Chapter Five: All Fired Up
The Fire Nation got hot in the dead of summer. Now that the war had ended, one of the country's prime exports—tourism—was back up and running, and dozens of resorts had popped up along the archipelago that reached out across the sea, grasping for the hand of the Earth Kingdom. Zuko and Aang had shed their coverings and were sweating bullets. It had been in Shu Jing Village that they had dropped off Toph and Sokka, who were off on their own adventure of equal importance. The plan that had been put together in the South Pole was reliant upon these two quests going smoothly. For the Fire Lord and the Avatar, they were headed to the Capital City of the Fire Nation, having been joined en route by a familiar face…
"The Fire Lord and the Avatar!" Iroh chuckled merrily. "It sounds like a children's storybook."
"Well, this is anything but," grumbled Aang, urging Appa to fly faster as the city came into view.
"I really appreciate you doing this for me again, Uncle," Zuko said. "I know you'd rather be back making tea in Ba Sing Se—"
"Nonsense, nephew! I'm always honored to help. Plus, being regent for a few days or weeks will give me plenty of time to pound out the details on my tea holiday!"
"You'll also probably have to do some actual business, you know," he warned.
Iroh nodded. "Of course. I know the Earth King quite well—we met at a party after the war. He's a fine man."
"Is there anyone on this planet you don't know?" mumbled Aang.
The former general stroked his beard. "Now that you mention it, there is one cabbage salesman I've run into quite often that never wants to talk to me. I haven't the faintest idea why, though."
The trio soon landed outside the Royal Palace, where Mai stood waiting. Zuko protested her being on her feet, but she was adamant she was alright and eventually he let up. Then came the meetings and the ceremonies, though the great show that was to be made of Zuko transferring the title and garb of Fire Lord to his uncle, ensuring that no one could mistake it for a coup d'état, would not come until the next day. Aang wasn't really paying attention, so his recollection of all the details were fuzzy. He'd seen it all before, anyways. The entire time, only one thing was on his mind: Katara. He couldn't get her out of his head, though it wasn't like he was really trying. Pangs of sadness, desire, and jealousy overcame him whenever he saw Zuko and Mai together, but all he could do was swallow the pain and keep from screaming at the top of his lungs. Finally, by nightfall, Aang and Zuko were in the latter's chambers, grabbing some of the Fire Lord's belongings to bring along.
"These will definitely be useful," the older man said, taking down his pair of swords from the wall and hooking the scabbard to his belt.
"Mhmm," responded Aang.
"I'll take along a warmer change of clothes too…"
"Mhmm."
"And a mask if we need to hide our identities…"
"Mhmm."
"Are you alright?"
"Mhmm."
"How many fingers am I holding up?"
"Mhmm."
"Aang, I have to tell you something… I'm in love with Suki."
"Mhmm."
Zuko grabbed his friend by the shoulders and shook him. "Back to reality, Aang. You're spacing out."
"Huh? Oh, sorry. I was just thinking," the airbender said sheepishly.
"Thinking about what?"
"…"
"It's okay if you're not comfortable with sharing," the firebender added, turning to reexamine the bowels of his closet.
"…"
"…"
"…I was just thinking about the last time we were here, at the Royal Palace. That was the last time I saw Katara. The last 'date' we went on."
Zuko frowned and put his arm on the Avatar's shoulder. "Aang, don't worry. We're going to get her back, safe and sound."
"For their sake, I hope she's safe and sound."
He eyed the boy with the arrow tattoos. "I don't like it when you talk like that."
Aang just shrugged.
/ / | \ \
The Fire Lord rose with the sun the next morning. The ceremony was at noon, but Zuko had six days' worth of work to get done in the six hours before then. He was careful not to wake his wife as he slunk off to bathe and get dressed, a process that would have taken half the time it did if he hadn't been so stubborn and refused all help from servants and waitstaff. Zuko took his breakfast at his desk, where he gobbled down a plate of scrambled eggs and assorted fruits, pausing only to pore over legal documents or pour down a sip of orange juice. There was a lot of paperwork that went into running a great and powerful nation, and even more when one was preparing to leave for a while. Most of the decrees he skimmed and signed, but the sheet of parchment at the bottom of the stack stopped him in his tracks. It was the request he'd lodged the instant he heard of Katara's kidnapping, calling for the armed forces to begin preparing a strike team—something that would be of use during the inevitable clash with the Southern Raiders. Zuko read it in full, defacing it with his signature once finished. He moved to put it on the outgoing stack of completed papers… but then stopped. He looked back down at it, read it once again, and then stowed it in the folds of his robes. Later, he thought.
Finished with his work, Zuko was swept up in the kerfuffle surrounding the Ceremony of Transition. Though an ancient tradition, Fire Lord Sozin had effectively forced the government to forget it ever existed in his successful attempts to consolidate power in the lead-up to the Hundred Year War. It wasn't until Zuko went digging around in the newly unsealed Royal Archives that the process of temporarily installing a regent while the Fire Lord was incapable of ruling saw the light of day. What made the ceremony dangerous enough to be wiped from the lawbooks was that, during the handing off of the crown, momentarily there was no Fire Lord. Sozin hadn't enjoyed that idea, and so he tried to do away with it forever. It made sense, then, that Zuko used it sparingly, having only ever called upon his Uncle Iroh to take the throne once in his reign, when the firebender had rejoined Team Avatar to find his mother. Afterward, seeing the sparkle of adventure in his eyes, Mai had made him promise he would only use it under extraordinary circumstances. The kidnapping of one of their closest friends, they had decided, fell under that classification. Hopefully, this would all be wrapped up within the week. Zuko had been stuck with National Tea Appreciation Day for four years now, and he didn't want to come back to an international pai sho tournament happening in the Throne Room.
The firebender maneuvered through his palace to the courtyard's entrance. Given the gravity of the situation, Zuko and Iroh had agreed to forego most of the ceremonial aspects of the process and instead simply transfer the headpiece of the Fire Lord from one man to the other. Already late, he swept past a helpful attendant and stepped out into the open, in between his uncle and his wife, while Aang leaned against a pillar further away. The head sage from Roku's new temple in the city addressed the crowd, which, though summoned at the last minute, was still impressive.
"What did I miss?" he whispered.
"Just the whole thing," Mai responded. "So, nothing important."
"Shoot!" Zuko hissed, smacking his forehead.
"Oh, it's not like you missed anything. This geezer has been talking about nothing for at least twenty minutes."
"...and so, it brings me great pleasure to welcome Fire Lord Zuko and the honorable General Iroh before you today!" the sage announced to thunderous applause.
The two men stepped forward, their best smiles plastered over their faces as they waved to the crowd.
"Repeat after me, please!" the sage ordered. "I, Zuko, son of Ozai…"
"I, Zuko, son of Ozai…" his father's name was mangled in his throat
"Do solemnly and sincerely…"
"Do solemnly and sincerely…"
"Renounce my powers as Fire Lord for a period indeterminate…"
"Renounce my powers as Fire Lord for a period indeterminate…"
"And transfer these powers to Iroh, son of Azulon, should he consent."
"And transfer these powers to Iroh, son of Azulon, should he consent."
"The headpiece, Sir Zuko," the sage demanded.
"Right," he mumbled, pulling it from his hair and setting it on an open palm. As the entire Fire Nation watched, he held the ornament out, waiting for Iroh to take it…
"FOR THE PHOENIX KING!"
The serious and quiet tone of the ceremony was shattered when a man in a black suit with a headwrap that resembled a sea raven came flying over the palace roof, his hands ablaze. Instantly, Zuko dropped the crown and leapt back to shield Mai as the berserker slammed into the ground where he had stood. The warrior shot a column of fire towards Iroh and the crowd, which the older man deflected. As the fire spiraled away harmlessly, several cloaked figures pushed their way to the front of the mob of onlookers, revealing themselves to be…
"The Southern Raiders," Zuko spat. "Iroh! Get Mai to safety! Aang and I can hold these traitors off!"
The old general nodded, dashing off to help the Queen. Meanwhile, much of the Fire Lord's Royal Guard ushered the panicked crowd away. Zuko silently cursed himself for letting the Kyoshi Warriors return home when he left for Yu Dao. He needed them now more than ever.
Aang immediately leapt into action, pulling from all four elements. A boulder hit one Raider in the shoulder, while a miniature tornado ripped across the courtyard, carrying another away. He attempted to bend the water in the reflection pools flanking the marble staircase leading up to the palace, but the liquid refused to budge. Out of evasive options, the Avatar hit the chest of an attacker with a red-hot palm, burning through the armor and searing his skin. Zuko winced as the Raider screamed, knowing full well how painful an experience that was.
"Go to the captain at the top of the stairs!" Iroh gruffly told Mai, turning back to help his nephew.
The Fire Lord, the Avatar, and the Dragon of the West were united in battle at last. Unfortunately, the rush of a new ally didn't last long, because just as Zuko thought the upper hand was within their grasp…
"Surrender now or the Queen will burn!" roared the guardsman at the top of the stairs. He held Mai, struggling, in a locked grip, one arm around her neck, and the other hand pressed against her swollen belly. Zuko's breath hitched as his world collapsed around him in a single moment. He howled for Iroh and Aang to stop, and they did. "Good boy…" the guard said, smirking under his helmet.
"This is just like the Dai Li all over again…" grumbled the Avatar as he reluctantly raised his hands over his head.
"So, the Royal Guard is not loyal to the Fire Lord?" Zuko remarked as the trio were forcibly shoved to their knees.
"We are loyal to the Phoenix King," drawled the Captain of the Royal Guard. "And we are loyal to those who support him."
"The enemy of my enemy is my friend. Sounds like some of that philosophy shit this old man won't stop spewing," chuckled one of the Raiders as he smacked Iroh upside the head.
"Bind the prisoners," the captain commanded, ignoring the blow.
Two figures, a Raider and a guardsman, stepped forward and positioned themselves behind the three squirming heroes. With the snap of their fingers, cords of lightning lashed out and wrapped around the prisoners' wrists and ankles. They didn't touch the skin, but hovered just above it, periodically nipping at the flesh with sharp, painful stings. Any sudden movement would surely lead to their violent electrocutions.
"What's your plan here? Depose Zuko, kill all of us, and then what? You're back at square one again," Aang surmised.
The captain laughed coldly. "Now, now, where would the fun in revealing our strategy early be? I know Iroh, pai sho master that he is, understands not revealing your hand."
"And to think I played that most special game with you!" roared the general. "With a traitor!"
"Oh, don't get your diaper in a twist, old man. The Avatar will now stand and follow me to the edge of the city. The firebenders will remain here, until I can return and deal with them," the captain said with a perverse smile.
Aang, his head hung in shame, was thrown to his feet and pushed up the steps. Just as he stumbled up the first marble slab, the minds of Zuko and Iroh seemed to meld together. In an unrehearsed but nevertheless concerted motion, they both grabbed at the rings of electricity surrounding their wrists. For any normal bender, this would have been the worst possible option, but the Fire Lord and the Dragon of the West were anything but normal. The electricity stayed caught in their fists as they focused, absorbing the lightning around their ankles as well. They let the intense energy flow through them, up their left arms, under their hearts, through their core, and out their raised right arms, striking like a viper in the direction of the Captain of the Royal Guard. Though normally chaotic, this lightning was disciplined, and it moved with startling accuracy, zapping the traitor with just enough power to send a shock through his nervous system and cause him to fall limp to the floor.
Then came the chaos. Aang, his wrists still bound behind his back, leaped around like a rabbit with wings, trying his best to bend using his feet. Mai, in no condition to be fighting, ran off as fast as she could into the depths of the palace. Sensing her safety, Zuko unleashed his full power side-by-side with Iroh, breathing a great plume of fire like that from the throat of a dragon. Some of the Raiders and guardsmen fled at this display, while others were too busy whimpering over their third-degree burns covering their limbs and torsos and faces to even try to run. In just a few minutes, the entire baker's dozen of traitors and raiders had been dealt with one way or the other.
"That was amazing," gasped Aang in awe, rubbing his wrists as Zuko bent the lightning bindings away.
"That was sloppy, and that was dangerous," the firebender protested. "If they'd killed me and Iroh… it could have meant full-blown civil war."
The general nodded, his hand on Zuko's shoulder. "Indeed, nephew, but the important thing is that we are all alive and well. You must go tend to your wife. Let Aang and I clean up."
"A-Alright, I'll—wait, what about the ceremony?"
Aang stepped forward. "I'll be your audience and your sage. There's no one better to witness such an important proceeding than the Avatar."
"I suppose…" Zuko hummed.
Iroh picked up the partially melted headpiece from the pavement. It wasn't severely damaged, but it had still not escaped the appetite of a fireball unscathed. From behind a pillar, the head sage and his colleagues appeared, taking over for Aang and coaching Iroh and Zuko through the rest of the ceremony, eventually ending in the old general attaching the headpiece. With credible witnesses, everything was in order, and Sir Zuko—a purely honorary title—raced to find Mai and probably a general. Who knew how deep the rot went in the foundations of the Fire Nation?
As the firebender ran, he heard a snippet of conversation between his uncle and the Avatar, one lone sentence that he couldn't afford to hear the answer to.
"Fire Lord Iroh?" asked Aang innocently. "I was wondering… would you teach me how to bend lightning?"
A/N: So... I should probably bring up the elephant in the room: the comics. I'm unsure of how they really fit in here. The current rule of thumb I'm running with is that things are canon until proven not. The Promise is definitely canon, the rest is still up in the air. I'm not exactly happy with a bunch of things that happened in the comics, most notably Zuko and Mai breaking up for... literally no reason. Their breakup happened in one panel over a very stupid thing they should have been able to work out (Zuko is the Fire Lord, obviously there are going to be secrets he can't share!). So, in my own headcanon, that wasn't really a permanent thing, and they got back together a little ways down the road, like they always do.
The other thing is the New Ozai Society and the events surrounding it. I'm not going to bring it into this story in any notable way, but rather I'm considering it to be one of many secret societies and groups that popped up around the Fire Nation following Zuko's coup. The fall of the Fire Nation in Avatar happened in such a manner that there's going to be a lot of organizations of that type, considering that a cult of personality and deification of the Fire Lord as extreme as Imperial Japan's worshipping of the Emperor before and during World War II reigned supreme in the Fire Nation for a century, before being violently toppled by a banished outsider working with people who spent the last hundred years hoping to obliterate their homeland. This isn't a recipe for disaster—this is a recipe for catastrophe.
Also, the review tab is being buggy for me, so sorry if you've asked me any questions that have gone unanswered! I'll try to get to them as soon as stops being broken for the billionth time.