Katara jumped up and down on the cold metal bench in her short, purple cheerleading uniform watching her football team obliterate the other. It was the last two minutes of the game and her team winning 49-7. She was so excited and proud that she didn't even notice the harsh biting wind nipping at her bare skin while she and the other cheerleaders waved their metallic pompoms in the air, leading their team's fans in celebrating their certain victory and mocking the other team and their fans. The deafening roar from the excited crowd floated over the stadium and overshadowed every other sound. Few people could even hear themselves think.

But the jovial mood was quickly disrupted when, out of no-where, some people started screaming "Riot! Riot! Riot!" but not as if they were trying to start a riot, but as if "Riot" was a huge, perhaps Godzilla-like, monster coming to eat them all. It was barely even audible at first but it quickly grew louder and louder and louder as crowd grew more violent and more out of control. Suddenly the gleeful cheers transformed into screams of panic and fear.

Katara, confused, got down the bench looked around. The football players had stopped playing and were abandoning the field; fans were running unto the field and begun brawling. Cheerleader were being harassed or pushed aside; she could see Azula, Ty Lee, and Mai dodging sweating, overzealous spectators charging in their direction. She ran to Coach Yin asked her "What's going on? Why are all these people going crazy?"

"No, I'm afraid I don't know; I've never seen anything like this has never happened before" Coach Yin looked as scared and confused as Katara felt. She fished in her tracksuit pocket and pulled out a set of keys. "Katara, go to my car in the East parking lot-the little blue bug-and in the passenger seat, you'll a red bullhorn; hurry and get it for me while make sure all the girls are accounted for."

"Alright." With sweaty hands, Katara took the keys from her and ran off the field, through the white-linoleum floored corridors of the stadium. She had been there a million times for previous football games but she still managed to get lost. Muscles tense and heart pounding, she finally made it outside.

'Where the heck is Coach Yin's car?' It was supposed to be a small and blue, but no car in that lot fit that description. Suddenly, Katara slapped herself in the forehead 'That's right, she said East parking lot.' She quickly changed direction and sprinted toward the right destination. Luckily for her the first car she saw fit Coach Yin's description and the key fit like a glove. When she opened the front door, surely enough, red bullhorn sat waiting in the passenger seat. She grabbed in, closed the door, and ran back as fast a she could.

On her way back, she spotted a tall young man who glared directly at her blocking her way. She skidded to a stop in front him. "Can I help you?" she asked impatiently. Without a word, he grabbed her, causing her to drop the bullhorn. "Hey!" she fought and kicked but it was not use; his grip on her was as tight as iron.

"Calm down." A girl commanded softly, "He won't hurt you if you cooperate."

"Who are you!" Katara screamed "What do you want with me?"

The girl didn't respond to her. "C'mon, we have to get her to home base." She told the boy "Let's hurry and get to the car."

The pair forced Katara back into the East parking lot where they tied her hands behind her back with a coarse rope. Then they shoved her in the back seat of a shiny new red car and speed away, barely missing a young boy.

"Stay down and don't let anyone see your face." The boy hissed to Katara.

The girl sat in the passenger seat and opened the glove compartment and pulled out a large kitchen knife. "If you try anything funny, we will have to hurt you. So just stay still and do what we say."

Katara laid facedown across the backseat of the car thinking about her situation. The car was moving-very quickly at that- and because she was tied up, she had no chance of escape. The best thing to do right now was to go along with whatever they planned until she could find a way to get free. Then she'd run away as fast she could to where she could get help.

She had no clue where they were going so she knew getting lost was a definite possibility, almost a guarantee. 'If I can get to a house or store and get to phone, I can call my dad or the police. If I escape, I should be able to identify them.'

She craned her neck to look for any identifying features. 'Two teenagers with dark hair; the girl is wearing a ponytail. How could I tell the police who they are? If I get to the police' she thought bitterly. 'What am I going?

The girl, fortunately, turned around to say something to her. "Is it true that you're dating someone from a different district?"

Katara's eyes widened. 'How did she know that?' "Yes; I'm from Shui and he's from Kongqi." For a minute, she thought it probably wasn't a got idea to reveal too much personal information.

"What's his name?" the girl asked

Katara bit her lip. "I shouldn't say."

"You're not ashamed to admit that you're dating from different district?" she asked in a disgusted tone.

"Why would I be? I love him."

The girl stopped talking and just looked her, utterly perplexed. Katara took the chance to study her face; the smooth brown hair with long bangs; the wide, matching eyes; the small nose and thin eyebrows. In the rear-view mirror, she could see that the boy had hard, serious features but not much else.

Suddenly, the car veered a hard left and the boy cursed loudly.

"What going on?" Katara cried.

"Nothing! Shut up!" the boy screamed at her.

A terrible grating and crashing sound exploded into existence and Katara felt her body being thrown up and back against the seat. Shards of glass flew into the car and pricked her skin. A small stream of blood flowed down her arms and unto the ropes; her ponytail has half undone and her eyes were wide with horror as she beheld the deaths of her captures. They lay limp in their seats with a part broken telephone pole hanging through the windshield. 'How? How am I not dead?'

It took a minute for her to hear the shouts and curses from a wild crowd outside the shattered car. She tried lifting herself from the wreckage, but she was too weak to move. She didn't how long it was but after what seemed like hours, she heard another voice, a male voice she had never heard before.

"Just hold still, I've got you." He soothed. He lifted her gently out of the car. Katara looked up into the tired-looking face of the paramedic.

"Hey!" she cried in shock

"Careful, little girl; you've severely injured." He warned solemnly.

Another paramedic helped the first man load her into the back of an ambulance and they sped toward the nearest hospital.

)-()-()-()-(

Aang had been high up in the stands when the riot began, safe from the hordes of animalistic fans-turned-brawlers but he was unsure if Sokka and Katara were safe. After all, Katara was near the fields, in the thick of the brawls. He hopped down from his seat and fought his way through the crowd until he saw the other cheerleaders but he quickly realized that Katara wasn't with them.

"Where's Katara?" he demanded.

"We don't know."

"I haven't seen her."

"I think she went to the parking lot."

Before sprinting toward the parking lot, he shout "thank you" over his shoulder. He searched each of the four parking lots put he say no sign of Katara, only a couple in a red car speeding out of the East parking lot.

"Aang!" Sokka appeared in the North parking "Have you seen Katara anywhere? She's gone missing!"

"I've been looking for her for almost a half-hour! I don't have a clue where she is."

"That bad; this is really bad."

"Sokka, why don't you look inside again while I check the rest of the outside area; knowing Katara, she probably wouldn't have wandered too far away."

The search lasted hours but came to no avail; Katara seemed to have vanished into thin air. All that was found was the red bullhorn she was sent to retrieve.

)-()-()-()-(

Coach Yin sat on the bench in the stadium surrounded by Hakoda, Sokka, Aang, Katara's grandparents, and the cheerleaders whose parents could not pick them up. "If only I hadn't asked her to get that stupid bullhorn." she lamented.

"It's alright." A cheerleader comforted her, "How could you have known?"

Kanna shook her head 'I lose both my children and now Katara, my precious granddaughter.' She thought bitterly.

Pakku, sensing his wife thoughts spoke up "Katara's a responsible girl; she'll find a way to contact us, wherever she is."

Then, as if the universe was bent on proving him right, Hakoda's cell phone rang.

"Hello? She is? Thank you." He sighed deeply, "Katara's in the hospital downtown."

"Is she alright?" Sokka inquired.

"I'm not sure; but she's got someone to take care of her. I'm going down there to check on her."

"I'm going to." Sokka declared.

"Can I come?" Aang asked "I really need to see if Katara's okay."

"Alright" Hakoda agreed "I'll call Gyatso."

Before Katara's family and boyfriend left, Coach Yin made a small request "Tell Katara I'm sorry."

)-()-()-()-(

In no time at all, the five of them were in Katara's hospital room, a room not unlike the one Suki had been confined to earlier; this riot made the bombing seem so far way, like a story that had happened to someone else. The room was so small that only three people were allowed in at a time and one of them had to a nurse.

"How are you felling Katara?" Aang asked.

"I feel like I need to sleep for a few weeks."

Aang laughed weakly "Maybe I should leave and let you rest."

"No," she shook her head "Not yet."

"Did they tell you what you're injuries were?"

"Just a few broken ribs and my left leg's badly messed up; I'll need to be on crutches for the next few weeks."

"Could have been worse; I'm just glad you survived." Aang smiled sincerely, though inside he winced.

"They others didn't." Katara stated quietly.

Sokka looked down at her thin cotton sheets "They had it coming."

"Sokka!" Katara cried "How could you say that?"

"Like this: THEY. HAD. IT .COMING. They kidnapped you and would have done who knows what else to you if they hadn't crashed. If you ask me, that's karma at work."

"But they were still people- kids like us."

"Kids who knew exactly what they were doing. Katara, how could you defend them after what they did to you?"

Katara pulled the sheets over her head and turned away from him.

"Katara!" Sokka shook his sister gently.

"Leave her alone, Sokka." Aang interrupted.

"Pardon me, Mr. Yang would like to see his daughter." A kindly old nurse announced with her thin, wrinkled hand on the door.

"Let's go Sokka."

"Sure buddy." He sighed. "Let's go."

)-()-()-()-(

Azula watched the chaos from her third story bedroom window in an almost sadistic manner. Screams filled the air and blood filled the streets; in the distance, she could that some skyscraper in Zhong Xing (she assumed it was Zhong Xing because as far as she knew, it was the only part of the city that had buildings that tall.) had been set on fire. Pleased with her work, she tied back her long black hair and slipped into her bed.

But she couldn't sleep, or even close her eyes. She had found her justification but it had hit closer to home than she had expected: her brother. She and her brother had never had the best relationship and she knew almost nothing about him, but she never though he would get involved with a girl from Diqui. A girl from Shui and a boy from Kongqi wasn't as controversial as a boy from Huo with a girl from Diqui.

She hadn't noticed it at first, but he had been hanging out with a girl Mai said she had seen in class before. After a little research, she found that she was from Kyoshi Island. She wanted to say that she didn't care who her brother hung out with, but she did, especially if was someone from another district.

Perhaps she did care about her brother, just a little, because she was afraid of what would happen to him after the riot, but she was more concerned about maintaining her plan. Riots were always good for starting district wars.

The one thing that escaped her was her friends' behavior. Lately Mai and Ty Lee had been quieter (Mai should she could understand, but Ty Lee?) and seemed less eager to please, thought Mai had lacked much enthusiasm from the beginning. Azula prided herself on her ability to read people and right now her sixth sense was telling her that her friends were pretty close to turning their backs on her. And for once she hoped she was wrong. Ty Lee and Mai were the only real friends she ever had and she'd rather cat off all her hair than lose them; they weren't just minion- they were like her family, much more so than her real one.

Unable to sleep, she got out of bed and walked downstairs to the backyard. She could hear the chaos, but she knew that the iron gate surrounding her house would keep any wayward rioters out of her hair. She breathed in the cold night air until her brother came down to check on her.

"Couldn't sleep?" Zuko appeared behind her.

"Not really."

"Neither can I. It's crazy out there."

"Maybe it wouldn't be if some people stayed in their place, this wouldn't be happening."

"What?"

"You know, Zuzu. You are your friend Suki too."

With that, Azula left her perplexed brother and went to inside.