AN: Started another story, for anyone interested; a "Zuko botched his escape during the eclipse and doesn't re-meet the Gaang again until post-comet (and these-are-not-their-happy-faces)" AU. If you've ever wanted a Season Four where Zuko is still the nominal baddie (but he's trying so hard), "Towards the Sun" is the story for you.

I now return you to your regularly scheduled dose of Little Zuko Making Great Life Choices (Don't-Tell-Uncle), already in progress.

Chapter 24: Yuyan v Endangered Species, Round Two

The supply wagon had two drivers. One of them was humming. The other looked like this had been a long, long drive.

"Run into trouble?" the guard asked, as he stopped them just outside of Pohuai Stronghold's gates. He walked around back, and stuck his torch in where he could start poking through their cargo.

"Worse," the tired driver said. "Earworms."

"You started it," the hummer briefly interrupted himself to say. Then he returned to the humming.

"I did not!"

"Right." A few bars of hummery interrupted the flow of the hummer's words. "Our mysterious and invisible stowaway was humming, not you." He didn't really need to pause for breath while humming; hums on the inhale, hums on the exhale. "If it's stuck in my head it's going to be stuck in yours, too." Humm. "It's called taking responsibility for your actions."

The tired driver slumped as far as the seat allowed. The guard walked a loop around the wagon, checked underneath for good measure, then gave their komodo-rhino a pat on the flank. "You're good to go in. What song is that, anyway?"

"Blue Spirit's theme," the tired driver said.

"I," humm, "knew you knew it! See, I didn't even know what it was called." The humming resumed, full force, and with just a dash of vindictive victory.

Catchy, the guard thought, and let them roll right in.

One Hour Ago

Zuko had been all over everywhere and stupid Sokka and his sister where nowhere, unless they were just really good at hiding, but he knew for a fact Katara wasn't that stealthy and he should have heard either Sokka's stomach or his mouth by now. He'd gone around the entire perimeter of Pohuai and he'd had to dive into a bramble-rose bush when a patrol had gone past, and he had a million little scratches on his arms under the dark sleeves of his shirt because he'd thought for five seconds that teamwork was the answer to his life problems. There wasn't any sign of the Water Tribe siblings.

He should have just done this alone. (How?)

He should have just stayed on his ship. (And left Aang with Zhao?) (No not Aang, the Avatar.)

Uggh, this was so stupid. He was going home. Zuko turned around.

...Home. That tiny awful insult-to-his-royal-status ship (that-his-dad-had-gifted-him-with-a-smile, but-only-after-Uncle-had-begged), he'd thought of it as home. Zuko turned again, and marched back towards the fortress. He just needed to get the Avatar and then he could go back to his real home.

Maybe he was just too early. He'd said "tonight" on his note, and it was technically still "tonight," though if they waited any longer it would be tomorrow because the Earth Kingdom measured time with weird sand clocks and called midnight the start of the new day. Not like the sensible Fire Nation, where sunrise was, and you could just ask any firebender the position of the sun. Did the Water Tribes do something different? Was this a cultural misunderstanding?

Maybe. Probably. He should check the perimeter again, just to be sure.

...Wait, was that the Avatar's lemur?

The lemur circled once, twice, and then landed on boy-who-smelled-like-hawks-and-fire's shoulder once he was sure there were neither hawks nor fire there.

"Do you have another message? ...Did Sokka run out of glue?"

Boy turned to him and—and the lemur leapt back into the air and screeched, because boy had face-of-wood!

"Sssh," boy-whose-face-was-like-tree-bark vocalized.

The lemur landed on his head, and leaned forward, and sniffed. Still hawks. Still fire. He rapped a paw against boy's face. ...Still wood. All proper animals had two parts, of course. He was lemur-bat, and had met lemur-birds and bird-bats and inferior bat-lemurs which were not to be confused with most excellently groomed and fit-for-mating lemur-bats. He had never met a lemur-tree, but it was not so hard to imagine a boy-tree when the proof was under his paw. The lemur was a very sensible animal, and not prone to judging the paternity of others. And really, this explained many things: why boy smelled like hawks (they perched in trees), why he smelled like fire (trees sometimes turned into fire, especially when there was lightning, which boy also smelled like), and why his hair was like moon-peach-fuzz, except longer and more tempting to groom. Maybe like trees, he would have many delicious bugs?

"Quit it!" boy-tree-who-smelled-excusably-like-hawks-and-sometimes-lit-on-fire growled, brushing at the lemur's paws. It was a very fearsome growl, but less fearsome now that the lemur knew he was part tree. Lemurs got eaten by many things, but trees were best-roosts-safe-home-food-pantries. He settled down and wrapped his tail around himself, and just like a tree in a storm, the boy made many scary noises but did not throw him off. "Fine, whatever. Ugh. Do you know where Sokka is or not?"

The lemur yawned. Then his ears perked, towards top-of-stone-cliff above them. The wind had shifted, and he smelled…

He smelled bad-thing-that-sticks-to-feet. With a chittering shriek that would have called down a mob of lemurs to attack this foe had any lived in this forest, he launched himself at this ancient-enemy-from-earlier-that-day.

The Yuyan did not have a set hand signal for Aaaaah there's a lemur attacking my glue pot aaaah!

Toriyama wouldn't have had time to make it, anyway. He was too busy trying to rescue his beautiful new arrows from the snares of lemur fur.

Fujita's fingers twitched towards his own arrows. With the way the critter was darting in and around his teammate's arms and legs and oh man, his clothes, it would be a really tough shot...

Ritsuko supervised, because someone had to.

Why does the lemur smell like ginseng? was another signal the Yuyan lacked.

Do you know where Sokka is, Zuko had asked, and then the lemur had launched itself into an angry blitz of fur over the walls of the Pohuai Stronghold.

Zuko wasn't too early. He was too late. This was what he got for trusting someone who glued arrows to lemurs to not get caught. He pulled back up his hood to cover his lemur-ruffled hair, took a moment to make sure all his screams where only on the inside, and went to case the road.

Sokka was going to owe him so much. Let-him-take-the-Avatar-without-a-fight levels of so much. Or at least, stop-his-sister-from-destroying-more-Fire-Nation-towns amounts of so much.

Present

The wagon rolled in. Zuko rolled off. He clung to the shadows until he found a sewer.

Ritsuko eased her head around a corner, watching silently as another unit of common soldiers stomped past, headed to the yards. Admiral Zhao had ordered all non-essential personnel to attend his victory speech.

The Yuyan weren't big on speeches, as a general rule. Ritsuko's wasn't the only squad surreptiously ducking the ceremony, which would make it easy to explain if their absence was noted.

Less easy to explain: the lemur glued to Toriyama's arm. It was kind of just… stuck there, it's back to his forearm, wings flapping erratically, hiss-chittering around the archery glove they'd shoved in its mouth.

This morning, her squad had been on the frontlines, helping to capture the Fire Nation's greatest threat. They had acted in perfect concert with their entire unit, a honed fighting force that had made the Avatar look exactly like the child he was. This morning, they had been destined for the history books. This evening... the lemur. Ritsuko and Fujita and Toriyama all knew with certainty which they'd be remembered for forever if anyone saw them now. They would be a sidebox in the history books, an amusing anecdote for Fire Nation's school children. So help her, she was not joining the likes of Kuzon of Bungee, and the triumphant victory over the Air Army's last stronghold and hey kids, if you're ever rappelling down on an upside-down enemy fortress, here's what not to do!

The soldiers turned a corner down the hall. Ritsuko signaled the all clear, and raced towards the next intersection. If they could just make it to the shower rooms, and maybe grab a pair of scissors on the way…

It was the most important stealth mission of their lives.

Water gurgled in the pipes under the shower room. Zuko slid past the grates above, his back pressed to the sewer wall, and kept going. Twenty feet further down he found another grate. A much darker, quieter one.

He pushed it open, and found himself in the kitchen. It was weird finding a kitchen empty. On the Wani, Cook or Assistant Cook Dekku were almost always there making something for the next shift. The same thing should be happening here too, right? Pohuai was big and had a ton of soldiers in it.

Pohuai also had Zhao, and Zuko was pretty sure he could hear him shouting something about glory and honor and this day shall be remembered for eternity from here. Ugh. He pulled himself out, and closed up the grate behind him, and felt a little bad for whatever shift was missing its dinner and/or breakfast to listen to—

He rolled under a table and went very still, and wondered if it was better to hold his breath and be extra quiet or take deep breaths in case he needed to bend.

The door had opened. A block of light shone over the floor. A Yuyan archer stepped in, her impassive eyes scanning the room slowly. She took a purposeful step inside.

Zuko held his breath.

Another step. Another. Straight towards his table and then she was there and— And she picked something up, and turned, and left. The door swung shut behind her.

Zuko took in big messy gasping breaths, the exact kind Uncle would have been disappointed in him for. He waited in the dark, watching the thin strip of light under the door, but he didn't see anyone else moving outside. Or hear anyone. Except Zhao's voice, distantly booming.

He could do this. He didn't need any stupid Water Tribe backup, Sokka's loud voice probably would have gotten them caught seven times by now. Zuko was fine on his own and he could definitely do this, even though he was suddenly thinking about what it would mean for a Banished Prince to get caught trying to free the Avatar, and everything Zhao would be legally allowed to do to him, and—and everything Father might do if he heard. Or might not stop from happening. But it was okay because he wasn't going to get caught, he never got caught, he could do this.

Once he stopped shaking long enough to get out from under this table, he could do this.

Got the scissors, Ritsuko signed. The signal for this was snipping the kitchen shears ominously.

Toriyama was sitting on a stool. His arm and the lemur were a cloud of angrily chittering bubbles. Fujita had a bucket of water and a soapy cloth, and was taking ridiculous care in trying to scrub them apart. It was times like this that Ritsuko remembered her trigger-happy teammate had a four-year-old daughter down in town who had taken the fact that daddy had tattoos as blanket permission to paint designs on her own face. With anything she could find while mommy's back was turned. There was probably a lot of delicate scrubbing during bathtimes at that house.

Ritsuko didn't have kids. She snipped the scissors again, and advanced.

It was really easy to tell where they were keeping the Avatar. It was the only room that still had guards. Big, scary, adult guards.

...Zuko could do this.

He just needed a distraction. If he could maybe lure them into a side hall one-by-one and… and attack from behind (yeah, because if it worked on the first one the others definitely wouldn't suspect anything) or maybe attack them while they were surprised by something (there were still four of them and one of him and it wasn't like Zhao would leave his weakest men here) or, or—

A bubbly lemur went shrieking past. Zuko only recognized it by the white bat wings and fact he'd known it was in the stronghold somewhere. To anyone else, it probably looked like a foamy spirit of ear-shattering vengeance, especially when it landed right on that guard's face—

Which was probably about as good of a distraction as the Blue Spirit was going to get.

Zuko drew his swords, and closed the distance as quickly and as quietly as he could.

Aang's arms had hurt for the first few hours. But now they were sort of going numb, so… that was an upside? And Zhao had left him torches, so he wasn't locked in the dark! And… and every once in a while he could hear the guards talking, so maybe he could learn about contemporary Fire Nation culture. Yeah. These chains and these guttering torches and this big empty room with suspicious stains on the floor (what had they used it for before him?), these were really helping him learn a lot about the modern Fire Nation. And its treatment of prisoners. And if he didn't find a way out really soon he was going to learn all about prison transport and prisons on the mainland and he'd probably get to meet the Fire Lord, too. Should he… say hi to him, for Zuko? Or would Zuko be there too? With no Avatar to hunt he'd probably just sail home and get back to being a prince. So… maybe they could have tea. And talk. In prison.

And maybe Katara and Sokka would get better all by themselves, and they'd ride Appa to his rescue, and Momo would unlock the cell door, and Zuko would learn the Power of Friendship and his dad would learn the Power of Not Being a Homicidal World-Conquering Megalomaniac and Iroh would serve tea at the peace conference and Aang wouldn't even have to fight (to kill) anyone to end this war because everyone really did have good inside of them, it had just gotten hard to remember that after Zuko's great-great-granddad had killed all the world's peaceful air monks and nuns down to the last uninitiated child, including the ones that were even younger than he was now.

One of the torches choked on its last bit of fuel, and went out.

"Yeah. I know how you feel," Aang said, and let his head drop.

He was kind of glad his shirt was full of wiggling half-defrosted frogs. It made it really hard to stay depressed when cold little feet kept poking into his ribs. It kind of made him giggly, actually. And it was just so weird and not-serious in the middle of all of this, that it made him wonder if he was actually just laying against Appa's side with a raging fever instead of locked up here. Maybe he would imagine that for awhile, instead of world peace. It was easier to picture.

He was in a very pleasant daydream where Katara was so worried about him that she was—she was saying things that made him blush, like I think I like you. Or she was just about to, when Momo screeched.

Momo screeched really loudly, and really close, and really for real.

Aang jerked his head up. Maybe that lemur-with-a-key daydream hadn't been that far off.

(Maybe the Katara one wouldn't be, either.)

The first guard didn't see Zuko coming because all of them were suddenly really focused on stopping a lemur from dissolving their friend's face with its oww it burns my eyes get it off get it off spirit bubbles. Zuko hooked a foot around his leg and pulled and then hit him in the head with the hilt of a sword as he went down, and really really hoped he'd judged the force right because it wasn't a move you could practice and there was a really fine line between unconsciousness and brain damage and these were his people, he didn't want to hurt them—

The second guard startled at the sound of armor hitting the floor, and looked down at the black-clad child spirit with the terrifyingly contorted face, and made sort of a strangled scream.

(Of course the World Spirit can summon other spirits to its aid, this particular guard thought, in the back corner of his brain where he was still coherent.) (The rest of his mind settled on Kill It With Fire.)

Zuko split the first wave of flames with his blades, and danced around the next, and told himself it's-not-dancing for the third. And even if it was dancing, it was dragon dancing, which was totally different. And apparently really effective in actual battle, wow, dragons definitely knew how to move with fire. This was actually… kind of (not easy, it wasn't easy, but… but freeing? Exciting? Alive). Even when the third guard gave up on helping his friend and joined in with the fireballing. Now if they would just stop being so tall so he could get in a headshot—

Whatever. Kneeshots then headshots.

That just left him with the last guard, who'd already sunk to his knees and was begging for him to please call it off.

Zuko reached out, and picked up the lemur by its scruff.

Thank you thank you merciful spirit, the guard gibbered, sinking into a full prostration. Which made Zuko feel really bad about knocking him out.

After a moment of thought, he used the unconscious guard's shirt to wipe the lemur off. It chittered, and raced up his arm to perch on his shoulder. Then it started twisting this way and that, trying to groom the bald spot on its back. The freshly shorn bald spot.

...Zuko was going to ignore that. He was going to ignore that like Uncle Iroh ignored his technical place in the line of succession. Instead, he patted down the guards' pockets until he found a keyring.

None of the Yuyan cringed, because cringing was not on the list of accepted Yuyan facial expressions. But it was a near thing, when from down the hall they could hear the very distinctive sounds of soldiers fighting against a Flying Bubble Spirit.

And losing. Apparently.

Toriyama finished toweling off his arm, clearly lamenting over the new hole in his sleeve. It was either that, or leave a patch of lemur fur glued where anyone could see. The evidence had been disposed of with much prejudice via Ritsuko's limited firebending. Their squad's reputation was secure.

And they'd unleashed a super endangered abomination upon Zhao's hand-picked soldiers.

...Should we help? Fujita asked, fingering his arrows with a rather indifferent air.

It's a lemur, how are they losing, Ritsuko attempted to sign, but mostly ended up making a series of highly frustrated and largely incoherent gestures that conveyed her meaning even better.

The hallway went alarmingly silent, except for an ominous string of irritated chittering. The Yuyan shared a single still-better-than-listening-to-Zhao's-speech look, and advanced with all due caution.

The Avatar hung from the ceiling by chains. The Avatar hung from the ceiling by chains, smiling, because of course he was. He looked a little confused for a second, and then he smiled even harder.

"Wow, is that you Zuko? Did you find the Power of Friendship?"

"What—? No. I'm capturing you. And I'm not Zuko! I'm the Blue Spirit, and the Blue Spirit doesn't talk!"

"Ooooh. Do I get a mask too?"

"No!"

Zuko made a point of ignoring the Avatar's other questions and not asking why frogs were jumping out of the monk's shirt. He just found the right keys and got the idiot down, and helped rub feeling back into his arms. The Avatar smiled sheepishly and happily and glad-to-see-him-ily.

"How are we going to get out?"

"We're not," the Blue Spirit said. "We need to find Sokka and Katara, first."

"Huh?" the airbender said, emphasizing the intelligence that had gotten him into this mess in the first place. Zuko growled and grabbed his hand and dragged him out into the hall.

The four soldiers were still unconscious.

The three Yuyan archers were not.

Down that hall, there was either a creepy child-sized spirit or a kid playing dress up in the middle of a secure fortress. He was kidnapping their kidnapped Avatar. While a lemur cleaned itself on his shoulder.

Fujita nocked an arrow, and drew. Should I shot it?

Toriyama and Ritsuko mirrored the motion. This was how the Yuyan took votes.

AN: Guesty replies!

spring, ch 23: Yay, glad to have you back! Hope your test went well! Zhao is a truly horrible person if you stop to think too hard about some of the things he almost did (horrible even if you don't think too hard, but truly horrible if you follow those plot threads). Show!Zuko deserves the Not As Big a Jerk As He Could Have Been award just for meddling so much in that guy's plans, even if he'd gone the whole rest of the series without a redemption arc (and now I kind of want to read a fic where Zuko stays evil until the end, really, how would that play out) (...probably like poor show!Azula and her lack of a redemption arc. And now I'm picturing Fire-Lord-By-Default Iroh regularly visiting his crazy nephew and niece in their padded rooms, and the sad look on his face is making me sad.) (Aaand putting that on my list of things to write after this story ends…) (Aaand now I just detoured from writing this chapter to write a version of that story three steps to the side of what I just described, this is all your fault, and for the record we are getting an insane asylum scene in Towards the Sun.) (Dammit now I'm nine chapters into that and I only just finished this chapter of Little Zuko. All the blame!) Ooo combustion bending, now there's an idea. *gets a plotty gleam in eye* I am tickled that you enjoyed Momo's POV so much. The secret to creative genius is watching your pets and thinking "how did running into that wall make sense in my cat's head." I am further tickled that A) you know Chinese sign language for "mind blown", and B) there exists Chinese sign language for "mind blown." Must. Learn.

Unnamed Guest, ch 23: Marathon reads are the bestest of compliments. Glad you're enjoying!

Unnamed Guest, ch 23: Squeeling is 115% the appropriate reaction to teenie-tiny rage-filled Fire Princes who are definitely not going to join up with Stupid Water Tribe Peasants, though maybe he'll travel in the same bison saddle because he happens to be going the same way. *Zuko huffs and crosses his arms and makes this distinction very clear*