This is the scene I wrote first in the whole story, and the one that inspired the whole thing. I hope you like it, and again, please review and let me know your thoughts! I also would love any advice or recommendations for where this story should go!

And to answer an anonymous reviewer, you'll find out more about the events in this story's universe as it goes on, and I hope I wasn't too vague or confusing beforehand about it. To clear some things up, this story takes place about two years after the start of the show, and the Avatar was stopped very early on his journey, but you'll learn more about it as the story goes on. Thank you again for reviewing and I hope you like this chapter too!

Chapter 2

The long wooden benches of the Grand Arena were nearly full, a few stragglers still filing into their seats, jostling about and talking excitedly. Commoners were stuffed into the higher benches, nobles and a larger than normal number of soldiers were eagerly settling into the closer seats, all curious to see the secret earthbender that had been living among them, all eager for her blood.

Prince Zuko barely registered the loud hum of their voices, resting his head in his hands in a futile attempt to dispel his headache. He was reclined on a large chair embellished in gold and copper flames, wearing his traditional dark red robes and a scowl.

"Are you well, Prince Zuko?" his uncle whispered from his left.

"I'm fine, Uncle," he hissed automatically, knowing that Iroh knew exactly what was bothering him. He would not discuss it, however. Not with his father sitting on his other side.

The royal family had special seating for such an event. While the citizens' benches took up the rectangular amphitheater's longest sides, on the far wall of the arena, above a large doorway, was a jutting balcony on which their ornate chairs were placed. The Fire Lord's, of course, was in the center and was by far the largest; Ozai reclined in it with an expression of vaguely satisfied boredom as his eyes scanned the crowd below him.

Zuko and Iroh sat on the left of the Fire Lord, and Azula's chair was on his right, though unoccupied.

"Impressive, is it not?" Ozai's bored voice sounded in Zuko's ear.

"My lord?" He turned to his father warily.

Ozai waved a lazy hand at the arena below them. "The arena. I've just had it renovated," he explained. "Yes, this duel should prove to be quite interesting indeed."

Zuko frowned. He didn't see any renovations. The arena didn't look any different to him. It looked just the same, in fact, as it had the last time he had set foot in this damned building, five years ago…

Iroh put a gentle hand on Zuko's shoulder and whispered again, "If you are uncomfortable, my nephew, you can always step outside for the remainder of the—"

"I said I'm fine, Uncle," Zuko snapped under his breath, not wanting to give his father the satisfaction of knowing how much being back in the Grand Arena made his skin crawl. Absentmindedly, the prince lifted a hand to the scar over his eye, then caught himself and clenched his fists on the armrests of his chair.

Zuko felt his father's cold gaze on him, and steadfastly kept his eyes trained on the crowd below. Ever since his banishment had been revoked, his father had taken to studying him like that: not hostile, not even disapproving, exactly, but lying in wait, patiently studying, as though it were just a matter of time before Zuko disappointed him again.

It made the prince's skin crawl.

It had gotten worse over the past year, Zuko thought bitterly, after rumors had reached the Fire Lord's ears that the Avatar had somehow survived Zuko's attack at the South Pole over two years ago, during his banishment. Of course, Ozai must have known as well as anyone else that those rumors were just that: rumors, created by some stupid Earth Kingdom rebels to try and inspire hope in their followers. As far-fetched as those rumors were, though, Zuko knew that they had placed a seed of doubt in his father's mind. He would have to work twice as hard now to prove to his father that he was trustworthy, competent, worthy of honor.

Suddenly, a great roar sounded from the crowd below them; Zuko, Iroh, and Ozai all leaned forward to look.

The earthbender had just entered the arena.

She stood on the polished wooden steps leading up to the actual stage, where the duel would occur. As she came into view, on the far side of the arena from the royal family, the crowd began to laugh and jeer at her. It didn't take Zuko long to see why.

The earthbender was wearing the most ridiculous costume he had ever seen: a tight-fitting tunic made up of the most lurid shades of green and yellow imaginable, accompanied by a wide, violently green headband covered in leaves. It looked like a forest had vomited on her.

Neon green ribbons wound through her braided light brown hair and matched the bright leafy belt fastened around her waist. Her sleeves were yellow and alarmingly poofy; the effect made her look childish and rather stupid, more like a strange exotic clown than an ex-soldier or spy.

In fact, other than her bare feet, which Zuko supposed must make her earthbending easier, she did not look at all prepared to participate in a duel. What in the world had she been thinking?

"Poor girl," Iroh muttered on Zuko's left. He raised an eyebrow at his uncle but then realized, quite uncomfortably, that the girl had clearly been forced to wear that costume, in order to look as ridiculous and foolish as possible for the crowd. A wave of pity rose unbidden in Zuko's chest. He felt distinctly uncomfortable.

Despite all this, the girl's shoulders were thrown back and her chin was raised defiantly, as though she were deaf to the crowd's taunts.

Then, only a few steps from setting foot on the arena, she stopped dead. The crowd began to yell even louder, this time cheering.

Her opponent had just appeared on the walkway on the other side of the arena, directly below the balcony where Zuko sat.

Princess Azula, the recently appointed War Minister of the Fire Nation's army.

Azula approached the arena confidently, seeming almost bored with the proceedings, although Zuko didn't have to see her face to know she was smirking at her opponent's ridiculous appearance and at the crowd's enthusiastic welcome.

Zuko scowled. His sister usually invited fear and hushed reverence from crowds, rather than cheers and applause; these people must be unusually eager to see the earthbender beaten, he thought.

But then his eyes found the earthbender again, and all other thoughts fled from his mind.

She was staring at the princess with a look of sheer horror, mouth open and eyes wide, no longer looking confident but utterly thrown. It was a look Zuko knew well, as it was the same expression he had worn in this same arena, five years ago, when he saw his own opponent for the first time.

She didn't know it would be Azula.

Zuko didn't realize he was gripping the arms of his chair so tightly his knuckles were turning white. For a horrible moment all he could see was his own father stalking toward him across that arena, the shock and dread freezing his limbs…

All he could do was stare at the girl at the far end of the room, who was clearly trying to force back her nerves and make her feet to move towards the arena floor: once the two opponents were standing on the stage, they would acknowledge one another and the duel would officially begin.

She hadn't guessed…

Zuko gritted his teeth. Technically speaking, the entire army was under the command of Princess Azula, and therefore any offence against the Fire Nation army was committed against her. It had only been a recent development: Fire Lord Ozai had given the title of War Minister to Azula as a test, to let her demonstrate her abilities as a strategist and leader. So far she had performed admirably, of course, although as far as Zuko knew she only ever interacted directly with the generals and admirals. That being the case, a common soldier would likely not even know the princess's new title…

"Earth scum!"

"Dirt-blooded whore!"

"Kill her, Princess!"

The crowd had grown louder, eager for a fight. The earthbender and the princess had finally stepped onto the arena floor, assessing one another coldly.

The Agni Kai had begun.

But as she stepped cautiously forward across the arena, the earthbender stopped dead for a second time. Her eyes grew so wide that, even from his lofty seat, Zuko could see they were almost as bright green as her tunic. Instead of shock, though, this time she had frozen in fury.

"What's wrong?" Zuko whispered to his uncle, who was staring intently at the scene before him and did not seem to hear.

"What did you do?" the earthbender's voice rang out angrily, even above the roar of the crowd. Her eyes darted back and forth uncertainly. "What is this?"

Azula's back was to the balcony, but even so, Zuko could feel her eyebrow rise mockingly. "What did you expect?" the princess answered dismissively.

"A fair fight! I deserve that much, at least!"

What is she talking about? Zuko stared at the opponents, confusion and unease growing in his mind.

"A fair fight!" Azula laughed scornfully, and the crowd was rapidly falling silent in order to try and hear the opponents' words. "What would a traitor know of fairness?"

"I deserve a fair fight! I'm not a traitor!" the earthbender insisted, her voice going up an octave as her anger transformed into panic. "I've only ever wanted what was best for the Fire Nation!"

The Fire Lord gave a soft chuckle to Zuko's right.

"You can't do this! I'm a loyal soldier!" The girl's voice was practically pleading now, her fists clenched at her sides and shaking uncontrollably. Zuko was barely aware that his own fists were doing the same. I'm your son, I'm your loyal son…He felt a sudden urge to run out of the building and never look back.

At the earthbender's words, Azula laughed again. She turned around deliberately and looked up to meet her brother's eyes, a cruel smile on her lips. He knew they were both recalling the same thing, and he matched her glare with as much fury as he could.

But while Azula was looking at her brother, the earthbender saw her chance and attacked.

With a jab of her hands, the ground under Azula's feet shifted and the princess fell heavily to her knees. Before she could get up, thin tendrils of sand had snaked up and engulfed her body, solidifying into rock and binding her to the ground.

The crowd screamed and jeered. With a blast of blue fire, Azula broke through her bonds with ease and leapt to her feet, sending a crackling wave of flames at the earthbender.

Like an ice skater on a frozen pond, the girl skidded sideways across the surface of the arena, sweeping around in a great arc to avoid the flames. As she slid across the earth, she kicked her foot into the ground, tearing little discs of rock out of the arena floor and firing them at Azula one after the other.

Azula dodged them easily, still smirking as she sent great tongues of flame chasing the girl in rings around the arena. The crowd was whooping and laughing as the earthbender resorted to more and more desperate maneuvers to dodge the blue flames.

Zuko frowned. He had rarely seen earthbending in action before, and had expected it to be quite different from this. He had imagined great chasms opening up in the ground to swallow opponents whole, and giant boulders ripped out of the ground and thrown high into the sky. But perhaps this earthbender didn't possess the skill or power for it, he supposed, and had to rely on defensive maneuvers and smaller attacks.

Despite that, her movements were incredibly graceful, he reflected, as she dodged yet another blast of fire by sliding across the stone floor. Earthbending was supposed to be uncivilized, brutal, filthy…that was what they had all been taught, anyway. Zuko's old bending master always described it as inane rock throwing, floundering in the dirt, work only fit for the Fire Nation colonies' rock quarries and coal mines.

For the first time, Zuko wondered if his teachers had been wrong.

But graceful maneuvers alone would not save the girl in this duel. The crowd clapped and yelled as a fire blast caught the girl's shoulder and sent her flying bodily across the arena. But the earthbender twisted in the air and landed fists-first, and as she hit the ground she made a giant cloud of dust rise off the stone floor, obscuring the entire arena from the crowd.

"Impressive," Iroh whispered, stroking his beard and sitting at the edge of his seat, but looking immensely worried all the same.

The crowd was booing as the fight was blocked by the swirling cloud of thick dust, with only the occasional burst of blue flame reaching their eyes.

Then, just as suddenly, the great cloud of dust condensed into rocks—pebbles hardly bigger than coins, floating sinisterly in midair. As one they flew like hailstones at the princess, who staggered and was forced to create a defensive fire shield around her body.

Panting for breath, the earthbender pressed her advantage. She dug her fingers into the earth and ripped a huge, flat sheet of rock out of the floor, leaving a wide, shallow hole in the arena's surface. Her muscles flexing against her poofy yellow sleeves, she flung the thin rock like a disc at her opponent's face with all her might.

The crowd applauded as Azula deflected this latest blow and knocked down the earthbender with another great burst of fire, but Zuko, with his higher vantage point, had noticed something that it seemed they had not. There was something shining on the floor of the arena, in the hole where the girl had torn the large, flat rock out of the ground. Instead of more earth, the hole revealed a flat, shining surface under the surrounding two or three inches of rock, gleaming like steel.

Steel?

Iroh had noticed it as well. He slammed a fist onto the ledge of the balcony, eyes darting darkly toward his younger brother. "The renovations…"

The renovations…With a sharp glance at his father, Zuko's eyes widened, and he understood.

The Fire Lord had had the normal arena floor replaced with a metal one, leaving stone only a few inches thick above the metal for the earthbender to fight with.

Suddenly, Zuko understood the girl's desperate, furious words as she stepped onto the arena floor. I deserve a fair fight… She must have sensed the metal below her feet, must have realized that she was not meant to have a fighting chance. She was meant to face Azula almost entirely weaponless, meant to make a fool of herself in front of the enormous crowd, meant to further disparage the practice of earthbending and then be brutally killed for her crimes.

With Azula as her opponent, and hardly any earth to fight with…there could be no other outcome.

Zuko was torn away from his horror as the audience gave another cheer, the loudest yet. The earthbender had been knocked off her feet by another fire blast, but this time she wasn't getting up. Azula laughed and formed a fire whip, crackling with white-blue flames. It flew out and coiled around the earthbender's leg, burning through the lurid green cloth.

The earthbender's scream of pain echoed through the stadium as the crowd bellowed their approval. Azula dragged the girl toward her across the ground with the fire whip, a cruel smile on her face.

Was the crowd this eager to see me burned? The thought came unbidden to Zuko's mind, his blood frozen in his veins. Did Azula smile like that, I wonder?

The girl was still screaming as she was dragged across the ground, scrabbling at the stone for purchase, perhaps to try to form a counterattack, but it seemed the pain of her burning leg was too strong. She came to rest only a few feet from Azula, who released the whip from her leg and stalked the rest of the distance to her prey, ready to deliver the killing blow.

The earthbender's screams of pain, the hole of shining steel in the arena floor, the jeers of the crowd; it was too much. Zuko leapt to his feet.

"STOP!"

Azula paused, her eyes flickering from her opponent to the balcony. Disgust and disregard showed openly on her face as she turned back to the earthbender, blue fire appearing in her right hand.

"I said, STOP!"

Without thinking, and deliberately avoiding his father's gaze, Zuko vaulted over the balcony wall and landed catlike on the arena floor fifteen feet below, his long robes pooling around him as he slowly rose to face his sister.

"That's enough," he said to Azula, coming to stand between her and her opponent.

The crowd had gone completely silent.

"Brother," Azula spat the word like a curse, her chest heaving furiously, "This beast is a traitor to the Fire Nation and a threat to our safety! I will finish it!"

"No. She's had enough."

"How dare you-" Azula began, but she seemed to realize, at the same time as Zuko did, the attention they were drawing: two members of the royal family fighting over an injured earthbending traitor in front of a wild crowd. It looked bad.

Zuko fought back a wince of embarrassment, but stood his ground. It was too late to back down now.

The siblings glared at each other for several long moments in silence, until finally Azula let out a snarl of fury. "Have it your way, brother. You've never learned how to properly finish an Agni Kai, after all." At that, she turned on her heel and stalked off the arena, back through the entrance door under the balcony.

As though Azula's departure were a sign, the crowd erupted again into boos and jeers, this time directed at Zuko, who had deprived them all of the gory finish they had anticipated.

"Guards!" Zuko called out behind him, ignoring the crowd with all his might. "Get the earthbender to a healer."

One of the guards approached hesitantly. "But…but, my prince…"

"Do it!"

As the guards picked up the earthbender, who seemed to have lost consciousness, Zuko turned and stormed away from the arena, wanting nothing more than to never set foot in the building again. But almost without meaning to, he paused and turned his eyes up to the balcony.

Iroh had vanished from his seat, but the Fire Lord had not moved since Zuko's outburst. He was staring unblinkingly down at his son, and with a great effort Zuko wrenched his eyes away from his father.

He pressed on, his jaw clenched painfully, trying desperately to ignore the cold mixture of disgust and fury on his father's face, and wondering how he could have let another Agni Kai go so horribly wrong.