tushanshu_logs | Katara's January Catch-All

Sokka may be laughing, but that doesn't mean he's forgotten at all. She might be able to sweet talk her way out of trouble with some people, and it may yet work here, but Sokka's face returns to the cautious one that he had before.

"Taking pictures, huh?" Sokka sort of nods to the device that she's holding, eyeing it a little suspicious. To be honest, Sokka's not quite up to snuff on this, though he's heard of it, and there were early attempts years ago at recreating images. But that's really not what Sokka's interested in here. "So you frequently talk to yourself when taking pictures?" The question doesn't really sound like an accusation though; more than anything, it's genuine curiosity.

However, she starts going off about bending, and Sokka just shrugs it off. "Hey, I don't know how it all works," he says just shrugging his shoulders. "But say what you will about my sister, but she's good at it. You wouldn't want to make her angry while she's swooshing all that water around."

"Swooshing, huh? Are you sure you don't know how it works, cuz you're coming off as a verifiable expert here."

She glanced back Katara's way. "Don't worry about me, just figuring out how stuff works around here. Most of it is a bit of a shock, you know?"

"Hey, if I knew how her waterbending actually worked," Sokka begins, pointing rather matter-of-factly, "I'd be waterbending my way through all my problems. I'm just saying, everything she can do defies so many natural laws that apply to simple people like me. I mean, far as I can tell, all she does is this—"

Sokka begins augmenting his words with karate-like gestures.

"—whaaaaaaaa, ay ay ay, chop chop chop chop chop, ooooooohhhh... and then the water moves. If there's more to it than that, beats me!"

"Alright, so enough about her. Tell me about you, about what a world where people exist than can control arbitrarily specific states of matter looks like."

That's a deep question, and Sokka places his hand on his chin to consider it briefly.

"Okay, well I'm pretty simple when it comes down to it. I've done a little bit of everything, really. You might say that I'm half-warrior, half-swordsman, half-scientist, half-tactician, half-detective, and half-comedian. I travelled with my sister and the Avatar to help defeat the Fire Nation since they were trying to take over the world." He pauses for a moment before thinking to add a little more context. "Basically, our world was separated into four countries, one for each of the elements: air, wind, water, and fire. And certain people of each nation could bend the element of their tribe. My sister and I? The best one: Water Tribe." He says the last bit with as much smoothness as he can muster.

That was... far too many halves. And he was half warrior AND half swordsman? Wait, comedian??

"I-I'm sure," Sonja replied. Sokka's description of his world didn't sound too dissimilar to her own, however, if you tried to assign an element to each of the four superpowers of Wars World. Yellow Comet would be fire, naturally, Blue Moon Water, Green Earth- well, obviously, leaving Orange Star with Air. Actually rather appropriate, considering Orange Star's focus on Air Force Doctrine.

That did leave Black Hole without an element. Perhaps something that absorbed elements rather than using them? Nevermind, this is getting silly, Sonja thought. She doubted anything like that existed in Sokka's world.

"I've a bit of tactician myself, actually," Sonja said. A very successful one - except for all those really important times she failed. Passing one. Maybe. "You actually saw war against the Fire Nation?"

Sokka doesn't have any reason to question the math behind all the halves. In his mind, he really was just that good.

Unaware of the mental debate going on in Sonja's head, that just left him with the open question she's asked, and Sokka's not unabashed to talk about it. "Of course I did. They were practically chasing us down for the better part of half a year as we were trying to get Aang to learn all four elements so he could take out the Fire Lord. Bunch of persistent jerks, they are. But besides that, I was always the planning guy of Team Avatar. I led what would have been a successful invasion of the Fire Nation... provided that our plan hadn't gotten leaked to them in advance because of some stupid politicians."

"So you can learn to 'swoosh' elements," Sonja said. She deduced that this 'Aang' was the 'Avatar' mentioned earlier. A title?

"Mm, politicians. I'm used to dealing with them from foreign nations. We have them in Yellow Comet too, although they have much less executive power. Monarchies are just better. No red tape or approval processes to make sure that what needs to be done gets done."

Sokka clenches his teeth when she talks about learning the elements. "Well, I mean, learning in the sense of figuring out how to do it. I mean, I didn't just know how to do rudimentary arithmetic straight out of the womb!" He coughs a bit, realising he got a little too dramatic. "Not everyone can learn, but those who have the ability have to learn how to do it. Just as anything else. Or be self-taught like my sister. One way or the other."

"Hey, don't get me wrong, monarchies and all are great..." he says, hesitant here too, "unless they're completely powerless wimps who let corrupt underlings seize control of the entire nation. Or power-mad dictators who exploit the people and nearly wipe out a civilisation. Or blind leaders who will let their daughter marry some absolute jerkface!" He doesn't have a personal opinion on this one, nooooooo.

"In my experience, ineffectual rulers don't last long," Sonja said. Some of those remarks were awfully specific though. She gave Sokka another appraising glance. This strange, strange boy must be pretty important to have rubbed shoulders with dictators and planned wars. Her interest steadily shifted away from Katara and her magic and towards Sokka and his unconventional anecdotes.

"But, I wouldn't consider 'letting' your daughter marry the person of their choice to be an example of poor vision," she said, her voice taking on a bit of an edge.

Sokka rolls his eyes and sighs heavily at that one. "Okay, bad example, I'll give you that. He actually was pretty effective (if not a little shortsighted)," Sokka admits while adding his own grumbled mumble at the end. He coughs at the end as if to swallow that argument. "And I did like him for the most part; I certainly followed his lead. But the other two? Not exactly the people I'd want to vote for Supreme Poobah of the World if you ask me. Look, all I'm saying is that it only took one guy to convince everyone else to commit genocide. I think at least a few checks and balances might not be such a bad idea."

Sonja laughed. You don't vote for monarchs, silly.

"Leaving power in the hands of the mob only leads to inefficiency and deadlock. Even Orange Star, with its democratic domestic system, knows that the military can't function by poll. Why would you try to run a country that way?"

Sonja spoke with a force of personality and confidence that was rare for her.

"If the people of a country are so lacking in moral fiber and social responsibility that they let themselves be led by a boar, then they deserve it."

Well, at least there's part of that which sounds reasonable, and Sokka has to admit that... even if he is starting to weary a bit of her newfound confidence.

"Alright, alright, military is one thing. Have your generals and your admirals and all that you want. When you're trying to strike fear into the hearts of your enemies," Sokka explains, "that's totally fine. Great. But if you're going to convince me that the sole qualification for running a country is the fact that that guy's dad ran a country before him, I might have to question your personal standards on that one."

Sonja only seems to get more intense.

"Primogeniture is not superior or inferior to election; one is random chance, the other rewards a ruler's ability to manipulate the masses rather than efficacy of rule. Both are flawed systems. Even a mythical democracy with a perfectly informed and motivated populace is still subject to the tyranny of the majority.

"The truth is, you can't trust human beings to make decisions in their best interests. Its up to individuals with the proper skills, resolve, and vision to seize power and make those decisions instead."

"Uh... huh..." Sokka just clicks his tongue inside his mouth. This conversation has just gotten a little crazy. And somewhat crazy interesting.

"So okay, so by that logic, you've just said it yourself: Monarchies are actually pretty terrible governmental systems. I mean, if you want an individual with proper skills and all that stuff to seize power, well, that's not what a monarchy is. Random chance! Well, okay, it is for a single generation. But someone could just up and take over the kingdom a generation later when some baby king rises to the throne, but then it's not really a monarchy any longer."

Already Sokka isn't thrilled with where this conversation is going, and he's growing less fond of Sonja by the minute. "Look, you just leave my sister alone, alright?"

"Oh." Sonja blinked. "I wasn't-"

This wasn't fair; he was ending the argument before Sonja could explain the error of conflating government systems with succession systems. This was putting an undue burden on her having to prioritize winning the argument with defending her motivations.

"It's not like I have plans for your sister or anything. Certainly nothing untoward, anyway. And she's not even my type; I mean sure she's rather attractive, but- actually that's none of your business. Good day."

She gathered up her things, managed to stumble out of the bench and start walking away.

Hey, when arguing for a monarchy, one can't just pick and choose which parts of a monarchy to support. But really, it was less her favoured form of monarchy that irritated Sokka and more her tendency to get a little overbearing about it. Which she probably wasn't, but Sokka is if nothing else protective of his sister.

Though her fumbled reply completely catches Sokka off-guard... in multiple aspects. Several questions come unbidden to his mind, one after another, but they're immediately discarded and replaced with another after each successive clause.

"You... eh? What?" is all he can manage to bumble as she starts to walk away. There's no longer any sense of lack of fondness, just complete bemusement.

Katara's January Catch-All

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