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The air was calm, peaceful. The birds were chirping in the trees, the waves lapped the shore, the breeze blew past gently. The perfect day for a stroll along the beach.
“Argh!” came suddenly from the 10 year-old. His parents snapped their gazes in his direction, taking quick notice of Bumi’s drenched appearance. Aang, who was sitting on a towel with a 2 year-old Tenzin and using his airbending to play with the infant, glanced towards his wife and daughter. Noticing that they were ankle deep in the water, looking as though they were in the middle of waterbending practice (if Aang was to guess, they were working on the water whip) until Bumi screeched, he pieced together that Kya hadn’t quite got the hang of the technique and managed to accidentally splash Bumi.
Unfortunately, Bumi seemed to grasp this at the same time.
“Kya!” Bumi shouted, further disrupting any peace other families may have been trying to enjoy. He began to stomp over to his sister, an explosive look plastered on his face. Before he could retaliate, Katara ran over to him.
“It was just an accident, Bumi. She’s still learning. I splashed your Uncle many times when I was
little,” she explained whilst waterbending the water out of his clothes and hair, effectively drying him. Alas, this was fruitless in stopping Bumi’s rampage. He was shooting daggers at Kya, deciding whether it would be worth pushing her into the water and subjecting himself to his parents’ wrath or not.
“Hey!” Aang called out, wanting to distract Bumi from assaulting his sister. “Is anyone up for lunch?” he asked, already in the bag packed with food. Luckily this managed to deter Bumi, who started running towards his dad, determined to get the first sandwich. As Katara and Kya strolled up, Katara and Aang shared a look, silently hoping that was the end of that.
Bumi stood, ankle-deep in the sea, staring into the distance. He knew he was forgetting something, he just couldn’t figure out what it was.
Behind him, Ikki and Meelo were playing together. He could hear them shrieking, probably chasing after each other. Jinora was with her father, the two of them trying to take advantage of the peace to meditate (which was going so well with Ikki and Meelo being loud in the background). They looked so calm, it was very tempting to throw sand at Tenzin (Bumi only just managed to refrain himself). Pema was sitting with Rohan, drawing pictures into the sand together. Pema’s picture of a sky bison was quite good, meanwhile Rohan’s drawing just looked like a bunch of squiggly lines (apparently they were supposed to be flying lemurs, but Bumi was skeptical). Kya was just relaxing by the edge of the sea, playing with the water. She sat with her legs crossed, making shapes with the water.
All of a sudden, there was a very loud splash. All the adults snapped their heads in the direction of the noise, and found Ikki drenched, having fallen into the sea.
“Ugh!” she yelled in frustration. As she was getting herself up and dried with airbending, Bumi had a revelation. Something about seeing his niece covered in water at the beach reminded him of that incident, all those years ago. The childish part of him relived the irritation towards his sister, how dare she get him soaked? But the slightly older part of him realised that, without his parents present now, he could get his revenge.
He didn’t have long to act. Who knew when another chance would arrive? So he had to think of a plan quickly.
It was simple, really.
First: enlist the kids.
“Aunt Kya! Quick! I need your help!” cried out Meelo. He was sitting on the sand, trying to create sculptures. “I need you to bend some water into the sand! It won’t stay up otherwise!”
Kya made her way over, bending water from the sea to mix with the sand.
Second: prepare the water.
With Meelo keeping Kya busy, Bumi and Ikki set to work on gathering the water. They decided that it would be best if they used airbending to trap the water in a bubble, making it easy to move above Kya’s head. As she was helping Meelo, Bumi and Ikki got themselves into position. They crept behind her, as silent as they could be (which wasn’t that silent, the sand was louder than Bumi wanted. He hoped Kya couldn’t hear them over Meelo’s babbling on).
Third: splatter the sister.
With Kya sufficiently distracted, Bumi gave Ikki the signal, and she let go of the water. “Argh!” shrieked Kya, absolutely drenched in water. She shot around, glaring at her older brother. “What possessed you to do that!?”
Bumi, looking sheepish, abruptly lost his ability to think of any words in the English language. Luckily though, Ikki came to his aid.
“He said it’s because you did the same to him when you were kids! He wanted to get back at you. He asked us to help!” she explained. After hearing this, Kya impressively seemed both irritated and confused at the same time. “I don’t even remember splashing you with water, Bumi. We were kids! How old were we even?”
Bumi looked down, before murmuring back “You were about 5 years-old.”
“What!? 5 years-old!? You held a grudge against me for something I did when I was 5 years-old!?” she yelled. “I can’t even- I don’t believe -”
Unable to properly convey what she wanted to say with words, Kya did the most reasonable thing she could think of.
“Argh!” Bumi screamed, suddenly doused in water. “What was that for!?”
“You damn well know what that was for-”
Tenzin, with the peace now thoroughly disturbed, opened his eyes, saw that his sister and brother were once again arguing, closed his eyes, and did his best to tune them out.
Unfortunately, his efforts were useless against the power of a sibling rivalry.