Xuan's hands were shaking badly enough that most of the tea he was drinking was ending up outside the cup. Despite all his efforts to stay calm and collected, he still felt like he was on the verge of exploding and imploding at the same time. He was angry at the world at large for turning its back on him. Him, of all people. But he was also terrified. Abjectly terrified like nothing before in his life. He was terrified of what awaited him back home with his reputation in tatters, and he was terrified of the thing that didn't even want him to get that far. His life was in danger, the lives of his employees and all his paying customers was in danger, and he couldn't shake off the feeling that they'd blame him for this. Posthumously.
The time alone in his cabin lent itself to this kind of self-indulgent pity. His was a comparatively luxurious quarters, fitting for a man of his station but nothing compared to the homes of his immediate employers. An Earth Kingdom noble wouldn't have considered worth the phlegm he'd spit on it. But it was comfortable enough for Xuan, because he wasn't really looking for comfy beds. He was looking for recognition, position, perhaps even admiration, for actually helping people instead of blowing them up. A veritable example to people. So he'd spent much of his time trying to get to know people and enticing them with treats. A satisfied customer was his pleasure in life, and he could subsist on little else.
So here he was now, on his own, cut off from his own service, going very slowly mad from isolation. It still felt like betrayal that his own staff could treat him like a prisoner. But with his own survival at stake, such things were moot in the grander scheme of things. He was caught in a dilemma. If he lived, his hopes of controlling the ferry crossings for the Mo Ce Sea would be torn to shreds. His own position would have little chance of remaining. On the other hand, if he died...well, he'd be dead. What the heck use was that? He thought of Captain Mayu's words on the subject of living through this intact, and realised that his dying was far more likely than his remaining alive.
Xuan clutched his cup in one hand as he sat up from his bed and looked wild-eyededly out the porthole into the red setting sun. Night was approaching, and he was certain that it would be the last he'd ever see of the sun. He looked back and took a strained sip of his seventh cup, looking over his belongings, his personal affects, and the hole in the wall that held a locked safe, built with circular dials on its face lined by calligraphic symbols, filled with the Service deeds and his cut of the revenue flow. His crackled brain calculated the prospects. If everyone died, his reputation would be safe. If everyone died except him, his reputation would be just as safe. And these things would be less likely to target one measly lifeboat. Surely?
He threw the cup aside and pulled a sizeable number of bags out from under the bed, quickly stepping over to dial the combination that opened the safe. He'd maintain his reputation, and stay alive by doing this. It was unquestionably the right thing to do, from Xuan's perspective.
Avoiding detection as the two of them (plus one lemur) made their way to the bottom of the ship was relatively easy while most of the crew were concentrated in the far aft section. As they reached further down, the decoration got sparser and sparser until there wasn't any decoration at all, just the raw arteries of the ship laid bare for easy fixing. There was one level lower they had to reach, however. The layer never intended for human habitation of any sort. It was in this forsaken place that they hoped to find Aang.
Toph planted her feet in the ground as she prized open the hatchway. It had taken ages to find a way down, since the ship had been built on the assumption that no one would be stupid enough to go down to the bottom of the ship while at sea. The hatchway they had found was sealed tight, and only opened with some persuasion. Luckily, Toph was a rather persuasive person, and the metal skin of the hatchway was peeled back enough to allow her to drop through. It was only when Momo screeched loudly that the blind girl realised she had jumped down a thirty-foot drop.
She flailed as she fell face-first into a pool of water, groaning as she sat up to a point where her upper chest was level with the water line. Katara bended a cushion of water upwards to soften her fall, while Toph rubbed the back of her scalp and squeezed water out of her tunic, mumbling, "someday, I'm gonna murder water."
"Hey!" Katara took offence, even as she adopted a defensive stance thigh-deep in the drink, "you kiss your mother with that mouth?"
"No," Toph answered without a trace of sarcasm, standing up until she was waist-deep and wringing out her clothes, "they were afraid I'd strain my neck if I tried."
Katara looked up thoughtfully, "...ask a stupid question..." She quickly snapped her attention down towards the flow of water around their bodies, facing a new direction down the length of the ship, "the water's coming from this way! C'mon!"
Katara began wading through the murky depths of the ship unthinkingly. Toph waited for Momo to point her in the right direction, and ended up flicking him to hurry the lemur up. Momo was barely any help in this darkness, and operated on best guess. The hull was almost cavitating with the amount of chugging activity reverberating across its surface. The bilge pumps were working full tilt trying to deal with the water leaking in. It would have been perfect for Toph to gain directions by, except for the pool of water cushioning the vibrations and the sounds. Nandi was conspiring to create a space she was least comfortable in, Toph felt. That just made her madder. She forced herself through the water.
To Katara these thoughts were peripheral. She just wanted him to be safe.
"Hold on good, Gam!" Shui implored as she hurried switched around bolts at the bottom of the pump control, being held up high by Sokka. She badgered, "show me what them man-muscles're made of!"
"You wanna see man-muscles?" Sokka bragged, straining his hardest to keep the tall, cylindrical pumping control from disappearing down the hole in the engine floor and into oblivion. He responded to the challenge by lifting the pump control even higher, nearly busting his back in the process, "now this is some man-musc- urk!"
"Don't kill yerself! I need ya ta stop this thing fallin' on me!" Shui scrabbled together the last of the screws and snapped the panel shut, "'kay! Drop it!"
Sokka relaxed his arms and let the cylinder thunk down into the hole. He quickly twisted it, holding onto a handlebar sticking out the side, but it twisted only a little bit before ceasing to budge. Shui grabbed onto another handlebar on the other side and pulled with as much might as her slight frame could muster. The stuck contraption gradually eased, then finally flung around and snapped into place. A tense moment passed, then a rumble joined the multitude of other rumbles as the wall of instruments next to the two of them started up.
"Oh yeah! We rock so hard!" Sokka punched the air excitedly. They both admired their handiwork and beamed at each other.
"We're gonna be th' team'a th' century, I tells ya!" Shui held a hand up and stepped forward, inviting a high-five. Sokka laughed as he high-fived in return, only for his hand to slap through thin air. Jerkily regaining his balance, he looked up to see Shui frozen in place and glaring resentfully at someone behind him. He turned to see Wan with arms crossed looking immensely peeved at the both of them. Sokka shrank back and smiled nervously.
"Eheh...hey! Look! Pump valves are working again!" Sokka tried to redirect Wan's anger, but the old man didn't budge a bit from his expression. Eventually, he marched forward to grab Sokka forcefully by the front of his shirt with one hand. Sokka winced, expecting a face full of phlegm, but instead he was just shoved forcefully aside and ignored by the engineer, who let go of Sokka and grabbed onto two levers set into the wall. He pulled down on them wordlessly, and pulled down on another set of two directly underneath them, both of which Sokka had previously been blocking.
Wan continued ignoring the both of them as he walked back through them, only mumbling bitterly, "...good job." Sokka briefly watched the man go back to the myriad of other duties he had to perform, and turned to Shui, who still seemed to be resentful of Wan's interruption. She shrugged it off and knelt down to pick up the debris of tools they'd left scattered around.
Sokka decided to comment out loud and see where it got him, "what a jerk." It was an honest opinion, "how do you put up with him all the time?"
"Don't..." Shui sighed, pausing to look up at Sokka knowingly, "y'know...he's a nice guy deep down...he just hides it really well."
"That's a way you can put it, I s'pose..." Sokka leant down to help with the tools, "...he told me a little about you...not a lot! Just...the basics...you know... It's great that you wanna do things with your life and everything, following the dream, that sorta stuff. But letting someone else run your life...is it really worth that?"
Shui stopped working and looked Sokka angrily in the eye, "y'got work ta do, don't cha? Go ask Wan about doin' sumthin' else."
Sokka reeled back slightly, but relaxed and nodded his head respectfully, "okay...I get it..." The Water Warrior stood up to retrieve a screwdriver from atop a part of the instrument panel. Upon picking it up, the gauge below it grabbed Sokka's attention, "hey...should this thing be doing that?"
"Should what be doin' what?" Shui stood up too to look at the gauge Sokka indicated. The needle was waving wildly at the far end of the scale, where most of the other pumps were operating at far more relaxed paces. Shui explained, "that's th' bilge pumps. They switch on automatically when th' bottom o' th' ship takes on too much water..."
Shui's eyes widened when she realised what Sokka's discovery insinuated. Sokka's eyes widened in turn, "I'll get Wan..."
He never had the chance. Right then, the door to the Engine Room flung open, and uniformed men and women marched quickly through. Engineers paused in their tweaking, fixing and shovelling to watch the militia emerge through the steam to make their presence felt. Through them, Captain Mayu made her entrance, staking authority on the metal plating around her with little except her aura. The engineers weren't sure whether to keep working or salute...they'd never had the higher-ups bother with the Engine Room before. Only Wan, halfway up the ladder as he was, knew how to react.
"Huh. Don't see ya down 'ere much," Wan leapt down to clank onto the floor, walking up to the Captain while wiping his hands and acting disdainfully towards his superior, "couldn'tcha knock first or sumthin'? People jus' barge in whene'er they're in th' mood, 'ese days..."
"Chief Engineer Wan, it's normally customary to stand to attention and show respect when a senior officer enters," Mayu drawled authoritatively.
Wan snorted and turned to a crewmate who was busy twisting a valve seal on the upper balcony, "hey, Zhei! Stand ta attention, willya?"
Zhei looked around uneasily and 'ummed' as he considered the request. He reluctantly complied, and winced as the inevitable happened and his spanner spun back round rapidly, flying off when the valve burst and let off a plume of steam. Reeling back, Zhei quickly sprung from his standing at attention and picked up his wayward spanner, quickly jamming it back on to screw the valve shut. Wan turned back to Mayu and smiled smugly.
"A simple 'I can't do that' would have sufficed," Mayu regarded the engineer with derision. She breathed the fuming air deeply, "Chief Wan, have you or any of your staff seen any young children enter this room in the last few hours?"
"Nope," Wan answered shortly, "an' believe me when I say I'm jus' as curious as y'are."
Sokka could see a sterling opportunity as it opened up in front of him. Wan might want to hide it, but right now was the chance to get the commanding officer interested without in the least bit implicating himself. "Chief! The bilge pumps are working flat out!" Sokka barged in, "the bottom of the ship's taking in a lot of water!"
"...ye don't say?" Wan stated flatly, none too pleased at his inside source going around him. Shui had wandered up, being extremely curious as to what agreement he and the Chief seemed to have. Mayu grew intensely interested.
"The bottom of the ship?" the Captain looked aside to indicate to the militia to prepare to leave, "that's outside the quarantine area. Are you sure?"
"The instruments don't lie," Sokka pointed a thumb behind him. Mayu grew intrigued at this crew member, so lacking in the typical characteristics of Wan's engineers. In studying the boy closely, something twigged.
"...have I seen you somewhere before?" the Captain asked. Sokka, placed on the spot, froze to the spot. After an uncomfortably long pause, he shrugged.
"...maybe?" Sokka answered uncertainly. Becoming self-conscious under this beautiful, stern woman's piercing and interrogative stare, Sokka was alert enough to jump noticeably when the Engine Room door slammed. Mayu noticed the jump and turned aside to see her first officer enter the room alone. The Lieutenant paused behind the gathering of militia, peering at all the crew members present before his young, fresh face settled on Sokka. Eyes narrowing, he walked through the other militia to reach the spy.
"Ah, Lieutenant Yin. It looks like we'll need to widen our search. I need you to find as many crew members as possible to block off the far lower decks. Quarantining the aft section is a lower priority now..." Mayu ordered in a disinterested manner, growing confused when the Lieutenant seemed to ignore her commands and walk straight past her. Perturbed, she stressed, "Lieutenant? I'm giving you an order!"
Yin still ignored his Captain, and came to a halt in front of Sokka, staring him derisively in the eye. He asked curtly, "you're Gameshin, aren't you?"
"...yeah?" Sokka answered, confused. His confusion turned to startlement when Yin grabbed one of his shoulders and jerked him to one side, grabbing both of his hands behind his back and shunting an arm into Sokka's back, slamming his body into the nearest wall. Shui gasped loudly.
"Whad'ya think ye're doin'!?" Wan demanded angrily. Sokka's face was pressed harshly against the hot rusty metal, almost scalding him. He grunted loudly in pain and fury, snorting at the treatment being inflicted on him. Yin was exerting himself, but remained professional throughout.
"Gameshin..." Lieutenant Yin of the Fire Navy Transportation Ministry Contingent informed the trapped and strained Water Warrior in disguise, "...on the Authority of the Fire Lord, Sovereign Commander of the Fire Navy, I am arresting you on suspicion of sabotage."
Kyo drummed the side of her chair impatiently. Over the hours, she'd been making fingernail-sized indentations in the metalwork, having been charged with nervous adrenaline with nowhere to exercise it. She was sitting in a small lounge, typically used for Xuan to entertain important passengers, and now filled with worried parents. None of them struck up any conversation. They mostly cradled their cups of tea staring off into the distance. The crewmate accompanying them had taken it upon herself to make them comfortable and refill their teacups for them, but by now the cups were simply going cold in their hands.
Kyo was still drinking, hands fidgeting, desperate to do something, anything. She knew everything was being done, but that wasn't any comfort to her. Her eyes skitted from one feature of the lounge to another, to the porthole, to the door, to the dull red lamps that lined the metal walls, but nothing could still her. Sick with worry, she sat ready to spring up at a moment's notice, and had been sitting this way for hours. Her senses were hyperactive enough that she was able to catch the merest hint of a childish giggle, going past the doorway.
Eyes snapping to the door, she saw the briefest flash of red, which was gone in an instant. The giggling faded away, but it energised her like nothing before. She mumbled in insane hope, "...Nandi?" Attracting the attention of the other parents, teary-eyed but determined, she scrabbled off of the chair towards the corridor, in search of her son.
Toph and Katara felt their way through the murky depths of the ship, squeezing past obstacles and the gaps between pipes until they came to something of a vaulted gap. At the edges, Katara could tell the Mo Ce Sea was pouring into the Gang Shen through five large gashes. She peered through the darkness, trying to make heads or tails of it. Toph, just being able to tell Katara's heightened awareness, asked aloud, "so are we there yet?"
"We have to be. Water's coming in from five holes. Two on the left, three on the right. See if you can..." Katara stopped in mid-sentence, eyes widened at the sight in front of her. Some way up the central pipe, she could manage to tell the presence of a slight, short-haired boy strung up with his arms tied around the back. He was limp and motionless, "...Aang?"
"Is he okay?" Toph asked as she felt her way down the sides, getting a face full of water as she hit upon the first of the holes. Spitting out salt water, she felt around the sides of the hole, gasping slightly as she realised what she was feeling, "hey! This is the outer keel! It's made out of impure metal! I might be able to seal it if I get a good enough grip! Can you help me with the water?"
"Just...just give me a second!" Katara steadied herself, drawing an arm up and pushing it forward to bring up a stream of water to do the same, slicing through the wire keeping Aang's hands in place. Aang fell forward, and Katara quickly ran to catch him in her arms. Cradling him, she brought up a well of more water to diagnose him. She sighed as she found out his condition, "he's...he's okay. He's alive...but he's out again."
"Out? Y'mean 'out' out? Like before?" Toph gave up on finding help and tried to seal the holes herself, prizing apart the metal skin to get to the keel. She groaned frustratingly, "well that's the most helpful thing ever."
"We have to get him out of here!" Katara implored, setting the water aside to carry Aang in both hands.
"It won't matter where we get him if we don't seal these-aah!" Toph was flung bodily across the hull, splashing back into the water with a sizeable thud. Momo, clutching her shoulder, flapped his wings to get her head back up over the water-line. Being able to breath, she spat out more salt water and shook her head to steady herself. Recognising the situation, she sprang up to her feet and took a defensive stance, flitting from side to side in preparation, "some...something just hit me in my chest..."
"What? I don't see anything!" Katara stood up, holding Aang's limp weight for now. His heartbeat, though slow, was still there, and that made her all the more nervously alert. In feeling the flow of Aang's blood as she held him, she could feel the flow of the water around her legs, and through this flow...something flowed of its own accord. A lot of things, going past her legs to elsewhere in the ship, "I...I can feel them!"
"Show yourselves, you cowards!" Toph challenged the creatures, going unseen for their entire journey, the vengeance of nature stalking the living and undermining them. In trying to seem tough, Toph betrayed her own anxiety. She had been badly beaten before, and here the things that beat her finally facing her. Her heart was beating in her mouth, and her teeth gritted in fury and terror. Katara's feelings were more straightforward than that. She was scared. Scared beyond reckoning. And nothing was coming to help them. The Avatar was dying, here, killed by those he swore to protect, and leaving those others he swore to protect behind. It couldn't end like this.
"Aang...Aang you have to wake up..." Katara pleaded, wiping a hand over the Airbender's forehead, breathing softly and shallowly, "you can't leave us like this...Aang! Aang!"
Xuan stuffed another box of money into the side of the lifeboat. This lifeboat was laid inside a large bare room just below the bridge, at the top of a large ramp down the back of the ship, set on an angle that allowed it to slide off the back of the command tower on its own. The other lifeboats were set into the sides of the hull, operated by a single mechanism, while this lifeboat here was meant primarily to allow the command crew to escape once they managed the evacuation. Except they wouldn't, because Xuan was taking it and he felt he was perfectly within his rights to do so. Chiefly the right to stay alive, regardless of what anyone else's lives were worth.
The Administrator ran over to collect another box of belongings, but stood frozen to the spot as he heard a single childish giggle. One hand on the handle of a storage box and the other gathering up an armful of scrolls, he looked slowly around at where the giggle should have come from. The room was empty apart from himself, and after taking a second glance around, he decided it was nothing but his mind making up things, and picked up the armfuls of the various things he'd accumulated over the years, some of which didn't strictly belong to him. Dumping them onto the side of the steel, engine-driven lifeboat, he was taking a breather to prepare to pick up the next back-breakingly huge consignment of riches when another round of giggling echoed around the room, this time noticeably more than one voice.
Gripping the edge of the boat and gulping deeply, he fretfully tip-toed his way to the door of the room, hoping that he hadn't been discovered. A quick glance through the door down either end of the corridor allayed his suspicions, and he relaxed a little. It was nothing, he thought, just the stress getting to him. Everything would be better when he got safely to shore with his reputation intact. Until the moment he realised his feet were getting wet, and when he looked down to see he was standing in a puddle of water that had implausibly appeared out of nowhere. Senses heightened, the implacable giggling started up again. He still couldn't pin it down, but he could pin down the sound that came next, the horrifyingly final clunk of the lifeboat release lever snapping down.
"Oh no..." he muttered. Xuan swivelled round and sprinted faster than he ever thought himself capable of, but it was only fast enough to reach the edge of the ramp in time to see the lifeboat disappear over the side, his personal affects aboard. His last chance of escaping with his reputation intact was ruined, but as he looked aside at the pulled lever, a far more uncomfortable realisation crept over him. His chances of getting out of this room had now dropped dramatically. He looked nervously at every corner as the giggling began again, setting his teeth on edge with its constancy.
"Was that the emergency lifeboat?" Lieutenant Tan asked aloud from the navigation table. Now with the crew concentrated in the aft section, it was down to a skeleton crew of himself and a single helmsman to manage the bridge, navigating through the encroaching darkness outside. The helmsman had to keep hold of the wheel with his fingernails to check the display.
"Yyyyyes, I believe it is, sir," the helmsman declared. Grunting with frustration, Tan chucked the pencil and compass to one side to stand up and walk over to the speaking tubes. They were simply too few to investigate lifeboats launching themselves...themselves. He flicked on the speaking tube to the aft station.
"Bridge to Aft Section. Require manpower. Please respond," Tan asked without much enthusiasm. He waited for the amount of moments he felt was needed for someone to take to the speaking tube, but no response came. With growing concern, he called down the tube again, "Aft Section! This is the Bridge! We need assistance up here! Respond please!"
The helmsman looked concerned as well, wondering what the problem was. Lieutenant Tan tapped his foot impatiently, and decided it was time enough for more serious measures. He snapped on the tube that overrode all other tubes and addressed the entire ship, "This is the Bridge! If any crew members can hear this message, please respond!" The wait continued. A full minute of total silence went by.
"I don't think that went through, sir," the helmsman offered his opinion. The two of them, at the hub of the entire ship, were completely isolated.
Xuan crept uncertainly towards the door, afraid that at any moment something might just pounce on him. The giggling swelled up and down at times, but with no sign of a source, and he kept having to tip-toe through small puddles of water. Sweating heavily, he remained alert, and felt a sinking feeling when another clank rang out, this time for the first of a couple of levers next to each other, which controlled the release of all the other lifeboats on the ship. His eyes flickered to the lever, and saw no one near it. Right now, the sides of the hull would be opening up to slide out the lifeboats along rails that extended out the sides of the Gang Shen, in preparation for loading them up and releasing them into the drink. Once they went, there was no way off the ship.
"Oh no you don't!" Xuan ran over to push the lever back up, splashing through a puddle in the process, to slide the lifeboats back into the ship and seal the hull. His sweat became a torrent in the effort, with his underused, aching muscles straining hard to push the lever back into its slot, but eventually it slammed into place. Gasping with satisfaction, he caught his breath back and listened to the mechanical sounds reverberating through the hull, the lifeboat mechanism in action.
Followed by a resounding crash of steel against water.
Xuan was trapped on the Gang Shen. As he stared in paralysed terror at the lever in front of him, the awful truth of his certain demise was as overbearing as the realisation that the thing that made sure of this must be right next to him. His breath ragged, his eyes drifted down to the lever that controlled the release of the lifeboats, pulled fully down, a tiny hand gripped around it, belonging to a small girl, skin a sickly pale, veins bulging across her skin, water pouring down across her face, eyes as empty as wells, smiling and giggling distantly as she stared straight through him.
Xuan retreated away from the girl, twisting quickly when he ran into another child, a boy, giggling at him. He turned this way and that, and every direction he turned in had a giggling child in it. The children surrounded him, leading Xuan to whine in terror as he shrank back against the wall. The children stepped aside to let another child step forward, messy-haired and looking at him as if he was the intended victim of an incredibly cruel practical joke. Nandi mocked, "you wanna leave? Fun ain't even started yet..."
Aang was elsewhere now. A few steps forward and the concept of being anywhere would become meaningless. Ahead of him was the waterfall, the flowing stream of all life on earth, on the other side of the bridge, beyond which Aang no longer need be Aang, no longer need be the Avatar. Bringing to an end the isolation inside his human shell, reincarnated for so long he needs forceful reminding of what it means to be human. The reflection before him was of himself, or at least the part of himself that was associated with Aang, last of the Airbenders. Soon it was the part of him that was Roku, the firebender at the time of Fire Lord Sozin, who was being reflected back at him. He couldn't take the final step until he knew the answer.
"Roku, what difference can I make now?" Aang asked his reflection, "what's my purpose? Everything's gone too far. There's nothing I can do anymore."
"You are still needed, Aang," Roku spoke back, "the Avatar is still needed. The Balance needs to be restored."
"There isn't a balance to restore!" Aang protested.
"All the more reason to restore it," Roku insisted, "you must understand, Aang. The Avatar's responsibility to protect all that is isn't a duty that is sworn to, nor is it a promise to be kept. It is the definition of who you are. You are the world spirit, and your responsibility cannot be willingly suspended. No matter how hard we wish. It is our purpose until the world itself is nothing but dust. Never for the slightest moment before."
"I...I don't think I can do it," Aang sagged. Even as a non-corporeal representation of himself, he was exhausted.
"Whether you can or not is irrelevant," Roku was uncompromising, "you will. You will because you are the Avatar."
"But I couldn't..." Aang implored, "I made a promise and I couldn't keep it. A whole race died because of me. Two have died because of me!"
Roku's image flickered into that of Yang Chen, looking at Aang impassively, "I made the promise to the Shachihoko, Aang. It saddens me that they are diminished, but it is the nature of the world that things die. It is up to you to ensure there is a chance for rebirth. You must protect the Balance any way you can."
"How!?" Aang asked in frustration, "how do I do it!?"
"The solution is up to you," Yang Chen admitted, "but to find it, you must admit to yourself that you have to find it."
"I'm trying to find a reason..." Aang turned his eyes down towards the blue, texture-less rock of the bridge, "...but 'protecting the Balance', 'taking responsibility'. It's always so...so far away. I can't relate to it. It's too big, I can't get a handle on it."
"You do not need to find a reason," Yang Chen told the last Airbender, "the reason is right in front of you."
Aang couldn't bring his eyes up, but he knew what she was talking about, "...my friends...Katara..."
THEN DO WHAT WE MUST DO.
The ground shook again, and Aang lost his footing. He yelped as he clung onto the edge with his fingernails. The last Airbender protested, "hey! Watch it! You know I can't bend in the Spirit World!"
THE AVATAR MUST ALWAYS BE.
"This is so humiliating..." Aang complained as he pushed himself off the ledge. "AAAAH!"
Aang fell back towards reality, flailing and hopeless and determined to stay, no matter what.
To Be Continued…
Avatar: The Last Airbender Concept and Characters © Nickelodeon 2005-06
Author's Note: Right then. I'm starting to run out of reasons why this story is taking so long and degrading in quality simultaneously. Although moving house and getting started on my dissertation doesn't help, I still take far too much time arsing around on the internet. I'm feeling run down and under-the-weather, and that might just be affecting the story. The humour's draining out of it, part by part. Ehhh...maybe I'm not cut out for this. What do you think? Hmm...maybe I use other's opinions as too much of a crutch...nah. Ech, I've no idea what I'm talking about anymore. It's all a big fuzz to me.
