Katara remembered Jet from her shadow day last April. He had gotten in some kind of fight in the cafeteria and school security had to drag him out while he resisted. "You can't silence me! The fire nation's reign of terror will come to an end! And when that day comes, you'll answer to me! And all the people you've hurt! I'll fight you! I'll never stop fighting you! You'll have to kill me first!"
But they did silence him, with a hard blow to the head he fell to his knees. The room gasped. Security began yelling. "Stop staring you miserable colonists! Go back to your lunch!"
The room began to fill again with the sounds of low whispers and slow eating. Sokka told Katara to look away. How? She thought. How could she keep looking away from what was happening? How long would she live pretending not to see what the fire nation was doing? That boy hadn't looked away. He looked the fire nation straight in the face and said what he thought. It was stupid, but it was brave. At least he had done something, better than the rest of them who ate overpriced bowls of soup and stale bread like they were in any normal high school cafeteria.
Now Jet looked at Katara, a little surprised.
"Hey."
"Hi."
He looked over at Haru, suddenly irritated. "Who's this? You said you'd take care of any others."
Haru stuttered. "I was just telling her to …."
"Whatever." Jet interrupted, too impatient to hear an excuse. "I've seen you around. You're the ponytail's sister right? Katrina?"
She shook her head. "Katara."
Jet smiled. "Katara, it's a beautiful name. Just like you."
Katara's blushed. "Um, thank you."
Haru shifted his weight nervously. "Jet, aren't we wasting time?"
"You're absolutely right, my friend. Katara, how would you feel about joining Haru and I on a little adventure?"
"I-I don't think …."
Somewhere outside the classroom the three kids heard a bang. Jet grabbed Katara's hand and pulled her from the desk. "And down they go. Sorry, no time to argue!" Jet opened the door and ran into the hallway as Katara was pulled behind and Haru ran after them.
Katara yelled over the now more frequent sounds of banging coming from behind them. "What's happening?!"
Haru ran up to her. "Please don't yell, someone might hear."
Jet yelled back to Haru, "Doesn't matter now!"
They swung open the gymnasium doors and ran to the exit. Jet stopped in front of it and pulled out his cell phone. The bangs continued to get closer. "Smellerbee, how are we doing?"
Katara heard someone's voice talking back to Jet's calmly. Jet seemed unhappy with whatever this person was saying. "I see. We're at the meeting spot now, except …" He snuck a glance at Katara. "We picked up an extra. Yeah, don't blame me, it was Haru's job to empty the place. Good, gather the meet for when we arrive." Jet looked back at Katara and smiled. "Don't worry about it, Smellerbee. I don't think she'll give us any trouble. In fact, we could use a fresh recruit on our team. Jet out." Jet hung up the phone.
Katara thought about saying something. She had already pieced together that somehow she had ended up in the middle of an attack, but whose? The White Lotus? It seemed unlikely to Katara that the ancient global organization of wise men would have someone like Jet leading their operation. No, this was something put together by a rag-tag team of rebels. Katara was excited by the idea. Ordinary people, even teenagers like her, were taking a stand.
Katara had spent all her life just going with the flow, never fighting back, allowing the fire nation to hurt the people she cared about over and over again. When the Fire nation came to take the villagers away, the men of the tribe were already gone. Everyone had accepted defeat before a fight could even begin, except for Sokka. He was the oldest boy left in the tribe and accepted the responsibility of a warrior. Gran Gran told him not to be foolish, said he would only get himself killed. But Sokka went into the chief house, covered himself in war paint, and prepared to face the fire nation alone. Katara wanted to be like her brother, more than anything, she wanted to fight for her village. But it was pointless. When the first ship arrived, Katara froze the opening of the chief house shut. And the southern water tribe was picked apart without so much as a word of resistance.
When she saw Sokka again two months later in a temporary prison camp, he wouldn't talk to her for a whole month. Katara still struggled over whether or not she had done the right thing. Now perhaps, was a chance to redeem herself, a chance to take Sokka's place as warrior, to finally fight back.
Katara took a deep breath preparing to say something to Jet just as his phone vibrated. "That's our cue." He grabbed Katara's hand and ran out of the gym into the back road behind the high school. A big green van waited with its doors open and a little kid screaming at them to hurry up.
Katara sat in the back squeezed between Jet and Haru. The van took off with a screech in the direction of the east colonist side of town. This close to Jet, the straw dangling sideways out of his mouth lightly brushed the top of her forehead. The van was dusty and dirty inside, littered with candy wrappers and soda cans. A couple of comic books were stuffed between the seats and a cardboard box covered with a cloth took up most of the leg room for the back passengers.
The warehouse was big, grey, and covered in graffiti. Katara had seen this place before but never thought much of it. Jet climbed the wire fence to unlock the door on the other side. The big guy who had been driving the van went in carrying the box from the back of the van. The rest followed in a straight line as Katara straggled.
Jet walked up to her and leaned against the van. "You coming?"
"What is this place?"
"Welcome to the Hideout."
"Your hideout?"
"The Freedom Fighter's. It belongs to us all. It's home."
"Freedom Fighters?"
"That's right. Our mission is to hurt the fire nation in any way we can. They destroyed our homes and dragged us to this foreign land. It's our right to revolt."
Katara nodded her head. "So this isn't the White Lotus."
Jet's smile melted. "The White Lotus and I have a disagreement of sorts. But we don't give them any trouble so long as they stay out of our affairs."
"Does the school know?"
"No, but I'm sure they have their suspiscions. In fact, I'm just one mistake away from getting thrown in a fire nation prison. For that reason we haven't been able to do any serious damage as of lately, but I'm working on something big."
"What are you working on?"
Jet smiled. "What are you doing? Trying to steal all my secrets? I'm afraid those pretty eyes have pried away all the answers I can give you for now. Come on, let's go in."
The bleak grey outside of the warehouse had in fact concealed the colorful and lively interior of the fort. Above their heads, ropes and wires connected the scrap metal platforms hanging from the high ceiling. Teens roller skated on the floor throwing a ball around. Loud punk rock music filled the large space and colorful graffiti covered every inch of the walls and floor. Somebody turned off the music and the sound of metal hitting metal turned everyone's attention to one of the center platforms.
The platform Smellerbee stood on was bigger than the rest and spherical lamps hung from the ends for decoration. The person standing there had brown boyish short hair and war paint on their cheeks. Honestly, Katara couldn't tell if it was a boy or a girl. The person yelled after getting the room's attention. "Jet's back!"
A loud cry arose and a crowd of cheering teens surrounded Jet and Katara. Jet walked through the crowd, giving out high-fives and receiving many pats on the back. He put his foot into a horse stirrup-like contraption with a wire hanging down attached to the main platform. He reached out his hand to Katara. "Grab hold of me, Katara"
Katara took his hand and was spun into his arms. She held onto him, as they ascended slowly towards the platform. Katara felt like she was flying with Jet, she blushed.
Katara stood next to Smellerbee behind Jet on the platform. The teens below pumped their fists, jumped up and down in rhythm and chanted "Jet! Jet! Jet!".
Jet held up both hands and the room went silent. He looked over his small army with a smile. "Today, we struck another blow against the fire nation swine!" The crowd cheered in approval. "Now the fire nation thinks they don't have to worry about a couple of kids hiding in an old abandoned warehouse, maybe they're right." The crowd booed. "Or maybe, they are dead wrong!" The crowd cheered again. They resumed the chant from earlier as Jet took a bow, the crowd died down then and went back to what they usually did.
Jet walked to Katara and Smellerbee. "Tonight we feast! I want all of our supplies restocked and the next set of plans put into action immediately. Smellerbee, I want you to meet Katara, who bravely assisted us on our mission."
Katara stuttered, "B-but I-I did nothing."
"Nonsense. You'll be the guest of honor tonight. I want you to be one of my Freedom Fighters. What do you think? Do you have what it takes to fight our enslavers to the death?" Jet searched her eyes. "Come on, Katara. There's a fighter in you, I can see it. You bear as much hate for the fire nation as the rest of us."
Katara's hand went to her neck, her mother's necklace was cold beneath her fingers. Some new kind of courage filled her and she looked straight at Jet with determination written on her face. "Yes."
