This is a reboot of 'The Hunt' and will likely be an anthology with a loosely plotline to connect them all.
The loch has the appearance of a bowl of soup, murky and with steam coiling up in thick blankets from the broath. Azula never had any such love for the water, much less being in such a flimsy boat. Though Zhao is rather adamant that his boat is the sturdiest in the whole of Scotland.
She squints out into the fog, trying her hardest to get a sense of anything really. The weather vexes her to a degree-just how the hell is she supposed to get a magazine worthy shot in these conditions?
At the very least, she supposes that she has the satisfaction of winning another debate. The one wherein Zuko had insisted that her rather pricey waterproof camera equipment was a waste of cash. She carefully shields her camera under the protective layer of her new camera cover.
With careful hands, she cleans the lens with her shirt and holds the camera out. She messes with it for a moment or two, zooming in and out trying to find an optimal focus.
"Can you put that away!?" Zuko snaps. "We're not here to take pictures this time."
Perhaps he isn't, but she is. It is how she funds getting new equipment and their trips as a whole from gas money to hotel fees. She is about to remind him as much when he continues. "We're here to get rid of that thing once and for all!"
"Get rid of it?" Azula asks as she snaps a test picture.
"Kill it, lass." Zhao clarifies
"I know what he means." Azula grumbles. "Killing it was never part of the plan."
"It's what we brought ye here tae do." Zhao shrugs.
Zuko nods in agreement. "That's what I came to do. I didn't sail all the way to Scotland to gawk at the thing."
Azula is none surprised to hear it. "We don't need to hunt down everything that has a vague sense of mystery to it."
"We're cryptid hunters."
"I prefer, investigators or researchers." She counters. All the same she is certain that she won't get through to him. He has a vicious passion that she doesn't share. A certain blinding need for vengeance. She recalls with vivid clarity standing in a graveyard on a dreary morning like this one, peering at a grave marked with their mother's name. Perhaps she doesn't share his hot-tempered bloodlust because she wasn't as close with the woman. Or perhaps it is simply that she handles her mother's passing differently-her temperament is starkly different from her brother's. "There is only one Loch Ness Monster, if we kill her, we waste research opportunities." She doesn't want to admit it, but she has a soft spot for certain monsters. Something she attributes to having been accused of being one for the better part of her life.
It is a strange feat to know that it is Zuko who adores the fame and glory that comes with conquering the town terror. It is more like her to covet the thrill of a has been her nature since she had learned to speak. And yet she finds herself enjoying the smaller aspects of the hunt. Much like Iroh, she had a knack for adventure, the roads they constantly take to provide her with a sense of ease and clarity. Her camera doesn't just capture the unknown. Its lens have captured mundane beauty and the average road trip sights.
More like herself, Azula also enjoys the intellectual acclaim that came from studying the remains and the behavioral patterns the cryptids had once exhibited in life. She enjoys seeing her photos in the glossy pages of various nature magazines, and on the odd occasion featured on the cover.
Curiosity and prestige, vengeance and a need to protect. She supposes that it is good that they have differing goals. They can pick up what the other lacks.
Azula sighs as a light rain begins putting a dampness in her clothing. She hopes that it won't worsen, it is hard enough already to make out anything in the dense mist. The girl yawns, they have been out here for hours now just drifting idly along. So far she has only jumped at false alarms.
The misty rain thickens into a thicker shower. Nothing unbearable but still a nuisance. She leans against the railing, staring blankly into the depths of the water.
"This is ridiculous." Zuko throws his hands up. "Why did you insist that we try to find this thing in the fog? We'd have better luck with clearer weather?"
"Nessie doesn't like to show 'erself in the sunlight. Ah only ever see 'er in the mist." Zhao pauses. "All'a us only ever see 'er in the mist."
Azula rolls her eyes, she should have seen the squabble coming, bored as they all were. As their bickering progresses continued, Azula studies the water with a closer eye. A sandy cloud beneath the water seems to swirl as though more dust is being kicked up. Azula reaches for her camera. The other two are paying her no mind, heavily engrossed in their argument.
Whatever is responsible for the peculiar motion darts deeper into the water, where a visual is even harder to come by. For a long moment the water is still save for the bobbing of their boat, it puts an instinctive pounding in Azula's heart. The underwater cloud disperses revealing a coiled indent in the sand. Azula snaps a quick picture before very softly calling, "Zuko."
"It ain't too rainy, ye just be a weakling, lad." Zhao declares boldly.
"Alright, you tell me what you see out there." Zuko points at an extraordinarily dense patch of fog.
A few feet ahead the water churns and splits. What little light that is able to peirce through the mist, glints off of whatever is emerging. "Zuko." Azula repeats with a hint more urgency, but not enough concern to put her camera down. This could be her one chance to get the perfect snapshot, to provide definitive proof…
She can earn them a very stable income.
"Ah ken see a buncha trees." Zhao interrupts her thoughts.
"Those aren't trees they're large rocks."
"They're trees, ye arse."
The creature begins to rise, slowly and gracefully, its motions tantalizing Azula. With a grin, she takes another picture and another just in case she somehow managed to miss her first shot. From what she can see in the gloomy half-light, the creature is obsidian black in color with a green sheen when the light hits it just right. And with, as she perceives, a smooth texture. She thinks that it is more akin to dolphin skin than fish scales. It could probably pass for an eel if it weren't so massive and hadn't it such an impressive maw. "Zuzu" She tries again and with more volume. "I think that you'll care more about this than winning your petty…"
Zuko threw his hands into the air again, "The sun could be beaming red-hot into my eye sockets, I'd still be have better luck sighting Nessie than I do right now!"
By now, Nessie has been well and roused by their dispute. Her slender neck rises completely from the water. Azula can faintly make out what looks like a dorsal fin. The creature opens its mouth to reveal something akin to a set of shark teeth. Geniuine concern begins to set in and Azula wonders if she has been mistaken in think that Nessie is a more demure and friendly beast.
The fog curls ominously around the creature's long neck. With a half satisfied and half horrified expression, Azula takes her magazine quality shot. To Zuko she hollars at full volume, "you'll have a better chance of sighting her if you turn around and look!"
Zhao spares her only an uncarring backwards glance, "Eh…what's the lass fussin' aboot?"
In one final display of immaturity, Zuko looks right at the sea monster and says pointedly to Zhao, "I don't know I can't see it through the mist." Azula has to admire that reckless brazeness of it all. She rolls her eyes as Nessie surges.
Ever an oppertuinist she smugly remarks, "I told you that I'd need it eventually."
"Really, you want to do this now?" Zuko grumbles.
"You and Zhao blew me off for petty debates." Azula shrugs as Nessie slams into their boat. Azula stumbles and clutches her camera protectivly.
"Lassie, get yer priorities taegether." Zhao remarks.
The boat rocks with the collision of the beast's body and sea-sickness sets in. Upon gazing at a decently large dent in the ship's steel haul, Azula recalls that swimming is not her strong suit.
"Still don't want to kill it?" Zuko asks hopefully.
Oddly, she doesn't. She frowns in concentration as she fights to get the boat's engine whirring again. Unlike herself, Zhao didn't seem to have come all that prepared for this endeavor. She looks at the dashboard. "You didn't happen to bring any extra fuel did you?"
"Int it much left, but Ah goat some." Zhao rummages through his belongings.
"Hurry up and find it!" Zuko grimaces as the Loch Ness Monster lands a third strike. Zuko, despite Azula's protests, takes hold of his gun again and cocks it. He ignored her outrage and took aim, firing a shot at the patch of water wherein Nessie had been last spotted.
"You're just going to make her angry." Azula cautions. "We won't stand a chance then."
"If I hit the right spot…" Zuko starts.
"We're not killing it!" Azula argues again.
"It'll kill us."
She can't quite refute that line of reasoning other than pointing out that they had picked a fight in Nessie's territory. Regardless, Azula very much wants to escape with her life and her camera. Reluctantly she releases her hold on Zuko's arm.
He steadied his gun once more only to have his nearly perfect alignment stolen by another blow. This time the boat overturns. The option to right it once more is stolen by Nessie's stubby but powerful tail coming down on it with a vengeance.
"Ah shite." Zhao yells as he finds himself dipping beneath the waves.
"Shut up and swim." Azula instructs. For her it is easier said than done with the extra weight of her camera. But she'll be damned if she lets their efforts go completely to waste. She scans, with a swelling sense of panic, the water for a chunk of the boat or any large sea debris. Some distance down the lake she spies a fairly large log. All she has to do was make it there.
She is about to vocalize her plan upon realizing that this seems to be a case of every man to himself, for Zuko and Zhao are a good many strokes ahead of her. She doesn't think that they mean to leave her behind; she has an athletic history, why would they fret over her? Even if such isn't the case, neither of the pair pay any mind to each other either. With nothing else to do, and a sea monster hot on her trail, she takes a deep breath and pushed herself through the water as fast as she could muster. She is distressed to find, that she isn't fast at all between the camera and the bagginess of her clothing. Azula curses to herself, her belly tying itself in knots as the gravity of the situation begins to settle in.
She tries to gauge the distance between herself and the shoreline.
It was so far…
So far and she knows damn well that she can't swim. She shudders as Nessie draws nearer. They have already lost their parents to these creatures. She doesn't want to die. Not like this, not helplessly treading water. She tries to kick herself forward but the motions are so foreign to her. Her body slips beneath the surface and she finds herself truly hoping that Nessie would devour her. It seems less agonizing than suffocating. Less dismal than sinking to the bottom of the loch, water logged and gathering barnacles.
.oOo.
Zuko is panting furiously panting heavily by the time he reaches the shore. His limbs are completely spent and his energy terribly depleted. He'd put so much time into this trip and will gain nothing from it, and with the world just as infested as it has ever been. The famous Loch Ness will still plague the waters a hazardously as before. He slams his fist into the sand. What kind of hunters are they if they can't even take down one beast.
One of a lower threat level at that.
"Laddy, Ah don't see yer sister anywhere." Zhao interrupts his furious thoughts.
Zuko bolts upright and scans the beach for himself. "She's here, she has to be." He scrambles to his feet and screams her name, only to have it echo back it him. "Azula!" He shouts again. The world around him is so terribly quiet. Even Zhao has nothing to say.
Zuko balls his hands. He can't lose her too. At times she is downright dreadful to work with, controlling and condescending. But he can't lose her. He can't let the supernatural claim any more of his family.
But the loneliness of the beach tells him that he already has.
The rain is falling in sheets now, even if he tries to make out her tiny form, he doesn't have much hope of spotting it.
"Ah think we should gather a search party, aye?"
"That's not going to do any good." Zuko mumbles. "Not in this weather." It'll be too late by the time it clears. He doesn't think he can handle seeing her body anyhow. She looks enough like their mother to hurt him twice over.
This time Zhao doesn't argue. "If ye wanna stand 'ere n wait then ye do that. Ah am gaun tae get some help."
Zuko supposes that he should thank the man. Instead he stares blankly at the thrashing water. A ways off, he can swear that he is able to make out the silhouette of his foe. A dark shape drawing ever closer and this time he doesn't have his gun. Much like Azula, that seems to be lost to the sea. Yet the sheer force of his anger roots him in place—somehow, he'll avenge his sister, he'll die doing so.
Death doesn't seem so bad with his mother dead and his father missing. And with his sister so freshly claimed. Even still, he can practically hear her making an commanding him to stand down and let Nessie off easy.
Time crawls slowly. Nessie languidly coasts along with no sense of urgency, none the wiser to the fury she was heading towards.
Zuko can see her with more clarity now, the creature that has haunted the loch for so long. She is every bit horrifying as the locals had warned. Those eyes, large and glassy, bare into him. Fully aware of the folly it is, he takes a sizable rock in his hand. Before he can throw his rudimentary weapon, Nessie bows her head.
As if it were some mundane, every day occurrence, Azula leaps off of the creature. She looks battered, her lip bleeds at its corner. "Azula." He whispers.
She gives him a small wave, she leans against the monster for a tad longer.
"Get away from that thing." Zuko shouts.
Azula rolls her eyes. "This thing saved me."
"She wouldn't have had to if she hadn't attacked us in the first place."
"Honestly, Zuzu, we drove a noisy boat into the middle of the loch and began screaming and yelling…" She trails off. "Personally, I wouldn't take kindly to someone kicking our hotell door in and causing a scene." She runs her hand over the monster's hide.
"That thing is…"
She cuts him off. "If it is like the creature that killed mother, then I'd be dead already." To drive her point home, she begins stroking its snout. He cringes all over as her hand nears its mouth. She goes much too far to prove herself correct. The sea monster nudges Azula's forehead, throwing off balance. And with a rather great sound and a surprising speed, darts back towards the cloudier parts of the loch.
With a cocky grin, Azula holds up her camera. "I still have the pictures too."
Zuko sighs, unsure if he is impressed or furious that she had managed to hang onto the camera. "So?"
Azula shrugs. "I don't think that I will release them."
"What do you mean you aren't going to release them?" Zuko roars. "You went through all of that trouble to protect the damn camera and you're not going to release the photos?"
"I'm glad you're okay too, Zu-Zu." Azula waves him off. "No, I won't. None of the clearer shots anyhow. She doesn't need more people like you going after her. If they get real proof, they will go after her."
"So what you're trying to say is that this trip was pointless?" Zuko asks. All the same, he is grateful to be having this argument with her rather than crying over her lifeless corpse.
"Our hunts don't always have to have a point." Azula pauses. "Not everything has a point, sometimes things just are." She shrugs. "But if it makes you feel better, no, it's not completely pointless. I have a few decent shots, they're of better quality than most of shots of Nessie. I'll sell those."
Zuko sighs as things fully settle in. "I guess it doesn't matter right? As long as you're okay." He has his arms around her before he realizes what he is doing. Try as she may, she isn't able to evade his fluff and sappiness this time. "I'm also glad that I'll never have to see Zhao again."
"I don't know about that last thing, Zu-Zu. He told me that he'd be interested in joining our duo."
"He what? That's not the truth. Please tell me that, that's not the truth."
"I don't know, I think it would be interesting to have him tagging along with us. I'd love to hear what he'd say if he came face to face with a some of the nastier beings."
"He is not joining our team." Zuko says firmly, he for one, could do without the visual. "I supposed we should catch up to him though. Before he gets everyone and their long dead ancestors to go looking for you."
"I don't know, I think that I might be fine with the attention." Azula smirked. She slings her camera case over her shoulder and follows Zuko up the beach.
.oOo.
She is wiped and aching up and down and wants to do nothing other than return to their hotel room. But Zuko insists on stopping for a bite to eat. She supposes that she is rather hungry too so she lets him have his way. Smelling of dirty lake water and drenched to her very soul, Azula sits in the booth and goes through her pictures. She feels a sense of pride, she has done very well this time around. They have all come out so clear and unmistakable. For a moment, she forgets about her discomforts and her faintly burning lungs. "They're perfect Zuzu, look at them."
He looks up from his coffee. "Yeah that one is pretty nice. But which ones are you submitting?"
Azula scrolls through the camera's library and shows him a few. The ones that are somewhat blurry, but still distinguishable. "They're clear enough to get attention but blurry enough to leave room for debate."
Zuko nods.
"Aye lass, laddie." Zhao greets.
"You've got to be kidding me." Zuko scowls.
"I told you that he wants to join us."
"Do Ah need tae submit an application?" He asks.
"Yes." Zuko answers as Azula asks, "can you fire a gun?"
"Ah ken, very well, lass."
"Are you any good at running?"
"Ah used tae be on the track team."
"Are you easily frightened."
He shakes his head no.
"Hired."
"What!?" Zuko spits his coffee back into his cup. "No. No way."
"I think that we can use an extra hand." Azula shrugs. "Especially if we're actually going to start taking the hunting aspect more seriously." For the longest time they have been going back and forth trying to decide if they should take on higher risk cryptids.
Zuko pinches the bridge of his nose. "We can't afford…"
"Ah ken pay fer meself." Zhao cut in. "Ah ken even take my own car."
On a normal day, she would have a business card to hand the man, but those are floating at the bottom of Loch Ness. Instead she scrawls her number onto a napkin. "We'll be in town for a few more days, until uncle finds us a new job."
.oOo.
Zuko watches his sister pick through a pile of sheets, newspaper clippings, headline printouts, and marked up maps that she has spread out on the floor. She has a pen dangling from her mouth as she narrows her eyes in concentration.
She takes the pen from her mouth to check off the box next to, 'track Nessie'. He follows her gaze down the list.
"Uncle has a lot of options for us this time around, which one do you want to go for?" She asks as she riffles through a few of the printouts before holding them out to him.
Zuko picks his way through them and he knows that she knows what he is going to say. "I want to track the wendigo. What do you want to do?"
Azula peers at the marked map. Just as well as she knows of his goals, Zuko knows that she is trying to decide which being will bring them closer to where they'd last heard from their father. Evidently, that puts their choices in alignment for once.
Looking over Iroh's reports she mutters. "I'll book a flight to Canada." He can see on her face that she doesn't like it. She isn't any more fond of the cold than he is. "In the man time," she holds out a small sum of cash, "be a dear and get us some winter wear."
She gives the notes another scan. "From the looks of it Canada has quite a few creatures out and about this autumn. We can make a few side stops along the way."