Chapter 13: Under Stone

They'd been driving nonstop since leaving Shen's Post. Taking it in shifts at first, between the three drivers, and then even teaching Sen how to drive just so they could keep it up longer. Two people would attempt to sleep in the rumbling backseat of the Avatarmobile while one drove, and the other helped the driver stay awake. It had worked well for a few days, but as time went on shifts got shorter and shorter. The strange sleeping schedule was wearing down their endurance gradually. They'd been going in shifts of eight hours before, now they were down to four. It wouldn't be long before none of them could keep their eyes open. Sen, in the passengers seat, was desperately brainstorming with Suda for ways around this.

"We've got to stop eventually," Sen moaned haggardly. "If we don't all get some real sleep we're going to pass out before we get anywhere."

"We're still three days out from the port," Suda replied. Their hasty retreat from Shen's Post had put them very off course. Their new destination, Tunuk Bay, was farther away than they would like.

"We could try stopping, actually making a camp, but they'd just use the time to catch up with us. We don't know how far behind us Howler is."

Whenever they'd driven through a city on their journey, Ada had turned on the radio, trying to overhear some news about the movement of Howler's troops, but there was no information. For all they knew the Energybender was just out of sight, ready to close in the moment they slowed down.

"We need to find some way to slow them down at the same time," Sen said. "Like, put a wall between us and them somehow."

Suda had himself an idea. He reached into one of the Avatarmobile's various compartments and pulled out the map of the area. He traced the line of the road they were travelling on with his finger. Finding what he was looking for, he slammed his hand down in satisfaction. Maybe he was just tired, but he was very proud of his idea.

"Hey, you two, get up," He shouted into the backseat. Hanjo was slightly rested, but Ada had just finished her shift driving an hour ago and she was not enthused about the idea of opening her eyes. She mumbled something rude to Suda and then twisted around in the seat, trying to get comfortable again.

"I have an idea, and then we can all sleep once you agree with me."

Ada remained quite obstinate. It was difficult enough to sleep in a moving satomobile without being interrupted. Hanjo rubbed his eyes and was ready to participate, Suda relied on Sen to demonstrate the map, since Suda was still responsible for driving.

"The road curves to go around these mountains here," he began, having Sen point to different parts of the map. "But the map says there's an old walking path here, where the mountain range is narrowest."

"We can't abandon the car, Suda," Hanjo said. "It's got all our stuff, we'd never make it to the Fire Nation if we leave all the supplies and money behind. We can't go back to foraging in the woods, we barely made it the first time."

"Not to mention foot travel would be a lot slower."

"We're not going to abandon the Avatarmobile," Suda said. "We're going to drive it through the mountain. Your badgermole buddy can make a tunnel for us."

There was a pregnant pause in conversation. In one way, it was the dumbest thing Hanjo had ever heard, and in other ways it made perfect sense.

"Let me see the map," Hanjo said. Sen handed it over and Hanjo examined the parts of the map he'd pointed out. He found something he didn't like.

"Suda, even at the narrowest part, those mountains are fifteen miles wide."

"Yeah, but look at the road around them. That's nearly a day of driving. We know Gun can tunnel about as fast as this thing can drive, so going fifteen miles would be a cakewalk."

Suda had a point. Gun had an uncanny speed to his tunneling. If he could do as well in front of the satomobile as behind it, they could make it through the mountains in less than an hour. There would be a few hours of off road driving to get off the road and back onto it after the tunnel, but all in all taking this route would save them around twelve hours of time. Not much, in the long run, but enough time for them all to get some real sleep and eat a decent meal, refreshing them for the next marathon drive.

"I'm sold," Hanjo said sleepily. "Sen, you're in charge, what do you say?"

"Sounds okay to me," Sen said. Hanjo had noticed that Sen usually just agreed with every idea he heard. He'd yet to see Sen make any real decisions of his own. Now was not the time to bring that up, though, so Hanjo turned to the girl trying desperately to sleep.

"Ada?"

The snoozing secret agent gave out a frustrated 'hmph' and twisted once again. Hanjo marked it down as a yes.

"Your plan is go, Suda," Hanjo said. "Now shut up and let me sleep again."

Suda obliged, and Hanjo quickly returned to his futile attempt to nap in the rumbling, awkward backseat. This had been so much easier when there'd only been three of them, and you could actually lie down in the back. Now there were two people in it at all times, so you had to awkwardly position yourself to avoid kicking your partner in the face. Hanjo wouldn't mind that in some cases, but Ada could probably kick pretty hard so he avoided it in this particular pairing.

They had a ways to go before reaching the narrow point in the mountains, so there was still some driving to be done. Suda kept himself awake by pestering Sen with questions.

"So, about this badgermole, anyway," Suda began. "Is he special or something? He's gotta be tunneling like sixty miles an hour on average."

"I don't know, honestly," Sen said. "Maybe they can all do that and they just don't want to. Gun keeps up with us, it's all I know."

"He must really like you guys," Suda said.

"He doesn't like Ada much, actually. I think he only likes Earthbenders."

"Well then maybe we should get Ada out of the group before he gets to be the size of a house. I wouldn't want to be on the bad side of something that big."

Sen did wonder what they were going to do with Gun once he got to be full sized. He'd been small enough to fit in a truck bed when they'd first met, now he was nearly the size of a satomobile. At the rate they were moving, he'd be full grown by the time Sen was learning waterbending, and badgermoles weren't known for living in arctic climates. Training with the Water Tribe might be a challenge.

Sen had the feeling it would work out somehow. Gun was their animal guide, after all. He had already surprised them more than a few times.

"I don't think he'd hurt anyone. Unless I told him to."

He had hurt all kinds of people in Shen's Post. Gun's ability to emerge from the ground and take enemies by surprise had downed more than a few of the Energybender's troops.

"Yeah, how does he do that, by the way? I mean, all you did was stomp your foot once, and then he did exactly what we needed."

"That's another thing I don't know," Sen said. Sen assumed it had to do with Gun's ability to read vibrations in the ground, but how did the badgermole intuitively know what Sen wanted done? It was another mystery for them. Sen didn't like mysteries.

"Sounds to me like you need to get to know the big guy better," Suda suggested. Sen agreed. Now that he thought about it, he'd rarely taken the time to actually bond with Gun. He was sort of taking the Animal Guide relationship for granted.

Suda passed the time with progressively more inane questions until his shift was over, at which point he declared that Sen was in charge, booted Hanjo out of the back seat, and promptly rolled over to attempt to sleep. Sen was glad to have Hanjo back at his side. Suda was nice, but they hadn't had much time establish a repartee. Talking with Hanjo was more natural.

"Do you ever wonder what's going on back at Beaker Hall? Like, what the heck happened to all those other kids once we left?"

"I'm hoping they all got on with their lives," Hanjo said. "That place was depressing."

"Maybe some of them will even meet their parents."

"Hah," Hanjo spat. He seemed offended by the idea. "That'll go well. 'Gee son, we abandoned you to a cruel, uncaring world the moment we got scared, but now that you're no longer a threat, lets be a family again!'"

"You sound like you resent your parents."

"What? No," Hanjo said, shaking his head. "My parents are dead, Sen. Didn't I tell you that?"

Sen shook his head. Hanjo was surprised. He thought he'd mentioned that earlier.

"Well, I am an actual orphan, unlike a lot of people at Beaker Hall. I remember reading my own paperwork in the office once. My mom and dad died when some earthbending thief collapsed a wall to make his getaway, accidentally knocked down part of the building."

"I'm sorry," Sen said. In a way it was good that Hanjo had actual closure on his past, but in other ways, Sen thought it had to be hard knowing your parents were gone.

"Don't be," Hanjo said. "All I ever knew about them is ink on paper. It's tough, sometimes, wondering what it would've been like, but if I had to choose between knowing my parents are dead or knowing they'd chosen to abandon me…Well, I think I'm doing alright."

Hanjo remembered the day he'd snuck into the headmaster's office to read his own file. It wasn't long after he'd found out he was an earthbender, when he was nine or ten. He'd been bullied by the other kids for being a bender, for being anything like the Avatar, and he'd been so hurt and upset he'd gone looking for someone to blame. Almost every other kid at Beaker Hall had been abandoned by frightened parents too terrified of the Energybender to love their own children. He thought he was the same, so when he went looking for his past he thought he was going to take some kind of childish, petty revenge on the parents who'd abandoned him. Imagine his surprise when he'd found out their fate. It had put a lot of things in perspective for him at a very young age.

"But, ah, what about you," Hanjo said, breaking out of his retrospective. "Ada said you didn't have any paperwork. No way to tell where you're from, who your parents are…did you ever think about it?"

"To be honest, no. I just sort of coasted along until, well, you know."

Hanjo could remember the quiet days at the Beaker Hall orphanage. He must have seen Sen hundreds of times in those crowded hallways and lunchrooms, but the future Avatar had never stood out, not even once. Hanjo often wondered how someone as amazing as the Avatar had been hiding away in such a meek shell.

"Well, what did you think about? You had to have some kind of hobby, or dreams, or something like that."

Sen did remember one dream of his, but it didn't seem like a big deal compared to what his actual life was turning out to be. He could say it anyway, though.

"I sort of wanted to be on a construction team," Sen admitted. "One of those earthbenders that puts buildings together."

"That has got to be the absolute lamest dream I've ever heard," Hanjo laughed. "It's a good thing you're the Avatar or you'd have turned out to be a total nerd."

Sen agreed that wanting to be a construction worker was a little silly. Most people thought of it as the worst use of bending talent. Sen just liked the idea of working with other people to put something together. He supposed in a metaphorical kind of way that's what you did as the Avatar, but he wasn't as interested in metaphors.

"Say what you will, that's what I thought my calling was," Sen said. "Don't mock my dreams, Hanjo."

"I am going to mock your dreams so much, Sen," Hanjo retorted. Then he did just that. Sen didn't even know you could make that many puns about construction.

Sen distracted himself from the endless stream of awful wordplay by double-checking the map. They were only a few miles away from the tunnel site now, so he shut Hanjo up and focused on the road. There would be a sign at the roadside showing where the new highway intersected with the old walking path from before satomobiles existed.

Hanjo spotted the path and veered onto it. The old road was serviceable for driving on, but without actual pavement the satomobile began to jerk and vibrate rapidly. Suda and Ada were violently awoken by the sudden change in stability. Suda at least was expecting this, but Ada was caught off guard and grabbed her sword by instinct. She was frazzled, confused, and frightened, and Suda decided to calm her down as soon as possible. His old wound was just starting to heal, he didn't need a new one.

"Stop, calm down, everything's according to plan," Suda said, scooting away from her blade. "We're taking an off road shortcut."

Ada took a deep breath and put her sword away. Suda relaxed. Once she'd rubbed her eyes enough to regain full mental faculties, Ada questioned what was going on. Sen explained the plan to tunnel under a mountain. Ada started rubbing her eyes again, because she clearly hadn't done it enough the first time. Sen was telling her that they were going to drive through a mountain, and that clearly wasn't possible. She asked him again what was going on, and he repeated himself. She looked around at her companions.

"This is what you come up with when I'm asleep," she groaned. "Follow the badgermole through a mountain."

"It worked for Sokka," Hanjo said. "You're the one with the Avatar history books. Avatar Aang, Book 2, Chapter 2, Cave of Two Lovers. It's all there."

"Our badgermole is even kind of trained already," Sen said. "So it should work even better for us!"

That actually made a little bit of sense. She'd studied Sokka's history in great detail during her swordsmanship training. The incident in the Cave of Two Lovers wasn't the most illustrious episode of his life, but it had all ended well. Ada was willing to go along with it, especially if she actually got to make a real bed. She kept her mouth shut for the rest of the bumpy ride.

After around two hours driving along the winding footpath, the satomobile hit a place where it could go no further. a steep incline took the path up a winding, narrow climb, far too thin and steep for the satomobile to negotiate. This would have to be their starting point for the tunnel.

The four occupants of the Avatarmobile climbed out, stretched their aching limbs, and then all ran off in different directions. After some long-neglected basic bodily functions were attended to, they reconvened at the site of the vehicle and began to set up camp. There was little conversation beyond what was needed to coordinate the effort. Every one of them wanted to pass out as soon as possible. One by one they collapsed onto poorly-made bedrolls.

An indeterminate amount of time later, Sen was the first to wake up. He had never felt quite so rested in his life. Even sleeping in a real bed in Zang after napping on the dirt for a month hadn't been quite as satisfying as this. He felt refreshed from head to toe.

The sun was low in the eastern sky, showing that the day was still new. That was good. Sen had been slightly worried that they might oversleep and cost themselves more time than they'd planned for. They were still on schedule for now, so Sen started putting a breakfast together for the rest of his travelling companions. They had burned through most of the actual food already, and were left with packaged rations and scraps, but he did the best he could.

The rest woke up one by one as the scent of food called to them. Morning conversation consisted of a few remarks on how good it felt to have a full night of sleep. Suda made a few remarks as Gun crawled sleepily out of the dirt. Apparently he had taken advantage of the rest stop as well. Sen stepped away from breakfast to check up on him.

The young badgermole seemed to be no worse for wear after nearly a week of non-stop tunneling. He had clearly not groomed himself in recent days, since his fur was matted with dirt and mud, but everything else seemed to be okay. He was still as healthy looking as ever, not malnourished or exhausted at all. Sen helped Gun bend the soil out of his striped fur, and within a few minutes he was right as rain.

"This is a big day for you, pal," Sen said. Gun showed absolutely no indication that he understood, but Sen kept talking anyway. "Think you'll be up to the challenge?"

Gun's blind eyes stared blankly forward. Sen knew he'd be more responsive when the time came. Gun hadn't disappointed them yet. He returned to some friends who were more talkative and discussed the plan for the day.

"So I figure we should have the earthbenders set up to smooth out Gun's tunnel, just to make things easy on the avatarmobile," Hanjo suggested. "Ada can drive, Gun will lead, and the three of us will take shifts keeping things smoothed out."

"That works for me," Ada said. "We'll have to take it fairly slow if you're that concerned about the tunnel's integrity."

"I don't think that'll be a problem. We'll start it slow and see how Gun does."

Gun's head turned when he heard his name. He'd learned to recognize it at some point, but he didn't seem to know many other words. Most of their communication was done by Sen stomping his foot.

"Even if we're only going fifteen miles an hour, we'll still clear the whole mountain range in an hour," Suda added. "I've got a hunch Gun can tunnel a lot faster than that."

Sen started to walk Gun through what they were doing. He slammed his heel against the mountain as the rest of the group packed up their supplies and moved the Avatarmobile into place. Gun sniffed at the mountain, somewhat confused. Obviously that wasn't going to cut it.

Sen thrust his hand forward, digging out a portion of the mountainside with his bending, and pushed it aside, creating a few feet of tunnel. He stomped his heel once again, and repeated the process a few times, digging a bit of tunnel and stomping his foot in turn. After Gun noticed the Avatarmobile following Sen into the tunnel, he got the picture. Gun took a spot alongside Sen and began tearing at the earth with his claws and his bending, opening up the tunnel much faster than Sen could.

Sen and Gun dug the tunnel out side by side for a while, just so Gun would get a good picture of his tasking. Working alongside the badgermole was interesting. Something about the way he moved was much different than any earthbending Sen had seen from Hanjo or Suda. The way Gun planted his feet and swept his front limbs seemed more intuitive, more connected to the earth. Subconsciously, Sen began to mimic Gun's movements.

After a time, Gun began to grasp his task, and he started tunneling ever faster. There was no way Sen could keep pace with Gun once the badgermole hit his stride, so he found his way back into the Avatarmobile and helped keep the makeshift road clear of holes and pitfalls. Gun's tunneling was fast, but far from perfect, leaving behind a greatly irregular trail.

Ada informed them that they were travelling about twenty-five miles an hour on average, which should get them through the mountains in less than an hour, provided everything went smoothly. The satomobile's headlights only illuminated so much of the tunnel, and it was hard to tell if Gun was digging in a straight line. The speck of daylight from their tunnel entrance had long since faded away.

"Hey, not that I don't think Gun's doing great," Suda shouted. "But could he go even faster? I mean, he can do that, right?"

"Yeah, but I don't think he's motivated," Sen shouted back. Gun's claws ripping through solid stone made quite a bit of noise, and it was hard to talk over it. "He's in front of us, not chasing us."

"What about some singing," Suda asked. "Badgermoles love singing. That might make him pick up the pace."

"Get to it then," Hanjo suggested. "You're a bandit, you must know some shanties or something."

"Shanties? You're thinking of pirates."

"Bandits are basically land-pirates," Hanjo said. "Do you know any or not?"

"No."

Hanjo asked Sen, who also couldn't sing, and then he looked expectantly at Ada. She shook her head.

"We're making good time. Don't worry about it."

"But can you sing or not," Hanjo asked.

"I cannot," Ada said. She demonstrated by chiming a few off-key notes of a popular love song. Gun actually slowed down while she 'sang', and they all shouted at her to stop. Gun picked up the pace again once the tone deaf serenade had stopped.

"Okay, we believe you," Hanjo said. His arms were getting tired, so he traded tunneling-clearing duty with Sen. Smoothing out all the stones required them to sweep their arms almost like they were rowing a boat, and it wore out your arms very quickly. Had anybody been around to watch them move along, they would have found the sight of four teenagers in a satomobile flailing their arms and chasing down a badgermole to be very comical.

The loud noise of Gun's tunneling made conversation very difficult, which left them all with plenty of time to contemplate the fact that they were sitting underneath several thousand tons of solid rock. It didn't help their fears that it seemed to get darker the longer they traveled. That was impossible, Ada knew, because the headlights were working very well, but it still seemed to be happening. It was just her fear making her see things. She had learned how to kill most of the monsters lurking in the darkness by now, but she had never quite shaken off the fear of the shadows. She reminded herself that she had two swords at her waist and pressed on through the darkness.

Over time Gun gradually got faster, for whatever reason, and Ada was all too happy to keep pace with him. The darkness inside the vehicle made it impossible to check any clocks to see how much time had passed.

"Have any of you been keeping track of time," Ada shouted to the earthbenders. Hopefully one of them had some inkling of how much time had passed.

"Long enough for my arm to get tired six times," Suda shouted. He was still only capable of bending with one arm, so he had to take much shorter shifts than Sen or Hanjo. All their shifts were getting much shorter, as well. It was like a much more rapid version of the sleep issue they'd faced earlier. At least it was decent earthbending practice for the two students.

Ada checked the speedometer again. They were up to forty miles an hour now, and Gun showed no signs of slowing. At this rate it wouldn't be more than twenty minutes before they got through the mountain.

Ada's mathematics, unfortunately, were affected by the fact that she couldn't keep track of time. In reality, their rate of speed would take them out of the mountain in a span of time further from twenty minutes and closer to twenty seconds.

In their calculations for tunnel digging, the entire group had neglected to consider that the ground on one side of the mountain was not necessarily level with the ground on the other side. Gun had tunneled in a perfectly straight line, as he was supposed to, and thanks to his diligent tunneling they were now exiting the mountainside at forty miles an hour, three-hundred feet above the ground.

There was a brief moment where they hung in midair, while forward momentum was still pushing them forward harder than gravity was pulling them down, and they had a brief second to contemplate their mistakes. Ada came to her senses the quickest.

"Do something!"

The sound of a panicked voice broke the spell holding them in the air, and they began to plummet downwards. None of the earthbenders were buckled in, and Suda and Hanjo were sent flying towards the back of the vehicle by the sudden, sharp drop. Sen got the worst of it. He had been leaning out the window to take his turn smoothing out the tunnel, and the sudden drop swept him the rest of the way out the vehicle, giving him barely enough time to grab the frame of the vehicle and keep himself from getting swept away. His glasses went flying off his face and vanished into the distance.

Gun didn't have the luxury of a handhold, and he was left to free fall, quite blind without the use of his seismic sense. He wiggled his paws fretfully, looking for a way to regain his footing and his sight, and found nothing. Sen put Gun's predicament on his short list of things to solve during their very brief plummet.

By his estimation they had a few seconds left before they hit the ground and went splat like bugs on a windshield. If the Avatar State hadn't kicked in by now, it probably wasn't going to, so he was going to have to use some conventional bending. He noticed a slight curve to the slope beneath them. If he could earthbend the soil just right, he might be able to make a ramp at the right angle to keep them from crashing. But to do that, he needed both his hands.

He let go of the Avatarmobile's windows, sending himself flying backwards. He heard a short scream from someone in the vehicle as they saw him drift away. He oriented himself in midair and swept his hands upwards. The mountainside beneath them rose up the catch the vehicle. Either Hanjo or Suda caught on to the idea and started working with Sen to create a proper ramp. With that in hand, it was time to save himself and Gun.

He pulled another rock out of the mountainside, putting it on a trajectory with himself. He had intended to stand on it, but being airborne made it hard to aim that specifically, and he ended up hitting himself with a large rock. He was still on the rock, though, so it was progress. With another twist of his arms, he sent the stone flying towards Gun. The badgermole was all too eager to dig his claws into the stone and hold on for dear life.

The collision with the mountainside was not easy, but they survived. Sen heard something go "pop" very loudly, but so far as he could tell all his limbs were still attached, so he could still bend. He did everything he could think of to soften the landing for their impromptu ride, but the impact was still jarring, and he was knocked off his feet. It ended up being Gun who saved them both. He grabbed Sen in his limbs, curled into a ball, and as they hit the ground, the badgermole rolled, and the ground rolled with them, surrounding them in a shielding ball of earth like an armadillo-beetle rolling into its shell. The sphere of earth protected them from most of the worst impacts with trees and terrain, but it wasn't perfect. At some point in the ride, Sen blacked out, and the rest of the experience was a blur to him.

The ride was going significantly better for the people in the avatarmobile. Suda and Hanjo had regained their composure and were managing to keep the earth in front of them as smooth as possible. They had to toss aside entire trees and boulders, which was no small feat, but the fear of death could make a person do incredible things. Ada was exempt from this principle, non-bender as she was, and she spent most of the ride holding on to her seat for dear life while screaming loudly.

With a screech and a hitch, the avatarmobile came to a halt after a nearly mile long plummet down the mountainside. Suda and Hanjo stepped out of the vehicle, and promptly fell to the ground in complete silence. Ada released her chair, leaving an imprint of her hand in the armrest behind her, and stepped out of the vehicle. She clenched her pounding chest and scanned the surroundings.

"Sen?"

Some distance, but not that far, away, Sen laid on his back in a mound of dirt. Gun was sniffing him intensely, either checking to make sure he was alive or looking for a treat he thought he deserved. He called back to let Ada know he was there. Ada responded.

"Are you dead?"

"No."

"Is Gun dead?"

"No."

There was a brief pause as Ada took stock of her existence.

"Am I dead?"

"No."

"Oh, that's good," Sen heard her voice call. Then he heard something go thump. With a groan, Sen grabbed Gun's head and pulled himself upwards. He leaned heavily on his Animal Guide as he hobbled back towards his friends.