Rai | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Personal data | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Real name | Rai | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Nicknames | Broody (by Duran) | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Age | 17 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Gender | Female | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Species | Human | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Occupation | Slave (formerly) Avatar | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Morality | Neutral | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Living status | Alive | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Production notes | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Created by | Zephyros-Phoenix | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Appearances | Unbroken |
Rai (雷 Rai (Japanese), Léi (Chinese), literally: "thunder") is the Avatar incarnation and immediate successor to Avatar Korra. Born in the Earth Kingdom, Rai was taken from her home and sold into slavery before she could be identified as the Avatar. The Avatar State triggered within her when she witnessed the brutal death of her friend and fellow slave. Rather than reveal herself to the world, Rai chose to conceal her Avatar identity and remain in hiding, believing the world had no need for the Avatar anymore as well as viewing the role of the Avatar as simply another form of slavery. Her animal companion is an eel hound named Haku.
Despite her efforts to remain anonymous, Rai eventually gains traveling companions in the form of Takumi, a young boy under her protection, Sati, an airbender who worships her, and Hiro, a fellow ex-slave. She has a younger brother named Arata, who is now better known as the ruthless slaver Ryota.
Rai eventually came face to face with her former master, Goro, who was able to bait her into losing her temper and entering the Avatar State, therefore publicly exposing herself as the Avatar. She went to confront her former master, but despite her abilities, she could not resist the influence of his bloodbending and was at his mercy. Fortunately for her, Takumi ignored her orders to stay behind and was able to take Goro by surprise, fatally shooting him in the eye with an arrow. With the death of her former master, Rai finally feels the freedom she longed for.
Physical description
Rai is a beautiful young woman with pale skin and light blonde hair, which is dyed, and green eyes. Her bangs are pulled back and clipped, revealing much of her face, such as the scar over her left eyebrow. Her hair is tied up in a messy ponytail, with the exception of two long strands of hair on either side of her face. Much of her clothes are old and raggedy with rough edges and sewn on patches of other fabric. She wears grey pants, black boots and black bracers with metal armor. On her torso, she wears a large yellow, floral pattern shirt with light green edges and a green and yellow and pink waist cloth. Beneath that she wears a long dark green skirt on the right side of her waist and a match green scarf around her neck that also acts as a hood.
In her youth, she had black hair, which she wore down.
Personality
Though Rai was once a happy and cheerful girl, her experience as a slave has made her develop a grim and dark outlook on life. She trusts no one but herself and Haku and this makes her emotionally aloof, blunt and outright antisocial.
Due to her experience as slave, Rai believed that the position of the Avatar was simply another form of slavery: someone being uprooted from their life and forced into a role by others. Seeing the effects of slavery and how committed some slaves became to their masters after being broken, Rai swore she would never let anyone dictate how she wanted to live. Additionally, she does not believe that the Avatar is necessary anymore due to the harmony between humans and spirits. Though human conflicts still persist, Rai does not believe the Avatar should have the ultimate authority to dictate human actions. If the Avatar was given such absolute power and control, how different would they be from a slave master? So, she chooses to keep her Avatar identity a secret so that the White Lotus will not force her into a life she does not want and so that she will not become the very thing she hates.
When interacting with others, she rarely speaks, simply waiting until the person leaves on their own. She prefers not to get involved in other people's business in order to keep a low profile and never stays in more than one place for too long. However, she will intervene if it has to do with slavery or oppression. When helping slaves escape, Rai was quick to state that "[she didn't] matter, they did", putting the well-being of those she was helping far above her own and volunteering to stay behind and occupy the slavers to buy them time to escape.
However, befriending Takumi and Sati, she has become slightly more compassionate towards the plights of others and makes an effort, albeit subtlety, to help those in need such as when she rescued a family's farm from brutish extortionists and helped a man regain ownership of his ranch.
Rai is also a very practical and rational minded being. She fully acknowledges that her path of revenge will not bring her peace, but does so anyway in order to fulfill what she believes to be true justice for all who have been wronged since she has little to no faith in the justice system. Despite her slight "progress" into a more compassionate and open being, Rai had no problem ruthlessly killing an ex-slaver from her past despite the slaver's claims of having changed. In her conversation with Korra, Rai admits that she lost hope a long time ago, making her cynical and pessimistic. She hints that she is suicidal, as she states once she has completed her vendetta, she is "more than happy to let someone else take over as Avatar."
After nearly being killed by her own brother, Rai briefly suffers amnesia, repressing the identity of her attacker. Upon realizing what Arata had become, Rai became so overwhelmed with guilt and depression that she contemplated suicide, unwilling to further deal with so much pain in all her life. However, Korra convinced Rai not to kill herself and instead live for the good future she can have with her friends. Rai moved forward with this by finally sharing her fears and concerns with her friends and admitting how she had come to care about them, in particular Takumi, whom she views as her hero for saving her from her own demons.
Despite her excellent degree of self-control, Rai had difficulty keeping her cool while conversing with her former master, Goro. She lost her temper when Goro insulted Kala, resulting in Rai entering the Avatar State and attacking him, all the while publicly exposing herself as Avatar. When she has a nightmare of being raped by Goro, she breaks down emotionally and realizes just how easily he is able to get to her and reduce her to a crying mess.
After finally confronting Goro, Rai is able to put all the pain and suffering from her past behind her and look towards her future.
Abilities
Rai is primarily a self-taught bender, learning from observation of others, scrolls and her own trial and error. While her technique is not perfect and rather unrefined, she fights with a blend of many different styles, able to easily change between them in the moment.
Powers
- Earthbending: Rai's native element and by far the one she is most proficient in, she discovered her aptitude for earthbending at an early age before she was taken by slavers. Her earthbending is strong enough to allow her to hold up boulders and prevent herself and others from being crushed in a cave-in.
- Metalbending: After escaping slavery, Rai eventually discovered she could also metalbend, which she often uses with the armor on her bracers to extend them into weaponry.
- Firebending: Rai's next more proficient element is fire, which she is highly skilled in using.
- Lightning generation: Rai is capable of generating lightning.
- Airbending: Rai's airbending, however, is largely mediocre due to lack of instructional material and her reluctance to seek proper tutelage from the Air Nomads. The reason for this is because she does not wish for them to discover she is the Avatar since the Nomads work so closely with her previous incarnation. Since training with Sati, her airbending has improved drastically.
- Waterbending: Rai struggles the most with waterbending, in particular it's fluid and graceful movements as well as a traumatic experience with her bloodbending slave master, Goro. With help from Duran, Rai was able to begin overcoming her fears and turn her trauma into her strength and begin learning to waterbend.
- Avatar State: In the Avatar State, Rai becomes connected with the vast cosmic energies of the universe, granting her immense strength and allowing her to perform incredible feats of bending. One such feat was using her earthbending to split open a small mountain and push half of it into the ocean in order to stop a cave-in. She entered the Avatar State again after reuniting with her former master, Goro, when she snapped at his callous remark towards Kala.
Skills
- Skilled martial artist: Rai's fighting style is similar to Korra's in that it is very brutish and up front, dealing strong attacks and hits from the start.
- Hunting: Rai is rather skilled at hunting for food.
- Survival: Rai has excellent survival skills, able to live on her own in the wilderness while also always being on the move.
Weaknesses
- Lack of spiritual connection: Rai possesses a very weak connection to her Avatar spirit and Raava, a connection that she does not seek to fix, believing it will only help the White Lotus find her. Over time however, she slowly begins to open up spiritually, at least to her predecessor Korra.
Equipment
- Metal bracers: Rai's only form of armor is the metal bracers she wears on her forearms. With her metalbending, she can bend the metal armor and shape it into weapons as needed.
- Waterskin: While in Ba Sing Se, Rai purchased a large waterskin that she wears across her back beneath her cloak. With the waterskin, Rai can always have a supply of water ready for waterbending if there are no other sources nearby.
- Cables: From one of Ryota's henchmen, Rai obtained a set of metalbending cables attached to a belt she wears around her waist. She can use these as whip-like weapons, grappling hooks to climb or even bind enemies.
- Camping equipment
Trivia
- Rai's name derives from the Japanese character, 雷, meaning "thunder".
- If Rai were to have a Pokemon team, they would consist of:
- Sceptile, to represent Haku.
- Riolu, to represent her spirtiual side, or lack thereof, and her difficulty with friendship since Riolu requires friendship to evolve.
- Dewott, to represent her use of dual blades and slow learning with waterbending.
- Typhlosion, to represent her proficiency in firebending and fiery aggression.
- Krookodile, to represent her proficiency in earthbending and relentless hunting down of slavers.
- Mewtwo, to represent her past as a slave and sheer power as the Avatar.
Team Avatar | ||||
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