The next morning Aang woke up and started pacing so Sokka had to drive. "Will you sit down?! If we hit a bump you'll go flying, what's bugging you anyway?" Sokka asked.

"It's what avatar Roku said. I'm supposed to master all four elements before Fire Lord Ozai uses a comet to win the war next summer!" Aang ranted.

"Well, let's see, you pretty much mastered air bending and that only took you 112 years. I'm sure you can master three more elements by next summer." Sokka said.

"You're not helping." I said scratching Patch behind the ear, I found out that Patch was a boy.

"I haven't even started water bending and we're still weeks away from the North Pole!" Aang said "WHAT AM I GONNA DO?!" I grabbed his wrist and pulled him down so he was sitting.

"First of all, calm down, it's gonna be okay." I said.

"If you want, I can teach you some of the stuff I know?" Katara asked.

"Teach me too!" I said.

"Fine." She laughed.

"You'd do that?" Aang asked.

"We'll need to find a good source of water first though." Katara said.

"Maybe we can find a nice puddle for you to splash in." Sokka mocked. We soon got to a massive river with a beautiful waterfall. "Nice puddle." Sokka said. I laughed as Patch jumped into the water along with Sadie, they both started splashing around. Oppa and Momo also got themselves soaked in the water.

"Don't start without me boy!" Aang yelled, he was about to jump in with Oppa.

"Remember the reason we're here." Katara said.

"Oh right, time to practice water bending." Aang said.

"Great, so…what am I supposed to do?" Sokka asked.

"You could clean the gunk out of Oppa's toes?" Aang said, he handed Sokka branch.

"So while you guys are playing with water I get to go hard at work and clean mud out of a giant bison' feet?" Sokka asked.

"Mud and bugs." Aang grinned.

"Okay." He shrugged. He took the branch off of Aang and walked over to Oppa. Katara started teaching.

"This is a basic move, but it still took me months to perfect." Katara said "So, don't be frustrated if you don't get it right away. Just push and pull the water like this." She moved her form inwards and outwards, making a very small wave with the water. "The key is getting the wrist movement right." Aang and I stood up and walked to the edge. I focused my chi and copied what Katara was doing.

"Like this?" Aang asked.

"That's almost right, if you keep practicing then I'm sure that eventually-"she started.

"Hey, I'm bending it already." I said.

"Me too!" Aang said. We were both making a wave about twice the size of Katara's.

"How are you doing that?" she asked me.

"I can already fire bend, so I know how to focus my chi already." I said.

"I still can't believe you got that so quickly." She said "It took me two months to learn that move."

"Well, you had to figure it out all on your own, we're lucky enough to have a great teacher." Aang said. When Katara wasn't looking I gave him a high five and said "Nice save."

"Thanks." He said. Next Katara showed us another move.

"This is a more difficult move; I like to call it 'streaming the water'." Katara said. She got some water out of the river and moved it around her. "It's harder than it looks so don't be disappointed if," she cut herself off. Aang and I were literally dancing around with the water, it was so easy. She dropped her water with a splash whereas Aang and I gracefully slid ours back into the water. "Nice work, though the over the head flair was a little too much." She said to Aang.

"Oh sorry, well anyway, don't stop now, keep em coming!" Aang chirped.

"Well, I kind of know this one other move, but it's pretty hard, I haven't even totally figured it out yet, the idea is to create a big powerful wave." She moved back and swung her arms up, it started to make a wave but she dropped it.

"Aim for Sokka." I nudged Aang, he laughed and nodded. I took a deep breath in and did the same as Katara at the same time with Aang. We made a massive wave that landed on top of Sokka and drenched him.

"UH! GUYS!" he yelled.

"Looks like we got the hang of that move." I said.

"Yeah, what else you got?" Aang asked.

"I think that's enough practicing for today." Katara growled.

"Yeah, I'll say, you practiced our supplies down the river!" Sokka complained I looked past him; we had just washed all of our food and other stuff away.

"I'm sure we can replace it somehow." I said hopefully. We walked to a town nearby; the docks were full of ships and travelling merchants. I had two copper pieces to myself and the others had three. I was walking around all the fire nation stalls. I finally got to a stall and saw a beautiful bracelet, it was a thick leather one that you tie on, imprinted into the leather were the symbols for all four nations. I handed over one copper piece to the person behind the stall and got the bracelet; I put it into my pocket and went to join the others.

"We have exactly three copper pieces left from the money that King Bumi gave us." Sokka explained "We need to spend it wisely."

"Actually, two-two copper pieces." Aang said, rubbing the back of his head in an embarrassed fashion.

"What did you buy?" I asked with my hands on my hips.

"I couldn't say no to this whistle." Aang said, he held up a whistle that was shaped like a bison. He took a deep breath in and blew, Sokka covered his ears expecting a very loud noise, but the whistle was muted, it wouldn't blow properly.

"It doesn't even work." Sokka said. Momo made a weird clicking noise. "See, even Momo thinks it's a piece of junk."

"No offence Aang, but I'll hold the money from now on." Katara said, she got the money off of Aang. We walked through the stalls until we got to the boats.

"Earth Nation! Fire Nation! Water Nation! So long as a bargain is your inclination, you're welcome here!" I heard someone yell from in front of a boat. Suddenly that guy who was shouting ran up to Sokka and said "You there, I can see from your clothing that you're world travelling types, perhaps I can interest you in some exotic curios?" We carried on walking apart from Aang he stayed back.

"Sure, what are curios?" Aang asked.

"I'm not entirely sure but we got 'em!" the guy said. He put his arm around Aang's shoulders and took him aboard the ship, Katara, Sokka and I had no choice but to follow them. We started looking around the ship.

"I've never seen such a fine specimen of lemur, that beast would fetch me a hefty some if you'd be interesting in bartering?" growled a giant guy with a big hat and a reptile bird on his shoulder. The bird on his shoulder squawked and Momo hissed.

"Momo's not for sale." Aang said, he hugged Momo. I looked around and saw nothing that really interested me.

"Look at this Hotaru, Aang," Katara said, we walked over and looked at what she was looking at, it looked like a water bending scroll "It's a water bending scroll!" She said, I was right. "Check out these crazy moves!" she said in awe.

"Where did you guys get a water bending scroll?" I asked the guy with the reptile bird.

"Let's just say I got it up North at the most reasonable price…free." He slammed down the scroll and rolled it up before putting it away.

"Wait a minute…sea loving traders, with suspiciously required merchandise and pet reptile birds!" Sokka said "You guys are pirates!" he exclaimed.

"We prefer to think of ourselves as high risk traders." The guy said, putting his arm around Sokka's shoulders.

"So, how much for the-uh-traded-scroll?" Katara asked, our two copper pieces in hand.

"I've already got a buyer, a nobleman in the Earth Kingdom, unless of course you kids have two hundred gold pieces on you right now?" the lizard bird owner said.

"I know how to deal with these guys, pirates love to haggle." Aang said, he held his hand out, Katara gave him the money.

"I'll be waiting outside." I said. They nodded. I walked outside and sat down; Patch crawled out from his space in my shirt. I laughed as he crawled up my body and sat on my shoulder; he wrapped his tail around my neck and sat there comfortably. A few minutes went by before I heard the others come out of the ship.

"What was that about Katara?" Aang asked.

"Yeah, I was just starting to browse their boomerang collection." Sokka said.

"I'll just feel a lot better once we get away from here." Katara said nervously. I frowned and got up, we started walking away.

"HEY THERE! Wait you!" I heard the pirate from before yell.

"Well well, look who's come to their senses, told ya the haggling would pay off." Aang smirked. Many of the pirates came off of the ship with their weapons.

"Uh, I don't think these pirates are here to trade with us." Katara said. We started to run away. We ran through some streets, one street we ran down had a cart of cabbages. I ran past and knocked one off by accident, then Katara knocked one off when she came past, then Sokka knocked one off when he came past, when Aang went past he jumped through the cabbage cart and didn't knock any off, then he sent a wave of air through the cabbage kart, it flew back and hit the three pirates behind it. "This city is even worse than Omashu!" the cabbage guy said. When we ran forward three pirates appeared in front of us. We turned back and ran away from the pirates.

"I hope that lemur of yours has nine lives!" a pirate threatened. We eventually came to a dead end. "Now, who gets to taste the steel of my blades first?" the pirate asked, flashing his blades. I started to step forward, I don't back away from challenges. Katara caught my arm.

"One of your arms is broken, normally you could beat all three of these guys on your own, but not now." She said. I nodded in agreement. Aang blasted wind at them, they were knocked back. Aang threw his glider and jumped on "GRAB ON!" he yelled. We nodded and hung onto the gilder.

"I thought we were running away from the pirates?!" Katara yelled, we were flying to the pirates.

"Just hand on!" Aang said. As soon as we got to them Aang air bended the air around his glider and lifted us up. Katara, Sokka and I hopped across the pirate's heads. We flew back to our camp. When we got there I fell to the ground and laughed hard.

"That was so fun." I said.

"Yeah, it was. I used to kind of look up to pirates but those guys were terrible." Aang said.

"Yeah, I know, that's why I took this." Katara said, she held out the water scroll!

"No. Way." Aang said.

"Isn't it great?!" Katara said enthusiastically.

"No. No wonder they were trying to hack us up! You stole their water bending scroll!" Sokka said angrily.

"I prefer to call it high risk trading." Katara said.

"Hah, good one." Aang said.

"Sokka, where do you think they got it? They stole it from a water bender!" Katara said to her brother.

"It doesn't matter; you put all of our lives in danger, just so that you could learn some fancy magic splashes." Sokka said.

"These are real water bending forms; you know how crucial it is for Aang to learn water bending." Katara said.

"Pfff, whatever." Sokka scoffed before walking away.

"Well, what's done is done, we have it, we might as well learn from it." Aang said.

"Yeah, thank you Katara, we all need that scroll." I said. She nodded thankfully and laid the scroll on a tree stump. I looked over the moves and frowned.

"What?" She asked.

"All of these moves require two arms." I said, waving my one working arm around.

"You practice what we've done already then." Katara said. I nodded and smiled. I walked over to the edge of the water and took off my top layer of clothes, leaving my swimming costume. Patch ran over and jumped onto my shoulder. I canon balled into the water and swam around with Sadie, Patch and Oppa. When I was done swimming I got out and dried off before going into the woods and gathering wood for the fire. I came back and put it all in a pile before setting fire to it using fire bending. Aang slept on his fur blanket and I got into my sleeping bag and left Sokka to eat his food, Katara got into her sleeping bag as well. I was curling up against Sadie and Patch was nestled on my shoulder.

In the morning I was awoken by Sokka saying "Hey! Where'd she go?" I blinked the last traces of sleep from my eyes and looked over at where Katara would normally sleep, her sleeping bag was empty. "I don't believe it." He said. I stretched my good arm and sat up.

"What's wrong?" Aang asked.

"She took the scroll!" Sokka said angrily "She's obsessed with that thing, it's just a matter of time before she gets us all in-"A length of cord was thrown around Sokka's wrists. Patch ran up my body to my shoulder and hid behind my hair.

"Sokka!" I yelled. I jumped in front of Sokka and slid my foot under the guy attacking Sokka, he went down to the floor, I didn't accept fire bending training, I said nothing about close range combat, I could also fight with almost any weapon. Sokka grabbed his club and ran at the guy I had just knocked over, he was now getting up. I saw something being fired at Aang, a net wrapped around him. I felt a foot in my back, I was kicked down to the floor.

"We got him." The pirate said. They dragged Aang off.

"Oh what? We're not good enough to kid nap?!" Sokka asked. A net was fired around Sokka and then another one around me.

"Damnit Sokka!" I said. We were dragged to the shore somewhere else where I saw a fire nation ship, why did it always have to belong to Brother?! We were taken out of our nets and then roped were tied around our wrists, mine was tied around my body because the other arm was taped to my side. "I wouldn't have expected you to get caught by these novices sister?" Brother mocked.

"Well it's kind of hard when you only have one working arm." I retorted. I looked behind brother "Oh, high Uncle." I said.

"Hi." Uncle said.

"I'm sorry Aang, this is all my fault." Katara said.

"No, no it's not." Aang said kindly.

"It kind of is." Uncle said.

"Give me the boy." Brother said. He had the scroll in his hands.

"You give us the scroll." The pirates said.

"You're really going to hand over the avatar for a stupid piece of parchment?" Sokka exclaimed to the pirates.

"Don't listen to him!" brother said "He's trying to turn us against each other!"

"Hotaru, use the princess card." Sokka whispered, I sighed angrily and nodded.

"Didn't you know you stupid pirates, he is the avatar and I'm princess Hotaru of the fire nation, I'll have you all imprisoned." I said.

"Yeah right, the fire nation princess Hotaru has a scar on her arm." One of the pirates said. I shuffled around my arm, pulled up my sleeve and showed my scar, I smirked at brother's face.

"Okay, you're the princess, but we can easily run from the fire lord, but, your friend is the avatar?" the lead pirate asked.

"Sure is, and I'm sure he'll fetch a lot more on the black market than that fancy scroll." Sokka said.

"Shut your mouth you water tribe peasants!" Brother said.

"Yeah, shut your mouth." Aang said.

"I'm just saying, it's bad business sense, just imagine how much the Fire Lord would pay for the avatar, you guys would be set for life." Sokka bargained.

"Keep the scroll, we can buy a hundred with the rewards we'd get from the avatar." The bird owner pirate said.

"You'll regret breaking a deal with me." Brother said darkly. He and two soldiers blasted some fire in our direction; we all jumped out of the way. One of the pirates through some smoke bombs in the soldier's direction. A large cloud of smoke erupted. I said "Patch, can you do anything about the ropes?" I heard a mumble in reply. I felt Patch scamper around underneath my jacket. He crawled out my sleeve and started chewing on the ropes, finally I was freed. I jumped up and looked around; there was a big cloud of smoke around us as well now.

"Aang, where are you?!" I heard Sokka yell.

"Yeah! Where?!" I asked.
"I'm over here!" Aang said, but I didn't see him "Follow my voice!" he said.

"I can't find you!" Both Sokka and I repeated time and time again.

"I'm right here!" he yelled loudly "Uh-NEVER MIND! I'll find you!" I heard him yell. I crawled across the floor and dodged flying weapons and fighting pirates and soldiers. I bumped into someone else as I was crawling, it was Sokka. I let out a breath of relief; we kept crawling when finally we came out of the cloud of smoke. "RUN!" Aang yelled, he jumped over us. I pushed myself to my feet with my good arm and ran after Aang. We ran over the beach and saw Katara pushing a ship "What are you doing?" I asked.

"Help me get this boat back into the water so we can get outta here." Katara said. We all started pushing, but it didn't work.

"We need a team of rhinos to budge this ship!" Sokka complained.

"A team of rhinos…or three water benders." Aang smirked. Aang, Katara and I got into place and moved the water in and out under the boat, we were making a tide. Eventually the ship lifted off of the floor and was on the water.

"Everybody in!" Katara yelled. We pulled ourselves up on the ladder and sailed down the river.

"Check behind us." Aang said soon after we left. I ran across the ship and looked behind us, I didn't like what I saw. "Uh-we got just a small problem, pirates in a fire nation ship!" I yelled to Aang.
"Sokka! Can't you make this ship go any faster?!" Aang asked.

"I don't know how, this thing wasn't made by the water tribe." Sokka panicked. The fire nation ship was next to us now and the pirates jumped onto our stolen boat. Aang brought up a massive wave and washed all but one pirate off the ship. Katara used the move that she couldn't do. She pulled water out of a puddle and used the water whip, she wacked the pirate off of the ship.

"You did it!" I exclaimed.

"I couldn't have done it without Aang's help." Katara said happily.

"Would you guys it congratulating each other and help me out?" Sokka said, he was getting bombarded by three of the biggest pirates. I jumped down from where I was standing and used fire to kick one guy off of the ship, and then Aang blew another one off. I pushed another one over the side and gave Aang a high five.

"This isn't over, look!" Katara yelled. I looked in front of the ship, there was a massive waterfall. Aang pulled out his whistle and blew it.

"Have you lost your mind?!" Sokka yelled "This is no time for flute practice

"We can stop the boat, we need to work together!" Katara said. I ran to the front with Aang and got to water bending. "Push and pull the water." Katara said. I nodded and took a deep breath in. I used my free arm to lean forward and pull back, the water moved with my actions. The ship started to slow down and turn around. "It's working! It's slowing down!" Katara said "We're doing it!" she said. We had stopped the ship from going over the edge.

"Yeah, but we have another problem!" Sokka said unhappily. He pointed back, I looked back, it was the fire nation ship. It wacked into us and pushed us forward, the boat tilted so we fell to the edge.

"JUMP!" Aang yelled. We jumped off of the boat and fell through the air. Suddenly Oppa swooped down and caught us in his saddle. "I knew a bison whistle would come in handy." Aang smiled. I laughed and nodded. I stroked Sadie and then the shaking Patch. He licked my fingers and settled back down. "Thanks Oppa." Aang said.

"Yeah, we owe you one." Sokka said. We flew above the clouds calmly. I leant against Sadie and started grinning because we were out of trouble.

"Aang, I owe you an apology." Katara said "You were just so good at water bending without really trying, I got so competitive that I put us all in danger, I'm sorry."

"That's okay Katara." Aang smiled.

"Besides, who needs that stupid scroll anyway?" Katara scoffed.

"I do." I muttered to myself so that nobody else could hear.

"Is that really how you feel?" Sokka asked, he held out the water bending scroll.

"The scroll!" Katara exclaimed, she went forward to grab it. Sokka pulled it back and held her at arm's length.

"First, what did you learn?" Sokka asked.

"Stealing is wrong." Katara said. Sokka handed the scroll over "Unless it's from pirates!" Katara smirked. Aang and I couldn't help but laugh at that. We sat down and relaxed, I looked at each of them in turn, who cares about Ozai, and mother, and Zuko, and Azula, these guys were my family. I smiled and leant back.