Avatar Katara

The Northern Air Temple

"Hey, you're pretty good," Teo said.

"You're not so bad yourself. But you've got nothing on a real airbender." She broke her descent and shot straight upwards. She landed on the side of the temple, closed her glider, and ran parallel to the ground. She threw her glider into the air and jumped up, grabbing back onto it and diving until she was back to the boy.

"Wow," he said, amazed. "You're pretty great. But here's a good one." He released a cord on his glider and flew in loops, black smoke trailing from his chair. From her position above him, Rina saw the Fire Lord with a ridiculously sour expression.

She burst into laughter. She couldn't help it, she liked this boy. "You'd get along famously with my cousins." She landed next to Katara and Sokka and closed her glider. Teo followed.

"I can't believe you're a real airbender," Teo said.

"I can't believe you're not, with the way you flew." The boy beamed at her.

"That glider chair is incredible," Sokka said, shoving his way into the conversation.

"If you think that's good, you should see the other stuff my dad designs." He began to wheel away. The trio followed their new friend into the temple. The main chamber was unlike what Katara had seen in the Southern and Western Air Temples. Steam-powered machinery covered the walls. There was a beautiful statue of an airbender monk in one of the walls, but he was covered in a layer of dirt and grime. Rina frowned and blew it off.

"Wow," Sokka said as he ran to inspect one of the machines.

"Yeah! My dad is the mastermind behind this whole place. Everything's powered by hot air. It even pumps hot air outside to power our gliders." As he spoke, a woman entered a cage nearby. She pulled a rope and steam lifted the cage up to the level above them, where the woman exited.

"This place is unbelievable!" Rina blew the dust outside with a fierce gust of air, revealing the shiny metal of the machines. "It's so different!"

"So better!" Sokka ran around to the different machines and gadgets. Katara stopped to examine a mural like the ones she'd seen before. She frowned. Rina's air hadn't quite managed to clear the dust, and some of the figures were destroyed by pipes running through them.

She turned to see a statue that might have once had a fountain. Now, it held some kind of bubbling green liquid, and smoke belched out of the statue's mouth.

Never mind that. She was sure that some parts of the temple were the same.

---

"Isn't this temple beautiful?" Katara asked Rina, who nodded enthusiastically. The Water Tribe girl examined another monk statue. Then a wrecking ball shattered it. She jumped backwards as a middle-aged man with a balding scalp and a red monocle walked through the rubble.

"What's the doodle? Don't you know to stay away from construction sites? We've got to make room for the bathhouse!"

Rina waved away the dust, looking unimpressed. "You just destroyed an ancient relic of my people for a bathhouse."

"Well, the people around here are starting to stink."

"You stink. Seriously. This is a sacred temple! How could you just destroy it like this? Come on, it can't be impossible to incorporate the statues into the bathhouse!"

"She's an airbender," Teo explained, coming up behind them. "Her people lived here a hundred years ago."

"Hm," the Mechanist said. "A long time ago, but not a hundred years ago, my people became refugees. My infant son, Teo, was badly hurt during the flood and lost his mother. I needed somewhere to rebuild, and I stumbled across this place. Couldn't believe it! Everywhere, pictures of flying people. But the whole place was empty. No one was home. Then I found these fan-like contraptions." He held up a glider.