The the throne room was, as custom, littered with the ever-present flames of its current, rightful occupant. Seated upon his throne in regal garb, the man looked down at his kneeling daughter. He could only confess to having loved, truly loved, two people in all his life for any significant stretch of time. His mother died when he was too young to recall her, while his father had been little more than a decaying obstacle to his ambition. One of his loves had betrayed him for The Disappointment as the man preferred to think of his so-called son.
Now all that remained was his daughter, loyal and without a blemish on her record. Talent without peer, cunning with few equals, an ambition to match his own, merciless to the meek.
It was in his quieter moments that he felt his nation, his burgeoning empire, had a prosperous future ahead of it. Once he deigned to pass on his title to her. Things must occur in their proper time. He eliminated his father for the stagnation that had infected his rule in old age, running counter to the ever growing nature of their element. But while his own reign might not be everlasting, it would be without equal in its splendor. His daughter would do well when the time came, a close second to him.
That's the best an extraordinary father such as himself could hope for in his offspring. And that was why The Disappointment was so irksome.
But that was for the time to come, there were pressing, urgent matters that needed attending in the present. Even he, the Fire Lord, could not be everywhere at once.
"Iroh is a traitor, and your brother Zuko is a failure. I have a task for you, Azula."
The smile she bore to him was magnificent, a promise to accomplish her task with ruthless efficiency and precision.
"Oh sure Azula, eliminate the most powerful bender on the planet. He's a child, as you know. Pay no heed to his ability to merge with quasi-omnipotent spirits to repel an entire Fire Nation invasion. Eliminate him as easily as you would some Earthbending thug!"
Azula was having a 'bitch fit' as Ty Lee would term it. And for the task, the fucking annoying task, her father had given her, none could blame her. Traveling across the country trying to capture or eliminate the Avatar was proving to be an enormous pain in the ass. Who'd have guessed? When it wasn't the Avatar's group being irritants it was her worthless brother and fool of for an uncle.
Sighing, Mai said, "Will you give it a rest already? You don't see us complaining and we didn't even need to be here."
Ty Lee snickered and said, "Mai, you complain any hour that Azula doesn't."
"The difference is I'm doing a her a favor, I have the right to complain about getting sweaty and dirty every other day, and not even the fun kind."
The three girls had decided to enter the tiny section of the Earth Kingdom their nation had managed to colonize. It had the benefit of both allowing them to rest and restock on supplies, as well as being only a day's journey from their new destination.
Azula's travels across the world, and interactions with the Avatar in particular, had made it clear that things could not go on as they were. The people of the world were worse off than she had realized. Not even just the century-long war. In different ways, even the Fire Nation was the same, it had become rotten. Everyone all looked the Avatar as the one upon whom all things rested. For the Water Tribe and the Earth Kingdom, it was for the assumed salvation the so-called Bridge Between Worlds would provide. For her homeland, it was fear for the single greatest threat to their dominion over all.
"Absurd," she muttered to herself, letting Ty Lee and Mai's back and forth fade from her attention. Yes, the Avatar was formidable and had to be accounted for, his defeat of their invasion at the north pole drove that home. No, the issue was the the tendency to let everything ride on a single gambit, to make problems to quickly swell into disasters. Zhao's invasion had been disastrous in terms of lives lost a sind resources wasted. Destroying the Moon spirit to remove Waterbending had been an idiotic plan given how chaotic the tidal effects would have been had it not been reversed. Not to mention how destructive it would have been to crops and creatures who needed the presence of the Moon as well.
No, they should have gathered their forces at strategic locations and waited for the Avatar to leave for the Earth Kingdom before striking. They'd have claimed the Water Tribe in a matter of days. Sheer numbers, technological superiority and rationality would have scored them a decisive victory.
But the addition of a single important variable - the Avatar - had driven everyone to rash decision-making. As much as her father laid the blame on Zhao's shortsightedness, Azula knew he greenlit the invasion. Zhao's historic blunder came as a result of her father's actions.
It was strange, really, as her uncle Iroh was the true threat. He was still beloved in the homeland, he had contacts everywhere - likely in foreign territory, Azula suspected - and he was a fully-realized master firebender with true military experience that was invaluable to their enemies should he aid them. But no one was even attempting to remove that threat, her father was willing to let him remain in self-exile, unaccounted for in spite of the dangers.
As the three reached the military base of the midsized colonial city, Azula knew them day ahead would, if their information proved truthful as the spirit said, be the turning point in history.
There had been a learned man at a seedy bar who spoke of an incredible library containing invaluable knowledge somewhere out in the Si Wong Desert. They hadn't convinced the man to help them find it, however Azula found willing Sandbenders who managed to locate it. Money is a universal language, just like violence. She couldn't recall how badly she injured the ones that tried to double cross her when she exited the buried library.
Azula unfurled the scroll from the spirit's library, a translation commissioned of an ancient scroll at some point in the past. A strangely helpful fox led her to it, as despite being 'all-knowing', the spirit owl had no discernable organizational system in place. The scroll read,
"The Thunder God, bearing the knowledge of an all-powerful art lost to man, sleeps in the catacombs beneath Xùn beyond the Wall of pure Earth. The spirits dictate only the spark of life can make him wake."
Azula smiled, knowing she could supply that spark, and quietly went to sleep with dreams of the changes to come.
"Are we there yet?" Azula asked their guide as they descended deeper and deeper into the subterranean network beneath Xùn City.
The earthbender they'd hired after disguising themselves as tourists from nearby colonized cities, smiled and said, "Hah, worry not. I know you're eager to see Xùn's Wall of the Forlorn, but it's just a few minutes out. I'm sure you can contain your excitement and fear a little longer. No harm can come to you with me present." He emphasized this with a kiss of his bicep and a completely unnecessary display of his Earthbending 'prowess'.
"Not sure I can contain my urge to shank this guy much longer," muttered Mai. She had a thing for kicking the ass of the "Muscle-y Overconfident Earthbender" type. Ty Lee seemed completely uncaring about it, content with walking on her hands as they descended a slight slope and curved around yet another seemingly pointless curved passage. But as they rounded the bend a startling obstacle came into view.
A massive metal wall stood within the cavern they walked into. It was hard to explain how big it was. Much larger than the immense walls protecting Ba Sing Se. They stretched into the darkness, the light of their torches not reaching the top.
"And hear it is, little ladies. The Wall of the Forlorn. Don't ask me why it's called that, all anyone knows is its been here longer than anyone knows," the man said.
"Does anyone know how to get passed it?" Azula asked innocently, using her good looks to her advantage. "Surely a bender as powerful and well connected as you might know a weak point, or even a rumor of how to open it?"
Blushing but still trying to be suave, the earthbender said, "Wellll, there is is a hole in the wall that looks like something might go inside it. But there's a hole I'd much rather talk about getting inside of-"
With his use at an end along with Azula's patience, she channeled a bit of lightning into his body, leaving him a twitching heap on the cold, stone ground.
"Fucking finally," Mai said in exasperation. "If you hadn't done it I would have. This guy is such a horn dog."
Pouting, Ty Lee said, "Aww, but I wanted to block his Chi. I need to keep in shape."
Ignoring them, Azula inspected the wall. Now able to use her firebending in in the open, released several orbs of azure fire into the air to see the metal wall more clearly. It was decorated with innumerable characters that resembled those in the modern language. Though their meaning was not clear the her, their positioning was of clear importance. At the center of the wall was what appeared to be the characters for Lightning. It was surrounded by a circle of tiny characters she could not make out. From the circle extended several more lines of characters which spread outwards to the edges of the wall.
But her attention fell upon the barely visible opening at the center of the character for lightning. The hole the bender mentioned seemed unremarkable, but she recalled the Fire Temple often had security measures for important rooms. So she did what the passage in the scroll dictated.
Assuming the proper stance, Azula brought her arms through the correct paces, swirling about her arms as she channeled her Chi appropriately. She could feel the awesome power of lightning coursing through her, only to be fired at the hole in the metal wall with as much as she could expel at once.
The effect was instantaneous. As the huge bolt of lightning hit, the wall lit up with a blinding flash. The characters lining the surface glowed with the light of the electricity Azula watched it awe as the characters began to swirl across its surface like a mystical whirlpool, seeping toward the center of the wall by some unknown force. As quick as it started, the movement stopped.
"...All that for a light show?" Mai commented.
Before Azula could angrily respond, there was a slight tremor as the metal wall began lifting up, allowing them to finally see inside.
Another, dimmer glow came into sight. It was a man seated in a meditative position. Well, nearly a man. He looked about the same age as the seventeen-year old Azula, maybe a little older. But aside from the glowing blue eyes, what stood out most was his spiky golden hair. Azula had never seen such hair color in all the world. His looks were pleasing and his bare chest showed his fitness, though the whisker like birthmarks gave off a somewhat animalistic vibe. One Azula found attractive.
As the man remained motionless, an intense pressure filled the cavern, as if the air had suddenly become oppressive and breathing was more labored. Azula walked up to him while her friends had remained where they were, whether entranced or afraid she didn't know. The closer she got, the greater the intensity became; it was clear the power the scroll mentioned was more than legend if she could already pick it up when he was doing nothing. Azula thumped the boy in the forehead and said, "You've slept long enough, oh 'divine' one. Now teach me to use the fearsome powers you're rumored to possess so that I might change this world."
His eyes stopped glowing, letting Azula see the bright blues that they were. He shook his head and looked at her with confusion. His attention waned for a moment as his look became vacant, before he suddenly snapped back into focus.
"What makes you think you can demand this from me? Why do you deserve power?"
With a confident look, she answered, "Because it's my duty as the princess of the Fire Nation to use any power I can win our war and put the world back in order. The ancient texts refer to you as a deity. And while I have my doubts about that, your looks suggest could at the very least be my… call boy."
The blonde man simply looked at her with a disinterested look which was soon replaced with one of indifference that did little to mask the despair he evidently felt. His gaze fell upon the ground. Azula felt it prudent to continue, saying, "You seek meaning, don't you?"
The man looked up at her again with a furrowed brow, so she elaborated. "I can give you purpose. It's plain as day you lost something important so you'd rather be left in here to waste away like filth. I can return the spark you lost along the way, and provide direction and goals for you to aim for. But the decision is yours."
She walked away from him, convinced by his surprised look that he would follow behind her out of interest if nothing else. The additional steps she heard following her and her friends caused yet another smile, an expression she knew would be more common on her face going forward.
(A/N): So I felt like doing a crossover with Naruto and ATLA. And Azula is awesome so I knew who I wanted to focus on. This basically starts sometime in season 2, before the Gaang enters Si Wong Desert. The first few chapters are already finished, but after chapter 2 I will release them as I get future chapters done. Chapter 2 will be up in a few days, depending on how this story is received. Hopefully you enjoy this (let me know any issues you have), please Favorite and Review!
Cover art by Amenoosa over on Deviant Art. Please check out their work!