Name: Hostage
Description: Walking through one of the smaller villages, you encounter a woman who begs for your assistance. As you enter the house, she holds a gun to the back of your head and two other masked gun men flip around with automatics. They disarm you of any weapons you have and tie up your hands and feet, holding you hostage. You find that you are one of two other people who had been living in the home who have been tied up. You find out that these are fugitives who are known for mass murder. By the looks of the fugitives, all of them including the woman could put up a fight good enough to take you out. How will you get out of this situation?
Aang punched the bag in front of him, sending it swinging at an alarming angle. He dodged the bag and caught it, settling it down. The boy was sweating profusely after his workout. He didn't think of the exercising as a way to get better, he thought of it as a good way to release his anger but he ended up doing both in the end. The monk pulled on his top but paused in front of the mirror – he'd only aged a few days in his time on this world but he looked somehow older. He was still the same scrawny child but there was this presence about him, almost an eternal sadness. Aang quickly turned away before he thought too much about it. Aang walked out of the gym and to the control tower, looking for Arthur.
He found the Samurai bent over a computer screen, muttering to himself. Aang walked up to him and tapped him on the shoulder. Arthur whipped round so fast you'd have thought he'd seen a ghost.
"Oh, Aang, it's just you," he said, looking slightly afraid. "Anyway Aang we have to head out on patrol now, to a small village on the coast."
"What's your problem?" Aang asked,
"I don't have a problem. Just drop it and let's go,' he spat as he walked from the room. Aang bent down and went to look at his searching history – it had been erased. Aang's imagination automatically clicked on and he wondered what sort of dirty stuff Arthur had been looking up. With his imagination whirring, Aang followed his partner out to the air pad.
The boy climbed into the helicopter and glanced at Arthur who just ignored him. Aang noticed that the usually calm warrior was gripping the wheel far too tightly – the whites of his knuckles shone out like small flashlights. Aang didn't bother pushing the matter so he just sat back and relaxed.
A thudding sound told Aang to wake up because they were landing. He could hear the rotor blades slowing down so he made to open his door. But just as his hand reached the latched he realized Arthur was completely still – as in not controlling the helicopter. Arthur seemed to have fallen unconscious while flying the aircraft, and now they were in a direct course for the ground.
Aang lurched over the helicopter, grabbing Arthur and launching himself out of the vehicle with Arthur in his arms. The monk began frantically kicking his legs, trying to conjure enough air to slow their descent – it was difficult with the giant Arthur weighing him down. Just before they hit the ground Aang did an extra hard kick and managed to slow them down enough to not be pulverized and become one with the ground. Aang crawled out from underneath Arthur and surveyed his surroundings: he was surrounded by trees all around, no sign of life anywhere…well, human life.
"At least it's peaceful," Aang said, trying to be optimistic. As he said this the helicopter plummeted to the ground, destroy the forest around him. "At least it didn't explo-" the helicopter exploded setting the entire patch of undergrowth around them alight. The boy sighed; he never learned to shut up.
The fire was spreading fast and would soon consume him, Arthur and at least a million small woodland creatures in the vicinity. Aang sprang up, leaping into the air and sweeping his arm down, sending a massive blast of air at the flames. The oxygen only made the flames bigger, brighter. So Aang tried again, but this time he concentrated all of his energy into his hands and pushed downwards. The blast of air that erupted sent him flipping backwards through the air but most of the fire had gone out at least.
After he had finished with the flames he went down to check on his friend. Arthur wouldn't respond to anything Aang did to him. Aang checked his pupils and blew on them – no response. He pinched Arthur's earlobe – no response. He put a small flame down Arthur's pants – no response. Aang sighed – he'd got himself into another extremely frustrating predicament. The small boy shouldered his partner and set off at a walk in a completely random direction – he had absolutely no way to tell which way a village or any sort of civilization was. He only hoped he ran into a river somewhere that could lead him to a village.
Hours later Aang was still walking, lugging around the massive form of Arthur. By then Aang's legs had practically turned to jelly and his friend's motionless body was all that was keeping him from toppling over and giving up. Aang had always worked hard in his life but never before had he walked this far before let alone carrying a huge man.
Occasionally throughout the journey Aang would hear a hissing sound which would send shivers down his spine and reminded him all too well that he was not alone in this jungle – there were things lurking, just waiting for his concentration to slip. Even the slightest moment of relaxation could have him inside something's belly. Even with the thought of being digested alive he still found it hard to keep his eyes open. And for just a second he closed his eyes and relaxed.
All of a sudden he felt himself be tackled to the ground by something slimy and scaly. Aang opened his eyes to see a snake's enormous head rearing up ready to strike. It darted forward with amazing speed and Aang just managed to catch the snake's jaws, inches from his head. The monk wrenched the reptile's jaws open as wide as he could and then spat a ball of flame down its throat. He watched as it writhed on the ground and after a few minutes it lay still. The boy felt a slight burning sensation on his face and rubbed the sore area. He took his hand away to find some weird purple jelly that was convulsing on his hand. It was a very weird substance and it seemed to be alive. Aang rubbed it off on a tree and went and picked up Arthur again, resuming the walk.
Aang finally found a river which was rapidly flowing and obviously inhabited with even more dangerous creatures. Aang decided to take his chances with the river rather than walking alongside for a few hundred kilometers. He quickly set to work making a crude raft out of a log and some sticks. He found a sharp looking rock and chiseled out seats for both him and Arthur and then he lashed sticks perpendicular to the bottom of the raft to help keep it balanced. He stepped back to look at his work and was utterly appalled at the result. It was the best the bald boy could have hoped for but it really did not look safe. He just shrugged and bundled Arthur into the front where he could keep an eye on him and then sat in the back himself. Aang wrapped his legs around Arthur to keep him steady and then lay back himself and put his hands in the water. He fired a burst of continuous air from his hands to push them off from the bank and then adjusted his hands – just like a speed boat's engine to turn. It wasn't the best way to turn but it proved effective enough not to get them killed.
Quite a few times along the way Arthur woke up in an extremely delirious state and tried to tip the boat over, Aang had to knock him back out to stop them both dying. Eventually after dodging many rocks, crocodiles and anacondas they arrived at a village.
Aang hauled Arthur and himself onto the shore my tipping over the boat and lying in a puddle. He waited for a few minutes before getting up. He was absolutely exhausted – all of his muscles were burning with tiredness – he could barely move. Aang struggled to his feet and began to drag Arthur through the mud towards a cluster of houses. Aang didn't bother picking him up, he was just too exhausted.
A woman spotted the bedraggled boy limping across the village and ran over to him. "Are you okay?"
"Yeah I'm fine. But my friend seems to have collapsed," Ang replied, gesturing at the mud-coated form of his friend.
"Well come in and relax while I tend to your friend," she offered as she ran away back to her house. The Avatar sighed and lifted his partner up and began dragging him to the house. He opened the door to find two other men in the room with the woman; they were facing the wall so Aang put Arthur cautiously down on the bed and subtly tensed himself for an attack.
"Sit down, Aang," the women ordered as the men turned around with deadly looking guns. "Listen, Aang, you've got yourself caught up in something that is beyond you, something that will revolutionize the course of the future. I'm going to tell you this because I don't think it is fair for you to die without knowing what a good cause you died for."
Aang sat down when the gunman jabbed him in the back. "You see, years ago before we were sent to prison we managed to make a formula – a prototype which we injected into your friend. Basically we programmed your friend's brain to react to the news of our escape by seeking us out. He obviously tried to fight the control which is why he passed out, but thankfully you managed to deliver him to us safely," the lady said with a smile.
"Don't mention it," Aang sneered.
"Come now, Aang, don't be bitter. You'll have died for a good cause. Now without anymore interruptions I'll explain further. All we have to do now is inject him with this," she held up a syringe filled with some sort of purple liquid. The liquid seemed to be moving around. "Once we've injected him he'll become our very own slave," she giggled maniacally. "Now we will have a mole inside the D'Haran Arm that will be totally loyal to us – not to mention one of the greatest and most high ranking fighters in the army therefore the least suspicious. Finally we can bring down the evil D'Haran Arm once and for all!"
"Evil?" Aang raised his eyebrow,
"Yes, evil! They've obviously hypnotized you. Anyway, boy, now Arthur will kill you as a little warm-up for what he will eventually achieve." Suddenly Arthur sat up. That usual lively spark was lost from his eyes, replaced by a dull grey of nothing. Aang's former friend just lowered himself off the bed, said nothing and drew one of his long Katanas. In a flash Arthur darted towards him and swiped out with his blade, Aang barely ducked underneath it in time. The Avatar slowly backed away from Arthur, not wanting to hurt his friend but also not wanting to get his head chopped off either. When Arthur went in for the second strike Aang dodged it again and leaped out of the window. The boy landed in a pile of broken glass. The boy was now covered in tiny little pieces of glass that sparkled in the sun, it made him almost look beautiful until the blood began to flow and Aang was moaning with pain. The monk had no time to rest though because Arthur had leaped from the window and drove his sword into the ground where Aang was only seconds ago.
Aang took off at a run, trying to make some distance from Arthur, but the damn ninja was just too fast. He was in front of Aang almost instantly, swinging madly with his blade once again. Aang finally did the one thing he really did not want to do – he surrounded himself in an inferno of fire once more, but he tried as hard as he could not to hurt Arthur. Aang tried to blow Arthur back with blasts of air but the persistent man held his ground. So Aang just unleashed the flame around him – that made Arthur back up. The entire area was filled with smoke giving Aang the chance he needed to escape. He summoned a ball of air underneath his feet and shot off towards the jungle once more – he had a plan.
The boy had noticed that the same stuff in the injection that had been given to his friend was the same thing the snake had spat on his face earlier that day. All he had to do was find the snake, milk the venom, and then find a scientist who could help him make a cure. The plan wasn't the best but it was the only plan he had.
So Aang slowly crept through the jungle, trying to hunt the predator that had done this to him only hours ago. Aang had never heard of the kind of venom he was looking for so he figured the snake must be pretty rare. Either that or it was just so deadly and efficient that there were never any witnesses to tell the story of a snake attack which is why Aang had to be both careful and observant at the same time. He found this difficult when he was bone-tired and could barely walk but with the thought of Arthur's once lively, happy eyes he pushed on.
Hours passed and he had still seen no sign of the snake or anything else for that matter. It seemed that this jungle was completely desolate except for that one snake that had attacked him – Aang prayed that it was not the only one, because that would mean he had practically killed his friend. As he was thinking this he felt a chill down his spine. He felt something watching him stalking him.
Aang quickly looked around but saw nothing. Whatever was following him was hunting very well indeed. He carried on walking only to hear the soft slithering sound coming from behind him. This time Aang did not turn around he just kept walking, casually. The slithering sound began to pick up speed. A hiss sounded behind him and in that moment he knew the snake was about to strike, Aang span on the ball of his foot and just managed to catch the snake around the throat. They both went down wrestling each other. It was then that Aang realized how gigantic this snake was. Its head was about the size of his entire body and its body stretched far beyond Aang's line of vision. The Avatar let go for just a second and punched the snake in the head, it seemed relatively unaffected. So the boy quickly backed up trying to think of a different plan while he kept it away with blasts of air. The snake would only stay back for so long so Aang had to think of something fast, and then he realized what he'd have to do. The monk quickly rushed towards a rotten looking tree, knowing that it would be soft and limber. He snapped off a huge branch and tested how dense it was. His finger sank right into the wood – perfect.
The Avatar now went on the advance, slowly circling the reptile and dodging the snaps. Then it made its fatal mistake as Aang held the stick up before him the snake tried to rip it in half – tried to show its dominance. Its venom began to seep into the log, but it was trying to pull free and the boy could not let that happen. So Aang leaped over the stick and onto the snake's head, from there he began wrenching the stick further up onto the snake's fangs. This was far harder than it sounds because the entire time he was being smashed into logs and rocks and other dangerous things.
After about ten minutes of being bashed by the reptile he figured it was enough venom and popped the log out of the snake's mouth. The reptile seemed to be so humiliated that it didn't even bother to carry on fighting, it just slinked away, ashamed. Now the next problem: Aang only knew one scientist and he was part of the D'Haran Arm which was now an impenetrable fortress to the boy since Arthur would have turned the entire organization against him by now. So Aang needed a plan to get in, a plan that could not and would not fail because it was that well thought out.
Aang spent hours and hours wondering what he could do to get inside and then something clicked in his head and he knew: he should just run in there disarm anyone that got in his way. Aang wondered why other criminals didn't do this when they were trying to break into one of the most well-protected and advanced facilities in the Galaxy.
The boy tied the log to his back and set off for the city, dust kicking up behind the blur that was his legs.
The D'Haran Arm complex seemed bigger to the boy for some reason. Maybe it was because his former friend was in there and plotting how to kill him. Aang decided to waste absolutely no time, so he just leaped over the gate into the fight.
Bullets were instantly whizzing around him, and soon the guards would take the time to aim and actually hit him. So he had to get out of there fast. Aang sprinted, a swirling hurricane forming around him as he headed for the side door to the building. The hurricane was managing to deflect the bullets for now at least but he knew it wouldn't be able to keep as intense and soon one of the little pieces of death would hit him and it would all be over. After what seemed like an eternity Aang reached the door. He heated up his hand and placed it on the handle, shocked to see it melt right off. He ripped open the door and rushed down the hallway, his hurricane tearing the white tiles from the walls and throwing them back towards the chasing soldiers. Most of the pursuing guards went down in a hail of stone as the tiles shattered into the walls probably causing more than one serious injury.
Aang rushed up the flight of stairs, he only had thirteen more to go and by the fourth he was finding the vortex hard to keep going as even more bullets whirred around him. Eventually it all became too much for the boy and he snapped, sending a wave of flames into the soldiers behind them. The Avatar did not stay to watch them burn alive. He could finally let the hurricane dissipate, but as he reached the twelfth floor he ran into an obstacle he didn't care too much for: two sentinels which were in the middle of the extremely large room which led to the thirteenth floor. They were sentinels captured by the D'Haran Arm and then reprogrammed so that they wouldn't go around killing innocent people – well if it could be avoided of course. But now they had been ordered to attack Aang, which was very, very bad news.
At the exact same time they lifted their arms and shot their lasers directly at him. Aang had to quickly vault out of the way and dance around him which would give him a few seconds to think before they turned around and killed him. He just couldn't think of anything and was forced to dodge again as they both fired missiles simultaneously at him.
"What is the point in firing at the same time?" Aang yelled at them. "There's no point in fact you're probably more likely to get blown up doing that! Someone could just draw your fire an-" Aang cut himself off realizing what he had to do.
He skipped around to the middle of both of the machines and held himself in the air at exactly eye level. Then when he saw their eyes begin to glow he dropped, and the two laser beams shot past each other and sent both of the robots crashing through the walls on either side – now smoldering useless wrecks.
"Damn I'm good," Aang said to himself as he ran for the thirteenth floor. The Avatar bolted down the hallway towards the Scientist's office but when he was almost at the door a squadron of soldiers appeared. The boy just managed to get inside the office before a torrent of bullets whizzed past. Aang slammed the door behind him and rushed over to the man sitting at his desk.
"Listen very carefully because what I am about to tell you will be very hard to take in," Aang assured the man.
"You do realize every unit in this facility is looking for you, right?"
"Yes I realize that! So just listen before they come in here and I have to take you hostage!" Aang screamed,
"Okay okay, go on."
"Alright, my friend was injected with a mutated form of the venom in this branch which caused him to lose control of his mind. Some women is controlling his very movements right now and she ordered him to kill me, so now he has enlisted the entire D'Haran Army to hunt me down. Now this bit is vital: I need you to make a cure from the venom in this log and somehow get it to me in this facilities' prison."
"One question: why is there venom in a log?"
"Simple; I improvised," Aang laughed, handing the log over to the scientist. "As added incentive to do this you can claim the patent on this new drug and I won't tell a soul that you didn't make it yourself. Have we got a deal?"
"Yes, I'll get it to you within a few hours." Just then the troopers finally burst through the door, guns extended, screaming for Aang to get on the ground. The boy lay down and expected to be dragged off to the cells, but instead he was electrocuted until he passed out.
The boy awoke in the jail cell with an extremely painful head. It felt like someone had taken out his brain, blended it and then put it back in. He rubbed his head gently and opened his eyes. He was in a tiny cell with one bed and solid, purple-coloured bars covering the front of his cell. Aang gently reached forward and touched them, and was instantly thrown back into the opposite wall. If he had any hair it would be standing up right about now. Then he heard footsteps. Aang's heartbeat picked up, expecting it to be the scientist who could get him out of this predicament. But no, it was Arthur, with the same grey-dull nothing in his eyes. The Ninja opened up the cell and stepped inside, the bars closing behind him. He said nothing; he just walked towards the crumpled heap which was Aang and picked him up by the throat. His large hands slowly began to clench on the boy's throat, cutting off any hope of air and slowly killing him. Aang's hands began clawing at Arthur's, making deep scratches in the skin. The Avatar was just too exhausted to do anything else and was still in shock from the electric blast that had been given off by the cell walls. All the boy wanted to do was sleep, sleep for an eternity. And he could feel the eternity slowly creeping up on him as the darkness began to speckle his vision. And just as the last bit of light began to fade from his brain he remembered the first mission he had been on Arthur; watching the man fight, kill hundreds of those terrorists with nothing but his swords. Then, before Aang passed away he took one last glance of the Arthur's eyes – nothing. The Avatar could feel the anger beginning to boil inside him once more, beckoning him to break free of the iron-grip. Aang roared, a deep tremendous sound that shook the entire building and grabbed Arthur's hand, wrenching it off his throat. Aang stepped towards the massive man, boiling rage inside him. For a second Aang thought he saw his friend smile as he lunged forward, driving his small fist into the massive man's stomach. The giant toppled to the ground and Aang stood over him, the anger beginning to fade. More rushing footsteps as the scientist arrived holding a vial. He stopped dead when he saw Aang on top of Arthur though,
"Oh my god, you're a terrorist!" He screamed, attempting to run away. But Aang just sent a gust of wind flowing from behind the man and sent him flying into the prison cell. Aang wrenched the vial from the man's hands and carefully poured it down his friend's throat. Within minutes it began to take hold, slowly restoring colour to his partner's eyes. And then when the happy, lively eyes were back Arthur began spluttering and coughing. He looked at Aang and smiled.
"Thank you, Aang, you saved my life!"
"Now you can save mine," Ang said, gesturing to the few dozen troops that had their guns pointed at him.
Later that day, Aang still had gotten no sleep and was en-route to taking down some of the most dangerous criminals Jurai had ever seen. Thankfully he had back-up: Arthur and a dozen of their best soldiers were riding with them in the helicopter.
They touched down in the middle of the village where Aang had dragged Arthur earlier that day. The soldiers in the helicopter poured out and began securing the area. Arthur made his way to enter the house but Aang stopped him. He didn't want to give them the satisfaction of taking down any of his men. The D'Haran men would not go in there, risking their lives; those terrorists would come out, or burn. Aang set alight the top of the house and waited. Seconds passed, and then minutes, then the house burnt to the ground along with the terrorists. Aang felt nothing. He was empty of emotion despite being filled with the knowledge he'd just watched someone burn to death. What was he turning into? What sort of monster was he becoming when he did not even care that he had killed three people. He used to cry at the thought of kill someone. This world had changed him. It had made him a cold, efficient killer which meant he could deal justice where nobody else could. But would he keep on changing, would he become like those that he looked down upon each and every day of his job?
The boy's eyes glistened with tears because he did not want to fail her, he could not fail Ange but something deep down in his soul didn't care.
Am I a monster?