Disclaimer: I do not own any of the Avatar Characters. Nickelodeon owns them.
Story Title: Ghost Town
Category: Romance/Mystery/…
Rating: T for Teen
Pairings: N/A Yet
Summary: Katara gets seperated from the group, and instead finds herself in the middle of a town completely destroyed by the Fire Nation troups. But is it really destroyed? And is she really alone?

A/N: Alright, quick update. Wrote this at school, sorry if its sloppy. Umm...this chapter starts from where I left off except in Zuko's P.O.V. And please don't hurt me for the OC characters, they're only in here for at least two chapters, this one and another. Don't hurt me. -ducks all pans being thrown- Oh, and everyone thank Cold Static because she was the one who reminded me to update. :3 -Solar Beam

Chapter Five:

Zuko kept Katara in a low crouch as the snake passed, keeping one hand on top of her head. When the snake passed completely, it silver and black scales shifting away, he tapped her and then pointed in the direction from which they had come. Katara nodded in understanding and began moving that way, and Zuko kept close behind her. I'm not going to let anything happen to you, he promised her and himself secretly. That's when the tongue of the snake slipped around Katara's belly and swung her into the air. The snake opened it giant jaws, releasing Katara from his tongue, his fangs dripping with saliva. Zuko jumped up, "Katara, no!"

Her scream echoed through his very soul as the beastly snake snapped his jaws shut after the girl and swallowed. Zuko's heart fell to the pit of his stomach. He couldn't believe it, his promise, everything, was for nothing. Katara was gone.

The snake swallowed and snapped its jaws a few times. "Mmmm, tasssss-stes just like mother usssssed to catch them," it purred. And then it coughed a few times, choked, coughed, and then it spit something up before shaking his head. It hissed angrily. "No, it went down the wrong tube," and then he looked at Zuko and opened its mouth wide, baring his dripping fangs. "Oh well, now for the main courssssse."

It lunged its head at Zuko, and he dodge-rolled out of the way. He leapt back to his feet, his fits clenched. He was angry; Katara was gone. Damn snake. It had taken Katara. Steam began to rise from his fists, but he ignored it. The snake was coming back at him, and Zuko wasn't going to move. Come and get me, he thought daringly.

Then something snapped above the snakes head and the snake's head lurched slightly. It looked confused a moment, before it shook its head and began coming at Zuko again. There was another snap, and the snake lurched. There were more snaps, and each time the snake lurched forward and backward a few times. Then, the snake's head fell to the floor in a lifeless crumble, seven black arrows sticking from the back of the scull.

Zuko looked up toward the trees and there, wearing dark, Earth Nation green clothes, stood a young girl, brown bow raised with arrow drawn. Slowly the girl lowered the bow, and then she took out the arrow and, after spinning it in her hand a few times, she lifted it into the quiver swung over her shoulder. But Zuko was confused; while the girl wore Earth Kingdom drab, she was obviously Fire Nation. She had pale white skin and golden eyes with black, black hair that was pulled into a loose ponytail. She was well fit, with thin lips and arched eyebrows. Her eyes scanned him a moment, and then the girl snorted in distaste and jumped down from the tree.

She completely ignored him as she came up beside the lifeless snake and began pulling the arrows from its head. After she had cleaned each of the seven used arrows off and set them in her quiver, she turned to him and glared at him. "So, you can see me."

"You can see me," Zuko corrected

The girl shrugged. "Either way you look at it, it's simple to tell that you are definitely not dead." She held up her hand to stop Zuko from opening his mouth and speaking once more. "I should thank you and your friend for being bait for King Snake, I've been hunting him for years. The name's Yasu Al, I'm one of the many guardians that protects the veil that separates the real world from the spirit."

"I'm Zuko, and you shouldn't go around thanking people who just risked their lives. I've lost my friend, thanks to you. You were there the whole time, why didn't you help her?"

Yasu Al turned her golden eyes to him, glared at him, and then shrugged. "I know who you are. Prince Zuko of the Fire Nation, son of Lord Ozai and Lady Ursa, brother of Princess Azula, nephew to the great Dragon of the West, and cousin to the past Lu Ten," she paused, "I know who you are."

She turned and began to walk away, Zuko ran to catch up. "Well if you know me so well, why didn't you try to help us?"

"Don't worry about your little friend; she's safe and completely un-eaten. King Snake mentioned that she went down the wrong tube, yes? Well, King Snake had a portal to the Spirit World in his body, its all very confusing and not worth trying to explain. Long story short is that he wanted to become the most powerful fiend in the veil, and therefore he ate a portal. Stupid snake…" She shook her head.

"So…Katara was sent to the…Spirit World?" It all sounded very unreal to Zuko. He wasn't sure he should trust this girl; he hardly knew a thing about her!

"Look, I'm going to help you out of here, let you go to the Spirit World to find your friend and get out of here. You can't stay here, you have such a big future ahead of you, and you shouldn't stay here long." She continued walking and he followed like a sick puppy.

"How are you going to do that?"

"I'm going to take you to one of the only portals I know of that might take you close enough to her. But once you get to the Spirit World, you have to go straight to her and try to stay away from any other human spirits." Her breathing was even, though she walked fast-pace and jumped over logs with ease, almost like an airbender.

"You can't come to the spirit world also? And why can't I see any other spirits?" Zuko's breathing was getting harsh now, gasping for breath as he trained to keep up.

Yasu Al suddenly stopped and turned, looking at him oddly. "You want to see dead people?"

Zuko stopped shortly after her, leaning over his knees out of breath, and said, "Why? You're obviously dead, and there's nothing wrong with you."

Yasu Al's eyes suddenly got very sad. "Its because I had a clean death. Many of the spirits in the Spirit World have had terrible demises, unclean deaths, and unnatural deaths due to the war."

Zuko was silent.

Yasu Al's eyes suddenly grew dark once more and she poked him in the chest angrily, "Take my advice and don't go lolly-gaggling with the dead people. It can get messy. And you are of the living! Just trust me." She began walking once more.

"Why should I trust you?" Zuko asked, "I know nothing about you!"

She continued walking, but spoke in an even, monotonous tone, "Fine, I'll tell you about me, will that help?" Without waiting for an answer, she jumped into her history. "You might have noticed that I look nothing of Earth Kingdom relativity. I was, in fact, born into a wealthy nobleman home in the Fire Nation. My father was an old general, come home from the war because of his wounded leg. My mother was a beautiful woman with a stunning personality; everyone seemed to love her so much, especially my father. As for me, I could have cared less for her. Then there was my sister, Emi. She was such a little flirt, so much younger than me, yet so much more social. As my name suggests, I was calm as a child, never speaking up much, always quiet and observant and since I was the oldest, I would have inherited my father's estate.

"When I was about seven years old, a few months before I left for the Fire Nation Academy for Young Girls, I got very ill. I lay in bed for nearly three weeks, coughing and choking and becoming even sicker with a bad fever. My nurse-maid, oh, she was so kind to me. She read to me in bed and helped me get to the point where I could stand on my own two feet without the help of a man servant! When I was well enough to get out of bed one day, she told me I was allowed to walk in my mother's garden. 'The fresh air will do you some good,' she said. So, I went on a walk through my mother's garden. I started on the rose path, picking a rose here or there, and setting them down on the path as a marker (though I hardly needed it).

"Just as I was turning into the daisy path, I heard my mother's voice. I thought it odd that anyone else would be in this garden but my mother and I, considering my mother's gardeners come out early in the morning. So, I hid behind a bush after hearing another voice and crawled toward where my mother stood. There was my mother, clothed in her Fire Nation dresses with her black hair pulled into a bun atop her head, talking to two cloaked figures. By listening to their tones, I knew one was a man and one was obviously a woman. They were talking quietly, but I managed to catch a few words," Yasu Al paused a moment, taking a deep breath before continuing, "They were saying words like 'raids' and 'murders' and 'rebellion' and 'for the good of our nation'. I was confused, but basically I got the jest of it. They were talking about a raid against the Fire Lord's main house near the outside of the capitol. My mother was helping them; she was giving them advice, telling them secrets about the Lord that even I did not know.

"So you can imagine how I felt; scared. I crawled back to the rose path and ran, despite the headache I had, to my father's office. When I reached the door, I had just enough strength she shutter the doors open before collapsing into my father's arms. You see, he was just about to go visit me, and was surprised that I was out of bed. I told him everything I had heard and understood, and to my surprise he believed me. He said I never lied, and then he stood up and limped out of his office toward the guards' room. By the time they had gotten there, however, the man and woman had vanished and my mother was pacing the garden. She was arrested, and sent to the capitol to have court with the Fire Lord himself present."

She stopped momentarily to glance to her left, looking down a path hidden by brush. Her hands gripped the bow dangerously, her knuckles turning white. Zuko stayed silent, however, watching her. She began walking once more, in the direction she had been looking. He followed. She began speaking once more.

"Emi was hardly fazed by any of this; she was too young. But it hit me a few months later, as I made my way in a carriage toward the Fire Nation Academy for Young Girls. I lived there, at that school, you know? Of course you know; your sister was there while I was. Anyways, a few years of being there changed me. I blamed myself continuously for my mother's arrest and her probable death. When I was thirteen, after a year of searching, I found the Rebellion in which my mother had been a high officer in. I joined, keeping it secret that I was her daughter. I went through a series of tests and classes; they taught me to lie and cheat and steal if need be, they taught me to use a dagger and a bow and a sword. I was good with a bow, and I was soon inducted into their ranks as a full member.

"When I was fourteen, I returned home, finished with me schooling for another year. Father looked terrible; looked nearly dead. He carried a cane with him, his leg had gotten so bad, and his face looked old with wrinkles. He looked beaten, defeated in his own battle. He told me that Emi had run off with a stable boy from an estate near-by, and I told him that she was flirtatious and a bit too out-going, but she would never try to hurt him intentionally. He had ignored me, telling me that I was the last true woman in his life and that I was his life now. I was the only one left that had not betrayed or hurt him…"

Yasu Al stopped in her tracks and stared at the ground, her fists clenched tightly at her sides. "But I did. I did betray him. I joined a rebellion against the Fire Nation, a rebellion that wants to destroy the Fire Lord and all of his little pawns. I was betraying everyone I loved! And for what? For the glory? Of course not! Betrayal is not worth the glory of it. I was doing it for my mother. For myself. I wanted to prove that I could do it." She shuddered slightly. And then she looked back at Zuko with a smirk and said, "I told my father, looked him straight in the eyes and said, 'You can trust me, father.' I lied to him, and that's basically my story."

"If you don't mind me asking," Zuko grumbled, "but how did you die?"

Yasu Al looked Zuko over one two before turning and walking once more, jumping over a fallen log with precise ease.

"Well, I returned to the Rebellion after a few nights at home. I had just wanted to go home to make sure my father was alright, and after lying to him, I couldn't stand to be there. So I left, I went to the Rebellion to return to my rank. A year later, when I was fifteen, I was sent on a mission to keep an eye on a Fire Nation army camp in the middle of the wilderness in the Earth Kingdom. I fell asleep on the job, something I had never done before. I was wearing Earth Kingdom drab, you see. When I awoke and tried to find the soldiers, which had by then moved off, I was captured by a passing Water Tribe army. They captured me; they wouldn't believe me when I said that I was a Fire Nation noble girl trying to escape her nation's hardships. They captured me, and the leader, who was a cruel man, starved me until I told the truth. Stupid Water Tribe peasant!"

Yasu Al spat at the ground, "I got fed up with him, and I stole my arrows and bow back from my guards once they were asleep and shot him three times in the back, killing him. A waterbender saw me and killed me on the spot. By accident, of course," she shrugged, "but that's how, I think. Its hard to truly remember, it was all such a blur. I was so hungry, and wasn't looking."

Zuko was silent, listening to her, taking in her story. "So, you were a noble woman?"

Yasu Al glanced back at him. "Basically, yes, heir to the estate in which I lived."

He nodded, "But you chose to become a rebel against the nation your father worked so hard to protect?"

She glanced back at him a moment before returning her gaze to the path ahead. "That's right."

"…and you weren't feeling any guilt about that?" he asked.

Yasu Al shook her head slowly. "No, I didn't. It just wasn't…it never really appeared to me that I was betraying my full nation. I was just set on living up to my mother's name."

He was silent for a moment; it was an awkward silence, kind of tense. Yasu Al kept on pausing ahead of him, before continuing on walking once more, sometimes when she stopped walking she would tilt her head to the left, kind of looking back behind her as if she was glancing back at Zuko, but her eyes were shut. Zuko followed obediently, listening to the still air around them. He couldn't hear anything; it was absolutely—

"I thought I killed you!" He looked up in surprise just as the sound of an arrow releasing a bow was heard, and there was a loud roar behind him.

Katara slowly came to consciousness. All her muscles were in pure pain, as if she had slammed into the ground. She felt as if she were soaked to the bone, and when she looked down at what she had been laying in, she sighed heavily. She must have landed in some water; she must have fallen off Appa. She sat on her knees, her elbows resting on her legs with her head in her hands. Oh, what a headache! Finally, as the ache subsided, she lifted her head and looked around, slowly taking everything in. Her eyes got wider and wider as everything came back to her, the town, Zuko, her mother, the old man, and most importantly the snake.

"I thought I was going to die," she whispered, rubbing the back of her head. She slowly began to stand up but she fell back to her knees, her hands gripping the muddy surface under the water. Her knees, her legs, were killing her. If she put weight on them, they shook and made her feel like the world was spinning off its cycle. She shut her eyes. Where was Zuko?

I'm all alone, she realized with a pain, and I have no idea where I am! Her eyes shut tightly as the pain in her head once more fell into a dull pang. She knew she had to be somewhere in the Spirit World, and she had an idea that she was no longer in the veil area. So perhaps I'm in the Spirit World itself; but how did I get here? And why the hell is Zuko not with me! She opened her eyes and looked around some, before she began to crawl meagerly toward a large root jutting out of the water. She crawled onto the root, her teeth clenched from the pain it took from her legs. She flipped onto her butt once on the root, and looked around.

She was in the middle of a swamp-like area, and she seemed to be the only one around. The water was a greenish-gray color, and it wasn't very clear and it wasn't very deep, either. Perhaps it went up to her knees at the deepest. She looked at her hands and realized that the mud she had gripped earlier was stuck to her hands, and she wiped them on the bark of the root. The mud was green color, like moss almost. And the water had felt so dense! Almost goop-like, except not. And the sky…Katara looked up but the branches of the trees surrounding her were blocking out the sky. But she could almost guess that there was no sky; not in the Spirit World. The trees…they were so big! The whole area reminded her of the swamp that her friends had traveled to earlier in the month. She sighed. Like then, she was separated from them without a hope of ever going back to them.

And where was Zuko? She snorted; he was definitely not mourning her loss. She was probably the worst thing that had ever happened to him—besides his banishment and the fact that he had a crazy ass sister chasing after him.

She sighed heavily and leaned back against the tree, which the root was connected to. She shut her eyes and let out another breath of air, making a moaning sound. Another sound answered, sort of a grunting sound. Her right eye opened slightly and she looked around without moving her head. Nothing was there, so she shut her eye once more. Soon, a well-deserved sleep overcame her, and she went into unconsciousness.

Katara's eyes tightened shut in pain to the sudden light that blinded her. She let out a pained moan and fought to pull whatever was covering her over her head. "Ah, so the living has awakened." Katara's eyes swept open and she sat up too quickly, making her head ache terribly. She looked around the small clearing until her eyes met a figure sitting beside a lit fire. The figure slowly stood and came toward her. "You were out for a long time, I was almost certain you were never going to wake up." Her eyes scanned the man's figure. He seemed about in his late twenties, early thirties. He was obviously from the Water Tribes, with tan, tan skin and bright blue eyes. His messy brown hair was pulled into a half-ponytail on top of his head and he wore a blue shirt like Sokka had, with white trimming and blue pants and navy boots. Two spikes, like the points of a sword, connected to a leather strap were wrapped around his upper forearms and he was very muscular.

"…Who are you?" she asked finally, lowering her eyes to the ground and readjusting herself in the sleeping bag so that she was not facing him.

"My name is Ryuu. Like you, I am of the Water Tribes." He crouched down next to her and reached for her arm. Katara, instinctively, flinched back. "Don't worry, you just have a gash on your arm. You're lucky I found you when I did. The spirit gators were circling you, and one got a bite."

"Spirit Gators?" Katara let him gently grab her arm to take a look at the wound.

"Spirit gators; they eat the souls of the living that fall into the spirit world. Its very rare, and there aren't that many of them. So when a living being falls through a portal, the gators come-a-running," he reached behind him and grabbed a piece of white cloth, and he gently wrapped her wound, "My buffalo deer smelled your scent, I guess. I couldn't get him to come along, he kept turning left when we should have been turning right!" Ryuu shook his head slowly. "So I let him lead at last and we came upon a very large group of spirit gators, and that's how I found you."

Katara rolled her shoulder a few times, looking at the wrap around her arm. "Thanks," she murmured, "I guess I owe you."

"Don't say that, just be lucky I found you and not someone—or something—else." He stood slowly and turned to go back to the fire. Katara watched him a moment, before standing and following. She stood awkwardly in front of the fire, looking down at the ground a moment before looking back at him.

"Well, thank you for your help. I should be going; I need to get…somewhere." Somewhere? Where should she go? Katara had no idea where she was heading! She had no plan, no survival tips, nothing.

"You should stay," he said, "your little friend, that firebender, should be along this way shortly."

Katara's eyes widened. "Zuko's here? Where is here, by the way?"

"You're in the Spirit World, you came from a portal in King Snake. And no, your friend is not here yet. He is coming." He said it without emotion.

"Oh," was all Katara said before she plopped herself on a fallen log near the fire, her chin in her hands. For a moment, there was just silence. Finally, just when Katara was getting ready to open her mouth, he got to it before her.

"You a waterbender?"

"…Yes…are y—?"

He interrupted. "Should've known. It explains why I don't like you."

Katara clenched her jaw. Well, that's nice. A Water Tribesman that doesn't like waterbenders… "You don't even know me," she pointed out simply.

"I don't need to. You're a girl, though, and last time I checked girls weren't allowed to learn true waterbending."

Katara smirked proudly. "That's where you are wrong. I fought that stupid rule and now girls are allowed to learn in the North Pole, as well as the South."

Ryuu was quiet a moment, before he said, "You fought it, eh?" She nodded. "Still makes no difference, only reason for me to hate you more." He stood and brushed off his pants, turning to walk away.

Katara's jaw clenched further, if it was possible at all. Her fists were clasped tightly in her lap, her fingernails digging into her skin. "Where are you going?" she said through gritted teeth.

"To see if there is any food that you can eat without getting stuck here forever. I'll be back soon. Ari is here with you." And then he disappeared.

Who's Ari? Katara thought, before the fire in the pit went out completely with a sudden gust of wind, and the cool air turned suddenly very, very warm.