Prologue

"Someday, I swear, I'll make the world see me for who I am." Stated a young Fire bender. "Ya, and someday Zuko's honor will be restored…ha. Three years, you'd of thought that he'd of managed to at least do something productive in that time." She looked in the tent flap at the sleeping Zuko and sighs. "P.Z., I hate what I have to do, but it's do this now or face Azula later." She leaned forward and inserted the initial blow of lightning into Zuko's heart and…missed that couldn't be right. She looked down he was still asleep but gasping for breath, and worse his friends probably heard the explosion. But she was rooted to the spot thinking about how she and Zuko had first met….

It had been a windy day at sea when they actually got to know each other. She was mulling her hair, which she had recently discovered was black, into a series of braids that she was holding in place with golden forks. After he had gotten over the first half of what she had just told him, Zuko stated, "so your full name is Alura?"

That of course had happened over two months before, a lot had happened between now and then. She touched the comb in the back of her braids, the comb that Zuko had welded out of two of the forks using Fire Bending, fell to her knees beside him, and began to cry.