Lixi slowly blinked her eyes open, mumbling some incoherences. The words "hello" entered her ears so she repeated them out of reflex, still unsure who she was responding to. She struggled to remember what happened as she attempted to collect her thoughts. The last thing she remembered was being at the Probending Cup's finals to cheer on her favorite Republic City Raven Eagles. She had to cut back on expenses for a month to save up for the ticket for that! It was a really close match and she was absolutely enthralled watching the teams but then...
"The announcer said it was safe... Then there was a light. And now I'm on my back and there's a bright...thingy looking at me."
Wait a minute. She checked her side pouch, releasing a relieved smile to find it was still there. She opened it and reach for a small piece of hard candy and brought it to her lips, then paused.
"...Wait, what are you!?" She half screamed before jolting straight up and scooting away on her behind. After getting a few feet of distance she put the candy in her mouth and swallowed it immediately, mentally cursed herself for not savoring it, then used the same hand to point at the creature. "You weren't at the Probending match! And...this isn't the arena! So who are, I mean where did, how, what?" In her mind she had asked all the right questions, but due to being confused and a bit scared her mouth didn't seem to want to cooperate at the moment.
After the creature's shouts Shun woke up from his rage and took a deep breath in. As it pounced toward him, he jumped back and exhaled, propelling himself even farther through the use of the gust of wind. He landed, dragging his hand along the ground and sheathing his blade. He then made a sprint for the cave-like door of the pillar.
"Yeah, roger that! Let's get going!" Shun shouted.
He took Luca and Longwei's hands as he passed by, yanking them once to get them moving and then letting go to make it to the pillar. He moved with such speed that when the cape of his hood went up it never went down; the cape would not fall as it being held up by the wind created from his sprint. He was of course the first to enter the cavern and when he did he changed the position of his blade from his side to his back.
"Why don't you guys act like you want to live?!" Shun shouted once more as he finished fastening his sword. "Man, that was a nuisance. What is this place?"
Not waiting to be caught by a random tail, Shun went a little deeper to take a look around.
Opening her eyes Alice looked at the sky groggily holding a hand above her face to block the light. She had no idea where she was or how she got there but, she did find it pretty. Confused she tried to remember what happened. She had come to the city to find her father but, decided to watch a pro-bending match for fun. That's when there was a bright light. Still confused she sat up a thoughtful look on her face. What caused it? Why was she sent here? Many questions ran through her head.
A voice came from her left causing her to jump slightly. 'Crap, I'm not alone.' Hand going to her dagger she looked to her left only to stop. There sat a girl with strawberry hair, but that's not what got her attention, no, it was the bright colorful thing next to her. While she will admit the girl was cute she still wasn't going to let her guard down. Alice listened carefully as the girl rambled, clearly as confused as she was. Even tho she wanted answers she would rather sit and listen for now, see how things played out.
Guess that didn't work. Mitsuko didn't hesitate in the command that ducking into a cave-stair-pillar thing was their best option for the moment. She wasn't above running like a chicken when things got bad, which they were, and she was already most of the way up the stairs before she turned to check on the others. Well, they were probably dead, but that didn't matter so much as the two who were talking and doing things were up and moving. The others would probably be fine, they hadn't done anything.
Probably.
"This is your fault that we're running from a crazy spirit monster, you know! If you'd just played nice we could have gotten information, but no we just had to run from the one thing that knows what's going on!"
Luca followed suit, throwing himself at the door with the creature behind him. It got stuck, groaning and squealing. It backed away and looked at them menacingly before disappearing from sight into the night.
Luca turned to the others, feeling out of breath. He turned to the sworded man with irritation. "Hey, it's your--" He sighed and continued with a calmer voice. "Ugh... We should keep moving. We never know when that thing might come back."
Down the Winding Road
The creature let out a deafening yelp as it recoiled. It seemed quite calm afterwards, somehow. "What am I? How rude! I'm an individual, that's what I am!" It looked at the two humans with wary curiosity.
"Probending? What's that? You're definitely not in an arena. I don't know how you got here, but this is the Spirit World. I haven't seen humans here in such a long time!"
"...Oh, okay, thanks." Lixi blinked, trying to take in everything while still being surprised at the same time. Wait, it said humans. Plural. Lixi turned her head to the right to suddenly find herself staring at another girl. "Oh! Um...hi there!" she waved hello, keeping her face as cheery as she could given the situation.
...Which she still wasn't exactly sure what said situation was. How the heck did she end up in the Spirit World!? Isn't that, like, the place that Water Benders go on about sometimes? She didn't really know much about it personally but she could have sworn it was locked down due to some wars the North and South tribes had. Or something. But at the very least she knew she wasn't in Republic City anymore. And this spirit thing didn't seem to have any more of a clue than she did. So let's take things one step at a time.
"Okay, step one, get back home. Uh, so Mr. Individual, can you tell us how to get back to the Mortal World? We don't really know how we even got here to begin with... I mean, I don't." Lixi turned to the other girl, "Do you?"
Longwei watched as the creature disappeared from sight. The group was lucky the creature's body was too big for the pillar's entrance. They no longer had to worry about the creature, but the main issue still remained. They didn't know where they were nor how to get back to where they were originally. As he thought, Longwei was able to muster a response to Luca's statement.
"Yeah, you're right. We should get moving."
Longwei made sure to check if he still had all his gear before venturing further into the pillar. To his surprise, and relief, he hadn't lost anything, and still had his bag. Losing his fen huo longs would've been far from convenient, especially in this situation were it seemed he might need them.
"I guess it wouldn't hurt to scout this place. We might find answers if we do."
He then began walking forward, hoping no other creatures like the last one awaited them further into the pillar.
