Hello and welcome to Chapter II. These first few chapters are heavy with original characters, but you can expect to encounter familiar faces soon, I promise. This story will have full involvement from the fire nation royal family, the original Gaang, and some second generation, Legend of Korra, characters. I have tried to be as true to the original material and timeline as possible, with some liberties taken for the sake of this narrative. Ultimately, I wanted to explore, in a grittier way than allowed by Nickelodeon, the ramifications of war in the Avatar universe. And Azula's story was always such a loose end ripe for fanfiction.
I apologize for any typos, I try to publish the chapters as soon as possible and sometimes they elude me.
The M rating on this story is warranted and you have been warned before heading into this chapter.
The trio returned to their cottage as the stars' brilliance outpaced the royal hues of dusk. Mozu was now on Raika's back while Xan unlocked the front door. It was a worn procedure: Xan, with his impressive stature, always entered the home first. Raika was the second line of defense, with Mozu shielded behind her. Muscle memory navigated Xan's eyes as he tried to discern any unfamiliar shapes in the hollows of space underneath patient's beds or behind the gauzy privacy screens. The group paused to listen for movement, waiting for someone's hair to stand up in warning.
Once Xan nodded the all clear, he stepped past the threshold and brandished his right arm. His fire bending ignited the candles in the room. Raika followed him inside and pivoted immediately to lock the door behind her. She shifted Mozu's weight. He was about the age to be going on play dates, she thought. He'd be invited to other family's homes and dinners soon and Raika wondered how old he would grow before he noticed their family's intricacies were not commonplace. How old before he asked why Lee's family never fed any of their food to their livestock before eating it themselves? Or why other children were allowed to carelessly burst through front doors ahead the adults? Or why no one else removed the paintings, photographs, and decorations from their living room before company?
"Here, I've got him Rai." Xan tugged Mozu from her shoulders. He whimpered at the movement, but did not wake. "I'll take him up to bed."
"Thanks," Raika nodded. Xan left the front room through an arched door on the right wall that separated the clinic from their private living quarters. Past the professionalism of the room lined with six cots, water basins, cabinets of herbs, and a healer's desk lived the family's home. Mozu's drawings hung along the walls next to the odd pieces of art Xan had collected over the years and miles. There were books piled on more books. Xan's carpentry accounted for most of the furniture and his glass blown figurines rested on sills, infused with sunlight.
It was warm and lovely and they liked it that way. Raika made sure there were always fresh flowers in one of her most prized possessions, an antique bronze vase. She was sure it was fire nation and the frieze like motif circling its brim depicted beach scenes. Sun emblems blazed behind figures running though sand dunes and banks. The script on the vase's bottom was difficult to discern, but Raika suspected it proclaimed something about an artist from Ember Island. Raika's mother had always packed the vase across their unyielding and unrelenting moves. Or runs, Raika corrected. She had always wondered, and sometimes believed in her mother's better moments, that the vase was more than decoration. That is was a message to Raika herself: "look at the elements together: water and fire, and look at their beauty." But it was reckless to own the vase now in the Earth kingdom. So, while the home was otherwise tidy, a film of dust distorted its carvings, muting its heritage.
Raika's other prized possession, one that was downright careless to display, was strip of four photos taken at a festival. Raika was young in the photos, maybe eight. Her mother would have been twenty-nine. Raika was seated on her mother's lap, secured by an arm roped about her waist. They were both smiling in the first frame, marveling at the new technology. The second frame was more candid. The suddenness of the flash had made them both jump (and her mother's arms tense, hands warming up). But they had quickly recovered into laughter. The third frame was staged with Raika tugging at the corners of her mouth, plump and pouty like her mother's, and her mother's hands plucking her ears out to the side. The fourth frame was a departure. Raika was giggling too hard to remain still and her face was lost in blur. Her mother, however, was unmoving. Her posture was both graceful and severe and her eyes had sought out a point in the lens that made every passerby feel as if her gaze followed. Nevertheless, Raika cherished the strip too much to hide it away from the daylight.
Xan came back into the clinic.
"I think we should investigate electricity. Mozu is starting to ignite candles in his sleep. His nightmares could burn down the entire house."
Raika laughed. "Only the mansions in Republic City have electricity right now, it will be a long time coming before it reaches us. And a longer time coming before my wages are able to reach the costs. Or have you finally decided to be famous artist?" Raiked raised her eyebrows.
"It's regrettable we travel in circles numb to good art. You can't teach good taste."
"I think the villagers might say you can't teach natural talent." Xan made a phsss sound through his lips and waived his hand. Raika, for her part, did genuinely like Xan's art. But so much of it was painful. He'd used an innate mastery of color to communicate sensations or memories without any narrative depictions. They darker pieces hurt Raika to contemplate, elicited a visceral response from somewhere in her chest cavity. Raika and Xan had ceased trying to sell the work upon the realization the villagers intended their darker memories to remain where they buried them. And the wealthier tourists traveling through the villages only wanted quaint depictions of country life.
Raika returned to the issue of Mozu's fire. "We'll just have to be alert- he's not the first child to bend in their dreams."
Xan nodded but added, "most children have not gone through what he's gone through." He pulled out the desk chair and sat down backwards, his arms crossed over the top of the back. His movements were often perfectly princely. Strangers might say his sureness was the natural result of his handsomeness. But in the years Raika had known Xan, she picked up on a dissonance. It was almost like he was the mime of some finer friend, that his movements had been copied and learned.
Xan continued, "his emotions are more ignited, and so too will his bending be." He spoke with his forearms, movements flowing like his bending.
"I know, Xan." Raika pushed herself onto a cot and fell backwards, her dark waves splaying. She pulled her knees up one at time to stretch out her muscles, already tired from tomorrow's return hike. "I'd like to sleep in our own bed tonight. Let's send thoughts out to the town: I wish for you to have sleep. I wish for you to have rest. I wish for you to stay asleep..."
There were two quick and sharp knocks on the front door. Raika threw her arms over eyes and groaned. Xan laughed at her.
"The spirits have never liked you, Rai."
"Har-har." Raika stood on her toes to glance through the door's spy hole, recognizing the town baker. She pulled away and looked back to Xan.
"It's only Tonn, I'm letting him in." Xan nodded.
Raika unlatched the door and opened it, admitting a portly man with finger tips almost as plum colored as the bags under his eyes.
"Tonn." Raika pronounced his name in welcome and in resignation, gesturing him over to a cot.
"Evening, Raika. Xan. Thank you for letting me in." The townspeople were always a little more formal, more distant with Raika and Xan. "I- uh- can't seem to get rest. I thought if I just kept baking tonight I'd tire the old body out, but dozens of berry pies later and well-." He chortled as shrugged. "No luck."
"None." Raika agreed. "Alright, why don't you just have a lie down." Raika took Tonn's elbow and led him toward the first cot. "Seat first on the bed." She patted the cot. "Swing your legs up. Good. Lower yourself down slowly. Excellent, Tonn." Once the man's head became horizontal, his eyelids sank together. Raika exhaled in exasperation. Most of her patient's had done this: came with complaints of insurmountable insomnia and then promptly fell asleep at her clinic.
"Tonn, just let your eyes close and we'll see if you can't get any sleep here tonight." He was already snoring.
"Well, so much for your own bed then," Xan said to Raika. "Do you want me to watch him for you?"
"No, it's alright. I'll take one of the cots." Xan pushed off the chair's back and stood up. He kissed Raika on the forehead, wishing her sweet dreams and disappeared into the family quarters.
Raika curled up on the cot opposite Tonn, watching his chest rise and fall. She still had no concrete idea about what could be causing the sleeping pandemic. No one stopped talking about or trying to explain the buzzing or the tremors. Buzzing inaudible to Raika and Xan and tremors unfelt by the pair. The town was closer to the mountains than their cottage and Raika had wondered if they would happen on miners during their hike today. But there were mines, no miners, no drilling or buzzing of any sort. And no bugleherb. What was the buzzing? What were the tremors? Why was their village ground zero for an as yet unheard of insomnia plague? We'll know at some point, I suppose. Raika closed her eyes.
The morning was bright and clear on the mountain, a mid spring day's crispness punctured by birdsong alone. And tortured shrieks.
"SHUT UP! Just SHUT UP!" Hoppo shouted in the face of a cowering woman. He snarled at her, the ends of his teeth jagged and sharp and mismatched, like he had eaten gravel. The woman only sobbed louder, shielding her face in the crook of her chained arms. "Fine," Hoppo hissed. He sliced the woman's throat. The sobbing turned to gurgling and then to death. Worthless, Hoppo noted.
Outside of his tent he could hear the sounds of the camp waking. Pots were being prepared for breakfast, men were clapping each other's backs asking about how their loaned slaves had faired in each other's beds. Hoppo stood and walked outside, moving past the guard stationed at the front of his tent. Bern, he thought the guy's name was. Whatever.
Hoppo smiled at the man. "She had an accident in there."
The guard did not react. Hoppo lunged at him.
Right in Bern's ear he whispered in falsetto, "a bit of a mess." He could see his spittle collecting in the slope of Bern's ear. "You know women."
Hoppo snickered and pulled back abruptly to stare at Bern dead on. He sprang up in an exaggerated gesture of indifference and thorough amusement. Hoppo smiled at Bern with a wildness that split his lips, mania bleeding from his gums.
Then he instantly sobered.
"Clean it up." Hoppo spoke in a bored monotone.
As he walked away from the useless interaction, he bent a pillar of rock to punch Bern in the back. Emphasize his order.
Hoppo meandered around the camp, nodding occasionally at the other men. He liked the comradery. He liked the validation. He was doing man's work. Earth work. Superior work. Spirit's work. Hoppo passed the metal cages where they held the captives. They were kept sedated during the day. While Hoppo knew he could crush any of the fucking roaches, it was better not to even give them the chance to harness Agni's power. It was annoying and tedious work crushing the fingers of a renegade fire bender.
At night, their techniques were more sophisticated. During their most recent trip to Republic City (hell, Hoppo dubbed the place) the commander had made contact with some kind of prodigy. An engineering kid. A kid with brains Hoppo would never have and would never respect. The kid a created a kind of anti-bending stick. Some kind of electrical current ran through the rod, singeing the chi points of their fire bending prisoners. The sticks made a fucking awful noise, a buzzing that frayed Hoppo's nerves. Whatever. He couldn't hear them over the women's yells in his bed most nights.
Hoppo set his course toward the commander's tent. He wanted permission to go after the little fire nation family he'd watched in the woods the day before. For Hoppo, this permission was more of a formality. Even if Tei Wang did not grant it, Hoppo wouldn't be deterred in the least.
Hoppo ignored the posted guards as he brushed into Tei Wang's tent. The commander was seated at a wooden table, drinking a cup of tea into which he dunked dried toast. Hoppo carelessly sat down opposite of him.
Tei Wang looked down to stir sugar into the tea. He used his hunting blade to create a current in the water. "Good Moring, Hoppo." Tei Wang did not glance up from his mug as he spoke. Hoppo grunted.
"How may I help you?" The commander sat the blade down.
"I saw fire nation in the woods yesterday. I want to bring them back."
"Ah." Tei Wang added more sugar to the tea as he picked his knife back up. "We are here to sell, not collect, Hoppo."
Hoppo did not react. He could not be bothered to process words that were of no use to him.
"Hoppo, there are no reports of fire nation persons in this territory. It was largely un-colonized during the war. It saw few battles. There would be no left over colonizers or bastard children of fire nation soldiers." He paused. "All this information you would, of course, know if you had been present at the strategy meeting yesterday."
Again, Hoppo did not care to hear.
"We are here for supplies before we move on to the buyers in Omashu. The customers are expecting our goods and we cannot humor every one of your dalliances. This would not be the first time you've imagined gold eyes or pale skin."
"Ping will tell you he saw the same as I."
Tei Weng sighed and sat his mug down. He looked up at Hoppo for the first time. But Hoppo had not been waiting to receive his attention at all. He was staring off into the recesses of the tent.
"No women again, commander?" Hoppo was distrustful of the commander.
"It is not a pleasant activity for the sights of a child." Hoppo consistently forgot, or had never remembered in the first place, the commander traveled with his daughter. She was sickly and she slowed everything down. Hoppo told the commander as much.
Tei Weng's face hardened slightly along his jaw. "Be back by noon." He dismissed Hoppo with a wave but the man's back was already in retreat.
Hoppo returned to his own tent, bouldering inside. He collected two throwing blades and an axe. He walked back out, headed toward Ping's tent. He spoke gruffly from outside the front flap. "Ping, I'm going back to the outlook." There was no response. "You coming?"
Silence. "Fine, I'll be at the same pass we hiked yesterday."
Better to have no company. That meant the girl would be his alone and he could claim the profit from the boy. He didn't care about the child, it would be easier to kill him on the trail than carry the weight of useless kid all the way to Omashu. He didn't have the patience to convince one their buyers a kid was worth rearing before you got any return. With optimism caking his heart, Hoppo set out.
