Avatar: The Parallels

Chapter 23: Plotting the Plotline

Tikaani's POV:

"Today's the day!" Aang cheered as he leaped into the air gleefully. "Can you believe it? After all that time searching for a teacher, I'm finally starting earthbending! And this place! It's perfect! Don't you think?" I didn't know whom Aang was talking too, nor did I care. I only knew that I was very annoyed with him. "Sokka?" I heard the grumpy lump that was Sokka let out an angry grumble. "Oh, you're still sleeping, huh?"

"We're all still sleeping!" I growled as I pulled my sleeping bag up over my head.

"Sorry!" Aang whispered in a very quiet tone.

"Good morning earth bending student!" Toph shouted in a very loud and excited voice. The pieces of her earthbending tent flew in all directions, creating a chorus of loud booms.

"Good morning sifu Toph!" Aang greeted jubilantly.

"Hey... You never called me sifu Katara..." Katara complained.

"Well... If you think I should-" Aang was soon interrupted by some loud grumbling and angry gibberish--courtesy of Sokka.

"Sorry, snoozles! We'll do our earthbending as quietly as we can!" Toph jammed her heel into the ground and a giant rock shot out of the ground beneath Sokka. The rock shoved him about eight to ten feet in the air. He screamed at the top of his lungs until he hit the ground again, at which point he hopped off, muttering what I assumed to be curse words under his breath.

"So what move are you going to teach me first? Rockalanche? The trembler? Oh! Maybe I can learn to make a whirlpool out of land!" Aang demonstrated the moves in a very zealous, over-excited way.

"Let's start with: move a rock." Toph suggested.

"Sounds good, sounds good!" Aang clapped and nodded at Toph's brilliant plans. She bended two large boulders in front of her and Aang, not even trying to be the slightest bit quiet. I sighed and, realizing that I wasn't going to get any sleep, decided to maybe go off and do my own thing for the entirety of the episode. Of course, I could assume that Red was going to come with me, so I walked up to her sleeping bag.

"Red!" I looked down at the sleeping bag. "Red, wake up!" A loud crashing noise sounded from behind me as Toph demonstrated to Aang how to move the rock. "How can you even sleep with all of this noise?" I nudged the sleeping bag with my foot and a cabbage rolled out of it. My eyes widened. I unzipped Red's sleeping bag and a whole butt load of cabbages rolled onto the rocky ground in front of me. "Walt!" I whistled the whistle that Red always used to call him, but he didn't come. Red was gone. It was then that I noticed a note sitting on the inside of her sleeping bag. The note was written in English. She was the only one who could have written it.

"Dear Tikaani,

Left for a little while. Should be back tonight or sometime tomorrow. Don't miss me.

~Red"

What on earth could she possibly be doing?

Red's POV:

"Ugh... I really hate this thing, you know?" I spoke to Walt as we flew through the wide-open skies. Mountains and pine forests stretched below us as far as the eye could see. I was fumbling with the map, turning it right side up and upside down. Japanese letters were written on certain places in the map, but I had no idea what they meant! "Ugh!" I growled in frustration.

Walt let out a long, drawn out howl while we flew. He turned his head back towards me and bark-screeched a couple times. The animals in the Avatarverse always made the strangest sounds. The cat owl is the strangest in my opinion. It lets out some sort of noise that isn't quite a meow, but isn't quite a hoot. Instead, It's a very odd, unevenly fitting mixture between the two common animal noises. It would be too difficult to explain in any other detail, but trust me; it is one of the strangest things I'd ever heard.