I can't tell how many people are following this story, but I'll update it as often as I can. I'll probably keep the story to a tighter timeline than I originally planned, but all of the main events I've planned still fit into the plot.
The Avatar Project: Chapter Seven
Sokka wasn't excited about heading back to the tea shop, especially when the jerk from the day before was standing behind the counter, but it felt like the right thing to do. Even if the grass-chewing annoyance had flirted with his sister and spilled the beans about Gyatso, Jet had helped Sokka save Aang from seeing the scorch in the basement's concrete. If this "Mr. Iroh" was half as cool as Aang seemed to think, then he would definitely want to know that the kid was safe, and Jet seemed to be the person that passed on messages.
Jet didn't waste any time after Sokka closed the tea shop's door. "Is Aang alright?"
"Yeah." Sokka might not like the guy, but he could appreciate the genuine relief that Jet was showing. "There were Yu Yan and Dai Li all over the place, but he got home alright with a little help."
Jet frowned, stepping out from behind the counter and nodding to the table with the little game pieces on it. "When did you hear about them?"
"This morning. I did a little research after they were crawling all over my neighborhood." Sokka took the seat facing the door, leaving Jet with the angle where he had to turn to see the full shopfront. Sokka didn't mention that his only good information had come from the weird little blind girl at the library. "I used a library computer to look everything up, and as far as I can tell they don't have stored records of computer activity. I didn't find much about them." He had found two mentions, actually, and neither had been half as useful as talking to Toph for a minute.
"The Dai Li are all earthbenders, and pretty nasty pieces of work, but the Yu Yan made Iroh pretty nervous. They're the ones that have a good chance of catching an airbender. Iroh didn't want to come out too early in the game, especially when Ozai's men were out in force. Ozai has the courts wrapped around his thumb, even if the police haven't been bought out yet, so if he could nail Iroh on a citizen's arrest—Ozai has a few bogus charges waiting, white-collar stuff."
"What's with the two of them, anyway? Ozai and Iroh are both firebenders."
Jet tapped one of the tiles against the table for almost a minute before answering. "Iroh said you'd have questions, and he said it's a sign of good faith that we're going to be honest. I'm going to tell you what I know, but keep in mind that it's all really sensitive information. Sozin Labs would do almost anything to keep it under wraps, so it's risky to hear."
Sokka shrugged. "It's risky to have the Avatar and somebody else that Sozin Labs isn't all that fond of in my house. I owe you for the tip about the basement." Sokka relaxed for the first time since entering the shop, and put both hands on the table as his biggest sign of good faith. He still had a holstered pistol that he could draw very quickly, but he wasn't (actively) waiting for a reason. "The basement fuse is out, by the way. You'll need a flashlight if you want to head down there to check things out again, and the last fuse in little pieces all over the floor. Aang didn't need to see that."
Jet's eyebrows went way up at that announcement. "I get the feeling we'd be pretty okay if I hadn't been flirting with the little sister. Look, I don't mean anything serious by that. She's way under the line for statutory. She was happy somebody paid attention, that was all of it."
"That doesn't mean I like you."
Jet grinned. "You have no idea how often I get that reaction."
He looked down at the table before continuing, which gave Sokka time to look over the store. Aang had been pitching furniture everywhere the day before, and had broken at least a few things, but the entire store was back to normal. The game board was even in same pattern as before, just waiting for someone to put a white lotus tile in play and start off the pattern all over again. Maybe there was something to his crazy secret club, if they went through this much trouble.
Jet was still looking at the board when he started talking. "Iroh's son died eight years ago, and that still wasn't the start of everything. That just kicked most of it off," Jet said. "Iroh pulled me into all this a few years ago, when some asshole named Long Feng wanted to use me as a guinea pig in some freaky psychology experiment. I was in juvie, he seemed to think I didn't know my rights... long story short, I broke his nose, he went running back to Ozai, and Iroh took a chance on me. So, when I'm giving you the story, I've only seen the last three years or so, and heard stray bits about the rest."
"Long Feng?"
"He's in charge of the Dai Li. They're earthbenders, but Long Feng thinks that if he branches out a little he can pull some of the attention from Zhao's Yu Yan—the archers. It won't be all that hard, because Zhao is still in deep shit for some stunt last year with an untested chemo treatment that went really badly."
Sokka felt like everything had slowed down to a crawl, even time itself, and something in his expression stopped whatever Jet would have said next. "It was a female patient, teenager, and that first chemotherapy cocktail killed her." Sokka knew before Jet's eyes widened. "Her name was Yue. Sozin Labs did something when she was born prematurely, and she happened to get this freaky cancer later that the doctors at the hospital had only read case studies about."
Jet rubbed the back of his neck, and didn't say anything for several moments. "Yeah. Yeah, that's what happened- I'm sorry you heard it that way, but I didn't think you knew the girl. When she was a baby, the same treatment that saved her life also made her a waterbender and probably messed her up for later. They hadn't worked out all the kinks yet, and didn't really think it was ready, but she was dying and her parents signed the release form."
"What do you mean all the kinks yet?" Sokka yelled, on his feet before he realized that he was standing. "My sister's a waterbender!"
That wasn't the best way to explain, and it definitely wasn't something he had planned on mentioning, but Jet didn't look upset with the outburst. He looked just as ready to start yelling himself.
"Well, shit," Jet said finally. "I don't think I can get Iroh on the phone until this afternoon, he's running a war council with a few old friends, but this is bad. Iroh wasn't behind treating Yue, not at all, but he was still with the company when your sister would have been treated. She was a preemie too, right? Born too early?"
Sokka nodded, even though his neck felt almost too stiff to allow the motion.
"I know they did a second treatment with waterbending, and Iroh himself was involved in that one," Jet said. "He was a lot more careful than Zhao or Ozai ever were. Iroh and Gyatso were research partners when the thing started, and Gyatso would never have dreamed of risking a life to bring bending back. That's how the whole project started, with barely any risk. Gyatso was a natural airbender, and he was friends with Iroh from the army. They figured out a way to get bending into adults. I have no idea how all that worked, but you needed some combination of the right temperament or something to go with the genes, or nothing happened. The other part of the deal is that you can only work one element, unless-"
"Wait a second-"
"Unless you're the Avatar," Jet finished. "That was the part of the project that got Ozai interested. The legends said there would only be one Avatar at a time, and he or she was going to be the best. They'd be able to control all the elements, and that's what Ozai wanted. He started the Avatar Project before he, Iroh, and Zhao had all made themselves firebenders. Iroh's son Lu Ten insisted that he wanted to be a part of it, too, so for while that was it. Gyatso was a born airbender, and then there were five firebenders out there- Iroh's assistant was a firebender, too."
"Then they just stuck magic waterbender-juice in Yue when she was a baby as a first try?"
"No. Then they tried to change the genetic makeup of a kid before he was even born, and it didn't work. Well, I shouldn't say that, because the kid was born and the guy is a firebender, but Ozai's son came awfully close to dying just about every week of gestation. Later, the kid was perpetually sick with something or other. He had the worst immune system they company had ever seen. Iroh thinks he's grown out of it now."
Somehow, Sokka guessed that their new house guest didn't have any brothers, and would have been born with that kind of luck. "And his name was Zuko?"
"You are good," Jet said, but his expression stayed grim. "Zuko. After that, they were working with airbending and getting nowhere, so they tried waterbending. Yue was born before they were ready. Iroh wouldn't have anything to do with something they hadn't tested at all, but Ozai and Zhao overruled him. Gyatso was already upset that Iroh had let his son in on the experiments, when they didn't know how it would work in a teenager, but Yue was the last straw when she still was a baby. Gyatso left Sozin Labs, and he never went back. The labs figured out waterbending, and your sister was the success story there. All they wanted was the success, they didn't think it had a lot of potential for fighting. Earthbending got messy."
"They tried it in a little girl, she's blind, and they don't even think she ended up an earthbender."
"Right." Jet gave up on watching the door entirely to stare at Sokka. "Where did you say you found out about all this again?"
"I didn't."
Jet didn't look as if he'd expected an answer. "Well, you're right. The little girl was blind. Nobody's sure if that was because of the treatment, but her parents got a court injunction and were ready to blow the entire company apart. Ozai did some fast talking, but that project was still over. They ended up figuring out the protocol for adults, and nailing it, and that's when most of the security team ended up as earthbenders. Iroh was still involved, at that point, and he was the one that figured out how to successfully use their premature-baby-saver to make an airbender- Aang. The problem was that nobody knew how to raise the kid. He was bending air when he was lying flat on his back in the cradle, and they never could get an adult to start moving air.
"Iroh brought Aang to Gyatso. That was the first time they'd talked in a couple years, and it was pretty awkward. Gyatso only agreed to raise Aang if the lab would never ask for him back. Iroh agreed to that, but Ozai was furious that they lost the most promising bender since his second kid—a daughter. She's fourteen now, I think, but Iroh said that she was making blue fire when she was six.
"They had a few DNA samples from when Aang was a baby, and I think they ran them just a few weeks before Iroh left the company. Lots of science junk later, the fast version is that Aang had a few genes switched on they'd never seen working at the same time. He had all of the things they'd look for in a firebender, waterbender, earthbender—all while they knew he's an airbender. They knew Aang was the Avatar, and they had signed papers that they'd never take him back from Gyatso.
"If Iroh was still at the company, he might have been able to force Ozai to cool it and leave the kid alone, but Iroh was gone before they knew for sure. His son died, and it never mattered that Lu Ten asked to be a firebender. Iroh couldn't do it anymore. He and Gyatso got in touch, they ended up friends again, and Iroh started up the tea shop. We're close enough to the labs to have a good idea about what's going on, and Ozai already made the first move. He murdered Gyatso because he wants Aang back. If Gyatso were alive, he'd either fight Ozai directly or use the police to get his kid back."
Sokka made a few gestures as he thought, trying to put all that information into some kind of order. He begrudgingly knocked Jet a half point down the jerk scale when there weren't any snotty comments. "Okay. Why did Iroh bring Ozai in at all, if he halfway knew what the guy was going to be like?"
"They're brothers." Jet didn't seem to think that was enough of an excuse, from his expression. "Ozai already had a small company with the right kind of technology available, and Iroh had the ideas that could make them very rich. Sozin Labs only makes about a tenth of their research public, and you've seen the kind of impact they have. They've saved a whole lot of lives with medical advances, and that's the idea that Iroh and Gyatso were really interested in. The bending was cool, and it would be awesome if it came back, but they wanted to help people."
"So... Iroh is Zuko's uncle?"
"Exactly. Iroh hasn't been in touch since he left the company. He still talks to one of the people working there, though, but Jee- Iroh's assistant- is getting nervous. Zuko was in Ozai's office yesterday, there was some yelling, and Zuko would barely talk to Jee... all of that's probably more than you want to know, but Iroh's nervous. Ozai told Zuko to go find Gyatso. Yesterday. Ozai killed Gyatso two days ago. Iroh has no idea what Ozai was after, and Jee says that Zuko never responded to a text message from last night." Jet let his hand slide off the table. "I didn't mean to throw that many names at you, but I'm still trying to figure out what's going on."
"Wow." Sokka shook his head, putting all of that information in with what he knew already. He'd known it was bad, but this was just a mess. "Well, Ozai might have accidentally gotten something with that. Zuko found Aang last night and gave him a ride back to my place. I think Zuko had the motorcycle somebody ditched about a block away from my house, but Sozin Labs might have already picked it up. There was this bright red Ferrari right across the street from the bike this morning, and it had the Sozin Lab logo painted in black all the way up and down the hood."
Jet hadn't been paying attention to the last few sentences, but the question told Sokka all he needed to know. "You've seen Zuko? Is he okay?"
Sokka winced. "He's not awake yet. Ozai..."
Jet's jaw clenched, and his fist looked tight enough to snap one of the game pieces in half. "Shit. Just... shit. We should have told Jee to do something a long time ago, he's been sending a few stories to Iroh for ages- Zuko's a weird kid. Sozin Labs has spirits know how many benders with more ambition than morals running all over the place, and Zuko ended up okay. He got himself kicked out of a board meeting a few years back for speaking up about something, and doing it well enough that the board of directors wouldn't side with Ozai." Jet relaxed his fist with obvious effort, letting the tile fall to the table with a clink. "What happened?"
There wasn't any way to make the news easier. "Ozai burned him. I don't know most of what happened. Aang brought the guy to my house, and spent more time throwing up than talking. Zuko's still out cold, but the burn is healed. Aang did some freaky waterbender glow-thing and took care of that, enough that a doctor was really impressed this morning. Zuko's fine physically, but he's going to look a lot different than Jee or whoever remembers. The scar's probably a good quarter of his face."
"Iroh's going to want to know whatever you can tell me. He'll want to get Zuko in the walls of his compound five minutes ago, really, but Zuko doesn't have any reason to trust him."
Sokka had thought he would just gesture for where the burn was, roughly, but the shape of his hand gave him the answer. He'd seen the way that Katara could cover her hand in water that followed every motion. Maybe fire could do the same. Whatever had happened the night before, Sokka felt a little more sympathy for Aang's newest friend when he pressed his right hand against the left side of his face, with the base of the thumb at the inside corner of his eye. "It's like this, about, but Ozai's hand is pretty big." Sokka let his arm drop onto the board, hard enough to rattle a few of the pieces. "The eye was hit the worst, but it spreads all the way back over the ear on that side."
"Shit," Jet repeated. "I'll make sure you have a few phone numbers before you leave. Iroh is going to want you guys all out at his place fast. Aang knows him, which might help with the trust issue, and I bet that's where he was supposed to end up... do you have the letter that Gyatso wrote? Aang grabbed it before he left yesterday."
"Aang didn't look likely to wake up soon when I left this morning. I'll bring it by tomorrow, by then I'll have talked to everybody at home about options." Sokka picked up a tile as he spoke, turning it over in his hand. It was hypothetically a white lotus. It looked a lot more like an orange cut in half to him, but he and art tended to disagree. "So, your super-secret club... what do you guys want to happen at the end of the day?"
"We want Sozin Labs out of Ozai's control. He's sitting on technology that could save thousands of lives next month, and instead he's outright killing people. Iroh might not have the heart to do it, with Lu Ten and Gyatso both gone, but he said he'd go in as a consultant if we find somebody decent."
Sokka turned the piece around and around in his hand, thinking about whether it was going to be worth it to join a team or to start his own. "What's going to happen to Ozai and the rest of the bad apples?"
"Jail, if at all possible. Iroh doesn't want to go in and murder his brother, but he said that if there isn't another option... jail at the very least, and we have enough dirt to make sure they can't go running to another country."
Sokka placed the white lotus tile in the center of the board, exactly as Aang had done the day before. Their fancy elaborate pattern game wasn't all that complicated, in the end. It looked flashy, but it was based on a repeated sequence that worked in symmetry. "Then I'm in."
Jet put down the second piece with a very doubtful expression, but that had faded into something almost friendly by the time the pair of them played the little tile-game that had replaced the secret handshake. Sokka didn't like the jerk, but he at least could work with him.
Sokka left the tea shop with a lotus tile of his very own and a business card with several scribbled phone numbers. He looked over his shoulder just once, to see Jet resetting the game board with an air of idle boredom, and noticed the abstract lotus painted on the storefront's glass for the first time.
The White Lotus had their strategies, but that didn't mean he was going to follow all of their steps. He finally had information, he had a few contacts, and he even had hints about motive. Next he'd only need to figure out what on earth he was doing.
