Later, while we're eating a dinner of noodles and sauce from my bag, Zuko approaches our group. He had been avoiding us since his failed attempt at a lesson.
"Listen everybody," he calls, "I've got some pretty bad news. I think I've lost my Fire bending. It's gone."
Katara giggles into her hand. Honestly, what is wrong with her? Everyone turns to look at the source of laughter.
"I'm sorry," Katara snorts, not sounding sorry at all. "I'm just laughing at the irony. You know how it would have been nice for us if you had lost your Fire bending a long time ago?"
"Well it's not lost," Zuko amends his earlier statement. "It's just weaker for some reason."
"Maybe you're just not as good as you think you are," Katara sneers.
"Ouch," Toph comments.
Zuko thinks for a moment. "I bet it's because I changed sides."
"That's ridiculous," the Water bender scoffs.
"I don't know," Aang says. "Maybe it isn't. Maybe your Fire bending comes from rage. And you just don't have enough anger to fuel it the way you used to, like Starr was saying earlier."
"So," Sokka smiles, "all we have to do is make Zuko angry!" He starts poking Zuko with Aang's staff.
"Okay, cut it out!" Zuko shouts. He sits on a rock next to me and begins eating his pasta. "Look, maybe you're right, but I don't want to rely on hate and anger anymore. There has to be another way."
"You're going to have to draw your Fire bending from another source," Toph states. "I recommend the original source. That's where I learned my Earth bending: from the badger-moles."
"The dragons are the original source for Fire benders," I muse, "I mean, were. But Zuko said that they're all extinct now."
"Maybe there's another way," Zuko says. "They say that the first people to learn from the dragons were the ancient Sun Warriors."
"Sun Warriors?" we all ask.
"They died off thousands of years ago," Zuko tells us. "But their civilization isn't too far from where we are now. Maybe we can learn something by poking around their ruins."
"So…what?" Sokka asks. "Maybe you'll pick some super old Sun Warrior energy just by standing where they stood a thousand years ago?"
"More or less," Zuko answers. "Either I need to find a new way to Fire bend, or the Avatar needs to find a new teacher."