Chapter 3: Invert The Idols
A/N: I knew I was going to catch some flack in terms of modeling Ashura's eyes after the Sharingan, but this isn't a crossover story and in no way shape or form will they both be the same thing. I just really think the design is cool. Plus, I am a fan of both Naruto and Attack on Titan, so there will be some inspiration drawn from both series. I've never actually written an actual story before, so cut me a break as I am doing this mainly for my own personal enjoyment and to improve my writing skills. All constructive criticism is welcomed. Thanks and enjoy!
"Better to be a lone pariah walking with truth than a false messiah damning with lies."
From dust we came and to dust we would return.
Or in my specific case, sand.
After the partial massacre I had inflicted upon the Si Wong desert bandits, I took the rest of the gang into my own personal custody and forced Ghashiun and Sha-Mo, who had finally revealed themselves as the ringleaders of the tribe, to guide me to the divine one with blue arrows.
The sand gliders had been destroyed in the skirmish between myself and the sandbenders, so I forced the remaining Hami tribesmen to shuffle across the Si Wong Desert with sand shackles I had bended to their hands and ankles. In an almost comical replication of a chain gang, the sandbenders made their away slowly through the desert with their heads held down in fear with the blood of their fallen comrades still weighing heavily upon their minds.
I allowed Ghashiun and Sha-Mo to lead from the front unchained because I could not afford any delays in my journey. I knew I was close. The Elders, in their incredible foresight, had informed me in the days before my training had concluded that I would need to find the reincarnated savior of this world in the Si Wong, otherwise I would never find him. They also foretold of me being guided across the desert by my fellow sandbenders, but that they were thieves and used sandbending in a bastardized version that diverted from the true Way.
For some unknown reason, I had no sympathy for those that took sandbending away from the true art that it was and morphed it into an inferior form that was no longer revered by the bending nations. Perhaps, it was from the education I had been taught by the Elders or maybe it was from a personal change of the soul that had occurred when I had crossed over from my previous life. Whatever the reason being, I knew that I was no longer the person that I once was. If only I could figure out who I was from before….
There was no time to think of such trivial matters.
I walked from the rear of the chained up desert degenerates, keeping a close eye on each one because I had no desire to be dealing with any potential escapees. I held no fear or worry of Ghashiun or Sha-Mo making an attempt towards freedom as they both knew I would have no mercy upon either them or their fellow Hami tribesmen.
The fear that had shown through Sha-Mo's eyes as I held the Medusa-head blade to his throat was also another clear indicator.
My starry-red eyes could read the depths of his soul and I saw something that even had me a little shook. Recognition.
I had never met these individuals in my life and yet this man from another world somehow knew me. Sha-Mo spoke to me in absolute reverence as he regarded me with the importance of a deity and I still don't know why he would refer to me as such. Meanwhile, Ghashiun looked at me with the hate of a thousand devils.
I closed my eyes and smelled the hot desert air. Yes. The scent was unmistakable. We were close.
"Stop right here," I said to the Hami chain gang and made my way towards the front of the pack.
I stood in front of Sha-Mo and Ghashiun while I tied my now shoulder length brown hair into its signature wispy bun. "He's close, isn't he?"
"Yes, my lord," Sha-Mo said with his head bowed, while Ghashiun looked at him in disgust.
"We've given you what you wanted! Now, will you release us or will you continue to keep as prisoners you sick bastard!" Ghashiun exclaimed. Sha-Mo smacked his son upside the head, which resulted in a yelp of "Ouch!" and quickly reverted back to his position of worship.
"I apologize for my son's foolishness, my lord. He is ignorant of our way and lore, especially when it comes to who You truly are," Sha-Mo explained. Ghashiun twisted his face in embarrassment over the public chastisement. He seemed to be in utter disbelief as to why a man as proud as his father was stuck in a state of absolute awe and servitude.
"Tch. You're nothing but a fool old man," Ghashiun said, while pointing an accusatory finger at Sha-Mo. "He kills our comrades and you have the gall to just sit there to be kicked around like some kind of dog."
I stared at father and son with an impassive look on my face. I really couldn't blame Ghashiun for acting like this because those were the same words I wish I had had the courage to say to my own father, in another form, of course. Regardless, I no longer had the patience to be dealing with anymore daddy issues.
I twirled two fingers in the air and bended a sand muzzle around Ghashiun's mouth to silence the impudent fool. He gasped and clawed at his mouth in order to clear the sand away, but I secured it by closing my fist so that the grains of my element were firmly locked together. Ghashiun's eyes went bloodshot and widened in shock as he tried to yank away the restrainer.
"I'll take it off when we arrive at our destination, until then I don't want to hear a peep from you," I said. I turned to Sha-Mo, who tried to show no reaction to his son's latest gag, and gestured outwards to the Si Wong Desert in front of us. "Your son admitted that he foolishly stole the flying bison away from a young girl, but I know that it belongs to the divine one. We've been retracing Ghashiun's trail for hours to no avail and we're running low on time. Where could the arrow-headed boy be potentially headed next?"
Sha-Mo lifted his head up ever so slowly and raised his misty eyes to meet mine and replied, "If he can't fly out, then there's only one out of few ways out of this spirits forsaken desert that the boy and his friends could've taken. It is perilous and is marred with buzzard wasps at every turn, but it is the only possible path."
"We have fewer grains of sand left in the hourglass than I thought."
After what seemed like hours of traversing across the sand, I noticed plumes of sand erupting into the air off in the horizon. I hastened our pace and when we finally came to be about a couple hundred yards away from our target, what I saw left me feeling slightly amazed.
A small girl with dark hair and dressed in green clothing was earthbending several rocks and shooting them with expert precision towards the buzzard wasps that were attempting to overwhelm her. The buzzard wasps were shrieking in pain as each rock made impact upon them and another girl dressed in blue was helping direct the female earthbender in taking down their insect foes. A boy also clad in blue was waving a hatchet around haphazardly in an attempt to help fend off the swarming buzzard wasps, while the last member of the group was utilizing his airbending in the fight off in the distance.
Despite all this effort, I could tell that the buzzard wasps were going to quickly overwhelm the young travelers and so I ran ahead of the sandbenders to aid in the battle.
"Wait, my lord it isn't safe! Set us free and we will help in the fight against the buzzard wasps!" Sha-Mo shouted while waving his arms. I thought that he made a good point and besides, I had no intention of keeping these men as prisoners for much longer. I knew that the one that I was seeking had to be among this group of travelers.
"Mmmh mmmmm!" Ghashiun attempted to yell through his muzzle. Turning around from my sprint towards the buzzard wasp's nest I replied, "Fine." And with a quick wave of my hand Ghashiun's muzzle and the Hami tribesmen's sand chains fell back to the desert floor.
"Now, kill the buzzards if you want me to allow you to live and go free," I said, as I shot several sand pillars upwards to scare off the swarm of wasps. The sandbenders, Sha-Mo, and even Ghashiun promptly obeyed in combining their strength as one to shoot even more sand pillars forth to scare off the remaining buzzard wasps.
As soon as the insect hybrids left, I approached the group, which comprised of what I guessed were tan siblings clothed in blue and the gray-eyed earthbender. I also spotted a sand glider near them as well. They must have a came across it in the Si Wong, after Ghashiun tried to steal the bison. They looked very wary of me as I studied them with my spinning red eyes and I felt a pang of disappointment because I could've sworn that the divine one had to have been amongst them. I knew the airbender was here.
I could smell it.
Suddenly, as if prophecy had dictated it, the orange-clothed and bald airbender landed in front of his friends, ready to face off against any adversary who dared to make a move against them.
"It's them, my lord! What are you doing in our land with a sandbender sailer!" Sha-Mo accused. "From the looks of it, they stole it from the Hami tribe and have been using it in order to travel across the Si Wong."
Sha-Mo was right. I could sense the strong spiritual presence emanating from his soul and knew it was the powerful individual that the Elders had told me about. The moon spirit whispered the boy's image into my dreams, which only reiterated what I already knew to be true.
It was the divine one.
"We found the sailer abandoned in the desert. We're traveling with the Avatar. Our bison was stolen and we have to get to Ba-Sing-Se," the brunette girl replied.
Now that his muzzle had been removed, Ghashiun wasted no time in vomiting the words that he had been holding back for hours. "You dare accuse our people of theft while you ride in on a stolen sand sailer?!"
Ghashiun waved his fist menacingly at the group, when I noticed that the earthbender began to narrow her eyes as soon as she heard the young sandbender's voice.
"Silence, Ghashiun. A stolen sand sailer is small price to pay compared to what you stole, along with leaving them marooned in the Si Wong," I whispered, not wanting the group to hear. Sha-Mo also turned around to berate his son, "We have to give them hospitality son, especially after what you did."
Ghashiun held his head down in shame. "I'm sorry father."
The dark haired girl's eyes widened. Fuck.
"I recognize the son's voice. He's the one that stole Appa," she said to the tan-skinned girl.
"Are you sure?" the cerulean-eyed girl asked.
"I never forget a voice."
I knew this wasn't going to end well. I rapidly tried to think of a way to defuse the situation that was about to explode, but the divine one took several steps towards us while brandishing his staff threateningly.
"You stole Appa! Where is he? What did you do to him!" the airbender yelled angrily. "Where is my bison?!" The tattooed boy swung his staff down and sent a blast of air our direction.
My eyes locked onto the wind current, but before it could reach us it went to the left of us slightly and crashed into a sand dune. I stood there stoically as the sandbenders around me started to panic. Ghashiun and Sha-Mo looked at me with pleading eyes over the now chaotic state of affairs, but I ignored them and focused my eye sight with all the power I could muster onto the boy's spirit which threatened to take over at any moment. If I was going to get my chance to talk with the divine one, then I needed to find a way to calm him down.
"You tell me where he is now!" the airbender screamed, as he swung the end of his staff upward and sent huge plume of sand up into the sky, which rained down upon us.
"I'm sorry! I didn't know it belonged to the Avatar!" Ghashiun pleaded.
"Oh, please Avatar on behalf of my son and my people, his foolishness brings shame upon us all! Please have mercy!" Sha-Mo begged.
"You said to put a muzzle on him!" the earthbender accused. Time was ticking and I couldn't think of anyway to stop the potential fight that loomed before me. It was settled then. Words would have no effect on the divine one and his friends, so violence would need to be put in place of tact.
"Tell me where Appa is!" the airbender said in an unearthly voice.
"The bison was traded to some merchants," I finally said. "He's probably in the city you call Ba-Sing-Se by now and he'll more than likely be sold there. You have every right to be enraged, but there's nothing we can do about it now. We'll escort you out of the desert, but you'll need to calm down so that we can talk this out."
My words made no headway because the air surrounding the divine one started to spin around him as he fully entered what the Elders told me was the "Avatar State", pulling in sand and creating a small tornado. The tattoos on the boy's skin began to glow blue and eyes also gave off a murderous cerulean glare.
"Just get out of here! Run!" the machete wielding boy screamed as he grabbed the earthbender by shoulders and pulled her away from the airbender. The sandbenders wasted no time in following suit, and they all commended fleeing for their lives.
The only one that bothered to stay behind was the girl with the brunette braid.
I refused to run and turn back now. I had come to far to just give up and escape into the Si Wong like some kind of coward. I had been pulled from my world into another plane of reality that shouldn't even exist in order to fulfill some kind of "lunar destiny" and I didn't intend on not finding out exactly what that meant. Although I didn't remember a damn thing from before, I knew damn well that now would be the only opportunity to finally make sense of the present.
The Sand Serpent awoke in my soul and the red pentagrams within my pupils were spinning as fast they could go. I could see the chi levels within the divine one's body rising and racing through his points at unimaginable speed. What was even more astounding was the airbender's spirit, which multiplied into thousands of other spirits that filled the boy with god-like strength.
The sand tonado grew even larger and spread quickly as the airbender slowly lifted himself from the ground into the air. The tan-skinned girl made her way through the fiece wind and grabbed the glowing boy's wrist, but he only looked down at her with anger and hate. The girl reacted with only an expression of sadness on her face.
Any diplomatic solution to the boy's rage would not suffice. Only the Way would solve this.
I rose right arm and with a snap of my wrist I sent a sand wave that slammed into the girl that was attempting to bring the divine one down from the air. She screamed as I sent directed the it to send her into a nearby sand dune.
I closed my fist and hardened the sand around the girl, which entrapped her within the dune with only her face showing. "Stop it!" she screamed, as she struggled against her sand bonds. "You don't know what you're up against! He's the Avatar! Just leave us alone!"
The boy turned to his female comrade and then looked at me with an even angrier expression than from before, if that was even possible. The wind whipped around us even more and the sand blew at a speed so fast that it wouldn't have been possible to see it with the human eye.
But my eyes could.
I lived and breathed the sand and I was one with it. I wouldn't be stopped in my elemental affinity.
"I don't care if he's the Avatar," I said. "A failed lineage of spirits which have been born again and again to solve the problems of this world, but they fail to do so every time. He or she is worshipped as a deity in every bending nation and this only amounts to nothing but sheer ignorance, which I guess can only amount to bliss as a war has raged on for a hundred years. The extremely disenfranchised and disillusioned are an enemy to those who do not possess the inner flame … your reality is warped, girl… the people here are no safer than a wounded beast backed into a corner, fighting tooth and claw to survive against the fire."
"The Elders told me much about this world and your gods, but nothing as to why I was brought here," I continued in a calm, otherworldly voice. "I will not leave until I have my answers to the questions of the moon."
The bloodsong rang in my ears like the gonging of a church bell and rose in tempo as I harnessed the sand around me, which I sent whipping around me in the form of vicious serpents.
The glowing airbender raced towards me with his staff and sent a powerful gust of air in my direction along with several sand pillars, which morphed into sharp spikes. I unsheathed my Medusa-head blades and sent myself across the sand with lightning speed on a collision course with the Avatar. I spun around the wind in a 360 while slicing the sand spikes in half and sent my sand serpents swirling around them.
The wrath filled Avatar swung his staff downwards at me with all of his might, but I blocked it with a high block from one of my blades.
What happened next was a mere blur as we engaged in a battle of dagger and staff. We moved with the speed of light as we exchanged, parried, and threw ourselves at each other with all that we could muster. We soon became gridlocked as I pushed my daggers on the Avatar's staff in an fruitless effort to overpower him.
Just when I thought all hope would be lost. I remembered what the Elders had told me about a power of the Serpent's eyes.
"If you ever find yourself in a situation where brute strength cannot prevail, then your eyes and song can guide you to victory through the eliciting of a single red note."
I knew what I need to do.
I quickly withdrew my blades away from the Avatar's staff and let it catch onto my right dagger's hilt. I then utilized my left blade and cut the Avatar's left wrist, which bloomed into a short red droplet.
The boy didn't even wince in pain, but the bloodsong within me hummed with new vigor and I capitalized on it by using the full strength of eyes in a complete staredown of the Avatar's glowing ones.
I smirked as soon as the airbender's blue eyes widened in shock.
I teleported myself through the Avatar's chi points and appeared behind the airbender. I did not wish to kill the boy, but only to restrain him. I clasped my hands together and sent my sand serpents in complete orbit around the Avatar's body.
The young airbender struggled against them, but his efforts proved to be in vain as they securely fastened themselves in absolute constriction around the divine one's body. At that moment, the Avatar collapsed and fell to the desert floor while the tan-skinned girl screamed out to him.
The wind finally dissipated and calmed as I descended back to the sandy landscape as well. The no longer glowing boy rolled around in pain as the sand serpents remained tightly fixed around his body.
Now, there would be no distractions. Now, I could finally get the answers that I desired.