Yes! This is the last chapter! Thank you all for your patience, you have been a great audience, especially the ones who reviewed this story. You are awesome, and I thank you.
Also, just to note yet again, I do not own Avatar the Last Airbender, or any aspect thereof.
Jet blinked. He, Long Shot, Smellerbee and Aang's group were all standing at the edge of Lake Laogai and staring at the surface.
"Well…" he said sheepishly, fearing for the worst, "This is right where he said it was…"
Most of Aang's group looked at him angrily as though daring him to prove his word, but once again Toph came to his rescue.
"There is a tunnel out there." she said, feeling the ground with her feet. "It's just underwater, that's all." she extended her foot and stomped on the ground. Violent ripples spread from the land nearest her as though she was a water bender rather than an earth bender, and a pathway emerged, leading from where they stood to a hatch more than a hundred feet away on the lake's surface.
"There we go." said Toph. As if there was nothing else to be said, she walked out onto her bridge and headed toward the hatch, Jet following thankfully, with the rest in tow.
They entered the hatch, and followed a long winding staircase to the bottom, where they found a dark and wet passage. They had gone little more than a few yards, when they heard voices coming from a door to the left. Jet crept forward and peered in.
"I am Ju Dee." said Lao Feng. "Welcome to Ba Sing Se."
A shiver ran down Jet's back as he heard the words echoed by a group of young women in their zombie like tone, and he realized that he was brainwashing them.
The group zipped by the room quietly, unnoticed by the Dai Li's leader. They continued down their hall till they came into a large room filled with enormous earthen doors.
"He could be in one of these." said Jet. "Let's look." He approached one of the doors and pulled a lever to open it.
Appa groaned, and lifted his head at the sound of stone grating on stone, looking to see who had opened the door and hoping it was Aang.
"What's the matter?" asked The Blue Spirit. "Am I not whom you were expecting?" he walked forward with his broad swords drawn. Then he stopped, just as he was poised to strike the chains from the creature's legs. After so long, he had the air bison chained and imprisoned. Three years of frustration had all culminated in nothing more than his imprisonment in Ba Sing Se, and now to have in his possession the one thing he knew the avatar would come for…that was surely a gift from fate.
I could let it go, and go ahead with the plan, or I could wait and attempt to capture the avatar. If I could kill the others…no, Jet will be with them. Do I really want to kill him? Of course not. But what if it's the only way…But even if I turn on them now, my only reward for losing my only friends in the world will be a slight chance of redeeming an honor that they themselves say I never really lost.
Zuko's head pounded inside his mask. He had to think fast before the avatar, or worse yet the Dai Li discovered him.
And then the door grated open again. Zuko whipped round, swords ready.
"Uncle?" he asked, and sure enough, there was Uncle Iroh, standing with his arms folded, and a small smile on his face.
"Oh, The Blue Spirit. I wonder who could be behind that mask?"
Zuko bowed his head and removed the mask. "How did you get in here?" he asked.
"The same way we did last time, except without the guards this time. All I needed was one earth bender to open the door, and I was in."
"And now you intend to advise me what to do." Zuko said, frowning. "But I already know what you're going to say. You're going to say I can't betray the only people who have ever treated me well."
"Well, actually I was going to ask you where you intended to keep the bison. In the new apartment?"
"No, if I were to betray them, I'd stay here and wait. They'll be along any moment."
"If it weren't for the avatar, you would have frozen to death at the north pole, and as long as we tailed him, he never attempted to kill you, or hurt you in any way he did not see necessary. If you betray your friends, then there is no guarantee that they or your father will end up forgiving you, but if you help them, then you are certain to gain their favor, and people who treat you fairly as your friends do are worth ten times as much as someone who looks down on you as though you were an expendable part of his arsenal." Uncle's voice almost bordered on shouting now, but he remained calm for the most part. "Please, my nephew, just learn to think these things through before you do them, and life will be so much easier. You didn't think about how to get the avatar back to the ship at the north pole, you just headed off into the tundra with a desperate hope of returning your honor. I cannot make this choice for you, but please remember that the last time you made one like it, you made a mistake."
Zuko looked at the ground, shame and rage shaking his body.
Jet stared into the room he had opened. "Oops, maybe not."
Twelve Dai Li agents looked up from their dice game in surprise.
Shutting the door, Jet moved on to the next one.
"Are you scatterbrained?" asked Katara, popping the cork out of her water bottle.
"You know Jet, she right." said Toph. "There's nothing big or fluffy behind any of these doors, I've just checked." she would have gone on, but at that moment the door Jet had opened and closed opened again and all twelve agents poured out, casting their stone gloves as they came.
The freedom fighters began to go about their work again, gladly taking the shortest route and killing any agent that came into easy range, while team avatar was far more reluctant to kill.
Aang himself never did make a killing blow, always choosing instead to trap his victims in a cocoon of stone, or freeze their feet to the floor.
Soon there were far more than twelve agents in the room, and team avatar and the freedom fighters found themselves fighting for their lives.
"This way!" shouted Toph, and led the way down a tunnel, into darkness.
As they came out the other end of the tunnel, they were confronted by Long Feng.
"Going somewhere?" asked the Dai Li's head.
"You bet!" said Aang, and darted in the direction of another door. Jet followed him, but the others were accosted by at least two dozen Dai Li members, and left to fend for themselves.
Aang would have turned back to help them, but now Long Feng was chasing him and Jet, and they had difficulty staying ahead of him.
At last they came out into another large chamber, where they turned to stand and glare at their pursuer.
"Surrender or die." said Long Feng.
"Well of the two, I'd personally rather you died, but if you wanted to surrender I'd accept it." spat Jet.
"Foolish boy." The Dai Li leader held up his hands and clenched his fists as though he were choking Jet.
The earth kingdom teen's eyes flared open wide, and panic spread across his face as he fell to the ground clutching his stomach.
"Jet!" screamed Aang, and dropped beside the freedom fighter to examine him. "Jet, are you alright?"
The older boy moaned. "Stomach." he said, and then began to convulse as waves of nausea struck him.
Fearing for Jet's life, Aang tried to encourage him. "Jet, get up! You can lick this, you can do anything. You're a freedom fighter!"
As Aang finished, determination mixed with the pain in Jet's face, and, rising to his knees, he hauled back his arm and threw one of his swords at Long Feng with all his strength.
The leader dodged the blade, and leapt to attack Aang, but before he had traveled more than a few inches through the air he snapped back again and flopped to the ground.
"Take that!" shouted Toph, and put her foot on the Dai Li leader's throat. "And stay down!" She raised her arms, and pillars of stone shot up to encage her prisoner's face. Only then did she release his pony tail, by which she had pulled him to the floor.
Then she and the others rushed into the room, all unharmed.
Katara's eyes grew wide, and she knelt by Jet with her water ready to heal him, but was at a loss for where to administer it. At last she looked at Toph and said "This is an earth bender wound, can't you do something?"
Toph hung her head. "I'm afraid I don't know what it is that guy did." she said.
Jet was on the ground again, convulsing in spasms of pain.
In desperation, Katara fished in her clothing till she found the water that Master Pakku had given her from the spirit oasis at the north pole. She was about to administer it when Jet's hand reached out and stopped her.
"Katara, just go. More of them will be here soon." he said, between groans.
"But this is special water Jet. It might be able to heal you."
"Then save it in case you need to heal someone important like the avatar, or one of his teachers. I'm just a kid in the end. Just go."
"But-"
"Go!" Jet fairly shouted, and instantly wished he hadn't as the effort sent another pang of pain through his stomach.
Long Shot put a hand on Katara's shoulder. "Leave this to us." he said. "He's our leader."
Katara looked at him for a second, tears coming out of her eyes in spite of how she had felt about Jet less than an hour before.
"I'll be fine." Jet promised.
Katara nodded, and the group left, as Long Shot knocked an arrow, and Smellerbee pulled a dagger from her belt.
"He's lying." said Toph. The group ran with all speed to the surface.
"You did the right thing, Zuko." said Iroh to his nephew. "I just want you to know, I'm very…hello, what's this?"
They stopped walking, their forms casting tall shadows in the dim light.
In the center of the room they had entered, Smellerbee and Long Shot stood ready to fight, facing a passageway from which a dozen Dai Li members were cautiously proceeding. On the floor, Jet was groaning pitifully.
Iroh's expression turned to one of anger, and he ran toward the agents sending out fiery punches and shouting "Get out of here you heartless maggots!"
Frightened, the Dai Li members retreated, dragging their dazed leader behind them and leaving Uncle free to inspect Jet's wounds.
"It was their leader. He did something to Jet's stomach." said Long Shot, concern evident in his voice. He looked up at Iroh, his eyes saying the rest. "I don't know if he's going to make it."
Iroh smiled. "Looks like a bad case of stomach ache to me. I used to run into this all the time during the siege of Ba Sing Se. The Dai Li have discovered ways in which to bend the minds and bodies of their opponents, but not completely. This technique was often used during the siege to set a fire nation soldier's innards roiling in on themselves. It's very painful, but all he needs is some thistle berry tea. We learned to carry a pouch with us at all times during the war, and it saved my life many times. If we can get him back to the shop before he starts bleeding inside, he'll be fine. But we've got to hurry, because if not things will get very rough."
As it turned out, they did not get Jet to the shop within an hour. He was still alive when they reached it, but in so much pain he could barely breath. Try as Zuko might, he could not convince the earth benders to move the train any faster.
When they reached home, Iroh hastily brewed the tea, and gave Jet a sip of it. When the boy quieted down a little, he handed the cup to him.
Once he was sure Jet would be alright, Zuko realized just how sick he himself was feeling, and before he knew what had happened, he found himself on the floor beside his friend.
"What…" he started to ask, but Uncle shushed him. "What you did back there was most unusual. After hunting the avatar for so long, you released his bison. Helping him is something you are completely unused to, and now you are rebelling against yourself, mind and body. Rest now. We will take care of you."
"You know, don't you?" he asked. "You know about the Dai Li."
"I have always known about The Blue Spirit, Zuko. And I knew that you were sneaking out and killing the Dai Li agents. I was not very happy about that, but I knew it was something you had to sort out for yourself. Now sleep, Zuko. A man needs his rest."