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020 -- [Various Filters || Action]
[ooc: dated to... idk. When the moon is not noticeably freaky. ALSO. The cut below is there because there are over 30 filters beneath it that take up a ridiculous amount of space, wow. I think I got all of the characters who were dropped, but just PM me if I didn't. After the event is done, there will be an ooc post regarding this, but I needed to get this part out of the way while my character would think to do so.
A note on the filters below - italic text represents breaks in the filter.]
[Early in the morning, long before the sun has risen and while most people are likely to be asleep, several filters start going up one-by-one. The journal window is covered with cloth; the handwriting not recognizable. Almost immediately after each one has been made, they're either deconstructed or disappear behind a private filter, viewable only to himself. He has no interest in talking to any of these people - he's just checking for breaks in the filters, which are visible for a minute until they're quickly taken care of.]
[Private to Shikamaru || Fake Cut to spare your f-lists and eyes]
[Two hours after this ends, a certain entry disappears behind a private filter as well. Then Shikamaru rolls over and goes back to bed. Damn, that was troublesome. He'll deal with the rest later. With the stuff that new Malnosso guy was talking about, he had a lot of other things to think about....
The next afternoon, he writes a couple of quick messages before heading out of the apartment.]
[Filtered to Raine Sage || 100% Unhackable]
What we talked about - it's done. Figured you'd want a heads-up.
[Filtered to Konoha Shinobi, Gaara, and Temari || 100% Unhackable]
Looks like we don't have to worry about Sasuke. At least for now.
[Filtered to Tony Stark || 100% Unhackable]
I have something to give you. Where you want me to drop it off?
[After he's taken care of that business, Shikamaru decides to take the rest of the afternoon to train. Not his shadow jutsus, however. Those close enough to the southern edge of the village at the time may hear something a few times throughout the evening. Maybe like thunder, but definitely a-
BOOM.
...but don't worry, everything is under control. And for once, he isn't even joking. It's taken months for him to get this jutsu down - a lungful of ash just is not pleasant - but he's finally managed it.
If for some reason you're close to the Southern Lake at this time, or choose to investigate, you're bound to find one (1) Shikamaru Nara taking a break by the water and unable to wipe the smirk off of his face. The air still might smell faintly of ash, but he cleans up well. And nothing has been destroyed but the targets he brought out here himself.
It makes up for all the weirdness going on. Just a little.]
A note on the filters below - italic text represents breaks in the filter.]
[Early in the morning, long before the sun has risen and while most people are likely to be asleep, several filters start going up one-by-one. The journal window is covered with cloth; the handwriting not recognizable. Almost immediately after each one has been made, they're either deconstructed or disappear behind a private filter, viewable only to himself. He has no interest in talking to any of these people - he's just checking for breaks in the filters, which are visible for a minute until they're quickly taken care of.]
[Private to Shikamaru || Fake Cut to spare your f-lists and eyes]
[Two hours after this ends, a certain entry disappears behind a private filter as well. Then Shikamaru rolls over and goes back to bed. Damn, that was troublesome. He'll deal with the rest later. With the stuff that new Malnosso guy was talking about, he had a lot of other things to think about....
The next afternoon, he writes a couple of quick messages before heading out of the apartment.]
[Filtered to Raine Sage || 100% Unhackable]
What we talked about - it's done. Figured you'd want a heads-up.
[Filtered to Konoha Shinobi, Gaara, and Temari || 100% Unhackable]
Looks like we don't have to worry about Sasuke. At least for now.
[Filtered to Tony Stark || 100% Unhackable]
I have something to give you. Where you want me to drop it off?
[After he's taken care of that business, Shikamaru decides to take the rest of the afternoon to train. Not his shadow jutsus, however. Those close enough to the southern edge of the village at the time may hear something a few times throughout the evening. Maybe like thunder, but definitely a-
BOOM.
...but don't worry, everything is under control. And for once, he isn't even joking. It's taken months for him to get this jutsu down - a lungful of ash just is not pleasant - but he's finally managed it.
If for some reason you're close to the Southern Lake at this time, or choose to investigate, you're bound to find one (1) Shikamaru Nara taking a break by the water and unable to wipe the smirk off of his face. The air still might smell faintly of ash, but he cleans up well. And nothing has been destroyed but the targets he brought out here himself.
It makes up for all the weirdness going on. Just a little.]
[ action ]
So Katara starts in the place where she is the most comfortable. Far away, in the past. She tucks her legs under her, and her voice takes on a quiet cadence. It's not hard to imagine how the children of the Southern Water Tribe spent cold winter nights, gathered around the fire, hearing stories such as these.]
Long ago, the four nations lived together in harmony. Then, everything changed when the Fire Nation attacked. Only the Avatar, master of all four elements, could stop them. But when the world needed him most, he vanished. The Fire Nation destroyed the Air Nomads, sweeping into their temples on the day of Sozin's Comet and leaving not a single airbender alive. And when they had at last finished their bloody conquest, they came to my tribe.
[She pauses and looks down.] Seventy years ago the Southern Water Tribe was as proud a nation as the North. We lived in cities. Men and women were taught waterbending in our own unique Southern style, and there was lively trade with the Earth Kingdom even as our people gathered together to try to make sense of what had happened with the Fire Nation and the peaceful Air Nomads, what had happened to the Avatar, and what we should do about it. We didn't get a chance to decide.
The Fire Nation attacked us. City by city they came with ship after ship, with technology and determination like we had never seen. But they didn't come to conquer. They didn't see any value in our lands. They came after our waterbenders. We tried to fight them off, but in the end they killed or captured every last waterbender. They left our cities in ruins, tearing out a vital part of our culture, and leaving my people to rebuild and adapt as best as they could.
[Shikamaru can imagine just what kind of a difference a waterbender can make - even a single one - in a land constantly covered with snow. Katara swallows and continues.] According to the Fire Nation, I wasn't supposed to be born. When my parents found out that I was a waterbender, Dad searched the entire South Pole for anything to teach me. Scrolls, someone with memories, anything - but they were all dead, the scrolls were all burned, there was nothing. And soon, the raids started again.
[She doesn't want to talk about the raids. But she pauses here to refocus, to let him ask if he has anything to ask.]
[ action ]
It's not that he doesn't want to hear what their worlds are like - what Katara's world is like. He just can't see what's so captivating about strange animals, or floating cities, or what kind of wonders lie in a world made up of more islands than continents.
He doesn't care about those things. He'll never see them.
What he does care about is people, and pasts and histories and what makes them who they are - good people or bad people or people just going along with their lives.
It's the sort of thing most people, understandably, don't talk about.
But if that's what this story is, then Katara will have his rapt attention.
This part here is the most she's talked about the war with the Fire Nation since one of their earliest conversations over a game of shogi, not long after he first got here. He's not sure whether or not this is the focus of the story though, so he remains quiet and lets her continue.]
[ action ] 1/2
About a year before I showed up in Luceti, Sokka and I were out fishing. All of our chores were done and our stores were running low. We'd done it a thousand times before, just us, in a canoe, in the middle of the breaking ice. But this time, something went wrong. We ended up stranded on large ice drift, without our canoe. And Sokka - he made me so angry, and I had no idea what I was doing with my bending, I ended up splitting the large iceberg behind me.
[Her face lights up here, a soft and radiant joy if muted by pain.] There was a boy inside. He was trapped in the ice - and I'd never seen anyone like him before. Of course we had to help him, and that was when we met Aang. We didn't know that he was the new Avatar then, but I could tell just by looking at him that he was someone amazing.
He'd been in a state of meditation for a hundred years. He didn't know anything about the war, or what had happened to his people... we ended up traveling with him, going from nation to nation so that he could learn the different bending styles, being chased by the Fire Nation all the while. The Avatars have to learn all the elements in the order of their reincarnation cycle. Aang was already a master airbender. Water came next, so we traveled through the Earth Kingdom to the Northern Water Tribe. Then we went to back to the Earth Kingdom so he could learn earthbending - that's when we met Toph. Finally, we ended up infiltrating the Fire Nation. Aang still hadn't learned any firebending, but we had a different plan of attack. We just had to get to the capital city by a certain date.
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While we were there, in one of the towns, we met a kind old woman named Hama. She came upon us when we were camping in the woods and offered us a place to stay in her inn. I felt a kinship with her right away. Sokka was suspicious of her kindness, but we went anyway. The next day she took us shopping to prepare a meal for us, and when we were all back in the safety of her inn, she revealed to us the truth-- she'd heard us talking in the woods, and the reason why she took us in was because she was a waterbender.
She was the last waterbender to be taken from the Southern Tribe. She told us what happened to them, how the Fire Nation came, how they had fought, but been overwhelmed. And she told us what happened to the waterbenders in captivity, how they were kept in cages with hot air pumped into the room, bound before given any water to drink, helpless to do anything but watch as their fellow waterbenders eventually died. She escaped, but couldn't tell us how. She said it was too painful.
[I told her about my mom.]
She offered to teach me Southern Style waterbending.
["To learn about my culture? It would mean everything to me."]
I'd never been happier.
[ action ]
As Katara talked about him, he probably nodded and mentioned remembering him before letting her continue, her story moving on to Hama and what this Fire Nation did to her people. Every culture has their tragedies, don't they?]
You don't sound so happy now...
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This is the part of the story I don't like talking about. If I tell you, you'll be the only person who wasn't there who knows. Will you keep it that way?
[ action ]
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The next day Hama and I went off by ourselves so she could teach me waterbending. Everyone else stayed in town to investigate some rumors about townspeople disappearing. Even though the Fire Nation was our enemy, these people weren't. They weren't soldiers. They were just living their lives, and one by one, they were mysteriously disappearing. Part of Aang's job as the Avatar is to be a bridge between our world and the spirit world. Spirits had done this sort of thing before, in other villages, when the land had been treated poorly. But the land in this village was beautiful, and everything was well cared for - no one knew what was happening.
And Hama... Hama taught me how to pull water from the air. She taught me to pull water from plants. She said that for waterbenders in a strange land, we had to keep our minds open to the possibilities. I told her about how I'd seen a swampbender bending the water in plants in order to control them and use them as weapons. She didn't seem surprised. She said 'There's water in places you never think about.'
[She takes a breath and finds, to her astonishment, that talking about this is less raw than she imagined. The wound is still there, but the pain is beginning to seem smaller. More pain can offer tremendous perspective on old pain, it seems.]
That night was the night of the full moon. We went out, even though it was the night people had been disappearing, because Hama said that she wanted to teach me the ultimate waterbending technique. When we were out there, alone, she told me how she had escaped from prison.
[Shame, though. Shame that waterbending had been used for this, that she knew how to use this... that wasn't any less prevalent. It still covered her like a cloak.] They kept every source of water from her, but every night of the full moon she could feel the moon's power strengthening her. And soon she realized that... the rats crawling around in her cell... they were nothing but small sacks of water. She practiced. And practiced. And eventually Hama developed a new technique: bloodbending. It can only be done on nights of the full moon, when a waterbender's power is at its height. With bloodbending you...
[She looks down and her voice is low.] You slip inside someone and take control of their blood. And with control of their blood, you have control of their bodies. When Hama had perfected it on the rats, she was ready for the men. She used her bloodbending to force them to unlock her cage, and walked free. She wanted to teach it to me.
[She has to pause here. This is - actually - harder than she'd thought. Her throat is tightening and she can't meet his eyes.
Sokka wouldn't want me telling him this.
Sokka would be horrified at what she'd done tonight.
Katara frowns a little and swallows hard. Explaining it... she'll have to apologize. When she's done. If Shikamaru still wants to talk to her, if he can forgive her for even stretching that part of her ability so much.]
[ action ]
Had he been told this before tonight... it would have been a surprise, yes. The things about the moon and her apprehension of his jutsu would've clicked into place smoothly with the explanation soon after.]
Did you learn it, that night?
[ action ] this face during this part of the story - but without the tears
I told her that I wasn't sure, that I didn't think I wanted to have that kind of power. To be able to reach inside someone and control them...
She told me it wasn't my choice. That the power exists. That - it was my duty to use the gifts I had been given to win this war. [She threw the death of my culture and the death of my mother back in my face.] We were the last waterbenders of the Southern Tribe. [To even be able to say there was another waterbender of the Southern Tribe, to have that kind of kinship...] They had wiped the rest of us all out. She said we have to fight these people, wherever we can, where ever they are. By whatever means necessary. And that's when I knew - people disappearing on the night of the full moon? It wasn't the work of any spirit. Hama had done this. She'd lived and worked and laughed among these people and every month she'd pick them off, one by one. She wanted me to carry on her work.
[A quick exhale, because it's hard to breathe - and yeah, maybe more wounds can offer some perspective. But they can't take the pain away.]
I told her no. No, I wouldn't learn bloodbending, and I'd stop her from hurting those people. She attacked me. She said I should have learned the technique before I turned against her.
[There's a strange emphasis on those words. Before I turned against her. Heh.]
Her power was inside me. She controlled every vein in my body, every muscle. It was... terrible. I begged her to stop. But she wouldn't. She forced me to my knees in front of her.
...so yes. I learned it. I learned it on myself. She wasn't the only one who could draw power from the moon. I was the more powerful bender. I took control of my body back. We fought.
[She keeps talking, quickly now, hoping that some of that numbness will return, the blessed distance. Because right now she feels just as wrung up and violated as she did then. And it hurts.]
Sokka and Aang showed up. Toph had heard screaming up in the mountains. All of Hama's victims... she'd just chained them up and left them to rot. Sokka and Aang came to warn me, but... they just turned into Hama's puppets. She had them attacking me, and when I stopped that, she had them attack each other. She was going to make Sokka kill Aang. But it was my choice. I reached into her and I stopped her.
[And I would do it again.]
[ action ] 1/2
...at least if anything comes from this, he can finally understand what frightened her about his jutsu. Bloodbending, as she describes it, and Kage Mane are not the same thing, by a long shot, but they have similar end results. Using it on her would have brought it to mind, especially given the emotional trauma.
Every culture has their tragedies. And every culture has their black spots, it seems.]
[ action ] And got it. 8|b
Your choice, huh? It was a good one.
[ action ]
Well, he was right to. And she knew that better than anyone. That kind of power... having it could do things to your mind. Look what she'd done tonight. Look at what she'd felt was all right.]
It was a better one than letting them die. [It was not good. Nothing that came from it could be good.] I'm not sorry for it.
["Congratulations, Katara. You're a bloodbender."
But she was. She didn't regret it. But she was sorry for it. Hama's laughter... she doesn't know that she'll ever forget it.
...
...]
I guess I owe you an apology. I didn't really use it on you, but it was close enough. We said no rules, but all the same... I shouldn't have.
[ action ]
He nearly mentions it then, but then she's apologizing. He sighs. How troublesome.]
Don't apologize. You have my permission to use it on me whenever you think you need to.
[ action ]
I really don't think that will ever be necessary. [...] Why would you even say that?
[ action ]
[Things aren't so terrible when you have a better understanding of it.]
And I make a pretty good practice dummy. [He shrugs again.]
[ action ] 1/2
I'm not going to practice bloodbending.
[She really can not think of anything that would be a worse idea.]
[ action ]
...but thank you.
[That much trust is something she hardly knows what to do with.]
[ action ]
I really think you should. Practice it, that is. It's your choice, though, and I won't argue that. Just come find me if you change your mind.
[ action ]
He sure is taking this whole thing calmly. She frowns in concentration, still feeling oddly vulnerable...
...how could he so easily offer himself up like this? Was it his world making this seem not as horrible as it was or... something else?
She turns over other conversations in her mind and... well, he's probably figured it out, but... since they'd talked about it so many times before, know that he knows she might as well address it.]
...do you understand now why I was scared of your jutsu?
[ action ]
[And he means that sincerely - even if he knows at the same time it wasn't is fault.]
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[A helpless half-shrug. She really, really hadn't been expecting it.
Katara leans forward a bit, rests her elbows on her knees.]
There's a lot about it that's not the same. You're not Hama.
Re: [ action ]
Tch. Damn right, I'm not. I've been called an old man before, and I let that slide, but I draw the line at old lady.
[That's a joke, too.]
[ action ]
Oh yes, that's so much worse.
[Her gently teasing tone fades into concern.]
...Shikamaru? Does the shape of the moon look... strange to you?
[ action ] 1/2
Huh? [He directs his attention upwards.]
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