Author's Note: Completely random thought: does Koh remind anyone else of the Merovingian of The Matrix trilogy? Koh is one of the oldest and most dangerous spirits. The Merovingian is one of the oldest and most dangerous programs. And something about the way they speak strikes me as similar.

Anyway, on with the show…

Chapter 26

"It's been a long time since I've added a child's face to my collection," Koh said, his face now that of an owl. "So, how may I help you?"

"I need to find the Moon and the Ocean," Aang replied.

The spirit began to slither around Aang as he spoke. "Their spirit names are Tui and La—push and pull—and that has been the nature of their relationship for all time.

"Please, help me find them. An entire culture could be destroyed if I don't get their help."

Koh's face changes to that of an old man. "Oh, you think you need their help? Actually, it's quite the other way around." Koh suddenly turned toward the boy, his face that of a blue ogre with red eyes and huge fangs. Coming scant inches from Aang's face, he shouted, "Someone's going to kill them!"

Doing his best not to show his emotional turmoil at this realization, Aang closed his eyes to collect himself. Opening them, he then looked up at Koh. "What do you mean? How can I find them and protect them?"

"You've already met them, actually," the spirit replied, flipping back to the white face with red lips. He began to circle around Aang once more. "Tui and La, your Moon and Ocean, have always circled each other in an eternal dance. They balance each other. Push and pull. Life and death. Good and evil. Yin and yang."

Aang's eyes widened as he realized exactly who the spirits were. "The koi fish!" he exclaimed with a smile.

Koh, hearing the emotion in Aang's voice, immediately spun around with his blue ogre face in front of the Avatar, ready to take his face. But the spirit was too late. Aang's face was back to a neutral mask.

"I must be going now."

"We'll meet again," Koh replied as he changed his face to that of a bald man before receding back into the shadows.

"We've been out here for hours and there's still no sign of them," Katara said worriedly as she looked over the edge of Appa's saddle.

"Don't worry, Katara," Yue said from her seat on the opposite end of the saddle. "We'll find him."

"I'm just afraid that she may have hurt him," the waterbender said. "What if she killed him?"

"Katara, remember what Aang told us about when he was captured by Zhao. The Fire Nation wants him alive. Even if Azula did hurt him, it wouldn't be enough to kill him," Sokka reasoned.

"That still doesn't make it okay." The girl's expression hardened. If anything had happened to her friend, she would make sure Azula paid for it.

Aang was back in the Mortal World, or so he thought. Seeing his pet lemur sleeping near the pond, he called out to him, "Momo!"

The creature didn't stir.

"Momo?" Aang said quizzically. He looked down at his hands then, and saw that his body was glowing with blue light. Realization dawned on him then. "Oh no! Where's my body?"

The young airbender looked around the spirit oasis frantically, but there was no sign of his body or of Katara or Yue. Someone must have moved his body.

Suddenly a blue ball of energy formed around him before beaming him out of the spirit oasis and up into the sky. Like a comet, his light body soared through the air over the outskirts of the city.

Katara saw the arc of light flying over Appa, and immediately knew who it had to be. "Look! That's gotta be Aang!"

Sokka then flipped the sky bison's reigns to follow the direction of his friend's light body.

The young Avatar finally reached his physical body, which was lying in the snow in a small valley between ridges several miles away from the Water Port and at the edge of the wasteland of the frozen tundra. As Aang entered his body, his tattoos stopped glowing. The boy cracked open his eyes only to see snow. A chill went through him due to the cold air blowing around him from the oncoming blizzard. He tried to move, but quickly realized he was tightly bound and gagged. He briefly struggled against his bonds, managing only to turn over onto his other side.

He wasn't prepared for what he saw.

Less than twenty feet away from where he lay, Zhao had Azula pinned to the ground. His right hand was moving down the girl's side, burning away the cloth of her jacket and the layers beneath that covered her. A sick feeling came over him as he realized what the man was about to do.

A mixture of rage and helplessness shone out from Azula's eyes as the admiral's searing hand continued to roam, exposing her skin to the frigid arctic air. Zhao's sadistic smile grew at the sight of the banished princess at his mercy and the pitiful sound of her gasps for air. He increased the temperature in the hand that gripped her wrists, branding them and causing the girl to let out a yelp as she continued to struggle against him to no avail.

"Get… off… me…" she rasped out.

Zhao chuckled darkly in response before lowering his head to her neck and biting down hard. The palm of his free hand cupped the swell of her left breast, scorching the skin there.

Tears sprang up in Azula's eyes as she hissed from the pain of the burn and the humiliation she felt. At that moment, she'd give anything to get her tormentor off her. The pressure on her stomach suddenly decreased a bit, as Zhao repositioned himself so that he was straddling her hips. His right fist then pressed into her stomach creating another burn, as he moved his head lower, biting down on her collarbone. A fresh wave of nausea coursed through her. She turned her head to the side in an effort to shut out what was happening.

Her eyes met the horrified gray ones of the Avatar. It was obvious to her that he wanted to stop what was happening, but was powerless to do anything at all. It made no sense. He was her enemy. She had captured him, yet just like after the Yu Yan archer had shot her, he had the desire to help her. In that moment, Azula was unable to break her gaze—almost finding some strange refuge there. In this harsh frozen wasteland, powerless to stop the man assaulting her, she found comfort in his eyes. They were so much like Ty Lee's—not just in the color, but the compassion that was so evident.

Suddenly a dark shadow fell between the space separating her and Aang. Seconds later she heard the roar of a sky bison as the beast made landing—sending the snow around his paws flying out.

Instantly, Zhao was off of her, preparing himself for a fight. Azula instinctively rolled onto her side away from the man, curling in on herself and trying to deepen her breath, which still came in shallow gasps. She was too tired to fight, too tired to move. She shivered against the cold and the memory of what happened. Her emotions swirled—horror, anger, outrage, humiliation, and relief—making it hard to know what to feel or think.

Katara jumped down from Appa's saddle, shocked by what she saw. She had no time to process it, however, as a series of fireballs flew toward her. She easily blocked them by drawing up a wall of slushy snow in front of her, the flames harmlessly dissipating into steam. The waterbender then formed the slush into a ball and propelled it toward Zhao. He crossed his arms in front of him, creating a flame and absorbing the blow—or as much of it as he could. The power of Katara's attack pushed him back, causing his feet to slide through the snow.

The man's face hardened as he glared at her. "No way am I letting some Water Tribe girl best me in combat. I am the great Admiral Zhao!"

He formed fire whips in each hand and prepared to strike.

On the other side of the bison, Sokka worked on freeing Aang from his bonds. Using the blade of his boomerang, he sliced through the cloth that gagged his friend.

"Are you okay?" Sokka asked Aang as he began to cut through the rope that bound his arms, wrists, and ankles.

"I'm fine." His expression was pained. "I… we have to help Azula."

Sokka looked at him like he'd grown a second head. "Help Azula?"

Not wasting any time trying to explain it to his friend, Aang sprang to his feet as soon as he was free, running around Appa with Sokka and Yue right behind him.

They saw Zhao's fire whips sail towards Katara, who was eager to finish this fight. Raising her arms up, she lifted a huge pile of snow up in front of her. The whips harmlessly evaporated. Then, Katara bent the snow, creating a twenty-foot wave, and thrust her arms out, sending the snow wave in Zhao's direction.

The admiral's eyes widened as he attempted to block the oncoming attack with a wall of flame, but it was no use. It crashed into him, sending him flying back hundreds of feet, near the base of the ridge.

Katara's eyes hardened as she watched the man slowly rise.

Knowing that Katara had the fight well in hand, Aang had run over to the princess, who was still curled in on herself. Sokka and Yue stood behind Aang, now realizing what had been happening before they arrived as they took in the sight of the fresh burns on her bare torso.

"Are you alright?" Aang asked Azula, who had finally gotten her breathing back to normal—allowing her to regain a little body heat. She was still shivering, and only partially from the cold air.

With a pained expression, she glanced up at the boy. Her cheeks flushed with shame over what he had just witnessed, and what his companions undoubtedly realized. She was in their debt, and that realization made her distinctly uncomfortable. She clenched her jaw and looked away, glowering at the snow. She hated appearing weak—and right now, she knew she didn't just look it. She felt it.

"Aang," Sokka said quietly as he leaned down closer to his friend's ear. Aang glanced back to see that Sokka was holding Azula's pack. "There's a uniform in here. It isn't much, but…" he trailed off trying not to look at Azula.

"Here," Yue took the uniform top out of the pack and moved closer to Azula. The firebender looked up at the other girl as she knelt down before her. The Water Tribe Princess's blue eyes met the golden ones of the Fire Nation Princess as Yue covered the other girl with the shirt. Not having enough strength to fight back or even pull the garment around herself, Azula could do nothing but let her counterpart help her.

Feeling sheepish, Sokka turned to look where Katara stood and then out to the ridge where Zhao had been tossed back. Across the top of the ridge, he could make out the form of the admiral running off. He didn't stand a chance against a waterbending prodigy in the midst of her element.

"Coward," Katara muttered under her breath before turning to face her friends. Her eyes briefly met her brother's before falling on Aang, who was still kneeling beside Azula with Yue at his side. To her relief, the boy appeared to be completely unharmed, which was more than she could say for the firebender on the ground.

Instinctively, she moved closer to them. She found her motivation was two-fold—wanting to protect her friend and, what seemed oddest of all, wanting to make sure Azula was alright. Katara placed her hand on Aang's shoulder, and he glanced back up at her and smiled sadly. "She has some burns. Do you think you can heal her, Katara?"

Despite everything Azula had done, she couldn't say no. In fact, all she could do was feel pity for the girl before her.

Katara nodded. "I can, but it would be better to do it on Appa's saddle." Her eyes glanced up at the horizon as snow began to lightly fall around them. "That storm is going to be here any minute now."

Aang nodded. "You're right." His eyes widened in remembrance. With everything that happened as soon as he had arrived in his body, Koh's warning had been pushed to the back of his mind. "And we don't have much time to waste. We need to get back to the spirit oasis right away!"

The urgency in his voice wasn't lost on anyone.

"We're taking you with us," Aang said, looking back down at Azula. The firebender didn't even have the energy to resist as the boy scooped her up in his arms, just as he had done when he had saved her from Zhao's wrath before.

With a quick burst of airbending, Aang propelled them up alongside Appa and into the saddle. He then laid Azula down on one of the saddle blankets. The three Water Tribe teens climbed up after them, with Sokka taking the reigns. "Yip! Yip!" he called out and Appa ascended into the sky.

Before Azula could even register the fact that she was flying, Katara was at her side—water pouch at the ready. The firebender tensed, and Katara noticed. "It's alright," she said in an effort to comfort the other girl. "I have healing abilities."

Azula vaguely recalled when she had tracked them near Jang Village. She had overheard Jeong Jeong talking to the girl about that very ability. She nodded her head weakly in ascent, but her eyes were still a bit wary.

"Where are your burns?" Katara asked.

"My wrists and…" Azula's face flushed with embarrassment as she scowled. Katara glanced up and noticed that Aang and Yue had graciously turned away.

Turning back to her enemy, Katara then drew the water from her pouch into her hands, and it began to glow. She brought her hands to one of Azula's wrists. As the water made contact with her skin, Azula could feel her chi flow to the area and mix with Katara's. The princess watched—somewhat awed—as the angry red burn began to fade and the discomfort subsided.

The waterbender continued her work as the western sky began to darken—both from the storm and from the sun's descent.

Ty Lee glanced up at the sky nervously. It was almost twilight, and the full moon was rising. She could almost curse the short days of winter at the North Pole. Despite her success on the battlefield, it seemed that Zuko had every intention of following through with his plan.

"Phase two of the invasion is almost complete," Zuko said to the group he had assembled for the third stage, which included Admiral Zhao, War Minister Qin, and Ty Lee, among others.

Zuko looked up at the moon and smirked. "Let's move out!" he commanded.

With that order, a line of Fire Nation tanks began moving through the citadel, creating a path for their prince and his team to march through.

As they marched forward, the acrobat couldn't help but notice that Zhao's aura was streaked with muddied red tones. The man was angry, and it obviously had to do with his pride. Ty Lee knew something must have happened during the day's battle. She had a sneaking suspicion that she wouldn't like it.

Of course, there was the larger problem—Prince Zuko was about to kill the Moon and the Ocean Spirits. Ty Lee bit her lip. "What am I going to do?"