tampered | dance dance, we're falling apart to half time

When; Friday, January 18th, evening
Rating; PG
Characters; Korra and her friends and anyone who happens to be in the club. Come one, come all!
Summary; Korra decides to celebrate 6 months in the City by dancing.
Log;She'd been woken up that morning by a incessant beeping noise; it took her a full three minutes to figure out it was her device and how to turn it off (she almost breaks it in her frustration, but she doubts she'd get any sympathy from Chekov if she broke yet another piece of electronic equipment).

What was so important that her device felt compelled to disturb her slumber?

CONGRATULATIONS ON YOUR SIX MONTH ANNIVERSARY!

Who sent it? How did they know? Korra doesn't bother wondering. Six months… At first the thought horrifies her…but it hasn't been all bad. She fingers the necklace that Chekov had given her.

She can either spend the day distracted and wallowing, or she can remind herself of the good things she has here.

She decides to go dancing.

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It's clear no one ever taught her how to get dressed for clubbing; she's just wearing her "I Mustache You A Question" t-shirt and Chekov's necklace, a strange combination of casual and fancy. Somehow she makes it work. And it's a bit early in the night for the club to really be rocking, but that doesn't slow Korra down any. She's in the middle of the dance floor, being taught some new moves by the club's regulars and just in general having a grand old time.

Come join her?

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

He's a little discouraged, but Korra's demeanor is cheering him up. Suddenly, he's thirsty. "Do you think they'd let me get a coke here? Or do they only have alcoholic stuff?"

"Coke, that's one of those fizzy drinks, right?" Korra scratches the back of her head. "Yeah, I think they have those. They've got all kinds of drinks here. Let's go see."

She punches his shoulder lightly and heads towards the bar.

"A soda, right. Do they not have those where you're from?" He follows her to the bar, pulling the weird City money he remembered to bring with him out of his pocket. "I hope I have enough. I never know how much stuff is gonna be."

"Nope," Korra says, taking a seat on one of the stools. "There's a lot of things here that we don't have where I'm from." To the bartender, she says: "Can I get a water, please? And a.......Coke? for him."

"What sort of stuff do you have, besides, like, the bending or whatever?"

Miles pays for his coke, ignoring the look the bartender gives him, and slides his way up onto a bar stool to drink.

"Uh..." Kind of a big question there. "Well, we have probending, which is totally awesome......but also bending. Right. And satomobiles, which I guess are kind of like cars if you have those."

How does she know so little about her own world? How closed off from everything has she been?

"Probending, like, airbending as a sport?" That sounds really interesting. He tries imagining Jinora in a jersey and snorts into his Coke.

"Sorta. There aren't actually enough airbenders." There'd be none if Amon had won. "Basically, you've got two teams. Each team has a waterbender, an earthbender, and a firebender, and you try to knock the other players off the ring."

"Sweet. Do you play?" Seems like sports are the universal language.

She smiles a little sadly. "I used to." She can't anymore. Even if she was home, or there was a probending team here, she doesn't have her waterbending. All she could do is watch.

He wants to ask why she stopped, but her expression stops him. It's definitely a conversation for another time. "That's cool. I don't play many sports back home."

You are a smart young man, Miles. "What kind of sports do you play?"

He tries, sometimes. "We play basketball and stuff in gym class. Everybody thinks I should be good at it, 'cause I'm black, but I kinda suck."

Korra tilts her head curiously. She's not familiar with basketball, but she can guess it involves throwing balls into baskets. It's the rest of his comment that really confuses her. "You're what?"

"I'm black. You know, like you're Asian...ish, I'm black. Well, half black. My mom's Puerto Rican."

Slurrrrp. No clue why she wouldn't get this.

Korra just stares at him. "I have no idea what you're talking about."

"Um, you know, race. What people look like and where they come from?"

"Oh. So you're from Black?"

Miles spits out his Coke.

"WHAT?! No, I'm-- I'm from New York. Black is just... what you call people with my color skin."

Ack! Sorry about that, Miles!

"Oh. Sorry."

She thinks it's weird, him being called "black" when he's brown, but there's all sorts of weird here.

"So New Yorkers are good at basketball? Supposedly?"

"Not New Yorkers, black people. Most of the NBA is black. All the good pro basketball players are black. Kobe, Lebron, Shaq..." He doesn't even compute that this might be like a foreign language to her. "Is everybody really the same where you're from?"

"No." Korra snorted. "You've seen me and Jinora. We have people from the Southern Water Tribe, the Northern Water Tribe, the Earth Kingdom, the Fire Nation, Republic City. But nobody...black?"

"Yeah but you guys both look sort of Asian to me. Like, different kinds of Asian but still Asian." If he's serioualy going to give a lesson on race, he'll need another Coke. Bartender?

Once he's got his soda, he dives in. "So different people from different places look different. In my case, real different. In your case, maybe not as much. Then people think that just 'cause you're from somewhere or you look a certain way, you're supposed to be a certain way. Like black people are supposed to be good at sports, and Asian people are supposed to be good at math. It's called stereotypes and it's stupid.

Korra raises an eyebrow. "Seriously stupid," she agrees. "Why would your skin color make you good at sports? That doesn't make any sense."

"I never said it made sense, that's just the way people think sometimes."

He sips his Coke and hopes this topic of conversation is over.

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anatural - 2013-02-05 01:54 (UTC) - Expand

spiderkid - 2013-02-05 18:12 (UTC) - Expand