The Awakening (SpawnofSatan)

Discovery

~Na li~

I didn't understand what Aang was so mad about. I tried to talk to him about it, but he just kept saying the same thing over and over again:

"Why won't they just let us fight?"

"You heard Sokka," I said. "We have to stay secret. Trust me, I don't like it either, but their logic makes sense. It will be so much easier to hide if the Fire Nation thinks we're dead. Plus, we're hurt. You know as well as I do that neither one of us fights very well like that."

"I don't care if we're wounded or not," Aang said, crossing his arms. "I still want to fight. It's our job to help people, especially our friends."

"What happened to the nice, non-warlike, pacifist Aang I used to--" I stopped suddenly when I felt a weird movement in my lower stomach. It felt vaguely like an egg dropping, but I knew for a fact that it was not that. I would have fallen to the ground just from the shock of it had the wall not been there to catch me.

"You okay, Nal?" Aang asked, looking concerned.

"I'm fine," I lied. I was tempted to tell him the truth, that I had no idea what this was, but I wasn't sure how he'd take it. "Just got a weird feeling, kinda like I'm dropping an egg again."

"Didn't you just lay, like, six of them in Ba Sing Se?"

"It was the day before we got into Ba Sing Se. And besides, that was over a month ago, and in cas eyou forgot, I kinda wasn't laying at all for the past, what, three weeks?"

"Okay, point taken," Aang said in defeat. I smiled a little, rolling my eyes as I got off the wall. I playfully punched his arm and we kept walking down the hall to our room. We didn't get ery far, though; we had barely taken three steps before something rocked the ship and knocked us both over. I landed on my side as my feet were swept out from beneath me, whereas Aang landed flat on his back a little ways away. I felt a light twinge between my shoulder blades in sync with Aang's landing. After a second, the ship's rocking stopped just as quickly as it had started.

"What...was that?" I breathed.

"Ow," Aang said, shifting his position uncomfortably on the floor as he tried to sit up. "That was a stray nail. Why did it have to find the sweet spot?!"

"Oh that's what that was," I said sarcastically as I stood up. "I thought something was attacking the ship."

"Ha ha, very funny." Aang rolled his eyes as I effortlessly pulled him to his feet.

"Come on, maybe the fight's over." Aang nodded in agreement with me as we headed back up to the main deck.

Once we got back up there, Jey told us that a sea serpent had helped us escape by attacking the enemy ship. The rocking that had knocked us over was caused by the serpent bursting out of the water. In short, the coast was clear and we were free to wander around as we pleased.

I nodded at Jey, but Aang didn't seem to be paying attention. He was glaring up a storm at Sokka. I had a good idea why, but before I could reprimand him for it, pain flared between my shoulder blades. Dammit, I thought. I'm off my healing schedule. I wasn't comfortable with letting Katara heal me, so since I'd come out of my coma, I'd been healing myself. The enemy ship had sort of disrupted my schedule.

If it hadn't have been for Aang, I would have been able to slip away unnoticed to heal myself, but beause Aang visibly flinched as if Jey had shocked him with lightning, Katara insisted on taking me to the healing room. I had no choice but to let her. She took me upstairs, yelling "Aang, you're next!" over her shoulder as we left. Jey came with us, probably wanting to question me further about last night's confusion. Great.