Soldier's Boy

The Tales of Ba Sing Se

Lee's Tale

 

Lee had figured out what he had to do the day after they arrived in Ba Sing Se, but it was several weeks before he was finally able and willing to put a plan into action. He had the outline from the moment of realization, but this was too important to play entirely by ear.

 
The basics: Appa was in Ba Sing Se. The Dai Li were holding him as blackmail. Appa meant the world to Aang. If he — Lee — managed to successfully rescue him, there was no way Aang would let the others leave him behind.

The complications: the Dai Li were terrifying secret police and elite earthbenders. He was a lone teenaged firebender with a fair amount of power but nowhere near enough finesse to come close to 'elite' yet. And he had no idea where they were holding Appa.

 

Conquering the first obstacle would have to be played by ear. The second was where all his planning had to go: getting to Appa. Like Kouji, he spent his days wandering the city, searching for any hint of Appa's whereabouts. Unlike Kouji, he surreptitiously followed Dai Li agents — if he couldn't find their base by word-of-mouth, he'd have to figure out a way to kidnap one of them and bully him into opening the door.

Come to think of it, as the base could likely only be accessed by earthbending, he'd have to do that anyway.

 

Finally, about four weeks after Appa had first been taken, he lost patience with his caution and decided to make his move. As he and the others had agreed, he was home by midnight. He slipped out of the house two hours later, when he was positive all of the others were asleep. He found a suitably dark and deserted alley, set his trap, and settled in to wait for a Dai Li agent to wander by.

 

He didn't have to wait long, and the agent, in a moment of spectacularly stupid hubris, fell for it. Lee kept his swords at the man's throat. "You have something I want," he hissed in his ear. "You are going to take me to it."

The agent, his stupidity and arrogance fading in favor of a healthy self-preservation, hissed back, "What?"

 

"The Avatar's bison. Take me to where he's being held."

The man was silent for a few seconds. Lee tightened the swords and he flinched. "All right, all right. Turn left at the end of this alley."

After an awkward half-hour of following the Dai Li agent's directions and never moving his swords from his throat, Lee arrived on the banks of a vast, pretty lake.

 

"The base is underneath," the agent said.

"Open it."

"You'll have to release me."

"I'm not that stupid."

 

The agent sighed, shifted position — nicking himself on the close blades — and pulled up an entrance. Lee pulled one of the swords away from his face and hit him over the head, as hard as he could. The agent dropped, and the teenager dragged him ito the bushes. Once he was sure his uncoscious hostage was concealed, he slipped over to the entrance and climbed inside.

 

He climbed down a narrow, underground tower, which dropped him in a vast, eerie complex, all smooth archways and dim green light. A few agents were down here, but none of them seemed to notice them. And he had no reason to believe that, despite their other creepy powers, they could 'see' him the way Toph could. He took a deep, silent breath, then slipped through the shadows, trying doors.

It took a fair amount of wandering — long enough that he was very tense and no longer had any idea what time it was — for him to find where the bison was being held.It took a fair amount of wandering — long enough that he was very tense and no longer had any idea what time it was — for him to find where the bison was being held.

 

Appa groaned and strained to reach him.

"Shh…" Lee whispered. "Just give me a few minutes, okay?" He slunk over to the bison and examined his chains. He bit his lip, looked around, and set about partially melting the shackles to weaken them. He'd cut through them once they'd cooled.

 

He'd fully freed five of Appa's six legs and was about to finish the last one when the door slid open.

Apparently, Lee's hostage had awakened and gone for backup.

 

Part of that backup included his boss.

Oh, fuck.

 

He checked the shackle. There was less than an inch of weakened metal keeping Appa grounded. "You can break that, right?" he breathed in the bison's general direction. Without waiting for any kind of response, he scrambled up to the bison's head. "Yip, yip!" he yelled.

 
The last shackle broke with a hideous screech, and they were airborne. Over Appa's triumphant rumble, he just barely heard some sort of hasty, angry conversation below. Something — a tank, maybe? — slammed into his side. He sagged, winded, and almost fell, barely catching himself on one of the bison's horns. Dizzy and still breathless, he looked down, and met the Grand Secretariat's eyes.

…He knows…

And then Appa carried him out into the breaking dawn. Lee managed to right himself, and guided the bison in the direction of their house.