Disclaimer: We own nothing... cus we're Fing awesome that way.


Jade Knight's Author's Note: alright this is probably the shorter and less intelligent Authors Note on here. Firstly, NO, when I came up with The White Wolf I didn't know anything about the game reference Richard makes. So please don't ask about it. Now...

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WE ARE LOOKING FOR ANOTHER BETA READER. This is something Richard brought up to me a short time ago. I type too fast, meaning I make a decent number of spelling and grammar mistakes, and since Richard is also a Co-Author and responsible for developing the plot he has very little time and patience to do a thorough beta job. So here's where we get to the main bit.

We are looking for a third person to read over the chapters and correct any mistakes that we have missed. We may ask your opinion or feed back on some issues, but you will be mainly operating in an beta function only. Interested? Drop a Review or a PM to either of us and well talk to over between ourselves and pick the best of the best.

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Richard Caine's Author's Note: It has come to my attention that a great many people reading this story tend to think about science, and scientific ideas, in a very specific way. This colors the way they look at the story we're trying to tell, pparticularly our treatment of how the Incarna works. Many people just don't like it, or feel that it doesn't fit. There is of course no accounting for personal taste. It's just that; personal. But I thought it might be nice to let people know how we look at it. To begin, a question.

One of my best friends, and a guy I'm actually working on a real novel with, once asked me an excellent question.

What is science in a world of magic?

The answer is of course science. It always has been. It's just a science that is alien to this world, a different set of rules upon which the universe rests. However, rules are still rules. Bending applies some pretty straightforward rules, and those martial arts are scientific in their essence. The issue isn't really science or method; it's one of history in a sense. Thing is, we always see fantasy worlds in a feudal state as far as history goes. What does the fantasy world look like in the Renaissance? In the Industrial Age? Today? Tomorrow? After the Apocalypse?

Because that is what the world of Avatar is to us. It is a hollow reflection of past glories faded, where man struggles, even those with superhuman power. I watched this show and I saw things... things I just couldn't explain any other way. And I wanted to show others what I saw, hints of a world that was so much greater than what lives now. A golden age, to the bronze age of the Avatar and the Incarna's absence. Look around. What do you see? I can tell you what I see.

The underground cities? What are they? Why are they freakin' everywhere? What happened to make a genuine city half a mile underneath Ba Sing Se?

Spark rock (the green glowing stuff). What exactly is it? More importantly, what else can it do?

How does Sokka know so much natural science (the Fortuneteller and others), How do they know what hell space is? (Sokka's Master) All this points to knowledge that took millenia for us to discover and prove... with techniques that are still sometimes questioned. Sure it's probably just writer anachronism. But what if it wasn't?

The Great Divide? It's a valley in the middle of a geological dead zone. Even the episode comments on it. (the Tour Guide waxes eloquent about Earth Spirits...) But it bears remarkable similarities to something that a guy with Orbital Ion Cannons decided to use as a scratch pad.

The statues we see, old, older than a hundred years. Older than perhaps a thousand; symbols of gods and heroes long past. Think of it. Think of the glory of a world that had the science of bending at the level we have perfected our own crafts. What a wondrous place. Cities miles high, suspended by earth energies and spirits that make the impossible possible. Air ships the size of the USS Iowa, powered by mechanically assisted bending. Floating palace cities of ice, physicians who could cure nearly any disease. Flame based weapons competitive with an Abrams tank. Heck, they've already got that much back. What about firebending weapons that could destroy a city? A continent?

And the Old Ones? Ships that sailed the Void between spaces, not just worlds. The prophetic power to understand the unfurling of destiny; and use it. Understanding the Pattern of the world so clearly that they can put together disparate facts in a way that would baffle the smartest man. A race that could and did stand against the Gods themselves (small spoiler of sorts there...), and beat them enough to gain their eternal respect, if not friendship... Tui and La sure as heck never forgot them.

What you're really seeing here in the description of Sokka's thoughts is how the Old Ones looked at science. Their Incarna creation is not science in any sense you or I think of it. The Incarna is much like the Avatar, a demi-god. What science can create such a thing, contain it? We're talking about rules here that are beyond that of physics, and into the sciences of metaphysics. I'm following in the footsteps of Robert E. Howard (Conan) and Howard Philips Lovecraft (Cthuthu), who asked the same question.

Does our science look like magic to those from the stone age? Yes. We put toast in the toaster and plug it in. Then voila, it's cooked. WTF? Then what would sciences as beyond us as electricity is beyond those of the middle ages appear to be? To most, magic. To people like Sokka, an enigma and a mystery to be solved; a science to be understood.

The Elemental Temples went crazy when Aang first went into the Avatar State. That is canon fact. Was it the harmonious balance of the world beginning to return? Was it the resonance of force unleashed? Was it the computer saying 'Hello Dave?'. Heck if we know. All we see are the pretty lights (Episode 3, first season). However, the Old Ones were above all other things the greatest scientists this universe has ever known. Even their opponents and foes recognized their mastery of physics and metaphysics. The real key is that what Aang would call harmonizing and relegate to a sort of mystical understanding, Sokka will see and search for a system of facts and analytical principals. See here 'The Fortune Teller' and numerous smaller examples. Sokka isn't a man of magic, he's a man of science; perhaps the man of science. That was why the Incarna spirit picked him; because he can save science, something that Aang doesn't care about and the world has nearly forgotten. But not entirely. There are examples if you look deep enough. We point a great many of them out, in fact.

Let us show a world to you that is larger, made larger, by the work of clever artists and writers who left so much unanswered... and that the Knight and I decided were worth answering. We're going to give you a glimpse of a world bigger and more terrible than anyone would want to deal with.

But they will, because that's what people do, and that's what stories do. So settle back and relax the stereotypes a little, because we're going to push them just a little. You might like where it ends up.

Coincidentally, if you do like it, check out Exalted, a game by White Wolf that is as much a helpful inspiration to me as Conan, Hellboy, Escaflowne, and Call of Cthulthu. Mostly because they took from all of that too. And they have a lot more cool professional writers than I do; darn them. (Knight: What about me?)

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Damn Richard, leave a little paper for the chapter... damn.

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OH, and remember we will be going up to an 'M' rating soon. We have a specific place that this will take place, (i would say it but it would spoil things) but as it has yet to be written we do not know what chapter it will be in; as soon as we know you will to.

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If you do not want to immediately want to run off to the Genzou VS Mouretsu: who is the deceiver? section of the forum... go back to the chapter and read it more slowly.

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And Lastly, give Richard some props... its only because of him that I'm uploading now. I was perfectly fine with letting you sweat it out for another week... but he said it would be cruel. (inside laught)

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YOU ARE NOW READING THE LONGEST TOKKA STORY (WITH MAIKO SPRINKLES) ON THIS SITE! ONE HUNDRED THOUDAND WORDS! WHOOT!

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-Curtain Up!


Sokka: Master of the Black Sword

By: The Jade Knight & Richard Caine

Creative Consultant & Beta: Richard Caine & The Jade Knight


-The Resistance Saga-

Chapter 12

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The Story of Sokka

Part 8: Avatar Yasuragi

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But here I was, at eleven point one percent of my total potential, looking at a little girl in a cute frilly black dress sitting on an oar, floating ten feet off the ground looking at me and in her arms a tiny little squirrel-mouse nuzzled her hand, looking very cuddly. She waved cheerfully and smiled like sunshine and I just waved back like a dumbstruck moron, once again wondering about my sanity.

"Hello again," she said, as sweet as sugar as her huge luminescent eyes sparkled.

"Hello?" I answered, confused.

"Don't turn into a meanie, okay?"

"I won't," I said in the old tongue, not knowing what was going on.

"Good," she said, smiling wider before she floated back into the sky, squirrel-mouse and all.

Okay, what the hell was that about?

Before I came to any conclusion the ghostly apparition of a monkey-sloth swung into my view and howled sadly to the sky, filling my heart with sorrow for the destroyed trees. I wondered briefly what I was looking at until it suddenly struck me that this monkey-sloth was the spirit of the trees in this oasis, and it was grieving over the loss of a part of itself. Without thinking I solemnly bowed my head to it and said, "the circle of life has no beginning or endings, only places where the circle starts anew."

The monkey-sloth seemed to notice me standing there for the first time and regarded me for a long second. I looked straight into his black eyes fearlessly for a long moment before it bowing its head to me and slowly fading back into the trees and the ground beneath the destruction where fallen acorns will one day regrow the dead section of the trees.

I slowly turned around, taking in all of the spirits that faded in and out of my vision, passing before my eyes like a thousand earthbound ghouls. Each of them a part of something and each dependent on something else. As I looked the strangest schematics and ideas fell into my head, things that I could built and ask these spirits to animate. Not to imprison, but to allow them it interact with the physical world, to right the wrongs and make their small parts of the planet a better place. A wind spirit brushed my spread finger tips before passing from my sight. I felt only the beginnings of the possibilities, a drop of the ocean that could be my destiny. All of this was so strange, yet, natural somehow. It finally started to make some sense, not much mind you, but a little.

'The first of the new race of spirit shapers'.

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I had turned completely around, facing back the way I came, and saw my family almost frozen, moving so slowly. I knew what this was now, I had stepped partially into the spirit world, and in the spirit world time moved differently, sometimes not at all, and sometimes backwards. It was a useful technique to reevaluate a situation, but I could not make any other movements aside from observing my surroundings; it was not a combat technique unfortunately.

Across the pond Katara was facing me, screaming something while a wave of the pond slowly rolled toward me, no doubt an effort to extinguish the fireball that had been after me like black on burnt toast. Toph was behind her, still in the process of getting back up. It looked like that last blast of air had knocked her back. And Aang...

Aang was consumed in a spiral tornado of flames. I now understood what meat must think when it sees me staring down at it.

I had seen this phenomenon a few times before, each time he had been consumed in an element before, it had always been coupled with one of his past lives coming to the surface. Yes, this was really freaking bad.

I looked straight up into the wide blue sky, dotted with a few fluffy clouds and listened to the Whispers of the Archive. Something up there, some sort of apparatus was trying to contact me, to become active. I think it was a sort of warning system, at least that was what one of its functions was. Kind of like how all of those Temples lit up the first time Aang hit his Avatar state announcing to the world that he was active. I brushed away the whispers and -I have no idea how- I told the things in the sky to go back to sleep, that I didn't have the source yet.

That aside another something tried to reach out to me, something from far in the desert. I looked to the east, through a part in the trees to a specific dune. It called itself the 'Divishna D'strella' and it said that it awaited my commands. I frowned as another stream of information from the Archive told me that the 'Devourer of Stars' had been missing since the last great war. Strange. I shrugged it off and told this new thing the same; that I was not ready yet and to go back to sleep. Apparently it obeyed me because it went quiet.

I would deal with Aang, or whoever the hell he would be in a minute, right that second I wanted a few explanations on what was going on.

I closed my eyes and looked within myself, reaching for that cold flame. I approached slowly, ready to back out right away should the power start to fade, but it held steady. Finally, my consciousness crossed the Void and was pulled towards something very, very fast. Towards something... something inevitable. Hitzuzen. My spirit followed the invisible trail of fate.

Now I was far away from here, looking down at a small fleet of airships over the ocean? I wanted answers to all of the crap that just happened, not more questions. I focused a little harder on the airship below me. It was something I had never seen before, a model of Fire-Nation airship. It was as if they had found the wreckage of the Inventor's design, and put a horribly destructive spin on it, turning it into an armor plated behemoth. I knew there were other ships in the formation, but they were unimportant to the march of inevitable fate. So I turned my attention to the lead airship, unable to look anywhere else ... a thousand thousand gossamer strands of fate wove about this one.

I focused harder on the ship with my will and started to see smaller things such as faces of crew and the compliment of weapons. Meaningless face followed meaningless face, each flinching slightly as I passed them. I guess they felt me looking at them, or something like it.

There!

Faces that meant something. That really bendy girl obsessed with pink and my oh so manly body, Azula's lacky and one of the three bitch-ka-teers. Then that thin athletic girl that always traveled with Azula, the one that threw the knives. She was walking down a hallway, when she froze, falling down on one knee as if she could feel my presence more keenly than the others could. A faint outline of dark skin and black exoskeleton shimmered in the darkened hallway.

Holy crap! She was like Senchi! As my gazed rolled over her bowed head and I could see her real face beneath the seeming she threw up to deceive others. She was one of those ... a word came to me; Gel-Hassad. Yes, that was it. She was one of the Gel-Hassad. Her hands flashed in a pattern, a Shaping of some kind. She was able to stand again, and her golden eyes locked with my own.

I looked closer at her awestruck features and somehow her face looked familiar, like I had seen it a thousand times before. A flash of memory, truly ancient memory, struck me. The Gel-Hassad fought behind me on Yegoth all those years ago. I remembered watching the first embryos floating in the hatcheries, I remembered the sadness in my heart when we lost one, and I remembered the first on to open her eyes and look at me.

Knife girl looked exactly like Vala, the Firstborn of the New Race. The race that would ensure the legacy and will of the Old Ones. I ... one of my past lives had seen a darkness on the horizon, and the new race, the Gel-Hassad was my answer to that.

More meaningless faces passed me as I was consumed by ancient memories of watching my daughter through the eyes of one of my predecessors. Watching little Vala take her first steps, learning her first words, meeting her siblings for the first time. That incarnation of myself could never have children and, although I had never planned on it, that first child of the Gel-Hassad and every one that followed had felt like my own. Then she faded from sight as my focus swept on as did my memories.

I snapped out of my reminiscing when the ugly mug of Combustion Man rolled past. I growled slightly, what the hell was with this guy? Didn't we kick his ass enough times to teach him a lesson? He was gone and replaced with two Gel-Hassad faces at once. That was weird, up until now it had always been one face at a time. Something twinged in the back of my mind and I got the impression that these two women shared a combined soul? I didn't really get it, but what the hell made sense anymore?

Azula sneered at me as I passed by, the killer intent coming off of her was amazing. However I don't think she truly felt me, not like Knife Girl had. That was a relief that I could hardly put into words. I pulled back a little until I was looking down on the airship again. Where was this happy little group going?

Of course! What the hell was I thinking, this was Azula's battle group that was going to destroy the resistance movement in Ba Sing Se. My eyes went wide in horror. Wait, the first time that that furry little monster had met me in the Spirit World she had shown me myself attacking the fortress of Ba Sing Se, this must be what it was warning me about. These airships, the three psychos, Combustion Man, they were all going to Ba Sing Se and ...

And what? Do I tell the others nothing and make us all run for the hills? Do I tell them? Do we go to Ba Sing Se and risk making that nightmare a reality? I'm supposed to be a smart man, what the fucking hell was I supposed to do!

Four days and Azula's forces would be at the walls of the great city. What do I do? I gently slid back into reality just as the time slowed flames around Aang reach their crescendo. How could I protect them? I looked over at Toph, almost back on her feet looking over in my direction, worried ... worried about me.

I couldn't hide this from them.

They were all I had left, my family in every way that mattered and I know I would be pissed off if they kept something like this to themselves. I would want them to share the problems, to let me help them, to know that they could trust me. I would not be a very good person if I didn't do the same for them. I would get back to the physical world and after talking about old times with my mortal enemy I would tell them everything, and we would all decide how best to proceed.

It was that easy. I decided that I wanted to return and suddenly time returned to normal again. The wave, damn, the near-tidal wave that Katara had created to put out the fire ball slammed into me. I held my ground and rocked back on my heels, letting the pressure slowly dissipate.

Two voices screamed my name over the howl of flames. I waved away the girls' concerns seeing as how I still couldn't speak anything they could understand. Ha, I knew I saw some weird-ass things hovering over them.

The Archive kicked back in and the information started to flow freely again. At any one time there were dozens of people in the world that held a spark of the elements in them, the potential to become talented and powerful enough to assist the Avatar rise back to his full potential every time he is reborn. These sparks can take the form of thousands of different things, depending on the host's personality, and it seemed that two recognized Henkotsu-sensei', Toph and Katara, were no exception.

Toph stood stark still, a sign that she was watching the world around her very intently. She looked very beautiful that way, her face slightly scrunched in concentration as the wind currents given off of Aang blowing her hair across her misty eyes. I had been using what the Archive called the 'Void Sight' for a while now, and I used it to look a little deeper. Something was nagging at me, there was something about Toph that was just outside my sight. I squinted slightly, focusing on her a little harder ... and there it was, dormant Gel-Hassad blood. Someone in her family -going back two or three generations from the looks of it- was a Gel-Hassad. I wonder if she knew?

I laughed, maybe this is why she seemed much stronger and tougher then her small form led most to believe? The traits were buried pretty deep, but not so deep to have a small amount of influence on her physiology. I think I might have just discovered the secret to the enigma that was Toph.

And the enigma only deepened with the Beast hanging over her, and I meant beast in the most literal sense of the word. Towering over her, nearly thirty feet into the sky was a great furry Goliath. It actually looked like an enormous slightly-humanoid Badger-Mole. Its arms were cabled with tons of sinewy muscle and its entire body was covered in shiny brown fur. It looked down on me with the same unjudging misty green eyes of Toph's that I always got lost in and I felt no malice from it. It was not a monster in any sense of the word, it was the spark of the Earth, the source from which Toph drew her astounding Earth bending talents.

I looked up at it and met its blind eyes. A deep rumble emanated from inside its gargantuan chest that almost shook the ground. I smile and bowed my head as a sign of peace and -I hope- mutual respect. It stood on powerful legs directly over Toph and rested its clawed hands on either side of all five foot height of its host watching both me and the flaming Aang, ready to lend its host all of its power should the need arise. After a moment it lowered itself onto on knee and bowed deeply to me.

O-kay? Well, at least its not attacking me.

I turned down the strength of my void sight a little. My calculations said that I had a further five seconds before Aang was through doing whatever the hell he was doing, and if I got caught with my void sight on too high when he want all 'human-god' it would be like looking directly into a smithing furnace when someone threw a bucket of gunpowder into it. Not pretty.

Katara was frantically tracking back and forth between me and Aang. Poor Katara, I didn't mean to make her so worried. Toph was the only one here who kind of knew what was going on. Katara was totally out of the loop, and if I was right it was about to get a lot worse.

My eyes tracked skyward and checked out Katara's spark of the ocean. Damn, I knew it was a bad idea to get on her bad sides, but damn.

Like Toph's it was tall, but not quite as gargantuan, only few hands taller then Katara herself. It was a deathly pale blue and obviously female. It's eyes were a bloody crimson and so deep they were maddening, its thin wispy gown flowed around its body like it was floating underwater. Its mouth open slowly in a spine tingling rolling click, sort of like an echolocation pulse, only a lot more freaky. It caught my eyes and glided forward slightly a few inches above the ground, regarding me with a lethal eye, estimating my threat level. Its hair flowed around its head like a Medusa's, eager to strangle the life from an enemy.

Again I locked eyes with this new spark and bowed my head respectfully; the spirits were very old school with the respects and stuff. At least thats what the Archive told me, and since I have very little experience in creepy-ass occurrences, I'm giving this Archive thing the benefit of the doubt. Again, the spark stared hard at me for a long moment, considering before it dropped to one knee in a bow that was a lot more then a little respect. Its like something I'd expect Aang to get.

And speaking of Aang, the fire was cooling off to a icy blue and lowering down to about knee level. I heard Katara call his name from where she stood, frozen in confusion, but Aang was out of his mind right now, she should try back in a few minutes.

Well, this sure brought back memories. Though, technically they weren't my memories, they were still so powerful I could almost feel the sands beneath my feet, or the setting sun on my face just like they had that fateful day forty thousand years ago. I tried several times to sheath my sword and to not look threatening, after all Aang was my best friend, I didn't want to hurt him. But the Archive wouldn't let me, the reasons behind it were unclear, but the message wasn't.

She's here to kill you.

I looked harder at the person that was once my best friend and I saw through the secret of the Avatar. Like when I fought Senchi, it was as though I was seeing an image draped over the real person, and that made this fight impossible for me to win.

The rage filled tarnished gold eyes of Avatar Yasuragi met mine and bored in. Her deep red hair, unlike anything I'd ever seen before, floated around her head with the raging windstorm that her power was kicking up. She gritted her teeth and the few age lines that were on her middle aged face pulled tight, giving her an even more dangerous aura. She stood there, proud and arrogant, glaring at me with a hate built up over thousands of years. A stiff wind filled with fine sand rattled slightly against her crimson armor. She had no weapons on her finely crafted belt, after all she was the freaking Avatar, a fully realized Avatar with all of her power and potential at her disposal. I was screwed; utterly, completely, and possibly absolutely.

Beneath the image that was Avatar Yasuragi the shorter body of Aang stood, eyes glowing. This was one of the secrets of the Avatar, they didn't really manifest their previous incarnations into the physical world, they used their great power to throw up a seeming, much like the Gel-Hassad. This made it all the worse, I could not attack Our mortal nemesis for fear of hurting Aang, but unfortunately for me Yasuragi had no such restrictions.

"Incarna Sokka, after reviewing the memories of this host I have regretfully come to the conclusion that you are too power hungry, an illness that will only lead to tyranny," Yasuragi said in a voice terrifyingly devoid of humanity. Behind her Katara's face went from confusion, to horror, to dark rage, a moment later a blackness entered the skin of her spark as it howled along with the turmoil in her heart.

"Don't do this," I said evenly in the language of the old, knowing that Yasuragi understood every word.

But she ignored me, her face just as emotionless as it was moments before. "By my authority as past Avatar of this land I hereby declare that for the greater good you will be executed on this day; prepare yourself Sir Incarna."

"You don't have to do this," I repeated. My grip on my blade tightened as the cold flame in my chest grew. The last time we had clashed at full power it was total devastation. Now, we weren't any where near the levels we were back then, after all the bitch was dead for crying out loud, but we still posed a great danger to the surrounding people and property.

"Katara, Toph," I called, hoping they could understand me, if only in my tone. "Run, run as fast as you can."

I walked out onto the small lake, my aura freezing the entire thing down to its core. Thousands of gallons of water, flash frozen in a fraction of a second. I took another step out onto the icy surface just as a chilling fog began to roll off of the dead lake, kicking up around my heels like the hounds of hell.

"Henkotsu, I order you to execute that man," Yasuragi said, pointing to me as I slowly closed the distance between us one step at a time.

"Run, please just get as far away from this psycho as you can," I pleaded. Then I turned to look at Katara, trying to tell her with my eyes what my words could not, and she used that, she used my feelings for my sister and Toph against me. My eyes caught a huge movement from in front of me and I snapped my attention back to my executioner, but too late. The entire lake, save for the small island that I stood on liquefied and rose up around me, forming a dome. It held there for a second, only a second, just long enough for me to hear Katara scream my name, for me to hear Toph attack Yasuragi. The inside of the dome came at me with impossible speed, condensing down as it descended so that I had no way out as countless wickedly sharp frozen spikes formed.

This was it.

This was how I died.

I closed my eyes, what could I do? She was the fucking psycho Avatar from millenia ago that had taken over my best friends ... no, my brothers body and was using it to kill me with. What could I possibly do? She had been slaughtering my kin, my fellow Incarnae for hundreds of generations. One hundred and thirty one before me had gained the power of the Incarna, and one hundred and thirty one times Yasuragi took control of the existing Avatar's body and killed. The bitch had a depressingly high success rate. I didn't have the power or the will to kill my brother just to stop her. I had no escape. Time slowed once more as the Void refused to accept what my mind had, and pushed me slightly into the Spirit World again.

The Archive was still sending me memories and plots, but none of it was useful. I wasn't smart enough, I wasn't powerful enough once again. I was going to die here, at the hands of Yasuragi and there was nothing I could do about it. From a distance I heard Toph's cry of pain as something struck her.

Rage boiled up from inside me and the cold flame in my chest became an inferno. Kill me if you must, but lay a finger on any of them and I will bring the sky crashing down around your face.

Eleven point nine percent maximum capacity. Secondary overrides degrading rapidly. Estimated possibility of survival decreasing. Warning; high likelihood bio-form will collapse under strain of additional power influx.

The body can only contain so much of the Void before it tears itself apart in a gory explosion. Or implodes, or both; the Void seems to be an equal opportunity destructive force. My arms shook at my sides as the muscles felt like they were being torn to shreds. The Gel-Hassad body is a decent bit more durable and flexible then the human body, they could handle a little more power in the unconditioned state then us.

Twelve point six percent. Secondary override channels burnt out; switching back to primary channels; reconfiguring power distribution.

I am the first human in the memory of the Archive to become the scion of the Incarna, so all of the power expectations and abilities were all just guidelines. They had never seen a human with the fear of oblivion and total loss in him wielding the Void. My entire body ached and my joints groaned like the thawing ice as more power flowed into me.

Twelve point nine percent. Estimated survival decreased by forty four percent. Warning, severe tissue damage imminent. I ignored the scrolling status updates at the corner of my vision.

I was not the Incarna yet, I would only be considered that when I ... merged with that White Wolf. Until then I had only a shaky grasp on my abilities, not unlike what a regular Gel-Hassad Spirit Shaper had.

I almost fell to one knee as I vomited a mouthful of blood onto the ice beneath my feet. The was so much power it was doing me great harm to hold onto it, but I needed it all if I was going to stop Yasuragi without hurting Aang.

It is a well documented and completely undisputed fact that a Gel-Hassad scion body, unconditioned and without the Spirit of the Incarna could only contain twelve percent of the Incarna's full potential before the body is destroyed by the forces it contains.

The human body is expected to only hold nine percent before total destruction. Turns out we're tougher than their calculations thought. Not that much tougher though.

I was just barely able to wrestle my screaming muscles into an upright position when I hit thirteen percent, my entire body vibrating with the power I now held. I quickly ran thousands of calculations and came to the only course of action that I could take, the only thing that would allow me to bring Yasuragi down without hurting Aang.

I focused a large amount of my power into my blade, charging it with pure Void energy until it seemed to suck in the very light and sky around it, like a whirlpool of hungry blackness. A howling wind raised around the edge of the sword as air was sucked into the great emptiness between spaces. I raised it just as I let go of the Spirit World, allowing time to flow quickly around me again. The glittering spikes of superdense ice once more continued their descent, but I was ready.

I bolted straight ahead, the dry river bed beneath my feet almost shaking with my steps. And then it was like a bomb going off in my face when I struck the wall, shards of ice exploding outward in a blinding hail. I heard Katara gasp in surprise and shield her eyes from the force of the explosion. She was fine, I had triangulated both hers and Toph's position from inside the dome before I had even moved.

I glared straight ahead of my, my eyes in agony from the amount of energy building up behind them. I could see clearer then I had ever before, it was as though I could peek into the souls of people and see their desires and fears. So when Yasuragi turned to me and we locked eyes I knew that she was planning on killing me by any means necessary. Toph, Katara, they were all expendable in her opinion.

"They are not expendable!" I bellowed, my aura of power exploding outward, stripping the leaves off of the trees. My voice wrapped around itself a chorusing harmony of a thousand voices that spoke a tongue no human could; a denial of everything the Avatar was trying to do to Us. I raged at the spiteful and hate filled person that had once been arguably the greatest Avatar.

"Against the threat you pose to the entire world, everyone is expendable; even me," said Yasuragi stepping away from where she had been staring down a furious Toph. She turned to look at me, her red hair lifting towards the singularity that my blade had become, pulled by the wind that rushed towards it. Meanwhile, my little warrior Toph looked about ready to lay the smack down on the Avatar. Good, the bitch needed it. I knew there was no arguing with this woman.

"Sokka, Aang, what are you two doing?" yelled Katara, looking somewhere between worried and pissed off.

"This man has to die. I may require your help Henkotsu, please prepare yourself."

"Who the hell do you think you are?" fumed Katara. "He's my brother, I'm not going to kill him or let you kill him."

My computation ramped up again. I winced slightly as I felt hundreds of Gel-Hassad using the Archive to try to figure out where all of the damn processing power was going. They felt me becoming a huge draw upon its resources, equal to the complicated working of a score of master shapers working as one. The Archive was immense beyond human reckoning, with processing power that grew greater every day, with every memory; there was no possibility that I could use it all. However, as unspeakably inefficient as I was being with the processing power, they were wondering where all of the data was coming from, and more importantly, where it was going. But all this attention was a distraction, and I needed focus.

I gathered up all of the Whispers that I could and delivered a message before I gently pushed them all away, although it was still probably a little strong. "I'm busy trying not to be killed by the Avatar, please try back later." I would have laughed thinking about their reactions to that if not for the psycho in front of me prepared to sacrifice my family in the pursuit of killing me.

I could feel my body about to give, I had ninety four seconds to end this before I was overwhelmed by the power of the Void. Well, let's bring the house down.

My feet barely touching the ground, I rocketed forward, the hungry Void-touched blade held high. Yasuragi had only enough time for her mouth to pull back into a twisted smile before we clashed. The grace and ease I moved with made my other moments today look like the bumblings of a five hundred pound man. I dodged jets of red flames and struck with the Black Sword, slitting the illusion's amour with every strike, but always careful to stay just a breath above Aang's skin.

The ground joined in on the fight a moment later, forming a huge towering wall between us, but I simply imploded a section of the wall, sending it hurtling into the Void with a power equal to when I broke out of the dome. Now a slight flicker of worry flitted behind Yasuragi's eyes as one wall after another fell through the doorway to the empty depths that my blade had become. She, like most benders fought best at a bit of a distance while us Spirit Shapers, save for a few weapon disciplines liked to be face to face with our enemies, using our superior flexibility and endurance. Gross generality, sure, but I've always been a sucker for stereotypes.

She was holding back some power while trying to get a little distance between us, obviously she didn't have access to all of Aang's memories or she would know I had just defeated Toph with the same maneuvers. He must have been fighting her.

Flame and rock attacked me from all sides. The flames were either a scorching scarlet or a frightening blue, but all of them blackened the rocks and glassed the sands as I danced through them like a flower petal in the wind. She should have stopped trying to use the earth to keep distance from me, knowing it was futile, but she continued to use it. One moment the earth would split, revealing a maw of spikes beneath me; and when I gracefully flew over the pit the spikes would leap up at me, but I had already calculated all of the angles and it was nothing to sidestep or block them, even in midair.

She was getting frustrated, and I was still like a shark in bloodied waters. No one, and I mean no one threatens the ones precious to me. Not even the Avatar.

Yasuragi screamed in rage, calling the winds up behind her in an attempt to blow me backwards into the death spikes she had arranged a moment ago. A hurricane bored down on me, but I just dug my blade in and gritted my teeth at her in defiance. A second later I felt the air currents change and knew that she was pulling the wall of death forward, trying to swipe at me from behind.

I leaped into the air at the last second, back flipping over the sliding death and was able to easily wiggle through the jets of fire that followed. I landed hard on the sandy earth and immediately snaked my way through the arms of water that tried to grab me, possibly to hold me still long enough to kill me.

"Why won't you die!" Yasuragi shrieked, her body a blur of motion as she commanded the elements.

"Don't hurt Sokka!" cried Toph as she got into the fight and attacked, sending a very impressive array of smashing and pummeling attacks at Yasuragi. Sharpened columns rose from under the earth and tried to skewer the psycho who moved with practiced ease around them, smashing some back into the earth and turning others back on Toph. My power flared at that, causing more pain and shaving another second off of my safe zone. I broke off my offensive to dart over and help Toph shatter all of the spikes coming at her.

I stood beside Toph, breathing heavily as blood oozed from my mouth, barely able to keep my grip on my blade.

Thirty six seconds.

Toph made to attack again, her left arm coming up in a motion that would harden the sand under Yasuragi into a forest of ten foot spikes. But I caught her arm in my hand and stopped it. She seemed confused and tilted her head to me in question right before I pulled her back at breakneck speeds to avoid the dozen or so razor sharp discs that Katara had sent Yasuragi's way a moment ago as they were rerouted our way by the once great Avatar.

"Stop!" I shouted over the sound of burning trees, falling earth and crashing water with both of my arms up, hoping that Toph and my sister got my meaning. It appeared they did, even Yasuragi stopped for a moment, trying to figure out how this ploy was to benefit me.

"I'll take him alone, it's still Aang under there and only I can get rid of Yasuragi without hurting him," I said clearly, hoping that something got through to them.

Yasuragi laughed hard, her voice filling the space.

"What did he say?" Katara asked completely lost, but not taking her eyes off of Yasuragi.

"He said something about us going away and him getting himself killed," said Toph like it was obvious. I couldn't help but cock an eyebrow at her. I knew she couldn't see it, but really, what the hell?

"How do you know that?" asked Katara sounding amazed, chancing a glance over to us.

"Well, I can't figure out what the hell he's talking about. But really Katara, it's Sokka. He's bound to be talking about doing something heroic and suicidal while we're supposed to run," she said. Then turning to me, "right?"

I could only nod, while Yasuragi laughed harder.

"Well, well," she said, still chuckling. "It seems you're more clever then I thought. Not only have you managed to negotiate your way into a perfect opportunity to kill my current incarnation, but you have somehow managed to brainwash two of my Henkotsu enough that they believe every word that comes from your deceiving mouth. Damn, boy. I wouldn't doubt it if they were prepared to die to protect you."

"Damn fuckin' rights I would," screamed Katara and Toph almost simultaneously, although the curse was from Toph alone.

"He's my brother, he is not a power hungry tyrant," hissed Katara. The water at her feet rippled dangerously with her every word and her spark looked absolutely lethal.

"Oh, really?" said Yasuragi slowly, drawing out every word. "Tell us Incarna, do you crave power at any cost? Do you live every day to only get stronger? You may have these two Henkotsu tricked, and judging from the memories of this host you fooled him as well. But can you deny it, do you not crave power like air, would you give your own life in the pursuit of this power? Now that you have it in your grasp, now that you are at the level of a minor demi-god would you give it back?"

I stared hard at Yasuragi, feeling my hate for her burn inside my chest. Yes, I craved power, yes everything she had just said was true. But she was taking it completely out of context. She made it sound like I wanted to rule the world over the edge of a sword. I could deny nothing she had just accused me of, because it was all true, just for different reasons then what she was implying. She was trying to use my inability to speak as a weapon to turn my family against me.

I looked at Katara and saw hate for Yasuragi, protective feeling for everyone in this clearing, but what killed me was the doubt I saw when I could not deny Yasuragi's cleverly crafted words.

"You don't understand anything and don't think you can manipulate us, right Katara," yelled Toph with total confidence.

Katara, turned her head slightly toward me, her guard against Yasuragi lowering slightly. But then she looked into my eyes, and I tried to tell her, to plead with her wordlessly that I was not the tyrant Yasuragi made me out to be. A flash of guilt was followed immediately by all doubt vanishing. "That's right!"

Instead of a reply Yasuragi just laughed harder, the sound bouncing around the ravaged oasis. "My, Sir Incarna you are much smarter then all of the others before you that I was forced to kill. You really have these two completely loyal to you, don't you?" Then for the first time I saw something like regret creep onto her face. No, she wouldn't. "In light of this new evidence I am saddened to say that I cannot allow two carriers of the spark to remain loyal to a tyrant. It pains me, but the two Henkotsu before you must decide to either break their bonds with you, or join you in death."

"What?" shrieked Katara. Toph just sneered dangerously and squared off against Yasuragi ... and I tore a deep trench into the ground as I ate up the distance between myself and the dead woman.

No one fucks with my family.

Eighty nine seconds, I could only hold this power for a further five seconds before it killed me.

I kicked up so much sand that when I slammed into Yasuragi going full speed, screaming like a demonic choir that the cloud of it was nearly a kilometer high. Fire and water were all over, steam exploded past me, burning my cheek, the smell of cooked flesh filling my nose. I pushed harder. I was a tornado of speed, my blade everywhere at once, hacking the tips off of stone spikes or freezing a wave of water into a crystal, only to smash it a second later as I blasted through it. My sword inhaled entire firestorms, trying to get to the manic that threatened my family.

Yasuragi fought back as hard as she could, but no matter the seeming she threw up she was still a fully grown woman trying to use the body of a small man who was just learning to control his power. In a straight fight the Avatar would out power the Incarna every time, our strength was in the planning and calculations. I weaved my way through a gauntlet of flame and water that tried to reach out and strangle me, my spine separating at every connection to allow me the mobility to dodge.

I was closing in, my body in excruciating pain as the Void ate at my muscles, tearing me apart one molecule at a time. We slammed together again, fire everywhere. Another explosion shocked the earth sending an acidic black cloud into the sky as we grappled, my black sword lay on the ground, all of the power I had placed in it had been expended explosively in that last clash.

Our faces were inches apart, I roared as loud as I could while my hands clamped down on her wrists. For a moment she just leveled her glare at me and I could feel the entire lake rise up behind me, until her face fell when she realized that I only had a hold on her wrists, not Aang's.

"Spirit Shaper, bitch," I growled. Then I wrenched back with all of my might, while pouring as much of the Void as I could into my hands. I don't know how I was reaching across the dimension and grabbing only Yasuragi's spirit and not Aang. But I didn't care, she was where I wanted her, and she was about to find out what happens to people that threaten those important to me. The howling Void drained at her spirit, wrenching her connection to Aang brutally apart, spiritual strand by strand.

I had her arms completely away from Aang, and the rest of her was coming when she made a last ditch effort and put everything into pulling back against me. I was tired, and dying from trying to contain too much Void energy, and so I lost my grip on one of her hands. The next thing I knew I felt a single spike of earth coming at my back, aimed right for my heart. I had to pull back, the damage had already been done so there was no point to risk serious injury, I had forcibly pulled the maniac Avatar's spirit from the body. She would be a danger for another three seconds, and then she would be completely powerless until she vanished back to the Spirit Word to recover.

I easily sidestepped the weak and pathetic spike of earth and was about to let go of the Void power when Yasuragi spun a thin rope of flames from her hands, twisting it into a writhing ball of white hot fire. My mind and the Void both calculated how she would attack, as well as three other possible outcomes, so I wasn't worried.

The ball of flame burned hot, hotter then I though possible as it struggled to break free of her grasp. Shit, if that stuck I would be reduced to a pile of ashes. I backed up quickly, snatching up my black blade and prepared to dodge her last attack. It came, I dodged and calculated that it would pass harmlessly over the tree tops before detonating a mile away, harming no one. But in her last moment of power Yasuragi sent a final blast of wind, barely a breeze really, toward her creation tilting it slightly to the left. It singed my clothes as it passed but I still easily avoided it. The thing was, I moved so fast I hadn't even finished re-calculating the trajectory.

I was suddenly moving as fast as inhumanly possible, racing a fireball. That last hit had put it on a collision course with both Toph and Katara, and if I didn't get to them in time ... no, I will get there in time.

If asked later I would have no idea how I had outrun a raging fireball that burned hotter then anything else I had ever felt, but I did it.

Immediately I grabbed both Katara and Toph by their arms and whipped them around, firing them off into the desert using my tremendous momentum to send them as far away form ground zero as I could. I watched them just long enough to see Toph pull up a dune of soft sand to cushion their falls before I went to make my own escape.

Again time seemed to slow, but it wasn't my doing this time. This time it was the illusion of a person face with their own death. I turned back to the enormous ball of white fire racing toward me and I knew I could not outrun it, it was barely ten feet away from me and closing in fast. I regretted nothing, I had saved them, I had saved them both. I started to run, knowing it was futile but trying anyway. The soft sands crunched and slid beneath my feet, making me lose my footing. I closed my eyes when the heat became too much for me. I didn't want to face death, I know it was cowardly but I couldn't look at my maker.

Step Between.

My eyes snapped open. A voice? It was a voice I had never heard before. It was powerful, much larger then anything human, but also somehow familiar, and it had come from inside me. Next I felt the flame of cold power inside me start to fade... no, not fade. They were draining somewhere, powering something. The strangest sensation over came me just then. It was like nothing I had ever felt before ... something my mind couldn't even begin to name or categorize.

And then came the pain.

Crushing force. I tried to scream out but I couldn't move or even speak. Impossible force pushed down on me from all sides, forcing the air from my lungs and making every bone feel like it was breaking. It felt like I was being jammed through the dimensions, pressed into another part of the world with the force of a thousand men. And for a moment, only a moment ... there was silence. Total silence. Nothing. I tried to open my eyes, but there was nothing and everything. It was like I was looking at the entire world and nothing all at once. It was maddening. I tried to scream or move or anything, but I was trapped. There was no air here, no space or sense of gravity; but at the same time everything existed here. I could see everything, my home in the south pole, an old man fishing on a small stream, the palace of Ba Sing Se, a small girl's birthday party, the airships I had been watching. Everything, was here, but not here at the same time.

I just wanted to make sure Toph, Katara and Aang were all okay.

I cried out as everything came back into existence. Light, sound, heat, the sun was burning my eye. I twisted away from the light and looked ... down?

What the hell was going on? I was nearly two hundred feet in the air, and falling fast. The wind screamed in my ears as my aching muscles tried to grab onto something, anything to stop my fall, but there was nothing to grab onto two hundred feet in the air. A flash blinded me once again as I screamed out and threw my hands up in front of my face, and then the impact of a deafening explosion hit me hard, almost knocking me the rest of the way unconscious. I fell for what seemed like forever; blind, deaf and confused before I heard voices.

"Toph, soft sand now! Sokka's falling!"

"Sokka, I got you." Toph? It was Toph. A fraction of a second later I met a column of soft sand that was reaching up for me. It was soft, well, softish. But it felt great to know where the ground was for once.

I must have passed out for a moment there, because the next thing I knew I was being... poked? I opened my eyes and Toph was kneeling right beside me, poking me in the cheek.

"Sokka wake up, Katara's broken or something."

I squinted at the sunlight, trying to get my vision to focus, and then I saw what had been so bright. A deathly black mushroom cloud rolled over itself lazily nearly three kilometers into the sky. I didn't know any words that could possibly describe what I was feeling, so I just stared open mouthed up at the remains of my fight.

"Great, are you going to answer me either?" asked Toph from beside me.

Remembering -for once- that she was blind I tried to put into words what I was seeing. "Do you feel those waves of heat washing over us?"

"Hey, you can talk again!" she exclaimed.

"Yeah, the power's gone. But I'm going to have trouble moving and walking and such for a day or so."

"You okay?"

"Yeah, I'm good. Well, better than Yasuragi anyway."

"So... what's with Katara?" I looked over to where Katara was also gaping at the black cloud. "She said you were falling, then something about it drying out her hair and then I couldn't get anything from her."

"A smoke cloud from that last explosion is rising up into the sky, its so tall it can probably be seen for a good hundred kilometers."

"Wow," she said, turning her face into the heat. "That was one hell of a fight, hey Snoozles?"

"Yep, and it ain't over yet," I stated simply.

"What?"

"Yasuragi's still got enough power to say in possession of Aang's body for a few more minutes," I said, unsure of the exact time as the awesome mathematical powers of the Archive had left me.

"She's mine," Toph growled before stomping off in the direction of the cloud.

"No, Toph wait," I called through a bloody smile. Little Warrior Toph off to do battle. "I got her, she has no power left. She can only bad mouth us for a little while longer then she's back to wherever she crawled out from."

"You sure?"

"Positive," I said from my place on the sand. I tried to get up, but was rewarded with electrical pain shooting up my back and across my aching chest. I gasped out in pain and immediately left myself fall back onto the sand. When the pain had passed and I reopened my eyes Toph was bending over me again.

"Are you going to be okay? And no macho stuff; the truth," said Toph, crouching back down beside me. I laid back down flat for a moment taking a tally of my injuries.

All of my muscles were strained, not ripped or anything so I should be pretty good after a nights sleep. I tested my back, after all I didn't do a good job putting my shoulder back in last time. But it seemed good. "I think I just over worked some muscles."

"Which ones?"

"Uh, all of them?" I replied weakly.

"Smart, you going to do that again anytime soon?" Toph snorted.

"If I have to," I said seriously.

For a long drawn out moment Toph just looked at me, thinking. "I don't want you to kill yourself doing some hero crap."

"I know, I don't want to do that either."

"Alright, I believe you. Just stick to that. Now lets go and make sure that the fire chick knows who she messed with," she said before getting up and starting the trek over to where the cloud still rose.

"Uh, Toph?" I called out weakly, feeling an embarrassing blush forming. "I can't get up."

Toph burst out laughing as she walked back to me. "Way to go hero."

"Hey, I'm injured here. Show some respect," I said, pouting.

"Pansy," Toph said as she pulled over of my arms over her shoulder and -with a little help from Earth bending- heaved me to my feet. I could have responded to her pansy comment, should have, but suddenly feeling her again me, supporting me, blanked out my mind again. While I should have been making a smart remark I was thinking that she had really soft skin beneath the callouses on her hands, and that's not to mention the rest of her.

"Um," Toph mumbled, while blushing slightly. "So, how did you get over here so fast? It seemed like you just threw us away and then when we landed you were already falling, screaming like a little girl."

I might have made a comment on her blush, or said that I didn't scream like a girl but a mind shattering realization struck me, casting all of that from my mind.

I was standing, mostly, and I could see where I had landed; as well as where the fireball had detonated. What stuck me silent was the fact that I remembered being only a few feet from the ball of flames right before they had impacted with the ground, and...

I looked back at where my body had stamped a Sokka print in the sands of the desert.

I had traveled nearly a kilometer and a half in a fraction of an instant before the explosion, and not only that; I looked up into the sky. I had somehow ended up two hundred feet in the air while doing so.

What the hell just happened to me?

-

It took us a little while to hobble over the thousand and a half feet back to where Yasuragi stood frozen, unable to move Aang's body on the edge of an gargantuan glass crater at least a half a kilometer across that had once been the peaceful oasis. As we came into sight she glared at us with cold uncaring green eyes.

It was harder to face her this time and not attack her. Now that I didn't have the Void showing me Aang trapped beneath her all I saw was a wild eyes woman spitting curses and damnations at me. Her armor, although just an illusion was still shattered and in tatters, hanging from her, held on by a few chinks of chain mail and thread.

"Henkotsu, I command you as your Avatar to kill that tyrant before he destroys everything," she shrieked. I almost pitied her like this, but then I remember that she threatened Toph and Katara and all that held me back from her throat was the knowledge that it was also Aang's. That and the fact that I was about as mobile as an upside down turtle-duck. Damn weak body.

So there I was, hanging between Toph and Katara; both of them working together to do what my unmoving legs could not right now. Both of them cursed and threatened Yasuragi, but they did not attack. I had told them about Aang's entrapment on the way over here. I let them scream for a while as I just hung there, studying my enemy. I was the first Incarna in many thousands of years to survive my encounter with her, and I knew she wanted to know how. Any moment now, she'd get tired of yelling about how she would kill me and ask the big question.

"Well, Sir Incarna? Why don't you just call upon the healing properties of the spirit and get on with killing me," she spat at me. There it was at last; and here we go.

"I have not met with the White Wolf yet."

"Deceiver!" she screeched. "You had too much power to be without the spirit. Do you expect me to believe that an unmerged human was able to teleport over fifteen hundred meters to escape that blast?"

"Well, that's what happened."

"Lie all you want Incarna. No one, especially not a human could attain that kind of power without the spirit."

"You were human," I said evenly

"I was different," she hissed.

"How so?"

"We are completely different!"

"Exactly," I said, getting a confused look from her. "We are complete polar opposites, the Yin and Yang, just like that Incarna and Avatar always are."

"Don't spew these ancient ideals at me deceiver."

"He's not a liar!" yelled Katara.

I wasn't a liar; but the Incarna once was. I remember saying the same thing to a little girl with red hair and gold eyes, long ago. I remember when she trusted me and what I stood for. I remember how I betrayed that trust. So I kept my mouth shut. I had no right to talk.

"He is a power hungry tyrant that has you all tricked," Yasuragi shouted back, trying to lean into Katara for more emphasis.

"I am not a tyrant, and I have not tricked my family into anything; they now know my deepest secrets," I said calmly. Someone had to keep a cool head during all of this. "Though, I cannot deny I crave power."

"The deceiver admits it!" crowed Yasuragi. To her it was vindication, the kind of admission she'd never gotten once, in thousands of years; I'm not such a petty guy that I'd deny her a moment of triumph. Especially since it cost me nothing.

"What?" breathed Katara, looking between me and Yasuragi, obviously lost. Even Toph raised an eyebrow as she felt my heart beat confirm that I was telling the truth.

"It is also true that I will fight, tooth and nail to never give this new power up," I said, staring hard into Yasuragi's eyes. "But, I do not crave power for selfish reasons. Imagine what would have happened today if I had been weak? Would I have been able to save everyone? Yes, me having this power provoked our fight. But what about the next time the Fire-Nation attacks? Or when we finally have to face the Fire Lord? I will not be a burden upon the others, I will be just as powerful as any of them and protect them just as they protect me."

My sister and Toph were both watching me intently in their own ways as I spoke these feelings for the first time.

"I will never hold them back again, and I will never put them in danger as they try to protect weak little Sokka. I am not Incarna, the tyrant. I am Incarna, the powerful, the protector. And the spirits will have no mercy on my enemies."

"Fool," laughed Yasuragi. "Do you really believe that?"

"Yes," I said. There wasn't much else to say.

"Well, your are an even better deceiver than even I thought; you believe your own lies. I almost pity you when He comes for your soul."

She looked almost mournful in that second, as if the idea of killing someone like me made even a hardened killer like her pause. Then it was gone and only conviction remained in her expression. "But know this Sir Incarna, I will return to this body when you least expect it and I will succeed in killing you next time."

"No you won't."

"What?" hissed Yasuragi.

"For one, Aang will never let you over take his body again. He knows you are a danger to us and he will fight you with everything he has next time," I said, drawing smirks from both girls. "And secondly, I'm sure you noticed that his body cannot reach the Avatar state?"

"What does that have to do with anything?" asked Toph.

"Everything," I said quietly. "You see. I can only safely hold about nine to ten percent of the Incarna's power in that cold mode thingy you saw, the 'Incarna state' if you will. I can push it to almost thirteen, but that's very dangerous; for both me and everyone around me. But the thing is, the secondary states, for both me and the Avatar multiply our power by quite a lot. For me it's me ten fold, for the Avatar it's more like twenty. So, if Yasuragi had the Avatar state she would have kicked my ass easily, but she couldn't reach it."

"I'll kill you next time," said Yasuragi while she ground her teeth.

"I thought that I already told you. No, you won't," I said in a painful sweet voice. I stared her down for a long time. There were still a few things I wanted to talk to her about while I had her powerless, but one of them I could begin to even admit to myself.

"Mouretsu said that you wrongfully accused the Old Ones of horrible atrocities and that was what brought on this war."

"One deceiver being guided by the lies of another," Yasuragi said, strangely calm and collected compared to a minute ago.

"After what I just saw, I may have changed my opinion. You forcibly took control of Aang's body and did not even give me chance to prove to you I was not a bad person, you immediately attacked with the intention to kill. How many of my fellow decent Incarnae have you murdered in your genocidal campaign against us? How many Gel-Hassad have you massacred because you could?"

"You were all power hungry and had shown traits that could only lead to monstrosity," said Yasuragi in a low dangerous voice.

"I call you out on acts of tyranny," I said smoothly, ignoring the constant stream of promised demise from the maniacal Avatar before me. "I don't know if Mouretsu is right, but I am more inclined to believe him after seeing the narrow minded psychopath willing to sacrifice her own people fighting a man who has not given any indications of wanting to be a 'tyrant', as you so easily put it."

"I will not give up on the world so easily Sir Incarna," said Yasuragi in a completely honest voice. This was it, I had to say it. I might be scared to death of it, but it needed to be dealt with.

"Its a little rich for you to be talking about tyranny," I said as calmly as I could.

"I will not be tricked by you, Incarna. Spout all of the lies you want," spat Yasuragi.

"What has happened to your mighty Jenkotsu?" I asked softly, and the madness in her eyes dimmed ever so slightly. Maybe she was really listening to me. I suppose I had to hope. "The four strongest bender clans in all of the world were given four scrolls of forbidden techniques by the Avatar soon after the Great War with the Old Ones. Each was told to train one, and only one warrior that could stand as their own army against the forces of oppression and destruction whenever the Avatar is learning a new body, and to be the Avatar's fists whenever he calls upon them. Isn't that right? You created the Jenkotsu as your own elite forces?

"And I'm glad my successor had the strength of mind to create them after all of the bloodshed and lives lost to your war."

"My war?" I said sneering but I put that aside. "Let me ask you this. The world is in total disarray, one nation is trying to rule the world, and they very nearly have. What's left? A few small towns, the Poles, and maybe the resistance of Ba Sing Se? As much as I hate to admit it, I think they have pretty much won. Now let me ask you this; is this not oppression? Is this not leading to the destruction of the world? Well then, where the hell are you precious Jenkotsu now?"

Yasuragi still tried to sneer at me, she even made a feeble attempt at a curse, but I could see I was hitting her where it hurt. "Would you like to hear what the deceiver thinks?"

"No-"

"Too fucking bad," I shouted in her face, whispering voices underlying my own as my fury grew cold again. "An annoying lying bastard of a flea bag once told me that every human, Avatar, Incarna and Jenkotsu included can be corrupted; it's part of our flaws as humans. And as much as I now know I hate that furball, I have to admit she was right."

I leaned forward as far as I could while not pulling Katara and Toph with me. "That means that at least some of your Jenkotsu are behind this damn war. They have been swayed by money or sex or some other vice and they are now trying to destroy the balance of the world!"

For the first time Yasuragi was silent, I could tell she wanted to scream that I was lying, but she couldn't. She knew on some level that I was right. I closed my eyes for a few moments, calming myself. Finally I felt like I could face this person before me without tearing out her throat and continued. "You know about the Archive, right? The Avatar and the Incarna were once allies, I must have told you about the Archive."

Receiving the smallest of nods I pushed on. "Most of the time a person needs a very specific question to get a specific answer, if they try to absorb too much information they are pulled into the Archive and their mind is washed away by it. Well, as the Incarna I have a much higher resistance to the Archive. Why, I don't really know, I just do. The point is until I merge one way or another with the Spirit the amount of information I can get from the Archive and my own intelligence is severely limited. Think comparing a trickling brook to a raging ocean during a hurricane. Anyway, my point is that I was able to look at a much bigger picture then any of the other Spirit Shapers, and I have come to a very disturbing conclusion."

I paused again, gathering my thoughts and courage in preparation to believe what I was about to say. It was true, every word, but it was horrifying on an unreal level. "Something is wrong in the records. The Gel-Hassad or old Spirit Shapers, whatever you want to call them. They believe that this war is their creation, they think they are in control of it, bending it to their own ends. What they don't know is that there are moles in their organization, that there is another player much larger and more powerful then any of us puppeteering the Gel-Hassad and this entire damn war for his own purposes," I laughed, not a happy laugh, but a laugh of disbelief and a supreme want to forget everything I now knew.

"I'm not smart enough yet to know who or what this shadow is yet, but I do know that everything that has happened in the last hundred years is all a result of him. We are all playing his game and no one even suspects it. Each side thinks that they are in control, but they're all wrong, it's this shadow man that is running the whole thing, we're just the pawns; even you and me."

Yasuragi was deathly still, as I continued on with narrowed eyes. "Anyone who plays us for fools gets what they deserve. I just thought you deserved to know. Just this once Yasuragi, let me do my job. I'm going to find them. I'm going to find them and remind them why they should fear their dreams."

The woman's face fell, and I saw the little girl in her once again... and I felt a tug at my heart as she looked at me with that saddened expression. "Very well Sir Incarna. If you live and do not turn as the others have always done, then may you find them and deal with them as you will. However, the second you turn, the second this boy's confidence in your better nature fades, I will be there. I promise."

"I expect nothing less, little sister," I said quietly in the Ancients' tongue. She shuddered painfully and faded away like mist on the wind. Aang's body slumped to the ground. Katara dashed forward and grabbed Aang as he fell. I had half expected it and shifted a little more of my weight onto Toph who took it in stride. I let out a sigh and fell to my knees, Toph lowering me gently. Aang had passed out completely. "We'll have to try to get into the city secretly tonight."

"Why can't we move now, its only noon?" asked Katara a second later after she made sure Aang was okay. She looked up at me still cradling Aang's unconscious head.

"We'll be able to move in under better cover in the dark, and," I paused feeling a heaviness on my heart. I looked down at Aang, not even able to imagine what he had been feeling. "And we'll have to spend a little time with Aang making him know that we don't hate him for what Yasuragi did."

"Why would he think we blamed him for that?" asked Katara in her dangerous voice.

"Because," I said sadly, "he could see and feel everything Yasuragi did, and he couldn't do anything to stop her from trying to kill us with his own hands."

Katara's pale faced expression as she looked down at Aang and the way she gently stroked his black hair made my heart twist. I guess my little sister was growing up. I remembered when Yue had given me that same look, right before I'd volunteered for that suicide mission that never went off. That wasn't the look you gave someone who was 'just a friend'.

Still, I smiled a little, with my bloody teeth shining in the sun. We were alive. I could worry about removing Aang's potential for wandering hands at a later date; besides, all of us needed a break, Aang and me more than anyone.


Jade Knight & Richard Caine

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