Dao and the Freedom Fighters

𝐂𝐡𝐚𝐩𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝟐 - 𝐉𝐞𝐭

Third Person POV:

Jet was jumping through the trees, making his usual rounds of his forest, keeping an eye out for any new Fire Nation camps being set up, checking Bee's hunting traps, when he heard a scream from somewhere in the woods. Immediately, Jet changed directions, jumping through more of the trees towards the source of the noise. Once he got close enough, he dropped down to the ground to figure out what was going on. 

 Above him, a kid- who couldn't have been a year older than The Duke -was caught up in one of their traps for Fire Nation soldiers. The kid was struggling like crazy and was minutes away from releasing the mechanisms and sending the whole thing crashing back to the ground. 

Jet swore, louder than he meant to. The kid in the trap, flung around widely trying to find where the new voice had come from.

"Just hang in there, I'll get you down," He said, trying his best to calm the kid down before he hurt himself. Jet got the trap easily released and in a minute the kid from the net was on the ground.

Jet crouched down so he'd be closer to eye level to the kid he'd found. He'd reached out to rest a hand on the boy's shoulder like he would any of his other kids up at the tree house. He only got a minute to look at the boy's face, or at least what was uncovered. The whole left side of the boy's upper body was covered in dirty rags, which couldn't be good for whatever was underneath.

Once the boy noticed his hand though, fire shot from his hands at Jet. Panic flooded Jet, he'd just saved a firebender, he drew his swords ready to fight back, but when the fire dissipated, the boy was running away from him. So naturally he followed.

The kid tripped ahead of him over a root, sending him sprawling over the forest floor. He didn't get up, rather curled up into a ball. Jet dropped his swords and stared at the scared child for a moment. 

He'd seen his kids curl up like that after nightmares of their villages being destroyed, of losing their parents, of any sorts of attacks that they'd seen in their lives. Jet himself had woken up like that a number of times over the years. 

The kid may have been a firebender, but he was still a kid. Who knows how far away from home the boy was, if he had any family left, what was under those rags. Despite every instinct in Jet, telling him that having a firebender around was dangerous, but he couldn't just turn his back on a kid in need of help. He'd had too many people turn away from him, he couldn't do that to someone else.

Slowly, he knelt down on the forest floor next to the firebending child. The kid curled in tighter on himself. Jet waited for a few minutes, trying to let the kid calm down a bit before talking to him. That however didn't seem to be working. If anything the boy's breathing was getting more and more hysterical as he was choking back cries.

Jet moved and rested a hand on the boy's trembling side; he violently flinched underneath Jet's touch. "It's okay buddy," Jet muttered, "It's okay, I'm not here to hurt you, okay? I wanna help." The kid's head peeked out from behind his arms, he sent him a kind smile. "Hey, my name's Jet, mind telling me yours?"

Carefully, the kid sat up, hugging his knees to his chest, he shook his head, refusing to meet Jet's eyes. 

"No? You gonna make me guess aren't ya? Alright is it... Lee?" The kid shook his head again. "Pao?" Another shake, "Shu? Hui?" he paused for a moment "Momo?" That got a small giggle from the kid, "You just gonna leave me hanging here buddy?"

The kid rocked a little bit in place, but still didn't seem to want to answer. That was fine, it's just Jet needed a name to call the kid. An idea struck him a moment later.

"You know, a lot of my friends have picked new names when they joined my crew, you wanna pick one?" 

The kid looked confused. "Did you pick your name?" The words came out raspy, too raspy for a kid so young, but Jet didn't dwell on that too long.