"Ah, here's something that might be interesting." Sokka stopped at a certain page and began reading the title. "The Tale of Kara. Hmm, who's Kara?"
"Maybe she's your long-lost sister who squabbles with Sugar Queen and has a huge crush on Zuko," Toph smirked.
"Or maybe she's a character the author created and put into the story," Aang suggested.
"Ooh, new character. Alright, let's do this!" And without further ado, Sokka began the story.
My name is Kara. I am sixteen years old. I live in the Southern Water Tribe with my grandmother, my fifteen-year-old brother Sokka and my fourteen-year-old sister Katara. I have long black silky hair that cascades down my back like a waterfall of velvet black. My eyes are blue like the sparkling sapphire sea, but sometimes flecks of gold appear in them like glittering stars from the heavens above. I am tall with slender limbs and a well-endowed bust. In fact, I am quite beautiful if I do say so myself.
"Okay, so she's supposed to be our sister, and according to her description she's 'quite beautiful'," Sokka summed up.
"At least I got the 'long-lost sister' part right. Half of it, anyway," Toph grinned.
"This girl sure has a rather good opinion of herself. And seriously, 'well-endowed bust'? What's that supposed to mean?" Katara sniffed.
"It means she's got more curves than you, Sugar 'Flat-Chest' Queen."
"Shut up, Toph."
My mother died a few years ago when the Fire Nation attacked our tribe, and my father left not long after that with the other men of the tribe to assist the Earth Kingdom in the war against the evil firebenders. Since then it's been me, my Gran Gran and my two younger siblings to look after the tribe. My Gran Gran is a wonderful woman, but my siblings are quite annoying, to say the least.
"Excuse me? She thinks I'm annoying?" Sokka frowned at the book.
"She thinks both of us are annoying, Sokka," Katara explained.
"You I can understand, but me? I'm so smart and funny; how can I be annoying?"
"Because your jokes are horrible and your plans fail half the time," Toph answered.
"And what do you mean, I'm annoying? You're the one who makes others do his dirty stinky laundry!" Katara wrinkled her nose in disgust at the memory of the laundry, especially the socks.
"Well, you're the one who drenches people on the head with your 'magic water'! If that isn't annoying I don't know what is!"
"Guys, calm down. Let's just finish the story, okay?" Aang spoke up, causing the Water Tribe siblings to finally stop squabbling. Sokka then turned back to the story.
Sokka I don't mind so much since he's usually playing soldier with the little kids and pretty much stays out of my way,
"'Playing soldier'?! I'm training new recruits here!" Sokka protested.
"New recruits who are seven years old. At least the girl got that right," Katara smirked.
but Katara is always hanging around me and showing off her mediocre bending skills, maintaining that she is the last of the waterbenders of our tribe and has been given the honorable duty of keeping our ancestors' traditions alive.
"At least I don't show off my 'mediocre bending skills'."
"Considering I am the last waterbender of our tribe, I don't know who that girl's got to compare to me and call me mediocre!" Katara huffed.
"Seriously, can you two shut up already? We're trying to listen to a story here! In fact, I just might agree with Kara on you two being very annoying!" Toph shouted.
Oh, I forgot to mention: Katara and I are both waterbenders.
"Oh, joy," Katara muttered darkly
I don't know where we got our abilities from, since both our parents are non-benders, but there might be an old ancestor of ours who was a bender.
"You don't have to have a bender in your family to have bending abilities. Look at my parents; they can't even move a pebble by themselves."
"Maybe you're actually a badgermole baby that turned into human form. Or you could be Master Yu's illegitimate kid," Sokka speculated wildly, but he was soon shut off when Toph threw a well-aimed booger into his mouth. He was busy gagging for a moment before continuing with the story, occasionally still retching.
He or she is gone by now anyway; all the waterbenders of our tribe are when the Fire Nation raided our village long ago and took them all away. We're the last of our kind, which for some reason Katara takes pride in. She's always attempting to move a bubble of water through the air and drenching Sokka's head in the process, and then he'll yell at her to stop playing with her 'magic water'. Some family I have, although it is quite entertaining to watch Sokka chasing after Katara with his hair soaking wet.
"I gotta admit, that scene does sound pretty funny," Toph commented.
"You wouldn't think it was funny if it was you running around with your head dripping wet in the cold Artic air. And when I say cold, I mean freezing," Sokka retorted.
Then one day, Sokka went off fishing in Dad's old canoe. Katara went with him since she's got nothing else to do, and personally I'd rather her hang around and irritate Sokka than me. I was left at home, taking care of some chores while Gran Gran made the midday meal. After finishing my chores, I headed out to my secret spot beside the ocean, hidden behind an ice dune. I stood on the edge of the water, taking a deep breath. Then I began practicing my waterbending.
I raised my arms and the water before me started bubbling as a small stream rose out of the water. I let my emotions flow through my mind and spirit, using them to control my bending. I thought of the sadness I felt when Mom was killed, when Dad left the tribe, when Gran Gran once fell ill and there was no one but me to take care of her. Katara couldn't do anything but hold Gran Gran's hand and sob pitifully, and Sokka was still out 'training the soldiers' and 'hunting our dinner', returning with a couple of fish and nothing more. I let my feelings swirl around inside me, and as I raised my arms higher the small stream of water became a large wave.
"Hey, I am perfectly capable of taking care of sick people! For your information, I do a lot more than just 'sob pitifully'!" Katara shouted at the book.
"And I catch way more fish than just a couple! I'm a very good fisherman!" Sokka added.
"Yeah, except for the time you accidentally forgot your fishing gear and came back home with an empty canoe. The mark of a great fisherman indeed."
"Speaking of which, what does waterbending have to do with your feelings and emotions?" Aang asked while the two continued their squabbling. "I mean, I know your mood and thought do have some effect on your bending, but it's not as important as the story says, does it?"
"Don't look at me, I'm not a waterbender," Toph replied. "But if waterbending's really about whatever bad memories you have, then you must be working up a tsunami every time you waterbend, what with losing your entire race and all."
Suddenly the clear sky was broken by a huge shaft of blinding light shining like a beacon, splitting the heavens into two. A sense of dread crept over me. The light couldn't mean anything good, so I ran back to the village as fast as my legs could carry me, sometimes even using my bending to help me slide across the icy plains as I hurried towards home.
"I'd like to know how she learned to slide across the ice even though she had no one to learn from," Katara huffed indignantly.
"Maybe she's a faster learner than you are. That makes three things that she's better than you – beauty, bending, and mentality," Sokka said as he counted them off his fingers one by one.
"Yeah, isn't she just perfect?" Toph said in a voice dripping with sarcasm.
"I guess this is where I show up in the story, huh?" Aang said, but everyone else was too busy thinking of the new character's perfectness to notice him.
When I arrived at the village, I found the entire tribe – mostly old people, women and little children – standing together in what was the village square, which was nothing more than an open space in the middle of the circlet of igloos that made up the village. They were all staring at the sky where the bright light had been, pointing up and whispering among themselves. I found Gran Gran and hurried towards her, holding her arm as we stood together. "What happened, Gran Gran?"
"You saw the light?" she asked me. I nodded, then noticed someone was missing. Two someones, to be exact. "Where are Sokka and Katara? Aren't they home yet?"
"That's what I'm worried about. They were still out fishing when the light came. Who knows what happened to them. I only hope they will be able to come home safely." Gran Gran looked towards the open sea, her eyes filled with worry.
"Actually, Gran Gran didn't even see the light that time. She was busy making lunch until we showed up with a bald kid and a giant six-footed beast. If she was surprised by that, she sure hid it well," Sokka reminisced.
"Yeah, the only thing she asked was whether Sokka caught any fish," Katara added. "Of course, that was a definitely no."
"Hey, when you meet a glowing kid with arrow tattoos and a snot-producing monster, you kinds forget what you were supposed to do, okay? Now on with the story."
I gripped Gran Gran's arm reassuringly. Those two may be irritating, but they're still her grandkids. We're all she has left after her husband died and her son left the tribe to fight in the war. I only wish they would grow up and stop causing trouble for everyone.
"Hey, we're not causing trouble! I even went to get us food, as compared to Miss I-Do-A-Few-Chores-And-Run-Off-To-Play-With-Magic-Water!" Sokka said as he glared at the book.
"If anything, her running off like that and leaving the tribe alone is the real trouble," Katara added.
"Isn't that pretty much what you did when you went fishing with me?"
"Um… I had to come along to make sure you actually caught something and got back home in one piece! If I hadn't been there, you would have drowned in the freezing water when the canoe crashed!"
"If you weren't there, the canoe wouldn't have crashed in the first place!"
"Er, I'll just continue the story from here, okay guys?" Aang pried the book out of Sokka's hands and continued reading, leaving the two siblings to quarrel in peace.
"Look!" one of the kids suddenly cried while pointing a finger at the ocean. We all looked up to see a great furry mass swimming towards us. The little ones ran forward to get a closer look, only to be held back by their terrified mothers. As we watched, the huge animal stopped at the shore and walked up on land. It was then that I noticed the three figures on it: a bald boy with strange tattoos on its head, and my two missing siblings in the saddle on its back. The three jumped down from the beast and walked towards us.
"Sokka! Katara! Where have you been?! We were all worried about you!" I shouted at my two ignorant siblings, then turned to the boy, taking in his arrow-shaped tattoos and weird clothes. "And who's this?"
Aang scratched his head. "Really? My clothes were weird?"
"They might have looked weird to the villagers at the time, especially since they haven't been seen for a hundred years," Toph pointed out.
The boy grinned cheerfully at me. "Hello. I'm Aang."
Aang flipped to the next page, then back and forth repeatedly. "Hey, there's nothing more of the story. It couldn't have just ended with me introducing myself, right?"
"Maybe there's another chapter," Toph suggested.
The airbender went back and forth between the pages again. "Nope, nothing."
"Oh, don't worry, the next chapter will show up soon enough," Sokka said, abruptly stopping his discreetly ongoing quarrel with Katara, who cleared her throat which was blocked up with spit from all the squabbling. "What do you mean, Sokka?"
"I've noticed it before; every day, there might be more stories in the book, or a story might have an additional chapter, or it might disappear completely, though that doesn't happen much. What I'm thinking is, this book is continuously updating even as it speaks, though I can't explain how it does that."
"Maybe there's a spirit living inside the book and changing its contents constantly?" Aang speculated.
"Then why don't you go talk to the spirit, since you're the bridge between our world and the spirit world," Toph said. "And while you're at it, go ask it how it seems to know us all, and why it has to write these crazy stories about us."
"Hey, what if… what if this other world the book came from that Professor Zei mentioned in his letter is the spirit world?!" Sokka cried. "That would explain why the book seems to know all about us, since spirits are supposed to be all-knowing, right? I mean, it's almost like they're watching us the whole time, from when we bust Aang out of that iceberg all the way to us in the Jasmine Dragon after the war!"
"Yeah, but why would they want to write stories about us?" Aang asked.
"Maybe they've got nothing better to do? Think about it; they probably just sit around and watch us do our business every day. They're bound to get bored eventually."
"I don't know, Sokka; I don't think that's what it's like in the spirit world."
"Well, since none of us except for you have actually been there, we wouldn't know either. The only other person we know who's been to the spirit world is Iroh, right Zuko?" Sokka looked around when Zuko didn't reply. "Zuko?"
The others also turned around to see Zuko sleeping soundly on the couch while snoring softly.
Today we're featuring one of the most common banes of the fanfiction universe - the dreaded Mary Sue! So, how was it? Too Sue-ish? Not Sue-ish enough? Reviews are much appreciated, and story prompts are welcome as well! If you want to see a particular pairing or topic here, be sure to tell me in your review! Until the next chapter, folks! See you!