Yes... the last chapter I'm re-uploading... (I'm starting backwards from 22 til ten, skipping a few) it was so worth it.

Maybe.

Read and enjoy, neophytes!

"Hey, Sokka… Come on, Sokka… Just give her a chance."

Aang gently nudged his friend in the stomach. Sokka refused to look at him, his arms still crossed across his chest as he stared into the wind. Appa was flying above the clouds, and every once in a while, a quilt-patch of green would show through the fluffy clouds.

"Sokka," Aang tried again. "She's just a person. Just like anybody else."

Sokka broke his silence. "But she's not like everybody else, Aang," he pointed out. "She's a firebender. From the Fire Nation. She's not just like anybody else."

"So what if she can bend fire, Sokka?" Aang shrugged his shoulders. "I'll be able to bend fire one day. Will you hate me then?" Sokka raised his finger to make another point but Aang cut him off. "And she's not from the Fire Nation; she's from the Water Tribe. In the North. She's from your sister tribe. You're practically related."

"First, no. We're not related." Sokka refrained from adding "Ew" though he wasn't sure exactly why. "Second, you're the Avatar. What am I going to do about that? It's not something you can help – you were born into it."

"And so was she, Sokka!" Aang protested. "She's just a normal girl."

Sokka gave him a look.

Aang shrugged. "Okay, so maybe she's a little weird, but she'd got an excuse. It's not like she's ever met nice people."

"Hey! That's my people you're disrespecting!"

"But they were mean to her, Sokka." Aang lowered his voice. "You saw her back. They beat her. If anything, she has more of a right to be untrusting of us, not the other way around."

Sokka sighed. "I guess you're right. I don't know… I just don't like it."

Aang looked at him sidelong. "It's not like what you felt with Jet, right?" he asked. "I mean, you don't think she'll do something really horrible like try to kill an entire village."

Sokka looked back at Elsie who was leaning over the side of Appa's saddle, gazing at the flashing scenery below them. He turned back to Aang and shrugged.

"I don't know Aang," he said slowly. "She seems really suspicious to me…"

Aang nudged him in the side again, a little harder. "I'm serious, Sokka."

"Ah, I'm just playing with you, Airhead," he flapped a hand at Aang. "Yeah, she seems all right I guess. At least, not on the same level as Jet – that guy was a creep."

"Yeah," Aang agreed. "Good thing you figured him out."

Sokka shrugged off the compliment but was secretly pleased. It was nice to be appreciated.

So he still didn't trust her, huh? The Avatar trusted her. That was one person, at least. Still more than before.

Elsie rested her chin on the saddle's side. It heaved with every breath the flying bison took. The breeze was calming.

She definitely liked this warmer weather. She didn't know if it had been because her tribe refused to attire her in the best clothes possible or if it was a side effect of being a firebender, but the North Pole had been extremely cold to her. Oftentimes it had seemed as if it affected her more than anybody else.

Elsie felt so much calmer now. These past five days had been like a dream. Yes, she'd been worried about Katara – and felt guilty for not saving her, but instead, running and hiding – and Sokka still refused to talk to her – instead, referring to her as if she were not there as, "the firebender" – but she still felt nice. Like something whole that had never been there before had appeared in her.

"You know, I used to know a firebender."

Elsie looked up to find the Avatar sitting down next to her. Glancing towards the bison's head, she found Sokka was now driving the creature. She hoped, with a slight smile, that he was a better driver than he was a cook. Their last meal had been slightly scorched because he'd refused to allow her near the campfire.

"His name was Kuzon, and he was very nice."

Elsie looked out across the clouds. The boy next to her didn't demand that he face her while he spoke. It was a nice freedom.

"We used to hang out all the time – I'd visit him, flying Appa. We'd do all sorts of things together and he wasn't a bad person. In fact, back then, nobody thought of the Fire Nation as they do now. Now everybody seems to hate them, and I can understand – some of what they do is pretty awful," Aang looked over at Elsie and Elsie looked up. Their eyes locked and it seemed as if there was a deeper connection that ran between them.

"But what some people can't seem to remember, is that just because somebody is from the Fire Nation or does firebending, doesn't mean they're like every other firebender or Fire citizen. Everybody's different."

Elsie nodded and rested her chin back on the saddle.

"Well, I guess that was it." Aang fidgeted with his shirt and looked up at the sky. "Do you understand what I'm trying to say?"

"That you have faith in me to make the right decisions in my life regardless of what other people think of me or the circumstances I face as a firebending Water Tribe citizen?" Elsie let it go in a rush of breath.

"Uh… yeah! I guess…" Aang was surprised at how much Elsie spoke to him. "That's basically what I meant. Glad to see you got the gist."

Elsie blushed. But it was nice to be able to speak her mind.

Aang patted her shoulder and went back to Appa's head to get the reins from Sokka. Elsie didn't even think of the touch until Aang was fitting with the reins in hand once more. It was only in friendship, and Elsie really didn't think of the twelve-year-old as anything but a friend…

Elsie blushed even harder.

But it was nice to know he wasn't wary around her anymore. That it really didn't matter. Because it showed much more through that simple touch that he didn't care if she was a firebender, than in all the pretty speeches in the world.

Sokka sighed. The sun was setting behind the horizon and the island they were sleeping on was cast in a red and orange hazy glow. The perfect time to go talk to the firebender.

"Hey," Sokka called to the girl. "Elsie. Can we talk?"

The girl stood up confusedly by the supply bags. Aang had finally convinced Sokka to allow her to cook the meals. Quite frankly, Sokka was disgusted with his cooking abilities and the girl had said she knew how to cook a mean veggie stew.

Or at least, that's what Aang had said she said.

The girl followed Sokka to the edge of the campsite and a little ways into the trees that surrounded it. She waited patiently once Sokka stopped for him to begin, but he wasn't quite sure how to go.

"Um," he began. Oh, good start, Sokka. "Look. There's nothing for it. I'm just going to be honest with you. I have no reason to trust any firebenders. They killed my mom and they made my dad go off to war. One of the princes of the Fire Nation has my sister and you were the only one there when she got captured."

Elsie hung her head. What did she say to that? He hadn't actually accused her of anything yet, really.

"But I guess…" Sokka rubbed his toe in the dirt. "I guess I can trust you. You don't seem like you're going to turn traitor on us."

Elsie nodded sagely.

"Jeez," Sokka muttered. "Don't you ever smile?"

Elsie gave a huge, tooth-filled grin that felt as though it were spilling off the sides of her face.

Sokka looked taken aback. "Well, if I hadn't met Momo, I'd say that was the creepiest face I'd ever seen."

Elsie bit back the urge to retort, And if I hadn't met you, I'd agree.

But the moment was too nice for that, and she really didn't have the courage to say something like that. What if he got too angry and decided to cast her out from the group? She'd be stuck on this island for all of her days.

They headed back to the camp and agreed to sleep on rotations so they'd be sure to wake up at the first light to follow Katara once more.

Sokka stared up at the sky, kicking his heels against the dirt anxiously as he waited for the morning to lighten enough to see. His eyes were opened as wide as possible, but he still could only see blobs of shadows and no details.

Finally, he stood up and began gathering things in a pile. He nudged Aang with his foot and called to Elsie.

"Come on! Get up you guys! We're going to do it! We're going to rescue her today!"

"What makes you think that?" Aang asked dazedly, his hand to his forehead.

"I can feel it in my bones!" Sokka declared.

"Your bones must be psychic because all my bones are saying is that they're tired." But Aang got up anyway and hurried to kick out the pile of grasses he was sleeping on. Katara was more important than sleep, anyway.

"You can sleep on the bison!" Sokka had woken Appa up and was throwing Elsie's sleeping bag onto his saddle. She looked awake but she was somehow quieter and stiller than she was usually and it gave the impression that she was tired.

"Shouldn't you be the one who sleeps?" Aang asked him, hoping up onto Appa's back. "You were the one up practically all night. You didn't fall asleep until after my shift last night, if you fell asleep at all."

Sokka shrugged and began tying things down energetically. "Doesn't matter. You're the Avatar. You're the one who really needs his rest. And you, Elsie, you can sleep too. I've got plenty of energy to last through the day."

Elsie looked faintly astonished by this proclamation but didn't say anything. If Sokka thought he was well enough to fly, she wasn't about to argue. It wasn't like she could fly the mammoth beast.

With a sigh from Aang as he laid back down on Appa's saddle and a cheery yip-yip from Sokka, Appa took into the sky and flew off over the lightening seas.

It was about midday when they first spotted the ship.

"Is that it?" Aang asked Sokka after being woken by Elsie. She was definitely more comfortable around him and he liked to think it was because of their talk yesterday.

"Well, it's smaller than the other ships we've seen and we know that Zuko's ship is on the smallish side," Sokka responded.

"Smallish?" Elsie said without thinking.

Sokka shrugged. "If you've seen some of these babies these Fire Nation guys are riding around on, you'd think it was smallish too."

Elsie shuddered.

"Hey, Appa!" Aang called to the bison. "Go down lower! We have to see if it's Katara's!"

Appa groaned and swooped lower. On the deck of the ship, they could see a few men walking about but there was no indication that this might be Zuko's ship over anyone else's.

"Well, we still can't tell- hey, look!" Sokka pointed to a door that led to what looked like the lower levels of the ship. "Isn't that Zuko's uncle? The general guy?"

"Yeah!" Aang said excitedly. "Yeah, I think it is!"

"Well, here we go," Sokka said determinedly. "I guess we'll just have to fly down now – they're bound to have seen us."

"Right," Aang agreed. "We just stick to the plan and everything will be all right."

Elsie still didn't think it was a very good plan.

The next chapter is The Rescue! Guess what the game plan is. If you've read CassandraClaire's Draco Veritas series, it's the equivelent of how Draco describes a typical Gryffindor plan. Review if you want to know what type of plan that is and I'll tell you.

Ha ha, see how I got you to review? (Not.)