Devil's Advocate

Bartering 1.7

Crawling through the sewers was an ordeal. Jesus, the fucking stench! Maybe it was just because I, comparatively, hadn't been through as much as the other members of our little quarters, but it seemed as though I was the most effective by the time we exited Aang's 'secret entrance.'

I bent over and put my hands on my knees, trying to stop myself from gagging after trekking through endless pipes of raw sewage. The others looked barely affected, I noted sourly.

When Sokka finally crawled out, covered in gunk from the sewage, Aang had to blast the excess off of his body with a blast of air.

"Aang!" I hissed sharply. "We're in enemy territory now! Please don't go using your Airbending without good reason!" I glanced around and Aang looked down, chastised. "Alright, we need to get you something to cover your head. Your tattoos are pretty obvious, and you're probably known throughout the Fire Nation by now."

"Right," Aang replied, looking serious for once, and peered into the gloomy night. He snatched up some spare fabric from a market stall and wrapped it around his head like a turban, then pulled his sleeves down over his hands.

"Gggghkkk!" Sokka grunted as he stumbled past us, trying to yank off a tiny octopus-looking thing from his face. He wasn't having much success – I was impressed by how powerful the suckers on these things were. Wait – could other animals learn Waterbending? Humans learnt it from the moon, right?

"Here," Aang offered, and rubbed one finger on the back of the octopus-thing's head. It closed its eyes in a horrifically cute impression of someone being tickled, and lifted its suckers off of Sokka's face.

"Alright," Sokka said, once he had composed himself. He was scratching at the sucker marks on his cheek. "We need to find the resistance. Bumi will either be with them or imprisoned by the Fire Nation, and it'll be a lot safer if he's with the resistance. First, we-"

"Hey!" The group spun round as one to face he Fire Nation soldiers approaching. "What are you doing out here? The curfew is still in effect."

I glanced to the side. Aang and Sokka looked frozen. "Oh, sorry, my friend here," Katara stepped forward, indicating Sokka, "Has, um, pentapox. We were just taking him to get... His... Medicine."

"P-pentapox?" The lead guard said, taking a step back. Sokka groaned and scratched at his face. "Didn't your cousin die of that? Let's get out of here!" And as quickly as they arrived, they were gone.

"Nice, Katara," I grinned. "That was some pretty quick thinking on your part." She blushed at the compliment and looked away modestly.

"Oh, it was nothing, really." Katara replied, flapping one hand.

"Alright," Sokka cut in, focusing us once more. "We still need to find the resistance. And with the amount of Fire Nation soldiers around, it won't be easy. Any ideas?"

"Well..." I said, scratching my chin and thinking. "We could stage an attack on some soldiers, see if they contact us?" I suggested. In canon, I think they'd just wandered around hoping to find Bumi, and only met up with the resistance by accident.

"Too risky," Sokka said, frowning. "If the Fire Nation send more soldiers before this resistance arrives, we might be overrun." He sighed. "It's getting late. We should find somewhere to rest, see if we can think of something in the morning."

There was a chorus of agreement from the group, and we set about trying to find shelter.

~/DA\\~

Eventually, we found ourselves in an abandoned, partially collapsed warehouse building, where we piled some of the various pieces of cloth around the warehouse beneath our heads, and lay down to rest.

It certainly wasn't the most glamorous of sleeping arrangements, but hey, I'd been prepared to sleep in the forest just last night, so I couldn't exactly complain.

We were awoken the next morning by the calling of Fire Nation soldiers out on the streets. Sokka was already peering out of the window, and upon the rest of us waking up, he waved all three of us over.

A contingent of Fire Nation soldiers was marching down the street outside. As we watched, two Firebenders emerged from a woman's house and rejoined the contingent. More soldiers entered other houses, where you would then hear muffled sounds of things being moved around and broken, before the soldiers would exit the house and rejoin the contingent.

As they marched, the leader roared to those watching. "Anyone found to be hiding a member of the resistance will be considered guilty of high treason, and will be executed on the spot! Those found to have knowledge of others harbouring resistance members, and did not come forward, will be publicly punished!"

Oh dear. I did not remember this at all.

Quickly and quietly, we made our way downstairs tot he entrance, and slipped outside as the Fire Nation contingent passed. We emerged standing next to a middle-aged woman with an expression of fury on her face.

"What happened?" Katara asked, sounding horrified.

"Didn't you hear?" The woman turned to Katara. "The resistance carried out a hit on the Fire Nation last night. They killed the governor's wife." The woman spat. "Serves those Firebender scumbags right. After everything they did to this city, I'm glad there's still a resistance to fight back." She turned slowly to Katara, as though realising what she had just said. "Ah... Don't tell anyone I said that, will you?"

Katara shook her head. "Honestly... We're with you." She gestured to Aang. "This is the Avatar." Aang lifted his turban, revealing the arrow tattoo on his scalp. I was uneasy with how quickly Katara gave up such crucial information, but...

The woman gasped, then looked around discreetly. "You'll be wanting to meet up with the resistance then, won't you?" She gestured to the four of us, before taking Katara's hand and slipping into an alley. We followed. "Come with me, I know the way."

Sokka and I exchanged glances as we followed. His hand slowly went to the boomerang on his back, and I nodded, holding my fists up slightly. Consensus reached, we turned forward and followed Aang and Katara.

~/DA\\~

We were lead into some tunnels underneath Omashu via a small, manhole-cover-looking grate hidden underneath a rug in an abandoned house. Sokka and I followed at a distance, Aang just in front of us, and Katara by the woman's side. Aang would occasionally turn and walk backwards, marvelling at the Earthbending that must have gone on in these tunnels.

Eventually, the tunnel began to widen, and opened out into a large cavern, steps and platforms cut into the walls with Earthbending. As we entered, the numerous amounts of people within stopped what they were doing and looked up.

"Rinya!" A gruff, bearded man spoke, coming to a stop before the five of us. "What are you doing with these kids?"

"Yung," Rinya replied, stepping aside and gesturing to the four of us. "They're not just kids. They're travelling with the Avatar."

"The Avatar?!" Yung stepped up to the platform we were on as Aang lifted his turban off his head. "Does that mean... You're here to help liberate Omashu from the Fire Nation!?"

Aang nodded. "We are." He said levelly, before peering around. "Is King Bumi here? Is he leading the resistance?"

"What?" Yung sounded confused. "No! Of course not! The day of the invasion, we readied ourselves for battle..." As Yung began his delivery of exposition to the Gaang, I peered around. The number of people down here was... A lot more meagre than I had remembered from the show. Or maybe I was misremembering? There couldn't have been more than fifty civilians down here, not including the obvious Earthbender guards.

"Bumi... Why...?" Aang muttered to himself, eyes downcast. Then he shook his head, his expression hardening. "Alright, that just means we have to find him and get him out of the Fire Nation's custody. He can explain himself." He sounded hopeful.

Yung's expression morphed into a snarl. "I hope I never see that traitor again-" He began, but Aang cut him off.

"I need someone to teach me Earthbending if I'm ever going to become the full Avatar," Aang cut in. "So for now, we try to free King Bumi, and you start to come up with a plan for liberating the city."

Wait... That wasn't how things had gone in canon. The fuck? Aang was supposed to convince people they should leave, not stay. Then King Bumi would tell him that stuff about 'Neutral Jing' or whatever, and that he needed to find a different Earthbending master to teach him, then they head to Ba Sing Se!

"Alright," Yung said. "It's a plan. You can leave at sun down – we don't know where they're keeping Bumi, so you'll be on your own. If you do find him, bring him back here and he can start teaching you." Yung nodded, and shook hands with Aang.

How the fuck had this happened?!

~/DA\\~