The blizzard bit at her face, hateful shards of ice digging around her eyes and causing her lips to crack and bleed. But she just tightened the wrap which she'd made out of an unneeded change of clothing so that it didn't flap and let the cold air in. The 'monastery' as they'd taken to calling it, was arrogantly constructed in the bones of a Storm King fortress, so it looked down on the Fire Nation from the frozen peaks. It was always this cold up here, it was said. Yoji barely noticed.
It should have concerned her that she wasn't noticing the cold.
As it was, she was distracted. The dreams were getting more and more vivid. More and more confusing. She was never that child. No matter what that Water Tribe man, and the Dragon of the West, and even the Agni-damned Avatar all said, she was not a Tribesman! They left her to die, and the Fire Nation rescued her, and that was that. Nothing would change that. Ever.
The bedroll and tent were wrapped at her back, a pack which now wound around nothing, as she'd exhausted her food. If nothing else, though, she didn't lack for water. The walls of the fortress were sheer, but rough. Even if the Storm King's hadn't in their arrogance thought that nobody would scale them, they were a race dead for eight hundred years. Well, dead for a hundred in truth, for the seven in between were mostly a lie held in place by partisans and traitors waiting for an opportunity for revenge. That was the way of it. Everybody said so.
It was what she was taught.
She took a calming breath, then reached to her belt, to the hook that she'd rigged from a few various bits and pieces that she'd come across in an abandoned house. With a twist, the tines snapped out and into place, before she rechecked the knots that dangled from its base. There would be nothing to save her if they came loose half way up the wall. When she was sure of them, she waited for the winds to die down just a bit, so her throw would be half-way true, before sending that hook up the parapets somewhere high, and out of the way.
This would have been so much easier... if Omo was still with her. Not just because he was an earthbender, and could walk straight through the wall. She just... she just wanted him here.
Not the kind of thinking for a Child. It was distracting. A distraction, to be disregarded and put aside. She had a mission. She had to return a rightful Fire Lord to the Burning Throne.
Agni help her, she needed to do this.
She braced her feet against the wall, locking her arms and taking in a cold, bitter breath. Damn it, Hikaoh, you're supposed to be better than this, she chastised herself, not realizing the name she'd latched to. You're a Fire National, you have a duty. This isn't the time to be weeping over a lost team-mate. Ideally, you shouldn't be weeping at all. But more and more, she was feeling less than ideal in her job.
With a snort that turned the ice on her facial-wrap into steam, she began to haul herself up the walls once more. A moment of regret was fine. But not when it would both see her dead and her mission failed. She reached the hook, heaving herself onto the battlement, and looking down the unusual architecture of the ancient ruin turned reconstituted holy-site. As the tallest point this side of the arbitrary divide which said that side was Azul and this side Shinzo, it was home to the High Temple of Agni, the spot closest to His glory. The difference in architecture was stark. The walls of stone and mortared brick bled into the intricately locked stone, and the woodwork and plaster of its occupants. The old, merging with something like the new.
A Fire Nation tumor out of a Storm King gut.
The treasonous metaphor was quickly forgotten when Yoji could see flames moving on some of the lower walls, those which played host to Fire Sages and their acolytes. They wouldn't be of much help. Yoji had to go higher. The whole place had a very antiquated air to it, even ignoring the fact that this place was probably first constructed a thousand years ago. That was probably part and parcel of the lords of House Kurita providing every penny – and every whit of oversight – to its construction. A more conservative bunch, she'd never heard of. She looked up, to the one tower which hadn't over the immeasurable drifts of time come crumbling down. A tower which had withstood earthquakes for centuries. While probably not housing Ozai himself, it would certainly house somebody who knew his whereabouts.
She looked to the patrolling Sages and acolytes. They weren't looking up, because it was cold, the snow was blowing, and who could possibly come upon them from above? They obviously hadn't learned the lesson of their ancestors; death could quite quickly come from above. She didn't trust her grapple hook to this; it would make a noise at an inopportune time, if not slide out of a window. But this architecture was even rougher than before, great cracks running up the side of the buildings which were slap-dash filled with a sort of rubbery caulk that glued the stones back together. Yoji blew on her fingers, warming them just a bit, before stripping away the gloves.
The cold bit into them almost instantly, but it didn't hurt the way that it once had. In a way she didn't want to think about, it was familiar. It was homey.
She ascended that cliff of human device, her fingers and clad toes questing for the cracks and crevasses, the missing bricks and the bricks displaced. Every mote of ascent made her feel like she'd done this before, though...
It came on her like a waking dream. Dark hands, bare to the winds, questing higher onto the rocks. There was so much left ahead of her, it dwarfed her so completely as to boggle the mind. But today, she was going to get up to that plateau that Harloq had bragged about. So what if he was seven and bigger than her? She could totally get up there, too.
"Hikaoh! What're you doing?" the boy's voice came up behind her. She stopped, looking down over her shoulder. It was a vertigo inducing sight, for all they were only twenty feet above the slope of rough scree, and only a hundred feet higher than the village had been in total. She was little. She didn't know any better.
"I'm climin', Sokka. Go away!"
"You'll hurt yourself!" the brat called up. "I'm gonna tell Mom!"
"Don't you dare!" Hikaoh shouted back. "I'm gonna go all the way to the top of Niira-Qatour, and I'm gonna find all the treasure up there, and I'll gonna come down and be a princess!"
"But what if you fall down?" the bright-eyed boy asked, the fear so clear on his young face. "I don't want you getting' hurt..."
"I won't fall down," Hikaoh called down. She then looked up, at the distances which were objectively enormous ahead of her, which themselves seemed even more enormous to a four-year-old girl with more moxie than sense. Her fingers went rigid for a moment, as her brain tried to comprehend the scale of this. Then, she looked back, to where her little brother was wringing his little hands. "Ugh! Fine! I'll come down! But I'm gonna get that treasure some day!"
"Maybe when we're both big an' strong like Mom and Dad, an' we can be the Chief and his sister, an'..."
"No, I'd be Chief, you'd just be a brat," she stuck her tongue out at the kid, then started to descend.
"Hikaoh! Stop pickin' on me!" Sokka shouted up, through the winds.
There was a blink and a sense of loss of balance, as Yoji shook away that delusion, that outright hallucination. God help her if another one came on like that. Whatever foul spell was infecting her, it was now actively trying to kill her. With an angry breath, she pushed ever higher, finishing the climb today that a Water Tribe peasant had abandoned in her youth.
She reached the highest point of the tower, and found it occupied by a single acolyte, possibly as punishment for some infraction to a code of beliefs that she didn't go into any depth to. She now started to wonder why. But that was a teleological question for another day. Right now, she had to get some answers. He might not know many, but he was the first step of many.
She pushed herself up, preparing to to set her balance, and pounce the young man, a knife preparing to press to his throat. Sadly, all the preparation in the world couldn't account for the fact that the brick under her foot shifted and ejected noisily from its loose perch. The bang of her knee into another brick, causing to crack, was not lost in the wind. The acolyte turned, amber eyes squinting against cold, but they went wide when he saw that he was not alone.
"Intruder!" he shouted, but Yoji knew full well that the distance would lose that shout into the winds. He cast forward a fist with a shout of angry effort, a bolt of flames raging toward her. Yoji didn't deflect it, as once she would have. Instead, she waited for the flame to leave his grasp, his active control. Flowing up to her feet with the grace of some kind of dancer to a tune that she had no memory of hearing, she swept a hand along the back of that fireball, and as she did, it twisted in its course, flowing with her as she swept around and forward, and launched the acolyte's own flame back at him. He managed to pull up a shield of flames, but the impact knocked him toward the half-crumbled wall that he had been taking shelter from the wind against. Yoji didn't even allow him that much security, though, as she bounded forward and made beckoning motions with her hands, her feet shifting along the snowy rooftop as sand in a receding tide, and as she did, the flames oozed away from the protective barrier, into a destructive bludgeon.
She rammed that fiery charge up and into his gut; it had a lot of force, but it didn't burn through his clothing; at most, it would have reddened him. That was something she was going to have to work on. Getting the killing power back. Still, it served her purposes today; she had somebody to interrogate. Yoji reached for her belt, and found that the dagger that she'd prepared had been lost, possibly over the edge from her flailing against a lethal drop. So instead, she pulled the grapple hook, it a collection of sharp edges and points, and hooked it under his chin, while she put a knee to his back and hauled back on his hair.
"Do I have your attention?" she asked. He let out a moan of terror. "Good. Now... you're going to tell me where you keep your prisoners."
Chapter 14
Journey to the West
The blizzard was worse than Aang could remember, a great drive of snow that probably was of a sort with the one which started his whole adventure in the thirty third century. At least this time, he wasn't flying over naked ocean when it swept up and slammed into them as an angry fist of a dying world.
"We've got to get out of this weather!" Zuko repeated the point that he'd been on about for a while now. "Even Appa won't be able to take it for much longer."
The unhappy groan of the bison was an unexpected agreement, but Appa did know how Appa felt best. And if the bison was feeling the weight of this maelstrom of snow, then it had to be bad. "Maybe we should hide in a cave or something?" Aang shouted over the wind.
"No go!" Toph answered, also at a shout. "There's nothing above-ground, and if we go down, we'll get buried and smother!"
"Just keep going this way for a few more minutes!" Maya's voice was an unexpected one to intercede on the conversation. She seemed somewhat tense about being around Aang, uncomfortable, as though she didn't know where she fitted in. The truth was, she fitted in as well as Sokka or Toph or Azula, in that everybody was welcome, but they for some reason didn't feel that way.
"Why?" Katara asked.
"Just trust me! I know this land!" Maya shouted.
"I hope she does, because parts of me are freezing that I'd rather keep thawed!" Kori offered, his voice appearing out of the gray as he was too far to see in the almost complete white-out.
"Toph, do you see what she's talking about?" Zuko shouted.
"I can't see anything!" har har. "We're walking on snow packed on top of snow! My rod can't reach the ground!"
"Just keep walking," Maya shouted.
"Well, isn't that familiar?" Kori gave a laugh. Even though both were hidden from Aang's sight, he was absolutely sure that she was shooting him a death-glare.
"Guys, I think I see something," Malu shouted back, almost vanished for distance and wind.
"What do you – ow! Why did you not warn me?" Nila snapped, her outrage beating the weather.
"I thought you saw it!"
"That way!" Maya said.
"What way?" Aang asked, as he could see only Azula, Zuko, and Toph, so that was patently unhelpful.
"Toward the Si Wongi!"
"Toward the Si Wongi she says, as thought I lack even a name! The unmitigated gall of that woman! Come and I shall show you how the weight of a commoners blood against a nobles!"
"That's the idea! Keep shouting," Sokka's voice came from somewhere ahead.
"Exactly my intention!" Nila said. "Airing grievances is a pleasant side-effect!"
"You snotty little peasant!" Maya shouted back.
"This peasant saved your life! Those who show no respect shall have none!"
"Ow! Oh, there it is," Katara said.
Aang almost walked into her, before taking a few steps aside, and entering the lee of a dark, wooden wall, which had great banks of snow whistling around it and mounting up. The noise was terrible, but the presence of this little grotto was a godsend. Appa plowed through those banks, and those who had been lagging, with Aang, followed in its cut-wake. Maya slid down the sheer face of the bank, coming to an unsteady stop at its base. "That's what I thought," Maya said. "She pointed to one side. "On this wall is the way in. Trust me, it'll be better than huddling in this hellish snow."
"Hey, this snow is nice. A bit unexpected, but nice," Katara said, now wearing the same thick winter coat she had in their last leg toward Summavut.
"This snow means the world's dying, Katara. That's not a good thing," Malu said, puffing out steaming breath, as she pinched away the crystals of ice that formed on her eyelashes. "Wow, those are annoying."
"What is this place?" Toph asked, thumping the wood with her metal rod.
"Switch house," Maya said. She took a few deep breaths, as though steeling herself, then grabbed Toph's hand. "Form a chain and don't let go. We'll be going blind until we find the doorway."
They did as the noble Azul asked, with Katara's hand taking his, before he reached back, and saw that the one at the end of the chain was either Azula or Kori. Azula looked between the two of them, and then rolled her eyes. "Fine," she muttered, and took Aang's hand, with Kori trailing last.
"What about Appa?" Aang asked.
"Have him follow, there's lots of room," Maya said, around that whistling corner. The whole chain of them slogged on, the snow, once past the protective corner, up to their waists. Toph must have been having it a lot worse, though. Aang couldn't see them, through the blinding snow that flew straight into his face. His eyes were squinted down until they were essentially closed, so he cut out the middle man and pressed them shut, trusting his connection to those before him to lead him onward.
"I hate the cold. I hate the cold. I hate the cold," Azula muttered with increasing intensity as they went. There was a cracking sound, and the line fell still for a few seconds. Then, with a tug, they were moving again.
"Appa! Come on, buddy!" Aang shouted back, and the grumble from the far rear let him know that the great bison was still following. He walked. Then, he almost tripped as his toe caught on something, but Katara's hand was pulling him up, dragging him left and into something. In a heartbeat, the tearing of snow on face ended, and the air, while still cold, wasn't frigid and brutal. Aang blinked a few times, looking at the broad, workshop looking area that they'd entered. A great door sat on the same side of the building as they had entered, but a bit further back. Aang continued, pulling Azula in, before breaking the chain, and rushing to the door. He tugged on the great wooden beam that was holding the doors shut. It wouldn't budge. Even when Zuko tried to help, they could only get it to wiggle. Azula looked at them, before shaking her head lightly.
"Stand aside," she said, indulgently, before squatting down under the bar and letting it rest on her shoulders. Then, with a rictus of effort and a slow push up, the beam slowly shifted out of its resting place. He knees started to quake, though, and it was obvious this was her limit, and maybe a little bit more than that. Zuko grabbed the beam putting his shoulder under it, and motioned Aang to do likewise, behind him, giving Azula the permission she needed to collapse onto her behind. She breathed heavily for a moment, then pushed herself away from the door. A glance between Avatar and firebender, and they pulled the beam out, letting it drop onto concrete, where Toph's earthbending easily shifted it out of the way entirely, now that she could tell where it was.
Opening the doors was easy, as they swung in. Closing them might be a problem, because they let in a vomit of snow, and only the horns of the bison were visible under all that snow. "Come in, Appa!" Aang begged, oddly repeating so closely that voyage, that ship, a century ago. The bison plodded in, moved to the center of the great concrete room, then flopped itself onto its belly, not even shaking off the snow. A few seconds later, as Zuko was firebending to melt the snow which had blocked the door from closing, a white blob jumped in, and happily walked over to where Azula was sitting, before shaking vigorously and throwing a great deal of that snow away. The moose-lion cub then muzzled wetly against Azula, who could only groan at the treatment. It was a hard push, helped by Toph in this instance, to close the door, and bar it with stone rather than wood.
Aang turned to the others, who were all huddling around a pyre which Zuko lit with a flick of a finger. When it lit, they could all see the scale of the building. Not vast, but impressive nonetheless. "What is this place?" Aang said, sitting down between Nila and Azula, in front of the fire.
"A train switchyard," Maly said. She tapped her temple. "I've memorized the railways, in case I ever had to run from a blast-urchin, or wanted to get out of Azul, or something. Never figured that I'd be huddling away from a snowstorm, though."
"I don't think anybody did," Aang said. He shuddered a moment, as the warmth of the fire slowly began to work its way to those around. "What do we do now? We can't cross the mountains like this."
"We won't have to," Maya said. They all looked to her. She seemed confused. "Traaaains?"
"Yeah?" Sokka asked.
Maya sighed and rubbed her face. "The trains can take you just about anywhere in the Fire Nation. And I can board any train I want to, legal, without paying. Yay being the daughter of a despot. Now the next question is, where are you going to go next?"
"You're not coming with us?" Aang asked.
"She's coming with us," Kori said.
"You don't know me en..."
"Do you want to stay here, in Azul, where it's blizzarding, or go over the mountains to where it's merely snowing?" Kori asked. Maya looked miserable. "I figured as much."
"We can decide that later," Aang said. "Right now... Now we just need to... Sleep, I guess..." he said, laying down, his body finally giving out after all that struggle to get this far. Within moments later, despite being on hard concrete without so much as a blanket, the Avatar was asleep.
Thunder sounded outside the window, which was not only closed but barred and sealed with some sort of adhesive canvas to keep the cold out. Many things had the seat of the long-diminished-into-nothingness House Yuchiban, but an eye for insulation was certainly not one of them. Although, those long dead and vanished nobles had a fairly good excuse; nobody in their right mind would have considered cold to be a Fire Nation problem on their own soil.
Another crack of thunder, followed by more kinetic taps against the canvas as another sheet of half-frozen rain pounded into the window. Suki knew that this was unnatural weather. After all, it might be winter on Kyoshi Island, but even their winters never got so severe, and... well, this was the Fire Nation.
No matter how many times she turned that around in her head, it never made any more sense.
"I would almost say that the universe is conspiring to keep this rebellion alive," Suki said, as she looked over the 'battle map' which had been stretched out and tacked to a long-unused table scrounged from the storage rooms. Markers of blue were massed all throughout the Ember Archipelago, though most on the last island in the chain, Grand Ember itself. Peasant levies, a real general might call them. Guerillas, Suki would. But the fact was, a quarter of the total population of the Fire Nation was in open revolt against the Fire Lord. And backing a woman who Suki had no real desire to see in power. "What's the situation with the blockade fleet?"
"They've gone back to port," the once-fisherman Boto said, pointing across the Horimota Strait, and the city of Yokaizo that nestled there. "Icing."
"Icing," Suki shook her head.
"I'm taking any advantage I can get right now," Boto said. He rubbed at a long-unshaven face for a moment, then took a moment to adjust the blue turban upon his brow before looking her in the eye. "They say you fought against Azula, last winter. Why the change of heart?"
"There was no change of heart," Suki said. "I still think that Azula's psychotic. It's just that if I don't work with her and the Avatar and... well, anybody else we can get," she gestured to the grab-bag collection of disenchanted mercenaries, struggling to find a fight they could believe in, to the farmers and tradesmen turned soldiers, to the soldiers who'd thrown down the Three Point Flame as soon as the front of the Rebellion reached them, "then this is going to get a lot worse."
"If you don't believe in the leader, why back the cause?" Boto asked.
"Why back the cause if it's defined by the leader?" Suki asked. Boto leaned back.
"Might have a point there, young lady," he admitted. The doors opened, and the sharp eyed Tribesman barged in, her arms draped over a musket that framed her back. Aalo had been quite pleased with herself when she looted that from one of the ships which now flew a blue flag, back when it stull flew red. She'd actually gotten fairly good with it, too.
"Another patrol," Aalo said, in her pidgin-accented Huo Jian. "Didn't do so well on the waves, so I helped 'em to the bottom."
"You sank a patrol?" Suki asked.
"You should see these Tribesmen fight," Boto said with a gruff smile. "Easy to see why they held the North so long."
They'd made quite a name for themselves in the brief time that they'd been here, but it was clear to everybody that they were running out of time. Worse, they were losing momentum. If they stalled, here... they might never move again.
"So you're still here?" the Azuli girl asked, her voice bored and flat as it pretty much always was. She turned bright eyes from Suki to the map, and notably, the great mass of blue flags that stared down a great mass of red ones. The red flags continued, every bit as thick as they were at the front, all the way into Caldera City, split along the border with Azul – in purple – had tiny numbers, but warranted an nonreciprocal response from Shinzo. Mai reached across the map and flicked away every flag that rested on the city of Azul, causing all to turn to her. "Just got news from the birds; Azul has collapsed into all-out civil war."
"What, did the Spider die?" Boto asked with a grim chuckle.
"If only. He's one of the sides," Mai answered him. She shook her head. "That rules out Azul as a possible ally. Or even a pinch."
"Pinch?" Boto asked.
Suki leaned across the map with both arms, indicating the two non-red forces, and where they sat. "We had the Fire Lord in a position where he'd have to fight on two fronts. Now, that option's pretty much gone. He can turn his full attention here. So we're going to have to jump the strait before he does."
"Good. Too much sittin' around anyway," Aalo said.
"That's a pretty bold thing," Boto said. "Jumping out of the frying pan and into the inferno. If we dig in here..."
"Then we'll be here till the world freezes over completely," Suki said. She rubbed her brow. It was days like this that she wished her mother wasn't so busy with the... well, the important parts of keeping an army alive. If there was one thing that the Kyoshi Warriors were masters of, historically, it was fighting guerrilla wars; they knew how to keep themselves fed, no matter what. And considering this army had no centralized leadership and nobody counting coin, the supply lines were pretty much non-existent. She had to shake her head. "...how did you people even get this far?"
"The Grace of Agni and a lot of hard work," Boto said. He sighed, and rubbed an unshaven chin. "Well, if we're jumping the strait, we'd best do it when their pants are still down. Aalo, figure you can sneak an army across freezing-over oceans in the dead of night?"
"I'll have to find out," Aalo said. She then turned to Suki. "Why is it that the twenty seven year old fisherman is the oldest 'un in this room?"
"Because everybody else is busy," Suki said. Considering all the actual soldiers who'd defected and joined them were all low ranking, there was an anarchy of military leadership that made the movement at once impossible to decapitate, and extremely disorganized and inefficient. "Boto, talk to anybody you need to talk to. We're getting across that strait, or we're going to die trying."
"Won't be popular, that's for damned sure, but I'll put out the word. Anybody who says no?"
"Tell them that they'll get left behind without weapons or food. Or heat," Mai offered. Boto gave a dry chuckle, and nodded to them, before silently making for the door. "Hold on, there's more."
"Ain't there always?" the fisherman turned revolutionary muttered. Mai reached to the very edge of the map, the tiny twist at its far eastern edge of the Ember Archipelago, to the obviously named Crescent Island. "Got a bird from a farmer on the terraces. He saw ships coming from the East. A lot of them."
"Allies?" Boto asked. Mai shook her head, grimly.
"No. The only allies that are joining you will be sailing the other direction. This would have to be..."
"Be who?" Suki asked.
"Long Feng," Mai said, arms crossing before her chest, as a fresh crash of lighting presaged a new wave of rain, this one hitting with enough impact to unstuck the canvas and make it flutter, wet falling into the room, but not very far. Flames fluttered in that wind, and those with turbans grabbed to make sure theirs didn't come off. Mai, short of hair and head unclad, didn't bother, waiting until Aalo reached over and splatted the canvas back. "It looks like the Grand Secretariat of Ba Sing Se is making his move. And from the rate that he's taken to get here, he'll be at Caldera City by the end of summer."
"An invasion?" Boto asked. His mouth pulled into a sneer. "Fantastic," he shook his head and spat on the floor. Then, he pointed a thick finger toward the map. "If nothing else, that'll put fires under asses, though. This is our nation, our Fire Nation, and damned if we're gonna let any inbred Easterners take it away from us."
With that jibe against Suki's ancestry and parentage, Boto turned and left for good, slamming the door behind him as he went. "Something I'm not aware of. What's the problem with this Long Feng?" Aalo asked. Suki shrugged.
"Imagine Fire Lord Azulon, the man who kidnapped you. Have that in your head? Hide it behind a smile and an honest if idiotic belief that he's doing it for your own good, and then make it about five times worse. That's Long Feng," Mai said. There was a cold anger there, one that Suki didn't quite know the reasons behind.
Suki still sighed, though. No matter what, no matter how grey today, how blue the banners, how white the snow that tried to stay on the ground... tomorrow would be red.
The building had warmed up considerably in the hours since they'd first barged into it. The great beast Appa was now contentedly dozing in an enormous pool of water, and the lemur remained tucked in the slumbering Avatar's lap. Kuchi, on the other hand, was wide awake and eager, but at least, at this point, Kuchi wasn't a ball of freezing wetness anymore. Azula found herself scratching behind its ears as it looked at her with those big, dark eyes, mouth agape and tongue hanging out. She'd never had a pet as a child. Strange that she'd appreciate one now.
"I'm still a bit in the dark as to what we do next," Sokka muttered.
"You get the hell out of Azul, if you know what's good for you," Maya said, leafing through some newsreel that had been left in an office. "I can't believe this. This thing hasn't been updated in a week. There's supposed to be daily runs through this part..."
"Well, obviously, but..." he trailed off regarding her first assertion, and sighed, shaking his head. Nila, sleeping, had her head in his lap, and he kept gliding his fingertips along her hair, so that she kept making uncharacteristically happy noises as she slumbered atop the piled cushions. "I don't even know what happened to us back in that city. What was Azul even trying to do with us?"
"I thought it was obvious," Azula said. "Announce to the Fire Nation that the Princess and Crown Prince of the former Fire Lord had returned, and were under his protection. Doing that, he would instantly garner the loyalty of the Blue Turban rebellion. He would then send them in as cannon-fodder so that he could surreptitiously assassinate Zhao and the leadership that could oppose Azul, before installing himself as Fire Lord. Then, he would have Zuko and the others executed, the leaders of the rebellion made examples of, and would keep me alive – barely – as leverage over the Avatar, who would also be kept in a state of nearly-dead," she summarized.
"You've put a lot of thought into this," Zuko noted quietly.
"It's what I would have done in his position," Azula noted. "A lifetime ago, anyway. I even know what somebody like him would do to keep the Avatar contained. It would not have been... pleasant."
"Yeah, can't imagine what you could do to chain an Avatar forever."
"An Avatar without eyes is still blind. Without hands and feet? Crippled," Azula said. "As I said. Not pleasant."
"You wanted to do that to Twinkletoes?" Toph asked.
"Not anymore," Azula muttered. And she didn't exactly know why. Or worse, she had an inkling of why and was vehemently denying it to herself. She turned to her brother and the earthbender, who were as usual keeping each other's company. "But the point is moot. Montoya Azul's plan is defunct, and we're out of his reach."
"Not just out of his reach..." Maya said, as she chucked away one paper to reveal another. This one had a headline which was visible even from the distance. House Azul Fractured. City, Country in Chaos. Maya had a haunted look on her face as she began to run eyes down the page, to pick out those things that, by dint of distance and small font, were beyond Azula's notice. "Agni's blood... My city's on fire!"
"Your city?" Sokka asked, mostly because the other tribesman who could jibe her about that was also sleeping, and thus couldn't. If there was one constant across all possible universes, it was that Sokka simply would not let a sarcastic comment go unvoiced. "I thought you wanted nothing to do with it."
"I wanted nothing to do with my father," Maya said guardedly. "And nobody even knows if my father is even alive at this point."
"...I'm sorry," Azula said.
"You're sorry? I thought you'd be glad that somebody else's relationship with their father was as terrible as yours," Maya said bitterly.
"My relationship with my father is..." she tried to come up with a better word, but couldn't, "...complicated."
"Complicated? He wanted to kill you. He burned off my ear," Zuko said, pointing to the left side of his head, where the bubbling of his flesh vanished up into his shaggy hair, ruining a perfectly good ear in the process.
"But he's still my father," Azula said, quietly, petting Kuchi as though it could offer her some comfort. In a way it did, but it wasn't nearly enough.
"Well, that's just about all of us, then. Welcome to the club. We all hate our parents. Well, not my mom, because my mom's awesome," Toph hedged. She then scratched at her hair. "I wonder if Twinkletoes over there hates his parents too?"
"Unlikely. He's an Air Nomad. He never knew his parents," Sokka said.
"Why?" Azula asked.
Sokka just shrugged. "It was a thing they did. We could ask... oh," he said, looking over to a workbench which had a blanket thrown onto it, and was now playing host to a snoring airbender all its own. "Okay, guess we'll ask whoever wakes up first," Sokka said.
"You have something on your mind?" Maya asked.
"The big problem," Sokka said. "We're going to try taking down the Fire Lord, but the army can't get across the mountains without, you know, freezing and starving to death. There's gotta be something we're overlooking."
"There isn't always a solution," Azula said. "Sometimes you have to accept that there will be defeats and losses, that even your victories can be bitter."
Sokka puffed out a grunt. "Yeah but... it feels like there's something staring me right in the face and I'm not seeing it. Maybe it's the weeks of terror, followed by the weeks of happy complacency, followed by the week of freezing perpetual blizzard, but..." he shook his head, and shrugged.
"mmrph want a pineapple..." Nila sleepily muttered, shifting a bit and returning to a more restful sleep.
Azula, though, had a different problem fixed in her mind. One that she'd desperately not wanted to think about. Father. What was she supposed to do about Father? She knew, in her heart and in her mind, that Father couldn't retake the throne. There was too much bad blood, most of it spilled onto the ground, for that. And when Zuko became Fire Lord, what would that leave for her? Would she be a forgotten relic of a lamentable war? The last shrapnel of the familial bomb that Azulon had lit the fuse of from beyond the grave? She knew that it seemed a disconnected thing, her own fate versus her father's, but the two were, in many ways, one and the same.
Despite everything he'd done to her, all the things he'd made her do, all the times he failed her, betrayed her, cast her in doubt, Ozai was still her father. He was still family.
What was she without her family?
"Azula?" Zuko asked. "You look like you've got something on your mind."
"...Father," she admitted. There was an angry glance aside, what she quite expected of him. Certain parts of Zuko's character were also immutable. Much like Sokka's penchant for sarcasm, so too did Zuko bear always a twisted and convoluted relationship with Father. In that, they had perfect sympathy. "I don't know what's happened to him. And that... that bothers me more than I thought possible."
"I thought you'd be the first to celebrate when your father was thrown down," Maya said, distracted and her face very concerned as she continued to read her out-of-date words.
"It's not that simple," Zuko said.
"It never is," Azula agreed. "You're feeling the same thing I am. You know that he's done... all of these terrible, idiotic things, but you still want him to be alright."
"No, I don't," Zuko lied. "I don't care what happens to him."
"Zuzu, you can't lie to me," Azula said. He shot her a glance, burnished gold eyes flaring against the firelight that filled the switchhouse with precious heat. He looked annoyed at being so easily caught out. The fact was, that would have passed bald-faced to just about anybody else. But Azula knew her brother. "A part of you wants him to be safe... and safely out of the way."
"I... Guess I just don't think the way you do," Zuko said, managing to switch tracks to something which was truthful, if utterly unrelated to her assertion. With a few years, this older brother of hers, he would be a political monster.
"When this is over, I'm going to find him," Azula promised quietly. "When you're in control, I'll have all the time in the world. If the world doesn't end, anyway," with a glance toward the slumbering Avatar.
"The train!" Sokka exclaimed, causing Nila to snort in his lap and her eyes to shoot wide. She lurched up.
"What day is it? What has happened about me?" she asked, groggily. Her hair was either mashed to her face or standing up on end, and her green eyes were bleary.
"I just realized it," Sokka said, bounding to his feet, filled with an excited energy. "The problem that we've all had was that our guys don't have the food or equipment to make a weeks-long march; what if they didn't have to?"
"What are you going on about?" Nila asked, annoyance clearly returned in force to her expression.
"Instead of having to march through the mountains, they can step off of a train and be exactly where they're needed – the last place that Zhao would expect!" Sokka went on. He cast a hand toward Azula. "I mean, did you have a railway factored into your plans to stop us?"
"No. Mostly because it wasn't until two years after Father's downfall that the TransContinental Railway was completed, by my reckoning," Azula said.
"Which means it'll be a blindspot in his plan!"
"Yeah, there's one little problem with this plan," Zuko said. "I doubt that a railway would just let a multinational army, bent on the overthrow of their government, board at a station."
"Oh, that's the easy part," Sokka said.
"How could that possibly be the easy part?" Toph asked.
"We need to steal a train," Sokka said.
There was a silence, broken only by Nila coughing the phlegm out of her tired lungs.
"You are mad," she said to him. "I shall sleep away from this insanity."
"No, just follow me on this," Sokka pleaded. "Azul's pretty much in chaos right now, am I right?" he asked Maya. She nodded, looking positively distraught. "Well, that means that if a train goes missing, they might just pass it off as highwaymen or... train-robbers, I guess. That's a thing that happens, isn't it?"
"Focus!" Azula snapped.
"Well, when we steal the train, we bring it to the south coast, have our forces board it, and then, quick as Yer Tonri's tongue, we're on our way to fight the Battle of the Black Sun!" Sokka said, clapping his hands together. The two airbenders, sleeping, muttered drowsily, but didn't awaken. "What could go wrong?"
"Did you seriously just ask that?" Toph asked.
"Yes, and in a serious capacity. What could go wrong?" he said, simmering down and returning to a sit. Nila, who came back and found him non-bombastic, returned to her pile of cushions, but this time, covered herself entirely in a blanket like a cocooned caterpillar.
"Well, at least one of you thinks things through," Azula noted. She raised a finger. "Here's the first thing that could go wrong..."
The weather outside was beyond dreadful, buffeting against window shutters which hadn't been open in decades. It lent the prelate's room a very sombre air, especially for a place which was supposedly closer to the glory of Agni than any other place in the Fire Nation. Perhaps it was the Storm King architecture, spiting them from beyond the grave and the wages of time. Perhaps it was just that there was a time when this prelate in particular had stood in this room, and the sun had been shining. Fourty years ago, before the mounting clouds over Shinzo and Ember reached into the mountains.
It might have been those things, but the prelate didn't care. For all a man of sixty years, he still moved with a vigor of somebody twenty years younger. He lifted the ceremonial cap off of his head, setting it onto the table next to his diary, which hadn't seen an entry in several days. Dull days made for dull entries. His musings hadn't even been profound enough to put to ink. Telling, when boredom hit such a critical mass that even an imaginative mind couldn't outdo it.
But today, he had something to add. Something that struck him even as he entered the room. He cleared his head, sweeping back a lock of grey hair that had leaked out of the phoenix tail he could still proudly wear, with a hand missing three fingers from long, long ago. He took up the brush in 'twixt his index and thumb, those that had been left to him, and began to dip at the ink. "Today..." he spoke to himself, quietly, as he wrote, "an intruder entered our facility. Murdered one of the acolytes. And now seeks to torture information from me. We shall see."
The creak of wood behind him, prompted him to tilt a glance over his shoulder, to the dark-skinned assassin who now shared the room with him. She looked every inch of her one of Montoya's trained killers. The girl, probably not even to her twentieth year, yet, stared back at him. What a pity, that the politics of the day had turned children into soldiers. "The acolyte is alive," the assassin said quietly, and every bit as darkly as the shadows she stood in.
The prelate gave a nod, setting down his brush, and turning on his knees to face the intruder more directly. "Then, depending on how this plays out, I may have to correct my error," he said. "I assume that you are here to either end a life, or steal one. If to end it, you'll find it more difficult than you expected. If to steal it, more difficult still."
"Give me what I want, and I leave you alone. Deny me what I want, and I burn this monastery to the ground," she said.
"A bold claim," he said. "The Fire Sages are skilled in the arts of fire as well as the arts of the faith. You are alone. Which means you are either desperate, or hiding something from a common eye."
The assassin took a step forward, and the prelate restrained himself from raising a brow, as what he saw wasn't what he expected. Those eyes were, without a doubt, blue. Not grey or silver, or amber or brown. A Tribesman? Strange. And a tribesman who looked quite the worse for wear. Her lips were cracked, and her eyes sunken as though she hadn't slept in days. In such weather, it would have been dangerous to. "Tell me where the Fire Lord is."
"Caldera City, I would imagine," the prelate said, a smirk coming to his face. As much as he was a leader of the faith, he could still send his old masters spinning upon their pyres by dint of being a smartass. The twist of the Tribeswoman's lips told him easily that she'd not enjoyed the joke.
"Ozai."
"Ah. Our guest, briefly," he said. He struck some stray flecks of chipped paint from his knees as he rose to his feet, and put his hands into opposing sleeves. "But I can then assume that you intend to steal him away. To put him back on the throne?"
"Just tell me where he is, Sage," the Tribesman demanded. How unabashedly strange. Her accent was one of pure Shinzo, crisp and clear and upper-crust. It betrayed her face, her eyes. What was this girl?
"I warn you that it will do you little good, dear girl. Ozai is quite outside your reach at this point."
"...where?"
"On the way to New Bhatti, I should imagine," he said.
"You're lying," she spotted instantly. Drat. That meant he was out of practice. Either that, or she was very good at picking such things out.
"Perhaps I am," he said, motioning vaguely aside. "But if I were, how would you know? Do you have keen enough a mind to see lies from truth?"
"I'm not here to discuss teleology with you. I'm here for a location. And if I don't get it from you willingly, I'll cut it out of you," she said, tapping a hooked blade that rode her hip.
The prelate sighed. "And I had so hoped this would go another way," he said. Then, with a movement as swift as a scorpion-viper's strike, lashed out with a cut of flames that seared toward the hapless perhaps-waterbender. His assumption regarding her element proved to be quite mistaken, however, which managed to flit through his mind in the time it took her to, moving as the most graceful of dancers, ducked under that blast, letting it slide into a spot right at her fingertip, before tearing it down and hurling it straight back at him. He spun up a wall of flames, but the impact of his own strike hitting him was stunning. He staggered back, shaking a two-fingered hand that smoked slightly. "Well, that was surprising. Do you have any more?"
"You have a death wish, don't you, priest?" she demanded, as she slid up into another movement that was like no firebending kata the prelate had ever seen in his long life.
"No. Simply a dreadful boredom," he answered, smiling. He turned with her as she circled him, waiting for her opening gambit. A gambit which didn't come. "Well, aren't you a patient one?"
"I don't tend to let the people I'm fighting get this snippy," the assassin muttered, as though chastising herself. Well, a woman divided against herself? "Age before beauty," she then said, a dark smile on her own face.
"Ladies first," he offered. There was a twitch of a smirk that pulled at that smile, then her hand flicked forward. But while the prelate twisted into being a shield of flames to deflect an incoming blast, he didn't anticipate that she would instead launch her blade at him. He barely leaned aside of it, a confused glance toward her, before she pulled back at a strand which was tied to the end of it. There was a tug, and the old man was sent off balance as the knife... no, as the hook came surging back, jabbing into him and turning him lest he have a chunk torn from his hide. He staggered, and she bent, tearing his flames from out his hands, bending them into a great band and twisting them 'round her, before she sent them out as a great lash. The prelate warded the strand away, flame smashing against flame and searing the tapestries off of the walls. A shame, but not a great one. While beautiful, they weren't worth much. The prelate pushed forward, living proof that an overwhelming offense was the only worthwhile defense. He kicked out a wave of low fire from his toes, searing the floor, and causing the Tribesman to have to leap over or lose her feet. But he kept the burn going, giving her nowhere to land.
She subverted that expectation as she had so many of his others, though. Even as she bounded, she somersaulted forward, ripping the flame up with her as though it were a rug, and casting it before her as she landed. The flame rolled back on itself, leaving her a clear landing place, and sending that whole great mass toward the prelate. With a ki-knife, he split the wave, annoyed that it destroyed his bed. He'd just gotten it the way that he liked it. "You can't keep this up, old man. Tell me where Ozai is!"
"Prove you're worthy of it, dear girl," he chided. Fists clenched, and the flame that ringed each of them burned hotter. She swung them around and back, the blot of liquid fire growing and distending as she did, as though it a rubber bladder overfilled with water, until it swung down and ruptured outward, the bladder breaking and sending an explosion at the old Fire Sage.
He bounded aside, letting the inferno rush past him. Sacrificing his diary for his life. Sad, but so it went. He rose with a blast of fire, simple but compact. It seared toward the Tribesman who couldn't offer defense from it. The blast sent her flying and back, smashing against a wall, and landing in a pile upon the floor. The prelate paused, looking at her, her snowy, wet clothes steaming from the impact.
"Hmm," he offered, as he moved closer. He stared down over his own fist at her, muscles roping below thinning skin. Something was amiss. In fact, he was almost certain that she was intending to ambush him. But how, he wondered? "You can call off this charade. I know you feign injury."
The head turned toward him, and the girl pushed herself to her feet, a sour look on her face. She struck singed cloth away from her chest and side, before raising hands up toward him again. Not a closed fist. Hands open, ready to grasp. Ready to pull his flames away from him.
He wouldn't be that fool again.
"Do you know why you seek this former Fire Lord, dear girl?" the prelate asked, letting the flames around his hands die. "Or do you simply follow the word of another. A mindless soldier to a mindless war?"
"Zhao should not be Fire Lord."
"In that, legally, I agree," the prelate said off handed. "However, there are also laws which allow provisional governance by a chosen representative in times of emergency. With all that has befallen the Fire Nation, surely you can see that we are in a state of emergency."
"I will not grant any justification to Zhao. And don't call me Shr-Li. My name is Hik – YOJI!" she snapped.
"Yoji. Or another name. Hmm. I see," he said, letting his fists drop completely, as he began to pensively pace around her. "I begin to see your nature, oh possible assassin. Azulon's 'stolen children', ripped from the arms of their parents in the South. Raised by his son to be the soldiers of the Fire Nation. So many failures. Only two successes. Only one he would admit to."
"Shut up."
"But this must cause some difficulty in your mind. Having to hold these conflicting thoughts," the prelate continued. "Are you Tribesman, or are you National?"
"I am..."
"Think hard on that question, don't be hasty," the prelate interrupted. The Tribeswoman seethed at that.
"You're not going to get inside my head, old man," she hissed at him. He gave her an honest smile.
"My dear, your head is wide open, to any who can see it. And that terrifies you, doesn't it?" he asked. If this would be a battle, then it would be one he was sure to win. No matter her training, there was nothing like simple age to sharpen the mind into a razor-edge for a battle of wits.
The day had dawned, such as it was, to overcast skies and a lot of wind. It was almost as grey as it had been through the blizzard the day before, but now, the snow was simply being blasted around by the gales, making the blinding effect only really applicable to the ground. Still, Aang shut the window with a sigh. This was just so weird. Every day that he woke up and there was snow on the ground in the Fire Nation, it was another nail in the coffin for the entire world. Aang took a moment to pause. Since when did coffins use nails? Shake of his head, and a notion dispelled. Sooner or later, he'd get this metaphor thing properly.
"Hey! Aang's awake!" Sokka said brightly from where they'd all gathered around a fire which blazed still – at the cost of several benches smashed into kindling. "We came up with a cunning plan to win the war when you were sleeping."
"Control your volume, Tribesman," Nila said, swatting his arm. "The firebenders have only just found sleep."
"I'm awake," came the grumbling voice of Azula from where she was curled up on the scavenged cushions – most likely from the smashed up benches. Nila's brow rose, and she looked to the princess on the floor.
"Then you got precious little sleep indeed."
"I'm aware," Azula said, and threw what she was using as a pillow at her. With that, she pulled the blanket over her head and let out a groan. Zuko, on the other hand, was asleep, sitting up in a corner, his chin down on his chest.
"Right," Sokka said, and beckoned the Avatar closer to him. "So the plan is, we steal a train."
Aang rubbed at his eye for a moment. "I'm sorry, I must be still dreaming. Because you said we had to steal a train."
"It was his plan," Nila agreed. "And shockingly, it may well work."
"A train," Aang asked.
"Uh-huh."
"Aren't those things... really really big?" Aang asked.
"Well, it's not like we're going to hide it under Appa's belly. We're just going to... well, boot its conductors out and use it to transport an army to Zhao's front door."
"Do you really think this is going to work?" Aang asked Katara, who was starting to fry some sort of meat on a slab of metal that she'd scavenged. That couldn't be a good idea. There was probably still grease on it. Well, several kinds of grease, now. Strange, how his question actually applied to both things.
"Maya talked me through it," Katara said, nodding. "There's a spot where the rails go right up to the shore. We can load the strike-force there, and head up the line to Caldera City."
"Why am I the only one who sees the glaring flaw in this plan?" Aang said. "How are we supposed to steal a train?"
"We'll find a way," Sokka waved the thought away. Aang's jaw was set in a look of disappointed disbelief.
"...we're all doomed," Aang said.
"Man, you're a downer in the morning," Kori said, walking into the room and striking snow off of his shoulders. "I thought you were supposed to be their shining ray of light? Shows what I know."
"What were you doing outside?" Sokka asked.
"Hm?" Kori asked, then dug at his ears, pulling great wooly muffs off of them. "Oh, outside? I was just watching the train come closer."
Azula sat up bolt-upright on her cushions. "A train is coming?" she demanded, looking somewhat haggard and lacking of sleep... which she was. "And you only warn us now?"
"Hey, I didn't see it at all until about five minutes ago," Kori said.
"AND YOU DIDN'T WARN US FIVE MINUTES AGO?" Azula shouted.
"Quiet! Trying to sleep!" Toph's voice came from the floor elsewhere.
"The thing's moving half the speed of a man-walking, and it's miles away."
"At half the speed of a man... walking," Maya said, as she slowly came awake, her hair falling in brown lines randomly about her, "that still makes the train the fastest thing moving in this weather. Is it morning?"
"Yeah," Aang said. "What do we do?"
Maya blinked a few times, then scratched at the corners of her eyes. "We get on board," she said. Everybody stared at her. "Is there something on my face?"
"Get on the train?" Aang said. He cast an arm toward Appa. "What about him! I'm not leaving him here!"
"I wouldn't abandon my pet in this weather, either," Maya said, rolling her shoulders and stretching her back.
"Appa's not a pet, he's a friend," Aang said sharply.
"Yes. But he's my pet," she said. Katara gave an 'ooooh', but Aang still didn't get it. Maya sighed. "You're right, we are doomed. They'll let it on, because it's my pet. Otherwise, they'd kill it, butcher it, and eat it. And as for you, you're all my valets and bodyguards."
"See? Easy solution," Sokka said.
"Although why a train would be crossing the lines here is a bit... worrisome," Maya said, but didn't elaborate on why that was.
"So we're going to walk up to this train and ask them to let us aboard," Sokka said. Then, he paused. "Fine, you'll demand that they let us aboard. Then what?"
"Then we steal the train," Nila provided for him.
"Doesn't that seem a bit... heartless? After them helping us get out of this weather?" Aang asked.
"Do what you must," Azula pointed out. "How many world-shaking entities have told you that in the last year?"
More than Aang wanted to admit, really.
"Alright. Wait! What about Sato!"
"Call in the Yubokamin," Maya said. "It's not like they're going to boot him out of their wagons. Their hospitality runs a bit better than that."
"And suddenly you're an authority on the Gorks," Kori jibed. He cast a thumb over his shoulder. "Well, be that as it may – and it probably is, in fact – if we're going to do something, we should probably do it quickly. They're going to be here soon."
"I thought you said it was miles away."
"I might have exaggerated the scale," Kori said with an apologetic nod. "What? It's a white-out, out there!"
Maya sighed, and nodded. "Wake everybody up, and pile everything onto your bison's back; I don't want them thinking that thing is a saddle."
The morning accelerated to a fevered pace. Or, rather, as close to a fevered pace as a bunch of groggy, cold, hungry teenagers could get. It wasn't long before their sum possessions, other than the thick winter clothing that girded them, was piling up the howdah on Appa's back, and a great sheet of canvas was bound over the whole thing, making it look like a beast of burden. Aang scratched behind Appa's ears, whispering, "I'm sorry to do this, Buddy. But it'll only be for a little bit. Then, we can get out of this cold. You'll like that, I promise."
Appa gave a low grumble as answer to that. Probably, Appa was ornery because there was so damned little to eat. The teenagers weren't the only hungry things in here.
"Alright, is that everything?" Maya asked. She looked over, then sighed and threw a wrench at Zuko, who'd remained sleeping the whole time. It hit him in the boot, which drew a snuff from him, and his eyes slid open. His golden eyes did a quick sweep of the room, taking it all in, then he stood.
"So we're getting on the train, then?"
"You were listening?"
"No, it was obvious," Zuko said flatly. Azula and he shared a smirk at that. He palmed a yawn, and then moved to the doors. "We'd best do this when we can hear it, since it'll be right outside the doors when..." Zuko trailed off, then pressed his right ear to the wood. "Huh. Closer than I thought. If you would do the honors?" he motioned toward the closed door to Maya, as he hooked his hand on the latch. Toph, also yawning, stomped her foot down, and the block of stone that was holding the doors shut dropped back out of the way. With a gust, Zuko was knocked back a step by the door swinging inward, and all beyond them were hit by a blast of wintery fury.
Aang, following right on Maya's heels, could barely see through the fog of white flakes that whistled on the skin-tearing wind. Even as cold as he was before, the difference was both stark and outright painful. "Where is it?" he had to shout to clear the noise, both of the wind, and of something great and mechanical trying to drown it out.
"Move toward the fire!" Maya shouted.
"What fire?" he shouted back to her, following her voice. Then, he was answered as a portion of the white ahead of him turned orange. A pause, then, another surge of orange. He moved toward those pulses, and staggered into Maya just as the woman reached a sharp decline, a wall of snow giving way suddenly and abruptly to naked gravel, and steel track. Entirely to the efforts of four men, firebenders, obviously, who were bathing the snow and melting it so that the dark form of the engine behind them would have some purchase to roll.
"Whoa! Stand back, m'dear. Wouldn't want y'gettin' roasted," the ethnic Yubokamin so bundled that it wasn't physically obvious said to her.
"I need to get aboard! My name is Maya Azul!"
"Ah, and I'm the Fire Lord," the Ghorkalai laughed. Maya produced something from her pocket, and the laughter stopped. "Oh me lord the Thunderin'... Oishi, keep 'er movin', will ye?"
"Lazy bastard!" Oishi shouted back, but without any venom or bile. The Gork motioned that they follow, and within a few steps, the wind and the white-out ended completely, as they passed into the lee of the great machine.
"Oh, t' good to hear me thoughts again," the Gork said. "Din't know we'd have y' this far from the city. Well, we're bringin' the city to ye!"
"What do you mean?" Maya asked.
"Bunch o' refugees. Gettin' out while the gettin's possible," he said. He pulled himself up the ladder, to the door of the engine. Maya gave Aang a stern glare, as though warning him not to say anything. Well, at this point, if he hadn't learned that, then they really were all doomed. The firebender gave the door a repeated bang, even as the engine continued to creep forward.
"What is it, Ersai?" the voice came through the crack of the door.
"We got a big passenger, out 'ere."
"Unless he's Montoya Azul, we don't stop."
"Maya Azul, actually, and I don't require you to stop!" Maya shouted up. The door swung open, and the man within was of an almost dusky complexion, half way between Azul and the Gork on the ladder above her. His eyes were clearly amber, though. He looked her up and down.
"Montoya had a bounty on you," the conductor – was that what they were called? Conductors? – said. He then shrugged. "But since he's not paying any bounties right now..."
"I'm looking for passage, for myself and my servants, and... and my pet," she said, as Appa trudged into view, after a warning only of several firebenders letting out confused swears. The conductor leaned out of the door, and shook his head.
"Agni-damned nobles. Can't have a regular pet to save their lives..." he muttered. He turned to her. "Fine, your beast can sleep in the stowage cart. But for you, you'll have to settle for peasant quarters. It's all we've got."
Maya grumbled, but shook her head. "Fine. I guess I'll take it."
"We're not stopping, so if you want to get on, you'd better have good grip and good balance," the Conductor said, before pulling his door shut with a heavy clang. The Gork pointed back, toward the carts which weren't obviously just carrying a huge load of coal.
"The carts start about five back. Good luck, Ma'am."
He went back to the front of the ship, which was creeping past the group even as they spoke. "See, that wasn't so hard," Maya said. She nodded a head toward the cart, which approached them even as they approached it, the great wind break which had a blast of snow arcing over its roof. Aang managed to get to the threshold of that cart a bit before Maya – airbending made for light steps, and light steps for speed, on snow – and began to pull people up and into the covered section that lead inside. Most got in easily enough. Azula looked a bit uncomfortable taking his hand, for some reason. Toph, though, was clinging to Zuko's back in a piggy-back, as he got the two of them up off of the snow. When she was back on the ground, and her rod thunked against the floor, she breathed a sigh of relief and her eyes rolled up a bit.
"You know, if you'd have told me I'd be wearing winter boots in the Fire Nation, I'd have been very skeptical," Toph muttered, before moving on. Zuko, though, took one look into the cart, then leaned back to Aang.
"I don't know if we can steal this train," he said quietly. Aang leaned in, the last one in, technically, as Appa was being 'loaded' into an empty coal-truck just ahead of this one, squatting down so that the wind and snow raced right over its massive, fuzzy head. Gods, he'd be as black as a boot-heel when he came out of there. And a beast to clean. Aang leaned through the doorway that Zuko motioned through, and saw why.
He'd never seen so many desperate people.
The prelate flinched aside, ducking a seal-breaker that was hurled at his face by the circling assassin, and he didn't let his smirk fade. "I don't see why Ozai commands so much loyalty from you. Were I in your position, I imagine I'd be more irate, having learned the truth about them. Angry at the man who took my mind, turned it into his weapon."
"Shut up."
"Nothing more eloquent? I'm disappointed, dear girl," the prelate said. "That seems to lie in the heart of the matter. Who are you, and what do you want? Because all I've heard from you thus far is, 'I don't know', and 'what somebody else wants'. But nothing from yourself. Sad. Pathetic, perhaps."
"I am not pathetic."
"A girl who denies her own heritage because of a long indoctrination process which worked on she and so few others, who is now well aware of said indoctrination process," the prelate continued. He just had to keep chipping at her. She was unsteady, now. Off balance. If he pushed her hard enough, in just the right ways, he could break her without a finger raised. "So what do you want? Who are you, who does not know your own history? They're simple enough questions, ones that shouldn't cause too much cognitive dissonance in you."
"I want you to tell me where Ozai is," she demanded, her teeth grit.
The prelate sighed, continuing the circle that they had begun, a dance of battle more elegant than that of blade or flame. "Perhaps I've spoken too simply. Not what do you want now. What do you want? If you could have any one thing – anything at all! – what would it be?"
"You're not making any sense, and more notably, you're not telling me where Ozai is," she said.
"Then tell me what you want," he said simply. "An answer for an answer, perhaps?"
She glared at him, blue eyes sharp, before she called a stop to grinding teeth, and even ended her circling. "Fine. I want to have a home."
"And do you lack one now?" he asked.
"You said you'd tell me what I wanted to know. Honor your deal, Sage."
"Oh, it'll be answered. In due time," he said. "Why do you so fear homelessness?"
She answered him by launching forward with a swipe of that wicked blade, slashing at him wildly, pulling it back to hand when it slipped out by the strand from its base. He managed to duck the first slash, and caught the second, twisting hard and shoulder-tossing the girl to the floor. Or trying to, because she landed on her feet rather than her back, and despite her terrible leverage, managed to twist the prelate's hand until it emitted a painful crunch, spun up, and kicked him right in the side. He backed away, waving the hand that she'd popped. Not broken, but the arthritis was going to be a terror, tomorrow. He also sucked in a breath, at how she'd managed to get a boot straight into where she'd nicked him, before.
"Disappointing," the prelate said. "So you want a home, because you either feel you don't have one, or fear that you'll lose one. I'm guessing... the latter. Which I'm also guessing stems from long buried, perhaps even denied memories of your childhood," he continued, putting the pain aside. He could only win one fight at a time, and he stood the best chance at winning this one. They began to circle once more.
"You don't have one goddamned clue," she said, but her tone belied her words. He gave a chuckle.
"And that, I believe, dovetails cleanly into the first question. And the one which I feel is much more the enlightening one. Who are you?"
"I am Yoji," she hissed.
"But who is Yoji?" he continued. "Is she the Tribesman, or the assassin? Or is she something else. You almost said a name, before. Hik-something. Are you her, perhaps? Is there even some part of her that is struggling to peek out from behind the mask that you have worn, perhaps freely, for all the years since your theft from the South?"
"Hikaoh was nobody! She was worthless!"
"Until somebody gave her worth," the prelate said. He puffed out a sigh. "Oh, you poor, dear girl. Clinging so long to so thin a veneer. Desperate for the approval that you only got by sacrificing everything that you were. So that is who you are, to which I can only ask a single more question."
"I think I've had enough of your questions," she snarled, and the lanterns began to swell, redden, without the prelate's noticing.
"This shouldn't take long," he said. He leaned forward a bit. "Tell me... was it worth it?"
There came a whoosh of flame that finally drew the prelate's attention, as the lanterns exploded, and the flame surged toward his back. He had to bend for his life, barely deflecting the flames away, before they circuited the woman, and slammed forward with all their speed conserved. This time, the shields that the prelate could pull to bear weren't enough to deflect the coming harm. Thus, he was lifted from his feet and hurled straight back – through his door, it turned out. It shattered with the sound of bursting wood and crashing splinters. The prelate somehow managed to roll onto his feet, but he took a step back and almost slumped against the wall, too dizzy, too drained to offer much in the way of useful defense. However odd a firebender she was, she had power.
"Prelate Hanihbau!" one of his guards shouted, as he recovered from his shock at the pandemonium. Given the screaming of the winds, it made sense that no noise had reached them, till now. He spun with flames toward the girl who was either Yoji or Hikaoh, intending to send her into ashes with a fan of them projected into her chest. But she ducked under, kicking up the flames so that the bent back and toward his own face, causing him to snuff them or else blind himself. Then, a lightning strike, as she punched him in the crotch, then pulled what remained of the fire into a serpentine line, ending with driving it as a pile straight into the guard's chest. He flew back, dashing against a wall and rolled to the ground, smoking, but groaning.
"Enough!" the prelate said, a hand raised. Spheres of flame which dripped as oil toward the floor hung from the stolen Tribesman's hands, as she turned almost wild, feral eyes toward him. "I concede. As long as you bring no further harm to my brethren, you may have what you seek."
"Where!"
"All is in the ledgers," he pointed back into the room. "Take them and go. We will not pursue you."
"I should kill you, old man," she hissed.
"And if you should, consider the other crimes against you. What do they deserve?" he asked. She glared at him, then backed through Hanihbau's door, and entered his rooms. He sat there, on the floor, picking at singed red robes, wondering if he'd done the right thing. On one hand, he certainly didn't enjoy the notion of someone of Zhao's caliber upon the Burning Throne. On the other, he was tormenting the girl with things that she didn't want to think about. And, back to the first hand, those things which one never wanted to think about were always the most important, the most vital, to think on. He'd done the girl a favor that she would likely never appreciate.
He looked to his guard. "Brother Honma, are you alright?"
"I'm sorry, Prelate Hanihbau. I couldn't stop her," he said, still staring up and barely able to move.
"Don't be sorry. No harm that will last," he said. He then looked toward the girl, who shot one baleful glare back at him, before climbing out his window and vanishing into the darkness of the storm. He remembered what the old prelate, the shaman, had said to him when he was but an acolyte himself. Of the stolen girl. She of two faces, two names, and two families. Of how she would be part of who lived, and who died. He puffed out a breath, one he'd been holding his entire life. "He was right. Destiny can be a funny thing."
Gasping one's way back to consciousness was not the kind of sensation that Irukandji was used to. Much less, one that it enjoyed to any great capacity. As the grey-filtered light reached eyes that seemed dry as month-old-bread, it took stock of the condition of its body. A glance down showed a network of bruises that seemed more or less complete. How much of this chick's blood was in its vessels, at this point, it wondered? Well, that was something easily fixed.
With a drawn in breath, Irukandji pulled the body back together again, something it hadn't had the strength to do for quite a while. With an internal noise that sounded somewhat like chunky suction, the bruises vanished in a great sheet from her skin, leaving her looking as brown and healthy as ever. And for the first time in a long time, it felt healthy as ever. A few more blinks, sending forth desperately long-overdue tears to soothe things along, then it pushed up to a sit. There were three others in the wagon along side of it. Two of them were somewhat young, a man and a woman of Sun Warrior descent. The last was a reedy Shinzoan, hunched over a pad of paper, with a very intense look in his eyes. The couple – probably married, now that it thought about it – gave a clipped yelp of alarm as they saw it sitting upright.
"Yeah, yeah. I'm back. Celebrations all around," Irukandji said.
"Hrm?" the other said, glancing toward her. Irukandji blinked at the face which beheld it. And she was a bit surprised. "Oh! I hadn't noticed you there. Do you live here?"
Irukandji turned to the other two. "How long has this guy been in this wagon?"
"Most of a day," came the woman's response.
"And he didn't notice me. I'm mildly annoyed," Irukandji said. It rose, to every vertibrae in her back popping, until it followed with crunching of knuckles, toes, and neck. Finally, a clap of the hands, and she pointed at Sato. "You're not supposed to be here."
"Why not?" he asked, mildly put out.
"Because you're supposed to be reverse engineering Sokka's airships," it said. Sato just blinked at her. "...right. Somebody else did that, didn't they? Fine. Just don't get yourself killed before you knock somebody up, would you? The time-line's messed up enough as it is."
"I thought I was going to have a dastardly beast for a son," Nomura said.
"Yeah, but don't tell anybody," Irukandji chuckled. It then puffed out a sigh. "Alright. Back to business. Where's the Avatar?"
"They left," the Sun Warrior man answered. "With the daughter of Azul, the Prince and Princess, and the Tribesmen."
"They left? Why would they... No, not the time. Where did they go?"
"Probably on the rails," the woman said. The man turned to her. "What? I hear things."
"Fantastic. I'll be able to check the whole system in about an hour," Irukandji said, rubbing her hands together. She moved toward the door, opening it slightly, before turning back in. "Word of advice? Tell your kids to invest in Future Industries. You'll make a killing. But sell when you start hearing about some guy called Amon. Savvy?"
"Not really," the man said, confused.
"Eh, suit yourself," Irukandji said. It closed the eyes of its body, and opened the door. And the instant that the threshold was open, there was a crack of thunder, and a bolt of lightning leapt out of the back of the wagon. Because Irukandji had rested enough. Now, came the work of saving reality.
To answer a question that I saw while digging through old reviews: There is no setting I loathe more than the Warhammer 40k setting. It is the antithesis of a moving setting. Koh would have come up with that setting in one of his nightmares, and then erase it because it was beneath even his standards. Any coincidence of name or trope with that setting is both accidental and a little bit unwanted. This is not disparaging the writers who actually pan some gold out of the shit that the entire 40k universe consists of, and certainly not insulting those who enjoy said pieces of literary gold. I simply wish that somebody had put a bit more thought into making a sustainable universe out of it, instead of 'you lose if you fight, you lose if you don't fight, and you die screaming in either case' that the setting boils down to at its heart. Any setting which preaches the 'glories' of anti-intellectualism just... urgh.
But, as usual, take this as it is; a single person's opinion, and therefore having no bearing on anything that exists in the world outside my own dislike of grimderp. My real inspirations were the games Turgor (Also called The Void), STALKER, the magic system of Legend of the Five Rings (Another setting that has its moments of irksomeness), and the spiritual system of Werewolf: the Forsaken. I don't mind the darkness, but there's got to be a light at the end of the tunnel which isn't an oncoming train.
Alright, now onto something that is a lot less likely to piss off readers: Some have noticed that in a story tagged Aang/Azula, it was fifty chapters before anything started to become of it. For good reason; if it had started with the two of them goo-goo-eyed, then it would have just been bad writing. Azula is a certain kind of person. Aang is, as well. In order to slowly bring the two together, bridging the admittedly fairly vast gulf between them in a fashion which was both believable and meaningful is a process that takes time. In my case, more than a year of writing, and more than a million words. But now that it's actually starting to go somewhere (Slowly, as things of this nature ought) you can see everything which led them to this place, and believe it. Character arcs are tricky things. Making an Aangzula that made sense given their personalities was a challenge that I'm pretty sure I nailed. We'll see when we reach the Day of Black Sun part, I guess.
