Sarapen's Journal

Despite all appearances, I seriously am writing. Mica and claudiapriscus on AO3 kind of got me doing it all over again for He Said, She Said. Take a look:

“So what did you think of the play?” mumbled Toph around the stick of barbecued banana slices that was currently in her mouth.

“Two thumbs up,” said Zuko. “The director’s thumbs, I mean, since I’m going to cut them off and shove them up his ass.” He demonstrated his pique by kicking down a banner pole whose sign read The Life and Death of the Prince of Ill Luck.

Sokka snorted at Zuko’s answer. “Hello, jerkwad, did you not get the memo about not being a bad guy anymore?” Sokka kicked down another banner pole, not because he hated the play but because as a good boyfriend he felt obligated to act on Yue’s behalf when the play was a blatant plagiary of her novel. Also he liked kicking things.

Zuko punched a hole through a backdrop showing some icebergs floating on the sea. “Me, not a bad guy anymore?” he asked. “Says who? I never promised anything to anybody. Anyway, who says good guys can’t cut off the thumbs of people they don’t like? What, are the good guy police going to arrest me for that?”

“Uh, yes, and they’re actually just the regular police,” said Sokka as he tore apart a set of red Fire Sage robes.

“For the love of crap, can you two just make out already?” interrupted Toph. “I swear, you can cut the sexual tension with a knife.”

Sokka turned to Toph in annoyance. “You know, Toph, life isn’t one of the borderline gay romance stories you pay people to read to you. Just because two people argue with each other doesn’t mean they’re secretly in love. Almost one hundred percent of the time it means they genuinely disagree with each other.”

Toph was too busy enjoying her banana slices to give a properly derisive jeer to Sokka’s pronouncement and in fact all she could manage was a sarcastic roll of her eyes.

“Hey, what are you kids doing backstage!” demanded an angry bearded man who Zuko assumed was the stage manager or something. He didn’t bother to find out but instead smashed the chair he was holding over the man’s head instead of smashing it on some Ba Sing Se palace scenery like he originally intended. Taking the man’s intrusion as a cue, he sauntered casually out of the back door whose lock he had bashed open with a rock – this was only after listening to ten minutes of fumbling and cursing from Sokka before the other boy admitted that he couldn’t pick the lock (and only after Zuko had broken the lock did Toph reveal that she could have used her metalbending and saved everyone the trouble).

Much later, on their way out of town and back to their camp site Sokka observed, “You know, for a play that’s supposedly about the ‘Prince of Ill Luck’ the majority of the story revolved around the whole Katara forbidden love angle.”

“Yeah,” agreed Zuko as he walked along swinging a wooden sign that said Colonel Kinjo’s Travelling Players, “It’s like they wanted to make a stage adaptation of Thunderstorm but kept getting forced to make a straight propaganda piece instead.”

“What kind of propaganda piece makes you feel sorry for the bad guys?” asked Toph as she finished her snack and began cleaning her teeth with the barbecue stick she’d been eating from. “Zuko’s supposed to be the traitor but the play ends with Katara crying her eyes out and promising to avenge his death.”

“Good point, it gets kind of weird near the end, doesn’t it?” said Sokka. “But can we agree not to tell Aang that he spends the Battle of Ba Sing Se screaming and hiding under a blanket?”

“No, we can’t, because I’m going to tell him that as soon as we see him,” promised Toph. “I even memorized the lines his character was shouting at Azula: ‘Take Sokka, he’s stupid and ugly and no one likes him.’”

Sokka huffed in annoyance and stuck his hands in his pockets. He should have known Toph would remember that line. “You know, Toph, maybe we really should come clean to Katara about where we’re getting our money from,” he threatened.

“Maybe we shouldn’t,” said Toph as she threw her skewer at Sokka’s head.

“So you’re cheating at crooked dice games,” said Zuko. “You’re just doing the same to those gamblers that they were going to do to you. How can that be wrong?”

“Exactly,” said Sokka.

“For sure,” agreed Toph.

They were both glad that Zuko had been too distracted by seeing the advertisements for the play that he didn’t ask how they’d scored same day tickets for what was obviously an incredibly popular show. If he had known they’d scammed the tickets from some rich jerkoff then he would have probably thrown a hissy fit about them risking the mission or something.

Honestly, for a firebender Zuko could be a complete wet blanket. No wonder he and Katara got along so well. All Toph and Sokka did was trick money out of people who had too much of it. What could possibly go wrong with that?

This chapter was actually ninety percent finished by the end of February, the only thing left was the big showdown at the end. But then I got a new job and that kind of slowed down my writing by a fair bit. It’s another long one, but guess what – the fic is 66% finished. Only Book 3 is left, the epilogue is actually already done. How about that, huh? I’m looking forward to actually finishing a multi-chapter fic.

“Princess Azula, I think you’ll be interested in this message,” said the governor of Omashu. Azula took the scroll from him and quickly scanned through it, then slowed down to read the message again more thoroughly when she realized what it was saying. “Well, girls,” she said to her friends, “it seems my brother has finally shown his true colours.”

“What do you mean, Azula?” asked Ty Lee. Behind her, the governor had silently retreated out of the room. Azula’s only answer was to turn the scroll around so that Mai and Ty Lee could read it. The tassel was in the gold and red pattern that meant an official message involving a royal wedding. Had the Earth King finally gotten engaged? Then Mai and Ty Lee took a closer look.

“Zuko’s engaged to Katara, ‘Master Waterbender and daughter of Chief Hakoda of the Southern Water Tribe’?” quoted Mai.

What would have happened if Aang hadn't recovered Katara's necklace?

“Katara’s necklace!” cried Aang. “Give that back!”

“Come and take it!” shouted Zuko as he kicked a blanket of flame toward the Avatar. The younger boy dodged nimbly out of the way, but the prince pressed his attack and released more blasts, all of which missed.

While the two boys fought – or rather, while Zuko chased Aang, who kept hopping around and staying out of the Firebender’s reach – Katara and Sokka fought Zuko’s bounty hunter, June, and her monstrous shirshu. For some reason the old Firebender who always accompanied Zuko did nothing but watch the fight. Perhaps he was too old to fight, or perhaps he was waiting for an opportune moment to join in. Whatever the case, Katara didn’t have the time to ponder the situation. June and her pet were already hard enough to fight on their own. Please don’t let the old man join the fight, thought Katara before she refocused herself on the battle at hand.

Luckily, Sokka was quite good at thinking on his feet and had quickly grasped the potential of the jars of perfume that the nuns had stored in the courtyard. “Katara, splash this stuff on that giant sniffer animal thing!” said Sokka as he tipped over the jars. Without hesitation, Katara grabbed the perfume and waterbent it at the shirshu. The smell overpowered the creature, causing it to lash out wildly at its surroundings. June was quickly paralyzed by her own shirshu’s poison tongue while a surprised Zuko suddenly found himself unable to move after the shirshu tagged him on the way into running into a wall and knocking itself out.

“Prince Zuko!” shouted Iroh in concern. “Are you all right?”