Practical Applications of the Fine Art of Pantsbending

Summary: Sokka laments his status as the obligatory Everyman to an unlikely listening ear. Sokka/Mai and the unendingly hot Suki/Ty Lee. Horrifically silly crackfic that tampers shamelessly with the fourth wall. If you dislike any of the above, please just give this a pass.

Disclaimer: All characters herein are the property of the lovely and talented Mike and Brian. The author of this absurdly silly little fic is making approximately no money from the writing of the aforementioned.

"You know, it's just not fair," Sokka lamented to his drinking buddy, giving his fifth emptied beer mug of the evening a good, sound thump on the bar.

The drinking buddy in question, a pale dark-haired girl clad in the loose-fitting clothing necessary to effectively conceal her habit of carrying the contents of a particularly well-stocked cutlery department on her person, sighed and stopped the bartender for another round. If Sokka was getting started on the injustice inherent in...whatever he was going on about, she'd definitely be needing it. If he didn't want his, she'd drink that, too. After all, alcohol was generally the key to successfully following Sokka's train of thought without the onset of headaches, nosebleeds, or seizures, hence the first five rounds she'd ingested during his impassioned lecture about how folk music in its entirety was based on a massive world-wide conspiracy to drive him, specifically, completely out of his mind.

"What's not fair this time?"

"I don't have any superpowers!"

Mai watched the distraught young man expectantly, waiting for a badly needed explanation.

"And?" she finally prompted impatiently, eyeing a passing elderly gentleman's double Scotch longingly.

"And, it's not fair!" Sokka wailed amid a good deal of wild gesturing. Mai ducked quickly out of the way of a flailing arm. "Everyone else gets superpowers - why don't I?

In a show of massively fortuitous timing, the bartender chose that moment to slide two fresh drinks onto the bar in front of them. With a grateful yelp that made Sokka wonder uneasily just how much he'd drunk tonight, and if it was enough to cause hallucinations of outlandish things like the girl next to him emoting, Mai pounced on her lovely beverage and knocked it back in approximately four seconds.

"Blaaaaagh, that's disgusting," she shuddered, waiting for the alcohol burn to subside and the pleasant fuzziness to set in. Noticing the bartender's stare, somewhere between heavily disapproving and faintly impressed, she shoved the glass at him. "More of the same."

Finally, she turned back to Sokka.

"Okay, so you don't have superpowers. Neither does most of the planet. So what?"

He rolled his eyes, somehow involving most of his body in the process.

"Come on, look at the people I hang out with! My own sister is this super ultra master healer waterbender who can control people with their own blood!"

She looked up from her half-hearted inspection of her fingernails, vaguely intrigued.

"That's kinda hot."

"Someone even wrote a play about her!"

"Yeah, but didn't someone write a play about all of you? You know, detailing your lives in creepily intimate detail, right up until your inevitable defeat, complete with badly simulated blood, and guts, and melting flesh, and compound fractures, and chains with hooks, and--"

Sokka waved off her casual inventory of their painful deaths impatiently.

"No, this is a different play. I think they called it Dark Water or something."

"Oh, come on," Mai scoffed. "I saw Dark Water. It wasn't about your sister; it was a ghost story. It was supposed to be based on real events, but give me a break. Evil, killer wat--hey, wait a second."

"Yup," Sokka grinned smugly. "It's the true story of Katara messing with some playwright's mind. I don't know what he did to piss her off, but she went over there every day and made his bath water attack him until he broke down in a sobbing heap and moved out."

"Wow...knowing the backstory really enhances the play," Mai noted curiously. "I knew she was the cool sibling."

Sokka sent her a sour look.

"You know, you could be a little supportive here."

She snorted disbelievingly into her drink.

"Uh, have you met me?"

"Yeah, once or twice," he grinned. "You took my pants off last night, right?"

"Which I'm sure the entire bar really wants to hear about," she added, bright red and slumping in her seat as though hoping to vanish entirely from the curious, amused eyes of their fellow patrons.

"Oh, I've got stories," he confided to the man on the barstool next to him, slinging one arm over the distinctly unimpressed fellow's shoulders. "Like the night I found out about her thing for bondage - man, that was a party! And her friend's a gymnast, taught her this one thing where she--"

Before he could continue, Mai grabbed his arm and turned him forcibly back towards her.

"I never thought I'd say this, but could you just get back to whining?"

He frowned.

"Uh...what was I talking about?"

"Everyone has superpowers but you?" she reminded him impatiently.

"Oh, right. Yeah! Why does everyone get superpowers but me? It's not fair!"

"Ugh," she noted, bidding a wistful goodbye to any hope of getting him somewhere that fun was likely develop before he became too inebriated to participate. "Didn't you get over this crap in Season 3?"

"Well, yeah, I'm over the nagging fear that I have nothing valuable to offer and I'm just holding everyone back--"

"Yeah, because that was never stupid.

"--but it still sucks! I'm sick of being the relatable everyman who grows as a person by learning that you don't need special abilities to be a hero! I want some damn powers!"

She rolled her eyes.

"So complain to the writers."

"Are you kidding?" he demanded, aghast. "Do you know what happens when you complain to the writers?"

"Nope," she replied. "I thought about it a couple times, but they were all the way over there."

"Suki complained to the writers," Sokka said ominously. "Next thing you know, she's getting jumped and stripped by three crazy--whoa," he finished, eyes growing faraway and dreamy as images filled his head of his current drinking companion, plus a scary (but hot) Fire Nation princess and an exceedingly stacked, exceedingly flexible circus performer attacking and undressing him. "I'll be right back."

Lips pressed into a thin, distinctly annoyed line, Mai shoved him back into his seat as he attempted to stand. With a sad sigh, he acquiesced, dropping back onto his barstool.

"At least tell me there was lots of steamy showering and groping."

"No, there wasn't," she replied through gritted teeth.

He fixed her with an imploring gaze.

"Could you make some up?"

"Oh, just ask Ty Lee what she and Suki have been up to since they went back to Kyoshi Island," she grumbled. "Kiss-and-tell is like a way of life to her."

The width of Sokka's grin would have taken two arms to properly express.

"Wow; so much for taking it slow," he murmured in awe at the bounty of appealing mental images flickering before his delighted mind's eye. "I've always thought that was a dumb idea."

"Yeah; it's right up there with getting drunk and whining about your lack of superpowers," Mai agreed, nevertheless taking a moment to appreciate that his last girlfriend, particularly the subject of her current relationship, coming up in conversation prompted...distinctly more than polite interest, rather than a sobbing fit. Although they had played their gradual arrival at the mutual decision to part ways close enough to the chest that it had been something of a shock to everyone else, they had pretty much exemplified the concept of an amicable breakup.

"I'm not whining! I'm stating facts!" he protested indignantly. "Seriously, name one of my close friends who doesn't have superpowers," he ordered, leaning back and crossing his arms with the smug certainty that she would be unable to.

Mai, on the verge of nominating me, you idiot, reconsidered quickly with the nagging suspicion that, sharing her pragmatic view of this whole thing (or at least, her sentiment of I generally find you highly annoying, but the sweaty stuff is fun, so let's just focus on that), he wouldn't necessarily consider the aforementioned sweaty parts, despite their occurring at increasingly frequent intervals as of late, enough to qualify her as a friend at all, let alone a close friend.

"Suki? Who we were just talking about? You moron?"

Sokka gave a distinctly impolite snort.

"Come on, you got stuck in the Kyoshi face paint too, you know how hard it is not to smudge it. But Suki's is always perfect, never smudges, never runs, nothing! Don't tell me that's not unnatural. She's gotta be some kind of...like, make-up bender."

She nodded, reluctantly conceding his point. During their ill-advised undercover adventure, she, Azula, and Ty Lee had spent an inordinate amount of time vying for mirror space and fixing their perpetually smudging face paint. And that was when they were just hanging around, waiting for something to happen.

Then there had been the deeply unfortunate day, just a few months ago, that she had walked in on Suki and her newest Kyoshi warrior just as sparring had given way to something that looked more like wrestling, but sounded far more enjoyable, if the noises emitted by the two participants were any indication. While Ty Lee's face paint was rolling in coloured drops down her flushed, ecstatic face, Suki's face paint, when she cast an alarmed glance over her shoulder at the sound of footsteps, was indeed flawless.

But speaking of her acrobatic pal...

"Ty Lee doesn't have superpowers."

Sokka stared, aghast.

"Seriously? She's just that perky naturally?"

Mai nodded gravely.

"Yup, that's all Ty. Scary, isn't it?"

"No kidding," he agreed, shaking his head. "But she's the exception that proves the rule. Everyone else I know..."

"Okay, I'm convinced," she shrugged absently, sipping at the remnants of his beer. Even if she couldn't help but be a little impressed by his sheer level of focus after downing that much beer (she generally had trouble remembering what she had been talking about a mere three minutes ago when she had ingested comparable amounts), this train of conversation was starting to get a little old.

"I'm serious!"

"I'm getting that."

"No, seriously! I mean, Toph's an earthbender - a freakishly powerful super-awesome earthbender. She wins Earth Rumble every year, usually destroys the stadium, and rebuilds it in ten seconds on her way out. She's got a thriving landscaping company, an excavation business, a mining company, three metallurgy businesses, and, like, fifty-seven huge commercial farms! The agriculture industry calls her The Hoe!"

Halting in the act of looking for the bartender, who had mysteriously disappeared somewhere between mentions of bondage and girl-on-girl-on-girl-on-girl action, Mai stared in disbelief.

"Wow, that's...kind of suicidal."

He laughed.

"It is how her grave digging career got started." Then he sighed despondently. "Seriously, she's 315 to 370 of the Forbes 500 Most Promising Emerging Businesses, by herself!"

"And...you want to be an earthbender so you can take the entrepreneurial world by storm too?"

"Oh, come on, that's just dumb," Sokka scoffed, wiping off his foamy mustache.

With a heroic effort, Mai resisted the urge to bang her head repeatedly on the bar.

"Yes; that's dumb.

"And Aang!" Sokka was meanwhile continuing. "Aang is...well, Aang.

Mai shrugged, reluctantly conceding the point. There was, after all, little point in denying Aang's identity as Aang.

"--Zuko's a firebender, with his own country--

And the nicest ass ever seen on a guy, she added silently.

He nodded hesitantly.

"Uh, right; I'll take your word for it."

She stared, distinctly horrified.

"...did I say that out loud, or has all your whining about no superpowers somehow made you psychic?"

Not that it wasn't true - the guy did indeed have an exceedingly nice ass, easily one of the nicest in her admittedly narrow experience of such things. But, she had eventually realized, there was a world of difference between admiring a nice ass and wanting to spend the rest of her life with that ass, and she fell quite squarely in the former category where Zuko was concerned. When combined with the increasingly undeniable fact that they had been gradually becoming more of a habit with each other than anything else, this had been a rather insurmountable problem. By this point long since over her tendency to go grudgingly along with bad situations without putting in any effort to improve them, she had clued Zuko into this revelation with the approximate subtlety and gentleness of a brick to the face. That same young man, who had never been one to accept what he didn't like, grudgingly, quietly, or any other way, had voiced a vehement disagreement, laying out several well composed and very compelling arguments that had served only to demonstrate to Mai that the same thing occurred to him before now, which had in turn only solidified in her mind that it was probably time to move on and let him do the same.

All of this, however, was completely beside the point, which was that, if she was going to continue to swat, poke, and aggressively jump him whenever he oggled another girl too enthusiastically, implied that she was at her best as part of an ensemble, or suggested that they invite a third party to join in the fun, it was probably kind of unfair to then go on to reflect fondly upon the backsides of other guys. And, as all of the above, particularly the last, had become some of her favourite activities as of late, she had no intention of giving them up. Which meant that the only option was to keep her appreciation for the attractive features of other guys strictly internalized, at least in front of her drinking buddy (which her mind still insistently referred to him as, even after almost a year of these endearingly bizarre meetings).

"No, you said it out loud," Sokka was meanwhile sighing mournfully. "The only one I know with psychic powers is the cabbage cart guy. I mean, how else do you explain how he followed us everywhere we went?"

"I don't know, running gag?"

"Great!" he exclaimed, throwing his hands up. "Now even the running gags are getting superpowers! The cabbage guy is psychic, King Kuei just got a book deal as the Bear Whisperer, those damn hippies can suck out your will to live with the power of their voices, and you're a pantsbender!

Once again, she stopped dead in the act of rubbing her eyes wearily, and stared, bewildered.

"A...pantsbender," she echoed flatly, opting against taking offense to his implication that she qualified as a running gag in favour of trying to sort out this other, far more baffling matter.

"Yeah! You know; whenever you're around, things start happening in my pants!"

"Uh...huh."

"Suki can do it too. I figured she taught you or something. I mean, you were spending a lot of time together for a while there."

By now giving up entirely on the notion of halfhearted involvement bringing this conversation to a close any time soon, she made a noise somewhere between a groan and a growl.

"Okay, look; first of all, pantsbender? That's dumb, even for you."

"Oh, thanks a lot!"

"Two, you're a twenty-year old guy. It doesn't take superpowers to make things happen in your pants. A few dirty thoughts can do that."

"Not like this," Sokka insisted. "We're not just talking about waking the big guy up - he's dancing around in circles, doing a tap routine, he's even got a little hat and cane!"

"Three," she continued inexorably, choosing to ignore that mental image for the sake of her own sanity, "nothing Suki taught me had to anything do with your pants. And no," she added as a hopeful smile lit up his countenance, "you're not finding out."

"You suck!"

"And four--" Both his mood and his estimation of her character brightened abruptly as she scooted her barstool closer to his, nearly losing her balance no more times than were perfectly reasonable given the number of rounds they'd been through, and finally regaining it by planting one hand firmly in his lap, with a playful squeeze as an afterthought, "I like to do all my pantsbending hands-on."

He nodded thoughtfully as he was dragged bodily from his seat out the door by her grip on the front of his trousers.

"Okay, I can live with that."

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End Notes: I love both Sokka/Suki and Zuko/Mai, but I felt like playing the Take My Two Favourite Characters, Smoosh 'Em Together and See What Happens game. Turns out, silliness!