shatterverse | (no subject)

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Sokka has gotten used to many things in his admittedly short life. He's gotten used to the fact that his sister can play with magic water, and also likely kill him with it should she so desire. He's gotten used to the fact that a bouncy twelve year old has more power than he can imagine and is meant to save the world he was born on. He's gotten used to the idea that nothing is as it seems and scrawny, nothing children should be looked at with as much suspicion as great hulking men with guns. Sokka has gotten used to the idea of space travel and grav thrusters and slipstream, he's gotten used to speaking the same language as everybody else but not being able to write the same one, he's gotten used to writing all of his work notes out in Chinese because pretty much everything in the last year was written in it and you couldn't depend on people to be around to take care of you. Sokka has gotten used to having a Firebender in his family, and a tiny young woman who is freakishly strong and twice as scary when she wants to be. He's gotten used to taking care of and absolutely adoring two tiny half-Fire Nation girls.

Who are, respectively, strapped to his chest and back by a cloth sling as he wanders down the Street of Eden toward his designated workshop-building, where most people assume he is hard at work trying to find a way out but he is, in actuality, carving loads of tiny toy animals for his nieces.

Sokka has also gotten used to the idea that while he isn't useless, there is a point where he has to recognize that he just doesn't know how to fix something, and needs to give it a rest for a while.

So with Hana and Loo babbling in his ears in their Baby Language, with an occasional Mama or Dada or Unca thrown in that he can actually understand, he walks on.

When the flash comes, Sokka ducks and curls his arms over the heads of the girls, because he's gotten used to sudden attacks. And when no explosion or other noise follows, he gets to his feet quickly, with a club in one hand and a boomerang in another, because Sokka's gotten used to being lulled into false security.

But when Sokka looks around and realizes he's left the Street of Eden and is in a place that isn't the Street, isn't Apocalyptica, isn't the Earth Kingdom, isn't anywhere in any of those places, he stares. Because despite doing it twice before, Sokka has not gotten used to this.

"No."

His reaction is, possibly, quite surprising.

"No! No, god damn it, no!" Glaring hatefully up at the sky, Sokka holds tight to the girls in the sling-- and then sits down abruptly, cross-legged, in the middle of a ruined road.

"I am going to sit here until you put us back! You can throw me to any world you want, but you can't make me get up!"

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There's a scuffle, a clatter and a bang, as if someone had been trying to watch the two of them by means of standing on piled up dustbins and had found out the hard way that dustbins don't pile very well.

"YAUUUGH!"

This possibly indicates that they are not alone in the street.

Sokka turns sharply at the noise, club abruptly back in his hand. He frowns and keeps his eyes on the crumpled dustbins while he answers Jack: "I don't know, maybe you're a baby-cannibal or are sexually attracted to gloves. I'm not ruling anything out!"

Jack doesn't react much to the noise.

At least not until after he's said:

"There's better eatings to be had on just babies..."

Then he's interrupted by turning his attention to the dustbins and who's there.

"Now, that's a thing I've notseen before."

Sokka waves his sword at them, from where he's flat on his back.

"...ouch."

Spying the sword, Sokka slumps with a deep sigh, replacing his club on his back beside Loo. "The bins or the idiot in them?" he asks Jack dryly, but he's approaching quickly nonetheless to peer at his-- sort-of-double.

"Are you all right?"

"You call yourself an idiot."

Once again, should be a question. Isn't.

Jack finds it all very funny, though.

The Sokka in the bins jumps to his feet and puts the sword behind his back.

"I meant to do that!"

The baby-laden Sokka gives Jack a side-glance and a smirk. "Quit reading my mind or-- whatever it is you're doing.

"What were you doing?" he asks his younger self, not accusatory, simply curious. "Did you find... whatever you were looking for?"

"Quit being so obvious," Jack returns sharply, but he hangs back to hear Sokka's answer.

"I found a whole lot of dead things," the younger Sokka says, abruptly serious. "I think we should get out of here. And, uh, you too, since you didn't look like you were trying to kill -- him. Me. Him. Me. Um. Us."

"Pbbth," Sokka replies to Jack, earning giggles from both girls. "Dead things like animals, dead things like bugs, dead things like people, or all of the above?"

A moment passes before he's giving his younger self a slight frown. "We're-- gonna have to come up with some other way to tell us apart, 'cause that's going to get really confusing."

"You can call me Sokka," the one in Fire Nation clothes says firmly, folding skinny arms. "You can be ... uh ... Weirdo Spooky Baby Boy. ... and um, you're not me too, are you?" This last to Jack, rather dubiously. Sokka's pretty sure he never looked like that.

Jack shakes his head.

"Jack Hollins," he announces, offering a shakable hand. "Notorious bloodthirsty pirate who should never be trusted. Honoured to shake hands with you."

"We could always call you Notorius Bloodthirsty Pirate," Sokka offers cheerfully. "Then I could be Jack Hollins. Even though the girls would have to learn a new name..."

"BLAH!" Hana insists while Loo chews on her side of the sling.

Sokka offers a bow in return, fist not quite to palm, and gives Jack a smile not quite as wide as that pirate's. "I don't trust you at all," he informs him cheerfully, "so I'm glad you don't want me to."

"What I want is not exactly what you're going to give," Jack observes.

His hand returns to his side.

"We're going to find the ocean."

"I got guilted out of the middle of the road," Sokka informs-- Sokka.

"Good, 'cos that was boring." Sokka brightens at the mention of the ocean. "Great! Will that get us home?"

(He's not sure what that hand thing was all about, he'll have to find out later.)

"Not 'less there's a caster," Jack shoot a glance at Uncle Sokka, "or someone else of the right talents nearby.

"But the ocean's the ocean and I'm to be safer knowing she's there."

The Uncle, and also the least excited of the three of them, shrugs when he's glanced at and nods off in the direction they'd been heading before the bins started crashing. "It's over this way. Can't hurt to look, anyway, and I've already moved so I guess I can keep moving. We need to find somebody who knows more than we do... which could be anyone who's been here more than an hour, really."

"If we can find the ocean we can make a boat!" Sokka says excitedly. "--if we can find stuff to make a boat with. And then we can go --"

Here is where his Excellent Plan runs into a snag.

"--uh."

"Out to sea," Jack puts in. "What is better than this dead town however it's seen."

"Did you float here?" Sokka asks the boy in red with just a very slight smirk. "I think this is going to be more like joyriding than escaping. But... it will be nice to see water again."

Like seeing the sky in Eden for the first time in a year.

"And I meant it about getting out of this town," the younger Sokka says, glancing warily behind them. "I need to get back to my sister and my friends, but I don't think sitting in the road and waiting to get EATEN is going to help."

"Can't say as to your sister..." Jack pauses, only to look between Sokkas. Different sisters.

"...and friends, but I know the sea's this way."