The Girl With the Bread

The Parade

Sokka grits his teeth as Venia, a woman with aqua hair and gold facial tattoos, yanks yet another strip of hair from his eyebrows. "Sorry!" she pipes in her ridiculous Airbender accent. "You're just so hairy!"

Why do these people speak with such a high pitch? No wonder it's impossible not to mimic them.

Venia twists into what's supposed to be a sympathetic expression. "Good news, though. We're almost done with your eyebrows!"

Woop-dee-doo, he thinks as he grips the edge of the table.

He has been in the hands of these three people in the Remake Center for over three hours and he still hasn't met his stylist. Apparently she has no interest in seeing him until he's had a good enough rubdown, and has been deemed attractive enough to be in her presence. He has been scrubbed down with a gritty foam that removed not only dirt but at least three layers of skin, turning his nails into uniform shapes, and riding his face of the meager stubble that had been growing recently. That included thinning his eyebrows, which was a whole new type of pain. But he has kept his part of the deal with Iroh, and no objection has escaped his lips.

"You're doing well," another member, Flavius, says. He has orange locks cascading in corks around his face, and a strange shade of lipstick. "If there's one thing we can't stand here, it's a whiner. Grease him down!"

Venia and Octavia, a plump woman whose entire body has for some reason been dyed a pale shade of green, rub him down with a lotion that stings at first but then soothes his burning skin. Then they pull him from the table and transfer him to the center of the room, whipping off his robe in the process. He now stands, completely naked in front of three strangers, as they circle him and poke and prod and tweeze last bits of hair. He knows he should be embarrassed, but somehow these people don't make him feel any more self conscious than if a trio of oddly colored birds had been pecking around his feet.

"Excellent! You look like a human being now," Flavius says as they step back to admire their work, and they all laugh.

He forces his lips to smile. "Thank you," he says sweetly. "We don't have much cause to look nice in District Twelve."

That wins them over completely. "Of course you don't, you poor darling!" says Octavia, clasping her hands to her heart in distress.

"But don't worry," Venia says. "By the time Suki is done with you, you're going to be absolutely stunning!"

"We promise! You know, now that we've stripped you down, you're not so horrible!" says Flavius encouragingly. "Let's call Suki!"

They dart out of the room. It's hard to hate his prep team. They're such idiots, but in an odd way, he knows that they're sincerely trying to help him.

He glances at the cold white walls and resists the urge to wrap his robe around him again. But this Suki, his stylist, will surely make him remove it. Instead he touches the shaved sides of his head, the ponytail at the back of it. His warrior's wolf tail, as his father had used to call it. When his mother was still alive.

The door opens and a young woman who must be Suki enters. She can't be more than twenty, but somehow she seems to be his age. He is taken aback by how normal she looks. Her short brown hair is cropped around her chin, a small amount half pulled pack. No part of her seems to be altered into the grotesque fashions of the Air Temples. She's dressed in a simple black shirt and pants, and the only thing that's out of place is her eyeliner, which is gold and brings out flecks in her eyes.

"Hello, Sokka. I'm Suki, your stylist," she says in a quiet voice that somehow lacks the Airbender accent.

"Hello," he says cautiously.