video: Avatar Arrival --> In person

[all_the_aangles]

[When the feed comes on it's clearly accidental. There is a close up of a pair of eyes, and a tattooed blue arrow on his forehead.]

Ok, so, screen towards me. Check.

[They glanced sideways and there was the sound of paper rustling.]

So the apple...no, app is open, ok. That's what they said. Wait, is it on?

[He steps back suddenly, revealing a sixteen-year-old in orange and yellow robes. He's smiling, and waves.]

Oh, hello. My name is Aang, and I've just -

[It's then that it turns out the camera was not t all securely placed, as it tumbles off of it's place, with there only time for a 'uh-oh' to be heard before the video feed cuts out. Technology isn't his forte, really. And he's a bit...discombobulated, really.]


But, in person...

But he's actually very easy to find, given his garb, and the staff at his side. The miniature skybison flying around him in a slow circle hardly hurts. The pixie sitting on his shoulder might be a little more familiar to the local population, though.

He's had some encounters, of course - and as he wanders he city, taking in the sights...he is bound to have many more.

But for a little while - just a little while - he isn't the Avatar. He's just a (relatively) normal teenager, who draws very little attention. For the moment, at least, he can just be Aang for the first time in his life.

Comments

[rediscovering]

...But it's uncanny. The first friend I make in the "multiverse" just happens to be the only person in his world who can control most of the elements, who also has an eerily similar family dynamic as I do with his dad and his sister and even his mom, sort of, plus a pacifist boss who's an heir to an important family, on a team of kids trying to end an era of violence... And I run into him in two multiverses! Even if the Gokudera here doesn't remember the other world, I still just happen to bump into him in another universe?! I haven't met anyone else I knew there who doesn't remember being there, and no one who knew me in another world or anything, it's just him—! And... I dunno, it just seems... like it must have something to do with our destinies?

[ He's animated as he speaks, gesturing with his hands lightly, but it fizzles into tentative musing. ]

Maybe he's not the Avatar, but— there's something...

[ Zuko's no Fire Sage. He doesn't understand these things. He has a gut feeling that isn't always reliable. But the odd connection he's shared with Gokudera has always struck him as uniquely otherworldly from their first meeting, when he first concocted this cockamamy idea — not just unique, but uncanny. An instant click. Zuko'd never had that with someone before. He doesn't know how destiny works, but his uncle always said that destiny is funny, that it will surprise you, and never turns out how you expect it, but always how it should... And Zuko took that to heart and dwelled on those words a lot since being spirited away. It caused him great panic to think his destiny had been deviated back home. He's been grasping at straws to make something make sense, find some belief that destiny is still on course somehow, hold onto some hope of connection and reason to trust that life isn't just exceedingly random with no structure at all, not even time itself... It's a lot to think about for a boy who never had friends until he was sixteen, okay. ]

[all_the_aangles]

[He gently places a hand on his shoulder.]

Zuko, sometimes we see patterns that aren't there, and it's easy to get stuck. You're trying to make sense of whole worlds flung together, more than I can even imagine.

But if you believe all of this...at least let me meet him, get a sense of it myself.