Genre: Character Study

Rating: Gen

Summary: The Prince, when he was just thirteen, acquired the worst wound of his life and ended up in the care of one Lieutenant Jee. The Lieutenant in question is not happy about this.

Jee really doesn't like his new captain.

For one thing, he's a brat. Even since he'd gotten out of sickbay he's been ordering his crew to do stupid shit, complaining about the standard of living on the ship, and generally making a nuisance of himself. He seems incapable of pulling his weight in even the ways that the youngest, most inexperienced of his crew knows. He supposes that Prince Zuko is really younger and more inexperienced than any crew Jee has ever had. He supposes that Royals were too used to getting their way to adapt to being simple military personnel within a few months. He still finds himself struggling to control the temperature of his hands when Zuko turns to shout at him the tenth time that day.

"Shut up," he almost says, but doesn't. He doesn't say anything else either.

Thankfully he doesn't have to, because his captain dismisses him with a flaming wave of his hand and an angry yell. Perfectly in character, honestly. Along with the fact that he hadn't actually given him any orders, because Prince Zuko was, of course, completely ignorant of how a ship worked.

Behind Jee, one of his crew members - an older Mulan soldier who got caught back when Azulon still reigned - scoffs. "I don't think I've ever pitied my commanding officer before, but here we are."

"I'll court-martial you again for disrespect," he hissed. She just snickered.

Jee turns away from the scene and goes to consult with the engineer. He's too tired to try and wrangle his own commanding officer, and given that he's the highest ranking officer on board with any idea of how a ship works, the responsibility of keeping this rust bucket afloat falls to him. The Wani is old, old enough to have been used by the Prince's father on his own quest to find and hunt down the Avatar. He wonders if Ozai's lieutenant had to deal with the same problems. If you'd asked Jee before he'd gotten assigned to this mission, he'd have guessed no; the current Fire Lord had a reputation for listening to and understanding people who Azulon would have simply ignored, which had made him popular with a lot of the lesser nobility and some lower-ranking officers in both Army and Navy.

Now, though, with Ozai's son on board, Jee's starting to have doubts.

He shakes his head. Now's not the time for grand and unpatriotic musings on the state of the Royal Family. The smell of burning coal hits him as soon as he enters the engine room, making him crinkle his nose and attempt to hold back a sneeze. It doesn't work.

"Put on a mask, it'll help," a voice calls out from behind the machinery. "Hook by the door."

Gratefully he grabs the mask, drawing it over his mouth and nose with practiced ease. "How's the engine?"

The engine, it turns out, is fine. So is the rest of the ship. Barely. But what else is to be expected with an old rust bucket like this? Of course, Jee doesn't expect it to stay fine for very long; even if it doesn't fall apart on its own, he wouldn't put it past his new captain to mess something up, deliberately or not.

...this is gonna be a long couple of years.

Mulan soldiers is the name given to women who pretend to be men to enter the Fire Nation armed forces. They're pretty common; if they were spread out evenly, each squad would have two or three. However, when noticed, they were usually grouped with other Mulan soldiers to lower the chances of getting caught/outed by more conservative and less practical commanding officers, since the Fire Nation couldn't really afford to turn down capable soldiers just because of their gender, regardless of what the law said. (One of Ozai's first acts was repealing the ban on women in the armed forces, thus letting a lot of Mulan soldiers stop pretending.) Yes I took the name from the Disney movie. I have no idea if it's realistic or accurate to the original story but here it is.

I think this will be my last flash fiction specifically for the AtLA verse, and the last flash fiction I'll be posting on here. I'll keep going, but instead I'll do miscellaneous fandoms only on Ao3.