Summary:It has always been the duty of the Avatar to keep the elements in balance. But the Avatar had disappeared for a century, and the spirits ran out of patience. Now, the Fires Four are about to be summoned, to ensure that he does not fail… Rated T for BVA, R & R!

Disclaimer: Sadly, I don't own Avatar… Because if I did, that oasis water would have been used on Zuko's scar without fail.

A/N: I am SOOOOOOOOOO sorry for leaving this story unfinished for so long. My excuse is these four words: I HATE being grounded!!! Well, on the up-side, I'm cured of Writer's Block, for the moment. I'll be able to update more.

"'Déjà vu'?" Zuko looked towards his teacher/traveling companion in confusion. "From when?"

"Uh…" Astrid swallowed in nervousness. She still didn't trust Zuko entirely, but she knew that in order to overcome certain hardships, she needed to have a shred of trust, at the very least, in someone, if she wanted to get by. But, then again, there was always the risk that if he found out…

She squashed that thought the second it popped in, and decided to take the risk, regardless of the outcome. "Remember a week ago, when I showed up at that shack in a bad condition?"

Zuko snorted. "'Bad condition' my foot. You would've died, had not I helped you and your guide had not intervened." He then fully processed what she was implying, and he stopped walking just as they entered the city's boundaries. "This is where you were attacked, isn't it?"

Astrid let out a deep sigh, but nodded. "This is one of the larger Earth Kingdom cities, and only the larger cities have pubs."

Zuko looked confused. "I thought you were attacked by 'perverted earth benders', I believe you called them."

"Perverted sake-driven earth benders," Astrid corrected him, putting extra emphasis on the alcoholic beverage. "Plus, I think that the blood we saw while coming in was mine."

She then shook her head. "No matter. We're here to enjoy ourselves. No use dwelling in the past, right?"

Zuko was very close to retorting that she knew little about how dire pasts could be, but then he remembered the conversation they had when they first met.

- Flashback -

"You're Zuko, aren't you?"

"How did-?"

"News travels fast in this region," she said, looking slightly guilty. "That and I had to sneak in a Fire Nation camp to get an antidote for some poison that someone in my surrogate family ingested."

"Surrogate?" He raised his right eyebrow in confusion.

She simply shrugged. "My real family's dead."

- End Flashback -

"No, I suppose not," he allowed.

"So, where to?" Astrid asked. "Today, you're in charge!"

"And tomorrow morning," he reminded her with a ghost of a smile.

"And tomorrow morning," Astrid echoed, nodding slightly. "But what now?"

"I'm not-" He abruptly stopped himself in mid-sentence. Then, without warning, he grabbed her hand and pulled her into a building that was still under construction.

"What are you-!"

"Shh!" He cut her off with a hand over her mouth. "Listen…"

Astrid complied and strained her hearing, unable to do anything else. She supposed that she could lick his hand, but that would be far too childish to do to anyone outside her surrogate family.

"-heard from a reliable source that the Avatar's headed this way." A gruff voice said this, and it had caught the attention of both teens after the word 'Avatar' was spoken.

"Perfect. Once he lands we'll wait for him to come to us, and then we'll nab both him and the Bei Fong child."

"They had a child?" Astrid muttered aloud, her words muffled by Zuko's hand. "Never heard that…"

"Then we get the reward money!" Snickers followed the gruff voice.

Curiosity got the better of Astrid, so she gently pried Zuko's hand from her mouth and poked her head out from their hiding place, only to dart it back in, whimpering in fear.

"What? What is it?" Zuko asked, though he was not used to this fearful side of his new sensei. In fact, she was starting to make him nervous, which wasn't a god feeling to him.

"It's them!" she whispered loudly. "It's those earth bending perverts!"

'Perfect,' Zuko thought. 'One more reason to fight them. One being for the right of capturing the Avatar, and the other-'

"Hey, uh…Lee?" Astrid whispered. "My nose itches. I think we should-"

"Shh!" Zuko cut her off. "I'm trying to listen."

"-then we'll have all the pleasurable compan-"

"Lee, there's too much sawdust in the air here!" she whispered louder.

"Quiet, this is my day off, remember?"

"Zuko," she reverted back to calling him by his real name in a seething voice. "I'm gonna sneeze!"

"Hold it in!" he hissed.

"I can't!" she whispered, almost desperately. "What happens to you when you try to stop yourself from sneezing, Z-man?"

"That's different," he reasoned. "I'm a fire bender."

Astrid winced. "I'm sorry," she whispered. "I didn't want you to find out like this…"

"Find out what?"

Astrid was no longer able to respond. "Ah-"

"Well, we'd better get back to work…" The voices seemed to be getting louder.

"Ahh-!"

"Astrid, we need to get out of here. They're coming!"

"Ahhh-!" Astrid's eyes widened, and Zuko got a major shock after he saw the color of her eyes.

Pure gold.

A trait only found in the Fire Nation.

Zuko was utterly perplexed. "Wha-?!"

"Hey, you can't be in here! Get out!" Zuko turned and peeked at the 'earthbending perverts' from under his hat.

"Well, well, well! Hey, boys, look who's here!" The big guy of the group pointed to Astrid. "It's the one that got away!"

"Let's pick up where we left off, shall we?" another said.

Needless to say, Astrid picked the perfect timing to let her sinuses get the better of her.

"ACHOO!!!"

The second that the air rushed out of her lungs at top speed, something erupted from within her. Not only was she ejecting sawdusty air, but she also sneezed out ashes, not to mention a tremendous fiery inferno that explained why ashes were even an issue.

The flames erupting from her mouth came into contact with a wood pile, which caught fire immediately, and the fires spread from there, around and upward, until the whole unfinished building was ablaze. All of this occurred in less than three seconds.

The earth benders shouted in surprise, and Zuko just stared, whilst Astrid looked guiltily towards him.

Shaking himself out of his stupor, Zuko grabbed Astrid's arm and pulled her out of the burning building and away from the men. Neither of them looked back as they ran as fast as their legs could take them, until they left the city boundaries by a good half-mile, that is.

Panting near the foliage, Astrid sneezed twice more, completely incinerating a nearby shrubbery.

"'Scuse me," she muttered while rubbing the underside of her nose.

"I don't get it," Zuko said, still bewildered at what he just witnessed. "Why didn't you tell me?"

"What's not to get? I couldn't trust you with everything about me, Z-man. 'Trust is something you earn', remember? I told you that on Day One."

"Well, that isn't really fair, is it? You could find out anything about me that you wish on a whim."

"Not true, I just was able to identify who you were. I'm not all knowing!"

Suddenly, she cried out in surprise and pain, clutching the back of her head. She pulled her hand back, and her hands were dripping with her blood.

"See? If I was 'all knowing', then I would've seen that…" She stopped in mid-sentence. Realization dawned on her face, albeit later than she would've liked, for it had just occurred to her that the reason for blood on her hand was that she had just been attacked.

"Run!" she hissed in an urgent tone, starting to bound in place from one foot to the other due to a sudden rush of adrenalin, one that generally leads to one of two actions: Fight or Flight.

"No!" Zuko hissed right back. "I never run from a fight!" He stood his ground.

"Then…" She looked ready to bound away at any given time, like a stag. Her eyes widened as an idea struck her. "Then, call it a tactical retreat! Just get your rear in gear!" She then turned and ran deeper into the forest.

Zuko was about to scoff at the very idea, but that was before he looked back in the direction that they came. His vision beheld the quickly approaching earth benders, whom looked mightily pissed, not to mention powerful. And there were several of them.

"Tactical retreat…" he muttered, letting the idea roll through his mind. He then nodded reluctantly. "I can live with that…"

He then followed the path that Astrid took.

Not much time had elapsed before he had both caught up with Astrid and had begun to overtake her. Though, this might've been due to her attempt to run and pull enough water out of the air for healing her head all at once.

"There's no water in this air, Z-man. I won't be able to water bend right."

"Then don't waterbend," he said with a smirk. "Firebend. Show me that you're capable of doing it other than when your nose acts up!"

"I wasn't going to use water to fight!" she shouted. "I was going to use it to heal my head! If I don't, it'll get infected!"

"Deal with it!" Zuko shouted back, pulling ahead of her.

Suddenly, Zuko stopped running. Astrid did not until it was almost too late.

She yelped in surprise as she tried forced herself to a complete, yet sloppy stop at the edge of a cliff, one that looked like a peninsula overlooking a sea of pine trees. She nearly fell, but Zuko grabbed her arm and pulled her back.

"Whoa," she breathed, expressing what was on her mind without realization. "I think we took a wrong turn."

"Wrong turn, wrong turn, wrong turn…" her voice echoed.

She felt like laughing at the sound of her echo, but then she caught wind of that thought, and shook off the feeling, labeling it as an act of deliria in her mind. She then wished she hadn't.

Astrid was downright terrified of heights, and with her deliria gone, the knowledge of just how far down she would have fallen if Zuko hadn't caught her became crystal clear. She was sure that she would've upchucked if not for the lack of blood. She caught herself almost being thankful for her head wound. Almost…

"Nowhere to run, now," Zuko muttered. "We'll have to fight our way out."

"Yeah, great idea," Astrid said. "But first, would you be so kind as to remove the rock imbedded in my skull plate, please? I can neither think nor see clearly, anymore."

He obliged, slowly pulling out the rock, as to make it as painless as possible. This didn't stop her from moaning in pain, though she shed no tears.

The amount of blood on it showed him all too well just how deeply it had penetrated. He was amazed that she endured that with nary a peep or a tear. Silently shuttering, he threw the offending piece of earth as far away as he could towards the direction that they came from.

It collided with something solid. That was to be expected. What they didn't surmise was the resounding ring that they heard with the sound of the impact. The rock hit something made of metal.

Armor.

"Already?" Astrid whined, but shifted her body into a shaolin dragon stance. This was the same stance, Zuko noted, that she had jumped into when she and he had first met.

Had it really been a week already?

"Prepare yourself, Z-man. We're about to make a major jump in your training."

He looked at her in confusion, falling into a stance that mirrored her own.

"If we survive," she continued. "I'll teach you to do it better. Smoother." Her gaze caught his, despite her rapidly blurring vision. "Right now, I need a fire bending master as my ally. Ready to step up?"

Zuko drew in a sharp intake of air, looking slightly shocked.

"I could make it worth your while…" Astrid thought about what he would want. "Something you'd wanna know about…"

"You could always tell me about that guy you said you were courting," Zuko suggested with a smirk.

She let out a surprised, yet quiet "eep!" sound that made his smirk even bigger.

"You weren't supposed to hear that…" she said with a blush.

"And why not?"

"Wait- why do you wanna know, anyhow?"

He shrugged, and his smirk intensified. "Just curious…"

In her half-conscious state, Astrid had yet another déjà vu moment at the sight of the mischievous twinkling in Zuko's eyes. Where have I seen that look before?

"Fine," she relented. "But only if we live."

"Not a problem…"

A/N: Geez, took me long enough, huh? I'm deeply sorry for not getting a chance to update this sooner.

This battle will be a two-parter, seeing that I'm already behind enough as it is with my updates… (I haven't been able to do anything with the story since… Holy crap! 10-11-06?! Dang!)

Oh! A congrats, kudos, and their name mentioned in my next posting for those who can tell me exactly where that "Wrong turn, wrong turn, wrong turn…" segment came from!