Chapter Eight: Invisible Flame
Katara countered a ball of fire with a ball of water from her canteen. Steam was all that was left afterward.
'If I don't defeat this brat soon, I'll run out of water...' Katara thought worriedly.
Close by, Toph was smiling as she and the oldest boy fought. He raised his right hand toward Toph, his middle and index fingers extended. If someone looked closely, they would notice a rippling effect, like the heat escaping from a hot roof or from above a fire, but otherwise his attack was invisible. It snaked around to behind Toph and just a second before the attack reached her, a wall of rock busted up from the ground and shielded her.
"Again?!" the boy demanded. "How can ya see my attacks?! They're completely invisible!"
"I guess I should have told you before we started. I'm blind," Toph told him.
"That makes even less sense!"
"So you really don't know, then... Fire puts off heat," Toph replied with a smirk. The boy widened his eyes in realization, now understanding that she can feel the heat from his attacks before they come in contact with her directly. He smiles.
"I'm glad I've the pleasure 'a battlin' ya. They call me Vissie, by the way."
"My name's Toph. Nice to met you."
---
"Are you sure you should go back on duty so soon, sir?"
"Yes! Now, out of my way!" the general demanded of the nurse. He stood, a grimace flashing across his face from a sudden pain in his bandaged side. He quickly masked his look of pain and started walking toward the door.
"Is there a reason for your sudden departure, general?"
With wide eyes, the man turned to see the Fire Lord standing behind him. "It's my duty to guard the city, my lord. As long as I can stand, I should be fighting for the Fire Nation," he said and bowed to Fire Lord Ozai. Ozai let the general leave, but watched him go with skeptical eyes, wondering what he was really up to.
---
Sokka got most of the way down the playing field. The next space was the one missing a square.
"Are you going to go or what?! You're holding up the game!" 'Scotch called.
"I'm going, I'm going!" Sokka called back. He attempted the jump and his right foot landed successfully on the square, he was seriously unbalanced, but he regained his balance after a few seconds. Then he noticed that his left foot was on the ground outside the square. He quickly grabbed his left foot again and redid the jump successfully, then made it back to the start in record time while saying, "Wait! I can do it! I can do it!"
"No redoes!" Once you mess up, you don't get a second chance!" 'Scotch said. "Now I have one point and you have zero." Fire begun writing their names on the ground close to the starting point. Under 'Scotch's name a 1 appeared and under Sokka's, a 0. "You begin round three," Scotch said and snapped her fingers. Now the playing field was a total of sixteen spaces in length, and there were three more blockless spaces. Sokka stared at what he now had to complete - knowing that making it to the end and back was his only way to keep from losing.
---
The stowaway from Zuko's boat had the same idea as Aang's friends. As he put on the finishing touches of the Fire Nation uniform, the robbed soldier came to and mumbled something through the piece of tape that was covering his mouth. Now tied up and only wearing a pair of boxers, the man didn't look much like a member of the fire nation army.
'It's nice to wear a uniform again... Sometimes I miss it...' the stowaway thought sadly and sighed. He walked over to the soldier and took the tape off his mouth. "Are you going to tell me where Prince Zuko was taken?"
"He's no longer a Fire Nation prince! You know that! He's a traitorous-" the soldier got out before the tape was replaced.
'And to think I used to consider us as friends... Oh well... I have a pretty good idea of where Zuko is being held, anyway.'
---
Vissie dodged a attack of boulders and then extended both of his hands to surround Toph with a invisible string of fire. When she felt a drop of sweat running down her cheek, Toph immediately earthbended herself above the fire on a pillar of earth and bended several rocksicles toward the boy. Vissie just barely missed one of them.
"You're good..." he said with a smile.
"I know I am," Toph replied proudly.
---
Aang was still in the tall grass, trying to get the ropes off of himself. He noticed a small stream close by. He watched as the water ran over a deteriorating ice cream cone, slowly washing parts of it downstream. He tried waterbending some of the liquid over to him. Moving his fingers in order to navigate the small amount of water was making his wrists hurt, but he knew he had to get the ropes off somehow. He pushed the water up and down over the ropes that were over his wrists, trying to make them erode away.