"Why don't we start off by having each of you introduce yourselves?" The man asked hopefully from off screen. "We can start left and go right."
"Zuko here," Zuko grinned waving almost shyly at the camera. "Uh, you all probably know that already."
He glances to Mai sitting beside him looking bored and uninterested as always. She pauses allowing an awkward silence to brew just for the hell of it. "Mai."
"Don't sound so bored," Ty Lee teased.
"I am bored," Mai snorted.
"Right, well, I'm Ty Lee," the pink clad girl smiled. The camera shifted ever so slightly to Azula, who was looking well past the camera off to the far right. She gave no acknowledgment of the camera crew and merely flipped them off.
"Perfect," the man replied, and the smile could be heard in his voice. "Why don't you tell us how all of this started? How'd you meet?"
— — —
"Ready for your first day of school?" A woman asked, the camera focusing on a young Azula, dressed nicely in her school uniform, already looking unimpressed with this 'school' thing.
"I guess," Azula shrugged, turning towards the classroom door and tugging it open. She immediately recoiled at the sounds of crying children and snotty faces. The young girl turned to look at the woman in horror. "Do I have to go in there?"
"Yes, honey, you do," the woman, her mother, sighed.
"Hey! You're new!" Someone exclaimed. The camera picked up on a thin, long limbed, brown haired, pink dressed girl.
"I am," Azula nodded, looking wearily at the new comer. "I'm Azula."
"Ty Lee-wait...." The other girl frowned, "is your older brother Zuko?"
"Maybe," Azula replied a little too coyly for a five year old.
"My sisters know him," Ty Lee explained. "Wanna play?"
"Depends," Azula pursed her lips and crossed her small arms.
"Swords?" Ty Lee asked hopefully, Azula's mother could be heard chuckling from behind the camera.
"Just go play darling," she encouraged, "Zuko will pick you up from here and walk with you to the car pick up line, okay?"
"I can find it on my own," Azula insisted.
"I can walk with her," Ty Lee promised. "I've been here bunches. I know this whole thing like the back of my hand."
"You're pointing at your palm," Azula noted.
"Same difference," Ty Lee shrugged. Again, Azula gave her mother an apprehensive look but the video cut out.
— — —
"That was some home video correct?" The man asked.
"Yeah," Zuko nodded, glancing in the direction of his sister.
"Looks like the two of you hit it off pretty fast," The man noted.
"I think I annoyed her more than anything," Ty Lee sighed, looking away bashfully. "We did end up playing swords though. Except the playground monitors said we couldn't swing around the big sticks we'd found so that was a bust. This was after lunch of course, we didn't have big sticks in the classroom."
"Didn't stop you from finding the rulers," Mai smirked.
"Ooooh, what happened with the classroom rulers?" The man asked, his voice holding a note of overzealous curiosity.
"You know how you can put a plastic ruler on the edge of a desk, bend it, let go, and make that weird ass noise?" Mai arched a brow, "yeah, well, she figured that out real quick and showed the entire class how to do it so the teacher had to confiscate all of the rules and lock them in a cabinet."
For the first time Azula gave some inclination that she was listening as the corner of her mouth twitched into the phantom shape of a smile.
"What about you and Zuko?" The Director man inquired, taking the opportunity to get a story out of Mai while she was talking.
"Oh, we met because of Azula," Mai explained.
"Go on," the Director encouraged.
— — —
"Zuko please be careful about where you ride your bike," the same woman as before, his mother, worried. The camera caught the hazy form of a young Zuko wobbly riding his bicycle down the sidewalk.
Off to the side of the frame, a young girl presumably a neighbor, stood at the edge of her driveway watching him curiously. Meanwhile, a young Azula set down a soccer ball, looked expectantly at her mother to see if she was watching, and exclaimed, "watch how far I kick it."
Without even looking, Azula whipped about and kicked the living daylights out of the undersized ball. It went sailing in the air and just before the camera cut out, made contact with Zuko's head.
— — —
"Well what happened after that?"
"He fell off of his bike and took me down with him. I'm the little girl off to the side. We'd just moved in a few houses down from where Zuko and Azula lived," Mai explained, trying not to laugh.
"You know, for someone so small," Zuko started, "Azula could kick the shit out of anything."
"Feet of fury," Ty Lee laughed to herself.
"Azula, anything to add?"
There was no response from the band's leader. Just a small phantom of a smile as she rewatched the clip. Then, rather suddenly, she turned her attention to the camera, "wanna see how far I can kick that camera?"