Burn My Dread FES
By Iain R. Lewis
Disclaimer: Characters and concepts belong to Nickelodeon, some of the concepts are similarly inspired by Persona 3 and Persona 4, property of ATLUS games.
"I play my role when I rip the mic apart, I do what I gotta do to place a spark. I'mma put it down, seeking no crown anymore."
- Deep Breath Deep Breath -Reincarnation-
Lotus Juice
Chapter 18: Glitch
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You are alone in a room. What do you do?
Wait.
You wait. Time seems to go on forever. Something is wrong. Your captors have been gone for a long time. You don't even remember what they kidnapped you for. Being a princess in one of these adventure games sure is hard work.
Sigh longingly.
Since you are a damsel in distress, you really don't have much in the way of options, and since you haven't met your One True Love and Prince on a White Horse quite yet, most of them are moot.
It seems something is happening.
Investigate.
The walls of your cell are starting to fall apart at the seams - literally! Who would have thought that you'd be locked in a cell with paper thin walls. This could be your chance to escape! But, there's still the matter of protecting yourself out there. Who knows what could happen.
Examine the cell.
It's not exactly all that secure anymore, but for as long as you can remember, you've been locked up here. Gross! That wolf that even wizard sent to fetch you brought back some stuff and they're all slimy and covered with saliva.
Examine 'stuff.'
It's a bunch of stuff. Not much more to say there. But, hey, is that a sword? You don't exactly know how to swing them around, but you do understand the concept of pointy end goes into the bad guy, so it's better than nothing.
Pick up sword.
Now we're talking! It's not like any sword you've ever seen, not that, as a princess, you go around looking at men's swords all the time - really, what sort of princess would? - but still, most swords aren't black.
Leave cell.
There's still something nagging at the back of your mind. Maybe you should take one more look around the cell.
Do that.
I don't understand the word, "That".
Examine cell again.
It's a cell. At least, that's what it looks like.
Get frustrated.
I don't understand the word, 'Get.'
Look for anything useful in the cell.
Those sure are nice fans. Probably should get those, too.
Pick up the fans.
They're shiny and gold, and kind of sharp. Better put those away carefully.
Put fans away carefully.
You've already done that!
Leave this cell as quickly as possible.
You walk out of the cell. You are now in the caverns, lowest level.
Yue was not conscious.
Zuko wouldn't have been either in her place, he figured. The ruins around them stopped looking so much like ruins and became an indescribeable mess of numbers and off-color pixels. Whites turned black, black turned orange, and the creatures appeared.
They weren't pixels, they weren't part of the game, they were something else. He kept a sullen watch while Yue slept with his cloak behind her head.
What was going on?
Just when he thought he'd seen everything, and he was certain at this point that if he ever wrote a book about his life, it'd be placed firmly in the Fiction section, the maze throws them another curveball. Perfectly Sokka, unpredictable and even, just a little, dangerous.
In the shadows, anything could be lurking: friend or foe. He felt on edge, he felt alone, he felt...
He felt alive.
And then she had to shatter it by waking. "What happened?" she sounded so quiet and apologetic. She tended to do that, he realized, taking on all responsibility. It was for that reason she felt so bad about her own jealousy that she buried it deep down.
"Don't ask me, I was hoping you'd be able to tell me."
"I'm not certain. Though, everything seems different now," she said, standing up slowly. Her eyes focused slowly to the darkness and she paused as she noticed the off-tone footsteps she made. "Oh dear. Is this normal?"
"No."
"Oh dear, oh dear," she continued, looking more fretful, "I think something dreadful must have happened. How long was I -"
"Not long."
A long sigh, but keeps smiling, her patience never waning. "Zuko, we need to be quick. I think the others have finally entered the ruins."
"Took them long enough."
"But, I sense something powerful moving below us, as well!"
He grunted, throwing a glance behind him, before he stood. "Let's hurry, then."
"Yes, I think so. But I'm worried. Will this place force us to be enemies in spite of ourselves?" she wondered. Zuko paused, but shook his head.
"I don't think the game is holding up. Someone's broken it."
"Broken it?" She tapped her lips pensively, looking around, "How?"
"Glitched it or hacked it, I don't know. I'm not great with computers," he answered, moving forward with a brisk pace. Yue called out for him to wait, and he stopped. Turning back, he saw her pick up his cloak and carry it over. "Come on, we need to get to the others."
Azula hated darkness. It wasn't a conscious thing, either, which made her all the more uncomfortable about it. The ruins were filled with darkness, the braziers - if that's what those blue blobs were, anyway - carried black flames.
"A glitch!".
Sokka continued to rant about the obvious. Azula wouldn't have any of this. "We know, we're not computer illiterate like Zuzu."
She just wanted out of the darkness. She did not want to go back there. She was free, she was finally free and she wasn't going back!
"Azula, are you okay? You seem," Katara's voice came across patronizingly, hesitating for the right word for only a second, "Tense."
"Tense, hah. Power Princess is stiff as a rock. Don't worry, nothing's going to sneak up and eat you!"
"I'm quite all right."
"You know, Azula, you don't have to act like you're alone," Katara said, quietly, "We need to rely on each other to make it out of here alive, whether we like it or not." Distinctly, she was closer to the not category. Katara seemed to be much of the same.
"I said I'm all right."
"Guys, leave her alone," Sokka interjected, "If she said she's all right, she's all right."
It felt odd to have him stand up for her. Usually he was going off like a small animal, yapping angrily and impotently at her heels. He actually looked in control for a second. The girls stopped, falling back into step.
"What's the place look like?" Toph asked. "Because it feels all - not-right."
"That's about how it looks," Katara answered quickly, "I don't like it - why is Aang leading us here?"
"Sokka's evil twin's got to be nearby."
"And the others, maybe," Sokka answered. Toph shrugged, grin never wavering.
"Yeah, them too."
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"What does that even mean?" Azula asked no one in particular. Apparently, she was the only one who heard it, but everyone else was too busy looking around. "Am I hearing things?"
"I hear something, too," Katara said, "Something's here."
"Yeah, something ugly," Toph muttered. She didn't hear any noise like that. Perhaps the sounds of the world around them descending further into a full-on system crash. That didn't seem good, with them inside the system, but whatever they were talking about seemed a little more immediate.
"Where?"
"I don't know. This place is weird, I can't get a fix on them." Toph shifted her feet, "They're close, though, and closing!"
"Great, looks like we're in for a fight. I bet this glitch has made all of the monsters more dangerous, too," Sokka said. Azula wanted to protest. Everything in this darkness seemed more dangerous.
The echoed sound of something scraping along the ground, for example, seemed ominous, like a long, metal implement being dragged behind a lurching figure. Still, that didn't really bother her at all. It was just the darkness that wouldn't stop, it wore at her nerves.
But she couldn't remember why.
"Well, we've got to follow you, Sokka," Toph said, "What do we do?"
You hear something.
Listen closely.
There are two people ahead, and they seem to be resting. The woman is an evil sorceress that you remember, but the man is unfamiliar.
Remember sorceress.
The Moon Sorceress Yue is a dangerous individual. She kidnapped you out of your palace and brought you here with only the power of her mind. She works for the evil Phoenix Prince. That man must be him!
Examine man.
He looks dangerous.
Hide.
Well, better late than never, right? You hide, and they don't seem to notice youxxxA18F Computing Error System ContaminatedUnfortunately, something else does. It has more mouths than it does hands, feet, legs, arms, eyes, noses, or ears combined, actually.
Examine creature
I don't understand the word cF115 ERROR ERRORture
Examine monster
There aren't any monsters here. You should focus on that sorceress instead
Attack whatever that thing is
"Get ready to fight," Sokka ordered.
Everyone moved ready to fight. Even Toph with those ridiculous ears looked fierce and ready to go. That was more than he could hope for considering the sudden and unexpected turn the world around them had taken.
He held the wooden sword tightly in his hands. This felt inadequate. Against the monsters of the maze it may be effective, but the scraping noise approaching them didn't seem to be normal.
"I got a bad feeling about this," Toph said, quietly. "There! Right ahead of us."
"I can't see anything," Katara answered, but she tightened into a defensive stance, "You're absolutely sure?"
"Positive, Sugar Queen."
He'd heard of shifting darkness before, but this actually looked like the blackness in front of them moved, and shifting was about right for how it moved. In the low light he could see a shape in the shadow, a long and slender sort of form.
As it moved, the sound of mucus hitting the ground and the faint smell of decay overwhelmed them. Something primal this way came.
Azula made the first move. Striking as fast as she could with an airbending slice. The strike forced the figure to move, revealing a long, slender arm and a bright, white mask with wolf-like markings. Sokka really wished he had more than a wooden stick right now.
It shifted as the wind died down, crawling forward on a multitude of slender arms, the mask affixed firmly to a vaguely man-shaped shadow among the mess of arms. Some of those arms ended not in a mess of spindly, spider-like fingers, but instead in long, sword-shaped spikes.
Warning. System Infection Critical...
"What is going on!" Toph shouted, "The whole building's going crazy!"
"Toph! Watch out!" Sokka didn't even have time to admonish himself for his poor choice of words. He could only move, taking the wooden sword and juxtaposing it between the long spike and Toph. It ended up stuck in the middle of the thick, wooden training weapon. "No!"
He released the weapon, and the large shape shook at it angrily, trying to remove it from the spike. "How did it move so fast!" Toph shouted, "Get back!" A series of glitched blocks shot out of the ground as she slammed her feet into a firm stance, and she threw them forward with a series of quick thrusts. The thing was pelted, moving backwards, but scraping at the ground the whole while.
Azula pushed the offensive, Her feet barely touched the ground as she charged forward, slicing the air straight through and leaping up to the ceiling, pushing down and slamming into the ground, causing a shockwave to tear through the ground. "We have to keep pushing it back," she said, "Katara, get on it!"
"Right!"
"Toph, back her up, don't let up for any reason!"
"You got it, Spice GIrl."
"Sokka - uh, you hang back and let us girls take care of you."
Sokka grumbled. "Yeah, sure, whatever," he muttered. The elemental fury inflicted upon the creature seemed to be effective, pushing it backwards slowly, and all Sokka could do is watch the girls work.
The creature slowed itself with the massive sword-like spines at the end of its arms, and its human-shaped head turned to focus on Sokka.
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Toph faltered, falling out of step with the others. "Something's going on," she said, "Hey, Power Princess! We got trouble!"
Azula didn't even slow, weaving through the creature's massive network of swipes and throwing a windy kick into the web of limbs, "What kind of trouble?"
"I don't know. Something's wrong. This place doesn't feel right. Worse than before, actually."
Azula shivered, but she didn't let it show. "Hold your ground for now. Once this thing is finished, we'll figure it out."
"Whatever you say."
Toph felt uncertain about this, but the creature surged forward, charging through the group suddenly. One of its arms pushed her aside, another forced Azula into the wall, and still one more threw Katara hurtling into Sokka.
It made a shrieking sound as it brought its spiines up high.
Toph pushed herself off the ground, stomping her feet angrily. "No way did it just ignore us like that!"
"More worried about Sokka!" Azula said, grunting as she was held firmly against the wall, "Toph, do something!"
Katara and Sokka stumbled to their feet, both of them watching the creature with a frozen expression on their face.
"What do you expect me to do? Make the floor collapse?" Toph shouted in response.
Data Block x0A45 through x0C20 cannot be opened. Please try again later.
She planted her feet firmly against the ground and found there was no more ground to plant her feet atop. "What the -" she managed to start before the ghostly image of the floor vanished entirely.
Standing on thin air, even in a video game, didn't seem especially possible.
The creature plummeted first, they followed shortly.
CRITICAL ERROR CRITICAL ERROR SYSTEM UNRESPONSIVE and the sorceress and the man she was with seem to have decided to leave. You stand triumphant over DATA NOT AVAILABLE and sheath your blade.
What do you do now?
Look around.
You're certain you're within the catacombs of the ruins around that small village in your kingdom. Why would the sorceress Yue take you here?
Think about man.
He looked dangerous. You're almost certain he's the Phoenix Prince. You don't know his goals, but you're certain they're evil to the core. That's just how it goes. After all, he did kidnap you.
Think about monster.
I'm certain there's no monster. And I'm quite certain there never was one whatsoever.
Follow Sorceress.
You don't know where she went, but they seem to be going up. So you go towards the stairs.
Examine stairs.
Seem sturdy enough.
Grow tired of this tedious mechanic.
You're not the only one.
Go up the stairs.
"Things sure are getting dangerous, aren't they?"
Azula lifted her head, but saw nothing. Everything was cast in pitch black, she couldn't even see her hand in front of her face. But she knew that voice, "Xiao?" The girl giggled in response, and seemed to be moving around her, the sound of her footsteps coming at a gallop.
"That's my name!" she said, "For now!"
"What happened?"
"The end is getting really close now. Not even the doors are keeping them out anymore."
"Who are you talking about?"
"A Primal Spirit, like the one you just faced," she said, "You remember, right? You saw one when you came to the dorm! And before that, too;" She giggled, "But you don't remember, do you? I wish you would hurry up and remember everything!"
"I can't help that I was in a coma for several months," Azula responded, trying to stand. She found the ceiling was a little low hanging for her to stand upright, so she chose to sit down.
"Pfft!" Xiao could barely contain herself, "Okay, keep telling yourself that. It makes things easier, right?"
"What?"
"Never mind. Once you remember, I'm sure we'll have a bunch to talk about. But right now, we got to be careful. More of those things are inside this door, now, and they may even be sneaking into your friend's past."
"What do you know about this maze?"
"I'm not hiding anything. Since it's you, I've told you everything I've known. After all, we're getting close to the end. I don't know why you want to get to the middle of the maze so badly, but if that's what you want, I'll help you!"
"Where are we right now?"
"I dunno. Somewhere. The monster's not here, but neither are your friends. I think there's a passage to your friend's past nearby, at least, an exit from it. Maybe they found their way in there!"
"Lead the way."
She giggled, "Sure! But we gotta be careful of the princess!"
"The princess? Who's she?"
Xiao stifled back a loud laugh, "You'll see!"
"Oh dear," Yue fretted, "Everything's going all wrong!"
Zuko looked around, and then back at Yue, "You sense more of those things? I don't see any." She shook her head, "Then what's wrong this time?"
"The ruins seem smaller all of a sudden," she said, "Just a little bit, but they're definitely shrinking."
"What does that mean?"
"I don't know, but I don't want to find out."
"Me neither." He grunted as he picked up the pace. "Come on."
"Yes, of course. Also," she hesitated, "That powerful force I felt before is close. I don't think we want to find out what it is."
"Yue, don't worry. Nothing is going to get the drop on us. It's not like they're just going to fall out of the sky in front of us-"
"Look out belo- oof!"
"- I stand corrected."
"Sokka?"
Yue kneeled down to check on the prone body in front of them. It certainly looked like Sokka, though green certainly did not suit him in her opinion. He rolled over, his eyes unfocused, his expression dazed, but in general, he seemed to be okay. "Whee, can I ride it again?" he mumbled as he started to come back to reality.
"He's fine," Zuko muttered.
"Yes, he is." She sighed, "Though I wish he didn't scare me like that!"
"Sorry."
"You back in the land of the living?" Zuko asked, frowning, clearly unamused.
"Before you get on my case for jumping down some hole, the floor just disappeared, not my fault and - what are you two wearing? Oh man, Zuko, that armor makes your neck look scrawnier than usual."
"Don't blame me! This is your fault, isn't it?"
"Yue at least looks cute in her evil sorceress outfit - hey, why are you guys all in black, anyway?"
Something snapped in Yue's head, and she just stared at him for the longest period of time, not saying anything. Sokka wilted back from the stare. She was grinding her teeth. Zuko at least registered that this had been bugging her more than she let on.
"What did I do?" Sokka whimpered.
"This is your subconscious, Sokka Floes!" Yue said, "And you're accusing me of coming up with this ridiculous outfit? You can see my belly-button!"
"It's a very nice belly button."
"That's not important!" Yue said, hiding a blush behind her hand, "Can you please do away with these silly outfits."
"I don't know how!"
"You are a complete and total - uh - Intellectually Lacking Individual!"
Divine anger aside, the moment was completely ruined with that. Zuko sighed and looked over at Sokka. "Now that we've found you, anyway, where are the others?"
"They fell. I don't know where they landed. The whole place was getting weirder and weirder."
"We noticed."
"So what do we do?" Both of them turned to Sokka, who blinked in response. A brief pause followed. Finally, he added, "Don't all jump in with suggestions."
"This is a video game, but it's 'glitched,'" Yue said, "At least, that's how Zuko put it to me. Wouldn't we have to find the source of the glitch and stop it?"
"Either that or stop the game," Zuko said, "But the only way to do that is to finish it."
"And we can't do that without everyone else. Wait! I got it! You're the bad guys. You have to give me a villainous monologue because I am obviously now your prisoner after being separated from the party."
"Oh we're not doing this," Zuko muttered.
"It may be the only way. Reach deep into the recesses of your mind, Zuko, find your inner nerd, and commune with it!"
"Oh no."
"Do it! Do it!"
Even Yue was joining in with Sokka's rhythmic chanting. Zuko grimaced. He was no good at being an intimidating villain. "Fine. Let's say I kidnapped something, a princess, maybe."
"Right, that's a pretty classic RPG plot," Sokka agreed. "Well, you kidnapped her and her father, the King, sent knights out to find her, and I, being an unassuming village boy, am destined to rescue her."
"We take her here for some reason," Zuko waved his hands vaguely, "Maybe because of some ancient sleeping power that requires a sacrifice."
"Works."
"It sounds terrible."
"It still works."
"Fine. Okay, but let's say we're not really evil, we're just misunderstood," Zuko said, looking over at Yue, pointedly, "Like we're doing this for all the right reasons."
"Oh, yes, the I'm Not Evil I'm just a Jerk gambit," Sokka said, "Always the coolest party members."
"Right."
"So you're trying to summon something for revenge, let's say."
"You sure?"
"You've got a problem with revenge?"
"No, revenge is good. Revenge is perfectly fine."
"Fine."
"Fine. Revenge it is. And I come and ruin that."
"Thoroughly."
"Yeah, heroes do that when they screw up."
"No, you do that when you screw up, heroically or not."
"Rub it in why don't you," Sokka murmured. "But that leaves us without a big bad guy to kill, unless you tried to summon it."
"I'm thinking, okay?"
Yue watched this intently, and when the two fell into quiet brainstorming, she added her own idea. "What if the princess is the bad guy?"
The two of them looked at her for a second, and yet couldn't dispute the idea. "Works, actually. I don't think it's been done before, but it works."
Focus, Katara told herself, they'd been through this before. Still, the sudden shift from the world of pixels and monsters to reality was so sudden that her stomach began to churn. There weren't any big blocky pixels making up the familiar Phoenix school, Ba Sing Se seemed to be devoid of bleeps and bloops, and Toph seemed to be sprawled on the grass and dealing with something.
"Are you okay, Toph?"
"I'm glad I didn't eat much," Toph managed to slur, "Because I don't feel so good."
"I see," she nodded, and then, sitting down, added, "Me too. Where's Azula and Sokka?"
"Don't know," Toph said, "Maybe they're around elsewhere?"
"But I was right next to Sokka, we couldn't have fallen too far apart."
"Maybe, maybe not. Maybe whatever Sokka's little world is snatched us up and left the other two to plummet forever? I don't know. Things don't always make sense here. I think I'm going crazy as it is!"
Katara sighed. "We're back in the past, I think. And back in our uniforms."
"Yeah, kind of figured that out. It feels like the past, anyway." She flopped over onto her side, "I think I'm getting my stomach back into the right place. Just give me a minute and we'll get this over with."
Katara nodded, looking out at the crowd in front of the school. They seemed to be making a circle around something. "Looks like someone ticked off Suki, again."
"Yeah, I heard that new kid in our class said something about how she shouldn't play baseball."
"Ow. Why not?"
"Because she's a girl."
"That little - and I thought he was cute, too!"
Katara watched the girls rush off, and sighed. That was the day, of course, that Suki and Sokka became inseparable. "Come on, Toph, I think we found why we're here."
"Urp," Toph belched, standing up, "Gotcha."
They stumbled over to the crowd and tried to peek through. Though the group of kids was thick, the two arguing voices carried pretty well. "Like I said, I don't know why you're getting so upset over this. Baseball is for men, you go and play your little softball game and have fun."
"You sure like repeating yourself, don't you?"
"Well, yes. But that's besides the point, I'm only repeating myself because you don't seem to be listening. Baseball is for men, got it?"
"Why don't you put that to the test? You and me, on the field, the one who hits the most runs wins. What do you say to that, Ponytail?"
"Wolf-tail. And I don't see why I got to prove an indisputable fact to you."
"Oh yeah? Sounds to me like you're scared a girl's going to beat you."
"What?"
"Scaredy-Sokka."
"That isn't - fine! If you want to be embarrassed. then fine."
Toph whispered aside to Katara, "He's going to embarrass himself, isn't he?" Katara slowly nodded and followed the crowd as they hurried over to the baseball field. From the looks on everyone's faces, it was going to be an eventful lunch period.
In comparison, Katara was busy with her newfound powers and responsibilities as a member of the Bending Club, which at that time meant cowtowing to every whim Azula had. And she had plenty.
"What's up?"
"Just thinking about what I was up to around now. Azula had me doing copies for the student council, little miss bigshot was too busy being treasurer."
"Ow."
"I heard all about it from Sokka, with some, ahem, hyperbole and exaggeration." She sighed, and looked over towards her brother, "Let's just say, he has his pride, and that's about it."
For Azula, the maze was quickly becoming tiresome. There were so many passageways that just bled into even more thick, inky darkness, with walls turning pitch black and even though she couldn't remember - or maybe she didn't want to remember - she knew that something about it caused her very self to rebel.
Maybe it was being left in a coma like that, that absence of time, her brain just sitting there unused. Nothing, absolutely nothing, frightened her more than that. Not that she'd admit it, not even to herself. Such an admission would be a sign of weakness and there was one thing Azula Houou refused to view herself as.
Regardless.
The darkness only briefly gave way to miscolored blocks and pixels, and she could hear distant music bleeping away, slowed and unrecognizeable, garbled up and grating. It was even just a bit terrifying in a horror movie sense.
Right about now the girl with the unkempt black hair over her face would appear and throw her down a well.
No? Moving along, then, she finds herself at a crossroads. Four pathways, and only one way forward. "Xiao, which way?"
No answer. Expected, but inconvenient. "Well, then, let's see."
She turned to her right, and followed the pathway. The darkness seemed to get thicker there, but she kept her hand to the wall. The music seemed to vanish the further she traveled down the hall. As disconcerting as the noise had been to hear, its sudden disappearance did not bode much better.
A miscolored lightsource flickered green against a purple brick wall. The hallway led to another split in the path. She approached it, and paused. Something didn't feel right.
System infection critical, formatting system...
Formatting system...?
Something about that seemed, well, bad.
She stepped back. There was something approaching down the halls, buzzing like a swarm of locusts. She kept herself perfectly calm, refusing to panic, but she prepared to run. They looked like bubbling blackness against the wall, but as they passed through, nothing remained behind them.
She didn't know if they'd just pass by her and leave her to plummet again, but she wasn't about to find out. She especially was not curious how it would be to be deleted.
They moved, slowly but deliberately, and they converged around the far wall, and more crept around the corner, devouring the walls and floors of the hall, approaching her. She turned back and ran. She looked down the other three halls. More of those bubbling shadows were crawling towards the center.
All except for this one. She broke into a dash down the long corridor, a wave of deletion at her back.
"All right, you kids got ten minutes to do this before you got to get your sorry butts back into class." Seeing Xin Fu did not bring back especially pleasant memories for Toph, but she supposed this was before they'd even met.
She was going to keep a good distance away just to be on the safe side, though.
"This won't even take that long," Sokka said.
"Sokka won the coin toss, so he bats first, got it?" Xin Fu eyed Suki carefully, and the girl nodded in response. "Good, since neither of you got any complaints, let's get right to it."
Suki took her place on the pitcher's mound, while Sokka grabbed a bat and took to the plate. He tapped his bat against the plate, then pointed out into right field. Katara placed her head in her hands. This was not going to end well.
Suki grinned, gripping the ball in her hands, and then threw a fastball right down the plate.
Sokka responded quickly, swinging and knocking it clean out into the outfield. He grinned and walked over to the mound, giving Suki a wink as she passed by him on the way to the plate. Positions switched, Sokka called out, "You got one chance to just forfeit and save yourself the embarrassment."
Suki just smirked in response.
"Right then." He gripped the ball and made for a curveball pitch.
Suki swung and with a loud crack knocked the ball flying out into centerfield.
Sokka just watched the ball fly overhead, flying clearly into homerun territory. He just stared and stared and stared for a good long while, until Suki tapped him on the shoulder, "Your turn to hit, slugger."
Sokka had the look of an animal caught in the headlights of a car.
"Wow, that landed out there," Toph laughed. "I guess he got a taste of his own medicine."
"I guess."
"Well, this is all fun and all, but what do we do here, it's not like we're going to disrupt his humiliation, are we?" Toph asked. "Whoa, hold it. Did you feel that?"
Katara looked back at Toph. "What's wrong?"
"Something just went crack. I don't know what." Katara's eyes widened, and looked around. "Back by the school, I think."
Katara turned around. A large crack had formed over the sky over the school, sending long spindling fissures down through the sky. "Oh no. But we didn't even do anything - Oh no!"
"What? What is it?"
It crawled across the ground on its myriad hands, large metal spines scraping against the ground as a long crack followed wherever it went. No one else seemed to see it as it crawled over the grass of the athletics fields.
Its mask was cracked, and there wasn't a doubt in Katara's mind that it was the same creature as before. "It followed us."
"So where do we even go now?" Sokka wondered.
Zuko and Yue just shrugged. "We were kind of hoping you'd have an idea," Zuko said.
Sokka looked at Zuko and Yue, and rubbed his chin with his thumb, thinking it over. He shrugged, and said, "Well, usually we find the other self of who made the world and face them. So I guess that means I've got to face myself."
"That makes sense, but where is your other self?"
"I dunno! I'm not even sure what my other self would be like. Everyone else's is all weird and different. Mine could be anything!"
Yue nodded, and felt something prickling at the back of her neck, like her senses going wild. She looked around. Something wasn't right at all, here. She could sense Azula nearby, but something about it - and there, she knew what it was as suddenly as it happened! "Azula's in trouble," she said, suddenly, "She's down a few floors, but the floor right below her just completely vanished!"
"What?" Sokka's eyes widened, "We've got to help her!"
"Yes, I agree. This way. We haven't any time to lose!"
She led them down the hallways towards the stairway back down. They barely had time to register the pixelated and off-color architecture of the maze. She ran through a few rooms, throwing open the doors with their loud, digitized buzz, and passed down a hallway where she stopped, suddenly.
"Oh dear," she whispered.
"What's wrong?" Sokka asked, pushing to the front. "Hey, that's -"
He cut himself off as the full magnitude of what stood in front of him registered. Heavy pancake make-up, an elaborate crown, a long, green gown, a pair of golden fans, and in hand, a familiar black blade.
Zuko broke the silence, "Figures."
"Oh shut up!"
"Oh dear," Yue whispered again, but it became clear she was stifling a fit of laughter herself. "I think we found your other self, Sokka."
"Shut up! Everyone shut up!" He looked at his other self, and fumbled for words. "And you, take that off right now, you look ridiculous!"
"Sokka, I finally found you," his other self said, in exaggerated falsetto, "Did you finally come to rescue your princess?"
"Shut up! What's the big idea!"
The Princess of the Ruins, his other self, just tittered happily and brought her arms down. "Are you having fun in our little game, my hero? Won't you protect me from the evil people?"
To be continued...