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The last thing that Katara, Sokka and Aang expected to see at General Fong’s Earth Kingdom fortress was a firebender, regardless of the fact that it was tied up, the firebending prisoner took them all by surprise.

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After hopping off Appa at the fortress, the trio were greeted by General Fong, who Master Pakku sent them to so Aang could find an earthbending master. The fortress was completely made out of a light sand coloured stone and had green Earth Kingdom banners proudly flying high. They were greeted out front of a giant sandstone staircase, that radiated power and respect. The General descended the grand staircase to meet the group and give them a tour before they settled into their temporary accommodation in the fortress.

The trio toured the training ground where soldiers were training for future assignments, the thing that took their attention the most, was a troop wheeling a tied up firebender across the training grounds.

“What’s that?” Katara asked, whilst pointing at the firebender.

General Fong looked where she was pointing and addressed her calmly, “That is just our prisoner or permanent guest, would you like to meet them?”

As they walked over to the troop pushing the firebender across the grounds, Katara got a better look at the prisoner. The prisoner strapped to a metal frame with two handles and had wheels at the bottom, their legs and feet were chained together, as well as their hands were cuffed together with metal handcuffs that extended up their arms to their elbows and covered their hands completely. On their face, they had a metal mask with small air holes that covered the bottom half of their face, restricting their ability to speak or possibly even open their mouth at all.

“Lieutenant, how is the prisoner today?” Confidently spoken by the General, “Not causing too much trouble so far?”

The Lieutenant responded with a quick salute to General Fong and proceeded to address him with “Not too much trouble today, General Fong, sir.”

“You can get a closer look if you would like.” Stated the General, now turned towards Katara. “He’s not going to bite or throw flames at you; we have pumped him full of bending suppressing drugs, as well as those cuffs that restrict movement.”

Katara slowly walked over to the firebender as Sokka and Aang sheepishly followed behind her. The prisoner was a young boy around the same age as Sokka, he was shockingly pale even for fire nation standards and sickening skinny, obviously malnourished. Standing out against his pale complexion, the boy had an angry, bright red scar that took up half of his visible face, the scar had obviously come from a not properly healed burn. The scar tissue made the eye that it covered permanently squint and was significantly whiter than the other eye, she doubted that he could see from that eye at all. He had long, matted, black hair that stuck to his face with dried blood and even though one was severely damaged, he had the most vibrant golden eyes, that she had ever seen, which definitely confirmed that he was from the fire nation.

He looked over the gaang with his brilliant, golden eyes that were half glazed over, giving Katara the impression that he was not completely lucid. The boy’s eyes settled upon the young airbender behind her, his good eye widened at the sight of Aang, as Katara noted that his burned eye betrayed no emotion. General Fong walked in strides to the left side of the firebender and put his arm on the top of the frame that the prisoner was strapped to.

“This is our resident firebender, as you can see, we have taken many precautions with him, we received him around 2 and a half years ago from the Earth Kingdom navy.” The General proudly announced, “He was travelling in a Fire navy boat that went into Earth Kingdom waters, so they were invaded with him as the only survivor because the troops didn’t want to kill a child.”

Sokka stepped forward to get a better look at the boy, “So, why is he so heavily chained? I doubt anyone could have done anything to be chained up like this.”

“He is a firebender and since you are travelling with Avatar Aang, you out of all people should know how dangerous these ones can be.” General Fong grabbed the firebender’s face by his chin and turned it to face himself.

The prisoner sluggishly tried to pull away and made a noise that can only be described as a restrained growl. It was obvious from a first look, that this boy was not in great health, but as he tried harder and harder to pull his head away from Fong, it was shown that even that much physical activity was too much and at the end of his struggle, he couldn’t even break away from the General’s grasp on his chin. The struggle only ended when he was let go of and he proceeded to scowl at the General.

“He is proving to be more of a struggle than we thought, he still hasn’t given us any information about the Fire Nation,” said the Lieutenant, who had only said a few sentences before then. “We don’t even know his name, so the troops have just started referring to him as ‘Li’. He still hasn’t broken yet, even after the sun deprivation and bending suppressant cuffs and drugs.”

“Bending suppressing cuffs and drugs? This all seems really inhumane to Li, half of this stuff is completely unnecessary as well, why does he need to be chained up this much if you are already using the drugs?” Chimed in Aang, who had a horrified look on his face. “Also, what does sun deprivation even mean?”

“We have to take further precautions here because we are at a military base, if this firebender got out, he could share Earth Kingdom secrets with the Fire Nation, so we believe it is necessary.” Explained General Fong, “Sun deprivation is used for firebenders, because they draw power from the sun, the only reason he is outside right now is because we need to keep him alive. So once every month, he is taken out of the lowest cell we have and taken outside for around an hour at most.”

“Speaking of General, the hour is just about up, so I should put the ash-maker back.” The Lieutenant inserted into the conversation.

To that, the General nodded and the gaang watched as they took away Li, to the main building. All of the trio had the same look on their faces, which was a mixture of shock and horror to how the Earth Kingdom could every treat someone like that.

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After a whole day of unsuccessful attempts to unlock the ‘Avatar State’, Aang stared up at the ceiling and thought about the whole day.

“Hey Sokka, are you still up?” Aang called out into the darkness of the room.

A voice answered, “Yeah, what’s up Aang?”

“I was just thinking about today, I don’t think we should force out the Avatar State, and General Fong scares me a bit after the firebender.” Aang shoved his face in to a pillow.

“I don’t trust the guy as far as I can throw him, especially after the firebender today. That kid looked sickly, his cheekbones were far to visible and the scar on his face.”

“When we leave here, I want to take Li with us.”

“Are you sure, Aang.”

“Yes”

“Okay, good night”

And just like that Sokka started snoring.

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Aang saw Katara disappear into the ground. All he could feel was anger as he started to glow, General Fong tried to calm him down and freed Katara, but the damage was done. He was about to charge at Fong, but then he felt Katara’s hand on his wrist. He started to lower and before they could run to Appa, he remembered the firebender that he needed to rescue. He would have asked General Fong for the location of the cell, but Sokka had knocked him out when Aang was in the Avatar State. So, the next best option was to ask a random troop, and the one that they chose just so happened to know where the cell was.

The trio was led down a curved staircase that took around 5 minutes to get to the bottom, if only they could earthbend it into a slide (as that is how they assumed the Lieutenant got the firebender down there on the metal frame). The further they got down the stairs, the more it smelt of mildew and mould in the cool, damp air. The only light supplied in the staircase was from crystals that shone in the darkness and made a cool, green light, that was just enough to tell where you were going. Even Aang started to feel slightly light headed as they went further down, it was terrifying to think of was sun deprivation could do to a firebender, let alone for so long.

Finally, at the end of the stairs, there was a hallway with a cell at the end, the bars were slightly dented and looked like something tried to ram in to them. Upon first glance you could see nothing but a few bugs and rats in the cell, but a double take of the view showed a firebender tied up and huddled in a corner out of sight.

Like the day before, he was wearing a metal mask, to stop him from talking and his arms and legs were cuffed the same. The only difference was now instead of his arms being chained in front of the firebender, they were now hanging above his head. His feet were also chained to the floor, making it impossible for him to move far from his current position. The newest update to his restraints was a collar around his neck, that was attached to the wall.

The prisoner looked asleep, but not peaceful. True, his eyes were closed, but his arms and legs were taut in the chains, making him look very stiff and gave a similar look of a tiger-lion preparing to pounce. Slowly, the gaang approached the bars of the cell and Katara used waterbending to slice through them. As soon as Sokka put his foot in to the cell, the firebender opened his eyes and started trying to struggling against the chains, he weakly thrashed against his restraints with pure determination and attempting to make threatening noises, which proved to be difficult with the muzzle. He didn’t register Aang, who approached him on his scarred side and hugged the raging firebender to stop him from moving, the resistance didn’t continue as Aang easily overpowered the prisoner and it was obvious that the firebender knew that.

“Hi, my name’s Aang, what’s yours?” Asked Aang before he looked at the muzzle on the prisoner, “Oh right, well my friends and I are here to rescue you, so we would appreciate if you would not struggle as much, it just makes things harder for everyone!”

Aang’s words were followed by a giant smile from him, that looked like it was shining. The prisoner’s eyes were wild and hardly lucid from bending suppressing drugs and sun deprivation, it was anyones guess if he thought that they were anything more than hallucinations. From the look of the firebender, he didn’t understand what was going on and modelled the most confused look ever seen, before closing his eyes and leaning into Aang’s hug slightly. Katara began bending way the chains holding his arms to the ceiling, before promptly trying to catch his limp arms as they were about to fall on to him and Aang. The rest of the chains went smoothly, but Katara was only able to cut the restraints attaching him to the wall, out of fear for cutting him so they decided to finish removing the bindings on Appa, where they had daylight.

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“I don’t understand why I need to carry him.” Sokka whined as his eyes were trying not to look away from the stairs that they were climbing, “I mean not that he is hard to carry, but can’t you guys just air bend or water bend him out of the stairs?”

“Hush, less complaining and more lifting.” Shouted Katara from the front of the group, “We don’t know how much time we have before Fong regains consciousness and we need you to protect Li.”

“I think we are almost there, look!” Aang pointed to a bright light shining at the end of the stairs, they reached the exit and as their eyes adjusted to the blinding light, Aang blew on the soundless bison whistle, “Appa, over here!”

The bison flew over and greeted the airbender with a lick, they quickly got on the saddle and laid the firebender down, in the run up the stairs, he must have lost consciousness as now his eyes were closed and was completely unresponsive to anything.

“Appa, yip yip”

The sudden movement of Appa starting to fly, made the firebender jolt awake and start to watch the group. He was still unable to move his arms or his legs, so he just laid there glaring at them with a slight growl, he looked disconnected from reality and starred at each person on the flying bison individually, like he was trying to deduce if they were real or not. After wiggling around on the saddle for a few minutes, he decided that this situation was real and it was not hallucinations from the drugs, from that realisation, Li looked like he was about to cry.

Katara slowly approached the (now free) firebender cautiously, like she was going towards a wild animal. With every step that she took, the more the firebender tried to shuffle backwards, this continued until he hit the back of the saddle and she realised that he was trying to get away from her.

“Hey, I just want to cut your bindings, is that okay with you. I am not going to hurt you.” She said softly, showing her hands to him in a non threatening manner. His good eye was wide with fear, but he nodded as to be free of the cuffs.

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The removal of the chains should be simple in theory, but the constant flinching from the firebender made it all the harder. Freeing the feet, was the easiest part and even then Sokka had to hold him down to stop curling in on himself. The arms were part that took the longest and once that was done, they had to restrain his arms again (restrained by hugging him) to stop him from protecting his face. The collar came off without many difficulties, leaving the muzzle for last, the straps were easy to cut through because they were made of leather. Once everything was off, the firebender sat there stretching his arms and legs, as well as continuously opening and closing his mouth.

“So, what is your name, I doubt that your real name is ‘Li’.” Asked Sokka to the firebender

The firebender looked at him, before realising that he could talk again, “I-I … th-ink m-my n-name was Zu-ko?” There was audible confusion, as he didn’t even believe that it was his own name.

“Well, hi Zuko!” Aang bounced on the spot in front of the boy, “My name is Aang and I need a firebending teacher, would you be want to teach me?”

“S-sorry, but I-I haven’t b-been able t-to bend in … umm I think 3 y-years?” Zuko muttered, as he tried to shuffle away from Aang to the edge of Appa.

“Well, do you think we could get you bending again? Because you are the first firebender that hasn’t attacked us except for Jeong Jeong, but I doubt we will ever see him again.” Sokka enquired whilst gently approaching Zuko, without trying to spook him over the edge of Appa.

“Umm, m-maybe?”

“Before we get into that, maybe you should try to sleep off the effects of the suppressing drugs, you look really tired and just not completely here. I promise that we won’t try to attack you.” Katara advised softly.

Slowly, but surely Zuko rest his head down on the saddle and closed his golden eyes. The group dared not to move in case it disturbed his well needed sleep, he was safe with them, they would never let anyone hurt him again.