From what Diana had seen, Korra was essentially a slightly less dumb version of Naruto Uzumaki, at the beginning of the Naruto series. Korra was an 'act first' kind of person with a 'think after (but it's totally optional)' mindset. As long as she kept that in mind when acting and talking like a teenager, things would be fine.
Huh. How did teenagers talk nowadays anyway? What if the slang had evolved? What if teenagers talked differently in this Avatar-world?
Hey... Wait a second... What if Korra was in Diana's body right now, forced to pretend to be Diana?
Diana was going to lose her job if that was the case, because there was no way Korra had the necessary knowledge to do the job right on top of acting like Diana. And if Korra started talking about bending and being the Avatar in front of Diana's coworkers or God-forbid, a client, then Diana's career would be over. She would be institutionalized.
Fuuuuuuuuuuu—
"Come on, children, leave Korra alone," Tenzin said upon noticing Diana's pale face. "She's had a rather trying day and she's sick. She needs to get some rest and you three need to stay away from her so you don't catch anything."
There was a chorus of disappointed groans, yet the children did not get off Diana. She tried nudging them away, but they clung to her like leeches.
"Korra will still be there tomorrow," said the pregnant woman. She turned to Diana. "I'm so glad to see you, Korra. How long will you be staying?"
"Korra," said Tenzin with the kind of tone all misbehaving children feared, "will be staying until she has finished her community service, and then she will be heading back home."
"What's community service?" asked the little boy, pressing up against Diana.
Ew, he smells. Aren't they supposed to be potty trained at that age?
"Community service is a non-paying job performed by someone or a group of people for the benefit of the public or its institutions," answered one of the girls with the tone of an adult lecturer. If she had a pair of glasses, she would've been a stereotypical bookworm. The girl paused, head tilted. "Why would Korra be doing community service in the first place?"
Tenzin gave an aggravated sigh. "I'll tell you inside. Please get off Korra before I make you."
The two girls let go of Diana willingly enough, but the boy just clung tighter and began chanting like a toddler in the middle of his Terrible Twos:
"Don't wanna! Don't wanna! Don't wanna!"
And to think, mum, you wanted me to give you grandchildren. I am very happy to never have to deal with this kind of thing ever again.
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Diana spent her first two days on the Air Temple Island as a figurative ghost. She stayed in her room, ruminating on her situation and brooding. She didn't leave the building.
While works of fiction about people being thrown into other worlds sounded interesting in theory, living it was much more nerve-wracking. Diana was having trouble dealing with it all.
The easiest solution would be to feign retrograde amnesia. Use it as an explanation for why she knew absolutely nothing, be it bending or the names of the people Korra knew. However, Diana had studied enough psychology to know that retrograde amnesia was rare, and caused by something such as a sickness, a hard hit to the cranium, a psychologically-scarring event or the use of drugs.
None of those had happened to Diana's body - to Korra - and so her amnesia would be downright implausible.
Diana didn't know enough about the Avatar world to know if possession existed, but if it did, then "Korra's" sudden amnesia and personality change would hint at possession rather obviously. People might react badly at the thought of their precious Avatar being possessed, understandably.
Diana's time spent brooding in her room was interpreted as a lasting sickness by Tenzin and his family. They left her in peace, though Tenzin's wife Pema did come over to bring some delicious home-cooked meals for Diana. Quite a lot of vegetables, starches, fruits, nuts and cereals. Diana had a suspicion that Pema was a vegetarian or Korra herself was meant to be one, but did not ask about it in case she was expected to have known it already.
During the day, Diana would glare out the window, trying to make plans and remember the little tidbits of information she knew about Legend of Korra. At night, she would climb out of her window and onto the roof.
She would sit there for hours, staring at the stars. They were much brighter than she was used to. Back home, the city lights made it hard for you to see anything smaller than the moon in the night sky. Sometimes Diana would see a star only for it to move, revealing itself as a distant airplane.
The sky in Republic City was different. It was reminiscent of online pictures, so full of stars that they had either been photographed somewhere rural, or simply photoshopped into existence.
The inspired in Diana a sort of distant shock that kept her quiet throughout the night, watching the stars in awe. Whenever her current situation became too much to handle, a glimpse of the sky would assure her that everything was very real.
Even under the dominion of the sun, the sky was recognizably alien. There were no long smoky trails left by planes, creating ephemeral grids in the sky.
Diana was used to adapting to all kinds of situations. She had accepted her current situation relatively quickly, realizing what had happened nearly immediately. That still wasn't enough to erase the emotion she would feel whenever she saw her now tanned skin, solid muscles and young, so very young, face.
It was probably incredibly petty that what she mourned the most was not the fact that she had no way to contact her friends and family back home, or that her cat would probably die of starvation in her flat before anyone noticed she was missing.
No, what she mourned the most, out of all things, was her hair.
She used to have a beautiful mane of hair reaching mid-thigh that she'd spent years growing, using all kinds of oils and conditioners to keep strong and hale. It would tangle so quickly that sometimes it could take an entire half hour for her to brush through it all. Every morning, she'd tie it up in an intricate braid to keep it from tangling and getting in her face, a different braid every day, and would secretly enjoy all the compliments people would pay her at work while outwardly staying modest. Her hair was her one vanity, the one thing she allowed herself to be frivolous and obsessive about.
And now it was gone.
The hair of young Korra, whose body Diana had inadvertently taken over, was short and full of split ends. It tore up Diana's soul that not only had she lost the long hair she'd spent near a decade growing, but now she was stuck with the hair of a tomboy who clearly couldn't have cared less about its upkeep.
Yes, it was incredibly shallow to care about something of such minor consequence, but it still mattered to her.
To make the situation worse, while Diana had her own memories, she possessed Korra's muscle memory instead of her own. So whenever she'd brush her fingers through her hair, her brain would tell her her hair was much too short while her body would tell her nothing was amiss.
For someone whose only physical sign of vanity was her hair, it was horrifying.
Tonight was her second night on the island where Tenzo, his wife and three kids lived (as well as numerous monks and guards nobody had bothered introducing Diana to) and Diana spent it exactly like her first - on the roof, staring at the sky. She let her mind wander, back to when things were more simple.
Diana had been a proud autonomous adult back home. She'd been a Senior Manager in a reputed firm. The promotion had been recent and at quite a young age, too, which had made her insanely happy, until she'd discovered a few things that had made her pride take a hit. Nevertheless, she'd been a very well-paid career woman who had been living in a cramped flat in order to put money to the side to buy a beautiful lakeside estate.
No significant other and few close friends, mostly because she had sacrificed her free time for her career, but that was something she had little regret about. She'd always been a little too blunt and bad at keeping contact for true friendship to exist.
"Korra?"
Diana looked over.
It was Tenzin, the bald airbender meant to be Korra's teacher. He was standing on the path passing right by the window of Diana's bedroom, and had somehow known she'd be awake despite the late - or extremely early, according to some - hour of the night.
"What is it?" she asked, feeling the tension go up. Every tme she had to talk to one of these people, she got nervous. The fear of revealing her true identity by accident scared her. She wanted to tell them, but at the same time she was still having doubts about her sanity, and didn't want others to think the same about her mental state. So for now, she would say Nothing. Maybe use the amnesia excuse, if pressed.
"Do you think you feel well enough to join Pema and I? We are playing cards now that the children are finally asleep."
Tenzin was trying. He had no idea what was wrong with 'Korra' and he was trying to be as respectful as possible. He didn't pry and he'd been very polite so far. Diana suspected he'd realized something was off about her, but he had yet to say anything.
"...Sure," she answered.
Encouraged by her response, he added, "I know that you are only here for your community service, but that won't start until Monday. Would you like to join me for some training tomorrow? I can teach you the basics of air-bending, if you'd like."
He was clearly aiming for a positive reaction, a way to make 'Korra' perk up.
Diana did her best. She plastered a smile on her face, straightened her back and agreed with enhousiasm. "I'd love to!"
She couldn't mope around forever. If she was stuck here, might as well make the best of it.
Diana just hoped he wouldn't expect her to show off any bending of the remaining three elements Korra was meant to know. She had no idea how to do the magic Kung Fu everyone else used.
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Replicating Korra's hairstyle was impossible. Diana tried several times, but getting the ponytail to stand up right never worked. It always slumped down like a dead limb, incapable of reproducing the cartoon physics of the real Korra's hairstyle. In the end, Diana got so frustrated that she decided to just give up and let the hair flow freely.
This was probably only going to make her seem even more suspicious. At this rate, people would realize she wasn't Korra within a few days.
She dressed in the same kind of orange clothes Tenzin and his family seemed to favour and left her room.
Tenzin was waiting for her in the courtyard, without any of his children.
"Ah, there you are," he exclaimed upon noticing her. "Come, let us begin training."
She followed him, glancing around curiously as she did so. She hadn't left her room much since her arrival, and it was interesting to look at the compound. The architecture was distinctively Asian, and reminded her of some temples she had seen in Beijing. As for the people, her gaze focused on all the people that weren't dressed in orange, the ones who seemed to keep their eyes on her.
Tenzin noticed. "You'll have to forgive me," he said dryly. "I asked them to guard the island so that you don't try to run away once your community service is over."
What would Korra have answered?
Diana tried to imagine a brash teenage protagonist and answered as best she could, "I wouldn't run!"
Tenzin didn't say anything, but his expression was one of muted disbelief.
"Here we are," he said as they stopped near the edge of the island. There was a cliff not even ten metres away, and a small structure consisting of four pillars holding up a roof with a curve recognizable as the kind found in hold Chinese and Japanese buildings. She was reasonably sure that was a pagoda roof, though she could be using the wrong term. It looked like the kind of structure a couple would stand under to get a picture, or like a small shrine without walls.
"What will we be doing?" asked Diana. She almost immediately cringed right after, wondering if that was a question Korra would have known the answer to.
It didn't seem to pose a problem, as Tenzin answered politely enough:
"We will begin by meditating. Considering how sick you've been, I thought it best to start with something relatively easy and not too strenuous." He paused. "I've been told that you've never managed even the slightest gust of wind, correct?"
Diana had absolutely no idea.
"Correct," she answered with a smile.
Oh. Wait. Korra would've been insulted by that last comment, wouldn't she?
"But I can do anything I set my mind to!" she continued with exagerated confidence.
Tenzin rolled his eyes. "We'll see about that."
Diana was instructed to sit on the stone floor next to Tenzin, under the roof of the shrine. She was facing the cliff and the waters beyond, eyes closed closed as they meditated.
Tenzin's instructions had been a bit vague. 'Be free like the air', really?
Diana wasn't even sure she could use the magical martal arts that were so popular in this world. She knew that it was something you were born with, or else Pema wouldn't have talked about wanting 'a normal child' at the start of the first episode. However, Diana had no idea if these powers were biological or spiritual. If they were biological, then that meant Diana could learn how to airbend. If they were spiritual, then without Korra's soul it was unlikely that Diana would manage.
She really hoped she'd be able to bend, or this charade wouldn't last.
The meditation lasted over an hour. At first Diana tried to imagine herself as a gentle breeze, free from the constraints of gravity and able to go wherever she wanted. When that didn't produce any results, she switched to imagining herself as a bird. No matter how much she tried, nothing happened.
Of course, she didn't allow herself to get angry. Anger wasn't helpful to meditation, and she wanted results ore than she wanted to rage at how difficult this was.
All she had to do was think about this logically. Air, Tenzin had explained, was about freedom and flexibility. It was all about moving out of the way of obstacles instead of facing them head-on.
If she thought about airbending as an obstacle, then instead of trying the same thing again and again with minor changes, such as imagining herself as a breeze or a bird, she should deal with the problem from another angle.
So instead, she thought about her current situation. She was, for all intents and purposes, caged in a prison of foreign flesh and trapped in a role she didn't want. The despair that knowledge filled her with had been permeating her for a while now.
She let go of the despair, let go of the hopelessness, and tried to think of her situation differently. She would not have to go back to her job, to her friendless life. She was in a world that cherished her because Korra was special, and she was a child so she wouldn't have to worry about taxes and rent and bills. Adults were taing care of her and shouldering the responsability. There was something incredibly freeing about the knowledge that as a teenager, Diana could now do a lot more and any mistakes would be excused as errors of youth.
And it was with those thoughts of freedom that Diana managed to summon a strong gust of wind for the very first time.
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Community service sucked.
Diana had expected to maybe have to pick up trash in the street or something. She hadn't had a specific idea in mind, mostly because she'd never had to do community service in the first place.
Instead, she was firmly stuck inside the police station, in charge of filing papers and delivering coffee as though she were an intern again.
It seemed that Saikhan, who was in charge of her punishment, had decided that the term 'community service' meant 'servicing the police'. She spent most of her time walking from desk to desk delivering things, or she was kept somewhere with mindless busywork to do.
She'd been given excuses for why she was kept inside, but she knew lies when she heard them. 'We can't have the city know you're here because it would rile up the gangs' was the worst excuse she had ever heard. If they really believed that, then the police force would be completely covert to avoid scaring those poor, trigger-happy criminals into violence.
The real reason she was kept away from the public eye was probably to make it easier for them to make her leave the city once her community service was over. The Avatar, from what Diana understood, was some sort of title that automatically made you a celebrity. Kind of a 'Boy-Who-Lived' type of title, except without the terrorist that wanted to overthrow the government and kill her. Probably. So if someone famous like Avatar was known to be in Republic City by the citizens, there would probably be questions if she was forced to leave very soon after. If the Avatar was as famous a title as Diana suspected, then the people living in Republic City would be outraged if she were forced back to the South Pole. They'd want her to stay.
It was either that, or Tenzin was so convinced Diana was going to escape her punishment that he'd asked Saikhan to have her around policemen constantly.
Diana liked to believe the real reason was the former one, not the latter. It soothed her ego.
"Got your tea," she announced cheerily, setting the plate down on Officer Tano's desk without making the cup tremble.
Despite being annoyed with what she had to do, Diana wasn't backing out of her promise and was trying to take her punishment with grace. Korra had to be held accountable for her actions, even if Diana has only proposed community service as a way to force Tenzin to keep her in the city. Now that Diana had had the time to think about it a bit more, she'd realized that her arguments for community service on the day of her arrival were more true than she'd thought. She'd been trying to find the arguments that would stab at Tenzin's logic and emotional core, and hadn't realized she'd found something true.
The truth?
It had been a case of nepotism.
Tenzin had been trying to use his influence to get Korra out of trouble, and that was wrong. Diana often cheated and lied in her daily life and didn't have a particularly strong moral core, but she would never run from the consequences if she were to commit a crime. That was just wrong.
Officer Tano looked up from his work and smiled at Diana. "Thank you very much, Korra."
On the first day, he'd called her 'Avatar Korra'. His almost subserviant behaviour towards her had made her deeply uncomfortable. It didn't help that he wasn't the only one on the force who looked at her like the second coming of Jesus Christ.
She had insisted he just call her Korra (Diana, my name's Diana) and he'd taken it as a sign that the illustrious Avatar herself had deigned to befriend him. He was nice... but still very weird. Quite polite, though.
Tano was also very talkative. During the first two days of her community service, he'd talked a lot about his job, how ambitious he was about his career (while procrastinating when it came to his work), and how he was an earth-bender and he was struggling to metal-bend so he could get a metal-bending mastery and get promoted and oh Avatar, could you help me out with my bending?
She'd politely declined, of course, saying she was too busy. There was no way she would be telling him she'd never done any earth-bending. She'd tried meditating in her room at Tenzin's house during the evenings and thought of things like rocks and fire and water, but those elements didn't seem to come out as easily as air. The emotions needed for the right element to come out were probably different, and the only thing Diana knew was that air was about being free. What was earth-bending about? Being dirty?
So yeah, she'd told him no. Besides, it was a bit strange that a man in his mid-thirties was acting like a teenager could teach him anything.
"Do you need anything else?" she asked, ensuring the skin at the edges of her eyes was wrinkled so her smile would look genuine.
He blinked a few times, as if coming out of a daze, and managed to tear his eyes away from the magnificient all-powerful Avatar long enough to look down at the papers he was holding. He hurriedly bundled them up, treating the papers much more carelessly than Diana would ever have dared, and handed them over to her.
She took the papers and tried to smooth them over without being too obvious about it.
"Can you destroy these for me?" he asked. "The shredder's blocked again, and these papers are too important to just be thrown out as they are."
"Oh. Sure." Diana nodded obediently. "Do you have a pair of scissors?"
Tano frowned. "Why?"
"To... cut the papers up? What else?"
He was a bit thick. Sure, she could rip the papers up with her hands, but there were about thirty pages and that would take too long. She'd also be highly likely to receive a papercut, which would keep her annoyed for the rest of the day.
Tano's frown deepened. "Korra, how about you just burn the papers. With your bending."
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Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu—
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"Korra? Are you all right?"
He leaned forward, glancing at her face uneasily.
"Korra?" he repeated.
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FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU—
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Tano looked ever so worried, the poor man. His precious Avatar Korra (notKorranotKorranotKorranotKorraNOT KORRA—) was twitching alarmingly.
She took a deep breath. Choked on it.
"Erm... Well, as the Avatar I have a lot of power and responsability, you know? So... err... my teachers had me promise to only ever use my bending to protect people, and not for frivolous things, so that I never forget that my powers are only for peace-keeping, and nothing else."
Tano was looking very awed. "That's a wise thing to do. I don't think I could stop myself from my bending for the little things, you know? It makes life very easy, so it's difficult to abstain. But you're the Avatar so of course—" He grabbed the papers, taking them a bit too forcefully from Diana. "—I'll just take care of this myself."
Diana's smile was so strained that Tano finally noticed it. He took it as a reprimand, though.
"I won't bother you with this sort of thing again," he told her earnestly. "I'm sorry."
"No problem."
That was too close.
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-x-x-x-
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It was Friday evening. Diana had now been in a fictional universe for nine days, and had spent five of those doing community service. She'd adjusted as well as possible, considering the circumstances, and had spent most of her time trying to glean information about the world from various sources. She'd gotten police officers to chat with her, asking them about the most dangerous current threats. The response mostly seemed to be organized crime.
Diana was starting to get an idea of who the antagonist of Legend of Korra was. It was most likely some sort of mob boss.
Having read enough books by Roberto Saviano to know how dangerous the mafia could be, she'd been attending Tenzin's air-bending lessons like her life depended on it. She'd need some way to defend herself, and air-bending seemed like her best bet.
She'd been pestering Tenzin about more lessons for a while as a result. They'd only meditated together a few times, but as soon as her community service started, he'd abruptly remembered hat she'd tricked him into staying in the city, and getting him to teach her had been much harder after that.
Now, after much begging, he'd finally agreed to teach her the next air-bending lesson. That meant she would no longer have to meditate alone in her room every night, trying to perform impressive bending-moves with her brain.
So immediately after the children had been put to bed, Tenzin had taken her outside and asked her to follow him to a training area.
"Where are we going?" she asked Tenzin.
They were walking towards a more forested area where Tenzin's children liked to play.
"Here," he said, and stopped.
He was looking at an open area, in the middle of which was a circular zone filled with beautifully-decorated wooden pannels. All of the pannels were standing straight, taller than Diana by two or three heads, and facing in various random directions.
Seated on the side were two guards. They were lounging on a bench that was set against the wall of one of the houses of the compound. Just above them was an open window with a radio set on it, with the loud voice of a sports commentator. The guards were listening to it while keeping a lazy eye on Diana. Clearly, the fact that she hadn't even attempted to escape meant the guards no longer had to be as cautious, and they were slowly beginning to lower their guards.
"Until now," Tenzin explained , "I have been teaching you how to meditate as I do. It was a purely mental exercise. Now, you will be doing something that mixes both the physical and the mental, so you can learn how an air-bender moves."
He held his hands like he was cupping something large and spherical, and thrust them forth. A strong wind came out and shot through the pannels, making them all spin.
"Now watch," he said.
Immediately, he ran towards the pannels and started spinning, weaving and moving mongst the pannels without touching any of them, and arriving safely on the other side without knocking into one of the thirty or so moving obstacles.
"That was amazing!" Diana exclaimed.
For once, her enthousiasm wasn't faked.
Tenzin looked very proud of himself as he went through the whole obstacle course again to come back to Diana. He was clearly showing off this time.
"It was nothing," he said with false modesty. "Now it's your turn. You must behave like you weigh nothing, and the slightest breeze can change your path, so that you move with the pannels instead of against them."
Diana looked at the madly spinning pannels with hesitation.
"Can I look at how it moves a bit first?" she asked.
Tenzin looked surprised. "Thinking before acting? Well you are certainly growing up."
A chill crept up her spine.
She stuck out her tongue at him, trying her best to channel her inner teenager. "Don't worry, I'm still not as old as you."
Tenzin rolled his eyes. "Yes yes, I'm as old as dirt and I'm no fun. My children tell me that every day. I don't need you adding to it." He flicked a finger towards the pannels. "Now go."
Diana approached the obstacle course and tried to look at with an analytical perspective. The pannels were spinning at different speeds, and Tenzin's gust of wind had been aimed at the middle, so the pannels to the right were spinning clockwise and the ones to the left were going in the other direction.
She circled around the contraption, trying to map out the position of the pannels. By coincidence, that brought her closer to the guards, and the radio they were listening to.
"—I'm sorry, folks," the sports commentator was saying, "it seems that Hasook is a no-show tonight! And without a water-bender, the Fire Ferrets cannot play. That makes this match an automatic win for the Platypus Bears!"
Too busy focusing on her air-bending lesson, Diana didn't bother paying much attention to the commentary of a sport she knew nothing about. She was only interested in beating the exercise and learning how to air-bend.
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