Legends of the Four Masters
#14—Regrets of an Avatar
"C'mon, get up. We need to go." Katara said to her sleeping brother sometime after midnight, who had been covered by sand courtesy of Momo.
Sokka sat up but looked like he was too tired or too drugged to be upright. Toph sat up and tried to spit out a bad taste.
"Yesterday my mouth tasted like mud. Now it just tastes like sand. I never thought I'd miss the taste of mud so much."
"Ugh my head." Shampoo said, getting up with a groan while holding her head, eyes closed tightly. "I'm never going to have the cactus at home again."
"You back to normal Shampoo?" Ranma asked, holding her steady since she wobbled a bit.
She managed to partly open one eye at him. "I'll be fine. My vision's a little blurry and I taste vomit, but at least I don't feel like I'm drugged anymore."
"You didn't have as much cactus juice as Sokka and Momo, so maybe you got it out of your system quicker." Kasumi theorized, stretching her limbs.
"My head hurts." The purple-haired girl groaned. 'Great-grandmother would have a remedy ready for me if she were here.'
Katara was about to wake up Aang. "I'm awake." He said, making her stop. "I couldn't sleep."
"Well, we need to get moving if we want to get out of this sand pit."
Aang got up but as he did he could see a dark shadow pass in front of the moon. "Appa!" He said happily.
"Appa?" Sokka asked, rubbing Momo's tail against his face. "But why would Princess Yue need him? She's the moon. She flies by herself."
"Was that how I sounded?" Shampoo whispered to Ranma.
"Not as bad." He whispered back.
The moonlight helped make the dark shape look a bit easier to make out, and it wasn't the missing sky bison.
"It's just a cloud." Katara said, sounding as disappointed as Aang felt. But then she got an idea. "Wait, clouds are made of water. Aang, go up to that cloud. You could bend the water into this." She held out her waterskin.
Annoyed that his animal companion was still gone from him, Aang took the waterskin and went off into the air. The cloud was gone in two passes, then he landed and gave the waterskin back.
Katara bended the water within to see how much they had, and it was less than she had expected. It looked like the the amount you'd find in a large puddle. "Is this it?"
"It's a desert cloud. There wasn't much there to begin with." Aang said in a snappy tone.
Katara sighed. "This will still help. Thank you Aang." Putting the water back in the container then putting the waterskin aside, she looked at the star chart. "Let's just keep moving. We need to head this direction."
Everyone started following her, the trek slow and making them wish they were sleepwalking.
"Watch out there Toph." Kasumi said, gently helping the blind girl move aside.
"Why?"
"You were about to stub your toe on a rock." She said, glancing at a big stone sticking out of the sand.
"Thanks Kasumi. I'm so sick of not feeling where I'm going. This is the first time in a long time I've actually felt blind."
The group walked past the rock, never realizing by doing so they were passing a buried sandboat that could have gotten them out of the desert much faster.
"Anyone else notice that we seem to be experiencing a heat wave?" Ranma asked.
"We're in a desert. What do you expect?" Aang asked snidely, still a little miffed at the pigtailed teen for their scuffle earlier.
"I'm no expert, but I remember hearing somewhere that deserts can be frickin' cold at night. And none of us are shivering." Ranma continued.
"We spent time at the South and North Poles. You don't know what cold is." Katara stated.
"You know what hunger is? Because I'm starving."
"Me too. We haven't eaten since the last town." Kasumi added. Thanks to her regular work in the kitchen, she was not used to being forced into situations where food was not easy for her to get.
"All our food was with Appa." Aang sadly replied.
"We have to find something to eat. Something that won't mess with our minds." Ranma said, looking around for anything other than sand.
"And where are we going to find something?" Aang asked.
"You can fly can't you? That's a start."
"You can cover more ground if you teach Ranma how to fly Aang." Kasumi added.
Aang looked at the pigtailed boy for a bit, as if trying to decide whether or not the older airbender deserved to be taught that or not. Like Ranma admitted, he wasn't an Air Nomad, so while Aang felt fine with teaching him some basics, he didn't really want to teach something so important to his culture to someone who showed so little respect for it.
But at the same time, hunger is a powerful motivator.
"Here's what you do." The bald monk started, getting his glider ready and over himself, waiting for Ranma to mimic that. "This is not like the rest of bending. You can't move your body during flight. If you try, you'll lose balance and just end up falling."
"The basic way to start with airbending for gliding is in how you use your legs. But the real key to it is feeling a bond with the air itself. Since you can't bend with your body once you're in the air, you have to bend with your mind. The air will try to take control, tell you where your glider can and can't go. You have to take control of it."
Aang crouched down and Ranma could hear some wind swirling around his legs a little bit. The bald monk jumped and it was clear he had bended the air to help propel him up. Once he was up though, there was nothing to really show how he was able to stay in the air.
'Alright, do what he did.' Ranma thought, crouching down and picturing the air getting ready to rocket him to the sky. Then he jumped...
...and crashed on the sand.
Sokka, who had taken a moment to try and bury Momo in the sand this time, saw this and laughed a little before giving a thumbs up.
Aang landed and walked up to the martial artist who was moving to sit up. "Usually this is done by jumping off a peak or something. If you had something to jump off of that might make it easier."
"How exactly am I supposed to bend the air with my mind? What am I supposed to do? Tell the air to lift me up?" Ranma asked, standing up and dusting some sand off him.
"That's a start. Unless you'd rather blow your breath to move around."
Ranma blinked. "That might help me get up if nothing else."
Crouching again, trying to command the air by thought alone, Ranma took a deep breath and held it before jumping into the air. Naturally due to his history of jumping from roof to roof, he could jump higher than a normal person, so this helped him get some extra altitude. The problem of course was obtaining the lift necessary to keep it.
Once he was up, Ranma tried an airbending exhale to push himself forward and help level his glider to catch any natural air currents that existed. For a bit it actually worked and he glided, though once Ranma needed to inhale again he started to nosedive.
Rather than try an exhale like that again, Ranma settled for maneuvering himself so he could land painlessly.
"You did better that time. Now you just gotta do it without having to keep blowing your breath."
"Can we keep looking for food while you two work on this?" Kasumi asked.
"I'll go look for something. Ranma should keep practicing while you guys look too." Aang said before taking off into the air.
"We really should look for ourselves." Katara suggested. "Aang's a vegetarian so he's only going to look for that sort of thing. Which I don't think there's a lot of in the desert except for more of those cacti."
"Please don't." Shampoo groaned.
They kept walking, following Katara's map, after taking Momo out of the sand, with Ranma off to the side trying to learn how to fly. When he saw a dune up ahead he tried running towards it like a kid trying to get a kite to fly, and jumped off the top.
He tried to will the air to keep him up, bend with his thoughts alone. It didn't work and he crashed again.
"Ugh, what am I doing wrong?" He asked, getting back up.
"Maybe you should flap your arms." Sokka suggested.
"Say Ranma, when you airbend normally how do you make the air go where you want it to go?" Kasumi asked.
"It's like anytime you use a weapon. You think of it as an extension of your body rather than separate from it. I try that with air, but it's easy to make air move with your body. When I fly, I'm staying still. How does Aang do it?"
"Well, maybe you don't need to move your body to stay up in the air. Aang doesn't, and Appa barely did move than flap his tail." Kasumi started, pausing for a bit because she felt bad for mentioning Appa. Everyone else present felt a bit bad too. "Anyway, airbending might work differently than the other kinds."
"Airen, didn't you say it used negative jing?" Shampoo asked, holding her head like she had a bad headache.
"Yeah, so what?" He asked back.
"Maybe you should think of it as retreating into the sky, not as just gliding."
Ranma blinked. "Actually, that might be a good idea." 'I'm so used to taking an offensive approach I keep forgetting that airbending is based on defensive tactics.' He then got his glider ready. "One more time."
He ran towards the top of the dune and again jumped. Like the other times he tried forming a connection with the air using his jing, but this time he tried focusing in a different way. 'Don't think about what my body is doing. I'm escaping the ground and the air is helping me.'
He felt some wind come under the wings of his glider and push up. Feeling confident, he tried to imagine the wind moving in place of his own body.
'Form a connection with the air, think of it as an extension of my body, and if it is, then it can do the moving instead of my body. Maybe that's how I airbend without moving.'
The wind continued, and soon enough Ranma was gaining altitude.
"He's doing it! He's flying!" Kasumi said, clapping her hands together happily.
Shampoo sighed despite her headache. "Airen never ceases to amaze him."
Sokka looked confused. "Aang's back already? I hope he brought food. Momo's starting to look tasty about now."
The flying lemur was too busy trying to stand on its head to notice.
Ranma smiled proudly, trying to practice guiding himself. Turning was easy enough, but each time he did he lost some altitude and had to regain it. 'This is awesome! I've never felt so free in my life!'
His stomach however was less thrilled about being able to fly, and with a lot of caution he tried to land. Landing of course was the hardest part of flying and not the same as landing from a big jump. The momentum threw the pigtailed boy off when he tried to land on his feet so he fumbled and rolled, dropping his staff.
Kasumi and Katara came up to Ranma. "You okay?"
He forced a smile. "I've been through worse. And now that I can do this, I'll go find us some food."
"If we're going to be staying here waiting for dinner, can I try making something?" Toph asked.
"Like what?" Sokka asked, chewing slightly on his own hand.
Toph stomped her foot and created some sandstone, then extended her arms and crossed them like an X. This made a few small sandstone walls on the edges.
"I'd like something solid to stand on if we're not walking. And we might as well make some walls and a roof to block out the wind and the sun if Twinkle Toes and Airhead take too long."
"I'm not going to say no to that." Shampoo said with a nod.
"Alright, I'll try not to be that long. I'll get you guys food even if it ends up being a camel." Ranma declared, getting his glider ready and jumping off a dune again, taking back to the air.
Toph went to work making more sandstone and walls. "Hey Yokel, want to lend a hand?"
Shampoo stretched out her hands, but winced and put them back on her head. She made pained noises that also sounded nauseous.
Katara gently put a hand on the purple-haired girl's shoulder. "Want me to try to soothe the pain?"
"Yes." Shampoo requested with a groan.
Bending some of her North Pole water, Katara began to give Shampoo a gentle touch that made it look like she was washing the Chinese Amazon's hair. Almost right away Shampoo stopped groaning and sounded like she was enjoying the treatment.
"Thanks, I feel much better."
"Be more careful with what you drink from now on." The Water Tribe girl advised, putting her water back into its container.
Shampoo nodded and sighed, her eyes closed in relief as she felt the last of her pain fade away. But then all of a sudden her eyes shot open like she just got shocked.
"What? No, it... she couldn't..."
"What now?" Katara asked.
Shampoo shook her head and covered her eyes. "I'm not sure. I... I need some time to figure something out please."
'What is with this group not wanting to accept my help?' Katara asked herself.
Flying around, Aang had to avoid going too high so he wouldn't miss something in the cover of darkness. But while he was trying to find food, his mind kept shifting back to trying to find Appa.
'Why would the sandbenders take Appa? What would they do with him? For that matter, what would they do with Kasumi if they had taken her?'
Aang didn't quite get all the facts of life before being frozen after all. He understood the idea of love and what it meant to have a crush on someone, but beyond that he still didn't know what else was involved in relationships between men and women that were more than platonic.
'What was that?' He thought, something catching his eye. Looking to make sure he wasn't imagining things, he was surprised that he did in fact see what he thought he saw. A soft glow, like a lantern or fire burning.
'Someone's out here.' He thought, developing a bit of a frown. 'Maybe they know where Appa is.'
Heading towards the light, the bald monk soon got close enough to see what was the source of the glow. It was an open campfire with a small group of people around it sleeping. But there was one person not asleep at all, a child by the looks of it tending to one of the animals.
Aang landed and the child, dressed in sandbender clothes with the face exposed, turned to him and looked ready to scream. "Don't hurt us please." Despite their fear, the child, a boy judging by the voice, stood protectively in front of a camelephant, a creature that had the body of a two-humped camel but the face of an elephant. There were more camelephants around, but this was the smallest, big enough for just the child to ride.
"I'm the Avatar. Have you seen a bison anywhere?" Aang asked, unwilling to found demanding of a young boy.
"What's a bison?"
"Big with white fur, arrow on his head, horns, and six legs."
The boy shook his head. The camelephant made a sickly bellow and the boy tried to comfort it with a pet and picking up a tray with water in it. "It's okay Tusky. We'll make it to the oasis soon. You'll be much better there."
"Your ride's sick?" Aang asked.
"He's not just our ride. Tusky is my best friend. We've been together for years." The boy said, sounding like he was suffering with his companion. "My name is Tuke of the Waja Sandbender Tribe. We're making a trip to the Sweetgrove Oasis. When we're there I'm going to get some dragon fruit. I hear they help make people and animals stop being sick."
Tusky made a sound like gargling while trying to get some water with his trunk.
"I'm sure Tusky will be just fine." Aang reassured.
Tuke didn't look as happy to hear this as the airbender had expected. "Yeah, grown ups always say that when they really mean they think the animal is a goner."
"No I don't. I mean it." Aang claimed.
Tuke gave him an angry look with tears in the corner of his eyes. "No you don't. My friend was trying to raise a camelephant last year but he got sick too. The grown ups all said the same thing, that he'd be just fine too, but he wasn't. He died and no one did anything about it except use his body for meat and leather. It's like they wanted him to die."
Those words sent haunting ideas of what might be happening to Appa through Aang's mind. "I'm sure they weren't doing that Tuke. After all, these grown ups are helping you heal Tusky right?"
Tuke still frowned. "That's just because we were already going on this trip. If we weren't they wouldn't care. They don't even like Tusky. No one really cares about him except for me."
With those words, Aang recalled his bursts of anger at his friends when they left the library. How he accused Toph of wanting to be rid of the bison. How he said Kasumi should have been taken. How he even went so far as to say none of them, not even Katara or Sokka, cared about Appa at all and were only thinking about themselves.
And he thought of the words Ranma told him. "I said you're a little boy throwing a tantrum. You think you're not?"
Aang knelt down to better look at the young boy in the eyes. "It hurts to know your good friend is suffering. I know just how you feel."
Tuke looked away, scratching behind Tusky's ear. "How could you know?"
"Beside my bison is suffering too. And I don't even know where he is. I'd do anything I could to find him and help him out. I'd hate to think of what could be happening to him right now. And even more, I hate the idea that he might be dead right now."
Tuke said nothing, but he stopped frowning.
"It hurts a lot to see Tusky suffer and know you can't make it stop. And it hurts more when it looks like others aren't as bothered by this as you are." Aang started, feeling a little heartache because this was just as much for him as it was for Tuke. "But just because others care about more than just Tusky doesn't mean they don't care about him at all. Grown ups can't do everything, and they often feel bad for that too. They feel bad that they're letting you down and want to help you, but being mad at them doesn't do anything except show how ungrateful you really are to them."
"I'm not ungrateful." Tuke proclaimed.
"No one thinks they are." Aang replied. 'I was such a jerk to them. Ranma was right, I was just like a kid throwing a tantrum. I just miss Appa so much, but...'
He couldn't finish that thought, and he didn't want to start crying in front of the child.
Tuke on the other hand was starting to cry a little while petting the camelephant, which looked like it was finally falling asleep. "You really think Tusky will get better?"
Aang nodded. "I'm sure of it. And these people here are trying to help you. They're taking you to the oasis aren't they?" Tuke slowly nodded. "They're helping you. Don't forget that. Even if it looks like you want Tusky better more than they want it."
"Thanks Avatar."
"By the way, do you know how far the oasis is? I kind of need to get out of this desert."
"I don't know, but we're supposed to be there sometime tomorrow so it can't be far." Tuke answered, then pointed east. "It's somewhere that way."
"Thanks Tuke. And good luck with Tusky. I'm sure he'll be fine once you get him that fruit." Aang said, getting up. His stomach growled. "I don't suppose you have anything you could spare do you?"
"How you feeling Sokka?" Katara asked her brother.
"I think my head's starting to clear up. But right now I can see two of you." He said, trying to decide which one to look at.
The Water Tribe girl narrowed one eye and arched an eyebrow over the other. "How many fingers am I holding up?" She asked while holding up three.
"Which hand?" Sokka asked back.
"You're still out of it. Think next time before you eat something genius."
"Don't mention eating please." Kasumi asked, laying down on the sandstone. "I've never felt so hungry in my life."
"I could eat cat food right now." Shampoo moaned, having never stooped that low back in Nerima.
"Anyone hear a thumping?" Sokka asked.
"Not now Sokka." Katara told him.
"I hear it too." Toph claimed. "Someone's outside the dome."
It had taken more effort than the expert earthbender had hoped, but she succeeded in creating a sort of sandstone igloo complete with floor. She couldn't sense anything beyond the sandstone, but she could feel the vibrations of anything that hit it.
"It has to be Ranma or Aang then." Katara suggested.
Seeing no reason to argue, Toph created a door by the knocking, and indeed Ranma was outside.
"I found food." He announced as he walked in, holding two dead jackalopes by the horns. "And believe me, it wasn't easy."
"Thank you so much. We can make a fire and cook the meat. Toph, make a hole in the top so the smoke had a vent out." Katara said.
The blind girl created such a hole while the Water Tribe girl took the meat.
"How are you going to make a fire?" Kasumi asked, not seeing anything to burn.
"Anyone done with these?" Sokka asked, holding up the bag that had their pickings from the library.
"Relax, I brought something for that." Ranma said, holding out some dry branches. "The horned rabbits were getting some twigs. Don't know why."
"Times like this we could use a firebender in the group." Kasumi thought out loud, with an image of Zuko appearing in her mind. 'I wonder where he is at the moment anyway.'
Katara took the wood and arranged them to start a fire.
"I can do this." Sokka insisted, grabbing his boomerang.
"Like I'm going to let you anywhere near a fire after you've been nuttier than a skunk-squirrel." His sister chided.
Kasumi came up to her. "Anything I can do?"
"You ever prepared rabbit before?"
Kasumi shook her head.
"I have." Ranma stated. "I had to hunt a lot when my old man and I were traveling around. Cheaper than buying the food sometimes."
"Start skinning it." Katara said, handing him a knife.
Ranma got to work on preparing the meat while Katara got the fire going. Everyone else just waited, and when the meat was put over the fire everyone enjoyed the pleasant aroma.
"Almost makes up for having no water left doesn't it?" Toph asked.
"Hey guys." Aang said at the entrance that Toph hadn't bothered to close back up. "Thought Toph made this thing. I found some food." He held some green stalks and plump fruits.
"So did I." Ranma replied.
Aang came in and sat down, putting down the food for everyone to grab. "Guys, I'm sorry about earlier."
"Aang it's-" Katara started.
"No Katara, it wasn't okay. I acted like a kid and I took it out on you guys. I miss Appa, but you guys aren't the ones I should be angry at. I should be grateful that the rest of you are safe and still with me, not accusing you of wanting to hurt Appa."
"What brought this on?" Ranma asked, turning some of the meat to cook the other side.
"Actually, you helped a lot with that Ranma."
Katara blinked. "He did?"
Aang nodded. "He was right, I was pretty much throwing a tantrum back there. I hurt so much I wanted everyone else to feel as bad as I did. But that didn't make me feel any better. Ranma called me out on that, and while I traveled it finally sank in. Appa isn't the only thing I should be concerned about out here, and he's not my only friend anymore."
Katara glanced to Ranma then back to the bald monk. "So that fight earlier actually did do you some good?"
Aang nodded. "In hindsight, yes."
Katara closed her eyes and suppressed a sigh. 'Boys are so weird.'
"Chowtime." Ranma said, taking the meat off the fire.
"About damn time." Toph said eagerly.
Appa held up one of the fruits. "I'm told that these are as good as water. And safer than the insanity cactus."
"Hand me one of those." Shampoo asked, hand extended. Aang gave her one and she bit in. "Ah this is good."
"Who told you that?" Katara asked.
"A small group of traveling sandbenders. Not the ones that had Appa though."
Everyone took something and ate, glad to finally have something in their stomachs.
"Oh, I almost forgot. I know where we can go next." Aang added. "I got word of an oasis not too far from here. The sandbenders were heading there and said it was less than a day away. We can finally get out of the desert."
"Perfect. I've had enough of sand." Toph commented.
"Maybe you can find out what happened to Appa there. Maybe those sandbenders went there too." Katara offered, taking a bite of cooked jackalope.
"That's what I'm hoping for."
"Oasis later, food now." Sokka said with a stuffed mouth.