[Fic] The Boy With the Steel Arm
The icon on this entry has almost nothing to do with the story. I just like multi-colored four-horned sheep. A lot.
I'm writing a lot of original or near-original (wild AUs, original fan characters) stories for story_lottery this time around. This particular set of prompts really encourages it, as the prompts are for places. I'm taking the opportunity to 'practice' writing original settings and characters without worrying too much about getting it 'right'.
That being said, I would really appreciate feedback on certain things. Am I providing enough background information for you to get an understanding of the world? Am I overloading on the background information? Are the characters engaging and interesting? What can you figure out about the characters based on what I've said about them in the story?
Title: The Boy With the Steel Arm
'Verse: Avatar AU: Cyberpunk
Characters: Ichiro, Liu, Alak
Word Count: 1200+
Rating: G
Summary: Ichiro wakes up in an Earthborn medical lab. Very, very not good.
Author's Notes: This is actually Pux's 'verse, but she let me borrow it to play with.
The Boy With the Steel Arm
***
Cat eyes glittered in the dark.
Ichiro saw them, but they were too high up for a cat to get. Too big. Maybe it was the drugs in his system still.
"Go back to sleep," someone with a Ba Sing Se accent said.
Ichiro must be drugged more than he thought, because he listened.
***
When he woke up the second time, his head felt clear. He blinked slowly and curled his toes, and nothing in his body started yammering about being hurt. Which, given that he'd been falling off a building when he blacked out, was worrisome.
He turned his head to look around. A curtain of dim green light covered the far side of the small room - privacy screen. Except there was something about its hum that made the hair on Ichiro's flesh arm stand up and the circuits in his cyber-arm fire faster. He wasn't quite ready to accept the privacy screen was as innocuous as it appeared.
He was lying on a medical exam table. He could hear the rustle of thin paper as he shifted, felt cool metal with his flesh fingers. He shuddered and sat up. Who knew what the Earthborn had been doing to him?
The privacy screen rippled, and a man stepped through. He wore an outfit of dark green with a gold-and-green emblem on his left breast. Something about the way the outfit hung on him made Ichiro think there was body-armor underneath.
The room stayed dark. The man glanced over his shoulder, and the light of the privacy screen made his eys glitter like a cat's.
Oh. It was a biomod.
The biomod moved more lightly than a man its size would. Except for the cat eyes, Ichiro couldn't really see any obvious signs of its inhuman nature. Except the cat eyes, he thought, shouldn't exist at all.
The Earth Kingdom prided itself on its skills in the biological sciences. But it also seemed to hate some of the things those very same skills created. It was all right, Ichiro was given to understand, for people to have their immune systems boosted, their organs' efficiency minorly enhanced, their looks sculpted to perfection. Extreme biological modifications (and he had never been able to figure out where the line was) made a being subhuman, whether it was pre- or post-birth modification.
Ichiro was pretty sure the Earth Kingdom didn't have the technology for the kind of post-birth modification people talked about.
But only pretty sure.
The biologically modified didn't look inhuman. Everyone in the Archipelago knew Earth Kingdom soldiers are all biomods, and Ichiro hadn't met one yet that looked less than completely human. He'd never met any biomod yet that looked less than completely human, and he kind of wished he had because it would have been nice to know better than to fight a few of those people.
The invisible strength mods were cheating.
But this biomod had cat eyes.
"Good morning," the biomod said with a Ba Sing Se accent. He sounded older than Ichiro expected.
"Mornin'."
"The doctors tell me your bones have been fixed. They also deplore whoever did your gene-tweaking; explaining you were a mongrel didn't help. They added some basic upgrades while they had you under."
A nasty shock ran through Ichiro, and flame snapped around his flesh hand. "What?!"
Upgrades? What kind of upgrades? Who the hell gave them the right to tamper with him? (What the fuck was he going to do if they demanded payment?)
"Standard upgrades," the biomod said, its voice almost kind. "Just enough to raise you up to baseline human. They had a more difficult time dealing with your cybernetic arm."
"I was baseline human," Ichiro snapped. He clenched his metal hand, fingertips rasping against his palm. Somedays, he wished he had the money to afford one of the high-end custom arms that mapped with your body's chi. Firebending with only one arm was a pain.
Today, though, he appreciated the difficulty because it meant he wasn't frying the biomod's face off. "Who the hell gave you the right-?"
"I am Dai Li Captain Liu," the biomod said.
Oh.
Oh, ashes and ghosts.
Ichiro's mouth went dry. Sozin's balls, a Dai Li. A Dai Li captain; what the hell had he done, where were his siblings, where was he, how the hell was he going to get out of this-?
Liu crossed the room, and fire flared around Ichiro as the Dai Li reached for him. Liu ignored it, hands settling on the young man's shoulders. "Breathe," he said gently. "Breathe. Now is not the time to panic."
Some part of Ichiro wondered giddily when was the time to panic if this wasn't it. The rest of him actually listened. He closed his eyes and breathed deep, and the fires faded from his skin. He took another breath, and Liu pulled his hands back. Another breath, and the sudden piercing sensation of 'I liked being touched' made his eyes fly open.
The Dai Li stood an appropriate distance away. "You have several options. We have an interest in Firenet technology, especially when it manages to work inside a known blackout zone."
Ichiro curled the fingers of his metal hand. That's right. Ba Sing Se was a blackout zone. Firenet tech would automatically go dead in the city as soon as the transponders uploaded their location to the nearest Firenet server. With worldwide wireless communications, you couldn't stop them from doing that- Unless you'd already disabled the wireless functionality so Firenet couldn't 'upgrade' your systems for you.
"You want my arm," he said carefully.
"We want to study your arm," Liu replied. "We'd prefer you to still be attached to it, but we're not picky."
"That's good, because I'd prefer to still be attached to it too."
Liu flashed a smile, the expression lighting up his whole face. "Then we're in agreement."
"It's not like I have a choice," Ichiro growled, quashing down the little part of him that went 'ooh' at Liu's smile. "Even if you kept me alive, getting my arm removed would hurt like hell."
"Perhaps in your next life, you shouldn't get thrown off of buildings and onto Dai Li agents," Liu said. "This is a city of sixty million people. One young man with a cybernetic arm should have avoided our notice entirely."
Ichiro flushed. Just his luck. Like always.
Liu tilted his head slightly when Ichiro didn't respond. "You may choose to stay here or you may return to wherever you are staying. We will message you when we need you."
The twins. If he went home, they'd find out about the twins. If he stayed here... These were the Dai Li he was dealing with, he reminded himself. It was safer to assume they already knew about the twins. "Don't touch Kouji and Yui."
The Dai Li nodded once.
"And no more upgrades while I'm asleep!"
Liu smiled. "I'm starting to see why so many poets wrote odes to the flash of anger in Fire eyes."
With that perplexing statement, the Dai Li turned and strode out through the privacy screen, leaving Ichiro alone in the dim cell. After ten minutes, the privacy screen flickered and vanished, and a young man about Ichiro's age stood outside in a uniform similar to Liu's.
"My name is Alak," the young man said. "I'm here to escort you home."
-End-
I'm writing a lot of original or near-original (wild AUs, original fan characters) stories for story_lottery this time around. This particular set of prompts really encourages it, as the prompts are for places. I'm taking the opportunity to 'practice' writing original settings and characters without worrying too much about getting it 'right'.
That being said, I would really appreciate feedback on certain things. Am I providing enough background information for you to get an understanding of the world? Am I overloading on the background information? Are the characters engaging and interesting? What can you figure out about the characters based on what I've said about them in the story?
Title: The Boy With the Steel Arm
'Verse: Avatar AU: Cyberpunk
Characters: Ichiro, Liu, Alak
Word Count: 1200+
Rating: G
Summary: Ichiro wakes up in an Earthborn medical lab. Very, very not good.
Author's Notes: This is actually Pux's 'verse, but she let me borrow it to play with.
The Boy With the Steel Arm
***
Cat eyes glittered in the dark.
Ichiro saw them, but they were too high up for a cat to get. Too big. Maybe it was the drugs in his system still.
"Go back to sleep," someone with a Ba Sing Se accent said.
Ichiro must be drugged more than he thought, because he listened.
***
When he woke up the second time, his head felt clear. He blinked slowly and curled his toes, and nothing in his body started yammering about being hurt. Which, given that he'd been falling off a building when he blacked out, was worrisome.
He turned his head to look around. A curtain of dim green light covered the far side of the small room - privacy screen. Except there was something about its hum that made the hair on Ichiro's flesh arm stand up and the circuits in his cyber-arm fire faster. He wasn't quite ready to accept the privacy screen was as innocuous as it appeared.
He was lying on a medical exam table. He could hear the rustle of thin paper as he shifted, felt cool metal with his flesh fingers. He shuddered and sat up. Who knew what the Earthborn had been doing to him?
The privacy screen rippled, and a man stepped through. He wore an outfit of dark green with a gold-and-green emblem on his left breast. Something about the way the outfit hung on him made Ichiro think there was body-armor underneath.
The room stayed dark. The man glanced over his shoulder, and the light of the privacy screen made his eys glitter like a cat's.
Oh. It was a biomod.
The biomod moved more lightly than a man its size would. Except for the cat eyes, Ichiro couldn't really see any obvious signs of its inhuman nature. Except the cat eyes, he thought, shouldn't exist at all.
The Earth Kingdom prided itself on its skills in the biological sciences. But it also seemed to hate some of the things those very same skills created. It was all right, Ichiro was given to understand, for people to have their immune systems boosted, their organs' efficiency minorly enhanced, their looks sculpted to perfection. Extreme biological modifications (and he had never been able to figure out where the line was) made a being subhuman, whether it was pre- or post-birth modification.
Ichiro was pretty sure the Earth Kingdom didn't have the technology for the kind of post-birth modification people talked about.
But only pretty sure.
The biologically modified didn't look inhuman. Everyone in the Archipelago knew Earth Kingdom soldiers are all biomods, and Ichiro hadn't met one yet that looked less than completely human. He'd never met any biomod yet that looked less than completely human, and he kind of wished he had because it would have been nice to know better than to fight a few of those people.
The invisible strength mods were cheating.
But this biomod had cat eyes.
"Good morning," the biomod said with a Ba Sing Se accent. He sounded older than Ichiro expected.
"Mornin'."
"The doctors tell me your bones have been fixed. They also deplore whoever did your gene-tweaking; explaining you were a mongrel didn't help. They added some basic upgrades while they had you under."
A nasty shock ran through Ichiro, and flame snapped around his flesh hand. "What?!"
Upgrades? What kind of upgrades? Who the hell gave them the right to tamper with him? (What the fuck was he going to do if they demanded payment?)
"Standard upgrades," the biomod said, its voice almost kind. "Just enough to raise you up to baseline human. They had a more difficult time dealing with your cybernetic arm."
"I was baseline human," Ichiro snapped. He clenched his metal hand, fingertips rasping against his palm. Somedays, he wished he had the money to afford one of the high-end custom arms that mapped with your body's chi. Firebending with only one arm was a pain.
Today, though, he appreciated the difficulty because it meant he wasn't frying the biomod's face off. "Who the hell gave you the right-?"
"I am Dai Li Captain Liu," the biomod said.
Oh.
Oh, ashes and ghosts.
Ichiro's mouth went dry. Sozin's balls, a Dai Li. A Dai Li captain; what the hell had he done, where were his siblings, where was he, how the hell was he going to get out of this-?
Liu crossed the room, and fire flared around Ichiro as the Dai Li reached for him. Liu ignored it, hands settling on the young man's shoulders. "Breathe," he said gently. "Breathe. Now is not the time to panic."
Some part of Ichiro wondered giddily when was the time to panic if this wasn't it. The rest of him actually listened. He closed his eyes and breathed deep, and the fires faded from his skin. He took another breath, and Liu pulled his hands back. Another breath, and the sudden piercing sensation of 'I liked being touched' made his eyes fly open.
The Dai Li stood an appropriate distance away. "You have several options. We have an interest in Firenet technology, especially when it manages to work inside a known blackout zone."
Ichiro curled the fingers of his metal hand. That's right. Ba Sing Se was a blackout zone. Firenet tech would automatically go dead in the city as soon as the transponders uploaded their location to the nearest Firenet server. With worldwide wireless communications, you couldn't stop them from doing that- Unless you'd already disabled the wireless functionality so Firenet couldn't 'upgrade' your systems for you.
"You want my arm," he said carefully.
"We want to study your arm," Liu replied. "We'd prefer you to still be attached to it, but we're not picky."
"That's good, because I'd prefer to still be attached to it too."
Liu flashed a smile, the expression lighting up his whole face. "Then we're in agreement."
"It's not like I have a choice," Ichiro growled, quashing down the little part of him that went 'ooh' at Liu's smile. "Even if you kept me alive, getting my arm removed would hurt like hell."
"Perhaps in your next life, you shouldn't get thrown off of buildings and onto Dai Li agents," Liu said. "This is a city of sixty million people. One young man with a cybernetic arm should have avoided our notice entirely."
Ichiro flushed. Just his luck. Like always.
Liu tilted his head slightly when Ichiro didn't respond. "You may choose to stay here or you may return to wherever you are staying. We will message you when we need you."
The twins. If he went home, they'd find out about the twins. If he stayed here... These were the Dai Li he was dealing with, he reminded himself. It was safer to assume they already knew about the twins. "Don't touch Kouji and Yui."
The Dai Li nodded once.
"And no more upgrades while I'm asleep!"
Liu smiled. "I'm starting to see why so many poets wrote odes to the flash of anger in Fire eyes."
With that perplexing statement, the Dai Li turned and strode out through the privacy screen, leaving Ichiro alone in the dim cell. After ten minutes, the privacy screen flickered and vanished, and a young man about Ichiro's age stood outside in a uniform similar to Liu's.
"My name is Alak," the young man said. "I'm here to escort you home."
-End-