There were times when Azula couldn’t stand her uncle, and today was one of them.

  “We were supposed to pull into port twenty leagues from here,” she said to him, irritably rubbing the back of her head. “Instead, you ordered to stop here. Why?”

  Iroh rubbed his belly. “Pai-sho is an important game, and I’m missing a piece.”

  She raised an eyebrow. “You couldn’t just make a substitute and wait?”

  “It’s a valuable game!” he said. “You could learn better strategy by playing with me.”

  “I was learning by sparring with Lieutenant Jee,” she said, looking over at the salt-and-pepper-haired lieutenant’s stern face. He was directing their entrance. “And besides, I am a genius at strategy.”

  Her uncle nearly doubled over with laughter, and she was tempted to blast him with fire, or maybe even lightning. She’d been practicing after watching Iroh.

  But the Avatar Roku had told her to choose love, whatever that meant. She rolled her eyes. “Let’s just get into port and get what we need. I’ll ask around for signs of the Avatar. Maybe we’ll get lucky.”

  “Fate has been guiding us. Have you not felt it?”

  ***

  The port was not terribly large, but a market resided there. She walked past a cabbage merchant, who was crying over a cart of destroyed wares. He held his green turban. “First Omashu, now here. Why does misfortune always follow me?”

  “You and me both,” she muttered. She made a mental note to talk to him later. Merchants traversed the world, so it would stand to reason that he would provide some excellent intelligence.

  She walked up to a wooden booth, where a man was displaying several masks on a makeshift counter. She picked up a blood red one with white tusks jutting from both sides of its mouth. She scrutinized it before setting it down for the time being. “I’m looking for a young, bald monk. There might have been two Water Tribe kids with him.”

  The man laughed. “You came to the right place.”

  She raised both her eyebrows. Maybe Iroh was right about fate guiding them. She leaned in eagerly. “Where can I find more information?”

  He pointed over at the sorriest band of pirates she’d ever seen. They were huddled together, wildly moving their hands in a great state of agitation. Good. Maybe they could be manipulated.

  She stepped into the huddle. “Excuse me.”

  They ignored her.

  “EXCUSE ME!” she said.

  They had the audacity to keep talking. She punched a ball of fire into their midst, and they jumped back. They stared at her in mute fright. She tilted her head and smiled.

  “Hello,” she said, calmly rubbing her nails on her uniform. “I heard you all had some excitement this morning.”

  An older man with a large, wide-brimmed pirate hat cleared his throat. “I am the leader of this group of high-risk traders.”

  “High-risk, eh?” she said with a smirk. “What happened?”

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  “A young monk and a dark-skinned girl stole a scroll from us.”

  “What was on the scroll?” she asked. More importantly, and what she didn't ask, was why did they want this scroll so much?

  “It was valuable. It held techniques for waterbending.”

  Azula snorted. So the boy and his girl wanted to gain some skill, yet lacked a teacher. Azula was suddenly thankful for Iroh's tutelage, such as it was. “This boy, he had a blue arrow on his head?”

  The pirate captain nodded. “And they stole our rightful property.”

  She pursed her lips. “Let me guess, you collected it fair and square?”

  A younger member of the pirates stepped in. “We would’ve made a great deal on it.”

  “Way more than what you paid for it, I’m sure,” she said. She tapped her lips, pretending to come up with an idea right at that moment. “I might have a deal for you.”

  ***

  It was dark by the time she, her uncle, some soldiers, and the pirate band began their search into the forest. She assumed the Aang and his friends would be near water, if only to practice the techniques on the scroll. Not that she would be sneaking up on them. The pirates made noise like a herd of stampeding hippocows. She spied the Water Tribe girl, Katara, looking around a tree at the pirates.

  Azula took a circular route to get behind her and whispered, “Pirates are the least of your worries.”

  In no time, they’d tied the girl to a tree. Azula stood across from her, crossing her arms. Perhaps an oblique approach would be best. Uncle said she lacked strategy. She reached into her pocket and pulled out a necklace. The girl had left it at a prison where she'd tried to create a jailbreak. “This is lovely.”

  “Give it back! It was my mother’s.” Katara said, straining at the ropes.

  “Your mother’s, eh?” Azula said, keenly aware of her uncle standing next to her. “My mother never gave me anything. My father—well, let’s say he gave me something much more memorable.”

  “I wouldn’t give you anything, either,” Katara said.

  The pirate captain walked up with his men. “We did our part. Give us the scroll.”

  Azula looked the man square in the eye. “Not quite. You didn’t give me the monk or his other friend.”

  The pirate captain stepped aside, revealing a bound Aang and Sokka, being dragged by more pirates. “You were saying?”

  “That’s fair,” she said. “Give me the captives, and I’ll give you the scroll.”

  “Scroll first,” the pirate captain said.

  She raised it and firebended a flame underneath it. “Or, I could burn it. It’s up to you, really.” She’d been expecting a double-cross.

  “You’re not going to trade a lousy scroll for the Avatar, are you?” Sokka said.

  Say what she wanted about the Water Tribe boy, but he was quick on his feet. Maybe she'd tell him so, perhaps after she lit that smirk on his face on fire.

  “The Avatar!” the pirate captain said. “He’s worth a lot more than your little scroll. What are you willing to pay me?”

  “Fire and blood,” Azula said. She simultaneously dropped the scroll and launched fireballs at the pirates.

  Soon enough, the pirates and her men were fighting. After taking one of the pirates out, she ran straight to the Avatar. He was the true prize, after all. He sent a powerful blast of air at her. She met it with a fiery blast of her own. The two elements met together and exploded. She flipped into the air and shot a blast from her feet. Aang dodged.

  “Is that the best you’ve got?” he asked.

  She sent a whip of flame at him. He barely ducked under it before launching a whip of water at her.

  “That’s new,” she said. Aang was always full of surprises. She would have to add it to her list of his skills. She could have said that she didn’t enjoy this part, but that would have been lying. She never felt more alive. She sent a fiery whip of her own toward his hand. He jerked it back just far enough that it didn't scorch his hand. The fire severed the whip of water. His fearful gaze was reward enough.

  She would have fought him more, but the pirate captain and a small group of his men made their way toward her. A couple of them slashed at her with their swords. She sidestepped the swipes and knocked them back with well-placed fireballs.

  The pirate captain snarled at her. “You’ll rue the day you decided to fight me.”

  “You broke the deal with me, remember?” she said, raising her hands in a ready guard. “I should be the one swearing revenge.”

  Iroh ran up to the pirate captain. “Your boat is being hijacked!”

  The pirate captain clamped his hands to his hat. “Great bleeding hog monkeys! After the boat, lads!”

  The pirate band stopped fighting and ran away.

  “A fool and his boat are soon parted,” Iroh said.

  Azula would’ve laughed, but then she saw the pirates taking her boat. “Hey! That’s mine!”

  “As I said,” Iroh said, smiling.

  Azula glared at her uncle. All she could do was watch helplessly as the Avatar flew away on his bison while the idiot pirates took her boat over a waterfall.