Title: Dragnet
Summery: Soon after they enter the Fire Nation, Aang and his friends get confronted by the police.
Chapter 1
The three police officers marched Aang and his friends down the street to the police station. All four of them were handcuffed, their hands bound behind their backs. They were metal of course, and Toph could metalbend herself and her friends out of them anytime she wanted to, but she knew that would blow their cover. So she was waiting it out, bidding her time for the chance to do it without getting caught.
They were ushered into the station, into a large L shaped room, with one end serving as the front desk area and the other serving as the jail. A black haired lady was sitting at the desk, reading a book.
"We've brought the culprits, Katsu," one of the police officers announced.
"I see," the lady named Katsu said, putting the book down and crossing her arms as she regarded the four friends critically. She had bright red trim on her armor, as opposed to dark red or gold, and Aang knew that meant that she was a high ranking member of the domestic military force.
"So you are the thieves from the museum," she commented.
"No, we're innocent!" Katara protested for what was the third or fourth time.
"You tried to steal the Ember Heart, didn't you?" Katsu pointed out, referring to the largest diamond in the Fire Nation.
"It wasn't us! Really!" Aang said.
"Well, we'll get to the bottom of this," Katsu decided, ignoring him.
"You got to listen to us," Sokka insisted. "It was two other guys who took the Ember Heart, but we got it back from them -,"
"Silence!" Katsu snapped at him, and Sokka complied without the slightest hint of sarcasm. Already he thought Katsu was scary; she reminded him of what Katara or Suki could be like in ten years or so.
Katsu studied them with narrowed eyes for several long moments, daring them to protest further. None of them did, knowing that for now, anything they did or said was useless. All that the police had as proof of their innocence was their own word that it was someone else who had taken the diamond, and there was no evidence to prove their assumptions wrong.
After a moment, Katsu turned to the police officers, and all three of them stood at attention. "You three - lock,barricade and guard the door from the outside, and stay there until I call you back."
The three police officers blinked at these unexpected orders. Aang and his friends were taken aback themselves, but the deputies knew better than to question their superior. "Yes, ma'am," they saluted, and filed out the door again before locking it behind them.
The sound of furniture being dragged on the cobblestones outside could be heard after wards. The door was the only way in or out of the room and the building itself, so the four friends were essentially trapped inside with a high ranking officer of the police force, with their hands cuffed.
The silence in the room was deafening. Katsu didn't say anything else for a minute, but seemed to be thinking and was not paying them any attention at all now.
"So..." Toph began, "aren't you going to lock us up or something?" She wanted to find out if she could use her metal bending now.
"Toph!" Sokka hissed.
"First of all, are you blind, girl?" Katsu asked Toph.
Toph blinked, as taken aback at the question as she and her friends had been by the orders Katsu had just given her subordinates. She nodded, slowly.
"I thought so," Katsu said, and opened a drawer in the desk.
"What does that have to do..." Katara began.
"I will need to know your names and ages," Katsu interrupted, business like, and laid out a sheet of paper and dipped her feather pen into ink. "You, what's your name?" she asked Sokka.
For a moment Sokka was tempted to use his Wang Fire alias, but decided that it would be best if he saved it specifically for his Wang Fire disguise. "Sokka," he told Katsu.
"Age?"
"Fifteen."
"Katara, age fourteen," Katara said next, having the same idea with her own Sapphire alias that Sokka had with his.
"Toph, age twelve." Toph, of course, had yet to use an alias in the Fire Nation at all.
"Kuzon, twelve," Aang said. Unlike the others, he was reluctant to use his real name, just in case the Avatar's actual name was common knowledge in the Fire Nation.
Katsu wrote down the information they gave her, her quill pen scratching at the paper. Aang rallied himself for one last attempt at convincing her of their innocence. They had to avoid being put in jail at all costs - once a jailbird, always a jailbird, and traveling in the Fire Nation was dangerous enough for them as it was, the last thing they needed was being escaped convicts, too, if they were to bust themselves back out.
"Listen, if we help you catch the real thief, would you let us go?" Aang asked Katsu. It sounded like a pretty reasonable deal to him, but Katsu just gave him a cold glare.
"I don't want to listen to anything you have to say, boy," she snorted. "Especially since you're wearing my brother's school uniform."
Aang paled. Monkey-feathers! Out of all the people for her to be...
"If I do lock you up," Katsu sighed, "it wouldn't be because you stole anything."
"It wouldn't?" Sokka asked, unable to keep the hopeful tone out of his voice. She was going to let them go after all?
"...What do you mean?" Toph asked, clearly puzzled by Katsu's statement.
"I mean," Katsu growled, "that even without committing a crime, at this rate you four would still get arrested sooner or later."
"...For what?" Katara wanted to know.
"For being idiots."
"But, why would we get arrested if we didn't do anything?"
Katsu dropped the bomb. "Because, he matches the exact physical description of the Avatar," she told them, pointing at Aang with her pen. She was pleased at the terrified looks they got when she all but said that she knew who they were. Good; they should be terrified, especially the Avatar. He had no idea what he had put Katsu through at the Siege of the North Pole.
"And there's four of you," Katsu went on. "Not three, or five. Two boys and two girls; two older and two younger. And the youngest girl is blind, but doesn't act blind, and the kid who looks like the Avatar also happens to use out dated slang and make a point to keep his head covered, even while indoors."
"And don't get me started on you two using names from the Water Tribe," she added to Sokka and Katara. "I'll bet that you even still have that flying buffalo somewhere, too."
The four friends were left speechless when Katsu was done. There was nothing that they could say to defend themselves. The things Katsu had pointed out were so obvious, but none of them had realized them at all until she did.
"Well, what if we are all those things?" Sokka asked her anyway, defensively. "What if it's all just a coincidence?" Toph stomped on his foot, to get him to keep from making the situation any worse, making him yelp in pain.
"If it's just a coincidence, they why don't you take off your headband?" Katsu asked Aang directly, ignoring Sokka's question.
Aang froze. The story about having an embarrassing scar on his forehead had barely worked on Ms. Kwan at the school, and he doubted that it would work here, especially when Katsu obviously already had a pretty good idea of who he was...
"And even if you're not really the Avatar, you are wearing my brother's uniform..." Katsu muttered.
"Alright, alright, you caught us!" Aang said, giving up. "I'm the Avatar."
"Then keep your voice down, idiot," Katsu snapped. "Do want them to know, too?" she asked, waving at the door where the other three officers were currently standing guard outside. Aang winced when he realized how loudly he had been talking.
Katsu's warning puzzled them, though. Why would she care how many people knew about them?
Katsu had been sitting in a relaxed posture in her chair throughout their conversation, but now she sat up, silently regarding them again, more contemplatively this time than critically.
Now would be my chance, she thought to herself as she studied the Avatar. Now would be the time to avenge everyone's deaths. Lock him in prison for the rest of his life; or better yet, send word to the Fire Lord himself so that he would get executed within the week. Thanks to what the Avatar had done to the great fleet at the Northern Water Tribe, Katsu and her brother had been left orphans, and two of the few members of her family that were still alive. Their parents had been in that fleet, and they hadn't been the only ones, either; her grandfather had been a ship commander, and there had been three uncles and at least half a dozen cousins that Katsu knew about who had been members of the fleet as well. Katsu herself had been a cook on one of those ships, and the only reason she was alive today was because her ship had been at the very back of the fleet, the farthest away from the Water Tribe city when the Avatar had destroyed the bulk of Admiral Zhao's invasion force.
The scar that she still sustained on her back from the battle began to throb as she recalled that night. A great monster made out of water and blue light had risen from the center of the city and chased the landed Fire Nation troops all back to their ships. But instead of merely scaring them off, the water monster - the kid calling himself Kuzon standing in front of her right now - had thrown a huge tidal wave after the ships as well, sinking the vast majority of the fleet, taking thousands of lives and destroying what represented decades of shipbuilding, only missing the dozen or so ships at the very back.
After whittling the fleet down to size, the monster, still out for blood, had started towards the remaining ships. One of which Katsu had been on, doubtless to send them to the bottom of the ocean too. But then it was as if the water monster ran out of fuel, as for no reason that Katsu could see or think of even to this day, it had suddenly retreated back to the city without destroying the remainder of the fleet.
Katsu's ship and rest of the fleet's remnant didn't even look for any survivors, on the off chance that anyone had even survived the monster's assault. They all turned their prows south and got to the nearest colony as fast as they could, the once great Fire Nation Navy all but gutted.
Katsu sighed, though she was careful to keep her face blank so the kids wouldn't read her thoughts. She had been injured the very first day of the siege, when the Avatar had actually set foot on her ship and tried to sabotage it. She hadn't gotten a good look at the Avatar himself, but he had sabotaged one of the catapults on deck, causing it to explode when it was fired, and one of the metal parts had flown wide and landed on top of Katsu. She'd gotten only one injury out of it, but she had still been bed ridden for the rest of the campaign and voyage.
However, she had still been in good enough shape to watch helplessly as over one hundred warships were sunk in five seconds flat before her very eyes, and with them, her family.
You didn't just kill my family, Avatar, Katsu thought. I watched you while you did.
Because of her injury and because she was a woman, and therefore shouldn't have been allowed on the front lines in the first place, even in a non-combative position, Katsu had been discharged from the navy as soon as she'd gotten back to the Homeland, delegated to keeping order on the home front as the head authority of this town's police, though she did get promoted a couple ranks by the Fire Nation's High Admirals beforehand, which was what got her the high position in the domestic force that she currently had. She'd gotten the promotion on the merit that she had survived the rampage of the Avatar.
She wasn't the only one on the island who had had her life destroyed by the kid standing in front of her, either. Every single Fire Nation soldier the Avatar had killed that night had had someone waiting for them to come back home, and this island in particular, had (or did have) a long and proud tradition in serving the Fire Nation and their Fire Lord in the navy.
Now, Katsu knew, with the Avatar in her power, it would be the time to make the Avatar pay for what he had done, to her and every other person in the Homeland, and practically everyone on this island, because she would probably never get another chance.
"By the way, don't you kids realize how stupid it is to steal clothes and then wear them in the same community that you stole them from?" Katsu asked them conversationally, ignoring Aang wearing her brother's uniform long enough to realize that she had seen other townspeople wearing the clothes that the other three kids were wearing within the last few weeks - in short, that all four of these children were wearing stolen clothes.
"Yes, we know," Sokka admitted meekly. What else could they say, or do? All four of them were still handcuffed, and the only way out was locked, barricaded and under guard. Toph could metalbend them all free of course, but with Katsu having such a good description of them and of the clothes they were wearing, she could send the word out to the rest of the Fire Nation, not only of what she'd told them, but also of their actual disguises. Escaping now would do little good.
And if they didn't know any better, she did seem to not have anything against them personally. If they played their cards rights, maybe they could get out of this with their fake identities, (and themselves personally and physically), intact.
Katsu stood up from the desk. "This way," she said, and herded them into the back, where there were about a dozen metal cages lining the walls. She shoved them into different cells, and Sokka noted how she took care to place them so that there were at least one empty cell between any two of them, and at how she placed them as close to the front room as she could, where whoever was left to watch the place could better keep an eye on them. She didn't untie any of them, instead leaving them handcuffed.
After locking the last cell door, Katsu turned to leave, but paused.
"If you kids didn't really steal the Ember Heart," she sighed, "then I'll let you go free - if we find the real culprit. Until then, you'll stay here." With that, she knocked at the front door of the building to signal to the other police to open it up again, and then she left the police station. Two of the other police men went back out to patrol the town, but the third stayed at the station to guard the four suspects.
The four friends looked at each other helplessly from their respective cells. They were all too far apart from the others, and too close to the front room where the guard was, to carry on a conversation without him overhearing, so they couldn't discuss how to escape. And with their hands still bound, as well, they couldn't get out even if they could. Toph could, of course, and the bars of the cages were metal as well, but they all knew that escaping as things stood right now wasn't a good idea.
Besides, they all knew each other well enough to know that they were all thinking the same thing: there was still a chance of them being allowed to walk out free by the authorities themselves if the real thief was found. So for now, they would stay put.
But they still worried. It couldn't be more obvious that Katsu knew exactly who they were, or at least who Aang was, and there was no telling if she'd decide to spread the word after all. For all they knew, she had just left to go to the post office and send off a letter to the Fire Lord himself to report them.
O-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-O
They stayed in the jailhouse almost all the rest of the day, during which Katsu did not return, which made them fear more with each passing hour that she was up to something that meant ill for them. The guard on duty refused to uncuff any of them, under the reasoning that Katsu knew what she was doing when she'd put them in the cells like that. The guard didn't give them anything to eat as the hours wore on, either, but did give them each some water with a dipper that had a six foot handle on it, since their hands were all still bound behind their backs and they couldn't hold a cup of water themselves.
Finally, when it was almost sunset, Katsu came back to the police station, carrying two baskets on a stick. One of them held food, and the other one held several wrapped packages, making it look like for all the world that she had just gone on a shopping spree while the Avatar and his friends sat and worried in the jail about Aang's safety. She set the baskets down and tossed a bag of money onto the desk.
"Did you find the real thief, Katsu?" the other police asked her.
"Yes," Katsu said. "Since the diamond had been quickly and safely retrieved after it had been stolen and there was no real harm done to it, I only gave him a heavy fine, and a warning."
"So are you gonna let us out now?" Sokka asked hopefully, overhearing them from his cell. Katsu didn't answer, but unlocked their cells and let them out before unlocking the cuffs on their wrists.
The others couldn't keep from grinning at each other. They were free! Good thing they hadn't tried to escape on their own...
"Well, it was fun sitting in a jail cell for half a day," Sokka commented brightly. "I guess we'll see you guys around." He and his friends turned towards the door, ready to leave, when Katsu spoke again.
"It's pretty late; I'll walk you kids home," she told them as she hefted the baskets she had brought in on her shoulder again.
That was one of the last things they wanted Katsu to do, as the only place she could walk them to was Appa, but they were all reluctant to get on her bad side, especially since she knew who they were, and as far as they could tell, had not yet told anyone else their identities. And they preferred to keep it that way if they could.
When they'd left the station, Katsu turned to them before they'd made it halfway down the street.
"I'm letting you go, but you'll have to leave town," she told them. "I can't have you causing anymore trouble around here. If you get arrested in my jurisdiction again, don't ask me for any favors."
"Okay," Aang said.
"I'll walk you to the gates," Katsu said, and it wasn't a suggestion. But it was better than the alternative, as it meant that she'd leave them alone once they were outside of town, allowing them to make their way back to Appa unobserved. The less information she had about them, the better, no matter how small it was.
The walk to the edge of town didn't take very long, but it was an uncomfortable one for both sides, to say the least. Aang and his friends still had a lingering feeling that Katsu really wasn't going to let them go just like that, if she was really letting them go at all. And Katsu was still torn between two decisions inside. She wanted so much to make the Avatar pay for what he'd done to her and her brother, and the only thing that stopped her was the voice of her late grandfather. Her grandfather, the one who had taught her how to fight and had inspired her to join the navy in the first place, even though females were rarely allowed to join any branch of the active military. Her one great life dream, ever since childhood, had been to be an navy officer, just like him, before this kid came along and ruined it.
They say that the enemy does not feel or think, they live and fight like barbarians. And before battle, there is a quiet dread, that comes from knowing what the enemy is capable of doing to you.
They soon left the smooth paved stone streets of civilization behind them, and found themselves on a dirt road that led through some fields.
Katsu set down the baskets again before turning to them. "These things are for you," she told them. "And I got my brother another uniform for school, so you can keep that one," she added to Aang. "And look; people in the Fire Nation already see the people in the rest of the world as nothing but savages."
But it is important to put fears aside and remember why we fight.
"So stay out of trouble and don't do anything that would make your people look bad," Katsu told them. "And take this, too," she added, handing them a map of all the major islands in the Fire Nation.
Sokka took the sheet of paper from her and looked at her in wonder. "Why are you helping us?"
"It's just this one time," Katsu snapped. "I'm not doing it again."
After all, aren't we all fighting these savages to protect the greater good?
Sokka looked at the map, and noticed that there were a few locations on some of the islands that were marked with an X, and one of the islands that was circled.
"What are these marked spots?" he asked.
"Those are towns that have prisons," Katsu explained. "With war prisoners. If you still want to launch an invasion on this country, you'll need some...personnel...to do it with. And that island in the circle is uninhabited," Katsu added. "People say it's cursed. It's the best place in the Fire Nation to hide, because no one will go there if they can help it."
"But why are you doing this?" Katara asked, puzzled. "I know that you won't help us next time, but...why help us this time?"
"Consider it a head start," Katsu shrugged. "I'll have to tell my superiors about you sooner or later, so enjoy your freedom while you can."
The important thing to remember is that we are all human.
"Um, okay, thanks a lot!" Sokka said, Katsu's last comment making clear exactly whose side she was really on, and picked up the baskets. With hurried bows and rushed words of thanks, the group of friends all but fled, not wanting to be delayed any longer, especially after the last thing Katsu had said; if there was anyone who would rat them out, it'd be her.
Katsu watch them go, amused by how flustered she'd made them.
We are all the same deep down inside, no matter how different we are on the outside.
O-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-O
"That...was way...too close!" Aang panted, leaning heavily against a tree some time after they had run away from Katsu.
"We are never doing that again," Sokka agreed. While they had been able to ditch Katsu once they'd gotten outside the town limits, they had left Appa a mile away from the other side of the town from where they had come from, and they had had to take the long way around the place, since they couldn't go straight back through the village again to get there. They still hadn't quite cleared the town itself, and Appa was still a couple a miles away.
"We should leave this island," Toph suggested. "Before she decides to tell someone else about us."
"Aw, do we have to?" Sokka complained. "We just got to this island when we got arrested. We haven't even done anything fun yet."
"I agree with Toph," Katara said. "Katsu said that if we get arrested here a second time, she wouldn't help us. The best way we can avoid that is to leave, and we really should get back to Appa before dark." Already the sun was starting to sink below the horizon, and she doubted that they could get back to the bison before night fell anyway.
Sokka pouted, but didn't protest anymore. He knew they were both right, but they had just wasted a whole day sitting in a jail cell doing nothing, and he was grumpy about that.
They were unable to reach Appa and Momo before dark, and trying to navigate their way through the woods on a dark night delayed them further. It was late by the time they'd returned to where they'd left their pets. However, Appa had been able to rest pretty much the whole time they'd been gone, so he was able to take to the sky for the next several hours without stopping again, and the humans were able to spend part of the night in the saddle.
They had the floor of the saddle covered with several furs that the Water Tribesmen had given them before they'd parted ways, so there wasn't even any need to get any bedding out; they could curl up and conk out whenever they wanted. But before they did, Katara looked through the things in the baskets that Katsu had given them.
Sokka immediately suggested that there could bombs hidden in the baskets, set to blow them all to pieces when they least expected it. Normally Katara would've disagreed with such an outlandish possibility, but considering they were in the Fire Nation now, and the baskets had come from a high ranking member of the domestic army who knew who Aang was, booby traps wasn't veryoutlandish. She felt like an idiot for not at least checking the baskets for such things as bombs as soon as they had gotten away from Katsu, instead of now when the four of them were scores of feet above the ocean on the back of a flying bison. In other words, the best time and place for a couple of bombs to go off right next to them and obliterate Team Avatar off the face of the map, or at least put them out of commission for the next couple months or so.
Fortunately, there was no such thing as bombs in the baskets in question. Upon unwrapping the packages in the one basket, Aang and his friends were surprised to find an assortment of odds and ends that would make life a bit easier for them as they traveled in/fled from the Fire Nation; things like some extra clothes, four blankets, a couple of sun hats, a few daggers, and several rolls of bandages and tins of healing salves. There was even a bag of Fire Nation silver pieces. There had been a good amount of Fire Nation money on the ship that the Southern Water Tribe had captured a month earlier, but Aang's friends had left the ship so quickly to track Aang down when he'd ran away, that they barely took the time to pack any supplies at all, and all the Fire Nation money they had brought with them was a couple gold pieces that Sokka had had in his belt at the time. So they welcomed the money the most.
The basket of food held two bags of rice and a loaf of bread, potatoes, a large bag of peanuts, a bag of dried seaweed, and bag of dried berries, as well as several fresh pomegranates and mangoes. Katsu had forgotten nothing, it seemed. There was also a few small metal canisters of preserved fish, but unfortunately there wasn't one of those specialized tools for opening such cans to go with them.
Unable to have a hot supper on the back of Appa this late at night, the four friends had the loaf of bread and the fresh fruit for supper, deciding to save the other, longer lasting food for another time, though Katara let Sokka try his luck at trying to hack open one of the cans of fish so he'd quite whining about not having any meat. He managed to get the can open with one of the daggers. Toph waited until after he'd succeeded before grinning.
"Y'know, I could have gotten that open for you," she said. Sokka, cashing in on the meat that was his reward for getting the can open, stopped and glared at her when he realized that she was right.
"Why didn't you say anything, Toph?" he whined.
"Because I was having too much fun watching you trying to do it," Toph teased. Aang and Katara couldn't help but laugh as they all flew off into the night.