by The Tale of Aang; Azula; Toph; Sokka; Zuko; Katara (retail) (epub)
“Until now you’ve been treated as honored guests,” Long Feng said sternly. “But from now on you will be watched by Dai Li Agents. If you mention the war to anyone, you’ll be expelled from the city.”
He paused, watching our expressions before adding, “I understand you’ve been looking for your bison. It would be a shame if you were not able to complete your quest.”
He’s threatening us! He was going to kick us out before we had a chance to find Appa—and maybe he also knew where Appa was.
“Now Joo Dee will show you home,” Long Feng said curtly before leaving.
A woman we had never seen before stepped into the room. “Come with me, please.”
“What happened to Joo Dee?” Katara asked.
“I’m Joo Dee,” the woman replied without hesitation.
Could this place get any weirder?
With our attempt to see the Earth King foiled, we turned our attention back to finding Appa. We put posters of the big furry guy up all over town, hoping that someone might have seen him. Shortly after we returned home the doorbell rang. It was Joo Dee—the first Joo Dee.
“Hello, Aang and Katara and Sokka and Toph,” she said, smiling.
Of course she’s smiling. She’s always smiling. “What happened to you? Did the Dai Li throw you in jail?”
“Of course not! I simply took a short vacation to Lake Laogai, out in the country. It was quite relaxing.”
“Why are you here?” Aang asked suspiciously.
Joo Dee pulled out one of our posters. “You are absolutely forbidden by the rules of the city to put up posters.”
Great. Another thing that we’re not allowed to do. We couldn’t see the Earth King. We couldn’t talk about the war. We couldn’t put up posters. What good was it being here?
Aang was furious. “We don’t care about the rules, and we’re not asking permission! We’re finding Appa on our own, and you should just stay out of our way!” Then he slammed the door in Joo Dee’s face.
I winced. “That may come back to bite us in the blubber.”
“I don’t care,” Aang said. “From now on we do whatever it takes to find Appa.”
“Yeah!” Toph agreed. “Let’s break some rules!”
We headed back out to put up more posters and decided to split up to cover more ground. I took Toph with me. But it wasn’t long before we heard a commotion coming from Katara’s direction.
“Katara, what is it?” I asked.
“Jet’s back,” Katara answered before our eyes locked on the figure that was partly frozen and pinned to the wall behind her.
Jet was a rebel we met during our travels. He had done some pretty bad stuff, and Katara didn’t trust him at all.
“I’m here to help you find Appa,” he insisted. “I swear I’ve changed. I was a troubled person, and I let my anger get out of control. But I don’t even have the gang now. I’ve put that all behind me.”
“You’re lying!” Katara said. Then Toph walked up to the wall and put her hand on it.
“He’s not lying,” she said. “I can feel his breathing and heartbeat. When people lie, there’s a physical reaction. He’s telling the truth.”
“I heard two guys talking about some furry creature they had,” Jet explained. “I figured it must be Appa.”
Aang got all excited. “I bet they have Appa here in the city!”
Then we found out that Jet had been brainwashed by the Dai Li at their secret headquarters!
“Maybe Appa is in the same place they took Jet,” Aang said hopefully. But Jet could not remember the name of the place.
“All I know is that it was under the water,” Jet said. “Like under a lake.”
That sounded familiar. “Remember what Joo Dee said?” I said. “She said she went on vacation to Lake Laogai.”
“That’s it!” Jet cried. “Lake Laogai!”
At last we had a lead to where Appa was. Now all we had to do was go there and rescue him!
Chapter 8
Jet led us to the shores of Lake Laogai.
“So where are the secret headquarters?” I asked.
“Under the water, I think,” Jet replied.
Toph felt around with her feet. “There’s a tunnel right there near the shore.” Using Earthbending, she opened the entrance and we slipped inside.
Beneath the lake we found a complex filled with hallways, rooms, and prison cells. We passed a group of women all being trained to be Joo Dee! It was definitely one of the creepiest things we had ever seen.
“I think Appa’s in here,” Jet said, when we came to one of the doors.
But when we stepped into the room, we didn’t find Appa. Instead we found Long Feng and his Dai Li soldiers! Maybe Katara was right to be so wary of Jet. Maybe he did lead us all into a trap!
“By breaking into Dai Li headquarters you have made yourselves enemies of the state,” Long Feng said.
Enemies of the state. I kind of liked the sound of that.
“Take them into custody!”
That didn’t sound quite as good.
We battled the Dai Li, and Jet fought against them as hard as we did. There was no doubt that he was on our side.
“Long Feng is escaping!” Katara shouted.
Aang and Jet took off after him. Toph, Katara, and I stayed and finished off the Dai Li. When we caught up with the others, we found Aang kneeling over Jet, who was hurt. Long Feng was nowhere to be seen.
Katara tried healing Jet, but he ordered us to leave, insisting that he would be all right. We didn’t want to leave him, but we had no choice. We had to find Appa before it was too late.
We hurried to a large cell, hoping Appa would still be in there. But when we got there it was empty.
“Appa’s gone!” Aang cried. “Long Feng beat us here!”
“If we keep moving maybe we can catch up with them!” I said.
Toph guided us through the maze of tunnels back up to the shore. There, Dai Li agents closed in on us from every side.
“We’re trapped!” Katara shouted.
Then Momo suddenly got all excited and took off into the sky.
“What is it, Momo?” Aang asked.
I looked up and gasped. It was Appa!
We didn’t know how he got free, but we didn’t care. We were just glad to see him again.
That big furball wasted no time in helping us. He knocked down the Dai Li, then bit Long Feng in the leg and tossed him into the lake. Then we all climbed onto Appa’s back and headed up into the sky.
It was just like old times.
We came to Ba Sing Se for two reasons—to find Appa and to tell the Earth King about the solar eclipse. It was more important than ever that we complete the second part of our mission. “Now’s the time to tell the Earth King our plan. We’re going to need his support if we want to invade the Fire Nation when the eclipse comes,” I said.
“And now that we have Appa back, there’s nothing to stop us from telling the Earth King the truth about the war and about Long Feng’s conspiracy,” Aang said.
We flew back to the city and battled our way into the king’s palace, fighting royal Earthbending guards who were trying to keep us out.
It was very strange—we were really on the same side, but we had to fight the guards as if they were the enemies, just for the chance to meet face-to-face with the king. I hoped it was worth it.
When we finally did reach the Earth King’s throne room we found Long Feng by his side, along with some Dai Li agents and some royal Earthbending guards.
“We need to talk with you!” Aang told the Earth King.
Immediately Long Feng jumped in. “He’s lying! They’re here to overthrow you.”
Overthrow the king? Well, that’s really dumb. Why in the world would two people from the Water Tribe, an Earth Kingdom citizen, and the Avatar want to overthrow the leader of the Earth Kingdom? “No, we’re on your side. We’re here to help,” I said.
“You have to trust us!” Katara added.
“You invade my palace, lay waste to all my guards, break down my fancy door, and you expect me to trust you?” the king replied.
“He has a good point,” Toph said.
It was only when the king learned that Aang was the Avatar that he agreed at least to listen.
“There’s a war going on right now—for the past one hundred years, in fact!” Aang explained. “The Dai Li have kept it a secret from you. It’s a conspiracy to control the city and to control you!”
The king was really skeptical, but was willing to let us prove the conspiracy theory to him, so we boarded a train for Lake Laogai. And get this, we found out that the king had never been outside the palace before. Never! No wonder Long Feng could keep him in the dark about what was really going on in the world.
“Underneath Lake Laogai is the Dai Li’s secret headquarters,” I explained. “You’re about to see where all the brainwashing and conspiring took place.”
But when we arrived, the headquarters was gone.
“Oh, don’t tell me!” I cried.
Katara and Toph used bending to try to find the opening, but it wasn’t there. “There’s nothing down there anymore,” Toph said.
“I SAID ‘don’t tell me.’”
“The Dai Li must have destroyed the evidence,” Katara said.
“This was a waste of my time!” the king said.
We had to think of something else. We finally had the Earth King’s attention, but now we had nothing to show him. Or did we? “What about the drill?” I asked.
“That’s it!” Katara cried. “They’ll never be able to cover that up in time!”
We flew back to the city, and were relieved to see that the huge drill was still there.
“What is that?” the king asked when he saw it.
“A giant drill made by the Fire Nation to break through your walls,” I explained. Now he would have to believe there’s a war.
“This is nothing more than a construction project,” someone said.
We all spun around to see Long Feng. He was still trying to convince the king we were lying.
“Then why is there a Fire Nation insignia on your construction project?” Katara asked.
That’s my little sister. Sometimes she gets it right on the money! The king had Long Feng arrested and hauled off to jail. Justice is sweet!
Now that the Earth King knew we were telling him the truth, we could finally deliver the information we had worked so hard to get to him. “A solar eclipse is coming. The sun will be entirely blocked by the moon, and the Firebenders will be helpless,” I said.
“What are you suggesting, Sokka?” the king asked.
“That the day we need to invade the Fire Nation is the Day of the Black Sun.”
“That would require moving troops out of Ba Sing Se. We’d be completely vulnerable.”
He didn’t get it, and I understood why. This was all new to him, and thinking of his city as anything other than a totally impenetrable fortress was foreign to him. But I had to convince him that he had no other choice.
“You’re already vulnerable,” I said. “The Fire Nation won’t stop until Ba Sing Se falls. You can either sit back and wait for that to happen, or take the offensive and give yourself a fighting chance.”
The Earth King thought for a few minutes. I could see that this was the most difficult decision he had ever had to make. “Very well. You have my support,” he finally said.
Woo-hoo! We did it! We really might win this war after all! And things might actually get back to normal in the world.
As we were celebrating, General How, the leader of the Council of Generals, came into the throne room with some amazing news. “We’ve searched Long Feng’s office. We’ve found some things that I believe will interest everybody. Long Feng kept secret files on everyone in Ba Sing Se, including you kids.”
He had a letter from Toph’s mother saying that she was here in the city and that she wanted to see Toph. He had a scroll that had been attached to Appa’s horn when the Dai Li captured him. It was from a guru at the Eastern Air Temple—some kind of spiritual expert, according to Aang—who could help him take the next step in his Avatar journey.
But the best news of all came in the form of an intelligence report that a Water Tribe fleet was located near Chameleon Bay!
“It’s Dad!” I couldn’t believe it. Every day since we started our journey I’ve thought about seeing Dad again. Everything I do to help Aang, to help people fight the Fire Nation, I do to prove that I’m a warrior worthy of Dad’s respect. And now, when things were finally looking up, we knew where he was. I had to go see him.
But then I remembered that someone needed to help the Earth King plan his invasion. I couldn’t leave. Dad would have to wait.
Then Katara said something incredible. “No, Sokka,” she said. “I know how badly you want to help Dad. You go. I’ll stay here with the king.”
She is the best sister ever! She was giving up the chance to see Dad so that I could fight by his side. I remember crying on the day he left for the war because he wouldn’t take me with him. I’ve always believed that he thought I wasn’t ready. Well, there’s no more crying. I was finally a man, a true warrior of the Water Tribe. And soon I’d be fighting at his side. I couldn’t remember when I’d felt happier!
As we all prepared to go our separate ways, news came that the Kyoshi Warriors were in the city.
“That means Suki’s here!” I said. “I don’t have time to see her now, but that sure gives me something to look forward to when I get back.” After a long group hug, we said our good-byes.
Aang and I took off on Appa. He was going to drop me off at Chameleon Bay on his way to the Eastern Air Temple. As the city faded from view I couldn’t help but smile at how things were finally looking up for us. The Earth King was on our side, Long Feng was in jail, and Suki would be waiting for me when I returned.
And best of all, I was going to see Dad!
Chapter 9
Appa landed on a hill overlooking Chameleon Bay. I climbed down, glanced at the Water Tribe encampment below, and immediately felt nauseated. I didn’t think I’d be so nervous seeing Dad again.
“You haven’t seen your dad in more than two years,” Aang said as he got ready to leave. “You must be so excited!”
“I know I should be, but I just feel sick to my stomach.”
“Don’t be nervous. He’s going to be so happy to see you.”
I nodded, even though in my heart I wasn’t sure. I watched as Aang flew away. “See you in a week!” he said. Then I was alone. I took a deep breath and started down the hill toward the camp.
I entered the camp and passed by some Water Tribe warriors.
I felt a little uncomfortable—they were staring at me like I didn’t belong. … No, that wasn’t it—they’re staring at me because they recognized who I was. Then they came over to shake my hand!
Wow. I never expected a greeting like that! Maybe they heard about what I had been doing, or maybe it was just because of who my father is, but it sure felt good to be welcomed. One warrior pointed to a tent up ahead. Dad must be in there. If only he’s as glad to see me as they were … well, here goes.
I stuck my head into the tent. Dad was there with his best friend, Bato, looking over a battle map. When Dad turned to look at me, his hard gaze met mine and I once again felt the power of his presence. Then his tough warrior’s face softened and he smiled.
“Sokka,” he said warmly.
He WAS glad to see me. I did make the right decision to come to him. “Hi, Dad!” I dashed across the tent and hugged him. And he hugged me back like neither one of us ever wanted to let go.
Over the next few days Dad helped me fit right in, just like I was one of the warriors who had left for battle with him all those years ago. I could see now that he was right to leave me behind at that time. I wasn’t ready then, but I am now. Everything I have been through with Aang has made me the warrior I’ve become.
; I got right to work helping Dad and his men set up a series of tangle mines along the bay to stop Fire Nation ships from getting to Ba Sing Se.
“The mines are filled with skunkfish and seaweed,” Dad explained. “When a ship detonates the mine, the seaweed tangles up the propellers and the foul fish smell forces the crew to abandon ship. I call it the stink ’n’ sink.”
“Good one, Dad!” Stink ’n’ sink! I can definitely see where I got my sense of humor!
Suddenly a warrior ran up to us. “Our scouts have spotted four Fire Nation ships.”
“Bato, get these mines loaded up,” Dad ordered. “The rest of you men, prepare for battle!”
What should I do? Should I go with the other men? I mean, even though I considered myself a warrior, I wasn’t sure I was a warrior in Dad’s eyes. Did he still see me as a little kid and expect me to stay behind? I didn’t want to do the wrong thing. “Uh, what should I do, Dad?”
“Aren’t you listening?” he said sternly. “I just said ‘the rest of you men, prepare for battle!’”
He thinks I’m a man! I’m one of his warriors! I hurried to join the others, applied wolf battle paint to my face, strapped on my machete, and grabbed a war club.
“Ready to go knock some Fire Nation heads?” Dad asked.
“You don’t know how much this means to me, Dad. I’ll make you proud. And I’ll finally prove to you what a great warrior I am.”
Dad grasped my shoulder and squeezed gently. He looked right into my eyes and smiled. “Sokka, you don’t have to prove anything to me. I’m already proud of you, and I’ve always known you’re a great warrior.”
“Really?”
“Why do you think I trusted you to look after our tribe when I left?”
Could this day get any better? I felt so proud—and so ready to fight the Fire Nation, right next to my father.
That’s when Appa swooped down into our camp. And Aang’s face said it all: the day had just turned bad. “This can’t be good news,” I said.
“Katara’s in trouble,” Aang said. “She needs our help.”
I didn’t need to hear any more. I hugged Dad tightly, then scrambled onto Appa’s back and flew off. Looking down I could see the love in Dad’s eyes as he watched me fly away. Then he turned and joined the other warriors on the Water Tribe ships setting out for battle. It felt good to know that he would have been proud to have me beside him on his ship.