Chapter 11: Sleep

With Bolin's home well behind them, the group, now including Suda, finally stopped for a day to practice Earthbending. Ada and Suda had been arguing all the time when cramped together in the Satomobile, and Sen was glad to give them some time to be apart. As soon as they had stopped, Ada wandered off to find someplace to be grumpy all on her own. Sen and Hanjo set up for some earthbending lessons. Gun emerged from the ground and casually regarded the earthbenders as he gnawed on a root he'd dug up. He'd been getting a lot bigger lately; he was almost twice the size he'd been when Sen and Hanjo had first met him. Within a few months he'd be a titan, just like his mother.

"I'm mostly going to have to talk you through earthbending, thanks to your female friend over there," Suda began. Ada heard him and made an obscene gesture in his direction.

"You guys really have to get over this eventually," Sen told him. Conflict between his companions was the last thing he wanted. He wasn't quite ready to call Suda or Ada his friends yet, but he knew he didn't want them to fight. With the Energybender on their tail, they had no time for petty arguments.

"I actually don't mind getting cut that much; it's happened before," Suda said. "The fact that we're on the same team now and she refuses to apologize for it is what chafes me."

"She'll get to it eventually," Hanjo assured him. "For now, focus on training us please."

Suda nodded and talked them through some basic drills he'd used in his early days of earthbending. He'd mostly learned from fellow bandits and other rogues; Suda had been born into a bad family. His father, a bender, had skipped town long before Suda ever got to know him, and his mother was hardly a caring individual, so he'd spent his childhood with whatever vagabonds were willing to keep a child around. He'd learned a very rough but highly effective form of earthbending from them, and he'd put his own finesse into it by duplicating Bolin's moves from the Movers he snuck into. By the time he'd joined up with Kuzo and the other bandits, he'd learned metalbending all on his own, and his talent had made him an obvious choice for leadership despite his young age.

In many ways he was a product of his environment, but he'd always thought of himself as a good person. He had to steal just to eat, but he never stole from anyone who really needed the money, and he never hurt anyone who didn't fight back. He kept his conscience mostly clear that way.

The fact that Ada couldn't see that hurt him more than he was letting on. He'd tried explaining all of that to her, but she saw him as just another bandit. He didn't quite know if it was that she was wrong, or that she might be right. Maybe his motivations didn't matter, and neither did his barely-there sense of morality. Maybe he was just a thief and that was all that mattered.

Whatever Ada thought of him, he had a chance to turn it around now. He was going to teach the Avatar and make his hero proud. Truth be told he'd probably have gone with Sen even if Bolin hadn't offered to tell him the ending to the twenty-seventh mover. He was always on the lookout for new and exciting things, and training the Avatar was sure to be the most exciting thing he'd ever done.

Suda was having them launch rocks at targets he'd marked on nearby trees, but Sen was having a very hard time hitting the targets. Those that did make impact seemed more like luck than skill. Hanjo was having much less trouble, and was trying to guide Sen through the process. Suda offered what advice he could, but none of it seemed to help Sen's aim.

Suda tried a different exercise, stacking rocks in a specific formation, and Sen found himself struggling again. His form, control, and motion were all perfect, even better than Hanjo's, but when it came down to actually putting the stone in the right place he fell flat, and Suda couldn't figure out why. He decided to try something that required less precision, to bolster Sen's ego.

"Stop my boulder without lifting your feet off the ground." He called up a large stone and let Hanjo go first. Hanjo went for the clever route; he bent the earth beneath his feet, giving him room to move as he bent the massive stone away. Suda considered that a pass and let Sen take his turn. The Avatar didn't move at all; when the stone approached him he split in half down the middle and let the pieces fall on either side of him. He seemed very satisfied with his demonstration. The lessons Kyo had given him about using his anger to carve stones had come in handy again, and his failure at the earlier exercises had given him plenty of anger to work with.

Suda kept teaching them lessons in brute force, giving them simple, broad tasks for Sen to accomplish. He excelled at digging trenches, exceeded expectations at creating stone traps, and he blew Suda's mind with his ability to create barriers. But the moment Suda sent them back to the target range, Sen faltered again. The taste of success made failure all the more bitter, and Sen tore the target tree out of the ground in frustration. Ada decided it was time to move on.

Back in the satomobile, they finally had a conversation topic other than Ada and Suda's arguments, which Hanjo enjoyed, but Sen was slightly less enthused about.

"Perhaps the small scale isn't Sen's forte," Ada suggested. "He obviously has a natural talent with the bigger tasks. Maybe he's more specialized?"

"It takes a brick to build a fortress," Suda said. It sounded wise, but really he was just quoting a mover. "Mastering the small things will make him even better at the big ones."

"Trying to focus his efforts on something he's not naturally talented at is going to be a lot of trouble," Hanjo added. "Wouldn't it be better to just use what he's already good at?"

"He's got to face the challenges now," Suda said. "What about when he gets to airbending, his opposing element? If he can't handle the challenges of earthbending, how will he succeed there?"

"He's got a point," Ada said. It was the first time the two had agreed since they'd joined up. "If Sen can't handle this, he'll have a worse time with the other elements."

"I can handle this," Sen objected. "There's just something wrong, I don't know what it is."

"I'd question the teaching environment first," Ada said, going back to her old tone.

"Hey," Hanjo shouted, shutting down the argument before it started. "I'm doing the same lesson's and I'm doing fine. Leave Suda out of this."

"Are you implying Sen alone is to blame?"

Hanjo looked at his friend. Sen stared back at him. Hanjo couldn't maintain eye contact.

"Yeah. I guess I am."

Sen turned away and stared out the window. The world outside was a blur to him, and they weren't even driving that fast. They were nearing another city now, and they were starting to see other satomobiles on the road, which affected how fast they could travel.

Occasionally a military vehicle drove by and they all ducked their heads. There was no telling who was on whose side nowadays. With half the parliament showing anti-Avatar sentiment, the UEK military was not a reliable ally in any way. Especially not for Suda, who probably had a few "wanted" posters up in this area.

"We have to decide on some kind of schedule for training," Suda said to his pupils. "Find a way to balance keeping ahead of Howler's forces and getting you two trained."

"We could try just stopping altogether, going deep into the woods or something and hiding out. With any luck, Howler's forces will go right past us."

"I don't like that," Sen said. "Even if they do go past us, who's to say we won't accidentally bump into them again when we start travelling?"

"Sen's right," Suda said. "If they're right behind us we at least know where they are."

"For now, we'll stay the course. Hopefully Bolin will have bought us enough time to outpace the Energybender's troops."

Ada said that, but she knew that Bolin's best efforts could only delay their enemies by a few hours at most. Hopefully it would help reassure Sen, who had been having some rough times lately.

His confidence had faltered somewhat in the past few days. His ineptitude at earthbending and the possibility of Bolin being harmed had put a damper on his spirits. Hanjo said they had managed to avoid causing any major trouble since leaving the orphanage. There had been a close call in a city named Zang, but since they hadn't heard of the Energybender attacking there, they assumed everything had gone alright. Up until Bolin, no one had actively been endangered by Sen being the Avatar.

Sen fully believed that Bolin would be fine; he was one of the world's greatest masters, after all. But the fact that there was a risk, that people could once again be hurt because of his presence, was dragging Sen down. They'd gone through so much without ever having the Energybender put on their tail that he had almost forgotten about the risk. It had been easy to ride around aimlessly with Hanjo and Ada. Now that they actually had an earthbending master with them, the responsibility of being the Avatar was hitting more close to home.

He could probably handle all of this, of course, if he was actually doing well learning earthbending, but his consistent failures were only enhancing his self-doubt. What kind of Avatar couldn't even learn the element he'd been born into?

Traffic came to a dead halt around the border between two provinces. Every province had its own independent government, despite the fact that they were all conjoined into the greater United Earth Kingdom, and each government enforced its borders and laws on an individual basis. Some provinces were very open, others had checkpoints on every road.

Hanjo immediately began piling bags and containers on top of Suda, trying to make him look like a lump of luggage. Suda was a very large person, so it took the lions share of their supplies to completely cover him. The supplies Ada had brought along from Zaofu included fake passports for the three of them, but she had not had time to make one for Suda yet, so he'd have to sneak across the border the old fashioned way. Suda persevered through the indignity of having boxes stacked on his head; he'd endured worse as a bandit. Namely, getting betrayed by all his so-called friends. That still stung.

Ada stopped at the border checkpoint and gladly offered the fake papers to the agent in charge. He looked them over. The documents listed them all as being members of the same family, as far as he knew they were the travelling Togo family, merchants on a mission to get a sale. It helped that Hanjo and Sen looked fairly similar. Anyone who didn't know better might say they were brothers. They had the same brown, fine hair and green eyes, their faces were about the same shape, everything matched up fairly well.

The border guard apparently fell for the resemblance, and completely ignored the conspicuous heap of luggage in the back seat, and they were allowed through.

"You kids be careful on the road," The border guard cautioned. "Strange things have been happening."

"What kind of things?"

"I dunno, I just look at the passports," He sighed. "People getting delayed, no one knows why. Not getting hurt or nothing, just showing up late."

That normally wouldn't be a problem, but they had an enigmatic killer on their tail, so any delay was a very bad thing. Ada sped down the road as soon as they were clear of the checkpoint.

"That sound like Spirit stuff to anyone else," Suda asked, shedding his cocoon of containers. "That sounds like Spirit stuff to me."

"That sounds right," Sen agreed. "Nobody's getting hurt, so it's probably just some wayward spirit with bad timing."

"Well you're the Avatar, so any spirit business is fine with us, right? It's not a problem."

Hanjo rested his feet on the seat in front of him and relaxed. Sen wasn't feeling quite so confident. He hadn't really done anything very spiritual yet. The Avatar state had taken over at Beaker Hall, but that didn't really count. He didn't know how well he'd do in his first real bridge-between-worlds outing. Considering how he was screwing up at earthbending, he doubted he'd do a good job.

"I know how to deal with spirits too," Suda added.

"The Bolin movers aren't an academic source," Ada sniped.

"I have actually talked to spirits, thanks," Suda shot back. "Me and the guys used to run into them now and then back when we lived in the woods."

"Did you ever run into one of the bad ones?"

"Of course we did," Suda said. "We threw rocks at it until it went away."

Somehow Sen did not feel he should make a spiritual role model of Suda. He could tell Ada felt the same way, but, in a distressing turn of events, Hanjo was nodding his head in agreement. Time to shut this line of thought down.

"Nobody's throwing rocks at anything until I talk with it," Sen said. "Whatever's going on, it isn't hurting anything, so we aren't hurting it."

"You might need to repeat that for Ada," Suda said. Sen kept his mouth shut, but he actually agreed. Ada was showing no signs of losing her violent streak, and her arguments with Suda were revealing a temperamental side to her that Sen hadn't seen before. Time had actually made him trust her less, not more.

"That was just dull," Ada said, trying to shut down an argument for once.

"What can I say? I don't trust you around sharp things," Suda said, expertly turning her comeback against her. Now it was on. Ada wasn't going to sit back and let him have the last word. They started at it again. Sen rolled the window down and stuck his head out, hoping that the air rushing by would drown out the sound of the argument. It worked for a while, but then the debate got more heated and their voices got louder.

"You can try and complain all you want, from where I was standing it was justified self defense," Ada said. "Sen and I agreed on that, right? Sen?"

"Leave me out of this," Sen said. He'd had it with their arguing.

"Yeah, looks like he really has your back," Suda said smugly. "Hanjo, what do you think?"

"Don't get him involved either," Sen shouted. Hanjo shook his head, showing he didn't want to be part of this argument. "I swear, I am so tired of this stupid argument!"

Now that he thought about it, he really was tired, in the literal sense. All this arguing would usually get his blood boiling, but right now he just wanted to sleep. With a quiet groan, he rested his eyes and hoped Suda and Ada would argue quietly enough for him to get some sleep. They disappointed, at first, but gradually their arguments grew quieter and quieter.

Sen opened his eyes. Quiet was not a quality he'd easily attribute to those two. He looked over the vehicle. Ada was slouching in her seat, eyes glazed over, while Suda was yawning in the back seat. Hanjo had already fallen completely asleep.

The holly trees outside rustled in the wind, inviting Sen to sleep. He wasn't driving, he thought, what would the harm in taking a nap be? Suda and Ada would keep themselves awake by arguing. Sen slammed his head forward again. He was not that tired, and something else was trying to convince him he was. He slammed his foot down, jolting Suda and Ada to alertness.

"Spirit stuff! Everyone stay awake!"

Suda shook his head, trying to chase off the supernatural sleepiness. It didn't work very well. He tried to shake Hanjo awake, but was unsuccessful. Sen tried to rouse his friend again. If they were dealing with anything unusual, he wanted Hanjo at his side. Hanjo had a knack for solving problems. Unfortunately, repeated attempts to rouse his fellow orphan proved unsuccessful. Whatever was causing this sleep was very powerful indeed.

"Pull over, Ada."

"No, I should keep going," She said, fighting back a yawn. "If I can get us far enough away-"

"If you fall asleep at the wheel we'll crash. Pull over so we can put a stop to this."

Ada nodded lazily and veered them towards the side of the road. Her parking job nearly landed them in a roadside ditch, but they were all alive, so it wasn't that bad. Sen got out of the avatarmobile, fighting off an alien lethargy every step of the way. He had to physically pull Suda and Ada out of the vehicle. They barely stood up, tottering limply on the side of the road.

"What now," Ada questioned quietly. Sen had no idea. He made sure to keep Ada and Suda awake, grilling them for ideas, but they were too tired to produce any suggestions. Sen was on his own. He acted on the first thought that came to mind.

He pointed into the cluster of holly trees by the roadside and told his friends they were going that way. He had a hunch that whatever was causing this sleepiness was in that direction. Nothing really stood out to him as they entered the woods. They all seemed like perfectly ordinary trees to him. Spirits usually glowed, or had weird colors, or something like that. He pressed his entourage forward, always shouting and prodding to keep them from falling asleep as they walked. The strange force causing the sleepiness seemed to be avoiding him, but Ada and Suda were still drifting off.

"Try talking to it," Ada advised. She really did want to help, even if she seemed ready to collapse at a moments notice. She had messed up too many times. She needed to do this one thing right, no matter how tired she was.

"Excuse me, sleep spirit," Sen shouted. "It's me, the Avatar. Please come talk to me."

"Please be quiet," A voice from the roots of the trees said. Sen bent over to look at the branches. A rather drowsy looking spirit was lingering among the roots of the holly tree. It looked like a very large grape with arms and legs. Small dot-like eyes lingered half open as it lazily regarded Sen.

"Are you doing this?"

"No," The spirit squeaked. It let out a tiny yawn. "I come here to nap. Natae's very good at making people nap."

"So Natae is the one making people sleep?"

"You are very pushy, Avatar," The little purple one said. "Yes, Natae is the sleepy spirit. Now shush shush shush."

The tiny grape spirit returned to its nap, ignoring Sen's presence. The Avatar pushed his companions forward, deeper into the holly forest, looking for Natae. After a few minutes of searching, Sen found a holly tree that stood taller than all the others nearby.

"This looks good, right? Spirit's like landmarks like this."

"Very good," Ada mumbled, not even looking at the tree. "Can I go to sleep now?"

"No," Sen said. Ada let out a low, tired groan. "The longer we stay awake, the more attention this Natae thing is going to have to focus on us. He should show up eventually."

"Very smart," A deep, slow voice said. Ada fell over, landing on a bed of dead leaves, and was quite unconscious. Sen barely managed to grab Suda's arm and pull him back up, slapping him on the back to jolt him awake.

"Throw rocks at 'im," Suda mumbled. He hung lazily on Sen's shoulder, barely awake at all. Sen was alone.

"Why making so much trouble," The slow voice said again. It seemed to linger in the air for a second when the speaker was done talking, as if the words themselves were too slow to keep up.

A figure came into focus, draped across a large branch of the holly tree. It looked like a sloth skin filled with water, draped amorphously over every branch, its arm bending in seven different places as it dangled along the path of least resistance. Only the creatures head seemed to respond to anything other than gravity, slowly drifting around to view whatever it found interesting.

"All I do is make nice place to nap," The creature, presumably Natae, continued. "Then Avatar come in with hitting and yelling and…"

Natae paused. Sen waited a moment before coughing for attention.

"Anger," Natae finally continued. "Why do you do this?"

"Me and my friends are going somewhere. We can't afford to sleep."

"Everyone need sleep," Natae said. "What makes Avatar so important that Avatar can't sleep?"

Sen didn't know how to answer. He looked at Suda and Ada, hoping they would wake up long enough to give him the advice he needed. They did no such thing. Hanjo was far behind, still fast asleep. Sen was on his own. He decided to go for the most blunt approach possible.

"We are all going to die," Sen interrupted. "We're being chased by the Energybender. He's said he's going to kill everyone who helps me."

Natae stared blankly for a very long, lingering moment.

"That is so important," The spirit admitted. One of his long, noodle-like arms began a ponderous journey to his chin. "I was wanting to teach lesson about patience and rest because you are fighting so much, but that seems silly now."

"I appreciate you trying to help, but right now I need to move more than I need a lesson," Sen said. "Can you let my friends go now, please?"

Natae blinked. Even blinking took him much longer than it should. The minute action at least seemed to break the hold of sleep on Suda and Ada. Ada began pulling herself out of the pile of leaves and dirt she'd fallen into, and Suda could finally stand upright on his own.

"Very sorry," Natae droned. "I will try to help however I can. But please do not argue any more. You are Avatar, Avatar. Avatar is meant for peace, not fighting."

"I know that," Sen said. "But sometimes there has to be fighting for peace? Is that right?"

"I do not know," Natae admitted. "I am spirit of only sleep."

Sen helped a very disoriented Ada to get her bearings while he thought about Natae. He was a rather curious spirit. Most of them seemed to display a very keen intelligence, but Natae seemed a little…stupid. He didn't think his actions through. Even though he'd wasted their time and let the Energybender catch up with them, it was hard for Sen to blame him for anything.

"Goodbye, Natae. Sorry we couldn't stay to learn a lesson. Maybe someday we'll come back."

"Please no shouting next time," Natae said. Then he faded from sight. Sen guided his friends back the way they came. That had been a strange ordeal from start to finish. Hanjo was waiting in the avatarmobile, confused.

"What just happened?"

"We had an adventure," Sen said. "You slept through it."

Two of his search parties had stopped reporting in three days ago. The Energybender had no time or patience for this. Every day the Avatar was out of his reach was a day he spent growing stronger, his spirit becoming more capable of challenging the Energybender's own. But here he was, up to his shoulders in holly branches, because he was a leader, and leaders were expected to make up for the failings of their men.

Finding the search parties had been easy enough; wakening them from their slumber had been slightly harder. There was spirit magic at work, and the Energybender had no desire to waste the incredible power of energybending to wake up a few slack-jawed footsoldiers. He pressed into the heart of the holly forest and found his quarry.

"Spirit of the tree," He commanded, staring down the largest tree in the forest. "Release my men."

There was no response. He placed his hand on the tree, feeling the spirit that flowed through it. A spirit lingered here, that was certain. He pressed his power into the flow of energy through the tree, creating a pulse of spiritual force that should draw the spirit out.

"Spirit of the tree," He shouted more forcefully. "I have mastered the art of the Lion Turtle's claws. I demand you answer me."

"Very rude," Natae said. He appeared amidst the branches of the tree, draped lazily as always. "Lesson should be learned. What does-"

Natae's lesson was brought to an abrupt halt as the Energybender's hand closed around the sloth spirit's limp throat. Natae tried to fade away, but the Energybender gripped his very essence, violently trapping him on the material plane.

"Release my men," The Energybender said.

"No…fighting," Natae groaned slowly.

"I have no time for you," The Energybender said dismissively. His power surged into Natae's body, tearing at the bonds that held the spirit together. The wind filled with the sound of screaming as if from a great distance. The howling rose as the Energybender struck out more and more violently at Natae's soul.

"Release my men," he commanded again. The howling reached a crescendo as he pushed Natae to the brink of death.

Natae let out a long, slow groan, and the Energybender could suddenly hear movement in the trees behind him. He released his ethereal grasp on the spirit, and Natae immediately faded from sight. The Energybender marched through the trees back to his vehicle, passing by his disoriented men on the way.

"We are on the hunt. Move."