Chapter 33.3- And so the Dragons Danced

When I came to, the world was spinning around me. A concussion, I diagnosed in seconds. One advantage of my body in this world was that it was basically superhuman. I pulled at my inner flame. That heat that distinguished me from the rest of the world and brought it to the forefront. I let out a breath that I knew would probably have steamed in the air outside. I did not open my eyes. That would hurt. I’d learned that lesson early on. Instead, I tried to think about what had led me here. Concussions were usually marked with short term memory loss.

I racked my brain and could barely avoid screaming ‘Eureka’ when it came to me. I’d been on the ship. Ba Sing Se. They had a wall on the beach head. They’d fired on us with trebuchets and probably sunk my entire makeshift fleet. That brought another question. Where was I now. It was moving just like a boat would so that meant I was still on the water. That went against my first theory that I’d been somehow captured by the Earth Kingdom. But it didn’t mean necessarily that I was safe. What made me make the decision that I probably was was the fact that I could feel my headache reducing. It was also marked with a feeling that I had become more than familiar with- Amara’s chi when she healed.

I tore my eyes open and was gifted with the sight of the water bender leaning over my body as she worked.

“Welcome back, General” She said with a smile that did not quite reach her eyes and I nodded at her in reply while increasing the heat that ran through my body. In case she’d poisoned me, it would be best to burn it out now rather than risk it becoming a thing later.

“Oh good, you’re awake. You can talk some sense into this lot” was the next thing I heard. I turned my head to the door of the room I was in and found Maki standing there with an irritable look on her face.

“What’s going on?” I said, making to rise. I waved off Amara’s attempts to help as I felt my legs almost give out as I took my first step and just reached out for the wooden wall of what I was now certain was a boat. A non-fire nation boat to be precise.

“Where are we?” I asked next, not even waiting for her to answer the first question as the second seemed far more pressing at the moment.

“You’re on my boat, General” Another voice said, coming into the room next after pushing his way past Maki. He had said the word General with a mocking tone, but that did not offend me very much. Instead, I was more focused on trying to figure out just who was standing before me. He had brown skin and hair tied in a long ponytail that made it all the way to his back. He wore simple clothes, a tunic and trousers. Simple but well fitting. And well made as well. That meant a skilled enough seamstress in his service or enough gold for clothes that fit well. Could be both.

“Who are you?” I asked even as I tried to place the features. He didn’t have the square jaw that was common in the Earth kingdom, and that skin was much too brown to even be considered fire nation. That meant Water Tribe by process of elimination, but that was not a certainty.

“The name’s Kai, captain of the Wicked Wench” He said in an accent that was neither here nor there.

A/N: here’s a fun bit of trivia, the Wicked Wench was the ship Jack Sparrow originally had before it was sunk and then when Davy Jones rose it from the depths, it was rechristened the Black Pearl