A/N: Thanks this chapter goes to Princess Azula, who when she wrote in a review "Beautifully written. I'm creeped out now." described exactly the reaction I want most of my writing to produce.

IV

The spirit world looked like a war had raged through it. Pungent smalls rose from water-filled gashes in the murky ground. The insect-spirit Koh curved around Ozai like a mobile mountain range, like the great trains that drove the Fire Nation's vehicles of war, before forging on ahead, serrated legs clicking.

Ozai pulled at the loose collar of the rust-colored cloak he had been given in the prison; the air was cold. This was no eyrie of dragons…but nor was it a cell. He would endure whatever debasement was required to regain his glory.

He stepped along beside the moving length of the monster, and then growled, "How does this help me, Face-Stealer?"

Faster than an eyeblink, Koh's head and shoulder-sections turned and loomed up before him. The face was a plain of furrowed tan skin and black hair. Like Iroh's son? Maybe. Ozai carefully froze his expression before he could react to either surprise.

"First you must help me," the face said. "The Avatar knows of our meeting."

"How do you know that?" Ozai made sure to keep his voice even.

"The Spirit world ripples like a pool of water, for those who can see its surface.

We will defeat him together. Then I will explain to you our bargain."

Appa sped through the sky. To Aang's sight, the dragon appeared beside him almost immediately, its whiskers streaming back along its streamlined head. It twined around Appa in wide loops. The thick belly-scales crossed Aang's vision, and when he saw the sky again, it was not the sky of his world any more.

It was tainted with mauve, and fallen trees littered the ground below like broken sticks cast among the still-living trees. Appa flew on.

Sensation shivered through Zuko, something wild and strong and strange. Power, as sure as a clenched fist. Then a vision stole his sight, replacing the striking sky with a narrow alley at dusk, stars visible as just a rectangle above the high walls of buildings to either side.

A woman walked across the cobbled stones, wearing a rough, loose, grey cloak and curled-toed slippers inappropriate for the dusty, puddle-strewn street. Zuko would have recognized her as his mother by an unknown sixth sense, he was sure, even without her pale hand moving as she shed a golden bracelet that he recognized as a gift from his father; even without her furtive looks backwards, revealing the curve of cheek and fall of onyx hair, Zuko would have sensed the mien of a queen fleeing a murder she committed and half-regrets.

For a moment, temperatureless air forced itself into Zuko's throat, but screaming into the past would do nothing, and so the gasp brought him again into the present, to Appa and to his companions.

Aang, cross-legged in his customary place, did not stir. Katara, her hair rustling in the wind, concentrated on the sky. All were uncertain of what this world was, of whether it had changed since their world had. No one seemed to have shared Zuko's vision, and so he considered it in silence.

Finally, Katara asked, "Where exactly are we going?"

"We'll know when we get there," Aang replied, his voice flat, then sounding more cheerful. "Or else we'll just fly around forever."

This did not seem to be the time for gallows humor, and so neither Katara nor Zuko responded.

Aang continued, "The spirit world is big. I've been to all different parts of it before, and I can't really see how this part is connected to any of them…" but his voice trailed off, because a clearing came into view below them, and in it curled a creature like a giant insect. It twitched and shivered as its legs moved in clusters of spikes, and within the half-circle of its body stood the figure of a man.

Aang murmured, "The Face-Stealer."

"The what?" Katara lay her fingers against her cheeks nervously.

"One of the scariest spirits I've ever met," Aang said. "He…ah…" he waved his hands, trying to search for words. "Takes your face."

Zuko glared down at the creature, trying to judge its weaknesses, if physical weapons could hurt it at all, trying to avoid looking at the human it had entrapped or allied with. Who knew what the rules of the spirit world were…if there were any. "Is that something someone can survive?"

"I'm not sure…" Aang replied.

Appa curved over the clearing. Katara's thoughts seemed to match Zuko's as she looked down. She murmured, "How did heget here?" It would have been foolish to ask her who she met. Of course she could recognize his father.

Aang said, "He would need a spirit guide," but Zuko had a better answer.

"Remember, every nation has animal guides. Air Nomads had sky bison; the Fire Nation had dragons. But there were others too. A long time ago there was a man whose entire purpose at the court was to study the animals that had to do with firebending or our history. What was his name…Li Zhing…no, Zhing Shu. He wrote some about the Face-Stealer." And it was something I hoped was a myth. "We managed to ally with the Face-Stealer once, but when he was asked to help us in war, he refused. But it seems that the spells to summon him are still known…by some, anyway."

"Apparently." said Katara. " We can't use bending here, right? Well, we're not entirely defenseless. Zuko, you have your swords."

He had packed them soon after Aang mentioned that bending did not work in the spirit world. He touched the hilt of one of the two. "Yeah."

But sour fear burrowed from his thoughts to his heart as he wondered if he could still firebend properly at all.

"All right." Aang said. "We'll confront them." He looked so serious that Zuko did not want to ask how he was going to defend himself physically. While Aang had proved himself hale often enough, his fighting style was not as similar to a purely physical martial art as Zuko's was to afford him much good without elemental powers, but the Avatar produced an aegis of confidence. "But I don't want Ozai killed."

No, thought Zuko, we don't want to have to make that decision again, but we don't exactly want it taken out of our hands, either. Even without bending, he could still kill one of us easilly.

I haven't really thought of him as my father in so long.

Aang guided Appa down and through the trees. The sky bison landed on the saturated ground and lowed fitfully; Aang patted the thick fur over his eyes before sliding to the ground. Zuko followed him. They strode toward the clearing containing the monsters, tense and hard-eyed.

Ozai heard the shush of footsteps and broke his stare with Koh. He heard the great worm blink, switching visages. Out of the corner of his eye he saw the brightly striped face of a baboon, its eyes unsettlingly piercing.

Ozai could not stop a wide grin when he saw the children walking so determinedly before him, propelled as they were by their naïve sense that destiny favored the upstarts. Defensiveness and arrogance fed his confidence. "The Avatar is mine, Koh," He hissed, and then he turned and spoke louder. "Welcome!"

And Zuko there, who so conveniently took Azula out of the picture once she was too crazed, too drunk with power to defend herself from her weaker sibling. Would Zuko be useful any more, now that he wanted nothing more from Ozai? No. He was just another child who thought it could take its world from its parents.

"Be patient." Koh's androgynous voice came from just behind Ozai.

"Silence!" Piqued by the creature's refusal to serve him as he had called it to do, he turned for a moment to look at the spirit. "You are here only to do as I command."

The baboon-face did not respond. Ozai rued how obvious it would be to his foes that he and Koh were not on the friendliest of terms.

But no matter. Even if they lacked solidarity, they far outclassed the children in power.

They must. Ozai would not suffer defeat again.