mako. (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
resistivity) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
acatalepsy_logs2018-09-09 10:53 am
resistivity) wrote in acatalepsy_logs2018-09-09 10:53 am
need the sun to break
Who: mako, ota otherwise! please bring me your babies c:
Where: various places
When: throughout the sickness event, the last prompt can cover any time period in it as mako won't progress past the first stage.
Rating pg for now! will update if it changes. some mention of a lightning-based injury tho!
What: settling in and maybe trying to mother-hen other sick people who need it. please toss me a pm or hmu on discord (violynnist#8733!) if you would like something custom for you, or to try another situation/scenario also! This was my intro post on the CR meme as well if that's easier to poke at c:
๐๐๐-๐๐๐๐๐๐๐๐;
๐ฌ๐ข๐ญ๐ฎ๐๐ญ๐ข๐จ๐ง ๐;
( he's no stranger to the fey and fantastic. being friends with the avatar has meant years of encountering things that might have otherwise been beyond belief. he has a healthy threshold of tolerance for the scope and scale of strange than most people would probably expect of a no-nonsense cop.
his first thought is spirit wilds. even astoria herself sort of seems like one, though she looks human (he's heard stories of koh) and the misty phantasms that roam the temple grounds certainly don't disabuse that notion. mako is. quiet. taking it all in, listening, learning. he jots down notes, which is difficult to do when one arm is an out-of-commission ruin, strapped into a sling that pinions it to his body. he sort of rests the notepad in the hollow of his wrist, over the fabric of the sling and scribbles everything in police short-hand.
thrown into a new situation? doesn't know anyone or anything beyond astoria's welcoming spiel? time to wander the grounds of the temple. when he runs into other people, he'll approach them politely and introduce himself, )
I know it probably doesn't matter here, but I'm a Detective with the Republic City Police back home. My name's Mako. I'd like to ask you a few questions, if that's all right?
( he gestures with his notepad, obviously intending on writing things down. feel free to talk with him, refuse a statement, agree but only off the record, etc. he's a mostly-amicable (if. sometimes humorless) guy! )
๐ฌ๐ข๐ญ๐ฎ๐๐ญ๐ข๐จ๐ง ๐;
( he can't feel the sun. it's there, visible, a low-hanging presence on the cusp of dawn. it's a slightly different color than the one he's used to, and he can feel its rays on his skin, but there's. nothing. no energy, no... deep, abiding warmth that sinks down into the bones and drags the life and breath of fire to life through the conduit of his physical body.
it lends further credence to the thought he must be in the spirit world, or something very like it. he finds his way to the fighting ring and, still with his left arm in its sling, he tries a few right-handed jabs at one of the training dummies. nothing. nothing. he's stayed calm through everything else, being recruited — kidnapped, essentially — to someone else's fight, the whole thing. but this? it reminds him too much of amon.
out of frustration, he kicks at the air, the sort of slicing motion that would have swept fire away from him in an arc. and.
to his complete and utter surprise, a column of rock juts up out of the earth and launches the dummy several yards away. mako, instinctively, turns to look for bolin or korra or even beifong, the earthbenders whose company he spends the most time in, but. he's alone.
except, perhaps, for your character. mako looks a little sheepish at having been caught unawares — he's usually a little harder to sneak up on, so he's rubbing the back of his neck as he asks, )
Did you do that?
๐๐๐๐๐๐๐'๐ ๐๐๐๐๐๐๐๐;
( he hates getting sick. firebenders are pretty hardy, all things considered. they tend to run hot. mako isn't used to feeling ill, it's only happened a couple times in memory, and. his default state is ignore all physical discomfort. he doesn't seem to be badly off, either, given what everyone else is going through.
so. a case of the sniffles. he sucks it up. pitches in around the kitchens, makes himself available to anyone who seems to be suffering. he even tries to go out into the forest of the fey to see if there is anything out there, some plant or herb that can be used as a remedy.
if your character needs some looking after during the event, mako's your guy. he will dutifully help total strangers, tuck people in, carry them off to a bed and help them through the loss of their senses should it come to that! let him big-brother you. it's the squishiest you'll ever see him. )
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[ mako, huh. she glances back towards the pile of rocks before turning her attention back to him. she smiles, holding her hand out towards him. ]
Still, it's nice to meet you. I'm Katara.
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he does a few quick, mental calculations. this girl is. maybe fifteen? and there are a lot of girls named katara in the water tribes, it became a popular name after the end of the hundred years' war. mako looks at her hand, then at her face. he's seen pictures of those old heroes. of course he has. even growing up on the streets, newspapers were still a thing. library books. there's a statue of katara at the hospital in republic city, only a little older than she is now. here. in front of him.
oh, it's the worst idea ever, in the world, ever to just blurt out the question he wants to ask. he can't imagine how he would have reacted as a child if someone came up to him and said, you're mako, right? best friends with the avatar? you helped save the world? so instead he just. immediately tamps down the urge to absolutely lose his shit and smiles. he has to tell korra. she's going to flip. )
Nice to meet you too, Katara. That's a Water Tribe name, isn't it?
( he does a pretty good job, all things considered, of not giving away any sign of the loud, high-pitched pterodactyl shrieking going on in the back of his head.
but. if she's this young, she's probably still in the middle of the war, and mako. looks very much like a firebender.
his grip on her hand is very careful, and he steps back and away from her once he's done it. whether or not he can earthbend now, the cultural shame that hangs over fire nation children like a cloud never really goes away. especially not when confronted with. someone like her. who suffered and lost so much in the war. )
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okay, so maybe there was a reason what he did looked so much like earthbending. it probably was, you know, actual earthbending. ]
... yeah. I'm from the Southern Water Tribe.
[ if he can earthbend now, then that makes he isn't one back home then. even without his looks, at this point it's a process of elimination. he's not water tribe, and he obviously wouldn't be an airbender. the only other options is that he's a firebender, or he can't bend at all, but he still has to be from somewhere. ]
And you're from...
[ she kind of just trails off, waiting for him to finish. ]
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there haven't been many times in his life that mako felt small. this is one of them, that rush of feeling when you look up at the stars and realize your own insignificance in the grand scope of the world. he starts to tuck his hand behind his back so he can stand at a respectful parade rest, but you need the use of both hands for that, and since his left is still in a sling he just sort of ends up at an awkward loss for what to do with his right.
he can't say the truth, and he's too much his mother's son to lie. so instead he just... gives her the literal answer, the one that's true if you go back two generations in his family tree. )
I'm from the Fire Nation. ( a little hastily, ) But I'm — I'm not a soldier, I'm not going to hurt you.
( even though by all accounts she was a waterbending master at this age, mako really wants to stress that he isn't. a threat. or even interested in being one. she was friends with the fire lord, right? she has to know that not everyone from the fire nation liked or even agreed with the war. )
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mako saying he won't hurt her actually makes katara narrow her eyes slightly. it's less because she thinks he actually will try, and more just her being offended at the idea that she'd be easily taken down. granted, she's not a waterbender here, she's a firebender, so she isn't anywhere near as good as she normally is. still. she has two months on him of being here, so she's more used to having a foreign element than he is.
thankfully, she doesn't immediately attack him, like she might have done before she stepped foot onto the fire nation. katara has spent enough time there to understand that not everyone there is evil, they're just... very mislead. she glances at his injured arm before her gaze returns to his face. ]
You know that's not the most believable thing to say when convincing someone, right?
[ although she obviously doesn't seem to be. ready to fight, so that's a good sign. ]
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his left fingers flex in memory. and then he just sinks down to the ground, just resting on his knees in a classic martial artist's pose. it's less a submission and more a clearly delineated abdication from any potential violence. )
Sorry. I know how it sounded.
( wow, yes, he is so good at this. )
And I'm sorry about your bending, too.
( that was what she'd meant, earlier. she went through it too. he has no idea why this place is so keen on swapping their elemental abilities with others. bo's an airbender now. of all the things he could have been. mako's just glad he didn't end up with fire. )
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she watches him sit. he doesn't seem to be trying to pull anything here, from what she can tell. granted, katara also knows that you can't trust everyone by their word, especially if they're from the fire nation.
then again, what would be the point in starting a fight here of all places? they're... who even knows how far they are from home. but they're somewhere unfamiliar, especially for him as he just arrived. he has less of a clue of what's going on than she does. making enemies here is stupid. ]
... it's what happens here. You get powers. If you already have some kind of ability, it gets switched with something else.
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( his tone's wry. obviously he has some disagreements with astoria's management style. )
But my brother... he was an earthbender, now he's an airbender. It's pretty incredible.
( bolin made a directly oppositional swap, mako just moved one step sideways. earth and fire aren't all that dissimilar. they're both powerful styles, one rooted down beneath the earth and one clawing up towards the sky. he already knows he'll be good at it — and if he had to chose to lose firebending to something else, he would have picked earth anyway. he already has a lifetime's worth of practice at all the forms from training with bo. )
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maybe he actually isn't a bad guy.
(unless this is a lie.) ]
... I can firebend now. [ she might as well get that out of the way now. ]
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even for a normal water tribe girl, that'd be a lot to take in. but katara's not normal in the scope of history. she's a hero, and she was famed for her mastery of waterbending at a young age. mako grimaces a little, soft sympathy. to go from something that can hurt as well as heal to something that only ever burns... she should probably talk to korra about it, as weird as it would be for the latter. a waterbender born who favors fire, she'd probably have some unique insights. )
I'm sorry. ( he sure is saying that a lot. ) It's a dangerous element. But... I think that if anyone could come into it at your age and master it, it'd be a waterbender. As far as I know, waterbending takes the same sort of discipline.
( all the elements require it. but water and fire are two sides of the same coin, similar in all the places earth and air are different. there's a reason that lightning redirection is a waterbender move. they both take flexibility and surety and power. there's a certain malleability to each. )
Is someone teaching you?
( or maybe she doesn't want to learn it at all. he'd understand if that was the case. )
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really, though, it's because of zuko. katara is from a point where she doesn't like him, but up until now he's the only person from her world who's been here. no one knew who they were. and it's one thing for mako to be polite to her, but she has no idea what he'll do if he finds out prince zuko is hanging around.
well. he's going to find out eventually. ]
... you could say that.
[ it's the least rude response she can manage that isn't a full blown insult towards zuko. ]
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he can't exactly blame katara for being a little on the recalcitrant side. she isn't exactly obligated to give him information or tell him... anything, really. the fact that she's even being tolerant of him says a lot about who she is as a person. not that he would have expected anything else from someone who saved the world before she was even sixteen years old. at her age, he was still running numbers for the triple threats. not exactly a positive influence on society.
he's a bit on the tentative side when he speaks again, )
Someone from our world? Or...?
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[ she should, potentially, just come out with it. in all honesty, most of her hesitance comes from the fact that she doesn't want to admit that she accepted zuko's help on anything. in reality, she had been mostly refusing until they had to deal with the lightning issue back on struxta. she didn't really have much choice but to give in there. ]
You'll... run into him sooner or later. He's hard to miss.
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All right. Well, feel free to let this guy know I'm here. Maybe I could brush up on a thing or two with my firebending while we're at it.
( mako reaches a hand out, splays his fingers across the ground and digs into the earth. he isn't trying to bend it, just comes up with a handful of clumps and lets it sift through the funnel of his hand in a fine dust. )
I don't suppose you have any earthbending tips?
( he says it lightly. not quite playfully, because 'play' and 'mako' means pro-bending and almost nothing else, he doesn't really goof off in that way with anyone but bolin and sometimes korra, but. he's giving it an honest effort. he doesn't owe this katara anything more than every other citizen of the world — she saved it. he wouldn't have been born without republic city's existence. but on a distinctly personal level, he also owes her for all the times she saved korra or healed him. if he can repay that even in some small part by treating her gently at a time in her life when such a thing was foreign to her, he will. )
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[ two friends, actually, if she includes aang in that. katara tries not to think of how instead of someone she knows showing up, it's a couple of strangers. on one hand, it feels kind of lonely, but on the other, katara shouldn't even want them here. it's already bad enough that any of them were taken in the first place, despite astoria's alleged good intentions. ]
I could try to summarize what I've heard her say, but it'll mostly be a lot of grunting and yelling and creative insults.
[ gotta love toph. ]
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Okay, point taken. Maybe I'll pass on that.
( that handful of dirt gets compressed into a small earthen disc with a flicker of his fingers. for a firebender, earth does seem to come easily to him. but growing up, he always... had a sort of envy for waterbenders. there were times in his life where he would have given anything to be able to heal.
he flips the little disc over his fingers like a coin, using equal parts coordination and bending to make it look effortless. he's not showing off, just. practicing in ways that won't alarm her. it's hard for him to sit still while there's still so much to learn. they were brought here to fight something. that means he has to be ready for it, and being unable to bend with his left hand is a huge handicap he knows he'll need to compensate for if he has the slightest hope of keeping korra and bolin safe. and katara too. he barely knows this version of her, but she's well within his sphere of protection in ways that go beyond simply being from the same world, or her being a child. )
Do you mind if I ask how long you've been here? I'm a detective back home, I'm trying to... keep track of things. Maybe uncover some sort of pattern in why we were all brought here.
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she tries to shake that thought away. if he really has nothing against her, then it doesn't really make sense for him to be directly working for ozai. ]
I arrived around... two or so months before you? And I know another group showed up two months before that, and I think they were the earliest arrivals.
[ so, as far as they're aware, astoria hasn't been kidnapping people for a long time. or, if she has, they aren't aware of any other groups who may have come before them. ]
As for pattern, I haven't really seen any so far. Some of the people seemed to have lived fairly ordinary lives. [ as in, no fighting, no trying to save the world, nothing like what astoria is currently trying to do. ] Although you might be able to spot something that I can't. Since... I'm not a detective.
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Don't sell yourself short. It takes people from all perspectives to see the whole of something. Being a detective already means I'm going to be looking at a situation from one specific angle, your life experiences mean you'll look at it from another one. Trust me, sometimes that makes all the difference.
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If there's anything else you want to know, I can try answering.
[ admittedly, she doesn't really think someone who's been here for longer than she has will be able to answer more. ]
You can also try talking to Astoria herself, but... good luck with that.
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I will, once I've got a decent grasp on what's going on here. No point talking to her blind and maybe missing my chance to get a real answer because there's something I'm missing.
( he shrugs a little, and that logbook gets put away. paper is a precious resource, he's trying to use it as little as possible while still recording his findings. he takes the opportunity to rub at his left wrist, the ache of the day's attempts at training settling into his bones. )
Have you heard anything about people going home?
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[ so it's not like people are figuring out the secret to escaping and then abandoning everyone. ]
I'm not entirely sure of how that works. It might just be Astoria's magic? She says she doesn't know how to send people back.
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( he stretches his hand out, fingers curled towards the earth. several small rocks lift themselves and levitate. as elements go, he's obviously fairly comfortable with this one. )
She keeps us here by an act of will, but if her concentration slips... ( the rocks fall and scatter, one — smoother than the rest — rolls away. ) Maybe that's what I'll ask her if I get the chance.
( idle musing. he shakes his head, and at length he gets back to his feet. it's about that time of day when he should really be heading to the kitchens to make something for bolin and korra. not to mention telling them that katara's here and. just a child. that's maybe the hardest part of this whole encounter to take — she's just so young. even knowing a bare half of what she's been through (he's a student of history, but growing up on the streets meant his education was spotty at best) makes him hurt for her.
he does give her a little smile, though. )
Anyway, I'm done here for the day. Unless you were out here looking for a sparring partner?
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I think I'd probably have the advantage there.
[ his control of earthbending has been pretty good so far, which isn't that much of a surprise; he's not dealing with his opposite element. but even if firebending has been annoying to get the hang of, she's at least had more time to practice it.
in a perfect world she could avoid using it altogether, but unfortunately that doesn't exist. ]
If anything, I should be the one letting you go. You're still getting used to everything so I shouldn't keep you.
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So, don't push my luck? Fair enough.
( he dusts his hand against his thigh, and then gives her a bit of a bow. he can't really do much with his left arm in the grand scheme of things, but making a fist to press into his right palm isn't all that hard, even if it rumples the sling. )
It was nice to meet you, Katara.
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[ they're bound to run into each other again sooner or later; the temple isn't that big, after all.
and even if they don't actually know each other, it's... nice to have someone from home around. ]
(no subject)