The following fanfiction is the result of two fangirls coming to the conclusion that AtLA needed more pirates. Neither fangirl owns anything except these nifty computers on which they type.

Water Water Everywhere

But not a drop to drink.

Sokka's heavy boots make decidedly not subtle thumping sounds as he sprints across the fire nation galleon's metal corridors, sword in hand. He turns back to make sure Katara is still following him, and she is, with her artfully tattered skirts fluttering around her thighs; her arms full of ancient waterbending scrolls.

He looked forward, stopping short as he noticed the Fire Nation soldiers in front of him. Sokka shifted into a battle stance, just like Piandao had taught him. He smirked in satisfaction as he heard the familiar sound of Katara's whip unfurling with a sharp crack.

As the soldiers advanced, rifles at the ready, he let out a fierce battle cry as he rushed forward to meet them. He heard Katara calling his name, "Sokka! Sokka move! You-move, will you? Wake up!"

And he did. Promptly. On the wooden deck. In immense pain. Katara had flipped him out of his hammock.

"What was that for?" Sokka demanded.

"You were drooling on me." She flicked his spit back in his face with a fluid motion.

"Well excuse me, princess." Sokka sat up and crossed his arms, glaring incredulously at his younger sister, who had since busied herself with her waterbending katas.

"Please try to be quiet, Sokka, I'm trying to concentrate."

"Yeah, well I was trying to sleep! But you just couldn't let that happen, could you, you little-" The ship lurched violently. Sokka had grabbed Katara's arm during the course of their argument, causing the waterbender to lose her grip on her power. The ship was mainly steered by Katara's waterbending, so causing her to lose her focus could be a very bad thing indeed.

Sokka, of course, was aware of this, but, being the ship's First Mate, he thought himself above such rules as "don't bother the navigator when she's bending". The fact that said navigator was his sister didn't help matters.

Katara regained her footing effortlessly as her brother fell to the floor for the second time that morning. It was now her turn to glare at him. "What the hell did you think you were doing, you idiot! You could have gotten us all killed!"

Her brother stumbled to his feet, returning her glare with equal ferocity. "Oh, please. You're not nearly powerful enough to cause a shipwreck, unintentionally or not."

By now, the combination of the lurching ship and the loud tones of the siblings' argument had woken the rest of the ship. The grumblings of the annoyed elderly overshadowed sounds of mothers consoling their distraught children. Through all of this, Sokka and Katara continued to bicker like children, their argument eventually regressing to the classic debate of "I know you are, but what am I?" This, naturally, attracted the attention of the ship's captain. The water tribesmen heard Bato before they saw him. The heavy thudding of his boots along the wooden staircase was unmistakable, and as the sound of his footsteps grew closer, the noise of the hold grew dimmer until it was completely silent. The siblings stood side by side at attention, holding back guilty smirks.

"What the hell is going on here?" Bato barked. He put up a hand to stop them before either one could get a syllable out. "Get on deck now, both of you."

_The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything_

The sun was high in the sky by the time Sokka, Katara, and the rest of the rigging crew managed to get the ship back on course. That morning's incident had caused the ship to wander, and to say Bato had not been happy was an understatement. Katara sighed as she leaned over the ship's railing and stared out at the vast ocean. After Avatar Kuruk had flooded the world to save his lover, the Water Tribe had had no real home to go back to: their frozen homelands now melted back into the sea. They had fled to their ships, and, in desperate need for food and supplies, had turned to piracy. Oh, there were various Earth Kingdom and Fire Nation crews floating amongst the waves, but the pirates of the Water Tribe held the true power in the black markets and hidden harbors where the world's pirates congregated. After all, with their entire race turning to the trade, it was only expected that they hold a monopoly.

Katara had been born on the very ship she now navigated. She had never known the feel of solid earth beneath her boots. The ocean was her place of birth, and she was certain it would be her final resting place. But she had no complaints. Katara was a waterbender, after all. The sea was her life, and she never wanted to leave it. She loved everything about it, from the salty air to the rocking movement of the ship beneath her feet. Well, there was the fact that this was the non-combatant ship; the ship for the injured and the old, the women and the children. If there was one thing Katara hated about life at sea, it was the fact that she was stuck on The Serenity, instead of a proper pirate vessel like the Dark Tide, or her father's ship, the Southern Chief.

After all, Katara was no damsel in distress. She was the only bender left in the Southern Water Tribe, her stealth skills were exceptional, she could steal a man's coin purse almost effortlessly, and she was pretty damn good with a whip. Her father knew this, as evidenced by the fact that he made her an officer, but he still refused to give her and her brother a placement on a real pirate vessel. As the cool winds filled the sail and whipped around her form, Katara drew her dark blue officer's coat around her. The coat and the position were both meaningless in her eyes, empty gifts and empty promises from a father who wanted his daughter to stay witth the women and stay out of his way.

"Katara!"

She spun gracefully on her heel, searching for the source of the call, only to find herself face to face with her grandmother. She smiled. "Hello Gran-Gran."

Her grandmother stood her ground, hands placed firmly on her hips, a smile on her face and an ever-present warmth in her eyes. "Don't you 'Gran-Gran' me young lady! Who do you think you are, sitting here sulking when there's work to be done?" That was her Gran-Gran alright. Ever practical and always looking out for her Tribe, Kana was a believer in the philosophy that there was always some work that needed doing. "Now, go on, lunch may be over, but there's dishes to wash. Get your mind off your troubles, eh?"

Katara had never been happier to wash dishes in her life.

_The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything_

Sokka paced back and forth dramatically in front of the (hopefully) intimidated rigging crew. Not a single one of them was over sixteen or female. They looked uncomfortable and out-of place in their oversized, hand-me-down, uniforms, small and scrawny with little to no muscle. Sokka tried to convince himself that a rigging crew composed entirely of barely-teenage boys was a good thing. He failed miserably. Thinking positively had always been more Katara's thing, anyway. It was time to get cynical.

"Right. Now, can any of you tell me what I should be disappointed about today?" He continued to pace in front of the line of nervous sailors standing at attention, looking each of them in the eye as he moved down the line. One of the braver boys stepped forward, coughing softly in an effort to gain the First Mate's attention. Sokka turned to face him. "You, boy, break it down for me. What did you lot screw up today, hm?"

Another cough. Sokka was starting to think the boy might actually be sick. "Well, sir, it took us way longer than it should have to get back on track after the, erm... incident this morning. Perhaps we could have... done... better?"

Sokka scoffed, moving to stand straight in front of the boy, who, now that he was looking closely at him, did seem a little flushed. "Perhaps? No, you definitely could have done better. Which is why," he said, addressing the entire crew now, "you will be spending the rest of the day making sure the deck of this ship is clean enough to eat off of! Am I understood?"

The response was a unanimous "Yes sir!" But as the crew filed out of the map room, he stopped the boy who had spoken up; the one who had been coughing.

"Not you. You go see Gran-Gran. I don't know what you've got, but I sure as hell know I don't want anyone else catching it." The boy nodded, and ran off to find the ship's chief elder and primary healer.

Let it never be said that Sokka didn't run a tight ship. People usually looked at him and immediately thought him nothing but an idiot. And yes, he could be a little goofy at times- okay, more than a little goofy most of the time- but he was, contrary to popular belief, quite intelligent and, when the situation arose, could be quite serious when he wanted to be. That is why he did not belong here, on The Serenity. He did not belong here, babysitting children. He belonged on a real vessel, stealing and pillaging with the best of them, selling his inventions on the black market, working his way through the ranks until he was given his own ship to captain.

Really, it wasn't fair. Most boys- hell, everyone but him- got a real placement by sixteen. And yet here he was, eighteen years old and still stuck on The Serenity. And to top it all off, he was the Southern Chief's son. You'd think that would give him an edge over the other boys, but no. Sokka was going to be stuck on this ship forever, he just knew it. That train of thought made him want to hit his head against the wall. So he did.

_The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything_

Two hours later, someone knocked on the door of the map room. That someone was Katara, who had only knocked as a courtesy and proceeded to enter the room before she was officially allowed to come in. Sokka and Bato looked up from the maps they were glancing over. They were greeted with the sight of a very angry waterbender, standing in front of the Captain's desk with her arms crossed. "I'm sorry, who is the Navigator of this ship?"

Sokka grinned awkwardly. "Er... you are?"

"Exactly. So why, pray-tell, was I not informed that we were changing course so very abruptly?" She leveled a slight glare at her brother.

"Because you were washing dishes," Sokka stood tall in a weak assertion of superiority.

"On what planet is that a viable excuse?" A thin stream of water found its way to her hands from the open porthole.

"The planet Gran-Gran lives on." Katara opened her mouth to retaliate, but paused. Their grandmother did take chores very seriously.

She sighed and bent the water back to the sea. "Fine. But you still could have mentioned it to me. I had to find out from a member of the crew! Do you have any idea how embarrassing it is for a navigator not to know where her own ship is going?"

"...you were washing dishes." He retorted.

"Argh! Sokka, I swear by the spirits I will-" She found a sinister stance.

"ENOUGH!" Bato slammed his hands down on his desk. He glared at the siblings who were now standing nervously at attention in front of him. "Sokka, I told you to inform your sister, did I not?" Sokka nodded. "So why didn't you"

"Um...dishes?"

"That is no excuse. And to put your mind at ease, Katara, we changed course because one of our boys spotted Fire Nation Vessels in our path. Does that answer your question?"

Katara nodded. The Fire Nation Navy was powerful and ruthless, taking no prisoners and doing everything they knew they could get away with, which was quite a lot. And with the sheer number of women on The Serenity... she didn't even want to think about it.

"Yes captain. Although..."

"Yes Katara?"

"My maps show that there just so happens to be a very large iceberg in the path of our current course based on the ocean currents this time of year."

Bato sighed. There always had to be some sort of problem. "Is that what this dot is?"

"Yes Captain."

"Sokka, with our current speed, when will we reach the iceberg?"

Sokka stood up a little straighter. "Sometime around four in the morning, Captain."

Bato turned to Katara. "Do you think you could bend it out of the way?"

She didn't have much of a choice it appeared, "I could certainly try, Captain."

"Well, that settles it. You two will have the First and Middle watch tonight, and when we get to the iceberg, Katara will bend it out of the way. Understood?"

Sokka and Katara answered with a simultaneous "Yes, Captain!"

"Good. Now, go see how that sick crewman is doing. The last thing I want after the day I've been having is an epidemic."

_The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything_

It was close to dusk now, and the last of the dinner dishes were being cleared away. Sokka and Katara leaned against the railing, observing the clean up. Sokka leaned his head back and groaned.

"First watch and Middle watch! I mean, what in the name of all that is good in this world are we supposed to do for the next eight hours!" He flopped forward hopelessly with his head in his hands.

Katara promptly smacked her brother upside the head. "Quit your whining. It probably won't even feel like that long."

"Oh yes it will, with our luck as of late. Trust me, sister dear, absolutely NOTHING of interest could possibly happen during those watches in the middle of the night."

Years later, Sokka would remember saying this. He would also remember how very, very wrong he was. Because, you see, interesting things did happen that night. Very, very interesting things.

A/N: On a ship, the 24 hour day is split into 8 watches of four hours each.

First: 8 pm to 12am
Middle: 12am to 4am
Morning: 4am to 8am
Forenoon: 8am to 12pm
Afternoon: 12pm to 4pm
1st Dog Watch: 4pm to 6pm
2nd Dog Watch: 6pm to 8pm

And then it starts all over! The 1st and 2nd Dog Watches are so the crew may eat dinner. Every half hour is marked by the ringing of a bell. At the end of the 4th hour 8 bells would be rung.

And yes, our line break is indeed the title of a song, The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything by Reliant K.