Naruto groaned, curling his knees to his chest, pulling his three jackets over them, and hugging his knees. He regretted choosing not to buy any winter jackets now. Go figure; the North Pole was cold. Not to mention, they had been flying for two days straight looking for the Northern Water Tribe, finding nothing.
A few weeks ago, Aang wanted to stop and check something in one of the Air Temples, rumors about possible still-alive Air Nomads; it seemed it was just a rumor with no actual air benders. Long story short, they saved another place from Fire Nation.
"I'm not one to complain, but could Appa fly any higher?" Sokka asked as Appa's foot touched the water before he began to drift upward again.
"I have an idea; how about we hop on your back, and you fly us to the north pole!" Aang snapped.
"Absolutely," Sokka said, turning around and waving his butt. "Hop on. Sokka is ready for taking off."
"It wouldn't matter anyway," Naruto said, bored more than anything. "It'd just be colder up there."
"Well, yes, but then we could see it from further away," Sokka said jokingly.
"Come on, guys," Katara said, trying to lift everybody's spirits. "We're all just tired because we've been flying for two days straight."
"Yeah, and we still can't find the Northern Water Tribe!" Sokka complained.
As if on cue, ice shot up, catching Appa's foot and spinning him before the ice broke off; Appa crashed into the water and being frozen in place instantly. As soon as he was, several boats began to surround them, dozens of water benders total.
"They're water benders!" Katara exclaimed with excitement. "We found the Water Tribe!"
"Who are you, and what do you want?" one of them asked, Aang standing, hands held up non-threateningly.
"My name's Aang. I'm the Avatar, and I'm looking for a water bending master in the Northern Water Tribe," Aang said.
Everyone looked around at each other before the ice broke apart.
"Follow us," the man said. "We'll take you there."
Then, the boats turned, beginning to escort Appa through the glaciers that had been the only thing they could see. Finally, a massive ice wall came into view, the Water Tribe symbol proudly carved on the front of it. Naruto smiled as it came into view. Then, his body shook violently with a shiver, and he tucked his head back into his jacket.
While Naruto had to admit that the place was beautiful to look at, he couldn't woodbend in a place like this, there was water as far as the eye could see, and the only piece of land was ice, not a good place to grow trees for fighting, that left him to fight with his hands or use his Dark Flames which wasn't the best option without making everyone outside of his group suspicious.
After a few minutes of hearing ice being bent around, Appa finally stopped, and he peeked his head out, seeing the others climbing off. He followed, and a man from the tribe chuckled, seeing how many layers Naruto was wearing.
"You're from the Earth Kingdoms, aren't you?" he laughed, holding out a very thick Water Nation jacket about the right size for Naruto.
"Kyoshi island actually, and I prefer warmer places," Naruto laughed, dropping his jackets and instantly pulling on the Water Tribe one, noticing it instantly be warmer than his other three combined, along with it trapping his body heat, warming up even more.
He stored the other jackets with his things on Appa's saddle and then caught up with the others. A few minutes later, they were introducing themselves to the Northern Water Tribe's chief. A couple of hours after that, they were sitting at a table in a massive area where the Northern Tribe was gathered around them, several waterfalls fell behind them, and the Chief and the Northern Tribe's elders were seated to their group's right.
"Tonight, we celebrate the arrival of our brother and sister from the Southern Tribe," the chief announced to loud cheers everywhere. "And they have brought with them someone very special, someone that we all believed disappeared from the world, until now. The Avatar."
Aang raised a hand, grinning shyly as everyone began to cheer.
"We also celebrate my daughter's sixteenth birthday," the chief continued. "Princess Yue is now of marrying age!" Everyone cheered for the princess; Naruto figured from the way people felt that they loved the princess.
Yue, a beautiful girl with snow-white hair, walked forward and bowed, smiling politely. "Thank you, father. May the great ocean and moon spirits watch over us during these troubled times."
"Now Master Pakku and his students will perform!" the chief announced, gesturing to a man with long white hair on the sides of his head and bald on the top, a thin white mustache and beard, and an eternally grumpy expression.
The man, flanked by two boys about Sokka's age, if not a little older, began to bend the fountain's water, moving the water in a sort of dance-like demonstration of their bending ability. To Naruto's right, Yue made the mistake of sitting beside Sokka, who went from shoving as much food as he could into his mouth to awkwardly trying, and failing, to flirt. He even went as far as calling himself a prince, to which Katara challenged his supposed authority before mockingly calling him "Prince Sokka." Then, Sokka began to, even more awkwardly, try to ask Yue on a date.
Naruto forced himself to ignore Sokka's painful attempts at flirting, then stood up, walking away from the area; he felt something pulling him away, but no one paid him much attention, especially since he was one of Avatar's friends; the blonde reached a strange place, strangely no guards were around, yet he could feel something pulling him, as if a voice calling him, it was faint, but he could hear it.
The place looked like a normal wall, except it had a rounded door in the center with a wooden handle; Naruto opened the door slowly only to see a place with actual ground and grass around it; the place was vast, with what looked like a rounded pool in the center.
Naruto saw the two strange coy fish swinging towards each other, forming a perfect circle. One was white with a small dark circle on top of his head, while the second was dark with a white circle.
There are the moon and ocean spirit; he thought, astonished, reaching the pool, the water was normal, and he could hear a faint voice calling to him from the pool.
Sitting down in a crossed leg position, he started meditating; right in front of the small pool, every sound around him was slowly blocked; the sound of the people and the celebration going on faded away, and he could hear nothing but the sound of the water.
Soon he felt himself much lighter, almost as if he had no weight. Opening his eyes, in front of him was Avatar Kyoshi with a neutral look on her face, sitting in the same position as him. "Avatar Kyoshi is an honor to meet you again," the blonde spoke respectfully towards the Avatar with a bow of his head.
"No need for that dear child, you're family; I see you found the place of the moon and ocean spirit," Kyoshi spoke, dismissing him with a wave of her hand.
Raising his head to look at her, he wondered why he could even talk to her. "Why am I able to talk to you, Ava- I mean great Great grandmother?" Naruto asked nervously, rubbing his hair, much to Kyoshi's amusement, but she didn't show it.
"We are not sure why Naruto, but I know your role is to guide the Avatar to make the best decision; your black flames are proof that something ancient has returned. Before you leave this place, talk to the Ocean and Moon spirit, they might be able to help you," Kyoshi spoke.
The blonde simply nodded in understanding before he remembered something he had wanted to know for a long time now. "Why did my family die? Who or what killed them?" Naruto asked almost pleadingly; he still didn't know what had happened to them.
Kyoshi had a grim look on her face; she looked as if wanting to say something, but in the end, she reluctantly shook her head. "I don't know the answer, Nephew, but always remember that your family is still alive within you; as long as you remember them, their sacrifice will not be in vain," she spoke grimly; Naruto wanted to ask her what she meant by sacrifice when her figure started turning blue before disappearing like smoke.
Naruto sighed, tired, not receiving much information, before opening his eyes; suddenly feeling weak, he groaned, forcing himself to stay awake and not fall asleep in such a spiritual place like this.
Standing up, he put his hands on the water, feeling himself relax; the water felt good on his hands, only to almost gasp in amazement; his hands started glowing blue, and he felt all his exhaustion suddenly going away in an instant. What is going on with me? He asked himself before standing up, looking at his hands; they looked completely normal and healthy.
Turning around, he decided to leave the place before anyone caught him here and perhaps thinking that he wanted to do something to the Ocean and Moon Spirit.
Later
Naruto sighed as he walked through the street. He and Sokka had both received "warrior training." Mostly, that meant that they were handed a club made of bone and then told to beat a trained warrior of the Northern Water Tribe with it. Sokka had quit after barely two days, instead choosing to spend his time with Yue, who, come to find out, was engaged already. Naruto had stuck with the training, graduating from a jawbone club to a jawbone dagger. He excelled at the training, mostly because he already had weapons training with the Kyoshi warriors. For the most part, what he was learning was the specific fighting style. He did, however, manage to get a pair of knives about as long as his old pair, these ones actually metal instead of jawbone like everything else he had seen at the North Pole. He had also received bo staff, spear, ax, flail, and hammer training. So far, no one had been able to beat him after three fights with a new weapon.
"I must say, Naruto," the warrior in charge of his training said, watching Naruto twirl a bone spear around himself. "You're a natural with weapons. I grant that you've been trained with a lot of them before, but even the ones you haven't been, you pick up quick."
"The fundamentals are all the same," Naruto said. "The balance of the weapon, the length of the weapon, and what part to hit with is all that changes."
"I wish a few of our younger guys would learn that," the warrior chuckled, looking over to where the junior warriors were training.
One hotshot who thought he was the spirits' gift to the Earth, Hahn, was glaring at Naruto since Naruto had only spent one-day training with that group before moving on to more advanced training.
"Looks like Hahn wants a rematch," the warrior chuckled.
"Sure," Naruto said, bored, not sure why the idiot wanted a rematch, stopping the spear diagonally behind himself. "I had a lot of fun beating him to a pulp before."
He turned to Hahn, motioning for him to make a move, and Hahn grinned, turning and charging at him with a staff. As soon as he was in range, Naruto's spear flashed out, sweeping Hahn's legs out from under him before driving itself into the ground beside his head.
"Dead," Naruto said, leaving the spear there and backing away, drawing his knives in a reverse grip.
Hahn flipped to his feet, charging again with his staff, swiping at Naruto only for the blonde to duck under it, getting inside of the next slash before spinning around Hahn, slicing the ties on either side of his pants' waist, dropping them around his ankles, then kicking him from behind, knocking him to the ground and kicking his staff away. He also put his knives away, walking over to his spear and picking it up as he looked up, his smile fading as he watched soot begin to fall, the water around the city turning black quickly.
"What is this?" the warrior training him asked.
"Soot," Naruto said. "The Fire Nation is here." The blonde had heard from Katara and Sokka how the smoke had mixed with the snow.
The warrior stared at him before nodding once and turning, running away from the training ground to report to the chief. Ten minutes later, the entirety of the tribe had gathered. Naruto sat with Katara, Sokka, and Aang off to one side as the chief spoke, praying to the ocean and moon spirits.
The blonde could see the little looks Sokka and Yue were giving each other.
"I'm going to need volunteers for a dangerous mission," the chief suddenly announced to everyone, Sokka standing instantly.
"Count me in," Sokka said without hesitation, looking up.
"Sokka!" Katara said, afraid, knowing this mission was dangerous.
"Be warned, many of you will not return," the chief said grimly as Naruto also stood with a roll of his eyes.
"I'll look after Sokka, Katara, don't worry about him," Naruto said quietly to Katara, who smiled at him before hugging him, much to his surprise. "Thank You," she whispered to his ear; before pulling back, the blonde just nodded, looking away, avoiding her eyes.
"Come forward to receive my mark if you accept the task," the chief said, all of the volunteers walking forward.
There weren't many. A handful of seasoned warriors, Sokka, Naruto, and Hahn. Naruto rolled his eyes at that. Hahn was going to get himself killed. But hey, at least he had guts. As they reached the chief, he drew three vertical, squiggly lines on their forehead, and they turned to their right, walking out of the room. Naruto stayed near the building they had gathered in, the highest point in the village. After roughly a half hour, a single fire nation ship arrived, beginning to launch boulders at the village.
"Can't you do anything about this, Naruto?" Sokka asked, looking at the incoming ship.
"What exactly do you expect me to do? In case you haven't noticed, there isn't a single piece of land around, the ocean around us is too deep for me to feel the bottom, I can't grow trees around here, and I definitely can't grow trees from my own body," Naruto explained, a bit on edge himself, sure there was land at the sacred place, but even that wasn't enough, his trees couldn't grow that much to reach the enemy ship that was almost a mile away from them, he really didn't like being here, it felt like being naked, without any protection, he knew he still had his Fire Bending, and his hand to hand combat but that wasn't enough.
Sokka sighed, understanding Naruto's point. Soon several rocks engulfed in flames started raining down. Naruto grabbed Sokka just as one of them hit the place where they were staying a second ago. He noticed a few civilians getting crushed by the rocks.
After the first couple, Aang and Appa took off toward it. After a minute, the boulders stopped, and a moment later, water benders had the ship suspended over the water with ice spikes. Then, Appa was on the way back. Naruto knew it wouldn't be only one ship. Not with that much soot.
"Hey, you're on the mission?" a warrior asked from behind him.
"Yeah," Naruto nodded.
"Get to the armory," the man said. "Do you know of any more?"
"Check the wall," Naruto said. "The Southern Water Tribe boy is also on it. He should be there."
The man nodded, running off, and Naruto turned, heading for the armory. The other volunteers arrived in groups of two or three until Sokka arrived, always the last one. Except Hahn wasn't there. Naruto grinned. He must have gotten scared off by the boulders. But then his smile faded. Hahn wasn't that smart.
"Men, you'll be infiltrating the Fire Nation Navy," the tribe's chief said. "And that means you'll all need one of these uniforms."
Hahn stepped into view, wearing an authentic Fire Nation uniform from nearly a hundred years ago. Naruto snorted in amusement while Sokka laughed.
"What's your problem," Hahn demanded with clear anger, gritting his teeth.
"Fire Navy uniforms don't look like that," Sokka explained with a tone as if he was explaining it to a child.
"Of course they do," Hahn insisted with a rough and deep voice, trying to sound intimidating, but was failing miserably. "These are real Fire Navy uniforms captured from actual Fire Navy soldiers."
"You mean those were the uniforms about a hundred years ago," Naruto corrected. "The current uniforms don't have shoulder spikes anymore. They're more streamlined."
"How do we know we can trust these guys?" Hahn asked, glaring at them. "Such bold talk for a couple of new recruits."
"This is coming from the guy who has lost to one of the new guys twice now," Naruto reminded him with a smirk that made Hahn angrier, now ready to exchange blows instead of words. "Besides that, I've had more experience with the current Fire Navy than you have had experience with weapons. Probably why you suck so bad."
Hahn growled angrily.
"That's enough, Hahn," the chief said authoritatively, making the boy stop dead on track. "Now, our first priority is to determine the identity of their commanding officer."
"His name is Zhao," Sokka informed him.
"Admiral Zhao, to be exact," Naruto added with a sneer; how could someone as incompetent as him become a general was beyond him. Most likely because of his bloodlust, Naruto thought with a grimace. "He's a skilled tactician, an excellent fighter, though he lacks any form of restraint, a powerful firebender, once again with no restraint. He's middle-aged and has brown hair in the customary high bun with large sideburns. He also has a temper almost as big as Hahn's ego."
A few of the warriors in the room snickered as the chief stared at Naruto.
"Sokka, Naruto, I want you to tell everything you know to Hahn," the chief said. "Hahn, I want you to show them your utmost respect. I expect nothing less from my future son-in-law."
Sokka stared at Hahn in shock; Naruto murmured, 'Poor Yue, under his breath, someone like her would do better with a ghost rather than him.
"Explains the ego," Naruto sighed.
"Princess Yue's marrying you?" Sokka asked with an open mouth, still not believing someone like her was marrying someone as braindead as him.
"Yeah, what of it?" Hahn asked, annoyed.
"Nothing, congratulations," Sokka said with a fake smile.
"No wonder she's so unhappy," Naruto said, saying exactly what Sokka wanted to.
"Excuse me?" Hahn snarled, turning fully at Naruto before expanding his arms, trying to make himself look bigger.
"With someone like you, Even a sick person would rather choose death," Naruto shrugged. "Can't blame her. You're a worthless prick. But hey, maybe you'll do us all a favor and make the mistake of attacking Zhao alone. That way, you die, I don't have to deal with you, and Yue doesn't have to get stuck married to you."
"Why you-" He almost screamed in anger, ready to beat Naruto.
"I wouldn't," Naruto said, holding one knife behind his back as Hahn reached for a spear. "Wouldn't want the chief to know his future son-in-law is nothing but an overgrown child who attacks the Northern Water Tribe's guests and allies right before a very important mission."
Hahn growled in rage, setting the spear back against the rack. Naruto turned to the other warriors.
"Now, since you're all the useful ones, here's what we know about Zhao and his fleet."
Naruto glanced sideways, seeing the chief enter the room, and walked over to him.
"Sir, I need a favor. And I know I have no right to ask, but this will work out best for both of us."
The man looked skeptical before deciding to hear him. "Alright," the chief said. "What is it?"
"I want you to take Sokka off this mission," Naruto said, pointing the finger at his friend, who looked surprised.
"Why?" the chief asked, narrowing his eyes slightly. "He's a skillful warrior."
"I agree," Naruto nodded. "Which is why he should be protecting Yue." He added with a smirk; Sokka smiled in appreciation but didn't show it.
"Explain," the chief prompted with a pointed look.
"Even if our mission is a success, even if we eliminate Zhao, the next-in-command will simply take over, and the invasion will continue until the Fire Nation is driven out and forced to retreat," Naruto explained respectfully. "And make no mistake. They are going to break through the wall. They are getting into the city. And once they do, who do you think they'll be more concerned with? The people that surrender instantly to save themselves, or the princess in charge of those people?"
"You're saying they'll target Yue?" the chief asked with a growing frown on his face.
"Yes," Naruto confirmed. "They'll target Yue. So you should have Sokka guard her."
The chief thought of it before he reluctantly nodded. "Alright."
"Thank you, Sir. Hopefully, I'll see you when this is all over."
Just then, Sokka tacked Hahn, the two beginning to roll around, Hahn pulling Sokka's wolf tail while Sokka tried to choke Hahn. Naruto sighed, walking over and pulling Sokka off of Hahn, then slamming his foot down on Hahn's chest as he tried to stand, pinning him to the ground.
"That's enough!" the chief shouted, stepping up behind Naruto. "Sokka, you're off the mission!"
As he turned to walk away, Hahn stood, grinning broadly.
"Alright, everyone listens to me, and this mission will be over in no time," Hahn grinned loudly.
"No," Naruto said with a low dangerous tone that made everyone except the chef back away, Hahn stopping mid-stride. "You're not in charge. I am. I know how to sneak onto a Fire Nation ship. I know how to navigate it without being seen. I know where Zhao will be. And I'm the one getting us useable disguises. I'm also the better fighter. I'm taking charge of the mission. If you follow my plan, you might survive this and be able to marry Yue. Though I highly doubt you'll survive since you don't listen to anyone."
Hahn glared at him before seeing the warriors in the room nodding. He sighed, crossing his arms. "Fine. What's the plan?"
Naruto picked up a knife and tossed it to Hahn. "Know how to use one of these?"