THE OTHER AIRBENDER (Book 2)

(VII) Air

I wake up with a start and a gasp when the ground below us starts to shake for no apparent reason. Suddenly, my eyes widen as a man sitting on top of a rhino emerges from the bushes before me, and soon after, two more join in.

"Give up! You're completely surrounded!"

I don't even get a second to understand what's going on before I am dragged by Katara onto Appa, followed closely by Aang and Sokka. She suddenly hurries back to where she had been sleeping before, yelling about getting her scrolls.

"Katara! Come on!" Sokka yells from Appa, and I watch her hurry as much as she can back to us.

Once she makes her way back to us, Aang doesn't waste a single more second before commanding Appa to depart. "Yip, yip!"

As we start to leave, Sokka's eyes widen as he attempts to reach towards the ground below us. "Wait, my boomerang!"

"There's no time!" Katara retorts, pulling him back onto the saddle.

"Oh, I see, so there's time to get your scrolls but no time for my boomerang?" Sokka retorts, crossing his arms over his chest bitterly.

"That's correct!"

"Hey, I left my favorite lychee nuts back there, too, if it makes you feel better," I tell him, with a shrug.

"Please don't compare my precious boomerang with your food."

Soon after, namely as soon as we get off the trail of our previous attackers, we finally manage to land nearby a small village by a cliff. The first thing I do is get myself some delicious lychee nuts to make up for my lost ones, while Aang gets himself a hat to hide his arrow tattoo. Sokka, on the other hand, continues his complaints about the lost boomerang.

"Sorry about your boomerang, Sokka," Aang tries to tell him, but to no avail.

"I feel like I've lost part of my identity. Imagine if you lost your arrow, or Katara lost her... hair loopies. Or if Alya lost her long brown hair. Wait. Maybe she will, you know... When she gets those airbending tattoos?"

"Wait. What?" I widen my eyes at Aang, nearly choking on the lychee nut I'd been eating a few seconds before. "I have to shave my hair for that?"

"It's a long process, actually..."

"Here's your produce, ponytail guy," the merchant attending to us says, as he gives Sokka a basket filled with supplies.

"I used to be boomerang guy..." Sokka says gloomily, carrying the groceries back to Appa.

"Hey, Water Tribe money!" the merchant notes, as Katara hands him a few coins.

"I hope that's okay."

"So long as it's money. Have a nice Avatar Day!" the merchant says, waving us off and leaving.

"Avatar Day?"

"As if you needed more attention on yourself," I retort, munching on another nut.

I mean... How stupid would it be for us to head into an Avatar Day fair with the Avatar himself while trying to slide under the Fire Nation's radar?

***

Apparently, we are stupider than I previously thought. We ended up in the fair anyways, mostly due to Aang's insistence. Sokka also wanted to stay a little while longer to see if he could find a new signature weapon and Katara... Well, she's just a pushover.

"This was really dumb. We shouldn't be here," I say, rolling my eyes as we watch a giant float of Avatar Kyoshi stroll past us, through the dense crowd.