Tales of Henwa Island
The Secret Island of the Cat Demons
"My name is Azula Kai and this is First Year Calculus or Calculus 101 which proves the administrators who published the summer course calendar can't count; or it's binary for Calculus 5" Azula stood in front of a sunlight filled classroom with forty odd students and made grand gestures with her hands as she spoke. "Those of you who laughed at that joke already have earned 10 percent of their final grade. The other forty of you should try harder to appreciate my humor or spend your summer like normal people – on the beach getting jellyfish stings."
A tall Water Tribe girl raised her hand, "I thought this was Communications 101. I didn't sign up for calculus."
"You have the wrong class." Azula leaned over the table and spoke frankly, "don't most of you exchange students travel as a pack? How did you get separated? You can take calculus if you want but I imagine you would like to take the classes specifically for those from preindustrial civilizations. You can learn to derive functions, astound your friends – amaze your enemies."
Several students laughed and half a dozen students left the room quietly.
"No one voluntarily takes..." Azula paused as Zuko quietly entered the room. "my unspeakable brother Zuko seriously." Azula glared at her brother as he took a seat.
In a tribute to the summer heat, the afternoon sunshine and warmth and the apathy of the class that no one seemed to notice the Fire Lord had strolled into a college calculus class and taken a seat. No one noticed that a koala had electrocuted itself on the electric transformer on a pole outside the building and fell past the window and made a dull thud on the walkway outside the classroom. Azula knew no one took calculus in the summer unless they had to, or like her had no life. Zuko did have a life and could have spent the day in any of many thousands of nicer ways even if taken on a tour of the sewers below the streets of Komatsu.
"I went to your house and Karo told me you had a job teaching here." Zuko said in a matter of fact way but a slight smile showed he enjoyed making his sister uncomfortable. "So I came to take your class."
"Sorry," Azula pretended to look at a piece of paper. "Student grants didn't come through and you don't have the prerequisites blah...blah...blah."
"Fire Lord Zuko!" An excited brown haired girl in the second row of the classroom exclaimed.
Azula picked up a piece of chalk and fought with the urge to chuck it at Zuko's head. "Good to see one of you was awake to tell me this."
An hour and a half later, Azula and Zuko left the North Wing of the Science building. The Science building consisted of a dull looking concrete 'Bauhaus' style rectangular two story ugly looking affair with far too few signs to guide people and far too many windows that didn't open.
"Why did you show up?" Azula stepped over a dead koala.
Zuko tripped over the unfortunate marsupial. "What is a dead koala doing on the main walkway of a college?"
"Not very much." Azula said dryly as she put her knapsack on her shoulders. "Whole islands crawling with them but lets speak of the reason for your visit to our unique ecological zone."
"I came on a diplomatic mission to speak with your Prime Minister." Zuko blundered past a herd of foreign exchange students who didn't appear to notice him. "He keeps demanding more independence from the Fire Nation and refuses to negotiate on many important matters."
Azula knew Fire Lord Zuko had no plans to tell her about these important matters. She opened the door to the administration building and let her brooding brother into the main building. She had advice for him but given that he never asked, she had no plans to make his life easier. The Prime Minister reflected the mood of the people on the island. She knew the Fire Nation had a tradition of following authority (a bad trait in her opinion) and an ancient culture of polite civility (which had saved her from choking many people to death). The Fire Nation had a rather insular attitude to foreigners even many years after the War and even Zuko in his manner of walking, his regal red robes and his bearing showed that he felt himself superior to the Henwa Islanders. The Henwa Islanders had all of the cultural characteristics that made them seem so abrasive to those from the Fire Nation. They loved tourists and their money, had a casual and uncomplicated attitude to life and for some reason Zuko never completely understood – mimes. They did take wine and fine food seriously as Zuko well knew. He had come to Henwa partly to inquire about why the prices of some of the fine Henwa delicacies kept climbing.
As cafeterias went, the college offered a banquet. Azula walked past a long row of stainless steel trays that held food and made for the row of tea and coffee pots neatly set aside with a chalkboard with prices. "you want some coffee?" Azula asked as she poured out two cups of the brownish coffee, "maybe a biscuit? The fish soup might appeal?" Azula paid the barista behind the tan marble counter and then held her hand to her brother waiting for her brother to fork out for the coffee. He handed her the coins and she handed them to the barista.
"Why does a college need a barista?" Zuko followed Azula out past the maze of varnished red wooden tables and sat down at a table across from her. "I saw mutton and pitted olives. Students can afford this?"
"No," Azula had picked a seat near a large float glass window and wish a push shoved the bottom half open and it made a click and locked in place. "but as they say on Henwa – give us good food or death!"
"You once wanted to be Fire Lord – well this job has no glamor." Zuko looked around as he spoke quietly in case he said something offensive. The half dozen students didn't notice or care as they read textbooks, newspapers or napped with their feet up on the table. "If I make an unpopular decision; the people in the Fire Nation politely grumble but accept it. The Henwa Islanders push carriages and trams over and set them on fire, riot and loot for a week, go on strike, complain and send dead animals through the palace mail."
Azula wore an astonished look on her face, "when did this happen – the riots and looting?"
"Last spring," Zuko said quite softly, "and I knew the dead animals came from here because someone sent me a dead koala."
"I miss out on all the fun but the locals are a boisterous bunch." Azula tapped her coffee cup with her fingernail. "What did you do to piss off the locals?"
"Henwa doesn't pay into the veteran's benefits program but some islanders draw a pension," Zuko spoke until Azula raised her hand. "I asked that the locals to pay their fair share of taxes."
"Uh, I don't really need to know all of this." Azula said abruptly because she knew her brother and knew he wasn't quite getting to the point.. "You have some news for me?"
"I came to invite you to dinner with mother and Mai. I invited Karo as well. You haven't visited mom for a long time and she misses you." Zuko drank the coffee and burned the roof of his mouth. "She wishes to visit you and Karo and Lady Zhao. I invite you to a dinner at Henwa Island's most prestigious eatery – The House of Food. I made reservations for seven tonight." Zuko expected complaints from Azula and a rant about her dysfunctional childhood. She said nothing at all making the ringing in his ears seem louder. He was a family man now and Anya his daughter had an ear infection and he acquired it. Henwa used the metric system not the familiar Fire Nation system of units and he wondered if his dizziness came from the mass of metric units like the meter and kilogram which made his servants pass kidney stones when sent out to purchase food and supplies or cross the city.
Azula had a feeling her brother still hadn't gotten to the point but as she no longer had access to the top echelons of power; she let it slide.
Karo sat on the couch with Katara fussing over his hair when Azula entered the door, "we have an invitation or rather a command to have dinner with the Family that Put the Fun in Dysfunctional – The Fire Nation First Family." She slammed the door and tossed the daily mail on the coffee table.
"Zuko told me as much," Karo reached down and picked up the mail. Katara had his hair out of his hair decoration and it cascaded down to his waist in soft waves like Samson.
Azula noted that it had become as long as or longer than hers and decided to measure this for a fact. "Can you hold on? I need a measuring tape." Azula stood at one meter and sixty seven and a half centimeters tall. Zuko stood at about one meter and eighty centimeters. Karo stood at a bit under one meter fifty five centimeters. She had seventy centimeters of hair fully let out which meant she was 2.3928 times taller than her hair. She had measured Karo's hair a year ago and it was fifty four centimeters long which meant he was 2.8704 times taller than his hair. Had he finally beaten her? She had to test.
Karo began to ask but Azula had gone into the kitchen and came back with Lady Zhao's measuring tape.
"Can you hold out his hair?" Azula asked Katara as she held the green tape in her hand.
"What are you doing?" Katara asked as she followed Azula's injunctions. "Shouldn't you be getting ready. Lady Zhao left to fetch you some razors and shop for a nice perfume for all of us. She wants us to dress in the finest dresses money can buy and make a grand impression on the Fire Lord."
Azula measured Karo's hair and measured it again in order to ensure good scientific rigor, "dammit! sixty seven centimeters." Azula did the math and realized he was 2.3134 times longer than his hair – he had beaten her at the hair growing game. "He actually has longer hair for his height than I do! Stupid split ends!" She looked at Katara who looked confused and then changed gears, "and why do I need razors?"
"So you don't show stubble under the dress Lady Zhao will buy for you." Katara spoke and showed some enjoyment when she told Azula this.
Azula made a clicking sound, "okay, what justifies this?"
"Fine ladies want to look fine," Katara explained, "Even Karo will wear his best clothes and make an impression."
Karo knew he wouldn't get money from looking his finest so he remained ambivalent but since Katara offered to fuss over him; he didn't object.
Azula left the room without a word and Karo and Katara heard flushing and looked at each other with confused looked on their faces. Azula returned a few moments later, "you can't drown yourself in a toilet – crap!"
"She's making a break for it!" Lady Zhao pointed out the kitchen window as Azula with her speed and swift reflexes ran away from Katara who held out a finely made red dress and ran into an iron rake left behind by Karo from the day before when he had raked hedge trimmings off the lawn.
Karo stood next to his mother and shook his head, "I'd thought Katara might have anticipated this more robustly when Azula asked to see her dress in 'natural' light."
Katara stood over Azula with a look of stern concern on her face and the dress in her hand, "are you alright?" Katara held out her hand and helped Azula to her feet.
"Azula shook her finger at Karo and began running who looked at his mother and then ran off through the front door, "I think she knows who forgot to put the rake away – bye!"
Azula ran past the house and caught Karo and dragged him to the ground by grabbing his legs and then kneed him in his back, "why you – can't you!" She shouted at the struggling Karo as she put her knee in his back but her victory was short lived.
"This dinner is the most important event in my life," Lady Zhao grabbed both Azula and Karo by their ears, "and I have to get ready. I can't do that with you two acting like ding a lings!"
"Ow!" Azula had never had a mother take stern measures against her and she found it oddly comforting that Lady Zhao did care enough to partially detach her right ear. Azula knew her father would have let her beat up Karo, her mother would have simply dismissed it as a manifestation of her inner psychopathic tendencies but Lady Zhao had a novel approach to being a mother – she wasn't apathetic.
Lady Zhao let go of their ears as she shoved Azula and Karo through the front door. "Sit down you two!" She commanded.
They both sat down instantly.
"I give both of you a roof over your heads," Lady Zhao scowled and held her hands on her hips in the manner of Katara. "I give you two a great deal of freedom and put up with both of your odd habits!" Lady Zhao pointed at Azula. "I let you keep your telescope in the backyard! I didn't complain when you bought a pressure cooker, tried to use it and had some kind of industrial grade meltdown!"
Karo snickered.
Lady Zhao took one look at Karo and he blushed and grew silent, "she doesn't work alone. You often go blithely along with her plans. I can't recall how many social norms you two have violated because it gives both of you some odd pleasure. I know both of you missed out on childhood but for tonight can't I ask you to please act like adults?"
Azula had tears in her eyes and wiped them away, "Do I really have to wear a dress?" Azula felt touched not because she had to wear a dress but because someone cared enough to reprimand her.
Lady Zhao sighed because she had reached one of Azula's neuroses and thought it best to work within the limits of Azula's psyche than try to change it: what made her neurotic made her a genius. Lady Zhao looked thoughtfully at Azula. Azula did dress well but dressed too much like a man for her tastes. Lady Zhao pondered things for a few seconds. "Okay – if it bothers you that much but please behave. I love my two dorks but not everyone appreciates you as I do. You two get properly dressed, clean up, smell nice and please no squabbling!"
The next day on a fine evening in late spring, Azula and Karo vented some steam in a heated game of basketball. A former tenant had placed a basketball net on a tall wooden board at the far end of the backyard. Karo and Azula had ignored it because they didn't have a basketball until Karo came back from a trip to the hardware store with a ball and a pump on top of the light-bulbs he had purchased under the injunction from Lady Zhao. Karo had purchased another week of art supplies and paper for his own amusement and typical for him, kept them in their original bag.
"Watch this," Azula shouted as she threw the ball at the side of the house. She didn't yet fully understand that 'watch this' actually triggered a screw up or some kind of accident because of the perverse laws of cause and effect in the Universe.
Lady Mai began to step through the back door that lead onto the patio of the backyard when the specific screw up was triggered. Azula bounced the ball off the back door just as Lady Mai began to open it. The door slammed shut and Lady Mai in her delicate robes fell on her ass. Lady Zhao stood behind her and had a look of absolute embarrassment tinged with the look of a mother about to yell at her kids.
Azula, for her part, could not work out what had taken place. She had taken a simple trick shot and she had the lead in the game over Karo by 15 to 7. She had no reason to expect Lady Zhao to appear outside the door with an angry look since she knew they were playing basketball in the back yard. Azula couldn't remember doing anything wrong. She had said nothing at all at the dinner at The House of Food while Karo only talked about 'safe' issues like how quickly Any had become a little girl, family and friends. Azula fetched the basketball after its odd and unintended bounce to a spot beneath the hedge and looked at Lady Zhao. Lady Zhao looked like she had found a a hole dug to the core of the Earth in the back yard after leaving her charges there to plant bulbs.
Azula tossed the ball to Karo and spoke to Lady Zhao, "yes?"
"Lady Mai has come over for a visit," Lady Zhao spoke between clenched teeth, "please be civil and join us for tea."
Karo tossed the ball into the net with a casual toss. "We did something?" he whispered in Azula's ear.
Azula walked in and looked at Lady Mai who glared back, "I came to pay my respects to Lady Zhao and thank her for a pleasant evening last night." Lady Mai said with a superficial imitation of politeness."
"We enjoyed ourselves," Lady Zhao answered back sweetly, "and we have to do this more often." Lady Zhao glanced at Azula but she said nothing.
"We don't have an ice pack but I found this," Katara entered the room with a neatly folded red towel in her hands, "I hope you don't get a black eye."
"I didn't expect the back door to hit me in the face," Mai smiled and accepted the towel.
Azula put the pieces together and tapped Karo on the back.
"What?" Karo said quietly."
Azula whispered into his ear, "I think I gave Mai a black eye...when I hit the door with the basketball – remember?"
"An accident – just apologize," Karo whispered back.
"Lets not get hasty - eh?" Azula answered back, "I can plead ignorance."
Lady Zhao noticed the pair whispering and decided to intervene. "Why are you two whispering?" Lady Zhao had a level and cold tone to her voice. She had no desire to offend the royal family and hoped to earn their fond affections for she still remembered the good and nice aspects of being a Duchess – the respect and the finest things. She had lived as a refugee in a strange land and long felt cut off from her people and felt neglected and ignored in Ba Sing Se. She hoped to regain some of that old privilege back. Azula would understand her motives and she would take time to explain it all to her when she had time but she knew Karo would have to wear the title. Fire Lord Zuko and Lady Mai liked Karo and Karo had no reason to hold grudges against them.
"We are sorry," Karo began slowly, "but we didn't see Lady Mai at the door and I'm afraid we hit her with the ball."
Azula could accept that. Lady Zhao looked clearly pleased with her son's apology and Lady Mai smiled softly.
"No harm done," Lady Mai said quietly. "I have a three year old girl and have had worse doled out by toys thrown at me."
A guard rushed in through the door holding a message in his hand and gasping for breath. She handed the message to Lady Mai and Lady Zhao rushed him to a dining room chair. He spoke between gasps, "Fire Lord Zuko – gasp – collapsed while playing with Anya – gasp – rushed him to the hospital."
Zuko lay in the hospital bed and looked at Mai and spoke with an apologetic tone. "Sorry I ruined your rest and relaxation."
"You didn't." Lady Ursa said kindly.
Azula pushed Karo out the door, "we will be – uh – finding food. We missed supper."
"Food?" Karo sounded astonished, "in a hospital funded by a socialized medical insurance plan?"
Azula pushed Karo out the door and followed him.
"Do the doctors here have any idea what you have?" Lady Mai pleaded.
"Where's Anya?" Zuko asked.
Lady Mai answered quietly, "With Lady Zhao and Katara in the first floor cafeteria. They are having jell-o and fruit cups for supper." Mai hugged Zuko, "can they help you?"
Zuko spoke as he held Mai's hand, "well do you know why my sister is such an insufferable ass?" He smiled at Ursa who looked sad. "Azula has had to deal with a past where our father tortured her mentally while he tortured me physically. The doctor said I have burn damage to my inner ear – the infection I got from Anya made it worse. That is their theory but all the tests for infections and nerve damage came up negative. They don't seem concerned so please quit worrying."
"Who was worrying?" Lady Ursa sighed with relief.
Mai sighed with relief, "when will you be discharged?"
"Tomorrow morning," Zuko said happily, "the doctor said I might have a concussion so they want to keep an eye on me for a night."
"Good to hear," Mai said, "do you want to talk to your daughter? She was really scared daddy was really sick."
"I would be happy to!"
I'll get her." Lady Ursa held back tears of happiness.
As soon as Ursa left the room, Zuko turned to Mai, "you do know that you left Azula unsupervised in a hospital." Zuko spoke with great concern and Mai turned to him as if to say 'oh dear Lord.'.
"Oh dear Lord!" Mai stood up.
"Patient File Number 167823, Ken Tsuwada," Karo read off a sheet of paper, "presents with visual distortions in the left eye and a headache in the back right portion of the skull. I omitted the medical terms because I can't pronounce them."
Azula paced the room with her hands behind her back, "we're playing 'manage the medical insurance' plan...so we don't need to consider the medical nature of the case."
Mai found Karo sitting behind the desk of The Chief Hospital Accountant with Azula pacing the room. He had a file cramped office on the third floor with a large maple desk, an adding machine, a window with the red evening sunshine streaming through it and a padded wooden office chair that creaked as Karo wriggled. "I – uh – what are you guys doing?"
"What do the doctors want to do?" Azula said firmly as she asked about the welfare of Ken.
Mai watched both of them, Karo leafed through the sheets in the file and then flipped them over.
Karo read for a moment, "not much – they found a tumor in his brain about the size of a walnut – and he was 86. We should call him the patient formerly known as Ken Tsuwada."
"What are you two ghouls doing?" Mai stood at the doorway, 'aren't patient records confidential?"
Azula turned and looked at Mai, "we found this office open and the files on the desk."
"The Public Health authorities have noted an outbreak of syphilis among the Geisha – is it Geisha, Geashas or Geishi?" Karo had picked up another file. "All were clients of the Mistubishi Geisha House and we have to determine what it will cost to test all the Geishas - Geishi for syphilis."
"How much does mercury cost?" Azula began pacing as Karo looked up something on another set of open files.
"About a silver piece a kilogram for mercury oxide?" Karo looked up, "oh -uh – hi Mai."
"Hello," Mai said meekly. She had some sick desire to see what Karo and Azula would decide and she leaned on the door frame and waited patiently.
"And to test the hookers?" Azula paced the room.
Karo had to look for a file that contained the costs of various tests and shuffled papers. "Holy Cheese and Crackers!" Karo exclaimed as he did the sums in his head and came out with the cost for each test, "and we would shell out two gold five silver per Geisha per test just for supplies. If you include the lab time and labor then the cost hits four gold three silver. It takes a week in a lab incubator to grow the bugs and then someone who can identify bugs has to take a look. He doesn't come cheap. If you multiply that by forty then, Karo did the math. "Man! One hundred and seventy two gold for all the tests and that is before treatment."
"The Geisha had a good medical plan?" Azula asked.
"I doubt it." Karo shook his head and pushed his glasses up his nose, "I don't think they belong in the same tax bracket as, say, civil servants. They may get lots of tips but I have no idea."
Azula looked at Mai but turned around and tapped the pile of paper Karo held, "Go with the cheap option and hit them all with the prescribed dose of mercury. Tell the Geisha to get used to the taste of mercury in their mouths and that the hallucinations will diminish with time."
"I came to prevent a felony," Mai said dryly, "and to let you guys know Zuko will be fine. He has an ear infection he got from Anya and he has inner ear problems."
"Why does Anya have a cat?" Karo asked if for no other reason than the ginger tabby cat seemed out of place in the not so gentle embrace of the young Fire Nation princess. Katara sat on the floor with her and the cat and played a game to see if the fat friendly cat would try to reach out and grab her fingers.
Azula held out the tag on the collar which said the cat had the name 'Teddy' and belonged to the pediatrics department, "our health dollars at work."
Anya held out a piece of thread and played with the cat and seemed oblivious to the outside world.
"The hospital has a couple of cats and a lemur to keep children in the hospital company," Karo explained to everyone. "The hospital says it makes the children calmer and cheers them up."
Azula also imagined the cats served a practical purpose – vermin control. The hospital sprawled over a vast area and she imagined it had plenty of mice and rats trying to make a living on hospital food.
Karo began playing with Anya and had the cat on its back squirming with glee. Zuko watched all of this with some amusement and with relief – he had worried about his daughter suffering some kind of emotional damage from seeing his father faint. Karo and Anya sat cross legged and played with the cat, a piece of string and they both made coochie – coo cat noises.
"I used to have a teddy bear when I was your age," Azula knelt down to speak at Anya's level. "I wonder if he's still in the collection of my stuff from childhood in the basement? My dad shipped me off to the Royal Fire Academy for Girls and the school didn't allow stuffed toys because they didn't think it proper for those destined to be warriors to have stuffed bears."
Karo pondered this, "that sounds rather unfair and cruel."
"Many things in life are unfair and cruel," Azula said thoughtfully as she played with the fat ginger tabby cat.
A nurse in the robin's egg blue robes of a hospital nurse knocked on the frame of the door and spoke politely, "visiting hours will be over in about ten minutes. Your friend Zuko needs his rest and you can return tomorrow."
Goodbye Zuko," Karo stood up and bowed.
"Take care of yourself," Katara added and then pet Anya on the head, "and you be a good girl for mommy."
Azula put the cat on Zuko's bed, "he likes you – no accounting for taste."
Lady Mai and Lady Ursa kissed him on the forehead and Mai gave him a hug. Lady Zhao bowed and wished him a good night's rest.
"Goodnight," Zuko said, "I hope I didn't cause you too much worry." Teddy, for his part, curled up at Zuko's feet and fell asleep.
"The classroom has windows that open, but that does very little to make that classroom bearable," Azula walked alongside Karo as she made her way to the small utility room the collge had set aside for her office. "I have the impression that summer students are the ones who failed first year calculus and then decided that sitting indoors in that magma chamber of a room in the summer beats not having the courses to become a doctor."
"Zuko spent the night under the care of people who failed calculus?" Karo asked as Azula wrestled with the lock.
"Indeed." Azula pushed her door open, "and I hope things work out for him."
Karo looked at the dingy interior of Azula's office and the off color cartoons she had posted up on the door. The college had given her the room that held the electrical equipment to run the elevators as her office. She had a beat up old metal desk painted in a military green and a light bulb on a string gave off a weak light. It didn't light up much except electrical boxes and a rough concrete floor. "Do all the college professors have offices like this?" Karo ran his hand across the desk and felt the dust on the metal surface, "I like the dank and dingy side of the office but it needs a window, air and maybe flooring."
Azula dumped a pile of homework assignments and sat at her desk, "this is an institution of higher learning and so you must earn tenure to inherit a rat feces free office. What are you doing here anyway? I thought you and Katara had planned to go with your mom to tour some promising places with the estates agent."
"They hate taking me along because they claim I have fussy tastes." Karo sat on the edge of Azula's desk, "just because I hate that murky yellow color most people like in their bathrooms and I hate carpet."
"I had trouble finding this office," Fire Lord Zuko poked his head in the door, "but one of your students told me to find the door with the most Krazy Kat comics on it."
Azula squeaked in her chair, "and you will find the odd Jubilee Street comic." Azula pushed Karo as a hint for him to get off her desk, "Karo started drawing them for the Ba Sing Se University student newspaper but the local newspaper here publishes his work."
"Well, its nothing but doodles," Karo blushed as he slid of the desk. "I wanted to write and draw about normal people our age. I don't know, perhaps it's therapeutic to imagine an ordinary life."
Zuko leaned over and looked over one of the Sunday panels of Karo's work. He had never taken comic strips seriously but he found himself drawn in by the lavishness of the strip and the odd energy which combined Azula's frenetic energy with Karo's quiet humor. "I didn't know you had a talent for art."
"Comics aren't really art," Karo said meekly, "The newspaper needs features to keep circulation – I'm there to sell papers. Reporters have a pad and pencil and I have India ink, watercolor and Azula to edit the work."
"I can see some of my sisters influence in the action scenes," Zuko turned to Karo and Azula, "I can see you two have found your own way in the world." Zuko found himself pleased with the new found good fortune of his friends. Azula had the talent to teach and work anywhere with a decent math or physics program and Karo had a clever knack for telling a story in pictures that would have newspapers willing to pay him a good salary to draw for them. "How did you ever learn to draw like this?"
Karo didn't really know. He had begun with crayons, pencils and books and despite his bad vision; he had a crystal clear imagination and grew into drawing as much as learned it. "As a kid I had no friends and plenty of pencils."
Zuko smiled, "and you Azula? Do you enjoy teaching?"
"It depends," Azula shifted her papers, "I enjoy mathematics and science and believe them to be the only hope of piercing the darkness of ignorance, suspicion and religion. I enjoy communicating about them and have met a few people who found new or novel ideas compelling." Azula rubbed her eyes, "the War saw many new discoveries such as new theories of physics, a model of the atom that works and yet never have so many lived so long knowing so little about so much."
"I came to ask you a question about the War," Zuko said quietly but not in a whisper as he produced a book from his robes. "Nekoyasha?"
"It didn't work but it killed plenty of people." Azula scratched her head. "The secret documents about Cat Demon Island only working their way up to your level?"
Karo leaned against a dirty wall, "I will admit I'm utterly lost. Nekoyasha Island belongs to the Southern Water Tribe so..."
Azula rescued Karo from his confusion, "Nekoyasha Island was the main reason the Fire Nation took such an interest in the Southern Water Tribe. Fire Lord Sozin looked for two things – the Avatar and a monster weapon. He found neither. Fire Lord Azulon continued the search for both – you know the history of the Avatar." Azula's eyebrows narrowed, "Azulon found Uranium ore near Nekoyasha Island and had a team of luckless scientists and political prisoners working at the research camp at Nekoyasha Island searching for a monster weapon. Azulon's team didn't find a monster weapon but did discover all the pleasures of working with radioactivity – poisoning, explosions, environmental destruction and cancers of all sorts."
"Fifty thousand or more people died," Zuko added with his characteristic severity. "The Fire Nation decimated the Southern Water Tribe to keep their work secret and protected from threats."
"When Ozai took the throne, this did seem like such a good way to kill people he went on to conduct more research." Azula creaked as she turned on her chair, "I only know the published history of the place because so much of that work remains shrouded in secrecy. Father never told me anything about the inner workings his pet defense projects and I never asked." Azula looked at his brother, "why do you ask?"
Zuko walked forward slowly and set a large red telephone directory sized book down in front of his sister. "Nekoyasha belongs to the Southern Water Tribe and they want us to remove the whole complex so they can fish there. I offered to bury the whole thing in a huge hole and let them have the island but they want it removed."
Azula gave her brother a curious look, "you didn't come to me to debate the merits of burying trash in a hole." She sounded civil but determined to get to the point.
"Is it possible," Zuko stood with his arms crossed, "for the Fire Nation to have achieved a self sustaining chain reaction?"
Azula thought for a moment; then gave a simple one word answer, "no." She turned the book around so she didn't have to read upside down and held it for a moment. "Science says energy and mass can be interchanged and one way to do that would be to take heavy atoms like Uranium and break them to smaller bits. The theory of fission has existed for decades but the engineering would prove impossible. On the one hand, you could make a device to make a huge explosion, level a city using fission according to this theory. That same theory suggests we could use wormholes to move from one part of the Universe to another or travel in time – so keep this in mind. No one can do it it with our level of technology. Why didn't Zhao turn the Northern Water Tribe city into a smoking ruin – huh?"
"It is possible?" Zuko insisted.
Azula scratched her head and thought about the problem again, "so are Moon rockets. We lack the technology to achieve it or the ability to pay for it."
Zuko tapped the book lightly. "My father believed in secrecy so I can't find the scientists responsible for this work but the book contains the secret papers from the last three years of the Nekoyasha Project and they speak of a self sustaining chain reaction."
"Oh?" Azula had a sudden moment of revelation, "I didn't know that! I studied the physics of electronics so the physics of fission lie beyond my purview somewhat. If they achieved that..." Azula tapped her fingers and leafed through the book. Even the title page looked secret and imposing with a huge red seal warning that this work was beyond secret and into the territory where even casually mention of the work would result in unspeakable consequences. "I have my doubts because we lack the technology to achieve any of this...but you're the Fire Lord. Have you sent experts to the plant to inspect and assess what went on there?"
Karo coughed politely, "I don't mean to sound rude but this sounds like work for Avatar Aang. If the scientists played with forces better left alone, doesn't he have a role to protect and save us from this?"
"I sent him down to investigate along with Hakoda and Bato," Zuko shrugged, "and haven't heard from them but they left only a few days ago. Part of my reason for coming here was to speak with my sister who studied physics and is loyal to the Fire Nation." He glared at both Karo and Azula, "and wouldn't speak of such secret and dangerous matters to anyone else."
Azula had put Karo on to the duty of copying the diagrams out to proper scale, do other drawings based on the text and still she remained baffled by the information in the book. "I don't know why my stupid brother doesn't simply have the Avatar bury this place!" The evening had grown late and Azula had worked out very little. She sat with Karo on the living room floor swatting the mosquitoes drawn to the lamp and bouncing complex and misunderstood ideas in her mind. Karo had figured out one part by looking at the drawings and realized he had drawn a kettle filled with graphite and water. Azula had to work out how this could possibly be used to make Uranium atoms break apart. She had no idea how this could possibly work and Karo's diagram looked like nothing more than a schematic of a coal powered locomotive engine with a good deal more piping.
"Could your brother have visited this place?" Karo asked gravely.
Azula scratched her cheek, "it sounds like the kind of stupidly brave, principled thing he might do. They didn't do anything new as far as I could tell. I would take years to work all of the details out but the Fire Nation had prison labor, trained experts and the military."
"How dangerous would this kind of nuclear pile be?" Karo hated these documents. Everything about them screamed secrecy and death. He could imagine the layout of the vast facility in his mind from the diagrams and maps contained in the book. A vast city with street numbers housed guards, families, the workers and scientists in a small city. At a distance some kilometers beyond this the concentration camps housed the labor needed for the facility, its construction and upkeep. As with anything vastly inhumane, the four huge camps had numbers not names.
"Even I wouldn't build it," Azula shifted the book to catch more of the meager tungsten lamp light. "I may have no regard for the welfare and feelings of others but I know when our science can't do something safely and when I can't run fast enough to escape should anything go badly wrong."
"What do you mean?" Karo found himself baffled by everything he had learned and questions yielded more uncertainties but at least he had begun to understand what science did not know.
"The nucleus of the atom of Uranium is just a big bunch of particles and it can't hold together because like over ambitious models made out of paste and tongue depressors – the glue can't hold it together." Azula held her hand out in a round shape and spread her fingers out. "It has too many particles and so it spits them out until it has become small enough for the nuclear glue to hold it all together. We call this radioactive decay and it does nothing too harmful but it gives off energy."
"Huh," Karo labeled another diagram.
"But under some not well understood conditions, Uranium might be made to fission or basically have its atoms break apart quickly but unless I have missed a crucial point – not in a controlled way. It would explode, melt apart, generate huge amounts of heat and kill people." Azula flipped through the book. "Some scientists think nuclear reactions make the Earth hot because when you place enough radioactive material together it heats up. Until today I met no scientist that thought a controlled reaction in the form of a self sustaining chain reaction possible given our technology or physics. The scientists working on this project claimed this plant can control the reaction. I think this is a boldfaced lie told to my father to please him and keep the project going. Nothing I can think up could possibly control a fission reaction once it got going."
"So kablam!" Karo made a grand sweeping gesture. "If the Fire Nation had something that made a big blast, why didn't they use it?"
Azula lay back on the floor, "and we come back to our basic question." She rubbed her forehead. "Why?"
Azula knew technology could fly in front of the science behind it. She had little expertise in nuclear physics as she had studied radio and electronics in her studies since the idea of sending messages at light speed across the ether intrigued her. She lay in bed and failed to get any sleep as she pondered the questions. She knew the basic reasons behind the decision came out of her dead father's mind and he had little restraint when it came to making large and usually unworkable military technologies. Karo knew nuclear piles were of little use in a world with hydroelectric, coal and gas power because these three power sources offered cheap and simple designs an entrepreneur could place in any sizable city and start a power utility. A nuclear pile offered all the disadvantages of costing a hundred times as much as any conventional power plant with the added excitement of blowing up randomly if they could be made to work. Only the Fire Nation had the resources to take up such a project and it struck Azula that her father had some reason behind his madness.
Azula knew Avatar Aang would consider the whole complex a blight on the planet and might try to destroy it. Aang could wreck the plant and bury it deep inside the earth but the contents would not stay hidden for long. It would slowly rise to the surface dragged up by glaciers or groundwater and would slowly poison the citizens of the Southern Water Tribe. He could shove it into the sea as an afterthought and trigger a massive explosion that would make the Southern Water Tribe homeland uninhabitable forever. The misery of the Southern Water Tribe didn't bother Azula – they had a small population and could be moved. As a scientist though, she had a duty and often the pleasure of preventing the ignorant from doing vastly stupid things.
"Karo!" Azula reached over and nudged Karo's side as he lay asleep in his futon. Karo wriggled and turned over and wrapped his red linens around himself. "Get up you!" Azula yelled.
"I can't fix nuclear piles," Karo rubbed the sleep out of his eyes. "We're victims of the banality of evil. The Fire Nation found the people with the big brains to build this awful thing and yet I doubt any of these people wanted to ruin the planet. The Fire Nation explored any technology that gave them an edge – airships, bombs, weapons of mass destruction like poison gas and massive fire bending attacks. Everyone went along led by a few evil or overenthusiastic people."
"I wanted to raze the Earth Kingdom to the ground using fire bending from airships," Azula sat in her bed, "at the time I believed it was all for the best."
Karo yawned, "hence the banality of evil. Lots of others thought this the right thing to do. No moral compass is absolute – I think it works more like a magnetic compass and shifts around depending on what or who pulls on it. You keep forgetting you were a confused kid living in awe of your father. You have to forgive yourself." Karo sat up on his arms, "well now you have a chance to try and undo something the Fire Nation did."
"Why don't they leave the bloody thing alone?" Azula said bitterly as she thought back to her other life before the War.
"I don't know," Karo said kindly, "Zuko might wish to undo some of the evil done by his father? Maybe the place poses dangers we haven't yet fathomed. Who knows? Maybe the thing can be made to do something useful. You need your sleep or you will get bandy and strung out and because your mind does its best work when you have a good night's sleep."
Five weeks passed and after Hakoda and Bato returned with Aang and reported the place uninhabited, an airship carried Karo, Azula, Toph and Katara to Cat Demon island. The Nekoyasha Industrial Complex stunned even Azula: the size of the planned city of Nekoyasha made her wonder how she could not have found out about the sheer scale of the place. The planned community had accommodation for perhaps seventy five thousand workers with blocks upon blocks of dull concrete blocks of flats built on the permafrost of the island. Fire Lord Zuko had the airship circle the dead city in the snow as they prepared to land. The Fire Lords had built a huge industrial city beyond the reach of any enemy where they smelted steel, made war machines and conducted weapons research without fear of enemy attack.
The irony of this place struck Katara most of all. She had grown up five hundred kilometers from this complex and had no knowledge of it. Sokka had planned the invasion during the Day of Black Sun without a clue of the size of the Fire Nation's presence in his backyard. Nekoyasha Island took its name from a rare - now likely extinct feral cat that hunted on the glaciers and snow covered lowlands of the islands. The Cat Demons may have had good hunting but people never did and no one from the Southern Water Tribe settled there.
The airship circled and began to descend to a clear snow covered field that would allow it to dock as the passengers selected for the mission: Toph, Katara, Azula and Karo stared at the buildings as they passed by beneath the airship. Everyone on the airship donned warm, blue Water Tribe parkas as they prepared to exit the ship.
"I gave the paper four weeks of strips in advanced," Karo told Azula as he pulled his backpack on and prepared to depart the airship. "I worked like a dog to get that work done and they haven't paid me yet."
Azula looked around, said nothing and pushed the door open. The cold wind hit her like a brick wall and she held her robes close to her. She saw a world of dark, cold twilight – that anyone could live and work here struck her as incredible. "We all have burdens we must bear."
"How long can we spend here?" Katara grabbed her bag and hefted it over her shoulder.
"My brother didn't tell me he had spent a day wandering around the main complex," Azula tried to hide her face from the wind as she walked toward the building they had been told was the airship terminal. "He got sick so your guess is as good as mine. We're five kilometers from the building my brother explored so we probably won't get sick."
"I thought he had an ear infection," Katara said.
Azula nodded as she trudged forward, "well I have my own theory about his illness. My brother has the same kind of principled outlook on life as my uncle so he traveled her to investigate this place. He probably ran across something that made him ill. This explains why you came along – we need someone who can heal us if we do get sick." Azula patted Katara on the shoulder in a manner that provided no comfort.
The airship crew didn't wish to linger and they quickly formed the detail to pack all the supplies into the airship terminal that the 'team' needed.
Toph pulled the heavy glass door open, "shouldn't the inside of this old building be as cold as the outside?"
The inside felt warm and comfortable. The interior had been stripped of furniture and fixtures leaving exposed steel trusses but the building held heat. Azula found a switch with a green and a red button and when she pressed the green button, the electric arc lights came on with a loud buzz.
"Power?" Toph said as she listened to the hum. She could hear the hiss of steam underneath her feet. "Heat? Could people still live here?"
"Hakoda and Bato hung off the coast of this place and saw no activity except penguins and orcas feeding on penguins," Azula looked around at the exposed tubing, pipes and vents of the building. "They saw no signs of activity but they did notice some things which might explain why we have heat and power." Azula held out a large set of scale maps Hakoda and Bato had made, "Hakoda noticed these five ponds just outside the complex had remained unfrozen even in winter so my guess is that one or more of the reactors is still running."
Katara held the door open for the hapless workers who trudged in with the rest of the gear. She hoped they could find some way of dealing with this awful, toxic place so it could be wiped off the face of the planet. She bowed as the last member of the airship crew left.
"Good luck," he said quietly, "we'll return with supplies in a week."
"Very well," Azula waved dismissively from behind a large book of blueprints."Damn my stupid brother – he finds out about this place and tells the Avatar. The Avatar wants it dealt with and my brother believes its his responsibility because the Fire Nation built it. He tells me because I have a background in physics but then he decided to keep this secret. I had no means of talking with any of the important experts in the field of atomic science at Ba Sing Se University. When it comes to atomic piles the size of large houses I find myself a bit out of my league."