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No. 116263
>>116262
Hayoda: (popping into the kitchen) So, um, ... is Yue OK?
Tseng: Huh? Oh, Yue's fine (completely distracted by both his love of cooking and his job of cleaning up his sister's messes), she just had a splinter.
Hayoda: Oh, phew, I thought it was something, you know, _more_. I wonder what Yi Lin's doing, though; she seemed to scurry off in a hurry.
Tseng: (turning his head away from the cooking to look at Hayoda for the first time) Seriously?
Hayoda: What do you mean?
Tseng: My sister's out of your hair for once and you're worrying yourself about her?
Hayoda: (scratching his head) Heh, good point.
Tseng: (giving a knowing glance) Now, if I were you, I would go over and spend some time with Irah. (gesturing on deck with his head)
Hayoda: (looks blankly, then follows the gesture to Irah, hugging a bundle of scrolls to her chest and giving Hayoda a warm, smiling wave) Oh. (he says, still looking at Irah and waving back)
Tseng: (turning back to cooking) Read some scrolls together, share your interests with her...
Hayoda: (smiles) You sure know a lot about this stuff.
Tseng: What would you do without me. Now out. (pushes Hayoda out with a foot)
With the rest of the Iron Sea Wolves busy with their own affairs, Yi Lin and Yue are free to prepare for their daring animal rescue. Knowing it would be very suspicious to be recognized as having loitered around the place earlier that day, Yue thinks concealment is best, and the two of them purchase some long, tan coats that help make them more nondescript in the town's bustling streets (clothing Yi Lin would later make a habit of using to conceal herself on her various clandestine jaunts as the Masked Shipper).
However, the girls barely need to case the joint at all. Displaying an uncanny skill for memory, Yue is able to remember the layout of the building with near-photographic recall, where each of the animals are inside, and from the information that had soaked into her brain from the many books she had read, how each of them would be able to be lured out.
Yi Lin: "Your brain is creepy. Helpful... but creepy."
Finally night falls upon the town of Neudai, and Yue struggles to contain the butterflies in her stomach as she and Yi Lin glide up to the roof of the store. From the rooftop they can see the store owner and one of his guards leaving the building to, as Yue theorizes, arrange some sort of deal with untrustworthy animal poachers. With only one guard remaining, the plan is for Yi Lin to distract him and lead him on fruitless hunts around the building by hiding in the shadows and making suspicious sounds, while Yue uses her chance to free the animals.
All their plans go out the window as the shoddily-maintained terracotta tiles beneath their feat start to slip and slide off the edge of the roof, clattering and smashing loudly on the ground below. The girls can only give each other a look of shock before the weak roof gives out underneath them and they land inside the building's main office, papers flying in a chaotic pile around them. An ink-stained piece of paper sticks onto Yi Lin's face, and she flails blindly for a few moments until an unseen hand pulls it off of her.
Yi Lin: "Oh, thanks Yu-- ...Oh."
Before her stands the huge, burly guard, a scowl on his face. He crumples the paper in his fist.
Yi Lin: (readying her staff) "Yue... run!"
Yi Lin jumps back and swings out her staff, creating a swirling blizzard of papers fluttering around the room. In the commotion, Yue dives through the guard's legs and flees the office, heart pounding in her chest. Thinking fast, Yue runs down the stairs to the main level, grabbing a huge jar of powdered pangolin-otter scales she remembered seeing earlier in the day. She scrambles back into the office to see Yi Lin just barely keeping herself out of reach of the guard's massive arms. Any surprise the guard was feeling at fighting an Airbender was more than offset by his ability to keep himself so firmly rooted to the floor that Yi Lin could not affect him, especially in these close quarters.
Yue quickly climbs on top of the desk and drops the jar on the guard's head, and pieces of ceramic and powder covers their foe. He flinches from the surprise attack, stumbling, hacking, and coughing. Yue tumbles off the desk just before a summoned gust of wind sends the heavy wood flying into the guard's chest, and consequently sending both flying against a wall.
Panting heavily and coming to terms with the seriousness of what they are doing, Yi Lin and Yue grab some nearby rope and, struggling to remember their knots and wishing Tseng were there, they tie up the unconscious guard and with great difficulty push him underneath the desk, then take his keyring and lock him in the office.
The girls quickly make their way downstairs to the animal room, a long hallway lined with caged animals. Taking opposite ends of the hall, Yue uses the keyring and starts frantically opening cages left and right, while Yi Lin breaks the locks with an Airbending slice, or cupping the locks and blowing into the keyhole with Airbending to make the metal devices explode into useless fragments in her hands.
Yue finally gets to the pangolin-otter's cage, the last one, but the lock won't open. She is about to call for Yi Lin to help when a sudden bellowing shout echoes nearby: the guard had finally escaped his bonds, and upstairs the locked door smashes open. As he appears at the bottom of the stairs, they can tell that while he is shaken and lightheaded, he is still a dangerous threat.
A single stomp splits the earth down along the hallway, and Yi Lin and Yue press themselves against the walls just in time. Dozens of birds squawk and lift themselves off the ground breaking beneath them. Yue dives to the floor and grabs a small lizard falling into the fissure, and from this vantage point sees the guard charging toward Yi Lin. Mustering her strength and what little Earthbending ability she has, Yue plunges her hand deep into the crevice and shoots up a series of bumps in his path, making him lose his footing just long enough for Yue's partner to finish the job. Yi Lin runs toward the guard, uses her staff and a healthy amount of bending to vault herself into the air, then flips and slams her staff across the ground, blasting the guard down the hallway in a cloud of dust with an impressive Airbending strike.
Knowing she can't waste any more time, Yue directs Yi Lin to take a couple bags of feed and run, and after a moment's hesitation Yi Lin does so, cutting a hole in each bag and making a trail of crumbs the starving creatures ravenously follow out of the building.
Staring intently at the pangolin-otter, Yue lifts up the nearby pair of sharp pliers, and for a moment the animal recoils in fear until it sees the girl using them to grasp the heavy padlock's shackle, squeezing as hard as she can until finally the cut lock falls to the floor with a heavy thump. Throwing the tool aside, Yue watches the creature slowly take its first few steps of freedom, and giggles as the pangolin-otter licks her with his long tongue.
Seeing the seemingly unvanquishable guard start to stir, the pangolin-otter gestures for Yue to climb on its back. Yue holds onto the pangolin-otter's neck, her heart leaping in her chest as the beast runs through the town, letting out an exultant cry.
Several minutes later, and back on the ship, Hayoda, Tseng, and Irah are completely unaware of all of this -- at least until a pair of screaming cousins and a flock of squawking animals run up the gangplank to the ship. In the distance the crew can see the shopkeeper and his other Earthdending guard chasing after them at full speed, apparently having followed a large and conspicuous trail of food leading straight to the ship.
Yi Lin: Aaaahh! Tseng, start the boat, start the boat! (cuts the rope mooring the ship to the pier with an Airbending slice)
Tseng: (narrowly dodging a pair of feedbags flying past his head, then leaping back as a stream of animals stampedes onto the boat) What did you do?!
Yi Lin: (gesturing back at Yue) It was all her idea!
Yue: Hey!
Hayoda: Yue! Get away from that thing!
Yue: He's not a thing, he's a pangolin-otter and he's my friend!
Tseng: Again -- what did you do?!
Yi Lin: (kicks the gangplank into the water) Talk later!
Yi Lin quickly wrenches on one of the ropes of the ship's sail mechanism and favored getaway plan, unfurling the vessel's impressive sails without realizing that it is in fact a rather windless night. As if to drive the point home even further, the guard raises a huge boulder from the shore and fires it straight at the Iron Sea Wolves. Irah is barely able to cry out a warning before the rock smashes into the mast.
The kids and the animals duck and cover themselves. A burst of quick thinking on Tseng's part and a sphere of water suddenly surrounding the impact site prevent the explosion of metal shards and wooden splinters from turning into lethal shrapnel, but the damage has been done. The mast falls across the deck, slamming and reverberating through the hull; the ship is dead in the water.
In the chaos, the pangolin-otter dives off the ship, grabbing the rope that once held it to the pier in his teeth. Without any apparent regard for the welfare of the animals aboard, the enraged shopkeeper orders the guard to throw another boulder. Spinning through the air, it threatens to sink the ship, but the pangolin-otter is able to pull the boat further from the shore, and the stone glances against the side of the vessel.
While Tseng divides his attention between raising walls of ice to block incoming boulders and yelling at his sister for getting into this mess, the pangolin-otter heads for his attackers and once-tormenters, jumping out of the water and charging down the pier. The guard tries to use Earthbending to wall the beast in, tall earthen cubicles erupting left and right around the animal, but the pangolin-otter dodges the traps and pounces on his foes.
The shopkeeper and his guard pull themselves just out of the way of the pangolin-otter's swipes, just barely avoiding being ripped up by his sharp claws. Rearing up onto his rear limbs, the animal turns and slams his tail into his two enemies, knocking out the guard and leaving the shopkeeper extremely shaken.
Glancing back to the ship and the five stunned children on board, including his rescuer, the pangolin-otter picks up each of his defeated opponents by their clothes with his teeth, and drops them into one of the Earthbent cages on the shore before hurrying back to the vessel and towing the Iron Sea Wolves further out to sea. His former master, a non-bender, will need to wait until his assistant comes around or someone finds them before he can be freed.
One would think that after rescuing dozens of animals (which are now littering the deck, both with their presence and with their droppings, to the mild but growing annoyance of the rest of the crew), Yi Lin and Yue would call it a day. Damaging the ship and almost getting everyone killed in a harebrained scheme of animal liberation would have definitely warranted many severe tongue-lashings -- if Yi Lin had been the one doing it. As fair or unfair as it may be, Hayoda and Tseng cannot help but go easy on Yue, for both her noble intentions and her accounts of bravery and cunning during the heist itself. Yi Lin is all too happy to take advantage of the rest of the crew's leniency, and makes a personal note to involve Yue in any future ideas.
And if anything, having boulders thrown at them makes the crew more than frustrated. Yue in particular is driven with a strange compulsion to see this through to its end, and with the help of the other kids, figures out which nearby areas can safely support each kind of animals, and over the next couple weeks they release their cargo into the wild -- each time with a bit of paper attached to them saying just where these animals came from and how abusive their owner was. Yue and Yi Lin take to this part with a surprising fierceness, wanting to ensure above all else that spreading the word will ruin this abusing animal keeper's reputation to the point that very few people would want to do business with him.
As the ship's mast has been utterly smashed, the pangolin-otter, whom Yue named "Po" (波, "bō", meaning "wave" or "storm") has been happily helping to pull the ship during this time, and has proven even more effective at it than the night of his escape, after several full meals of fish and a Waterbender's healing abilities repairing the damage Po had taken during its captivity.
A few prominent nobles in a nearby city, having heard about the Iron Sea Wolves' deeds and wanting to increase their prestige by associating themselves with a popular and charitible cause, offer to adopt and properly care for some of the more exotic and foreign animals, and after a few convincing speeches by Hayoda about "donating to the cause," the kids are able to collect enough money to get the ship's mast repaired better than before.
All that really remains is Po himself. Neither Yue nor the others know where his family is, or even if he has one. As Yi Lin works on writing one last paper denouncing the abusive animal-keeper to attach to the pangolin-otter upon its release, she watches Yue and Po playing together on the waves, and she knows what is going through everyone's minds, much as Yue and her scaly-furry friend can sense from each other.
Yue: I guess... we're your family now, Po. I mean, if you want us to be--
(Po interrupts her with a quick lick to the face)
Yue: Hee! That settles that then!
Watching this scene from the ship, Yi Lin nods to herself and folds up the bit of paper she was writing, the still-wet ink smearing into a black-on-white double image. Opening it, she smiles, amused at the image the blotted ink had made.
Yi Lin: Looks like a pretty butterfly.
END
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