High School AU

One late, late night, Milli, Maritova, and Murph conjured this up. (note to self: crop and upload pictures)

Yue
Yue is in the 7th grade, she's a bit timid and finds it hard to make friends

Yue ends up becoming part of the band, finding a hidden talent in playing the tuba, thanks to some outside lessons from the music teacher Ms. Toph, who's a longtime family friend (and also plays the tuba!). Yue's "Earth Rumble" story becomes a Battle of the Bands, which is coming up in a month and she's nervous as hell.

Also, the middle school has an "All About Animals" club. Yue joined the first week.

Tseng
Tseng is 8th grade, he fits in pretty well. Definitely the mature type, he only really allows himself to let loose when he's chilling in the theatre group.

Outside of the GJr, Tseng's best friends are theatre kids. He's not really in acting, but does backstage and production stuff and has gotten the chance to direct a few productions at the junior high school. He's usually able to enlist Irah's artistic skills in building the sets. He also constantly has to fight off offers from Yi Lin to write him a play. D:

Being the good girlfriend she is, Jing goes to all the plays Tseng directs. He's been assigned to direct a small play for a festival coming up, and he's a little nervous but is super excited.

He doesn't have a ton of free time since he's gearing up for the play with rehearsals and stuff, so that makes his brief time with Jing fairly intimate. :3  Though he occasionally goes to hang with her on breaks at the mall -- those times he's the patient boyfriend listening to her bitch about her job.

Tseng also has a video camera, and makes some of those stupid artsy films. You know the ones, like someone filming leaves falling for an hour with classical music in the background.

Also, he might be too young, but Tseng totally ends up riding a moped.

Yi Lin
Yi Lin is 9th grade. She's got a fairly large social bubble cause she's so damn friendly. She's not particularly devoted to schoolwork, so you'll often find her in the library reading novels, not textbooks. She also has a (very decorated) laptop on which she writes a lot of bad fanfiction under a pen name (Irah ended up getting her hooked on some silly book series). Nobody at school knows her pen name or the fandom (and they'd honestly rather not know, cause the minute they show interest she launches into fangirl mode).

When it comes to fanfic, she's so terrible, but so oblivious. She has her diehard fans and her haters, but her fans love to defend her and Yi Lin is just "Can we stop fighting :3".

She's also in the anime club ( yaoi yurifangirl? :3). Nikiru always comes to the meetings with her when she's invited, and suffers the room full of creepy neckbeards if it means spending more time with Yi Lin.

Nikiru
Nikiru is also in 9th grade, and she goes to the same private school Irah does. Her dad is involved in politics, at a more local level (maybe city council, wanting to run for mayor). This means there's some media scrutiny on Nikiru, so she's still kinda sad and held back (but less sad...hopefully?).

Both Nikiru and Irah are on the student council, which is how they got to know each other (and eventually how Nikiru got to know Yi Lin). Nikiru is also part of the Students for Social Justice club (her dad's involvement in politics has made her pay attention to current events).

While working on student council stuff, Irah ends up mentioning Yi Lin in passing. Then, Nikiru gets introduced to Tseng, who also mentions Yi Lin. Then she meets Hayoda and Yue, also talking about Yi Lin. So for some time she's always really close to meeting her but never quite gets there, so she ends up developing this crazy idea of Yi Lin. Like, Hayoda'll mention that she's an obsessive shipper, and Tseng is all "yeah she's tall," and all Nikiru can imagine is this 10-foot tall amazon woman going on about love and shit.

Anyway, at the mall one day, Yi Lin saves her from bullies or something, and never leaves a name, so Nikiru just has her 'handsome prince/ss' that she fantisizes about, and daydreams about her savior rescuing her from the 10-foot tall crazy amazon.

Because all she hears about Yi Lin happens to be negative, she gets this idea about what a terrible person Yi Lin is, so imagine her shock when her precious hero turns out to BE Yi Lin. INNER CONFLICT! But eventually her love of the mysterious hero completely washes away any negative thoughts about Yi Lin, and BFFS FOREVER <3

Irah
Irah is in 10th grade, and at the same private school Nikiru's at (with UNIFORMS~). She's had a fairly 'rich kid' sorta upbringing - lots of shuffling from lesson to lesson (art, piano, fencing...). She is in the studen council at her parents insistence (because it will look good on her college application), though she really doesn't mind it.

She's the type who's always on the edge of cutting class to chill with Haydoa, but chickens out at the last second. Like, standing in the doorway as he's like "c'mon let's go, let's go." And she's like "um... well.." and then the bell rings and she's like "SORRY I HAVE TO GO TO CLASS ;_;" and runs away quickly.

She is an artsy one, liking all sorts of drawing and painting. She tends to be more traditional than Tseng's artistic tastes, but he recruits her to help building sets for his play on weekends.

She's fairly modern and caught up - top-brand cell phone, really nice clothes, etc.

Irah's parents are pretty rich, known for throwing extravagent balls, so Irah tends to attend a lot of boring parties with other blueblooded folks. Basically, Maiko = old money: each child born is an heir to the fortune, and it just goes on forever.

Mai and Zuko make large donations to things that affect them or Irah, which includes the school. So while Irah is really trying to improve herself in her art and music, the teachers are all like "We can't criticize you! We'll lose our funding!" So Irah ends up getting unwanted preferential treatment.

Hayoda
It's Hayoda's last year at high school, and he doesn't know what he wants to do afterward -- and he doesn't want it to end either. Hayoda is the quintessential slacker - everyone likes him, students and teachers, but he's more interested in fucking around. He just kinda coasts through school, ditches last period all the time to pick up his girlfriend. He's known as the super excitable senior, highly competitive. He's basically the fun one, also the one likely to be chugging beers at a house party. His only major flaw is that he's headstrong about retarded things... and, as they call it in high school, doesn't "apply himself."

He's had one serious girlfriend in the past, who broke his heart :( So he's takin it slow with Irah (he's also terrified of Zuko).

Hayoda's also a member of the basketball team (he always ditches school for the afternoon, only to return after school for basketball). Coach Tom-Tom is always yelling at him.

Also, he hangs out with Tseng, they play Brawl.

Jing
Jing is in 11th grade. She's not nearly as well-off as the rest of this crew, but not really poor either. She's of course, gorgeous, and has some solid... assets. Rumors tend to fly around about how morally questionable she is, which isn't really helped much by her apparently dating an 8th grader. But when other girls start to spread rumors, Jing, being Jing, just punches 'em out -- or yells really loud at them.

Example
What's this, rumors about her and Tseng? Jing gets up on a cafeteria table and starts screaming about how she doesn't give a damn... poor Tseng is across the room with the other junior high kids, mortified... hiding behind a tray. Hayoda's trying to get her back down off the table ('WHAT ARE YOU DOING? YOU'RE EMBARRASSING HIM YOU IDIOT!' 'YOU SHUT YOUR MOUTH, I'LL DO WHAT I WANT!'). And then Hayoda ends up getting on the table and they're yelling, and Tseng is fucking ready to die. And in the midst of it all, Yi Lin sees Jing and Hayoda... and starts typing...

Jing is on the girl's basketball team (she's actually pretty sporty in general, and thus hates her boobs), and the boys and girls teams share a gym for practice, so she and Hayoda are RIVALS, and Coach Tom-Tom is just like ":|". Hayoda also ~doesn't approve~ of her dating his cousin Tseng.

Jing works at a soulless corporate-owned dead-end job at some mall food court smoothie place like Jamba Juice or Booster Juice or whatever you have in your city. She hates it with every fiber of her being, and is quite willing to tell Tseng repeatedly and in great detail whenever he comes to visit her during her break.

It might help Jing with her reputation if they didn't always hold hands when walking back to the Juice Hut or whatever it's called, but hey they can't help it, they're in loooooove~

And how does their relationship start?
Tseng and Jing first meet one day when Tseng shows up at the gym during basketball practice, waiting around for Hayoda to finish, and ends up sitting with Jing (who was on the sidelines due to an injury).

Later, Tseng is directing a big production at his junior high school, but when one of the cast members ends up unable to perform, he has to step up and fill the role (as he's the only one available who knows the script forward and back). A shame for him it was the female lead.

Jing's also attending the show, serving the accursed smoothies during intermission, and during the second half she decides to sit down and watch the show. She realizes, "Hey, it's Hayoda's cute cousin in a dress," and meets him after the show, mainly to tease him, but over time they start to grow closer and closer. And while it may take longer to get more serious, we are confident that their relationship is EXACTLY THE SAME as we know it. Yes, like that. Tseng will never be able to run from his crossdressing nature no matter what universe you throw him in. >:3

Aang and Katara
Aang and Katara would totally be the upper class yuppie couples who fucking donates to 80 charities. Aang is pretty involved in this sort of work, so he often has to travel.

Yi Lin is also around the age to start learning to drive. D: And Aang's teaching her -- and he's a terrible driver (he finds them unnecessary, always going on about 'PUBLIC TRANSIT IS THE FUTURRRE! SAVE A TREE! REDUCE YOUR CARBON FOOTPRINT').

Zuko and Mai
Zuko and Mai are well-off, some of the richest in town (but not uber-billionaire rich). We see them as having lots of parties at art galleries or something, and thats where Irah gets her appreciation for it. While Katara and Aang are more "let's solve world hunger," Mai and Zuko are "let's donate to an art gallery. And have a GALA. Cause we can!"

Sokka and Suki
Sokka and Suki's family are probably the closest to normal. Sokka, Suki, and at least Hayoda are the athetic type: biking together, hiking, running... When Hayoda was younger, Sokka was a neighborhood soccer coach.

Hayoda and Yue's family aren't as well-off as their friends' families, but they do fine. Sokka has a pretty good job as an aerospace engineer, which mostly involves him working on boring mechanical designs behind a boring desk in a boring cubicle most of the day, but every now and then he gets the chance to test out something fun. He also has a cool boss (The Mechanist), who is totally awesome even when the regional administrator gets after them both. Suki's a personal trainer at the local gym, teaching a women's self-defense class -- fairly straightforward.

Ty Lee and Azula
Ty Lee is a student counselor (and coaches cheer after school). Suki comes in a few days a week to help Ty Lee teach cheer, but she's not really a faculty member.

Azula lives just outside of town, in a little more rural area. She doesn't work, because she had a nervous breakdown years ago, so she lives off of government support money, and Zuko sends her checks -- pretty substantial ones, apparently, because she drives a convertible. Every weekend, Azula picks up Ty Lee from the school to take her out to her home for the weekend. So of course, rumours fly amongst the students, and Ty Lee doesn't confirm or deny -- but if anyone ever approaches Azula, she just glares (anti-social as ever!). Azula's pretty mean, except to the kids -- and Ty Lee. Basically she's our Azula, just with a convertible and sunglasses. Oh, and fewer gray spots in her hair; she can dye it now.

Toph and Tom-Tom
Toph is the blind music teacher. Her hearing is flawless, and teaches her class with an endearing toughness, following the offkey sounds and finding the person responsible, then smacking them with her cane.

Ms. Toph and Coach Tom-Tom get to see (DOHOHOHO) each other a lot, because the marching band always plays at sporting events. And Toph yells at the band during it if they mess up; she doesn't care that they're in the middle of a show. And Tom-Tom is always "LOWER YOUR VOICE YOU'RE EMBARRASSING THE SCHOOL!"