The Impossible Tales of the Tea Shop
or
The Summer Vacation and The Comic Book Store
"Azula?" Karo asked politely as he looked for his friend.
"I sent Azula on a run an hour ago." Katara poked her head out of the tea shop kitchen.
"I have working knowledge of this paradigm," Karo stood in front of the counter, "and that means I have to go to the comic book store and find her." Karo tapped the glass above the mint candies he liked.
"Can you please go find her?" Katara came out and handed Karo a bag of candies. "Sundays are slow and we never have any customers but that doesn't mean she can just go and take long lunch hours at the comic book shop."
"Half of the arguments between you two revolve around how utterly useless you find Azula as a co – worker." Karo handed over the change to pay for the candies. "The other half of the arguments revolve around how she plans to see how long it takes her to give you acid reflux disease."
Katara discovered the one thing Azula knew about the tea shop: she knew how to operate the cash register. Katara fumbled with the keys, struck the thing with her hand and discovered the massive brass and steel contraption didn't fall to persuasion.
"Can you go find her!?" Katara looked down in exacerbation at the register. "Consider the candies your payment for doing me this favor."
Karo looked out of the window of the tea shop.
"We've had two weeks of steady rain. Azula may have gone off to work on our ark." Karo grumbled. "I sang a few dreary hymns and then the pastor said something droll about God's plan for our lives."
Katara hit the register and her eyebrows narrowed.
"Shall I find Azula then?" Karo realized the register could not too many more well placed blows.
"Get her back here so I don't have to figure out how to operate this gizmo from Hell." Katara said emphatically.
Karo left the tea shop.
"Neither of them have acid reflux but I'll die of a bleeding ulcer." Karo mumbled as he unfurled his umbrella and stepped out in the street. "When did the Water Tribe girl learn about Hell?"
Azula and Karo hung out at a small comic book store named Metropolis Comics which Katara regarded as too close to work: – Azula could wander off up the block and go shopping there. The store served the local neighborhood and provided its services to the local society of geeks; Karo and Azula were members in good standing of this community. Metropolis Comics belonged to a nervous man in his thirties who had Tourettes affectionately named Koichi 'Shakes' Yamoto.
Karo left the tea shop and walked up the street to the store with the most posters in its windows. This was the comic book store. Karo pushed the door open and a little set of wind chimes with a brass bell announced his arrival.
"Good morning – Karo." Koichi stammered. "Are you looking for Azula?" He pointed an unsteady finger at the graphic novel display.
"How come you can always hunt me down?" Azula stacked another graphic novel onto a stack she had been growing beside of the display. "I told Katara I was taking lunch. So she sent you to take me back to the tea mine?"
Karo looked into his bag of candy. "She has trouble running the cash and she just gave me a bag of sea salt flavored candies. I like the peppermint or cinnamon ones – who eats sea weed flavored candies?i" Karo grimaced in disgust. "Those with iodine deficiencies might eat them. The rest of us go 'yuck'."
"The same fine folks who make Radium Yums Glowing Green Lime flavored candies." Azula picked up her stack of comics and walked over to place them on Koichi's desk. "The same fine folks who made Radium Yums until the lawsuits for all the bone cancer cases hit the courts." Azula had made that particular factoid up but Iroh did buy some unlikely flavored candies including ones for diabetics that left a metallic aftertaste in the mouth.
"She can't run the cash register?" Azula handed over her money and Koichi put her purchase in a plain paper bag. "She has to take the order and enter the amount for each item in the register which then makes clunking sounds. You ask for the total amount displayed in flip leaf numbers and the customer hands you a fiver. Anyhow, what has the princess confused?"
"Always nice to enjoy your business." Koichi handed over the receipt. "Do you have your tickets for GalaxieCon next weekend?"
"I bought ours a month ago." Karo reminded Koichi as he dumped a bag of candies into the bin next to the display desk that served as Koichi's desk. "We should get back before Katara has kittens..."
"I live to aggravate that woman." Azula picked up her bag. "We all need hobbies. Are we at the water bender can't eat spicy food' stage yet?"
Azula had a stack of freshly minted Planet of the Apes graphics novels and she manned her seat behind the lobby of the tea shop quietly reading 'ape fiction'.
A restaurant supply delivery man sidled up to the desk and cleared his throat.
"May I speak to Iroh?" The man asked as he held a clipboard tucked under his arms. "I have his order of specialty teas."
Azula slowly closed her book in a manner she had mastered that conveyed annoyance and contempt. She sighed as she picked up her Periodic Table of the Elements bookmark and placed in the book.
"Uncle Iroh has gone to the rec center to play Pai Sho." Azula answered. "I'll fetch the cook."
Azula leaned through the kitchen door. "Can you come out Katara. Someone wants to drop off a load of special tea."
"Since when do we receive deliveries on Sundays?" Katara walked out of the kitchen and into the lobby.
"If one of you won't mind signing?" The man pressed a pen against the paper on his clipboard. "We didn't have all the teas he wanted when we did our delivery on Thursday so I brought the last three boxes while I did another run out here."Sorry, we're just the part time help." Katara blushed softly and signed the paper. The invoice appeared in order, the Chai Bei Tea Company was Iroh's supplier of extra special import teas and the quantities looked about right for the tea shop. "Leave them in the lobby and we'll put them away."
The man tore off the receipt and handed it to Katara.
Azula resumed reading her book.
"Did you ever think you'd spend your days putting away tea." Katara sighed as she recalled her past glories as a pageant in the theater of her mind. "I taught the Avatar to water bend and you are a Fire Nation princess."
The man dragged a dolly into the lobby, smiled and dropped the boxes of tea off then left.
"I don't want to be a princess." Azula turned a page in her book. "You have had talked to me about all your regrets and it boils down to wanting to meet a nice man and start a family. Sokka has a wife and has begun a family. Zuko has a wife and begun a family – Lord knows I didn't want them to breed. Aang used to sing lewd songs to you. Your dad dated my mom. You like to imagine Karo and I have something going on but I assure you we don't."
Katara picked up a box of tea. "I always hear you telling me exactly the same thing. I'm in a rut."
"You can make the word Lazy out of Azula – well you can't - but let go with a workable falsehood." Azula shuffled her book to one side having realized that Katara had no intention of letting her finish reading it. She placed her hands behind her head and leaned back on her chair. "I consider myself the model for modern young women. You think I'm congenitally lazy and a terrible role model because I seek to be efficient and I want to be a scientist of great repute. All I know of kids comes from hearing them throwing a tantrum in the toy section of a department store or kicking the back of my seat on trains or buses. I thought you wanted to become a doctor – you've chosen the science stream in high school."
"I don't know. I'd like to become a doctor." Katara lugged the box of tea off to storage in the kitchen. "I'd like to have a family, loving husband and raise nice kids."
"You have a goal. I think nice and kids is an oxymoron." Azula answered back. "We need doctors. I need two to keep me chugging along. One keeps my body going; the other keeps me from having seizures. Both of them make a packet for writing a word or two on paper and telling me I have nothing to worry about."
Katara returned to fetch the second box.
"I consider myself a traditional healer as was my Gran Gran." Katara reminded Azula as she lugged off the second box.
"Yes...but traditional healers don't drive nice cars." Azula returned the remark. "What about a pharmacist? You can be the guy in the white coat who places pills in a cheap bottle and charges me a packet each month. I think most of the training amounts to deciphering the doctor's handwriting hieroglyphics." Azula had a sharp hint of derision in her voice. "You could be a nurse. We have enough old codgers around to keep you in work for millenia."
"Why does it take half an hour to shove two hundred pills in a bottle?" Azula stood next to Karo who had the blood pressure monitor on his arm. She had a dislike for the pharmacy and disliked the way renewing a prescription interfered with her day by taking at least a half hour. "I've come to the same chemist for years and they still take a half an hour to fill my prescription for valproic acid. Don't forget to remind me to get another 'Epi – Pen'. Katara is celebrating Shark Days in two weeks and I broke my former Epi – Pen playing darts with it."
She put on a pair of reading glasses.
"Pot costs less and the nasty looking guy at the school with the wispy beard can get my order filled in a minute." Azula tried on another pair of glasses. "On those days when he's aware or conscious."
"I have nothing to say except that the chart says I have moderately high blood pressure." Karo let the air out of the cuff. "I think you've had that effect on me."
"I'm only too happy to help." Azula shifted over to another display. "I have never found glasses for color blindness." Azula picked up a bottle of pink stomach medicine and a bottle of purple powder. "What color is this?"
"The pink goop or the purple powder?" Karo held up the stethoscope. "The pink stuff fixes your stomach; the purple stuff kills foot fungus. Don't mix the two up or you'll die."
"What if I have stomach fungus?" Azula began tapping her feet impatiently. "The local chemists loses much of its convenience when you have to stand around a half hour to get a prescription filled."
"Why not just phone the drugstore ahead of time?" Karo countered. "They'll fill your prescription and you just come down and pick it up."
"Or they'll screw up and I'll end up with birth control pills." Azula had found herself astonished by the frequency of dispensing errors made by drugstores. She had received (wrongly) birth control pills, a vial of some chemotherapy drug, a bottle of barium, heroin, warfarin, a bunch of anti psychotic sample packs and insulin.
"Azula Kai – your prescription is ready." A white haired man with a wiry mustache called out from behind the counter.
Azula walked up to the counter and examined the bottle. "Azula Kai: take one twice a day. Streptomycin?"
She turned around to Karo. "Do I have syphilis?"
"It may explain a good many things." Karo mumbled as he pumped the rubber ball to inflate the blood pressure cuff. He wanted to double check the previous reading. "I don't think so – why?"
"Listen ... um ... drugstore minion." Azula held her breath to check her anger. "I have a prescription for Valproic Acid. You simply had to pour two hundred pills from the big brown jar o' pills labeled Valproic Acid to the little blue ones and slap a label on it that instructs me not to take them on an empty stomach or some such."
"My mistake...so sorry!" The chemist blushed apologetically. "The navy has come to Ba Sing Se and during navy week we have lots of demand for drugs to treat syphilis."I will resist the urge to be rude." Azula tapped her fingers on the gray granite counter top. "What was that other thing I had on my list?"
"An Epi – Pen." Karo returned the stethoscope to the stand. "Katara keeps serving up Water Tribe cuisine and most of that comes in the form of fish."
"I'm bored!" Azula walked along the wide boulevard known as The Ichidan; the main street in their neighborhood where swanky shops, upscale jewelers and high end dental clinics occupied the first floor of the Victorian style five story blocks of flatsii. During the long hot summer evenings, locals strolled along the maple tree lined street to escape the heat and window shop.
Karo stopped humming whatever complicated musical theme in E Flat minor had wafted through his head.
"We have the comic book conference this weekend." Karo said cautiously as he tried to avoid having the unique pleasure of keeping Azula occupied.
Azula regarded Karo's musical side as a show of his strange ingenuity with music. He could unravel the potential of the simple melodic cells and toyed with them like a cat with a catnip filled mouse: he argued with a clear direction and his 'sound' was quite personal. He also had a faultless memory for music. She could interrupt him and they'd talk for five minutes and he'd pick up the tune at exactly the note bar and measure he had left it. She found this quirk very interesting.
"Cat fried to death in overhead power lines?" Azula asked Karo as he looked at the display of atlases in an upscale bookstore window.
"Uh – what?" Karo wrinkled his nose and sniffed the air. "No – uh – the wind is blowing out of the northwest which means the oil refinery. The south brings in the stockyards and the smell of dying pigs."
Ba Sing Se had pollution problems from the coal fired power plants and industrial factories and heat made it often intolerable in the summer. They had taken down the old city walls to alleviate the problem but it did little except allow the city to expand outward. They had banned open fires. They had electrified the city and pollution kept ahead of the planners. Odor in Ba Sing Se did have one use: a skilled nose like Karo's could function as a kind of 'City Positioning System' because a skilled sniffer could triangulate their position by looked at a flag or banner to gauge the wind direction and sniffing the air to see which industrial facility was downwind.
Azula handed her ticket to an ape manning the admittance booth at the ma
in doors to the conference center hall. As the theme this year was Planet of the Apes; this did not take her as a sign of mental illness.
Karo handed in his ticket with total obedience. The ape ticket taker had very good make up and rather bad breath.
Karo had visited the famous and world renowned Proserpine Hotel tea shop. The Proserpine Hotel was a ten story hotel on top of a huge conference center, restaurant, tea shop, bar and casino. The Proserpine put other hotels to shame for its opulence and from the outside, showed off its baroque facades as well as any church. The Suihanese baroque and Palladio styles had become fashionable in the last few decades before the War. Karo never fully understood why. Suihan architecture had come from their skills at building their churches with stained glass and lots of ornamentation and it seemed inappropriate for a building with a secular function.
The conference hall of the hotel put on its own show. Built before the War when hideous opulence was is fashion, anything not plastered in frescoes was gilded in gold included the tops and bottoms of the marble columns. Karo always thought the place went a bit too far. The tea room had carved amber sky lights made of the real stuff; not gussied up brown beer bottle glass. Karo accepted it as one of the laws of the free market that a tea shop with punch pouring out of the mouth of a two meter long swan carved out of ice could charge twenty times more than Iroh for the same cup of tea.
Azula had the heebie jeebies. She looked up at a dome with a chandelier that spanned distance of a modest house. The thing was gilt in gold and had lead crystal balls dangling tassels. On the dome above it, lit by the mottled yellow light of a thousand ten watt light bulbs was a fresco of a swan being chased by nude women. This kind of hall did not suit a crowd of comic book geeks walking around in ape masks working their way from booth to booth but comic conventions made the hotel money and that helped pay for someone to change the light bulbs in the chandeliers. She knew of mad kings, lords and nobility and this conference hall had all the hallmarks of a building designed by one.
A red haired cosplayer in rugged gray green cargo pants and black shirt swing from chandelier to chandelier as part of a promotion for a new series of graphic novels based on the radio serial 'Kate Plausible'. As with all comic book conventions; the event was not so much about indulging fans and their favorite fantasy worlds as separating those fans from their monies. Azula saw her hanging from the thin wires used by circus performers: rather than from the end of a grappling hook shot out of a red grappling hook gun as the promoters would have one believe.
The acrobat playing 'Kate' circled and then landed directly in front of Azula and Karo still holding the red grappling gun. She hung by thin wires from a system of canteniary wires on the ceiling but clever tricks, lighting and her own training as an acrobat hid them from view. She appeared as if she hung by the rope of the gun.
"If it isn't Azula!" The actress playing 'Kate' ran forward and hugged Azula.
Azula had the look of a gazelle in the jaws of a jungle cat. She had no idea why a radio character and one she didn't particularly like; might be crushing her.
"I think we have to establish some answers to a few questions." Azula explained as 'Kate' let go. "The fact is I don't know who you are at this moment."
"It's me, Ty Lee." the girl explained. "We grew up together. I knew you as a little girl and then you left with your mother and I became a professional circus performer."
Azula had a problem with faces. Karo had to sometimes wave and shout out to catch her attention and he suspected this kind of thing went deeper than Azula's social ineptness which – after all – was about on the same scale as his. He could recognize faces but voices – they were his thing – and something about the voice of the girl triggered some kind of recognition in his mind but he couldn't flesh it out.
"I think you had a whole bunch of sisters?" Azula tried to connect a few facts as she bumbled around looking for a means to connect this girl with memories from her childhood. "We had lots of visitors and I remember a family with a tribe of five or six girls who came calling and my mom always sent me and my brother out to play with them." Azula scratched her head. "In any event, this is my friend, Karo Zhao, the son of Admiral Zhao."
Karo Zhao bowed. "Welcome to Ba Sing Se."
"You have a cute accent." Ty Lee remarked and Karo blushed. "Suihanese? You have the red hair of someone from the Dominion."
"Ty Lee once belonged to a noble family and gave it all up to pursue her passion to perform in the circus." Karo recalled the name from Suki who had trained Ty Lee as a Kyoshi Warrior while imprisoned. "Ty Lee had rebelled against her very distinguished family and so to hide their disgrace; they had her tracked down, arrested and thrown in prison." Karo shook his head in disbelief. "Am I the kind of man who attracts ex – cons."
"Probably attracts cons and sailors given your leanings." Azula had her attention on the details of the engine room of a famous space ship in science fiction and drank in every detail. "She did nothing wrong except that she dressed up as Kate Plausible for money."
"She wanted me to go for a ride on her grappling gun." Karo mused over a warp core which gave off heat and glowed pale blue. Silver bands spaced half a meter long gave it the 'science fiction feel' although they mainly served to keep the whole thing glued together and standing. Someone had made it to scale which meant Karo was examining a perspex tube four meters tall and a meter wide. Karo tapped the thing. It made a fine pitched ring. "I can't see that being a euphemism but one never knows."
"Her bare midriff may have influenced your mind to think that." Azula had her mind on getting the three figures to complete her collection for this particular cast of fictional characters and wondered where they had hid the merchandising arm of the franchise. "I can't see you hanging from a grappling hook swinging with a copy of 'Kate Plausible' because you hate heights."
"Not so much the heights but the sudden stop at the end worries me." Karo tried pressing colored buttons on a mock console out of an idle curiosity to see what the red one actually did.
Azula had a mental list of her objectives at the comic convention. One of them involved filling out a list of collectable figures, cards and a number of autographs. She had a backpack full of items which she wished autographed.
Karo had a girl compliment him on something. This went against the way Karo modeled the world in his mind.
"Ty Lee has a job to do and that's to sell people on the idea of a new product – 'Kate Plausible' graphic novels. Kate's a teenage girl who fights super villains and that kind of thing appeals to guys in your age group." Azula had seen enough and left the large 'prop' and made her way to the shop attached to it to fill the gaps in her collection.
"Does that mean my accent was not cute?" Karo followed Azula.
"Suihan sounds pleasing to the ear with its gentle sounds." Azula walked over to the display of figures. "I wouldn't call it cute but the accent has a charm to it." Azula examined each figure carefully. "What you should ask is why a woman destined for greatness as a warrior has come to a comic book convention?"
Part of that answer came while Azula and Karo had lunch. Fat Boy - the official lunch and dinner of fan boys - set up in a booth and dispensed the best fast food their minimum wage slaves could fry up. The booth looked like every Fat Boy ever constructed right down to the steel Fat Boy trash bin with the mouth that opened to accept refuse. Azula didn't eat meat but had a thing for the Fat Boy Bladder Buster and Sodium Enriched Onion Rings while Karo liked the chicken nuggets and Fat Boy fries.
With their paper tray and blue and red Fat Boy paper cups, the two comic convention goers sat on a wooden bench beside the large clay a strange looking palm planted directly under a skylight. The tree was real, kept alive by central heating and tender care. Ty Lee in the guise of Kate swung around the palm tree in a gentle descending spiral and landed almost silently before Karo and Azula.
"I had heard something rustling." Azula looked up at the tree. "I thought maybe a spider had come along when they shipped it up from the Western Air Temple."
"Ty Lee?" Azula had scarcely heard the girl land. Azula had not expect to see a girl fly in around a palm in a fine flowing acrobatic swing. 'And just how many wires had they strung around this place?' was her first question. 'Why would they go to that kind of expense?' was her second question. Stringing wires for acrobats cost no small some and The Proserpine Hotel never failed to charge when it could. Azula had no doubt the hotel had charged extra to cover insurance should 'Kate Plausible' do a face plant in the fountain.
"How has your morning been?" Karo had nearly perfect Chinese but he rolled his 'r' sounds and smoothed out the hard consonants to match his mellifluous ear for Suihan.
Azula wondered for a moment if he made a bit more out of his sing song accent than he normally would. Karo had a humble way about him but no one was beyond fishing for a complement.
"I catch the attention of everyone as I swing over their heads." Ty Lee said happily. "I've never heard of 'Kate Plausible' before a week ago but the pay is decent."
"The company that publishes her graphics novels has deep pockets." Azula said unenthusiastically. "They'd have to pay me a heap to get me into that costume."
"Well...how do you like our city?" Karo hastily intervened lest Azula show too much of her lack of enthusiasm.
"Of course Ba Sing Se has so much to see and do. I didn't know it was so big. I came in by airship and I couldn't see anything but buildings from horizon to horizon."
"Seven million people call this city home." Karo explained proudly. Karo had lived in Ba Sing Se most of his life and had come to grips with the size of the city by ignoring its scale. Even during the War, he couldn't see the wall surrounding the city – in recent years much of it had come down and the city longing for more space spilled out over more of the landscape. "I take half a day to cross the whole city."
"I toured the Dominion in the spring and they have a few big cities like this." Ty Lee said introspectively. In fact, Odapest, a former city state in the Dominion rivaled Ba Sing Se in terms of size. "I wonder why the Fire Nation Capitol never got so big?"
"My dad ran the economy into the ground." Azula bluntly said and then shoved an onion ring into her mouth.
"Mind if I sit with you?" Ty Lee smiled brightly.
Karo nodded nervously.
Azula looked unable to refuse but she harbored a wish to do so.
Ty Lee sat down and Azula offered her an onion ring.
"I don't eat fried food – thanks anyway." Ty Lee said politely.
"What else is there to eat?" Azula looked down at her onion rings. "I work in a tea shop run by my Uncle Iroh and I wouldn't dream of eating some of what he boils."
"We have busy lives as students and sometimes we don't have time to cook anything." Karo explained as he chewed on a rubbery chicken nugget. "Think of it as factory made food for people – People Chow."
Azula remembered a friendly girl she had played with in the palace yard. The girl had dark brown hair in a braid who walked on her hands, did cartwheels and liked 'pretty things'. This girl sat next to her now. She found it difficult to accept that anyone from her childhood would remember her as she spent as much of her time alone as her parents and their social obligations allowed.
"So why are you - uh – working the comic convention circuit." Azula asked curiously. "I thought you'd have a career with the Kyoshi Warriors."
"I get to travel the world and I live to entertain." Ty Lee offered as an answer. "My family wants little to do with me now. They consider me a traitor since I sided with the Kyoshi Warriors."
Karo found this serious tone a strange thing to hear from Ty Lee.
Ba Sing Se had become the cultural center of the world as the War had drawn in refugees like him to seek protection behind its walls and now the cultural diversity had born fruit. He had assumed Ty Lee had come to Ba Sing Se to witness the vibrant community of artists and actors. He had never assumed she'd be a kind of refugee.
"You know I haven't been back to The Dominion since I was a small child." Karo said sympathetically. "I can barely remember anything but the olive trees."
"You remember olive trees?" Azula loitered at the booth for one of the leading graphic novel publishers. "Why the olive trees?"
"We had a large grove of them." Karo leafed through a color novel. "My family has a large estate near Komatsuiii where we grew grapes and olives, made wine, olive oil and I think how different my life would have turned out if my father liked to grow things."
"I know Ty Lee." Katara smiled and nodded when Azula mentioned her name. "She toured with the circus during the War. She had a thing for my brother Sokka."
Azula and Karo had returned to the tea shop around supper time as Katara prepared to close. They had bags filled with trinkets and toys and Azula had an interesting story of a girl who had complimented Karo.
Karo sat at the Pai Sho table and stared at a box containing a Lego Death Star he had bought. He had bought the thing because it came in a large box with a picture of the completed product on the front of the box and looked cool. He had also bought a Lego City of the Planet of the Apes with Lego apes.
Karo realized he might end up leaving both of them in their boxes because while he could draw; he was mechanically declined. He rattled the boxes and heard many little bits that needed the instructions and the patience of a guru to put together.
Azula had her large purchase on the Pai Sho table. She had purchased a Lego Solar System model with real sun action – Karo hoped to God Azula wouldn't ignite fusion in the plastic sun. She had a light saber and a whole collection of graphic novels including two Kate Plausible novels she had decided to buy.
"The tea shop badly needs a large gray round piece of plastic." Katara said slyly as she walked toward the table.
"Give me two years." Karo tapped the box. "Besides that, toys keep their value when left unopened."
"Tell me about this girl you met." Katara decided to have some fun with Karo. Karo had his charm, intelligence and was a nice person, but most girls except Azula made him nervous. "Ty Lee is her name?"
Karo shook the box nervously. "What about her?"
"Azula said she called you cute."
Karo looked to Azula who sat behind her heap of the haul from the comic convention.
"She said my accent was cute." Karo corrected the record. "She complimented my charming accent, sense of nationalism and pride in my native language."
"Katara keeps hoping you'll find a nice girl and settle down." Azula held the box with the City of the Apes toy and wondered which would happen first: the Sun would go supernova or Karo would put this thing together. "Ty Lee is quite the fox. Maybe you should give this a try."
"Are you willing to give up the one man in your life?" Karo blushed. "You'd have no one to bash spiders into oblivion and isn't that the evolutionary function of the human male?"
On the second day of the comic convention, Karo and Azula watched movies. Meeting halls off the convention hall had been converted to theaters with enough seat for fifty patrons at a time. One could see previews of what the studios planned to release, popular series and even obscure documentaries on things of interest to comic fans.
The list of programs included the premier of the 'Kate Plausible' cartoon.
"I guess they want all of our money." Azula stood in front of the poster and sneered cynically.
Karo put his hands on his hip and muttered: "I thought this comic convention was all about the apes..."
"Humans are apes." Azula divulged a common science fact. "If Kate is like us, she's an ape to so I see no contradiction."
"I know this but I mean...look you know what I mean." Karo wrinkled his nose in disgust. "I mean ape action with gorillas and the Forbidden Zone and Doctor Zaius and 'you blew it up!' and mute humans."
"Do you think Cornelius says 'ick' when he crushes a spider?" Azula patted Karo's back. "We've seen the cosplayer; we may as well see the cinematic version. They've promised another viewing in fifteen minutes."
"Oh very well...next time you see one of those eight legged cinder block sized arachnids from Hell; you can ask Cornelius to smash it." Karo moved forward reluctantly into the meeting hall.
"Have you figured out how to put your Lego kits together?" Azula found two aisle seats toward the back of the theater and motioned for Karo to take a seat.
Karo sat down next to Azula and gravely crossed his legs. "Each one has an instruction manual that reminds me of what the engineering diagrams for The Drill must have looked like. I could be building a Lego model of The Death Star or a new kind of matter to energy bomb as far as I know."
"Usually those kits come with a list of parts." Azula had speculated on just such a bomb to find out that while the equations could work; she needed Uranium in vast quantities and the kind of money no one had. Even if those limitations weren't enough, she had no target market to make it pay given that such a device removed small islands from the globe and island removal wasn't in demand.
Ty Lee worked her way toward Karo and Azula. She wore her pink skirt and top.
"Hello!" She smiled. "How are you two doing?"
"Aren't you supposed..." Azula cut her voice off as she slid past her to stand next to Karo.
"To be hanging from a grapple?" Azula's voice slowly died off.
"I'm so glad to meet you Azula." Ty Lee smiled. "I miss the Fire Nation. I mean before I was banished."
"Oh...I was kind of banished." Azula spoke apologetically.
"My dad didn't want me to join the circus and tour the world." Ty Lee answered honestly.
Azula wasn't banished but her mother had escaped Fire Lord Ozai's wrath by fleeing to Ba Sing Se. She had knowledge of his plan to kill the old Lord, this in Ozai's eyes meant even his wife had to die. She did nothing to spare Lord Azulon but she knew her husband would sacrifice her should his murderous plot be uncovered. The Dominion helped her flee as they understood Lord Ozai would only try to conquer them. They regarded her as one of their own and so made plans to aid her escape. They wished to help Lady Ursa and both children escape (they came so close to sparing Zuko so much suffering) but Zuko had gone on training with Uncle Iroh. They had spiesiv everywhere and so when Ozai summoned his own secret police to take Ursa, it so happened the Dominion spies showed up in the uniforms of the secret police. They carried Lady Ursa and Azula in a steel cage and loaded her onto a ship for the Earth Kingdom. They spent time in an Earth Kingdom refugee camp until the money to free them reached the camp.
Fire Lord Ozai called this 'banishment' although he could not find his wife, had no clue where she lived or any idea of her well-being. After the War as he faced trial. Once Uncle Iroh knew no harm would come to Lady Ursa, Iroh sent Ozai a message to inform him of the whereabouts of his wife. Lady Ursa returned to the Fire Nation and remarried Lord Ihen. The Dominion has wished her to become Fire Lord but Zuko held the throne.
"You'd starve to death if you got paid for each piece you fit on that thing." Azula found it too hot to go outside on this Monday afternoon and decided to hang with Karo as he put together his Lego Death Star in the event he knew swear words she had not yet learned. "I think this thing will sit on the coffee table for two years, then you'll get to that ape city."
Karo held a piece with a pair of tweezers and wore a puzzled look on his face.
"I think you have the mechanical version of dyslexia." Azula needled.
"So are you just going to spend your afternoon heckling me?" Karo held the piece in the tweezers and admitted to himself that he had no clue where the piece belonged. "You could head off to the school lab and work on your latest project."
Azula sat next to Karo and put her arms behind her head. "I've reached a critical impasse in my research."
"Uh huh?" Karo held up the instruction diagram to the light. "The school custodian kept getting pissed at you for blowing all the fuses on that side of the building?"
"And yet he gets paid to do that kind of work." Azula placed her feet on the coffee table. "He didn't like my suggestion that 'as a wage slave, he do his job and leave the creative thinkers alone'. The principal suggested I lay low – floor polishers can careen out of control.."
Karo placed the piece inside the sphere and pressed it into place with his thumb.
"I can tell you're bored." Karo glanced up at the instruction diagram.
"We could practice our fire bending." Azula suggested. "We could get together with Katara and have a bending session."
"In this heat? We'd die." Karo scowled. "I set aside this afternoon to put this thing together. You could break out the ape city kit and go ape on it. It's on my dresser next to my lava lamp."
"I don't normally keep track of trivia but I remember hearing about Ty Lee going out with Aang." Azula sat forward. "Why is she working the fan boy circuit?"
"She needs to pay the bills?" Karo had three pieces of the kit in his hands and noticed they all were the same shade of gray. "I thought Katara broke Aang's heart and he went off to a career of ineffectual spiritual leadership."
"Cynical of you...and I thought you had a spiritual side." Azula shook her head. "I admit that I probably said that in the past. My point is that she's traveling the world alone."
Karo snapped another piece in place. "She didn't say much to us about her personal life."
"True," Azula conceded, "but she seemed to find you interesting."
"Anyhow, maybe she is traveling with Aang." Karo put down the other two gray pieces. "The Avatar doesn't have to spend time with us – he has a standing invite to stay at with the Earth King."
The summer afternoon was not the best time to go out and do anything. The heat of the afternoon combined with the pollution to make going outdoors an eye tearing, asthma inducing experience. The climate was clinically bipolar: in the winter, it borrowed the most powerful cold fronts from the polar region and in the summer, the heat and humidity made the murder rate skyrocket.
The Northwoods High football team practiced at ten in the evening in order to keep the players alive. In the still air of the evening, Karo could hear the coach yelling out plays and instructions to his players in the still air of the late evening. He sat at the coffee table working on his 'do it yourself' project. Azula sat at the dining room table putting together the ape city and Lady Zhao sipped tea and wondered when she'd be able to sit down at the furniture she'd paid for. She lingered over her tea as a cvooling breeze came in through the kitchen window carrying the scent of lilacs and sulfur.
Lady Zhao had long known her son as the artistic, delicate type but he lacked the proper mechanical skills to put his kit together without lots of sweat (partly frustration and partly summer heat). Azula, on the other hand, had a gift for seeing in an instant the place where one piece fit. The contrast between the two teenagers became clear when Lady Zhao noticed that Azula had almost finished the ape city while Karo had barely moved forward with his death sphere since the afternoon.
All three of them looked to the front door when they heard a soft and slow knock. At ten in the evening in July, in Ba Sing Se, a knock still often meant bad news or worse. The reflexive jump came even in the time after the War, after the Dai Lee.
"I'll answered it." Karo stood up sounding relieved. "The Dai Lee always arrested people at five in the morning." In spite of the fall of the Dai Lee as traitorous war criminals, that memory was still fresh and Karo made sure he could answer the door while he could still reach the cricket bat kept near the front door in the basket where the family stored their umbrellas. Karo had heard of home invasions and so he looked through the peephole.
"Ty Lee?" He said in astonishment.
He opened the door. "What brings you here at this hour?"
He invited Ty Lee inside.
"You look upset." Karo closed the front door.
Azula approached from the dining room and stood beside Karo. 'I had not expected a visit at this time of day.'
Ty Lee handed an opened envelope to Karo.
"Gópesti Ostóga?" Karo eyed the formal font of the return address on the face of the yellow envelope. The letter inside simply sated the offense was War Crimes and his trial was pending but had not been scheduled. "I don't understand? Why did you come here to give me a letter from a prison?"
"I hadn't heard from my father until this morning when the hotel desk told me I had a letter." Ty Lee almost whimpered. "I haven't talked to my father for years and now I find out he's in prison for War Crimes."
Lady Zhao stood behind Azula and held a dignified presence.
Gópesti Fortress protected the Fire Nation naval base at the city of Lushen on the southern coast of the Fire Nation Main Island. The Suihanese had built it under contract for Lord Sozin in the first years of the War to protect his navy from attack while in home port. When the War ended, the Dominion kept Lushen as a trophy and reclaimed the mighty Gópesti as their very own. The Gópesti had exemplified a time when The Dominion and Fire Nation had co-operated to defeat the Air Nomads and to dominate the world. Lady Zhao had seen the grand defensive fortification when pregnant with Karo. She thought how 'un Fire Nation' the fortress looked. The Suihanese had built a five point fort with sloping walls reinforced with reinforced contract to deflect any bending attacks. A low level grass field gave the advantage of height to the fire benders protecting the vast fort and large concrete towers - the teeth - rose up to allow the defenders to survey all going on beyond its walls.
The use of The Gópesti as a prison was new but not unanticipated. Its thick concrete walls and network of fortifications made it nearly impossible to escape.
"What did he do during the War?" Lady Zhao had read of trials involving the upper echelon of the Dai Lee and the range of charges ranged from outright murder to a crooked accountant cooking the books and the sentences varied accordingly. Long Feng got life as did a few others. Quite a few others received a few years and many others received an acquittal. The accountant walked away free – no one could prove their suspicions about his fraud.
"Our family are bankers." Ty Lee told Lady Zhao. "My dad did his time in the army but served in the Western Earth Kingdom in the Quartermaster Corps."
'Deadly boring but not deadly.' Azula thought to herself.
Karo, as ever, thinking like the Suihanese, asked the obvious question: "What do you think they want?" Karo understood the Suihanese love of profit. He had no desire to ask if Ty Lee had a usurious bastard as a father who ripped off Dominion Companies during the War (Fire Nation bankers had a well earned reputation for being disreputable). This sort of insult never went down well in a country based on the fair deal and Karo imagined a bureaucrat in the Grand Dominion Financial Ministry noting a financial wrongdoing fraud or theft (the Fire Nation had ripped off lots of people).
Lord Lee could rip off his own people but The Dominion had The Secret Collection Service (The G3 Men) with agents around the world looking for the big fish who skipped town with the money. Karo imagined they caught Lord Lee and smuggled him to Lushen and wanted their money. He didn't want to explain too much because he had a Death Star model to complete and didn't want to be recruited to help in an adventure that had no chance of paying off.
"We are being manipulated by her or by the Avatar." Azula said with emphasis. "The Dominion has many people who are bilingual."
"This is true." Karo told Ty Lee. "You hired us to built the Gópesti and we never intended it to be a prison."
"I did mean to try to meet you but not to manipulate you to do anything." Ty Lee pleaded. "I don't know the Law in the Dominion. And yes I do think Karo is cute."
Azula waited. She had to wait for admission of any kind. Ty Lee had given her this and she was Suihanese enough to accept this.
"Did I tell you that you have cute freckles." Azula said as she sat next to Karo. "I didn't call you an idiot. I think I deserve points for that."
Karo worked on his model. He wished to have it complete before they had to travel to Lushen to help Ty Lee and her father. He understood the language, all its nuances and so did Azula although she had a slight accent. He hoped someone might explain to him how he had come to play the role of translator.
"Last month you took an eyebrow pencil and played connect the dots with them while I took a nap on the couch." Karo answered dryly. "I've come to see 'idiot' as a kind of respectful greeting from you."
"I should be more of a lady." Azula explained as Karo looked more and more puzzled.
"You'd have to give up belching." Karo said distantly. "Does this have anything to do with Ty Lee?"
"I had wished to develop my skills with belching," Azula pondered, "maybe perfect echolocation?"
"Katara explained that you might be jealous." Karo held up a gray piece between tweezers. "You have me forever and ever. Ty Lee can play me but only you affirm my belief in the dignity of human suffering."
"What the hell do you mean by that?" Azula sternly replied.
Karo held up a piece of his kit to the morning light. "You crawl into my bed and kick the crap out of me in your advanced stages of REM sleep."
"I had to ask Katara how to shave my hairy zones." Azula held up a piece of the Death Star. "Other women have perfect figures and I have hair." Azula handed the piece to Karo. "I grew up as a tomboy but now they tell me to shave this or get rid of the hair on that. I have hairy armpits – when did that happen?"
"I hope to continue this conversation – after I'm dead if God has any mercy." Karo snapped a piece onto the model.
"Oh screw it!" Azula yelled out in frustration. "I'll have my doctor give me chemo!"
Karo heard this from his seat on the living room couch. He put down his pieces of Lego, his tweezers and went upstairs to investigate.
"It's half past eight in the evening, what are you doing in there?" Karo stood outside of the bathroom.
"Making crop circles in my armpit hair!" Azula complained bitterly from inside the bathroom. "You need a new blade in your razor and we have the same blood type – right?"
At that moment, and air raid siren blared out loudly.
"Welcome to the Dictatorship of the Proletariat?" Karo belonged to the bourgeoisie but the Communist leader in Ba Sing Se had a nice mustache and was often called Joe. "Would the Communists set off the siren if they overthrew the government?"
"Possibly." Lady Zhao walked out of the upstairs library. "I'll call the city. If Beria or Stalin picks up then we know." Lady Zhao went downstairs to place the call.
"Did we have one of those drills?" Azula opened the door to the bathroom and peeked around. "Should we gather cans and hide in the basement?" She actually hoped it was some malfunction in the air siren system because she didn't want to have to dress out of her night robe. "I'd hate to greet the new Dictatorship of the Proletariat with half groomed pits."
"I think I figured out why all the air raid sirens went off." Lady Zhao shouted up from the kitchen. "Azula – did you expect visitors in a Zeppelin?"
"Hell no!" Azula stormed down the stairs. "Wait!"
"The young man calls himself Aang." Lady Zhao shouted upstairs.
Karo headed down stairs. "Doesn't he have a sky bison?"
"My brother came with him." Azula explained as Karo bowed to Avatar Aang.
The sirens cut out.
"A nervous button pressing moron must have taken his hand off the big red button." Azula huffed and looked to Aang for some kind of explanation. "I have a few questions for you and my brother. What are you doing here? Let's begin there."
Karo held to his faith. The Suihan Orthodox Church had laws against religious persecution. No one could kill or harm anyone for religious ideals. Money – yes – religion – no. Lord Lee may live in the lands of the Church but hey didn't urge him to convert. The kinds of laws covered by the Church didn't apply to Lord Lee. The liberal ideas of the church had some appeal but the church taught that people should always chose them in the marketplace of ideas. Karo understood the Marketplace of Ideas as the arbiter of truth. God cared that he people coming to Him had come out a desire to pursue their own gainv.
So Church Law wasn't the reason Lord Lee lay in prison. Zuko had floated the idea that the imprisonment of Lord lee might be an attempt on behalf of the Church to obtain money to rebuild their holy places.
Azula had to refrain Karo from slugging himvi. 'You do not insult me that way!' Karo yelled.
"Patriarch Tikon didn't imprison Lord Lee and if he knows of this crime under his authority – he will end it." Azula held back Karo. She had little place for religion but Tikon was the best kind of leader – smart, kind and very well educated. When Karo thought he was gay and talked to Patriarch Tikon, the old man told him that 'honest love was never a sin before God' and he offered fatherly advice." Zuko had worn his royal robes but feared they didn't impress Azula.
Azula pushed back Karo. " We don't care. Karo wants to kill you for insulting his faith and I believe I like this place."
Patriarch Tikon had fought to win back Ba Sing Se though his mastery of the cannon and the gun. He wasn't a bender but he understood his maths. The fire benders used his work to guide their aim and the water benders knew his tables. Iroh was a close friend of Tikon. So was Karo. Zuko was in a tough position.
Azula stood still as she held back Karo. "In the morning we'll visit Tikon and talk to him."
iSome kind of Kyoshinese delicacy.
iiIchidan is an upscale urban area of Ba Sing Se. Ba Sing Se has a layout not unlike modern Moscow with broad streets running from the castle in spokes like a wheel with circular cross streets. Neighborhoods often take their name from the major street that bisects them. The old 'rings' or inner walls are now canals used for shipping and to drain the city.
iiiKomatsu is the Fire Nation name for the Suihanese harbor city of 'Ceiresu – pronounced keeres'. The city lies on the north coast of The Main Island of the Dominion.
ivThe Dominion had opposed Lord Ozai's succession to the throne. They had pressured Azulon to accept Lord Iroh who was sane and also seen as loyal to the Dominion. The Dominion had a vast network of spies operating under a well organized set of 'Organs'. The PVD (Piride Vehenci Docori) operated in the Fire Nation and kept eye on the Fire Nation. The Minister of Fatherland Security had his intelligence services split into two divisions. The information needed to be cross checked against other sources and so the PVD spied on the Fire Nation while the spies abroad in the Earth Kingdom the ERD spied on the Earth Kingdom. As if to rebel against the Fire Nation the Dominion never spied on the Water Tribes or the Avatar.
vThe church rejects conversions by force or with mentally unfit people because this was not done by free will.
viBribery is gain without money and by the Church a sin. Zuko said to Karo that 'the Patriarch had sinned.' All decisions about monetary affairs flow through the Patriarch – at that time Tikon who had fled to Ba Sing Se. Patriarch Tikon was a member of the White Lotus and a mentor to Karo.