cyclicality | Welcome to Republic City!

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Welcome to Republic City!

It was a bright and sunny normal day in Republic City. Children were playing, spirits were chirping about, and everything was going along like normal. Well at least that's what everyone seemed to think. That is until so many people seemed to be appearing out of nowhere. For some reason Republic City seemed to be more lively and the crowds bigger.

The spirits have grown restless as if something important was about to change, and to try to fix that change, the spirits with their big long tree like limbs dragged people into the world left and right. Even the vines covering Republic City seemed to help. Although the spirits had the best intentions in mind, some people were more affected by the grab than others. There's talk that people in this city don't even know what this place is. People who have never heard of the words "bender" or "non-bender."

Welcome to Republic City! And to those who already live here: Happy Saturday. Please make yourselves at home and don't mind a little spirit gunk. It's mostly harmless. Go enjoy yourself a classic mover. Maybe you're the athletic type. If that's the case, come watch a few Pro-bending matches or form your own team. Just watch out for any Satomobiles. They can be deadly no matter how pretty the driver is.

Please remember to enjoy your stay and don't cause too much trouble. The Republic City Police don't need more riffraff to take care of. And don't stray too far. To make the the peace is kept, there's a huge spirit barrier around the perimeter of the city. It seems pretty strong, but it won't be able to last forever. Still, it's worrying. Radio signals and telegraphs don't seem to be getting past it.

[ OOC: The game is officially open! From this point on, feel free to make any posts you want or tag into this. Please remember to tag your posts with Canon: Character. Finally, although the game has no real network, you're free to respond with prose or brackets, whatever you're comfortable with. With that said, have fun! ]

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"Not now, Meelo! We can play later, I need Tenzin!" Bumi scolds as he runs past them, making sure to give the bison a wide berth as he does so.

When he's a good ten strides away he stops.
You don't get to the rank of Commander in the United Forces without being able to detect when a situation seems off.

Bumi doesn't so much turn as he pivots.

"You're not Meelo."

Bumi's grasp of the obvious something to be feared.

"Nope. Try again?" Aang posits meekly. He had worn a hat in the city to try to keep his forehead arrow out of sight, but he'd taken it off for now. He figured that he couldn't hide his arrows for long at an actual air temple so there wasn't much of a point in trying.

And now the question is if Bumi's thoughts can move faster than a pair of friendly animals, as Momo is swooping directly at his hair while Appa is about to slobber him with a giant tongue. The strange man is new to them... yet oddly, there's a scent that doesn't feel wholly alien.

His brow furrows as he tries to make sense of all he's seeing before him. He saw the robes first, and the face second, but the arrows...the arrows he's only just seeing now. What happens next seems, to Bumi, to happen in slow motion. He opens his mouth to speak, but that's when the attack comes.

Not from the Air Nomad in front of him, but from the sides. From the flying lemur and sky bison he didn't even notice were there.

Momo nearly knocks Bumi off his feet, but some how he manages to remain standing. It's almost like he's done this before. However, all hope to remain upright are lost the second Appa gets to him.

With most of his body pinned under the head of the enthusiastic sky bison, Bumi can be heard sputtering, "Appa! Appa no! Down! Appa down! Heel! MOMO YOU AREN'T HELPING!"

Meanwhile, a blue dragonfly bunny spirit finally catches up to the scene. He's carrying Bumi's UF uniform jacket, and appears to be laboring under the weight of the thing. So much so that he feels the need to pause for a breather on Aang's shoulders. BumJu trills a greeting at Aang before headbutting him affectionately.

Aang laughs warmly as he watches the scene unfold. Such a cooky old dude! And adorable in an odd way. He can't help but remark, "Hey! You know their names!" But that guy can't really be Sokka, can he?

Then his eyes widen as the spirit suddenly appears on his shoulders. "Whoa!" He giggles some more at the affectionate headbutt. "Need a hand there, little guy?" He'll reach over to collect jacket to hold onto for BumJu, while offering him a very warm smile.

"Hey! No! Momo! Out! I don't have any treats for you in my pockets!"
Oh but Bumi does. There's a couple of pieces of blubbered seal jerky in there that Momo is determined to get.

Hey! You know their names!
The words from the boy find purchase in Bumi's mind even as he continues to wrestle the lemur from under the bison.

It's then that Bumi stops, and just...looks, as if for the first time. His eyes widen with shock as he raises a reverential hand towards the bison's head.

"Appa," he whispers. He'd have known them anywhere, even after all this time. And...in a sense he did, he just didn't realize it at first. "It's really you. And..."

Bumi turns his head to look at Momo, who by this point has already made off with the jerky.

Aang step closer, to try to get a better look at him. He's not sure why he keeps thinking of the family photo that he saw at the museum. The pieces aren't clicking together yet.

Appa gives a friendly growl as Momo seeks a perch to enjoy the spoils of his battle. Aang gives a slight, nervous smile. "Aren't they the best?"

The boy speaks again. It's not a voice Bumi would recognize, but the fact that it comes as part of a packaged set that involves Appa, Momo, and those particular tattoos...

"They...they always were," he says quietly, giving Appa's nose one more pat. Feeling the familiar sensation of bison's breath on his hand as he does so.

Eventually he turns his attention to the boy. The boy who shouldn't, it doesn't...none of this makes sense. But yet there he is, and he looks as real as the weight of Appa feels.

"....great rutting badgermoles," he swears under his breath.

Aang leans forward curiously, blinking as he tries to make sense of the bearded man.

"What did the badgermoles do...?"

Bumi's taken aback, though by this point even he's not sure why. That's the exact same thing Jinora said when she caught him swearing the first time, and it's because of this that Bumi begins to laugh. It's dry and quiet at first, but as he starts to replay his afternoon in his mind it's all becoming more and more clear.

He's dead.
He fell off a cliff and did not survive the landing.
That's why he thought he could airbend. That's why he's seeing Appa and Momo and...and...
Or maybe it wasn't the fall that killed him at all, maybe he died in his sleep. Afterall, he is getting a little long in the tooth and the men of his family don't tend to last all that long.

This is nothing like what the sages and philosophers said this would be like, he muses as he regains control of himself long enough to ask the boy, "Want to give me a hand here?"

He's still not sure what's going on. But he nods and draws closer, extending a tattooed hand to the man. "Um, sure! Sorry that my buddies knocked you down... They must think you're really neat!" Or in Momo's case, his jerky was neat.

One old-man grunt and Bumi is back on his feet, brushing himself off, and eventually patting down his pocket to see just how badly Momo had fleeced him.
Pretty badly judging by the strength of the eyeroll that follows.

"They'd better. Him especially," he says jerking a thumb in the direction of the lemur. "I see you've met BumJu."

The little blue spirit chirps a greeting to Bumi, but pretty much stays put. Aang has good sitting shoulders.

"That's a cute name!" He tries to give a friendly poke at the spirit. "Nice to meet you, Bumju!"

And he looks up at the bearded man. "But what about you?"

Bumi just looks down at the boy, a bemused smile on his face.

"I'm Bumi. And he's Bumi Junior, or BumJu for short. And I think that's my coat." He gestures to the oversized-for-Aang United Forces uniform coat that he's carrying.

Aang presents the coat to him with an almost automatic movement, as he's now mostly staring at Bumi in bewilderment.

"Bumi?! But... but... How'd you get so young?" And oddly Water Tribe-looking...

In confusion he silently mouths How did I get so... until he finally gets what Aang is asking. What follows is a loud peal of laughter.

"No, no. Don't let the hair fool you, I'm not King Bumi of Omashu, though I am named after him." He slides into his coat and then runs his hands through his hair for emphasis.

"I thought you looked different from that Bumi!" he says as if he had discovered this vital clue. "It's nice to meet you, New Bumi! Your parents sure must've been fans of him."

"I guess you could say that. He was my father's oldest friend, and I mean that literally. He'd died not a few years before I was born. Been doing my level best to live up to the man's legacy ever since."

For a moment, he idly wonders who this man's father could be, but that train of thought is derailed by another part of the sentence. "Bumi's... gone?" He says with a silent gasp. He knew he was far in the future now... but Bumi had seemed timeliness. Aang focuses his attention on the ground, sniffling slightly. "I... I'm sorry to hear that. But... I'm sure you're doing a good job with his legacy."

Bumi knew that posture all too well, he'd seen it too many times to count, though if pressed he could probably come up with a number anyway. He made it a point to visit the families of those who fell in the line of duty under his command. It was the very least he could do.

"It was his time," he says quietly as a formality that wasn't there before slips into his voice. "I'm sorry for your loss, Aang."

"Thank you." He spares a light smile as he glances up towards Bumi's eyes, while blinking back tears in his own. "Ih- it's okay. It must have been his time. He lived a really, really long life... and it must have been full. I guess I... I'm lucky he was still around after I got out of the iceberg. And... your dad must have been a great friend for him, too."

Bumi offers a small smile and nod in return. It warms Bumi's heart to see his father as a child be as free with his emotions as he was when he was much older. People used to joke about his mother's penchant for 'tear-bending' but it was usually his father who misted up first.

He's not sure what to do next, and so Bumi looks to BumJu for advice. The little dragonfly rabbit spirit nods his head once, as if he knows Bumi is looking for permission to keep going.

It's then that Bumi starts to shift his hypothesis. Maybe he isn't dead. Maybe BumJu is leading him on a spirit quest. Maybe now instead of seeing cannibals everywhere, Bumi is getting a similar conversation with his father that Tenzin had in the mists.

"They were really close for a while, and then there was a long stretch when they didn't talk, but they picked up right where they left off when they did see each other again. And Dad was even really extra forgiving when Bumi trapped his friends in creeping crystal as a joke.

It was a weird relationship."

He's certainly a tearbender in his own right. But as he listens to Bumi's story, he ends up exclaiming eagerly.

"Wait, did you say creeping crystal? That's what he did to my friends, too! I wonder how often he did that joke!" Despite the arrow pointing down on his head, some things tended to instead go directly over it.

Bumi just blinks, and in that moment sees so much of his little brother before him that it's all he can do to not smile.

"Well, the way Mom tells it...a Lot. It's just no one ever fell for it again after that one time."

"Wait, just one time? But then... what about the time Katara and Sokka got stuck... in... it...?"

His eyes slowly widen as a possibility starts to unfold.

"Yoooouuuuu wouldn't happen to be related to any Avatars, would you?"

Watching Aang catch up was like watching a house catch on fire; slowly at first and then all at once. All the while Bumi's grin merely widens.

"Only on my father's side," he says as matter of factly as he can manage. Then he looks up and to the right. "Well, I guess in a way I'm also related to Korra. Water Tribe being one big family, after all..."

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