Chapter 9: Sokka's Intelligence
Forty-three miles from Gaoling, in the rugged Ayanoran Pass, red-clad ranks marched. Troops of mounted komodo-rhinos paced along with footsoldiers, and metal tanks clanked forward at the flanks. General Iynni herself was riding a long-legged cheetah-wolverine, leading the troops. The animal was savage and still half-wild to any but her, but nothing was faster or more deadly in the chaotic heat of battle.
Ahead, a flicker of motion drew her gaze, and she narrowed her eyes. She hadn't gotten the moniker "Eaglehawk" for nothing; her unusually keen sight had saved her life more than once.
"Halt," she told her aide, who conveyed the order to the rest of the forces marching through the mountain pass. Looking hard at the sides of the pass, she could see unnatural shapes in the stone. Oh, Agni, they were earthbent shapes, and now that she noticed them, the shapes were very distinctive.
Iyinni swore vividly, swinging her cheetah-wolverine around. "Ambush!" she bellowed, years of army experience giving her a volume that drill sargents would envy. "Ambush!"
The pass shook, and the first boulders rained down on them. She swore again as boulders crashed down on them. She'd hoped it wouldn't come to this. The pass was their most vulnerable point on the journey to Gaoling, and a good force of earthbenders ranged all along the pass could do some damage. There weren't nearly as many as she'd expected, though. Not enough to bring the full fury of the pass down on them.
Her troops were initially shocked by the assault, but they rallied quickly. The long-range firebending squads stepped forward, protected by the other men around them, and raised fists.
The long-range squads had been Iynni's brainchild when she was still a girl in Basic, and they'd served her and their nation well. Most firebenders trained for close combat, keeping their fire short and fierce. The long-rangers, though, trained for distance, working together to send ribbons of fire far past what anyone would reasonably expect.
Rippling fire exploded upward, a long, slender river of death that shot upward. Iynni watched as it lashed against one of those earthbent shelters.
Something exploded there, a small combustion.
Iynni had dabbled in explosives before Azulon handpicked her for a general in the army. Explosions in a pass like this were bad. Very bad.
She didn't even have time to curse in the blink between the little explosion, and the massive ones that ripped into the pass walls and sent the mountains down on top of them.
It seemed to last lifetimes, the deafening smashing and booming, the choking dust that made sight impossible. Iynni was aware of her cheetah-wolverine leaping and bounding as she clung to its neck.
Finally, the noise died, and the dust slowly began to settle. Iynni's steed had brought the two of them back further from the worst of the damage, most likely saving their lives. It crouched atop a higher stone outcropping now, sides heaving. She patted the spooked beast's neck, and surveyed the damage as it slowly emerged from the dust.
It wasn't as bad as Iynni feared, in regards to the soldiers under her command. If she hadn't seen the danger and kept them from advancing, they would have been caught in the full fury of the explosion-triggered rockslides. As it was, the main body of the troops was fairly unscathed. Only the frontal troops had really taken a beating.
She raised her gaze, and grimly surveyed the way forward. It was all but obscured by shattered, slid rock, the mountainsides shredded and unstable. It would take them at least two days, maybe more, to clear any sort of a path through the rubble. The devastation was far more than what earthbenders alone would have been able to accomplish.
She cursed softly and steadily as she guided the cheetah-wolverine down and forward, to tally the casualties and begin the work of clearing the pass. Iynni didn't want to destroy Gaoling. She didn't have the stomach for enjoying razing and pillaging. She'd done what had to be done in Dai Gilang, and she knew she would do it here if needs be. But she had hoped they would surrender in relative peace. Now, she realized that was a fool's dream. So she cursed the Earth-stubborn idiots that inhabited this Agni-forsaken land, cursed their resistance against the Great March of Civilization, cursed their arrogance in thinking they could stand against the Fire Nation. Gaoling would never hold.
But first, the Great March of Civilization had to get through this mess.
;=;=;=;=;
"What's out here, anyway?" Sokka wondered, staring out at the wide savanna plain, barren except for a few tufts of grass and a number of small holes in the ground around the group.
"Prairie mocking-dogs!" Jiao cheered as Aang played a few notes on his makeshift flute. Several little creatures popped out of the holes, mimicking the notes in squeaky voices. Katara laughed in surprise.
"It's a long, long way to Ba Sing Se…" Toph sang, surprisingly melodiously. A chorus of prairie mocking-dogs accompanied her.
Zhi's mouth dropped open. "Toph!"
She laughed. "Would you rather me sing the one about the fishermen and the-"
"Don't sing that one! How do you even know it? I certainly never taught it to you!"
Toph smirked.
"Me, me, me, me, me," Jiao warbled, and the little animals copied him. He laughed.
Though entertaining, this side trip wasn't doing them any good. Sokka opened his mouth to complain about the pointlessness, but was distracted when a little brown streak shot past his feet, aiming for the nearest prairie mocking-dog. The singing animal disappeared into the burrow like a flash, and the moose-lion cub stopped in confusion before following.
"Foo Foo, get back here," Sokka scolded.
"Sokka, we aren't calling him that."
"Then come up with a better name," Sokka sniffed, trying to fold his arms and wincing as he jostled the splint on his broken arm (Katara was good, but even the best healers couldn't mend bones quickly). Momo ran after the cub, disappearing into the hole as well. All three animals came up in different holes. Momo and the cub stared around in confusion before disappearing again. Aang played a few more notes, making more prairie mocking-dogs appear.
"We could call him Fluffy," Jiao suggested.
"If we can't call him Foo Foo Cuddlypoops, we can't call him Fluffy," Sokka snapped. "What about Fang? Or Macho? Or Destroyer?"
"He doesn't have any fangs yet," Aang said, taking the flute away from his mouth.
"He will, eventually. What about Stew? Or Stir-Fry?"
"Sokka!" Katara said, outraged.
"Just sayin'…" Sokka shrugged.
"This is all very nice," Zhi said in some exasperation, "but I think we have more important things to be doing."
"Thank you," Sokka said, dragging his wandering thoughts back on track. "We need to keep working, guys. We have plans to make."
"We did make plans. We're all picking mini-vacations," Katara said.
"There isn't time for vacations," Zhi said. "Aang, you said Sozin's Comet is returning at the end of summer? You need to have mastered water, earth, and fire by then!"
"I'm learning as fast as I can," Aang protested. "I'm working hard with Toph and Katara every day. I'm practically training my arrow off!"
Toph folded her arms. "Gotta say, you could be putting a lot more effort into your earthbending practice. You train for half an hour and then whine that you're tired and need to stop."
"Because I am tired!"
"I'm your sifu!" Toph snapped. "If I tell you to train for three hours, you do it! Oh, wait, I forgot. You don't trust that I know what I'm doing." She turned away, scowling hard.
"That's not true," Aang protested, but Toph didn't answer.
"Listen," Sokka elbowed back in. "We don't even know what we're doing or where we're going. How are we going to get a firebending teacher for you? What's our plan for taking the Fire Lord down? Do we even know where the Fire Palace is? No! We need some intelligence if we want to win this war."
"Fine, we'll finish our vacations first," Katara said. "Then we'll look for Sokka's intelligence. He seems to have left it somewhere."
Sokka glared at her.
Zhi groaned and sank back into Appa's fur. "Wonderful. Time-wasting vacations, here we come."
"I know where we should go next!" Aang said excitedly, hopping to his feet and pulling out a map. "Misty Palm Oasis! It's amazing!"
;=;=;=;=;
Misty Palm Oasis wasn't very amazing. Maybe amazingly disappointing.
Jiao stood with the rest, eyeing the rickety structures and the lump of ice in the middle. It was kind of cool, having ice here in the middle of the desert – cool, ice, heh heh. He would have told the pun to the others, but they were all talking together, not even looking at the ice spring. He wandered over, and touched it. Definitely ice. Weird.
Zhi studied Aang's map. "This is the right place," he said doubtfully, rolling it up and sticking it in his belt.
"Great place," Sokka said sarcastically. "A real crowd-pleaser."
Aang was saying something about the fruit drinks they served here, but Jiao wasn't listening. His attention was caught by the multilegged things crawling around near the base of the ice, enjoying the cold water melting off of the ever-renewing spring. One of them was as big as his hand, and he eyed it for a moment, a grin splitting his face.
"We should try some of the fruit ices!" Aang said enthusiastically. "Gyatso and I came here for AAAGARHAAAAG WHAT IN MONKEYFEATHERS IS THAT!?"
"Aang?" Katara said with concern, as the Avatar leaped up and down, screaming and clutching frantically at his backside.
"IT'S IN MY PANTS, GET IT OUT, GET IT OUT-"
An octopuspede, still dripping with ice water, and now bright purple with terror, fell out of his right pantleg. Jiao scooped it up. "Just a little bitty octopuspede," he said. "Not even venomous. Nothing to be frightened of. Look, he's scared of you, you big meanie."
"You put it down my pants!" Aang accused shrilly.
"Me?" Jiao asked innocently, letting the little creature scuttle back to the ice.
Aang huffed and turned away, ignoring everyone else's snickers.
;=;=;=;=;
Professor Zei was… an interesting fellow.
Zhi watched as the man flitted around Aang, excitedly measuring him and asking questions about Air Nomad culture. Something about the professor made him slightly uneasy, but he didn't have a reason for it, so he sat and watched. Honestly, this whole place made him uneasy. The dingy, poorly-lit building, with its clientele of sandbenders, desert nomads, and other sketchy-looking characters, didn't inspire confidence.
"So, Professor," Sokka said, leaning over the table. "You seem like a well-traveled guy. I don't suppose you have a more current map? Our's seems to be a little… dated." He glared at Aang, who looked abashed.
"How was I supposed to know that the Misty Palm Oasis kind of went downhill in the last hundred years?" Aang protested in the background.
"Of course," Zei said, handing Sokka a map. Zhi leaned over the Tribesman's shoulder as he unrolled it, spreading it out.
"It doesn't have the Fire Nation on it," Zhi said flatly.
"Why does nobody have a good map of that place?" Sokka complained. "Lots of trips into Si Wong, but no Fire Nation! What's in Si Wong, anyway?"
"Supposedly, Wan Shi Tong's Spirit Library is to be found there!" Professor Zei said.
Zhi snorted, before remembering he wasn't in the Underground anymore. "Wait, the actual Spirit Library?"
"Of course!" Zei spread his arms wide. "The crowning jewel of lost wonders! I've wandered far and wide, and made many great discoveries, but the Library continues to elude me."
"...does it even exist?" Zhi asked.
"It must," Zei said passionately. "I will find it, someday. More precious than gold, it is, because it contains vast knowledge. And knowledge is priceless. It was built by the great knowledge spirit Wan Shi Tong, He Who Knows Ten Thousand Things, and his knowledge seekers, the fox spirits. They gathered up vast treasures of knowledge from all over the world, books and scrolls beyond value, protecting them from the ravages of war and destruction, and put them on display so mankind could read them and better themselves."
Zhi had finally realized why Zei made him uneasy. The man was crazy.
"Then why the Library so hard to find, if it's on display for mankind?" Toph asked, digging in her ear.
"It is to weed out those who are not true seekers of knowledge," Zei said earnestly. "Those who are, will seek the Library out regardless of difficulty."
"Knowledge from all over the world," Sokka mused, sipping his drink. "And is any of this knowledge current?"
"Of course," Zei said. "The knowledge seekers are constantly searching for knowledge in the world."
"So they're thieves?" Katara asked.
"They don't steal knowledge if it is being used, or well kept," Zei protested. "They find the scrolls that have been forgotten in dusty corners, and the tomes threatened by leaping flames, and the books of knowledge that have been ordered destroyed."
"Do you think they might have information on the Fire Nation?" Sokka asked. "I don't know, a map or something?"
Zei shrugged. "Most likely."
Sokka rose from the table. "Then it's settled. I do believe it's my turn, and I'd like to spend my vacation… AT THE LIBRARY! Oww," he added, apparently having forgotten about his broken arm momentarily. Zhi smirked. Note to self: don't use broken limbs to gesture dramatically.
Everyone stared at Sokka for a moment. Several people at other tables turned to look at them.
"There's a problem, however," Zei said, more quietly. "I've made several trips into the desert, following different leads, and almost died each time. I'm afraid that Si Wong is impossible to cross unless you're a sandbender, and good luck getting them to help you."
Zhi glanced over at Sokka, who looked conflicted. Finally Sokka sighed. "That may not be a problem, Professor," he said. "Would you like to see our sky bison?"
;=;=;=;=;
Miles of sand, hours of searching turning into days. This was a mistake.
At least, until they saw the fox spirit, running faster than any mortal fox could have. Running to the lone tower reaching into the sky, the rest of the magnificent edifice buried under untold masses of desert sand.
They'd found the Library.
;=;=;=;=;
"It's huge," Toph said reverently, one hand splayed against the worn stone of the Library's highest tower. "I can't even feel how big it is. It's like it… fuzzes out, kind of. It goes down way deeper than I can feel like this." She'd never felt anything quite like it before. It was like part of it was there, and then it wasn't, but it still was somehow, just in a different place… it kind of hurt her head. Probably spirity stuff.
Or it was just this stupid sand. Man, Toph hated sand.
"There's got to be useful information in there somewhere," Sokka said cheerfully. "I'll bet we can get in through the top of the tower, like the fox did."
"I'll stay out here," Toph said, taking her hand off of the tower.
"Got something against libraries?" Katara asked.
"I've held books before, and I gotta say, they don't exactly do it for me," Toph said dryly.
"Oh," Katara said, sounding embarrassed. "Sorry."
Toph shrugged. She really didn't care that they forgot she was blind. It actually made her feel good. She got along so well they didn't even notice she wasn't like the rest of them sighted people (not like at home, where Mom and Dad made sure she would never forget she was blind).
"I'll stay with you," Zhi said reluctantly.
"You should go," Toph said. Even if this stupid horrible sand was making it really hard to 'see' everyone, she could tell that Zhi really wanted to go into the Library. "I'm fine out here. Appa'll take care of me, right, Appa?"
Appa snorted.
"I'll stay too," Jiao volunteered, rubbing Appa's head. "It'll probably be kind of boring in there anyway."
"That's actually a good idea," Sokka said. "We don't know what's in there. On that note, do we really want to leave one of our strongest fighters out here while we face La knows what?"
"You'll be fine," Toph said, flapping a hand in Sokka's direction. "You've got the Avatar. Spirits will probably fall over backward trying to make him happy."
"Yeah," Aang said, not sounding very certain. "Heh. That's me, the spirit tamer."
"Convincing," Sokka grumbled.
"We should go in," Zei said, sounding impatient. "We don't want to waste any time finding that beautiful, beautiful knowledge…" He rubbed the sack of books and maps he'd lugged around since they met.
"...Ookay," Sokka and Zhi said at the same time, and smirked at each other.
"Um, Sokka," Katara said, indicating the rope that Sokka had pulled out, a pile of hemp-smell and swishing noises. "You can't climb that with a broken arm."
"I can too!" he said. "...not."
"We can take Appa up," Aang suggested. "And you can tie a loop in the rope and we'll lower you down."
He shrugged. "Whatever gets us inside," he said, fiddling with the rope. "Rope ready, everyone set? Great, let's go! Onto Appa!"
They clambered onto the bison's bulk, and Appa took off. The top of the tower wasn't that far overhead, and Toph could still hear them bickering and bantering as they reached the window.
She idly kept one hand on the library wall, keeping track of them as they climbed inside. It was harder to see them from a distance like this – deliberately shaped, not-earthbent stone, like this wall, was harder to see with – but she could still follow their progress as they climbed through the opening at the top and vanished, presumably sliding down the rope to the inside.
Appa landed nearby, an indistinct impression nearby. "Good boy," Jiao said from the bison's vicinity. Toph trudged over, misjudged where empty air stopped and Appa started, and ran into his shoulder.
"...Appa's there, by the way," Jiao said.
"Thanks," Toph muttered, making her way around Appa until she found the cooler sand that meant shade. She settled down, leaning up against the bison's furry side.
Something nudged against her, and she jumped, automatically reaching to slap it away with earth and only making a handful of sand stir. It turned out to be the saber-tooth moose-lion cub, nosing against her arm. She sighed, and let it clamber into her lap.
Toph wasn't used to not being able to see things. Normally she could sense everything around her, with a level of preciseness that was amazing to sighted people. Now she couldn't even tell that the moose-lion cub was coming up to her until it bumped her arm. It was frankly disconcerting.
"Hey, Toph!" Jiao said, from up on Appa. "Will you teach me to sandbend?"
"I would," Toph said, annoyed, "if I could sandbend."
"Oh," Jiao said.
Toph scooped up a handful of sand, letting it run through her fingers. It was so fractured, so many little tiny reference points that all read differently to her power. She suspected that if she did figure out how to see in sand, it might be more precise in some ways than normal earth. But that was if she did. Which didn't seem likely.
Then again, she was the greatest earthbender in the world, or almost there, anyway. Sandbending couldn't be that hard.
One hand idly rubbing the cub's ears, she sifted her fingers through the sand, trying to focus on it. It was hard. There were so many different little vantage points that her earthbending wanted to focus on individually. Instead of being one cohesive whole, that she could treat as a whole, sand split and tumbled and escaped her control. One, two, three grains at a time, she could manage just fine. But even a small handful of sand? As soon as she tried grabbing it with her bending, it slipped out of her control, spilling through the cracks in her power just like it spilled through her fingers.
Jiao slid down Appa's side and sat next to her, a companionable distance away.
After a while, Toph said, "How is this less boring than the spirit library?"
"It's not really. I just didn't want you to be lonely."
Toph swallowed, and didn't answer. She was unhappy with Jiao for going behind her back and teaching Aang, she was, but it was really hard to care when he was being so… Jiao-y. He'd always wanted to fix everyone's problems, like a little kindness could actually change anything.
The cub shifted in her lap, pushing its head against her hand - she'd stopped scratching behind its ears. She resumed, to the cub's pleasure, and smiled crookedly. Maybe Jiao was on to more than she thought.
;=;=;=;=;
The Spirit Library was vast.
Layers and floors descended down into darkness that somehow wasn't dark, a blurring of worlds. It expanded out to either side, enormous and unending. It made Sokka feel very, very small, and the thought of finding anything in this immense collection of knowledge was suddenly incomprehensible.
Sure, the architecture was amazing, and Professor Zei was ecstatic, but Sokka couldn't help feeling uneasy. He was just a guy from the South Pole, nothing special. This grandeur and size was a little overwhelming to him. Give him a cozy fur hut any day.
And that was before they got snuck up on by a massive owl spirit that didn't look happy at their presence.
Sokka stared up at the giant bird, and swallowed.
Wan Shi Tong was… strange. Slightly out of proportion for a real bird, not enough to be glaringly obvious, just enough to be wrong. The spirit's edges were slightly fuzzed, like he couldn't decide whether he was actually in this reality or not. And he radiated the same strange otherness that Sokka had felt when Heibai had brought him into the Spirit World. The same sense of not-belonging.
"Hello," Professor Zei said brightly, although he couldn't tear his eyes away from the ranks of shelves piled with knowledge, marching away into the distance. "I'm Professor Zei. Head of anthropology at Ba Sing Se. This is marvelous. Do you have any scrolls on the Xian-period Shou Dynasty? My information is sadly incomplete, and nowhere else has anything. Oh, do you possibly have a Yn Taga compendiary as well? I've been trying to translate an ancient Water scroll, but it's so old the language is quite insurmountable-"
"I am He Who Knows Ten Thousand Things. I hold the knowledge of the world," Wan Shi Tong rumbled in that bizarre voice of his. "Who are you, that you consider yourself worthy to seek it?"
"I'm just a humble seeker of knowledge," Zei said, finally pulling his gaze back to the spirit. Wan Shi Tong regarded him with what seemed like a glimmer of tolerant amusement.
"Sooo are we!" Sokka interjected, sliding up next to Zei. "Humble knowledge hounds, that's us. Learning for the sake of learning, woo yay!"
Behind him, Zhi smothered a groan.
The owl gave him a dark, unblinking stare, tolerance gone. "You are humans. Humans are no longer allowed in my Library."
"Why not?" Aang asked, poking his head around Sokka.
The spirit's gaze slid to Aang. "Avatar," he said, and there was a great weight in that word.
Aang swallowed. "...hi?"
"Humans," Wan Shi Tong said finally, "don't learn for the sake of learning. They learn, to gain advantage over other humans. Destruction and pain follows in their wake. All they seek is to destroy their enemy, and the world with them." He fixed Sokka with his stare again. "So, who are you trying to destroy?"
Sokka swallowed. "Ah, we're, we aren't into destroying. Just… knowledge!"
Aang stepped around Sokka. "We're trying to fix the world," he said seriously, sounding less like a goofy kid, and more like someone Sokka might actually listen to. "It is imbalanced. Surely you have felt the effects of that imbalance, tipping the world past what it should be."
"Hmmm," Wan Shi Tong said.
"We don't want to destroy anyone or anything. We don't want to hurt anyone else. We just want to find knowledge so we can bring peace and balance to the world. I'm the Avatar. I need to do this."
The owl considered him for a long, unblinking moment, then said in his sepulchral tones, "Very well, Avatar. You all have my permission to peruse my vast collection, on one condition. You must offer worthwhile knowledge in return, to prove your worth as scholars."
Zei immediately dug in his bag, and pulled out a fat, leather-bound book with yellowed, curling pages, presenting it to the spirit. The others glanced at each other, before digging in their own bags or pouches.
Katara swallowed, and held up a familiar-looking scroll, with flowing diagrams and elegant text. "I have an authentic waterbending scroll. Northern style, Gold Chieftain period."
Wan Shi Tong swept it out of her hands. "Mmm. Those illustrations are quite stylish. A master's work. Excellent contribution."
Sokka sent Katara a sideways glance. She looked sad. That waterbending scroll held a lot of memories. It was where she learned most of her basic moves and theories from. Even after she'd mastered waterbending in the North, she kept the scroll for sentimental value. This was important to her.
"Uh…" Aang dug in his robes and produced… his Fire Nation wanted poster. "Ha!"
Wan Shi Tong gave Aang what could be classified as an incredulous look.
"It's, ah, it's an excellent example of modern Fire Nation writing in a non-scholarly setting!" Aang said, waving it. "Not to mention an interesting piece of history for the archives!"
"...I suppose that counts," the spirit sighed, taking it.
Zhi produced Aang's old map, shaking out the wrinkles. "An authentic, hundred-year-old Air Nomad map."
Wan Shi Tong inspected it. "It will do," he finally pronounced.
All eyes turned to Sokka, who… didn't have anything. He didn't know this place was pay-to-enter, all right? He didn't make a habit of carrying around valuable documents or old books on his person!
"And you?" Wan Shi Tong said pointedly.
Sokka swallowed. "I don't have any physical knowledge here with me," he began, hastening as Wan Shi Tong's eyes narrowed. "But I do have first-hand knowledge of recent events that you likely don't have in your collection."
"Such as?" the spirit asked.
Sokka scrambled to think of something that would suffice, and swallowed hard. "Such as the defeat of the Fire Nation at the Siege of the North only a few months ago… and the ascension of Princess Yue to the Moon Spirit."
Wan Shi Tong eyed him, hopefully in a interestedly-thinking way and less of a let's-kill-him-and-throw-him-off-the-tower way, for some moments. "That will suffice, if the account is clear and detailed," he finally said. "We have writing materials. You will be shown to them. You will set down the promised information. I will judge your contribution and decide whether to admit you to the Library."
"All right," Sokka said, relieved. At least he seemed to have avoided being thrown off the tower.
"You companions are free to browse the Library as they wish. I will have you escorted to them by one of my knowledge seekers when you are finished."
The owl spirit swept away. Sokka felt something tugging on his pants, and looked down to see a green-eyed fox spirit with a chocolate-splotched red coat, looking up at him. "Just a moment," he told it, and caught Aang's arm as the monk turned to head into the Library's halls with the others. "Aang," he said in a lowered voice, "what was all that about not hurting anyone and just being peaceful? Were you serious? Because our whole point is to take down the Fire Nation."
Aang looked sad. "I meant exactly what I said," he said quietly. "I don't want to hurt anybody. I don't want to destroy anything. But it might have to happen."
Sokka let go of Aang, shaking his head. "And here I thought you didn't have the mind for lies and intrigue," he said.
"I wasn't lying," Aang said.
"Exactly." Sokka grinned. "You told him what he wanted to hear. You were perfectly sincere. And everyone gets what they want. Very sneaky." He waved Aang on and looked back at the fox. "Now, about those writing materials?"
The fox led him down several hallways and into a smaller room that might have been someone's study, long ago. It had a distinctly cozy feel to it, with a fireplace, a comfy-looking couch, hangings adorning the walls, and well-loved wooden desk against one wall. The effect was somewhat ruined by the choking layer of dust that coated everything.
"I thought you guys were in charge of keeping this place up," Sokka told the fox.
It gave him a reproachful look that said, It's a big library, and leaped into the air, spinning around. A blur of motion obscured the room for a moment, and the fox landed again, proudly tilting its head. The room was now spotlessly clean, a fire burned in the fireplace, and a blank scroll sat on the table next to several brushes and an inkstone. There was even a cup of water to the side.
"Okay, I'm impressed," Sokka said, pulling out the chair and sitting down. The fox preened.
He picked up the brush and considered the blank scroll for a moment. Where to start?
Well, the beginning of the Siege was a good as a place as any. He dipped the brush in the ink and started to write, his tongue between his teeth.
The black snow was so thick, the day the Siege began, it turned the midday to twilight...
;=;=;=;=;
"Jiao?"
"Yeah?"
"Why did you do it?"
"Do what?"
"Sneak around behind my back and teach Aang." Toph felt the anger returning. "He's my student. Was I not good enough? What?"
Jiao turned toward her, startled. "What? I wasn't… I didn't think you weren't good enough, it wasn't because of that!"
"Then what was it?" she demanded, frustrated. "What?"
He slumped back into Appa. "I just… never mind, it obviously didn't work."
"What?"
"I thought it would make you feel better, okay?" Jiao blew out a breath. "You were unhappy and frustrated, because he wasn't earthbending, and I thought that I could fix it by helping him and then both of you would be happy, but it didn't work! It just made you mad at him and mad at me and I don't know why!"
Toph swallowed past the sudden lump in her throat. Oh. "I…" She wasn't sure what to say. Her indignation and hurt had suddenly been replaced by embarrassment and shame. "I thought you were doing it because I was a bad teacher," she finally mumbled.
"You aren't a bad teacher. He's learning, isn't he? He just needed a different way to start off, I guess." Jiao slid over, hesitantly bumping against her arm. She didn't lean away. "I should have talked to you about it, but I thought if you thought he'd figured it out on his own, you'd be happier with him, and things would be better -"
"I should have talked to you," Toph said, wondering why she hadn't done so before now. She was so stupid. How could she have thought that Jiao would try to hurt her like that? "It's my fault. I'm an idiot."
"No you aren't."
She snorted, leaning back into Appa's soft side. "How did you do it?"
"Teach him?"
"Yeah. How come it worked with you and not me? Why were you suddenly able to get him to earthbend, but I couldn't?"
"He just needed a different way of doing things, that's all." Jiao shifted, reaching over to scratch behind the moose-lion cub's ears. ""Toph…" He hesitated. "Bigger isn't always better, you know? Not everyone can take on a boulder on their first day of earthbending training. He'd never even earthbent before. How did you expect him to stop a giant rock?"
"He's the Avatar," Toph snapped. "Of course he can earthbend."
"He knows that in his head, but his body wasn't so convinced. How many people can handle something like that on their fist day, Toph?"
"I did."
"You've been moving rocks since before you could walk," Jiao said. "You've always been able to earthbend. You just needed instruction. Aang didn't need the instruction as much as he needed that first earthbending experience. Small steps. I didn't start with boulders, and neither did he."
"But there's only one way to move a rock," Toph said stubbornly. "It doesn't matter whether it's big or small, you move it exactly the same way. And he has plenty of power! Size shouldn't matter unless he's moving a literal mountain."
"There's a pretty big difference," Jiao said. "That difference being, if he hadn't been able to stop the boulder, he would have been dead. When your life is dependent on doing something that you have never done before, that you don't know you can actually do, jumping out of the way seems like a pretty good choice. We started with a pebble, and he didn't get it the first time. Or the second time. Or the third time. Or the fourth time. Or the fifth time. Or the sixth-"
"Okay, I get it," Toph snapped.
"To earthbend, I think you have to know you're strong enough to do it. It might mean someone is super self-confident, or has lots of willpower. Or they stand up to someone big and mean, and figure that standing up to a rock has to be easier. Or… I don't know. They just need to know they can. For Aang, that meant bending a pebble first."
Toph chewed that over. It was… not what she'd ever really thought. She didn't like the idea of there being more than one way around earthbending. No trickity-tricks, as it were. But Jiao and Aang were proof that everything had more than one solution.
"I guess," she finally said, even though it still niggled at her. Leaning over, she punched his arm gently, slightly off target. "But my way is still much better, 'cause it's my way."
Jiao laughed.
"How did you get to be so… creepy-wise, anyway?" Toph asked.
"Creepy-wise?" Jiao said, confused.
"Yeah. Sometimes it's like talking to some old master or something, and not a kid. It's creepy. You aren't supposed to know that much."
She felt his shrug. "I don't know. I open my mouth and… stuff falls out. Usually words. Sometimes dinner."
Toph smirked. She hadn't been kidding, though. Jiao could sound way older than his age, sometimes. It was easy to forget that her little brother knew so much, but then he went and spouted off knowledge and philosophy and stuff that made Toph feel like the little sibling. Ah, well. Maybe it would keep her ego from getting too inflated… nah. Her ego was a force of the universe and nothing could stop it.
The moose-lion cub raised its head and made a whining noise in the back of its throat.
"Shhh, Fluffy," Jiao said, scritching behind its ears again to calm it.
"Don't let Katara hear you call it that," Toph said.
"She doesn't care if I call it Fluffy. Sokka cares. And Zhi."
"That's only because Zhi doesn't want you calling it anything. He never wanted it in the first place."
"He doesn't have it. I do."
"I – what is that?" Toph propped herself up against Appa with one hand, listening.
"What?"
"That noise." It was louder than the constant breeze, and there was a different tone to it. She couldn't sense anything, though, because of this EVIL STUPID SAND. Spirits, she hated sand!
Jiao stood, sand shushing as he walked around Appa. "It's… sandbenders! Sandbenders on sandsailers. Coming right for us. They're just coming over one of the dunes."
Toph scowled. "That's not good."
"Should we fly away?"
Toph shrugged with one shoulder, standing up. The moose-lion gave a high-pitched yowl of complaint as it dumped onto the sand. "I don't want to let them into the Library. Not with everyone in there. And we can't just leave our guys stranded down there." She chewed on her lip for a moment. "You should take Appa up. I'll talk to them. If worst comes to worst, I can hold them off with, I don't know, stone from the Library, and Appa can buzz 'em."
"Fine," he said, although he didn't sound enthused. "Be careful." He scooped up the moose-lion cub and climbed onto Appa, out of Toph's limited earthsense.
"You too," Toph muttered, bracing herself against the stone of the Library for moral support.
Appa launched into the air with Jiao's "Yip yip!", and Toph blew out a breath of relief. At least whatever happened down here, Jiao would be fine. She'd heard about sandbenders, though. They didn't really have a great reputation. Desert thieves; backstabbing, squabbling pack rats that will only band together long enough to steal the clothes from your back and the breath from your lungs, one particularly venomous tutor had said. Toph wasn't inclined to trust him implicitly, but she didn't trust the sandbenders, either.
So she waited, as the shush of sandsailers neared, circled her, and stopped.
A voice spoke, harsh and dry, like the desert wind had scraped all the moisture out of the man's throat over years of living. "Call the bison down, girl."
;=;=;=;=;
Sokka had never had great handwriting. He'd had better things to do with his time, okay? In the war-ravaged South, being literate at all was impressive. But Wan Shi Tong didn't have to look quite so disbelievingly put-upon as he scanned over Sokka's written account of the events at the North-
"This is truly what happened?" Wan Shi Tong glared like Sokka was personally responsible for all the troubles in the world.
"Yeah, pretty much."
The owl blinked - actually blinked, Sokka hadn't thought the spirit was capable of it - and looked back at the scroll. "...Remarkable," he rumbled finally, and made no other comment on it. "The knowledge seeker will show you to your companions now." Wan Shi Tong turned and vanished around a darkened corner.
"Lead on, little buddy," Sokka said, looking down at the fox.
It trotted unerringly through the hallways, down a flight of twisting stairs, through a room full of tapestries depicting various scenes from some old Earth Kingdom epic, along a catwalk that connected one side of the Library to the other across a vast, cavernous hole that had no visible bottom, down a corridor lined with labeled rock samples, and finally to another bank of shelves where the others – minus Professor Zei – were investigating the books and scrolls there.
"Sokka!" Katara said, the worried lines crinkling her eyes smoothing out. "You made it!"
"Sure did," he said, flexing his muscles. Zhi rolled his eyes and returned to skimming through a heavy-looking book with what looked like blueprints to a giant jungle gym… or possibly some alchemical apparatus, on second thought.
"Where's Zei?" Sokka wondered.
"He got all excited by some obscure rendition of a 'Mountain-era wartime saga', or something like that, and ran off. I hope we can find him again when we need to leave," Katara said.
Aang held up a scroll with elaborate badgermole-head endcaps. "Does anyone want an account of Earth King Anoi the Fruitful's ancestry through the patriarchal line? No? Didn't think so." He threw the scroll back onto the shelf. "How are we supposed to find anything in here?"
The fox slipped behind Aang and straightened the scroll, giving Aang a reproving look.
Sokka scowled and wandered past them. "There's got to be an organization system here somewhere."
"It seems pretty random to me," Katara said, frowning at a book about the anatomical differences between different subspecies of catfrog.
The fox fluffed up its tail, indignant.
"Hey," Sokka said, suddenly interested. "Is there an organization system?" he asked it.
The fox nodded, with a distinct air of yes, you poor slow thing.
"Do you know it?"
Now the fox just looked insulted.
"Can you help us?" Sokka asked. Everyone else was paying attention as well. "We need information on the Fire Nation."
The fox tilted its head, then nodded and took off again, loping away. Everyone scrambled to follow.
It led them through several large, shelf-crammed rooms, until they reached one that was a little more open. In the middle of the room, there was a pedestal, with a single piece of tattered parchment between two pieces of glass, the edges burned and blackened.
"The darkest day in Fire Nation history," Sokka read. "It has… a date? What is that?"
"It's a date," Zhi confirmed, coming up next to him. "The old style. The Fire Nation calculated their calendars from the first Dragon Emperor, for a while, before they merged with the date system that the Earth Kingdom used."
"...Huh," Sokka said. That was actually really interesting, he'd never thought about the fact that different cultures might calculate their calendar dates from different points, did that make it more difficult to reconcile old documents with newer ones, but he really needed to focus on the matter at hand. He eyed the parchment, then pried at the glass with his fingers. When that didn't work, he used Boomerang to lever the glass apart and slip the parchment out.
The fox growled softly in its throat.
"Hey," Sokka told it, letting the glass back down. "I just need to match this date to Fire Nation history, okay? I'll put it back."
The fox looked unconvinced, but it didn't stop him.
"Now, where can I find some scrolls on Fire Nation history?" Sokka asked. The fox, slightly disgruntled, led them down hallway after hallway, room after room.
Sokka began to notice a burned smell. "Do you guys smell that?" he asked.
No one answered, because just then they turned the corner and saw the devastation.
An entire cavernous room, burned to ashes. The walls were scorched, the floors black under the ashes and debris. There was nothing left but destruction. The banner over the entrance, proclaiming the history of the Fire Nation, was singed at the edges.
"Firebenders," Aang whispered.
"They destroyed all the information on the Fire Nation?" Katara said. "Why? Why would they do that?"
"So we couldn't get to it," Sokka said bitterly. He stared out at the dark room, the edges lost in shadows and ash. "They beat us, again. How will I ever find out what happened on the darkest day?"
"Sokka," Zhi said hesitantly, "I think the fox wants to tell you something."
Sokka turned to find the spirit standing just behind him. It turned and started away, glancing back and jerking its head.
"Okay, fine, we'll follow you," Sokka said, slowly starting to walk. "This wasn't very helpful, though."
"Maybe the fox wanted us to understand what we're up against," Zhi suggested.
"Or it just wanted us to marinate in our own despair," Sokka shot back. "I hear we taste better that way."
Zhi opened his mouth, then closed it again, looking bewildered.
"Just follow the fox, Sokka," Katara said tiredly, already walking past him.
It led them to a room with an elaborate circular door that rolled open for them. Inside the room, it was dark, with a faint smell of mechanical grease.
"Wow," Sokka said flatly.
The fox sauntered over to a round pedestal in the middle of the room, and pushed a lever down. With the clank of mechanisms falling into use, the ceiling itself begin to move.
"It's… a planetarium?" Zhi said, craning his head back as little star-spots of light moved over his face.
The sun rose, on a curved beam that hugged the domed ceiling, and threw light over them. Sokka frowned. "Well, this is very pretty and fascinating, but how is it supposed to help?"
"The dials," Katara said, pointing to the pedestal. "They're dates. Maybe if you set them to the date on the paper, we'll find something out."
"Wonderful idea," Sokka said, throwing his arms out. "If the date on this stupid parchment wasn't based on some extinct calendar system that I don't know!"
Zhi blew out an annoyed breath and brushed past him, neatly swiping the parchment. "Here, I'll do it. The years will be nine hundred and sixteen years apart. The months are numbered, that's easy. The days ought to be the same, adjusting for seasonal change…" He trailed off, spinning dials and matching characters, finally stopping. "Ha!"
The room darkened with a grinding sound.
"Great," Sokka said, "you broke it."
"He didn't break it," Katara said, staring up. "The moon is covering the sun."
Sokka frowned at the apparatus, and suddenly gasped as a glimmer of understanding dawned, albeit a little delayed. "It's a solar eclipse! Literally the darkest day in Fire Nation history!" He started to pace, thinking. "Obviously, something awful happened on that day. Something… I don't know what, but it had to have been because of the solar eclipse. Wait. Firebenders get their energy from the sun, what if a solar eclipse blocks their bending?"
Everyone stared at him for a long moment.
"That's… an audacious claim," Zhi said slowly.
"It makes sense, though," Katara said. "Remember what the lunar eclipse did to waterbending at the North Pole?"
Still pacing, Sokka stole the parchment back from Zhi and studied it. Sadly, no other information had mysteriously appeared on the scorched sheet. "This means… do you realize what this means? This means that on the next solar eclipse, the Fire Nation will be totally helpless, and we-"
"Sokka!" Zhi snapped.
Sokka swallowed. Gee, he'd almost forgotten that they were here at the mercy of a massive, touchy owl spirit who was some sort of a twisted pacifist. "We can, um, protect their borders! And bring them flowers!"
Katara groaned.
"But when is the next solar eclipse?" Aang asked, brushing his fingers across the dials.
"Hopefully sometime before Sozin's Comet comes," Sokka said grimly. "Or we're all toast."
"Sozin's Comet," an echoing voice said from behind him, making him jump. "A twisted mockery of the spirits."
He turned, mouth drying at the sight of Wan Shi Tong's looming form. Man, that was one imposing owl. "Wh – what?" he asked, hiding the parchment behind his back.
"The Comet," Wan Shi Tong said icily, "is not of humans, nor ought she to be restrained by human names. Sozin's presumption to erase her old name, and replace it with his, is beyond unforgivable."
Sokka frowned. "Wait, its name isn't Sozin's Comet? That actually makes sense… It had to be called something before Sozin. If this thing comes around every hundred years, someone had to have named it before him -"
"Her name was Hiirosume, the Daughter of Agni," the owl intoned. "She was meant as a blessing, and a warning. She gave firebenders power unto a hundred suns, for a single day, to remind them of the greatness of their element and the potential inside them. But it was also exceedingly dangerous. The power she gives is all too easy to lose control of, and many a firebender has lost themselves to the flames of Hiirosume."
"Her name was Hiirosume?" Zhi said, his brow wrinkling.
Aang swallowed hard. "She's a spirit, right?" he said quietly. "I… I never thought about that. Spirits… when they get too closely tied to humans, we really start to affect them. If we forget them, or everyone starts thinking differently about them, or… or their name is changed, it changes who they are. Hiirosume… when Sozin renamed her to Sozin's Comet, and everyone forgot what she used to be named, it changed her. She isn't the same spirit anymore."
"Even so," Wan Shi Tong affirmed, taking a measured pace forward. "It was unforgivable. To strip a spirit of their name and original purpose is to strip their identity. When Sozin used her power for warfare, not caring how many of his own people he doomed along the way, he set a grim and terrible precedent, one that I fear will continue."
Distantly, they heard Professor Zei whoop, "Miraculous! Priceless! This is more than I ever hoped for! Who knew that anything survived from this time period!"
Wan Shi Tong's head tilted back toward the door. "It is always good to meet one who delights in knowledge so much," he said, shamelessly changing the subject even though Sokka was learning new and ominous things from their conversation. "Perhaps I shall share some other tomes that the Professor might find of interest." He turned and strode noiselessly away.
Aang slumped against the pedestal, looking sick. "He… he stole who she was," he said quietly. "Sozin twisted the Comet for his purposes, and he hurt her, too."
"Maybe now that we know who she really is, it'll help her," Katara suggested.
Aang smiled weakly. "I hope so," he said, but his head drooped forward again. "I'm the Avatar. I'm supposed to keep anything like that from ever happening. It's my fault-"
"Aang. You know it isn't your fault," Katara said firmly. "Stop blaming yourself. If you hadn't run away, you would have just been killed with everyone else. This way, you can stop them. We have a chance to save the world."
"She's right," Sokka said, patting Aang on the shoulder. "Look, when the war's over you can fix this, okay? Now come on. We've got work to do."
"What work?" Aang asked, looking up.
"We need to find out when the next solar eclipse is," Sokka said, then thought about what he'd just said. "...But how do we do that?"
"In a place this big, there has to be an astronomical planner somewhere," Zhi said. "Something that records future predicted events. Like a solar eclipse."
Sokka glanced over at his helpful little fox friend. "Would you happen to know where something like that is?"
The knowledge seeker had been patiently sitting by the door. It stood at his request, and bounded away. The rest of the group hastened to follow.
"Wow," Sokka said as they hurried forward. "This is gonna be a lot easier than I expected."
;=;=;=;=;
"Make me," Toph said.
"She's blind," a younger voice said with derision.
"Abandoned you, did they?" the first man said, an edge of amusement audible. "I imagine you aren't too fond of them. Call the bison down, and we'll treat you well."
"Make me," Toph repeated.
"You really want us to make you call it down?" the man growled. "I promise, you won't find it pleasant. Last chance, little girl. Call the bison down before we start getting… persuasive." He punctuated the last word with the hiss of steel sliding out of a leather sheath.
Toph made a face in their direction. "How about a new offer?" she countered. "You get your sorry butts out of here right now, and I'll let you leave in one piece."
There was a lot of laughter at that. At least eight men. Toph bit her lip in concentration, trying to pinpoint their locations. "Not taking my generous offer?" she said.
"So you're going to be difficult?" the first man, likely the leader, said. "Very well. Don't say I didn't try to warn you."
"Ghashiun, she's blind," the second man repeated, with less derision and more concern. "Take it easy."
"Blind girls can still scream, can't they?" Ghashiun said darkly.
"Oh, shut up," Toph said, and sunk her fingers into the stone of the tower.
It resisted her in a way she wasn't used to, like the stone was glued together, trying to repel her earthbending. She gritted her teeth and yanked, and the strange resistance collapsed. She wrenched out a block half the size of her head and whipped it at where Ghashiun's voice had last come from, and heard his high-pitched shriek of pain with deep pleasure. Sounds like I hit a sensitive area, hmm? That's what you get for picking on little blind girls. She yanked out another chunk of stone and winged it toward where she'd heard another voice, and was rewarded with the sound of smashing wood. Hard to use a sandsailer if its hull isn't there anymore.
"Get her!" Ghashiun snarled, his voice still higher than before.
Toph hoisted on her make-grown-men-wet-themselves grin, and reached for more stone.
;=;=;=;=;
Katara tightened her hold on her waterskin as they made yet another turn down yet another hallway. She didn't like this place at all, didn't like how massive it was, didn't like how she could spend a lifetime searching this place without finding what she was looking for. At least the knowledge seekers seemed to know where to go.
The fox they were following suddenly froze midstep, its tail stiffly upright. Another fox rounding a nearby bookshelf had also stopped, a book falling from its mouth. The whole Library felt suddenly different. Darker somehow.
The fox leading them bared its teeth, and growled deep in its throat. The other fox unfroze and ran past them, a reddish blur heading for the stairs up.
"What…" Sokka said.
Their fox growled again, and turned to them, snapping its teeth. It looked angry.
"Uh, did I say something?" Sokka asked, slowly backing up. It moved forward, fur bristling.
"I think it wants us to go back," Aang said uncertainly. "I don't know why…"
The fox barked, staccato and angry.
"Okay, okay, we're going back this way," Sokka said, leading them back to the stairs. "What's your problem?"
The fox herded them up the stairs and back over their route, barking occasionally. Another few foxes ran past them.
Professor Zei came around the corner, two foxes snapping at his heels. "What happened?" he asked, puffing. He clutched several books and scrolls to his chest.
"We don't know," Zhi said grimly. "Nothing good."
Suddenly Wan Shi Tong appeared next to them with a deep rattle of feathers, eyes drawn down in dark fury. "What have you done?"
"We just looked at your planetarium, I swear!" Sokka yelped. "We didn't break it! It was like that when we got there!"
The giant spirit loomed. "My Library is being harmed. Why have you brought one who would tear into the very walls of this hallowed house of learning?"
"Toph?" Katara said, her eyes widening.
"We didn't know!" Sokka said. "We aren't harming the Library. Maybe there's an explanation -"
"I do not want your explanations," Wan Shi Tong rumbled. "I do not want your excuses. Get out before I end your mortal quest here and now. This is my Library. I will protect it."
Katara looked worriedly at the others. They glanced back, then all broke into a run without being prompted (except Zei, who was trying to juggle his armload; the foxes surrounded him and snatched the tomes from his arms, leaving him empty-handed).
They had made it back to the second floor from the top, nearly back to the tower, when they heard an eerie howling, and then a single terrified, high-pitched scream rang out above them.
"Toph!" Zhi yelled.
;=;=;=;=;
Jiao stared down over the edge of the saddle. They were too far up to hear what was being said, but it wasn't hard to interpret when Toph started attacking the desert nomads, yanking chunks out of the tower wall and slinging them toward the sandbenders.
"We've got to get down there and help her!" Jiao said, frantically tugging on Appa's reins. "Come on, Appa! Yip yip, let's go!"
Appa groaned and turned lazily in the air, reluctant to approach the fray.
"Down!" Jiao shouted, frustrated. "Go get them!"
Finally the bison wheeled back and descended, coming in toward the sand sailers. The sandbenders on the first one yelled and scattered as Appa slammed past, an air blast shattering the dry, fragile wood. Appa pulled up and turned back for another pass.
Then the first fox leaped out of the Library's tower, landing on the sand with unnatural grace. It was followed by more foxes, all with teeth bared and flattened ears.
The sandbenders howled in fear and scrambled to their sandsailers, abandoning the attack. "Spirits!" someone wailed. "The spirits are angered!"
Toph was surrounded by three foxes, running in a tight ring around her. She was wildly flinging rocks around her, but the foxes didn't even seem to notice. They all howled, sounding eerily like wolves. Toph screamed, and collapsed like a puppet with its strings abruptly cut.
"Toph!" Jiao yelled, yanking at Appa's reins. "Come on, Appa, please, we need to get-"
The first sandsailer whipped away, moving much faster than would be deemed safe, the sandbenders recklessly bending with all their strength. The others followed, leaving the shattered wrecks behind, and the foxes turned to their new target.
Appa.
"No!" Jiao screamed, as the first foxes leaped at them, could the foxes fly, how were they getting that high? "Please, we aren't hurting anything, I just-"
Appa bellowed, panicked by the frenzied spirits, and flew. Faster than Jiao knew he could move. Faster than when they were fleeing Princess Azula and her friends. Faster than when Aang decided to show off Appa's diving skills. It was quake-fast, like ripples of earth spreading out too quick to follow, too fast even to register which direction they were going before the Library disappeared from view behind dunes and sky.
Jiao was blown backward. He tumbled against the back of the saddle and desperately clung to the edge, his voice lost in the wind, a shaking saber-tooth moose-lion cub pressed up against him. Appa surged over the desert, fueled by panic, unable to hear Jiao's cries.
;=;=;=;=;
Toph wasn't moving.
Aang was the first out of the tower. He didn't bother climbing down the rope, just jumped from the lip of the window and cushioned his landing with a blast of air. It blew Toph's black bangs across her face and scattered sand all over, but she didn't stir.
Aang ran to her side, dropping next to her. Her eyes were squeezed shut, her whole face tight like something had terrified her. When he shook her, she didn't wake.
Maybe he should have been doing something more helpful, but all Aang could do was stare numbly, and think, I never did find out what I did to make her mad at me...
"Toph!" Zhi screamed. Aang had never heard him sound like that before. The young man scrambled down the rope so fast Aang could hardly believe he'd been nearly dead a week ago, letting go to fall the last ten feet and run to Toph.
Zhi shook her, gently, then harder. "No, Toph, please, wake up!" His face was starting to crumple, his usual calm dissolving.
Toph didn't wake up.
;=;=;=;=;
"It's a death trap."
Meilin scowled, staring out over the Gaoling Valley from the higher ground toward the east. "We can hold the mouth of the valley-"
"Not for long. It's too wide to barricade, or fill. The Fire Nation has superior numbers and weaponry; they'll quickly break through any forces we set to bar the way. And once in the valley, there's nowhere for our people to go unless they plan on scaling sheer mountain faces. They'll be bottled up for the Fire Nation to finish off."
"The tunnels-"
"Are useless for evacuating. You could hide in the Underground lair for a while, but it doesn't connect to the outside. The tunnels all the way through the mountains from the Rumble arena are too small to bring more than a few people through at a time, not to mention confusing and hazardous."
"So, what, Gaoling is doomed?"
"Essentially, yes," Poppy Beifong said. "It's too late to evacuate the city, now that the Fire Nation forces are close enough to block anyone coming out."
Her daughter glared out over the valley, her face dark. Poppy studied her for a moment, seeing her own mother's features in Meilin's grim, angry expression. Funny how conflict brought people together, even generations that had never met each other. Mother would have liked Meilin, I think.
"Then what do we do?" Meilin finally asked, turning to Poppy.
"Leave."
"What?" Meilin stared at Poppy. "But – but you just said-"
"The tunnels are useless for a mass evacuation. But a few people can navigate them. We have holdings and resources elsewhere that we can use-"
"We can't leave! That's the coward's way!" Meilin's hands clenched into unpracticed fists. "This is my home, Mother. I… I won't leave it to be overrun by the Fire Nation."
"Believe me, I understand," Poppy said, briefly resting a hand on Meilin's tense shoulder. "But we aren't running to escape danger. We're running because I cannot accomplish anything when I'm besieged by the Fire Nation. There is a task that needs me, that needs us, outside of Gaoling."
Her other hand, in her pocket, closed around a tightly rolled message that had arrived earlier that morning, a message that she didn't need to open to see what was within. She'd already memorized the foreboding lines.
-in disarray; Dai Li infiltrating Order, compromising security; Order members are disappearing-
-puppet king; Grand Secretariat Long Feng is the true power in Ba Sing Se-
-with so few to watch and balance it, the Heart is faltering. I suspect it will fail by summer's end if the balance of the world is not corrected-
-help is desperately needed-
Meilin looked confused. "A task?"
Poppy turned, beckoning Meilin down the slope, back toward their home. "Come. We need to prepare to leave. And we need to talk."
I just realized that all the meat Team Avatar has is from the saber-tooth moose-lioness that Sokka and Zhi killed and butchered. Which means that the moose-lion cub Jiao adopted, is now eating its own mother. Mmmmm…