Chapter Nine: There Sure Are a Lot of Kuzons

Aang slumped over the edge of the palace balcony. Down below, Appa was munching on a hay pile. Momo and Hawky were perched on opposite horns, hissing at each other. Flopsie had jumped in the hay and hadn't come up for air, but Appa would eventually eat his way down to the gorilla-goat. Aang really, really wanted to go play with them. Or grab Bumi and go for another ride on the mail chutes. Or grab Katara and practice some waterbending in the palace fountains. Or interrupt Sokka's sword training with the King's Guard via a whole tray of pies to the face. Or something.

Something that wasn't slumping against a stone balcony, trying to ignore the fact that Omashu had giant walls and a giant-er chasm separating it from the world because one-fourth of the world wanted to burn it to the ground. (Or was it one-third of the world, now? Could Aang count as a whole nation on his own?)

Ugh, the Fire Nation had really gone downhill. But he couldn't let them all die. Probably. No, definitely! Bumi had even said these were just new recruits, they probably didn't even want to be here! If he could just talk to them— (without getting fireballed) (or captured) (or running into Zuko, which would be both plus a village under duress)

People from different nations weren't even that different, he didn't know why no one understood that. If he hid his tattoos, no one would ever even guess he was an Air Nomad. Then all he needed to do was wear green, or blue. Or red.

Hawky landed on the balcony with a vindictive shriek and one less feather in her head-crest. Momo chittered below. Appa took another mouthful of hay, paused, and spit out a gorilla-goat. A mail cart clattered by overhead.

Aang looked at the mail cart. Looked at Hawky.

Aang had an idea.

He did not run the idea past Sokka first. He wouldn't even be gone that long, honest!

Kuzon of Aomori had always known he had a common name. But it wasn't until he'd mandatorily volunteered to join the army that he'd realized how common. 'Kuzon' was the name every Sergeant shouted when they didn't have anyone more specific to pick on; 'Kuzon' was 'your parents took the first name the Fire Sages suggested'. 'Kuzon' was the Li of the Fire Nation.

So Kuzon of Aomori was lined up between Kuzon of Fukushima and Kuzon of Byakko for afternoon drills when they first saw Kuzon the Mailboy trudge into camp with two mailbags that probably collectively outweighed him. That Kuzon started immediately telling the officer that met his group that he was Definitely Kuzon, but didn't immediately add his hometown to his name. That was Kuzon of Aomori's first clue that the kid was a fake Kuzon. A Kuzon Impersonator.

That, and he looked exactly like the crown prince. Except…

"If he's the prince, then what happened to his face?" Fukushima whispered, his lips barely moving and his eyes forward. The Sergeant had called Atten-shin! and Atten-shin! they were standing in. "Who could even get that close to a prince?"

"Gotta be assassins," Byakko whispered, out of the corner of his mouth.

"It's a burn," Fukushima whispered back. "You think the Earth Kingdom has firebender assassins in their pocket? What, did they brainwash them? Or what, the Water Savages learned to walk on land, got past the royal guard, and took a torch to him?"

"You're missing a nation. One with a lot of firebenders," Aomori whispered, which wasn't quite treason. Whoever had done that to their prince, that was treason.

"You sure it's even him?"

Aomori watched a twelve-year-old in a teenie-tiny senior engineer's uniform walking in the middle of his mismatched entourage like he owned them, and leaving a trail of confused social interactions in his wake.

"Positive. One of my uncles is on the war council. Got us middle-row seats when the prince was officially crowned heir." That was when his uncle had handed him a stack of recruitment papers, pre-filled, and said sign here. "I mean, his hair's shorter, but the doctors would have shaved it after… that."

"Maybe one of the other noble families…" Byakko didn't finish that sentence. So it also wasn't treason.

"Yeah," Aomori said. "Yeah, the Fire Lord probably sent him away from court while he… deals with it. So now the prince is traveling incognito."

"As a Kuzon," Byakko said, and all assembled Kuzons took a moment to feel both pride and complete obscurity.

"But why would they send him to the front lines?" Aomori struggled not to fidget. The Serg was looking right at them.

"Come on, Aomori. It's just the front lines on paper," Fukushima stared somewhere over the glaring Serg's head and managed not to move his lips at all. "You think they'd really stick a whole division of fresh meat on the real front? Plus we've got the 82nd shadowing us. We're safe as turtleducklings in the palace pond."

A fact relevant to this conversation: mail service at the Fire Nation's front lines, outside of the order-carrying hawks, had a pretty reliable six-to-eight week delay. None of the assembled Kuzons had ever given much thought to this delay. Or its relevance to their current conversation. Or the letters that were about to be opened.

Also, Kuzon of Fukushima was poorly informed on the life expectancy of palace turtleducks under the reign of Fire Lord Ozai.

Zuko was definitely going to save these people. These people who didn't know that they needed saving, because no one here was acting like they were on a suicide mission. The recruits were goofing off, the Sergeants were yelling, the birds were singing and the sun was shining. Everything was normal, except that the 41st was camped in Omashu's territory and no ruler could ignore that for long.

What could he do? Maybe… maybe the commander just didn't know. (Didn't know what, that the division had been sent unprepared into enemy territory? The commander knew.) He could give them new orders— (Banished Princes didn't out rank anyone, no matter what he'd bluffed Commander Zhao into believing. But Zhao had never been the brightest flame.) He could give them new information, something that would make the commander feel he had a higher priority than existing orders (Like what? What could he possibly say?)

"Wait here," the soldier escorting them said, and their little group stood outside the command tent's flaps. Lieutenant Jee set down his mailbags, and then Crewman Teruko did. Zuko didn't set his down until after a brief stare-off with Engineer Hanako. They let theirs drop at exactly the same time.

(Zuko wished Uncle were here.) (But he knew Uncle didn't care, or he wouldn't have been alone in that war room. Uncle cared about him but he didn't care about the Fire Nation, that's why he was a Retired General and a Retired Crown Prince and was fat and lazy and sat around all day drinking tea and playing board games, just like Father said.)

Their escort came back. Zuko was out of time.

Colonel Akio was carving an eel-hound when the mail arrived, a week late. He gave himself a moment to finish the diamond pattern on its tail with a few steady swipes of his blade.

"Send them in," he said, gave himself the half-breath between when his man left the tent and when the mail carriers entered to close his eyes, and send curses and thanks to Agni in roughly equal measure.

The men and women under his command deserved their letters from home. Of course they did. He was just terrified of what those letters might carry. He praised Agni, but he prayed to postal censors. The children under his command did not need to know the fate the Fire Lord had ordered for them. Knowing didn't make it easier.

The tent flap opened again, and things got… irregular. In walked a naval lieutenant with no top knot (what was the story there?), the shortest senior engineer he'd ever seen, a crewman with her sergeant bars recently and conspicuously unstitched, and… another senior engineer? One that hadn't bothered to put on his good shirt this morning, judging by the oil spots.

Colonel Akio looked from uniform to the face. He dropped the eel-hound carving, and the knife, and himself. The hound's tail snapped under his knee as he kowtowed.

"My prince."

"I'm not Prince Zuko!" the burned prince protested, but even with flailing his arms he stood as straight as any noble. "I just… look like him! A lot. But I couldn't possibly be him because then you'd be legally obligated to arrest me. Have you thought about moving camp at all? Because if I was Prince Zuko than I might advise you that the west is, ah, really hospitable this time of year, and—"

Colonel Akio began to see how a twelve-year-old could get in so much trouble from one war meeting.

The camp was exactly where Bumi's maps said it would be. Aang circled high, so high he'd look like another bird in the clouds. Then he swooped down low about a mile from camp, and snapped his glider shut. He readjusted the bag of borrowed-for-authenticity mail on his back, and took a strip of jerky out of Sokka's snack bag (also borrowed).

Hawky landed on his shoulder, and disappeared the jerky so fast it was like a magic trick.

"Good Hawky," Aang said. "Now just… keep sitting there. There's another strip in it for you if you do."

Shriek.

"...Two strips? Three."

Mailbag: check. Messenger hawk: check. Reddest clothes he could find in Omashu: check. Confident and completely authentic Fire Nation strut: check and check. Operation Mailboy was a go. He wasn't even going to do anything dangerous, just look around a little! Ssesh, he didn't know why his Inner Sokka was shrieking as loud as a hawk.

Aang double-checked that his hat was on straight, then strutted straight into camp.

"Another mailboy?" one of the soldiers said. Which was as good an opening as any. Aang was up next to him quicker than he could say personal space violation.

"That's right! It's me, Kuzon the mailboy. I have brought your mail this fine day, hotman."

Another soldier muttered to himself about please tell me 'hotman' isn't in again, that's how my grandma talks when she's trying to be cool but mostly Aang ignored him in favor of luminescently smiling at his current target.

"Kuzon, huh?" the soldier smirked. "What a flamin' coinkydink."

(Please not you too, the mutterer muttered.)

"I'm Kuzon of Fukushima, the muttery guy is Kuzon of Byakko, and the guy who's just kind of staring is Kuzon of Aomori."

"There sure are a lot of Kuzons," Aang smiled.

"The other mail carriers are in the Colonel's tent," Kuzon of Fukushima said. "Come on, I'll show you the way."

...Other mail carriers? His Inner Sokka shrieked louder than twenty hawks. "That's okay, I can find it on my own."

Kuzon of Fukushima caught his shoulder as he turned to leave. "No problem, hotman. Wouldn't want you to get all flameo flamin' lost."

(Byakko dropped his head into his hands. Ugh please stop, you're doing it on purpose now.)

"Umm, that's really okay—" Aang protested. And was dragged off anyway.

Byakko peeked out from between his fingers, watching them go. "So whose incognito noble kid is he? And whose bright idea was it to call them both 'Kuzon'?"

Aomori kept staring after the boy. "That's what I'm trying to figure out. Looks almost like one of those chi blockers, but I thought they only had daughters that age."

"Well they are hiding him," Byakko pointed out, quite reasonably. "Think he's one of the prince's bodyguards? In training. ...They're both so tiny, who would even want to hurt kids like that? I hope the Fire Lord roasts 'em."

"Yeah." Aomori kept thinking he was missing something. It was the kind of feeling he should really listen to, but he'd been having it pretty much since the division had been deployed to Omashu, so he was getting a lot of practice tuning it out.

"—Oh, and you should get up now! Because I'm not the prince," the prince finally finished, as if he'd just noticed that kowtowing was not something a mailboy should expect from a colonel.

Akio straightened into seiza, but did not get back to his feet. He looked above the prince's head, to the Lieutenant he'd come in with. "Could you give the—the mailboy and I a moment in private? Perhaps you could begin mail call."

The man nodded, and ushered his people out. The prince fidgeted with a rolled-up shirt cuff just a bit too long for him.

"Mailboy Kuzon," Akio began. "As a member of the Fire Nation's postal infrastructure, I hope you can carry a message for me to Prince Zuko. Please convey to him heartfelt gratitude, on behalf of myself and the men and women of the 41st, for all he has sacrificed for us. Please send my wishes for his health, long life, and swift return to the capital. It is this officer's humble opinion that he will be the Fire Lord our nation needs. Please also convey to him my regrets that I will not be there to see it."

The boy startled. "But—"

It was inexcusably rude to interrupt a prince. But he had been commanded to ignore the royal status, and Colonel Akio followed commands. "Please make it clear to him that the 41st Division has its orders. We are, as he is, loyal sons and daughters of the Fire Lord."

The boy's face paled. The flames that had begun to gather around his hands were snuffed to smoke in an instant. He swallowed, and bowed.

A full ninety degrees. Too much for a prince to a colonel, but well within a simple mailboy's rights.

Prince Zuko left the command tent. Akio rose, and dusted his knees off, and did not smile at stiff shoulders and a retreating back. He picked up his carving, and settled down at his desk. A stack of paperwork was waiting for him. Colonel Akio really couldn't see himself getting in trouble for ignoring it.

Outside, there was a whumph of two bodies colliding.

"This is the least organized mail call I've ever seen," Byakko complained, because he wasn't as good at elbowing his way to the front as Aomori. The pseudo-mail-carriers had pretty much dumped their bags on the ground and let the soldiers have at it. Their Sergeant had taken one look at the spectacle, and gone for tea.

"Hey, I got yours too," Aomori said. "And Fukushima's. And… wait, we have a Kuzon of Aizu? What, is he too good to hang out with us?"

"Aizu? As in… Sergeant Aizu?"

The Kuzons exchanged a terrified look, and swiftly returned Aizu's mail to the pile. They took their own letters off to a quieter corner of camp. Aomori smiled down at his mom's perfect handwriting and little calligraphy flourishes.

(Wrong, something pinged again in the back of his head. Very very very—)

He glanced over at Byakko's letter, then back at his. Censor marks. There were none, zero, flamin' nada interrupting his mother's careful lines. That was… almost impossible. Last time, the censors had blacked out the price of cow-pig milk, for Agni's sake. The censors were a bunch of bored brush-pushers with a kilometer-long list of things the troops didn't need to know because it might hurt morale.

Aomori looked down at his mother's letter, where every single word must have been deliberately chosen to be as innocuous as possible, so that every single one of them would make it through.

Aomori started to sweat.

Dearest Kuzon,

We hope this letter finds you well. Everything is quiet at home. Your uncle finally retired…

Aomori only had one uncle. The one on the war council. The one who loved his job like fire loved dry boards and closely packed Earth Kingdom homes.

...He hopes you can visit soon. Perhaps at your next break, or your earliest convenience. But he understands you were hand-picked for your assignment, and he's sure you'll do our family proud…

Hand-picked. He'd been hand-picked to be here? His uncle would know, if anyone would. Somebody was trying to kill him. Because of his family. But that didn't make sense, he wasn't some scout off on his own all easy to accidentally disappear, he was part of a whole division—

A division on the front lines, when it really shouldn't be. And they hoped he could come home at his earliest convenience oh Agni they wanted him to desert.

...May a hundred blessings be upon you and a thousand upon Fire Lord Ozai and his glorious heiress,

Your loving mother and the whole of your family,

Ayu

Heiress. Oh Agni. The Fire Lord was cleaning up court. And somehow, whatever had happened with the prince was related to whatever was about to happen to his division, and Kuzon of Aomori really wished he'd paid more attention when his uncle had tried to teach him all the million ways a proper courtier could kill with a twist of words.

"That is the sweetest letter I've ever read," Byakko said, glancing over his shoulder. "You should hear my mom. It's just 'come home with a medal or not at all' and 'don't you think I didn't clean under your bed after you left and your little brothers could have found those mister' and—"

Kuzon of Aomori smiled and nodded and laughed in mostly the right places.

And wondered if there was more information in here, coded somehow, like a map to the traitor Jeong Jeong's location and how long it took to get there from Omashu, because he could really use more than just a 'get out, get out right now' letter, thanks mom—

And then the shouting started.

Zuko stepped out of the tent and directly into another boy carrying one of the Wani's messenger hawks.

"Fire Flake?" he asked, confused.

"Zuko!" the boy under Fire Flake yelled.

"Avatar!" Flames leapt to Zuko's fists. Fire Flake hopped to his shoulder, and started preening his hair. All of the messenger hawks had been really weird since his hair had started growing back, like they were confusing him for a fuzzy chick or—not the point. "Surrender. You can't escape."

Why was the Avatar in the middle of a Fire Nation camp? Did he have no survival instincts? ...They were gathering a crowd. Zuko flushed, and made sure to enunciate really loudly and clearly: "And I'm not Zuko."

"Hey, you're a prince, right?" the Avatar was in his personal space again, why was the Avatar in his personal space again, at least Fire Flake looked like she was about to peck him right back out—

"No I'm not!" Zuko shouted. "I am definitely not the prince!"

"And honor is really important to you and everything, and you wouldn't break your word?"

It was getting to be kind of a big crowd. "Yes, I definitely hear that honor and not breaking his word are very important to Prince Zuko who-I-am-not." Zuko narrowed his eyes and was very suspicious about where this was going, coming from a kid who broke his word every time they met. "I also heard he sent this bird to Sokka. Why did you have it?"

"Well we do travel together, but that's not the point! The point is—I challenge you! To a duel! Ah, an Agni Kai? But I'll use air instead of fire, because I haven't learned that yet. And if I win, you have to take all these troops and leave!"

The Avatar was beaming like he'd just solved all the world's problems. Zuko's eyes widened, because maybe the little airbrain just had. He could feel Colonel Akio standing behind him and the crowd was muttering and this was such a bad idea in so many ways but—

Zuko puffed out his chest, and tried to channel his inner Azula. "You, Avatar, dare challenge me, Zuko, son of Ursa and Fire Lord Ozai? Hahaha!" (It was a pretty good Azula laugh. Even the hawk looked a little uneasy.) "If you wish your doom to be so swift, then I accept. But when I win, Omashu surrenders."

"Fine!"

"Fine!"

"...But, ah, I'll have to check with Bumi first. It's his city."

"Fine!"

"Fine!"

The Avatar flew off. He circled the camp once, and shook a bag of… jerky? Fire Flake soared after him with a screech.

"I'll send her back with the answer, I promise, nice seeing you again!"

Bumi leaned forward on his throne. "So you want me to rest the fate of my city... on a pit fight between children."

Aang held his glider behind his back and shuffled his feet. Just a little "...Yes?"

"Are you sure I shouldn't just surrender?" The king tapped his chin, like he was actually thinking of that as a real thing he would do.

"...No?"

"Pit fight it is!" the king cackled. "I'll bring the pop-jennamite. Say, you haven't seen my Pai Sho Monthly, have you? It should have been in today's mail…"

"I've got to go write Zuko bye!" Aang hurried out of the throne room, a bag of Omashu's mail still borrowed-not-stolen on his back.

Fire Flake swooped down, and landed on Zuko's outstretched arm.

"The king agreed. The fight's tomorrow." He felt a little dizzy, like when he'd first caught the Avatar back at the South Pole, when you're banished suddenly had a clear end date.

The Colonel didn't speak until they were back in his tent. But at least he didn't kowtow, this time. "I can't retreat if you lose. We have our orders, my prince." And they both knew a banished prince couldn't change them.

Zuko swallowed, and leaned into the hawk's preening. "Then as your prince, I just need to win."

The Colonel gave him his own tent for the night, but everyone from the Wani piled in without even asking and set up their sleeping bags right around his and completely ignored his shouting, What was that, Mailboy, we didn't hear you. In the morning, Engineer Hanako let him borrow her good shirt for the fight.