Legal Disclaimer: I own neither FF XIII nor Avatar

Dear Readers,

This is a response for the Prompt #63: Avatar: The Last Airbender/Legend of Korra crossover-AU. Fang as an earth bender, Light as a fire-lightning bender.

For this story, it actually takes place in both time periods of the Avatar universe.

This is also the last prompt that I managed to fill during the month of February itself, though I have plans to continue working on prompts (particularly now that FangRai February has become FangRai Forever!).

Thank you to everyone who supported FangRai February (authors, readers, submitters and all); and please continue to support FangRai Forever!

~Logos Minus Pity

Cycles of Earth and Fire

On the once grassy fields before the great city of Taku in the Earth Kingdom, war had been officially declared. For the last week, wave after wave of Fire Nations troops had poured off of the vast fleet stationed along the beachhead, beginning the first of what Fang knew would be many battles to determine their fates. The balance had failed them, and the Fire Nation looked to consume a world that was bereft of an Avatar.

Fang stood alongside her fellow earth-benders and thought of her sister, Vanille, still safe behind the walls and gates of Taku. She would continue to fight, continue to defend, until she had nothing left.

"Ready!" The warning was echoed down the ranks. "Here they come!"

And sure enough, on the ridge of the hill, a dark line of soldiers appeared, all dressed in their identical black and red armor, their faces obscured by their angry, mask-like helmets. They charged down the hill, toward the waiting earth-benders, and the world exploded in a furious battle of the elements. Fang moved without pausing to think, calling up the sand and mud and stone before her hands and feet. The earth responded, and she tore through the ranks of her enemies, safe from their burning flames as took them down one by one. Before the dedicated forces of Taku, the fire benders began to break, fall, and retreat.

"Push them back!"

Fang soundlessly followed the order, pushing forward, intent on driving fear into the invaders. And then she stopped.

While most of the Fire Nation soldiers who could still move were already fleeing back toward their ships, one stayed his place, helmet gazing directly at Fang, challenging her forward progress.

They stared silently at one another, neither speaking nor acting, but waiting.

The soldier crouched low, falling into that distinctive fire-bending stance with curled fingers and an outstretched arm.

And then…then, they both moved.

Hot fire and raw earth soon filled the air as they traded blows. Fang was a talented earth-bender—one of the best in Taku, and she knew it. But this faceless Fire Nation invader was clearly talented, too—far more than his weaker brethren that Fang has systematically defeated thus far. His moves were unbelievably agile, and his flames were strong and lively, though Fang's mud shield held before his onslaught.

She countered his flames with a storm of rocks, sending air-borne stone clubs careening toward the fire-bender.

The soldier was fast, and able to deflect the brunt of the assault, but his helmet still took a jarring blow that bent and cracked the side of the armored helm. He stumbled then, dazed for a moment, but unleashing a quick barrage of fire to prevent any more attacks from Fang while he struggled to remove the broken helmet. A moment later, and when the fire stopped and Fang dared to drop her rock-wall shield she had called up, she was greeted to the sight of pale skin and furious blue eyes, with a stray twist of strawberry-blond hair that fell down the side of one cheek.

Her opponent was a woman!

Fang knew she shouldn't be surprised, but with their formless closed helmets and standard armor, all of the Fire Nation soldiers looked alike on the field.

"You," spoke the soldier. Her voice was low, and she enunciated crisply and with a tone cold enough to send shivers running down Fang's spine. "Will not get so lucky again."

She began moving her arms, bending, but her motions were completely different now, an utterly distinct style from the normal fire-bending that Fang was used to seeing, and it made her stop for a moment, both wary and curious. All of the usual rigidity and violent motion that had been present in her bending only seconds earlier was now gone, replaced with a string of flowing circular designs that seemed more reminiscent of water-bending.

Sparks abruptly crackled to life on the two outstretched fingertips of the Fire Nation soldier, and Fang had the barest of moments to feel the hairs on the back of her neck stand up in anxious terror. Out of pure instinct, she dove aside just as the air screeched and a searing thunderbolt vaporized the spot that her head had been in a moment earlier.

She regained her footing, turned to counter, and was forced to duck and roll in repeated desperation as a nearly continuous flurry of the bizarre fire-lightning tore up whatever air and ground she passed through.

It was a desperate struggle for her avoid the otherwise lethal attacks, but was only a matter of time until she slipped up.

She had seen the bolt of electricity flying toward her face, and had wrenched her body sideways, but she hadn't been quite quick enough to evade the lightning attack. It had grazed her left side, burning off some of her hair and simultaneously ripping open and cauterizing part of her shoulder and ear. The smell of her own burnt flesh and hair pervaded her nostrils, and her stomach flipped with nausea even as her nerves screamed out in senseless agony. A sharp kick to the chest quickly followed and sent her sprawling into the ground. When she looked up, the fire-bender stood only a few feet away—too close, Fang knew, for her attacks to miss.

"It ends here."

The words were cold and emotionless, though Fang swore for a moment that she saw the briefest flicker of something like regret pass through the woman's otherwise unreadable eyes. Then she began the motions for lightning-bending, sparks crackling to life at her fingertips again.

Fang acted out of pure instinct. One foot stomped the ground awkwardly and sent a hail of earthen spikes up in a final counter-attack. And her hands…she didn't know why, but she threw one hand out toward the where her death would surely come from, and she threw the other fist first into the hard ground, thinking only of the deep well of strength in the earth, which could handle the force of even quakes and volcanoes.

And then the lightning struck her; and instead of obliterating her, it moved into her.

For a moment locked in eternity, Fang actually felt her heart stop as the tremendous amount of electricity rushed through her chest, out her other arm and into the ground. Her vision grew dark and her blood ceased to move in her veins, and as death overtook her, pain exploded beneath her rib cage, dragging her conscious mind kicking and screaming back into the world of the living.

Spots exploded throughout her vision in waves, and her breath rasped painfully against her raw throat. Every nerve ending felt as though it was on fire, but she was alive. Somehow. But what of her opponent?

At the fearful thought, she managed to haul herself upright, the worst of the terrible burning subsiding into all-consuming numbness. Her right arm dangled uselessly at her side, immune to feeling and motion, and for a moment Fang whirled nervously, afraid for a second thunderous attack of lightning. Her fears were now unfounded, though, as she saw her opponent on the ground several feet away, unable to get up. Fang's last blow had struck true, and a solid spire of shale rock had pierced the fire-bender straight through her amored chest.

As Fang cautiously dragged herself closer, the soldier feebly tried to react and bend again, but it was useless. The small sparks and flames died on her fingertips, her ability to fire-bend now bleeding away along with her life.

A bloody froth oozed from the woman's mouth, mixing further with the dirt and mud that marred an otherwise beautiful face.

"S-Serah," she tried to call out, her fingers reaching toward the smoke filled skies. "I…sorry…I lost."

Fang hovered over the dying bender, frozen in place as her enemy spoke out.

"Serah?" She asked dumbly.

Those startlingly blue eyes came back into a focus for a brief moment, resting back on Fang's face before dilating again as if seeing something beyond her.

"My…my sister…" The fire-bender coughed with the effort of speaking, and Fang felt the warm splatter of blood speckle her against her cheeks.

Suddenly all prior joy at defeating her foe was sucked right out of Fang, leaving her with a void where she felt her heart was supposed to be. She looked up for a moment, at the charred and torn fields before her smoking city, and wondered what madness this war had started. This wasn't some nameless and shadowy enemy before her, but a person—a person who had dreams and aspirations and family, no different than her. She was an enemy, but still, Fang debated the urge to help comfort and ease her passing. However, when she looked back down, though only a bare second had passed, it was too late, and the strong and proud eyes had stared her down on the battlefield were now glazed and lifeless. Fang felt unreasonably hollow, but she took the time to press the unknown soldier's eyelids closed before pushing herself fully upright

Her right arm was a dead weight on her side. Wicked looking burns marred the length of it, souvenirs from channeling the fire-lightning through her body and into the ground. She supposed it was a blessing that she could no longer feel the pain because of the numbness, but she also knew with a sinking feeling in her stomach that her arm was beyond help, and she would be lucky without it to manage even half as much earth-bending as what she had only just been capable of; she could only hope that someday she might regain at least partial use of the limb. Her thoughts remained heavy with shock as she was helped back into the city by other benders and guards, her mind still consumed with fresh memories of the lifeless and beautiful face she had left behind on the killing fields; she might have won in the end—they might still win in the end—but at what cost?

She thought of her sister Vanille, and of the family that she had parted the fire-bender from, and she felt shaky and queasy all over again; all she wanted now was to go home. If the cycle of rebirth was really true, then perhaps in another life her blood debt might be repaid.

Lightning let out a sigh as punched her time card for the day. She'd made some good money this afternoon with her bending; she might be young, but she was by and far one of the best lightning-benders in all of RepublicCity, and her energy output today had been phenomenally high, even for her. Maybe all of that martial training the past few months was actually been paying off. At the very least, the extra money she'd been making lately during her power plant shifts would help things out at home with Serah.

She left the building and moved out onto the sidewalk of the busy, late-afternoon street of the Industrial District. And there, standing just a few paces outside of the plant gates was an unexpectedly familiar face.

"You didn't have to wait for me to get out of work, Fang," she chided gently, though she was touched by the gesture.

Rather than responding, the earth-bender closed the remaining distance between. Then Fang kissed her, slowly and thoroughly, and with a tenderness that almost made Lightning think that it had been weeks since they last saw each other instead of just yesterday.

"Hello, beautiful." Fang spoke only after pulling back.

Lightning sighed amusedly, more pleased than annoyed. "Fang, this is a public street."

The other woman raised her eyebrows. "I thought it was an accepted fact that most sweethearts greet and part like that?" But knowing better than to press the issue further, she changed subjects. "Are you ready for a session? Or did you want to take it easy after your plant shift? It'll just be you and me today—Snow can't make it."

Lightning straightened. It was the end of the week, and she was more tired than what she would care to admit, but that was beside the point. There was work to be done, so they went down to the abandoned warehouse district down along the old harbor, and right alongside the lapping waves and passing boats, they bended and sparred against one another, Lightning's fire versus Fang's earth.

After all, there was less than a week left before matches would commence for the Pro-bending League, and that meant less than a week before Lightning's first ever match as part of Fang and Snow's league team. It was hard to believe that only a scant few months earlier, she hadn't even known who Fang was, let alone been interested in Pro-bending.

Snow had been an unwanted intrusion into her personal life from the moment he and her younger sister Serah had begun dating; he was a water-bender, and a Pro-bender competitor, which maybe explained Light's prior disregard of the Pro-bender competitions in their entirety. She had never actually gone to watch Snow and his team participate in the league matches, but had been assured by Serah that his team was more than capable. However, that had all changed when the fire-bender on his team decided to step down and retire. Light wasn't sure whose idea it had originally been—Serah's or Snow's—but either way, it had ended up with Snow desperately trying to convince her to take his old teammate's place.

Lightning had initially refused all of Snow's attempts to get her to join whatever pro-bending team he was on, and while she had steeled herself away in preparation to continue putting off his incessant requests, she had not been expecting him to send his other team member in a last ditch attempt to persuade her. The first day that Lightning had walked out of the plant and found the smirking earth-bender leaning by the door, waiting just for her, she had been completely taken off guard. It had been more than the unusually catching beauty of the smiling woman—and she was undeniably beautiful—it had been something more that had made Lightning's heart unexpectedly skip and then speed up, causing a warm ache to spread through her chest. For all that RepublicCity was a burgeoning metropolis, she couldn't help but shake the feeling like this was an old familiar of hers, a face that she had not seen in a great many years.

It hadn't helped when the other woman's first response on meeting Light had been to let out a low whistle and exclaim, "Snow didn't mention that you were talented and pretty!"

Had anyone else spoken such brazen words to her face, they would have likely received a sharp elbow along with a few sharp words. But Lightning had frozen on the spot, her embarrassment only further fueling the rising heat in her cheeks. And yet despite all of that, somewhat in her couldn't just turn away from the brazen women.

Fang had coaxed and teased and complimented at all of the seemingly perfect times until Lightning had finally relented, promising to at least give it a shot. And once she had started training with Fang, it became a finished deal, one that she no longer had any intention of backing out of.

As they moved in a mock fight against each other now, she was reminded all over again of everything that she admired about the woman she was falling in love with.

For an earth-bender, Fang's style was surprisingly flashy and theatric, though it was more than effective for her, even in sparring. With all of her innate skill in earth and metal-bending, Fang could have easily met the requirements to join the police force, and yet the woman had declined, instead looking to make a name and living for herself in the Pro-bender Arena. Granted, given all that Lightning knew of Fang now, the arena seemed much more suited to Fang than the rigid order of the policing squad. It wasn't about the theatre or the show, though Lightning didn't doubt Fang enjoyed that much; it was about her very nature itself. There was a certain wild abandon and grace to her personality as much as her bending, and it made so much more intuitive sense in the environment of the arena rather than on the streets of the city, hunting down criminals.

And on the docks now, as they moved in perfect time with one another, Lightning remembered. From their very first session together, she had been acutely aware of just how easy it was to work with the earth-bender. Their motions had a natural synergy to them, a compliment of bending styles and techniques regardless of whether they were sparring against each other or working alongside one another. It was an inherent balance that even Snow had commented on, so maybe it wasn't all that surprising that her relationship with Fang had progressed with such startling ease to more than just a friendship. Perhaps, just perhaps, if the cycle of rebirth existed for the rest of them as it did for the Avatar, it was because they had known one another in a past life. Lightning smiled at the thought and shook her head as they performed cool down stretches, their training finished for the evening. She was not one for sentimentalities, and the past didn't really matter to her. It was about the here and now, and the future that was yet to come.

She gratefully accepted the skin of water from Fang, relishing the feel of the cool liquid on her parched throat. Their evening training done, they sat side by side atop one of the breakers of the old harbor, looking out over the glittering waters of the harbor and bay, and letting the sea breeze cool the sweat from their skins. After a period of comfortable and companionable silence, Fang finally dared to break the quiet.

"Are you nervous?" she asked, and Lightning could feel the viridian eyes studying her. Fang didn't need to specify what.

Lightning looked into the horizon of the ocean, where the orange of the setting sun was steadily being engulfed by a star-studded twilight mantle.

"No," she spoke honestly, without any bravado. There was no need for posturing, not when it was just her and Fang.

She saw the flash of Fang's smile, and turned just in time to receive a quick kiss.

"Good," said Fang afterward. "You're going to be magnificent, Light. And I have this feeling…we're going to make a great team, you and I."

A hand sneaked in and intertwined fingers with her own.

"I just know it."