Tokka Week – Shield

Sokka was a firm believer that the best way to win a one-on-one, man-to-man, "let's settle this like proper warriors" duel was to bring a whole bunch of friends and ambush the enemy the night before. The only fault he could find with that philosophy was that it was absolutely no fun to experience on the receiving end, but here he was.

'Here' was a seemingly deserted jungle island somewhere off the coast of the western Earth Kingdom, but beyond that Sokka was a bit vague on the situation. He wasn't even sure how, precisely, he had wound up on the island, beyond the part where he had been ambushed in his sleep in Ba Sing Se by a bunch of masked thugs and thrown into a bag before he could land a single punch. He had spent the next eight hours in the bag, and when he was finally released, it was to be dumped over the side of a sailboat and allowed to swim to the island.

Of course, he didn't have to be told what would happen next. Most people didn't go out of their way to maroon their enemies with nothing but a pair of pants when options like easy murder were available, and smuggling him out of the Middle Ring to the nearest ocean definitely constituted going out of the way. No, the only reason to leave your victim to swim alone to a deserted island and then drop anchor for a while was for the purposes of Game Hunting, where the game in question was Sokka himself. He hadn't thought too long about who might be behind such overly-complicated and cruel revenge; he had easily gotten to a list of fifteen likely people before deciding it wasn't worth the effort.

No, right now his main priority was surviving the experience.

The first step was easy: Sokka needed weapons before his hunters arrived. And the nice thing about jungles was they had so many wonderful resources that could be repurposed into tools for hurting people. A stick, a stone, and some vines became a good-sized spear, and a thick frond became a pouch for rocks that could be thrown or fired from a vine-sling. Meager weapons, to be sure, but when combined with superior tactics, they could be quite effective.

Next, Sokka needed a way to defend himself. A stick wasn't going do it against a good Dao saber.

But Sokka's people had long experience with both hunting and being hunted, and knew the proper way to make a good shield.

In tough times, a chunk of ice would do nicely, but bone was much lighter, and in his travels, Sokka had found that wood was a fine compromise between strength and weight. The good news was that he was in a jungle, and there was surplus of wood to be had. The bad news was that his sharp rocks weren't going to be cutting down any trees (at least not without a year and a half of spare time to keep working at it), so he was forced to stay on the move while looking for nature to provide. Whether it was destiny or a once-in-a-lifetime case of actual benevolent luck, nature did eventually cough up the goods, and Sokka found the remains of a lightning-blasted tree that had no objection to having a thick rectangle of the remainder of its trunk torn off for his personal use.

From there, Sokka applied the lessons his father had taught him to making a proper Water Tribe shield.

Water Tribe shields weren't much different than the shields made in other cultures, in that they were basically big tough things meant to be carried and positioned between enemy weapons and the user's soft, squishy flesh. As such, Sokka knew how to create some hand-holds (vines were such versatile things) that would allow him to move the long shield around easily, centered so that a blow to the top or bottom wouldn't be likely to tear the thing out of his grasp. Extra loops would allow him to mount the shield on his forearm to provide extra stability, and a little play in the vines would even allow him to push the shield further up his arm in case he needed to free his hand for other use. A sharp rock was sunk into the outside because as long as you had a big plank strapped to your arm, there was no reason it couldn't also be used as an offensive weapon, and while hitting someone with a big piece of wood was always nice, hitting them with something sharp at the same time was a great bonus.

There was just one more step to complete the shield, and Sokka debated whether he should bother. It was the one thing that made Water Tribe shields stand out from all the other personal defense devices in the world, but it wasn't a component he found all that useful.

Water Tribe shields invoked the spirits.

Or, at least, that was the theory.

It was a simple process- all that was required was drawing something on the front of the shield that symbolized the supernatural force being invoked. For the Day of the Black Sun invasion, all those years ago, Sokka's father had decided to call upon the protection of the Moon Spirit, and so everyone's armor had a crescent moon painted somewhere on it, and all the shields had a blue moon right in the center. Whether that had been effective or not was an open question; there had been no Control Group in that battle against which Sokka could compare casualty rates.

Alone in his tribe, Sokka was skeptical of the idea of pictures somehow bringing extra strength or luck to the wearer. He wasn't exactly against the practice, since it comforted warriors and aided in focusing their minds, in addition to creating a shared culture to bind a fighting force together. Yet, even war paint was more useful, since it did all those same things but also provided a terrifying appearance that might intimidate enemies. Who would be intimidated by a picture of a moon on a shield? Sokka knew the Moon Spirit personally and was very fond of her, but she was no warrior and didn't have any luck powers that she had ever shared with im. Drawing a moon on his new shield would probably be pretty pointless.

On the other hand, he was alone on an island about to be hunted by unknown enemies, and he could use all the psychological boosts. Maybe invoking Yue, even ineffectively, would help shore up his resolve and confidence. Maybe it would at least draw her attention, so that she'd be watching over him as he died; she might even show up to guide him through the reincarnation cycle, and pull some strings so that he didn't end up as an insect.

On the other hand, it was the opposite of a psychological boost to be drawing things on your weapons in the hope of getting a more peaceful death.

If he was going to draw anything on his shield, it should be something fearsome. Something confident. Something reliable. Something self-sufficient. Something that could anywhere in the world without worry, because it was the master of all domains. Something unbeatable, unbreakable, unassailable. Something that knew limits only as those things that shattered to pieces on the way to somewhere else.

And it should be something good. Something that fought for the right reasons- to protect loved ones, to bring peace, to embody the proper way to fight. Something that improved the world with its presence. Something that could be a friend just as easily as a warrior.

Something meaningful for Sokka, personally. Like the moon, but something that hadn't left him, that didn't represent his own failures.

Something strong- strong in every way.

With that thought, he realized what he needed to put on his shield, whether or not the whole idea was superstitious tomfoolery.

And so, much later when Sokka jumped out of a bush to ambush his hunters and kidnappers, screaming a war-cry and raising his spear and shield, he displayed the image of a savagely grinning face- a wide mouth filled with points teeth, dead eyes nearly hidden by slanted eyebrows, and all other human features hidden by a jagged fringe of hair that bespoke mystery and savagery in equal measure.

On his shield was the face of a criminal, a figure that had laughed at Fire Nation law and was never caught.

On his shield was the face of his best friend, Toph.

Sokka had no sooner landed amidst his enemies and swung his left arm to smack one of them in the head with the shield when the ground started shaking, and out of the loamy soil erupted pillars of earth that battered his enemies with pinpoint accuracy, striking stomachs and chins and elbows and knees until they were all on the ground writing in pain.

Amidst it all, Sokka was left safe and untouched.

He stared at the enemies he never got a chance to really fight, and then looked up to see Toph emerging from the tall grasses, arms crossed and grinning in a very familiar way. "Found you," she said.

Sokka smiled, and patted his shield. Maybe there was something to the old superstition after all.

END