Author's Note: I have to admit I am a little disappointed that apparently no one went over to Distant Horizons and added a vote to the Best Fan-Fiction Author poll. I was really hoping some of you would check out the amazing authors who've been nominated (most of them by me) and put in your two cents. Ah well…I tried.
Anyway, I'm sorry to say that this update is going to have to hold everyone over until the end of next week because I'm leaving on a business trip tonight and won't be back until Wednesday.
So read, enjoy, (review!) and maybe take a moment to read some of the recommended stories in my favorites (or by the authors who've been nominated on the Distant Horizon Fan-Fiction forums…hint hint!) to get you by until I can post the last chapter.
And now…back to the 'show'!
Aang had less than a heartbeat to defend himself against Azula's attack, and it took only half that time to raise a barrier of earth to block the searing blast of flames. The force of the impact shook the stones, and Aang gritted his teeth as he struggled to hold the impromptu wall in place with his bending.
A whistling in the air was the only warning Iroh had of the daggers flying toward him from the ruined doorway, the sole way out of the room now that Aang had sealed the gaping hole in the side of the building. The old man dodged all but one of the blades, the last of which imbedded itself in the sleeve of his robe, pinning him to the opposite wall.
As Mai reached for another knife, Iroh ripped the sash from his waist with his free hand. In one fluid move, he pulled his arm from the captured sleeve and followed through with a roundhouse spin that left the robe dangling from the dagger. He finished the turn by releasing a powerful jet of flames toward Mai, the sudden attack forcing her to delay her throw as she jumped out of the path of the fire.
Meanwhile, Aang was grunting under the strain of keeping the wall together as it fractured under the barrage of Azula's assault. But try as he might, it eventually gave way with a deafening roar and an explosion of rocky debris, throwing the young Avatar across the room where he landed with a thud.
He barely had a chance to recover from the blow when a whirlwind of jabbing fingers came darting his way. Blocking two with speedy reflexes, he evaded the third, and Ty Lee's hand collided with the stone floor instead. Aang made his getaway while she danced and hopped around in pain, cradling her injured fingers and uttering a litany of 'oohs' and 'ows'.
No sooner had he gotten away from one threat, however, another was bearing down on him as Azula hurled yet another azure blast in his direction. Leaping aside on a gust of air, he only barely avoided the blaze, and when he landed next to Iroh, the two took stock of their situation. It didn't look promising.
They were now backed into a corner, and both exits from the room were blocked.
It didn't take long for Katara to push aside her guilt and start focusing on a way to get out of her predicament. But she was starting to lose hope that she would find a way to free herself in time to warn Zuko and his uncle. And then of course there was the problem with Toph.
The blind earth bender was still unconscious, and despite the small groan she'd let out earlier when Katara found her, she didn't seem to be waking any time soon. As the water bender struggled against her binds, she fervently wished she'd had Sokka's knack for ropes and knots. He would have been able to get out of this mess, she was sure of it.
Katara kicked her feet against the ground in frustration. She didn't have time for this. She needed to get out of the cave and find some help.
Taking a deep breath, she rolled over onto her stomach and slowly, painfully, began inching her way toward the exit.
Zuko's swords were drawn in an instant and he quickly brought them around, crossing them to catch the descending blade a hair's breadth before it would have cleaved his skull in two. The rain bounced nervously on the shaft of steel less than an inch from Zuko's nose before he whirled the blade down and away, sloshing backward a few steps to prepare for the next attack.
Jet wasted no time in advancing once again, swinging his hook-swords in a vicious and deadly tempest that kept Zuko on the defensive, and forcing him to retreat, one step at a time, until he was backed up against a tree. He barely had time to duck and move aside before one of the wicked hooks lodged itself in the bark right where Zuko's neck had been.
To his horror, the prince realized that this was nothing like the ploy to get him to fire bend and expose himself for an arrest. Jet was intent on killing him and Zuko feared that there might be only one way to end the fight. The thought filled him with dread and remorse.
"You can let loose with some fire any time now," Jet taunted hatefully, as he yanked his weapon free and spun to face Zuko again. "No one's watching this time."
He launched yet another brutal attack, the steel ringing and clanging as Zuko blocked and parried every strike.
"What's the matter," the misguided teen sneered, as he took a moment to regain his footing, "is the rain dampening your spark?"
"Maybe I just don't want to kill you," Zuko returned angrily, his mind reeling as he tried to think of some way to disable Jet without doing any lasting harm.
"Yeah?" asked Jet with mock consideration. "Well the feeling isn't mutual," he spat nastily, and he rushed at Zuko again.
Aang wasn't about to wait for his opponents to make the first move, they needed to get to Appa and get out of there. Noticing the crumbling section of roof just above Azula and her cronies, he slammed a powerful fist into the wall behind him with a yell, setting some of the rubble lose to crash down on his enemies.
It almost worked. But the three girls were quick enough to keep from getting buried and the cave-in only afforded Iroh and Aang a brief enough distraction to head for the opening in the wall. As Iroh darted through the rift, Aang started slamming the large bricks lining the hole toward Azula, trying to buy them more time to get away.
Iroh was halfway across the courtyard when Ty Lee popped up in front of him. Her arm streaked forward, aiming for one of the fire bender's pressure points, but he deftly caught her hand in his own, pulling her forward before swinging her around. She yelped as she was lifted off her feet and hurled headlong toward the exterior wall of the building and she landed with a tumbling roll right near Aang. The Avatar took the opportunity to encase her lower legs in stone before she could get back to her feet.
This left him momentarily vulnerable to another strike from Azula, who was circling her arms in the dreaded formation of lighting. Just as the bolt was about to fly, a small metal object came whizzing through the fissure in the wall, clanging into her wrist guard and knocking her aim off to one side. The lighting blasted the remainder of the wall and the rest of the ceiling crashed down around her.
The boomerang sailed back to its owner and Aang heaved a sigh of relief at the sight of his friend. His joy was short-lived, however, when he noticed the others were not with him. But there was no time for questions, and both boys hurried to help Iroh who was losing ground against the hailstorm of steel Mai was throwing his way.
Sokka made straight for Appa while Aang gathered up the standing rainwater from the cobblestones, bending it into a powerful wave that crashed over the deadly knife-wielder and washed her across the courtyard next to Ty Lee. With a powerful, icy breath, Aang froze the liquid around her and pinned her to the ground.
Without a moment to lose, Aang sent a gust of air at Iroh, tossing the man up with a surprised yell into Appa's saddle. Sokka had already vaulted up onto the bison's head and taken hold of the reins and Aang was still leaping toward Appa when the warrior let out a frantic 'yip yip!', getting them airborne just as the Avatar landed in the saddle next to his teacher.
As the ruined temple fell away from their sight, the mound of tile and stone within it rumbled ominously for a moment before exploding in every direction as Azula burst forth from the rubble in a glorious but terrible eruption of blue flame. Rain hissed and steamed on the smoldering rock as she hurried past the debris and out into the empty courtyard.
She sprung onto the saddle of her waiting mongoose-dragon. With a disgusted glare at her defeated comrades, who were still incased in ice and stone, she spurred the beast forward to pursue her prey, leaving them behind.
Ty Lee glanced at Mai uncertainly as Azula rode away. "She's going to come back for us soon…right?"
Mai only shot her friend a nasty scowl as a reply before looking away with a worried frown. The honest truth was that she wasn't so sure Azula would return at all.
Katara squirmed across the ground, inch by painstaking inch, her feet often slipping in the wet underbrush as she pushed her body forward through the forest. She had no idea how far she had gotten from the cave, her eyes too busy scanning the area ahead to find a rock, a stone, a sharp branch; anything she could use to cut the ropes on her wrists while she wriggled ever forward.
Cresting a small rise along the forest floor, she pushed herself around so she could roll down the shallow incline, making more progress in that brief tumble than she had since she started her tedious trek. Twigs and bushes snapped and crashed as she tumbled painfully down the hill, finally coming to rest with a thump against a massive tree trunk. She let out a sore groan, her body aching from the arduous journey.
As she lay there catching her breath and waiting for some of the throbbing in her arms to subside, the faint clang of steel ringing on steel reached her ears. With renewed vigor, she began pushing herself toward the sound.
Zuko was getting tired of being on the defensive and was growing weary of this entire absurd conflict. Time and again, he tried to reason with Jet, all to no avail. As the fight dragged on, both boys were beginning to show signs of fatigue, but still they pressed on.
At last, the prince decided to end the fight, and seeing an opportunity, he unleashed a fiery blast along length of his blade, hitting Jet square in the chest, the drenched armor sizzling with heat as the force of the blow knocked him to the ground.
Before the Freedom fighter could recover, Zuko drove his twin dao into the soggy earth, neatly pinning the prone boy's arms through the sleeves. The two glared at each other, their chests heaving as they took gasping breaths of air, the rain running in rivulets from their exhausted bodies.
"Go ahead and finish me off," challenged Jet acidly. "It'll be good practice for when you kill the Avatar."
"How many times do I have to tell you," growled Zuko in frustration, "I'm not trying to kill Aang."
"Enough with the lies," hissed Jet. "I know all about your banishment, you know. You can't go home unless you capture him. Do you really expect me to believe that you'd give up the only chance you have of getting your life back?"
Zuko reached into his tunic and pulled out a damp piece of parchment, the warrant for his death.
"This is my life, Jet!" he shouted furiously, holding the page in front of the boy so he could read it. "And there is no going back."
As Jet read over the page in shock, Zuko added quietly with a painful hitch in his voice, "There never was."
Jet looked uncertainly from the paper to the prince, not wanting to believe what he was seeing and hearing. Zuko pulled the swords free from the mud and dropped them to one side in disgust before he tiredly joined them on the wet ground next to Jet.
"Believe it or not," the prince said bitterly, "not everyone in the Fire Nation agrees with the Fire Lord. The people of my country have been waging this war for a hundred years, marching off to their deaths at the orders of men who care nothing for their lives or the welfare of their families."
"But you're the Fire Lord's son," Jet reasoned doubtfully as he sat up, "why didn't you try to do something to stop it?"
"I did try," Zuko insisted painfully, "and I got this for my trouble," he added softly, pointing the scar that marred his face. "Afterward, I was banished, and told not to return unless I captured the Avatar.
"It took me a long time to realize that I was never meant to succeed. Never meant to return home," he finished sadly.
"So you joined the Avatar instead?" asked Jet cautiously.
"This may be the only chance I have of setting things right; of even going home alive and taking back what's mine," Zuko answered calmly. Then looking Jet in the eye, he added earnestly, "I'm not about to give that up."
Understanding and acknowledgment dawned slowly on Jet's face, and he nodded thoughtfully. But before he could voice his acceptance of Zuko's story, a slow, sarcastic applause rang out from behind a tree across the way, and Azula stepped out from the shadows, her voice cold and deadly.
"Spoken like a true traitor."