A/N: Managed to make an early upload. Phew! Right off the bat I'm gonna go ahead and say that this chapter is probably grammer mistake-ridden and I hope you guys will all bear with me. I'm also starting school next week so the chapter 16 will most likely be coming a little later than usual. But don't worry, I'll be graduating and then starting spring break again a couple weeks later. You might wonder what kind of messed up school I got to. Well, let's just say it's a Korean one xD
Enjoy~!!!
+Avatar World+
For someone who was blind, Toph never ceased "seeing", and as her rock platform zoomed through the forest, dodging the larger trees and flattening the smaller shrubbery, she was all eyes, every bit of her. She could "see" for a good 10 feet in every direction and then the vibrations became more subtle, the objects less sharp. The dark-haired earthbender had been at the vigilante watch for nearly the entire ride and she was almost dozing off even as she bended the platform forward. Suki sat behind her heels, having fallen asleep three hours ago. But Toph could never sleep now, not after what Suki had told her. Not with gut wrenching worry…
"Suki," Toph said after the slab of rock had slid to a halt a solid three miles from the crazy vacuum fissure, "tell me what you know."
Suki sat down on the edge of the platform facing Toph who was standing in front of her. Without a moment's hesitation this time, Suki started to talk, rattling off her story as though compelled to exhaust her vocabulary before the hour was out.
"Okay, the other Kyoshi Warriors and I were asked to come visit this village because one of the villagers was getting blackmailed. We accepted and arrived at Aunt Wu's village. She was the one getting blackmailed.
"At first, she explained to us that the blackmails she had been receiving weren't all that serious and that they were probably some sort of stupid joke someone was playing. But she just in case, she wanted us to watch her house for the night in case something really did happen."
As Suki paused for breath, Toph hardly failed to notice that Suki was not making eye contact with her but instead had her gaze fixed somewhere along Toph's left shoulder. She didn't question this and listened intently as Suki continued.
"None of us really thought much of it. We agreed with each other that it was probably a joke like Aunt Wu had said. But we'd promised to watch her house so we decided to take turns guarding the house.
"When it was my turn, it was a couple hours after midnight. Maybe one or two at most. It was getting really late and Tai Lee fell asleep on the watch so I decided to take her into the house to let her sleep. We were allowed to take the bedroom next to Aunt Wu's and when I was getting out I heard a noise coming from her room so I went to check if everything was all right."
Suki's voice shook. Toph could feel every syllable of the last sentence vibrate like a tuning fork but again, she stayed quiet. Suki, head now completely bowed and staring straight into the ground, started again with a shaking voice.
"I… I didn't know what was going on. When I opened the door Aunt Wu was in bed sleeping. But she was talking. Talking like she was actually awake and having a conversation with someone. But there wasn't anyone else there and she didn't respond when I tried to ask her what was wrong.
"And then I started listening to what she was actually saying. I'll be honest, her voice freaked me out. It was normal and everything but it was like someone else was just borrowing her voice, talking through her like she was a puppet or something.
She said a lot of stuff. Some of it she said it so fast that I didn't catch the whole sentence but it was always about one thing. She kept repeating the words 'danger'. When I finally go near enough, I started understand what she was saying. She said something about a white man…no, a man in white and something to do with a flame…"
"A man in white blowing at a candle?" Toph asked.
Raising her head, her eyes locked with Toph's. Suki seemed startled by this question.
"How did you-"
"That was what it said in that message we got from Aunt Wu." Toph explained. "The one she sent before she was murdered."
Suki seemed horrified. Toph nodded for her to continue.
"She kept talking about this lake and a star. And then about twin stars in-"
"Wait a second," Toph interrupted, "you man she said 'two stars'?"
"No, she said 'twin stars'. I remember that part because her voice got all low and angry."
"What did she say about the twin stars?"
"She kept repeating 'twin stars in skies apart, fire bright when one departs'."
"One departs?"
"That's what she said."
"Yeah."
"Okay, did she say anything else?"
Suki thought for a minute, trying to remember. Then slowly, she quoted her recollections: "She muttered something like 'fire will destroy everything when one twin is lost' and then started chanting 'Mt. Fudiyu' over and over, almost in panic, until she woke up."
"What did she say when she woke up?" Toph asked.
"She asked what I was doing in her room and I told her what I'd heard. She seemed really confused about it, told me that she must've been mumbling in her sleep or something. I don't think she was lying."
Toph mulled this over for a moment. Suki's accounts were extremely strange, even downright ominous. If the letter, the contents of which Toph only possessed an audio memory of, was true, down to every last detail, then the scene Suki had witnessed was surely that of Aunt Wu dreaming the same dream she had confessed to have seen numerous times. The bit about the man in white and the candle were most suggestive but the completely new additions of the twin stars were lost on her. Unless Toph had misheard Sokka's reading as one star when he had really read it as twin, then there had been a sudden change in the dream. But why?
"I should have told Sokka." Suki said quietly after awhile. "I should have told anyone. But I didn't."
Toph sat down next to her, her feet digging circles in the dirt path. "Don't beat yourself up over this. It's no big deal."
"But it is!" Suki cried looking sideways at Toph. "If I had just told someone, maybe it would've helped…"
Toph snorted. "Yeah, because that Aunt Wu's dreams make a whole lot of sense. Trust me on this Suki, we wouldn't have known much about what was going to happen even if we were there in person listening to her sleeptalking. It's only after all this stuff happened that we managed to fit the pieces together. And only barely."
Suki cast her eyes downward in thought. Toph looked up at the starbright sky above, the one thing she had never been able to "see" or feel in her entire life. As she stared up at the vast black ocean salted with stars, Toph realized that it had never felt so foreign and mysterious as it did now. Twin stars in skies apart, fire bright when one departs. Toph wrapped what she hoped was a comforting arm around Suki's shoulders, not breaking eye contact with the sky. At the very least, they weren't alone. Like diamonds upon dark velvet, the stars twinkled brightly, and though the blind earthbender did not know, reflected themselves in her unseeing eyes.
Dawn was upon them now. Toph relentlessly swung her arms back and forth, urging the platform onward, hoping it wouldn't break in two before they reached the palace gates. Somewhere near them, an iguana-rooster crowed loudly.
+Fire Nation Palace+
Sokka was seen to immediately by the palace healer with everyone flocking around him anxiously, trying to see over his shoulders until he angrily told him to leave. Hakoda, Iroh, and Mai stood outside in the hall, Hakoda with his ears pressed against the door, Iroh looking grave as he stood behind him and Mai leaning against the opposite wall.
She might have looked like her usual uninterested and bored self but she was trying to control a raging forest fire in her chest from exploding outwards. She had seen the burns as she had helped carry Sokka to the room and she had been reminded of Zuko again. Zuko, who had had half his face burned off as a kid for speaking out. Zuko, who was lost in this world or maybe the next. Zuko…
The door opened and Hakoda almost toppled in. The healer helped him up but was almost immediately shoved aside by all through visitors as they tried to get a glimpse of Sokka.
With surprising strength, the healer, who was no taller than Iroh and probably less fit, managed to push them all back outside the room and shut the door behind him. Hakoda looked anxious but the healer, after straightening his eye glass, smiled in a tired way.
"He's fine." The healer said, and they could almost hear the tension melting. "His burns are rather severe. There's no doubt he'll be left with some scars on his back but he will live and with the proper treatment, we'll be able to prevent the loss of flexibility in the burned area."
Hakoda hugged the healer, nearly crushing him and Iroh laughed in relief. Mai smiled but did not say anything. Hakoda was thanking the healer profusely, thumping the man on his back so fiercely that he doubled up coughing. Iroh laughed harder at this and under the commotion, Mai slipped away, back straight and chin up so that no one from behind would suspect. No one, not even a messenger hawk with 20/2 vision could possibly know that Mai, impassive and cynical, was crying, tears streaming uncontrollably down her cheeks. Behind her, the laughter grew fainter and soon, she could no longer hear them.
+Katara+
One eye and then another. The lids felt like they were behind weighed down with coins. She shook her head, trying to clear it.
"Hey, are you okay?" a stranger's voice asked from somewhere directly above her.
Katara didn't answer. She felt like throwing up. The floor beneath her seemed to be moving, shaking badly. It was almost like drinking cactus juice… almost.
And then, her bruised brain managed to start a grainy film of memory. She recalled sprinting to the Microbe building, trying to get in through the parking lot and then pain. Something had hit her hard and she had fallen to the ground. And after that…
"Oh no." she whispered. Opening her eyes wide, waking up to a fuzzy floor and tried to struggle but she was bound tight by some sort of net. Someone above was trying to grab her but she struggled, trying to get away.
"Get away from me!" she yelled, floundering helplessly against the soft carpeting.
"Kid, will you stay still?"
"NO! Get off me! Zuko! Help!"
She flipped onto her back. Bent over her was a man she didn't recognize. He had sand colored hair, looked middle aged and was holding a pocket knife. Katara screamed.
+Just Outside Heyday+
It took almost half an hour to calm down the screaming girl, cut her loose from the net she was entangled in and explain to her that they were not going to hurt her. Of course, Jones wasn't really sure if Yumi wasn't going to kill her if only because her screaming annoyed her. In fact, the premeditated murder of the girl might just be what Yumi was contemplating as she stretched her legs outside, back turned to the minivan and facing the road. Meanwhile, Jones had managed to pull the frightened girl into the backseat after having calmed her. He had thoroughly exhausted himself in the process and felt a twinge of annoyance that Yumi wasn't helping in the slightest.
"Um, Ethan," the girl said uncertainly. Jones looked around at her. He had introduced himself by his first name as he always did when he was trying to play "good cop" with a suspect. He wasn't all that sure she was bought in with the strategy but was glad that she was screaming anymore.
"What is it, kid?" Ethan asked.
"My name is Katara." She corrected him. "And I need to know where Zuko is."
Jones looked down at her surprised. But it really wasn't genuine shock he felt. He supposed that some small part of him at known from the beginning that this was the "waterbender" he had questioned Zuko about in great detail. At the time, Jones had been informed that Zuko was a friend of a known terrorist gang leader by the name of Katara and was instructed to get every last scrap of information out of Zuko while pretending to be heading a missing person investigation. His employer, whom he had never met in person, had also requested that Jones ignore Zuko's strange explanations about "his world" and "bending" as the unfortunate boy happened to suffer from a mental illness similar to schizophrenia.
But now, little over a week later, Jones was sitting in the back of a stolen minivan being asked where Zuko was by the exact same girl he knew so much about who looked nothing like a terrorist gang leader but apparently was according to a powerful company that had tried to kill him anonymously one more than once during the last couple of days. Really, when had he become this hapless?
Before he could answer however, Yumi Kim got back in the driver's seat and told them all to put on their seatbelts. Katara looked a little confused at this as she had ever right to be but not even Jones could bare to explain about Yumi Kim to her so he just put on his seat belt as she started up the engine.
"Before we get to Heyday," Yumi said casually, glancing into the review mirror at the two of them, "we need disguises."
"Disguises as in masks?" Jones asked.
"No, you idiot, I mean fake identifications." Yumi said matter-of-factly as though she were suggesting that they go into the supermarket to grab some snacks. "Jones, from now on you'll be Calico Dreadlocke and Katara, you'll be Fantasia Dunk.
"Where the heck did you get those names, the baby book of Hell?" Jones asked her.
Yumi didn't answer as she withdrew from a wallet two plastic cards and handed one each to Ethan and Katara.
Jones looked incredulously at his laminated card which was the ID of Calico Brian Dreadlocke complete with social security number and photo. The man looked slightly porkier than he was but still had blonde hair.
"Where did you get these?" Jones asked as Yumi drove the car out onto the road again.
"Picked them up somewhere." Yumi answered vaguely.
"Right, like from a dead guy's pocket, you mean?"
"I didn't kill him if that's what you're worrying about."
Jones gaped at her. "What, so you did take them from a dead guy's pocket?"
Yumi ignored him.
Katara on his right looked curiously at the laminated card. Looking over at her stolen ID, Jones saw Fantasia Dunk was an African America with teased black hair and a nose ring. She did not resembled Katara in the slightest.
A/N: Hope you enjoyed that :D Feedback is always welcome and if you have any suggestions, leave them in your reviews. I'll answer first chance I get ^^ Thanks again for reading~!