He had had many faces and many names, had many tasks and lived many lives, but no matter where he went or who he was, he always looked for them.

A cameo appearance by a man ostensibly known as Kojima, from my favorite fic, Romance of the Four Nations, because who wouldn't want that?

Reincarnation

HE HAD LONG SINCE STOPPED THINKING ABOUT WHY HIS EXISTENCE WAS THE WAY IT WAS. All he knew was that he never really died. Sure, his current life would end, but then he would open his eyes in a new body in a new world, until the day came when powers that he still did not fully understand (and didn't even bother to anymore) truly opened his eyes, and he would be given his mission and he would go forth and march towards his destiny. Maybe it was a punishment, this endless cycle of death and re-birth and awakening, or maybe it was a blessing, a boon, a mark of the special favor of the gods, or spirits, or what-have-you, it didn't really matter, did it? Maybe it was none of those things, or all of those things, but even that wasn't all that important in the end.

What mattered, really, was the mission. Sometimes he would succeed, sometimes he would fail, sometimes he would manage to do both, others to do neither. Sometimes he would end wars, other times he would start them. He would launch revolutions and palace coups, manipulate entire nations to his mission, but then he would die and be re-born and awakened and he would find that his only mission was keep one single, solitary person alive, and he would live out his days on a farm or a ranch or in a tiny ramshackle apartment never really knowing why that person was so important, and never really caring, either. Sometimes he loved his mission, sometimes he hated it, sometimes he just endured it, but there was always the birth, the awakening, the death, and, of course, the mission.

His body, like the mission, changed, too. Sometimes he was tall and lean, other times short and fat. Once he had been blind, another time deaf, one time more both, and a few times he had even been a woman, which was always interesting. The worlds he woke up in changed, too, the worlds and the times and the technology. In one life, he would be scraping out shallow ditches in dusty fields with only rudimentary tools he had to make himself, and in others he would be sailing across the stars, a rocket strapped to his back.

And the things he saw, and the people…

He saw worlds born and worlds die. He saw people at their worst and at their best and at every point in between. He saw horror and bloodshed and love and courage, life created and life destroyed. He stumbled into a strange man in a blue box, several, actually, though he had a sneaking suspicion that they were all the same. He met kings and peasants, saints and sinners, givers and takers, lovers and haters. He spoke a thousand-thousand languages, so many he couldn't even begin to keep track of them all.

In short, his existence was always changing, always different, always unpredictable…

Except for them…

He liked them the moment he laid eyes on them. He met them first as aimless nomads, a man and a woman and their children and the lives they had built together. The mission had nothing to do with them, but he stayed with them all the same, stayed with them and protected them, why, he wasn't entirely sure, maybe because it was the one thing in his existence that was entirely his choice, that he could accomplish by his own will.

After that, he always looked for them, always sought them out. Sometimes, he didn't find them, others, he found one, but not the other, and other times still, the fates defied him and he could not bring them together, or, worse, the mission intervened and he was obliged to tear them apart. Most of the time, they got themselves together, when life and destiny allowed it, or even when life and destiny didn't, they often defied the powers that seek to control human existence, that was one of the constants, their stubbornness and their pride and their need to be together, come what may.

He liked the constants, because if keeping track of his own changes was irritating enough, keeping on top of theirs was a genuine headache. Generally the boy was the boy and the girl was the girl, but not always, sometimes it was switched, or they were both one, or both the other, once one of them was both in and of themselves, which set the man beyond time and place to scratching his head on how to make it work, but then the one who was generally a boy found out and decided he loved the one who was generally a girl anyways, and the man beyond time and place patted himself on the back and strolled off whistling a happy tune.

There other changes, too. In one place, they would be royalty, in another slaves, in yet another criminals carving out a life among the dregs of society. He met them as soldiers and warriors, monks and nuns, believers and atheists, fruitful and barren, angels and demons. Sometimes they had magical powers, or could bend the elements to their will (he always liked that particular world best, he didn't know why, it was just a personal preference), or could do none of that. Once, he had met the mostly-a-girl in a tiny little village in a place called Manchuria in a year called nineteen-forty-one, and then he bumped into the mostly-a-boy in a place called Japan in a city called Osaka a few years later, and he scratched his head and had no idea how to bring them together, was about to give up, but then he was chasing the mostly-a-boy on horseback and shot the mostly-a-boy's horse out from under him and when he found them five years later, necking in a squalid bar in a place called Angola, he couldn't help but feel proud of himself.

But no matter what, he always looked for them, and if they hadn't managed to be drawn together on their own accord, he always did his best to put them in each other's way and let their hearts finish the job.

He was in a place called Republic City, in his favorite world, though in a different timeline from any other. This confused him, but he eventually got a handle on it, and he pursued his mission (which, this time, was to prevent a war, which pleased him enormously), until the day he saw the mostly-a-boy and managed to get his name. Tazaki Zuko, patrolman in the Republic City Police Department. The man liked that, liked it very much. A uniform had always suited the mostly-a-boy-now-called-Zuko (as he so often was, though it wasn't a guarantee), and the role of a policeman suited the boy even more. Now that the boy had been found, half the man's job was already done, but, try as he might, he couldn't seem to find the girl.

Until the day he got shot, that is.

It wasn't a mortal wound (for which he was very grateful, he still had a lot of work to do in this particular life), but it was serious enough to require a visit to a hospital. He chose the hospital at random, stumbling in with a blood-soaked rag pressed to his wound, and the nurses and doctors went to work and stitched him up and he was sitting in his hospital room, wondering when would be a good time to duck out, when the mostly-a-girl walked right in, and it was very hard not to burst out laughing.

She was a doctor this time, and her name was Katara, both things that had happened before. She was calm, cool, professional, but her smile lit up the room and for a time, the man beyond time and place just reveled in his triumph. When she asked him if he wished to make a police report, he leaped at the opening, said he did, asked her to contact the RCPD, enquire after one Tazaki Zuko, I've met him before, I know I can trust him, and one Dr. Katara agreed and promised that she would and he was already planning his escape, it would have to be very neat, when she pointed out he had declined to give a name to the intake nurse in the ER and asked if he had one to give to the RCPD when she put in her request and he smiled and gave her the first name that leapt to mind.

"Kojima," he said, smiling from ear-to-ear, "go ahead and put down Kojima."

She frowned, brow furrowed as she wrote it down. "Alright, Mr. Kojima, I'll go ahead and…" She paused, looked at him, looked away, looked back. "Um, excuse me, but…have we met before? I'm just getting the weirdest sensation…"

He chuckled and shrugged and pointed out that it was a big city and a small world, anything was possible, and she laughed and admitted that this was true, and then Dr. Katara went off and called for Officer Tazaki Zuko and it turned out the boy was on duty and in the area and, though he was probably confused, was on his way to take the statement. The man who was once again calling himself Kojima waited until the girl called Katara and the boy called Zuko were giggling and smiling at each other as they walked down the hall towards the man's room, and the man smiled and chuckled to himself and slipped away before they got there, content in the knowledge that he had achieved his little victory against the powers that threw him hither-and-yon, he could continue with the mission now, all was well.

For the rest of their current lives, Zuko and Katara would often wonder about the man who had called himself Kojima, though, as always, whether they remembered or not, they never quite managed to get any answers.

It never bothered them, though. They had each other, and two beautiful daughters, and a nice life in a nice city, and were able to bask in the warm glow of being exactly where they needed to be, with who they needed to be with, of being soulmates.

The man who occasionally called himself Kojima would've been proud.

That was just good, clean fun, you guys, like, for realz. The past couple days have involved a lot of feels and a lot of gut-punches and various things of that nature, for, for the next few prompts, I felt a need to enjoy myself and, by extension, allow you guys to enjoy yourselves, too, especially those of you who were kind enough to read Romance of the Four Nations all the way through, because I feel like you will enjoy this little piece the most.

If you haven't read what I like to call Ro4N, by all means, please do, it's one of the few pieces of mine that I feel confident in calling fucking awesome-sauce, and I feel like it's definitely worth the read. That said, you really don't need to have read it to enjoy the little piece you just read, so feel free to ignore my shameless begging for page-views and fanart. *looks cute in hope anyways*

As for the piece...you know, the more I saw, the more the joy and mystery of the piece will be ruined. Kojima is one of my favorites among the OCs I've created over the years, and part of the reason is that, no matter how much I say about him or reveal about him, you'll always be left with as many questions as answers. He's a character that works best in ambiguity, because clarity will only ruin the fun. That was actually one of the challenges I set myself going into today's chapter: Just how much can I say while still preserving the mystery that is central to whether or not this character works. I like to think I've accomplished that, though you're free to disagree, because the fuck do I know?

Welp, that's about all for today. Gotta take the dog for a walk, run some errands, and I'm thinking I'm going to need to do something really nice for the wife, because yesterday was not the easiest day to live through and neither of us were in the best mood this morning and I think we both need a pick-me-up, you know? Though, don't worry, it's nothing world shattering, just a simple matter of, when two people spend pretty much every day together, at some point, one of them's going to say or do something stupid, and that person is generally me. I love you, babe.

In tomorrow's episode, the fun continues, as we pop back into the future of A Different Path's universe as the Steam!Baby Crown Prince discovers a really cool little story, and we get to see Katara being all Fire Lady-y. Stay tuned!