Two days after "The Waterbending Scroll"
Even Zuko's boots sounded angry. Iroh could hear his nephew tromping down the hall well before the heavy metal door to the bridge was flung open so fiercely he thought it would rip free of its hinges. Iroh looked up from his pai sho game, smiling softly, attemtping, as futile as it usually was, to project calm onto the banished prince.
"Uncle, we were supposed to start training a half hour ago!" Zuko thundered. The other players bunched around the pai sho board looked apprehensively between Iroh and Zuko, their rear ends seeming to sink further into the ratty pillows they used as game chairs. Over the years, the crewmen had developed a sixth sense for when Prince Zuko was in a foul mood. Iroh would've given them more credit, but, really, it didn't take much expertise to determine when his nephew was angry. The secret? He was virtually always angry. The task fell to Iroh to compel him to use his emotions in a more productive way.
So far, he hadn't had much luck. But he had to keep trying. It was what uncles were supposed to do.
Yes. Uncles.
"Did my attendant not instruct you to meet me at the bridge?" Iroh asked quizzically.
"No!" Zuko whined. He looked around, surveying the pai sho players. Some of them were still wearing their armor despite the decidedly relaxed ambiance. Or, as relaxed as one could be on a dark, red-lit, metal warship. "Are we practicing close-quarters combat today, Uncle?"
Iroh's tablemates looked at him worriedly, and he shot them all reassuring looks to assuage their worries that they had been summoned for firebending target practice as well as a pai sho beatdown. "In a way, my nephew. In a way." Iroh leaned over, stretching out his arm as far as it would go to grab another pillow without getting up. "Sit," he told Zuko, offering him the pillow.
"I don't want to sit, I want to train!" Zuko roared. His fists started to smoke. Voluntarily or involuntarily, Iroh didn't know. And Iroh didn't know which option was better. Calm, he reminded himself. I must remain calm. Then he will remain calm.
"This is training, Prince Zuko. There will be time for firebending later. This is far more important."
Zuko lowered his one eyebrow even further, but obliged, harumphing his way over to sit next to Iroh. "Thank you," Iroh said graciously. "I promise this will not be a waste of your time."
A waste of time, Iroh thought wryly. A waste of time? When the mission is unachievable, is there such thing as a waste of time?
Iroh had thought capturing the Avatar would be impossible in and of itself, but, by some miracle of the spirits, the Avatar had survived a hundred years in the form and vitality of a twelve-year-old boy. Capturing him had so far proven too much for their small crew to handle, but even if they did achieve that feat, that wasn't the real mission. The real mission was for Zuko to earn back the love of his father. And Iroh knew that to be impossible.
He had been a father. He had loved and lost. He knew Ozai to be as much of a father as Iroh was a waterbender. Sure, Iroh had studied the waterbenders. He had used their teachings to his advantage. But he could not stop the waves from pounding against the hull of their ship. Ozai could pretend to love, pretend to raise and nurture, but on the day of Zuko's Agni Kai, Iroh knew exactly what would happen as soon as he saw Ozai on the other side of that platform.
The role of father had not fallen on Iroh's shoulders. The role had been vacant from the moment his nephew was born. Iroh had been granted the part by virtue of being the only one auditioning.
Iroh lifted a tile, twirling it between his fingers so Zuko could get a good look at its insignia. The White Lotus. As if it would be anything else, he scoffed to himself.
"That the tile you had us waste all that time trying to find?" Zuko asked, his grudge evidently still healthy even after being separated by days from that unsavory encounter with the pirates.
Iroh nodded. "Of course, there are as many strategies in pai sho as there were clans in the era of Zoryu, but the White Lotus tile is overlooked in most of them...except mine." He placed the tile gently but confidently on the board, in the very center of his array of other pieces. Lieutenant Jee and a couple of the other competitors, the ones who had been learning the fastest, groaned. Iroh would have victory in exactly six moves. The other two players blinked rather dumbly, unaware quite yet of how badly they'd been snookered.
"Did you just win, Uncle?" Zuko asked.
"Hush, Prince Zuko, you must not interfere with the flow of the game! The other players must be allowed to effect their strategies without outside knowledge!" Iroh chided. It was too late. The two lesser-skilled crewmen finally saw their situation for what it was. Iroh chuckled. "Oh, well. Shall we play again, my friends? Truly, it is becoming more and more of a challenge to achieve victory each game."
The other players smiled and scooped up their pieces, clearing the board. Iroh, as the winner of the previous game, moved first, placing his lotus tile in the same position as it was before. This time, there was no sense in hiding his strategy. If they hadn't caught on by now, maybe they weren't improving as much as he thought they were.
"I only asked if you had won to see if we could train!" Zuko whispered angrily. So he did have enough respect not to raise his voice during their game. Iroh took this as a small victory, even if he were to go on to lose the game. Hah, he thought. If I were to lose. "In firebending! I don't need pai sho to capture the Avatar!" Zuko hissed
"That is where you are mistaken, my nephew," Iroh said seriously. "Everyone needs pai sho in their life. But you...you especially could learn something from this beautiful game. Do you know who the greatest pai sho master in history is?"
Lieutenant Jee slipped a sly grin to the helmsman sitting next to him. Iroh ignored the unspoken mockery and awaited Zuko's answer. "You, I assume," Zuko guessed. "You play constantly, and I've never seen you lose." Alas, everyone had assumed Iroh was talking about himself, forgetting one of pai sho's most basic tenets: humility. Even when the game is going well, never let arrogance and complacency prevent you from executing the final series of blows.
"Incorrect," Iroh said. Zuko's eyebrow quirked and the other players simply looked shocked. Iroh was flattered, really, he was. But it was sad that the other men hadn't played enough pai sho to know that Iroh, while a master, was not the be all and end all in the game. It had existed and flourished long before him and it would continue to do so long after him. The saga of the Dragon of the West was but a pamphlet compared to the epochs of pai sho history. "The greatest pai sho player of all time is the Avatar."
"That little kid?" Zuko scoffed. "How would you know? Did you have time for quick game while we were supposed to have him in chains?"
"No, not the little airbender boy," Iroh shook his head.
"Not him? Uncle, he's the Avatar!"
"Not the airbender," Iroh repeated. "A past life of his. Each Avatar is not only blessed with the ability to bend all four elements, but with the skills and even the memories of his or her past lives."
"I know. And that's why we should really be practicing firebending right now!" Zuko placed a hand roughly on Iroh's wrist, gripping the shirtsleeve slightly. Suddenly, Iroh's mind was transported ten years into the past; Lu Ten had barged into a meeting with War Minister Qin and two other generals in Iroh's home office, tugging as hard as his little hands could pull on Iroh's shirtsleeve. The boy had wanted to play soldier, and Iroh had chuckled and said that he was already busy playing soldier. The other two generals had laughed along, and War Minister Qin had pushed a figurine denoting the Rough Rhinos onto the little dot that symbolized an Earth Kingdom mining town. Iroh had forgotten the village's name. He supposed it didn't matter now. All of its citizens had been conscripted or executed.
Iroh ignored Zuko's petition for firebending practice. "Kuruk, the Water Tribe Avatar two incarnations before Roku, was said to be the greatest grandmaster in recorded history, the best since the game was played by the spirits themselves. Do you know why, Zuko?"
"No idea." Zuko rolled his eyes. "But I'm surprised a grandmaster came from the Water Tribes. I guess they don't spend all their time skinning polar leopards."
"I confess, I do not know much about Water Tribe pai sho. However, each nation developed the game differently. If I were to journey to the North Pole and ask for a match, I'm sure they would have to teach me the rules...as if I were a toddler, learning not to chew on the pieces!" Iroh guffawed. A couple of the helmsmen joined in to be nice, but Iroh was perfectly content being the only one who laughed at his jokes. The others didn't have to humor him.
"The nations' styles of pai sho, ironically, are all quite different from the nations themselves," Iroh continued. "In the streets of Ba Sing Se, pai sho is a fast-paced game of chance. The steadfast nation of substance and endurance, reducing the game to something flighty and unpredictable. On the contrary, the airbenders, who relished their free spirits, apparently had a more rigid and cumbersome set of rules for pai sho than anyone else."
"So we play it right in the Fire Nation, then, Uncle?" Zuko asked. The steel had come out of is voice, and Iroh dared to hope that the boy might be genuinely interested in what he had to teach.
"Now, I didn't say the other nations were wrong," Iroh tutted. "Just different. The Fire Nation, in the same vein, has developed pai sho into a game opposite our nature. In war and in life, we move quickly, with passion and drive. In pai sho, we are careful and methodical." Iroh looked around at his competitors. "Or, some of us are, anyway," he laughed again.
"Methodical," Zuko mocked. "In this case that just seems like another word for slow."
"You will learn to appreciate it, nephew," Iroh declared. "As part of your training, I will teach you to play pai sho."
"What? Why?" Zuko sputtered.
"The Avatar masters every element, and therefore is a citizen of every nation. He knows the dualities, the contradictions, in each one. This is why Avatar Kuruk was a grandmaster. Just as he bent every element, knew its nature and power, he learned each style of pai sho, embraced the differences between the styles. It brought a measure of balance to his life, which was otherwise filled with chaos and regret."
"I'm not the Avatar!" Zuko protested, gesticulating emphatically. "I can bend one element. I'm loyal to one nation. I don't need the 'dualities'."
"If you wish to capture the Avatar, and if you wish to achieve balance within yourself," Iroh said, not giving ground. They had reached a phase of the conversation that might best be done in private, but Iroh couldn't just whisk Zuko out of the room now. And besides, Zuko would find it more awkward to refuse his uncle's offer with witnesses than without. "You will learn to play pai sho. Just twice a week. You will master the game, just as the Avatar masters the elements."
"Can I sign up for the training too, General?" Lieutenant Jee interjected.
"Quiet!" Zuko barked.
"Another time, Jee," Iroh said more gently. "Am I understood, Prince Zuko?"
Zuko stood up and bowed curtly. "Yes, Uncle. Just tell me when our first match is," he said, gruff as gruff can be. Iroh smiled and listened to his nephew stomp back to his room. And now, the Dragon of the West could continue laying waste to his poor, sweet underlings around him at the pai sho board.
Thanks for reading!
I wanted to write a chapter in which Iroh teaches Zuko pai sho. Since the rules of pai sho aren't developed in canon, the idea changed into this. Some of the pai sho lore is canon, and some of it is my own ideas and extrapolations. Kuruk was the greatest pai sho player of all time, confirmed in the Kyoshi novels (also a ton of other Kuruk lore that I won't spoil, but is pretty game-changing for his reputation). And, it's not the whole Earth Kingdom, but in TLOK, Bolin says that pai sho is a fast-paced game of chance in Republic City.
This was an extremely fun chapter to write, so I hope you enjoyed. If you did, please favorite or leave a review! I'll be back in two days with chapter 17.