Sokka was all sweaty from practice, he probably smelled worse than he looked, and to top it all off the front of his tshirt and shorts were caked in mud from falling while trying to take the ball from Suki. He couldn't have asked for a worse time to run into Princess Yue, to literally run into her.

He was rushing to grab his chemistry textbook from his locker before the janitors locked all the stairwell doors and happened to turn a corner at the same time as her majesty and …. It didn't go well. Sokka landed on his bum and hit his back on the floor. He didn't mind though, because he was much more concerned by the fact that princess Yue was now lying on the floor, covered in mud, and her school papers had fallen everywhere around them.

Sokka stared at her for a moment, completely dumbstruck, before frantically getting up, yelling panicked apologies, and scrambling to pick up all the papers. Yue simply reached her hand up towards Sokka and spoke softly, "Please, help me up." Sokka's mouth went wide open as he gingerly took her majesty's hand and pulled the princess to her feet. "Thank you." She held out her hands and took the disorganized papers from a silent Sokka. "I'm Yue. And you are ….?"

Sokka continued to stare at her a bit before responding. "I'm Wolf Sokka. I mean Sokka Wolf. Of the South Pole."

She chuckled at his wide open mouth expression. "Hello Sokka. Thank you for helping." She bowed her head and continued walking down the hall.

Sokka bowed. "Excuse me, Princess Yue, please forgive me, for …. Uh, running into you like that! And for ruining your uniform! I can pay for dry cleaning!" Sokka reached into his pockets and clumsily managed to drop loose change everywhere. He got on his hands and knees picking up the coins.

Yue blushed. "Please Sokka, there's no need for any of that. It was an accident and I usually have my uniforms dry cleaned any way so it's not an issue."

Sokka counted three gold pieces and five copper ones. He walked to her, got on his knee, bowed, and offered it to her. "Please take it, I have insulted the bonds of brotherhood between our tribes, please let me make it right again by paying for the dry cleaning."

Yue was touched by Sokka Wolf's genuine sincerity and accepted the money in his hand. "There, I took the money. You can get up now." Sokka stood and bowed his head to her respectfully. Yue began to turn around, but instead she leaned over and kissed Sokka on the cheek. Sokka stared at her, his cheeks completely red and his mouth wide open again, as Yue quickly walked towards the exit. "Holy Spirits!"

Sokka had never wanted to punch anyone so much in his entire life.

Sokka's day began just as miserably as it ended. He woke up that morning, interrupted in the middle of his dream date with Yue, to the pain of a laptop falling on his head. Aang, who had supposedly forgot Sokka's presence as he slept on the couch, had decided that was the perfect place to just drop a laptop case. It was an especially unpleasant event when you add the fact it was only three in the morning and Sokka had to deal with that horribly innocent look on Aang's face. How much longer was he going to have to deal with this bald freak anyway? Wasn't it bad enough that his sister had to be a waterbender? Wasn't it bad enough he had to give up his pride and let a girl on the soccer team? Wasn't it bad enough he failed his last math test? How much could the spirits hate him?

Katara ran to the living room to find Sokka wide awake and yelling at Aang. Katara commanded in a hoarse whisper "Shut up, Ponytail!"

Sokka did not shut up. "It's not a ponytail, it's a wolftail!"

Katara ran to her brother and covered his mouth with her hand. "I said shut up!" Sokka, realizing her serious urgency, shut up. Katara took her hand off her brother's mouth and faced Aang. "What did you do?"

"It was an accident, I forgot he was there."

"Yeah and now I have a massive headache! What are you two doing at three AM anyway?" The room went quiet and Sokka's suspicion grew. "What's going on here?"

"Nothing." Katara spoke way too fast.

Sokka spoke with a warning in his voice, "Katara".

Aang whispered. "I have to go home." They stared at Aang who shuffled his feet nervously. "This whole time, things have just seemed wrong. Machines I've never seen, places I've never heard of, a war I knew nothing about. Something's wrong, really wrong. I need answers."

Sokka put his head in his hands. "Alright, where's home?"

"The Southern Air Temple."

Sokka jumped from the couch. "What?!" Katara shushed him. "You're crazy! You're completely insane! The Southern Air Temple? How the hell do you expect to get there?" He turned to Katara. "And you! You were trying to help him on his suicide mission?"

Katara whispered. "We have a plan, it's not suicide! We'll be back before sundown. Come on, Aang." Katara grabbed Aang's wrist and began dragging him to the door.

Sokka followed them. "Stop it. Katara! Ah come on!" Katara opened the door and dragged Aang outside. Sokka called back at them from the doorway as Katara marched her way up the street with Aang cringing and stumbling behind her as she held on firmly to his wrist. "Get back here! I'm not coming after you y'know!"

Sokka went after them.

Surprisingly, the plan was not too bad for a couple of freshmen amateurs. Sokka frowned at Katara as she, smiling, passed out cups of orange juice and bags of peanuts to the train passengers. Sokka felt exceedingly uncomfortable in his stolen train attendee uniform which was all yellow and black with a great big fire nation emblem on his left shirt pocket. Aang was supposedly up in one of the front cars with the driver, probably being yelled at for messing up coffee orders and making bad jokes. The thought made Sokka's frown deepened, he would do anything to get his hands on some coffee right now.

Sokka found that the train ride went surprisingly fast if he looked out the window and tried to imagine what all that area of poor neighborhoods must've looked like before the fire nation forced the native people into those sickening places. He imagined farms of cowpig and eaglechicken, little ponds filled with turtleducks, and trees, lots of great big green trees.

Sokka still remembered the first time he ever saw a real live tree. It was from the deck of a human cargo ship on a cloudy morning. The cold mist surrounded the ship, but despite the gloomy weather, Sokka was glad for the cold. Cold had always been a certainty in his life, it was a fact of the south pole, cold was home. Even though it was a comfort to Sokka, he felt sorry for the other prisoners, or colonists as the fire nation workers had called them, who huddled together in small groups, tugging at their small cotton blankets and shivering.

Sokka stood at the edge of the deck gazing at an unknown landscape. In a few weeks his entire life had gone crazy, and yet it felt like years since he'd walked through the snow covered village he so loved. It was all gone now. Staring at the misty landscape, he saw something strange towering above the other shapes. Something that twisted and turned and spread out like bones. He ran to Gran Gran and pulled her to the railing. "Gran Gran, what is it?! What is that monster?"

Gran Gran shook her head. "That's no monster, my grandson. The only monsters here wear fire nation emblems. It's a tree, Sokka, a harmless plant, nothing monstrous about it."

Sokka liked that memory, he needed it. He needed to remember just one good thing about that place, one good thing to give him hope, one giant scary tree to remind him that not everything is evil, and that the only real monsters in the world wear fire nation emblems.

After sneaking away from the train and meeting up with the others outside the station, the trio got in a cab headed for the Museum of War. They waited in line for forty minutes before finally being whisked into a crowded tour bus and beginning an hour long ride to the Southern Air Temple.

Sokka watched as Aang's happily began describing the temple to Katara in the seat in front of him. Katara seemed to look more and more worried the more excited Aang got. Sokka looked down and bent over to pick up a tour brochure that had been left on the floor. As Aang described scenes of peaceful nature, Sokka saw pictures of the temple's destruction. As Aang talked about his different friends who he lived with at the temple, Sokka read about how every last person had been brutally murdered. Aang was right, something was definitely very wrong.

Zhao sat at the desk in his personal study looking over some interesting papers. The paper on top had a picture of a freshman boy dressed in a brand new fire nation uniform for Elements High. Beside the picture was a chart listing the boy's name, age, gender, and other personal information. Zhao woke up the computer on his right and typed in the boy's name; Kuzon Fire. No results. He looked down at his parental info and typed in the two names; Wang Fire and Sapphire Fire. No results. Zhao leaned back in his chair and stared at the boy's picture, thinking. Something was wrong.