The Legend of Korra

The Strange Tale of Iban and the Republic

The Exiles of Kyoshi Island

"Remember that all nations and tribes in your world, all clans and kingdoms are ordained by God alone in the hopes you may come to know each other better. Never forget that all people are one and equal. Saint Meskat of Suihan"

A long economy class flight to the capitol city of Nipponia and a much less comfortable flight to Sapporo – the capitol of Kyoshi Island had brought Iban and his family to Kyoshi Island. The local Kyoshi Airline flew twin engine propeller driven aircraft and the flight to the Toyuma airport – the nearest airport to Suki's village was even less comfortable. Even a thirty minute flight with forty nine other passengers in a tube with engines that roared at rock concert level was made uncomfortable by the rocky and turbulent flight. Azula kept wondering what the aircrew did if the propellers fell off.

Toyuma was a city of a quarter of a million that sprawled across the hills of one of the large volcanic mountains on Kyoshi Island. It had won some fame for being the home municipality of the famed, mythological Kyoshi Warriors and more fame for its beautiful harbor in all the Realm.

Iban drove the cramped rental mini van down the main highway that crossed the island and saw the usual strip mall that had come to ring all cities in the west. He hated white cars as a rule and the white mini van failed to live up to his expectations. It was gutless, smelled of an all too enthusiastic pine and vomit scented air freshener and someone had already ruined the suspension.

A large jumbotron advertising shopping mall venues stood up over a full parking lot ringed by cedar trees that served a number of multinational retailers and a Radio Shack.'Shop here and buy cheap crap' sprawled across the LED display.

Korra had hoped to see one of the famed temples of Kyoshi Island. The intricate wooden Shinto temples had stood since the days before Avatar Kyoshi and long before the Kyoshinese had become a modern Western people.

In spite of the language barrier, Iban cursed the traffic. Suihan had a large vocabulary of rude rugged words.

Azula noticed the city had expanded vastly in seven decades to include every fishing village and small town along the coast. The bank sign stood on the sight of the home of an old farmer who had long quit farming cabbage.

Karo recognized the hills and the hulking shape of Domokiro lurking above the city; a dormant volcano that had not erupted in historical times. Subdivisions of neat homes, blocks of four story apartments, schools and parks went up its sides until the land grew too steep to build on. Why this was the case eluded Karo. Kyoshi Island had six or seven million people living on it and had plenty of room for all of them. Most of the island was island pine forests, marginal farmland and some of the most beautiful fjords Karo had ever seen. The rural landscapes had a Scandinavian feel to them, and the steep southern latitudes gave the late summer sun a special 'color'.

Azula had spent many hours on an international flight but had long forgotten Kyoshi Island was fifty five degrees south of the equator. Warm currents heading south to the Water Tribe Homeland meant the island had warmer winters than one might expect from the latitude. The island had become a draw for sportsmen and skiers as well as those who loved the outdoors. The bank sign gave the local temperature at noon on a late spring day as seventeen degrees. The climate seldom exceeded twenty degrees even in the height of summer, rained a good deal even in the summer and had snowy but moderate winters.

In the glory days of the Kyoshinese, they had dominated the other tribes around them; driving the Keltoi – the future Suihanese onto the remote islands that would form the Dominion of the modern day. Once great warriors, they had become a meek and poor people during the time of Avatar Kyoshi. Other Nipponese peoples had left seeking peace and taken over the archipelago of islands that ringed the Southern Earth Kingdom. According to Kyoshinese mythology; Avatar Kyoshi had cleaved Kyoshi Island from the mainland as a haven for her nation. Academic geologists doubted this: Kyoshi Island was a typical Nipponese volcanic island noted for its wet, cold and gray Nordic climate.

Republic City had its seasons reversed; now it was in the midst of one of the Earth Kingdom's cold, snowy continental winters. It had humid summers with long spells of clear weather and could reach thirty degrees on some days. Tenzin had grown accustomed to them and felt out of sorts in the southern hemisphere.

Kyoshi Island had a climate warmer than it should have been given that the island lay about sixty degrees south of the equator and people could read outside at midnight. In winter, streetlights had to remain on all day. One of the reasons few people in the modern day bought into the myth that Avatar Kyoshi created the island was the climate. The summers were often wet and dreary, winters long and dark. The short growing season allowed only the hardiest strains of wheat and oats to grow and the people depended on the sea for food.

Few disputed the natural beauty the island possessed. The tall cedars, Kyoshi spruce and aspen trees looked beautiful and the mountains had an almost seamless carpet of these trees. Dark rocks formed cliffs that poked out of these forests and in flatter areas, pastures and meadows had pretty, well kept timber framed farmhouses with cattle, sheep or horses enjoying the outdoors. Glaciers had crept over the land in cold times, retreated and the whole island had steep valleys and rugged terrain. Volcanoes made wonderful hot springs, created the landscapes of ash and forest that took on a magical dark shadows and pastel coloring in the strange sunlight of the far south.

Korra watched ahead as Iban drove down the four lane main highway that went through the downtown area. Nothing in the city was on flat terrain. The downtown core had tall office buildings clad in glass tinted to blend in with the spruce green of the surroundings. The tallest might have topped thirty stories and didn't compare to those in the larger cities, but as Iban entered the downtown district, Korra felt that unease whenever she traveled in an urban area. A bus painted in the green stripes and white theme of the local transit company pulled in front of them.

Azula began to find the terrain familiar. Toyuma lay at the head of Subasa Fjord – a twenty kilometer long fjord which had steep walls graced by the lush valley bottom of green fields and hills. The land had the most dramatic and moody look – green pines, grayish black cliffs high above a green valley floor and almost black sea. Whether Avatar Kyoshi had created the island, or it took shape by the long processes of geology; it was a tribute to how a determined people could conquer a land.

Suki's home village of Kurohiko lay to the northwest at the mouth of the fjord. Like a familiar face seen after many decades, the features began to make sense to her. A city lay at the head of a fjord where several towns once lay along the small harbor. The harbor had grown in step with the scale of the city but the land looked as familiar as ever. The Kyoshi Islanders had built their harbor and most settlements in the shelter of the cold waters of the fjord as the mythical monster; the Unagi avoided the cold waters. Where the topography permitted it, villages and towns lined the fjord connected by highways and long winding railways.

Korra played tourist but she knew more about Kyoshi Island than Iban or his family since she had made the place home in a past lifetime. She knew Avatar Kyoshi had ripped a chunk of land the size of Ireland and sailed it south about five hundred kilometers. This saved her people from Earth Kingdom oppression. Her work had created this beautiful landscape as she had crumpled and sculpted the land as she drove it south and it scraped along and plowed its way to its final resting place. Glaciers had done much of their geological handiwork before Avatar Kyoshi came along, but her work had created gashes and escarpments of vast appeal for those who loved geology.

Iban had to read road signs. He didn't find it as much of a challenge as he had thought. He knew most of the kanji and while the written alphabets represented syllables; he had learned one of these systems in order to read Suihan. Left, right, north and south, the colors and conventions of the signs on roads were all so close as to pose no problem. The Kyoshinese drove on the right as did The Dominion and traffic rules worked the same. He had to drive in midday traffic and track the map and had little time to admire the scenery.

Korra saw a temple in the midst of a large park ringed by lust chestnut trees. The temple barely stood above the old trees, the wooden curved roof dwarfed by the large hospital tower at the edge of the park. Cars, buses and trucks of every color drove around the large park going about more urgent business. Korra couldn't read Kyoshinese or Nipponese even though the highways department wrote out signs in both official languagesi. A large wooden sign with white characters gave the name and a series of blue signs with a white reflective background admonished park users to pick up after their pets and of the fees to rent the soccer field and tennis courts.

A fancy Victorian chateau looked over the entire downtown from a bluff. The railway had built it for tourists many years ago. It gave the city a regal look with the tan and pink brick finished off with white stone finials. It looked like a massive stone castle with large windows. Korra found it strange that it fit in well with the city.

As Iban drove and the highway climbed higher and higher, at times the four lanes and the median appeared blasted out of rock and Iban felt a sense of vertigo from the sight of looking up at a rock wall. The suburbs along the highway were built on convenient slopes and level parts of the topography. Here and there, exits led off the highway and Iban could see the typical suburban strip mall with fast food and chain stores serving the local population. Iban found himself staring down at the water of the fjord and with the highway showing no signs of leveling out.

He had memorized the kanji for the name Kurihiko and looked right and left for any signs pointing the way. One exit led to a community college built on a wooded lot. Iban kept seeing patches of residential development, sparking motels and townhouse complexes. After a few more exits, a sign with the characters he sought indicated the exit for the village. He pulled into the merger lane, slowed down and waited for an arbitrarily placed traffic light to let him and a red flame decal covered logging truck turn left.

The well paved road ended a few hundred meters after he had turned off. The logging truck passed him with a loud honk. The road remained paved but took on the appearance of something both frost heaved and badly patched but it began to wind down the hill. A sign warned of turns but the international yellow with black curve didn't fully make clear the extremely windy nature of the road. Iban slowed down and braked as he made a right hand turn. The side of the hillside was steep and yet comfortingly enough, lined by cedar trees. Iban could smell the fresh scent of the sea and of pine.

Azula began to recognize the sights. The road went down the steep valley that led to the village and small, neat homes with tulips of red and blue growing in front of them lined the road. Karo knew this was pretty much the village. The road ended at a cross street and a light blue building with gas pumps offered the visitor fuel, a slurpee, chocolate bar and live bait. Next to that building, a while clapboard building had a hardware store. Karo saw a long dock as Iban pulled to the side of the road to check where he was on his GPS. The coastline had a marina and yet the sharp U shaped bay and even the hills looked identical to Karo.

Iban looked at the map. A thousand people called Kurihiku home. Iban could see an elementary and middle school that shred the same building on a street up the hill. Across the street, a bank offered ATM service. Next to it, a clinic an a dentist had their shingle out. All the buildings had pale green, white or light blue wooden siding.

He parked on the side

of the road.

An old stranger approached him. He had the weathered face of a man who had posed as a native fisherman for one of those geographical magazines that showcased why every other part of the world was better than your dull corner of it. He had gray hair, balding at the top and he slouched on a cane.

"I came to greet you." His voice creaked in Kyoshinese. "I'm the Head of Tourism."

Korra smiled and opened her side of the door. "Do you speak Chinese?"

"Oh?" The man yelled. "I thought you were some of those Nipponese tourists lost in the back of beyond. My Chinese is rusty but I think I can be understood."

"I'm Korra." She bowed. "I'm with my friends to see Suki the Kyoshi Warrior."

"Ah the Kyoshi Warriors." The man smiled. "My wife fought in the War. Her name is Koko."

Iban watched as Karo ducked.

"I didn't know my old man moved like that." Iban said to Azula who sat behind him. "Did he find a ten yen coin on the floor?"

"Ask him if she's dead!" Karo asked in a rasping voice.

"That seems tactless." Iban replied. "Hello...or if the dictionary has the right information – hello and a whole bunch of crap that makes you sound polite – is your wife dead?"

"How do you open the door?" Azula asked Iban as she struggled with the door. "I can speak Kyoshinese – sort of. We won't be living here and so I doubt if offending a few villagers will give rise to any more offense than dropping bombs on them did." She freed the door and it slid back. "Don't mention the War. The Fire Nation never officially went to war against Kyoshi Island but airships don't always go where you send them."

Iban pressed the button to release the lock for his mother.

"Is your wife still alive?" Azula asked in halting Kyoshinese.

Iban smacked his forehead.

"I'm sorry to say she passed this last winter." The man looked sadly at Azula. Somehow the question had less bite when an old woman asked it.

"Iban!" Azula shouted. "Tell your father, he's safe."

"When you both go nuts from dementia, how will I recognize the difference?" Iban waved to Tenzin who sat calmly in the back and had said nothing. "Everybody out."

Iban had never seen a traditionally dressed Kyoshi Warrior. No one else outside of the small village had seen one outside of one of those quaint black and white movies shown on late night television after the talk shows had run.

The movies were well directed but hard to understand.

Suki was graceful but old.

Iban wondered if mortality was contagious.

"My husband died three years ago." Suki began. "I miss him."

"You speak impeccable Suihan." Iban answered back nervously. "Most of the exchange students from your land complained bitterly about gender."

"You speak a very sexy language."

"I will shut up now." Iban answered.

Suki had the house every old person had. It had a neat front lawn with ant infested peonies in neat rows. Roses had a prime place beside the concrete driveway.

She had a nice bunch of tomatoes but Karo was at a loss to explain why they hadn't croaked in the horrid climate.

The inside of the house was what Iban had expected most old people kept. Given that Kyoshi Warriors were revered, Iban and Karo had expected more lavish living conditions. A Kyoshi Warrior outfit greeted him as he walked into the living room. He had not seen an old analog TV in years and that caught his attention.

"I owe many a debt to the Prince of the Fire Nation." Suki said as she patted Iban on his back. "Many people think very highly of you."

"You do know I design nuclear reactors?" Iban sighed. "Your nation has purchased many of our finest products."

Suki hugged Iban.

"Zuko was my husband's best friend." Suki explained. "He loved you as his true son. He always hoped for the best for your you."

"He was a cheat and an utter bastard." Iban grumbled as he looked around for any excuse to leave the conversation. "I will beg your forgiveness if I sound bitter."

"Korra?" Iban implored. "So where did the butch chick with the mystical powers get to?"

For a country noted for its neutrality during the Great War, the Nipponese Empire had many weapons of mass annoyance. They had invented the 'Premium Cable' package and then found a way to charge extra for the box that let you receive it.

Iban had discovered Suki had the 'Premium Cable' package which consisted of four hundred channels of crap he had no desire to watch and Mythbusters. The cable channel had thoughtfully dubbed it into Kyoshinese for the locals and that played on one audio channel, Nipponese for the rest of the country played on the second audio program and Karo couldn't understand a word of any of it. He had to rely on his recall of the reruns to understand anything at all.

He had the audio soundtrack set to Nipponese not because he understood any of it, but because Nipponese had less annoying voices performing the dubbing. The Discovery Network had a much smaller pool of voice talent to choose from when dubbing into Kyoshinese. Nipponese and Kyoshinese were close cousins with different approaches to the problem of language. Like spoiled brothers, they resembled each other but had disagreements on small details. This meant the poor Kyoshinese school student sat in a classroom staring out the window while taking the mandatory Nipponese lessons while his Nipponese partner could 'blow off' Kyoshinese for something else like wood shop.

They had a device called the 'Futon' which Iban had encountered in the spare bedroom of Suki's house. Korra could sleep anywhere and she fell asleep as soon as her head hit the futon. Iban wondered if his futon was defective since while it looked white and comfortable, it felt hard and lumpy. He had found yet another Nipponese weapon of mass annoyance.

He decided to do laundry.

Karo had managed to find the channels in the triple digits as Iban passed him as he sat on the couch.

"I tried the futon." Karo explained. "I guess you had a chance to take it out for a test drive? I decided to sleep on the couch – the futon made my back sore and your mother snores loud enough to be mistaken for the first stage of a moon rocket."

"They have The Shopping Channel?" Iban glanced at the screen of the TV. "As an ancient and wise people, you'd think the Kyoshinese wouldn't buy cheap crap on credit."

"We all have needs son." Karo said as he aimed the remote. "Hope you can find some way to get some sleep."

"Off to do laundry," Iban said as he walked away, "I feel the Universe works better with clean towels."

He did laundry when he couldn't sleep because in some way the sight of rotating towels and spinning shirts comforted him.

The Nipponese washing machine was yet another weapon of mass annoyance.

"I put in the soap and borax...what the Hell do you want from me?" A red light on the machine blinked. The Nipponese had invented the 'red blinking' error of mass annoyance light. Iban kicked the door and the light went out. "Why is everything in this country small, compact, unusable and gutless. What use is a washing machine with the capacity for one towel and a small one at that."

"I suppose you wish to know more about yourself..."

Iban stared at the window of the washing machine. "You speak impeccable Suihan. Where I come from, washers and dryers don't do that. They steal my socks and whisk my boxers to another dimension but they don't talk."

"I'm your mother Yukina."

"My mother is a Matsushita Washing Machine?" Iban wondered if he should save the time and trouble and simply go mad.

"I'm a demon..."

"I suspected as much." Iban replied. "As I've got your attention, can I ask what happened to my boxers with the pink hearts. I liked them and they vanished inside a washing machine at my University fraternity and I never got them back."

"Look up." A pleasant feminine voice commanded.

"You have aqua colored hair." Iban stood up. "You are very beautiful."

"I'm sorry that I left." The young woman in the blue kimono and deep red eyes teared up. "I always loved you." She kissed Iban's cheek.

"I've seen this episode of Mythbusters a few dozen times." Karo had his feet on the couch. "You look like you've seen the dead."

"Yukina visited me." Iban admitted slowly. "Either a demon who is my mother visited me or at 10:23 PM the washing machine became self aware."

"I see." Karo stabbed at the remote. "You know they can dub a show into dozens of languages but they only subtitle it in one or half a language. As I recall, you're an ice apparition."

"Yes..." Karo answered. "You are a demon."

"So my inherently evil nature finds expression in nuclear engineering?"

"You're not evil."

"You do know that however much you jack up the volume on the TV, you won't be closer to understanding Nipponese?" Iban told his father as he put his feet up on the heavy dark wooden coffee table. "Or have you seen this episode of Mythbusters so often you know it by rote?"

"Sorry."

"You're still my dad. I never even met Zuko." Iban remembered something in his subconscious that reminded him that putting his feet on the coffee table on Kyoshi Island was considered 'rude'. "My gun toting mother is my mother. You both took on the task of raising me."

"This is the episode where they blow up a cement truck." Karo reminded Iban. "I'm sorry we couldn't tell you the truth."

"Because I wouldn't adopt well to human ways?" Iban queried.

"Your mother feared that if you discovered your true nature then you might turn to evil." Karo told Iban. "Zuko never told us what she might have meant by this but told us your mother would teach you about your powers when you were ready." Karo put down the cable box remote. "I never understood what that meant but we brought you up as a normal human boy."

"I build nuclear reactors." Iban suddenly realized he would be saying that refrain many times in the coming days. He didn't think building nuclear power plants was evil given that the electric company switchboard received many angry calls during an outage but public perception was one of fear of nuclear power and a certain doubt about the moral characters of those who built them. "Who can explain all of this?" Iban sounded a trifle impatient.

"Yukina will guide you in due time." Karo tapped the remote against his hand. "I had hoped this day would not arrive because I loved you as my son." Karo sounded tired and sad. "I don't have all the pieces, but we knew fate would arrange the circumstances around your life so you could grow as a demon. With the visit of the Avatar, our unplanned or recklessly staged exile, your vision and our arrival here, I have begun to think things are beginning to come together. No one ever explained enough of this for me to fully understand."

Iban wasn't Nipponese.

He might be a demon but he wasn't feeling supernatural.

The sight of twenty school girls in uniforms walking in formation across a basketball court had a certain level of the absurd. The idea of school uniforms struck Iban as a tad on the ridiculous since in a village of a thousand souls, everyone would know who the school children were.

"You are the son of Yukina." Korra tapped Iban on the shoulder. "An ice demon is very rare. Water Tribe legends say your tears turn to the rarest diamonds."

Iban sighed. He had never cried and up to that moment had not thought that odd. "If mere mortals were to know of my true nature, they could pose a danger to me."

"Do you remember that time you were a small boy and you couldn't pass through that stone gate in the park?" Tenzin asked.

"Sorry?" Iban walked past the school yard and the bells chimed. "How do you know that? You don't have spies that good."

"The line of the Avatar shares such things as visions with me." Korra admitted half apologetically. Iban was powerful as she knew but fragile for he had not yet faced his true nature and she had been told by The Order of the White Lotus to speak cautiously about what she knew.

"I grew cold and couldn't control my fear. Only my parents know this and I always thought I had a phobia of the dark." Karo looked at Korra. "You have a different explanation?"

The school girls formed an orderly row at the end of the basketball court and marched into the school. Iban found this level of conformity disconcerting.

"The site in that park was sealed by the ancients who feared evil demons might violate their sacred ground and sealed it magically against any demons." Korra explained to Karo. "The Dominion built a city over it but the seal was never broken."

"Yukina wished to protect you as long as she could but her time to appear in this world has not yet come." Tenzin answered back. "In the coming days, you will come to know your true nature. Up until now, all knowledge of yourself was hidden from you so you believed in yourself as a human. The coming days ill be hard for you and I know Yukina didn't mean for you to suffer."

Iban looked up a pole with signs on it written in the delicate calligraphy of the school children. Each sign had a city name and the distance in kilometers from the village – it was an exercise to teach the children where they lived and where the places they had heard about; lay about the globe.

"My home town is fourteen timezones away." Iban said sadly. "I'm always cold and I feel human. I would love to see the sun at noon, not the gray murk they call a fine day around here and I hate seeing sunset at ten in the evening."

"I'm sorry..." Tenzen walked beside Iban. "If you knew as a child, you might have turned evil."

Iban snickered. "I design nuclear reactors for a living. I have a degree that gives me permission to muck with the forces of the mighty atom. The woman who raised me invented the atom bomb and developed the technology that has kept your people in fear for six decades. I wanted to become a scientist or engineer since I was very young. Did you know I designed the power plant for the Nipponese at Fukushima. I won the Imperial Design Award for Engineering Excellence for that project."

"Fukushima?" Korra asked.

'The growing economy of the Empire needs cheap and reliable power. Nipponia has little coal, imports much of its gas and oil and has almost run out of suitable sites for hydroelectric or geothermal power." Iban placed his hands behind his back. "They approached my company to build a nuclear power plant. This was no ordinary power plant: it had to withstand the strongest earthquakes, flooding and yet also operate on a heavily populated island. We picked the site near Fukushima because it lay close to the major cities and provided employment in a rural region with chronic unemployment. Well...they are quite happy and gave me an award. All I did was design the core to remain cool and stable even if it lost power or crucial systems broke down."

He had won the award and vastly understated his accomplishment. He had won the award because he had turned a half century of nuclear engineering on its head by changing the fuel. He designed a boiling water reactor that used thorium and not uranium. Thorium could fission but unlike uranium, the fission process turned thorium fuel into harmless non radioactive substances. Thorium also needed water to even heat up so if the core lost water, the fuel didn't keep heating up, but would cool down within hours. Once he had worked out the details; he had eliminated the need for active cooling systems, control rods and for the spent fuel ponds.

Iban had won the awards for another reason. When a huge quake struck the area, the plant remained standing but the emergency system did something the operators thought was a malfunction. It cut off the water and began venting the steam out of the core. Unlike a uranium fueled reactor, no control rods stopped the reaction: the water was the control system and the only source for spare neutrons needed to initiate the reaction. As steam vented out and the water in the reactor boiled away, the fuel rods began to cool as they contained only non radioactive decay products and thorium. Without the water, thorium lacked any capacity to heat up by latent decay. When the tsunami struck the plant and destroyed the emergency diesel generators; the fuel was stable. At this point, the operators could go to work and survey the plant for damage.

Tenzin had heard this story from Karo on the trip to Kyoshi Island.

Tenzin learned nuclear power wasn't evil in itself; utility companies were.

Karo had explained that Azula had a huge influence on Iban as he grew up and gave no guarantees as to whether or not Iban was actually evil. Tenzin realized he was rolling the dice on telling Iban his true nature. He had no idea what a powerful ice demon could do.

Iban pressed the button on the school crosswalk. No cars were driving on the road but Iban had grown up in a city and did this as force of habit.

Korra had to save the life of a teenage boy on a long board as he careened through the crosswalk at an insane speed due to the insane 'can't drive uphill in a snow flurry' hill.

Iban watched with detached indifference as she set off a breeze of great strength and the boy came to a gentle stop. Tenzin wondered if Iban was 'evil'.

The village of Kurihiko had discovered they had Suihanese visitors.

One of the charming traits about the Kyoshinese was their unending desire to learn Suihan and soon Azula, Karo and Iban had to endure endless flubbed attempts to communicate in Suihan. They had a hard time understanding people who constantly scrambled the grammatical rules of his native language. Kyoshinese had a completely different means of doing everything linguistically.

Iban spoke a language with four genders and five declensions for nouns. These kinds of arbitrary rules were part of his mental framework and he had subconscious rules embedded in his mind from childhood that laid out the whole system. He knew what sounded wrong because that kind of noun didn't go with that kind of ending. Had he come to the island with some training as a teacher; he would have proven of greater help. As it was, he had to try to model the right phrase and hope Kyoshinese speakers could absorb the rules of Suihan somehow by osmosisii.

Iban was at the small general store. He hoped he had guessed right from the sign that he was in the general store. A set of fuel pumps outside and a sign Iban utterly failed to understand offered a sale on Ramen Noodles or Wolfram. Iban didn't see any reason for a store that sold gasoline and soda to sell Tungsten.

He fumbled through the ATM menu. He had picked the options he had expected the machine to offer although ten thousand yen seemed like too much money to take out of the machine or far too little.

He strolled the aisles of the store. He had a few horrid run ins with the Kyohsinese language. Evidently 'Mr Sparkle' was a stain remover although it came in a tube like toothpaste. His teeth had never been whiter. Iban wanted to be absolutely sure he would end up with cola flavored soda. He had bought a fizzy drink once from the airport vending machine. He had always called wasabe – horseradish. He had grown up with the cultural bias that informed him that horseradish was a godawful flavor for a soda. The Nipponese didn't have any such bias. They sold a wasabe flavored soda. Iban was not a pleased customer.

Iban had the Poison Control Center on speed dial.

He looked for something that looked like a chocolate bar in the colorful candy display. At least he took the display to be the chocolate bar display. He had no known food allergies but the octopus and sea cucumber had not yet been tested.

"I speak Suihan real good." A school girl told Iban.

"Very good." Iban nodded.

The locals wanted to show off their mastery of the Suihan language. Avatar Aang had once been heard saying he had faced two great challenges in life: facing Fire Lord Ozai and the Suihan language. Iban valued Suihan as a paragon of common sense and he wanted to use the local language but the locals gave him no chance.

Iban had a night of strange dreams. He had tried to bash his brains back into shape with a carafe of what passed for coffee.

Iban watched the slushy machine whirring away. As the so called son of an ice demon he found ice of interest.

The clerk tried hard.

"You help need?" He asked Iban.

Iban's language centers swung into action as he picked up what he hoped was a delicious candy bar.

"Oh you like...Dolphin Bar?"

"Dolphin as in 'iruka'? The fun loving social marine mammals that like to frolic in the water and play with balls?" Iban looked down at the bar on the counter. "I might be sick."

Iban decided not to roll the dice on that one. "Do you sell Kyoshinese to Food dictionaries?" As Iban knew, His god blessed the dolphins and forbid him to hunt them.

Iban actually owned a manual for the operation of a nuclear power plant. The operating instructions spanned three blue volumes of a thousand pages each but that wasn't what surprised Tenzin. Various pages had fold out diagrams with wiring diagrams, engineering schematics, tables and various ominous diagrams. This didn't surprise Tenzin.

What Tenzin found surprising was that he was so bored that he was actually reading it. He was so bored he had read past the warnings and deciphered the diagrams of the fuel rod assemblies and was now reading a ponderous section on reactor fuel specifications and enriching uranium. He didn't understand nuclear physics but the document had an ominous sentiment that formed an underlying theme. As well as assuring the reader that a serious nuclear accident was impossible, it also included warnings of a dire sort about what could happen if someone seriously screwed up.

Unlike having planes drop out of the blue yonder; nuclear accidents didn't kill a small number of people (a few hundred) quickly. An accident amounted to three stages: denial, acceptance and insurance companies arguing about the nature of their policies.

Suihan had always prided itself on being a language that had a vast, diverse and voluminous vocabulary of technical terms. Tenzin had seen a number of these monsters of concatenation in the book and it lacked a glossary and assumed anyone reading it knew the necessary technical terms.

Tenzin didn't want to build a nuclear power plant. It went against his Air Nomad sensitivities but he had a bit of curiosity about how they functioned. 'A crapload' of very small, precision parts all doing the right thing at the right time was the basic idea behind a nuclear reactor. The largest piece was the concrete radiation shield that prevented radioactive material from leaving the core without the proper supervision.

Karo was only slightly less boring than a nuclear power plant manual. He had spent the day watching game shows. Iban had gone out to try and find food that wasn't any form of marine life. Suki, Azula and Korra had gone to seek a small house in the village to rent until they got settled.

Karo had the television volume jacked up.

A page folded out like a pinup in a magazine. Tenzin didn't know Iban all that well as a person but he had some idea the man he had come to know had to have a mind for details. The diagram was a fuel channel in the reactor and exploded diagram of all the parts and pieces needed to make a fuel channel work. Iban had designed this part.

'A man that makes machines to split atoms'. Tenzin pondered this. 'If Iban knew of his full powers, would that make him dangerous?' He could have great power but Tenzin wasn't sure of his moral character. Iban didn't have problems designing machines that posed a grave danger to humanity and this bothered Tenzin.

"I bought bananas." Iban pushed through the front door. "I couldn't be certain what anything in a package might contain."

Tenzin sat at the table on his knees. "Why did you become a nuclear engineer?"

"I wanted to design aircraft." Iban placed the paper bag with the bananas on the table. "I became a nuclear engineer almost by accident because I took a course on electrical engineering and my interest grew."

"What happened at Fukushima?" Tenzin tented his fingers. "I've heard you refer to the nuclear accident at Fukushima and now people can't live there."

"A massive earthquake struck the area followed by a tsunami." Iban leaned against the counter. "The earthquake didn't cause any problems but the tsunami destroyed the emergency power generators and washed them out to sea."

"Any deaths?"

"Not from the accident." Iban shook his head. "The tsunami drowned two workers but the accident didn't harm anyone. The power plant had a sea wall to protect it – we call it a ravellin. When they built the plant forty years ago, they didn't have any idea the earthquake and tsumani hazard was so dangerous so they didn't build the ravellin high enough. They designed the site with critical safety systems too close to the shore and the water destroyed them. They were due to shut the site down a year after the quake."

Iban looked at Tenzin. "Why the sudden interest in the Fukushima accident?"

"I'll admit I'm trying to understand you." Tenzin said calmly. "You engineer powerful machines. I saw your name as the head engineer of a number of systems in use in power plants in your country."

"I took pride in those accomplishments." Iban wore a sad and tired look. "That is all in the past."

"Some might say you are meddling with forces you have no business playing with." Tenzin replied.

"Any engineer will tell you any engineering carries risks. A plane can crash, refineries and chemical plants have a darker side." Iban answered. "We need these things and we do our very best to make our creations as safe as we can. The reactors at Fukushima were well designed and had no defects in their design. The accident happened because of circumstances beyond the control of any engineer. The site lay far too close to the sea and the power company ran them for forty years when they were designed to last only twenty five. As an engineer, when I tell you something like that, I mean it."

"What happens now?" Korra asked Tenzin.

Tenzin walked along the old wooden fishing dock and looked up at the village. The statue of Avatar Kyoshi had seen many a better dawn and was a faded vision of its former self. It stood in a park behind the primary school and looked out over the village: at one time she had protected the island but now Tenzin knew the locals viewed her as an anachronism.

"We have to wait." Tenzin stood on the end of the dock and watched the gray sky. He raised his hand. "As Avatar, you know more of the dreams of the Demons than mortals. In Suihan, they would say you made a deal with the Devil. The Universe returned your bending to you and you returned it to Lin and to those who had lost it to the Equalists but..." Tenzin looked out at the calm sea. "We have to wait and see what the Devil wants."

"We defeated Amon." Korra stood beside Tenzin. "When we came on this journey, you never told me why you sought out Iban. The story you told me was that Iban belonged to an important family."

"He does." Tenzin turned and faced Korra, his face now grim and serious. "He belongs to the family of the Fire Lord and is also the son of an ancient spirit. While Zuko did his best to keep Iban from inheriting his throne; others thought it was a reckless and stupid move. We have no way of knowing what Iban the Demon thinks of the idea. " Tenzin put his hands on Korra's shoulder. "I like Iban as a person. He has a pleasing intelligence all out of keeping with the unwarranted arrogance of Azula or the self absorbed and selfish melancholy of Zuko. Yet don't forget he's a member of the Demon race – he may be a master of deceit. We have to watch him closely."

"You make no sense." Korra answered back.

"Civilizations fall; but they seldom know when they will strike the ground." Tenzin said sadly. "Zuko and my father knew this. Avatar Aang ended the Great War. He bought our world a reprieve of a few generations. Zuko made a pact with Yukina in the hopes his son would side with us in the coming days. My father knew he had given up much of his great power and much of his allotted life to defeat Fire Lord Ozai and Zuko hoped he could have reunited the Realm through the Republic. Both men did not foresee the rise of the West."

"In what coming days?" Korra's face grew ashen.

"When we either have to learn to live together or go to war." Tenzin spoke without emotion. "Iban is an ice spirit; very rare. We know so little about their nature and have no idea if they are evil, simply unconcerned about moral issues or good. The bargain we made with the Devil may be that we may have to come to rely on Iban for our future or may have to defeat him."

"There is more harm in the village than is dreamed of." Yukina said in her soft voice. Her Suihan was sweet, fluid and without accent.

"I had expected an Ice Demon in an aqua colored kimono to speak with more of an accent." Iban had set out to take a walk in the hills above the village and had happened upon a small and neglected wooden shrine carved by hand out of cedar standing among a grove of the most ancient of thse trees. He let his curiosity get the better of him and found Yukina inside the small holy space inside.

"In your language, village and world are almost the same word." Yukina answered calmly. "You know 'muri' means world, 'mura' means village. Whether you live in a large world or a small village comes down to a matter of perspective."

Iban wore a look of even greater confusion.

"I know little of the Suihan character." Yukina admitted to Iban. She had a son raised in the Suihan traditions of a monotheistic and rational God and while not a believer, had grown up hearing the words of the great teachers and saints. He didn't believe easily in demons for he had heard 'There is no other God but God.' He may have had doubts about God but he had these ideas as parts of his mental furniture. "You grew up in their midst and they have greatly influenced how you think. I have to guide you now so you will better understand your true nature."

"What does that mean?" Iban asked carefully. "The word 'demon' in my world means a being intent on evil."

"Not always so." Yukina said. "You can become evil or choose to try to be good. We make the choices we make as humans do: on limited knowledge and given what we know and what we have been given You have a choice to make. I can only help you and hope you choose to do good in this world."

"What if I decide to save you the effort and go nuts?" Iban answered. "I had...so you live here?"

"In a way – yes." Yukina smiled. "Once upon a time, there were shrines to local demons all over this land but now the humans have forgotten. You walk among them and they never see your true nature."

"I didn't know my nature." Iban said sadly. "Evidently it was hidden from me as well as the humans. Now I fit in nowhere."

"I can't tell you anything but that I'm sorry.' Yukina hugged Iban. "Sad to see this temple falling into such neglect."

"Rather squalid." Iban looked up into the timber framed roof. "I had only recently discovered my demon nature. Perhaps as a naïve demon, I had hoped to have better accommodations."

"The locals have neglected this place." Yukina patted Iban on the back. "As my son, I apologize for neglecting you."

"You came here to apologize?" Iban shrugged. "A pat on the back?"

"I watched you grow into a fine person."

Azula watched the printer.

She had witnessed the evolution of the technology from a reliable teletype machine that dutifully printed out the text and ran as long as the owner fed it paper and ribbons into the cheap, mass produced color ink jet printers that died a day after the thirty day refund warranty.

Suki had no use for a computer. No Kyoshi Warrior ever did but she had a cheap PC and the equally crappy printer that went with it because she had three sons and many grandchildren. One of her sons had bought her a computer on the idea that Suki could learn to use email and save money on long distance calls.

Azula watched as the printer whirred and clunked away.

This was odd because Suki never used the computer and the power bar was switched off. Azula had seen plenty of evidence during her life of the supernatural. She hadn't expected the Spirit Realm to channel through a printer.

"Are you done?" Azula asked the printer not expecting a reply. She held up the printed page. "Why are you running the test cycle?" Azula then paused and had the presence of mind to ask: "How can you run at all seeing as the power bar is shut off? In the beginning, our appliances needed juice to run but I may be out of touch."

"You have passed on to the Realm of the Dead." The blue LCD panel spoke and displayed the text.

Azula looked down at her hands and saw they were young. Her hair was her youthful brown.

"All I had expected after the end of my life was nothing." Azula stared at her hands. "What did I do to merit this superlative good fortune."

"You had faith." A gentle alto female voice said. "God tasked the Angels to find True Love in this World and they found you and Karo. Your time in the World has ended but you and Karo will live in Heaven forever."

Suki found Karo holding the remote. Azula had collapsed next to the computer printer she had never used. She wept as she met Iban coming from the old temple.

Suki held up a printed page.

'We have found the two most valuable things in all the World.' Iban cried as he read it not knowing whether it had come from his mother or a greater source. "Do not mourn. Your mother and father have found Peace, Joy and Life Everlasting." He read aloud.

He did mourn and he did cry out. He knew the day would come when his beloved parents would die but he was all to human in his belief that this was in the future.

Suki watched as a wave of blue energy washed over him and rose up into the air as a shock wave. The back yard trees fell down as if struck by a huge wind. The street lights exploded and windows shattered.

Iban's hair turned a brilliant silver and his eyes darkened until they were cobalt blue.

Karo's life had touched so many people through his art. In spite of his wife, he had never missed a deadline and wrote his strip for sixty years without a break. The newspaper world noted his death and told their readers solemnly that Karo's life had ended when they printed his last Sunday strip. Few knew him and yet many fans wrote to his syndicate and shared how his art and gentle humor had made their lives a touch more bearable.

The Fire Lord declared a day of mourning for his loss.

His hometown of Komatsu commissioned a statue and placed it in his beloved Jubilee Park. He stood as a young man in the middle of all the characters he had given life. People came and laid flowers. He had become a fixture in their newspapers and many thought of him as immortal. The Dominion declared The Green Gables Inn a national historic monument.

Karo would not have approved of any of this. He had done what he did for artistic reasons and not for fame. He had no idea he had won widespread fame nor did he know he had set the standard for all cartoonists after him. He had not wanted fame and always found the praise of critics and fans touching but surprising.

He stood before God.

"I wish to go where my wife went." Karo asked firmly. "She did much that was wrong and evil but I don't wish to exist without her as my companion."

Karo looked at his youthful hands. His old hands hurt and they shook and age had made his work much harder. Karo had accepted this as he had accepted most of his life and even his brief exile. He endured.

God spoke out of a burning fire. "I made both of you. I asked an angel to find the two most valuable things that I should spare from what must come and he brought you and your wife."

"I don't understand." Karo said meekly.

"Come and enter paradise." God spoke. "You and your wife will dwell in paradise for all eternity. All is forgiven. You have lived your lives and met with many hardships and done well."

Korra found Iban sorting through his parents remaining possessions.

"I loved my parents but until now didn't know how much." Iban felt Korra put her arm around him.

"We have to leave this place soon." Korra said gently. "We have to return to Republic City. There you will meet Katara who will train you so you can learn more about your powers in this world."

"Do you want my mother's copy of A Thousand and One Suihan Verbs?" Iban leafed through the yellowing pages. She had bought the book seventy years ago and had taught herself the language of Karo through reading it. She had made notes in the margins next to the more hairy forms. Suihan claimed to have few irregular verbs but the forms of the common ones spanned ten pages. 'There is method to the madness' Azula had penciled in the margins. Iban teared up when he saw her note 'Karo is about as helpful as a bug'. She loved him and he loved her.

Korra hugged Iban. "I have that book and it's twin – A Guide to Suihan Noun Declensions. Tenzin has made learning Suihan a priority. I have respect for your mother for learning such a hard to learn language."

Iban had learned Suihan as a baby and had accepted the stupidity of some of its rules as natural. All language was arbitrary and yet he had the prejudice held by all people: that his native language was the paradigm of common sense. Korra challenged this when she asked questions about making nouns plural or why a lamp was always a 'she' yet cabbages were male.

Azula had a word for this: moronic or stupid or idiotic. She had set about to design a logical language based on regular rules to finally solve the problem. Only the science fiction fan community had any use for it.

"I miss my mom and her cynical rants. I miss my dad and his meek and odd ways." Iban explained to Korra. "I remember how all the kids in school thought my dad had the greatest job."

"Toady's forecast will be periods of rain and a high temperature of fifteen."

The television droned on as Channel 7 News out of Toyuma delivered the helicopter traffic report. A truckload of chickens had jackknifed on the 401 filling the roadway with feathers and causing delays and snarl ups.

Watching the morning news was a ritual for Suki. This meant Iban got up when Suki switched the TV set on because the great, wise and old Kyoshi Warrior Suki was hard of hearing and her set didn't have closed captioning or the feature didn't work.

No one had explained to him about the nature of his mortality. He had accepted death in the manner of most humans – that it was unavoidable, inevitable and best put at the back of the mind. He had wondered if it would all work itself out somehow. As he had been brought up Suihanese, he believed tepidly in an all knowing rational being called God. AS a demon, he had no idea if he would live a life and die or persist until the end of time. He had to admit that his mind had not grown in accordance with his status as a demon for he did not have any better an understanding of these big questions.

Iban hated tea but his mind needed a jolt. He could hear the news report from any part of the house and could walk around the yard and clearly make out the sound track. Sometimes Suki didn't care about the program – Iban had heard mid morning infomercials jacked up and playing up the features of a knife set with an exotic name. She was lonely and wanted company. Mid morning manic depressive infomercials or shows on cherry blossom festivities or the odd cricket match gave her the sense of another voice in the house.

He poured out his tea and watched the steam rise off of it. He could feel his mind acting on the steam making words out of the vapor. 'Good God that TV is loud' wafted into the air.

Iban picked up the newspaper. He couldn't read Kyoshinese and from the plans of Korra and Tenzin, he would have no chance to learn it. Korra had told him on several occasions they would have to leave soon. They didn't tell him if they had to leave because they had worn out their welcome on Kyoshi Island or because of other circumstances he no longer controlled.

"I wonder what they do in this language when they want to use the word 'the'." Iban muttered to himself.

"Morning." Korra smiled at Iban.

"Yes it is." Iban sipped his tea. "I would be better company but all urge to accomplish anything has fled me."

"You may not believe me; but you have begun a larger and more epic journey." Korra said reassuringly. "Katara wants to help you master water bending."

iNipponese is often called 'Kyoshinese's poorer cousin'. The Nipponese language can trace its lineage back to Kyoshinese but arose out of the trade language of the other Earth Kingdom islanders between a thousand and a half to a thousand years. Nipponese became an established creole used by the small cities of the Southern Islands of the Air Temple and Earth Kingdom for the purposes of trade. It became the standard dialect for the purposes of written communication around a thousand years ago but only during the last few centuries did it become the official language of the Nipponese Empire. Most Nipponese speak Standard Nipponese or a close dialect. In rural areas, Nipponese dialects remain in widespread use – particularly in the eastern islands. Most dialects can be understood with some difficulty although some eastern dialects are largely mutually incomprehensible to a native Nipponese speaker.

Nipponese has a relatively analytic grammar, SVO (verb medial) language with a grammar similar to modern Dutch or Nordic languages. It has fixed word order with freedom of word order on a par with Dutch or German. While Kyoshinese and Nipponese are related languages; they are not at all mutually understandable. Modern Kyoshinese is based on Japanese.

Nipponese has many similarities in vocabulary but shares little in common in terms of grammar. In Kyoshinese, the noun has no endings but Nipponese has a rich system of inflections or endings for nouns and adjectives. Nipponese nouns take articles, have two genders (animate and inanimate) have a plural form and can take four subject cases. Nipponese verbs do not take endings for level of politeness or deference but do have forms for the simple past, present and simple future, the imperative, optative (expressing a wish) subjunctive and gerund. Unlike Kyoshinese, many tenses are compound tenses or modal.

Kyoshinese: Boku o tasukette kudasai!

English: Help me please!

Nipponese: Taskio veganen! Deso!

Nipponese has seen sound shifts such as b to v, and it has a 'light l' as well as r. and consonants can appear together. The verb 'help' is given as a command 'taskio' in Nipponese (a form not used in Kyoshinese) and 'me' has two parts – 'vega = I' and 'nen' marks the Dative case (indirect object) of an animate class noun. In Nipponese 'deso' please and 'getto' thank you are function words.

Nande shimasu ka?

What are you doing?

Nedo d'anet sulenda?

Nipponese like English is quite reliant on pronouns (vega - I, anet – you singular, an – he/she, mu – it, venin – we, anin- you, inin – they.). Kyoshinese often omits them and most conversation uses them sparingly. Nipponese doesn't have the special polite address forms.

Nipponese has both the progressive tense 'd(a) + surenda' for singular subjects' and 'deso +surenda' for plural ones. This is the progressive present using 'to be + a gerund and in this case is a close match to the English). Nipponese uses compound tenses quite frequently. Kyoshinese doesn't. Words in Nipponese have contractions in the vernacular as well – Kyoshinese has some but they are used only in casual conversation. Kyoshinese has retained the 'ka' particle to mark a question but Nipponese has lost it except in a few forms: 'kalleke' – here?, 'dochike' – where'.

iiSuihan has either five or seven declensions for nouns depending on how the grammar is analyzed. The list of endings nouns take prove fairly regular and for the vast majority of nouns, depend on their class, masculine, feminine, neuter or mass. The four classes account for four of the five declensions. The fifth declension is a 'catch all' category for irregular nouns. Some split the regular neuter declension based on whether the noun ends in a vowel or consonant which gives rise to a sixth declension and consider a subset of irregular nouns a seventh declension.