Chapter 3: Jailbreak!

Azula blinked in surprise, and noted with detachment that she was experiencing blinding pain, emanating from multiple points in her body. Normally, this would enrage her, but at the moment, she was involved in performing a precise fire-bending move, which she had just invented, and a clear head was essential to not blowing herself up. Well, if she hadn't already.

She had managed to separate the energies necessary to create lightning, with her feet, without much trouble. Guiding the energies with her feet was clumsier than using her hands, but she was sure that she had them going in the right direction. The critical part - the tricky part - was of course getting the energies to reunite at the right place, and completely. The energies were naturally attracted to each other, and simply moving them closer together and letting the energies crash back together on their own, would result in an explosion. If that happened, it would likely blow her hands off, since they were chained to the wall on either side of the point at which she was aiming. Had she forced them together quickly enough? Had she re-combined them fast enough to produce lightning. Yes. And yes.

As her vision returned from the white flash of pain, she took stock of her injuries. Her hands were still attached, she noted with some relief. BETTER, they were no longer chained to the wall. The wall no longer existed. #I'm FREE# A smile threatened to cross Azula's lips, but was cut short by more blinding pain from the left side of her face.

#That... is a problem#

A thousand white-hot shards of some sort of metallic rock had imbedded themselves up and down Azula's forearms, across her throat, and across the half of her face that had been turned towards the explosion. They were still burning hot, and each gave off a bright white light. Small streams of light shone out of Azula's wounds.

#As if I were a Spirit! Am I dead?#

All at once, her sense of smell came back, and she was nearly overcome by the nauseating smell of burning flesh. #MY burning flesh# The lights from her little wounds started to blink out, each replaced by a tiny flame of red fire, which lasted only a second before puffing out of existence entirely. She didn't think she was dead, but it didn't really hurt either. And there wasn't much blood. The intense heat of the incandescent metal fragments had cauterized each wound instantly. Most of the fragments were tiny, and hadn't penetrated much below her skin. Azula decided she was going to live. Well, assuming she was right about being alive right now.

A pair of fire nation soldiers crashed into each other, and her cell door, fumbling frantically with the keys to the cell. Azula pushed herself up off the floor fast. Unfortunately, it was too fast, and she found herself right back on the floor in agonizing pain.

#Moving... Hurts!#

Through gritted teeth, Azula forced herself forward, now on hands and knees, towards the gaping hole that now served as the wall of her cell. The soldiers were through the door now. She pushed herself at the hole, but a soldier's hand closed around her foot, before she could fall head first out of the hole. She turned towards the soldiers, who each had one of her legs now. Rage returned to her now, at the though of the impropriety. Common soldiers – manhandling her – her! - like she was so much meat! Electric blue flames danced dangerously in Azula's eyes.

Ignoring the pain of her wounds, Azula swept her arms out to the sides, and rent the energies between the soldiers apart. The soldiers stopped, all-at-once, as they felt all the hair on their arms and legs suddenly stand on end. Then Azula let the energy crash back together, not so carefully this time.

The soldiers bore the brunt of the explosion, while Azula was blown neatly through the hole in the wall. The soldiers hit the remaining wall on either side of the hole with a sickening smack. Battered, half-conscious, and pierced all over, Azula hit the ground, rolled limply through the dirt, and rammed hard into the side of a water trough, which broke, dousing her entire body in water. She came up gasping for air, and heard her name.

"Azula! Azula! Wake up!"

Her mother's voice came to her, clear, strong, and urgent. Azula's vision swam as she sat up. When the kaleidoscope of colors finally coalesced into something, it was familiar. Her mother was stooped over, shouting down to her. Also, she was transparent. That was also familiar.

"Not... real..." Azula groaned in the general direction of the apparition.

"You've got to GO!"

The horse, which had been drinking at the trough, chose this moment to whinny loudly and back away, which was convenient enough. Azula dragged herself to the horse, then dragged herself to her feet using the horse's reigns, and finally dragged herself across the horse's back.

With her head and arms hung off one side of the saddle, and her legs off the other, her bottom was raised high in the air in a way that no princess should ever have to endure. But Azula was too bleary, too hurt, to care. Azula's mother was shouting and urging her along, as the horse made it's way out of the gates of the prison yard at a trot. The last thing Azula remembered before she passed out, was thinking to herself that at least she had a good excuse for seeing things this time.

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A faraway voice beckoned Azula from her sleep. Someone was singing quietly to themself.

"mother?" she asked weakly, awakening someplace she didn't recognize. #It would be nice if that would stop happening.#

"You awake?"

"Where-"

"Don't you worry about that, now," answered a woman who appeared to be some sort of peasant, or perhaps farmer. "You're gonna be ok. Nasty wounds, though. Guess you escaped from the prison."

Alarmed, Azula tried to sit up too fast, and once again found herself on her back, out of breath. #It would be nice if that would stop happening, too.#

"Now don't you worry none about that, either. We aren't planning to send you back there. Way I figure it, you ended up there, you probably did something to piss of... hiiiim..."

Here the farm-woman motioned towards the mandatory portrait of firelord Ozai which hung at the appropriate height on the wall of the 1-room farmhouse. Azula blinked back her confusion. Apparently, the woman didn't know who she was, which was a new experience for Azula.

"We aren't big fans, and rumor is, the Avatar has defeated the firelord."

The woman was apparently woefully underinformed.

"True or not, you can't stay here long, the soldiers will be along in a day or so."

Azula's hand wandered up to her face. Smooth, perfectly manicured fingertips ran over the surface of her face. Horrified, she found tiny pits, with taut, bumpy stretches of burned, raw, scarring skin tracking away from them, interrupting her perfect complexion and china-doll features.

"I hate to move you so soon. You've obviously been through an ordeal. You have a couple cracked ribs I'll wager, and..."

"My face...?"

"What's that? Oh..."

The farm-woman stopped now, and looked down at Azula with a sad sort of look that Azula didn't recognize. "You poor thing. I'm afraid you'll have some scars, there. It's not so bad, now, though. Really, doesn't everybody have a few scars from this damned war."

The kind woman here turned for a second, and came back with a hand mirror. She stopped short of handing it to Azula, though, and half-offered it to her, as though she might not want to look.

Azula snatched the mirror from her hand, and turned it to her face. Dozens of angry red marks tracked up across her face, like tiger stripes.

"The important thing..." the woman continued, "is that you made it through."

Tears leaked from Azula's eyes. One ran straight down a smooth cheek. The other criss-crossed its way down a rougher terrain, leaving the sting of salt in its wake.

"What we're going to do, is help you to go somewhere where the soldier's can't find you."

#WEAK!# Azula hated herself for being so weak as to cry.

"We know a man who operates a ship. You're in luck – he's just come back at the town. He can take you away, to the provinces."

More was said, but Azula wasn't listening anymore. Her body shook as she struggled to suppress sobs for long minutes afterwards.

To be continued...