Foreword,
I apologise for the unimaginative working title, it just sort of stuck and is only loosely related to something coming up in later chapters and has nothing to do with the moon, its cycle nor its spirit.
But briefly, about what this story is or what it's attempting to be. For starters, I've deliberately ignored almost all of the expanded universe, so anything that wasn't explicitly stated or could be inferred through the original series, has no bearing on this story, so while I personally would call it "drawing upon orthodox canon" it's basically an alternative universe.
And while it follows orthodox canon up until the Day of Black Sun, from the moment it starts it morphs into another alternative universe where violence and adult themes are dialed up, hence, just to be safe, rated M for Mature. Ideally, I would have loved to keep the kid friendly tone of the original series, but due to my weakness as a writer, I soon gave up on that so it's definitely more HBO than Nick.
However, at it's core, it's supposed to be an ode to my two favourite characters of the show, namely Sokka and Azula, and my lamentation on why we didn't see them interact more than that beautiful moment when Azula finds a chink in Sokka's armour and strikes.
Anyway, enjoy,
Dark Moon Rising
"Come and get it!" Azula whispered to herself in smug satisfaction, her gamble had paid off, or at least so she though as she dropped one of Mai's throwing knives from her sleeve, her first mistake.
Before she realised what had happened, the young Earth bender had screamed out a warning to her friend and Azula felt a tremendous force pull her back by her wrist and slam her against the wall as the wind was knocked out of her. She pulled back her arm only to feel her hand firmly stuck to the wall by rock cuffs. She had just about regained her composure when the Water Tribe boy tackled her back to the wall, and another grunt escaped her lips. The boy had grabbed her by the collar and was lifting her slightly off her feet, he was either very strong or she had really hit a nerve.
"Where is Suki!?" he demanded to know, his eyes fierce like that of an injured and hungry predator and she couldn't help but feel a sense of slight fear in that moment, things hadn't gone to plan and perhaps she had done her job a little bit too well, she was putting up a brave face though, and in the heat of the moment she was helped by an unexpected feeling, excitement and the feeling of being turned on by the fierceness in the boy's eyes, the Kyoshi captain must have been something else to elicit this kind of response from him.
And she had to admit to herself that Ty-Lee was right, he was a rather handsome male specimen, the thought even crossed her mind to really push his buttons and give him a kiss just to see his reaction out of sheer curiosity but as she glanced towards the hilt of his sword, she figured it was probably best to play it safe… For now.
"Where are you keeping her!?" The boy screamed with such volume that Azula's ears rang and she couldn't help but feel smug at how much rage she could conjure up with what was in spirit, a lie. The Kyoshi warrior had under interrogation let it slip that she had a dream, a coping mechanism really, that some day, her Water Tribe "Prince" as she had called him could still come and rescue her, she had no illusions about her predicament. It hadn't taken much intelligence work to figure out that the Water Tribe savage travelling with the Avatar had been the Chieftain's son, which technically would qualify him for that title and Ty-Lee had provided her with the last piece of damning evidence back in Ba Sing Se.
Azula remained stone faced with a grin, she probably would have to say something before this savage started gutting her like livestock, or Agni knows, starts tearing through her face with his bare teeth as angry and vicious as he looked, but she reckoned he wasn't quite there yet.
But then, he bit down hard, Azula could hear the shearing of his teeth as they ground together and squeezed out one more tear before speaking again, "Aang, Toph, I know what she is doing and I can't help myself." Sokka hung his head as the tears of rage started flowing. "You must go!" he yelled out to his comrades, and Azula couldn't but let her self-satisfied grin rise just a bit further up on her face, her next mistake, as Sokka had lifted his gaze slightly and saw the slight rise of malice in the Princess's face, and he saw red as if a capillary had burst in his eyes.
Azula saw the build up of boiling rage and her face dropped instantly in fear and reckoning, she had opened her mouth to speak but Sokka let out a scream in sheer frustration and lifting Azula slightly more, jolted his head back by the neck and with the whole weight of his body, headbutted her with such force that Azula's head recoiled back and slammed against the wall with a horrid thud.
"You guys need to go find the Fire Lord without me, rendezvous with me here in five minutes if you can't find him!" Sokka ordered.
The last thing Azula could remember was Sokka's tear filled face when there had been a break in her stream of consciousness, she didn't recall the impact nor the lead-up to it, and as she came to, her head throbbed and she felt more dizzy and confused than at anytime in her young life. "Wha-at h-happened…"
Sokka slammed himself against the princess and hoisted her up ever so slightly more, to the point that instead of it giving relief from the stone cuffs, it twisted her arms awkwardly, "Where's Suki, you Bitch?!" With his free hand he grabbed the Princess by the throat and sneered through clenched teeth "I'll end you, you hear?"
Azula met Sokka's blue eyes, as blue and as fierce as her own flames, through the pain and confusion she couldn't help but instinctively smile and slurred out "You're so hot when you're angry". Sokka was taken off guard and as he stepped away from Azula he could feel a kick to his stomach.
As he fell back, wind driven out of him, thankful that Azula's aim had been high, there was a crack and rumble as if an explosion had taken place deeper in the tunnels. Azula lifted her head groggily and slurred out; "Looks like Fire bending is back on." And Azula met Sokka's stunned eyes, and smiled wickedly.
Azula kicked her leg up and bent a bolt of flame towards Sokka who just about managed to dodge it. Azula leapt backwards and with a blast of fire broke the stone but as she pried her hands apart she realised her third and final mistake. Mai's throwing knife had integrated itself to her cuffs and was now glowing white with the elastic properties of a demonic resin. Had she realised what was happening in time she could have drawn away the heat but now molten hot steel was being quenched by her blood and tissue. The Pain overwhelmed her and she tumbled down to the ground breaking her fall with her arms.
At first Sokka found the sight amusing, the Princess feet up bent backwards against the wall, mumbling and slurring her words face to the dirt, until he got up and got a closer look at and and almost fainted. Azula had broken both her wrists, bone was protruding from the still sizzling skin and her left hand hung useless while her right hand spasmed eerily.
Azula first fell to her side and then slowly sat up and looked at Sokka who was loaded like spring, sword in hand, boomerang in the other, ready to pounce on Azula as soon as he had parried her first attacks. Timing was everything, he knew from experience, he had a split second from calculating a fire blasts trajectory to successfully dodge and with Azula, he was sure he would have to be at the very least three steps ahead. He eyed her like a wolf would eye an injured tigerdillo, he knew he could take her but one wrong step would be his end.
Azula punched towards him with her left arm, giving her follow-up strike more flexibility as Sokka had feared, he would spring at the flash of her blue flame.
Which never came. Wound up, Sokka flew to the left and parried with his sword, but the flame was a pathetic puff.
Azula brought both of her hands in front of her as her face and Sokka watched as her her eyes rolled over in her head, a heavy thud and a near lifeless lump lay on the ground in front of him.
Sokka let out a sigh of relief as Aang and Toph came from around the corner. "Sokka, are you alright?!" yelled Aang before he laid eyes on the lifeless body in front of his friend. "Is she… dead?"
"I don't know..." replied Sokka.
"She's alive! ...But her pulse is weird." said Toph.
Sokka walked over to the princess and turned her over on her back. Shivering in the warmth of the volcanic rock, she was as pale as a ghost and her face though for the most part expressionless, her eyes conveyed terror, "Dad..." he could hear her faintly whisper into the aether.
"She is in shock!" Sokka exclaimed.
"In what now?" asked Toph in her usual half-sarcastic tone.
"She is so overwhelmed by pain that her mind has shut down, she could even die, happens to the best of warriors at the worst of times." Sokka replied matter of factly.
Aang looked around nervously; "We really need to get moving, we couldn't find the Fire Lord."
He looked at the trembling pitiful site on the floor, "What are we going to do with her?"
Sokka sighed, "I'm going to take her prisoner, we'll use her as leverage and when the time is right, we could exchange her for Suki."
Toph started "One princess for a Kyoshi warrior, she's got to be worth at least-" but with a poke from Aang's staff she stopped herself, unable to see Sokka's glare so deadly that he could have invented heart stopping blood bending right then and there had he had the knack for it.
Sokka dove into his bag, for bandages and a small vile, "I'll give her something for the pain, and bandage her up, then we go!"
Sokka realised that this was the first time he had gotten a good look at Azula in a situation when both weren't trying to kill one-another. Even now, as a pathetic ghostly creature on the ground, Sokka had to admit to himself that she was creature of true beauty and cold grace, and for the first time, she actually looked vulnerable, which was no surprise considering her state. "So she is human after all." Sokka whispered to himself, as he lifted her head and poured a vial of milky liquid down her throat.
The Fire Lord fumed in his chamber, cradling his hands in front of his face as he plotted on what he would do with Zuko as soon as he got his hands on that disappointment again, no bending this time, he would strangle that insolent piece of excrement with his bare hands and watch the life drain from his eyes but not before having him gelded and disembowel by a properly starved and angry lynx-hound.
And where the hell was that daughter of his anyway? The admiral of the airship squadron had already sent down two runners to ask for permission to take off. Irregardless, she had some explaining to do, if the Avatar indeed was alive, that could only mean she had lied to him.
A third runner came charging in through the side entrance, bowed deep and proclaimed; "My Lord, the Admiral wishes to relay that he has taken upon himself to launch his squadron to cut off the retreating enemy."
The Fire Lord rose from his throne and walked towards the runner, "I'll lead the assault myself."
He stopped next to the runner and turned his head to him, "What are you still standing here for, go and tell your Admiral!"
"Yes sir" said the runner and charged off in the direction that he came from.
Azula was slowly but surely regaining some useful consciousness, there was a dull throbbing pain in her hands that were sloppily wrapped in bandages but she felt strangely blissful, even with the taste of vomit in her mouth. She looked around and saw she was outside with a battle raging all around her. She was being carried.
She was so confused and didn't understand why, she tried to remember how she got there, she remembered being so pleased with herself, and a handsome young man with deep blue eyes, when she reached her hand up to her eyes to take a closer look at the bloody bandages concealing whatever injuries she had.
"Can she walk?" She heard a man's voice say.
"I don't know, she's pretty out of it dad, I gave her a double dose of poppy extract, and she is banged up pretty good regardless, I doubt she'll ever regain the full use of her hands."
"Poppy" she thought to herself, she was drugged, but through the blissful haze she couldn't help but feel worry over the comment about hers hands.
"I can walk!" she said and playfully kicked with her feet.
"Okay, if that's what she wants." Said the man carrying her.
As he let her down, her eyes met his, it was the handsome man from her dream. "I know you" She said with a smile and kissed him on the lips causing the young man to blush. "I told you, she is pretty out of it." Azula just giggled "You're like, literally, the man of my dreams." letting out a little snort with her last giggle, "Or would it be in my dreams?" she asked and before beginning to cackle maniacally.
"Yeah, no need to say that twice Sokka!" said a young woman with an eerie similarity features to the two men, she knew her too but could quite remember from where either.
As Azula walked around in a dreamlike state observing and trying to make sense of the reigning chaos around the young man looked up into the sky and his face dropped "Oh no..."
The Firelord stepped onto the bridge of the flagship, it was more crowded than he was used to seeing on an airship. He looked at the Admiral who stood smack in the middle of the bridge, looking out at his squadron through a pair of binoculars. They were the last ship in an inverted wedge.
"Why aren't we leading the formation? ...Admiral!"
The Admiral ignored the Fire Lord for a second, and quietly said something to one of his subordinates before answering; "I want to see what's going on in my squadron, Sir. From this position, I can see the battlefield and the position of my ships without averting my eyes from the other, believe me, I would love nothing more than to be on the front but my responsibility is to lead this formation." the Admiral said stoically, true to his words, not averting his eyes from the battlefield.
"Sir, bandit, starboard high, out of the sun." yelled on of the observers. "A glider, might be the Avatar!"
The Captain of the ship stepped up, "Helm, evasive manoeuvre!"
Another observer yelled out, "Another bandit, port side low, they're attempting a hammer and anvil attack."
"Helm, down twenty-five degrees." yelled the captain.
Ozai, feeling perhaps a bit superfluous in the face of professional sailors turned airmen decided to grab a pair of binoculars of his own and scan the battlefield bellow.
The Admiral, stoically ordered; "Commander, signal the War balloons to drop all their ordnance and concentrate all their firepower on the Glider and the Bison."
"Ay ay, sir" responded the signal officer.
Ozai scoffed and thought to himself, "I could have thought of that!"
The Captain walked up to the voice tubes, "Crew, brace for impact!"
A second later a shudder rocked the giant airship which started to drift to port and down.
"Damage report!" Yelled the captain down the voice tubes.
"We took on… Water... in port engineering, all port side boilers flamed out, catastrophic failure of boiler number four, casualties are numerous and rising." sang one tube.
"Bow cell is venting gas into the atmosphere, we're readying a spare cell" sang the second.
"Starboard engineering, we're diverting steam to port engines and sending stokers." said the third.
The Admiral scoffed and said in dead pan, "Float cell replacement during battle, looks like we're splicing the mainbrace when this is all over boys."
"Ay ay!" yelled the bridge crew in unison.
Ozai guessed the Admiral's comment could only mean that the procedure wasn't easy to carry out during the best of times, the observers had all ran out of the bridge to help with the damage control, he could feel the ship accelerate as it was descending.
"Captain, we're gaining airspeed and we'll be over priority target in approximately ninety seconds." yelled the helmsman.
Ozai looked down through his binoculars, they appeared as though they already passed the bulk of the main enemy force, as the ship was descending, he could start making out faces in the crowd, he revelled in the fear he could begin to make out in their eyes, but among the green and blue, he saw something, a small figure clad in red and black, he looked through his binoculars to see the face of his daughter. Fraternising with the enemy!
As anger began to boil, he looked as his daughter leaned into one of the water tribe savage with a look on her face that no father much cares to see.
The binoculars came apart it his hands as he squeezed down on them.
"Hey! Do you have any idea how expensive those are!" shouted a voice from the other end of the room, Ozai turned to look at a young lieutenant. The young man's face dropped as he saw the Fire lord's face twisted in rage. "Sir..." The young man added as he shrunk and turned back to his gauge cluster.
"Circle around and drop every bomb we have on my command!" Ozai screamed in anger at the crew.
The Admiral turned towards the Fire Lord as if to acknowledge his command and then to his signals officer, "Signal the Warspite and Azulon to turn and attack the enemy force after their attack run on the priority target!"
"Did you not hear what I said?" seethed Ozai to the Admiral.
"I heard you clearly and I have ordered my lead ships to form an attack."
"I told you to circle around NOW! Admiral! NOW!" screamed the fire lord turning the head of every man on the bridge.
"To what ends? If we turn now, at this speed, we wouldn't intersect with the enemy force even with the wind in our favour, we're down one boiler and most of our port side stokers, request denied, Sir." The Admiral exclaimed.
"I'll have your head for this!" Ozai screamed. The tension on the bridge thick enough to be cut with a knife.
The Admiral turned to the Fire Lord with a look that could kill, "You'll have my resignation when this battle is over. "
The Captain interjected, "Sir, I'm sorry, but the Azulon and Warspite are in the best position to carry out your orders, we're just trying to follow the spirit of your command to the best of our ability."
"Bombs away!" yelled the bombardier.
Ozai flared up at the lowly ensign, "You insolent rat, I told you-"
"Chain of command, Fire Lord, any command you give will have to go through me." said the Admiral, looking out at the sea. "Captain, bring this ship around to attack the main force of the enemy!"
"Ay ay, sir! Helm, begin turn!"
Ozai rolled his eyes, he felt dejected, but technically his officers hadn't been insubordinate, since the days of his grandfather, commanders were encouraged to exercise their own initiative, probably because the pride of the fire nation navy, the revolutionary battleship Revenge, or Sozin's Revenge, Scourge of the Southern seas, a beloved child going by many names, had collied with an other ship before it ran aground and broken her keel, all because the helmsman, nor any of the other officers had dared to question the idiotic orders of the possibly senile, possibly drunken Admiral.
As Ozai looked out the window he saw what appeared to be the Avatar's sky bison flying away into the horizon, he walked up to the Admiral and grabbed the binoculars out of his hands and lifted them to his eyes.
Indeed it was the sky bison, "The Coward is running away, after him!" the Fire Lord pointed in the direction of the Avatar.
"Commander, signal the fleet to turn South!" commanded the admiral.
Sokka watched as the giant air ships formed up to deliver a final attack on his army, his throat ached as he held back tears. "Hold on dad..." The allied army had struck its colours but the air fleet was set on delivering a final exemplary punitive blow. The first ship in the line had began opening it's bomb bay doors when suddenly the whole line turned in their direction.
Sokka yelled out, "Aang! I think they're setting up to follow us!"
Aang looked down at Appa worried, he would have been overburdened enough with the people, now he was clad in armour too. "Katara, take the reigns! Sokka, cut off the armour it's not doing us any good."
Aang jumped off on his glider and yelled out, "Meet me at the Western Air temple, I'll lead them off."
"Toph, watch the prisoner!" commanded Sokka as he jumped off and started started cutting the heavy leather straps holding on the armour. As the first plate fell, he felt momentarily heavier as the bison suddenly ascended. As he cut the second strap, he realised he had made a mistake, "Hold on!"
Appa roared as he suddenly felt so imbalanced that he could naught but bank sharply to his right. Everyone screamed in unison while Sokka used this momentum and flung himself to the other side of the saddle, the leather strap around his wrist his only life line, and quickly cut two of the straps.
A salvo of fire flew past them. "Haru!" Sokka called for his comrade's attention and threw him his trusty boomerang, "Help me cut the armour evenly!" No further instruction was needed, the young man had leapt up before the boomerang was in his hand.
Another salvo streaked by, this one slightly closer than the last one.
"Katara, zig-zag!" Yelled Sokka, "What do you think I'm trying?!" Katara screamed back with her voice breaking. "I can think of one useless piece of deadweight we could throw overboard to lighten the load!" Yelled Toph, sitting cuffed by her space rock bracelet to the barely conscious Azula, pale as a ghost, who had done nothing but sing quietly to herself for the last half hour, her bandages absolutely soaked in and dripping with blood.
"Would you rather be captured with the hostage or without her?" retorted Sokka.
"If she'll even live, I can feel her pulse through the cuff, it's growing ever fainter."
Sokka worried internally but focused on the task at hand, Haru was keeping good pace with him despite his sub-par cutting tool and Appa was gaining speed and altitude thankfully.
As him and Haru prepared to cut the last piece of armour, another salvo passed by and Sokka hardly had time to blink when one ball struck dead centre of the saddle, everyone had been holding onto the saddle railing and miraculously no one suffered anything but superficial burns. The Duke had somehow managed to pull Teo out of his burning wheelchair before it caught fire.
The saddle was lined with leather but framed with with bamboo and wood which was now catching fire at an alarming rate, "Everyone grab an armour strap, we have to cut the saddle!" Screamed Sokka. While Haru and the Duke helped Teo out of the saddle and secure themselves, Sokka grabbed Azula by the collar and pulled her out and used the strap around his wrist to tie her secure.
Katara was weaving in sharp panicked turns, and Sokka understood that the salvoes were much too wide for that to be of any use. "Katara! Go wide and steady! Then!… Then chase the next volley!"
"Are you crazy!" screamed Katara turning her brother her face twisted with a mixture of anger and panic.
As Sokka cut the saddle strap, he looked his sister trying to look as reassuring as possible, "Trust me!"
The saddle was caught by the air draft and Sokka climbed onto the back of the bison, since the beginning of the stern chase he hadn't been able to lend a second to the air fleet, he now saw it was was only one ship following them, and they were slowly inching away from it. Another salvo streaked by far to the right of them and Katara went after it.
"Now as long as they don't figure out what we're doing we should be fine!" Sokka said to his sister. "Can someone watch for flashes?!" Katara shouted out with a tense anger. "Right!" replied Sokka and grabbed his spyglass from his bag.
Looking back at the single large airship he could see the symbols for War and Spite on crests on the bow. A single flash could be seen, he tapped Katara on the shoulder and she put her head down slightly as they changed course. Sokka kept looking into his spyglass even as the volley streaked by, but there were no more flashes.
A few hours later out at sea and the giant ship was but a speck somewhere above the horizon. The sun was setting on the horizon and the warm sea air was cooling to form clouds. As they entered a cloud, Sokka, took the reigns from Katara. "As long as we stay in cloud cover I think it's safe to head to the air temple."
"I think we need to find a place to rest for the night."
"I know" said Sokka, for the first time realising just how exhausted he really was.
Ozai stared into the sunset, he had opted to take the crippled airship home after the the Admiral had changed his flag to the decidedly less damaged Indefatigable when it became clear that she no longer could give chase, everyone hoping the new flagship would live up to her name in the pursuit of the of the Avatar.
One thing had become clear to Ozai, that as mighty strike weapons as these airships were, they were glass jawed. The Tigerdillo had been one of the newer and more advanced ships and after just one single attack it had to fall out of line, she had the teeth of her namesake but not the armour. He had learned that had it not been for a brave airman who had opened pressure release valve in the port side boiler room, all of the boilers would have most likely exploded, collapsing the bulkhead to the starboard boiler room and the floor over the bomb bay, which would have destroyed the ship.
Ozai had gone back into engineering to pin the Sun cross on the badly scolded young man in person. The valve had been glowing dull red when the man had fought through the pain and opened it with his bare hands to the awe of his grateful comrades.
But the whole report of the incident had left Ozai shaken.
At the moment of his greatest victory, he would have fallen, literally, with only his treasonous children and brother as heirs, the thought alone made Ozai fume, and sick to his stomach.
Even if he hadn't been onboard and the ship would have gone down, it would have meant he would be left with only one ship in reserve to complete his plans for the Earth Kingdom. The plan already hitched on the High seas fleet doing the bulk of the work undertaking shore bombardment but even with the great gulfs and navigable rivers and lakes of the Earth Kingdom and Sozin's comet to aid them, they'd only be able to reach so far inland.
The occupying forces would scorch the Earth as they strategically withdrew from the cities. His generals had warned him that though it was a theoretically feasible plan, it had to be executed perfectly and without flaw. Already today, the plan had been tested.
Aang had flown throughout the night, though he was pretty sure he had lost the lumbering airships some time around dusk, silhouetted by the faint starlight he thought he had seen a war balloon shadowing him. He had done a wide circle sometime during the night to see if he could loop around and get behind his stalker, but to no use.
If someone was following him, he was an experienced hunter, he might have sensed the trap and looped back on Aang, he would have lost time, but patience is a virtue when hunting dangerous prey, even Aang knew that and though he didn't give it much thought, alone in the sky, he thought about the fact that technically he was one of the most, if not the most, powerful being on the planet, worshipped as a God in some incarnations of his cycle.
Aang decided that he would try to catch some shut eye, but the only thing that seemed to be on offer in this part of the great archipelago that composed the Fire Nation were a bunch of small skerries, most of them so small and raked by the wind and sea that not a blade of grass was allowed the peace to grow there. It looked like he would have to deploy an ancient Air Nomad gliding technique where he'd go into a meditative trance while he glided along the sky.
He looped around to get his bearings, the monks had taught him well, navigating by the stars and the moon, which tonight was almost as dark as the night Tui had been slain, only a faint waxing crescent to help him navigate and which now told him that if he started westward soon, his course would take him straight to the western air temple. A dark thought flashed through Aang's head at the thought of his friend's being captured or worse, the thought was unbecoming of him and he quickly suppressed it, though he dared think about his epithet, Avatar Aang, lived and died a coward.
The Gaang had spent the night in a small but heavily vegetated gulch where they, and especially Appa would be hard to detect from the sky.
Sokka, uncharacteristically, had risen before the sun rose to look at the stars, noting their latitude, now with the sun rising on horizon he could make a pretty good guess where on the map they were and through some lengthy number crunching, to his great surprise he noticed that they were probably less than a day's walk away from the location of the Western Air Temple. Appa had truly outdone himself and Sokka wouldn't burden him with any more flying for the next few days.
Katara stepped out of her tent and came up to Sokka from behind and gave him a hug. Sokka in turn lifted his hands around his sister's head and pulled her into his lap and hugged her in return. "Thanks Katara, I really needed that after yesterday."
"Me too" replied Katara.
"Hey, I've got some good news, the Air temple is not far." Sokka forced a smile and he said it, even though internally he felt like it was equivalent to saying that the Prison camp wasn't far.
Katara's face told pretty much the same story.
"How are the patients doing?" Sokka inquired.
"Nothing major, Nothing which wouldn't have healed itself, except for the princess." Katara said gloomily.
Sokka looked towards his sister's tent where the princess had been quartered for the night, "Is she d-"
"No, she had lost a lot of blood and I pretty much had to rebuild her hands from scratch, rearrange and transplant a whole lot chi-pathways." Katara looked at Sokka who looked at her sceptically, "I took an oath! Okay! Besides it was a chance to build experience!"
Sokka nodded his head, "Hmm, good point. Would any of this new gained medical knowledge be useful in fixing Teo's legs?" Sokka said inquisitively.
"I doubt it… Even so, I think I did a lot of damage trying to stitch her up, I honestly doubt if she'll ever be able to bend again. ...At all."
Sokka couldn't figure out if his sister was telling him matter of factly or subtly bragging about ironically enough, disarming Azula.
Katara looked towards her tent, "She's in a deep sleep, I doubt that she'll wake up for the entire day."
Sokka smirked, "I think I'm going to follow her example and catch some more shut eye before we head off."
Katara got up and started walking towards the firepit to begin preparing breakfast, as she reached it she turned to her brother, "Oh Sokka, I know you probably meant well, but next time, don't give a patient so much poppy milk that it could floor a mooselion."
As Sokka looked up through the tree canopy he could see a figure flying across the sky that he figured could only be one thing. "AANG!" he called out with all his energy.
