The Hitchhiker's Guide to Republic City
Azula and the Turbo Time Travel Tea House
"How do you know his vision keys off of motion!? How in the hell could you possibly know this about an animal that has been dead for sixty million years!?" Karo yelled so loud that his voice began to squeak. The glass window of the tea house had a large T – Rex staring through it and his breath condensed on the cold glass. "You programmed this thing to move into the future sixty five years because you thought the people you stole the Turbo Time Travel Tea House from would have conveniently given up! I expected bloody futuristic nuclear powered air cars not those freaking smart, pack hunting lizards or the huge dinosaur trying to pry this thing open like a bag of cheese puffs!"
"Decimals are such slippery things," Azula poked and prodded a gray metal console set into the far wall past the dainty doily covered tea set with the pink tea set. She spoke calmly as she pressed switched. "We've gone back sixty five million years but not to worry – he can't see in here because he doesn't believe in beings from the future."
"The raptors had no trouble adjusting! If you hadn't electrified the outside of the tea house we'd have now been lunch! I had no idea lizards could open doors or hunt in packs...or..." Karo's voice petered out as he stared into the huge eye of the monster of all land dwelling predators. "Didn't something kill off the dinosaurs? Something big and worldwide – a mass extinction event?"
"An asteroid slammed into the earth and wiped out eighty percent on all life." Azula said calmly. "On the good side of things, Creation Science is an utter pile of crap."
"Do something!" Karo ran toward Azula and stood next to her.
"I'm doing something as we speak." Azula spoke with irritation. "My God boy! Why did you go outside if you didn't want to meet the locals? Never enter an ecosystem where you're not the apex predator."
"I thought we'd landed in the future!" Karo winced as he heard the T – Rex growl, then begin stomping around the outside of the tea house. Karo had seen the T – Rex – a plucked turkey body designed perfectly for a set of teeth the size of railroad spikes. The gray green monster could land a foot on the ten by twelve foot tea house and pick out the meaty bits inside with no effort. "I wanted to rent a hover car!"
"We could have done a good deal worse." Azula grabbed Karo's shoulder. "The Turbo Time Travel Tea House was designed for small hops across time and space but we traveled back sixty five million years in time and continents drift about over such eons of time. We're lucky the tea house landed on solid land and not at the bottom of an ocean or inside the core of the planet."
"I feel so much better." Karo didn't mean that in the least.
"This is a tea house," Azula grasped Karo's collar, "go make some tea while I start the time travel sequence."
"Tea?" Karo wished he could sound astonished but of course this was Azula. "You want tea? Now?"
"Once I finish programming the tea house, we'll take about half an hour to travel to our original destination and I would like to relax."
The T – Rex heard a distant crackling and a second sun appeared in the sky. He sniffed around and smelled nothing off. He had decided to eat the two mammals inside the white house with the pink roof and he raised his foot.
A flash of blue light, a pop and his foot landed on nothing but the grass of the meadow. The house had vanished. He watched the second sun until it went below the horizon and a big flash grew into the sky a moment later. He still heard nothing or smelled nothing out of the ordinary. 'Time to eat something Cretaceous' he thought as he pounded his way through the undergrowth of dense ferns.
Karo's hands visibly shook as he poured tea into Azula's tea cup and kept his other hand firmly onto the chair he sat in.. Azula had taken a liking to the tea house from the aliens that had landed in the university quad. It looked like a tea house made for little girls and it even had a heart shaped window set into the blue door. Karo had not helped her steal it but got sucked into her schemes in any event. He found out only after he couldn't get off the machine that she planned to use it to get out of going to a baby shower. Azula told him; the young girls staying at the house wanted flowers and trained ivy painted around the ceiling. Only after he had begun to sketch out a lovely pattern of lavender color ivy did Azula push the Big Red Button on the main console and announced to him they were bound for the future.
Outside the heart shaped window in the door the great blur of time gave off a blue green glow.
Karo didn't expect to have many more minutes of life left. He took solace in the idea his beloved mother would save money on his funeral as no one would ever find their bodies. The tea house had about as much floor space as a gypsy trailer. 'If the afterlife has any options', Karo thought to himself, 'I'm taking the seventy two virgins (in hot swimwear) just to annoy my fiance.' He pondered reincarnation and doubted it could help him. The Avatar had gone through more reincarnations and revisions than a badly written musical and had no useful recall of his past lives. Karo didn't want to come back knowing about nothing: learning to use the toilet, read and write and mathematics. He had no fun learning them the first go around – he didn't fancy a second.
The tea house worked in a manner that Azula only had the vaguest idea about. She had gained much of her operational knowledge through through practical testing. An accidental trip to the Age of the Dinosaurs had proven she lacked complete knowledge of the tea house or its inner workings. The first test had allowed Azula to dodge the baby shower for Ty Lee by going back to when Aang had tried to seduce Katara with bad love poetry and cut down the tree in front of the house where he had planned to climb and express himself. Karo found himself on this trip because in a world where Katara and Aang had become engaged, Azula reieved another invitation to endure another baby shower on the very same day.
She decided to flee to the future. She chose sixty five years because anyone she knew would be dead or tottering and yet it would not place her and Karo in a future too different from the world she knew. She didn't want to go too far ahead in case the human race had blown itself up and ants had taken over.
Her plan seemed plausible as long as the human race hadn't blown itself up.
"Couldn't we go back and fix the time line so I get my life back?" Karo placed the tea pot down on the table.
"No one in the Realm has ever attempted time travel." Azula stated the obvious and glanced sideways at the instruments. "I didn't know the death of one tree would change the history of the world." She pressed her hand to her chest as if speaking from the heart. "I'm lazy and fixing the time line sounds like too much work. We'd have to go back, stop or past selves from cutting down the tree in front of your old home in Ba Sing Se. I have no idea what could happen. Physical law says matter can neither be created or destroyed so what would the Universe do when we returned to the past and met our past selves to stop them? We might destroy the Universe as it tried to reconcile this contradiction or simply destroy the Earth when both copies of ourselves flashed into energy. A new universe with shiny new protons might arise but we wouldn't be living there."
"I wonder how often this kind of thing happens in the real universe?" Karo mused as he poured his own cup of tea. The tea house offered a steady and calm ride as it sped through time at thousands of years in a second but Karo felt like a limbo person. "I could be my mother's own father."
Azula often wondered why Karo set himself up for a cruel insult but she didn't have any chance to deliver one. She heard a loud hum, then silence as the windows changed to a sky blue. She felt the sickening feeling of free fall for a split second and an impact knocked her off her feet.
"I must have forgotten to engage the continental drift compensation." Azula fell over in her pink wooden seat and peered out through the heart shaped window cut into the back.
Karo fell over in his chair. "Azula Time Travel: As smooth as vodka distilled in a car radiator."
"Come out with your hands up!" An authoritative female voice shouted over a megaphone.
"Am I talking to a person or did the cockroaches take over after Doomsday?" Karo shouted back. "Will I see a human city or a bunch of geometrically perfect termite or ant mounds? I read stories of a future ruled by hymenoptera! I mean ants for the proletariat masses!"
"Don't be stupid Karo!" Azula admonished as she crawled across the floor toward the door. "If they were cockroaches; how could they speak our language?"
"You mean I just sent out a mating call?"
Azula looked out the window. "I doubt if hymenoptera would be found in a love song to hymenoptera. I see a tall middle aged woman with graying hair and a couple of scars over her right eye – otherwise fit and healthy - dressed in some kind of gray uniform."
"Don't you know it is against the law to park a tea house in the park?" The voice announced. "I'm Chief Bei Fong of the Republic City Police."
"Toph?" Karo asked Azula as she peered over the window.
"As mean looking but not as butt ugly or old enough assuming we did make it 65 years into the future." Azula explained. "I'm going to open the door. Get your ass over here."
Karo crouched like a soldier ducking from automatic machine gun fire and crouched next to Azula. "Where are we supposed to park a ten ton tea house?"
"Not anywhere it wanted to – evidently." Azula had her hand on the door knob. "Hold on..." she shouted loudly, "we come in peace."
"Thank God you forgot to say: 'shoot to kill'." Karo crouched as Azula slowly turned the door knob. "Wasn't this tea house equipped with a cloak? The same cloak you claimed would hide us from danger?"
"Whoops!" Azula blushed. "I think I left my brain behind on the dresser." She opened the door, made a last minute adjustment with her glasses and put up her hands.
Karo pushed up his glasses and saw a dozen men and women in gray metallic looking uniforms. "I liked the velociraptors better."
"We have no weapons." Azula said as she stood in front of the tea house with her hands up in the air.
The tea house had appeared in the middle of the open grass of the park a half hour ago. Chief Bei Fong at first thought someone was drunk dialing the police but after the switchboard was swamped by calls about the tea house in the milled of the grassy knoll of the park; she came out with a dozen officers to investigate.
"We will have to impound your 'tea house'?" Chief Bei Fong would never have guessed she would have occasion to say those words.
She didn't have the chance. The original owners had built the Time Travel Tea House with some concept of discretion once its operator had left it on its own. It could move in time and space so it decided to wait out this current situation in an uninhabited region – inside a mountain glacier a few hundred kilometers to the North. It set itself to that location and engaged the 'move in space' function.
Chief Bei Fong watched as the tea house glowed an electric blue and then literally 'popped' out of existence.
The tea house had to have a map to move in space and that particular mountain glacier had retreated over the six and a half decades since Azula had tried and only partially succeeded in programming the topography of the Realm into it. It sat on a small gravel bank deposited by the glacier in its 'better days' but since no people showed up to bother it; it contemplated the eventful day. It stood there and waited for Azula to signal it to return for her and Karo.
Azula had not come to rely on the tea house actually performing as expected. She had made a few guesses when she knicked the thing. The kind of artificial intelligence required for time travel also required some degree of annoying free will. She half expected it to rebel and kill everyone in the tea house by detonating the power cells; or leave for a nice banana grove. The thought of the two girls she had knicked it from coming after her had also crossed her mind.
Thirteen grapples shot empty space; grabbed the snow and ice where the tea house had stood and one police chief had the look of a woman with many, many questions.
Azula had the audacity of the invention on her side. The Turbo Time Travel Tea House wasn't something one could understand easily so she knew unless the police chief approaching her had a degree in advanced math and believed in special relativity, wormholes and quantum mechanics; her secrets were safe.
"You both are under arrest." Chief Bei Fong held up two pairs of cuffs and stood in front of Azula as her officers reeled in their grapples. "Illegal parking, violating zoning laws, erecting of a structure without a building permit and violating physical laws?"
"Another fun time with you in a jail cell." Karo grumbled as he paced the small concrete cell. "They have one toilet and two of us."
"Deal with it – freckle boy." Azula had bigger fish to fry. Part of the problem with using a biological brain as part of the control matrix of the tea house was free will. She wondered 'what if the Turbo Time Travel Tea House buggers off and leaves us here – wherever we are.' If it had loyalty and decided to find its real owners then they were stuck in the future.
Chief Bei Fong unlocked the dark steel bars of the jail cell. "Who are you two?" She asked as she opened the door. "Another Avatar wannabe come to see the big city?" She sometimes enjoyed intimidating those who had caused her overtime and gave Karo a look. "You two come here for our underground gay scene?"
Karo had an odd inability to decode sarcasm in time to do anything useful. "You mean homosexuals who meet in the subway?" He had a disarming habit of actually taking things literally but this time it had the positive effect of verbally disarming Chief Bei Fong. This wouldn't make the chief any more agreeable although Azula did find it mildly amusing.
"We're time travelers from the future." Azula faced the chief. "My friend didn't want to stop and ask for directions and so here we are."
"Is that true young man?" Chief Bei Fong almost barked.
"Well the last time I did have a chance to ask for directions; a dinosaur almost ate my head. We are time travelers." Karo answered back reproachfully. "We sail the temporal seas in search of a time of peace and harmony. Stupid us."
"I only needed a simple yes – young man." The Chief said sternly. "Why should I believe any of this? You could be Equalist scum with a plot and a bag of tricks." She doubted freckle faced Karo and the delicately featured Azula looked like criminals (although they looked Henwanese), she never took chances on first impressions.
"Who are the Equalists?" Karo asked as he sat down on the lower bunk. "They have time travel?"
"They are terrorists who wish to eradicate bending." The chief answered back.
"Do they show up in tea houses with blue doors and light blue shutters on the window?" Azula asked pointedly. "I thought the tea house looked harmless and would not attract undue attention. Well you got me. I miscalculated." Azula looked at Chief Bei Fong. "Wait – eradicate bending? Last time I checked no one except maybe the Avatar could do that."
Azula held her palm open and gave Chief Bei Fong a brief demonstration of her skills. Karo made a fire emerge from his finger like a cigarette lighter.
"I have neither the time or inclination to explain any of this to you two." Chief Bei Fong puzzled over her visitors but as a woman with the practical mind of a champion of law enforcement; she had her focus on determining the threat to the city these two posed. "What are your names?"
"Azula Kai." Azula answered.
"Karo Zhao," Karo gave his Fire Nation Chinese name.
"We have no evidence to keep either of you. I am here to release you on your own recognizance." The chief informed them. "I warn both of you that Republic City is not the Dominion. You won't find yourself well liked among many. The Dominion may have become an industrial power but those from the Fire Nation think of it as an imperial power. The Water Tribes accuse you of polluting their waters and ruining their fisheries and some in the Earth Kingdom resent Dominion political control of Ba Sing Se. I don't normally give political science lectures but you two look like college students with pranks on your mind." Chief Bei Fong tapped Azula in the chest. "I warn you that this city isn't like your rich capitol with its palm lined boulevards. We have litter, we have rats, we have the homeless, we have crime."
"How do you know we come from the Dominion?" Azula looked down as Chief Bei Fong pointed her finger at her.
Chief Bei Fong laughed: for her it was self evident – they had Henwanese accents. She replied in Henwanese. "You have the accent and you speak that awful language. I will have my eye – er eyes on you both. Keep out of trouble." She stood to one side to let both of them pass. Azula and Karo walked out past her.
She could keep an eye on those two but they did have the air of the ridiculous about them. Karo stopped at the door and struggled. "Push! Push you fool!" She yelled down the hall.
He opened the door and Azula shoved him through.
Chief Bei Fong hated Equalists and what they stood for. She hated the Henwanese because the The Dominion had all the money. She could arrest an Equalist for belonging to a terrorist organization but she couldn't arrest those from the Dominion.
She had a grudge against them though.
"How bloody cold does it get here?" Karo shivered as he walked down the steps of the Police Headquarters. Aside from his often oblivious nature; he was a consummate complainer and picky about personal comfort. "Why do people always locate their major cities in the shittiest places on the planet. Let's put Ba Sing Se on a windswept northern plain because we can grow wheat. Omashu's on the top of a frigging mountain and this place currently has a windchill slightly below the temperature of dry ice."
"I didn't dress for this either." Azula reminded Karo. "For a city with so many tall office buildings; couldn't they employ someone to chip the dead rats out of the ice?"
Karo passed by a newspaper kiosk made of rough wood manned by a haggard looking old man wearing a red wool toque who hated his job. Karo realized he wasn't at home anymore. Dominion newspaper kiosks operated under a franchise system and all of them looked the same. They had a clean white painted plywood finish, a clean yellow canopy with elaborate displays of newspapers, magazines and books from around the world. The rack of postcards for tourists was obligatory and they looked colorful. This looked like something slapped together by a carpenter with no level. Karo picked up a newspaper and glanced over it.
"You have to pay for that!" The man chewed on a cigarette and shouted through it. "Do you think I'm out here for my own health?"
Karo worked for a newspaper and had a free subscription as one of the perks of his membership in the Writer's Union. "How much – sir?" He asked politely.
"Ten yuan!" The old man shouted.
Karo had money but had no idea what a 'yuan' was. He checked his pockets and produced Dominion currency – bronze piece and a folded up five gold bank note. The old man knew his money. The Dominion used the old Fire Nation names for their money. The 'Pim Iari' note actually amounted to a huge sum in Republic City – ten yuan was about three bronze. The newspaper stand owner decided not to tell Karo this and decided to take advantage of the stupid tourist from the Land of Coconut Bras and Tea Houses.
Too bad Karo was an economist. In a city that looked like it had just hosted an air raid; Karo didn't think the yuan held the same value as Dominion money. A block away, he saw a forty story skyscraper that once had limestone siding and gargoyles that now had half of its cladding missing and was smoking. He prepare to explain to the kiosk owner the reason why he lived in poverty.
Azula kicked him from behind to remind him that this was not the time to be cheap or miserly. Azula had never seen a city so dangerous looking. "When you're waist deep in the dung hill of humanity; that is not the time to negotiate terms on the price of a paper. I don't want to end up on a slab with that Bei Fong chick telling my corpse 'I told you so'." Azula knew Karo and the Dominion character well enough to know a dishonest businessman and a frugal Henwanese tourist meant trouble. She could see the twitch in Karo's face.
Karo gave up the money but sadly intoned. "I had expected more 'chrome' shininess in my future." He held out the paper. "Only two murders this week. Evidently this is an achievement. No mention of all the missing hookers – some things don't change."
"Go away you Dominion scum." The owner of the newspaper kiosk demanded and then waved them away. "If people see you hanging out here they won't want to buy my papers."
"I would have thought low literacy would have capped demand." Azula grumbled. "What ass would have set up a city in butt hole central? Oh wait – I smell the armpit of my brother in this. I can hear him sucking up to Aang now – saying 'we need a city where all nations can live in peace!' Aang with the political acumen of a marsupial agreed and they founded Republic City on the tract of land least likely to be missed if someone dropped The Bomb."
"Shit!" Karo rubbed his arms with his hands. "You think Aang and Zuko could have founded this ghastly place? I thought this was an old Fire Nation gulag and the prisoners were just to freaking lazy to walk away when the War ended." Karo had the socially conservative view of the economist that societies had themselves to blame for their poverty. He wondered if Republic City was one of those awful socialist experiments which as he knew always ended in social disorders after years of production shortfalls. He doubted Avatar Aang or Fire Lord Zuko had any real understanding of democracy or markets or law. The city had the dreary look of a place run by committee. The ordinary people mulling the kiosk had the look of people who had no say in running their city and so either grew angry and revolutionary or apathetic. He felt annoyance at having not paid fair market value for the paper – he worked for a paper that demanded only a fair price for their work. They made certain to give to their patrons what they needed and demanded – the news and entertainment. He took pride in being a cartoonist working for papers, doing quality work and had never met a dishonest newspaperman in his career.
"Oh crap!" Azula pointed Karo forward. "How much money do you have on your person?"
"Not enough to buy my way out of this." Karo whimpered. "Is it me or do you see a huge polar bear dog?"
"Shit!" Azula answered. "I had hoped I was hallucinating."
"You two look out of place." A female voice spoke from the top of the huge white hairy beast. "Our police chief thought you'd need a helping hand from the Avatar."
"When Azula the Mad Scientist turned the key on the Turbo Time Travel Tea House, the Avatar was bald and an air bender." Karo backed up. "You have a full head of hair with support for three pony tails and evidently are a member of the Water Tribe."
"So Aang kicked the bucket?" Azula asked with no diplomacy whatsoever. She had decided that she would have her say before being killed by a polar bear dog. "He is an ex – air bender – pushing up the daisies and no longer listed among the living? He's only standing because the taxidermist was very skilled?" Azula told the woman on the bear and a sly smile crept across her face. "What good news."
"Tenzin warned me about you two." The woman answered calmly. "I can offer you a place to stay on air temple island. I am Avatar Korra and yes...Aang died."
"And Katara of the Water Tribe?"
"Who do you think told me about you and the Turbo Time Travel Tea House?"
Azula showed her mastery of Henwanese curse words. She knew a long amount of explaining would not clarify matters with Katara.
Katara had waited sixty five or more years for a chance to slap Azula. Katara had become a respected elder of the Water Tribe. When Azula cut the tree down; she had fallen for Aang and they married.
"Ow!" Azula rubbed her face. "Does slapping me in the face constitute some kind of greeting? I had hoped attitudes had changed in the future but on the way over here Korra slapped me when I complemented her on her rack. You slapped me for noting how much yours had succumbed to gravity. I'm a lesbian and notice such things."
"Mother!" An officious male voice cautioned Katara. "You told me about Azula and Karo – but you said they died in a botched time travel experiment."
"I thought they did. Karo's mother held out hope and sent the two girls who came in the tea house after them. She died not knowing what ever became of them.." Katara muttered. "By The Spirit of the Moon, they somehow they made it to the future." Katara played a gentle game of 'connect the dots' with the freckles on Karo's nose. The young man was Karo – the freckles never lied. Azula's off putting personality could never be forged.
"When did Aang keel over and kick the bucket?" Azula rubbed her arms as a cold wind whipped through the courtyard of air temple island.
"I think we have other issues to talk about."
"Wait...I thought you had a problem having children. The frumpy looking guy called you mother."
"The Avatar has a very powerful seed."
"I didn't actually have a need to know this. You know what they say about a simple workable falsehood? 'The doctor made a mistake' is such a simple workable falsehood. After six decades, your open honesty about such things can still give me the heebie jeebies." Azula said coldy to Katara. "Evidently his warranty did expire since the curvy water bender chick called Korra..."
"Avatar Korra." Katara corrected.
Azula crossed her arms. "Don't mind me as I bask in an Aang free future. "
"You broke the time line when you cut down the chestnut tree in front of your mother's home in Ba Sing Se." Katara grabbed Azula's collar. "Do you know what it's like to be married to Aang for six decades!?"
"Mother...please." The stern looking man protested.
"Gasp...you have a huge amount of upper body strength for a woman who is pushing ten decades...gasp." Azula protested. "Why not choke Karo in anger or sexual frustration?"
"He does what you tell him...like any good pet."
"Hey!" Karo remarked.
At the last moment, the elderly Katara gave Azula a warm hug. Katara looked old, her hair had gone silver but she looked wiser and more importantly to Azula, harder to fool.
"Sokka died six years ago." Karo said as he entered the simple room Tenzin had set aside for their accommodations. "He suffered from cancer. I find that sad. I liked him in my sort of way"
"Everybody dies of cancer if they live long enough. You've been hanging out with me in the Turbo Time Travel Tea House which means you have absorbed the equivalent of a hundred chest X – Rays. We shouldn't plan on a cancer free future." Azula fidgeted with the bezel of her watch (actually the one she had stolen with the tea house). "Did you actually think they'd cure cancer in six decades? If they cured all hideous diseases then those who made money selling drugs would have to find an honest line of work. I have more sad news. Do you know the watch that remotely controls the tea house?"
"The one you stole?" Karo reminded Azula as he felt the cold air rush through his Fire Nation clothes. Karo had become accustomed to thirty degrees centigrade with ample humidity as an agreeable room temperature. Tenzin kept the Air Temple buildings at a cost saving eighteen degrees with next to no humidity and Karo found his body reported this as cold.
Azula grumbled something Karo didn't wish to hear. "I have only the vaguest clue how to undo what I did to the tea house and if I am reading the small dial at the bottom of this thing – the tea house has almost run out of power." Azula pointed to a little blue – white set of bars like those one found on smart phone screens and it showed one blinking bar left. "The Tea House has no power and that leaves us in the future to rot." Azula tapped her watch. "In the future to rot – I don't see any freaking hover cars running off fusion engines." The watch still gave the local time but she had no idea how to reclaim and then recharge the tea house.
"So we're screwed?"
"Would you rather have the inhabitants of Jurassic Park as friends?" Azula kept tapping her watch in frustration. "We're still screwed. We have no Turbo Time Travel Tea House and we cant go back and fix the future which means Katara won't wind up a lonely old crone. This makes me deeply unhappy but I take solace from the fact she had to live with Aang for six decades. I had expected less squalor and polio in the future. If we get back to our time period; I'm going to visit those science fiction writers and kick each one of them where it'll do the most damage."
Karo rubbed his hands together. "Anything remotely useful to say?"
"I wonder if I can still use my bank account?" Azula picked through her clothes and produced coins and pieces of lint. She found a tin soldier in one of her vest pockets. "I have ten silver pieces, a lieutenant in the Earth Kingdom army, lint and an unbent paper clip." She held out the paper clip. "Does anyone actually use these things to clip paper? How much money do you have?"
"I have a coupon for one Fat Boy French Fry." Karo dug through his pockets. "A gray furry cough candy which went south long before we traveled in time."
"No money...we need to find some cash." Azula tapped her chin.
"I don't think it comes apart." Karo answered from inside of the air bending maze and swung one of the doors. "It's an antique of sorts but given the small market for antique air bending gear and the fact it's rooted to the stone walkway puts a cap on an otherwise fine plan."
"It took me forever to get the hang of this," Korra told Azula as she walked across the courtyard of the air temple toward Azula.
Azula briefly nodded as she tried to work the watch. She didn't get a manual with the thing and so she had figured out many features by trial and error – more error than trial she reckoned. Her watch had many interesting features; one of which was the ability to signal the tea house and bring it back to their location. The watch worked reliably if the tea house had power or its computer brain hadn't gone insane. So far the tea house had ignored her calls.
"How the hell do I get out of this Air Nomad maze thing?" Karo asked. "If we're going to pinch it; I have to escape it first. Of course we could try ethical ways of earning the money we need."
"The trick is to be in the moment and use your sense of balance and your air bending." Korra told Karo and Karo jumped since he couldn't see out of the maze and knew Azula wanted to steal it.
"You lost me at 'the'. I have no balance to speak of and air bending? You must have me confused with the other Avatar Karo of blessed memory – the one that didn't suck at his job. I made a move and now your voices are coming to the left and down." Karo pushed on another panel. "Good Lord..."
Korra made a gentle air bending motion and the doors swung and Karo flew across the courtyard and landed in a juniper bush.
"Scratch petty theft as a means of earning money." Karo climbed out of the bush. "We may have to build another time machine. Given that you have no clear idea of time travel theory; we have a good deal of work to do."
"The pro bending leagues are always looking for talented benders. They have stopped holding matched due to the recent events in the city but once they're back up and playing; any team owner would jump at the chance to have talented fire benders on their team." Korra suggested. Azula's reputation for skill as a fire bending preceded her and the princess had even refined lightning bending to a fine art that some gifted fire benders had taken to heart. Korra's fire bending teachers had taken much from the Book of Azula. Azula had the talent to make a packet in pro bending if she wished – who could refuse the best fire bender in living memory? "I play on a pro bending team."
"I found a hockey puck in the bush." Karo held up the black rubber puck. "Too bad I stink at any team sports that humanity has ever invented."
"A sport where you face off in teams of three – an earth, water and fire bender and you beat people up using your bending." Korra explained patiently.
"Like hockey?" Karo tossed the puck in the air and utterly missed catching it on the way down. "Concussions be damned?"
"With some rules." Korra told Karo. "We are somewhat more civilized."
"I like the idea of beating up people and being paid." Azula tapped her lower lip as she pondered the prospect of engaging in mindless violence and mayhem for money. "I sense a catch to this nearly perfect sport." She could sense a catch: murdering an opposing team member probably violated some rule. Water polo didn't allow players to drown opposing players and hockey players had to stop after breaking the skull of their opponent.
"You need to be able to swim." Korra answered. "The outside zone of the game ring is surrounded by water. A player sent out of the ring lands in the water and has to swim out of play. I'll have to take you down to the arena when it opens and show you. Maybe I can face off against the great Princess Azula."
"Damn! The one thing I never learned to do." Azula muttered. She didn't hold her ability to swim in high esteem and decided against this idea for the time being. "Can I pawn the radio?"
At that moment the Turbo Time Travel Tea House popped into existence in the courtyard and looked as out of place as it did in the Cretaceous Era. It had a girlish color scheme and looked like the mutant offspring of a barbie doll accessory. A confused eighty year old monk in saffron robes stumbled out the front door in confusion.
"You're out of toilet paper." He advised.
"Ew!" Karo, Korra and Azula shivered.
Tenzin walked around the Time Travel Tea House first clockwise and then counter clockwise. He didn't like the location and his children found the pull of the colorful building dangerously powerful. He found the odd thing dangerously powerful: too powerful for mere humans. Only the vile Princess Azula would make use of such a dangerous piece of scientific equipment. He had no desire to understand how it operated as he could only imagine the twisted minds that could build such a thing and make it alluring to children at the same time.
According to Katara, Azula had broken the Universe in some way.
Tenzin worried Azula might break it in a new and completely unanticipated fashion and he'd end up with six legs instead of two.
Karo screamed and a loud boom rang out across Air Temple Island. Smoke filled the interior of the tea house, the door flew open and Tenzin watched blue smoke billow out.
"We should have used some kind of adapter." Azula shouted in the raspy voice of someone who had inhaled too much acrid smoke.
Karo stumbled out and looked at Tenzin who glowered back. "I think I owe you a very frank explanation...we don't actually own The Turbo Time Travel Tea House."
"Don't tell him that!" Azula stumbled out of the door with a smoking bundle of wires in her hand. "Remember he's the son of Aang. It doesn't take much to imagine a good deal of moralizing in our future."
"Do you have something to tell me?"
"We stole The Turbo Time Travel Tea House." Karo brushed the light dusting of ash from his clothes. "Quite frankly we know bugger all about how it worked but we stole it from two red haired alien girls who landed in the Quad of Komatsu University. Azula and I went back in time and through the careless use of a chainsaw helped your mother and the Avatar become husband and wife."
"They would have only used time travel for evil. I'm sure of it." Azula blew on the smoking bundle of wires. "If it makes both of you feel any better; I told Karo not to take it."
"You're wearing the remote control watch!" Karo protested.
"Indeed." Tenzin raised his eyebrow. "What about the girls you stole it from?"
Azula grabbed Karo's collar. "That Bei Fong chick wants to toss us in jail – don't you think frank admissions of theft will land us in whatever festering rat hole they throw thieves into?"
"What about fixing the machine and giving it back?" Tenzin added helpfully. Sparks flew upwards and trouble always seemed to find him – he often wondered if he was some kind of trouble magnet. He had never quite felt at home in his skin and only ever wanted a peaceful life for him and his family and maybe the odd seal hunting trip. He had inherited his love of things Water Tribe from his mother. Now he had two time traveling thieves and a time machine. He breathed in and consoled himself with images of clubbing white furry seal pups.
"We tried to 'fix it' and Karo did something that nearly killed us," Azula put air quotes around the word 'fix'. "I would be conceding defeat if I told you I failed." Azula held up the bundle of wires which had cooled down in the cold of the winter air. "This did something but I have no clue what and it's now melted. A screw driver can fix anything provided you apply enough force. I said it once but I should have said 'when stealing from aliens; try to learn their language before mugging them.' I wish I could read the manual for this stupid thing."
"Aliens?" Tenzin had once read a newspaper article about the possibility of life on Mars and the impossibility of sending someone to check up on it. "What do you mean?"
"You can't think I'd pick this design." Azula banged the open door with her fist. "People build this kind of thing so their little girls can play with dolls in the backyard. I like tank turrets and grapples and would have gone with the 'don't mess with me unless you have a bigger gun' theme. The girls looked human. Since no one I knew could build a time machine and I knew most of the physicists I assumed they were aliens."
Karo felt Azula's grip tighten on his collar. He knew very little about everyday gadgets like toasters and radios so he had to wonder if Azula made the best choice in choosing him to help fix a machine a thousand years more advanced than a toaster. Turbo Time Travel Tea Houses were way beyond his league and he'd grounded himself against something vital. Azula began to drag him off to his doom.
Tenzin sighed as he felt the snow begin to lightly fall on Air Temple Island. Katara had told him to expect such things from Azula. He felt some relief they hadn't confessed to murdering the alien girls but he had once again learned to respect his mother's perceptive nature. He trudged off in the snow.
As all time travelers except for Azula and Karo understood; was that one always had a spare time machine as a spare in case the main one went missing. Mary and Susan Test had managed to track the thieves through space and time to a large city on a beautiful bay that lay in the grip of a cold winter sixty five years in the future. They had knowledge of the first rule of time travel – always have a way of tracking down your time machine in the event it went missing. They had forgotten about purchasing a lock on the front door which was the second rule of time machine engineering.
"At least Lady Zhao helped us dress inconspicuously," Mary Test whispered as she poked her head into the front door of the tea house.
"These clothes don't keep out the cold." Susan peered inside and then turned on a flash light.
The Test sisters weren't in a good mood. Their backup time travel device lacked the sophistication of the tea house and had homed in on the bus depot of Republic City. In a classic example of 'right time but wrong place' they had popped into existence in a dirty washroom that looked as if someone didn't gave enough of a damn to bomb it. Their backup time travel device then fizzled and burned out as if it had decided it had had enough. This left them in a rundown washroom in a strange city full of people who didn't speak English.
They had met a grumpy customs guard as they tried to leave the bus depot who gave them a short quiz on a piece of paper (in Chinese) as they dodged out a side door and into the night. They had the good fortune of having tasers which may have spared them much trouble with the criminal elements.
This did nothing to improve their moods. They did have a smart phone which could understand any human language and translate it for them. Traveling across Republic City on public transit had allowed them to learn 'colorful metaphors' for sex, crime and drugs and a golden opportunity to see all of the buildings people had given enough of a damn about to bomb.
"Do we have any fruits or vegetables to declare?" Mary read off the paper to verify that the time travel translator function worked. "This city looks like the rats would be in a hurry to leave and they worry about a time traveler bringing a carrot to the city?"
Susan walked around the tea house shining a flash light in various corners. "The tea house wasn't supposed to cross dimensions. What went wrong?"
Mary paced in the other direction. She had no idea what went wrong. One theory suggested they had overshot the Big Bang by some distance and the tea house picked the most viable reality in which to land. She knew one thing had gone wrong as she looked at the broken console: that other girl and her freckle faced boyfriend had broken it beyond their ability to repair it.
The Test sisters had to convince Lady Zhao to help them and this took some tinkering with their translator and a few convincing demonstrations. She finally agreed to provide them with clothes and money after they agreed not to destroy her son and daughter in law and return them both safely home. They could injure the daughter in law but Lady Zhao assured the Test sisters the punishment she had in mind was far worse than what they could conceive. Lady Zhao let the lawn and the weeds in it grow to punish Karo. She had decided to let the spiders breed in their room as a gift for Azula and began to kill off those which didn't exceed ten centimeters.
They wondered if they could keep up their side of the bargain.
"They blew up the batteries." Mary grumpily complained. "We didn't design the tea house for use in Europe did we?"
In six and a half decades, the phonograph had advanced from a machine that could play one record at at time to a slightly more sophisticated machine that allowed the listener to stack five records on the top of a spindle and play them one after the other. It still didn't flip the records to play the other side. The record player made a loud thunk as the second record dropped onto the turntable.
"I don't know if I can stand the peace and tranquility of the Air Temple much more." Azula stood up from a rather hard stool. "Is it still snowing?"
Karo looked out the window at the snow falling past the faint light of the window. "Indeed it is."
Azula said nothing as she walked outside. She had counted on better weather in the future as some of those with nothing better to do than forecast Doomsday had called for a rise in global temperatures caused by the burning of fossil fuels. 'So much for global warming!' Azula thought.
A loud crack followed a second later and Azula screamed.
Karo ran to the door and looked out into the dimly lit hallway. Azula lay on the ground in fetal position, in obvious pain with two metal barbs stuck in her back.
"As long as we have our hand on the trigger, you will do what we want." Karo could see the outline of two teenage girls dressed in his clothes. "We're the Test sisters. Didn't think we could find you? We came to fix our tea house and take you two back to Lady Zhao."
"Those are my clothes!" Karo said as he gazed at the two Test sisters resplendent in his Fire Nation fashion. "Are you wearing my boxers too?"
"Now is not the time – eep – for debating about who wore your boxers; you freckled imp!" Azula kept feeling sharp jabs of pain as one of the girls pumped the trigger of the device they had used to ambush her. "They've got some kind of gun and they're pumping thousands of volts through my body as we speak." Azula spoke with a shake in her voice. "It focuses my mind beautifully but having my heart explode could put a crimp on an otherwise crappy day."
"We broke that." Karo put up his hands at the sight of the two girls with two very nasty 'Tasers'. Whatever they did, however they looked, they made it quite clear to Karo that he didn't want to be on their business end. The Test sisters had two 'Designer Pink' tasers and were now filling Azula with electrons and pain. He distinctly felt Azula would respect their sadism and yet knew she'd harbor a grudge. "Given that you must have come through time...can you give us a ride back? We can laugh at all that's happened and go our own separate ways."
"No!" Both sisters yelled back. "Without the tea house working, none of us go anywhere or anywhen. Our emergency time travel tea cup ran out of power bringing us here!"
"Will all of you shut up!" Azula now twitched in fetal position. "Will whoever keeps shocking me stop it!"
Azula found she could move but had two metal hooks in the meat of her back. "Funny how you miss bladder control when you lose it! I may seem fussy but now could someone dig the barbs out of my back."
"We don't trust you!" Both Test sisters shouted.
Mary waved the pink taser. "Stand up!"
"Ouch!" Azula had enjoyed more successful crimes. She couldn't see what Katara was doing but could feel her digging out the taser prods. "You enjoyed pulling that out!"
Katara had gained much dignity and said nothing. She had enjoyed pulling the taser dart out of Azula's back. She had Azula squirming on a chair next to the rickety wooden table that held a blue glass bottle of disinfectant alcohol and a selection of pliers.
The Test girls didn't quite trust Azula and had their pink tasers pointed at her. They had heard stories and had to dodge a bolt of lightning from Azula (Lady Zhao had briefed them and they had expected this). The lightning took out the back door of the temple dormitory in a flash of blue flames and sent the population of the lemurs on the island into a squealing fit. This was what woke everyone up.
"Ouch!" Azula winced. She had to admire the pure sadistic nature of the Test girls' taser device. It shot barbed hooks into her back and sank deep into her back and remained there until someone came by with a pliers to yank them out. "Ihad a good business model for the tea house – Azula Kai's Retroactive Abortion Service. If you wake up and find out your kid has decided to become a poet; I could go back and screw up your engagement or honeymoon plans!"
In Karo's eyes, the two red haired Test girls dressed like Azula and also looked half mad. The pink tasers they gave them the kind of menace only mad Fire Nation princesses had. Karo could only tell them apart because one wore a star shaped hairpin and the other a moon shaped hairpin – he had no idea who was behind the pins.
Katara wondered if she had grown too old to play with old friends as she placed the two probes and the wires from the taser round on the rough table. "You should feel better."
"My hearts beating as fast as a hummingbird!"
"You are the two girls who own the tea house?" Katara asked the two red haired girls.
"Your friend broke it and our backup Time Travel Teacup broke so were stuck here." The girl with the star in her hair replied. "I'm Susan and this is my twin sister Mary Test – and we want to go home."
It'll take months to get the tea house working again!" Mary threw up her hands in frustration as she completed her sister's thought in that odd way identical twins always did. "Something in the time space continuum knocked us off our course as we traveled time and we would up at your university. Realizing we landed at a university, we went in search of someone who could help us get back to our reality. We found our friend in her lab and asked her. She agreed and even helped us work on the tea house and offered us a place to stay at Lady Zhao's house."
Azula squirmed uncomfortably. In any other reality; she'd get along famously with two social outcasts like the Test sisters and she had come to regret rashly stealing the tea house.
Susan continued. "She sneaked out of the house late that evening with the freckled boy. The city lights dimmed and when we returned to the university quad, the tea house had vanished!" She reached into her vest and then placed a burned out looking tea cup on the table in the small room and it fell to pieces. "We blew our back up time travel tea cup trying to get here!"