Sorry for the delay, as always. Yet another restatement, I do not own Avatar or any aspect of it, and thank you to everyone who comments. Also sorry so little happens in this chapter.
"Hey there, Katara?"
Katara's eyes, which had been narrowed slits of ice, snapped open wide, and she whipped around, popping the stopper off her water pouch, ready to defend herself as she recognized the voice that spoke.
"What do you want?" she spat.
Jet looked at the ground. "Sorry, I just saw you there, and had to call out to you. I actually did want to talk to you, but I had intended to send Smellerbee and Long Shot to talk to you first to let you know I was around so you could warm up to the idea slowly."
Katara's eyes flashed with a dangerous fire, and she sent out a gushing torrent of water from her pouch, freezing the deadly liquid around Jet's right forearm, pinning it to his side.
"And why should I give you the chance to even say one word?" she asked, accusingly.
"Umh…" said Toph beside her, "didn't you just say a lot more than one word to him?"
"Be quiet Toph, that's not important."
"Oh I see," Toph's voice clearly betrayed annoyance now. "'Toph, don't interfere, I can say as many nonsensical things as I want to if I'm doing it for the higher cause of spinning my bad ex boyfriend in circles.'"
Katara's eyes grew truly wild at that, and she rounded on her friend. "He's not my ex boyfriend!" she shouted.
"Katara, I can tell you're lying. I can always tell."
In the brief moment during which Katara was stumped, Jet held up the poster of Appa with his left hand. "I just wanted to talk to you about where to find your bison!" he shouted. "Katara, please unfreeze my arm."
"You liar!" Katara shouted at him. "You just want to use me and my friends again, but it won't happen!"
"Actually," said Toph, "he's telling the truth."
For a moment it looked as though Katara was going to argue, but then she relaxed. "Well then we'll take him back to Aang, and we'll see what he thinks."
At their house, Katara and Toph opened the door and ushered in a blindfolded Jet. Katara had insisted on the blindfold.
"Look what we found wandering the streets." Katara said, giving her prisoner a rough shove.
Sokka and Aang stood up from where they had been playing cards on the floor.
"Oh high there Jet." said Sokka. "Normally I'd be as apprehensive as Katara is, but I doubt you'll find it easy to flood Ba Sing Se."
Aang eyed Jet suspiciously. Jet had been the first boy Katara had ever kissed, and Aang had hoped for that position himself. "Hello." he said
"Hey Aang; Sokka. Katara, could I please have my eyes back now?"
Katara turned away, but Toph reached up and pulled the blind fold off of Jet's head.
"Thank you." he said.
"Ok." said Aang. "You're here, now what's this about?"
"It's about Appa. Is there anywhere where we can sit down to talk?" he asked.
The avatar nodded, and beckoned him into the room before sitting on the floor again.
Team Avatar sat in a circle with Jet amongst them.
"Well, I don't really know where to start." Jet said. "I've been in this city for a while, but at first I didn't know you'd lost your bison, or even that you were here. My friends and I have been fighting the Dai Li-" he stopped as Katara flashed a visual snarl at him, but continued at the urgings of the others, "-we've been at it for weeks now. We have alter egos and everything. I'm The Red Whisperer you might have heard of, and my friend, who wished to remain anonymous is The Blue Spirit. He doesn't want you to know who he is because…because like me you've had run-ins with him before and as I understand it you're on even less friendly terms with him."
Alarm filled Jet's eyes. He saw the reactions on the faces of the people he was with as soon as he mentioned The Blue Spirit, and he realized that they must know who he was.
Stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid! Why did I give away our alter identities? That was a really dumb thing to do.
Only Toph remained unaffected. It seemed she had not heard of The Blue Spirit before.
But the others had.
"Oh, we know who The Blue Spirit is." said Sokka. "He's Zuko's alter ego. And you're right, we've had nothing but trouble from him from day one. On day one, we found Aang, and later on day one his ship arrived with the big black metal, and all the ash in the ocean killing all our fish, and the soldiers, and their 'crackle crackle' fire bending, and he tried to capture Aang and take him back to the fire nation, and our experience with him has been nothing but a long line of similar events."
Katara looked furious. "Really Jet, if you wanted to do anything in your ability to make your position with us any worse, you couldn't have done any better than to tell us that you and Zuko are working together."
"Really," Aang said, reluctant as usual to condemn anyone, "they are right. Our relationship with Zuko has been a bit on the down side of our lives."
"A bit heated at the best of times." said Sokka.
"Alright!" Jet shouted. He could not contain himself anymore. "I get that he's been really bad to the lot of you in the past, but he's changed. He's changed even to the point where I would talk civilly to him, and he really wants you to get your bison back, so you can take my help or leave it."
"And how do we know it isn't just another trap he's laid for us?" asked Katara.
"Do you really think I'd come anywhere within near vicinity of a master water bender who had good reason to hate me for something as paltry as a trap?"
"If you were scared enough of Zuko you might."
"Excuse me?" Toph raised her hand. "If you lot aren't all too engrossed in your hatred of one another to listen to the voice of reason, I have something I'd like to point out."
"What is it Toph?" asked Katara, a bit softer than when she spoke to Jet.
"From the little you've told me, Jet hates nothing in the whole world quite so much as the fire nation. Zuko is the prince of the fire nation. You've told me a little about both of them, and from what I can see there's no way those two would work together unless one or both of them really had changed. Something tells me that Jet hasn't joined the fire nation, and we haven't had any trouble from Zuko since before we lost Appa. And for your information, Jet hasn't lied once since we met him, and nobody's that good a liar."
Aang and the others were silent for a moment, which dragged on into several moments, and then a minute. The two water tribe teens and the avatar were all trying to find a flaw in Toph's reasoning, but none of them could.
"Alright." said Aang, at last. "We'll give you a chance, but you've only got the one, understand?"