The balloon hit a wide pond of swamp with a jolt that sent flying those three that had managed to stay in the basket. Ursa surfaced from the mucky water, albeit with a lily pad running down her long hair, but when Toph didn't Katara dove in after her. The water below was thick with algae and so the waterbender swished her hands to clear it for visibility.
She looked one way and saw nothing. She looked another and saw the little earthbender sinking like a stone.
As she dove Katara had to constantly flick the algae from her way, as the tiny organisms seemed to swarm over and invade any water she'd managed to purify. She felt like an ostrich-horse flicking away flies with a tail but she kept at it until she'd snagged the collar of Toph's shirt.
Katara resurfaced with the coughing girl, Toph clutching hold of her so tightly she might've dragged them both back down, in time to see their transportation claimed by the water.
Katara's expression sunk just as quickly as the balloon. Both a river and a ravine were in their path to the Western Air Temple, short work for the likes of her and Toph, but in them having to walk all the way back the rest of the gang would have to abandon them for any chance of winning the war. As powerful as the Avatar was he wasn't invincible. Katara, Toph and Zuko were some of the rebels' top players; their absence could and would be detrimental...even if Azula didn't manage to reach the palace in time from the solo journey she'd undertaken the last they'd seen her.
A glance to the earthy shore found Ursa dropping to her knees in grief over all that could've happened to her children.
"Hang on, Toph," Katara mumbled, swimming for the both of them.
Being the resident optimist could really be a drag at such times.
Once her feet touched mud Toph leapt from Katara's support, joyous to be back among the element she knew. In one of the few times, Katara wasn't in the least infected by her friend's enthusiasm. She thought ahead to their transportation issues and more locally to the wilted woman before her.
"Ursa," she started, reaching a hand for her shoulder.
"They were just snatched right up," Ursa gasped, her eyes staring past anything that existed as though she were replaying the scene in her head. "So high above the ground, nothing to slow their descent…Zuko, Keiko…I'd only just gotten them back and now…now…"
Katara didn't rise at once to say otherwise for the situation was dire. She decided to say what she thought was the truth. "If I know anything from this past year traveling with the Avatar," – she paused to think back – "I know that Zuko is a survivor."
Eyes beginning to shine over, Ursa shut them tight to keep tears at bay.
"They'll be okay. That guy can take anything you throw at him."
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His head cranked lower and lower and his teeth grinded with such force that he could hear the noise reverberating through his skull. Zuko did so to try and cope with the whining, flailing little demon in his arm, held upside down as he trudged through the muck.
"Bad! Bad! Bad!" Keiko shrieked through the dress encircling her head. She'd been saying the same throughout the last hour, seeming to have a selective memory for the rough way she'd previously been held and a sore bottom courtesy of Zuko rather than the time he had only just rescued her from certain doom. "Keiko want up! Up!"
"We tried that already!" He brandished his other arm lined with tiny teeth marks. "You can't be trusted!"
"Waaaah!"
Zuko felt a patch of heat form on his shoulder and, like he'd done many times before, swatted out the fire.
"Mommy!"
"She's not here."
"Mommy!"
"I'm telling you she's not here! You've just got me!"
"Bad! Mean!" Keiko shouted, putting emphasis into every syllable. "No like! No LIKE!"
"So I gathered!" he yelled back, putting out another fire to be at his knee in her discontent, sidestepping an upshot of earth from below.
Trying to tune out Keiko's endless complaining, Zuko looked round the swamp they'd found themselves in. The canopy above shielded off all but a few holes of sunlight; all of it looked the same and so every so often he'd slash open an 'X' on a tree to keep from walking in circles. The sludgy water that reached his shins penetrated through the pores of his boots so that he could feel a disgusting squish with every step he took. He tried to focus on a promising direction to take but was met with another distraction.
The insect that had so tempted him on the cliffside had evaded him and so Momo zoomed in a zigzag formation all throughout the path ahead to find something else to satisfy his hunger. He whipped from one side to another, curling up and hissing at a game too large, scrambling after small game that had hidden in a log and blowing into the holes in the wood, making wind notes that sounded most rude.
A deep growl rumbled in Zuko's throat but he kept his mouth shut.
"Bad! Bad! Bad!" Keiko kicked any part of him she could reach.
Momo had cornered a bug but as he went in for the kill it blasted him in the face with a noxious smelling liquid.
With a wild squeak, Momo tumbled out of the tree, squabbling and scratching at the smell. He flew to the other side and, with the reduced visibility, crashed into a hanging of vines, getting stuck and kicking up an even louder ruckus.
Every part of Zuko tightened, hunched inward to keep it in.
Momo snapped the vines through with his sharp little teeth. He rubbed at the liquid obscuring his vision, jumped off to fly again but his formations were loopy and off-kilter like he'd been downing cactus juice again.
Momo didn't make it to the other side for Zuko's free hand flashed out, seizing the little lemur by his long, fuzzy tail.
"Stop being annoying!" he yelled into the lemur's face.
Letting loose a small amount of his anger, Zuko continued to storm through the mucky swamp, Momo bumping along his right leg, Keiko his left, in his irritation showing them the same care as he would to a pair of hunted game. Only too soon would he be able to give them back to those who actually enjoyed their company and only then would he be free of two burdens.
Before that happened though, Keiko popped his last nerve by kicking his sore shoulder.
"You want down so much? Well there you go!" he growled, flipping her over and dumping her right there into the muck. He unhanded Momo too but the lemur was quick to fly to a branch. "Have a nice life!"
Pulling herself up into a sit, Keiko's lips pursed to form a tiny 'o', the first she was struck silent in some time.
Zuko turned from her in one harsh movement. He stomped off from them alone.
The tiny 'o' didn't leave Keiko's lips as she watched him go further and further away with every step. She turned her head to the left, her little pigtails bobbing as she did, and she turned to the right. Everything was slimy and wet and with night closing in branches looked like claws reaching to eat her up.
Keiko made a tiny noise that could've been a squeak or a hiccup. She made a thin, wordless cry after Zuko.
He kept walking.
The toddler piped up louder, putting a shrill sort of whine to it, got to her feet and waded after him through the waterline that reached her collarbone. The mud did plenty more to slow her body down than it did Zuko.
"Zzzz!" she cried after him, stumbling, trying to catch up but with her little legs she could breach little of the distance between.
His form was several feet off and beginning to be claimed by the shadows of the night.
"Zzzz!" Keiko cried again, her voice straining with desperation as the mud hindered her so that she could barely plant one foot in front of the other.
Deciding only then that he had proved his point, Zuko stopped, not for a moment intending on abandoning her no matter how upset he was. His father may have raised Azula in such a cruel manner but it was not the way he'd been brought up by Iroh. Katara would've yelled at him until she was blue in the face but, as young as she was, Keiko was still old enough to be taught a certain amount of respect.
When he walked back for her Keiko's face lit up like a sunbeam, an expression he'd never thought she'd have directed to him. She reached out her pudgy arms to be lifted up again, her happy, happy face deceiving that she could have ever acted as naughty as she had. By itself that face of hers managed to melt away some of Zuko's bad feelings. "I've got a lot of grown-up stuff to take care of," he said softly as he walked, "so you've got to be a good girl for me now, okay?"
"Good girl! Good girl!" Keiko agreed, nodding her head so vigorously it might've dislodged from her neck.
"You're not just saying that?"
"Mmmm!" She shook her head in that same way.
"All right," Zuko consented but when he'd gotten to the two foot mark separating them the sight of a catfish-gator sent him jolting back in his soles. As quickly as he'd drawn back he dove forward after but it was too late. The gator snapped its jaws over the hem of Keiko's little dress and dragged her under so fast that the water covered her scream off halfway.
He dove for that very spot but surfaced with nothing, the gator having sped away.
"Oh no! No, no!" he said back to himself, wringing his head in disbelief. "Keiko! Keiko, where are you!?"
While the channel was wide it was some ways off that it parted off into two different directions and from the currents in the water Zuko knew the thing hadn't double-backed on him. He couldn't afford the mud weighing him down so jumped onto the higher ground in chase, straining his eyes in the darkening night for any sign of bubbles on the water's surface.
"Keiko!" he shouted, cupping his hands over his mouth to carry the cry. He didn't know how long her little lungs could retain air.
The night continued to drone its croaking melody of animal calls.
"Give me a sign!"
A pillar of earth blasted out of the water and for a moment Zuko glimpsed a scaly tail.
"That'll do!" And without a second's delay Zuko made a running leap from the tree roots, holding back his arm only to swing it forward in full force in a flaming fist onto the gator's back.
The force of the blow made the reptile release its prey and when it tried to reclaim her Zuko pounded it hard on the snout. He ordered Keiko to the trees and she scrambled to do so without complaint. She covered her eyes when she heard him draw his swords.
Shivering like a leaf and wet, Keiko kept her eyes covered even as the terrible creature's fights were suddenly cut short. She turned her head, using her ears only, and what she heard were footsteps splashing nearer before stopping before her.
The girl gave a shrill cry and jumped into his arms so that Zuko had to drop his swords just to catch her.
"It's okay," he assured, patting her little back awkwardly as she wailed so hard that her whole body shook. "You're okay now."
She didn't stop and Zuko didn't know what magic words could make it all better, words that his mother, Katara, even Uncle Iroh were sure to know. He did what he thought he'd have wanted had their roles been reversed and just rocked her, continuing to say that it was okay now.
Whatever Zuko had been doing to console her, the process it seemed was far too slow for the environment they were in and they had attracted the attention of the locals. Yellow eyes of all sizes glared from the shadows all around, looking only at them.
Zuko's mouth stretched back in a grimace. One firebender could only handle so much, not a whole legion of terrible, nasty swamp-beasts, not with only one free arm to spare.
"Keiko," he whispered out of the side of his mouth. "Keiko, shhh. Be quiet now."
She continued on and on. He heard snarls and growls, saw scales and claws emerge, all drawn in by the cry of easy game.
They were getting closer.
"Quiet!" he hissed, trying to cover her mouth. "You said you'd be good for me. I'm telling you now, be quiet." But nothing he said made Keiko calm down, not after what she had survived. The way things were going they'd have escaped one set of jaws only to be caught by another.
Zuko gulped and he closed his eyes as he held her. He couldn't believe it had come to this but he wasn't going to hesitate.
"Leaves from the vine," he crooned with all the elegance of a bullfrog, rocking her.
A hiccup rose in between Keiko's sobs.
"Falling so slow," he continued, hoping, "like fragile, tiny shells drifting in the foam,"
She continued to sob but the intensity dwindled down to whimpers.
"Little soldier girl," he adjusted the lyrics, "come marching home. Brave soldier girl…comes marching home."
Exhausted from her forceful crying and being dragged under without air, the little girl sunk onto his chest. She hadn't the energy to give him any more grief that night. Zuko wondered if maybe she had heard that song before from their mother, reflected that his uncle sang it much better.
A good number of the beasts that had been closing in seemed to lose interest now that the potential prey was no longer projecting so strong a signal and Zuko set the bolder ones running with a blast of his flames all around.
Not trusting the swamp, nor to leave Keiko alone even within his sight, Zuko undid the sash around his waist and, after several tries, constructed a carrier to strap her to his back, something more comfortable for the both of them. He stripped the catfish-gator only of the meat he could carry, knowing nature would finish off the remains and, making sure Momo was tailing them, started off.
"All right," said Zuko to his two wards after they'd found a place to set camp, "if you're going to be traveling with me there're some things we've got to get straight: first, no making me sing ever again; second, I'm group leader so what I say goes; last-" – he fixed Keiko with a serious look – "you, young lady, are not to set me on fire anymore, not for any reason. Got it?"
Keiko cooed, rocking back on her feet, as if wondering why he were still holding onto that unpleasantness when she'd sent it away long ago.
Zuko fed the two cubes of gator meat, saving the largest portion for his larger stomach. He lay down to sleep right there, using his arm as a pillow, trying to get comfortable on the great slab of rock. He heard little feet patter up to him, heard her plop down next to him.
"I don't know any stories," he grumbled, not even opening his eyes.
"Zzzz…" Keiko seemed to be trying to push out the rest of it, needing help.
He blinked his eyes open, looked at her. "Zu – ko," he said slowly, emphasizing both syllables.
"Zzzzu…" she tried again, determined to get it right.
"Zuko," he repeated patiently. "The last part is the same as yours."
It all came out in one burst. "Zuzu!"
His face creased when he heard that dreaded nickname, the one that Azula had made a show of taunting him with for so long, making him feel less and less like the elder of the two. He'd been about to tell Keiko to keep at it until he saw how she swelled in pride for her accomplishment.
"Yeah, fine," he grumbled and as she plunked down into a spread-eagle position beside him, asleep before she'd even hit the ground, Zuko found that, spoken in Keiko's voice, the nickname didn't much bother him all too much.
That wasn't to say though that he intended on extending that generosity to anyone else.