Bao acquired an animal companian: Maomao, the owl ferret
heard rustling behind the party as they traveled through the forest
after party finished washing themselves in stream, Zo saw movement in clothes and reached inside quick to grab the "spy" that was watching them. Bao convinced Zo to let Maomao go, and later Maomao returned with a gift of dead rat to repay his debt
Maomao climbs up Bao's arm onto her shoulder to ride along, frequently scurries under clothes
party splits up to gather intel
Atka heads to bath house, talks with a bunch of people, trying to find the spiritual center of the town
he's really obvious about it, draws attention to self
comic scenes with him approaching plenty of half-to-fully-naked old men and women
he eventually finds himself back in the center of the bathhouse, frustrated, and gets in the pool to think about next steps. finds it weirdly relaxing, realizes there's a pattern at the bottom of the pool, and tries to feel it with his feet, to see what it is
slips as he does this, and when resurfaces, much more time has passed than he thought -- he's the only one left in the water, so he can now clearly see the pattern: it's a large, imposing dragonfly bear, done in wood on the bottom of the tub, which has some clear spiritual significance
there's one Earth Kingdom guy heading for the door, and then three Fire Nation soldiers come in, talk to the Earth Kingdom guy a bit, and then yell "hey, what are you doing here?" at Atka
Bao, meanwhile, has gotten herself working alongside a work crew hauling logs from the depot to the kilns, where they're fired into charcoal by the Fire Nation soldiers
hauling on human-drawn carts, they're never out of eyesight of the Fire Nation soldiers guarding them, but they are out of earshot between the two locations, so they have time to gossip
Bao hears a lot about the town: Fire Nation has been here for a while, folks fairly resigned to the situation (no discussion of resistance), but things got much worse, work got much harder in the past several months, after Captain Sheng showed up, replacing the old Captain Shori
they say Old Wen, another villager, had worked out some sort of deal with Shori, but that Sheng wasn't interested, and made things much harder on them
Zo just marched up to the Fire Nation camp and presented herself as Zolzaya, reporting for duty
treated as a Corporal (low ranking officer, same as brother), and shown around by Corp. Yashin
many of the soldiers have been there for a while, but the leadership all switched out several months ago when Capt Sheng arrived
Yashin is jealous of Sheng: they were in the same class as the academy and Yashin doesn't think she should have been promoted over him. "she wasn't even top of her class!" "were you?" "mumble mumble..."
says Sheng has something to prove, but Yashin clearly has a chip on his shoulder about her, never says that she's "uppity", but clearly thinking
started a 6-count clock (1 tick now) for "Zo's betrayal found out"
everyone hears the commotion at the bathhouse
Zo distracts Yashin, keeps him talking
Bao races over
Atka dashes out of the pool, through some of the rooms, and finds a half-empty apple barrel with a hole in it to hide in
Bao rushes in and pretends to the soldiers that Atka is her younger cousin Li that has been causing problems
"he's always hiding in barrels -- Li, are you in there?" "[grumpily] no..."
the soldiers are convinced, one of them says "my daughter is just like that...", and tell Atka that he really shouldn't have been there, the bathhouse was closed for the day
they find Atka a yukata to wear out and, despite his asking for the barrel of apples ("you really shouldn't use that for anything else"), they only give him one to take with him
they then all return to their appointed meeting spot, camp in the edge of town, and debrief
Atka is very excited about the dragonfly bear and keeps gesticulating with his apple as he describes it
every time his hand swings back, Maomao takes a nibble of the apple, so that they've been eating it from both sides