Khala followed Tsubaki into the room, not really sure what to think of the situation. On the one hand, Tsubaki was being incredibly thoughtful. On the other hand, she hadn't realized that Tsubaki was so... well, violent. She knew Tsubaki liked to fight, but she hadn't realized to what extent the girl was willing to put that into practice.

Still, she couldn't help but keep her eyes on the other girl. She still thought it was silly, and she blushed every time Tsubaki glanced her way out of fear the other girl would notice her staring. In some ways, the two couldn't possibly be different... Tsubaki, brash and violent and prone to pushing others around; Khala, quiet and reserved with a focus on internal and external peace. But Khala could see kindness in Tsubaki, too. From where she was, it seemed to her that Tsubaki lived life the only way she knew how, and maybe she could help teach the girl a way to do it without threatening people in the future.

Or, maybe that was just her crush clouding her judgment.

"Yes," Khala agreed,  "that's definitely better than doing something violent."

Khala returned the waterbender's bow as politely as she could manage. "I am Khalama Choden... but please call me Khala."

She finished her bow and rose to look at Kiat, but instead of throwing an attack as requested, she bowed her head slightly toward her, then glanced at Tsubaki. "Tsubaki... I really appreciate what you're trying to do for me, but..." She looked back at Kiat. "I don't want you to teach me because you're being forced to. I would be a terrible acolyte if I accepted something that came out of coercion." She bowed again. "I apologize for wasting your time..."

She turned back toward Tsubaki.

"Tsubaki... can you just... tell this Mugen guy that she's giving me lessons and consider her debt paid? I'll even come and sit with her once a week if I have to, but I just can't force someone to do something against her will." She looked down at the ground, feeling terrible for rejecting what she knew Tsubaki had intended to be a gift of kindness. "I'm sorry."

If Kiat found Tsubaki hard to deal with, this Khala person was downright impossible. It was insanely difficult to keep a nice resentment going when someone was being nice and reasonable.
"Um, hey, listen...it's really not a big deal or anything." Kiat sighed again through gritted teeth as she hated being in a situation where she couldn't blame anyone. "I've never taught anyone anything and I need practice anyway since I have a pro-bending tryout soon.

It took a moment to notice that Khala was avoiding Tsubaki's gaze the same way she herself was but it looked like for totally different reasons.
Since she started smoking Kiat found that doing something with her hands and filling a little bit of time was good for dealing with awkward moment.
"So...Baki, you can wait outside. It's going to get very wet in here." Kiat almost bit through her cigarette at calling Tsubaki 'Baki' unintentionally. Shortening her name seemed way too familiar and caused Kiat to groan out a stream of smoke.

Instead of getting angry which Kiat predicted Tsubaki grinned.
"Haven't been called that in a long time. Thanks. You're one of the good ones, Kiki. I'll be back later." As she turned to leave Tsubaki lightly punched Khala in the arm.
"Have fun and don't get too hurt, okay? Well, it's okay to get a little hurt because it's training and all but, like not like really really hurt like losing an arm and stuff. I'll come back later."

Tsubaki's rambling speech patterns made her seem less like a hired thug and more like an excitable child which was one more reason for Kiat to suspend her hatred. Anger was useless but it was something she felt she needed to hang onto.
She took a drag off her darg gray tohil brand cigarette and pointed to Khala.
"I think she was distracting both of us. We can start now. Just try to hit me so I can check your form. If you can extinguish my cigarette I'll give you twenty points...not that points mean anything." She smiled and put her hands behind her back and swayed side to side slowly while waiting for Khala to attack.

Khala gave a genuine look of concern. "Are you sure? I don't want to be a bother." It quickly became clear, though, that Kiat was sure. Khala nodded. "Thank you. I'll be the best student I can be; I promise not to waste your time."

Then Tsubaki touched her. Sure, it was a punch on the arm, but it was a touch nonetheless. She felt her cheeks get hot and knew she was blushing. "Th-thanks Tsubaki..." She turned toward the door to hide her face from Kiat, trying to disguise it as if she were leading Tsubaki out. "I'll be out soon I'm sure. N-not that you have to wait for me or anything, just..." She took a deep breath. "I'll be out soon."

She took a moment to regain her composure as Tsubaki shut the door behind her. A couple of deep breaths with closed eyes did the trick, then she turned around and bowed again. "Thank you again for teaching me."

Taking another calm breath, she moved into her stance. The stance wasn't quite right; it was close, but it looked more like an airbending stance than a waterbending stance. The basic position was right, but she was a little too upright, her weight not quite forward enough. She moved her hands like an airbender, too, in big circular motions. The water followed, came out of the bucket and into the air before her, but it didn't quite take the nice solid form that a water whip was supposed to take. Instead of forming a solid quiet shape, the water in the whip spun around slightly, churning slowly as if it were trying, but failing, to form the sorts of air vortexes that the airbenders used to attack with.

She followed her form slowly, and the water followed suit, but when she finished the form and tried to throw the water at Kiat, she lost her control over its shape. The slowly spinning vortex grew larger, but not faster, as it moved toward Kiat, until finally, about halfway between the two of them, it lost coherency altogether and splattered all over the floor.

Khala sighed.

"I know, I know, my form's all wrong... My grandma taught me a little bit, but she was from the northern tribe, and in her day they only taught women to heal... and neither one of us is any good at that."

Kiat studied Khala for a tense twenty seconds a little too surprised to puff on her cigarette which she flicked to the side.
"Yeah...that was a huge mess." She paused and thought about how patient her father was when he taught her bending. With a sweeping motion Kiat bended the water back into the bucket and tried to think of someting encouraging.
"Okay..." she paused a sighed. "This is good since you don't have to unlearn a whole lot. First your stance is all wrong. Put your side towards me and stand on the balls of your feet. Also, forget about things like water whips or anything requiring rotation."

Kiat began to smile and put her hands with in front of her in lightly curled fists. She slowly extended her left arm as she tightened her hand into a fist then took a place at Khala's side.
"Just jab your hand forward like that." She pulled back her arm and repeated the motion. "This is just a fast, straight attack, nothing special. It's really just to knock people off their guard to set up your haymakers." She instantly regretted mentioning haymakers because she didn't want to jump to the more fun advanced stuff.
"Just keep throwing that one punch over and over and over."
After some time observing Khala and correcting her form Kiat's curiosity got the better of her. "So, why learn to fight now? I thought you acolytes shunned that kind of thing." The next question came out abruptly and she instantly regretted asking. "And how did you get involved with the likes of Tsubaki? No offense or anything but I don't think people like you are usually in the same social circle."

Khala nodded as the punch was demonstrated. Punching she could do. She'd learned a lot of that. Her problem was controlling the water itself.

She repeated the punch without any issue.

"Actually," she repeated the punch as she spoke, "a lot of us study martial arts the way the airbenders used to fight. We can't bend air, of course, but a lot of the physical movements still work for regular combat. Studying martial arts focuses the spirit and the body and encourages good health." She punched a few more times. "We hope we never have to use it on anyone - we don't study for the purpose of fighting. It's internal growth we're after. But if someone else attacks, we will defend ourselves and protect the innocent."

She gestured at the staff that she'd left by the door. "I've been training with my staff since I was a little girl. I find it really relaxing to practice with it. At the northern air temple I would stand out on the grass and practice in my bare feet, looking out over the clouds. You could see the clouds going for miles, with little patches in between where you could get a glimpse at the ground down below, villages or fields or roads." She let out a quiet sigh. She missed her home and her family. Everything was so... low to the ground here.

"Anyway. I'm not really trying to learn to fight. I'm just trying to learn to bend. I know some people would say there's no difference, but even if there's not a difference in the what, there's a difference in the why. Waterbending is a part of who I am, a part of my family history. I honestly didn't want to come all this way and study bending, I wanted to stay home and study the air nomad texts, but the Abbot thought I wouldn't be able to truly embrace myself and find balance if I throw away the part of me that's a waterbender. And no matter how much I miss the temple, I know he's right, I need to find harmony with my bending abilities and this is the best place to do it."

She stopped punching. "What do you mean about Tsubaki, though? She's just a regular girl... right? I met her on the street playing her trumpet... I liked her music so I started playing with her on my flute. She invited me to her house, and we um..." Khala immediately turned red again as the conversation reminded her of Tsubaki's naked body in the tub. "We did some sparring and had dinner..." And nothing else happened, she reminded herself. Nothing else happened and that was that.

Kiat chuckled at Khala's shock regarding her opinion of Tsubaki.
"Look under that long red coat she wears and you'll see an arsenal of weapons...is that a 'regular girl' thing? I'm from the Dragon Flats District too but I don't feel the need to be armed all the time."
Kiat pulled some of the water from the bucket and formed into a sphere and tossed it towards Khala like a ball.
"I'm sure she had good qualities and all because you seem, uh, fond of her but I don't think she's safe to be around. Throw that back to me." She stepped back and tossed the ball of water back to Khala.
"You know what a loan shark is, right?" Kiat felt like an idiot asking that but she wondered if air acolytes knew much about criminal practices.
"My dad needed a lot of money so he had to borrow from someone...someone that isn't a bank. Someone that needs to strike fear into people so they pay. Your friend there is the one who causes the fear."
She shrugged her aching right shoulder and grimaced. "I just thought you should know who you are dealing with. I think you should probably go back to Air Temple Island."

Memories of dating a reckless and arrogant firebender filled Kiat's head and she patted at her sweat pants pocket where she felt the chrome cigarette lighter that once belonged to the deceased young man. For a moment she felt she shouldn't be so judgmental of an infatuated young girl but considered that her ex-boyfriend was at worst kind of annoying and not at all dangerous.

Khala shook her head. "She actually told me a lot about her weapons. They're sentimental to her... gifts from her mother and other important people in her life. She knows how to use them, but..." She gestured at her staff again. "I know how to use that, too, and I always carry it with me. It's very important to me - a gift from the people at the Northern Air Temple before I left. I keep it with me all the time because it's an important part of who I am and where I came from - it reminds me of both my home in the northern temple, and the history of my people in the air nomad nation. Just because I carry a weapon doesn't make me a violent person."

Khala tried to catch the ball as it flew toward her, but she messed up her form again. The best she was able to manage was splitting it down the middle and sending two blobs of water crashing into the floor on either side of her. She held her arms in front of her face as little droplets of water rained down on her. "Sorry, I've got a lot to learn..."

She shook herself off a bit. "The person you're talking about - the guy that loaned you money. That's Mugen, right? Tsubaki mentioned him briefly." She shook her head. "He doesn't sound like a very good guy. And maybe Tsubaki's gotten mixed up in something she shouldn't be. I've been to her home... her family isn't well off. I think she's doing what she thinks she has to. But when left to make her own decisions, she treated me better than anyone else in this city has, other than the other air acolytes at the temple. I think she has a good heart deep down. If what you're telling me is true, then she just... needs to find a better way to use it, I guess."

She shrugged. "Don't worry about me. I can take care of myself. I may not be the best bender, but I've been studying martial arts since I was a little girl. And you know how we air acolytes always are... when someone's in a bad position we have to help." She gave a smile and a wink.

"Alright now..." She assumed a bending stance again and tried to form the water on the ground back into a ball. She managed a ball - sort of - but much like the water whip she'd tried to do before, it spun and twisted, like she was trying to make an air scooter, but out of water. "This never quite works right... Tell me what's wrong with my stance."

"Turn your side towards me to make yourself less of a target and stay on the balls of your feet. Traditional waterbending stances are too easy to pick off and disrupt."
Kiat scatches the side of her neck and tried to think of the right way to put things.
"Water can flow and it can crash. What you need to do is learn when to flow and when to crash. You stay on the balls of your feet to stay mobile. Flowing. Once you got that down I'll teach you to crash."

The waterbender looked at the air acolyte and her stance and tried to think of something to further motivate Khala.
"You like pro-bending? Think of this stance as your way to not getting knocked back a zone. It also looks tons cooler." Kiat took the same stance in front of Khala but with some gentle, but random swaying added like she had trouble staying still. That part was true due to her knee pain but even when her body was in peak condition that odd sway was part of her signature style.

With a cocky smirk Kiat fished the cigarette lighter from her black pants pocket and ignited it. The flame left a faint trace as she swayed.
"See if you can douse my lighter." For a moment she felt more like a bully rubbing her skill in someone's face and less like an instructor. She remembered how her father acted when he instructed her and tried to exude that wise calm.
"Keep an eye on my feet. I won't take a step, just pivot. Fire when ready."

Khala followed instructions, turning her side and getting on the balls of her feet, nodding as her instructor explained the details of her style. When she mentioned pro-bending, however, Khala suddenly dropped the stance, tilting her head in confusion.

"Uh... Pro-bending?" She blinked a couple of times. "I've never, uh... What's pro-bending?"

While she may not have known, well, anything about pro-bending, Khala was nothing if not smart and resourceful. Douse the lighter, and her opponent wasn't going to move her arms or legs? She didn't need precision or control for that - in fact, if anything, precision and control would make this harder. She pulled the water from the room and formed it into another large ball. She couldn't use that ball for any kind of real attack, but she could use it to douse a flame, no problem.

She let one hand drop to one side below the not-quite-stable ball of water, and then quickly raised it into the air, stepping forward and twisting her body with it, sending the power as much from her hips as her arms. The ball flew toward the ceiling. As anticipated, it couldn't hold its shape as a ball as it flew - it quivered and shook and became more of a blob than a ball - but she didn't need it to. Just above the instructor's head, the ball burst, sending the whole mass of water down onto the other woman. If all she did was pivot, it would be a miracle for the flame to escape a dousing from above.

As the water fell from above, Khala just stood there grinning like an idiot.

If Khala had revealed herself to be Koh the face stealer Kiat could not have been more shocked than to hear the air acolyte had not heard of pro bending. The same sport that shaped every aspect of Kiat Igaluk's had somehow not made it to Khala's attention, which mystified Kiat, almost to the point of letting the flame of her cigarette lighter become extinguished by the torrent of water raining down on her.

Kiat bent her knees and pivoted on the balls of her feet until her upper body contorted into an almost serpentine shape to avoid most of the water. What remained she could control with her chi, even without moving. It was a simple trick used to keep the rain off.
She bended the water from the floor back into the bucket and closed the lid to her lighter with a sigh.
"You really are from another world, aren't you?" Kiat immediately felt guilty about such a cutting remark and gently banged her fist against her forehead. This wasn't how her father taught her. He was patient.

Partly to seem informal but mostly to give her aching knee a rest Kiat sat down on the floor and gestured for Khala to do the same. Using water she bended the shape of a pro bending arena and explained the different zones and scoring, all the while talking faster and faster as she got lost in her enthusiasm for the sport.
"...so if you're going to nail someone really hard in the face make sure the ref is not looking."
Even she wasn't sure how she had jumped from the basics of the rules to the proper time to make a cheap shot.
"Anyway....that is pro bending and how I'm going to teach you. We might as well have some fun while you learn. It's a great way to learn control and how to keep your cool. It's also the funnest thing ever. Do yourself a favor one day and go see a match. Pro, semi-pro, kids messing around in the park, it doesn't matter. Go watch and see how fun it is. After seeing one match as a kid I knew that was what I wanted to do with my life."

The idea of getting to introduce someone to the sport she loved made Kiat forget all about the circumstances that led to her teaching Khala.

Khala dropped her arms to her side and drooped her face down in a sullen pout. "Aw man... I thought for sure I had you that time..."

She then lowered her eyes as her instructor called her an alien.

No... just... another country... They don't have pro-bending at the air temple...

—-

Khala frowned as Kiat finished her story.

"Pro-bending sounds... violent..." She shuffled uneasily. "I... don't want to sound ungrateful or anything... but I don't think that's the kind of bending I'm meant to learn. The abbot said I needed to get in touch with my history, with what it means to be a member of the Water tribe. Not... to learn to beat people up for entertainment like some thug..." She realized too late what she'd said. "I-I mean... um... no offense or anything..." She blushed brightly, feeling extremely embarrassed.

"A-anyway..." She shifted around uncomfortably. "I um... I don't suppose you know any of the traditional forms the water tribes used...?" Ugh... She felt so rude...

Kiat almost took the word "thug" like a physical attack but held her tongue. She admitted that she was rough around the edges and bent the rules of pro-bending as far as she could but Kiat didn't consider herself in the same league as a criminal.
Then she remembered that her old team named themselves The Face Stealers and that she had been the most aggressive of a team named for a malevolent spirit. She also assumed she wasn't called 'The Goon' ironically.
She tried to see things from Khala's perspective but couldn't resist firing a shot back.
"What, you'll hang out with a thug but you won't bend like one?"

Kiat ran her hands over her short, pixie cut hair with a sigh that spoke both frustration and resignation.
"You're the type of person who would go to Ember Island and not even hit the beach, aren't you? Fine...fine...have to start with the basics anyway. Boring, boring basics."

She thought about the basics that were drilled into her by her father and others who had helped her with both her pro bending and calligraphy.
"Okay...I guess if I had to describe water bending with one word that one word would be 'Change'. Ice, steam, oceans and puddles, we benders have a lot of tools in our box.
First thing is first, Khala. Bend the water from that bucket," she said pointing to a bucket near Khala and then to one near her about tweny feet away. "To this bucket. If you spill anything pick it back up and put it in the first bucket.

"Do you know the jings? Positive, negative and nuetral? Think of them as advance, retreat and stop. To bend water you will have to know how to flow between these three jings. She leaned over to Khala hoping to make an impression on her new student. "These three jings will touch ever aspect of your life. Positive, negative, neutral. Learn to identify them.

When the first bucket was empty and Tsubaki had returned for Khala Kiat felt almost disappointed the lesson could not go on longer. She knew that Tsubaki was a completely different type of goon than herself.
"Homework, Khala. Carry around a cup of water with you the rest of the day and don't spill a drop. Remember what I said about noticing jings. I'll see you later in the week."

"So, can you throw ice spikes at people yet?" Tsubaki excitedly asked Khala.

"I-I-" Khala stammered. "I didn't mean to say YOU were a thug... Just, pro-bending in general seems like a very violent sport. I guess I just don't see the appeal in watching people hurt each other..."

She listened to Kiat explaining the philosophy of waterbending. "Change..." She equated it to her air teachings and her own, slightly personal take on air acolyte philosophy, "Yin into yang... yang into yin... never static, always flowing. The air acolytes sometimes described yin and yang as being like water. So I just have to think of water as being like yin and yang."

That already was a fundamental shift in her approach. She'd been trying to hold the water still earlier when she made the big ball. Now she tried something new: She picked the water up from the first bucket, but this time instead of just putting it into a static ball, she began to spin it around. She formed a ball, but kept the water moving in the ball. Instead of the erratic quivering ball she'd made before, this was a smooth ball that kept its form nicely. Her face broke into the idiot-like grin she was so prone to wearing at times. "I'm doing it!" She flew the ball through the air toward the other bucket. ""I'm doi-"

Just then the ball of water touched the other bucket, and the current in it sent the other bucket flying across the room and crashing loudly into the wall. Khala jumped from the noise, and in that instant lost her focus... the ball broke up and water splattered everywhere. She winced. "Well... it's a start?"

It was a start, and with a little more practice, she learned to keep the water flowing in the ball with a lower current that didn't fling away the other bucket... and then the water was in! Just in time, too, as Tsubaki had showed up only moments before to take her home.

She thanked Kiat probably a lot more than she should have for a great lesson, and then headed out with Tsubaki.

"Ice spikes?" She laughed. "No, but I can apparently spin a ball of water fast enough to throw a bucket across the room ten or fifteen times, so there's that, I guess."

"Bucket bending! Neat-e-o." Tsubaki waved at Kiat who gave a half-hearted wave back to the muscle of the man that her father owed money.

Using her hands like calligraphy brushes Kiat used airborne water as paint and spelled out her phone number for Khala. "Call me when you want to set up another lesson. I'll try to, uh, be more spiritual or whatever for next time. Until then manipulate water any way you can as often as you can."

Kiat stopped and let the water she had used to write her phone number coalesce into a ball of water which then became a ball of ice which she bended over to Khala.
"Oh yeah...this is homework. Keep that ball of ice from melting until our next lesson." She gave Khala a slight bow of her head and left the warehouse surprised to be feeling happy about teaching someone and concerned that her first student chose to hang around with bad people.

"Great news today. It's payday! Also great news is guess who's playing in Lemurland? Blind Lemur! Wait, I guess that might be obvious since the club was named after him." Tsubaki gently shook Khala by her shoulders while smiling. "Still, this is good news! Do you want to go? Tell me you want to go. We can listen to some great music, have a few drinks and dance. Wait, do acolytes drink? Hm....well, we can eat and dance then. I just have one dead drop to make. Oh! Dinner. I'll take you to dinner too because you shouldn't drink on an empty stomach. Woo, Tsubaki exclaimed while pumping her right fist into the air.

Tsubaki lowered her raised arm onto Khala's shoulder and let out a snorting laugh.
"I was feeling pretty down last night because my date stood me up but this totally makes up for that. Someone paid back his debt to Mugen and I didn't need to mess anybody up. It's like that song 'What a difference a day makes'. Love that song! Oh, oh, oh! I need to know what your favorite color is so's you can get a tie. If we're going to be a band we should match."

"Yikes! I've been going on and on about me. What about you? Do you even want to eat, drink and play music with me?"

"I-Ice?" Khala stammered. "But I don't know how to do ice yet! And you already gave me homework with the cup..." She sighed. She'd do her best with the ice, of course, but she had a feeling she was going to fail that assignment. "And I thought I was enthusiastic about learning..."

As usual, Tsubaki was talking till she was blue in the face. Khala seemed a little overwhelmed for once by the amount of words being thrown at her while she was still trying to reflect on the lesson and how in the world she would even begin tackling that ball of ice.

"W-whoa, slow down, Tsubaki. Breathe. Remember to breathe. Air." For a moment she wished she were an airbender so she could put some air into Tsubaki's lungs for her. "Ok, first question: what is Lemurland, and who is Blind Lemur? Second question: What is a... 'dead drop'?"

She looked down at her clothes. "As for favorite color... I dunno, everything I've ever worn has been orange, so... but uh, that's what all the air acolytes wear..."

She thought for a moment about whether she felt up to a night on the town after her lesson, or whether she'd prefer to go back to the temple and meditate on it. It was a tough decision. Meditation won over partying easily, but she did want to spend more time with Tsubaki... she felt herself blushing.

"Um..." she began timidly. "Um... what if... that is, uh... well..." She bit her lower lip, then took a deep breath and put everything out at once. "Doyouwanttocomehomewithmetonight?" She blushed brighter.

"Uh, t-that is, I mean..." What she'd said wasn't what she'd meant to, but she couldn't help realizing it was what she'd wanted to say after all. "I mean, I've been to your place, b-but you haven't been to mine... and... and I'd kind of like a quiet night... t-to think about the waterbending lesson, and..." And maybe cuddle a bit? She clenched her eyes shut. NO NO NO! JUST FRIENDS! JUST FRIENDS! SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP!

She shook her head, deciding maybe she should just back out of this idea after all. "T-that is, if you don't want to, that's totally ok, we can go see blind leper... I-I mean leopard... I mean blithe lemur... I mean..." She clenched her eyes shut again. "I mean I like you Tsubaki!"

She clasped a hand over her mouth. "A-as a... as a friend... I mean I like you as a friend and you should come hang out with me..." She trailed off. "Yeah... yeah, that..."

Most of her life Tsubaki Ito had been the type of woman things were explained TO, not the one who did the explaining. With her education consisting of some frustrating tutoring lessons and experience Tsubaki never considered she would know something someone else didn't, even if it was just dead drops and jazz.
She kept her arm slung around Khala, glad to be in the position of educator for once.
"Dead drops are things left at a certain place that I pick up. Usually money. So, like , instead of people giving Mugen his money he gets them to drop it off somewhere and gets me to pick it up later. That way things are harder to trace back to us."

For a moment Tsubaki actually fell silent trying to think of an explanation of something closer to her heart than picking up sums of money from strangers.
She pulled at Khala a little tighter to her as she mumbled a bit thinking how to explain something as simple as a musician.
"Blind Lemur's this really cool jazz musician. He's a trumpet player like me. Or I'm a trumpet player like him. When The Bride of Nine Spiders was teaching me to play the trumpet she bought me his album to...uh, I'm not sure why. Maybe to see how it should be done or something. His music made me happy. And sad. And excited. Before that music lessons were just this thing that dad forced me to do but listening to him made me want to be a musician. It makes me miss The Bride of Nine Spiders since she's like a second mom."
A moment of uncharacteristic sad nostalgia tempered Tsubaki's normally manic glee until the subject changed to colors.

"We'll get you a nice orange tie then. Oh, and a black suit. You need a black suit to match me and Mugen...or is it Mugen and I...or me? Anyway, the three of us need to match if we're going to form a band. Except the ties, I thought it'd be neat to wear different color ties."

The rather perplexing idea of spending the evening not partying to celebrate her good fortune was floated to which Tsubaki grunted a few times while pondering.
"You know what, I've been to Air Temple Island. It sounds like fun. Oh! Can we pet the sky bison and can I take one home? Or two? A big one and a little one. One of flying and one for cuddling."

Khala's nervous stammering caught Tsubaki off guard for a moment. "I like you too, Khala. You have nice hair and you're smart. I'd like to hang out at your place and I'll try not to embarrass you in front of the monks."

In her mind Khala was wondering about the safety of dead drops and what would happen if someone else took the money before Mugen could get to it... but outwardly, she was far too embarrassed by her sudden outburst to actually say anything about it. And then as the explanation went on she found herself getting hung up on the concept of a second mom... and in her mind she was imagining a daughter running around the temple calling her and Tsubaki both moms. The thought turned her face vibrant red.

"That would be really nice..." she hummed to herself, a bit amorously. Then she realized she had spoken that thought out loud...

"Um. I mean... you coming to the temple would be nice..." Then again, maybe it would be a good idea for her not to try and get alone with Tsubaki right now. She was having enough trouble containing her confusing emotions as it was. "B-But I'd hate to keep you from your music! Let's go see Blind Lemur!" She grabbed Tsubaki's hand - a shot of emotion surged through her at the touch, but she suppressed it - and she pulled Tsubaki after her. She didn't know the way to the concert but that didn't matter, she needed to interrupt this awkward moment, so away she went in a random direction! "To Lemurland!"

While Tsubaki loved Khalas newfound enthusiam, she had to adjust the position of the acolyte's arm to downtown Republic City.
"That-a-way. But first, clothes. I mean, yeah clothes are clothes, but I should wear something special. Besides, after getting dumped last night I want to feel pretty. Hey, did I tell you the guy who stood me up also stuck me with a huge bill? Ugh. What a bad date that was. I did meet a guy but he's a guy who likes guys so no chance there. Totally not my type anyway. What kind of people do you like? In a romantical sense. Quiet ones, loud ones, tall, short, tattooed?"

She let out an extended grunt while looking at Khala trying to decide the qualities of the air acolyte's hypothetical mate.
"You need someone a bit on the crazy side, I think. A person who gets you to do weird, fun stuff. Maybe we'll meet someone nice at the concert. Or at the temple. Is there someone at the temple you like? Someone you peek at when you should be meditating or brushing sky bisons?

Once home Tsubaki didn't waste time with pleasantries or greetings and simply went to her room and began changing as soon as she and Khala entered the room. Khala was taller so Tsubaki spent an extra minute in her underwear pondering loaning Khala some clothes. They would be ill-fitting but might not clash as much as her acolyte robes.
"Feel free to raid my closet for something if you want."

Tsubaki pulled off her shirt and exposed her patchwork of scars addorning her back and shoulders from previous fights. Because she would see a musical hero she decided to change out of her shuriken print underwear and settled for a more mundane plain red. It wasn't until after she had changed that Tsubaki realised the only way a person would see those parts of her wardrobe was if she got lucky that night. She entertained the thought for a moment and remembered being dumped the night before. There would not go searching for male companionship this night. A girls night out seemed like fun, anyway.

A red, knee-length dress was selected. The former Equalist didn't have many clothes to pick from. For special occasions she had her red gown and for a nice but not too nice night out she had this red dress. Simple and she could easily kick in it and access her weapons.
"Ready?"