Zhao pressed his back against the closed door and exhaled, letting the pressure release

Zhao pressed his back against the closed door and exhaled, letting the pressure release. The pressure didn't seem to want to leave so he just let every muscle drop and did the best he could. He lazily looked at his desk and realised that the woman sitting in his chair had half-swivelled in his direction and looked out of the corner of her eye with some interest, New York Times folded on her lap and her cigarette twirling smoke towards the ceiling. The gramophone was straining to the sound of Puccini, which struck Zhao as a little too ironic for its own good. The Colonel was utterly annoyed...even when his career was going down in flames around him, he couldn't even be allowed the luxury of a private place to drown his sorrows in.

Azula smiled.

"You look like someone about to commit Hari Kiri," she quipped, taking a sharp inhalation of her cigarette, throwing the newspaper onto the desk and swivelling around to face Zhao, "please don't. I've seen it before. It's messy, it's obnoxious, there isn't an ounce of dignity in it, and it throws the entire administrative framework into a blind fit trying to work its way around your corpse."

Zhao listened quietly and made no attempt to force Azula out of his chair. Even with things as bleak as they were, there were still things Zhao could lose. He felt little harm in asking, "if you've a vested interest in keeping me from doing anything stupid, maybe you could help me out?"

"Ooh! A little demanding, aren't we?" Azula leaned forward, resting her cigarette-holding arm on its elbow and giving Zhao a calculative, sultry look, "who said I had a vested interest in anything? Do what you wish. I'm just a humble passenger."

Zhao scowled, resting hands on hips, "how much do you know about our situation?"

"Enough to know that you really should have seen this coming," Azula's eyes drifted down to the scrunched piece of paper in his hand, "if my eyes don't deceive me, that's an ULTRA Triple-Zero message from Imperial General Headquarters in Tokyo. Knowing you, it's probably denying a request you made for extra-ordinary levels of authority to complete the task you're on."

The chair swivelled aside and Azula turned to smoking while looking out the window at the Manchurian countryside. The day was dying, but in mid-summer days like these there was still plenty of light this late. She liked the effect the light made in forming dust motes in the air, very aware that it was a potent metaphor for countless metaphysical concepts. A human being could read anything into anything, so might as well pick something that looked pretty to carry some artificial meaning.

"Going over the heads of the Kwantung Army and appealing straight to Tokyo...not very smart," Azula grinned slyly and took another puff, "you of all people must know that the Kwantung Army has friends in very high places, and aren't keen on one of their own getting uppity and forgoing all the secret handshakes that go into getting promoted. For a man with so many connections and lines of influence that was rather...incautious."

"I felt the circumstances justified extra-ordinary measures," Zhao conferred cagely. He didn't know how much Azula knew about his 'circumstances' and wasn't about to give away more than was strictly necessary.

"Normally, I'd agree with you, "Azula stubbed out her cigarette on Zhao's pristine and expensive ash-tray, and pressed her hands together while looking at the ceiling in thought, "but the question then becomes...why do you need these measures, specifically? Members of your faction within the Kwantung Army aren't exactly renowned for their mental stability. Take Colonel Hiroto. The moment the mission turned against him, he had a nervous breakdown. As of now he's restrained in the back of a van heading to Hsinking, sucking his thumb and asking if he could get off a train to see his mother. That's the kind of person who subscribes to your view of the world, Colonel Kokami."

Zhao looked around the office. How in the world was she getting this information? He straightened himself out and pointed out "I think you'll find my ideals are perfectly in concert with your father's ideals, Miss Hinaga."

"My father's ideals..." Azula tipped herself over and opened the bottom drawer of Zhao's desk, leafing through stuffed telegrams and ordinance surveys from months ago and drawing out a rarely-thumbed hardback book, down the side of which was written in kana and kanji 'Forging A National Spirit –Ozai Hinaga' in slightly flaked gold lettering, "...which as we speak are making their journey through the Japanese school curriculum..." Azula leafed half-interestedly through the pages of the book, "...are an amalgamation of concepts stemming from the theory of freedom which supposes that true freedom comes from recognition by others, building up a shared national community in which everyone is collectively free...a 'spirit' that is more than the sum of its parts. Although the theory had antecedents in the writings of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, its first true formulation was first made by Friedrich Hegel in the early 19th Century."

Azula slammed the book shut with one hand, shunting Zhao out of his befuddlement. Despite being shorter than him, Azula still somehow managed look down upon him, "do you even know who Hegel is?"

Zhao's temper was beginning to fray. He didn't enjoy being made to feel stupider than a 15-year-old girl. But at this juncture he didn't feel had much say in the matter, so he let her talk to bring her ever so slightly closer to 'the point' of this narrative.

"My father modified these ideas through the concept of 'will' as expounded by Friedrich Nietzsche..." Azula dumped the book in another, roomier, desk drawer.

"Oh! Now I've heard of Friedrich Nietzsche," Zhao felt a rare opportunity of showing off. He'd read every word of Nietzsche.

"Of course you have. Everyone's heard of Friedrich Nietzsche," Azula slammed the desk drawer shut and scoffed loudly, "he's the patron saint of faux-intellectuals. He's convinced a generation of young men that all they need is a bad hairdo, an axe to grind and some kind of mental disorder to make themselves look 'profound'. If you really want to prove your mettle as a philosopher, try getting into Heidegger's 'Being and Time' and out the other side without throwing yourself out of a window. Only a small minority have managed that feat."

"And let me guess, "Zhao interrupted bitterly, "you're one of them?"

Azula smiled and shrugged. She wasn't going to reveal anything about herself. Not yet, anyway. She wandered away towards the gramophone, leaning forward to pull the needle away from the spinning vinyl disc. A loud squeak terminated the opera, and Azula commented "Puccini can be so dire at times. Let's try something a bit more upbeat."

"Miss Hinaga, I hate to be forward, but I have pressing matters to attend to," Colonel Kokami attempted to nudge Azula towards the end of her meanderings, but the young Japanese girl in the classy uniform seemed in no mood to hurry things. She flipped another record seemingly out of nowhere and laid it on the gramophone. A brief crackle and the office came to be filled with the peppy and pleasing sound of jazz manouche.

"You do? That's definitely news, " Azula twirled around and started swaying and clicking her fingers in time with the music, "c'mon! Unwind! So you have long years of unemployment to look forward to? Kierkegaard supposed that it's only in adversity that we truly define ourselves. That's another 'Hegelism' too. The 'master/slave' relationship. In the early days of human conflict one side decided to back down and become slaves of the other. While the slave acquired self-consciousness, the master rested on his laurels. So when the slave overthrew the master, the master turned out the better for it. Who knows? Maybe the same will happen to you."

"Do you really believe that?" Zhao cocked an eyebrow at this girl's behaviour.

"Not really. Name-calling dead Germans just makes me look smart," Azula paused her swaying in thought, "though Kierkegaard was actually Danish..."

"Miss Hinaga, might I ask why you're drowning me in degeneracy, here?" Zhao was becoming uncomfortable from being buffeted by Russians, Italians, Danes, New Yorkers and Louisianan-inspired Frenchmen.

"Since you're taking that attitude, no, you can't," Azula smiled deviously, putting hands on tilted hips, "you're a pretty canny man. I'd hesitate to say smart, but I'm sure you could figure it out, given time. You seem to be a man in search of time, and just by chance I can point you to where you can grab some. For example...I think I spy a time-stamp of 1753 on that telegram. Am I right?"

Zhao scowled and unscrunched the paper in his hands, and found that the time at the top was stamped as 1753 hours. He also found that there was no way she could have known that. Someday, he had to figure out how she did these things.

Azula didn't wait for an answer, and pulled a slip of paper from her left breast pocket, "funnily enough, and completely coincidentally, I have a message from Tokyo here stamped 1757. Just as coincidentally, it has your name on it..." Zhao's eyes popped, and he let the slip he was holding drop to snatch the paper out of Azula's loose hand. She continued "people in government can be so fickle. A stray word from a stray official can sway the lot of them. In a way, governments are like lovers. One moment they're cold, cruel and distant, then the next they're giving you more than you even asked for."

The more Zhao read, the more his smile widened. His smile turning more malicious and calculative when the implications set in. He clenched in fist in triumph. His gamble had paid off. In fact, it hadn't just paid off, it deluged him in winnings. A whole new universe of possibilities opened up before him, and abruptly he realised who he had to thank for this. He coughed loudly and bowed respectfully, "I shall endeavour to carry my new position exclusively for the glory of the Chrysanthemum Throne and act in the best traditions of the Imperial Japanese Mili-"

"General, you can gloat if you really feel like it," Azula pulled a cigarillo case from her right breast pocket and poked a cigarette with her holder, taking a silver lighter out of a back pocket and lighting the cigarette with practised ease. She took a puff and blew smoke in Zhao's direction before speaking "just keep in mind the man who spoke up for you at IGHQ, and read his book properly this time."

Lieutenant General Kokami's vicious smile returned, and he turned around and burst through the office door with renewed vigour, wasting no time in enacting his new-found authority. Azula smiled her own calculating smile and walked back to the comfortable swivel chair, relaxing with lit cigarette prized between her pointed, painted fingernails. The chair swivelled slowly around while Azula clicked her fingers to the music until its back faced the desk. The office door closed of its own accord.

"Okay! There's...there is a perfectly good explanation for this..." Sokka stammered.

"Throw it over," the armed, assertive, khaki-clad woman jabbed her submachine gun in Sokka's direction.

"...throw...what over?" Sokka peered forward and squinted. The sound of palm impacting against face resounded loudly from Katara's direction.

"I thought you might have a bag of marbles, and I wanted to play a while," the woman smiled whimsically before scowling harder, "what d'ya think I'm telling you ta throw over!? Get that pea-shooter off your back and put on the ground in front of you! Hands far apart, two fingers each, and keep 'em where I can see 'em!"

"Okay..." Sokka carefully and gingerly prized the rifle off of his back and laid it in front of him, "okay, look, I know what this looks like, but if I can just see the man in charge, I can explain, and you'll see this is all a simple misunderstanding."

"Grab it," the soldier ordered another khaki-clad woman, who leant down to pick up the piece while the others kept their eyes and weapons peeled. They all wore flat-caps, jackets and jeans underneath their ammo belts and green armbands, and the additional yellow armband on the opposite arm of the Chinese woman asking the questions indicated that she was the leader, "you can explain to me. I'm the one in charge."

"Eheh..." Sokka took it for a joke. The visual hints passed him by entirely, "no, really, take me to the man in charge. I'm sure he'd be very happy that you're so eager, but if he's out, I can wait."

Sokka's temperature dropped when the soldier loudly re-loaded her weapon. She squinted fiercely, "you're reeeaaally pushing your luck, friend."

"Suki...they're unarmed..." a fellow soldier whispered with uncertainty.

"Sure...but they also might be spies," the leader, Suki, responded loudly enough for the prisoners to hear, "and no matter where you are, the penalty for spying is immediate and terminal. Being armed or unarmed has nothing to do with it."

"We're not spies!" Katara scrabbled forward and spoke up, provoking a flurry of barrels being pointed at her. She stopped and stilled herself, trying hard to remain calm. She took a deep breath and spoke in a level tone, "we're Mongolians. We're escorting this monk here to Tibet."

Suki leant to one side to peer at the boy monk. Aang was sitting cross-legged on the gravel and smiled and waved uneasily upon mention of himself. The Chinese soldier peered back at Katara suspiciously, "so you brought him through here and stuffed yourselves in a coal bin? At what precise point is this story supposed to start making sense?"

"Well..." Katara was at a loss as to whether or not to mention the whole travelling-through-space-and-time shenanigans, "we...got lost."

"Bag," Suki asserted, having had enough of this nonsense, "empty it. No funny business."

Katara deflated herself, and promptly took her satchel off of herself and tipped it upside-down, emptying its contents onto the gravel. Food tins, a water pouch, packets of rice, fruit, a slightly tattered journal, spare blankets, maps and documents flapped across the ground. Katara was very economical in saving space. Suki leant down and picked up the most incriminating piece of evidence, the journal, and flicked through to a random page while Katara sullenly and silently scolded her.

"Mongolian," the soldier remarked, shutting the book tight between her fingers. She thought for a while then said, "I suppose that backs up a part of your story, though we can't be sure until we find someone who can read this stuff."

"Suki..." one of her subordinates had knelt down to pick up the slightlyused map that had pencil-marks on it, and stood up to show it to her superior. This was one of the more obvious signs that this wasn't a typical military unit...they all called their senior officer by her first name. Suki looked at the map, seeing the traced route from Hailar to Harbin.

"Okay, now this is where your story starts getting downright odd," Suki looked up from the map, "you're escorting a monk from Mongolia to Tibet, and you not only take by far and away the most dangerous route to get there, but you take the long way round through Manchuria."

"Ah, that's...heh...that's kind of a funny story, really. Y'see...uh..." Sokka blagged, and paused to let his head catch up, "...y'see...we're from the really far eastern end of Mongolia and...uh...the People's Army kinda got wind Aang was there so...we didn't have much choice really. We skidaddled outta Mongolia the nearest way possible."

Suki winced at Sokka, "that's not a funny story. That's downright depressing."

"I guess you had to be there..." Sokka shrugged.

"And it still doesn't explain why you're hiding in a coal bin in this little town of ours," Suki glanced down at the map, "far as I can tell, you were heading south through Beijing, and if that's where you were aiming for then I gotta say you missed pretty spectacularly."

"Oh?" Katara asked, "where are we?"

Suki's face froze, and she handed the map back to the nearest soldier to collect herself, "you honestly don't know where we are?"

"Sorry...my brother's path-finding skills are a little rough..." Katara attempted to be as friendly as she could to the clearly authoritative woman before her, "we got...ah...sidetracked and wandered in accidentally. We didn't mean to cause you trouble."

"I have people stationed all around this town making sure the Japanese stick to their bargain," Suki explained, "I have eyes peeled so tightly I'd know if a rat scuttled through in the middle of the night. There's no way you could've 'wandered in' without us knowing unless you were trying really hard to hide yerselves. Which, to me, screams 'spy'."

"Wait...bargain?" Sokka noticed the meagre thread of exposition and wished to use it as a lifeline, "what d'ya mean? What bargain?"

"We're asking the questions, stranger," Suki challenged, "we've kept this town safe from war for nearly thirty years, and I'll be damned if anything threatens it on my watch. Normally I'd let people like you carry on with your journey, maybe stay at our lovely inn and enjoy our wonderful local cuisine, but there's one thing that you keep side-stepping every time I ask you about it. How did you get inside that bin without anyone spotting you!?"

"We...uh..." Katara clammed up. She had nothing to fall back on whatsoever. Sokka was at the end of his abilities himself, leaving Aang to look up between themselves and the female soldiers. Their presence here was completely inexplicable, in the most literal sense. Aang heaved a sigh and crawled over to Katara, face leaden with uncertainty.

"(Katara...)" he whispered heavily, "(...I think we should tell them)."

"(Tell them you're a reincarnated demi-god with power over time and space?)" Sokka whispered urgently back at them, "(yeah! That'll go down well!)"

"(Aang, it's too dangerous)," Katara beseeched, "(we can't expose ourselves like that)."

" (Look, I know it's dangerous to tell people)," Aang reasoned, "(but right now don'tcha think it'd be more dangerous to not tell them?)"

"(We don't even know who they are)," Katara shook her head, her expression weighted with worry.

"(Whoever they are, we know they're not with the Japanese)," Sokka reasoned, before sighing at the easy puncturing of those simple plans of mice and men, "(I don't like it any more than you do, but I got nuthin'. Aang, I don't know how you're going ta pull this off, but you better do something before we're pumped full of holes)."

Aang swallowed at the thought, but a steady hand on his shoulder reassured him. Katara paused, pushed her worries out of her mind, then smiled a sweet smile at the monk, "(whatever you decide, I'm with you all the way)."

Aang smiled back. All his worries disappeared for a split second inside her smile.

"Care if I interrupt the conference for a second?" Suki stuck a finger up in the air and crouched lower. Despite her steadfastness, she could tell a close-knit group of friends when she saw one, "I'm still waiting for my explanation."

Aang took a deep breath, raised his hands, stood up and looked Suki in the eye. He began, "this is going to sound really bizarre, but...I'm the Qoghusula."

Suki got the feeling that she should be shocked and amazed, but she ended up simply confused, "...run that past me again?"

Aang grunted irritably, and elaborated, "I'm a reincarnated Tibetan tulku who is in touch with the void that underpins existence and can manipulate all space and time." Suki listened carefully and opened her mouth to comment, but all that came out was a strangled squeal of befuddlement. Aang looked down at the ground in embarrassment and muttered "...told you it was going to sound bizarre."

"We found him in the mountains in eastern Mongolia, near the border, a few days ago," Katara filled in, "the last he remembered, he was in Tibet 50 years ago."

"Then this crazy Japanese guy with his own unit attacked us," Sokka chipped in, "he'd been searching for the Qoghusula and tracked him down to our village. That's how we found out who he was."

"They rescued me, and since then we've been going to Tibet to help me use my...uh...'abilities'..." Aang added nervously, "I don't know how, but somehow the Kwantung Army found us out and trapped us in a train in Harbin. That was just a few minutes ago. We hid and I...well I...I got us out of there and we ended up in your coal bin."

Suki was open-mouthed at the craziness of them all. She absent-mindedly grabbed the map from one of her subordinates and looked at the pencilled dotted line heading down from Hailar. It cut off at Harbin. There was no way this story could have been true.

"The Kwantung Army is probably searching for us right now. They got posters of us and everything," Sokka concluded, standing slowly to his own two feet as a measure of trust, "so...this is gonna sound a bit cheeky, but...we need sanctuary. Bad."

Sokka's humble honesty melted a portion of Suki's resolve, and for a brief flickering moment looked him in the eye and earnestly believed she needed to help these people.

"So...can we see the guy in charge now?" Sokka implored with a cheesy smile, provoking another bout of forehead-slapping from Katara. Suki pursed her lips, narrowed her gazed, scrunched up the map and threw it into the gravel. Both hands returned to the sub-machine gun.

"I don't know whether you should be shot or institutionalised," Suki decided, "I gotta say you've got your work cut out for you if you want me to believe your crazy story. 'Your word' ain't gonna cut it, I'm afraid."

"Well..." Aang looked around at the other, equally resolute, women soldiers. It was at that point that he noticed, behind them, a growing number of onlookers of all ages and sexes...except adult males, which was interesting. It seemed to be a similar make-up to Usutai, except the locals seemed to respond to the pressures of a lack of menfolk in a remarkably different way.

This didn't give Aang any more insight into how he was going to get out of the mess he was in. He asked resignedly, "...what should I do?"

"I don't know. You're the one who can 'control time and space'," Suki answered in all reasonableness. In spite of her fierceness, she still felt obligated to accommodate anything that might have helped these poor, confused people get out of their situation alive. Actually shooting them was strictly a last resort she wanted more than anything to avoid. She commanded, "so control time and space."

Aang looked around a bit more for clues. Taking them somewhere else was out of the question, firstly because it was hard enough the first time around without having women soldiers staring at them while he sat in a circle and chanted, secondly because even arriving in this specific place in one piece was tantamount to a fluke, and thirdly because if he ever stared into a blinding light hotter than the centre of the sun again it'd be a billion years too soon. Instead he tried to think of what else he'd done, no matter how unintentionally, that was weird enough to satisfy the questioning gaze of Suki.

The town was mostly of stone construction, with relatively simple, utilitarian roof tiles. It wasn't a large place, as he could see the buildings running out some distance down the gravel road. It was a lush grassland valley surrounded on all sides by shallow mountains, black in the shadow of the low sun in the sky. It was a beautiful place, but Suki wasn't lying when she said they could spot a rat approaching in pitch darkness. He could spy a heavily guarded watch-tower some distance off outside the town, looking over the dirt track out of town that led over a narrow dip in the ridge surrounding the place.

His concentration was increasingly put off by the burgeoning band of onlookers, but he did spy something that tapped his memory. Around the back of one building was a flume carrying water from a distant, unseen freshwater stream. It was barely more than a slow dribble, but he remembered the one time when he was able to make a moving object stop just by screwing his eyes shut and concentrating. Admittedly, that object was a hair's breadth from blowing his head off when he stopped it, but he supposed that meant it would be easier if he tried stopping an object that wasn't about to blow his head off. No sooner had he decided, then the crippling self-doubt flooded in.

"Okay, I think I got an idea, but..." Aang blushed as he stepped up to demean himself, "the thing is...I don't...really...know how to do this stuff. I mean...I know I can do this stuff, but a lot of it was by accident. I mean...I'm saying 'I mean' a lot...I mean I don't even know how I managed to get us here. We were in a hidey-hole in a moving train, I meditated for a bit and then...well...a lot of crazy things happened. Crazy, unpredictable, freaky, mind-blowing things and...besides the whole holding us at gunpoint you all seem pretty nice, so I don't really want to risk...blowing you up."

Suki nodded through this, listening carefully, and finally said, "so I take it the gist of this preamble is that you're able to teleport from Manchuria but you don't think you can do anything like that right now."

"Uh...yeah..." Aang deflated.

"That's handy," Suki noted suspiciously.

"Aang," Katara sidled up to the boy monk and rested an arm on his shoulder, saying soothingly, "you got an idea, yes?"

"...yeah, I do..." Aang relaxed as the warmth of Katara's hand drifted down through the fabric of his jacket, "I'm gonna see if I can stop the water in that flume over there. It's the only thing I can think of."

"If you think you can do it, then go for it," Katara leaned over and smiled.

"But...I'm not sure if I can..." Aang protested quietly.

"I've just seen you save our lives with that gift you have," Katara tugged Aang to one side and looked the Tibetan straight in the eye, "I know you can do this."

Aang didn't respond straight away, but took a deep, long breath to clear his head and mentally prepare himself. Silence passed, and even the onlookers hushed as it seemed like something Very Important was about to take place in their little town. Aang opened his eyes and nodded, facing the women soldiers, "okay. Can you take me to that flume over there?"

Suki looked behind herself, and couldn't see the harm in it, so she turned back and waved her gun in the flume's direction, shifting the three forward under close watch. Aang stepped uneasily towards the flume, seeing the glittering silky and clear water flow past unimpeded, glowing orange in the late evening sun. He looked at his reflection and stared down himself, daring his own uncertainty to surface. Thankfully, it backed down, and he took a deep breath and cracked his knuckles, holding his hands out for all to see.

"Behold!" Aang announced theatrically, "witness in amazement as the Qoghusula ceases the flow of this mighty torrent of water!"

"It's not that mighty..." an old man amongst the on-lookers pointed out.

"It's a little mighty..." a house-wife next to him argued, "I seen flumes around this area only half as big as that one."

Sokka was devolving into uncontrollable sniggering, which earned a sharp elbow jab from Katara. Aang coughed irritably at the interruption and tried again, "all right! Witness in amazement as the Qoghusula ceases the flow of this moderately mighty torrent of water! Using nothing but his amaaazing mind!"

Aang closed his eyes and waved his arms before him majestically. Eventually after a brief period of failed concentration he mentally kicked himself. What was he doing? He wasn't a bearded mystic sorcerer on a rain swept mountain-top, he was a monk. A Buddhist monk. Who did Buddhist monk things. Instead of trying to stop the flow of the stream through the telekinetic power of his hands, he relegated himself to pressing his palms together and bowing his head toward the flume, a traditional act of blessing that Buddhists engaged in. It made some sense. After all, while meditating he was reflecting on himself and his own intrinsic existence as non-existence...or something similar. Blessing, on the other hand, was directed at something else. Hopefully, by blessing the flume, it would be so chuffed at being admired for its own sake that it would pause to repay the complement. That made sense in his head.

How did he do it last time? He stared into the face of death and leapt back, taking a bit of it with him for a brief moment. That seemed ridiculously morbid when applied to the gentle, flowing flume, so he had to figure out a way to manage this state that didn't involve being about to die. Recreating that moment in his head, that was only a couple of days ago but felt like an eternity, when he was half-concussed and staring at a strange metal object, and Katara crying his name in anguish cacophonously inside his skull, senses heightened and yet deadened, one step removed from everything.

He opened his eyes just a peek...still flowing.

Grunting in disappointment, he concentrated harder, trying to visualise the flow of the stream inside his head. The water cascaded before him, beginning at a freshwater lake somewhere and ending in a reservoir somewhere else. A hundred times he mentally froze the image, but he still heard the stream flowing past in his ears, so that wasn't any good. The more he thought about it, the more he felt a strange, cold feeling of entrapment that he couldn't entirely shake off. He knew this was a bad idea, he decided. How could he have stopped a small bit of a stream anyway? If he stopped the flow of water before him, what happened to the water a little way ahead, or a little way behind? After all, the stream came from somewhere and went to somewhere.

In fact, when he thought about it, the stream didn't even have an end. Eventually it would either become part of a person's blood stream, or evaporated into the sky to become clouds, or used to douse a fire and sizzled away on the spot, and all three outcomes could have arisen from the same drop of water. The water of the whole town mixing and interweaving in the reservoir, an arbitrary hole in the ground or a barrel or something that stored water temporarily before it moved to other places. Topped up constantly by this very flume.

He was so caught up in this self-mocking train of thought that he had no idea what he was doing.

The rapid detour by Major Hinaga's Unit had not done wonders for the state of the Chiyoda's suspension, although thankfully the border crossing was at the top of an incline so brakes wouldn't be an issue. If the driver had any say about it, he would've preferred to avoid inclines altogether until they were in a position to make repairs, but this particular incline was impossible to avoid... considering it was part of the Great Wall of China and everything.

"I never get tired of that view," Iroh sighed, peering out a small slit in the metal side of the armoured car, "how many times would you reckon we passed this way?"

"Exactly one time too often..." Zuko murmured, peering forward through the driver's forward slits. What little light penetrated the dark interior had long turned orange in hue, and was dimming rapidly. There were to be no marvelling of sunsets over the ancient man-made barrier that arbitrarily defined the Manchukuo border, not that Zuko was particularly inclined to do anything of the sort.

The atmosphere inside was tense, but for the moment panic had subsided. They had little clue where the Qoghusula was now, but they took heart that the Kwantung Army had even less of a clue than they did. For the moment, they had the advantage, and after the setbacks over the last 48 hours it was a great morale boost. Iroh had relaxed the most, having been just a little worried back there, while Zuko hadn't eased a muscle. Gakki's ears were too plugged into his headphones to notice the change in mood.

Gravel crunched as barbed-wire fences were dragged aside away from the Chiyoda's path. Wedged in-between a sizeable gap in the wall, a red and white pole barred the Unit's way, attended and watched over by a sturdy wooden sentry post. The flag of the rising sun fluttered in the early evening breeze atop the border post's watchtower. The post was sparsely manned but formidably armed, and a senior Corporal wielding a clipboard waved the Chiyoda to a halt. A small port in the side of the car opened to allow Zuko to lean out and talk to the soldier.

"Identification, sir?" the Corporal asked politely, taking out a pencil for imminent use but keeping his rifle slung closely around his back.

"IJA Extra-Ordinary Operations Unit. Major Zuko Hinaga commanding," Zuko spieled, in a cogent enough mood to do things by the book this time instead of glaring his authorisation through.

The Corporal scrolled down the list on his clipboard, brow furrowing with every box he skipped over. He addressed the officer, "sorry, sir. We've received no authorisation to let you through this checkpoint."

"Don't need any," Zuko flashed up a crumpled, aged, but still very flashy document with an incredibly important signature carefully preserved at the bottom. The Corporal eyed the document and was suitably impressed.

"No, you certainly don't, sir," the Corporal stepped back and waved the barrier up. There was a slight hesitation on the part of the Kwantung Army soldiers manning the pole, but news had spread about what happened in Hailar and the poorly-paid Privates were not in any special mood to be embarrassed and run over by an obsessive adolescent loon. The barrier raised and the Corporal extended formal greetings, intentionally avoiding the convoluted patterns of respect reserved for people of status. "Have a safe trip, sir!" the soldier smiled, "welcome to...uh..."

The soldier turned to nearby compatriot, "hey...Sameji...what's this place called this week?"

Zuko's Unit didn't stay to find out, since the given title of Japanese-occupied China was a matter of frankly academic interest. Instead, gravel was ground under the tires of the convoy and the vehicles churned through the open barrier to the other side of the Great Wall, rolling into the vast multicoloured vista of China proper.

It was a breath-taking view, a small microcosm of the vast country of China, with desert lands visible in the far north, waterways glistening in the distant south, a web of fields to the left and lush forests to the right. All of it could be seen by the naked eye from this vantage point, coming down the incline that the Great Wall was strategically built on over 2,000 years ago. It was like a teasing taster of the treasures to be unlocked by any prospective invader stupid enough to take on the Chinese Empire. All of it could be theirs...if only they could get through the Wall.

Even Genghis Khan hadn't managed to breach it. His hordes snuck in the back way via the Gobi desert, and even that method took a decade to bear fruit. The Manchus got through the Wall by being invited in. If one discounted subterfuge and backhanded tactics, an invader could take millennia to breach the Great Wall.

Then in one gentle Spring in 1933, it took the Japanese 3 months.

"Lieutenant!" Zuko called, pulling a heavily-used map out of an overhead compartment and spreading it out over his desk, "status report on the Signal!"

"It's getting a little weird, sir," Gakki was rapidly multi-tasking between fiddling with the controls, inspecting the displays, listening to the buzzing and whirring that crackled through the airwaves, and scribbling horrendously complex equations in his notebook, "it's like every time I turn my back, this son of a bitch changes the laws of physics!"

"Care to elaborate, Lieutenant?" Zuko demanded testily, plotting their position on the map of northern China with a grubby, badly sharpened pencil.

"The signal frequency has returned to its regular level after that spike an hour ago, but its strength has been diminishing to a point where it's getting hard to read. Lower than I've ever registered it, but very gradually, over the last few minutes," Gakki twisted a few knobs just to make sure, "I think this has to be a temporary thing. At this rate we'll soon have to switch to long-wave radio, and that can't be right."

"Never mind that, where is it?" Zuko turned to press the question into Gakki's head.

"Uhhh..." Gakki glanced rapidly back and forth, from the Instrument to the map, then back to the Instrument, energetically tabulating figures longer than most human brains were capable of holding. Eventually, in a burst of urgency, the technician reached across and scrawled a wide circle on the map, some miles west of their position, calling "there! ...approximately."

"...I don't suppose you can be any more specific?" Zuko looked at the circled area. It wasn't any wider than the area they had found in Mongolia, but the difference was vital. Usutai was the only village for dozens of miles in all directions, somewhere near the edge of the range they had discovered. In the area Gakki had circled just now, there were at least a hundred settlements.

"I'm afraid not, sir," Gakki seated himself again, but addressed his commander respectfully, "I can try looking over the last few readings of the spike, but given that I'm not Niels Bohr, I can't honestly say when I'll be able to decipher them."

"Try your best," Zuko ordered. There wasn't much force in it, after this long, exhausting day of car chases, hundred-mile road trips and quantum physics. On top of that, his uncle's incessant pipe-smoking was making him nauseous. He pinched the bridge of his nose and concentrated hard on the countryside inside the scrawled pencil mark, "for now, we do it the old-fashioned way. We methodically check every village, follow every lead, and ask nicely."

"I suppose I could offer my services there," Iroh considered haughtily, "I mean no injury, my nephew, but your people skills do leave a lot to be desired."

"Can I snook a peek, sir?" the driver scrunched aside and held an arm out. The Major handed over the map and the driver inspected it with an expert's eye, "hmm...Xilingol Grassland, north Chahar Province." The old man handed the map back and addressed his commander in the eye, "'s close ta th' front line. Kwantung Army's gotta hold on it that's tenuous at best."

"After today, I can't think of that as being anything except a good thing," Zuko decided, flopping the map onto the desk and peering through the forward port hole, "the Kuomintang won't be a problem this far north, but keep an eye out for Communists. Best possible speed. Keep sharp, and get as much rest as you can. This is going to take a while."

The sense of disappointment in his voice was hard to dispel, but he had the satisfaction of knowing he was at least on the right track. For whatever reason, that didn't make him feel any better.

...the rain came from the evaporating oceans, which swirled together in a seamless mass older than history itself. Before that, everything was clouds. Before that, everything was a giant cloud hurtling through space. And before any of that, all water was stardust. Where that last flourish came from, Aang had no idea, but needless to say it was absolute, complete, final proof that stopping a flowing stream was impossible.

Aang opened his eyes and found and he was...disappointingly...entirely correct. He sagged, groaned and let his arms drop to his sides, as the flume continued to sparkle, uninterrupted, into the water trough. At the very least his feeling of cold entrapment lifted as he was relieved of the obligation to prove himself. He turned to admit defeat and politely request that they don't shoot him, but something odd befell his vision as he turned. Everyone besides him was gawking either at the stream or himself.

"Uh...did I have something on the back of my head?" Aang wondered, "I got this bump and I always thought it was a birth mark but all the other monks told me I was just being paranoid. That said, if I do have one, it's really rude to stare..."

"Aang..." Katara mouthed, half-shocked, "you made the water go backwards."

"What?" Aang swung back to the flume and looked carefully at the never-ceasing flow of water. It didn't look like it was going backwards, so the idea that it was struck him as utterly absurd, "but...but I...I didn't do anything..."

"It went up out the pool, up the flume and up the stream to the river. I don't know much about gravity, but I don't think it's meant to do that," Sokka reported, his brain broken from the grotesque lack of logic in all this, "do you see any other Qoghusulas who can do crap like that?"

"But I...I...I...I couldn't have! I didn't say any magic words or anything! I didn't wave my hands about or levitate or all those other things you're meant to do! So how..." Aang stopped, and remembered what he was thinking as he blessed the stream. He went...back...through the stages the stream had to go through. "Oooooh..." Aang strangled out the realisation, shockingly impressed at himself.

"Okay..." Suki gathered, nodding her thought processes into coherence, "...okay, your story sounds believable and straightforward. That was very...impressive."

"I actually did it," Aang tried to reconcile reality with his achievement, "I made time go backwards. I can teleport, I can time travel, I can pause and reset the world around me. I...am...the man. I never thought I'd hear these words out of my own mouth but I am the man."

"You da man! " a small girl in the crowd punched the air and squealed.

"Okay, I wanna show you something else," Aang grinned madly and turned excitedly to Suki, "do you have a coin? Something small and shiny?"

The sub-machine gun wielding woman raised an eyebrow and gently fished her pocket, "not much hard currency around here, but..." She froze, and felt in panic around her surprisingly empty pocket. She opened it up and peered inside, yelling irritably, "where's my purse!?"

"Behind your ear, silly!" Aang reached over to the side of Suki's head and a small green pouch spontaneously appeared in his stretched hand.

"WOOO! AWOOO! AWAGHarghablagablgl... " a bystander found himself overcome with emotion and collapsed in a puddle of foam. Suki's attention snapped to Aang and the pouch in the corner of her eye. Her gloved hand snatched the purse away and pointed an accusing finger at the bald-headed boy.

"That ...was not so impressive," Suki decided.

"That's what I told him!" Sokka chimed.

"Hey!" Suki swung her accusing finger in the militiaman's direction, "you're still on probation, kiddo."

"'Kiddo'?" Sokka scoffed, folding his arms, "I'm as old as you are, y'know."

"'till you start actin' yer age, I heavily dispute that," Suki grinned mischievously.

"What about us?" Katara stepped forward to ask, since talk of 'probation' was still being bandied about.

"Yeah, you're okay," Suki didn't hesitate, pocketing the purse and waving away her doubts, "you're not stupid."

The soldier waved away her compatriots, and made strong indications that the crowd disperse for the night. The soldiers diligently obeyed orders, while the crowd took longer to drift away, particularly since the foaming mouth guy's drool had attached him to the gravel. Suki relaxed and put her hands on her hips.

"Let's take a walk. I'll tell you more about this place. I'd say you've got a lot to fill in too," Suki shouldered her weapon and invited the others along, her manner hinting at a fun-loving, care-free side that was only just becoming apparent, "I never caught your name."

"Aang," the monk smiled, "Aang Anil."

"No, I wanted the pink dress! The pink dress! This one's purple! It's no use to me!" the stodgy, white moustachioed, stick-thin old General Sonobe whispered harshly into his phone, glancing furtively from door to door in the paranoid belief that someone had to be listening in, "no, I don't care if you don't have it in that size! Make one that's in that size!"

"Aw, but the purple brings out your eyes so well!" Zhao interrupted, bursting through the doors of the office flanked by a duo of Kempeitai and the swagger of someone who knows he's won the chess match even before the first piece is played. Sonobe bolted upright and slammed the receiver, alternating violently between stunned shock and immobilising rage.

"You!" the Commander of Eleventh Army cursed Zhao's existence, his hand gripping his sword unstably, "you've got some nerve showing your face around here, Kokami! I'll see your head for this!"

"Sir, I am afraid you'll have to come with us," the well-chiselled Kempei to the left of Zhao stated professionally, gripping his own sword.

The General's rage faded into senile confusion as his gaze wandered confoundedly from face to face, "what's the meaning of this?"

"We wish to enquire why you haven't vacated Lieutenant General Kokami's office," the other, equally well-chiselled Kempei to Zhao's right carried on the sentence uninterrupted, "this is the office of the Commander of Eleventh Army, is it not?"

"Lieutenant General!? " Sonobe spat the words as he strongly implied Zhao wasn't good enough for the title, and certainly wasn't good enough for the office. It was a very nice office. Wooden panelling throughout, a stacked bookcase of all the major classics, an aged globe of the world in the corner, a massive laminated pine study desk and an excellent view of the hills surrounding the Kwantung Army headquarters at Hsinking, just south of Harbin. He certainly wasn't letting it go without a challenge, and jabbed, "now look here, you upstart! You might be the same rank as me, but that doesn't entitle you to treat me like some kind of verruca! Now if you-"

"Oh, Mr. General!" a sly young girl popped her head round the door and playfully tilted her bangs to one side, "you don't know where I can find some nail polish do you? I'm running a bit low and I don't want to bother my friends with useless requests."

"Oh..." General Sonobe stopped his rant in its tracks and mouthed like a fish while he collected his response, "...um...down the corridor to the east wing, third door on your left, I believe there's some special stocks there. The door's locked, mind, so..."

"Oh, that won't be a problem. Thanks!" Azula smiled a Hyena's smile and bounced off out of sight.

General Zhao, still grinning, raised his eyebrows expectantly. General Sonobe was momentarily left lost for words, like a deer in headlights. He breathed deeply before pursing his lips and smiling in defeat, pointing at the desk and saying, "I'll just...pack my things..."

"...then the lid swung open, and instead of being dragged out by a mentally unstable Japanese officer, we were dragged out by you," Katara finished, taking another much-needed sip of late night tea, "and you know the rest."

"Incredible," Suki remarked, sipping her own cup. The group was sitting around a plain, brutally chiselled wooden table in Suki's home, after their brief tour of the town. It was at the very end of the day, so they didn't see much before light disappeared entirely, but thankfully there wasn't much to see. They discovered that the town was called Bai Shan (due to some local legend about a giant eel in the nearby river…Aang forgot the details), had a population just shy of a thousand or so and, in contrast to Usutai, it sat at the foot of a large depression, which helped keep the area lush and vegetative. Also in contrast to Usutai, Bai Shan was isolated by human choice rather than by geography.

"I think this place is incredible!" Aang interrupted, so excited that he hadn't even touched his tea, preferring instead to absent-mindedly feed Momo a never-ending series of nuts, "how do you manage to get by all on your own?"

"To be fair, it's not exactly 'on our own'," Suki admitted, her lush crop of hair breathing after being cooped up under her soldier's beret, "the Communists have a secret support network set up, and we're one of the beneficiaries so long as we send men. It's kinda become our chief export. We try ta keep it under wraps so we don't attract unwanted attention."

"And the Japanese leave you alone?" Katara remarked, "I'm still not sure how that works."

"The Kwantung Army doesn't have the manpower to hold down the area it controls, so it either rules by proxy or makes deals with the locals," Suki shrugged and leaned back in her seat, looking surprisingly comfortable despite her soldiers' gear, "we got an agreement with the Japanese. They don't bother us an' we don't bother them. All our support is under the radar. The women in uniform is ta keep up appearances."

"I see…" Katara looked down and took another sip, hiding her discomfort with all this neutrality business, "so what made you go it alone?"

"It wasn't by choice, I can tell you that much," Suki said wearily, sipping her tea to relax herself, "Bai Shan's had to fend for itself ever since the last Emperor fell. Not that we miss him or anything...though it's pretty hard to miss him since he's just next door and everything. But once the government collapsed we had to make do on our own. We've been playing off warlords, Chiang Kai-Shek and foreign invaders off against each other for decades. I think we've got pretty good at it, personally. After all, it's not like there's anyone else to look out for us."

"...I think I know what that feels like," Katara sipped the last of the tea to calm her thoughts and smacked her lips, "this is really nice tea." She held up the empty cup and smiled at the tea server, "oh, garçon? I believe I need a refill."

"The kettle's still boiling, you greedy little guttersnipe," Sokka moaned loudly as he turned up the paraffin stove. The militiaman swiped the cup from Katara's hand and slammed it on the dusty counter piled high with maps and half-open boxes of ammo. Suki's home was simple, but large and uncomfortable, though one couldn't tell that from the sheer volume of debris that littered the living quarters-cum-command centre. The cup clattered on the worktop as the kettle built up its ear-splitting whistle, and Sokka somehow managed to refill it with fresh tea angrily, "why am I making the tea, anyway!? It's your house!"

" These two've been okayed. You, though, are still a Prisoner of War," Suki sipped with a smug, self-satisfied expression, "an' so, you gotta do Prisoner of War type things, like forced labour."

Aang ran out of nuts without noticing, and offered his finger instead. Momo bit deeply, causing the boy monk to yelp quietly.

" This completely violates the Geneva Convention," Sokka slammed Katara's refilled cup on the table in protest, "when can I stop being a Prisoner of War?"

"When you stop being a jerk," Suki stated playfully, "so, basically, when the sun goes cold."

"Don'tcha think that's a bit soon?" Aang chortled, nursing his finger and pretending everything was fine. Just then, a curiosity visibly popped into his consciousness, and with things as they were, he realised this might be the only chance to settle it. He leaned in closer to ask the question that had been plaguing him for hours, "hey, is there really a giant eel in the river nearby?"

"What?" Suki was caught completely off-guard, "no! It's just a local legend! There're tons of those kinda stories!"

"Are you suuure?" Aang pressed, "I've seen some pretty weird stuff in my time. Once in Indonesia I came across this lizard, a 'Komodo Dragon,' who was really short, squat, pudgy and brown. I never thought a dragon would be so funny-lookin'."

"You know what? That's what gets me..." Suki put her cup to one side to speak her mind, "we're in an age of steam-ships, trains, cars, airplanes, I hear they're even talkin' 'bout rocket packs. And yet you...50 years ago...have travelled further than all of us."

"Well...I haven't been that far..." Aang diminished himself in apology, "just East Asia, really. I mean, it's not like I've ever been to Constantinople."

"Actually, it's Istanbul, not Constantinople," Suki pointed out.

For some reason, this caught Aang by surprise. He swirled the name around inside his mouth, "but 'Constantinople' sounds so classy. What'd they change it for?"

"Who knows?" Sokka had absent-mindedly made up another cup of tea and set it on the table to join in the geography lesson, "but for some reason, nowadays, it's Istanbul. Not Constantinople."

Suki cheekily snatched the steaming hot cup and told Aang with a straight face, "so if you've a date in Constantinople, she'll be waiting in Istanbul."

Sokka's mind jerked suddenly, and he concentrated an index finger and an open-mouthed gape at the female soldier sitting at the table. He tested, "so take me back to Constantinople..."

Suki's head turned, and her expression widened. She pointed her finger back up and gave the next bit of the secret password, "no, you can't go back to Constantinople..."

Sokka returned at a quicker tempo, "been a long time gone, Constantinople..."

Suki quickened the pace, "why did Constantinople get the works..."

And all together now for the finale, "that's nobody's business but the Turks!"

As Sokka and Suki stared at each other in utter surprise, Katara's perplexed head came crashing down on the table, "oh, god. Shoot me now..."

Aang was confusedly aloof from all this, and eventually thrust his hands up in resignation, "me not getting anything is gonna be a running theme of this adventure, isn't it?"

The air whistled around the newly-promoted General's cap, and a mighty vessel of steel and steam rumbled underneath his feet. The view was glorious, a mighty torrent of dark greens and dark browns that blurred past him. The shadows loomed larger than the tiny pricks of light, but those slowly grew as the sun rose behind him like wind filling his sails. A blazing omen to his majesty, spurring him through the vast realm that might as well be his.

"The sun rises every morning, General," Azula reminded from her perch in the corner of the observation balcony, some distance ahead of the more heavily armoured observation point that sat atop the armoured train. Zhao's chest couldn't be puffed out much farther if it had been hooked up to a tire pump, while Azula was merely whimsical, effortlessly reading his thoughts, "I'd be wary of interpreting it as a sign of something."

"It's a sign if you make it a sign," Zhao beamed, glancing back from his commanding position with a delighted twinkle in his eye, "I believe that's one of the observations in your father's book?"

"Good, you've finally got to the preface," Azula gently mocked, "but you haven't won yet, Zhao. You've no idea where your quarry is, and you've lost track of my brother since he crossed the border. He's stolen a very significant march on you."

Zhao was almost perturbed enough to ask how she knew that, but thought better of it. Instead, he concentrated on the present, and looked ahead at his destination, "he can steal as much march as he wants from me. He's completely out of his league. The state his Unit was in when it entered Hailar is proof of that. The moment he finds my...'quarry', he'll inevitably mess up, and drive his prey away from him...and onto me."

"So you'll set yourself up in Beijing and wait for your target to come to you," Azula considered, "I'd say that's a rather imprecise strategy, myself."

"Who needs precision when you have the Eleventh Army?" Zhao closed his eyes and wafted in the intoxicating aroma of power that statement released, "and I know well who to thank for this opportunity, Miss Hinaga."

"Don't thank me," Azula added flippantly, "I'm not doing this for you."

"Then why...?" Zhao furrowed his brow and turned to address the precocious youth, only to find that he was the only person on the balcony. Rather startled, he marched over to the hatch and pulled it open with some effort. The General peered down into his control room...still in the process of being upgraded...and asked one of the new influx of staffers he brought on board, "soldier! Did Miss Hinaga retire to my office?"

"I...didn't see her come down, sir," the pasty new officer responded, pausing his clipboard scribbling to address his commander.

Zhao sagged, and nodded sagely to himself. Of course, he thought. How silly of him. Of course she'd disappear enigmatically without a trace. People like that didn't exit through the front door. They couldn't conceive of the existence of 'front doors', only 'obstacles in their path'. So he ordered the new officer, "carry on, Lieutenant...whatever your name is."

General Kokami shut the hatch door and decided to let the matter pass. It was of no consequence, as right now he had everything he needed. Status, authority and the power to make a momentous name for himself. He rubbed the new badge of rank sewn into his collar, the single star on a pure yellow background, the satisfying physical evidence that he wasn't only a few stars ahead of his rival, but an entire level above him. His shady back-room deals would continue to augment his authority, but today was the first day that he didn't need to rely on them. Today, he had stormed the hall of kings.

In either direction, the Great Wall stretched. At first a meagre line on the horizon, now it loomed as a mighty barrier to his progress, a block to his further advancement. A large section of the wall had been tunnelled out for trains to pass through, and after a brief smoke-filled darkness the wall was behind him, a speed bump so minor that to call it a 'barrier' was laughable. The rising sun burst from behind the wall to light his way into China itself, and Zhao's spirits rose. Becoming a king was only a stepping stone. Today, he was taking his first step to becoming a god.

Sokka and Suki stayed up late into the night talking about the virtues of swing, but Katara was just about ready to throw her head into the pillow after this nerve-racking day. They slept in a spare, abandoned cottage fitted with a bare majority of the simple comforts, but Aang couldn't get much sleep. His mind was still buzzing with possibilities, and as he'd discovered earlier that day, possibilities were remarkably fluid and terrifying things to contemplate.

Katara had an early night, and rose at the crack of dawn. Sleepy-eyed, it took a fair amount of patting of the thin bedsheets to realise Aang wasn't in them. Braving the cool morning air, the boy monk didn't prove hard to find, as she stepped out the cottage and looked at the high ridge along which a sliver of sunlight was gradually emerging. A bald-headed child was visible in silhouette, shining like a beacon compared to his surroundings. The sight was enough to gust away her fears, and she clambered up the side of the valley.

Aang was sat on the top of the ridge, watching the sunrise. He wasn't meditating, strangely, but instead just seemed to be gazing silently into middle distance, allowing Momo to enjoy the view from his shoulder. Katara wandered up carefully, happy to have a chance at some fresh air and a nice view after three straight days of being chased, shot at and hiding out in various forms of transportation. She wiped the lower rim of her long tunic and sat down on a rock next to him, sidling up.

Aang didn't seem interested in talking, so for a while she simply stared with him. The view was fantastic, with rolling grasslands as far as the eye could see, and other villages just visible in the distance, making the surrounding area many times more populous than Usutai's bare, uninhabited area. But eventually she felt a nagging need to fill the air with something, so she leaned back and noted whimsically, "hundreds of miles apart, in separate countries, both at the farthest edge of existence, and they both love Swing Jazz. What are the chances?"

"Uhh...pretty high if you're looking for something to hook you to a place far away from people shooting at you," Aang pointed out, in more need of flippant conversation than he had realised.

" Wait, wait, let me get this straight..." Katara waved her hands in a 'time out' motion, "back then, in Harbin, when you were looking for strands of threads of ropes of the things that bind and define human beings, you managed to bring us here because one of us had the same musical taste as someone here?"

"That's as good an explanation as any I can think of," Aang resigned, "I don't think we should do it that often."

"I'd have to agree..." Katara worried, "you seemed lost, and whenever you found yourself it seemed like you just came back from hell. It didn't look like you were fully in control of yourself."

"I wasn't. And there's something else too..." Aang put a hand to the side of his head, while Momo helpfully patted the other side, "it's hard to explain, it's just this feeling that I've forgotten something, ever since I did...whatever it was I did."

"What do you mean?" Katara drew closer, her concern growing.

"It's a feeling...of...walls? Something lonely..." Aang concentrated hard, but even as he thought about it the niggling thought dispersed into an incomprehensible cloud. He shook it off with a hand-wave, "never mind. It's nothing. So what's the plan now?"

" The plan now is to rest up and figure out our next move," Katara informed the boy, "we'll be safe for a while, but we need to keep moving."

"Well...maybe a pause is what we need? We've been through a lot and everything, and these people aren't gonna turn us in," Aang reasoned, a smile breaking out across his face, "and after that stunt yesterday, everyone thinks I'm awesome. That's not a bad place to be."

"Don't let it get to your head," Katara warned, "you're no good to the world if you know nothing."

" I guess...I'll manage..." Aang shrugged playfully, focusing intensely on Katara, "I'll try not to blow us all up. No promises, but I'll do my best."

Katara laughed, and put a hand over her mouth to control herself. Aang couldn't help but stare. As much as the celibate monk tried to deny it, she was absolutely intoxicating. She recovered enough to remark, "trying not to blow me up. The most thoughtful thing a man can do." The thought triggered a pause in Katara as she scientifically studied that last statement, staring back at the town, "come to think of it...I don't think I've ever come across a man who didn't try to blow me up."

Aang's thoughts were topsy turvy, staring down at his sandals and swaying them this way and that in time with his head...a tidal motion that Momo participated in, and he was manifestly not thinking straight when he pointed out as casually as he could, "Haru didn't try to blow you up..." Aang realised what he was saying as soon as he said it, and the jolt he gave himself sent Momo reeling, "well! I mean...well. I...I...I guess guys trying to blow you up. That...well...that...eheh...that shows interest! Yeah! But Haru? Wasn't interested in blowing you up. Had no commitment. Terrible, terrible character flaw, I'd sa-"

Aang froze as he realised Katara was grinning at his discomfort with raised eyebrows. Pursing her lips, she remarked, "you know what? You're adorable."

She leaned over and planted a kiss on his forehead. Aang was taken aback at first, and gradually melted into a self-satisfied haze that he had been kissed by a girl. It was through this haze of glorious contentment, drunken on ambrosia, that the heart-rending realisation shot through that Katara had just called him adorable.

"Hey! That's a terrible thing to say!" Aang protested, and spun around to confront Katara only to see that she was already halfway down the hillside, humming happily to herself. Scorned, he spun around and scowled at the ground in front of him, angry at himself for blowing it so spectacularly. Momo, seemingly noticing his human friend's unhappiness, darted off his shoulder and returned a second later with a pawful of nuts. Aang glanced at the gesture, but wasn't in the mood, uttering a non-committal "egh..."

A scatter of rocks drew his attention, and behind a boulder his ears picked up a squeaking whisper of cuss words...or at least words that would be considered 'cuss words' if you were seven. The monk called out, "you can come out, now. Don't worry, I won't be mad. I'm a Buddhist! Buddhists don't get mad!"

Out from behind the boulder, a heavily apologetic Chinese girl, no older than eight or nine, stepped into view. She fumbled her hands and spoke haltingly, "sorry, mister...I just...well...I...I...I saw you...yesterday I saw you do those things...I mean...those things where you made the water go backwards...I was wondering if..."

" I'm really sorry. I can't do it on request if that's what you want," Aang excused himself to the girl.

"Well...uh...well..." the girl said 'well' and looked at the ground a lot, "that other thing you did with the big lady Suki's purse was really cool too..."

" Really?" Aang was perplexed. It'd been ages since he was asked to do magic tricks, "well...sure! I'd love to show you some..."

Aang looked down the slope of the hill, merging with the grassland that stretched to the horizon, and had a better idea.

"Althooouuugh..." Aang formulated a plan, "you see those grasses down there? How 'bout we play a game in them?"

"But mama told me not to go to the grasslands alone..." the girl fretted.

" You won't be alone! You'll have the master of all time and space to supervise you!" Aang held out an arm and invited her over, "c'mon! I'll give you a ride down! Think of me as a tiger." The monk got on all fours and playfully clawed, "I can really fierce, but right now I'm cute 'n cuddly and want to give you a ride on my back. But once we get to the bottom, you'll turn into a wildebeest. So you'd better run."

The girl smiled so widely it looked like the bottom half of her face was falling off. Gasping in excitement, she yelled loudly behind her, "hey! Aangy's gonna give us a ride down the hill!"

Out of the rocks and boulders emerged an army of beaming kids, mostly girls, who ran out from cover and rushed the prone and eminently surprised Aang. The kids flung themselves over him and the bald-headed boy reeled back, absolutely delighted. As Momo scurried rapidly to avoid the scrum, Aang and all the other kids laughed their faces off.

Katara looked up at the scrum of kiddies and smiled knowingly. The boy had a magical effect on the people around him, and Katara imagined if he could spread it the world over. It was a heart-warming thing to imagine.

But doubts crowded, and she looked aside from her place in a small gap of the ridge to look at the quiet and sleepy town cut off from the rest of the world, and the unspoilt greenscape beyond the hills that were overlooked and protected by the sun pushing distance between itself and the horizon. It didn't look like it had ever been touched. It didn't look like anything could touch it. It was impossible to imagine this comforting, coddling, impenetrable curtain of silent contentment and satisfaction with life ever being violated. It looked...safe.

The rising sun brought a different message: it only ever looked safe.

END OF PART TWO

To Be Continued…

Avatar: The Last Airbender Concept and Characters © Nickelodeon 2005-08

Author's Note: This chapter just grew and grew. It's actually been ready for more than a week, but a hefty format bomb kept it from being proof-read right until yesterday. I checked, and it's been close to two months since Part 2, Chapter 9. I don't have to tell you this is unacceptable and must be punished severely.

Only thing is, I think it's only going to get worse. Besides the general awfulness of the job I'm in, I've also signed up to NaNoWriMo. If you've heard of it, then your solemn duty must be to talk me out of it as sternly as possible. However, this isn't just an on-the-whim thing. I'm writing to win. I've got a premise, a strong central character and a good overarching theme to hold it together. It will require bunking up on modernist art movements and a week-long trip to Prague. Even if I weren't writing, I'd take a week-long trip to Prague. I need a damned holiday.

I'll try my best to keep this story updated. I've started a few paragraphs of Part 3, and see where it leads. I'm not abandoning another story. I'm sticking this out even if it kills me.

Thanks to Assault Sloth for the proof-read, input, and informative discussion. Read his stuff. Evening y'all.