AN: There's one more scene that's as close to nigh-plagiarized from FTH as one can get without removing 'bending and adding flachette guns and pulsers. But really, Honorverse fans, would you have me deprive you-know-who of their crowning moment of awesome? Didn't think so.

The World without the War

S-Michael

Chapter 5:

In Which Heaven and Earth are Moved to Rescue Sokka

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Wakaun walked into his house, and saw Azula leaning against a retaining wall. "What are you doing there?"

"Distracting you," she said.

Suddenly, Ty Lee jumped out of nowhere and rapid-fire jabbed him in his chi- and pressure points. "Hi," she said cheerfully as he dropped limply to the ground.

"What do you want?"

Katara came out from behind the retaining wall, dragging a bound and gagged Hahn. Azula lit her index finger, and began lazily melting curlicues into the retaining wall. "We're here for answers," Azula said, "and you're going to give them to us. Or else Yue is about to become a widow."

Wakaun swallowed. "You have my attention." He was incredibly composed, for all that he must have been scared out of his mind.

"Very good," Azula said. "So, what did you do with Sokka?"

"I have business dealings with the Dai Li station commander in Saibei, a man named Doro Kim. He has some harebrain scheme about starting a war with the Fire Nation, and I convinced him that he could use Sokka to manipulate you into creating an incident, claiming that the two of you are lovers. He's a natural when it comes to covering his own butt, so he'd have gotten the Glacier Plateau Raiders to do it for him."

"So your plan was to rely on the fact that the wheels would eventually come off of Doro Kim's plan, and being the ass-coverer he is, his first instinct will be to destroy the evidence—namely Sokka?" Azula deduced.

Wakaun said nothing, just smirked a little bit.

Katara and Azula exchanged a look, Azula nodded, and Katara approached Wakaun, squatting in front of him. "Look me in the eye. I need you to see how deadly serious I am. You see, we can't kill you yet, because we still need to confirm your story. You're not off the hook yet, though.

"The thing is, if he dies, you die. And your son dies. Do not think that you can evade us, either, because we are very, very good at what we do. Azula and I are top-class benders, and Ty Lee is something even scarier. And being with Azula gives us diplomatic immunity, which I imagine will come in quite handily. She's also a fairly good tracker, I hear, though if her skills prove insufficient, it's not like she doesn't have fund to hire the best tracker out there. What I'm saying is, there's no escape for you. If Sokka dies, you die, period. So if you care to change your story, I recommend you do it now, while we're still in the 'no harm, no foul' stage of things."

It probably said bad things about Azula that this was the moment when she decided that she really, really liked Katara.

"I told you the truth," Wakaun said, but he was no longer nearly as composed.

"I believe him," Azula said.

"Okay; that's good enough for me," Katara said. "Wakaun? Hahn? We were never here."

"One other thing," Azula said: "I'm sure being completely destroyed by three teenage girls has got your macho panties all up in a twist, and y'all're going to want to take it out on somebody, and that Yue is the closest, weakest tangentially related target you have available, but the thing is, Sokka would be wracked if something happened to her and it was 'his' fault, so I'm only going to say this once: Do not mistreat her, Hahn (and you should probably stay as far away from her as possible, Wakaun), because I'll be back, randomly, and if she's not walking on roses and sunshine, well, someone's going to be struck by lightning on a clear day; do you understand what I'm saying?" Katara really liked Azula, but up until that moment, she'd had some secret worries that there was a wolf under that Fire Nation clothing, and in that moment, all her fears about Azula went out the window. Whatever darkness she kept under such strict control, what Katara saw Azula do just now was one of the most selfless things Katara had ever seen anyone do ever (assuming she was right about Azula's feelings for her brother, at least). Azula nodded, satisfied that they got the message. "Let's go."

"The paralisation should wear off in a few more minutes," Ty Lee said as they left. "About twenty."

Tsubasa was outside serving as lookout. "You know something? I like the way you people operate. What now?"

"We visit a friend of mine at the Northern Air Temple," Azula said.

"Whoa, now, I can't go back there," Tsubasa said. "Banished, remember? I'll go back to Saibei City and keep an eye on things there. See you then."

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"Mai!" Ty Lee shouted, hugging her as they entered the room.

"Ty Lee. You're as disgustingly cheerful as ever," Mai said.

"Hello, Mai. How're things?" Azula asked.

"Oh, wonderful. It's so wonderful than my father is ambassador to the Air Nomads. So wonderful that I can't play any of the local sports. Wonderful that I only see my boyfriend once every other month."

"Zuzu misses you, too," Azula assured her. "I'm afraid we're here on business, though. This is my friend, Katara, and her brother has been kidnapped by the Glacier Plateau Raiders."

"That's unusual," Mai said, "they usually go for girls."

"Oh, so you know about them? That's excellent. We need all the information we can get."

"It all starts with the Northern Water Tribe," Mai explained."The thing is, the Northern Water Tribe is into arranged marriages. Not all of the women appreciate that, you see, so they run away. The most logical destination being Saibei or the surrounding area.

"As you might imagine, not all husbands are exactly thrilled when their wives run away, and so they post…bounties. And in come the bounty hunters. The Glacier Plateau Raiders are probably the single most misogynistic group of people on the planet. They're composed of ideologues from the 'Pole and sociopaths from the Earth Kingdom, all thrown together and blended to perfection. They…do not require much proof that a woman is a man's wife, other than that he can pay the 'finder's fee'. Scum of the Earth.

"Scourge of the greater Saibei-Ria area, more practically. The Princes of Saibei have traditionally hunted them like the vermin they are. And when Saibite authorities catch these 'Raider', what they do is…not pretty. Death by impalement right outside their precious glacier, so their buddies can see. It's a particularly nasty way to die. Personally, however, I find I have trouble sympathizing with their plight."

"Wait, the authorities know where they live?" Katara asked.

"Glacier Plateau Glacier is a big place, riddled with ice caverns and, you know, cavern-caverns. And the Raiders have waterbenders and earthbenders. So, yeah, their general location is known, but it doesn't do much practical good," Mai said. "Whenever an entrance to their hideout is discovered, they're quick to block it and move to another cave."

Suddenly, the room went dark—an impressive feat, considering it was midday and the room had bay windows. Mai sighed. "Toph, was that necessary?"

Toph earthbending-opened the windows she'd used earthbending to plug. "You know how I like making entrances. Toph Bei-Fong, at your service."

"Guys, Toph; Toph, guys," Mai said by way of introduction. Typically, one would think from her tone of voice that she were reading off inventory rather than making introductions for the most wanted person in the Earth Kingdom. "Any particular reason you felt you had to introduce yourself at this particular time, Toph?"

"Yes. These are the guys who are looking for the Avatar. It seems to me that it would be in my best interests if when they found her they had a positive opinion of me and/or owed me a favor." She grinned. "Besides, another friend of mine already asked for help with this very situation, oddly enough. She figured these people would be calling on you soon, Mai, and that I could make introductions."

"And how do you know we're looking for the Avatar?" Azula asked.

"We have several friends in common, though you don't know it. King Bumi, Mai, a few merchants in Sunshine. Don't look so surprised; 'All roads lead to Toph Bei-Fong,' you know."

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"So, how'd it go?" Tsubasa asked when Fluffy returned.

"We made some friends," Katara said. "This is Mai, Azula and Ty Lee's friend, and this is Mai's friend, Toph."

Tsubasa's eyes widened. "As in—?"

"I'd give you an autograph, if only I could write," Toph said.

Tsubasa shook her head. "You guys have the greatest adventures."

"While we're here, we've got to meet a friend of mine, and her friend," Toph said.

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Azula, Katara, Ty Lee, Mai, Toph, Tsubasa, and Usani were seated at the patio table, having all introduced themselves to each other, but Usani insisted that there was one missing. "So, where's your friend?" Just then, a Dai Li operative jumped off the roof into their midst in the Dai Li style.

"Everyone, this is Kasha," Usani said.

"But…he's Dai Li," Katara said.

"I've studied the Dai Li myself, Katara, and the thing is much more complicated than people realize," Azula said. "The image most people—well, in the Fire nation, at any rate—have of the Dai Li is that they're simply an organization of goons and thugs. And certainly, some of the vilest people on the planet are wearing Dai Li uniforms, especially those that volunteer to work in their secret reeducation centers."

Azula saw the look on Katara's face: "Didn't realize operatives had that kind of latitude, did you? It's quite a democratic outfit, in some ways, hard as that might be to imagine. They have to be, really; see, Long Feng knows, as did his predecessors, that men don't become monsters just because they put on the Dai Li uniform. Since there's no way to look inside someone's head and see if they're a monster or not, the best the Dai Li can do is to let their operatives sort themselves." She shrugged. "It's not a perfect system, but it works well enough. For their purposes."

Kasha grinned at Toph. "You know, a week ago, I'd have been hauling you in."

"You mean you'd have tried," Toph said. "Well, now that we're all here, we need to come up with a plan."

"Actually," Usani grinned wolfishly, "Kasha and I already have a plan…"

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"Who's there?" one of the Raiders demanded.

"Relax, it's Doro Kim's messenger boy," the other said, recognizing Kasha.

Kasha hid his shame at his remembered naïveté, "The station commander ordered me to check on the prisoner."

"We hear and obey, great Dai Li lord," the second said sarcastically.

"Look, sorry if I come across as cold and imperious, but I've got my orders," Kasha said…icily. "Let's just do this so I can get out of here."

"Well, I s'pose there's no harm in it," the second relented. Kasha followed him into the glacier, ignoring a slight nervousness in the back of his mind.

Dai Li normally carried about twenty pounds of rock around, for use as cuffs and other such tools. If an earthbender trained his 'bending sense on Kasha, he might wonder why so much of the rock he was carrying was obsidian. Obsidian was a favored stone amongst the Earth Kingdom's surgeons…and assassins. It was a very, very sharp rock, obsidian. Especially when 'tempered' by earthbending.

They entered what appeared to be the Raiders' main living space, where some two dozen men were gathered. I was afraid of this.

"There he is," the Raider pointed at a small, face-size hole in the wall. Kasha looked, and sure enough there was a chamber on the other side, and the boy in the cell matched Sokka's description.

"Yes, I shall inform Doro Kim," and without a second's hesitation or warning, he slit the Raider's throat. Obsidian blades were attached to his fingertips; "fatalons," someone without much good taste had nicknamed the technique long ago. He earthbended the floor beneath his feet for speed, moving to kill as many Raiders as possible before they had time to react.

Abstractly, Kasha understood his advantage—had planned for it. Despite his lack of actual combat experience, he had trained for this (though none of the people he got to train him had the least idea what the exercise was supposed to do). He expected what was happening, while the Raiders were still half-paralyzed with shock. Or, even where they weren't paralyzed, they had so much adrenaline unexpectedly pumping into them that their motions were too jerky, too violent. When they managed to get off shots, they missed their target—or hit one of their own. Up to martial standards, these people were not.

Earthbenders first, as they could mess with his earthbending, potentially, and he needed what advantage his speed would buy him. So he attacked those in Earth Kingdom clothing first. Only way to be sure. Earthbending gave him speed, sure, but so did being prepared for it, and ignoring everything but his goal—including things like safety, or even the plan. Kasha was supposed to scatter them with obsidian flachettes—after all, taking all these Raiders on on his own was crazy. The thing was, he didn't much care.

He was the stone fist of the Earth Kingdom, a champion of the people and the Earth Kingdom; so he thought himself, and so he was. Betrayed by the very people he'd sworn fealty to. And, quite frankly, for all his martial training and discipline, he was still, in the end, a kid. This was how he threw his temper tantrum.

He simply stepped into them and killed them, surviving by nothing more than speed, cold-bloodedness, and the sheer audacity of what he was doing. I am Dai Li. Sneer and be damned! Again and again and again, just as he had trained for in the years since he marched out of the slums to fight for his own. He made no attempt to take cover, no attempt to evade the 'bending of his enemies. Never realizing, even, that the sheer fury of his charge was his greatest protection. Kasha was no longer thinking of tactics. Like a berserker, he would meet his enemies naked, standing on the open field of battle—as he'd been promised. He would make it so. Sneer and be damned!

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Less than a minute after Kasha was escorted inside, the Raider left behind found himself in dire straits as Tsubasa drew the air from his lungs. He tried to gasp, tried to scream, but made no sound; there was no air. He collapsed, unconscious…then dead.

In spite of the nature of Toph's struggle, she always regretted when someone had to die, even scum like this. In a sense it was comforting to have this reassurance that she was still human…in the sense that gallows humor was humor. Tsubasa also used her voidbending to extinguish torches as well as human lives.

Several times in the maze, Kasha's path left earth, and Toph would have to trust Usani to track him via scuff marks he'd leave at intersections. Toph didn't like that, and not just because her feet got cold, either. It wasn't that she didn't trust Usani; just that, even after all these months of being a rebel leader, she didn't like relying on other people. Eventually, the path ended in what appeared to be a main living area (with an earthen floor, thank the spirits). Apparently, Kasha had located Sokka, because he killed his guide…and then kept on killing; it quickly became readily apparent that he wasn't going by the plan.

"Usani? Hate to break it to you, but your friend is crazy," Toph said. "Well, we'd best keep him from getting his stupid ass killed. Tsubasa, your part of the plan still stands—" she was to suck all the air out of any adjoining passages so that sound—and people—couldn't travel out or in "—but as for the rest of us…let's be about it."

Azula fired lightning at the Raiders farthest from Kasha, frying three of them and knocking a fourth unconscious. With that, the battle was joined. And, shortly enough, it was over.

"What about this Doro Kim person who sicced these vermin on Sokka in the first place?" Azula asked as Katara waterbended a hole in the wall of Sokka's cell.

"Don't worry," Usani said. "Kasha and I will take care of him."

"Could someone help me wash off all this blood?" Kasha asked suddenly, as though to punctuate Usani's statement.

Azula nodded. "Good," she said savagely.

"Katara," Sokka said, hugging his sister. After a few seconds, he let her go. "Azula."

"I—"

He kissed her.