Avatar The Last Airbender Fan Fiction ❯ When Ice and Lava Meet ❯ Helping the Wanted ( Chapter 1 )

[ T - Teen: Not suitable for readers under 13 ]
Disclaimer: I don’t own Avatar: The Last Air-bender, the very talented team of Mike and Brain own the show and characters. The rating maybe wrong but I did try to get it right.

By: year of the snake (at fanfiction) aka. crescentmoon (at mediaminer). And now Opal-Dreams on DeviantArt.



Toph age: 15-16 hair: Black eyes: Light Green
Katara age: 18 hair: Brown eyes: Blue
Aang age: 16 hair: Brown or Bald eyes: Grey
Zuko age: 20 hair: Black eyes: Gold
Iroh age: 68 hair: Grey Bald on top eyes: Gold
Suki age: 19 hair: Auburn eyes: Blue-Green
Sokka age: 19 hair: Brown eyes: Blue
Fire Lord Ozai age: 47 hair: Black eyes: Gold

When Ice and Lava Meet

Chapter One

Katara sat down and stared at the Blind Bandit. The Blind Bandit was just a little girl of fifteen, drawing near sixteen, and she truly was blind. Yet she was the current rising criminal of the world. She didn’t know how this young girl did it.
The Blind Bandit cheated cheaters and she was now lying across the table in her dinning room with her feet burned horribly. The Blind Bandit was a Robin Hood of sorts, she did keep some of the things she acquired but then she was the first to say she wasn’t a saint.
Katara was surprised earlier that evening when she found a girl scurrying on her hands and knees trying desperately to escape someone behind her. Katara sensed the need of the girl and jumped in with some water bending action before she could even think that she was suppose to be living incognito in the Fire Nation as a peasant. It wasn’t fair. Katara would have to move again. She just couldn’t not help someone who needed it. She froze the tormenters turned victims to the wall facing the walls they were attached to, in the hopes that maybe they couldn’t identify her.
Then Katara picked up the girl and ran off as fast as she could. The sound would draw soldiers, and then she would be in deep trouble. Katara brought the younger woman home and placed her on the table. It was when she got a good look at her outfit that Katara knew who it was. The Blind Bandit, a curse in the Fire Nation and she had rescued her. As if she didn’t have enough to worry about being a hidden royal. They would be putting each other in more danger.
Katara had been a peasant-princess in her own land, the Southern Water Tribe. A peasant-princess is a princess truly but everyone in a tribe like the Southern Water Tribe does the work that needs to be done, everyone helps everyone else, thus everyone is equal, everyone is a peasant. The Fire Nation attacked her homeland half a year before and she and her people had to split and flee to survive. She hadn’t seen her father, the Chief, since he and most all the warriors of her tribe left to help fight the Fire Nation when she was eleven, now she was a woman of eighteen.
This is how she ended up staring at a blind woman who tricked tricksters, who stole from thieves and who was now unable to walk. This is how a peasant-princess named Katara ended up healing a runaway rich girl who called herself The Blind Bandit.
Katara let water surround her hands and then let them glow with the healing ability that was the compassionate core of her being. Using the water she accelerated the healing. The fresh burns and blisters began to recede and vanish. But it would still take at least a week for the Blind Bandit to walk. And they would have to leave before then. They would have to leave in an hour at most.
“Why are you helping me? You do know that if you’re caught sheltering me you will be imprisoned and put to death after a show trial don’t you?” The Blind Bandit said.
“Yes I know. That is why we will have to leave town tonight, soon. I will be back; I must pack what I can.” Then Katara rushed out of the room and into one of the other two rooms. The dinning room was the front room of the house, and then came both the kitchen and a small bedroom. It was an extravagant house for a refugee but Katara managed to afford it. You see when she first came to this town she had nothing but the clothes on her back, she had had to leave what little she had gained in her last Fire Nation home when she was attacked by Fire Nation assassins. After living on the streets for weeks and being so hungry her own arm was starting to look good she decided to try her hand at getting a little money by pretending to be a fortune-teller. And she lured a rich man to allow her to read his fortune. A few days later he tracked her down and provided her with this house and everything in it, if she would tell only his fortune. He was impressed with her as her fortune telling came true for him. So she agreed. Now she would have to leave what little comfort she had in this tiny home for an uncertain future.
Katara threw together her meager possessions in a pack. She put on a cloak and brought another one to the Blind Bandit. She lifted her again. They left out the back door and took back and side roads out of town. Katara had to rest often with the load of a nearly full-grown woman weighing her down. They continued stop and go until they came to the river the town was built beside.
Then Katara took a longer rest. They would travel by water after dusk. She would construct an ice raft and they would float away. As her brother would say to her, ‘Things are never that easy for us.’
The men she froze to the wall and fire-bending soldiers who got them down had raided her house and some soldiers scoured the town while others came outside of the town to look for them. Katara could hear them approach. Making the raft now would be a mistake. Her only hope was to face the coming men as far away from the water as she could get them and hopefully deter them. Then she could come back and still make the raft and float them down river without the Fire Nation knowing what direction they went.
Katara ran through the forest until she met the men. “That’s her, that’s the water-bender!” cried a shivering man. The moon rose just at that moment, it was near full. Katara smiled this would be easy. The men would find why they should never attack a water-bender when the moon is round. Katara drew water from her water pouch and the grass under her feet. The water ball she made was so gigantic that the inexperienced fire-benders became nervous. Their leader yelled at them to stand their ground that they had her outnumbered.
Yes she was outnumbered, but they would be exceedingly more than outmatched in the moon glow. The water Katara controlled bombarded them like fireballs in their training matches but this was breath-stealing. Some of them got the air knocked out of them, others were brought to there knees and still others were bashed into trees. The battle was over seconds after it began. Innocent Katara in an effort to buy time solidified the water to their bodies sealing them where they stood, kneeled or laid.
Returning to the spot she left the Blind Bandit Katara wasted no time getting an ice raft made and moving the sulking woman onto it. The Blind Bandit hated that she couldn’t participate in the fight.
Katara made the block of ice move faster than the water surrounding it using water-bending. They passed two other groups of buildings before Katara decided to stop bending the water and just let the freezing raft float on its own.
The Blind Bandit was wrapped in Katara’s sleeping bag and sitting on top of the stuff Katara had packed and she was still shivering because of the cold early spring night air and the block of ice that just made things cooler. That and Katara had her keep switching having her feet in the bag and then out of the bag and against the ice to help soothe the burn sooner. Katara had little problem with the cold, she came from the snow-blown south pole after all.
“Hey,” the Blind Bandit’s teeth chattered as she began, “why are you so willing to leave your home to help me?”
“That was not my home. It was just a place I was living.” answered the water-bender.
The Blind Bandit could tell that she didn’t want to talk about it and so out of thankfulness for her unasked for help she didn’t pursue the conversation.
Later that night Katara moved them off the water and into the forest. The sun was nearly rising and Katara longed for sleep. The Blind Bandit fell asleep even though she was “turning into a blob of ice covered woman.” as she so delicately put it.
Katara moved them as far away from the river as she could and then she collapsed into a dew covered field.

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Hey everyone! This is the first chapter of my first real written Zutarian effort. =D I don’t know how I got the idea. If this sounds like a story you read before it is purely accidental as I rarely ever read fan fiction. Anyway I wanted to get this up on my birthday but my birthday was a Saturday, one of the busiest days for me. That and my birthday is always a why did I even consent to waking type day. So I’m putting it up now.

Please let me know what you think. Thanks for reading. Type again soon I hope.