Chapter 3: The Swamp

Tyler didn't recognize the place they were flying over until it was too late. In fact, he was asleep until Sokka started shouting.

"Aang! Why are we going down?"

"What?" Aang muttered, wiping his forehead with his hand, as Tyler groaned awake, "I didn't even notice."

Tyler's vision started to clear up and he looked around. Sure enough, Appa was descending at a steady rate.

"Are you noticing now?" Sokka said sarcastically.

"Is something wrong?" Katara asked.

Aang looked down with a slightly fierce expression, "I know this is gonna sound weird, but... I think the swamp is... calling to me."

"Wait..." Tyler mumbled, still trying to wake up, "Swamp?"

Sokka held his stomach, "It is telling ya where we can get something to eat?"

"No, I... I think it wants us to land there," Aang replied.

"No offense to the swamp," Sokka said, "But I don't see any land there to land on."

"I don't know... Bumi said to learn earthbending, I would have to wait and listen, and now I'm actually hearing the earth. Do you want me to ignore it?"

"Yes!"

"I don't know..." Katara put in, "There's something ominous about that place."

As Appa continued to descend, Tyler peered over the saddle to look as they get closer. And that eerie feeling he got from months ago... and his eyes widened at the familiarity of the swamp.

"Aang, pull up," Tyler commanded.

"What?" Aang asked, now confused.

"AANG!!! PULL UP NOW!!!"

But before anyone could do anything, there was a load noise, and a moment later, a large tornado appeared out of the swamp, moving at terrifying speed in pursuit of the kids, tearing up the swamp as it went.

Appa tried desperately to evade the tornado, Aang manipulating the reigns furiously. But by then, the tornado was right on top of them, and they were unable to distance themselves. As the whirlwind came down on them, Sokka was blown off the saddle, Katara catching his arm and Tyler catching his leg, and they held on for dear life. As Sokka screamed, Aang jumped out of the driver's seat and onto the saddle. He then instantly created an air bubble around them and Appa just as they were sucked into the tornado.

They fell back into the saddle as Aang struggled to keep out the whirlwind. He failed, though, as one of Appa's toes began to stick out of Aang's protective air blister. Aang's barrier collapsed and they were engulfed in the tornado, which threw them out in all different directions. Appa was ejected deep into the swamp, knocking down much in his path as witnessed by the dust and dirt cloud that erupts over the swamp canopy.

The Gaang landed inside the swamp and into the muddy water. It was dark in there, even though it was still daytime, since the swamp canopy blocked out most of the sunlight. A second later, Aang dropped in, using his airbending to cushion his fall. Sokka, Tyler, and Katara got up out of the water, Sokka rubbing his head and making pained sounds.

"Where's Appa and Momo?" Aang asked, airbending himself through the trees and emerged at the top of the tree canopy, calling fruitlessly, "Appa!! Momo!!"

"Sokka!" Katara warned, "You've got an elbow leech!"

Sokka freaked out, "Where?! Where?!"

After he stopped moving, it was clear that the leech was hanging from his elbow.

Tyler crossed his arms and looks coolly at him, "Where do you think?"

Sokka angrily ripped off the leech and threw it near Katara, "Why do things keep attaching to me?!"

Katara looked angrily at her brother for a moment before Aang swung on a vine back towards them and she asked, "You couldn't find them?"

"No..." Aang answered sadly, "And the tornado... it just disappeared."

XXX

Later on, realizing they had to find their animals as quickly as possible, the Gaang made their way through the swamp. Sokka just... wasn't in a good mood, using his machete to cut through vines and leaves.

Aang looked concerned at this, "Maybe... we should be a little nicer to the swamp."

Sokka continued to chop through the vines anyway, saying, "Aang, these are just plants! Do you want me to say "please" and "thank you" as I swing my machete back and forth?"

Katara also looked concerned, "Maybe you should listen to Aang. Something about this place feels... alive."

Sokka was now slightly annoyed as he gestured with his machete, "I'm sure there are lots of things that are alive here, and if we don't wanna wind up getting eaten by them, we need to find Appa as fast as we can."

As Sokka began cutting again, Katara addressed Tyler, "You seemed a bit panicked before we were sucked up by that tornado. What was that about?"

"Probably because I've been here before," Tyler answered bluntly.

"Wait, what?" Aang said, very surprised.

"I crashed here on my way to find you guys," the Image explained, "I experienced the same thing you did. Before I knew it, I had hit a tree and fallen into this swamp. I decided to explore a bit before getting into the air again. While I was here, I experienced... something weird."

"What was it?" Sokka asked, now intrigued.

"I encountered... a hallucination. I saw a girl, and she looked like she was from the Water Tribe. But that wasn't what caught my attention. She seemed to be training... but she was firebending."

"What?!" Katara exclaimed, "A girl from our tribe... firebending?!"

"That's exactly what I thought. But before I could say anything, she was gone. Like dust in the wind. Something's definitely off about this place. I have no idea what it was trying to tell me, but I doubt I want to find out."

"Oh please," Sokka said, not believing his friend at all, "That sounds like you hit your head too hard. Now come on, we better start a campfire."

After they had stopped to ponder what Tyler had said while Sokka got firewood, Katara asked, "Does anyone else get the feeling that we're being watched?"

Sokka responded in annoyed tone, "Please, we're all alone out here."

He started swatting at a fly with his machete and missed, but suddenly, the fly turned into a ball of incandescent light. The kids shielded their eyes from the light, and right behind them in the swamp, many glowing eyes looked at them up and down. The Gaang turned their heads to look at the sinister eyes.

"...Except for them," Tyler mumbled, scared now.

The eyes disappeared behind them, and they grabbed each other in a group hug, Sokka now terrified, "Right, except for them."

The fire began dying out by the time they got in bed. Unbeknownst to them, vines snaked their way across the ground, winded around each of their legs, and then around their whole bodies. They woke up screaming, all of them being pulled in different directions.

XXX

Once Tyler got himself free, he got up and tried to find his friends, but ultimately knew there was only a slim chance of finding them. This swamp really loved to mess with his mind. The disembodied voices didn't help either.

Oh yeah, there were disembodied voices. Probably what creeped him out the most was that every voice he heard was his voice. And he was fairly certain that he had never said these things before in his life.

"What we have here is a rare opportunity for me to go all out and show you just how powerful I am."

"You're in my world now."

"Just because... I know I'm going to die... doesn't mean I want to..."

"I'm sorry..."

But the next voice wasn't his at all. It was a girl's. She was introducing herself, but her name was muffled out, much to Tyler's confusion and frustration. It kinda sounded like this.

"My name is K(muffled). I'm here to help."

"If you're gonna make me hear voices, swamp," Tyler grumbled, "At least have the common courtesy to give me their name..."

But the next voice sent shivers down his spine, despite not knowing this voice either.

"NO MATTER HOW MANY OF YOU THERE ARE, YOU'LL NEVER STOP ME!!!"

"YOU'RE PERSISTENCE AMUSES ME!"

"SORRY KID, BUT YOU'RE MY PUPPET NOW! HAHAHA!!!"

He covered his ears, getting a bit freaked out by the constant voices, and when sounds of battle became assimilated with them, Tyler took off running, not wanting the Post Traumatic Stress to kick in. And eventually, he smashed into the rest of the Gaang... literally. They had all ran into a clearing at the same time and ran right into each other.

"What do you guys think you're doing?!" Sokka exclaimed, "I've been looking all over for you!"

"Well, I've been wandering around looking for you!" Katara said, displeased with Sokka's attitude.

Aang airbent himself to his feet, "I was chasing some girl."

"What girl?" Tyler asked.

Aang helped Katara to her feet, "I don't know. I heard laughing and I saw some girl in a fancy dress."

"Well, there must be a tea party here and we just didn't get our invitations!" Sokka said sarcastically.

Katara was quiet and looked down, "...I thought I saw Mom."

There was a pause again before Sokka said, "Look, we were all just scared and hungry and our minds were playing tricks on us. That's why we all saw things out here."

"You saw something too?" Katara asked him.

Sokka turned away, "I thought I saw Yue. But, that doesn't prove anything. Look, I think about her all the time, and you saw Mom, someone you miss a lot."

"What about me?" Aang put in, "I didn't know the girl I saw."

"Neither did I the first time I came here," Tyler added, "And I didn't see anything this time. But I heard voices. But they were all my voice, saying things I've never said before. And then I heard a girl introduce herself, but her name was muffled out. And for some reason, I think it might be the same girl from my last vision."

Tyler opted to not tell them about that last voice. What he had said was far too eerie to discuss right now.

"And all our visions led us right here," Aang finished, scanning around as if looking for something.

"Okay... so where's here?" Katara said, gesturing in front of them, "The middle of the swamp?"

"Yeah, the center..." Aang answered.

Tyler looked up and realized that they were standing at the base of the largest tree imaginable.

"It's the heart of the swamp," Aang explained, "It's been calling us here... I knew it."

Sokka got very frustrated, "It's just a tree. It can't call anyone! For the last time, there's nothing after us and there's nothing magical happening here!"

Tyler was about to retort, but at that moment a huge swamp monster, seemingly made of vines, burst from the water behind a log. The four kids cried out in terror.

"You want to say that again, Sokka?!" Tyler yelled.

The monster was made out of swamp vines and had a very simple, carved wooden mask on its face. The vine monster swung at the Gaang, and the four broke up and ran in different directions. The monster grabbed Sokka as he ran away and began flailing him around. Aang turned and knocked Sokka out of the monster's grip with a blast of air and Sokka fell into the water with a yell.

The monster then knocked Aang way back with a sweep of its arm. Sokka cut the vines around him with his machete as more the vines start rising out of the water. The vines attached themselves to the monster and rebuilt the right arm that Aang had damaged with his blast of air when he released Sokka. The monster swung at Sokka and grabbed him again.

Katara skated across the water in a graceful curve and fired a jet of water through the creatures left shoulder. The creature dropped Sokka again, a large hole in its left shoulder. Katara squared off against the creature as it filled the hole with more vines. Katara skirted around the monster as it swung a few times and missed. She sprayed some water at it and then concentrated, building a large wave and washed the creature backwards. Sokka screamed, as he is once again in the monster's clutches.

Tyler then ran next to Katara and parted the water between them and the monster. Both of them ran down the dry earth in front of them, but the creature knocked them backwards with vines that grew right out from its body.

Aang ran back to the fight as Katara and Tyler sailed the other way, yelling as they went. Aang turned back just in time to get smacked backwards by another vine appendage. The monster placed Sokka on its chest and began to suck him in, with Sokka struggling, but to no avail.

Tyler and Aang approached rapidly across the water, seated on his metal board and airball respectively. They rode up the monster's torso and back as the monster swung at him and misses. Aang landed atop its head and began to make a whirlwind around the monster. The whirlwind twisted the vines that composed the monster into a huge coil. Meanwhile, Tyler began to try to freeze the water to entrap the monster.

Katara made a few waterbending motions then blew a breath out that froze the water vapor in front of her and froze the vines around Sokka. She rose a column of water behind her that propelled her and Sokka through the chest of the monster and into the water behind. The monster repaired the hole in its chest and began to advance on the pair.

Aang and Tyler jumped through the air and landed on the monster's back, but jumped back onto the ground and the monster blasted them out of the way again. They went flying through the air and landed back in the water.

Katara turned back to the monster, an expression of determination on her face. She began to rapidly fire loops of water at the monster as it approached. The loops got larger the farther they got from Katara and as they struck the monster, the water sliced the vines apart. Tyler caught a glimpse of the inside of the monster, realizing that there was a man inside the monster. Katara continued to rapid fire and the monster began to disintegrate, revealing a few more glimpses of the man inside.

"There's someone in there!" Tyler exclaimed, realizing what the man was doing, "He's bending the vines!"

Katara twirled around in a bending move and sliced the mask and the head of the monster with a mighty lash of her water whip. The head and mask fell into the water as a bunch of vines grabbed Katara. Sokka and Tyler watched as Aang flew back into the picture and, with a single blast of air, blew away the rest of the monster to reveal a fat, leaf clad man.

Aang looked at the man angrily, "Why did you call me here if you just wanted to kill us?"

The man dropped the rest of the vines around him, "Wait! I didn't call you here."

"We were flying over and I heard something calling to me, telling me to land," Aang replied.

"He's the Avatar," Sokka explained, "Stuff like that happens to us... a lot."

"The Avatar!" The man said, surprised, "Come with me."

XXX

The kids and the man, who introduced himself as Hue, were climbing the exposed roots of the great tree at the center of the swamp.

"So, who are you then?" Katara asked.

Hue bent a vine out of their way, "I protect the swamp from folks that want to hurt it."

He let them pass, before aiming his next statement at Sokka, "Like this fellow with his big knife."

"See? Completely reasonable," Sokka said, not getting the message, "Not a monster, just a regular guy defending his home. Nothing mystical about it."

"Oh, the swamp is a mystical place, all right," Hue replied, "It's sacred."

Hue sat down, "I reached enlightenment right here under the banion grove tree. I hear it callin' me, just like you did."

"Sure ya did," Sokka said sarcastically, "It seems real chatty."

"See, this whole swamp is actually just one tree spread out over miles..." Hue said, "Branches spread and sink and take root and then spread some more; one big living organism, just like the entire world."

"I get how the tree is one big thing, but the whole world?" Tyler said.

"Sure. You think you're any different from me? Or your friends? Or this tree? If you listen hard enough you can hear every living thing breathing together, you can feel everything growing. We're all livin' together, even if most folks don't act like it. We all have the same roots, and we are all branches of the same tree."

"But what did our visions mean?" Katara asked.

"In the swamp we see visions of people we've lost, people we loved... folks we think are gone. But the swamp tells us they're not. We're still connected to'em. Time is an illusion, and so is death."

"But what about my vision?" Aang asked, "It was someone I had never met."

"Same here," Tyler put in.

Hue smiled, "You're the Avatar and Image. You tell me."

"Time is an illusion... so, it's..." Aang said to himself before looking up at Hue, realization spreading across his face, "Someone we will meet?"

Hue smiled and winked at the two. Sokka stood up and addressed the group.

"Sorry to interrupt the lesson," he said, "But we still need to Appa and Momo."

"I think I know how to find them," Aang replied, leaning forward and placing his hand on the tree root.

He closed his eyes and began to concentrate, "Everything is connected."

The arrow tattoo on Aang's hand began to glow. In a few moments, the tattoos stopped glowing and Aang looked up hurriedly.

"Come on! We've got to hurry!"

XXX

They found Appa and Momo tied up and ready to be eaten by a duo of men in boats, both dressed like Hue. Aang launched a jet of water beyond the boats and destroyed the one farther one that does not contain the two men.

Aang appeared on the tree branch that held his pet bison, "Appa!"

Aang unleashed a blast of air that knocked one guy off the boat. He dropped the bag with Momo as he flew off and Momo got out and flew away.

"We're under attack!" one of the men yelled.

One waterbent a wall of water up at Aang and Katara, who had joined Aang on the tree branch, which they bent away from them. Katara bent back and forth as she manipulated the water.

"Hey," Katara realized, "You guys are waterbenders!"

"You too?" one guy said, "That means we're kin!"

Katara looked vaguely horrified at that thought, the water wall collapsing between them. Sokka, Tyler, and Hue ran up the tree branch to Aang and Katara and looked down.

One guy put his hands on his hips and smiled, "Hey, Hue! How you been?"

Hue smiled sheepishly, "You know, scared some folks, swung some vines, the usual."

XXX

They all made campfire and the kids and the swamp men, the two men introducing themselves as Due and Tho, around it. They were all eating meat off shish-kabobs.

"How you like that possum chicken?" Due asked, a catfish crocodile sitting just behind Hue and Tho.

"Tastes just like arctic hen," Tyler admitted, finding it surprisingly tasty.

"So why were you guys so interested in eating Appa?" Sokka said, examining his kabob and pointing at the catfish crocodile, "You've got plenty of those big things wandering around."

Due looked at him incredulously, "You want me to eat old Slim? He's like a member of the family!"

Due took a fish off his kabob and tossed it at Slim, who ate it in one bite.

"Nice Slim!" Sokka said nervously, throwing a piece of roasted insect at Slim, but it bounced off his mouth.

Slim turned and growled at Sokka, who recoiled in terror.

Due laughed, "Oh, he don't eat no bugs! That's people food."

"Where d'you say you're from?" Tho asked

"The South Pole," Katara answered.

"Didn't know there was waterbenders anywhere but here," Tho said, "They got a nice swamp there, do they?"

"No, it's all ice and snow," Tyler said.

Tho and Due looked surprised, Tho saying, "Hmm. No wonder you left."

Sokka turned to his sister in a slightly sanctimonious tone, "Well, I hope you realize now that nothing strange was going on here. Just a bunch of greasy people living in a swamp."

"What about the visions?" Tyler asked with a raised eyebrow.

"I told you, we were hungry," Sokka argued, lifting up his meal, "I'm eating a giant bug!"

"But what about when the tree showed me where Appa and Momo were?" Aang asked.

"That's Avatar stuff, that doesn't count," Sokka retorted before turning to Hue, "The only thing I can't figure out is how you made that tornado that sucked us down."

"I can't do anything like that," Hue said, "I just bend the water in the plants."

Sokka tried to sweep the issue under the carpet, "Well, no accounting for weather. Still, there's absolutely nothing mysterious about the swamp."

Suddenly, Sokka felt a tap on his shoulder. He turned to look, but there was nothing.

"What was that?!" he exclaimed, looking around.

Everyone else laughed, but admittedly not knowing who tapped Sokka's shoulder... except for Tyler, who kept on smirking, nobody noticing the metal that reentered his pocket.

XXX

Well... I actually did not plan for Tyler to hear that last voice... Looks like someone decided to make a cameo...

You got that right! I thought I just have to warn Tyler of what's coming! And tell him to stay out of it.

Whatever. I'll stop you when we get to that point. Till next time guys!