They had walked for quite a distance…non-stop…for the whole day. Even Toph was getting a little irritated at the distances they were having to travel. Their feet ached, their legs ached, their backs ached, their heads ached and their stomachs were roaring at the indignity of it all. But the irregulars had yet to stop walking, and it was getting hard to keep pace with the strong men and not lose sight of them amongst the dense trees and pointy branches, especially as night began creeping up on them. Lighting up torches would have been suicidal in the territory, and despite the increasingly heavy burden of the backpacks they were wearing they didn't dare stop for a breather. They took one of their early hints from the green-clothed guerrillas in front of them: for goodness' sake, if you're travelling across continents on the run from the authorities…travel light.

With all the effort at catching up with the irregulars, the group hadn't had much of a chance at any discussion, but as they travelled further they began hearing the loud roar of a river nearby. Although distant and muffled through the canopy of the wood, it allowed the group to exchange low whispers about the predicament they had found themselves in. But before they dared do so, Katara made a well-aimed kick at Sokka's shin through the shroud of gloom.

"Ow!" Sokka exclaimed as loudly as he dared with the guerrillas close by, briefly hopping through the undergrowth in pain, "what was that for?"

"That hurt, you big dumb jerk," Katara argued pointedly before petting a half-asleep Momo to ease her tension, "so tell me, 'mastermind', why do we have to call Aang 'Kazuki' for the rest of this trip?"

"What? It's a perfectly good Fire Nation-sounding name," Sokka shrugged philosophically, "lots of 'k's, lots of 'z's, a 'u' in the middle, I'm kinda proud of it myself…"

"That's not what I mean!" Katara whispered harshly, "why couldn't we tell them Aang was really…Aang? That the Avatar is alive?"

"We couldn't risk it with those Fire Nation soldiers near-by," Sokka asserted, staring ahead in grim certitude, "it's safer all-round if we keep Aang's identity a secret."

Aang kept quiet, feeling for whatever reason that he didn't really have a say in this kind of decision. Toph regarded Sokka a little more suspiciously. His heartbeat raised a little, and it was obvious that it wasn't the whole reason for his secrecy. Feeling a little more self-conscious, Toph wandered closer to Katara until she was walking alongside the Waterbender.

"Hey, Katara, can I have Momo back?" Toph requested, and Katara considered the request carefully before leaning over to perch the slowly awakening winged lemur on the blind girl's shoulder.

"Sure…" Katara leaned back and brushed her fingers through her long, unkempt hair in a teasing expression of her own pleasant curiosity, "I never thought you as someone who could be so attached to small furry animals."

"Oh, there's nothing sentimental about it. I've just come to realise that having a winged lemur perched on my shoulder comes with certain convenient perks for someone like me," Toph corrected Katara, and just to illustrate the point, the sleepy animal jolted itself wide awake with a screech upon hearing a snap in the twigs above, and stood straight upright on Toph's shoulder catch a piece of fruit a few inches before it struck Toph's head. Toph took the fruit from Momo's gradually calming hands and bit into it smarmily, addressing Katara with a sly smile, "case in point."

Katara raised an eyebrow at Toph's utilitarian definition of close pets, before wondering out loud, "where do you think we're headed, anyway?"

"I'm not sure, but I think we're heading deeper into the Earth Kingdom," Aang's geographical know-how emerged from his spindly self, "we've been going south-east for a few hours now, so that river we're hearing must be the Yalujiang. It's famous for these twin pillars that lie either side of its passage to the Mo Ce Sea. They hang over the sides of the river like icicles and have this lattice-like structure, inside which are these pools where these amazing water creatures live. I've always wanted to see that too…"

Aang sighed in wistfulness before clearing his mind and marching along. Sokka, realising something, pulled one of the maps from his satchel bag and unrolled it, trying to see glimpses of the parchment through the gaps of starlight falling through the trees. In concentration, the warrior extrapolated, "you know, if I was some evil conniving Fire Nation general carving up bits of the Earth Kingdom for permanent annexation, this would be an excellent place to draw the border."

"Excellent supposition," Yuung's voice made Sokka's head snap abruptly upwards as the voice was uncomfortably close. While he was peering at the map, much of the forest in front of them had abruptly disappeared, and in front of them lay instead Yuung and his band of guerrillas, the dozen hooded and whimpering Fire Soldiers, a sandy embankment and a wide river that looked almost grey in the small light of the crescent moon. Yuung was looking at them all impatiently with crossed arms, "except you forgot one thing about us Earthbenders: we make our own borders."

The Colonel spun around and adopted a stance in mid-air, shifting his weight to his right foot and planting it before him, thrusting both his clenched fists forward and up. The ground shook and a sizeable hole opened in a rocky outcrop that hung over the river, inside which was a large, heavily reinforced tunnel. Colonel Yuung straightened up before turning back towards the slightly stunned group, staring fiercely, "I want that Fire Nation brat walking where I can see him, understand?"

The others nodded, and the group made their way down the sandy embankment towards the hole. Outside the tree canopy, the starlight defined their features, evanescently blue and heavily lined with shadow, as they emerged one by one and walked carefully past the irregulars. While treading through the sand, Toph suddenly stopped with a quizzical expression on her face, leading Sokka to nearly collide into her, and she faced down-river as a low rumble lightly reverberated through the air. Momo's fur stood on end as high-frequency sounds set his teeth on edge, and the rest of the group turned to look in the direction Toph was looking. Near the horizon, a number of stars were shading out of existence as something drifted upwards to block the view. Toph, figuring out what that rumble was, said "something really big exploded down that way…"

"Construction work. The Fire Nation's been clearing the way for something called a 'railroad' to be built between the Earth King's territory and the Fire Colonies," Yuung informed the group of the source of the explosion, before adding with a scent of satisfaction, "we're blowing it up next week."

"Ha! That'll show 'em!" Sokka joined in with Yuung's smugness, which abruptly disappeared from the Colonel's star-lit features as he eyed the group impatiently.

"I didn't tell you to stop," he reminded the group, the members of which collectively winced at the directedness of the remark. They turned and entered into the dark tunnel, with Toph confidently, if poutingly, leading the way. Sokka followed sullenly, while Katara paused to gulp down some nervousness before entering the tunnel, bending over in order to fit inside the hole. Aang led up the rear, carefully watched by Yuung, who followed right behind the group and led his fighters and the prisoners inside.

While Toph strode ahead, despite Momo's increasing fretfulness at the utter abundance of the dark, she eventually had to slow down as she realised that the others were finding it hard to walk forwards into such lack of light. It was all the same to her, though the flow of liquid a short distance over their heads and the ever-present dampness brought with it an unshakeable insecurity and some extremely unwelcome memories. She wondered if the others were feeling the same way, and sure enough Katara was trying to calm herself down from a panicky heartbeat. The Waterbender could handle the river above fine, but Toph knew what else she was thinking about. For Toph, the blind girl had the comfort of feeling solid earth beneath her toes, but the feel of squishy, amorphous blind spots frayed her nerves. Sokka paused just behind her as the door of the tunnel closed and Toph guessed that whatever this weird thing called 'light' was, it wasn't coming in anymore. Then she could feel a frail pair of footsteps approaching in the low-ceilinged tube of robe, coupled with a little warmth. She almost imperceptibly noticed the quickening of Aang's heartbeat, which was unusual in itself since it had remained almost monolithically stable for the entire journey.

"So who're these sorry varmints, then?" the bare-footed old man in brown rags holding a flaming torch was obviously not a part of Yuung's professional team, being obstinate and mean-eyed, but he still showed, in his own way, deference towards the Colonel. Colonel Yuung, for his part, made light of the man's paranoia.

"These 'sorry varmints' were the Avatar's closest companions, and our honoured guests," the Colonel leaned over and smiled from behind the group, before turning his eyes suspiciously towards 'Kazuki', "except that kid. Supposedly he's an ally, but keep him on a short leash for the next day at least, you hear?"

The old man peered closely at the small boy, innocently looking from one pair of paranoid eyeballs to the other with unassuming fright. For a moment, Aang's eyes rested on the torch, which instinctively drew his field of vision as the small flame danced, flickered and breathed. The man holding it, noticing the red-clothed boy's line of sight, turned the flame away from Aang as if keeping a dangerous object out of arm's reach, glaring at the boy the whole time. He addressed Yuung once again, "so how far down does the Earth reach, stranger?"

"'The Earth reaches into the depths of our bones'," Yuung recited impatiently, "it always has reached into the depths of our bones, it always will reach into the depths of our bones, and it will continue reaching into the depths of our bones the next time you ask."

"Don't blame me for keeping up one of your stupid ideas…" the old man complained, turning from the front of the procession and leading the torch down the narrow tunnels. With something to see in front of them, the group began to walk again, bending their backs further to get through the narrower sections under the middle of the river. The tunnel kept going generally downwards, levelling off after a few minutes but never rising.

The dampness receded after some time, and the tunnel gradually became chunkier and more solid. This gave Toph greater confidence in the firmness of the foundations. She didn't need Momo to tell if anything was going to fall on her head anymore, but at the very least his rising and falling nervousness at the surroundings gave Toph a decently good idea of how much light was in the tunnel. She was finding his claustrophobia a little funny and despite the continuing awkward silence between the group and Yuung's irregulars the atmosphere seemed to ease a little. This may have had something to do with being away from Fire Nation-controlled territory, but relaxing one's guard at any time was a risky proposition for them in particular.

After a while, the light from the torch struck a blank wall at the end of the tunnel. Placing the torch in a holder affixed to the side of the tunnel, the old man took up a stance and dropped his arms before the wall, bringing it vertically downwards into the ground and letting light spill into a large, dark space beyond. As the old man reclaimed the torch and walked forward, the edges of the basement they had found themselves in came into light. A ladder was attached to the far wall, leading up to a wooden door embedded in the ceiling, while a substantial series of tunnels led off in all directions. While the group was wandering out of the tunnel, Yuung's men emerged from behind them and quickly went about their business.

"Get the names of those soldiers as soon as possible. We don't want the Fire Nation claiming they didn't really have captured soldiers like last time," Yuung ordered as his men led the Fire Soldiers down an adjacent tunnel and gradually disappeared, while the old man re-entered the tunnel and bended it closed behind him, taking his torch with him. Yuung took a couple of small rocks out of his pocket and scraped them against each other over an unlit torch in the corner of the room, which promptly lit. He picked up the torch and turned to the assembled companions of the boy formerly known as the Avatar, "now we can talk."

"Okay, now we're away from the Fire Soldier's ears, I think it's safe to tell you," Katara addressed Yuung seriously and indicated towards Aang, "this boy…'Kazuki'…he's really Aan-"

Katara winced in pain as Sokka made another swift kick to her shin, smiling at the Colonel as if nothing had happened, "he's really…anxious…as…we all are! Anxious to find out where exactly this place is."

The Colonel looked towards the short-haired boy who had taken to theatrically twiddling his fingers, "he should be anxious about a lot more than just that, but it was a good idea to wait until now before asking." Yuung wandered over to the ladder and placed his torch in a holder next to it, beginning to climb one rung at a time, suggesting on the fourth rung without turning his head, "You can see for yourself if you follow me."

As the rest of the group moved to follow, Katara was still half-paralysed in wincing pain, and harshly whispered to Sokka, "did you have to kick the same place twice?"

"I wouldn't have to if you could just keep your mouth shut about our dear friend 'Kazuki'," Sokka argued quietly, placing a hand on one of the ladder's rungs after Aang. As his back was turned he received a short, sharp kick in his calf, and paused in minor agony before turning back to a furious Katara, "yeah, real mature, little sis."

Katara, staring intently at Sokka, moved her hands to open her water pouch. Getting the message, Sokka quickly turned and climbed up the ladder after Toph and Aang. Katara moved her hands away from her pouch and onto the ladder beneath her brother, but still stared intently at the back of the warrior's head. Yuung, now at the top of the ladder, knocked slowly on the bottom of the wooden trap-door four times, and quickly three times, waiting a few seconds before the door opened and more natural light entered the gloomy basement.

"Find any interesting knick-knacks down in the basement, sir?" a young voice came from above, as Yuung clambered quickly out of the opening in the floor of the room above and stood next to it, allowing the rest of the group to emerge from underneath him.

"Oh yes. 12 shiny pebbles and a few companion pieces to the four-coloured vase that was…smashed to bits," Yuung spoke cryptically to the young boy who couldn't have been that much older than Aang, but still sported two streaking burn marks on his cheek. At the news of the vase, the boy's smile fell, and he looked at the four people emerging from the hole.

Toph was first to climb out, having little difficulty getting to her feet, while Aang stepped straight onto the floor from the last rung of the ladder. Sokka had to use his hands to get out of the hole properly, while Aang stood to the side to help Katara up. The room was small in comparison to the basement, consisting of small, Spartan dimensions and a tiny window to let in the dim star-light. Another wooden door led out, but there was nothing in the small room other than that except a thin futon that had been rolled over. The trap-door lay right next to it, so presumably the futon was for the express purpose of hiding the entrance to the tunnels below. The young boy was dressed in green rags and sported a scruffy haircut, but still had a sword belt around his waist. Upon seeing 'Kazuki', the bright young boy suddenly came over grim-faced and reached for his sword.

"No need to worry," Yuung stayed the boy's hand sympathetically, "this shiny pebble's taking a place in our collection…for now."

The Colonel said the last two words as a warning, and Aang got the message clearly enough, nodding in recognition. The young boy relaxed his grip on his knife, but not his attitude towards 'Kazuki'. He did, however, end up distracted by the rapid ball of white fur that shot out of the hole and flew a complete circle around the room before resting on the open hole that served as a window inside the hut. Momo leaned over and peered out at the sight. The others crowded over to look over the winged lemur's shoulder and saw the outside of the hut, a long series of stone rectangular huts dimly lit by infrequent torches, around which plentiful bundles of cloth lay scattered along the muddy road that separated the hut from the row of huts symmetrical to it. It took close examination before they noticed there were actually people inside those bundles of rags. They were protecting themselves against the mild cold of the early summer night, and didn't look like they had any place to stay. The huts didn't have doors, and bundles of cloth seemed to be piled just as haphazardly inside them as outside. Behind the row of huts was a wall no taller than a typical person, and beyond that wall a number of trees that could be seen by dim torch-light.

"We can't stay here and gawp all day," the Colonel reminded the group, "I'll show you to a place you can get some rest. You'd better appreciate it, because that's more than most people here get."

The group, all seemingly distracted in thought at the sight of the place, looked back and drifted into line behind Colonel Yuung as he opened the door out of the hut. Toph once again offered an arm that the dazed and tired Momo dutifully took, and followed straight behind Katara. The Waterbending girl was struck by an immense wall of frustration and melancholy as soon as she stepped out the door and saw something like the view through the window mirrored to infinity. Huts lay in approximate, haphazard rows that sometimes merged and coalesced with each other, as huge numbers of hungry, desperate people lay sandwiched between them, trying to claim whatever source of heat they could. Kids played between the rows of blanket-clad people unattended, trying to find whatever distraction they could create out of their spare time. Most of their parents had given up, and simply nursed their empty bowls. A small girl had briefly stopped building a pile of rocks to stand straight up and salute Yuung as he walked past. Yuung didn't seem to notice, but Katara could tell that the people in whatever place this was treated the man in the makeshift uniform with a large amount of respect.

"What is this place?" Katara asked out loud, her eyes continuously distracted by her surroundings.

"They don't have a name for it," Yuung described without turning his head, "it's a refugee camp, one of a number of them that lie just behind the front-line. Many of the refugees from Omashu ended up here."

"Why didn't they go to Ba Sing Se?" Sokka enquired, just about keeping up with the Colonel's quick pace.

"Many of them did, those who decided that they would never get their homes back," Yuung declared, "for those of us who couldn't accept that, these are the places we ended up in. These camps been around for a lot longer than us. Some date back almost to the very beginning of the War."

"So these people have been living like this for a century?" Toph openly questioned. It seemed to stretch plausibility, "why are they still here, now the war's over?"

Yuung stopped and turned his head towards the massless sea of rags, "because the war's not over for these people. They were driven out of their homes by the Fire Nation, replaced by settlers who took everything they had. Now our leaders are telling them that there's 'peace', but what kind of peace can it be when the Fire Nation is still everywhere on Earth Kingdom soil? When the Firebenders still have seventy-six military bases across territory that doesn't even belong to them?"

"I thought it was seventy-seven?" Aang interrupted quietly. Yuung's stern glare was sufficient to force the short-haired boy to explain himself, "sorry…it's just…I heard someone talk about Base 77…"

"Ach, we made that stuff up. It was one of Bumi's ideas to motivate our soldiers better if there was some unnamed Fire Nation base with a random number attached to it where all kinds of horrors could be left to the imagination. These people don't need delusions, they need their homes back," Yuung began walking again, indicating the sprawling mass around him, "these people's lives were taken away from them, and now the Earth King says that they can never have them back, that their lives are the Fire Nation's now, and they have no right to reclaim them as their own. They can't accept that, and neither can I."

"That's terrible…" Katara mumbled, letting the incalculable number of the poor and tired and vulnerable wash over her vision. She was lost for words. Aang looked for some time, but after a while his eyes dropped. He couldn't dare look these victims in the eye, products of a mistake he made, but he resolved, as he had resolved before and will resolve again before all this was over, to put right this horrific imbalance.

"Actually…about the Earth King…" Sokka quietly intruded into Colonel Yuung's spiel, "he was secretly overthrown by his royal guard, the Dai Li! That's why the Earth Kingdom made peace, because the Dai Li's committed itself to Fire Princess Azula! We managed to get the King to safety at the Northern Air Temple…"

Yuung scoffed and looked over Sokka with an incredulous eye, "so he's either a collaborator or a wimp overthrown by other collaborators? Is he practicing 'neutral jing' as well or is he really as pathetic as he sounds?"

"Hey, don't talk about Kuei that way! He's a nice guy!" Katara turned back to Yuung with her hands on hips, "admittedly maybe a little too nice, but if the Earth Kingdom is to rise again, we'll need his help!"

"What goes on behind the Walls doesn't interest me in the slightest, young woman," Yuung remarked disparagingly, turning forwards and walking briskly again down another narrow row of huts, "what does interest me is helping these people get their land back. If the generals aren't able to do it, then that leaves us."

The Colonel had led them to a large building with lights streaming out from the windows embedded in it. Yuung knocked on the wooden door, and a small gap in-between the planks through which previously streamed light abruptly filled with a blood-shot eyeball, speaking in a low, extremely tired voice, "how high does the earth rise?"

"The earth rises to the crown of our skulls," Yuung repeated mechanically, and the eyeball disappeared to the tune of clicks and clacks before the door finally opened, revealing a warm, orange interior with the door held open by a man dressed from head to foot in brown rags and scruffy bandages, having difficulty standing up. Yuung led the group inside the building, which they couldn't help but notice was a lot smaller on the inside. The discrepancy was quickly explained by the sick man pulling aside a tattered tapestry to reveal a large hole in the wall, leading downwards. Yuung walked inside without hesitation, but Aang briefly paused to look into the sick man's eyes, expecting some form of recrimination for his clothing. Mysteriously, however, the man didn't seem to pay 'Kazuki' much heed, and indeed it suddenly struck him that he had wandered through a refugee camp with every reason to string him up from the nearest wall, and yet he had passed unmolested and unnoticed, despite the reception from the old man and the young boy they'd met earlier. Whatever the reason, he had no choice but to follow Sokka downward into yet another of the labyrinthine tunnels that ran through the camp like coal seams.

The tunnel led into another, larger, connecting tunnel, dimly lit by small torches and considerably more populated. Here, men and boys of all ages ran to and fro in constant activity, sometimes carrying equipment or buckets of various substances. Although some of them seemed to have been professional soldiers, many more were quite noticeably civilians drafted into military work. No one except Yuung wore any kind of uniform, and they didn't pay much attention to the newcomers except to nod their respect for the Colonel, being intently busy on whatever matter they had set themselves on. There were boys as young as ten and old men who still considered themselves in the prime of their health, and sometimes people with bandages and lost limbs hobbling determinedly from one tunnel to the next. The professionals were noticeable because they were the only ones who didn't move in much of a hurry.

"How long has this been going on?" Katara asked, amazed at the organisation of the tunnels they were walking down.

"These tunnels were first built by smugglers supplying food and weapons to the refugees, they've been around for years," Yuung explained, facing forward, "but when my men found them, we decided to put them towards more…practical uses. We've established a wider network, and now with the new 'peace' we've been given an opportunity to put this network to good use."

"I see…now that the Earth Kingdom's made peace with the Fire Nation, the border's no longer guarded," Sokka surmised.

"Precisely," Yuung continued, "two weeks ago you couldn't move for all the troops positioned just across the river. But now their forces have withdrawn towards the north we can slink through whenever we wish. Ironically, it's opened up the possibility of finally getting these refugees' land back."

"You're planning to drive out the Fire Nation from the north-west?" Toph wondered, since it sounded a bit of a tall order for the straggle of irregulars they'd ran into thus far.

"From the inside out, yes," Yuung spoke cryptically, not used to having to explain his actions.

The group walked past a wide alcove, but didn't enter it. Though they all gave the dark tunnel a cursory glance, none of them noticed the small kid who peered out the corner of the alcove, holding onto a short pike, eyes peeking out from under a stolen copper helmet. His eyes widened at the sight of the Avatar's companions, and he gazed in shock at their passing by.

"Pipsqueak!" the helmeted boy whispered loudly, "Pipsqueak! Look at who just arrived!"

"What is it, Duke?" a low, guttural voice emerged from an adjoining tunnel, inside which a colossal giant of a man filled the space between the rocks, holding a sack of supplies effortlessly on his shoulder. He peered round the corner from behind the tiny, pensive Duke and snarled, "you gotta be kidding me."

"It's those jerks," the Duke cringed angrily at them, "if it wasn't for them, the Freedom Fighters wouldn't have broken up!"

"Glad the Airbender's dead," Pipsqueak rumbled, "now we can get back to what we should've been doing all along."

"Yeah…" the Duke agreed with a mischievous smile, before his attention snapped to the red-clothed kid treading carefully behind the Avatar's group, "wait…is he one of ours?"

"I don't know…I never saw him before," Pipsqueak briefly wondered, before leaning up with his sack of foodstuffs and starting to walk back down the tunnel they'd emerged from, "c'mon, Duke, you know how mad Thaksin gets when we're late with his supplies."

"…sure…" the Duke confirmed, still looking at the strange, short-haired boy. As the red-clothed kid turned a corner to disappear, the Duke saw something that would haunt him for the rest of the night in curiosity. The boy he saw, absent-mindedly, lifted up the back of his shirt to rub an enormous scar that ran down the length of his spine and burst outwards like a star. The Duke was still staring out at it in amazement when a massive hand emerged out of the tunnel behind him to grab his shoulder and pull him back towards his prescribed duties.

The two boys carried on with their tasks, as did everyone else in the hive of tunnels, dedicated towards the task of purging the Earth Kingdom of Firebenders forever.

To Be Continued…

Avatar: The Last Airbender Concept and Characters © Nickelodeon 2005-06