thelegion | [video] Show Me Your Moves

[The camera bobs and judders as someone sets it up, catching flashes of a scruffy, unkempt face and pale arms and the sky for a moment.]

Okay so I've been thinking, we've got super powers here, right?

[The picture steadies pointing out at what appears to be a beach, but is more likely to just be a simulated section of beach on the Legion World. It falls over, and Grif swears as he rights it again.]

...Anyway. By super powers I mean amazing things you couldn't do before, because otherwise you're just from some world where you can do cool stuff most of us can't and that's not superpowers, that's just life being unfair to the rest of us.

[Satisfied that the comm is stable, Grif steps out in front of it as he continues.]

So, I want to see what you guys can do. And because I am all about being fair, I'm going first.

[He swings his arms a little, takes a couple breaths, then bolts to the waterline. He's nothing but a speed blur followed by a trail of thrashed sand. He stops at the surf and charges back just as quickly. At the end he's doubled over in front of the camera, hands on his knees, huffing and wheezing.]

Whoo!

[He laughs as he catches his breath, which makes it somewhat harder, and is grinning despite how much that tiny display of super speed seems to have taken out of him. In good shape, this guy is not.]

It's like... it feels like everything's normal speed to me when I do it and everything's all slowed down. It's crazy shit, man.

[Grif plunks down heavily in the sand and picks up the comm again, still visibly panting.]

So. That's me. Show me what you got.

((OOC: Feel free to threadhop each other and talk about powers if you like! Grif is encouraging sharing.))

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

It's not a show. With Bending, you have to learn the right forms to be able to Bend and control your Bending.

You can't just throw fireballs at people or it'll go out of control. Or you can't do it at all.

That's how my uncle does it. Not out of control, of course, but whenever I've seen him fighting with it, it's just sort of thrown out.

[Flicked out? Hard to describe it, the man never fights without his swords in hand.]

Your method is much more interesting to watch, though.

Then your uncle's doing it wrong.

Firebending is what it is because having actual forms means you can attack and defend in ways you can't if you're just...chucking fire at people like snow balls.

[Not that Firebending is a very defensive form of Bending but having actual forms means you can counterattack effectively, cutting through attacks with attacks of your own.]

You can redirect and cut through someone else's attacks.

[woah shut the fuck up the uncle is sacred bro]

That's what the non-magical fighting is for. And it's hardly fair to says he's doing anything wrong when what you do presumably doesn't exist where I come from at all.

[His tone remains cool and polite as ever, but he can't help the hint of a frown that slips onto his face.]

[He catches the frown and thinks about how he'd feel if someone said that about his uncle and wonders if they maybe have something in common there. Maybe. Even though he isn't habitually that polite, he still knows his Uncle would be frowning at how he's been...less than genteel with some of these people and tries to nudge things into more civil territory.]

Maybe your bending is just different then, if it's still effective that way.

[That's a compromise, right?]

The reason Bending is the way it is in my world is because it is how we fight. It's a combination of controlling our elements and unarmed combat.

[Most Benders had no difficulty combining physical attacks with their Bending or with translating the fighting forms of bending to purely physical unarmed combat, and this was a fact that served him well when he and Uncle were hiding their Bending in the Earth Kingdom.]

But it sounds like your people develop their nonbending skills more to compensate for not doing the same. That's something I understand. Not all Firebenders train with weapons but I've trained with dao -- dual swords.

It's not bending. It's magic.

[He says this with a perfectly straight face, like that's completely normal. Because it is.]

But yes, most people can't do that sort of thing back home. Humans, anyway. Most need additional tools to work with esoteric magic. The rest just train themselves with ordinary weapons if they want to be any use in a fight.

[And he frowns again, casting an odd look at the screen.]

...My uncle uses those as well. The dual swords.

[He has trouble wrapping his head around the concept of someone flinging fire being magical. The idea that people would consider Bending to be magic is strange to him. It's considered a natural ability back home and magic is...magic. It's strange things that happen that have no rational explanation. But Bending is Bending. For Benders it's a natural ability, something that extends from their breath, a way they can exert the energy of their own body on the world.]

[He figures that if it's magic elsewhere, maybe instead of it coming from the people themselves, they're invoking it from the spirits or something.]

I've found that it pays to have something other than Firebending to fall back on.

[He says it in a tone that suggests hardship. That he needed to have those alternate skills to survive.]

[Well, you're right on the money as far as demon magic goes, at least.

Saralegui looks thoughtful for a moment, and his gaze is piercing even with the tinted lenses to soften it. But then he shrugs, glancing away.]

That's true of any skill. Relying on it entirely will only leave you floundering when you find yourself in a situation where it can't help. I can only hope that those with newly discovered powers here don't focus on them to the exclusion of all else.

They've said that Karate Kid [Such a weird name, what was with the weird names?] will be teaching hand to hand combat and that the annoying blue girl will be teaching people how to control their powers and strategy, so it looks like anyone that doesn't know what they're doing will learn quickly enough.

Karate Kid is good. [A pause.] Very good.

[Of course, that begs the question of how he knows that...]

[That...certainly gets the briefest little skeptical look, but no, he is as kind and unassuming as ever.]

Did he do a demonstration? I wish I'd seen it.

[Another long pause.]

You could say that.

[If by "demonstration," you really meant "totally kicked my butt during my panicked attempt to fight my way free of being pinned down by the people just trying to explain where I was." Then yes, it had been a demonstration.]

[bro, you are suspicious as all hell.]

...And what else could I say?

[No way is he admitting to getting his butt whooped.]

You could say that we may have fought each other before I understood where I was and what was going on.

[That's not the same as admitting he'd been beaten. Soundly.]

And that he was, uh. Very good.

[That is absolutely the same as admitting it. Saralegui grins.]

I wish I'd seen it even more, now.

[Zuko narrows his eyes.]

It wasn't that impressive.

[A pause.]

But he was good.

[Innocently:]

It sounds like it would have been fun to see.

[He'd love to see someone get their ass kicked.]

[He glowers.]

It wouldn't have been.

[But, you know, he's biased. Since. He got his butt kicked.]

[video] Show Me Your Moves

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