Avatar: The Last Airbender: Reawakening

15

Three weeks. Three weeks with no progress at all. Three weeks of walking around Ba Sing Se, searching through all of the libraries they could find. Three weeks of trying to locate any amount of information on the Spirits they were looking for, or better yet, finding the missing pages of Kuruk's Journal. All of that work, met with failure.

Tau would be lying to himself if he said he wasn't frustrated. He was a man that liked progress, at any level. Sitting around for three weeks in the most populated city in the world simply wasn't his cup of tea. Tau thought back on those weeks remembering that after they had snuck into the city; he, Ryu, and Sorin had quickly trashed their Earth Kingdom uniforms and they easily blended in well with the crowds. They looked like any other ordinary citizen of the Earth Kingdom and it wasn't hard to find an inn located in the middle ring to stay in for their time in the city.

The inn wasn't large, it was actually no bigger the averaged sized home, and besides the innkeeper and her son, Tau and his group were the only ones there. It was just the way he wanted it. At first things seemed to be going well, but that had soon changed.

Tau sat in his own room on the bed, holding his head in his hands, trying to suppress his frustration. They were so close, but yet so far. The first thing they had done was try to gain access to the archives but Ryu had been right, only extremely high ranking officials were allowed in. Anyone else that had access to the archives had special permission from those high ranking officials. With being able to simply walk into the archives out of the question, the idea of simply sneaking in had been tossed around, but once again that plan was out the window before it even came to fruition. The archives were simply to heavily guarded, no doubt because Ba Sing Se had heard about the events in Omashu. Tau knew that stunt there would come to bite him in the back.

After that, they did the only thing they could do. They searched every library in the city for anything pertaining to spirits. Sure, they found books talking about the spirit world but those had only common knowledge in them. Nothing about ancient, unknown spirits was even mentioned and now, Tau knew they had come to a dead end. They either had to get access to the archives in some way or go to plan B: enlisting the Avatar. Tau only wanted to do that if it was necessary though, besides, the Avatar wasn't even in Ba Sing Se. If Tau wanted him here, then he would have to lure him here somehow.

Tau picked his head up sharply when his thoughts were interrupted by a knock on his door.

"Yes?" he said, gently.

"My mom said dinner's ready," a young boy said behind the door, "She said to come and eat before it gets cold."

"I'll be down in a minute," Tau replied, and he heard the boy say a quick 'okay' before he was heard running down the hall and the stairs to the inns dining room.

Tau smiled, in spite of himself. The boy, Zi, reminded him of some of the children he met during his travels in the Earth Kingdom, before his capture by the Fire Nation. The boy was only seven years old, with green eyes and short black hair, and he had a certain energy about him that tugged on Tau's heart strings a little. The boy had in his childhood what Tau didn't; peace and happiness, and Tau envied him a little for that.

The Waterbender stood up from his bed, wearing typical Earth Kingdom clothing, and made his way out the room and down the staircase, seeing a woman, no older then thirty-five, setting some dishes on the table, filled with meat, and other foods that Tau and his friends were not able to have during their travels. It was something that they had gotten used to in the three weeks they had been here though and Tau knew he would miss it when his goals forced him to move on.

"Oh, there you are," the women said, spotting him, "come take a seat, I'm sure your hungry."

"Thank You Ming," Tau smiled at her and took her offer, taking a seat opposite of her as she sat down as well. Tau watched for a few moments, studying her features. He had to admit, she had an attractive quality to her. She had light brown hair, hanging down to her shoulders and green eyes that always seemed to be filled with joy despite what she had been through, and as far as he could tell, her white skin was flawless. He knew that underneath she was different though. Her husband had died in the Hundred Years War, executed after the Fire Nation had taken control of Ba Sing Se after Azula's Coup and he had tried to fight back, leaving Ming alone to take care of her son. That loneliness though was part of what made her love being an innkeeper. As Tau had soon found out, she was very friendly and she was all too happy to house his group here.