A couple nights later, they stopped early and stayed up late to watch a meteor shower.

"Wow. This is amazing to watch," Katara breathed.

"Kind of makes you realize how insignificant we are," Sokka added.

Kouji, slightly apart from the Avatar and his friends as usual, said nothing.  But he watched too, with a tiny smile on his face.  Yui, Ichiro… are you watching this too? he wondered.

"Eh. You've seen nothing once, you've seen it a thousand times," Toph said.

On cue, a particularly large and bright meteor shot over their head.

"Oh, man. You've never not seen anything like this," Sokka shot back.

The meteor continued over their heads, close enough for them to feel the heat, and slammed into the ground some distance away.  Kouji yelped when the shockwave hit, leaping to his feet and scrambling slightly up the ridge they were on to see where it had landed. 

In the distance, red flickered against the night sky — a fire, he quickly realised.  Katara was the one who noticed the major problem with this. "The fire is gonna destroy that town!" she shouted.

"Not if we can stop it!" Aang replied, and they all scrambled up onto Appa to head for the impact and clean it up.

They landed way too close to the fire for Kouji's comfort, but he dismounted with the others.

Katara stayed on Appa, heading for a nearby creek to fetch water. Aang and Toph roped Kouji into helping build a trench to contain it.

"What should I do?" Sokka asked.

"Keep an eye on Momo!" Aang shouted back, then followed Toph towards the blaze.

Ouch, Kouji thought, just behind the Avatar as Sokka yelled about being a lemur-sitter.  The two earthbenders and Avatar got into a line and in unison formed, and then widened, a trench between them and the meteor.

Katara shot over them seconds later, spraying the fire and cutting it down significantly.  After that, Toph started smothering the fire with a large rock slab; Kouji worked in the opposite direction from her, bending large amounts of dirt to do the same thing.  Then Katara tossed the water to Aang, who shouted for Sokka to get out of the way before blowing it in a massive dome all over the fire, completing the extinguishing.

Aang had slightly overdone it — the water on the ground had frozen.  Kouji put a foot on it, yelped, and skipped back a few paces as ash rained from the sky.  Aang, grinning, congratulated the others. They collected a sulking Sokka from the pile of ash and headed back to their camp for the night.

The next day, they stopped for lunch in the town they'd saved.  Kouji, completely in Avoid Katara Mode, chose to eat at the table behind Toph so that the blind girl could block him from the waterbender's sight.

"These people have no idea how close they were to getting toasted last night," Aang announced when he joined the girls with his food.

"Yeah," Toph agreed. "The worst thing about being in disguise is that we don't get the hero-worshipping anymore. I miss the love."

Kouji scowled.  I thought that things like what we did last night were done because they needed doing, not for any rewards.  What the hell.

Sokka, too, seemed annoyed by Toph's wistfulness. "Oh, boo hoo. Poor heroes."

"What's your problem?" Katara asked, bewildered. "You haven't even touched your smoked sea slug."

"It's just… all you guys can do this awesome bending stuff, like putting out forest fires and flying around and making other stuff fly around… I can't fly around, okay? I can't do anything."

He actually had a point, Kouji had to admit.  Even last winter, until Iroh had explained to them why they were wrong, most of the firebenders aboard Prince Zuko's vessel hadn't really considered the Water Tribe boy much of a threat, simply because he wasn't a bender.

"That's not true!" Katara protested. "No one can read a map like you."

"I can't read at all," Toph agreed.

"Yeah!" Aang added. "And who keeps us laughing with sarcastic comments all the time. I mean, look at Katara's hair, right? What's up with that?"

"What?" she yelped, jerking it out of his hands. "What's wrong with my hair?"

"Nothing," Aang said, hastily. "I was just trying to—"

Should've used my hair, Avatar, Kouji thought.  You never comment on a girl's appearance.

"Look," Sokka was saying, "I appreciate the effort, but the fact is, each of you is so amazing and so special, and I'm… not. I'm just the guy in the group who's regular."

Katara got up and went to sit with her brother. "I'm sorry you're feeling so down," she said, "but I hope you know none of us see you that way." When Sokka didn't respond, she immediately brightened her tone and squeezed his shoulder. "I know something that's gonna make you feel better."

"You do?" he asked, in a very small voice.

"Yes. Come on." She pulled her brother up and dragged him off.

Aang looked at the others, and sighed. "I think I know where this is going. Come on."

"…where is it going?" Kouji asked, confused, as he rose to follow.

He got his answer from Sokka, a few minutes later. "Shopping!"

…oh, boy.  It was a weapons shop.  Kouji sighed and followed the others in.

Sokka ran around excitedly, looking at everything and trying several styles of weaponry on for size, while Aang, even more entertainingly, piled on every piece of the most fearsome, slightly mismatched, armour he could find. "What do you think?" he asked the others, grinning from under the helmet. "Pretty slick, huh?"

Kouji stared, and then slowly backed away — and down an aisle with short swords.  His attention was promptly riveted as he remembered his lessons of the previous winter.  Immediately he began checking his small horde of coins, wondering if he had enough for a wakizashi.

Sokka, meanwhile, had finally found what he wanted— a longer straight sword.

"You have a good eye," the shopkeeper told him. "That's an original, from Piandao, the greatest swordmaster and swordmaker in Fire Nation history. He lives in the big castle up the road from here."

Kouji let out a low whistle.  Even he had heard of Piandao.

"That's it!" Aang suddenly cried, as the shopkeeper wandered away. "That's what you needed all along, Sokka!"

"A sword?" he asked.

"Not the sword, a master," the Avatar replied gleefully. "We've all had masters to help us get better. You should see if you can study with Piandao."

"That's a great idea!" Katara chimed in. "I could never have gotten to where I am without Master Pakku. Everyone needs a teacher."

"I learned from badgermoles," Toph said. "They don't talk, but they're still good teachers."

Kouji smiled slightly, thinking of Ichiro.  How much better would you be if you'd had a master, Ichi-ni? he thought, selecting the weapon he wanted, moving to pay for it, and praying Katara didn't spy him doing it.

Fortunately, she was fully occupied by her brother, who was commenting on how much he would like to be a master swordfighter.

"All right," the older boy finished. "I'll talk to him."

So much for the Schedule, Kouji thought as he strapped his new sword to his waist.

If Katara noticed, she didn't comment. She generally preferred to Ignore him whenever possible, probably not liking the person she became when she got really pissed off, which was only too likely if she engaged in conversation with Kouji. The girls, Aang, and the colonist left Sokka at the path to the castle, heading back to their camp to wait while he met with Piandao.

As soon as they hit camp, Kouji moved slightly out of sight, trying to remember what Li Yan had taught him.  His first few passes were… awkward, to say the least.  However, as he kept going, the movements became easier, and the memories flooded back.  He corrected his footing, and his strokes become stronger and surer.

After awhile, Kouji was panting and sweating from the exertion and wandered back to the camp to get water.  The others were lying on their backs, staring up at the sky.

"What should we do today?" Aang was asking.

"I'm tapped out," Toph said. "I already picked my toes twice."

"Twice?"

"Yeah. First time's for cleaning, but the second time's just for the sweet picking sensation."

"Sokka's been in charge of the schedule," Katara cut in. "I'm not sure what we should be doing."

"Plus, it's so hot today," Toph complained, picking her nose.

Kouji sighed and guzzled down some water, then overturned the container over his head.  It did him no good, even the water was warm.  He sighed, picked up the bucket, and headed for the water source to refill it while the other three attempted to fill the void of Funny caused by Sokka's absence.

And failed.

Miserably.

Even Appa expressed his displeasure at Katara's attempts.

Wincing, Kouji fled back to the area he'd claimed for practise, and started working through his sand katas.  These were easier for him than working with Toph — here, his background of being taught by a firebender helped him.  Once he'd run through those a few times, it was back to the wakizashi, and then attempting to adapt the techniques he'd seen the Avatar using to earthbending.

The others, meanwhile, tried to fill the other voids Sokka's temporary absence had left — planning, scheduling, route-plotting, and so on, Katara continuing to attempt to amuse the others and failing even more miserably each time.

Toph came to fetch him at sunset for dinner. "If it's cooler tomorrow, we'll get some work done," she informed him, punching his shoulder lightly.

"I think I got a lot of work done today," he told her, tired but grinning.  "Can I jump in the stream before dinner, or will you force-feed me if I try?"

"If you're not back and eating in five minutes, I will."

"I'll be on time," he promised, and was — though he was absolutely soaked when he arrived.  He took Toph's threats seriously.  Aang absentmindedly dried him off, then passed him some food and went back to his own dinner.  "Thanks," Kouji said, devouring his portion of the meal, then wandering over to collapse by Appa, happily exhausted.  None of the others bothered him, and Sokka didn't return — he was apparently staying the night at Piandao's, too.

The boy was asleep in moments.

Toph apparently decided it was again too hot the next day, because he didn't wake until midmorning, when she shouted that Sokka was back.  Kouji jerked awake, eyes wide.  "Beware the jubjub bird!" he yelped.

Toph punched him. "Wake all the way up, Sunshine. Sokka's back!"

Sure enough, the older boy crested the hill their camp was on. "Hey guys. Whatcha doing?"

The others all ran over and threw their arms around him.

"We missed you so much!" Katara informed him.

"Say something funny!" Aang demanded, grinning like an idiot.

"Funny how?" Sokka asked, blankly. The others all giggled.

…I will never understand them, Kouji decided, rubbing sleep from his eyes.  Agh, arms hurt.

Toph, the only one who hadn't laughed, turned her back on Sokka and insisted she didn't care. But she was blushing a little.

"Thanks," he said, wryly. "That warms my heart. Anyway, I need some help." He then explained, quickly, that he wanted them to move the meteorite from two nights before to Piandao's for him. 

Kouji tipped his head to one side, curious.  "This'll be interesting," he commented.

The teenager led them to the crater. By now, the rock was cooled enough for them to "push" it manually and not make obvious how they were really moving it. It took them about a half hour to push it all the way to the castle's doors.

Exhausted, Kouji peered up at the gateway.  Something about the insignia on it — the flame of the Fire Nation, held inside a stylised lotus blossom — was nagging at his memory.

Sokka ran up to it and banged excessively with both knockers. After a few seconds, a middle-aged man — probably Piandao himself — opened the door. "Who's this?" he asked, studying the other children.

"Oh, these are my friends," Sokka explained. "Just other good Fire Nation folks."

Piandao eyed them another few seconds, then bowed slightly. Relieved, Sokka continued, "Do you think we can make a sword out of a meteorite?"

The man examined the rock, considering. "We'll make a sword unlike any other in the world," he said, then pulled Sokka away, leaving the others to fend for themselves.

Kouji groaned and put his face in his hands.  "Whyyyyy?" he moaned softly.

"C'mon, Sunshine, let's explore," Toph said, grabbing his wrist and yanking him into the house. "Twinkletoes is in googly mode again. I can't stand being around him."

The boy yelped and was dragged after her.  "Googly?" he asked, confused.

"Over Sweetness. He gets like this sometimes, when he remembers his stupid crush. Pick a hallway."

"…oh."  Kouji looked around, then picked a direction.  "This way."  He started walking down his chosen hall.

Toph followed, and picked a random door and fiddled with it. "Crap. Locked."

"Too bad my sister isn't here," Kouji commented, peering at the lock.

"Why, she good at busting locks?" She considered it. "It's steel, I could probably break it..."

"Picking them, actually.  She taught herself to do it when Ichi-ni and I were off teaching ourselves to bend.  And you probably shouldn't.  That's like saying 'here there be spies'," Kouji told her.

"You're right. Damn." Toph sighed. "Oh, well. Next door!"

Kouji laughed a little and moved on.  He was starting to notice a theme in the décor — those stylised lotuses were everywhere, and it was making him a bit uneasy.  Why were they so familiar?

It took three tries to find an unlocked door. "All right!" Toph crowed, and kicked it open.

"Gently," Kouji told her, walking in and looking around. Sure enough…  "This guy really likes his lotuses," he commented.

"Huh?"

"He's got stylised lotuses painted all over the place," Kouji explained.  "There was even a big one on the gate."

"That's nice. Ooh, this is soft..."

"Whatcha got there?" he asked, looking over at her.

"Pillowcase." She rubbed her cheek along it.

He reached over to feel it too.  "Wow, you're right.  Wonder what it's made of?"

"Not silk. And it doesn't feel like linen, either." She slapped his hand away. "Get your own, there's like a million on that shelf."

Kouji stuck his tongue out at her — never mind that she couldn't see — and instead looked for scrolls.  What would a man like Master Piandao read? he wondered.  Unfortunately, they were in some kind of storage closet, not his library. There weren't any scrolls in the room.

"Damn," he muttered, and explored a bit more.  "I  guess he's some kind of noble…"

"Okay, bored now." Toph grabbed his wrist and dragged him out again. She'd surreptitiously slipped the pillowcase in her pocket.  Kouji yelped and was made to follow.  They passed most of the next few days in this manner, exploring the castle while Kouji grew more and more uneasy.  Every now and again Kouji would slip free of Toph so he could at the very least work on his swordplay — at least until he found Master Piandao's library and buried himself in there.

Eventually, Piandao's butler collected him, and the visitors all gathered in the entryway of the house, so the swordmaster could say goodbye to Sokka.

"Sokka," he began. "When you first arrived, you were so unsure. You even seemed down on yourself. But I saw something in you right away. I saw a heart as strong as a lion's, and twice as big. And, as we trained, it wasn't your skills that impressed me. No, it certainly wasn't your skills. You showed something beyond that." He took Sokka's meteorite-sword from his butler and drew it, exposing the sleek, black blade. "Creativity. Versatility. Intelligence. These are the traits that define a great swordsman." He sheathed the sword again and offered it to Sokka. "And these are the traits that define you." The boy bowed his head and accepted it. Piandao went on, "You told me you didn't know if you were worthy, but I believe that you are more worthy than any man that I have ever trained."

…wow, thought Kouji, looking up at Piandao.

And then Sokka and his conscience interrupted the picture-perfect moment.

"I'm sorry, Master," he said. "You're wrong."

Kouji's eyes snapped down to the Water Tribesman.

"I am not worthy," he went on, still looking down at his sword. "I'm not who you think I am. I'm not from the Fire Nation. I'm from the Southern Water Tribe."

What is he doing!? Kouji thought, his grey eyes wide.

Judging by their faces, the others were experiencing similar thoughts.

"I lied," Sokka said flatly, "so that I could learn swordsmanship from you. I'm sorry." He offered the sword back to Piandao.

The man's face hardened, and he turned away. "I'm sorry, too."

Before anyone could react, he spun around, his own sword whipping out and nearly taking Sokka's head from his shoulders. The teenager cried out and fell back. Kouji yelped and rose with the others, reaching for the bag of sand on his hip — but Sokka had blocked the next blow with his still-sheathed sword. "No," he said. "This is my fight. Alone."

Piandao's eyes narrowed, and he pulled back a bit. "Not in here, then," he said, curtly. "We'll do this out back."

Nervously, Kouji followed the group outside.  Despite his agitated state, he clearly noticed the lotus tiled on the practise grounds outside.

Sokka and Piandao faced off, the older man with his sword pointed down and outstretched, Sokka with his higher up and across his torso. For a few seconds, they just stared at each other. Then they moved.  As the fight progressed, Kouji noticed something.  "Is he… teaching as he fights?" he asked, having caught Piandao's compliment to Sokka about using his superior agility.

"'Course he is. Any master worth his salt does that," Toph said, derisively.

"Pakku did that when Katara jumped him," Aang commented. "Only less advice and more sniping."

And he didn't seem surprised when Sokka told him the truth…  Rather than voice this, Kouji asked, "Who's Pakku?"

"The waterbending master we learned from at the North Pole," the Avatar answered absently, focusing more on watching the fight.

Kouji thought back.  "…oh.  Waterspout-on-land guy."  That was the only master he could think of at the moment.  The fight drew his attention again as Sokka came shooting out of a small bamboo forest.

The fight didn't latch much longer after that. Sokka flicked sand into Piandao's eyes, but stepped on a twig as he was trying to sneak away. The master quickly disarmed him and knocked him flat on his back.

"Ouch," Kouji commented.

Piandao walked straight up to Sokka and pointed his sword at his face.

The others all leapt off the balcony, but Piandao pulled his sword away. "Excellent work, Sokka," he said.

The stunned expression on Sokka's face was memorable.  Kouji smiled slightly, and now went over the balcony to land behind the others.

Piandao signalled over his head, and the butler threw the sheath into the air. The swordmaster spun and caught it with the blade. "I think I'm a little old to be fighting the Avatar," he said wryly.

Okay, that part was surprising.  Kouji stared at the older man.

"How did you know?" Aang asked, just as surprised.

"Oh, I've been around a while," Piandao said, a little smugly. His butler brought him a towel, and he wiped his face. "I picked things up. 'Course, I knew from the beginning that Sokka was Water Tribe. You might want to think of a better Fire Nation cover name. Try Lee. There's a million Lees."

Kouji let out a muffled snort and covered his mouth with his hands.

"But… why did you agree to train someone from the Water Tribe?" Katara asked.

"The way of the sword doesn't belong to any one nation," he answered. "Knowledge of the arts belongs to us all." He retrieved Sokka's sword from where it was stuck in the ground and handed it back to him. "Sokka, you must continue your training on your own. If you stay on this path, I know that, one day, you will become an even greater master than I am."

The two swordsmen bowed to one another, and the children started to head out.

"I like him," Kouji said quietly from the back of the group.  He's like Uncle…

"Wait!" Piandao's butler called, before any of the others could respond, chasing after them. "The master wanted you to have this," he told Sokka, when he'd caught up. He handed him a small bag. "As something to remember him by."

The teenager accepted the bag, bowed, and, as soon as the butler had left, turned to his friends and opened it. There was only one thing inside.

"It's a Pai Sho tile," he said, bewildered.

"The white lotus," Aang said, also confused. "Huh."

"What?!"  Kouji whirled and snatched the tile out of Sokka's hand.  Grey eyes wide, he stared at it, his hand shaking.

"What does it mean?" Katara asked.

"I have no idea," Sokka said.

"Sunshine?" Toph asked, quietly.

Kouji didn't answer.  He turned as the gate closed, and stared at the lotus on it.  He was completely unaware that tears had started to run down his face.

Toph started to say something else, but Sokka, clearly wanting to change the mood, cut her off.

"Oh! That reminds me!" he said. "Toph, I thought you might like this, since you've probably never had a chance to bend space earth before." He took a chunk of meteorite out of his pocket and handed it to her.

"Sweet!" she said, instantly distracted from the younger earthbender's distress, and started playing with her new toy. "Check this out!" she made it into all kinds of fun shapes, including a star and a weird blob.

Kouji didn't watch, instead wondering if he ought to run back and see if Piandao knew anything about what had happened Iroh.  "Uncle…," he whispered.

The others had started arguing about whether the rock from the meteorite counted as 'earth,' strictly speaking, and Aang touched his shoulder.

"Come on. We should go, before Piandao changes his mind about turning us in. Or the butler does," the Avatar said softly. "If you want, we can talk later?"

Kouji shook his head slowly.  "They won't turn us in," he said softly, closing his fist around the tile.  "They've eaten the fruit and tasted its mysteries."

"Well, whatever that means, we should still move on." Aang tugged him. "We can talk later, whenever you're ready."

"…yeah," Kouji said, wiping his eyes.  He cast a last glance back at Piandao's castle, then tucked the tile in his pocket and followed the Avatar.

*           *           *

A couple days later, they took another miniature break in the trip. Sokka didn't even object to their stopping to rest and play a bit in the sheltered rocky pool on a seemingly-uninhabited island.  Kouji eyed the water and elected to stay out of it — he'd been taught to swim over the winter, but he didn't like to do it.  Instead, he remained on shore to practise his sandbending and his swordplay.  Aang, in particular, was relishing the opportunity to leave his tattoos uncovered, even being careless enough to ride a natural waterslide.

Kouji stopped and stared at him.  "…should he be doing that?" he asked nobody in particular.

"He's fine," Toph said, lazily. "And we're only here overnight. Even if he gets spotted, it'll take at least that long for a message to even get to someone who can do anything about it. And if there's guards on this rock, there aren't more than two or three."

"…I thought we were supposed to be keeping his survival on the down-low?" Kouji was watching the sky now.

"The guard tower's not close enough to see the exit of the slide. I checked earlier. I'm not stupid."

"What if they leave the tower?" Kouji asked.

Toph considered this for a minute. "…Like I said. He's probably fine. I'll yell at him when he gets back."

Kouji sighed and kept watching the sky.  He had a sense of foreboding that he couldn't shake.

He thought he saw a shadow flicker across the sun, but it was there and gone too quick to identify.

Concerned, the boy brooded for the rest of the day.

The night, however, was quiet, Toph's prediction that any message would take at least a day to get anywhere important seeming true. They packed up and left without incident the next morning.

Current Location: my bed
Current Mood: weird
Tags: au, avatar, fanfic, sf gaangline, small flame

(Leave a comment)