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Toph and Penance are back at their campsite. Sokka has to admit he isn't quite sure where this Metropolis is any more, or if they're even driving in the right direction -- but nobody really minds. There's plenty of food and water around, they've still got heaps of spare fuel, and all four teens are having the time of their lives racketing around the countryside.

Currently Claire is teaching Sokka a few more of the finer points of driving. Or at least, that's their excuse. There's a lot of laughing and the occasional squeal -- WHICH IS TOTALLY NOT FROM SOKKA, NUH UH -- as they rattle along the road and occasionally come to a screeching halt.

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"Sometimes they throw them," Claire repeats for the bazillionth time.

She's almost tired of explaining to Sokka what football actually involves. But not yet.

"But I bet stadium hotdogs never go stale."

Sokka looks away from the road to grin at her. "Hot dogs. Your world is so weird."

Claire's world is weird.

She's not looking at the road either.

"Pigchickens," she reminds him.

"Pigchickens are totally normal."

He jerks his attention back to the road in time to avoid a particularly large pothole.

"They're not even closely related," points out Claire the evolutionary biologist. "There was just some weirdass hybrid experiments in your past."

"We wouldn't even know how to do that stuff," Sokka points out, laughing. "Except by ... putting a chicken-nothing and a nothing-pig in a field together and poking them at each other. We don't have technology like here."

He revs the car happily.

Beat.

Then Claire places her head on the dashboard.

"I did not need to think of a pig and a chicken doing it."

"They'd probably have to have some kind of support for the chicken half," Sokka says thoughtfully, although the mischief in his eyes gives him away. "And I guess the pig could be blindfolded ... and made to think it was a female pig ..."

Claire doesn't even move her head, she just hits out at shoulder level with her left hand.

Sokka's laughing, even when he leans over to avoid her and swerves accidentally until the car's wheels spin on dirt.

Brakes! Although not quickly enough for whiplash this time. Even if it's only for a second, he doesn't want to hurt her.

They come to a slow, sliding halt, perfectly safely, halfway into the ditch.

Claire is smirking when she finally looks up.

"You are so lucky they don't have driver's ed in this world anymore."

Sokka looks Super Totally Innocent and taps on the horn a couple of times.

"I meant to do that."

Claire shakes her head. Then nods it.

"Oh yeah, of course you did. There was probably a very good reason for it, too."

"Definitely was." He's Vry Srs. "I can't think of one just at the moment, but it's on the tip of my tongue."

The car's wheels spin in the dirt at the edge of the road when he starts it again, and he looks slightly dismayed.

"...uh, what does that noise mean?"

"It means the wheels are spinning," Claire says, turning around in her seat as if she could actually see the back wheels from the passenger seat.

"Someone's going to have to get out and push."

Sokka grins at her. "Now when you say someone..."

Claire raises her eyebrows at him.

"...I'll stay by the steering wheel."

Sokka laughs. "Somehow, I had this sneaking suspicious that's what you were going to say."

He doesn't sound too upset about it.

"I just push at the back of it -- while you accelerate? Or what?"

"Not while the wheels aren't on the road..." Claire says.

She's trying to sound like she knows more than she does - which isn't much at all.

"I'll just keep it in neutral, and you need to... actually, push the front so I can reverse out?"

Sokka sighs, overdramatically. "You just want to see me pull my shirt off and perform hard manual labour," he accuses ever-so-wearily -- before pulling his shirt off to perform hard manual labour, like the good boy he is.

"-----is it working?"

Vrrrrrrm.

Vrrrrrrmmm.

Vrrrrrrrmmmmmmmm.

"Uh. No!" Claire calls back, then has a BRILLIANT IDEA.

She leaves the car in neutral and keeps the handbrak off and hops out to help.

"I'm not taking my shirt off, though."

"Aw." Sokka grins. "There goes that cunning plan."

He eyes the car.

"...if you're not in it, won't it just sort of leap across the road and crash into the other fence?"

"Not if it's in neutral," Claire says, hoping she's right. "I mean, we just need to get it so the wheels can get a purchase..."

Trouble is, it's hard to get a grip on mud in Claire's brand new sneakers, and trying to push the car just makes her feet slip.

She might fall over! Falling over would be bad! SUPER bad. She'd get all muddy!

Sokka's just doing his gentlemanly duty when he slips an arm around her waist. Just to make sure she stays up.

Even if his cheeks are a little bit flushed when he glances across at her.

"You right?"

"Yeah," she says, cheerfully, leaning into his arm. "I'm fine."

She looks at him, and grins less, though she doesn't seem any less happy.