So he'd come along to inquire along the lines of, "Hey, look how awesome I am! You want to take me on as a student and turn me into a Great Earthbender, right?" And mind you, I was the one who phrased the second part as a question. From the sound of things, Aang had treated it more like a statement. At the very least, the kids definitely didn't have the money to pay for lessons, but Aang still wanted to study there. Though I wouldn't be surprised if they hadn't known the lessons cost money in the first place.
Whatever the case, no one at the academy had been in any hurry to mention that little detail. They'd been trying to stall for time and curry favor with the authorities, and in principle, they'd succeeded, but... thanks to the Avatar's incredible luck, he had once again slipped through our fingers and now obviously wouldn't be showing up for the lesson they'd arranged.
Then again, he probably wouldn't have come back for it anyway, because Master Yu had failed to think of anything better than once again showing off his students' training and skill level. It bought him about twenty minutes, but after that Aang had clearly assessed the situation correctly and started edging toward the exit.
In short, a failure. Another complete failure.
"So what's the plan now?" Azula asked once the Academy was behind us, crossing her arms over her chest and, by all appearances, suppressing her own irritation.
"We fly to Ba Sing Se," I answered grimly. "It'd be easier to storm the damn city and kill the Avatar in the process when he comes rushing in to defend it than keep playing this absurd game of tag."
"Tch..." The princess clicked her tongue and sharply tucked a loose strand of hair away from her face, but offered no objection.
"Back to the airship?" Zuko proved somewhat more talkative.
"No." I took a deep breath and shook my head. "We left a little blind girl at a tournament with a bunch of big, vicious men. We should go back and make sure they're all safe and unharmed... the men, I mean. Then we head for the airship."
"At least one of us can boast about having a good time," the princess snorted sarcastically.
And that brought the "debate" to an end. The respectable people present silently agreed that yes, for all the Avatar's stupidity, even he wasn't stupid enough to return to the city, and apart from Ba Sing Se, there really wasn't anywhere else for him to go.
Sure, there were still possibilities involving assorted Fire Nation deserters, random badass gurus appearing from who knew where, or even Lion Turtles, but not only did all of those possibilities look frankly dubious and unreliable—which, when talking about the Avatar, let's be honest, was not an argument at all—there was also absolutely nothing we could do about any of them.
Here in Gaoling, at least, we had informants and local support, even if they'd ultimately proven useless. But trying to find a flying boy on a flying bison "out in the wild," even with an airship, was simply impossible. Ba Sing Se, on the other hand, was somewhere Aang couldn't avoid visiting.
And if, by some miracle, he still wasn't there, then... screw it. The city needed to be captured anyway, and our little group, whose sheer "nastiness" made it comparable to an entire army corps, could certainly prove useful in that endeavor.
I have to admit, when we went to "pick the kid up from the amusement park"—by which I mean Toph, who had won a championship belt nearly as big as she was—I couldn't shake the nagging thought that we were about to discover Aang had somehow managed to sneak into the tournament and had already approached the little blind girl with some friendship-and-training pitch.
I knew perfectly well that this was complete nonsense and that even he wouldn't try recruiting the girl who had literally been showering him with stone shrapnel over Omashu only a few days ago. But the more time passed after our conversation outside the Academy, and the more I thought about just how damn conveniently the Avatar had managed to incapacitate Private Liang Yu, the more my mind started spiraling.
I was genuinely afraid we'd arrive and find that Toph had been kidnapped. Because it was complete absurdity—and yet somehow perfectly in Aang's style: She doesn't understand that I'm the good guy, but we don't have time to convince her, so stuff her in a sack and fly away; we'll explain everything later.
So when the happy kid came out to meet us with an enormous, partly metal championship belt raised triumphantly over her head, I nearly scooped her up into my arms. It took real effort to suppress that ridiculously paternal urge to go, Thank God you're all right, sweetheart! while patting her on the head and rocking her back and forth.
That was nerves. It needed treatment. And no, I suppressed the urge to grab her not because the Blind Bandit might have smashed my family jewels into oblivion for pulling a stunt like that. I was simply a very restrained and steadfast boy. Self-control, discipline, good upbringing—that was all. The possibility of suddenly taking a stone spike between the legs had absolutely nothing to do with it. One hundred percent confirmed!
(End of Chapter)
P@treon: /SadRaven
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