A/N: After this it's just the Epilogue left. Wow, that went kind of fast, huh?
Chapter Twenty-Four
General Iroh woke up gasping for air.
The reaction caused him to suck in the thick haze of smoke filling his room, which led to a violent fit of coughing. However, Iroh quickly ascertained that the smoke wasn't his biggest concern. His room was on fire! Choking fitfully, he scrambled from beneath the covers and leapt to his feet. His first instinctive reaction was to do something to keep the flames at bay. After taking several deep, cleansing breaths, he pushed and pulled his arms back and forth from his chest in an effort to bank the fires. He lessened the intensity, but he did not put them out altogether.
It seemed a new wave of flames would engulf the walls as soon as he'd beat them away. Cause for further alarm was the great pillows of black smoke that continued to seep from the crack beneath his door. The fire, he realized with growing alarm, wasn't contained to his bedchamber at all but was very obviously located outside of it. Acting quickly, Iroh scooped up a dry piece of cloth and dipped it in the bowl of wash water beside his bed. When it was saturated to his satisfaction, he covered his mouth and threw himself through his door and out into the blazing corridor.
The first thing he noticed was the billowing heat coming off the licking flames not ten feet from where he stood. Consequently, he started in the opposite direction, winding his way in and out of the superheated hallways while simultaneously searching for someone who might have an idea of what had happened and, most importantly, where his nephew was.
However, when he happened upon one of the royal guards moving swiftly through the halls, Iroh barely had a chance to question the man before the firebender was attacking him. With a sigh, Iroh immobilized the man with a chop to the base of his skull, only to groan aloud when he realized there was more where he'd come from.
"And all I'd wanted was a nice nap," Iroh mumbled to himself. He assumed his fighting stance as the mass of firebenders blocked his path. Some of them fell back a step when they realized they were facing down the "Dragon of the West." The corner of Iroh's mouth tilted in a cocky smile. "You want me?" he challenged. "Come and get me."
"No, General Iroh," Komo corrected from behind as he and a group of loyal guardsmen brought up Iroh's rear. "I think you mean come and get us."
Sokka's group met with a series of stops and starts, slowed as much by the fire as their own natural instinct to help others. Meanwhile, Sokka never stopped searching for Katara and asking anyone and everyone if they had seen her. He shouted her name, searching for her face in the wall of fire. As time went on, however, the search began to look increasingly dim.
They were surrounded by oppressive heat, bathed in a miasma of smoke and sweat. The air was incredibly thin. It burned their eyes, their throats, their lungs. Charred ceiling beams and great posts of wood were already beginning to crack and crash to the burning surface.
As they winded their way down the labyrinth-like corridors of the palace towards the Great Hall where the grand staircase to the upper level was located, more than once they had been forced to retreat and try an alternative route due to the raging fires. Visibility was practically zero. Toph's attempts to earthbend them through the second floor had been continually thwarted by the consuming flames, falling debris and coughing, confused servants in need of assistance.
"Tell me again why we sent away our only means of controlling these fires?" Mai coughed irritably.
"Aang had to do his thing and now we have to do ours," Sokka choked.
Mai fanned away the thick clouds of black smoke. "Does that include getting baked to a crisp?" she complained. "Because, if so, I'm not feeling it."
"I hate to agree but…I don't know how much longer the Palace is going to hold, Sokka," Suki sputtered around a fit of coughing. "The smoke is so thick I can hardly see, let alone think. We might need to cut out losses before this whole thing comes down on our heads."
"I'm not leaving without my sister," Sokka insisted stubbornly. "But if you girls want to get out of here, I'll understand."
Toph punched him lightly in the arm. "We're not leaving you," she told him. "Even if it does feel like we're surrounded by a wall of fire and cooking in our own skin while this place falls down around our ears, you're stuck with us."
"Yeah, Sokka," Suki agreed gently. "I don't know how you could have thought anything else."
"Well, I've got nothing better to do…" Mai drawled in a bored tone, but the small smile she gave Sokka gave away her true motivation for staying. She wanted to help. They all knew she never had any intention of going anywhere.
"So what's next?" Toph wondered. "How exactly are we supposed to fight a sea of fire?"
"I was just wondering that same thing…" Mai murmured with a grim look around at their burning surroundings. The fire leapt and crackled, incinerating beams and gradually crumbling walls to ash. It was evident the palace would not be standing for too much longer. "I'm not sure that if we stay in here much longer we'll be able to get out later." She surveyed the group with a bleak stare. "Are you guys ready to accept that?"
Sokka averted his eyes, knowing the forbidding prospects before them, but, at the same time, not wanting to consider that possibility at all. "Come on, Aang," he muttered to himself. "We need you."
By the time Aang made it outside the sun was just beginning to disappear beyond the horizon. It had taken tremendous effort for him to bend his way through the blaze and so, consequently, he was exhausted and starved for oxygen by the time he made it out. Hawky flew to the safety of a nearby tree while Momo looked on in helpless worry as his master sucked in great gulps of clean air. Aang staggered, very clearly on the verge of passing out.
However, through sheer will alone, he managed to shake off the waves of dizziness and remain conscious. One look at the leaping flames emanating from the smoking edifice behind him was more than enough motivation. Beyond the palace the city was in an uproar, with people running and screaming and gathering in the streets to watch the palace burn.
Aang moved quickly, inhaling a deep breath of intense meditation as he called forth the knowledge and skills of his past lives. His eyes and tattoos glowed momentarily with a white, ethereal light that blazed even brighter than the burning building behind him. When he felt the stiff rush of power pulse in his veins, Aang stretched out his arms and began rhythmically bending the lake water in twirling rivulets towards the palace.
In a spiraling swirl of air, Aang elevated himself above ground, still balancing the water above his head in a fluid vortex, until he was high above the walls and able to have an unobstructed view of the Fire Nation palace. There didn't seem to be a single place the fire had not touched. Aang thought of his friends, the scores of innocent people and especially Katara most likely still trapped inside and that spurred him into action.
Swaying his arms back and forth in a smooth, sinuous motion resembling currents of water, Aang directed the stream down against the lower level of the building, gently bending the waves in gradual rivulets over the surface of the ground. An audible hiss split the air as the fires were progressively tamed, the roaring blaze retreating and retreating until there was nothing as left of it other than a trailing gray mist of smoke and steamy vapor. When the flames were doused completely Aang was finally able to see the full devastation that had been wrought. Much of the palace was now little more than a smoking crater.
His heart racing with a renewed sense of dread, Aang quickly landed on the ground and ran back inside, filled with new determination to find his friends.
Katara and Zuko dove for cover, barely dodging the earthen fists that launched straight at their heads. "You take the girl," Azula ordered the Dai Li. "Zuko is mine." As they moved to carry out her order, unleashing a punishing stream of rock and earth on the young waterbender, Azula faced her brother with a self-satisfied smile.
"Why are you doing this?" Zuko cried. "I don't want to be your enemy!"
"I truly wish I could believe that, brother," Azula replied, turning a fiery and facile cartwheel mid-air, "and sadly, I don't believe I care!"
Zuko blocked her assault, but did not bother making a countermove. Instead, he stood there regarding her with outstretched arms in entreaty. "Azula, stop this," he said. "I don't want to fight you. I'm not going to fight you." He looked over to where Katara continued to hold her own with the Dai Li, though she was taking a pounding with them both coming at her simultaneously. "Call them off," he ordered his sister wearily. "This is between you and me."
"Oh, look at you," Azula cooed. "Zuko the protector. Does Mai know how devoted you are to the little waterbender? I wonder if she'd be so loyal to you then!"
"Leave Mai out of this," Zuko replied wearily.
"Oh, but I can't do that. This is about Mai and Mom and anyone else who has ever chosen you over me!" Azula spat bitterly. "The very idea is insulting and degrading."
"That's not the way it is, Azula."
"Do I look like a fool to you?" Azula snorted. "Don't confuse us, Zuzu! I see things very clearly! I'm not the one who was stupid enough to believe Father ever loved me! We were a means to an end. I always knew that. Look how long it took you to figure it out!"
Pointedly ignoring her barbs, Zuko sighed, "Azula, please. Let's end this."
"Oh, I intend to," she promised in a whisper.
She attacked again, spraying forth a dripping blaze of blue. Zuko defended himself behind a wall of fire, countering her every advance with a skilled retreat. Around them, the Dai Li and Katara circled in ribbon-like attacks, winding and retreating, circling and advancing, like an ancient dance. A spray of rock and water rained down on brother and sister in an unrelenting hail. The Palace creaked and shifted ominously beneath their feet. Smoke filled the room in great, dreary clouds. But both Zuko and Azula remained oblivious to their surroundings, so focused were they on each other.
"Do you fear me that much, Zuzu, that you would shrink back from a fight?" Azula laughed.
Her taunts finally found their mark. Old habits died hard and Zuko found himself rising to the bait. "I don't fear you, Azula," he snorted. "I pity you."
Azula became practically livid with his reply. "Pity me?" she screeched. "Pity this!"
She assumed her stance, sweeping her arms to and fro in a winding, macabre arch, triggering the potent surge of crackling electricity through her body and out through the tips of her fingers. It was the most intense lightning strike she'd ever produced and she was certain it would kill him. That's exactly what she wanted.
Zuko absorbed the forceful current into his body and literally quaked with the blinding wave of power. It knocked through his frame with enough impetus to drive him to his knees. He actually convulsed with the sheer force of it, but he managed to channel the raw energy and finally release it. The lightning current zinged skyward, burning a hole through the ceiling and revealing the purple sky that was just beginning to wink with the first stars of the night.
Following that magnificent display, Azula stared at her older brother in a mixture of surprise, admiration, and disgust. "You could have finished me off if you wanted to," she spat. "Why didn't you?"
"I didn't want to," Zuko replied softly. "I don't hate you, Azula."
"But I hate you," she sneered. "And that, dear brother, is your misfortune." Her plans to duplicate her previous strike and finish him off in his weakened state were terminated, however, when the floor unexpectedly gave way from beneath them all.
Sokka, Suki, Mai and Toph barely had time to rejoice over the cooling ebb of water that washed in over their feet and drowned out the flames in a swelling hiss of steam before more trouble followed.
When the roof came down, Toph instinctively kicked up an earthen shell to keep the group from being crushed. They emerged seconds later to find the corridor completely blocked with smoking debris. The wall to their right had completely collapsed, exposing the room behind it that was also littered with rubble from the upper level. Further still, the section of the palace where they currently stood was now completely without a roof.
"Oh no," Suki breathed, creeping closer to one of the fallen victims to check for vital signs. Seconds later, she snatched her hand back before sparing a glance at her friends. She shook her head in response to their hopeful stares.
Disheartened and weary, Sokka asked, "Toph, can you feel anything? Is…is there anyone alive under here?"
In response to Sokka's query, Toph knelt down and placed her hand flat against the ground, listening intently. After a long silence finally she heard something, muffled cries for help underneath the rubble. "There," Toph indicated with a point of her finger in several different areas, "and there and there. Some people are alive." Upon her verification, the group split up, Sokka following one lead, Suki another and Mai the last one.
Working quickly, they each dug out their groaning victims and helped them towards the exit. But it was Suki who found someone they never expected to find. "Zuko?" she gasped.
Mai's ears perked the second she heard his name. "Zuko?" She threw a glance over her shoulder just as Suki was assisting him into an upright position. And then she was on her feet, scrambling across rock and smoldering wood, to get to his side. Toph and Sokka soon joined her. "What are you doing here?" Mai demanded frantically. "I thought you were with your mother! You were supposed to be with your mother!" She skimmed her hands over his arms and legs, checking for broken bones. He seemed intact, save for the bloody cuts and bruises that marred his pale skin.
Zuko captured her questing hands with a soft, reassuring smile. "I'm fine. My mother went to see my father today, that's why I'm here. I didn't mean to worry you." Their gazes locked and Zuko expected her to say something flip, but instead, in an uncharacteristic explosion of emotion, Mai flung her arms around his neck with a relieved sob. As Zuko stroked a comforting hand down the length of her back, he asked the others, "Where's Katara? Have you found her? Is she okay?"
"Katara?" Sokka echoed blankly. "Wait a minute. She was with you?"
Zuko nodded slowly in affirmation. "…when Azula attacked us…"
"Azula?" the group chorused incredulously.
Mai reared back from him, her usually composed features frozen in a horrified mask. "What do you mean when Azula attacked you?" she questioned sharply. "Azula is locked away, remember?"
"Not anymore evidently," Zuko grunted. "She's behind all of this."
"Did you find Katara yet?" Everyone glanced up to find Aang running towards them, his genial features drawn in a worried frown. "Well?" he demanded impatiently. "Where is she?"
"Zuko said she was with him," Toph provided reluctantly. "He was here, after all. Apparently, Azula escaped and attacked them. She's behind the entire siege."
"Azula did all this?" Aang uttered. At the nodded confirmation, he looked over to Zuko. "So where is Azula now? Where's Katara?"
"I don't know. I saw them both right before the floor collapsed," Zuko replied. "I…I don't know what happened to her or Azula after that. I must have hit my head and blacked out for a little while."
"Oh no…no…" Aang mumbled; panic already beginning to arc through his body in sickening waves.
He and Sokka moved in a flurry of motion to begin digging through the thick piles of debris, both screaming Katara's name in tandem. Suki and Toph quickly joined the search while Mai remained at Zuko's side to help him regain his bearings. When he felt steady enough then they began to search as well. They found the broken bodies of the Dai Li agents, along with several servants but there was no sign of Katara or Azula. With each second that ticked by without success, they lost a little more hope.
Aang flipped on Zuko in angry accusation. "Why didn't you watch after her?" he cried. "Why didn't you protect her from your crazy sister?"
"I tried, Aang!" Zuko reacted defensively, feeling guilty because he did feel partly responsible for what had happened. "I'm sorry, okay? I'm sorry! I didn't know this was going to happen!"
"Well, you should have known!" Aang blazed unfairly.
Trembling, he sank to his knees and buried his face in his hands, releasing a low, sobbing groan of frustration and fear. Tears burned the backs of his eyes but he steeled himself against shedding them. He felt like he was being pulled apart from the inside out. The pain was almost unbearable. Minutes later he felt a hand settle on his shoulder and when he looked up, Sokka was there. The anguish in the older boy's eyes mirrored the crushing ache Aang felt in his chest.
"We're going to find her, Aang," he said hoarsely. "We just need to keep looking."
"You're right," Aang agreed, pushing to his feet. "Let's keep looking."
After what seemed like hours of fruitless digging, but had really been little more than minutes, Toph finally felt the first faint trembling of recognition beneath her feet. "She's over here!" she cried out excitedly. "She's alive and…annoyed."
When they uncovered her from beneath the heaps and heaps of smoldering wreckage, she complained good-naturedly, "It took you long enough. Some rescue squad. You guys stink."
Aang was too worried to laugh at her attempt at levity. "Are you injured?" he asked her, tenderly brushing the soot and dirt away from her eyes and cheeks. "Are you in pain?"
"Yes to both questions," she confirmed tightly, closing her eyes for a brief moment. "But I'll live."
"Of course, you will, you drama queen!" Toph teased her, but the tears in her voice were evident. "You just like to milk the attention."
"You're half right, Toph," Katara laughed breathlessly, her unfocused gaze settling on Aang's worried face. "I'm not against milking certain people's attention at all." Her words coaxed forth a faint smile from Aang. He brushed his knuckles lightly across her temple as they traded a profound stare. An abundance of unspoken feelings passed between them and, for a minute, it was as if they were the only two people alive.
Regrettably, the tender moment was shattered a second later when Sokka suddenly spotted Azula pulling herself from the rubble and taking off in a sprint down the adjacent corridor. Everyone stared after her with mounting dread and frozen shock. "Aang," Katara whispered, "you and Zuko should go after her. Stop her. End this for good."
"I don't want to leave you," Aang protested.
"He's right," Zuko agreed. He rose unsteadily to his feet. "This is my fight. Azula is my responsibility. I can face her on my own."
"No, you can't," Mai argued, standing with him. "And you won't. I'm going with you."
"And so is Aang," Katara insisted weakly. When he started to shake his head she groped around in the darkness for his hand. After giving his fingers a reassuring squeeze, she told him, "Zuko needs you. Go with him. I'll be fine. I promise you."
"Aang, it's true. She'll be fine," Sokka reiterated gently. "I told you I'd find her and I did, didn't I?"
"Um…technically, I found her," Toph interjected mildly.
"It was a group effort, Toph," Sokka amended, making a face at her before returning his attention to Aang. "The point is, she's here and she's okay. Go do what you have to do."
"Yeah, Sokka will get her out of here," Toph reassured him. "Meanwhile, Suki and I will stay behind to look for more survivors." She directed an unseeing look over in the young Kyoshi warrior's direction for confirmation and Suki nodded her agreement. "I think we should try and save as many people as we can tonight."
"Do it," Aang said. "Take care of yourselves...all of you." With one last lingering look at Katara, he sprang to his feet and disappeared down the corridor after Zuko and Mai.
Azula ran straight for the throne room. She didn't know why, but it seemed like the safest place to go. It was definitely where she felt sanest and probably one of the few places the fire hadn't yet touched. In hindsight, she realized Lei Jin's advice to her had been sound after all. She almost regretted killing him. The fact was she had let her jealousy get the best of her and it had clouded her judgment. Frustrated with herself, Azula ascended the steps to the Firelord's throne, theorizing vaguely on when her life had ceased making sense and at what precise moment she had lost control.
"It's over, Azula!" Zuko announced as he, Aang and Mai burst through the throne room doors. "Let's not make this harder than it has to be."
"Three against one?" Azula mused. "Now that's hardly fair. And you have the Avatar on your side as well. Methinks you may be overcompensating, Zuko."
"Azula, just come down from there and we can end this peacefully," Aang reasoned.
She tapped her chin, pretending to mull it over. "Hmm…no thanks," she chirped before springing to her feet to attack.
Her fire blasts were chaotic, like a frenzied blue storm with no clear direction. Aang and Zuko countered her near feral explosions, combining their efforts into a mutual wall of fire to stave off her stalking advance. They remained on the defensive, committed to leaving her unharmed, but Mai was another matter. The more aggressively Azula pressed forward, the antsier she became. At one point it looked as if Azula might nail Zuko with a wild shot and Mai reacted on pure instinct.
She sent forth a hail of arrows with enough force to drive Azula back and pin her to a nearby post. The last of the arrows sliced through the flesh of Azula's upper arm, drawing blood. The Fire Nation princess snarled at her former friend while Zuko ordered Mai to stay back. "I don't want you to get hurt," he told her.
"Well, in that case…" Azula sneered, breaking free one of her arms to shoot of angry blue ribbon of fire straight at Mai. "It's definitely something I want!" In the wake of Azula's serpent like attack, the throne room echoed dissonantly with the sound of Mai's surprised yelp of pain before she crumpled, with a disbelieving stare, to the floor.
"Mai!" Zuko screamed in horror.
He skidded across the polished floor to scoop up Mai's limp body in his arms. There was a hole burned through the abdomen of her robes, revealing raw, blistered skin beneath. Zuko's hand hovered over the wound, afraid to touch her, afraid to even move her. In that agonizing second it didn't even seem to him like she was breathing. He sobbed over her fallen form quietly.
Azula laughed, largely pleased with her handiwork. She darted gleeful eyes between her brother and the Avatar. "So who's next?"
Enraged, Zuko launched himself at her with a low bellow, quite intent on killing her with his bare hands. Aang rushed forward, meaning to stop his friend from making a decision Aang knew he'd live to regret. However, his efforts in that area were suddenly overridden when Ursa, unkempt and covered in debris, came springing out of the darkness to wedge herself between both her children.
"Zuko, no!" she cried just as her son drew back a hand to make his killing blow. She spread her arms in front of Azula protectively. "I won't let you hurt her."
"Mom, you don't understand!" Zuko cried. "She just tried to kill us all!"
"No, Zuko. No," his mother insisted. "She is your sister!"
Beyond them, Mai made a small groan and Aang rushed to her side to offer aid. "Zuko," he called out a second later. "Mai's alive. She's hurt bad, but she's alive. This can be over. Let's just take Azula into custody and end it now."
"No," Zuko said, shaking his head in refusal. "It won't end. I will never end. Not until she's dead."
Unfortunately, his mother stubbornly blocked his every attempt to get at Azula. "No, I won't let you," Ursa declared. "You don't want this, Zuko. It's not who you are. It's never been. I can't let you do something I know you'll hate yourself for later."
Up until that particular moment Azula had been sure that her mother was arguing for her safety, was fighting to protect her. She had been dumbfounded and amazed and even…hopeful. For one brief, stunning second, she had felt loved. She had felt worthy. She had felt like her mother's priority. But reality crashed hard. She realized belatedly that her mother wasn't acting in her behalf at all, but in behalf of Zuko…just as she always had. It was always Zuko and it would always be Zuko. There would never be any love or understanding for her as long as he existed…as long as they all existed.
Once the fanatical thought took root in her brain, Azula lashed out and locked her free arm about her mother's neck in a death grip. Surprised, Ursa strained against the chokehold. She clawed fruitlessly at the punishing forearm locked about her throat, which only provoked Azula into tightening her grip.
"Don't get any closer to me," Azula warned Zuko, "or I will not hesitate to snap her neck." Ursa begged Zuko with her eyes to back off, not because she was afraid, but because she knew if he reacted then things would most certainly end badly. He held up his hands in a gesture of surrender. "Step away, brother," Azula ordered him coolly.
With great reluctance, Zuko did as she commanded, his eyes never leaving his mother's mottled face. He could tell that Azula was cutting off her air supply. Ursa's lips were already beginning to turn blue. Just when Zuko didn't think he could hold back any longer, Azula struck.
"You want our mommy, Zuzu?" Azula baited, twisting her arm against Ursa's neck for good measure before finally relinquishing her grip. "Then take her!" When she shoved her mother forward Ursa was already unconscious due to lack of air. As Zuko swooped forward to catch Ursa, Azula took advantage of his distraction and made her move.
She lifted her hand with every intention of igniting the entire room and incinerating them all, but she never made it that far. Aang "saw" her intent before she could even bend. As soon as the cerulean flame began uncurling from her palm Aang's body flashed briefly with the glow of the avatar spirit before he began bending Azula's flare, mid-flow. Dancing arcs of flickering blue turned back at her, whipping and flexing around her body like a coiling snake. Try as she might, Azula could not control her own flame. Aang's will to bend it was superseding her own.
Roaring in pure rage and frustration, Azula ripped away from the post to attack with her other hand only to find herself this time trapped in a swirling hailstorm of wind. Her own flames circled around her in a dizzying vortex, trapping all her bending attempts within the stiff spiral of air. Aang then lifted both his arms and clenched his fists definitively; bolting both Azula's feet to the ground with earthen shackles before hitting her from behind with a rock spike in order to knock her off balance. When she instinctively attempted to break her own fall, he secured her hands on either side of her as well, only then releasing her from the violent frenzy of wind imprisoning her.
Zuko watched the awesome display with amazed eyes, from where he cared for his fallen mother and girlfriend. He had seen Aang fight plenty of times in the past, but never had he witnessed such a tremendous, effortless display of power. That was saying a lot, considering Aang had never been an ordinary bender even before he'd become a fully realized Avatar. Zuko's gaze locked with Aang's across distance in silent exchange. At that precise moment, Aang knew what he must do and Zuko knew what needed to be done. He gave the young Avatar a subtle nod of consent.
Aang floated over to Azula on a pillar of air and settled in a kneeling position before her. The Fire Nation princess regarded him with defiant eyes, breathing blue fire the entire time. Inhaling a deep breath, Aang bended her errant flames under control and then placed one hand on her heart and the other on her forehead. Then, he closed his eyes.
He opened the connection between them and the flow of emotions from Azula's body into his was wild and overwhelming. She was full of hate and violence and twisted evil. But she was also full of fear and self-loathing and painful insecurity. Azula was an interesting and complex mess of contradictions. Aang knew, by stripping her of her bending, he would be taking away the only thing that had ever truly brought Azula satisfaction in her life. It was both a punishment and a blessing. She used her bending to destroy and, in the process, systematically destroyed herself as well. Aang would take her only reason for self-worth and he would do it, ultimately, to save her life.
When it was done and the connection was severed her clay shackles fell away and she lay there in a pitiful ball, anguished, weeping and shattered. They all were shattered, each one broken in their own distinctive way.
imotel, I'm glad to hear that. It was a beast to write. That one and this one too.
Glitterfuck, is it less bleak for you now, lol?
clockworkchaos, I'll never tell. Only two people know for sure, me and my beta, lol.
Quathis, Azula is a particular kind of crazy. I think she's a good example of mad genius, a person so complex mentally that it actually makes them nuts. I love that girl.
PhantomS, and I was pretty sure this one was going to be my last. (Action scenes are a pain.) But, alas, I am punishing myself again. (sighs) Yay me.
Fire Lord Lionheart, I've seen you over there. It's probably a good thing you read it here. I've been revising it like crazy and the one that's posted here is definitely a final draft. This is yet another reason why I try to wait until I'm finished or nearly finished with a story before I post it. I can't leave it alone even after it's complete.
MJ, meep! Thank you. Seriously, as much as I love Avatar and Mike and Bryan for being epic geniuses, the fact that you could even think I could be on the same level as them is like…wow!
Shinobi Bender, I actually got a kick out of the idea of Toph saving Aang's bacon. I mean, here he is THE AVATAR and he has to be saved by a girl and a blind girl at that. I just love the irony.
JacktheMonkeyxo, I think my beta tried to coax me into fleshing out the Mai, Suki/Sokka part more, but I was pretty sure if I tried I'd have to kill us both, lol. When I say writing these two chapters was really, really hard, I'm not exaggerating.
tege, lol!
greenred, Aang is my favorite character too! I'm like crazy-insane for him so he usually gets the star treatment in whatever I write. (Fangirly squee) And I'm back, lol. Anyway, there's an epilogue after this chapter and then this puppy is done.
Connor Kent, you would tempt me with your random comments when we're at the end, lol. On another note, you listen to the Avatar soundtrack while reading this? Wow. I don't have the soundtrack but I will listen to the theme music on the DVDs when I'm writing. It just gets me in an Avatar-y mood, lol.
Satyuros, thank you! I think your review was the one I was most nervous about. Hopefully, I kept the momentum going with this chapter.