The door to the airport offices slammed open like a thunderclap. Sen stomped through, his exhausted friends following close on his heels. Since receiving the news of Miyani's plane crash, Sen had made a beeline for her last known location. He he'd barely slept, barely spoken, and never stopped, moving with a desperate energy no one had seen since his manhunt for Sarin. His arrival in the small airport settled in like a storm cloud threatening to burst forth with lightning. The manager of the airport, who had been anticipating, or rather dreading, his arrival, stepped up.
"Avatar Sen, we've, uh prepared everything we can, we have the private hangar available for examination, and the prep crew waiting in the office nearby, and, and, the last known location from the plane's radio transmitter logged..."
His words gave Sen something to focus on, and a glimmer of thought returned to the instinct-driven Avatar.
"Zas, Ada, check the hangar. Whistler, Hanjo, with me. Suda, get that location and Ariak, get the boat ready."
As the Avatar's team scattered, Hao chose to tag along with Ariak, and prepare the boat they'd ventured this way in. There was not much ground to cover -this was a small, private airport at the tip of the Fire Nation island chain, usually nothing more than a stopgap destination to refuel and resupply. The Avatar his companions swept through it with ease. The office was only a few steps away, and Sen found what he was looking for almost immediately. He'd brought Hanjo and Whistler along owing to their proficiency in deception, but the person he was looking for was very poorly disguised -at least to Sen. He recognized the aberrant touch of Sarin's energybending anywhere.
"You!"
Sen snapped forward with lightning speed and took hold of the disguised soldier's collar. The other flight crew scattered to the side as the artificially created bender sneered at Sen.
"You're one of Sarin's men," Sen snapped.
"Kalden's men," the soldier snapped back. While he may have defected from Sarin's armies and gone into hiding, the defector still believed in the cause he had once fought for. "Sarin was nothing but a disappointment. Kalden would've-"
Sen tugged on the soldier's collar to shut him up. He'd lost all patience for talk of the energybender long ago.
"What did you do to Miyani?"
"I got even," the soldier taunted. Sen pulled on his collar again, this time swinging him bodily off his feet and holding him against a nearby wall.
"I don't have time for this," Sen shouted. "Tell me!"
"What are you going to do?" The soldier spat. "You weren't even man enough to kill Sarin, at the end of everything."
The tautness on his collar faded slightly as it gave way to a new form of pressure -a metal staff pressed hard into his throat. Whistler had partially unfolded her glider and pressed it against their unfortunate saboteurs neck.
"He doesn't have to do anything to you," Whistler growled. "He just doesn't have to stop me from doing what I'm going to do."
Whistler increased the pressure on his neck. The effect was obvious. While Whistler shared Sen's distaste for taking life, she was far more willing to inflict pain, a fact that their captive was well aware of. He decided it wasn't worth any further trouble. He'd always been planning on telling Sen eventually. He just wouldn't be able to torment the Avatar as much as he'd hoped.
"I put a bomb in her plane's engine," the soldier gasped. The staff retreated from his throat slightly, only due to Whistler recoiling in horror. "It was set to go off a few hours after takeoff, when she'd be miles out to sea."
Sen stepped back. His fists clenched so tight Whistler could hear his knuckles crack, on the edges of her blurred senses. While she reeled, the soldier's smug smile grew ever wider.
"Now you know what it's like to lose the future you fought for," he said. He had spent all this time waiting to deny the Avatar's dreams, just as his own dream of the future had been taken from him by the Avatar. Long months spent tracking down the place Miyani's plane visited, and then infiltrating, getting himself in the right place at the right time, had all paid off. Or so he thought.
"Not yet," Sen said. There was an unshaking certainty in his voice, though it was marked by a sense of urgency. "She's alive. We need to move."
While the saboteur was hauled away in chains, Sen reconvened with his allies. Zas and Ada had little to show for their investigation, but Suda approached the office table waving a thick stack of papers and a folded up map of the area.
"These are the coordinates from her radio transmitter before things went south," Suda said. "I can't make heads or tails of all these numbers, but I figure Sen-"
Without waiting for Suda to finish, Sen snatched them from his hands, unfolding the map on the table. He flipped through the sheets of coordinates with one and marked of a trail of red dots with the other. While they didn't understand the exact methods he was using, all his allies could see one clear pattern forming. The route from this airport to the one in Republic City was a straight shot, but Miyani's flight took a curved path.
"Why was she flying off course?" Ariak wondered aloud.
"Not just off course," Sen said. He made the final dot on his line in the middle of the ocean, and marked the spot with an "x". "She was flying low, and very slowly."
"Well, that's good, right?" Suda said. "Means her crash wouldn't have been as bad, and she was a lot closer to land."
"True," Sen said. "But why?"
"We can ask her when we find her," Hanjo said. "Where's your dad with the boat, Sen? Hao?"
Hearing his name get shouted, Hao left the dock and wandered back to the meeting.
"How's the boat going, Sen's dad?"
"It's uh, a bit slow going," Hao admitted. "That waterbender friend of yours had something else to do."
"My apologies, Hao, but I called an old friend," Ariak said. He appeared in the open door of the airport and beckoned the group out. "I got us an upgrade."
Cutting through the waves like the spear it was modeled after, the Blade Ship surged towards the water, coming to a halt at the docks with expert precision despite its speed. It had barely secured its place at the docks before the gangplank came down.
"Oh yeah, that thing," Whistler said. "I forgot we had that."
"We did sort of leave it on a random shoreline," Ada said.
"And the Shorewatcher's got it back, obviously," Ariak said. "It's yours for as long as you need it, Sen."
With a quick, grateful nod, Sen ascended the gangplank. He'd been expecting to see a familiar face at the helm, and he did find one, but not he one he'd been expecting. Rather than Surma, Sen found himself face to face with Alrok. Sen's one-time tutoring classmate saluted sharply and put his hands on the wheel.
"Good to see you again, Sen," Alrok said.
"You too, Alrok, but I'm not really in the mood to catch up," Sen said. Alrok nodded understandingly as Sen held out the map he'd marked out Miyani's course on. "Take us to these coordinates, full speed ahead."
"Will do, Avatar," Alrok said. He began barking orders in every direction, and the crew of Shorewatchers set to work getting the Blade Ship moving yet again. The fastest vessel in the waters vanished from the docks as quickly as it had arrived, slicing through the seas once more on the quest to find Miyani.
Hanjo, who had never gotten a chance to ride the big fancy boat, took a moment to appreciate the vessel, despite the circumstances. He toured the sleek interior and examined some of the cabins before sidling into the cabin to watch Alrok work.
"Hanjo, right?" Alrok said, keeping his eyes on the seas even as he conversed.
"The one and only, until all the babies named after me grow up," Hanjo said. There were a lot of them. He'd checked. He was proud to say he was the third most popular Team Avatar inspired baby name, Sen obviously being first and Ada being the second. "You're Alrok, yeah? Sen mentioned going to tutoring with you. And that time you helped stop a prison break."
"Hopefully more of the prison break than the tutoring," Alrok said. He'd been better at saving the day than schoolwork, though he'd ultimately been solidly 'okay' at both.
"Solid mix of both, really," Hanjo said. "How'd you end up behind the wheel of this thing?"
"To be honest, I'm a lot better at the captain gig than I am at crime fighting," Alrok admitted.
"Nothing to be ashamed of," Hanjo said. "Everybody's got their part to play."
Hanjo paused for a moment. Alrok picked up on the lull in conversation.
"Nothing to worry about, Hanjo, I'm really good at this," Alrok assured him. "We'll catch up with Miyani in no time."
"I'm sure," Hanjo said. "It's nothing."
Hanjo had been planning on asking to pilot the blade ship for a little bit, but that odd feeling had disrupted his train of thought. He stood up and took a look out the window. Sen was standing at the prow of the ship, staring intently at the horizon. Some distance behind him, Hao stood on the sidelines, staring at Sen with equal intensity. Hanjo rubbed his chin, and wondered what part Hao played.
The wreckage of the small plane began to take shape in the hold of the Blade Ship. Most of the fore section had been torn to shreds, and the smaller components carried away by the current, but the bulk of the machine was there. The Shorewatcher divers were still bringing up pieces from the sea floor just to be sure, but Sen had enough to work with.
"Small, not large enough to injure Miyani herself," he said. The blast damage was contained to the area beneath the engine and propeller, not reaching the cockpit.
"Given what we know of her trajectory and altitude, and that our Shorewatcher friends have not found any evidence of a- well, it's very likely she survived the crash," Zas said. "That leaves the question of where she is now."
Without a word, Sen left the reconstructed wreckage behind and headed for the deck to scan the horizon. Hanjo and Ada, and the ever-present Hao, stayed at his side while other members of his team scattered to help pick up leads. Sen squinted at the rising sun and examined the waters. There were several large islands nearby, all of them uninhabited. In the distance, Sen's eyes caught a quick glimpse of twin spires of rock, curved in on themselves like the fangs of a serpent. The setting sun slipped nearly perfectly between the stone peaks. Sen stared at them for a moment, and then turned his head to the westernmost of the islands.
"I think she went that way," Sen whispered. Hanjo lifted a pair of binoculars in the direction Sen indicated before handing them over to Ada.
"You sure about that, Sen? That's a heck of a ways to swim."
"If I had just crashed I'd be heading to dry land as soon as possible," Ada said. Sen shook his head.
"That'd be the sensible thing to do but...something's wrong," Sen said. "The sensible thing to do would be to find high ground and keep an eye out for a ship, but Miyani's not doing that, or she could have easily signaled us by now."
The Blade Shop was a massive target, difficult to miss, and had been idling in place for about two hours now as they examined the plane wreckage. It was hard to believe that she hadn't spotted them, if she were anywhere nearby. Ada frowned at the entirely correct logic. Between taking her plane off course and her apparent aversion to being easily rescued, Miyani's actions seemed entirely irrational.
"I'll send somebody to scout the islands, just in case," Sen said. "I think we need to split up, cover more ground. Ada, you and Zas head for the capital. You two are going to coordinate the groups and make sure we're all alerted if anyone calls in that they've seen Miyani."
Ada saluted sharply and headed for the speedboats while Zas stayed behind briefly to help coordinate. Sen turned his attention to other groups, instructing some of the Shorewatchers to scout for Miyani on nearby islands. Ariak stepped up with a chart in hand, displaying it to the Avatar, and indicating to the east.
"Sen, the currents here flow this direction," he said, tracing a route with his finger, "If Miyani was clinging to any floating debris, she could have been swept along with the current. I think we need to check it out, just to be sure."
"Good thinking. Take Hanjo and follow the current," Sen said. "Suda, Whistler!"
The last two unassigned members of his team stepped up and snapped to attention.
"This may sound strange, but I want you two to go to Hayao's island," Sen said. The two shared a quick glance. Gai Zhu, and Hayao's volcanic lair, were halfway across the Fire Nation. Sen noticed their concerns and allayed them. "I know, I know, but...Hayao's got a strong connection to Miyani. He might know something."
"If you say so, boss," Whistler said.
"This'll work out," Suda assured them all. "We'll probably be halfway there when you tell us to turn around and join the welcome back party."
Sen offered a half-hearted smile and a nod. Suda realized that his attempts to make Sen feel better were futile for now and did the one thing that could really help: get moving. Suda and Whistler sprinted to action while Zas passed on an order to one last Shorewatcher, and then turned his attention to the leader of the operation.
"And that leaves Hao," Zas said. Hao was surprised to hear himself get brought up. Sen had overlooked him thus far. "As good a choice for an assistant as any. You've got about two decades of tracking experience, haven't you?"
"Not very successfully," Hao said sullenly. Zas clapped him on the shoulder heartily.
"Experience is experience," Zas assured him. "Here, I'll give a you few pointers before I go."
Zas led Hao by the shoulder across the deck of the Blade Ship, some distance away from the Avatar. As soon as Zas knew for sure that the distance would thwart Sen's exceptionally sharp senses, Zas pulled Hao even closer.
"Look, Hao, I'm going to be honest, I don't think you'll be much help in the conventional sense, but Sen still needs you," Zas said. "He can get...intense, when his emotions are running strong. He focuses too much, to his own detriment. I think having you around, making him think about his past, the life he could have had, will help keep his head clear."
"You want me to distract him to keep him focused?"
"I know it sounds contradictory, but Sen's like that," Zas said. "His strength is that he can see everything at once, but when he gets like this, it's a sort of tunnel vision. He loses sight of a lot of things that could help him. You need to keep him looking at the big picture."
Hao looked at his son, who was now shouting orders at Alrok to take them towards the island he suspected Miyani to be on. His every word was edged with a desire Hao knew very well. Sen was looking for someone he deeply, truly loved.
"I think I can help him," Hao said.
"I'm certain you can," Zas said. "Good luck."
Zas released his grip on Hao and sped off to join Ada. A swarm of speedboats sped away in every direction, leaving Hao and Sen alone on the prow of the Blade Ship, hoping to pick up Miyani's trail.