As the Turn of the Worlds: Aang never woke up from the iceberg, and the world went on without him, and without the Avatar. Over the next three thousand years, technology advanced astronomically - literally, the people of the overcrowded world taking to the stars, colonizing a whole new solar system with dozens of planets and hundreds of moons. Now, the Avatar is a barely-remembered myth, bending is regarded as a relic of a rightfully-dead past - and any children showing bending talent are scooped up by the government for "teaching" and are never seen again - and only two of the original countries still exist: the Fire Nation, part of the Union of Allied Planets and still one of the most powerful forces in it, and the Water Tribe, clinging to life on the Outer Rim, fighting desperately for the dream of independence. The most recent civil war ended seven years ago, in a landslide victory for the Alliance - but that doesn't mean that the fight for independence is over.

Book Three: No Power in the 'Verse: With Aang in the Fire Lord's clutches, it's a race against time and the full force of the Alliance military to free him and somehow keep war from breaking out again in the Outer Rim. Meanwhile, the crew is forced to fall back on Toph's family for sanctuary, and Yue - alone in the Fire Nation - is in over her head, trying to keep out of sight and find a way to stop Azula, who has something big up her sleeve, a high-military Alliance secret she plans to unleash on the rebellious border planets, something called the Pax...

Author's Note: There's no decent excuse for this taking five years to get from writing to publishing. I'm so sorry, to my loyal readers. But here we are, book three!

As the Turn of the Worlds

Book Three: No Power in the 'Verse

You all got on this boat for different reasons, but you come to the same place. Now I'm asking more of you than I have before, maybe all. Sure as I know anything, I know this: they will try again. Maybe on another world, maybe on this very ground swept clean. A year from now, ten, they'll swing back to the belief that they can make people better. And I do not hold to that. So no more running. I aim to misbehave.
-Malcolm Reynolds; Serenity

prelude
At the Fire Nation palace on Sihnon

Yue's hands shook as she slipped out of the record room, stomach rolling, mind reeling.

She was playing the ultimate con: convincing Princess Azula that she was a mere soldier, a nobody guard that she shouldn't even think to notice, while simultaneously recording all of her outgoing waves and unraveling her plans as she made them. Her brilliant white hair was a problem, but she'd kept it under a helmet most of the time, only her eyebrows giving her away, and as long as she made herself utterly unassuming, Azula wouldn't have cause to ever notice her.

It couldn't last. She knew that - she'd known that when she'd killed one of the guards on a bathroom break and stolen the woman's clothing, when she'd set her own bug in the princess's cortex, when she'd marched the bound-up Avatar into see the Parliament, when she'd looked him in the eyes as Azula locked him in the hold beneath the single most tightly-protected building in the known universe. She didn't mind that it wasn't going to last, not too much; distantly, she was aware that this was all horribly unfair, but the way the Avatar had locked eyes with her, clung to her as his last, most desperate hope... she didn't mind going out this way.

It frightened her, down to her bones, but fear hadn't stopped her yet, and with this new development, she was surer than ever that she was doing something important. And right now, before Azula had even noticed her, she had to get the message out - she couldn't be sure if she would have another chance, and this could not wait.

Grunts weren't allowed in the records room, but after Azula had taken her father in earlier that day to show him something, something integral to her plan, a message sent from a rim planet some ten or twelve years ago, Yue had made up her mind to find out what that message was. They must have talked it over in the room - and it must have gone well for Azula - because she had come out looking downright gleeful in a way that had chilled Yue to the bone.

She wasn't allowed into the records room, but she was nothing if not crafty, and after a lot of tinkering, she had managed to bypass the security that locked the message up to everyone short of the top-tier members of Parliament and the Fire Lord himself - even Azula's password hadn't been able to crack into it, so she'd been forced to go in sideways. It had taken work, but she'd succeeded.

She almost wished that she hadn't.

Azula's plan had become clear to her the moment the first image flashed before her eyes, and it only became more and more apparent as she watched the feed, straight until the video cut itself off. She didn't even know where to begin explaining it to Freedom, but the moon goddess had brought her to this place to see that message - she had to get it out before Azula found her and killed her.

Azula was going to do to one planet - her blood ran cold in her veins; there was only one possible target - what the scientists had accidentally done to Miranda. A show of force, a deadly threat to the rest of the Outer Rim, what their fate would be if they tried to be like the Water Tribe, if they tried to be independent, step out of line, side with the Avatar rather than the Princess. With that kind of power at her hand, she would have the entire 'Verse bowing to her, terrified of being next.

Yue barely made it to her bunk before she was sick everywhere.