#bittw

Fandom: The Legend of Korra Pairing: Bolin / Original Female Character Rating: T Tags: Rivals to Lovers, Slow Burn, POV First Person, Waterbender OC

Work Summary: Taro thought that when she left the Southern Water Tribe, that would be the last time she would ever see her childhood friend Korra. That was, until she ran into the Avatar at a pro-bending match over a year later. Will she be able face her fears, and open her heart?

Chapter Summary: As the United Forces fleet attempts to land in Republic City, Taro and Korra fight desperately against the new equalist weapons. After the fight, Taro resolves to follow Korra no matter where it takes her - to end this war, once and for all.

Many thanks to the lovely @papalogia, who answered my request for prompts that would work for a Mikoto & Madara Uchiha broship. The very first prompt she sent spawned an AU that will very likely turn into an episodic series.

Episode One: In Which Madara’s Assumptions Make an Ass Out of Him. (But It All Works In His Favor In the End.)

“You didn’t gag me, so I’ll assume that there’s no one around to hear me scream.”

Madara aborted his plans to check the perimeter of the hastily established camp in favor of staring at the woman tied to the tree in the center of it.

When he had kidnapped the Uchiha matriarch, disgusted at the way his clan seemed to have fallen from their former prominence in only a few generations, Madara had expected a delicate flower, chosen for breeding over power. This woman seemed to fit all of his expectations: elegantly and neatly dressed, no scars from weapons, long hair that was left to hang loose, spent most of her day confined to the main house...

Hearing that particular sentence from her mouth certainly changed things.

“Excuse me?” he spluttered with his usual eloquence.

“Abduction 101,” she replied patiently. “If you’re making camp close to civilization, make sure your prisoner is gagged. Otherwise they make too much noise, and you’ll have everyone and their uncle trooping in to see what’s going on. Now, most people who resort to kidnapping have no problems killing those who get in their way, but there’s usually a good number of people who show up to save damsels in distress. I doubt even you could kill them all, Madara-sama.”

He spluttered again. How did this woman know not only his name, but how to properly transport prisoners?

She smirked at him, and he watched astounded as her eyes slowly changed, morphing into the familiar red and black patterns of the first stage of the sharingan. “It may not be your mangekyo, Madara-sama, but I’m hardly a civilian. Now, why don’t we sit down like shinobi and discuss why you felt you had to kidnap the clan matriarch?”

The woman stood gracefully, shaking the kinks from her muscles as the ropes slid away from her body to pool on the floor. With perfect poise and posture, she knelt next to the fire he had built and reached for his pack, deposited carelessly on the ground.

Rummaging in the pack, she tsked at something she found, but pulled out his collapsible cooking pot and filled it with a nifty little suiton jutsu (he wasn’t envious of that at all, no sir) before dropping one of the prepackaged soup rations in it before setting it on the outskirts of the fire, where it would simmer away happily until they were ready for it.

All of this, of course, had been conducted with the precision and elegance as if she had been performing a tea ceremony for the daimyo.

“Sit, Madara-sama,” she murmured, sounding like a well-bred matriarch, but the hint of sharingan when she looked up from under her eyelashes to glance at him proved that otherwise. “We have a discussion to conduct.”

And that was how Madara found himself sitting across the fire from the current Uchiha matriarch, as they discussed plans to reform the Uchiha clan as it currently was.

“My husband and the elders feel that a violent coup is the only solution,” the woman, Mikoto she had informed him, said, tone dripping with well-bred disapproval. “They whine and complain about how the Sandaime is treating them unfairly, how the Uchiha’s star is waning in the eye of the village, but they do nothing to dispel the ugly rumors about us.”

“You do not side with them?” Madara asked, surprised. Surely the matriarch would be loyal to her own clan?

“Hardly,” she sniffed. “When I accepted my hitai-ite, I swore my loyalty to my village, knowing that my clan would always come second. While the Sandaime does appear to have been unfair to my clan, there are other ways. Has Fugaku asked for an audience with the Sandaime? Has he brought his grievances before the other clan heads as is his right? No, he sulks in his police station and grumbles over the unfairness of it all!” Mikoto’s eyes, having reverted to their normal onyx color when he sat down, flashed red with the sharingan. “And worse,” she continued, her voice so cold that Madara couldn’t help but shiver. “He wishes to use my son as a spy against the village. Against my better wishes, I allowed Fugaku to push Itachi forward when he showed promise, but I will not stand by and make my son choose between his parents and the village, even if I have to announce our discontent in the middle of the village square!”

Madara sat open eyed as he watched the matriarch’s ire grow. Even his own great-grandmother, whom he had heard was one of the better matriarchs, had not been so formidable. By tradition, the strongest kunoichi in the clan, so long as she could be spared from the battlefield, married the clan heir, and ran the defense of the clan compound while the bulk of the forces were fighting other clans. She was supposed to be capable of defending the women, the children, the wounded, and the elders, with everything in her, so that if the compound was to fall, they would not fall quietly.

Having never taken a matriarch himself, he had left the position empty until his heir assumed leadership, installing his own wife in the position of matriarch even though the woman had few of the necessary qualifications. It had left him with a sour feeling in his stomach, one that had only gotten worse as he had watched Uchiha Mikoto before abducting her.

Now, he was pleasantly surprised by her ferocity, her loyalty to both the clan and village, and her protectiveness of her son. This was a woman who could redeem the Uchiha clan from its current lethargy, and restore it to its former greatness.

“I could help with your problem,” he offered, watching her for her reaction. “It was my intention to force changes upon the clan when I came to Konoha.”

“And thus you abducted the matriarch?” she replied dryly, passing him a bowl of soup that she had just served.

“That was one of the first steps of my plan.”

“Swear loyalty to the village, and to the clan that we will shake out of its lethargy,” she demanded. “Swear it by the grave of Uchiha Izuna.”

Damn, Madara thought, shocked once again by this kunoichi’s knowledge of him. She will be a formidable ally.

But he obediently closed his hand gently around a kunai until the skin broke and swore his allegiance to the clan and to the village on his brother’s grave, the only thing he held truly sacred these days.

*points at Owen* AND YOU GET A SUBPLOT

*points at Abolish* AND YOU GET A SUBPLOT