The forest they'd been forced to land in was the kind of place that looked like it had been painted to better hide soldiers wearing Fire Nation colors, but that was still better than flying over and having it be a guarantee they'd be spotted, reported and chased by an army. The trunks were unbelievably massive, old enough to seem above the troubles of war, and Sokka really wished that he could get Katara to stop storming around and appreciate it, what with their very limited access to trees growing up in the Southern Water Tribe. The canopies were so far above them that they blocked no sight at ground level, but the house-sized trunks were many and thick, keeping even Appa largely invisible from more than a hundred feet away. Which was good, as there wasn't much underbrush where they were, making every step a touch less than cozy. There were definitely patrols out there—they'd seen the boot prints.
Katara was adding to them as hard as she possibly could, like each step was meant to punish the ground for forcing her to walk across it. Hair loose, eye regularly twitching, thoughts racing—blood pumping like it had somewhere to be, she had as much fire as the missing Lady Raven about her.
Rubbing his bald head as he trudged as quickly as he could, Aang muttered, "I am so wired but everything huuuurts…"
Freezing in place, Katara swung around. "Well, gee! I wonder why THAT's happening, Aang?!" she barked.
Aang groaned. "Stop shooouting, aaaaggh…" And he started leaning on his glider like a geriatric for emphasis.
"And stomping," Sokka flatly added.
"When he stops munching roots like a total jerk! When I guess just my friend is kidnapped!" Katara snapped without even looking back again, right back to her stomping, elbows out and fists clenched. "Stupid Fire Nation! Rrrgh! Stop taking people!"
All Sokka had was an uncertain, "Er…" and he stifled a yawn as hard as he possibly could.
"I can't even have a firebender that I somehow like? They take that too?!" Katara downright flipped out, eyes a bit moist.
Then a blast of fire hit her square in the back.
Back arched, her body pitched forward as if kicked, Sokka and Aang could only stare in horror as she went flying, then slammed chest-first with a thud on leaf litter, smoldering black trails rising from flickering embers on her right shoulder, where it appeared her clothes had been burned through instantly.
For a heartbeat, the forest was silent as their stomachs dropped.
Then a Fire Nation voice barked, sharp and triumphant, "Hah! Attack! Don't let them escape!"
Soldiers surged out from between trunks and behind roots, and the cover they'd been using wasn't even that good. Katara had been such a staunch anti-stealth loudmouth it called all attention, friend or foe.
Aang moved first, airbending a jump that snapped him into an arc before anyone could line up a shot on him. He was between the onrushing spears and Katara in a blur, and stubbornly swept his glider hard. As the formation of soldiers scattered, flung back and slammed into trees or the ground, Sokka lunged on pure instinct, his throat squeezing painfully as he reached to drag his sister out of harm's way.
"Aang! Hold them off!" Sokka's voice cracked.
Aang was way ahead of him, swept his arm up. The air answered, a huge blast swept across the dusty, leaf-covered ground, and pulled all the debris into one upward burst, killing visibility. Further spearmen stumbled and skidded back, leaves exploding up around their boots and grit in their eyes, while orange streaks of misplaced fire criss-crossed the first imploding, then rapidly expanding cloud.
But their captain pushed through the chaos, decorated mask gleaming, armor sharp-edged enough to slice a leaf or two on the way in. His rapid series of thrusts sent fire right at Aang, despite the cover, and the boy spiraled away to the side on a current of wind, unfortunately clearing out the area right around him. He was spinning his glider before his toes touched the ground, scattering the captain's instant next streak of flames from a follow-up kick. Along with two other firebenders, the captain aggressively advanced, forcing Aang to pivot, deflect, reposition, and dodge farther and farther away from Katara whether he liked it or not.
"Sokka, look out!" Aang still snapped, catching a glimpse of a spearman catching sight of him, while he pulled his sister back by the wrists—no time for a more graceful carry.
A spear thrust for Sokka's ribs, but Sokka dropped into a roll the instant Aang called his name, like it yanked him by a rope. Not only did the spear miss by a mile, but Sokka smoothly spun into solid stance to grab the shaft and yank with every ounce of his strength.
The spearman flew forward, face-first, with a growl of frustration and pain right beside Katara, so Sokka did not waste time being nice. The enemy was spinning onto his back to stand, but didn't see it coming at all when the butt of his own spear smashed him in the jaw, sending a tooth down his throat, and him down for a nice nap to digest it.
"Thanks, idiot!" Sokka almost chuckled at the weapon now in his hands after protective instinct wore off, like he couldn't believe it worked, then snarled, "who's next?!!"
Beside him, Katara made a weak sound and pushed herself up.
Sokka risked a glance. "Katara!?" came out desperately, what with the smoke still rising.
She was getting to her knees on her own, shaky, breath coming tight, back still bare and sooty where the blast had hit. The fabric there really was charred through in places, but extinguished as he noticed a hazy fog, not just smoke, had rolled in. She winced hard, jaw clenched like she was trying to bite the pain into behaving.
"Someone's going to regret that," she rasped, then swallowed, and glanced back at Sokka with murder in her eyes, but it softened as she quickly added, "It stings, but I'll live."
Aang didn't get to participate, because the captain and his benders were greedily demanding all of his time.
"Leave the Avatar to us! Kill the others!" the apparently very ruthless captain shouted, not breaking off his endless barrage for a second, being expert enough to realize that's all it would take for an airbender to escape.
Somewhere in the flurry of leaves and dust, Sokka was shouting like he was trying to spear something, and Appa finally had enough. A massive wall of wind blasted across the entire chaotic engagement, with Sokka and Katara ducking low enough to miss most of it, but every Fire Nation soldier was thrown off balance at once, with those still trying to stand getting knocked over again. Good timing, too, as it pulled more than one spearhead off its dangerously close trajectory for either sibling. Although it did expose the entire fight again.
"How dare you do that to Katara!" Aang shouted, actually furious. "Cowards! At least all attack the AVATAR!"
Expert as he was, the captain was too off balance to react, and the giant spiraling cone of dust and leaves pulled back into the air Appa had just cleaned struck him squarely in the chest, sending him spinning back to slam against a tree, closely followed by his two firebender comrades who took it even harder.
Sokka's eyes went wide and furious. "Seriously! Who targets the girl FIRST?!" he shouted, voice cracking with sheer disbelief. "You guys SUCK!"
Rolling her shoulder with one last wince, Katara barked, "guys, I'm FINE!" And then glowered at the men scrambling back to their feet and grabbing their weapons. "But they're not," she growled, like she'd been waiting to take out her anger on someone who has it coming.
Immediately followed by her shrieking yelp as a fourth firebender they all hadn't really noticed struck out his fist with gusto and forced her to duck or radically change hairstyle.
"Don't let them regroup!" the firebender captain bellowed over the confusion as he dragged himself and his two close-by firebender comrades back to their feet.
Aang had an exhausted and bothered look about him. "Oh, come on!"
But Aang had to immediately bend, his glider staff extended and ringing with motion to punch back the three flaming bursts sent his way. His hand snapped back, all three foes had planted a foot to sweep their boots, sending arcs of deadly fire high, middle and low. Aang was forced to leap, back-flipping to a massive tree trunk, scorched with three black slashes as his toes touched bark. Kicking off to the side, their follow-up bursts were way behind where he was going, and Aang slid through the kicked up leaves as he landed, but didn't delay his own next strike at all, sending a arc of wind stronger than the three flames combined but with nothing to counter it.
The captain and the two had their legs kicked out from under them, and slammed hard on their chests with a heavy whump and clatter, just like they'd done to Katara, and groaned at their new collection of bruises.
Sokka, meanwhile, was not done having a furious protective older-brother moment.
Not every Fire Nation spearman toppled by Appa's burst had scrambled to his feet in record time, and Sokka took the opportunity to not let him, thrusting his stolen spear into the man's exposed calf, and he cried out, toppling back down, but only very briefly before he too lost teeth to the metal plated butt of spear, and fell limply back on the forest floor.
Light suddenly burst in Sokka's face, and he felt weird streaks of hot and cold, seeing steam, snowflakes, and tiny embers floating in front of his face as he blinked. The fourth firebender had aimed right for his face. He glanced aside, and saw Katara, unblinking, having blocked the attack for him.
"Nice shot, wow Katara!" He praised her, breathlessly.
Katara was already making a wide, swirling motion with her arms, like gathering and collecting something. "Pay attention, Sokka!" she yelled, and through the streams of misty fog rushing past his cheeks in a chilly wind, he saw the rest of the spearmen had some misgivings about what he'd done to the other two, and they all charged him at once.
Across the settling and thrown up again dust, the swirling moisture pulled right out of the air, and the increasingly crushed and burn leaf litter, Aang could tell the captain's two buddies were struggling to keep up. Despite being tossed around and slammed about, the captain was ignoring the pain quite vigorously, and he charged forward, stomped his steel boot deliberately on a jagged rock—sparks jumped, each became a tongue of flame, arcing up towards Aang. Aang was forced to get above it again, feeling the heat singe his chin as he ran up a trunk, airbending for dozens of feet of height in a breath, but this time he couldn't safely jink the to side, as the other two benders were filling the air with fire.
Aang saw Sokka in a mess of spear thrusts, barely twisting and dodging deadly strike after strike, but he wouldn't last forever, and there were way too many for him to counterattack. Aang's feet placed firmly on the trunk as gravity forgave him for one brief moment at the peak, and he had to take the captain out. It was only a matter of time before Sokka was skewered.
"Stay…" Aang breathed, and like the glider staff was his own spear, he braced it, and didn't merely kick off, but full on leapt as hard as he could. "DOWN!" he bellowed.
The captain had no recourse. No time to react at all. The other two firebenders watched in shock and awe as the sideways tornado struck him square in the chest. Aang hit him like a missile, his helmet sailed into the canopies, a boot came loose, some of his coat tore away, and he hit the ground so hard it left a visible dent. That time, he didn't get up again. He didn't even groan.
The sheer force of the attack flung the captain's two benders off their feet anyway, where they groaned, at least, but weren't too keen on getting up in a hurry.
Aang pivoted right off the captain's cracked breastplate to leap towards Sokka and Katara, and his eyes darted around, looking for the right move.
Oddly, however, he saw that the last firebender was already flat on his back, arms limp where they fell, with his mask smashed in by a rough chunk of ice that bled steam as if trying to keep up with the man's crushed nose.
As he skidded on his feet towards the line of spearmen trying to corner Sokka, he was ready to bend, but didn't have to.
Katara was slamming her hands down, harsh and brutal, for some high stance, and a slanted, giant claw-like arc of ice shot from the mist she'd gathered. It sheared so close to the men's faces that they felt her breath like a cold wind, some lost whiskers, and all their spears snapped like twigs from the force.
"Whoa…" Aang breathed out, genuinely amazed.
The Fire Nation soldiers halted, wide-eyed, looking down at their broken weapons, to the left at the massive blade of ice steaming profusely from where it was embedded a full arm's length into the massive tree trunk, and then to their right at Katara… who was already forming another. Instinctively, many were already reaching to draw their swords.
But Katara bitterly commanded, "run away now, or this one takes your heads!" And the edge gleaming sharp ice formed in spindly lines within the mist cloud.
Some paused, some noticed their captain flattened on the ground, some realized they were fresh out of benders, but they didn't break and run easy.
"What, are you stupid?!" Sokka strode up to them, the only guy who still had a spear. "She's not even the Avatar!" He clarified, in case they were slow. Each man shifted back an inch, at least.
"Just run away already!" Aang barked, aiming his glider like a spear too.
With that… they didn't stick around.
The very instant it was clear the fight was over, both boys dropped their ready stances, and practically flailed their way over to Katara in a mixture of hope and horror.
"Katara?! Are you okay?! That hit looked really bad!" Aang downright panicked.
Sokka was already there, hands hovering, as panicked but better at hiding it. "Let me see it. Turn around. Katara, turn around!"
Katara tensed up, all that aggression and resolution shattering at once. Her eyes went wide and fingers flew up in confusion over the fussing, letting her half-formed ice-claw collapse into a pile of crumbles in the leaves and dust.
"Wh-whoa, I think?" she peeped as Sokka outright snagged her and yanked her around.
He carefully—but quickly—brushed away flakes of burned clothing and soot, and he and Aang leaned in to stare at her bare back as she was crumpled under them, making awkward strained bird-like noises from the sudden intrusion.
"Huh…" Sokka muttered.
"Great!" Aang cheered with relief.
There was redness, sure, and soot smudged around it, but the sun had done worse to her before. No blistering. No cracked, blackened skin with eye-watering bright red beneath, as expected. It looked like it hurt a little at least.
"It doesn't hurt that much," Katara insisted, breath still shaky. "I put it out right away. I pulled the fog right into it."
Sokka pressed two fingers gently against the bare skin where the fabric had burned away, testing. Katara stared up at him, gaze flattened.
"Why do you look mad that doesn't hurt me?" she grumbled.
"I don't! I'm not?" Er…" Sokka floundered, but his brow furrowed deep. "But Katara," he said slowly, suspicious and awed at the same time, "you don't look burned… like hardly at all. That's like… a miracle? That hit knocked you off your feet."
Aang gaped at him. "Well I, for one, don't mind Katara being unhurt at all!"
"I don't mind!" Sokka snapped back. "I'm glad! I don't get it!" Then his eyes flicked to the ice blade still stuck in one of the huge trunks nearby, curved like a claw, buried a foot deep. "And where did you learn to waterbend ice like that?!" he demanded, realized how accusatory it didn't need to sound, and Aang and Katara both watched as his face reset in apology and he gave instead, "it was amazing!"
Katara blinked at him, genuinely confused by the question. "I dunno," she said, like that was obvious. "I just… did it."
Aang had no reservations at all, giving Katara on the still clothed side of her back as Sokka 'let' her stand again. "That spear cutting was legit one of the coolest things I've seen, not gonna lie," he praised her.
For a moment, all the fury and focus Katara had blinked away. She had the biggest, genuine smile for a moment before it went smug. "It was, wasn't it!" And she giggled with delight.
The three stopped to stare at the rapidly evaporating ice, for whatever reason sublimating rather than melting, and with a crackle it came apart, largely sliding out of the ginormous gouge into the tree trunk.
"And you're not gonna question how she did it?" Sokka flatly stated to Aang, arms crossed.
Aang twiddled fingers awkwardly, and gave Katara a smile he obviously picked up on clearance. "Well…" he started, and she looked like his word choice was about to be very important. "Ahh… I wanna know how, 'cause I wanna do it too?" he sheepishly asked.
Katara gazed down at him for one heart-stopping moment, then said, "okay, yeah, that's fair." And all that puffed up chest fell out of her. She stood and thought for a moment, having to silently bat back Aang's and Sokka's stupid faces as they loomed awkwardly close in too much interest. "I just—!" she began, but looked a bit lost, then slowly said, "I… pulled water out of the air back on Kyoshi, it hit me to try anything, so I did? I've been thinking about it. When I got… uh… hit, I reacted instantly, I guess? After I put the fire out, it struck me I could just, like… do that whenever I want?"
Katara blinked innocently with her most girly smile, like that would explain it all. She really was doing her best.
Aang nodded along like he was following.
"Okay, I see where you're coming from," Sokka astutely stated, looking to the last of the mist drifting away where her ice had crumbled. "So you pulled the water to a spot, not a person or fire? That's how you made the big slicey-icy with no water around?"
"Ooh, good name, slicey-icy!" Aang said with wide eyes.
"No," Katara stated, and by her tone it was final. But faltered. "Er, yes that's how, no we're not calling it that. I want it to be cool!"
"Riiight… because it's ice," Sokka nodded, like that made perfect sense.
"Slicey-icy has ice in it twice, what's not cool about slicey-icy?" Aang protested. "When I do it, I'ma call it slicey-icy."
Katara and Sokka both looked at him like he'd gone at least a little insane.
He shrugged, "eh, I said it too much, now it's weird. Nevermind."
"Okay, good, I wasn't going to teach you otherwise," Katara said in a tone that made it not quite half-way clear she didn't really mean it. "How about… something like… 'Spearbreaker' style?"
Aang and Sokka had to let a few leaves gently blow past on that one. It was very quiet except for Appa's breathing, that was close enough to stir their hair and clothing, like he was the only one suggesting they maybe move on from where they beat the snot out of a Fire Nation patrol, but they ignored him.
"Hmm… I du-" Aang started.
"Katara," Sokka stated very seriously, and gestured to the huge gouge her bending had made. "That would put a hole in a Fire Navy warship. Just because you broke some spears, doesn't mean-"
"How 'bout 'Icewolf' style?" the three heard from beside them.
"Ooh, that's REALLY cool, and cool!" Aang brightened. "Who are you, though?" he said with a big happy smile ready to meet a new friend.
"Jet," he said. "And niiiice bending."
Sokka instantly chortled a laugh. "Was that on purpose?" he quickly peeped. "The pun?" But then held his appropriated spear ready. "Pun or not, who the heck are you, dude?"
Katara stared silently and blinked too much.
The boy had two swords, was maybe a year older than Sokka, and had a smooth and charming vibe about him that actually made it not cringe that he was chewing on a shaft of wheat even as he spoke. But just barely. He'd have to watch himself.
"I was leading those guys you stomped into an ambush, but then they ambushed you… and you won anyway?" Jet calmly said, but a little 'impressed' leaked through. "Like damn, you really are the Avatar, aren't you. Whole thing was over before I came back to check on all the noise and fire that wasn't, uh, supposed to be happening yet."
"Oh… glad we could help, I guess?" Katara happily said, still riding on the joy of having seriously kicked some ass like she never had before. "Also, totally using 'Icewolf style', you nailed it, Jet-the-new-guy."
He looked like he already knew she was going with his suggestion.
Aang was a little busy batting Appa away so he'd stop sharing the intense stank of partially digested grass with them quite so generously, but he still managed to ask, "so, did you need something?" And he flickered a gaze to Katara, who already looked pensive at the notion. "We're in a bit of a hurry, though."
"Unfortunate, but way more Fire Nation soldiers have entered the area in the last couple days. After you all, probably? We've—I lead a band of freedom fighters, we're trying to drive the Fire Nation away—anyway, we've been really boxed in," Jet said, striding over to the gouged tree to kneel down and inspect precisely how deep it had gone.
"Oh… sorry," Aang quietly said.
Sokka snorted, though. "Don't be. They won't have to fight much longer, Aang. I'm Sokka, by the way, that's my weird sister Katara."
"Hey!" Katara barked.
Jet shrugged. "I like weird."
"Oh…" she blushed.
"But what do you mean?" Jet pressed.
"Yeah, what do you mean?" Aang insisted.
Sokka's mouth tightened. "Aang, come on. With what happened on Crescent Island? You think the Fire Nation is going to lock down the woods?"
"Ohhh… hmmm…" Aang drifted off into thought.
Katara gasped. "That's right! Raven's closet goblin blew up a bunch of Zhao's warships!"
Jet stared at them all, having no idea what they were talking about, but it sounded like good stuff.
Sokka sounded as confident as ever as he wagged a finger at Jet. "You can bet on it, Jet-the-new-guy. I'm guessing you've never heard of the Arzayans?"
"Who?"
"Yeah, well, important parts: One—they're part of the Fire Nation. Two—they hate the Fire Lord as much as we do. Three—the really, really crazy lady leading them, Arzaya—we call her the closet goblin because Aang is a legend—anyway, she attacked the Fire Navy and they're like… so at war now? Or about to be?" Sokka managed to explain rather succinctly, and as Jet took it in, he pondered for a moment and added. "Just give it a week, Fire Nation'll probably clear out on their own."
"Huh…" Jet considered, leaning against the gouged tree. "You sound pretty sure of all that."
He glanced at Aang and Katara.
They both nodded, confirming Sokka had it right.