Avatar: The Last Airbender: Reemergence

9

Mogdashu was just a small city in its own little pocket of the Earth Kingdom. If you could even call it a city that is; it wasn't much bigger than a large town. For the most part, it was a peaceful place to live.

However, as Aang, Katara, Sokka, and Suki walked through the streets, they got an entirely different impression. Things seemed to be in chaos. There were groups of people stampeding through the streets in order to see what all the commotion was about and the group had to push their way through the crowds to get a look for themselves. Everyone seemed too preoccupied to even notice that the Avatar was right beside them.

The fire that had started in the city had died down by the time Aang and his friend's had gotten there but now there seemed to be another problem entirely. When the group of friends got to the source of it all, they saw exactly what was happening. Two Earth Kingdom soldiers that were assigned to guard the city held another man to the ground with a much older looking man, who had a bald head and a short grey beard, standing above him. The rubble of whatever building it was that had been burned to the ground could be seen behind them.

"I swear I didn't do it!" the pinned man yelled out, "Let me go!"

"I have five other people telling me that they saw you, and only you, set fire to the blacksmith's shop," the older man told him.

"Well then they must be lying or something," the other man told him, "What reason would I have to do this."

Katara rose an eyebrow at this whole exchanged. The pinned man on the ground seemed to be genuinely confused.

"Everyone in this city knows that you have a grudge against the shop's owner," the older man argued, "I doubt anyone here is surprised by any of this."

The man that was pinned on the ground kept quiet, seemingly having lost the will to argue back and the older man just slowly shook his head at him in disappointment before turning his attention to the two soldiers holding him.

"Lock him up with the others," the older man ordered, "And someone please disperse this crowd."

As the two soldiers carried the man off to what Katara assumed was the city's jail, a few more soldiers came and began to usher the crowd away from the scene. Slowly but surely everyone began to go back to their daily routine, leaving only Katara, Aang, Sokka, Suki, and the older man who seemed to have some sort of position of power in the city.

It wasn't long before the old man saw them and his faced brightened with curiosity as he slowly came over to them.

"You're the Avatar aren't you?" he questioned, and Aang quickly nodded as the old man spoke the next words with relief, "I'm so glad you're here. My name is Chao and I'm the ruler of this small city. When we sent a distress call to Ba Sing Se, we definitely did not expect them to be sending the Avatar."

The group of friends exchanged confused glances.

"Um, not to be rude but what are you talking about?" Aang asked.

"Yeah," Katara continued, "We don't know about any distress call. We were just in the area and we saw the fire so we thought we'd check it out."

"So you didn't get our message?" the older man asked.

"We didn't even know you sent one," Aang told him.

"Mmm, I see," Chao stated, a hand coming up to stroke his beard before he let out a smile, "Well in any event you're here now so maybe you can help us."

"With what?" Sokka jumped in for the first time, "It looks like you have everything under control."

"What you just saw was one event in a series of disasters," Chao told him solemnly, "After everything that has happened, people are scared, terrified even. It's taken everything I have to just maintain order and peace around here."