Fellow Prisoner Li, Part 5: Zuko, Ruiner of Speeches
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“We can’t leave without Li,” Katara said, and Aang said, and Hama and the other ex-Fire-Nation-prisoners were largely neutral on, but Sokka wasn’t actually arguing that.
“We’ve been here too long,” was what Sokka was arguing. “We are in the middle of the Fire Nation. After breaking into a prison, with our giant recognizable sky bison and our glowing recognizable Avatar. The whole point of coming here was to not be recognized, which now that I think about it, was a planned doomed to fail the second it started with ‘break into a prison’—”
Not that he’d voted for that plan, either. Honestly, that plan seemed custom-built to out themselves immediately. While in a prison designed to hold benders. Which just went to show that Li was not a Plan Guy. And yes, Sokka was just as worried as the rest of them that the firebender had apparently wandered off with no supplies into a forest and not come out in any of the neighboring towns, but—
“Would you leave me behind?” his little sister said. “Or Aang? Or Hama? Li’s one of us.”
“Yes,” Sokka said. “I mean no. I mean—ugh. He knows where we are. So either he doesn’t want to come back, or someone is stopping him, and the fact he’s held out for days means it would probably be pretty terrible of us to waste his—”
“If you say sacrifice—” Katara said, while Aang was turning a distinct shade of hadn’t-previously-contemplated-torture white.
Which was, of course, when the Fire Nation troops announced themselves. The inn was surrounded. Appa was groaning under the sudden weight of an iron net. Faceless skull masks stood poised to bend in a double-ring all around them, with… a teenage girl as their leader?
Good evil smirk. 10/10. Sokka really felt the unflappable confidence.
“What have you done to him?” Katara shouted, interrupting a very dramatic monologue about the inevitability of their defeat.
“Rude,” the girl said. “And unspecific.”
“With Li. Where is he?”
The girl’s eyes skimmed over their little group again. Three children and one elder out front, other elders huddled inside, watching through the upstairs windows. Her eyes narrowed.
“You misplaced your firebender?”
“Well,” Aang said, clutching his staff in front of himself. “He might have been upset, and… left?”
“Li,” she said, drawing the name out in a very particular way. “Left. Left you. The Avatar.”
“Or,” Katara growled, her glare firmly on the girl, her hand firmly on her waterskin. “He was captured.”
“If he was captured, I would know,” the girl said.
“Because… you are…?” Sokka asked.
10/10 on the I don’t disappoint me, you disappoint me look, too. Which was on her, really, because what had been the point of her whole speech if there was no one here who even knew who she was? And it wasn’t like they should know—
“Princess Azula,” she said. “Daughter of Fire Lord Ozai. Heir to the Dragon Throne.”
And then she snapped her fingers, and started giving orders. Search pattern orders.
“Find him,” she said.
“Um,” said Aang, holding his staff a little less tightly. “Are you… capturing me?”
The Fire Princess had quite a repertoire of looks. Sokka… did not recognize this one.
“What’s even the point if he’s not here to watch?” she said, and turned her back on them.
She still left the nets on Appa, and enough soldiers to burn the inn if they so much as twitched. Given all the elders inside who could barely walk, much less run…
Team Avatar sat tight. Or, as Sokka preferred to think of it: outsourced their Li-tracking to someone with superior manpower.
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