Quick advisory: This one gets a bit grisly right at the end. If you're not into that, might want to stop reading when they go to refill Katara's water-skin, if you catch my poorly constructed foreshadow. The last section isn't as bad.
The breeze which wafted along the deck was actually damp, itself a massive change from their long slog along the base of the Divide until they had reached a part where they could clamber back out of it. Nila stared to the north as the ferry quietly chugged its way through the cleft separating Full Moon Bay from Chameleon Bay. Of all of them, the trip was only notable to one of them. Sharif stared north, motionless and expressionless, as blank as a slate. Tzu Zi had crossed far greater bodies of water, and in far worse conditions than a stiff breeze, so this was ideal for her to simply doff robes and sun herself in the rising spring. Nila had rode a sailboat on storm-tossed seas, and while she didn't emulate her friend in the sunning, she did take the moment where she could do nothing else and relax, and let the gentle singing of another passenger somewhere aft of them wash over them. Well, that and enjoy the show.
"Host help me we're all going to die!" Ashan shouted, clinging to the edge of Nila's chair as the ship gave a slight creak, passing over one of the wind-thrown 'waves', which barely stood, peak to trough, taller than Nila herself. Other rough and desperate looking refugees, of which there had been no shortage in that well hidden pier, turned toward the two of them questioningly, and Nila sighed.
"He has never been on a boat before," she said patiently.
"Heh. Desert rat should stay where he belongs," a middle aged, unattractive woman said. The way she stared down her nose pegged her as somebody who had come from wealth, and now was actively disgusted at having to travel with the likes of them. Nila's brow drew down.
"And where exactly does he belong? The desert? The same desert which produces the perfumes you try to hide your obvious malodor under? The south, source of every scrap of gold in this entire continent? Or are you simply referring to his low status?" She demanded. "Because I dare say that there will come an upsetting leveling when this boat reaches its port, one which will favor you far less then you hope."
"Well, I never..." she said, before storming off. There came a chuckle from somebody else, who was leaning against the rail. He was a tall, lithe youth, with wild hair and a strand of straw stuck 'twixt his teeth, which he rolled casually, very likely a nervous habit he'd adopted quite early in his life. His eyes were dark, and his face was young, but his stance was a fighter's as surely as any beih in Si Wong.
"I like your moxie, girl," he said, his voice quite smooth.
"Nila, you shouldn't do that. Those people could..." Ashan began.
"And who's this guy? Your brother?" he asked, turning to lean back against that rail.
Nila shook her head briskly, then nodded to Sharif. "That is my brother. And before you ask the obvious question, yes, he is simple. If you say any more on that matter, you will find Full Moon Bay much more hospitable than here."
"I like her," a raspy voice came from nearby, showing a similarly wild-haired youth, but Nila paused at her classification of this one.
"Well, Smellerbee's given you her seal of approval. I'm Jet."
"And I am trying to rest," Nila said, turning back toward the front of the ship. Ashan gave a nervous chuckle, but did not rise from the chair which had been built into the deck and wall of the ship.
"I am Ashan ibn-Ali din Ababa. Your acquaintance is well made," Ashan said. "Forgive me for not rising. I have no desire to put my fate in the hands of Sobki today."
"He's afraid of the water," Nila clarified flatly.
"Water's nothing to be afraid of," Jet said.
"It is if you can't swim," that oddly named person piped up, causing eye-rolls from both Nila and Jet, which in turn caused a raised brow from the former. So something of a kindred spirit, then? "Come on. Shadow's gonna be back with our food any minute now."
"Yeah, yeah," Jet said. He looked to Tzu Zi and his smirk widened a bit. "Well, I hope you ladies are taking good care of yourselves. It'd break my heart if somebody did anything unpleasant to other travelers like us."
"I'll be fine," Nila said.
"So you know how to use that bow, I take it?" he asked, crossing his arms as he leaned.
"No."
"So..."
"I can keep her safe," Ashan said. "I am a sandbender, after all."
"Yeah, and how much sand is there around here?" Jet asked with a grin. Ashan wilted at that.
Nila leveled a flat look at her brother's oldest friend. "If I wished to have your 'protection', I would ask for it. And since I wouldn't, you'll have to take my unconsciousness for permission."
Ashan just stared back at her. "You have a way of making me feel like an idiot, you know that?"
She chuckled for a moment, then pulled the firearm up from where she'd propped it. "I have all of the protection I could desire."
"That's an odd looking club," Jet noted. Her opinion of him drastically dropped in that moment. She tucked it to her shoulder, picked a random gull flying a fairly significant distance away, sighted along the barrels, and pulled the trigger. There was a blast of flame and a gout of smoke, and a quarter of a mile away, the gull dropped out of the sky, dead long before it hit the water. She turned her bright green eyes back to his.
"As I said, I have all the protection I could desire," she lowered the smoking gun back to its place, ignoring the hubbub that her demonstration had caused.
"Umm... Nila? It might be a bad idea to shoot that thing on a boat full of scared people," Tzu Zi opined from Nila's side, not even bothering to open her eyes. Nila paused, and realized that Tzu Zi was quite right on that. The people who had been minding their own business before were now pointedly minding hers, and that was not something which Nila enjoyed at the best of times. She leaned back, and stared ahead of her, as her brother was doing at the front of the boat.
"This is all the food they had," a raspy woman's voice seemed to appear out of nowhere, actually causing a flinch from the two Si Wongi nearby. Its source appeared likewise, almost walking out of Jet's shadow, handing him a bowl of thin, oily soup. "It smells terrible. I smelled a lot better in there. Captain must be hording it for sale," she said impassively.
"Then demand some. You have money to pay for it, don't you?" Nila asked. The slender young woman with hair no longer than Nila's turned pale eyes upon her. Once again, Nila felt a desire to lean away.
"Who is this?" she asked.
"A couple from Si Wong, and her brother," he said.
"We're not a couple," Nila and Ashan managed to blurt simultaneously.
"Yeah, she'd never..."
"He is superstitious and..."
"...sense of humor like a buzz-ard..."
"...hopelessly traditional..."
"...too clever for her own good!"
"...know a good idea if it bit him!"
The pale eyed girl just blinked at them, and shrugged. "Yeah, I'm convinced," she said with the same flat tone she used pretty much all the time. A glance toward Tzu Zi lingered, though, before she shook her head, and placed her hand on Jet's arm. "We need a word."
"Can it wait? I'm just enjoying the breeze," Jet said, turning to face the bay once more.
"Now, Jet," she said, her flat tone finally slipping somewhat. Jet sighed, and walked away from the children of Si Wong. That left the oddly named Smellerbee standing nearby. Nila stared at the frankly unattractive Eastern girl. She stared back.
"So..." she said, obviously uncomfortable. "...you like boats?"
Nila sighed, rolled her eyes, and turned her gaze back toward the slowly approaching northern shore, and what appeared to her eyes as a mountain rising above them. Her mind, though, assigned a different title to that great mount which dominated the northern horizon. The walls of Ba Sing Se.
"I see your star, you left it burning for me; Mother, I'm he~e~ere..." that young man crooned somewhere near the middle of the ship, out of sight, and Nila could see the appropriateness of it.
"I'm coming, Mother. You'd best be ready for me," Nila said, her mind already churning to find the best way to locate and deposit Sharif as efficiently as possible; if a tenth of what she heard about Ba Sing Se was true, she would have to step lively in that city. But because she was looking forward, she didn't notice what many others had on this boat; that another was passing them, through the cleft in the other direction, its hull low on the water, as though weighed down by stacks of lead. She didn't see the standard, see the black flame. Just as well. She had enough to worry about.
Chapter 8
The Divide
"KEEP YOUR KNEES HIGH, TWINKLETOES!" Toph's voice roaring through the echoing recesses of the Great Divide buffeted him as he tried to balance the boulder on his back, despite her extreme attempts to dislodge it. If he didn't know any better, he'd think that she was doing this just to be mean. But the fact was, his first earthbending, in the ruins of Sentinel Rock, had not been followed by a successful attempt. He didn't know why he'd succeeded that first time, and why he couldn't replicate it, but even still, he'd come a great deal further under Toph's tutelage – even being able to tremble pebbles under his own power – then he had under Bumi's.
The unintended but pleasant side-effect was that both Aang's strength and his stamina, two aspects of his athleticism he utterly neglected before, were swiftly improving. While he certainly wouldn't beat Toph – let alone the unexpected powerhouse that Azula embodied – in an arm-wrestling contest, he now was at the point where he actually looked the proper strapping young teenager, rather than a lanky, too-tall child. With a hitch, he pulled the boulder into a better position for balance, just as Toph smacked on of his feet up, causing the hitch to become a launch, and the boulder flew aside out of his control. "Hey, that's not fair!"Aang said, leaning against the rock which had so long been leaning on him.
"You've gotta be ready for anything. You might be toughening up nicely, but you're still too flighty and too spindly for some of the real high end earthbending," Toph said as she shoved the rock out from under Aang with one foot, sending it crashing into the redstone walls of the Divide. "Still, a lot better than I feared. Horse stance!"
"Again?" Aang complained. "My hamstrings are still burning from the last time!"
"ROCK LIKE!" Toph snapped, and Aang quickly found himself in the much maligned horse stance once again. It seemed to be an an odd quantity in his life that all of the women around him tended to push him around. He wondered if that was telling of his character, or just that the universe liked to poke fun at him. Then again, the universe seemed to think that Aang was supposed to be lovey-dovey with Katara, so the universe was obviously insane. Toph bent the stone, and two pillars rose up under Aang's feet, propelling him about fifteen feet from the rock, giving him a decent view of the campsite, and managing to not disrupt his balance too much. That, too, was telling of her training. His instinct might always be to run away, but he could see what came from rooting your feet and standing your ground. He just hoped that the things she was telling him were actually reaching some useful end, towards earthbending.
While Aang had wanted to see what had become of the cities of Si Wong in his century of absence – he'd visited only once before, and found it quite enthralling – he was strongly vetoed by Toph, and when asked her reasons, Katara seconded the veto. Now that he had a moment to understand things, he could see why. But still, it felt like an opportunity missed. Not like the Great Divide. This was the largest canyon on the face of the planet; at its lowest point, Lake Mang-Gag, it was almost a mile below sea-level, a body of water so salty that nothing could live there, fed by trickles of water through streams like the one they were camped beside. It effectively split what was considered the Northern Earth Kingdoms from the Southern. It was so wide that even at its narrowest point, it could never sustain a bridge. Toph pointed out the ruins of The Monolith's attempt to do that very deed thousands of years before. It certainly didn't look like much of anything, just an oddly clear patch of out-of-place stone on the south side of The Divide.
It was a place Aang had always wanted to visit. He'd just never gotten a chance until right now. And he didn't even get a chance to enjoy it. And now, instead of wrangling with the canyon crawlers and spelunking in the deep-falls, he was trying to move rocks around. And failing. Which was more than a little infuriating. Toph wandered away, but Aang didn't loosen his stance; he knew she was 'watching' him. But if nothing else, the stretch of his calves and the time before him let him have a moment to think about something other than crushing weight, bruised knuckles, and general drop-dead-fatigue.
His own words were 'something's wrong with the universe', and the more he thought about it, the more it seemed that he was bang on in that respect. They might have brushed it off because of the whole Avatar State thing, but that he himself had put it out of his mind for so long showed that he really needed to get his act together. It was almost as though he and everybody with him had stood up and said 'ah yes, 'Imbalance', the metaphysical black hole which threatens the integrity of reality; we've dismissed those claims', and went on with their lives in willing ignorance. As he stooped and cramped, he felt like kicking himself, because there were so many questions he knew he should ask Korra, that were only obvious in hindsight. So many things left unsaid, unlearned, undone.
He slowly placed his fists together, and drew his breathing in, trying to focus through the pain, and the frustration. He wanted to stop this. He wanted to get down off of these pillars and give up. And he knew that he couldn't afford to. He was fighting against himself, like an Ostrich Horse which wanted to go two directions at once. He could either pick a path, or tear himself apart. And with that, his eyes popped open, and he tried to figure out what the hell that metaphor even meant. A shake of his head, though, and he was back to his consideration.
He thought about Vajrapata. That dream was a vision of times past, he now understood. It was something which happened to Avatars sometimes; one lifetime could look back upon deeds of another. It certainly explained why Aang had such vivid and unusual dreams in his childhood. He wasn't just imagining being Fire Lord Tenko, standing against the rampaging South Water Tribe on their own waves; he was Fire Lord Tenko, and was simply remembering it. He wondered about things that he ordinarily wouldn't have wondered about. Toph said that there were three thousand years since the fall of The Monolith. But the world hadn't changed much in all that time. One nation became a hundred, then several dozen, then twenty, then five, but through it all, there were fundamental things which remained the same. Earthbenders in the east, firebenders in the west, waterbenders near the waves, and airbenders in the mountains and the distant places.
The world seemed resistant to change, he considered. Every force put upon it to alter itself tended to backfire. After all, Aang was continually told that the Fire Nation was the most technologically advanced people on the face of this planet, but much of that advancement came in one great rush starting a little over two centuries ago, after the fall of Chin the Conqueror. What, then, was the world doing for more than three millenia before that? The way people thought seemed to be much the same way. In the east, the old way was the best way. So too with Aang's nomadic kin; tradition was probably no small part of why Gyatso never told Aang about his birthright, and his responsibility. From the people he'd talked to, namely the Dragon of the East and the Mountain King, Avatars weren't supposed to even know about their unique status until their sixteenth birthday at the earliest. Another two years and five months, round-abouts for Aang. Only the Fire Nation and the Water Tribes ever dared to invent, to adapt, but for the latter, that only came when there was no other option.
Then, his mind drifted to Vajrapata herself. Time seemed to run in circles. Airbenders and firebenders at war with each other, again. Only when she was Avatar, she was trying to end tyranny and domination. And when Aang thought a moment on that, so was Aang. Why was it, it seemed that the airbender Avatars always got saddled with the most vicious conflicts in their lifetimes? Yangchen had to bring down the South Water Tribe. Vajrapata had to decimate her own people. And now, Aang was on that same path, but pointed at the nation which once stood at the forefront against cruel oppression. But even through that, the Avatar was never alone. Kyoshi had her husband and in time her daughter. Vajrapata had the young Prince of Ember at her side – before his father died at the Day of Black Sun – as well as the earthbender from the north and the waterbender from Great Whales. Yangchen had... well, Aang never paid attention, but he knew for a fact that she had a group of her own to keep her mind clear and her feet walking that narrow path.
Now Aang had his own group. Toph, the blind earthbender, imparting knowledge as through from the badgermoles themselves. Katara, ever eager, trying to keep a dying art alive in herself, and through him. Sokka... who was... good with a boomerang. Aang frowned a moment at that, but maybe there was more to being part of the Avatar's 'council' than the element you bent. Maybe Sokka's complete inability to let people become mopey, or his sarcastic wit, or his mad genius with all things mechanical... maybe those were just as important in their own ways. As he thought about things, he could with the same difficulty imagine going on without Sokka as he could imagine going on without Toph, or Katara, or anybody else.
As Aang pondered, Toph sidled back toward him, catching him completely off guard. She tutted lightly, shaking her head in annoyance, and positioned herself directly between the two pillars which held up each of Aang's feet, and lightly cleared her throat. Then, with a roar of "ROCK LIKE!" she slammed her fists into those pillars, causing a quake to ripple up through them, a naked attempt to dislodge the pesky airbender perched atop them.
While Aang might not be any kind of earthbender, at least not yet, he was not utterly unable to learn his lessons. The first lesson on the stubborn stone he'd ever gotten was standing his ground against a volcano. It was a lesson which settled deeper than he thought possible. With a grit of teeth and a grinding of feet into solid position, he weathered that shudder in the stone, not even budging from his footing. There was a moment of silence, then a grinding as Toph raised up on a pillar of her own, a smirk on her face. "You might actually be learning something," Toph said with smug satisfaction.
Aang couldn't help but smile at that.
"Wipe that smile of your face. We've got a long way to go until you're surfing rocks and punching volcanos in half," she said, and stomped the two of them back down to solid ground. Aang scratched at his shaven pate.
"Um... I already have punched a volcano in half."
"And have you done it recently?" Toph asked.
"Well... no, but..."
"Then I'm not impressed," Toph said. "Come on, Twinkletoes, I can't earthbend for you forever!"
"Yes, Sifu-Toph," Aang said with a degree of weariness. Katara, who was reading quietly near where Appa contently dozed, turned toward him with annoyance.
"Wait a second, why don't you ever call me Sifu-Katara?" she asked.
"...should I?" Aang asked.
The cockerels were not even close to crying out their summons for the sun, but still, the old man was awake, staring to the brightening sky to the east. Daylight always came. It was one of the certainties which all firebenders held closest to heart, and one the nation held closest to its soul in times of hardship and poverty. No matter how dark the night, no matter how grim the battle, no matter how lost all seemed, daylight always comes. Even if the sun rises through the smoke of a dozen burning cities, it rises. Even if you yourself are not alive to see it, it rises. It was a sort of fatalistic optimism which best described the Fire Nation all the way back to when they first conquered fire, learned the secrets of elemental martial arts from the dragons themselves, and changed the face of the world forever. Who could say what the world would have been without the firebenders and the waterbenders to take the natural world, a world which had never seen bending, and made it what it was today?
He heard a grumbling nearby, the girl who both was and was not his niece shifting as the sun dragged her back awake. The disc had risen into view, but was still eclipsed by the horizon, bathing the world in golden red. He had a difficult time making up his mind about her. He knew she was a threat to both he and Prince Zuko, but at the same time, he had sworn to his wife that he would keep her safe. And there was something in the way she acted which gave Iroh an inkling of hope. After all, she didn't kill him when she'd had her chance. Even if he didn't know why she recoiled as she did with certainty – and he did have some theories as to why that was – the fact that she did not, that she would not later attempt it, told him that there was some fragment of the girl he'd come to care about still inside that mind.
Iroh looked out upon a hill, capped by a stunted tree. It called to mind old memories, once joyous, but later tainted by pain and regret. Of Qiao, carving life into stone with no more than a file and a chisel, under a pale grey sky, while Lu Ten played the less volatile version of Hide And Explode that she'd concocted. Iroh, then younger and fitter, running up to the tree on that other, distant hill. To the 'safe zone', only to be 'struck down' by his son, who bounded laughing onto his back. They all laughed.
Nobody was laughing when they last went to that hill; that was where they laid Lu Ten's memorial pool. It was raining when they swore that they would see him again, one day. It almost always rained in the West. He turned his attention back to the less dangerous of the room's two inhabitants. She was stirring more, now, as sleep fled her more concretely, and the sun's disk finally reached above the horizon by its whole height, and with a gasp and a twitch, she was awake and trying to untangle herself.
"Bad dreams?" Iroh asked placidly. Azula leveled a glare at him for his trouble. "Have some tea, it will help dispel the unpleasant vapors of the night."
"I don't need tea," Azula said sharply. "You'd probably poison it, anyway."
Iroh's frown came to his face, genuine despite his attempts to the contrary. "You obviously don't know me very well, Princess; if you did, you'd know that I would never poison tea," he said, pouring himself a cup and sipping at it. It was a bit sharp, but remarkable given what he had access to. Azula still didn't take any, but drew herself up into a more proper sit.
"You want something from me, am I right?" Azula asked.
Iroh glanced toward that hill, that tree. Then, down to the road which ran near it, intersecting with two others. "I want a few things. What you have to offer is surprisingly small," Iroh said.
Her eyes narrowed, as she glanced around, face impassive. "I thought I recognized this place. This is where you and Zuko joined the Avatar and tried to capture me. So you would betray me again, would you?"
Iroh's eyebrow raised at that. "I cannot see Prince Zuko joining the Avatar," Iroh said. Well, not yet, anyway. Any other version of Zuko would probably have been rightfully suspicious of the Avatar, doubly so if the boy hadn't learned through caring for his sister to calm down and heed Iroh's advice. "Your brother – or rather, her brother – is not the kind of young man who would turn against what he believed in so lightly, and I believe that is likely a trait which your Prince Zuko shared. Since you don't seem to see this as the end of your journey, I must assume you escaped that 'ambush', itself very likely simply a coincidence of appearance, somehow."
"Of course I did," Azula said. "All I had to do was injure you."
Iroh chuckled heartily at that. As though she even could. "That would be a surprising assault indeed."
"Why do you keep looking at that tree? What are you hiding?" Azula demanded. How quickly it seemed that their warden-prisoner relationship had reversed, despite it never having been such in the first place, and no bondage really existed.
"I'm thinking about my son, Lu Ten," Iroh said distantly.
"He was a screw-up," Azula said bitterly.
"He might have been," Iroh admitted.
"He didn't deserve to be Fire Lord," Azula continued.
"He might not," Iroh nodded. Lu Ten was a great many things, but a leader of men was not one of them. That was probably what lead to his demise.
"Father was right to take your place on the throne," Azula pressed.
"Of that, we have differing opinions," Iroh said, and obviously so. "I cannot say what sort of Fire Lord I would have made..."
"Weak, befuddled, and tea obsessed," Azula said in offer. Iroh gave her a flat glare.
"...but without reference I can never say, and neither can you. Who knows what strange fate would have befallen the Fire Nation had I rose to power instead of my brother? What world would we have lived in that saw me upon the Burning Throne instead of your father? Would we still be at war? If so, would we have won at Summavut? The great tragedy and something you must understand is that we can never know. All that we know is what happened in your time, and what happened in mine," Iroh said, running a hand down his beard as he poured himself another cup of tea. "I would like to think I would rule in a world at peace, that the war would have ended. But I cannot say, because fate decided that it was not my place to be Fire Lord."
"You allow fate to decide your path?" Azula asked. "Pathetic."
"Is that not what you do now?" Iroh asked. "You assume that everything you do will have relevance, that in slaying the girl, you can prevent some calamity to your daughter, who has not even been born yet. If that isn't a faith in fate, I cannot find a better example."
"I don't know why I put up with you," Azula muttered.
"Excellent tea and good advice," Iroh said, raising the former. "The secret to both is proper aging."
"I'm going," Azula said, getting to her feet.
"And I will follow."
"Do it and I will..." Azula began.
"What?" Iroh interrupted her, but without harshness. "What will you do? I know that you might be powerful. Perhaps the most powerful firebender alive. But I do not fear power. Will you ambush me? I am more watchful than you realize. Will you try to slash me with your knife? You will find its edges don't agree with my old hide. I believe if you were going to do something, you would have by now. You were never passive in your aggression. So stop making threats we both know you will not carry through upon."
Azula looked about ready to spit lightning bolts, but remained quiet. Iroh gave a glance to the tree, and to the place where three roads met. He had hoped that Zuko would have heeded his order, the one he'd left on the path to Omashu, and come to this place. But the fact that he saw the boy in Omashu told him that Prince Zuko would not be awaiting them in the abandoned city at the place where three roads met. And probably for the best that it had happened that way. Bumi might have been a strange man, but he knew what Zuko was to Iroh. The worst thing would be for Zuko to be alone in the world, without purpose or goal or direction. Even the simple thought of what might come of a Zuko without hope drove a shiver into the old man's spine.
"I don't like this," Azula said quietly.
"And yet, it continues," Iroh said. He rose, and dumped the last dregs of the tea in the pot out the window. One could never quite drink it all, it seemed. "You seem quite determined to impress my brother, but I know that he is not a man to regret any decision he has made, least of all toward the people he has hurt. And he has hurt you quite deeply. Anything you do will likely be seen as aggression against him."
"No, he will see my deeds and know that I am a worthy heir," she said. "This time, there will be no mistakes, no miscalculations. No trusting anybody who will betray me."
There was a heartbreaking, desperate loneliness in that last sentence which Iroh could tell was so genuine and real that it took his breath. So the flower blossomed, it seemed. Betrayal was always in her words; perhaps it was because betrayal caused a cruel injury to her? Iroh had a notion. "Azula, please, come with me."
"Why?" she asked.
"Because I have something that you need to see," Iroh said. "Now stop being a petulant child and come!"
Her teeth gritted, but she obeyed, which was surprising in its own right. He sauntered out of the shack, and took up a stick, and scratched the flame into the dirt. "It is obvious that you are going to return to my brother despite my good advice. Since you are, you should know more advanced defensive techniques."
"You sound as though you think he's going to attack me," Azula said.
"I know he will," Iroh said flatly. "Your mastery of the cold-blooded fire is not this body's. When did you learn to control lightning?"
"I mastered lightning not long after I became thirteen," Azula said with a note of pride, which caused Iroh to pause. Ozai himself hadn't begun to learn bending the lightnings until he was twenty, and he was renowned as the Lord of Thunder, amongst his other monikers. Iroh looked back to the dirt.
"And you have..."
"At some point, you learned to redirect lightning, a feat I didn't think possible. To this day, I cannot say how you did that," she continued, growing annoyed toward the end.
"I see," Iroh said. "Very well. If you wish me to 'show my worth' to you, then I will tell you the secret of redirecting lightning."
She leaned back, skeptical. "You wouldn't."
"Watch me," Iroh said. This was probably the longest gamble he'd ever offered. He really hoped that it did not come up bust.
Keen eyes were a necessity for this kind of work. They weren't the most important necessity, by far, but they were sorely needed to outmatch their prey. He scratched at the edge of the mask, where it dug into his cheek, but did not dislodge it. The face-paint which usually marked he and his like was in incredibly short supply both in the North, and in the East; besides, the paint would have become encrusted with dirt in a matter of minutes, and turned a drab, unpatriotic brown. The masks would suffice. Besides, that's the way things were in the old days. No, while keen eyes were important to his ilk, the much more important feature was being able to break habits of a lifetime. It was always said that earthbenders always stare below the horizon, to the stones which made up their culture and their soul. Firebenders, on the other hand, looked to the horizon, to greet the rising sun in the moments of its appearance. But for the Yu Yan, they needed to look up.
Always up.
"Nothing yet," Ite said quietly, his own amber eyes drifting in sweeps from the nearby horizon, upward. While it would have been far easier if they'd just scaled the walls and looked down, it was doubly imprudent; first, it would have made them an obvious target to anybody looking from above. Second, the landscape of the Great Divide worked against them. Every climb they took to gain perspective would be canceled out by a descent, to reclimb somewhere else. Faster to just use the Divide against whoever else was within it. Lines of sight might be short, but sound carried far. In fact, that was a third thing one needed to be an effective Yu Yan Archer: Excellent hearing.
And because of that third factor, Vachir was able to pause, causing his counterpart to fall silent. It was barely more than the wind, but enough that he could make it out. Words. Not just words, but words in a tongue not often heard in this region. Tianxia was as common as the dirt under their feet, and while it claimed to have a hundred odd dialects, they all sounded roughly the same to his Huojian trained mind. But sounding quite different from those was the tongue of the children of the poles. That Pole-ish language was somewhere in the canyon right now, and its bearers speaking without regard to giving away their position. Which they'd just done.
"Go back to the others," Vachir whispered. "They are further northeast than Zhao predicted."
"That we found them at all is a miracle," Ite pointed out, and Vachir couldn't disagree with that.
"Go. I will ensure they do not escape," Vachir said. Without another word, Ite vanished back into the Divide, to rally the others of the Yu Yan. Today, the last Storm King would die. Today, the Yu Yan would finally be complete in their purpose.
He didn't know exactly what he was looking at. It came part in parcel of not being a native to this continent. He'd heard descriptions of just about every animal under the sun, but it was the 'just about' which tended to come back and bite him in the blubber at any available opportunity. For example, he could name all three distinct species of Ostrich Horse just by the shape of their beaks, but when it came to identifying the adorable little ball of fluff and cute noises in front of him, he was drawing a blank. He pondered it a moment longer, rubbing at an imaginary beard, before sighing, and limbering his machete.
"You know, you're awfully cute, but unfortunately for you, you're made of meat," Sokka said apologetically, as he readied his footing on the tree-limb. "You shouldn't get too upset. It's just the natural order of things. Big things eat smaller things... unless you're in Azul, and then, all bets are off. But it's just the way things go. If you were big and vicious, you'd probably be eating me."
The small brown thing continued pawing experimentally at the fist-sized tumbleweed, chirruping to itself with a detectable amount of joy. Sokka sighed. It was hard killing cute things, but cute things were just as edible as ugly things. Usually more so, in fact. And while Aang was always preaching a proper vegetarian existence, that was just no way to live. It was not a meal until there was meat in it, simple as that. So he screwed his feet, and prepared for the vault, pausing only to recalculate his trajectory so he didn't end up wedging himself in that rather deep looking crack in the ground.
And then, right as he pushed off, there was a rapid, staccato 'thack-thack-thack-thack' sound hitting the tree limb, and Sokka's triumphant and effective pounce became a shrieking flail, as his momentum, already imparted to his course, carried him off of his stable perch, but not toward the adorable meat-thing. No, he didn't have time to see the four arrows which now affixed his boot to the tree, but he could certainly feel their presence as he began to lever down, his movement turned from a vault into a rotation, until he was dangling upside down by one boot which was pinned to the wood. He blinked for a moment, then looked up. Arrows, he thought? Where the hell did those come from?
He immediately jumped to the probably correct assumption that somebody was trying to capture him, and heaved himself up. Pulling the arrows seemed about as useful as self-dentistry, so he pressed the machete, which he managed to cling to despite his tumble, to the leather of his boot, about to saw into the last bit of clothing he still had from the South Pole.
He was saved from having to destroy his footwear in the most inconvenient manner possible. Namely, by the appearance of four more arrows, which pinned his arm to the same tree limb, right beside his foot, leaving him dangling in a position which afforded him absolutely no leverage. On the ground below him, that adorable meat thing looked up and peeped at him. Sokka sighed. "You think I deserve this, don't you?" he asked. The meat-thing waggled its little tail in response, before bleating and running for the woods past him. And when two archers, decked with red face-masks emerged silently from the underbrush, bows drawn and ready, Sokka could see why.
He gave an awkward laugh. "Um..." he said. "Can we call this one a draw?"
The archer paused, looking up at him, and shook his head slowly.
Practice brings perfection. Considering how long she'd been practicing her waterbending, she should have reached perfection a few years ago. But since she'd only had so briefly a teacher, she had to make do with what she had. The stream was small, and had very little flowing through it. Still, compared to the rest of the Great Divide, it was as bountiful as the seas. Vegetation, tough and hardy, clung to the edges of that brook with an eager intensity. Finding a place where it pooled in any useful amount was a task in and of itself. But one she took to eagerly, since she desperately, desperately needed a bath.
She would have had them all land here, to use the pool more directly, but as experience with the young monk had taught her, it was pretty much just the South Water Tribe who didn't have problems with the whole 'nudity' thing. For all the Avatar saw her as a sister, she didn't feel any desire to inflict that kind of embarrassment on him. He'd get over it sooner or later, she considered. After all, he'd probably find a girlfriend someday. Or maybe a boyfriend. She couldn't really be sure. Either way, body shame never did anybody any good.
She finished her bath a good five minutes ago, but even half-dressed, she couldn't resist the call of open water. With a wistful smile on her face, she bent it up out of the pool, into a delicate wheel, which she spun around her, delighting in a visceral sense the control of her element. As she did, she gave a moment to attempt all of the forms she knew, and read about. Just once, just to keep the forms fresh to her muscles. A flick, into the water whip. A twist, into the defense and riposte. Hands close to the core, for the octopus form. Hands wide for the water-knife. Closed fist for ice. Flared fingers for steam. As she worked through the forms, she started to sweat again, a fresh sweat, not like that caked on nonsense like she had to endure in the desert. She let her hands drop, as she reached the end of what she knew. There was footwork, also, but considering the mud, and her boots all the way over there, she didn't feel like working that, as well. Even so, as she affixed her heirloom necklace back in place, she felt like there was something she was overlooking. There was a form, something she knew was begging to be discovered, but she didn't quite know how to describe it, or what it meant.
From what she'd already learned about waterbending, there was a technique she should be capable of, which would be obvious to a decent lateral thinker. Since she was not her brother, it eluded her. And that annoyed her.
Her consideration was cut short, though, when she heard the slightest of 'goosh'es. One foot slipping from dry land into firm mud. Not even enough to get Momo worried. But Katara could feel something. She'd talked with Toph, about the way how the blind girl 'see's with her martial art. As she did, she started to wonder if she might, some day, do the same. It wasn't that, she believed, which turned her attention around, not the clear pseudo-vision of a finished and perfected technique. Just a shock where there ought not be one. And because of that tiny sound, that miniscule sensation, she saw a man moving toward her, bow drawn. As soon as her eyes fell upon him, the arrow was released, but her reflexes were honed by naked combat, and with a flick of her hand, a water knife slashed the arrow in half long before it reached her.
The archer was already pulling a second arrow, so she backed off. "Stay back! I'm warning you!" Katara shouted.
Another arrow away, and she pulled up the water again, into a barricade, one she snap froze before the projectile could clear it. In a flash, that archer pulled a second arrow, and fired it into the halted first. Then, a third, cleaving into the halted second. Each arrow caused the hole in the ice to widen, as well as Katara's eyes. She pulled more water up, to shore the barrier, but a whistling in the air pulled her attention to her left. In an instant, her defense was turned to offense, a new water knife, slashing through the netting which screamed through the air, send by arrows to ensnare her. She glanced between the two archers on her left, to the one in front of her.
"Clever girl," the archer before her noted without cruelty or scorn. Just a man doing his job. "But not clever enough."
Another snap of a bowstring, and this time, a line shot past her face. She flinched back from it, only to find it twisting back, and snaring one of her arms to her side. The three archers she could see, and the one which she couldn't, continued to fire those twisting lines, until she was no longer able to keep herself upright, and tipped over into the scant mud. Paralyzed. Trapped.
"Collect her," the first archer said. She saw a hand reached down to grab her where the lines collected, right above her breast. She knew what she had to do.
"OW! DAMN IT! SHE'S BITING ME!"
"Easy as pie," Jet concluded. "We'll be in and out before anybody even realizes."
"Jet..." Mai said patiently. "I thought you said you were getting out of this."
"It's not banditry. He's a bandit for holding back the food from these desperate refugees. We're the heroes, here!" Jet explained. Longshot, who had been as usual quietly sitting to one side, turned and gave the two of them a look, which clearly said 'and it's so obvious that you haven't been looking for a chance to play hero, Jet'. Jet frowned at that. "There's no need to be snide, Longshot."
"If anybody finds out, there'll be trouble," Smellerbee said, nodding slowly.
"Come on, guys. I thought you'd be with me on this one," Jet said. Mai sighed, as she was wont to do.
"Jet, we stole so we could feed starving children. The children are safe in Omashu, now," she pointed out. "We just need to worry about ourselves now. And I still wonder why you want to go to Ba Sing Se. Omashu seemed... well, dull as Hell, but better than living in the woods."
"A fresh start, Shadow," he said. "And Ba Sing Se's the place for it. Who knows. Maybe if we play our cards right, we can get to the Earth King, and get him to actually fight against the Fire Nation instead of..."
He trailed off. Mai raised an eyebrow at that. "Fresh start," she repeated. "And stealing from the ship's larder helps that how?"
"It doesn't," a testy voice came from the door to their tiny, one man cabin which now housed five. Of them, only Bug was asleep. All turned, Bug excluded, to the source of the voice, and she saw that Si Wongi girl from the deck, standing with a fist on her hip and an unamused look on her face. "The captain finds he has been robbed, he'll know exactly who to punish. Everyone. Your... fresh start, will begin and end in a prison cell."
"But this isn't justice," Jet snapped. "He should be helping these people, not hoarding things for himself."
"Why?" the girl asked. Jet sputtered a moment at that.
"You're defending him?"
"No, I think he's acting like a brigand. But why must he share with the destitute?" she answered. "Self interest can make fools of wise-men. And it is a difficult thing to defeat. It takes a powerful motivator to overcome. I have no faith that you would be able to, not with thievery and distribution."
"And what would you do?" Mai asked, cutting off Jet before he said something insulting. The girl crossed her arms before her chest, and pondered a moment.
"I will speak to him, show him the error of his ways," she said with a snide twist to her words. Jet gave her a raised brow of suspicion. "The Sultan was right. My name does open doors. I am more the fool for not utilizing it more often."
"And who are you supposed to be?" Jet asked.
"I am the Dragon's Daughter," she said simply, before turning and walking away. "Don't do anything foolish while I'm gone."
Jet turned to her with a shrug. "I can't believe it," Mai said idly. "I never knew that woman had children."
"Who?" Jet pressed.
"You remember the man who almost won at Ba Sing Se?" Mai asked, leaning back against the wall, and almost vanishing against it. "That girl's mother is the reason he lost."
"Come on... Mooooooove!" Aang muttered, thrusting his fists toward that stone before him, which had a 'victory notice' bearing the burned likeness of Lord Zhao upon it. Even now, he seemed to be openly mocking Aang for his failures. The rock did not move. Despite that immobility, and in fact its inorganicness, the Zhao Rock sneered at him.
"Gotta give you a gold star for effort," Toph said, slugging him in the shoulder as she walked past. "But a big fat nothin' for effect. Come on, Twinkletoes. You chucked a rock in that crazy ass ruin!"
"Yeah, I know! It's driving me crazy!" Aang complained. "I know I can! I know I've done it, but I can't remember how!"
Appa, who had been watching Aang's futile struggles, gave a bass grunt, and plodded along the river, munching idly at the foliage. Aang walked over and scratched at the beast's drooping ears. "Maybe you're holding out on me," Toph said, moving closer, leaning in. "Maybe you're just not trying hard enough."
"But I've been working my arrow off since Omashu, and still nothing!" Aang said, turning to kick a rock, and managing to hurt his toe in the process. Toph 'stared' at him a moment longer, then sighed. "What? Am I not doing it well enough for you? This is all I've got!"
"Yeah, well, maybe this can start up again in the morning," she said. "You might be shaping up... slowly... but nobody said you'd be an earthbender overnight."
"...I kinda hoped..." Aang muttered.
"I think it's a bit more than just the skills you're missing out on," Toph said. "I've done a lot of thinking, about Oma and the First Avatar," she said. Aang paused for a moment, and then remembered that Sokka and Toph were both now fluent in a language three thousand years dead, and thus, didn't bother explaining what had the two of them up to all hours of the night. He turned to her, surprised. "Yeah, figured you'd be interested in that. See, it took ages to teach the First Avatar, since she was from the Fire Nation and thought like a firebender. But I've also heard that Kyoshi was waterbending before she could even twist a breeze. I figure there's gotta be some component of the way you think in how hard it is to bend."
"That... makes a lot of sense, really," Aang said, scratching at his head. "Are you saying I don't think like an earthbender should?"
"Absolutely," Toph said without humor. "You're flighty, you run away far too much, you can't stick with anything. You're lazy, shiftless, and you never face your problems unless you've got nowhere else to turn. That's about as far from earthbending as possible. One day, you're gonna learn that not every problem's got some trickety-trick that can weasel you out of it; it'll have to be dealt with head on, full speed, and damn-the-landmines-march-to-the-walls! You can't reason with a landslide, you can't argue with a collapsing building, and you can't trick your way into earthbending."
"Then... maybe I'm just not cut out to be an earthbender," Aang said sadly.
"Don't be a wuss, Twinkletoes. I'll get you chuckin' rocks if it kills you," Toph said.
Aang's eyes went wide as they rounded a bend in the Divide, and he reached out, grabbing the blind earthbender. "Shh!" Aang hushed. Toph scowled in his general direction.
"What?" she demanded, but mercifully, quite quietly. Of course, she couldn't see.
Ahead of them, near where the campsite had been laid out, he could see both Katara and Sokka, bound and trussed on the ground, with a whole cadre of those frighteningly effective Yu Yan archers around them, keeping all directions observed. With a heave, he tackled the two of them to the ground. "Yu Yan," Aang said. "They've got Katara and Sokka!"
"Yu Yan?" Toph said. "Then you've got a problem. Those guys were formed specifically to bring down airbenders, back when there were still Storm Kings floating around."
"But... They have Katara and Sokka."
"And they'll kill you flat no matter what trick you try to pull with them," Toph said, getting up and pulling him, despite his best efforts, away from that clearing. "Like I said, especially trained to kill airbenders. They know every trick you've got, and have a counter for it. I hear they had a field day during the Purge, and the years after."
"So what? You want us to run away?" Aang asked, his voice strangled, finally tearing free of her drag. "I can't do that!" he caught her shirt. "I am not going to leave them behind!"
With one stiff-armed shove, he was thrown down to the dirt, and Toph smirked above him. "Wasn't my intention to begin with," she said, clapping the dust from her palms. "Like your attitude, by the way. Very earthbender."
"So..." Aang said from his seat, confused. "...if we're not going to run, and I can't get close to them without killing me... what do I do?"
"How do you move a rock?" Toph asked. Aang stared at her for a moment, then turned, back toward that bend, where the Yu Yan lay in wait.
"Head on," he answered.
"...As you are well aware, Fire is the element of power," Iroh said, as he dragged a box around the flame emblem he'd scratched into the ground. "It represents both creation and destruction, contains both yin and yang in almost equal measure. Because of their connection to Fire, the people of the Fire Nation are resourceful and strident, possessed of energy and will."
Azula obviously was bored by the time he started talking, so he snapped his fingers, dragging her attention back to him. "Pay attention. This could save your life some day," he chastised. The fact that she shot him a glare meant that her attention was back on him, so he drew the glyph representing earth. "Earth, on the other hand, is patient and enduring. It neither creates nor destroys – it simply is. It is very strong in yin, very weak in yang. Because of this, the people connected to it are substantial, they are resilient and enduring. Their traditions are their shield, and their diverse peoples their strongest spear."
"And their biggest weakness," Azula noted.
"If they are weak, then how have we warred against them for ninety years and only managed to claim token portions of the continent?" Iroh asked. "They are strong because every time we defeat an enemy, learn his strategy, the next has a strategy utterly divorced from the one before. We must fight entirely new battles every time, and nothing may be taken for granted. They are balkanized, divided, but all part of a great whole, the whole of Earth," he then scratched the whirling vortices of the element of Air. "Air is the element of freedom, of mobility and chance. It is the opposite of Earth, and has the strength of yang that Earth has of yin, and respective weakness. It is the element associated with time, and history, and life. That it was in the hands of the Storm Kings was a great irony of its element. Water, finally," he said, drawing the great wave in the final position of the square, "is the element of change and transition. Where Air is life, Water is death. It is said that all began in water, and that in the end, all will come to water once again. Water, like Fire, can create and destroy. It has Fire's same balance of yin and yang..."
"Impossible," Azula snapped. "Waterbending is nothing like firebending."
"It is much more similar than you would believe," Iroh stated. "It may not seem it, but Fire and Water, while opposites, are more alike than any admit. We banded together against our greatest enemy. They devote themselves wholly to the good of their clans and Tribe. How are we different?"
"Basic sanitation," Azula quipped.
"They bathe in water almost freezing cold," Iroh said. "It is a very... bracing... experience."
"Ah, yes," Azula said, leaning forward. "How could I forget your little foray with those barbarians. Of course, you weren't very old when you wandered off, were you?"
Iroh schooled his expression to not betray him. She must have learned about another Iroh's past, one which was somewhat similar to his own. He ought not let it shake him. "You were taught, as most are, that the elements are separate. This could not be further from the truth," Iroh pressed on, drawing divisions between the elements, before encircling them one and all. "They are all part of a greater whole, something which could not exist if any were absent, or present in too much strength. By drawing wisdom from only one element, one philosophy, one aspect of the real, we allow our ideas to become stagnant and stale."
"We are in a revolution the world has never seen before, one which will twist your head with its scope," Azula said, her tone and expression turning from derision to something more akin to begrudging wonder. "The things I've seen over my years... it was like mankind had conquered magic and made technology of it. Carriages needing no beasts to bear them. A voice cast from one continent to the other clear as daylight, upon wings of copper wire. Buildings which stabbed down the clouds..." her eyes focused on him once again. "Don't dare say we are stagnant, old man."
"And this happened after your war ended," Iroh pointed out. "Once freedom had returned, and your version of the Avatar restored balance to the world. What do we create now? Weapons. That is our paradigm, that is our goal, that is our only focus. Your technological marvels cannot come about, not until somebody is willing to think freely, and see what lies beyond the horizon of his knowledge. While the Avatar represents all of the elements together in one person, it is possible to expand beyond one's own limitations by understanding the philosophies of the others, to make one a greater, wholer person."
"'Wholer' isn't a word."
"You have already done it," Iroh pointed out easily, pointing lightly to the whorls of wind, boxed off below the flame. Azula looked at him like he'd lost his mind. "When I watched you fight the Avatar, I saw not a firebender. You were not the firebender that any teacher in the West would make you. You firebent like an airbender would. Whether you realize it or not, or are willing to accept it or not," Iroh pressured when she started to raise a complaint, "you understand on some level that you are not as strong with your elements disparate as you are with them united."
She glared at him for a long moment, her jaw tense. "Fine. So I picked up a few useful techniques by stealing them from my enemy. That still doesn't make this any more valid."
"You picked up more than his techniques. Your art," Iroh continued. "It was a style this world has never seen, capturing the world as it is, rather than how one is expected to see it. That innovation requires freedom. Fire needs Air. It is in the Trinity of Flame itself. Air without Fire can continue, but Fire without Air chokes and dies."
"You sound like you have sympathy for our enemies."
"I see the world as it is," Iroh said, pointing the stick toward her. "And so do you. The technique of redirecting lightning was something I developed by observing the Water Tribesmen. They can turn attack into defense in a heartbeat, and from defense flow effortlessly and losslessly into attack in another. That is the precision and timing you need to turn lightning away from you."
"I always wondered how dum-dum ever managed to learn that trick," Azula said.
"It was not easily learned," Iroh muttered. She looked up at him. "Yes, I have already shared with your brother the secret. I had great concern for his safety. Although only he, I, and my brother..."
"And me," Azula said angrily.
"...could generate lightning, I believed that there was ample reason for him to know how to defend himself from the cold-blooded fire. And now, it is time for you, as well," he bade her rise, and pointed to his fingertips, stretched away from him. "You must create a path with your inner power, your chi, and have it flow in through your arms," he traced the path as he spoke. "It must travel up to the shoulder, then immediately down, into the stomach. This is the pool of chi – although in my case, it is more of a vast ocean. Ha! It is the pool of the energy of our souls, which give fuel to the fire we bend. If it is crippled, we lose our capacity to bend fire. While it is usually a small thing, it can expand to contain the energy of the lightning, but only very briefly," he stopped rubbing his belly, and continued tracing the path. "The energy must then pass up into the other shoulder, then out through the fingertips. The detour to the stomach is absolutely vital. The energy must not pass through the heart. If it does, the damage could be monumental, every bit as fatal as doing nothing. Do you understand?"
"How do I know that you're not lying to me, teaching me dance-moves to amuse your twisted humor?" Azula asked.
"You don't," Iroh said. "And I hope that you never have to find out."
Azula glared for a long moment, then her head flinched to one side, and her scowl took on a more sickly look. "Fine," she said, with an odd amount of strain in it. "Let's get this farce over with."
She paced slowly before the door, running through her head a number of questions. Chief amongst them was, of course, why am I even doing this? The answer, she decided, was because it needed to be done. For some reason, it didn't quite sit well enough with her. But it didn't matter. She was here, having already knocked, and would not be made a coward by her own brain. It was the one trait which she shared with all of the other dirt-dwelling Easterners; she was stubborn.
The door cracked open, and the somewhat corpulent man peered out from the other side of it. "What do you want, girl?"
While it was somewhat pleasing, for reasons she didn't go into at this moment, to be immediately recognized for her gender once more, she had business to attend to. "You have a serious problem," Nila said without preamble.
"Pardon me?"
Nila pushed past him, into the upper room, which was directly above the kitchens and larder. He huffed at her temerity, but she didn't care. She stabbed down a finger onto is manifests. "You are serving foul, rancid food to the refugees on this ship, while it says clear as the sun in the sky that you have far better to offer them."
"You should not be in here, little girl," the man said, puffing out his chest. "This is my private cabin."
"Private for not much longer, I would fear," Nila pointed out. "There are a great many discontented rumblings below the decks. I can only assume that you are no veteran of this route?" she didn't wait for his stammering explanation that 'he'd been working in he south until recently' to finish before pressing on. "Then of course you would not know of the great desperation that so many of these refugees would display. How many are fleeing from the fall of Summavut, or the news that the Fire Nation turns its eyes East once more? A great many. And that great many are universally hungry."
"That is not my problem. I've been subsidized to bring them across the bay into Ba Sing Se. Not fill their stomachs."
"You'll find that the latter is the only way to effect the former," Nila pointed out. "Those discontented rumblings, included amongst other things, robbing your pantry, running you off the end of the boat, or else 'keel-hauling' you, which I can only imagine is something far worse, for it was spoken of in hushed tones."
"Who? What rat said that? I'll..."
"Not one. Not even a few," Nila said, affixing the older man with her emerald glare. "If they do not abandon those mutterings of their own free will, blood will come of it, and that blood will be neither theirs nor mine. If you wish to keep your boat, then you will have to better what they have already received. A peace offering. A fine dinner, and a fine breakfast, before setting into port. If not, the only thing on the platter, I fear, will be you."
"Of all the cheek," the captain said. "That food is worth real money. These people are worthless."
"The only people who are worthless are those who make themselves so. I have seen a great many non-worthless people since I came aboard," Nila said.
He shook his head. "You're asking me to essentially give away money. Who are you to demand that of me?"
Nila sighed, then looked him square in the eye. "You do not know me, but you should. You have heard of Sativa Badesh bint Seema din Nassar, the Dragon of the East. I am her daughter. I am Nila Badesh bint Seema din Nassar. And I am the only thing standing between you and bloody mutiny."
"That's... impossible. The Dragon of the East went into exile years ago!" he claimed. "The last time I or anybody saw her was at Ba Sing Se!"
Nila leaned forward. "Look me in the eye, and tell me I am not her daughter. Then, ask yourself one question. What do you stand to lose by inaction? An elephant mouse of prevention is a finer thing than an elephant tiger of cure after the fact. A fine dinner, and a fine breakfast, for the weary souls aboard. Is that so much? You lose some food you wish to gouge prices with. But in failure to do this, you risk the loss of all. Which weighs heavier for you?"
"You are a witch," he said sourly.
"I have been called worse by better," Nila said. The captain scowled at her for all he was worth, but she just stared impassively back, until finally he broke.
"Fine. I'll tell the cooks to ready a feast, and tell the rats on the planks that I pitched the fool responsible for lunch over the rail. Are you content with that?"
"I was content in either way," Nila said, turning toward the door. "I would just prefer to have an uneventful trip to Ba Sing Se. This seemed the easiest way to do so."
She stepped back through the door, which had remained somewhat ajar, and returned to the highest deck of the ship. As she did, Ashan leaned off of the wall where he had, at some point, appeared, and started walking with her. She gave a confused glance, but didn't start. She wasn't so easily startled after all. She made bombs as a hobby.
"You are a very convincing bully," Ashan said in their native tongue of Altuundili.
"Some people need sense beaten into them. I assume you do not approve?" she asked with a sarcastic smirk.
"You took time and effort to prevent bloodshed and despair. I could not approve more," Ashan said. Nila rolled her eyes. "Oh, don't give me that. You did a good deed for a change! That's a good thing!"
"I neither ask nor want your approval, Ashan," Nila said pointedly, as she walked away.
"I give it all the same."
"...you are so annoying," Nila muttered.
As they both passed below to where Tzu Zi and Sharif were staying, a third figure appeared out of the shadows, where she had been watching the two of them with pale, emotionless eyes. She gave a small, pleasantly surprised grunt in the back of her throat. "She's not bad," she said to nobody in particular, a bad habit she was going to have to break sooner or later. She then sighed. "'course, now this trip just got boring again."
"How about you take this blindfold off, and I'll wipe that smile off your face?" Katara shouted, in as much surprise as she was that he didn't, as so many had before, gag her. She hadn't heard from Sokka for a while, but that was after they dragged him somewhere else because they thought the two siblings were conspiring in their native tongue. That they were was immaterial.
"I am not smiling," the archer answered back flatly.
She struggled against her bondage in a fashion which was becoming both worryingly routine and disturbingly familiar. In her entire life, she'd never been bound against her will even once, at least, before landing on Kyoshi Island. Ever since then, it had happened with disturbing and remarkable frequency. She also knew that these people did a far better job at restraining than most, giving her perhaps a few inches of movement across her entire body, and keeping her as far away from the water they'd captured her in as humanly possible. Smart and annoying. These people were the Sokka of Fire Nation adversaries. Only more effective.
She knew that Aang was out there. She knew that he would come back, and find them. And then... and then, he'd barter his life against theirs, because that was the sort of person he was. Whether or not the archers followed through on whatever deal they offered, the war would be over. The Fire Nation wins. In her head, she screamed at Aang to just go. Leave them behind. And at the same time, she knew he never, never would. Her hands clenched into tight fists, which squeezed the sweat from her palms. She knew she couldn't do anything, that fate would move on without her. She knew it, but she didn't accept it.
Because there was water nearby. Her brow rose under its black-cloth prison, as a conversation from so long ago came back to her mind.
Yugoda let her hands drop to her lap, and the glowing which suffused the arm and shoulder of the wounded Tribesman dimmed, and he rose from his supine position with little more than a grunt, before shuffling out the door. "Are you just going to let him disrespect you like that?" Katara asked, as the soldier vanished into his milling, brutish ilk.
"He's not disrespectful," Yugoda said. "They have more important things on their minds than tact and manners."
"But you just reattached his arm!"
Yugoda shrugged. "It was a simple thing," she said, rising to pour herself some tepid broth to sip at. Katara gaped at that.
"His arm and his body came into this room in different order. How is that simple?"
"You are still new to healing, young pupil," Yugoda said patiently. "Water is called the element of death, but it is also the basis for all life; it suffuses everything that lives. And by manipulating it, we can allow life to flourish, or if the case requires, snuff it out. There is water in everybody that lives. It is just a matter of seeing it, and knowing how to use it properly."
"But... his arm was off," Katara stressed, still not able to believe what she'd just witnessed. It was, after all, her first session with the aged master healer. "You put it back on. I..."
Yugoda smiled. "It's alright, Katara," she said kindly. "Sometimes, these lessons take some time to sink in. To heal or to harm, water is everywhere. Even in a severed limb, even in the winds of a desert. To a master waterbender, water is always at hand. You just need to expand your vision to see it. Now please, observe," Yugoda said, as another soldier limped into the hut, filthy, bloody, and expressionless. She should have seen how wrong things were, working with Yugoda. What had gone wrong with her cousins in the north? At least she still remembered those words, those important words.
Water is always at hand.
It was a tentative thing at first, feeling the sweat in her palms. Water. Water with unpleasant stuff in it, but water. The more she felt it, flowing along her back and her arms and her hands, the more she was sure what Yugoda had intended when she'd told her that. Water is the element of life. Everything alive contains water.
And with a twist of her fingers, the sweat grew cold. Grew solid. Grew sharp.
Vachir kept his eyes up. He had to. That was what the Yu Yan were. "He'll be coming back soon. He won't abandon his friends," Ite said, somewhat unnecessarily. Vachir considered chastizing his younger partner, but that wasn't his place, and honestly, he had better things to do. But still, he would inform the Captain that Ite had a serious problem shutting the hell up. Amongst the other bag of tricks that a Yu Yan needed to be truly successful was effective and proper use of silence.
"I think I've got something over here," Dogo said very quietly from the other side of the camp. Not shout, nor even a full speak. Quietly enough to not travel, loud enough to be heard where it was intended. A lesson in itself, right there. "They must be coming for the Tribesman first."
"Bison?" Vachir asked.
"Yes."
Vachir turned to Ham, the largest of them, who looked like a living manifestation of his nickname, all meat and lacking the lithe body of his fellows. Just as well. Somebody had to carry that damned thing. Ham nodded, and lifted the machine, one invented only a century ago, to bring down the Storm Kings' Bison with a single shot. It wasn't a bow, not like had been used since the first Rebellion, but the Yu Yan used them all the same. After all, an arrow to a bison was less than a toothpick to a man. But a harpoon was a harpoon, no matter the scale.
The beast floated in the air, easily within range. And since it was within range, it would be within targeting distance. Ham was very good at using that mechanical device, and sighted it very intently, waiting for Vachir to announce the launch. After all, the Captain was overseeing the girl. Keep him divided and off guard. That was Zhao's order. And a good one.
Vachir looked up in the air, and when he did, he didn't like what he saw. "Hold fire," Vachir said, and Ham glanced back. Vachir nodded up toward the bison, which was scudding over them with lazy paddles of its tail. Even from this bad angle, Vachir could see that this bison not only lacked a saddle, but even the posture of one who ever had. Feral bison, nothing more. "Not the right one."
"Then where is the Avatar?" Ite asked.
Like many things in this world, the answer came very quickly, and with a great deal of noise and anguish. Hurling himself out of the water of the stream like some sort of River Demon, the Avatar landed with less than a whisper, but the other, the blind earthbender they'd been warned about, she was not so subtle. She landed with a crash of rocks, having been vomited up from the Divide itself, and immediately started to hurl stone about her with wild abandon. Without a word needing be said, the Yu Yan divided into two groups. The smaller group focused on the earthbender, keeping the air filled with projectiles, keeping her in a constant defense.
"Aang!" the Tribesman shouted from where he was encircled. "They took her to..." before Ham walked passed and kicked the boy face first into the ground. The earthbender obviously didn't like that, so flicked off a hefty stone, which burst across the back of Ham's skull.
Vachir picked up Ite, who was the only Yu Yan who had been both struck and leveled by her initial assault, and got him to join his larger group, sending waves of arrows at the Avatar. Ham, who had no targets, was given a moment to shake off the brick the size of his head which had deflected off of same. That he could at all was a remarkable thing. "These guys got some coordination to 'em!" the earthbender declared, even as she was beset. Vachir only offered the girl half a glance, and a little bit of confusion as to how a blind girl could possibly defend herself against attacks she could not possibly see. But it didn't matter. Vachir turned and with a draw of his bow, added to the maelstrom. It was less than a fraction of a second before he was firing a second, at where he knew the airbender would dodge to.
But the Avatar did not dodge. That alone caused Vachir pause.
"Where is Katara?" the Avatar demanded, as he whirled the air around him in a hellish band, causing any arrow trying to enter it to be thrown off of its course. He didn't dodge. He made the air dodge for him. Ite and Vachir shared a glance. They weren't sure what to do with this. But fast thinking was clearly a well-appreciated factor in Yu Yan recruitment, so all of them drew as one, and fired as one, one great, massed shot which could not be wholly dispersed nor deflected. Not by any airbender the Yu Yan had ever heard of.
But he did just that. He leaned back, to where he could see all of the attacks as one, and laid out a hand. And before that hand, the air seemed to waver, and quiver in a pudding-like fashion. An arrow struck it, and burst as though impacting an iron plate. And every other one which followed did exactly the same. An airbender, neither avoiding nor evading. It was like he was earthbending, but with the naked wind. And then, with feet dug into the soil, he twisted his arms, and lashed out with a gale which slammed into Ite, and sent the young archer flying through the canyon, as high as half a dozen yards in the air, and all the way until the Divide turned and the stream vanished from sight. The only mercy was that Ite struck water and not stone. It was slim mercy.
"Good one, Twinkletoes!" the earthbender said, before flicking out with a foot, which caused the stone to slide away from Dogo, leaving him face down in the dirt. But only for a split second, because with a flick of the girl's hands, a great pillar of stone slammed up into him, catapulting him away, dazed and confounded, into a pile on the ground. The others closed the gap Dogo left, but Vachir could start to see how this was going. He didn't like what it implied.
"Where is Katara?" the Avatar shouted once more, and the Yu Yan answered as they were trained to. With aerial murder. But it was to no avail. Their instincts were playing against them. Every whit of muscle memory pulled at their hands, to lead an evasion which did not come. This airbender stood his ground, and blocked their attacks. Vachir took one step back, out of rational concern. And the Avatar took that opportunity to pull the stream up and hit them with it. Not water from the stream. The stream itself. Rooted as the boy was, it still seemed a feat of surpassing ease to manhandle so much water, and to bash it about. The arrows still flew, but this time, they were smashed against rock-hard ice, deflected by air currents, or ignored because they flew at a target which didn't behave as it should have.
Vachir now had very real concern. The earthbender was still bottled up, but with the Avatar bending as no airbender they had ever faced, he was beginning to doubt that they had the leverage, the angles, and the advantage that they needed. A yelp of pain and surprise dragged Vachir's attention away from the immediate area of the Avatar, and showed that he had let much of the stream resume its course... or made it appear so. Now, it was rising up, like some sort of hell beast of the deep, grabbing 'hold of archers and heaving them about like toys. Concern turned to mild alarm.
Vachir pulled one of his smoke pellets and hurled it to the Avatar's feet. If nothing else, a moment of blindness would... and then he realized his oversight, even as it was still leaving his hand. The smoke did indeed bloom up from the pellet, but swirled around the Avatar at his pleasure. He lashed forward once again, the water which undulated in a ring around him seeking devastating purchase. Vachir denied it, by heaving himself aside and ducking for a moment behind a small standing rock. He scrambled for his line arrow. He might still be able to slow the Avatar down. He just needed to get exactly the right angle.
The Avatar stopped.
Then turned to Vachir.
With a great stomp which sent the stones quivering in a line between Yu Yan and Avatar, the latter thrust forward, with one fist leading, single minded focus on his face. Vachir started to flinch down, to avoid the whip of water, or the gale of wind, secure behind his stone bastion. Then, there was the slightest grinding of stone, and Vachir looked straight down.
Mild alarm turned to near panic.
And near became complete as the Avatar's bending sent the rock directly into Vachir's chest, and carried him spiraling away from the fight, defeated by an airbender's earthbending.
Extracting Sokka from his bondage was much easier done with the Yu Yan Archers dissolving away into the Divide. At some point, even Aang could see that the mathematics of this ambush had changed. And he couldn't help but feel a grin on his face as he unraveled knots, even as Toph hurled a few parting insults and boulders at the retreating Nationals. "Are you alright, Sokka? Where's Katara? How did they get you?" Aang asked, unable to keep his voice from its rapid rate.
"I've been worse, she's in a box canyon less than a mile that way, and the universe hates me," Sokka answered, pushing himself to his feet. He immediately set about pulling through the bags which had been left on the ground, until he found his blue metal boomerang, which he hugged to his chest for a moment before slipping it back into his case. "Call me crazy, but I've got a feeling that they'll be back once they shock wears off. We better get my sister and run!"
Aang didn't see anything wrong with that suggestion. "Gotta say, you did good, Twinkletoes," Toph said, patting Aang on the back hard enough to send the Avatar a step forward. "You stood up to the enemy and faced 'em head on. Hell, more impressive, you stood up to me! You've got the makings of a half-way decent earthbender, I figure."
Sokka paused from hurling things into the howdah to glance Aang's way. "You know, that almost sounded like there was a compliment in there."
"Lap it up," Toph said. "I don't just give praise away."
That she did not, Aang thought. Her calling him half-way decent was probably the equivalent of some other bender pointing at him, white in the face, and shouting 'Gods and demons did you see that? How is that even possible?' before hyperventilating and passing out, foaming at the mouth. And as humorous as that mental image was, Aang had something else he needed attending to. "Toph, I..."
"Oh, trust me, I'm on it," she said, before walking through the canyon wall. Not that she created a passage or path; she walked into the wall, and vanished into it with the slight grinding of rocks which vanished quickly as she did. Aang didn't put more consideration into that, at the moment. She was obviously a good earthbender. She had to be. Aang was still starting. But he was bending earth, of his own volition, and of his own will. That was more than he could have said earlier this week. Aang whipped the air under him into a scooter, and upon it, shot along the gully at tremendous speeds. He had to. He didn't know how long it would be until the word of the fight reached Katara's warden, and when it did, what he would do.
It was something of a relief when he skidded to a stop in that dead end, carved by water and then drained of it, a null place in the chain. He could see Katara, blindfold over her eyes, bent back, as though trying to glare at her captors, to be brave even in bondage. There was only one which Aang could see, a man in a red mask, who noted Aang's entrance with a drawn bow and a steady, dark eye. "Stay where you are, Avatar," he said quite calmly. "This does not need to end in further bloodshed, for my men or for you."
"Let Katara go," Aang demanded.
"An acceptable term," the archer said without stress. "If it is in exchange for you."
"Don't do it, Aang!" Katara shouted from her place. The archer sent a glance her direction, neither outraged nor annoyed. Just taking stock. She'd fallen silent, probably because she was sure he was going to slap her. He didn't. "He'll just..." she pressed on as that became clear.
"Silence," the archer demanded. "I do not not know who you've dealt with before me. I am a man of my word, unlike, for example, Mong Ke and his Rough Rhinos. I do not betray. I do my job. My job is capturing the last Storm King. That would be you."
"The Storm Kings died out centuries ago. I'm not one of them. I never was!" Aang stressed. The archer shrugged.
"You fought like Storm Kings when the Purge came. My great grandmother died because of your kind. My father was paralyzed hunting those who escaped. As I see it, the Storm Kings are alive and well," he said without malice. How could somebody so hate filled be so calm? "Contrary to your alarm, I haven't been conscripted to kill you. The King of the North wants you alive, and in chains. After he gets you... I can't say it matters to me."
"He won't keep his word," Katara said. "He'll kill us as..."
"I would have no reason to," the man snapped, impatience finally tinging his words for an instant. He turned back to Aang, still staring along an arrow. "I am many things, Storm King. But I am always professional. Surrender, and no harm will come to your companions by Yu Yan hands. I swear it."
"I can't take that offer," Aang said. "You don't understand how important what I'm doing is. How much is at stake. I can't let the world burn, and I can't let everybody down."
The archer let out a mild sigh. "Your faith and beliefs are strong. Such a pity that they had to be arrayed against us. Make it rain, brothers."
Aang squatted low, in a defensive posture, but his ears detected no whizzing of arrows, no snapping of bowstrings, no whispers of incoming antagonism. Just the hum of wind in the Divide, and the distant drone of the canyon crawlers. Suspicion entered the archer's eyes, and he started to back away, putting Katara between himself and the Avatar. "I offered your friends safe passage for your surrender, but if you won't take that offer, then I'm afraid you must pay forfeits."
But unnoticed by the archer, but not unnoticed by the Avatar, Katara was smirking smugly where she was on her knees. And Aang could also see why; the bonds which were supposed to be containing her, keeping her hands trapped behind her back and close to her feet, were one and all lying in a pool between her legs. Even as the smirk faded, and Katara started to flow into motion, Aang was doing likewise. A stomping step, and a rock kipped up away from the soil, projected by his will. Katara, though, was moving fast, twisting and lashing out with one hand. As she did, a sliver of ice lashed out from her grasp, and shot toward the archer. No, not the archer; at his bow. With the tiniest snickt, the cord parted, and the bow heaved forward, its tension lost completely, leaving the archer holding an arrow with a mildly baffled look on his face. Katara then hit the deck, as Aang moved seamlessly into the next part of his kata.
The simplest of earthbending techniques. To move a rock.
At calamitous speed.
It slammed the archer in the chest, smashing up up against the wall of the Divide, leaving him dazed and winded. Aang sprinted over to his surrogate sister and pulled her into a very fast, very happy embrace, before glancing past her, to the archer once more. "Yeah, I'm alright. I did most of my own saving," Katara noted with pride. The stone opened near the two of them, and about a dozen bodies flopped out of it, groaning and squirming on the ground, with a Toph striding upon their battered forms.
"Yeah, I could 'see' that," Toph said. "How'd you do it? They must have been smart enough to take your water away from you."
"I made my own water," Katara said, wicking some of the sweat from her brow, and levitating it above her palm. "First beerbending, now sweatbending," she said.
"Sweatbending?" Toph asked. "That's actually fairly genius. Stinky and sweaty, but genius."
The grumbling of Appa pulled the attention of those present to the most important thing at the moment; Escape. "Come on," Aang said. "We need to get out of here before they wake up."
"We could just off 'em," Toph pointed out. Sokka shook his head at that.
"That's not the way Aang here does things," he pointed out from his place on Appa's brow. "Something about 'inalienable rights to life' and 'possibility of future redemption' or something like that."
"Sounds exhausting," Toph said flatly.
"It definitely is," Sokka agreed. "Come on. Let's leave this horrible canyon behind us. Forever."
Katara was up on the saddle not long after that, but she immediately dug through the contents of their luggage, even as Aang gave his 'yip yip' and brought the beast into the sky. It wasn't long, maybe a few minutes, before she let out a hiss of alarm. Aang turned to her. "What is it?" he asked.
"Water," she said. "We left all of our water behind."
"No way are we going back to our campsite, Sugar Queen," Toph said vehemently.
"Sugar Queen?" Katara asked, baffled, but shook her head. "No. I've still got an empty skin I was stitching up. It's not like mine, but it'll keep water inside, and since we don't know where to get clean water ahead of us, we might need it."
"So we can just get water anywhere?" Sokka asked. "No problem."
With that, the beast took a dive, back down toward the divide, albeit a few miles away from where they went toe to toe with the people who were specifically trained to kill one of their number.
The sun was beginning to wane in the heavens when the old man finally decided that she was doing it right. She still didn't believe, of course. He was a liar and a traitor. "This had better not be some stupid dance," Azula warned. "Something to amuse your twisted sense of humor."
"My sense of humor is not twisted," Iroh said with a petulant note.
"Yeah, it is," her younger half agreed, however begrudgingly.
"Then prove it," Azula said. "Throw your lighting at me."
"WHAT?" the girl asked.
"What? Are you crazy?" Iroh asked, a frown instantly on his face. "I'm not going to throw lightning at you."
"Why not? It is the only way I'll know if this technique you've shown me is genuine."
"It's incredibly dangerous!" Iroh said. "And that's not the point of this. I'm teaching you something with the hope you will never have to use it. To ask for your own destruction is beyond foolish, it is idiotic. I am not going to wager that body's health on your ability to learn."
"See? Uncle Kook knows that you're not worth the air you're stealing from me," the young Azula pointed out.
"You shut your little mouth, you ratroach!" Azula snapped at the girl, before turning to Iroh. "So you would just have me take on faith that you're not making a fool of me, that you are acting in my best interests, and that you actually taught me something which, by your own admission, you had devised to use against members of your own family."
Iroh nodded. "Yes."
"A clear answer from him? Mark the calendar," the girl said with a roll of big golden eyes and a chuckle.
"And what do I have to base this faith on?" Azula asked, annoyance sliding into her words.
"That Zuko wants you to be alive when he sees you next," Iroh said, turning away from the more dangerous of they two. "We should depart. If you really are going to Ba Sing Se, then you have a long way to travel."
Azula took a moment to consider her next move. The obvious one, the one calling out to her, was a bolt of fire straight into the back of the old traitor's skull, end his long treason here and now. But the instant that thought floated through her consciousness, the young Azula was glaring at her. "Don't. Even. Try," the girl hissed, her words hotter than any flame.
"You wouldn't have the power to stop me," Azula said with a cruel sarcasm.
"I think you overestimate your own control, and underestimate my ability to hurt you," the girl answered her. A sadistic smirk came to the girl's cherubic face. "Go ahead. Try and do it. I dare you."
As tough as she thought she was, Azula had weathered far worse. And her smirk was darker by a half. With a swift and efficient movement, she began her attack, lashing out at the old man while his back was turned.
She didn't even get her arms half way into place before she felt a shifting in her, like a veil sliding over her mind. It felt like her brain was being thrown through a meat-grinder, and as it happened, every muscle in her body locked rigid, and a desperate, horrible wheeze escaped from her lungs. Her eyes bugged wide, and she tipped forward onto her face in the dirt. And then, just as the electricity started to crash through her brain, it stopped. Azula panted for a moment, quietly enough that the old man walking before her couldn't hear. She slowly, achingly pushed herself to her hands and knees. And the girl was smiling smugly, fists on her hips, right before Azula.
"Which one of us is stronger again? I'm afraid I didn't quite hear your answer," the girl said. Azula pushed herself to her feet, stiffly and awkwardly, and started to stagger after the old man. Her muscles would loosen, probably before he even thought to look back. But as it was, it was all she could do to keep herself believing that the tracks of tears down her face were stifled rage, and not cold, dark terror.
Katara didn't take her time filling the skin, but when it proved leakier than she'd feared, she asked them to take a minute or so to patch it up. Sokka, ever the over-planner, agreed with her. After all, people could last a lot longer without food than without water. Toph was busy picking at her feet to be much of a talking companion at the moment, which left Aang wandering the edge of their momentary landing sight. And because of his wandering he heard an anguished bleat.
Aang followed that bleating, until he saw a tiny brown form, huddling in a thorny bush. "Aww," Aang said. "What's a little saber-toothed moose lion cub doing all the way out here? Where's your mama, little buddy?"
It was truly remarkable the transformation these creatures went through over the course of their lives. Born tiny, relatively helpless, drab, and adorable, but maturing into something quite threatening. Those black button eyes would eventually lighten into an uneasy mottle. The teeth in its powerful maw would extend and sharpen to daggers as long as a man's hand, or longer. The body, now so small that Aang could easily lift it with a single hand, would develop into a vast wall of muscle and vitriol, widely accepted as the second most foul-tempered omnivorous hunter in the East Continent, after the obvious Platypus Bear. It pawed at Aang for a moment, and he let it back down onto the ground, and walked after it. It seemed to be making a clear and short path, and he could always shout if something went wrong.
The little cub hadn't gone far. And when Aang saw what lay around the corner he turned, the capacity to yell fled him utterly.
So much blood.
His grey eyes widened in horror as he beheld the scene before him. There were remains of animals strewn about with wild abandon, and more of that same as far toward the artificially close horizon as he cared to look. They hadn't been savaged, as such, but devoured, only the bones too big to fit into their predator's mouth left uneaten and hurled into piles. And the blood was... well... almost everywhere.
And Aang could see what he assumed was the cub's mother. His mind couldn't comprehend. In the Divide, there was no higher predator than the saber toothed moose lion. Since this place was no Azul at the worst of times, he could only wonder in his darkest dreams. And wonder harder, since that moose lion was not the only one so butchered, only the most recent, and the most whole of them. Aang slowly circled that great corpse, and when he saw what had created it, his brain locked up completely.
She was wearing a kavi.
It was little more than rags, now. But Aang could see the yellow and orange and red, put together like it had been stitched whole, only to be torn asunder again. Her hair was as black as Aang's eyebrows, her eyes hooded and darkened enough that he could only guess their color. And her pallor, where it was not brown with filth, was scarlet. The teenaged girl ate with a lunatic hunger, stripping out the offal and gulping it down without hesitation to chew. Aang felt a very real desire to be sick.
"...wha..." he said.
That might have been a mistake, because in an instant, that head twisted toward him, grey eyes wide and bloodshot. She paused, finally stopping her horrid feast. Her mouth worked, almost like it had forgotten how to form words. Maybe, if he was lucky, she had.
"Aa...Aang?" she asked. Aang leaned back. "H...how?"
"What are you doing?" Aang asked, his surprise beating out his horror. "Did you do all of this?"
"Y...you died... How?" she said, her hands still clawing at the innards of the beast, as though her body was trying to compel her to eat even now. "How are you alive?"
"Who are you?" Aang asked, even his outstanding good nature not enough to overcome his revulsion.
"It's me... Malu," she said, getting to her feet with a shaky – and for the bloodiness of it, ghastly – smile, blood and slabs of raw meat in her hands. Because of her seeming unwillingness to let go of one, she flopped it against her chest as she tried to introduce herself. "How are you alive?"
"Malu?" Aang asked, his disbelief stretched to his limit. He knew a Malu, once. She was one of the other airbenders, the one which just about everybody – Aang included – thought was surely the next Avatar. That it turned out to be Aang himself was a kick in the pants. But that Malu, serious, overachieving Malu could be this twisted person... It just didn't make sense. "That... You can't be Malu. She'd never do something like this!" let alone that she would probably be dead of old age by now.
"Something like what?" the young woman asked with an almost desperately oblivious chuckle. "You're not making any sense."
"You killed that thing! You're eating it!" Aang pointed out. She stopped, and looked down at the meat and gore which covered her fingers. Then she looked up, her expression gone from confusion to horror and pain.
"You don't understand," she said, almost at a wail. "...so hungry. Nothing else helps. Only this. I had to do it. I'm so hungry..."
She crammed both fists of meat into her mouth, and ate them with a single bite for the both of them. Even Sokka wasn't that kind of dedicated carnivore. "This isn't right! Air Nomads are vegetarian; we're not supposed to harm any living creature!"
"But I'm soooo hungry," her words becoming desperate, her eyes darkened, and her lips peeled back. It wasn't the teeth which caused Aang to take a retreating step. It was the fact that there was naked oblivion beyond them. The moose lion let out a terrified bleat of its own, and Malu's head tilted down, and a scream came from her mouth, so similar to those blood things from the ruin that it made Aang flinch. And when Malu hurled herself at the tiny creature, Aang responded immediately. A blast of airbending almost as hard as rubber, bashing her springing attack aside, and dashing her against the wall of the Divide. She bounced off and rolled to her feet, her eyes wild and insane. "So hungry! HAVE TO EAT!"
This time, when she hurled herself forward, it was not at the moose lion cub, but at Aang himself. He backed away, and only because of his hands fearfully before him did he managed to intercept her, as she snapped herself onto him, the air between them exploding out of the way so she could reach him in a fraction of the time any creature dealing with wind resistance would have. She was curled up, tipping him back as their combined weight was barely enough for Aang to keep balanced, and only then, because Toph had made such a point and good effort at toughening him up. Her scarletted fists were balled in his kavi, and his own could barely keep her from leaning in closer, from biting at him, as her teeth slammed shut with horrid clacks before his face.
"Aang what was that sound?" Sokka's voice came from somewhere back where they had gathered. All of the Avatar's effort, though was put into keeping the insane girl from tearing him apart. And it was obviously not quite enough. Head on wasn't the answer to this question, he realized. Sharif was more right than Aang had realized. Being Avatar wasn't just bending all the elements. It was thinking with four minds. And right now, he needed to be an airbender. With a flash of his hands, twisting away from her chest where they were holding her at bay, he spun an air scooter into existence between then, and let her try to close distance. When she did, her body was caught on the vortex of the bubble of wind, and twisted aside, causing one hand to rip free of its grip on his clothing. With that freed hand and her lost momentum, he flicked a hand, and a column of stone jutted up from the ground, striking her squarely in the face.
"Ooooh... sorry," Aang said, as she finally let him slip only due to her being knocked brutally away. It let him take a step back from her. She got up, eyes now reddened and twisted into utter madness. With a puff, she spat out the teeth he'd knocked loose, but as she kipped back to her squatting posture, he could see some sort of horrible energy tearing at her gums, and new teeth erupt bloodily from the gaps he'd created. "By the gods... What are you?"
"AVATAR!" she screamed, echoing through the Divide. "HUNGRY!"
And then he knew. He didn't know how it was possible, but he was as sure as of his own shadow on a sunny day. With another squeal, she twisted her arms again, bending the air out from between them, readying herself for another kinetic launch, but this time, Aang knew her trick, and countered it with yet another form of thought. Defend and counterattack. With a twist of his body, he ducked the launch, causing her to smash against the red stone of the Divide, and before she even turned to lash at him again, he was sinuously twisting the bloody water into a whip which he slammed over her, knocking her back once more. A glance aside revealed that Katara and Sokka had rounded the corner, he with the usual goofy grin, she with a look of stress and consternation. That grin turned to horror quickly, and stress turned into the cold mask of the Summavut veteran.
"Tui La, what the hell happened here?" Sokka asked.
Malu answered by rising, despite Aang's attempts to buffet her down. With a hand, she cast aside and a line of detonations moved through the air as it was burst in a wave. Katara instantly bent the water to her defense, creating a shield against it. The attack passed straight through it, and slammed her to the ground. Sokka, non-bender that he was, just opted to dodge it, and stayed on his feet, machete now in hand. Bloody maw, head and all, turned toward Aang, and she charged for the third time. This time, Aang's attempt to divert her was smashed through, his attempts to dodge countered when she caught one of his bending arms and twisted it up. Then, with her other hand, she grasped his throat, rising him up from the ground, crushing his wind pipe.
Fingers cut into the throat. Nails tore at skin. No air. No life.
But there were four elements, and in the Avatar's moment of most abject desperation, he called on one which he didn't even know he had in him. With his one remaining fist, thrust forward, the air between his knuckles and his former fellow airbender's face turned into fire. It lashed at her, and she recoiled, grip loosening slightly, but not enough. Because even though he'd cooked her head, she was still holding him, and when the smoke began to clear, her skin was already stretching back into place, pulled by horrible black cords each no larger than a hair. She screamed, that horrible wail of insanity and hunger from beyond the walls of regular reality, and pulled him closer, her fist closing all the tighter.
And then there was a machete in her skull. Her eyes lost their madness, her expression shifted into one of utter bafflement, and her hands fell limp. Sokka, machete in hand, followed her down as she slumped, his weapon still buried several inches into her head. With a yank he pulled it out, before pulling Aang away from her and behind him, weapon still before him. As Aang glanced around Sokka's back, he could see why. Those same black threads which knitted her skin were replicating the same process on her head, pulling the pink meats of her brain together, the bloody white of her skull. "I'm guessing she's not going to stay down," Sokka said, with real alarm. Aang nodded, and quickly blew hard on his bison whistle. Appa trundled around that corner a few moments later, and the two Tribesmen were quickly scrambling up its haunch, and Aang took his place in one bound to Appa's brow. But even as they did, Malu was slowly pushing herself to her feet once more.
"What are you doing? Let's get out of here!" Sokka stressed from the lip of the howdah, directly to Aang's back. But even as he reached for the reins, he could see that little moose lion cub, pawing at its mother. Aang felt his jaw set, and he leaned down to Appa, whispering his commands, and leaning back to Sokka.
"Go get Toph before it's too late!" Aang shouted, heaving the reins up and back, before bounding off of Appa's head. Malu was already turning from the larger targets to the more convenient ones. The small, adorable, helpless ones. With a twist of his arms, he shepherded the air between he and the cub aside, creating a tube of almost perfect vacuum. And then, with a punt of airbending at his back, he hurled himself through it, crossing the dozens of yards in a fraction of a second, leaving that tube with an audible and visceral thud. Malu was getting ready to hurl herself at the creature, so Aang wasted no time. With one hand, he grabbed the cub. With the other, he twirled open his glider, using that motion to buffet Malu away from them. It was just successful enough to stop her in her tracks, and give Aang the fraction of a second he needed to take to the sky, one hand guiding him, the other holding the terrified animal.
His flight was short, which was for the best, because he was bone tired. With a quite ungraceful landing, he dropped into the howdah, using his own body to comfort the drop for the young animal. Katara looked a little confused. "What just happened back there?" she asked.
"Yeah," Toph said, rotating her arm as though she'd pulled it. "You wander off for five minutes, and then Brain here is screaming holy terror and heaving me up onto the flying carpet at a sprint. Did the Yu Yan find us?"
Aang shook his head, and when he remembered who he was talking to, said aloud; "No. Something far worse."
"What could be worse than the Fire Nation getting ahold of you?" Katara asked.
"The end of the world," Aang said, pulling his knees to his chest, an shivering as the adrenaline poured out of his body, leaving him feeling weak, exhausted. "Irukandji was right. Imbalance is here, and I don't know if we can stop it."
Katara gaped in shock. "That was Imbalance? That girl in the yellow robes?"
"That must be her Host," Toph said. "We should go back and kill her, then."
"Not possible," Sokka spoke up, even before Aang could voice his utter refusal to that plan. "That chick just doesn't seem capable of dying, even with a blade in her brain."
"Oh... well, that's a problem," Toph said. Then, there was a pause. "Two things, Twinkletoes. Is that a saber toothed moose lion cub I hear?"
"Yeah..."
"Huh. Second; where do we go now? Since I got you earthbending like an old hand, and all..."
"I don't know," Aang said. "I just don't know."
"I must say, this food is far better than we got earlier," Ashan pointed out, as he gnawed on his kebab with gusto. Tzu Zi joined him with that same glee, while Sharif ate, as usual, with mechanical obligation, the same enthusiasm he'd shown when eating the dross. Nila just rolled her eyes.
"Of course it is," Nila said. "What they gave before was not fit for the consumption of sheep pigs."
"I'm sure they tried their best," Tzu Zi stated diplomatically from where they had gathered, near the front of the ship as was their new-found custom. Nila scoffed.
"'Their best' gave at least a quarter of the passengers food poisoning," she stated. "I had a chat with the owner and made his position in this enterprise clear. After that, he had a change of thought."
"A change of thought which results in food of this quality is a fine change indeed," Ashan agreed, savoring his supper. Nila turned, and saw the pale woman appearing near their midst, albeit without the same flinch and stammer which Ashan and Tzu Zi gave.
"So you came through," she said, not asked. A glance toward Tzu Zi, her eyes resting there a bit longer than Nila was sure how to interpret, before shifting back to Nila herself. "Good. You preventing Jet from doing something dangerous and ill-advised."
"I did not do this for your Jet," Nila said plainly.
"I know," Shadow answered. "You're honest. That's a good quality. And you've done me a favor, in keeping Jet away from his old ways. He needs a fresh start more than most, and you proved he might find one. Thank you."
"It was just food," Nila said.
"Food that you got by talking to a man, rather than stealing it," Shadow pointed out. "Jet has lived a hard life, and I feel you could be a positive role model for him."
Nila leaned back, a scowl on her face. "I have no desire to shepherd your paramour through his life."
"And I won't ask you to," Shadow said. "But still, you did him a favor. One I won't forget."
"You're welcome to eat with us, if you like?" Tzu Zi said, extending a second skewer. Shadow frowned at the girl.
"...Ty Lee?" Shadow asked. Tzu Zi's smile faltered at that.
"N...no... My name's Tzu Zi," she said. Shadow shook her head, rubbing it with the heel of her hand.
"I see. I thought you were somebody I used to know, a long time ago," she said. She turned back to Nila. "I will keep Jet from destroying himself, and you've made that easier. It's a debt I will repay," she said solemnly. She gave a nod each to Tzu Zi and Ashan, before slipping back into the background, and out of sight.
"A very stern girl," Ashan said contemplatively.
"She kinda reminds me of somebody I know," Tzu Zi said, giving a significant glance toward Nila.
"I am nothing like her," Nila said.
"Too serious, of strange habits, and a penchant towards being out of place?" Ashan noted. "Hmm. Who else do we know who showcases such tendencies?"
"Nothing. Like. Her." Nila stressed.
"Oh, she's just jealous 'cause Shadow's got a boyfriend and she doesn't," Tzu Zi said brightly.
"I am not seeking a mate, nor a paramour, nor a guest-for-the-evening!" Nila snapped.
"Such a shame. I think you'd be a very good girlfriend," Tzu Zi opined. Nila, of course, harrumphed at the notion, as Ashan chuckled, before returning to his kebab. Then, Tzu Zi seemed to reconsider. "But then again, with the way she thinks, she'd probably be the 'boyfriend' in any relationship she was in, an I right?"
Ashan had the decency to choke on the kebab, which set Nila to laughter.
First off, I swear I wrote the Malu part long before the Florida Cannibal. Remember that I have a roughly two month buffer.
The throw-down between Old'Zula and Lil'Zula is still waiting in the wings, but the two of them are learning that they are mutually incompatible. Old'Zula grew up somewhere closer to canon, pushed into a role of 'crazy little weapon' by her father and utterly ignored by her mother. Lil'Zula was at the center of a tug-of-war between Ursa and Ozai which ironically almost turned 3F Zuko into Canon Azula. The two 'Zulas don't understand each other, don't see eye to eye, and will punch each other in the throat, given an opportunity. It's just that Lil'Zula figured out how to first.
Also, just because Old'Zula is a generally hate-filled person, doesn't mean she's utterly without humanity. Remember that there's only one character in this fic who is a monster, and Azula ain't the one. She's bitter, yes, but that bitterness gives her a level of humanity in places that even Lil'Zula wouldn't be able to match. For example, Lil'Zula will walk blithely by a child being threatened, but Old'Zula will bring down the hammer on anybody so debase. Old'Zula had pleasant memories. Most of them were bound up in her children. That makes her a bit single minded, in certain ways.
Finally, Korra is not from 'the' future of 3F, because, as Sokka continuously says, the laws of physics prevent time-travel. She is from 'a' future. One where Azula murdered Aang.
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