"But that's just not true." Sokka argued as the group were sat near a lake on a sunny and beautiful day.
"It is true." Harry replied.
"Tea does not give you power!" Sokka said in an exasperated voice.
"Underestimate it at your own cost." Harry said simply as he shrugged his shoulders.
"Look!" Katara said suddenly, sounding very excited. She pointed to the lake where a big green fish, a se tu fish, leaped out of the water before diving back in.
"Hey!" Sokka blurted out when the fish jumped out again. "It's taunting us!" He said in an offended voice, not liking the way the fish had looked at him.
"Yeah, he is, what are you going to do about it?" Harry asked him challengingly. "You going to take that from a fish?"
"NO! I'll show you what I'm going to do!" Sokka said as he pulled out a fishing stick and charged towards the lake.
"Did you have to do that?" Katara asked Harry, rolling her eyes.
"No," Harry admitted. "but I did." He said, unapologetically.
"Hey, where's the fishing line?!" Sokka demanded after realising that he was now holding just a stick.
"Oh, it's here." Aang said after holding up a bracelet made up of the fishing line and a small red flower.
"Damn it, Aang." Sokka groaned. "It's all tangled."
"No, it's not tangled, it's actually 'woven'." Aang corrected before turning to Katara. "I made you a bracelet!" He said proudly as he held it up for her.
"Aw, thank you, Aang." Katara smiled as she took it and put it on her wrist. "This is really nice, I love it."
"Really?" Aang asked with a smile.
"Really." Katara confirmed.
"Great, if saving the world doesn't work out then at least you have a talent in jewellery making to fall back on." Sokka said sarcastically.
"Good to have a backup." Harry said to Aang in a sincere sounding approving voice.
"Thanks!" Aang grinned.
"Oh Aang, it's so pretty!" Katara exclaimed as she looked at the bracelet now on her wrist.
"Great, you want to award your boyfriend with a kiss or something?" Sokka said, rolling his eyes before he went into the lake so he could catch the fish by hand.
"Sokka, don't be childish." Katara admonished before turning to Harry and Aang. "What do you think?" She asked, holding her bracelet up so it was next to her face.
"It...it looks...um..." Aang blushed as he looked at her.
"Oh, how cute!" Sokka said before he began making kissing noises after catching the fish. "Someone's in love!" He said in a sing song voice, he likely would have said more if he wasn't interrupted by the fish slapping him in the face as it escaped.
"Stop teasing Aang," Katara told him off before smiling at Aang. "Aang's just a good friend." She said before patting the side of his head. "A sweet, little guy! Just like Momo." She added before she moved onto petting Momo.
If Katara had been paying attention to Harry then she would have seen him wince slightly on behalf of Aang. 'Poor guy,' Harry thought to himself. 'he got both friend and pet-zoned.'
"Uh...thanks," Aang said quietly, sounding disappointed, though Katara didn't seem to notice. "it's nice that you think of me...as a friend...like Momo and Harry."
"Um...yeah." Katara nodded, casting a glance towards Harry before smiling at Aang. "We're all great friends."
"Yeah, I..." Whatever Aang was about to say was cut off by a large noise coming from a small distance away. "...that sounds like a platypus bear." Aang frowned as he picked up his staff and stood up.
"It sounds like a welcome distraction to me." Harry said under his breath as he also got to his feet.
"What the fuck is wrong with this guy?" Harry asked the others as they came upon a man who seemed to be casually dodging attacks from a platypus bear. The platypus bear's fur is mostly brown with a white "V" on its chest similar to that of a sloth bear, and a patch of lighter brown around its eyes. The creature has a large bill lined with jagged teeth and a platypus-like tail while its front paws are padded with claws and it has large, webbed hind feet.
"Shouldn't we help him?" Katara asked, looking at Harry.
"I don't know." Harry admitted. "We should but he doesn't look too bothered and I'm honestly quite willing to see how long he can last before the bear gets him." Harry shrugged.
"Harry." Katara said in a disapproving voice just before turning in the direction of the stranger. "Run!" She shouted. "Go find a big tree and climb!"
"Oh, it's perfectly fine." The stranger said with a smile as another swipe of the bear's paws nearly got him. "Whoa! That was a close one!" He said, sounding more amused than anything else.
"Is he crazy?" Sokka blinked.
"The fact that he's letting a bear attack him isn't evidence enough?" Harry asked, raising an eyebrow.
"Oh, enough of this, I'm going to go and stop this before he gets hurt." Aang said before he leaped in-between the man and the bear, he threw up an air shield that blocked an attack from the bear. "Run away!" He shouted to the man.
"Oh, don't worry about me." The man waved him off. "I'll be fine."
"Harry, do you think you should help?" Sokka half-asked, half-suggested.
"I would, but I'm not really a fan of harming animals because people are idiots." Harry said before pausing. "Though on the other hand it is possible that the man has some mental problems, and I am not really a fan of letting the mentally ill suffer, so yes...yes, I will help. Appa!" Harry called. A second later the big and fluffy sky bison had landed behind the platypus bear. A single roar from Appa had let the bear realise that it was no longer the biggest animal here, it rather wisely ran off. "There, me and Appa dealt with it." Harry told Sokka and Katara.
"Appa did all the work!" Sokka said, Katara joined him in looking at Harry with disbelief.
"Yeah, but who called him? Huh?" Harry pointed out.
"Why are we friends with you?" Sokka couldn't help but wonder.
"Beats me." Harry shrugged before turning to the calm man. "You alright?" He asked.
"Oh, don't worry about me, I'm perfectly fine." The man said dismissively.
"You're lucky we came along or you wouldn't be." Sokka told him, shaking his head slightly at the man's attitude.
"Thanks, but everything was already under control." The man said with no doubt in his voice. "Not to worry. Aunt Wu predicted I'd have a safe journey."
"Who?" Aang blinked.
"No, Aunt Wu." The man corrected him. "She's the fortune-teller from my village. Awful nice knowing your future." He said with a grin.
"Are you kidding me?" Harry looked at the man with disbelief.
"No, she really does know the future." The man's smile got even wider.
"Oh, that must be why you were so calm, Aunt Wu told you your future!" Katara gasped.
"He was calm because he was idiotic enough to trust a fortune teller, a moment or two later and he would be dead." Harry said in an irritated voice.
"Yeah, she was wrong," Sokka agreed, turning his attention back to the man. "you were almost killed."
"Almost," The man pointed out with a laugh. "but I wasn't, I wasn't even hurt. So Aunt Wu was right!" The man chuckled. "Okay, I must be off now. Though if you ever do visit Aunt Wu then I'm sure she'd be willing to tell you all your futures. She told me I'd have lots of good luck if I directed someone to her, this will be a fun trip." The man waved at them before walking off, whistling a merry tune as he left.
"Hey guys, we should go and visit her!" Katara said in an excited voice. "Maybe she could tell us our futures."
"Oh come on, please tell me you don't believe all of that." Sokka sighed.
"I'm with 'Captain Ponytail' over here," Harry said, gesturing to Sokka. "going there would just be a waste of time."
"I don't know, I kind of want to go." Aang said with a grin. "It sounds fun." He added before he and Katara smiled together.
"Congratulations." Harry told Sokka.
"Huh, why?" Sokka asked in a confused voice.
"Because you're no longer the dumbest person here." Harry told him.
"Come on, Harry." Katara said. "It'll be fun."
"No, it won't." Harry snorted. "It'll be a..."
"..colossal waste of time." Harry said, still ranting even as the group neared the village. "She's probably just a drunk-ass woman who sits around on a comfy pillow and makes the occasional lucky guess."
"Wow," Sokka said quietly while Aang and Katara stayed silent, not willing to say anything that might further increase the length of Harry's rant. "you really don't like fortune tellers." Sokka said, he wasn't fond of them either but apparently his dislike of them did not match the level of Harry's.
"I hate them." Harry said with a scowl on his face. "I hate fortune tellers, I hate oracles, I hate prophecies, I hate prophecy-making oracles! Half of them are just drunk assholes that make crap up while the other half are sober assholes that make stuff up."
"Oh come on, I'm sure they're not all that bad." Aang said, hoping it wouldn't make Harry's mood worse.
"Yes, they bleeding are!" Harry snapped. "I can't believe you lot believe this crap, 'Oh, I'll tell the future'." Harry said mockingly. "As if that actually works. It's a bunch of crap."
"Well, maybe this one is the real deal." Katara said optimistically.
"The real deal?" Harry scoffed. "If that's true then answer me this, does this 'Aunt Wu' appear to be in hiding?"
"Well...no."
"Okay, so she's an actual fortune teller who is not in hiding and clearly doesn't mind letting people know about her based on what we learnt from that dumbass who took her word seriously enough to not try and escape from an angry bear. If she's such a real deal then why don't most villages know about her? In fact, why don't the Fire Nation know about her? Huh?" Harry asked, raising an eyebrow. "Because let me tell you something, if Fire Lord jerk-face knew about a woman that actually tell the future then he'd want her by his side, constantly telling him the future so he could plan around it. If she's the real deal she'd be killed to make sure she can't be used against him or kidnapped so he could use her."
"W...well," Katara stuttered as she tried to think up a reply. "...um..."
"Oh, 'um', huh?" Harry asked. "Yeah, 'real deal' my ass."
"Well, maybe there's a good reason for it." Aang said eventually.
"Yeah," Katara quickly agreed with him. "for all we know, there could be a good and perfectly valid reason for it." She said in a confident voice. Harry snorted disbelievingly at that but didn't say anything more.
"Harry!" A seven year old Azula called as she arrived in the garden to find the eight year old Harry meditating.
"Hey Azula." Harry said as he opened his eyes to find Azula standing in front of him, except she was not alone, she had two girls with her. Harry stood up and took a look at the two girls.
One of which was dressed in fine and high quality Fire Nation clothing, she had a unique hair style, her hair was short with bangs covering her forehead and two tufts of hair that were formed into balls, those two tufts were decorated with pretty red ribbons, thought the girl's face was seemingly blank. Next to her was a girl who had her hair into a long ponytail, though unlike the previous girl, this girl had a wide smile and seemed to radiate cheerfulness.
"Meet my two friends from school," Azula said as she gestured to the two girls. "this one is called Mai." She said, gesturing to the first girl.
"Hi." Mai said, her voice sounding somewhat bored.
"Hey." Harry replied, matching her tone, something which surprised the girl given the slight widening of her eyes.
"And this is Ty Lee." Azula said in an amused voice before gesturing to the next girl.
"Hi!" Ty Lee smiled and cheerfully waved at him.
"Hi." Harry blinked at the cheerful girl.
"And girls, this is Harry, my best friend and the 'Emerald Dragon'." Azula said, sounding smug over the fact that she knew Harry better than any other kid her age.
"Really? Oh, it's nice to meet you!" Ty Lee said in an excited voice. "I've heard so much about you! Oh, your aura is magnificent!"
"My what?" Harry asked slowly.
"Your aura, it's so powerful!" Ty Lee said as she bounced up and down on the tips of her toes. "I can feel it radiating off of you. I mean, mine is so much pinker than yours, but your aura is nice too. It's really bright and green! Hmm, I wonder how big it can get." She said thoughtfully, cocking her head to the side.
"Well, I..."
"Oh, do you want to see me do flips?" She asked suddenly. "I can do cartwheels, flips, backflips, I'm really flexible as well and I can do handstands and just about anything! Oh, maybe I can teach you some stuff! And then you can teach me! We can teach each other! Then teach these two!" She said with a bright smile. Harry stared at her for several seconds with a flummoxed expression before he turned to Azula.
"You're enjoying this, aren't you?" He said, seeing Azula's smile.
"Maybe a little." Azula smirked.