"How did you convince me to do this again?" Fei asked as she stared down a bustling street.
For the sun only just rising it was surprisingly busy to the girls. But then again the busiest place they've been was the Royal Palace in the Fire Nation. Even there you at least have privacy and not somebody brushing by you every five seconds.
"I'm holding to the theory that you were swayed by the wonder of trying out new tea in a new place," Xen explained as she jumped up and down, trying to get a better view over the top of the crowd.
"Um, Xen," Fei started off, eying her best friend warily, "I know you're short and don't really like the help, but do you need a boost?"
For a moment Xen stopped in her erratic hopping and eyed Fei, "You're only like an inch or two taller than me."
"So?" Fei wondered aloud.
"That," Hop, "Means," Hop, "That you," Hop, "Can't," Hop, "Make fun of," Hop, "My height."
The Avatar grabbed her clueless, barely scratching five feet, friend's wrist and started dragging her through the crowd, "Maybe I can't make fun of your height, but other people have enough reason to make fun of us with all that jumping you're doing."
"What do I care? They don't know who we are," Xen pointed out, all the while trying to resist Fei's tugging.
"They might not know who I am yet, but somebody has to have a clue as to who you are," The green eyed girl pointed out.
The petite firebender couldn't care less, "Yeah yeah. Princess of the Fire Nation, blah. Title gets old after a while."
A careful green gaze met Xen's gold one, "Who are you and what have you done with Xen?"
"Hardy har har, Ms. Avatar."
Fei quickly clamped her hand down on Xen's mouth, "Shush on the Avatar business. You remember what Sheng said, low profiles remember?"
Sheng is officially the girls' escort for their travels. Also, he's a member of the White Lotus Society. Probably the only way Iroh would let anyone look over his granddaughter. Iroh is surprisingly protective, considering all the stupid things he's pulled himself. But by now Sheng had gotten used to them ditching him by now. At least this time they left a note saying they'd meet him at Airbender Island by midday.
With a breath of fire on Xen's part, Fei removed her hand from the smaller girl and glared at her.
"You just love burning me, don't you?" Fei questioned as she tried blowing on her hand to cool it down.
"The first time I burned you was an accident," Xen cautiously started off, "Besides, I ended up bringing you flowers."
"Only because your grandfather told you to. I still have the scars from it." Fei uneasily rubbed at her left arm with her good hand. All the scarring was covered with a long sleeve, but it still wasn't one of Fei's prouder attributes.
"Without that 'incident' we wouldn't be friends."
Fei pondered this for a moment, "Got a time machine?"
"You're hilarious Fei," The young firebender deadpanned. With a couple notches up the excitement scale she tried again, "Now can we get some tea?"
"First, we have not a single clue as to how to get anywhere in this city besides the port. Second, we would only get lost if we tried. Third, did you even grab any money?"
Xen's eyes widened as she raced through the pockets in her loose pants even checking the sash folds of her belt. "No," She admitted dejectedly with her head down.
Fei shook her head, even though Xen couldn't see it. "Do you remember where our hotel is?"
"Well, it was somewhere by a pet store, cause the place reeked worse than when cousin Yui had five servings of cabbage-beet salad. And the roof tiles of the buildings surrounding us were red! So that means we must've been somewhere over there…" Fei started zoning out around that point as Xen was pointing to random locations and coming to crazy conclusions with a few too many anecdotes.
Due to zoning out she started gazing around for any sign of where they are. Her sight locked onto one thing. And it certainly didn't help their location. Fei saw a guy roughly seven feet away, maybe one or two years older than her and Xen, staring at them, specifically Fei herself.
He had short, scruffy black hair and a tan almost meeting the standards of someone purely from the Water Tribe. The mystery guy was wearing almost all black except for a bit of red shirt sticking out of his overcoat. His most noticeable trait though, were his bright blue eyes that quickly darted away as eye contact was established. After he dropped his eyes he swirled around on his heel and darted away. Fei couldn't quite place it, but something about him seemed off as compared to an ordinary citizen.
On a split decision Fei turned to Xen and interrupted her jabbering with a hasty "I'll be right back" before running after the mystery guy. Swiftly pushing her way through the crowd, Fei was able to keep the guy in her sights before he made a sharp turn into a small alleyway. Keeping in step, she followed him in.
Unluckily for her, he was already waiting.
Unluckily for him, he didn't know who he was up against.
The second she turned the corner a glint of silver caught her eye. It clearly wasn't from his clothes. Upon an extra second and a bit too close of an encounter with the object it was determined to be a dagger.
"You did not just swing that at my face!" Fei yelled out as she dodged to the side, hitting the wall of the cramped alleyway.
The guy lunged at her again with a bark of a laugh, "Well, it would be a shame to hurt such a pretty thing. But following me is not the brightest idea you've ever had."
"Neither was staring at me earlier," She retorted back, keeping enough time to taunt and stay scratch free.
"Most people would take it as a compliment," He commented with a bit of haughtiness tinting his voice as he raised his empty hand. "But anybody can see that you're getting to be a bit of a nuisance. And I don't like pests who get in my way." In his empty palm a small flame came to life, growing larger and more controlled by the second.
Fei looked on, unimpressed as he tried showing off his bending. "That won't work," She singsonged.
He simply shrugged, "We'll see." He stuck his dagger into an unseen pocket in his jacket and dispersed the flame to both of his hands.
Just before he blasted the fire where her head would have been, Fei dropped to a horse stance and bended a bit of the earth pavement over his feet to keep him in place. Due to him being so close to the wall she sunk his wrists into the brick behind him also. For good measure at the least.
"Nice try though," Fei said off-handedly as she straightened up. "Gold star for effort and all that."
"Hmm," He hummed out in thought, seemingly unfazed that he was now stuck in place. "So you are a bender then. Impressive little setup you've made here."
With a roll of her eyes and a quick scoff she tried to meet him eyelevel. Which was a bit difficult considering he was almost a foot taller than her. "Now you try to be smooth?"
"Second chance?" He offered.
Fei leaned against the wall opposite him, "You could start by introducing yourself."
He took his turn to scoff, "You must be new here."
"What was your first indicator? Me and my friend being completely lost?"
"That princess from the Fire Nation? The one who called you the Avatar? I'm hard of hearing and even I heard that part." He gave a small smirk like he knew he had the upper hand. Verbally at least.
Fei tried to stay nonchalant, the only indicator of her growing anger was the slight narrowing of her eyes. "How do you even know that stuff's true? We could be two crazy people for all you know."
"You know, you can tell a lot about people by their eyes," He trailed off ever so slightly, "And yours are especially angry right now. That's how I know."
"Thanks for taking the time to go all Zen Master on me, but I'll be going now," Fei gave a slight wave of her hand and strolled to the original opening of the alleyway.
The guy's next words slightly halted her just before her departure, "I'll be seeing you around, Fei. The name's Nurik by the way."
Green gaze met blue and a small smile worked it's self onto the Avatar's face. "We'll see." And she disappeared into the crowd.
~Motions of the Cycle~Motions of the Cycle~Motions of the Cycle~
It's a slow morning, Enlai – or currently in his thief persona, Xian Mu- thought to himself. Normally he could've gotten two sacks of coins by this time.
He was currently lounging on the edge of one of the taller surrounding buildings, enjoying the hustle and bustle of the crowd below. Behind his mask, his dark green eyes roamed along the distant people.
A head of black hair, staying firmly fixed in place along part of the edges, caught his attention. It wasn't common for somebody to just stay still at this time. Usually people were running in all sorts of directions for all sorts of different reasons.
With a little squinting he could see that she was wearing a red cut off tank top, leaving her midriff and arms free to the slight morning breeze. She also wore loose red pants of the same color of her top with a gold sash leading to a piece of fabric flowing down the center of her legs with red and gold accented flames decorating it. She also wore black sandals the same ebony as her short hair. Even by the quick examination you could tell she came from money. Only someone rich would wear that quality of fabric in this part of town.
And there is my morning salary, he thought.
Just as he was about to start hopping rooftops to get down to her a voice startled him out of action.
"I thought you knew not to mess around in my territory, Xian Mu."
The masked teenager turned to meet the face of the familiar skull mask and obnoxious red suit of "The Chuckling Reaper of Justice", or so he called himself.
"Way to give a guy a heart attack Reaper," Enlai said with a masked smirk.
"I'll keep the tactic in mind," The teen in the red suit replied coldly.
"As much as I love the cold shoulder over here, I've got a quota to meet," He carelessly stated.
Looking back over his shoulder so he wouldn't lose his target he saw another girl join the first. This one had long black hair reaching to her lower back with messy bangs and braids keeping the front part of her hair hanging securely, tied in red bands. She also had a loose brown tunic with red edging that had one long sleeve and one short. Also, she had high-waisted, close fitting dark green pants that held way to worn brown boots that had seen better days. Apparently the rich girl didn't keep a money standard to the company she kept.
Either way, they were walking away and the possibility of him getting anything off them was leaving with their hasty footsteps.
"There goes my morning," Xian Mu exclaimed, as if accusing Reaper for ruining everything.
"Really?" Just by his tone you could tell he was raising an eyebrow in amused speculation, "I've got something that'll fix that."
The first masked teen gestured his arm out widely, as if saying "Go on."
Reaper walked towards the edge of the rooftop without another word and pointed down. There, in the alleyway between buildings, was Nurik, the youngest leader of the Triple Threat Triads to date. And he was pinned to the wall with the help of earthbending.
Both teens climbed down the fire escape quickly and went to face Nurik.
Reaper and Xian Mu both started laughing as they saw an up close of the oh-so-infamous-Nurik attached to the stone wall.
"I know this is really funny. I'm even laughing on the inside, trust me. But could you two help me out here?" Nurik asked with clear sarcasm showing through.
Xian Mu unsheathed one of his butterfly swords and started hacking off the earth cuffs.
"So… how exactly did you get into this position?" Reaper asked as he got his self-control back.
Nurik rubbed his now freed wrists, "Well boys, it's time to have our fun. There's a new Avatar in town."
A/N: THANK YOU TO EVERYONE WHO SENT IN FORMS! I love how much of a response the prologue got. Wanna do it again for the first official chapter? Hmm?
The OC's for this chapter are as follows:
Fei – Me
Xen – Simply One Hell of a Fujoshi
Nurik – MaddyTheFangirl
Enlai/Xian Mu – smyle
Reaper – BiggerGuilmonmon
Okay! That's all settled then. The characters shown over the next few chapters do not all have defined main character spots, just an afterthought I need to put in here. I'm just trying to use as many of your guy's OC's as possible.
QUICK LITTLE ADVERTISMENT FOR AN AWESOME STORY: Simply One Hell of a Fujoshi is doing a SYOC story for the anime Mirai Nikki (or Future Diary) if you have seen that anime (it's a good one, you should watch it no matter what) please submit a form. I want her to continue that story really badly and she hasn't gotten a single form yet. Please?
READ. ENJOY. REVIEW.