The Ember Island Player's Extended Scenes
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Ziggy's Corner: This is just a one shot. That episode was really good, BUT it could have definitely been far better. At least I think so anyway. They missed a good, really good chance, to give a nod to the fans' devotion to the show. Underline the word, devotion. And so, I present this short story. If the Gaang thought the play was odd … wait till they see their "fans" in full Avatard strength! Lol, you'll see what I mean! ;).
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"I can't believe how bad this play is," Katara said, walking down the steps to the lobby. "And its only the first act!" She turned to look to see if her friends agreed, all of them, save for Toph, were nodding viciously.
"I warned you about this," Zuko said with a sigh. "I nearly threw up the last time I went to see their rendition of, Love of the Dragons. Heck, my dad actually threw his bag of firecorn and booed the actors during their first ten minutes!" The young prince smiled, though he was bitter at his father, there was a time when he was fun. It was only when his uncle went to conquer Ba Sing Se with his son, that Ozai's attitude had turned dark.
"I'm surprised he didn't shoot flames at them," Suki said, wrapping her arms around Sokka's wasit.
"He would have, if my mother hadn't been there," Zuko laughed. He laughed to himself, his mother was shocked and horrified enough that her husband decided to actively 'boo' the actors, and had yanked him to his seat by the edge of his ear!
"Anyway, I need to find the bathroom, we've only got like… ten minutes before the second act starts!" Sokka said. He slipped away from Suki, giving her a Water Tribe kiss, and slipped through the crowd, before anyone could say anything.
"He's just still emotional from that last scene," Toph giggled. Through the vibrations of the ground, she could sense Suki giving her a dark stare. She shrugged, and slumped to the ground. "Probably going to buy himself some firegummis too."
Katara continued to walk around the lobby, surprised at how big it really was, and how many people were here. It shouldn't have surprised her, it was the grand opening of the play… that's usually how plays worked. It was only if it was an awesome play, that they continue to pack the building week after week. There weren't too many colors to catch her eyes, the typical reds and blacks of the Fire Nation, although from time to time, she caught a piece of gold. That's new, I wonder what that's all about?
She continued to walk around, cautiously keeping her eyes on her companions, in case someone recognized them. With so many people, it would be hard to escape, not only would there be no room to manuever, let alone if everyone decided to fight for their country, they'd have too many opponents! It was only a flash of movement that caught her eye, and she frowned.
The girl wore bright blue, and her hair was dark brown, curled up into two thin loops. For a moment, Katara thought she was looking at a mirror, then remembered she was wearing her Fire Nation clothes… and her hair was down, not in loopies. Wow, a Katara fan. She smiled for a few moments, impressed at how well the girl had copied her. She nearly decided to approach the other girl, when a second Katara walked around the corner. This one was heavier than the other girl, or the original. Her dress really didn't seem to fit, or flatter her, and her eyes were a pale green. O…kay, two Katara fans, I guess there's no problem there.
"Oh… its you," the first Katara copy said to the second. There seemed to be a pleasentry, although it masked a bit of snobbery. Her voice nearly reminded Katara of the rich little brat she and Toph had encountered at Ba Sing Se, Star, that was her name. "So, I didn't think you'd come," Star Katara said to Big Katara.
"I had too, I was hoping that they'd put some of my ideas into the play," Big Katara said. She seemed oblivious to the other girl's distain for her, and seemed very pleasant.
"You mean where Katara and Haru make out?" Star Katara giggled. Her face twisted as if she had just tasted bitter wine, and wanted to spit it out. "Oh come on, you know that's just stupid. Katara and Prince Zuko is a much better romance." She smiled superiorly and crossed her arms as she sighed. "Its so much more romantic."
Katara felt her jaw drop as she blinked. Not only were these girls dressing like her, they were deciding who she would wind up with? She nearly laughed, but as Zuko walked toward her, she blushed, and inched away. He seemed to notice, and turned his attention to the two other Kataras, before he seemed to realize that he'd been approaching the wrong girl!
"Seriously, Mara," Star Katara said to Mara 'Big Katara', "Zutara is better."
"Who's Zutara?" Zuko asked. Star Katara and Mara "Big Katara" turned and looked at him as if he was insane.
"You're a fan of these people, and you don't know?" Mara "Big Katara snapped.
"Well, a moment ago, she was talking about how she liked the 'romance' between me… I mean, Katara and Zuko," Katara said, quickly reminding herself that she was underground from the law. She could feel Zuko's jaw drop, and knew he'd inched away from her.
"Duh, Zuko and Katara romance, Zutara, don't you know your shipping?" Star Katara sighed.
"Shipping?" Zuko and Katara asked.
The two Katara copies looked at each other, and rolled their eyes. "Newbies," they groaned in unison. Instead of explaining anything, both of the girls walked away, leaving a shocked Water Bender, and Fire Prince to try and make sense of what just happened. Slowly the began walking back to Toph, inching away from each other, as they stared at the ground.
"You know, I like you, but only as a friend," Zuko said softly.
Katara blushed, and turned her gaze to Zuko, back to her feet. "Er… sure. Of course." She blushed harder and laughed. "I mean, you and I…," she said through a forced, nervous, giggle.
Zuko chuckled nervously himself. "Yeah, I mean… that's kind of … weird."
"So weird," Katara agreed.
"The weirdest," Zuko said with a blush of himself. He shook his head, and prayed Mai never found out about this. Though they were "technically" on a break, he still had strong feelings for the girl, and was thankful she'd helped him, Sokka, Suki, and the others in getting away. He only hoped she'd managed to escape from Azula, or her uncle made prison life easy for her.
Katara opened her mouth to say something, when Sokka burst up to them at a fast pace. His skin was so pale they thought he must have eaten something bad. "What happened?!" she asked.
"I.. I went to the bathroom, but there was this stand selling stuff… and… and," he began hyperventilating, his skin growing even greener.
"And what?" Suki asked, making the three teenagers jump.
Slowly Sokka slipped a piece of paper from his pocket, and handed it to Zuko. The young prince frowned, looked at it for a moment, and felt the blood leave his body.
"What is it?" Katara asked.
"It's a drawing, of Sokka and Mai together!" Zuko shouted at the top of his lungs, his eyes buldging!
"Sokka, how coult you?!" Suki cried.
"Hey, I didn't draw it!" Sokka snapped back. "And anyway it gets worse!" He passed out a few more drawings. "Suki and Hahn! Suki and Haru, Aang and Ty Lee, Aang and Katara…,"
"Wait… why is that one worse?" Katara snapped, flushing bright red. Her hand reached out and snapped the paper of her and Aang, and she nearly fainted. "Okay, now that's just plain weird." The drawing had the two as adults, with five children, all wearing some odd clothing from some other culture.
"They were selling Aang and Azula pictures too!" Sokka said, his pulse racing!
Half shocked, half weirded out, Zuko laughed. "Aang and my sister?! Oh yeah, that's a romance I'd like to…," he stopped as a group of at least thirty Zuko's raced by, play fighting with three Zhao's.
"Hey you guys, you're not going to believe this," Aang said, racing forward. "There's an eating contest!"
"Well, at least that's normal," Sokka said, slowly.
"Aang, compared to what we've just seen," Katara said as she hid the pictures, "that's really nothing to talk about."
"Sokka could probably enter it, and win whatever prize they're offering," Zuko said.
"Yeah, but you didn't let me finish, you have to look like General Iroh to enter it," Aang said. He waited for a long moment, but stood silent as four silent, jaw dropped faces looked back at him.
"Look, its nearly time to get back to the play," Katara said, relishing the chance to get back to normal "Avatarish fan stuff". "I say we find our seats, and watch." If there was going to be any votes of opposition, a legion of tap dance, Kyoshi drag dressing "Sokkas" made it vanish like a ghost disappearing in the morning mist.
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"Okay, that act wasn't so bad," Toph said with a smug smile.
"Only because you're character looks like a overly bound behemouth in a dress!" Sokka snapped.
"Exactly," the girl said with a bright smile. "Well… that plus I have such an awesome power!"
"Yes, because you're always using your belching power to keep an eye on us," Zuko said.
Sokka and Suki disappeared, looking for the backstage, so the Water Tribe warrior could meet his actor doppleganger, and give him jokes. Katara had disappeared to look for a missing Aang, and all that was left were Toph and Zuko.
They talked for a while, and then Zuko was unintentionally "insulted" by a mock Aang, about his scar. Zuko stretched, and stood to his feet, looking around. They'd intentionally decided to rest in a different area of the building. "I'm going to see if I can find something to eat," Zuko groaned.
"Then I'll go with you," Toph said, quickly joining him. Most of the wares weren't to either of their tastes, but Zuko finally found chocolate fire pies, one of his childhood favorites, and bought three of them.
"I'll give you a discount, for your girlfriend, if you want," the short young girl, who worked the stand said with a bright smile.
Toph did a spit take, without having anything to drink to spit, and burst out in laughter, though despite it, she blushed.
"She's not my girlfriend," Zuko answered quickly.
"That's okay, I didn't mean to insult you. I just thought you guys were a Toku couple."
"What in Agni is a Toku couple?" Zuko barked.
"You know, Toku? As in Toph and Zuko. You just take one part of a person's name and add it to another part of the other person's, to make a ship!" The girl smiled, and for a moment, she reminded Zuko of Song. Toph could do nothing but laugh hysterically.
"Don't you think, I don't know, that Toph's a little too young for Zuko?" the young prince asked, desperate to discharge the situation.
"Maybe, but many of my friends think its cute, just like Tokka," the girl said, still smiling. "I personally like Toaang myself."
"Oh man, I think I'm going to pee myself," Toph said, thrashing on the floor as she laughed.
Zuko had to struggle to get her to her feet. "Well, we'll keep that in mind, thanks."
"I can't breathe!" Toph said, wheezing with laughter.
"Will you cut it out, you're making a scene!" Zuko begged.
"You guys! Suki wrote an autobiography!" Sokka said, roaring up to them. Before they could question it, or before he could realize Toph was spasming with laughter, he thrust a six hundred page book, with Suki's face painted on it.
"My Path of the Warrior?" Zuko said, reading the title. He frowned, watching Suki roll her eyes. He paged through it, reading some intimate things, and continued paging through, until he realized something.
"I didn't write that," Suki groaned.
"That you know about, what if you wrote that in the future and a hole appeared and it dropped here!" Sokka said, his eyes wide.
"Some deranged fan wrote it, pretending to be me," Suki snapped. "I mean, come on, it ends as I get sick for the last time, with my grandchild finishing it, after I died. Eighty years from now!"
"Like I said, it could be from the future!" Sokka gasped. "We have all the facts of the war's end, we'll know how to beat the Fire Lord!"
"The war, according to 'me', ends when the Fire Lord marries, Katara and realizes he's made a serious mistake!"
"Yeah, don't remind me. I've got a few choice words for her," the warrior snarled.
"Then explain how its Admiral Zhao who finally surrenders to the Avatar at Ba Sing Se ten years from now!" Zuko said. "He died months seven months ago at the North Pole."
"Maybe the spirits bring him back to life," Sokka said, his mind racing with conspiracy theories. He continued his thoughts until his girlfriend slapped some since into him.
"Sokka, get over it, the copy me even said she was the one who wrote it! She called it… what was it?"
"Fan fiction!" Sokka said, as the words struck his mind.
"And I suppose someone made a game about us too!" Zuko said, rolling his eyes.
"Actually yeah," Toph said, finally breaking away from her laughter. "After the first act, when all you abandoned me, I heard a fake Aang and a fake Jet playing a card game. I couldn't see the images real closely, but it was obvious that some cards had most of us on them."
"This is an outrage!" Sokka shouted. "We should be getting a cut of the ginger-apple pie!"
Zuko slapped him in the back of his head as he shook his friend's shoulder. "Will you be quiet, between you and Toph it's a wonder why we haven't been caught yet!"
"Oh yeah, I forgot about that, some people think either Zuko or Sokka should be my boyfriend!" the girl said with a wide smile, fighting giggling again.
"I can beat that!" Katara said, her skin crawling. "Someone just tried to offer me a 'story' with the 'shipping' of Katula!" It took a few minutes for them to add one and two together, but once they had, each one of them turned green.
"These people are weird," Toph said with a shudder. She'd been enjoying the mocking characters, the devotion the fans had to them, even the "shipping", but that … that was just plain weird!
"Let's just go and watch the third act, so we can go home," Zuko said, disappearing quickly in the crowd.
"Good call," Katara said with a nod.
"I'm not sure if I even want to see the third act," Suki said with a groan.
"It might have good effects! The second one had pretty decent ones," Sokka point out.
"I'm all for just going home now," Toph sighed. "By the way, where's Twinkle Toes?"
"He's coming, he just needed some fresh air," Katara said. She blushed as she remembered his soft lips on hers, and her mind raced. Did she love him? And if so, as a brother? A friend? Or something else? Leave it to these fans, and I'd have every single guy as a boyfriend whom I've ever met. Winterstorm, leave it to them and I might have some other kind of relationship! She shuddered, but as it raced down her spine, her mind again raced to Aang. Maybe… just maybe those Kataang people weren't too far off.
Ziggy's Zone: Okay, lol, the Zutarians are going to hate me, but I want to point out, Michael and Bryan finished the story off with Zumai and Kataang, so OFFICIALLY the Kataang gang did win the OFFICIAL ship war. Of course that's what's fun with fan fiction, there's always alternate history, alternate universe, and the such. After all, Katara's name was originally her mother's! Kya! Hench, without knowing it, Michael and Bryan created not one but TWO Avatar Universes! Who knows, maybe in that one, where Aang doesn't really seem to be interested in Kya, the end of THAT story has Zuya, instead of Kutaang!
I still had a blast with this, and laughed myself silly while writing it. No doubt if the Gaang and their world saw us, and our fandom, they're react the same way they did to their fans in their world in this story! I hope you all had fun too with this one shot! And thanks for reading!