Pro-Bending Circuit | Round Three

Team & Position:Laogai Lion Vultures, waterbender

Addiction: hoarding

Prompts Used:(object) glove | (emotion) disgust | (restriction) Exactly one person must have dialogue

Bonus:Use of my element (water)

Word Count:1,456

Summary: Sometimes, it's hard to take your sister seriously when she's made of ant-mites and there's a lemur plotting to kill everyone. An insight into what may well have been going through Sokka's head after he indulged in that desert cactus juice. This story assumes you're pretty familiar with episode 31 The Desert. Don't do drugs kids.

Hoarding Sand

Thirst quenching.

Nothing's quenchier.

It's the quenchiest.

Katara doesn't understand this, which is weird because she's water. Well, she bends water normally, but right now she's made entirely of water. Until she moves. Now she's made of ant-mites. They're everywhere.

Sokka doesn't want to be near their snapping jaws or scuttling feet. Can no one else hear their feet?!

Sand!

Sand will stop them.

It doesn't even occur to Sokka to question that logic — or lack thereof. He's wrist deep in the burning grains of ancient volcanos when he realises that just sand isn't good enough. Of course it isn't. If he wants to be safe from ant-mite-Katara, he'll have to collect the sand one grain at a time.

Honestly, Momo should have thought of this.

But Momo is distracted. Momo's gone crazy. They all have.

Am I really the only one here who hasn't lost my mind?

Wait… Who lit Toph on fire?

'Who lit Toph on fire?' He's not concerned. Toph isn't made of wood anymore. Her face has always looked that way, with her eyes slowly moving further and further apart…

Three grains of sand.

Where will they, the grains, be safe?

Momo looks at him with eyes so wide, he could fit two burning Toph's in them.

Momo can't be trusted with the sand. Ten seconds later Sokka's facial muscles — fairly numb by now — register the thought and arrange the wool that is Sokka's face into a glower.

The three grains! Right…

The pouch on his belt is green and has tiny, ceramic carvings of Bumi's face smiling up at him. Weird, he could have sworn he's carved whale bones into it…

The sand is safe.

Better yet, no one has noticed his collection.

The smugness is rich and full, like the toffee his father once brought home after trading with the southern Earth Kingdom villagers. It buoys him. Buoyant. Floating… Water.

He'd suck a whole pond of frozen frogs to have one sip of water….

Momo hands him a baby catgator. Can't the lemur see he's trying to think?

There!

By Momo's tail.

A puddle of water!

Working from some part of his brain buried too deep for excavation — the same part that demands meat and sarcasm — Sokka dives for the puddle. Cool, sweet freshwater floods past his lips, grainy against his tongue.

Something like bile rises when he swallows.

It's awfully sandy, this water.

Sokka spits out the grains of sand-water in disgust, shaken.

His eyes stream — with tears, not ant-mites, he's checked! — but one sandy mouthful isn't the problem anymore.

A tentacle wraps around his arm, slimy and cold. Despite the unpleasant sensation, it's just Katara.

Her tentacles have got really cold.

Might have something to do with being at sea…

They're going to have to find a boat. And fast.

'How did we get out here in the middle of the ocean?'

Katara's mouth opens in ripples.

- o -

Five grains now.

He has to get to ten. Ten sands. That's obvious. Even Momo knows that.

He only finds two more that will work, adding them to the glowing hoard in the pouch at his waist, when a gloved hand emerges from the ground.

It waves at him.

Sokka grins and waves back. Classic glove hand, he thinks knowingly, shaking his head.

But Katara's voice is crawling through the air at him; shock grips him. When had his sister swallowed slime? Toph replies with a revolting baritone that hurts Sokka's ears and turns his stomach.

Thank goodness for the mushroom.

It understands how repellent Katara and Toph sound. It knows .

'It's a giant mushroom!' Have the others not seen this yet? 'Maybe it's friendly!'

Momo gets it.

Momo's after his five grains and suddenly has the most repugnant body odour Sokka's even known.

But Momo gets the mushroom.

'Friendly mushroom!' they chorus. Well, Sokka choruses. Momo just lets loose a low drone. 'Mushy giant friend!'

- o -

Momo is waterbending in the Si Wong Desert. Ocean. Swimming. Fish. Food. Meat… what was he talking about?

Momo's not very good at waterbending.

He's just sort of lying there.

While water pools around him.

Sokka takes another grain of sand from the lemur's knee. He feels a little guilty about this until he realises that Momo's waterbending while Sokka's thirsty.

Also, he has steaks for knees.

Sokka doesn't remember ever being nauseated by the sight of food before. Especially not meat.

Damn you, Momo…

Katara wants to take her steak-kneed monkey to Ba Sing Se. If she wants to make it she's going to have to get their permission.

He points to the sky to help her; she's been pretty dense ever since they'd left the owl's fancy book palace. 'Why don't we ask the circle birds?'

- o -

Katara is the worst sister in the world.

Aang should Avatar State slice her and Toph should… stomp around and bend her into a ditch.

Sokka is repulsed that such a tyrant could ever come from his family! Making them trudge all day through the sand that refuses to stay sand! Only when she tells them to stop for the night (Aang and Toph are probably in on it, though…) does Sokka relent; he supposes she's not so hideous a sister after all…

His antipathy towards her dries up faster than rain in the desert when she opens her water pouch to give each of them a drink.

Sokka is busy checking his grains; Aang has been unusually surly, and Sokka can't take any chances with the eight grains (two more he found tickling his elbow; he could hardly believe his luck!). So distracted, was he, by the eight grains that he's too late to stop Momo when the lemur finally launches his plot to kill them all.

Sokka's horrified when Momo sloshes Katara's water to the ground. Appalled hatred for the lemur forces his hands to his head where they grasp his hair in despair. 'Momo, no! You've killed us all!'

The ant-mites are back lining his sister's hand as she draws the liquid from the ground.

Oh.

'Oh, right. Bending.'

He glances around. No one noticed his lapse. No one noticed that he'd briefly entirely forgotten his sister's magic water.

Water...

He loves his sister. What would he do without her?

She says something about the library and all sunny feelings of warmth and sweetness disappear like a candle's flame in high wind.

'What?!' he splutters, grabbing at his bag which is decidedly too feathered for a bamboo satchel. 'I didn't steal anything! Who told you that?'

But he knew.

'It was you!' He points at Momo even as he reaches for the pouch at his belt. If Momo truly had turned on him, he has to make sure the grains were safe! 'You ratted me out!'

Momo can't fool him. Sure, the lemur is pink down his left side for some reason, and one of his ears is dribbling down his body like a wax figure — Sokka has a real aversion to gooey things that dribble — but he can't fool the warrior!

Although he seems to have fooled Katara.

- o -

It's finally happened.

All ten grains of sand are safety enclosed in the pouch made of fine bone china.

There's nothing Momo can do now…

Momo is swimming through the desert sand. Clearly, he doesn't realise that Sokka has the ten grains — the ten grains, remember — and is enacting some fiendish plot. The lemur's betrayal fills Sokka with abhorrence; after everything they've been through together.

Ew, the air is sticky over here.

Toph's eyelids are yellow again.

Aang's arrows have all become rather active, dancing over the airbender's face and hands.

Katara seems to have angered a forest spirit because there's bark growing out of her ears and nose.

And she's talking about the moon riding Appa.

'Appa? But why would Princess Yue need him? She's the moon!' Even Momo agrees with him here. Sokka briefly forgives the lemur his repellent behaviour and rubs his tail over his face. 'She flies by herself!'

Momo's tail has come off in Sokka's hand.

Does the lemur have no standards?!

The repulsive little viper-monkey tells him Yue doesn't love him anymore and Sokka feels it's important for Momo to understand the Spirit World and the complexity of the moon's lunar goodness.

Momo's body odour is back (black pepper, stale swamp water, and a hint of lemon).

Sokka is sickened by the lemur.

How dare the furry little monster be so disgustingly smelly when he's trying to explain the exact shade of Yue's eyes.

But then Sokka's hands feel wet and sort of flat and he forgets about peppery lemurs and the sorrows of the moon.

I haven't written one of these crack-fics before, this is the closest I'll probably get. They are amazingly fun! Also, Sokka's voice comes frighteningly easy to me... not sure that's a good thing. Good for this fic at least! Hope you enjoyed!