New chapter coming up for We'll Meet Again. Sorry to keep you waiting.
Nobody: [waiting]
Well, whatever. Anyway, I hope this confession is a little more substantive than other recent ones have been. Now, enjoy another crossover disclaimer!
Eureka: Sorry, Samtana, but you don't own Avatar.
Samtana: Aw, why do you have to be so mean, Eureka?
Eureka:
Why are you calling me names? Is it because I'm an alien? Don't
look at me; I'm hideous! [runs off whimpering]
Renton: Not
again. I'll go get her.
Samtana: Does this happen a lot?
Renton: Yeah.
Jun's Confession
"So, you want to be a bounty hunter, huh? Look to your left. Now look to your right. None of the people you just looked at will ever become a bounty hunter. That's because bounty hunters don't exist."
Jun turned to her left to see a smiling classmate fading away into the background, evaporating into the air right in front of her eyes. Jun whipped her head to the other side and watched in horror as another classmate, an old friend from home, started melting to the ground like a burning candle, her hand waving lightly in the air as it decomposed. Soon Jun, breathing heavily, was left alone in the classroom with only her burly instructor to look at.
"You see?" said her instructor as Jun's head swiveled about, looking for the others who used to be in the room with her. She was so cold now. The room was so empty. "You have no chance to succeed. Your new life will be filled with solitude and isolation. This loneliness you feel is unacceptable."
"What happened to my friends?" demanded Jun.
"They don't exist," said her instructor with a menacing grin. "They never did. You never had friends or family or anyone close to you. Your only drive in life was to grow into a legendary occupation that doesn't exist. That has been your life for all of eternity."
"But bounty hunters do exist," Jun asserted, trying to match the menace of her instructor. "I saw one in my home village growing up."
Her instructor laughed, a hearty, booming laugh that echoed through the hallways all around and the tree leaves above, the vibrations all focusing their strength on the defiant ears of the woman seated in the middle. "What you saw was a mirage, the result of an overactive imagination produced by a childhood of dreadful solitude. You confuse fantasy with reality, little girl!"
Suddenly Jun felt herself shrinking in her chair. She felt pigtails poking out of her head, and she lifted the braids in front of her eyes to confirm it. She wore a checkered kimono and a thin film of makeup on her nose where a pimple throbbed lightly. It was just as she remembered.
"I know what I saw!" she said with her cracking pubescent voice. "Don't you tell me what's real and what's not!"
"Why not?" boomed the man, his voice louder with his newly enhanced size advantage over her. "I am your instructor, and I know how this world works. Why shouldn't I be the one to teach you what is real and what isn't?"
"Because," snarled Jun, "I saw a bounty hunter kill my dad." She stared daggers at her instructor, but he dodged each one, leaving them buried in the corkboard behind him. "My dad was a troublesome rebel fighting against the Fire Nation's presence in my home village, so a lot of people wanted him dead. Especially me. He beat me each day, and he would always tell me how I would never amount to anything, how my brother had all the good genes in the family. I wanted him dead so badly that when the bounty hunter rode into town and cut his head off, it was the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen. At that moment and every moment since, all I've ever wanted to be was a bounty hunter like the man who killed my father. So don't tell me they don't exist! And don't tell me my friends don't exist either, because they're sitting right here next to me!"
The chair on Jun's left was filled by a girl fading into focus slowly, like she was being bled out by the colors around her. On her right a girl was melting in reverse until she attained the form of a living, breathing young woman, her hand waving idly in the air. "Thank goodness!" she exclaimed, the confident voice of the friend Jun remembered. "I was getting sick of not existing!"
"Not possible!" exclaimed the burly instructor, sweat dotting his upper lip. "How could you… why is this…"
"And I am not a little girl anymore!" shouted Jun, sprouting as her voice spilled out, the pigtails blending into the rest of her hair, the kimono melting into her familiar outfit.
"There are no bounty hunters!" stumbled the instructor, stepping back into the wall. "There is no such thing! The man you saw kill your father, he was no bounty hunter! He was a Fire Nation soldier with direct orders from Fire Lord Ozai! There are no bounty hunters!"
"Yes there are!" retaliated Jun, jumping to her feet and sending her chair careening backwards and through the window behind her. "Because the person who hired my father's killer was me!"
Wind began to blow from behind the burly instructor with incredible force, throwing Jun's classmates through the threshold and into the empty black void where the window used to be. Jun was able to hold her ground in her aggressive standing position, but everything in the room was being sucked inevitably into the black hole. The Burly instructor was quickly sucked in, as were the chairs and desks and daggers stuck in the wall. Soon the walls themselves followed suit, then the echoing hallways and trees all around, and soon there was no way that Jun could resist the darkness any longer. Letting herself go, she allowed the current to sweep her away.
With that, Jun snapped out of her reverie. She was in a small room, facing a cowering young man, his shivering back against the wall. His eyes were wide and terrified, his breathing harsh and rapid. In his left hand he clutched what looked like a pendulum with a small, decorated weight on the other end.
"You bastard," Jun spat, standing up.
Within moments the young man was tied and gagged, knocked unconscious by a bulging bruise on his temple. Jun left the hut with the young man draped across her shoulders and looked out over the forest scenery under the moonlight, a solitary cloud splitting celestial orb in two. The nighttime, the trees, the wind, the cloud covering the moon, all of it was definitely real.
"What a pesky hypnotist," she said to herself. "No wonder the Earth King was so desperate to catch him."
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Mmm, she shouts a little bit more here than she does in the show. Well, emotions bring out unseen aspects in people. I wonder who those two classmates/friends were.
Thanks Sarcastic Ninja for the suggestion for this one. Really, thanks. I think I'll adapt this one to be a non-fan fiction at some point. I had a lot of fun writing this. Have a yellow penguin.
-samtana
