A/N: YAY! Yet another update! This one is just short of 2,000 words but I hope you enjoy it all the same. I'm kind of having trouble deciding how to go on with this story. I have an ending in mind but the problem is how to get from her to there. ;_; But no worries! I'll figure something out :D Read away everyone~!

+Avatar World+

Morning arrived with the bloody yolk of sun staining the perfect blue folds of the sky. The Fire Nation Palace was starting to wake up; first the servants stirred to start their morning work and then later, the royal residents. But today, there was no awaking for the royal party. They had never made it to bed in the first place.

In the royal dining room, Iroh sat slumped at one end of the long dining table. He looked utterly disheveled, still dressed in the same robes he had been wearing the day before, and heaped around him were stacks of drained teacups, an empty porcelain teapot lying on its side and balls of crumpled up paper. He appeared to survey this clutter through bloodshot eyes but they were unfocused and lost in thought.

Halfway down the table sat Mai. Unlike Iroh, her composure could not have been stiffer. Though she had accompanied her boyfriend's uncle through the all-night brooding session, her hair was not in disarray, her back was straight and had not bent an angle once since sitting down and her eyes were only slightly bloodshot. The immediate area around her was immaculately clean.

The two had not been disturbed once in the night and during the following morning the servants had enough sense to give the dining hall a wide berth. Not even the royal cook entered to place before them their breakfast. At any rate, they didn't look like they had much of an appetite.

Outside, an iguana-rooster crowed its morning chorus. Iroh, who had dozed off, woke with a start and managed to knock half a stack of teacups to the floor. The resounding crash did nothing to bring Mai out of her reverie but even before one of the cups stopped spinning around the floor, Mai stood up, suddenly alert.

"It's nothing, Mai, I'll pick it up." Iroh assured her as he too stood up.

"No, it's not that," Mai said quietly, "Listen."

And sure enough, the muffled cry of a man could be heard outside. Dashing to the closed window, Mai flung open the door and leaned outside. She quickly withdrew her head and looked back at Iroh with a pale face.

"It's Chief Hakoda," Mai explained to a bemused Iroh, "Sokka's with him. He's injured."

+Just Outside West Verklay+

As evening drew near, the sky overhead grew darker. The armored minivan sped down the highway at over 80 miles an hour but Jones felt like he was still stuck in that parking lot getting the holy crap punched out of him. He had fallen asleep on the less bruised side of his face but he had woken up not 10 minutes later with it throbbing like it had been repeatedly run over by a semi.

In the front seat, Yumi Kim had been driving for little over an hour now. He tried to catch her eye in the rearview mirror but she had put on a pair of sunglasses she had found in the glove compartment and she had never once averted her gaze from the road throughout the whole drive.

Half an hour ago, Jones had felt it was safe to ask where they were headed. Yumi Kim's ambiguous answer of "somewhere safer" wasn't quite what he was looking for but any other attempts of getting answers out of her since had been futile.

At the beginning of the ride, Jones had repeatedly checked on the bound girl in the back trunk of the minivan. The girl looked like an average teenager with slightly curly, brunette hair that reached her back and a tanned, pretty-ish face. She seemed to be of Inuit descendant judging by her skin color and facial features but her clothes didn't seem to fit the description of an average teenager, Inuit or not.

The blue robe she was wearing reminded him of oriental clothes like something out of an archaic martial arts movie. Her hairstyle was also a little odd, although not completely bizarre by any means. Jones, having no children of his own, was not a reliable expert on teenage fads but nonetheless was aware that none of the teenagers he had come across on the streets or interrogated had ever worn their hair in any form of a bun. Her hair also seemed too natural in color with not a lock dyed in some neon rainbow. There was a chance that she was just a sensible teenager and that Jones had just become too used to seeing punks with crazy hairdos who also boasted a long list of wrongdoings but it was unusual all the same.

Even with his keen eye, however, he could not imagine what this girl had done to warrant capture by a heavily armed group of men. They had not been police of any sort, he knew, but they had been quite professional and must not have come cheap.

He wondered if she was a drug dealer but unless she was the leader of some serious teenage cocaine gang, it was unlikely that anyone would hire a team of armed men to capture her in a private parking lot and in broad daylight, no less. It had been extremely well timed with the fire at Microbe which made Jones suspicious of the accident itself. No doubt the two were connected somehow but it seemed unlikely that anyone would evacuate an entire building full of people just to kidnap a teenager. Someone with that much power would surely have opted to have her officially arrested. Unless, of course, the girl held a trump card that could be used in an event of an arrest. What was it?

He had already asked Yumi about this. When asked why they had been trying to kidnap the girl Yumi had just answered "This isn't the right place". Jones knew she was shut-clam about the topic and had dropped it. Years of experience had taught him that people like Yumi couldn't be pushed. The time would come when she would hopefully reveal everything, he was certain.

Twenty minutes later, they were free of the highway and were speeding along an empty road which led to a small town called Heyday. North of Heyday was New York City and Jones wondered vaguely if "somewhere safer" was located in the heart of the Big Apple and Heyday was just a pit stop where they could ditch the car.

It was dark out now and the only things Jones could make out beyond the tinted windows of the minivan were the fir trees that lined each side of the road. No other vehicles were visible and the only thing that illuminated their path was the headlights.

Behind him, the Inuit girl stirred.

+Clivian+

"You alright, sir?"

"Can I get you anything sir?"

"Would you like to be escorted to the hospital?"

It was times like these that Clivian really regretted not having a bodyguard. Of course, Clivian could easily have broken each and every one of the sycophantic idiots' necks without breaking a sweat but it would have left a permanent stain on his glowing reputation. In order to keep his secrets under wraps, Clivian had considered the regular replacement of a bodyguard but this strategy would ultimately collapse as a bodyguard's allegiance could change into the wrong hands and even the slightest of clues could chip the final letter into his epitaph.

Instead of breaking the annoying people's necks, Clivian politely refused all help and only requested a cup of cocoa which effectively sent them scurrying for the closest coffee shop. Clivian sighed and peered around him.

It was getting late in the afternoon. He had been rescued from the burning building hours ago and was now sitting inside an ambulance with a blanket around him. He had suffered no serious injuries but his left arm had been cut elbow to shoulder when he had fallen out the broken window. Or so they thought.

Thinking back, Clivian thought that he had handled the situation quite well on his own. He had anticipated some minor injury and the cut he had received was almost nothing to what could have happened had the monstrous boy chosen to do so.

"Call off the hit," Zuko growled warningly, taking a step forward with fire at his disposal. Clivian merely stood there, grinning nastily.

"I said call off the hit," the boy warned again, taking another step forward, "NOW!"

Clivian ducked almost a moment too late. The blast of fire that erupted from the boy was so hot that it nearly singed the top of his head. Sailing straight over his head like a comet, it hit the window behind his desk with such force that the glass blew out, completely shattered with a loud, resounding smashing of glass.

Out of nowhere, the boy grabbed the lapels of his expensive suit, dragged him over to the window and shoved him close to throwing him out. The back of his knees touched the window ledge and Zuko was face to face with him.

"CALL OFF THE HIT!" he shouted into Clivian's face, spraying him with spittle. Disgusted, Clivian wiped his face with the back of his hand and returned the glare he was receiving though not the radiant golden kind.

Raising the cellphone in one hand he whispered just loud enough so Zuko could hear, "What sort of scum will you be here when the last of your world is dead?"

With a savage roar, Zuko drove a fist into his stomach, making him double over but more importantly, trip over the ledge and falling backwards outside the window. As Clivian had known he would, Zuko grabbed by the collar at the last minute, almost choking him.

"CALL OFF THE HIT!" Zuko shouted again but the game had been won. Help was arriving for Clivian. Time was up.

Clivian was brought out of his reverie when he reached the finale. Zuko had pulled him back up again, a memorable feat as Clivian weighed 190 pounds and was only a couple inches short of 6 feet. Then, like the sewer rat that he was, the boy had fled the office and had disappeared.

Clivian got out of the ambulance, looking up at the 40-story-building of Microbe. It was a fine structure, built like a twisting rope, sort of like a strand of DNA. Each floor had special flexible glass windows that stretched from floor to ceiling. If programmed correctly, the building could be seemingly wall-less, a floating mass of offices and labs. The smart glass was capable of being tinted or transparent or translucent at the touch of a button. Right now, they were all tinted, closed, shut tight like a fortress on Clivian's orders. If things had gone according to plan, it would have been tonight's stage for phase one of his brilliant plan. But once again, the idiots had failed. Katara had escaped with two currently unidentified associates.

"So, Zuko," he said quietly, looking up at the starless sky, "let's see who can get to Katara first, you or me."

The wind whistled and a nearby tree whispered back into the premature darkness.

A/N: Thanks a ton for reading! Suggestions and feedback are all welcome!