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Chapter Two: The Fire Within
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Zuko's mind was trained for a lot of things. Combat. Fear suppression. Quick decision. Strength. One thing he never accounted being trained for was the questioning of his honor by what drove his very soul: the capture of the avatar.
The blue mask hid Zuko's face, but it was frozen like the stones of airbending temples.
At that moment, Aang felt like someone was watching him and turned around from Katara's kind words. But the blue spirit did something he never thought he would, he ran as fast as he could from his destiny. Zuko felt like something was chasing him away from Aang, having no clue what it was, he continued sprinting across rooftops.
Shingled bricks made tiny clinking sounds as he ran, eventually he reached a balcony he had to cross to approach the districts letting him return to Iroh's apartment in the outer ring. A woman sweeping her porch down below on the street gasped as she saw him do a front flip off a porch onto another rooftop.
It was if Zuko was escaping the largest tidal wave of his life, and he had to carry himself to the only safe place he knew, which was his uncle's homestead. He ignored the system's noticing of his efforts to run away as fast as he could.
Chi Points: 321/650
When Zuko finally reached his uncle's apartment, he stumbled into its bathroom through its window from the rooftop above. Throwing off his blue mask, Zuko placed his hands on either edge of the bowl in front of the mirror Iroh had in his bathroom holding clean water.
Sweat began to drip loudly off his face into the bowl below as he panted.
Plip. Plip. Plip.
His eyes grew wide. His pants grew louder as his heart beat faster. It took sheer willpower to not collapse into the bowl he hovered over. Unknowingly, he was bending fire with his own breath. With every inward breath, Zuko made every flame nearby, including the candles lighting the bathroom, shrink in size. With every outward breath, they expanded quickly.
Similar to how he bent fire out of anger on his first date with Jin, Zuko's emotions overran his senses and was unable to control his chi's influence over his inherited element of fire. This time, there wasn't one emotion but several. Confusion, curiosity, fear, and most of all: shock.
Questions acted as miniature flames that all blazed into a wildfire in his mind.
'The Avatar is here!? Is Azula tracking him!? Does the Dai Li know too? Should I capture him? Or do nothing? What in the world do I do!?'
Iroh's eyes flew open when he noticed the flame giving him a light to read by his bed was growing and shrinking: knowing what it meant. He ran as fast as his old legs could carry him to his bathroom to find Zuko on the verge of passing out.
Zuko stumbled a bit in front of a speechless Iroh before falling on him, "The...the..." He blacked out while leaning on his uncle.
Every flame close to Iroh's apartment, candle, a fire for a stew, every single one fell much weaker when Zuko passed out, before returning to their normal status.
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Jin was mostly surprised to see that Iroh had placed a 'Closed' sign in the window of his tea shop the following morning. She walked through the bustling streets of Ba Sing Se's outer ring to her boyfriend's apartment.
Hearing a knock at the door, Iroh held the doorknob lightly, "Who is it?"
"Uh...it's Jin?...Are you Li's uncle?" Jin asked on the other side of the door.
Iroh opened the door and waved her inside. As he prepared some tea for the girl, she looked at him blankly as she stood, "Er...sorry, my name's Jin. We've never been introduced."
"Iro...Yren." Iroh corrected himself, as he used some jade spark setters instead of his firebending to light the stove for the tea pot.
"Oh...why is the tea shop closed?" Jin asked.
"Zu..." Iroh cleared his throat, "Li is not feeling very well."
"He's not?" asked Jin in rapid attention, "W-What happened?"
"He...he came home very tired." sighed Iroh as he stirred some tea.
Jin sat down on a comfort Iroh had in a circle of pillows around a Pai Sho game he'd started against himself on a table, "Is he all right?"
"He's exhausted. He's been sweating very much for the past few hours, so I must pour water into his mouth to help him." Iroh sipped some of the tea as the tea pot whistled and nodded, satisfied.
"How did he get so tired?"
"I have not been able to ask him." Iroh sat down and placed two cups on the table between him and Jin, "He's been asleep since he arrived last night."
Jin took the tea Iroh poured for her, "C...Can I see him?" She looked up from her cup.
Iroh shook his head, "Sorry. Not today."
"I really want to see him."
The Dragon of the West sat up from his pillow, "I would imagine so. But I still cannot let you see him."
As Iroh picked up a bowl of water and walked towards Zuko's bedroom, Jin spoke out, "Li tells me a lot about how wise and kind you are...how could you not let me see him?"
"Reasons that are for your own good. And his I believe." Iroh opened the door to Zuko's bedroom and sighed when it was a tiny bit open. Looking at her over his shoulder, Iroh spoke, "I am very happy he has found someone like you. But Zuk...Li. Is different than you or I. He processes his emotions differently than anyone. I would like to tell you more, but I cannot."
"Why?"
"Maybe one day...when he knows you well enough, he may tell you." Iroh was about to go into Zuko's room but Jin spoke again.
"What if I beat you in Pai Sho, can I see him then?" suggested Jin.
Iroh chuckled quietly and closed the door lightly behind him.
Considering the massive age difference between them, Jin decided that it would be fruitless to challenge him like Iroh implied, and so she finished her tea, and walked home somewhat sadly from Iroh's apartment.
His nephew was laying on his back on the bed Iroh had bought for him in his room. Iroh opened Zuko's mouth and poured the water in gently. After he closed it, he changed the towel that was over Zuko's forehead and the boy coughed himself awake.
"Ah...finally..." Iroh sat cross-legged next to his nephew who laid out on his bed in a sweat.
"Where's Jin?" Zuko asked in a voice raspier than a man's who walked through a desert.
Iroh nodded, "She was just here."
"You don't want her learning who we are right?"
"I assumed your story could include the Avatar, or something like that yes. I also believe she may harm you if you get too...intimate."
Zuko tried to reach out and grab the bowl of water next to his bed but his fingers were too weak to get it. Iroh understood and poured it into his nephew's parched mouth. Iroh then sat back on his heels silently as Zuko watched him with unamused eyes for a moment.
He blinked tiredly, "You want to know what happened last night?"
"That would be kind." Iroh smiled.
"If I tell you, can you tell me what's happening to me?" asked Zuko.
Iroh then nodded.
Zuko blinked slowly again, "I went into the inner ring...and...I saw the Avatar in a house the city must've given him...and..."
"You ran."
"H-How'd you know?" said Zuko weakly.
"Because you would've ambushed them and stolen the Avatar if you had not. And he is not in my apartment." surmised Iroh.
"Right as always uncle." murmured Zuko raspier than ever, "And I did run from him. I don't know why, but I did before he could even see me...But I ran hours ago, why am I still so tired?"
Iroh explained, "You are currently in conflict with yourself. Running away from the Avatar was so sudden a change for you that the part of you that still needs to capture him has rebelled. However, after your body has calmed and you have finished fighting yourself, whatever decision you take will be clear. And I shall respect it."
"Thank you uncle. But why did I run?"
"You changed too rapidly than I think you should have normally. I believe that the Earth Nation girl has you fallen for her, and so you have convinced yourself to leave behind your old life so quickly to adapt to your new one better," said Iroh, "The transition was too fast for your emotions to change to the speed they needed to."
Zuko coughed, "But...why do I feel so awful?"
"The conflict within yourself will be more draining than anything you could imagine. It will be the hardest fight of your life perhaps."
"C-Can I see Jin?"
"I suspect that she may cause shock similar to how the Avatar did to you. She represents a new life for you Zuko, and the Avatar the old one. The only person I believe you may see now is me."
"But don't you represent my old life?"
"No. Because whatever path you take, I will respect, and you know I will. Rest well Zuko." Iroh placed a hand on top of the towel absorbing Zuko's forehead sweat and Zuko fell back into his haze induce sleep.
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He dreamed that he was back inside the Fire Nation's Royal Palace. Not too far off from where he and his mother named turtle ducks, there was a room where him, Azula, Ty Lee, and Mai all played together as children, named eloquently as the pillow room. While it never existed and they never played there, Zuko imagined it aplenty, dreaming they were all small again.
They bounced around laughing and running about, and Zuko and Mai needed more than a little coaxing by Ty Lee to enjoy it. Azula loved it, with help from Ty Lee, she bounced high into the air and released the fluff from the pillow right into the air with her fingernails.
"Wheeeee!" Azula laughed as she set fluff everywhere.
Some pillow dust fell on Zuko's nose and Mai turned to him, "Here you got some-"
"Hey wait-" He tried to stop her.
"Awwww!" Ty Lee giggled as she walked around the bouncy pillow room in Zuko's mind on her hands, "Zuko's shy around his girlfriend!" Her foot reached out as it moved past his face and booped him on the nose.
"Of course he is." Azula smirked, opening more pillows with her nails, "Zuko can be the son of the Fire Lord himself, but he's still shy around little Mai..."
"You!... You all can't..." Zuko retreated to a corner of the pillow room and the girls kept playing together. Until the prince leaned back, he did not discover that he was inside his vacation playhouse on Ember Island, "Hey wait!" He banged on the door he fell out of after it slammed shut on its own, "Hey come on wait!"
Silence fell as Zuko stopped banging the door.
"Zuko!" A voice said in the house.
"Mom?" He shot around, looking, "Mom?"
Zuko began running around the house, before finding a small desk with a painting of him and his family on vacation in the Ember Isle. He paused, staring at it. Zuko picked it up and stared at it, rubbing the dust off it.
"Who am I?" Zuko said aloud as he held it and stared at the face's of his family for what seemed like hours.
Zuko remembered his father was Ozai, the Fire Lord, who would never accept that he was with an Earth Nation peasant. The thought alone of him keeping them apart set the picture of the Royal Family aflame in his hands.
"No...wait!...I didn't want that!" Zuko tried to stamp out the flame with his foot but the fire remained. He tried bending it off the picture and quenching it, but it was the only fire in his life that did as it pleased.
Soon, the fire had spread to the beach house's wooden structure and it was burning down with Zuko inside it. None of the flames responded to his bending, and they kept spreading. He was saved when the planks in the beach house's living room burst under Zuko's weight and he fell.
When he landed he was back in the fire lit courtyard where he kissed Jin. Looking around it, he noticed that the blue spirit himself was staring right at him, sitting on the corner of a rooftop aptly.
"Are...are you me?" Zuko asked.
The spirit didn't respond, and Zuko then woke up from his dream.
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Zuko's eyes opened from the sunlight pouring into his room, and Jin gasped, "Li!"
He smiled, "H-hey Jin."
"Should I get your uncle?" She started for the door but Zuko croaked out in his raspy voice.
"No, he doesn't want me to see you when I'm awake."
"Why is that?" Jin wondered as she took her hand off the doorknob.
Zuko blinked as Jin sat down close to him, "I dunno, he's old. Probably thinks we might...do stuff that I'm too tired for."
"Mmm like what?"
"Like hugging, what else?" Zuko looked at his girlfriend.
"Hugging?" Jin had to cover her mouth to stifle her laughter, so as to not alert Iroh that Zuko had awoken, "Huh, I guess you do know some pretty good jokes."
"Thanks." Zuko said in his now even raspier voice.
Jin rested her head on his stomach, and Zuko didn't really mind and she asked him a question, "Hey Li...can you tell me what happened last night?" She tried to look behind her head.
"No, sorry Jin."
"Mm...it's all right." She snuggled closer to him and laid on top of him.
It felt nice to Zuko...almost...warm. Not the biting and stinging warmth of a flame, but similar to a softer and kinder warmth of a blanket. This only continued as he brushed her long brown hair with his fingers.
[Congratulations! You have unlocked |Snuggling| with your girlfriend Jin! To read more on |Romantic Game| mechanics, select your menu's info option.]
Zuko waved the game notification away as it was seriously getting on his nerves, but then looked to the blue box over her head.
[Jin- Level 0, Nonbender]
She turned on his body so that her chest was more parallel with his. He started to feel warmer by the minute. Her breasts were the largest of any girl he knew, excluding the plucky chi blocker Ty Lee, and they squished outwards against his chest.
The warmth he felt went from nice to burning quickly because of the moment, and Jin gasped and stood off him when she heard him gasp and groan in pain.
"L-Li?"
Iroh burst into the room when he heard Zuko's cries of pain, "I told you to tell me when he would awake!" He snapped at Jin, angry over the pain she caused his nephew.
"I-I-" she stuttered.
He brushed past her and knelt to his nephew, "Where does it hurt?"
"E-everywhere!" Zuko winced.
"What the..." Jin watched as the fringes of the blanket over Zuko singed, and the candle next to his bed flickered and expanded, becoming attuned to his breathing once more.
"You need to leave! Now!" Iroh actually snapped to keep their identity a secret and to ensure Zuko's health.
After she flew out the door, Zuko asked his uncle another question, "Why...why did you let her in?"
"I told her to tell me when you woke up. She's a kind girl, it would be cruel to her still." Iroh sighed as he quenched the tiny flames Zuko released with his bending, "Your body is under extreme stress, the part of you that wishes to stay with her has grown stronger, but in retaliation, your other self has attacked and resumed the battle."
"Why...why am I bending?"
"You are not exactly bending." Iroh poured more water into Zuko's mouth before the boy coughed, "Your body is under such intense conflict with itself that it is releasing energy in the only way it knows how, which is fire. Aside from the sweat..." He changed the towel on Zuko's forehead for another one, "I am afraid that I must keep watch as this continues, or we will bring great harm to our neighbors."
Zuko tried to ball his fists but they were simply too weak, "I need to get over this so I can see Jin again. Or keep an eye out for Azula, help you in the tea shop or-"
"Until you have recovered from this, you will not be able to even walk my nephew. Stay, rest, and you will recover much quicker if you ignore any outside influence."
"Ach..." Zuko wiped the unbearable amount of sweat from his forehead under his towel, "Why is my head so hot?"
"A well-developed part of any firebender is their muscles and breath. But for someone who draws a lot on their emotions to bend, the energy inside your mind is a very powerful source Zuko, if not your most powerful. Which is why your dreams and thoughts will be the most important factor in deciding the battle within yourself."
Zuko wanted to keep hearing his uncle's wisdom but the heat became too much again and he fainted into his dreams.
The first thing he noticed was that he was back in the courtyard again with the Blue Spirit. He repeated the question in his dream, "Are you me?"
He said nothing from behind his blue mask, the spirit only gave chase across the city, and Zuko, of course, followed him. "What do you want!?" yelled Zuko as he followed him across the shingled rooftops of Ba Sing Se. Again he said nothing, only giving chase to follow.
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