Running low on new chapters, but that's alright, because I'm finished writing it. Yup, it's official. Two more weeks, and then this story is consigned to memory and history. All told, CotW ended up being three quarters of a million words, all hammered out in less than a year. God damn, that's been a hell of a run.
There's a number of things which I regret about this story. A lot of places I didn't get a chance to explore, which had such potential. I've gotten Great Whales well enough to sate my interests, but I've barely touched Azul, and because of what was needed for the story, fully half of Ty Lee's sisters were dead before we knew anything about them at all. And that's unfortunate. Worse, because of the pace of the last chapters of the story, there are a couple of people I couldn't touch on at the end. But that's enough moping about. You came here to see Azula take on an army, and that's what you're going to get. It ends about how you'd expect.
While I learned how to do Mood Whiplash from Supernatural, I learned Juxtaposition from Goodkind. Well, Goodkind before he discovered Ayn Rand and went all preachy, anyway. But there is a sense of ennui that I felt flowing through this work which I had seen nowhere else. The world was ending. I was letting it go, because the stories I wanted to tell were told. It's almost like watching somebody slowly die. Yes, it's inevitable, and you know that it will be good in the end for all concerned, but it still has a sadness to it which cannot be denied or explained.
Enough moping. Having a bad month, might as well not drag everybody else down.
"Alright, now everybody tilt your head back," she said, her tones bright and singsong. Before her were arrayed a dozen boys and girls, all of them from around Azul and its outlying hills. All of them wanting to get out, and willing to pay for the privilege. Ty Lee Baihu was, after all, regarded by most authorities – which consisted of pretty much exclusively the Avatar himself – the greatest airbender of the modern age. It was said, and quite rightly, that after Avatar Aang taught Ty Lee how to airbend, she then started to teach him. So lessons from Baihu were considered the gold standard in the world.
She opened one brown eye, making sure everybody was doing as she asked. Then, with a happy sigh forced out, she swung her head down. "And then let it dangle, like a soggy bit of asparagus," she directed. A dozen young heads flopped about like they were held on by only a loose spring. In truth it was dishonest what she was doing. It wasn't hurting, but there was no way she could teach them airbending. That required two things. Children who had the knack, and a teacher who knew her stuff. Aan Jee Baihu was fairly sure she had neither.
She forced herself not to sigh, as she pondered that this really wasn't what she expected to be doing in Azul. But then a goddamned civil war came out of nowhere, and she had to make the best of it. And by make the best of it, she meant 'look out for my own damned skin because of what Ty Lee is doing with the Red Flame'. Aan Jee frowned at the blue marks on the backs of her hands. Not tattoos, of course. Any con requiring that level of commitment had to pay off a lot better than this one. This was just getting her enough money to put food on the table, a roof over her head, some shoka in her belly, and maybe a nubile Tribesman in her bed. She found, in the last few months, that she was fairly good at stretching a little money a long way.
"No thanks to you, sis," Aan Jee muttered.
"What was that, Master Ty Lee?" one of her 'pupils' asked.
"What? Did I say something?" Aan Jee forced her voice to be flighty and insipid again. Well, that wasn't really fair. It wasn't that Ty Lee was dumb... which she was... it's just that she got held against much smarter people for comparison, and it was hard to shine intellectually when she was being compared against a scholastic genius like Zhu Di, or a streetwise slicker like Aan Jee.
"When do we start airbending?" a girl of about six asked.
"When you have a... clarity of thought," she lectured. Well, lecturing wasn't the word, because Ty Lee would never lecture. She would just hug people until they learned things. Somehow. "You can't float on the breeze if you're all, like, tethered to the ground and stuff."
"Oh. That makes sense," the girl nodded, as though it was the most logical thing in the universe. Aan Jee had just made it up off the top of her head. She didn't know the philosophy of airbending. Not even close. She was no bender of any kind herself, not like Tsu Zi was shaping up to be. She couldn't comprehend how seven sisters, of which six were almost perfectly identical, could only produce two benders, and one of them not even a firebender! But then, Tsu Zi had to go and get herself all dead. And so had Rai Lee; she never got that boat she always wanted. So had Kah Ri; all of those little stories she wanted to write, burnt up with the rest of her. So had Gwen. Although, the way Gwen moped around, one would almost think she'd welcome it. It didn't help that Mom had to saddle her with such a weird name. It was like it was Whalesh or something.
Aan Jee didn't let any of this show on her face, though. She mourned her sisters in the best way she knew how: by bringing down the man who ordered their deaths. There was a catharsis in knowing Ozai had fallen, and everything he worked to accomplish crashed and burned around him. That his every plan came to naught, all because she was good at forgery. Well, there were a lot of things that Aan Jee was good at, very few of them legal. Aan Jee was about to give another instruction which, while pointless, wouldn't necessarily be harmful, when she felt a gust of wind behind her, and a loud bellow that sounded like the ground itself was shouting at her. Aan Jee's dark eyes shot wide, and she turned, just in time to have her face intercepted by a tongue larger than she was. It threw her onto her back, covered in bison drool.
"Is that you?" her own voice shouted down at her. Aan Jee flicked the goop off of her eyes and beheld... herself. It was like looking at a mirror, if there existed a mirror which would make you appear sitting astride the brow of a fifteen tonne flying bison. Well, to her benefit, she wasn't sitting up there long. Aan Jee had scarcely gotten back to her feet when she found herself being swept into a bearhug the likes of which only Ty Lee was capable, spinning around on a cushion of airbending until she was frankly more than a little dizzy. When it stopped, Ty Lee started with the questions.
"Oh my gods! I was so worried that you were hurt or dead or something! Are those tattoos? Are you an airbender now? What happened to what's-his-name? You know that cute guy? What ever became of him? What's with all of these children? Hey I can't even see that scar anymore! Didn't you get that in a bottle fight? Or am I thinking of somebody else?"
"Ty Lee," Aan Jee said. All of her 'pupils' were staring in abject bafflement, which Aan Jee was scarcely better at hiding. "What are you talking about? Don't you recognize your own students?"
Ty Lee's questioning look vanished into a grin when she finally got what Aan Jee was doing. Sweet girl, her younger sister, but not bright. Not so great at improvising. If there was one lesson Aan Jee had learned over the years, it was how to roll with it. It was why she still had her hands.
Well, rolling with it, and a certain blind metalbender, but don't let history know about that.
Chapter 21: Breakthrough (Part 2)
Azula poured over the map which had been hastily thrown over the table by the man with the off-kilter hat. Some, who didn't know a real fighter from a hole in the ground, would have called it a sloppy adornment of uniform. In truth, the angled, wide brimmed hat was one of the most recognized symbols in Fire Nation warfare, and one of the most feared. "So what do we have to work with?" Azula demanded.
Iñagoh Azul, Montoya's grandchild and already a Gurkha of some repute, began to rattle off figures. "We've got roughly five hundred Gurkha at the ready. Another thousand in auxiliaries and archers, including almost a hundred from Yu Yan. That isn't counting the bodyguards of the Azul and Loyo Lah families."
"What is is Amada doing here?" Azula asked. "She's supposed to be on the edge of Hui."
"Grandfather took them in when a scion of her family became Fire Lady," Iñagoh said distractedly. He shrugged. "She was quite thrilled at the sudden improvement in her station."
"Regardless, it just means I have two families to deliver instead of one," Azula said. She frowned for a moment. "What about assassins?"
"What do you mean?"
"You're Azuli. As in, the family of Azul. You can't honestly tell me that you don't have any trained assassins on hand."
"I try to keep out of that business," Iñagoh said uncomfortably.
"Twenty," his grandfather answered gently.
"Twenty," Azula repeated. She tried to kneed her brow, but her spectacles got in the way, so she had to remove them to complete the gesture of aggravation. "I suppose it was too much to ask for to have a commando unit at my disposal," she muttered. She looked up to the old man in the red and purple robes. "We can't throw them away, but we can't be timid with them. Use them as audaciously as you dare. Blind their army."
Montoya smirked at that. "Well put."
"The real problem is that the terrain works against everybody," Azula said. "And considering the size of the army bearing down on us..."
"How large of an army?" Iñagoh asked.
"The entire occupation force for the city of Azul," Azula answered. She gave the young man, only of age with Ked, a sideways glance. "Does that weaken your resolve, child, knowing you face fifteen to one numbers?"
Iñagoh actually looked mildly insulted at that. "The Gurkha dies; it does not break. With a thousand or alone, I will fight."
"And here I thought that little spiel was simple bravado," Azula said with a smirk of her own. She caught Montoya nodding out of the corner of her eye. She pointed at the map, at a spot that was not close, by any means, to where they were. "They have ten thousand men and more bearing down on us. That works for us, if we can use it properly. They will be broken up by the terrain in Ibuki. And they can't use the paths we will."
"I wouldn't be sure of that," Sokka interjected. "The reason Azul fell so quickly was because their defenses were literally undercut. That means earthbenders, possibly Dai Li," he pointed at another spot. "They're probably flanking us toward this path even as we speak. They have the same maps we do, and they will be sealing the paths they know we will use."
"You are a threat to morale, Sokka," Azula said flatly. But then, the Tribesman began to grin.
"Good. I'll be a threat to theirs. What are the Azuli known for?"
"Killing people quietly, crushing anybody that tries to invade their homeland, possessing the most advanced manufacturing facilities on the planet, and potatoes," Azula rattled off.
"Exactly. They do things a certain way. Don't you, Monty?"
Montoya grumbled something under his breath.
"Which we can use to our advantage by being unexpected," Sokka pushed the broad map over further, letting it unroll and pinning down its hitherto ignored section with an empty liquor bottle. "They'll expect us to make for the passes, which they will have sapped, blocked, or trapped. They likely have a Dai Li heading this, and Dai Li attack from all directions. I know. I've had to fight them before. So they're flaring out to surround us," he made gestures around their position. "Now, if a commander was going to hammer-and-anvil a force, one has to make sure there is complete enclosure. That means lots of disciplined and capable soldiers sweeping ahead of us to where we're getting boxed in."
Azula's eyes went wide. A dark grin came to her face as she grasped intimately what he was explaining. With one fingertip, she drew a direct line from where they were, directly into the city of Azul. "Brilliant," she said.
Iñagoh gave a glance to his ancestor, who raised an eyebrow, demanding clarity without having to say a word.
"We cannot make for the passes," Azula announced. "By the time we reach them, we will already be surrounded, and we will be crushed into dust before we can get anybody across them. So we need to be audacious. We will cut through their lines at their most fragile point, at the critical moment."
"What are you saying? That we retake Azul?"
"With this force? Please, we would be slaughtered the moment their force returned," she rolled her eyes. "I am saying that we storm Azul, commandeer the ships in the port, and sail to Grand Fire."
"There's an entire army between here and Azul," Montoya pointed out.
"There won't be for long," she answered. "Because three quarters of it is going to be flaring out to surround us. We only need to cut through a fraction of their force. We cut the ones that matter, and we run, and we don't stop until we have iron hulls under our feet and ocean at every horizon. How does that strike you as a plan?"
"Insane and suicidal," Montoya said, but not harshly.
"And it might just work," his grandson finished. He looked up. "I'll tell the men. By the way they're covering ground, they'll be split in a half-hour. We make our move then, or never."
Azula nodded, and said, "Jai Maho Agni, Ayo Gurkhali," Iñagoh smiled at that.
Ked looked a bit confused at that last utterance, as the young soldier departed from the cabin. Azula turned to him with a shrug. "It is their warcry," she explained. "Blood for Immortal Agni, the Gurkhas have come."
"They don't do anything half-assed, do they?"
"No, we do not," Montoya answered. He rose, and gave Azula one last look, before turning toward the door himself. But as he walked, he spoke again. "I hope you realize that if we do not survive this, neither will you."
"I don't like being threatened," Azula said.
"How was that a threat?" Montoya asked, opening the door.
"By implication, the way you do it best," Azula said. "I will lead from the front. That is where I belong. Your khukris shall go thirsty of my blood today."
"Is that wise?" Sokka asked.
"No. But in this case, it is our only option," Azula admitted.
What Montoya thought of that, he did not say, vanishing into the world outside. Azula turned back to the map, which now had only they three surrounding it. "So, what odds do you have of us actually surviving this?" Azula asked idly.
"I'd bet on us," Sokka said genuinely. "Come on, we've got the most terrifying woman on the planet, and the smartest man on the planet, on the same side. What could beat us?"
Ked groaned. "You do enjoy tempting fate, don't you?" he asked.
The heavy iron of the vault squeaked unsettlingly as Chan slowly opened its massive bulkhead. Their plan depended on quite a bit of luck; first and foremost, there was one thing that they needed to know beyond all shadow of a doubt. So Chan found himself down here, in the dead of night, breaking into the guts of Yuchiban Palace between the frequent patrols of those stone-faced killers. There were a lot of things that he'd rather be doing, but Yui would get this look in her eyes, her lip would pout out just a little, and he'd melt. It was a good thing the real Azula never learned how to pull an expression like that. She could rule the world on pure adorableness.
The first thing to hit him as the stink. Of course, from what he'd seen, he had the good sense to hold his breath, taking it in slowly so it wouldn't leave him gagging. He'd smelled filth before. It was like this child hadn't the first concept of human sanitation. Chan ignited a flare over his hand, deliberately avoiding the lamp near the entrance. It would be just like Long Feng – so he'd heard – that he'd check the oil levels every time he left or returned. The light revealed what Chan expected to find. The crust of dried urine pooled in a slight low spot on the floor. The filth and foetor was otherwise confined to one corner, upon which rested its source. The instant the light hit the child, it let out a thin whine, pulling in on itself and hugging its rags closer.
"Do you understand what I'm saying?" Chan asked. Then, he caught himself and sighed. Of course he didn't. He was an earthbender, that meant he must speak Tianxia. He muttered to himself, trying to call up the lesson's which had mostly vanished into the ether years ago. "What are you?" he managed, but even then, he grumbled, since that wasn't what he meant to ask. Damn his elementary-school understanding of foreign languages.
The child pulled in on itself, its bare, filthy feet kicking as though trying to push Chan away. Chan shifted the cloak on his shoulders, letting the hood fall back. He held his ground, though. "Damn it. Why couldn't you speak a real language, kid?"
Chan sighed. "Of course, everything riding on my shoulders. I hate when everything comes down to me. Let somebody else have that kind of pressure, but no-o-o-o, it's gotta be Chan. How is that fair?"
With a grumble, Chan sat on one of the edges of the racks which had been built into the wall, and then abandoned when the vault fell into disuse. "The problem is if you flip out and try to kill us, there's not much I can do but kill you. I'm not an earthbender. Firebending's pretty much kill or nothing, which limits my options. You must know all about that, don't you?"
The child stopped shaking, which was good. Well, better. Chan tried to figure out how to say it properly. "Do you want out?" he managed.
The child moved its hands down from its face, just a little. The eyes, that just wasn't right. One of them was a bright green, but the other was both misshapen and discolored. From what Chan knew about eyes, which admittedly wasn't much, it was almost certainly blind in it. Come one, it didn't even have a pupil in that one! The child stared at Chan for a long moment.
"Well?" he asked, in the wrong language, forcing him to repeat it in the right one.
Trama shrunk back, as though trying to sink into the wall. Chan stood, and took a step toward the child. "This isn't going to work if you're fighting us. I don't know what I'm supposed to do right now. How do I tell Yui?"
Chan turned again, but this time when he tried to step toward the exit of the vault, he found himself checked. One spindly arm, with remarkable strength, had grabbed onto the hem of Chan's cloak and was clasping it in a death-grip, staring hard at Chan. Chan tried to tug it away, but he'd might as well have tried to pull out a full grown tree by the roots. "What?" he asked. He took a step backward, but Trama's grip meant that it only forced him to lean, the cloak still thoroughly entangled in the emaciated hand. "Do you want something? Can you even speak?"
The child let out a groan. Just at the edge of Chan's sensation, he could have sworn he heard something. A sharp stab of panic slipped into his spine. He quickly unbuckled the clasp of the cloak, letting it slide off and pool on the floor. Trama didn't waste an instant. It took the broad cloak and swept it over its head, cocooning itself against its corner, under the cloak. The incessant shuddering that its small body exhibited began to slow, and finally come to a stop. Chan heard a tiny sigh, almost like relief, come from the child.
"What are you...?"
"I want out," the voice came, high and reedy, and tired, and afraid. "I don't want to fight anymore."
Chan gave a glance toward the door, but then turned back to the child. He leaned down, letting the flame dim a bit. "We'll get you out of here," he said haltingly and influently. "Have faith."
With that, Chan turned and left. He managed to close the door, and even get around the corner as he heard those clattering footsteps approaching. More Dai Li. Forcing himself to walk normally was far harder than he expected as he began to pass those working in the palace. Mostly, because he had to work very hard not to give into the whole-body shudder which he desperately wanted to release.
He was blind to the grandeur, to the gold, to the wealth around him, until he finally made it back into Yui's room. She wasn't here, which meant she must have been trotted out for something. Chan didn't know, and he really didn't care. They were leaving. They had the plan set firmly in their minds and nowhere else. Chan made sure that every physical trace they left about it was burnt beyond ashes. He was a hero to her, and he wasn't about to muck that up. It was time he earned the respect he had always demanded. It was time that he became the hero Yui saw.
"Oh, this is going to get bloody," Chan muttered to himself, his back to the door. He just hoped the blood wouldn't be theirs.
Behind a wall of carefully cut glass, golden eyes scanned the terrain. Dust was flying in the morning, swept by the wind from the mountains. Much as Azula wanted to deny it, she was coming more and more to dependant on the glasses to see. If nothing else, today, they kept the grit out of her eyes. Azula swung her legs to one side, and dropped off of the rock she had been sitting on, and quickly made her way back to the men and women who found themselves under her command. Her soldiers, and Ked. She frowned, seeing him up here, trying to pull armor on.
"As much as I appreciate the gesture, I'd prefer if you didn't die today," Azula said, raising an eyebrow at his struggles.
"What? I'm supposed to be pr..." he stopped, looking into the distance as his rational mind caught up to his emotive one. "Yeah, like I'm going to be able to protect you in battle."
"Like she'll even need it," one of the Gurkhas said with a chuckle. This drew a blush from Ked. She leaned in close to him.
"You need to stay back with the civilians. There are going to be innocent people hurt today, there's no way around that. You have to keep them moving. I have no intention of leaving anybody behind. Are you capable of that?"
Ked sighed, and looked her in the eye. "I still think this plan is insane."
"The best are," Azula admitted. She gave him a peck on the cheek, upon he turned and moved back to the milling forms of the families Azul and Loyo Lah. She turned to Sokka, who was lounging in his armor and lazily twirling the white sword. "I notice you didn't weigh in?"
"Before a fight is no time to be a prick," Sokka said with a shrug. He adjusted the wolf-head helm on his head. The first time she saw him in his pale blue Water Tribe armor, it actually gave Azula a pang of nostalgia. The good old days when she was trying to kill him. When he gave her an unexpected hair cut on the day of Black Sun. Bizarre as it was to hold that sort of empathy for a time she was essentially Ozai's slave, she still felt warmly of that time.
She hoped at some point to stop being so bloody irrational.
Azula took a few steps forward. The wind was bringing sounds of motion to her ears from every direction. They were encircled. They were outnumbered. And she needed to pull a win out of this. "Men, we are in the fight of our lives," Azula said. "If we fail, every single one of is will die to the blades of old enemies and foreign mercenaries."
"That's great. Open with a joke," Sokka snarked.
"Which is why I know that none of you will give anything less than a heroic effort," Azula powered on, giving the Tribesman a glare. "We will cut through the heart of their line. You will spread out that line and hold them back, while the rest get the civilians through. It will not be easy. We will be beset on all sides. To our rear will come a charge of Komodo Dragons. To our sides will be hundreds of firebenders and infantrymen. And we will be tasked with bearing a delicate cargo. It's like..." she pondered a proper metaphor.
"Getting an egg out of a swine-chicken's ass?" Sokka prompted.
"Inelegant, but appropriate," Azula said.
"And where will you be?"
"At the bleeding edge," Azula said. "I cut a hole. The Gurkha expand it. But there is one more task I must ask of you. When we get the rest out, we will be pursued, and with the cavalry on our tails, we would be run down long before we reach Azul. Some of you will need to..."
As one, almost a hundred men stepped forward, faces determined.
"There is almost no chance of survival," Azula said. "If you take this task, it will be almost certain death."
"The Gurkha dies, it does not break," one said.
"Jai Maho Agni, Ayo Gurkhali!" the other volunteers shouted. She turned, and saw that Iñagoh was one step forward, with the rest of the Gurkhas.
"You can't do this," Azula pointed out. "The Coordinator..."
"I don't give a damn what my grandfather says. I am a brother to my men," Iñagoh smirked for a moment. "Besides, I'm too pretty to die. I'll see you in Grand Fire. Mark my words."
Azula stared the young man in the eye, certain it would be for the last time. She gave him a nod, then turned so that the sun, rising over the mountains, was at her back. "Everybody draw blades and fire. Move out!"
And the army charged, full of wrath and rancor, into the jaws of the beast. At their head, the point of a spear, blue flames in her hands and in her soul, charged Azula.
The Secretariat scratched a report to his superior as he waited. Long Feng had to be kept in the loop, because Han Hua's success was intimately tied to Long Feng's own. His one green eye ran across the page; it was somewhat premature to declare his victory, his crushing of the enemy. Unlike those fools from the Fire Nation, he never declared victory until after it happened. But it still was good to have it penned out in advance. One never knew what would come in the hectic end of a battle.
"Secretariat Han?" a soldier whom he never bothered to learn the name of ducked into the tent. From the uniform, he was actually navy, not army, and high ranked. However, he was an Embiar, not Dai Li nor even an Easterner, so he was mostly beneath Han Hua's notice. "We are hearing very little back."
"It is a battle, confusion is endemic," Han Hua said evenly and patronizingly.
"Sir, I don't think you grasp the gravity of this situation. Rhino Riders are going silent. They're never silent."
"Maybe they've finally learned the importance of secrecy in this ambush," Han pointed out.
"That's not all. We're getting sporadic reports that the enemy have broken camp. Azul is on the move."
"Good. We will crush them with their backs to the mountain passes."
"Sir, they aren't headed for the passes," he said with power and verve. "They're headed here!"
Han Hua looked up, his one eye glinting. "What."
"The entire army is charging toward this position."
"So they run headlong into the arms of death? Well, how very accommodating of them," Han said with a dry chuckle.
"Goddamn it, you foreign heathen, listen to me!" the wayward admiral shouted. "They are charging the weakest point in our lines! We can't pull the regiment in fast enough!"
Han glared, unimpressed with his harsh words.
"You might want to rethink what you call me. When they hit the lines, I don't doubt that they'll be crushed under the weight of the men. That is what you people do."
"You shouldn't be in charge of this," the man sneered. "You're not military. You don't know the first thing about actual battle. The soldiers here were the anvil. They're conscripts and recruits so raw that they still find wet behind their ears each morning, held in place to deny them retreat. Well, they aren't retreating. They're going to cut through like molten iron through ice. And when they do, they will charge right through this camp."
Han Hua didn't like the sound of that. But he also didn't think it was very likely.
"You are being preposterous. There is no way that twelve hundred men can cut through twenty thousand."
"They don't need to," he answered. It occurred to Han Hua in that moment who this person was, a distant memory called up from the deep. "They only need to beat five thousand. And they have Sokka Baihu leading them."
"That is quite enough, Admiral... Chan," Han Hua said. "Do your job. Crush the upstarts and the Azuli. I will hear nothing more of this."
The man glared, running a hand through grey hair. "I really hope there aren't idiots like you at Yuchiban, where my son is stationed," he muttered, before heading out. Han Hua glared at him as he left, but then discarded him from his mind. Twelve hundred could not beat twenty thousand. It was as simple as that. There was nothing more to it.
But there was a niggling doubt, just a hair of worry. He glanced over his shoulder, to the long, wrapped form he kept standing against the pole which supported the canopy of the tent. Procuring rubber had been extremely difficult, with almost all sources lying in the hands of the Red Flame, but if it worked, it would be worth it. If only to see the look on her face when her greatest attempts failed.
Putting the absurd out of his mind, Han Hua carefully blotted the paper, and waited for it to dry. He drank the bitter local drink which they served instead of tea. Not quite as pleasant on the tongue, but it had wonderful effects on his focus and clarity. Be patient. That's all he had to do; be patient, and let things sort out as they inevitably would. After all, twelve hundred couldn't defeat an army of twenty thousand.
It was inconceivable.
Fire was the world.
And at its heart, stood Azula.
Every joint and muscle in her body screamed at her to stop, to rest, to do anything but keep fighting, but they were in the thick, now. Once, many years before, when Iroh had been besieging Ba Sing Se, he once found his position surrounded and cut off. He described it in the letter that he sent home that week as 'the most target rich environment that he had ever seen.' That was certainly how Azula felt right now. For whatever worth it was that they cut through the weakest part of the army, it also had the downside of having the most soldiers, and every one of them was a pang of conscience digging into her. It almost made her regret bothering to reclaim that sealed off section of her mind. These were her countrymen. And she was killing them.
A hastily conjured wave of fire, bright blue but more similar to Jeong Jeong's favored method, swept away from her hands, eating of her power and transforming it into living warfare. The rookies and the conscripts dove and clawed out of its way, letting a path open up, however briefly, through the mass of bodies, until the firebending unraveled and snuffed. Not very long. A few seconds. But a few seconds made for a few yards, and that was precious gain, right now.
"We're not moving fast enough!" Iñagoh shouted over the din of screams and clattering of iron.
"Don't complain if you can't do anything to change it!" Azula roared back. She launched herself into a pocket of resistance trying to refill the void that they had, in their wavering courage, emptied. One of them, a boy perhaps the age of Ked's sister, furiously tried to firebend, but his panic made a mess of it so badly that only a wisp of smoke wafted away from his fists. Understandable. When you lose control, you lose your firebending. It was why the insane could not firebend. If only the same could be said of other elemental martial arts. With a lash forward of a long-booted foot, she kicked the boy in the chin, knocking him senseless onto his back, and creating a blastwave of percussion to hurl the rest of the squad away.
"Keep those people moving!" Iñagoh shouted, and she could feel the force behind her press into the gap which she kept on advancing. She was the edge of the knife, and the flesh of the Blue Flame army parted as she walked. Which meant she must not falter. Binding around this blade would be bad news indeed.
Azula turned to shout something to the swordsman who was keeping her back clear, but found instead a twenty pace gap between her and anybody else. Her left eye twitched at that. "Where the hell is Sokka?" she roared.
Iñagoh yanked hard, hooking a soldier off of her feet and smashing her into the ground with a swift blow from his military hammer. When he finished, he looked back up, around, and motioned to one side of the battle line. She saw him there, well away from where he was supposed to be, scything through the soldiers with wild, almost insane abandon.
"Move the line!" Azula shouted, before urging her tired body to where the Tribesman was flowing through the soldiers like a river of razor-edged death. "Sokka! What are you doing? You're supposed to be watching my back!"
Sokka ignored her, his blue eyes almost as sharp as his sword. He gave her one glance, and in that glance, she did not see anything of the jolly, foolish polymath who had joined her on Gwynt. These eyes belonged to some mad predator. Something which killed, just to feel the blood on its face. It was so unexpected that she actually hesitated so long that one of the terrified soldiers almost managed to stab her in the face with his spear.
Growling at herself for being such an idiot, she smashed the spearhead away from her, and then levied the edge of her hand against the haft, snapping the weapon, before kicking at the shattered stump, driving it painfully into the soldier's groin. She moved to Sokka's back. "Get back in position, Sokka!"
"Don't tell me what to do, firebender," his voice was barely human, let alone the man she had come to know. She grabbed his shoulder, turning him toward her, and he answered that with a fist directly into Azula's nose. Stunned, she slowly picked herself off the ground, wiping the blood which was now flowing out of her nose and across her lips. It took her rather a while to get her bearings, but still she managed to deflect another attempt to kill her without paying it much attention. As she was getting to her balance back, she felt somebody grab her arm and haul her to her feet. Grey eyes appraised her briefly, before nodding.
"What the fuck is going on with Baihu?" Iñagoh shouted.
"Ked warned me about this, he's gone blood drunk," Azula said, wiping the blood one last time from her nose. Her glasses were broken, so she discarded them; she'd left a spare set in Grand Fire. She would either collect them when she returned, or never. And she also knew that she had to do something unfortunate, because she would never forgive herself if she hurt Ty Lee "Get the civilians through the gap. I'll go after Sokka."
"What gap?" Iñagoh asked.
Azula turned toward the edge of the conflict, still a not inconsiderable distance away. She took a deep breath, grasping ahold of that sum content of her pool of chi. Well, not the entire contents. She wasn't trying to rearrange the geography of Azul. But much of it. With a flick of her hands, a movement closer to earthbending than any firebending form she'd been taught, there was a shape which appeared, a void in the air like a sausage almost a mile long. It expanded outward, detonating with such force as to hurl away bodily everybody caught nearby. Those too close, did not survive the experience. She would worry about those unfortunates later. A good portion of the army which was already wavering broke into full flight under that provocation, opening up a corridor.
"That gap," Azula said, unsteady on her feet. It was taxing to firebend like that. Doubly so when she was already tired. But she had to keep Ty Lee's husband alive, because Azula was not going to see that woman cry again. "Don't just stand there, run! That hole isn't going to be there forever!"
Azula spat out a spray of dribbling blood from her face and set off after the hints of blue which was wading deeper into the melee. Not today, Sokka, she thought. You're coming out of this alive if it kills you.
"So what'cha doin' here in Azul?" Ty Lee asked enthusastically.
"Oh, not much," her sister said. She gave a glance toward the students which the airbender didn't notice, because she cleared her throat and did it more obviously. This time, Ty Lee grasped what her older sister was trying to say.
"Students, would you mind giving me and my little sister some time to catch up?" Ty Lee asked. One of the boys at the front drooped a bit at that.
"Ah, but I've been really tryin'. And I don't know if I can afford another lesson," the boy whined. Ty Lee shot a glance to Aan Jee, who shrugged.
"You know what, don't worry about that," Ty Lee forced a grin onto her face, which was unpleasant, because what she was really feeling was annoyed. She didn't like acting against what she felt. "How about we just call this one a freebie, okay?"
The children let out a bunch of hoorays and rushed forward to hug her legs. In that moment, the annoyance melted away, looking down at all of those happy children. She wondered if she really wanted children of her own. She'd need to talk it over with Sokka. Much as she knew she'd be a great mom, if he wasn't on board, it would ruin things between them. She didn't see that as likely. He'd be a great dad. Of course, Ty Lee was somewhat ignorant of his occasional anger issues, so her view was a touch biased. When the students began to wander away, Aan Jee let out a weary sigh and leaned onto Basu's paw. Basu retracted that paw, letting the eldest Baihu fall onto her rear. It was almost like Basu could read Ty Lee's mind.
"So, what brings you to Azul?" Aan Jee asked from the ground.
"What were you doing with those children?"
"What? Times have been tough what with this whole 'civil war' thing going on. But I tell you, if this is really a civil war, then I'm a Tribesman. Nobody invades Azul. Nobody with a brain, anyway."
"Yeah, turns out it isn't a civil war," Ty Lee agreed.
"I knew it," Aan Jee said singsong, as she got to her feet, striking the dust off of pink clothes. How out of date. Ty Lee had moved on to yellows years ago. "Look, I don't exactly work well in the... shall we say... more legal aspects of society. Never have. And as long as there was a shadow economy, well, it suited me just fine. But with all of these soldiers, nobody I worked with is willing to poke their heads up, for fear of having it smashed in by a club. It's been a very hungry season for me."
"So you make money lying to children?" Ty Lee was quite annoyed now, her arms tucked under her breasts and her foot tapping. Aan Jee let out a defeated sigh.
"It didn't start out that way. Just 'a couple of pointers' so that I could get a warm meal and a place to sleep where I wouldn't get rained on. Yeah, that's what I get for looking like you," she shook her head, braid waving. "But then things started to take on a life of their own, and before I knew it, I had money again, and people were seeking me out. Well, seeking you out, but it's the same thing in the end."
"It's not right to play on people's beliefs and string them along," Ty Lee stressed.
"It's not stringing them along if I don't actually promise them anything," Aan Jee countered. "Besides, it's put me in a position where I might be able to help you."
"What?"
"Yeah, since people thought I was you, they kept sending me stuff. You know, files and information, because they thought I'd send it to your husband. You know, the pretty one?"
"You have intelligence for Sokka?" Ty Lee asked, failing to recognize the joke.
"A bit. He seems like the sort who's always looking for it."
Aan Jee reached into her cleavage and withdrew the scrolls, handing them to Ty Lee. She made a face at them. "Oh, they're all sweaty," she muttered.
"Yeah, well, that does happen," Aan Jee admitted. "One time, I had to hide an entire calligraphy set. You wouldn't believe where I put it."
"And I really don't want to know," Ty Lee said, a note of alarm in her voice.
"Oh, don't be like that. You love my stories of misadventure," Aan Jee said with a nudge to her identical sister. "And I notice you still haven't answered my question. What's brought you to Azul? It couldn't have been me."
"You remember my friend Azula?"
"The crazy bitch in charge of the Blue Flame? How could I not?"
"Don't talk about her like that! She's on our side!" Ty Lee said, her tone hurt. Aan Jee sighed.
"Fine, I'll take your word for it. What about her?"
"She's getting Montoya Azul and the rest of his family out of the mountains before Long Feng finds them and crushes them like an egg," Ty Lee summed up their mission quite concisely. "Of course, that was yesterday, and I haven't heard from her. I'm starting to get a bit worried."
"Yeah, you were the type to worry," Aan Jee pointed out. "Look, from what I know of her, I doubt anything could get in her way for long," there was a moment of silence between identical sisters. The only difference between them was the color of their clothing. "So she's really not evil?"
"Nope."
"Wow. That's a shocking development," Aan Jee shrugged.
"Uh huh. She's in love, too."
"That Embiar boy she was running around with years ago?"
"Him? Oh, no, not him," Ty Lee said sadly. "No, he's... not the one. But she's better now. You'd like her. I bet you two could talk about all sorts of things!"
Aan Jee let out a laugh. "As much as I enjoy a thrill-filled and interesting life, I think I'm going to stay away from that quagmire. It might just be me, but it seems like calamity follows that woman around."
If Azula were a more superstitious woman, she might have started to believe, at some point, that calamity was following her around. The ground was quenched, unusual for this dry time of year in Azul, but only because of bloodshed. Still, she had been fighting since she was five years old, so she lost neither time nor sight of the Tribesman as he carved his way into the Blue Flame. Ignoring the pain in her nose and making the best of her compromised vision, she deftly dodged her way through the squads of soldiers, who were growing more sturdy, well trained, and eager as she moved away from her own force. It was a fools task, but when it came to her admittedly few friends, let it be said that Azula was something of a fool. Well, as long as nobody actually said it, because then she'd need to make an example.
Azula felt an odd tenderness as she lashed out with blasts of searing flame. Like when she vaporized the island near Pulse, there was a feeling like she had overtaxed herself. Not surprising, really. But still, now as then, she kept pressing forward. One soldier in particular, in his middle years and of strapping build, moved to intercept her. He was an Embiar, and considering that most people started to manifest their firebending in their teenage years, and that it took between ten and fifteen years to reach the plateau of one's power, he was about as threatening an opponent as most soldiers would be forced to face. Azula didn't even bat an eye at him.
He rushed forward, his fists slamming forward into a column of bright yellow fire. She gave it no more effort to deflect than a simple Agni Kai block, using her own fire to deflect it away. The glare the attack sent into her wounded eyes was actually far more devastating than the heat or impact, but she persevered. As he twisted to send out another column toward her, she lashed out with an even swifter attack, low toward his boots. He broke his stance and stumbled back so as to not have her cyan flames vaporize his feet. She continued to press, advancing on him as she did, until he tripped over a rock and landed on his back. She swiftly bolted to his side, driving her heel down in a brutal axe kick which landed directly between his navel and diaphragm. Right into the Pool of Chi. He let out an agonized groan and curled in on himself as though she had just braised his genitalia.
That distraction out of the way, she cast her gaze around. The armor of the people here was much more complete than the patchwork and inexpensive armors of the recruits. It was also of uniform color, a bright blue. That made it far harder for Azula to see the pale blue of Sokka's armor. "Agni damn it, Baihu, why did you have to go crazy now?" she demanded darkly.
She panned past him, then her mind caught up to her eyes, and she locked on again. It wasn't that she had to watch for pale blue against bright blue. She just had to look for shocking, scarlet red. With a growl which might have been a profanity in a language itself too blasphemous to put to paper, she moved after him again. Considering how spread out the groups were, out here, it wasn't nearly as difficult as it had been in the thick.
"Sokka, stop this at once!" Azula shouted. Sokka answered by twisting and hurling his boomerang at her. Her eyes went wide and she managed to hit the deck in time for it to miss her head. She got back to her feet, a scowl on her face. "If you don't stop this, I will have to st–"
She was cut off when something hit her in the back of the head. Shaking stars from her vision for the second time in five minutes, she spotted his boomerang laying on the ground nearby. And how the hell had that happened? It was another moment before her higher cognition kicked in, because that was when she remembered that boomerangs tended to circle back if thrown properly. A difficult and dangerous art to perfect, extremely effective if mastered. She let out another growled profanity, grabbing the boomerang and shoving it into her belt.
She forced herself to her feet once again. It was getting increasingly difficult to do so. She managed to keep her feet under her again, as she watched him cut down the last of the group he had waded into. Hunched like a beast, he swung his head, to and fro, looking for his next victims. As a brutal, slasher smile spread across his ordinarily harmless and goofy features, she ran forward once again, getting some momentum. He spotted her quickly enough, and his blade lashed out toward her. But while she was hardly as masterful as she was at firebending, she was no slouch with the blade herself. Pulling her long knife from its sheath in the small of her back, she deflected the cut away from her, and lashed forward with a brutal kick to his stomach. He took it with barely a flinch. "Don't make me put you down, Baihu! You're long overdue!"
"Like you even could," Sokka's voice was crazed, as were his eyes. He lashed forward again, and her own eyes went wide with alarm as she found herself furiously deflecting his bright blade with her own much lesser specimen. But it was enough to keep her from being cut to ribbons. That would have to be enough. Because he wasn't thinking. However effective he was, he wasn't being his usual, almost supernaturally effective self. He was operating off of muscle memory, no imagination. No consciousness.
She twisted the blade in her hand, switching her grip and locking the blades together, the two of them straining against each other. Sokka had reach, but he was no stronger than she was. And she had flexibility. Not even fully aware of the smirk which grew on her face, she twisted, letting his bloodied blade just nick along her cheek, before grabbing his forearm with her other hand. She pulled hard, and levied a kick directly into his shoulder blade, which emitted a horrible pop and the blade fell from his hand. His entire arm seemed to slump lower, as it dropped out of its socket.
"I'm not finished yet!" Sokka's scream chilled the blood.
But even if he wasn't, she was. She reached forward with one hand, cradling his brow, and let a pulse of electricity connect her thumb and pinky, with a brief detour through the Tribesman's skull. Not much. Just enough to make every muscle in the Tribesman's body lock up rigid as a board, and cause him to tip over onto the ground.
Azula glanced around. The others were giving the two of them a wide berth, but now that there was only one, they would doubtless converge quickly. She let out an exasperated sigh, and dragged the barely sensate Tribesman to something like a stand, his non-dislocated arm draped over her shoulder as she began to guide him toward the edge of the line.
"W-w-wha happ'n'd?" Sokka's voice was heavily slurred, and he didn't seem particularly with it.
"We're leaving," she answered. "And don't you ever claim to have the mental high-ground with me ever again."
"Di' I lose't 'gain?" Sokka mushed, his gait as unsteady as his speech.
"Don't make a habit of it," Azula ordered. She could see an uneven smile settle onto his face.
"Yes ma'am," he answered.
Han Hua leaned forward on the tower which had been built in quite a bit of haste here at the edge of the camp. It was all wood, quite unlike the metal fortifications that they would use given half a chance. This thing had just been erected in ten minutes so that he would have some place to look above the broken terrain and see what lay beyond. And he did not like what he saw.
"This is... inconceivable," he muttered.
The back edge of the army was only a few hundred yards away. Just out of arrowshot. But from above, Han Hua could see what lay beyond that back edge. Pressing outward like a Horror Beetle erupting from its parasitized host, the force of fifteen hundred cut through. The army which should, by any reckoning, be crushing them under weight of numbers alone, buckled, wavered, and finally broke. And out streamed the Gurkha, and with them, Azul. Somewhere in that mass which broke through and began to sprint toward the camp, was Montoya Azul. Somewhere, and he had no ability whatsoever to find him, or capture him.
"But why are they running toward the camp?" he asked nobody in particular. But then, his remaining eye widened as he spotted the first of the Gurkha slashing the remount lines for the Komodo Rhinos. More and more of them turned and raced back toward their afoot counterparts, sweeping them up into the saddle, until the beasts were under full load, whence they turned one final time, and broke toward the city for which the noble house took their name. He just shook his head, watching this all happen in minutes, as his grand plan fell apart.
He only had one word rolling through his mind as he watched.
"Inconceivable."
Admiral Chan was going to be insufferably smug.
"So what are you going to do now?" Ty Lee asked her older sister.
"To tell the truth, I really don't know. I had a lot of fun out here in Azul. But I'm beginning to think that it might just be time to move on. Like with Ember."
"You almost got your hands cut off. I think that would count as a sign," Ty Lee admitted. Aan Jee laughed briefly and dryly at that. She bit her lower lip for a moment, trying to figure out the best way to say it. Failing that, she just out and said it. "You could always go home?"
"Home?" Aan Jee scoffed. "Home is a four letter word to me, Sis."
"Well, yeah," Ty Lee agreed. Then she saw the slanted glance which Aan Jee was giving her. "Ooooooh. Right. 'Cause of what Zhu Di said? You can't take that to heart. She's always a bit sharp, with everybody."
"That isn't the reason and you know it," Aan Jee said, but not harshly.
"Well... you could always come to Grand Fire. Zuko would love to have you. They've got lots of space," she pointed out. And more quietly, she added. "And I'd know you were safe."
"That's the thing, Sis," Aan Jee said patiently. "I don't do safe. Never have. And I don't do still," she cast out her arms before her. "There's an entire world out there, just waiting for me to take a swing at it, and it's not going to wait forever. I need to feel the road under my feet. I always have. That was what you taught me. To never get complacent. To never be... satisfied."
"But is that a good thing?" Ty Lee asked. "Sometimes, isn't it nice to just have something, and be glad you have it, rather than angry that you don't have more?"
Aan Jee sighed, and nodded. "You know, you might be right. But that doesn't change what I want. Right now, I want to... go places. See things. I want to experience. I'm not ready for settled, and I'm not ready for safe," she admitted. She glanced up, staring into Ty Lee's eyes with a pair identical to them. "But I'm getting the feeling that you are. You want a family, don't you?"
"I haven't thought about that."
"Fei hua," she countered. "You've thought about it. You're thinking about it now."
"Maybe," she admitted. She gave her sister a hug. "Don't stay too far away, okay? Send letters. I want to hear about all the interesting things my sister did."
Aan Jee smiled at that, a smile which, not the overpowering and beaming grin which Ty Lee favored, still held a familiar warmth. "Alright. As a favor to you. After all, you can't keep going forever, can you?"
"Neither can you."
"Maybe, but I'll give it a hell of a shot," Aan Jee answered with a smirk. "Take care of your Tribesman. And don't let Zhu Di get all..."
"Zhu Di-ish?" Ty Lee offered.
"That's the best way of putting it, yeah," Aan Jee agreed. "I guess I'll see you again, some day."
"I hope it isn't long," Ty Lee said.
Without another word, and only a sedate smile, the airbender and the con-artist parted, and walked their separate ways. Ty Lee bounded up onto Basu's head, and gave the reins a flick. "Give'r, Basu," she said, her voice subdued. The great bison gave a hop and lifted into the air. She let out a pained sigh. "I wonder if I'll ever see her again."
It was a testament to how dangerous lightning was to the human brain that when Azula finally kicked, stabbed, and blasted her way out of the back of the Blue Flame line, Sokka was still barely able to walk, so she had to support him to get any amount of speed out of the Tribesman. She, too, wasn't moving at her best speed, because the intervening period had seen a few attacks get very close to killing her. There were more near-misses by arrows and slashes across her borrowed red and purple armor than she cared to think about.
With a face painted the national color quite accidentally, she staggered to a familiar face, one she really hoped would have made it further. "Iñagoh, why aren't you at the defile?" her voice rang in her ears. Unconscious firebending could do many things, but protecting her hearing was not one of them. The grandson of the Coordinator looked much better for wear than many of the Gurkha around him, and he let out a sigh.
"We've run out of time. The cavalry is five minutes out at the most," Iñagoh said. He shouted to one of his compatriots. "We're going to have to hold them here."
"It'll be a slaughter and you know it."
"Then you'd better ride fast and ride hard," he said. A loud grunt almost went unheard by Azula's damaged hearing, so when a partially snapped-off horn intruded into her vision, she jumped a bit. She would rightly blame her temporary deafness for that reaction; it wasn't easy to get Komodo Rhinos to surprise one. "Don't make me tell you twice, Princess. You fought your fight. Now let me fight mine."
Azula nodded, her face expressionless. "You do credit to your organization," she said.
"And you do credit to your name," Iñagoh answered. Azula shoved Sokka up into the saddle, and found he actually assumed the proper form without a thought, obvious from the bleary look in his eye. Azula got up in front of him, and snapped the reins. "Don't stop until you taste the sea air!"
"'Zula?" Sokka asked, his voice less slurred, but much more slow and uneven of tone.
"What?"
"When did I get on a Rhino?"
"Just now," Azula said. Truth be told, it was remarkably hard to stay upright. Between her bloodloss and fatigue, and his electroconvulsive reset, they were the riding wounded. The ground sped past them, a streak to her wounded eyes and his sputtering percept. It was almost a blur, time punctuated solely by pain when the movement of the beast jostled her wounds, which was often. But despite her notable difficulties, she kept her eyes, for such worth as they were, scanning constantly. The pain gave her focus. It kept her wary.
Which was why the first boulder that flew at her head didn't smash it into pulp. She sawed on the reins, bringing the beast up short, but not short enough. The block, roughly the size of a man's torso clipped the beast's head, stunning it. It stumbled, and Azula got a bead on who was attacking. It was an earthbender, who only had one eye, and something strapped to his back. Azula didn't have time for this, nor the stamina remaining for something flashy. So she opted for the simplest, most efficient means of spreading death she had at her disposal. She snapped her hand toward the man, and a crackle of lightning answered her. There was a moment of building-up, and then a thunderclap as that lightning bridged the distance.
But the earthbender did something Azula really didn't expect. He tore the thing from his back and slammed it into the ground directly before him. The lightning, which had been searing toward his chest, slammed into that pole right near its head. The cloth covering it spontaneously burst into flames, showing a copper rod, clad in rubber where he grasped it. The lightning crackled at its top, and fingers of it reached out along its foot. He'd grounded out her attack. The instant of shock she displayed was too much, because in that scant moment, he lashed forward again, another assault, which smashed into the two of them. She took the worst of it, to a peal of snapping ribs and horrible agony. It was a different kind of pain than she had experience with. Sudden, shocking, and blunt. When her vision cleared, somewhat, she was lying on the ground, on her back, and the beast had staggered a short distance. But Sokka, stunned as he was, reached to her back, and pulled the boomerang from her belt. With a throw so awkward even Azula could have emulated it, he set it to the air. It did not cut a graceful circle, cutting delicately on the breeze. No, it was little better than a hurled rock. But it struck the earthbender, smashing him between the eyes and sending him reeling away.
"W'r not makin' the boats," Sokka muttered, pawing at his shirt. He pulled something from a pocket, and began to blow on it. He stumbled over to one knee, and looked up. Azula looked up, against the rising sun, and saw what he saw.
It was large.
It was flying.
It was white.
It landed with a horrendous thud, halfway between the Gurkha's last stand, and the outskirts of the city of Azul. The airbender on its brow bounded off, and seemed for a moment paralyzed with the choice of being concerned for Sokka, and being concerned for Azula. Ty Lee managed to break that paralysis, by opting to hug them both at once, which drew an anguished yelp of pain from Azula.
"Help her. Ribs're broke," Sokka said, unsteadily getting to his feet. He gave a glance toward the earthbender, who was himself beginning to rise, but probably realized as Azula did, that for the time being, his boomerang wasn't coming back.
"I'm so sorry I'm so sorry I'm so sorry," Ty Lee chanted as she carefully hoisted Azula onto the bison's back. Sokka carefully helped her lay out on the bison, and Azula couldn't restrain a moan of pain when the beast took to the sky. "Sokka, where's Ked? We need to get her to Ked!"
"Ocean," Azula wheezed. "On a boat. Somewhere."
Sokka just looked like he couldn't believe what happened. And bearing in mind what happened, it wasn't that surprising.
"What happened?" Ty Lee asked, looking between her husband and her friend.
Azula and Sokka shared a glance. That bleary look was slowly dissolving away from his expression, as the after effect of her hard-reset of his cognition slowly faded. "We won. More or less," Sokka said slowly.
Han Hua held a bandage to his bleeding forehead. There wasn't much point to it, since the blood wouldn't get into his good eye, but still, it was aggravating. He shot a glare at his counterpart, who had the double annoyance of losing a portion of his fleet, captured by the Azuli on their way out into the ocean.
"Not one word," Han said darkly. Admiral Chan either wisely obeyed his directive, or else simply had nothing more to say.
This was going to hurt him and his goals, somewhat. He would have to take active steps to remedy this. Personal steps. But he knew he had it in him. But he sighed, as he reached into his coat and extracted the letter-carrier that he had prepared. With only a modicum of care, he threw the whole thing, contents still inside, onto the flames of a nearby brazier. That declaration of victory had proven to be somewhat premature. Han Hua would not make that mistake again.
"So. The Family Azul is out of our hands. Our navy is out of position to intercept them. In three days, they'll be safe in Grand Fire. What now?"
Han Hua smirked. "Now, we move on to Plan E."
Admiral Chan scowled.
"Plan E?"
"Draw them out of their fortified positions. And the best way to do that, is to hit the Fire Lord where he is weakest. In his heart. He is the kind of man who bleeds when others are hurt. And as it will hurt him most to target his people, we make him suffer, by making Azul suffer." Han Hua said. "Plan E. Exterminate."
"Exterminate?" the admiral asked. Han Hua smiled, then. It was not a pleasant smile.
"Exterminate."
Yeah, Han Hua isn't nearly as clever as he thinks he is. Just like the guy I based him off of.
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