Altered | A Genderswap ATLA AU

A Banished Princess

The two teens and the one preteen were no longer thinking about the light that had burst out the iceberg Aang had appeared from. But someone else, in a large steel ship sailing through the frigid polar waters, could think of nothing else. That someone was a girl with a long, sleek black high ponytail, pale skin, stormy amber eyes with dark circles beneath them that were so deep they appeared more like bruises than a product of little to no sleep, and she would have been considered pretty, beautiful evenin, if not for the angry red scar that covered almost the entire left side of her face. That, of course, as well as the permanent scowl etched onto her features. 

That girl was the banished Crown Princess Zuleika.

When the beam of light had shot into the sky, her eyes widened. "Uncle Iroh!" she cried. "That light! Do you know what that light means?"

Her uncle looked up from his table of Pai Sho tiles and sighed. "That I won't get to finish my game?"

"No!" Zuleika snapped. "It means my search has come to an end. That light had to have come from somewhere, right?" A thin ray of hope invaded her mind. Up until now she'd been close to giving up, maybe make whatever life she could out here. Yet here was finally proof the Avatar was indeed alive. They had to be.

"It's probably just the celestial lights, my dear," Iroh replied skeptically. "We've been down this road before, Princess Zuleika. I don't want you getting your hopes up. Why don't you come and sit down and have a nice, soothing cup of tea?"

"I DON'T NEED SOOTHING TEA!" she screamed, outraged. "What do I look like, some vapid little girl who just wants to play and have tea parties all day?! I am a grown woman on a mission! A mission to capture the Avatar! Helmsman, steer a course towards the light!"

Iroh simply flipped over a tile and sighed, once again, at his fifteen-year-old niece.

☕

"Did she just say...airbender?!" Sokka stared wide-eyed at the little girl, her jaw hitting the floor.

"But — but that's impossible!" Katasi muttered, still trying to wrap his head around the situation.

Sokka began to poke the unconscious Aang with her boomerang. "Hey! Wake up! You can't just drop a bomb on us like that and then konk out!"

"Cut it out!" Katasi scolded, batting the weapon away from her again. "You could hurt her with that, you know!"

"Relax— Katasi, it lives!" Sokka pointed over his shoulder at the previously unconscious girl as she stirred awake.

It was at that moment Aang finally opened her eyes and blinked sleepily. "Don't worry, I'm okay," she assured him. "Katasi, was it?"

"Yeah?"

"C–come closer."

Hesitant, Katasi obeyed and leaned down to hear what the supposed airbender had to say.

"There's something I want from you..." Aang continued.

"What is it?"

Blinking, she suddenly perked up and broke into a megawatt smile as she chirped at a much louder and higher level he'd expected from such a small girl, "Will you go penguin sledding with me?"

Taken back, Katasi needed a moment to consider her request. "Um...Sure!" With a grin, Aang glided upward, using her bending to set her feet on the ground, and Sokka yelped. Bad enough her brother insisted on helping this stranger who may or not be a Fire Nation spy, but she also may actually be an airbender, something no one had seen for a century and something they had no idea how to fight?!