The Avatar_500 Jump Start Posting And Comments Meme

[attackfish]

Alright, I'm unwilling to let avatar_500 go without a fight, so I am going to incentivize participation.  Write and post a fic for Round 65 - Air, and I'll fill a drabble request of yours.  Comment on all of the fics in the round (everybody said they wanted more comments), and at the end of the round, link me to all of the comments and I'll fill a request for you.  Do both, and I will fulfill three requests for commentfic.

The rules for posting to avatar_500 can be found here.

You don't have to belong to avatar_500 or have ever participated in it before to earn a request for commenting, and if you do want to join to post a fic for the round, all you have to do is click the "join the community" button, and you're in, easy.

About which I will not write (so don't request):

Ty Zula
NC-17
Incest
Ships where one party is much older or younger than the other(s)
Rape
Other people's OCs

Other than that, everything is fair game.

The deadline to post fic is Saturday December 1st at 11:00 PM EST.  The deadline to post comments is  Saturday December 8th at 11:00 PM EST.

Fics in The Round So Far:

Marking Boundaries by attackfish
The Need to be Seen by lalunatique
Playtime at Air Temple Island by wolfs_lament 
What Are the Odds? by c3childs
Wrong by chordatesrock
Four Element - Air- Third Stanza byclockwerkchaos
How Tenzin Met Pema by lavanyasix


Fills:

Forwolfs_lament:
   For a story: Hufflepuff Zuko, Secret Tunnel

For chordatesrock:
   For a story: Holding This Breath: the Aftermath of Kidnapping Aang
   For commenting on everyone's fics: Quiet Shadowed Places: the Cooler
   Bonus: Zuko/Toph, all grown up and surviving state dinners

For lalunatique:
   For commenting on everyone's fics: Ty Lee and Suki - Sake

For somariel:
   For commenting on everyone's fics: The Grand Lotus puts out a call

For: c3childs:
   For a story: Hama - Katara wasn't her first pupil  *Warning for violence and death*
   For commenting on everyone's fics: Amon - the vigilante of Republic City
   Bonus:  Yakone - he owns Republic City

For lavanyasix:
   For a story: Lin Realizes Toph is a dirty cop
   For commenting on everyone's fics: Pre-series - Korra encounters prejudice due to being half Northern and half Southern
   Bonus:  Ozai marries his son off into an insultingly low-ranked colonial noble family. Zuko/Kori

Comments

For Stories

[attackfish.livejournal.com]

Comment here with a link to the avatar_500 post for your story and a prompt/request for me to answer.

Re: For Stories

[chordatesrock.livejournal.com]

Wrong by chordatesrock, for avatar-500 prompt #65. (http://avatar-500.livejournal.com/226185.html)

That horrible universe where the Northern Water Tribe captured Zuko: what ever happened with his attempt to kidnap Aang?

Holding This Breath - The aftermath of kidnapping Aang 1/2

[attackfish.livejournal.com]

The ice wall parted, and Zuko's head jerked up. Yue caught his eyes from the doorway and held them as she crossed the floor of his room and sank down to her knees beside him. "Zuko, what were you thinking?"

He dropped his eyes and glowered at the floor.

"Don't be like that." Grabbing his chained hands and cupping them in hers, she tried to catch his eyes again. "You had to know it wasn't going to work. What were you going to do when the cotton-poppy juice wore off?"

He stubbornly refused to look at her, and it made her unreasonably angry. He was the one who had run. He was the one who had left her alone.

"Zuko, it's me." She rubbed the back of his hand through his mitten. "Talk to me."

"What was I supposed to do?" Finally he met her eyes again, and his own were wide and unhappy before he narrowed them. "I never even had a chance to go home before, the Avatar- I never really believed he was real before, and now..."

Yue kept rubbing the back of his hand with her thumb. All day, she heard people talking about it. She wondered if the guards talked about it in front of Zuko, now that he was chained up again and harmless, or if they had stopped talking in front of him at all and consigned him back to the bubble of silence that had surrounded him when he had first been captured. She didn't know which was kinder, and she hoped that mattered to the guards, at least a little, enough for them to consider it.

They never had ever had a chance before either, not really. Nobody talked about it, because nobody wanted to remember, but they all knew that the only thing keeping the Fire Nation from their door was that they just weren't worth the struggle, at least not while the Earth Kingdom was around, richer, and easier to pick away at. But that wouldn't last forever, and everybody knew it.

It was usually much, much easier to forget about all of that when she was with Zuko, to forget that out there, it was Zuko's nation that was creeping ever closer to swallowing them whole. "Do you think your father really would have loved you again if you brought him the Avatar?"

"He does love me!" The ice under him hissed as it melted and boiled all at once. "I just have to-"

Re: For Stories

[wolfs-lament.livejournal.com]

Playtime at Air Temple Island (http://avatar-500.livejournal.com/225470.html)

Can I request Hufflepuff Zuko? Toph and Zuko in an unintentional adventure, or coming back to the house dorm after Toph has lost a bunch of points and Zuko getting caught up in it.

Secret Tunnel!

[attackfish.livejournal.com]

Hufflepuff Zuko is always request-able! This takes place in their fourth year.

~*~

"Well I didn't know they kept an army of animated suits of armor down there." Toph folded her arms and smirked. "Not my fault."

Zuko scowled back at her which she was totally oblivious to. "I don't think anybody else knew either, but most people know better than to go of running down every secret tunnel they come across!"

Toph set her jaw and sat down on the bench, arms still folded. "You didn't have to come."

"Yes I did, you dragged me in with you."

"You could have climbed out again." She shrugged, grinning and spreading her arms wide. "It was only a few feet."

Zuko had seen the look on her face, when the stairstep had vanished, and she had stepped down onto thin air, when she had grabbed his arm reflexively and held onto him as she fell. "Just help me get these seedbeds manured."

She grabbed the spare trowel and pulled it out of the manure with a nice, heavy load. "Admit it, you had fun."

Zuko's good eye bulged. "No I didn't, we had to run for our lives!"

"See?" said Toph triumphantly. "Fun."

"Ugh," Zuko replied. He was on his hands and knees, spreading manure in a greenhouse on a Saturday morning. He didn't want to deal with it.

"Personally, I don't know why they gave us detention," Toph said innocently, blinking her eyes. "They shouldn't leave vanishing staircases like that over tunnels that poor helpless little blind girls like me could have fallen into."

"Give it a rest," he groaned. "Nobody buys that anymore." Except for Zuko, especially when he knew he shouldn't. And there she was, saying the same thing Longbottom and Smith had said to him, about how he didn't have to go with her, and he stood there, unable to tell them yes, yes he did, because Toph was going down that tunnel, and what would she do without him if there was something in the tunnel with her. And she had, needed him, hadn't she? "You lost us a hundred points."

"Hey, I lost us fifty. You lost us the other fifty." She grinned again, wild, and carefree, and unafraid. "Anyway, they should be glad we found those suits of armor before some first year did."

Zuko picked up another trowel full of manure and spread it over the bed. "Most first years aren't stupid enough to poke something they find down a dark corridor with their wand."

The manure hit him right between the shoulder blades.

"You've got to be kidding me," he yelped, grabbing a handful of manure to throw back at her.

Re: For Stories

[c3childs.livejournal.com]

http://avatar-500.livejournal.com/225572.html

Hama - Katara wasn't her first pupil.

Hama - Katara wasn't her first pupil pt 1/2

[attackfish.livejournal.com]

Warnings (big warnings) for graphic violence, and blood, and death, and bad things.

~*~

"What's the point of practicing like that anyway?" He pressed himself against the bars of his cage, thin legs poking through. "There isn't any water here."

"Hush," she rasped, body too dry to wet her mouth. "I need to concentrate."

"Concentrate on what?" He let his arms fall away from the bars and swing to his sides, and Hama couldn't help staring at them, and how thin and knobbly they were, like twigs. She tried to place him. "You're not bending anything. None of us are ever going to get to bend anything again."

Yuna's boy. He was what, maybe fifteen or sixteen? He can't have been more than ten when she left, and now look, he was old enough to go to war and become a prisoner. She laughed at him, coldly. "Not if you think like that, you won't."

"The guards are going to catch you. They're going to take you out and beat you. You really want that to happen again?" He licked his cracking lips, but it didn't do any good.

Hama's eyes flicked back to him as she began her forms again from the beginning. "You can watch for the guards if you're so worried."

"I don't get it." He said flatly. "There's no water."

No. Not there, where the air was so dry it stole away their tears and their sweat as soon as they formed, where the cups of water they were given weren't enough to keep their mouths from tasting like dust or relieve the pounding in their heads, where the guards measured their piss and beat them if they didn't think it was enough. And it was never enough, because the water was never enough. "Yes there is, don't you feel it?"

He stared at her as she continued her way through her forms as if she had gone crazy, and she smiled fiercely back. She got it, and he didn't.

"There's water inside of me," she said, her voice low, and she wondered what he saw with his sad, terrified eyes. She was a young woman still. Did he see a grownup, someone who had already been fighting when he had been a little boy, or did he see the closest thing to a pretty Water Tribe girl he was ever going to see again? Was that why he was worried for her? "And inside of you, and inside the rats that scurry around this prison." She let her voice drop even lower until he had to lean into the bars to hear her. "And inside the guards carrying the keys. We'll bend their blood."

"That's impossible. Nobody's ever-"

"I already have." She grabbed the bars of her cage. "I made the rats come out of the shadows last month, and under the full moon, we will break free, and they won't be able to stop us, because I'll control their very bodies."

"Show me," he hissed. "If you're so great, show mw while the guards aren't looking."

Hama looked away from him. "I need the full moon and the power it gives us."

He shook his head. "I don't believe you."

"Wait." She smiled. "The full moon's in two days. I'll show you."

~*~

Hama pulled her arm back, and the rats slumped forward, and then, with a flick of her wrist, the rats flew out of her cage, and back into the shadows.

The boy's lips has parted in astonishment, and he closed them, siting there with his legs hanging out of his cage, silently until he managed to speak. "Can I try?"

"Go ahead." Hama smirked. "Nobody's stopping you."

He breathed out. His hands tensed into claws, and she could see him grab hold of the water in the rats' veins. Two of them jerked forward, into a patch of moonlight between the cages when he moved his arm. He let his arm fall, and they ran off, chittering into the darkness. "I think I can do more."

"That's good." Her eyes didn't leave his. "That means I'm not alone."

He pulled his legs back inside the cage. "It felt really..."

"Powerful?"

"Yeah, I guess." He gulped. "Weird.

"Help me." Hama reached her hand through the cage bars. "You want out too, don't you? We'll take our freedom together."

"Yeah." He nodded. "We'll get everybody out together."

For Comments

[attackfish.livejournal.com]

Post here with the links for each of the comments you've posted to the stories in this round, and a prompt/request for me to answer.

Re: For Comments

[lalunatique.livejournal.com]

Placeholder post before deadline, will comment and edit add more links if new entries come in.

For Marking Boundaries (http://attackfish.livejournal.com/111425.html?thread=1359681#t1359681)

For What Are the Odds? (http://avatar-500.livejournal.com/225572.html?thread=710436#t710436)

For Playtime at Air Temple Island (http://wolfs-lament.livejournal.com/790.html?thread=534#t534)

Request: I'm thinking Ty Lee/Suki with the prompt "sake" (the drink), though I might change my mind before the deadline. The additional challenge is to NOT to make the characters all giggly and boozy, and for them not to have a drunken ill-advised romp (though I'm fine with sex per se). Can be gen, though I have a slight preference for slash.

Ty Lee and Suki - Sake

[attackfish.livejournal.com]

So, I checked through, and you had commented on everything, and I've been sitting on this for days, so here you go. I tried, but it didn't turn out all that slashy.

~*~

Suki's head sank lower on Ty Lee's shoulder and her breath came warm and rasping, and heavy with the scent of alcohol. She stumbled on the empty floor, and Ty Lee caught her and kept her from falling. "Come on," she murmured. "We're almost there."

"Thanks, Ty Lee," Suki said slowly, carefully enunciating each word. "I'm sorry."

No, Ty Lee restrained herself from saying. You are not going to start crying again. But She wouldn't have stopped Suki if she did, not really. "It's okay. Let's just get you in bed, and..."

"You're really nice about this, I mean reeeeeally nice. I don't think the oth-" her feet tangled, and she dropped, and Ty Lee scrambled to catch her before she sagged to the floor.

"Maybe you shouldn't talk right now." Ty Lee propped her back up. "Maybe you should just concentrate on walking." She pushed the sliding door out of the way and half dragged her leader into the room.

Suki just grunted, and when Ty Lee layed her out on her futon, she patted Ty Lee's cheek. "I mean it." Her hand slid down to Ty Lee's throat, and stayed there, as if she were unaware of it, still there at the end of her arm. "You're soooo nice about this. The other girls would laugh."

Ty Lee cupped the hand on her neck in her own and peered down at her leader through the darkness. Her leader. She had never seen Azula so vulnerable. She had never seen Mai or Zuko so vulnerable either. She couldn't remember letting anyone ever se her so vulnerable, reliant on a friend to carry her to bed and tuck her in. "I wouldn't laugh at you," she said seriously.

"See?" Suki said, closing her eyes and smiling. "Nice."

Kneeling beside her in the dark, Ty Lee saw Azula's face for a moment, instead of Suki, saw her her as she had let Ty Lee see her, without weaknesses or imperfections, so, so perfect that she never could quite believe it wasn't real until after Azula was gone again. "I guess."

Ty Lee was nice because she wouldn't laugh. Right then, she wanted to. She wanted to laugh, and laugh, until she started crying, and then she wanted to disappear. This woman was her friend, and she was so sure, so completely confident the worst her friends would ever do to her was laugh.

Somehow, she felt touched.

Somehow, she felt lost.

Maybe she should have stayed in the Fire Nation, with Mai and Zuko, with people who at least, above all else shared with her the bone deep hard taught knowledge that moments of weakness were just tools for others to use against them.

"Stay?" Suki whispered in the dark.

"Of course," Ty Lee answered her. Suki trusted her. This was what trust felt like. And she wished with everything she had that she could trust back. "Of course."

Re: For Comments

[chordatesrock.livejournal.com]

My comment on The Need to Be Seen (http://lalunatique.livejournal.com/28869.html?thread=225221#t225221)

My comment on Marking Boundaries (http://attackfish.livejournal.com/111425.html?thread=1367105#t1367105)

My comment on Playtime at Air Temple Island (http://wolfs-lament.livejournal.com/790.html?thread=3094#t3094)

My comment on What are the Odds? (http://avatar-500.livejournal.com/225572.html?thread=712740#t712740)

If someone posts another fill after this, do I have to post another comment? And if I post a fill, do I need to comment on it? Are AUs allowed for this challenge? And will you do this again next time?

My request is for the Quiet Shadowed Places verse, whichever of the following appeals to you most:
1. Crossroads of Destiny
2. The initial meeting of Zuko and Aang at the South Pole or something from that first episode
3. If it happens in QSPverse, then the episodes set on the Rock; otherwise, whatever was happening at that time instead
4. Going and learning from the dragons

(ETA: Oh, and I can't read your format guidelines. LJ gives me an error message.)

Re: For Comments

[attackfish.livejournal.com]

Sorry it took me this long to answer. I had to get to an actual computer instead of my cell phone, so I could send you links. The rules and format guidelines for posting an entry to an avatar 500 round can be found here: http://avatar-500.livejournal.com/profile . Yes you do have to post comments to any new fills for this round, and post links to them here.

Some of those requests of yours, I've actually filled for other people.

First episode Zuko and Sokka meeting at the South Pole (Aang and Zuko's meeting is pretty much identical to canon): http://attackfish.livejournal.com/65620.html?thread=692052#t692052

Firebending Masters: http://attackfish.livejournal.com/65620.html?thread=665428#t665428

Re: For Comments

[chordatesrock.livejournal.com]

My comment on How Tenzin Met Pema (http://avatar-500.livejournal.com/227534.html?view=714958#t714958)

My comment on Four Elements - Air - Third Stanza (http://avatar-500.livejournal.com/226680.html?thread=714616#t714616)

Quiet Shadowed Places - The Cooler

[attackfish.livejournal.com]

Zuko breathed out a thin stream of flame that curled like ash in the freezing air. In front of him, the fire glowed on his senses, spinning and spiraling until it touched the boundaries of his prison. He felt it lapping at the wall, fluttering against it like a living thing, or like a piece of himself, and he held onto it.

His breath flew out of him in a rush and coated the walls in a wave of fire, seeking, mapping, bright in the way he could almost see it. It flickered and danced up the walls, finding the ridges and bumps of the bolts he had to unfasten, and then climbed higher, to the cooler's flat ceiling before he let them dissipate, leaving the tiny room ice cold again.

And he held that picture in his mind, of what the room had to look like, and what it had looked like to him under his fire, but without the fire, it felt suddenly suffocatingly small, and dark, and very, very cold.

He sighed and grabbed the wrench Sokka had passed to him. The heat from the other boy's hands had long since vanished, and Zuko's own hands stung as he held it. He braced himself against the wall and bit off a curse at the cold that raced into him from that tiny point of contact. But he had a job to do. He wasn't just in there to shiver away until the guards decided he had been punished enough. He had put himself in there. This was his choice, and by his will. He left his hand against the wall, and let heat roll down it, and loosened bolt after bolt until the icy wall itself grew warm under his hands and lit up in his senses again.

Re: For Comments

[somariel]

Lavanya Six
clockworkchaos
chordatesrock
c3childs
wolfs_lament
Lunatique
attackfish

Iroh, Kindle the Wind

Re: For Comments

[attackfish.livejournal.com]

Since Kindle the Wind is still open, and I'm trying to fill those in some semblance of chronological order, could you ask for something in a different verse (not Ice Flows Through, as that's still ongoing)

The Grand Lotus puts out a call

[attackfish.livejournal.com]

"I cannot stay long," Iroh told him as he stood in the window of his friend's grand estate. Piandao supposed that if one were going to escape from prison, there were far worse places to retreat to. "I only came to ask you to help me spread the word."

"Of course you did." Piandao shook his head ruefully. "Old friend, it's funny but we never talk anymore except when we have to."

"I'm sorry." The steam above Iroh's cup made small spirals in the mountain air. "If this goes well, there will be all the time in the world to renew old bonds."

"And if it doesn't?"

Iroh smiled sadly.

Piandao away from his friend towards the door. "I have to go into town." He turned around. "We'll meet at Ba Sing Se."

"We will," Iroh said, and Piandao knew he would be gone by the time he returned.

Re: For Comments

[c3childs.livejournal.com]

Comments:
1)clockworkchaors: http://avatar-500.livejournal.com/226680.html?thread=721528#t721528
2)Lavanyasix: http://avatar-500.livejournal.com/227534.html?thread=717774#t717774
3)chordatesrock: http://avatar-500.livejournal.com/226185.html?thread=721801#t721801
4)wolfs_lament: http://wolfs-lament.livejournal.com/790.html?thread=790#t790
5)lalunatique: http://lalunatique.livejournal.com/28869.html?thread=217541#t217541
6)attackfish: http://attackfish.livejournal.com/111425.html?thread=1361473#t1361473

Request: Amon - the vigilante of Republic City

For Bonus Fills

[attackfish.livejournal.com]

After you have qualified for and requested fics for writing a story and commending on all of the other stories, comment here with another prompt/fic for me to answer.

Re: For Bonus Fills

[chordatesrock.livejournal.com]

Kindle the Wind: anything at all.

Re: For Bonus Fills

[c3childs.livejournal.com]

Because of reasons (the witnesses all had 'accidents' or 'left town' or 'something') Yakone isn't convicted, and Republic City is effectively his.

[lalunatique.livejournal.com]

I have a separate question: What's your policy on reposting? I have a 300-word story (http://avatar-contest.livejournal.com/161059.html) posted to another contest and I think it fits this prompt. I thought about doing a new story for this prompt but I can't think of anything more interesting than what I already did.

[attackfish.livejournal.com]

Ordinarily, I would say that you would have had to have posted it after the beginning of round 65, but given how desperate we are right now for fills, I am willing to make an exception. But you have to either link to your journal entry, or post it to the community. No linking to the post on the other community.

[lavanyasix.livejournal.com]

ENTRY: http://avatar-500.livejournal.com/227534.html

COMMENTS:
"Third Stanza" - http://avatar-500.livejournal.com/226680.html?view=718712#t718712
"The Need to be Seen" - http://lalunatique.livejournal.com/28869.html?thread=230597#t230597
"Playtime at Air Temple Island" - http://wolfs-lament.livejournal.com/790.html?view=4886#t4886
"What are the Odds?" - http://avatar-500.livejournal.com/225572.html?view=717860#t717860
"Wrong" - http://avatar-500.livejournal.com/226185.html?view=717449#t717449
"Making Boundaries" - http://attackfish.livejournal.com/111425.html?view=1376065#t1376065

[attackfish.livejournal.com]

*pokes the links* Yay! But could you post some prompts to the correct sections so that I have something to answer?