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Hazuki headed off in her own direction, not worried about the snobby lord she'd just crossed paths with. True, she didn't meet other world-hoppers like her often, and she was curious about him - But as the saying went, curiousity killed the cat. It was better to keep him at a distance. Men were nothing but a pain in the ass, anyways.

After walking for about twenty minutes or so Hazuki came across an expansive waterfall. It was a gorgeous scene. Many of the plants in this world, as well as many of the people, were colored blue, but the flowers growing around this waterfall were blood red. Hazuki vaguely wondered why, but didn't think too much about it. They reminded her of Hatsumi's eyes.

Plus she was thirsty, so why not take a drink? She'd seen the locals collect water from a stream nearby their village, so she figured the water here, which looked clear and fresh, was fine too. But she didn't know that the blue people of this world specifically never visited this very waterfall, and for a very good reason...

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Zuko was annoyed. He didn't need anyone's pity, but that Hazuki was almost as frigid as her icy blue eyes. Oh well, he had more important things to worry about, like getting out of here. Of course, how he was going to achieve that when he didn't even know how he'd gotten there to begin with was anyone's guess. But he wasn't about to go searching out Hazuki for her help, not after she'd clearly given him the cold shoulder. He was too proud for that.

But after wandering through the woods for a short time Zuko quickly realized he was only getting himself lost. This was no elaborate prank, nobody had hidden or replaced the path back to the Fire Nation capital, it was truly not there at all.

He was just starting to wonder what he could actually do about the situation at hand when the silent air was suddenly violated by a horrendous sound. It was hard to tell if it was more like a roar or a screech, but it was big, and it was angry. He looked back towards the way he'd been walking from, where Hazuki presumably still was, and took a second or two to have a moral dilemma over it. The snide side of him had to comment, "Hazuki is a big girl, she can take care of herself..." But clearly whatever it was that had made that sound was much bigger than her, and he knew he couldn't feel okay in the long run about leaving her to face whatever it was alone. Even if she didn't appreciate his help, he would lend it to her.

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Hazuki stood at the edge of the shore, scooped a handful of the mirror-esque water and brought it to her dry lips, sipping slowly at it and listening to the tranquil chirping of the bluebirds. But then suddenly a rumbling could be heard, originating underneath the water, and all the birds took flight at once, squawking fearfully. Hazuki was only just beginning to think to herself, "What's going on-?" When the water before her quite literally exploded, showering her and everything else in the immediate area. In the midst of the unnatural rain, a gigantic serpent rose it's head above everything except for the towering waterfall. The water beneath was apparently much deeper than it looked, because the snake was almost impossibly huge. The part of it that had emerged from the water alone had to be over thirty feet long, and it's mouth was more than big enough to swallow her whole. By the hungry stare in its eyes, that seemed to be just what it was thinking of.

She stared mutely at it for just a second, still as a corpse, hoping that perhaps it wouldn't see her if she didn't move. No such luck. It stared at her intensely for just a second itself before its mouth opened, full of long, sharp, slimy fangs, and let out of horrifying screech. In the next second it's huge head had lunged at her. With her ninja-like reflexes she managed to leap out of the way just in time, leaving the serpent with a mouthful of dirt.

She'd barely managed to unsheath her sword before it had recovered from the miss and lunged after her again. It was nearly upon her in a second and she only had time to do one thing - She held out the blade of the sword horizontally and the front two fangs of the serpent clashed against it. She secured her footing but the creature was huge and it managed to push her back several feet, her shoes digging into the dirt. It would soon overpower her, so she quickly dove to the side. The serpent, surprised by the strength in the small person, hit a tree that had been behind her, propelled by itself when she was no longer pushing him back. It thrashed in fury as it realized one of its fangs had chipped from the impact.

While it was distracted by the pain, Hazuki had hopped onto it's scaly back and was running at full speed up it's spine. Once she reached the slimmer end of his neck closest to it's head, she jumped up into the air and brought her sword up above her head. With a warrior's cry, she brought her magically energized katana down upon the serpent, severing it's head in one fell swoop.

The rest of the body crashed to the ground and went still. She caught her breath and looked up, and from the forest a familiar red-clad male had appeared. He stared at her wide eyed for a few seconds, not really sure if he was seeing right. He had assumed Hazuki wouldn't carry around a sword that long if she didn't know how to use it, but damn, did she know how to use it.

She calmly hopped off the back of the snake and approached him. "What, did you forget something?" She asked coolly, flipping her long, disheveled hair over her shoulder.

He sighed and gave her a weak glare. "I heard that thing roar. I thought you might have needed some help..."

How chivalrous he was. It made him twice as annoying to her. "Well, as you can see, I do-" She had been about to say 'don't', but a loud gurgling noise distrated her. They looked behind her where the body of the serpent was starting to writhe again. The bleeding wound was steaming and bubbling and to her horror, two serpentine heads sprouted from the open wound to replace the one she had just severed.

"-Shit." She amended, quickly turning on her heel and sprinting away, grabbing Zuko's hand and dragging him along with her. They were both very fast on their feet, but the creature was right behind them the entire time.

"Hey!" He ran along behind her, not having much of a choice for the time being. "What are you doing? I thought you had that snake thing taken care of!"

She scowled her displeasure back at him. "Well I don't, okay? And it's not a snake, I just realized! It's a Hydra!"

Zuko was again confused. "Never heard of it!"

Hazuki growled out a sigh. "It's SUPPOSED to be a mythical creature, but I guess nobody ever told him that! If you keep cutting off its heads, two more will replace every one! It's hopeless to try and fight it, it will only get stronger!"

Zuko gaped at her, "You've got to be kidding!" One of the two heads made a sudden lunge at him, just barely missing again and nearly nipping at his heels. "Then how the hell are we supposed to kill it?!"

The first head spat the dirt it had accidentally swallowed out at the second head, and the two stopped following their prey for a brief moment to quarrel amongst themselves about it. Hazuki took the opportunity to drag Zuko behind a large tree to rest and hide. "There's only one way to kill a Hydra..." She informed him breathlessly. "After you cut off the head, you have to cauterize the wound before the next heads can grow..."

He blinked at her, an infuriating smirk starting to stretch out the corners of his lips. "Cauterize... As in, burn it? With fire?"

"Yes, burn it!" She confirmed distractedly, searching her pockets. She had a book of matches on hand, but she and everything on her had been soaked to the bone when the Hydra had emerged from the water and sprayed her. Not that some measly matches would have helped her against the massive serpent anyways.

"You don't say..." His smirk was now nearly a full grin, and it didn't go away even when the two serpent heads emerged, one on each side, from behind the tree, hissing two mouthfuls of fangs at them. Hazuki held her sword out, but before she could act, Zuko took over. A stream of flames errupted from his mouth, right into the faces of the twin Hydras. They shrieked and flailed their heads in their air, blinded.

Hazuki was almost as shocked as they were, staring at Zuko wide eyed. He narrowed his eyes at her but continued to smirk about it. "Well, now do you need my help?"

She blushed and turned her head away. "Need? No." She insisted stubbornly, but then she sighed. "But... I would appreciate it..."

"Ladies first!" He instructed her rather cheerfully. Beautiful women usually always had the upper hand on men, and he'd felt a little put off before. It was satisfying to know that she now knew he wasn't as useless as she had assumed.

But she wasn't about to let him hog the glory, either. "Right! Get ready then, firebreather!" She told him, sprinting after the flailing beast. It was thrashing so violently that the heads were banging against each other, on the ground and against trees. She expertly maneuvered around the heads as they beat themselves on the ground, nearly hitting her several times but never managing to quite squish the bothersome blue bug.

She somersaulted the last few feet of the way, then once again hopped on the back of the beast and began running up it's backside. However, though both heads were still blinded, one of them felt her movements and turned around, attempting to strike at her. She leaped right over the offending head, turned on her heel and swung the sword at it, severing the head. Then she continued on her way towards the second, bringing her sword up and then down on it's neck as well.

Zuko was quick to follow her, his body nearly engulfed by his flames. He threw ball after ball of fire at the open wounds, burning them until they were blackened to charcoal. The body squirmed for a moment, but finally it fell still, definitely dead.

They took several moments to catch their breath, and to make sure Hazuki's theory about the Hydra was correct. But it stayed dead, and stayed down.

After wiping the blood on her sword off on the grass and sheathing it, Hazuki finally looked towards the barely taller man, blushing. "Hey, thanks. I couldn't have done it without you..." She was compelled to admit.

He was about to answer in kind, but they were interrupted by the sound of applause. They looked back where a group of the blue humanoid locals had gathered. Some were a lighter shade of blue like periwinkle, others were the darkest shade of navy blue on the spectrum, and there was nearly every other color blue in between. Some were tall and some were short, but they all had long pointed ears and very little clothing. They cheered for the strange pair who had just become their heroes in their native tongue, and their children began gathering the red flower petals from the side of the waterfall and showering the pair with them like confetti. Zuko rubbed the back of his head awkwardly and Hazuki blushed a little, accepting the praise wordlessly.

One of the womenfolk, one of the darker blue shades, came up to them and bowed, and said something slowly to Hazuki, who in turn interpretted for Zuko, "They want to hold a feast in our honor..."

Well, why not? He hadn't had breakfast yet. Although it was apparently suppertime now...

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(( Omg, I can't believe this obscure crossover actually got a review! I'm so excited! =D I'm so glad you decided to give it a try and I hope you enjoyed chapter 2! And yes, I hope you give Yamibou a chance too. You can actually find all thirteen episodes for free on youtube, so when you got the time you should give it a try! Just to warn you though, there is a loooot of girl on girl fanservice... XD Also I'm not much of an artist but I did a quick pic of Zuko and Hazuki. You can find the link on my profile. ^^ ))