The train had picked up speed as it finally broke free of the worst of the snow, and finally made decent headway against mere flurries rather than blinding snowstorms. The tracks, now hugging steep-sided cliffs as they approached the border between the ludicrously deadly Azul and the much more pacific Shinzo, shed their mass, and now only played host to slush. Thus, they picked up speed. At the worst possible time, too. Because they needed time to think.

Sokka was rubbing at an imaginary beard, as he was so often wont to do. It was obvious, to him at least, that this train would have been more than adequate to bring the army to the Fire Lord's door, in time for the Day of Black Sun. However, and he agreed with Aang on this, leaving a bunch of refugees and desperate people in the lurch was just the other side of evil. Much as he liked to call himself pragmatic... even pragmatism had its boundaries.

Luckily, in deciding not to steal this train, he found himself on his sister's – and perhaps more importantly the Avatar's – side. "So how are we going to find a new train before the big day?" he asked. "We're kinda running out of time."

"Please, we have weeks," Azula dismissed. "The issue isn't going to be getting a new train, if we can just offload these people somewhere moderately safe and..."

"That's not good enough," Katara interrupted her. "These people have suffered enough. I'm not going to be party to making their lives any harder than they already are."

"If you doom them because your hopeless idealism blinded you to facts of reality, you're doing them more harm than you think," Azula snapped back.

"Zuli, calm down," her brother said.

"I am calm!" Azula shouted, anything but. "And don't call me Zuli!"

"Well, what if..." Aang began.

"This is all academic," the long-lost Tribesman said, leaning in on their conversation. "Especially if you can't get these people off the train. From what I've heard, they're clinging to it like a lifeline. You cut that lifeline, they will cut you back."

"See? We can't do that to these people," Katara said.

"Um. We could..." Aang tried again.

It was remarkable that they'd all gotten a relatively quiet car in the train. Probably because they numbered enough that others didn't feel slighted when social pressures had them move. Not that Sokka had any in-depth knowledge of Fire Nation social etiquette, by the by. He turned to his girlfriend.

"Well, you've been silent this whole time; what's your opinion."

"Moot," Nila answered, carefully adjusting what looked like a spyglass atop her favorite firearm. "I am no master of military matters. Leave that to more appropriate heads than I."

"Guys, why do you keep cutting...?" Aang asked.

"The fact is, if we remain on this train, then your armies are going to be left behind. That's not acceptable," Azula said, chopping her palm with her other hand. "Sacrifices have to be made, in order to achieve victory!"

"GUYS!" Aang finally shouted. All stopped, and turned to him.

"...what?" Zuko asked.

"What if we're looking at this wrong?" he asked. "What if all this effort we're putting into planning to unseat the Fire Lord is just effort wasted from what we should really be paying attention to?"

"Imbalance?" Malu asked from Sokka's side of the 'conflict line'. Toph, ruthless pragmatist that she was, was at the moment on Azula's. "But what can we even do to help that?"

"I don't know, but armies and fighting, and the Day of Black Sun won't matter much if we throw everything against Zhao, only to have the world die right after," Aang said.

"The problem with you airbenders," Azula said, her tones patient but unimpressed, "is that you are constantly staring at the horizon, so you never notice the rock under your feet. Yes, this Imbalance of yours is your greater threat. However, this is the problem we have now. We can't cross a bridge if we don't know which river it spans."

Aang sighed, rubbing at his forehead and the headband over it. It was easy to tell even to somebody regarded as comically oblivious as Sokka that the thing was really starting to get under Aang's proverbial skin. That he wished he could take it off once and for all. Pity, things just didn't tend to go his way on that front. Sokka rubbed his chin for a moment. Then, his eyes shifted over to his estranged clansman. He was staring into the distance, far beyond the boxy walls of the train cart they were riding in. "You've got something on your mind."

"Yes..." Kori said. "If I know the way that Zhao thinks... and I'd like to think that I do... He's going to take advantage of this civil war in Azul."

"Which would mean bringing forces away from the Azuli border, because they're no longer needed against internal conflict..." Zuko continued Kori's thought.

"Exactly," the Tribesman said. "They're coming back to deal with the Blue Turbans. And guess which way they have to come?"

"They're behind us?" Aang asked.

"They'd have to be. A few days behind at most, in this weather," Kori said. He shrugged. "You'll get your train, and you won't have to steal it from refugees."

"Good for everybody!" Sokka exclaimed.

"Not exactly," Zuko said, leaning back, his arms crossed before him. "Has anybody given any thought to how they're going to steal a train that's full to the brim with eager, wild-eyed soldiers, as opposed to terrified civilians?"

"Can't be that hard," Toph said.

"Can't be that hard?" Malu asked. "That sounds almost impossible!"

"You've got the Avatar on your side. Impossible is nothing," Sokka said brightly. Zuko clapped a hand onto his forehead. "What?"

"You do realize you've just begged the universe to make this eight times harder, don't you?" the firebender asked past his palm.

"I don't think the universe is listening to requests right now," Sokka said. He turned away from the others, who launched into their own squads, pro against con, plot against scheme, and turned to Nila.

"You've got something else on your mind, don't you?" he asked, far more quietly. She gave a glance to the others, and nodded.

"My brother," she said. She then pointed through the walls of the train, and beyond. Northeast. "Somehow he has freed himself, and is working for traitors of your enemy."

"...you're afraid for him," Sokka hazarded. Nila didn't shoot him a glare; she simply nodded, very slowly. Whew. Good to get it right from time to time.

"I don't want to lose my brother again," she admitted. He snaked an arm over her shoulders, and held her close. She leaned into him like he was the only thing keeping her from falling off a cliff. Her rifle was still in hand, but... Sokka looked up, to everybody. Not just the few civilians at the far end of the train, but the whole of the rapidly expanding Team Avatar. They were all afraid.

Nobody know if victory was possible, let alone if they could achieve it.

Sokka just wished that he wasn't as scared as the rest of them.


Chapter 16

The Great Train Robbery


Kori stood out in the snow, stretching his legs as it were, while the conductors of the train worked in firebending shifts to melt the boiler water in its track-side tower so that it could get into the engine. The greatest irony of it all was that Kori could do in a second what had already taken them an hour – and counting – but if he did, he'd probably get strung up and lynched.

"I suppose you're here to stop me?" Maya's voice came from behind him, which caught him somewhat by surprise. Not that he showed it. Instead, he slid his easy-grin onto his face and turned to her.

"And why, pray tell, would I do that?" he asked. His tones were oily, with an implication that he knew the answer she was about to give. The truth was, he was a bit in the dark why she even talked to him.

"I'm going back to Azul," she said, her expression resolute and stern.

Kori raised a brow.

"My country is tearing itself apart. The only chance they have is if I put a stop to this."

Kori gave a mild chuckle, and patted a hand on her shoulder. "With all due respect, Ma'am, that's absolutely idiotic."

Maya's face went from resolute to insulted in a heartbeat. She was really going to have to work on that; even the Avatar was better at hiding what he was thinking than she. "Wha...how..."

"Maya, Maya, Maya," Kori said, continuing to pace in the little circle that he'd cut with his boots. "As much as it'd give me a heady dose of schadenfreude to cast you naked and helpless into a meat-grinder of epic proportions, I have to be at least a little bit practical. If you go back to Azul, right now? You die. You'll die before you even reach the city. And definitely before you reach anybody you can trust."

"You're selling me short," Maya said.

"No, I'm being extremely liberal with your chances," Kori shook his head. "If your father's alive, then you're then his tool, which is worse than dead as I understand it. If he's not alive, then all of his enemies – and trust me, that man did have enemies – will rip you apart like an anomolokia on a baby bison."

"So come with me. You think so highly of yourself..." she began. Kori barked a laugh, which brought her to a halt.

"Oh, I've got no intention on going back to that place. I do value my own life, after all," he said. He turned to her. "Wait, did you think that I would instantly jump to your defense out of affection?"

"...a bit."

"Maya, let me be frank," he said, turning to her and setting his hands on her shoulders. "I find you psychologically repugnant. You're shrill and unpleasant, tyrannical in all your dealings, and about a quarter as sadistic as your sire. Which makes you only a bit meaner than your average murderer, but I digress."

"How dare you!" she said, trying to slap his face. Since his arms were where they were, he caught the slap easily.

"You're not my type," he finished with a grin. He then released her hand and took a step back. "However, as I'd like to think of myself as a halfway decent human being, I don't want you to end up dead. Call me soft hearted."

"You think I'm just going to stand here and let you insult me?" she asked.

"No, I expect that you'll give some serious thought to what you're doing," Kori said. "Me? I'm going to Caldera City, and I'm going to start a little civil war inside the organization that raised me from the day I was stolen from my parents. Half because they, you know, stole me from my parents; the other half, because there's a few people in there who really don't deserve to get killed in what's coming."

"Oh. Well... Then what do I do, if I'm not going to Azul?" she asked.

"What would you do?" he asked.

Maya blinked a few times, pale eyes staring into his own very dark blue, before turning away. She took a breath. "I don't know. I'm supposed to be a master of politics and strategy, and Agni help me, I don't know."

"Well, think about your options," he said.

She looked toward the Avatar, then, down the rails which ended in Caldera City after skirting the mountains which turned one country into another. "I see two," she said. "First; join the Blue Turbans as the 'wronged daughter' of a tyrannical madman. That garners me support amongst the Azuli Nobility, because armed resistance to the master of the Burning Throne is about as noble a pasttime as anybody can hold, in their eyes."

"And second?" Kori asked. Now she was showing some brains.

"Join the Blue Turbans... and back the Avatar," she said.

Not what Kori would have expected for option two, but intriguing nevertheless.

"That'll make me a traitor in the eyes of the rich and powerful, but as we've all seen, there's a lot more poor than rich. Sensible minded people, not hidebound and locked in the past, will see the incredible value in having the tacit support of a demigod. Popular support amongst the ethnic Yubokamin, the poor, and the middle-class, would spur a movement to 'sweep the dross' from Azul's court."

"Well thought out," Kori admitted. "You'd return to Azul as its savior, rather than an opportunist trying to wrest it away from your father, and your betters."

"Options," Maya said, shaking her head. "Why does it seem like every one makes me feel like I'm whoring myself to somebody?"

"Everybody's a whore, Princess," Kori said, his arms spreading wide. "It's all a matter of price."

She glared at him. "You're disgusting."

"But I'm still alive, so I must be doing something right," he said with a grin. "So I presume that we'll be sharing each others' company for a little while longer, at least."

"How horrible," Maya said, deadpan. She looked to the Avatar and his group, who were now huddled amongst themselves in the lee of the coal portage building. For once, there was no snow stinging down, but the wind was nevertheless bitter. "This is such a strange age we live in. That the hopes and future of the Fire Nation depend on a Storm King."

"Air Nomad," Kori corrected. "But you're not wrong. We live in an age of madness, and stand amongst powerful people; their attention is deadlier than any axe or mortar. And the man – boy, really – we depend on is a... well, you've met him," he said with a nudge. She shrugged.

"Not what I expected," she said.

"The words stolen straight from the minds of everybody else who's met him, no doubt," Kori said.

"Do you think he can win?"

"Of course he can!" Kori expounded. She leaned back.

"How can you be so sure?"

"Because if he doesn't, I'm worse than a dead-man," he said. "Have to keep optimistic about these things."

"Child, you are a madman."

"So are all of my brethren, apparently. In both senses of the word," with one final glance toward the craziest of the three Tribesmen – Sokka – and he began to tromp toward them, leaving the younger Azul behind him. It was the Prince's eye that caught him first, and burnished gold burned up at him. Oh, so he still wasn't welcome? Well, tough. "I suppose that your little scheme is already afoot?"

"It's just a matter of timing," Sokka said primly.

"I should let you know I'm heading in my own direction, now," he said. He looked to the northeast, in his minds eye, picturing that great span between Land's-End and the capitol. Not a short distance. But then, what ever was? "There are things I need to do."

"Kori..." Katara cut in, as he half turned away. "What about our sister?"

"She who is Yoji and Hikaoh?" Kori asked. She nodded. "If I know her... and sadly, I do... she's probably denying herself as hard as she possibly can. She won't give up what was given to her until she's broken free of it. And that won't be pretty, I assure you."

"There's got to be some way we can get her back."

"Probably," Kori said. "And it won't be easy," he patted her shoulder, hopefully in a reassuring manner. "But if anybody can do it, it'd be you."

"Because you have faith?"

"Only in your stubbornness," Kori said. He cracked a smirk. "You could stubborn some sanity into a drooling idiot. You'll find a way."

"Thank you," she said, patting his hand. He gave a nod.

"Now if you'll excuse me, I've expended my daily allotment of 'not being an ass', so I'd best leave before I say something that makes you hate me all over again," Kori said, with a flourishing bow, and backed toward the train.

"Child!" Zuko snapped before he could get away. Kori looked up at him. "We aren't done."

"After the shellacking I gave your sister, on two different occasions, I didn't presume we would be. But there'll be plenty of time to hate me if we all survive this. Who knows? You might even get a rematch."

"Good. Whatever," Azula said, her attention locked somewhere elsewhere, and her tones distracted. That got Kori confused once more. Her, not pursuing a means of revenge? How unlike her.

"Truce," Zuko said. "For now."

"And so it goes," Kori said, and turned toward the train. "Maya! Come! We've got some reputations to destroy!"

"Yes. Mine," she said.

"And won't that be half the fun?"

"...I should have let that anomolokia eat you," she muttered once more, and Kori could naught but laugh.


She wished that she could glare her hatred straight into the Mountain King's skull, and have its raw heat bore a hole clean through so she could see daylight whistling threw. However, that might have just been because of the bee-stings.

"If you do that, you're all going to die," she declared, looking over the map that they had arranged. Grand Ember was much as Sativa remembered it, from the lone time she'd come to it so long ago. She was barely older than Nila was now, when she boarded that boat as a stowaway. And everything that came after it, it all started there. Such a hodge-podge had gathered in the metropolitan heart of the Ember Archipelago. To one side, there was Boto Toturi, the former fisherman. As uneducated as a man could be, he was rude, crude, and hadn't an ounce of culture to him, but he had the distinction of being one of the first to the fight, and to the Blue Turbans, that made him a default leader. And in its way, having him so rough was a godsend; it meant that he never planned with his pride. The other side of the spectrum were the Loyo Lahs, uncle and niece. Azuli nobility, and as such, clearly resisting the master of the Burning Throne with all that they had. Or so the common opinion went. That the two of them had very personal reasons for disliking either of Ozai or Zhao didn't matter to the mob. Why would it?

"Excuse me?" the Matriarch of Kyoshi Island asked. "I'd like to think I know my way around a maritime invasion, Badesh."

"Perhaps, for you are more nautical than almost any Easterner I could name," Sativa admitted. Well, the words sometimes flubbed, from her swollen and bee-stung lips. She persevered. "But this is more than an action in the dark; it is to be a clash of armies. Your plot assumes that the army... materializes to the rear of the Fire Nation force. You neglect that this will be a storming of a cliff-walled beach."

"I'm not neglecting it. It'll only take a small force to secure a route," the Matriarch said, pointing to a cataract that ran near the city where so much military buildup had transpired.

"Were this a standard army, staffed whole with regulars, I would agree," she said. "But this is a most irregular force, I'm sure you will agree," she turned a look to Boto, who nodded.

"Pains me to admit, but that won't be sneaky," the fisherman-general said. "We're going to call down a lot of shells and a lot of fire before we get everybody in a spot where we can fight back."

"So what would you do?"

"Coordinate," she said. "Zha Yu?"

"The coalition forces out of Omashu will be coming soon. When the come, they'll be in a position to pressure the city from the north," the Mountain King said, setting down some markers on the other side of the sea of red that blanketed the other shore upon this map. "Which will distract them long enough for yours to pressure them from the south. When they break, they break west."

"Simplistic," the Matriarch said.

"The way I like it," Zha Yu answered her.

Sati, though, took the opportunity to rise, backing away from the table. It was a cruel progenitor who instilled humankind with an urge to prod at their own wounds, and she cursed he or she mentally, because she couldn't help but do exactly that. Piandao noted her egress, and was quickly falling in beside her as she left the ad hoc war-room, which lay under the dome of Yuchiban Palace. "You look exhausted," Piandao said.

"I am, however, I shall have time to sleep upon my death," she admitted.

"Sati, you'll die if you don't sleep," he mirrored.

"There is too much to be done," she said continuing to stride. Even so, with her ground-eating pace, he kept up with her. It was mostly to do with the fact that he was almost a foot and a half taller than her.

"And you're the only one who can do it?" the swordsman asked.

"Yes."

"Sati..."

The Si Wongi stopped, and palmed her face with a tattooed hand. "What do you want to hear from me? That there is no better head for soldiery than I or the Mountain King?"

"I'd like to hear that 'or' a bit more often," Piandao said. "You don't need to support the weight of this entire war on your shoulders."

"Mine are the only I can trust," she said bitterly.

Piandao sighed. "I'm sorry that you feel that way."

She wanted to tell him that she would be fine, but knew she wouldn't. She wanted to tell him that she could direct this war with distinction, without aid, but knew she couldn't. Her pride was in the way from asking for help. Pride. How much good had that ever done her?

She could as much cut away her pride as she could restore Piandao's lost hand.

"You are free to do as you would," Sati said. "I will be safe enough in the heart of the rebel camp."

"That's not why I stay close," Piandao said.

She looked at him, then. Dark grey eyes met with green. "Piandao... No. It is too late."

"It's never too late," the swordsman said. "And with the world the way it is, what is the harm?"

"We had our chance. And tragedy befell us; an old flame, burned out, cannot be reset."

"You've never even tried," he answered her, his voice so soft.

"How could I?" she asked, her mask cracking a bit. "How could I demand of a man, after all that I'd done on my own? Not even of my reputation, but of my sense of self! And what man would happily harbor children of unknown paternity?"

"I would have," he said.

"You cannot say that," she said. "You never knew the stresses I faced. You never knew the trials."

"Because you didn't let me know," he told her. "Sati, you didn't have to live like you did for all these years. I know how unhappy you were. And you didn't have to be."

"How can you know of me better than I?" she asked, jabbing an ink-imbued finger into his chest. "What hubris says you know me so well?"

"There was a time where I knew you better than my own name. And you could say the same of me," he answered. And then, he sighed. "I don't know why that had to change."

"All things change, all order breaks down, and entropy always wins," she said grimly.

"Of course it does, if you don't bother to fight it."

And of course, Sativa was torn. There was a section of her that wanted to grab ahold of him, to weep decades of misery and strain into his shirt. That was, however, a small and well compacted section. So instead, she simply took a step back. "And how can we fight the landslide that has already begun? It. Is. Too. Late."

Piandao answered that, with all of the swiftness and certainty that his martial arts were renowned for. In one instant, he was standing apart from her, his maimed hand tucked behind his back, his eyes sad, his posture proud. The next, he was before her. Enveloping her. A wounded arm pulled her close to him, while the other cradled her head, tilting it back. Lips met lips. And for a brief, and glorious time, there was no war, there were no decades of separation, and there was no death.

Just the two of them. Sati and Piandao.

It ended, as so often it did, because she couldn't bear it. "No. No this must stop," she said.

"Sati..."

"I cannot do this. I simply cannot!" she said. She would never admit to the tears in her eyes. Or to anybody, that she wanted to make a liar of herself. But she knew that doing this would be catastrophic. That it would be a repetition of the agonies after Ba Sing Se, be it the first time or the second. She didn't want to do that to him again.

She didn't know if she could do that to herself again. If she could ever dare to let him close again.

"I never stopped l..."

"Do not even say the words," she cut him off. "Not here. Not now."

"Sati, please..."

She shook her head, and walked away, leaving him standing in the hall, alone. It was a hard thing, to be smart enough to know when you were being monumentally stupid. Because Sativa Badesh bint Seema din Nassar definitely had that sensation, right now.


Boredom and cold were not good friends, so when they met, misery came with them. In all the years that Hyuuga had been an engineer in the army, he'd never seen weather like this. It was unnatural. Ungodly, even; he didn't feel afraid of blasphemy, when Agni hadn't shown himself to his chosen people in decades. But in all that time, and in all the time he built and fixed the vessels, the Salamander Tanks, and so many other devices that gave an edge to the Fire Nation Military's blade, it might have been wet, but it was a hot wet. In fact, this very thing was the reason he never got himself installed as a field mechanic; he liked his problems discrete, fixable, and more over than that, safe. Safe, meant upon Fire Nation soil. Fire Nation soil, meant that it was never cold. Until this 'summer'.

"Come on, stoke it a bit," Aoba muttered, shivering in his armor. Just an infantryman, but they were thick as thieves from the day they stepped out of basic.

"Can't stoke it. You'd smoke out the entire car," Hyuuga pointed out.

"At this point, I don't really care," Aoba answered. "If it gets any colder, parts of me are going to start to fall off! Important parts! Popular parts!"

"Only in your own head, corporal," Hyuuga laughed.

"Hey, if anybody's getting attention due to 'popular parts', it's going to be me," Rei said from near the doors. Unlike most in the train, he wasn't shivering and miserable. He simply looked bored and miserable. Probably because he'd spent the better part of the decade since they'd split away locked in an ass-backwards part of the Earth Kingdoms; they had 'winters' there. With snow. Snow rather like what was taking every opportunity to come down from the heavens, these days.

"How is Shinu's daughter doing, anyway?" Hyuuga asked.

"Her rugrat's about six, now," he said.

"Think it's yours?"

"Almost definitely," he said with a grin. He then shrugged. "What? If they want to shut me out from the kid, then fine, she can raise him/her on her own."

"Can we stop talking about the Private's privates and get this thing hotter?" Aoba demanded. There were grumblings from the soldiers throughout the train.

"It's not a matter of stoking; any more fuel, and..." Hyuuga tried to rationalize with the soldier, but the glare that the amber eyed fellow had was brooking no explanations which didn't end with more heat. "Look, just settle down next to the firebenders."

"Them? They're worse than me!" he said, with a head thrust toward the firebenders who looked just this side of dead. Huh. This weather was hitting everybody pretty terribly. "Come on. Just a little more coal."

"It wouldn't help!" the engineer finally shouted at the whining soldier. "We've just got to hold on until we – ack!"

The 'ack', was brought on by the entire train decelerating rapidly, and throwing him from his feet. Aoba crashed across the brazier which was keeping him warm, and casting the hot coals onto the floor, where they started to burn and smoke at the floor boards. He rolled off, striking the cinders off of his chest before they could infiltrate his armor, and looked like he was about to piss himself. Hyuuga, on the other hand, had landed face first on a soldier's behind, who had, in turn, landed in a pile with so many others toward the front of the train car.

The shrieking of metal, and the lurching sensation which kept anybody from regaining their feet was a story to one such as Hyuuga. Somebody'd thrown on the emergency brakes of the train; that meant they saw something about a half-mile head of them that they could not simply plow through. Or, if they underestimated the momentum of the train, they saw something far closer, and everybody aboard was going to die.

The lurching, the forward pressure, and the screaming of metal started to die down, as the machine slowed first to a snail's pace, then, with a loud hiss, to a complete stop. Hyuuga pulled back. "Sorry about that," he said.

"Ah, I've had worse," the short-haired woman laughed it off. The engineer gave her a confused blink, and a mental note to figure out her name; she seemed like a fun drinking buddy. "Hey, idjit, stop staring at me. It's creepy."

"Something's wrong with the train," Hyuuga said, by way of escaping a potentially uncomfortable conversation. He moved to the doors, throwing them open and jumping out of the car. As the train had given up the wide expanses of Outer Azul for the narrow, cliff-clinging switchbacks of Lands-End, there was mercifully little wind, wedged as he was between the train on one side, and the cliff on the other. He stomped up through the dirty, grey-brown slush, pounding on the next cart as he went. The door slid open, and he gave a shout. "Engineer corps! Front of the train!"

"Aye sir!" came the cry from within. While Hyuuga didn't outrank pretty much anybody in traditional military hierarchy, when it came to fixing things, his word was doctrine. He didn't look back, as the others began to pour out of the car; he was too busy repeating himself on the next car, and the one after that. He darkly muttered to why they didn't just put all the engies onto one car. He didn't consider that there was a good reason, being if any one car was lost, there'd still be something of an engineering corps left. His solutions tended to be much more material than hypothetical. Finally he reached the portage cars, so he could continue without interruption, and after a few empty, once-coal-filled cars, he pounded on the doors of the rear of the two engines pulling the train.

"What have we got?"

"Rail's washed out," the conductor said. "Talk to Sungawa, he made the call."

With a nod, the mechanic moved ever forward up. But he didn't need to talk to the man at the front of the train, because as he rounded the last bend, he could see what they'd stopped short of. There was a stretch of open plummet, which the tracks they were based upon circumvented by clinging to the cliffs, which ended near the next corner that went out of sight. It ended, because a landslide had come down, and smashed the rails away. Hyuuga rubbed at a face several days unshaven. He'd so been looking forward to getting to Caldera City, and taking a long deserved break. Staring at uppety Azuli was not his idea of a good time. Stressful, is what it was. But this? This posed a problem.

"...this could take a while to fix," he muttered.

Exactly as a blind earthbender that he had no knowledge of had intended.


"Don't you think this is a little cruel?" Aang asked, looking to Appa, who was still mostly grey from his time in the coal-car.

"Would you rather let the train escape us?" Azula asked.

"For a wonder, I have to agree with the Avatar," Nila said. "It seems a needless risk."

Azula was, honestly, surprised that Nila would oppose her plan. If there was one thing that Azula knew and respected about the Si Wongi girl, it was that she was entirely willing to be ruthless when ruthlessness was called for. "Do you have a better idea of how to keep the soldiers afraid and distracted?"

"Having a clutch of anomolokia follow this beast into the back of their train will either result in his forfeiture, or several dead anomolokia in short order," Nila pointed out. "Soldiers, I have noticed, are very good at fighting."

"Yeah. It's too risky, and it might not work," the Avatar said diplomatically.

"Might not? It almost certainly won't!" Nila corrected.

"Nila, please. Azula's right about one thing; we need to keep them away from Toph while she works."

"She is through a wall of stone; they could not find her lest they blasted for her," Nila said with eyes rolling.

"And what do you think they'll do to clear the scree?" Zuko asked flatly. Nila stared into the distance, then, with annoyance, kicked a stone over the precipice. She didn't like being proven wrong, either. A girl after Azula's own heart.

The place that they'd set in to steal the train had the benefit of being high enough that nobody would sensibly come looking for them, counteracted by the incredible cold and the fact that the air was becoming rarified at this altitude. Of all of them, the firebenders suffered most. When one couldn't breathe, it was hard to firebend.

It would have been the height of arrogance to put their 'basecamp' somewhere with a view of the train they sought to pilfer; a break in the weather would have revealed them. So instead, they were a turn of the mountain away. It was a bleak, cold, wet place, and the fire that'd been set, burning hard woods that gave little smoke, did very little to either raise the temperature or raise anybody's spirits.

There was a rush of wind that came from an unexpected direction, as yellow and orange dropped into sight nearby. She looked the airbender up and down, her mouth slightly agape in incredulity. "Why are you wearing that?" she demanded.

"What, this?" Malu asked, tugging at her kavi. "It's comfortable."

"You stand out against the sky like..." Azula couldn't come up with something to describe contrasting orange against grey. "Change! Change back into something else!"

"Yeesh. So speaks the fashion-plate," she muttered. Azula's jaw set. There were days when she dearly believed that Great Grandfather had something approaching the right idea, getting rid of airbenders. They were just so annoying! "They're stopped solid," Malu reported to the Avatar. He breathed a sigh of relief. "But they've got guys already working to bridge the big hole Toph made."

"Awww," Aang muttered. "It's never easy, is it?"

"No. Have you not been paying attention?" Nila asked caustically.

"You're just crabby 'cause Toph ran off with your boyfriend," Malu teased.

"She did not 'run off' with him. He is aiding her in preventing a perceived landslide from turning into a real one," Nila shot back.

"Which still begs a question; how do we keep them from finishing their work?"

There was a moment of silence, punctuated only by the grumbling of the bison, and the chittering of the lemur that was poking its head out of the front of the waterbender's parka. Aang brightened for a moment, a finger raising in triumph, before his eyes got a stricken look, and the finger wilted. "Okay, that won't work."

"What won't?" Katara asked.

"I was thinking, if we attack people, those soldiers could get hurt or killed..."

"Enemy soldiers," Nila said.

"My countrymen," Azula and Zuko said as one.

"So we can't send rocks or beasts after them. So I thought, what if I take Momo, and put a sheet over him, and send him down there to scare them like a ghost, or..."

"That might work," Nila said. All turned to her, as she scratched at the back of her neck.

"...Really?" Even Aang seemed disbelieving.

"Not the lemur in a sheet, that is preposterous," Nila said with a flick of tattooed hands. "But you are a shaman, yes? What can a shaman do in such situations?"

"Call on spirits of earth or air or the mountain," Malu ticked off quickly. "...Oooh, or even Industry Spirits! I wonder what those look like!"

"Wait..." Azula said. She looked across the distances. "Can you look... insubstantial?"

"Ordinarily, no," Malu said. "But here in the Fire Nation, right now... Probably?"

"Why 'right now'?" Zuko asked.

"The Outer Sphere is pretty ripped to shreds right now," Malu said, which made no sense whatsoever to Azula.

"What do we need to look ghostly for?" Aang asked.

"You're a Storm King," she said simply, with a smirk. He leaned back.

"No... I'm an Air Nomad."

"They are Fire Nationals. To them, you're a Storm King. Soldiers, in my experience, tend to be a superstitious lot. And if they see themselves as 'beset by the wraiths of the Storm Kings... their attention will not be on fixing a bridge, I can assure you," Azula said. And more importantly, none of her people would get pointlessly killed.

"Yes!" Malu said brightly. "And I can even talk in Anno to confuse them more!"

"What's Anno?"

"What they used to... Aang, seriously. Learn your history," Malu said, thumping him on his arrow. "This is just embarrassing."

"Anno, the language of the Airbender Empire," Zuko said, chuckling darkly and shaking his head. "Never thought I'd be glad to hear that."

"You didn't believe in the Storm Kings too, did you?" Aang asked.

"When I was a kid, yeah," he said. Azula nodded as well "Everybody did."

"And who'd've thought that knowledge of a dead-language was going to help steal a train?" Katara asked.

Azula gave the waterbender a glance, then rounded on Aang. "Alright. Change."

"Excuse me?"

"If you're going to be a Storm King, then you're going to have to look the part. Change into something more Storm King appropriate!"

"But the only thing I have would be my old... kavi," he said, and then remembered that it still probably had those bloodstains on it from when he'd gotten shot through the heart.

"Exactly," Azula said. "What is more terrifying than somebody who bears the obvious marks of death, and yet walks?"

"You've got a creepy mind, Azula," Malu pointed out.

"You're ready for your part. But the rest of us... That will take a bit of lateral thought," Azula admitted.

"Which would be all the easier were Sokka here," Nila pointed out.

"We've come up with working plans tonnes of times without Sokka's help," Katara said.

"And how many times, comparable to the alternative, were they successful?"

"...Shut up," Katara said unhappily. Azula gave a laugh at that.

"You'll have a part to play in this as well," Azula said, running her thumb along her fingernails in a habit she'd picked up 'decades before' when she had no way to care for them, but still wanted that sense of manipulation. "We are, after all, surrounded by snow."

"See? Everybody's working together!" Aang said brightly.

"Out of necessity," Azula and Katara said as one. Then, both glared at each other. It didn't matter how Azula knew that this waterbender was probably a deciding factor in saving the world, she still didn't like her.

"And us?" Zuko asked.

"What's a good haunting without some," she flexed her hands, and brought blue flames into them, "...pyrotechnics?"


The weather had gone from bad – blowing snow down the cliffs in a stinging haze – to worse, with the arrival of lightning. Thunder started first, tearing from unseen heights. Then, lightning began to fork down the mountain. Sometimes, it came within feet of striking the train, or somebody working near it. Other times, it raked along the cliffs, sending light scree tumbling down. Needless to say, Hyuuga wasn't having an easy go of fixing the rails.

"No, no!" he shouted. "That one goes there, that one goes there," he pointed out the trusses that were being inexpertly handled. As much as they were trained engineers, they didn't have his expertise in working rails. How could they? They were hired to keep mortars up and running, not steam locomotives. He sighed, and rubbed at a face which was very close to numb. It also didn't help that his head was starting to pound, either from the stress or the unabashed cold, he couldn't say. All he could say, was that it was a half hour since his ears stopped hurting. And he took that as a bad sign.

"Junko, take over. I need to warm up," he shouted to the woman on the other side of the rail. The beefy woman gave a nod, and then started shouting orders at the workers in a far less kind way than Hyuuga did. But then, she was pretty good at this as well. It was only her stunning personality which kept her away from places warmer, drier, and a little less deadly.

He stomped back, trying to get feeling into any part of himself. It was a lot easier to move, now that the slush had been pounded out of the path of walking by so many other sets of boots, but still, he felt awkward and stiff. Like he'd aged thirty years in the course of an hour. Must be the cold. He hurled himself into the car, which had given over all other considerations to pile about seven braziers in a tight circle, and stoked them until they were staining the roof. It was a lot warmer, granted, but they'd be out of burning coal in half a day at this rate. He squatted down, holding his hands toward the heat, grateful to even have as much as he did.

He looked over to some of the firebenders he'd met on his tour, before shooting a look over to Aoba and Rei, who were sitting with back to back, each eating some dried rations with cups of melted snow for drink. "What's up with the firebenders?" Hyuuga asked.

"Beats me," Rei said, and left it at that.

"They don't look so great," the engineer noted. One of the ladies – who were five of twelve of them in this car – looked positively deathly. Her skin was a close thing to grey, and her eyes stared almost lifelessly into the distance. Another firebender, who was little better off, rubbed a warm blanket over her shoulders, but her own face showed much the same hollowness, fatigue, and trial. The non-benders were bitching and whining, yes, but they did so with bright – if annoyed – eyes, and clear – if annoyed – voices. The firebenders though, they didn't complain. Like they didn't have the energy to.

"They're getting worse," Aoba said quietly, possibly quietly enough that they wouldn't even hear him. His feet, which were raised atop his unworn helm, rolled side to side for a moment, as he chewed on salt heef. "It's like the longer they stay in the cold, the worse they get."

While Aoba had nailed it exactly on the head, as the old saying went, Hyuuga didn't know how or why. He looked to the firebenders, tending to their own, then to the braziers. A moment, rubbing his face, then he rose from his squat. His gloves protected him from the heat as he pushed the tight circle outward, leaving a gap in their midst. "Bring her into the center," he said to the firebender. They all looked at him. "Come on, she needs to warm up."

The soldiers, once so fiery and cocky, now listlessly obeyed his orders. They shuffled between the braziers so they would be struck by heat from all angles. It wasn't until a minute after they started, that the stricken woman let out a relieved sigh, and her eyes slid shut. She leaned against a man nearby, and seemed to go to sleep. It was an improvement.

"Good catch," Rei said.

"Lucky catch," Hyuuga said to himself. He still didn't understand why, but then, he wasn't a scientist. He was an engineer. If it worked, then you did it, even if you don't know why it worked. He held his hands before the flames once more, and started to regain feeling in his fingers. Of course, the downside of thawing out was that his ears started to sting like utter bastards.

He was just starting to feel like a human being again – and the firebenders in the midst of the fire started looking like them as well – when there was a terrified bellow coming from one of the cars down the train. Rei and Aoba tried to look at each other, but each picked the wrong shoulder. And when they tried again, the did the same thing in reverse. It wasn't until the third that they found each other's glance. "That doesn't sound good."

"Well? Get up!" Hyuuga said. The firebenders just mumbled, but his admonishment was for those who didn't look half dead. With a groan of dismay, Rei took his feet and plunked his helmet back on, before seeing Hyuuga out the door.

"Watch, somebody had a bad dream," Rei said ascerbically.

"Cold makes for hard sleeping," Hyuuga said. And he was cut off when a spear was cast out of the traincar, and clattered against the cliff wall. The two men stared for a moment, then gave each other a measured glance, before both took off at a run toward that car. They skidded to a stop – Rei sliding a bit – to see that everybody in this car was either flattened against the back walls, or clumped in a back-to-back circle, with spears and swords pointed out.

"Where did she go?" one of them shouted.

"She was right there! You had her!"

"She's gone. How can she be gone?"

"What's going on here?" Hyuuga asked. Not barking orders, because he definitely didn't outrank people in this car, but still, the question needed asking.

"There was... It was impossible. I must have been seeing things," the very panicked junior officer said, sweat pounding out despite the cold, sword trembling in his hand.

"Bullshit, seeing things. That was a Storm King!" another soldier shouted.

"Shut up! The Storm Kings have been extinct for a century!" the officer berated his inferior.

"The Avatar's a Storm King!"

"What. Is. Going. On?" Hyuuga asked.

"Nothing, we just..."

"There was a girl. She was... not all the way there. She shouted at us. She had a machine, a Storm King Machine, and she was going to use it on us!"

"And then she was gone! In a blink of an eye!" another continued.

"That's... not good," Hyuuga said. He turned to Rei. "Hear about anything like this in the East?"

"The only things I heard were my idiot partner's inanities and the wind whistling past my outlook. Or between his ears," Rei said.

"It was nothing. Just seeing things," the junior officer stressed. He shakily put his blade away, as another thunderstrike slammed into the metal frame of the car. The thunderclap, starting less than two dozen yards away, was momentarily deafening, and Hyuuga blinked and clicked at his ears, stunned from the onslaught of it.

He turned to Rei.

There was somebody else in the way.

He wasn't tall, but there was a wildness in his grey eyes. He was borne upward by an updraft, yellow-orange robes fluttering, hair blasted back, showing that hateful arrow upon his brow. His lips pulled into a rictus, and his finger began to point.

Then, he was gone.

Hyuuga stared at the spot that spectre had been for a few seconds, his lips working, his jaw opening and shutting, but nothing coming out. He then slowly turned to Rei, who was making signs to the Sun and Comet, probably out of sheer nerves. Hyuuga then turned to that junior officer.

"That?" he said, pointing to the spot between he and Rei, "that wasn't nothing."

"It was... I..." the officer seemed baffled. And terrified. A bad combination. Hyuuga knew a secularist when he saw one, but there was a certain amount of oddity that one simply had to accept if one wanted to live a happy life upon this spinning Earth. And this poor young man, probably no older than Hyuuga himself, didn't have a proper tolerance for weird, yet.

Another thunderclap, this one striking the engine, hundreds of yards away. The clap wasn't nearly so deafening, but in its wake came fresh screams, and men started to sprint into sight, heedless in their escape from a force or phenomenon they couldn't understand. They buffetted past Hyuuga and Rei, who made no attempt to stop them. After all, he felt no great need to be trampled.

"What in the hell is going on?" Rei asked, as the soldiers ran away.

He was answered by a blast of wind, almost as hard as a punch in the face, blasting from the front of the train and sending the two of them sideways off their feet, and landing them among the slush. Both pushed up, one striking the gritty slurry from his beard, before retaking their feet. They did so, pressing back to back. Rei had a sword to hand, while Hyuuga's was wrapped tight 'round a heavy spanner wrench.

"I think we're under attack," Hyuuga said.

"From what? Bad weather and ghosts?" Rei asked, a fearful edge to his words.

The two of them were answered when there was a thud on the roof of the train directly beside them. Two sets of eyes flashed upward, wide as saucers, as they saw a black-haired girl atop the wagons. Her toes jutted over the edge of the traincar, and her back was hunched in almost feral fury. She slowly craned her shoulder's back, and let out a roar into the sky.

"HATYAROM KO HATYA!"

Then, punctuated by a shriek which tore away from her in a solid wave, such that it smashed rocks loose of the wall, causing them to bounce off and dent the flank of the train. If either had been paying attention to her, instead of recoiling in sheer terror, they might have noticed how she let out a minor flinch at the rocks hitting the train. As it was, they didn't notice anything, save her sudden disappearance. The two were driven back, their backs pressed against the wall, heedless of the pebbles and stones which rained down in a loose rain around them. The impact had been stark, but the far more worrying thing, was the sensation of shifting that Hyuuga now felt in the stones behind him. He turned to Rei, then to the wall.

"Do you feel that?" he asked.

"Feel what? The piss running down my leg? Because that's the warmest I've been all day!"

"The rocks!" he shouted to the hopeless lech. Rei slammed a hand to the rocks, and his eyes widened as well.

"Earthquake? Impossible. Not here..."

"There are Storm King ghosts openly attacking us! Who knows what makes sense these days?"

The cracking of the earth sounded, and with it, a shelf of stone broke and slid away. It might have weighed as much as the engine of the train, and it skipped off of the cliff above them, smashing down onto the far side of the track, missing the train by inches.

Again, had he been paying attention, he'd have known that such a bound would be impossible for freefalling rock. However, Hyuuga and Rei both, were distracted.

"Run," Rei said.

"No!" Hyuuga said. "Something's not right here..."

"Of course it's not! We're being haunted and the cliff's about to land on us!" Rei stressed.

"That's not it..." Hyuuga said. Much as he didn't notice the big things, he'd still learned long ago to trust his gut, no matter where it took him. "Back of the train. Go!"

"What?" Rei asked.

"Trust me on this one," he said.

"Yeah, that sentence has never ended terribly for me," Rei rolled his eyes.


The perpetual night wasn't doing anybody in the new Spirit Oasis any favors. While the fish yet swum in their new pool, and even the great black and white beast of Heibai gave the ill and heat-desperate something to snuggle against, it all came with the lingering dread of a world freezing solid. Ominous creaks sounded from outside the Oasis, as water froze, welled, snapped, and refroze. Yue had only had a few moments outside, in the brief time between when she left the protective warmth of the Oasis to grab the frozen foodstuffs left very nearby, and when her skin would have frozen solid. The landscape she saw out there was foreign almost to the point of unrecognizability. Had she not seen the spire of Chimney Mountain in the distance, a black finger blotting out stars, she would have thought they'd been pulled to a world already dead, slowly freezing solid as it spun 'round a snuffed-out sun.

The warmth didn't sink in as quickly as it used to. While the edges of the Spirit Oasis were still overrun by grasses, they were starting to be trampled down. Even spiritually manifested grass could only take so much punishment, and a thousand Tribesman and more gave quite a bit of punishment. She set the rock-solid fish down beside a fire, where they would slowly thaw to the point where they could be cooked.

It was desperate, but at the same time, hopeless. She'd lived in Summavut for most of her life. She knew how it felt, in the heart of winter, to a week or more without seeing the sun. It was unpleasant to most, but she'd always associated more with the moon than with his fiery opposite. Now, though, she was bereft that pleasure. The moon hung out of sight, and the sun?

It felt like the sun should have peeked over the horizon long ago, but had forgotten how.

"Yue, come here," Hahn said. He beckoned her over, to the spot that the two of them had 'reserved', at the head of the smaller, internal pond. Almost listless, she sunk down onto the flattened grass beside him, and he pulled her close. His warmth wasn't much, but frankly, even after that briefest of sojourns outside, it was desperately needed. "It's going to be alright."

"I wish I believed you," she said.

"You should believe in yourself more," Hahn said quietly. Where was the brash, rude, and chauvanistic brat that she'd been betrothed to? Oh, right; reality had weathered that away from him. Now, he had the same hungry, frightened look to him that every other man over the age of twenty had. And that every child under the age of thirteen shared, but for other reasons. "I know you're going to see us through this."

She accepted his brief kiss, before he curled back up on the grass. His eyes were sunken, as though he weren't sleeping. Then again, right now, who was?

Yue, though, had no other recourse. Through all her life, she'd been one thing or another at the behest of another. She'd been the warrior by her father's word. She'd been the acting Chief by her step-father's. And now, she was supposed to be a savior, by the word of the Tribe. And her faith was quaking. Shaking. Cracking.

So she settled herself on her knees, her hands tight before her, her head bowed down.

"I need help," she whispered to the moon, its fish circling lazily before her.

"What help is there that you do not already have?"

"We're losing hope. We can't survive like this," she said. The other, the sea, broke the circuit, and swum closer to her.

"The faithful of Sea and Moon have survived much. An age of death. The Righteous Wrath of an Avatar. You will survive."

"How could you know that?" she asked. "The Tribes may survive, but the Tribesmen? We're just human. We're hungry, we're cold, and we're afraid. And nothing ever seems to change but for the worse." The Moon ceased it's circuit and joined its partner, it's other half, staring up at her.

"Hope is a currency much sought after in hard times."

"But what do we do?" Yue implored.

Silence was her answer. The two retreated from her sight, first away from the water's edge, then into the heart of their pond. Her eyes went wide when they seemed to vanish from view entirely. And when they didn't surface, her breath hitched in her throat, a desperate sob lodged there.

Then, a spark.

It started above the surface of the water, something small, almost vanishingly so, but unimaginably bright. It rose drifting upward as a mote in an updraft, until it reached the 'ceiling' of the new Spirit Oasis. And then, the spark began to unfold.

YOU BEHOLD THE GLORY OF THE SUN!

The last words, booming through the crowd, caused infants to cry, children to pull close to their parents. The old to shudder, the wild to quake. It caused Heibai, so placid, to shift and shudder, his manifested corpus degrading slightly as it came close to the presence of something so much more powerful than itself, before restoring itself. The flame rose, out into the heavens, and then, with a blast of honest to the gods heat, reached out and erased the night. It rose higher, into the sky, into the atmosphere above. The heat declined from a hellish oven, beyond even Fire Nation cruelties of temperature, to something more akin to summer in the East. Then, autumn in the east. When Agni ceased her ascent, hanging high above the nadir of the dying Earth, it was a new spring, bathed under comparatively weak, but comparatively warm, sunshine.

The Tribesmen, so used to terror and despair, looked up, at the second sun that shone just for them.

And they wept. They wept, hugging their loved ones close, under this miracle.

Yue wept with them.


The movement had stopped, leaving Hyuuga standing with only Rei and Aoba at the front of the train. All had progressed backward. As though it were strafing the train from stem to stern. But nothing here.

"You see what I mean, don't you?" Hyuuga asked.

"This is where it started. Why isn't it here now?" Aoba asked.

"Something's not right," Rei agreed. "...it feels like we're being herded."

"Ghosts don't herd," Aoba said.

"What do you know about ghosts?"

"I grew up in the wagons, dumbass; I know more about ghosts than you'd believe," the fair-complected man said. Then again, there were plenty enough of the daughters of Shinzo that were seduced into joining the Yubokamin. Which defied all good sense, when one thought about it. "This isn't ghosts."

"But what is it, then?" Rei asked, as the three of them began to move slowly toward where the lightning now struck, where the screams now originated. Where the spectres yet preyed.

"Not spirits. They look too human. And shamans can't just flit in and out of existence," Aoba said.

"Why'd you never tell me you were Azuli?"

"My mother left when I was eight. What am I supposed to do, tell my captains my entire life story?" Aoba snarked at Hyuuga's question. And he had a fair enough point.

"You certainly know your stuff."

"I'd have to," he said. There was a grinding sound, which halted all three in their stride. Slowly, they turned, as they looked up, and saw the stone begin to shudder. The earthquake which had threatened was mounting. Rocks fell harshly and heedlessly around them.

"Well, spirits or not, that's going to kill us!" Hyuuga shouted.

There were no more words said, as the cracking and popping of stone slipping free of it's mooring began to drown out even the sound of thunder. Three men sprinted for their lives, racing perhaps yards ahead of the devastation, the rock dropping and crashing against the side of the train. None looked back, though. None saw that the stone always formed a wall, just a hair from knocking the train off of its rail. Just a hair from ruining what unknown forces wanted to steal. They were too busy running.

They sprinted, and they ran toward screaming.

Hyuuga was the one to slam into something, when his eyes told him there was nothing there to hit. The blow sent him rolling to the ground. The other two raced past him, and then stopped, turning back. Hyuuga found himself on his belly, with an unnoticed teenager under him. His eyes went wide, as stars seemed to get shaken free of the youth's gaze. There was a blast upward, and he found himself flying.

He landed harshly on his back, knocking the wind from his lungs, as the boy bounded to his feet. Aoba, the least superstitious of those yet remaining, grabbed the 'Storm King's shoulder with one hand, and sent the other, armored fist toward the back of his head. The Storm King, or whomever he was, bent his head out of the way, so that the blow turned his other shoulder rather than cold-cocking him. He cast a hand out, and a great wave of air blew the feet out from under the once-Azuli soldier, but his grip remained tight on the shoulder. The next blast was sent forward, hurling the womanizer so long sequestered in the East rolling away. Then, with a flash, both soldier and spectre were gone.


He'd made a miscalculation, somewhere.

It'd started when he stepped back into the Physical just in time to get plowed into by some guy, and continued until he found himself dragging another guy into the Outer Sphere. The soldier didn't so much as look askance at the strangeness of the world around him, didn't react to the clamoring unreality that had befallen him. If he'd been a bender, he'd have felt his birthright deadened here. But instead, he lashed out with a kick. A kick which Aang, unable to dodge effectively, had to take and roll with. He caught the foot in the instant before it sent him flying though. He couldn't let the illusion fall.

A fresh shift, and the two were dumped even further, past the ripped and shredded Outer Sphere, and into the naked Spirit World. He rolled away on the ground, resisting the urge to rub tender, impacted ribs. He had to look the part. He had to convince this guy that he was something other than some kid with tattooed arrows and a knack for showmanship. So he spun up to his feet, and he held his arms wide.

"ARISE!" he screamed, and in his soul, the words were spoken. It was a strange sensation, not imploring. Simply demanding. Spirits spiraled up – or rather, down – from the Outer Sphere, into what was once their home, and now the most hostile of all places for them. They bathed around him, a festival of multicolored lights, spirits with barely any more than a wisp of corpus. Not more than a twinge of concept. But the effect was swift, and effective.

There was no obvious human amongst that shifting mass of lesser spirits.

"...oh, hell," the soldier muttered.

UNBREACHED DIVIDE, THE PATH WALKED BY THE VAGABOND KING, WARDEN OF THE PLAINS, BEAST AT THE GATE;

GEAR OF EGRESS

HE STANDS A THING OUTSIDE HIMSELF

AN UNSOUGHT PART OF AN UNTHINKING WHOLE

A GHOST TRAPPED IN THE HELLISH MIRE OF THE REAL.

CAST

HIM

OUT.

The fabric of reality began to bend, bubbling around the man, and scooping him, whole and unwilling, back into itself. It was a bubble of subjective reality, one that he could control with his words. If he wanted, he could cast the man outside of existence, to a fate as grim as anything eaten by the Shards of Imbalance. He could unmake a soul. But Aang was not that kind of man. Never that kind of man.

So he simply pushed him back. Across the veils and the divides, and back into the physical world.

There was a sense of bubble popping, and the soldier who'd tracked him into this place was sent back. A fresh sound, also rather bubble-popping-ish presaged the appearance of another shaman onto this bleak and tiny island that floated in an invisible and unending sea of nothingness, here in the Spirit World. Aang released the demand, and his 'armor' of spirits began to break and waft away to safer places.

"Aang?" Malu asked as she appeared. "I saw some guy follow you in; are you alright?"

"He didn't get a good look at me, not from the front," Aang said. "I sent him back."

"That was too close," she said.

"I know. Do you think they're scared enough?"

"Toph's already doing her thing," Malu said. "We should get back."

"I hope nobody gets hurt," Aang said. Malu gave a smile.

"Of course they won't. The plan was a brilliant one."

"I can't believe you'd say that about something that Azula put forward," Aang said, as they walked to the rift that Malu had used to enter bodily the naked Spirit.

"I've got no problem with her, 'sides the fact that she's actively trying to turn you evil," Malu said.

"She's not trying to turn me evil. She just wants to win, and this is the only way she knows how to," he corrected.

"Winning isn't everything," Malu said.

"When the stakes are this high... it kinda is," Aang said, rubbing at his hair. Weird, how he'd gotten so used to it, after these past few months. "She's a good person who's had a hard life."

"If you say so," his airbending counterpart said, her eyes rolling. Then, with a sucking sensation, the two passed out of the Spirit, and back into the Mortal World. Behind them, in the instant they left, there was a metal thud, a great bell of solid iron struck with an equal weight, across impossible distance. Not a blowout. But an awakening.

They appeared beside Toph, who was rolling a tumult of stone before her. She had stripped down to an undershirt, and sweat poured off her despite the cold. Her face was one of relentless concentration, twisting that stone before her, casting the detritus over the trains and down the cliff. "Toph? Are you alright?"

"Just peachy, Twinkletoes," Toph snarled through gritted teeth. "Why'd they need to make these damned trains so long?"

"You're doing great," Aang coached. He turned to Malu. "How much more?"

She bounded straight up, running up the cliff to get a perspective, before she turned in the air and slid back down easily as a cat. The thunderstrikes still sounded ahead of them, but it wasn't close. "There's still a quarter mile more train to go," she said.

"I can't do another quarter mile," Toph said, which sounded more painful to her than the strain she was putting herself through to simulate a landslide, and at the same time, prevent a real one.

"How fare are the soldiers from the stone-front?" Aang asked.

"Pretty far," Malu said.

Aang looked for a moment, and thought. If Toph faltered, the whole thing was undone. If she faltered in a bad way, she might get hurt or killed as well. They needed the train...

But they didn't need all of it.

"Sokka!" Aang shouted, turning back to where the Tribesman was following. Toph's tremor-sense lessons were paying off; he'd 'seen' the young man without having to turn. "Do you think this is enough train for everybody?"

"Probably, but it'd be cramped," he said.

"Toph," Aang ordered. And was a bit surprised with himself that he was ordering. "Cut the train here. Send the rest over the cliff."

"That's my kind of plan," Toph said. She stomped a foot, and a great shelf of stone raced up between two cars, cutting them apart. Then, with a last great heave, she tore the stone from its lofty perch, and let it slam down as it would. It vanished beyond a wall of her device, but the sounds were calamitous, and didn't end at the rails. The twisting of metal, the shrieking of machinery undone continued, as the cars behind the one she'd picked for the last were sent flying over the cliff, crashing down to unforgiving rocks.

Aang quietly hoped that their distractions, their 'terror campaign' had been enough, and that those cars were empty. And if they weren't, then he quietly prayed for those within them, and asked them for forgiveness for what he'd done.

"Alright, we need to get going," Sokka said, turning on his heel, and starting to sprint toward the front of the train. "I really hope this thing's as easy to use as Zha Yu made me believe!"

"They'd better be," Toph said, slumping to the ground. Aang caught her before she landed on her back. "Hey there, you fuzzy thing. Where'd Twinkletoes go?"

"Toph, you done good," Malu said.

"Great. Done good. I'm going to just sleep for a while now," the exhausted earthbender said. There was no groaning, but a sense of wind diverting told Aang that Appa had returned from his lightning-bearing strafing run.

"We've got to go. Malu, get her onto one of the forward cars," Aang said. The other airbender nodded, scooped up the smaller girl, and bound backwards with great, ground-eating leaps. Aang, though, pulled himself onto the top of the second-to-last car. He couldn't see over the rocks which had washed away a great length of the rear of the train. That wasn't his purpose here. He simply waited, and breathed heavily. Deeply. Focus. Do what needs to be done.

There was a slight lurch, several minutes later. Inch by crawling inch, the rear car began to pull free of the rubble, causing it to rain down slightly onto steel rails behind it. Inches became feet. Feet became yards. And when they were moving honestly and at speed, Aang reached up. His hands grasped, his stance widened and dropped. And with a great heave, he pulled down ever more rock behind them. Turning an illusion into a fact.

Erasing the evidence that the Avatar had just stolen a train.


The halls of the library weren't silent. Silence was a simple absence of relative noise. In its way, there was no true-zero of noise in the waking world; no matter how quiet, there was always something to hear. Perhaps it was the barest whisper of breeze. Perhaps the shifting of the grass on the ground. Or even just the sound of one's own heart beating. But here, it was a thing beyond silence. This was a realm for which sound had no meaning. The halls between the stacks of books seemed to stretch on infinitely.

Fitting. Right now, they were.

Irukandji could feel the bleeding of worlds here, stronger than most other places that she'd ever encountered. Sometimes, there were places that the spirit inside this woman would go that there were already existing, preformed conduits from other worlds already in place. Somebody finding another way to tunnel into a reality not their own. Usually one or two people. Often shamans. Sometimes Aang, surprisingly enough. But this was a different smell, a different sensation. It'd only ever felt something of this magnitude once before, during that inverse world. The world where seasons ran backward, and an entire reality came crashing in where it didn't belong.

A reality that almost hooked up the kid with the crazy pyromaniac princess, ironically enough.

That'd been a disaster that it'd been roped into fixing, even though it honestly had nothing at all to do with creating. But it was a valuable experience, in retrospect; it taught the spirit how much a world was worth, and how much it could cost to protect it. How dangerous that things outside their natural order could be. How dangerous Irukandji could be, in the right circumstances.

The hallways of knowledge stretched infinitely, as they were no longer simply the libraries of Wan Shi Tong. No, this was the Akeshic Record, bleeding into reality. A thing which couldn't be held with in the bounds of a universe, peeking in regardless. A bellweather of how degraded what was had become. Irukandji read, theories and stories of lives never lived, of times never seen. The first Avatar who drew breath among the human race. And the last, as well. But that woman's trials and tribulations offered no comfort or succor to Irukandji now. Instead, it tried to understand how it could do what the Avatar was so often tasked to do.

Save everybody.

Irukandji was hopelessly out of its depth.

"He should have let me kill those girls," Irukandji said, words exploding into that soundless expanse, a profanity against the quiet. Her head shook, though, and Irukandji tweezed her brow. This was an usual thing in and of itself. Irukandji had sometimes held a Host for a decade or three, but never for a century. Sooner or later, it'd start thinking of itself as a 'she' at this rate. And Koh help it if it did. Mostly because it'd never live it down.

There was a new silence. A different silence than the one that had dominated the great vacant expanse of Wan Shi Tong's library. It had a different timbre, a different tenor. It was a silence of things hiding in terror. A silence of a predator about to pounce.

Irukandji spun away from the book on its lecturn, lightning sparking and riding along her hands; its life-blood, turned into a weapon. A weapon against a thing which could not die. The Shard was blacker than the blackness beyond it, the eyes pulsing red, like old wounds. This one, unique amongst a unique kin, almost looked like its eyes were oozing. Like it had been forced into a role that its nature rebelled against.

"Oh, this ain't good," Irukandji said, backing away from the Shard.

Her feet kept their footing, Irukandji was happy to note, but no amount of retreat was enough to outstrip the Shard. Even were it to turn this mortal shell into the lightning, and send it streaking up and away, the Shard would be waiting for it wherever it landed. As it was, every time Irukandji's retreat passed another line of shelves, the Shard was there before it again. Staring, with oozing eyes. Its mouth agape and toothless, a horrible void at its heart.

"Well? Are you going to eat me? Or are you just going to admire this woman's breasts?" Irukandji taunted.

Oddly enough, she seemed to nod. Well, not nod, as the head didn't move, but the body... transformed a bit. The lanky girl made of abject blackness mounted up, growing taller. The shoulders pulled out slightly, the hips, dramatically. Blue, lightning-filled eyes widened, as the beast's eyes diminished in size. No longer were they grapefruits of profane red and black puss, glowing against nothing. Now... they looked almost like eyes. Red, black, and puss-y eyes, but still.

"What... in... the... hell..." Irukandji asked. The Shard tilted its head, and the mouth slowly transformed as well. The horrid maw which would have stretched from the nose to the collar-bone of a human shrank, flaps of blackness rising up, overtaking it. Hiding it away. Behind a real mouth, invisible against the rest of her, but obvious for what it concealed. "...this ain't good."

Irukandji retreated, and a Shard that now mocked Irukandji's Host to the inch and ounce followed after her. It rose a hand, first clawed and jagged, but slowly cracking and popping until it was a human hand, if one wrought in blackness, toward it.

"Hell with this. I'm out!" Irukandji declared.

There came a thunder-clap, and a blast of lightning seared away from Wan Shi Tong's Library, and any answers that the spirit sought to find in it. The Shard simply stood, watching the lightning disappear. Then, the oozing eyes impassive, it turned to a line of shelves, stepped into the shade that somehow leaked between them despite the suffusive light of this barely-existent place. When it did, it vanished from the Spirit World entirely, going to the place where only Shards, like it, could go.

Irukandji might have lost the answers it sought... but she got answers it desperately didn't want to know.