A couple of things to be aware of. One, I'm basing the Watchmen stuff off of the comics, though I might take some things in the movie. Two, it's mostly Rorschach that'll be starring in here, and I don't care if you like him better actually dead or teleported to another universe. Three, I might be off on some details about the Avatar universe, so don't flame me for it but pointing them out would be nice. And four, I haven't written a fanfic in years so things might be a little terrible until I pick things up again.
Disclaimer: I don't own any ideas from Avatar: The Last Airbender, nor Watchmen. They belong to their respective creators.
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He had always wondered what death would feel like. Because he was always the one dealing it. Never receiving it. And he couldn't get much from his victims, who were screaming in terror before sinking into a blank expression.
Especially by his hands. Jon Osterman. Dr. Manhattan. The almost god-like figure had killed countless before, during the Vietnam war. But he never was faced with a dilemma. He never had to kill his friend.
"Do it!" He had shouted before feeling what he assumed was death. No. That was wrong. He couldn't feel anything. Everything went black, every part of him was numb. If he was a religious person, he would say that his soul managed to escape the vaporization and started to drift towards the afterlife.
But the sensation lasted only for a moment. He could see the flash of blue light that should have killed him. Should have erased the masked vigilante, Rorschach, from the face of the earth.
Was it worse that Jon teleported him here, wherever here was? He knew that he will find his way back, and tell the truth about what happened in Antarctica. For someone claiming to be detaching from humanity, he had a funny habit of sparing the life of his friend, someone who was very much so a human.
He couldn't even see where he ended up. Tears were clouding his vision. He had never cried before, so he was a bit shocked to feel them running down his cheek. Using a free hand to wipe them away, he realized that he was holding his mask and quickly put it back on without a second thought.
What the hell did Jon do? Did he teleport him to freaking China?! He stepped back in surprise and his foot bumped into a duck-chicken thing. It squawked and flailed its wings at the stranger before it was scooped up by its owner. A middle aged Asian women that stared at him with wide eyes.
Everyone was gawking at him. Let them gawk. He didn't care about their impression of him at all. He'll be out of here as quickly as he came, or as soon as he found the nearest airport.
Everything about this place was off though. The air was clean, like it hadn't been exposed to cars or factories. The people around him, when they weren't staring, always had a smile on their face. Much unlike the residents of New York City, who were often looked down at the ground as they hustled by. It could be paradise by his standards, if he hadn't already told himself that there was no such thing as paradise.
One thing was clear. It wasn't likely that he'd find an airport here, or even anything more advanced than a typewriter. There has to be some way home. Some way to travel back so he can reveal what Veidt had done. There has to be...
"Excuse me mister?"
A high pitched voice made him whirl around, ready for a fight. No one approached him for any reason other than that.
Then his second thought was that the woman behind him spoke English. When she was obviously Chinese, or Japanese, or belong to one of those other Asian countries. That's strange.
"I think you dropped this..." She held out a pen to him.
Oh. That pen. He used it to write in his journal. Which, it suddenly occurred to him, should have been reviewed by now by the newspaper company he had dropped it off in. A small glimmer of hope was sparked. The truth could be told, even without him even being there. But he still prefer to be home and not stuck in the middle of a foreign country.
He took it back without saying a word and turned to leave. But the woman followed after him, not getting the hint that he wanted to be along.
"It looks like you're not from around here, mister." She said, panting lightly because he had quickened his pace. "It might do you some good to get a guide. Ba Sing Se is a huge city, and you can get easily lost in it."
"I don't need one."
"Are you sure? I can help, maybe." She didn't seem fazed by the stranger's reluctance for help. "It's rare nowadays to find anyone that isn't familiar with the city. Rarer anyway. Now that the war's over, there's no more refugees coming here, and all the ones that used to live here returned home."
He stopped walking. Only long enough to say, "What war?"
"You don't know?" The woman let out an audible gasp. "Wow, you must have been really sheltered, or really not from around here. Basically, the Fire Nation tried to conquer the world for the past 100 years and was only recently defeated a couple months ago by Avatar Aang. What nation are you from, if you haven't heard of it?"
He didn't answer. There was a brief moment of welcome silence before the person piped up again.
"I'm sorry. That was rude of me. You're the newcomer here, so you should be the one asking questions, not I. It's just..."
When she trailed off, he thought that she was going to leave him alone now. But she didn't.
"I used to be a Joo Dee. They were tour guides here, but not very good ones. Many women, including I, were brainwashed by the Dai Li to make us the perfect guides. They're disbanded now, and I'm trying to be normal again. But it's hard. Sometimes I slip into being a Joo Dee, and do more harm than good."
This place was more interesting than he originally thought. If he was stuck here, it might be worth it to investigate the recent history further. For now, he kept walking and looked at everything but the former Joo Dee.
"It's alright to ask questions. Honestly. I want to help you as much as I can."
"Go away then. You're too chatty."
That shut her up for a bit, much to his satisfaction. He frowned under his mask when the light footsteps of the woman resumed again.
"Are you sure? It's also dangerous here, in the Lower Ring. If the Dai Li did anything right, it was that it kept the criminals in check. But now they run rampant, and the guards are such amateurs that they can't do much to control them."
"I can handle them. Go. Away."
That did it. The woman sighed, loud enough so he could hear, and turned away without another word.
Of course, the peace wasn't going to last long with his luck. He only took a couple steps forward when a scream rang out behind him.
She was right in that the criminals were out of control. They needed to be brought to justice, and if the policemen here couldn't do it, he'd have to clean things up himself. Even if he was a complete stranger in this city.
The scream had come from the woman that held the one-sided conversation with him. She would've been louder, but the muggers covered her mouth and held a knife up to her throat.
"This doesn't have to be any harder than it has to be. Just give me all that you have and you'll be safe."
Right after he said that, the woman was torn away from him and he was instead holding a strange man in a mask instead. He wasn't holding him for long either, as his arms were grabbed and twisted in a way to let him go. And to cause extreme pain.
"Aaagh! Let me go! I didn't do anything you psycho!"
He ignored his pleas. Flipping him around so that the mugger's back was facing towards him, he shoved his face into a brick wall. It became stained with blood gushing out of his broken nose. He was lifted from the hard surface only to be smashed into it again. And again. And again. The spot where the pounding and grinding was taken place was slowly becoming one color. Red.
"Please! That's enough! You're hurting him too much!"
The woman's cry distracted him enough for the mugger to regain a fraction of his strength. For the split second that he turned away, he pushed his assailant away from him and aimed a feeble punch at his face.
It was easily grabbed by the masked man and he proceeded to break its bone by squeezing hard. He yowled in anguish and his eyes became watery, but he refused to let go.
"Aaaaaaaaargh! What did I ever do to you?! Please!"
He was still able to talk rationally. That surprised him a bit, since he'd think that his teeth had shattered and pierced his tongue by now.
This was getting tiring anyway. He had made his point. The mugger was flipped over again, this time slamming into the ground with a sickening thud.
The woman was gone. Not surprising. This might have been the first act of real violence in this almost paradise. And it was needed, to keep thugs like these guys in line.
"There he is! He's a madman! Arrest him, kick him out, just don't get him near me!"
She came back? Glancing up towards her, he wasn't shocked to see the incompetent guards that she spoke of right behind her. Typical. Save a woman's life, and you only get betrayal in return. That's what happens in Manhattan, and even in this country, it's still expected.
These guys shouldn't be harder than the bloody body next to him though. All that made them different from him was the fancy uniform.
And he was very wrong. Only one step was taken before rocks flew out of the ground and sped towards him at high speed. He was able to dodge quite a few of them but he was pelted by the rest. Several of them struck his head and he fell over, dazed but able to see what was going on.
Something was very off here. If flying rocks weren't enough to convince him, stone rose up from the ground and wrapped itself around his ankles, preventing him from getting up or running.
"It looks like you never seen Earthbending before. Of course, who can tell under that weird face of yours?" One of the guards laughed and approached him. To dissuade any further engagement, he made some pointy rocks float around him, eager to drive them into his body.
He didn't give up yet. They made the mistake of not binding his hands, and they were going to regret it. Because he grabbed the knife that the mugger had conveniently dropped and slipped his other hand into his pocket, discreetly enough so the guards won't notice what he just did.
"Now, what are we going to do with you..." The person that was talking before was apparently the leader, and didn't want to stop gloating.
"You were going to arrest him! Put him in jail! He killed a man for no reason!"
Actually, he didn't kill the mugger. He was still breathing, barely. If these idiots paid more attention and got him to a hospital faster, he might have lived. Now, the chances of that are very very slim.
"Riiight. I was going to do that." He sauntered over and bent down over the fallen man. "Now don't try anything funny, because one more and these rocks will give you some pretty nasty scars- AAARGH!"
Before the guard finished his sentence, he flung the knife past him, into one of the other mook's eyes, and pulled his pen out of his pocket and threw that into the leader's groin. Both of them keeled over in pain, and his shackles were loosened enough to jump up and deliver another blow to the person in front of him.
As expected, more rocks were flung at him, but he was able to dodge and deflect them with the round helmet of the unconscious guard. Their smallest break between barrage was his opening, and he threw his shield like a Frisbee and retrieved his knife and pen while he was at it.
The hat knocked out a bunch of the guards, and the remaining one were watching in fear where they stood. They were too amazed and afraid of the masked stranger to do anything more than throw rocks at him.
All of them were wiped out with little effort. They didn't deserve to be the policemen of the city. All they had that was a challenge was the 'Earthbending', as one of the guards called it. And that didn't pose much of a threat once they saw what he could do without it.
He heard ragged breathing behind him. Turning around, he saw that it was only the woman that started the whole mess. She should have paid like the rest of them. But before he could do anything, she opened her mouth and shouted.
"Don't you dare get near me! I'm not as helpless as you think I am! Nor am I scared."
She was lying. He could sense her fear in her voice. Gripping his pen tight, he was deciding on whether to chuck it at the center of her forehead, when-
WHUMPH.
A pillar of rock burst out of the earth and knocked him into the air. The force made him release his pen and knife and they clattered to the ground harmlessly.
He wasn't as lucky. He barreled through the sky for what seemed like a lifetime before he landed on a cart, filled with vegetables.
"Argh! My cabbages!"
That was the last thing he heard. Being thrown into a cart, stuck with splinters, beaten up by sharp stones earlier was damaging enough. But adding on the hurt he got from Veidt, it was enough to turn his vision black...
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Some more notes, yeah, this is technically the same day as when he and everyone else confronted Ozymandias. And it's the first chapter, so the others probably won't be as long cause I don't have to explain as much stuff. Maybe.
