Summary: Katara and Zuko are suddenly confronted by the elements, and Aang, Sokka and Iroh search for them. But they can only survive if they work together. KataraXZuko
Author's Notes: This is the fourth installment in a series of fake Avatar episodes that begin where The Blue Spirit left off. If you'd rather read my stories in order, you can get to them from my author profile page (justanotheravatarfan).
RedHawkK'sani mentions that I should have put all these chapters in a single story, and ZukosGirl expressed some puzzlement, and I apologize for any confusion or inconvenience. The site's user interface confused me and wouldn't let me start with Chapter 14 (The Blue Spirit was Chapter 13 in the actual series). When I start the Book of Earth, I promise to do things the correct way.
Also, Thank you, Booter-Freak and Carmensasa for pointing out my misquote and telling me Haru's father's name (Tyro). I've reworked that paragraph to reflect your input.
Obligatory Disclaimer: I own nothing from the Avatar world, but I hope to create something this fabulous some day.
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"Let's continue heading for shore, Lieutenant." Iroh murmurs hopefully. "Perhaps Katara and Zuko can get to the beach. Or perhaps we can find them." If one of them doesn't kill the other one first, the Dragon of the West silently thinks to himself.
Meanwhile, Katara observes the currents, calculates the distance between themselves and the ship as opposed to the distance between themselves and the shoreline, and quickly decides they have a better chance of making it to shore. She incongruously recalls Haru's father Tyro saying, "I hear cowards float," when they had swept the Fire Nation guards off the prison ship.
Zuko remains afloat and would hence be a coward, according to the elderly earthbender's logic. Yet, Katara knows that amongst all of Zuko's repellent characteristics, cowardice is not among them, and she also sees that Zuko is struggling.
She propels herself towards her enemy, blocks off the waves so Zuko can catch his breath, and exclaims, "We need to swim to shore – I think we can make it! Stay with me!"
Katara feels annoyed as Zuko stares at a fixed point on the horizon and does not respond. She grasps his hand and cries impatiently, "Come ON, Zuko, let's GO!"
"Egad!" he exclaims, "What's THAT?" Katara whirls around in the direction towards which Zuko is pointing, and sees a huge serpentine form gracefully undulating towards them from the horizon.
She shrieks in terror, "Eeeyikes! It's An UNAGI!"
Zuko shouts back, "What's an UNAGI?"
Katara snidely remarks, "Surely you remember the one from the Island of Kyoshi back when Aang rode the thing and made it spray water on the fires that YOU created back when you were attacking the town!"
Zuko gnashes his teeth and snaps, "Well, it's all YOUR fault that we're here now! Your waterbending needs some work."
Katara's cheeks flame with anger and she sharply retorts, "No, it's YOUR fault! You DISTRACTED me!"
They suddenly stop squabbling as they nervously eye the rapidly approaching unagi.
Katara remembers how Aang handled the sea serpent and knows what to do. She trembles because she knows that she lacks Aang's training, agility and strength, but she focuses her mind because she knows it's their only chance.
She sees a tall wave poised to bury them, turns it away, and tells Zuko, "We need to get onto the unagi's snout, where it can't get to us, and ride it to shore as close as we can get."
Zuko frowns and snorts derisively, "Yeah, right! Like it'll give us a ride to shore?"
Katara sharply retorts, "So you have a BETTER plan?" She adds, "All I know about the unagi is that it'll go after anything that moves, that its antennae are very sensitive, and that it isn't terribly smart. But that's STILL more than YOU know."
Zuko heaves forth an exasperated sigh, "Okay, fine. Do whatEVer."
Katara faces the approaching sea serpent as it slithers swiftly and sinuously through the water towards them with strands of saliva dripping from the fangs of its gaping, famished jaws. She waits until the last possible moment, as the antennae dangling from the fearsome beast's snout drift within her reach.
"NOW!" Katara shouts as she grasps an antenna in each of her hands and flies up in the air. The antennae swing wildly in opposite directions and the girl is flung back into the water.
"Oh, shirt!" She sputters as she disentangles herself from the suffocating folds of her tunic and struggles back to the surface. She sees the unagi plunging towards shore in search of its lost prey, with Zuko quickly following behind. Katara catches up to them and creates tantalizing splashes in front of the unagi to encourage its forward movement.
But the sea serpent soon grows suspicious and swirls around in their direction.
"Nice job of distracting the monster," Zuko snaps at Katara after drawing a breath, "But, NOW what?"
Katara sardonically replies, "Well, since YOU'RE so obviously capable of coming up with something better, why don't YOU think of something!"
"Fine," The fire prince sharply retorts, "I WILL."
He swiftly hurls a ball of flame that lands squarely upon the unagi's jaw and burns its flesh. As the monster cringes into a ball and screeches in pain, Zuko throws out another flame as a distraction, then nimbly lunges forth to grasp both antennae in one hand, as he grips Katara by the waist and pulls her against him with the other hand and orders, "Hang on, Katara!"
As the unagi wildly flails about and attempts to dash the unwanted passengers against the hard scales encasing its body, Zuko adroitly lands on its side feet-first and uses the force to propel himself and the girl upwards in a double-flip like an acrobat while maintaining a firm grasp on the beast's antennae. They swiftly and roughly descend atop the creature's snout.
"Nice landing," sniffs Katara.
Zuko abruptly shifts Katara behind him and she clings to his waist as he flings another ball of fire towards the shoreline and the enraged sea serpent charges towards it. As the unagi tires, Zuko hurls another flame ahead of them. But the beast is reluctant to come any closer to shore, soon slows down, and begins turning back towards the horizon from whence it came.
"Pull the reins!" shouts Katara, "And then we'll JUMP!"
Zuko tugs smartly on the unagi's antennae. A torrential stream of water gushes forth from the beasts' mouth onto the beach as they tumble down the monster's snout and are violently propelled to shore. The blast crashes them against the black, ice-covered rocks on the snowy beach.
They pant and struggle to their feet as they gaze at the unagi gliding away. A few inquisitive penguins and sea lions approach them, sniff, discover that the newcomers have nothing to eat and are not small enough to be eaten, and waddle disconsolately away.
Suddenly, Katara shivers and her teeth chatter uncontrollably. "You'll die of cold!" Zuko remarks as he grasps Katara and pulls her towards him. "Hey!" the girl huffs indignantly as she whirls around and glares towards the pressure on her back. The fire prince gasps in horrified astonishment as a thick layer of ice swiftly encases his hands.
"What's the MATTER with you?" he cries out and scowls down at the girl, "I just didn't want you to FREEZE to death. Now we're STUCK like this!"
"Uh-oh!" Katara stammers awkwardly, "I-I d-don't know how th-that happened."
"You're totally SICK!" Zuko howls. Katara bursts out laughing and after a few seconds, Zuko begins laughing too.
"We need to start a fire so the others can find us and so we can warm up." Katara suggests as she tries to change the subject. "Good idea," Zuko mutters, as they reluctantly lean against each other and wait for the ice to melt.
They scavenge along the beach for driftwood. Zuko soon declares, "We have enough, and it's getting late." Katara protests, "But it's all soaked through and frozen – we still need to find something suitable for tinder or it won't light up." Zuko triumphantly holds a flame aloft in the palm of his hand and replies, "I think we can manage."
Katara exclaims, "Oh, good, I'm SO glad to know that you firebenders can do SOMETHING useful that doesn't involve KILLING people."
Zuko replies with more than a hint of irony, "Yeah, too bad we can't ALL be nice, peace-loving water people like YOU, Katara."
They sit silently by the campfire as the waves slap softly against the rocks. The stars dance in the midnight sky as the moon reflects on the shimmering, sapphire waters and suffuses the once-menacing icebergs with a pale, silvery glow. Zuko gazes broodingly towards the sea with the un-scarred side of his face towards Katara. She sees the firelight dancing upon his chiseled, determined features and is about to ask why he changed sides and what happened to his face, when the ship suddenly appears.
"Look!" Katara cries, "They've come for us!"
Zuko responds, "So, does this time COUNT?"
Katara snaps back, "Count towards WHAT?"
"Saving your life," Zuko replies.
"No way," Katara sneers, "After all, I saved your ship."
"Half a point?" Zuko shoots back.
"Fine," responds Katara, "I'll give you half a point."
Then she begins counting her fingers and enumerating, "But, there's that time with the pirates times three for Aang, Sokka and me. And then there's that incident in Avatar Roku's temple times three. Oh, and the time we first met you and rescued Aang from your ship. That makes NINE already, not counting Appa and minus half a point."
The fire prince glares at the water girl and exclaims, "But what about yesterday? And rescuing the Avatar from Admiral Zhao's dungeon?"
Katara scowls and replies as she ticks things off on her fingers, "Fine, three points for yesterday, but only half a point for Aang because you weren't doing it to save him and shot fire at him. And then there are all the people in MY village and the folks on the Island of Kyoshi who you tried to burn to a crisp. But I'll be CHARITABLE and round them off to one hundred. So that's 109 points all together, minus FOUR points … So now you STILL need one HUNDRED and FIVE more points!"
"That's not FAIR, Katara," Zuko declares, "I wasn't really planning on hurting anyone from the water tribe OR the Island of Kyoshi."
Katara snorts derisively, "Well it SURE looked like that to ME."
As Aang, Sokka and Iroh descend from the ship's plank and approach the castaways, Iroh inquires, "So, you are both STILL fighting?"
He then puts an arm around Zuko's shoulders and says, "I'm so glad to see you alive."
Meanwhile, Aang and Sokka enclose Katara and the three of them hug in a circle. "I'm glad you're safe," the girl's brother murmurs. Aang sheds tears of relief and says nothing.
"We need to head for the North Pole," declares Iroh as he turns back towards the ship and the others begin to proceed after him. Several sets of pale, glowing blue eyes follow their progress.
Sokka notices them and suddenly gulps, "Um … we might need to slow down for a minute."
Sure enough, they're surrounded by a pride of large, muscular, gleaming-white snow panthers peering at them hungrily. The five of them abruptly freeze. Zuko blasts fire at the leader, but the animal gracefully dodges the flames and growls as he and the rest of his pack ominously close in.
Sokka's blue eyes gather in a frowning squint as he throws his boomerang in a circular motion towards the leader and his cohorts at neck-level. He calmly watches the progress of his boomerang as the snow panthers lunge towards him, and then suddenly collapse as the blood spurts forth from their severed jugular veins.
"Um," Sokka graciously inquires, "Frozen snow panthers, anyone?"
Zuko looks at Sokka with bemused respect and asks, "How did you do that?"
Sokka meets his eyes and grimly replies, "I guess I have more experience in hunting snow panthers than you have hunting US!"
When they finally arrive back onboard the ship, Iroh orders tea and rice and they all attack the victuals with zest. "We need to turn in. Tomorrow, we'll reach the North Pole," he declares.