Chapter 4

The Exhibition

May 5th,

Crystal Palace, Great Exhibition, London

"Raise that banner there!" the foreman shouted in his gruff northern accent.

"Right!" the workers shouted back.

Preparation was in full swing for the Annual London Great Exhibition that was to be held in 5 days. People prepared for this event a month ahead, with frenzied construction of pavilions, frantic jostling for spots in the Crystal Palace, (the centre of the exhibition) and mad unloading of scientific experiments, exotic animals, and all sorts of building materials. Exhibition Park was closed to the public until the opening of the Exhibition, but with enough money you could slip right past the entrances. This is what Dola and her gang was doing to scout out the location of the PAEF exhibit, and they were also calculating the best possible way to kidnap the locals.

"Mum, how are we going to snatch them?" one of Dola's sons asked whiningly.

"Call me captain! And keep your voice down! There are workers about!" she said in a hushed tone, "We'll wait until the first day of the exhibition closes, and when they slip out the back to be taken to the hotel, we follow the car, shoot out its' tires, then make off with the hostages!"

"Oh." he said in a hushed whisper. "Do you know the lay of the land by now mum?

"Call me captain dammit! Now quit your whining, and get back to the car!" she whispered angrily.

...

The Queen Victoria, Greenwich-on-Thames, UK

Aang was worried. After the incident two weeks ago, Katara had been giving him the mother of all cold shoulders. He couldn't understand it! He had explained what Alex had said after she had left, and that had at least stopped her from calling him a "Mangy, no-good, son-of-a-bitch" for the 45th time. Of course it didn't help that the trap that Aang had set for Alex before dinner was suddenly activated while he was explaining himself, so that Alex had come catapulting up through the floor and fell right back down 2 floors on the bed, breaking it in two. Aang sighed. Women! Do them a favour and they hate you for life. Sheesh.

Up on deck, Sokka and Toph were standing together watching the sunset over the London Skyline. (Well Sokka was anyway. Toph was merely feeling the diminishing warmth.) Sokka said,

"That was weird what Aang did, wasn't it?"

"Yeah, but I think I know why he did it." she said.

"Why?!" Sokka asked in his excited voice.

"Don't you get it? Aang is in love with Katara! I heard what that boy Alex said after Katara accepted his dinner invitation. It was nasty! He was just trying to protect her."

"Ohhh." (Insert hallelujah chorus) "I get it! Aang has been acting weird around Katara ever since we left the North Pole!"

"Yes! It penetrates the thickest skull in the entire universe! Hallelujah!" she threw her hands in the air in mock celebration.

"Hey! That's not nice!" he said in a wounded voice.

A gruff voice from the loudspeakers interrupted their conversation,

"Crew! We'll each London in about half an hour or so, and all of you who received shore passes this morning may disembark. I need Aang, Katara, Sokka, and Toph to the bridge. That is all."

...

The Bridge of the Queen Victoria

"Hello all of you!" Commodore Wilberforce barked. "I am just letting you know that you need to practise for the Great Exhibition. Toph, Aang, and Katara, You need to practise your bending! Sokka!"

"Yes sir!" Sokka snapped

"You will deliver summaries of the war, history, and of your basic culture to the crowds at the Exhibition.'

"Alright."

"Good. We land in twenty minutes, so look sharp!"

...

London, May 10th, Exhibition Park

The Queen slowly rose from her ornate golden throne to overlook the huge crowd that had gathered in the Crystal Palace for the Third Exhibition. She adjusted the microphone stand in front of her and proceeded with her speech.

"Thank you for attending this great science exhibition in the glorious city of London." she started "We present to you, as a gift of the British Empire to the world, this third annual Great Exhibition of culture and science in hopes that it will further educate you about your world. I pray that this exhibition will provide you with further knowledge and be a godly interaction between the people assembled here and science." short and sweet. Cheers and applause erupted in the chamber, and the crowd rushed to the exhibits. The most popular of them was, of course, the Pacific Anomaly exhibit. They had a platypus-bear, a flying-squid, and Appa, who Aang rode around the chamber.

People watched Katara's water-bending with amazement, wondering how in the world she could do that, Aang air-bended to an uproarious crowd that threw coins onto the stage after the performance, and Toph surprised her crowd by lifting the earth underneath their feet fifty feet in the air. People listened to Sokka's enthusiastic tales of their adventures, and his description of the different cultures of the four nations. Elsewhere at the exhibition, people browsed through the technological achievements of the greatest scientists of the age, gasped in disgust at a recently discovered Tongan Tarantula as big as a small sheep, and marvelled in wonder at the Crystal Palace itself, a steel and glass-work triumph of Victorian engineering. Unbeknown by any member of the PAEF, Dola and her boys were also there, thinking on how they were going to snatch the Avatar and his companions from their car.

"I didn't know they could control air!" a bewhiskered son of Dola's said nervously.

"I doesn't matter! Their weird little 'powers' are based off martial arts moves! Once they are bound, they lose their power!" Dola yelled.

"But mum, what if they can slice through the ropes?" another son asked

"CALL ME CAPTAIN! And we'll be using handcuffs, so all of you quit your whinin'!"

"Yes Mum!" they answered in unison.

"Call me Captain!"

The day was drawing to a close, and the end of day fireworks show began. The fireworks display was the stuff of miracles, with massive explosions, colourful sparkles, and fiery pinwheels. The show halted for a moment as a loudspeaker rang out over the crowd.

"Now, Ladies and Gents, please turn your attentions to the south-west corner of the park!"

That was Aang's cue to leap into the air, and do a spectacular move of fire-bending. He started from his central point and then circled outward trailing fire all the way, until he reached the outside of the circle and sent a massive wave of fire into the centre, which exploded. It was spectacular. The huge assembled crowd broke into cheers and applause, and some 25 thousand people gave Aang a standing ovation. After the applause died down, a pleasant female voice sounded over the loudspeaker,

"Ladies and Gentlemen, the exhibition is closing. Please leave via the designated exits."