Taking a break from flying, all of us took the time to enjoy some swimming. I loved it, diving in from the tallest part of the waterfall and whooping excitedly as I fell before spinning, wrapping myself up in water before I plummeted to the bottom then swam, kicking back up to the surface with my hair totally loose and free. "This is great! I haven't had this much fun in ages!" Kicking back I floated on the water before playing with it, water bending for fun as everyone else enjoyed the water too.
"Aang, I know swimming is fun and all, but do you really think you should be exposing yourself like that? Cover up!" Toph yelled to Aang who had stripped off all of his clothes in order to enjoy the water, exposing his tattoos rather clearly.
"What? I'm wearing trunks."
"I know. It's your tattoos I'm worried about. What if someone sees you?"
"There are walls all around us. It's completely safe." Katara reasoned as she sat perched on a rock with her feet in the water so as I turned, I sent a blast of water right at her with an evil grin. "Hey! I'll get you for that Kayo!"
"Gotta catch me first!" Diving under the water I propelled myself as Katara came after me with spears of water trying to pin me, making a huge game of it until we all dragged ourselves from the water several hours later, soaked but exhausted. The water benders all bent the water off of ourselves and everyone else to dry everybody out, all three of us working on Appa since there was a lot of fur for the water to soak into before we all went to bed, thinking it would be a nice, relaxed, dream filled night until Toph woke us all up with a rather alarming warning.
"Guys, you're all gonna think I'm crazy, but it feels like a metal man is coming." Metal man?
"Toph, were you dreaming of metal bending a person or something?" I asked sleepily with a yawn as we all struggled to focus until something shone into Aang's face, making him squint against it. I looked at Aang then up onto the cliff ridge, seeing a man silhouetted against the night, the moonlight shining on his arm which actually was made of metal. All of us froze in place, uncertain whether or not this guy was an enemy or just someone passing by until a beam of focused light lit up and before we knew what was happening, the beam of light which shot out from the guy's forehead caused an explosion so fierce it flung all of us backwards from the aftershock, all of us yelling aloud.
Toph was the first to recover her stance, rooting herself to the ground as she earth bended a bunch of rocks at our attacker who seemed to be able to make things explode with his mind. "Why don't you guys ever attract NORMAL people?!" I yelled over the noise as I covered my head from the rocks that the explosion guy blew up when he saw them coming at him. Turning to the water I helped Katara create a water barrier against the next attack but the heat of the explosion caused a veil of steam to engulf us completely.
Seeing our chance, I quickly grabbed Momo who was racing around in crazed circles and we all dove behind a rock to take cover as our attacker just started firing randomly into the cove, shooting at everything and causing quite a great deal of inconvenience for us. "This is crazy! How can we beat a guy who blows things up with his mind?"
"Well for starters, don't give him a target. Get your head down Sokka!" I yelled at him over an explosion as I grabbed his head and pushed it down, my arms wrapped around Aang, Momo and Toph to keep them protected from the rubble as we all stayed undercover.
"We can. Jump on Appa. I'll try to distract him." Aang instructed, crawling out from under my arms before racing headfirst into the steam. Well, I'm not going to argue. Still holding onto Momo to make sure he didn't fly off and get himself hurt as we all ran to where Appa was hiding underneath a the cliff face out of sight. With Momo on my shoulder I leaped up and took the reins, soothing Appa as he growled and moaned fearfully at all the rocks.
"Toph! Keep those rocks from hitting us, you too Katara." I called behind me as I called for Appa to take off. Between the two of them, Katara and Toph were able to bend and strike the falling rocks out of our way from where they'd been ripped out of the cliffs after exploding whilst I wrapped the steam cover around us, creating a huge cyclone which pushed upwards and guided Appa up out towards the top so we were higher in the air and above our attacker's eye level, but he had lost all interest in us and was focused entirely on Aang who was giving us a chance to get out of here. "He wants Aang, not us so we should be safe up here." I called back to everyone as Momo shivered on my shoulder, claws digging into my skin.
"We have to get him out of there!" Katara worried, everybody watching Aang fight this guy from the edge of the saddle so I pulled the reins to the side to make Appa bank down.
"Hold on!" We flew towards Aang just as he burst into view from where he'd been hiding covered in rock armour, intending to take out his opponent only for another explosion to throw him into the air, his armour crumbling. I steered Appa around and underneath him, letting him fall onto the back of the saddle and right into Katara's arms before flicking the reins. "Yip-yip!" With a mighty flap of his tail, Appa quickly got us out of range of the explosion man before he could blast us out of the sky.
"Well, that was random." Toph finally breathed after we'd recovered from the shock of such a surprise attack.
"I don't think so. I get the feeling he knows who we are." I groaned out loud.
"And I was having such a nice dream to before we all almost got blown up. That guy is definitely someone we should avoid in future." Sokka asked if I had any clue who he was but I drew a blank. "I may be Fire Nation, but that doesn't mean I know everything. He's got to be some kind of fire bender, right? Somehow he's just about to do it all with his mind. Maybe the technique is how he circles his chi from his stomach up to his mind and releases it from there, or something. Anyway, he's a bad guy. We don't like bad guys, so we'll avoid him from now on." I informed everyone pointedly. "And Aang? Try not to get yourself blown up."
"Got it." Smiling as I turned around, I veered Appa slightly north to find somewhere safe to land later, as far away from that guy as we could possibly get.
