Disclaimer: Don’t own Naruto nor Avatar.

Chapter 12

“Are you out of your mind?” Sokka demanded.

He took several steps back as Katara grabbed his war club and held it under his nose.

The look on her face was one he never hoped to see aimed at him. (I bet dad would flee seeing that look on Katara’s face.) the young Water Tribe warrior told himself as his sister went back to her preparations.

Appa had shown up shortly after the Fire Nation’s ship had left.

(Left with Aang and Naruto.) Sokka felt bad for the bald head little kid, but he was more concerned with the blond kitsune that his sister was going after.

“Will you stop and think about it!” Sokka tried, then turned as their grandmother entered the tent

“Gran-Gran, thank the spirits. You can talk Katara out of this insane plan of hers to storm the Fire Nation ship and rescue Naruto.”

Kana looked at her grandson a moment. “Katara dear.” She began and Sokka’s sigh of relief became a yelp when Kana said, “Don’t forget to pack bandages and ointments. No telling what the Fire Nation will do to them.”

Katara nodded. “Thanks Gran. Can you make sure Appa is ready, I asked Sokka but he’s too busy whining to do anything I asked him to do.” The last came out a growl and Sokka was backing up even before Gran-Gran grabbed him by the arm and dragged him from the tent.

“Gran-Gran…she’s gone insane!” Sokka started.

“Go pack.” Kana told him. he looked at her. “WHAT?”

“You will be going with her and help her.” Kana said. “You are our only warrior and her older brother.”

Sokka swallowed whatever he was going to say and went to his own tent. Kana sighed and looked at the large sky bison. “You better be up to the task. Your master’s life depends on it.”

Appa let out a groan and a huff.

XX

(Fire Nation Ship, Hold)

Azula looked at the blond that was spread eagle held in the air by chains attached to his arms, legs and tail.

She saw the lash marks were already healing and growled. “Who did this?” she demanded looking over her shoulder towards the door.

The soldiers that had moments ago been proud of themselves for showing some initiative backed up in fear. The Princesses temper was legendary amongst the crew. So they did what any self respecting soldier would. They shoved one of their own forward and before the poor masked fool could utter a sound he was burned to a crisp, engulfed in blue flames.

“No one.” Azula snarled, her eyes showing her rage. “No one but I am to enter this room. AM I CLEAR?”

“Azula?”

She turned and saw her brother standing there with a look of concern and questions on his scarred face. Behind them their uncle Iroh had a raised eyebrow and she wanted to wipe the knowing smirk from his wrinkled face.

“Nothing to see here.” She snarled and returned to the hold and slammed the door shut with a clang.

The soldiers scattered like roaches leaving the prince and general looking at the sealed doorway.

Back in the hold Azula strode forward her eyes took in the wounds, which were nearly healed. She took a deep breath and looked at the blond who was looking at her now.

Her gold eyes met his blue ones and there were many things left unsaid.

“You ran.” Azula finally said.

“I had no choice.” Naruto rebutted.

“You did.” Azula said keeping her distance despite him being bound, or because of it. “I would have protected you.”

“Not from your father.” Naruto said.

Azula looked away first.

“Azula…”

“Don’t say my name like that!” She hissed.

Naruto sighed then remained quiet.

“Why?” she asked.

“Why?” Naruto echoed.

“All you had to do was stay hidden in my chambers. But no, you had to save those peasants.” Azula snarled.

“Because it was the right thing to do.”

“THE RIGHT THING TO DO WOULD HAVE BEEN FOR YOU TO STAY HIDDEN!” She yelled and blue flames exploded from her fists on either side of Naruto, barely missing him.

“Six months. Do you know that in six months you changed me in ways that I couldn’t go back to being who I was. I made peace with Zu-Zu.”

Naruto gave her a smile at that.

“And then you left, my father found out I had been hiding you and he challenged me to Agni Kai not even a day after he abused Zuko, I was next.”

She opened her top and Naruto’s eyes looked at the burn scar that was shaped like a claw.

“Oh…Azula.” He said his voice edged with sadness.

“He spotted this.” She gestured to the bite mark. “And he banished me with Zuko. My disgrace was complete.”

Naruto tilted his head down. “Now what?”

Azula looked away, crossing her arms over her chest. “I have no choice. I must give you to my father.”

“I…I understand.” Naruto said.

Azula left the room and Naruto sagged in his bonds. (I heard rumors, but I never thought the Fire Lord would do that to his own daughter.) the whisker marked blond thought sadly.

XX

(Another part of the ship)

“So, you guys never fought an airbender before, have you?” Aang asks the guards who are escorting him to his cell.

“I could take you both with my hands tied behind my back.”

“Silence!” the first guard snarls.

They stop in front of a door. As one of the guards moves to open the door with a key, Aang takes a deep breath and blows the guards with the key into the door knocking him out. The breath also propels him backwards and into the guard behind him. they continue all the way back down the hallway where they crash into the stairs they came down on. The guard is knocked out since Aang used him to cushion his own impact.

Aang airbends himself back up onto the deck and airbends the door at the end of the deck open, he then rushes into the ship and runs down another hallway.

Behind him one of the guards he escaped from emerges and shouts to the guards on the bridge.

“THE AVATAR HAS ESCAPED!”

XX

Appa is swimming through the water with Katara at the reigns and Sokka on his back in the saddle.

“Come on. Go…Fly…Soar.” Sokka says with a dreary tone.

“Please Appa! We need your help. Aang and Naruto need your help.” Katara begs the bison.

“Up…Ascend…Elevate.” Sokka keeps trying from his perch.

Katara leaned in and mock whispered to the sky bison. “Sokka doesn’t believe you can fly. But I do, Appa.” She tries coaxing him. “Come on. Don’t you want to save Aang?”

Appa rumbles in response but doesn’t speed up or fly.

“What was it that the kid said?” Sokka mutters. “Yee-ha? Hup-hup? Wahoo?” Sokka is saying the words, “Uh…yip-yip?”

This last one gets a response from Appa as he rumbles again and begins to flop his massive beaver tail. He begins to hop along the surface of the water as he picks up speed. Finally with a might heave, Appa takes off into the sky.

“You did it Sokka!” Katara says ecstatic that her brother finally got the bison airborne.

“He’s flying! He’s flying! Katara, he’s…” Sokka says but noticing his sisters smug look continues nonchalantly, “I mean…big deal, he’s flying.”

As the bison flies high into the horizon.

XX

(Fire Nation Ship)

Aang is running down one of the ship’s hallways looking behind him for pursuers. His hands are still bound behind him. he turns around and starts running forward only to crash into three Fire Nation soldiers blocking his way with their weapons drawn.

“(panting) You haven’t seen my stadd around have you? Or a blond kitsune perhaps?” Aang asks before running forward and up and around the guards by running along the walls and ceiling in corkscrew like circles, getting past them with ease and they can only look on at his retreating form with surprise.

“THANKS ANYWAY!” Aang yelled over his shoulder before he runs into another hallway, this time his path is blocked by a single guard who blasts a fireball at him. Aang managed to avoid it by launching himself over the guards head, and as he does, he is able to cut his wrist bonds by catching them on the horn of the guards helmet.

The bonds break and the guard is thrown off balance and lands on the ground.

Aang, his hands now free runs opening several random doors as he goes by. The last door he opens reveals a snoring Iroh.

“Sorry.” Aang whispers and he closes the door softly.

He runs past another open door, then stops and backs up to it.

“My staff!” Aang says with a grin and enters the room, but the door slams shut behind him revealing Zuko who had been hiding in wait for him.

“Looks like I underestimated you.” Zuko says with his eyes narrowed.

There is a brief pause before Zuko begins blasting fire at Aang, who barely manages to dodge. He is terrified as he gasps and pants to catch his breath. After dodging several more shots, Aang rolls underneath Zuko to get behind him.

By standing behind him, Zuko is unable to blast him with fire but tries, and spins away. Aang is once again facing Zuko and he uses a small air ball he formed with his hands to dissipate each fireball Zuko sends at him.

Aang creates another airball and rides it like a scooter around the walls and ceiling of the room, all the time getting licked by the gouts of flame Zuko unleashes at him. Aang terminates the airball and grabs a tapestry off the wall and wraps Zuko up as he passes.

While Zuko struggles against the tapestry, Aang is able to grab his staff just as Zuko breaks his bonds and they once more square off against each other.

After several moments of maneuvering, Aang airbends a mattress up off the floor and slams it into Zuko and propels him into the opposite wall. He is smashed into it and falls to the ground, landing on the mattress. Aang then airbends the mattress up into wall and smashing Zuko into it again. Both then fall to the ground, Zuko looks up in anger only to find that Aang is gone.

XX

Naruto looks up as the door to his cell opens.

“Sounds like trouble.” He says. Azula shuts the door. “Quiet. Seems like the Avatar has managed to escape and is giving my brother a merry chase around the ship.”

Naruto looks at Azula and noticed that she had changed her clothes. “You still have them.” He remarks.

Azula looks down and then her eyes meet his. “Do you know what you do to me?” she asks and before Naruto can answer she crosses the distance and captures his lips with her own.

XX

Back above deck a wheel mechanism that opens a deck hatch on the floor begins to spin. The hatch pops open and Aang airbends himself onto the bridge from below. He rushes forward out onto the bridges observation deck. “Naruto?” he calls out.

Shaking his head he opens his glider, throws it into the air and jumps after it. He catches it, a happy expression on his face.

Unfortunately, right behind him is Zuko who jumps after him in pursuit, letting loose a fierce cry of desperation he manages to grab Aang’s foot which drags him to the deck.

Both get up and square off yet again. Aang sporting a look of trepidation is tempered as he turns to look over his left shoulder to see Appa in the sky gaining on Zuko’s ship.

Zuko spots it. “What is that?”

“Appa!” Aang says with joy seeing his long time friend, but he senses danger and turns just in time to use his staff to block a fire blast from Zuko.

Thinking quickly he uses his staff as a helicopter to escape the blasts and comes back down at the edge of the deck, nearly falling overboard before he regains his balance and blow three more fireballs away before his staff is knocked away from him.

He dodges a few more blasts before he finally knocked overboard and into the water below.

“Aang NO!” Katara is close enough now that her voice is heard even as Aang sunk below the water.

Katara’s calling his name is heard by him and suddenly his eyes and tattoo’s glow white hearing Katara’s scream of his name. An expression of determination forms on his face. As he turns around in the water and begins to rise towards the surface.

Around him a mighty whirlpool of water begins to form.

Aang is at the center of a now monstrous inverted tornadoof water is propelled towards the surface at an amazing speed. He breaks the surface in front of the ship, towering high over the bridge atop his swirling maelstrom of water.

Zuko looks up at the swirling column of water and the Avatar at its pinnacle with dismay and a hint of fear.

Aang lands on the deck, his eyes still aglow and bends the water from the column around him in a circle. He releases it and it expands outward in a shockwave that blasts Zuko and the gathered soldiers overboard.

Sokka and Katara witness this from atop Appa’s back.

“Did you see what he just did?” she asks, her voice telling all how incredulous she thought it was.

Sokka meanwhile had a huge grin. “Now that was some waterbending!”

Aang on the foredeck is on his knees, wobbling after the huge amount of ebery he expended.

He slumps forward, the white energy fading from his eyes and tattoos. Appa lands nearby, Katara and Sokka leap off to retrieve him.

“Aang? Are you okay?” Katara asks as she reaches him, she then looks around. “Where is Naruto?”

Sokka holds Aang up

“Hey Katara. Hey Sokka. Thanks for coming.” Aang says in an exhausted voice. “I’m not sure where Naruto is, I haven’t seen him since we were brought aboard.”

“Well we couldn’t let you guys have all the glory of kicking Fire Nation tail.” Sokka said with a huge grin.

“I dropped my staff.” Aang says, his voice getting a bit slurry.

“Don’t worry, we’ve got it.” Sokka says even as Katara retrieved it. He watches as his sister picks it up but is shocked when Zuko is holding the other end that was hangng overboard, and it is what kept Zuko from hitting the water below when Aang washed him overboard.

Katara snarls and with a shove butts Zuko in the head with the end of the staff three times making a hollowed Doink! Sound with each blow, Zuko lets go and begins to fall.

Sokka smirks at his sister. “HA! That’s from the Water Tribe!”

Appa gets up from where he landed and shakes off some of the water he lets out a growl as some of the guards who had been washed down the deck by Aang’s waterbending are getting up and preparing for combat.

Katara uses her skills that she had learned with Naruto’s help to pick up a stream of water from the deck and she mentally smiles as the guards pull back a bit in fear. She tries to whip the guards with the water, but instead freezes the water on the deck including the water around Sokka’s feet behind her.

“KATARA!” Sokka wails even as Aang laughs at the sight.

Sokka begins to chip away the ice holding his feet with his boomerang while the soldiers are moving forward once again.

Katara picks up another stream of water and throws it at the soldiers without looking. They are now frozen in a thin sheet of ice.

“I need to find Naruto.” She says as Aang helps Sokka.

Katara takes several steps at a time, she opens door after door and finally reaches the end of a corridor, the door is locked.

She huffs and uses some water that washed down the stairs from Aang’s earlier attack. She directs it at the door even as Aang and Sokka join her. the water freezes the door and without asking, Katara grabs Sokka’s war club and hits the door, shattering it.

“Naruto, we’re here to…” the words die on her lips as she finds the Fire Nation girl from earlier kissing Naruto who is still chained.

Azula realizes that someone is in the room and turns, a snarl on her lips before she is sent across the room, pinned to the wall by a sheet of ice.

“Oh…hey Katara.” Naruto says, his fox like ears drooping. He sees Sokka and Aang standing in the doorway, their jaws hanging nearly to the floor at what they’d seen.

”Don’t hey Katara me.” She snarls and water rushes from the hall and impacts with the chains holding Naruto and freeze them. Katara smashes them with the borrowed war club. “Let’s go.”

She turns to see Naruto looking back at the frozen Azula. “Naruto.”

He nod and makes it to the doorway. (I’m sorry Azula. I hope you find your way.) he’s out the door and up the stairs even as Azula raises her body temperature and the ice around her melts.

“GAAAAAAAAA!!” she lets out a roar as a jet of fire explodes from her hands.

She races up the stairs in time to see four figures atop the flying bison flying away. She turns to see her uncle helping Zuko back up on deck.

“Shoot them down!” Zuko commands.

Zuko, Iroh and Azula unite to launch a massive bolt of fire at Appa.

Katara and Sokka look behind them in horror at the approaching fireball.

Aang leaps from Appa’s head and holds his staff like a baseball bat ready to swing, but Naruto with a swipe of his tail sends a gale of wind that sends the fireball away from Appa and into the cliff nearby where it explodes, releasing a huge amount of ice from the cliff wall which falls into the narrow channel that Zuko’s ship is navigating.

On the deck Zuko gasps in horror as the bow of the ship is buried under an avalanche of ice which also blocks the whole channel.

“Well at least there is some good news for the Fire Lord. The nation’s greatest threat is just a little kid.” Iroh mutters.

“That kid, Uncle just did this!” Zuko gestures to the heavily damaged and buried bow of the ship. I won’t underestimate him again.” Zuko turns and starts issuing orders. “Dig this ship out and follow them!”

Several soldiers begin to use controlled firebending to thaw out their fellow soldiers that were frozen by Katara.

Zuko adds. “As soon as you’re done with that.”

Iroh looks at Azula who has been strangely silent. Her back to him, he is unaware of the look in her eyes as she watches Appa and his passengers fly off into the sunset

XX

Naruto slumps, even as Katara is questioning Aang, his blue eyes land on the Avatar, thankfully for now Katara is distracted by what she’d seen the younger boy do and now wanting answers.

“How did you do that? With the water? It was the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen.”

Aang who is sitting cross legged on the bridge of the saddle is sporting a sad expression. “I don’t know. I just sort of…did it.”

“Why didn’t you tell us you were the Avatar?” Katara asks.

“Because I never wanted to be.” Aang said as his shoulders slumped.

“But Aang, the world’s been waiting for the Avatar to return and finally put an end to this war.”

Aang looks down and his voice becomes softer. “And how am I going to do that?”

“According to legend you need to first master water, then earth, then fire, right?” Katara asks.

Aang shrugs. “That’s what the monks told me.”

“Well, if we go to the North Pole you can master waterbending.

Aang looks up and smiles. “We can learn together.”

Naruto mentally scowled, but kept quiet.

“And Sokka I’m sure you’ll get to knock some firebender heads on the way.” Katara offered. She knew her brother wanted to return home, but she wasn’t above bribing him. her eyes landed on Naruto who had been quiet.

He sighed. “I go where the Avatar goes.”

“Don’t sound like that.” Sokka said putting an arm around Naruto’s shoulders. “Look at it this way it could be fun.”

Naruto nodded, but he knew that sooner or later he’d have to explain Azula to Katara. (Hopefully later, way later.)

“Then we’re in this together.”

Aang with a huge grin that Naruto was surprised the kid didn’t swallow his own head pulled out a scroll. “All right, but before I learn waterbending, we have some serious business to attend to.” he tells them before he airbends himself over to them and opens the scroll to reveal a map. “Here…here and here.” He points to two spots on the Earth Kingdom and one spot on the southern Air Nomad islands in quick succession.

“What’s there?” Katara asked.

Aang grins and points to the eastern Earth Kingdom. “We’ll ride the hopping Llamas. Then waaaaaay over here…” he points to a spot on the southern Air Nomads islands. “We’ll surf on the back of giant koi fish. Then back over here we’ll ride the hog-monkeys. They don’t like people riding them, but that’s what makes it fun!”

Naruto shook his head. “You have responsibilities and you want to…” he stops and with a growl transforms into his fox form and curls up ignoring the bald headed boy.

“What? Is there something you want to do?”

Appa flies into the clouds while the others talk.

AN: well finally getting there on motivation. Next time we peek into the “Southern Air Temple” episode and Katara has some questions for Naruto about Azula. Later y’all.