Zuko was surprised to find that he didn't really dislike his job. He wasn't a big fan of tea, that was for sure, and the hours were long, and the pay wasn't great, either. But it kept him busy and distracted him from his thoughts of catching the avatar and restoring his honor, so on and so forth, you know the drill.
But, as any food service or retail employee knows all too well, sometimes customers could be a real pain in the ass. And there was one customer in particular who especially got on Zuko's nerves.
The door burst open, and Jet walked in, his mouth wheat rippling menacingly in the breeze. Zuko wondered about that mouth wheat whenever they encountered each other. Did he put the same wheat in his mouth every day? Wouldn't it get soggy after a while? If not, then where was he finding wheat in Ba Sing Se? Was he at least washing it before he put it in his mouth?
"I'm telling you, these people are firebenders!" he cried for the sixteenth time since Zuko and Iroh had started working in the tea shop. The wheat bobbed in his mouth. Zuko had never seen Jet without his wheat. Why did he always have it? Was it like a pacifier? Did he just like the taste? Did he take it out to eat? Did he eat in the first place? Was Jet even human?
"Sir, I'm going to have to ask you to leave. You've already been banned from this establishment for harassing my employees, and we'll have to notify the authorities if you continue to come here," Zuko's boss said.
"It's quite insensitive of you to insist that I'm a firebender, considering my face," Zuko added. Just to fuck with him, he added, "The fire lord himself gave me this scar."
"See! The Fire Nation has sent their elite forces, who have all been branded by the fire lord to mark their station, to run a sex ring out of the basement of this tea shop!" Jet accused, drawing his swords and brandishing them wildly.
"What?" Now Zuko was beginning to suspect that the mouth wheat wasn't wheat at all, but rather some sort of drug. "Boss, may I have permission to fight a customer? Just this once?" he pleaded.
"Yeah, you know what, all right, he's scaring away the other customers, so go for it," his boss said, and when Zuko drew his own swords, he gasped, "Lee, what the hell, why did you bring swords to work? That's breaking a dozen safety regulations!"
But Zuko was already on it, achieving the one true dream of anyone who works in customer service: besting a rude customer in hand to hand combat… and not having to worry about getting fired over it! He even cut off Jet's mouth wheat, and…
Jet disintegrated.
"What the hell? Why do I keep Thanosing bitches in this fanfic?"