The black iron prow of the Fire Nation ship tore a path through the ice like scurvy to an old scar.
The Southern Water Tribe's little harbor village shuddered around it: ice floes heaved, huts rattled on their lashings, the watch-post of piled snow and whale-bone shivered as if it wanted to bolt. Steam hissed as metal met ice. Children scrambled behind their older siblings. Mothers pulled little ones close.
Sokka planted himself at the front of the line anyway, boomerang white-knuckled in his grip, fur parka flapping in the bitter wind. His war paint was immaculate, for all the good it would do him.
The massive boarding ramp slammed down, cutting into the ice and holding the warship in place like a bite to the neck of its prey.
Fire Nation soldiers marched out in neat formation, armor gleaming red and black even in the gray light, boots crunching in perfect rhythm. Spears, halberds, all very pointy and very not-wood. At their head walked a boy only a few years older than Sokka, but somehow more alarming than all of them—scar winding over one eye, his helmet ill-fitting like it was half a size too small.
Prince Zuko swept his gaze over the tribe like he was seeing a puzzle with one piece missing.
"You!" he shouted, voice cutting through the wind as he pointed in accusation at the huddled villagers. "I know you're harboring the Avatar. Turn him over, or suffer the consequences."
Sokka gathered his reckless courage and lunged for the prince as his soldiers seemed unconcerned. "Yaaaah!" he cried out.
"Sokka," Katara hissed, mad but terrified he was about to be incinerated.
The boy with the scar barely spared Sokka a glance. "Out of the way, peasant," he sighed, simply grabbing Sokka's forearm amidst his clumsy charge attack and giving him a boot on the backside to send him tumbling into the piles of disturbed, tossed up snow and ice.
Katara breathed out a sigh of relief he was still alive, at least.
"Please!" her grandmother raised her voice as much as she could, taking a submissive posture on her knees. "We are defenseless, we have nothing and no one to hide!"
Katara felt it too—that cold, hollow drop in her stomach. "Aang," she whispered, realizing who the Fire Nation must be after and why.
But Aang was still a distance away, closing fast on his glider as Appa recuperated, and someone else arrived first.
Zuko saw fire on his periphery, but never would have guessed it wasn't one of his own men, and turned his gaze slow to meet a flying kick with his assailant's whole body behind it—she was small, but he went flying nonetheless, catching a blast of flames he could bend away, but he failed utterly to catch himself on the icy ground and slid ten paces on his backside, stopping only when he hit the same pile of crushed ice and snow that Sokka was pulling himself out of.
"Hiyah!" Sokka cried out as he opportunistically smashed his whalebone club over Zuko's helmet, really only annoying him, and the prince had to focus on the coming flames.
"Zuko!" The girl raged, a hand wreathed in flames fluidly forming into a long whip of liquid fire that lashed his way. The prince Sokka struck dispersed the flames, and tried to stand, but staggered and slipped again on the thin layer of melted water now atop the ice from the heat.
Having no idea what was going on, the beleaguered prince shouted at his soldiers, "what are you idiots doing?!" not even sure it was one of them who attacked him as he couldn't quite see through the smoke and steam, and he couldn't quite believe how lazily they were jogging his way.
"You minions stay out of it, or burn with him!" the girl bared her teeth, her pale skin along with her expensive red garb enough to make it clear she was a noble, and the men weren't eager to aid the banished prince against a Fire Nation noble still in good standing for all they knew.
"Sokka, get away from them!" Katara cried out, but he had no mind for her.
Sokka again tried to charge Zuko, far better suited to running on slippery ice, and his form was absolutely on point. It made no difference. Zuko's boot heel outreached and connected with Sokka's chest squarely. The boy didn't stir so quickly after being tossed back into the snow again. But flames came for Zuko, a quick lash of the whip he had to dodge with no time to bend it away, and he barely caught the molten flood of furious fire to turn it aside, on the opposite side from Sokka much to his fortune as it instantly turned the icy surface into a boiling pool where it fell.
"Raven...?" Zuko breathed out with disbelief as she launched for him like an angry missile, streaks of fire following her foot steps and then her feet as she arced through the air, but still he saw the person in yellow and orange—the Avatar, he was certain—skidding down to stop behind the hapless water tribe villagers.
His training came automatically, however, and despite his shock his hands moved on their own, sweeping away the flames, catching her forearm as he shouldered her near miss of a kick aside, and he pivoted to throw her right over him. Even as she shrieked in panic from being sent higher and further than she meant, she still threw one last spiteful blast of fire his way that stopped him from saying another word to her before she joined Sokka in the snow.
"Are you... on our side?" Sokka awkwardly asked the teenage firebender as she shook snow from her hair, and he reeled back at the sight of her lip twitching with rage as she glared at him.
"I'm not on his!" she barked as she hopped to her feet again. "But stay out of my way," she bitterly growled, and Sokka instantly took the hint, scooting back as she took a stance that blasted her dry with nearly scorching hot air.
"Um... Lady Arza, is this an Agni Kai...?" she suddenly heard from beside her, and she lost much of her steam as she blinked and looked over at a helmed and masked firebender from Prince Zuko's crew.
"Wha—? I don't— Yes! Go away, you buffoon!" she scoffed at the man in disbelief, and he scampered backwards, ducking a bit like she might explode, but it seemed the soldiers had accepted it was a duel, even if a random water tribe boy was getting in the way.
The line of Fire Nation troops shifted uneasily. "They're… dueling," one muttered under his breath.
"In the middle of a raid?" another hissed.
"Nobles," the first insisted, with the blind confidence of someone who very much did not want to get involved in aristocratic business. "You want to stand between them? Be my guest."
Nobody was that brave. They tightened their ring around the villagers instead and pretended this was all according to plan.
On the other side of the trampled snow-street, the Water Tribe stared.
"What's an Agni Kai?" Sokka croaked, still half-covered in the drift Zuko's boot had sent him into as Katara dragged him only mildly unwillingly away from the fight and back to the villagers.
"A duel," Katara said faintly. "Sacred firebender duel. You're… not supposed to jump in the middle of one."
"Oh, well," Sokka wheezed as he dramatically bowed and stepped back symbolically. "I sincerely apologize." Not that either firebender was listening.
Half mad trying to divide attention between the Avatar freely wandering around still in plain sight and his apparently insane and apparently ex-betrothed, Zuko planted his boots, chest heaving, ribs throbbing where her first full-bodied kick had landed. Snow-melt steamed around him. He glared at the similarly self-drying girl across from him like he could bully reality into making more sense.
"Raven," he said again, slower this time, like saying her name wrong would make her crazier. "What are you doing here? You're supposed to be–"
"At home?" she spat. "Safe? Locked up in a nice warm palace while you just get away with it?" She flicked fiery sparks from her fingers like she was shaking off insects. "You don't get to vanish and pretend I don't exist too, you monster!"
"Wha—? Are you insane?!" Zuko snapped before he could stop himself, heat rising behind his words. "There's a war! I am hunting the Avatar, I don't have time for—"
"For me?" she cut in, voice cracking on the word. Fire flared around her hands again, bright and wild. "Let me fucking schedule it for you!"
She launched before he could answer.
Her arms swept out; a whip of fire snapped toward his face. Zuko blocked on instinct, flame meeting flame and blasting apart in a burst of hot wind that sent nearby snow from domed roofs sloughing down in soft collapses.
"Wow..." Aang quietly said standing just beside Katara and Sokka while Fire Nation soldiers cautiously failed to make it look like they knew what was going on or what they were supposed to be doing. "That girl is really angry."
"She's too small and cute for language like that," Sokka flatly stated like it was obvious.
Katara raised a mildly annoyed eyebrow at him, but Sokka just shrugged, and both had their attention drawn back to several flashes of flames and shouts from the dueling nobles.
"Stop! Just— this isn't the time! Agh!" Zuko breathlessly cried out as he deflected blast after blast of flames. "That's ENOUGH!" he bellowed, firing back with a much stronger single blast that Raven was forced to stop and defend herself from. Cracks from the force of the blast in the ice were loud, and a tremor had the water tribe instantly worried as they backed further away from the water's edge despite their already generous distance.
"He's gonna kick her butt, he's way better," Sokka narrated like it was a sport he knew anything at all about.
Katara scowled. "What, because she's a girl? I bet she beats him." She thumbed her nose. "Whoever they are," she uneasily added.
"Eh..." Aang said with a shrug. "He really is better."
Katara glared at Aang like he'd betrayed her badly enough that a second Agni Kai was warranted, but she quickly dropped it as she snapped back to her senses and whispered, "shouldn't you—we—be running away...?"
"A tactical retreat would definitely be—" Sokka started, and after another blast of flames there was a much louder crack in the shelf of ice that caused several Fire Nation soldiers to stumble. "A re-e-eally good idea."