Under a Blank White Sky

Ignatius looked around and continued watching the people introducing themselves, standing coldly by the temple gate.

He noticed the ghost quickly, as his magic inclined him to, but did not act on it.

Eventually he took a few steps closer to the group and spoke in an odd and slightly disturbing monotone, as he always did. "My name is Ignatius Bellator. Black mage of death magic."

Toph raised an eyebrow as she sensed a girl walking around her, analysing every single part of her body. When the girl stood uncomfortably close to see her eyes, Toph sighed, waiting for her to finish. Right now, she really wanted to flick her finger at the girl's nose. She was probably thinking "oh my, a blind girl actually doing stuff! Impossible! Impossible!"... That was the type of person Toph hated the most. When the girl finished analysing her, Toph quickly answered her question... with another question:

"What? "Supposed to be taller"? Just who are you, anyway?"

edited 6th Apr '12 11:53:57 AM by Stratofarius

Against all odds, one of Flonne's arrows actually hit something flying overhead, causing it to plummet to the ground with a pained squawk. What exactly it was thatshe hit was a bit of a mystery - it looked like a mottled green octopus, about two feet long, with bat wings on the main portion of the body. It hissed angrily at the white arrow stuck through its body, and just when Flonne might have wondered if that arrow as a dud, it exploded.

Even stranger than the creature was what happened to the ground around it when it died. It had landed on one of the featureless grey patches, which now rapidly filled in with dirt and grass, as though something was leaking from it to transform the ground into actual ground. Likely a source of release for the earthbender, who would be able to feel the change as it happened, and tell that she was standing on earth.

"Curiouser and curiouser..." muttered the man, scratching his head. "Call me Sedd, by the way."

Apparently unconcerned with the others names for the moment, he began pacing clockwise around the clearing, reading off the words and symbols on the stone slabs as he went. For some reason, all the carvings except for the eight-legged serpent were incredibly crude.

"Ognyax and a sword... Ihdisith and a snark... Valtrazha and a heart... Heshradil and a leaf... Thaldimar and a hammer... Liscritei and a shield... and back to the creepy eye-hand temple."

Sedd returned to his position leaning against the temple, hand on chin, deep in thought.

edited 8th Apr '12 4:32:31 PM by Sir_Screwloose

Pretend there's something clever written here.

"Did some Seisui just hit the ground?" Nana remarked as he saw the patch of green stretch out among the grey landscape, cocking his head to one side as he watched the growth of color. Since that miraculous substance could heal all wounds and make a forest from a single seed, it wasn't that much of a stretch to compare the effects to the very substance. "The place does look a bit better with some color."

Always be ready to do the unusual and unexpected.

Ignatius observed the ground changing and walked towards it. As far as he could tell, it appeared the odd creature's demise had turned the ground into normal dirt and ground.

He removed the shovel from its place on his back and cautiously, as the status of the ground was still unclear, started trying to dig through it.

He also showed no emotion at all and such.

Red Arrow crouched and went to check the grass-covered grounds.

It bothered the archer. Who or what did it that it was able to change the area?

"It's not natural." murmured the auburn-haired hero. "It changed quickly. What's going to happen next?"

"Exit muna si Polgas. Ang kailangan dito ay si Dobermaxx!"

As Sedd leaned up against the temple, he would find himself standing next to the reptilian bulk of Dak Hamee, Aldrea's graceful figure not far behind. Dak looked at him for a moment, yellow eyes glinting in the white ambient light that seemed to fill the white space. Dak lowered his head; the traditional Hork-Bajir gesture of respect and submission of his own people, hoping that the sight of the enormous gargoyle-like creature lowering his wickedly bladed head at the human wouldn't frighten him. "Are you..." he began in his rough voice, before reconsidering, "... how did you know what those things are?" He pointed at the tablets with one clawed finger.

Aldrea, however, examined the enormous temple and the eerie hand-sculptures one more time before trotting over to the gaggle of other creatures. She hung on the outside of the group, examining them one by one with her two stalk eyes while her tail twitched over her shoulder. The creatures were still standing, for the most part eyeing one another with a mixture of suspicion and confusion. She did not feel ready to reveal herself directly to them just yet. That was when the green creature... materialized and exploded in what seemed like an instant. She inhaled shaprly in surprise, flashing her tailblade in case of any other attackers. When Aldrea believed it to be safe, she trotted over to the patch of grass, a welcome splash of colour in the otherwise drab landscape. Cautiously, she dug a hoof into it, hoping that the nutritional content of the flora would be sufficient as to allow her to survive for the time. It was nowhere near as good as the grass on the homeworld, or even the scrubby patches ringing the valleys of the Hork-Bajir world, but it would do. For now.

Kestrel watched the squid-bat creature explode like a hefty sack that had been overfilled with soup. The subsequent transformation of a patch of ground made him raise an eyebrow, but he said nothing more. The people were getting stranger by the minute, and he had to suppress the urge to say "Yeah, right" when one of them claimed to know some sort of magic. What nonsense.

"I think we've got more important things to do," said Kestrel after what felt like the longest pause in his life. Despite trying to sound as friendly - or at least professional - as possible, his throaty growl of a voice made him sound perpetually annoyed, or at least displeased. Despite the excellent technical accuracy of his English, it was heavily accented. "...I'm Kestrel," he added half-heartedly. It felt rather foolish of him, as though he was at a meet and greet rather than a place where disparate cultures - and species - were meeting for the first time.

Still, he wasn't about to tell them his real name, or even his alias. He didn't even trust Archer with that, and they had saved each other's lives many times before. Of course, that might have had to do with how unruly the Third Echelon agent was. He wouldn't have trusted Archer with a paper bag, to be perfectly honest. They were good working partners, but nothing more. And he wasn't about to break operational security even in a strange place like this.

The Voron operative stalked after Sedd, though he stopped at the temple gates. No matter how much he tried, Kestrel found that he could do nothing but move in a quiet, efficient manner. To many people who didn't know him - or his work - the fact that such a fit man could move so silently was a bit unnerving, but it came as part and parcel of the job.

A bit of curiousity sparked within him, and experimentally Kestrel activated his sonar goggles. Although only the most aurally sensitive people would have heard a subtle electronic whine as the ingenious device's internal mechanisms set to work, for the user it was an entirely different story. The world - or at least the view from his right eye - turned monochrome as a white pulse raced forth, an unearthly ping and whining sound accompanying it as it mapped the area in front of him. The sonar would go through solid material*

, but objects of interest or life forms would hopefully show up in bright, fuzzy white. The white images - if there were any - would fade away after a few moments, until another pulse (joined by another ping) was emitted.

The image didn't cover too far an area, but hopefully it would be enough.

Locking you up on radar since '09

Ignatius, having dug a small amount of dirt, returned the shovel to the odd set-up he had made to hold it on his back, then decided to attempt something else to figure out the nature of the land.

He reached out with his magic and attempted to sense dead spirits in the area. To others, this would appear as his eye turning slightly black and defocusing, not being obviously looking at anything, but to him his vision was now clouded and dark, but an odd indescribable sense would inform him of any nearby spirits or undead, and in most cases subtly notify the dead that someone was attempting to sense them, to which the basic response was to either attempt to reject them and cut off their sense, connect to them and either communicate with the magic and/or find them, which worked either way, or merely ignore it.

"I better check this out."

Red Arrow ran as fast as he can to the temple, approaching the gate carefully to avoid the chance of setting off kind of trap or some kind of event that would be beneficial to him or to anyone else around him.

"Locked." muttered the archer when he tried to open it. He sighed and looked up to see how tall the gate was. Red Arrow grabbed his personal pair of binoculars, military-grade. He used it to see if there were any hostiles in the temple and around.

"Alright." Red Arrow stretched his neck and arms after putting the binoculars away. "Let's try this."

Squatting low, Red Arrow jumped as high as possible to grab the top of the gate.

Unfortunately, the archer was not able to grab it since it was too tall for him to grab the top of the gate.

"Dammit. What do I do next?" Red Arrow was now tempted to use an explosive arrow, making him grab one of them with his left arm from the quiver strapped at his back via shoulders.

"I could try and breach the gate..."

The archer handled the recurve bow and went to step a few feet back from the locked gate before putting the explosive arrow on the bow. Afterwards, he raised the bow and began to aim the explosive arrow's miniature warhead at the gate.

edited 6th Apr '12 7:38:02 PM by Ominae

"Exit muna si Polgas. Ang kailangan dito ay si Dobermaxx!"

"That what these beauties are for, Spike," said Sedd, smirking as he pointed to his eyes. "They're pretty common symbols - where I'm from, at least. Though the snark's a bit rarer." he explained.

Kestrel would, in fact, see silhouettes: two of them, a fair way into the temple. Whose silhouettes they were, though, was an interesting question. They were roughly humanoid, though strangely proportioned, with short legs, wide torsos, and big arms - and if there were heads, they were hunched over too much to tell.

edited 11th Apr '12 9:46:40 AM by Sir_Screwloose

Pretend there's something clever written here.

Korra paused.

How do you tell someone that you are the Avatar when they taught the previous Avatar...and there is like a 70 year difference between you! She started to say something and then stopped herself.

She finally started again,

“I...don't know if you'd believe me or not.” She turned and moved over to the temple, running her hands along the rock statues.

“I think I can open this for us...”

Toph was about to ask Korra another question before she sensed the new patch of grass. Immediately, she ran towards it, pushing everyone (and everything) out of her way. She dropped down, almost hugging the earth, and letting out a smile:

"Oh, my sweet, sweet earth, I missed you so much!"

And to prove that, she began an earthbending routine- creating small rock pillars, and then immediately destroying them, making small boulders and smashing them together, until she was covered in a thick layer of dirt. She fell down on the ground, this time letting out a sigh of relief:

"Aaaah. Nothing like a healthy coat of dirt..."

The blind girl continued to stare at the sky, not caring if people were looking at her.

Dak ignored the nickname; whether or not he actually took offense to it and suppressed his displeasure or simply didn't acknowledge the potential insult was something that only he knew. The creature seemed to be engrossed with the crude carvings, although Dak could not fathom what they were or the outlandish names he assigned to the various carvings. Once again, he spoke up, raising a claw as he peered over Sedd's shoulder. "... a what?" he said.

"A snark, Spike," said Sedd. "Brother to the snake, it has eight legs because it stole the snake's, forcing it to crawl on its belly. If you get bit by one, you start seeing and hearing things that aren't there. Very clever creatures. Beautiful too, and they can change colors - the carving really doesn't do it justice."

He raised an eyebrow at Toph's little practice session. "Terrakinesis, huh? That's always a good power, much better than terrapinesis, the ability to move turtles with your mind. They make good projectiles, but then you get the animal rights people on your back.

Korra's offer, however, drew a look of actual concern. "I... really don't think that's a good idea. You don't know what might be lurking in there."

edited 11th Apr '12 9:47:21 AM by Sir_Screwloose

Pretend there's something clever written here.

Red Arrow sighed when he heard Sedd's concerns.

"While I'd like to say that I'd understand, I don't think it's in all of our interest to stick around the now grassy fields and do nothing since we can't figure things out."

The archer then aimed the recurve bow at the gate, making sure that no one was in the way or near the gate.

"Unless someone has another idea beside the futile attempt of climbing the gate, I'm going to breach it with an explosive arrow of mine."

He eyed the gate, concentrating his attention towards it when Red Arrow began to pull the recurve bow's string with the explosive arrow included.

"Exit muna si Polgas. Ang kailangan dito ay si Dobermaxx!"

Korra actually smiled as she turned and without thinking said,

“I'm the Avatar, I can handle things.”

Then she swung around in almost a hurricane kick, smashing her heel into the stone post next to the gate. The stone buckled as she used her Earth Bending abilities to blow the one side of the gate inward, shattering the stone.

Looking at Red Arrow, she said,

“Save the arrows. We might need em later.”

edited 6th Apr '12 8:44:43 PM by RevenVrake

Toph immediately stopped smiling and got up on her feet, somewhat angry. She then pointed at Korra, and screamed:

"Hey, weird girl! I happen to know the Avatar, and you're not him, so you better stop lying to these people!"

The blind girl stomped her bare foot, a medium-size boulder coming out of the ground. She thrusted her fist forward, and the boulder flew towars Korra. The girl was so focused in making everyone see that this Korra wasn't the real Avatar (since that title belonged to her friend) that she didn't even notice that her heartbeat continued the same, and would have probably changed if Korra was lying.

Another tear opened in the blank world's stale, scentless air as the hands unceremoniously deposited the sleeping form of a young man onto the ground. Anyone looking in his general direction would probably first notice the bright red colour of his T-shirt, which would have seemed to stand out like a beacon on the dreary grey landscape.

He was a rather ordinary-looking young man of a roughly medium height and build; casually dressed, with short black hair, clear olive skin and dark, long-lashed eyes that slowly flickered open as he stirred. His features were almost too regular; he might have been considered handsome, but in an excessively unobtrusive way. His wide brown eyes seemed to betray what might have been either naivety or simple confusion as he stared at the enormous temple, and the people milling around outside it.

They're not all people-people, are they? mused the young man as he slowly got to his feet, absent-mindedly brushing some dust off his faded blue jeans. Some of them looked like normal people-people, and most of them seemed to be able to talk and do other people-things, but a number of them looked like things that weren't quite people, or were very definitely not people. At least, not people as he knew them to be.

Maybe "people" wasn't the right word. What was the right word? He knew he was a person, but he wasn't the same as most people. He wasn't human.

That was it. Human. They were all people, probably, but a lot of them weren't human. Some of them looked like they might almost pass, if it weren't for the occasional outbreak of tails or the fact that one of them had just stamped her foot and seemingly caused a boulder to fly at someone else.

That wasn't something humans could normally do, was it?

And now that he was thinking about things that couldn't normally happen, why was the sky white? It didn't seem to be very cloudy. A patch of grass was spreading out across the ground, but he was still standing on something grey and vaguely lumpy. Ground didn't normally look like that, did it?

Where was he?

Anyway here's Blackwall

Kneeling down, the robe clad male stuck out two fingers from his right hand, scooping it into the grey earth. Putting it in his mouth, he was filled with a taste Nana couldn't rightly identify. Regardless, he spat out the mixture and its unfamiliar feel. "Eugh, this place..."

Walking after the others, he found a door of some sort, which was rather suspect. And then the other girl proceeded to start smashing at it. "Um... Oh dear." Pausing to pluck the multitude of flying debris midair with his deft fingers, the blonde man threw them away from himself. "You... might wanna not be so rash." He advised the eager girl, wincing as she blatantly destroyed the stone structure.

edited 6th Apr '12 10:15:11 PM by GreyStar

Always be ready to do the unusual and unexpected.

"Ew," Marle said as the flying octopus got shot with one of the arrows... and it created some ground and grass. Things were certainly very strange here. At least, Toph and the weird horse-person were happy.

Then Korra and Toph begain using their Earthbending abilities against both the temple and each other.

"Whoa!" Marle said, stepping back as she readied herself to use her Ice Magic to defend everyone else here from these two's Earth... Magic? That didn't make sense. She's never seen anyone who could control the earth like these two.

edited 7th Apr '12 6:47:16 PM by GameGuruGG

Wizard Needs Food Badly

"Whatever your problem is, I suggest that you save it! We don't have time to deal with your personal problems."

Red Arrow told Toph after he went to keep the unused explosive arrow.

"Thanks for making that entrance for us." Red Arrow told Korra. "Definetely didn't expect that."

The archer took out his binocular and approached the entrance Korra made from busting the statue down, scanning the interior for any beings.

"I'm now wishing that Aqualad, Robin and maybe Superboy would be around to help me." Red Arrow said out loud while peering through his binoculars.

"Exit muna si Polgas. Ang kailangan dito ay si Dobermaxx!"

Ignatius, eye still defocused and black and still with his spirit-sensing magic active, and started walking around the small area in which they stood.

At several points he stopped, then focused specifically on a small area, then a larger one, then moved again, repeating this several times to scan the area of any dead spirits, eventually stopping near the temple. What he does next depends on the result of his magic scan.

He can sense her normally and most parts of the scan will pick her up (to varying levels), yes.

edited 7th Apr '12 9:11:38 AM by Replica

Sakuko watched the antics of the others (such as the earthbending) and the octopus-thing hit the ground. Sure do seem to have quite the strange variety around here. Maybe I should try contacting someone, she thought. She rolled up her right sleeve a little ways, and pressed a button on her armband. It displayed back the holographic characters: No Signal. Whoa, that's strange - I think by now the smart money's definitely on an interdimensional location.

Rolling down her sleeve again, she walked lightly over to the temple and gate entrance. "This looks like where the party is. So... what's everyone doing over here? Property damage? Breaking and entering? Sounds like fun," she said slightly jokingly.

I'm assuming he's still detecting Sakuko, and if he scans her multiple times, she'll wave back at him.

edited 7th Apr '12 9:03:54 AM by Sonzai

Danger: Intense gravimetric distortions nearby. Please reverse the polarity on your deflectors now.

Korra moved with the incoming rock, her reflexes taking over as she swung her right arm in a backwards movement, deflecting the rock into another path and away from the group.

Inwardly she was cursing herself. She just had to say that...didn't she? Now she had possibly one of the most stubborn beings in history throwing boulders at her! She had to do something...

So she did.

Korra, after letting the boulder fly out of the way, punched forwards, aiming for the spot in front of Toph's feet. Knowing what she did about the Earth Bender, Toph's protectiveness of her feet was one thing Master Katara had mentioned. Along with her stubbornness, rudeness...

From her fist, bright orange and red flames appeared in a long line, not unlike a flame thrower, throwing a wall of fire between the two benders.

Korra smirked as she said, caught up in the bravado,

“Then explain that.”