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In the modern age, lost treasures have grown harder and harder to come by. Almost all of the hidden temples and sunken wrecks have been plundered of all their riches, meaning there were very few real ancient relics left for newer generations to discover.
So, the very minute Azula heard rumors of an ancient golden mask buried at the bottom of the ocean, she knew she had to immediately dive down and find it for herself.
Of course, Azula knew she couldn’t dive for it by herself, so she called up her girlfriend Katara, and asked if she wanted to join her on this dive. Katara agreed on the condition that they would donate the mask to a museum instead of keeping it for themselves, which Azula didn’t have a problem with. She didn’t care about keeping the mask, she just wanted the thrill of uncovering a long-lost artifact.
The next day, Azula and Katara headed out to sea on a rental boat, stopping at the exact coordinates the rumors had given.
“You’re sure this is the right spot?” Katara asked, zipping up the back of Azula’s wetsuit.
“Positive,” Azula nodded, turning around to help Katara zip up her own wetsuit, “Fortunately, it seems like we’re the only ones here.”
“Or there’s no golden mask at all, and what you heard was a load of nonsense,” said Katara, sitting down to put on her scuba gear.
“I’m prepared for the possibility that we don’t find anything,” said Azula, her red lips forming a big smirk, “But even if we don’t, scuba diving with my hot girlfriend is a reward in and of itself.”
“Well, I guess that’s a positive way of looking at the situation,” Katara noted, her cheeks flushing red.
“It’s true, you know,” Azula remarked, throwing an arm around Katara’s shoulder and pulling her in close, “We’ve gone on so many dives together that it’s difficult to imagine diving without you. I’d really miss you if I went diving for this mask and you weren’t with me.”
“Aw, ‘Zula,” Katara giggled, tightly hugging her girlfriend and planting a quick kiss on her lips, “You’re really sweet when you want to be.”
“Plus having you for eye candy helps,” Azula grinned, kissing Katara fiercely.
“I take that back,” Katara sighed, still melting into Azula’s kiss.
After they broke the kiss, Azula and Katara finished putting on their scuba gear. Their air tanks, BCDs, weight belts, flippers, masks and regulators were all in proper condition, so now all they had to do was just get in the water.
“Ready, Kat?” Azula asked, tightening her mask strap.
“You bet,” Katara nodded, reaching over to turn Azula’s air tank on, “But do you really need to bring that speargun?”
“Hey, you always say it’s better to be safe than sorry,” said Azula, turning on Katara’s tank, “You never know, there could be a vicious, man-eating shark down there. Shouldn’t we at least be prepared to defend ourselves?”
“You have a point,” Katara sighed, “I just hope we won’t need to.”
“Same here,” Azula smiled, giving Katara one last peck on her lips, “Let’s dive.”
Azula and Katara put their regulators in their mouths, grasped each other’s hands tightly, and rolled over backwards into the ocean. After making sure they were okay and their gear was functioning properly, the two girls swam down to the seafloor, about sixty feet below the surface. The water was pretty murky today, so Katara had to shine her flashlight to get a good look at what was up ahead.
The girls swam side-by-side, hand-in-hand, as they made their way across the seabed. Even though they were supposed to be searching for treasure, Azula made sure to sneak glances at her beautiful girlfriend. Katara looked amazing in her blue wetsuit and purple scuba gear, and Azula especially appreciated how her wetsuit accentuated her chest and butt.
“‘Z’lluhh,” Katara grumbled, waving her hand in front of Azula’s mask to get her attention.
Azula simply winked at Katara and laid down on the sand, allowing Katara to get a good look at her. Katara was nowhere near as lecherous as her girlfriend, but she found herself gazing at Azula’s stunning form for longer than she should have. Azula’s black wetsuit highlighted her curves immaculately, and her red scuba gear only made her look even hotter.
“Khht?” Azula burbled, smirking around her regulator mouthpiece.
Katara’s face turned almost as red as Azula’s lips, and she quickly turned away and shone her light up ahead. What she saw utterly astounded her, and she hurriedly waved Azula over. Only a few dozen feet away lay a huge ship, well over a hundred feet long, covered in algae with a massive hole in its port side. The girls looked at each other and knew that if there was a golden mask here, it had to be in that ship.
Still gripping each other’s hands tightly, Katara and Azula swam inside the ship and began their search. Katara checked her air gauge and signaled to Azula that they had an hour and twenty minutes to find the mask before they needed to head back to the surface. With that, they split up and started swimming around the ship’s interior.
Unfortunately, Katara had the only flashlight, so Azula had to rely on the sunlight shining in through the water to see clearly. At the very least, it was bright enough for her to swim around without bumping into anything by accident. But even though they were both in the same ship, Azula couldn’t help but miss having her girlfriend by her side.
“Mmmnnhh…,” Azula murmured into her reg, her golden eyes narrowing behind her mask as she swam from room to room, looking in every chest she could find.
After about ten minutes, Azula found herself in what appeared to be a storage room, with tons of boxes strewn about, and weapons hung up on the walls. If she had more time, she would’ve loved to properly explore the entire place, but right now she was hyper-focused on finding that mask. She opened every single box she could find, and while some of them had cool things in them like scrolls or books, none of them had the mask.
Just as Azula turned to leave the storage room, she suddenly found herself face-to-face with a large, decayed statue of what appeared to be a person with a cartoonishly disfigured face.
“Mmph!” Azula let out a muffled squeal in surprise.
Once she got over her brief shock, Azula looked down and saw a large chest carefully placed in the statue’s hands. She cautiously took the chest and placed it on a table, cracked her knuckles, and began to open it. The chest was very rusty due to possibly being underwater for centuries, but Azula was able to lift the lid off with enough muscle power.
Sure enough, the mask was inside, practically glimmering as it became exposed to sunlight for the first time in potentially hundreds of years.
“Hmmmhh…,” Azula breathed, picking up the mask and holding it up to get a good look at it.
The mask was intricately detailed, with engravings carved all over its golden surface, and red-and-blue stripes painted on its cheeks and forehead. Azula was no archaeologist, but she could certainly admire the craftsmanship on display. She closed the chest and set it back in the statue’s hands, then she swam out of the storage room to find her girlfriend.
Azula found Katara investigating the kitchen, and she excitedly waved her over, holding the mask out for her to see. Katara was just as awestruck as Azula was, taking the mask and tracing her fingernails over the engravings. She couldn’t wait to talk to an expert at a museum, she wanted to know where it came from, what civilization made it, what purpose it served, everything she could possibly know.
The girls were so excited about their discovery that they didn’t notice a third diver approaching them until it was too late.
Suddenly, Azula felt a large box slam into her side, and she was knocked against the kitchen wall. She whirled around to see that another diver had joined them in the sunken ship, one wearing a black wetsuit with black scuba gear. The new diver had long black hair with one large bang covering the right side of her mask, dark red lips pursed around her mouthpiece, and a stunning buxom figure.
“Jnnn!” Azula let out a muffled growl, recognizing the enemy diver.
June was a rival of Azula’s. She must’ve heard the same rumors about the golden mask and followed her and Katara down here. June didn’t care about discovery or historical significance or anything like that, she only cared about how much money that mask was going to make her.
Fortunately, Katara had kept ahold of the mask, but June was blocking the doorway to the main hall, so they were going to have to fight their way out. June unsheathed a dive knife strapped to her weight belt and lunged at Katara, causing Katara to drop the mask as she grabbed her attacker’s wrists. Seeing her chance, Azula swam over and picked up the mask off of the floor, narrowly avoiding being kicked in the head by the other divers as they wrestled.
June kicked Katara in the stomach, causing her to double over and let go of her wrists. Azula tried to swim through the doorway, but June grabbed her ankles and pulled her back in. June tried making a grab for the mask, but Azula was not letting go, and the two of them wrestled, punched and kicked each other as they fought for the artifact.
“Grmm!” Azula grunted into her regulator as June yanked her scuba mask off of her face, momentarily disorienting her and causing her to drop the golden mask.
Seeing her girlfriend in trouble, Katara swam over to help Azula, but June was ready for her. June took hold of the valve on Katara’s air tank and twisted it all the way down, cutting off her air flow. With both of her rivals now distracted, June picked up the golden mask and swam out of the ship, giving them a teasing wave as she left.
Azula strapped her scuba mask back over her eyes and nose and cleared it, then immediately swam over to turn Katara’s tank back on. Katara took several deep breaths from her regulator, then signaled to Azula that she was okay, and the two girls swam out of the ship to chase down June. June had already made it a third of the way to the surface, but Azula and Katara were faster swimmers, so they quickly caught up to her.
June took out her dive knife again and slashed it at the younger divers, but they weren’t going to be intimidated that easily. Katara gripped June’s legs and pulled her down, while Azula swam behind June and grabbed her wrists, pinning her arms behind her back. Azula painfully twisted June’s arms, causing her to let out a muffled cry of pain and drop both the golden mask and her knife.
Azula caught the knife and quickly used it to sever June’s air hose, while Katara snatched the mask.
“NMMMFF!” June cried out, clutching her regulator as she watched all her air leak out of her tank in a massive cloud of bubbles.
June broke out of Azula and Katara’s grip and swam for the surface, bubbles still streaming out of her tank. Overjoyed at their victory, Katara wrapped her arms around Azula and pulled her into a tight hug, which Azula gladly returned. Not wanting to accidentally stab her girlfriend, Azula let go of June’s knife and let it sink to the ocean floor as she embraced Katara, brushing her fingers through her long black hair.
But they weren’t safe just yet, for out of the murky depths came a loud, roaring cry. Katara and Azula whirled around just in time to see a massive sea serpent barreling towards them, jaws agape. It was the unagi, a rare, hundred-foot-long carnivorous sea eel, and today it seemed to have scuba divers on the menu.
“MMMPH!” Azula and Katara let out a simultaneous muffled scream as they both narrowly dodged out of the way of the eel’s massive maw.
In her shock, Katara accidentally dropped the mask, and it sank all the way back to the seafloor, twenty feet down. Katara dove down as fast as she could to snatch it back, but once she reached the sea bottom, the unagi had whirled around and was coming straight for her. In a panic, Katara grabbed the mask and started swimming back towards Azula, with the sea serpent hot on her heels.
Azula had detached her speargun from her air tank and was now aiming it right at the unagi’s face. As soon as Katara swam up next to her and out of firing range, Azula took the shot, the speartip flying out of her gun at high velocity and embedding itself in the unagi’s right eye. The enormous eel shrieked in pain, a high piercing noise that seemed to make the entire ocean vibrate, and it thrashed around as it swam in circles along the seabed.
Unfortunately, the tether attached to the speartip, which by now had stretched out well over twenty feet, had wrapped itself around Azula’s left ankle and Katara’s right, inadvertently tying them together. Azula and Katara only had time to give each other a look that read “oh no” before they were both dragged down by the sheer force of the unagi’s strength. The eel lunged at them again, blood streaming from its blinded eye, and the girls could just barely get out of the way of its jagged, interlocking teeth.
Azula and Katara held onto each other for dear life as they were yanked around by the thrashing sea monster, banging against the side of the shipwreck and the sandy seafloor. Seeing June’s dive knife resting on the sand, Katara quickly grabbed it as they were dragged along the sea bottom, and not a moment too soon. The unagi turned around and swam at the girls again, unwilling to let its troublemaking prey escape.
“Hmmf!” Katara grunted into her reg as she jammed the knife into the unagi’s other eye.
Now blinded in both eyes, the unagi writhed in pain on the seafloor, completely disoriented. Azula pointed at the surface, and the two girls took their chance and swam all the way up to the surface as fast as they could without getting decompression sickness. Katara and Azula swam like mad until they climbed up onto the boat, keeping their regulators in their mouths in case they were dragged back underwater.
The unagi breached the surface and let out one more piercing cry before it dove back into the ocean. Azula and Katara held onto the side of the boat like their lives depended on it, as they looked for something to cut the tether binding their legs. Fortunately, there was a spare knife in one of their backpacks, but it was just barely out of reach.
“Mmmrrgg…mmhhnnn…,” Azula groaned into her regulator as she reached for the knife, stretching her right arm out as far as she could, but to no avail.
The whole boat was being tossed around thanks to the unagi’s strength, and the girls were now afraid that it would either be flipped over or sunk. Luckily, the boat tipped to one side just long enough for the backpack to slide closer to them, and Azula quickly snatched the knife out. Knowing her own strength might not be enough, she and Katara held the knife together, and finally sliced through the tether, letting the line sink to the bottom of the ocean with the unagi.
Katara and Azula crawled to the middle of the deck, breathing heavily from their regulators as they collapsed from exhaustion. Katara rested her head on Azula’s chest, and Azula could only squeeze her hand weakly as they slowly recovered from their experience.
“Y’hh uh‘llrr’hht, Khht?” Azula murmured.
“Mmhmm,” Katara nodded weakly.
After a couple of minutes, Azula and Katara removed their regulators and masks, before embracing each other once again.
“You okay, ‘Zula?” Katara panted as she and Azula took off their oxygen tanks and BCDs.
“Never better,” Azula sighed, her red lips curled into a satisfied grin, “We got what we came for, didn’t we?”
“Yeah, and we almost died getting it,” Katara groaned, looking at the golden mask on the floor next to them, “I hope this mask is worth all the trouble we went through to get it.”
“Of course it is,” Azula chuckled, running her fingers through her girlfriend’s hair, “We got to uncover a long-lost artifact and rub our discovery in June’s face. I’d say that’s worth almost getting eaten by a hundred-foot eel.”
“Flawless logic, ‘Zula,” Katara laughed, “I’m just happy we made it out alive!”
“Admit it, Kat,” Azula smirked, “You’re glad we found that mask. I saw you down there, you were just as excited about it as I was.”
“I never said I wasn’t,” Katara giggled, “It does look really cool. What civilization do you think it came from?”
“How should I know? I’m no historian,” Azula shrugged, “Isn’t that why you wanted to donate it to a museum?”
“Yeah,” Katara nodded, “Ideally, we’d return the mask to the descendants of whoever made it, but since we don’t know who they are, the museum’s our next best bet.”
“Or we could keep it for ourselves,” said Azula, picking up the mask and tracing her index finger along the contours, “It’ll be a nice decoration to hang up on our wall.”
“Absolutely not,” Katara replied, giving her girlfriend a stern glare.
“I’m kidding!” Azula laughed, “I’m only kidding, Kat. We’ll deliver it to the museum if that’s what you want.”
“Thank you, ‘Zula,” Katara smiled, pecking Azula’s lips, “Now let’s get back to dry land. I’ve had more than enough of the ocean for one day.”
Katara started to stand up, only for Azula to yank her back to the deck floor.
“Oh no you don’t,” Azula grinned, “You’re not just giving me one kiss after what we went through.”
“Oh yeah?” Katara smirked, “Make me.”
“With pleasure,” Azula purred, placing her hands on Katara’s cheeks and kissing her passionately.
Katara laid on top of Azula and kissed her back just as hungrily. The two girls rolled around on the deck, kissing each other over and over and over again, the golden mask momentarily forgotten.
“Kat,” Azula murmured against Katara’s lips, “If I was in trouble down there and you could only save me or the mask, what would you choose?”
“You, of course,” Katara laughed softly, going in for another kiss, “You’re my greatest treasure, ‘Zula.”
“That’s the sappiest thing I’ve ever heard,” Azula snickered, kissing Katara once again.
“It’s true, you know,” Katara remarked, “What would you choose, me or the mask?”
“You, every single time,” Azula smiled, “As lame as it sounds, you’re my greatest treasure too.”
“Aw, ‘Zula,” Katara giggled, kissing Azula hard.
Many great treasures had been lost and found over the millennia, but Azula and Katara could attest that the greatest treasure of them all was one they had all along.