hey guys! bet you weren't expecting anything from me! haha, suckers!
anyway, enjoy the ride, and don't get bit by any mad rabbits!
Disclaimer: do you really need this?
Beta: the lovely and epic aussie- TigerInTheMoonlight! As ever, I'm crazy grateful that she puts up with my bullshit. Thank you Tiger!
Prelude
I suppose this story is at least somewhat worthy of telling, seeing as adventures within the Earth Kingdom to traveling across the world aren't even the highlights of my tale. So, here goes.
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I guess I should start by introducing myself, and explain what was happening when my story began.
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Traitor to the Dragon Throne
Chapter One
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My name is Akari, and I was born in the eighty-fourth year after Sozin's Comet, the same year as Fire Prince Zuko- which is undoubtedly considered 'lucky' by some idiot somewhere. I grew up in a small city on Kimura Island, the second largest island in the Fire Nation archipelago. My childhood was fairly normal -aside from the fact I grew up in an orphanage- and one that didn't exactly care much for its wards at that. Well, they fed us, kept us clothed and sent us to school, but that was about it. They barely gave us any attention at all, rarely bothering to punish us (unless we broke some really big rule or somebody else was snitch enough to bring it up). So, I grew up in a place that didn't care what I did as long as it was legal -or I at least wasn't caught doing it. You can only imagine the type of things that went on there.
The school I went to was given very little funding, and the teachers had too many uncontrollable students to care much about discipline. You break the rules enough, without care for the consequences, and after a while nobody really gives a shit anymore. But that's beside the point-the turning point of my young life took place in that school, which considering everything actually had a surprisingly well-stocked library. Probably because nobody cared about books enough to vandalize the place. I think the curator was actually grateful for me, as I frequently escaped both my classes and my responsibilities in that library. It was there, in the very back and on dustiest shelf that I found a book that had somehow escaped the mass censorship ordered by the Fire Lord around the time of Sozin's Comet. The book was absolutely ancient, bound by leather and completely covered in dust, enough to make me go into a sneezing fit just cracking it open. It was down at the bottom of the shelf, behind several other books and at first glance it seemed entirely unremarkable. It was also really nasty, what with all that dust, so it's no surprise that no one wanted to touch it. It had fallen from its hiding place when I took out the book in front of it; a dry treatise on the political ramifications of Avatar Kyoshi's splitting off her island from the mainland. Of course, when a dust covered and antique book falls off a shelf in the restricted section of your library, and you are an inquisitive and admittedly eccentric preteen such as I was, you pick it up, dust it off, and examine it. Never mind the fact that not reporting it will most likely end up with you in a lot of trouble (even at my school). We weren't ever supposed to be in the restricted section anyway…there was reason it was 'Restricted'.
Immediately upon finding the book, I shook off the dust, and opened it excitedly- it wasn't everyday that something this interesting happened in my life, much less in the library of all places. The title page read 'The Four Nations and Their Militaries, a Treatise on War after Avatar Yangchen'. I'd not heard of her before, so I assumed she was one of the ones we didn't talk about here in the Fire Nation. Turns out I was right, as a quick glance at the foreword proclaimed that she was an Air Nomad Avatar; this little bit of information peaked my interest greatly, and I decided to tuck the book into my bag and make off with it. It's not like it would be missed. As I had done this many times before, getting the 'borrowed' book into my bunk at the orphanage was no big deal, and I hurried down for dinner once it was tucked away safely under my mattress.
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After the meal, I stole another candle from the matron's office (really she should know to lock the door by now), and headed back upstairs. All the other children had already gone back outside to do whatever it was that normal kids did after dinner, so I was uninterrupted as I crawled into the rafters of the building. I had discovered that there was a space where I could hide away from everyone else when I was much younger, and had found it by accident after skipping out on a lesson. The ceilings of the orphanage were sturdy enough to hold my weight, as the space between the roof and the rafters was meant as a storage space. However, only the blocked off side over the boys' dorms was used, as squirrel-bats had once made a habit of nesting over the girls' dorms and nobody was game enough to check if they were really gone after one of them bit the matron a few years back. Of course they were all long gone now and their entry hole blocked up, but nobody needed to know that. It was up here that I kept my books and other stolen nick-nacks, and hid when it got too hectic or boring for me down below. Now, as I settled down, I lit several of the candles around me, and sat down to read my new book. Oh, I should probably mention that I'm a Fire Bender, and that I look about as 'Fire Nation' as is possible. These facts will come into play later.
The foreword didn't have much that I hadn't seen when I had skimmed over it back in the library, just that Avatar Yangchen had been born in the western Air Temple, was preceded by the Fire Nation Avatar Haruhiko, and had maintained an era of Peace for her entire reign as Avatar. After the prelude, there was a page of notes, seemingly from those who had edited the various editions of the book. The most recent one was dated around twenty years after Sozin's Comet, and was from a Fire Nation man called Kuzon, who asked that the reader make sure that the secrets of the book were kept and preserved. I was a bit skeptical that the book held many secrets, but I shrugged and kept reading. A few dry chapters about ancient militaries in, I was yawning my way through the end of the Fire Nation section, when the next section's title caught my eye. 'Air Nomads' -finally! The history of the Air Nomad army, the notoriously ruthless and dishonorable fighters who had been defeated by the Great and Noble fire Lord Sozin, the bringer of a new era! I aroused myself from drowsiness and dove into the words with excitement. It didn't last, however, and was soon replaced by a numb sense of horror.
According to this book, the Air Nomads had been a pacifistic culture, who believed in non-violence and peace. They had never had a military. They had never had armies. Their defeat now sounded less and less like a glorious victory over ruthless would-be attackers, as we had always been told, and more like an unprovoked genocide. I felt sick to my stomach, and further considering the implications, I had to choke back bile that tried to rise in my throat. Avatar Roku had died twelve years before the attack on the Air Nomads. The cycle dictates that the new Avatar would have been born into the Air Nomads. They would have been twelve years old at the time of the Comet. If the old legends were true, the Avatar wouldn't have even known of their status yet! They would have been too young to fight back; and if the Air Nomads were truly pacifists at the time, they wouldn't have even known how. It was murder.
By that time, it was about five minutes before the other children came inside, and if I wanted to stay out of trouble, I had best get down quickly. I marked the page of the horrifying revelation, and closed the book. After climbing mostly out of the ceiling, I put out the candles, which were burning low. Just as I dropped onto my bed, still feeling pretty out of sorts, one of the other girls-a snooty bitch called Haruka- walked in. I don't recall exactly what happened, but she stopped bothering me afterwards.
The rest of the evening was a blur, and I believe I ended up dry retching several times. Later on, as I was lying in bed, lucidity returned to me briefly. I remember praying to the spirits to forgive me for ever thinking that the Air Nomad massacre was justified. I lay there in shock for quite some time, and finally fell into a fitful sleep what seemed like hours later.
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I woke several hours after dawn the next day, a worrying thing for a Fire Bender, and I still felt quite awful, though I was no longer in a daze. I skipped school that day, and spent the morning coming to terms with what I had learned the night before. There were several times when I weakly tried to validate the disturbing actions of my country, but I knew they were not justifiable, and finally accepted the ugly truth. I was part of a nation of killers.
At around noon, I snuck back into my hiding spot, and retrieved the book, as well as some lunch from the kitchen as I had not eaten since dinner the night before, and had most likely emptied my stomach since then, and took off. Once I had reached the forest outside of town, I sat down and hesitantly opened the book, my hands trembling with apprehension at what other horrors I might find there.
The rest of the section on Air Nomads thankfully proved to hold no more terrors, but directly afterward was a personal account written by Kuzon, the last to renew the book. He told of his friend, a young Air Bender called Aang, whose death had shed light on the true nature of my nation's beloved Fire Lord Sozin. Kuzon had ended up spending the rest of his life working to end Sozin's reign, although he failed at that, in the end. All he could do was help people and try to spread the knowledge that the Fire Lord was attempting to make 'disappear', or be 'replaced'. It was a gruesome story, and I'm sure that it continued after his final editing of the book, but his story was cut short by whatever circumstance had caused him to hide the book in the first place.
After a brief pause to finish my lunch, I skimmed the remaining chapters of the book that changed my life, but no other groundbreaking knowledge came to light. I kept the book, however. Most of the books I stole from the library were returned after a while, but not this one. I memorized the passage in which it spoke of the Air Nomads, and that night, my inner fire took on a new light.
(End)
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yeah, hope you like it! drop me a line and review, people! also it''ll be posted on my deviantart sometime soon-ish.
next chapter will be up this time next week, hopefully. (all chapters should be posted on saturdays-ish) (if i can keep my shit together) (so no promises)
-Chopsticks89