Digging into the hard soil was by no means an easy task. Unsurprisingly, those who had more luck with it were earthbenders, but all the villagers worked as hard as they could, encouraged by Sokka and Aang.
Katara watched the work progress from a higher point on the mountain side, knowing she would be of little help with her waterbending skills. Not that she didn't try other ways, but all the shovels were already being handled by the most capable people.
"Keep it up! We'll dig through here, and take it to the river, right this way!" Sokka yelled directions, motioning a wide arch with his hands.
For a while it seemed like a perfect synchronization, with everyone working together. The young strategist couldn't keep himself from smiling; the plan was going so well. But it's usually moments like this when something goes wrong.
"Attention, everyone! Mayor Shen has given us new instructions. All non-benders must return to the village and prepare to evacuate. Once all the houses have been readied, and essential items have been moved to the safe location in the forest, we can continue here."
"What?!" Sokka couldn't believe what he was hearing. He turned around to look at the messengers. "You can't do that! We need everyone here to prepare this trench on time."
Other villagers had stopped digging upon hearing their words, unsure if they should follow Avatar or their mayor.
The two men who had arrived with the news looked a little conflicted about the message they were bringing. The older one turned his head to his companion, but Jiro continued to watch the trench with a grim look. He wasn't sure what he was going to do when he was on the way, but he's already seen enough here.
He looked Sokka in the eye, and asked about the last thing that could weight in on the matter "Can you guarantee that with everyone here, you'll succeed? That we'll make enough difference to save the village from lava?"
"Well, I..." Sokke scratched his head, looking around "We have to do our best!"
Jiro smiled bitterly at that. "I see... Someone told me recently not to try to match benders, but to help in the best way I can think of. And as much as I hate to admit it, the mayor's right. Earthbenders actually make a difference here, but the rest of us can ensure that even if it fails, we'll still make it out."
He exchanged looks with Maru and both men nodded in understanding. The older then took a step and called "You heard him! Earthbenders stay here, and the rest of us is to go back for now! We have to ensure the village safety, and evacuate the people! Then we can go back here and continue digging!"
It was clear that not everyone agreed, but they still followed them back to the village to execute the new plan. Sokka was the only one left with the shovel in his hands, and doubt crept into his face as he took a look at it. Aang finally noticed something was happening, for the noise made it impossible to hear the earlier announcement.
"What's going on? Where are they going?" the kid asked worriedly as he rushed to Sokka's side.
"Mayor of the village ordered evacuation, and called all non-benders to help with it." the young warrior replied, kicking a nearby stone with frustration.
"He doesn't believe we can save the village...?"
It was clear that the kid was upset by this, and seeing this, Sokka took it upon himself to restore morale. "Well then, we'll show them!"
He turned to face the remaining benders, who were still standing there in confusion.
"We're not stopping here! We'll save the village for sure, go back to digging!"
"Jiro, are you ok?" the man asked his friend as he caught up.
The younger man sighed. "Yeah... You know, when I saw how little progress the others were making, compared to earthbenders... It's just not fair."
"It wasn't unexpected, but... I know what you mean." Maru admitted grimly and then nudged him lightly with his elbow "But honestly, I was worried you'd rebel to help with that trench."
Jiro chuckled "I was thinking about it, but... Standing there, in front of the mountain... Everything is so small compared to it. It'd be crazy to risk everyone's lives on a chance that it will be enough, wouldn't it...?"
"It is children's plan after all." Maru answered with a light laugh, but added more seriously "But who knows, even if it doesn't fully work, it could lower the damage. I don't know about you, but I'm going back here once we'll make sure everyone's safe."
The whole village sounded with hasty calls and noises of rushed preparations. Zuko was passing directions to the people who were coming through there, but other than that he didn't have much to do.
"It seems that they got it. If it continues like that, they will be able to help with digging as well. I don't know what exactly the Water Tribe guy had in mind, but maybe they will actually manage to redirect at least some lava. Nobody has ever tried it in Fire Nation, but we don't have earthbenders to actually try it."
He considered going over there quickly to check out how this trench was coming along, when he heard sounds of an argument.
"Come on, Meng! You heard the Mayor, we have to leave the village for now!"
"NO!"
Zuko turned around, trying to locate the source of commotion. Just as he passed the nearby corner, he was faced with a strange sight. A couple was trying to pull a young girl out of the house (probably their daughter), but she resisted stubbornly. He recognised her as Aunt Wu's young assistant.
It seemed like she remembered him as well, because the moment she saw him, she yelled "You! It's your fault! What did you do?"
She didn't stop struggling with her parents even for a moment. They also noticed that they had a company, although they were confused as to how their daughter knew the stranger. The firebender also didn't know what the girl meant, so he just stared at them in surprise.
Meanwhile, she continued angrily, "Aunt Wu told me to leave early after she spoke to you, and I did, but now everyone around keeps saying that she lied to us, and that we need to leave the village!"
Zuko looked at her as if she had grown a second head. "Are you out of your mind? Don't you see that volcano is erupting? It's obvious that she lied about it! You really think that any of us could have caused that?"
She hesitated for a moment, and tears glistened in her eyes. "I... You had to! We were fine before you came!"
It definitely wasn't the first time he had been falsely accused of something, but the sheer ridiculousness of this particular accusation really pissed him off.
"Yeah, how convenient! A group of strangers comes into the village and the volcano explodes - surely it's their fault!" he yelled, raising his arms in frustration "Because that's easier to believe than accepting the truth, that an old women has no way of knowing when a volcano is about to erupt!"
The couple frowned slightly at his speech. "Young man," Meng's father said "I don't think we appreciate your tone here."
Zuko took a deep breath and pinched the bridge of his nose, trying to calm down before answering.
"Very well. But believe me, none of us caused this. And you're lucky that we actually came here, because, from what I saw today, some of you would have just stayed in your homes with a blind belief that you'd be fine by some miracle."
He turned around and was about to leave, but after a moment's thought, he added, "The Avatar is trying to save your village, but you would be wise to observe the results from a safe distance."
Zuko returned to the square, still fuming with anger, and absentmindedly gripped his chest as he walked. The wound continued to hurt, and he had no way of alleviating the pain. Usually, he could attempt to remove heat from the surrounding tissue to numb it, but he didn't dare to try it after this morning's incident. What if he couldn't even do that anymore? Had he truly lost his bending?
The first villagers had started to gather on the square, carrying bags and small carts. They gave him nervous glances, and fell silent as he approached. But when he didn't say anything, they slowly resumed their hushed conversations. The moods among the people varied from annoyed to anxious to fearfully desperate. It was beginning to look bad for their plans, and Zuko sighed again - he needed to calm them down, even if he was a mess himself.
"Are we really abandoning our village...?" a young woman asked in a louder tone. Before anyone could answer, Zuko spoke:
"No. You're not abandoning your village; you are ensuring that all your families, friends, and neighbors will be safe, even if the worst comes. That's what makes a village, not the buildings."
Whether his words actually reached them, or it was the mayor's arrival, they seemed to calm down.
"Well said, Lee." he praised the teen with a reassuring smile.
The prince just nodded in answer, and Shen passed him to talk to the villagers. He paid him half-mind, seeing that the man could handle organization himself. He wondered if he should join Team Avatar by the trench, when suddenly he felt that someone had grabbed his arm from behind.
He turned quickly, ready to fight, but all he saw was the old villager who had spoken earlier, when they were trying to convince people to take action.
"Oh my! Sorry to startle you... I wanted to thank you. If it wasn't for you, children, we would probably still be deluding ourselves that Makapu won't erupt somehow. I didn't want to believe it myself; that this nightmare could happen again. But this time, we have a chance." He said with a smile, although his eyes were sad, reminiscing about the events of his youth.
There was something calming about the man Zuko. In contrast to the hostility of the other villagers, it was nice for a change to just talk without bias.
"You don't need to thank me, uh... may I ask your name, sir?" Zuko asked, scratching his head slightly. It felt odd without any hair on it.
"Ahh, where are my manners? You may call me Guo Jin. And I assure you that there is very much to be grateful for. If there is anything I can do for you, please do not hesitate to ask."
Zuko couldn't think of anything he needed from the old man, but he didn't want to leave his presence just yet. Eventually, he remembered of something "I... You don't have to answer, but I was wondering what happened during the the previous eruption?"
"Oh, that. Well, it... It happened fast. Faster than this time." Guo Jin averted his gaze as he tried to recall the past events.
"The earth shook twice. After the first one, we didn't really react. I was out of the village with my father; he was teaching me how to hunt in the forest. I remember him saying carefully that we should go back to the village. I was upset, but he didn't explain why. We weren't far from the village when the second wave came. I tripped over, and when I looked up, I saw the smoke coming out of the mountain. My father told me to stay there and he rushed back. That was the last time I saw him... I watched him run into the village as the lava was coming down on it. He died trying to save my grandmother from the house that was melting away. It..."
A single tear appeared in the corner his eye, and Zuko really regretted asking.
"It's okay, you don't have to say more. I'm... Um, thank you for sharing."
The old man looked at Zuko again and smiled sadly. "I can see you didn't have it easy either. But you're a good man. Your parents must be proud of you."
The prince felt a lump in his throat suddenly. He took a step back and said, with a strangled voice "No, I don't think so."
And with that, he spun on his heel and walked away, ignoring the man calling after him.
Shen heard the calls, but he only caught a glimpse of the young man leaving in a rush. Still, he called after him as well "Lee, wait! We need to leave already!"
Obviously he was too late. He approached the old man and asked "Guo Jin, what's going on? Did Lee go to check on benders' work now?"
The asked man looked at mayor in confusion, but he quickly connected the dots "Ah, so his name is Lee. I have no idea, we were talking and suddenly he just ran off."
"Well, we can't wait for him. He knows where to find us." Shen turned his attention back to the gathering on the square. "Alright everyone, let's go! We're heading to the western forest!"
The earthbenders were just taking a short break to catch their breath, but the trench looked promising already. Sokka surveyed the progress constantly, and he was proud to admit that they had managed to get it all the way to the river, leaving them only with the task of deepening it as much as possible in the remaining time.
After pointing out another shallow spot for the earthbenders to deepen next, he turned and noticed his sister coming towards him.
"So, what do you think...? Is it gonna be enough?" she asked him nervously.
"Honestly, I don't know." Sokka replied, with a furrowed brow. "I really hope so, but I have no idea if it's going to work."
He paused for a moment before continuing "We're doing all we can right now. And it seems that all the villagers will evacuate anyway, so at least there shouldn't be any victims if it won't hold, so..."
They stood quietly for a while before she suddenly said "I still can't believe how stupid I was. How did you know Aunt Wu was wrong about the volcano...?"
"Well, we didn't exactly know it." Sokka answered without taking his eyes off of the trench "I mean, I doubted this whole fortune-telling thing from the beginning, but it was that jerk who started to insist that these guys need to go back to checking this volcano. He said that if they were caught by surprise with eruption they wouldn't make it out on time."
He looked at her, and he knew instantly that she understood what he meant. He continued "I don't really trust him, you know, and these people are seriously stubborn. But if he was right... I thought that we could at least check it ourselves while we're here... So, I talked Aang into flying on the top of the Makapu, and you know how it went from there."
"So Zuko just came to you...? Like, he wanted to help the village? That's kinda..."
"Yeah. Weird. Wait, where is he now?" he looked around the gathering.
"I'm not sure, somewhere in the village I guess." she answered pointing general direction "He didn't come here, anyway."
Sokka was about to comment on that when another quake shook the earth, and a bit of lava began to show at the top of the volcano. The moment of truth was coming.
"Alright, everybody! We're running out of time!"
Meanwhile, Zuko was walking through the village when the earth shook. Looking up, he noticed the lava beginning to flow out of the volcano's peak, and he quickened his pace. The sky was getting black with all the ash and smoke in the air.
"It's too early! It wasn't supposed to happen so quickly! Are the others still there working on the trench?"
As he ran toward the gate, he met a group of people fleeing in the opposite direction. Quickly, he informed them about the location of the evacuation point. Fortunately, they accepted this information without questioning him, and he continued on his way. The run was tiring for him more than he expected, but he was glad he was able to get there without breaks.
When he arrived, the lava was beginning to reach the trench, and he noticed that the only ones left at the scene were Aang, Katara, and Sokka, who were now standing on the trench's bank. They strengthened it by adding a wall made of earth that they had dug.
While Zuko actually was impressed with the design, it was too much for him to climb it, as the jog had already taken a lot out of him. He was short of breath and the blood pounding in his ears resonated with the burning pain from the wound.
The rest of the group noticed his arrival with surprise, but nobody said a word. Their attention immediately went back to the lava, which was beginning to fill the trench gradually. The heat radiating from it was enough to make them sweat, but it didn't matter at all to them.
Zuko watched it for a few more seconds, but then the realization hit him - he didn't need to see how deep the trench was; with such lava flow, there was no way it could be deep enough.
"There's too much lava," Zuko warned them. "At this rate, it will overflow the trench. We need to get away from here."
He moved to leave, but the rest of them stood their ground, still watching, obviously hoping that he was wrong. Yet the lava was filling the trench much faster than it could flow down into it, and it seemed that it would indeed overflow within less than a minute.
Sokka cursed silently and took a step back, casting a look at his sister. Katara returned it and they both quickly slid down the wall.
"Aang, come on!" Sokka called as he noticed that the airbender wasn't moving.
"No! We can't just leave! They're counting on us!" Aang stated with determination "There has to be something we can do!"
Katara considered climbing back up to drag him away, but she just said, "Everyone is evacuated! At least no one will get hurt. It's not worth the risk! We have to go, Aang!"
But Aang was far from giving up; he had already taken a great leap into the air. Focusing his chi, he released it in one powerful blast of air. The force of it was strong enough to cool the lava below into a solid wall, effectively stopping the flow that was threatening the village.
The rest of the group watched silently in awe, until Sokka spoke thoughtfully "Man... Sometimes I forget what a powerful bender that kid is."
"What did you say?" Katara asked him, frowning slightly as she recalled something.
"Nothing, just that Aang is one powerful bender." Sokka repeated absently. Suddenly a concerning thought occurred to him.
"Well, it should be high enough to stop the lava now" he said carefully, not willing to ask the jerk prince directly, but hoping that he would disagree out loud if he deemed it still wouldn't be enough.
Zuko stood next to them, his face filled with a mixture of shock and awe at the Avatar's power. He didn't really pay attention to what the other teen said, so the hidden question remained unanswered. The kid, however, was unaware of their reaction as he jumped off the trench wall to join them.
"I think this will hold" he said with a smile. "What do you think, Zuko? You seem to know about this volcano stuff."
The question finally made its way into his mind, and the firebender actually examined the newly created wall. It seemed high enough to stop the lava wave's impact, and solid enough to withstand the lava flowing around the village to the lower terrains.
"I think so. However, they could be in trouble if it continues for too long, because the bottom layers of lava may start congealing and the wall may become too low."
"And how long is too long...?" Aang asked, his smile fading already.
"It depends on the flow," the firebender shrugged. "But at this rate, it should hold for a few days."
"Few days?! Just how long do volcanic eruptions last?" Katara couldn't help but ask.
"On average, it can take from a few days, up to a few months." The prince answered, raising a brow at her.
"Isn't that common knowledge? I guess they didn't have many volcanoes at the South Pole..."
He took one more look at the mountain "But with such eruption strength, it could be on the shorter side."
"Then I guess we shouldn't tell the villagers to come back yet, if it's still not safe." Sokka said reluctantly
"But we can tell them that the trench held for now; I'm sure it will calm them down!" Aang said with a smile as he opened his glider.
"Wait, Aang! There's no need to rush so much." Sokka stopped him just before he jumped on it. "I'm pretty sure they could see it; they probably went somewhere to a higher terrain."
"Yeah. The mayor chose the western forest." Zuko added silently, unaware of a surprised look Sokka sent him.
"Oh. Okay then, let's go!" the kid grinned, folding his glider back into the staff.
After last quick check of the wall, they started walking towards the forest. At first there was a silence between them, with everyone thinking about what they've just seen, but eventually Katara broke it awkwardly.
"So... I've heard that you were the one that who warned us, right Zuko...? How did you know about the volcano?"
Zuko turned to her with a sigh. "I didn't know it was this close to eruption. I was just pointing out that the village built right on the volcano's side should be checking its state. It's not possible anyone could foresee the eruption, and wishful thinking has almost cost them their lives."
Aang frowned slightly in worry, but a thought occurred to him. "Hey, wait a minute! But if Aunt Wu wasn't in this village, we wouldn't have come here and the village would have been destroyed! So she still kind of protected it in a way, right?"
"That's a bit far-fetched, but come to think about it..." Sokka wondered out loud "You may be kinda right. Well, maybe the people would have run away, but the village would be under lava now."
"Are you kidding?" Zuko asked incredulously. "Her presence alone didn't save anyone! If you hadn't happened to stumble upon this village at this exact moment, they would have died. You heard what they were saying."
The entire Gaang stared at him with a mixture of shock and guilt, but he continued, "And even more so, what was the chance that you would decide to check this volcano when you were there? You could have left the village after seeing her. Heck, even that trench of yours wasn't enough! If it wasn't for the Avatar, it would all still be for nothing. If anything, the village was saved by a series of lucky coincidences."
"Honestly, there was more luck here today than I've had in my entire life." Zuko added in thought
"So many coincidences, maybe it was destiny?" Aang asked with shy smile "If they were so lucky, maybe they were meant to be saved?"
"Destiny..." the prince hissed mockingly "So many people got killed over the centuries, so many villages got destroyed by volcanoes, even this village has suffered it once already. Why would it be destined to be saved now?"
"I..." Aang started, but his voice cracked. Katara was in his defence instantly.
"Hey, back off! You have no right to talk to him this way!"
They kept holding each other's gaze, but eventually Zuko looked away. He kept silent for the rest of the way, and they ignored him as well. Only Aang would occasionally cast a glance at him once in a while, and the Water Tribe siblings just chattered to keep the airbender occupied.
"Just how much longer...?" Zuko asked himself as he clutched his chest absently.
I hope you enjoy the story so far ;) I made convincing the villagers look a bit different, as I didn't think they could be so dumb to not believe that volcano is erupting.