Katara walked into the school with the others, trying to make her stride purposeful even while she was inwardly quite reluctant. They'd all agreed that this was the best way to figure out how to pass themselves off as Fire Nation residents, but she still wasn't happy about it. Her eyes darted from side to side, all senses heightened for detecting signs of trouble. One part of her mind wondered when she'd become a tense, alert warrior.

The answer came in the form of a flash of memory. It was Aang being struck by lightning and falling, as though in slow motion, until Katara had summoned all of her bending powers to be in time to catch him.

Oh yeah. Nothing had been the same since that day, but Katara couldn't afford to be dwelling on the past right now. A perky girl, with brown eyes and wearing her dark hair in something akin to pigtails, approached them with a bright smile.

"Are you new?" she asked.

"Uh, yes," answered Aang, to whom she seemed to have addressed the question. "We're from the South." This was their selected cover, easy to come up with since, for most of them, it was technically true.

"Great! You're cute," the girl commented, still talking to Aang. "I'm Wen Li. And you are…?"

"Mine," Katara stepped in, both verbally and physically.

"Tara," Sokka muttered warningly, using the shortened form of her name that she'd decided to use here. Katara ignored both that and the sharp look she could feel Aang tossing her. She didn't like the slightly predatory look in Wen Li's eyes, something she was quite sure the boys had missed.

"Really?" drawled Wen Li, glancing between them. Fortunately, Aang picked up on Katara's cue and put his arm around her waist. She tingled where his hand settled, but she forced herself not to think about it, draping her own arm across his shoulders.

"Yes," Aang replied blandly. "Why?" Katara felt his muscles tense, which she assumed was a symptom of his lying.

"Oh, nothing. Welcome, anyway." With that, Wen Li flashed Aang another smile, spared a look of loathing for Katara, and flounced away.

"What was that about?" wondered Toph, when the four of them were alone again. Katara regretfully pulled away from Aang. She brought her head close to the others, who followed her lead by leaning in.

"I don't think it's a good idea to let someone get that close and start asking him personal questions," she answered calmly, in a low voice. Her response had actually been more or less automatic, but she was rapidly coming up with plausible excuses. "Besides, now people won't think it's too strange that he and I are together all the time."

"So what if some girl comes up to me?" Sokka demanded. "Are you going to step in there, too?"

"I'll leave that to Toph," Katara said airily, earning herself a scowl from that girl. "It's none of my business who you flirt with, and I'm sure you won't give anything away."

"You think I would?" returned Aang, sounding a little insulted. Katara quickly tried to backtrack.

"It's not that," she assured him. "But if you had a girlfriend, don't you think she'd eventually want to take off your headband or hold your hand?" At the mention of the fabric covering his forehead, Aang had automatically raised his arm to check it. With her last words, though, he turned his wrist in front of his face, gazing at the sharp point of the sleeve hiding the tattoo on his hand.

"I guess you're right," he conceded.

"The evidence of who you are is all over your body," added Katara. "Our best chance of keeping you anonymous is to have a reason to keep you away from other people as much as possible." She tried not to think about the bonus that she'd get to pretend to be his girlfriend for a little while.

Sokka still looked skeptical, but he just shrugged and let it go. Toph made a few snide comments at random intervals, but otherwise, the rest of the day passed with no notable incidents.

Of course, Katara knew that this wasn't the end of things with Wen Li. Even now, the other girl was most likely plotting to steal Aang away from Katara. All Katara had done was buy them some time and a little distance, but she didn't feel the need to share that with her friends. With any luck, they'd have what they needed from this place and be out of there without a trace before anything happened. In the meantime, she intended to enjoy herself