Aria 1.2
We flew over the city towards the central library. It wasn't the closest, but it had the widest variety and if Victoria was taking me then it was simpler to pick up and drop off books there. I could have flew there using my aerokinesis, or airbending, but that would have taken longer since while I could fly with my glider, I couldn't get even close to Victoria's speed.
After breakfast, I didn't really want to hear the continuous bickering of my past lives so as we passed over a hardware store I close my eyes and concentrated, mentally pushing them away. The mental doorway they spoke through closed and I felt my biological sense of Victoria fade in intensity slightly while still remaining clear.
Ever since I was five, they had spoken to me, offering advice or just making inane comments about my life or each other. While I appreciated their company and companionship, it was still a relief to be alone in my own head every once in a while.
I let out a sigh and relaxed as Vicky carried me across the city.
It was nice, I always liked soaring through the air, especially if it was with Victoria. Before she triggered, I'd be the one who would fly her around the neighborhood with glider as she held on. Now, she was the one that carried us.
Thinking back on it, I probably shouldn't have tried hiding most of my powers when I was adopted by the Dallons. Maybe I'd be closer to Carol and Mark if I wasn't constantly trying to hide my other powers, but I'd been afraid, of them and the Protectorate when Claire and the others had explained my powers to me. I had powers so much worse than my father's, and they'd locked him in the Birdcage. And I had voices in my head telling me to do things, which probably wouldn't have gone over well.
That was our reasoning, and sometimes I regretted it, but seeing how Carol looks at me now, I know that it's too late.
At least I'm close to Victoria, though only because of those same lies. If she knew the truth she'd treat me the same as Carol does at the very least.
And I'd probably deserve it. I slumped in her grip.
"What's wrong Ames?" Victoria asked, noticing my mood.
"I'm just tired," I lied.
I could feel her frown and how she opened her mouth, about to say something before deciding against it and closing her mouth.
We flew in silence the rest of the way to the library and set down on its front steps. This early in the morning, especially on a weekday, it was relatively empty, though the street outside was crowded with the morning rush. It wasn't as crowded as the massive skyscraper filled metropolis that was Republic City or Caldera City in Rei's lifetime, and unlike those cities the problems Brockton Bay faced were much more obvious.
I shook off memories of the life I'd been shown and entered the library. It was certainly large and filled with books of all kinds, including old textbooks and scientific texts. That was my reason for coming, in order to use my biokinesis and my various bending powers to their fullest, I needed to understand what they could do and as much about how they worked as possible. This meant I needed to read as much about biology, physics and mathematics as I could since knowledge and skill was only shared in the Avatar state, and none of them had been particularly studious in life, so they couldn't help me in finding ways to exploit my powers in way I thought [i]should[/i] be possible. After all, if the Avatar can control all four "elements," then shouldn't I be able to use all four at once for general telekinesis, or use metalbending to assemble a computer? And if earthbending can manipulate coal, then what about plastic or bones? I did know that waterbending could heal and control people's bodies, so how fine of a control could I get, could I effectively have remote biokinesis? Since I could remotely manipulate objects with bending, could I "sense" my environment with bending like Toph and a few others that my past lives remembered?
The feats from their memories had mostly been accomplished without a detailed knowledge of the physics at work, or at least how bending interacted with the work with small objects. There had been one metalbender who had managed to level half of the Fire Nation capitol with nanomachines.
+AA+
We stood atop Sun's sky bison outside the reach of Qiángbì's liquid metal.
"Hit him hard! We have to stop him now!" I cried out as I sent a double punch of blue flames down
Sun nodded. "I'd hoped we wouldn't need this, but here goes nothing." He hefted the long rocket launcher onto his shoulder and aimed at Qiángbì, who was smirking up at us.
I charged up a lightning bolt and the two of us fired at the same time, the roar of lightning and explosives sounding in harmony and a cloud of smoke covered the roof Qiángbì had been standing on.
We waited for what had seemed like an eternity in tense silence, waiting for a sign he had dodged or blocked it somehow. But when the cloud cleared he was still standing there, smirking.
Then he crouched and jumped fifty feet straight up to meet us, landing on the sky bison before we could swerve away.
"What!?" Sun cried out. "How can you survive everything we throw at you? Metalbent dust doesn't do that!"
Qiángbì grinned, liquid-seeming metal swirling around him like a cloak, and said, "Nanomachines, Sun. That's how."
+AA+
If some crazy earthbender could do that, then I should be able to top that feat. After all, the Avatar was supposed to be the greatest bender of them all so it made sense that I'd be able to accomplish something much better than that if I had the right tools, which meant I needed to do research. If the Avatar was supposed to save the world, which is what they all said, then that meant I needed to become as good as possible to defeat things like the Endbringers.
Unfortunately that meant I spent more time studying physics and biology than actually using the majority of my powers. At least I'd figured out how to unlock simple locks without touching them. It was a neat trick, even if it wasn't particularly useful to me.
My current project was to study biology enough that I could hopefully find a way to heal large groups of people. I had settled on trying to combine waterbending with biokinesis to remotely heal or stun people, but even though Claire was happy to help with that, I still had trouble getting waterbending to work how I wanted.
I was there at the library to pick up two college level textbooks on cellular and molecular biology, and I already had chemistry, physics and mathematics books out to help me understand each of them better. I hoped that a better understanding of the process would help the two powers mesh together like I wanted, but even if it didn't my touch-based biokinesis would be improved by my greater understanding of what my power was telling me.
With this in mind, I walked up to the gaunt, old-looking librarian at the front desk. I'd seen her here several times before.
"Hello again, Amy," she said in greeting. "Here to pick up some more books?"
"Yes, thank you," I replied as I walked up to where she sat.
"Alright, let me go get them then," she said before standing up to walk over to the shelves where the books on hold were kept.
Victoria walked up behind me. "Alright Ames, while you're waiting here for your books I'm going to go find this book I saw recommended on PHO for my book report."
"Okay, I'll be getting one for class too so I'll just wait here," I told her.
She smiled brilliantly, nodded and cheerfully said, "Okay, it'll only be a minute so don't wander off!" before jogging off towards one of the staircases. I didn't know had book it was she wanted, but since it was PHO, she was probably going to the young adult section.
It was for a book report on books that were or had been banned, and I had already picked one, Grapes of Wrath, and it was on hold along with the two biology books I was picking up today.
After about a minute of waiting, the librarian brought back the books which I then checked out. Just as I was putting them in a bag I had brought with me specifically to carry, Victoria came back and walked over to the desk.
"Hi, do you have Double Life by Simone Feather?" she asked the librarian.
"Hm, did you check the literature section under W?" the librarian asked.
"Yeah, but it wasn't there."
The librarian nodded and check on her computer before turning back to Victoria with a frown. "Sorry, but all of our copies have been taken out. Do you want to be put on the waiting list?"
Victoria frowned and sighed. "No, I needed it for a book report but if it isn't here I won't get it in time to read it."
The librarian nodded sympathetically. "I'm sorry to hear that, but it could still become available in time."
"Yeah, okay." She turned to me, "Well, we should probably get going. I can find another book later."
I nodded and we started out.
I was quiet as we exited and Victoria took hold of me so we could fly to Arcadia High School.
After we lifted off and were in the air, I asked her, "So, uh, why did you want that book?"
"Well, I was looking on PHO for interesting books and one of the posters, Winged One or something like that, suggested it, saying that it was a well written book about cape life and romance."
I couldn't really find any words to say.
"But what made me interested," she continued, "were the responses. One of them said it was 'the most uncomfortable book I've ever read,' another person said they were embarrassed to be seen with the book and a third said it was a 'skeevy slash fiction,' not literature. There was also someone else who said that the author barely avoided a Simurgh quarantine when he was writing the book, so it was probably ghost written by the Simurgh. The discussion derailed after that but I was pretty curious since the description didn't really seem 'skeevy' or anything like that to me, just some story about two sisters who go out as superheroes and their adventures." She sighed as we flew over an intersection. "Since it's not at the library I guess I'll have to pick something else, shouldn't be too hard."
We flew in silence for almost a minute before I finally decided to speak. "Oh…well, um, if you were still interested I...have a copy," that had been personally signed for me by the author when he visited the city about three months ago.
Victoria paused in midair. "What, really?"
I looked up at her. "Uh, yeah, I got it a few months ago when Ms. Feather – the author – came to town… She signed it and everything."
"And you're willing to lend me your signed copy? You're the best sister ever Ames!" she cried out as she squeezed me tightly for a moment. "Thanks, now I don't have to look for something else to read!"
"You're welcome, just…it's a signed copy, so don't tear it or light it on fire, okay?" I asked, trying, and failing, to joke.
Vicky laughed. "Sure thing Ames! Now let's get to school!" And with that she took off again towards Arcadia.
As its large H shape came into sight, she asked, "So, since you've read the book, is it really as bad as they said? Well, if you got a signed copy you must have liked it."
"Um…" I said, trying to buy time to think of an answer, "…yes…I-I thought it was very interesting and well written character study."
"And what about the romance? I remember that being mentioned in the thread," she said as we neared the ground.
"…um…it was…interesting?"
"That bad?"
"No! ...um…it was just ah…unusual," I said as my feet touched the ground, already regretting this.
"Okay…" Victoria said skeptically, before seeing her boyfriend Dean standing with some friends one of the trees. Normally I wasn't too happy to see him, but this time I was relieved to have a distraction from this conversation.
"Anyway, I shouldn't spoil it for you. I'll get it to you later. Bye!" I tell her as a slip away and into the crowd of students arriving for school.
+AA+
A/N: To answer the most important question first: Yes, in this world the Simurgh does ghost write trashy romance novels and contact her publisher over the internet to send drafts and stuff. JK, that's totally not what's happening, I swear. You can trust me. For real.
She may or may not write fanfiction though.
I kept the past lives out of this chapter for the most part, what did you think of that? The flashback was in there because it kind of slipped away from me there, I hope it works.
Also, the book does have a larger story purpose, relevant to its plot I've implied.
These chapters have been largely slice of life for Amy so far, but afterwards she will/would drop by her lair and probably go out as her alter-alter ego with its bio-armor, whatever that cape name would be.