I'm sorry for the two week break, guys, but McDonalds has been kicking my butt! Not only am I in all Advanced Placement classes in high school, but I work thirty or so hours a week with a day off. That doesn't leave much time for me to finish this story up. I've got two or three chapters to REALLY fix before I have four chapters that are already fixed, and then I've got to write the end of Season Three from scratch.
Anyways, in this chapter, Emiko and Sokka have an Oprah Winfrey situation...but who's getting Oprah Winfrey-ed, really?
Disclaimer: I do not own Avatar: the Last Airbender. Nor the phrase "Zuko, Here!"
Zuko, Here!
The sun...the sun is beating down on me...
How can the world be so cruel? The sun, the beautiful sun is alive and well, even though, for a moment, it had been covered. But my child...my child was gone. Its life force had drained from inside my abdomen, and it was simply...gone.
"Emiko...Emiko! Don't you leave me!" Katara pushed Emiko's diaphragm three more times, willing the girl's heart to beat.
"Are you happy now?" I asked the clear blue sky above as I lay on the grass, my white kimono billowing out around me. "You've ruined my life."
"I haven't ruined your life. I've simply...changed it." The monster slithered out of its cave, its centipede's body creating thousands of sounds that echoed throughout the small, enclosed space. But wasn't it filled with wide, open spaces...?
I didn't even bother looking towards that...that monster. "Koh."
"Yeeesss?"
"Go to the Abyss."
"Aang, she's not responding!"
"Can't you see? We're already here."
I looked around the large space, finally seeing that the sky was peeling in places, and the grass was rough, almost as if made out of a harsh cloth. Still, I tried to see the brightness in my confined space. Koh, towards the side, where a small cave was, was standing towards the darker side of my paradise. I didn't want to look towards him. "Are we?"
"Smart child...although your mother was, as well."
Tears were flowing from Katara's face as she bended the water around her, willing Emiko's blood to flow, for her wounds to heal. "Don't die on me, Emiko...please!"
"Leave my mother out of this," I said without inflection, wondering if he was trying to get a rise out of me. Apparently he was, although I wouldn't let him. "You didn't get her face, and you won't get mine."
"Oh, in time, you never know what will happen," he said happily, apparently pondering his future, where he had my face. I could just see the perverted happiness on his face.
"Get out of my life."
"Oh, my fellow Spirit...you will have more children."
This interested me, but I couldn't show him any emotion. Just the possibilities running through my mind made me want to crack a face, either one of happiness or confusion. "Oh? Well I wanted that one."
"Katara...she was pregnant?"
He simply scoffed, and I could imagine him admiring his nails...if he had any. "There will be others. Enough said. And now, unfortunately, child...you are being resuscitated. Just remember...you must live your life. It is a sad truth. In fact, your pitiful existence is sad. But one day, I will have your face. I haven't had a Sun Spirit's face in..." I looked up in time to see thick black hair falling down the sides of his body, along with the fragile face of a child. "A very long time."
Katara
Emiko sat up straight, coughing, crying, and trying to catch her breath at the same time. She wrapped her arms around herself, choking up the water that Katara had used to heal her with. Katara instantly wrapped her arms around the girl, running her hands up and down her body, trying to calm her down before she hurt herself again.
"AHAAA!" she cried, clutching Katara to the point of pain.
Katara looked up at Aang for help, but he was sitting with his face in his hands, shaking his head. Her brother had left earlier, and Toph had run the moment Emiko had woken up. She wouldn't be getting any help in comforting the girl. "Emiko...I-I'm sorry, i-it'll be okay..."
"M-m-my b-b-baby!" Emiko sobbed, rocking back and forth with Katara's effort to calm her down. Her hair was plastered to her head from all of the water that Katara had used to heal her. Her clothes were changed from the original, bloody cloaks, to a simple tan uniform that Katara could maneuver around to work on the...the wounds.
"I'm so sorry..."
Katara wanted to do something more than just apologize and heal the physical wounds, but there was nothing she could do for the mental ones. She simply held Emiko until the sobbing put her back to sleep. The Waterbender laid the Firebender back down on her pallet, onto the cold floor of the Western Air Temple.
Just looking at the poor soul who lay on the cold marble broke Katara's heart. She would have made an amazing mother...
"Aang," Katara said softly, not taking her eyes off of Emiko's shaking form.
"What." The boy hadn't even looked up from his position on the ground.
She had to take a deep breath before she could speak. Her mouth was so dry that she could barely swallow. "We...we need to decide what we're gonna do now." Although she hated to admit it, they needed to look at the situation at hand. What had happened to Emiko was horrible, and the girl was going to be scarred for life. But to save the world...
Aang finally looked up, his eyes slightly red as he stood up shakily. "R-right." He created a current that picked up his staff, which he then sat against the bench that he propped himself down onto. "It almost seems wrong to talk about it."
"What are we supposed to do, then?" Sokka asked, looking over at the sleeping Emiko on the floor. "We can't just sit here and feel sorry for ourselves."
Katara couldn't believe the way he was acting! "She lost her child," she snapped at him, standing up and clenching her fists as she looked at her brother.
"She lost the Prince's parasite," Sokka said simply, clenching his jaw.
Katara was about to tackle Sokka, to take him down a notch, to make him take it back, but Toph got between them in her usual way. "Woah! Guys, we can't afford to fight right now. We need to figure out a new plan."
Normally, since she was the cool-headed one, she sat down and nodded, taking a deep breath. "Right...yeah. A new plan." That didn't mean that she didn't want to shove a rock down his throat for what he'd said.
"Nothing's changed," Sokka said, glaring at his sister. "If you ask me, the new plan is the old plan. Aang just needs to master all four elements and confront the Fire Lord before the comet comes. End of story."
The Avatar still looked shocked from what had happened. "Oh, yeah, that's great." He looked up at his surroundings, the Air Temple, and his friends. He finally seemed to be back to himself after a moment. "Yeah...no problem, I'll just get right on that."
She wanted help him somehow, to take away some of his burden, but she knew that she couldn't. Even if she could take all of it, really, she would take it, just to get the look of anguish off of his face. "No one said that it would be easy."
"Well, it's not even gonna be possible!" Aang shouted angrily, suddenly gaining back some of his pessimistic Aang-ness. "Where am I supposed to get a Firebending teacher? The one Firebender on our side is..." He looked down onto the sleeping form of Emiko, which was starting to stir with his shouting. "She's...yeah."
"We could look for Jeong Jeong," Katara said softly, not wanting to wake Emiko up and see that horrifying sobbing again.
"Yeah right." He fell back onto the bench he as sitting on, throwing his arm over his eyes to block out the sunlight. It looked like a very, very pitiful gesture. " Like we'll ever run into Jeong Jeong again."
"Look...we'll figure something out," Katara said, trying to sound optimistic, wondering if she failed at that. "For the meantime, we need to make sure that Emiko is alright. Maybe she can help Aang with some of the Firebending."
Sokka didn't look as if he really believed in anything that Emiko did. So, of course, he was the one who asked, "Where can we find a Firebender...?"
That was when everything went to Agni. "Hey! Zuko here."
Emiko
That one moment of consciousness had completely taken everything that I'd had. Katara, a hopeful friend, had held me, while the rest of the group had stayed away as if I were a foreign entity, not able to even come near me in case I might need their comfort. I'd known Toph better; why hadn't she tried to comfort me, instead of the Waterbender?
Ah, it didn't matter. All that mattered was that I was blissfully unaware of anything that was going on around me. Nothing mattered in my unconsciousness. Not even the sound of his voice would...would it? "He's not my friend!" No...no, he couldn't be back! He couldn't know what happened to our baby!
"That guy locked me and Katara in jail and tried to blow us all up!" Was the ground shaking? Oh, gods, I was going to die, and I couldn't even open my eyes. He was right in front of me...if only I could reach out, touch him, tell him I was sorry!
"You once said that you thought we could be friends. She believes in me, why can't you?" Zuko, I do believe in you! "You know I have good in me."
"There's no way we can trust you after everything you've done. We'll never let you join us."
"You need to get out of here. Now."
"I'm trying to explain that I'm not that person anymore!" No, he wasn't! He wasn't that person...he was the one who loved me, the one who wanted to have...to have a child...?
"Either you leave, or we attack." No...no, Sokka!
"If you won't accept me as a friend, then maybe you'll take me as a prisoner." Zuko...in the camp? Where he could see me like this? "I have to be with her, and I'll sacrifice myself to do it."
"No, we won't!" my Waterbending savior cried, and I wanted to actually cry. "I...I've gotten her through the worst of it. She's...better." Better? You called this state, where I couldn't even wake up, better? Where my child was gone, and my life was over, better? "Get out of here and don't come back. We're taking care of her."
I had to admit, yes, she was taking care of me. But they couldn't send Zuko away! I needed him to hold me, to tell me that everything would be alright. He needed to know about his child...but seeing him everyday meant that I wouldn't be able to let go, to finally realize that yes, I could have other children. Maybe what I needed was time alone. Away from him and everybody else.
Sokka
It was late that night, and Sokka couldn't sleep. He'd been thinking about Zuko, the freak, wanting to join their group. The fact that the creep had followed them was proof enough that he was still after Aang. And why would he want Emiko back if she'd been on their side all along?
She lost the Prince's parasite. He felt horrible about saying that, but still...how could she have slept with...with him? When he'd first met her, she hadn't seemed like that kind of person. She'd glanced at General Iroh with love and respect in her eyes, and she'd been there for him, not Zuko. But then he'd seen her right after Zuko had betrayed her, and she'd been...hollow. Not the same, loving girl that she'd been before.
Ahg! He shouted into the air, though inside, he guessed, as he threw off his covers and sat straight up. He was tired, but he couldn't sleep, maybe because the room was so bright, with the moonlight falling over him. When he looked out his window, the full moon was high in the sky, he wondered if Yue was watching over him. He knew that she would want him to check on Emiko, to make sure that he was okay. She lost the Prince's parasite... It repeated over and over in his head like a mantra.
Sokka stood up and pulled on a pair of pants over his underwear, not bothering with a shirt. He didn't even slip on shoes as he walked through the dusty hallways of the abandoned Air Temple. Everything was quiet, except for his footsteps, which echoed through the empty halls.
So when he got to Emiko's room, he was surprised not to find her there, and hear another set of footsteps leading away from the room. That's strange...she's been knocked out for hours, now. Why suddenly wake up?
"Emiko?" he asked softly, and the footsteps halted for a moment before going again. He decided, against his better judgment and need for sleep, to follow her. At least, he hoped it was her. But then again, who could it be? Zuko? Did he...did he come all the way here to take her?
Sokka was sweating bullets after that thought. He picked up his speed, just a little, thinking only the worst, like how his sister would kill him if she found out that he'd let Zuko take her. Or how he could try and seduce her again and she'd be back to that small, hollow woman she'd been before. So when he broke into the moonlight outside the Air Temple, into the small courtyard that gave a view of the entire canyon, he was surprised to see that she was just...sitting there.
Emiko was sitting there, in the middle of the courtyard, staring up at the moon as she sat Indian-style on the floor. She wasn't saying anything, or moving, just looking...up.
He hesitantly strode forwards, trying to decipher if he should say anything or not. Should he help her get to her room? "Emiko?"
She moved as if he'd surprised her, which he had, and then looked back at him. Her bright yellow eyes were confused, but they didn't look crazy as they had whenever she'd woken up earlier. "Oh. Hi, Sokka." Then she turned her eyes back up to the moon. "It's a beautiful night."
He'd been prepared for yelling and crying...but he hadn't been prepared for whatever this was supposed to be. "Uh...yeah," he said, rubbing the back of his head, "yeah, it is." Underneath the moonlight, her short hair almost gleamed white, but it was just a trick of the light.
Emiko didn't even look back at him as she patted the ground next to her, signaling him to sit down. He didn't want to, but he figured that if he didn't, he wouldn't be able to get her back into her room, where Toph could keep an eye on her in case Zuko decided to come back for her. So he plopped down next to the short teenager, telling himself that he wouldn't talk long and that his bed was calling him.
There was an awkward silence for a moment, until finally she asked, "Her name was Yue, wasn't it?"
A hole almost ripped through his chest. "Wh...what?" How had she even remembered that?
She still didn't look at him. Instead, her eyes were reflecting the moon. "Yue. The Moon Spirit." Her strange, yellow eyes almost seemed silver in the moonlight.
"Uh...yeah. Her name was Yue. Princess of the Northern Water Tribe and all that." He tried to play it off as unimportant, but his voice got stuck in his throat by the end.
Emiko uncrossed her legs, instead bringing them up to her chest and wrapping her arms around them. Finally, she turned her head to the side, looking Sokka in the eyes. He saw a deep sadness etched there, but a courage that could hold a person together for a long, long time. "I can sense that you two had been close. She was very beautiful."
He let out a sigh. "Yeah, she was." But in a completely different way than Emiko. Where as Yue had had pure white hair and deep, chocolate skin with those beautiful blue eyes, Emiko was a jumble of colors, from her midnight-black hair, to her pale skin with the rosy cheeks. Even her eyes, which were the color of the sun at noon, had a different hue to them than any other Fire Nation citizen. Yue's blue eyes had been different from any Water Tribe member's, too.
"I remember you saying something about you being connected to the Sun Spirit," he said without meaning to, it just kind of came out. He was surprised at himself. It seemed to make her face harden, so, for a moment, he was disappointed in himself. But then she went back to her soft, sad smile.
"Mm-hmm. My mom is the Sun Spirit. And so was her mother before her, like I'll be when I die, and my daughter will be after me." Now she looked up into the sky, back at the Moon Spirit. She was silent for a long time, and Sokka was almost sure that she wasn't going to say anything else. But then she said the last thing that he thought she would ever utter. "I wonder what kind of mother I would have been."
There was nothing more uncomfortable to Sokka than that question. He couldn't believe that she'd let the Prince get near her, let alone sleep with her. So when he didn't say anything, she looked at him again with a little bit of sadness and a lot of slyness in her gaze. "I, uh..."
"You never liked me, did you, Sokka?" she asked smugly, though her sadness cut him through. "You never could understand why I stayed with Zuko, even though I knew that he was bad."
"No, I didn't understand," he said harshly, although it might have come out a little too harsh. "Why would you stay with that evil, self-absorbed, psycho teenager who did nothing but torment us?"
She smiled knowingly, but still, she wouldn't meet his gaze. "If it weren't for Zuko, I would be dead right now, thrice over. And I wouldn't even be here if Iroh hadn't..." She took a deep, shaky breath before she could continue. "So don't look at me and judge me by what you see on the outside. Me or Zuko."
Sokka had nothing to say to that. All he could think about was the thousands of innocent men and women that Ozai had put to death, either by his own hand or by the hands of his soldiers. And Zuko was his son! All of that blood-thirsty, psycho-craziness had to come from somewhere. And Sokka told her that. He told her exactly what he thought of Zuko.
"You can't judge a person by their parentage," she whispered, her voice barely a breath.
"Like you can talk! Your mother is the Sun Spirit; she's practically one of the holiest people in the universe!"
Emiko smirked, then rolled her lips together as if to keep from laughing. Finally, she crossed her arms and buried her face into them, her shoulders shaking with laughter. She let them become audible, and it was a great thing to hear after all the girl had been through. "Y-you r-r-really didn't know my mother!" Her laugh was melodic, a high-pitched bell laugh that surprised him by how loud it was.
Obviously, he was confused. "Would you care to elaborate?"
"My mother was a pirate, Sokka," she said, still laughing when she finally looked up at him, a smile in her bright yellow eyes. "She plundered, and stole, and killed. She ran away when my grandfather deserted the Fire Nation Navy after my grandmother died."
But that made no sense! A Spirit was pure, a Spirit made up every element of the world, from the moon, to the ocean, to fire, and if it was corrupted... "Of course! It's fire!" he exclaimed, glad to have figured it out. Fire was already corrupted, so therefore, so was the Spirit.
"No, the Sun God is in control of all Fire Spirits," she said, conjuring a small ball of flame into her hands. "My mother is the Spirit who controls the essence of fire. She keep the hope of fire alive, that it will sustain us, that it will always burn hot and keep us warm. Fire is what a person thinks of it. When my grandfather thought that it was nothing but destruction, that's what it became around him. My mother controls it, decrees what child will be born with the power of fire and what child won't." She looked like she wanted to continue, but then a thought came across her face. "That...that might be why my child wasn't born...because it was a child of the Sun, and when the eclipse..."
She was going to continue even more, but even before the tears could come, a loud rumble shook the ground. "Toph?" Sokka asked the air, though maybe Emiko, and he stood up, hoping that nothing bad had happened. Emiko stood up in a flash of heat, her emotions probably making her bending erratic. I'd better be careful...
He ran towards the area where the large lotus-tile fountain was, their "main base" of sorts, and saw that everyone was out, looking for the source, and all of them were in their nightclothes. Pipsqueak looked strange in his baby blue night clothes and a small, light blue hat. It would have been comical if it hadn't been such a scary moment. Suddenly a hole appeared in the back wall, rocks tumbling out of it before a familiar head of black hair slid out and to the floor, grunting in pain.
"Toph, what happened?" Katara asked in her way, bending down to check for any damage. Emiko, next to him, had gone completely still.
"My feet got burned," she said in a painful voice, though she appeared to try not to show it. Emiko instantly pushed everyone out of the way except Katara, bending down next to her friend's feet as Katara asked how. "Well, I kind of went to see Zuko last night..."
"Zuko?" Emiko asked softly, gently running her hands over the bottom of Toph's feet. "He's here?" She sent accusatory glances at Katara and Sokka, as if it were all their faults.
"You did what?" Aang shouted, grimacing. "I can't believe it!"
"Zuko?"
"Guys, concentrate!" Emiko shouted, picking up Toph all on her lonesome and leading her over to the large fountain. "Why did you go look for Zuko?"
Toph looked uncomfortable up in the air. "I just thought he could be helpful to us. And if I talked to him, maybe we could work something out." Katara followed behind, bending water out of her waterskin and molding it around Toph's feet to heal them. Sokka only watched the water glow for a moment before he looked away.
"So he attacked you?" Aang asked, disgust evident on his face.
"Well...he did and he didn't. It was sort of an accident."
"But he did Firebend at you," Emiko said for clarification, a hard look on her face. She sat the Earthbender down, setting her feet in the pool. Toph let out a groan that sounded like a mixture between pain and relief.
"Y...Yeah."
"See, you trusted Zuko and you got burned... literally," Sokka said, giving a glance towards Emiko to see if she understood. "It's happened a lot, actually."
Emiko shot him a glare, but before she could say anything, Katara finished her healing and put her water back into her skin. "It's gonna take a while for your feet to get better. I wish I could've worked on them sooner."
Toph snorted in dry humor. "Yeah, me too."
Sokka had stood therefor a moment, gloomily staring into the pool of water, but he knew that he had to say something. All he could think about was the burn on Emiko's arm, or her stomach from Azula, and now Toph's feet? Even Zuko had been hurt by fire. So he knew what he had to do. "He's clearly too dangerous to be left alone. We're gonna have to go after him."
Aang seemed disappointed by this, and Emiko infuriated and a little green in the face, but Aang said, "I hate to go looking for a fight, but you're right. After what he did to Toph, I don't think we have a choice."
Emiko didn't look as if she really wanted to say anything about it, but knew that she had to. "I'll go."
"No!" Katara and Sokka cried out at the same time, causing Sokka to flush in the face and look away. Katara glared at him for a moment, then turned kind, motherly eyes onto Emiko. "You're not ready to see him. Not yet."
"Look," she said, a little shakily as she stood up and dusted her knees off, "I'm going to have to confront him sometimes. And I've already told you, I'm not going to be Aang's teacher. Something tells me that it's wrong. Zuko is the only other person who can teach him."
"We can find another way than sending you out there," Aang said lowly, not able to meet Emiko's eyes.
"Maybe just invite him back here," Toph said from the edge of the pool. Well you look like you're feeling better already, Sokka thought harshly. "He's already offered himself up as a prisoner once. "
"Yeah..." Sokka said, liking the sound of that idea. "We get him to come back and say he'll be our prisoner. Then we'll jump him and really make him our prisoner!" He smiled, knowing that his plan was foolproof. "He'll never suspect it."
"I'm going," Emiko said, not meeting any of their eyes. "I can't sleep anyways. And besides, I don't think he'll attack anyone else tonight after he attacked Toph."
"And if he does?" Sokka asked, wishing he could slap some sense into her.
"Burn me once," she said softly, looking up at the moon, "shame on you." Now she looked Sokka directly in the eye. "Burn me twice, shame on me. I'm not going to make the same mistake twice."
Are you sure? he wanted to scream at her, shaking her body until he got some sense into her. But just by the look in her eyes, (which were watering,) he could tell that she wasn't going to take no as an answer.
Toph 'looked' at Emiko, an almost pleading look coming off the blind girl's feet. "I know you, Red. You're kinda ditsy sometimes, but you're not stupid. Going out there after..." Toph actually blushed, and so did Emiko, although the latter's was more of an angry flush. "You know. It's stupid. And besides...you wouldn't leave me here like this, would you? Because now I know how the rest of you guys feel. Not being able to see with your feet stinks."
Emiko actually cracked a small smile, but it didn't last for long. Sokka could almost see the hairs on the back of her neck rise. "Guys..."
"What?" Aang asked, having disappeared to look for a towel, now coming back.
"MOVE!"
Suddenly the entire alcove collapsed, leaving all of them covered in a thick layer of dust. Sokka personally had a lump the size of an ostrich-horse egg on his head, but he was too worried about moving Toph out of the way, and getting Emiko to safety. Because up on the ledge where the shot had come from was a tall, muscular man with an eye in the center of his forehead. Sokka knew from experience what that eye could do. So he grasped Emiko around the waist, just as Aang picked up Toph, and then he heard a voice that made Emiko stiffen in his grasp.
"Stop!" the Fire Nation Prince yelled from the ledge where Combustion Man was standing. He was holding his arms out in front of the muscular man, as if that alone would make him quit. "I don't want you hunting the Avatar anymore."
Emiko dug her face into Sokka's shoulder as he tried to pull her along, but finally she just stopped. "Emiko, come on!" And you think you could have gone to get him? Look at you! But he didn't say 'I told you so.' Not yet, anyways.
"She lost the Prince's parasite."
Said Prince then cried out, "The mission is off. I'm ordering you to stop!"
But Combustion Man shoved Zuko out of the way and fired another blast at the top of the fountain, completely destroying where they had all just been standing. Sokka managed to pull Emiko down and out of the way before a set of beams fell down and destroyed the place where she had just been.
Emiko started sobbing under him, and Sokka wanted to do something, anything, to stop it. He hated women when they cried. He couldn't do anything about it! So he gently rubbed her back as she sobbed out, "He sent an assassin after you? I'm sorry, I thought he didn't know...I thought they all thought you were dead, I'm sorry, so sorry...I'm so hard on my friends."
"If you keep attacking, I won't pay you!" Zuko called out. Sokka wanted to slap him and tell him that he was only making her worse, but he kept on. "All right, I'll pay you double to stop!" Still, no matter what Zuko did—shoot flames at the guy, kick him, grab a hold of his jersey—Combustion Man wouldn't stop.
Suddenly Sokka noticed that a warm being wasn't below him. He looked left, right, and then finally up, until he saw Emiko climbing up vines like a ship's boy in some rigging. "Emiko!" he shouted, and Katara cursed when she saw the Firebender running to Zuko's safety.
Emiko
Don't you dare leave me, Zuko! He was fighting the man like a maniac. There was no way that I would let some freakshow with a third eye take him away before I could even tell him that I lost our baby!
Suddenly the man looked at Zuko as if he were an annoying fly. I noticed and felt the energy building up in his head as I landed yards behind him, and he sent flying a blast towards Zuko. "NO!" I cried, sending White Fire into his back. That made the man lose some energy in the beam. Zuko shielded himself with a circular wall of fire, too, which might have helped. This protected him from the beam, but the force of it sent him backwards and over the side of the walkway.
My heart stopped inside my chest. "Zuko!" I cried, pushing the man to the side as I rushed over, trying to see where he'd gone. But in his place was nothing. "You...you monster!" I yelled at the man, who had a very strange look on his face.
Aang, Katara, and Sokka looked up in surprise.
I didn't know what I was doing. My emotions were going wild and I didn't know if I wanted to save Zuko or strangle him. I sent blasts of fire at the man, who surprised, blocked each one and grabbed me by the collar. He held a fist up as if to punch me, but stopped. He looked me in the face for a moment, his brown eyes tinkling with remembrance. "You won't hit me," I growled at him, now holding completely still in his grasp. He looked as if he would rather be in any position except this. So he sighed and sat me down, gently nudging me so that I would fall onto my butt.
Even though it hadn't been harsh, it'd still hurt! I sat there for a moment, tears stinging my eyes, when I noticed the man aiming down at my friends again. Aang got up and ran away, making a whirlwind of dust before another blast was sent at him. He jumped out of the fire and smoke and sent a torrent of air towards the guy who jumped through it and sent another beam at Aang. The Avatar jumped backwards and landed next to Katara, but the landed on a slab of stone above the Avatar before sending another blast that missed.
Katara jumped up and, using Waterbending, sent a wave upwards. I didn't dare go anywhere down there. Coming down out of her jump, she crossed her arms and made her fingers into claws making the water turn to ice shards. The man ducked and blocked the ice with his metal arm. He got up, angered, to see that the Avatar and his friends were no longer in his sight. He sent another angry blast down.
It turned out that Aang, Sokka, Katara, and Toph were behind the nearby wall. They sheltered themselves, and I breathed in relief that they were safe, if only for a moment.
"He's going to blast this whole place right off the cliff side!" That had to be Toph.
"I can't step out to Waterbend at him without getting blown up!" I heard Katara yell. "And I can't get a good enough angle on him from down here anyways." I saw her glancing at me, but what could I do? I was in the corer, desperately trying to control my depression. That man…and Zuko…and… It was all I could do not to destroy them all. I buried my face into my hands and felt myself sobbing.
"I know how to get an angle on him!" Sokka exclaimed somewhere behind my pity-party. I had no clue what he was talking about, just that two more blasts exploded down there and I couldn't get back down to help unless I jumped, which so wasn't happening. "Alright buddy, don't fail me now...
I heard the man take a deep breath and then he turned around...BAM! Right in the forehead! Sokka had thrown his boomerang and hit the man right in his greasy little third eye. He fell to the ground, dazed.
"Yeah, boomerang!" Sokka exclaimed in child-like glee, jumping up and catching it. I would have laughed if I hadn't just seen Zuko fall to his death, or if the explosion man hadn't then decided to get up again. "Aw, boomerang..."
He and the rest of his friends ran, trying to get away from another blast, but...another blast didn't come. I looked over the edge at the man who was showering sparks from his third eye. He put a hand over it and then WHOOSH! A small eruption flared from his head, devouring his body and the pagoda he was standing on. Something went flying, too, down into the chasm around the Air Temple.
And that was probably the time that I passed out. Or I think I did. You know, after sleeping for hours on end the day before, you'd think that I wouldn't need to sleep. But not sleeping that night had killed me. So, I went out like a light. Literally.
Sokka
"You know, she weighs more than I thought she would."
"Sokka!"
"What, it's true!"
At the moment he was carrying Emiko down from the ledge the long way, not the way Zuko had used to get down. Walking down a path with a heavy unconscious girl in your arms was hard enough, let alone swinging down a vine! He looked down at her pale face and wondered what the heck she had been thinking, going up there like that. He remembered her being picked up and feeling a strange protectiveness growing inside of him...
He cleared his throat and looked at his sister. "She going to be okay?"
"She'll be fine. She just overexerted herself," Katara said softly, looking at the girl with a motherly look in her eyes. "I'm sure that after she gets some more rest, she'll be just fine."
I'm not so sure about that, he thought, wondering if Zuko was settling in comfortably. He hadn't even seen her up there, she'd just collapsed and he'd passed right by her. Speaking of him... "How's our guest settling in?"
Katara's face instantly went dark. "I showed him to his room." Obviously Katara wasn't happy about their new recruit, either. "But...Aang needs a teacher. And Emiko isn't ready to teach him." She let out an agitated sigh and ruffled her hair in an irritated manner. "What does she see in him, Sokka?"
"Good question." He looked down onto her soft, pale face which was a little flushed. She had short but thick black lashes that matched her short and thick black hair. And her eyebrows were arched regally, making her cheekbones appear higher and her jaw appear more defined. Her lips were awkwardly wide, her nose slightly too large for her face, but all of it worked with her short height and stout body. "Very good question."
Um...some of you might start getting mad at me with the whole Emiko/Sokka chemistry. I'm a diehard Sokka/Ty Lee and Sokka/Azula fan, so don't worry...I have plans.
Your thoughts?
Katara and I sat in an easy silence as we watched the boys in a heated conversation. Well, Zuko was more awkward, and Aang seemed nervous, but it was heated, nonetheless. Aang tried a Firebending move, but it came out as a puff of smoke. Zuko then demonstrated, making Aang step back. But...nothing came out.
Alright, pause. Things got a little weird there, I'm not gonna lie. I was used to getting premonitions. It wasn't an unusual occurrence. Normally it was of something from the future that may or may not happen. Sometimes it was of nothing in particular, just some message from the Spirit world. Well...this was different. It wasn't from the future, it seemed to be a very, very long time ago.
"You aren't leaving, and that's the end of that," an old, wrinkled man with bright white hair said below me, right where Aang and Zuko had been. I could still see their silhouettes where they'd been frozen, and Katara next to me was transparent and frozen. "It's too dangerous. You have no idea what the Sun Warriors are capable of."
Where am I? I wondered, looking around. But I was in the same exact place I'd been before. Tents were set up all along the pathways below me, and individuals who looked very, very old-fashioned walked around with gear over their shoulders, on their backs, or being dragged behind them. Everything was washed-out. The sky, where it should have been a radiant cerulean, was a dull robin's egg blue.
"But Dagur...I've got to have one! I've been having strange dreams, and I swear I hear something calling me, pulling me towards the Temples..." That was when I noticed the girl. She was tall and lithe, with long black hair flowing down her back in thin, straight strands. Her back was turned to me, so I couldn't see her face. "Please, I'll take Jin-Ho with me. I've got to go, Dagur!"
The old man gently ruffled the girl's hair, making her clench her fists. He just smiled at her. "Maybe one day. But just as fire cannot be played with, neither can these creatures."
The girl narrowed her eyes in such a familiar way that it sent a shiver of remembrance through me. "I want a dragon, Dagur...and I'm going to have one."
And that was it. It just ended, and I was left with hearing Katara say, "...and dinner is going to be so awkward, I don't want to even think about it." Katara stood up, stretched her back, and held out a hand to me. "You coming?"
I took a deep, shuttering breath, trying to figure out what had just happened. "Uh...yeah. Definitely."
Review! Oh, and I'm sorry, but...another two weeks! (It's ACT week. Don't kill me!)
Review!