Some Time Later. Aang and His Team.
"Any word on Sokka?" Katara paced anxiously around the small room they had been given.
"Someone in the city saw the Fire Nation soldiers taking him away, but that's all," Aang sighed heavily, his shoulders slumping with exhaustion.
Constant fatigue had become as familiar to him as an old friend ever since they fled the North Pole.
Hopelessness and exhaustion.
War...
War was everywhere. It followed him wherever he went, lingered in the air like the smoke of burning cities, flowed through rivers as poisonous industrial waste from factories that produced machines of war, stained the earth with the scars of burned forests. Spirits that had once been peaceful were now filled with rage, turning against humanity after being infected with madness and aggression.
But something else was even worse.
Spirits that had always been evil were beginning to appear.
Even now, Aang still saw that sinister figure in his nightmares—a being wreathed in flames and surrounded by the echoes of hundreds of deaths. A being powerful enough to force the Ocean Spirit itself to retreat. And that spirit served the Fire Lord. Or at least allowed him to believe it did, which was even worse.
Aang had even sought out the Face Stealer once more, but the answer he received had brought him little comfort.
Among all the spirits in the Spirit World, there was only one with the power to stand against the Ocean. One who truly drew his strength from chaos, war, and suffering.
Vaatu.
The very name stirred regret and indignation in the deepest part of Aang's being. An ancient and unimaginably cunning enemy. He had been bound and imprisoned ten thousand years ago, but no prison could last forever—that much the young airbender knew from personal experience. And if Vaatu really had broken free...
Aang simply didn't know what to do.
He was only twelve. No Great Spirit had ever trained him. Of the four elements, he had truly mastered only air, and to some extent water. He desperately needed to learn earth and fire.
And he was trying.
Again and again, he searched for different methods, for shortcuts, for some alternative path, yet with the stubbornness of a badgermole, he kept grinding away at the mountain of knowledge—sometimes almost literally. On the third day, earth had finally yielded to him. Even so, he could feel in his very bones how far he was from true mastery. He still had a long, long way to go before he could match Avatar Kyoshi's skill with the element.
And time might already have run out.
There was only one option left.
The Avatar State.
But he still couldn't enter it at will, and the risks were enormous. Yet if that was what restoring Balance required...
"Aang? Are you okay?" Katara interrupted his dark thoughts.
"Yeah... sorry. I was just thinking." He forced himself back to the present. "Wait... what's all that noise?"
The young Air Nomad wasn't in the mood to talk, so he seized the first excuse he could find to end the conversation that had been weighing on him.
"It's coming from outside..." Without another word, the two teenagers stepped into the courtyard.
The atmosphere at the resistance headquarters, tucked away in the yard of one of the townspeople's homes, was even bleaker than it had been after their failed operation. The newcomers exchanged puzzled glances.
"There they are!" one of the earthbenders who refused to give up shouted. Dozens of hostile eyes immediately turned toward the two teenagers.
"W-What's going on?" Aang asked.
"Master Bumi... is dead," the rebel leader said grimly.
"What? How?" The Air Nomad felt as though the ground had vanished beneath his feet.
"A heart attack."
"No... that's impossible..."
When he was informed that the plague had broken out in the city, his heart gave out..." the earthbender said, lowering his gaze. "The funeral will be this evening. The Fire Herald has declared a truce until then and offered to let his disciples retrieve the body..."
"It's a trap!" Katara blurted out.
"You'd do better to keep quiet," the earthbender replied heavily. "You're outsiders, and your suggestions have already cost us injuries and several lives. Now Bumi is dead. We respected the Avatar. We thought he could actually do something. But he's just a child, and we're done following children. This was a foolish idea from the very beginning."
He turned and walked away, leaving Aang standing motionless in the courtyard, his eyes empty. They no longer had any allies left in Omashu.
"Aang?" Katara asked timidly.
"Katara..." His voice was barely audible. "I need to be alone."
"But—"
"Just leave me alone!" he almost snarled.
Grabbing his glider staff, Aang launched himself into the sky.
***
Chan and Company. The Following Morning.
"Hmm..." Zuko read through the letter one more time before handing it to Suki, who repeated the process. "This is... strange."
"I'd have to agree." After taking a moment to finish reading, the warrior nodded. "But at least they've agreed to meet, and Tom-Tom is definitely with them."
"Yes, but this line about discussing the terms for handing the child over..." I frowned. "I don't like it. Something's off. Too bad none of Bumi's former followers showed up for his 'farewell.'"
"Were you planning to capture them there?" Azula asked.
"No." I shook my head. "Breaking the Fire Herald's word would be the same as breaking the Fire Lord's word, and that's completely unacceptable. But quietly tracking those partisans back to their hideout and getting an estimate of their numbers and resources would've been useful."
"Perhaps they decided one boy wasn't valuable enough to trade for such an important hostage," Mai suggested.
"Buuut..." Ty Lee tilted her head. "Did we ever tell them Tom-Tom was an important hostage?"
"Don't be silly, Ty Lee." The princess theatrically rolled her eyes. "The fact that people immediately started searching for him and even managed to track down the conspirators already tells them the child isn't ordinary. And the fact that the terrifying Fire Herald has turned a blind eye to those efforts instead of dragging everyone off to be burned at the stake for 'assisting enemy saboteurs' tells anyone with half a brain that Tom-Tom is a very," Azula emphasized the word, "important person."
"Well, Sokka isn't just some random fishhead either," Suki pointed out. "He's the Avatar's friend and traveling companion."
(End of Chapter)
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