In this AU the gaang are a group of sentient toys (bear with me) and they learn the value of friendship through shenanigans a la Toy Story! I have four chapters written and the rest of it in various stages of planning, so this will be updated on a weekly schedule for now and hopefully after, and probably finish at around 20k. Hope you enjoy!!
Tired eyelids opened, creaking in their sockets with disuse, and a pair of rounded glass eyes stared out. The room was dark. The toy shifted in discomfort – a sharp object was digging awkwardly into its back. Taking a moment to make sure that no humans were around, it stood up on dusty legs and stretched. Something soft squished under its feet. The toy was in an unfamiliar place, with unfamiliar surroundings.
He pushed his arms against the nearest wall. From the distance to the other end, he could tell it was the smooth side of a large, plastic trunk. He patted down his stiff plastic clothes – he didn't appear to have any part of him missing, and his staff too was still clipped to his waist. He pulled it away, and with a flick of a button it whirred and opened into a glider. The toy leapt onto the edge of the trunk, using the glider for balance.
There was no one, toy or human, in sight. In the box below he now saw a jumble of items and trinkets, a water bottle, a couple of jackets, and the offending tennis racket that must have nudged him into consciousness.
He tried to remember how he had got to this place, but his mind drew up a blank.
Surveying the room, he guessed it was a classroom: a sliver of moonlight from the window lit up rows of small desks and chairs, and the walls above were lined with scribbled drawings and poems in large, awkward handwriting.
He decided to wait. If this was a school, someone would be here in the morning.
Katara walked along the narrow ledge of the whiteboard for the hundredth time. By now, she barely needed to look down to keep her balance, and the novelty of being so high up above her usual haunts had worn off hours ago. The idea of flicking through all the books lined along the shelves, and watching the goldfish glittering in their tank, and trying out the new stock of paints, were all tried, tested and old news.
This whole room was a sight she had seen far too many times. Smoothing down her tunic so that any tears in it didn't catch, she carefully slid down the cord hanging next to the board, whirling her water whip around the wooden arm of the teacher's chair to leverage an easy landing.
It wasn't Jia's fault that she left Katara at school almost every week without fail. She was just forgetful, and Katara couldn't be mad about it when Jia liked her enough to bring her with her to school to play with her every day in the first place. And it wasn't always so bad, quite often there were other toys in the lost-and-found that she hung out with, though no one's owner left them here as frequently as Jia did.
She landed on the cushioned seat with a dull thud, caught her balance, and made the leap to the closest table. Still. What if one day, Jia left and didn't come back for her?
It happened once, it could happen again.
Katara shook the notion out of her head. That was a train of thought she couldn't afford to follow. It was almost noon judging by the glare of the sun. She should go back to the trunk to make sure that Jia and her mother had the best chance of finding her when they came to pick her up. She traced the familiar steps over the edge of the desk and jumped down into the trunk on autopilot.
Something caught her ankle and tripped her. Katara landed face first in a clump of sweaty sports shirt. At first glance it was some kind of stick, a bright orange flicker trailing it. Before she had time to stand, a voice cried out.
"My glider!"
Something ran forward before stopping short in front of her. Katara got up, her face twisting at the stench of PE clothes, and turned.
It was another toy. A boy. He was dressed in orange and red, in a strange style of wrappings Katara had never seen before. In his hand he had snatched up the object that tripped her, not a stick, she saw, but a staff of polished wood.
"Hi," he said breathlessly. A brief look of embarrassment passed his expressive face as he looked down at the staff, but he recovered quickly, resuming his curious expression. "I'm Aang. What's your name? Do you know where we are?"
Katara paused for a moment, barely keeping up. "We're…in the classroom. Third grade, Ms Ling's class."
The boy blinked. None of those words seemed to mean anything to him. Katara noted his eyes were made of glass, or at least an expensive resin like the kind top-shelf toys always had. His lashes were carefully applied, hand-painted. She pressed on, confused, "Didn't one of the kids leave you? Who's your owner?"
"My…owner?" he said slowly.
Katara quirked her brow. "You mean someone from the class didn't leave you here? Then where did you come from?"
The boy gaped for a moment; her question was clearly too expectant for the fact that he lacked a real answer. Then he sat down on the rim of a sports cap near his feet. He rubbed at his head. "I don't know… All I know is that I woke up here last night, with my glider. I don't remember anything else. I mean, besides the fact that I came from a shop."
That much Katara could see. Despite the layer of dust he had gathered in his time here, he showed no signs of wear and tear. His vinyl limbs were smooth and opaque, with perfect joints, and even eyelids. He was clothed in that unfamiliar orange get-up, the fabric deep-coloured, rendered in such breathtaking detail that even though it was plastic it appeared to billow in the air. Even the glider's wings were woven in cloth. He didn't have hair, which was pretty odd, but that must have been by design, because over his head curved a long arrow, like a tattoo, separate from his skin yet almost seamless, in translucent blue plastic.
Katara searched her brain, trying not to be too obvious as she observed him. "I've never seen you in any commercials… are you new?"
"I don't think so," he said. He was looking around the room, and down at his hands. He even checked under his robe and hunched over to check the soles of his shoes. Katara suppressed the dreadful feeling that rose in her stomach as she watched what was unfolding: he found no sign of ownership, nothing to jog his memory. She was about to offer her help when she caught a glimpse of silver at his back.
"Hey, wait– what's that?" Katara leapt forward and stopped him by his shoulder. She peeked under the loose fabric of the tunic at the back of his neck. As she expected, there was a battery there, but it was dislodged slightly, poking out of the holder. There was no casing covering it, but screw holes around the cavity showed that there was supposed to be. It looked old and rusted. Impulsively, Katara pushed the battery into place.
Aang's eyes and his arrow lit up instantaneously. She gasped and leapt back. It was brilliant white, bright enough to make her shield her eyes.
Aang whirled to catch the vague reflection of it on the side of the trunk, but he barely managed to get a glimpse. The lights flickered, faster and faster, and then went out as if they had never glowed in the first place.
Curiosity got the better of her, and Katara inspected the battery again, removing, examining and replacing it again. It was fine. She noticed a small switch above it and flicked it back and forth, but the lights were gone for good. There was something vaguely familiar about the display she had just seen, but Katara couldn't recall what exactly, or where she had seen it, so she let the thought slip for now. There were more important matters at hand anyway.
"Are you Kee's? He's always forgetting his toys," she tried, though she didn't expect a positive answer. She was beginning to realise that wherever Aang might come from, there was a slim chance he was a child's toy – he simply looked too valuable for that.
"I don't think so," Aang said worriedly. Katara had never seen a toy look so perplexed.
"I'll tell you what," she said. "You can come back with me. If you really don't have an owner, then you won't be missing. Jia's really nice, and we could really do with more toys in her room."
His eyes lit up wonderfully, lights or not. "Really? Are you sure?"
Katara had to laugh in unbridled happiness at his reaction. She was well aware of the relief he must be feeling. "Of course! You don't wanna hang around in this dump, do you?" she said, wrinkling her nose in the direction of the pile of used clothes.
Aang looked sheepish. "Oh yeah… Sorry about that. I shouldn't have left my glider lying around."
Katara picked it up from their feet and graced him with a smirk. "I'll forget it if you show me how it works."
Aang grinned in earnest. "Done."
Katara was tons of fun. Aang didn't know how long he spent showing her how to use the glider, taking turns flying off the side of the teacher's desk. She was a crazily quick learner, and swift to boot, even if she wobbled under the weight of the wood when she landed. When Katara suggested they should try flying off the windowsill, a considerable upgrade from the low desks, Aang was delighted. He noticed that she carried a long bag strapped across her shoulder, concealing some sort of spool of strong, shining blue-white ribbon that she wielded with remarkable agility, like a whip.
Only once, she misstepped and the glider caught on her tunic and tripped her landing. It tore a little, but she didn't seem to care. The fabric was fraying and cheap, and Aang noticed, stitches in a few places. Even if she wasn't old, which seemed unlikely going by her expressive design, she was definitely well played with. Katara simply got up from her fall, shouting with glee, and tried again.
"This is the most fun I've had in so long!" she screamed, her long braid swishing in the air.
Aang yelled from the ledge above, "Don't you play with the toys at home?"
"Sure," she said, and when he leapt down she lowered her voice to a more sombre and explanatory tone, "But Jia has a lot more after school activities these days, and there aren't many of us in the toy box. Everyone's busy with their own thing."
Aang considered this. He would be lying if he told her he knew what a normal amount of toys was, his last memory was of sitting in a box on the locked shelves behind the counter of a toy shop with a dozen others, most of them haughty and self-important and few of them interested in conversation, let alone playing. He had certainly never met any toy like Katara, with her fading leggings and pen marks by her hairline.
He was very glad to be here with her instead of in that box. Even if he was technically lost.
There was a noise by the door. The sound of a pair of amiable voices floated in.
"...thank you so much for letting us come on short notice," one voice was saying.
"Of course! We're still finishing up work until tomorrow, even though the kids are out for the summer."
"I really appreciate it. This is the only time I could come, I have to be at my afternoon shift in– oh! – twenty minutes."
Katara looked at Aang, and eyed for him to follow her back to the trunk. She whispered as they climbed in again, "Now Jia will come in with her backpack. She'll find me, drop it by the trunk, and then she's definitely going to go look at the fish. That's when you have to hop into the bag after me. Got it?"
Aang nodded. She made it sound like this routine was something that happened many times. He felt a little bad for her, being left alone so frequently, even if nothing about her demeanour suggested she felt similarly.
The door swung open and Aang and Katara dropped lifeless into the trunk.
"Go on, honey, grab your doll," the first voice said. A patter of footsteps was heard, and then Aang watched a pair of hands lower into the trunk and lift Katara out from the corner of his eye. Sure enough, Jia's steps retreated towards the side of the room with the fish tank. The two adults still chatting in the corner of the room. When he was sure that all were distracted, Aang leapt out of the trunk, and into the open bag.
He landed head first, knocking his head against a water bottle. Katara silently but forcefully yanked him up by the arm. They smiled at each other in recognition of a successful plan.