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Opal could never get it right. Almost every time she predicted sunny skies over Republic City, the weather made a turn for the worst and the black cloud came to paint her in a bad light. She could never get a lucky break at all when it came to making the forecast.
Jaahn (Opal and Kuvira’s baby boy) asked every morning before she made to way to the radio station to make her forecast if it would be sunny or if it would be as dreary as ever. Every day Opal would try and make the promise that it would be sunny, but always told him she didn’t see the forecast from the Meteorology station before she arrived at the recording booth. The boy would always wait on Kuvira’s lap in the mornings in her wheelchair around the wireless for the forecast, eager for it to be sunny enough to go for to the Avatar Korra National Park with the Avatar herself, her wife Asami and their twins (Senna II and Ursa; waterbender and firebender respectively).
“I’ll be back after the forecast, sweetie. Are you gonna listen in with Mother again?” Opal asked her baby boy, kissing him on the forehead and brushing the beautiful sides of her bob of lush hair behind her ears again. Opal blushed from the quaintness of the family she had with her strong yet chaired wife as she wheeled into the entrance hall. Jaahn was as excitable as he was every morning when she left.
He cheered and roared as he stomped his foot, instinctively earthbending the floor into a tiny crater under his foot. Kuvira was chuckling behind them before he launched himself on an earthen beam into her lap and she cuddled him in the chair, Opal leaning over the small boy to kiss her wife.
“If he starts earthbending the house apart again...”
Kuvira smirked in the chair. “I can use my hands, dear, just not my legs. I can still bend this little termite into a big cuddle!” Kuvira teased the little boy as he tossed and tumbled in his mother’s arms, cackling as she tickled him unrelentingly. His cries of joy made Opal smile and blush all the more at her little family in her little airbender house.
When she arrived at the station, Opal grimaced at the weather map the instruments had drawn up for her. A thicket of deep and black cloud passing over Republic City whole by the time it reached midday. She had wanted to promise Jaahn a clear and sunny day, an outing with the Avatar and her family, and she wanted to see Korra and Asami herself. The latter had been so busy lately developing new technology in the field of Meteorology. All of the instruments that now predicted the weather for Opal and Republic Radio were made by Future Industries, all developed by them and the science behind it even researched by Asami’s company. It seemed they were creating inventions and science in every area now – Meteorology, Locomotion, Combustion, Telecommunication.
The black cloud made Opal sigh as she observed the weather maps layered over one another. All of them told her that a downpour was on the way.
“Oh, and Miss Beifong?” The Radio DJ asked her before he left. She looked up at him aloof an alert. “Our sponsors are telling us that if we don’t get a right prediction on the next forecast, they’re gonna pull out. So the commissioner’s saying if this next forecast isn’t correct, he wants to cut it all together,” he explained, causing another sigh of desperate sadness. First Jaahn was let down, and if she didn’t explain the rain was coming, she’d have no job left. Opal liked delivering the weather forecast, for it made her feel the least part important. “Just thought I’d let you know, Opal. And you’re on in five.”
It would take a miracle to make everyone happy in Republic City. Opal thought as she sank her head into her hands. She’d need to push the cloud layer away in order to make Jaahn happy and get the prediction right. Push them all the way and let the sun shine...
Opal had an idea.
“Good morning Republic City! Opal here, with your morning forecast,” Opal beamed proudly into the microphone. She thought of Jaahn as she looked keenly to the support staff on the other side of the soundproof booth window.
They were egging her on to call it right.
“There’s some traffic congestion around Kyoshi Bridge, and a small accident on Sokka Boulevard has more Satomobiles stuck in a jam, but as for the weather, well Republic City, you better get your shoes on and get out there because we’ve got sun coming all afternoon and right on through to the dark!” She sung into the microphone with a beautiful smile. Meanwhile, the support staff behind the glass pane was gasping, mouths agape and shocked, as if she was trying to get the segment cut.
“That’s right, Republic City! Opal’s got the sun for you!”
***
Now came the hard part, she thought as Opal took to the roof of the Republic Radio and gawped at the black layer of gloomy and besmirched cloud shrouding the beautiful skyline of Republic City. She’d have to get rid of the clouds herself, and all before midday came. This was something she already knew she underestimated when she made the purposefully false prediction. She’d make it real.
Swinging and swaying her arms, Opal thought of Jaahn and how much he wanted the sun to be able to go out and play. She would make it so, and airbend the clouds away so the sun would shine.
Opal began to snap her wrists back and forth with the air currents coming to her beck and call in droves, creating a massive tunnel of wind high in the sky, reaching and piercing the clouds. But it quickly became apparent that her airbending was not enough. She tried anyway, pushing through as her arms began to ache a little and her body too as she flailed her body about on the roof. She created a small hole in the black cloud but by the time she could see it, Opal was completely out of breath. She couldn’t keep this up and she had barely started left.
Out of nowhere, the clouds began to part a little more widely. They were moving, quickly so, as another unknown force began to act upon them, but not Opal. She looked all around her to see groups of brightly coloured benders on the surrounding rooftops of the skyline.
“The Airbenders!” Opal shouted to herself as her fellow airbenders began to spin their collective arms around in a wide and expansive movement to clean up the darkened skies. They all noticed her and smiled with thumbs up.
Jinora, Tenzin, Ikki and Kai all flew up to her rooftop with their wingsuits and smiled as the rest of the acolytes swept up the cloud layer in a mass air tornado high in the sky. “What is going on?” Opal asked the airbenders incredulously, shocked and in disbelief, they were helping her clear the skies.
Tenzin raised his hand to stop her. “We listened to the show, time to clear the skies,” he reassured her kindly. All of the airbenders combined their bending strength and soon enough the small hole in the thick black layer of cloud that Opal had started to create had grown tenfold and the sun was visible on the other side. They’d beaten back the rain, but it was still not enough.
Opal asked for the airbender glider from Tenzin and he nodded, handing it to her. With her wingsuit and the glider, she took to the skies with one hand to hold her staff keeping her just under the clouds. As she strafed the length of a patch of cloud, Opal continued to rally the rest of the airbenders, as well as snapping up a waft of the wind to her own fingertips, bending the very clouds themselves as she flew across them. Still, it wasn’t enough. The blackness was building up all the more as she attempted to airbend it away and let the sun shine on through. Her strafing and bending technique, even with the airbenders still whipping the clouds away it wasn’t working.
A biplane shot past her, zooming as fast as it could and then followed by another. Another strafed around Opal until she was caught in an entire attack wing of the United Forces biplanes. She screamed, elated as she flew into the cloud layer and with their engines and propellers, blasted the clouds away a little more, a bigger blotch of the black than before.
“The United Forces!” Opal cried as she wiped her tears of gratitude away, gently soaring with both hands on the glider. She found another building near the centre of the city by the Spirit Portal and waved at them as the finished up.
“Hey, Opal! We listened to the show!” The planes wrote in bright smoke in the sky that faded in no time along with the black.
There was still a massive patch of black still covering Avatar Korra National Park. Opal had had enough as well, and airbending could only repel back the black clouds enough. She checked the large clock tower near Zhu Li’s Presidential Office – it was eleven o’clock and she had an hour to beat back the last and largest patch of the black sky before her prediction could be valid.
As she took to the park, using her airbending to slash down a couple of the more decrepit trees left over from the last winter, she saw familiar faces in her mother, in Auntie Lin, Grandma Toph, Kuvira and even Jaahn as well as Wing and Wei, her brothers and sports enthusiasts. “What are you all..?” She wasn’t allowed to finish for her mother interrupted her as she finished what appeared to be a giant pyre.
“We listened to the show, dear. Now, what can we do to help?” Suyin asked sweetly as Jaahn began to earthbend himself all around their vicinity.
“Don’t forget us!” Opal heard Mako call from behind them. It was him, Bolin, General Iroh of the United Forces, Fire Lord Izumi in a more sporty version of her Empress robes, even Kya and the Fire Lord Honour Guard too. Just what she needed, a group of firebenders.
She directed them, using Lin and Kya to help her build a few more pyres and with the group of firebenders they all began to burn with violent life around the park, burning high into the air thanks to the residents and royalty of the Fire Nation. Izumi’s firebending was tremendous – she took an entire pyre to herself and managed to regulate the flames to extraordinary heights with just her controlled breathing. It was a technique she learned from her own great uncle Iroh who developed a similar method through tea, Lin told Opal as she delegated between each pyre while using her airbending to control the flames into a spiral vortex of air so it could reach the clouds. They were beginning to disperse as well.
“Looks like it beginning to work! The fire’s making the clouds scatter!” Fire Lord Izumi called out from the pyre she was sharing with Lin and Kya (although the latter two weren’t doing much aside from observing and waiting to assist with calming the flames down).
“Not enough though, look,” Suyin and Mako called out as the clouds began to bundle up and come back from all sides. They were undoing all the work the pyres had done. Opal screamed and pulled hair as it looked to rain no matter what.
She took the glider from beside a tree again and took a run up as Jaahn leapt onto Kuvira’s lap in her wheelchair. “It’s not gonna end like this!” Opal called out as she thrust herself into the air with another wisp of wind from the soles of her feet. She strafed again close to the warmed clouds but they did nothing in response to her airbending. They were bundling up and ready to burst with a rainstorm.
Before the thunders came, something shot across the cloud layer like a bolt of lightning, but certainly, nothing relating to thunder. Opal felt it across her cheek and entire body. It was wind, airbending specifically but more powerful than any airbending in existence. When the clouds scattered with more slashes of air, Opal could see flames pierce through them too, and then tentacles of water sliced them up into clear skies. Buffets of stones and earth made the final few groups of black clouds scatter completely and then Opal saw what had aided her.
It was the Avatar.
“Korra!” Opal screamed into the heavens and saw the bright and wondrously luminous eyes of Avatar Korra in the Avatar State as she buffeted the clouds away as if they obeyed her.
“Hey, Opal! I listened to the show!”
“I could kiss you, Avatar! Thank you, Korra! Thank the spirits and thank you, Avatar!” Opal cried back as Korra suspended herself in an orb of pure air, what she had been using to float and fly around the place. “Are you bringing Asami and the twins to the park?” Opal shouted to her finally.
Korra smiled, still in the Avatar State. “Of course! We’ll be right there!”
“Awesome! Thanks, Korra!”
Opal made for the ground for the final time to see her family and the rest of the firebenders and airbenders gathered, clapping and cheering for the Avatar and for Opal. Finally, a weather prediction of the sun had come to fruition and it looked like it would shine forever over Republic City.
Pedestrians and their children had already taken to the park as the firebenders and Kya began to put out the pyres and move the wood to the lake to drown. Opal made for her wife and her son in her lap. She kissed Jaahn lovingly as he climbed up at her, latching to Opal’s chest like a monkey, making it harder but not impossible for her to kiss Kuvira on the lips passionately. Jaahn grimaced at the show of affection in a childish manner but both women laughed at their son before littering him with kisses.
She let Jaahn down and he was immediately approached by another child, a non-bender at first glance due to his mixed culture of clothes. “Hey, is that your mom? Isn’t she the weather lady?”
Jaahn smiled as he looked at both of his Mothers doting on each other. “Yep! She’s the best weather lady there is too. It was gonna rain today but she made the clouds go away!” He told the small boy and smiled, pointing to the hole in the black sky. Now the rain only ringed Republic City. “See!”
“Wow,” the other both gasped. “You’re mom’s so cool!” He complimented as they both gawked at Opal.
“Both my moms are the coolest!” Jaahn laughed, having to cover his eyes because the sun was shining so much.