The ship blew a deep sounding horn to announce the closeness of the land. Sazumi jumped at the sound, and quickly stored Zuko’s necklace in the inside pocket of her dress before heading below deck to meet with Zuko. Just before they touched land, Sazumi arrived in the room where Zuko and several other soldiers sat atop the rhinos.
She walked up to Zuko’s rhino and he held a hand down to help her up without a word. Sazumi sat in front of Zuko on the rhino and he had one of his arms curled around her shoulders with his hand resting near her neck, while his other hand clenched the reins tightly. As the gangplank lowered in front of them Zuko lit the hand that was near Sazumi’s neck with flames. Sazumi knew Zuko wasn’t going to hurt her, she only had to look like a hostage, but she still flinched when he lit the flames.
“I want the Avatar alive!” he demanded of the other men as they began to exit the ship.
The rhinos began to walk up the path toward the small island village of Kyoshi.
“Zuko,” Sazumi whispered as they grew close to the village. “Should I fight alongside you if Aang doesn’t surrender? I don’t want to be in the way if you suddenly have to fight,” Sazumi asked hesitantly, biting her lip. Zuko blinked as if the thought hadn’t occurred to him that Sazumi would have to fight.
“Just go where you’re needed and if you feel like that would be by my side then I’ll make sure you don’t get hurt,” he reassured her. The time for talking stopped when the rhinos arrived at the front of the village. An eerie calm and quiet was in the village as Sazumi noticed several villagers peeking out at them from small wooden houses.
“Come out Avatar! You can’t hide from me forever,” Zuko called. “The only way you’ll get the girl back is if you surrender!” After several beats of no response and no sign of Aang, or Katara and Sokka, Zuko ordered his soldiers forward.
“Find him,” he growled. Now that they were no longer moving, Zuko wrapped his other arm around Sazumi’s waist as if her were restraining her. To increase his threat of having Sazumi as a hostage, Zuko increased the intensity of the flames he held in his hand. Sazumi shrank back from the flames, in the process pushing closer to Zuko.
His sharp intake of breath made Sazumi whisper, “Sorry, l just don’t like having fire this close to me without the freedom to use my bending,” she explained.
Zuko simply nodded his head, and tensed, alert for signs of any attempt at attack or a rescue mission for Sazumi. Sazumi closed her eyes and breathed evenly, allowing her senses to expand and heighten.
“When facing an enemy that you cannot see, it is best to remain calm and allow your other senses to find your enemy, before they find you.”
Uncle’s voice echoed in Sazumi’s mind. He had told her this during one of Zuko’s and her own training sessions.
Sazumi heard the swish of what could have been a weapon opening, and the rush of air as someone moved quickly out of sight.
“Zuko, they are making their move,” Sazumi whispered, opening her eyes. Immediately after she told him this, the soldiers that were ahead of Zuko and her, were attacked. Three girls dressed in green robes with their brown hair tied back and painted faces jumped the men from the rooftops of nearby homes, managing to knock three men off the rhinos. They each held a fan in both hands, the weapon that Sazumi had heard open.
Zuko tightened his hold on Sazumi as a girl ran at the two of them. Zuko quickly lifted Sazumi from the saddle of the rhino and tossed her to the side as he raised his hands to bend two blasts of fire at the leaping and attacking female. Sazumi landed on her feet in the snow in just enough time to see the girl knocked away by the komodo rhino’s tail.
Zuko quickly glanced at Sazumi, worry and concern in his eyes. Sazumi quickly met his gaze and she smiled slightly, trying to reassure him. Zuko’s gaze softened to a tender look, and he quickly returned his gaze to the girl that the rhino had knocked aside. He shot a blast of fire at the girl that lay on the ground but it was quickly swept away by a fan held in the hands of a girl that had the sides of her head shaved.
Suddenly, Zuko was knocked from the rhino onto the porch of one of the houses by another of the opposing girls. Sazumi stood up, ready to fight when she noticed the girl with the sides of her head shaved with the rest of her hair pulled back to a small ponytail. She looked extremely familiar to Sazumi, and that gave her pause as she searched her memory.
“I guess training’s over,” the girl with the strange hair said to the one on the ground. Sazumi recognized that voice. It was Sokka! She tried not to snicker at the sight of him dressed in a girls fighting uniform and wearing makeup.
Sazumi quickly turned stoic again though as she noticed Zuko being surrounded by Sokka, the girl he rescued from Zuko’s blast, and the girl that knocked Zuko from the rhino.
Sazumi ran out into the open to help him, too late to realize that Zuko knocked all three of them away with a spinning blast of fire from his feet, and that she had left herself exposed. Zuko stood in the middle of the street some yards away from her. A figure suddenly leapt toward Zuko from a rooftop. Sazumi quickly shot her hands out and two darts of fire leapt from her hands to hit the girl and knock her away from a surprised Zuko.
“Nice try Avatar!” Zuko called. “But these little girls can’t save you!”
Sazumi looked around at the burning buildings and swallowed her guilt of betraying Aang, Sokka and Katara. Unexpectedly, she felt someone’s eyes boring into her and she turned to meet the gaze of the last person she had wanted to betray. Sokka, who was still lying on the ground from when Zuko knocked him down.
‘He saw me knock that other girl away from Zuko,’ Sazumi realized. She broke eye contact with Sokka to turn her head down in guilt. She had to swallow hard so as not to be consumed by her choice to join Zuko.
“Hey! Over here!” called a young voice. Aang stood at the other end of the village, holding his glider, challenging Zuko.
“Finally,” Zuko whispered as he advanced to attack him. Zuko struck at Aang with two large fire balls. Sazumi was suddenly knocked down with what felt like a slap of cold water. She quickly gained her feet again and turned to meet the gaze of Katara, leaving Zuko to deal with Aang.
“You betrayed us!” Katara screeched before trying to hit Sazumi with her water again.
“You never allowed me to become an ally anyway!” Sazumi yelled back, breaking Katara’s small stream of water with a small dart of fire. Sazumi kicked out a large stream of fire at Katara, attempting to gain some distance. It worked, but it also succeeded in making Katara even more furious.
“How could you join him!? He’s trying to capture Aang and end the world’s last hope of freedom from the disgusting Fire Nation! I should have known you wouldn’t fight for the right reasons! You half-breed! You just couldn’t stay away from the Nation that made you a monster!” Katara ranted while swinging another whip of water at Sazumi. Dodging the slow moving whip, Sazumi leaped to the top of a house, blasting a wave of fire at Katara as she jumped, and passing dangerously close to Katara. Sazumi felt a strange tug at the back of her neck, but dismissed it as she landed on the top of the roof.
“You want to know why I joined him!?” Sazumi cried at Katara. “Because he is the only one who hasn’t called me a monster because of what my mother chose!” Upon hearing this Katara dropped her waterbending in shock.
“Y-your mother?” Katara stuttered, confusion and shock in her eyes.
“Yes! My mother was the one who gave me my Fire Nation blood! And your sister Tribe of the North had her and my father killed! They killed someone from their own Nation! And you Katara,” Sazumi paused in her screaming, pointing a finger at a frozen Katara. “Aren’t any better!”
Anger replaced the shock in Katara’s eyes, and she lashed out with a much quicker whip of water than she had been able to bend last time. Sazumi dodged her attack by jumping off the roof and sending a huge wave of fire from her kick toward Katara. Katara shielded the brunt of the blow with a small amount of water but it still knocked her down.
Sazumi turned her attention back to Zuko’s fight just in time to see him put through the wall of a burning building from an air blast Aang had sent his way using two fans.
“Zuko!” Sazumi called in worry. No response came from where Zuko went through the wall. Turning toward Aang, who was just leaping onto his glider, Sazumi attempted to blast him out of the sky with a punch and kick of firebending. She only managed to knock him off balance and singe the end of his sleeve. Ignoring him and Katara, who was pointedly ignoring Sazumi at the other end of the village, Sazumi tried to go through the burning house to reach Zuko who still hadn’t emerged. The entire village was burning by now except for a few houses which Katara was pushing young children into.
“Zuko!” Sazumi called for him again. The noise of crumbling rubble came from the far corner of the collapsing house as Zuko emerged from under a pile of burnt wood.
“The Avatar?” he questioned, still a little unbalanced from his explosion through the wall. He and Sazumi emerged from the crumbling house to look into the sky.
A distant cry of “Appa! Yip-yip!” answered Zuko’s question before Sazumi could. On top of Appa stood Katara, Aang, and Sokka, beginning to fly away from the burning village. Before they got too far away, Sazumi met Katara’s eyes, and the vision she had before the battle flashed right before Sazumi’s eyes, but in real life.
“Back to the ship!” Zuko ordered his men. “Don’t loose sight of them!” The group of them ran for any rhinos that may remain from the small battle to be ridden back.
As they were running down the path on the back of a rhino, Sazumi saw Aang jump from the back of Appa into the water below. Seconds later, a black sea snake emerged and squirted a jet of water onto the village, soaking it and Sazumi, Zuko, and the other soldiers. Zuko scowled and Sazumi narrowed her eyes at the snake as she watched Aang jump from it, back to Appa.
Sighing and soaking wet, they returned to the ship.
Sazumi hung her head as she gazed at the shrinking dot that was Appa, as she leaned on the railing at the front of the ship.
“Where you hurt in the battle?” Sazumi jumped at the sudden voice to the left of her. She turned to meet Zuko’s gaze, which was guarded. She simply shook her head and reached to cup the small white gem she wore around her neck, trying to get over the loss of the battle and the fight with Katara. Startled when she didn’t find the gem in its usual place around her neck, she desperately searched for the black string that held it around her neck. It wasn’t there.
“No,” Sazumi gasped, horrified.
“Zumi? What is it?” Zuko asked, his eyes worried. He placed a steady hand on the shaking girl’s shoulder.
“It’s gone. Zuko my necklace is gone!” she said, her voice quivering.
“The one I bought for you?” he still sounded confused. Why would she be so upset over a necklace he gave to her only right before the battle?
“No,” she said, closing her eyes and shaking her head in dismay. “The necklace with the small white gem at the end of it. Zuko,” she met his eyes, hers filled with tears. “My father gave me that necklace, it’s the only thing I have left of my parents.” Sazumi couldn’t hold back the tears of grief any longer, and they flowed down her cheeks.
Zuko gently wiped one away with the back of his hand before wrapping Sazumi in his arms. He held her, as she cried for the last connection she had on this earth to the people who raised her.
Katara released Aang from the hug that she had given him after he returned from the head of the Unagi. Reaching into her pocket, she pulled out a necklace.
“Where did you get that Katara?” Sokka asked, pointing to it.
“From the girl who betrayed us,” she simply answered, as she held up the white gem to the setting sun.
“You what!” Sokka yelled.
“When we were fighting, I tried to stop her from jumping to a roof and only got her necklace,” she explained.
“Sazumi betrayed us,” Aang stated sadly. “I thought we were going to rescue her.” Sokka took the necklace from Katara, and slipped it into his bag.
“We are Aang,” Sokka answered determinedly. “And when we do she’s going to be getting this back.” He glared at Katara to silence her protests. “I’ll make sure of it,” he whispered.
