Defiance ❯ Atla

ᴠɪ. ᴛʜᴇ ᴡɪɴᴛᴇʀ sᴏʟsᴛɪᴄᴇ ᴘᴛ 1

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Katara's started a revulsion. It began with the Earth bending boy in a small village. Haru. Earth bending is illegal for his people; the Fire Nation takes all their coal. Miko has always been told the Earth kingdom shares their resources, but these people act as though it is being taken by force. Perhaps, in the Fire Nation classifies as "sharing." Miko isn't sure. She tries to stay out of politics. At any rate Katara convinces Haru to Earth Bend anyway -- to save an old man from the collapsing mines. The old man turns him in. Katara comes up with a convoluted plan to rescue him, which involves her posing as an Earth Bender herself and getting arrested. 

That's how they all end up on the dock of a prison ship, crouching between dozens of crates. Katara refuses to leave until every prisoner is set free. "We don't have much time. What are we going to do?" Sokka asks.

"I wish I knew how to make a hurricane," Aang says. Miko almost comments that he had made one the night he escaped Zuko's ship, but at the last second she thinks better of it. It's her people who have caused all this. She has no right to say anything. Instead, she opts to stroke Momo as he hops from the Avatar's shoulders to her own. "The warden would run away, and we would steal his keys." The Water Tribe siblings give him identical unimpressed looks. 

"Wouldn't he just take his keys with him?" Sokka says.

"I'm just tossing ideas around." 

Katara looks down at her lap, her fingers fiddling with the ugly brown fabric she and the other prisoners were forced to wear. "I tried talking the earth benders into fighting back, but it didn't work." She scowls, her eyes hardening into silver glaciers. "If there was just a way to help them help themselves…" 

Sokka thinks hard on this. "For that they need some kind of earth or some rock, something they can bend."

"But this entire place is made of metal." Katara places her hand over the surface of the boat floor. Miko frowns as she realizes the other girl is right. There's no earth for miles, the only non-metal objects around are the wooden crates hiding them from the guards -- which the earth benders can't bend either. It's hopeless. There's nothing they can do. 

"No it's not." Miko jumps. For a second, she thinks the Avatar has read her mind, but when she looks up he's pointing skyward. "Look at the smoke." Sure enough, there is smoke billowing from the ventilation shafts above. There's lots of it, thick, black -- where there is smoke there is always fire, and when there's fire… Something is probably burning. "I bet they're burning coal. In other words…" He pauses briefly. "Earth."

They set to work. It takes hours just to climb to the top, for Aang to slip down through the vent. He's doing most of the work, admittedly, but there isn't much for the others to do just then. So they wait. "It's almost dawn. We're running out of time." Katara is crouched in front of the vent, Sokka is standing, leaning over it. Miko stays out of the way. "Are you sure this is going to work?" 

"It should." Sokka crouches down too. "These vents reminded me of our little trick back at the village." Yes, the trick they'd used to make the Fire Benders think Katara was an earth bender. They'd placed a rock over a vent, had Aang air bend it so it hovered, making it look as though the Water Tribe girl was lifting the rock. "We're gonna do the same thing, but on a much bigger scale." That could work… "There's a huge deposit of coal at the base of this island, and the whole system is ventilated." Miko is curious as to how he knows this, but she doesn't want to throw off their planning by asking him. Perhaps, he's just good with ships, being from the Water Tribe and all? "Aang closed off all the vents except for one. When he does his airbending, the coal only has one place to go -- right back here."