Here is the third chapter in Book 5, released on time as promised. This chapter is a shift from what just happened in chapter 2 and introduces the last player of sorts in Book 5 who is new to the series, as well as the next arc of the story but as with Book 3, this is a converging arc so rest assured what has happened in the Northern Air Temple is still relevant and coming back soon to meet up with what is about to happen. That is all I have for now though and as there isn't anything to respond to that means that it time to sit back, relax, and enjoy the 3rd full installment of Avatar: The Tale of Harry. Book 5: Duty.
Disclaimer: As always I own nothing related to these two great works of fiction.
Chapter 3
The young man groaned as he the alarm clock on the upturned crate next to his mattress went off. Grumbling, he pushed his hand out from under his covers and flicked his wrist. The alarm clock went off. It was pure laziness to turn it off by metalbending, but he didn't care, he was too tired to wake right now. That was when he remembered what day it was.
He was still tired but today was an important day for him so with a sigh, he sat up and blinked the sleep out of his eyes. The sheet slipped off him and with reluctance at the lost sleep but ready for the day, the man looked around his meager apartment.
The man lived in a basement apartment under a dumpling store in the Dragon Flats district of Republic City. All it was was a small room with a mattress on the floor, a small crate for a bedside table, a chair and worn desk, a washbasin and a small toilet. There was a shower in a side room, but it was also used by the employees of the shop above, so he had to share it.
It was a cheap, shitty, place in a cheap and shitty area of the city and that made it the best place for him to go unnoticed. He certainly could afford a better place, his parents had made sure of that in such a way that the money he had access to was clean and untraceable to them, but he had decided not to touch it unless he absolutely needed to.
The dangerous nature of the neighborhood he lived in didn't bother him either, he was a talented bender and even earned some under the table cash working security for the legitimate businesses in the area. He needed to fly under the radar for various reasons and this was the place he'd decided would give him the best chance at that so here he was.
Given what he had planned today, that could easily change soon. Today was the day he finally made the trip he had wanted to do for years. It had only been his hesitation and fear over what might happen when he got there that had caused him to delay his decision. However, with the 20th anniversary of the event that had changed his life forever, not that he recalled that day well as he'd only been 6 at the time, he had to make the trip.
With another groan, he got out of bed and winced as his bare feet hit the cold stone floor of the apartment. Grumbling, he pulled on a pair of specialty socks made for earthbenders that kept most of his feet bare so as to maintain contact with his element, the man got up and went to pee. Nature always made its voice known whenever he woke up and he dealt with that first.
When he was done, he went to the small wash basin and filled it with cold water. Splashing his face to wake himself up, he looked at himself in the broken mirror on the wall. The same reflection as always greeted him in it.
At 26 years of age the man was fully grown, standing a little over 6 feet and almost pure muscle, though not enough to make him look like a total meathead. His physique was just a side effect of his years of training and honing his skills.
He knew that he gave off an aura of strength and skill that only came with being a master bender and that was what he was. He was a gifted earth and metalbender but even those who had seen him bend did not know the full extent of his abilities as he kept those hidden from all. It was just one of the many traits he had inherited from his father and why he couldn't show the extent of his skills given how rare his skills were.
He also had his father's unruly black hair that he kept long and unkept to add a roguish, lower class, look to his appearance. It also helped contrast him with the clean-cut image his father had had. If he had the same style he would look just like his dad, and he didn't want to deal with that similarity. Well he would except for his eyes. For some reason had inherited his mother's eyes.
The man looked deep into the mirror and his cool light blue eye stared back at him showing how tired he was at the moment. They had been compared to a calm glacier sparkling in the sun and that was a fitting analogy. His mother had been a waterbender after all and like his father, she had been one of the best of her generation at her bending talent but all he'd inherited for her were her eyes.
it was apparently a strange trait within his family where the eldest son always looked like their father but had their mother's eyes. It had been true for his father and was still true for his grandfather, now it was true for him as well. He knew this because had a picture of his parents on his box and he could tell that his father had had brown eyes. The family tradition had continued with him.
The picture was the only one that he had of them. It had been taken back when he was 7, shortly after he finally met his father, and it was just them. It showed his father in his full regalia, tall and regal, with his arm around his mother. She was smiling and in her finest dark blue dress and Southern jewelry, something that was apparently odd for her, and they looked happy. It had been taken for him personally and by one of the few members of their inner circle who knew the truth.
Few knew that his parents were an item, let alone married and had had a son who was born shortly after the first major moment in his parents' lives. It had been done to protect him and them from potential enemies and to ensure that he was always safe until everything had calmed down and they could live together as a family at last.
He had of course been informed of the truth by his mother while growing up with her, she loved to talk about how amazing his father was but had been sworn to secrecy given his father's situation. He hadn't truly understood it at the time and had only met his father on a few occasions when he returned to their life, though they had been happy times in an uncertain year, but he had kept their secret.
The issue was, and the main reason why he hid his connection to them other than the one picture he had, was that his parents had turned out to not been good people. Yes, he loved them and missed having them in his life but at the same time, he knew the truth of who they were and what they had done.
They had been condemned by the world for their actions. Their names only ever spoken in hushed tones by those who still believe in their views or as derision by those who fought against them or as a warning to not be like them. Their actions had been unforgivable, and the man knew it but they were still his parents so he still loved them, even if he couldn't forgive them for what they'd done.
Alas, even he did not know the full truth of how his parents ended up where they did. His mother, who had hidden him from the world when she was still alive, seldom spoke of her past before she met his father. There had been good reason for this though as he would learn from her personal diaries after he found them a few years after her death.
He had discovered that his mother had had a terrible upbringing complete with physical, emotional, and sexual abuse, drug use, and petty crime before she was 11 but had done a complete 180 when his father saved her from being raped when she was 17. It certainly explained why she had come to worship his father as he'd been the one to save her from herself and help her recover.
By contrast, his father's history was well known but there was still no explanation for how he ended up the way he was. Not even he knew fully how his father had become the man he ended up becoming, though he did know a bit thanks to his mother.
Thanks to her, he knew what they believed and how they had come to believe it because his mother had done her best to indoctrinate him into their believes growing up. Had what had happened 19 years ago not happened then he likely would have followed in their footsteps and shared their twisted views on balance and the world, but fate had decided differently.
When he was 7, his parents had left to finish what they had started almost a year prior, the actual event would take place on the one-year anniversary in fact. They had not come back, however. They had both died on the same day, almost at the same time, trying to end what they had begun once and for all.
He had been told by those he was entrusted too that they would win, that they would return victorious and full of glory but that had been a lie. Of course, he had been devastated, he was 7 and had just lost both of his parents. He had sworn revenge on those who had killed them.
There had been a small ray of hope his young mind had clung to back then. His mother's body had never been recovered so he hoped that she'd come back to him. However, it was known how she had ended up in the water and there was no surviving what had happened to her. Still, that had been his initial reaction.
However, he had since changed his stance on it. He had only been 7 when they died, too young to truly fall under their spell despite their attempts to brainwash him. It was in fact the very structure designed to keep him safe that had also allowed him to understand the full story.
There had been a provision for him if his parents fell that day, a failsafe so to speak to keep the movement going. He was to be raised and looked after by loyalists in Republic City who knew of him and trained the way his father had been as his bending had manifested when he was 2 and showed him to be his father's son.
In order to avoid detection, he was to be raised normally by his "uncle and aunt" and they were to blend into society and blend they did. They were two people unknown to all but his parents so they couldn't be taken away from him. They had already been pretending to be just another one of the many neutral families during the incident so when it ended and the "husband" took in his older brother's son who'd been orphaned because of the incident, no one batted an eye at them.
As such he had been integrated into normal society when he was 7, had gone to the Elemental Academy when he turned 11 where he had excelled in bending and academics but had deliberately held back to as to not stand out. It was all done to protect him from any potential scrutiny of his parentage.
They had all acted normally, only speaking of the good days in private when he was home for long breaks from the Academy. However, as he got older, learned more, and broadened his horizons, especially at the Academy where his foster parents couldn't reach him, he began to realize just how wrong his parents' views had been.
They had a noble goal on the surface, but ignoble means to achieve it while also not understanding something crucial about the nature of the world that ensures that it would never going to work. The more he learned about what they had done, especially precisely what his mother was as he had not been informed on the extend of her special skills until he got to the Academy, he had begun to see the full picture.
What he learned was that they had not been good people. They had not been the great heroes who had been defeated by the ignorant opposition that they were made out to be by his foster family, but rather the aggressors who'd committed evil to accomplish their goals. That was when he realized that he had to get away from those who still had influence over him.
He kept all of this to himself though, while squirreling away enough cash to be comfortable, so that when he graduated from the Academy, he disappeared from their lives for good. As far as anyone was concerned he had gone to the Swamp on a journey of discovery and never returned from it so he'd either died there or chosen to stay as a hermit seeking enlightenment.
He had indeed gone to the Swamp, that part had been true. However, he had gone there to walk the Path of Remembrance and Revelation and the Swamp, in its strange ways, had shown him just what he needed to see.
He saw that his parents had loved him dearly, but that they also had a vision for the world. It had stemmed from a good purpose, but his father had twisted it and gone to extremes to achieve it while his mother followed him in complete devotion to his father's vision.
That vision had been what had led his father and those who followed him down the path of darkness and destruction. Their deaths had been their own doing and it was in that moment that he had given up the last vestiges of his hatred and revenge against those who had killed them. They had done what was necessary in the heat of battle to prevent them and his parents could have killed them at the same time but had lost the encounters.
He saw the whole truth and renounced any lingering views he may have held. He shed the name he had gone by at the Academy and retook his birth name, the name only his parents knew as that had been kept secret from all but them and returned to Republic City via a different route a changed man.
He knew what he had access too, but he didn't access it unless absolutely necessary. He kept a special bunker in the warehouse district that only he could access where he kept the personal stuff he needed, files that his parents had that no one had ever seen, as well as backup cash and weapons. He didn't need it, but it was useful to have, and he had been raised to always have multiple backup plans that only he knew about.
Instead, he rebranded himself as an honest man, doing odd jobs for cash or food to help out the folk in the worst area of the city and living there, away from the affluent neighborhood he had grown up in, where his foster family still lived, and all the comforts he had known. It had been a form a penance for his parents' crimes, but it was also what he needed.
That had been 8 years ago. Now he was ready to finally deal with the last thing that he needed to deal with. He had to go and see it to hopefully find that last bit of closure regarding his parents' actions. He had to let his father know that he forgave him for what he did, for what had happened, and for barely being in his life. It was also to forgive those who had killed his parents and to finally close the past behind him and start anew.
All of this had been going through his mind as he got ready for his journey of forgiveness as he called it. He had had a quick shower, dressed and grabbed his bag before leaving and locking the apartment behind him with his bending. The last thing he had packed was the picture of his parents, that was something personal to him and he always made sure he had it one him whenever he left for an extended period of time or at least that it was hidden so that no one saw it and learned the truth.
The man was dressed to travel anywhere without notice. He wore a simple pair of black pants, dark gray tunic that hugged his body, a black jacket and a forest green traveling cloak with a hood that he would raise and keep up as soon as he needed to conceal his face. Lastly, he wore a pair of old, worn, but sturdy metal boots designed for metalbenders.
Naturally, he was not unarmed. He had a pair of metal spools on his belt under his shirt and a pair of forearm bracers under his jacket but over his tunic sleeves. The bracers had hidden blades in them that he could bend into existence at a moments' notice. He felt that he was ready for anything.
He made his way through the storage corridors under the store, up the back stairs and into the kitchen of the small shop he lived beneath. It was the typical hole in the wall noodle and dumpling store, though more known for the former not the later. It was also a favorite of the neighborhood and respected and protected from the Triads and other criminals.
As he got reached the kitchen, the owner and head chef had just finished cooking up a fresh batch of meat dumplings for the breakfast crowd and they smelled great. They were the best in the area after all so that was to be expected.
"Hey S, you're up." The chef said to him with a smile on his broad face. "Good to see. You heading out for a bit?"
"Hey, yeah I have places to be and need to get going." The man said with a smile back at the chef. "Can't sleep in anymore as I got to get to this task nice and early."
He seldom used his full name, another form of protection as his name was rather rare for an earthbender to have and would thus cause way to many uncomfortable questions. Most just knew him as S or some variant of that. It was the first letter of his name, so it worked and helped keep another layer of separation from him and his family.
"Ah sleep, that foreign concept." The chef said with a chuckle. "Been years since I had a good night. Between the business, the misses, and the kids, I can barely get a wink these days."
"Yeah that's why I enjoy the bachelor lifestyle." S said in reply. "I can basically do what I want when I want. So long as I am on time when I am needed that is."
"Ah I miss those days." The chef said with a touch of nostalgia in his voice. "But one day you will find the right woman and settle down, maybe start a business like me and produce kids of your own. I know how good you are, you could start a dojo or training center and get yourself a pretty wife through it. Plenty of folks here need a good trainer like you."
"True but it will be hard to tell those who need it for protection from those who would use it to help further their crimes." S lied because as a truth seer, he could easily tell who was there for protection or to get better and those who were there to use what he taught them for evil, but he didn't need to tell people that he could detect lies. "And a truth seer that is trustworthy is far too expensive in this area."
"Aye, true, only the Triads can pay for them and those are ones who you can't trust given who employs them." The chef said shaking his head. "Well think on it at least, you are nearing the age to settle down and we'd all love to help. You have been a great service to me and the other legit businessmen in this area, we all owe you."
"Just doing my job." S replied. "I don't like criminals or those who use their power to exploit, threaten, intimidate, or otherwise bully others into getting what they want. Someone has to stand up and I have those skills."
"That you do." The chef said with a nod. "I hear you were doing so last night down at Wu Wu's Tavern. Some attempted robbery or something."
"If only, those are easy to deal with." S said shaking his head. "The wanted protection money and for Wu Wu to push their drugs out of his backroom. Wu Wu isn't clean, and that backroom has some high stakes, not entirely legal, Pai Sho tables but that is something most don't care about as the tables aren't rigged. They wanted to sell their drugs there so that they could fleece people while they were high. Wu Wu runs an honest gambling racket and refused."
"Well as honest as a gambler can be in these parts." The chef said with a chuckle. "But I take it you taught them the errors of their ways."
"I am a licensed security operator so I can do what I need to do in self-defense and Wu Wu has cameras everywhere but his backroom." S replied. "A little bending against the first punk to try something showed them not to fuck with me. Nothing serious, only a few broken bones, and we delivered them to the local RCPD station. Turns out they were all wanted with some having a decent bounty on their heads, so I got a little bonus."
"Anything to help clean the streets but their like roaches." The chef said with a sigh. "For everyone you see, there are a dozen more you don't."
"Don't have to tell me twice." S said with a hint of annoyance in his voice. "I swear every time I have to stop something its almost always some new punk who is trying to cut his teeth against me. Most of the time they lose those teeth within moments of trying."
"A rock to the face will do that." The chef agreed. "You'd think they'd learn not to fight an earthbender in a city but some of them are more balls than brains."
"Or a fist." S pointed out. "I only bend when I need to, no point in beating a punk with that when I don't need it. Only those who show some skill get the rocks and those tend to be the ones with more brains than balls."
"Spoken like someone who knows how to embarrass people." The chef said with a laugh. "Guess you learned that trick on the job."
"Best way to reinforce it to these assholes that their bending doesn't give them power is to beat their asses without it." S replied simply. "Those who show skill get mine and then they see a bender greater than they are and are quickly beaten."
"I've seen your bending, just last week in fact when you helped out here with that latest Triad offshoot trying to make its bones in the neighborhood." The chef replied. "It's good, very good though as a nonbender I am not a great judge of ability."
"Practice, that's all it is." S said instinctively deflecting. "Though few of these gutter elephant rats really test me anymore. Now just my mere presence is enough most of the time."
"Aye it helps, more so than the RCPD." The chef said with a note of scorn in his voice at the law enforcement in the city. "They've never cared about this area much."
"I dunno, Chief Lily has at least been more active as of late." S said with a shrug at the mention of the Chief of Police. "She has at least tried since the war; she is a veteran of it so she knows what suffering is but there is only so much she can do. I keep an eye on the reports at the local station and most of the people I bring there end up in prison so that is good. There are also more patrols, especially when I am not on duty."
"I guess, just hard as I've lived here all my life and am hardly convinced." The chef said with a sigh. "Both before, during and after the Principate and no matter what happens, this area stays the same. I will admit that it is cleaner these days, in no small part thanks to you S. Enough of that though, where you off too?"
"I have somewhere to be, so I am leaving the city for a few days at least, maybe longer." S replied vaguely. "Not sure when I will be back if I'm honest."
"I can tell, well you will be missed but after last night it will be a few days before the punks come out again." The chef said. "That will give us time to prepare if they do return."
"Yeah and there should be more patrols, I did tell the local sergeant that I am friendly with I was heading out for a couple days." S responded. "He promised to beef up the police presence at night to help out."
"That is good to know." The chef said though he didn't sound too convinced at S's statement. "So, is this business or personal?"
"Personal." S responded and left it at that.
"Ah I see, well have fun." The chef said with a wink taking his statement as it was intended to be and not what S was actually doing. "Take this for the road. They're your favorite."
The chef then scoped some of the fresh dumplings off the pan and put them in a takeout bag. He then tossed them over. Catching them deftly, S just nodded at the chef and left without another word as he was starting to cut it a little close.
Taking a still hot dumpling out of the bag, he took a bite and savored the slightly spicy and well-cooked meat and light sauce that made the dumplings so good. It was a nice perk of helping out at the shop from time to time and he enjoyed them as he walked to the train station.
"Yo S what up!"
"How's it going?"
"I saw what happened last night, we won't be having trouble for a while thanks to you."
"Yeah the whole neighborhood is grateful for what you did last night."
These were just some of the greetings that he received as he walked through the neighborhood towards the main train station for travel into the ISEK from Republic City. As a licensed security guard, he worked odd jobs protecting the businesses and always charged below value for his services unlike the others with the same license in the area.
After all, someone had to help these people out and the RCPD couldn't always be there. This was what he did to help people and to do his part to make up for what his parents had done. It was a rewarding job but there was still the nagging of his past and that was why he had to go and find closure today. He had to close that off and embrace a new future.
It took about an hour to walk to the station. It was the end of summer, so the weather was nice and the walk pleasant for him as it allowed him to clear his head on the way. It had been years since he had been to the station or even left Republic City but he knew the way without an issue. There may have been changes to the trains to make them faster and more efficient, but everything was still simple enough to understand and he knew where to go.
As soon as he left the Dragon Flats district he pulled the hood of his cloak up as he was leaving the area that he lived in and entering one that he might meet someone from his past, and he didn't want that right now. He wanted to look like just another traveler making his way through the world. No one would bother him and that was what happened. He was able to reach the station without a problem.
His talk with the chef had cut it close. He had hoped to be able to grab a coffee, a snack, and a paper for the train but by the time he reached the station he knew there was no time for any of that, though the dumplings had served as the snack on the way. He would have to get them on the train for the higher price that the train charged but that wasn't a problem for him.
"Last call for the express train departing platform 9 for Omashu!" An announcer called almost as soon as he reached the area of the station where the platforms were, thankfully he was already by platform 10 when the announcement came in. "The train will be leaving in 5 minutes."
The man didn't run but walked quickly to the train, flashed his ticket to an inspector and got on just in time. He had booked a cheap seat in the coach class and as the train pulled away from the station, he made his way to the back until he found a carriage that only had a few people in it and took a seat at the end that ensured no one would bother him. He put his bag on the seat beside him and pulled the cowl of hood over his face to make it look like he was sleeping.
Instead he was thinking. He needed to compose himself as they entered the ISEK and prepare himself for where he was going and what he had to do when he got there. It was something that he had to be in the right state of mind for this and the train ride would allow that.
He knew that his mother's body would likely not have been found, it had been 19 years since her death and it had never resurfaced in that time, but his father's hadn't suffered the same fate. It was not common knowledge and it had taken a lot of investigation, another reason why he had taken so long to make this trip, but he had eventually found out where it was buried.
The reports had said that his father had been cremated and his ashes scattered so as to not make his tomb a pilgrimage sight for those who still believed in what he said. That was what had happened to others like him, but the man had doubted that was the truth given who his father was.
His doubts had been right in the end. He had discovered that his father had not been cremated but had in fact been buried in his family's tomb in the tombs of Omashu, his family's hometown. The grave was specially designed to prevent desecration, but it was definitely there. That was why he had to go to see it. He had to pay respects to his father, get closure, and see the extent of his father's crimes that existed in the tomb itself.
Then again, when your father had been the Princeps himself it was no wonder that they had hidden the fact that he had been buried in the family tomb alongside his ancestors. After all, he was one of the greatest criminals in history, a madman who plunged the world into a devastating war the likes of which it had never seen given the short timeframe of the war. The Princeps had killed countless people including his own brother before his father, the Avatar had killed him.
That was also why Sirius had made it a point to do anything to not be connected to his father for numerous reasons, he couldn't let people know who his father had been. This was likely going to get the secret out in some small way, but he had to do it for himself, and he would deal with the fallout when it happened.
All of this was on Sirius's mind as the train sped across the Earth Kingdom towards his ancestral home, the tomb of his father and the location where almost all of the few living family he had left lived, specifically his grandparents. More importantly it was where his grandfather, the Avatar, was.
Hopefully, they wouldn't meet, and he could get this over with without incident, but Sirius doubted that that would be the case. Fate didn't like to be simple like that and no doubt had some twist in store for him. Still, he had to do this. He had to see his father's tomb, he had to pay his respects and most importantly he had to get closure. Whatever happened when he got there happened.
Well, here is that nice little foreshadowing surprise from the end of the last chapter, the reveal that James and Sylvia had a son together and hid him from everyone and was so secret that he is not mentioned in Book 4 at all, though I think I allude to him at times. I used James's middle name from the HP canon for Sirius's name so as to keep some similarities there but otherwise he is effectively an OC, though his role is minor but sorta important in Book 5. Y'all will have to wait and see what happens with him though, especially when he reaches Omashu as the Omashu arc begins and for the first time since Book 1 we see the city that the Avatar is from. However, that is all I have for now so I will leave it here. As always any questions in PMs or reviews will be answered before the start of the next chapter (as well as replied to if possible). Please follow, favorite and review, all are greatly appreciated. Until next week.
Stringdog