Aang for the first time felt what was meant by the expression 'hairs standing on end'. To complicate matters further the wind was rushing through his emergent fuzz at a speed that made him feel like his head was coming off. There were good reasons why Airbenders had shaved heads, and this was one of them. Little of this mattered to Katara, Aang noticed, who seemed elated in terror. She held out an arm into the clouds, keeping the other tight around Aang, and spun elegantly, the slight motions in her hand forming a string of water from the clouds. In short order their free-fall was superseded by the vortex of water Katara formed around themselves. She stepped onto the edges and held an arm forward in concentration, the devious smile never leaving her face.
The vortex spiralled out of the clouds, through the vast blue sky, and towards the ancient City of Lieu, its riders clinging on to each other as their bodies rocketed downwards. There was an opening through which a steady stream of water was pouring, pointing upwards towards the heavens, and this was what Katara carefully aimed at, the wind stinging her wide open eyes and whipping her long hair in all directions, intently focussed on giving Aang the ride of his life if that was the last thing she did. Aang was earnestly hoping it wasn't the last thing she did, or that he did for that matter, but his choice had been made, and he clung close as the vortex closed the gap between sky and mountain and sent the both of them plummeting into darkness.
Aang didn't dare close his eyes, no matter how hard the wind bit them to tears. But now in the darkness his optics felt some relief. It was pitch black compared to the world outside, and he couldn't see a thing, but he trusted Katara to feel the water flowing under her feet, which she seemed to be using as a…surf board? That alone made Aang reluctant to trust Katara with much else, but he couldn't do much clinging to Katara's side, feet never daring to touch the rapid waters beneath them both.
Then there was light.
An opening above them appeared, a vast man-made chamber that housed the water-chute, which swerved from side-to-side down to the ground below, hugging the rock face the whole way. The warm summer light streamed down, illuminating the carvings and statues that lined the chamber. Pillars and walkways curved around the rock-face, and moss collected in the damp places. Beside them, facing the sun, small cherry trees clung precariously to collect what little light there was and sucking up the sweet moisture of the stream. The City of Lieu wasn't dead. It had been reborn.
"WOOO!" Katara skipped over one of the bends, and Aang noticed that she had formed an ice shard to better ride the waters. They flew through the air briefly before rejoining the stream, on its way down to more narrow tunnels, but as they flew the light caught the ice shard and reflected onto Katara's face, joyous and terrified beyond measure.
It was the most beautiful thing Aang had ever seen. But he didn't know there were even more breath-taking sights to come as they flowed deeper into the tunnels.
The rest of the group had planted themselves atop the city, on a flat rocky plateau with some impressive views of the surrounding area. Sokka was in little mood to be appreciative, and pressed the prone Toph for information.
"What's going on down there!?" Sokka demanded. Toph was kneeling down and feeling the ground, Momo still perched on her shoulder, while Kuei stood aside to let what he assumed to be the professionals carry on their work. Toph smirked, and abruptly stood up.
"I don't know, but whatever it is, it feels like fun!" Toph took a stance and opened up a smooth passage into the rock. Before Sokka could utter a yelp of protest she had disappeared, a disoriented Momo in tow, not wanting to be left alone. Sokka was aghast.
"What? …y…you can't leave me as the sane one!" Sokka yelled down the hole, "I can't take the responsibility!"
"I could help a little…" Kuei advanced, to Sokka's irritation.
"Yeah, what can you do?" Sokka crossed his arms.
"I can rule the largest country in the world," Kuei responded irritably.
"And that turned out swell, didn't it, Your Highness?" Sokka was too distracted to notice the two mountaineers leading a pack of lizard-goats across the plateau, up until they stopped to gasp.
"Look! It's the Avatar's Bison!"
"Get 'im!"
"I saw 'im first!"
The two struggling mountaineers framed Sokka's woes, and the warrior slunkily returned to Appa's back.
The tunnels swerved, ducked, and even briefly rose at high speed. Aang's stomach was turning into knots while Katara skidded across walls and jumped across rises to keep balance. Truth be told…he was actually starting to enjoy it.
"What do you think of the Big Carp now!?" Katara yelled over the roaring water.
"It's…really…really…we don't have time for this!" Aang yelled in return, sincerely conflicted.
"Hmph, and I thought Sokka was a spoil-sport," Katara huffed at the ingratitude, but her eyes sprang open as an explosion of dust appeared before her. She swerved to avoid it and looked aside to see Toph with her feet planted in the ground, creating a local rock-slide that she used to ride through the tunnel. Katara was elated, but still incredulous, "hey! You can't butt in the middle of a race!"
"Don't worry! I'll give you a handicap!" Toph grinned, bending her knees forward to speed into the distance, looping around the ceiling of the tunnel just for show. Momo was left in her wake screeching in terror, eventually grabbing onto Aang's red cloth and hiding behind his head.
"You give me a handicap? That's a laugh," Katara felt challenged, and snapped her hand backwards to speed up the water flow. Before her opened up another lit chamber, where the stream curved to the left in a long bend. She saw that Toph was making her own, tighter bend out of the rock below, and Katara knew she had to deal with that, "two can play at that game, you rule-breaking twerp."
Katara trusted Aang to hold on while she raised both her arms, her hands drooped downwards as if flowing behind her limbs like reeds. The stream before them raised up off of its canal, flowing through mid-air. Then she swept her arms to the left to bring the stream crashing into the tunnel Toph was heading into. The surge made the Earthbending girl swerve to avoid the water, giving Katara free reign to crash down the tunnel. She smiled as her control settled down to normal, and held onto Aang again.
Aang's heart beat at a frenetic pace, and thoughts blattered his mind to a pulp. At this moment a realisation came over Aang. A strange moment of tranquillity when time slowed down and he saw every detail of the tunnel around him. He could feel the water brush against his skin and the heat pumping through his body. It was in such a state that Aang made a fateful decision. He couldn't just stand by let these two risk their lives in some attempt to show him a good time!
He was going to join in, damn it!
Aang reached out to grab a brittle branch, snapping it off easily with the Waterbender's unstoppable momentum. Katara heard the snap and looked over in confusion as the fuzzy-haired boy looked over the branch and smiled. She had no time to react as he let go of her body and fell away onto the long, flat length of wood.
"Let's see how good you really are!" Aang challenged Katara, as his feet planted themselves onto the branch and controlled its descent into the rapid water, picking up speed as it went and leaving Katara behind. Momo clung on for dear life, unsure as to whether hiding behind Aang was strictly a good idea anymore.
Katara hadn't intended this. She just wanted to show him a fantastic time, not make the boy risk his life on a reckless stunt. Not that she was one to talk, but there was an important difference between the two of them, "but…Aang! You can't bend!"
"So?" Aang quickly answered, and just for effect made a similar loop-the-loop around the tunnel that Toph did, around a narrow section of the tunnel that had formed a whirlpool. Katara stared ahead in shock. She wasn't sure what to make of all this. Except the loop-the-loop…she definitely had an opinion about that.
"That's it, no handicap for you my friend," Katara used both her arms, now free, to speed herself along the tunnel.
Appa flew over the mountains, inside which the three water sliders were now completely invisible. Sokka flew the bison ahead, feeling distinctly put-upon, while Kuei was looking over the side in intense curiosity.
"I just wish I knew what they were up to down there…" the Earth King complained.
"Welcome to the fifth wheel, Your Majesty," Sokka remarked bitterly, "souvenir toys are on the stall."
Aang may have lost his ability to bend, but he was small, agile and well-balanced. That made riding his makeshift board that much easier, but it still took intense concentration. He could feel every stray branch he scraped, and he always had to look out for the small holes of light that occasionally burst through. More problematic were the frequent openings in the tunnels where the abandoned City of Lieu lay, since sometimes these produced some unfortunate surprises. Such as the decayed water mill that blocked the aqueduct he was travelling across.
"AAAH!" Aang shrieked as he twisted the board to stop himself. Momo dug his feet into Aang's shoulders and quickly shunted the boy out of the water, as Aang grabbed the board beneath him and ran across the narrow ledge that made up the left side of the aqueduct before leaping back onto the water, holding the board beneath himself and letting the current do its work. Aang looked behind himself at the decayed piece of stone-work, no longer moving as it once did. Abruptly, a sliver of water split it in two, and in-between the separated two halves a wild, powerful-looking Katara rode through the gap, deviously intent on overtaking him.
"You're not getting away from me!" Katara announced, causing Aang to gasp and concentrate forward on the next section. Another tunnel opened up, but across the opening a waterfall was running from another aqueduct high above. Katara smiled devilishly and prepared to cut Aang off, turning part of the stream ahead of her into ice as she reached out with her arms and legs towards the waterfall. Aang saw the danger, and tried to find something to counter her with. Handily, just such a something was clinging to his shoulders.
"Momo! Katara has food in her head! Go get!" Aang brushed Momo off, and smiled as he concentrated forward. They had nearly reached the waterfall when Katara's mischievous expression turned to surprise as the winged lemur flew straight at her face and wrapped himself around her head. Her ice-shard flew off her feet as she lost concentration and got swept away by the current. Aang burst through the waterfall and immediately swung left down an alternate tunnel to avoid the foaming dead end ahead of him. Katara, soaking wet and splashing impotently, had no choice in the matter.
"Ack…Momo! I…can't…see!" Katara was swept through the waterfall and made a satisfying crash into what Aang subsequently guessed to be a store-room for pottery and other items. He didn't bother going back to check principally because he was so elated that he was still winning. A rumble of rocks and a kick-back of dust announced the arrival of Toph as Aang's competitor, and she appreciated the troubles ahead rather more tactically.
The tunnel here occasionally opened up on the chamber they had just left, letting their ride be punctuated occasionally by light and shadow. Aang was already wondering in the back of his mind whether the people of Lieu did such things as they were doing. Toph had no such concerns, and was concentrating on ways to overtake her opponent. As she was fast catching up to Aang, she didn't notice Momo flying ahead of her until he had slapped himself across her face and covered her eyes. The ineffectualness of Momo's strategy made Toph pause for thought.
"Calling you an idiot would be a waste of time, wouldn't it?" Toph commented, moving herself to go faster through the earth underneath the water, the speed making Momo cling on harder and squeak profusely. As the riders were turning further into the maze of tunnels, Toph hugged the wall higher than the water could reach and overtook Aang, who coughed on the dust left in her wake.
"Still sure you want that handicap, Toph?" Aang called to his opponent jovially. The tunnel was approaching another chamber…no, it wasn't a chamber, it was a chasm, where the water fell down a chute for a precipitous height before sliding up a ramp and across the canyon. Toph directed herself to head down the centre of the ramp, and brought her arms down with her palms up, ready to push the earth ahead of her.
"Watch your 'handicap' disappear, twinkle-toes," Toph brought her arms up with great effort, as what used to be a spout became a bridge, tapering forward from the rock-face to a fine point on the other side where the tunnel reappeared. Toph rode across the gap in fine style, and Momo had finally to let go because of the speed she was travelling at.
Unfazed, Aang looked down the canyon and saw another spout below that seemed even bigger than the one Toph had crossed. It had to be a short-cut. As he descended the ramp, he made an exhilarating jump off the edge and directed himself towards the end of the spout. If he timed it correctly, he'd easily have the lead on Toph, since all the streams had to merge into this one eventually.
Aang could feel thin air below his board, and for a few precious moments felt that he was airborne. The air currents flowed around his arms and whipped his legs as he descended, much more readily than he had when he first dropped that height with Katara. He approached the spout, and spread his arms out, pushing his feet onto his board as the opening appeared, smile beaming across his face, happier than he had ever felt before. For those few moments, he felt he was invincible.
Then he missed the tunnel.
The opening dropping away before his eyes filled him with a momentary confusion. With little time to reason what had gone wrong, he reached out his fingers to grab onto the rock. He just managed to cling to a hard, jagged edge just below the opening, but without any means of stopping himself he yelped as he thwacked himself face-first into the rock.
"Oof…" Aang muttered, getting a foothold on the rock-face. He shook himself aware and felt his forehead. There was a nasty, stinging cut, but nothing too serious. He looked up to see the spout flying over his head and he wondered what it was he did wrong. Then he realised…he had tried to Airbend into the tunnel. He smirked, giggled, and then burst out into uncontrollable laughter, wiping a tear from his eye with his free hand, "ha ha…hoo yeah. I forgot about that…"
"Need a hand!?" Katara's familiar voice sounded out overhead, and Aang noticed the spout had changed shape, leading down from the tunnel above. He reached out his hand and felt it being grabbed by the warm, if wet, palm of his Waterbending master. Aang was pulled up as Katara passed by, and she placed an arm around him. She looked at him with some concern, but then couldn't help but giggle, "no point telling you to use your head."
Aang laughed along as they disappeared into the tunnel. Momo flew after them, having given up trying to ride with the masochistic crazies.
Sokka grumbled to himself as he rode Appa down further into the mountains, at least trying to find the exit point of this maze. Kuei was keeping himself occupied with counting out the nuts. He sighed to himself as he picked some out.
"These were Bosco's favourite nuts…" the Earth King reminisced. At that moment a wonderful idea struck him that he had to share with the Water Tribe warrior, "oh! Oh! Warrior Sokka, do you think the Avatar's bison would like these nuts?"
"Not while he's flying! Sheesh!" Sokka shot down the suggestion with a tug on Appa's reins.
Katara's ice shard refracted the sudden shifts of light and dark as they flew through the openings of the City of Lieu, through many centuries of walls and passages, formed around the streams. The place was alive again, and Aang could feel it acutely.
The stream split off into tributaries, and Katara headed down the fastest one with Aang clinging on, laughing his head off as Katara leapt over a fallen statue to get to it. They were back inside another tunnel, and they felt that they had left Toph far behind. This was of course mistaken as right at that moment just in front of the two of them a burst of dust intruded and Katara looped over the bump in the tunnel left by Toph's entrance. Toph herself was laughing viciously.
"Shortcuts mean nothing to me, slowpokes!" Toph said excitedly, apparently forgetting all about her 'handicap', much to the annoyance of Katara. Aang felt like he needed to egg her on.
"Come on, we'll get her at the next inter-section!" Aang pointed forward and Katara smiled in recognition, skipping a hand behind her to speed up. Sure enough around the next corner was a bright opening where the next chamber had to be. It was lighter than usual, but if they could reach it they had a chance of overtaking Toph. The Earthbending girl seemed to recognise this as shortly after she disappeared into the opening the tunnel was blackened as the light ahead vanished.
"So she thinks she can trap us in here, the cheat!?" Katara blurted angrily, swerving her arm upwards behind her and pushing it forward to bring the water she was riding behind forwards towards the blocked opening. The water burst open the sealed rock and they rode in its wake. Katara was determinedly out for blood as they sped through the opening and abruptly found themselves looking out upon clear blue sky.
They only realised their predicament soon enough to scream their heads off as Aang and Katara felt the air beneath them give way. Before they could fall, however, they found themselves flat on the back of a long slab of rock that jutted out of the cliff face behind them. The cliff was massive, and up and down it were littered small waterfalls as the water tunnels of the City of Lieu finally came to an end. Toph herself was magnetised to the cliff next to the opening, looking at the both of them with a cocked eyebrow.
"You try doing someone a favour and they go and mess it all up themselves," Toph commented as Momo flew out of the opening and made a series of barrel rolls, glad to be in the open air again. Aang and Katara broke out in apologetically nervous laughter, interrupted by the shadow of Appa flying overhead. Appa came to a rest beside the pillar with Sokka at the reins.
Sokka glared at all of them, making it clear from the outset that he was very profoundly annoyed.
The group had only just planted themselves on Appa's back when Sokka, who was busy fuming on Appa's head, turned back to his sister, arguing, "of all the stupid, irresponsible, half-witted, gummy-brained, moronic things you could do, Katara! What got into you!?"
"I just wanted to make Aang feel better," Katara defended herself. Aang himself was pooped, recovering himself near the back of Appa.
"Well, then pardon me! I didn't realise being splattered against the rocks would have such excellent medicinal properties!" Sokka floundered at the air in anger, "who am I to talk? You're the healer after all!"
"We've been on edge for the last two weeks, we needed this!" Katara argued, "we can't go on being so…glum all the time! You should have seen Aang, Sokka! He looked like he was…alive again."
"Sure, and the blood on his forehead is just his worries relieving themselves!" Sokka turned back to his sister, "you can't take those kinds of risks by yourself! I won't allow it!"
"What about me? Can I take those risks by myself?" Toph asked hopefully.
"You stay out of this, you turncoat!" Sokka jabbed a finger at the girl, leading the blind girl to somehow, through some means, make a really mean stare back.
"I know you meant well, but Warrior Sokka does have a point," Kuei decided to mediate between the two…the kind of thing kings are meant to do, "for the sake of the world, the Avatar can't be put in too much danger. He isn't yet recovered."
"I know that! I know that better than any of you!" Katara accused, as Aang had in the meantime recovered from his exertions and was sneaking, tremulously, towards the group. Katara continued, "but he needs more than just training and being kept safe! He needs…he needs to be what this world needs! He needs to have that special something that made him the Aang we knew! Oh…ech…it's hard to explain…"
"Then try," Sokka pronounced with extreme scepticism, "explain to us why throwing Aang into some suicidal attempt to have some fun is so beneficial to him?"
"HEY! CAN WE DO THAT AGAIN!?" Aang shrieked into everyone's ears, apparently too excited to pay much attention to the conversation. Katara was as surprised as the rest of them, but smiled triumphantly at Sokka as they all registered what this meant…the old Aang was very officially alive. For now. Sokka looked Katara in the eye, knowing he had been thoroughly trumped.
"Okay, that's enough excitement for today. We still got a long journey ahead of us," Sokka turned back towards Appa's front and whipped the reins, "yip, yip."
The City of Lieu was left behind, and the group made their last journey on Appa for some time. But a little spark of the Air Nomads had been relit in those caves.
To Be Continued…
Avatar: The Last Airbender Concept and Characters © Nickelodeon 2005-06