AN: Thanks reviewers! Every time I read a new review, I get so excited, just giddy dorky delight all over the place. My cat scorns me with his eyes. So thanks for being so awesome and making that happen! (Not the scorn. That would happen anyway.) ((And, also, some of you took the words right out of Toph's mouth about the Pakku scene. ;) Happy accident!))

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Zuko and Suki had taken out more than a dozen warriors between them by the time the earthbenders showed up. Only when the rocks started flying did the crowd of recruits scatter and dart into training rooms, leaving Sokka to shout and dodge rocks alone.

Zuko snarled as he chopped a head-sized boulder out of the air. "How long do we have to keep this up?"

Suki was running along the balustrade, leaping out of the way of another missile to roll and come up kicking the foremost earthbender in the face. Zuko used the distraction to rapidly advance on another soldier.

"I don't know!" Sokka was shouting. He hurled his boomerang at a few warriors who had come around the walkway to flank them. "Until they find Dad!"

Just then, a man's voice cried from high above, echoing against the walls of the deep atrium. "Katara!"

Zuko kicked the earthbender in the chest and sent him tumbling backward, then whipped around to look at Sokka.

"Alright," Sokka cheered, leaping to catch his returning weapon. "Progress!"

From the corner of his eye, Zuko saw a shape plummet past. He scrambled to look down at the dark harbor, where he could barely make out lines of white foam as someone shot across the water. "She's getting the ship," he said. "We need to move." A rock flew an inch in front of his nose and he jerked back, scrambling to get out of the way of the next one.

Zuko, backing up and deflecting whatever came within his reach, didn't really notice the murmurs as Sokka and Suki led the way past the training rooms and down the stairs, but words were rattling around among the recruits, words that drew the young men out and down, following the angry soldiers at a distance.

.

Katara surfed across the placid harbor, tearing up waves as she approached the one ship she recognized, the very ship she had spotted returning home to the South Pole so long ago now. There was a cluster of Northern warriors stationed on the pier and they watched her approach with dim curiosity that quickly morphed into alarm. Katara guided her waves onto the flat stone of the pier and swept the Northerners out into the harbor, leaving herself in their place.

Herself, and the one waterbender in the crew, who regained his feet and shot a stream at her. They exchanged a few strikes until his attention slipped - his eyes got stuck on the front of her ragged tunic - and Katara knocked him in the face with an icy fist. He went skidding back to hit the wall and slumped there, unconscious.

A few heads had poked over the side of the ship above and Bato's very skeptical voice reached her. "Your master probably won't appreciate your interference, but we do. What's your name?"

"Uh… Katto," Katara said, hoping not to be recognized just yet. "Chief Hakoda is on his way. Get this ship ready to sail."

There was a stunned silence from above. "We'd need an earthbender to get through the cliff," Bato ventured.

"We have one."

Katara's eye caught movement from the stairs and she turned to find Sokka and Suki racing around the pier toward her. Zuko was following at a distance, watching the stairs as if expecting pursuit. Sokka came to a stop beside her, panting. "Where's Dad?"

Before Katara could answer, there was a grinding noise and a stone door slammed open. Hakoda stepped out at once, looking a little pale from the ride. He was followed closely by Iroh and Toph.

"Some jump, Splatto! I thought you were really gonna live up to the name that time!"

"Dad!" Sokka rushed in to greet Hakoda, who hugged him hard but then stared over his shoulder at Katara. The two of them exchanged some quiet words.

Katara felt a sick twist in the chest, jealousy or shame, and pretended not to notice them. She tugged her sash to be sure it was tightly holding her shirt together. "Toph, we need the way opened for the ship. I'm-"

There was a clang of steel on stone from down the pier and Katara spotted Zuko facing down a handful of earthbenders. Behind them, a small mob of Water Tribe warriors was coming off the stairs. It wasn't quite a hundred to one, but it certainly was terrible adversity. As she watched, Zuko caught a rock in the gut and went flying back. He barely recovered in time to roll out of the way of the next strike, but then managed to knock a stone back at such an angle that it nailed a soldier in the face. The earthbenders were driving him down the pier, but he was making them fight for each step.

He looked so fine, so fearless.

Katara had intended to say something like I'm going to help Zuko or I'm going to cover you but she just trailed off instead and went racing toward him. It felt a little like leaping into the atrium from the upper levels and hurtling toward her element.

As she ran, she lifted up a big stream out of the harbor. Zuko, spinning out of the way of the next rock, caught sight of her and dodged completely to one side. The stream gushed through the soldiers, sending several sprawling and throwing a couple more off the pier entirely. Most of the earthbenders held their positions, though, and stomped, raising up more stones to punch at them. Katara pulled up a shield of ice and deflected most of them, but the shield shattered under the impact and, before she could launch a counter attack, the next volley was already in the air. She dragged up another shield, then another. It was difficult. All pull and no push - it wasn't the way water was supposed to work.

"You're gonna have to take them out," Zuko shouted over the crashes of stones and water. "They don't get tired."

"I know, I know!"

Katara raised up one more ice shield, watched it go crashing down, and then sent all the smashed ice skittering under the earthbenders' feet. A few slipped and toppled on their own, but even more lost their footing when she struck with several small gouts of water that changed direction and slithered across the pier before snapping up to strike at faces.

Yet even when the last earthbender staggered, slipped, and fell, the remaining warriors were advancing with a wall of shields and clubs, and more soldiers were already coming down the stairs. Katara heard a shout from behind her, but it was Zuko she understood.

"The ship is moving out."

She turned to find the pier empty and her father's ship poling slowly toward a tunnel that hadn't been there before. "Come on."

Distantly, Katara heard shouting and Zuko's swords sliding into a scabbard, but she was focused on running forward, leaping on an ice floe, and surging out to the ship. She didn't notice how many people paused to watch them - how many recruits and staff members and officers had gathered on the lowest walkway to see the fight - nor was she aware of how smooth it was when she and Zuko landed together on the deck.

Katara just knew the ship had to move faster if they were going to get through the tunnel before the earthbenders recovered enough to close it. She had straightened and was raising her arms to bend when a warm hand clasped her shoulder.

Zuko stared down at her, and he looked like he was in pain. "You're bleeding," he said. He opened his mouth again and she knew he was about to ask what had happened or if she was okay, and just the thought of having to answer either of those questions made Katara feel ill.

"Not now," she said, and pulled away.

With long sweeps of her arms, she hauled water past the hull, exerting huge energy to drag them a little faster. There were voices around her - Sokka and Hakoda and the crew shouting to work the ship, cries from the pier and the atrium above - but only one voice broke through Katara's focus.

Iroh came to stand directly in her line of vision with a faint apologetic smile. "Not to interrupt, but I am afraid there is a problem..."

He guided her to look ahead of the ship, to the gap in the pier where the tunnel cut through the stone. Pakku stood to one side of the tunnel, waiting. As Katara watched, he sank into a bending stance and raised a huge wave that would push the ship back the way it had come.

She did not think; she leapt.

.

Zuko saw Katara turn from his uncle in one smooth motion and leap over the side of the ship. He hustled and elbowed along with the tribesmen to claim a spot gripping the gunwale.

By the time he reached it, Katara had already taken a position on an ice floe a ways out from the ship and was just standing there in a ready position, waiting for the enormous wave to reach the perfect spot. Then, she moved. It was so graceful and subtle, the way she shifted her weight and bent her elbows and knees just so. The wave veered off course and surged around the harbor, knocking moored ships together as it diminished, and finally swept in under the stern of the Southern ship, bearing it faster toward the tunnel.

Then Katara lifted up a little wave beneath her and rode past the ship toward the old master on the pier ahead. Zuko watched her approach with bated breath, but Pakku just stood waiting until she landed on the stone. They faced off, apparently talking, though they were too far to hear. Especially over the conversations breaking out all aboard the ship.

"That's little Katara? I just overheard Sokka say..."

"...always seemed like a dutiful girl, I never would have expected her to run away from home!"

"Did you see her take out those earthbenders? I've never..."

"I knew something funny was going on when Hahn was going off about Hakoda's nephew. Hakoda doesn't even have any siblings."

"Well why couldn't you have said something to me about it? I thought everybody had just left me out of the loop! Like always!"

"Cool it, Tukna. Nobody was gonna contradict Hakoda when he was in a mood like that..."

A distinctively higher voice cut through the clamor. "Fanboy! Where are you, you noodle-head?"

Zuko cast a subtle glance at the earthbender, who was standing with one hand on the mast, looking even more blind than usual. As quietly as he could, he turned back around.

But a hand clamped down on his shoulder. "Here he is, Toph!"

Zuko turned his scowl on Sokka, but Toph had clambered over before he could say anything. "Thanks Snoozles. You get a Bandit point." Without warning - or perhaps that's exactly what that was - she punched Sokka in the arm.

"Ow!" He clutched it, appalled.

"Enjoy that. It's an expression of my affection." Despite her bluster, she was a little pink in the cheeks.

"Yeah, well, remind me not to get on your good side," Sokka huffed, stalking off to join his father near the helm.

"So Fanboy," Toph said, latching her fingers onto Zuko's sleeve before he could dodge away, "describe what's going on out there."

He huffed and tugged on her shackle-like grip. "I don't know. They're talking."

"Who?"

"Katara and her master. Pakku."

"Oh, that sour old boarcupine?" Toph's tone switched from wrathful to a little sad. "He's not her master anymore. He kind of disowned her upstairs. It was pretty brutal, actually."

Zuko snapped back to watching Katara speak to Pakku. They weren't fighting - yet - but she was shaking her head and took a step back as if he'd said something really horrible. They were still too far off to hear, and definitely too far to make a leap for the pier. Zuko's fingers curled hard around the wooden rail.

Toph gave his sleeve a yank. "Come on, focus, Fanboy! I need you to look for earthbenders and tell me what they're doing. I don't want to be crushed in a stupid wooden boat if they try to close that tunnel on us."

"Rrrh! Fine!" Zuko jerked his sleeve from her grip and looked around the pier - only to see a regiment of earthbenders hurrying toward the tunnel and, setting up on the walkway above them, a squad of Water Tribe men with bows. "Archers off the starboard bow! Take cover!"

.

Katara landed on the pier and held fifty-third position, waiting for a surprise attack and trying not to reveal how her heart and stomach twisted sickly together under this man's cold eyes.

"Spare me your theatrics," Pakku sighed, peering down his nose at her. His posture was perfectly relaxed, as if he was merely giving another day's instruction. "I want to know if you've done as I told you."

Slowly, Katara lowered her hands. She tried to remain ready. She tried not to let her fingers curl into fists at her sides. "I did everything that you told me to do. I was a good student."

"The best." Somehow, the way he twisted his mouth when he said this made Katara think he resented making this admission. "But your time as a student is at its end. And I want to know. Does water burn, Katto?"

It came back to her in an instant, the strange question, what power water could gain from fire. Katara blinked, then shook her head in disbelief. "Hahn is a traitor and you want to talk about riddles?"

"Hahn is a Northern Tribe problem, and ours to deal with. I'm asking you about your part in this war." Pakku narrowed his eyes. "Have you burned, girl? Did you take what that boy's been offering you?"

She thought of healing and stifling fire. She thought, unbidden, of Zuko's proposal. "I... I don't understand."

Pakku sighed and folded his arms over his chest. "The Water Tribe," he said, "is dying. We can hold out a while longer, but we cannot hope to win this war by a direct conflict, even with the help of the Earth Kingdom. To ensure the survival of our people, we must adapt." He spoke the word with a particular curl in his lip, as if it had gone sour. "We must find ways to harness Fire Nation aggression and arrogance in favor of our own interests. Of particular pertinence to you, is the arrogance of a virile, tactically foolish prince. Do you understand, now?"

Katara was stunned, and opened her mouth to volunteer the coincidentally happy news of Zuko's proposal - but something stopped her. Something wasn't right. Something was different. She was no longer Pakku's student, and was no longer obliged to obey him. But, what's more, this man had cruelly turned on her just minutes ago. It would be foolish to volunteer anything to him. Katara shut her mouth.

Pakku went on slowly, as if she appeared to be having trouble understanding. "That boy comes from a royal line. Any offspring he sires will have a claim to the throne, bastard or not." The word shocked her, cut her all over again. "And if the prince himself is as reckless as his uncle's stories suggest, no doubt he'll blunder through that treacherous pit of rat-vipers they call the Fire Court and into the next world in no time at all, leaving his natural child to petition for the throne."

Katara fell a step back. Her face was hot and horrified. For Zuko, for herself. Her fists balled up, unnoticed. "You mean to tell me that... that is the answer to your stupid riddle? I thought you were trying to teach me some deeply philosophical technique and you just wanted me to- to...!"

"Lay down with the enemy," he supplied with distaste. "You've quartered with him all these weeks, surely it can't be so difficult to slip into his bedroll by now."

Katara made an offended noise. It was all she could manage through the shame, the humiliation. Because, a hateful little voice was whispering, it's true, isn't it? Wouldn't your master be pleased to know - you didn't even need clear instruction to do his bidding.

Pakku was watching her face, expression unchanging. "We've all made sacrifices, girl. Your virtue is by no means our nation's greatest loss."

"But it's mine!" Her words cut across the harbor. She whipped up a finger to shake at him. "How dare you think you can march me off to do your bidding that way! How can you think you have the right to command something so... so manipulative and personal and, and shameful from me!"

"Perhaps you're confused about what it means to be a soldier," Pakku said, tipping his head toward her. "You wanted to learn to fight, and I taught you. But everything has its price, and now you have an obligation to the Water Tribe, a duty you must perform however it might sting your pride. It was my duty to train you because you are one of the last of our people, and as long as your little deception went unnoticed, I swallowed the shame and did my duty."

Katara flinched. So he had known, since the beginning or since Iroh had told him, it hardly mattered. The fact that his repudiation was as much about appearances as his own beliefs only made it hurt more.

"The resistance sends young men to die," Pakku went on, "and they do it proudly. Now you're offended because your task is one that no man can accomplish. Phuh. You should be grateful - you get to keep your life when you do your duty."

Katara took another step back, ducking her chin down and glaring at him. She wanted to argue that those sacrifices were fundamentally different, to tell him that the 'duty' he assigned her would be reviled by the Water Tribe, not celebrated like a clean warrior's death. But Katara couldn't find the words.

"I'm not a soldier any more," she spat instead, dropping into a bending stance, "and just like you said, I'm not your student either. So shut up and fight me."

Pakku gave her another lengthy, assessing look and twisted his jaw to one side. "I don't fight women, much less sulky, presumptuous girls. I do, however, expect an answer to my question. Have you given that firebender what he's so obviously been pining for?"

Katara, trembling with outrage and shame, reached up with a narrow wave and slapped him in the face. "Fight me, you horrible old man!"

Pakku straightened and, with a slow pass of his hand over his glowering face, flicked the water away. "I spoke too soon, Pupil Katto. It seems a final lesson is in order, after all."

And then, fast as a rat-viper, he pulled up a great gout out of the harbor and brought it arching down on her.

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Up on the walkway a quarter turn around the harbor, recruits crammed together along the balustrade, elbowing and clamoring as they watched the action below.

"Did you see Li cut those arrows out of the air like that? I didn't know he was that fast!"

"Woah, Sokka's a crackshot with that boomerang!"

"What about that girl? I saw her take out three earthbenders earlier and she doesn't even have a weapon!"

"Oh! Oh! Guys, who's that fighting Pakku?"

"Psh, Katto, who else? The Southerners don't have any other waterbenders."

"Man, I didn't know that kid could move like that..."

There was a momentary pause as the keener-eyed recruits watched the figure of Katto below, the bloody blue tunic that fluttered a little where it was torn in the front. And Jeeka, being one of the keenest-eyed of them, was the first to point out what they were all now starting to notice.

"Katto's got tits."

Suddenly, everyone was staring at Katto and nobody was talking.

"Katara," Palluk said. He clenched his hands on the stone before him, suddenly feeling a bit dizzy. "I heard someone shout her name earlier. That's Katara of the Southern Water Tribe."

The clamor rose up again - always was really girly, never came back to the showers... she saw me naked that time! ...lived with Li, that liar! Do you think they...? - but Palluk didn't hear much of it. He was searching the escaping ship for Li, not sure yet whether he should feel betrayed.

Palluk was confused about a lot of things. How to be himself in a world that would challenge him at every turn. How to deal with Hahn as an undeserving authority figure. How to honor his responsibility to his people. There was a mighty burden on Palluk, and he had revealed that burden to Li because he'd thought he was dealing with a similar situation. Only he wasn't. Li was living with a girl, protecting a girl's secret. Palluk felt like a fool, and a weakling.

But still, Li's words were stuck in his head, as they had been all week. You can't live your life waiting for somebody to tell you that it's okay.

Palluk couldn't find Li on the ship, but he could see Katara. She was surging back off the harbor, bringing down a tide on Pakku. The Southern Princess, people had been calling her. A lot of guys had had kind of a fantasy about her after Tantec came back with his stories - they thought of her as a pristine and beautiful Water Tribe girl hidden away in the ice, a last part of their world that remained pure.

When Palluk looked at her now, he suddenly saw something bright and defiant. Katto had been scrappy and gifted, but Katara was fearless, unrelenting, self-sacrificing. Palluk remembered how she had insisted they save the warriors during the training exercise, never mind the danger. Now, here she was with Sokka - her brother, who she'd obviously successfully freed from the Fire Nation - rescuing her people and warning the Northern Tribe about Hahn.

In fact, that warning only confirmed suspicions that Palluk had been struggling with for a while now. It certainly hadn't been a lack of suspicion that kept him quiet since returning from the training exercise. It had been a lack of belief in himself. Because who was he to challenge Hahn? Who was Palluk but a half-grown boy with a dangerous secret?

But watching Katara face down her own master, Palluk started to wonder.

Katara was by no means a proper Water Tribe maiden - whatever her private situation might be, there was nothing proper about a girl living with a man in a barracks and lying about being a girl - but her versatility and conviction made her something greater than a mere maiden. She had been a comforting ideal before, but now she was an inspiration, a heroine straight out of the oldest legends. Northern law forbade her to learn martial waterbending, but Katara had risked everything and broken that law. Palluk had thought of Katto and Li as a source of hope for his own dismal romantic life, proof that it was possible to be happy, but now when he looked at Katara, he saw someone who hadn't needed proof at all. No one had told her that her choices were okay. She had just been brave enough to make them anyway.

"Some princess," sneered Jeeka. "Not hard to guess how she kept that half-breed quiet. Ha, Whore of the South, is more like it."

Palluk's head snapped around and he fixed a glare on him. "That's a pretty foul word, Jeeka. You need your mouth washed out. Attuk." He shifted his gaze to the big guy standing behind Jeeka, and jerked his chin toward the harbor. From his square shoulders to his hard eyes, everything about Palluk spoke the command.

Attuk, who had already been wearing an even-darker-than-usual expression and glaring down at the back of Jeeka's head, grabbed the smaller guy by his sash and the back of his tunic and hurled him over the balustrade. Jeeka flew the twenty or so feet down, kicking and wailing, and then slapped hard on the top of the water. The sound was actually quite satisfying to everyone who heard it.

.

Pakku was powerful, and he knew nuances of form that could only be learned through a lifetime of practice. But Katara was young and fast and her anger lent her boundless energy.

The water came down on her and Katara went with it, surfing fast out into the harbor to loop tightly around and bear down on him. Pakku froze her wave to a slide of ice and Katara just skated down and circled him in a blur, launching many small darts of ice as she passed. Pakku remained largely untouched at the center, the graceful sweeps of his arms subsuming most of her ice into a whirling radius of water that he suddenly lashed outwards, knocking her hard in the face.

Katara lost her footing and hurled into the harbor, but it was only a second before she rose up atop a floe and launched great whirling blades of ice back at him. Pakku dodged spryly for his age but barely evaded a few of the blades, but then he performed a move he had never shown her, stepping around and crouching low to shove a thin wave in her direction. It was too tall and fast to redirect and Katara could only leap out of the way, diving into the water and spinning to rise back up like a leaping fish. Only Pakku had anticipated her trajectory and, the instant she spun the water from her face, Katara found herself slapped back down by a great tentacle of water.

The silence below the surface was a crushing force and for a second Katara only floated in it, crushed. Then, realizing her need for air, she shut her eyes, focused on the calm, and burst through the surface gasping. Another giant tentacle was on its way, but she swept her arms in a precise hook and the water impacted just to her right, the resultant wave bearing her fully out of the water and back into a tearing surf toward the pier.

Pakku lashed at her with waves and whips and she dodged between them easily, leaping off her wave to take a knee on the stone. The wave went on, barreling down the pier at her master. He dispersed it with little more than a twist and a closing gesture of his hands at his center and then raised one wiry eyebrow at her.

"A week away from your training may not have dulled your skills, but it has made you arrogant."

Breathing heavily and rabidly certain that this was a lie, Katara shot to her feet. "You haven't seen my skills yet!"

She came in fast and wild, first with swipes of water that Pakku barely deflected in time and then, when she had closed the distance between them, throwing a barrage of short punches. Pakku blocked the first two strikes but caught the next in his stomach. Katara came in with a punch aimed at his chin that would have knocked his stupid droopy mustaches right off.

But then, in a whip-fast movement of just his hands, he slammed her sideways against the wall with a wave that seemed to come from nowhere. Katara hit hard and fell hard and, for a second, saw only bright spots of light.

Then she was on her knees with her hands iced to the stone behind her and she was dragging her hazy vision off the wall at her side and blinking, trying to focus on Pakku's dry, thoughtful face. Only, it was turned away as he looked elsewhere. "I've seen enough," he said, but she noticed he was breathing heavily. He turned back to her. "But I still haven't had your answer, Katto."

Katara shook her head trying to clear it, but that just made everything worse. What was the question? About... Zuko? She twisted her face into a scowl and turned it up at the old man. There was blood in her mouth, she realized. She had bitten her lip. The sting made her scowl even harder. "No."

Pakku assessed her for a long moment. Katara fought not to fidget, not to flinch, but it seemed to be no use. His mouth quirked upward unpleasantly. "A last piece of advice for my star pupil." He slid into a bending stance and the smile faded away. "Master your temper. Anger can lend you power, but with a clear mind you might have stood a chance in this fight."

And then he drew up a rain of icy needles and brought it whipping down toward her.

.

"Look, this is a one-time thing, Fanboy, but you've gotta throw me onto the pier."

Zuko, still holding his swords and watching for stray arrows, eyed the distance and thought about it. Then he stiffened. "I'm not throwing a little blind girl anywhere!"

"Hey! I'm armpit-deep in puberty here, I am not a little girl!" This was accompanied by emphatic pointing at her armpit-regions, which Zuko's eyes snapped to reflexively. He grimaced and averted his glare. Toph went on, unaware. "And I have to get to solid ground to stop the earthbenders so either figure something else out or get to tossing, Noodle-head!"

Snarling, Zuko looked around. Crews of men were deflecting arrows with shields to cover others as they worked long poles near the stern, slowly directing the ship toward the tunnel, but the pier was still way too far off. They were about to pass near a moored ship, though. Zuko hurriedly sheathed his swords and crouched down. "Get on my back and hold on."

Toph scrambled, kneeing him in the spine and momentarily strangling him before settling. Zuko hardly waited. The second she was on, he raced across the deck, sprinted three steps along the gunwale, and made a flying leap. Toph's weight on his back pulled him a little off balance and he tripped on the rail of the far ship before tumbling down on the deck.

"Are you trying to kill me?" Toph demanded as she dragged herself upright, rubbing her elbow. Zuko just snatched up her hand and ran with her for the dockside.

"Get ready to jump."

"Jump? Isn't that what we just- Hey!"

He hauled her over the rail with him and hit the stone with his body first, rolling to disperse the impact. Still, it was a big shock, and Zuko spent a second feebly trying to right himself from under Toph's death-grip on his tunic. There was a sound of many boots approaching. He blinked up at the earthbenders just as stone cuffs slammed over his wrists and ankles and the soldiers surrounded them.

"You're under arrest," said the captain with a hard look on Zuko. He had a big bruise forming on one side of his face, about the size of a deflected rock.

"Sweet, sweet dirt," Toph said where she knelt at Zuko's side. She, he noticed, hadn't been cuffed, and she was passing her hands over the smooth pier with an almost indecent look on her face. The earthbenders cast her uncertain looks.

"Are you gonna help me?" Zuko shouted.

She stiffened and clambered angrily to her feet. "Yeah, yeah - get off my back!"

The earthbenders hesitated, but Toph did not. In a few sliding sweeps of her feet and measured chops of her hands, she pummeled the entire regiment, leaving a few groaning in the rubble and a few more sputtering in the middle of the harbor. One man had actually hit the boat they had just jumped from and was hanging by one limp arm from a loop of mooring line. Then, finally, Toph broke away Zuko's bonds. He surged to his feet, slapping off debris and scowling at her.

But Toph wasn't paying attention. She had one hand on the ground and a smirk on her face. "Oh there they are!"

"What are you-?"

Zuko didn't finish because she had straightened and made a few hard motions, jutting out her arms and scuffing her feet. The walkway overhead cracked away from the wall and tipped with an unnatural roughness. Zuko watched, stunned, as the archers slid off and tumbled screaming into the harbor. Then the walkway righted itself and Toph was grinning, brushing her hands together.

"Those guys were really bugging me."

"Come on, we have to get back on the ship."

Zuko frowned at her blitheness even as they ran. The archers had hit at least three of the Southerners that he saw - but they seemed to be aiming to disable, not kill, so no one had been seriously injured. It said a lot about relations between the two Water Tribes.

Zuko filed that away for later consideration. They skidded to a stop where the pier ended at the tunnel's entrance just as the ship was drawing near.

"Alright," Toph said, cracking her knuckles, "tell me where the ship is and I'll launch us. I've got an eighty percent accuracy rate, so try to be more specific than 'over there' unless you want to swim."

Only, Zuko wasn't looking at the ship. He was watching Pakku ice a limp Katara to her knees on the other side of the tunnel mouth. He was watching the old man draw closer to her, watching him raise up a swarm of icy knives.

Zuko didn't think. He took a running start down the pier, kicked high off the wall, and, with no other way to make such an impossible leap, whirled fire from his legs to propel himself across the distance. He didn't stop to recover, but rolled straight into a form, sending a curtain of flame between them to melt the ice and then advancing fast on the old man with punches and kicks and furious shouts.

.

Katara flinched as the ice came down at her, so she did not see it when the icy needles divided so as not to hit her directly. They would have nicked her, perhaps, if it hadn't been for the sudden wall of fire that cut blindingly in front of her, leaving nothing but a spatter of droplets in the air.

She broke through the ice cuffs and scrambled to her feet immediately to face the new threat - and a part of her thought it was the real threat, that fire - but she knew Zuko's voice at once. Her pulse leapt when she spotted his shape in the flashes of his bending, the familiar one-sleeved shirt she had mended.

Katara turned back to Pakku, who was easily blocking each attack but didn't seem to be carrying through to a counter. He was smirking. His eyes flicked to Katara, and she knew this was exactly what he had wanted. Zuko revealing himself to defend her. A grand and foolish gesture, the old man probably thought.

Then Pakku shifted to strike back and Katara broke into motion. She snatched his stream from the air and sent it back at him just as Zuko attacked again and fire and water converged on the old master. Though he blocked, the combined force sent him skidding out onto the harbor.

When Katara turned back, Zuko was scanning her with a worried eye, like he was looking for the killing wound. It hurt her, the fretful pinch in this boy's brow, because she wanted to soothe it away. She wanted to throw her arms around him right then and there. But with everything Pakku had said looming over her, she could hardly even meet his eye.

She looked past him towards the ship where it was now entering the tunnel. Several familiar faces were watching her - and Zuko as well - and it put a cold lump in her gut, but she didn't waste time thinking on it. Not now. A rope ladder unfurled. It was time to go. She snatched up his hand.

"Come on!"

Katara let Zuko go to make the leap and scrambled up the rope ladder. Sokka grasped her hand and pulled her the last of the way over the gunwale. She tried to step away to start waterbending the ship faster but he settled his hands on her shoulders and made her stop.

Sokka was peering at her, and he looked worried, too. It didn't feel any better coming from him. "Are you okay?"

"I'm fine, Sokka! Let go!"

He did, holding up his hands with a defensive shrug. Katara turned away, and she didn't really notice any of the faces turned toward her, the open stares she was receiving. She just moved midship and sank once more into the long sweeps of her arms, and all she focused on for a while was the huge effort of moving water past the hull.

She did not notice that Toph, instead of rejoining the ship, had earthbent a footpath along the wall of the tunnel for herself. Suki stood near the rudder, talking down to her so she would know where the ship was, and Toph strolled along, shutting layers of stone as they passed. Katara didn't hear the rumble of stone, but she felt the surges of water as it was displaced, and she rode them, pushing the ship faster down the long path toward the glimmer of daylight ahead.

She also did not notice that Zuko sat tenuously balanced on the gunwale where he had climbed up the ladder, glaring down his nose at Hakoda, who stood dangerously close, whale-tooth sword in hand.

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AN: So this chapter is a little shorter than the last few, but it really is about the target length that I wanted them to be. Next chapter will be up by next Friday! Happy weekends!