11th Day, Peach Moon, Year of the Tiger
Prince Zuko

The hinges had proven too difficult to move, so they had started working on the door. Or Azula had started working on the door because the guard bringing dinner had acted the same way as the one bringing breakfast had: cracked open the door, shoved a plate of food in, and hurried off without checking to see if either Zuko or Azula needed anything.

Zuko was almost tempted to ask Azula to try and saw his handcuffs off. Quite aside from being unable to do anything for himself, they were starting to chaff. He hadn't complained about it, knowing that Azula would tease him for being a baby if he did, but he was afraid they might rub his skin off if he kept them on for much longer.

"You should stop trying to get your hands out like that," Azula said. "It's not going to work and you're going to make it worse."

Zuko spun around, certain that Azula was standing right behind him and watching his struggles without doing anything to help. But she was still working on the door, diligently using Zuko's knife to hack out a circle around the doorknob. "What makes you think I'm trying to get out of them?"

"Please." Zuko could not see his sister's face, but he suspected she was rolling her eyes. "I can hear all that clanking you're making. It's driving me mad."

"It's not that loud," Zuko said. It was barely noticeable to him, and he was the one right on top of it.

"It's loud enough," Azula said. "And if you weren't so caught up in trying to break out through brute strength, you would have thought to pick the lock."

"With what? You've got the only knife." And, even if Zuko had had his knife, it wasn't as though he had ever tried to pick a lock before. It couldn't be that easy, because people went to the bother of making locks in the first place.

"Dum-dum, you don't pick locks with knives. You use a hairpin or a piece of wire or something like that." Where she had learned that was anyone's guess, unless she hadn't learned it at all and was only making it up so that Zuko would look stupid when he tried to jam a hairpin into the locking mechanism of the handcuffs.

Zuko took a deep breath, forcing himself to stay calm. Azula wouldn't do something like that, not when there was no one else around so see Zuko make a fool of himself. She would want him free so that he could help her escape. "Do you have any hairpins in your topknot?"

"Of course not," Azula said. There was irritation in her voice, like Zuko should know how she did her hair. "If I had hairpins, they wouldn't have stayed in all this time. Don't you know anything about hair?"

"Of course not," Zuko said, mimicking his sister's tone as best he could. "I'm a prince, why would I know anything about how to put up hair?"

"You need to be able to take care of yourself," Azula said. "So that when you're leading troops through the Earth Kingdom you don't need to rely on anyone else to make yourself presentable." For the first time, Zuko noticed that Azula had fixed her topknot up since they had been captured. It had to have been last night, when she had made him lie down and try to sleep.

"When I'm leading troops through the Earth Kingdom, I think my appearance will– what was that noise?" Zuko cocked his head, hoping that he could get a pin on where it was coming from. It wasn't directly above them, but he thought it might be from somewhere on the upper floor– or perhaps it was the stairwell coming up from the basement.

"What noise?" Azula asked. She stopped her work and pocketed Zuko's knife, assuming one of the firebending stances that Zuko had only just started to learn, the one that didn't look as though the user was ready to start hurling fire.

"It's like when you were hit with the," Zuko paused, trying to remember what Azula had called the thing, "stiletto-shooter."

Someone in the camp outside the room someone shouted. It was in whatever strange language these people spoke, so Zuko didn't know what it was, but it sounded urgent. From the sound of things the entire camp jumped to their feet and began to run towards where the noise had been. "I think we're under attack," Zuko said.

Azula scowled at the door, eyeing the notches cut around the doorknob. "It's going to take hours to cut through the rest of this," she said. "So much for escaping while they're distracted."

"Not necessarily," Zuko said. Azula had weakened the door quite a bit. If they applied enough pressure to it, it might break. "Get out of the way."

Azula glared at him. "Don't charge the door, Dum-dum."

"I'm not going to charge the door," Zuko said, even though that was what he had been planning to do a moment prior. "I'm going to kick it." That would be better than punching it.

"You might want to wait a minute for all their people to leave," Azula said, still not moving out from in front of the door.

Zuko shook his head. "We need to leave during the confusion," he said. "That way we won't get caught by whoever they leave behind to guard camp."

"Guard camp? You said their operation was sloppy. Why would they leave guards behind at camp when they're so terrified of whoever's attacking them." Zuko listened to the sounds of the camp breaking up and troops being deployed. Not knowing exactly what was being said made it difficult to tell what was going on, but Azula was right. It sounded frightened and haphazard and not at all professional.

"Fine," Zuko said. "We wait." He slumped down on the bed, waiting until the noise outside died down.

When the last few footsteps were fading away, Azula turned to the door and kicked it, using one of the strikes from firebending training. The door did not budge. Zuko couldn't see Azula's face from where he was standing, but her posture suggested that she was livid.

"You're too short," Zuko said, knowing that blaming her height was the best way to make her stop without getting her upset. Azula got touchy whenever anyone suggested she hadn't done something well enough. "You can't reach up high enough to hit it where it's already weak. Let me try."

Azula shuffled out from in front of the door, still glowering. Zuko ignored her, focusing on the door and how to go about breaking a hole in it. It was obvious where he should hit it, in the notches Azula had carved around the knob, but what move to use. One of the heel strikes would be best, since they concentrated the most force in one place, but Zuko knew several of those...

"If you're going to kick the door, kick the door," Azula said. "Otherwise, get out of the way so that I can kick the door. You're wasting time."

"Sorry," Zuko said. He took a step back and kicked the door as hard as he could.

The door cracked, but did not break.

Zuko kicked it again, causing the door to come flying open. For half a second he was disoriented. Two days had made the camp look far more different than it should have.

"Well," Azula demanded. "Which way is out? You were awake, you should know."

"We don't want to leave just yet," Zuko said. "We should raid their supplies first. That way we'll have food." He began scanning the halls, looking for anything that might be useful.

"How do you plan on carrying it?" Azula asked. "You don't have your hands free to carry stuff, and carrying anything with slow us down– and make it harder for me to fight, if we run into trouble."

"We're not going to be able to fight our way out of this," Zuko said. "Remember what happened when we tried that earlier?"

"You mean, when I tried that. All you did was surrender." Azula's lip curled up and her eyes narrowed into an expression of distaste, as though she had never tapped out of a fight.

"I cut my losses," Zuko said. It sounded better that way, like it was part of a strategy instead of a desperate attempt not to get shot. "Which one of us got stabbed?"

"And which one of us is locked up in handcuffs?" Azula asked. "It was worth getting shot with the stiletto-shooter to be able to use my arms. And I'm all better now, so it's not like I really lost anything." No matter what she said, Azula did not look all better. She looked like she had just started recovering from a nasty cold and was anxious to be up and about.

"For a little bit there, I thought you were going to die," Zuko said. He wasn't sure how the thought Azula would react to that. Probably laugh at him for being so stupid as to think she could die.

"What, were you afraid that you'd be left here all alone?" Azula asked. "Didn't think you could take the Earth Kingdomers yourself?"

"It doesn't matter," Zuko said. "We should get out of here before our captors deal with whoever attacked them. Come on." He headed off down the hallway in the direction he thought the staircase was.

A little while latter it became obvious that Zuko had no idea where the staircase was. Figuring that whatever fighting is going on is happening at the stairwell, he starts following the noise.

"I think we should stop for a bit," Azula said. "At least until the fighting stops. We don't want to get shot by accident."

Zuko didn't want to get shot either, but he wasn't going to stop just because Azula thought they should. "It'll be easiest to sneak past when they're distracted, right? Once the fighting's over they'll just set a guard and we'll be caught the same way we were last time. We should keep going, at least until we can see people."

A gout of fire came around the corner, hot enough to make Zuko's skin redden. If his hands had been loose, he would have tried to firebend it away from him, but as it was he considered himself lucky he hadn't been burned too badly.

"Looks like we stop here," Azula said, sitting down right where she was standing. "You might want to back up, Zuzu, so that you don't get fried again."

Zuko shook his head. "How about you get in front and firebend anymore attacks away from us," he said. "That way we can get close enough to see what's going on and who's side the firebender is on."

"Firebender?" Azula repeated. "That was way too big to be a firebender. It was probably a gas explosion of some kind. We went over those in school when we were talking about energy sources."

"I know," Zuko said. "I learned about that in school too. Gas was deemed dangerous and unreliable and we decided to stick to coal instead. Less risk of poisoning people." From what he had seen of their captors, Zuko thought it likely that they were stupid enough to play around with gas, but they shouldn't have a good way to get any. "If it was a gas explosion, then is should have used up all the gas, so there won't be another fireball." He starting walking again.

There was the rustle of clothing as Azula scrambled up to follow him. "There shouldn't be another fireball. That doesn't mean there won't be one. And if there is one, you'll get burned. Badly. You aren't any good at firebending without your arms."

"Then you should get in front where you can firebend an explosion away from us." Zuko didn't really think she would do that, not when she wanted to stay here, but it was worth a shot. For once, he might be able to out-stubborn her.

"I have a better idea." Azula's footsteps were hard and fast, like she was jogging to get ahead of Zuko. He started walking faster, to make it harder for her to catch up. "We stop at the corner, and I'll take the lead."

Zuko sprinted the last few steps to the corner, stopped and peered around it. If there was something nasty up ahead he could always stop and let Azula deal with it. She was the one with her arms free, and the better firebender. She could take whatever it was. "I was right. There is a firebender."

"Let me see." Azula shoved Zuko, pushing him into the wall as she looked around the corner from behind him. "What firebender? I don't see one."

"He's the short one with dark hair on the Water Tribe team." At least that was Zuko's guess, he had missed the start of the last firebending attack, but it had seemed to point from that man to a group of the people in Earth Kingdom colors. "The people in blue, I mean." They probably weren't Water Tribe any more than the other people were Earth Kingdom.

"The one with all the rank insignias?" Azula asked.

"Yeah," Zuko said. He wasn't sure what the insignias meant, but he figured that having lots of them meant that someone was important. " I think he's the one in charge."

"He does seem to be barking orders the most," Azula said. Zuko turned so that he could see the expression on her face out of the corner of his eye. She looked far happier than she had moments before, as though one of the enemy commanders being a firebender made some kind of difference.

"He's not Fire Nation," Zuko said, hoping to get his sister back to reality before she thought up any stupid plans involving this guy taking them home. "He probably doesn't speak our language, and there's no way he knows how to get us home."

"That's obvious, Zuzu," Azula said. She snuggled into him a little bit, like she was nervous and wanted comfort. Or maybe she was just trying to get a better look. With Azula it was hard to tell sometimes. "He's not dressed properly and he's not using proper firebending forms."

"How do you know that?" Zuko asked. This firebender, wherever he had learned from, had gotten good enough at it that he could firebend without moving himself at all. "He's only using his hands."

"Exactly," Azula said. "If there were any firebending moves that only used your hands, and used them as little as he's doing right now, don't you think we would have heard of them before?"

Whether the forms were proper or not, that man was making a lot of flame. "I wonder why he hasn't done any big fireblasts like the first one we saw?" Zuko mused aloud. "He could have gotten rid of the people attacking him so much faster that way." Instead he and his soldiers, they were wearing uniforms so they probably were professionals, were firing stiletto-shooters at each other.

"He's probably trying to conserve his energy," Azula said. "It must be awfully tiring to make great big fireblasts like that."

"Right," Zuko said. It had to be exhausting to make fire the way this man was. Zuko wouldn't be at all surprised if he collapsed at the end of the battle. "So do we wait until the fighting's stopped and get him to help us or do we do this on our own?"

"We get him to help us, of course," Azula said. "He's a firebender so he can't be too bad. And he's in charge." Meaning, that if he decided to take proper care of Zuko and Azula, no one else could get away with locking them up again.

"But how do we get him to help us?" Zuko asked. They couldn't simply ask him– unless he had the good fortune to speak their language– and it wasn't like military leaders were in the business of helping strange children found lurking around their enemy's lair.

Azula snorted and for half a second Zuko thought she was going to make some kind of smart comment about his inability to make friends. "Easy. We're little and cute. All we have to do is look frightened and he'll be eager to help. You're even handcuffed. That should make up some for how old you are."

"I'm not sure that's going to work on him," Zuko said. "He's a general, not Mom."

"Dum-dum, Uncle Iroh's a general and this would work perfectly on him." It probably would, Zuko couldn't see Uncle doing anything but making sure a couple of children lost near his camp were taken care of. "And we're both firebenders, so he's bound to like us."

"You can impress him with your firebending." Zuko knew that he wasn't good enough to impress anyone, and this firebender was obviously very skilled. "That way he won't delegate taking care of us to his subordinates." Which was what Uncle Iroh would probably do.

"Who cares if his subordinates are the ones taking care of us as long as someone is?" Azula said. Her voice projected confidence, but Zuko could hear worry underneath it. Azula had always been independent and eager to take care of herself, no matter what Mom said, so there had to be some kind of other reason for her to want someone to take care of her.

Or she was just frightened by how little control she had now that she and Zuko were on their own and wanted someone else to do all the heavy lifting. That sounded more like Azula. "His subordinates probably aren't firebenders."

"Of course not, you don't see any of them firebending, do you?" Azula said, right as a particularly large gout of flame knocked over one of the last defenders. "Now, we should wait until the fighting stops and then run up to the group. Make lots of noise, we don't want to startle them and have them shoot us."

"Shouldn't noise startle them more?" Zuko asked. After all, loud noise could be caused by all sorts of things, many of them unpleasant, while the sight of two kids walking around could only be caused by a pair of kids.

"Not if we give them time to hear us coming." Azula began to stomp in place. Neither the firebender nor his subordinates seemed to notice, but they had a couple of people shooting at them from around the next corner to worry about. "Then they'll be waiting for us."

That didn't sound entirely comforting, considering that waiting could mean 'waiting to shoot them as soon as they emerged', but professional soldiers wouldn't shoot a couple of kids. "You should wait until the fighting's over," Zuko said. "That way they'll be able to hear you." And there wasn't any risk of being shot by the bad guys.

"Duh. I'm not stupid, Zuzu," Azula said. "We're going to have to time this perfectly, because the firebender isn't going to stick around long after he wins."

Zuko didn't think it was going to be that difficult, but he didn't interrupt Azula's diatribe. He was too busy watching the fighting, preparing himself for when it stopped.