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A minor celebrity has just arrived in Republic City.
He styles himself Delightful Jun, and if he has a last name, no one's ever managed to find it. Reports of his age vary, but you'll usually find it quoted between thirty-five and forty in recent years. His press interviews are rare, unscripted, occasionally contradictory, and inevitably surprising.
As for what he's famous for: he is a firebender, the producer and performer of a multimedia stage show that defies description. Delightful Jun's Palace of Fiery Delights combines music, lights, dancing, sleight of hand, a certain amount of acrobatics, flamboyant costumes, and of course, creatively applied and exquisitely controlled firebending. The show is never the same twice. Audience members are permitted and even encouraged to bring recording devices, but cautioned that if they do, they might be so busy getting it all on tape that they miss half the fun.
He has been known to remove all his clothes onstage; he has been known to take audience volunteers for various occasionally hazardous tricks; unsubstantiated rumours claim that he might have combined those two things, but no one's ever coughed up a video, so the rumours are generally discredited. He has been known to set off small explosives. He has been known to breathe rolling tongues of flame over the heads of the audience. When he booked an outdoor venue for six weeks in Chin Village, he concluded his final show by setting off a row of fireworks that wrote 'Delightful Jun' in the sky stroke by stroke. The headlines the next morning read, 'Delightful Jun Autographs Sky', and he cheerfully stole the turn of phrase for use in his own posters and advertisements.
One of his best-known signature moves is an elaborate, graceful bow ending in a sweep of his arms that gives him momentary wings of fire. It appears in countless photos, and it's how he ends his show every night for his first week in Republic City.
fiery-delights
thinklikethis
"...I am probably not the person to ask," he says. "But I could try! I guess! Why don't you ask Jun? He makes all his own costumes, did you know that?"
roc_on
"I didn't know that. Anyway, I want to have at least one suitable outfit when I go in tomorrow, and he ended the lesson because he had to get ready for his show. I don't necessarily need help, just, my opinions on clothes are pretty negligible, so if you had any I could just use yours. I can also just use a shopkeeper's."
thinklikethis
"Probably more convenient to use the shopkeeper's," says Dao. "Unless you want your firebending practice clothes to be stuff I think you look hot in. Which, I don't know, maybe you do."
roc_on
"It wouldn't hurt. It's not like the new clothes will be inappropriate for applications that aren't firebending, so I'll probably wind up wearing them a lot once I have them."
roc_on
"Awesome. I can come pick you up, we can grab dinner, we can look for something suitably practical, maybe I can wear colors other than red and yellow and orange for a while."
roc_on
That is the correct way for him to greet her!
Dinner is tasty yet nondescript, and then there is a mall with clothes shops in it.
Dinner is tasty yet nondescript, and then there is a mall with clothes shops in it.
roc_on
Beila enlists a salesperson, who steers her to a section, and she picks out some okay things and tries them on for Dao's inspection.
roc_on
She narrows down the selection based on fit and Dao's opinion, and walks out of the store with two new outfits in a bag. "Maybe I'll even get recognized less for a while," she says optimistically. "I don't mind it all the time, but just going about my business it can get weird."
roc_on
Squeeze! "So apparently the fact that I'm sort of perpetually airbending interacts kinda badly with fire in a way it didn't with water or earth."
thinklikethis
"...Wow," he says, "yeah, I can imagine. Are you okay? You didn't—?" He checks visible areas for damage.
roc_on
"I'm fine," she says, pecking his temple, because it's sweet that he's worried even though they've just been through an entire shopping trip and this is the first she's mentioned it. "Scorched my sleeve, put it out right away, didn't even need to heal myself. I have to split my attention not to get the wind near the fire, but I can do it and there were no further accidents."
roc_on
"And it'll be a while before I have enough comfort with it to play with that sort of thing on purpose," she murmurs.
roc_on
Mmm kisses. They should get all the way to somebody's house before there are too many more of those, probably.