Azula flew through the living room and crossed the main entryway, glancing at the stair tower as she passed. I need to take out everyone on the first floor first! So I can trap the rest up stairs! She saw no signs of light or movement… Yet. Fear and urgency pressed her to move faster. She threw open the door to the other first floor wing and darted inside.
Two women were fast asleep on futons at either side of a bedroom. They didn't stir or groan, neither of them having felt or heard anything to disturb their slumber. They were servants of the home in which they lived.
Searing heat and flames engulfed them. They jolted awake and screamed as horrendous pain clawed their eyes and skin as if their bodies were pressed to a hot stove and held there. They wailed at the top of their lungs as their skin melted, their hair singed away and their lips blistered in the flames.
Pain constricted them. When they breathed, smoke and fire burned their throats. When their minds struggled to comprehend what was happening, all they knew was that they wanted it to be over and to awake from the excruciating nightmare. Suddenly, sharp pressure and stinging pain stabbed into their abdomens, and jerked sideways.
They gasped.
Warm liquid coated their bellies and doused the flames that burned there. Their breath left their lungs. Their consciousness faded and their pain was gone.
Two men lay asleep on futons at either ends of a darkened bedroom. Their eyes peeled open as piercing, muffled cries filled their ears and fell silent as quickly as they had appeared. Fear and curiosity made their eyes widen. The voices had sounded familiar, close by and female. They stirred and began to rise.
Suddenly, the sliding door to their room was thrown open, revealing a shadowy figure in the doorway. Shining sapphire flames exploded from the figure's hands and blasted toward each of them. Fire engulfed their bodies faster than either could respond, singing the skin of their hands, arms, necks and faces, setting their clothes and linens aflame.
The men fell backward against their futons, crying and writhing in agony, until their necks were slashed by a burning hot, razor sharp force.
Warm liquid poured from their open necks and doused their burning clothes. Their cries ceased. Their bodies fell limp. They sighed… And died.
The shadowy figure sprinted out of the room as the fires began to take hold.
-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-
Shinzo Tanaka-Mori lay on his raised platform bed, fast asleep beneath the covers next to his Mori-born wife. The room was quiet and dark save for the cool sea breeze that waved the curtains and the dim glow of moonlight that filtered through.
A dull thud and muffled cries found his ears. His eyes fluttered open but as soon as he detected the noise, it vanished. Nothing else followed.
His eyes stayed open.
-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-
Azula stopped at the main stair tower and looked up. All was dark and quiet. She ran up the stairs, two steps at a time, up into the unknown. Here, on the second floor, enemies would be everywhere.
She leapt from the top step and spun, throwing a thin ring of blue fire outward in all directions. The band of blue flames careened down the halls and set small fires in its path, the blue turning orange as the fires supported themselves. To her left and right ran hallways of equal length, each with a sliding door. At the farthest ends, the hallways turned sharp corners and butted to into the opposing hallways, representing the furthest extents of the second floor. Behind her was the stair tower, and behind that, through a small corridor, was the entrance to the other hallway that ran along the other side of the second floor. In a split second, she formed a mental image of the battlefield.
She darted to the nearest door and stopped. She planted her left foot, cocked her right leg back, kicked her right leg forward and fired a roaring blast of blue flames at the door. The thin wood-and-paper screen exploded inward in a hale of embers and splinters. She lunged through the burned-out opening…
… And was greeted by a red-orange fireball.
She swiped at the fireball with her right hand before it could impact her.
The majority of the attacker's flames deflected to the side and slammed into the wall next to her, bursting in a splash of reds and oranges that set that portion of the room on fire. She had not deflected all of the flames, however; a sliver sloughed off the main fireball and impinged upon her unarmored abdomen.
She had not swiped fast enough; her skills were that poor.
Screaming pain erupted across her belly in a narrow line, like a hot iron was pressed there, burning her silk and melting her skin. She clenched her teeth and grunted in agony but the warrior inside her stood her ground.
In the glow of orange firelight from the burning wall, she observed a man dressed in a nightgown standing in front of her while a similarly-dressed woman stood behind him and to his right, cowering in the far corner. The man's fists were raised. He motioned to launch another volley.
Azula followed her deflection of the fireball with a sharp jab of her left hand, wincing as pain seared in her belly. A tight bolt of sapphire streaked toward the man. She followed that with another quick jab of her right hand, aimed at his legs.
The man caught both of her attacks and threw them upward, setting the ceiling on fire. He slid his right foot forward, turned it abruptly and kicked a fan of red flames across the floor, aimed at her shins.
She jumped with all her strength, ignoring the stretching, stinging pain that blared from her belly wound, and tucked her legs up to avoid the low-lying strike. She had not jumped as high or pulled her legs in as tightly as she had expected, as she had used to have been able when she was stronger.
The fan of flames struck the lower halves of her boots, knocking her legs backward and sending her tumbling forward. Quickly, she threw her right fist forward and blasted a heavy stream of fire as if a small rocket had erupted from that hand. Her tumble was arrested but she continued to fall.
The man crossed his arms as the shimmering blue stream roared toward him. It burst against his hands like the splash of a wave and sent blue flames flying all around. Some landed on the floor in front of the cowering woman. She flinched and shrieked as the flames formed a ring in front of her and set the floor on fire, like a fiery cage.
Azula landed in a crouch, and as she did, she spun on her heel to kick another solid stream toward the man's legs. He bent down and blocked it but the force of the blast knocked him backwards a little, against the dresser, his nightgown not allowing his legs to take a proper wide stance. When he jerked back into fighting form and separated his arms to unleash another strike, a flaming blue fist shot through the dark and slammed into his throat.
The cowering woman screamed.
The man coughed and sputtered. When his hands began to circle inward to deflect her arms, she took her fist off his throat and swiped both her arms outward in a harsh, opposing circle, batting his arms away. She took one step backward, planted her left foot against the floor, twisted her torso and threw the full force of her right boot into the man's soft belly.
Blue fire flashed beneath her boot and disappeared just as quickly. Half a second later, it reappeared behind the man as a fountain of blue flames and purple-tinted flesh exploding against the wall.
Another loud feminine scream pierced her ears.
She retracted her leg and planted both feet firmly, her boiling-hot sole hissing as it touched the blood-strewn floor.
The man's arms fell limp and his neck lolled. His body fell.
She heard high-pitched, hyperventilating to her left. Turning, she spotted the cowering woman, her back pressed against the wall as an arc of yellow-orange flames burned on the floor in front of her.
Terror made the woman's eyes wide. Her fingers gripped the wall while her feet pushed against the floor desperately as if trying to push the wall down.
"No! Please!" The helpless woman pleaded as the demon-masked assailant stormed toward her. "Wait! Stop!"
The attacker stormed through the ring of fire.
"Stop-stop-stop-stop-stop-stop! AHHHHH!"
Blue fire engulfed her.
Azula turned and plunged her fire blade into the woman's soft belly, and jerked sideways as if slashing a sword.
Warm wetness dumped onto the floor around her. The woman coughed, groaned, and fell.
Azula spun and kicked another fire blast at the bedroom's door, blowing an even wider hole for her exit. She raced across the room to begin her invasion of the next one. Hopefully she still had a chance to catch them off guard.
She ran through the burning doorway…
When something long and shiny swung through the dim light.
"Ahh!" She cried in terror and pain. A long, hard object slammed into her upper body, striking her shoulder armor with the force of a hammer.
The glistening object pulled back sharply, leaving a dent in her thin metal-and-leather plates. Out of the corner of her eye, to her right, she spotted the glistening outline of a sword readying for another strike.
Without hesitation, she rolled to her left, turned and dropped onto her back just in time for the sword to swing horizontally above her, aimed for a slicing blow against her unarmored belly.
It missed.
Tucking her legs in and kicking them forward, she launched a two-footed, combined stream of blue fire at the unknown sword-wielder.
It was man. He was already lunging at her, his curved blade raised above his head, aimed for a plunging strike at her stomach.
Fear hammered in her heart.
The sapphire flames jetted from her feet in a solid stream as wide as a tree trunk. It thrust her backwards across the floor, out of reach of the plunging blade, and struck the man with the force of a waterfall. The swordsman was thrown backwards. The sword fell from his gasp and clanged against the floor as he landed on his back several feet away. His torso was burned and his clothes were aflame. He writhed and cried in agony as the ceiling, walls and floor around him burned with red-orange flames.
Azula clamored to her feet, wincing, hissing, groaning from the throbbing ache in her chest and right shoulder, and the stinging agony of her burned belly. She gasped in utter horror."
Had she lost her arm?!
Fear knotted her gut sickeningly hard. She attempted to move her right arm and found that her shoulder rotated, her bicep flexed and her forearms and hands turned. Everything was there. She felt no blood or gash. Her armor had held.
She heard doors fly open followed by panicked, bewildered calls. She sprinted toward the downed swordsman, dropped to one knee and plunged her fire blade into his abdomen. As blood poured from his open wound and his limbs stopped moving, she darted forward and disappeared into the room from which the swordsman had come to destroy whoever else was inside.
-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-
Shinzo and his wife threw open their bedroom door, dressed in their silk sleeping robes. Orange fires crackled in the hall, smoke pooled in the ceiling and the thuds, roars and crashes of firebending raged nearby.
"What the—?!" The clan leader scanned around frantically, trying to find who, or what, was going on.
"Shinzo!"
The clan leader and his wife turned. Their two firebending guards raced from their shared bedroom at the end of the hall, both of them dressed in their silk night robes. They took defensive positions around their master and his wife.
"Are you hurt?" One of the guards asked over his shoulder as he stared down the hallway at the source of the noises and flashing light.
"No!" Shinzo answered. "What's going on?!"
"Someone's in the hose," the other guard said certainly, his hands balled into fists and aimed down the other hall where the firelight was dimmer.
Shinzo's eyes bulged. "Where?! Who?!"
He remembered: they were inside a castle.
"HOW?!"
Suddenly, azure light flashed at one end of the hall and a stream of blue fire surged from around the corner. It crashed against the wall, setting it aflame.
Shinzo's jaw fell. Blue fire… What…?
Yellow and orange flashes matched the blue in rapid succession. A few seconds later, a teenage boy and girl appeared around the corner. They stepped backwards defensively, their legs and arms positioned in firebending stances and their fists raised at an unseen target as wisps of blue fire tore past them.
The clan leader's eyes widened.
One of the teenagers spotted him. "Dad! Help!" The teenage girl cried. "There's only one!"
At that moment, while the two teenagers were blocking streams of blue flame, the door at that end of the hall cracked open, revealing the scared faces of the leader's non-bending teenage niece and nephew.
Shinzo gasped. "The kids!" He shouted. "Guards! Go around!" He motioned with his hand toward the dim, unburning portion of hallway. "Get behind them!"
The two men raced down the hall.
Shinzo turned to his Mori-born wife. "Go get the others!" He spoke in a hushed, urgent tone. "Get them downstairs! Get them out of here! I'll get the rest! Hurry!"
His wife hurried away and disappeared into their youngest children's bedroom. When she returned, she came out leading two small children, a boy and a girl, by their hands. Shinzo covered their retreat toward the stairs.
"Go wake the others!" He whispered sharply, and flinched when orange light and fire flared. His guards had reappeared around the corner and, together, launched a combined attack at the unknown assailant.
The woman nodded to her husband and lit a fire in her hand for light. Once she and the kids fell out of sight, Shinzo rushed down the hall to the defend the remainder of his family.
Where is everyone?
He couldn't see the other hallway due to the dividing walls between. That was where his brothers and sisters-in-law slept.
They were nowhere to be found.
-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-
Azula's back was to the wall and her hands were raised. She launched two tight bolts at the firebending teenage duo but they deflected them with ease, and answered with two fireballs of their own.
She ducked low, letting the two fireballs sail over her head. She spun on her heel and swept her right leg in an arc along the floor, sending a horizontal fan of sapphire speeding toward them.
The teenage boy lunged in front of the teenage girl and brought his hands to a point in front of himself as if slicing through water. The fan of flames broke against his body and flowed around him while the teenage girl took shelter behind his body. When the flames had past, the teen girl leapt from behind her masculine shield and fired a blast of yellow-orange flames at their shared enemy.
The two teenage clan soldiers had popped out of a bedroom after she had slayed the swordsman's non-bending wife. Now she was stuck against them. How could it be that she was stuck against two mere criminal kids?
The stinging, burning pain in her abdomen made every breath painful and short; he dull, aching throb in her right shoulder hampered her right arm's range of motion; and her strength and speed just weren't what they used to. The teenage boy and girl were holding their own, and while she hadn't properly trained in over a year and a half, their techniques looked sound.
A flash of light and the roar of fire appeared out of nowhere to her right. Spinning quickly and raising her right hand in defense, she caught the approaching fire blast in the nick of time, the red-orange fireball crashing against her hand as would have a wave against a boulder. Its heat warmed her face and the rush of air loosened her hair. None of it burned her.
At the same time, two more attacks flew toward her from the teens. She twisted at the waist and flung her left hand outward to arrest the two smaller blasts. Normally, she would have used an open hand to swat both fireballs away, but her crippled left hand was forced into a two-finger position by the leather band. Her two fingers swatted one fireball away but failed to deflect the other. It struck her left leg just below her armored skirt, above the knee.
"Ahh!" She shrieked as her left leg began to give way, but she gritted her teeth, snarled and planted her left foot firmly. Her left leg remained firm despite the agony of her flesh being seared.
Both enemy attacks faded. Giving a vicious roar to fight through the compounding pain, she slashed a wave of fire at the teens with her left hand and kicked a massive blast to her right at whoever was attacking her there. She followed that with a rapid volley of small bolts aimed for the teens to keep them distracted. When her blue fire swirled and dissipated to her right, she caught sight of two large men with their feet planted in competent firebending stances. Fear stabbed through her heart.
I'm surrounded.
With the urgency and ferocity of a cornered animal, she launched and kicked rapidly at both sets of enemies, hoping to weaken one of the flanks and take advantage, but they deflected her attacks with ease and caught every bit of her fire. Not a sliver of her blue flames got past them. They were entirely defensive. They had stopped attacking her.
What? Her brow furrowed in bafflement, and then she saw why: behind the two men, a middle-aged woman appeared around the corner and hurriedly ushered two small children down the stairs. A fire was lit in her hand.
Azula's eyes shot wide. Wait! Where are they—?!
Her eyes caught further movement to the left, past the teenagers. At the far end of the hallway, a man was ushering two more teens out of a bedroom door. Those two teenagers were headed for the stairs.
Her gut wrenched solid. They're escaping! They can't get out can they?!
She had to kill them all. They would continue their war against her and the charity home if they survived, and they had witnessed her blue fire!
She threw more attacks at the defending teens and the two firebending men but they blocked them all and shielded the escapees' flight down the stairs. Once they were gone, the new man at the end of the hall turned and joined the two firebending teenagers. She recognized his face instantly. Her eyes narrowed.
You.
To her surprise, the guards did not back away and follow the woman, teens and children down the stairs. Instead, they stepped toward her… And fired, as did the clan leader and his teenage soldiers.
In a sudden reversal, she found herself blocking wave after wave, stream after stream, bolt after bolt, and fireball after fireball launched by five separate opponents from two different directions. She struggled to keep up with their pace and power. She made no attacks of her own. She was entirely defensive.
The fire she swatted away set fire to the walls, floor and ceiling. Thick smoke began to obscure her vision and choke her lungs, burn her eyes. She stepped backwards into the recessed nook at the junction between the two bedrooms.
Her arms were growing heavy. Her breathing was rapid and shallow. She was exhausting rapidly and flanked on both sides. She had nowhere to go, no way to stop them.
Five enemies were escaping and she had revealed her blue flames.
Her plan was failing.
Panic set in.
The two firebending guards to her right stepped forward in unison and punched at her with all arms. A bright ball of yellow-orange fire roared to life in front of them and blasted toward her in a combined, four-fisted attack. At the same time, the clan leader and his teens did the same, their assault larger and brighter.
The charred walls and smoke-laden air glowed with yellow-orange firelight as the attacks careened toward. She felt their head and light on her skin.
Her existence flashed before her eyes.
She dropped to one knee and dug the pointed toe of one boot into the floor, waving her hands in a fluid, circular motion. As she dropped into form, blue fire swirled around her, and as she brought her hands together, toward her chest, the fire flared into a dense, spinning ball of blue light and flames.
Her body jolted and her boot dug into the floor as the enemies' attacks detonated against her sphere but her muscles and flames held.
The reds and yellows of the enemies' flames flashed shades of green and purple as the different colors mixed with her blue, and were thrown aside by the spinning ball with tremendous force, cracking and burning the surrounding walls and ceiling.
Her body jolted again as the attackers threw another powerful onslaught.
The spinning fire roared in her ears and stung her eyes with its brightness. She felt herself slowly sinking as the flames singed the floorboards and scoured the ashes away. The air inside the sphere was turning hot and stale. She had not taken another breath. Her chi was fading. She felt starved for air.
I'm surrounded. No way out.
Through the translucent blue she observed the burning walls and shattered planks of the surrounding bedrooms. A solution formed. Resolved kindle anew.
No way out… But one.
Two more combined attacks impacted the sphere as her enemies drew closer. Just as they readied to deliver the final, winning blow, she sprung.
Rising to her feet and throwing her arms up and outward, the sphere of flames exploded. It crushed the adjoining walls and ceiling; it shielded her behind a wall of light and smoke, and flung debris and compressed air down the halls toward her foes.
Without any time to think, the clan soldiers halted their attacks and braced for impact. The expanding cloud of blue fire tore past them as would have an explosion, cracking the walls, floor and ceiling around them and setting them all aflame.
When the masked assailant's surge of blue fire passed, the clan members fell back into their stances and readied to deliver their follow-on strikes.
Instead, their faces dropped with surprise.
Where the masked attacker had stood was now a twisted pile of burning planks and shattered roof tiles, and behind that, a smoldering hole in the wall to the outside world.
The attacker… Was gone.