Chapter Text
“Katara, get up.”
“Ugh,” she groans, pushing off the hand jiggling her shoulder.
“Katara, please. We need to go.”
She finally cracks an eye open, finding Sokka crouching over her with a worried expression.
“What? Why?”
“A scout spotted a Fire Nation ship sailing toward us. Zuko said it’s his sister’s. We’re packing up camp.”
Katara bolts upright. “Why didn’t you wake me sooner?”
She scrambles for her water skein and her boots, running out of the tent to find most of the camp packed up.
Sokka starts breaking down the tent behind her, throwing out her hastily rolled bedroll into a pile of others.
She looks around for Zuko, and finds him talking with a serious expression to her father and Aang, crouched over a diagram drawn in the dirt. She hurries over, smoothing out her braid.
“The engines on the newer models are on both port and starboard,” Zuko says as she comes within earshot. “They’re harder to disable than the older ships you’ve been dealing with. But I will admit the seaweed slime does sound effective. The rotors overheat easier when clogged, and the new blades are thinner, which makes them more efficient but also more prone to catastrophic breaks.”
“Morning, Katara!” Aang chirps, waving at her as she hurries up to their group.
“Hey,” she says. “Azula’s coming?”
“We think so,” Hakoda says. “Aang is going to fly over on his glider and drop some bombs for us.”
“Bombs?”
“Not really bombs,” Aang quickly clarifies. “Just the kind they use to stall the engines.”
“Okay?” She feels lost.
“Silnak will set you up, Avatar Aang. Good luck.”
“See you!” Aang runs down the hill with a wave, glider in hand and orange robes blowing in the sea breeze.
“I guess you guys have worked things out?” Katara asks, looking between Zuko and her father. They both look tired, their eyes rimmed with dark circles.
“Enough. You were right about him having good information—if it’s true, that is. The Bei Fong girl has been helping pack up the ships, so I haven’t been able to interrogate him about the veracity of this information.”
“I captained a ship for four years. I might have been banished, but I kept up with the new naval developments,” Zuko says, sounding vaguely annoyed that Hakoda doubts the accuracy of his analysis.
“Let’s hope it’s accurate,” Hakoda replies. “The five of you will be departing on the bison when the Avatar returns. I don’t want to risk any of you getting caught.”
“I don’t want you to, either!” Katara says, suddenly overwhelmed with worry.
“We’ll be fine. I’ve been avoiding Fire Nation ships since before you were born. And it’s just the one. We’ll draw her out and lose her in the corals of the Mo Ce Sea. The big steamers can’t navigate the rocks.”
“Okay,” Katara says. She hugs her father tight. “Be safe, please.”
“I will. Love you,” Hakoda says, holding her securely around the shoulders.
“Love you, too.”
Suddenly there is a great crashing boom from the far side of the camp, accompanied by a huge plume of black smoke. Katara pulls back from her father, looking for the source of the noise.
“Of course she’s got bombs,” Zuko groans. “Oh, shit.” His yellow eyes go wide. “She’s got an airship. We need to get out of here.”
Looming over the coast is a big black balloon edged with gold and carrying a small black basket. Azula is just barely visible at the prow, blasting jets of blue fire down at her own ship.
“Where is Aang?” Katara asks, running up the hill to get a better view of the sea and sky. Aang is just visible, his red glider flashing as he drops a brown sack into the water. The sea has been stained a greenish black color all around the steamer, and the crew run back and forth like scattered ants as the vessel slows to a crawl.
“We need to get Appa,” she says, grabbing Zuko by the wrist and heading toward the hill where they left the bison.
Toph and Sokka are already loading the saddle with supplies.
“Aang’s in trouble, we need to go,” Katara says, scrambling up the beast’s side.
“Okay. We’re all set,” Sokka says. The all clamber onto Appa, hardly seated before Katara snaps the reins and yells: “Yip yip!”
They soar into the air. She directs the bison down toward the water, bending up a huge globe and holding it over her head.
As they close in on the ship, Katara releases a torrent, streaming it directly at Azula. The stream catches her off guard, sending her stumbling as they swing around toward Aang.
“Nice shot!” Sokka cheers.
“Don’t get your hopes up,” Zuko says, shaking his head. He’s in a deep-kneed squat on the saddle, fists raised and eyes keen.
“Aang!” Katara calls. “We need to get out of here!”
The airbender glides next to Appa.
“Those bombs are pretty effective, Sokka. The ship’s basically stopped already!” Aang collapses his glider and drifts into the saddle.
Behind them, Azula has rallied, sending out a long tongue of flame that would have singed Appa’s fur if Zuko didn’t direct it away with a sweep of his hands.
“She’s gaining on us,” Sokka says. “Damn. Those balloons are fast. It must be an updated design.”
“We need to lure her away from the ships,” Katara says, snapping Appa’s reigns to encourage him to move faster.
“We should follow the coast. It gets really rocky in about 200 li, and we can potentially hide out there and lose her,” Sokka says.
The head in the direction that he’s indicated, but Azula keeps creeping closer. She sends out another blast of flame. This time, Zuko only manages to deflect part of it, and Appa roars in terror. He starts to thrash around in the air, dropping fast.
Zuko stumbles, just barely managing to hold onto the side of the saddle. Katara feels the fear of weightlessness as they drop, watching Sokka grab Toph before she can tumble off Appa’s back.
Appa rears back up, throwing them all down in a tangle of limbs.
“Okay,” Aang says, rubbing his bald head. “So I guess Appa’s really afraid of fire now. Maybe we should go out over the ocean?”
When Zuko rights himself, he looks up at the balloon and then the stalled ship.
“She’s too far away for reinforcements from the ship, now,” he says. “If we keep going at this pace, even if she catches up we should be able to fight her.”
“I am not interested in fighting your psycho sister,” Sokka says. “I’m sure she’s got her terrifying friends with her, too. Even with you on our side now it’s barely a fair fight. She plays dirty.”
“She does,” Zuko agrees. “Incoming!”
He sweeps aside another great burst of blue fire, as Aang directs Appa to dip in altitude.
“Maybe we should just confront her and use it as a distraction to destroy that balloon of hers,” Toph suggests. When Sokka starts to protest, she holds up her hands and continues. “We don’t have to beat her, just prevent her from being able to follow us so quickly. It would take her a long time to get back to her ship, right? And even longer for it to be fully functional again. So we’d have a better chance of evading her.”
“That’s…actually not a half bad idea,” Sokka says, rubbing his chin. “Aang! Can you take Appa down on those cliffs?” He points to an upcoming section of coast marked by tall, sheer rock that drops directly into the churning sea.
“Okay!”
“I don’t think it’s a good idea to engage with Azula,” Zuko says, his gaze still trained on the advancing balloon.
“Look, either we fight her on our terms or we fight on hers. I like the odds better if we get to pick when it happens. Remember the last time she was chasing us? We didn’t sleep for like two days straight,” says Sokka. Katara watches the cliffs grow ever closer, her heart pounding in her throat. The cliffs are so far away, she won’t be easily able to bend the water up, especially since she’s still exhausted from her escape yesterday.
“You might have a point, Sokka,” she begrudgingly admits. “But let’s take it a little further on. Aang and I won’t have any access to the water on those high cliffs.”
“Fine.” He relays the message to Aang, and they start to fly down as the next set of cliffs come into view. These sit at the base of a narrow valley and much closer to the crashing waves.
As soon as Appa’s six huge feet touch the windswept grass, all five of them leap down onto the earth. Katara bends up a huge stream of water, holding it around herself in the octopus form. Toph readies a circling set of boulders. Aang stands at the head of their group, brandishing his staff like a spear.
Azula’s war balloon drifts over head and spits out a long rope, which the Princess slides down at incredible speed.
Her pointed-toe boots have hardly touched the ground before she’s sending off a hot blast of blue flame.
Their joint assault against her pushes her back—she’s surprisingly alone, her acrobat and knife thrower nowhere in sight—but not for long. She backflips onto a craggy boulder and unleashes a great plume of fire, so hot it’s almost white.
Katara bends a shining wave from the sea, turning the blast into a cover of burning steam.
“Toph,” says Sokka from behind her. “Can you hit the balloon if I direct you? It’s close enough I think you can take it out.”
“I think so.”
They break off from the rest of the group, taking cover behind a stand of jutting stones.
Zuko is in a deep bending stance, scanning the dissipating steam for Azula. Next to him, Aang starts to spin his glider, pushing the last of it off the edge of the cliff.
But when the steam clears, Azula is nowhere to be seen.
“Where did she go?” Aang asks, looking around. Her balloon is still hovering over the cliff, swaying slightly in the breeze.
Zuko peers around, and Katara brings up another wave, twining it around herself in a spinning ring.
Suddenly, the cloudless air feels charged like a storm. Azula is just barely visible behind a tall, leaning boulder, sweeping her arms around herself, sparks and white electricity tangling over her fingers and the greaves on her wrists.
“How does it feel to choose a Water Tribe peasant over your own family, Zuzu?” she asks coldly, flinging her arm out, her long, red fingernails pointed directly at Katara.
“No!” Zuko shouts, flinging himself around and tackling Katara to the ground in just enough time for the lightning to blast over their heads.
Appa bellows, startled as the lightning hits the ground less than a chi from his giant feet, catching the dry grass on fire. Zuko leaps up, pulling Katara with him, only to be knocked back to the ground when Appa beats his enormous tail against the earth in fear.
Aang is the only one to weather the gale. He turns to Azula, his gray eyes furious, and flickering white. He begins to rise, his eyes and tattoos fully glowing, small rocks and dry blades of vegetation swirling in a giant orb of air.
“How dare you attack Appa!” His voice echoes, deep and foreboding with the gravity of his thousands of past lives. He sweeps his arm out toward Azula, sending a great torrent of wind at her.
But she crouches, enduring the blast with only her meticulous hair disrupted.
Katara and Zuko both rush towards her, sending twin tongues of flame and water at her. But she flattens herself to the ground, and when she springs up, barely grazed by their attack, leaps back onto the high ground of the rock.
Behind them, there’s an unexpected metallic crunch, and the creaking sound of metal grinding against stone. Toph has successfully pierced the balloon with a spire of rock.
They all turn to watch the helmsman and the navigator scramble out of the basket, dangling precariously over the hungry ocean.
The air suddenly takes on that stormy ozone smell again.
When Katara turns back to look at Azula, the lightning has already left her perfectly manicured fingers—directly for Aang, still floating and glowing in the Avatar State.
“No!” Katara screams, running for the airbender as he falls. She catches him in her arms, still crackling with residual electricity. He’s not breathing. He’s not breathing! She pulls the water from her skein, running her glowing hands frantically over the weeping red wound in his chest.
In front of her, Zuko wages a fierce fight with Azula—red flames meeting blue in a blur of fists and swinging kicks. But his sister’s fire is brighter and stronger—she’s overwhelming him.
The earth rumbles underfoot, as Toph and Sokka reemerge at a run. The tremors knock Azula out of her precise bending stance, but also topple Zuko, who falls on his back and just as quickly springs up, pushing himself up with his hands.
Toph traps Azula’s feet and the hand she uses to keep her balance in cones of earth, holding her in an awkward crouch.
“We need to get out of here,” Sokka shouts. He has brought a skittish Appa toward Katara, still bent over Aang. She can’t feel his heartbeat—she’s only able to keep his blood and chi flowing with her imprecise and untrained healing. Zuko and Sokka run toward her, picking up the battered monk between them and carrying him as they all scramble to Appa.
Toph launches them onto the saddle with an earthen platform that snaps back into the cliffs with a rumble.
Appa bellows as he takes off—a flap of his tail knocks down the disoriented balloon crew that scramble off Toph’s stone spire.
Azula, having pulled her hand and feet from their stone restraints send a plume of flame at them. But they’re too far away—it fades into shimmering heat long before it can get near them. Katara hears her scream in frustration, but it, like everything else, seems very far away.
She yanks the vial of Spirit Water from around her neck, breaking its leather cord in her haste.
She bends the tiny, glowing ball of water from the vial and directs it onto the wound on Aang’s chest. The water absorbs immediately—and the glow dissipates from the wound through his tattoos, which glow momentarily and fade back to blue. He takes a small, shaky breath.
Katara breathes easy, if only for a moment. She runs her bending water over his chest and limbs, feeling for his heartbeat. It’s weak, but steady. His chi is sluggish but flowing.
She gently lays him on the saddle, tucking a bedroll under his head to keep him comfortable.
“What do we do now?” Sokka asks. The mood in the saddle is somber.
“At least we lost her,” Toph says. “That balloon is definitely out of commission.”
“But she hit Aang with lightning—she could have killed him!” Katara says. She realizes for the first time that her face is coated with tears, wet and sticky and cold in the wind of the upper atmosphere. “I think she did kill him,” she continues softly. “He didn’t have a heartbeat for a minute. I couldn’t feel him breathing.”
“It’s a good thing you still had the water from the Spirit Oasis,” Sokka says. “We need to find a safe place to recover. Somewhere Azula won’t be able to find us. Somewhere nearby.”
Zuko leans over the back of the saddle, staring at the shrinking black dot of Azula’s balloon. His brown Earth Kingdom tunic is scorched on one of the shoulders, the sleeve just barely hanging on. He has a fresh burn where the fabric used to be, but he hardly seems to notice it.
Katara checks on Aang one more time, reassuring herself that he’s still breathing, that he’s still alive, and then she scoots over to Zuko, her hands already coated with water.
He jumps when she touches his burn, looking down at her with a startled expression as she runs her glowing hand over his wound.
“Azula burned you,” she says softly. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” he says. He looks at the others in the saddle, his yellow eyes lingering on Aang’s prone form, and sighs. Katara pulls away when his burn fades to shiny new skin. She’s too tired to do any more now—still recovering from her ordeal yesterday and emotionally exhausted from watching Aang fall. She leans back against the saddle, finally wiping the tears from her face.
“We should go to the Eastern Air Temple,” Zuko says after a long minute of silence.
“The Eastern Air Temple?”
“It’s close. If we cut over the Mo Ce Sea and head south we could be there in a day, maybe less,” he continues.
“Won’t she look there?”
“It would take her at least a day, maybe more, to get back to her ship, and then another three to sail there. We would be safe for a few days. We need to recover.”
“That’s true. This was a disaster,” Toph says. She has one of her small hands on Aang’s shoulder. Her worried face makes her look young for once, like the fourteen-year-old girl she actually is.
“The guru is there,” Katara says after a moment. “Maybe he’ll be able to help Aang recover.”
“If anything, we should be able to regroup,” Sokka says. He climbs out of the saddle onto Appa’s head, pulling on the reins to direct him, and talking in a low voice to the giant beast.
It’s a long and somber flight over the Mo Ce Sea. Katara sits with her hands wound tight over her knees, pressed into Zuko’s healed shoulder. For the first time, he smells of smoke rather than lemongrass, and that, coupled with the sight of Aang still on the floor of the saddle, his orange robes charred and fluttering in the wind, makes her heart clench in sorrow.