"Keep those arms of yours firm, Katara. Remember to breathe... Excellent serenity, Yue."
"Thank you, Coach Hama!"
Yue's voice seemed to flutter as she gracefully returned the small blob of water at Katara's side of the court, and the dark-toned waterbender grit her teeth to prevent the blob from touching the sand pavement of the tennis court. Their coach - a slouching, petite old woman with silvery white hair - observed the girls' opposing strategies at one side of the court. One small mark of water on the white floury sand would be impossible to summon from even the most expert waterbender, and Katara refused to get her sandy side of the court get another mark of water.
Outside of the sandy tennis court, with a small moat of water that surrounded the two female waterbending players, Aang noticed a blackboard posted at the very far end, with the following written on white chalk:
Round 4
YUE: 13
KATARA: 11
It was a friendly round, and Yue was beating Katara by two points... which explained why Katara was straining to gain those points back. Her hair was hanging down to her waist and it moved wildly along with all of her swift movement along the court.
Yue leapt as the same blob of water came towards her side of the court as quick as lightning, and the girl launched a move with her right arm to ricochet that water back towards her opponent before her side could hit the sandy ground. Yue's features were calm and secure, while Aang was both impressed and terrified to see Katara's ferocity on the opposite side of the court.
To say that the girl took this sport seriously was quite an understatement, and Aang could not help but be fascinated by this other side of Katara.
"Come on, Loopies! You can do this..." Aang heard the familiar voice of Teo shout from the front of the crowd, and he saw the boy grip the handles of his wheelchair in anticipation.
The young airbender smiled at that nickname, wondering if he was already qualified to use it himself as a friend. He went over and waved a hello to the familiar face.
"Oh hey, Aang."
"Hey," the boy clutched Katara's script with one hand behind his back, hoping that the reason behind his coming to the Water Tennis game were less obvious. "What're you up to?"
"Meh... just killing time," Teo shrugged over to the airbender, "Toph is finishing up with her Football practice, so I'm waiting around for her."
There was a slight beaming look that passed through Teo's face, and Aang laughed, as if understanding that feeling very much. "How's the Tennis match?"
"It's close...and a crazy one." Teo said without hesitation, "Katara doesn't get it... she needs to stay calm during those moves. She gets really into the game sometimes. It's scary."
Promptly, the girl's growling voice lunged forward when attempting to toss the blob of water back to Yue as an overhead pass. Her hair was disheveled , lifted above her scalp as she waved both arms behind her with a stunning ricochet of the blob of water... and it flew over to Yue's side as two shards of ice!
Aang's eyes rose in shock... even more as he saw Yue's calm - almost disappointed - demeanor.
The young opponent with radiant white hair kept both hands firmly outward at her center, and with her knees bent, she received both shards of ice like a voluntary magnet. Just as they reached her palms, the girl breathed in and quickly melted the icicles back into water, floating serenely to become a single blob once again.
A small jump forward, and Yue exhaled her breath, releasing the water back to her opponent quickly, with her fingers opening out like webs. What caught Katara – and a few other spectators – off guard, was that the water had suddenly broken off into little droplets as they passed over the net. And froze into hail.
Katara was too overwhelmed by that sudden move, she instantly crossed her arms over her face to block those little marbles of ice from hitting her.
"This was supposed to be a friendly game, Katara!" Yue shouted over to her, sadly, but the girl with hairloops did not seem to listen.
As if her stubbornness had suddenly taken a life of its own, Katara's lifted herself up into a new Bending stance and raised her arms up. With closed eyes, she lifted all the pieces of hail from the sand in unison, floating in midair. She knew that Yue had won that point, but regardless, the girl did not return the water to her in a blob.
Instead... Katara scrunched her face into a cruel, almost bestial frown as she opened her eyes to her friend... and the marbles of ice slowly molded themselves into sharp little daggers in mid-air.
Half of the spectators gasped. One look at Teo's eyes, and the young airbender knew that this was a very... very illegal move she was about to do.
And that was when Coach Hama had had enough.
In a flash, the woman had lifted her sleeves up to the elbow... with her eyes full of disappointment... to demonstrate a waterbending technique that was both a blessing and a curse to her hands.
Katara's arms suddenly began to jerk menacingly, shaking all the way down to her sides and breaking the control she had over the ice shards. Her teeth grit with both sadness and rage as she felt her own body almost betray her to the sand, on her knees, and Aang's heart was beating menacingly like a drum... wanting so much to jump over the fence and help her.
Katara shut her eyes, knowing full well she had broken the rules as her body continued to shake like a dangling puppet.
The crowd grew silent, and Teo looked away at the corner of Aang's eye, but the airbender could not help but see the ultimate power of the elder waterbender take control to the rebellious young waterbender. And with a slight whimper of surrender on Katara's part, Coach Hama eased the grip on her elderly hands, and released the young girl into the soft ground to breathe heavily.
"That is the second time this week you make me do this, Katara..." Coach Hama slowly approached the girl as she laid on the sand, breathing heavily, and then raised her voice a bit more for the spectators to hear. "The game is over."
At that, Yue lowered her head in sadness and turned around to leave the tennis court, not taking her eyes off of her friend as she stayed on the sandy ground, as if there were bitterness keeping her there with an unquestionable force.
Aang studied Katara's frustrated features as she revealed her face again, and he looked over to Teo to wonder how he felt. The boy in the wheelchair was shook his head in disappointment.
"God, she's never gonna learn, is she?" Teo said rhetorically to nobody in particular, but Aang glanced over to the girl as the old woman crouched down to her.
The boy could see Coach Hama place a comforting hand to the girl's shoulder, muttering something like "come on... we need to talk" before helping her up from the sand. Aang noticed Katara's eyes beginning to glimmer from a dense feeling of surrender, and he immediately remembered why he liked her so much. She was passionate, and she wasn't afraid to show it.
The young girl and her coach moved out of the court for a brief conversation in the shadows, and as people began to step off of the stone bleachers, the boy noticed another pair of familiar faces in the small crowd... a sulky young man with a scar, and a preppy-looking girl who had once caught the young airbender off-guard with her copper eyes.
By the way they were crossing their arms, still sitting next to each other without saying a word, Aang did not have to guess that Zuko and Azula must have been related.
"Hmm, she's utterly pathetic, if you ask me..."
That muttering of Azula's velvety voice escaped the open air and Aang caught those words from a few feet away, making the boy frown. Katara was anything but pathetic.
"... if that sloppy technique of hers reflects her determination to win class presidency, than I have nothing to worry about." Azula smiled smugly, yet sinisterly.
Aang caught those muttering words of the young woman, and he noticed how Zuko was still staring at the court, pretending not to hear a word. The scarred sibling just watched without blinking, becoming much more intrigued on Katara's side of the court.
"I thought you'd outdone yourself with Mai... but congratulations with this one, big brother. I'm sure you'll both be utterly pathetic together."
"She just a friend, Azula," Zuko muttered grudgingly, slouching even more on the bleacher with his arms crossed, turning slightly away from his sister to watch the game. The woman just smiled amusingly at the sulking boy, almost happy to see him scrunch his face like that.
Aang's heart almost skipped a beat at the hearing of all this, practically feeling like all of his chances with Katara were diminishing in seconds. As much as he couldn't bare the sight of Zuko... the young boy had to believe him. He had to believe that Katara was not seeing anything past friendship with Zuko, and the young airbender turned his head back to the game... refusing to listen to any more of that muttering, bittersweet conversation.
The Avatar must accept all truth that is given to him, but also be aware that he has the ability to change the course of any person's life.
Aang bit his lip, wanting to get Monk Gyatso's voice out of his head feverishly. By a stroke of luck, Katara had finished the brief talk with Coach Hama and walked over to his direction near the court to pick up her tennis bag... catching the boy's gaze almost by surprise.
"...Aang?"
"Hey, Katara!" The boy said cheerfully through the wired tennis court fence, and the girl composed herself with a smile, as if pretending that whatever Coach Hama had told her were fragments of a terrible dream.
The girl muffled a "Hey... how was the play meeting?" while she put here things together in her bag...and the young boy raised a brow and placed a hand onto the court fence... desiring so much to ask if she was okay.
"Um, it was okay... Haru told us a story about him playing a dragon, or something..."
Katara laughed instinctively, wrapping a small towel into her bag and but not looking up at Aang. "Oh, that story, huh?"
The boy kept a hand on the fence, looking at Katara with curious gray eyes and hoping that hers would reach him eventually.
"Yeah; I think it's going to be an awesome show." Aang tightened his stomach to continue talking to her, believing that any basket of words would help the girl feel better. "I was looking at the script, and it looks like we spend a lot of time together onstage."
Without warning, the girl's eyes raised up towards Aang with slight alarm and apprehension. "Really?"
Suddenly, Aang felt like he should've said something else. "Well– I mean– the lines don't seem to be that bad..." the boy could feel the taste in his mouth turning sour from that lie. "...and besides... we can help each other out."
The young airbender slowly clutched the wire of the tennis court fence, desiring to Bend that twisted metal so badly, to wrap his arms around the crushed girl with hairloops he adored. As his other hand still clutched the girl's Omashu script, he wrapped the script like a tube and rolled it through the fence for Katara to receive it.
"Did you want to meet to run some lines together this weekend? If we could start memorizing now, we'll be better prepared for the rehearsals..."
Aang was aware that the Southern Air Temple had its first dodge ball tournament of the season that Saturday, but all of a sudden it was like those games were something trivial. Something he would see if he just didn't happen to have anything better to do.
Katara received the script from the boy's fingers kindly, and she looked at him with sincere, very exhausted blue eyes. "I think that's a great idea... I have a feeling I'll be getting a lot more time for rehearsals, anyway..."
At that estranged comment, the girl put the script in her tennis bag and threw it over her shoulder in a harsh slump, looking down at the sandy ground as if she wanted to swallow some of it. Aang's eyebrows raised themselves into a concerned gaze, fishing for the next few words to say to her. His mouth trembled. Why was it becoming so difficult?
The girl smiled again, seeing the troubled look in the young boy's eyes, and she placed a reassuring hand next to his on the fence. It was like she was silently telling him that yes... she would be okay. And yes, thanks for caring so much about me.
It brought a contagious grin to the boy's face, and he asked the spirits to keep him from blushing foolishly as the girl's hand slightly brushed his on the wired fence. She probably didn't think much of it, anyway.
Only a few milliseconds had passed between them, but for Aang they could've been minutes... hours, even... studying the pretty face that fell across the fence from him. Katara sighed a very long breath, still recovering from that intense Waterbending practice with her friend, and feeling that she owed her an apology. Her eyes then left Aang's, as if she were interested in something that was over his shoulder, and her hand spontaneously removed itself from the rail.
"Can you meet tomorrow at mid-day, outside of the school courtyard?" Her soft, pleasant voice then came to life again.
Aang beamed.
"Sure!" It would be cutting into the Airbenders' dodgeball tournament... but still, Aang thought... there would be other games.
Katara gave a little laugh, feeling a little flattered by his excitement. "Okay, well I'll bring us something to eat for lunch..." she secured her tennis bag over her shoulder and began to walk towards the court exit, her face still looking at Aang. "...Do you like dried sea prunes? They're a Water Tribe delicacy."
The boy's form involuntarily seemed to follow Katara's footsteps as she moved, walking along with her on the other side of the fence. "Um, I've never had them before, but I'm up for an adventure!" Aang smiled up to her with a clever eye. "Hey! If you bring the prunes... I'll bring the organic rice milk."
Katara laughed that lovely, musical laugh of hers, and Aang knew that she was back. "It's a deal, kiddo," she said, and finally exited the tennis court to meet the young airbender within a few feet.
Aang wasn't sure if it would be too forward to just hug her, right then and there, but a few trembling words escaped his mouth before he could take any action.
"Did you want a ride home? My bison... Appa, should be flying to pick me up at any moment... and I'm sure he wouldn't mind if...you..."
His voice trailed off, being too mesmerized by the girl's flowing brown hair and her intense blue eyes that mimicked the color of the sky. She had waited for him to finish, but then amusingly decided to respond, by putting a hand on his forearm for ease.
"That's really sweet of you, Aang..." Katara said with a grin, and the boy fought that fantasy of her leaning to him closer... her lips approaching his own in a slow motion...
"...but I actually told Zuko I'd walk home with him today."
Aang's stomach suddenly tightened, like he'd just swallowed a rock.
"Wh– what?"
Katara gestured with her eyes over to someone behind him, and Aang turned his head to notice that apparently... someone had not left the bleachers after the tennis match ended. He was still sitting there, his body slightly slouched on the stone bleachers... holding a pair of what looked like thick chopsticks and drumming them rhythmically on a knee with one hand.
The young airbender blinked in disbelief. Zuko was there the WHOLE TIME!?
Aang tried to gulp his nervousness down, part of him wondering just how much that young man had seen... and part of him wondering if his Avatar abilities could make Zuko disappear off the face of the Earth Kingdom. But he opened his eyes... and there Zuko remained, completely unaware that a young boy wanted to air-pummel the living daylights out of him.
Katara still had her hand on Aang's forearm, and the boy sighed in his mind as the girl brought it back to her side, knowing that it meant farewell.
"I'll see you tomorrow, okay?"
Aang took in that serene voice as well as he could, trying to make himself more hopeful. "Okay," he muttered, but with a courageous smile.
Katara then clutched her bag tightly over to her shoulder and ran towards Zuko over in the bleachers, with Aang turning his head to watch her form become more distant from him.
He tried not to think about the smile that Katara had for Zuko as she waved at him, and how Zuko made a rare grin in return... instantly jumping off the stone bleacher to meet her. He pretended not to hear Katara's voice as she started talking to Zuko so casually about the Water Tennis match, as they walked down a grounded path into a trail in the woods.
And the boy deeply, deeply fought the urge to hear that familiar musical laughter, as Zuko started to playfully drum on her shoulder with chopsticks to make her feel better.
It was when Aang could faintly see two little stick figures in the distance... when he finally threw his schoolbag to the ground and kicked the Omashu script, the math homework, the literature scrolls and history book inside it. Twice.
Stupid... Avatar... High... he thought angrily, convinced that Monk Gyatso had plotted all this to make his life miserable. ...Why can't I be TALLER?
A familiar screeching sound then caught the boy's ears, and Aang looked around to see which tree Momo was perched on. He turned around in a semi circle and realized that not only had he heard Momo... but that he had found another shoulder to perch on.
Aang's eyes rose in utter surprise, removing his bandana subconsciously.
"Hmm...Girl trouble, I presume?" came a worn, raspy voice of the old man standing a few feet away, studying his young apprentice's blue arrow with amusement.
The boy felt like he'd accidentally swallowed his tongue. He hadn't expected to see Avatar Roku so suddenly.
"Wait a minute... you mean we have to know ALL of the major cities of the ENTIRE Earth Kingdom?"
Mai didn't bother to look up from her sketchbook as she rolled her eyes, over at the girl who was acrobatically turning her Earth Kingdom Atlas pages with her toes over her head. The girls seemed to keep their distances from one another in that vast, beautifally red-tinted bedroom of Princess Azula, and yet still maintained the warmth of a slumber party through their bits and pieces of conversation.
"Well yes, Ty Lee... that is what an 'Earth Kingdom geography quiz' entails..." Azula glanced over at her friend from her mirror with disbelief, as the Fire Nation princess removed her own make-up at the mirror. She was rather meticulous and slow about it, since her own mother had decided to give some of the royal servants the day off.
What was that woman thinking?... Azula pondered... These people worked diligently their entire lives to have the honor of waiting on the Royal Fire Nation family. Giving them temporary freedom was like an insult to their life-long training.
"Sheesh, your mom really likes to force things on us... doesn't she," Ty Lee said with a giggle, lifted her feet back into a proper sitting position. "I mean... shouldn't you try and make her go easy on us? We are your friends... and you are her daughter."
"Believe me, Ty Lee... if I had any power over that woman... I would use it to my fullest advantage," Azula muttered under her breath, trying really hard to not let the make-up removal cream fall into her copper eyes. "But I've got more important things to worry about."
"Oh. Let me guess," Mai's husky voice came in sarcastically. "You're going to spend the rest of this year trying to re-elect yourself as student body president... even though you won by a land-slide last year."
"Wonderful, Mai. I'm glad to see that you know me extremely well," Azula smiled from her mirror, successfully removing the mascara off of one eye. "Now tell me... how many obsessive little drawings of Zuko will it take... before you finally accept the fact that boys are a complete and ultimate waste of our time?"
Mai's eyes slowly went up to meet Azula's, but the pale girl said nothing. Instead, she moved her sketchbook at an angle to show for her information... she was drawing a lamp. And that as much as Azula was dancing for a reasoning behind their break-up with her copper eyes, one stern look from Mai told her 'no, it's not your business. Even being princess and all.'
"Come on, Azula. Boys aren't a complete waste of our time ..." Ty Lee made another one of her cheek-to-cheek smiles, thinking about her last encounter with Hide back at the Omashu meeting. She started humming an unidentifiable tune to herself, reading the Earth Kingdom Atlas upside down without moving her eyes.
"Well you were right about me winning by a land-slide last year," Azula still had her keen, analytical eyes on Mai as she was drawing in her sketchbook. "But that all due to my clever initiative to take down that sweet and innocent little twit of a Water Tribe princess."
"Oh, yeah, I remember... Yue!" Ty Lee poked her head out from the open Atlas.
"That young woman, who believed that being a princess entitled her to having the power of running the entire student body," Mai muttered under her breath, without lifting her pencil from the sketchbook.
Azula raised a skeptical brow to the artist, and continued. "Unfortunately, Yue did not seem to think past her 'princess' title... she thought she could be all her sweet self and not know the school like the back of her hand. It was the reason I was able to manipulate her so easily."
Ty Lee giggled from those random memories of last year. "Weren't you the one who talked her into getting a portrait of herself in a bikini, and post them up on the walls in order to get more of the male guys to vote for her during elections?"
Azula noticed how Mai's hand flinched nervously at the sound of 'portrait,' but then replied to Ty Lee's questions just as eloquently.
"Indeed... And that poor Water Princess had some nice little talks with my dear Uncle for about a week, and clearly did not get many mens' votes... most of the posters had gone missing by the time elections came around."
"Hide still has one in his bedroom." Ty Lee pointed out with a slight blush in her cheeks, sinking her face under the Atlas book.
Mai looked over at the girl in pink with an incredulous eye, sighing in disbelief as to how low this girl was stooping.
"Besides," Azula continued without a moment's thought. "I knew how to control most of these stupid boys with an iron hand. The trick is to know exactly what they want... which doesn't really amount to much, and then let your trusting voice easily let the rest of the school fall under your faithful clutches. You have to be a Princess of the utterly manipulative People."
The princess let her sinister laugh get the best of her. "Quite the waste of Water Tribe royalty, if you ask me... and to think... all she wanted was to try and make the school a better place..."
Ty Lee couldn't help but giggle some more as Azula's voice became so mockingly weepy at the end. Mai didn't seem to care at all.
"So... what's so different about this year's elections, your highness President?" Ty Lee brought up. "Don't you think you're going to scare all other candidates to the ground?"
Azula made a smug sound to the mirror. "You would think so... but I believe I have a new innocent face to bring down... one that I would like to call, Little Miss Perfect."
Mai scoffed. "It's that obsessive waterbender girl, isn't it," came her expressionless voice.
"Truly, it is," Azula said promptly. "And as usual, she is trying to make something of herself, which in her book means trying to befriend everyone in the entire school, and then discover what sort of things this little school is lacking. She wants to be an actual voice of the people."
"What an inspiration," Mai said sarcastically with her tongue sticking out in disgust, placing the finishing touches of her black lamp.
Azula narrowed her eyes in thought, letting the make-up remover cream carefully go onto her eyelid for the mascara. "I have a feeling she's going to try to diversify this school in every way possible... trying to strip the pride of this Fire Nation-founded school into smithereens... making us forget everything we've worked so hard to obtain."
"That doesn't seem too bad," Ty Lee claimed slightly positively, as she turned another page of her Atlas, "I mean, if all else fails... you can try to threaten her out of the elections with your super-awesome FireBending power."
"I'm afraid there is a bit more complexity to this one," Azula mustered from under her breath.
"Pray tell," came the voice of Mai, turning a new blank page for more sketching.
"There's a rumor across the school that another airbender has arrived at the school..."
"What?" Ty Lee raised a brow. "You mean... another one of those 'Oh, look at me, I am all tattoo-y and faithful and talk to animals... and totally don't fit into a regular school setting' type of people?"
"Perhaps," said Azula, "but here is the catch. This one has been invited by Avatar Roku himself. I can bet my crown that he is the Avatar-in-Training... and I will bet you my entire Royal fleet that this water bender girl has already become friends with him."
"And that's a threat to you because..." Mai's voice trailed off, pretending to seem intrigued about the situation, but actually pondering about what to draw next.
"Because the Avatar-in-Training holds the power of all Four Nations!" Azula grabbed a brush from her vanity table and began to untie her hair with frustration. "With the Avatar-in-Training at our school... surely, the people will have take sides on anything that he deems worthy... and that includes the next Student Body President."
Azula began to brush her hair carefully, trying to calm herself out of that intense frustration.
"If he decides to vote for that water peasant as President, than of course the majority of the school will see it fit."
"Oh, I see..." Ty Lee wondered dreamily. "So you're gonna have to find a way to not make that girl be friends with the Avatar-in-Training...right?"
Azula smirked sinisterly at her friend from the mirror. "No, actually."
Mai looked over at the young woman with those deep copper eyes, wondering what in the hell was brewing in her sadistic little mind.
"I'm going to try something a little different, so that the school... even Avatar Roku... will have to practically hand over my role as Student Body President on a platter for the years to come."
Both girls looked at their friend by the reflection of the mirror, while Azula continued to brush her hair in a gentle, almost maniacal fashion.
"I am going to welcome this Avatar-in-Training... and make him wish that he had never... ever... set foot inside Praying Mantis High School."
