Fic: "Only Mostly Dead"

[redbrunja]

Title: Only Mostly Dead
Author: redbrunja
Fandom: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Rating: PG
Author’s Note: written for avatar_contest , week 38 – crack fic. Spoilers for recent chapters of Bleach and Naruto. For bellzooks , who'll get the references.
Summary: For Jet, Death (maybe - it was unclear) is only the beginning.

Jet shook his head groggily.

The hands that had been shoving him into the room vanished and when Jet whirled around and slashed with his hooked swords, no one was there.

"Oh, hi there!" someone said perkily from behind him. "Look, we've got someone new!"

Jet pivoted back around in time to get a brief look at a rather spectacular set of breasts before arms wrapped themselves around him and he found himself face-first in said cleavage.

"Welcome!" the person attached to the boobs said. Jet stumbled back.

"Where the hell am I? Is this a Fire Nation plot?" he held up his swords.

He was in a blue-walled room with too other people. He could hear a stream gurgling from an unknown source and soft music was playing.

The woman smiled at him like he was an adorable puppy.

"This is a plot, but the details are kind of beyond your pay grade," the woman said. "I'm Vice Captain Matsumoto, but you can call me Rangiku."

She went over to lounge on a black leather futon, her inky kimono blending in with the furniture. There was a low table in front of her with a bowl of untouched pomegranates and what appeared to be a carafe of wine. On the other side of the table was another couch, with a white haired man dressed in Earth Kingdom colors. He even had a bit of dirt clinging to his pants. The man was reading an orange book and when Rangiku waved a hand at him and went, "that's Hatake. He doesn't talk much," Hatake raised a hand and waved lazily.

Jet didn't trust either of them. He raised is swords threateningly.

"If you don't tell me what's going on...."

Matsumoto smiled sweetly.

"This is limbo," she told him, "you're mostly dead."

Jet laughed at her.

~~~

"He didn't believe me," Rangiku pouted. "What a rude little child. It makes me miss Toshiro."

Hatake reached out a hand without looking up from his book and patted her mostly on the shoulder.

"I'm sure he'll be back much, much sooner than you want him to be."

~~~

Eventually, Jet stormed through the door marked 'authorial limbo: authorized personnel only', back into the blue walled room, pointed on esword at Hatake and went "EXPLAIN! NOW!"

Hatake turned a page. "You're probably dead," he said laconically.

"You may be dead," Matsumoto corrected.

Jet narrow his eyes, his mind working fiendishly. "Are you dead?" he asked suspiciously.

"Oh, I'm dead normally," she said cheerily.

Jet motioned with his sword. "So is he dead, then?"

Matsumoto leaned close, whispered from behind her hand in a voice that nonetheless carried to every corner of the room, "No one will unequivocally say."

"But you think I'm dead?"

Matsumoto tapped the beauty mark on her face contemplatively. "It was rather unclear."

~~~

"He ran out of the room again," Rangiku commented.

"He'll probably be gone for quite a while, this time," Kakashi closed his book definitively.

"Lucky me," Rangiku said with a smirk.