An Etude! Hoorays.

>Technically
>speaking, it predated Republic City itself, having been the core of the
>wartime Fire Nation colony chosen by Avatar Aang and Fire Lord Zuko as
>the hub of their bold experiment in nationbuilding - the capital of the
>United Republic of Nations.

Tangent: I like to imagine that in whatever dark place his soul ended up in, Sozin considers the existence of the Republic as complete vindication of his whole Fire Man's Burden philosophy of international relations and nation-building. Because Sozin was a crazy monster, but he at least had a certain kind of vision (also self-delusion) that was sorely lacking in his son and grandson.

>A year ago I was up to my shoulders in trouble (and usually in filth).
>Nobody gave a damn about me except the people who wanted to strip away
>everything that makes me who I am and use my body as a weapon.

Second tangent: Man, I can't wait until the Psi Corps decides to do something arrogant and ill-advised with what must look to them like an underdeveloped planet full of powerful human psions. It's going to go hilariously wrong for them.

(I generally assume that anytime the Psi Corps has tried their particular brand of skullduggery in places that aren't EA strongholds already, such as Jyurai or Braal, it has gone completely pear-shaped for them in ways that ended up with dead Psi Cops and embarrassing trials.)

>"Karana is convinced, or claims to be convinced, that I am,"
>said Azana. She paused to take a sip of tea, then went on, "She nearly
>got us arrested in Caldera City once, for demanding that we be admitted
>to the Royal Palace in the middle of the night, on the grounds that I
>was 'the rightful Fire Lord'."

It's entirely possible that Azana is related to Zuko but not in any way part of the extended Royal Family; Zuko's actual lineal descendants are probably well-documented even if some of them ended up down at the heels, but they might have kept the existence of his much younger half-sister quiet. I can't imagine Ursa wanted to go back to doing the whole Princess thing.

Or Karana is wacky in the head. Or both!

>"Some of Zuko's detractors claimed he'd had her killed, or
>banished her to some spiritsforsaken corner of the world - because she
>was a threat to his rule, or simply an embarrassment to the family."

I think 'Agni-forsaken' might flow better when you have cause for Fire people to deploy this particular phrasing, but that's just a stylistic preference on my part.

I imagine that Azula is a convenient mythological figure for unreconstructed Fire chauvinists. She's not Ozai (nobody is going to want to try and defend or justify Ozai openly) but she was one his most effective tools and has that long string of being a conquering hero under her belt before she just up and vanishes after being beaten by a cheap shot.

Also, she killed the Avatar. Not a lot of people have that on their resume.

>Besides the tie,
>he had an ostentatious gold watch chain across his waistcoat and a lot
>of gold-rimmed mother-of-pearl buttons, and wore what looked like
>snakeskin cowboy boots.

Ugh. Has anyone who wasn't a giant douchecanoe ever worn snakeskin cowboy boots unironically? Because I don't think they have. Especially not with a suit.

>"Oh, I'm sorry, I forgot. Only your chunky little pal
>from the South Pole gets to call you that, right?" He spread his hands
>in a gesture of mocking surrender (Anne noticed that his nails were
>varnished the same red as his suit)

Okay, for a mob torpedo, Kaiten looks completely ridiculous. I mean, my god man. Develop some fashion sense. His don should be ashamed of himself for letting him leave the house like that.

>He was sharp-
>featured, just on the right side of what could be called "rat-faced",
>and somehow the gauntness of his narrow cheeks seemed a bit unnatural.
>His nose didn't quite look in proportion to his face, like the noses of
>mummies Anne had seen in books. His eyes were that stereotypical
>firebender amber, but murky, without the sharp clarity of Azana's, and
>one was open ever so slightly wider than the other.

In light of future events, I have to say that I very much like this passage right here, but I think it could have been better executed without hitting the nail on the head so hard with Anne's follow-up.

The way you put that description of Kaiten together, it looks on a first pass like he's just an ugly thug. People are prepared to believe thugs are ugly, it's a genre convention and longstanding stereotype.

Only Kaiten isn't ugly because he's evil. He looks like he does because he has been fucking himself up with Comet. This is the Firebender equivalent of the gaunt-cheeked heroin addict look people get after a couple months of chasing that dragon really hard.

You could have just slipped that in there real quietly, which I think might have worked better than having Anne immediately point it out to the reader. Better that we only realize after the fact, when the Doctor is telling Korra that Kaiten has been doing this to himself for a long time, very intensively, and let us have that 'OH' moment.

>"You will
>note at this point that I am not asking you whether I can help you."

You know, they may not share any genetic code, but when Azana decides to turn the old Fire Nation "I am better than you and I know it" dial up to eleven, the resemblance to Azula does suddenly become... strong.

>Something in the way she handled her chopsticks,
>perhaps, elegant and precise, or the very pointed way in which she
>barely ever looked at him, and then never for more than a half-second.
>It was the most poetically administered cold shoulder Anne could
>remember witnessing.

Like that, right there. 'Course, if Azana were Azula, Kaiten would have died right after she said "Hah" and put her cup down. But the resemblance is there.

>"Or do you -like- seeing us kept down by the
>dirt merchants and ice babies?"

You know, the Fire Nation needs to work on its racial slurs. I mean, seriously. This is the best they can do? They lack the punch of something like "troq".

>"You've gotten away
>with disrespecting the Triad before now because the boss was afraid of
>the old man and the Avatar, but that's all over now. We don't need to
>worry about Ito any more. We don't have to worry about -anybody- any
>more."

Yeah, because people who hit on the bright idea of using supercharged firebending to conquer everything in their way have an amazing track record there, buddy. Hey, I've got an idea. You and your friends should wait a few years and do some hits of Comet while the actual comet is in the sky. I bet that will work great!

(I know I'm joking, but I wouldn't be surprised if there were already firebenders who are actually considering doing this.)

>Then he pulled the item at the end of his watch chain from
>his waistcoat pocket, revealing that it wasn't a watch, but rather a
>small silver vial.

Okay, despite my general disrespect for Kaiten's whole aesthetic, I have to give him some serious style points here, because that was pretty cool.

>Of all the things she had expected him to do, actually
>starting a fight in broad daylight in the middle of the Firetown street
>market hadn't been on the list. Even the Agni Kai were usually subtler
>than -that.-

Given that the fight is about to kick off, I'd like to take this moment to discuss your portrayal of the criminal element in Republic City. There's probably some overthinking involving here.

I'm italian-american, so I have more than a bit of a passing interest in the subject. And the vibe I've been getting around the Triads so far in Diqiu is... hmm. It's hard to describe. It's got sort of an "the mob in the 70s and 80s" feel to it. Their time is passing and they just don't know it yet; law enforcement is beginning to really get wise to their various levels of bullshit, and they've hollowed themselves out from the inside and gotten into some drug-running shit that just isn't going to pan out the way they think it is, and their leadership just isn't agile enough to adapt.

Kaiten in particular strikes me as being the sort of person who would have been one of those interchangeable guys with suits who were always surrounding John Gotti in photographs. Someone who thinks they own the whole city, they're untouchable, respected and wealthy, they got women and blow and their boss is a big important man and they're important too by association. But everything is about to change real, real soon.

I dunno. Could just be me.

>"We all have to be together for that to work," Karana said
>seriously. "Only by all our powers combined can we summon the Avatar."
>
>The cop blinked. "Really?"
>
>Karana snorted. "No," she said. "Don't be a dope."

Let's be fair to the poor guy, that would not even be in the top three craziest metaphysical things surrounding canonical Korra. God knows what UF-Korra has on tap. :)

Also: challenge coins are just inherently cool.

>"Yo! Beifong! Little help here!"

Ahahahahahahahaha.

I love that the cops are called Beifongs. That's just... oh man, it could easily have been overly twee, but instead it is awesome.

>(with a discreet
>boost from Anne's TK, what little of her mental bandwidth she could
>spare for it)

Man, Anne's telekinesis is going to make all the benders completely jealous when they learn about it.

"So wait. You can just... lift anything you want with your mind? It doesn't matter what it's made of?"

"Pretty much."

"... cheater."

(I often forget just how powerful Anne is going to be once she figures out how to harness all her talents. I mean, yes, we got a little taste of that in Blades. But the woman is just going to be this unstoppable force of nature.)

>When she let it out,
>her eyes snapped open, clear and bright once more - and the fire that
>suddenly wreathed her hands was a clean incandescent blue, like the
>flame of an acetylene torch.

I can honestly say that I didn't see this coming.

As always, I feel like I ought to have had more to say about the fight scenes, but there's never really anything in them for me to pry open and discuss. People fought! And it was cool! So... yeah.

I do want to talk about the blue flame a little bit; we sort of got into it a bit in the Agreement in Principle thread but it's slightly more relevant here.

Depending on how common being able to generate the blue flame in Diqiu is, Azana's career arc may have just taken a fairly radical turn. If it's merely rare but not unheard of, it is still a pretty big feather in her cap; whoever handles merchandising for the Fire Ferrets will probably be very pleased indeed, and of course her achieving that degree of mastery and insight brings honor and respect to Master Ito and her academy. Juniper may have gotten in on the ground floor of someone who might suddenly be very in-demand as a sifu.

If this is a "literally nobody else has been able to do this since Azula" situation, though, where the blue flame is a one-a-century talent, then all that gets dialed up to eleven. Azana may find herself the subject of some rather unpleasant attention from her mothers ultraconservative political faction, for example, who would really like to have someone who harkens back to the ancien regime in their corner. Katara may ask her cousin to renew his friendship with his old schoolmate to ensure that the exact opposite of that happens. It could cause trouble for her MLB career, with opposing teams claiming unfair advantage, the bending equivalent of using a corked bat or putting an airbender on the team.

So there's that.

This also might have some relevance to what happens if and when Azula tries to return to Diqiu as Princess Azula, as opposed to Sarah Inazuma. It's hard to dismiss someone as a crazy person if they can generate a kind of bending that only Azula (until Azana) could do.

Anyway. Sorry for taking so long to get to this. I'll see about polishing off the Azula mini-stories over the next couple days. Although I've said THAT before...

-Merc
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