Chapter 06

Tu's Misadventure

With the important matters of yesterday behind them and time to kill before their departure for Republic City, the three made plans to make the most out of the next couple of days. First thing each of them had done was take a quick shower at some point that morning. Zhuang had taken Souta up on his offer, and would be spending the day at a firebending dojo, learning proper stances and fighting techniques for the first time in his life. Fei Yen, after bugging Zhuang for the rest of the money Souta had given him, went shopping with a couple of the younger girls from the meeting yesterday. Tu, not having any plans whatsoever, decided to explore the city on his own. "Maybe I'll visit Zhuang later and see how his firebending stuff is going," he thought out loud as he made his way out of the apartment building and into the busy streets.

He wandered aimlessly for a while, getting a little lost within the crowded sidewalks of the city. He hadn't noticed until he was in Akkil's apartment last night, but the entire city seemed to be wired up with electricity. For some reason, he had only thought that a few buildings, like Tongscreen tower and the palace, would be powered.

He somehow wandered into one of the smaller market squares in the city, and there were several wagons set up with wares displayed. Tu decided to poke his nose into things even if he couldn't buy anything.


"Greetings, Zhuang," the elderly man greeted. "My name is Bumi."

"Greetings, Master Bumi," Zhuang said, bowing low to show his respect. "It would be an honor to learn from you."

Bumi laughed. He seemed ancient, but at the same time he stood tall, his aged skin covering muscles that still seemed like they were quite capable. He was one who seemed to have remained quite active in his old age. His hand moved to scratch his balding head as he looked Zhuang over. He lacked facial hair as well. "Give me a demonstration of what you can do," he commanded.

Zhuang moved to the center of the dojo's main practice room. While the architecture was clearly in the southern Earth Kingdom style, the decorations and color scheme inside were clearly derived from the Fire Nation. Zhuang wondered if this man was a Fire Nation citizen living in Omashu or if they were alike in their origins. His name suggested he was born in the Earth Kingdom, but Zhuang didn't want to jump to conclusions.

As it was only those two and a few practice dummies and obstacles, Zhuang decided to start things off big. He started on the basic steps he had devised himself, sending huge plumes of flame from his fists into the air as he stepped forward. He moved his arm in a wide arc, creating a thin crescent of flame that met its end on several of the dummies. Finally, he ran forward, jumping into the air. When he landed, a huge flame erupted from his feet, and he took out another dummy. They were made of some kind of metal so they didn't burn, but Zhuang was proud to see that his last move added to the innumerable scorch marks present on their metallic surfaces.

Bumi nodded. "You've never had any formal instruction?"

"No," Zhuang said. "My mother showed me the very basics, but she couldn't show anything beyond that."

"Well, your movements are sloppy and unrefined," Bumi began, hurting Zhuang's pride at his accomplishment, "but you show a lot of promise. I do find it impressive that you've managed to figure this much out on your own." This eased his pride's wounds somewhat.

"However," the old man continued, "you seem to think that the strength of your flame comes from the muscle. This could not be further from the truth. Before we work on your technique, we must concentrate on your breathing. Stand here," he said, pointing.

Zhuang did so, and Bumi went to stand beside him. "For now, we won't be doing any firebending. Just mimic my breathing," he commanded, then started to demonstrate. Zhuang started what proved to be a surprisingly difficult breathing exercise, and for much of the morning they did little more than that: breathe.


"So how do you play this game?" Tu asked. He had stumbled across a game court outside between two skyscrapers. On that court, there were a group of teenagers kicking around a black and white ball, with a small group of them running around and one standing at each goal post, which was a makeshift net tied between two garbage cans. It seemed fun, even if it didn't involve any bending.

One of them walked over, and the game was effectively put on pause while they explained the rules to him. They called the game "football," and, in simplest terms, they kicked around a black and white round ball into the makeshift goals. Tu learned that using your hands was against the rules, but your head, feet, and any other part of the body was fair game. They stressed that bending was against the rules when he asked, and before long they managed to fit him into one of the teams and off they went.

This would be the root of his later problems, but for now he simply enjoyed the game.


"What do you think of this one?" Fei Yen asked, walking out of the dressing area wearing a white, simple strapless dress. It hugged her upper body tightly before gently flowing to her feet, and the girls with her gave their approval.

"That one suits you," one said. "Is that the one you're getting?" asked another.

Fei Yen was looking herself over in an arrangement of mirrors. They were set up in such a way that she could look at her whole self, not just the front and sides. "I don't know. If I'm going to be on the road a while I want to at least look fashionable."

The blonde one shook her head then. "No, that isn't meant for the road. Let's try... this one," she said, walking through a nearby aisle and coming back with a light brown tank top and some brown pants made out of a material Fei Yen couldn't immediately name. "It's a light cotton/silk mix - straight from Gaoling."

Fei Yen disappeared behind the curtain to try it on. People moved to and fro in the store, and the four girls went back to look at clothes for themselves. After a few minutes Fei Yen re-emerged, visibly liking this outfit. "This is really comfy," she commented to herself as she walked over to the mirrors again. The girls with her soon walked over to see how she looked.

"Now that's better," said the blonde girl.

"I want more like this," Fei Yen said, laughing.


Tu was running toward the goal, parallel to one of his teammates that had the ball. When they got close and the other team started crowding him too much, he made a swift pass to Tu. Tu was about to shoot the goal when the ground right in front of the ball suddenly raised up, creating a slope which the ball rode up on and became airborne. Tu, while stepping over the suddenly disappearing slope, jumped up to kick the ball into the goal. He succeeded, partially because the surprised goalie hadn't recovered fast enough the ground beneath his feet rising unevenly, causing him to trip over.

"That earthbender cheated!" someone from the other team shouted.

"It wasn't me!" Tu shouted back. "I don't know who was doing the bending, but it wasn't me!"

"You lying sack of crap!" Members of both teams were starting to surround him, clearly angry by his perceived actions. "You're already good enough without your magic!" someone shouted.

"I didn't do th- hey it's not magic!" Tu shouted. "Someone framed me! Maybe it wa-" Someone threw a rock at him, and he barely managed to catch it with his hand. "Alright that's it!" he shouted over the noise they were making, and with a stomp of his foot caused the ground beneath them to quake, knocking everyone within a couple of blocks over. "Maybe I overdid it," he thought out loud.

"Hey, who did that? Earthbending on that scale is illegal within city limits!" A couple of police officers were running into the alley, and seeing that Tu was the only one standing guessed who the earthbender responsible was. They were dressed in a blue and green uniform, but weren't currently wearing the hats that were standard issue, as they fell off while the officers managed to keep their balance.

"It was him!" one of the kids getting up shouted while pointing at Tu, confirming the guess.

"Freeze!" They started running toward him, with one slowing down apparently ready to do some bending to keep Tu in place.

Tu, not knowing what else to do, panicked and started to run off. He managed to dodge the couple of dirt hands that rose up to grab his ankles, and after a couple of steps stopped to bend a small rock out of the ground. While not much bigger than his head it did have a flat surface, and after quickly jumping on it he had move like a bullet out the other side of the alley, barely avoiding taking a pedestrian's head off in the process. Looking behind him quickly, he saw that the two policemen had followed his cue and were already on their own rocks, with one of them talking into what Tu assumed was a device that allowed him to call for backup. A high speed chase through the streets of Omashu had begun. He flew over the sidewalks and a small market square at first, but after knocking over a stall of cabbages ("What is it with this city!?" some poor cabbage salesman shouted) and a wagon full of pottery (somehow breaking every single one in half a second), he decided that this wasn't the place to be.

Moving into the automobile driven streets, Tu found he had more room to maneuver as he dodged cars going back and forth. With a bit of concentration he managed to raise his rock above all but the taller cars, but he sacrificed speed in doing so and the officers gained on him. Another officer, whose uniform had some grey about the shoulders and a metallic insignia just under the Omashu police logo on his chest, shot a cable of metal at him. It barely missed, and Tu increased his speed so that the metalbending officer wouldn't get a second chance.

"You better stop!" one of the officers shouted from below. That gave Tu an idea and, after bracing himself, caused his rock to stop almost instantly. The two officers shot on by below him, but they were starting to quickly turn around when a large Satomobile truck came cruising by, hitting the rock of one of the officers and sending him flying. The other officer, after a second of indecision, seemed to go see if his comrade was ok.

Tu decided now would be a good time to disappear, and floated his rock over to a nearby building's wall. It was an older building, so it was crafted out of stone instead of metal. "Good old earth," Tu whispered as he took a step, violently shoved his palms into the wall, and bended a some steps that went up to the mail rail that ran over his head. Stepping off, his gently lowered his rock before sending it flying into a fenced in playground, then ran up the steps. After looking both ways to make sure there wasn't a large package coming, Tu lightly jumped off of his step and onto the mail system pathway. Shoving his palm into the wall again, the steps went back into the wall, not leaving a trace. "That should lose them," he whispered to himself.

To his right the mail rail came sloping from a higher portion of the city, flattening out to where he stood now before splitting into two paths. He saw a door where one of the earthbending mail controllers were, and opened it to go inside.

There he found a woman sitting in a chair, reading. She looked up as she closed the door, surprised at first and then irritated. Her round pale face scrunched up into a scowl, her short done up brown hair bobbing around as she gestured violently while yelling at him. "What are you doing here!? People shouldn't be walking around out there!" she pointed to the door. "Give me one reason I shouldn't call the police on you!"

That brought Tu up short, and, instead of answering her, he ran by her and down the stairs. "Hey!" Part of the wall reached out to grab him, but he managed to block it with part of the stairs before running down the rest of the spiral stairs and out the door, back on the streets. He started to breathe a sigh of relief, but the man he just ran in front of happened to be one of the two officers he had escaped earlier.

"You have got to be kidding me," he said in disbelief as the officer reached out to grab him. He barely managed to escape the grasp, and, finding his rock just inside the playground that just happened to be by the building he had emerged from, he bent it back to him, jumped on it, and was off again. The officer in question again found a rock from somewhere and was after him, and Tu couldn't help but think that his entire detour up and on the mail system was a huge waste of time.

"This just isn't my day," he said irritably, seeing a group of bending officers up ahead of him ready to stop him.


"With proper breathing, a firebender can both put more flames into his greatest attacks and practice more precision with smaller flames when necessary," Bumi said.

Zhuang nodded, breathing heavily and sweating profusely. After the breathing exercises he was told to repeat some of his movements from earlier, and the difference in how much fire he created astounded him. He couldn't believe something as simple as how he breathed when bending could make such a difference in his potential flames.

Since then, he had learned a few combat stances and was currently working on another when they suddenly heard the glass at the front of their building break violently. When both of them ran out of the main practice area to see what it was, they found Tu struggling to get back up on his feet. His shirt was really scratched up and his was bleeding from a couple of small cuts, but by and large he seemed ok.

"Care to explain how this happened!?" Bumi roared imperiously, taking a couple of threatening steps toward the startled young earthbender.

"Uh," Tu said dumbly, his mind only beginning to catch up to the situation he found himself in.

"Well!?" Bumi took a stance, preparing to incinerate Tu in his anger.

"Wait," Zhuang said, running to stand between his teacher and his friend, but ended up bending over to breathe as he was getting exhausted. "He's a friend of mine," he said between gasps of air.

Bumi relaxed a bit, but still shoved Zhuang out of the way and walked up to Tu. "What happened here?" he asked, not quite as loudly as before.

"I was...," Tu began, took a deep breath, then said, "I was running from the police. I misjudged how fast I was going on my rock and, well..." he gestured to the rock that had crashed through the window. It was currently partly embedded into the wall separating the entryway from the main practice area of the dojo.

Bumi sighed, took a couple of deep breaths, then kicked Tu in the face. The young earthbender flew a couple of feet before landing, holding his nose and generally groaning loudly.

"Is he one of us?" Bumi asked a stunned Zhuang.

"Yeah."

"Then take him to the back room while I deal with the police. They should be here any minute."

Zhuang nodded, then ran to grab Tu. After he grabbed him and carried him to the back room, he put him on the bed. "Are you ok?"

Tu looked at him, then gave him a weak thumbs up before delicately feeling his nose. "I... don't think it's broken," he managed to croak.

"Good," Zhuang said before leaving to rejoin his teacher. When he turned the corner back to the front he saw three police officers there talking to Bumi.

"...vagrant ran off before I could burn him alive!" he heard Bumi shouting.

"Which way did he go?" one of the officers asked.

"He ran off that way," Bumi said, pointing.

The officer nodded, but before they left another one quipped, "Well, at least he only ran into a fire rat's den and not something important." Bumi said nothing, and as Zhuang finally stood beside him the officers left.

Bumi immediately turned and unleashed a massive flame on the rock, and before long nothing remained of it except a small pile of ash. "Your friend is foolish and reckless," he grunted. "The last thing we need at tonight's gathering is a face every police officer in the city will soon be looking for. He will not be able to travel freely in the city anymore."

Zhuang nodded, before looking back to where Tu lay and wonder just how he managed to get himself in trouble with the law on his first full day in Omashu.

"Are you ready for an advanced set now, Zhuang?"

"Of course."


Fei Yen had walked back to Akkil's apartment with a bag full of new clothes. She was quite pleased with her day's accomplishments, for now she wouldn't have to wear those drab travel clothes her mom had packed for her. Smiling, she prepared to pull out her clothes and ponder what she would wear to tonight's gathering. All in all, she was having a good day.