Water
The Spirit World
The glow from Aang's tattoos shone clear through Katara's eyelids. And though she'd been expecting this—though she knew better than to think that she would be able to cross over into the Spirit World alongside him—her stomach still sank. Silly as it was, a small part of her had hoped that she might be able to do more than this. To play a larger part in the fight than just opening the way for Aang and then stepping aside to let him do everything else.
But Aang's tattoos were glowing, and Katara could feel the grass beneath her and smell the unpleasant sootiness hanging in the air. Like it or not, he'd gone on without her, and there was really nothing else that she could do.
Slowly, she allowed her eyes to open.
"Come on, no." Sokka groaned. "That was supposed to work. Why didn't it work?"
"It did work," Katara answered. All she could manage was a half-voice, and even that felt close to breaking. "Aang is in the Spirit World."
Yue frowned. "But—I'm sorry, but I thought that you were both going into the Spirit World. You are both the Avatar."
"We are, but—" Katara felt her own lips compress, and she had to look away as she tried to force back the burning from her eyes. "But I can't go into the Spirit World. All I can do is open up the way for Aang to go through."
"Since when?" Sokka asked. "Back on Crescent Island, you went—"
She shook her head. "Avatar Haasi came to me. I didn't go anywhere." She rose slowly to her feet. "Haasi told me—she said that when I found Aang, our powers split so that he could come back. Aang can't open the way to the Spirit World, and I can't cross over. And I didn't know I could do either until after that power was already gone."
"You didn't know—" Zuko began.
Sokka shook his head. "How could we have known? Gran-Gran knew that Katara was the Avatar for a long time, but we didn't find out until she wrecked your ship."
"Oh." Zuko's forehead creased, but there was something just a little soft, just a little sad in his eyes. He stepped closer to Katara.
"Is there anything you can do?" Yue asked. "It seems terribly unfair that you can't use your own abilities."
Katara shook her head. "No. Avatar Haasi told me that—as long as there's two of us, then I'll never be able to—" she had to break off there. It still hurt to think too hard about it. About how a part of her was missing, and how she would never even know what she'd lost.
Worse, she could hardly even allow herself to wonder what things might have been like if she hadn't lost that part of herself. Keeping that part would have meant leaving Aang behind in the iceberg. Regaining it would mean losing Aang forever. She couldn't gamble with his life that way. And yet—somehow, the fact that she was convinced that she always would have chosen to revive Aang didn't make her feel better about the fact that she hadn't known there was a choice. If she had at least known that waking him would change her, then at least it would have been her decision instead of some strange accident of destiny.
She glanced back at Aang, and her jaw tightened. "It's—it's probably a good thing, though. Right? Because Haasi told me that it's easier to go in and out of the Spirit World than it used to be. As long as I can open up the bridge, Aang can cross over without any problem, and now all he has to do is find the moon spirit. It should be easy."
Zuko stepped even closer to her, hesitated a moment, then his hand came to rest on her shoulder.
Katara couldn't help herself. She leaned into the contact. It felt nice. It felt good to have him there with her, to know that he was trying to help, even if he didn't seem to know how. And this was helping. Probably a lot more than he realized.
Sokka looked like he was about to say something—probably something obnoxious and bordering on ridiculous about her and Zuko—but he didn't get a chance before Yue spoke up instead. "Will it be easy? And even if Aang manages to find the moon spirit, how will he get back to us?"
Katara wasn't entirely sure on either question, but she did her best to be optimistic. "Well—the last time that he went into the Spirit World, Avatar Roku was there to meet him. Maybe Roku will help him again. Or another Avatar, or some other spirit, or—" She took a deep breath, steadied somewhat by the warm weight of Zuko's hand. "I'm sure everything will be fine."
None of them looked particularly convinced by that, and Katara had to admit that she didn't feel much better. Stuck here on the outside, with very little to do but continue waiting, it was hard to fake any real cheerfulness. Still, it was possible that things could be going well for Aang. If the Spirit Oasis was really a center of spiritual activity, then there was probably a spirit waiting to speak with him just on the other side.
Sokka frowned after a moment. "Last time he went into the Spirit World, something else came out, didn't it?"
Katara nodded. "That was Avatar Haasi."
"And that gigantic eel monster too," Zuko added, sounding a little less impressed.
"Whiskers," Katara said. "Haasi's pet. Like—her version of Appa, I guess. Only a lot more terrifying."
"I remember," Zuko grumbled.
"Guys," Sokka interrupted. Though all of them were already listening, he snapped his fingers right next to Katara's face until she pushed his hand away. "Last time that Aang went in, a different spirit came out." He paused, glancing toward Aang and the koi pond beyond him. "So what are the chances that that's going to happen again?"
Yue's eyes widened and she clutched Sokka's arm. "If the moon spirit comes out and makes itself vulnerable, then—"
"Exactly." Sokka nodded. "We may have just made things a whole lot worse."
Much to Aang's disappointment, the Spirit World at the North Pole looked more like the way it had in Senlin than it had at Crescent Island. Low and swampy and misty, and all illuminated in a weird brownish-yellow light.
But, on the bright side, the Spirit World up here also smelled a lot better than it had back at Senlin. There was no stench of decay up here. It smelled a little stale and murky, like—well, a swamp, but this one seemed more alive than dead and rotting.
Aang stood up and stretched. Crossing over into the Spirit World really wasn't that difficult, despite what the monks had tried to tell him when he was younger. Sure, the spirits lived in a whole different plane of reality, but Aang had been here three times already, and it had never taken more than a few minutes' worth of meditation before he popped out on the other side. His old teachers had always made this place sound so distant and so inaccessible that he used to dread the day when he would have to cross over. But now that he'd done it a few times, the journey was so simple that if the Spirit World were a bit more pleasant, Aang could imagine stopping by for a lazy afternoon every once in a while.
But this place wasn't that pleasant, and when he looked around, he realized that there was no Katara here either. Hmm. He turned on the spot, searching around the small, mossy brown knoll where he'd ended up. She shouldn't be that far away. They'd been sitting right next to one another while they meditated. Logically, that should mean that Katara would materialize right beside him in the Spirit World.
Well, maybe it was just taking her a little more time. Katara hadn't made it through to the Spirit World when they were back on Crescent Island, but they had a bit more time now than they had then. Maybe it was just taking her a little longer to cross over. After all, she was a great waterbender, but that didn't mean that she knew much about meditation. She would figure it out, of course. If Aang just waited for a few minutes, surely she would join him.
He found a stick, and he was busy poking holes in the mud at the edge of the brackish waters when a familiar voice spoke behind him.
"I sincerely hope that you have not come all this way merely to dawdle, Avatar Aang."
Aang spun around, grinning. "Avatar Roku! I was hoping I'd see you here."
Roku gave Aang a tight-lipped stare that reminded him a little too strongly of Master Pakku. Did all old men have the same grumpy face? "If you had called out to me, I would have arrived sooner."
"Oh. Well, I'm not in that big a hurry. Katara didn't make it through yet, and I wanted to wait for her. It doesn't seem fair that she hasn't met you yet."
"I have no doubt that I will see her someday. But today does not seem to be the proper time for it." Roku paused, and his beard caught in a nonexistent breeze. "I sense that you have come here on a mission of great importance. It would not do to lose time waiting."
Aang nodded. "Well—yeah, but I really want Katara to come with. She's the Avatar too. I don't want to leave her out."
Roku stared long and hard at him. "Avatar Aang, your friend is not coming. As long as you both live, she cannot join you in the Spirit World."
"What?" His insides felt cold. "What are you talking about?"
"Perhaps you should speak to your friend when you return to your world. She has known for quite some time. But while you are here, what is it that you need?"
Aang frowned. He wasn't sure he liked the sound of that. If Katara knew something about the Spirit World that he didn't, then she must have been keeping it secret since Crescent Island at least. Or possibly even longer.
Why hadn't she told him? How bad could it be? It couldn't be a good thing if Katara couldn't enter the Spirit World, right?
When Roku cleared his throat, Aang jerked back to the present. "Right. Sorry. I'm looking for the moon spirit. Admiral Zhao of the Fire Nation is coming to the North Pole, and we're pretty sure that he wants to do something bad to the moon spirit. Do you know where I can find it?"
"I do not," Roku answered. But then, after a pause long enough for Aang's heart to sink all the way down, he added, "But there is a chance that I may know of a spirit who does."
"Wait. So is that the reason why you were in such a bad mood the morning before we ran into Jet?" Sokka tossed his arms out to the sides, and for at least the eighth time, Zuko regretted sitting this close when a flying hand whacked him in the knee. "I get it now! It finally makes sense!"
Though Katara still seemed a bit out of sorts, she glared at Sokka. "No. I was in a bad mood because someone got the bright idea to say that we had to walk the rest of the way to the North Pole even though we had a perfectly good sky bison to fly there."
Zuko's lone eyebrow shot upward. "He made you all walk? Why? You all realize that the only reason I didn't catch up with you sooner was because the bison is annoyingly hard to keep up with, right?"
"That's exactly what I said!" Katara exclaimed. "Being spotted on Appa was one thing, but being spotted on the ground where we couldn't outrun anything would have been a disaster."
"Hey, it was a strategic decision," Sokka said. "It's not my fault that it didn't work out the way I planned."
"What happened?" Yue asked.
"Well, first you have to understand that it was totally not my fault, and—"
Katara clapped her hand over Sokka's mouth. "We walked directly into a Fire Nation camp with a sky bison, an airbender, and wearing Water Tribe clothes. It went about as well as you would expect from there."
Or, apparently, better than Zuko would expect. They'd made it out, after all. And he hadn't heard about that incident in all the time that he'd known Katara, so at the very least, it must have been a relatively brief encounter.
Though Yue covered her mouth, the way her eyes crinkled betrayed the smile underneath. "Oh, no. That's terrible."
"Yuck!" Katara pulled her hand away from Sokka's face. "What are you doing? Don't lick me."
"Don't try to cover my mouth when I'm talking, then."
With a scowl, she swiped her hand over his hair. "Take your spit back."
Zuko snorted, and Sokka shot a look at him. "Don't give me that, man. Do you seriously think you get to make fun of me for Crescent Island."
"I thought you said this was after," Zuko said.
"Same difference. I bet you weren't doing anything all that great the very next day."
"I was fighting a duel with Zhao so that all of you could get away. Tell me how that ranks against your moronic plan."
"Oh." Sokka sighed noisily and stared up at the sky. "Right."
Zuko felt Katara's hand come to rest on top of his, just barely out of Sokka's sight, and his face heated. Damn it. He blushed way too easily and way too obviously.
He cleared his throat. "At least Zhao is sort of predictable."
"Predictable?" Katara made no effort to conceal the skepticism in her voice.
He shrugged. "We know he doesn't fight fair. That's better than nothing, right?" Then, when none of the others answered, "Maybe we'll be lucky, and he'll collapse from the shock if he sees me alive. He wouldn't be the first."
"That would be handy," Sokka conceded. "But that kinda seems unlikely. And also, Katara never answered my question."
"What question?" she asked.
"Whether you were angry on the day after Crescent Island because you'd just found out—" Sokka waved his hand vaguely through the air. "All this. Losing half of the Avatar powers and stuff."
"Oh." Her brows furrowed and she looked downward. "Well—no, I wasn't angry about that. I was only angry about the walking thing, but—" She sighed, and Zuko took the chance to take hold of her hand. "I was—confused, I guess. I don't know. I'm pretty sure it's not half of the Avatar's powers, but it's just weird knowing that I lost something I didn't know I had in the first place."
"You didn't mention any of this to Aang?" Yue asked quietly.
"No. How could I? It's—it's in the past. I revived him, and that's it. There's no going back." She leaned to the side again, and her head rested lightly against Zuko's shoulder.
His pulse quickened, and he briefly debated whether it was a good idea to put his arm around Katara or not. Probably not. Not with Sokka sitting right there, already giving Katara weird looks and well within reach to push the two of them apart. It was probably safer just to stay still and enjoy the contact while it lasted.
"If I had said anything, Aang probably would have felt bad about what I gave up, or he might have thought that I didn't want to bring him back. And I did. I just—I don't like that I can't do my whole job as the Avatar."
Sokka made a small, noncommittal grunt. Then, "To be fair, it seems like you've got a lot better handle on the Avatar State than Aang does. That's a good thing, right? Like—you've probably gone into the Avatar State more than he has, but at least you haven't tried to blow anyone off of a mountain the way he has. And when you come out of it, you don't usually fall over and forget what happened."
Katara frowned. "Maybe."
"What are you talking about, maybe? I'm right and you know it."
"This coming from Mister 'I Don't Even Believe in Spirits'?"
"Hey." Sokka jabbed a finger at her. "I do believe in spirits now. Remember how I got sucked into the Spirit World? I know it's a thing." He paused for effect. "But now that I know they're real, I'm also aware that they suck. I can know about the spirits and still tell them to kiss my ass." He crossed his arms, and when both girls narrowed their eyes at him, turned a little defensive. "What? I'm right. Back me up here, Zuko. You probably agree with me."
Zuko raised his eyebrow. "Why are you dragging me into this?"
"Because! I know you weren't impressed by that big—I don't know what to call it. That thing at Crescent Island. Whiskers."
Zuko shook his head. "I didn't like whatever that was, but at least I'm smart enough not to make things worse. The spirits already hate me. I don't need to make them angrier. Especially here. In the Spirit Oasis."
Sokka scoffed. "What are they going to do to me? We aren't in the Spirit World, we're just—kind of sitting by the entrance."
Yue looked less than impressed. "Sokka, the spirits do have power here. They saved my life when I was a baby, and I wouldn't wish to test their powers by provoking them now."
That, of course, was enough to make Sokka look immediately chastened. "Right. Sorry about that."
Katara smiled at Yue. "Can you teach me how to do that? I want to be able to get Sokka to agree with me that easily."
Riding on Fang wasn't quite as comfortable as riding on Appa. Part of that probably had to do with the fact that Fang was long and scaly and slippery, not round and soft and fluffy like Appa, but another part of it might have had to do with the fact that Aang had to hold onto Roku to keep from falling off.
Aang didn't normally have any problem being close to people. Sharing close quarters with friends was just how he had always lived. But Roku was—Roku. He was big and tall and intimidatingly stern, and Aang got the impression that he'd probably never been fond of people invading his personal space. Kind of like Zuko, only older and much more serious, and much less likely to be unintentionally funny. Plus there was the fact that Roku was a spirit, so there really wasn't that much to hang onto in the first place. And on top of that, Roku's long, spirity hair and beard kept flying around, hitting Aang in the face and making his nose tickle. It took a lot of effort to keep from sneezing all over Roku's slightly translucent back.
But on the bright side, Fang was fast. Really fast. Probably twice as fast as Appa, which meant that it wasn't very long at all before Roku steered the dragon down into another part of the swampiness of the Spirit World and let Aang off.
"So," Aang asked as he clambered down. "What am I supposed to look for here? Is it another Avatar? Maybe someone older than you, or—"
Roku shook his head. "The spirit who you must speak with is Koh."
Aang didn't recognize the name. Which meant that it wasn't another Avatar, at least. Or a spirit that he'd learned about at the Air Temples either.
He turned on the spot, searching around the pools of murky water and the weird, moss-draped trees. "I don't see anyone around here. Unless—is it that monkey spirit over there?"
Roku shook his head. "I'm afraid that is more likely to be one of Koh's most recent victims."
Aang felt his eyes widen as he looked back at Roku. Victims? What kind of spirit had victims? And if this Koh spirit was that bad, then why did he have to go talk to it?
"You must be exceedingly careful," Roku said. "Koh is very well known and very well feared. At the slightest trace of emotion on your face, he may attack."
Aang's stomach lurched. "What do you mean by 'attack'?"
Roku looked past him to where the monkey spirit sat, and his mouth tightened into a line. "Koh is also known by another name. The Face Stealer." Roku glanced toward Aang again. "I believe you can imagine the rest."
He could. Aang could imagine exactly what Koh was capable of, and he sort of wished that he hadn't asked.
"He lives in there," Roku added, gesturing toward an enormous, broken-off tree stump with a massive, dark opening between two of its roots.
A shiver ran up Aang's spine. That dark opening definitely looked a lot like to sort of place where a face-eating creature might decide to set up its lair.
"Will you come with me?" Aang asked. He'd sort of been counting on having Katara here with him to help face the scary things they were bound to see, and he supposed that Roku would probably do in her place. Roku had been around the Spirit World for more than a century now. He probably knew what to do when things got scary out here.
Roku shook his head. "It is dangerous enough to allow one Avatar to face Koh at a time. If he were to overpower us both, the damage would be catastrophic. The best I can do is wait here for your return."
"Oh. Okay." Aang couldn't pretend that he wasn't disappointed by that—he really didn't want to go in there by himself, but unfortunately, he didn't think that he had a lot of choice in the matter. If Roku didn't want to come, then Aang couldn't force him. And at the very least, having Roku waiting out here with Fang would make for a quick retreat once Aang was finished here.
He forced a smile at Roku. "No expression, right? I can do this. I'll see you in a little while."
Roku either looked doubtful or just plain stern—Aang didn't stick around long enough to figure out which it was. He set off toward the lair, feet squelching in the mud until he finally reached the patch of dry ground beside the hollowed tree trunk.
The monkey spirit he'd noticed earlier sat just outside the entrance, back turned toward Aang, and he paused for just a moment. What if Roku was right? If this really was one of Koh's victims, then it would probably be a good idea for Aang to investigate a little. Wouldn't it? At least if he could see what it looked like when Koh did his face-stealing, Aang might have a better idea of the stakes and a better chance at maintaining his focus.
"Hey, Mister Monkey," Aang said quietly. "Can I see your face please? I just want to find out if you've run into Koh at all or—"
The spirit turned in the middle of the sentence, and though Aang had been half-braced for a gory mess where the monkey's face should have been, the blankness that he found there instead was enough to make him recoil. There was nothing left. No eyes, no nose, no mouth, nothing but a smooth, flat expanse of skin.
Somehow, though, the monkey spirit was still upright and moving around despite its apparent inability to eat or even breathe. Maybe spirits didn't need to do either of those things. Aang, on the other hand—he could imagine things going much worse for him if Koh tried to take his face away.
Steeling himself, Aang set his face into the blankest expression he could manage and took a deep breath before he took his first steps down into the gaping black opening of the lair.
The opening between the tree's roots, it turned out, was really just an entrance that led to a sharp downward tunnel. After the first few steps, it seemed like it should have been too dark for Aang to see anything at all, but somehow, there was still light creeping in from—somewhere. Enough to keep the tunnel lit with a dingy brownish light that made everything look like mud, at least.
After roughly ten paces downward, the tunnel flattened out, and about a dozen paces after that, the tunnel opened up into an enormous dome-shaped cavern. A nest, he suspected, and the back of his neck prickled. Aang's steps slowed as he crossed the threshold, scanning every inch of the place that he could. Though it was still dark, he could see that there were no other exits from the chamber—none large enough to accommodate anything the size of a person or larger, at least. And, at first, that was all he could see. Just the dark, murky chamber with tangled roots forming a thick canopy overhead and spilling down the sides of the walls.
Aang realized with a jolt that he'd never asked what type of a spirit he should expect to find in here. The face-stealing bit made it sound like Koh was probably huge, but the spirits didn't tend to play by normal rules. For all he knew, Koh might be no bigger than a meadowvole and hiding somewhere in the roots lining the walls.
So Aang searched harder, shoving his face right up next to the muddy, vine draped walls, and climbing as high as he could to check the nooks and crannies that he couldn't see from the ground.
Still nothing.
"Koh," he called out once or twice in the midst of his search. "I just want to talk to you, Koh. I have a few questions about the moon spirit." But there was no answer, and no matter how hard he searched, he couldn't find anything that might be a face-stealing spirit, or a place where a spirit might be hiding.
Eventually, he had no choice but to make his way back up and out of the tunnel. Roku was waiting beside Fang, just where Aang had left them.
Brow furrowed—he was much too confused to remember Roku's advice about keeping his expression steady, not that it probably mattered now that he'd stepped outside of the lair—Aang called out, "I forgot to ask earlier—how big is Koh?"
Roku folded his arms. "He is nearly the size of Fang. You should be able to see that for yourself. But do not let his size alarm you. So long as you remember my advice, all should be safe."
"Yeah, about that." Aang scratched the back of his head. "I think we have a problem. There's nobody in there."
Sokka was doing his best not to comment on the fact that Katara hadn't left Zuko's side at all since Aang had gone into the Spirit World. And that wasn't easy. It wasn't just that she was sticking close to Zuko, either—she was actually touching Zuko most of the time. Leaning on him, holding hands with him—it was weird.
But Sokka was mature and professional, and he wasn't going to let their weirdness get to him. Not least of all because Yue was leaning up against Sokka a lot of the time. He had a bad feeling that if he made fun of Katara or criticized their weird touchiness, then Yue might stop this half-snuggle thing that they had going. At the very least, Zuko seemed not to be going out of his way to make things weirder than they had to be. Whatever that was could almost pass for normal friends sitting close together if Sokka wasn't well aware that there were more layers to it.
"I just hate how useless I feel," Katara said. "I meditated for ten minutes to send Aang into the Spirit World, and now—what is there for me to do?"
Zuko shrugged. "There's not much more than that for the rest of us to do. If you feel useless, then where does that leave us?"
Katara frowned, then poked Zuko in the ribs. "I'm trying to mope here. Why are you making good points when I want to mope?"
"Well, I would have a pretty hard time freezing you to the ground the way you like to do to me. My options are limited."
Another poke in the ribs. "I thought you told me earlier that you were never funny. I'm starting to think that you just don't know what funny—"
She cut off sharply as the ground beneath them started to rumble.
Was the fleet seriously getting that close already? Bracing himself against the shaking, Sokka looked up at the sky. No, as far as he could tell, neither the trails of smoke nor the yellow-orange flashes from the firebenders' attacks were any closer than before. Which meant that the shaking had to be coming from someplace much, much closer.
Sokka reached across and grabbed Katara's arm. "Whatever you're doing, stop it."
"Me? What do you think I'm doing?"
"That's earthbending, isn't it?"
Katara shook her head, and Zuko mirrored her.
"I've been on the receiving end of a lot of earthbending. This isn't it," he said.
"Well, that's great," Sokka interjected sarcastically. "Then why the utter fuck is the ground—"
There was a blast from somewhere deep beneath the pool in the middle of the oasis, and Sokka fell onto his back. By the time that he recovered his senses enough to raise his head again, the others were all on the ground as well, and there was—a thing, for lack of a better word, crawling its way out of the hole where the water should have been.
Just the sight of it made his skin crawl. The body was divided into innumerable clear segments, each with its own pair of creepy, bug-like legs that were each nearly as long as Sokka.
All of that was bad enough. Sokka was fairly certain that they were all about to be eaten by—whatever that thing was. But when it turned its head and loomed over all of them, revealing a human face in the center of its first, plate-like segment, his blood ran cold and he scrambled, crab-like, back from the edge of the water.
"Delectable, all of you," the creature said in a deep, unnervingly rich voice. "Young faces are always the sweetest. And the power beneath them is astounding." It lingered over Zuko for an extra second. "And asymmetry to add flavor as well. I have truly found a feast for the ages."
There was a small squeak that sounded like it came from Katara, but if he were honest, Sokka wasn't entirely convinced that it didn't come from him instead. He wouldn't even be that embarrassed if it were him. He was pretty sure that this was a decent excuse for making weird, high-pitched noises.
"Ah, but I have only just begun here. The riches of the physical world must be explored before I gorge myself on the finer morsels." Several long, pointed legs lifted from the ground, and the creature stroked each of them on the cheek. Sokka couldn't help but squirm away from the contact. "I will be back. Run if you like. I will find you all again."
With that, the creature pulled away, almost slithering its way toward the wall, and when it reached the icy barricade, its weird, barbed feet grabbed onto the ice like it was nothing, and the beast crawled up and over the wall, out of the oasis and into the city.
Katara was the first to break the long, breathless silence that followed. "What—what on earth was that?" She sounded breathless.
"A centipede spirit?" Zuko guessed.
"What's a centipede?"
"Basically that, but usually small and not normally wearing a human face."
"And it's going to eat us?" Yue asked, voice quaking with terror.
"Just our faces—I think," Katara replied.
"Oh, that's really reassuring," Sokka said, voice higher than it should have been. "I'll have you know that I like my face, Katara!"
"So—no one is concerned about the fact that it's loose in the city?" Zuko ventured. "Isn't it going to try to eat everyone's faces?"
Katara scrambled to her feet. "I'm going after it. I'm the Avatar. I must have let it out of the Spirit World. It's my job to stop it, right?" She didn't wait for an answer. Instead, she just scooped up her parka and was halfway across the oasis before any of the others could react.
Zuko sprang up too and started after her.
Sokka sat the rest of the way up. "Where are you going?"
"I'm going after Katara," he called back.
"To bring her back here, right?"
Zuko paused long enough to turn back. "Probably not until after we stop that thing, but—"
"No!" Sokka insisted. "You made a promise. Get her out of harm's way, okay?"
Zuko frowned. "I promised to look after her, not to keep her out of the fight. If you think that either of us are going to let that giant creepy bug hurt anyone, you're out of your mind."
Author's Note:
You know, Sokka did say that they might have made things worse by opening up the Spirit World. But I don't think that even he anticipated anything quite like this :) But now there's a giant, face-eating centipede to deal with, so that should be exciting!
I think that's about all I want to say this time, so I'll just say that the next chapter will be out in two weeks again! In the meantime, comments and kudos are appreciated as always!
