Chapter 10: Battle on the Waves

Owing to the shape of the Earth Kingdom's continent, there was no straight way from the Ba Sing Se harbor to the wild borderland where Lady Ursa was most likely to be found. The Fire Nation ship would therefore be forced to sail around the huge landmass on either the north or the south in order to reach its goal. Captain Shin decided, after giving the matter a great deal of thought, that the northern passage would be most likely be somewhat faster, and ordered his crew to steer in that direction.

After a little more than a week, the ship had left Ba Sing Se waters and passed through a narrow strait to re-enter the ocean proper. Azula took to standing on the prow, staring out over the sea at something her eyes alone could see and snarling at anyone who came close to her. Only Ty Lee seemed exempt from this, but even the bubbly acrobat knew better than to push her luck by speaking. She would simply hop up onto the railing and go through her various exercises in silence, and if Azula took any comfort from her presence she didn't show it. Still, she never tried to send Ty Lee away.

Eventually, however, the other girl's outgoing personality found a new outlet. Tempers had been running high after word of the near-showdown between Azula and Captain Shin spread (a process which took less than a day, considering the small size of the crew), and Ty Lee began to worry that some enterprising crewman might have more loyalty than sense and try to pitch the princess overboard. Such an attempt had little chance of succeeding, of course, but the last thing that Azula needed in her current state was incentive to go berserk on everyone.

Ty Lee began floating her idea for a morale-booster among some of the lower-ranking officers, and before long Captain Shin himself sought her out to get the details straight from the original source. He rolled his eyes as she explained, but finally agreed, sending the acrobat cartwheeling off to start getting things together.

That night the crew was gathered together on the deck, with a generous portion of food prepared by the ship's cook laid out for them. Ty Lee stood up in front of them and bowed dramatically, a huge smile on her face, and then began her act. The ship was a very different environment from a circus tent, of course, but from Ty Lee's perspective it just made things more enjoyable. She leapt and bounded across the ship faster than the eye could easily follow, finding balance on the most unlikely surfaces, until finally she landed in the exact spot where she had begun and bowed again. The crew's applause filled the night.

After Ty Lee sat down, members of the crew came forward. Two warriors demonstrated their skill with knives in a fierce mock duel, and another put on a firebending display with a theatricality that showed, to the acrobat's experienced eye, that he could have been a bending performer had his life taken a different path. When he was through, she looked over her shoulder and saw that even serious Captain Shin was smiling- and beyond him was Azula in her customary position by the prow, back to the festivities.

Ty Lee slipped away from the crew and joined the princess. "What is it?" Azula asked quietly.

"Come on, Azula!" Ty Lee said, "We've got food and a lot of the crew are doing entertainment. Come on over. I bet that you could do some firebending that would make that one guy's look tame."

"I've fallen a long way, Ty Lee, but I'm not lowering myself to a source of entertainment for my own soldiers," Azula said. "I still have some dignity."

Ty Lee scowled. "That doesn't mean you can't have fun."

Azula looked out over the dark waters for several minutes. "That's not all," she said. "I think we're in danger."

"What do you mean?"

"I can't explain it," Azula admitted, "but I can't shake the feeling that we're being followed."

"You're still worried about that Dai Li guy," Ty Lee guessed. "Even if he was following us, he's back in Ba Sing Se. The Earth Kingdom doesn't make very good ships, you know. I guess it's because rocks sink or something. Even though they don't actually make their ships out of rocks."

"That doesn't matter," Azula snapped. "There's something out there- I can feel it."

"If you say so," Ty Lee said, sounding unconvinced. "But if you get tired of standing there, we do have a party going on. See you there!" With that she flipped onto her hands and walked back over to the crew, managing to keep her balance the whole way. Azula watched her go, then turned back to the ocean, her eyes trying desperately to penetrate the night's shadows and discover who it was who lurked in them.

/

The sun rode high and hot in the cloudless sky, and Captain Shang lowered his glass and gave a jagged-toothed grin. There was a Fire Nation ship out there, a small and stripped down model from the looks of it. Hardly a challenge for a crew composed of some of the most ferocious and infamous pirates in the northern waters, and if its hold contained valuables of any sort they would be well-compensated for their troubles. Even if it didn't, it would still be good practice- and either way, Shang wasn't expecting much difficulty.

"Helmsman!" he barked, "take a look to the northwest and tell me what you see."

The man who stood by the ship's wheel raised his own spyglass and took a look in the direction his captain indicated. "Looks like a Fire Navy ship, sir," he said, "all alone and ready for plucking."

"Aye," Shang said. "Shall we pay them a little visit, men?" The crew shouted in affirmative and raised their various weapons- united only in that all were sharp and possessed of a highly unpleasant appearance- in the air. The captain allowed himself a vicious grin as his ship pulled out from behind the rocks where it had hidden and set off in pursuit of its quarry.

As the crew scurried off towards their stations and prepared to board, Shang turned to the dark-skinned man who stood silently beside him and had been watching the other pirates with a faintly bored expression. "Now then," he said, "think you can manage to hold 'em in place for our killing stroke?"

"Aye, captain," the man said, smiling and smoothing his sea-blue tunic. "When have I ever let you down?"

/

Azula lay on the bed in her cabin, having been unable to get to sleep at all the previous night as a result of dark dreams that involved her parents, Zuko, Long Feng, and General Azun in ways that she couldn't remember, but always ended in fire and pain. She had almost made up her mind to remain in the cabin and hope to manage some rest at least when the ship came to a sudden halt with a terrible grinding noise.

The princess was on her feet in an instant, hurrying out of her door and bumping straight into Ty Lee. "What's going on?" Azula demanded. "Did we run aground?"

"No," Ty Lee said, looking bewildered. "A wall of ice just shot up out of the sea and trapped us. I was just coming to get you."

"Ice?" Azula asked. "We're still too far south for that much ice- and this is a ship full of firebenders. Why do we need to worry about ice?"

"I don't know!" Ty Lee said. "You know a lot more about fire than I do. I just know that there's a lot of ice out there that wasn't there a few minutes ago."

"Which means," Azula muttered, "that either we're experiencing the strangest weather since the Sun and Ocean spirits dueled to see whose element was stronger- or there's a master waterbender out there."

The princess knew which of those two theories was by far the more likely. Seizing Ty Lee by the wrist, she hurried up onto the deck.

Ty Lee's description of a "wall" of ice turned out to be exaggerated- there was certainly an unusually large ice flow that had wrapped itself around the front of the ship, but it would have been an easy matter for the ship's firebenders to melt it off- were it not for the fact that the ice kept replenishing itself. Captain Shin stood near the working benders, his spyglass up and staring towards the south.

"What is it, Captain?" Azula asked.

Shin lowered his spyglass, his expression grim. "There's a ship out there," he said, "that doesn't match any design I know, and isn't flying the colors of any known nation. It's heading this way."

"Pirates!" Ty Lee said. "That must be who you thought was following us, Azula. It wasn't the Dai Li at all! You know, I always wanted to meet a pirate. They sounded so exciting."

"Oh, they're exciting all right," Shin said sourly. "And on the seas, exciting is never a good thing." He turned to the crew. "Leave off that ice, men!" he shouted. "Prepare for boarders."

The pirate ship was in sight now, and Azula could make out the figures lining its rigging, shouting and waving their weapons. One man who looked almost dignified stood back- obviously the captain, though Azula's naturally suspicious mind wouldn't rule out a decoy- and beside him was a younger man in bright blue, raising and lowering his hands in time with the rising ice. "I see you, waterbender," the princess hissed.

Water and fire were natural opposites in the elemental cycle, and on a personal level Azula nursed a particular enmity for them- Katara, the Avatar's spirits-cursed girlfriend, had thwarted her on at least two major occasions, and the princess wasn't one to forgive easily. She doubted the man on the pirate ship had the same raw power- much as Azula hated to admit it, Katara was a prodigy with water every bit as much as she herself was with fire- but he was almost certainly more experienced, and had much more water at his disposal than the peasant girl ever had during their encounters. This ought to prove very interesting.

"Ty Lee," Azula hissed, "when the ship gets close enough, I want you to get over there and take that waterbender out."

The acrobat stretched. "I'm on it, Azula." She leapt lightly up onto the rail, and as the pirate ship moved to pull alongside the Fire Nation vessel, she jumped across.

A shout of surprise went up from the pirates as Ty Lee landed lightly on their rigging. She shot them all a dazzling smile and immediately began leaping and twisting in a way that would put one of the Air Nomads' winged lemurs to shame, dodging pirate weapons and making for their waterbender. Every so often one of the enemy crew would get in her way- a few quick jabs later and he would be collapsed to the deck, wondering numbly why his arms had stopped working, and Ty Lee continued on her way.

If the waterbender noticed his crewmates' fall, he gave no sign of it, continuing to pull at the ice with a dreamy expression on his face. Ty Lee landed in front of him and prepared to make her chi-blocking jabs, when he suddenly opened his eyes wide and made a slightly different motion with his hands. Water coated the pirate ship's deck, and at the waterbender's command it rose up and wrapped around Ty Lee's legs, encasing her in ice to the knees.

"Hey!" she said. "No fair!"

"Silly girl," the waterbender replied, "word of advice- never fight a waterbender at sea. It won't end well." He jumped back and gave a mighty two-handed pull, and the ice encasing the Fire Nation vessel's prow shot forward, creating a bridge between the two ships.

The pirates hurried across, but firebenders were waiting for them. Shin and his crew hadn't attacked earlier out of fear of hitting Ty Lee, but now they unleashed all their power. The ice-bridge melted and fell into the sea, and many pirates were forced back, shrieking in pain and nursing fresh burns. Still, the pirates greatly outnumbered the Fire Nation crew, and wielding grappling hooks they quickly swarmed aboard.

Azula found herself facing four of the pirates- outnumbered, but hardly outmatched. These men were good for what they were- brawlers and thugs- but they just didn't have the formal training to match against a firebender of the royal house. Several of them were forced back, glaring and cursing, and Azula smiled and let blue flame play along her hands. "That's right," she hissed, "be afraid. You haven't seen anything yet."

Suddenly her hands were pulled tightly against her sides and Azula stumbled back. A pirate had snuck up behind her and wrapped her in a steel chain. With her arms pinned she couldn't direct her bending, and the man had positioned her chains so that they didn't touch bare skin. She couldn't even heat the metal without burning her shirt off, something the proud princess had no intention of doing in present company. Azula cursed herself for a fool- confidence was well and good, but cockiness was a fatal weakness.

The ice-bridge reformed and the pirate captain came across, his waterbender by his side, dragging a now fully icebound Ty Lee. They stopped in the center of the ship's deck and faced the pirate crew, who now held Captain Shin and his firebenders as well, Shin himself sporting a nasty bruise on his forehead.

"Now then," the pirate began, "my name is Captain Shang, and I hope that we can do business in a civilized fashion. You can simply tell me what your cargo is and allow my crew to offload it, and then you can go free to the Fire Nation or wherever. Deal?"

"We don't have any cargo," Shin spat. "And we wouldn't give it to you if we did."

Captain Shang grinned unpleasantly. "Well then, we have a problem." He stalked down the line of prisoners, stopping at Azula and giving what he apparently thought was a charming smirk. "And who might this lovely young lady be?"

Azula tossed her head proudly. "I am Azula, princess of the Fire Nation, and if you order your men to unhand me now, I promise that I'll let you go- mostly intact, if I'm feeling generous."

The pirate captain laughed. "Really, girl, you're in no position to be making demands, even if you are who you say you are, which I doubt." He leaned in close. "Of course, that doesn't mean you can't be… useful to me." His expression now was an undisguised leer.

"You wish," Azula whispered, and then she drew and deep breath and expelled from her throat not air but blue flames, catching the captain straight in the face. Shang stumbled back, beating the flames off frantically until the waterbender called a small wave over the side and doused them.

Captain Shang's face was a burned mess, and he glared at Azula with murder in his eyes. "You'll want me to see to that right away, sir," the waterbender said. "Healing isn't my specialty, but it's still better than nothing."

"You're going to pay for that, girlie," the pirate captain rasped. "Ilook! Get rid of her, now."

The waterbender- Ilook, apparently- stepped forward, that dreamy grin slipping across his face. "With pleasure," he said softly, and the pirates holding Azula stepped back. Before the princess could even attempt to escape, however, Ilook pulled his hands back and a wave crashed over the side of the deck, wrapping itself around Azula and freezing her solid. The waterbending pirate's smiled widened, and he made a pushing motion. Ice, chains, and princess were sent hurtling over the edge.

Azula was trapped by the ice and weighted down by the chains. She could do nothing but curse helplessly as she struck the water and was swallowed by cold darkness. The last thing she heard as seawater closed over her head was Ty Lee's scream and Captain Shang's bitter laughter.

/

How can we have a sea voyage without pirates? Most of these characters aren't very important in the long run, mostly being there to provide an action scene to spice up the journey a bit, but Ilook is going to have more to do further down the line. More about him next chapter.

Azula is hardly at her top form here, considering all the distractions going on her life, and she pays the price for it (though she does get to burn most of Shang's face off – the natural consequences of underestimating a firebender), Still, this is the Azula Trilogy, after all, and don't worry that I'm killing off the title character with a fic-and-a-half to go. The Fire Princess isn't out of the game yet, and she's not a good enemy to have…

-MasterGhandalf