Avatar: The Last Airbender
Created by Michael Dante Dimartino and Bryan Konietzko
Book 3: Fire
Chapter 2: The Fire Colony
There hadn't been a cloud in the sky all day, but it wasn't dry by any means. The humidity was ever-present in the trees and bushes of the densely-forested North-West of the Earth Kingdom. The leaves were lush and green, soaking up more sunlight than they could stand, but the greenness of the leaves didn't spread far beyond the plants, whose trunks were several shades of rusty reds and browns. The redness spread to the road, and the very air the forest inhabited. These were not native Earth Kingdom plants, but under careful cultivation they had flourished. These were plants used to harsh conditions, and in more gentle climates they consumed everything around them. Everything about the Fire Nation was obsessed with consumption, with absorption, with the elimination of competition and smoothing of the fractured fault lines of the world with their own kind. Some day the whole world would be like this. The Fire Nation was already something completely different to this, and needed these colonies of greenery in order to survive. To exist, the Fire Nation needed to turn the whole world into its former self. Then it would turn the world black.
Consumption was foremost on the minds of most of the Avatar's companions, chiefly the consumption of fluids. Sokka was starting to suspect that the Fire Nation could track them down with the vast trail of sweat they were leaving behind. Toph didn't feel particularly exerted, but there was a limit to the amount of heat she could stand, and she was definitely reaching it, even though Momo's frequent flapping of his own wings to cool himself down while perched on the Earthbender's shoulder was having a pleasant effect on her temperature. Katara had passed that point long ago. She had grown up around ice, she wasn't used to heat, and that was coupled with a…certain lack of motivation. Aang didn't hold any of these worries, partially out of a mystic detachment from the world, but mostly because out of all of them his Fire Nation clothes were the only ones woven with hot weather in mind. His eyes were focussed forward underneath his short, growing stubble of brown hair, and his sandal-covered feet walked with a regular rhythm. The others were beginning to struggle.
It was heading further into the afternoon, and they had travelled many li south from when they decided their course of action yesterday at noon. That decision was final enough that apart from discussing the paths of various roads, co-ordinating replenishment and rest alongside the thankfully plentiful fresh-water streams, and Toph's words of warning about an ever-increasing frequency of Fire Nation patrols, barely a word had passed among the group for the two days they had been travelling. Momo's constant panting didn't strictly count. Exhaustion makes one outspoken, however, and Sokka, finally articulating the question that had been preying on his mind for the entire journey, sparked the first real discussion they'd had since Aang decided they were going to the Fire Nation.
"So…how exactly are we going to reach the Fire Nation?" Sokka asked.
Aang slowed down, as evidently it was a very serious question, and turned innocently towards Sokka, responding, "you mean…you haven't been working on a plan?"
"What!? How can I plan for something I've no idea about!?" Sokka waved his arms in exhausted anger, "we've just been going in a general southerly direction for two days. Now, while the Fire Nation is that way, last I checked, only Katara is able to walk on water, and we can't use her as a substitute for Appa."
"Nah, a decent saddle'll fit her just right, I reckon," Toph joked, prompting an irritated bonk on the head from Katara, who was taking this whole quest somewhat uncertainly. Momo, who had lapsed into a heat-induced exhaustion for the last several li, was forced awake by the annoyed shudder from Toph, and looked around in confusion.
"We'll need a boat, and sneak into the Fire Nation that way," Sokka decided, letting the seriousness of his tone suppress his urge to laugh out loud at Toph's comment, "we might be able to find a fishing village near the coast, and if we go far enough south we'll be able to hitch a ride in a place outside of Fire Nation control, so long as we conceal our identities, which won't be hard without Appa along."
"You saw the state of the Fire Nation blockade last time we saw it," Katara reminded the 'military genius', "we could barely get through it on Appa, let along some kind of rickety wooden fishing vessel."
"And it'll take days to get south enough to be outside Fire Nation control," Toph pointed out, with a hint of concern, "Iroh might not have that long."
"The alternative is trying to sneak on-board a Fire Navy ship," Sokka laid down the options, "that's far too dangerous."
Toph, as blind as she was, had to blink in incredulity at the concept of 'too dangerous'. While Momo had briefly lifted off of her shoulder to gain some nutrition, she said matter-of-factly, "so?"
"Let's…just try to think this through," Katara appealed to reason in hot and flustered exasperation, "are we sure this is a good idea at all? Heading into the heart of the Fire Nation?"
"We don't have a choice!" Sokka went to great pains to emphasise, "I don't like it any more than you do, but so far I haven't seen any convincing signs pointing to anywhere else. Once we find General Iroh, then a few more options are open to us, but not before that."
"But we're heading into the Fire Nation, Sokka!" Katara felt herself get angrier every passing second, "the source of all the hurt and pain in the world right now, and we don't even know what it looks like!"
"Oh come on! It's not hard to imagine!" Sokka crossed his arms and closed his eyes as if recanting a well-known truth, "it is a place of black soot and brimstone where fire belches out of the burning embers of the underworld, and dark, hellish oni scour the earth eating the flesh of the living, forming Firebenders from the remains of rotten flesh and where women of ill-repute spend their efforts working infernal baby-gobbling machines instead of cooking meals and cleaning their lodgings like us decent Water Tribe folk."
In an earlier time, Katara would have burst out laughing at such a brain-stultingly moronic description, but nowadays she just looked annoyed, "'women of ill-repute'?"
"That's how old man Hukato always described it!" Sokka defended himself.
"'Old man Hukato' never saw a decent day's work in his ninety-four years on this earth, let alone the Fire Nation," Katara recalled of the old coot from their village, constant fixture of their childhood whenever Gran-Gran's stories got too staid, "and neither have you. No one has!"
"That can't be right…" Toph interjected, while Momo had dropped his piece of fruit to the ground as heat exhaustion caught up to the winged lemur, "in a hundred years there has to be at least one person from the other nations who's been to the Fire Nation."
"Sure, probably hundreds, just none that have ever come back," Sokka corrected Toph, "even prisoners-of-war are never taken there, dad told me. Except those the Firebenders never want anyone to see again…"
Sokka drifted into contemplation, as the fate of Suki weighed on his mind. He hadn't heard a word about her in over a month, except when he thought she'd come to Ba Sing Se, only to find it was Azula and her cronies in disguise. And with her not appearing on the Fire Nation's Most Wanted list, he had begun fearing the worst. He knew she would never have given up. In the void of the conversation, the argument about whether or not going to the Fire Nation was more than a suicidal idea drifted away into a sullen fact that they knew absolutely nothing about what they were getting themselves into. Aang had had enough with falling into endless voids, and sought to rectify this, cautiously.
"Uh…I've been to the Fire Nation," Aang spoke quietly, having spent most of the discussion on the sidelines. This statement took Sokka with more surprise than was strictly warranted, but at least it distracted him from thoughts about Suki.
"What!?" Sokka remarked startlingly, "since when!?"
"Since…a hundred years ago…" Aang commented as if it should have been obvious, "I did tell you I had a friend there, right?"
"No! You told me no such thing!" Sokka reacted angrily, "nice backing me up there, champ! It's good to feel frikkin' appreciated!"
"Calm down, you'll burst a blood vessel," Toph intervened, as the outburst had briefly woken Momo up, "but it's been over a century since you saw the Fire Nation, Aang. A lot changes in that time."
"Don't worry, I'm starting to get used to things changing," Aang reflexively felt the massive scar on his back, which was fast becoming an annoying habit, "besides, it might not have changed that much. Omashu hadn't changed a bit in the hundred years I hadn't been there…before it fell, anyway."
"Yeah, but that's the Earth Kingdom for you, we don't change much," Toph placed a hand on her hip assertively, "it's not in our nature. But this is the Fire Nation we're talking about. Look at this place, annexed Fire Nation territory. In days past my grandpa would drone on endlessly about the endless green fields his peasants toiled on up here or something dumb like that. Now look at it! The Fire Nation changes, shifts, morphs. It's like water except it goes uphill. You get that?"
"That's…weirdly perceptive of you, Toph…" Katara commented, "but she's got a point. The Fire Nation as it is now is going to be unrecognizable to the Fire Nation you knew."
"It's better than nothing, isn't it?" Aang shrugged, "and we don't have a choice, it's where we have to go."
"So…did it have the fire and the brimstone and the flesh-eating oni and the women of ill-repute?" Sokka queried.
Aang wasn't sure how to answer that. His experiences of the Fire Nation had been brief, but even in those days it didn't seem like the source of all evil or anything of the kind. It was warm, pretty tropical, had a lot of fishing ports and steam mills, and the people there were passionate and poetically-minded. And hungry. He remembered there were a lot of hungry people. But that was all he knew, and he'd seen only a small fraction of the place. But it was too much info to really condense into a form Sokka would have found satisfying, so he kept it simple, "uh…not the parts I saw."
"What? Old man Hukato was making it all up?" Sokka looked into the distance contemplatively, "who knew?"
Katara felt like beating her brother's brains out with something big and heavy, but Toph intervened before that plan could come to fruition with a sudden exclamation that Momo finally stayed awake after, flying off of the blind girl's shoulder, "guards! Coming from the south!"
"That's the fifth patrol in the last hour…" Katara commented on the sharp increase in Fire Army activity the further south they were heading, and quite frankly was finding it tiresome to jump into the bushes so often, while coddling an alerted Momo in her hands, "something must be up in this area."
"Whatever it is, we'll have to find out later," Aang was beginning to wander towards the trees to the right of them, "we need to hide…"
"Wait Aang!" Sokka placed a hand on Aang's shoulder, "this could be the chance we've been looking for! Do your thing with the 'cute-'n-innocent Fire Nation kid' act and try to get some info out of them! We'll hide and keep watch."
Aang, as detached as he was from the normal rules of cause and effect, nevertheless felt a distant pang of annoyance that he was the one taking all the risks, but the rest of the group was already hiding in the trees and the Fire Nation patrol was within eye-shot before it crossed Aang's mind to argue. Momo purred as he was concealed underneath Katara's arms, and Aang was left alone in the dusty red road. Breathing himself calm, his concerns lifted effortlessly, and he was an innocent 12-year-old again. He bounded towards the approaching soldiers, smiling and waving his hand like he was genuinely excited to see them, "hey there!"
The commander of the sizeable patrol, consisting of 12 soldiers, halted his men and looked a little surprised, "hi, kid. What are doing all the way out her by yourself?"
"Sorry to bother you, sir…" the red-clad boy halted before the squad and seemed briefly overcome with nervousness, twisting a sandal in the dust, "I was just travelling with my family and I got a little lost."
"You shouldn't be out here on your own, boy," the captain leant down to the short-haired child's eye level, "there's all kinds of bad people around this area. It just isn't safe for you to be wandering around like this."
"It won't happen again, sir," the boy looked up pleadingly, "I can manage on my own, I just need to get my bearings. I was walking with my relatives…we were going to visit the Fire Nation, y'see sir…and I got distracted by these mongoose-rabbits and I lost sight of them…I think I missed a turning a while back, but I don't think they're far. I just need to know where they're going."
"Man, he's good," Sokka whispered in admiration at how convincing Aang was, hidden deep in the crowded vegetation.
"Yeah…a little too good in my opinion," Toph whispered contentiously. She could feel the 12-year-old boy's heartbeat and found nearly completely stable, with only small deviances to indicate he was more than bending the truth a little. The child had attained a mastery over his own functionings that crept her out a little, even if it was handy.
It did more than creep Katara out. She felt that same nervous uncertainty she had felt earlier when Aang was fooling the Fire Nation patrol in the clearing where they discovered Iroh had escaped. It was something she felt whenever she considered the clothes the boy was wearing. It was more than simply the worrying nature of possible losing him…it was a small creeping horror that he was turning into something she feared more than anything in this world. Such fears were foolish, and she knew it, since she was concerned enough about getting Aang to feel alive again. It was just so nerve-wracking. The moments when he seemed more like the Aang she knew were more frequent, but the swings back into detachment were becoming practically schizophrenic. And here was the small, fragile boy, last hope for peace in this world, acting like an innocent little Fire Nation kid. She felt more scared for him than ever.
"The nearest port is Ryojun, sir, but that's dozens of li away," a private piped up behind the captain, "and there's a dan of roads leading that way."
The captain, taking this fact on board, pinched his nose in frustration, looking back at the small boy, "listen, we can't just leave you at the mercy of fate. How about you come along with us, and when we get back to our base we track down your relatives? They must be worried sick about you…"
"No! No…uh…they put a lot of trust in me!" Aang tried to cover his tracks, "I'm sure I could catch up with them if I knew the way…maybe…a map would be better?"
The way the boy panicked at his ruse falling apart seemed to abruptly bring Aang back to both Toph's and Katara's senses. His heartbeat was starting to beat widely and his visible nervousness was patently no longer an act. Katara felt herself smiling, even though it meant Aang was in trouble. Sokka tensed up, remarking irritably, "can't he keep to the damned script?"
"There's no way you'll be able to find your parents on your own, kid," the captain remarked, "and they shouldn't be hanging around this neck of the woods anyway. Honestly, leaving you behind, it's disgraceful. Isn't it corporal?"
"Absolutely, sir," the soldier nearest to the captain concurred, "this kind of behaviour is unacceptable for members of the Fire Nation."
"It's not what you think!" Aang waved his hands and smiled nervously, "it's just…my family's really big. They probably haven't even noticed I'm gone! Eheh…they're probably getting worried by now anyway, and I don't want to distract you guys from the really important work you do!"
Sokka gently lowered his back-pack to the ground and drew the boomerang from his back and peered carefully through the leaves in the bush, analyzing the situation, "they're getting too suspicious. We can't let Aang be captured. When I give the word, Toph, bury them in quick sand, while Katara and I try to get behind them and take out the stragglers."
The other members of the group nodded affirmatively, their amusement at Aang's self coming back into glorious water-colour tempered by fear for his physical well-being, being as he was trying to reason with a group of armed Fire Soldiers. Momo remained absolutely still. It was then that Toph felt surprise at feeling many extra pairs of boots emerging in all directions.
"Protecting the people of the Fire Nation is our really important work," the Captain rose to his feet and crossed his arms, feeling his sympathy for the boy drain away with every prevarication, "and something about you is making me wonder whether you appreciate the work we do."
"No! No! I'm really proud of what you're doing!" Aang reasoned desperately, "but you don't need to worry about me! Really! My relatives aren't that far away, I just need to know the local roads a bit more…without pressing on your time too much…eheh."
It was one nervous laugh too many for the captain, and he stared down the boy while the soldiers behind them raised their weapons in preparation, "you aren't really looking for your relatives, are you son?"
The look of nervous excitement on Aang's face gave way to a disappointed annoyance under that short brown crop of hair, "why can't you be idiots like normal guards?"
Sokka, taking this as the final cue towards a showdown, raised his boomerang in preparation for giving Toph the word to attack. But, just as the boomerang was coming down assertively, the ground beneath his feet seemed to shift as particles of dust flowed inward towards the road. Either side of Aang and the Fire Nation patrol massive liquid pillars of earth shot out of the ground and converged like a pair of hands over the startled soldiers underneath, who panicked in the face of such a wild outburst of dried mud and attempted to run away from under the collapsing tunnel formed around them, while Aang, surprised but still collected, attempted to leap backwards out of the earth-trap. It was to no avail, and they were all buried in the avalanche of dirt up to their necks, coughing and spluttering. Stuck fast, Aang and the soldiers heaved fruitlessly against the mound of dust that had appeared around them, blocking the entire road. Sokka's boomerang dropped limply to the Water warrior's side, and he looked at the almost instantaneous attack in shocked, and slightly impressed, surprise.
"Toph, I didn't mean for you to bury all of them…" Sokka looked behind himself to see that Toph was not actually in any kind of Earthbending stance, and was simply lying on the ground with her head in her hands, looking substantially annoyed.
"That wasn't me," Toph drawled irritably, pouting at being spectacularly upstaged. Both Sokka and Katara whirled around to see leaping out of the bushes a little up the road from them at least two dozen men, dressed in casual shades of green but all either physically well-built or wielding something very deadly-looking, approaching the buried mass of soldiers and Avatar from either side, staring intently, determinedly, and angrily at the red-clad people. The captain of the Fire Nation patrol managed to free one hand enough to push his helmet out of his eyes, looking at the assembled burley young men with astonishment. The realisation spreading on his face was palpable.
"Oh…phooey," the captain remarked disappointingly, "three days till the end of my tour and this happens."
"What do we do?" Katara whispered questioningly, calming a rattled Momo. They were concealed in the shadows so that only small pin-pricks of light penetrated through and touched their faces, while the Earthbenders and assorted weapons-wielders were positioned with some caution along the edge of the road. If they moved any further they'd be spotted. Sokka held an arm out before the other two members of the group and crouched. He wanted to know what he was dealing with first.
Sokka soon got his answer when another strong man stepped out of the bushes on the other side of the road. Unlike the others, he was clothed in something much closer to an Earth Army uniform, though slightly modified to cope with the summer heat. This was an altogether more familiar face, and one he would've done well to anticipate: the face of Colonel Yuung, slightly hidden in the shade of his wide hat, looking stern in the face of the enemy. He spoke with some gravity, "look on the bright side. Your tour ended a little early. I might consider letting you go home if you took every other of you metal-heads with you."
"You…" the captain was shocked at the sight of the man more than he'd been shocked at the sight of the collapsing tunnel, and angrily sneered first at the Colonel and then at the small short-haired boy who was still struggling ineffectually at getting himself out of the earth trap, "you tricked us! You conniving little brat!"
Aang, struggling with eyes screwed shut and teeth gritted as he was, didn't like to be called a conniving little brat, and turned towards the captain pleadingly, "what? No I didn't! I…"
Aang stopped abruptly as he was shrouded in shadow, the humid air around him suddenly and inexplicably cooling. He looked up at the gaze of the stern and grim-faced Colonel, which somehow chilled his heart, as the fierce and stone-faced man looked down upon him with something like authority, and something else…a deep-seated hatred that was in him the last time they'd met. In the months since, it seemed to have grown, and intently focused on him in particular. It was with an eye-opening realisation that Aang figured out what he was focusing on…a Fire Nation child.
"Uh…he's with us, actually…" a teenaged boy spoke up behind the Colonel, and his stare gratefully lifted from Aang's face and towards the straggle of Water Tribe peasants, runaway Earth Kingdom noble heiresses and winged lemurs that retreated nervously from the collection of clenched fists, shiny pikes and sharp, pointy objects that suddenly surrounded them. As the Colonel's glare lifted to be replaced with surprise, he called off the irregulars from their fighting poses.
"Sokka?" the Colonel wondered questioningly, "Katara? What are you two doing all the way out here?"
"I could ask the same thing about you!" Sokka approached with a disarming smile along with the others, "what are all of you doing this far north?"
"We'll have time to answer each other's questions later," the Colonel responded warmly, before giving Aang another glare, "except one…who is this Fire Nation boy and why is he 'with you'?"
"He's not a…!" Katara exclaimed before being quickly kicked in the shin by a still-smiling Sokka.
"He's...a friend of ours! He's turned against the Fire Nation and come over to our side…" Sokka explained quickly while Katara winced, "his name's…Kazuki. He'll be no trouble at all, quiet as a mouse, honest."
The Colonel continued eyeing the small boy in a suspicious and untrusting fashion, and barely a heartbeat stirred. Only Aang was within close enough hearing distance to hear the Colonel mutter under his breath, "so the Avatar really is dead…" Yuung revealed his decision when he turned his determined eyes back to Sokka and Katara, stating in no uncertain terms, "if he so much as twitches in my direction I'm sending him to the roof of the sky."
Colonel Yuung raised one of his legs and pushed it into the ground with excessive force, and without turning his head shunted Aang out of the ground and onto his backside with a small yelp. Sprawled out on the dirt mound, the young 'Kazuki' was thus born in the minds of everyone around him: a small, vulnerable, apologetic and spineless Fire Nation boy, rubbing his behind in unassuming pain. He got to his own two feet and brushed off his bare knees while Yuung marched away from them back towards the forest.
"Okay men, get them shackled and hooded! I don't want a single eyeball peeking from those Firebender stooges," the Colonel ordered. The men nodded in acknowledgement, and despite their casual attire they acted with the utmost professionalism. Although some kept a suspicious eye on 'Kazuki' as he rejoined the rest of the group, Sokka, Katara and Toph were broadly accepted into the team. Their reputation had preceded them, and it seems there was an implicit assumption that they were obliged to accompany them.
"So…is this good?" Katara asked out loud, stroking Momo in uncertainty.
"They're not trying to kill us, so it's going wonderfully by our standards," Toph decided, beginning to follow the team as they took their prisoners and disappeared into the humid forest. The rest of the group felt no reason to argue, and walked into the bushes on the other side of the road with her. The road was flattened, and to any unsuspecting passer-by it would have seemed like absolutely nothing had happened along this quiet stretch of dusty, red highway. Only the gentle rustle of the trees indicated anything out of the ordinary in the draining red light at the end of a beautiful summer's day.
To Be Continued…
Avatar: The Last Airbender Concept and Characters © Nickelodeon 2005-06