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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.
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fiery-delights
fiery-delights
He leads her up a few steps, through a door beside the stage, and down a short hallway into a cozy little room containing a table, two folding chairs, and a rack of costumes. The table also holds a little tray with a teapot and several empty cups.
Jun sprawls into a chair with careless grace, pours himself a cup of tea, and blows on it. Steam begins to rise gently from its surface.
Jun sprawls into a chair with careless grace, pours himself a cup of tea, and blows on it. Steam begins to rise gently from its surface.
fiery-delights
"It's a lot harder than it looks," he says. "Freezing is one of the first things you learn with waterbending, but I couldn't warm a cup of tea until I'd been studying for ten years."
roc_on
"Are there subskills? Separate things, all of which you have to know to learn to do that? Or does it just require a refinement of control you didn't have for the first decade or something?"
fiery-delights
"A little of one, a little of the other," he says. "It helps if you know how to breathe fire first, and breathing fire itself takes some pretty refined control, and then you have to figure out how to put out a tiny, tiny fraction of that kind of heat and aim it precisely enough that it warms your tea instead of your fingers."
fiery-delights
"Believe it or not," he says, "almost ten years of pure classical combat firebending. Which I think is a pretty good foundation no matter what you plan to do afterward, but I don't think everybody needs a decade of it."
roc_on
"Good, that is way more of my life than I wish to turn over to classical combat firebending."
fiery-delights
Jun laughs.
"All right, all right. She just thought you'd be bored with the usual fare, and I am anything but usual."
"All right, all right. She just thought you'd be bored with the usual fare, and I am anything but usual."
roc_on
"I don't know about bored, but I've wandered through one or two firebending dojos and they seem to set straw dummies on fire more than they do anything else. I'm not, like, allergic to straw."
fiery-delights
"Right," he says. "Whereas with me, well, I understand that firebending is so much more than that. And now so do you."
fiery-delights
"Classical combat firebending until you've picked up the theory," he says. "Then, who knows. Depends what you want to learn."
roc_on
"Before Shifu Riko brought me here I was leaning towards trying an industrial school, actually. Industry does productive things with the fire."
fiery-delights
"I know industrial," he shrugs. "But if you ever want to do anything but industrial, I wouldn't start you there."
fiery-delights
"I can teach you arty stuff," he says. "All the arty stuff your heart desires."