Chapter Text
Kimiko never thought things would turn out for her like this, she never thought the universe would be so big and full of so many frightening, horrible things. Be good and good things will follow; that's what she'd tried to live by for her whole life. Even when their mother neglected her own children, even when Kimiko's jobs belittled her, even when finding her real father had only left her with disappointment and heart ache, and even when she finally had to runaway for their own safety.
When the three siblings managed to cross paths with their mother's estranged family and their family business happened to be traveling play performers, their spirits were lifted and their lives began for what Kimiko truly believed was her own karma finally giving her what was owed at last. It stayed that way for three good years.
As a firebender Kimiko learned to firedance from her Aunt Kiyoko, another bender of remarkable talent. The first time Kimiko had seen her perform, she was dazzled. As she watched the woman spin and move over the floor as flames licked the air around her, a spell descended over the girl. Her heart quickened in anticipation as her eyes followed. She felt like she wouldn't be able to turn away from the sight even if she wished to. She was completely captured by the hypnotizing movements.
After that dance, Kimiko begged to learn all her auntie knew and luckily the woman was more than pleased to comply, taking the girl on as her protégé. At last Kimiko learned the rudimentary bending lessons she'd been denied her whole life. Going through that was tedious but necessary. Breathing exercises frustrated her, yet previous jobs involving her bending had taught her the overall basics of what to expect and she was at least not completely inexperienced. As young as she was she did know a few advanced techniques that allowed her to eventually apply for better work before her circumstances prompted her to run away.
Even as she knew they were important to progress, they made her impatient. All she wanted to do was fly but she had yet to grow her wings.
At last, it was time to learn the dances and Kimiko could not have been happier. With her aunt coaching her she excelled quickly. Kiyoko assured her she was doing well, yet Kimiko found that it was herself that was hardest to please at times. Her timing was off, the jump not high enough, she should have held that longer. Others told her the dance was excellent, but excellent wasn't perfect as far as Kimiko was concerned. She'd practice for hours till it was finally the way she wanted it to be, and when that was done there was always more to learn.
Out of everything though, the emotional part was hardest to produce. All art required a certain level of emotion the artist had to put into it. She'd wanted to keep it out of her performance, but many told her that it would be an viable part of any performance she tried to do. It was how the audience would be pulled in. Dancing In truth, Kimiko there was a great deal to felt a great deal but she was
In time, she was ready for her debut. It was the eve of their performance and Kimiko gathered with her brothers and cousins in the practice tent.
They were camped out in an abandoned marble quarry near a town called Jin-Ki and were scheduled to perform the very next day. Everything was ready, they were just rehearsing their act. Kimiko went through her dance, assuring and reassuring herself inwardly that everything was at last perfect. As she moved into position, the music started and the heated fire dance began with her family being her first audience.
The flames licked and blazed all around her, growing and extinguishing, dancing across her skin and mesmerizing every onlooker in attendance. It was inspired from an old poem which told the story of Kubi'Zaki'Sha, the lover for an ancient avatar hailing from the Fire Nation. What was surprising was that the lover's name was remembered but the Avatar's name in question was completely forgotten. For some reason any mention or memory of them had been stripped from the histories. Kubi must have been some woman to have her memory enshrined forever over a passed avatar. It was said that the dance performed was so difficult and so hypnotic that the poet had felt cause to focus his piece on her over the master of all elements.
Kimiko poured her soul into that dance forgetting everything except the moves and her own emotion. With a final flourish her ad the drum beat giving one final bang, the dance was over and the spell lifted. A moment of silence and then her cousins exploded in aplause. Her brothers were the first to reach her, giving her their exclamations of praise and pats on the back and shoulders, telling her over and over again that it was breathtaking and tomorrow's show would be out of this world.
Then clapping sounded. Slow and ominous, belonging to someone who wasn't from the troupe. Turning, they saw a hooded figure enter through the tent flap. Everyone traded glances with one another and several of the youths got into fighting stances. Strangers like this normally meant trouble, especially ones without tickets.
"Who are you?" Cousin Kuzo demanded. "This is private property. We have permission from the owners to be here. If you're not a resident or a troupe member you've got no business here."
The stranger spoke but it wasn't in any language they had ever heard before. Confused, the teens all exchanged looks with one another. The stranger said something else and gave a small hand gesture. Before they had said a single word, something shot out at all of them and there were suddenly more people everywhere. Before Kimiko could lift her hands to defend herself, something had struck her hard in the chest and flung her back. It wasn't like being punched, there was no pain that followed it. Just darkness.
When she woke up, she was behind bars.
Her head was throbbing and she had no idea where she was, but from her guess it looked like the storage compartment of a ship, though there were some details and machines that looked… odd. Even with that in mind, traveling all over the world with an acting troupe, Kimiko had seen her fair share of ships by now, so she was sure she was in a ship. The walls were all metal and there were various containers that surrounded them. As her eyes focused, she saw she was surrounded by the members of her troupe and family all of whom had restraints on them, the same that were on herself as well.
They were heavy metal contraptions that covered their hands and bound their arms in the front of their bodies, leaving them practically useless and frozen within absurdly thick restraints.
"Zooie!" She cried, when she spotted her brother hunched next to her, still unconscious. Shaking him awake his eyes blinked wearily open and he stared back in confused shock. Probably the same reaction she herself had when waking up.
"What's going on?"
"I don't know."
Around them the rest of their friends and family were rousing one by one. It was then that somebody noticed their other accessories. Kimiko heard the clinks of chains before she saw them. When Nanook pointed their collars out, there were multiple exclaims of shock and alarm all around as multiple hands went to their throats in surprise.
Just then, the door to the entrance slid opened with a sinister hiss and in walked the same hooded figure that had been watching Kimiko's performance before their untimely capture. There were three others that accompanied him and they were quite possibly the strangest creatures Kimiko had ever seen in her life. She didn't know how to describe them other than while they were humanoid, they were certainly not human.
Two of them were beast-like, sort of like a lion-bear, or maybe a lion-dog? There was a young one with darker hair and an elderly one with greying hair—or fur she supposed.
One of them was a blue-green color, sort of like swamp vines, with scaly skin that was either reptilian or aquatic. He (or at least Kimiko thought it was a he) had a long snout-like mouth, strange tube-like antenna, large pointed ears, and enormous bulbous black eyes. By far he was the strangest creature out of the lot.
And the leader—the strange hooded one—had unveiled himself to reveal a fierce looking reptilian humanoid. Kimiko and many of the others looked startled and fearful at the sight of these creatures. Who were they? What were they?
They exchanged words with each other in the same language that the creature used to distract them. The Red Sun Troupe exchanged looks with each other wondering what on earth they should do. Finally, the reptilian one turned to the lot and tried to speak with them but Kimiko as well as everyone else couldn't understand a word, just as before.
Instead, the reptilian said something to the young lion creature and he disappeared to fetch a cage with one of the troupe's own creatures trapped inside. It was Cookie, one of Lee's water ferrets. Everyone's eyes were on the reptilian as he held up a small… thing of some kind. It was very small and most of them could barely tell if he was holding anything at all, but since Kimiko was one who was closest to the bars, she had a decent look. From her perspective it sort of looked like a glimmering fish scale and was about the same size as one. He brought out a syringe and flicked it inside where it bobbed a little inside a clear fluid that was already in the tube. Once he was sure he had everyone's attention, he injected it into the ferret, scale and liquid alike.
The animal squeaked and hissed in response, angry by the abuse. A second later the reptilian took out a device with a button and held it up where everyone could see it.
Kimiko wasn't sure what it was for but she had a gut-wrenching feeling that it was something bad.
She was proven correct when the beast pressed the button with his thumb and Cookie was instantly blown apart. There had been nothing, no warning and no sound from the little creature before it'd been reduced to simple pink mist. They all stared in absolute shock before the monster brought their attentions back to him once again. His sharp claws pointed between the lot, waving over all of them and Kimiko suddenly understood what he was trying to tell them.
Misbehave and you'll end the same way.
As realization hit them, the color drained from all their faces; they all had one of those devices inside of them! Kimiko understood the same moment as everyone else and began to search herself, checking for small penetrated areas that could have been caused by a syringe like that. It didn't take her long to feel around the nape of her neck and notice a tiny bump that she hadn't remembered feeling before arriving on the ship. Zooie found one in the same spot on his own body. Everyone instantly began searching just to discover their own mark on their necks as well.
The reptilian left with a snarling warning and pulled out a square box-like device with many other buttons across it. A remote, she realized. He struck one and everyone shared a scream of shock as a bolt of electricity shot straight through their bodies. Kimiko had had her fair share of lighting shocks so she was quite familiar with the sensation, but while those were generally quick, this felt like it went on for ages before the reptilian beast seemed satisfied and at last released them from the pain. Everyone slouched on the floor and panted, bodies twitching and muscles spasming from the terrible demonstration.
The creatures took a moment to laugh at their discomfort before exiting through the very door they had come from. Kimiko watched them go, feeling the same terrible fear that settled inside all of them. The daunting realization that there was too much unknown to them had everyone struck dumb with fear.
What Kimiko herself understood was that they were captured. Prisoners of humanoid creatures that had implanted tiny bombs inside each and every one of them. If they misbehaved, those bombs would be activated and they'd be blown to smithereens instantly. That or they'd be shocked into submission thanks to the collars around their throats. What she didn't quite know was what their purpose was to their capturers. Her first initial thought was that they'd be sold into slavery, but she didn't know how that would be possible. These creatures, whatever they were, couldn't possibly sell them at any regular port or city traffickers—just look at them!
How could they earn a profit when they looked like that? Who would buy from a monster?
That question was quickly answered in time, much to the troupe's collective horror.
Hours may have gone by while they sat there in their cages. In that time they traded plans for escape or hope that perhaps the authorities would find them. Some of them wondered if they could pick the locks to their restraints and bars, several among them had experience with that kind of thing. Yet sadly none of them had seen locks that were on their restraints much less what was on the bars. What was worse was that if they dared touch them or even got to close to them they were electrocuted viciously by way of the collar. None of them knew how their captors could tell when they were getting near to them, but each and every time someone tried they were punished for it.
A couple of the earthbenders thought they might wake up some metal-bending in them and get free the way Master Toph had done when her metalbending was awoken, but no one had seen them bend so much as a coin before this, so it wasn't like anyone bothered to hinge their hopes on the slight chance of that happening.
It seemed to Kimiko, their captors wanted to make it clear that they had planned for anything they tried.
After a while things seemed to calm, panic subsided and plans were discussed and tossed out as they all eventually slid into their depressing new situation. Kimiko didn't know if she had slept. The last thing she remembered was closing her eyes and what felt like moments later the creatures were back. Five of them this time and they had pointed towards her grandfather Wayne and uncle Hou, their leaders; and dragged them out of their cages. There had been cries of protest all around but they were instantly silence with a push of a button and several answering hisses of pain.
As soon as they were ushered out of the storeroom, anxieties soared and everyone looked between each other, fearing the worse. What seemed like hours passed before the two were blessedly returned to them all, looking even worse than before, if it was possible. There was no color in their faces and when the rest of them asked what had happened, they almost weren't able to speak of it.
Finally, they managed a few sentences.
Admittedly, Kimiko hadn't believed her grandfather and uncle when they said they were no longer on their planet. She hadn't believed them when they said they were somehow in space and their captors were aliens native to multiple different worlds. And she especially hadn't believed them when they told her they were being sent to a distant factory to be processed and trained as slaves.
She hadn't believed them, none of them had, even as she knew in her hearts it was probably true. Her own eyes had revealed unimaginable horrors already. Only when she was forced out of their cages, linked together to her friends and family by unbreakable cables and the drawbridge was lowered to reveal what was waiting for them, did she finally accept what she was seeing.
A blast of filthy hot air saturated with dust, smoke and chemicals greeted them all. She choked with several others, trying to rid her lungs of the offending atmosphere, yet it was all that was there to breathe. Eventually their lungs grew used to it as they slowly adapted to the change.
They were forced forward where their captors met with more strange creatures, these ones looking a bit like cats, mostly due to their strange large pointed ears on top of their heads. They also had fur, slitted irises and small horns that lined their chins and scalps where their ears met. Kimiko watched fearfully as their captors spoke with these new players heatedly. All at once the reptilian pointed to several in their group, including herself and they were all dragged forwards separating them from the others. As she looked between the ones selected, she noticed it was all the benders. There was more discussion and the new being stepped up selecting one at random. His gloved hand clawed at her cousin Misha's face, turning it over and inspecting it roughly, forcing her mouth opened and examining her teeth. Kimiko knew Misha wouldn't like that and she predictably responded by biting the being viciously. He howled in pain and snapped his hand back. A look of unhinged fury crossed his face and before Misha had time to regret that move his fist slammed right into her cheek and she landed roughly on the ground.
Kimiko cried out along with several others including Misha's sister Lili who was still with the rest of the nonbenders but had seen everything from where she still was. Shocks traveled through all the benders who had moved to help, pausing their actions instantly. In that long, long moment the cat-man had kicked Misha repeated where she still lied on the ground, shouting in his language a phrase he repeated three times before their collective punishment was ended. The shock had forced many of them on the ground where Kimiko found herself. She trembled and gasped before the reptilian came up behind her and used her hair to force her back to her feet.
The cat-man turned from Misha, whom was curled into a ball, trying to work air back into her lungs. Kimiko stood before the cat-man as he began the same examination he'd done on the other girl, gripping her face roughly and turning it over with far more force than he needed to. While his hands and eyes pawed at her, Kimiko's face burned with both anger and embarrassment. Her eyes filled with tears, and as humiliating as it was, she began to cry. Even as she was sure she'd never before been handled this roughly the moment reminded her of a similar situation when a matchmaker from her home-town had examined her long ago. Her eyes had held the same glint of greed as this creature in front of her. To that woman Kimiko wasn't a person, she was a product. A thing to be sold to her future betrothed. This man had that same glint yet he did nothing to hide what was in his mind.
She could tell he was making mental notes to himself of her finer features and tallying up her final cost. With the reptilian's grip back in her hair, it began to speak excitedly. The cat-man gave a skeptical look and made a remark. All at once her restraints were released and Kimiko's hands were freed for the first time since this nightmare began. She rubbed at her sore and sweaty hands and wrists while the reptilian barked something at her.
She stared at him with confusion, shaking her head, not understanding. He made a gesture with his hands that looked a bit similar to one of the moves she had done in her dance where she had cupped a ball of flame.
Was that what he wanted? Did he want her to bend?
She weighed the idea of refusing him, disgusted that her bending would impact the price of her and the other benders, yet while her cuffs had been released her collar hadn't. Refusing would probably end in pain.
Defeated, she cupped a ball of fire.
The cat-man's eyes widened in astonishment. He spoke again to the reptilian and they went back and forth in a way that made it obvious they were haggling. Kimiko's stomach tied up in knots and her head bowed down staring at the flame that was cupped in her hands. She held it to her like it was a baby bird to protect. She wasn't sure how this would impact her treatment, but judging by the expression of the cat-man he had other plans for her, none of which she would enjoy.
Finally the reptilian and the cat-man reached an agreement and everyone was taken into a large daunting facility, benders towards one end and nonbenders towards the other.
She was shoved forwards, her flame going out as she looked behind her, catching one last look of her brother Zooie just as he disappeared with the others.