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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
roc_on
"Yeah, guess so. It never came up with water or earth - they're heavier, I guess, not so easily perturbed by a little wind to stabilize me."
fiery-delights
"Yeah. But fire, well - fire moves. So," he says, "try that again - you can step back a little closer to the sink first if you want, I won't laugh - and this time, pay attention to both elements, and try not to let them conspire against your shirt. It's a perfectly nice shirt and doesn't deserve to catch fire."
roc_on
Beila steps closer to the sink, refills her bottle, throws the punch a few times at full speed without fire to get a closer look at what she's doing with the air, and then - tries again. A modest little tongue of flame, which does not deviate from its path, is produced.
fiery-delights
Jun applauds.
"There we go," he says. "Do it again, but put more force into it. Try to really feel the fire."
"There we go," he says. "Do it again, but put more force into it. Try to really feel the fire."
roc_on
"I was keeping it underpowered in case I was wrong about how the air interacted," says Beila. And she does it again. With more force.
fiery-delights
"Good idea," he says, "bad habit. There, that's much better."
He corrects her form a tiny bit, then has her repeat the move.
"Are you getting a sense of the element yet?"
He corrects her form a tiny bit, then has her repeat the move.
"Are you getting a sense of the element yet?"
roc_on
"In the sense that I know the difference between how I punch fire and how I punch air, now. But that's not much. Why is it a bad habit?"
fiery-delights
"Underpowering your strikes to get less fire seems logical, and it works just fine as a beginner, but if you rely on it now it'll come back to bite you later when you're learning control. Watch."
He does the same punch three times. One releases the same narrow bolt from earlier, and this time it splashes against the far wall, leaving behind a pretty star-shaped scorch mark; the next produces a teardrop-shaped plume of flame that reaches six feet in length before finally dissipating; and the last barely coughs out a candle's worth. The motion of his body is almost exactly identical all three times, crisp and forceful in the classical firebender style.
"You'll learn how to do that eventually," he says. "And before you do, if you have to control it another way so you don't light yourself on fire, that's fine. But keep in mind that it's a bad shortcut, and don't do it any more than you have to."
He does the same punch three times. One releases the same narrow bolt from earlier, and this time it splashes against the far wall, leaving behind a pretty star-shaped scorch mark; the next produces a teardrop-shaped plume of flame that reaches six feet in length before finally dissipating; and the last barely coughs out a candle's worth. The motion of his body is almost exactly identical all three times, crisp and forceful in the classical firebender style.
"You'll learn how to do that eventually," he says. "And before you do, if you have to control it another way so you don't light yourself on fire, that's fine. But keep in mind that it's a bad shortcut, and don't do it any more than you have to."
roc_on
"Okay. Maybe I should just do this wading in the ocean or something when I'm practicing on my own."
roc_on
"Man, if I had started anywhere in the Cycle that had me doing fire before water, I would be so scared to work with this," laughs Beila, shaking her head. "Without a healer on hand, anyway."
roc_on
"Yes. Especially since I need air to do anything else." She tries the punch again, full power, carefully confining her helpful winds as close to her arm as can be so they don't disturb the flame.
fiery-delights
"Very nice," Jun approves. "That was almost three feet. Try it again."
fiery-delights
"You're spreading out," he observes. "See how the flame gets much wider by the end? Try to narrow it down."
roc_on
Beila bites her lip, and nods, and stares at the point she wants to aim her flame at, and allocates some of her brainpower to the control of her half-conscious air -
Punch.
Punch.
fiery-delights
If the flame is any narrower this time, it's not noticeably so.
"Try again," says Jun, undeterred.
"Try again," says Jun, undeterred.
fiery-delights
By the third, the flame is starting to narrow a little.
"Good!" says Jun.
"Good!" says Jun.
roc_on
"Well, I am supposed to be a prodigy," laughs Beila, and she does it again, and again, switching hands each time.
fiery-delights
"Considering that you've been working with an extra element this whole time, I am very impressed," he says. "Pay attention, now. Can you feel the difference between a strike that goes narrow and one that goes wide?"
fiery-delights
"More your brain than your arm, but more the element than either," he says. "It'll be something you're doing with your brain when you learn how to control it. Right now it's doing its own thing, and your job is to figure out what that is."