Author's Note: Okay, here the identity of the "familiar stranger" is revealed if you haven't guessed it yet. This is the last chapter I have written, if you want an epilogue just let me know and I'll conjure one up =). I don't own Avatar: The Last Airbender or any of the characters pertaining to it. The places are all fictional. Enjoy!

"June!" Zuko slammed into the bar, rushing to find any sign of the wayward water bender.

"Hey cuz, what's got your panties in a twist?"

"I can't find Katara. Have you seen her?"

"Oh," Zuko's cousin started, thinking as she casually washed a glass "you lost your girlfriend, again?"

"Yeah-wait, no-" He growled exasperatedly, "Have you seen her or not?"

"Yup. She was over that-a-ways last time I saw her." To Zuko's horror, June pointed to the way he had seriously hoped he would not have to go.

The scarred bender let out a loud curse as he bolted over to the stairs behind the dark corridor. He was right. Some slime bag had taken her up there. Whoever it was, he was going to regret it; Zuko would make sure of that.

Back behind the locked door, Katara's drugged senses were being pampered by the stranger. The man had begun with taking his time in seducing the girl, but he was getting bolder as his desire escalated and she continued to show no signs that she was uncomfortable or that she would try to run off, not like she could anyway.

He rested a hand on the inside of her fishnet covered knee, deciding to finally take another step towards his goal for the night. He pulled her fishnets off to reveal her smooth, shapely legs and seeing them made him wonder what the rest of her would look like. But he was in no hurry, for he was confident that he would have all night to find out. His fingers flitted up the inside of her leg, tickling her nerves. He stroked her skin up her thigh and under her sexy little skirt. Probing, he felt that her underwear was already damp from arousal. She moaned shortly in a soft, encouraging way when she felt his fingers underneath her skirt.

He noticed her previously shut eyes open and a new emotion replaced her drowsy, complacent expression when she looked into his face. She fumbled with the buttons on his shirt until she could feel his stony muscles bare against her palm. Trailing her fingers down his abdomen, she reached down and began to pull her panties down, but he finished the job for her, tossing the unnecessary article of clothing aside. Clinging to him as his fingers pleased her with more intensity; she kissed his neck and bit down on the skin. He hissed with desire when she maneuvered on top of him, her emotions taking control where her mental state was currently faltering. He adored the view of her breasts as she lied flat against him and he relished how her skin felt, but he wanted to feel more and to see more. Her hips- clad only in her frilled miniskirt, began to grind on his still-denim-wearing lower half. He groaned as his pants became tight to the point of being an uncomfortable nuisance. One of his hands was on her upper thigh, moving with her going down on him, as his other moved down to the button of his jeans.

Sure that Katara was nowhere to be found out on the floor of the club, Suki had made her way up the stairway to where Zuko had said he'd go look. She had picked open two of the doors already when she was joined by her furious firebending comrade.

"Have you seen her yet?"

"Nope, I'll check this side, you'll check that side?"

"Got it."

With that, Suki and Zuko frantically continued their search, opening doors that were not meant to be opened and seeing things that were not meant to be seen. Man, people did some weird stuff. Wait, where the hell did Elvis come from? She thought as she hurriedly shut another wrong door. Okay, this has got to be it, she thought, reaching the last door on the hall. Suki flung the door open to see exactly what they had feared. "Hey Zuko, I-" Suki cut herself off as she took a better look at who was with Katara. Thinking quickly, she shut the door before Zuko could get a look in there and she slammed him into the wall, pinning him down by the back of his head and his forearm.

"Suki, let me go! Is she in there?"

"Uh, no, nothing to see there," she said nervously. "HARU!" She shouted, realizing what she had to do to prevent total disaster. With that, the homosexual boy that had recently been infatuated with Zuko appeared in the dimly lit corridor, a shower of glittery confetti raining down to announce his arrival. "Haru, here, he's all yours," Suki commanded, pushing both boys into the room that Zuko had just picked the lock of across the hall.

"Suki! NO!" Zuko's screams of protest were lost behind the door as Suki jammed it shut from the outside. She let a relieved breath out before getting back to the task at hand. Her Kyoshi game-face on, she reopened the door that Katara was behind. Yep, there was no mistaking it, Suki thought, extremely glad that Zuko hadn't seen what she saw.

Due to the commotion outside, the man had sat up on the bed, leaning against the elaborate headboard with Katara comfortably lying against him, his arm wrapped around her possessively. Suki took in the almost-stranger's appearance to confirm her dark suspicions.

He had a straight mane of long black hair, a face that flaunted a flawless bone structure, his chin garnished with a simple stream of a beard, and those unmistakably fire bender eyes that he had passed down to the next of his line. He looked like he could be in his late twenties, but Suki knew him to be around thirty-eight. Honestly, Suki admired her friend's taste in older men, but the admiration was short lived as Suki came to terms with the danger at hand. She saw an annoyed anger in his expression that chilled her to the bone, she knew that this guy was not one to mess around with. Suki took a hesitant step into the room, prepared to duck out of the way of an irritated fireball making way toward her face.

"It is very rude to break through locked doors," the guy snarled, cuing Suki to leave. The redhead mustered up her courage to face this man and get Katara out of there.

"It's also rude to trick young girls into following you into, uh, places like this." The man waited like a cobra preparing to strike.

"C'mon Katara," Suki stepped forward again, "we have to leave." Katara shook her head slowly.

"Nu-uh, I dun' wanna leave," she mumbled. What? Suki thought in disbelief. Did Katara actually believe him? What is she on?

"Katara!" Suki placed her hand decisively on her hip, "We have to GO! Don't you see that this guy is old enough to be like, your dad!" Mentally Suki laughed at the sick irony of it. Zuko could sooo not find out about this. "Really, Kat, c'mon," Suki said as she began to pull on her intoxicated friend's arm. The oppressor sat up on the bed and pulled Katara into his lap, wrapping his arms around her in a protective way. He had picked up on her name from her silly friend's constant calling of it.

"Katara," he drawled in a velvety, villainous voice, "Would you rather go with her than stay here, with me?" When he felt Katara's slight hesitation, he pulled her close to him and kissed her fully on the mouth, running his hands up and down her body. Suki watched in shocked horror as Katara melted into him and he lowered the two back to lying on the bed. I can't believe this, Suki thought, what has gotten into her, well, hopefully nothing yet. She racked her brain for some way to get Katara away from the brazen firebender.

Just then, the desperately thinking teen turned at the sound of heavy footsteps bursting across the threshold of the exciting room. She saw that a new guy had come into the room, and by the look of him he was extremely pissed off. It was some middle-aged perv with the weirdest sideburns. Katara's captor nonchalantly pulled away from the kiss the two were engaging in and he rolled his eyes at the sudden newcomer.

"Get out of here, Zhao," he called from the bed.

"No," Mr. Sideburns, err, Zhao, growled angrily, "Ozai, you traitor! I saw her first!"

"Zhao, this is not the time. Leave, now." There was a dangerous cold to Ozai's voice, it sounded like the same threatening element that Zuko and his sister filtered into their voices when they meant business. Suki was almost scared for the new man on the scene. Didn't he realize that Ozai would most likely kill him without a second thought?

Suki watched, not wanting to get anymore in the way of this than necessary. She witnessed Ozai grab Kat's shoulders and lie on top of her, giving her a final kiss on her lips and then a long, vampire-like kiss on her neck. He pulled away and stood up to confront the inconvenient challenger. The animosity and testosterone in the air was almost tangible.

Suki seized her chance and darted toward the bed, grabbing Katara and flinging her over her shoulder; she carried her out of the forsaken room and slammed the door shut, jamming a chair under the knob just for an extra few seconds to make an escape. Halfway down the hall, Suki remembered Zuko and Haru. Katara in tow, she ran back to the room that she pushed the two in and opened the door. Zuko fell backward into the hall when the door on which he'd been leaning against sprung open.

"Suki, you're a crazy bitch, you know that?" He said as he scrambled to his feet, shutting the door quickly behind him. His hair was a mess and he looked like he'd been thrown into some kind of angry mob, minus the pitchforks.

"Yeah, I'm not the only one," She said, thinking about Katara. "I'm really sorry about that-"

"You better be sorry, you'd never guess who was in that room you just shoved me into with that Haru guy!"

"Yeah, Zuko, that's nice. We've really gotta go. C'mon, walk and talk." Suki lead him and Katara down the hall, trying to make it to the car before Zuko's daddy came back for Kat.

"So, uh, she was in there then?" He asked awkwardly, taking in Katara's discombobulated form. He went over to her and steadied her as they walked. "Where are her shoes?" Zuko picked Katara up off of her bare feet and carried her bridal style the rest of the way to the parking lot.

"Yeah, she was." Suki replied, getting into the passenger's seat as Zuko lied Katara down in the back.

Zuko got behind the wheel. "And why couldn't I have helped you get her out of there?"

"Because, if-uh, that just really wouldn't have ended well," Suki stumbled over her words, still not wanting to divulge to Zuko just how bad the events of the night were. "Zuko, just pull out of here."

"Why can't you just tell me? It's not like I can pull an Aang and go Avatar State on this place."

"Zuko," she said in a sing-song voice, "just drive. We gotta go." Suki noticed a particularly angry firebender making his way to the car that Zuko was supposed to be getting the heck outta there.

"I just don't see what the big deal is, she's with us now. What more could happen?"

"Uh, you could find out who took her up there."

"I wish I did! Wait, do we know him? Who was it? Dammit, Suki."

"Zuko drive!" She yelled as she saw Ozai running out to their car. Ozai was getting dangerously close to the car and Zuko was still refusing to move until he got his answers. This family was just too persistent, Suki thought. She frantically put the car in drive and hit Zuko's knee, forcing him to push the gas as she guided the wheel in his hands. Just as they were getting out of there, Ozai flung something into Suki's open window.

"Wait-that's, what is HE doing here?" The frustration and bewilderment seeped into Zuko's voice. "And what the hell was that?" He asked, referring to the items that were flung into the car by the pursuing Ozai.

"Um," Suki blushed as she held up Katara's shoes…and her underwear.

"What the-" Zuko's eyes widened in horror as he realized what had happened. Moments later, the firebender's overpowering feelings sparked the fuse in his car, and the car stopped short, still miles from Katara's house. Epic Fail.