A/N: A very special thanks to The Mountain for helping me out with this chapter!

Enjoy! (Or don't. It's really up to you but I'd prefer you enjoy) =]

Betrayer

On legs made out of jelly Ozai pushed open the heavy wooden door to exit Jeong Jeong's training ground. The building sat on a small ledge of collapsed rock on the wall of the crater surrounding Capital City. He let the door close behind him with a deep thud, glancing around for the palanquin that would take him home, but there was no one in sight. The prince wobbled up to the edge of the winding path to see the palanquin bearers sitting in a small circle at the bottom of the hill, Ozai's transportation abandoned off to the side of them.

He bristled up with annoyance. "So, now I have to walk down to meet them since they're too lazy to do their job?" he grumbled, then glanced around making sure no one had heard, thankfully not seeing his master or any lingering students. A prince shouldn't be seen talking to himself. At the corner of the small clearing in front of the large, square training enclosure sat a bench which was partially shaded from the setting sun's orange glare by the cliff face. Ozai wanted nothing more than to lay down on that bench and rest for just a few minutes, but he knew that if he did he probably wouldn't get up for a long time. Then he would get in trouble for dawdling.

With an annoyed groan he took a deep breath and started on his trek down the switchbacks to reach his lazy servants. Along the way he kept his eyes focused on the ground and wrote a script in his mind of what he would say to his father in order to get the men fired. 'I had to walk all the way down myself,' he thought. No, that makes me sound too lazy he'd just get mad. 'What if I had been attacked on the way?' No, that sounds too cowardly. He was still mentally running through various stories, trying to decide which ones would make him look the best and the servants look the worst when his eyes landed on a pair of feet.

He looked up from the basalt ridden ground to see that the person attached to the feet was none other than the boy from firebending class. His toothless face brought the weak, wobbly feeling in Ozai's legs and the raw, cold feeling in his lungs back up to the forefront of his mind, quickly followed by the desire to give the boy a few more missing teeth.

"What are you doing here?" he asked in his best intimidating prince voice.

Before the boy spoke, he bowed again, although this time Ozai could see his lips moving, soundlessly counting out the proper length and now he stood to look the prince in the eyes. "I was just waiting for you," he said with a weak imitation of his goofy smile from earlier.

"Why?" Ozai asked with a raised eyebrow, crossing his arms over his chest. He knew that a lot of the boys at the Academy were only his friend because he was a prince, but that didn't mean he wanted to befriend every lowlife kid he met. Besides, he was still angry at the boy for making him run while everyone else got to practice firebending, the one thing that Ozai had to get excited about, and it was fun to watch him suffer a little.

"I just wanted to say thanks for not telling on me," he said, glancing down at his shoes. With every whistled 't' or hissed 's' Ozai felt his annoyance growing; and with each word from this boy's treacherous mouth the young man felt his urge to punch him in the jaw grow stronger.

"I did tell on you. Jeong Jeong just didn't believe me," the prince replied dryly, stepping past the boy and continuing on his journey down the crater wall. He didn't like this apparently orphaned, whistling show off, but he also knew it wasn't worth it to get in a fight. I should just be content with the knowledge that I'm a descendant of Agni and he's just a random kid, he told himself.

"Well..uh. I'm sorry then," he said, sounding honest and hurrying to catch up with the leaving Ozai. "But if I got in trouble you know he'd just kick me out." When the prince didn't reply, only looked at him out of the corner of his eye, he continued, "You're a prince, if you do something wrong he's not going to kick you out since of how mad the Fire Lord would be; me, I'm just an orphan." He sounded almost sad and the sullen, tired, angry prince felt a little bit of the annoyance disappear, despite the whistling.

He smirked, "You didn't know I was a prince."

"I got lucky," the toothless boy said with a grin. Ozai gave a tired chuckle and the boy continued, his nervousness almost disappeared, "Why are you in a class with us? I thought princes got private lessons."

Ozai's frown fell back into place. That was a question he had purposely been avoiding asking himself. Why would his father put him in a class with a bunch of orphans? Maybe he didn't know, Ozai thought, Yes, Jeong Jeong must not have told him. That's all. "My father wanted Jeong Jeong to be my teacher," he told the boy, then let his thoughts go back to that uncomfortable place. He could tell on his new master, but then what if he got the man fired? Would Iroh have to be his teacher? Getting Jeong Jeong fired was not something he wanted to do anyway. Somehow, amidst the stern stares, the man's soft but angry voice, and the endless running, Ozai had gained a tremendous amount of respect for him. Something about the firebender just exuded power; he could make boys listen without yelling, and he could terrify princes without threats. He wasn't someone that Ozai wanted to betray.

He sighed. Orphans it is, then, he thought, and then realized that the toothless boy was still talking.

"…so then he told us to come here today and make sure that we wear the proper uniforms. It's so cool to finally learn firebending." Ozai blinked slowly and nodded, trying to calculate how much longer it would take to get down the hill in order to distract himself from the fact that he was learning among peasants. Apparently, the nod was all the encouragement the exuberant boy needed, and he continued rattling on, "I could still join the army without being a bender but not the navy. I was planning on the army before since I didn't know if I could find anyone to teach me but the navy would be way better; that's our biggest defense against the Water Tribe." Ozai's ears perked up at the words 'Water Tribe'.

"Yeah, you can't get in the navy without being a bender. Since you're in their territory our ships would get ripped apart if we couldn't bend," he recalled the legendary battle of the Koyuk Straight. His father, Prince Azulon at the time, had led one of the first full-on assaults of the Southern Water Tribe. If they hadn't been able to melt their ships out of the ice that the waterbenders had trapped them in, they never would have been able to take the city, arresting all of the benders in order to neutralize the surviving Water Tribe members. "Did you learn about the battle at Koyuk Straight?" he asked the boy, preparing to brag a bit about his father.

"Oh man! That was my favorite thing to learn about in history! That was so cool how Azulon had them firebend at their ships instead of the ice so the outside hull was red hot and just carved through the ice like butter," Toothless-Boy said, and Ozai grinned, it was pretty cool. "If only they had been able to do the same at the Northern Water Tribe."

"Their walls are almost fifty feet thick, I heard, and two hundred feet tall." In his mind Ozai could already see the towering walls of impenetrable ice that he had heard so much about. "And as soon as any of our catapults can make a decent hole their waterbenders just fill it back up again. I bet if my dad had gone they would have been able to do it," he said proudly.

The toothless boy nodded enthusiastically. "Yeah, but that's when Fire Lord Sozin died right? And he had to come back to take his place?" Ozai nodded, still very tired but the boy's betrayal was pushed to the back of his mind and he was excited to talk battles with this boy, who knew a surprising amount for someone with no noble connections. "Is it true that the comet's power is what made Sozin live so long?" he asked.

Ozai shrugged. He had heard the story before, but he had no idea if it was true any more than a commoner orphan and he realized they were nearing the bottom of the hill. "I suppose it could be," he said.

"I bet it is. I think when the comet comes back that the Fire Lord should use it to either take Ba Sing Se or the Northern Water Tribe," the boy said, kicking at the ground.

With raised eyebrows Ozai nodded thoughtfully. There was only a little over 30 years until the comet with his grandfather's namesake would end its one hundred year cycle and return. "They should. I bet that if they did it in the daytime with the comet there the Water Tribe would be almost defenseless," he grinned and so did the toothless boy. "I think they should go for Ba Sing Se though. The Earth Kingdom is our biggest threat." Neither of them really knew what they were talking about, but it was fun to pretend that they were generals planning the war.

"But think of destroying the last Water Tribe stronghold!" the boy exclaimed. Ozai frowned, thinking. The Northern city really was the last of the Water Tribe's defenses; the Southern Water Tribe was all but defeated without their benders. As Ozai was weighing the options in his imagination, his fair-weather friend interrupted him. "Hey, weren't those guys supposed to give you a ride?" Toothless-Boy lisped and pointed to the palanquin bearers.

"Yes," Ozai said with a little sneer, realizing that after being distracted by naval strategy he still hadn't thought of anything to tell Azulon.

"You want me to go get them?"

Ozai raised his eyebrows and felt an amused smile working its way onto his face. He nodded. "What's your name again?"

"Zhao," Toothless-Boy said with another annoying smile.

"Well go tell them to come get me," Ozai said, slumping onto one of the rocks and rubbing his legs to try to work out some of the lactic acid. Why didn't he think of that sooner? What good was having an annoying little friend with no noble blood whatsoever if he forgot to order him around?

Said annoying friend with no noble blood now took off at a jog down the winding trail, seemingly pleased to have an irritated, royal friend. The prince wiped the sweat off his brow watching Zhao talk to the palanquin bearers and point up to where he was sitting. He held no illusions that this boy actually liked him; like most of Ozai's friends he figured he was just after a little political power and Zhao had already proved that he didn't have very high moral standards by happily letting someone else take the blame for him; at least until he found out that that someone else was Azulon's son. However, Ozai figured that if the Zhao didn't mind being used in order to gain a friend in a high place, then he didn't mind using; something Azulon would be proud of. The boy knew that his father had plenty of 'friends' and 'advisers' that he just kept around in case they became useful.

He smiled as the servants slowly got to their feet and eased the palanquin onto their shoulders. Maybe Zhao was useful.