AN: I completed the story a little while and began the mass editing of the story because the amount of mistakes in it is staggering! For anyone who just saw this story because of a search or something like that, please read the whole summary on my bio or else you might get confused a little bit! Please Rand R as I can still change some things while I'm editing!
Chapter One: An Ember Amongst Shadow (Part One)
Pathetic. Coron's whole world seemed to be summed up it that one word. His parent's ignorance to the true nature of the vile spirit doctor, the vile spirit doctor, Coron's loss of strength and his failing health which was probably thanks to the vile spirit doctor, and foremost, his loss of speech which was undoubtedly because of the vile spirit doctor. Even now he could hear him telling his parents that he wouldn't last the night and the best thing he could do for him was give him a sedative. Ha! What a load of... well, he was probably right actually. Coron had fallen sick a month and a half ago and it had all gone downhill from there. He had been sent home from school with a record breaking fever and his parents had immediately called the local doctor who had told them he had never seen anything like it before and that he couldn't help them. They had then called in the vile spirit doctor from the newly formed Health Ministry. The only reason they could afford to bring in a specialist was because of whom Coron's parents are. His mother ran the Amttim Day Spa which is frequented by court figures and nobles which made it very lucrative. His father ran the Ba-Sing-Se zoo which was always packed because of his nation famous Jack-a-roo shows. Together they had the largest income of any middle class family and they liked it that way.
Coron had just disliked the spirit doctor when he first came in. He had only started to hate his guts after he had first tasted the medicine he gave him. In Coron's opinion it tasted like all the sewage in Omashu compressed down into a little glass. The first time he had tried to take it he had switched to a one track mind that said 'get this stuff out of your mouth!' At that point the medicine was still a ways from his throat so he spit it back out and hit the spirit doctor full in the face with it. Although the spitting was unintentional he now wishes it wasn't.
A little later he tried to ask if the spirit doctor could make the sewage taste any better to which he caught the spittle spraying response, "No, you ungrateful little maggot!" 'So much for forgiveness' Coron thought. Next he had tried to improve the taste by going through his parents which got the same result. He resigned himself to the fact he would be taking the foul tasting crap until he died, which at this rate wasn't very long. He couldn't figure out if that was bad or not. Coron finely settled on the routine of trying to dim down the medicines earthy flavours of various manures by shutting off as many of his senses as he could. He closed his eyes, plugged his nose and launched the crud to the back of his throat like he was in a drinking contest. Not that he does that sort of thing; he's only eight for goodness sakes! At any rate, the fact that he was getting a sedative tonight could only mean that it would taste better than the regular medicine. As it turned out, he was wrong again and it tasted even worse. Coron couldn't help but compare it to the spirit doctor's personality. The sedative added yet another question to his growing list: what would make him go unconscious: the taste of the drug, if it was even a drug, or the drug itself?
A short while after that Coron began to feel sleepy and he nodded off immediately. He realized as he was closing his eyes that he was probably going to die and for a reason that escaped him, that didn't bother him at all. As soon as his eyes closed they snapped open. His brain was moving sluggishly so it told him he was trying to stay awake. About a second after that he realized this wasn't possible because it felt like he had coffee in his veins. A second later he realized he actually had the strength to use that energy. Happiness surged up in him like bile sometimes did after he took his medicine. Using every grain of will power in his body he did not jump out of bed and sprint around his room to flaunt his new health in the spirit doctor's face. He also didn't question why he was suddenly better. Instead he thought of a plan so inane, childish and rude that he would be grounded until he was twenty. He was counting on his parents shock for that not to happen. He threw the covers of himself and jumped to meet the spirit doctor face to face.
He then began his long rant of insults, "You call that a sedative!?! More like über coffee with a pound of sugar thrown in for an extra KICK!! One problem with that though: there's no way it could be, because it tasted like something toxic sludge wouldn't go near!! What's in it, extract of YOU!!
He then turned on his parents so he could tell them that this guy was by far the worst thing they had ever put in his life, worse than Aunt Mwu's 'hello' pinches that left blood blisters, but before he could his mom said something that threw him completely off his game, "He looks so peaceful when he's sleeping." When Coron heard that he simply stopped and stared. He waved his hand in front of their faces which produced no reaction what so ever and he thought to himself 'nothing'. It took a minute for him to actually realize what he was thinking of when he thought that (wrap your mind around that one!). What he was thinking of was the fact that his hand had turned see through and was tinted blue. The realization hit him like a physical blow and he stumbled backwards and looked down to see another , more solid him laying in bed with his see through leg going through his much more solid head!
That was the last straw for his sanity and it went on vacation. Coron dashed straight through his bedroom wall and out onto the field behind his house where he could see the great walls of Ba-Sing–Se rising up in the distance. His sanity was still on vacation because standing by the road that led to his house stood a penguin-seal. His sanity got tired of the chaos all around it and came back. His first thought was that penguin-seals live in the poles. His next thought was that he must be dead. Coron was again astounded by the fact that this didn't bother him at all and it sent a trickle of pride through him. Coron sat down on the ground and began to ask himself questions, a few of which he was able to answer: If I can walk through walls then why am I not falling through the ground right now, is this the afterlife, why is there a penguin-seal here, am I supposed to do something, etc. The answers that came back were mostly 'not a clue' or 'I don't know' or something else. The intelligible answers left him with a list of options: Should I haunt the spirit doctor, travel the world, or try to find out more about what the heck is going on.
He would have gone on contemplating all this if the penguin-seal hadn't waddled up right in front of him and bopped him with its head. Immediately, his vision shot down to a narrow point with darkness all around him, then the narrow point at the end of his tunnel vision started to radiate colour and he noticed he had the sensation he was falling. The point at the end of his vision started to expand back to normal, and when it was, back to normal he was launched through the bottom of a lake kicking screaming 50 feet into the air.
