"It's a blacked-out blur,
But I'm pretty sure it ruled."
("Last Friday Night," Katy Perry

Katara sighed. Why did this time have to be Sokka's turn to handle the money?
Her older brother was looking smug after winning a dice game. One of the painted-up beauties hired by the management to sweet talk men into blowing their money had whispered into Sokka's ear that he should bet on "evens," and he was taken in like a fool. 

"I wouldn't be too cocky," Katara said. She fluttered her souvenir paper fan from Luck Goddess Temple. "These dice games are rigged. They lure you in with a taste of success; then you're fleeced like a goat-sheep for everything you're worth."

Sokka gave Katara his typical "I know you're right, Katara, but I'm too pigheaded and sexist to listen to you" look, then turned his attention back to the dealer.

The dealer, a pretty woman with bare, tattooed arms, overturned a bamboo cup on the tatami floor.  "Place your bets," she said.

Katara raised an eyebrow as Sokka and the other players pushed their betting tokens forward and shouted either "evens" or "odds." Sokka, thinking it would extend his winning streak, bet on "evens" again.
"Hey, take it easy," Katara said. All of Sokka's previous winnings were riding on this game and he was in danger of leaving empty-handed. "Or else we'll be eating out of the garbage and swimming back to the mainland."
Sokka rolled his eyes. "I know when to stop."  He nudged Zuko, who was kneeling on the other side of him. "Come get your woman."
Zuko put a hand on Katara's shoulder. "I think Aang and Toph went to watch a puppet show. Let's go look for them."

The dealer lifted the bamboo cup with a theatrical flourish to reveal the dice underneath. A six and a one. Odds. Sokka's betting tokens were raked in with the rest of the losers. His palm hit his forehead.

Katara giggled. "Told you so," she said. 

"Don't call your mother,
'Cuz now we're partners in crime."
("Waking Up In Vegas," Katy Perry)

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"Are you thirsty?" Zuko asked Katara. They were walking through the stone arcades of Jigoku-no-Hi's pastel pleasure palaces toward the wharf, where Toph and Aang had gone to watch a puppet show.

Katara's mouth was as dry as a desert. "Yes," she said.
The climate on Ember Island (where the resort of Jigoku-no-Hi was located) was hot even by Fire Nation standards. To a girl who'd grown up on the frozen tundra of the South Pole, it felt like walking through a furnace. Only Katara's paper fan provided any relief.
They approached a shaved ice stand. The people around them parted to let Zuko and Katara pass. Though they had no idea who he was, Zuko carried himself like someone important to whom deference was due, and because Katara was at his side, they afforded her the same respect.

"Two please," Zuko said to the boy at the counter, who filled up two bowls of shaved ice. The boy drizzled cherry syrup over the shaved ice, then squeezed lime juice, and finished by sprinkling grated ginger.
Nothing was more refreshing in this heat than shaved ice, but Katara had to gulp it before it melted into a watery, cherry-flavored slush.

Katara resumed fanning herself after she'd slurped down the dregs. "Is it always so hot here?" she said to Zuko.

She was sweating to death even in her light cotton summer yukata. Many other women passing through the arcades wore strapless sarong dresses and wrap skirts. The daring ones went more-or-less topless with only a thin shawl draped over their shoulders.

"I heard, this year's been unusually cold," Zuko said.
"No..?"
Zuko laughed. In the rare moments when he let his stoical, princely mask slip, his face radiated like the sun. 

They caught the end of the puppet show Aang and Toph were watching, which wasn't as innocent as Katara had expected. It tells the story of a beautiful, young blacksmith's wife who is unsatisfied with her impotent, old husband, so she sneaks around with a virile soldier her own age.

Zuko blushed and tried to hide his disapproval. Katara giggled. "Learn anything?" she said. He lowered his gaze.
Zuko's prudishness never failed to make her laugh, even though, of the two of them, Zuko was the one who wasn't a virgin. He'd had palace concubines and high-class courtesans to make a man of him, while she was from a tiny village where the only young man around her age was her brother. And even after all her travels, her virtue still remained intact, despite what Sokka assumed. The one man she wanted was too spirits-damned noble to take it.
"Let's get some kushikatsu," Zuko said as they left the puppet theater. "That should get Sokka away from the dice hall."

"Looks like we don't need to," Aang said. He pointed in front of them. Sokka came barreling out of The Forge, the gambling den where Zuko and Katara had left him.
Sokka grabbed Katara by the shoulders. "We need to get out of here...now!"