(1) Augmentum | Zuko

Chapter Ninety-One

Rana follows after Sokka and Aang who race after Katara as they walk down the long steps from the Citadel building they've just left. Rana is actually immeasurably proud of Katara for the way she stood up for herself. Katara is a force to be reckoned with, people seem to forget that sometimes.

"Are you crazy, Katara?" Sokka asks. "You're not gonna win this fight!" Katara takes off her coat and throws it at Sokka, hitting him in the face.

"I know! I don't care!" She argues.

"You don't have to do this for me. I can find another teacher" Aang tries to assure her.

"I'm not doing it for you! Someone needs to slap some sense into that guy!"

"Yeah, they do" Rana agrees, Katara looks at her and nods. Rana winks and nods back at her. She knows Katara has this under control. She's a better water-bender than they know. They reach the bottom of the steps as Master Pakku appears at the top. Katara turns and sees him.

"So, you decided to show up?" She asks but he walks past her. "Aren't you gonna fight?"

"Go back to the healing huts with the other women where you belong"

"Coward" Rana points out. Insanely angry, Katara draws a water whip out of the ground and whips Pakku on the back of the neck. He stops and then turns to face her.

"Fine. You want to learn to fight so bad, study closely!" On either side of the plaza at the bottom of the steps, there are two huge pools. Master Pakku grabs most of the water in each and bends it around himself. Katara runs at him, but she is flung backwards when she is hit by the water. She stands, now perhaps ten feet from Pakku. He bends the water in a wall around both of them. It spins faster and faster creating a whirlpool effect. "Don't worry, I'm not going to hurt you!" He tells her, mockingly. The whirlpool constricts, but before Katara is knocked back down she swings her arm, almost as if she were swinging a baseball bat, deflecting the wall of water off on a different trajectory. The errant wall of water hits Sokka and blows him off of his feet. 

"OW!" Katara runs at Pakku with a water whip. He raises a ramp of ice in front of her which she slides up and then backflips off, landing neatly on the guardrail of the citadel steps behind him. Pakku liquefies the ramp and throws it at her while catching her feet in ice. The wave breaks around Katara, however, as she bends it out of the way.

"You can't knock me down!" The crowd behind her cheers.

"Yeah, get him, Katara" Rana cheers.

"Go Katara!" Aang offers too at her side. A very angry and determined Katara is bearing down on Pakku. Pakku raises a sheet of ice between him and the raging girl. Katara liquefies the ice as she reaches it and throws several blows at Pakku, one of which narrowly misses his face, before he washes her out of his way and into one of the pools with a wave of water. Pakku smiles with satisfaction. She breaks the surface of the water and the crowd cheers. Katara then raises a circular pedestal of ice out of the fountain pool and begins to shoot slivers of the top of the pedestal at Pakku. Pakku breaks them as they arrive with swift Tai Chi movements. The last one however narrowly passes to the left side of his face. When it is gone, he turns back to Katara with a bewildered and, perhaps, somewhat impressed look on his face. Katara is now bending a stream of water around her which she throws at Pakku, who catches it and begins to twirl it around him. Katara runs at him again, but he washes her backwards and onto her behind when he releases the stream of water. Katara jumps back up in a bending stance. She makes a motion and the segmented pillars of ice behind Pakku collapse, narrowly missing him.

"Well, I'm impressed. You are an excellent water-bender" Pakku points out.

"But you still won't teach me, will you?"

"No" He answers Katara. With a cry of effort, Katara raises water near her feet, freezes it, and send it in a rolling wave along the floor to Pakku, who is raised up on a pillar of ice when the wave reaches him. He liquefies the base of the ice column and begins to flow forward on it, like an iceberg riding along a river. Katara has raised her own stream of water and knocks him off his iceberg, but Pakku grabs Katara's water and freezes it in an arc around her as he slides around. As he exits the arc he knocks her down, her necklace falling to ice near her. Pakku raises a huge column of water out of one of the pools, making a whirlpool out of it in the air and then freezing it into shards the whirlpool disintegrates. Katara is now standing in front of Pakku, but the shards land closely all around her. She is trapped. She struggles in vain against her prison of ice, her hands and arms unable to move. "This fight is over"

"Come back here! I'm not finished yet!" Katara yells at him.

"Yes, you are" He stops in surprise, picking up Katara's necklace. "This is my necklace!"

"No, it's not, it's mine! Give it back!" Katara argues.

"I made this sixty years ago – for the love of my life" Katara's ice prison liquefies behind him, freeing her. "For Kana."

"My Gran-Gran was supposed to marry you?" Katara asks surprised.

..........

Iroh is walking down a corridor in Zhao's ship toward a guard walking in the other direction. They stop when abreast of each other and begin to whisper.

"Our plan is working perfectly" Iroh comments. "Zhao doesn't suspect a thing" Eevee brushes up against the guard's leg and Iroh bends down to pick her up. The guard removes his mask to reveal Zuko.

"You didn't have to do this," He tells his uncle.

"No nephew of mine is going to stow away on a ship without some backup!"

"Thank you, Uncle" Zuko offers softer, Iroh hears something from down the corridor.

"Someone's coming!" Zuko replaces his mask. "Stay hidden until we get to the North Pole! Good luck!" Iroh offers and then watches as Zuko disappears down the corridor.