a/n: short chapter is short. too much stuff to do, so little time to do it in. Atla belongs to Brike and Sayuri belongs to me... R&R if you would be so kind as it would be very helpful.

-chapter 6-

After her long day at the daycare, Sayuri rushed back to her apartment. She was deadbeat-tired, to say the least. The magmabender was glad that she was off tomorrow. As Sayuri lay on her bed, beginning to fall asleep, there was a knock on her door.

Groaning in annoyance, Sayuri drug herself from the bed to answer the door. To her surprise, the person who's knocked on the door was one of the freedom fighters, Smellerbee.

"Hey Smellerbee, what's up?" Sayuri asked casually.

"Not much, I was in the neighborhood so I thought I would stop by and say hello," the freedom fighter responded.

"Oh, well do you want to come in? I could get you something to eat." the female bender offered.

"Sure, thanks." Smellerbee said as she walked into the small apartment.

The two women chatted while Sayuri got some jerky from one of her cupboards. She put the dried-out meat on a plate and handed it to the freedom fighter.

"Wow, this is some pretty good jerky, Sayuri," Smellerbee said as she took a bite out of the meat. "When did you learn how to do this?"

"Shortly after my mother died," Sayuri said somberly. Smellerbee knew she'd hit a sore spot with the other female.

"Oh... sorry I didn't mean to bring up bad memories," the freedom fighter apologized quickly.

"It's fine, I know you didn't," the brunette smiled.

XXX

For Sayuri, the next few hours after Smellerbee left her apartment were spent curled up on her bed moping and remembering what her life used to be like up until now. She remembered the first year after her mother had passed, and the gang that made her who she was today.

Life in the city of Yu Dao was just about as normal as life in any other Fire Nation colony. The firebenders were the first class citizens while the earthbenders were poverty-stricken. That didn't stop some people from trying to force their way into the upper class through crime. Sayuri was one of those people.

Her days spent in the colony were tough. The little mamgabender had found herself on the town's "Ten Most Wanted Criminals" list for various offenses-two of her most major offenses being the robbery and murder of a few very prominent Fire Nation officials which were committed with the help of an earthbending gang notoriously know as the Bloody Stones, a group of delinquent orphans. The gang found Sayuri when she had first stumbled into town and had given the girl a place to lie low when she had broken one of the Colony's laws.

Then one day, Sayuri and another member of the Bloody Stones, Rabaroo, went on a crime spree. As the two went from house to house, the two looters began to have more advanced ways of protecting their homes from intruders. Seeing that things were only going to get worse if they kept on trying their luck, Rabaroo and Sayuri stopped and headed back to the gang's base of operations, a run down old shack near the edge of the colony that belonged to a Twenty-year-old man named Panrilla. Panrilla, who was really an Ex-Fire Nation Soldier and the Gang's leader, was actually a young man born to a wealthy Fire Nation family. He saw the war as trying to seize power by the Fire Nation and so- being the pacifist that he was- separated himself from his family. Thus dropping both his Surname and Given Name and calling himself Panrilla.

Panrilla had once explained to the members of the Bloody Stones that even though he was a citizen of the Fire Nation by birth, he was no less of an Earth Kingdom citizen than any of those that were standing before him. When Panrilla had first met Sayuri, he felt sorry for the girl and took her under his wing, helping her to learn the basics of crime and the basics of bending. Panrilla was one of the first people in the gang to see Sayuri's Magmabending abilities. Panrilla immediately began to think of ways to help the dark-haired girl harness her special abilities for survival purposes.

Through this process, Sayuri and Panrilla began to get closer in their relationship with each other. She saw him as the older brother she never had. One that would be by her side for the rest of her life to protect her from anything that would hurt her. One day when Sayuri was seven, while out with more of the experienced gang members, Panrilla and his group were attacked by multiple Fire Nation Soldiers. Only two members of the Bloody Stones survived long enough to get away and warn the others about what was happening. With mass hysteria going about the other members, Sayuri eventually found herself taking the blame for Panrilla's death and being booted out of the gang for that reason.

From that day on Sayuri vowed to herself that she would never join another gang for as long as she lived and that she would always rely on herself and no one else.

The dark-haired teen brushed a tear away from her eye as she sat up on her bed. She looked around the room, taking in her surroundings before carefully getting up. As she stretched her aching back and yawned, Sayuri decided that the best thing to get her out of this mopey mood she was in was to go for a walk. Meandering out the door, Sayuri felt a warm breeze flow past her warming up the already warm night in the town of Ba Sing Se.

XXX

The sun shone brightly over the Ba SIng Se as a young man dressed in worn, green Earth Kingdom clothes entered the city. His lazy blue eyes scanned over the people walking past him as if he we looking for someone. Strands of his frayed, light black hair hung down messily in front of his pale face. The boy looked about as good as he felt. His face made him look like he could have been anywhere fourteen to twenty years old, but with his tall stature, he look like he was at least twenty-three years old. His real age was fourteen. His name was Taika and he was a waterbender.

A young woman soon approached him from behind. She too was dressed in worn, green clothes. She was not so tired looking and she looked considerably younger than the boy standing next to her. She had long dark-brown hair that she kept pulled back in a braid. Her eyes were a luminous shade of amber and she had tanned skin. This young lady's name was Suika and she was a firebender.

By looking at the genetic differences in the two, one wouldn't know that these two were twins. In fact, many people couldn't tell that they were even siblings at all. There were more instances were Taika and Suika were given weird looks when they mentioned that they were indeed siblings. Because of this, Suika and her brother began to shut out many people in their childhood town, causing them to socially reject other children. The only reason that either of them had left their cozy home in the Fire Nation was because their father had ordered them to find the magmabender (which is what Sayuri is known as in the Fire Nation) and bring her back to their home.

"So do you think that they'll be easy to find, brother?"Suika asked the stoic-looking Taika.

"Most likely not," Taika replied back, "To fit in, in this nation, one must be stealthy like a chameleon viper, Suika. It is likely that we will be able to find the magmabender if we are as patient as the Hawk, then we will get our prey."

a/n: Please r&r... I know this took for ever to get out but y'all know what life is like and y'all know that when it rains it pours and stuff just happens so imma be trying to get all my stories caught up and quite POSSIBLY take a little break until I get all this drama that keeps me from my writting sorted out...