Raven Arza had absolutely no intention of being left behind.
Her teeth were still chattering by the time rough, unfamiliar hands hauled her bodily over a low railing and dumped her onto a deck that smelled like salt, cheap pitch, and stale cargo. The boards were slick with blown ice and slush; a thin skin of frost clung to the iron fittings. She lay there for a second, coughing up seawater and hatred in equal parts, shoulder-length dark brown hair plastered to her face, fingers numb to the bone and somehow even paler.
"Uh," a nervous male voice ventured nearby. "Is she supposed to be steaming?"
A thin veil of steam did indeed hiss off her soaked red and black garb, haloing her in the gray air. Then it erupted into a mildly scalding cloud, with a nose or two singed like overly curious cooks. The tiny, stubborn flame still clinging to her fingertips flared as she slammed her palm down to push herself upright, scorching a perfect handprint, overcoming the crew's pre-soaking of the planks. Snow crystals and salt hissed to nothing under her.
Raven spat a mouthful of brine over the side, breath fogging in the bitter wind, eyes fixed on the sea ahead.
Zuko's warship was already pulling away from the shattered harbor, a black knife against the flat, pewter horizon, moving with the hungry determination of a predator catching scent again. Churned ice bobbed in its wake. Above, a white shape bobbed in and out of the low, ragged clouds, growing smaller.
He was still chasing the Avatar.
"Coward," she rasped, voice rough but full of venom. "You won't get away."
"Ahaha," the same nervous voice tried, belonging, when she finally turned, to a lanky man in patched Earth Kingdom leathers and a Fire Nation-issue scarf that absolutely did not belong to him. His hair stuck out in wind-chewed tufts from under a battered cap, and up close she had to tilt her chin sharply to glare; she barely reached his shoulder. "Lady Arza, welcome back aboard. Uh. We… saw a lot of fire."
"Lo Pei," she said, equal parts greeting and warning.
Captain Lo Pei—otherwise out of work due to the war and desperate for any charter—did his best to cautiously say, "we followed your instructions exactly. We stayed out of range, we didn't raise any flags, we—"
"You weren't seen," she quickly said and snapped, "Why are we not moving?!"
He blinked, sea-gray eyes flicking to the sluggishly turning paddlewheels. "You... haven't given orders. Are we following—" he started, pointing vaguely towards Zuko's warship, now just a dark wedge in the distance.
"Obviously!" she clarified, stabbing a finger in the direction of Zuko's wake. "Now!" Faint flames buffeted out from her feet, drying out the deck in an uneven circle but thankfully not igniting it. Melted snow ran in little rivulets to the scuppers. She shook her limbs, getting out the last of the frost as her firebending rapidly rejuvenated her, but never took her unblinking hazel eyes off the man.
Lo Pei winced, glancing twice in mild panic at the slowly rolling flames. "Y-you heard the lady!" he yelped over his shoulder. Their own vessel—a stout, patched-up Fire Nation transport hull that surely looked great in Sozin's time—plowed gracelessly through the ice rubble, which it was never really designed for, deck timbers grumbling against the metal siding with every bump. At least Zuko's larger vessel had left few serious obstacles in its wake, but there was no mistaking which ship was meant for war and which for sacks of grain.
Raven clenched her fingerless gloves on the cold beaten metal of the gunwale, which rapidly warmed under her grip, sending droplets into the ocean below. Her heart was still pounding so hard she had to think deliberately to breathe properly, and her mind raced over what had just happened. She had spent so long gathering a few coins here or there, making it work for her in trades behind closed doors, all painfully slow under her irritatingly perceptive father's notice, all so she could throw herself at Zuko without any regard for what she had planned—a direct challenge he'd be forced to face to the bitter end, a proper Agni Kai—but now she could only grit her teeth at her own stupid emotions getting the better of her.
She slapped at the back of her surcoat, knocking loose stubborn lumps of slush. For a moment the golden spearhead emblem there—the ornate symbol of House Arza—caught what thin gray light there was and glinted fiercely before the clouds swallowed it again.
"Ahh, Lady Arza?" Lo Pei peeped from behind her, boots skidding a little on the still-damp deck as he edged just outside the radius of residual heat, and the nearest crewman's eyes widened as he backed out of potential flame range.
"What."
"Ah, well, you see," he said awkwardly, but the baleful glare of wasted time spurred him on, "we burnt through most of the coal getting here, if we don't stop at the closest harbor," he poked at a partially folded map flapping in the breeze, calloused fingers pinning a corner. The ink was smudged at the edges from years of use, but the coastline was clear enough, not that she was looking closely anyway. "We'll, well, end up adrift before we catch a speedy cruiser like that."
Raven glared at him like physics was a personal insult. The wind tugged at the ends of her hair; even dried, it still smelled faintly of smoke and salt. "We can't lose him when we're this close!"
"With respect, Lady Arza," he said, and to his credit there was a little steel under the wobble, "we really appreciate the work, really! We all do!"
"Thank you, Lady Arza!" a few nearby men called out meekly and waved.
"But we'd rather starve to death on shore. Not freezing in the middle of nowhere," Lo Pei said with some finality but a disarming shrug to temper it. "If possible."
Her hands curled into fists at her sides. But she shook her hair and the last of the moisture burned away, unsticking the strands to land somehow perfectly back into her noble hairstyle that she clasped anew with gold in practiced precision. She wanted to scream. She wanted to throw fire until something gave. But it was just reality that Zuko's vessel outpaced hers by a significant margin, and chasing him without knowing where he was going was a fool's errand regardless. She knew that, she just... wanted to charge screaming across the water after him anyway.
Instead she dragged a hand down her face, forcing her voice flat. "Nearest harbor?"
Lo Pei brightened slightly, relieved to be back on a practical topic. "There's a coal depot at Naqorin Point, half a day north if the currents are kind. We make for it, we can refuel and still… possibly… maybe… be in the same ocean as Prince Zuko by tomorrow."
The closest crewman, Bao, stroked his half-grey beard and cheerily added, "they've the top quality fuel coal there, too. Only for the warships usually, but you're a noble, so...?"
"Oh, yeah, that's right, Bao! Hey, we'll get more speed out of this Yaoru-class frigate with that, the new boilers you paid for can take the heat," Lo Pei rapidly nodded with a wide smile under his uneven mustache as he wrung his hands, scarf tails flapping in the wind.
"You guys talking about the warship grade coal at Naqorin Point? I've heard that coal makes vessels twice as fast!" a third deeply unsightly and unevenly tanned man—Bong Li, whose nose looked like it had met too many tavern tables—artificially leaned in from just inside the rusty door to add, breath steaming in the chill.
"Twice as fast, you say?" Bao stood tall and put his hands on his hips to say. "We'd make up the time lost in just a few hours! That's incredible, Bong Li!"
Raven deflated as she gave them a disappointed grimace. "I'm not going to burn you over this frigate being old and slow." But her expression cooled to one of simple indifference. "You can stop doing... whatever you're doing right now."
Only the smoke from Zuko's cruiser was visible anymore, a faint gray smear under the low clouds. The men just stood there, glancing from time to time at the smoke that heralded their doom, waiting to see for sure if their employer was going to kill them or not.
"Fine," she bit out. "Naqorin Point. I will be stoking the flames myself, so waste time at your own peril."
Lo Pei swallowed. "Full speed it is," he said briskly, and bolted to shout orders at the crew.
The merchant sailors—men who'd lost their trade routes and livelihoods to the war and were now very aware of how incendiary their new employer was—jumped to obey. The crew hustled even if they had nothing to do, the wooden deck creaked in its metal prison, coal shovels bit faster, and their soot-covered engineer ducked for cover as Raven stormed her way into the engine room.
The engineer—old enough to make Lo Pei look like a recruit, shoulders permanently hunched from years spent under low beams—was barely taller than Raven, but somehow still managed to look smaller as he huddled under the piping, mask askew. He squeaked something panicked and wordless as she took a solid-footed stance, both palms forward, to vent her frustration into the boilers and transform it directly into knots.
"You won't get away next time," she grumbled to herself as she let out a near half-minute long jet of flames, the metal skin of the boilers glowing faintly warmer in response, before having to take a deep breath. She saw the white-hair-scorched-black-on-the-tips engineer looking up at her in horror from where he had huddled, pointing at himself and looking ready to cry. She briefly locked eyes with him, and rolled them. "Not you."
The small man breathed with relief and scampered off between the humming machinery. "'Scuse me, Lady Arza!"
Only when she couldn't summon up another single spark did Raven trudge her way back up to the deck, boots thudding delicately on iron steps that clanged in the cold air, where she instantly heard voices calling something out in the distance, and looked herself, suddenly leaping from the pits of uncertainty to a new energy despite it all.
The Avatar. In the distance, but unmistakable as no other flying bison were around, that was for certain. Against the low cloudbank, Appa's shaggy white bulk was visible only for the saddle and riders. He'd doubled back and was heading in just the right direction that she'd struggle not to cross paths with Zuko again soon.
"Hah!" she jeered, spooking a few men at the rail as her voice cut through the wind. "I've got you now."