Daughter of Hate

by Blutus Mindpretzel

The war is over. Azula's motives remain unknowable as her child stands to shake the foundation of everything built since the fall of Fire Lord Ozai. For Toph, Mai, Aang, Katara and the rest, the world is an even more dangerous place than it was when they were children. And despite being long since gone, Sasuke's impact continues to shudder their world, perhaps more than they know.

44. Chapter 44

AN: Looking at the storyboarding, looks like this story will end with right about fifty chapters total. Hope you're all enjoying as we head towards the finish!

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Chapter 44: Leverage

Toph felt the way Azula and Soza practically were falling into one another's arms, and it surprised her how quickly she felt the tears coming. Not once had she ever experienced a show of emotion between these two quite like this and it was rather overwhelming. If Toph had gone up to her dying day not seeing Azula so much a real hug to her daughter, it wouldn't have surprised her.

"It was pretty stupid of the both of you to come here on your own with just Sasuke," Suki said quietly beside her and Toph gave a sniff that she hoped didn't sound too much like she was on the verge of tears and gave her eyes a hasty wipe on her sleeve.

"Where'd you find her?" she asked, ignoring Suki's comment. She didn't care much to be lectured on the stunt that she and Azula had pulled in tagging along with Sasuke, even if the Kyoshi Warrior was probably right in her rather simple assessment.

"Nowhere special, just in one of the guest rooms," Suki replied, still quietly as to give the moment that Azula and Soza were sharing its due respect; despite her disdain for the princess, it seemed that she at least somewhat understood the gravity of what was happening between the two.

"She said they had been put there by Madara and when I asked her who 'they' meant, she said that she had been in there with Sasuke's teacher, the one we met on the island," she continued.

"Kakashi?" Toph asked in surprise.

"Yeah," Suki muttered. "Even though there was no sign of him in the room. He apparently had been being held in there with her but had been sleeping when Soza was put back in the room. She had tried to doze off too, but when she woke up, he was gone."

The fact that Kakashi was being held there as well further confirmed to Toph the idea that things were perhaps just as bad as Sasuke had silently feared. His concern over this Madara person had been something he had tried to keep to himself, but Toph had been able to catch on, and she assumed that Azula had been able to pick up on the same.

Only someone like Sasuke or Kakashi would be able to beat them.

She remembered the elegance and superhuman speed he had employed when sparring with Sasuke after their brief reunion and she nearly shivered at the idea of a third person in their world being on a level such as that, perhaps even stronger.

"When I met up with the Warriors, I took the time to do a sweep of the upper floors before leaving, that was how I found her," Suki explained. "We were low on time, but I figured I could at least manage that, guess I got lucky just before you guys would have found her."

Suki started to walk back towards her compatriots, prompting Toph to turn after her, asking a question as she did.

"You have some sort of plan?"

She received a sort of humorless, single snort of a laugh in return.

"We're all supposed to get outside the city; Aang figured if we can keep the fight out of Ba Sing Se it would be for the better. Sokka went to get ahold of the army so they can help, Jin, Ty Lee, Yue, and Ursa went to try and get some evacuation going, and Mai was supposed to be trying to track down you, Azula, and Sasuke. Aang and Zuko are outside the city where we landed, going head-to-head with the spirits to buy us time and distract them from us."

Toph gaped.

"You… everyone's… here?"

"Toph, did you really think that once we found out where the three of you had gone that we were just going to sit up north with our thumbs in our asses?"

She could hear the smirk in Suki's tone, but it didn't completely obscure the darkness of her tone; it was clear that she didn't find the situation entirely optimistic, but Toph could tell that she was trying to keep from revealing that.

"So, let's get you, the princess, and the kid out of here. I've informed the Warriors of the situation and they'll help escort us out of the city where we can regroup with the others."

For whatever the hell comes next.

Toph could hear the lingering added statement that wasn't spoken aloud and it furthered an assumption she had been building from the moment Suki started talking.

"There's not a plan, is there?" she asked, somewhat shakily. "After everyone gets out of the city, there's… nothing more is there?"

Suki stopped walking just ahead of her Warriors and Toph could tell she wanted very badly to say something else than what she had to.

"We fight," she finally said, her voice brittle and somewhat forced. Toph knew that if she had replied with a simple 'no' then the meaning would still feel the same. But even despite that hopeless touch in the two words, there was no indication that Suki had given up.

I'd expect nothing less of her.

"I can't go with you," Toph said then. She felt Suki half turn to look back at her as she felt Azula and Soza get shakily to their feet behind her. "Our plan was for Sasuke to distract Madara and the spirits so that we could get into the palace, find Soza, and make sure she was safe. But after that, I'm going to find him and fight with him, whatever he's up against. That was the plan."

Suki gave an almost tired noise of amusement.

"Yeah? I'm sure that was your plan, Toph, but in case you hadn't noticed, Sasuke has a habit of playing things his way. Do you have any idea where he is? Do you have actually any idea who or what he's fighting? And do you honestly believe that he would seriously consider letting you fight alongside him if he thought he could end this all on his own without putting anyone else in danger?"

She spoke bitterly, but it was a testament to her understanding of Sasuke's person that she spoke quite truthfully of his nature. And even as Toph felt her throat start to tighten, she found herself shaking her head almost automatically.

"It doesn't matter," she said in a hollow sort of voice. "Even if he didn't mean it when he said he'd let us help, he still can't stop me if I—"

"Toph, wake UP!" Suki shouted then, her voice resounding loudly off the walls around them. Toph felt her body stiffen as she was forced into silence by the sudden yell and she kept her expression as passive as she could while Suki continued in a furious tone.

"You do realize what's happening, right?! You know what Sasuke did to Kyoshi and the spirit army up north; do you really think that it's just them that he's having to deal with now?! Whoever he's going up against, what do you honestly think you're going to be able to do to help him?!"

As her lips tightened, Toph found herself trying to try and just tone out Suki's words in the hopes that they somehow wouldn't reach her mind to the point of forcing her to actually consider if there was truth behind them.

"Right now, we are worthless to him! And if this really is that Madara that he's up against, then I'm sure he only sees us as insects! Less than insects! If any of us tried to get between him and Sasuke, to try and help or whatever… for fuck's sake, Toph, we'd be dead as soon as he looked at us!"

Clenching her hands into fists, Toph tried to just focus on her breathing and nothing else.

In… out… in… out… in—

"So, please explain to me what you'd be trying to prove! Do you think it would do Sasuke any good if you just walked into something like that and got yourself killed?! He's doing this for us, he's fighting for us! And you really just think it's the best course of action to waltz on in and make that risk he's taking be worth nothing?!"

"What do you expect me to do?!" Toph suddenly screamed, the words ripping from her throat with a furious, desperate voice. She suddenly didn't care that she was about to more or less break down in front of an audience; if Suki kept talking, Toph was likely to hit her.

"He's supposed to face Madara down alone?! For us?! Why should he have to do this all over again?! Our world has done nothing but hurt him, and yet he's risking his life to save it! Why should he have to do this all on his own again?! I need to be there with him, I don't care if I'll be able to do almost nothing! I need to be there, I need him to know that—"

She strangled herself off her words before she went too far. Giving a shiver and pulling in a tremendous gulp of air, she released it in a shaking breath. What she had been about to say was something that she didn't know if she was ready for anyone else to hear, and she certainly didn't want to say it in front of Azula, not when she had next to no idea what the princess's feelings for Sasuke were.

And if Soza knew… I can't let her know yet.

"Toph."

Suki spoke her name in a much more mellow tone, though it was still firm. Toph didn't warrant turning her head up as she snarled back a single worded reply.

"What."

After a brief pause, Suki spoke again and to her surprise, Toph could hear the whisper of a smile in her voice.

"It's not a mystery to any of us, you know."

Not daring to give a response to that, Toph remained where she was, not so much as flexing a single muscle on her face, but Suki didn't seem deterred.

"Ever since he came back, it's just it was when you were a kid. The way you look at him, even without seeing him. The way you've reacted to him, talked to him, everyone can see that even after all these years, nothing's changed. Even if someone hadn't been paying attention to you specifically, the way Aang looks at you sadly, the way Ursa looks at you almost jealously, the way that Azula…"

She trailed off, minding the fact that the princess was in fact there to listen in to their conversation.

"Anyway, what I'm trying to say is that… we get it. I get it."

Toph felt Suki's hand land on her shoulder, giving it a firm squeeze that carried none of the anger that she had previously heard in her friend's voice.

"But you don't need to prove that to him. You don't need to prove that to any of us. And I should think you don't need to prove it to yourself. Dying at his side isn't going to do a damn thing, other than fuck up Sasuke even more than he already is."

There came a swift fleeting thought through Toph's head as she imagined Sasuke collapsing at the side of her lifeless body and her heart surged painfully.

"Dad's really strong, you know."

Toph half-turned her head at the sound of Soza's voice. She could feel the girl standing tensely at Azula's side while she and her mother held hands tightly. But despite her tentativeness, the clarity in her voice was more than apparent.

"I've seen what Madara can do, and he's strong too. But if anyone can beat him, my dad can. He'll win."

It should have been the last thing she should have asked a child, as the very idea of planting doubt within Soza was a horribly selfish thing to do, but Toph couldn't help herself. She was desperate to have some sort of foundation to justifying turning her back on Sasuke when every bit of her couldn't stand the idea of doing so.

"How do you know that?" she whispered.

She waited for Soza to falter, to stumble over her words, to stutter to the point that Toph would hear the growing fear in her words and feel it in her movements.

But quite the contrary, she felt Soza's form almost expand, as though she were puffing out her chest proudly, and it was impossible not to hear the pride and affection in the girl's voice then.

"Because he said he'd protect me no matter what. And if that means beating Madara, then that's what he'll do."

Toph could only stand still a moment, stunned into silence by Soza's pure belief in Sasuke before she released a shaky laugh and shook her head.

The idea of it was no more bearable now then it had been a minute prior, but something rather odd had happened when Soza had given her response, that singular, definitive answer.

Toph was found herself believing what the girl had said.

She began to turn back to face Suki, intent on telling the Kyoshi Warrior to lead the way out of the city before her feelings for Sasuke took over her and she denied the most logical way forward once again. The words were on the tip of her tongue before she felt an incredible chill run up her spine. It was a feeling she had only felt once before, the sensation that something truly and impossibly massive had just taken place, and as the hairs on her arms stood on end, she heard Soza gasp and several of the Kyoshi Warriors speak over one another in tense, nearly frantic tones.

A few seconds passed before a thundering boom seemed to slam into the palace itself with a colossal force that Toph couldn't even find herself able to quantify.

She was knocked off her feet and landed heavily on the floor; as she did, she felt everyone else in the hallway follow suit, the Kyoshi Warriors collapsing like dominos and Azula tucking Soza tightly to her as they both went down. The windows around them exploded at the force of it, and Toph could feel the very structure of the palace seem to shake. It seemed to last forever though Toph knew it could only have been a couple seconds before the sound roared away into nothingness and the relative quiet that followed deafened her ears just as heavily.

"What happened?" she said loudly as she struggled to her feet, careful to sense the floor and avoid any shards of glass that had landed around her.

"Hell if I know," Suki growled as she clambered upright also. "You couldn't see it, but the sky just lit up blue and bright as day."

She crossed to the side of the hallway, no doubt to look out the windows and scan the sky.

"But there isn't anything now, it's just pure black again… what the hell just happened…"

"I should think it would be obvious," came Azula's voice, expectedly haughty and poised as she stood, helping Soza up with a gentleness that surprised Toph. At her words, the significance of it descended on Toph and she felt her skin crawl; Azula wouldn't have needed to finish her thought then to indicate what she meant, but she did anyways.

"They've begun."

---

Mai looked hesitantly down at her feet as she made her first steps about in the spirit world. It was the most bizarre thing, to know that she was here in such a place, but she forced herself not to think about something so utterly overwhelming and focused instead on gaining her bearings.

We don't likely have much time.

She saw a strange blue aura that hovered around her arms as she looked at them and as she turned her gaze to Katara and saw the same aura covering the waterbender head to toe, she knew that she must have also been shrouded in the same. Mai didn't feel any different overall; it was rather just like being in the material world other than the blue sheen that surrounded them, but as she turned her eyes up, she could see that not a single other similarity could be drawn in that regard.

Locking eyes on the wide-open oval of rugged earth that stretched an enormous length, she saw two spirits, one glowing white and blue, the other black and red. Both were pinned to equally massive objects, a huge rock and a towering tree respectively. In the pits of her ears, Mai could feel a deep thrumming sound that almost felt like the pulsing of an irregular and erratic heartbeat thudding in her head. The entire landscape around her was alien, vast and foreign, as though she were standing on a completely different planet.

Which I suppose I rather am.

Katara looked up tensely towards the discolored sky that seemed to change more often than not, but she seemed to shake herself and adopt a focused, fiercely determined expression. Her eyes looked down the hill that they now stood upon and gazed off, away from the immediately capturing sight of the two great spirits.

"See there?"

Mai followed her gaze and tracked it to what looked like winding grove of dead roots that must have belong to a tree the size of a mountain for how enormous they were. They twisted like frozen serpents through a valley of mist off beneath them.

"That's where Sasuke said to go," Katara said tightly; she looked down to her palms and drew them about in a traditional waterbending motion, then winced.

"What's the matter?" Mai asked flatly, but Katara didn't reply immediately. She instead continued to focus for several long seconds before a sphere of water formed between in her palms. She released a somewhat pained sounding gasp.

"Bending…" she grunted. "It's… more difficult than I thought it would be."

"So, will you be able to do it or not?" Mai asked, rather urgently. The entire plan that Katara had shared with her was predicated rather heavily on the fact that she would be able to perform her waterbending.

"Yes," Katara replied firmly, looking like she was trying to hide how much even just that small bit of bending had winded her. "It might be a little more difficult than I was expecting, but that won't stop me. You might have to bide time for longer though."

Great.

"Fine. Just make sure that you don't fuck this up, or we're both dead in here," Mai said plainly and Katara gave her a rather unamused look as though wondering why it was that she needed to be so matter of fact.

But that didn't take away from the fact that it was a very true sentiment; there was no backup plan to what they were about to do, and should it fail, no one knew they were in there, no one except Sasuke who was more than preoccupied at present. Should Mai and Katara fail, it would surely mean their end.

"I'll work my way around the hills that lead into the valley," Katara said, gesturing at the rises that sloped around the misty grove in the distance. "Once you get down there and get inside, pick a pace and maintain it. That'll make it easier for me to dog your footsteps. And when you find—"

"I know," Mai said through gritted teeth. She didn't want to talk, or really even think about what was coming anymore than she had to, and Katara seemed to pick up on this.

"Alright," she said with a final sort of sigh. "Let's get moving."

For a very pathetic moment, Mai almost snapped at her to give her a second to get her bearings. But she knew fully well that there was no time for that; Sasuke and the others were on the outside, doing all that they could and she needed to be able to put forth all her willpower as well. Even if the prospect of what was coming had a grip of icy fear on her heart.

"Just remember… he shouldn't be able to shapeshift, but now…"

"I know," Mai repeated, trying not to bring her voice to level into a snarl. What Katara was referring to was perhaps the thing that had her most on edge.

Before she could give herself any more time to second guess herself, Mai straightened her back and started to jog towards the grove, splitting off from Katara who took the higher path on the other side of the hills. Mai didn't bother to see if the waterbender was keeping pace with her and instead dove into her mind to try and steel it as best as she was able.

The dead, dry ground of the spirit world kicked up small clouds of dust at her feet as she ran, and she used her pace to match her breathing, giving her some sort of consistency to look towards, some repetitive metronome that kept her anxiety at bay.

He'll want to play, you know he will. Just use that to your advantage, let it work as long as it needs to. Buy time, and don't let yourself get riled up.

Ha. Easier said than done.

Before Mai knew it, she was at the edge of the misty grove and she slowed her pace to brisk walk, minding what Katara had said. Her mind screamed at her to stop, but she knew that if she came to a rest before marching into the haze, she might never be able to get her legs moving again.

It became thick and nearly impossible to see shortly after she moved into the grove. Twisting grey roots arched and spiked all around her, some small enough to trip over, others large enough to tower above her in great arcs that only further enforced the idea of them being great serpents, paralyzed in mid-movement. It seemed to grow even more quiet then too, and Mai heard her footsteps almost seeming to echo rather hollowly around her with nothing else to add to the sound. She felt as though a hundred eyes were laying into her from every angle, and it took effort not to start swinging her own gaze around in a near fit of paranoia that she was being watched.

After a minute or so, the grove felt as though it were starting to constrict around her, its mass of winding cold roots tightening and the mist seemed to thicken, pressing against her like a suffocating pillow. Mai knew this was just her anxiety playing tricks on her, but that didn't keep the effect that it was having on her any more at bay. She forced her lungs to pull in deeper breaths and exhaled more slowly, doing her best to maintain a steady flow of oxygen to her head.

Oxygen… air… is that even what I'm breathing here?

As she started to ponder this, she finally heard a noise that mingled with that of her hollow footsteps.

And she selfishly found herself wishing that the sound she had been producing could have been left alone.

It was nothing short of a low, slithering hiss. It resonated from somewhere a distance away, but it somehow seemed to Mai as though the sound had its own sentience as though the sound was looking for her, probing at her. Yet again, she fought the urge to turn and leave the hissing sound far behind her, to get as far away from what she knew lay ahead. But she forced herself to think of the people she was doing this for and it steeled her.

The grove sloped down a touch then rather steeply, and Mai carefully descended into what seemed to be a small basin. As she reached the bottom of it, the mist seemed to darken further as though it was twilight just then. Ahead of her, she could squint and see what looked to be a shadowy sort of pit just a dozen or so yards ahead of her. It was then that she noticed the hissing had stopped entirely, and she nearly staggered at the feeling of paralysis that came over her. For a moment, she closed her eyes and did her best to let all the emotions flow from her body before she squared her shoulders, adopted a passive expression, and continued towards the pit.

"Of all the people I might have expected to see… you were surely one of the last."

The voice came from directly behind her and it took all of Mai's self-control and discipline to keep from whirling and slashing with one of her hidden blades. Stopping in her advance, she paused for just a moment to correct her breathing into a slow and steady pattern before slowly turning where she stood.

Koh's body seemed even longer and massive then when Mai had last seen it, though she wondered if perhaps that wasn't due to her fear messing with her perception. His great centipede-like body arched and twisted throughout the mist and almost seemed to match the size and shape of many of the roots, causing Mai to wonder if perhaps she hadn't even seen him while walking and just hadn't known it.

Seeing him again filled her heart with a hate and dread that she couldn't quite stomach in time to keep herself from moving forward with the plan; it took several seconds before she could find her voice and put her side of the ploy into motion.

"Where's Sasuke?" she said, placing the majority of her focus on keeping her expression passive. Koh seemed to shiver with silent laughter.

"Whatever makes you think I would know such a thing?"

"I know he came in here," Mai replied, doing her best to keep her voice match her expression. "I know he came in here with Madara. Where is he?"

"Now why ever…" Koh hissed, his bizarre mask of a face coming down to within a couple feet of Mai.

"Would I go and tell you something like that?"

Digging deep, Mai pulled from the reservoir of questions that she had prepared in an effort to keep Koh talking for as long as possible.

"Is he dead then?"

For a long moment, Koh merely regarded her before withdrawing from her far enough so that his form was just shadow among the mist.

"You speak with a strange sense of certainty…"

"Either he's dead, or you don't know where he is," Mai replied. "You wouldn't pass up the opportunity to torture me with where he might be if you knew."

"Torture," Koh whispered back, a whisper that seemed to shake Mai's very eardrums. "Is that what you think my preference would be with the lot of you?"

"You didn't hesitate when given the opportunity when we were in Ba Sing Se before this all began," Mai retorted. She almost didn't want to bring it up; there was a part of her that felt naked and vulnerable all over again as she remembered what had happened that night. But she knew it would entice Koh to even reference it and as he released another chittering laugh, it was confirmed.

"Perhaps I did… toy with you a little. But for you to put all that blame on me… when you enjoyed it so."

He rose to a height well above her, towering over in a clear show of power.

"When you wanted it so."

"Does that…" Mai started and realized her voice was rising to something near to a snap and she caught herself. Any further aggravation and she might very well have started scowling and it would have meant the end for her right there.

Stupid, Mai, stupid. He's trying to rile you up, just like you knew.

"Does that make a difference?" she replied, crossing her arms and looking up at him with an apathetic expression. "You pretended to be someone you weren't, and you played to my insecurities and emotions."

"Yes, that the Fire Lord has been nothing but a disappointment to you as a man, and you needed someone strong, someone powerful to remind you what it was like to feel safe," Koh carried on, sounding like he was thoroughly enjoying himself. "You bent over like an animal in heat, so… enthralled you were by the idea of just letting all that stress and fear go."

He twisted around her slowly, his body sliding around in a curve like some immense snake.

"Tell me, child, would you hold any regret and reservation now if it really had been him?"

Mai froze on the question before swallowing and forcing down her emotions yet again. There was no right answer to this inquiry; if she confirmed that, it would only further satisfy Koh's twisted mind and if she denied it, he would accuse her of lying, no doubt taking that opportunity to further force the issue. But to her surprise, he continued on before she even had a chance to reply which she found almost antagonized her more, as though he knew what her answer would have been without her saying a word.

"But nevertheless, my reasons for doing what I did were practical; certainly, I could have done about it in perhaps a less perverse way, but I won't deny that I possessed much curiosity for how the demon had affected you all, how he had made you all feel. I would have gone to the blind girl had I seen such a chance to do so, but she was well among her friends that night and you were so gratifyingly out on your own…"

The idea of Koh posing as Sasuke to take advantage of Toph and abuse her the same way filled Mai with a burning black hate. When she thought of how badly she had felt after learning the truth, she could only imagine what experiencing something like that would have done to Toph.

Then, she was barely able to keep herself from smiling as something occurred to her.

"She wouldn't have fallen for it," she said. "She would have known it wasn't him."

Immediately, she knew she had struck a blow as Koh's slow and methodical twisting about the ground came to a halt. He didn't say a word in reply to this immediately, but she knew she had struck a painful chord with him. The mere implication that his ability to take the form of others in the physical world was not perfect surely didn't sit well with him, but Mai knew in her heart that Toph would have sent an imposter Sasuke exploding through the wall of her bedroom.

"I suppose we're not in a place we'll ever know, though," she added, figuring she didn't want to actually get him angry enough to attack her. For all her skill and agility was worth, she wouldn't last long against Koh's horrible, monstrous coils.

But as she thought about it, something occurred to her about something Koh had mentioned quite briefly, but something that she realized didn't make a great deal of sense to her.

"You said that you… did what you did to me because it was practical," she said. "What do you mean by that?"

Koh seemed to get past any grudging feeling he was experiencing rather quickly at that.

"Certainly you didn't think I came so near into your midst to just experience the physical pleasures of humanity?" he asked her, his great head twisting just slightly in a gesture that almost made him look like a curious dog. Mai felt a shiver crawl up her spine and she suddenly wasn't sure if she even wanted to know the answer to her question.

"Perhaps this would be a better question…" Koh said, raising his head as though in mock pondering. "How do you think we were able to keep such a close tail on you after you fled Ba Sing Se?"

For a few seconds, the potential meaning of what was being suggested twisted about in Mai's head, completing rendering her incapable of grasping any meaning. She continued to look emotionlessly up at Koh as her mind raged viciously until it finally clicked.

Her knees wobbled briefly, and she hoped Koh didn't notice. By some miracle, she kept a resolute expression, but she was sure her lower lip quivered as she opened her mouth to speak.

"You put something inside of me."

"Indeed," Koh confirmed, the eyes on his mask of a face almost seeming to twinkle in satisfaction at her understanding of his implication. "I'm sure you no doubt were swimming in fear at the idea of becoming impregnated at the behest of a being like me, but what I had put within your womb that night was a substance of my own design, something I had thought would be undetectable and something that allowed us to follow your movements with perfect precision."

It was the last thing Mai would have wanted to hear. She already struggled every day since it had happened with trying to bury the memory of being taken by an imposter Sasuke and feeling so truly and perfectly relieved that it was him doing what he did with her. She felt such a severe and raw guilt every time she so much as laid eyes on either Zuko or Sasuke, but this…

Everything that had happened from the moment they left Ba Sing Se, Ursa's crew being willing to sacrifice themselves, Sasuke nearly getting killed by Kyoshi, Ursa actually dying, and the whole lot of them being forced into battle with the Talons and spirits…

That's on me. They found us because of me.

And though her expression remained tightly guarded, Koh's massive black shape blurred in her vision as tears tried to push themselves free. She wondered if this would be enough for her to lose to Koh's twisted power, but either it didn't, or he didn't notice the glaze that now coated her eyes as he repositioned himself. Wrapping himself around one of the massive curving roots as though to braid his awful body with it, he addressed her again.

"And yet… after you made contact with Dovan and Orian, I lost you. I could no longer pinpoint your location, and by the time we had sent reinforcements to where our two spirits had been destroyed, we could find no sign of you. In that sense, my plan failed. We hounded you just briefly, and you escaped, for a time."

He leered closer to Mai's face, a rasping hiss seeming to issue from whatever Koh's equivalent of a throat was.

"So, I ask you, child, what was it that rid you of my essence?"

It took Mai several seconds before she even registered his question, so caught up as she was in her mental anguish. The idea that she had put them all in such danger was something that only mounted in severity the more she considered it, but with some strain, she forced her focus back on Koh. There would be time to pity herself later for the role she had played in their collective trauma.

When she thought about it, the answer came to her rather quickly; when Sasuke had tapped into whatever forbidden and almost impossible seeming power in his utter agony at losing Ursa, he had literally rebirthed every single one present in that area he had cast his energy. Despite Kakashi's almost furious indication that this was something that could just as easily wound up in every single person present dead, it had worked. They had all come back, reborn in an event that Mai had often found herself pondering, looking at her hands and body and wondering if this really was still her.

But when had had utilized that power, and Mai's body had been dissolved and reformed, it made sense to reason that it had been reformed without Koh's parasite within her body.

"Who knows?" she asked airily, not budging from where she stood or uncrossing her arms. "Maybe you fucked up somehow."

She didn't know why she necessarily suddenly felt the need to lie to Koh, but it was deeply satisfying to see his body seem to give a great rasping shiver then, seemingly annoyed that she didn't have a better answer for him. Mai wondered if he knew that she was lying, or if his reaction was from the fact that he believed she didn't have a solution to his query.

"I'm sure Kyoshi was good and pissed with you after that," she allowed herself to remark. It was a question that she was hoping might kill two birds with one stone; on one hand, she could move the conversation away from the subject of her sexual encounter with Koh, and on the other, she wondered if she might not be able to uncover something more about Koh's allegiance and stake in all this.

"As if I could care what that arrogant and pretentious woman could have thought," Koh hissed, immediately answering part of Mai's question. "She fancied herself the leader of our little invasion, but she's always been just as much a pawn as the spirits beneath her."

Mai feigned mild confusion.

"So, you're just doing this all for your own amusement then?" she asked. "Or did you ask Madara yourself if you could join up with him? If you're chummy with him, what's got you fucking around in here while he wins out there? I would think you would want to get a good look at the world you helped destroy."

It was a direct inquiry to get at Koh's motive and she thought for a moment that she might have overplayed her hand. Mai intentionally let some accusatory and jabbing tone enter her voice to play off the fact that she was seriously curious as to his answer. His great body gave another quiver that seemed to suggest further aggravation before he replied.

"My reasons for allying with Madara Uchiha are my own," he snapped, his voice ripe with as much frustration as Mai had yet heard out of him. "As are my reasons for remaining here in the spirit world."

Curt and short, Mai considered his reply and felt something like further satisfaction slip through her veins as she heard something in his voice.

He's scared of Madara.

It didn't necessarily surprise her, but it confirmed the reason for his motive entirely. If Koh was afraid to go against Madara, then that explained every action he had taken against them; perhaps he wasn't fully as allied with Kyoshi herself as it might have seemed, but this fully told Mai exactly why he was here in this misty grove instead of out in the material world enjoying all the chaos he had helped sow. The more she thought about it, the more it seemed as though Koh's movements were irritated, almost impatient. Of course he wouldn't want to be there when he was such an entity that enjoyed reveling in mistrust and discord. Here, alone, what enjoyment could he find?

But he's scared of Madara. Enough that he's heeling like a dog to stay here and keep watch, no doubt per Madara's orders.

She didn't dare say this aloud as she rather imagined that doing so might cause Koh to lash out at her then and there and crush the life from her body. Instead, she kept the charade going, feeling a twinge of impatience of her own just then.

Katara, where are you? I can't keep this up forever…

It wouldn't take Koh long to figure out that she was biding time and at that point it would come down to his perception as to whether she was buying time to distract him from something, or if he would assume that she was just trying to stay alive as long as she could.

"You shouldn't have tricked Sasuke the way you did up north," she said in a voice that she kept calm, but added just a touch of reprimand to, almost like a parent withholding the urge to scold a child. "If he's alive, and he beats Madara, he'll come for you to make you pay for what you did."

Rather than further irritate Koh, this rather seemed to cheer him up immensely. He drew himself up again with a satisfied sort of aura about him.

"You mean the ploy with his disgusting abomination of a daughter?" he asked her. "I merely took the form of something that I thought would distract him enough to keep him from actually probing my identity out of pure fear and shock. It worked a charm, though… again, something must have interfered, just as it did with you and my essence."

His brief bout of pride seemed to trickle away then as he lapsed into a brief silence of annoyed contemplation.

"Perhaps that lost child, Koloss… though how Sasuke might have convinced that ailing and frail being to assist him is beyond me… after he went there to kill it, no less."

"Perhaps for the same reason that Koloss showed up with Sasuke to help fight off your army," Mai replied plainly. "Sasuke let it live. And it was grateful and chose to help him."

The laughter that gushed from Koh then was so abhorrent and mocking that Mai felt her insides twist aggressively.

When he finally ceased his awful chuckling, he lowered his head back down to a just feet from her face once again.

"Child, do you truly think a being as ancient and jaded as Koloss is labored by such foolish and pointless emotions as gratitude? Or that it would need to repay a favor?"

His monstrous head gave a slow, pitying shake.

"If Koloss has truly chosen to side with Sasuke, it is for reasons of his own. That child has never once experienced such emotions for it to possess an ounce of emotion such as what you've suggested. It was shunned by all others, even at the height of its power, and then it was cast far away to rot in an icy tomb, to wither; Koloss has been as near death as a being can be without truly being able to die for longer than you could even hope to guess. No, there is no gratitude for Sasuke in its small, pathetic body. It exists to better its own circumstances after being damned as it was for such a length of time."

"Are you certain of that?" Mai challenged. "You attribute those emotions to the weakness of humanity, but if it had never seen something like mercy or pity before, who's to say that it wouldn't find some meaning or value in that?"

"I will not neglect any possibility, such as what you propose," Koh replied with a clear smirk in his voice; it was clear that was more or less exactly what he was doing. "But equating the wills and motives of spirits with you emotional and confused humans is not but folly."

"You keep calling this weakness," Mai said back. "But hasn't this been exactly what's allowed us to last this long against you?"

Koh said nothing in response to this and she pressed on.

"If it wasn't for Sasuke's love for us, what stops him from just shrugging and letting Madara walk all over our world? If not for his emotions—"

"Then he wouldn't have to die this day," Koh rasped at her. "No matter what righteousness you label him with, all it has done is meant his end, and the end of all you fools who desperately cling to him. Are you certain that your defense of him isn't drawn from your desire to be with him in a way that can never be?"

It was Mai's turned to be knocked into silence as she once again found herself quite suddenly forced to ponder something she badly didn't want to.

"I don't know what you mean," she said coolly, just managing to keep her tone level. "I know that Sasuke hasn't chosen me, if that's what you're referring to. Be it Ursa or Toph, his eyes are set elsewhere."

She spoke it with such a painful certainty that she felt a lump rise in her throat.

He's hasn't chosen me.

"Ah, but you haven't entirely chosen to believe that, have you?" Koh persisted, sounding amused. "You know the truth as honestly as you have spoken it to me now, but there is a piece of you that longs for him. You can't release the hope that you might spend your life with him, in some impossible future. Why do you torture yourself so, child?"

For all his mocking and taunting, Koh couldn't have spoken more truth in that statement. That was exactly what Mai knew she was doing to herself, even as she had spent every minute of every day ignoring it. Her only recent memories that actually seemed to flow with genuinely positive feelings were the fantasies she had spent drifting off to sleep in, where she had imagined Sasuke joining her in her room, wrapping her in his arms, and whispering softly to her. The thoughts had been so strangely blissful that Mai had often forgotten about every piece of her own reality in her wish for those fantasies to become her new reality.

"I'm human," she said hollowly, not even willing to try and keep the reserved misery from her voice. "Torturing myself with dreams and fantasy is just part of my being."

"And how very unlike a human to admit such a thing," Koh hissed, sounding mildly impressed. "Your truthfulness is something I find myself rather admiring, as you humans seem to be so bound in your lies. Both to yourself and others."

He pulled back from her and rested the majority of his body slowly on the ground, the mist wrapping about him like an otherworldly blanket.

"Have you other truths you'd like to admit before you die?" he inquired. "Perhaps you'd like to tell me how badly you wanted to kill the princess for what she did to your friend. Perhaps you'd like to speak of how you not only wished for it to truly have been Sasuke with you that night, but for how you wish now that you were in Ursa's position. Or perhaps… you'd like to lament as to how useless you feel that all you can do is speak with me for you have no power to fight or escape me. I suppose it would rather be the most honest thing of all to curse your weak and pathetic humanity in your last moments, no?"

As he spoke, Mai found she indeed felt extremely small as Koh loomed before her. Just as he stated, there was nothing she could do to try and attack him, nor would she probably make it any farther than he allowed if she tried to run. She was just a single person, helpless to do anything more than stand before this nightmarish foe who she rather hated more than anyone or anything.

Except… I'm not helpless.

Just as she thought it, she felt a startling wetness strike the back of her neck just at the nape. There had been no sign of any sort of precipitation since she had started into the grove and not since she had encountered Koh either. But the drop of water felt as deliberate as anything could, for it to strike her so precisely in a place that Koh couldn't see.

I'm not helpless.

"You're right," she found herself saying, the words coming from her as easily as any had to that point. Koh turned towards her, twisting his body almost curiously as though this hadn't been what he had expected her to say.

"I hated Azula for what she did to Ty Lee. I think no matter what changes about her, I'll always hate her for what she did, especially if Ty Lee can't ever…"

It hurt her to consider, if it was even something that was a possibility, but she struggled on.

"I wished every day since it happened that it had really been Sasuke who had come to me that night. You're right that things haven't felt right between me and Zuko, and that I haven't been happy with him. You're right that I want Sasuke. I want him now, and probably will for a long time yet. It might never go away."

She uncrossed her arms and gently lowered them to her sides even as the muscles in her legs tensed to the point of near numbness. Looking up at Koh, she imagined herself smiling widely at him.

"But you want me to talk about my uselessness? About how weak I am compared to some ancient, incredible power like you? I don't plan on going that far. But what I will tell you is that, if I were able, I would rip you to pieces as slowly and painfully as I could, so that you would hurt and hurt and hurt. I hate you and want you dead, even though I know there might be nothing anyone could do to destroy an evil like you. You'll linger and persist long after we're all gone."

Koh simply gazed down at her, and she wondered what he was thinking. Was he annoyed? Angry? Impressed? Amused? There was nothing she could see on his bizarre face that would indicate any one thing that was passing through his twisted labyrinth of a mind as Mai looked up at him.

"But I do want you to know…" she said slowly, her heartrate vicious and intense. "I hope this hurts."

All she could do at that point was trust Katara and Mai threw herself onto the ground, stomach first.

There was only the barest fraction of time where it was nearly completely silent above her as her ribs seared in pain as she splayed herself out before she heard a rush above her, a great many sounds of objects passing above her with speed enough to generate sound. She heard several muffled and loud thuds that echoed around the small area that climaxed into screeching roar that could only have come from Koh. The ground beneath her began to shake inconsistently as it was shaken by a violent force and only when she knew for certain that she was still alive and untouched, Mai raised her head.

Koh's massive body had been impaled by a veritable storm of icicles, spears of pure frozen ice that at their largest were as wide around as one of Appa's feet. They protruded all up and down his centipede-like form as he thrashed about trying to free himself while releasing horrible and monstrous sounds of pain.

At a sharp movement behind her, Mai turned to see Katara sprinting into the clearing. The waterbender was soaked in sweat and her face was pale; clearly it had taken a great deal out of her to manage to bend up enough water to create the ice she had, but she didn't seem to be done yet. She raced past Mai without a word to her and gave a roar through gritted teeth, sweeping her arms up and over her head as she did. From somewhere behind her, a wave rose and fell over Koh and froze the moment it touched him, pinning him even more so to the ground. He released fresh screeches of fury and Mai immediately saw hairline fractures appearing in the thick coating of ice that now ran over his body.

"Mai, let's move!" Katara said loudly, and she too was forcing a passive expression even though she wanted nothing more than to tighten her face in agony and slump to the ground. Mai nodded firmly and rushed to the darkened shadow ahead of her that had looked like a pit and as she reached it, she saw that was exactly what it was.

It looked almost like a nest of some strange creature, a spacious oval of about seven feet in length, though it only cut into the earth about two feet. Resting within it in a fetal position was a body.

As Mai clambered into the shallow pit without hesitation, she found herself looking at a young woman, likely not much older than herself, who had the same pitch-black hair that she did. She was wearing tight-fitting red and black armor over a white tunic and Mai found herself wondering if she was of Fire Nation descent, though her attire looked like something she more likely might have seen in a history book rather than actually within the Fire Nation. Her face was pretty and pale, her expression almost calm like she was sleeping, but there was a pull to her features that made it look she was fighting off some invisible pain. Not sparing another moment, Mai reached down and pulled the woman slowly up who released a quiet groan that was just audible over Koh's booming struggle.

"Where… is he…" the woman murmured in Mai's ear. "I'll… fucking kill him…"

Not sure who exactly she was referring to, Mai ignored her and with some effort, she hoisted the woman over her shoulder and got free of the pit to see Katara waving her on. There was a strange relief in exiting the shallow pit and she realized that she had just felt a rather strange burden, a tiredness that she couldn't quite identify. It almost felt like her body was urging her to climb back into the hole. Adjusting her newfound load, Mai grimaced and raced as quickly as she could past Koh without so much as a look at him. As she did, he released a roar after her, within which she heard her name amongst a cluster of other noises that could have been words unintelligible through rage or perhaps different language entirely. But she didn't look at him once, and as she followed Katara into the misty forest of roots, Koh's sounds of rage died away behind her.

---

Tucked away in one corner of the dark room that acted as their collective cell, Yangchen continued to watch after Kyoshi who was standing against the wall on the other side of her. The taller Avatar had her arms crossed and was leaning against the wall, resolutely ignoring Yangchen who sat near the corner, watching Kyoshi sadly.

The two of them had been brought to the room by Madara some time ago, who had spared a brief laugh at their expense, clearly trying to rile Kyoshi into attacking him so he would have an easy excuse to pummel her some more, but she hadn't taken the bait. At that point, Yangchen had found that she herself had rather been feeling rather angry enough to try and land some kind of blow on him; she had always been able to maintain herself in a very level-headed fashion, but her complete outrage with the situation as a whole had her blood boiling. That said, she had been in far too weak a state at that point to do much of anything, and it was only when Madara had made to leave that she had issued a plea that she truly had meant from the bottom of her heart.

"Please don't hurt the child."

Other than stop briefly at the door, Madara hadn't reacted otherwise to her words and had left them in semidarkness shortly thereafter.

Hours had passed while the two Avatars slowly recovered from their wounds. The process was slow but even as their overall appearance didn't recover much, the more grievous of their injuries did, enough to allow them both the ability to get to their feet and stretch feeling back into their aching muscles. Still, they had said nothing to one another.

Hours more went by as Yangchen had tried to place a number on where exactly they might be in terms of what the time might be. By the time she had taken a seat in the corner of the empty room that had been made into their cell, she imagined it might have very well been half a day or more since she had tried to attack Madara and failed miserably. Kyoshi didn't even seem to react to the fact that she was sharing the room with Yangchen and instead had tried to use her bending to escape the room, but to no avail. The door had proven ineffective to try and open; every attempt made to grasp it or kick it down resulted in Kyoshi's hand or foot slipping away from it as though it were impossible to touch. Madara had more or less made a very simple, square room the perfect prison for the two of them.

And so they waited in silence. Yangchen wasn't sure what Madara might plan to do with them next, if he would try and use Kyoshi again, but he surely wouldn't allow Yangchen to live for much longer based on what she now knew.

How could I not have known… how could I have been so blind…

"Are you going to tell me?"

It took her a moment to realize that she had been the one to speak those words, a thought that had been made audible as it resounded hollowly within the small room. Kyoshi didn't so much as blink at the question. Her body seemed to be mostly recovered, though her clothes, hair, and face paint were all in various states of disarray. Her eyes though had been the one thing that hadn't seemed affected at all by their current conditions; Kyoshi's stare was as piercing and intense as ever.

"This was never about Sasuke," Yangchen continued dully, feeling a proper sense of betrayal and defeat coming on. "Madara was using you this whole time, and I never knew."

"So, what?" Kyoshi asked quietly, her voice heartless. "You want me to apologize? I never asked you to come with me and the spirits when we were preparing to invade."

The fact that she had gotten a reply of any sort only spurred Yanghcen on further.

"You attacked the mortal world with an army, releasing unto it chaos that should never have been seen," she snapped. "The world bleeds because of what you've done, the nations thrown into madness by what you've led, people have died, and what I want? I want you to tell me why exactly this was all worth it. Why being a hound of Madara was worth it."

"Don't you dare imply that this was something I desired," Kyoshi said in a more menacing monotone, but Yangchen had never once truly feared her fellow Avatar and she wasn't planning on starting now. She got to her feet and glared at Kyoshi.

"Then explain yourself!" she shouted. "Do the other spirits know?! Do they know why we're really here?! Do you know what Madara's endgame is?! Does Koh know? And why, why, did you agree to this in the first place?!"

She hadn't been able to get so much as a single straight answer out of Kyoshi since the day they had stepped back into the physical world, but somehow, she felt that now she might be ablet to find some sort of honesty out of her fellow Avatar. At that point, the cat was out of the bag, so what good did it lend Kyoshi in continuing to hold it all to herself?

Yangchen took a long, deep breath to calm herself before adding a small addition to her rather aggressive assault of questions.

"You told me not too long ago when I was asking you about how we were going to proceed that 'we didn't have time'. Why didn't we then?"

The silence ticked on for several long seconds before lasting into well over a minute, at which point Yangchen had to push down the angry tears that wanted to form in her eyes at Kyoshi's silence.

Why won't she tell me?

Slowly, she tracked her way back to the wall and leaned against it, mirroring Kyoshi's position on the other side of the room. She wasn't going to beg; that would surely only annoy her fellow Avatar as much as anything. When Kyoshi's mind was made up about something, then that meant she—

"He's got Rangi."

Yangchen looked up at Kyoshi so quickly it hurt her neck. Kyoshi still wasn't looking at her, but even as much as Yangchen's mind felt like it had to deny the possibility, she knew she had just heard three very critical, and very worrying words from her fellow Avatar's mouth.

"That's it," Kyoshi said quietly. "That's the whole reason. That's all I've got for you. I know you'd probably like for there to be a much more complex explanation, like I was playing Madara all this time and I've been working to undermine his plans at the perfect opportunity, but that's it."

Yangchen hardly dared breathe; it felt like so much as moving might break the spell that was Kyoshi actually talking to her.

"I don't know what his ultimate goal is. I don't know if Koh is aware of it and I don't know if the shapeshifting bastard has been in with Madara since this all started, but it wouldn't surprise me."

Finally, she turned her eyes to look at Yangchen, who saw a furious, smoldering fury burning behind her intense glare.

"It's true that I really rather hated Sasuke and what he represented to this world, but I never would have come here if Madara hadn't approached me. It was a few years after the Hundred Year's War ended here in the physical world; I was ready to fight him then and there, but he started asking me about all the unrest he was noticing among the spirits regarding Sasuke. I thought he might have just been stalling, but then he told me that he wanted to instigate an invasion to destroy him, and I was the perfect being to lead that invasion. I laughed him off, but he didn't laugh back."

Kyoshi gave a slow swallow as her eyes glazed over at the memories she was reliving. Yangchen clung tightly to every word she heard.

"He told me that he figured I wouldn't agree, so he had taken something of mine as assurance I'd cooperate. It didn't take long to figure what he meant, and I took off running all over the spirit world; day and night I searched for four days, but I couldn't find her. And on the morning of the fifth day, he appeared before me again. He had her by the back of the throat; she was unconscious, I guess. I demanded he let her go, but that was when he finally laughed. Told me that he'd let her go once I'd done what he wanted, and if I still refused to obey his orders, he'd completely annihilate her essence and remove her from existence."

Pain wasn't something that Yangchen had ever associated with being something that tainted Kyoshi's words, but she heard it now, plain as day.

"Looking back, what I did then was stupid. He could have killed Rangi then and there, but I suppose I imagined that perhaps I might actually be able to beat him. I'd seen Sasuke fight and knew that people from this world were incredibly powerful, but so was I. So, I tried to attack him."

She shrugged.

"He crushed me. I didn't land a single blow on him, he was too fast. Before I knew it, I was on the ground next to Rangi, unable to move, unable to reach out and even touch her before his foot was on my head, pressing it down. He told me then that it was my last chance: obey his command or condemn Rangi. And I knew then that it was no bluff. He could have wiped the both of us from existence then if he had wanted to."

The gloss of her eyes faded as she came back to the present.

"So, there you have it. I've followed Madara's orders from the shadows since that day. I've followed them then, and I've followed them here in the physical world."

There was a frightening touch to her voice then that implied something that Yangchen then badly hoped she wouldn't say, but of course, that hope was denied.

"And I will continue to follow them until Rangi is safe."

Yangchen looked at her miserably.

"So… if you actually were able to escape this room…"

"Yes," Kyoshi said, her voice pure steel. "I would leave this palace, track down Sasuke and his companions and do everything in my power to force them to yield. I know now that what I've done so far hasn't been enough for Madara, so I will redouble my efforts until he's appeased."

She gave her head a small shake as she fixed Yangchen with a deadly glare.

"Don't think for a single fucking moment that I enjoy this, that I've enjoyed a single, solitary second of what we've done here in this world. I don't expect you either to forgive me for this, but I don't care. I'm selfish, I'm aware of that. And I will gladly go down as a villain in the annals of history if it means keeping the person I love more than anything in the universe safe."

The resolve in her voice couldn't have been missed, and Yangchen knew that she wasn't lying. For a time, they simply regarded one another in the low light, Kyoshi looking with intense and final resolve, and Yangchen looking back with miserable regret.

There's nothing I can say that will make her change her mind…

Still, it was worth a try.

"Do you think if Rangi knew what you were doing now, that she would be grateful for this?"

Kyoshi laughed then, a hollow, humorless, and bitter sound.

"Certainly not. She'd curse me for being a coward and accuse me of betraying the ideals we've shared for our entire existence together. Make no mistake, her hatred will be the hardest to bear."

That was all that Yangchen could think of to say. She continued to look at Kyoshi with a pleading look, but there was no wavering in the other Avatar's expression and Yangchen dropped her gaze towards the floor, unable to stand looking at her old friend any longer.

It was then that she noticed something rather odd, something she had to blink at in order to try and process.

Kyoshi's shadow was twitching and tugging along the floor, though the Avatar herself was standing still and steadfast. For a moment, Yangchen was certain that her eyes were simply playing tricks on her, but the more she looked, the more the bizarre phenomenon became apparent to her as being reality and not of her mind. And as she watched, and Kyoshi too looked down to see what she was looking at, Yangchen could see that it was not the shadow itself pulling away, but rather something that seemed to be trying to pull itself away from her shadow.

With a sudden, jerking motion, the thing came free whatever it was and there came a strange keening wail before the door ahead of them seemed to cave in on itself before expanding sharply and erupting in a mass of shadow that sent both Kyoshi and Yangchen reeling from the blast. Her head knocking into the wall, the world spun before Yangchen before she righted herself and looked hazily towards the front of the room to find the front of it was gone, door and wall together. It looked like some behemoth creature had come down and taken a bite out of the palace just specifically where the wall was placed.

Kyoshi stepped towards it slowly, extending a hand as she did. As her fingers passed through the area where the wall and door had been, it passed through without any sort of resistance. She looked down at her hand for a moment as though waiting for it to spontaneously catch fire, but no ill effect came of her passing over the threshold. After a moment, Kyoshi looked back towards Yangchen, who found herself quite certain of what was about to be said.

"Stay put. I know you want to try and stop me, but you can't," she said darkly. "You'll get in my way, and I promise I will go through you if I have to."

She stepped out into the hallway and paused a moment, half-turning her head back over her shoulder.

"I'm sorry."

And with that, she swept away off through the palace, leaving Yangchen where she was, feeling more hopeless and despondent than ever before.

---

Seeing Jin, Ty Lee, and Yue return to join their ranks should have filled Zuko with a surge of relief which was something that he supposed he felt on some level. But not seeing his mother with them was enough to numb that feeling down to being almost unnoticeable.

They had been able to work their way to them thanks to the Earth Nation army that had rallied in a wide perimeter around them. While the spirits themselves were able to resist any form of bending, the pure tons of earth that were being flung towards them kept them from being able to move in enough to properly surround them, and per what Zuko had asked of Gokan, the soldiers on the edge of the perimeter had been keeping an eye out for the rest of their group. As the three young women made their way through the soldiers, Zuko watched them as they approached before shouting over the carnage as soon as he knew they could hear him.

"Where's mom?!"

Ty Lee and Yue both looked at one another nervously, but Jin held his gaze.

"We don't know. After we all went off to commence evacuation around the city center, she went off to cover the neighborhood I sent her towards, and I know that she was able to make it through to them because we started seeing citizens roll out from the north side of the city. But she never regrouped with us, and we weren't able to do much more than—"

"Where did you last see her?!" Zuko shouted over her, his voice high and panicked which prompted Ty Lee to grab his arm tightly.

"Zuko, if she went off to do what I know you're thinking, there's nothing we can do about it! I know that none of us wanted her to put herself in danger, but we have to focus! She must have met up with Mai and they must have found the others by now!"

Being reminded that not only his mother, but his sister and Mai were still gone only further ramped up his anxiety. He couldn't bring himself to reply and instead looked off desperately towards Ba Sing Se, somehow wishing he could will his eyesight to be strong enough to home in on wherever they were.

"We have to trust in them, Zuko!"

Jin's words were distant and echoed vaguely in his ear, but they offered him no comfort beyond a chance to jam his eyes shut and roar angrily before turning away from the three of them, fire exploding from his palms and upwards at the spirits above. The only solace he knew he would be able to find was in combat even as he felt his energy continue to drain from the exertion he was forcing on his body. It struck him again that it wouldn't be something he would be able to maintain much longer as he and Aang had been fighting through the entire night.

How much longer? How much further will this have to last? How much longer, Sasuke…

While he tried to focus more on his frustration for Sasuke and the time with which they were losing, Zuko couldn't help but worry deep down in his heart that something had indeed gone wrong.

He can't lose, though… he's invincible. I know he is.

It was partially why Zuko hated him so much. Sasuke would never be able to be killed and because of that, he was going to be a pain to Zuko for the rest of their lives, regardless of what would come of their relationship. And as he continued to hurl fire through the deep black sky, Zuko found himself hoping badly that the reason for the lack of Sasuke's return wasn't because he had somehow lost.

The fighting raged on, intensely and furiously despite the hours that had already passed. As his muscles burned and sweat dripped into his eyes, Zuko panted heavily through his dry mouth as the sounds of war continued to erupt all around him. The explosion of blue energy far off in the sky that made it seem briefly as bright as day had done nothing more than provide a temporary distraction to the fighting as the spirits had hardly seemed to notice it while they relentlessly attacked, and the light had faded not too many moments later.

Sasuke...

Thinking to it now, that must have been the cause, an hour ago now as it must have been. And as Zuko swung around to return to a back to back position with Aang to deal with a heavy influx of spirits attacking from the air, he noted that just far off on the edge of the horizon, he could see the faintest touch that the sky was brightening, even as dark the night still seemed.

There came an earthshaking explosion from somewhere nearby and Zuko snarled as he felt the ground lift up from under him, or rather he was lifted above it, and he was thrown heavily to the ground. A cloud of dust rushed up to meet him as he struggled to rise, and he was forced to throw an arm over his eyes to keep himself from being blinded. When the dust finished exploding past and he was able to look forward, the sight was less then encouraging.

In a circular area that had been blown free of anyone else by the impact of her arrival, Kyoshi stood tall and powerful as she glowered around at the lot of them, from Zuko, Aang, and their company, to the soldiers of the Earth Nation littering the ground around her as they struggled to rise as well. All eyes fell upon her as her presence demanded complete attention; the spirits above and around their perimeter too came to a stop as they surely awaited the word of their leader.

Physically, Kyoshi didn't look all that much better than she had the last time Zuko had seen her; her clothes remained ripped and marred with blood, her hair flowing wildly down her back, and her warpaint even more of a mess then when Zuko had last seen it, though that might have made her overall appearance all the more terrifying.

Because in that moment, with the fury Zuko could clearly see behind her eyes, she looked as terrifying as he imagined anyone could.

"You all," she said in a low, menacing voice and Zuko couldn't believe how much her voice now resonated in the silence that had so recently taken over the battlefield, but now, even with so many beings there, the quiet that she had forced upon them all was stifling. She gestured towards him, Aang, Jin, Yue, and Ty Lee.

"You all will come with me back to Ba Sing Se. You will do so willingly."

"You should know damn well what our response to that is," Yue said loudly in reply.

"I had indeed guessed at it, yes," Kyoshi replied, her tone unwavering. "If that is the case, I will kill every soldier here, beat the five of you into submission, and drag you back with me by the throats if I must."

Zuko had no difficulty believing that she was telling the truth and judging by the way she was looking at them, she was almost hoping that was exactly the route they would choose to take. Everything about her demeanor reeked of the attitude that she wasn't going to waste a minute more of time if she could help it.

"And we'll fight you every step of the way," Aang said strongly and took a step forward so that he was the closest person to her. Without a second's hesitation, Zuko joined Ty Lee, Jin, Sokka, and Yue as they moved shoulder to shoulder with him and there was something incredibly gratifying then to hear and see Gokan and the Earth Nation soldiers all gathered there straighten and place themselves in readied stances to fight. It was almost enough to make Zuko break into a smile then and there.

They don't know what this is all about… they don't know why we're all fighting, they probably aren't even sure if this is a fight we can win. They're looking at someone who may as well be a deity, and they're going to readily fight her.

He squared his shoulders then as well, taking a deep breath and preparing for the battle once more.

I'll be dead before I let you use me.

Kyoshi looked around at them all once more, this time with an almost disdainful look on her face.

"Death, then," she murmured coolly. "I pray the lives of you all will be the only ones I'll have to take today."

It was a different voice that rang out then.

"Not likely."

Zuko turned to his right and saw with a rush of emotion Suki, Azula, Toph, and Soza making their way into the center of the circle, escorted by Earth Nation soldiers and what looked like Suki's entire outfit of Kyoshi Warriors that had remained in the city after they had left. As he met eyes with his sister, it took Zuko a surprising amount of self-restraint to keep from running up and hugging her.

The Earth Nation soldiers closed the gap in the perimeter behind them and the four moved to join Zuko and the others already standing ready to face Kyoshi. Zuko looked down towards Soza and saw her wearing an expression that looked both determined and frightened. Seeing his niece alive and well, looking no worse for wear after being kidnapped was something that touched him once more with relief. For a moment, he wondered why they hadn't tried to hide her or take her far from this conflict before reality reminded him of such an outcome.

Where could they hide her? Where would she be safest, other than with some of the most powerful benders alive?

It surely was a difficult decision, but Zuko knew that if things went badly then, Soza was surely as good as dead regardless, a thought that sickened him to his core.

But as he looked at them, there came a worrying surge through his gut that numbed him to his toes.

Where's Mai?

Azula and Toph moved to either side of Soza, clearly intending on guarding her with their lives based purely in their expressions and furious eyes. Suki led her Kyoshi Warriors up to stand just behind the group and she raised a hand in the air; at once, every one of the warriors executed a loud war cry and, moving in complete sync, drew their weapons and adopted readied stances before growing completely still. Suki's eyes never left Kyoshi as she stared up at the matron of her home island.

"You'll have to kill those who had taken your namesake as well," she said with an impressive smoothness, looking just as much ready to fight and die as any of them.

Kyoshi, however, hadn't so much as given Suki or any of the warriors a single glance. Instead, her eyes were locked fiercely to look between Toph and Azula, glaring at Soza who, to her credit, didn't shrink away from the intense stare.

And of course, Azula couldn't resist instigating.

"That's right, out from under your very nose," Zuko's sister said haughtily. Her expression was as classically arrogant and smirking as any face he had ever seen her wear, but at the way her body was tensed, he could tell she was fully ready for things to escalate to blows.

"You didn't pay her enough mind with what's been happening to your precious occupation, and now you hold no leverage," she continued, and Zuko could tell she was enjoying taunting someone as powerful and unshakable as Kyoshi. "You have nothing to threaten us or Sasuke with."

Kyoshi continued to stare at Soza for a long moment before finally turning her eyes up to the girl's mother.

"I don't need to threaten you," she said, her voice more dangerous than ever. "I only have to break you."

She cracked her knuckles and Zuko felt his heart rate leap upwards. His mother and Mai were absent, as was any sign of Sasuke yet, but just then, it wasn't going to matter. This stand would have to be made without them. He looked to Aang, Azula, Ty Lee, Yue, Jin, Sokka, and Suki, to the Kyoshi Warriors just behind them, to the Earth Nation soldiers that surrounded them, and he could see not a single face lacking in resolve. Even Soza held a fire in her gaze that was unmistakable. He, Aang, Azula, and Toph moved nearest to the front to keep the nonbenders behind them, Azula and Toph ensuring that Soza remained comfortably safe just to their rear.

The air grew even stiller as the only sound came from the movements of beings tensing for the battle and Zuko, along with everyone else, watched and waited for Kyoshi to make the first move. She gazed unblinkingly and mercilessly at their group and Zuko tried as hard as he might to try and ascertain from the flicks of her eyes what her first action might be.

But then, as the tension became almost unbearable in its silence, she did move, but it wasn't how Zuko might have expected.

Behind her, within the midst of Earth Nation soldiers surrounding, Zuko thought he could see a flicker of movement that looked out of place. He assumed it must have been his exhausted and anxious mind toying with him, but as Kyoshi's brow furrowed and she started to turn towards the movement, he knew that couldn't have been it. But by that point, the shape was already moving quickly enough that she only had time to begin to dodge before she released a roar of pain.

The movement had turned out to be a figure, running full tilt towards Kyoshi's back. As the Avatar had began to turn, the figure had leapt, whipping what looked like two shimmering swords and sliced through the barrier surrounding Kyoshi as neatly as if it had been paper; had she not managed to move quickly enough to start to dodge, it might very well have been a fatal blow, but regardless, two red cuts opened on her back, spilling blood against her green robes.

The figure tucked into a roll as they came out of their jump, coming neatly out of the movement to move to a readied stance along with the rest of them, both blades held at the ready and as the person whipped their head to let their long hair flow over their shoulder, Zuko's heart surged.

"Mom!"

Her eyes didn't move towards him or any of the others even as Zuko felt Azula inhale sharply next to him, but her mouth turned up in a small, reassuring smile.

"Sorry it took me so long."

She didn't look away from Kyoshi whose face was pulled in an expression of fury and pain. In truth, she looked not so much like the blow had hurt and rather seemed to be more so in a state of outrage that she had allowed a blow to be landed on her at all.

"You…" she growled, staring Ursa down with a new sort of ire. "The unexpected problem."

"I think there's probably a fair few others who would agree with you on that," Ursa replied and Zuko couldn't believe how light his mother's voice sounded. Toph and Yue shifted just barely at her words and Azula gave a strange jerking motion as though she were about to step forward.

"The rest… the rest I'll take back with me," Kyoshi said quietly and with a noise of metal against metal, her serrated fans were in her grip faster than the eye could follow. She raised one and directed it towards Zuko's mother.

"But I'll handle you first."

Her lethal intent was clear and Zuko opened his mouth to tell his mother to get back behind the group so that they might be able to shield her from Kyoshi's wrath before Ursa raised a sword in return and Zuko could see that the blades were indeed shimmering with a pale blue light just as Yue's sword did.

"I was hoping you'd say that."

"Mother!" Azula's voice cracked out like a whip. "What do you think you're doing?!"

Though her raised voice was something that surely only added to the chaos of the situation, Zuko found himself fully agreeing with his sister's outrage.

"Honey, it's alright," Ursa said smoothly, sounding far too calm under the circumstances. "Look after your daughter, I'll be fine."

"She wants to kill you!" came a cry from Yue who sounded just as desperate as Zuko felt while he clenched and unclenched his badly sweating hands. His mother only slowly inclined her chin in confirmation of Yue's words.

"I don't intend to let that happen."

In his peripheral vision, Zuko could see Soza pulling at Azula's sleeve, her voice quiet but urgent.

"Mom…" she was saying. "Please don't let grandma fight her, don't let her go…"

It was clear that the situation was truly catching up to her and she sounded on the verge of tears. Azula didn't seem to notice her daughter, so caught up as she was staring with wide-eyed anger and horror at Ursa, but she seemed to encounter the same problem that Zuko was currently facing.

Kyoshi pulled in a deep breath and when she spoke again, it was much louder and clearly not directed just towards them.

"No one interferes. If anyone makes a move, kill them. Beyond that, stay put."

She spoke to the spirits surrounding the perimeter and hovering in the sky above as though she were addressing her pets, but they all seemed to affirm her orders; it almost seemed that they were relieved to finally have some direction beyond the aimless attacking they had been plaguing Aang and Zuko with all night. The Earth Nation soldiers were looking around to Gokan for orders as well, but he said nothing, the massive man's eyes locked fixedly on Ursa.

"Shall we, then?" Kyoshi asked, rotating her shoulders and starting to pace in a wide circle, regarding Zuko's mother with an almost hungry look in her eyes. Ursa made no reply, but matched Kyoshi's movements, starting to pace in a similarly circular motion. The silence about the rugged landscape grew even more tense as the only sound that was audible came from the footsteps of the two women as they regarded one another unblinkingly.

Zuko's heart was thudding in his throat by this point as he felt paralyzed by the mere sight of watching his mother being stalked by the imposing and threatening figure of Kyoshi. He knew fully well that his mother was a master at the craft of her blades, but Kyoshi had been someone who had fought for reportedly hundreds of years and who knew how far beyond in the spirit world. How well would those strange new swords he now saw in his mother's hands hold up against those serrated fans that had no doubt spilled more blood than Zuko could likely imagine?

He ground his teeth hard enough to be nearly painful, but the stage had been set no matter how much he cared for it or not. If he stepped forward to try and interfere, the spirits would set upon him and he would be thusly putting everyone else in danger by consequence.

I have to trust her… I have to trust my mom.

Driving his fists to unclench, he forced himself to remain rooted where he stood, and looked on with the rest of his friends.

He felt the brush of something like fingers near his hand and he looked down.

From as near as she was to him, he saw that Azula had moved her hand to his without a word and had her fingers extended in a gesture that he immediately understood. Without hesitation, he gripped her hand in his and squeezed it, feeling his sister tighten her fingers as well as they clung to one another, wrought with fear for their mother who was once again in danger of being taken from them forever.

---

Ursa couldn't quite understand how it was that she was feeling as even minded and coolly tempered as she was. There wasn't a reason for what she had done, slinging herself at Kyoshi with such reckless abandon. She should have been placing plenty of distance between herself and true danger, if for nothing else but fear for the life of the baby growing within her. Mai's words continued to resound endlessly in her head, accusing her of recklessly putting both her and the child's life in danger by her almost obsessive nature with wanting to help in whatever way that she could.

But Ursa would never have been able to stop herself for doing what she had. Part of her had told herself that she was doing this just as much to buy time for Sasuke and Mai to get back to them. But she also knew that she would still be standing where she was even if not for that practicality. She felt there was nowhere else she needed to be more than standing between her family to protect them; somewhere, she knew that Sasuke was doing the same thing and she would never stand by taking a backseat to protecting the people she loved, just as she knew he would never stand for.

I'll see him soon.

And all the while she stared down Kyoshi, feeling her blood racing, her heart pounding, and her muscles tensing, she found the reason that she felt so calm.

Somehow, she was going to beat Kyoshi. Somehow, she knew that.

And as she looked across the way between her and the Avatar, she saw Kyoshi's furious glare intensify and Ursa realized that was likely because she was smiling.

Because I know that I won't… I won't lose.

Knowing that Kyoshi wouldn't let her continue to buy much more time merely by their mutual pacing, Ursa decided that she ought to move the situation forward under her own volition. With her next step, she intentionally pressed her foot down in a way that allowed her to flick her eyes down as though she had stepped on something uneven. It was a feign that she had used dozens of times and even though Kyoshi was more powerful a foe than she knew she had ever faced, the Avatar didn't seem immune to such a fake out.

Ursa just managed to get her swords up in time to drive them against Kyoshi's fans which hit them hard enough to buckle her elbows and nearly force her arms to her chest.

Hell, she's strong.

Though she was rather tall herself, Ursa still had to look up to meet Kyoshi's eyes and saw them regarding her with nothing short of annoyance and disdain. And as she felt her own muscles straining to maintain their locked position against the Avatar, Ursa knew that unless she was able to control the flow of the fight, she likely wouldn't stand a chance.

She turned her swords to the side and let Kyoshi's fans slide down them which gave Ursa a chance to spin away and free herself. Not willing to let the Avatar be the one to initiate the next strike, she sent a thrust from her left blade flash out towards Kyoshi's thigh who was forced to leap aside herself and bring her fans down to block Ursa's right blade which flicked upwards to where she was forced to dodge to in an attempt to catch her off guard. She saw the almost impressed look flash over Kyoshi's glowering face and knew that her opponent hadn't been expecting the aggression, nor the skill.

Just like that, they became a web of steel; Ursa pressed hard when she was able, allowing Kyoshi as few chances to attack as she could. The fact that she was able to manage to control the direction of the battle was a positive sign, but Ursa quickly found herself discouraged by how little any of her attacks actually were. Not a single one wasn't dodged or deflected and during several of her more aggressive attacks, Kyoshi started to take advantage of her rushing style of offense. As the fight continued, Ursa was granted a vicious glancing kick to her ribs that made it feel like something fractured, a lashing elbow to the cheek that split her skin and opened a deep cut, and an exceptionally dangerous swipe from one of Kyoshi's fans that cut into the skin below her neck and chipped at her collarbone. She could hear her children crying out, but she couldn't make out words for the world was fuzzy around her as her heart raced and sweat beaded down her temples. Bleeding and hurting, Ursa met Kyoshi more neutrally as she tried to regroup on her strategy; the blades sang to her and she let herself dance to their rhythm while her mind raced.

She's not having any issue dealing with such a forceful offense… but how else can I get at her? I let her go on the aggressive, she'll beat me down with that strength of hers and I know that her being who she is will let her outlast me in a battle of attrition.

Grimacing as she tried as hard as she could to redouble her efforts, her thoughts whipped about just as her blades did.

How do I gain leverage on an opponent like this?

Ursa could feel her arms starting to burn at the rigorous force she was forcing them to output, but as she whipped a slash towards Kyoshi's head and watched the Avatar dodge underneath it, her long brown hair flying, Ursa realized what she had to do.

She doesn't need to compete with my swords for aggression. Every attack I lead with my blades force me to close the distance between us and that's where she's most comfortable fighting from. I'm just a touch faster, but her fans give her the advantage any time I get close.

Ursa locked eyes with Kyoshi through the flashing of their steel.

All out it is, then.

In a move she was certain surprised everyone watching the combat take place, Ursa lunged in swiftly, whipping her swords around and slashing them at Kyoshi's waist. He saw the Avatar's eyebrows flick up as she swung down her fans to catch Ursa's attack, but as they swept down to catch underneath Ursa's swords, she stopped her swing and instead pressed down on Kyoshi's fans to give herself a burst of momentum upwards which got her close enough to slam her forehead into the Avatar's face. She expected that Kyoshi would have kept her spiritual aura active for the fight and that the strike would have been nothing more than a surprise and Ursa's head would have slid off the shield. But it seemed the Avatar wasn't one to deny a fair fight and Ursa felt her forehead sear with pain as something gave behind it. She threw a kick into Kyoshi's gut to leap backwards just in time for the fans to miss decapitating her.

Kyoshi's nose looked like it might have been broken; blood poured from it over her mouth and down her chin as she grit her teeth and glared across the short field of combat, but Ursa was already moving again. If she relented in her aggression now, she might never be able to regain the momentum. And she had just proven that her opponent was susceptible to such close range.

Getting inside Kyoshi's reach, she swung her swords with near reckless abandon. Every strike was aimed and poised, but she threw them as often as she could even as she could feel her body protesting strongly against her unrelenting movements. But even as she felt her body starting to give in to fatigue, Kyoshi couldn't seem to get enough distance to regroup and counterattack.

I have to do this now.

If she didn't, she would be left wide open and exhausted, and that would be the end of it. No one had ever endured such a beating from Ursa's blades and lasted this long, and it was clear that Kyoshi would take advantage of any angle she received.

The end came with startling quickness that Ursa wasn't even ready for. Seeming inclined to try and create an opening, Kyoshi lashed out with a powerful strike that came hard enough to knock the sword from Ursa's right hand and the scene seemed to shift to slow motion. She saw what a fight with only one blade would mean for her and she also saw how the Avatar's strike had rendered her left side wide open. Just as she had done to a hundred opponents before, Ursa flicked a slash into Kyoshi's thigh, whose leg buckled at the trauma inflicted; Ursa jabbed the sword into her torso and withdrew it quickly enough to whip around as Kyoshi brought her fans up to try and catch the blade as it left her abdomen, leaving her right knee open to another slash that Ursa didn't miss. Snarling, Kyoshi crashed to her left knee and in a moment, Ursa's blade was a centimeter from puncturing her throat.

Sweat dripped into Ursa's eyes as she panted desperate, heaving gulps of air, her arms burning as though they were on fire, though she didn't so much as move the sword from where it was placed. Blood tracked down her cheek and chest, and her ribs ached something fierce; she wanted to collapse and pass out then and there, but didn't dare so much as blink as she looked into Kyoshi's glaring eyes.

And as the silence around her settled despite the hundreds of beings looking on, she realized with a start what had just happened.

I beat her.

Through some mixture of luck and skill, likely compounded with Kyoshi's battering from Sasuke and who knew what else restricting at least some of her physical ability, and perhaps her mental state too, Ursa had won the duel.

Kyoshi's expression was mildly stunned though Ursa could see that the Avatar was eying her with something like distant respect. But that didn't carry to her tone as she spoke in a voice that Ursa imagined only she could hear as everyone looked on in cacophonous silence and shock.

"Well, then?" the Avatar murmured softly. "You beat me. Finish it."

This realization also came as a start.

I can kill her. Right now.

Ursa didn't know what striking such a blow against the spirits would mean. Kyoshi could just reform her essence once she disappeared like the others, wouldn't she? Would the spirits she had called off go on the offensive once they saw their leader fall? Was Kyoshi intentionally trying to make Ursa make such a move?

She took a deep breath. It didn't matter; Kyoshi out of the way for at least a period of time would mean the spirits' most powerful player was eliminated. The spirits couldn't last forever and they would be able to regroup when their numbers stemmed, and that was if they even chose to attack. Perhaps they would scatter and regroup themselves, affording them all even more time. Regardless, the choice was clear.

Straightening her back and not taking her eyes from Kyoshi's, Ursa pulled back her aching, throbbing arm, marveling yet again at how circumstances had transpired to allow her to defeat such an opponent. Kyoshi didn't have an ounce of trepidation on her bloody and paint-smeared face, rather, she was looking up rather challengingly.

Fine, then.

With a sharp movement, Ursa pulled back her arm.

"STOP!"

The scream was loud enough to resonate powerfully over the battlefield and strike Ursa's ears with enough force to actually give her action pause. Without thinking, she turned towards where the noise had come from, fully expecting it to be reinforcements from Kyoshi, even though the scream had been much more desperate than forceful.

Standing at the edge of the inside of the perimeter were three women; the one on the right gave Ursa a surge of relief when she saw that it was a very exhausted, but very alive Mai. The woman on the left however caused a fist to clench around her gut.

Katara?

It was almost paralyzing to try and fathom what she was doing there, and even more so, how she was there at all. Ursa likely would have taken the time to try and decipher such a mystery had her attention not been drawn towards the woman in between Katara and Mai who had clearly been the one who had screamed.

She was fierce looking but very pretty; her attire was that of several Fire Nation eras back, not since worn well before the days of Azulon, if Ursa's memory for her nation's history served her accurately. Black hair flowed down her back and her face was pale, and her appearance exhausted. Rather, it looked like she was quite unsteady on her feet, but the intensity on her face and in her eyes was unmistakable and clearly what was driving her. Her eyes were locked piercingly on Ursa, desperation seeping from them.

"Please," the woman said in much more wavering tone, though Ursa could hear the usual steel the woman must have possessed beneath it. Clearly, what Ursa had been about to do had shaken her far more than anyone.

"Please, don't," she further pleaded and Ursa looked at her in silence. She was near to asking why in the world she ought to when she happened to look down at Kyoshi. Nothing should have been enough to surprise her at that point, but just then, she felt her mouth go just slightly agape in relative disbelief.

Tears were shimmering in the Avatar's eyes as she looked at the woman who had just prevented her execution from being carried out and Ursa found she couldn't much react other then stare as the woman waited a moment longer to see if Ursa would listen to her plea before rushing to Kyoshi. The Avatar just had time to stand before the woman wrapped her arms tightly around her in a viciously tight hug. Though her face lit up in pain at the sensation of having her body squeezed, Kyoshi's face was quickly overtaken by emotion as she hugged the woman back. Ursa knew she wasn't alone in staring on in shock.

"You idiot," the woman muttered, pulling away from Kyoshi after a moment. "You complete fucking ass, Kyoshi."

If hearing someone speak to the tall, imposing Avatar in such a way wasn't stunning enough, the faintly cowed expression on Kyoshi's face certainly would have been enough to floor Ursa all the more.

"I couldn't lose you," she whispered, an instant before the woman slapped her across the cheek. There were tears in her eyes as she glared at Kyoshi.

"I'm not worth all this!" she yelled. "I was never worth all this!"

"What you're worth to me has never been your decision to make," Kyoshi replied quietly, and the woman let out a bark of a laugh.

"Oh, that's rich," she said bitingly, and crossed her arms. "How many people have died because of what you agreed to?! How much chaos has been sown into this world that we once did everything in our power to make a better place, because of what you agreed to?!"

"What do you want, Rangi?" Kyoshi asked, and there was a curious touch of desperation in her voice. "What should I have done?"

"You should have let my ass die!" the woman named Rangi barked back. "I oughta fucking…"

Seeming to find that whatever she ought to do wasn't enough to say aloud, she turned away, running her fingers through her mess of dark hair.

"You've got a lot of fixing to do," she said quietly after a moment, and Kyoshi nodded.

"I know."

Rangi half-turned back to her, her arms still crossed.

"But how about first we go smoke that son of a bitch? Then I'll get back to being pissed at you."

Kyoshi stared somewhat blankly back at Rangi for a long moment before the smallest of smiles touched the edges of her mouth.

Ursa couldn't believe what she was seeing. She was trying to process it but didn't feel she was having a great deal of success. All around the two women who were talking like they were the only two people in the world, hundreds of beings looked on, from spirits to men and women, not a one daring to say a word.

This woman, this Rangi… she was the reason Kyoshi led this invasion? Is she talking about Madara?

There came the smallest twinge of hope in Ursa's stomach then.

Could that be… if Rangi was the power he held over her—

That was as far as her process got before something struck the ground with enough force to create a thudding boom and kick up a shockwave powerful enough to send Ursa's hair whipping behind her. Turning towards where the thing had hit which was a distance between herself and Aang, Zuko, Azula and the others, she put an arm over her face to shield it from the veritable wall of dust that had been kicked up.

What now?

She gripped the sword she still held tightly and once the dust had stopped rushing at her, she took her free arm down and put it also on the grip of the sword, ready for anything.

Or, so she thought, until she saw what had landed just a half dozen meters from her.

Nothing could have made her ready to lay eyes on such a sight.

Battered, bruised, and bloody, Sasuke dragged himself from the crater that his impact had created, crawling over the ground with just his arms to pull him forward. He was rasping for air, his breathing coming in audibly and with sounding like it was causing him agony just to expand and compress his lungs. His clothes were ripped, blood caking his hair and smearing his face. He looked even more than Kyoshi did.

Ursa felt her blood freeze as she set eyes on him. Her hands started to shake, and her lower lip began to quiver as she heard Soza scream, but the sound was muffled as her head swam. Sasuke's daughter sprinted from where she was and collapsed at his side, tears immediately bursting from her eyes as she reached for her father gingerly, but clearly couldn't decide if even touching him might bring more harm to him. She instead was forced to remain there on her knees, practically bawling as Sasuke almost didn't seem to notice her, so out of it he seemed.

Toph, Aang, Azula, Sokka, Yue, Ty Lee, Mai, Katara, Suki, Zuko, and Jin all looked completely and utterly dumbfounded. It was the first time Ursa had ever seen the group's faces all entirely in sync with one another. Not a single one of them seemed to be even able to process what they were seeing, and not a one of them so much as moved. That was as much as Ursa was able to take in before her vision blurred with tears as well and she felt her legs start to carry her desperately forward.

It was the most awful thing to see him like that. Someone so powerful, so invincible physically; Ursa knew he was anything but that in his head, but to see his body reflect the torment that she had known spiral constantly and eternally in his head, it was too much for her to bear. She needed to hold him, to whisper sweet nothings to him, tell him it was alright and that he could rest; she was with him now, and everything was okay. No matter how many lies she had to tell, Ursa couldn't bear to see him on the ground before them all, so completely destroyed. It was breaking her heart and shattering her with fear as to what it could mean.

She made it only a few steps before the rich, rumbling voice rang out behind her.

"Well, well… it seems our longwinded game has finally come to an end."

Though she knew who it must be and though she knew she had every reason to be frightened, Ursa continued to pace to Sasuke until she was standing between him and the person who had just spoken. Only then did she slowly turn and look upwards.

Hovering in the sky just above them, the spirits in the air all flocking far from him to give him a wide berth, she set sight on a man with a long mane of black hair, with damning grey eyes, and coated in maroon armor. She didn't need him to say his name to know exactly who it was.

Madara Uchiha spread his arms and looked down at them all like a child looking down upon an anthill, foot raised to smear it from the earth.

"I think it's about time we finished this."