Avatar: The First Metalbender Book 1: Water

Chapter 5: "Jet" Fuel Can't Melt Steel Beams

After securing the book to his board, Kaiden flew away from the South Pole the next night. He knew it would be an extremely difficult to find Katara, Sokka, and Aang again, but he had to at least try. He did, after all, find a way to bust a bunch of earthbenders out of a completely metal prison without using metalbending. He could do this.

Using his compass, Kaiden navigated his way over a giant swamp. He looked over it and got a strange chill. There was something... eerie about this swamp. He stared at it for so long, he didn't know he was descending until it was too late. The board smashed into a tree and Kaiden tumbled down, crying out in pain each time his body hit a branch. He hit the ground with a THUD! How he survived, he had no idea.

"Ouch..." he groaned.

He managed to get up and locate his board, which had landed nearby. After putting the book in his pocket, shrinking his metal into the size of a squashed tin can, and putting that in his other pocket, he decided to explore a little. What's an adventure without a little exploring?

"Why am I getting such an eerie feeling about this place?" he wondered aloud.

Suddenly, Kaiden heard the familiar sound of firebending. He immediately responded, his metal becoming a staff. He looked around frantically, but saw no one. Tyler then heard it again and walked toward the sound. He came up to a curtain of vines and moved them with his pole.

He saw... a girl. Her skin was dark like his, was wearing Water Tribe getup, and dark hair in a wolf-tail hair style. She looked about his age and was admittedly quite beautiful. But that wasn't what caught his attention. She was firebending. She wasn't aiming at anything in particular. It was like she was sparring by herself. Kaiden wondered how on earth she was firebending when she was clearly from the Water Tribe. That was impossible!

Kaiden closed his eyes and shook his head. When his eyes opened again, the girl was gone. He swung his head left and right trying to find her again, but there was no sign she was there. Kaiden had had it with this place now. His pole transformed back into a board and he jumped on and took off into the sky.

"What the heck was that?"
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Kaiden managed to find his way to a large forest with a dried-up river outlining one side of it. There was a small town nearby, bustling with activity and a dam blocking up a nearby smaller river. After taking a closer look, Kaiden discovered that the town was part of the Fire Nation, so he decided to steer clear.

As he got closer to the forest, he noticed some movement near the edge. His eyes widened when he saw a familiar figure on the outside of the forest, watching the movement. It was Katara.

Tyler zoomed over to her, "Katara!!"

Katara's head turned, "Kaiden?!"

He landed next to her, "Hey, what's up?"

Then he noticed that her eyes were a bit red, "Hey, are you okay?"

"I'm fine," she answered, turning back to the forest, "But I'm not sure how much longer Aang is going to last."

"Wait, what's going on?"

"A guy named Jet befriended us, but it turns out he wants to flood that town over there. I trusted him! But it turns out that he's a freaking extremist! Those people down there haven't done anything!"

"Jet, huh? Well... I think I might have to intervene."

He tossed her his book, "Read up. I've got a terrorist to take care of."

Kaiden hopped on his board and, before Katara could object, flew towards the tree line. He almost immediately found the two. Aang wasn't doing so good. Jet clearly had the advantage in the trees, but how could he handle two people fighting him? Kaiden began searching for an advantage against Jet. The one he found was that Jet was using these harpoon-like weapons. That were metal. He smirked. Jet was about to stab at Aang, but suddenly, the harpoon jerked back and stuck itself into the tree trunk.