Emerald Dragon chapter 59

Chapter 59:

"I like flying on a bison as much as the next man but it's nice sometimes to have my feet on the ground," Sokka said as the group walked through a marketplace in a small village that they stopped in. The village was hardly the best place in the world but it looked peaceful and calm enough.

"You said it," Toph let out a happy sigh. "The ground is my home turf, where I'm strongest, I'm like a sitting turtle duck up in the sky."

"I'm alright either way," Harry shrugged while Aang nodded in agreement.

"Of course, you two would be," Katara rolled her eyes. "You both are in tune with multiple elements after all."

"True," Aang nodded in agreement. "I'm basically an airbending master, I'm pretty good with water and sooner or later I'll get Earth down."

"Then we move onto fire," Harry told him. "And this time, you will listen to what your firebending teacher tells you," Harry said firmly to Aang who nodded sheepishly.

"I've learnt my lesson," Aang said, rubbing his head.

"Good," Harry nodded in a satisfied manner.

"But still, I am looking forward to it," Aang said with a smile. "Master the elements, beat the fire lord and then I'll have the rest of my life to relax and enjoy myself," He said hopefully.

"I give you about one week and a day after the war ends before you end up having to fix up another mess, and that's just if you're very lucky," Harry replied.

"Stop, thief!" A voice called suddenly, the group turned back and saw a weedy-looking man running whilst holding a small box in his hand. Meanwhile, a pudgy man with a thin moustache was chasing after him. "Stop him! Thief!" He cried desperately while chasing after him.

"I can stop him," Toph offered to the group.

"That's alright, I got it," Katara grinned before summoning water out of her pouch and sending it arching through the air until it fell down and punched the man in the face, knocking him down onto his back with the box dropping next to him. Allowing the pudgy man to catch up to him, the mild-looking man suddenly gained a vicious grin and leapt into the air before landing elbow first onto the man's groin with a vicious elbow drop, causing the thief to let out a pained gasp before rolling onto his side with pain.

"Goodness," Sokka blinked hard.

"Many thanks," the man said as he got up off of the thief and casually grabbed the man by the shirt so he wouldn't run off. "This pest has been stealing from my store for weeks, I've never been able to catch the little bastard before now."

"My parents were happily married," The thief protested weakly from the floor.

"I've met your mother, trust me when I say they were not," The man told him before turning back to the others. "Please, I'd like to invite you all to my shop so I can offer you a reward."

"Oh, that's not-" Aang began but was quickly interrupted by Sokka.

"Edible rewards?" He asked hopefully.

"No...well...I suppose I've got some tea if you want," The man offered.

"I'm in," Harry said instantly.

The shop in question was a lot like a pawn shop in that it had tons of seemingly random stuff. It wasn't the biggest place in the world so everything ended up looking like a cluttered mess that Harry couldn't make heads or tails of. But evidently the shopkeeper didn't seem to have any problems with how things were organised as he seemingly knew the shop like the back of his hand.

"Here we have some weapons," He pointed to a small collection of weapons that were sticking out of baskets and were placed next to a small collection of shoes, paintings and headbands for some reason. "We've got your swords, your poles, your spears, your bludgeoning weapons and so on."

"Neat," Sokka said approvingly before examining the hairbands.

"Of course, we also have our armour over there," The man pointed to several mannequins, each with various different armour from all four nations from various time periods.

"Wow," Harry whistled. "That's really old Fire Nation armour there,"

"Vintage," The man said proudly. "Took me a while to get it, believe me, a couple of scratches on it but for the most part it's in perfect condition. Anyway, I won't bore you all anymore. Please, feel free to look around, each of you can have one item...for free!" He said with forced enthusiasm at the end of his sentence.

"Cool," Sokka grinned before staring at the headbands once more. Katara immediately went over to look at a pair of necklaces while Aang went over to look at some scrolls.

"You want to go shopping with me?" Harry offered Toph.

"Sure, choose something nice for me," She said before following his lead as they walked around the shop. About half an hour later, nearly everyone had decided what they wanted. Sokka had chosen a blue hairband with a wolf symbol while Katara had brought herself a second water pouch so she could store twice the amount of water. Meanwhile, Toph had picked up two fighting sticks and a promise from Harry to teach her how to use them. Harry himself had picked up an old scroll on earthbending techniques. Meanwhile, Aang was still looking over a scroll of some sort.

"Aang, what's the hold-up?" Harry asked, walking up to him and leaning over his shoulder before freezing. "Is that what I think it is?"

"Yep," Aang said weakly. The pair of them both stared at the scroll with shocked expressions until Sokka walked up to them and frowned at the scroll.

"Hey, you two find something good? Hmm, that's disappointing. It's not even anything adult-rated," He frowned as he stared at the scroll. "Not even a nip-slip."

The next the sound of a slap echoed throughout the entire shop.

(.)

Azula stood patiently on the deck of the ship alongside her brother, Zuko, doing her best to focus on her uncle who was standing in front of them. She welcomed the practice session as it got her out of thinking about Harry's parents. Mai and Ty Lee were both currently spying on them, Azula knew that if either of Harry's parent let slip even a small bit of useful information then her girls would find out.

Azula knew that the knowledge that Harry's parents were hiding was important, the pair had information that at the very least could help her figure out why Harry had left the Fire Nation to join with their enemies and what would have pushed him to try and bring down the nation that his family and everyone he knew had been part of since its birth.

"Very good, Prince Zuko," Iroh complimented Zuko, bringing Azula out of her thoughts.

Iroh had decided it was time for them both to learn how to redirect lightning, a technique that was obviously going to be highly beneficial to both of them. A technique that she knew Harry could perform, having seen him do it before. At one point she thought that was just another one of the miracles that made Harry the fierce warrior that he was, but no, her uncle had assured her and Zuko that it was very possible to learn the technique.

"Waterbenders deal with the flow of energy. A waterbender lets their defence become their offence, turning their opponents' energy against them, I studied them for the longest time and learned a way to do this with lightning, a technique that I had taught to Harry." Uncle Iroh had told them at the start of the lesson. "If you let the energy in your own body flow, the lightning will follow it. You must create a pathway from your fingertips, up your arm to your shoulder, then down into your stomach. The stomach is the source of energy in your body. It is called the 'sea of chi', only in my case it is more like a vast ocean." He had laughed, and Azula could admit that the corner of her lips had curved up slightly at that. "From the stomach, you direct it up again, and out the other arm. The stomach detour is critical. You must not let the lightning pass through your heart, or the damage could be deadly. You may wish to try a physical motion, to get a feel for the pathways' flow."

And like that he had them both practise the motion for several minutes before making sure that they both took turns so that he could assess them individually, Azula had already performed hers and so Iroh was now left looking at Zuko who was also now performing his perfectly.

"Now, Azula, you try again," Uncle Iroh instructed her once Zuko was done.

"Uncle Iroh," Azula spoke up. "Is it perhaps time for us to try real lightning?"

"Real lightning?" Uncle Iroh gaped at her. "Are you crazy?"

"More or less but I thought that this was the point of this lesson?" Azula frowned. "To learn to redirect lightning, how are we to do that without practice?"

"She makes a good point," Zuko grunted out his agreement, Azula nodded in a pleased manner, her brother really was starting to grow on her. He had also been practising non-stop since he had learnt how to finally do lightning and much like her, he enjoyed it. "If we don't use real lightning then how are we going to know if we're doing it right?"

"I hope that neither of you ever has to actually use this technique," Iroh said with a small shake of his head. "This technique is your hidden board tile, the thing that you'll keep hidden until the day that you really do need it. It's a technique with a very small margin for error, one single mistake and you're both going to be fried with lightning. And I'd rather not risk that, so there will be no actual lightning being thrown. Now, if you can practise your stance, please." He gestured for her to continue.

"Yes, Uncle Iroh," Azula nodded before getting into her stance and exchanging a quick look with Zuko who nodded to her from behind his Uncle's back in silent agreement. The pair of them would be shooting lightning at each other the second that they thought their Uncle was asleep, that man could sleep through anything.

(.)

"Was the slap really necessary?" Sokka frowned as he rubbed the part of his face that held Harry's handprint.

"Yes," Harry answered bluntly while staring at the scroll in his hands. The group were all back on Appa's saddle as the sky bison flew through the air. Toph sat with her new sticks in her hands, trying to twirl them with her fingers like Harry did with his. Meanwhile, Aang was sat on Appa's head, piloting as usual, the rest of the group sat just behind him in the saddle.

"What's so important about the scroll?" Katara asked. "And why did you slap Sokka?" She asked with no hint of judgement.

"He deserved it," Harry answered simply.

"Fair enough," Katara nodded.

"Hey!" Sokka protested while Toph laughed.

"As for the scroll, it's an old Fire Nation scroll," Harry continued. "Apparently the Fire Nation ended up raiding some important library of some sort and ended up losing this scroll which ended up in the shopkeeper's hands somehow."

"Convenient," Toph snorted.

"I've seen weirder things happen," Aang commented over his shoulder. "You know, one time the monks tried to ban sweet treats for a month because of a cat-fox fart,"

"Weirdly, that makes complete sense to me," Toph said with a thoughtful frown.

"Same," Sokka nodded.

"Yep," Harry agreed.

"So, what does it say?" Katara asked, bringing them back on track. "It must be important,"

"This details the 'darkest day' of the Fire Nation," Harry said in a serious voice. "It's a little damaged but I've got the gist of it down. Something awful happened the last time there was a solar eclipse. The moon blocks out the sun, the source for all firebenders, or at least most of them," He added whilst gesturing to himself. "I've been trying to find a weakness against the Fire Nation for years but I've come up with squat on that front. I reckon Ozai or one of the previous Fire Lord cunts had removed all knowledge, either that or nobody had ever been bothered enough to write about it."

"Nobody ever discussed the solar eclipses with you when you lived there?" Katara frowned.

"It was mostly just 'We're the best around, nothing's ever going to keep us down'," Harry told her whilst allowing himself an internal sigh as he knew that not a single one of them would understand the reference he had just used. "I never even considered a solar eclipse, most of my ideas were quite frankly battlefield-related."

"So we got a plan then," Sokka said in a pleased voice. "Head to the nearest and biggest army we can find and tell them all about what's going on,"

"Our best bet would be Ba Sing Se," Harry said thoughtfully. "It's the closest to us and it's pretty much the biggest Earth Kingdom around. They have a bad history with the Fire Nation,"

"Yeah, if we can convince the Earth King to help us then we're golden!" Sokka grinned. "Hey, maybe he can send a message to other places as well. All of us together can finally end this war!"

"Here's hoping," Harry nodded.

"How are we going to get to Ba Sing Se?" Katara asked.

"Nobody has a map?" Toph groaned.

"Don't worry about it," Harry told them. "We're going in the right general direction,"

"You've been to Ba Sing Se before?" Toph asked in a surprised voice.

"The Fire Nation brought me one time, wanted me to see if I could break through the wall." Harry shrugged, "After a lot of arguing I managed to convince them that my fiendfyre was more or less completely useless against something that big."

"Is it?" Sokka asked genuinely.

"No," Harry shook his head. "But the problem comes with maintaining and controlling the damn fire long enough for it to do enough damage without getting shot by their defence and then controlling said fire after it consumes what appears to be a hundred-foot tall wall. I didn't really want to test it out, the Fire Nation was already a big enough problem, and having them conquer Ba Sing Se would make them near-invincible in the eyes of their enemies."

"What do you guys know about the Earth King?" Katara questioned. "How likely do you think it is for him to help us?"

"Don't look at me, my parents have never mentioned him once in front of me," Toph shrugged.

"I know diddly squat about him," Sokka said helpfully before giving Harry a questioning look.

"Ba Sing Se doesn't really have a lot of information leaks," Harry said with a deep sigh. "The Fire Nation have tried for ages but the only real information anyone has is that it's basically impenetrable. If we get them on our side then we'll be able to learn more."

"Here's hoping," Aang nodded.

(.)

A.N: Yeah, I decided to skip a few episodes and just have the group go straight to 'Ba Sing Se' which is irritating to write when my auto-correct keeps changing it to Ba Sing See. I'm going to more or less be skipping everything until the drill attack. Also yeah, I did forget about the solar eclipse for the longest time or I would have probably written that in at the start.

Anyway, thanks for reading, feel free to leave a review.