A/N: The following is rated BA, for badassery
It contains dialog, where appropriate, from S1E15
Reader discretion is advised.
The Samurai of the Water Tribe
Early Summer, Year 10 in the reign of Fire-Lord Ozai
After a week of hiking back to the coast, Zuko found the rendezvous point to be very poorly guarded.
Probably because of all the singing.
"What in Akodo's name are you doing?" he said flatly, drawing attention to himself for the first time since entering (what should have been) the defensive picket line.
His officers, and a few of the non-commissioned crew, dropped the various instruments they held as they sprang to attention. Iroh, sitting in their midst, a genial smile on his face, remained seated. "Ah, nephew. It's music night! Come sit by the fire and listen. They've grown quite good," he said, indicating the now nervously sweating soldiers around him.
Zuko rolled his eye. "How wonderful for them," he growled, "but we are leaving. NOW."
The guilty officers sprung into a frenzy of activity, packing bags and tearing down tents. Unnoticed in the hubbub Iroh moved quietly to Zuko's side.
"I take it from your lack of shouting that your mission was a success?" Iroh murmured, slipping his hands into their adjoining sleeves.
"No," Zuko said simply, still glowering at his officers.
Iroh narrowed his eyes. "And yet you return here… alive?"
"He captured the Avatar, uncle."
Iroh's eyes widened minutely in shock then faded back to normal. "How?"
"I do not know. He managed to acquire the loyalty of the Tsuruchi archers though. Perhaps they did it?" The clan of master archers was famous for their unique style of a kyujutsu and Zuko restrained himself from rubbing at the now faded bruise on his forehead.
"Hmmm. But I assume once again from the fact that you are here that Zhao no longer has the Avatar?"
"You are correct." Once again Zuko didn't elaborate further.
Before Iroh could ask any more questions, the entire camp went still at the crashing sound of breaking tree branches. Something was coming, and everywhere throughout the half-packed camp hands fell to the hilts of weapons or moved into bending forms. One of the sailors nervously raised an unusual stringed instrument over his head and waved it in what he seemed to think was a threatening manner.
After a tense moment, and with a final resounding CRACK, a large eyeless beast the size of a rhino-lizard burst from the darkened woods, its massive snout flaring at the ground. A woman in her mid-20s with long dark hair was riding its back, a look of intense concentration on her face.
"MOVE, you scags!" she shouted as the creature lunged forwards. "I'm after a fugitive!"
Damn. Did Zhao send her? Zuko thought, preparing to strike.
But the sniffing beast ignored him. Instead, it snuffled and snorted its way onto Zuko's skiff where it tore a hole in the deck boards with its surprisingly powerful jaws. All of a sudden, a ragged looking peasant scrambled out, making a break for the water.
But he didn't get overly far. The beast's tongue lashed out, quick as lightning, and snapped into the man's back. He fell to the ground instantly, rigid and motionless. The woman quickly dismounted, bound him hand and foot with the ease of one long practiced at the task, and then hoisted him over her shoulder.
"You put a hole in my ship," Zuko said, approaching her swiftly.
"You were harboring a fugitive. Besides-" she glanced at the large hole- "it'll buff out."
Iroh, only a pace behind Zuko, laughed uproariously and beamed at the woman cheekily. "Oh, this is good! Beautiful and funny. Please don't kill this one, my prince."
"Prince?" she said, smirking. "Figures. Looks more like a picnic than a military operation."
Zuko ignored this insult and took another step closer to the woman, glaring down at her. "How did you find him?" he asked softly.
She tensed, but hid it well as she glared back up at him. "My shirshu can smell a rat from a continent away, and her tongue has got a paralyzing quality to it that makes bounty hunting a snap." She began to edge away from Zuko. "That being said, I've got to turn this fellow in before it wears off so…" she turned around to leave only to find Cpt. Haki standing between her and the shirshu.
"You are in luck," Zuko said, "as a commander of His Majesty's forces I am empowered to dispense justice here in the colonies. How much is he worth?"
"Ten koku," she said, turning back to Zuko smiling wickedly.
"Ten koku?" Iroh said skeptically. "What did he do? Run off with the governor's daughter?"
"No idea, I never read that far into the wanted posters. You going to pay me or not?"
"Who here was in charge of security for the camp?" Zuko said, raising his voice.
"Uh… I suppose that was me, sir?" Haki said, looking mildly surprised.
"Then pay her for doing your job, captain."
Grumbling to himself, Haki took the prisoner and began rooting around in his coin purse.
"Now, seeing as you are between jobs and you owe me for damages to my ship…"
"Not a chance princey, Kinshoko June is a free agent," June said, snatching her koku from Haki and moving to mount her beast."
"You will-" Zuko began angrily
"We'll pay your weight in gold" Iroh shouted, cutting Zuko off.
She turned, all smiles again. "Make it your weight in gold, handsome, and we have a deal."
Iroh laughed again. "Deal!"
Zuko shook his head, wondering privately where his uncle thought such a fortune would be coming from. I'll deal with you later uncle, he thought as he stepped forward and pulled Katara's necklace out of his inner breast pocket.
"I need you to find someone."
June looked nonplussed as her eyes flicked from the necklace dangling between Zuko's fingers and the man himself. "What happened, your girlfriend run off?"
Zuko grit his teeth. "I'm not after the girl. I'm after one of the people she's traveling with, a little bald monk." He advanced on June, looming over her again. "You will find them, use your… shirshu to paralyze them, and once they are safely in Otosan Uchi-"
"I'm not going all the way to-" she cut off as a bar of red fire materialized in Zuko's fist hissing malignantly.
"Once they are there you will have… everything you could possibly desire. Am I clear?"
June glared up at him for a moment. "Not a lot of people say no to you, do they?"
"Never more than once," Zuko said with a nod.
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They moved north along the coast at speed.
Zuko had assigned Lt Rin to watch June, which for some reason had prompted Lt Bo to begin asserting that she should come along as well. She and June had almost come to blows when the latter had thrown her arm over Rin's shoulders and said that she would "take good care of him."
Zuko was mystified but had dispatched Bo and the other officers back to the ship with Cpt Haki. Haki would return with his cavalry company. Lt Bo, despite her arguments to the contrary, would stay with the ship, which would shadow the coastline alongside the land detachment.
Zuko had found himself surprised, but pleased, by the skill of Nyla, which turned out to be the name of June's pet shirshu. After a few minutes of sniffing the necklace, the creature had been able to give them all a solid heading, north of their position. After Haki returned with the cavalry they all mounted up and rode northward.
Iroh had elected come along as well, to no one (least of all Zuko's) surprise.
After a few days of travel, they passed through the town of Makapu. The small city was in the midst of a celebration when Zuko arrived. Celebrating the fact that they had just survived a severe volcanic eruption… thanks to the intervention of the Avatar. Zuko was so pleased with Nyla's performance he decided not to execute anyone there for their obviously treasonous sentiments.
"You are to be commended for your skill Ms. Kinshoko," Zuko said, bowing slightly as they made camp that evening. "I must admit I had expected this to be nothing more than a wild sabretooth-goose chase, and for you to have slipped away unnoticed while our backs were turned."
She shook her head with an amused look on her face. "What sort of work would find if I did something like that? Besides, I take a great deal of pride in my skill as a hunter and Nyla here won't rest until she's found her prey," she said, patting the beast affectionately. Her smile changed slightly and she took a step towards Zuko, resting her hand lightly on his chest. "Besides 'everything I could possibly desire' sounds pretty good to me, Highness. I just hope you can live up to that," she finished with a husky note in her voice.
"Capture them for me and you will have all that and more. Lands, titles, gold. You will want for nothing."
She stepped away, chuckling. "She must be something else, this girl of yours."
"I… beg your pardon?"
"The necklace girl?"
Zuko frowned. "She- she is my enemy, the ally of my prey. She is a means to an end. Nothing more."
"Oh, nothing at all I'm sure, I don't suppose you would mind if we just killed them all except your Avatar? Probably save a lot of hassle in transport fees."
"ABSOLUTELY NOT," Zuko snapped, "The agreement was-"
"Yes, I know what the agreement was," she said, and her ever-present smirk grew wider. "You're kind of an idiot, aren't you?"
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"It seems that I have been a terrible sensei to you nephew," Iroh said seriously as he poured Zuko another cup of tea the next evening.
Zuko's eye grew wide and shocked. "Wh-what? Uncle? You were a great sensei."
"I had thought so as well, but it seems I must acknowledge my utter and complete failure."
"Uncle… I swear to you, I will catch the Avatar. I will NOT stop and I will not let anything distract-"
"Who said anything about the Avatar?"
Zuko blinked, then looked around the clearing where his cavalry company was setting up camp for the night as though he were trying to find where the entire point of the conversation had gone.
"What," Zuko began slowly, "are you talking about?"
Iroh's expression had begun to take on an aspect of a man pained by a terrible burden. "Zuko, I cannot fathom how you continue to survive in life when you cannot even tell when a beautiful woman is trying to sleep with you."
Zuko had of course chosen this exact moment to take a large swig of tea, which now erupted out his nose violently. Iroh shook his head mournfully as Zuko hacked and coughed.
"And now you waste good tea too? Honestly, I don't know where I went wrong with you."
"You are out of your mind Uncle. Absolutely OUT of-"
"I'm just trying to figure out," Iroh said musingly, ignoring Zuko's sputters, "is why it is that nearly every beautiful woman we meet just throws herself at you."
"-don't know why I even listen to you. It's always just some-"
"It's the height, isn't it? Or maybe I need to trim my beard?"
"-ridiculous puns and your damned hot leaf juice-"
"I thought women liked grey hair? Maybe some dyes…"
"Absolutely ASININE!" Zuko roared.
A few hours after they broke camp that next morning the coast turned westward and the terrain changed from the old growth forests around Makapu to sandy coastline and rolling hills. As though in response to the change Nyla began to grow more and more excited, and increased her speed dramatically, angling away from the sea.
"We're CLOSE!" June shouted, that look of concentration taking hold of her face. "Very close."
And after a few hours of pushing their rhino-lizards to their limits, they FOUND them. The Shinjo siblings stood back to back in the middle of a dirt track road, a pair of large rucksacks discarded at their feet as they prepared to face down the cavalrymen that had surrounded them.
"So, this is your girlfriend?" June said with a laugh. "No wonder she left, she's way too pretty for you."
"I am NOT his girlfriend!" Katara shouted angrily as Sokka, despite the situation he found himself in, snickered with laughter.
Wow, Zuko thought, pausing for a moment after dismounting his rhino-lizard, I didn't misremember, she really IS stunning when she's angry. He shook his head quickly in an attempt to clear his mind. The boy isn't here though. Perhaps he heard us coming and ran away like the coward he is, abandoning his allies. Zuko took a closer look at the Shinjos. Something IS different though… about the both of them.
As Zuko looked over his erstwhile opponents his eye counted their weapons as a simple matter of course. Sokka had drawn a long knife that appeared to be carved from bone even before he was completely surrounded but there was still another weapon at his waist.
It was a wakizashi. Katara had one as well, purple and ivory stuck, in her belt, the hilt resting next to a waterskin that was slung over her back.
Zuko placed his right fist in his left palm and bowed over top of them. "May I offer you my sincere congratulations on your successful gempukku Shinjo Sokka, Shinjo Katara." As he rose from the bow, his face had twisted into an evil grin, his eye on Sokka. "Now, I get to kill you."
After a moment of panicked gabbling, Sokka managed to form a coherent sentence. "I challenge you to a duel!" he squawked, pointing his finger at Zuko rather rudely.
"Unwise," Zuko said softly, his hand on the scabbard of his katana, "I am less likely to take you alive if this becomes a matter of honor."
"We- we can set terms though? With a duel?"
"We can," Zuko said with a nod, "but I am under no obligation to accept them."
"Fine. If Shinjo wins, you leave us… and Aang alone; forever! If Akodo wins-" Sokka paused here, stroking an imaginary beard in thought- "if Akodo wins… you can have my sister!"
Zuko, despite using every trick he knew to prevent it, flushed on the working side of his face as his heart did a backflip.
"SOKKA!" Katara shrieked.
"Ok, ok," Sokka said placatingly, "You win and we'll tell you everything we know about the Avatar's whereabouts. Deal?"
"Deal," Zuko growled, "I grant you five minutes to prepare yourself."
"Ourselves," Sokka said, grinning.
He did say "if Shinjo wins" didn't he? Zuko mused, his eye flicking between the two of them. Clever, but not clever enough. These two aren't duelists and there aren't any large bodies of water within bending range. Unless they have a strategy I haven't seen yet, they will probably hinder each other more than help.
Zuko said nothing more, just began to watch his opponents, centering himself, clearing his mind in a way that only seemed to work right before a fight. Sokka had begun a series of ridiculous looking stretching exercises and Katara simply fidgeted nervously, eyes darting between her brother, Zuko, and the ground.
She looks taller, Zuko thought, forgetting for a moment that looking at the girl who gave him heart palpitations before having to fight her was not a great plan. I suppose being tied to a tree would make anyone look smaller. Maybe after I win I should return her neck… lace…
She had a new necklace on, a handmade thing of beads and flowers.
"It's a betrothal necklace," Lt Bo had said and Zuko's mind went cold with rage. There is only one person who could have given that to her, he thought as his knuckles popped on his clenched fists.
"My congratulations on your betrothal, Shinjo," he said trying and, for the most part, failing to keep the snarl out of his voice.
Katara's eyes grew wide in surprise, her hand fluttering to her neck.
I'll KILL him.
"What? No! It's just-" Katara sputtered.
You are NOT killing the Avatar. You need him.
"Time is up. Prepare yourselves," Zuko said, igniting his sword of fire and causing the Shinjos to take an involuntary step back. "Welcome to adulthood," he snarled, and then he charged.
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The duel proceeded much as Zuko had anticipated.
He disarmed Sokka within seconds, his sword of flame slicing through Sokka's bone knife as easily as if were not even there. Sokka had the mental acuity to roll away however, abandoning the ruined weapon almost instantly, but it still left him shaken.
Katara was a different matter, her bending had gotten good. Even through his rage Zuko noticed that she had improved in both speed and power since the last time he had seen her. The fact of the matter was that she only had a waterskin's worth of water to work with and Zuko quickly took that away from her as well, evaporating the water in an instant after she fumbled a parry. He did his best to ignore the shocked look on her face as he knocked her flat with a kick to the stomach.
All told, the duel only lasted a few minutes, long enough that Zuko managed to get his temper under control at least, but it probably seemed to take much longer to the Shinjos, who, after they were disarmed and Zuko banished his sword of flame, took a series of strikes from his hands and feet. Zuko took out the last of the wild flares of his temper by doing his best to utterly humiliate Sokka again, beating him near to senseless, driving him to his knees.
"Disappointing," Zuko said, sneering at Sokka.
Sokka was breathing heavily, having had the wind knocked out of him by a particularly vicious fire strike to the abdomen, and Zuko drew his katana from his sheath with a sibilant rasp.
"You are defeated Shinjo Sokka," Zuko intoned gravely, pointing the blade at the young man's neck and beginning a slow walk around behind him. "I grant you the right of seppuku. That you might die with your honor unblemished. Go now into the arms of you ancest-"
"NO! Wait!" Katara cried, at last finding her breath, "We surrender! WE SURRENDER!"
Sokka actually managed to look angry. "She doesn't speak for us!" he shouted, shooting a glare at his sister.
"And yet you spoke for her earlier did you not?" Zuko said, narrowing his eye.
For once, Sokka had no response.
Zuko locked eyes with Katara resting his blade on Sokka's shoulder. "Where. Is. HE?" he growled.
"We don't know," she said, her eyes downcast, seeming ashamed. "We split up yesterday. We were going to leave with our Uncle Bato and he would continue north to Shiro Doji, the Crane capital."
"You expect me to believe that after traveling halfway around the world together you split up within weeks of your goal?" Zuko said with a snarl. "How stupid do you think I am?!"
How dare she LIE to me!
"Pretty stupid," Sokka wheezed painfully, "but it's true. He… lied to us about some things. We got angry and left. We were coming back to try and find him, but he's probably flown off already."
"Flown off from where?"
"The Shrine of Ebisu, a half day's travel along this road," Sokka said, gritting his teeth.
"Very well," Zuko said. He motioned to June with his head and Nyla's tongue shot out twice in quick succession paralyzing the pair.
"Somebody see to their wounds," Zuko said beginning to walk away. He stopped for a moment and turned back to the prone form of Katara.
"We've been tracking you by scent," he said dangling the necklace in front of her eyes, then tying it around her wakizashi hilt. "So, I'll be needing this," he snarled as he pulled the beaded necklace off her neck and stalked towards the bounty hunter.
"New scent June."
June chuckled. "Breakups are the worst, aren't they?"
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A few minutes of sniffing and a short ride later Nyla, once again in a slavering frenzy, smashed right through the doors to the shrine and began running in circles in its inner courtyard. Zuko dismounted his rhino-lizard quickly and strode over to what he guessed, based on the unique headdress, to be the mother superior of the abbey.
"I hope you will forgive the intrusion, mother?" Zuko said bowing politely. "I will have my men repair the door. I come seeking your blessing and a fugitive."
The nun bowed back, though she looked less than pleased to see him. "The Kami Ebisu favors those who behave with integrity and perseverance, my son. Those who would take the quicker path…" she glanced pointedly at the pacing Shirshu.
The Avatar has been at this one. She looks at me as though I were planning to eat her favorite pet for dinner!
"Somehow I doubt that the Kami of honest work looks favorably upon an airbender, mother," Zuko said, narrowing his eye. "Perhaps you might bless us, the common soldiers? There aren't many trades more honest than that."
As they glared at each other, the prince and the holy woman, Nyla let out a keening whine and began pawing at the air. Only a heartbeat later the Avatar dropped out of the sky and sent a blast of air at the soldiers guarding the Shinjos. Nyla, nostrils flaring wide, launched herself at him but was intercepted en route by Appa, who appeared just as suddenly, flying over the wall of the shrine, riding out of the sunset like a storm cloud.
Zuko flew at Aang, a roar on his lips and red fire forming at his fists in an instant, his brain awash with, what his conscious mind refused to acknowledge as, jealous rage. They met, trading blow for blow, near the center of the courtyard. The Avatar was actually attempting to stand his ground for once and Zuko was bound and determined to burn that ground to cinders. Wind and Flame pulsed and spun, until a shield of air hit a jet of flame at just the wrong moment, creating an explosion that sent them both flying in opposite directions.
A few moments passed before Zuko was able to regain his feet. He was, however, pleased with the scene that greeted him. His men had cornered Appa, menacing him with spears, not allowing him to take off. Rin and Haki, along with June and Nyla, were chasing down the boy, forcing him to weave and dodge dangerously atop the shrine's roof.
Everything is under control, Zuko thought, pleased. There will be nothing to stop us this ti-
Suddenly a massive plume of water blasted into Haki, knocking him off the rooftop.
What in the Sun's name? Zuko spun to his left clearing his blind spot.
Only to find Katara, on her feet, bending a flood of water from a nearby well.
"Is this the Unicorn's idea of SURRENDER?!" Zuko roared, starting towards her.
"He's right there!" Katara shouted triumphantly. "Now you know all I know about his whereabouts!" She bent a torrent of water around herself and began to move his way as well, narrowing her eyes. "Now I get to kill you," she snarled.
Zuko barely even noticed the words, all he could see was that she had put on her old necklace, the one he'd returned to her.
If she'd betrothed herself to the Avatar she wouldn't have done THAT… would she?
Zuko laughed manically, mostly in relief, and executed the "Lion's Roar" kata, fire appearing from his hands and mouth in a roaring red burst. A primal challenge as old as the Fire-Nation itself.
And wonder of wonders, Katara screamed back. Not a bending maneuver, but just a simple honest cry of rage, eyes burning with the same terrible fury that had already given Zuko many sleepless nights.
"AKODO!" he roared and lept.
"SHINJO!" she responded and pounced.
And they met in the center of the courtyard with all the force of a volcano exploding underwater.
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Thought died.
As they circled one another, fire and ice slamming together with concussive force, it was as if they were both partners in some incredibly violent dance. Like animals in the wild they circled one another, snarling and cursing. Flame met water, ice met red blade, steam gathered. Their kata complemented and opposed one another, balancing and repelling in equal measure.
Zuko understood the fight, had the grasp of it almost immediately, and somewhere, in his heart of hearts, he understood… that he would lose.
He found that he didn't care.
He was too wild, enjoying the fight too much. It was the happiest he'd been in years. Katara was focused, her rage like a storm, implacable and deadly. Her fury, her skill, her everything was breathtakingly beautiful.
Fire… comes from the breath.
The real mistake was when he followed her down the well.
She had forced him to dodge a series of icy disks she had whipped at him, separated from a block of ice at her feet, and when he spun back and refocused he saw her disappear down the well she's been drawing water from. He immediately pursued, like a hound after a mole-squirrel, leaping on top of the well and throwing a massive gout of fire down after her. It was snuffed out, and Zuko thrown aloft when the entire contents of the well burst upwards in a raging flood.
He hit the ground hard, but rolled to his feet, blocking most of the shards of ice she threw at him.
Only most of them.
Zuko could taste the blood in his mouth as he sank to his knees, hands grabbing reflexively at the spear like foot of ice that had punched all the way through him.
Well... I guess this is it then, he thought, a sense of calm flowing over him. It's over. It's finally over.
His eye flicked up as he heard the rasping sound of steel being drawn. Katara had drawn her wakizashi and was pointing it at his neck. Rage still in her eyes, she began to slowly move towards him.
Helped into the next life by the woman I love? What more could I ask for? No voice sounded in his mind to contradict that thought. Huh. I guess this WAS a storybook romance after all.
The sounds of the courtyard, Katara's footfalls, the cries of battle from where the Avatar still fought his soldiers, the sounds inside him, the hammer of his heart, his wheezing breath, all of it fell away. The world grew quiet, still, and in that silence he could hear it.
The Song.
The song of his ancestors, the drums and chants, the roaring throng calling him.
Calling him home.
He knew what he had to do.
He drew his wakizashi, a quick jerking motion, and Katara reflexively took a step back, expecting an attack. Zuko simply placed the tip at his belly and spat blood out of his mouth.
"Sun on the water
Grey the storm approaching me
In death, I go home."
He spoke his death haiku softly, managing it despite the blood that still slowly poured into his mouth, a smile coming to his lips. He closed his eye and steeled himself for the pain that would come from the triangular cut, spilling his innards out onto the stone courtyard.
An honorable death… at last.
The moment came… and he found that he couldn't move his arms. He opened his eye, stunned to see that they were encased in ice. Katara was now in front of him, her wakizashi sheathed, looking pale and horrified.
"Wha-" he tried, but he couldn't even form words anymore. He fell forward onto Katara, unable to even remain kneeling anymore. Katara caught him, pushed him onto his back and took his wakizashi from his frozen arms.
Just- just let me die dammit. But he couldn't get the words out.
Katara bent the rest of the ice off his arms, as well as the blade in his stomach, and began to press her hands to the wound, trying to stymie the flow of blood.
Is she… crying?
The dying sunlight glinted in her tears and in the necklace at her neck. Zuko, without knowing how he found the strength, lifted his right hand up to touch it gently.
"…'isss pretty…" he murmured and then passed out.
A/N: Greeting weary travelers and welcome to end of the chapter! Good, bad, really ugly? You be the judge! Feel free to comment/review/what-have-you. I enjoy feedback. But either way you read the whole thing, and THAT my friends is all I can reasonably ask for. Thank you muchly!
Now the meta-bits!
Unicorn Gempukku: It's ice dodging. The metaphor was pretty clear on watching the series again while working on this project of mine. Right of passage, a test of manhood, blah blah blah, it's gempukku. Sokka and Katara are now adults and samurai in the eyes of there tribe and the world at large. A little late to the party but that's not their fault. It is also good to note that in this AU Hakoda has actually been gone almost nine years at this point, so most of their skills are self-taught. Which just makes how good they are all the more impressive.
Rokugoni religion: So, I'll try not to write a thesis paper here, but bear with me. In L5R proper there is a single unified religion, fused together from three separate elements by imperial fiat. You have Shintao(a Buddhism/Taoism hybrid), Fortunism(Shinto-like animism) and Ancestor Worship(just what it says on the tin). The different clans(dojos in this AU) favor one or two of the aspects of the religion above the others. The Dragons(Aang's dojo) are Shintaoists, detachment and all that. The Lion are primarily ancestor worshipers, with an understanding that the gods (or kami/spirits in this case) are very real and powerful creatures. The Kami Ebisu, who is mentioned in this chapter, is the Fortune of Honest Work, a patron of farmers and tradesmen. You should also expect figures from Avatar-verse (Wan Shi Tong, La, Tui, and so on) to fall into this same category; the Great Kami.
June: Ahhh June, voiced by the redoubtable Jennifer Hale of FemShep fame. I love that character. She definitely seems the type to me to just roll into a military encampment, rip stuff apart, throw shade and sass, and flirt with the fellas. Definitely Renegade FemShep. Also, anybody feeling the dissonance of having Zuko "loom" over her? I keep trying to slip allusions to height in there. Zuko is the same height as Ozai at this point, who was NOT a short dude.
No hand waving with the scroll: Man, I just hate some hand waving in storytelling. Having Nyla somehow magically know that the scroll that just happened to fall out into the road had Aang's scent on it is just a narrative tragedy. SO, I changed it. I regret nothing.
Sokka, giving Katara shit: So now we play a bit of a game where we examine what's happening off camera. Honestly putting stuff like this in the author notes DOES feel like cheating to me, but I've already written over 200k words in a single POV and I feel changing over now is just as bad. So please bear with me. Anyway, we have Sokka having a bit of a laugh when June calls Katara Zuko's girlfriend. In the back of my brain, I imagine that Sokka has been giving Katara a great deal of shit about boys for the last few weeks. First, you've got her being captured by Zuko and tied to a tree. Using my personal experience as an older brother with a sister I know Sokka probably just made an off-handed comment about THAT being how dating works in the Fire-Nation. I also know Katara would have absolutely flipped her shit. Sokka would have then realized that somehow, he had accidentally struck teasing gold. He'd have gotten a few good ones in before JET happened.
And then it would have got worse. "Katara has the worst taste in men" and "Wait until your Fire-Nation boyfriend finds out about your Rebel boyfriend!" and so on. Katara would have been extremely pissed, not only is she embarrassed about Jet and being captured because she snuck off with the waterbending scroll, she is also getting mixed signals now that she is in the Fire-Nation colonies. Zuko is known there, had been traveling around for 8-10 months "searching" for the Avatar. He's actually liked in the colonies, being one of the few members of the royal family to take more than a passing interest in them in recent history. There is also the fact that Zuko is, despite his own opinions, rather good looking. Every time I write that "her face flushed with anger" you've got to remember that even the narrator is viewing things from Zuko's perspective. She's actually just as embarrassed as he is most of the time. So, we've got ALL this mixed together in a confusing mish-mash of EMOTION which is why we get…
Katara the BAMF; ass-kicking and healing: Yep. The chapter "rating" is referring to Katara. So we've got a confused Katara, who has only recently been pronounced a full samurai. She is subsequently lied to by her very good friend (Aang's concealment of the scroll), referred to as Zuko's girlfriend by a total stranger, forced into a duel by her brother against the main source of her confusion, then mistakenly assumed to be engaged to Aang. She has to be confused by that, Zuko's reaction is very OBVIOUSLY jealousy. Then the good-looking guy, who people have recently been telling her is a local folk-hero, beats the ever-loving shit out of her brother, returns her mother's necklace, and then tries to kill her friend. Serious emotional whiplash, no wonder she snaps.
So when she escapes her bonds, levels the playing field for Aang a bit, she goes for the main source of her emotional distress; Zuko. One of my biggest departments from canon in this book so far I think. Katara is a badass. She is a damned waterbending prodigy and the decedent of war chiefs. She is not taking this crap anymore. So, she fights Zuko. She gets her "you can't knock me down" moment early. She is so taken by her fury that she doesn't even notice that she impaled Zuko. I think she believed she had just knocked the wind out of him.
Then Zuko pulls his wakizashi.
I think that snaps her out of it. She sees that this is serious business for Zuko, though she really doesn't know why yet. She also gets her equivalent to Aang's "firebending is dangerous" moment from "The Deserter." And then to further accelerate her own personal storyline, she figures out how to heal right there and then instead of next episode.
What, you didn't think I was going to let Zuko get killed did you?
Wow, that was a lot of notes! If you stuck through to the end you get a bonus point, bully for you.
Thanks again for reading! Hope it was enjoyable.
NEXT WEEK on a very special "Avatar: The Last Dragon"...
Iroh drinks tea! Zuko recovers, then makes a desperate gamble!
TUNE IN. Same Zuko time, Same Zuko channel!
Original post date: 5 August 2018