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[center][h3][b]?????????? - Xiao Yu[/b][/h3][/center]
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[b][i]Unknown Location - Unknown Time[/i][/b]
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[hider=A Memory of the Void (Entirely Optional Character Interaction Reading)]
[i]The soul of a young woman watched the proceedings surrounding the absurd, wondrous phenomenon that was the meeting with Avatar Aang... if that was, indeed, who he was. Admittedly, she wasn't sure if she was right to be paranoid, especially given his apparent generosity, but she was still someone who was inclined to caution in the face of anything that seemed just too good to be real.

And that was why she hung back. Beyond her initial comments, she had found herself slinking back into the crowd, letting others take the lead in asking questions about how this whole reincarnation process was going to work. She watched, as one soul after another made their requests and was sent on their way. She listened to what was rejected and what was accepted, and as her own turn came closer by simple dint of there being increasingly fewer alternatives, she seriously considered her own choice.

[b]I want to have the power to make a difference... to live my life the way I want, to be able to make a real impact from the word go. The helplessness of being an infant... I reject it! Like hell I'm going to endure years of that dull existence just waiting to grow up! If I'm going to have time before the supposed Imposter appears to prepare, then I'm not going to waste a second of it![/b]

She continued to watch Aang, the Avatar, observed his mannerisms, the basis of his decisions and concerns he raised, and the more she saw, the more convinced she was that this was either the real thing or a [b]very[/b] good actor. Either way, she already knew what she was after.

"Well, it seems like you're the last one," Aang said with a wan smile.

The girl's soul glanced around the crystal-filled void and nodded. "Seems that way..."

"You looked rather lost in thought there," Aang observed.

The woman's lips quirked. "How could I not be? This is a big decision, and honestly? I want to be discerning about it." Shaking her head, she rubbed the bridge of her nose. "To be honest, I'm rather concerned by the number of my supposed allies that chose to be reborn into the Fire Nation..."

Aang chuckled, but there was a somewhat somber and perturbed expression sneaking behind his own features. "Guess I can't blame you for that." The Avatar leaned on his staff, despite that he was still floating freely in the void. "But you know, the Fire Nation isn't all bad. Their people deserve saving and consideration as much as any other."

The woman's lips pursed, before a sigh escaped her. "It's not that I fundamentally disagree... but the Fire Nation of the Hundred Year War's era isn't the kind of place that's safe to draw attention. For all its advancements, it was a place of cultural brainwashing and propaganda." She frowned. "Am I really wrong to be concerned about those who were supposed to be going there to stop the Fire Nation going native?"

Aang shook his head. "Maybe not... but this isn't really about stopping the Fire Nation, you know?"

The woman fell quiet at that, inclining her chin. "The Balance, huh...? In the end, the Fire Nation as a whole isn't really the true enemy here, but those that lead them... and the imposter wearing your body." She sighed. "I guess I shouldn't have expected anything less from Avatar Aang of all people. You were always the type to be doggedly optimistic about redemption and coexistence."

Aang smiled a bit awkwardly, one hand rubbing the back of his neck. "Eheh... I know I sort of brought it on myself, but it's still weird to hear people talk about me like that... like they're confident they know me inside and out."

The woman frowned, briefly bowing her head. "Sorry about that."

Aang waved her off. "There's nothing to apologize for." He trailed off, glancing around the void, before continuing. "Not to rush you... but have you made a decision yet?"

The woman chuffed. "Maybe I haven't."

Aang smiled a little, before frowning. "I can't keep you here forever, you know. It's already bad enough that I pulled souls out of their proper cycle, but the longer you stay like this, the more chances you situation grows... unstable." His expression grew apologetic. "If you don't choose something soon, for your own good, I'll have no choice but to put you back where I found you or send you along with whatever seems decent."

The woman didn't respond immediately beyond a frown, a long moment passing before she asked, "Are you going to be okay?"

Aang blinked. "Okay?"

"Here alone," the woman elaborated. "Humans aren't meant to live in total isolation, and I don't think you ever mention how long you'd actually been trapped here..."

"Ah." Aang smiled softly. "Don't worry about it. After all, the Avatar is never truly alone."

"Ah, that's right. Raava?"

Aang nodded, a flicker of a white glow around him preceding what almost seemed to be a hallucination of countless indistinct figures standing behind him. "With Raava here and my past lives, I won't ever be alone, not really."

The woman sighed. "A part of me wants to say that's not enough, but... 'different strokes for different folks' as they say." She snorted. "Alright then, I think I've got an idea in mind."

Aang smiled. "Go ahead."

She told him, and after a long moment of shuffling through the crystalline shards around them, Aang could be seen peering at one of the rather more sizable chunks among them with a critical eye. The Avatar frowned, turning the shard over a few times, before glancing to the woman. "This power... I'm not exactly opposed, and the baseline is within the ability of your soul to assimilate safely... But are you sure about this?"

"I am."

Aang's brow furrowed in indecision. "I'm a bit surprised honestly; hearing you talk before, I would have expected something more... heroic." He glanced at the shard again, the crystal gleaming with alien power. "If you let this power get out of hand..."

"It won't," the woman replied confidently. Aang shot her a concerned look, but she only smiled. "If anything happens, I'll clean up my own mess. That much I can promise you. If you can trust anything, trust that I want to make the future [b]better[/b], not worse."

"Good intentions have been the root of many unfortunate actions..." Aang murmured.

"I'm not about to lose sight of why we're here," the woman said, chuckling. "That's why, assuming my soul can hold it, I'd like those memory protections others asked for as my second boon. That way I'll never forget why I'm truly here and what I promised you." She smiled softly, a true smile on her lips. "Aang, I'm not sure you understand just how amazing this opportunity is for someone like me. A new life? A chance to [b]be someone[/b]? A chance to have fantastical powers and save the world? This is a dream come true. But if I'm going to make sure the job gets done, I need to settle for nothing but the best..."

Gaze oddly piercing, Aang was silent for a long moment, mulling over her words, before slowly nodding. "Well, you believe what you're saying at least..." He sighed, his expression firming, as he called forth a smaller shard to float beside the larger. "And what does a 'better' future mean to you?"

The woman grinned. "It means a world where people are satisfied but productive, coexisting but ambitious. To ask for a world without conflict is to ask too much of human nature, but I don't think harmony amongst themselves and with spirits is ultimately unrealistic. Growing pains are inevitable, natural, but once overcome, I believe there is a golden dawn waiting beyond the horizon."

"And you'll accomplish that with powers like [i]these[/i]?"

The woman chuckled. "I hope you aren't expecting whatever future you've seen through our memories to remain intact, Avatar Aang." Her good humor dimmed a bit. "Be it the machinations of the Imposter or the other ways this world might be warped by these... 'tropes' they used to imprison you, this world's future will ultimately be its own."

Aang frowned but nodded. "I think I get what you're saying, but..."

"Asking a pack of scattered, uncoordinated and ambitious reincarnates with meta-knowledge to somehow preserve a perfect 'canon' timeline is unrealistic, Aang," the woman grinned wryly. "We'll deal with the Imposter, I imagine, even if only out of self-preservation for some as altruism for others, but this world's future is far from certain..." She inclined her chin. "Though I suppose you already knew that, right?"

Aang met her gaze for a moment, before sighing, "Yeah... I did, but... I don't know. Maybe I wanted to hope..."

"Sometimes, it's better to keep your expectations tempered," the woman shrugged. "And like you said before: these are desperate times and even more desperate measures. In the grand scheme of things, the Imposter is the real threat here, so as long as we can keep the world intact and foil the schemes of the Imposter and other evils alike, wherever they may rise... that will just have to be enough, right?"

"...Yeah."

"Haah, sorry to be a downer, I guess."

"No, it's fine. You're right... I don't like it, but you are."

"Hey, just try to see the silver linings, you know? Once we take care of the Imposter, you'll be able to return, right?"

"Yeah," Aang nodded. "Once their own power is no longer constantly reinforcing this prison, my spirit should be able to reenter the world."

"Then just look forward to that. In the meantime, trust this world to make its own future, you know? It may need saving right now, but at the end of the day, everyone has the right to choose their own destiny..." She smiled. "Even you."

"Huh?"

"You didn't choose to be the Avatar, Aang, and honestly, it's not something you ever really wanted, right?"

"...Maybe not, but I've had long enough to come to peace with it. Besides... considering my situation, I was never much of an Avatar to begin with..."

"Oi, you shut it with that self-depreciating shit," the woman snorted.

"Uh..."

"You're not at fault here. You couldn't have possibly been prepared for this situation, and honestly, you're making the best of it with what you have," the woman said bluntly. "You deserved better than this, and honestly, when all is said and done? I hope the world doesn't need an Avatar." Aang's eyes widened. "You deserved to have a full childhood. You deserved to choose your own destiny. You deserved to live in peace and prosperity... Life isn't fair, but those were all things you should have had." The woman's lips quirked. "So, you know what? I think my real hope for you by the end of this... is that the world you are able to return to is one with no grand duty laid out before you. If we can build a future that gives you the freedom to live life however you choose, then I'll be satisfied."

Aang fell quiet for a while, before sighing. "I... guess we'll just have to see." He visibly firmed himself. "But I think that's enough delaying now. I'll approve these abilities you're after. Whatever happens next, whether you succeed or fail, I'll trust that at least here and now, you set out with the intent to use them for good."

The woman smiled brightly at him. "Coming from you, that's quite the vote of confidence." She chuckled. "Yeah, I suppose we've delayed long enough..." Spreading her arms, her grin widened. "Beam me up, Scotty!"

A moment later, two shards of impossibility made possible slammed into her chest, and her disembodied soul was consumed in a flash of golden light...

...that soon bristled underneath with a spark of ignited darkness.[/i]
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[b][i]Earth Kingdom - AG 82 (Spring)[/i][/b]
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In the grand scheme of things, the reborn soul of the young woman would not have said she truly regretted asking her benefactor for the protection of her memories. After all, memories were what made someone who they were. Take those away, and -regardless of some silly technicality like having the same soul- you were basically dead. In other words, it was ego-death, no different than truly dying really. It was one of the things she had truly feared in some dark corner of her mind, the distant worry about growing old and having her own mind, the very bedrock of her selfhood, failing her, leaving her body as little more than a walking corpse puppeted by some blank slate wearing her face and name like a skinwalker. She would honestly rather die than be reduced to such a disgraceful, humiliating state.

And that was why she wouldn't regret choosing to prioritize preserving who she was above all else. No matter the benefits she reaped from this arrangement, no matter the opportunities this new life offered her, it was all utterly pointless if the "her" enjoying them wasn't the "her" that actually mattered. The benefits far outweighed any downsides, those yet realized or otherwise, and she would endure a thousand screaming births in crystal-clear detail before she ever even [i]considered[/i] not being herself.

Even so...

[i]Ah yes, so this is what it means to wish you could repress things.[/i]

...maybe having a bit of conscious control over what she remembered most clearly would have been nice.

Being an infant again was a special sort of hell, the newly named Xiao Yu decided. It was a roller coaster of humiliation, helplessness, hunger and just general utter [i]mind-numbing[/i] boredom.

You couldn’t walk... or talk... or even have any real agency worth a damn. And all the worse, assuming you were actually conscious and lucid in this period of your life, you were also basically illiterate and incapable of understanding anything others said.

Or, at least, that is what she could have been concerned about. Instead, for some reason, despite most of the Elemental Nations being blatantly Asian in cultural inspiration, they all spoke in English dub...

Well, she supposed she couldn't really complain there. It was a small salve against her indignity at needing to relearn bladder control, a relief against the boredom of staring up at a ceiling from her crib, and she'd take those silver linings where she could get them.

Then again...

Well, she certainly had [i]other[/i] ways to solve boredom.

Churning in her core, the energy she could now feel at all times these days ebbed and flowed like a crackling tide, an ever-present [i]warmth[/i] that tickled her guts with the comforting promise of its existence.

Gooey baby lips twisting into a whatever passed for a sly smile on her dumpling of a face, Xiao Yu stoked and prodded that energy with intent, feeding it her indignity, her anger and determination, and in a flash of orange light-

[i][b]Trans-Magia[/b][/i]

-her helpless saggy baby body was filled with surging power, a wordless coo of glee leaving her lips, as she was draped in tiny segments of black armor and adorned with a crimson cape flowing down her back.

As usual, she found herself grimacing, however, her once weak baby arms now possessing just enough strength and dexterity to rub at the space just below her collar, where a trio of black stars stood out against her skin like tattoos around a larger golden star that was outright imbedded in her flesh.

Already, she could feel the strain on her body.

Magic -MahoAko magic, rather- was peculiar in the sense that part of your stamina in using it came from the actual strength and age of your physical body. Therefore, being that she was literally a months-old infant, she couldn't practice her magic for nearly as long or hard as she wished.

At least, not the more magic heavy powers.

A moment's concentration was all it took for her body to leave her crib, taking flight, as she slipped over to her window and easily lifted it open.

Smiling wide, with glee bubbling in her chest, the emotion feeding further into her magic and bolstering her depressingly small reserves, a single infant soared high into the night sky of the Earth Kingdom, her now magically sharpened gaze casting across long expanses of rich forests and rocky fields.

Feeling the wind in her tufts of hair, feeling the true freedom of soaring closer to the clouds... as Xiao Yu rocketed across the dark skyline of Ba Sing Se at a pace that would have probably put some helicopters to shame, she decided that this had been worth it. No matter how little of this power's true potential she could manifest right now, improvement was just a matter of time and training, and this sense of freedom she had acquired... this sense of truly being able to take her future into her own hands...?

[i]Well, as long as Aang doesn't interfere further or demand more of me than the present task, I suppose it's a price worth paying for this... I may be grateful and all for this chance, but I'm hardly going to commit myself to supporting his every future whim. As much as he should have had the right to choose his own destiny, I've got the right to choose mine.[/i]

Of course, tonight, she was on a particular sort of hunt, one she'd been working towards slowly ever since she'd started getting strong enough to secretly leave her home unnoticed by her parents.

Raising her hands towards the air, the infant's face scrunched up in concentration, the golden star on her chest channeling her intent into guided patterns and carving a cloudy dark gate in space into the air.

Abruptly, she gasped -wheezed really- as the drain on her magical reserves from what was [i]supposed[/i] to be one of the cheapest magical feats in her entire cheat powerset still nearly knocked the breath out of her.

[i]Guh... if I were just a little older, damn it..[/i]

Taking a couple seconds to catch her breath, the infant wasted no time diving through the small dark gate-

-and came out the other side about what she estimated to be halfway across the continent.

The main way she could mostly say that for certain was that she was currently floating high above a point where two massive rivers flowed into a yawning titanic lake behind her. That same lake, somewhere further east at her last expedition's starting landmark, was crossed by a narrow strip of land called the "Serpent's Pass". And directly forward to the west, large forests clustered across the land.

Smiling widely, Xiao Yu let her dark portal close and set off flying again, straight due west as much as she was able... which, admittedly, wasn't [i]too[/i] hard. The titanic lake behind her and the connected rivers (or were they more like long, massive water channels really?) were distinctive enough landmarks that as long as she had a map with her, she was not likely to get lost any time soon.

And she did, of course. Have a map, that was.

Stolen, yes, but really, who was going to miss it, right? That map shop had plenty more, after all. And hey, her cheat powerset came from a villainess anyway! So, of course, she was going to use a few questionable methods for the sake of saving the world!

And besides, she was a literal infant right now!

How in the world was she supposed to acquire what she needed in any sort of legitimate manner, eh?! She didn't have time to waste!

So, naturally, she had spent her first nights out with her powers experimenting, then preparing for her future voyages, then stealing a decent quality map of the Four Nations, and then beginning to take periodic nighttime flights out into the world around Ba Sing Se to expand her options.

See, the thing about her portal magic was that visualization was important. She couldn't just imagine a scene from a cartoon and pop right out in the Fire Lord's palace. No, she needed to actually see that place in person somehow and be able to clearly visualize and recall it as a way to teleport back.

Sure, she could have tried to use scrying magic to remotely view the world from the comfort of her home, and -to a degree- she [i]had[/i] managed that, even used it to help plan her map heist... But scrying was weirdly a lot more mana intensive compared to just portaling out and exploring personally.

And honestly? She didn't really mind that too much.

Being able to get out and stretch her metaphorical wings... to be free of the stifling existence of an infant even for an hour that she could finally move her body correctly and forget about her currently degrading existence... that was a priceless thing to her right now, this freedom. And she wouldn't give it up even if she had an alternative.

Thus, the plan was relatively simple.

Right now, she was too weak to do much other than fly around and make maybe two portals a day before being tuckered out. But even while that was the case, she had enough resources to be productive.

Therefore, for this first year of her childhood, her primary goal was to visit all the major locations of the world of Avatar she could find and burn them into her memory, radically expanding her options for her portal targeting down the line.

Everything else could wait, aside from trying to mess around with her chi while she was otherwise stuck playing the part of a normal infant. But right now, the important thing was to ensure her dark portals could reach every corner of the Four Nations, the sooner the better.

This was, after all, turning out to be a fairly big world, much bigger than the show had made it seem at least, and once she linked up with her fellow "saviors", she was sure they would rather appreciate not having to make the same sort of treks the GAang did to get everywhere.

Smiling in satisfaction, Xiao Yu soared through the sky with confidence and a sense of progress burning in her chest, the pleasant hum of improvement raising her spirits, as she took yet another step towards her goals.

And that night, when she returned to her crib and released her transformation with a weary sigh that soon transformed into the groan of sleep from her feeble infant body, the reincarnated soul still slept with a satisfied -and perhaps concerningly smug- smile planted upon her lips, satisfied with another flawless operation, no-one the wiser of her absence.
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[b][i]Ba Sing Se, Earth Kingdom - AG 82 (Winter)[/i][/b]
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Honestly, the weather in the world of Avatar was fucking weird. The concept of seasons barely seemed to exist across national borders, as each nation seemed to largely perpetually maintain a single season year-round. Really, about the only thing that seemed to mark the passage of time in the actual series was the movements of the celestial bodies and the night and day cycle.

Which was why living in the Earth Kingdom meant a baby could be wandering about outside barefoot in the dead of what should have been -and technically [i]was[/i]- winter and be completely fine.

"Aamamamahhttbbbtt..." Yu babbled mostly aimlessly, as she toddled forth on stocky baby legs. Honestly, she would have done so mostly in silence normally, but working her lips was the first step to coherent speech. And besides...

"You're doing so [i]good[/i], Yuyu~!" cooed her mother, apparently quite enamored with the nonsense flowing out of her child in baby-speak.

Yu resisted the urge to scowl at the baby-talk, because she just knew that her frustration would only make her look even cuter somehow. Honestly, nothing entertained adults like a small, harmless creature looking petulant and trying to appear angry. She would know; she'd been one, after all. At this point, the only thing she could really do was endure the humiliation and fight harder to regain the control of her body that she'd lost.

Case in point, she was currently spending her daylight hours establishing her independent streak from the word go. Already about a year into her rebirth, and she had the basics of walking down, even if it was still more comfortable to use something as a handhold to keep her up.

Like the wooden fence she was currently peering through, staring across a wide expansive field with bright blue eyes at the herd of strange creatures that still made her want to cringe as much as watch in fascination.

The creatures in question were large, flightless bird-like entities... if birds had the tail and head of a horse with a broad and curved beak mounted on the front of the former. They were mostly covered in feathers, aside from a bit of short course hair around the horse-like parts of the head and the long stream of the tail, and the fully grown members of the creatures towered at what Yu could only eyeball at an easy eight feet tall.

"Hehee~, do you like the ostrich horses, Yu?" her mother giggled.

Again, the baby restrained the urge to cringe at the creatures' name. It wasn't the first time she'd heard it by any means, but she still wasn't even close to getting used to it.

[i]Seriously, what is it with this world and fusing random fauna together? Is it so much to ask for to see more normal animals around here?[/i]

"Ablabbrrble," she instead replied sagely in response, wobbling a bit, as she tightened her grip on the fence she was standing against.

Her eyes were drawn to the only human currently out in the field, her father, who was currently mounted atop one of the horse-bird things and running the rest of the herd through what seemed to be tolerance exercises. Namely, that her father would steer his steed over to a group he had yet to accost in turn, dismount... and start earthbending.

It was with utter fascination that Xiao Yu watched, feeling the distant rumble of displaced earth vibrate through her feet, as her father sometimes ripped jutting walls out of the ground and soon replaced them, while other times chucking boulders about and seeing which steeds didn't clear away squawking in offense. Those that didn't sometimes got additional attention, as her father earthbent obstacle courses and other structures, before guiding ostrich horses through them to gradually acclimate them to earthbending in their vicinity.

From what she could already gather about her parents' jobs, it seemed they were some of the latest in a multi-generational series of earthbending ranch owners (her father born into it and mother married into it), who seemed to be raising military steeds. Honestly, that was about the only reason Yu could think of to put so much focus on training the otherwise docile horse-bird-things to not be freaked out by any amount of earthbending. If you were out in the middle of a battlefield, the last thing you'd want is for your steed to panic and buck you off over your own damn attacks... or just generally run for the hills every time you dismounted to get serious.

"Do you like daddy's earthbending?" her mother interrupted her thoughts again, smiling in that way that was casually patronizing and indulgent, even if adults maybe didn't mean it to be.

[i]What do you think, lady?![/i]

"Blyuh." Instead of frowning, Yu just nodded seriously, earning a gleeful little giggle from her mother. Yu rather doubted her mother actually thought her baby understood what she was saying, but maybe if she...

As the thought occurred to her, Yu was struck with indecision. On the one hand, it would be immensely satisfying and make her feel quite smug... On the other hand, was she ready to start distancing herself from the cover of safety in obscurity? Hmmm... perhaps not. Still, as long as she wasn't unlucky enough to attract the Dai Li's attention somehow... it should be fine, and even if it wasn't? Well, she had options they couldn't account for even now.

Fine then. It was decided.

Furrowing her brows, Yu shifted her feet, gripping the fence like a lifeline, as she dared to bend her wobbly baby knees and nearly toppled over. Immediately, the burn of weak baby muscles began to protest, but instead of letting herself fall, she mustered as much will as she could manage to remain in an increasingly crouched stance.

Her knees shook precariously, burning with exertion... but Yu simply looked down, then back up at her father, focusing on mirroring her stance to her father's, as he tore up another line of the field. Sucking in a slow, steadying breath, she closed her eyes and simply let herself... feel and listen.

[i]The key to earthbending is confidence. More than anything else, it is the will to face anything head-on, to endure and power through with brute force and will. To be a true earthbender is to understand the concept of neutral jing, to balance offense and defense to withstand any assault until the perfect moment to act decisively arrives.[/i]

Her mother was still chatting at her every now and then, but Yu wasn't really paying her much attention. Instead, she was focused on the soil underneath her feet, on the rumble of every shift of the earth and every heavy footfall of the creatures that lived in it. She focused on perceiving those vibrations, on feeling the way they rippled up her shaking legs. She focused on the way her feet dug minutely into the soil yet further, as she ground her heels and toes into it, deepening her stance as best she was able.

[i]But more than that, earth is a stubborn element, and you must be stubborn in order to bend it. For an earthbender, the only paths are to endure or advance. You must be unyielding and utterly sure of yourself. Fear is the mind-killer. Doubt is weakness. If you do not believe with absolute certainty that the earth will obey you... if you do not impose your will upon it, the earth will not answer.[/i]

She listened instead to the sound of the earth around her, to the way it crumbled and cracked, trying to imagine what her father was doing with it based on sound alone. She listened the squawks and whinnies of the ostrich horses, listened to their footfalls and tried to guess where the closest ones to her were.

[i]In this way, the first step should theoretically be the hardest. After all, somewhere in the back of a normal person's head, they aren't really going believe they can move the earth. They are going to doubt. They are going to question. They are going to hesitate. And they are going to get caught in a spiral of self-reinforcing failure until they get lucky and break through.[/i]

She inhaled deep, letting the scent of the earth fill her.

[i]But me?[/i]

Xiao Yu let go of the fence, letting her body fully settle into the stance of her wobbling legs. Scrunching up her brow, she tensed, forcing her legs to stop shaking, as they burned harder.

[i]Bitch, I'm a motherfucking isekai insert, and we're simply [b]Built Different[/b].[/i]

"[i]HWAH[/i]!" shouted the baby just a few months short of a year old, thrusting her arms out through the gaps in the fence, and the soil before her [i]lurched[/i] in response. Even as her gut did summersaults with a brand new sensation, a tingling running up her legs and spine, Yu didn't have all that much time to revel in the feeling of triumph, before the shift of nearby earth ripped her own footing right out from under her and sent her toppling back into the grass with a yelp.

There was abrupt shouting, the squawk of a few ostrich horses that she had barely noticed getting closer, and Yu soon found herself scooped up her mother's arms, the wide-eyed woman fretting over her incessantly. Grumbling internally, Yu fumbled to swipe away at the fingers brushing dirt off her clothes and questing over her head in search of fresh bruises.

[i]Wan-dammit, woman, I'm a baby earthbender! I'm not a regular-ass glass cannon of a child. If there's any bloodline that would be born with hardier stuff, it's us! Oi! Are you married to an earthbender, or not?! Where was all this concern when I was toddling around barefoot around the fence in search of splinters, eh?![/i]

Despite Yu's frustration, however, it was still immensely funny to see her mother suddenly round on her father with no few berating words on her lips, chiding the poor, confused man over earthbending so recklessly so close to her "precious baby" and apparently not quite recognizing that it was Yu, herself, who had actually managed the feat, despite doing it right in front of her.

It was, therefore, even more amusing to squirm around in her mother's arms until she finally let her down, before [i]planting[/i] herself by her mother's leg and throwing an even more confident punch forward... accompanied by a shifting spray of the dirt in front of her.

And as her parents both stared at her utterly gobsmacked, Xiao Yu finally couldn't stop the peals of genuine victorious laughter from screaming uncontrollably from her mouth, as she tumbled over, finally -perhaps ironically- looking much more like a normal baby for once in the face of her joyous accomplishment.

Grinning widely with her mouth of tiny baby teeth, Xiao Yu's eyes gleamed with triumph.

[i]In the end, with earthbending, it's like a little green troll once said...

[b]Do or do not; there is no try.[/b][/i]
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[b][i][Trope Acquisition: Prodigy (Earthbending).][/i][/b]
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After that little "incident", the rest of her first year of life started to go in a rather more tolerable direction. The knowledge that their child was capable of earthbending at her age drastically ripped the rub out from under her parents' feet as far as underestimating and babying her... mostly anyway.

Yu was still a baby, after all, and suspension of disbelief only went so far. Her parents started to treat her as more capable and weren't as surprised when she started showcasing even more atypical baby behavior, but that didn't mean they started placing unusual expectations on her.

If anything... it was almost the opposite?

Indeed, her prodigal showing, if anything, seemed to make them more [i]worried[/i] than proud, and Yu felt she could hazard a guess as to why.

[i]Long Feng and his ROOT knockoffs.[/i]

The citizens of Ba Sing Se did not like the Dai Li, the secret police of the Earth Kingdom. Though no-one would perhaps dare whisper of it aloud, plenty of rumors likely told of what happened to those that crossed the tyrannical organization that held the entire city in the quiet iron grip of fear.

Of course, if she thought about them like ROOT, then it didn't take much of a stretch of the imagination to guess why her parents would be concerned. After all, one had to wonder: where did the Dai Li recruit their absolutely loyal earthbenders from? Of course, the most diabolically efficient way would be to just abduct young earthbenders to brainwash as soon as possible, whilst also brainwashing anyone that objected to forget they even existed.

Maybe she was reaching, but honestly, given the shit they had pulled in canon, Yu was pretty confident that she wasn't even half wrong.

And that was why she could understand why her parents were reluctant to indulge her push to learn further earthbending young. Of course, they couldn't really stop her from trying on her own, but every time she tried to get her father to show her more, he would try and steer her towards something else, as if it were so easy to redirect her supposed infant attention span. Her mother, meanwhile, had taken to trying to keep her inside more, filling her time with books and learning.

On the upside, this was actually useful. Being educated faster meant being able to sooner justify communicating through writing the words her mouth couldn't yet pronounce properly. And as for her father's attempts at distractions, it [i]had[/i] led to her being introduced more closely to the ostrich horses, and Yu was actually quite interested in getting involved in the family business.

Unfortunately for her parents though, they weren't dealing with a normal infant, and Yu honestly didn't see any reason to delay her earthbending education for a moment. From what she could gather of her family's business, she wasn't the sort of earthbender the Dai Li would probably abduct, because she was part of sustaining an important enterprise. Training war mounts for the Earth Kingdom properly required earthbenders, and thus, thanks to her family's position, even as low-class as they were, that should mean she would be considered more valuable right where she was.

In short, she was pretty sure she was untouchable unless she went out of her way to attract trouble. Making her disappear and covering the tracks would be more trouble than it was worth, given how large a family she'd seen at one of their holiday gatherings and their probable incidental connections due to who they must be actually selling war steeds near exclusively to.

Besides, she was an [i]earthbender[/i], dammit!

Backing down and giving up simply wasn't in the nature of her chi. An earthbender endured hardship and challenges stubbornly, and she wasn't about to let herself falter ideologically from the word "go".

Less than a year old or not, Xiao Yu [i]would[/i] be learning earthbending [i]now[/i].

And if her parents assumed otherwise? Well, they were free to be as incorrect as they liked.
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