Khala bit her lip. Using the term 'romantic' wasn't helping matters. "N-no, not really... I had my own room and I kinda stayed by myself a lot. Either in my room studying, or out away from the temple watching the clouds. The clouds were really beautiful..." She realized quickly what she thought she may have just said. "N-not that you're not beautiful." Then she realized what she said again. "I mean, not that you are... But... I mean... I mean, that is, no, I'm not a peeper!" She smacked herself in the forehead. "I'm sorry. I'm really not used to being around people this much."

Khala was bright red at this point, and she knew it, so she was busy looking away from Tsubaki trying to hide her face.

"I'm not sure what I should ask, to be honest. I like to take people as they are. I learn a lot more about a person by just watching them and being around them than by asking questions. People share a lot more than they realize when they're not talking."

She picked up her staff and followed Tsubaki out to the back, then joined her in some stretches. "It's been a while since I sparred, too. I've spent the last few weeks walking here from the Northern Air Temple, so I didn't have anyone to spar with, and the acolytes on air temple island seem to focus less on the martial arts than we did at the northern temple. Aside from Tenzin and his kids, of course."

After some stretching, she picked up her staff again, holding it over her shoulder and angling it downward so the lower tip was around knee-level. She adjusted her stance, settling down a bit and preparing herself for combat. "Ready?"

Seeing people blush was one of the many joys that Tsubaki enjoyed in her life. As she wasn't particularly prone to it the red coloration of other people's faces always came across as extremely cute. Being such an extrovert certainly had its' disadvantages.

"Aww...whatcha call 'em, um...introvertebrates or whatever, you know people who aren't good with people are actually pretty fun. They react to things in neat ways. My friend that I grew up with was probably twice as intro as you and ten times as much a jerk but he's still my friend. I got a thing for quiet people. I respect anyone that can stay silent for so long. It's soooooo hard."

Rather than her typical assortment of sharp and deadly instruments Tsubaki first brandished a rope connected to a heavy wooden ball. Typically, the ball was metal and studded with spikes but Tsubaki knew that causing permanent scars and brain damage would make her a bad host.
She deftly swung the weapon around until the choppy movements became smooth even in the transition from one stance to another.
Tsubaki loved flail weapons. They were the misunderstood, violent little sisters of water sleeve dancing. Just as pretty but with twin injections of danger and fun.

A happy sigh emerged from Tsubaki as she felt the rope in the hands while dangling the wooden ball which hung to her knee. He left hand rested at her left hip for a quick draw of blades while spinning her rope and wood flail until it made a loud enough sound to please Tsubaki's ears.
"Ready ready."

Tsubaki felt a little bad about having a home field advantage but not bad enough to keep from running toward Khala, stopping at what looked like the edge of her staff-bearing partner's reach and swung her wooden ball towards her new friend's head.

"I'm normally not as talkative... but when a topic's important to me, I can talk. That, and I already think I like you, so that helps, too." Khala smiled.

"Oh," she interjected as Tsubaki began readying her weapon. "And not that I'm any good at it anyway, but fair's fair... no bending, promise." She nodded.

As Tsubaki sounded the signal, Khala immediately went into combat mode, stepping sideways in a circle around her opponent - a technique known as "walking the circle." Air combat taught to always stay in motion. A moving target is harder to hit.

As such, by the time Tsubaki had reached her, she'd already stepped to the side a few paces, forcing Tsubaki to adjust her course to keep the ball on track toward its target. Reacting quickly, she dropped to the ground, extending a leg forward toward Tsubaki as the ball flew over her head. Without stopping her movement, she shifted her weight from her back foot to her front foot, remaining crouched as she did so, and swung her staff around, adjusting her grip to the very back of it to achieve its maximum reach.

The pole whizzed through the air toward her opponent's ankles. But Khala knew better than to let the attack stand on its own. If she stopped moving, even to attack, she was a target. So as her weapon flew around, she lept in the opposite direction, resulting in her ending up on the exact opposite side of Tsubaki from where the ball had come to rest.

Somehow, throughout all of this, Khala's face remained somehow... calm and serene, almost distant. She wasn't thinking about the fight. She was just allowing her movements to happen.

It only took seeing the first dodge for Tsubaki be impressed with aibending. The way Khala moved reminded Tsubaki a bit of waterbenders she had previously fought but more difficult to hit. Her day was just getting better and better. Tsubaki decided that even if a meteor made of garbage fell on her it would still be a pretty good day.
Then she saw the swing for Khala's staff and judging by her position it looked like a sweep. As much as she loved flail weapons, like the practice chigiriki she was using, they took longer to redirect if dodged.

The two options that came to mind was take the blow on the ankles, be knocked down and counter with a throwing weapon but Tsubaki decided to take the other option that came to mind and raised her right foot and swatted the staff away with the sole of her boot. It stung horribly for a moment before she lost some of the feeling in her foot. The recoil of the staff from her blow allowed Tsubaki to get her flail once again into attacking position.

Rather than attack Khala immediately Tsubaki was entranced by the look on her sparring partner's face. While there were no physical similiarities between her friend and her mother Tsubaki was reminded her mother's calm demeanor when they fought that seemed to shut out the rest of the world. While Tsubaki smiled and laughed people like her mother and Khala were still. Her mother called it "fight zen".

Fighting was a good way to get to know people as well as being a lot of fun. One of the things Tsubaki learned was how good her opponent was. It was only a dodge and an attack but it was enough to know that Khala didn't need to be handled delicately. Fun but unwieldy weapons would not do. If it wasn't something she had complete confidence in she knew she would fail. Besides, going easy on Khala would be an insult to a fellow warrior.

Tsubaki handed her weapon to her father who had adjourned to the backyard to see the sparring match and apologized to the weapon she discarded.
"Sorry, Falling Poodle Monkey but this isn't a good fight for you."
There was another apology to Khala. "I'm sorry for not taking you more seriously. I can already tell you are going to be fun to fight."
Her yellow eyes twinkled as she smiled. "I guess I was wrong before about being ready ready. Now I really am ready ready. You ready?"

With her left hand Tsubaki threw three shuriken in Khala's direction and held back her right as she charged the air temple trained waterbender. The shuriken were, at best, distractions. No one ever won a fight with a shuriken but they were useful at breaking people's concentration. When Tsubaki found a gap between Khala's staff and the body it protected she charged in and sent a flurry of chi-blocking hits she wasn't sure she could land. It was never her best weapon.

Khala may not have ever fought against shuriken before, but she wasn't stupid. She could tell something was about to be thrown, and whatever it was, she had no delusions she could block it with her staff. So the only obvious choice was to dodge them.

There were several ways that Khala could dodge those, but she didn't really have time to think. The throw was coming horizontally, so her best bet was to dodge vertically - that meant up or down, and up was always followed with down, so timing a jump wouldn't be easy. With one obvious choice left, Khala took it - she fell flat on her back as the shuriken soared overhead. She fully expected the throw to come with another attack behind it, so without looking where she was aiming, she simply thrust her staff forward toward the last place she saw her opponent before she fell.

Of course, now there was a problem: she was flat on her back, and that was a bad place to be during combat. She needed to change that as quickly as possible, so she swung her staff in a wide arc to try and force some distance between her and her opponent, then kicked her feet into the air to gain some vertical momentum. As her feet came up, she passed them in between her hands, letting them catch her staff and raise it so that she could free her hands for the next bit. Reaching back, she planted her palms on either side of her head, pushing off to get herself back to her feet. She kicked with her feet as she came up, sending the staff airborn, only to catch it in her hands as she landed upright on the ground.

"Ha! Nailed it!" She'd put a lot of time into practicing that particular maneuver if only because she thought it looked cool.

Turns out, though, that she may have been focusing a bit too much on looking cool, as she momentarily lost focus on where her opponent was - a fact of which she was made painfully aware when she caught a pair of chi strikes in the back. Usually when she sparred at home the other students would wait until she was standing again before they'd launch another attack. Score one for real combat experience, she figured.

Letting out a little grunt of pain, Khala tumbled forward to escape further hits from the chi strikes, spinning around with another wide sweep of her staff as she came up from her roll. Then, once she'd ascertained that she had some safe distance between herself and her opponent to fit in a couple of words, she resumed her circle-walking, one hand rubbing the small of her back as the other held the staff extended in front of her to ward off any incoming strikes.

"What was that? I've taken punches before but... I feel weird all of the sudden. Did you hit me in a pressure point or something?"

"Ha! Nailed it!"
Had it been a serious fight Tsubaki might not have shouted "Neat!" when Khala fell to the ground only to pop back up. It most certainly gave away her position but it didn't stop Tsubaki from getting a few light chi-blocking blows in.
Not treating Khala as a serious opponent, even for a moment, led to an unfortunate meeting of Tsubaki's head with the end of Khala's staff as the water-bending, staff-wielding air acolyte reacted to the chi-strikes.

Tsubaki Ito's vision became a night sky filled with stars for a moment but shortly turned day with fewer stars. By then Khala was circling her like a predator, but a mildly confused one. Tsubaki did what she would do for anyone who put up a good fight, she pulled out two of her most dear weapons named for the dear people who gifted her those blades: A short katana given to her by her departed grandfather and a slim, ornate stilleto dagger left to her prior to her music teacher's disappearance. Yudai and The Bride of Nine Spiders.

"What was that? I've taken punches before but... I feel weird all of the sudden. Did you hit me in a pressure point or something?"
"Yep...but I didn't do it right. Chi-blocking is hard. I was hoping you'd be unable to move." Tsubaki pointed the slim, spider-decorated stiletto in her left hand at Khala as the acolyte circled her and kept the kodachi in her right hand primed to strike.

"Go, Khala!" Tsubaki's father yelled from the porch with a smirk while he lit an old kiseru pipe with the tip of his finger and handed it over to a woman with slightly graying, long black hair who sat next to him.
"Go, Tsubaki," the woman yelled after she took the kiseru and began to smoke.

Having her parents watch and cheer gave Tsubaki a rare feeling of embarrassment. It made her want to end things early. It also made her mis-step onto a hot coal and while her foot didn't burn thanks to her boots there was a quick and distracting smell of singed rubber.
Quickly, she moved away from the pit where her mind wandered to why the cooking pit was lit and then to what was going to be for dinner.
She shuck these distractions from her head and focused on Khala.
"Next cut or bruise, then stop for dinner? How does that sound? I don't know what dad's cooking but it smells good. He's like the third best cook ever next to my friend's mom and whoever cooks at Ni-Ten Dumplings."

Once she saw Khala was not only ready but ready ready Tsubaki charged directly at Khala hoping to bypass her staff and land a cut with at least one of her blades.

When her opponent looked away toward the coals, Khala thought to take advantage of the momentary distraction, so she rushed toward her to try and get in a strike. But the distraction didn't last long enough, and Khala was not particularly into the idea of fighting against live blades. This was something she'd never done before, and she had to admit, she was a little scared. Maybe a more than a little.

As soon as Tsubaki looked back toward her, Khala backed off like a skittish kitten, immediately halting her attack and reversing direction with a backward handspring. She absolutely had to keep her distance. Her weapon was longer than her opponent's. She could not let her opponent get inside her reach - when live blades came into the picture, a mis-step in this sparring match could actually mean a very serious injury for her.

So she went back to circle walking as she tried to decide what the safest way to approach this situation was.

She could make a thrust to make maximum use of her range, but that would be easy to dodge and difficult to recover from. If the attack didn't land, Tsubaki's almost certainly would.

She could do another horizontal sweep, but she'd done enough of those now that Tsubaki would be ready for it.

She could try and use her bending to help, but she wasn't very good at it, and was pretty sure it'd be more of a hindrance than a help. Besides, she'd already promised not to do that.

No... There was really only one way she could handle this. If she didn't pull it off, she would be in trouble. But it was the only way she knew to approach an opponent with blades who'd had time to adjust to her fighting style already. Or maybe her fear just kept her from wanting to try anything else. Certainly, she wasn't willing to go on the attack and willingly get herself closer to those blades.

Holding her staff in front of her, she nodded silently, accepting Tsubaki's final challenge. She wasn't sure she'd ever be 'ready ready' for this, but this was as close as she was going to get. And on queue, Tsubaki charged toward her.

As Tsubaki drew close, Khala feigned a one-handed thrust with her staff, letting her opponent move past to disguise her true intention. At the peak of the thrust, she released her staff, extending a foot and catching one end of the staff with her ankle, just enough to keep it within reach instead of letting it fall to the ground. She shifted her body to the side and out of the path of Tsubaki's attack as she caught her staff, extending her hands toward her attacker just at the moment that she made her strike. If her technique worked correctly, she would grab Tsubaki by both wrists as her blades passed by her, then redirect her attack by pressing Tsubaki's own hands upward toward her face, hopefully turning it into a combination disarm and throw that would wind up with Khala holding the blades and with Tsubaki lying on her back. If that succeded, she'd follow by (gently) discarding the blades on the ground, kicking her staff back up into her hand, and ending with a downward thrust toward Tsubaki's throat. (She would then, of course, stop said strike short if Tsubaki didn't manage to dodge it, as the ability for her to land that strike would, at that point, be clear - and there was no sense bringing real harm to someone when it wasn't necessary.)

Of course, if her technique didn't work, she'd likely be needing some first aid very soon...

One of Tsubaki's most bitter-sweet memories involved the short katana in her right hand. It had belonged to her grandfather since the days of Fire Lord Ozai's war. The old warrior was oiling the blade with shaking hands when it was dropped. Before it could hit the ground and possibly chip her decrepit grandfather moved with the speed of a snake and caught the blade by hand which scarred him for the rest of his days. That more than her mother's lectures drilled into Tsubaki the importance of her weapons.
Even while in Khala's grip Tsubaki Ito would never let go of the weapons she had named after Yudai and The Bride of Nine Spiders.
It must have looked like an awkward wresting match to Tsubaki's spectating parents who shared a pipe while smiling at the friendly sparring session.
Tsubaki let out a coarse laugh while in the undignified position of lying on the ground tangled up with Khala.
"Call it a tie?"

Tsubaki momentarily used Khala as support to stand back up while not letting go of her weapons. Dirt marked her clothes and she just noticed blood dripping down her face when when the staff had grazed her.
"I have to fight more air acolytes. That was fun. I was all 'slash, slash, slash' and you were all 'whack, whack, whack'. Fun." she rotated her left arm with a grimace and then reached out her right hand to help Khala up.
"Can Khala stay for dinner, mom?"

Knowing who would be doing the cooking Saya Ito passed the pipe as well as the responsibility for answering to her husband Habaki.
"I hope you like vegetable stew, miss Khala. Tsubaki, show her to the bath so you two and get cleaned up. I'll have the water ready shortly."
The tired, middle-aged man, hunched from overwork actually smiled at the idea of providing for a guest. Typically, the guests their family had in their run down, Dragon Flats home were of the dangerous, invading type.

"This'll be great! We can take a bath together like some fancy spa kinda place."
Tsubaki led Khala to a part of the house built around a large metal cauldron filled with warm water that got warmer and warmer.
"Don't mind my dad...he's just keeping the flames going," she said as she stripped down to nothing and slid into the recessed iron bath in the flood. The warm water rose which comforted Tsubaki's aching body.
"You might want to come in before my dad turns up the heat."

Tsubaki ran her hands over the spiders that decorated the recessed tub like gargoyles. She wondered how many men would build a spider-themed bath for a woman. She assumed not many. The heat and steam melted away Tsubaki's physical pain and hoped the same for Khala.
"Hey, Khala," Tsubaki asked while she swam over to her new friend. "What are you parents like?"

Khala frowned. She'd done her disarm wrong, clearly - when her masters had done it, all the grip in the world wouldn't have kept it in your hands. Just went to show that she still had a lot to learn.

She blushed a little at the awkwardness that had ensued from her technique being countered. "Um, yes... a tie." Khala would happily accept that, because in this position, without her staff in hand and with Tsubaki still having more control of her own weapons than Khala did, she was definitely in a losing position. All it would take would be for Tsubaki to get off the ground with her weapons before Khala managed to get back to her feet and Khala would be nothing more than helpless prey before the more seasoned warrior.

Then Khala noticed the position she and Tsubaki had ended up in - Khala had ended up falling on top of the other girl, her knees on either side of the girl's hips. That made her blush all the more. She quickly threw herself off to one side, trying to hide her embarrassment. It wasn't that she was the type of person to always have her head in the gutter, you know, but there'd been enough awkward situations today already. She was starting to worry Tsubaki would think she had a crush on her or something.

Well, Tsubaki was kind of cute... Khala shook her head. That wasn't an appropriate thing to think about a brand new friend. It sometimes amused her to think about how accidents like this could lead one's mind down a completely unexpected, and typically unwanted, path. She was just here hanging out with a new friend. That was all.

Pushing herself off of Tsubaki, she came up to her knees next to the other girl, then offered an arm and let Tsubaki use her as a support to bring herself to her feet. Then once Tsubaki was up to her feet, Khala accepted her hand in return and followed suit.

Khala smiled as she was offered vegetable stew. "I appreciate you guys trying to work with the air acolyte diet," she quietly said to Tsubaki, "But you know..." She gave an awkward, shifty look like she was trying to hide something. "I don't get to eat meat very often at the air temple." She coughed. "Call it a weakness... I call it delicious. Just don't tell the other air acolytes!"

And then Tsubaki suggested bathing together. As if Khala weren't fighting enough to keep from seeming like she was trying to get Tsubaki naked, now Tsubaki was offering to get naked. And suggesting Khala get naked too!

"U-um..." Khala blushed deeper than any blushing she'd done yet. "A-are you sure? W-we can just take turns, I-I don't mind waiting..."

Nevertheless, she was pulled forcibly through the house, blushing brightly the whole way to the tub. She stood facing away from Tsubaki, refusing to look, as the other girl got undressed. She herself made no indication of doing so. She really didn't want to add more 'romantic comedy' to the evening...

Tsubaki invited her in. "I-I'll be ok waiting, I-I'm sure the heat doesn't get that bad..."

As she stood, leaning against the wall, refusing to let the other girl think of her as a peeping Tammy, Tsubaki asked her about her parents.

"They're model acolytes." Khala smiled. "They even stick to the vegetarian diet. They're role models for me. My father is one of our spiritual leaders in the Northern Temple." She felt her heart ache a little bit. She missed them a lot. "They named me with traditional air nomad names - my first name, 'Khalama,' means 'sky path,' because we follow the ways of the air nomads, and  my second name, 'Choden,' means 'the devout one,' because they hoped I would share their devotion to the air acolyte ways." She looked over her shoulder at Tsubaki. "You might think that means they pressured me into my studies, but they really didn't. I follow the air acolyte path because I truly believe in it."

Suddenly, she realized she was looking at a naked Tsubaki. Her head snapped back around as her cheeks turned red yet again. "Um, sorry, I didn't mean to look, sorry!" Romantic comedy... Well, Khala wasn't really as sure about the romantic part, but she was convinced about the comedy part. She was making a complete fool of herself today.

"I appreciate you guys trying to work with the air acolyte diet, but you know I don't get to eat meat very often at the air temple. Call it a weakness... I call it delicious. Just don't tell the other air acolytes!"

Tsubaki snorted as she laughed at the conspiratory way Khala spoke of enjoying meat. The former Equalist had heard the Air Acolytes had a weird lifestyle but she had no idea it extended into their diet.
"Sounds a lot like being broke...kinda like us...um, we're not Air Acolytes, we're the other thing...broke. Meat's kinda expensive and all that." She leaned towards Khala. "I'll get some yuans together and we can split a skewer of meat on the way to your temple so don't fill up on stew."

Khala's parents reminded Tsubaki of her own and it made her like the Air Acolyte even more.
"My dad wanted me to be a metal worker like him and mom wanted me to be a fighter. I think you can see who won that fight. Nothing wrong with either thing...but I kinda wish I'd gone to school and stuff. Played with other kids instead of knives but then things would be different and I'd be different and that would be weird. Know what I mean? I'm me and you're you and we turned out good."

"Um, sorry, I didn't mean to look, sorry!"
Tsubaki rolled her eyes and made a dismissive noise.
"Go on. I'm looking. It's a great way to see stuff. I don't mean like in that way, but you know, you have nice skin and stuff. Totally nothing pervy going on because we're pals, right? Nothing against women liking women 'cause my mom's girlfriend was so super cool and taught me to play the trumpet she even gave me that spider stiletto I showed you. Weird when you think about your parents dating people." She made an exaggerated facial gesture of disgust while sticking out her tongue.

She rubbed her chin with a grunt. "Hmmm. I'm talking a lot aren't I? You can say stuff, you know, just, like jump in and cut me off, it's really the best thing to do. Oh! Tell me some Air Temple stuff, of some Khala stuff or some Air Temple Khala stuff. What's it like to grow up like that? Do you have to wear the same outfit all the time? I mean, I have some clothes I really like, but every day? No thanks. Time for me to be quiet now and listen."

Tsubaki dipped her stiff, dry hair into the water and began to lather it. She was itching to ask if Khala observed any specific hair care regiments but held her tongue to keep to her promise to be quiet and listen. Some people had found it difficult to put up with the sheer magnitude of Tsubaki's chatter and told her so.

Khala was silent for several moments while Tsubaki spoke, and then several moments again afterward. She didn't really hear most of what was said, however. There was something in there that had suddenly caught Khala's attention. She found herself looking at Tsubaki again, but not really at her. Kind of... through her. Her mind was somewhere else, off in a neverland of new ideas she'd never considered before.

When she finally spoke, it was barely more than a whisper, though she was close enough that Tsubaki would have no trouble hearing it.

"Women liking women, huh?" It seemed like a new concept to her. She'd never really thought of it that way. She offered a smile. "I mean... I do think you're cute..." She blushed and looked away, shuffling her foot on the floor and hoping that admitting that didn't make things awkward. "But I've really never thought of it that way before. I guess I've never really thought of myself as a woman? Maybe?"

She pondered the thought for a moment.

"I mean... it's not like I consider myself a boy or anything. And I don't wish I'd been born one, either. So I guess that makes me a girl. But I've never really thought of it that way. I've always just been me. I always slept with the girls at the temple, but I never really thought of myself as one. Just Khala. So I never thought..." She blushed even harder now, her face turning a nice shade of scarlet. "...that liking girls was weird."

She looked up again, smiling once more at Tsubaki. Tsubaki wasn't the most feminine girl Khala had ever met... but even so, for just a brief moment, she found herself looking at the other girl. Because Tsubaki had invited her to... she allowed herself one brief moment to enjoy looking at Tsubaki as a cute girl. She still kept her eyes just on Tsubaki's face, though... she wasn't willing to give herself any more luxuries than that.

Then suddenly, she closed her eyes, turned away, and waved her hand, trying to dismiss everything she'd just said.

"No, don't worry about that, I'm being weird. I'm sorry. You're right, we're pals. It's fine that way."

She frowned, keeping her gaze away from Tsubaki again now. "I'm sorry. I got all serious there, didn't I?" She took a deep breath and exhaled, willing the seriousness to go with it, then smiled. Still, she didn't let herself look at Tsubaki. "You were asking me something weren't you? I got distracted... so I didn't hear your questions. Can you ask again?"