Title: Shattering the Pieces

Author: i-embrace-ocd

Synopsis: Sequel to When Adventure Calls; Toph-based. A man who assisted Azula in her rebellion is working to become the most powerful figure in the world while seeking to destroy the Avatar and friends in the process. Tokka, Kataang.

OC's: 2 (one's the villain)

Author's Note: If you haven't read When Adventure Calls, I highly suggest it; it catches you up on where everyone is relationship-wise (and a lot of history of how they got there, in the case of Toph/Sokka) and clues you in to references I make to Azula's rebellion.

After 2 months, I'm finally releasing the sequel to When Adventure Calls. Hope you enjoy it. :)

Disclaimer: I don't own Avatar: The Last Airbender.

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Chapter 1: Driven to Insanity (Prologue)

The Fire Lord wasn't as oblivious as everyone seemed to think.

He was dedicated to his post. He stayed caught up in the news of all the nations and made sure to keep everything in order, even down to sending the chief of the Northern Water Tribe a birthday card when that time of year rolled around. He was always informed, and more so than many Fire Lords before him; criminal justice, education, foreign affairs - he was constantly active.

As many knew, Zuko had experienced a rough past. He had gone through so many trials and tribulations, so much inner turmoil, that he no longer believed in coincidence. Destiny was everything: He made connections in his mind that caused him to believe that everything in his life had led up to his ultimate destiny - being Fire Lord. He believed that he was always meant for the position, though he admitted that he hadn't always been aware of it.

Therefore, keeping in mind that Zuko was constantly given the latest international news and that, to him, coincidence didn't exist, it should come as no surprise that he made a connection between the deaths of three nobles (one from each nation) in the period of one week.

What's worse on Zuko's part is that all of the deaths were anticipated, so, if he expressed his concerns that something bad was sure to happen (and soon), he wouldn't be believed. Being taken seriously, of course, wasn't a problem; however, if he was wrong, his credibility would be shattered, and good credibility was essential for an effective ruler. All these things he contemplated, and he went over all of the deaths (murders, as he mentally referred to them) in his head:

Kolu had been the right-hand-man of the chief of the Northern Water Tribe. Of course, he had been in his prime when the airbenders were wiped out, so he was getting on in years; his death (in his sleep, so they said) came as no surprise to anyone and, while he would be missed, the cause of his passing was given little investigation. This was normally the case with deaths of the elderly.

In addition to Kolu, a man from the Earth Kingdom's Foreign Affairs branch (he was Head of the Integration Committee and encouraged international peace and brotherhood) was murdered in one of the largest Fire Nation cities - Fire Nation citizens tolerated the other nations; they did not accept them, and many still harbored ill feelings in regard to others of different nationalities. Seeing as how the man had (supposedly) been killed by a mob protesting his presence, the entire town was simply punished by being put under the supervision of soldiers from the Fire Nation army that were instructed to keep peace within the city's boundaries. As he had not been welcome inside of the city's borders to begin with, his death was no surprise, though it did present problems for Zuko; his citizens were (probably falsely) accused of murder, and, no matter how disappointed he was, he had to take responsibility.

Finally, the Governor of Ongata (the sister city to the Fire Nation's capital) was also murdered. He himself had been hated by his people as a result of a few recent laws he'd passed regarding taxes and marrying into separate nations; governors normally weren't given the freedom to pass laws that dealt with such matters, but Zuko was inundated with work, so he'd given them more freedom in the hope that they might leave him to his business. One man in particular had been making (what Zuko considered to be empty) threats regarding Ongata's governor, so, instead of dedicating time to investigate the death, soldiers arrested the "offender." Said threats he'd made had been declared in a tavern after he'd had a few rounds, but his state of mind was no matter. He'd said the threats, and for all anyone else knew, he'd followed through with them.

Zuko connected all three deaths and attributed them to a single cause: Something was happening. It was obviously not good, so, as soon as he had a conversation with his uncle, he planned to call a meeting with the Avatar. If something was happening, Aang ought to be informed.

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Standing over the threshold of a dwelling that vaguely resembled a cabin was a man.

He was neither short nor tall, neither portly nor especially thin; one wouldn't describe him as clean-shaven or even hygienic, though he did look considerably better than he had in almost four years. The war had taken a lot out of him - almost as much as it'd taken from him. His wealth, his status, his family... he'd lost everything.

Well, maybe not everything. One thing he hadn't lost was his dream. In fact, he had kept it with him all of those years, had even allowed it to grow, to expand. His dream was this: He yearned to have control. Originally he had planned for his control to be over the Fire Nation, but ever-ambitious, as many Fire Nation nobles had been before the war, he had extended the reaches of his power to include the entire world, to include all three nations. His dream had evolved into this, had evolved into something horrible and ugly, had changed to include reigning over the conquerers of the world (he often thought of the Avatar and his comrades as such).

He kept this dream close to him since the death (the murder) of his family, as it was the only thing in which he could seek solace; now that he had begun to put his plan into action, however... he was beginning to get caught up in how well everything was turning out. He did think it was a little irrational to have killed all three men within such a close time range, but it was necessary to arouse Zuko's suspicions. He wanted to know that the Fire Lord was having sleepless nights. It brought him such inhuman comfort, to know that the man who had essentially ruined his life was experiencing uneasiness and worry. Of course he was worrying - he couldn't possibly have any idea of what was really going on, that the deaths of so many important officials (and he wasn't finished, goodness no) was only the icing on the cake instead of the real threat. Perhaps Zuko knew this, but there was no way to be sure, and it didn't matter either way: There was nothing he could do now.

Not one thing.

He had begun scheming when he first heard that Prince Zuko had discovered the Avatar. Since then he had partaken in many attempts to keep the Fire Nation as the predominant world power or, after the war had ended, to redeem his nation; his most successful attempt was Azula's rebellion. Even if it was called Azula's rebellion, she'd had to have a man behind the curtain pulling the strings. Most thought of her as a one-man (one-woman, really) operation with the exception of Mai and Ty Lee; though a woman as young as herself would have run into many obstacles in gathering so many weapons, in amassing such as army right under the Fire Lord's nose. He had assisted her greatly, had supported the idea from the start, but when the rebellion had failed... he'd returned to his original plan, to his greatest idea yet.

The frightening thing was that he was no longer a man with just a dream or an idea. He was actually making his dream a reality, was taking the necessary steps to make his idea so much more. He dedicated his life to it; he had contacts now, men who would succeed those he had managed to "take care of" (kill and murder were terribly incriminating words). These men were on his side, believing that their status would increase greatly when the Avatar was replaced as the most powerful figure in the world.

Of course, in order to seize control of the world, he had to remove whoever was already in the most powerful position. This was the Avatar, and, as he blamed the Avatar for everything (as most Fire Nation citizens did), conviction wouldn't be the problem. Method would be his main issue, but he had that all worked out.

Suffering was key, of course. He would make the Avatar suffer by making him watch the world fall to pieces; he would make sure that Aang had front row seats to witness all of his hard work destroyed, all of the nations corrupted. He would make every living thing kneel at his feet, and he would make the Avatar watch; the only punishment worse than that for the Avatar would be to destory his friends, and, of course, he had these things planned, too.

The earthbender would be the first to go.

Without a doubt, he hated her the most. She had led them to where he and his family had been tucked away in hiding, awaiting the arrival of a ship that would carry them to a nearby island. She had shown them where he and his family had been, had provided them with his family's whereabouts so that they could destroy everything he cared about. He may have been a ruthless man when it came to fighting for his nation and what he believed in, but he had a heart, and it had been crushed when the echoing cries of his baby girl had resonated throughout the forest in which they had taken refuge; his infant daughter had been taken! He suspected that perhaps she was still alive somewhere, that she would be raised in a law-abiding Fire Nation household where she would learn the ways of the new era; his stomach churned at the thought of such early corruption (of the innocent!) and he believed that death was certainly more suitable. At least then he wouldn't be kept awake at night by the idea that in a few years his baby girl would grow into a woman who fought for the Fire Lord and his twisted beliefs.

He planned to go after them all from the inside, from their secrets fears - he would attack what they cared about first, and then, by destroying the earthbender (oh, how he had plans for that one), he would begin his cycle of destruction on the warrior. With him taken care of, the waterbender would come next. Once he had taken all of them down, tortured them from the inside out, he would already be well on his way to the internal demise of the Avatar.

He wouldn't kill Aang. That would be stupid. He would simply settle for the next best thing: Make him wish he was dead. If you break a man's spirit, then you have broken the man himself, and this is what he intended to do.

The man disappeared into the confines of the dwelling. The empty cage of his messenger hawk (it was the same one he'd had since he was fourteen, and had been his closest companion ever since) sat atop a rickety wooden table in one corner of the main room. Having just walked inside, against the wall opposite from him was a desk.

Upon the desk were several rolled up scrolls. One, however, was sprawled out the entire length of the piece of furniture; strange symbols of a dead language lined the top of the scroll, and the body of the scroll was a map of the world. In the corners were symbols designating the four nations, and a single white line was drawn from each symbol connecting to the northernmost region of the Southern Air Temple. Above this island was another symbol, this one of a light blue diamond; it's borders were lined with gold (not yellow, but a true, shimmering gold, untouched by time and handling). Above this, written in a more recent (but still quite old) script in white letters that looked quite beautiful written over the blue of the ocean, were the words, "Four nations, one people."

The other scrolls held secrets of deciphering the words written at the top, secrets describing what the scroll's contents entailed, secrets that told of what power one held when one unlocked everything about the secret as old as history itself.

The man's name, Kanaye, could be translated to "zealous one." This he certainly was; one would have had to be, if one aspired to cause an ancient race to rise again among the world governed by the Avatar and be the most powerful person in the world.

The Avatar, in fact, had come from this race of super-benders; they had been called the Shinsei, meaning "pure." They had been able to bend each element in its purest form. They did not, however, have the benefits of the Avatar State (among other things, though Kanaye still had much to learn about the Shinsei; that isn't to say he would before awakening them).

His plan was already being put into effect: The deaths of important figures (and the rising of his own allies into their places), the discomfort of the Fire Lord, the scroll with the secret to world domination (a cliché phrase, certainly, but oh-so appropriate). It wouldn't be long. No, his wait was nearly over - soon he would begin making his way to a coastal Earth Kingdom city in which he would exchange words and key items of the expensive to borderline priceless variety, and then he could begin his journey to that northernmost region of the Southern Air Temple, where he was sure his destiny awaited.

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Author's Note: In case you're wondering, Kanaye is pronouced "Kuh-nahye." Second syllable rhymes with eye. Next chapter we pick up with the Gaang, so stay tuned!