***
You know, there are certain kinds of people in the world with certain professions that you know are strong no matter how harmless they might look. Like a certain Fire Nation general that was recognized as the greatest of his time and almost took down Ba Sing Se. Can you imagine just how many battles this man had been into?
The burst of fire that was heading my way reminded me of that very clearly. I dodged the attack, by stepping to the side, but the fire curved slightly and seemed to chase me like a snake. While the curvature wouldn't seem that impressive, when dodging something you don't expect the attack to change direction and it would have taken me by surprise if danger sense hadn't warned me 0.6 seconds before, giving me just barely enough time to dodge.
I was tempted to use waterbending as it would take them all by surprise. Even Iroh would probably fall for that, but that wouldn't be beneficial. Plus, I liked Iroh, he spared me the first time around and now I was just returning the favor.
Though I could tell now, that he wasn't holding back anymore and was using the environment around him to empower his flames. He burned the leaves around me and was trying to entrap me in flames.
Sadly for him. I had already seen through that and was just playing along.
"Young people nowadays keep getting stronger and stronger by the day," Iroh complained tiredly.
But he wasn't fooling anyone here… well, he was probably fooling Zuko and the others. But I wasn't convinced by his act at all.
"Old people should also spend their days leisurely and stop interfering on young people's issues," I retorted, trying to get him to talk. He was like a super high-level Boss on the first floor of the dungeon.
Zuko and ten other firebending soldiers joined in trying to burn me, and I had to move at my top speed trying to dodge them.
"That's a good idea," Iroh suddenly agreed and stopped attacking. This surprised me, what I said before was just a joke, and didn't think he would listen to it.
"Uncle!" Zuko yelled out, annoyed by his relative's behavior.
The old general shrugged and massaged his temples. "My shoulders are getting stiff, sadly age catches up even to the mightiest of us."
Damn, I was awe-inspired as hell by this guy. He was able to immediately tell that I wasn't here to try and fight them. Though it's kinda worrying how he was able to read my intentions so quickly. It would be bad if he decided to become my actual enemy.
Should I just kill them all right here? I could probably do it if I revealed my waterbending.
No, no, I would do that if I didn't know the future. But I knew that the chances of Iroh becoming my enemy were nonexistent. He was too much of a pacifist for that. The man was more worried about getting his nephew off the wrong path than anything else.
Now that Iroh wasn't helping the pressure decreased quite a lot and without the man there predicting where I would come from next. My speed was quite a bit impressive. "Don't blink or you'll miss it."
Kicking off the tree, I flew forward like a cheetah and by using my spear cut up any balls of flame that came towards me.
Fwish!
Within an instant, I had landed in front of Zuko and atop his lizard rhino's head. Which agitated the creature.
"Get off!" The angry teenager yelled and shot a blast of flames at me that I used the but of my spear to point his hand towards the sky before his fire could even touch. Looking around, the firebenders weren't shooting in fear of hurting Zuko.
I smiled at them. "Unlike the old man, your fire is out of control and unbalanced."
"I will show you fire!" Zuko used his other hand to shoot flames at me, but I quickly ducked below them and used the but of my spear to give him a quick hit in the chin. That made his eyes go hollow as his brain was rocked inside his skull, making him go unconscious.
Grabbing Zuko by the back of his neck like a cat, I softly threw him on the sand in front of his grandpa… Errr… uncle. For a second there, Iroh's white hair, almost bald head, and white beard make him look old.
Iroh frowned at me. "You just thought something rude about me."
"Can you read minds?" I asked him curiously. Well, he wouldn't be able to read mine even if he could do so, as Gamer's Mind which would protect me from mental attacks. But that didn't mean I couldn't joke around with him.
"No, but you kept looking at my hair pitifully and it wasn't hard to guess what you were thinking." He said with a hurt look that almost made me feel bad for him.
"Sorry about that," I apologized and tried to put a sincere look on my face.
"No, no, I understand. I seem old, I am old too. Though I know you did that intentionally." Iroh smiled at me.
"..." Well, he was good at this. I did kinda stare too much… and he was kind right, I did want to see what his reaction would be if I did that. It wasn't what I expected though.
"Die!" yelled one of the firebenders on the sidelines as he shot fire at me, the lizard rhino I was standing on panicked and started moving erratically.
I jumped above the fire, and looked at the attacker, I twirled my spear and threw it. Though it was from the dull side, it landed straight on his head and knocked the man out.
Baam!
He fell on the ground and his lizard rhino ran off.
Looking at the others around me, they were shocked at what I did and I shrugged. "So, are you ready to give up?"
"No! A fire soldier never gives up!" Yelled out one of them passionately. His eyes were lit with a flame inside of them that said that he wouldn't give up no matter what.
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"Don't fight anymore," Iroh intervened, and looked at me with a narrowed gaze. "We would need at least thirty firebenders to catch him, and even then they would have a hard time capturing him."
"Okay, then we give up," the man who passionately refused to give up previously easily surrendered.
Where the hell did that passion go? What a weird guy.
The soldiers picked their knocked-out comrades and Iroh went towards the fire he and the other firebenders had created.
Taking a deep breath and lowering his palms, the flames slithered downwards until they fizzled out. He gave me a side glance and smirked. "You are quite the nice young man, this is my payment for going easy on my nephew. If it wasn't for that personality, you would be a saint."
"I don't know what you are talking about, old man," I feigned ignorance, shrugging. But I understood what he was implying. What a sharp old man.
He took Zuko over his shoulder like a bag of potatoes and stared at me one last time. "I know you do know what I meant."
With that said he walked off into the ship and the landing bridge got pulled up and they retreated.
"Woah!! That was amazing, Sokka!" Aang yelled out, and I saw that he had the Kyoshi Warriors and Katara with him… plus a bunch of other people from the village were rushing from the bushes with crudely made spears.
They were a good distance from me, just enough so I wouldn't see normally. I also didn't check the map in detail for friendly people nearby as I was more concerned with dealing with the enemies.
I looked at my notifications and saw some new ones.
======
[The Kyoshi Village feels Gratitude Towards the Gamer]
[Quest "Defend Kyoshi Village" Completed]
[Kyoshi Village suffered 0 Damages]
[Calculating Reward]
[Maximum Reward Granted]
[You have gained 40,000 Exp]
[You have Leveled Up]
[You have Leveled Up]
[You have Leveled Up]
[You have Leveled Up]
======
I ignored the rest as it was just Spear Mastery reaching level 20 and Sense Danger reaching level 10. Meaning I can sense danger a whole second before it happens. Which was a good skill, if I could doge said danger because there are times when you can't dodge the attack even when you foresee it. Also, my level was 26, and got twenty new Stats points and put them all into luck.
After doing all that, I looked at Aang and narrowed my eyes suspiciously. "So you saw me in danger and decided to not come and help?"
"Well, we only came towards the end of the fight when you had already knocked out Zuko. Also, I didn't want the villagers to be put in danger because of me, I don't want them to think that the Avatar is here." Aang tried to rationalize, saying that he would have come and helped me if I was in any real danger.
"Oh~ so you realized that staying here was very stupid as the Fire Nation would eventually attack," I said as if it was the most obvious thing in the world.
"Wait, you knew?!" He was surprised by my words.
"I am the guy who knows things, that's my whole shtick," I said jokingly, seeing that Aang seemed to feel bad about what his selfish actions had done. He was a twelve-year-old kid, I wasn't expecting him to think too deeply about such things. Honestly, he was already too mature for his age.
"Well, then let's get out of here," as if listening to my words Appa appeared and flew down from the sky, he had hay all over his body and the fur on top of his head was made into girly braids. "Well, I am ignoring that, I don't want to know what a ten-ton flying bison went through to end up like that."
I was very curious but decided to not ask. Aang nodded and jumped up, Katara jumped up too.
As I climbed up, Suki kept staring at me but not saying anything. Many thoughts about what to do here went through my mind. Fuck it. Since when did I start becoming so unsure of everything? I climbed back down and the village head handed me a bag with supplies. "Here, you will need this."
I took the bag, easily grabbing it with one hand and walked in front of Suki, and took a deep breath, ready to spill my heart to her here.
Suki waited anxiously for my words, she didn't know what to say or do here. I confidently stared into her eyes and it made her heartbeat like a drum, I could see it. Her face flushed and she tried to compose herself.
I was unsure about what to say here. Sure, I had been in relationships in my past, but I wasn't exactly the best guy to be around or be in a relationship with. A thousand and one problems would arise out of our "perfect" relationship.
Damn, well. I guess I will just tell her the brutal truth.
"I like girls with bigger breasts," I said honestly, completely ruining the mood that we had built up.
But lying here wouldn't be something I wanted to do. Honestly, I had lured her and tried to make her feel things he never felt before. "I am not good at goodbyes either if it wasn't already plainly obvious. Sometimes I can be manipulative, scheming, controlling, and a general scumbag. Also, I don't even care how you will look on the outside when I am horny. We are young and I have no idea if these feelings you feel will even last long-"
Sukki interrupted by grabbing me by the collar and leaning in to kiss, she tasted like cherry and she looked at me angrily, biting my lip as we separated. "Go to hell."
Next, she slapped me in the face. I could see she was about to cry.
Well, now that was out of the way, time to give her the good news. "I don't care how you look on the outside that much and I would rather have a girl I could spend the rest of my life with. When this war is over, maybe we can get to know each other and see how things go. When our bodies crumble and we get old and ugly, I want to still love you if we do end up being together."
***
-Katara POV-
Oh.My.God… this had to be the worst kind of speech to give to a girl who had feelings for you. But my brother didn't stop there and continued.
"Also, if you want to spend more time with me after the war then we will have to meet in the South Pole, which has bad weather, the nights are cold and it generally sucks to live. Honestly, if I was in your place that would be a turn-off-"
I went down there and closed his mouth and smiled at Suki uncomfortably. "Sorry about him…" but that was when I noticed something strange.
Suki still was staring at him dreamily, like someone she was destined to be with…
"Girl… did you just fall for him even more?" Was she stupid? That was the worst speech he ever gave and he was about to continue with that mess. I quickly dragged Sokka away. "You are coming with me before you ruin this."
Suki waved at him and yelled out. "I will be waiting for you! No matter how long it takes!"
After saying that she ran off in embarrassment. I took my hand off Sokka's mouth and took a deep breath about telling her, but I pulled him down and instead said. "Appa! Yip-yip!"
We took off and I stopped Sokka from talking about another disaster.
"Ahh~ I was just about to get to the best part," Sokka complained. "Why did you have to stop me?"
"I was saving you from ruining your relationships," I sighed.
But suddenly I felt a little guilty, what if he had something good to say that would have helped them get together. What if I stopped my nephews and nieces from being born just because of this? Looking at Sokka I couldn't help but ask him. "What were you going to say?"
"Well, I was going to explain that outward appearances don't matter because if I carved her flesh then she would be just flesh, blood, and bones just like any other girl. So I wouldn't care about it when we got older. So I would truly care about her personality." Sokka added amusingly as if he was telling an inside joke that only he knew.
Thank God I stopped him! "You sound like a serial killer! Be glad I stopped you from saying that!"
"I think it was kinda-" Aang was about to add his input. But I stopped him.
"Shut up Aang. Any girl would call the guards over to arrest him if he gave a speech like that." I explained to him. How the hell wasn't Suki mad? Well, she was initially mad, but she calmed down. Still, though, has the world stopped working with logic.
"So I shouldn't try and say something like that to a girl?" Asked Aang curiously. "Some parts were bad, even I understand that. But the feelings were there."
"No… just no…" I shook my head.
"Whenever your time to confess comes, just follow your heart," Sokka advised Aang. It almost made me want to try and freeze my brother in place, but I stopped myself.
"If your heart says what yours did, then it would be better to keep it to yourself," I added, trying to calm myself, that was still shocking. I still couldn't believe that someone was mad enough to say that.
What a troublesome brother. I tried helping him, but he just doesn't seem to listen.
Suddenly as we were flying he extended his hand and ruffled my hair. "C'mon now, dear sister, don't worry too much. Even if things with Suki don't work out I will find another girl."
Since when the hell did you become so confident? You hadn't even kissed a girl before now. Don't act like you have some sage-like experience with relationships.