Chapter Two
When Aang got home, he slid his backpack off his shoulder and leaned it against his door before rushing to his computer, "Avatar" CD in hand. He sat down in his computer chair, wheeling around to face the monitor and turning on the PC. He bounced his foot impatiently against the carpet, watching the windows logo disappear and his homescreen appear.
"Aang?" Gyatso called from the kitchen. "How was your first day at school?"
"Good" Aang said, never taking his eyes off the computer. He opened the disk tray and put in the CD, closing it shut and waiting for the autoplay.
"Just good? Nothing else to add? I know what a big day this was for you."
"Yep, just good!" Aang watched as his screen turned black, followed by large letters in a stylized eastern script reading Avatar. He silently urged the loading bar to go faster as he settled his headphones over his ears and rested his hand on his mouse. Gyatso shrugged and went into the kitchen, leaving Aang to his own devices.
Avatar finished loading, and a menu screen appeared asking for Aang's student ID number. He entered it, and was then prompted to enter a password. He smiled and entered Gyatso. Another loading screen appeared, and after a short wait, Aang entered the world of Avatar.
Aang's character stood on a cliff, overlooking the sun high in the sky above a mountainous region. Fog filled the bottoms of the mountains like water in a bowl, shielding from Aang's view the earth underneath. He looked down and found himself wearing monk's robes, orange and yellow in color. On his hands he saw a blue arrowhead, and he traced with his eyes the arrow's tail as it wound its way across his arm before disappearing into his sleeve. In his hand he held a large staff, odd in design with a bulge toward the top. He fumbled with his keyboard for a moment before wings sprouted out of the side, revealing the contraption to be a glider. He made a mental note of how to work the glider before opening the menu from the top right corner of his screen and clicking the help tab, familiarizing himself with the controls of the game.
Aang studied his screen. Along the bottom of the screen was his skill bar, and at the top left there was a portrait of his in-game character, which appeared to be modeled after his school photo. Next to it was a health bar and an energy bar. The bottom corner had a chat box, which was empty. He switched from the "local" tab to the "global" one, and suddenly his chat box filled with messages. He saw he had one private message, and he opened it up.
Katara Hey Aang, where are you?
Aang smiled upon seeing who it was that had PM'd him, then responded.
Aang I don't know, no one else is around.
Katara What nation did you choose?
Aang What do you mean?
Katara When you logged in, what nation did you choose?
Aang It didn't give me an option, I just appeared here.
Katara furrowed her brow in confusion. She distinctly remembered when she had first logged in to Avatar; she had been presented with a screen asking her what nation she wished to be a part of, and had struggled with the question for the better part of an hour before Sokka told her he was Water Tribe, and she chose it as well.
Katara Are you sure you didn't just click past it or something?
Aang Positive. Do you think my game is broken?
Katara I don't know… Let's just try to figure out where you are for now.
Aang I'm in a mountain range of some sort. There's nothing around me.
Katara Press 'M' and check your map.
Aang opened his map, finding he was in the upper area of a massive continent labeled "EARTH KINGDOM". It was covered in green. The poles of the planet were colored blue and labeled "WATER TRIBES". The western islands were red labeled "FIRE NATION". He saw four small spots scattered across the globe labeled "AIR TEMPLES". Dots on the map were labeled as cities, and smaller squares were towns. Additionally, a larger dot colored a darker variant of the color of the nation it is in existed for every nation. It represented the capital of that nation. The air temples had four capitals, the water tribes had two, while everyone else had only one. Aang saw he was between the northernmost Air Temple and the city of Ba Sing Se.
Aang I'm near a city called Ba Sing Se. X: 3063,Y: 1034.
Katara Oh, so you're an earthbender?
Aang Earthbender?
Katara There are four elements: water, earth, fire and air. If you started in the Earth kingdom, you must be an Earthbender, or a non-bender. What do you have in your skill bar?
Aang looked at a bar on the bottom of his screen. He saw 10 squares adjacent to one another filling the bottom of his monitor. The first 3 contained small graphics; the first was of what appeared to be a gust of wind, the second showing a foot racing forward, and the third a small ball of air. He relayed this information to Katara.
Katara was confused. Aang's descriptions didn't match and skills she had heard of in her 3 years of playing Avatar. Usually, when you started the game for the first time, you chose your nation and began in the capital city of it, with water choosing one of their two cities to begin in. Aang must've been given a glitched copy of the game from the Mechanist. There was nothing she could do about that, however, so she decided to roll with it.
Katara Meet me in Ba Sing Se, at Iroh's tea shop. It'll be on your city map once you get there.
Aang opened his map once again, aligning himself with the direction he knew Ba Sing Se to be in. He began to run forward, before quickly realizing that it was impossible to just walk there; it would take him hours, real-time. He had to try something. Aang jumped as he ran, hoping it would speed him up, but finding it did him no good. Next, he tried his abilities. Aang clicked his second skill, the running foot, and suddenly he began to run much faster. A cloud of dust appeared behind him as he whipped by trees and rocks, racing forward at more than triple the speed he had been running before. He opened his map and saw the arrow that represented him gradually blaze a path through the mountains toward Ba Sing Se. The hours-long journey turned into one of five minutes.
Aang settled back in his chair, keeping one finger on the 'W' key. The watched the scenery go by, amazed. Aang had played video games before, but never like this. The world had so much detail, and it was just so large. Even though he was alone in an area far from civilization, every rock was detailed, every tree believable in its location. Either someone had placed things here by hand, or it was a very advanced algorithm that had built this wild. In the distance, Aang saw the walls of Ba Sing Se rise over the horizon.
Azula looked bored, just like she always did. "You know, I really don't know why they bother to reset the servers every year; we will just conquer the world again, just like we do every year."
"Yeah." Zuko replied, barely listening to her.
"Well, at least it will be fun." Azula smirked.
They sat in the living room of their families' manor, their computers adjacent. Azula's character sat on her throne, carefully typing out orders to her generals. Her eyes rapidly analyzed the map in the middle of the war room, pointing to direct representations of battalions across the world. She ordered her ships loaded with soldiers and sent to the shores of the water tribes and the earth kingdom.
Also in the war room, her brother, Zuko, watched the proceedings, only mildly interested. He waited for his orders, just as he did every year. Azula had quickly taken command of the Fire Nation once she revealed who her father was; Ozai, the original firelord, the first to lead the fire nation when Avatar was created in the 1990s. Azula had not disappointed; since her freshman year, she had led the fire nation to global conquest 3 times, and now she began her fourth.
"Why bother taking the southern water tribe? Everyone picks the northern one, anyway." Zuko asked his sister.
Azula glanced over at him with a slight frown. "I don't need to explain myself to you, Zuzu, but I will anyway, because i'm charitable like that. The southern water tribe will be easy to defeat. We will knock out their waterbenders and use the time before they respawn to burn their pathetic tribe and cripple their ability to fight. Once all hope is lost, we can worry about the other pathetic worms we must stomp out."
Zuko didn't question her logic, although he winced slightly at her wording. Sometimes, he wondered if Azula knew Avatar was just a game. "Where do you want me?"
"You will lead the southern raiders and defeat the southern water tribe for me."
"WHAT?!" Zuko shouted. "I'm the second best firebender there is! Can't I do something more important?"
"Oh but Zuzu, this IS important. If you can't do as I say now, how can I trust you to defeat the Earth kingdom later? Don't you remember your failure last year?"
Zuko cringed at the memory. He had been tasked with taking Ba Sing Se, and he had failed miserably. It had setback Azula's plans, and she was not happy. Azula's anger was a scary thing, and Zuko had no intentions of kindling the flames, so he sighed and resigned himself to his duty, no matter how insignificant it was.
Azula told everyone else in the war room of Zuko's duty, before moving on to more important topics. He bet that they were snickering at home at his sidelining, despite their non-response in game. Zuko had always taken second place to his sister, ever since their first agni kai to decide who would rule the fire nation. It had lasted less than 10 seconds, something Zuko was highly suspicious of, since they had both just played Avatar for the first time. Azula wouldn't have cheated and played before she started high school, would she?
Of course she would.
Zuko made a chat group, including all the soldiers that had been assigned to the southern raiders this year. Mostly the less promising freshmen firebenders and other classmates that had a disappointing performance in the game last year. This was his command, the southern raiders.
Zuko rubbed his temples and sighed. He was in for a long and annoying school year.
Katara blew the water beneath her ship back as quickly as she could, propelling her raft forward. A few feet in behind her, Sokka kept his hand steady on the rudder, steadying their course. At their current speed, they would reach Ba Sing Se tomorrow night, Katara hoped. She leaned forward in her computer chair, resting her cheek on her hand and pressing the '3' key every 30 seconds to keep her character propelling the ship forward. Her TV played a sitcom in the corner of her room, which she turned to when she got bored of staring at the water on her screen. Sokka had brought in his computer and set himself up across the room from her, and he was laughing obnoxiously at the TV. Katara smiled slightly in amusement, more at Sokka's reaction than at the show itself.
"So, have you figured out what's up with Aang's game yet?" Sokka asked, momentarily taking his eyes off the TV and looking at his sister.
"I have no idea. We'll have to ask the Mechanist tomorrow." Katara responded, hitting the '3' key absentmindedly. Aang had just started Avatar for the first time, and he had already deviated from the norm. He was a weird kid outside of the game too, Katara thought, remembering his excited demeanor at the prospect of going to school. Maybe it was a good thing that he was so happy, because Katara found happiness was contagious.
"He was just in the mountains near Ba Sing Se?"
"Yeah. It'll take him forever to get there. We might even beat him to it." Katara said. She glanced at her screen and saw she had a new private message from Aang.
Aang Here! Where are you?
Katara's jaw dropped. She checked her map again, finding the place Aang had been and tracing with her finger the shortest route to Ba Sing Se. It should've taken him hours to get there.
Katara How did you get there so quickly?
Aang I just used my run ability. Where are you?
Katara We just passed the southern air temple, we'll be there sometime tomorrow night. What run ability?
Aang My second ability, remember? It makes me run really fast. The southern air temple? That's so far away! Maybe we should meet halfway. How about General Fong's base?
Katara Sure, that's fine. See you there.
"He's already at Ba Sing Se, so now we're meeting him at General Fong's Base" Katara said aloud.
"What? How?" Sokka asked, turning to look at his sister.
"I don't know, he said he had some kind of run ability. This just keeps getting weirder. I don't know of any nation that has that power.
"We'll have to ask the Mechanist at school tomorrow. He probably gave Aang his personal copy of the game or something."
"Yeah, we'll ask tomorrow. For now, turn toward Fong's base."
"Sokka adjusted the rudder and their ship sped off toward their new destination, racing along the waves to the light of the setting sun.
/Author's Note/
Map I used:
photos/mudron/8306408148/sizes/o/
Auberjonios is the name of the voice actor who voiced the Mechanist. Also, if it wasn't clear, the place Aang started in was meant to be the cliff he overlooks in the intro to the show, when the camera pans up to the sun and Katara says, "But I believe, Aang can save the world."
I would like to thank everyone for their reviews and for reading my story. I do intent to keep working on it, even if it takes me a while between updates. I hope to fall into a rhythm soon.
Sorry for the weird formatting, copy/pasting from google docs doesn't seem to work so well. I've tried to fix it up some, but it may still look weird, I don't know.