attackfish

Written for avatar_500 prompt #5, Tyrant.

Summary: The strain takes its toll on the new Firelord.

Leaving and Gone

“What! Which one of you just said that?”  Through the flames around her throne, she could barely see the twins pointing their gnarled fingers at each other.  The flames first turned blue, she remembered, when Zu-zu left.  Everybody was always leaving.

“What a shame.”  Her eyes were bright.  “There’s only one way to resolve this. You two must duel each other. I order you to fight an Agni Kai.”

It didn’t matter which twin started the answer.  “But…”

“We’re not firebenders.”  Because they finished it together.

“Alright, fine.  Lo, you’re banished.”  it didn’t matter which of the twins she was pointing to.  “Li, you can stay.”  They were both going to be leaving.

~*~

“But what choice do I have?” Azula howled.  No!  She wasn’t going to think about Mai and Ty Lee.  She refused to think about the ones who’d already left.  “Trust is for fools. Fear is the only reliable way. Even you fear me!”

“No. I love you, Azula.”  Her mother’s reflection gave her the saddest look.  Why did she have to look at her like that?  “I do.”

Her hand latched onto the brush.  She wasn’t crying.  She wasn’t crying!  The tears splashed on the top of her table.  Her mother was talking to her, and she was already gone.

Azula roared.  Her hand opened.  The brush slammed into the glass.  The air broke apart, and from the ruined pieces on the floor, her mother blinked back at her.  Why wasn’t she leaving?  Wasn’t she already gone?

Written for avatar_500 prompt #3, Undying.

Summary: The first new moon.

Uncharted

Yue rose early, pale and lusterless in the morning sky.  “Hello Agni,” she greeted, bowing her head.

Beaming, he waved to her as she climbed higher.  Her hands trailed though the air, pulling the ocean waters after them, and La reached his hand up to her, but she didn’t take it.

He wanted Tui.  She couldn’t be Tui.

When she came close enough, Agni took her hands and pulled her into an embrace.  “You feel so thin,” he whispered.

She leaned against him, letting his short, round body bear her weight for a while, her head against his pudgy arm.  “Is something wrong with me?”

He shook his head and tucked her braids behind her ears.  His eyes took on a faraway look.  “Tui always had a hard time just before the new moon too.”

Yue let go abruptly.  “I’m sorry,” she wanted to say.

She hadn’t realized she had spoken it aloud until Agni laid his hand over hers.  “What for?”

“You must miss your sister terribly,” she murmured.

Agni rubbed the back of her hand with his thumb.  “Your sister too.”  Smiling sadly, Yue shook her head, and let him keep holding her hand.  After a moment, he let go and stood back, dangling in the air in front of her.  “Do you want me to help you through the sky?”

She felt horribly weak nodding, but her head bobbed without her permission.  He lifted her and her sliver of moon into his arms and carried her through the sky, letting the sun disk drift along behind them.  “Was-”  she stopped talking, and looked away.  “Was Tui your real sister, or was she your sister like I’m your sister?”

His brow furrowed, puzzled.  “You’re my real sister.”

“No, I mean, did you have the same parents?”

“We don’t have parents.”  He closed his eyes as she looked back to him.  “But I’m the Sun, and she was the Moon, so she was my sister.”

Yue wished he would smile. His round face was made for it.  She wished she could make him smile.

“I’ve never missed anyone before.  She’s the first of us to die.  I...”  He closed his eyes again and fought back tears.  “I didn’t even know we could.”

A piece of Yue was circling La in the pool at the spirit oasis, frail, and living, and vulnerable.  She brushed her hand against her brother’s cheek.

Written for avatar_500 for prompt #1: element.

Summary: People cross into and out of their elements all the time.


Ten Thousand Things

Playing another note on his reed flute, Aang grinned around the mouthpiece as another prairie dog popped out of its hole and echoed the note.  “I’m putting an orchestra together!”  He looked up at his friends.

“Orchestra, huh?” Sokka muttered.  “Well la dee da.”  But it didn’t matter, because Aang was in his element.

Toph crossed her arms.  “I say you guys go ahead without me.”

Katara rounded on her.  “You got something against libraries?”

“I’ve held books before, and I gotta tell you, they don’t exactly do it for me,” she sneered.  She didn’t like being out of her element.

~*~

“So, you like flyin’?” Toph drawled.  Appa scratched his ear.  Toph was out of her element anyway.

~*~

“I have an authentic waterbending scroll.” Katara smiled eagerly.

“Oh…” Wan Shi Tong murmured covetously.  “These illustrations are quite stylish.”  As he swept his wing over the scroll and it vanished into his collection, Katara bowed to him, still smiling.  She was in her element.

~*~

The water tribe boy dangled from the rope.  “Professor, let’s go!”

Zei picked his head up from the scroll in his hands, disregarding the sand pouring down around him.  He was in his element.

~*~

“Your waterbending won’t do you much good here,” the knowledge spirit sneered.  “I’ve studied Northern Water Style, Southern Water Style, even Foggy Swamp Style.”  He raised his head and opened his beak.

Sokka waited to let go of Aang and the glider until he was right above Wan Shi Tong.  The book in his fist crashed hard into the knowledge spirit’s head.  “That’s called Sokka style,” he crowed, beating the air with his fist.  “Learn it!”  As he ran, he was in his element.

~*~

Wan Shi Tong drifted out of consciousness, his knowledge flitting away from him.  He was out of his element.

The Will of a God

“I thought I told you if you ever slept with a man who could not beat you in fair combat you would suffer my wrath!” the war god thundered his bloody gaze falling on the scrawny form of the man beside her. The flames from the god’s sword miraculously didn’t set the pillows on fire, but she could feel them burn where the blade touched her neck.

Her new boyfriend stared wide eyed at the shining terror standing at the foot of the bed.

She didn’t even bother pulling up the sheet and winked. “Our Scrabble matches are very combative.”



Author's Note:  So it's a stupid, misogynistic, melodramatic trope, so I feel compelled to spoof.

Stop.  Don’t.

Ty Lee’s father’s feet were as light as hers, and when she was little, she watched him hesitate, and draw them down, and keep his steps even, but didn’t know why.

Stop.  Don’t.

Around her, her sisters followed his lead, and gazed at the sky with wistful smiles, and never left the ground, at least not where anyone could see.

Stop. Don’t.

Her mother always gave her father a puzzled look when he said that.

Stop.  Don’t.

But Ty Lee dreamed she could fly and woke up sure she could.  The air would never have let her fall.

Author's Note: So the other day, I gave Iroh a really silly drabble.  This counterbalences that.  Poor Iroh; a Dragon's work is never done.

Harmless Old Man

The tea streamed into the porcelain cup, but the man sitting behind wasn’t really there for the tea.  Iroh could always tell which ones were there to gawk at the Dragon of the West, to see their old nightmare gentled and humble and safe.

But that was alright, because he wasn’t really there for the tea either.

The Dai Li trickled back into the city with the multitudes, and the Earth King’s new power crouched unsteadily on his shoulders, restlessly waiting for someone to pluck it away, but no one tried.  No one dared rouse the Dragon of the West.

Time Flies

“I learned to bend water in vines at the side of my mother and father,” the young woman held her head high, hands balled into determined fists, “I mastered earthbending when I was seventeen.  The Fire Lord herself taught me.  I am twenty years old, and one element away from becoming a fully realized avatar.  I’m ready.”

The temple elder cocked her head and stared at her sideways, pulling her wizened, scrawny, shriveled body up to cartwheel and flip down to her.  “But do you think you can fly?”

All of her bravado spilled away behind a little girl’s grin.

Author's Note: Oh come on, we all know the next Avatar's going to be from the swamp.  Yes, that temple elder is Ty-Lee, and in my head, the current fire lord for this is Zuko's granddaughter.

This is another one of those drabbles I wrote in the gift exchange at atlaland, this time fore suzukiblu.  Her fanfic is seriously brilliant, and you can find it at white_knuckle.  Check it out.

Push and Pull

Yue stood thin and insubstantial in the grim half-light of the spirit world. “I am the moon for my people.”

La’s arms hung limp at his sides. “But you aren’t Tui. You can’t be Tui.”

The ocean spirit was crying, she realized, like a person, and she was the moon spirit, and every thing hurt and itched, and didn’t feel right. “I’m sorry,” she said the words falling flat.

His hand rested on her cheek, face slack with desperation. “I barely know you.”

She kissed him on the forehead and pulled away. “We don’t have to love each other yet.”

Author's Note: After all that running around after and then with the avatar and his brave companions, I can just see Zuko coming home and being really genre savy.  This is item number one on the evil overlord list, actually...  I don't know, it feels like he's channeling Gen from Megan Whalen Turner's books here, playing innocent and stupid most of the time, and then WHAM, oh yeah, that's why he's Fire Lord.


Form Over Function

“Tell me,” Zuko asked, “Why do Fire Nation troops wear face masks or helmets with visors?”

“They protect their faces and intimidate our enemies,” one of his generals replied, suppressing a sigh.

The new Fire Lord’s eyes flicked over the tax reports on the table and then narrowed on the general.  “Really?  Because I always thought they just made it easy for people to infiltrate our armed forces.”

The general flinched, finding himself missing Princess Azula.  No one ever forgot she was terrifying.  “My lord, I don’t...”

“It was really useful during the war," he deadpanned.  “Thanks, by the way.”

Author's Note: I really like the thought of Ty Lee being an airbender and not knowing it.  It's an idea I plan to play with in the future.  It's not supposed to be Aang/Ty Lee, but I guess it kind of gives that vibe.

Pointing the Way

The hair had finally started to grow back in a soft fuzz.  Every morning, she shaved all the way back to the middle of her skull, displaying her still healing arrow gracefully.

She rested her chin on her arms innocently as the needles bit into the skin over her spine, leaving their ink behind.

“It’s all your fault, you know,” and he remembered the way she had flinched and clenched her teeth when those same needles moved over her skull and between her eyes.  “No one’s impressed with my acrobatics anymore.”

“I’m still impressed,” Aang told her, re-inking his needles.

I wrote this for himhilien in the gift exchange at atlaland because I'm accustomed to giving other people gifts on my birthday. Yes, that is an intentional Star Wars quote as the title.

More Powerful Than You Could Possibly Imagine

“Stop pacing, some of us are trying to feel better.”

“You wouldn’t feel sick in the first place if you hadn’t eaten all those cakes, Sokka.”

“Katara!”

But Katara didn’t even slow down. “I just don’t understand why Toph would want to go home right away. It’s so... sudden.”

“Maybe she thinks that now that she helped Aang win, her parents will realize she’s not weak and fragile,” Zuko muttered.

Meanwhile, trapped in the carriage that would take him to the family of his new body, the Melon Lord stared out of her sightless eyes and planned his ultimate victory.

Disclaimer: JKR doesn't mind fanfiction writers I hear.

A Matter of Appearances

Black Sentenced to Azkaban The newspaper headline proclaimed, and Walburga scanned the first line, chest fluttering.  Notorious mass murderer Sirius Black was sentenced to life in the Wizarding prison yesterday evening...

Her firstborn was a credit to the family after all.

She pulled out a peace of parchment and wrote the letter needed to re-inherit her son.

With both her sons disgraced, for the right reasons, she could bear her own disgrace and wile away her remaining years knowing she raised them well.

And even if Sirius couldn't touch a knut of it in Azkaban, it was the appearances that mattered.

Author's Note: While taking my Central American Politics class, I wanted to write something set in a world based on Guatemala at the height of the political oppression, but I never managed to get my plot to grow into anything longer than a 250 word drabble.  Guatemalan society for more than a hundred years was run by the coffee growing elite, who controlled the government and enforced a form of debt slavery on the rest of the country's population.  The military was almost entirely deployed internally, as an arm of political control to keep the peasents working on the coffee plantations.

Coffee Bean Ghosts

The first time Gnat stole something, it was a soldier's coat, into the belly of her dress.  She had been pregnant then, so it just looked like more bump.  After that, she pilfered a soldier's trousers from the laundry and a box of ammunition from the bed closest to the barracks door.  That night, a bayonet hung from a string around her leg.  She heard the whispers as she walked past the guards.  She's just Alvero's lover, no danger.

As soon as she made her way home, she kissed her husband and he dressed in the soldier's uniform.  He hefted the soldier's pack onto his shoulders, and at the rustling inside, Gnat hushed her daughter.  The jungle rose thick around them as they crept away, Javier's hand around her waist.  "Just looking for a little privacy," he called to the guards at the gate and they looked down at his uniform and the brown faced woman, and waved him through with a laugh.

Out of sight, Gnat pulled a handful of Coffee beans Alvero had given her to show her what she was growing out of her pocket and she tossed them to the ground behind her.  "Natalia Calderon y Ortega," she said to them, and as soon as she did, they rose up and followed where She walked.  In the darkness, the beans wore the face of her grandmother and stopped them each time they grew too close to soldiers.  They slipped into the pack to distract her granddaughter.

Disclaimer: Sweet Nameless Creator(s) I'm glad this isn't canon!

Author's Note: Once again I decry responsibility and lay it squarely at the feet of the lovely ladies at Potions and Snitches, excepting my own self, with a side inclusion of the terrible Cat.  Upon viewing one of my challenges, one lady remarked, "why can't you write any happy challenges, Fish, why must it always end in tears?"  Cat, who I forced to read this, replied, "or gay marriage..."  and another lady at Potions and Snitches, not privy to that verbal insertion responded, "I don't know, you could use love potions..."  I said, "but that would take out all the lovely angst!"  to which the second lady responded (quite rightly, I must interject) , "The angst comes when the potion wears off and they're locked away in St. Mungos."



Only End in Tears


The tumblers clinked together in mutual misery as their respective possessors brought them to their lips to sip.

"I never notished how lovely your eyes were," James slurred, almost sliding off his stool.

Severus Snape leaned forward to kiss him, the whiskey jumping away as his elbow almost sent it careening over the table edge.  A tiny fist formed, pinched from the rest of the glass and shook itself at him.

When the potion wore off some hours later, the alcohol dispersing with it, through their hangovers, both men started to gibber.

They have their own ward at St. Mungos.

Author's Note:  I blame Rose, who told me today that every time she hears Fenrir/Bellatrix, she mentally adds in mpreg, because "everything's funnier with mpreg", and I blame the ladies and gentlemen at Potions and Snitches, for getting me started on Fenrir/Bellatrix in the first place, and for giving me the title for this drabble.

Disclaimer: Even if I tried to market this, I'd never make any money.


Psycho Death Eating Were-Cubs


Fenrir's heart pounded as he jolted awake.  Bellatrix's knife stood poised just beneath his ribs, a drip of his blood welling up.  "Are you out of your bloody mind?"

She giggled at his stupid question.  "You got me pregnant," she sang, voice high, "And I'm not carrying your mixed breed filth."  He panted, his fetid breath, hitting her in the face.  When he tried to throw her off, she drove her wand into his throat.  "But you can!"

"I don't think you understand how this works," he howled, scrambling to get away.

"I'm going to put our baby inside you!"

Disclaimer: JKR is really friendly to fanfiction writers, actually, so long as we make no money from it.

In which Severus considers the relative intelligence of Professor Trelawney and Sirius Black, and finds his colleague wanting.


The Truth about Bats and Dogs

"Ah, Severus, my inner eye tells me you have been avoiding me."  He ignored her.  "Is it because you're afraid of what I'll see?"  he rammed his mashed potato covered fork into his peas so they stuck like sprinkles to ice cream.  "Have you, oh, no, have you seen a large black dog?  Have you seen a Grim?"

He choked.  "Many times, and I'm not dead yet.  Now if you don't mind shutting up-"

But Trelawney was used to that.  "It hasn't approached you has it?" she asked, eyes particularly insect-like behind her huge glasses.

"He knows better," he snapped.

Summary (or an excuse to explain what was in the thirty words I had to cut): In which the Weasley twins find out that Remus and Sirius are Moony and Padfoot.


Idle Worship


The Weasley twins passed Snape, standing at the kitchen door, "Hey Snape, have you seen Sirius and Remus?" He glowered at them until they moved away. A door nearby clicked and he looked up in time to see Lupin ducking inside. The twins grinned at each other and hammered on it. Lupin's voice came through muffled, "No, I will not tell you about all the pranks I played. Stop asking!"

"Fred, George, stop hounding them and help me with these curtains," their mother yelled. The two sulked up the stairs. The pantry door creaked open. "Are they gone?" Sirius asked.

This is a is a response to a challenge on thematic_hp

Disclaimer: Nope, still not JKR...

Prompt: #93 (round 11) Computer/Wizard Interface: Welcome to Computer/Wizard Interface (or some other snazzy name). We update your computer to work with magic and your wizading needs.  Bonus - some pureblood that would normally be out of their depth with Muggle technology.
Summary: In which Draco runs afoul of former professors and Muggle wire boxes.

Author's Note: Astoria is Astoria Greengrass, a character not mentioned in the books that JKR said marries Draco.  She is Daphne Greengrass' (a Slytherin girl in Draco's year mentioned in book five) younger sister.


( Telephone Trees )

This is a plot bunny of Laume's that slunk in on its belly, camouflage paint in its fur.  It's apparently what her brain did with No Difference.


April Fools


"Ah Severus, I'm glad you came," the headmaster's voice was grim.

"Is there something wrong, headmaster?"

"No, not wrong, precisely," he replied, standing.  "Professor Trelawney had an... accident with Miss Granger's Time Turner."

Severus nodded.  "What do you need?"

"Nothing like that, Severus, it's only that she spent nearly a year in the past only shortly after her own birth, and before she left, she and Hagrid had become involved..."  Severus stared at him nonplussed.  "She bore a child, and he was adopted by your parents."

There was a loud thump.

"Dear dear, Severus.  You should pay more attention to dates."

Hey, I can actually blame these on somebody!  This post by lothy gave me the idea for the first drabble, and the first gave me the idea for the second.

I made no attempt what so ever to use Old English, Latin, or any of the numerous Scottish dialects that founders of Hogwarts might have spoken, partly because I'm lazy, partly because I don't know enough, and partly because the drabble is not at all serious.

Disclaimer: If Harry Potter were mine, the books would have a lot more wine, women, and song.


( Parselscript: In which Salazar Slytherin gets drunk )

( Half-Bloods: In which Harry bonds with a blanket )
 

Disclaimer:  If I owned these fellows, my life would be too interesting to bother with fanfiction.

Summaries (in order of drabble):

1. In which Regetti splits hairs… er tentacles.
2. In which Elizabeth Swan makes Pintel’s day.
3. In which James Norrington realizes what he’s afraid of.
4. In which Mr. Gibbs confronts Davy Jones’ darkest fear.
5. In which Jack Sparrow and Mr. Gibbs reminisce.
6. In which the crabs feature prominently.
7. In which Lily and Calypso bond.
8. In which Snape runs afoul of anachronistic muggle cultural references.
9. As does Sirius.

 

Author's Note: I watched Pirates of the Caribbean 3 for the first time  a few  days ago and here's the result, a drabble for each of the pieces of  eight.  alright, so three  of them are crossovers and one is almost entirely quotes, but the pieces of eight weren't real pieces of eight anyway.

And here there be crossovers...

 

 

In which Filch and Umbridge learn they have something in common

Disclaimer: I am not affiliated with the Police, and they would likely be less upset than I at what I did with their song title.  I also own nothing in the Harry Potter universe, and if I did own Umbridge and Filch, I'd I'd give them to the first idiot willing to take them.


( Don’t Stand so Close to Me )