Lady Hina of Ring Island, Agriculture Minister, arrived slightly early for the Civil Council Meeting. This would be the third Fire Lord she'd served. Third time lucky, perhaps? An inexperienced and idealistic teenager on the throne was a situation with possibilities, if handled correctly. She was looking forward to this meeting.

Murasashi, the Industry Minister, and Nao of Propaganda, were already present. Murasashi nodded, his ever-present frown slightly deeper than usual. Nao was, as usual, smiling slightly. Constable Sung arrived, paused, then relaxed slightly as he saw the Fire Lord's place still empty. Looks like someone was nervous...

Kichi of Education and Mayumi of Health arrived together, talking in low voices.

Then Fire Lord Zuko arrived, trailed by a couple of guards who stopped at the door, as well as Kaito of Fisheries and Yoichi of the Treasury. They all stood and bowed, and he gave a much shallower return bow before everyone sat back down.

They all introduced themselves. Zuko looked at the empty spot at the end of the table, and frowned. "Who are we missing?" he asked.

"The Colonial Minister," said Murasashi. "She was touring the Colonies, but we haven't heard from her since she entered the southern Wulong Forest, and that area is rife with guerillas. You may need to appoint a new minister."

"You think she's dead, then?"

"I don't know, but quite possibly."

Zuko made a note.

Hina suppressed a frown. Did he not have a scribe? With Azula's banishments, quite possibly. They were going to have to fix that.

"Well, ah... we'll start with each of you telling me where we currently stand on your area of responsibility. Hina, I am especially concerned with the state of the food supply. I'll want extra details on both Fire Nation food production, and anything you have on the Colonies, so let's deal with that at the end. Murasashi, why don't you start?"

"Certainly, Fire Lord."

While Murasashi spoke, Hina listened with one ear and made notes for her own speech. Not that she didn't know the information, but presentation was important, and if the new Fire Lord wanted to know about the food supply, she intended to see that he knew about it. So long as his armies were fed and his people weren't rioting over the price of rice, Ozai couldn't have cared less about where that rice came from. Azulon had, but Azulon had been ten times the Fire Lord Ozai had ever been.

They went around the circle. Hina knew most of it already. Zuko was asking a lot of detailed questions. She started paying more attention when Nao asked how Zuko wanted him to spin the end of the war, the pull-out of troops, and the Avatar suddenly not being their enemy.

"How much do you know about the Air Nomads, and their destruction?" asked Zuko. "The real story, and not the official line."

Nao frowned. "After the terrible destruction of Typhoon Yangchen, Fire Lord Sozin launched an attack on the Air Fortresses to take out the Avatar during Sozin's Comet. The cost to the Fire Nation was significant, and Sozin seems to have missed the Avatar. We were not able to control the great strength of the Fires well enough to hit only combatants. Hence the death of a culture."

Zuko winced. "That's partly true," he said. "I'm going to have to get Aang to tell you about what the Air Nomads were actually like." He looked Nao in the eye. "I have been to the Air Nomad temples, and spent a great deal of time in the company of the only living Air Nomad. The Air Temples were homes and religious establishments, not fortresses. They may have been hard to get to, but they were not otherwise fortified or designed to resist attack in any way. The pattern of scorch marks and bodies suggested that the Air Nomads fought in their own defense, but like cornered animals or civilians scared for their lives, not a coordinated army. They were clearly taken by surprise."

Hina's gut clenched. She had known that the official line on the war with the Air Nomads was a gloss over a much uglier truth, but having that spelled out in detail by the Fire Lord was something that didn't happen in the middle of Civil Council meetings.

"The Avatar's immediate reaction to my trying to capture him was to run away, surrender because he thought I was a threat to a village, and then escape and run away again. It took him a long time to be able to fight in anything other than the most immediate defense of himself and others, and even at the end of the War he chose not to kill Ozai. He spared my life twice while I was still his enemy, and leaving me to die would have been the sane, simple thing to do. He tells me this is normal for Air Nomads."

"I can't tell people that, they won't believe it," said Nao.

"Then they'll end up hearing it from the Avatar, and everyone outside the Fire Nation," said Zuko. "And with my father's recent attempt to burn as much of the Earth Kingdom as physically possible, it won't be so unbelievable."

"I suppose," said Kichi slowly. "We aren't going to be able to control the information flow if the War is over, Nao. The end of the war, and a new Fire Lord who is well-known to have had... disagreements with his predecessor is as good a time to come clean as we're going to get." Kichi looked at Zuko. "But this is not going to go over well, Fire Lord."

"I know," said Zuko. "It took years for me to really accept it, even with the evidence everywhere I looked."

"What if we just quietly added it into changes to the school curriculum?" said Kichi. "The curriculum does change fairly frequently, and I'd imagine there are other changes you'd like to see as well."

"Yes," said Zuko. "I never went through the public school system, so I'm not sure of the exact details of what kids are learning. I know that the depiction of the death of the Air Nomads is wildly off, though, as is a lot of 'common knowledge' about the other nations. Aang gave me an earful."

"Aang is..."

"The Avatar. He spent a couple of days attending a Fire Nation school while wandering around the Fire Nation undercover, and he was quite upset about what the school was teaching."

Kichi shook her head. "Apart from that, what types of changes, in big-picture, are you thinking of?"

"Judging by what my tutors taught me, and by the assumptions of my crew on the Wani, I imagine history, civics, and geography need an overhaul. And the doctrine of fire being the superior element has got to go. Anyone who believes that has never fought a master of another element, or been healed by a waterbender."

"If I might make a suggestion, Fire Lord," said Murasashi. "If the Fire Nation is going to be building and inventing machinery and other things to sell to the other nations, we should really have a stronger emphasis on the sciences. If some of the time spent teaching things aimed at making good soldiers were routed towards creating good scientists and technicians, it would be really helpful..."

"Good idea," said Zuko.

Murasashi's perpetual frown actually vanished into a small smile.

"Why don't I write a proposal, and bring it back to you?" said Kichi.