Dao and the Freedom Fighters

𝐂𝐡𝐚𝐩𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝟏 - 𝐈𝐧𝐭𝐨 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐖𝐨𝐨𝐝𝐬

Third Person POV:

Zuko ran as fast as his legs possibly could; doing his best to not trip as he could only see out of one eye. He kept running, his feet slamming against the forest floor, no doubt alerting everyone in the forest of his presence. He didn't care, he just had to get away; away from grandfather, away from that strange man who'd burned him; away from the strange people who'd brought him to these strange woods.

His foot snagged on a tree root sending him tumbling to the needle covered floor. He shoved himself back to his feet, ignoring the pain coursing throughout his whole body at the sudden movement. Zuko kept running, tears dripping down his face from his one good eye. He just wanted to go home .

The next time he fell to the ground, he didn't have the strength to get back up. He stayed hunched over, sobbing on the forest floor. He didn't know where to go. He was lost in this weird forest with no one he knew. His body hurt, his face hurt, he was hungry and tired; he was alone and he was scared. He just wanted to go home.

Home where everything made sense. Where he could play with Azula, where he could feed the turtleducks with Mom, drink tea with Uncle (even if he didn't care for tea all that much), he could train with Dad, or he could practice with his sword against Lu Ten.

But Lu Ten and Uncle were off to Ba Sing Se, and grandfather was mad at Dad now and Azula said that Dad was going to kill him, but Azula always lies, so was Dad even going to kill him or was it something else? He didn't know anymore.

He felt something small press into his leg. He curled tighter to himself, trying to hide away from whatever weird animal was near him in this scary forest. It poked him again and he still refused to lift his head. When the animal let out a soft growl, that's when he finally looked up.

Sat right next to him in the forest was a juvenile dragon. Why? Why was it here? It growled at him again. He uncurled from his little ball and picked up the small creature, petting it. It leaned into his hand, happy with the attention from the warm, firebender boy. When he tried to stop petting it, the dragon lightly nipped at his fingers to get him to continue.

Not far away, Zuko saw a small pile of nuts and berries that would be the perfect treat for the little creature, though it wouldn't be nearly as good as the meat that the chef at the palace always made for him and Dad when they'd go to feed dragons. Plus if the dragon didn't like it, then he'd at least have a little bit of food before he went searching for another way out of this crazy forest.

Carefully, Zuko got to his feet, stumbling a bit over to the pile, leaving the little dragon by a tree while he went to grab the food.

As soon as he was in close range to the pile, suddenly the ground lifted from around him, pulling him up higher and higher until he was strung up high above the ground. He screamed, once again alerting the whole forest full of weird creatures and people that he was there and had no idea where he was going.

He hung up there for a while, all the panic that had begun to fade away when he was with the dragon, returned at a tenfold. His breathing was picking up faster and faster until it got to the point that it hurt to breath. He didn't know what to do. If he tried to burn the net he'd fall and get hurt, probably breaking something, but if he waited around for whoever put this trap here, they might kill him.

Before long, he heard footsteps approaching on the dried ground.

The person below him swore. "Just hang in there, I'll get you down."

Next thing he knew, he was lowered back to the ground, where a boy about thirteen years old with crazy looking hair stood with a rope in his hands, odd looking swords attached to his belt, and a piece of wheat between his teeth. He crouched down to the ground and tried to reach a hand out towards Zuko.

All Zuko saw was a hand reaching towards his face and last time that happened, he ended up with this shoddy bandage on his face. He had to fight back. He pushed what little fire he could from his hand to get away from the boy with the traps.

The tall boy with a stick of wheat in his mouth jumped back at the fire, drawing his swords, giving Zuko just a couple of seconds to turn and start running. He had to get out of there before the boy attacked him. He saw the dragon still sitting by the tree and hoped that the boy would leave the little creature alone, it hadn't hurt anyone.

Zuko did the best he could to run, but that all failed. He hadn't been watching where he was going and tripped over a tree root, sending him once again colliding with the hard ground.

The boy's footsteps got closer, so Zuko did the only thing he could think to do, which was curl up as small as possible and hope that the strange boy would let him live.