THE VILLAGE | An Avatar The last Airbender Fanfiction

─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───

The last few days had been a wild ride, to say the least. First and foremost, the gang had camped out at a fishing town in the middle of a large fire nation lake. The water everywhere was polluted severely by a newly built factory near the dam and It was more like a swamp than anything else. Long story short, Katara had pretended to be the towns patron spirit, the painted lady. She'd brought them food every night to help with the hunger crisis. The thing the town really needed was for the factory to somehow disappear. Katara was exposed but as a result, fought off some fire nation soldiers with the rest of the group and ultimately saved the entire town. They cleaned the lake up and it was just a morally enriching fable.

On the other hand, Adeline wasn't too interested. Her and Sokka had been slowly planning the perfect way to tell Aang about her abilities and finally explain properly to Sokka about how she even had them. They'd never had too many chances to talk about it so when everyone knew, she could just spit the stories out. She was just going to follow the format she used to tell Sokka. Start off slow with 'I'm a bender', let the chaos unravel and wrap it up with her background. Easy right?

The five kids lay against the ground looking at the stars, all with their hands behind their heads, giving their neck support and comfort. Blue shining meteors shot past the sky like giant raindrops with a diagonal destination. The sky was a mix of grey and navy with giant gas stars spiralling in the distance, appearing minuscule from the earth. The grass was soft beneath them, not pointy and felt similar to a slightly hard armchair.

"Wow, this is amazing to watch" Katara admired, her hands now spread across her stomach.

"Kind of makes you realize how insignificant we are," Sokka said with a slight sigh.

"I've never seen anything like it" Adeline admired.

Toph shrugged. "eh, you've seen nothing once, you've seen it 1,000 times."

More meteors whizzed past forcing awes and gasps as a particularly large one presented itself. It was like a blue sun, growing bigger and bigger, as it headed straight for them.

They all stood, bar Toph. "Oh, Man. You've never not seen anything like this" Sokka gasped, as the blue aura whizzed past their heads.

It landed in a blue haze not far from them with a giant explosion and pale mushroom cloud. The five kids stumbled over the rock to get a better look at what happened. A river led up to a bigger mound of rocks and behind the small mountain sat the crater made by the meteor.

The gang hopped on Appa and hastily flew to where smoke was billowing out of the ground. It was mostly grassland but just short of the fire sat a lonely fire nation town. "The fire is gonna destroy that town!" Katara called as Appa circled the meteor and landed.

"Not if we can stop it," Aang said hopefully.

Sokka, Toph, Aang and Adeline all hopped of Appa as Katara crawled onto his neck and took hold of his reigns. "There's a creek over there," The girl said as she pointed to said creek. "I'll bend the water on to the fire"

She pulled the reigns and Appa took off, leaving the rest of them on the ground. "Toph, let's make a trench to keep the fire from coming any closer" Aang yelled as the two ran forward.

Adeline stayed behind Sokka as he called to the two. "What should I do?".

He sounded exasperated and about ready to give up. Momo flew past Aang's head as the boy's eyes followed. The monk pointed to the flying lemur. "Keep an eye on Momo"

They ran off. "So what, I'm just a lemur-sitter?" he called. Momo flew onto Sokka's head and wrapped his arms and legs around his neck.

"We're both lemur-sitters," Adeline told him, scratching momo behind his ear and getting a 'purr' like noise in return. Up ahead. Aang and Toph worked together, moving in steady sync and gradually creating a cavern. Bits of fire flew at Adeline and Sokka, landing all around them, very close to Adeline's foot. Momo ran off. Sokka panicked and started hitting the fire with his sharp blue half axe while Momo and Adeline put out the others. Sokka's face went sour as he looked around.

The three stood there, not doing anything as Katara dropped a heap of water over the crater. Toph folded earth out and the fire got smaller and smaller. By this time, Sokka and Adeline had taken seats on the mossy ground and watched helplessly. It didn't bother Adeline that she wasn't able to do anything because she hoped that one day if a situation like this arose, she would be of use. But Sokka... what he was thinking was another story.

Appa flew overhead and Katara bent some water to the ground and into the hands of Aang. He swirled it around in a circle about himself. "Sokka, Adeline, Stand clear!"

"Right, stand clear. Got it" Sokka sighed, picking up Momo and walking away from the decreasing fire and blast of water Aang threw.

Unfortunately, before they got away in time, Aang blew a large blast of air and water their way. It blew itself into a giant sphere and then dispersed leaving little water droplets mixed with air to fall and hit the ground like snow.

Sokka sat up from a snow pile, he and Adeline had been drenched in and frowned. Aang rubbed his hands together as Katara and Appa landed. "Good work, everybody"

─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───

The cafe was small and quaint. The canapé above them was held up by thick bamboo and fitted at the top with glowing yellow lanterns although the light didn't reach every corner. However, natural light took over where others could not. A few wooden tables lined the area and the ground was paved with salmon-coloured cement slabs. Aang walked over to a table which consisted of Katara, Toph and Adeline, carrying a tray of food for himself. The others already ate their food and smiled at the warm sensations making their way down to their stomachs

Sokka sat a hot minute away at the outdoor entrance where some cobblestone steps led up to the court. "These people have no idea how close they were to getting toasted last night" Aang stated as he picked up some chopsticks.

Toph held a piece of dough up in the air before taking a bite. "Yeah, the worst thing about being in disguise is we don't get the hero-worship anymore." She lowered the Dough and put her chin in her free hand. "I miss the love"

Sokka rolled his eyes, facing away from the four. "Boo-hoo, poor heroes." he spat, spitefully as he looked out over the sea of red upward curling fire nation rooftops.

Everyone turned to him. "What's your problem?" Katara asked. "You haven't even touched your smoked sea slug" The girl motioned to a streaming tray and platter beside her brother which rested, deserted.

Sokka looked up, still faced away from the gang. "It's just, all you guys can do this awesome bending stuff like putting out forest fires and flying around and making other stuff fly around. I can't fly around, ok? I can't do... anything"

"That's not true. No one can read a map like you" Katara consoled.

"I can't read at all" Toph cooed.

"Yeah, and who keeps us laughing with sarcastic comments all the time?" Aang prompted. "I mean, look at Katara's hair, right?"

He reached forward and picked up one of the large loops dangling from the back which had been moved to the front. "What's up with that?"

Katara pulled the hair back into her chest. "What? What's wrong with my hair?"

"Nothing, I was just trying to..."

Adeline stayed silent, she was a bender although she couldn't do much. And we'll, trying to console somebody with lies when they already know the truth wasn't exactly how you comfort someone.

"Look I appreciate the effort. but the fact is, each of you is so amazing and so special, and I'm not. I'm just the guy in the group who's regular"

They frowned before Aang decided to say the one thing Adeline had been begging the universe not to be said." Hey, don't put yourself down like that, Adeline doesn't have any bending either, you're not the only one!"

Sokka turned his head rapidly, angered but attempting his hardest not to show it. "But I am! Adeline isn't normal, it's not fair!"

The group looked between Adeline and Sokka, puzzled. Sokka stood back when he realized what he'd said but Adeline was prepared. "Bit harsh, Sokka, don't you think?"

Sokka nodded and smiled awkwardly, not convincingly at all. Katara walked forward, still a bit confused but left the antagonising stares to Toph and Aang. "I'm sorry you're feeling so down, but I hope you know none of us see you that way."

She sat down beside him and put a hand on his shoulder. "I know something that's gonna make you feel better"

He turned to her. "You do?"

AUTHORS NOTE

Sorry for this god awful chapter but the book is finally getting to my favourite bit lol. My writing has been slow and I'm only on chapter 23 as I write this but I'd expect to pick up the pace soon and update more! I have been skipping episodes I don't find that important or compelling to write so I'm sorry if you like those ones, they just aren't very important. Also, I have a new 'my hero academia fic' If you wanted to check that out, it would be greatly appreciated.

WORD COUNT: 1632