Tales of Green Gables
All The Lemurs Bananas
Karo watched Mitsumi play in the banana grove behind the hotel.
The Fire Nation had grown bananas on the island for a century. The bananas had taken hold in the wild and become more of a weed than anything. Mitsumi loped through the big leaves of the banana plants crashing through them like a mad man on a mission. Karo thought the large green leafy plants hand one virtue. Mitsumi couldn't climb too high up a three meter tall plant.
The same wasn't true of the baobab trees further up the hill. Mitsumi climbed into the spindly branches and looked down at the sight of Karo smacking his forehead in sheer frustration.
Azula pushed banana leaves out of her way.
"Your mother sent you a letter." Azula waved a red envelope.
The baobab had a thick trunk and spindly little branches which made them instantly recognizable as they looked fat, had gray bark and looked like a badly designed chess rook. Mitsumi voiced his disgust with their lack of fruit by chirping loudly in his high pitched lemur voice.
Azula handed the letter to Karo. "What do we do now?"
"Fire bending comes to mind." Karo carefully opened the letter. "Maybe we could ship him off to Ba Sing Se University – he might be a good candidate for a communications major."
"As this letter reached you, my beloved son, I imagine you're standing in a banana patch and – yikes!" Karo noticed a nest of six inch long tent caterpillars making a communal nest in a banana tree. Like all Suihanese bugs, they were ugly, bright green and pink and hairy. "I think we should change the Torquay town motto from 'A rest spot by the seas' to 'Scariest bugs in the industrialized world.'
"Last week, you suggested 'Parrots with attitude'." Azula felt her usual fear of bugs and rising panic and she stepped back. "Or was that 'Fines for all occasions?'"
"Our by law enforcement officers have such a dedication to their duty. Katara nearly washed the town off the island with a tsunami and they still ticket me for parking in a reserved or handicapped spot." Karo backed away from the caterpillars. "I forget because there are so many ways to lose."
Azula backed up. "How many bananas call this grove home?"
"I really have no idea." Karo hated bananas as a rule. "At this point in time, when I'm face to face with some kind of Kyoshi Island Mutant Caterpillars such trivia easily escapes me."
"Bananas are slightly radioactive." Azula had her hands on Karo's back and steadied herself. She hadn't expected to miss her big toe but she still found herself a bit wobbly. "I think eating one gives you a tenth of a microsievert. I was wondering if the caterpillars are the result of some long term exposure."
"Your lemur is up in a tree behind the inn and is bawling." Lady Ursa told Karo as he manned the desk. "May I ask how long will you let him bawl before you do something?"
"We can't climb that tree because it's precisely the wrong shape for humans and has no branches below five meters." Karo replied kindly. "My mother sent me a letter and she sends her greetings and wishes you success in your endeavor as an inn keeper."
Tick...tick...tick...tick!
Azula walked past the front desk with a large black metal box and it ticked.
"Care to explain?" Lady Ursa asked her daughter. "Ticking metal boxes make my guests nervous."
Azula looked down at a dial on the box. "Oh...yes." She looked at her mother. "I want to find out how radioactive the banana patch actually is. I have a vague idea but I thought I'd objectively measure it."
"What is the ticking box?" Lady Ursa asked with her reserve of infinite patience.
"Oh...this?" Azula put the box on the broad lobby desk. "This is a Geiger Counter. As you can see, Karo has a low level of radioactivity from the potassium in his body."
"When did you get a Geiger Counter?" Karo asked.
"When the lab boys in the physics lab at Komatsu University weren't looking." Azula picked up the machine. "I wanted to check on how much X – Ray radiation I was absorbing from the machinery in the lab where I worked. It worked out to be about one dental X – Ray a day. I wondered if I qualified for danger pay."
"What about those ugly caterpillars?" Karo asked.
"Right." Azula marched past the desk. "You still have the cricket bat?"
"In the closet." Karo pointed up but looked rather unhappy. "This time wash the thing off so it isn't dripping in bug goop. Don't kill any innocent geckos. I rather like the small lizards and I wish I could figure out how they can walk across the ceiling."
"Should I ask what that was about?" Lady Ursa turned to Karo who still had the letter from his mother.
"Azula resents many things." Karo tapped the red paper of his letter with his finger. "Insects and spiders rank up there on her list of least favorite things. We found a nest of hideous nesting caterpillars in the banana grove behind the inn. She's on a mission to kill them."
"And the metal box?" Ladu Ursa asked seriously.
"Do you eat bananas?" Karo asked.
"I have been known to."
"Evidently they are mildly radioactive." Karo explained to Lady Ursa. "No one told me. When you see a kid put a banana to his ear and pretends its a phone, he may be getting radiation from the banana phone."
Sokka had many questions as he watched Azula walk the back yard with a black box. Azula had once intimidated him and now seemed little more than a cheerless eccentric. He propped up his luggage on the front step and prepared to enter the hotel.
Suki wondered why she had a round metal cylinder with a wire pointing at her face.
"Do you eat bananas?" Azula asked.
Tick...Tick!
"On occasion?" Suki raised her eyebrows.
"I heard a loud crack. You broke my cricket bat!?" Karo came through the doors. "Oh hello Sokka."
"In my defense, they were some butt ugly caterpillars." Azula told Karo. "Really, really ugly ones and I tried to get our lemur out of the tree and the tree broke the bat."
"The words 'Come Here Mitsumi' followed up by a promise of fruit never crossed your mind?" Karo asked sarcastically. "So in your fine tradition of 'save the bad news for last' just how radioactive is the banana grove. Are we talking pretty much normal for a city built on granite bluffs or normal for the Ba Sing Se Research Reactor?"
"You should know this area has abnormally high levels of radiation." Azula put the cylinder on the metal holster. "Not that high for a city built on granite bluffs and so we're relatively safe. The bananas are radioactive but I have no idea what a normal level of radiation for a banana should be so we have nothing to go on."
"Welcome to the Green Gables." Karo bowed and welcomed Sokka and Suki. "Are you here for business or a pleasant holiday?"
"We came for a pleasant visit with our mother in law. We haven't had a nice holiday since Timiko was born so Sokka decided to celebrate mothers day by visiting me a for a week long holiday." Suki smiled happily.
Karo looked to Azula. "A holiday? Are you sure you want to stay with us at Mad Scientist Central?"
Azula hit him across the head with her hand.
Azula looked at the bunch of bananas sitting in a red glass bowl.
Karo had the adding machine, a pad of paper and his pencil out.
"Decided to live dangerously this evening?" Azula looked at the bananas. "Why are store bought bananas yellow and the ones in the back are green?"
"After this afternoon, I'm more concerned about growing cat ears or sprouting an extra mutant power that sucks: the ability to sense magnets or pastel color vision." Karo shifted on his stool. "Anyway, Lady Ursa put the bowl of fruit there for the guests so I had no say in this new policy."
"Mitsumi fell asleep on my bed and barfed up a gecko."
"At least it wasn't my bed." Karo pressed a few numbers to enter them into the adding machine. "In the Fire Nation and Ba Sing Se and just about everywhere but here, they use a period for the decimal. In our funky system, we use the period to split up numbers into groups of four and a comma for the decimal." He cranked the handle. "Did Suihan do this to be different?"
"Hello." Suki walked in the lobby in a pink Kyoshinese kimono. "I hate to be a bother but I'm three months pregnant and I have terrible morning sickness. I don't want to make a mess by getting sick on your floor. Do you have a chamber pot?"
"We have a bucket. I think." Azula told Suki.
"This place is a money pit." Karo looked at the bill to fix the dryer and cringed. "Two hundred dollars to fix a dryer with a busted belt. One more broken appliance or another over priced rack of lamb and my paycheck will bounce."
"Follow me." Azula waved her hand. "If you have morning sickness, why did you don your 'gay apparel'."
"A kimono has great symbolic value for our people."
"We have the revered stop sign." Azula opened the basement door. "You wait here. One of the steps is loose and you'd sue us if you got injured." Azula groped around in the dark. "The bloody bulb is gone! No wait, why does it need to warm up?"
"So sorry to be a bother." Suki apologized to Karo.
"I can't find a bucket." Azula called out. "My neat freak mother tossed a whole pile of crap out when she took over. Is a detergent box waterproof?"
"No." Karo replied.
Azula stomped up the stairs. "We buy cooking oil in big buckets and use them to contain the grease when the hotel cook drains the deep fryer. Follow me into the Heart of the Green Gables."
Suki followed Azula into the kitchen as Karo worked at the hotel books.
"Dammit!" Azula cried out. "Even without my big toe, stubbing it still hurts. Karo?"
"Yes?" Karo spoke with some dread.
"Did we take an order for flour?" Azula growled. "The idiot from the restaurant supply place just up and dropped it by the door."
"Karo?" Suki came out with an empty black metal bucket with white writing. "What did this bucket once contain? Azula was too busy cursing to tell me and I can't read your language."
"Canola Oil." Karo adjusted his glasses. "We buy it for the deep fryer."
Suki had seen the character for 'oil' but had no idea how Karo got Canola out of the characters.
"I apologize for not saying 'congratulations'." Karo smiled kindly. "I hope things go well for you and Sokka."
"I'm off to bed." Azula announced as she emerged from the kitchen. "Well off to use your bed. You can work out what to do with the gecko."
"Thank you." Suki smiled. "Have you thought of starting a family?"
"No!" Azula gave her opinion as she walked up the stairs. "I hate kids."
The next morning, Karo heard a familiar ticking noise when he went to fetch the mail.
Sokka had Azula's Geiger Counter.
Karo flipped the red mailbox flap as he had to post a letter to his mother.
"Dare I ask?" Karo held the mail.
"Have you ever heard of uranium? Element 92?" Sokka put his arm around Karo and spoke with enthusiasm. "Azula told me to search the grounds for it. She told me the future lies in fission – splitting the atom. In these rocks lies a fortune in limitless energy."
"She has a delicate sense of humor."
"This rock could heat a house for a century." Sokka held up an amber transparent rock to his eyes. "I found this beside the driveway and it's radioactive."
"What can I say?" Karo walked backwards and shrugged as he opened his arms. "You keep up the hard work and we won't have to worry about the bills."
Karo walked into the inn.
He dropped the mail on the desk and Lady Ursa picked it up.
"Good morning Karo." Lady Ursa smiled.
"Good morning." Karo headed for the small restaurant of the inn. "I need a word with your daughter. It's half past ten, so I imagine she's in the dining hall having her morning coffee?
"I think so." Lady Ursa said in the manner of small talk as Karo went into the dining hall.
"I see you have found something for Sokka to do." Karo sat down at Azula's table as she peered out from behind the newspaper.
"He was bothering his wife." Azula explained. "She wants to relax and get over her morning sickness. He needed to be distracted so I gave him the Geiger Counter and a few lessons on looking for uranium ore."
"He found a piece of a beer bottle." Karo decided to go to the coffee urn and fetch a cup. "So your ticking doohickey has a beer bottle setting?"
"He seems happy. He may find uranium. Practical nuclear fission remains a pipe dream and the time when you can go to your local appliance store and buy a Mr. Fission nuclear power plant probably will never happen" Azula sipped her coffee. "I don't see the future chief of the Southern Water Tribe as the father of modern nuclear power."
"Ba Sing Se University has a research reactor." Karo sat back down with a cup of coffee. It was too early for the lunch crowd so Karo and Azula had the dining hall to themselves. He sipped coffee from his white mug and burned his tongue. "It must work."
"It barely works." Azula knew the beast and part of her distrust of nuclear power came from trying to complete important work with it. While capable of boiling water, it mainly made radioactive isotopes for medical research and tested the limits of scientific patience and had bouts of flakiness and the sorts of design flaws which would prove fatal in any safety context. It had given medical science a new concept – the cancer cluster.
"Can you read this?" Sokka handed Karo a cardboard box. "I found this in the bushes beside the driveway and I have no idea what it says."
"Mr. Sparkle." Karo looked at the red box. "Homer Fish Bulb is the logo for that brand of soap. He promises to get your clothes clean with the use of 'Activated Detergents'. Whatever that is. You haven't found an alien artifact from Mars. When I saw you a few hours ago you were all up over uranium."
"I have a family and after finding that box and bits of beer bottles, I decided prospecting wasn't for me." Sokka leaned over the desk and whispered. "I still don't trust Azula."
"A wise policy." Karo answered. "We have learned a lesson today."
"Give her back her Geiger Counter." Sokka placed it on the desk. "I wanted to take Suki out on the town. Any suggestions?"
Karo bent down below the desk. "What kind of evening? We have a number of fine Suihanese restaurants which serve up the finest fried or spice free food you can hope to taste. Follow that up by a movie and you have a winning evening."
"Looking for something?" Sokka bent over the desk.
"Lady Ursa had a bunch of pamphlets in a box." Karo looked around. "We had a bunch of business cards and a couple of telephone books but my wife of sorts has misplaced them. I use them to stand on when I change light bulbs. When Azula mans the front desk, she tends to misplace things."
Sokka took a banana from the red bowl.
Karo placed a dart cannon on the desk. "The suction dart cannon is hers."
He ducked back down. "Lady Ursa loves order. I find it hard to believe the two of them are mother and daughter. She has tin soldiers?"
Karo put a metal toy tank on the desk. "What does she do – plan Blitzkrieg during her afternoons at the desk?"
"That is the T – 34 main battle tank." Azula told Karo as she walked through the lobby. "The gun shoots sucker darts. What are you looking for?"
"A Yukina doll from Poltergeist Reports? That wasn't it." Karo dumped it on the desk. "Stupid me for thinking hotel like stuff would be here in the desk. Are you plotting an invasion? We had a couple of telephone directories, a box of pamphlets and business cards. What happened to them?"
"I put them on the shelves under the phone." Azula lifted the phone ear piece.
"I'm going to find a dead parrot in here." Karo looked in the shelves. "An ex – parrot who has ceased to be."
"Does Torquay have any Water Tribe restaurants?" Sokka asked Karo.
"We have two: Aunt Mizu's and The Dancing Polar Bear Dog." Karo flipped through the phone book yellow pages. "Aunt Mizu promises 'Genuine Water Tribe Cuisine.' and The Dancing Polar Bear Dog promises 'Blubber Just Like Mom Used to Make'."
"Marketing is decidedly something the Water Tribe can't do." Azula placed a sucker dart in the barrel of the gun of the tank.
"What about Song's Supreme Fire Nation Cuisine?" Karo had eaten there. "They have a sign that reads 'We don't know where cat is – you quit asking now'."
"The movie may not work out." Azula pointed the tank and released the dart and struck the face of the grandfather clock. "Neither of you speak anything much in the way of Suihan so maybe a nice dinner and a walk along the marina." Karo leafed through to the maps of the city and the bus route information. "Sontúla Park has live concerts May through September on the weekends but it's a very nice park to take a walk."
Karo had felt an earthquake only few times in his life. He sat on the stool at the hotel desk when a rumble and then a hard jolt knocked him off the wooden stool and then the phone struck him in the head. A series of smaller shocks followed and Karo took refuge as close to the desk as he could.
"Are we following the wrong Gods?" Karo asked no one in particular as the heavy metal mechanical adding machine fell to the floor beside him.
"Excuse me?" A Fire Nation lady staying as a guest asked over the noise of many poodle monkeys and angry dogs in the neighborhood. "What just happened?"
Karo lifted himself off the wooden floor. "An earthquake, I think."
Karo stooped to pick up the phone and the adding machine. He looked at the group of half a dozen guests in the lobby.
"Please remain calm." Karo placed the adding machine on the desk. "Is everyone alright?"
Everyone nodded but in a manner that didn't indicate a high level of confidence.
"About 5.0 magnitude quake." Azula said as she walked in the lobby followed by her mother. "Not even powerful enough to knock a grass hut down."
Karo brushed off his vest. "We don't get quakes in the normal course of events."
The neighborhood chorus of dogs quit barking.
Mitsumi climbed onto Azula's shoulder.
Lady Ursa opened the front doors and looked through the murky darkness illuminated by the front porch lights. "I think we have an earth bender of quite some power."
Karo and Azula walked to the front doors.
"We have a henge." Azula remarked. "I never heard the pipes a callin'. Did the Chief of the Moor die?"
Karo knew little about the mysterious neolithic monuments scattered over the islands of the Fire Nation and the Dominion because no one knew much about them. Some of them were little more than heaps of rock stacked to cover the carcass of a king or chief along with his crude bronze age ax. Others like the one in the front yard were built with precise astronomical alignment either because the stone age people wanted a calendar or had too much free time.
"Hey guys." Toph walked towards the hotel. "I thought I'd make a splashy entrance."
"You are wearing the proud uniform of the Earth Kingdom Mounted Police?" Azula looked at the little earth bender. "Was Karo's driving so bad that his reputation reached Ba Sing Se?"
"I have to pay parking fines in both countries?"
"I came to Dorky to interrogate Hino." Toph stood under the porch light in the dark blue and silver trimmed uniform of a police officer in the Earth Kingdom Mounted Police. This dress uniform meant she represented her country internationally and had come to work with the Dominion police on the case of the murdered dwarfs. Karo knew this because he had read it somewhere but had no clue why this tradition had arisen. "I arrived this afternoon and found your local jail in rubble and your great Chief Imogen blithely told me the murderer Hino had escaped! Did you know no one told your police force that Hino could water bend so they took no precautions? They put Hino into a cell with a toilet and so he waited for the right time and blew his way out of jail."
"Who would have thought the toilet a weapon of mass destruction." Azula muttered.
Karo patted the granite side of one of the uprights. "What has that got to do with this henge?"
"I had no asses to kick." Toph stomped her feet and the ground shook. "Hino has escaped, Jun has left the country and I have no leads."
"The henge is very rustic." Azula muttered and spoke with her unsettling calm. "Now you want a nice place to stay?"
"Can you please take down the – what my daughter called it?" Lady Ursa asked kindly. "Please? And could you do it with a little less drama. I will be happy to put you up for the night."
"I know you're a guest," Karo said deferentially, "but can you take your feet off the table?"
"I need to rest my feet. You should be thankful because as a representative of the Earth Kingdom Mounted Police, I have to be on my best behavior." Toph stroked Karo's cheek with her foot.
Karo cringed. "I will wait for my stomach to settle to finish my morning coffee. Your feet have the tensile strength of structural steel."
"My boyfriend says I have sexy feet."
"He may be biased in that opinion." Azula walked into the inn's small restaurant and headed toward the coffee percolator. "If I ended up in a space capsule with you and have to put up with your hygiene, I'd eat my head or pop the airlock."
Azula tossed the morning paper on the table. "Read the front page."
"Who is your boyfriend?" Karo rubbed the cheek Toph had stroked with her feet.
"Ohen...a fellow cop."
Azula thumped the wooden table top. "Read the front page."
"I guess the mugshot of Hino means the escape is public knowledge." Karo snapped the paper in his hands. "The Chief says he advises anyone who sees Hino to call the police immediately and to be careful because he's very dangerous. I suppose such care is due when dealing with a man who can use a toilet as a weapon of mass destruction."
"That's the usual police 'screw up' line." Azula scowled. "I was hoping to have you read the second story. Since you won't, I'll sum it up. The Henwa Sea has fairly low tides because its a shallow sea hemmed in by the islands of the Dominion and the Fire Nation. In this sea, we have hundreds of islands; little blocks of granite scattered over a million square kilometers."
Karo put the paper down and picked up his rapidly cooling coffee. "Yes...and?"
"Look at the tides." Azula pointed at the Weather and Marine Report at the bottom of the page. "The lighthouse at Skilly recorded a tide five times higher than normal for the hemmed in islands."
Karo scratched his head as he stared at the figures. Among the hundreds of islands, Skilly was one of the least remarkable rocks the Dominion owned. Five sheep, a few scabby pine trees and the family of the lighthouse keeper called it home. "I got nothing. That guy takes weather readings every day and reports them. He has to note temperature, wind, rain and tides – he might have screwed up."
"Hino landed there." Azula insisted. "You never followed the Avatar during the War. Skilly lies due north of here and has no permanent inhabitants. The Dominion put up a lighthouse to protect ships but the place is a rock. For a water bender on the run, what is a more perfect place?"
"He'll be gone by now." Toph stomped her feet impatiently on the floor.
"Maybe, but you've been on Skilly before." Azula had her hands on her hips and prepared to deliver some very fine reasoning. "You never called it 'Skilly' because maps of the Fire Nation called it as Kurama Island – the birthplace of some minor deity. You spent several days rallying your troops before the eclipse on the same island. Call it a lead. At least you have something to go to the Chief with."
Toph stood up.
Karo wondered how such a stout girl could have the kind of footfall normally found in metal robots.
"We will chase down Hino." Toph announced.
"Let me get this straight," Azula tossed a map out of the pilot seat as she sat down, "Toph's parents own a twin engined medium range bomber?"
"How much money do does Toph's parents have?" Karo slid into the co – pilot's seat and looked for a place to stash the maps. "Why do they need an offensive bombing capability?"
"Toph said they bought the Komatsu Aerospace Engineering K 435 because they planned to have it converted for their private use." Azula hesitated to start anything until she knew Toph was on board. "A firm here in Komatsu refits them for civilian use. The story has us at the airport about to take a high technology bomber over everyone's airspace. If you hate my driving..."
Karo looked around the gray cockpit and the gray seats. "I imagine the decorators haven't shown up yet. I notice they haven't changed the outside of the plane from military green to a happier color and the numbers and markings look like we intend to deal death from above. We're going to take anti aircraft artillery from someone."
"Where is Toph?" Azula tapped the yoke impatiently. "I should inform you that I have no experience flying modern aircraft – anything with wings and four radial engines. This will take the efforts of both of us."
Karo wanted to leap out the window and run across the concrete apron. "I have no flying experience whatsoever so why am I here? Couldn't Toph's parents afford a co – pilot?"
"You have the master controls for the guns and Sokka decided to sit in the tail gunner seat."
Toph came into the cockpit. "You have flown in the War and you do know how to fly?"
"I know all the basic rules." Azula answered. "When a plane goes up against the mountain, the mountain always wins." She jerked the stick. "You should be asking why we are doing this."
Karo adjusted his chair. "What now? The dashboard compass is broken."
"Battery on." Azula hit a switch. "Do we have to do all the checklist crap? Do you even know the proper checklists?"
"I was expecting to find them in the glove box." Karo answered back. "I'll put the headset on and ask if we can take off."
"Okay...everything lit up. Checklist complete!" Azula wondered what most of the amber back-lit gauges meant. "Starting engines."
The plane shook as the engines came on one by one.
"I regret this." Toph sat in the third seat. "I don't like to fly."
"Ask the tower for clearance so we don't fly through a blimp or into another group of idiots doing the same thing." Azula nudged Karo. "We filed a flight plan as Bei Fong One."
Karo spoke over the headset. Nothing happened except that he had tapped into a rather intimate conversation between him and his wife on the shortwave channel assigned for them. "Sokka! get off the damn radio! How did Suki manage to get hold of a shortwave radio?"
"Your neighbor in Torquay is big into HAM radio."
"That explains the towers in his back yard."
"Cut off the tail gunner channel. Turn the radio to channel E!" Azula pointed to a red dial. "Tune the green one until it reads 124.5! That will set you up with the tower."
Karo turned the dials.
"I know why the cockpit has four cigarette lighters." Azula turned back to talk to Toph. "We can still back out or pray. Prayer won't help but it'll distract from the growing fear."
"We're free to go." Karo held the wire to his headset. "Glory or death awaits."
"Dammit!" Azula cursed. "No wait...do you know the nose gear has no steering."
"When you have parents that can shell out for a plane from petty cash..." Karo asked Toph. "Why ever try to get a real job?"
"Do we have problems?" Toph asked nervously.
"I have to learn how to drive all over again." Azula thought such a huge aircraft needed nose gear one could steer but this was the cutting edge of technology and no one had thought of such things. "Forward and don't hit the grass at the side."
Toph's parents owned a vast corporate mining enterprise and the K - 435 would be part of a small fleet linking their northern mining enterprises. His iron and coal could leave by rail but he had decided on using planes to provide mail and transportation. As The Dominion had advanced the art of aircraft manufacture to a high level, he had no choice if he wanted capable aircraft.
Azula climbed over the Henwa Sea. The Dominion had advanced flight decades beyond the balloon or Zeppelin but that didn't imply the aircraft flew easily. The Dominion had built the plane out of aluminum and attached four engines to give the wings enough lift to make it off the runway. If the plane were a bird, Azula knew every instinct would have forced it to plow into the sea at high speed. She had control but that meant yanking and shoving the controls hard enough to have any effect. In the Realm, high technology in aviation meant the cables and bicycle chains operating the cams that moved the surfaces were hidden. She had the impression of riding a flying ostrich horse and having to yank on the reins to make it turn. She knew the ostrich horse didn't normally fly.
Karo had flown on aircraft that flew below a kilometer in altitude. This bomber could fly five or six kilometers high and unlike the autogyro or Zeppelin, did so at four hundred and fifty kilometers and hour. While a technical feat, the airplane didn't provide the comfort of a Zeppelin. Karo could feel the engines roar and the bomber had a brutal edge to it. Karo had a set of controls. Some governed the radio – a crude analog dial and a set of flip leaf numbers showed the band and frequency. He had a large switch on his headset that turned on the microphone that protruded in front of his mouth. Others governed things he only vaguely understood such as magnesium flares and the intercom that allowed him to communicate with the gunners and payload specialist.
Toph could hear Mitsumi trying to beat his lemur sized brain into understanding flight without any effort on his part and hating the experience. He had come along because Lady Ursa didn't want to take care of him and made that politely clear. Toph could feel the rumble of the engines and even worse she could identify the half millimeter thickness of the aluminum and sense the cables and piping all around her. The cabin was pressurized but somewhere at the tail, a seal leaked. She wondered if her determination to prove herself as a blind person had overcome her good old fashioned common sense. She felt the plane rise and drop in the thin air outside. Things shuddered and rumbled and hummed and when Azula began to bank, she lost her sense of contact with gravity.
She heard Karo rustling a map. He could hear Sokka complaining about something but his intercom channel had been left off.
"Skilly Island has a landing strip – more a mowed fairway." He said as Toph grabbed her stomach when the plane sank. "About a par 5. There are trees on the north end and a cliff on the south that drops into the sea."
"At least the weather is good." Azula grumbled. "Three thousand meters."
"Do any of you have a bucket?" Toph had evidence of distress in her voice.
"No." Azula answered. "Where the hell is the island?"
"I need to throw up."
Karo looked around. "We have a vacuum toilet."
Toph could hear him shuffling.
"I found a gas mask." Karo reached behind his seat and stretched his arm. "Here...barf into this."
"Could he be dying back there?" Karo put Sokka on the com.
"I'm cold!" Sokka complained. "Can you turn on the heat?"
"Sokka's cold." Karo told Azula. 'Can we do anything?"
"No. The boy hails from the Water Tribe." Azula found herself preoccupied with a sudden fog that had cropped up.
"Spoiler alert." Azula yelled at Karo. "Hit the spoiler."
"What!? You always tell me the endings to novels before I read them. Why mention it now?"
"Pull the levers on your right marked 'Spoilers!'"
Karo yanked at the levers. Like any other control action on the aircraft, this took a surprising amount of effort and he grunted. "What did I just do?"
"You helped us slow down." Azula looked out the cockpit window. "I've read about flying large aircraft so if the theory works they help us land. I read the paper and they forecast sun and warm westerlies. Crap! I will remind the weather authorities to can a few employees."
Karo looked out at the early afternoon sun and got a face full of fog. "I'm beginning to panic."
"We have a thousand meters between us and the sea." Azula gritted her teeth. "Shit! We should see the damn lighthouse just as we fly into it!"
"I can't see a thing!" Karo held out the map.
"Get your head out of that gas mask!" Azula scolded Toph. "Karo! Pull yourself together and beg forgiveness from your Gods; look at your maps and tell me where we should be."
"Fifteen clicks southeast and then the fog overtook us!" Karo tore the headset off.
"When I tell you to go, earth bend a large flat piece of rock like a wide road about five hundred meters long." Azula had a hint of hysteria in her voice. "Okay, one hundred and fifty knots. Karo! For once, just find the flaps lever and set it to the middle position!"
"One forty, five hundred meters."
Click! The flaps snapped into position.
Karo clutched his chest.
Sokka yelled and filled the cockpit with his manly cries because he sat in the middle of a transparent bubble which let him feel the descent and see nothing at all. Karo had the presence of mind to cut his mike.
"One thirty...four hundred...one twenty, three hundred...landing speed."
"I can't feel the earth!"
"Guess!" Azula shouted. "Nose up! More flaps!"
Click!
"Gear down!" She shouted to Karo.
Karo had read the controls and now had a clue as to what the switches and levers did. He wondered if the engineers wanted the crew to get fit flying the bomber as he pulled a lever with a red knob that didn't wish to be pulled. At the next to last ounce of strength, the lever suddenly switched over.
"I see the lighthouse!" Azula now almost screamed. "Hit it Toph."
Thump!
Karo had his left hand locked on the flap control and his right clutching the seat.
Screech!
Karo and Azula felt a lurch forward.
Karo could feel the aircraft rumble and he could see the edge of the stone pier Toph had managed to erect.
Azula swore countless times as she pushed on the brakes. "Engines to idle. One hundred knots. I can't see the end of the runway! This thing handles like a pair of oxen!"
Karo grabbed his chest which was actually the knob of his harness.
Toph tried to look calm and collected and failed.
"Okay..." Azula breathed out as she hit the switch and the engines cut out. "We've managed to land."
"What now?" Karo asked as he felt the plane wobble in the breeze.
"Welcome to Skilly Island." Azula lay back in the seat. She decided not to tell Karo or Toph how much of her flying skill amounted to guess work. She had an interest in high technology and so had read about this class of bomber in newspapers and books.
She had a bad feeling as she peered into the fog and could make out the outlines of the scraggy pine trees and weathered rocks.
Karo undid his harness.
Mitsumi crawled out of the webbing normally used to stow parachutes and stretched.
Karo held out the map. "Skilly Island has an area of twenty square kilometers." Karo heard the loud slam of an aluminum hatch as Sokka crawled out of the tail gunner's seat.
Mitsumi flew around and landed on Toph's unsteady shoulder.
"The Island of Kurama was where Sobojo taught the art of swordsmanship to the First Swordmaster." Sokka walked unsteadily toward the group standing on the grass field. "My master taught me about this. I picked this island to rest and practice my skills before the invasion on the Day of Black Sun because I thought it would give me power."
"We all know how that worked out." Azula sneered. "Someone probably just made up that story as a part of a real estate scam."
"No one has come out to greet us." Toph felt the ground and could sense nothing. "Not a typical Fire Nation Island – granite and old with sheep."
"Sobojo?" Karo paced out around the field and compared it to the map. "What or who is Sobojo?"
"The demon who lives in this place." Sokka leaned on Karo and prepared to go into the long mythology of master swordsman. He had not realized Karo had the mindset of a rationalist and one who had not had been pushed out of his comfort zone too often. "He was the demon who taught us the art of the sword."
"One the next island is Glock the demon who gave us the gun?" Karo studied the map and wished Sokka would quit leaning on him. "Master of the art of shooting your big toe of with a pistol?"
Azula grabbed Karo's collar gritted her teeth and threateningly said: "Can we get onto other topics. We learned swordsmanship through the efforts of the bronze age sword smiths of yore who found metal could cleave in the skulls of tribal primitives better than anything yet invented. This was such a good way of killing people, we kept developing it until we could peel a soldier out of his armor with a heavy steel blade."
Toph noticed an interesting problem. She found a dead fox in the grass.
"We may have killed it when we landed." Karo said apologetically and in a gesture no one else understood (even Karo) drew a cross with his right hand and clapped.
"'Skilly Iúnúsi' – Island of the Fox." Karo nodded. "The Dominion used their names. Skoner Iúnúsi is ten or so kilometers to the west and has a fishing village and takes its name from an old type of sailing ship."
Toph patrolled the field. She wanted to make sure nothing lurked beyond the range of sight. She found nothing.
Azula began to pace in the fog. She had never understood why The Dominion gave everything in their territory new 'non Asian names' after the War. Karo talked about 'fit and rhythm' so Kyoshinese and Kyoshi Island became 'Seípan and Seípan Iúnúsi'. Chinese in Suihan was Siannád. She had never quite figured out the 'aesthetics' but Suihan was a very beautiful and soft language.
Toph loved Suihan. She loved the soft tones of the language and how it gracefully packed information about the boring grammar into the noun making easy to listen for subtleties. Suihan had a gift for metaphor and she suspected somehow that it had a long and ancient history in the Realm. She listened to Karo and Azula discuss the map as Sokka paced the grass field following her.
"We didn't kill the fox." Azula told Karo. "It was murdered."
Mitsumi made a long quiet howl.
"How?" Karo looked down at the pathetic creature.
"A banana...if you look closely, someone impaled him with a banana."
"What? Like he died of radiation poisoning?" Karo began to wonder if his girlfriend had lost his ability to cope with recent events. "We ought to warn the food people or find a way to make a banana powered reactor."
"Someone used water bending to impale this fox with a banana." Azula clucked and kicked the corpse of the fox over. "They froze the banana solid and then killed the fox with it – a banana katana if you want the pun."
Karo looked down at the blood soaked wound in the poor animal's chest surrounded by banana remnants. "I can live without the pun."
"We're not going to find the answers looking around here." Azula looked into the murky fog and shivered. "Which way to the lighthouse?" She shouted toward Toph.
"About a five minute walk down the hill!" Toph shouted back. "You'll find a stone path down to it."
"Strange..." Karo almost whistled. "The lighthouse should be sounding the foghorn."
"Even stranger...its cold and damp like a late fall day." Azula could feel herself slipping on the mossy stone steps.
"Yeah!" Karo followed Azula past the rough stone fence that surrounded the lawn belonging to the house for the lighthouse keeper. He could see the stone house and a stone building and the white lighthouse with the red top through the fog. The lighthouse sat on a narrow spit, while the house and shed lay further inland and used the shade of large chestnut and maple trees to shelter them from the elements. "They should have the generator going because they need power for the lighthouse."
The house looked like a typical Suihan house. The original builders had made a fence of the native gray granite by stacking the rock loosely: the fence was intended to keep out sheep and nothing else. The house had the same stone neatly mortared together with a stone chimney poking out of the slate roof. The red door frame and door as well as red window frames added a dash of color to the bleak house. Azula could recognize Suihan houses instantly. They had no ornamental curved roof finials and no shutters. The builders loved stone and used wood sparingly and the windows used glass and had no shutters.
"You're fire bending needs work." Azula pulled out a pistol from her vest. "This is your point and shoot option."
"I can't shoot someone!" Karo protested. "What happens if God exists?"
Azula pressed the gun into Karo's hands. "Then tell God you didn't know the safety was off. You turn the safety off by pulling down the lever on the side – do it now!"
Karo looked at the black metal body of the gun and slid the switch as instructed. "How did you get a gun? They banned you from owning guns for ten years."
"Basil hid one in my mother's room." Azula whispered as she went through the gate of the fence. "I found it in the closet in a wooden box marked 'In Case The Voices Come Back!'"
A frozen banana smashed in front of Karo.
Karo saw a flash of the dark blue coat of a water bender. He felt himself freeze in place as if he had been grabbed by a large hand. He felt a searing pain in all his joints.
Azula swiftly made the motion to send a blue searing fire bolt at the edge of the house where she had seen movement. She never made it. Karo had a gun to her temple.
"I never know what's going on." Karo had blood coming from his mouth and looked pallid and very weak.
"Blood bending can control the person but you are alive because Karo has such a strong moral backbone." Hino had not shaved for a week or more and his rugged Water Tribe face looked even more horrid to Azula. "I can make him move as I want but he passed out when I tried to have him shoot you."
"Where is he?" Azula tried to move but Hino had her tied to the stone and masonry post that supported the floor above her. She looked around at the windowless cold and damp stone room which had served as the store room for the lighthouse keeper and his family. Boxes of unopened supplies and shelves of canned preserves lined the walls. Azula could smell the damp in the room and if she could have moved she would have shivered. The only light came from a bulb on the string – whatever else had happened, the diesel generators still worked.
"Where is he!?" Azula demanded and pulled against the bindings holding her. She had watched paralyzed as he placed her against the solid post and then tied her hands and feet to it with fencing wire. Hino had, for the moment, out thought her because although he had let her free of his strange grip, any struggle she made caused the steel wire to bite into her wrists and ankles.
"He's fine." Hino grinned and showed his ugly yellow teeth. "He will join you shortly. I have to leave now. Your other friends and the lemur have nearly found this place."
Hino came back dragging Karo by his collar. "The Kyoshi Islanders would call him 'Bishonen' or beautiful man." Hino shoved Karo into the room and let him flop down in fetal position. Karo made no effort to struggle against the bonds and lay there bound in garden twine. "I find him attractive and may keep him for myself."
Azula stared at him with a look that made even his unfeeling heart quake a bit.
Karo moaned.
"Are you heading toward the white light?" Azula asked sadly.
"I had an unexpected and sudden utter brain failure." Karo stuttered. "What happened? I thought I had a stroke but then the ugly guy made me move like a puppet. I tried to shoot you – sorry."
"At least we know you obey the Three Laws of Robotics." Azula struggled but couldn't free herself. "Hino has some kind of odd power I never heard of. Katara is a master water bender and she never pulled a trick like that."
"Maybe he's some other kind of bender – like a mental bender." Karo coughed as he tried to work up the strength to free his hands.
"He water bends. We should have a warm sunny day and we flew into fog." Azula answered back. "We should ask where the lighthouse keeper and his family got to."
"I don't want to even think about it."