*twiddles thumbs* C'mon guys... reviews would be nice... *holds out mug* XD I kid, you don't HAVE to review... but it would be nice. I get lonely here with only lychee nuts and my typewriter...
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Moving on...
DISCLAIMER: I would like to inform all potential prosecutors that I don't own any of Avatar: the Last Airbender no matter how much I would like to. *WAHHHHHHHH*
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As soon as the sky began to swirl into a beautiful splash of purples and pinks and oranges along with the golden setting sun, Katara and Aang wheeled their cart back to the cave, disappointed at the scarcity of their sales. Aang threw his arms into the air and stretched into a huge yawn while Katara dropped to the ground, a mopey look splayed across her face.
"The only things we sold were those two melons! All this fruit is going to go bad if we don't sell it soon," Katara said, slightly downcast. Aang patted her back.
"You know, all we need to do is make a living. We can eat the fruit when it's on its last legs of freshness." He scratched his head and looked down at a few bruised apples in the cart. "Some of the fruit could be in better shape, though." He picked a few badly bruised ones and tossed them into the bushes.
"We should set prices on the fruit and write them down somewhere where everyone can see how great our prices are," Katara suggested, shrugging. "We're getting all this fruit for free so we don't need to worry about setting our prices too low."
"Yeah," Aang agreed, tossing the last mauled apple gently. "It really seems like the town's kinda suffering because of the trade lock-down and the farming crisis. The least we can do is offer very low prices to help everyone out."
Katara looked around. "Did Papan leave his bag with the parchment and ink here?"
"Let's wait until they get back." Aang dropped to the ground next to Katara and rested his head on the dirt. Katara shifted her head so she could rest it on his chest.
After the sun set behind the hills, they could hear the crunching of the dirt, signaling Toph and Sokka's return. As they approached, their slouches became more and more pronounced.
"What's up?" Katara called when they came within a suitable earshot. Sokka kicked some dirt in response.
"Another bad day?" Aang suggested. Toph exhaled loudly.
"Papa," she began venomously, whipping her head around to face him, "why don't you tell them?" Sokka winced.
"Well," he began shiftily, "we took another really high-paying job." He yelped when Toph's fist connected with his shoulder. "And this time it was the first farmer guy's evil second cousin!" Sokka peeped double-time.
Toph's feet slapped along the ground when she entered the cave, and she fell forwards and was somehow cushioned by the unforgiving rock. She was sleeping comfortably within a few minutes.
"Evil second cousin?" Katara questioned, sitting up. Aang followed suit and Sokka nodded tiredly.
"Except for this time he didn't just have the accent, he only spoke French." Sokka screwed up his face and dropped his eyebrows, looking somewhat like a demonic old man. "Vous devez faire tout je vous dis ou vous n'allez pas recevoir vos paiement!"
"Geh my French is rusty," Aang complained. "I didn't speak it all that much in Belgium... I could get by with Mrs. Omanito in English..."
Sokka sighed, thought for a second, and then relayed, "You must do everything I tell you or you're not going to get your payment!" Wiping his forehead, Sokka added, "Same thing as last time, eh?"
"Toph must have had a hard time, too," Katara mused. "She speaks Spanish, not a speck of French." Sokka shrugged.
"I thought she got along fine," he said, turning to the fruit cart. He picked up an apple and bit into it, the juices spraying all over his face and clothes.
"CAN'T YOU EAT NICELY?" Katara shouted at him. "I'M GOING TO HAVE TO WASH THAT!"
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The next day, Katara and Aang wheeled their cart into town. They parked it in a place with more traffic so they'd have more potential customers; this time Katara had used one long piece of parchment and scrawled neatly every price for every fruit they were selling, one side in English and the other side in French, just in case. Berries were two copper for a handful, a single apple was a single copper. Their pears and peaches went for two copper each, and after replenishing their melon selection from the mountain, the melons were selling for one silver apiece.
With the flow of traffic much more numerous than before, they had much more sales than they had the day before. People saw the low prices and came up to the cart; if they asked for fruit in English Aang would handle it, while if they asked in French Katara would answer them. Sale after sale was carried out, and around a half-hour after lunchtime, sales died down.
The two were lounging around their cart when an older man wheeling a cabbage cart saw their fruit cart. Smirking slightly, he wheeled his cart and parked it across from theirs, about twenty feet away in total. Katara was examining a bruised peach and Aang was counting the money when the first cabbage hit.
It wasn't big or anything; it was a small lump off a head of cabbage. Splattering into the front of the cart and falling to the ground, Aang and Katara jumped backwards, completely shocked. Katara's bruised peach departed from Katara's hand and squished itself on the floor, a handful of money clattered to the ground. Aang wrapped his arms protectively around her waist while the both of them looked around for the source of the attack. Their eyes landed on a wheezing old man at his cabbage cart, struggling to breathe because he was laughing so hard. Katara's eyes narrowed.
"He just hit our cart with a cabbage!" she hissed into Aang's ear. Aang rolled his eyes and shrugged.
"Maybe... it was an... accident?" he said, smiling when Katara gave him an annoyed 'even you don't believe that' look. He turned his eyes to the cabbage man.
"Hey!" he called to the man. "What are you doing?" The man snickered loudly.
"A bit of friendly competition, nothing more!" he called back, picking up a head of lettuce and examining it closely. He shined the lettuce head with his sleeve and set it back on his cart. Katara and Aang sighed.
"Oh well," Aang said, bending down and beginning to pick up the coins he dropped on the floor. As soon as he ducked down a lettuce head sailed right over where his torso used to be, slamming into the wall behind them and flopping onto the floor. His popped right back up and glared at the man. "Ooh... it's on..." he said darkly, rolling up the cuffs on his sleeves. Katara looked shocked.
"What?" she said indignantly. "You were defending him just a moment ago!" His answer was picking up the bruised peach from the floor and throwing it as hard as he could at the cabbage man. It hit him smack-dab in the nose.
"BLEHHHH!" the man shouted as mushy peach-juice sopped all over his face and dribbled down his neck. "BLEH BLEH BLEH! EWW!" As he wiped it all off with one of the rags on his cart, a wide grin made itself present on his face, starting small at first but then blooming into a fully-developed sinister smile. "HEHEHEHEHEH..." He picked up another lettuce head and tossed it roughly at the fruit cart.
Aang, making use of his quick reflexes, snatched up an apple and chucked it as hard as he could at the lettuce that was still mid-air. The two exploded into a flurry of lettuce and apple bits on impact.
A while later, Aang and the cabbage man were draining their resources from their carts and attempting to make the other surrender as quickly as possible. Berry juice and mushy apples littered the cabbage man's cart, while bits and leafs of lettuce were all over the fruit cart. Katara didn't even want to know what their front sign looked like anymore.
It was around five o' clock now, the sun at a tilt, threatening to fall back behind the mountains. The no man's land in between the two warring carts looked like a true battlefield, gory strawberries and dying peaches all crying out in despair as they were assailed with flying lettuce.
And then it was all over. The cabbage man tossed a medium-sized head of lettuce, aiming straight for Aang's head. At the last second, however, Aang's hands flew up to protect his face and ended up catching the head of lettuce neatly between his fingers. The cabbage man flipped.
"AUUUUGH! YOU CAUGHT MY LETTUCE!" he shrieked, running around in circles with arms flailing. He sped around to the back of his cart and hoisted up a pole with a white rag tied to the end. He waved the flag around wildly, set it back into his cart, and then frantically wheeled his cart as far away from them as he possibly could, tossing silver coins behind his back. Aang strolled over to the trail of silver coins, picking them up one by one. When he returned, a look of utter triumph was splayed across his face. Katara rolled her eyes.
"Guess that was the manliest thing you've done in a while, huh, Dominique?" Katara drawled. Aang nodded, depositing two handfuls of silver coins.
"And we even got the spoils of the war," he said happily, grinning. He failed to mention that their fruit supply was completely annihilated and after lunchtime, nobody had bought a single fruit. In fact, nobody had even walked down the street while the fruit-cabbage war was in session.
Wheeling their empty, lettuce-ified cart back home, the only "spoils of war" Katara could come up with were the clinking of the full coin bag and the hot grin Aang had on his face for the entire day.
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WOOT! *fistpump* I think that was the most fun I've had writing a chapter. Like, no joke. Hope you guys liked! (I sure did lol) Review plz! BY THE WAY: if some of you happen to not know the meaning of "spoils of war," it essentially means the things you win because you won a war. No need to get all technical if you know the entire dictionary definition by heart, I just wanted to simplify it so I could post this chapter faster XD
~Momo
