Katara lays on her back, head propped up on her bedroll, and holds her phone over her head, scrolling through her newsfeed. The connection is surprisingly good, considering they're in the middle of nowhere in the Earth Kingdom. She glances over at the others. Aang is doing his trick where he darts around on a ball of air, while Sokka attempts to follow him and capture the action with his phone. Toph lays directly on the ground nearby, seemingly unbothered by all the dirt that's definitely in her hair now.
"Who's Azula?" Katara asks, lowering her phone.
"Who?" Aang asks, tracking tighter and tighter circles around Sokka, who spins in place to try and keep up, gets dizzy, wobbles, and falls over.
"She's commenting on all Zuko's tweets."
"He's still tweeting?" Sokka asks, climbing unsteadily to his feet.
"Yeah. He finally turned off his location, though. But he might still mess up and let us know where he is." Katara clicks on Azula's profile. "She's... his sister? Wow, she's really mean to him."
"Sisters," Sokka says, throwing his hands up in the air. Katara bends a jet of water at him. "Ah!" he yells, ducking under it. "See? See?"
***
"She's got a point," Aang says. They're on Appa's back, slowly circling some minor city in the Earth Kingdom, hiding in the cloud cover. "I shouldn't have left so many landmarks in the pictures I posted. We're lucky Zuko didn't catch us. I'll try to crop them better."
"You could do what I do," Katara responds. "Just post them a few weeks or so after we move on. Then it doesn't matter."
"Oh yeah, that's smart," Aang says. "I'll do that."
"You could just not take pictures everywhere we go," Toph rolls her eyes. She'd made Sokka watch her practice the motion until she got it right.
A short silence follows this remark. "....Yeah," Aang says, in a conciliating tone. "I guess that's true."
"I think it's fun." Katara likes imagining Gran-Gran seeing all the exciting places she's going. And knowing she's safe. On the other hand, she's not totally sure Gran-Gran even knows how to use Twitter. Or what it is.
"Yeah. Selfies rule," Sokka makes faces into his phone.
"Can't say they've ever done much for me," Toph replies.
Sokka groans. "We get it, Toph, you're blind."
"I'm blind?" Toph sits up, waving her hands in front of her eyes. "I'm blind!" she wails.
Katara clicks back to Azula's profile. Look, she knows she shouldn't be spending so much time looking at it. Azula's arguably more evil than Zuko, and besides that, she's just plain mean. But she's mean to Zuko, which is pretty funny, and considering he's trying to kill them, Katara doesn't feel a lot of sympathy. Plus, objectively, you can admire a strong, smart girl with a great sense of style and think she's a bad person at the same time.
***
Azula liked one of Katara's photos.
It wasn't anything special, just a shot she'd taken sitting by the water at one of the lakes they'd stopped at to cool off during the heat of the day. She had thought she'd looked really good in it, but she hadn't really expected poised, royal Azula to agree. Or to know she existed at all.
Then Katara slaps her forehead. Of course, Azula is tracking Aang. She's probably following all of them to try and figure out his location. Katara should probably start scrambling her photo posting, just so there's no clear trail.
She can't figure out the strategic value in liking the picture, though. Maybe she's just trying to get in Katara's head? Well, two can play at that game. Katara flips through Azula's photos, picks one (what looks like a staged shot intended to look natural; Azula standing regally in front of the Fire Nation palace, angled slightly away from the camera, looking out at the city (#royalty #futurefirelord #Zuwho?)), and likes it.
***
"Katara!"
She glances up from her phone. Aang is looking at her indignantly. "What?"
"Why did you like Azula's tweet?"
"What?" Katara takes a moment to process the question. "Oh, she complimented me." She looks down at her phone again. "Well, kind of."
"She said I was incompetent!"
"No, she didn't..." Katara trails off. "OK, maybe."
"Yeah, Katara," Sokka says. "We have to stand together on this. She's disrespecting us! Our team!"
"Uh, yeah," Aang says. "Us."
Sokka's mouth hangs half open as he looks from Aang to Katara, then he throws his hands up in the air and falls onto his back. "Does anyone here respect me?"
"I respect you." Toph says.
"Thank you," Sokka begins, until he glances over and sees Toph's smirk. "Why are you like this?"
***
