The Search
As soon as Izumi was well enough, she insisted upon joining the search effort for Hisoki.
"Absolutely not!" Zuko had told her when he heard wind of her plan to leave.
"And why not?" Izumi asked defiantly. There was a glint of determination in her golden-tangerine colored eyes. Zuko knew at that moment she couldn't be stopped, but he thought he would try to anyways to change her mind.
"It is not safe for a woman to travel without an escort."
"Then send the escort. I'll lose them quickly,"
"It is not safe for a princess to travel–"
"I'll leave the crown at home. I'll hide my bending. No one will know who I am."
"It is not that easy to hide your identity,"
"You managed even with your scar, for years," she reminded him sharply.
"Izumi, what about Iroh!"
"He is young. He has Mother. She already approved my travel plans."
"She approved— Seriously, Izumi, what is with you two conspiring behind my back!
"Look, as long as Hisoki is out there, and I am legally bound to him, I cannot rest. We cannot encourage our rapidly progressing nation to seek out and spread peace and happiness if we subject ourselves to pain simply to appease the few radicals who may start another pro-Ozai uprising. I don't care about my reputation anymore. I need to find Hisoki, and I need to end him. To be able to establish and maintain peace in my nation, I must first find peace in myself," Izumi explained.
Zuko looked down at her from his throne. Everything she said made perfect sense. The Fire Lord will never be able to please the entire population, but they had to focus on the majority. The wellbeing of the whole organism and not just a small part about it, and if Izumi broke like Azula, there would be no saving the Fire Nation.
"Izumi, you are my only daughter,"
"I know."
"I love you."
"You don't always act like it," Izumi muttered under her breath.
"And I will let you go alone," Zuko said pretending he didn't hear her, hiding how much her words hurt. "But only because I trust you, and understand that this is a journey you need to take, but you must promise me one thing,"
Izumi looked up at him again.
"When you do face Hisoki again, don't choose revenge. Don't kill him for playing our family. Let out your anger, and then let it go. Forgive him."
"HOW CAN I FORGIVE HIM? HE BLAMED ME FOR KILLING OUR BABY! HE LIED TO US ALL JUST TO GET INTO THE PALACE AND GET HIS NAME KNOWN ALL OVER THE WORLD!"
"And what has he done with that? Nothing! He hasn't gone to the papers yet, he hasn't slandered our name, he hasn't raised an army–"
"You don't know that!"
"He wasn't kind, I know, and I am sorry for not noticing sooner and stopping it. I am sorry for failing as a father to protect you. But at the same time, you cannot put full blame on him for his behavior either. You were both just following orders," Zuko reminded her. "Be merciful, Izumi. You will be the first Fire Lord with the chance to ascend to the throne with a completely clean name with all four nations. Don't dirty your hands with the blood of your enemies until absolutely necessary, IN DEFENSE. Don't make the same mistakes as your ancestors. And don't make the same mistakes as me."
"Yes, Father," Izumi said waiting a moment. "If that is all, may I go pack?"
"Yes."
Izumi went to pack. She had her son rolling around on the bed with a few toy soldiers, and a few dolls. He had tied one doll to the bedpost and was planning a rescue with the toy soldiers. In the village between the pillows where the remaining dolls were sitting.
"Whoever taught you that?" she asked Iroh, thinking of the unknown female archer who gave her life to keep the two of them safe. Iroh wasn't listening, too caught up in his imaginary scenario.
"May I come in?" Mai's voice asked from the doorway.
"Of course," Izumi said. Her hair was down, just past her shoulders, her face flawless. She wore peasant clothes with nice wide sleeves and a long skirt. On her bed she had a pair of dual swords, and an array of knives.
"What do you think you'll be taking?" Mai asked coming to stand next to her daughter.
"I'm seriously considering taking neither."
"Why?"
"They're identifiers," Izumi replied. "The sword is made of the highest grade titanium plated steel that only our family can afford to mine and forge in the first place, and the knives have our crest carved into it."
"You're wise to want to hide your identity," Mai said. "But at the same time, you must accept who you are, Izumi. You are my daughter, and the daughter of Fire Lord Zuko. You are the Princess of the Fire Nation and heir to the throne…and ordinarily, I would ask you to conduct yourself accordingly when you leave, but there comes a time when rules and traditions only hinder one from doing the right thing."
Izumi looked up at her mother.
Mai reached onto the bed and picked up a set of throwing knives.
"Don't worry about the crest, and don't forget about chi-blocking. This is not a slight to your father, but his sword is a bit harder to conceal," Mai said placing the knives in Izumi's hand.
Izumi slid the sleeve up her right arm and the other up her left and hugged her mother.
"One more thing," Mai said, pulling a stack of papers out of her robes.
"I sent scouts out during your recovery. This is all we could find. But as of now, nobody outside the family and our immediate staff know Hisoki is missing. I am sure you'd like to keep it that way as well, so burn these before you get onto the ship to the Earth Kingdom."
"Thank you, Mother."
Izumi turned to Iroh who looked at her curiously, not recognizing her in such casual wear with black fingerless gloves and no bun.
"That's good. If your own son doesn't recognize you, then neither should people on the other side of the world," Mai said.
Izumi laughed and picked up her son anyways. Iroh touched her face and leaned his head on her chest.
"I may not love your father, but I will always love you to the world and back, Iroh. Try to understand. I will come back for you, I promise, but in the meantime, be good to Gran Gran. She may not seem like she is capable of feeling, but she loves you too more than you could ever imagine," Izumi said to her baby. He said nothing and continued playing with a lock of her hair.
She held him a little while longer, then handed him to her mother and left.
Izumi read the leads in the carriage ride to the docks of the Fire Nation Capital. All of her practice reading in preparation for war meetings, grand assemblies, and conferences with the ministers of finance and industry made Izumi well skilled at memorizing facts quickly and with great detail. After the hour carriage ride, she climbed out with the stack of papers in her head and all of the leads in her head organized by which she wanted to pursue first. As soon as Izumi let go of the carriage and stepped her second foot onto the cobblestone, her left hand burst into red flames engulfing the papers letting the ashes be scattered by the wind.
"Do you have everything you need, Miss?" the carriage driver asked.
"Yes, thank you," Izumi replied heading to the docks to buy passage to the United Republic.
She spoke to her mother's spies in Republic City, then Omashu, then Ba Sing Se. She traveled through the Serpent's Pass, flying over the part where the path went underwater, wondering if her father had ever walked these trails across the world. She got an eel-hound in a merchant village and rode it from the Serpent's Pass to Chin village, wondering what it would be like to have a pet dragon and fly. She traveled along the coast talking to locals, showing them a picture of Hisoki in normal clothes, hiding her face as often as possible, and coming to realize just how many people in the Earth Kingdom had green eyes. Everyone in the Fire Nation had varying shades of brown, gold, and orange colored eyes.
She even found the legendary bounty hunter named June who had a pet Shirshu that could track anybody all over the world. She followed the bounty hunter to a rocky region near the Great Divide.
"Nyla is getting twitchy so he shouldn't be far. She thinks he's probably underground. Do you happen to be an earthbender?" June asked sliding off her Shirshu.
"No, but hold your animal still, and cover her ears," Izumi said sliding off her eel-hound, wrapping the reins several times around her arm. She pointed two fingers at the ground in front of them and blasted it with blue lightning cracking the ground until it completely caved in revealing a supply room of sorts. The animals reared.
"Loot it, I don't care, I'll pay your weight in gold if you find him," Izumi said as she slid down the pile of rubble into the supply room..
"Why are you so hellbent on going after this guy anyways?" June asked, following her after tying Nyla to a tree.
"He hurt my family, and he hurt me in a way that can't be forgiven," Izumi replied subconsciously placing her left hand on her lower abdomen. "And I want to kill him."
June looked curiously at this young woman. She was so young, yet showed so much anger and pain in her narrow eyes. "How old are you?"
"Twenty-three," Izumi replied.
"Have you ever even killed a man before?" June asked, appalled. How could a girl so young already be out for blood? How could anyone have hurt her so badly? Death, killing and its finality were clearly beyond this child's comprehension. She should be somewhere basking in the sun, relaxing under the protection of her parents or at the very least, some friends. She should be enjoying her youth.
"Does it matter? There's a first time for everything, right?" Izumi replied turning into a dark hall, igniting a small red flame for light.
"Yes, but–" June grabbed Izumi's shoulder. Izumi flashed the flame in the bounty hunter's face as a warning not to touch her, but the bounty hunter evaded it, looping her wrist around Izumi's and forced her to the ground with both hands behind her back, twisting her shoulders. "You're too young for murder, kid." June said to Izumi, making sure to keep the girl's wrists over her shoulder so she couldn't firebend in the non-bending bounty hunter's face.
"You don't know me!" Izumi growled with frustration, feeling her breath hitch in her throat and tears bead in the corners of her eyes.
"You're right, I don't know you. But I know you were born after the war. You were spared so much devastation. You should count yourself lucky and not be like my generation."
"You're just a sellsword, not an imperial advisor so unhand me!" Izumi yelled angrily.
"Spoken like an entitled little prince I once knew, Princess Izumi," June said letting go.
Izumi remained on her knees, massaged her wrists and stretched her shoulders then lit a flame again. Great. The bounty hunter knew her name only because she reminded the woman of her place. She looked up and saw a door at the end of the hallway with light shining through the crack at the bottom.
"Must be deaf to not hear your little lightning," June commented as they walked towards the door.
Izumi kicked it down and a young boy stood up. Izumi threw four knives pinning the boy to the wall behind him.
"THERE'S MONEY IN THE SUPPLY ROOM!" the boy cried. It was a radio room. Izumi looked around and switched every receiver and transmitter off then turned her attention to the boy. She placed a hand on his chest and paralyzed his body from the neck down long enough to remove the knives from the wall and replaced them in her sleeve.
"Please!"
"We're not interested in money. We need information. Hisoki Ibonara. WHERE IS HE?!"
"Hisoki?" the boy asked.
Izumi raised him higher by his collar.
"There's a Hisoki in the team of handlers. I don't know his last name. I just heard he was going to make a delivery somewhere in the Southern Earth Kingdom. Needed train tickets for the National Rail's Omashu to Gaoling line for some reason. But I don't know what stop he will get off at!" the boy cried.
"Its something," June shrugged.
"Or he's lying to get us to leave," Izumi replied.
"And how do you intend on finding out?"
Izumi let go of the boy, releasing the block on the synapses in his nervous system. Just as he moved his wrist, she zapped him with dispersed lightning, the type that didn't leave scars anywhere on the body.
"Tell me where Hisoki is!"
He told the exact same information.
"Okay," she accepted it the second time. She was going to leave before she remembered the radios. She grabbed the boy and shoved him out of the door, then torched the entire room, melting the equipment completely then closing the door. The boy shrieked.
"So you can't warn the south that I am coming," Izumi replied.
In Gaoling, she met another one of her mother's spies who were sending back reports on Izumi's wellbeing to the capital. She refilled her gold, silver, and copper supply, and sharpened her knives and decided to rest her feet for a week while the spies went searching through the region and city.
"Have you given up yet?" Kei-Lo asked, arriving in the city on the second day to speak to the Princess and make sure she was okay.
"Do you know me to give up so easily?" Izumi replied with her fingers linked, and her hands draped over her stomach as she lay on a couch in the luxurious Beifong Estate, courtesy of some family friends.
"I've known you to complain, occasionally," Kei-Lo replied.
Izumi smiled for a moment. "I will find him," Izumi informed Kei Lo before closing her eyes. "And there's one place I haven't yet looked."
"I won't let you go into the Si Wong Desert," Kei-Lo said adamantly.
"And why not?"
"It is not safe! There are bandits, thieves, sandbenders–"
"The perfect hiding place then. He'll know my parents and advisors are against it," Izumi replied sighing, wanting nothing more than to sleep before journeying into the desert.
"Princess, please, don't do this," Kei-Lo begged.
Izumi stood up with a heavy sigh and looked up at her mother's best-friend and advisor.
"The only way to stop me from going, is physically, Kei-Lo. I'm sorry," she said walking past him to go to a private room and shut everyone out for the rest of the evening.
Five days later, Izumi set out for the desert. She sold her eel-hound in a merchant town about halfway there. The beast wasn't bred to endure extreme heat, and Izumi knew it would be hard enough to just keep herself hydrated and fed. She changed into sandbender clothes in an alleyway in the merchant town to try to hide her extremely pale skin that blatantly gave away her status as at least Fire Nation Nobility, then hitched a ride with a merchant on his way to the Misty Palms Oasis.
"A word of advice, Girl," the merchant said to Izumi just before they arrived.
Izumi looked up at him curiously. After an eight hour ride in silence, he only now spoke?
"Keep your eyes down out here," he said. "The color gives you away, Golden-Tangerine," the merchant said, cracking the reins of the two ostrich horses that pulled his cart.
"Thank you," Izumi said pulling her mask a little higher on her nose and her hood a little lower on her forehead until they covered her brow.
She looked at the ground as she approached the pub her father spoke about in all of his stories of exile. She thought on his life and his journey. How much struggle, how he had to fight. And she had everything. She paused to glance at the bulletin where a couple of wanted posters and advertisements for various services were hung, imagining her father and great uncle's face among them.
She was tempted to tack up Hisoki's photo up there. Wanted dead or alive, she thought she might add at the top of the photo, to be taken back to the Fire Nation, supervised, and kept hushed. She turned away from the bulletin and entered the pub.
She was already starting to feel fatigued from the heat as she approached the bar for a drink.
"Watermelon and peach, please. And spike it," Izumi told the bartender, slamming two coppers on the counter before turning away.
"What percentage?" the bartender asked suspiciously, not used to hearing please, or the slight hesitation before the request to spike the fruity drink.
"Twelve," Izumi replied.
The bartender hesitated. Izumi could hear his breathing, feel his gaze on the back of her covered head.
Foreigner. They both knew the other knew as he slid over the drink. Izumi pulled down the mask just enough to be able to smell the drink clearly before lifting the mask up again. Part of her training back at the palace included smelling for common poisons before eating or drinking. One of her exams when she was thirteen years old included determining the percent cactus juice in a drink. The substance was a dangerous hallucinogen that made one characterize inanimate objects, become delirious and then fatigued. Izumi knew her tolerance. She and Saru discovered each other's when they were fifteen during one of their kitchen raids. Hers was twelve percent to dull the pain yet retain her sanity. His was seventeen. And by the smell of this, Izumi could tell the bartender thought he might try to get lucky.
Izumi turned and chucked the glass at his head head as he ducked.
"I SAID TWELVE PERCENT NOT SIXTY!" she yelled as the ice cup shattered against the opposite wall, the drink spraying over everything.
Everyone in the bar turned to see, but Izumi was no longer facing their direction on her stool. She placed her head down on the counter, tired, and wanting to hide the color of her eyes.
The bartender frowned, but made her a new drink nonetheless. She smelled it and took a sip, tipping him a copper. He's just a man. Such simple creatures indeed, she thought as she tasted the sweet watermelon and peach.
"Hey stranger," a man said sitting next to her at the bar. "You're not from around here are ya?"
"No," Izumi replied with both elbows on the counter, looking down at her ice cup, finding it difficult to slouch after decades of being indoctrinated to sit up straight with her spine curved at a certain radius and her chin tilted at a certain angle, always.
"What what brings ya out here in disguise?" the man asked.
"Trying to find a man," Izumi replied sliding over the photograph, and looking away so he wouldn't see her eyes.
"That guy? Came in with a couple o' bandits a few days ago. Kidnapped some kids and left," the man said sliding the picture back.
Izumi's eyes narrowed. Hisoki was worse than they thought. Kidnapping kids? She worried for the first time then about Iroh. Please mother, she begged. Don't let him out of your sight.
"Which direction?!" Izumi asked.
"Why do you want to know?" he asked clicking his tongue.
Izumi frowned under her mask. "I want to kill him." Well, that is what she told June at least. Might as well be consistent with her reasoning.
"If you really wanted to kill him, you wouldn't go around the world tellin' people that. They might lock you up."
"He took something from me," Izumi said.
The man looked down noticing her hand move to her lower abdomen.
"Your kid or your cunt?" the man asked.
She turned to him, appalled he would have the audacity to say such a thing. Then she cursed herself for making eye contact with the man and looked down at the cup again for a second before chugging the thing and smashing the ice on the table top. Izumi sighed in frustration, regretting chugging the drink so quickly.
"I guess you could say both," she replied.
"He went into the desert towards Ba Sing Se. My guess is he's going to sell the kids to the Earth Queen's Dai Li. There's a trading village about half ways there from where we are now. I can take you on my sand sailer if you'd like. I've finished my last delivery for the week and have a few days," the man offered.
"Sure," Izumi replied. The bartender looked at the man with jealousy.
If he is lying to me and also wants just to fuck, I'll kill him too, thought Izumi as she followed him out of the bar. Gosh if her father saw how she was acting, thinking, he would be so…. Angry.
But Izumi didn't care. She didn't care about anything but finding Hisoki. She lifted the mask higher and pulled the hood lower hiding as much of her face as she could.
The sand sailer seemed like a fast method of travel, Izumi thought as she held onto its frame, but she knew it would be still a few days to cross the desert to Ba Sing Se. "Do you think he's already in the City?" Izumi asked the sandbender.
"Nah. Most of the trade is done where we're going. Customs is too nitpicky 'round the capital."
Izumi didn't reply. She was too filled with hate to respond. She hated the Fire Sages for putting up an ad for her hand in marriage without her consent. She hated Hisoki for responding to that ad. She hated him for playing her family. She hated him for leaving, and now she also hated him for participating in child trafficking. Just when she thought she couldn't hate any more, she realized that she also hated the Dai Li from all of her father's stories, and now she was beginning to hate the new Earth Queen Hou-Ting for reestablishing that horrible secret police and growing it out of kidnapped children that Hisoki was helping to collect!
"You alright back there, lady?" the sandbender asked turning back to Izumi. She looked up.
"LOOK OUT!" she screamed pointing ahead. A giant sand serpent leapt out of the dunes nearly destroying the sand sailer. It veered to the side and around as Izumi held onto the ropes.
"Still there?" the sand bender asked.
"Yeah," Izumi replied examining rope burn on her fingers.
"Yeh must have soft hands. And those ropes are old," he commented.
Izumi shrugged off the comment. Of course everyone out here would be so callous, but she was raised in a palace. She unwrapped the strip of fabric on her forearms and rewrapped it to cover the wounds and stop the bleeding.
"You don't talk much, do you, lady?"
"I used to. Just not recently," Izumi replied looking away.
The Trading village was putting it mildly; it was actually a full on city in the middle of the desert. How was it not on any map in the Fire Nation? Izumi thought. Hopefully they would stay until night so she could map their location based on the constellations and add it to the map when she got back to the Palace.
There was a metal hub, a wooden hub, a crystal hub, a food hub, and a human hub, much to Izumi's disgust. "How can the Earth Queen let something like this exist?" Izumi asked aloud as she walked past laborers being sold in chains. There were stalls that sold smiths, miners, farmers, craftsmen, seamstresses, then finally women and children.
"This way," the sandbender said taking Izumi's hand. She reached into the folds in her robes for a knife, just in case.
They walked past the inspection lines and the bidding area to the offices in the back of this horrible establishment. Izumi took a deep breath to keep herself from killing the masters right there. But this was not her kingdom. If she were caught and delivered to the Earth Queen for disrupting one of her profitable trades, it could be disastrous for the entirety of the Fire Nation. She made a mental note to at least mention it to her father, and maybe even the White Lotus and her friends in Republic City.
The sandbender reached a door. He knocked. "Wait here," he said going in. Moments later, he emerged with one of the Masters of the establishment.
"This way," they said leading her a few doors down. "He's making a delivery but will be back in a few minutes. If you could just wait in here," they said opening the door. Izumi peeked in. the room was completely barren, with stone floors. Her split second inspection gave them just enough time to kick her into the room and slam the door, locking it.
"You BASTARDS!" she screamed slamming her fists onto the door.
"Nice catch. I could tell by her eyes, she's young and pretty. Will fetch a healthy price, I already have a buyer in mind," the man said outside the door..
"How much will you pay me for her?"
"Pay you? Your mistake was bringing her here unannounced. She's mine now." the man said knocking on the iron door.
"I belong to NO ONE!" Izumi yelled banging her fists on the door again.
They laughed at her.
Izumi paced, then she remembered. She could melt the door possibly, but she didn't want to hurt the people being bidded for. Maybe death would be a mercy. But no, not by torching, Izumi thought. What fire could she control?
She stood in the center of the room. Sphere. She put her fists together and concentrated, then dropped kicking up onto her hands spinning on her hands, firebending a ball with her feet.
"Is it getting hot in here or is it just me?" the merchant asked.
The sandbender shrugged. Izumi stopped building and stood on her feet again and turned out her hands. She heated the red sphere with her hands to be blue, and expanded it, breaking down all the walls, melting the door, and collapsing part of the floor above before fleeing out the back of the building. She ran to the edge of town and kept running into the desert. After she scaled the first mountainous dune, she used her feet as rocket thrusters to launch herself over the next and the next and the next. For three hours, she ran, getting as far from the town as possible before collapsing on her chest. She pulled out her canteen and drank a little, capped it and fell asleep.
When Izumi woke, it was night and she was half buried in sand. Maybe it was a sign she should just stay and die. No. She had a son waiting for her back home. A son, a father, a mother, and a nation. She had to keep going. She unburied herself and walked, in less of a hurry than before, to get away from the child traffickers. She had made enough smoke to distract them from whichever direction she was running, so if they searched, they shouldn't be able to find her. She was safe for a little while, at least. She looked up at the sky, at the stars, trying to remember all of the astronomy and navigation classes she had as a child.
She decided to head East, to Ba Sing Se. There she could either continue the search for Hisoki, or head to the Fire Nation Embassy, and go home.
After a day, she regretted not stealing food before fleeing that awful merchant city. After another, she was running out of water. On the third, she was near collapsing. She looked up at the stars. Four days, she thought recognizing the constellations. Four days left on foot. Maybe eight at this rate.
She drank the last of her water then pulled up her scarf and pulled down her hood again. She wanted to cry over her foolishness and naivety. She hated herself for trusting Hisoki and that random guy in the bar at the Misty Palms Oasis. She almost got herself sold into Earth Kingdom Slavery. She stupidly fled into the desert on foot without anything to eat. If she couldn't even plan this journey as it happened, how could she ever hope to rule her country responsibly. She squeezed her eyes shut and curled her fingers into the sand. No, she couldn't cry. She would lose precious water if she did, water she couldn't afford to lose.
Her sadness turned to anger, and her anger turned to pain as she fell to her hands and knees, choking back sobs.
When she first met Hisoki, he was a polite young man. He knew politics. He was a good talker and could engage in intellectual conversations with her parents and her before she fell apart. Then they were married. He became dull. Plain. All he focused on was getting her pregnant, and bettering his own name. She realized, he never cared about her in the first place. All he wanted, or all his mother wanted, probably, was the fame of being married to the Princess.
Hisoki- I should have known. Even your name means "secretive". No amount of observation or interrogation could have prepared us for this betrayal.
"Hisoki, WHERE ARE YOU?!" she screamed throwing her head back, feeling the sand melt below her hands and feet. She roared like a dragon then bowed her head and took a deep breath. She felt fire building up inside her body. It was a fire she didn't recognize but she didn't care. She watched the veins start to show through the skin on her hands and fingers. She felt her entire body tense, and her vision become blurry. It was just fire. She wouldn't feel anything, she thought as she closed her eyes and let the flames consume her completely.