Aang was surprised to see a new structure jutting up from the middle of the main street. It was a single rock, shaped like a jagged dagger and exceeding even the local minaret in height. Normally such an arrogant feat of construction would be offending the monks, but since there hadn't been any for years, he felt it was safe to explore it, and in two leaps he reached the top.

"What did I miss?" he asked Toph, who was hunched at the peak, looking down vaguely contemplative.

She sighed. "Not much. Nothing really happened."

Aang folded his arms. "Let's start with the fact that we're standing on a mountain that wasn't here when I left this morning to get Appa."

"Didn't you make me a referee? How else was I gonna get a good view."

"Of what?"

"Nothing, I said!" Toph stamped her feet, cracking the rock below. Aang was as concerned about her temper, as he was about the structural integrity of the platform. "Nothing happened. Infuriatingly so."

He stared down towards the town square below them, and was puzzled by two new earthworks in opposing corners. It also provoked a mild flush of jealousy. He could travel far, but Toph could conjure up a house wherever she wanted. It was about time he learned the same. "What are those?" he asked, his patience fading.

"Arena. Even better than the one I made this morning."

He rubbed his forehead. "Are you sure I didn't miss anything?"

"I told you!" More cracks in the ground. "Nothing but boring talking and talking, and most of it among themselves. Didn't you say that you guys had legendary fights with this guy and his family?"

"What are they talking about?"

"Well, Sugar and Stupid are in the bunker to the left. And it's a beautiful bunker - I put it close to the well so they've got ammunition - but they rewarded my tireless efforts by arguing with each other, how Zuko could possibly have done it, and why, and what they could -"

"Done what?"

Toph looked back at him, presenting a mighty frown, as if her gestures and voice hadn't sold her vexation yet. "Kidnap you. You were late."

His reverence passed away in an instant, swept away by the wave of realisation. "Ugh! And you, rather than suggest they come find me; you built them an arena?"

"Well initially it felt like they were gonna use it."

Aang groaned, knowing that there was little he could do to educate the girl, and leapt down to the centre of the square, amplifying the sound of his landing for good measure. He did the same to his voice, and shouted: "Guys, it's okay! This time I'm not kidnapped, or captured, or stuck in a ball of ice!"

"A welcome change of habit!" Iroh shouted heartily, while Sokka made a tired comment about wishing a block of ice. All four left their bunkers, and surprisingly the oldest among them moved the lightest.

"Sorry, it was just the logical conclusion…" Katara threw a suspicious glance at Zuko, before relief returned to her face. "But what took you so long?"

"Well, someone else was kidnapped." His voice lowered, and he looked at his feet, but then at Zuko and Iroh, not entirely certain what to make of their presence. "Are they sticking around?"

"Seems so," Toph mumbled, having descended from her hillock behind them. Much like the final crack of a dying fire, she threw her fists downward, and with a sharp crack followed by a drawn-out rumble it collapsed into a pile of pebbles.

"Did you find your sky cow?" Zuko's single comment drew the ireful looks of Katara and Sokka, and he put a step backwards, lowering his head and displaying some faux-regret for having dared to open his mouth.

Aang looked at him. He could only guess at what had transpired between him, Iroh, and Aang's companions, for his presence to be treated as the new status quo, but the result was all the same. Zuko was with them; the same Zuko who had chased down each of them for months, over the entire globe, catching up to them at various occasions. Every encounter had ended in violence; even the one when he, clad in a dark suit and a blue opera mask, had liberated him from Zhao's clutches and the prospect of a lifelong imprisonment.

But was it the same Zuko? There appeared to be little left of him; he had lost his ponytail and a great amount of weight, and his eyes, though not one bit dimmer, were sunken into his skull to such an extent that it was hard not to take a pity on him.

The time would come to understand their precise arrangement, and the miraculous events that had lead up to it, but he had promised Zuko that, under different circumstances, they could have been friends. In the abandoned town in the middle of the desert, this was the last place he would go back on his promise. "If they are with us to stay," he said with confidence, "then I think we can forge some much-needed trust if we all together go find the missing mammal."

-0o0o0-

Appa sneezed in mid-flight, and a few more stubborn leaves were duly expelled from his fur. It was a hairy variety of greenery, much like himself, and he would likely be foilaged until they hit a tornado, to his and his passengers' dismay.

And a diverse set of passengers it was.

"So it's Momo who was taken," Sokka asked incredulously. He was scratching his head with one hand while gently leaning the other on the saddle railing, which Iroh still clutched tensely enough to whiten his wrinkled knuckles. Zuko too looked stiff as a board, and Toph and Katara had taken turns commenting on the altitude and pointing out specific clouds to him, even if the latter had stopped when she had noticed Iroh's disquiet.

But by far the least comfortable of Appa's new freight was Zuko's ostrich horse: even bound and blindfolded, he could not be kept still without Aang leaving his usual seat on the bison's head and petting the animal with care the skinny creature had evidently been lacking. Although, he was forced to realise, the horse did not look mistreated: just underfed, like his owner.

He looked at his companions, more snug than usual on the crowded saddle. "I camouflaged Appa over and walked him back. Whichever forces managed to kidnap Momo, they're obviously really powerful, and I did not want to risk facing them alone." He grinned a broad smile at the two newest members. "And you two are welcome too!"

"And we will do our best," Iroh said carefully. He paused, looking worriedly at the skies once more before fixing his gaze on Aang. "To make ourselves useful, that is. Which will be easier on the ground, I say!"

"We're flying to the crime scene, though I did already investigate it thoroughly." Sokka raised an eyebrow, but Aang didn't let him interject. "I already found several lemur-sized traps. One of which had been recently re-set."

He jumped up, and scoured the saddle from end to end; gesturing people to move and let him look under them. Only Zuko refused to do that; he hadn't moved a muscle since boarding. Aang shook his head, and then finally found a packaged bundle underneath the ostrich horse's tail feathers. It whinnied softly as he unpacked and presented the small wooden contraption.

The design was typical; a cage with a door that would shut itself behind whatever creature had been tempted by the berries placed inside. It would not harm its victim, but leave it trapped for the poacher to retrieve - as one evidently had, the very same morning, apparently right before Aang had found his bison.

Sokka bent over the trap with no less hunger than Momo would have had for the fruit inside, and examined it twice from every angle. "You're not letting us get a look at it," Katara protested, but he only waggled his finger at her, and Aang knew to let him. Iroh made a comment about patience, and Zuko was habitually silent.

After a full minute of intensifying frowns from his sister, he finally abated, and put the thing down with his chin raised in brazen pomposity. "Ladies and gentlemen," he declared proudly, "we're going to Whale Tail Island."

A splash of ennui descended down upon the other party members, by which some were physically pushed back into their seats. "Dare I ask why?" Toph said, adequately representing the collective with her lethargic snark.

"There's whale bone in it." He held out his palms, presenting his irrefutable conclusion. "And it's not Water Tribe design. So tell me, where else are you going to find whales?"

"But one must first wonder, why one would put whale bone in a lemur trap," Iroh said, scratching in his beard. "I crafted those knickknacks when I was a youngster. You can put them together from strings and twigs; this one is exorbitantly fancy." Sokka was silenced by that remark, and rubbed his own chin where, to his dismay, only soft fuzz was present.

Katara turned the thing around, and expressed her agreement with the statement. Besides the bone elements, the wood was lacquered and the hinge well-oiled. It looked to belong more in a museum than a forest. She was ready to pass it to Aang when she noticed a single character inscribed in the floor of the cage.

"Yep, that's our other clue," Sokka remarked before she had had a chance to comment on it. "But I can't read it. That sign didn't come up in any of the scrolls we had to read at the South Pole."

Aang scratched his bald scalp. "I don't recognise it either; but my literacy is a hundred years out of date."

"And it's almost that long for me," Iroh chuckled after giving it a look. "But this looks like a seal - and they invent new ones whenever they establish new families, companies, towns…" He passed it to his nephew, as the other three conversed about what place or person it could refer to. There were a number of settlements nearby that were in range for poachers, not to mention families and private individuals. It would be a long search for a single lemur.

"I would hate to comment," Zuko mumbled. Every eye looked at him, except for Toph who had been staring before herself for the entire conversation, and the ostrich horse who could look at nothing under the blindfold. "But I recognise that sign. Saw it not far from here, when I was passing by last week."

"Listen, if this is..." Katara began irefully, but Zuko wouldn't let her finish.

"So now I kidnapped the monkey too!?" He spread out his arms, and ended up hitting his horse and uncle on their respective flanks, compelling both to hilariously similar snorts. "I am with you guys for the moment, whether we all like it or not. Which we obviously don't. But be reasonable, for one second."

"Thank you Zuko," Aang said after a brief pause. "Where are we headed?"

"South," he replied, and he closed his eyes with a groan. "Follow the river, left at the bifurcation, and then it's the first town with two bridges." They turned, and continued the voyage in silence.