| abstract | - </p> This guy is a a**. Seriously, the guy I based it was such an a**hole.
- The Puppetmaster is an angry spirit that Ben and the gang ran afoul of.
- Camping out in the woods for the night, Team Avatar sits around a campfire, telling ghost stories. Sokka tells a horror story about a haunted sword which fails to scare the others. To darken the mood, Katara tells a frightening story about a little girl named Nini, a friend of her mother's who disappeared during a harsh winter storm in the Southern Water Tribe. She recalls that despite her vanishing, the villagers kept seeing smoke coming out of her chimney. The story leaves the entire group jumpy. Toph suddenly claims that she can hear people screaming from under the mountain, frightening everyone. Out of the darkness, an old woman named Hama appears behind them and terrifies everyone, but she warmly offers them a safe place to stay for the night, which they gratefully accept. At her inn, they enjoy spiced tea. Hama warns them that people in the woods have recently been mysteriously disappearing during full moons. This concerns the group, but Hama reassures them calmly that they will be safe with her. The next day they all go out shopping in the marketplace for food. Hama and Katara become fast friends with Hama commenting that they are "going to get along swimmingly". Meanwhile, Sokka overhears some of the locals talking about the strange disappearances of villagers during the full moon. The market clerk claims that he has lost at least one delivery boy in the past full moons. Believing the strange events to be the work of an angry spirit, he, Toph, and Aang agree to scope the village to see if they can discover what the villagers could have done to anger the spirits. Hama sends her guests back to the inn, saying she has some errands to which she must attend. Sokka, becoming increasingly suspicious, remarks to Hama how mysterious her town is, causing her to grin oddly and tell him, "Mysterious town for mysterious children." With Hama absent from the inn at that time, Sokka decides to investigate the house for anything suspicious, much to the protests of Katara. His searches uncover a cupboard filled with wooden puppets in a hallway and a locked door in the attic. Peering through the keyhole, he sees a box lying in the room beyond it, and uses his sword to pick the lock. After breaking into the room, Toph earthbends her meteor bracelet into a key for the box. Just before they manage to open it, Hama walks in and catches them in the act. However, she opens the box for them and pulls out a whale tooth comb, revealing she is from the Southern Water Tribe. Hama prepares a traditional Water Tribe dinner for them, explaining she knows they are from the Southern Water Tribe, too, as she heard them talking in the woods. Hama also reveals she is a waterbender by bending their soup into their bowls. This delights Katara and arouses curiosity among the rest as to how she ended up residing in the Fire Nation. She proceeds to tell them the story of how she was taken from the South Pole into the Fire Nation. When Hama was young, the Fire Nation captured all of the waterbenders during raids of their tribe, over time whittling down their numbers until Hama was the last remaining. Eventually, she too was captured, and among those taken was the only one who managed to escape alive. Katara is deeply moved by her tragic story and expresses her delight at having found another Southern waterbender. Hama offers to teach Katara what she knows in order to carry on the tradition of the Southern waterbenders. Katara is overjoyed at this and happily consents, wishing to learn more about her tribe's cultural heritage. The next day, Hama tutors Katara, explaining how water exists in all forms even in the air. She proceeds to draw water from the air to the fascination of Katara. She leads the younger waterbender to a field of fire lilies and demonstrates that water can also be drawn from anything that is alive as well. With a swift motion, Hama pulls water from the flowers, leaving them dried and dead. Katara is amazed, but becomes sad upon realizing the lilies were killed. Hama dismisses her concerns quickly, reminding her that they were simply flowers, and that she must do anything to survive in this hostile land. She tells Katara she has one more technique to teach, one that can only be used during the full moon when their bending abilities are at their absolute peak. When Katara expresses hesitance due to the rumors of disappearances, Hama reassures her, stating that two master waterbenders under a full moon should be able to handle anything. Meanwhile, Aang, Sokka, and Toph, believing the disappearances to be the work of an angry spirit, carry out an investigation. After briefly exploring the area, Aang concludes that the town is surrounded by natural beauty and that the townsfolk have done nothing to disrupt the environment or anger the spirits. Questioning one of the locals leads the group to Old Man Ding, an elderly man who supposedly saw the spirit. That night, Ding tells the three that he never actually saw a spirit, but rather felt possessed and compelled to walk toward the mountain. Unable to control his own movements, Ding almost walked into a cave; however, the sun rose, and he regained control of his body. Upon hearing this account, Toph realizes that she really had heard screaming coming from under the mountain, and concludes that the captured villagers must be imprisoned there. Katara and Hama arrive in the forest with the full moon in the night sky. Hama remarks sinisterly she has never felt so alive. Aang, Sokka, and Toph discover an underground prison in a cave. Toph metalbends the door open and crafts her bracelet into a key to free the villagers from their shackles. The villagers tell them it was not a spirit that captured them, but the innkeeper Hama. Sokka and Aang go stop Hama while Toph leads the villagers out. Hama reveals to Katara the story of how she escaped. While imprisoned, she and the other waterbenders were completely separated from any and all water. The guards pumped dry air into the cells and made sure their arms and legs were tied before giving water to them. However, she eventually realized that water exists within all living things, and first began to manipulate water in the bodies of rats that crawled into her cage. This technique, bloodbending, could only be used with the influence of the full moon enhancing her abilities. After years of mastering the technique, Hama took control of one of the guards, forcing him to unlock her cage and allowing her to walk free after decades of imprisonment. Horrified by the idea of controlling another person's body, Katara has doubts about learning bloodbending. Hama declares the choice is not hers, and that they must enact their vengeance on the Fire Nation for nearly wiping out their entire culture, saying Katara must avenge her mother's death. The outburst leads Katara to realize that Hama has been causing the villagers to disappear. Hama wickedly states the people of the Fire Nation deserve the same treatment they gave to the Southern waterbenders and that Katara would obey her wishes for her to learn the technique. Hearing this causes Katara to refuse to learn bloodbending and she commands Hama to stop further terrorizing the town. Enraged at being denied, Hama uses the technique to temporarily force Katara into submission. Katara soon regains control of her body, reminding Hama that she too draws power from the moon, and is powerful enough to overcome Hama's technique. The two begin to battle, each drawing water from the grass and trees surrounding them, but it quickly becomes obvious that Katara is the superior combatant. When Katara appears on the cusp of victory, Aang and Sokka arrive to assist her—and succeed in doing little more than providing Hama with an advantage, as she uses bloodbending to control them like puppets to attack Katara. Katara evades their attacks and manages to freeze both Aang and Sokka to two separate trees to stop them, but this proves to be only a temporary solution. Hama frees them both and resorts to sending them flying at each other, with Sokka's sword pointing straight at Aang. At the last second, Katara desperately uses bloodbending to subdue Hama and protect Aang. Toph arrives with the other villagers, who handcuff Hama and take her away, vowing to imprison her forever. As she is dragged off, Hama begins to cackle and remarks that her work is done, as Katara has become a bloodbender. The young waterbender breaks down in tears, as Aang and Sokka attempt to comfort her.
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