It started as a crunch of ice. A crack along a dark blue surface, causing all of the Tribesmen around it to step back. Expectant eyes looked on, but none so expectant as the shining blue of the teenaged girl with the stark white hair. The wind, which had been howling mere moments ago, tearing the heat from even the most cunningly girded bodies, fell silent. The hard and vacant skies, showing the great gibbous form of their deity above, offered very little respite besides that. The heart of South Tribal Winter was not a time for the many to be gathered so far from their igloos and tents.

But the many, be they shaman or not, they all came, because they had to see.

The ice cracked louder, a rent opening and spreading away from the stone on the southern side of the spire that was Chimney Mountain, the long extinct volcano which gave the city its ancient name – Niira-Qatouravut – but it did not collapse, as ice so often did. Instead, the cracks presaged a mounting up, the snapping and popping of the glacial ice mounting higher, and according to a very clear design. It spread, a great arc, cutting toward the stone of the shore. And the ice crept further still, surrounding and grinding that stone clear of the mountain, pulling it away to a din of crashing rocks. An island of scree, floating amidst the ice.

Then, the island began to sprout and flourish, grasses appearing ex nihilo. A tree mounted, rising from nothing. The Tribesmen watched, unable to speak, as the walls came to a head just at the top of the tree's boughs, a dome that shone with crystal clarity, onto the island that had been pulled out of place.

"Are they there?" Wequais asked of Yue. She walked to the island, pressing a hand to the trunk of the tree. She bowed down her head.

"Please..." she begged. "Don't leave us. Not now."

She turned, to see that the water between the walls and the island starting to melt. The shamans and Tribesmen with her had to scramble, either outside the walls, or into the island with her. When the ice had receded to water completely, and a breeze of warm summer wafted amongst them, she saw who they had so desperately wanted.

Two koi-fish, circling each other, even as they circled the island.

"We're going to be alright," Yue swore. "We will survive."


The light was penetrating, glaring into her eyes the moment that she had the wherewithal to open them. A ragged groan escaped her throat – one that ached a bit – and she flopped a hand over those eyes to protect them. She felt exhausted, light-headed, and a little bit sick. But then again, she did have a distinct memory of having her throat slit, so if all she felt was a bit tired, then that was a blessing beyond measure. The problem was, she wasn't entirely sure that she had survived. Thus, the first question which escaped her lips was "...am I dead?"

"Were you dead, you would no doubt find yourself in much better company than I," Nila's voice intruded on her self-induced darkness. "Tribesman. Tribesman... Sokka! Wake up!"

"Herm phua what?" Sokka said, as he flailed his way to consciousness.

"Your sister is alive," Nila said idly, while she delicately bent some tiny scrap of metal, for purposes that Katara neither knew nor had any place knowing.

"Really?" Sokka asked. He lifted the hand away from Katara's face, and when she winced against the light – which wasn't very bright as the day was a solid overcast – he burst into a beaming grin. "Tui La, you had me scared there for a while, little sis," he said.

"...repaying the favor," Katara told him. As far as near-death episodes where they were in the hands of the other, they'd just come out even. "Hmmm... what happened?"

"A lot, actually," Sokka said. "First there was..."

"Your Avatar brought down much of the city of Azul and absconded with you from the rubble. Simple," Nila said.

"Come on, there's a lot more to it than that," Sokka said.

"Where am I?" she asked, finally starting to take a look around her, now that she could do so without a searing pain in her eyes. The environs were cramped, all wooden, but they lacked the constant sway of a ship-at-sea, so she hadn't the first clue. Perhaps a country-inn or something? She retracted that thought when she beheld so many trinkets, brooch-paintings, and doodads that hung from the walls and ceiling. This was somebody's living space. Somebody's very tiny living space.

Hell, her igloo back home was bigger.

"So she's actually coming around is she?" Zuko's neutral voice intruded. He opened the door at the far end of the room, letting more pale gray light in, but mercifully blocking it as he did so. "I could have known that she was too stubborn to die."

"Women are tougher than men. Hasn't anybody ever told you that?" Katara asked, her tones raw. Again, considering, that was a small price.

"I grew up with my sister. I'm painfully aware," he answered. He turned to the others. "They're pegging down; I think that means they're going to stay here for a while."

"Well, that can only be good, now that we are far away from that hellish city," Nila said.

"You haven't answered my question," Katara said.

"Hrm? Oh, right; we're traveling with some Gorks," Sokka said. He flashed a grin. "I'm getting treated like a king. And angry-jerk is getting treated like garbage! I love it!"

"Not garbage... just with general distrust that they're entitled to, given our history," Zuko corrected. "And I thought you said that you were done with that 'angry-jerk' business?"

"Yeah, but you've gotta break out the classics for special occasions," Sokka said.

"I have no idea how you put up with him," Zuko said to the Si Wongi. She gave a chortle, and continued to give her undivided attention to that tiny scrap of brass.

"What... about Aang?" Katara asked.

"Oh, he's fine," Sokka said. Katara didn't believe that for a second. While she didn't have a whole lot of memory of what happened – exsanguination was kinda the thing on her mind at the time – she distinctly remembered that look of unforgiving wrath on the airbender monk's face. The specific and unstoppable hatred. The look on Aang was... frankly, the look that Azula had every time she tried to kill Katara.

"Really. What happened?" Katara asked.

"There was a thing with ghosts. Very dramatic. Maya Azul threw Azula off a cliff, Aang caught her. Face-suckage ensued. There was much rejoicing," Sokka said. And promptly got cuffed in the back of the head. "Ow! What was that for?"

"You do realize you're talking about my little sister, right?" Zuko asked, his tones more annoyed than angry. Zuko turned to her next. "I've got a feeling that having to save peoples' lives distracted him from allowing himself to mope. Which is a good thing, because unless we can come up with something to resurrect the plan... or come up with a new one... then we're going to run out of time. It's already getting worse."

"Zhao is the Fire Lord, we've lost everything we came to Azul for. How could it get worse?" Katara asked, as she slowly and with great effort pushed herself to a recline. The others all looked amongst themselves, as though none of them knew how to say what was clear to them, but not to her. "...it found a way to get worse didn't it?" she asked.

Zuko sighed and nodded, then stepped aside from the door. She squinted from the sudden light... and then her eyes went wide despite herself.

It was snowing.

"...I... how long was... Where..." Katara couldn't think of what question to ask first.

Sokka moved to the door, pulling Katara up with him as he went, until the two of them pressed past Zuko and sat on the back step of the... wagon? Really? Katara looked around, to the other wagons that were starting to unfurl canopies over their windows and back steps, poles being driven into the ground to sport awnings. Probably intended to keep rain off of heads, but now... now they held fluffy white. She turned her head slowly, until she saw mountains in the distance, their peaks belching grey smoke through the glaciers atop them. Too many to be any place but one.

"I don't know what to tell you," Sokka said. "...other than it looks like the Fire Nation's finally seeing what a real winter is like."

"How long?" Katara asked.

"About a week. Don't panic," Sokka said.

"It's snowing in the Fire Nation, in the middle of summer," Katara summarized, still trying to make herself believe what she saw. The wind was chill, yes, but she was dressed even now for that kind of weather. A lot of others wouldn't be.

Sokka just nodded, a very solemn look on his usually rubbery and goofy face. He just stared at the sky, the fat flakes of drifting snow. "To be honest, I didn't want to believe it. I mean, I went along with it 'cause, you know, fighting the Fire Nation, whoo... but..." he shook his head. He puffed out a sigh, which swirled before him. "I think we're really watching the start of the end of the world."

Katara was transfixed for quite a while, but she finally shook her head. "No. Aang's going to find a way to stop this. He'll find some way to make this right."

"I really hope you're right, Katara. I really, really do," Sokka said.


Chapter 12

The Children of the Sun


Breathe in through the mouth. Hold the breath, draw it deep into the lungs. Right to the bottom, almost until it puffed out his stomach. Until it ached. Then, let it rise once more. Up the throat and out the nose, carrying with it the strain, the effort of the breathing. It was a hard way to breathe, not something that anybody would do day-to-day, but that wasn't the point. The point was to focus on the breathing itself, until there was nothing left on his mind. And since there was so damned much on his mind, it took quite a bit of breathing to reach that point.

At least he wasn't breathing alone.

"You're still worried," Malu said from Aang's side, where she mimicked him – bettered him, in a lot of ways – leaving the rest of the people below. The terrain here wasn't sheer cliffs and dropoffs, but the jagged, black, volcanic rocks made this a secluded hill, where nobody would trespass 'less they wanted a boot full of natural glass. "We're going to be alright. You don't need to carry us on your back too, you know?"

"That's the thing," Aang said, after the breath left his nose. "I am carrying all of you. I'm carrying the entire world. And I don't know how to win."

"We'll find a way," Malu said, her tone resolute. He opened his eyes, turning to her, seeing that she had her posture perfect, her eyes still shut. "Between the cute Tribesman and the moody firebender, we've got some good schemers on hand. They'll find an inspiration somewhere."

"I hope so," Aang said. He heard a rumbling below, away from where the Ghorkalai had taken for camp. It was mechanical, metal upon metal, a sort of chugging noise that was slowly growing closer. "I... I wonder if Appa's okay."

"He's fine. I just have a feeling," Malu said.

"I wish I had a bit more than your feeling... no offense."

Her lips pulled into a frown. "...I know how much it hurts to be without your bison. Ihah... she died right in front of me, and all I could do was crawl away and hide. But that isn't now, and Appa's not being hunted by an entire enraged Fire Nation. You'll have Appa back again."

Aang really wished that he had his cohort's faith. He really wished he had faith in general, right now. So much of it had been stripped away over the last few months. What he had left was... shaky. But he held to it. There was a way to win this war, and to save this world. They wouldn't be easy, but there was a way.

A breath, in through the mouth, out through the nose. He glanced over his shoulder as a machine gradually rounded a hill in the distance, a great engine propelling it forward, belching steam as it went. Behind it, cars and cars and cars. A great train, all of a single device. The world had changed so much since he was a kid. "Malu?"

"Yeah, Aang?"

"I think I need to go check something," he said.

"Check what?"

"With Avatar Korra," he said.

Malu opened her eyes then, turning toward him. "What, your future you? What's brought this on?"

"Well, I... I don't think I'm going to be able to do anything just sitting here. Out there in the spirit world, there might be something I'm not seeing. A path we haven't taken yet. An ally we haven't made."

Malu nodded slowly. "Yeah, that sounds possible."

"You should go tell the others," Aang said.

"And let you wander the Spirit World alone and helpless? Not a chance," Malu said. She thrust a thumb toward herself. "I've got a keener sense of the anomolies and the traps of the Spirit World than anybody alive... well, Nila's brother excepted. You can't do anybody any good if you step into a... what did Nila call the green thing?"

"Fruit punch?"

"Right. Step into a fruit punch and get your legs melted off," Malu said. She pressed her eyes shut, then opened them slowly and deliberately. She clucked her tongue as she looked around. "Man. It's like they're everywhere I look, nowadays."

Aang, not catching her meaning, opened the World Eyes as well. What he saw was a little concerning. Where once rifts, the portals for the physical to enter into the spiritual, were once mere ripples in the fabric of what was, now they were gaping rents. Some of them extended straight from the Mortal world into the Spirit, with no stop between or warning of transit. They hung suspended in the sky. They lay partially buried in the stone. The mechanical train down in the valley zipped harmlessly through one that reached from the Outer Sphere into a place far beyond it, but didn't touch the Inner at all. It was a lot worse even than when he'd looked during his time in Azul.

They were running out of time.

He got to his feet, picking his way carefully over the long cooled magma, where it ran in curved mounds, avoiding the parts where it had broken and sheered into razor-sharp edges. "Are you sure that you want to do this?" Aang asked, as he pulled off his headband, letting the hair that'd been growing for more than a month start to flop down a bit over the arrow in its stead. He dropped it on the lava flow, even as he dragged his toe through it, carving out a simple message as to where he'd gone, and who'd gone with him. No need to worry them all.

"Are you kidding? I wanna meet this future you you keep talking about," Malu said with a grin.

"I've got a feeling that she's going to like you," Aang said, and then gave a mild moan as the implications of that sank in. "And that's going to be a nightmare."

"Oh, you're too serious by a half and too worried by three-quarters," Malu said, clapping him on the back, before she stepped through a rent, and vanished from the Mortal world completely. Aang only shook his head for a few seconds, before he pulled in one final breath. In through the mouth, out through the nose, before following after her.

He was instantly falling.

His scream of surprise was cut off when he caught the ground sloping up to meet him, and started to roll, cascading down the humus that was dry, grey, and dead. He came to a halt amidst dead roots and petrified wood, mere feet from where Malu was herself slowly shaking off her tumble. "That was..."

"Yeah," Malu nodded. "Gonna have to watch out for that."

"You could have warned me," Aang said, pushing himself to his feet manually, as there was no airbending kip that he could perform here.

"If I'd known," she nodded. She pushed herself from her sit to a lean against the drab, lifeless tree. "So where are we heading?"

"Toward the city," he said. She glanced at him, and he shook his head. "...not that city. I'll explain as we go."


Breathe in through the nose, and pull it deep. At the bottom of her lungs, set it on fire, and let it come roaring back out. Azula's body moved through motions that had so long been practiced into her that they were as much a part of her as her eyes, her skin, or her hair. Rotes that were once so rigid. Now, though, there was a more organic blending. The rigidity of old Azula had been supplemented by the mental youth of the rest of her. She was learning again.

She also had an audience.

"Why do you insist on watching me?" Azula asked the teenagers who'd been gawking at her since she'd started. Even despite the cold, the snow that dropped in a solid blasphemy against what it meant to be the Fire Nation, Azula wasn't bound up for warmth, or cold despite that lack of adornment. Activity had the way of melting even the most frozen of forms.

"That's amazing," a girl roughly her age said, staring with wide, dark eyes. "How'd you learn to do that?"

"Do what?" Azula asked.

"That isn't the way we do it at all," another, this one a strapping lad probably a year older than Azula, mentioned. "You've got a lot of power, yeah, but control?"

Azula raised a brow, then spun low into a thrust of azure flame, racing off of two fingers, and intercepting his cup as he was lifting it for a drink. It shattered and he tipped back off of his stool with a scream of shock and surprise. The others, watching, either laughed, or gave awed 'oooh's. "I have precision to spare. Don't make claims on my skill that you can't back up," Azula said. The young man shook his head, and got up, though. He had a scrutinous look in his bright grey eyes. "What? Have I offended your honor? Am I going to have to beat you in an Agni Kai to settle this?"

"Nothing so lethal. Just... Try to hit me again," he said.

Her brow rose. "Really?" she asked.

"Yeah. Hit me. Try to," he said.

"I don't miss what I aim at," Azula warned. "This will be painful and embarrassing, in some measure of the two."

"Fairly warned. Now stop talkin' about hitting me, and try to hit me," he said, a smirk coming to his face. She rolled her eyes, shaking her head as she did so. But she interrupted that look of bewilderment with a sudden assault, a single blast of flame held golden so that it probably wouldn't kill him.

He swept flames from his own hands, a brace against the blast that she'd sent that reached it just before it struck him. The impact spun him in the air like a top, but he kicked out a blast of flame from one bootheel, righting himself and landing a few yards further away, the smuggest look on his face. Her own brow drew down in concentration. She twisted an axe kick of scarlet flames toward him, but he caught and rolled with that blow as well, not even so much as singeing his shirt as he flipped and landed on his feet a yard away from her point of assault. He hopped up, limbering his limbs and cracking his knuckles.

"Alright, missy, le's see how you deal with this," he offered. Then, with a twisting bound, he sent forward a snaking rope of golden fire toward her. This one Azula dug her feet into the near-freezing mud and swept her own flames into a wedge before the tips of her fingers. Her own greater flame split the rope, sending it flailing beyond her, until she thrust a bolt of fire forward from her fingertips and let it run up the bolt, unraveling it further. It was an exchange that took all of two seconds, but ended with the other releasing the blast and hopping back, practically dancing in place. "Got some skill, I'll be th' first to admit."

"Decades of practice," Azula said. She launched a blast of flame at his legs, just to see what he'd do with it. That, he simply levered a foot forward, creating a plane which drove her incoming blast into the clay. The kick of it pushed him back, but he used the upward momentum, plus rocket-fists behind him, to arrest him. He swept into a great sheet of flames that seemed to billow out, obeying no style that Azula knew about, as it rippled toward her. Getting out of the way of that random and flopping assault would be almost impossible, and standing her ground would be tricky as she couldn't predict how it'd land.

So she tried something different. Even in the fraction of a second that sheet of flames seared toward her, she started thinking about how other people dealt with firebending attacks. Waterbending wouldn't help her here. But airbending?

She swept a leg back, twisting as she went so that when she levied a protective shield of flames against that sheet, it served the purpose of sending her into a flying spin, rather than simply rooting her to the ground and having flame bathe her. She landed with remarkable grace, all things considered. As she did, a fresh attack was coming in. Without even thinking, she hinged herself to a side, letting the bolt of fire streak past and die inside a snow-covered bush. "You don't put a lot of power into your attacks," Azula said, as she regained normal footing.

"What we firebend against, don't tend to stand on two legs."

"That could be so much better if you just put your lungs into it," Azula said, as the two began to circle. Even without her realizing, she'd developed a bit of an audience. He, the young local, dancing his way in a circuit, his limbs in constant motion, his eyes on the most dangerous part of her – her hands. She, the daring interloper, the unknown, the dark Ostrich Horse, moving with a much more sedate rhythm, one that spoke of a long knowledge of exactly how to move in a fight. Knowledge, of many, many fights in general. And so it went, with move and riposte, neither landing a strike, neither losing their footing. A dance of violence and flame.

A dance of dragons.


"This isn't what I remember the Spirit world being like at all," Malu noted, as they passed from the riverbank into what looked like a road cobbled by a single piece of something black and rough, the transition happening over the course of one step.

"A lot of things have changed," Aang said. He almost stepped forward over a metal grill set into the ground when Malu let out a hiss, and tugged him to one side. He trusted her instincts on that matter. She probably knew the Spirit world better than he did... in this way. In others, Aang was actually more expert. It was a pity that neither Nila nor Sharif were handy; they had both of them trounced flat. "Like you. You seem a lot more calm than I remember you being."

"I was thirteen when you knew me. I had a lot of growing up to do," she said primly. "And don't step there."

Aang once again avoided the space under a pole, that was set across with something like a glistening spider-web. Only it couldn't be, because Aang'd never seen a spider in here. "I was talking about... You know..."

Malu nodded, as they passed into a forest of buildings, all of them standing taller than anything that Aang had seen in Ba Sing Se, or Azul, or even Caldera City back when he was still somewhat welcome there. It wasn't just that they were tall, though. It was that they were boring about being tall. An edifice of this height would have been the centerpoint of a city. Instead, they're just everywhere, begrudging their size, their bricks faded and grey, their glass-paned windows weeping stains down which nobody bothered to clean. If this was the future, then the future was boring. And a bit bleak.

"I've learned a lot of hard lessons," Malu said. "And so have you."

"I don't want to talk about that," Aang said, glancing away.

"Aang, I don't want to push you on this, but the fact is, you do have to talk about it," she said, then grabbed Aang's shoulder and made him abruptly stop. She looked around, nervousness on her face. "You have to... to... hide, now."

Aang nodded, and backed off, ducking into the dark gap between two of those hulking buildings, pressing back through it until they passed some sort of barely substantial, metal containers which sat forever empty. The two of them hunkered down there, staring out into the dim light, amidst the dim shadow. They didn't speak. They just watched, and waited. And ahead of them, after almost a minute in silence, a black-skinned, red eyed form strode past, its maw wide. Aang was pretty sure he forgot to breathe, with that thing so close. Probably because he was afraid to. The dread that had come with it started to fade, and finally, Aang silently moved forward, peering around the corner, into the streets that it had passed.

"...well, that was terrifying," Malu said, very quietly. She looked ahead of her. "Huh."

"What?"

"That thing got rid of all the traps and stuff that we were walking into," she said. She turned grey eyes to Aang. "Where's this Korra supposed to be, anyway?"

Aang swung his head about, until he saw that single window which was larger than the otherwise identical ones which plagued this so-called city. Whatever place this was modeled off of, it had no soul, that was certain. Aang pointed. "That one," he said.

Malu dragged him along, across the distances. As they reached the door, Malu flinched again, and looked behind them. "We've got to get inside," she said.

"There's more of them?"

"You wouldn't believe how many," Malu said. Aang pulled the door, and it opened to his hand. It would have accepted none-other than Korra's, actually. It was pretty specific about that. The two of them darted inside, and he pulled the door shut, before returning his attention to the 'apartment' before them. He knew from past experience that he was now on that very-high floor, having not stepped a single step upward. The Spirit World was strange like that. What struck him, though, was that the hallway was bright. Motes of silvery light floated, like tiny lanterns, banishing shadows throughout the apartment.

As he passed further in, toward the room with the oversized fengxiang sort of device in it. As he went, he noted the doors. Notably, there weren't any. The frames, too, had been violently removed, hewn out until there was no real threshold to walk through. Man, this place had become seriously Shard-proofed. "What a dump," Malu said.

"This dump is probably the only safe place in the Spirit World right now," Korra's voice came from one room, as she slipped behind Aang and draped an arm over the shoulder of both he and Malu. "Something happened up top that made the Shards go friggin' nuts. I'm guessing that was you?"

"I don't think so," Aang said.

"This is Korra?" Malu asked.

"The one and only. Who are you?" she asked, only mild confusion on her spectral face.

Malu shrugged her way out from under Korra's arm, and backed to the wall. "I'm sorry, I'm just having trouble understanding how your future self can be here without... It doesn't make sense!"

"Yeah, well, that's the way things go when the Avatar is around," Korra said, releasing Aang before the dreaded noogie could take place. She leaned in the threshold opposite Malu. "Seriously. Who are you? You don't look familiar."

"Korra? This is Malu."

"The other airbender? Huh. Thought she'd be either a lot older, or a bit younger," Korra said. "Well, you've picked a dicey time to show up."

"Really? Why?" Aang asked.

"I'm waiting on a spirit that's on our side. Have you heard of Irukandji?" she asked.

"He's the only reason the North Water Tribe survived at all," Aang said. "What happened to her, since the start of summer, I mean?"

"We'll see, soon enough," Korra said. She puffed out a breath, strange as it was for something that didn't need to breathe. "I hope you've got a plan for stopping this whole 'end of the world' business. 'Cause I'm coming up blank."

"...I was hoping that you had something," Aang said. Korra rolled her eyes.

"We'll come up with something. Don't get all mopey. If there's one thing the years have taught me, it's that it's never easy."

"That doesn't fill me with confidence," Aang said.

"Really? She's you?" Malu said, pointing between the two.

"Yeah, I get that a lot," Korra said with a dismissing wave. She leaned toward Aang. "You'd think they didn't realize that we get reincarnated, not reborn."

"Yeah. It's just that... I could use a bit of good news right now," Aang said. Korra looked to Malu.

"He's had a very rough week," she said. Korra just nodded.

"I know how that goes."


It had gone beyond simple pride, the movements that she sent out, blazing with flame that scorched the snow away. Now, there was a simplicity of joy to it. A curiosity to it. She pulled out her trickiest maneuvers, the ones drilled into her head from the age of eight. He slipped around them like she was a stock-still earthbender. He launched forward with something that looked somewhat based on what she did, and she adapted. Now, kicks were barely missing heads, fists of flames searing past bent-back chins, the two of them inside each other's reach as their practice turned into something somewhat like a dance. If a dance that could kill anybody within ten yards of them, anyway.

The only warning that Azula got from the Ghorkalai firebender was a twinkle in his eye, one of mischief and glee. A kick, which had just shot past her neck, burning with flame, suddenly snapped back toward her, this time aiming far lower than her head, and without so much as a spark trailing. The sweep caught her right behind her calf and pulled, sending her off balance even more than she already was to avoid the kick. She felt herself starting to fall. But she wasn't just learning from this firebender. She learned from everybody. Even the airbender.

She flared out a jet to reset herself, landing with a single hand connecting her to the ground, her body twisting in the air, spinning like that damned Avatar, but rather than having blasts of wind propelling her, she 'made do' with rockets of flame. When she'd set her balance just right, she continued her twist, sending another foot past his head and toward the ground. He had the choice of taking the kick and knocking her flat, or dodging the kick, and missing his opportunity. Azula somewhat thought he'd do the former; it was what all young firebenders did, until they learned how dangerous firebending could be. Those who were schooled in the fight-or-die that their elemental martial art so often became, they knew that an instant's prudence could extend a lifetime, sometimes quite considerably. It seemed that whoever he was, he was of the latter philosophy.

Her movement finished in its great spin, her feet now firmly below her, and on fist blazing with blue flames searing toward the side of his head. And there it stopped, burning, an inch away. She breathed heavy, steaming in the cold air. The boy did too, shocked that she'd bested him. In truth, if this were life and death, she would have ended it ten minutes ago with a lightning bolt, but she wanted to see what he was capable of. It turned out, rather a lot.

"Not bad," Azula said.

"You're not bad y'self," he said, shifting so that his balance was no longer precariously twisted beneath him. "Stunning to see that one of those soft, Shinzo types actually knows how to chuck a flame."

"I'm harder than you can possibly imagine," Azula said, letting the flames die and stepping back. She looked him up and down. In all of her lives, she'd never known this lad. And somebody of his skill would have come to her attention, either as an ally against her brother, or as an ally of her brother against her. "What is your name?"

"Askin' me out?" he said with a smirk. Her flat response drove that smirk away.

"I've never met somebody who could keep up with me in my native element – when I wasn't in the midst of a psychotic breakdown, anyway – until now. I want to know why I've never heard of you," Azula said.

"Psychotic... What?" he asked.

"His name is Koinahim," one of the lookers-on offered.

"I protect my people," Koinahim said with a shrug.

"You do realize that with your abilities, you could be so much more. Achieve so much more," Azula asked.

"Why?" he asked, honestly confused. "I've got everything I want. I've got a roof over my head, food in th'gut. Nice arranged-marriage hooked up with a pretty girl from the next clan over..."

"And you were asking me out despite being for all intents and purposes a married man?" Azula asked, raising a brow. "Why you dreadful lech."

"Hey, don't look at me like that. I ain't married yet," he cracked a smirk. "So where'd you learn to fight like that. Ain't ever seen a firebender w' moves like that."

"I didn't learn them from a firebender. You said you protect the village. In what capacity?"

He blinked at her. "I don't know if you've noticed, me lovely, but you're standin' in Azul."

"He keeps the monsters away," a child of no more than five said, still clinging to some sort of stuffed animal which had undergone so many rough repairs that it was no longer obvious what it had originally been.

"Monsters?"

"KOI!" a scream came through the tents. "Koinahim! Ano's!"

Instantly, Koinahim's stance went from cocky and borderline flirtatious to the coiled-spring readiness that she'd seen in any of a thousand Ghurkas. "I've gotta go."

"What?" Azula asked.

"Somebody got hit by the wildlife," he said, even as he turned back and threw open the door to the nearest wagon. Tucked into the corner, next to the door was a wooden handled implement – one that from Azula's experience, could be found in every wagon in the village. He looped a strand over his shoulder, then tucked the mattock into it. "Stay here. The others can hold the wagons," he said to her.

That instantly struck Azula right in the pride. "No," she said, even though the rational part of herself was nevertheless telling her to shut up and stay put. "I'm going to see what could turn you into a decent enough firebender to..."

"Talk or walk, pick one," Koinahim snapped over his shoulder as he started jogging toward the other side of the village, cutting through the middle as the inhabitants pressed aside to give him a clear shot. And Azula, between her boredom and the fact that he actually told her to stay here where it was safe, was following after, managing to keep just inside the back end of his wake. She passed the Tribesmen and the bombmaker as she did so, but didn't stop for so much as a glance. She wanted to see where this was going, and she kept pace with him almost effortlessly.

Clear of the village on the other side, Koinahim was joined by four others, of which two were women, one somewhat older than Azula, the other one grey-haired, and the other were middle-aged men. All had a mattock on their backs, and were moving fast.

"Where?" he shouted to the waving Yubokamin who sat half way between the village and the closest break of line of sight. He pointed toward the trees.

"Round the bend! I saw a purple flare go up!" he shouted. The others all nodded, and picked up their pace, until they were all at a dead run. The trees loomed closer, and so too did the rut that they'd cut into the ground as the village moved. This was probably one of the stragglers, she realized. There was only so slow that the village could allow itself to move. They came to a lurching halt as the first scream sounded from before them. That scream was answered by a shriek, that sounded significantly more human than the first.

"Go hot," the bearded of the two older men said. Koinahim nodded, and his fists became wreathed in flame. The man turned back to Azula. "Don't get killed, it won't be our fault."

"Noted," Azula said confidently, as azure fire began to bathe her hands. The older man just tutted his tongue and started running forward again, not even bothering to condescend to her. Time, it seemed, was of the utmost essence.

The six rounded a final turn, one cut off from sight of the wagons by the dense rainforest shrubs that lay to her side. Her eyes went wide as she saw the first of them. It was tall, easily twice as tall as she; its carapace was a sort of runny purple, the spikes that were its feet and forelimbs darkening to veiny black. Two great and gleaming gold eyes glared, but not at they. Azula made it one more step, clearing that much more of the terrain, then she saw the rest of them.

There had to be more than half a dozen of the things. Eight or nine Anomolokia, all fully grown.

The closest turned away from the splintering and ravaged wagon, away from the beasts of burden which had died, gutted, on their yolk. Its eyes saw a chance for more food. Six jumped forward as one, even as it started to explode with movement toward them, its many legs tearing up mud and soil as it launched itself into the air. When six landed, it was to cast forward fire. It bathed the creature in flight, and it dropped straight down, its carapace blackened.

Then, its eyes opened, its mandibles flared, and it continued toward them.

"Focus down!" the older woman shouted. The six of them as one moved back into a semicircle, an arc described before the center which was the Anomolokia. Azula found herself falling into their movements without so much as thought. She tightened her flames, her heat, into something more searing by far than her previous wave of blue fire. The others did likewise. Six streams of fire launched forward, many lashing toward the joints of its limbs, where the carapace would be slightly softer, slightly easier to crack. Azula sent hers straight into the middle of its 'neck'. There was a sick pop, as the thing was disassembled by flames.

"Azula! Your left!" Koinahim shouted. Azula instantly glanced left, but didn't see anything.

"What?" Azula shouted back.

"Not you!" he snapped, as he peeled off with the older of the two women, and the younger – apparently also named Azula – barely managed to hurl herself out from under a pounce from one of the remaining Anomolokia. She landed with a roll, tearing something from her belt and pulling straight down. There was an instant of hiss, then a rocket shot up and away into the sky. Probably a warning that this was a lot bigger than they thought they could handle.

Azula herself, not the Yubokamin version, found herself having to jump backward, as one of the great beasts slammed down into the turf before her, which broke the line in half. Another let out a clack, leaping away from the wagon and the young boy perched atop it, to land on Azula's other side, if several yards further away. There was a shriek that came from the throat of the beast before her, one that called to mind only the sound that those damned Shards made in the hunt for their quarry. It was a cry that seemed custom created to invoke fear in the mind of whoever listened to it.

Pity. Azula wasn't afraid. Concerned, yes, but not afraid. The Anomolokia before her began to surge toward her, its forelimbs slashing in disemboweling arcs, trying to catch her flesh, to rip her apart before it could feast on her warm innards. She darted and dodged, moving so much like the movements that Koinahim had showed her. A single touch would be death. It was dodge or die. Evade and avoid or else. She knew she only had so far back that she could retreat away from this thing before the other turned on her, and hit her in the back. And these things easily had the strength needed to disembowel somebody straight through the spine. Flame wasn't going to do it. She just needed a second. A fraction of a second, even.

She ducked under a claw, only to have to spin aside so that she didn't get her foot stabbed by one of its own. Then, she spun again, under its other leg, and inside its ability to slash her. It hopped, trying to spin to a point where it could rip at her, to bite and gnash, but the hop that it did was high enough that Azula hit the ground and rolled under it, reaching it's back end – which was scarcely less spiked and dangerous as its front – and spinning to her feet. She instantly had to hinge back to avoid getting her head cut off by the slash of the other Anomolokia which had bridged the distance. She used the momentum that the reaction had given her to tumble back, as quickly as anything Ty Lee could do, if nowhere near as elegantly. When she'd gotten her feet back under her, she once again sent a blast of fire out, but this was down and forward, not at either beast. Flame alone wouldn't do it, not fast enough.

Azula was rocketed up and back, away from the two of them. One of them hopped and spun again, reorienting itself toward her, But she was spinning as well, a twirl through the air like a blossom rising in an updraft. And as she rose, lightning cracked into being upon her fingertips. At the apex of her flight, she cast a hand down, to the one which had almost beheaded her, as it was already moving ot intercept her landing. The bolt of lightning landed with a terrible crack, lancing through the carapace and causing the thing to lock solid. When it did, it launched itself into an involuntary leap easily twenty feet into the air, landing on its head in the muck. And it still wasn't dead. Azula landed with a backward roll, managing to keep a few precious feet between her and the slower of the two, even as the lightning struck one started to regain its equilibrium.

She didn't have any focus to give but to the beasts that were directly attacking her. A lapse of concentration now would be worse than death. She kicked back, hurling herself backward even as she spun once more, the energy within her parting without thought let alone effort. She lanced out, not at the one that was closest to her, but at the one trying to recover; no good would be done locking them into a stun if they could simply leap-frog each other in recovery. As the Yubokamin had ordered; focus down. The second lightning strike boiled the ichor under its now brittle carapace, causing it to burst open into a shower of orange and blackened shards.

The pity of bringing down one Anomolokia single handedly, was that it neglected the one far closer to her.

She managed to pull her leg in so that it wouldn't be sliced off at the knee by a swiping claw, but the beast simply shifted its momentum, to bash her aside with a 'shoulder'. Said shoulder terminated with a spike which jammed into Azula's chest, grinding against the bone of her rib but not quite puncturing her lung. The impact sent her flying, smashing her into a tree, and then rolling over it as momentum could only ever be deferred. She rolled to a stop, and pushed a bit further back, to her feet. The Anomolokia was vaulting that log even now, but it was lacking two things that Azula had.

The first, was a rote control of lightning itself. The second, was a quarter of a second to exact that mastery.

Lancing out with a bolt of lightning, which slammed into the air with the same horrendous crack as all before it, caught and spun the beast, as all of its many, spiky limbs became rigid. Its jagged extremities caught on the turf, and spun it so that it landed face-down before Azula, a pace away at most. She already twisted her hand in the snap-bolt maneuver that her father had never deigned to teach her, but she learned despite him. Twin blasts of electric force slammed into the fallen beast, and split it wide open, dumping the orange fluids which sustained it onto the frigid ground.

Azula took a deep breath, and then winced, feeling just under her breast where that spine had lanced her. It could have been far worse. An inch lower, and it likely would have slipped right between her ribs rather than slamming into – and likely breaking – one of them. She looked around, listening as a whoosh of flame punctuated her victory, and the sound of chitin popping. Then, a second later, a meaty thwack from that same direction. She held her lacerated flesh, and walked haltingly toward where she'd left the others behind in her desperate bid to not get killed.

"Next time, when somebody tells me to remain behind... I really should," Azula noted grimly.

She skirted the log, and the others came into view. Koinahim was swinging his mattock over his head and into the face of a charred Anomolokia, perhaps ensuring a death-blow. The others were either tending to the other Azula – who had a spine a foot long jutting out of her upper thigh, or quickly hauling the terrified youngster from the top of the essentially annihilated wagon. All of the other Anomolokia were now charred, hulks, lying amongst the scene of the desolation. The slightly bloodied firebender looked up from his deathstroke to see her, and a smirk hit his lips for a second. "Good. Hoped I wouldn't have to spike as fine a lass as you."

"Koi, now ain't the time," the grey bearded Yubokamin said, as he knelt before the child. "How long?"

"I don't know," the boy said. His elder pointed once more to a girl, perhaps a year younger than Azula, who was lying on the ground next to the ruins of the wagon, clutching a gut-wound and groaning pitiously.

"HOW LONG!"

"A... Two minutes? Maybe three?" he asked, tears in his eyes. The old man nodded.

"Hey! Mihal!" he snapped. The grey haired woman turned to him. "We might save the girl!"

"Save her from what?" Azula asked.

"She got egged," Koinahim summarized. He hustled over, ignoring that his scalp had been split at some point during that insane – if brief – struggle, and dropping his entire weight onto her legs, pinning her to the ground. The other men grabbed her arms, one each, and pulled them away from the wound. That wound was almost the size of a cannon-ball. How she survived that... Azula didn't know. She let out a wail of agony at the treatment, before Mihal picked up her own mattock. She slammed stream of flame over the sharpened spike of it, until the thing was glowing orange. Then, she took her place at the girl's side. She tightened her fingers on the handle, then, with a looping swing, drove that spike down straight into the injury the girl already had. Azula flinched at that, honestly not having any idea what was going on. This seemed like a very good way to kill somebody as slowly and painfully as possible. Mihal extracted the spike as quickly as she drove it in, then motioned toward her.

"Tip her, tip her!" she said. The men all moved to turn her onto her belly. In the instant between when the wound passed out of view and when she was sideways, a sluice of orange fluid gushed out of that wound amidst the blood. She snapped her finger to Azula's sparring partner. "Koi! Take her in. Waterbender might be able to save 'er from a three-minute egg!"

"Aye ma'am," Koinahim said, and he pulled her over his shoulder like a sack, her gut-wound pressing down into him and staining him further. He looked to Azula. "Get the Azula's back sharpish. Might be more of 'em out here."

Azula looked at the scene, now that she had a moment to. There were two people amidst the wagon even yet, though utterly still. "What about their parents?"

"We can serve the dead if we survive to tend the living!" the grey-bearded one snapped. "Now hustle back!"

With that, Azula began to follow in Koinahim's hustling footsteps, even if every one of them did pull at a fresh would and every breath did tear at a cracked ribcage. She drew abreast of the firebender who had fascinated her, and now had outright impressed her. "Coming was a mistake, I'll grant that," Azula said.

"Wouldn't go that far," He said with a twist of the head. "Might be, weren't you there, they might have et us. Got a spirit of a Ghurka in ya, and don't let anybody tell you different."

"Please, that was obvious from a long time ago," Azula said. But, and she would admit this to nobody, it did feel rather good to have that sentiment validated.


"That's horrible, Aang," Korra said, where the two sat opposite each other, their legs folded under them. "I can't imagine what you're going through right now."

Malu, sitting at the third point of the triangle on the floor, which was cushioned by the seats stolen off of sofas which were piled roughly in the center of the room for no discernible reason. "I can understand it. I've had my own rough times."

"Who hasn't?" Korra asked. Aang, though, puffed out a breath, and turned his eyes to her.

"What about you? Have you ever had to go through this?" he asked. As much as it was uncomfortable, painful even, to talk about this, there was a pressure that was relieved from it. A spring, finally allowing itself to unflex. Korra nodded slowly, staring at the center of that triangle, her lips a hard line.

"I was... about seventeen? Just a kid. I didn't even realize it'd happened at the time. I was fighting these people... There was a raid, that I got suckered into by an asshole politician. They were terrorists... kinda. We tore through 'em like they were nothing. But when I did that, I got distracted; when I froze a guy to the wall, I did it by his face instead of by his chest. He suffocated," she said. She shook her head slowly. "I didn't learn about it until I reread the paper, almost a month later while I was kicking myself for being such an idiot. It wasn't a good feeling, I can tell you that much. It also wasn't the last."

"Really?" Aang said. "I thought being the Avatar was about finding ways to not kill people."

Korra shook her head. "We're not always given that option, Aang. Maybe if you were where I was when I was in my twenties, you could have figured something out. I didn't. She died."

"And you felt like a monster for doing it," Malu said. Korra sighed, and shrugged.

"I don't know really what I felt. It was all too much. I trusted her. She betrayed me. But I didn't want her dead. She was a friend, and..." a shake of her head. "I know that Asami and Bolin and everybody else forgave me instantly, but I couldn't quite forgive myself."

"It doesn't get easier," Aang said.

"Funny enough, it kinda does," Korra said slowly. She puffed out a sigh. "But just because it's easy, doesn't mean it's right. A lot of times, it's as wrong as you can get. But sometimes – just sometimes – there's no option, or every option is worse than the one before it. I managed to stop a war by leaving a man to die. I stopped a persecution by becoming something that the world called evil. I don't know if I'm the right person to tell you about it... you know, considering you were pretty much my go-to mentor for decades... but I've figured out that the Avatar isn't about the perfect solution. It's about the one that lets you see tomorrow. It's a burden, a weight of the world on our shoulders, because ours are the only ones that can hold them."

Aang nodded. "That's how I feel right now."

"You're not doing much to help Aang right now," Malu said.

"I wish I could," Korra shrugged. "But the fact is, the Avatar is the Avatar for a reason. Sometimes it hurts. Sometimes it hurts more than anything in the world. But it has to be done. I won't try to justify some of the darker things I've done by saying 'I did what I had to do'. I won't excuse myself. But I know why I had to do them. And I was willing to pay the price."

"You must have lived in a terrible time," Malu said.

"Turbulent, yes. Terrible? Not even close," Korra said with a smirk. She cracked a chuckle. "And if you want to see turbulent, you'd best keep an eye out for how things are going to be in the next few years. You know, if we don't all die, and everything."

"Have you ever given thought on how to help me enter the Avatar State?" Aang asked.

"A bit. You might not like it, though," Korra said. Aang sat, letting the silence stretch out, and then slowly raised his head to look at her.

"Anger," he said. Korra sighed, and nodded.

"You've spent your entire life trying to smile at everything, ignoring every shadow and evil. But a part of you knows that you can't keep doing that," Korra said. Malu nodded slowly.

"I think I know what she means. I couldn't get Imbalance out of my body until I confronted my greatest weaknesses, and let them go. I was afraid of death, and afraid of pointlessness. When I stopped fearing them, I was free. I was a battered and weary shell of what I thought I was, but I was free, and I could help you."

"So my fear of... of my own anger, is what's keeping me from mastering the Avatar State?" Aang said. He actually laughed a bit at that. "Man. Azula was right."

"Yeah, she... wait, what?" Korra said.

"Azula told me that anger, at the right time, was a good thing," Aang said.

"Azula told you that?" Korra said. She shook her head. "I'm sorry. I just can't quite picture her in a position to give you advice. Since she... you know... killed you twice as far as I recall."

"That was a different Azula," Malu said. "Apparently there's a lot of her out there. And not so many me, which is kinda disappointing."

Korra just offered a shrug. "It took me long enough to wrap my head around this whole 'this isn't my home universe' thing. Makes me wonder if that physics professor my husband got into arguments all the time with was right. Multiverse, quantum mumbo-jumbo... makes you think," she said, nodding slightly.

"If Azula was right about my anger... what would it take to get into the Avatar state? I can't go around angry all the time," Aang said.

"Well," Korra began, but Malu cut her off.

"Aang, you're looking at this the wrong way," she picked up a glass of something that had the consistency of oil, though was as clear as water, and another glass next to it. She evened the two of them out, over the course of a few seconds. "Alright. Imagine that when you're like this, you're perfectly able, ready, and willing to go into the Avatar State. You've got your good parts," she hefted one cup. "All the love, the compassion, the hope. But at the same time, you've got the bad parts," the other glass. "Your fears, your weaknesses, and in your case, your anger. When you're like this, Avatar State is A-Okay, because the balance is just right to let it happen. But you..." Malu dumped one of the oily glasses over her shoulder – the one which she used to represent his 'bad traits', "deny that they're even a part of you. Does this look A-Okay to you?"

Two glasses, one half full, the other utterly empty. Aang just shook his head. "I think I understand. It's not about tipping the balance the other way... it's about admitting that the balance is there for a reason."

"Yeesh, that's a lot better than I'd have explained it, but it does get to the right point," Korra said. She leaned forward. "My pride? It got in my way a lot of times, but it also gave me the resolve to keep going when I was literally a step and a half from killing myself. Your anger is something that you don't want to admit to..."

"But it tells me that there are things that need to change, and gives me the willpower to try to change them," Aang finished for her. He blinked a few times, staring into the distance, past the walls that hemmed them in. Was it really so basic a thing? That his running from those parts of himself that he'd been taught were evil and wrong was what was crippling him? Or was it, instead, that he allowed himself to think that they were evil and wrong in the first place?

Azula had said that the Avatar State was not good or evil, principled nor anarchistic. It simply was.

And so was anger. Righteously, it could topple tyrants. Ignobly, it could savage the helpless. But it of itself, simply was. And it was every bit a part of him as his breath, his skin, or his blood was.

He closed his eyes, and felt. Hope, despair. Love, apathy, hate. Joy, rage. All a part of him. The parts of himself that he didn't want to admit to, they were still there. He could control them, and even never express them in all of the years of his life, but he couldn't deny that they were fundamentally a part of him. The Avatar might have been a demigod, yes, but part of being a demigod was that the base for that divine and awesome power was that it manifested in a human being. Human beings, as flawed, as weak, as petty, selfish, conceited, contrary, silly, or stupid as they were at their worst, could be something as powerful as the Avatar itself at their best.

Aang opened his eyes.

He didn't even notice that they were blazing white.


"What in the hell..." the waterbender said as he took in the approach of the village's protectors, some of them wounded, one of them carrying an unconscious girl over his shoulder as one would a sack of meal. The grey bearded one, whom Azula had as yet not heard the name of, snapped his fingers toward this 'Kori' character.

"Waterbender!" he shouted. "This girl needs help. Can you heal her?"

"What kind of help?" Kori instantly asked, the sly smirk he'd been wearing until their appearance gone entirely, his eyes cold, but with a focus to them that Azula knew very well, as it had so often been seen in the mirror throughout her life. Koinahim laid the girl out, and the waterbender gave a bit of a wince. "She got egged?"

"We spiked it. If you close the wound, she might recover," Koinahim said. Kori offered a shrug, and rolled up his sleeves. Pulling a slick of water up from the snow-dusted ground, he moved to her side, his hands glowing brightly. The grey bearded one offered a sigh of relief, and nodded. He turned to Azula.

"You did something brash and stupid, girl," he said. "And your assistance was invaluable."

Azula, on the precipice of being outraged at being so dismissed, found herself off balance when it instantly turned to praise. "I don't take kindly being told what to do," she said simply enough.

"I'd have thought a Shinzoan would value safety over pride. And pride itself can be dangerous. How badly is your wound?" he asked.

"I've had worse," Azula said. He nodded, then jerked his head aside, toward where the lagger of their group was bearing the other Azula, the one with the impaled thigh. Obviously, calling her to follow them. She made her way inward, to where the first wagons of this 'village' had parked in a circle around a central pyre, one which was being built up every time it tried to tumble down and weaken. One of the elders looked to the grey-bearded one, he being the only one who'd come out without so much as a scrape.

"Phu, what was the problem?" the elder asked.

"Anos hit one of the stragglers. Parents dead, beasts butchered. Lost nobody," Phu answered, glancing to the injured – everybody else – and shrugging. "...came close to a few."

"And this would be the ghost-girl," the elder said. He cracked a moment of smirk. "Good to see that Punya didn't have you die on the cliff. Sit, please."

"Why?" Azula asked.

"You've saved our people, and spilled your blood on the field with ours. That makes your blood ours as well. We look to our own blood. Just our way," he shrugged. He looked to the... now that she thought about it, these people, the mattock-bearers, they were more Ghurka than any soldier that had ever fought in her father's armies. She could think of no better term for them. "I don't think we've met properly. I am Savir. You've met Phu Pkroong, Azula, Koinahim, Mihal, and Mandvi."

"She did well. Surprisingly well," Phu said, fluffing at his beard. "Took on two Anomolokia on her own. Killed 'em both."

Savir's brow rose when he said that. "And how I pray tell did you manage that feat of impossibility?"

"It was hardly impossible. It just needed a timely application of lightning," she said idly.

"Timely, she says," Phu chuckled. "Like it wasn't locked up in the minds of the Midlanders."

"Phu, please. She's a guest at this fire," Savir said. He tilted his head, looking at her chest, but without the slightest hint of lechery to him. "You're injured. Didn't feel like telling somebody?"

"I've had worse," she repeated.

"Doesn't matter, in this hellish mire, it can fester. Even the cold doesn't stop that," Savir said. He gave a whistle, and a boy came running up to him. "Run, go find the waterbender girl. She'd ought be free by now."

"Yes, Elder Savir," the boy said, before pelting away, leaving a tiny gap as he darted between legs. Savir looked back to her.

"Lightning is a powerful skill, one I'd heard was restricted to the family of th' Fire Lord himself," he said.

"Not entirely accurate," Azula said, inspecting her fingernails and finding them dreadfully bloody. She sighed, and started to wipe them off on already stained clothing. "It's just something that nobody bothered to teach anybody."

"True enough of many things," he said. He waved a woman toward her, and Azula found herself with a bowl of some thick stew in her hand. It smelled rather good, actually. "I suppose that there's a lot that people don't know. That you don't know about us, that we don't know about you..."

"I can only imagine," Azula said, sing-song. She took a bite, then as she was chewing, she recalled something that'd been bugging her, before her pride almost got her killed. "I do have one thing I'd like to know, though."

"And that'd be?"

She tilted her head toward where Kori was being aided by a number of them, and otherwise fawned over. "Why do you treat the Tribesmen so kindly? I thought you'd be sore about the war at Summavut."

"A new fight doesn't break old bonds so quickly," Savir said. Azula stared at him.

"Old bonds? Between Fire Nationals and Tribesmen?" she asked.

"The very oldest that remain," Savir nodded. "Older than the Monolith itself, some say."

"That requires a bit of explanation," Azula said. Ooh. Good stew.

Savir was about to start, but turned, as Katara made her careful way into the circle. "Ah. Katara Hakodasdottir. I hope that we're not rousing you at a cost t' your health, but we've got injured needing tending to."

"Really?" Katara asked, and glanced from one Azula to the other. Azula brusquely waved the girl's attention to the one who might lose a leg if she wasn't dealt with. "Alright, I'll see what I can do to help her. She might not be completely healed but..."

"If you save th'leg, tha'll be fine enough," the other Azula said, her face fairly gray for her dark complexion.

"Now, as I was," Savir said. "The Ghorkalai... we weren't always Haunted. There was a time, a long, long time ago, when there weren't the ghosts to weigh us down. To keep us moving so that we wouldn't press down too long on old graves. We had a different name, then. Before even the Dek Duung Xathiy. We were the children of the rainforests that stood as old as time. Masters of a land that slew all that dared trespass. We were warriors of the sun."

Azula nodded, as this wasn't a shock to her. In fact, she'd met a splinter-culture of them a lifetime ago. "I thought you might have been. Nobody else would have been crazy enough to stay in this part of the world, unless they had something to tend to."

"What do you mean?"

Azula made a dismissing gesture, "I met Agni in one of your old temple grounds. Since the traps were reset, I knew that somebody had to still be alive from that culture."

"You walked the temple-grounds, stood before the eternal flame, and survived the Storm of Dead Dragons?" Savir asked, his eyebrows raised. That last one was news to her. She'd have to ask her brother about it some time. "Then you're a sterner girl than I'd thought possible. Few of our own make that journey. Fewer still of any other do, and of those, fewer yet survive, let alone reach that hallowed destination."

She didn't see any purpose to informing him that she'd cheated by riding a bison into the heart of their lands, so let him continue.

"We can claim to hold a culture older than any on this Earth," Savir said. "And even that is something of a lie; we keep changing. We aren't who we were when we prayed to the ancestors of Ran and Shao. We aren't even the people who left the lands behind, and took shelter with the Water Tribesmen to avoid the iron fist of the Monolith. We have the old stories, but we aren't the old people. Nobody is."

"Wait. The Yubokamin lived with the Tribesmen?" Katara asked, taking the question straight out of Azula's mouth, but for the waterbender, it was out of honest surprise, rather than incredulity. Savir nodded to her.

"For generations," he said. "They were far kinder hosts than we thought we would ever find. Because of them, we were able to perform our rites, pray to our gods, and not the twisted pantheon of the East. The older stories tell of Uamannaq and his courtesan?" he asked. Katara nodded. "Guess which one was Yubokamin."

"Really?" Katara asked. "The lover of Uamannaq was a firebender?"

"No, Uamannaq was a firebender," Savir said with a smirk and a shake of his head. Katara stared at him, agape. "You never did say his name right. Yuam Ngahk, he was," Savir peeled down an eye, showing its pale shade. "Where do you think we got these eyes?"

"That explains... very little, other than the physical similarity," Azula said. "Why the Tribesmen?"

"Well, it wasn't like we could shelter with the Storm Kings; they didn't exist yet," Phu said with a barked laugh. Savir nodded.

"Are you seriously saying that she," a point toward Katara, "and I bare any family connection?"

"Why would you even think that?" Katara asked.

"It's a long story, and it involves the Avatar, so it's mildly ridiculous," Azula said. She couldn't have been more shocked when the truth of she and Zuzu's maternal great-grandfather came to light. That Azula had the blood of an Avatar in her veins, even after so many generations. It had infuriated her, when she first learned it. By the time she actually believed it, she didn't care anymore.

"That's the greatest shame of Azul, and all the families that toady to him," Savir said, before breaking off and accepting a fresh bowl of stew. "That for all their attempts at 'racial purity', they're already more infected by what they seek to exclude than any other."

She shook her head, trying to piece all this together into something that made sense within her worldview. When that attempt failed, she swallowed her pride and tried to accept it at face value. Yeah... that was going to take some time. "The Azuli are Water Tribesmen. The world must be ending, because the strange just keeps on coming..."

Savir shook his head briskly. "They are Water Tribesmen the way that you are a Sun Warrior," he clarified. "It's an old story, it's old blood, but it's there."

"That's why you're treating us so well, isn't it?" Katara reiterated the obvious.

"Of course, my dear. We pay our debts, and this is a debt long owed," Savir said with a somewhat paternal smile.

"It also explains why you try so hard to treat the earthbender and the Si Wongi as pariahs," Azula said. Savir's expression became hard. Obviously, just as they remembered old favors granted them, they also remembered old wounds inflicted. "It all leads to the simple question; why do you stay here? There are easier, safer places to live than in Azul."

"Do you know what Azul means, in the tongue of the Tribesmen?" Savir asked. Azula's brow drew down, and she looked to Katara. She blinked a few times, then looked at them.

"...Crucible," Katara translated, "...if you pronounce it 'ahsul'."

"This land is part of us. We are a part of it. We can as much leave it as we can leave behind ourselves. It is a bitter pride that holds us here, but it is who we are," Savir said.

"The greatest punishment that we can give to one of ours is to exorcise them," Mihal said. She leaned over the other Azula's leg. "Yes, that's fine enough. Now heal the other," with a gesture toward the Azula that wasn't from a culture of vagabonds. Katara blanched.

"I'm sure she's fine."

"Do it, girl," Mihal said sternly. "She's earned a place here every bit as you have. Now hop to!"

A sharp crack of a hand against another saw the Tribesmen wobble to her feet and move to Azula's side. There was obvious distaste on the Tribesman's face when she approached. It was like she was wondering how to heal Azula without having to touch her. Katara puffed out a breath. "I don't know if I can do this..."

"You'll do as you must," Savir said, sternly but not harshly. He motioned at Azula with his bowl. "So must we all."

Katara wilted. "This would be so much easier if you hadn't tried to kill me so often," she said darkly.

"Actually, it'd be easier if I'd succeeded," Azula noted. Katara frowned at her. "Easier isn't always better."

Katara rolled her eyes, and shifted Azula's hand out of the way, putting glowing hands onto lacerated skin and broken rib. Azula, though, turned her attention back to the elder. "I assume that you're telling me all of this because there's something that you want out of me."

"You're astute," Savir nodded. "It's a matter of I want you to understand who you stand with. The shamans, they all say that the end is coming, and coming soon. That the Four Soul Mind is our only chance, that she holds the key to the army of thunder," Savir said. He pointed with his spoon, "and from what I've heard from idle conversation, you'd be that mistress herself."

"You expect me to perform some sort of miracle, to lead you in some sort of conquest?" she asked.

"No," Savir said, shaking his head briskly. He took a long slurp of stew, chewed for a moment, then shrugged. "We expect you to save the world."

"Really."

"Wouldn't that be the most ironic thing on this planet," Katara said dryly from Azula's side. There was a shard that seemed to prick at her, but Azula stomached it without complaint. After all, it wasn't like Azula had any experience what it was like to be healed by a waterbender, now did she? There was some sort of tumult from one end of the camp, and Savir turned toward it, but no alarm was raised, so his attention returned to Azula.

"Be that as it may, I don't hold any keys and I am not going to lead any army. I know that when this is over, my brother is going to sit on the Burning Throne, and I will fade away from history," Azula said. She spoke quietly, next, to herself but some part of her knew that Katara could hear her, "...just like last time."

"She claims, while throwing bolts of lightning to strike down the beasts of the Occident," Savir said. Azula sighed, and put her bowl down, still having to hold one arm up to give the waterbender access.

"You want me to teach you how to bend lightning, don't you?" she asked.

Savir set his bowl on the ground next to the fire, and leaned toward her. "The shamans are afraid. The spirits tell of a darkness coming; whispers from beyond the darker veils. An ending of all things. Sacrifice and loss. A world not teetering, so much as outright plummeting. Look around you! Do you not see th' queer weather for what it is? It's the world's blood, drifting down on the cold wind. The Ghorkalai have the oldest of the old stories... and I'd like for those stories to not die with me. I'd like there to be a world for my grandchildren and great grandchildren – when they do come about – to live in. We've all got to do our part to – what the hell is that?"

Savir was interjected by something brown bounding through the crowd, black eyes shining and stubby tail wagging at a blur. It slammed into Azula's thankfully uninjured side, and stared up at her, its mouth slightly open, as though it were smiling at her. Azula couldn't have been more surprised. "Kuchi? What are you doing here?"

"What is this thing?" Savir asked. Azula looked up and saw that the elder already had procured a spike mattock in the amount of time it took Azula to regain her balance.

"This is a saber-toothed moose-lion. Specifically, mine," Azula said. She idly scratched the back of its neck, and it let out the most pleased grumbling sound, its eyes pressing shut and its weight leaning into her. She felt a smirk come to her face. "Who's the most dangerous little critter in Azul? You are."

Azula could feel Katara withdrawing from her, a stunned look on her face. "Did you just baby-talk the moose-lion cub?"

"No, you misheard me," Azula snapped.

"That thing is... poisonous?" Savir asked, obviously trying to wrap his head around something small, furry, and adorable could survive in his homeland.

"No. They grow to be fairly large. This one is young," Azula said. She stopped, and looked up. She could have sworn... "Did you hear that?"

"I don't know what you mean," Savir said, letting his mattock slip out of his fingers and rest on the ground. He retook his seat, but he kept a wary eye on the cub. Resourceful as a thief, he was. Anything small and delicious in Azul had to be, otherwise something else would discover how delicious they truly were.

"Appa must be close-by," Katara said. She turned her attention back to Azula. "The bleeding's stopped. You can let it heal the rest of the way naturally if you want, although it might scar."

"It was a risk I should have taken into account before I decided to do the stupid, heroic thing."

"Hey, stupid and heroic are hardly the same thing," Katara noted.

"Then you've obviously not been 'heroic' as long as you'd like to claim," Azula said, as Katara backed off, a dark look on her face. "I decided to aid the rescue of some stragglers, and almost got killed. And half of them were dead by the time I got there."

"And the other half survived because you were there," Savir said. "Don't sell your courage short."

"It's not my courage I'm disparaging, it's my lack of common sense," Azula pointed out.

"If there was no wisdom to it, then why did you do it?" Phu asked.

Koinahim cracked a smirk, which was quite stark under the bandages he'd opted to staunch his own injury rather than take time away from the more critically wounded. "Because I told her not to."

Savir laughed at that. "Youthful pride. May the gods have mercy on us."

"We'll need it," Azula said. Mostly because she knew what was going to have to happen before the end of summer, and it would take a lot of heroism – stupid to its utmost – to succeed. There was a conflicted look on Katara, as she walked away. Like she wanted to be disdainful, but at the same time, had a spark of respect for Azula. The firebender just shook her head, and let the waterbender go join the other, who was trying to save a girl's life. She continued to pet the murmbling cub that was now curled up in her lap – and taking up more room than her lap had to offer, since this thing was starting to get large – and listening to old stories, told by old men, about old worlds.


Light blazed through the apartment, pressing out against the walls, and driving the two women, one young, the other dead, to back away. At first, it was out of a sense of atavistic alarm. After that initial twinge, it became a more rational notion of giving a wide berth to something that likely had a lot more power than one of them could understand, and as much power as the other one intimately did. Aang began to rise, not borne up by wind, as such a thing was not possible in the Spirit World, but rather, by the fabric of the Spirit World itself shifting itself. He stared, the white limning his vision, the thousand whispers in his mind. He held out a hand, seeing how the tattoo on its back shone with the light of a sun. So much power. So much wisdom.

He shut his eyes, and set it aside. The power ebbed out of him, not leaving him exhausted as it so often had, but simply sliding off like water off of a buttered pan.

Aang blinked a few time, as the world returned to its normal, almost desaturated hues, and the silence return to the apartment that lay in an insane portion of a dying world. Korra was grinning. "See! I told you you'd be able to do it!"

"I... I just went into the Avatar State, didn't I?" Aang asked. Malu was nodding slowly. "And then I left it. And... And I think I could do it again."

"What did I tell you?" Korra said, moving close to deliver the dreaded Avatar-on-Avatar noogie. She was cut off by a flare of silvery light that welled up between the two Avatars, growing and blazing. Aang looked through the World Eyes, and gazed upon its Form, to see the spirit of Void that was pulsing and twitching the way that a terrified animal would, despite having no features in common with any animal that Aang had ever seen. "What is that th..."

This is not possible.

Aang got to his feet, his brow furrowing. "What do you mean?" he asked the spirit of Void.

This is not what we witnessed. You were not supposed to learn this lesson. Not yet.

"Well, he did. What's wrong with jumping the gun a little?" Korra asked. An Aang that had injured Katara with his firebending would have responded instantly; this time, though, Aang had never had such a cruel lesson, and could only shrug.

I was supposed to teach you the wholeness of self. To accept the parts that were cast aside. This is not supposed to happen this way.

"And what's wrong with that?" Korra asked, trying to pressure her point. Aang got the gist of it, though, from the fear that came from that amorphous spirit.

"This isn't the way that they predicted. They don't see time the way we do. They live... outside it, I'd say," Aang said. "They see time from the outside, instead of the way we do, from the inside, living through it. If they see something, it's because it's going to happen, and to them, it's already happened."

Yes.

Aang took his feet. "Korra, imagine if... I don't know, you remembered learning how to firebend, but one day, you couldn't anymore. You have all these memories of learning how to firebend, and all the times you've ever firebent, but reality now said that you weren't a firebender. What you remember isn't what is, anymore. That's the way they feel," Aang pointed to the Void.

Yes.

"Wait, I thought time just kinda went past-present-future," Korra said. Then, she stopped and had a very flat expression for a moment. "And here I am talking to my previous lifetime while he's still alive. Yeah, time is weird."

Yes.

"So why did it change?" Aang asked.

"The Shards," Malu said, snapping her fingers. She stepped before the glowing spirit. "When we first came to the Western Air Temple, did you see us being attacked by Shards while we were there?"

Yes.

Malu stared for a moment. "Oh, right, that's happened. Okay. Tell me this; do you see us ever – ever! – being attacked by the Shards in the future?"

No.

Malu gestured toward it, as though it'd proven her point. Aang motioned that he might need a bit more. Glancing over to Korra showed that she had an equal amount of befuddlement. Malu sighed, and shook her head for a moment. "Do you see a climactic battle between the Avatar and Imbalance?"

We have seen no battle.

"But we all know that it's going to happen," Malu said. "They can't see Imbalance, or anything that Imbalance does, until it's already done. Everything they see is just a 'what would have been if Imbalance hadn't stuck its nose in', rather than a certainty. It foresaw you learning – from it – how to enter the Avatar State, probably right before going to fight the Fire Lord, or somewhere around there. Instead, you've done it now. And why is that?"

"Because I..." Aang said, and trailed off. "...because I fled the Western Air Temple, and went to Azul... and then fled Azul, and came here... because the Shards kept chasing us."

Where we are, right now, is a place that they haven't seen before," Malu said. "They might be able to guess what comes tomorrow, or next week, or next month, but if Imbalance so much as sneezes on it, it'll be dead wrong, despite it being as real as Korra's memories."

"Whoa," Korra said. "And I thought the spirits in my day were strange."

"Huh?" Aang asked.

"There was a cat-bird...man-thing. Nevermind," Korra waved the thought away.

...I don't know what will happen.

"Welcome to seeing time like the rest of us poor saps," Korra said to the spirit. "Aang's got control of the Avatar State, and he did so nice and early. And it's always nice to see a prophecy be wrong."

"Got something against prophecy?" Malu asked.

"They bug me. I'm thankful they don't make any about the Avatar."

Malu looked to Aang. "Why not?"

"They wouldn't dare," Aang said.

"Alright, since you've got the powers of all your iterations begging for a direction, we should–" Korra said, and was cut off when the door slammed open. Everybody froze, and then turned toward the hall, as the thumps of heavy footsteps came in. There was a squeak, and a thud as the door slammed back shut, and the footsteps grew closer.

"Suddenly, this guy not being able to see the Shards is a big problem," Malu said, her eyes wide.

"Can't you feel them?"

"Too many Void spirits. It's all... fluffy," she said, unable to come up with a better term for the sensation. The thumping continued, until it reached their doorway. But the form which appeared through that non-threshold was not the utter blackness and the virulent red eyes. It was instead dark blue... and shining.

No, not shining. Sparking.

Irukandji turned toward them like a stunned beast. Her eyes seemed to be leaking tiny snaps of lightning, and black ichor oozed from her ears. "Is it time to rule the universe now?" Irukandji asked, the voice distorted. She raised an arm. "Kneel before Irukandji!"

Then, she fell forward onto her face on the floor. Aang stared at her for a moment, then turned to the others. "Did you see this coming?" he asked.

"Nope," Korra said.

Yes.

Aang gave an annoyed look at the Void spirit. "Then why didn't you warn... nevermind," he let out a groan of annoyance, and move to turn Irukandji over, and sit her back against the wall. Her lips, upon closer inspection, were cracked, and those eyes were also sunken. Her dress also seemed to be baggy on her, like she'd withered from inside it. "Irukandji? Are you alright?"

There was a blink, and an electric snap, as something jolted Aang's hand. He pulled it back, waving away the tingling numbness. The lightning that fell from Irukandji's eyes abated somewhat, and her eyes became a more normal blue once more. "Buwaaa what's after happening now?" she muttered. Then, a puff of breath and a shake of her head, she took in those around her, probably for the first time since she fell into the room. "Ugh. That sucked. But at least we've got both Avatars in one room for a change. And that one..." a dark glare at Malu, before her attention returned to the Avatars.

"So?" Aang asked. "Have you figured out a way to save the world?"

"Save, no. Postpone the annihilation of... more or less," it answered. It winced, rubbing a forehead that shifted and slid like the skin wasn't completely attached to her skull. "The way I see it, you've got another month, at most, before this thing's beyond saving."

Aang sighed. "That's right around Sozin's Comet."

"Funny, how everything tends to come together right around then, eh?" Irukandji asked.

"I thought you said you had a plan," Korra said. Irukandji scoffed.

"I had a plan. Last year. Then you had to go get... exorcised," it waved an angry hand toward Malu, who just stood back, her face plain and expressionless. It sighed, leaning forward, wiping the ichor away from its ears with a sleeve. "The way I see it, the next step will be to wake up Koh. If we do that, then at the very least, Imbalance can't eat everything. Just every reality that currently exists."

"How is that better?" Korra asked.

"Hrm? Oh, that's one of the things Koh is there for; to make sure that there's never a true oblivion," Irukandji said. It leaned back, the look on its face a bit wan. "Although, I've seen the way ol' Koh designs realities; I wouldn't want to live in it."

"Why not?" Malu asked.

"Too crazy," Irukandji said, ignoring the immense divine irony. "There's drills and shouting and some guy who never wears a shirt; it's just..." it shook its head. Irukandji then shrugged. "Could be worse. Could be the first reality Koh ever made. That one was better off annihilated, believe me."

"If Koh can make realities, why haven't we woken him up already?" Aang asked. "That sounds like the kind of power that could beat Imbalance flat out!"

"You're not understanding Koh, kid," Irukandji said. "It's not something he does. It's something that he is. He can't choose to do it. He just does it. The same way that you don't choose to get reborn, you just do. Both of you," a gesture between incarnations capping the spirit's explanation. Aang frowned. For a moment, that was sounding like an ideal solution. "Koh's an insurance policy. If we can get anything else out of him, that's pure gold, in my books."

Aang sighed, but nodded. "Alright. When do we leave?"

"Leave? Are you kidding me?" Irukandji asked. "Look at me! If I don't take a day off, I'm going to die. And I'm in the interesting position that if I do take a day of, she dies," it said, casting a thumb at its own chest.

"Come back with us, then. We can look after Huuni," Aang said. Irukandji looked up at him, somewhat confused. "You can rest, and she will survive; we've got two pretty good waterbenders around where I'm staying, these days."

"Really? And you're not going to object when I come back to the surface and hijack this brainless bitch's... brain?" it asked.

Aang slowly shook his head. "If she understood what was at stake, she'd want to help in any way she could."

"No, she wouldn't. Trust me," Irukandji said. It offered a dark chuckle. "It's a hell of a lifetime that sees me as less evil – less! – than the meat-suit I'm inhabiting."

"I don't think you're evil," Aang said. "You're just afraid, desperate."

Irukandji lowered its face into its hands. "...more desperate than you can imagine, kiddo."


There was a sinking feeling in Zuko's heart as he looked out over the countryside. Snow. He just couldn't get used to it. The rains had given out completely, now opting to drop hail at the least, and fat flakes at the most. He could feel the heat of his internal furnace, keeping him from experiencing any kind of chill, but he could tell, a lot of Nationals were in for a very, very rude awakening.

"You're putting on a fairly impressive mope," Toph said, carefully moving to his side, sitting up on the step while he simply leaned against the wagon's wall. No wonder she was moving slowly; she was actually wearing footwear.

"It's things like this that make me wish I didn't have any sight at all. This isn't natural. And it's going to get worse."

"Who cares what's natural? It's just a little snow, it won't kill you," Toph said.

"A lot of snow will. And even a little snow is enough to kill an entire harvest," Zuko said. This was going to be a hard year, even if they won. "It all just seems so big. So overwhelming."

"Yeah, I get that. What I don't get is you giving up. I mean, you chased the Avatar around the whole goddamned planet! If there was ever an avatar of not-giving-up, it'd be you, sparky."

"That almost sounded like a compliment," Zuko said. "There's just a lot on my mind."

"Join the club," she said, sounding quite annoyed. "You think I'm not itching at the walls, looking for something I can hurl a brick at? You think I don't feel as useless as nipples on a bull moose-lion right now? We're just ancillary actors to the people who have the best chance of doing something, right now. It sucks."

Zuko couldn't help but chuckle at that. "You do have a way with words," he said.

Toph nodded. There was a silence between them, which was bathed with the sounds of a village trying to stabilize itself after the traumas of the day, and the fear that came with such unnatural weather. Finally, she cleared her throat, as though she'd been trying to work up the guts to say something. Zuko glanced to her, even though there would be no way for her to tell that he was doing so.

"Hey... remember that little shard?" she said, pulling the object in question out of her pocket.

"The one that makes everybody around you blind," Zuko said. Toph nodded. "What about it."

"I figured something out about it. It's not really making them blind," she said. Zuko raised a brow. "It's... I don't know, stealing their vision, I guess."

"I'm failing to see the distinction," Zuko said.

Toph took a deep breath, and opened useless eyes into the distance. "The sky is grey, today."

Zuko nodded, as though she were simply pointing out the obvious, until he finally realized what she just said. "...you just said..."

"Yup. Grey. Didn't know there was such a thing as grey before this morning. Now I do. And it sucks. Green's better," Toph said.

"It lets you see?" Zuko asked.

"Something like that. Not worth the trouble, though," she said. She was silent, ignoring if not unaware that Zuko had a scrutinous gaze on her. "I was thinking that maybe I–"

Toph was cut off when the airbender suddenly appeared directly before Zuko, appearing out of the naked air. She looked to him, and she instantly shivered; she was covered in sweat, and looked exhausted. "Hey, could you give me a hand with this?" Malu asked.

"G'ish – where'd she come from?" Toph demanded. Zuko had scarcely gotten away from the wall that a second person appeared, at a stand, but that changed swiftly. It was a woman, who had the complexion of a bruise. She immediately tipped forward, her eyes rolling back in her head – those eyes being solid red from the burst vessels in them, and collapsed directly into Zuko's grasp. He did wince, as his attempt to keep her from landing on her face had caught her by the chest, and shifted his grasp to something a bit less... gropey. A second after he had her in a state where she wasn't in threat of cracking her skull open, the Avatar appeared just as Malu and this injured woman did.

"Well, that's a interesting way to come back," Zuko said.

"Who's back?" Toph asked, "besides the Sugar-Queen, I mean?"

"Zuko, we need to get Katara and Kori," Aang said. "She's badly, badly hurt."

Zuko nodded, and shifted his grasp on the woman until he hefted her onto his shoulder. It was awkward, but he could support her. "I'll get right on it," Zuko said, and immediately took off into the village.

Toph, on the other hand, stayed where she was, blind eyes staring ahead. "So. Just appearing out of thin air, now?" she asked.

"Yup!" Aang said brightly. "And I've mastered the Avatar State!"

"You haven't mastered it, Aang; you've just figured out how to get into it without being out-of-your-mind angry," Malu corrected.

"Yeah, well, that's pretty master-y if you ask me," Aang said, his arms crossed before his chest in a fit of snit. Malu had just finished her sigh when Aang felt something land on his shoulder. Remembering where in the world he was, he let out a shriek that was a bit girlish, and blasted it away, only to hear a very familiar screech when he did so. He turned back, and saw the black-and-white, flapping form of Momo, who was righting himself in the air and holding position in the snow. It chattered irately at Aang, then landed on Malu, who was a much more forgiving perch. "Momo! You're alright!"

"What, you thought he wouldn't be?" Malu asked.

Toph cocked her ear to one side, and her eyebrows rose. "Well, if that was good news, you're going to love this," she said. She pointed into the distance, through the swirling white. Aang's eyes became roughly the size of dinner-plates, and he jammed his fingers into his mouth, blowing hard the hopelessly high note that Appa knew so well. At first, there was nothing but snow and clouds. But after a few seconds... a distant, bass groan from the sky. Aang's face was almost split apart by the smile, as it appeared from the swirling white. Appa was filthy, one of its legs hosting a red-brown stain and was held close to the body... but the bison came, nevertheless.

When it landed with a thud, to the people behind in the village remarking of things that Aang paid no attention, there were tears in his eyes. He hurled himself onto the fuzzy, filthy brow of the bison, and pulled himself close. "I missed ya', buddy," he said.


The sea was oddly tranquil, as the ships slipped through the fog that clung close to the surface, sliding across the Antiprime Meridian and circumnavigating to the West by heading east. While Hakoda had a lot of experience traveling the wild seas, having them so placid put him on alert. Something was wrong. It tingled in the back of his mind like an oncoming storm. It pulled at his attention and wouldn't allow him peace. They were making slow going, but going nonetheless.

"Hakoda," Zha Yu said, as he approached the prow of the ship, where the Tribesman was letting the lode-rock dangle. The magnetic iron subtly tugged itself to hang, its inscribed point showing south, but that was a small amount of help when there were no stars to navigate by. "Are you sure we're on course?"

"Positive," Hakoda said. "Even by dead-reckoning, I know my way east."

"Really," Zha Yu asked. "I don't want to impugn your navigational skill, but that gives me a moment's pause."

Hakoda looked up, to what Zha Yu was pointing at. He nodded, as he looked upon the grey grim ahead of them. He knew the look of that very, very well; that was snow over the water. "We're heading toward the Fire Nation; if we were south, we'd have hit ice by now. There's no ice."

"It's snowing in the Fire Nation, then?" Zha Yu asked. Hakoda could only shrug. The earthbender sighed, and palmed his grey-bearded face. "Never easy, is it?"

"If it was easy, then they wouldn't need us to do it," Hakoda pointed out.

What words followed after that did little to assuage Hakoda's uncertainty. Yes, he was certain that he was traveling due east, without the significant side-trek that would be required to hit this kind of weather but... If they were coming upon snow in the Fire Nation?

Honestly, he kinda hoped he was just hopelessly, hopelessly lost, because that was the far less unsettling option.


If you haven't figured out the Tribal City naming-gag by now, then I'm a little disappointed.

ALLavut. SUMmavut. NUNavut. Et cetera.

Anyway, feel free to review.