8
Hoshiko leaned back on the saddle of the giant bison. They had left Omashu yesterday, and they were still traveling. Hoshiko watched as Momo scurried around the saddle, peeking over the edge to see the land they flew over. Hoshiko looked over as well, looking down at the swampy lands below. Katara was going over a water bending scrolls and Sokka was sharpening his machete with a rock. It had been straight flying for hours, so everyone was a bit bored. Aang looked down at the swamp, seeing the sunlight reflect off the water through the trees. He kept staring at the water, not really focusing on anything he saw.
Sokka looked around when he saw the clouds around them changed direction from a horizontal flow to a diagonal one. He looked down at the swamp then back at Aang, "Hey, you taking us down for a reason?" He asked. Hoshiko and Katara looked around at his words, seeing that they were indeed descending, Aang didn't respond until Sokka demanded, "Aang! Why are we going down?"
He seemed to snap out of his trance, "What?" He asked, rubbing his eyes, "I didn't even notice."
"Are you noticing now?" Sokka asked. Katara and Hoshiko came up closer to Aang.
"Is something wrong?" Katara asked.
"I know this is gonna sound weird, but," Aang began, "I think the swamp is… calling to me."
"Is it telling you where we can get something to eat?" Sokka asked, holding his stomach as he looked down at the swamp.
"No, I…" Aang said, "I think it wants us to land there."
"No offense to the swamp," Hoshiko said, leaning over the saddle and looking at the swamp, "But I don't see any land there to land on."
"I don't know." Aang said, "Bumi said to learn earth bending I'd have to wait and listen. And now I'm actually hearing the earth. Do you want me to ignore it?"
Sokka looked over the saddle and down at the swamp Momo doing the same, "Yes."
"I don't know." Katara said, "There's something ominous about that place." Momo shrunk back from the swamp with a whimper, and Appa let out a loud grunt.
"See? Even Appa and Momo don't like it here." Sokka said.
"Okay, since everyone feels so strongly about this," Aang looked down at the swamp, "Bye swamp. Yip yip!" He whipped the reigns on Appa and the bison took off. The group heard whirring and crunching sounds behind them as they moved. Sokka turned around and saw a giant tornado moving towards them.
"You better throw in an extra 'yip'!" he said, "We gotta move!"
Aang reacted instantly, having Appa swerve one way and another to avoid the whirlwind, but it seemed to follow them wherever they flew. Finally, the tornado got close enough to them that the winds were able to pick up Sokka. Hoshiko reached out and grabbed his arm with both hands, forgetting that in order to make him stop flying she needed to grab onto something. Katara grabbed the Shinjun's leg while grabbing onto the saddle. Aang, abandoning his position on Appa's head and jumping onto the saddle, using air bending to create a protective air bubble around the bison. Sokka and Hoshiko fell back onto the saddle as the air bending created a different flow of air so it wasn't so powerful. Since no one was directing Appa, they flew right into the tornado. Aang kept the bubble around them but he couldn't keep it up forever, so the bubble 'popped' and everyone went flying.
The tornado spat out Hoshiko, Sokka, Katara, and Aang a few feet away, and sent Appa and Momo in another direction. Everyone but Aang splashed into the swamp water when they landed. Everyone stood and looked around, seeing that they were surrounded by mossy trees with hundreds of leaves and vines growing around them.
"Where's Appa and Momo?" Aang asked, looking around. Nervous for his pets, he used air bending to climb up a tree to call out for them, but he saw nothing, not even the tornado that got them there. As the rest of them tried to get less disoriented, Hoshiko looked over at Sokka and saw something she had only read about in books.
"Sokka, you've got an elbow leech." Katara said, pointing at it.
"Where?! Where?!" Sokka cried, turning around in a panic.
"Where do you think?" Katara asked dryly. Sokka looked down at his elbow and glared at the leech as he grabbed it around its long mouth and easily yanked it off.
"Why do things keep attaching to me?!" He demanded as he threw it behind him, almost hitting Hoshiko.
"Maybe it's because they find you tasty and delicious." She said sarcastically. Sokka glared at her as he rubbed his elbow. Aang flew back down to the group, landing on a nearby tree root.
"You couldn't find them?" Katara asked him.
"No. And the tornado…" He paused unsurely, "It just disappeared." Everyone looked at him wide-eyed as they looked around the swamp. Why would a tornado form so suddenly only to vanish just as fast?
"We should probably get out of here." Hoshiko said, looking around at the trees, "This place gives me types of heebie-jeebies I didn't know I could get."
"I'm with you." Aang said, "Let's find Appa and get going."
The group began trudging through the waters of the swamp, more than once having to stop because something got stuck to them in the water, or because someone's foot got stuck in the muck they walked on. When they encountered a wall of plants, they attempted to go around it. After a while, Sokka's impatience got the better of him, and he pulled out his machete and began slicing away at a wall of vines.
"We better speed things up!" He said before he sliced at the vines again.
"Maybe we should be a little nicer to the swamp." Aang said cautiously.
"Aang, these are just plants!" Sokka said, "Do you want me to say 'please' and 'thank you' as I swing my machete back and forth?" He swung at the plants again, getting more of them out of his way.
"Maybe you should listen to Aang." Katara said, "Something about this place feels… alive."
"I'm sure there are lots of things that are alive here." Sokka said, "And if we don't wanna wind up getting eaten by them, we need to find Appa as fast as we can." He slashed at the vines again and everyone followed him through the pathway he made. Hoshiko heard a rustling sound and looked behind them, her eyes quickly scanned the trees and their branches. Seeing no movement, she shrugged it off as her own paranoia and followed the others.
"Oh hey!" Sokka said, as if he had just figured something out, "Hoshiko!" She looked over at him, "Can't you track Appa with your shadow bending?" She shook her head.
"No, I can only track on land." She said, "Swampy marshlands are no good, and I can't track anything when I'm waist deep in swamp muck." She gestured to the waist-high water they all stood in.
"Oh yeah, right." Sokka said, going back to chopping at the leaves.
As they went deeper into the swamp, the darker it got, and it wasn't because of the thickness of the branches above them, it was getting late. Finally, it got to be to a point where the moon had risen, and they were still out searching for their bison friend.
"Appa!" Katara called through the darkness, "Momo!"
"There's no way they can hear us and no way we can see them." Sokka said as they traversed up a tree root, "We'll have to make camp for the night." A few bugs began to buzz around his head and bite him. He slashed furiously at them with his machete, and stopped when Hoshiko brought up a ball of shadow around the bugs and threw them in another direction, "Thanks." She nodded back at him.
They heard a bubbling sound and then a low hiss before seeing something rise out of the water.
"What was that?" Katara asked fearfully.
"Nothing. Just swamp gas." Sokka said, "Look, there's nothing supernatural going on here." The group grimaced as the scent from the swamp gas reached their noses. Everyone jumped as a horrible shriek was heard, huddling together in fear as they heard it again. "I think we should build a fire." Sokka said before darting off to the nearest tree, which had been hollowed out over time, and chopping off a log of one of its old roots.
"Sokka, the longer we're here, the more I think you shouldn't be doing that." Aang said.
"No, I asked the swamp, it said this was fine. Right, swamp?" Sokka said sarcastically before grabbing the top of an old root and saying in a puppet-like voice, "No problem, Sokka!" Aang sent him a dry look that said he was not amused. Sokka ignored it as he chopped off the part he had been using as a puppet and proceeded to get more logs from the dead roots. He made a fire in the hollowed-out tree and everyone gathered around it. Katara looked out to the swamp behind them and turned back to the fire.
"Does anyone else get the feeling that we're being watched?" She asked.
"Yeah, I'm watching you." Hoshiko said sarcastically. Katara gave her the same dry look Aang had given Sokka.
"Please, we're all alone out here." Sokka said before swinging his machete at a fly that buzzed around his head. Suddenly, a bright light came from the fly as it buzzed further away from them into the swamp, where the light reflected off the eyes of other creatures surrounding them.
"Except for them." Aang said fearfully as he and Katara huddled close.
"Right, except for them." Sokka said, huddling next to Hoshiko. She gave him a dry look before pushing him off, "Hey!"
"Huddle with your sister, not me!" Hoshiko said, wrapping her arms around her legs and pulling them close. Sokka saw her pupils turn a glowing green color as she looked out into the swamp, "There's nothing out there, just a few harmless birds and a couple stork monkeys."
"How can you tell?" Katara asked, Hoshiko pointed to her green pupils.
"Hello! Night vision." She said, "All us Panther Shinjuns can see in the dark, so long as I'm here on lookout or whatever, we'll be fine." She turned back to the fire and everyone waited in a silence.
Eventually, as the fire died out, everyone began to fall asleep, leaning against someone else's back. As the night turned to early morning, everyone was fast asleep, so no one noticed long green vines slithering up to them and coiling around their bodies like a serpent until they jerked them awake and pulled them off in different directions. Hoshiko was dragged against the swamp floor, she clawed at the ground to try and stop, but that was no good. So she dug her heels into the earth and forced the vines to bring her to her feet. She wriggled her way out and chopped them away from her with shadow bending, using her shadow as something of a knife, fighting them off with one slice after another. When no more seemed to come, she ran off in the opposite direction, through the water and jumping over tree roots.
When she finally came to a stop, she saw the morning light rise, showing her the swamp and all its plants. She looked around and saw that she was alone.
"You gotta be kidding me."
"AANG!" Hoshiko called, "KATARA!" She looked around through the fog and saw a figure with a little ponytail, "Finally! Sokka!" The figure turned to her, but she could only see his silhouette, "Sokka, that is you, right?" She got closer, "Thank the spirits I found you! I've been wandering around this swamp for…" As she got closer, she saw the figure was actually shorter than Sokka, with white hair and not dark, wearing a blue tunic and blue pants, with white wolf ears on the top of their head. "Hours…" The figure turned to her and her breath caught in her throat. It was Kotaro, exactly as she remembered him, his little stub of a ponytail at the base of his neck, his dark marble eyes looking right into hers. He was the same fourteen-year-old she last saw him as. He smiled at her, showing his fangs in his teeth, but it didn't scare her.
"Impossible…" She breathed, she was frozen to the spot. She stared at him and he stared back, still smiling. She felt tears prick at her eyes and she moved closer to him. She lifted a hand out to touch his face, but he suddenly ran off, "Hey! Wait!" She heard him laughing as she chased after him, "Kotaro, please! Wait!" She kept running after him, never losing sight of him, not even when he turned sharp corners, she kept her eyes on his tail before he ran off and she turned the corner after him. "Kotaro!" She called. She was running out of energy, she couldn't keep running for much longer. Finally, she turned a corner and saw him standing on a tree root a few feet away. She ran towards him, and it was only when she was able to see the entire body that she realized that it wasn't Kotaro, but Sokka. She skidded to a stop before she crashed into him, and he looked at her.
"Hoshiko!" Sokka exclaimed, obviously happy to see someone else.
"Sokka." Hoshiko said, "Are you okay?"
"I should be asking you that!" Sokka said, Hoshiko looked down and saw her pants were covered in mud and muck from all the running after an imaginary figure.
"I'm fine." She dismissed, "Don't worry about it." They heard shouts and two beings came crashing into them, knocking them onto another giant tree root. They looked up and saw it was Katara and Aang.
"What do you guys think you're doing?" Sokka demanded, standing. "I've been looking all over for you!"
"Well, I've been wandering around looking for you!" Katara shot back.
"I was chasing some girl." Aang said as he used air bending to stand up.
"What girl?" Katara asked.
"I don't know." Aang said as he helped her up, "I heard laughing and then I saw some girl in a fancy dress."
"Well, there must be a tea party here and we just didn't get out invitations!" Sokka said sarcastically.
"I thought I saw Mom." Katara said, everyone's eyes went wide as she said these words, because they all knew Katara and Sokka's mom was dead.
"I saw my hanbun tamashi, Kotaro." Hoshiko said.
"Look, we're all just scared, and hungry, and our minds were playing tricks on us." Sokka said, "That's why we all saw things out here."
"You saw something, too?" Katara asked, Sokka turned away from them.
"I thought I saw Yue." He said quietly, "But that doesn't prove anything!" He turned back to them, "Look, I think about her all the time! And you saw Mom, someone you miss a lot. You saw your little soul mate guy, and you miss him, too."
"Hanbun tamashi means 'half soul,' not soul mate!" Hoshiko corrected, Sokka rolled his eyes in response.
"Same thing." He said dismissively.
"It is not!" Hoshiko insisted.
"What about me?" Aang asked, "I didn't know the girl I saw. And all our visions led us right here."
"Where is here, exactly?" Hoshiko asked, "The middle of the swamp?"
"Yeah…" Aang said, turning around to face the gigantic tree whose roots they stood on, "The center… It's the heart of the swamp. It's been calling us here. I knew it!"
"It's just a tree!" Sokka said, "It can't call anyone! For the last time, there's nothing after us! And there's nothing magical happening here!"
Suddenly, a gigantic, beast rose from the swamp water with a wooden mask for a face. Everyone screamed and ran away from the beast. It shot out its arm and it lengthened so it could grab onto Sokka's leg and pull him up. He brought his arm down again and again, making Sokka splash into the water. Aang shot out a sharp slice of air at it to cut off its arm and make it drop him. The monster then shot out its other arm at Aang and threw him back. Sokka kept chopping at the vines that held him, not seeing the monster bring up more vines to recreate its arm until it grabbed him again. He shot off in the water, Katara went after it with her water bending, and shot out a powerful stream of water at its shoulder so it would release her brother, but it didn't do any good because the shoulder began to regenerate.
Hoshiko ran up to bring up shadow but they never came. She couldn't bend the shadows under the water. She dodged its arm when it tried to crush her to run up to a tree branch, but it caught her and threw her in a different direction. She shrieked and dug her claws into the bark of a tree she hit. She let out an animalistic growl and brought up the shadows that hung around the tree to wrap around her body, covering her arms, legs, face and torso. When she was completely covered, her crystalline blue eyes were the only thing you could recognize about her, because she didn't look like herself, now she looked like a panther, only her skin moved around with black tentacles coming out from the inky darkness. She let out a roar and ran over to Katara.
"Katara!" She called out, she looked at her in shock, "I can't bend shadows in the water. Bend up enough water to make a dry path for me!" The monster brought up its arm, but before it could bring it down, Katara bent up a wave of water and pushed the monster back against a tree branch, still holding Sokka in its grasp. She bent up a dry pathway and Hoshiko pounced into it and charged at the monster. Before she could pounce on it, the monster stuck out its stomach and a third arm came out and pushed her away, making her fly off into the swamp past Aang as he came back. The third arm pushed him back as well before he could make an attack. The monster put Sokka into the third arm and began to engulf him into his stomach. Sokka tried to cut through the thick vines, but his arms and legs were quickly held back.
Aang, riding his air scooter, went up to the top of the monster's body and used air bending to create a whirlwind around it to mangle its body. Sokka was still visible through the vines, and Katara used her water bending to freeze the vines around Sokka, then she brought up a huge stream of water and pushed him out of the monster's body. The monster brought up more vines to regenerate the hole that was made in its body. It began to move toward Katara and Sokka.
Hoshiko, still looking like a shadowy panther, leaped from the trees and landed on the monster's head, making it fall forward. She jumped off its head, turning back to her more human form and stood in front of it, taking the shadows that once surrounded her body to hang above her arms, ready to fight. The monster used its arm to make her fly back and land into the water a few feet away. Katara saw this and glared at the monster before bending up paper thin slices of water and using them as giant watery blades to slice the monster into different bits. It was too fast for the creature to react in any offensive form, so it took a defensive one. As one slice cut through the torso, and the group saw the silhouette of a man's body for one moment before he bent up more vines to cover the 'wound' on the body.
"There's someone in there!" Sokka said, "He's bending the vines!" Katara brought up another stream of water and used it to slice off the top half of its head, and have it slide to the water. Since the body was no longer a body, Katara thought she had won, but more vines came up from the water and wrapped around her and pulled her up and away from it. Aang jumped out of the trees and shot a powerful blast of air at it, making the vines fall back into the water.
"Why did you call me here if you just wanted to kill us?" Aang demanded.
"Wait!" A voice called out. The vines moved to reveal a portly, middle-aged man with gray hair that fanned out into something like an umbrella shape with a moustache and beard on his face, he wore nothing but a type of leafy underwear, "I didn't call you here." The group shared uneasy glances.
"We were flying over and I heard something calling to me, telling me to land." Aang said.
"He's the avatar." Sokka said, "Stuff like that happens to us a lot."
"The avatar?" The man repeated, "Come with me." The group shared another glance and followed the man as he led them up a few tree roots to a place near the giant stump of the tree.
"So, who're you?" Hoshiko asked as they walked up.
"I protect the swamp from folks that want to hurt it." The man said as he bent a vine out of their path, "Like this fella with his big knife." He moved aside and let them pass by him.
"See? Completely reasonable." Sokka said, "Not a monster, just a regular guy defending his home! Nothing 'mystical' about it!"
"Oh, the swamp is a mystical place, alright." The man said as he brought them closer to the tree's base, "It's sacred. I reached enlightenment right here under the banyan grove tree." He sat down in front of them, "I heard it callin' me. Just like you did." Sokka looked up at the tree then back at the man.
"Sure you did." He said sarcastically, "It seems real chatty." Hoshiko rolled her eyes at him and pulled him down to sit next to her as they all sat around the man.
"See, this whole swamp is actually just one tree spread out over miles." The man said, spreading his arms to gesture to the whole swamp, "Branches spread and sink and take root, and spread some more! One big, living organism! Just like the entire world."
"I get how the tree is one big thing," Aang said, "But the whole world?"
"Sure." The man said, "You think you're any different from me, or your friends, or this tree? If you listen hard enough, you can hear every livin' thing breathing together. You can feel everything growing. We are all livin' together, even if most folks don't act like it. We all have the same roots, and we are all branches of the same tree."
"But what did our visions mean?" Katara asked.
"In the swamp, we see visions of people we've lost. People we loved." The man said, "Folks we think are gone, but the swamp tells us they're not. We're still connected to 'em. Time is an illusion, and so is death."
"But what about my vision?" Aang asked, "It was someone I had never met."
"You're the avatar, you tell me." The man said, giving Aang a humorous smirk.
"Time is an illusion…" Aang repeated aloud in thought, "So… It's someone I will meet." The man nodded in agreement.
"Sorry to interrupt the lesson," Sokka said as he got up, "But we still need to find Appa and Momo."
"I think I know how to find them." Aang said as he put his hand on the root they sat on, "Everything is… connected." He pressed his palm against the root and the tattoo on his hand began to glow as a small circle of lightening moved around his hand. After a moment, he jumped up, "Come on! We've gotta hurry!" Everyone took off after him as they went through the swamp to a large river portion.
Hoshiko's sharp ears picked up the sound of someone singing a very off-key song.
"Set my lines by the riverbed!
Caught ten fish and I killed 'em dead!
Cut 'em and gut 'em,
And tossed the head,
In the water to keep them cat gators fed!" They looked to see Appa trapped in a net being dragged by boats that were being moved by men in the river. Katara shot a wave of water at the group, sending a few of them into the river. Aang flew up onto the branch and saw his bison.
"Appa!" He called, he shot out air at a man holding a bag, and once he let go, Momo came flying out and went towards him.
"We're under attack!" A skinny man yelled before he brought up a wave of water to knock Aang and Katara off the branch. They bent it back to defend themselves against him.
"Hey, you guys are water benders!" Katara said as she kept bending the water away.
"You, too?" The skinny man asked, "That means we're kin!" Katara grimaced as the water fell back into the river. Sokka, Hoshiko, and the man from before came running up to join them. The skinny man smiled at the portly man. "Hey, Huu! How you been?"
"You know," The man began, "Scared some folks, swung some vines. The usual." The group looked at him.
"Huu?" Sokka repeated.
The group was back at the swamp water bender's camp. They had invited their 'kin' over for dinner. Hoshiko looked unsurely at the assortment off food they had been given on sticks. Some was possum chicken, some was some kind of giant insect, and some species of fish. They all sat around a fire as some stew was being mixed with water bending for them to eat later.
"How you like that possum chicken?" The skinny man from before, who was named Du, asked Sokka.
"Taste just like arctic hen." Sokka said, looking down at the meat he had just eaten, "So why were you guys so interested in eating Appa? You've got plenty of those big things wandering around." He pointed to the cat gator lying down behind Du.
"You want me to eat ol' Slim?" Du asked incredulously, "He's like a member of the family!" He took a fish off of the stick he had and tossed it at the reptile, who quickly chomped it in his mouth.
"Nice Slim." Sokka said, tossing a giant bug at the creature. It landed on his nose and he growled at him. Sokka flinched in fear. Du laughed.
"Oh, he don't eat no bugs!" He said, "That's people food!"
"Where'd you say you was from?" Tho, Du's brother, asked.
"The South Pole." Katara said.
"Didn't know there was water benders anywhere but here!" Tho said, "They got a nice swamp there, do they?"
"No, it's all ice and snow." Katara replied. The two brothers grimaced.
"Hmm, no wonder you left." Tho muttered.
"Well, I hope you realize now that nothing strange is going on here." Sokka said, "Just a bunch of greasy people living in a swamp."
"What about the visions?" Hoshiko asked.
"I told you, we were hungry!" Sokka insisted as he held up a large fly, "I'm eating a giant bug!" He chomped on it and swallowed it with a grimace.
"But what about when the tree showed me where Appa and Momo were?" Aang asked.
"That's avatar stuff, that doesn't count." Sokka said before turning to Huu, "The only thing I can't figure out is how you made the tornado that sucked us down."
"I can't do anything like that." Huu said, "I just bend the water in the plants."
"Well, no accounting for weather!" Sokka said, shrugging casually, "Still, there's absolutely nothing mysterious about the swamp." Hoshiko rolled her eyes.
"Right." She drawled sarcastically. Sokka glared at her, "You know, it wouldn't kill you to be a little more open-minded about things." Now Sokka rolled his eyes at her.
"It won't make any sense that way." Sokka said.
"If you just accept that some fiction is fact, the unexplainable would make plenty of sense!" Hoshiko argued before taking a big chomp of the piece of fish on her stick. She looked over at Tho, who was staring at her in a way that made her uneasy, "What?"
"Where'd you get them ears?" Tho asked, "Did you make 'em out of some fancy war stuff?" Hoshiko sent him a furious glare before she stood up from the ground.
"These are my real ears!" She shouted, "They're not fake! I was born this way!"
"Well, what 'bout yer tail?" One of the other water benders asked before tugging on it roughly. Hoshiko stood at attention with a loud squeak, her face tightened. She whirled around to glare fiercely at the water bender, her face flushed in anger, as she snatched her tail out of his hands.
"Don't DO that!" She ordered in a high-pitched voice, Sokka looked at her in shock before smirking deviously.
"Oh, so your tail is a weak spot, huh?" He asked slyly, Hoshiko looked at him.
"No." She said, "It's just… Sensitive." She petted her tail gently in her hands before sitting back down, "It's very painful when someone pulls it." She released her tail and let it stick out behind her again as she reached for her stick of food and began eating it.
"So, what if someone did this?" Sokka asked as he gently ran his hands up the tail. Hoshiko blushed and shivered at the sudden moment, "What would that do?" She would never tell him this, but having someone do that to her tail was incredibly arousing.
Hoshiko glared at him and pulled her tail back into her grasp, "It's none of your business what it does!" She growled. She took one more chomp of food and stood up, "I'm going to bed. Goodnight."
"Goodnight." Everyone called back as she went up to Appa. She petted his fur before leaping up onto the saddle and snuggling into it to try and get some sleep.
"Oh, I see!" Sokka yelled from his place near the fire, "It turns you on, doesn't it?" Hoshiko brought up a stream of shadow and had it smack him upside his head. He yelped at the sudden pain, "Yeah, I probably deserved that." Everyone around the fire laughed, and even Hoshiko allowed herself a giggle before drifting off to sleep.
Yay! Chapter 8!
Okay, I'm gonna be greedy now, and say that you can't get the next chapter until I get
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For this story. Just two! That's all I ask!
It will make me feel like this story isn't a total fail.
:(
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