The red standards flew in the air along with the blue ones. Horses charged without any restraint, weapons shining in each warrior’s hands. Resistance was futile: every military unit was being wiped out systematically by the powerful siege weapons that tore down buildings, walls and guard towers. Nothing could slow down the destruction of an entire civilization, as the winds of conquest swept by. Time was running out already, but the untimely demise of the Japanese civilization could not be slowed, not when all their castles and samurai had been slain…

“Ugh! I quit!” Toph shouted, throwing her hands up in the air. Suki groaned.

“Come on, just a little further, we have resources…!”

“They’ll have wiped out our buildings before we can do a damn thing. Leave it be! Quit and let them celebrate already!”

Suki sighed and resigned from the game, and on cue, the red and blue team started their mandatory celebration, laughing and kissing as the rest of the competition sighed in defeat.

“Well, you should be glad you guys were the last to fall, if anything,” Katara told Toph and Suki, pouting.

“Yeah, well, your team was very easy to target once we realized Aang had no military forces,” Sokka laughed at Katara, with Azula’s arms still around his neck.

“We are most grateful for that, Aang,” she said, smirking at the bald, defeated boy who scowled a little at her. “A population limit of two hundred, and you made a hundred and eighty villagers… did you just want to be wiped out, really?”

“Well, as much as he only had villagers, at least he wasn’t the first to fall. Next time we’re not getting paired with Zuko,” Toph pouted. Zuko jumped.

“Hey! I was working just as hard as everyone else here!” Zuko exclaimed, blushing.

“Zuko, you know as well as everyone else that your strategy skills were, uh… lacking,” Suki said, eyes wide. Azula snorted.

“Poor, innocent Zuzu, too unprepared, too lacking to practice the art of war on Age of Empires…” she snickered. Zuko huffed and glared at her.

“Shut up. That joke’s not nearly as good as you think it is,” he grunted.

“Well, the bad joke of the day really is the whole lot of you, I’d say. Beating you didn’t even take an hour,” Azula smirked. Sokka chuckled next to her. 

“In all fairness, Azula, we’re just too smart for them to handle,” he said. Azula sighed in agreement.

“Indeed. Whatever they may do, there’s no contest against us,” she said, with a contented smile. “We ought to invite Ty Lee and Mai the next time.”

“Oh? Think they might be better competition?” Sokka asked, squeezing her shoulder gently. Azula snorted.

“No, I simply want more people to crush,” she said. He laughed again.

“You’re unbelievable,” he whispered, kissing her cheek.

“I don’t know what’s more gross about the two of you, your displays of affection or your teamwork,” Toph growled, shaking her head. “Maybe a mix of both.”

Sokka only smiled proudly at his girlfriend and she gave him one of her trademark smirks too. Too often their displays of affection were over the top, just to make their friends uncomfortable, but the teamwork was something they took pride of beyond most anything else about their relationship.

It was to be expected for them to pull off such remarkable victories over their friends, seeing as they had spent the better part of two years playing games together, even before they were dating. Before they knew who the other was, too.

But while they loved playing in Dannan, they had other games they rather enjoyed, too. And Age of Empires, a game of strategic warfare, was certainly one of their favorites.

While Sokka and Azula usually spent most their free time alone together, this weekend was different. After Toph had badgered them enough about wanting to play with them, Sokka and Azula finally had decided that the best game they could play with her was Age of Empires, rather than Dannan. Yet Toph suffered from the obvious problem regarding games: she couldn’t see. So that had brought her to ask her friends if any of them wanted to help her play against the gamer pair, and that had stirred everyone’s curiosity quite a bit. Katara was the first to volunteer, but Toph had decided to pick Suki as her proxy instead, as she was more likely to listen to Toph’s orders, instead of stubbornly doing whatever she thought was best.

The conversation had caught Zuko and Aang’s interest too, and in the end, everyone had showed up that Saturday with their respective laptops, ready to install and play the game. Sokka and Azula hadn’t been expecting such a turnout, but they were far from displeased: it would be much more fun with more players.

They set up their computers in Sokka’s living room, some of them sitting on the couches, others with the computers on the coffee table. After a quick rundown of how to play, they had set up the first game between them all: a seven-player game, where Sokka and Azula had comprised the red-and-blue team, Katara and Aang had been the yellow-and-turquoise one, and Zuko had joined Suki and Toph’s unit, playing as the orange-and-green team.

Sending two teams of rookies against two experienced players could only result in total annihilation. And the pair responsible for such a feat were clearly quite proud of themselves.

“You know, we just need practice,” said Katara, scowling at Azula. “We’re going to be much stronger eventually and then we’ll fight evenly, you know we will.”

“Say what you will, I think we’ll have the upper hand no matter what,” said Azula, smirking proudly.

“Only because you’re paired with each other,” said Suki, shaking her head. “You two have been working together for ages now, of course you’d know how to beat everyone else at this game.”

“Yeah, I bet you’d stop being so smug if you got paired with Zuko instead,” said Toph, smirking.

“Uh, possibly, but really, even Zuzu can’t be so bad that he’d cause me to lose,” said Azula, shaking her head. “I’d still win.”

“Are you sure?” Aang chimed in, with a small smirk of his own. “Even… if Sokka’s in the opposite team?”

Those words were the first to make Sokka and Azula tense up in the entire day. They frowned, looking at Aang with uncertainty.

“I’m just saying…” he said, but Katara stepped forward and looked at them with amusement.

“He’s suggesting something really good, actually,” she said, with amusement. “How well would you two fare against each other, instead of being on the same team, for a change?”

“That… is a terrible idea,” said Sokka, looking at his sister pointedly. “It might end up being a twelve-hour game, or so…”

“Oh, I think watching you two destroy each other will be well worth twelve hours,” said Katara, with amusement.

“Well, unless they’re scared of doing it because, you know, they might break up because of it?” said Toph, smirking and shrugging. “Seeing how competitive they both are…”

“Please,” said Sokka, rolling his eyes. “We wouldn’t break up over something like this, of course we wouldn’t. Right?”

He looked at Azula, but she remained silent, a thoughtful look on her eyes. Sokka’s eyes widened and he nudged her with his elbow.

“Right?!”

“Uh, heh? Depends on how the fight goes, really…” Azula said, with a dry grin. Sokka’s jaw dropped.

“Say what?!”

The others laughed at Sokka’s response. Azula simply shrugged apologetically.

“What can I say? I don’t like losing and I know neither do you, but one of us is going to lose anyways…” she said. Sokka snorted, in disbelief.

“Fine then,” he said, shaking his head and standing up. Azula watched him as he picked up his laptop.

Her eyes followed him as he moved to sit opposite to her, their tilted screens in light contact. He fixed her with a steady gaze, to the brim with determination. Soon enough Azula smirked.

“Well, then… we’re doing this for real?” she asked. Sokka nodded.

“You bet we are. Though if you want to break up after I kick your ass, well, I won’t stop you, but I would’ve thought you wouldn’t be such a sore loser…” he smirked, as he started setting up the game. It was Azula’s turn to laugh in disbelief.

“Ah, well, if you’re so confident, I do hope you won’t come crying to me once I make you bite my dust,” she said, shaking her head as she leaned forward towards her computer too.

On cue, everyone else gathered behind the two players of this round, filled with perverse curiosity. Zuko and Katara drifted to Sokka’s side, while Suki, Aang and Toph moved towards Azula’s. Yet neither of the competitors took much notice to how the groups had distributed. They were too busy trying to intimidate each other before their battle.

“I’m picking the Byzantines,” Sokka declared. Azula smirked.

“Good luck. My Spanish shall blow you to smithereens,” she said. He scoffed.

“You can’t break the best civilization of the game with a few guns, I thought you already knew that,” he said, shaking his head. “But I suppose Gilded Fire has always put too much faith in firearms…”

She laughed again and looked at him with skepticism. Sokka smirked back at her, his mouse hovering over the button to start the fight.

“Ready?” he asked. She smirked.

“To write your epitaph? Afraid so. You were loved dearly, Sokka,” she said, mockingly. He couldn’t help but laugh again before starting the battle with one click.

It had been a brutal, fierce fight. The Nomad mode of the game was harsh, and without their awareness, they had set up camp far too close to each other. Battles had ensued, conflicts had arisen, but Sokka had been able to respond well at first. He built up a strong army, with large groups of priests that quite often converted Azula’s units and caused quite a lot of trouble for her.

Yet as Sokka took three relics for himself, Azula took the last two. And where Sokka walled himself in his territory, while also seeking to destroy Azula’s initial base, she set up a new base elsewhere, and waited patiently, quietly. The red soldiers were building their strengths, and she focused on developing all the technology she needed to fight back, even as Sokka frequently sought to siege her new base. But it wasn’t enough. Not even his best units could tear through the full defenses of Azula’s own walled territories.

After a few scouting missions that he couldn’t stop, she found his monastery. And with a massive army of paladins, conquistadors and trebuchets, she tore through his lands without breaking a sweat and destroyed his army, along with his every military building. Just as she was stealing the relics from his fallen monastery, the unsurprising message had blinked in her screen: Sokka had surrendered.

“Woah! That was amazing!” Toph shouted, laughing and patting Azula’s shoulder. Suki had narrated everything for her as it happened. “Damn, you kicked his ass!”

Sokka groaned and dropped his head on the keyboard as even Zuko and Katara went around the table to congratulate the winner. Azula was beaming with pride, hearing them recount the most impressive of her tactics.

“So wait, she had already set up elsewhere on that area while Sokka was busy wrecking her first base?” Katara asked, impressed. As she had been at Sokka’s side, she hadn’t seen any of what Azula was doing.

“I don’t know how she did it, but she did it,” said Aang, with an amazed laugh. “Though he almost got her at a few points…”

“He’s good at quick responses,” said Azula, smiling fondly at her sulking boyfriend. “But it’s hard to outdo me when it comes to long-term plans, and he knew that. He tried to strike first to stop me from doing what I did, but… it was too late already.”

“Yeah, well…” said Sokka, grimacing and lifting his head only to bow towards her. “Good game, good game…”

“Why, thank you,” said Azula, smirking. “Though you ought to address me with more respect, now, Sokka…”

“Huh?” he said, raising an eyebrow. Her smirk only widened as he grimaced. “What, you don’t want me to call you empress or something, do you…?”

“She did win at the Age of Empires…” Aang said innocently. Azula laughed as Sokka snorted.

“Heh, well, fine, I’ll humor you,” he said, with narrow eyes. “Empress Azula… conqueror of my heart!”

“Oh god, Sokka!” Katara groaned, as Toph made a face of disgust. The others laughed while Azula blushed but smiled, shaking her head at him.

“What? It’s still true, I wasn’t going to break up with her because she beat me!” he said, beaming proudly.

“You should kick his ass again, Azula, please.” said Katara. “Make him stop being so corny.”

“If you want me to, gladly,” said Azula, smirking at Sokka. “What’s it going to be now? Fortress? Arena…?”

“Team Islands,” Sokka said, with a raised eyebrow. Azula tensed up.

“N-no, you can’t…”

“Oh, yeah, I can,” he said, with a proud smirk.

She wasn’t very good at maps with water. Sokka was far too talented in them, better suited for water-based warfare than anything else. But she couldn’t falter. She shouldn’t.

“Fine. Fine,” she said, raising her hands before glancing at everyone else. “Well? Are you lot going to join in this time, or not?”

“Woah, are we?” Aang asked, looking at Sokka with unease. “I thought you two were going to have it out again…”

“Oh, we can. On opposing teams,” said Sokka, smirking.

“Huh, well, then I’ll join Sokka this time,” said Zuko, beaming. Sokka tensed up.

“Heh? Don’t you want to join Azula instead…?”

“Oh no, you keep Zuko, I’ll take Aang,” said Azula, smiling as Aang jumped to his computer. Katara looked at Toph and Suki.

“So I guess we’re going together this time?” she asked. Toph smirked and Suki nodded in approval.

“Let’s do this!” Toph exclaimed.