A/N: There are a few OC's; Kuzon (the evil Nazi badguy) and the Old Man (an earthbender who helps Jun and Zei) and a few others fill out the story. I included the Combustion Man (as a Nazi) who goes by the name of Fen. Where ever possible I used Chinese to name things (like Na'Cui); the only exception is Karasuki, the family name I gave Jun, which is two Japanese words for raven and wood. Which brings us to Indiana Jones - yes! I think that, and the Nazi occultism/conspiracy stuff, is what inspired me to write this. Between them Jun is more like Indy; Zei has a few moments here and there where he channels Indy too; their romance is subdued much as I think it would be if it were ever to occur. They see each other more like equals than lovers. I hope that is not a problem. There's a lot of Indy references, actually, and X-Files-y stuff as well as Ancient Alien conjecture. The premise of the story is that the world of Avatar is set in a post apocalyptic world. Something called the cataclysm destroyed us and brought the Avatar into being. Archeologists like Zei and Jun's family occasionally uncover artifacts from our period of time. They spot languages that they call 'Riyu' (Japanese) and 'Meiguo' (American/English - really a catch-all mostly for the Roman alphabet). The Nazi's (I won't spoil how) somehow survived not just WW2 but the catastrophe and are alive and well. Through staged interventions they are altering the course of history, setting the stage for their return. With the Avatar out of the way and the Fire Nation close to victory, they're busy scouring the earth for what remains of a very precious ore (uranium) which they need to enact their ultimate plot of doom...
Section 1
Volcania loomed, isolated, at the middle of the ocean. Its peak was jagged with slabs like fingers jetting into the sky. Its slope was a perfect if steep grade symmetric from side to side. Its facade sported only tiny smatters of flaws: segments of fissures - deep and wide - carved into its bulk like a spiral.
An explorer could have scaled the volcano without difficulty yet that was not the aim of Zei and his party.
It was daybreak when their boat approached the island. As they neared its edge, a blanket of white sunk onto the peak of the volcano. Soon that cloud was aglow - an effect not unlike the splendor of an aurora except it wore a dusty shade of red. Suddenly a wave of smoke bellowed out of the peak and it got swept away by the wind down, across the bulk of the mountain into the forest. And then, with a roar that swayed the vessel and knocked the party off of its feet, the island slumbered...
A canoe slipped onto the water. Turuk, a man of the Northern Water Tribe, climbed aboard. Fen and Xi watched Zei toss a sack at the waterbender then wave goodbye as the figure retreated.
Xi continued to steer the boat right into a cove. The rest of the crew - Fen, Li and Chuan - got off of the vessel and through a wall of wave dragged the anchor ashore. They saw how the perimeter of the island was littered with relics of eruptions. They secured the anchor with the largest and nearest of those long-ago ejected rocks.
"We need to remove that sail," Zei explained, pointing at the object.
Xi nodded and gave the word to the crew. They set to work removing and stowing the neutral color sail. They unfurled a banner at the stern - a vague, fiery emblem like the kind a Fire Nation national used. With any luck that would be enough to fool the navy.
It was a ploy, to be certain, which may or may not have been overplayed by smugglers - Zei could not say as it was his very first trip into that (hostile) region of the world. It was a guess surmised through a year's investigation regarding how to blend with Fire Nation society. Everything was selected to avoid attention. A fisherman's boat - that tended to be generic, more functional than national. A yellow, faded sail - that indicated years of use, abuse at sea. Even the crew, hired at the Earth Kingdom coast, was meant to pass as a Fire Nation crew - and could have been so descended, as Koji feared...
They deviated only when they met a Water Tribe navigator familiar with that area.
Koji, the student, turned to Zei, the professor.
"I know field trips are dangerous and I know it's far, far too late to be worried about safety - now that we're at the doorstep of the Fire Nation," he prefaced, looking down, across and fidgeting as if defending a thesis and not stating the obvious. He gazed aback, cautiously, as the crew, headed by Fen and Xi, transported supplies from the deck to the shore.
"Fen and Xi, what a pair!" he interjected with his erudite if naive tone. "One all body. One all mind. Together they make a complete man."
"Yes... What I'm worried about... Though... Well, after what happened with the sandbenders, I get the feeling you don't always hire ... honest ... people that could be trusted. I fear your willingness to comb through taverns and such will be your undoing. In the Earth Kingdom, I guess, it didn't matter that much. In the Fire Nation, though, it's way, way too reckless."
The professor clasped Koji at the shoulders. The student noted a glow - a twinkle of a kind - at Zei's eye that matched the fire of the volcano. It bespoke of an all-consuming and blinding passion - and he understood what it meant. The archeologist was at the verge of discovery - he smelt it wafting through that dawn's warm, tropical air - he saw it reflected about that island's vibrant green jungle...
"Relax, Koji, everything is OK." Zei paused and whispered - without looking like he whispered. "The crew, no doubt, is as eager to leave as you and I. We will not be harmed - at least ... until the haggling for more and more pay starts ... later. Remember, it's not just the risky nature of archeology within a world that does not value its history. Worse, still, it's the way the art is corrupted by the Fire Nation as graverobbery. What we do is not always ... above reproach ... to people. The crew reflects that."
He stopped yet it was not either word or gesture only the roar of the volcano that punctuated his sentence. Animals scattered about the forest. The boat rattled and everything that was not bolted was tossed. "And that is why we're safe - with that volcano ready to burst - the Fire Nation will not dare come ashore," he added.
The Fire Nation was an archipelago whose islands were too vast to count. Its larger, central islands were deemed important. Its swaths of tiny, outer islands - like Volcania - were notoriously erratic and uninhabited. The forest that rooted at the foot of the volcano and carpeted the rest of the island testified that the last, full-blown eruption occurred a hundred years ago. A new eruption was overdue and the mountain's spate of activity indicated that there was not a lot of time left.
Zei took Koji by the elbow and together they fled from deck to shore. The sand was onyx and felt like smooth, fine ash - loose enough that their feet sunk into its depth. At the end they reached the encampment: a tent and fire, the sight of the boat visible through the trees.
At noon an expedition was organized to survey the interior of the island - Fen and Xi volunteered to go while Li and Chuan opted to stay. The goal was to trace Tenzin's path of discovery. Tenzin was the (only) archeologist who examined that island way, way back when Sozin reigned. Zei followed Tenzin's journal, convinced that it could be read like a map and failed to appreciate until then and there how the island changed after the century that passed.
Then, when Tenzin came to Volcania, it was a wasteland from shore to shore as it just survived an eruption. Now, that its features were eroded by weather, carpeted by forest, Zei found it hard to gauge the locations of landmarks the diary described. But he theorized that the orientations of its features could not have changed significantly. And with the volcano as the ultimate central landmark, he began to notice a congruency between atlas and geography.
A mile into that trek, with the sun at the peak of the volcano, Zei's obsession was rewarded as his party stumbled into a region of wilderness that had been systematically deforested.
"Look at that," Xi said, aiming a finger at the ground. Fen saw a log and lifted it with his hands. It was mossy and rugged, covered by patches of algae. The point of interest was at its end. It was not splintered as a log ought to be if it fell due to nature. Rather, it was clean as if it had been sawed. "Somebody beat you, professor."
"Hmmm - was it possible?" the professor asked aloud as he rubbed his chin. Xi examined the log after Fen let it drop. "That cut doesn't look at all like firebending."
"It was cut long ago but not too long ago," the assistant added, indicating at log's still sturdy, heavy bulk. "Judging by how long it is, by how long it could have been - erosion - and factoring the growth of the forest after Tenzin's expedition and today. Maybe it fell twenty years ago?"
"Younger," Zei mused. "Maybe ten years ago."
They labored onward, into the center of the clearing. As they tread they realized how thoroughly unnatural the area actually appeared to be. They tripped upon row and rows of logs and every so often a stump. It could not be denied that somebody explored that part of the island in the not too distant past but traces of who they were and what they did beyond deforesting had been swept away.
Zei continued to hypothesize: "It could not have been Fire Nation and, certainly, it could not have been Earth Kingdom. At least nobody of the Earth Kingdom reported such an investigation. And, frankly, except for those of us at the Department of Archeology at Ba Sing Se University, there aren't too many people who know about Volcania."
Once upon a time that fact had been different. During the waning epoch of Avatar Kiyoshi's rule, especially after the demise of Chin the Conqueror, the Fire Nation itself was set ablaze with interest about everything historical - a kind of rebirth of knowledge as it were. Instead of tearing down the old in favor of the new - a cultural pattern entrenched throughout the world and not unique to any nation - they began to focus in on their history. They gathered up as much information about the past as possible.
They hired men like Tenzin to come and teach a whole new generation of native archeologists - and somewhere along the way, amid all of that progress, the Island of Volcania became a center of attention. Sadly, Tenzin's journal was censored by the Dai Li at the start of the war, what remained did not make it clear why the elite inner circle of the Fire Nation royalty was obsessed with that island.
Indeed - their fascination about their past was coincidental with a revolution of the present. It was as if antiquity stored a vast reservoir of knowledge that allowed them to advance unlike any other corner of the world. The climax of their fury came with Avatar Roku's emergence - and with the Avatar a Fire Nation citizen they felt truly destined to rule the whole of humanity itself. Then, almost at the start of the war, that interest was stifled - it extinguished as quickly as it flared.
Did they find what they were looking for? Or were they so hell-bent to reach their future that their past simply did not matter anymore? Nobody knew, exactly, the Fire Curtain - as the academics called it - made them and their motives a mystery.
At last, at the edge of the clearing, they came into the site that Tenzin dug a hundred years ago. The location of it was preserved by who or what ever returned to the island. To Zei and Koji the area was splayed like a feast of thanksgiving. Its trenches were arranged in perfect rows and columns. Its depths were enough to cover and encompass Fen if he stood within it. It was complete, exactly as described, and with the aid of the journal it was possible to recreate the activity Tenzin's party engaged at the very last day of the expedition - when the funds were exhausted. Weather and minor volcanic spasms conspired to erode the edge of the complex; those who returned were more concerned with the center than with the limits.
The archeologists just could not get the thought out of their minds. Those who came after Tenzin... But who were they? And what were they after? They did not seem to leave anything except that clearing which was a tool to uncover the dig-site.
At length there came a breakthrough of sorts - a discovery that showed those interlopers had been up to something...
If Zei were not Zei, he would have been dejected at the discovery. Koji, already an ambitious young student, was melancholic at the letdown further exploration was certain to uncover. Yet the professor did not lose a breath of enthusiasm. Instead of admitting defeat, the archeologist grasped at the last remaining straw... There were still mysteries waiting to be solved - not the least of which centered about what happened at that island when nobody was there to see it.
It was, as it tended to be, Fen and Xi who uncovered the find - a doorway embedded into the earth at the base of a trench.
The journal indicated that such a trench existed, however, anything connected to it had been censored - torn - out of the diary.
Zei's heart skipped a beat as he assembled the puzzle and realized the doorway, and whatever lay behind it, was the key to understanding the nature of Tenzin's discovery. A discovery which was too shocking for the Dai Li to allow. Standing at the center of it, the professor sensed, too, that there was something all together odd about that trench and its doorway. He could not tell exactly what it was. Except that the excavation of the dig-site at that location just seemed to be too perfect - as if machined - as if it was possible...
Regardless, those two heavy metal doors were a curiosity. They could not have been imported with Tenzin's party, as the Fire Nation industry at that era was ill-prepared to manufacture steel of such quality. Let alone of such workmanship. Their lock-and-key mechanism also appeared out of time and place - if, indeed, any technology yet known were capable of its construction. It was not alien, there were many examples of analogs, it was simply too refined.
Individually, the doors were thinner than wider, and had to be opened together to admit a man. They were dense with a rough and unpolished texture. They were coated with a forest green paint that no doubt added to its defiance against weather, as rust was undetectable. The mechanism that freed the doorway consisted of a wheel and rods that connected to the wheel and terminated within the concrete at the perimeter of the frame. When engaged, a turn of the wheel loosened the rods and released the doorway from the frame. It was the wheel's thin, inaccessible axle that was arrested by the lock-and-key mechanism.
Unable to force the wheel, they probed into the earth around the frame of the doorway, believing that another entrance could be found still unexcavated. Instead they discovered that everything was attached to a hardened shaft of concrete that extended deep, deep into the ground. There was no way to determine its dimensions without digging and filling the trench. Worse, the jagged perimeter of the shaft, revealed by their digging, combing fingers, displayed the exotic nature of its material - a fact that took the academics' breaths away.
Zei saw a material like at a ruin. Koji knew of it only through sketches.
Ordinarily, concrete was a frozen mixture of many different stones. As such, it tended to be a commonly found material throughout excavations of prehistory. Knowledge of concrete did not vanish (entirely) with development. What established that concrete as extraordinary was that it contained rods.
Rods of a metal like iron jetted out of the edges.
"Amazing," the archeologist exclaimed. Aroused, he unearthed more and more examples of stubs and brought to light a few long rods which had been bent through eons of catastrophe. The rods were adorned with patterns that indicated machining - the output of a factory, of an industry lost to antiquity. "Material of this type is found only in a few locations and even there it is not so intact!"
"A rod reinforced concrete..."
"Almost impossible to break because of the iron inside of it. Koji - do you know what this means? These doors were created and added onto the shaft by the very people who poured the concrete. They were not additions setup later. Except that lock-and-key pendant. I think our friends - those who came after Tenzin - added it." Fen and Xi looked at each other a moment while the academics mused. "All of this is tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of years old."
Zei stopped the lecture and searched for a rock.
"What is it?" asked Koji.
"I need a rock. All of this. All of it. Is ancient - but Tenzin did not find the doorway blocked, I know, and we need to get through it if this expedition is going to succeed."
Fen picked up a boulder while Xi watched.
Koji's eyes widened at the heft of the brute.
"Zei! You are willing to destroy an artifact like that?" he asked, stunned at the implication of the act.
"The journal details a tunnel and I am convinced it exists behind that doorway," Zei expanded. "Those who came after Tenzin must have uncovered the tunnel, too, and added the lock-and-key mechanism. It must be removed. Yes, it is cruel ... it must be."
The bare-chested behemoth with the third-eye-tattoo worked the boulder against the artifact. When it proved to be too well-protected, as it dangled beside the wheel, he turned, attacking every last weak-spot, settling at the hinges as they were exposed and undefended. His hands swelled and glowed red, roughed - raw - braised, with the dust of the rock as it disintegrated. Although built to endure, it could not withstand Fen, and soon the age of the doorway worked against itself.
"It would be so much easier if we used a firebender," Xi mumbled - Fen grunted.
With the rock turned into a pile of dust - and the hinges smashed, battered into scrap - they looked on with awe as Fen grasped the free edge of door and pried it off the rest of the way. The doorway fell aside, warped around its wheel, split into two and slipped onto the dirt.
The yawn-like maw that had been freed revealed a shaft onyx like night - bursts of stale, noxious air erupted out of the depths.
They lit two torches and two lamps with their flint. Zei was the first to enter. Koji clamored to be at his side. Fen and Xi took the rear of the train.
"No," Zei told Koji. "Stay at the end and study the details."
At the edge of the doorway were steps, carved out of concrete, that invited the train of men further underground. They followed steady though cautious and, eventually, when they lost sight of that exit, its steps faded into a down-slope ramp-like passage. None of it was natural despite the way roots broke through the concrete and hung like an upside down carpet above their heads. The symmetry of the passage and the uniformity of its feature revealed it to be carved by man.
After a stretch they came onto a passage where their path was obstructed - a significant portion of roof was caved. Not everything was spared the ravage of erosion and already Zei wondered what other obstacles yet awaited. They slid through the debris, dodging rubble and unidentifiable, fallen structure. Soon their decent became an annoyance as that state of dilapidation became normal. Then, again, they came into unblocked stretches of tunnels. Then, again, they were confronted by chaos.
The air continued to be breathable yet they could not escape its stagnation. Everything was hot due to the volcano, whose magma permeated the island. True enough, at a juncture where the tunnel forked left and right, the rejected pathway was a chamber ablaze with the heavy seepage of magma. It oozed like blood through fissures scratched into it walls. The professor voiced a certain level of regret about not following that pathway, as it seemed to be straighter beyond the chamber. The student echoed that it seemed impossible to endure such heat and that it should be left alone.
Still, Koji stood by that archway to contemplate the chamber, to confront the mystery its view teased of a world inaccessible beyond its pools of molten, fiery rock. As the silhouettes of the crew passed, he knelt and studied what he saw within that magma encrusted chamber. There was a wide, unobstructed portal at the other end of the room. It emptied into a tunnel that ran straight into the earth. The archway that marked the boundary between the chamber and the tunnel dripped with magma. Enough of it remained to show that it was adorned with symbols. He was too far to be certain but it seemed to be writing and it seemed to be the Riyu...
The earth shook - Koji was almost knocked flat into that chamber of fire. He rolled back, away in time to see Fen arise and Xi point at a fissure that just appeared. Zei staggered toward the site of it - Koji yelled 'wait' and staggered to be next to Zei after he gauged a suspicious look coming from the faces of Fen and Xi. A sound echoed out of the earth through that wide, jagged crack - it was a ghastly unspeakable mixture strangely akin to the melody of the surf as it breaks. Then the fissure glowed a dull, dark red as if it were the mouth of a tunnel hundreds and hundreds of feet above an ocean of magma.
"Maybe we ought to go back to camp?" Koji suggested, breathless.
"Let's see what's left of the tunnel." Zei paused and wiped his brow with his sleeve. "Alright, we're headed into a place where only a handful of people have been to in the last ten thousand years. Let's be careful and cautious of quakes."
Koji straightened and the crew nodded.
They progressed, heading deeper and deeper under the ground.
Onward the tunnel took an altogether new and different feeling. Where the vaulted roofs and the flattened walls were once devoid of details, were now decorated with a trove of features. They were explorers in the midst of another world. It was strange, though, that in spite of its character it was through and through the work of man.
Zei was filled with a great and reckless exuberance, declaring such superlatives as 'amazing' and 'extraordinary' as those artifacts came into view. Koji, at the end of the train, was silent though upset at the decadence of his advisor - he was too concerned with safety at that juncture to divide his attention away from Fen and Xi - their behavior was strange to say the least. They were as eager as Zei to break into the tunnel yet did not display the kind of wonder exuded by the professor - indeed, they seemed to be bored as if they saw the likes of those tunnels already.
True, to be certain, there was nothing fundamentally alien about that complex, as it was the product of man. It was simply that the location and the age - and the advancement - that were out of the ordinary. The details only now coming into focus attested to the mystery of that civilization in whose ruins they were strolling. There were bulkheads embedded into the walls, made of steel and bolted with rivets the sizes of fists. There were pipes running across the ceiling, across the walls, twisting and turning, wherever they met an obstacle. Wires and other unknown fixtures dangled off of the pipes, a few of which were fallen onto the floor. The floor itself was dominated by an almost endless series of boards, framed by straight, long rails - a pattern that resembled the layout of the tram at Ba Sing Se.
"It corroborates a claim Tenzin stated to Mako," the professor explained to the student, "about the board and rail system analogous with the tram at Ba Sing Se."
The tunnel ended at another ornate archway where it emptied into a cavern - that was not a cavern.
"If those were the tunnels, professor, then these are the platforms."
"The station," Zei whispered unable to believe they travelled so far into antiquity. "A station thousands and thousands of years old and not powered by earthbending. The civilization that built this technology..."
The earth rattled and stones tumbled onto the platform.
They explored the station, noting the parallel layout of track below, the network of support above, the passages at the perimeter no doubt intended to carry passengers into even more remote, buried locations.
"Koji, that, this, is the feeling of finding another world, another universe! It's like birthing a life." Approaching a wall, while Fen and Xi tended to their light, Zei produced a brush and swiped it across the ash that covered the tile at the wall. Under their light the tile glimmered as if it retained a very glossy surface beneath the soot. Indeed, it was the dew like twinkle that caught his attention. Feverishly, he removed the crust. Franticly, he dropped the brush. He fetched the journal and compared the copy to the original image.
Koji took the instrument and continued the excavation of the wall. When it was scrubbed he saw the mural - and the writing displayed by the tile of the mural. The script ... it almost appeared readable. Yet that was the trick of the Riyu -always to be familiar though illegible.
"Amazing," Zei said at length.
"It's the Riyu," said Koji. "I saw a trace of it within that chamber of magma."
"We reached the site of Tenzin's discovery. This," said the professor, turning around toward the crew, toward the student, "this was as far as that expedition went. As to those who came after..."
"Do you suppose they left that behind?" Xi asked, looking at a track between platforms.
Zei raced to see what it could be. Along the boards and rails, which were stopped by a cave-in at the mouth of an archway, was the outline of a figure. It was a corpse - its skull crushed by the rubble, its flesh - where it was not stripped off of the bone - was desiccated. The clothes unlike anything the academics saw: a stylized black with metallic accessories at the chest, wrist and collar. In that sense it resembled a uniform although it was not of any known, extinct or extant, group. Beyond that the body offered no hint whatsoever about who or what it represented.
Exploring that track they found another collapse and two other remains identical to the original except that they were not killed by any visible injury and their uniforms were gray not black.
"There must have been a quake or an eruption and the smoke must have gotten at them," Xi said of those bodies.
Turning them about, Zei commented aloud about how (relatively) young they were with respect to the age of the complex. Indeed, the cave-ins were not that aged as judged by the tiny, residual amount of sediment that fell atop. He estimated that the quake and their deaths were within a ten to twenty year period - not unlike the age of the log.
So, little by little, everything began to make sense.
They were the remains of those who came after Tenzin. They cleared the jungle and refurbished the excavation. They ventured into the complex. For reasons they could not fathom yet those people had been there. Then there was a quake or an eruption - not enough to destroy everything of course - and the fellows of those victims left the complex and locked the doorway to keep their activity a secret.
The professor wondered about what those uniformed people could have wanted with a site like Volcania. The assistant went to work turning and examining the remains. Meanwhile, Fen and Xi watched with their indifference.
Yes, the clothes were uniforms by virtue of their commonalities - even among the grey and the black variants there were more details in common than in difference. What truly, really differed were the minutest arrangements of insignias - their metal, color, design. It screamed of the hierarchy found within an army. What kind of army? He could not say. The uniform they wore was just too strange to allow identification.
What had to be the most striking feature, however, was not metal but cloth - an armband they all wore - a bold red armband. With a white circle. With a crooked, black cross at its center.
Zei took the armband and commented about its elasticity. Koji said that it must have meant something to those people, thus, identifying what it was ought to reveal who they were. That was not everything - the academics noticed symbols throughout the uniform that were written with the Meiguo.
"Riyu and Meiguo - at the same time and place?" Koji mused. "The Riyu was to be expected as Tenzin went on and on about it. But the Meiguo, professor, the Meiguo splattered all over bodies that are not even fifty years dead, the Meiguo that has not been written or read in tens of thousands of years."
"Languages of long, lost civilizations ... or ... so we thought..."
The assistant arose to follow the professor, leaving the trinkets atop of the chests of the bodies. When they and their light passed, the crew - Fen and Xi - came onto the remains and rummaged through their uniforms. With vulture-like appetite, their fingers - which had not been interested with the unseemly, graverobber side of archeology - ravaged the artifacts.
Zei theorized and Koji watched - the way Fen and Xi scavenged was not reckless. They knew what they wanted as if they understood what those trinkets meant. For a moment he struggled to recall how, exactly, those two joined their party.
Zei and Koji walked past that section of track and ventured into another where they stumbled onto an antechamber. There were another set of heavy metal doors - except they were not locked and looked as if they had been jammed into the wall where a crack formed. They were not part of the architecture.
The chamber at the other side of the doorway was not immense as judged by the dimensions of the complex observed up to that point. The ceiling was vaulted and supported with a network of struts. Their light revealed that the roof itself was composed of rock. Letting their eyes fall the course of the ceiling to the walls to the floor they saw that everything had been carved out of the earth and fitted - like the doorway itself - after the fact. There was no doubt to their minds that those who came after Tenzin, those whose remains littered the station, were responsible for what they witnessed then and there. Otherwise traces of it at least would have been noted by the journal - the diary was filled with enough redundancy that a word or two would have escaped the Dai Li's censor.
What the chamber contained, though, proved to be so alien that they were at a loss to describe them. There were such things casually strewn about that no words existed to name them. Gods, how were they supposed to catalog the contents of another universe? At that juncture, as far as they knew, those people who created those wonders could have come from another planet, along with their uniforms.
Yet, what was startling, awe-inspiring, what was a curious though abstract notion - until that chamber turned it into reality - was the impossibility of its age. Artifacts covered with the Meiguo should have been ancient. Instead, they appeared as new as a hundred years old. A few items were so vivid they might have been freshly-minted.
Of course, there were a few items with known analogies: chairs, desks, cases and the like. Implements that although strange served the purpose of writing and drawing. Scales of the most complex and intricate order. Boxes filled with wires and tubes. It was what remained that proved to be a problem. Books were written with the Meiguo. Maps of unknown lands with unknown names. Scrolls that, unraveled, revealed highly-precise geometric designs.
"Professor - it's a laboratory - filled with bits and pieces of their technology. Those people, who or what ever they were, came to this island to create something. By the looks of it, something that had been broken and needed parts for repair - maybe parts from this station? This technology defies description - what if it represents another kind of bending? One that was common at prehistory but man moved away from..."
"Koji - imagine the possibility of it - everything we're seeing is new by archeological standards. That means that right now, now in the world that we inhabit, there are men like those men, with this technology."
"Impossible - I mean - I mean - they should have been noticed?"
Zei looked at Koji, his face framed with lamplight, and concluded: "Indeed, it is fantastical - these people were alien in an alien land, out of time and place, where would they be hiding? Where could they be hiding?"
Suddenly there was a great burst of light that outshined their fire.
It was Xi who, by accident or by intent, while rummaging through the chamber, pressed a button that activated a long, cylindrical object atop the table. The shaft was metal. The end was glass. Out of which emerged the straightest, brightest beam of light. It hurt everyone's eyes to look at its direction.
Zei took it and struggled to find that button - with a click it was off.
"Professor!" Koji shouted - he had kept his eyes shut and was still able to see, faintly, as Fen and Xi again approached Zei in that menacingly, chilly way. Without a thought, he pushed the professor out of the way as something emerged like lightning out of Fen's third-eye-tattoo - it connected with his own shoulder.
"That guy's a firebender," Zei expressed with shock as he staggered onto his feet.
Smoke filled the chamber. Dazed. Confused. He saw only intermittently the bulk of the crew loom toward Koji and fire away another shot.
"No!" he screamed, grasping the edge of the table, raising it and flinging it violently at the attackers. The distraction caused the blast of fire to miss and strike the ceiling instead.
Zei fell back onto the ground and fumbled about within its shadow and darkness, looking for a place to duck and cover. He felt hands clutching at his back, trying to grasp and yank at his shirt. He stopped and rolled, swatting away with the blunt end of the light-cylinder - an act that elicited a yelp that could have come from either Fen or Xi.
Amid the struggle the light-cylinder turned on - its bean shinned into the face of the brute. The colossus staggered aback, his third-eye-tattoo blinked as another shot of lightning went astray.
The earth, stirred by the ammunition, responded with a fury of its own - the chamber shook and everything was knocked aside.
Smoke descended, its heat spread, filled the chamber. The lamps were dying as they fell and scattered about the ground. There came the sounds of fists ransacking through cases. Somebody lifted a lamp to help the search. Objects were flung left and right as they were quickly scanned then rejected. The crew was after something...
Zei crawled on hands and knees and found Koji beneath a pile of junk.
"Koji," Zei whispered, uncovering the student.
"I - won't make it."
There was scarcely a voice left.
"Stop that!" He struggled to find anything to say - yet - was at a loss. "I get you in. I get you out. That's the deal."
"No - Zei - go!" He coughed - and it was then that the blood at the mouth was visible. "I get to be part of history, Zei." With the last surge of strength he pushed Zei away and then relaxed...
Zei was frozen.
Fen resumed, targeting and firing at random. Xi, however, continued the frantic search for whatever it was they were after. Zei struggled to keep calm - he located the exit and crawled toward it. Along the way he neared where Fen and Xi stopped to rummage - they dropped a sack full of papers which spread about the floor. Zei grabbed an item that looked to be a map.
The earth quaked and a fissure gashed the wall - the glow of magma swirled out of the rent.
With a newfound burst of energy, and taking advantage of that distraction, Zei arose and ran toward the doorway. From there the world beneath the ground was like an impenetrable abyss. He stumbled about as he worked platform to platform, all the while trying to keep track of his position relative to his memory of the station. He knew, more or less, how many tracks remained between him and the tunnel to the exit and in what direction to go. There was no teacher like experience and despite everything - when life and death depended on memory - he failed to maintain any sense of bearings.
He feared he would be trapped within that complex forever and out of desperation itself he settled with a trench. He followed its track to its end where he unearthed an alcove. He did not attempt to use the light-cylinder - as it would have revealed his location to his would be killers - instead he fumbled, feeling the detail of the antechamber while coping with the heat and fouled sulfur-laden air.
He found a ladder - a set of rungs attached onto the wall - and climbed it with his sack across his back filled with relics. Soon he realized he lurked within a shaft just large enough to admit a man. Scaling the ladder, like a rat leaving a sinker, he became aware of a glow beneath... He feared it was Fen and Xi - and sighed, as if relieved, that it was only magma. Thankfully, it proved a light - dim as it was - and the shaft itself terminated at the base of a tunnel where he stopped to breathe.
The earth, though, did not take a break from its upheaval.
Zei covered his eyes leaving only the slits between his fingers to view. He turned on the light-cylinder. A flash erupted - it was enough to reveal the nature of the tunnel. He followed it upward until he came onto what appeared to be an archway. There he turned off the light-cylinder. He did not know what powered it or how long it would be operational therefore it was best to conserve its use.
A little while later he felt that the air was getting cooler rather than warmer. It seemed, too, scented by the dew of the jungle. And there was another factor wafting through the breeze but he could not identify it.
At length he was confronted by what he prayed would not be the final obstacle to freedom - that fork in the complex they passed at the very start of their adventure - the chamber of magma.
Magma everywhere - everything was aglow like hell would be.
He paused to catch his breath and prepare his mind...
Throughout his travels he witnessed ceremonies where initiates walked a path of fire. The trick to survive was to go slow. In spite of it, to go slow. Let the feet build a layer of ash. Using that as theory, he took a few tentative steps into the chamber, then another and another, then more and more. At length he found that he crossed the center of the chamber and knew stopping at that juncture was not an option. So against the pain that could not be quelled he continued that slow and steady pace.
The earth shook and added its own flavor of danger to the mix of lethality that was the chamber. Such as it was he struggled just to maintain upright. Arms wide, body swaying left and right along with the ground, he took wide, low stances to prevent a topple. Throughout that ordeal the exit seemed like a tease - too close to be real... And, then, due to that quake, the other end of the chamber collapsed and something large, something heavy crowned through the hole that had been punched into the roof. It looked like an animal about to be born. Another rumble and the crack widened and whatever it was skidded into the chamber of magma where its momentum carried it toward Zei.
He screamed at the sight of the monstrosity. It was, no doubt, the train carried by the boards and rails through the complex. Now crumpled, aflame, its appearance inspired fear - and speed. He ran, feeling like his feet were about to burst into flame. Yet he was not fast enough to escape the train. Its front contacted his rear and quickly he jumped onto its bumper to avoid another death.
The vehicle raced toward the exit. It skid and threatened to flip - he launched off of it at the end and raced into the tunnel beyond. It crashed into a wall with a roar and raised a cloud of dust at its wake.
Shaken, and not all together certain about what happened, Zei simply continued to race toward the end of the tunnel. There came the steps. There came the doorway. There came the trench. Out of the complex, he thought he was safe - it was a matter of getting to Li and Chuan and dragging the boat to sea and that would be the end of it.
Then that illusion of freedom crashed...
The professor was surrounded by torches - torches attached to hands - hands attached to arms ... men. A tribe of men. Loinclothed and with very angry warpaint.
"Er," Zei raised his hands above his head, "hello, there, er, I am professor..."
"We know who you are, Professor Zei." A figure wandered out of the jungle into sight. A Fire Nation citizen to be sure, tall and broad. He could have been a twin of Fen by the looks of it. "We followed your departure at Chin City." The man took off his hat, revealing a head as shaved as Fen's head - Zei replied identically. "Your reputation proceeds you - forgive me - the name is Kuzon."
The figure extended a hand, confused, Zei blinked at what the offer was supposed to mean - the man shook, realizing the error, bowing instead.
It was night and what he sensed yet could not identify was the smell of torchfire - he did not expect company...
Guarded by two of the tribesmen, Zei was walked toward the edge of the clearing, there he was met by a group of warriors with sticks with heads of Li and Chuan upon them.
The volcano grumbled - fire bellowed out of its peak and the air got warmer and more and more laden with sulfur.
Looking toward the trench, at the annoyance of the guards, he spotted Fen and Xi coming out of the doorway with sacks of loot.
"Graverobber," Zei blurted, disgusted.
"Come, now, Professor Zei, we cannot steal what belongs to us!" Kuzon scoffed - revealing an accent that was not entirely common, if known, outside of the Fire Curtain.
"I may as well call you hypocrite," he added, while opening the sack Zei carried - he found the light-cylinder among other effects.
"What are you doing, anyway, the Fire Nation lost its interest with its past," Zei asked.
"Fire Nation!" Kuzon smiled, playfully, as if accused by a child. He stroked the right side of his moustache. "Fire Nation? What are any of these ... nations? Hmmm, my aim and your aim are identical," he added, using the light-cylinder as a kind of extended, wagging finger. "We are motivated by the truth. I am shocked, frankly, at your attitude. I studied you and your adventures many, many years, Professor Zei - you cannot fathom my reach. You cannot imagine how strong, how deep my interest with long lost civilization is. Indeed, you cannot fathom, whatsoever, just what that subject means to me."
Kuzon walked about the crowd of warriors, admiring their catch - fresh and dripping with blood.
"If you want to talk about long lost anything - just take a gander at these men - ancient sun worshippers. Theirs is quite a storied bloodline, let me tell you, magnificent examples of what a man ought to be, aren't they? The perfect prototype of a perfect race - is it any wonder we chose them to carry our seed into this world? How did the rest of you become such a muddle of races - and nations? How did you fall, Professor Zei, do you know that? I know that..."
Zei leaned into Kuzon - as far as the guards felt comfortable.
"You are a raving madman."
Just as Kuzon was about to reply the peak of the volcano roared and the island rattled. At that moment, that instant, when their eyes turned toward the mountain, Zei grabbed his sack and light-cylinder and fled into the wilderness.
A stunned Kuzon barked an order to follow using the native's own language. It was too little, too late. Zei was already engulfed inside the forest and everyone became preoccupied by the volcano as its yawn was followed with explosions. Meanwhile, Kuzon continued to shout, yelling devolving into that accent - a guttural weapon of a language. The professor's would-be pursuers appeared to revolt against the madness of it and retreated toward their own escape.
Smoke filled the sky and obscured the starlight. It was only by accident that Zei came onto the ruins of their encampment. He did not stop, though, as the pathway to the boat was within reach. Of course, he did not know what to do with the vessel - it was beached and anyway could not be helmed alone. Alas those concerns about escape proved to be moot - embers ejected out of the volcano crashed onto the deck and set the wood ablaze. Other chunks of molten, fiery debris littered the shore where they sizzled. A steady trickle of rock continued to fall into the water.
"Damn it!" he shouted.
He heard a voice call out of the water.
Bewildered, he staggered onto the shore as a canoe floated into view.
"Turuk!" Zei raced into the water. A hand reached and helped the man board the vessel. "I thought you were going home."
"When I spotted that Fire Nation ship ... I circled the island just to be cautious. And Koji and the rest?"
Zei shut his eyes and shook.
"No," he whispered.
And with that they slipped away.
