Episode VI: Bumi and Mipsie
97 years ago (Bumi age 16), early summer.
--
Sweat trickled down Bumi's forehead.
"Steady, steady. Use the legs."
Bumi used his legs, digging his heels as deep into the hot soil as he could get them. He gritted his teeth and pushed forth with all his might. The other boy was panting.
"You must be unmoving! Defeat your opponent with sheer will power!"
Bumi's arms shook with the effort. He felt his splayed hands sinking into the ton or so of solid rock he was trying to push onto his opponent. Said opponent (a fellow earthbending student named Hun) had other (and indeed rather opposite) plans. The great stone slab inched its way this way and that but otherwise had not made much progress for several minutes.
"Earthbend, Bumi! Muscle alone will not move that rock!" Master Gar bellowed. Bumi bristled at the remark and renewed his efforts, shuddering as he channeled his earthbending from the center of his back, through the palms of his hands, and into the slab. It stubbornly refused to move.
"Earthbend!" Master Gar shouted again. Bumi's scowl deepened with resentment for Gar and his damnable advice (though if Bumi had decided to be honest with himself he might have instead resented his chronic difficulty in maintaining bending focus). It was happening again, just like last time. Bumi was losing. He thought not.
Bumi lifted up a foot and stomped into the ground, sending three spires of stone jutting into the bottom of the slab. Hun let out a brief grunt of surprise as the rock stopped shaking, its base held sturdily in place by the hidden buttresses. There was a quiet gasp from the class.
Bumi stomped his other foot, sending a fourth spire of earth rocketing directly up into the other boy's groin. There was a solid thump and a wail of agony. Bumi retracted his braces back into the ground and then shouldered the slab with all the force he could muster. It tipped over in excruciatingly slow motion and came thundering down atop the neutered earthbending student. Luckily, Gar leapt forward and caught the falling stone just before it could press a permanent boy-weeping-in-the-fetal-position mold into the arena floor.
The entire thing had taken only three or four seconds and was followed by a moment of stunned silence (except Hun's whimpering, but considering the circumstances, no one could really hold that against him.)
The class burst out laughing. Bumi grinned widely and performed several showy bows, drinking up the attention. Master Gar flipped the rock slab out of the way and stooped to help his injured student. He pulled Hun to his feet.
"Silence! Silence!" he roared, quieting the class. He sent Hun to the healer's with another student as escort, then immediately rounded on Bumi, his eyes glittering angrily from beneath the brim of his wide hat. He jabbed two thick knuckles into Bumi's chest.
"The point of this exercise," he managed through gritted teeth, poking Bumi for emphasis with each syllable, "was to overpower your opponent. Not kill him." Bumi shrugged
"You said earthbend, I earthbend."
"We have gone over this before, Bumi."
"I won, didn't I?"
"Winning isn't the point," he hissed. "You are here to learn earthbending. Earthbending, which has been around for thousands upon thousands of years and is already quite complete even without you adding to it. If you ever want to become a true master, you must learn form, focus, and philosophy, which can only come from doing the exercises and learning the concepts that we earthbenders have been learning for generations. If you cannot endure an entire match without seeking an easy way out, you have no place here." Gar spoke louder, so the entire class could hear, and took up a defensive stance.
"Earthbending," he said, "is about strength, substance, endurance, not tricky halfassery. You must be direct and straightforward, stubborn and immovable as the greatest of stones. You must be strong," he pounded one of his club-like fists into the other "and capable to be an earthbender. We do not ask our element like airbenders. We do not guide our element like waterbenders. We do not even command our element like firebenders. We force it, we bend it until it breaks, until it is at our mercy. Earth is just a tool to be used. That is the nature of earthbending. There is nothing spiritual to gunk it up, no 'greater meaning' to its use, no speck in the sky granting us permission. Badgermoles use it to build their homes just as we use it to crush our enemies. Just sensible, straightforward power."
Gar talked with more and more feeling, clearly having given this very speech before. "When we bend the earth, it complies not because it is afraid not to do so, nor because it has been tricked to do so, as Bumi here seems to think, but rather because it has no choice but to do so"Bumi rolled his eyes and exhaled sarcastically just as Gar's speech reached its crescendo. "Earth is a mighty element and can only be used by those that are mightier still! We are the stronger, and if you cannot be the stronger then you do not deserve to call yourself an earthbender!" Gar was red-faced with effort by the time he bellowed the last word.
Again the class was silent, overcome by pride. Hearing Master Gar present the other three nations as people who simply lacked the strength to deal with earth was to them very pleasing indeed. The line about firebenders (along with the way Gar had practically spat the word) had felt especially moving, considering how unpopular the Fire Nation had become of late. Bumi did not approve of Gar's frequent tirades of patriotic racism thinly veiled as earthbending lessons, but he could not help but feel a little prouder to be an earthbender after such a rousing speech.
"Class is dismissed," Gar finally breathed, chest puffed out with pride of his own.
The students departed quickly, anxious to get out of the sun and drink some water after yet another grueling training session. Bumi, too, headed immediately for the arena door, but was stopped by a muscular hand on his shoulder.
"Not you, Bumi. You and I are going to be strong for a little while longer." Bumi narrowed his eyes.
"You can't keep me here." Gar removed his hand and inspected his fingernails for dirt (or perhaps his dirt for fingernails; it was hard to say which was more accurate).
"That's true," he admitted, unconcerned. "But I can convince you to." He reared to his formidable height. "You are staying to work on your miserable lack of focus," he announced again. "Or else."
Any other boy might have meekly acquiesced, intimidated by the earthbending master's imposing physique, but Bumi was notoriously brave in such circumstances (like two years ago when the brainless but muscle-bound leader of a gang of street kids had taken to singling Bumi out for torture; Bumi hadn't seen the boy since he framed him for stealing his mother's wedding ring and locked him in a cellar, but he felt certain he'd never again look at flute wasps in quite the same way).
"Or else what?" he challenged, puffing out his own lanky chest.
"Or else you have proven yourself too weak to continue as my student. Are you?"
The question hung in the air while Bumi weighed his options. Gar was playing rough, prodding Bumi's weak spot. Bumi was a bit angry that Gar deemed him so predictable, but had to admit it was working. He grimaced as he strained internally, grappling with indecision. Gar's tiny, self-righteous grin was not helping matters.
On one hand, the very idea of being ordered around (much less baited so obviously) by anyone set Bumi's stomach boiling. Three years had done little to temper his pride, and he typically strove to be unpredictable, completely impossible to manipulate. Giving in would mean giving Gar the satisfaction of victory, which Bumi had tried hard over the past few months to prevent happening at all. (The scoreboard, to his reckoning, currently read Bumi: 54, Gar: 0. He would hate to besmirch such a record.)
On the other hand, despite all the trouble he caused, Bumi did very much enjoy his earthbending lessons. He enjoyed the feeling of solid rock rippling under his power. He enjoyed showing off to the little kids in Lower Omashu when he played earthball with them. He even enjoyed sparring with the other students (though only when he won).
Furthermore, after one fateful lesson Bumi had happened to catch his appearance in Kihni's full-length mirror and was shocked to discover the first hints of muscle on his theretofore skinny arms. He had taken to this new appearance with his usual over imaginative ego and had redoubled his efforts (not only with earthbending but with a rigorous regimen of striking poses in front of any object with even the tiniest hint of reflectivity). Progress was frustratingly slow, but Bumi had kept at it and had ever so steadily watched his lanky frame gain mass.
If he lost Gar's lessons, he would lose that opportunity, he would disappoint Shou and, as much as he hated to admit it, he might never master earthbending.
If Gar had not been there, Bumi would have sighed in defeat. He needed Gar, he needed Gar's teachings, and he couldn't bring himself to back down from such a challenge. Gar was there, however, and so he just hardened his facial features and nodded in the most assertive fashion he could manner. Gar just smiled and headed back into the arena.
"Okay. I'm predictable," he admitted, mentally cursing himself as he followed behind.
--
When Bumi finally stumbled through Shou's door and collapsed on the floor, he was, needless to say, quite tired.
"What's wrong?" Shou asked with distracted concern from behind his easel, this time set up by the window.
"Tired," Bumi informed him. For a time no words were exchanged and the only sound was the scrape of Shou's paintbrush. After a few minutes, Shou shifted his stool back a bit, trying to look at his work from a different perspective. He let out a satisfied sigh and set his paintbrush down.
"Why?" he finally asked, as if the preceding pause had never occurred. "Lesson run long?" Bumi turned his head to look up at his friend and mentor, who remained perched on his stool.
"Sort of. I'm afraid I bent a pair of stones that were off limits for some reason. Hopefully Hun didn't want kids." Shou laughed.
"Ahh…" he finally said, always having been a man of few words. "So what happened?"
"Gar made me push laps." Thirty laps, to be precise, and pushing the rock slab with which he had nearly crushed Hun. His limbs felt quite ready to drop from his torso.
Shou stood and walked to Bumi's prone form. Handicap or not, his gait was proud and strong, partly due to the new prosthetic they had commissioned be built for him. More importantly, however, Shou had had three years with which to accept his fate. He could no longer be a soldier, could no longer defend his nation as he had trained his whole life to do, but had settled reasonably well into a life as an artist and as part of the city's greatest moneybender duo.
"I think that mastery of anything will take some effort, Bumi. A little more so if you insist on mauling the other students," he offered sagely. They shared a grin and Shou helped Bumi to his feet.
"Oh, but how am I to get through a whole lesson without seriously injuring somebody?" Shou raised an inquisitive brow.
"Earthbending lesson, Shou. Not the other ones," he quickly amended, grinning sheepishly. There was no reason for Shou to learn about the glue incident.
"Good." Shou nodded forcefully. He had remained adamant about Bumi's schooling, for reasons Bumi did not entirely comprehend. Bumi figured he owed it to Shou to keep at it, though, and had attended to his studies dutifully. Bumi leaned against the stone counter while Shou plopped onto the nearby couch.
"So what do we have to do today?" Shou asked after a moment. Bumi counted off the tasks on his fingers.
"I'm going to drop by Kihni's and then go meet with a fellow interested in the daggers we got last week. If all goes well we'll set up a deal. You need to follow up on the beekeeper thing; I believe he wants to meet this afternoon. Don't agree to anything more than…" he did a few calculations in his head, "say… eleven copper to the jar. Throw in the bees for free if you have to, but keep the jar price low. Should be pretty straightforward."
"Got it. And after that?"
"Nothing. Today's an easy day. Undermarket meets at Crosshatches today, I think, but no one's going to be there. Just a few silk deals tonight. I'll probably check it out just in case." Shou nodded.
"Don't stay out too long, Bumi," he said, more out of habit than anything. They both knew Bumi would stay out late into the night as he did nearly every night and they both knew that they owed their successes to the information Bumi gathered while doing so. Information was the most valuable commodity by far and if they were to continue to benefit from and compete with the Consortium, they would have to remain diligent.
"Of course not," Bumi lied, heading for the door. "I'll see you tomorrow."
"Tomorrow it is."
--
Bumi strolled slowly down the sun-bleached street, whistling a cacophonous tune while his mind shuffled through his actual list of activities for the day. The list he had told Shou hadn't been a lie, per se, but had contained a few omissions, mostly of the potentially dangerous variety. Shou was his friend and partner, but lacked Bumi's flexible outlook on business ethics and disregard for the possibility of being caught. Some things Bumi had to do alone, and secretly. Stealing sales out from under the most powerful Consortium members happened to be one of them.
It wasn't as if they really needed to do anything illegal. Even without the occasional legal infraction they had been very successful. Using the money from the printing press, Bumi and Shou had started a miniature trade empire of their own. Their wares were varied and different every week; they had peddled everything from geodes to spoons, ink to desk chairs, steel wool to maps. In fact, the only consistent product they provided their customers was intelligence. Not counting the occasional painting or carving that Shou sold, they produced nothing on their own and instead made money entirely by matching buyers to sellers. They were professional middlemen, buying and selling trade goods according to Bumi's unnaturally deep understanding of the market. Whenever somebody was selling something for less than it was worth, it was a good bet that Bumi was not far away.
They were a good team. While Bumi sleuthed and mucked about in Lower Omashu, where no one spared a second thought at dealing with a grubby-looking teenager, Shou would make sales to the wealthier, more conservatively minded merchants of Upper Omashu, where a bit more professionalism was a necessity. Their partnership had worked amazingly well (as Shou's new house, modest though it was, attested).
So Bumi's continual raising of the stakes had little to do with money. Bumi and Shou were already reasonably wealthy, but Bumi found that riches did not bring him much joy. He still wore ratty clothing that billowed over his slender form, still refused to sleep indoors, still ran deliveries for Kihni and, except for the occasional celebratory meal after a particularly important success, had given up his obsession with roast lambster.
It was about the adventure. The Undermarket was a perfectly profitable (if a little bit illegal) venture whether you understood it or not, but Bumi had spared great effort to decipher its peculiar language of money and subterfuge. He had nothing against the Consortium (indeed, he found their brand of behavior particularly inspiring), but nonetheless viewed them as competition of sorts. They were the city's professional mad genii, a title that Bumi would not leave undisputed. Just as Xiej found delight in continually slipping past the authorities despite the immense bounty on his head, Bumi found delight in out-tricking the tricksters themselves.
To that end, Bumi often harried the Consortium with childish pranks. He had long since become fluent in the alphabet of notched coins and routinely introduced his own forgeries into the system. His messages were usually merely inconvenient, listing a laughably peculiar meeting place (he had once tricked a merchant into sneaking into the king's throne room, believing a black market operative would be stationed within) or strange order, but occasionally he could use them for personal benefit (canceling an Undermarket meeting to prevent a particular deal from going through, for instance). The Consortium fools were furious every time, but had not the brains to know who was responsible. Bumi snickered at the thought.
After the first half dozen or so hilarious pranks, the coin forging lost some of its novelty and Bumi began to seek ever newer and more ambitious activities. Indeed, Bumi had plans for today.
--
Bumi shifted in his seat, mostly ignoring the bartender's suspicious gaze in his direction. (Mostly in that he was grinning rather mockingly, not directly at the bartender but very much for his benefit). Seated in one of the furthest back tables in the pingnu bar a few blocks from Kihni's shop, Bumi awaited his contact. The fingers of his right hand drummed against the tabletop while his left hand idly felt the smooth bundle of cloth Kihni had asked him to deliver.
Finally a soldier strode into the bar, helmet pulled suspiciously over his eyes. Bumi watched him as he ordered a drink, but made no acknowledgement until the man slid into the seat opposite him.
"You're here for the knives, yes?" Bumi asked, knowing very well that wasn't really why the man was here.
"Yes," the man replied, making it very clear that he was not, in fact, here for the knives.
--
Esto was a corporal in the Earth Army.
A year ago he and some of his fellow privates had met Bumi in a bar very much like this one. They had been complaining about the rigors of war and about how they were viewed very much like mere meat shields to cover the rather more valuable earthbenders. Bumi had joined in without hesitation. Within the hour, the conversation had changed to a discussion of tactics.
"The Fire Nation," Bumi had claimed, "trains its soldiers to fight, but they aren't built for it. If they weren't at war they'd be at home trimming their goatees… not the most rigorous lifestyle." He had mockingly stroked his smooth chin, making the gesture as unmanly as he could. This had aroused a round of jeering applause from the soldiers.
"They aren't strong like Earth Kingdom men; they can't bear the burden of armor for as long. They are thinkers-turned-fighters. We are survivors-turned-fighters. We have to accept that they are strong too, and extremely dangerous if they reach us." (This garnered rather less applause, but the soldiers continued to listen). "But if half of them die trying to reach us, it's no skin off of our backs, right?" The soldiers had fallen silent as they actually began to consider Bumi's words.
"What I'm saying," Bumi had continued in response to the unasked question, "is that we don't have to sit still and let them reach us. There's nothing weak about making a fight pan out on your own terms. We can keep moving and they will drop before we will." The soldiers were amazed to hear what appeared to be sound tactics from someone so young with no military training at all (which wasn't entirely true; Shou still very much missed his life as a soldier and often talked to Bumi at length about military strategy).
To make a long story short, some days later Esto had convinced the commander of his platoon to make a tactical retreat instead of a desperate last stand. This resulted in, as Bumi had predicted, a decisive victory for the Earth Kingdom when its fully rested regiment managed to ambush and destroy a haggard and exhausted troupe of firebenders. Esto got a promotion and his own unit.
--
Now Esto was back for more. His unit was resting in Omashu for a few days and he was hoping to invest his money wisely before he left, hopefully to have a nice stash waiting for him when he finally came home from this bloody war. When he learned that Bumi was something of a local guru for business advice, he had gladly set up a meeting and agreed to buy a shipment of daggers as a cover story for something rather more lucrative.
"Thank you so much, Mister. I have to sell these daggers to help my mom make ends meet," Bumi lied cutely, hopefully to throw off suspicion (it was so hard to accept that he was too old to play this card). He leaned in to the proper conspiratorial whispering distance.
"Alright," he explained, his voice back to normal. "The spicemonger is making the deal in front of the ware-caverns at the west chute, mid-level, fourth plaza, at sunset. It's a very good deal. You buy this stuff and then resell it to Lower Omashu in a few years and you'll make out like a king." Esto nodded in comprehension.
"How…" he started, but Bumi cut him off.
"It's a lot of spice, no doubt stored somewhere in Omashu. The spicemonger will want to get out of there quickly, so he'll just give you the key to where he's keeping it. You can just leave it there until you're ready. Should be easy. Just get to the meeting before the Baron's servant does, give the spicemonger his money, and get out of there before the Baron figures things out." Esto grinned briefly.
"And by the time the Baron figures out who stole his good deal, I'll be long gone," he finished.
"Right."
"Why are you telling me this instead of doing it yourself?" Bumi rolled his eyes in exasperation.
"First of all, the spicemonger would recognize me. I've bought from him before. He'd know I wasn't the Baron's representative. Second, I have to stay here in Omashu. You will be off safely with the army tomorrow afternoon, which isn't enough time for them to identify you. Third, the third reason's a secret." This seemed to daunt Esto a little, but the promise of riches overruled his fear of being used and he stood and shook Bumi's hand anyway.
"Always a pleasure to help a struggling boy out, Bumi. I'm sure the knives will make excellent birthday gifts for some of my nephews."
--
As it turned out, the third reason that Bumi was willing to pass on this particular scam was playing out before his eyes right now. Stooped behind a pillar in the semi-darkness, Bumi watched the spicemonger, who was himself trying to remain inconspicuous just inside one of the ware-cavern entrance tunnels. The guards within the tunnel could see him clearly enough, but anyone in the courtyard would mistake the man for a mere pile of discarded rags. It was just before sunset; Esto would arrive any minute, followed by the Baron's actual representative.
As if on queue, a person with Esto's loping gait emerged from a nearby building and looked cautiously from side to side. The spicemonger approached him and the two began conversing in quiet tones. Bumi licked his lips in anticipation. He stole a quick glance down the nearby tunnel, verifying that the two guards were still standing at bored attention. All was well. He returned to watch the transaction unfold.
After a minute or two, the men seemed to have come to an agreement and, nodding, went their separate ways. They disappeared guiltily into the shadows on opposite sides of the plaza and were gone. Bumi's legs began to ache from holding a crouch for so long. He shifted his weight slightly from foot to foot, not daring to stand. The guards were still there.
It was a full ten minutes later and almost fully dark when the next person appeared in the courtyard. He strode arrogantly with none of the caution or secrecy that the others had employed. A cape billowed from his shoulders. From this distance Bumi did not recognize him, but anybody pompous enough to dress up for a secret meeting almost had to be from the Consortium.
The man stood presumptuously out in the open, fidgeting impatiently as he waited for the spicemonger to show up. When minutes passed and no liaison was forthcoming, the man took to stalking around the courtyard, prodding at nearby bundles of rags in irritation. Bumi could just make out a slur of cursing as the man worked his way along. The man's movements became more erratic, more angry and panic-stricken. He risked calling out for the spicemonger. He called again, but only Bumi and the guards down the tunnel were there to hear it (and none of them much cared to answer). Bumi winced with impatience, willing the man to play into his hands.
Finally, he did. The man peered into the entrance tunnel and barked at the guards. Bumi's body tensed, ready for action. The guards appeared uninterested in the man's problems, but nonetheless came when called, recognizing a potential briber when they saw one. The guards came to a stop just outside the tunnel entrance and stood impassively while the man interrogated them. Had they seen anyone in the area? Yes they had. Two men, in fact. Did they see who they were? No they hadn't. And so on.
While the merchant grew angrier and angrier (and began to accuse the guards of some sort of misdeed), Bumi snuck carefully towards the tunnel, keeping to the shadows. He didn't have to wait long for all three men to begin a shouting match and then it was a simple matter to slip behind the guards. He ran the tunnel's length as quickly as he could and threw himself around the first available corner.
--
Bumi flattened himself up against the wall and strained to listen over the sound of his panting. Nobody was following. He had done it. A wicked smile spread across his face. He dusted his hands off on his baggy pants and set off down the tunnel.
Aside from breaking into ones in which you did not belong, there was nothing illegal at all about the ware-caverns. Dozens and dozens of them cut into Omashu's great sides and were rented out as storage to all sorts of people. The particular caverns at the end of this tunnel, however, happened to belong to several high-ranking Consortium members. He doubted Xiej's stash would be here, of course (the location in which Xiej kept his personal riches was something Bumi had only dreamed of; the crown jewel of outdoing the Consortium. Someday he would find it) but Bumi felt quite confident that he'd find some interesting things. The Undermarket's tendency to meet within taverns had a convenient way of loosing certain merchants' lips.
Bumi reached the end of the curved hallway, where four narrow corridors branched off at regular intervals, leading to the caverns themselves. A thick stone door plugged each one. Bumi selected the first path and peeled the door away as quietly as he could. A blast of cool air greeted him and he stepped forth.
The cavern was of reasonable size; ten men could lie end to end across its depth, four across its width, and one atop another's shoulders could just reach the rough stone ceiling. Wooden crates were stacked throughout the room and cast tall shadows in the soft green light. Bumi pulled the door shut behind him and strolled down the narrow trail that meandered through the towers of goods. Many were open; he peered within these first. There were many bottles of expensive alcohol from the Uilar vineyards to the northwest (considerably more expensive ever since the aforementioned vineyards had come to a fiery end). Judging by the great quantity, the wine was being given time to appreciate. Bumi logged that fact away for later consideration.
There were boxes of silverware, some thirty odd sets of porcelain, many jars of honey (to Bumi's chagrin), half a dozen beautifully forged ornamental swords, and more. Bumi opened every box he could manage (if the owner knew what his expensive swords were being used for, he'd no doubt slip into a coma) and checked it all quite thoroughly. He committed each product he found (and the quantity thereof) to memory. He took nothing, but would by no means leave empty handed. He had already begun to form a solid guess of how the market would act in the near future. That was as valuable as anything he could carry out of here (except maybe those swords. He'd have to think about that.)
Oh what a glorious game this was! Bumi entered the second room, then the third. Each one sported a more peculiar menagerie of luxuries than the one before. Bumi was a mad genius. Probably the very smartest person in the whole world, he figured. But he was humble, too, and could readily recognize cleverness (albeit slightly less clever cleverness than his own) when he saw it. Some of the things these merchants were preparing to sell had never occurred to Bumi at all. Dolls! Why hadn't he ever thought to sell dolls? They would sell well; he knew it. Whoever had thought to sell dolls was a smart man indeed. (Bumi could outdo him, though. While the girls played with this guy's dolls, might the boys not play with Bumi's new Fire Nation 'Action Figures', with real detachable limbs? He resolved to look into doll making later in the week).
As Bumi closed up the third cell, he could not help but grin, not just for himself but for all of the smart merchants of the world. They indeed were an elite corps, a rare example of the intelligent people getting their well-deserved power. While the stupid-people-run government scrabbled to keep up with them, they just sat back in taverns, drank expensive beverages, and watched their riches accumulate. Bumi was immensely proud of them all, competition or not.
Until, that is, he opened the fourth cavern. Instead of a pleasing pulse of cool air as in all the others, he was met this time by the nearly overwhelming stench of feces and decay. He recoiled and only barely managed to hold onto his stomach contents. The cavern had the distinctive temperature of rancid milk and the distinctive charm of a room full of several dozen caged animals wasting away in their own filth. The milk thing turned out to be a coincidence.
Bumi pulled his shirt collar up over his nose and cautiously entered. Metal cages lied strewn about the room and held a diverse menagerie of creatures in various states of neglect. A spectacled moray boa huddled on the metal floor of one cage, wrapped up on himself in a futile attempt to escape the cold. Six or seven bedraggled individuals were all that was left of a previously large flock of screaming birds. Exotic sparrowkeet species, usually bright and vibrant, steadily lost feathers in a tall enclosure to the right. There were a dozen or so small cages containing pangolillas, most of which appeared to have died already. A trio of tiny chamelmosets sat morosely in their empty food dish, wide eyes staring at Bumi in fear. A starving muskajou chewed desperately on the filthy bars of its cage.
A particular cage in the back, much larger than any of the others, attracted Bumi's attention. He gasped in wonderment and disgust at its contents. A large white furred primate rested wearily on its side. Its glassy eyes were pale and infected, its hide was matted and stained with all manner of unfavorable body fluids, and it sported a series of gashes across its once-muscular left forearm, which it was engaged in licking back and forth with its wide, dog-like tongue. What Bumi had initially mistook for clump of the beast's horrendous fur shifted unexpectedly and revealed itself to be a pair of infants latched desperately onto their mother's belly. Bumi was amazed and revolted. Bumi had never before seen such a creature. Even half-starved it was clearly an immense animal, rivaling even Aang's sky bison Appa. Its listless eyes were disturbingly intelligent, too, as if it understood quite well what sort of cruelty was being inflicted on it. Bumi could not believe it. How could someone treat such a marvelous animal so poorly? It was just awful, and bad business sense to boot!
Bumi cussed a stream of such well-executed profanity that it would have turned heads even in the scummiest of Omashu's bars. He damned whoever had done this to a thousand evils. Bumi would not leave these animals to die, slowly starved or poisoned by their reprehensible living conditions. It was wrong, this sort of thing, much more so than selling goods on the black market was wrong (if that was wrong at all). These animals were living, feeling things, and Bumi would save them. And then he would find the man responsible and ruin his life.
He took one last glance at the beast in the cage. It gazed at him hopelessly.
"Don't worry, big girl. I'm going to get you out of here."
--
Bumi returned the next night. He was exhausted, having not slept at all since his last visit. Seeing the animals again brought him new resolve, however, and he quickly set to work.
He had spent the entire previous day trying to work out how he was going to get all these creatures out of there. He could slip past the guards fairly well himself, but he doubted that, even incompetent as they were, they would readily miss the exodus of a conspicuous mammal the size of a small house. He had considered attempting to tunnel into the back of the cavern, but there was no spot where he could conceivably start digging without drawing attention to himself (no doubt it was intentionally so in order to avoid this very thing). So Bumi had decided to tunnel out. No one would hesitate to stop a boy from digging thirty feet into the floor of their building, but if he were to merely emerge from the floor at the head of a procession of exotic animals, would stopping him really be the first thing on their minds?
Bumi had come well equipped for his mission. Aside from his messy sketches of the layout above the caverns, he sported a thick strip of cloth over his mouth and nose, a pair of bolt cutters, a half dozen cloth bags, rope, and some assorted seeds and fruits. He fed all of the animals he could, scattering the food in through the cage bars. Those animals still living descended on it ravenously. The mother beast creature extended a massive hand in which Bumi placed a half dozen apples. She ate them slowly, masticating small pieces and pushing them into the mouths of her twin babies.
Bumi wiped his head and sized up the back wall. It was some sixty feet, he had guessed, to the pottery shop he was aiming for. He would attempt to emerge directly in front of it but at this point it was hard to guess how well it would work. At about mid-morning the guards would do a final check of each of the caverns before changing shifts, so he only had a few hours to do this. He sighed and started digging.
Bumi's earthbending-assisted fingers dug through the solid rock rather easier than any shovel could, but it was still hard going. The pile of soil in the ware cavern grew larger and larger as he pitched handfuls of pulverized stone into it. The stench of the animals and the exertion of his task began to make him feel ill. He continued nonetheless, and ever so slowly bored his way upwards at a shallow angle. Bumi had to shift the smaller cages out of the way from time to time to avoid burying them in the great pile of dirt he was leaving in his wake.
Several times Bumi had to take a break and would observe the animals more carefully. The large female creature, whom Bumi had decided to name Mipsie, still interested him the most. Mipsie appeared to have recognized that something important was going on and had stood, resting shakily on her great knuckles. Her twins whined cheerlessly but she remained silent, shifting her horned head to follow Bumi's movements across the room.
Bumi got back to work. The hours ticked by. With no sunlight, Bumi could not gauge the time and he began to worry. If the guards checked on this cell to find it half-filled with dirt with a half-complete tunnel dug into the back of it, they would no doubt be quite upset indeed.
Finally, though, after hours of backbreaking work, Bumi's aching fingers broke through the final few inches of his journey. His euphoria overtook his exhaustion as a bolt of dim light streamed in on him. He widened his little hole and stuck his head through. He had misjudged and landed a few feet east of where he wanted to be, inside the pottery shop instead of in front of it, but all in all it was a job well done. It was morning already, though. He would have to hurry. He earthbended a thin plug over his hole and slipped back down into the cavern.
Working swiftly, Bumi cut the bolts off of each cage. Birds screeched and twittered with excitement as they flew for the first time in months. Bumi stuck most of the smaller animals like the moray boa and the pangolillas into the cloth sacks, tied them together, and slung them over his right shoulder. The muskajou he positioned carefully on his left, grimacing a little as its claws sunk into his skin.
Last was Mipsie herself. As soon as the heavy lock that held her in thundered to the floor, she burst from the cage and threw herself at Bumi. Her long tongue slathered over his face with such forceful gratitude that he nearly dropped the animals he was carrying.
"You're welcome," he said, laughing. Mipsie stood obediently to his side and Bumi pondered briefly if she might have been a trained pet before being locked here.
The cavern door slid open. A guard stepped in and cried out in surprise.
"Time to go!" Bumi informed his animal companions and scampered up the tunnel with Mipsie in tow and scattering a handful of seeds as he went. The released birds descended aggressively on the dropped foodstuffs as before.
What the potter must have thought when a teenaged earthbender, a massive white ape, and a flock of birds materialized out of his shop floor, Bumi did not know. Regardless, the man simply watched in abject shock as Bumi waved the birds through the open door, sealed the tunnel, and then bolted from the shop.
Bumi ran down the street as fast as he could, Mipsie's thunderous footfalls the only thing he could hear over the sound of his laughter.
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A/N: And there's chapter 7. I find this sixteen-year-old Bumi harder than both his younger and older forms because slipping into abstract silliness doesn't work quite as well. Do tell me your thoughts, if you have them.
An additional thing: I would like to thank Blooappall, who beta'd this chapter for me.
And a final thing: If you don't review, Mipsie will cry. That's cruelty to animals and I think there's quite enough of that in this chapter, don't you?