Master Pakku cornered him outside his apartments, the Fire Nation slave at his heels. The dark man wasn't smiling, but he looked as if he was thinking about. Master Pakku looked like a thundersnow-cloud.

"I always knew you hated me," he greeted.

Arnook raised an eyebrow. Conversations with Master Pakku (or Mistress Yugoda) often left him feeling bullied and puzzled, but they rarely started out so strangely.

Master Pakku waved an irritated hand at the Fire Nation man. "First the girl, now him. I can barely live in my own home!"

".... I see." He didn't see at all, and he was certain his tone conveyed that.

Master Pakku glowered. "You are the one who decides the disposition of raid-spoils. Get rid of one of them."

Today was evidently going to be a puzzled day. "Master Pakku, you know I can't do that. You need a woman to take care of you-" He ignored the waterbending master's snort of disgust and the Fire Nation man's flash of a grin. "-And none of our warriors could fight him. You can kill him, if need be."

"So can Yugoda!"

"That would not be at all acceptable," Arnook said patiently. He could just imagine how much everyone else in the city would scream if he gifted a healthy, virile-looking male slave to an unmarried woman, even one as elderly as Mistress Yugoda.

Master Pakku snarled and stalked away. The Fire Nation man paused to give Arnook a bow, then trailed after the waterbending master. A dark hand reached out to touch the small of Pakku's back-

A wave slammed the Fire Nation man into the wall and froze him there.

Arnook sighed. Now he needed to find another waterbender to get the slave out of the wall.

He didn't hate Master Pakku, but the man seemed to want to give him reasons to some days.