A few points, if you will have patience will me. Or skip it all if you really don't care. It doesn't make a ton of difference in the long run.
Yes, I did write a story called Avatar Academy previously. And it sucked. Also, a kid from my school found it & made fun of it, so with those two points made, I deleted it. THIS IS NOT THE SAME AVATAR ACADEMY. There will be drama. Like, actual drama. And it will be decent. And my OC, Vi, is out. I really don't like her anymore. I have like, 3 other OC's but they won't be main characters. And they're pretty likeable non-MarySue characters, so hopefully they'll go over better than Vi did.
And I'm currently working on Things My Best Friend MUST DO Around The World.And I want to start on my FictionPress stuff again. Thankfully, my father MURDERED my Sims 3 so I won't be playing that, but I do have something that resembles a life now, so be patient with updates.
Alright, enjoy.
VQVQVQV
August 25, 2009
On The Way to Avatar Academy
Sokka's POV
I can't believe I have to go to boarding school. I mean seriously, what does my dad think we are? Some prepped-up rich family with money to burn?
If you know me, you might think, 'Sokka, why aren't you happy to get out of that house? Freedom!'
That is a very good question.
That I do not have the answer to.
Yes, in a way, I am excited to leave. Excited to leave my small house in the South Pole, leave behind my tiny room in the basement, my new step-grandfather who hates me, the ghost of my mother that still haunts us all.
Everything that happened there.
But I'm sad too. Sad to leave the only home I've ever known, the house I've lived in since the womb. I know everything in that house, from the dent I made in the oven door when I was little to the marks my sister made on the wall when she was five & was rocking her baby doll so hard she fell over backwards. That's where I was born. Where I grew up. Where my mother is buried.
And now I'm leaving to go to the other side of the planet to attend a school I never even wanted to go to in the first place.
"Hakoda, how much longer until we get there?" My fluffy-headed new stepmother whined. Yes, my stepmother. The reason Katara & I are being carted off to boarding school in the first place.
Nicole. Oh, she was all right when my father dated her. Twenty-something blonde, always sweet & loving whenever she came over to the house. We were never that fond of any of our dad's girlfriends, but Katara & I agreed she wasn't too terrible.
That all changed the day of the wedding.
It was early June, I had gotten out of school a couple days before. I was feeling a bit stiff in my new tuxedo, but I was happy for my dad. The ceremony went fine, but once the ring was safely on her finger, she changed.
I couldn't wait to get away from her at the reception. After about an hour I grabbed my sister & we ran upstairs to our hotel room. Dad didn't even try to find us before he left on his honeymoon. I still wonder if he even noticed we left.
"Just about another hour, dear." My father looked over at his wife & smiled. She smiled back, then went right back to looking boredly out the window, as if the whole loving wife act was a bit too tiring at the moment.
After they got back, things changed. For one thing, GranGran & Pakku were told to move out. It threw us, but it was not an unreasonable request. They had been talking about moving into a tiny cottage down the street from us, give everyone some space. We all knew that they should move out. But it wasn't her place to say it.
After they were gone, Nicole moved her stuff in their vacated room. To this day I really don't know what's all in there, or what she does in there, because she allowed no one in there, not even my father. She made plans about the house, plans to rip out the outdated kitchen & put in all new, stainless steel appliances. Re-tile the bathrooms, repaint all the rooms in the house. I liked our house. We didn't have the money to update anything while my sister & I were young and after my mother died, we wanted everything to stay the same. How it was when she was alive. How she loved it.
Then she took it too far. She wanted to take out the gazebo in the back, the beautiful gazebo my mother had built in her garden, the garden she worked on every summer in the little time it was actually warm enough for anything to grow. The urn containing her ashes was there. She told that it was time to 'let go' and scatter her ashes somewhere.
I put my foot down at that. I said some things that I really shouldn't, that she wasn't out mother & it wasn't her place to get rid of our real mother. I said this with my dad within earshot.
To this day, my dad can't look me in the eye. After my fight with Nicole, she suggested sending us to boarding school, for 'enrichment' & a 'higher education.' Both me & Katara knew she just wanted to get us out of the house so she could do whatever she wanted. I'm certain my dad did too. But he didn't object.
Katara & I were supposed to help make the decision. We looked through all the sites with them, read all the brochures, but in the end Nicole decided to send us as far away from home as possible.
Avatar Academy.
It was far away enough. The campus sat in between the Inner Wall & the Outer Wall of Ba Sing Se. It was an old school, it was established as a tribute to Avatar Aang, who ended a war that lasted a hundred years between the four nations. It had plenty of tradition. And it was a good school. We looked into the school, it had great academics, a great extracurricular program, & it had spat out a whole bunch of smart, successful people who made something out of themselves.
But it wasn't where I wanted to be.
I wanted to be home, talking to my dad about the girls at school, having him coach me about how to ask the one I liked to Homecoming. Having my grandmother lecture me about being a gentleman. Pakku could be there, I guess. Baking cookies with my sister, getting flour all over the kitchen. Since this is a fantasy, Nicole never existed. My mom is there, helping me write my English papers, because God only knows how much I suck at that particular subject, making dinner, all of us around the table to eat. One big, happy family.
But that's not my life.
My father sees the school sign. He turns left.
VQVQVQV
August 25, 2009
Avatar Academy Main Office
Zuko's POV
I've never been good at math.
It's just something I've always sucked at. Put me in an English class, I already know everything the teacher tells us. Give me a language textbook, I can have the thing memorized in an hour.
But math? I just can't get the hang of it. I never have been able to earn a grade higher than a C in every math class I've been in. & even then I had been lucky.
And supposedly that is what I'm supposed to be focusing on here. Learning math. I feel about five years old.
I finish filling out the athletics form & push it towards my father to sign. He scowled at me, then signed his name in his chicken scratch handwriting. On the other side of me, my Uncle rolls his eyes.
Uncle would be staying here with me. He came here a couple years ago & built the campus it's very own tea shop. I still think it's weird. But at least he would be here with me. At least I wouldn't be left alone.
My sister bounced up to my father and showed him her schedule. Full of honors classes & advanced firebending courses, most likely. My sister was born with the gift of not being bad at anything. I was as gifted as her in many areas. More, in some cases. But she has always been the better firebender.
And she can solve an equation.
"Oh, here's Zuzu's schedule." She said with a sniff, then handed my schedule to my father, who glanced at it for a moment, then flicked it to me with disgust. Uncle looked over my shoulder.
I liked my schedule. It was full of classes I was excited to take & I had lunch at a reasonable hour. But I knew what would really set my father off.
"You signed him up for choir?" Ozai glared at Iroh, which is what I did when he told me too.
"It's enriching! And I think if Zuko gave it a chance, he'd really enjoy it." Uncle gave me a big, goofy grin and threw his arm around my shoulder. I, of course, knew I would never enjoy it. But Uncle would appreciate bragging about how his nephew was in the Avatar Academy choir, which was one of the most accomplished choirs in the world. Also, my friends Mai and Ty Lee said they'd take choir with me. So that makes it a little better.
Ozai rolled his eyes; Azula scoffed. She had, of course, signed up for another firebending class rather than an art or music class. Personally, I think I had more of a chance of having fun in choir.
"ZUUUUKOOOOOOOO!" Ty Lee barralled into me at full speed, jumping & hugging & squealing. Mai was right behind her; that's right, Ty Lee's parents had been out-of-town for her sister's wedding, so Mai's parents had taken both girls over. Ty Lee was ecstatic to be away from her airhead parents & match-set sisters. Mai was about as happy as Mai could ever be, leaving her parents & her little brother.
"Ty Lee. Chill. God." Mai walked up to us, rolling her eyes. Azula stepped forward.
"It's great to see you, Mai." The two awkwardly embraced. Once they parted, however, Ty Lee mauled Azula in the same fashion as me.
"Oh my god! This is gonna be so much fun! Just like The Royal Fire Academy, except Zuko's going to be here with us! Yay!" Ty Lee clapped.
Ozai rolled his eyes once more. "Well, I should probably be heading back. Your grandfather will be expecting me." he bent down and kissed the top of Azula's head, then looked me straight in the eye. "Succeed here. You'll need to."
Love you too, Dad. Iroh had walked over to Mai's parents and was chatting with them. Two dark-skinned kids about my age came in with a man who could only be their father, and a anorexic looking blonde who looked like she was hardly a few years older than us. The girl was wearing a white tank top with her chocolate colored waves cascading down her shoulders. The boy was wearing a concert tee and pre-destroyed laguna straight-leg skinny jeans. Their father was looking uncomfortable in a button-up shirt & tie. The woman with him looked completely at home in a white sundress.
The father walked up to the front desk and gave the names. Sokka and Katara Waters. So the anorexic was not a student. She looked that young.
The kids came up to their father's sides and started filling out paperwork with him. The blonde hung back, looking bored. The son was on the side nearest to me. He looked up & met my gaze and gave me one shy, friendly smile.
I nodded back and turned to my Uncle.
VQVQVQV
August 25, 2009
On The Earth Dorm Circle
Toph's POV
"Are you SURE you have everything you need, sweetheart?" Even Fall Out Boy couldn't drown out my mother's sickly sweet voice. I was forced to remove my earbuds and face her.
"I mean, you could always change your mind now...you don't have to stay here if you don't like it." I rolled my eyes.
"Mom, I LOVE it here. I WANT to stay." And it was true. The reason I wanted to go here in the first place was to get out of the house, true, but I hadn't been on campus for an hour & I loved it. I could feel the way the campus was laid out, how the very front and center section contained the Main Office, the offices of all the teachers, the library, the cafeteria, hangouts spots. The front right was where all the students lived, and I loved that. The dorms were positioned in four circles, Water Circle, Earth Circle, Fire Circle, and Air Circle. Each individual dorm was named after a place of person of that nationality, or something to that nature.
I had been placed in Toph Bei Fong Dorm, my ancestor and namesake. She had been a blind earthbender, just as I am. And she had aided Avatar Aang in saving the world a couple centuries ago. I was proud to have her name. I really was.
Except I wish I didn't have to inherit her clingy parents as well.
"Toph, your mother and I are just worried about you. This is a big place, and I'm not sure your cousin will be able to watch out for you." My father did not do a great job of hiding his dislike towards my older cousin. Or, technically, his cousin, as Haru's mother was my father's mother's sister. Haru was three years older than me, five times bigger than me, and a much worse earthbender. Oh, he did okay. He just wasn't that wonderful.
Oh course, Haru made an ill-timed move and chose that particular moment to appear.
"TOOOOOOOOOOPH!" Haru scooped me up in his large arms & swung me around. I laughed.
"It's SO good to see you! How have you been?" Haru was practically jumping up and down in excitement. His parents walked up behind him, stepping exhaustively, but they laughed at their overly-eager son.
"Haru, it's good to see you." My father put on a semi-smile and shook Haru's hand. "Lyrra, Tyro, it's good to see you two as well." He shook Uncle Tyro's hand, and finally embraced my Aunt Lyrra.
"Lao, how have you been? You and Poppy haven't brought Toph up in a while." She laughed.
While our parents chatted, Haru and I snuck over to the side to the car.
"So what's been going on? You never called me back." I pouted. Haru sighed.
"There's been a lot of trouble with the store. A lot of theft in the area. I've been pretty busy trying to help my parents, but..." He trailed off.
"You haven't come out of the closet with them yet, haven't you?" I asked. Two years ago, Haru told me he was gay. I had kinda figured it out by then, & I'm fairly sure my parents & his had a pretty good clue. He smiled nervously.
"I didn't want to go off to school and have the worrying about me, you know, sharing a dorm with other guys who are straight and all that.' He fiddled. "I'm thinking of telling them on Winter Break. Who knows, maybe I'll just bring a boyfriend home and tell them that way." He laughed nervously. I rolled my eyes and put my arm through his and started walking towards our parents.
"Whatever decision you make, just remember I'll be there with you every step of the way."
VQVQVQV
August 25, 2009
Main Office
Teo's POV
"Omg! TEO!" My very best friend Yue threw herself at me so fast I didn't even see her. I actually had to throw my brake down so I didn't go careening back and slamming into my father, who's back was turned to me.
I laughed as Yue finally released me. "It's great to see you Yue!" I hadn't seen her since the Midsummer's festival two months ago. I don't get to see Yue that often, but when we do see each other, it's like we had never been apart.
Her dad jokes that it's because our destinies had been intertwined. I really don't know. I do know that our lives were both saved on the same night. When I was a baby and Yue was about two, a flood wiped out our town and killed my mother. My father was unharmed, but they couldn't find me. So he went to the Oasis in the Water Tribe city in the North pole and prayed to the ocean spirit. Yue's parents were there, praying the the moon spirit to heal their sick daughter. Afterwards, Yue's parents came home to find that she had made a complete recovery. My father received a phone call saying they had found me.
It's a weird story, I know. But hey, who am I to judge with destiny?
"So! Who did you get for a roommate?" Yue asked me excitedly. Actually, I hadn't even looked at my room assignment. I glanced at it.
"Some guy named Haru. You?"
"Someone named Katara Waters."
VQVQVQV
August 25, 2009
Inside Southern Air Dorm
Aang's POV
I have a secret.
I walked around my small-ish single, where a bed, a desk, a bookcase, and a dresser all fit nicely. I had put a rug down for Appa, my lowland sheepdog, and my Siamese cat, Momo, was sleeping in the top shelf of the bookcase.
I wasn't technically supposed to have pets, but they made me feel safe. Protected. I needed them here.
Because my secret could get me killed. My secret could cause a war if it was discovered. My secret cannot be told to anyone, because even I am not supposed to know for three more years.
My secret is this. My name is Aang. I am the Avatar.
VQVQVQV
Yes, I apologize that these got smaller as the chapter went on. I wrote Sokka's thing on a completely different day than the rest. & I have to get off in four minutes.
Alright, I was some opinions. I tried telling the backstory of each character here without being obvious, except Zuko's, because we all know Zuko's issues.
So yeah, review please. I'll give you a pudding cup!