Okay, I swear that my house is haunted. I've had all kinds of weird experiences where I've seen things at the foot of my bed, felt someone rub my arm and sometimes I can feel really cold breath on my face when I'm falling asleep. Now twenty minutes ago I felt someones fingertips on my shoulder as I was typing this chapter. Creepy, I know. I'm one of those people that totally believes in ghosts, but I don't really believe in aliens. I believe there are people living much like we are in distant galaxies up by Polaris, but I don't think they've managed to span the distance between our worlds. I also think that bigfoot is actually Cain from the bible because he was cursed to walk the earth forever as an outcast. Anyways, I don't really feel comfortable with how this chapter starts out, but I don't quite now how to fix it to make it better, so ya get it as it is.
Katara183: Oh! The Zipper is just about my favorite ride. I went on it with my brother Dusty a while back and we managed to get our cage to spin eight times as we plummeted. It was so freakin awesome! Anyways, September 23? Really? YAYNESS!
Plutobaby494: I actually don't know many twelve-year-olds that know about female monthly cycles.
O-dragon: I actually didn't ask my mom, I just kinda put myself in that situation and thought about how I would feel if I had just had my first child. I'm glad you liked it. By the way, your story rocks. I'm going to read the next chapter in just a few minutes and I hope you don't mind if I do some shameless advertising on your behalf after I finish these shoutouts.
Zukoscute2: here it IS IS IS!
Khazia: That is a weird dreams. I'm surprised. Usually I have real doozies of dreams every night, but I haven't been able to remember any of them except the one you were in. And yes, you can never trust carnies. I spent almost fifteen bucks last year trying to win this stupid bottle game. Then i did a dart throwing game before that but I think they did something to the darts because they were completely out of balance and wouldn't throw straight.
Darklight4ever: Well, say hi to your kitty for me and give her a squeeze.
ZukoPunk: Once again I'm very sorry to hear about your mom. The only advice I can give you is to put her out of your mind. All that thinking about her will do is cause more pain and if she's really as bad as she sounds then she's just not worth that pain, hun.
Okay, here is some shameless advertising for O-dragon's story. She's absolutely fabulous and just posted a story called 'One Night'. You should all read it because it's pretty nifty. And if anybody else wants me to advertise your stories, just let me know. I ain't shy!
"Psst. Miss Lin. Is prince Zuko with you?" Katie jumped and glanced at the door to her right. It was barely cracked open and she could see Iroh's brown eye peeking out at her.
"Um…no." She said looking around to be sure.
"Then could you come here for a second? I need your opinion." Katie looked around once more before slipping into the room. The room really wasn't much more than a closet housing spare armor and weapons.
"So, what do you need?" Iroh was grinning like a naughty child.
"I was wondering if Zuko has told you what a special day tomorrow is?" Iroh said fiddling with his fingernails casually.
"Um, it's Sunday."
"Oh, it's not just any Sunday. It's August twenty-eighth." Iroh said spreading his hands.
"I'm afraid I'm not following you." Katie said slowly, raising an eyebrow.
"Tomorrow Zuko turns seventeen."
"Holy crap! You're kidding me!" She said, a grin spread across her face identical to Iroh's.
"No, I'm not. But this is where your opinion comes in. Normally he wouldn't allow us to throw him a celebration. But under present circumstances, I don't think he would put up too much of a fuss."
"I guess it just depends on the celebration."
"I wasn't thinking of anything much. Perhaps another music night with merely more food."
"YES!"
"Well, I'm glad you agree." He chuckled. "But I want to get the dining hall ready, so I will be relying on you to keep the prince occupied all day tomorrow."
"Yeah, no problem."
"Very good. Then it's settled. But the prince cannot know until tomorrow night."
"What time tomorrow?"
"Just before sunset." Katie nodded and they both left the closet walking up to eat lunch with the rest of the crew.
"So how are the prisoners faring today?" Zuko asked when Katie sat down next to him.
"All right. I feel sorry for Katara though. I need to bring her some necessary supplies later today."
"Katie, I'm trying to eat!" Zuko said dropping the chicken leg he was about to take a bite out of.
"Sorry." She said grinning into her cup. She took a sip and immediately spat it back out. She looked into her cup with disgust. Someone had replaced her water with rum. Several soldiers around her began cracking up. She glared at all of them and turned to Zuko who was grinning as well. "Yeah yeah. Very funny. Now where's my water?" One of the culprits pushed her original cup back over to her. Katie promptly threw it in his face causing his buddies to burst with fresh mirth.
"Well you deserved it chum." One of them said giving him a hearty pat on the back. Katie grinned and held out a hand to the sopping soldier.
"Truce?" She asked. The soldier's face melted into a grin and he shook her hand.
"Yes, truce." Katie excused herself to go get a few things for Katara. She had an idea forming in her head since Iroh had mentioned a party the next night. She bee lined to her and Zuko's room to grab some towels to keep up pretences. As she rummaged through a drawer she heard the door open behind her. She looked up as Zuko walked past her and opened a drawer by his mattress. He pulled out a necklace. It was very simple, just a black ribbon with a silver pendant.
"Here. Give this to the girl as well." He said handing the necklace over to her. Katie took the necklace and hugged him tightly.
"I believe there's hope for you yet my prince." She murmured. Zuko gave her a confused look when they pulled apart, but Katie had already hurried off to the prison block.
"Let's spend the day together." Katie said to Zuko over her changing screen the next morning. Zuko hadn't bothered with putting on his armor today but instead pulled on his red, sleeveless shirt.
"We spend every day together." Zuko said pulling his hair down and retying it.
"No, I mean really spend it together without anyone else around. Lately I've been feeling like I hardly get to see you." Katie said synching her belt and stepping out from behind the screen.
"Well I can't think of anywhere we could be alone on this ship."
"There's always the training deck. You could try teaching me to fight again."
"You aren't up to something are you?"
"No. I just want us to get to know each other better while we have the chance. Once we get to the Firenation you're going to be ripped in every direction. I'll probably never see you again."
"Of course you'll see me again. I'll make sure of it." Zuko said laughing.
"Still. I think we should spend the day together. Just for the fun of it."
"Okay, we'll spend the day together."
"Great. I'll get some food. Meet me up on the training deck in ten minutes." Katie said with a smile. She hurried down to the mess hall for enough food to last them the day. She made a quick stop in their room to grab her sketchbook and some stuff to read in case they decided to have a lesson today and met Zuko on the training deck.
"So. What do you want to do?" Zuko asked, slightly uncertain.
"I want you to know who I am. I know almost everything about you, but you've been really patient about me being so mysterious for so long. So ask me whatever you want to know." Zuko pursed his lips and tried to think of something. There were so many questions he had wanted to ask her, but he didn't know where to start. He glanced down at the sketchbook beneath her arm and decided it was as good a place as any to start.
"Will you tell me about the pictures in your book?" Katie smiled and nodded. They lay down on their stomachs on the floor and Katie opened to the first page.
"These are my nieces and nephews. That's Connor, Seth, Bowen, Nikki, Brinn, Alex, Irelind, and Skylar." She went to the next page, which had a picture of a man with short dark hair and a goatee. "This is my brother, Tony. I've always been closer to him than any of my other siblings even though there's a ten year difference between us." She went on to the next page explaining her other brothers, Blair (A/N: I know I said earlier his name is Blaine, I did that because I didn't think I would be using their real names but changed my mind.) and Dusty. She didn't really have any drawings of her sister though because she had to deal with her so much already she had never wanted to draw her. There were a few more individual pictures of various nieces and nephews. There was a rough sketch of her parents. Then there was a drawing of three strange creatures that Zuko had never seen before. "These are my horses. This darker one is my Kai. In real life she's almost blood red. The next one is Mama. She used to be brown, but she's been turning white so right now she's just kinda pinkish. And the third one is the white nag. She's really old and a pain."
"And you ride these?"
"When I have the chance I do." They went through some sketches of her friends, there was one of a dragon and then there were a few pictures of some boys. Katie giggled at these and tried to skip over them without an explanation.
"I thought the whole point of this was for us to get to know each other better. I think that includes telling me about these." Zuko said grinning and turning back the pages.
"Well, these were just some goofy guys I met at a leadership conference. They were showing off for me and a few friends so I asked them to let me sketch them."
"And…?" Zuko said nudging her arm. Katie blushed a little.
"And…I ended up dating one of them throughout the weekend. But then I found out he was younger than me so I dumped him." Katie said turning the page quickly.
"I'm younger than you." Zuko said frowning slightly.
"Yeah, by like seven months. This guy was two years younger than me. Plus he lived across the country, and he was a bad kisser."
"Oh really? Have you kissed all of the boys drawn in your book?" He asked cocking an eyebrow.
"Of course not! I may have wanted to at some point or another, but besides you there have only been three guys that I've ever willingly kissed."
"Do tell." Zuko said. Katie laughed awkwardly. "I'm serious. I want to know what I'm up against." He said giving her another nudge.
"Fine fine." She skimmed through the pages until she found a sketch of a boy with a square jaw, light brown goatee and eyes that had been colored in with a blue pencil. "That's Shawn. I dated him all of last year. He placed second in his weight division in wrestling last season. But we ended up just drifting apart at the end of the school year." She said with a shrug.
"And the third?" Zuko asked glaring at the face. Katie flipped a few more pages to a picture of a guy with a bowl cut hairstyle and a few dark freckles spread over his cheeks.
"This is Max. He was my first crush. We were neighbors and best friends when we were younger until he moved away. We hooked up two summers ago when he visited his grandma for the holidays. But we broke it off because he lives so far away and because I began dating Shawn."
"And were they good kissers?"
"I'll never tell." Katie said grinning as she went back to various pictures of her house and the pond in her hay field, and her neighbor's Clydesdales. Zuko seemed very curious about all of the other boys she had drawn in. Most were actors she liked or friends from work or school. Then they came to one that Katie had only just started of Zuko standing in a moonlit room without a shirt on. Katie snapped her book shut before he caught more than a glimpse and announced that they had looked at enough. Zuko grinned evilly and wrestled the book out of her hands and opened to the page. He studied it closely, pursing his lips skeptically.
"I'm not that skinny!" he announced. Katie grabbed the book away blushing furiously. "If you need me to, I'll pose anytime you want." Zuko said giving her a wink. Katie shoved playfully and sat up. Now that the ice was broken, Zuko began asking her every question that had ever popped into his mind and Katie answered them all while not quite explaining the fact that she was from a different world. They talked until noon, then they broke out a small lunch and began a reading lesson which didn't last for too long. Zuko began training her once more in self-defense. They took almost the entire rest of the day punching and kicking at each other, only pausing when Zuko would adjust her posture.
"What time is it do you think?" Katie asked panting for breath and wiping sweat from her eyes. Zuko opened a porthole and glanced outside.
"It's sunset!" He said sounding shocked at how fast the day had gone by.
"We should go up for dinner. I bet Iroh's been freaking out." Katie said lacing her arm through his. They dropped their stuff off in their room and changed into clean clothes before finally entering the mess hall. Zuko froze when he stepped through the doorway. All the soldiers in the room cheered and raised various bottles in salute to Zuko.
"HAPPY BIRTHDAY NEPHEW!" Iroh yelled standing on top of a table. The entire room chorused in a HAPPY BIRTHDAY and began cheering again.
"Did you have anything to do with this?" Zuko asked, turning to Katie.
"Maaaaaybe." She said scratching her chin. She smiled and pulled him deeper into the room. Iroh plopped one of his ridiculous hats on Zuko's head and somewhere in the midst of the soldiers, someone began playing a lively tune on some sort of brass instrument. Music night number two went on even louder than the first. Katie had refrained from singing or playing anything that night. Instead she stood up and taught the soldiers the only square dance she knew. They joined in enthusiastically, clapping and stamping their feet as loudly as they could.
"Do you hear that?" Aang whispered to Katara. She strained her ears and certainly enough, two floors above their head they could hear the sound of people stomping in unison.
"Yeah, that's the signal." Katara whispered glancing over at their current guard. He didn't look too pleased to be missing the festivities and was waiting anxiously for someone to come and relieve him of duty. She pulled a small vial of water from her pocket and pulled away the cork. She moved the water with her hand to fill the gaps in the keyhole. She did a complicated hand motion and the water froze. The expansion caused the locking mechanisms to crack and the cell swung open. To her right, Aang had done the exact same thing. The guard sat up straight at the sound of the cell doors swinging open, but he wasn't ready when the avatar slammed him against the wall with a well-guided air current. The guard sank to the floor, unconscious.
"Hurry." Katara whispered running to the exit. They crept up the flights of stairs trying to always keep some distance between themselves and the stomping sounds of the line dancing firenation.
It was really amazing how contagious a silly little line dance could get. The soldiers just didn't seem to want to stop. The only one still not joining in was Zuko who was lounging on a cushion, grinning at this new form of entertainment. Katie kept throwing him glances and nods to get him to join them, but he would only smile wider and shake his head.
"Come on Zuko. You're always going to regret it later!" Katie said as she led the men into another set of grapevines.
"I'll try to find a way to live with myself." He hollered over the heavy stomps. They went through the entire routine four more times until Katie was facing Zuko again. She had barely begun sliding forwards twice when she noticed a figure standing in the doorway. Her blood chilled as she gazed into the face of Admiral Zhao.
I kinda didn't want to stop here, but the chapter is so friggen long already and I can feel some Carpel Tunnel (spelling?) coming on. Hee hee. Can you imagine an entire fleet of Firenation soldiers doing the boot scoot boogie? If not before, you can now! Please review.