"she changed,
but not overnight like in the books you read. over years. slowly and painfully. sometimes brutally.
but she did."
tenshi has been through a lot and on the way lost sight of who she was and after an injury, lost her memory too. when she...
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I intend to stay with Katara and Hakoda but Katara is incredibly unwilling to be around me and sends me away so I find myself heading for Sokka. I find him hunched over a map, squeezing his shoulder as I approach, I crouch besides him to look down at the map. Sokka starts to talk me through the directions to the palace, he's already explained this many times but I let him speak anyway.
When he glances up he seems to spot something over my shoulder, "Dad!" He stands and I follow, "You're on your feet again."
Hakoda sits down, "Thanks to your sister. I'm in no shape to fight, but maybe there's some way I can help."
"Everything's going smoothly and the eclipse hasn't even kicked in yet."
"Let's hope our luck holds out." Hakoda stops at the sight of his daughter watching something in the distance. "Katara, you seem distracted. Is something wrong?"
Katara's voice is higher in pitch when she speaks, her confusion clear, "Yeah. Is that... is that Aang?"
"What?" All of us follow Katara's line of sight to see Aang riding in on his glider, dodging fireballs as he does. He lands in front of us with a concerned look on his face. "Please tell me you're here because the Fire Lord turned out to be a big wimp and you didn't even need the eclipse to take him down."
"He wasn't home. No one was. The entire palace city is abandoned."
Sokka's eyes widen, "...They knew."
Toph having now found us, we have the chance to regroup together. We sit in a circle and I watch on with a concerned frown as Aang rubs his fingers along the ground idly. "It's over. The Fire Lord is probably long gone; far away on some remote island where he'll be safe during the eclipse."
I sigh, "Maybe we could still find him...?"
Sokka seems to be the only one to agree, nodding his head thoughtfully, "My instincts tell me he wouldn't go too far. He would have a secret bunker; somewhere he could go and be safe during the siege but still be close enough to lead his nation."
"If it's an underground bunker we're looking for, I'm just the girl to find it." Toph points to herself as she speaks, brightening up a bit at the prospect of helping.
Sokka pulls out a small mechanism, watching the face of it, "The mechanist gave me this timing device. It looks like we've got about ten minutes until the full eclipse. Ten minutes to find the Fire Lord."
Aang nods confidently, "We can still do this. We can still win the day."
We make to move but Katara stops us, "Wait! If they knew we were coming it could all be a trap. Maybe we should use the time we have left to make sure we all ger out of here safely."
