A/N: Iiti em hotep! Hey, I'm getting faster at this updating thing! (I blame the end of the school year for that)

Disclaimer: I own Alea, but not ATLA.

B-L-A-C-K-O-U-T

THE PROBLEM WITH PYROMANIACS

"What would it take for things to be quiet; quiet like the snow?"
-Devil Wears Prada

It took a lot longer than ten minutes, but Zuko and the salesman eventually struck up a deal to get Alea back to her village safely. My mind had been far too preoccupied to be sure, but I was almost positive that there had been some threatening involved on the princes' side of the negotiation. I supposed it was necessary, though, especially considering our obvious lack of money.

Not to mention the fact that we looked like homeless masochists.

Alea had looked close to crying as she and her escort got ready to leave, nearly suffocating poor Zuko in a hug and making him promise to come and visit her. Personally, I thought the whole thing was extremely amusing. Finally - after way too long a time than was safe for us - Alea was out of the city and on her way back to her home.

"One down, three to go," I muttered, watching the cart pull away in the opposing direction. Where was Iroh? "Hey, how do we get out of here, anyway? 'Cause I'm not about to go back the way we came." Zuko cringed, as if the memory was offensive.

"I don't know," he replied gravely.

"Ohh, no," I groaned, pressing both palms to my forehead. "We'll have to ask for directions."

Zuko rolled his eyes at the irony at what I had just said, walking in step with me. I grimaced, growing more and more irritated by the second. We were going too slowly. Why weren't we hurrying? My hands clenched and unclenched, doing absolutely nothing to ease the pent-up tension in my chest. Finally, I couldn't stop myself.

"Can't we go any faster?" I demanded in a harsh whisper, leaning forward to look up at him out of the corner of my eyes. Then, Zuko did the strangest thing. He took hold of the back of what little outfit I had leftover and pulled me upright again. I gave him an are-you-crazy glare.

"No, we have to walk," he replied, still keeping his eyes forward, instead of looking back down at me. "We already look suspicious."

"Fine," I grumbled, knowing full well that he was right. If we ran around Ba Sing Se like criminals, then we would be found and arrested again in no time. I was already suspicious of this city we were stuck in, and, after what had just happened, I didn't trust anyone there. The fire nation just had too much undetected control. Finally - and just when I thought that we might never make it out - Zuko and I spotted what we had been looking for.

Hanging up over the great wall of Ba Sing Se, a seemingly thin wire was strung from one building inside the city, to another just outside of it. And, going back and forth across the zip line, was a lift. Zuko and I turned to stare at each other, the both of us realizing just what we had found. I grinned, immediately turning back on course and walking just fast enough to get there quicker, but still go unnoticed by anyone around.

The crowd suddenly became dense, making it nearly impossible to go in the direction I wanted. Zuko was still a ways behind me, not bothering to try and keep up. I spun around to look back at him as the crowd encased me from all sides, pushing me up the ramp that led to the lift. He caught my gaze, attempting to shove his way through the copse of people, but it was no use. I had already been forced onto the air-train with the allotted amount of passengers. Zuko would have to catch the next one.

I pressed my lips together, finding a seat resignedly. He was going to be ticked off about this later.

With an internal start, I suddenly realized that it was the first time I'd really been on my own since I'd met the prince. What a strange thing, I realized, especially since I was so used to fending for myself ever since I ran away. Now, with this group of total strangers surrounding me, I felt like being alone was something I had never done before. For once, it seemed as if I had nobody to rely on. And I didn't like that.

It made me uneasy.

The lift began to move, sliding easily through the air and over the colossal wall encircling Ba Sing Se. For a few minutes, I simply looked out the window over the landscape. Being a city relatively close to the ocean, there weren't many trees outside the urban center, and the distinct smell of sea salt blew in the breeze. From so high up, I could see the coastal, hinterland village that Iroh had been telling me about earlier.

Spirits, where was that man? I knew exactly what had to have been going through Zuko's mind on that particular subject, so I had tried to hide my anxiety for his sake while we were getting away. Now, though, alone with no familiar faces to think about, the worry couldn't have been clearer on my features.

Iroh had told me the bare minimum just before I dragged Alea into the hallway. All he had given me was a name, Yuumi, and the strictest orders to get onto the ship and leave if he didn't make it back onto it within two and a half hours. I wasn't sure what he'd told Zuko, but I had the sneaking suspicion that his brash nephew had not been given these orders. Zuko never would have left his uncle's side if he had, and Iroh had known it.

A chill ran up and down my spine, like somebody's cold fingers on my neck. My posture stiffened as I pulled my arms to my side, peering out of the furthest corners of my eyes. No one was looking at me, but something was wrong. I could feel it . . .

My head snapped toward the back of the lift, completely full of people. I jumped up off my seat, shoving my way to the rear window, and making quite a few shouts and curses fly in the process. But I didn't care by that point.

My hands were the only thing that kept me from smacking face-first into the glass pane. My eyes popped, my jaw dropping. The lift behind mine was completely empty save for two people.

And it was on fire.

My sudden revelation, of course, did not go unnoticed by the other passengers around me. And once one started screaming, so did all the rest. I cringed at the high-pitched noise in irritation, attempting, in vein, to think through it. If they would just shut up for a second . . .

"Quiet!" I screamed, my voice cutting through the terrified chorus of yelling and crying. The crowd sobered up at once, staring at me with a consistently mutinous expression. I gulped, the glares of the group physically forcing my feet back. There had to be a way to get that idiot out of there. Ugh, could we run into any more problems in one day? Was that even possible? My mind wanted to tell me no, but all valid signs of logic and reason were pointing toward yes.

I looked back out the window and away from the leering passengers, hoping to clear my mind, or perhaps spark some kind of useful rescue idea. I instantly regretted the move.

Never again would the world see the banished prince of the fire nation on top of an air-train, in clothes tattered to the point of being obscene, fighting an earthbender while the floor he stood on slowly erupted into flames.

Never again.

And I, being the only person in my entire lift who wasn't about to faint, did the only thing left to do:

I climbed onto the roof and began yelling at the fire prince.

"You idiot!" I practically screamed, causing both benders to momentarily lose their focus, "I told you to hurry up, but no!"

Despite being at least fifty feet off, it was hard to miss the glare on Zuko's part. Down below me, I could hear several passengers shouting for me to get off the hood of the lift. Ignoring them, I looked out toward the end of the zip line, letting out a sigh of relief. There couldn't have been more than a minute or two left before we were back on solid ground. I could only pray that no one stopped the lift before we actually got there, realizing that there was now a total of three people where they definitely should not have been.

"Okay, we can do this," I breathed, mostly to myself. "Just as long as Zuko doesn't do anything stu-sparky, what are you doing!"

Zuko's fingers were turning red, from the looks of it, as he clung to the zip line for dear life, slowly making his way closer to my lift. The earthbender behind him - one of Azula's 'hired bodyguards' - looked on with an amusingly miffed expression. Apparently, there was nothing way up there that he was able to bend in an attempt to knock the stupid prince to the ground. I supposed that it was a good thing that my bending wasn't physical, either, or I might have tried to do something similar.

Zuko reached my carrier the very second it hit the earth, pulling me off the roof - much to my irritation - and breaking into a dead run after I so kindly shook his grip off. I huffed as we barreled down the narrow streets of the tiny village outside Ba Sing Se; partially in exhaustion, mostly in annoyance. I seriously doubted that I would ever allow myself to run again after all this was over.

We reached the docks in record time, weaving in and out of the privacy-butchering crowd in search of our ship. It seemed, however, that dear Iroh had neglected to mention to us which ship we were supposed to board, and so now we were running around the boardwalk like complete morons with no idea what to do.

After a few minutes, we finally came across one that looked at least semi-promising. It was a fire navy ship - but, of course - completely steel and, to top it all off, an angry cloud of ash-gray smoke billowing out from the top in suffocating sheets of obsidian. The symbol of the fire nation was painted onto the mountainous side of the vessel in the colors that I hated most - red and orange.

A rather elderly-looking couple stood along the walkway, right where the steel exit ramp let out. They were an exceedingly odd-looking pair, to say the least. It wasn't every day that a seemingly-adorable, little, old man and his equally as innocent-looking wife stood purposely out in front of an ocean-liner belonging to the most violent empire in the world. They didn't talk - not to each other, or anyone else for that matter. They simply stood there, fingers locked together behind their backs, every now and then stopping, staring off to the side or up at the sky, and shifting their weight to the other side. They were waiting for someone, for sure. But, could we really be sure that someone was us?

"I don't recognize their faces," I warned Zuko, who had begun to walk toward the carrier without hesitation. "What if it's not the right one?"

Something flashed behind Zuko's dark gold eyes as he considered my comment; something like bewilderment.

"No . . . I think it is," although he sounded dangerously unsure of it himself. "I can't remember where, but I could have sworn I saw those two with my Uncle a few months ago." I sighed, gazing up at him doubtfully.

"Whatever you say, sparky . . ."

The very second we began to walk toward them, the elderly pair's already suspicious stares snapped right in our direction simultaneously. Zuko and I froze on the spot, staring straight back into their eyes.

"You still want to go talk to the creepy couple, Zuko?" I asked through my teeth, the pitch of my voice escalating.

"No," he replied, but began to move forward again despite his immediate answer.

Apparently, in Zuko's mind, we had to speak to them whether we wanted to or not. I copied reluctantly. As we approached them, the two did not take their eyes off of us for even a second. Their gazes did not waver or vacillate even the slightest bit as they observed our distrustful trek in their direction. The familiar feeling of the steady increase in air pressure closed in on me as I readied myself, and my bending, for whatever might have been about to happen to the both of us.

We stopped in front of them, just along the ledge of the dock that separated land from ocean. I held my breath. The old woman spoke, then.

"Can we help you, dears?"

I blinked, caught off guard. She sounded . . . well, she sounded like my grandmother. I don't know what exactly I had been expecting out of the strange, old woman, but the kind and perfectly normal sound of her voice was not it. I was momentarily taken aback, giving Zuko the opportunity to answer her question.

"We were looking for-"

"Yuumi," I cut in, suddenly remembering the specific name that Iroh had given me. My unexpected outburst earned three different reactions: Zuko looked shocked and slightly irritated with me, while the old man and woman stared at me with different levels of quiet surprise and understanding; neither of which I was very sure about.

"General Iroh sent you, did he?" the old man asked, stealing both mine and Zuko's complete and undivided attention. "The people of this village know me as Mr. Yuumi. This is my wife."

Mr. Yuumi gestured to the frail old woman beside him, who smiled sweetly at us, or so it would seem to anybody happening to pass by our little conversation. Her expression became more serious as she stepped aside to reveal the ramp onto the ship.

"We've been waiting for you."

B-L-A-C-K-O-U-T

A/N: Aww, sorry to disappoint anyone who wanted Alea to go along, but I already had that part written out when y'all reviewed. Anyhoo, Read&Review!