This has been a crazy couple of months, but I have finally returned to the land of the living! Someone in my family was sick for almost two months straight (though not with the plague, as far as we know). Anyway, I am back with the next chapter, and since chapter 26 is already half written, I would expect it to be out in less than a month. But don't quote me on that, because with the way this year is going, who knows what will happen next? -_-

Thanks to all of my wonderful readers who have stuck with this story! I want to thank, especially, my faithful reviewers. I really appreciate you all, and I know I've done a terrible job of keeping up with my review replies over the last few chapters. Just know that I treasure each and every one of the reviews. You are the real heroes of the fanfic world.

More Than Blood Can Stand

Chapter 25: The Yuyan Archers


Azula sat at the vanity in her room in the Earth Kingdom palace, gripping a brush so hard she thought she could snap it.

Nothing was going right for her lately. She had lost Zuko at Ba Sing Se, she had lost General Mak's support, the traitor, and she had lost Ty Lee.

Oh, sure, Ty Lee hadn't died. Was she supposed to be grateful for that, when she had lost the use of her arms for at least another week from those grotesque burns?

Azula had wanted to leave her behind in Ba Sing Se and continue on with Ling and a small squad of troops. But no, Ling wouldn't leave an injured comrade.

Her lips curled as she thought about it. Injured comrade her foot. Ling was a man, and she knew how they behaved around Ty Lee. He was infatuated, besotted, not thinking clearly. And because of this, she had lost precious time in chasing Zuko and the Avatar, and had been forced to wait around Ba Sing Se in an interminable stasis.

Served her right for bringing a man along. For not the first time, she bemoaned the decision to allow Mai to go with Zuko. She, Mai, and Ty Lee would have been an unstoppable force. Men and Ty Lee simply did not mix without consequences.

She ought to leave them both behind.

But she knew she wouldn't.

The hand holding the brush twitched. For a wild moment she considered throwing it at the mirror. She pulled her arm back and tensed her muscles.

No. She would control herself. She was a princess, not a barbarian.

A knock sounded at the door.

"WHAT?" The brush fell from her hands with a clatter.

Ling opened the door and stepped in, bowing. "Forgive the intrusion, Princess."

With trembling fingers, she picked up the brush again, running it through her already-brushed hair. If he was going to show up at her door unbidden, he was going to have to wait patiently until she was ready to listen.

After several moments of uncomfortable silence - enough, she was sure, to drive her point home - she smiled, wiping all traces of irritation from her face, and turned to face him.

"Now. What reason could you possibly have for interrupting me so late at night?"

Again, he bowed. "General Shu says that his troops have found no trace of the Avatar or Prince Zuko."

"And this is newsworthy because…?"

Ling continued his report as if she hadn't said anything. "He has called in General Shinu's Yuyan archers to aid in the search. They have arrived in Gaoling, which based on reported sightings of the Avatar's bison is where we estimate Prince Zuko is now. They intended to begin their search tomorrow." He paused, and she had a sneaking suspicion that he was about to get to the important part, the reason he'd come in for a special report. So naturally, she interrupted.

"I already know all of this. I don't have time for this nonsense. Save it for the scheduled briefing in the morning." She turned in her chair so that her back was to him. "You are dismissed."

"I would not have diturbed you if it were not important, Princess." She had to give him credit for being exceptionally brave. His voice hadn't wavered from his strong, formal tone. "The region around Gaoling is in uprising."

Her head snapped around. "Then why didn't you say that at first?"

He bowed in apology. "From what the officers can tell, the uprising began with a sighting of the Blue Spirit in one of the nearby towns last week."

Now that was interesting. The Blue Spirit was a rogue who had started an uprising up north in the area of Yu Dao a few months ago. He had stood up to the soldiers and incited the populace against her father. He was considered dangerous, and all Fire Nation soldiers had instructions to kill him on sight, but he had gone into hiding and hadn't been heard of since. If he was in the same area as Zuko, that could spell serious problems.

"I'm surprised you didn't know how to handle this on your own, Ling." She sighed and returned to brushing her hair, if only to give her something to do. "It's quite simple: instruct the Yuyan to search for this Blue Spirit and bring him to justice. He is as much a threat as Zuko. They should capture them all."

Then she turned around and fixed him with her best glare. "And we will leave the palace today and do whatever it takes to catch up with them. With or without Ty Lee."


Aang stared at the boulder despondently. It was a massive impediment, an unconquerable foe. It wouldn't budge.

"Maybe there's another way," he said, with more optimism than he actually felt. "What if I came from the boulder from another angle?"

"No." Toph's voice had an iron edge to it. "That's the problem. You've got to stop thinking like an airbender. There's no different angle, no clever solution, no trickety-trick that's going to move that rock. You've got to face it head on. And when I say head on," she said, backing up and crouching slightly, "I mean like this!"

He watched in awe as she jumped onto the rock - head first! - and smashed it into pieces. Earthbending practice with Toph was something else. He was beginning to feel like he would never master it, that he didn't have what it took to be an earthbender.

But he was the Avatar, and he couldn't afford to think like that.

Another boulder sprang into place before the dust from the previous one could disperse. He took a deep breath, bent his knees to get into the horse stance she had taught him yesterday. Fully grounded to the earth, he reached out with his fist and punched.

"Ow!" His hand smashed into the boulder; he thought he might have fractured a finger that time.

Toph shook her head. "You hesitated, right at the end. I saw you. Come on, Twinkletoes! Stop giving in! Earth is a stubborn element. You're going to have to learn to out-stubborn it."

"I've been trying that for weeks!" He groaned and sat down. "It's not working."

"That's why you work harder."

"Come on, Toph," Katara said. She was sitting with the others by the firepit, nominally doing chores, but in reality doing more watching of the earthbending lesson than work. "Give him a break! He needs some time off for a change."

"To do what? Wash the rice?" She scowled. "I don't think so."

Katara scowled back. "It would be more productive than these lessons have been."

"I'll show you productive!" Toph started towards her with a murderous look in her eyes.

"Hey!" Hinata stood up and took a step towards Toph. "That's enough."

Both girls fell silent, though obviously reluctantly.

"I think it's obvious," Hinata continued, "that something is blocking Aang from learning earthbending right now. What he needs is a different approach."

"You mean a new teacher," Toph said bitterly.

"No. I mean a different approach. When someone is having trouble with a firebending technique, do you know what we do?"

Knowing firebenders, Aang thought, tensing, probably train all day and night until they got it right.

"We take a break," Zuko spoke up from the fire. "We sit out of the training session and watch our Master and the other students to analyze what we're doing wrong."

His muscles began to relax slightly. That didn't sound so bad.

"Then," Zuko continued, "we train day and night until we get it right."

He collapsed onto the ground - the frustrating, immovable earth - with a groan. "That sounds like torture."

"It's too bad," Sokka said, clapping him on the back, "that we don't have other earthbenders for you to watch."

"Excuse me," Toph stiffened. "He has me."

"Yes, but you're so…" Sokka waved his hand around nebulously, as if he couldn't quite describe it.

"Stubborn?" Katara muttered.

"Silent," Sokka said. "Haven't you noticed? Toph doesn't move like other earthbenders. She's quiet, still. Her movements are less dramatic, more instinctual."

They all stared at him. Sokka was so often the fool of the group, but when he was right, he was right.

"What?" he said, looking around at the stares from the rest of the group, "I've seen other earthbenders. They're all so dramatic and over-the-top with their movements. I think it would be good for Aang to watch more of that."

Aang looked at Toph to see how she would take this. She was awfully prickly about, well lots of things, but especially about her skills as an earthbender. Sokka's idea was a really good one, he thought, but that didn't mean she wouldn't take offense.

But she didn't look offended. In fact, there was a tiny crook to the edge of her lips that made him think that she was actually intrigued by the idea.

"How close are we to Gaoling?" she finally said.

Sokka looked surprised. "Really close. Why?"

"I think we can find some less talented, more showy earthbenders there. That is" -she rounded on Zuko, Mai, and Hinata- "assuming your people kept their word and released the prisoners who helped them rebuild the walls in Omashu."

"My father always keeps his word," Hinata growled.

She punched him in the side. "Then I guess we're going to Earth Rumble."


Gaoling was a nice enough place for an Earth Kingdom town, Lee thought as he and his brother archers settled into a hiding spot on a roof on the edge of town. The way the town was nestled in the valley reminded him of their capital in the cauldron. In some ways it reminded him of home - more so, at least, than their desolate base at Pohuai Fortress up north. The southern Earth Kingdom was warmer, friendlier, more familiar.

But like every other part of the Earth Kingdom he had visited in the course of his duties, Gaoling was touched by the war. Buildings lay abandoned, many of them in piles of rubble or scorched wood, and the people had a tenseness about them, especially when they saw a Fire Nation soldier. The sight of the Yuyan archers with their red facial tattoos seemed to especially frighten them.

Lee was proud of that. He loved his nation and was proud of their superiority over the rest of the world. But he wasn't here to gloat. He had a job to do: find Prince Zuko, the Avatar, and the Blue Spirit.

He looked at his mission briefing again, making sure to commit the information to memory. The Blue Spirit would be easy to recognize based on the drawing he had been given. The grinning demon face wasn't one you would easily forget. The Avatar, too, ought to be easy to spot. He was short, bald, young, and, according to the information in the briefing, could create tornadoes and run faster than the wind. He wasn't sure he believed that part, but it did conjure up a mental image that ought to make him easy to pick out of a crowd.

And then there was the Crown Prince.

Lee looked at the picture again in amazement. He had seen Prince Zuko on more than one occasion at the palace before he had been assigned to the Yuyan Archers, and the picture in front of him was so diametrically opposed to the handsome, smiling face he remembered that it made him shudder.

Where had that scar come from? Who had given it to him? Prince Zuko was widely known to be one of the best firebenders in the palace, better than most of his guards.

"Hey!"

He blinked at the hand waving in front of his face and looked over to see Julong, who had been assigned to this blind with him, scowling.

"Are you deaf? I've been calling your name for the last two minutes. We have work to do."

"Sorry," Lee said. "I was just looking at this." He jabbed his finger at the picture of the prince.

Julong's face immediately softened. "Hard to believe, isn't it?"

"What do you think happened to him?"

"You're kidding, right?" Julong laughed without a hint of humor. At Lee's blank stare, he shook his head. "Word is that Ozai gave that to him before he took over for Fire Lord Iroh."

"But if it was before that…"

"Then it was weeks before he was labeled a traitor, yeah."

His mouth opened and closed a few times before he was able to form a coherent sentence. "That makes Ozai just as much a traitor as Zuko!"

Julong lifted his bow and tested the string. "Worse, if you ask me."

"Then why are we following his orders? He's the one calling Zuko a traitor. Shouldn't we be following the Crown Prince?" He regretted saying it the moment the words were out of his mouth. Speaking of treason… "I didn't mean it that way," he said hastily.

"Sure you didn't," Julong laughed. "You'd better keep your mouth shut about that if you don't want to wind up on the wrong end of a firing squad."

"But you're the one who said-"

"Look, it's one thing to gossip about the Fire Lord. It's a very different one to openly defy him. I may not like the way things are going, but I don't like dying more."

Lee didn't see the nuance, but he wasn't about to say so.

"All the same," Julong went on in a tight, hushed tone, "I'm not going to go out of my way to capture the Prince, if you know what I mean."

And this time, he did. He pushed the picture of Prince Zuko to the bottom of his stack and pulled up the one of the Avatar instead. There was an enemy that he could shoot with a clear conscience.


In the end it was only Aang, Toph, and Sokka who went into the town. Zuko was too well-known to show up without his Blue Spirit mask, and his altar ego too wanted to show up with it. Mai and Katara weren't interested in watching, as Katara put it, "a bunch of guys chucking rocks at each other." And Hinata wasn't going to leave Zuko unguarded.

That was probably for the best, Toph thought. If the whole lot of them showed up at Earth Rumble, they would be awfully conspicuous.

Not that she, the champion of Earth Rumble V, wouldn't be conspicuous. But she was hoping her competitors would be too busy fighting to notice her, and her fans too busy watching the action to notice a small girl in the stands. Seeing people could be so short-sighted sometimes.

Toph led them to the arena, being sure to take the long route. Not for any reason, really. Sometimes it felt nice to have a good walk, that's all.

"Wow," Aang breathed. "That's a really big house. Or it was, before it was burned down"

Oh, hey. Home. Imagine that.

It meant nothing to her, of course. She refused to allow herself to think about how there were no people - no servants, no parents, nobody - in the shell of a house. She wasn't going to upset herself over that. She had hated her life at home. She was much happier as one of Zuko's guards, as a part of Aang's team to save the world.

But she couldn't help that little shuddering breath that escaped her as they continued down the street. And she couldn't entirely wipe out the image of what might have happened to her parents if the Fire Nation had left her home in such a state.

She was doing such a good job of not thinking about these things that she would have walked right past the arena had Aang not tugged on her hood to stop her.

"Isn't this it?" he'd asked in that sweet, innocent way of his that would usually be disarming. But her emotions were so twisted inside her that what came out was rage. Scowling, she reached out and tugged on his own hood - maybe just a tiny bit too hard, pulling it clear off his head.

"Don't pull on people's hoods!" she snapped.

One of Aang's hands flew up to his uncovered tattoos, while the other fumbled for his hood. "What was that for?" he hissed. "Someone could have seen!"

"Yeah, yeah, whatever, Twinkletoes. It was only visible for a second. Besides, no one's watching us."


"Did you see that?" Lee turned to Julong, pointing at the boy. "Airbender tattoos! One of those kids with the hoods walking into that big building."

Julong squinted in the direction, but shook his head. "Are you sure? Which one?"

Now that he looked at them again, he wasn't quite sure he could tell which kid it had been. "I'm certain it was one of them," he said lamely.

"Lee," Julong sighed, "we can't go barging in there without a target. That's what the infantry would do, not the Yuyan."

"Yeah, I know." He pulled his bow out and fitted it with a net arrow. "But when they come out, we'll be ready for them."


"Did you see the look on the Gopher's face when Hippo smashed that rock into him?" Sokka jumped into the air, landing in a manner vaguely reminiscent of a rock, and then switched to a cowering position, flailing his arms about in panic.

"It was great!" Aang replied. "Did you see how he twisted his hips at the last second to give it that extra shove?" He stuck his hip out in a way that Toph assumed was meant to mimic the earthbending form, but to her it felt more like a bad attempt at a dance move. "We gotta do this more often."

Toph would have rolled her eyes if she could ever figure out what that meant, but settled on a retort instead. "It doesn't take much to impress either of you, does it?

"That was the coolest bending I've ever seen," Sokka breathed. "And I've seen a lot, let me tell you."

"Definitely more than I have!" she agreed.

"I wish I could talk to the Hippo and ask him about his bending style," Aang said. "I bet it would be helpful."

"And," Sokka said significantly, "we could ask him for his autograph."

"You want the Hippo's autograph?" Toph was surrounded by fools. If they thought the Big, Bad Hippo with his Big, Bad Bending could even hold a candle to what she was able to do, there was no helping them. They had no grasp of subtlety, of the value of listening and waiting, of the power that comes from knowing your opponent's move before even he did. Still, if it would help Aang master earthbending…

"All right," she sighed heavily. "I'll go back in there and see if I can convince him to meet up with us later." She felt Sokka's mouth begin to open and held up a hand. "And before you ask, no, you can't come with me. They only allow competitors into the lockers. Wait for me outside. I'll let you know what he says."

She almost felt bad at the way Sokka deflated at that. She hoped, for his sake, that the Hippo was in a good mood today.

Aang grabbed Sokka by the elbow and pulled him towards the entrance. "Thanks, Toph. We'll be right outside."

They were obviously in too good of a mood, she thought, judging by their body language. Something about Earth Rumble seemed to have sparked a love of earthbending in both boys, and despite herself Toph felt a smile creeping onto her face.

She started to descend the stairs towards the lockers, bracing herself for what she would see there: who would be missing, how much had their captivity changed those who had returned? She raised her hand to knock at the door, when all of a sudden she tensed.

There was a commotion outside, some sort of struggle. A crowd was forming. She bent down to touch the ground, blocking everything else out to listen to the vibrations in the earth, but it was no use. She couldn't detect Aang or Sokka.

Oh no, she thought, racing up the stair, bending each stair up as she stepped on it so that she was effectively taking three or four steps at a time.

But by the time she got to the top, the crowd was blocking the exit, and there was what felt like a group of soldiers at the edge of the square. Except they didn't feel quite like Fire Nation soldiers. They were smaller than usual, and wore almost no metal on their bodies. There were only a few triangular-shaped metal pieces strapped to their backs.

Arrows. Toph shivered. Of all the weapons she did not want to face, arrows were at the top of the list.

And where were Aang and Sokka? She dug her feet into the ground, but try as she might she couldn't sense them.

"What happened?" she asked the man next to her. "Who are those soldiers?"

"It's the Yuyan Archers, the Fire Nation's elite archery squad. They captured two boys leaving the arena. Said one of the boys was the Avatar! I don't know if I believe it, though, because he was so young-"

"Where did they take them?" she interrupted.

"They threw them in metal cages and threw them onto one of their tanks."

"How many of them were guarding the cages? Which way did they go?"

The man hesitated before responding, and Toph could tell he was beginning to be suspicious of her. She switched immediately to her innocent-blind-girl smile. "My parents will be worried if I don't get home safely. I just want to know how to avoid them."

The man relaxed. "I would say there were about thirty archers, not to mention the soldiers operating the tanks. They took the north road. If you're worried, I'd be happy to escort you home."

"Nah, I live south of here. Shouldn't be a problem if they're headed the other way." She waved him off and made her way to the side of the building to think, heart racing.

Toph leaned against the wall, bit her lip, and dropped her head into her hands. She had heard of the Yuyan archers. People said they could pin a fly to a tree at hundred yards - without killing it. The best earthbender in the world she may be, but even she could not handle thirty archers of that caliber on her own.

She could usually detect large pieces of earth flying through the air if she was concentrating hard enough, like in an Earth Rumble match, but small rocks were still hit-or-miss, and she was still developing her metalbending sense.

She imagined thirty small metal arrows flying at her at the same time, each perfectly precise-

No.

She wasn't going to be able to free Sokka and Aang on her own.

But maybe she could figure out where, exactly, they were taking them.