Chapter 25: Plausible Deniability For Everyone

"Well," the Avatar said, "thanks for trying."

If they weren't both pinned against the door by innumerable arrows in their clothes, Zuko might have killed him. It might take a long time to find the new Avatar, but at least a baby wouldn't talk.

"I don't think you need to worry about Katara and Sokka," the monk kept rambling. "I mean, you do, but not about them being here, because unless you saw them get captured then I'm pretty sure they're still back at the—at the place. That I left them. Because they were really sick and not going anywhere and Sokka thought he was an earthbender but his stance was terrible—"

"But he was supposed to meet me here. To break you out."

"Did he… say that?"

The Blue Spirit didn't talk, so Zuko didn't have to answer. And he definitely didn't blush. Wearing a mask was like being blush-proof, and no one could prove otherwise.

At least he had his answer: What kind of person glued arrows to a lemur? One running a really high fever.

Colonel Shinu was not quite sure how long this speech would take. More concerning was that Zhao didn't seem to know, either. He just kept… talking.

It therefore came with great relief when one of his Yuyan dared to walk across the stage and bow to them. Zhao's words kept going, but his eyes—and everyone else's—were tracking Squad Leader Ritusko. It was the most exciting thing to happen in the past hour.

Something you should see, she signaled. Nominally to Admiral Zhao, her acting commander. But since the Navy man didn't even know enough of the archers he'd borrowed to understand their most basic signs, Shinu was left to translate.

"She says there's—"

Zhao broke off somewhere between summer and end of the war. "I am in the middle of a speech, Colonel. Unless the Avatar has escaped and is now running loose in the fortress, I don't want to hear it."

...Not running loose, Ritsuko said, with the pointed half-second pause of completely still hands to indicate an ellipsis. It wasn't a formal part of the Yuyan sign language, but generations of highly trained archers with too much down-time between missions worthy of them had resulted in… quite a few hand signs that were not strictly necessary to the running of their units. Some of which they tried very hard not to use where their current commander could see.

"Well?" Zhao snapped.

"No, Sir—"

"Then take care of it, Colonel. And make sure your archers know that attendance at this speech is mandatory. Why is it that I count fewer of them now than there were when I started?"

Shinu was more impressed that they'd been sneaking out without Zhao catching them at it, even though the man hadn't taken his eyes off the crowd. He did not share this thought; just bowed, and followed Ritsuko off the stage.

"Whatever it is, Colonel," Zhao yelled after them, "See that it doesn't interrupt my speech."

Perish the thought, one of the few remaining Yuyan in attendance subtly signed.

Shut up, Colonel Shinu's watching, his squad mate replied.

Colonel Shinu, like all good Yuyan commanders, pretended not to understand.

Moments later, he stood in a hallway. Four guards where sprawled on the floor. (Can't see any wounds, his mind noted, with battlefield calm. Which was all he could do, when they were too far away to ascertain if they were breathing.) Ritsuko's squad mates had not approached them: they stood with arrows readied as far back as the corridor permitted.

The Avatar was pinned to a door by his clothes. No blood, and the child didn't seem to be in physical distress. Good shooting.

A flying lemur was pinned to the same door by its fur and a scattering of arrows that had been ricocheted off the walls at just the right angles to form a cross-brace around its neck. Also no blood, despite the outraged screeching. Excellent shooting.

The third target was the size and shape of a twelve-year-old, wearing dark clothes and a common theatre mask. There were very few twelve-year-olds motivated enough to chase the Avatar into one of the greatest fortresses in the colonies. Colonel Shinu took the advice of his physician: he pinched the bridge of his nose. Hard. It did not stop his sudden headache.

It also did not stop the Banished Prince from being pinned to his wall, one unmasking away from ruining all possibility of plausible deniability.

"...Take them to my office. Don't take off the mask."

Super Endangered too? Ritsuko asked, lacking a distinctive signal for 'flying lemur-bat,' or assuming he wouldn't know it. To be fair, he didn't. It had never come up.

"Sure," Shinu said, conveying his enthusiasm. "Why not." He would rather be listening to Zhao's speech than dealing with this.

...Almost.

Zuko got a few elbows into a few ribcages and one solid stomp-on-a-foot as the archers unpinned him from the wall. They didn't do this until after they had a pair of cuffs ready for him. Real steel cuffs, not stupid Kyoshi Island rope, and they weren't even stupid enough to leave his hands in front where they could maybe be useful. They did the same to the Avatar, except there were less elbows and more token efforts to blow them over using his breath. The lemur got in a few angry snaps at fingers and actually got free before they could shove it into a sack, but instead of doing something useful like providing a distraction or escaping to find help all it did was roost on the top of Zuko's head like he was some kind of especially small tree. It chitterred angrily. The archers exchanged silent looks, and left it there.

Once they were secure (or securely roosting), the Colonel knelt to checked the pulses of the guards. They still hadn't woken up, and Zuko wasn't sure if that was normal or a Bad Sign, and he would have felt a lot better if they were groaning and moving instead of… not.

"...Are they okay?" he asked.

"They're alive." The Colonel stood, tucking Zuko's dao swords under one arm."I didn't think spirits spoke."

Zuko shut his mouth. And jabbed his elbow into the nearest Yuyan, on principle.

Toriyama was signing some very impolite language that Ritsuko hadn't even known he knew. She didn't know some of those. Had he been hanging out with Tanuki Squad again?

He was very pointedly not using his foul-mouthed hands to rub at his bruised ribcage. Yuyan were impassive elites who didn't feel pain; everyone knew that.

...Ritsuko's foot hurt. She didn't know if spirits could really touch people, but she was almost positive that they didn't throw mini-tantrums and stomp on their captor's feet. Flesh-and-blood twelve year olds, on the other hand…

The Avatar was one thing. He might look like a kid, might even act like one, but she knew her spirit tales. Give him a few years to train or get him angry enough, and the child facade would crumple as the multi-millenia World Spirit came out to play. And there was no way what lived under the airbender's skin would approve of what her country was doing. The Fire Nation stood for human progress, not the artificial stagnation of separate nations under the forced arbitration of an eternal Avatar.

The Yuyan were elites. The best of the best. Promising archers were pulled from the common ranks in the first weeks after enlistment, were put through years of specialized training, were shipped directly to Pohuai with their small squads when they were ready to join the main units. There were never many of them; less than a hundred and twenty at the moment, most of them on assignment securing the supply lines between the coast and Ba Sing Se. Earthbending terrorists that endangered caravans were best dealt with from a safe distance. A mile back and with a favorable wind, preferably.

The Yuyan were expensive to train, expensive to deploy, expensive or impossible to replace—only three people had made the cut from Ritsuko's training year, and she was looking at the other two. They weren't used in trivial missions. They weren't put on the frontlines with the kind of rabble who burned villages or employed other unsavory tactics. Those things happened, it was war, but the Yuyan were… detached from that. Too valuable for that.

Which was to say: before this morning, Ritsuko had never pointed an arrow at a child. Though the Avatar wasn't a child, not really. The mission briefing had been very clear about that, but their unit leader had still made a point of keeping their newest recruits stationed back at base, and looked the other way when Usagi Squad had all come down with a sudden case of the Ethical Flu and sat out the mission. All he'd asked was that they protest to him or Colonel Shinu, not to Admiral Zhao. Admiral Zhao was commanding them, but he wasn't a Yuyan commander. The Navy sunk entire ships and called it a victory; in the Yuyan, even scratching your target without a direct order to do so could get you ragged on for weeks in the barracks. Sloppy shooting was what regular archers were for; they were better than that.

The masked kid had stomped on her foot while she'd put on his cuffs, and now her foot hurt. Which was easier to think about than how his wrists had been shaking under her hands. She appreciated the Colonel ordering them to leave the mask on, it made it easier to pretend, but she was pretty sure real spirits didn't shake.

She grabbed his shoulder and marched him down the hall, and tried to ignore the twist in her gut that said you're better than this. And seriously, what kind of twelve-year-old snuck into Pohuai?

…Probably the same kind who won a city in a single fight with no serious injuries on either side. Which was an very Yuyan way of handling a situation, really.

She would really appreciate it if the prince of her nation and future Fire Lord would stop digging his boney elbow into her ribs.

Better you than me, Fujita said, dropping back a pace as she wrangled the prince and Toriyama handled the Avatar. By a quirk of Yuyan semantics, this was the same hand sign as I'll take rear guard.

Colonel Shinu was up for promotion this year. He looked across his desk at the reason he wouldn't get it.

Aforementioned reason still had a lemur on his head. The creature caught Shinu's gaze and hunkered down with hackles raised, like the boy's head had somehow become its exclusive territory. Shinu let out a slow sigh.

The moment he took off the Blue Spirit's mask, the boy would be conclusively identified as Prince Zuko. As soon as he knew he had Prince Zuko, he would be legally obligated to arrest him, because unlike certain of his contemporaries—Colonel Akio of the 41st, he was looking at you—Shinu worked in a major communications relay point, so any attempt to pretend he didn't know of the prince's banishment terms would lead to imprisonment, not a cosy new command at the nation's newest colony. And once he arrested the prince, his political career would be over. Zuko was banished, but popular. With courtiers and the rank-and-file alike. His hunt for the Avatar was a literal spirit tale in progress, and one he was doing astoundingly well on. If Shinu was the reason he was locked away mid-quest, he'd be reviled nationwide.

Which made him wonder why Zhao was so keen to interfere with the boy's progress. Frankly, there was only one person who could have ordered him to do so; who could have offered him terms that would make becoming a national villain still sound sweet.

Shinu couldn't arrest the boy, or the people would hate him. Couldn't let him go, or the Fire Lord would be most displeased. Couldn't unmask him, or he'd have to choose. Couldn't leave the mask on, because there was only so long he could stall. Surely the prince couldn't be alone, he must have backup somewhere that could rescue him—but if he had responsible adults looking out for his welfare, he wouldn't be in Shinu's office right now. He would, in fact, be back in the Fire Nation. Presumably that was where he'd left the rest of this face.

The lemur started licking at its back. The prince tried to elbow-stab Ritsuko again. The Avatar had been babbling something about world peace and the balance of the nations and how one person could make all the difference if he could maybe make the right choice, please, but Shinu's promotion wasn't hinged on whatever tripe that was.

There was only one way out of this: he had to frame Zhao to take the fall before Zhao could do the same to him. The prince had to escape, and it had to be because of the new Admiral's incompetence.

So nice of Zhao to pull all those guards to watch his speech. His three Yuyan surely stood no chance against the Avatar, not when Zhao had deemed an entire unit necessary for taking the boy down.

Shinu lifted his hand off his desk, and started to sign.

Ritsuko was trying very hard not to listen to the Avatar. Firstly because the kid sounded more like a kid with every word out of his mouth, and secondly because one person could make all the difference was exactly the problem she was facing right now, and she didn't need her internal thoughts given external commentary.

It took her longer than it should have to catch the sign. She didn't even see it until Toriyama twitched. It was an extremely guilty twitch, that came dangerously close to giving him a facial expression.

Where is Colonel Shinu, Colonel Shinu was saying. Either that or he had the world's worst itch over his eye, and felt that making intense eye contact with the three of them would somehow help it.

...No, not 'Colonel Shinu'. That was the sign for their acting commander, which was usually Colonel Shinu but was currently… Admiral Zhao.

Ritsuko hesitantly moved her hand in a blah-blah-blah motion at her side, a sign which needed no further interpretation. And while it wasn't the most subtle of their signals, he was looking for it, which… had a whole wealth of implications for what constituted a private conversation between Yuyan and not their commanders that Ritsuko really didn't want to deal with right now. Especially when he clearly understood that Where is Colonel Shinu was the accepted opening to any pitch for on-base shenanigans.

Communication established, the Colonel kept signing. He also opened his mouth and started parroting some of Zhao's more villainous lines about you're my prisoner and never escaping and with your capture this war ends for their two spectators, but it was pretty obvious which conversation he was actually putting effort into, to anyone who spoke both.

He wants us to WHAT? Toriyama signed, forgetting that their private signs weren't so private.

Your choice, Shinu reiterated. Can't order you.

"Now, if you'll excuse me," he said, sneering coldly at the airbender. "I believe Admiral Zhao would like the honors of unmasking your savior. I doubt he'll have as long a life as you, Avatar."

The Colonel smirked (a bit too theatrically, in Ritsuko's opinion), and left.

Left them with the prisoners.

Left them, literally, with the prisoner's lives in their hands.

He wants us to WHAT? Toriyama repeated.

He's setting us up for the fall, Fujita signed, angrily enough that the Avatar cut off his stream of desperate-hopeful words and stared at the archer's hands.

"Do you guys have some kind of secret language?"

"Of course they do," the prince said. "They're the Yuyan archers. They're the best and they go on the most awesome missions so of course they have a secret language. And they never talk, like the Blue Spirit, so shut up."

"Wait. That means you shouldn't talk, not me—"

The prince stomped on the Avatar's foot.

This was not helping Ritsuko make good life choices.

...Super endangered, she signed, with great trepidation. Because if that term didn't apply to their nation's banished prince, she didn't know what did.

We'll be executed, Fujita countered.

Only if we're caught.

Some of those sentences had taken more than one sign. Plausible deniability didn't.

The Yuyan were arguing. It had started out really subtle, they might have even been doing it while their commander was still in the room, but Zuko hadn't noticed it then. It was really hard not to notice it now. Probably they hid a lot of their signals from their commanders because that would be extra awesome and definitely something he would do if he was one of them. A secret language in a secret language.

They were arguing and they were distracted, and his swords were on the commander's desk, and there were windows on the wall, and this was only the second story so he'd definitely jumped from higher before and the Avatar was an airbender he'd be fine. If they could just get their hands free, they could do this.

...These were kind of adult-sized cuffs, weren't they?

How do we plausible-deniability them out of steel cuffs? Toriyama had to get very creative with his signs, but he made it work. He'd definitely been spending time with Tanuki Squad; the veterans had the best curses and the best circumlocution.

He's working on it, just keep—DON'T LOOK. That last sign actually translated to PLATYPUS BEAR and caused Toriyama to look around in some confusion, but she had to do something to stop him from staring directly at the kid wiggling out of his cuffs. Plausible deniability started with not letting the prisoners know that they were letting them escape. Ritsuko drew the line at trusting a pair of twelve year olds—one of them extremely chatty—to know that they'd been helped and not blab it to all their friends, and probably the Dragon of the West too.

We, Fujita continued to enunciate, like maybe they just weren't reading his signs right, will be. Executed.

She played the only card she had, when it came to Fujita: Tricky targeting.

No it's not. We already caught them. Easy.

Catching them was easy, she agreed. Not catching them while looking like we're catching them? Hard.

He looked… thoughtful.

The prince elbowed the Avatar. "Oww, Zu—" Another elbow cut off that particularly incriminating name. "Oww! What are—oh."

His wrists were even scrawnier than the prince's.

All three Yuyan returned to talking very animatedly, mostly about nothing at all. This gave them an excellent excuse to not stare at the prisoners' hands.

Colonel Shinu strode over the stage. "Admiral Zhao—"

"Is the Avatar running loose?" the man hissed.

"No, Sir, but—"

"Then wait until I am done, Colonel Shinu."

Well, Shinu had tried. No one could say he hadn't. Especially not this entire fortress full of witnesses, only a small portion of whom were in any way loyal to Zhao.

The Colonel adopted a perfect at-attention stance, and made sure to open his mouth every time it even looked like Zhao might be wrapping things up.

Zhao smirked, and talked over him every time. Shinu did not smirk, and let him.

It was working, it was working and the archers hadn't noticed yet, they were still hand-talking to each other like they were having a really big fight about something important. Zuko had wiggled one hand completely out of the cuffs which was all he needed (oww, he hadn't needed that skin anyway, oww), and a quick glance sideways told him that Aang had too, which meant…

Which meant they were escaping. Right now. He could tell by how much of Zhao speech he couldn't hear that these windows faced the back of the fortress, which was perfect. For some reason most people had an aversion to jumping out of windows and an even bigger aversion to wadding through sewers, so if they could just get away before these archers sounded an alarm they stood a chance of getting out of sight before they were caught.

Zuko didn't really know how to signal Aang. So. He just met his eyes, and then bolted.

A jump and he was sliding across the desk, grabbing his swords in hand. The Avatar actually could take a hint, he was already at the window and he'd knocked the archers down behind them. Breaking the window would be flashy, but glass was awful and stabby, so Zuko took the extra second just to open it. Up on the ledge and jump and get ready to land—

Tanuki Squad had been the first to duck the speech, which put them in the coveted furthest from the yapping commander position at the complete opposite side of the fortress. It was a little dark back here, so no one was getting chatty. Didn't need to be chatty to pass around a bottle of fire-whiskey. A window creaked open above them. The five veterans looked up.

A bat-winged child spirit came hurtling down at them.

In an instant they were steady on their feet—veterans did not get wobbly, even if they had been passing that bottle for an hour—with arrows drawn. It was unanimous: shoot the thing. A sudden airblast deflected their first round in a very familiar way, as the Avatar landed next to his accomplice. Squad Leader Kuzon of the Yuyan was the first to get another arrow nocked, the first to shot—

—The first to have his own arrow deflected by another arrow. One with very new, still-smelled-like-glue, distinctively Yuyan fletching. He raised his eyes, and saw Hiyokezaru Squad staring down at them.

Super endangered, Squad Leader Ritsuko signed, backlit by the light from the Colonel's office.

Which was the point were the bat-winged child spirit resolved itself into a twelve-year-old with a flying lemur clinging to his head.

...What kind of twelve-year-old broke into the Pohuai Stronghold?

His squad paused, because the obvious answer to that involved possible execution for harming a prince of the blood. A banished prince, sure, and possibly one who'd just sprained his own ankle, but also the hero of New Ozai.

"Oww," the hero of New Ozai said.

The Avatar waved. "Hi. Uh… Bye?"

He grabbed the prince's arm, and ran. There was a distinct poof of air as he did so. With the wind currents he was creating, and the lemur flapping, and the prince stumble-running behind him..

...It was really interesting targeting. Had Kuzon of the Yuyan been anything less than the best, he might have smiled.

"Not that way!" the prince shouted.

"It's either this or the archers!"

"Pick the archers! Pick the—"

Ritsuko's Squad came leaping out of the window. The Avatar did not pick the archers.

"Admiral, I really must insist—" Colonel Shinu said, instead of anything remotely informative.

"—a new day in our nation's history," Zhao continued. Loudly. "A day that shall be remembered—"

Which was exactly the point where the Avatar ran past in his own personal tornado, a masked prince and a screeching lemur caught in his backdraft. Every non-essential soldier in Pohuai turned their head to watch them pass.

"Admiral Zhao," Colonel Shinu had the great pleasure of saying, "The Avatar is running loose."

Running loose with Prince Zuko, the scheming colonel did not say. Zhao shot the man a single, scathing look. A we'll talk about this later, when you're at my mercy look. For now…

Plausible deniability was the Banished Prince wearing a mask. He'd clearly ordered the boy to stay in the harbor, hadn't he? How could he have possibly known that the Blue Spirit was actually Zuko? Really, what kind of twelve year old breaks into Pohuai?

Zhao smirked. "Kill the intruder, and capture the Avatar!"

Zuko had his swords (and a bad ankle and skinned hand and a shoulder that still remembered a storm and a catch he hadn't been strong enough to make). The Avatar very quickly had a staff, once he'd broken the useful part off some soldier's spear. The lemur had… very strong flap-in-their-faces instincts.

And then the arrows started raining down. It was like the Yuyan were crawling out of a dozen clever hiding places all around the fortress where they'd just been waiting to ambush them—

The Yuyan came peeking out of a dozen speech-dodging hiding spots. There was no time for hand signals, and no need; Zhao had ample lungs, and his orders required no interpretation.

Until Tanuki Squad and Hiyokezaru Squad came racing around the corner, and… things got strange.

Suddenly the Blue Spirit's swords were deflecting arrows, and the Avatar's twirling staff was an arrow-ridden but highly effective shield, and… and that was really tricky shooting. To hit a narrow moving target in the middle of a localized windstorm, while shooting around the rest of the guards, and—and had Kuzon of the Yuyan just lined up a shot through the Avatar's dangling handcuff?

Even Usagi Squad stopped their subtle skulk back to the barracks, and reconsidered their Ethical Flu relapse. Following Zhao's orders to kill and/or maim children was a far, far easier shot than what those two squads were pulling off. And when the senior most members of the Yuyan and the three who'd most recently talked to the Colonel started acting strange, the rest of the unit paid attention.

And, a heartbeat later, they started having fun.

It was widely agreed by every non-archer on the field that that was when things became terrifying.

Zuko was—oh crap—deflecting—too close too close—arrows—it's okay he didn't like that corner of his sleeve anyway—with his swords.

How was he deflecting arrows with his swords, that wasn't a thing people did outside of plays, Master Piandao had always told him if you ever try that for real I will deny ever having you as a student, so how—?

Oh yeah. Because there were so many of them. So many that the regular soldiers were keeping their distance to avoid impalement, so many that he literally couldn't miss hitting at least a few.

...So why were the arrows missing them?

"Colonel Shinu," Zhao said, past gritted teeth. "Your archers are missing."

"Your archers, Admiral," the Colonel replied. "Perhaps it's a deficit in leadership?"

Shinu watched the spectacle of sheer anti-marksmanship and reflected that, perhaps, he did need to send his Yuyan out on more missions. The level of enthusiasm they brought to creatively not shooting someone was… mildly alarming.

Especially when they started splitting each other's arrows. The ones embedded in the Avatar's rapidly spinning staff.

Ten points, he caught one of them signing.

"Aang," Zuko hissed, "back up towards the gate."

"I can't! We're barely holding them off!"

"I'll, ah… cover for you?" Zuko offered. And stepped forward. And twirled his sword in utterly meaningless patterns but still deflected all the arrows. This was a lot easier to do now that he knew they were aiming for his swords.

...Were the Yuyan secret Avatar supporters?

"Kill him, you idiots!" Zhao shouted again. "I'll have you all up on mutiny charges!"

Nevermind, they probably just didn't like him. Zuko spun his swords in great sympathy, and kept backing towards the first gate.

He was absolutely not expecting the ladder-hopping stunts that followed, but the archers seemed to enjoy it. And with the regular soldiers still staying very far away from the target-practice, it was… not actually that hard to get out of the gates. Apparently having a whole unit of Yuyan on your side made life a lot easier. He would definitely remember this lesson when he was Fire Lord.

"I can't help but feel," Colonel Shinu said, making no effort to lower his voice, "that this could have been prevented if my guards had been allowed to remain at their posts. How will you explain the Avatar's loss to the Fire Lord?"

Zhao snatched a bow from the nearest Yuyan, and an arrow off the back of another, and marched to the center of the final gate. He was no Yuyan, but on this particular evening, that made him the best shot in Pohuai.

Zuko looked back in time to get a concussion. This was better than the alternative, but probably still not great for his health. He'd been getting hit on the head a lot since finding the Avatar.

This definitely explained what happened next. No other reason.

AN: Let's be honest guys and gals, the show!Yuyan totally could have taken Zuko and Aang down if they'd been trying. So where the heck where they for most of that fight?

Hiding from speeches. Guaranteed.

Replies to guests:

Lila, ch 24: That was the most wonderful incoherent-coherent train wreck car crash with an airplane wreck on top I have ever read. Will you be my spirit animal? Also, I am unclear on the degree to which you love this story. Totally unclear. Please send moar reviews. Also also I would like to state for the formal record that I am definitely not attempting to kill you via laughter, that is totally not my plan, even though it would be the perfect crime and the police would never be able to get it to stick in a court of law. But I am definitely not trying that even though it would be the best scout badge ever, the I Made A Person's Ribcage Implode From Across the Internet badge. Momo may or may not be trying to kill you, I'm not sure what chewing off the head of a squishy-juicy bug while looking in your general direction means. And now he's offering the other half to you, it's kind of leaky. I think that means you're now friends?

Unnamed, ch 24: Momo is for realz the Team Avatar MVP. True hero of the tale. All these other fools just be posin'.

Love the story, ch 24: Glad you're enjoying it! Sometimes I fear I'm having too much fun with the POVs, but then people like you come along and validate my life choices. ;) (Though now I'm internally cringing and trying to hide the swears in my other story under an internet carpet. Little Zuko is definitely a no-swears kind of tale, though!) Great suggestion for Aang! Gonna have to think on what ghosties will work best in the upcoming arcs...

Mimori Dinko, ch 24: Ehehe, glad you gave it a chance! It's hard to write a description for this story that doesn't make it sound like a weirdo crack fic, instead of an awwwww. ;)