I don't think I need to explain why this one is here... I played a little loose with canon, but only the most dedicated fan will notice it on their first readthrough or two. Takes place somewhere between "The Fortuneteller" and "The Northern Air Temple."
Appa let loose a low, contented rumble. On these days, the days when the weather was warm, though not to the point of being dry, and the air was refreshing but not so windy so as to be disturbing, flying was an absolute joy.
He gave his tail another swing, bending the air beneath him into an upward draft as easily and instinctively as he chewed his food. The massive rush of air formed a sort of elemental, horizontal chute, first lifting him into it, and then carrying him along it. These are the sort of details which Sokka cared about immensely.
"Aang, one day you'll have to teach me how Appa flies like this," he commented from his place in the saddle. "I mean, you need your glider to really fly, but he does it all by himself."
"What do you mean?" Aang asked, his bald head tilted amusingly as though the answer was self-explanatory. "He's Appa. He airbends and flies."
"Yeah, but I wanna know how he does it," Sokka said, unrelenting.
"Ignore him, Aang," Katara smiled, with a sideways glance at her brother. "He doesn't believe in the 'magic air,' remember?"
"I believe in the 'magic air' just fine," Sokka countered. "It's the 'magic water' I don't trust, and that's entirely because you're my sister." He closed his eyes and stuck his tongue out at her to show he was teasing, and then gave a sharp yelp, followed by an unenthusiastic sigh. "Thelly thunny. Now unthreeze the thoomerang throm my thongue."
The three were flying toward the North Pole, where Aang and Katara could really get a handle on waterbending. Their mission technically required urgency, but the day was so nice, none of them felt like urging Appa to fly at an increased pace.
"By the way, Aang," Katara said softly, amused with the sight of her older brother massaging his tongue back into form, "how far from the North Pole are we, now, anyway?"
"Well... it shouldn't be too much farther," he mused from his spot on Appa's head. He let the reins go and toyed with them in the air, floating them with his airbending. "There's only one city between here and the North Pole. It's just a fairly small fishing port on the north-western point of Earth Kingdom territory."
Katara took the map out and traced positions on it. "Well... the map shows that this part of the Earth Kingdom is really close to both the Northern Air Temple and the North Pole."
Aang nodded. "It's a fishing port, but a lot of the fish supply comes from the Northern Water Tribe fishermen. They sell it to the town, and the town sells it to the Air Nomads who bring it back to the Temple."
"At least..." Sokka mused.
"Yeah," Aang echoed his tone, suddenly looking downcast. "That's how it was a hundred years ago." His grip on the reins loosened slightly, and Katara smiled a little sadly.
"...Aang, I know it's out of the way... but how about we take a trip to the Northern Air Temple before we go to the North Pole?" she said softly, as though afraid that saying it louder would startle him away from the idea.
"Katara..." he said, his tone a little grateful, a little wistful. "It's okay. Besides, we're closer to Nan Kwei– the port town– anyway."
"So?" Katara asked, leaning over the front of the saddle to persuade the young airbender. "Let's stop in Nan Kwei now to let Appa rest, and then we'll go straight for the Northern Air Temple. We have plenty of time."
"Actually, I thought we were trying to get there quickly," Sokka muttered in a low tone to his sister, but Aang didn't hear over the rush of the wind. He had urged Appa on a little faster. Maybe there was a reason to pick up the pace, after all.
Zuko had urged every last bit of speed from his ship's engine that he could, trying desperately to keep up with the Avatar's flying bison. After so many miles, though, it just didn't want to cooperate peacefully, anymore. It was, however, doing an admirable job considering how little fuel was in it.
He cried out in frustration. "Can't we get this ship to go any faster?"
"Patience, Zuko," his uncle said, his words ever calm and slow. "It won't do you any good to catch up to the Avatar if you're exhausted from pacing the deck of a ship that will barely make it back to the Fire Nation." He drank from his tea, swishing it in his mouth slowly to draw out the taste.
"I know that, Uncle!" he snapped in a voice that clearly said he did not. "But it will do me less good to lose him entirely!"
Iroh sighed and took another deep sip from his tea, swallowing just as slowly as before. The liquid did not serve to sooth his nerves, as talking with Zuko was hardly enough to bother him after growing up with Ozai. He truly was his father's son, it seemed: both were impatient and myopic... but at least there was hope for this one.
"How long has it been since you've spoken with the men, Zuko?"
The wandering prince seemed startled by the question. "Not so long. Why?"
"Your lead engineers say you won't have enough fuel to last a fortnight," he replied calmly, sipping from his tea again. "...Peppermint from the Earth Kingdom is a true exotic wonder..."
"I don't care about your tea, Uncle!" Zuko exclaimed, fist tightening, a tell-tale sign that he was being himself. "I care about the Avatar. I care about my honour."
"The path to honour is not smooth and easy to follow, nephew," Iroh smiled, a little sadly. "Honour is difficult to come by, and fleeting as a hummingmoth. Capturing the Avatar may not be the solution you are looking for."
"It has to be," Zuko said. "Otherwise, there's nothing left for me."
Iroh sighed again. "It looks like there is nothing left for me, either..."
"Uncle?"
"My tea is empty..."
"I see the port!" Aang exclaimed, and for a brief moment, he shed the weight of the world from his shoulders, forgetting the burden that would lay on him when he got to the North Pole. For now, there was exploring to be done.
"Wait!" Sokka cried in warning. "Fly low!" His eyes were narrowed and his grip on the side of the saddle was tight in expectation.
"Why?" Katara asked, tilting her head slightly. No sooner had he opened his mouth in reply than a great shot of flame flew a meter from Appa's muzzle. Sokka pointed to a sign flying the Fire Nation flag.
"That's why! Go low and back into the trees!" Sokka ordered, adopting his I'm-the-leader-even-though-we-have-the-Avatar-here tone. Aang frowned back at the village, but steered Appa into the forest's cover.
Nan Kwei was built along the shoreline; not tremendously huge, it only accommodated a couple thousand people. However, as a resource town, there were none for miles around which could match it. Aang remembered how the people of the Northern Water Tribe brought fish to its shores, and traded for lumber. The small town was situated with the sea along one edge, and was framed by a forest along its backside, so wood was in full supply. The airbenders who came would take a little of each fish and wood, leaving behind money or sometimes just wisdom, if it was good enough.
But as Aang watched the port sink out of view, its poles all flying the Fire Nation's insignia, the cost of his cowardice a hundred years ago truly began to sink in. Though he was still not quite ready to accept the responsibility of being the Avatar, he was more than ready to accept the responsibility of his mistakes.
With a smart salute, his lieutenant delivered the status report. His uncle's words had proved startlingly prophetic: they would not have enough fuel to continue their desperate chase for much longer. They could either reduce speed to conserve it ("Impossible! We'd lose the Avatar," Zuko hissed) or try to make a stopover in Nan Kwei, a Fire Nation-controlled port. While it would have the supplies Zuko needed, there was no doubt that Zhao's forces were there, beginning preparations for an assault on the Northern Water Tribe.
"How do you plan on getting fuel out of Nan Kwei, Zuko?" Iroh asked him later when he'd heard of the plan. Zuko paced his quarters furiously. The temperature in the room raised slightly, but Iroh only looked more comfortable. "Though Admiral Zhao is already en route to the North Pole, his forces stationed there will not just give it to you. They are under orders not to, for he was hardly pleased with you at our last meeting. They may even try to arrest you on some biased charge."
"We'll think of something. Diversionary tactics, a sneak attack from an unguarded part of town, full-on force…" his plans became more and more foolish as they increased in number, his tone similarly increasing in desperation. This was not just about the ship, for Zuko: this was a life requirement.
Iroh shook his head. "You want to steal fuel from your own country? And how would you get the coal out of town when you got to it? It would be stored in underground piles or noisy, heavy wheelbarrows. Any guard within two blocks would hear you!"
Zuko replied through gritted teeth and closed fists, "I'd think of something when I got there!"
"Think of what?!" Iroh bellowed. "When you get swarmed with soldiers, you become helpless! You wouldn't be able to bend as soon as you found it, in case you set it all alight! "
"But neither could the enemy!" he countered, wheeling on him. "And I'd have the advantage of surprise!" Every word brought him a step closer to his uncle, every syllable made him lean over him a little more.
But Iroh would not back down from an impudent nephew. He was only ever stopped by the great walls of Ba Sing Se: a desperate teenager was nothing. "Your enemy recovers from surprise in two seconds. Then they have the advantage of knowing the terrain and landscape, being unburdened by having to escort fuel out of the city, and numbers. If you rush into this without planning anything, the worst will happen and you won't even have any backup to save yourself!"
"If I do it quickly," Zuko said, leaving and closing the door behind him, "I won't need to be saved."
"They're going to be searching for us, soon, you know," Sokka said, mostly because a line of simple fact that sounded like pessimism couldn't come from either of the other two. Momo jumped on his head and curled around it, only leaping from his to Aang's shoulders when the former tried to brush him off. "We should probably get out of here."
"We will," Aang assured him. "I just want to see what's going on in the port, first. Besides, if it is a Fire Nation base and we can disrupt it somehow…"
"Then we give a major edge to the Northern Water Tribe!" Katara finished for him, the excitement in her voice shining. Usually one for avoiding the Fire Nation, the prospect of helping her Northern brethren seemed too tempting to refuse. "Aang, that's brilliant!"
"…um… hello? Fire Nation Military Outpost? Am I the only one who doesn't like the combination of those four words?" Sokka said, exasperated. "I don't even like any of those words individually."
"Well, you can stay here with Appa, if you'd like," Katara smiled. Appa, taking this as his cue, lumbered over to Sokka and gave him a ten-ton lick. Sokka fell over.
"I almost wonder which is the more dangerous…"
"Appa was the less dangerous!" Sokka cried, running from a quartet of Fire Nation soldiers with Aang and Katara to his left and right.
"Well, why don't you go back there and let them know their doing their job as Fire Nation?" Katara gasped at him.
"Less talking, more running!" Sokka shot back.
Aang twirled his staff into a wide lateral swing behind them and used a gust of wind to trip them up. One saw it coming and jumped over it, while the others collided into a tangled heap of arm, legs and spears. He kept up his chase, but was instantly caught in one of Katara's infamous "backward-shooting-freeze attacks."
"What happens if one of them comes from in front of us?" Sokka shot at his sister.
"You use your boomerang and I'll freeze it to their tongues."
"That was cold..."
"If that was a pun, I'm freezing you first."
They rounded the corner of a building and came into the town square. There was an exit to the north; they came in from the south, and a particularly strange Fire Nation solider standing under a sign ("Dennis") blocked the west, with a line of solid buildings blocking the east. Soldiers began pouring in from the north the moment they'd hit the center of the square.
"Wrong way!" Sokka called, throwing his boomerang in a wide arc. It didn't do any damage, but it did slow down the soldiers' charge, buying them precious time. He caught the boomerang deftly and turned on his heel, Katara mirroring his turn.
"Agreed," Aang decided. "Back to—" But turning around revealed that Fire Nation soldiers were already pouring in from the south, as well. In a moment, the square's perimeter was lined with enemies.
"If you have any ideas, Sokka, I'd love to hear them!" Katara said, already shakily holding her bending water in midair. Sokka spun his boomerang once, menacingly, and then pointed it towards the south entrance.
"I say a lot of magic air that way. Clear us a path back to the forest," he motioned to Aang.
The airbender nodded his assent, but added, "Okay, but I'm going to glide the other way into the port for a while to buy you time. No Fire Nation soldier can ignore the prospect of capturing the Avatar."
"Aang, no," Katara admonished him. "It's too risky, there are too many of them!" She tried to catch his eye, but he was already focused on making his next move. He drew a deep breath to focus on the air around and inside him, and began.
His staff lowered, he planted his feet and swung his staff upward, then flicked it to the right at the swing's apex. The resulting sonic wave scattered the soldiers into the air and the additional flick created a batting motion from the air, hitting them to the right. They collapsed into buildings and roofs, stunned.
"There's your opening! Go!" Aang muttered to them, twirling his staff into the airbender's glider he was so accustomed to. "Hey!" he cried to the soldiers, firing intermittent gusts of wind in haphazard directions. "Look at me! I'm the Avatar!" And he took off into the sky over the northern exit from the square, inviting all the soldiers to follow him. Katara and Sokka began their dash for the southern edge of town.
A Fire Nation soldier watched them flee. "Captain, are we going to let the blue ones go?"
"...probably."
"But that was the most blatant diversionary tactic I've ever seen!"
"You do recall there's a large bounty on the Avatar, captured alive, correct?"
The soldier didn't reply, already running after the group in pursuit of the flying money.
Most days, the Blue Spirit needed shade to work. The darkness of an alley, the quiet of the nighttime to slip in and out of places. The darkness was the best place to leap from, the best place to pin a foe with dual blades, and the best place to slip into when danger approached.
Today was bright and sunny, comfortably warm, despite its proximity to the North Pole. The sun was shining down, illuminating every square inch of the premises. There was no darkness to cling to.
...of course, there didn't seem to be any soldiers, either.
The Blue Spirit did not know why the port was empty. Surely something so valuable as fuel should not go unprotected, but for whatever reason, it was unprotected, and he would take advantage of that for as long as his good fortune held out.
He crept from an alley, making as little noise as possible. There were no guards... no people in sight. Something big must be happening. A low rumbling sound, like the noise of a hundred people running, was carried on the wind. In fact, the wind, itself, sounded louder than usual. Some unknown instinct told him to retreat back into the alley, and as soon as he did...
"Faster! Faster! He's getting away!"
"What do you want me to do, run up?"
A very familiar boy on a very familiar glider zoomed past, followed immediately by several scores of Fire Nation soldiers on foot, the ones in front punching out balls of flame which he narrowly, yet familiarly, avoided.
The Blue Spirit suppressed a gasp. The Avatar...
Now all that was necessary was a plan to capture the Avatar and get coal at the same time...
Fire Nation ships ran on coal. Without a steady supply, the Fire Nation Navy wouldn't be able to continue their assaults on the shores of the other nations. As such, the warehouse where the coal was kept was marked with a strict sign: "No bending within these walls. Prosecutors will be fired."
Aang, however, just saw this as a temporary safe haven. With one hand off the glider, he blew the door open with a mighty snap of razor wind, and flew through the created circular hole, setting down in the center of the warehouse. He had no problems bending in here. They did.
Advantage: Aang.
Advantage: Blue Spirit.
The Avatar had barricaded himself inside a warehouse, albeit one with a large hole where a door used to be. Momentarily, Fire Nation soldiers would pour into the warehouse. The Blue Spirit could leap in at an opportune moment and dispatch as many soldiers as necessary to secure the premises, all the while gaining the Avatar's trust. He could trick the Avatar into carrying a large amount of coal via airbending to his ship (whereby the Avatar would be accused of theft and not himself), then capture him, once he was tired, back at his vessel. The plan was perfect!
All that was left to do is swoop in at the last moment...
The last moment wasn't ready to come, yet. If the Blue Spirit had overlooked something, it was that a hundred non-bending soldiers against one over-powered airbender was a clear mismatch. The soldiers couldn't firebend, but Aang had no qualms against airbending to his heart's content.
Two soldiers came in with spears lowered, charging from either side. Aang twirled in a jump and each spear ran into a shield of air, deflecting them to either side of his body. Aang landed on his hands and kicked up, and a sharp updraft of air caught each of them beneath the chin and they went down. Another soldier leaped from above off a pile of coal, and Aang quickly taught him why one never, ever attacks an airbender from above.
Aang's staff got caught against a spear, so his left hand caused a shockwave that blew five soldiers away, instead. When he was surrounded, he used his bending to leap high in the air and flip over several of them to get to safer ground.
For ten minutes the battle raged on. The Blue Spirit took advantage of the soldiers being preoccupied to sneak into the warehouse and take up a hiding place behind several wheelbarrows. He was waiting for a chance to jump in, but Aang looked invincible against the soldiers. They were mostly dispatched when it happened: Aang leapt out of the way of a spear, arched his back around a second one swinging up at him, and came down for a landing. He landed on the slope of a mound of coal in the corner of the building and his foot slipped. Three things happened at once in that moment.
First: Aang hit the ground with a Fire Nation spear heading right for him. He had time to shunt the tip slightly with airbending, but all it would do is make the spear impale a different part of his body. He could choose heart, shoulder or stomach, but that's all the time he had. He began to bend.
Second: The Blue Spirit saw the moment of opportunity coming; he had to save the Avatar, now. He jumped up, charged, and threw a fireball, but realized to his horror that it was sailing wide... and was going to sail past the soldier and hit coal lined up against the far wall, igniting it and ruining his chances of getting both the Avatar and the fuel he needed.
Third, a sudden large blast went off on the opposite corner of the building. The blast ended up being less of an explosion as it was a "this is what happens when a ten-ton flying bison hits the wall of a warehouse." Appa forced his way through the wall with a forward gust of airbending and at an upward angle, so as little of the wall fell on Katara and Sokka, riding on his back, as possible. Katara fired water from Appa's back to protect Aang; the Blue Spirit's fireball fizzled harmlessly against it, and the water froze around the soldier, giving Aang the time he needed to escape.
"Guys!" he cried, gliding up to Appa. "How did you find me?"
"Oh, I dunno," Sokka said with his typical Sokka grin in place. "Empty port, the sound of fighting is coming from here, and there's a giant hole in the wall where a door should be."
Katara smiled. "You left a nice trail of burn marks along the city from the square, too."
"Not to mention a nice scattering of unconscious bodies," Sokka commented, looking down at multiple Fire Nation soldiers, laying prone on the ground.
"Let's get out of here and head for the Northern Air Temple before they wake up," Katara mumbled. "Somehow I don't think Fire Nation soldiers are interested in a nice spot of tea."
"Delicious!" Iroh smiled, the tea warming his heart. "It is not quite the same as peppermint, but still feels just as warm." He had spent the day lounging around the deck. Zuko had docked in the morning, casting anchor just out of sight from Nan Kwei, and disappeared into the forest with a package, with the orders that none were to follow. If he wasn't back by nightfall, Iroh planned to go to Nan Kwei (it's not as though he didn't know where he was going), but to his surprise, Zuko returned with an ostrich-horse-drawn carriage full of coal, the same package messily wrapped at his side.
"Zuko!" Iroh called down. "Where did you find that?"
"Tree Spirits, uncle," he called back up. Of course, with the military presence of the town unconscious from the Avatar's efforts, it was absolutely no trouble to "borrow" a carriage, load it with coal and bring it back.
"I have heard the Spirits of the woods are quite active this time of year," Iroh replied pleasantly.
"You heard correctly," Zuko replied. "Have the men cart this aboard, load up and we'll set sail for the Northern Air Temple." At his uncle's quizzical look, he replied, "I overheard a little birdie mentioning something about it..."
Iroh had the coal loaded, but watched Zuko. With the success of this mission, which was no doubt foolhardy, rushed and risky, there was a bigger change that when the big showdown came (most likely in the worst of places, like the North Pole or something similarly bad...), he was going to do something even riskier. If only he weren't so hot-tempered.
But he was his father's son, after all. Regrettably.
-Dedicated to the best friend a person could ever hope to find, and certainly one of my best: to Sam, on her birthday.