legionworld | Azula intro [open]

Entry tags:

Azula intro [open]

Who| Azula
What| Step 1 of Azula's Plan for ~~World~~ Legion Domination: Meet & Greet
Where| Crew Quarters
Warnings/Notes| N/A

This was certainly the most interesting that had happened to Azula for a long, long time. And naturally, she meant to make the most of it.

She looked around. She was in some sort of barracks, she'd heard them called crew quarters. While each person had a fair amount of space to themselves, more than any soldier in the Fire Nation, it was not what Azula was used to.

But still better than where she'd been before.

Of course, where she was didn't exactly matter. Azula knew to succeed her, she would have to have allies. Or at least people who thought she considered them allies. Which meant she had to leave this room and go out there.

She headed to the door, then paused. It had been so long since she was last on the outside. For a moment, she wondered if she could do it. It had been a long year in that facility and she didn't want to go back.

"I'm being ridiculous," she told herself. "I am the rightful leader of the Fire Nation and the most powerful firebender in the world. I'll have this Legion bowing before in no time."

And so she headed out, head held high, looking for people who would be useful to her.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"Oh." Kubo wondered what that was like, growing up where magic was fairly commonplace, as usual a skill as using the sword. And then to still be considered very good at it - "Congratulations," he said, settling on what seemed an appropriately complimentary response.

He tapped his bachi lightly on the strings of his shamisen as he cast about for something else to talk about, a conversational topic that might give him a better idea of this Azula beyond that something about her calm, excessive power made him uncomfortable.

"So . . . what do you do, with your magic?" he asked. "Fire must be pretty useful, to make your living with."

A firebender would be great in a forge, he guessed.

"It is very useful for those who have to make a living," Azula agreed. "I was mostly trained for combat, however. It is even more useful for that."

His questions reminded him a bit of her own, which was most than she would have expected based on appearance and occupation. Perhaps Kubo was more useful than she first believed.

"And what do you do with your ... papers?"

No wonder she put him on edge. She DID remind him of his aunts, powerful and dangerous and unimpressed by things that were whimsical and pretty.

But she was on his side, Kubo thought, or - that was what he'd been told, when he came here. That the others brought here like him were on the same side against the end of the universe, of all universe, and that meant he ought to stop comparing this girl so hard to his aunts. She was a warrior forged in fire, and it wasn't her fault that similar powerful, hard-to-impress warriors he'd met had killed his mother and father and almost succeeded in taking his remaining eye.

"I tell my stories," he said, a little more relaxation sliding into his posture. "Mostly about mighty warriors and monsters, adventure and revenge -"

He began another song on his shamisen, and when his papers fluttered out of his pack this time, they stayed near him. Blue paper folded itself into undulating waves, stones in a river current, and a bright orange paper folded itself into a goldfish that dipped in and out of the paper water to Kubo's playing. For all his talk of vengeance and monsters, it was a very peaceful image.

"I learned a few more from other people recently, though," he said. "Like this one, about the goldfish that swam up a waterfall and became a dragon. The kids around town really like it."

So it didn't usually earn him that much money, but sometimes it was a sweet, soothing tale to tell.

Azula was absolutely unimpressed by things that were whimsical and pretty. As she watched the papers moving about, she couldn't see much practical use in any of it. Except perhaps as a distraction, though she wasn't sure how effective that would be. It probably depended on who needed distracting.

"Is that how you plan to defend the universe? With stories and songs?"

Kubo shrugged. He had a feeling that the day wouldn't always be saved by love and memories - he also had a feeling Azula would not be particularly impressed by tales of the power of love and memories.

The truth was, he had ideas about using his paper in combat, but it wasn't anything he'd TESTED yet. He'd only just gotten around to determining that, no, he couldn't fly with his own power, but he COULD still send out his soundwave - probably not powerful enough to kill anymore, but enough to be useful in combat. A bit.

But he was sharing his peaceful soul with Azula, the part of him he valued much more than his ability to kill, the part of him that had saved him and the villagers against the Moon King, and she didn't seem to understand or care about it. Being underestimated by her was inevitable, but was it really all that bad?

Having thought all that out - "I've got a sword, too," he said, as if the Sword Unbreakable were just another weapon and not a tool of such power that the Moon King once sent his daughters to kill warriors just for questing for it.

A sword. Well, that was better than nothing. She'd seen a few non-benders who were decent warriors, though it was hard to fight fire or lightning with a bit of pointed metal.

"Well, that's ... nice," she managed to say. "Are you any good with it?"

She supposed his paper powers could also perhaps be weaponized in some way. Maybe find out if there was any truth to tale of death by a thousand cuts. Still, she'd still bet on her abilities long before his.

He shrugged.

"My mother got to teach me the basics before she died, but she always said I needed more practice."

It might be easy to mistake his sullenness as directed at his mother, but he was a little lost in thoughts of the aunt he'd killed - how Azula might at least approve of him having HAD that power, even if it wasn't quite as strong here - but he had never been proud of killing his aunt, and wouldn't have been even if killing her had saved his mother and father.

But since it hadn't saved them, the memory was beyond not-proud.

The last thing he wanted to share with someone unimpressed by him at his best was the worst moment of his life, the time when his heart had been the most broken, but that was the sort of power Azula was digging for.

Edited 2016-10-04 02:46 (UTC)

So that was a no.

Azula sighed. The standards here were clearly in need of some major revisions. If, make that when, she had more authority here, that would have to be one of the first things she looked into changing.

"What exactly do you think you'll be doing here, then?" she finally asked, because she just couldn't figure that one out on her own.

For all that Azula was making Kubo uncomfortable for reasons that had nothing to do with his ability to be a part of this team, she was asking a decent question.

What did he plan to do? He was the son of a mighty samurai, but he had no father to teach him to shoot anymore, no mother to teach him to fight, and neither of them to guide him and help him on this quest as they'd been on his last.

He'd done a lot on his own, with taking care of Mother, and taking care of his grandfather after that, but he wasn't much of a warrior, and he hadn't figured out what to do with his magic other than entertain, distract, or unleash a force he could barely control.

He had to figure something out, and he'd have to do so on his own.

That conclusion somehow brought him back to confidence. He'd done such difficult things alone, before. He'd figured out when he was much, much younger how to care for his mother, earn their rice, hold an audience's attention. Defeat the Moon King.

"I'll figure it out," he said, no longer sullen, but wondering if there was a polite way for him to excuse himself from Azula's company. That was the first thing to figure. "It wouldn't be the first time I've had to do that."

Well, looks like she'd finally touched upon something worth investigating. Maybe. The sudden confidence could be a front as easily as it could be well-earned. But there was something that she could see in his one eye that suddenly made him harder to dismiss.

"Why don't you tell me about the first time?" she asked. "That sounds like an interesting story."

Kubo considered telling her the story - the WHOLE story - then his discomfort turned to a sudden, very genuine chuckle.

"Nah," he said. "You wouldn't care for it. In the end, I defeated the Moon King with the power of love and memory, not with the Sword." He gave Azula a wry smile. "I can read an audience. It's probably not your kind of story."

He strummed his shamisen and a white paper flew out of his pack, folding itself into a monkey. A dark green piece of paper folded itself into a shape like a samurai warrior, but an exaggerated shape with a crest too large to be a helmet, and four arms. A red piece folded itself into a small boy.

"I bet you'd rather hear about the time Monkey, Beetle, and I fought a giant skeleton demon and found the Sword Unbreakable."

Behind him, rusty red paper fluttered to the tune of his shamisen into a bony, skeletal shape twice as tall as Kubo. Maybe he could still tell her a story other than the one that still brought him dangerously close to weeping.

No, that definitely wasn't Azula's type of story. The power of love. The very idea made her want to gag. Who needed love anyway? She'd done just fine without it her entire life, thank you very much.

Giant skeleton demons however sounded at least somewhat promising. "Fine," she said. "Tell me about that."

She really hoped this wouldn't be a waste of time. If it was, well, maybe she wouldn't be so careful about where her flames went next time.

"If you must blink," Kubo struck an opening chord on his shamisen. "Do it now."

The rust-red skeleton fluttered apart to his performing song and the paper figures on the ground vanished - all but the small red boy. Grey paper swooped from Kubo's pack and became identical, broad-hatted women, dark green paper swirling around them like smoke. They crowded the paper boy in with deliberate, threatening movements, until a golden sheet of paper snapped between them and the child, became a figure of a woman, and exploded in a paper flurry that dispersed the grey sisters and the green paper "smoke."

"Our hero, chased from his village by the terrible daughters of the Moon King, his mother gone after using the last of her power to save him from her evil sisters, was no longer alone." Kubo announced, as the fleeing paper boy found his feet, looked around at his solitude, and made a few tentative, searching circles. "His quest for the Sword Unbreakable began with the help of his new friends -"

The white paper launched to the foreground of Kubo's playing stage and folded itself into a monkey again, its movements animal and quick through a complex martial arts sequence that defied the realm of what should have been actually possible to depict with origami.

"Monkey! His mother's creation, alive to protect and guide him, no matter how hard, no matter the cost!"

The dark green paper flew back into the exaggerated shape of a four-armed Samurai, fitted an impossibly intricate paper arrow to the string of a paper bow, pulled and aimed, four more tiny arrows held in his lower set of arms.

"And Beetle - once a mighty samurai, now a cursed half-man, half-bug, wandering the Farlands with no memory and no quest - until our hero brought a quest to him!"

The twang of his rolled-paper bowstring could almost be heard as he fired one, two, three, four, five arrows, and each paper arrow split the one before it down the middle.

"Together they journeyed through sleet and cold, through sun and cloud, out of the cold, distant Farlands and down, down the mountains, to the very gates of the Temple of Bones -"

Inside the temple, the foolishly enthusiastic Beetle tripped the very obvious trap that brought to life the giant paper skeleton, the enormous, jagged-toothed figure looming over Kubo again. The paper skeleton demon, its head full of many breakable and One Unbreakable sword, snatched the paper figures in turn, raising them to its broken teeth to bite their heads off, foiled each time by interference from whoever was free of the two hands at the time. Kubo wove the tale of the battle against the Gashadokuro with skill and detail, his memory of the fight precise for someone who'd been trying not to die while participating in it, his theatrical timing honed by years of performing for his supper. He wove in moments of glory for each fighter - Beetle's arrow pinning the falling Kubo to the wall through the neck of his robes, Monkey's relentless strength breaking free from the skeleton fingers to smash sword after sword - until, when Kubo's friends were moments away from literally losing their heads, the tiny paper Kubo plucked the Sword Unbreakable from the demon's skull, and sent it crashing down to the floor of the Temple of Bones.

The way Kubo fitted in every demonstration of Monkey's determination and immense skill, every one of Beetle's silly jokes - he obviously cared deeply for his companions on that quest. Deeply enough to remember their words, their personalities, and work them into the story where personality and words could take a backseat to artistry and action.

"But their next great journey was about to begin," he said, when he'd left the trio on the beach of the Long Lake, "For now their quest would lead them on - in search of the Breastplate Impenetrable. For all stories have an end -" he finished, with the way he'd become accustomed, in these last years, to ending his tales - "but there is no end of stories."

Despite herself, Azula had to admit that the tale was entrancing. The only thing similar that she'd ever seen was a performance by the Ember Island Players and this was far removed from their style of performance.

It did leave her with many questions. The hero's backstory - Kubo's backstory - was hinted at but left unexplained. What was the Moon Kingdom and what happened to his mother and evil aunts? How was Monkey created? Was he a real monkey? Why was Beetle cursed? Why hadn't it been Beetle that the Legion recruited, since he not only had extra arms but exceptional skill in archery?

And, of course, there was the most important question when such tales were being told. "Exactly how much of that really happened?"

"Everything! See?" Kubo drew the sword from its rather simple sheath. It was, in fact, a work of master craftsmanship, perfect and unblemished. "Sword Unbreakable."

He raised the work of master craftsmanship, and blithely started hammering it on the ground. The blade rang, but not a chip or scratch marred its surface. "It never needs sharpening," he said. He held up the blade, thoughtful - "can your fire melt regular swords? Do you want to try it out?"

That was actually something useful to figure out - if the Sword Unbreakable was also the Sword Unmeltable. Better now than in the heat - ahem - of battle.

Azula was never one to turn down a test of her powers. "Certainly, if you think you can handle it." Before that story, she definitely wouldn't have thought that was even possible but now, well, they were about to find out.

Her body moved gracefully, summoning up a decent flame that floated in the air between them. It wasn't large but it was very hot. Certainly hot enough to melt most things. "Go right ahead," she said, concentrating. She could feel sweat already forming on her forehead from the waves of heat flowing through the air.

Kubo stuck the sword he, his mother, and his father had almost died to retrieve unhesitatingly and directly into the blue flame.

The heat was immediately uncomfortable for him just to be near, the air drying uncomfortably around him, but he gritted his teeth and kept holding the sword in the burning blue fire. Very quickly, it became too hot to hold, and he dropped it with a hiss. The blade glowed brightly, but dimmed quickly. In much less time than Azula had needed to heat it, the blade was silver and cool again. Soot hadn't even collected on it.

Kubo crouched over the blade, testing the air around it with the back of his hand.

"Looks like it made it all right," he said, picking up the sword. He lifted it, inspecting the still-unmarred blade. "Yeah - I think it is."

He hammered it on the ground a few more times, just to check that the blue flame hadn't done damage yet unseen. It stayed in one piece, and the same shape.

"That was amazing, though," he admitted, of Azula's flame. "How do you stand to have your fingers so close to the heat? I felt like my hands were burning and they were really far away."

Azula let the flames dissipate and took a step forward to get a better look at this sword. The weapon was formidable, even if the one bearing it wasn't. She'd never seen anything quite like it before.

She smiled at Kubo's praise. "I wouldn't be a very firebender if my own flames hurt me." She wasn't, of course, completely immune to fire but she did have a higher tolerance. The heat from this fire though had still affected her more than usual. But she didn't need to tell him that.

Kubo had taken one hand away from the sword before the other, and he checked that wrist quickly - the bracelets of his mother's hair and his father's bowstring were still unharmed by the heat. Good.

"So you . . . back in your world, you were a fighter? Who did you fight?"

He kept the sword out, waiting for the last of the warmth to cool before he put it away.

Azula noticed Kubo glance as the strange bracelets he was wearing. They must be meaningful to him. Of course, everything he had so far seemed meaningful.

"What fools happened to cross my path," she replied. "I mostly dealt with the Earth Kingdom's pitiful excuses for soldiers. The only reason we didn't take over the country faster was because they hid behind a big wall."

Of course there had also been the Avatar and his group ... including dear Zu-Zu. Azula didn't feel like mentioning them.

The sum of Kubo's worldly posessions were - basically - all with him, easily transported to Legion on his person. When he had so little, when he'd lived so long with so little, the few possessions he kept anymore WERE the meaningful ones.

"Why were you taking them over?"

It sounded like there was a story there. Possibly a very good one.

Edited 2016-10-09 07:11 (UTC)

Azula scoffed. For someone who supposedly had lived through a life of intrigue himself, Kubo didn't seem to know much about how the world worked.

"To expand the power and influence of the Fire Nation, of course. Why else are wars fought?"

"I've never been in a war."

He'd been involved in vendettas, yes, and revenge. Full blown war? Not really.

"Why would you fight a war to gain power? Seems like you'd have to expend things in a war."

Azula wasn't surprised in the least by that information. Or that she had to explain things even more.

"Of course there is a cost, lives and other resources used up by the effort. That is why you only start a war when victory is worth the price."

"What's worth the price of lives to you?"

His asking wasn't skeptical. Obviously there were things worth dying for. Kubo knew this. It was in his stories, in his life. His mother and father had died to protect him. The loyal samurai who'd followed his father before Hanzo had been cursed had been willing to die for his quests, and some of them had. His aunts had been willing to die for their father . . . but something told him they hadn't expected to actually lose at all.

Azula intro [open]

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