"I just meant that they were different, that's all. I wasn't trying to brag."

"Yes, you were."

"Maybe you're just plain better at air than airbenders. But I have three more elements. Although I'm the only person who does."

"Why's that?"

"I'm the Avatar. ...Which probably doesn't mean anything to you. Uh, I am the reincarnation of a long line of people who do that and also have various spiritual obligations and powers."

"Well. Seems like it's reincarnation week."

"Is it?"

"Helen and I reincarnate, and so did the woman who looks like you."

"I assume it's not the exact same way, since you don't bend four elements... and there are two of you?"

"There's at least one other, that we know of." She doesn't sound pleased about it.

"I'm the only one of me. If other people reincarnate they don't get recognizable powers out of it."

"I create barriers made of light. Gregory instantiates sharp objects."

"Seems like a sort of... non-thematic collection of three traits."

"Oh, there's lots of different kinds of powers. People who can fly and people who are really strong or really fast or really tough, a few different people whose exact powers I'm not sure of but used them in a healing capacity, people who can change shape...lots of things. I don't know for sure that no one else is reincarnating, but Gregory's the only one besides the two of us where we know for sure."

"...Okay, how would you not know if somebody was reincarnating? Wouldn't they turn up with the same powers over and over?"

"Powers haven't been around very long. Less than a century. There are some people who might be the same person again, but there are also some very similar ones that occur at the same time. And you have to get your powers activated, you're not just born with them, and you have to get them reactivated after you're reborn. I'm on life three, and I spent my whole second life powerless."

"...Do you not remember stuff? Like, at all?"

"No. I don't even have a consistent personality. I think it's kind of dumb to call the other Avatars 'me' in any meaningful sense. Might as well call people who used to have some fraction of the calcium in my bones my 'past lives', really, since the spirit isn't doing anything with me-as-a-person, just the nifty powers. And influencing my taste in playthings when I was a baby."

"...That's really weird. That it would have an effect but such a small one seems more improbable than both having no effect at all and having a larger and more consistent one."

"Is it even meaningful to say you're reincarnating at that point?"

"That's the way it's customary to talk about it, but compared to someone who remembers things or even just acts the same life to life, no, it is not meaningful. I was just born when the last Avatar died and have the relevant powers."

"How strange. Well, it's inarguable that there's something going on there, but I wouldn't call it reincarnation."

"We don't have your kind around to confuse the issue."

"Shame. Not being dead twice over is pretty great."