Koete ↠ Sokka

Chapter 7: The Pirates - Part 5

Her original plan was to walk straight through to the other side where she knew everyone would end up, but that went to shambles when she quickly found herself disoriented with the lack of visual cues. "Charlie! Aang! Are you there?" she heard Sokka shout over the sounds of swords clashing all around.

"I'm over here! Follow my voice," Aang instructed from somewhere in the grey cloud.

"I'm here too!" Charlie called out, trying to wave the smoke away from her face as she frantically spun around, looking for the source of their voices.

"Where? I can't see anything!" she heard Sokka say back. She turned in the direction his voice travelled from, making the split-second decision to run towards it. When the smoke cleared from her vision, revealing the other side of the bay where the pirates' boats were docked, she immediately tripped. With a yelp, she fell on her side, unable to break her fall with her bound hands, finding herself lying next to a shocked Sokka, who'd crawled out of the smoke.

Seeing her wrists still tied together, he reached behind his back and drew his boomerang, using its sharp side to slice through the ropes until they fell to the ground. "Thanks," Charlie breathed out, pushing herself off the floor.

Only a second later, Aang was jumping over their heads screaming, "Run!" Charlie grabbed Sokka's wrist before he had the chance to stand up, running after Aang. He yelped at the force of being dragged forward but stumbled into a steady pace behind her. "Katara, you're okay!" Aang said as they reached the girl, who was trying to push one of the larger wooden ships from the dock.

"Help me get this boat back in the water so we can get out of here," Katara rasped out through another strained push, her feet sliding back through the sand.

"That won't work, it's too heavy," Charlie said, resting her hands on her knees while she caught her breath.

"We'd need a team of rhinos to budge it," Sokka agreed, looking up at the boat. It stood tall above them all, the red sails casting a shadow over their faces.

"A team of rhinos..." Aang turned to Katara, giving her a childish lopsided smile. "Or two waterbenders."

While they performed a pushing and pulling motion with the water, bringing their arms back and forth in synchronisation, Charlie looped around to the side of the boat where a rope ladder hung. Hopping through the rising lake water, ignoring how it soaked into her shoes, she climbed onto the ropes.

"Everyone in!" Katara called out as the boat started to sail into the water on its own, backing away from the dock. Aang used a twist of airbending to propel himself onto the deck, while Katara and Sokka had to run through the water to reach the ladder. Charlie hung on the edge of the rope, reaching her arm down for them to latch onto. One-by-one, she helped pull them onto the moving boat, making sure they were all on board before she climbed up herself, falling over the wooden railings to the deck.

Sokka had already gone to man the wheel, twisting it harshly left so the boat would travel downstream. Charlie ran to the back of the boat, jumping on the raised platform to look back at the shore where the smoke had already mostly cleared. When she saw Iroh gesture towards her, catching the pirate's attention, she gave a patronising wave. While the pirate ran after them, Zuko pointed and laughed almost childishly at their misfortune before realising his own river steamer had been hijacked. Six pirates followed behind them on the smaller Fire Nation boat, picking up speed faster than the wooden ship could.

Charlie ran around the command room to the quarterdeck where Sokka steered the ship, coming to a stop next to Katara. "Sokka, can't you make this thing go any faster?" Aang shouted, holding onto the flagpole atop the command room.