For what shall it profit a man if he gains the whole world only to lose his own Soul?
–Mark 8:36-38 King James Bible–
Oh Zuzu, Azula thought with a slow shake of her head. You and Uncle really have fallen on hard times, haven't you? Her delicate tongue clicked against her teeth in a half-hearted display of disappointment as she looked about the shabby little beach house that now surrounded her.
She had been just about ready to order her informants to be killed the moment she had first stepped through the doorway. The information they had given her must have been wrong, for the very idea that even a banished member of Fire Nation royalty would be found in a place like this was both absurd and offensive.
Even Zuko had higher standards than that, or so she had thought before taking her first step inside the cramped little structure that smelled of incense, unwashed clothing and every conceivable type of male odor.
Sparsely decorated, and barely furnished, save for a few rickety looking tables and chairs, the house was a depressing sight to behold. The more she took it all in, the more Azula found herself both laughing at her elder brother's misfortune and lamenting it.
Some might have described the shabby little domicile as being cozy or perhaps even charmingly rustic.
For Azula, the only word she had for it was claustrophobic.
Though I have to admit… A sneer pulled the corner of her mouth back into her dimpled cheek. …It does seem a fitting place for the backwash of our family to windup, especially after having suffered through so many hardships and letdowns.
She moved towards one of the lopsided tables which lay tucked away in what seemed to be the house's dreariest corner. An assortment of odds and ends had been left scattered across the wooden surface; seashells and polished stones; little figurines and other sorts of useless nick-nacks that only her dear Uncle Iroh would waste the time and money collecting.
She picked up a shell from the pile, felt the scrape of her sharpened nails scratching against the rough surface.
A patron of the useless and the mediocre, she remembered her father once saying to her during one of those rare moments when their terse verbal exchanges shifted to something resembling an actual conversation.
Azula suddenly scowled, banishing the thought before it had enough time to take root.
She tossed the shell aside, knocking over several of the little figurines when it struck the table. When she reached for one of the polished stones, she stopped as something far more interesting caught her eye.
Setting aside her uncle's ridiculous little trinkets, Azula made her way over to one of the house's shabby looking beds, where a weather beaten traveling bag lay propped against the wall. Beside the bag, several sheets of parchment were strewn about in a disorganized pile that could rival even her uncle's.
Really Zuzu, she silently mused. Were all those years of royal upbringing completely wasted on you? She smiled, despite her admonishments, secretly relishing the ironic sweetness of it all. Of all of Uncle Fatso's examples, being a useless slob is the one you chose to follow?
She picked up one of the sheets, felt it crinkle under her fingers and found… Not at all what she had expected to find.
The parchment's yellowed surface was a chaotic mismatch of sketches, diagrams and blueprints; hastily scrawled notes and scratchy blotches where old ideas had been crossed out and left to be forgotten.
Azula frowned.
Her older brother may have been many things, but scholar was certainly not one of them. Academics had never suited him. Even back when they were children, hardly a lesson went by without poor little Zuzu finding something to complain about, be it the difficulty of the material being taught or the quality of his sitting cushion.
Her curiosity piqued, Azula swiftly gathered up more of the strange looking documents, sitting herself down in a nearby chair while she held them under a dusty shaft of orange sunlight. She flipped through each sheet carefully while her golden eyes devoured every scrap of detail they could sink their claws into.
There were simple studies of gears, valves and pistons; graphical calculations of force and stress. She saw the inner workings of various Fire Nation technologies, rendered in crudely intricate detail with each component marked, noted and categorized.
There were even diagrams for things that Azula knew for certain didn't exist; small, two wheeled carts powered by tiny boilers; flying things held aloft on bulging sacks of super-heated gas; iron-heavy machines with piston-driven arms made for tearing into rock and dirt.
Some designs were so esoteric that even she couldn't guess their purpose.
Her gaze eventually shifted from the drawings to the scrawls of incomprehensible writing that filled in the empty spaces between. The language was unknown, the style very much foreign; tiny compared to both Fire Nation and Earth Kingdom calligraphies.
Azula's eyes narrowed, becoming little more than a pair of molten slits. She grazed the tip of her finger along the foreign writing, tracing over tiny loops and crosses and tapping the little dots that punctuated each line.
Well now… she thought to herself, unable to hold back the evil little grin that now threatened to split her face in two. Isn't THIS an interesting little development?
She was about to reach for the traveling bag itself but stopped at the first sound of approaching voices; One old and cheerful, the other young and petulant.
Her uncle was the first one to step through the doorway, with Zuko following only a few paces behind.
Neither one took notice of her presence.
A triumphant smile was spread between the old man's jowly cheeks as he dropped his latest haul of seashells onto a nearby table.
"Aren't they magnificent, Nephew?" he asked. "Who would have thought that such rare treasures could be found in a humble little village like this?"
His tone was so cheerful that it was practically buoyant.
"We don't need anymore useless souvenirs, Uncle!" came Zuko's response, the embittered rasp of his voice still recognizable even after three years of absence.
Azula watched as her brother practically stomped his way towards their uncle, his face a tightly pinched mask of annoyance. When the table was within reach, he plucked a shell from the pile and held it in front of the older man's face.
"Did you forget that we have to carry everything ourselves, now?"
It was strange how much her brother had changed and how much he had remained the same. Same eyes, same voice, same undeserved sense of entitlement. He seemed taller than before, his face more angular than she last remembered; the left side now dominated and disfigured by the ugly red scar which their father had burned into his adolescent flesh three years previous.
"Fallen on hard times, have we, Brother?" Azula finally spoke up, making her presence known.
Both Zuko and Iroh turned at the sound of her voice. Surprise quickly corroded into expressions of suspicion and resentment the moment their eyes came to rest upon her seated figure.
An unpleasant silence quickly swept over the house as all three of them stared at each other. Before long, time itself seemed to slow to a sluggish crawl, with one moment oozing into the next like a flow of molten slag.
"What are you doing here?" Zuko practically growled at her, breaking the silence.
Azula smirked at her brother's lack of manners. "Is that how you greet family, now?" She asked, leaning her cheek against her knuckles while glancing at the diagrams she still held in her other hand. "In our country, it's usually customary for one to exchange pleasantries with a guest before asking them questions."
She paused for a moment before adding: "Then again, the Fire Nation hasn't really been your country for some time, now…." She leaned forward and favored her brother with a smirk. "…isn't that right, Zuzu?"
Zuko's good eye flared before he took several steps towards her. "Don't call me that!" he shouted.
"Still the sensitive one, I see," Azula retorted before shifting her attention to her Uncle. She met the old man's frown with a look of counterfeit sweetness and said, "You're looking well, Uncle."
"As are you, dear Niece," came her uncle's reply. His tone was courteous, the look on his ancient face unreadable. "To what do we owe the honor of this… unexpected visit?"
"There, you see that, Zuko?" Azula asked, cocking an eyebrow at her brother. "Even after spending so much time away from the civilized world, our dear Uncle still understands the value of good manners. You might consider learning from his example."
Zuko's scowl deepened, causing the skin around his scar to crinkle. "What… do you want, Azula?"
Azula just sniggered at her brother's attempt to intimidate her. "A little more courtesy from you would certainly be a nice place to start," she said. "It would be a shame for me to go all the way back to Father, without telling you what he has to say."
"Father?"
Azula inwardly blanched, sickened by the way her brother's tone and expression softened so suddenly at just the mere mention of their father. A part of her had secretly hoped that three years of banishment and deformity would have left him somewhat resentful, perhaps even slightly rebellious.
That would have at least made things a little more interesting.
But no… he was still very much the same, sad little Zuzu, who flinched at their father's every word and clung to the memory of their dead mother's skirts.
Taking her brother back to the capital in chains would be much easier than she had originally thought. The look in his eye told her that she had his attention.
"That's right," Azula said. "It seems that father has decided to give you a second chance. He believes he may have been too… harsh… when he passed judgment on you." She leveled her gaze with Zuko, saw the look of hope that she knew he was trying to hide. "He says that it's time for the Fire Nation's prince to return to where he belongs."
"He… he wants me to come back home?" Zuko asked, his voice like a scratchy wisp of old wind. "Father… he's forgiven me?"
"I said he's willing to give you a second chance," Azula replied sharply, adding just enough truth to the lie in order to give it just the right amount of pull.
Setting the diagrams aside, she pushed herself out of her chair and made her way over to Zuko, saw him tense at her approach until they were practically standing face to face. "Let's not get too far ahead of ourselves, Brother," she finally said. "Your banishment may have been lifted, but the matter of your public disgrace is one that still has yet to be properly resolved."
"If that is indeed the case," Iroh spoke up. "Then for what reason has my brother decided to summon Zuko back to the capital?"
"Always one to get straight to the point, Uncle?" Azula responded, silently noting the way her uncle had casually tucked his hands into his sleeves, hiding them from view. "It's nothing too important, just a silly little plot to overthrow the Fire Lord."
"What?" Zuko asked.
Azula smirked at her brother's gullibility. "Rumors have begun creeping up around the Capital," she said. "Whispers of discontent among certain factions who think the Fire Nation needs a change in leadership."
She looked back at Iroh who, unlike Zuko, remained unmoved and unfazed by her words. "You know how it is; plots within plots… treacheries within treacheries."
Before either Zuko or Her uncle could respond, Azula turned away from them, moving towards an open window. Arms crossed, she looked out at the grove of cherry trees that lay beyond the house, admired the way their blossoms resembled falling ashes.
"Father has always said that, in a pit of hungry viper-rats, one can only look to their own if they are to avoid being devoured." She turned back to Zuko, saw the way the sunlight played off the texture of his scar. "He's called you back because he believes in consolidating one's assets, regardless of personal opinions or past biases."
Done with the view outside, Azula crossed the room once more, returning to her abandoned chair which now lay tucked away in the shadows. "You may be the lowest of the low, Zuko, but you're still Fire Nation. More importantly, you're still family."
Even from where she sat, one leg crossed over the other in a very unladylike fashion, she could hear the sound of Zuko's throat clenching as he swallowed, saw the hint of a tear in his unburnt eye before he turned away from her.
The idiot was actually buying it.
She had him!
Before she could take too much pride in her skills of manipulation, a new sound began creeping through the surrounding ambiance of wind and waves and rustling trees. It was a subtle thing at first, so indistinguishable from the rest of the outside noise, that Azula hardly noticed it at first. But as the sound drew closer, it gradually began taking on the shape and dimension of an unfamiliar voice lost in the notes of a song.
"Bum…De A-Dum! Bum…De A-Dum!
"Bum…De A-Dum! Bum…De A-Dum!
Azula cocked an eyebrow at her uncle who's once stoic expression was now weighted down by one of worry. When he saw her looking his way, he quickly turned his attention towards the door, where the source of the singing was now growing louder.
"Atom bomb baby, loaded with power,
Radioactive as a TV tower…"
Zuko ignored it, choosing instead to continue staring out the window, fist clenching beneath sagging shoulders.
"…A nuclear fission in her soul,
Loves with electronic control!"
Azula frowned. The song was familiar to her, though she could not place the source, just knew that she had heard it somewhere before. The memory was there, though little more than a shapeless blob that could easily be shoved into any corner of her recollection.
Footsteps soon joined the one person chorus. She could hear them as they shuffled noisily across the gravel pathway, fingers snapping to the beat of the song before a shabby looking young man literally came waltzing through the threshold.
"Atom bomb baby, little atom bomb,
I want her in my wigwam,
She's just the way I want her to be,
A million times hotter than TNT!"
He was taller than Zuko, though the added thickness of his features gave him a slightly bulky appearance, like a stack of barrels that had somehow mistaken itself for a man. His shoes were caked with dirt, his clothes worn and faded, despite his obvious attempts to maintain them; strange looking in all respects due to their foreignness. Some parts even looked to be held together by stitching and patchwork. A tangle of rust colored hair sprouted from the top of his head like an unruly fungus; a perfect match for the tangles of red scruff that covered the lower half of his face.
Azula remained silent, even as the strange looking man danced, and ambled his way obliviously across the floor, snapping his fingers while tracking sand and dirt behind him every step of the way.
"Bum…De A-Dum! Bum…De A-Dum!
"Bum…De A-Dum! Bum…De A-Dum!
Atom bomb baby, boy she can start,
One of those chain reactions in my heart,
A big explosion, big and loud,
Mushrooms me right up on a cloud!
Atom bomb baby, little atom bomb,
I want her in my wigwa—"
It was only when he nearly bumped into her uncle that the singing foreigner suddenly realized he wasn't alone and immediately clammed up.
"Oh shit, you're back!" he exclaimed, looking between Iroh and Zuko. "Just how much of that did you guys hear?"
Zuko said nothing, sinking deeper into his grumbling slouch while the older man regarded the stranger with a faint smile.
"Enough to know that you have a rather nice singing voice," Iroh said. "It would certainly make traveling on the road more pleasurable should you decide to do it more often."
"Sorry, General," the stranger said, his accent just as foreign as his clothing. "But out of all the songs I had on my iPhone, that's the only one I bothered to learn by heart." He poured himself a glass of water from a pitcher. "And at this point, even I'm starting to get sick of hearing it." He threw his head back, emptying the entire glass in two loud gulps.
"I take it your trip to the village library proved to be less than successful," Iroh inquired, taking a moment to glance in Azula's direction before looking back at the stranger.
"Ehh" the stranger replied with a shrug. "I'd say it went about as well as I expected it to. Then again, I wasn't really expecting to find a whole lot regarding parallel dimensions or speculative quantum theory; at least not in a place like this anyway."
"What will you do?"
Another shrug. "I guess I'll just have to keep scouring every library and bookshop until I eventually find what I'm looking for."
"That may take some time," said Iroh. "There are a great many libraries in this world and even the greatest of history's scholars were unable to visit them all."
"I know, it's gonna be a huge pain in the ass but what else am I gonna do?" He suddenly stopped speaking, snapped a finger. "Oh yeah, speaking of which…"
Azula watched as the stranger reached into his pocket and pulled out a small bundle wrapped in a layer of waxy paper.
"…Here's that ummm… other thing, you asked me to look into." He handed over the bundle, which Iroh eagerly accepted.
"Ahhh!" Azula heard her uncle practically croon as he inspected the bundle's contents. "Much appreciation, my young friend! It will be a relief to finally be able to sit down in comfort—" but he was suddenly cut off as the stranger threw his hands over his ears and turned away.
"Ah-det-det-det!" The stranger exclaimed with a rapid snapping of his tongue. "Iroh, I was happy to do you the favor, but learning what that stuff was going to be used for was bad enough without you providing me with updates." He brought his hands together, palms pressed flat as though he were a sage in prayer. "So take your embarrassing medicine, use in good health, and let us both agree to never speak of this again!"
"Hearing you complain about it," Zuko finally chimed in. "You'd think that you were the one with the hemorrhoids."
Iroh coughed in embarrassment.
The stranger just rolled his eyes. "And he's talking again," he said, looking up at the ceiling before adding; "Was one afternoon really so much to ask for?"
"What was that?" Zuko barked, twisting around, the look on his face practically murderous. "What did you just say?"
"I didn't say shit, Zuko." The stranger turned back to Iroh. "So, are you good? Is there anything else you need?" Not waiting for an answer, he made his way over to the beds, stopping just a step or two short of where Azula was seated.
Ever oblivious to the girl's presence, he began sifting through the clutter, gathering up various odds and ends which he quickly stuffed into the traveling bag.
"Because if it's all the same to you, I think I'm just gonna–" As he reached for something else to put in the bag, his hand was swiftly grabbed by Azula's. Her strong fingers held him in place, her claws deterring any notions of pulling away.
"Ummm… hello?" he said, confused apprehension in his voice. "Something I can help you with?"
But Azula ignored the question, turning the hand over so she could study the ink stains beneath his fingernails. His hands were large, yet the fingers themselves were long and nimble; the kind that could be found on the hands of artists and musicians, yet calloused and leathery like those of a common factory worker.
"Aren't you going to introduce us, Uncle?" She asked, raising her gaze to meet the stranger's.
Two rodent-gray eyes stared back at her from behind a pair of wire-framed glasses that looked in dire need of repair. His face was teeming with freckles. Beneath his furrowed brow, a large nose stuck out at crookedly past a wide mouth which lay half-hidden behind his untrimmed whiskers.
He seemed almost primordial at first glance.
She saw traces of neither Fire Nation nor Earth Kingdom in his outlandish features. Him being Water Tribe was also an impossibility, what with his red-orange hair and freckled skin like old milk or a piece of stale bread. The Air Nomads had long been wiped out during Sozin's purge; when the Hundred Year War first started, so that was hardly worth further speculation on her part.
"My apologies," her uncle spoke up, his voice taking on a sternly diplomatic tone, the kind often used by those who's only goal was not to provoke her.
He moved closer to the stranger, placed a hand on his shoulder while gesturing towards Azula with the other. "Please allow me the esteemed privilege and honor of presenting my niece, her ladyship, the Princess Azula. Daughter of Fire Lord Ozai and Lady Ursa."
"Hello," the stranger said a second time, earning only a single nod from Azula, who's grip on his hand remained unchanged.
"Azula," Iroh continued. "This is Mr. Isaac Brockmarsh. He's been traveling with us for some time."
"Has he, now?" A tiny smile crept onto her painted lips. "I trust my uncle and brother have been good company? I'm often told the roads in the Earth Kingdom are quite perilous for travelers, these days."
"I can't really complain," the stranger named Isaac replied, keeping his words short and his tone even. He looked down at his hand, gave it a light pull and said, "Do you mind?"
For a moment, the Fire Princess considered not releasing him; just to see what he would do in response. A look from her uncle swiftly changed her mind about that. Instincts also told her that a confrontation with either him or her brother would only defeat her visit's true purpose.
That was something that she simply could not afford; not right now; not when everything was right there for the taking.
Business before pleasure, I suppose.
The Fire Princess favored Isaac with a parting smirk before snapping her fingers open. His hand pulled away instantly, though he did not recoil from her, nor did he step back as she had expected him to.
Instead, he just continued to stare down at her with a look that reminded her of the ones Zuko used to give her as children, whenever she flicked food at him from across the dinner table. More confused than angry, he looked at her as though she were an apparition, a phantom of light and shadow that he wasn't quite sure was really there.
"I'm gonna take off," he eventually said to her Uncle, hefting his mildew smelling bag over his shoulder. "I'll be back between sometime and whenever, so if there's anything you guys need–"
"There isn't!" Zuko cut in. He moved in closer to Isaac and jabbed him with his thumb. "We haven't needed anything from you since the moment we first pulled you out of the ocean! So stop acting as though your tagging along has done us any favors!"
Azula watched the one-sided exchange with a perverse sense of delight. An awkward silence soon fell over the house as Isaac and Zuko continued to stare each other down. Muscles restrained by self-imposed restrictions; lips pinched so tight, they were little more than wire-thin lines, neither looked like they had any intention of backing down.
It was the shabby looking foreigner who finally broke the silence.
"Iroh…" he said, his tone surprisingly calm despite the intense look in his eyes. "I'll see you guys later." He side-stepped around the Fire Prince, keeping his distance as he quickly made for the door, stopped and looked back.
"You know something, Zuko," he said, looking him square in the face. "You're in more dire need of a blowjob than any white man in history." He then glanced at Azula. "Nice meeting you."
And then he was gone again.
It took all of Iroh's strength to hold back his nephew who now looked like a volcano just seconds away from erupting.
"I'm gonna kill him!" Zuko snarled.
"Let it go, nephew."
"I swear to Agni, if he ever talks to me again, I'll burn that stupid red beard right off his damned face!"
Azula's unexpected laughter drew their attention back to her. It had started as little more than a light chuckle which she had tried to hold back. But the chuckle had quickly festered, forcing its way up her throat, tickling and teasing her pallet until it all came bursting out of her mouth.
She threw her head back, red lips stretched wide over glittering teeth as the last peels of laughter finally left her. She then brought her hands together and clapped, looked at Zuko with cruel, condescending delight.
"Oh Zuzu," she said. "I honestly can't tell if your taste in friends has improved or declined over the years. A little bit of both perhaps?" She turned to Iroh. "Or maybe he's one of yours, Uncle? Have your declining years left you so jaded, that you now feel the need to… experiment?"
Iroh ignored his niece's slight, a talent he had cultivated from doing so many, many times in the past. "Please forgive Mr. Isaac's behavior. I am afraid that he is unaccustomed to dealing with—"
But Azula just held up a hand, silencing him. "I've heard all I've needed to hear and said all I've needed to say." She unfolded herself from her chair, stretched her limbs like a waking cat. "Father asked me to deliver his message and now that I have, I shall bid you both a pleasant evening."
She suddenly felt her brother's hand on her arm before he roughly twisted her around to face him.
"Did you really mean what you said?" He asked, anger masking the desperation hidden in the rasps of his voice. "Does father… does he really… want me back?"
"Want is a rather subjective word, Brother," came Azula's nonchalant reply before yanking her arm free. "The Fire Lord has requested you and Uncle's presence. What he wants is a different matter, altogether." She tugged at her sleeve, smoothing out the wrinkles left when Zuko had grabbed her. "If you can't be happy in knowing that, then at least try to be satisfied."
Iroh moved to place a hand on her shoulder. "I'm sure your brother just needs a moment to—"
"Don't patronize me, Uncle!" Azula hissed, slapping the hand away before it could touch her. "If Zuko can't find it in himself to show a little gratitude when it's due, that's on him." She shot her brother a cold glare, all pretense and smiles gone from her features. "I didn't have to come all this way to tell you this, you know. I'm not the family's messenger."
"Then why did you come?" Zuko asked. "You didn't care when father banished me three years ago, so why should you care now?"
Azula shrugged. "I had my reasons. In any case, I can see you still need some time to consider all that I've said." She started for the door once again and this time, no one tried to stop her from leaving. "My ship is docked at the southern harbor," she said. "We depart for The Capital in the morning, so I suggest you both be on board by then… Or don't… It really makes no difference to me."
She came to a halt just as she passed the threshold, turned to face her brother and uncle one last time. "And tell your… friend… that he's welcome to come along as well. It's a long trip back to The Capital and I'm sure Zuko would appreciate having a playmate to keep him company."
Zuko snorted steam from his flared nostrils.
Iroh's frown only deepened further, the tufts of his gray beard and sideburns bristling. "That is a very generous thing for you to offer, dear niece," he replied. "Especially to a stranger with whom you have only just recently become acquainted.
"Have you not heard, Uncle?" Azula exclaimed with a flamboyant wave of her hand. "I'm the most generous woman in all of the Fire Nation!"
And with those final words spoken, the Fire Nation's princess slid the screen door shut behind her with a nasty sounding 'thwack'.
• • •
The palanquin ride back to her ship was a relatively quiet one, though mainly because Azula had ordered her bearers silent, less they risk incurring the wrath of their Fire Princess. Nestled comfortably within a womb of velvet curtains and silk, she leaned back into the embroidered cushions of her seat, shrouded in darkness save for the small blue flame that she rolled back and forth between her fingers.
Her thoughts were consumed with all that she had seen and heard during her little visit. There were so many details to analyze and so little time to consider the possibilities and potential pitfalls.
The trap was set. All that remained for her to do now was to simply wait.
Her uncle may still yet prove to be a problem. Zuko's single minded devotion to restoring his honor may have made him as gullible as ever, but the retired General was a different matter altogether. Despite his age and oafish nature, her uncle was a wily old creature and bringing him down would require a far more tactful approach than she was normally used too.
Azula would have to move quickly while at the same time treading lightly.
Upon arriving at her ship, she retired to the seclusion of the main pagoda, where her opulent private quarters were situated and her small army of maids and servants awaited her arrival. As soon as their young mistress entered their sights, they immediately sprung to life in a great fluttering of their silken skirts. They carefully stripped her of her armor and clothing, which she immediately ordered to be burned and a new set prepared for her by the next morning.
She could think of no other way to be properly rid of the stink left by her brother and uncle.
Once the last piece of her soon to be incinerated attire had been peeled away from her slender form, the Fire Princess stepped naked into the adjoining washroom. Set deep into a tiled floor made of smooth cut volcanic rock, an enormous bathtub had been filled to the brim with steaming hot water in preparation for her arrival.
Heated to a near boil, the water felt heavenly against her skin as she took her time submerging herself beneath its frothy surface. She had often found it ironic that a child of fire, such as her, could derive such pleasure from their opposing element.
So comfortable was she, that not even Li and Lo's incessant clucking in her ear would have been enough to disturb her. The two old crones that her father had assigned to her entourage had been more tiresome than usual as of late, with their endless criticisms and constant reminders of loyalty and duty; to both her Lord Father and to the Fire Nation itself.
Once she began to slowly adjust to the water's scalding heat, she lay back against the tub's smooth edge and let her servants see to her body's every need. They washed and combed her hair with well practiced fingers, rubbing her scalp with fragrant lotions, while the ones who sat on either side massaged spicy scented oils deep into the tightly corded muscles of her arms and legs.
She closed her eyes and allowed herself to enjoy this rare moment of perfect calmness, basking under the predatory gaze of intertwining dragons and phoenixes that decorated the walls and ceiling in golden patterns.
Finished with her bath, Azula quickly rose from out of the water, a trail of steam following her like an unsatisfied lover as she stepped dripping onto the tiled-floor. She accepted the towel offered by one of the attendants but declined the robe, dismissing everyone with an order and threats of great bodily harm to whomever next disturbs her.
She made her way across her enormous stateroom, past the four-poster bed with its velvet hangings and through the adjoining dining area where she helped herself to the plate of candied ginger that had been left out for her. She moved towards the room's largest wall, ignored her private training chamber despite how much her revitalized flesh craved the stimulation of one last workout before bed.
She soon stood before a pair of enormous steel doors, studded with rivets and reinforced by a complex locking mechanism which kept them securely shut.
Standing back, Azula cracked her knuckles, stretched her arms and legs before dropping into a low fighting stance. She filled her lungs with air and let it out slowly, felt the flow of her chi suddenly flare up within her as she mentally redirected the currents.
Arcane muscles flexed within her arm.
Moving with a dancer's grace, she twisted about and plunged two claw-like fingers in a downward arc through the air. Her skin trembled. A rippling tide of electric blue light unfolded around her, crackling sharply as her claws lacerated the air. Her other arm was soon mirroring the motion. Sparks ignited between her fingers, blossomed and spread jaggedly across her limbs.
For a moment, she remained like that, relishing the cold bite of the electric discharge as it enveloped her. And then, with a violent, whip-snap of movement, she suddenly whirled about, pointed and fired a single bolt of lightning towards the doors.
The whole room shook.
A spray of electric blue ichor splashed across the doors, causing the reinforced plating to hum as the rippling torrent forced its way into the lock's intake nodes. There, within the complex inner workings, hidden mechanisms sprang to life, twisting and snapping, pulling apart and unfolding.
With a hiss of hidden pneumatics and a great groaning of steel, the doors rolled open, receding into the walls and revealing a hidden room of impenetrable darkness.
The lock had cost her a small fortune, and had been considered by the minds who conceived it – who were, of course, all dead now – to be the most advanced piece of technology ever to exist on their world.
Or at least it had been.
Stepping through the void-like threshold, Azula entered the dark little alcove, just long enough to retrieve the item contained within; a small, rectangular box carved from a single piece of bloodstone jade, which she carried in her hands with the utmost care.
Crossing the room, she made her way over to the study, gently placed the box down on the imposing looking desk, before removing the tiny key that had been hidden beneath one of her fingernails.
The box clicked as she inserted the key into the hidden lock, turned it until the lid snapped open.
Inside was a small pouch made of brilliant red silk, tied shut with a golden cord and embroidered with the three pronged flame of the Fire Nation in black thread. She lifted the bundle into her hand, felt the weight of the flat, rectangular object held within as she unwound the cord and spread the bag open. With a flick of her wrist, the item slipped from the bag as smooth as freshly melted wax, dropping into the flat surface of her palm.
Discarding the bag, she strode over to one of the room's plush couches, sat down and crossed one bare leg over the other. With her elbow propped atop the armrest, her cheek once again found its favorite resting place against her knuckles while she gazed at the curious looking object in her hand.
Despite its relatively small size, there was a weightiness to the object's mass, just enough for her to feel it pushing down on her hand as she held it. She watched her reflection stare back at her from the black, mirror-like surface of what she had long-since determined to be the object's 'face': a pane of paper thin glass; perfectly smooth save for the telltale signs of old scratches that the royal jeweler had attempted to polish away.
She slid her thumb along the beveled edge, seeking the slender strip of metal that stuck out just ever so slightly.
Azula pressed her thumb down upon it.
White light flashed in her hand, brighter than any candle or flare, yet strangely cool to the touch.
The symbol of a partially eaten apple suddenly appeared, it's esoteric meaning still lost on her, even after seeing it so many times before.
This was soon replaced by a grid of gray circles, each containing a large white symbol that bore no resemblance to anything she would recognize. There had once been a time when their meaning too had left her perplexed.
At least that was until a little experimenting on her part had determine the grid to be some form of puzzle, a test of one's intelligence; with each symbol providing the necessary keys to open the lock but only if touched in the correct sequence.
The Fire Nation's most renowned code breakers had assured her that such a complex mechanism would take months, if not years to decipher.
Azula had figured it out in less than an hour.
Though in all fairness, the only reason it had been so easy for her was because whoever had set the lock's password had done a laughably poor job of it, using only the first symbol on the grid for the entire sequence.
A sequence which had only required four entries to complete.
It was as though the previous owner had wanted his secrets to be exposed.
Once she had completed the monotonous little ritual of implementing the all but useless password, "1-1-1-1" the grid of gray circles quickly disappeared. It was then instantly replaced by a new set of images and symbols, each one just as strange and colorful as its neighbor.
She touched the one resembling a flower with rainbow colored petals. It reacted to her touch instantly, expanding outward and filling the rest of the illuminated surface with yet another grid work of smaller images.
Unlike the symbols, these were far more easier to decipher, as they were more akin to the painted portraits and landscapes that hung in the palace galleries back home.
Only these weren't paintings at all, but images that had somehow been ripped from the very fibers of reality. She had heard stories of ancient Fire Nation alchemists that were said to have worked with such esoteric crafts. Some were even said to have spent entire lifetimes in isolation, perfecting their skills to one day unlock the secret of capturing light and shadow the way scribes capture the spoken word.
But this was far beyond the crude, barely recognizable blotches and streaks that the alchemists had burned into bronze plates with noxious smelling sludge.
This was a catalogue of memories, each as crisp as the day they had first been experienced.
She touched her finger against the first image, watched it expand until it filled the glowing window. An empty room now sat in her palm, a single window looking out onto an uneven horizon of rooftops. She flicked her finger across the image, watched as it followed the motion, replacing the empty room with the image of another, this one filled with brown colored boxes sealed with glossy strips.
She flicked her finger across the glowing surface again; repeated the motion again and again, until she was rapidly flipping from one image to the next; a small furry creature curled up in a cage, an unfinished meal, cities skylines, glittering towers that dwarfed even the tallest of her world's structures.
There was a solitary tree in a park, a rainbow that curved a through a cloudy gray sky, a line of boats in a harbor and two pieces of rubbish that looked like a pair of arguing faces. She saw sunsets behind bridges, and dead fish in beds of crushed ice, athletes playing in an open stadium and an old man shouting at a uniformed constable.
On… and on… and on, the catalog of random imagery went, seemingly endless in both quantity and variety.
When Azula was just about ready to give up her search, her eyes suddenly caught sight of several young people sitting in a tightly pact tavern.
Yes… There we are!
There was four to their little group; three boys and one girl, all dressed in mismatched sets of ridiculous looking clothing; green being the unifying theme and color. Each was in their own separate state of drunkenness, mouths open wide with laughter as they hefted huge, frothing mugs filled with some dubious looking green beverage.
An arrow pointing to the right, lay transparently atop their faces.
Azula tapped it.
A blast of noise at once came pouring forth from the device as the image itself came to life.
Sounds of celebration; a wild symphony of clinking glasses and cheers and laughter. A dark skinned boy shares a sloppy kiss with a girl who's nose was studded with numerous piercings. At the group's center the two tallest boys stand above the others. Their arms lay draped over each other's shoulder as their drinks collide in midair, spilling another helping of green froth onto the table below.
"Heeeeeeeyoooo, Boston!" The tallest boy shouts, his hair a wild tangle of red curls that clearly resented the hat he wore. His hopelessly freckled face is so flushed from the alcohol that he looks like a tomato. "This is Isaac Dan Brockmarsh wishing all you other losers and misfits of MIT 2016 a fucking Happy SAINT PADDYYYYYYYYY—"
Azula tapped a second time, halting the sequence just as the screaming boys face thrust itself towards her.
"Father once told me that I was born lucky," she mused to herself as she studied the face staring back at her from the palm of her hand. "I wonder if the same can be said about you… Mr. Brockmarsh."
A press of her thumb and the image collapsed upon itself, blinking back into darkness with a pleasantly artificial 'click'.
This work is dedicated to the many authors on this website who's works have not only entertained but inspired me for nearly two decades and to the ones who's works continue to inspire me to this day. Your stories may not be found on the shelves of bookstores or libraries, but among your vast numbers, there are those with a true sense of story and command of the written word.
From the bottom of my heart, I thank each and every one of you.