A/N: At last, at last, Zuko's education, at my hands anyway, is nearing completion. What follows is the final submission on the challenge on the LJ community to get our good buddy Zuko laid in 10 defined locations. The challenge was labeled "Geography Lessons". I don't think I'm going to be offered tenure.

As noted in earlier lessons, when inspiration for snark is in short supply, wordiness results. This is definitely true for me. So if you're wondering why this is so long, well, now you know.

With this final lesson, a brief nod will be made to many past lessons (i.e., those within the appropriate timeline). By the way, this location is dedicated to Storybender, whose work on the Zukok/Jun pairing I have borrowed cough-stolen from-cough heavily on, and who first suggested the ending when I showed her the work in progress.

Warnings: Definitely strong language, abuse of innuendos, and violence.

Disclaimer: Don't own it, don't claim it; am free from legal action thereby.

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An Ostrich-horse Stable

Sweat poured down his neck, streaming in heavy rivulets down the creases of his bare torso and back muscles as he pushed and strained. He strove to control the fury of his movements, to shift them into smooth long strokes rather than short, ill-timed thrusts.

But Zuko had not had a lot of practice at mucking out stables, and although he had spent much of his admittedly short lifetime at the practice of controlling his temper, the reality was he probably would need a lifetime more before he could govern it properly. And no matter what Uncle Iroh said about the benefits of humility to his soul, Zuko could only focus on the humiliation of shoveling shit, seemingly acres of it, for a prince of the Fire Nation's royal family.

Uncle had uttered some drivel about a greater man than he could ever hope to be having been given the labor of cleaning out a stable of thousands of cattle in just one day, and how Zuko could take a lesson from both the example of this great man stooping to common laborer's work and the fact that the common laborer did it every day. But what Zuko noticed was that Uncle's task was to entertain the children of the stable owner up at the house (it was just possible that his chuckles could be heard over the squeals of the younglings as he wove tale after tale of bizarre heroes).

In fact, in all the time that he and his uncle had traveled together in the guise of mendicants or laborers Zuko had never seen his uncle bend his back to the shovel or the field. This despite his many aphorisms about the virtues of common toil.

Zuko suspected that, if questioned, Iroh would merely return some cloudy remark about expecting from each that which he was best suited to give, and that an old man's mind could provide more value than his arm. Even though Zuko knew full well that his uncle could more than match even earth-bender muscle, despite his age and rotundity.

Uncle never applied his wiles to getting Zuko out of the most menial of tasks. While there were all kinds of levels on which to question this, Zuko had hesitated to challenge Iroh on any of them to date.

But after spending the day knee-deep in ostrich-horse shit he was more than ready to begin.

Zuko exchanged the shovel for a pitchfork and began the tedious business of filling the now clean stalls with fresh hay.

"Well, well, well. If it isn't Angry Boy, himself."

Some voices do not require much exposure to imprint themselves upon the mind.

"I guess you didn't find your girl-friend."

"That's all you think you know." He couldn't resist saying it, even if he knew he was only reinforcing the bounty hunter's stupid impression of his relationship with the Avatar's water-bender. "I found her all right."

"Whoo-hoo," the dark-haired woman mocked as she slid from her ugly, wrinkled-skinned nosed mount. The dark leather of her jerkin creased seductively around her breasts, and Zuko wondered how he had missed this effect before. "Rejected you again, did she? I told you she was too pretty for you."

"Not at all," he replied. At least, he thought to himself, not exactly the last time they had met, although his memory was still foggy on that account. "She gave me what I needed from her." Okay. So he was playing word games here. Perhaps some would say he 'needed' to have the snot beaten out of him by a girl before coming face to face with his sister again after three years. Certainly, no one would argue he needed his burnt wrists healed when last he came across the water-bender.

As for the needs implied by the sultry woman before him, with her raised brow and the forward thrust of her breasts as she leaned on one hip before him? Well, the bitch deserved no clearer statement.

"My, my. Angry Boy's all grown up and still, oh so angry." And she laughed, a low, throaty chuckle that sent a tremor from Zuko's audio canal down deep to stir the restless beast of his young man's passions. "Where's Uncle Lazy, Handsome?"

And this struck a chord all wrong.

Zuko had been leaning on his pitchfork through this exchange, preferring to keep this questionable character in view than to turn his back on her. Her mockery fit well into their previously established pattern, and her remembering Iroh was all of a piece as well. But Jun had, without doubt, found his scar hideous, so for her to suddenly call him "handsome" sent Zuko's alarms ringing madly.

"Couldn't say. We were separated." And so they were. Yes, they had subsequently been reunited, but Zuko was proud of himself for, so far, parsing the truth so finely as to save him from an outright lie. Zuko wasn't good at lying.

Jun was a bounty hunter, and would be fully aware that there was a bounty not only on his head but on his uncle's. So Jun was clearly calculating her odds of collecting both bounties.

Suddenly the stable walls felt very close indeed. Zuko stepped back slightly, leaning away from the pitchfork while keeping his hands lightly balanced on its shaft. He squared his shoulders and slowly, subtly shifted his legs into a broader stance.

The bounty hunter hissed slightly with her indrawn breath. Zuko tried to read the appraising look she was giving him, and felt oddly uncomfortable as her eyes seemed to travel almost leisurely up and down his form.

Zuko knew the right side of his face still reflected the fine bones and clean lines that showed to such beauty in his sister, but for once found comfort in the ruin of his left side, turning it like a shield against Jun's speculative gaze. Now he regretted forgoing the effort of maintaining his previously shaven skull, even without the proud cockscomb; he knew the roughly grown mat of dark hair lacked authority. Her eyes seemed to linger on his torso, following the faint discoloration and puckered lines here and there from burns and healed-over cuts. A faint smile tugged at her lips, and Zuko had the distinct impression of being a cut of meat undergoing inspection by a connoisseur. He nervously drew one hand across the hard plane of his stomach, flushing as her smile broadened into a grin as she followed his movement.

"My, aren't we touchy?" she murmured audibly. "Was it something I said? I think, perhaps, we have some unfinished business."

And Zuko would swear something had changed in the way she spoke to him. He knew she was dangerous and cunning, and he would do well to remember that the whip in her belt was by no means purely decorative. Still, when she tilted her head that way, letting her wave of ebony hair fall across one eye, he felt something catch in his throat, and a familiar rhythm began to pulse throughout his body. The woman before him was very, very much a woman, and it didn't help his muddying thought processes to have her shift position, arms crossed beneath those full breasts as she thrust her hips forward.

He swallowed hard. "You failed me. You have your xirxiu back. I think we are even."

Zuko knew he was spouting nonsense, but he also knew better than to let Jun be aware of his real suspicions against her. And he did his best to ignore the provocation of her stance.

"So. You don't blame me for that? It was sheer luck that the nuns made perfume, and worse luck that those damned water tribers figured out to use it against my xirxiu," she shrugged, almost nonchalantly. "It wasn't my fault. It's never happened before and it will never happen again."

As she spoke, Zuko had leaned again into the pitchfork, having decided that the motions of pitching straw provided better cover for a sudden shift to fire-bending than an upright stance. Not to mention a better cover for a raging hard-on. Now he found the long, even strokes of his thrusts second nature, and an evil voice in the back of his mind questioned if the presence of the lean, curvaceous form of the bounty hunter before him had anything to do with it.

The heat gathering in his belly and accompanying erection seemed answer enough. He was suddenly aware of the trail of sweat snaking its way along the fine, dark hairs below his navel, joining the moist heat already accumulating down there. And he wondered yet anew what insult he had hurled to the spirits in a previous life to warrant his treatment thereof now. It did not occur to him to question his current life's activities.

Which may explain, in part, the lack of assistance he received from said spirits in the here and now.

"So, Angry Boy. Shall I show you what it means to do a clean sweep?" Jun rolled her hips suggestively.

Whoa. So it wasn't just him. She did just suggest something, well, carnal, didn't she? Why was it that when opportunities for sex did come to him they were so damned dangerous? He needed to back off from this, definitely.

Zuko offered a feral snarl in response. "Sorry, Jun, I seriously doubt a peasant like you can impress me."

"Awwe. Water-girl didn't do the trick? Now, I am surprised. The water tribes are famous, actually, for their…thoroughness. But perhaps she didn't give you her best."

With which words, June closed the distance between them with preternatural speed, twisting the tool from his grasp before he realized she had even moved, slamming her body against him and them both into the low pile of hay.

Zuko found his body enveloped by the odd hard/soft combination of Jun's muscular frame and delicious curves, her legs straddling his (ah, glorious!), her breasts, tightly framed by the leather of her jerkin and, Zuko suspected, nothing else, (definitely not mushy, somewhere between firm and soft and incredibly voluptuous and, really, why hadn't anyone come up with the exact word that described the way a woman's breasts felt against your chest?).

His own physical response was, of course, at no question here.

So. Why the fuck couldn't he manage to contain a simple thing like an erection?

Reflexively he grabbed her arms above the elbows, trying to decide if he should be defending himself or urging her on. He had forgotten how damned strong she was, though, and with this realization came the thought that her damned xirxiu and its paralyzing tongue was not more than a dozen feet away in the stable yard. Would it come to her if she called it? Would he be able to block her and that nasty tongue?

And why were her thighs gripping him so hard?

"Come on, Angry Boy, show me what you've got," Jun purred into Zuko's ear, shifting her weight slightly. And the rough hide-wrapped handle of the whip was no longer jabbing him uncomfortably in the gut, but it was even less comfortable to contemplate what she intended doing with it now that it was no longer at her belt. Well, it wasn't in her hand at the moment, because that hand was working its way inside the waistband of his pants. Her other hand was at the back of his head, fingers fisting on his short hair.

This was a good thing, right?

Jun's tongue ran down Zuko's neck, and her teeth closed, hard, on his shoulder just as her fingers gripped his aching cock, definitely not gently.

Something snapped in Zuko's brain. The full catalog of females to have casually handled his manhood, metaphorically or otherwise, reeled through his brain, starting with the water-bender's slamming him into the ice, followed closely by his near escape from death at his sister's hands. Oh yes, it included the off-handed flirtation of the cabbage man's wife, that Blue Spirit warrior at the festival (too, too much irony there), silent and deadly Mai, the lovely Song – to whom he owed that maniac's attack on him in the Earth Kingdom prison, even the ditz-brained floozy in the cave! And now this!

Enough already. There was just no way he was going to succumb to the control of yet another! He tightened his grip on Jun's arms and, breathing deeply to ignore her various holds on his own anatomy, rolled hard to the right, grinding his hips against her to crush those cruel fingers before they could cause him any more pain or confused pleasure.

"You want to know what I got, peasant?" Zuko hissed as he bore his chin against her temple with bruising force to dislodge her teeth. She moaned beneath him, and he assumed it was from pain, for she pulled her head away even as she pulled back on his hair. He ignored the pain, since his hair was too short and fine for her to have gained real purchase on it. Digging his own fingers into her wrist he pulled her hand away, pinning it above her head. "Are you sure you can take it?"

Zuko willed heat to gather in his palm, and watched with appreciation as Jun's eyes widened, watering slightly as the contact with her skin translated to pain.

"My mistake, Angry Boy, perhaps I misunderstood," he watched as panic fought with calculation in the bounty hunter's eyes. She made no attempt to move beneath him. But Zuko saw a trace of confidence return to her face as they both realized that his arousal was by no means diminished.

"Don't. Call. Me. Boy!" He dived into her lips for a cruel kiss as he reached down with his other hand to free himself from her hold by the expedient of again driving his thumb into her wrist. Now he interlaced his fingers with hers, bringing both hands to either side of her head, and leaned heavily on her forearms as he raised himself up again, grinding his loins against her all the while.

"Send that damned beast away. You came here for something, and believe me, you won't be leaving without some kind of…satisfaction," He had kept his eyes locked on her even during the kiss. Adrenalin was soaring through his system now, and Zuko felt a rush of power he hadn't experienced since helping his uncle take down the Earth Kingdom soldiers back before the solstice.

Jun nodded, licking her lips and gathering breath.

"Oh, don't try to trick me and call it in here instead," he allowed smoke to trail from his mouth. "I could kill you with a breath." Now both palms heated up to emphasize his words.

She swallowed hard and then whistled sharply, twice. He heard the beast lumber away, and his lip curled in satisfaction.

At last, he thought to himself. At last I'm going to get some.

"Ah, children, I believe what you see before you is the end of a sparring match. It would seem 'Li' is the victor," an all-too-familiar voice interrupted his silent triumph. "Get up, 'Li'. I believe your, er, excitement over your success has allowed you to forget the proper form."

Zuko seriously, seriously wanted to weep.

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And with this, ZukoGetsNone retires. Thank you for your indulgence, and you may pick up your grades with your final reviews…