Disclaimer: This story has elements and characters from Avatar: The Last Airbender, which is owned by Nickelodeon and Viacom.
Hongda looked around at the throne, he delighted at the idea of working under the Fire Lord's wings as a war minister. He walked closer to Fire Lord Zuko and Fire Lady Mai. He could not speak for the first ten seconds after being within an arm's length of Zuko. Then he spoke after giving Zuko the Fire Nation salute and bow.
"It is an honor to get to work with you, my lord." Hongda said with a bow.
Hongda was a large, chubby man, he was taller than the average fully grown Fire Nation man at 177 cm. He sported a handlebar mustache and wore a red silk tunic. He has a burn mark on his lower cheeks from accidental firebending. He was a decent firebender but certainly nowhere near as good as anyone as Zuko or any of his firebending relatives, except Ozai (who lost his firebending during the end of the Avatar wars).
"I am Yeung Hongda, I was a general of the 11th artillery brigade and the 2nd and 6th Infantry brigade, I served in the Fire Nation army under Iroh, Zhao and Azula's command. I have participated in the first unsuccessful Seige of Ba Sing Se under your uncle's command, the close but ultimately unsuccessful Siege of the Northern Water Tribes under Zhao and the successful siege of Ba Sing Se under your sister's command." Hongda said.
He knew that he'd have to renounce his loyalties to the Ozai court if he was going to achieve the position of Fire Lord. He didn't really like Zuko much and he hated Iroh with a passion and he declared himself a sworn enemy of the White Lotus Society. Compared to Azula, Zuko was much preferable.
Zuko looked at him and knew right off the bat that appointing Hongda as Fire Lord would be controversial. Zuko though had almost no choice but to prefer him over the other choices, seeing that Hongda was the most battle hardened and experience of the high ranking officers. He knew that Hongda has served in the Fire Nation Army since before he was born, before Ozai and Ursa were married.. Hongda though was a dark-horse candidate for the position, Zuko only knew a outside-evident information of his past. Zuko did know that he was the most qualified out of the other candidates.
"Leung Hongda, do you think you can manage the duties and responsibilities of maintaining the commanding the entire Fire Nation Army, Navy, Home Guards and Airship fleet?" Zuko asked while he sipped his tea.
"Yes my lord." Hongda bowed agains before leaving
During the evening, Hongda met with his war buddies in his regular hangout. There he met with his former comrades-in-arms while getting something to drink.
"Zuko is a little more trusting of me, but he's still wary." Hongda tells him
"But remember, we need an inside man within his court in order for us to start our ascension to rule. A man that son of a bitch can be secure with!" Colonel Gao Zhihar said, literally referring to Zuko's mother Ursa. "We cannot afford to have that nephew of a motherfucker catch on to our plans!" Gao added, this time referring to Iroh.
Hongda slightly rotated his head into Gao's direction. "Yes, but lets not forget that I'm a militaryman the Fire Lord trusts the most, since the most of the generals who have survived the Avatar war, of the war trials and those who weren't 'banned' by Azula aren't worth enough shit to Zuko to command the entire Fire Nation military."
Many of the soldiers in the hangout were not very fond of Zuko taking power. They have seen the effects of the military reduction. They were the ones cast aside by his pro-peace policies. They were older men, some of them were in the standing army since Azulon's reign, they fought under three fire lords but once they were cut from the military in favor of cheaper conscripts and men-at-arms and advanced firestickmen. They became more and more disenfranchised and longed for the "good" old days prior to fall of the Sozin-line of Fire Lord and their empire. From time to time, they plan with the belligerent ex-officers to plot the downfall of Zuko. However, after Zuko was overthrown, they would not restore Ozai or Azula to the throne. Hongda would simply have Ozai killed in a savage manner. Azula made into a pleasure girl by crippling her hands and binding her feet to annul her fire bending so that high ranking members of Hongda's proposed junta would have their way with her. To Hongda and the military, they were hopeless failures, Ozai is without his bending and Azula is way too mentally unstable to have power. Hongda even came up with plans to a possibility of finding Ursa; she would be made into a concubine, used as a rape-toy solely for General Leung's pleasure.
The members of Hongda's junta were mostly eccentric men. Many of them have adopted a bizarre religion contradictory to the pagan sun-worship of the Fire Nation. Their religion was know as "Yi Tai" or the "One Sun" theology. Yi Tai was a monotheistic movement in which there are morals; one must make pilgrimage to the temple of at least three of the Sun's prophets of fire avatars, prayers must be recited five times a day in a kneeling position while facing in slightly up-angle. Fasting is to be observed from sun-up to sun down of each day, also during the summer season, meat cannot be consumed during the weekends. It is a fast growing religion among the non-peasant commoners, yeomen and the lower class merchant bourgeoisie. To the nobility, military elites and peasantry, Fire Nation paganism is still the predominant faith. Rumor has it that it was Roku himself who prophesied the Yi Tai theology. The Yi Tai is common in the Fire Nation and parts of the Earth Kingdom once dominated by the Fire Nation from Sozin to Azula's rule.
The top member next to Hongda was brigadier general Zhang. Prior to the end of the avatar wars, he was a top military aide to Ozai and taught Azula troop commands, tactics and strategy and siege craft. He was the true mastermind of the fall of Ba Sing Se; the giant drill and the Kyoshi impersonations. Zhang is also the uncle of Ty Lee. The third highest member is a Yi Tai sage named Matzai, he was a religious man. Unlike Zhang, Matzai was an open critic of the Ozai court and a secret supporter of the avatar, Iroh and the White Lotus society but he is not satisfied with the Zuko court and his progressive policies. Matzai is the best firebender in the group. Next in the ranks is Ling Dewei, he is actually an earthbender but was given rights of passage into the Fire Nation by Yi Tai missionaries and members of the White Lotus, he is a fanatical believer of the Yi Tai theology. He was an expert of propaganda and moving people. He was responsible for making anti-Fire Nation propaganda posters during the Avatar War but after the war, he switched his allegiance after the Avatar war. The next man is Han Lei, a captain in the Home Guard police force. He had a strong sense of justice during the Ozai days, but now that Ozai is no longer fire lord, he find the status quo to be degenerate and rotten to the core with Zuko in charge. The fifth man was Tao Kaizi, he served as an engineer in the Fire Nation Army, he was the inventor of explosive goo and perfected many war-time uses for it. Since the downsizing of the military, he found himself out of a job because he failed to perfect civilian uses for his inventions. As of late, he has been tied to several bombings and sinkings of freight junks. Each day, he lives in hiding out in the wilderness wanted by the Fire Nation government and various Earth Kingdom principalities and merchant aristocracies. Tao also wrote an anti-technology, anti-industry highly manifesto which was highly critical of the rapid industrialization that occurred in the Fire Nation during the Sozin line of fire lords and Ba Sing Se kingdom under Kuei's reign.
Collectively, these men make up the "Divine Revolt" syndicate. They want nothing more but to see the current line of fire lords to be ended and for a new wave of leadership to breath new air and save the Fire Nation from a damned and rotten system. They knew that the most effective way to bring down the system was to infiltrate and become part of the system. They needed someone who could grab a hold of power, especially the power that protects the Fire Lord's government, polices the nation and can exert much control over the nation; the military. Hongda was the man everyone in the Divine Revolt looked up to because of his importance.
The next day, Hongda attended a war room meeting with the Fire Lord presiding over the decisions. They were discussing the improvement of the Fire Nation's army, most specifically the transition from archers to firestickmen; men armed with firebend-powered muskets and hand-cannons, with firearms becoming more prevalent in battle, fewer men would be needed to fight battles. Also in the discussion, there was talk of slowly phasing out catapaults and other older siege craft weapons with boulder-shooter cannons and boulder-tosser howitzers. It was obvious that cannons needed fewer men to operate than catapults and siege engines used during the previous war. It was not just because of Fire Lord Zuko's dovish policies, it was also the fault of invention. The military reforms actually began under his father's rule and proposed by his sister and the war council after witnessing their failures in taking the Northern Water Tribes during the war. Zuko not only decided to follow in his father's footsteps and accept his despised sister's plans as his own but take it even further to replace all men-at-arms armed with pikes and spears with firestickmen. The reformed military would favor a conscripted army consisting of more inexperienced and lower paid enlisted men as opposed to a feudal standing army of noble warriors on large stipends, the elite Home Guards would also go through slow and steady abolishment while the Army and Navy and the Airship force are improved. Like his father, grandfather and great-grandfather, Zuko had a fascination with military technology indeed. However, his technophilia was to a much higher degree than was Ozai's.
The Fire Nation has changed in many years, during the reigns of Azulon and Ozai, the Fire Nation had already industrialized by great leaps and bounds, however industry was owned by the aristocracy and the feudal nobility and much of the production was guided by the Fire Lord himself. With the knowledge that Azulon and Ozai were militarists, much of the production and manufacturing was directed to weapons, armaments, naval vessels, artillery, tanks to contribute to their imperial war efforts. In doing so, the feudal industrialists had to sell their factories and assets. Much of the feudal industrialists lost their power and prestige, as a consequences, the bourgeoisie opened their own small-time production facilities, silk-spinning studios, foundries and warehouses to produce consumer goods such as toys, shoes. Within three years of the "Bourgeoisie takeover of production" factories expanded and grew, the wealthy Fire Nation bourgeoisie made even larger factories than the former-nobility of the Fire Nation. Many Tradionalists and Ozai-loyalists became increasingly critical of the Zuko court, labeling it as pro-Bourgeoisie, a "wrong wealth-giver." a "destroyer of traditions" although the courts of Sozin, Azulon and Ozai were the real catalyst of the bourgeoisie take-over with the initial industrialization and military modernization happening under them.
The difference between Fire Lord Zuko and his familial predecessors is that Zuko enacted the pro-Bourgeoisie political and social reforms possible to sweep out the hapless nobility through more parliamentary powers, in which the wealthiest of business owners and merchants with no drop of noble blood could finally gain power. The old nobility of the Azulon and Ozai days were rapidly demoted to socio-economic conditions lower than peasants as many of them were too used to living in aristocratic and platonic luxury, some of them have never done any backbreaking labor in their lives and all of them were too old to adapt to peasant and workingman's labor. They could only get by, by selling their arts and crafts and poetry, and much of their styles are outdated and unpopular because of the changing conditions that have relegated them into a desperate position in the first place.
Hongda and his Divine Revolt will attempt to overturn the perceived unpleasant changes; the overemphasis of the merchant class, the overemphasis of money as a means of determining wealth rather than military honors, Agni Kai status and proficiency at firebending and martial arts, all of the which were prime in the days of the Avatar wars. They will restore them, even if it means abolishing the power of the "corrupted" Fire Lord. They knew that this struggle will not come easy, they knew that the appeal of the old nobility and aristocracy would not be enough, they needed the help of peasantry and the disenfranchised middle class. They also needed to find the roots of the problem; such as new socio-economic system, the new technologies and the increasingly "representative" bourgeoisie-led government.