As Sokka predicted, it was late afternoon when they arrived near Jang Hui, and Appa touched down on an outcropping of one of the many jagged peaks too rocky to host more than scraggy bushes and trees. The rocks here, broken and their innards exposed, were a rusty orange which was stark against the flat, gray mountainside. Deep cuts scarred the rock in a regular pattern, no doubt made by some kind of machinery though, by the looks of the vegetation and debris, it had been some years since anyone or anything had been this way.

They quickly unloaded and stretched, interested to glimpse the new village near the foot of the mountain. Other than its location—the middle of the wide, slow river—the town itself was nothing to look at: several raised docks had wooden buildings set on them, and tens of boats surrounded the town's perimeter.

"Is it just me," asked Aang, "or is the water all brown?"

"What?" Sokka shielded his eyes from the harsh sunlight. Sure enough, what must have been beautiful river water at one time was a sickly green-brown. "Ew," he couldn't help commenting.

"You guys don't smell that?" asked Toph. When no one said they did, she said, "Be glad," and left it at that.

Sokka pulled out his map. There didn't seem to be another village close by they could travel to before dark. Still, it didn't hurt to ask: "Are we sure we want to stay here, Zuko?"

Zuko stepped next to Sokka. "From here, we could move further west to here," he pointed to a small island northwest of them, "but it's half again the distance we've already traveled."

"Okay, then." Sokka collapsed the map and returned it to his pocket. "Looks like we're staying here for the night," he announced. "Hey, Zuko. Do you remember this place at all?"

"Some of it," he replied. "It was nicer when I visited. Busy, like I told you. The water wasn't great then—nothing like this, though. I wonder what happened." He scratched his head.

It's the Fire Nation; they ruin everything! was Sokka's first instinct. Instead, he shrugged. "Eh, it's not our problem. They probably shouldn't have built an entire town over water. Trash gets everywhere."

"That's true, I guess."

"Should we go into the village?" Katara asked no one in particular.

"We're only here one night," Sokka replied. "And we've got all the food we need. And the less we're seen, the better."

"The city's on water? No, thank you," said Toph, crossing her arms.

"Aang?" Katara asked.

"I'm up for it!" Of course he is. Forget that there's an entire army looking for you.

"Zuko?"

He shrugged.

"That's two and a shrug for 'yes,' and two and a shrug for 'no,' " counted Sokka. "You're going to have to commit, Zuko: either side with them—" he gestured to Aang and Katara, and, at that moment, a butterfly landed on Aang's head, flapping its wings once, then twice—"or us." He pointed to himself and Toph.

"You're probably right about us not showing our faces, me especially," Zuko replied, his eyes downcast.

"Ha! Three to two. Take that, Katara!"

"It's not a competition."

"That's exactly what every loser says." Sokka clapped his hands together. "Now! Onto the most important thing: food. What's for lunch? Or will it be an early dinner? Katara?"

Katara crossed her arms. "Why is it I'm the only one who cooks around here?"

"Do you really want me to answer that? You've tried my cooking; Aang—I love ya, buddy, but I have to be honest here—will serve the most raw-yet-burned weird food with not a scrap of meat; and Toph—you haven't tried to make anything, have you?"

The earthbender shook her head. "You don't want me to."

Sensing weakness, Katara attacked like a tigerseal after an otterpenguin: "Well, maybe you should try it."

"I don't want to try. You're doing just fine by yourself."

"You complain about the food all the time!"

"It's called 'constructive criticism.' "

"Uh," interjected Aang, "Zuko made rice once."

Seizing the opportunity to diffuse the mess this was becoming, and with no one cooking food for him in the meantime, Sokka said, "Yeah, twice! That wasn't so bad."

Everyone turned to Zuko who was standing perfectly still next to Appa. He didn't respond with more than a small shrug and a muttered word that Sokka interpreted as, "Thanks."

"See, Katara?" Sokka continued. "You're not the only one who cooks."

"I am…almost," she replied, arms still crossed and with a frown forming.

"Okay, fine; you are," he said with a heavy tone of exasperation. Didn't she have empathy for a starving man? "Can you please make something? Preferably hot? I'm still cold from being up there." He pointed at the sky. It was deceptively serene and beautiful, pretending that it matched the atmosphere and temperature of the ground, but it was frequently cold, and winds from all directions could assault them.

Katara shot back, "I didn't know I was taking requests." Nonetheless, she asked Aang to gather wood for a fire and to pick some of the berries from the nearby bushes. "And can you make us a path down to the water, Toph?"

Sokka edged to the brink of the steep overlook. Situated somewhere below the tree line of the mountain they were on and well above the murky river, their camp was also surrounded by boulders and brush blocking any possible path down. There was no way Katara would make it down without Toph's help, and she knew it.

"I don't know." A smirk slowly formed across Toph's face and grew into a satisfied smile. "I'm not sure if I feel like it. After all, I'm only useful as a cook."

Katara huffed and shot Toph a look. "I didn't say that. Can't you just help without complaining, for once?" Suddenly, Katara sounded like she didn't have the energy to fight Toph anymore on the subject. And it wasn't just that; it sounded like something a mother would say.

A fleeting memory. A tone of voice. Tired. Loving. A poor attempt to cover up true thoughts and feelings that Sokka had never recognized before.

And then it was gone.

"What do you mean, 'For once'?" Toph continued, bringing Sokka back to the present. "I don't complain a lot—!"

"Toph," Sokka interrupted as gently as he could. "Could you? Please?"

"Fine, Cactus Man. At least he asked," she added to Katara before crossing to one side of the overlook, moving boulders and displacing small trees to create a makeshift path that Katara followed her down.

"But I did ask!" Katara said as they left Sokka's view.

"Not really. You…" They continued bickering until he could no longer hear them—thank the spirits.

"Alrighty, then. Guess we'll unpack." With the help of Aang and Zuko, Sokka offloaded Appa and they took off the air bison's weighty saddle, setting it aside for the night. Aang ended up getting distracted as he gave Appa head and back scratches which left Zuko and Sokka putting together three tents.

"Any ideas on where we'll stay tomorrow?" Sokka asked, draping dark canvas overtop the peak of what would be Katara's tent for the night.

"I'll have to take a look at the map. Finding someplace to buy supplies and stay hidden will get harder with Aang's training. Toph is never quiet with her drills, and the people here will report anything suspicious, that's for sure."

He was right. Continuing to stoop in order to tie the canvas ends to the boulders on the ground—the stakes they usually used wouldn't penetrate the rocky soil—Sokka responded, "Let's finish this and then figure it out. Maybe we should find somewhere more remote. We'll need to get extra supplies to stock up, but we'll lower our chances of being discovered."

"And we might not need to move around as much. It'll give Aang more time to train—and you, too."

Straightening himself so that his head peaked over the top of the tent to face Zuko, Sokka replied, "Could we practice today? We still have time before sunset." He tried to keep the excitement out of his voice, but now that his arms had recovered from two hard days of training, there was nothing stopping them from continuing.

Zuko paused his work. "You're ready?"

"Yes!"

The firebender smiled. "Okay."

"Okay!" Already, Sokka noticed he had picked up his pace building the tents. "We'll finish these, then train."

"We still need to look at your map."

"Okay. Tents, then map, then sword fighting."

-o-0-

"I'm going up, Sweetness," announced Toph, already taking a step up away from Katara.

They had reached the water at the bottom of the foot of the mountain. It looked even dirtier up close, having a rusty brown color that wasn't simply stirred-up mud—at least, Katara didn't think it was. "Hold on," she said.

Toph threw her head back and groaned. "What now?"

"Just—hold on!" Katara replied distractedly, slipping a little on the wet rocks as she bended a small orb of water and tried to bend fresh, clean water from it. It was proving to be difficult. "Hey, can you earthbend the dirt—or whatever this is—out of the water?"

Toph didn't reply, and Katara turned her head to check on her. "What's wrong?"

She stepped close to Katara, and held her hands up to the water twisting the in air. "I don't think it's dirt that's in it. It's like…" Toph's right hand touched the water's edge and it clung to her skin.

"Is it dangerous?" Katara asked. "Should you be—"

"Lay off; I'm fine." She withdrew her hand slightly, and Katara bended the water away, still worried that it wasn't completely safe. Katara began to let the water fall to the ground, but Toph ordered, "No, keep it up. I want to see something." The earthbender went into a familiar stance, feet kept wide apart, then slid forward and punched at the water without touching it.

It was as if the suspended water Katara so easily controlled had suddenly turned against her. The gentle, swirling flow turned into needles tearing away to her left. Katara held on, but, as quickly as it started, the pull that had seized the water disappeared. In its place was pristine water reflecting the afternoon sun in her face.

"That fixed it, right?" Toph asked.

"Yeah." Not letting it go to waste, Katara directed the clean water into the water pouch at her side until it was full. "What was—"

"That? It was dirt but also something else. I think it was metal."

"Metal?" She looked back at the remaining clean water in her hands, then the dirty river at her feet. "In the water?"

"I think so."

"Do you think they," she nodded towards the village, "drink the water?"

Toph shrugged. "They shouldn't."

Looking again at the water still suspended in her hands, Katara asked, "And you're sure this is okay to drink?"

"It's our best option."

That's not an answer. She brought the water up to her mouth, hesitated one last time, and took a sip.

"Well?" inquired Toph.

"It tastes like water." How else could she describe it? "Seems fine. Looks like we'll need your help with dinner, after all. We need drinking water, especially Appa."

Toph made a face. "That's not really dinner."

"It's a part of it."

"Fine."

"Here." Katara gulped down the remaining mouthful of clean water then gathered more contaminated water, enough for everyone to drink, though she might have to come back again just for Appa. The suspended water, much more than what Katara had just finished drinking, weighed heavy on Katara's control: the ever-flowing water wanted to be unrestrained and the more of it there was, the more power it had to do as it wished.

Katara adjusted her footing, avoiding the slick river rocks by stepping into the river. It wasn't ideal, but the water would help keep her footin—

-o-0-

Darkness. White. Red. All together. All separated by flowing lines and varying shades, like thousands of layers of the thinnest gossamer shifting at the slightest touch. Altogether, they belonged to something unknown, unknowable, yet undeniably graceful with unmatched beauty.

With a transformative shift, the reds turned redder like bright blood splashed everywhere, and it pressed against Katara, threatening to suffocate her. Melancholy, desperation, anger. The river was dying; its people were dying; the land was poisoned. All this was impressed upon her with the same intensity as the color.

Darkness swiftly overcame the reds in waves of progressively and impossibly darker blacks following each other.

Then white, the weakest of the colors. It was foam created by the rushing black waves. Floating and spreading slowly into the endless darkness—

-o-0-

"KAT—!" the sound of water in her ears—"AH!" A hand roughly pulled at her collar, but she quickly found her footing and rose above the water line at her calves, coughing nonstop. Beside her, Toph coughed and sputtered as well. "What were you doing?!" the girl yelled. "You just fell into the water!"

"What?" The images from before stayed with Katara, and their urgency made what Toph was talking about fade into near-irrelevance. What was—

"Katara!" Toph hit her shoulder with more force than her usual friendly jabs.

"Huh?"

"What happened?"

Like blinking away after-images, the abstract shapes faded in Katara's mind until only one thought remained: the town was in danger from…something—something bad—that she knew. "I…I saw…" The last images faded. "What happened? I was waterbending, and then the next thing I remember is you dragging me up from the river." As she spoke, she noticed how soaked Toph was. Although the water only came up to her knees, every bit of both of them was wet.

"You fell," Toph said simply. "Are you okay?"

"Yeah." Katara shook her head to get the unsettled feeling out of it. "Are you okay?"

The girl looked upset in an angry sort of way and didn't say anything.

"What is it?"

"I swallowed a bunch of the water," she answered miserably, her hand swiping at the river like it was the one at fault.

Katara tried not to think about how much she may have drunk after her unexpected dip into the polluted water. "You'll be okay. If they drink the water here, it won't hurt you," she replied with a confidence she did not have. But if anyone was going to bully their way through the side effects of the dirty water, it was going to be Toph. "C'mon."

They walked the few steps it took to exit the water, and Katara waterbended their clothes dry. "Thanks," Toph said, still sulking.

Trying again and succeeding to purify a smaller orb of water—with more than a few words of complaint from Toph—they then made their way back up the side of the steep hillside and to the overlook.

Upon reaching the top, Aang, Appa, and Momo greeted them; meanwhile, Sokka and Zuko were once again bent over their map, oblivious to the outside world.

At least Katara thought so. After depositing the water into the pot Aang provided, she approached the boys, careful to not make any sudden movements or sounds. Sokka, without looking up, said, "Are you really going to try that again?"

She shifted her glance to Zuko, who hadn't lifted his head, but his eyes peaked out from under his brow, watching her with a curious look. "We heard Aang," he explained.

"Zu-ko!" Sokka shoved his shoulder a little. "Don't say that! She was supposed to be impressed by our listening prowess."

"At least you weren't scared this time," teased Katara.

Apparently deciding he wanted the subject changed, Sokka asked in higher register, "Anything to report down below? Still no evidence of Fire Nation?"

"No Fire Nation," she confirmed. There was something still bothering her about…She tried to think on all she had seen but nothing but the vaguest sense of danger lingered.

"What is it?" he asked, evidently sensing she was leaving something out.

"Something happened…I think…" she began slowly, trying to find the words to explain something she didn't fully understand. "I think the village is in danger." At least that much had been made clear.

Sokka shrugged. "Sure. From the Fire Nation."

"I don't know." She frowned as she tried to conjure up what had been so clear minutes ago. "I…I just know it's in danger."

"Wait, what happened? How do you know this?" Sokka asked.

Toph explained, "We were getting water, and when she stuck her foot in the river, she fell or collapsed or something."

"What?!" both Aang and Sokka exclaimed.

"Are you okay?" Aang asked.

"Yeah," she said. "I'm okay, Aang."

"And I had to fish her out," continued Toph. "Never thought I'd ever have to do that with Sugar Queen, here." Katara appreciated her feeble attempt at lessening the boys' anxiety.

"So…how does that make you suddenly all-knowing about this impending disaster?" Sokka waved his hands around dramatically as he spoke.

Katara's head hurt with the thoughts and memories she desperately searched to help her case, but to no avail. Letting her shoulders drop, she said, "I don't know. When I was in the water I…I just know it's in danger."

"Uh huh. And this has nothing to do with you being outvoted for visiting the village?"

How could he think that?! Sometimes that boy could be so smart; this was not one of those times. "No!" she reproved him without masking her feelings.

"Okay! Okay!" He held up his hands. "Fine! I was curious."

"But…" She did want to visit the village even more now. If there was danger heading their way, they needed to investigate.

Reading her mind, Sokka rushed to cut her off: "No. No! No, Katara. We don't have time for this!"

"But, Sokka," Aang said, "if we can help these people… Isn't that what being the Avatar is about?"

"Yes, but the Avatar also has to fight the Fire Lord, which is more important than, uh, um—"

"More important than helping people?" Aang asked, his accusation quick and penetrating.

"I—I just mean the day can't be moved, right?" Sokka stammered. "It's not like we can move Day of Black Sun because we're running late. 'Come back tomorrow, Sun!' and all that. If we take too much time here, we're going to miss it."

For the first time since Katara and Toph had returned, Zuko spoke: "You have the schedule, Sokka. How long can we stay here and still get to the rendezvous on time?" Judging by the looks they exchanged, Zuko already knew the answer. After all, they had probably discussed it when looking at their route on the map.

Still, Sokka was reluctant to answer: "If we ride hard for the rest of the time leading up to the day before Invasion Day—the day we meet up with Dad—and I'm talking about long days, we have probably two or three days to play with."

Zuko nodded and turned back to Katara. Right then, he looked oddly happy, like he had given her the information himself and that it was something he was proud to have done.

She gave him a quick, appreciative smile as thanks. "And it shouldn't take that long either," Katara told her brother. "If we go to the village, we might be able to figure out what could be happening that might put them in danger."

"The village?" Sokka whined. "But shouldn't we avoid interacting with them? Hiding from the Fire Nation while in the Fire Nation probably would go more smoothly if we stayed out of sight."

"Well, I say we try to help," Aang said with a determined tone and an upraised hand.

"But we already voted, Aang!" Sokka admonished him.

"Let's do another vote, then," Katara said, raising her hand as well.

Sokka closed his eyes and groaned, but allowed it. "Zuko?"

Zuko replied, "I think if we have the time, we should help them." He raised his hand.

Groaning louder, Sokka buried his head in his hands.

"Toph?" Katara asked.

This time, Toph was the one who shrugged. "Still not a fan of an entire city on water, though."

"Fan-tastic," muttered Sokka. He raised his head back up. "Can we at least keep the wanted criminals here when we're in the village?"

A/N following the beginning bit of Painted Lady (where Katara falls into the water): Another deviation from the story. I hope I did Katara justice here. My issue with the Painted Lady episode is twofold: First, I just find Xu and Doc annoying. Unfortunately, he's our main source of information in this episode and it's a pretty important episode. Second, you might have noticed I've been keeping the Gaang out of a lot of these villages. This is done partly because it doesn't make sense for fugitives to be visiting villages for anything more than necessary supplies (I'm looking at you, Headband), and partly because it allows the characters to interact with each other.

Now, the change I made had two issues: First, as I mentioned, Xu/Doc tell us that the Fire Nation is responsible for the pollution but he also gives Katara the idea for the Painted Lady. If I take him out, how can that information be given otherwise? Second, and this is incredibly important, Katara MUST retain her independence as well as her thirst for doing good despite what everyone else says is not their problem. I did not want the Painted Lady to come in and basically demand Katara do something. The Painted Lady is canonically not strong while the pollution is going on (note that it's only after Katara and Toph clean the water that she's able to make her presence known) anyways and, again, Katara has to show her strength of spirit in a major way. So, she's given a piece of the puzzle: the village is in danger. She has to do the rest of the work.