Tales of Henwa Island
The Return of the Duke of Henwa Island III
The Revelations of Aang the Avatar
Azula had no idea why Aang had brought them to the Western Air Temple and it wasn't in her nature to be complaint. The dragon had dropped them off on one of the verandas of the Western Air Temple and then beat a straight ling directly away from the temple and left them in the middle of an empty stone patio with only a fountain for company. A twelve year old boy with a shaved head named Tang greeted them and explained that Aang would meet with them later but until then – they should rest.
Karo had decided to rest and lay on the bed under the window. He found it more upsetting to have to fly on a dragon – without having peanuts to munch; than to find himself in a strange corner of the world with no idea why Aang had summoned him.
"Karo!" Azula shouted, "Karo! Wake up."
Karo stirred under the saffron colors of the bed covers, "mmhmm?" Karo sat up and yawned, then looked out the window. "What time is it?" He asked as he looked at the twilight and realized he had lost all track of time.
"About quarter to five in the morning," Azula had managed to get some sleep but she could not sleep well with all of the uncertainty about the purpose behind this trip. "I couldn't sleep very well."
"Kind of you to let me share in that experience," Karo put his feet on the floor but then lay back in bed. "Great Gods above – that floor is cold."
"Don't you wonder why Tang asked Katara to come with him?"
"Mmmhmm," Karo rolled under the covers and mumbled something about wanting a fresh cup of Tang with bacon and eggs.
Azula thew a pillow at him and it bounced off his head and went through the window to plummet into the abyss below the Air Nomad Temple, "I mean Tang the Air Nomad – you jackass!"
"Who?" Karo turned around and spoke in utter confusion, "who is Tang?"
"You met a young boy about twelve or thirteen – blue arrow tattoo and the orange and yellow clothes? Do you recall any of this?" Azula scowled at Karo for losing her pillow and being dim at a dim hour. "He had the name Tang!"
Karo yawned, "that fills a gap in my knowledge. Any of our questions will be answered in due time – possibly with a crash of thunder, a flash of lightning and four horsemen. Before then, I think the chances of us figuring any of this would have to rise to reach zip so I would recommend sleeping and some Tang in the morning. Tang makes the perfect artificial non fruit, fruit drink."
The floor was cold and Azula pulled her feet up and lay back under the covers. The Air Nomads had no corner on the market for taste and the barren room told her they were not much for creature comforts. She vowed to hit Karo upside the head at some random time the next day. "Karo?"
"Mmmh?"
"What are the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse?" Azula asked quietly.
"No idea," Karo muttered, "but I would guess one of them is insomnia caused by a fiance asking imponderables."
"Hit Karo upside the head," Azula whispered quietly to herself.
A girl about fifteen knocked on the heavy wood door of Azula's room at around nine in the morning although to Azula it seemed like she had only just managed to fall asleep. Karo appeared from behind the girl already dressed and freshened. The dragons had given the trio from Henwa time to pack a few belongings and Karo had picked his best clothes and he had decided to go with his best to meet the Avatar.
"I needed to wake you up so you could prepare for your meeting with the Avatar in the Hall of Echoes." The girl bowed before Azula. "Please gather your things and follow me."
Azula smacked Karo upside the head as she walked past him, softly so as not to wreck his glasses but she intended to make good on her plans to hit him upside the head.
"What was that for?" Karo rubbed the left side of his head, "I usually have to do something on the Azula screw up list to earn that! I didn't do anything!"
"My name is Akiko...and that was awfully mean," the girl said. She wore the Air Nomad uniform and had the tattoos and struck Azula as having the looks of someone coming from a long line of Earth Benders with her brown eyes and to Azula a rather unappealing freckled face.
Azula followed Akiko to the room that passed for a washroom.
"It's rather squalid," Azula looked at the room with the dim daylight seeping through two narrow windows that looked to Azula like castle murder holes. She noticed delicate carvings on the floor and a stone counter with a sink carved in it lined the wall below the murder holes. Azula could make out very little color in the room but she set about to do her best to clean up and wipe away the dirt of the trip.
"I will return to fetch you in a few minutes," Akiko bowed.
Azula turned her back and said nothing. The Air Nomads had returned in small numbers but the Western Air Temple remained a long way from the bustling center of a monastic community of thousands and it haunted her as she sat in the silent room and washed herself and prepared from the coming day. The washroom had no mirrors but Azula had learned to straighten her hair. She ran her comb through her hair and placed her hair in the delicate queue she had worn as a Fire Nation Warrior. She had decided to hate this place not because Air Nomads had returned but because she found it reminded her of her past.
"I hope you are ready, "Akiko returned and spoke through the door, "we will meet with the Avatar soon."
Azula dusted her uniform off and placed her red night robe in her knapsack and trudged toward the heavy door.
Akiko waited for her with Karo in the dim hallway. She had her hands clasped and she bowed again as she greeted Azula. "I will take you to the Hall of Echoes. The Avatar is anxious to meet you."
"If you were anxious to meet me, would you leave me waiting?" Azula stood at the far end of a large and perfectly square room with Karo and Katara.
"You? No!" Karo thought the room lit by dim lanterns looked like a badly executed plan for a kind of concert hall. The floor sloped down like a concert hall but it had a slow gentle incline with no platforms for the seats. "You keep hitting me upside the head for such small infractions. I can't speak for Avatar Aang."
The room seemed to boom with the sound of their voices.
"This would be the Hall of Echoes," Azula walked forward.
"I am sorry to keep you waiting but my wife is pregnant with my first child." A voice replied from the darkness. "She is in the third trimester and needs my constant attention."
At this point Katara expected Azula to do something. Azula had the kind of sarcasm that could level a city and nothing would prove more of an invitation to a withering comment than this news but Azula said nothing.
"Yes," the disembodied voice answered back in order to break the silence.
"What does that have to do with me?" Azula looked at Karo with an incriminating look, "did Karo have anything to do with this?"
"Hell no!" Karo said.
"No," the voice answered back calmly, "but I know you are happy for me."
"And you needed us to hold the pom poms and cheer the miracle of childbirth?"
Avatar Aang had acquired a quiet dignity and depth of character that intimidated Azula as he calmly walked into the dim light. He still wore the clothes of an Air Nomad but he had matured, grown taller and his boyish frame had filled out.
"I have spend six hours riding on the back of a purple dragon," Azula complained with her brutal frankness, "and I didn't sleep well and I want some questions answered."
A fountain made the sound of rushing water in the distance but Azula could not make out where the sound came from. She had only ever seen the temple from the outside but the Hall of Echoes amplified every sound inside the vast warren of rooms cut into the effect of the fountain combine with the sound of so few people dwelling inside the vast temple made Azula feel uneasy.
Karo stumbled a bit and regained his balance but he felt like vomiting from a combination of exhaustion and airsickness. Azula steadied him as he faltered and noticed his pallor.
"You doing all right?" Azula asked.
"When I get home I will be." Karo said quietly.
Avatar Aang had a stern look on his face as he spoke, "I wished to see you because I have some important things to say. I know you do not feel well Karo but I had to bring you here. Lady Zhao and Lady Ursa grew up as sisters but a dark sinister secret looms over both of them. Both women had unhappy marriages because they married evil and power hungry men."
Karo stepped forward, "so the dark secret is that I am Lady Ursa's son and Zuko is Lady Zhao's son? Azula is my sister."
Azula gave Karo one of those looks as if she believed Karo had gone insane but in her mind that sort of irony made a good deal of sense. Karo half expected to receive a smack in the head.
"Not exactly." Aang said apologetically.
Azula put her hands on his hips and tried to hide her disappointment, "yeah...we will call off the wedding."
"You don't have to." Aang answered quietly "I brought all three of you here because I have news for all three of you."
"Katara? Your mother had twins – one a strong baby girl but the other a weak and frail young boy." Aang said quietly as he walked towards her. "In a Fire Nation raid on your village, a young and evil petty officer named Zhao took advantage of your mother's kind heart. He threatened to kill everyone in your village if he could not take her as his lover." Aang felt a deep pain has he spoke. "Your mother gave birth to twins; she named the girl Katara and the boy Karo. In all too brief a time, the Fire Nation and Zhao returned. When he found out your mother had twins, he demanded to take his son so he could raise him as his own. He wished to raise him as a powerful warrior and so he left with baby Karo." Aang put his arm around Katara as she stared at Karo.
Katara could now see it. She felt an epiphany: she felt like someone who having stared at a strange ancient text found she could suddenly make sense of it. Karo had green eyes – she had blue, Zhao had amber. She understood why she always felt a deep attachment to Karo. She had thought her affection for him because he was a kind soul but it went beyond that. She could see much of her mother in his face and much of Sokka's. She found it easier to understand why Lady Zhao took such a kind attitude toward her – her stepdaughter.
Karo didn't know what to think. He felt relief and yet felt deeply guilty for having sprung into the world out of such an act of cruel evil. Karo wondered if his mother's act of kindness in raising him in Ba Sing Se somehow made the Universe more balanced.
"You all must insure Admiral Zhao sees justice," Aang stood back from the group. "You have a duty to each other and to me to find all the evidence of his past crimes and see to it he does serve time."
"What about you?" Karo asked Aang.
"I will play my role when the time comes. Justice, real justice must be done if my actions are to have any meaning! I did not witness all his treachery and so we must uncover it." Aang spoke commandingly. "I will take Admiral Zhao's bending if and only if he has been proven guilty beyond any doubt for his crimes."
"Can we go home now?" Azula asked, "I have a bed and a pillow yearning to be used."
Aang sniggered – which reminded Karo of the old and playful Aang, "You will sleep - I will send you home on Appa," he said kindly. "I know I have caused you much inconvenience but I have much to do and I have a newly born daughter to raise."
"You know," Karo followed Azula between the rows of a long abandoned olive grove, "when we find the safe, how do you plan to get it open?"
Azula shrugged, "we will see."
"How will you get the car back out of the ditch you drove it into?"
Azula shrugged, "that was no ditch, a creek took out the bridge."
"You sure I don't have a head injury?"
Azula shrugged, "not yet."
"You usually don't help the Avatar," Karo said, "you two don't even get along so why start now?"
"I may not get along with the Avatar but your father I like even less." Azula kicked a twig out of her path. Karo knew Azula's talent for understating her feelings on most topics and so decided accept her answer.
"If I asked you why we are wearing helmets with spikes on top of them would I regret it?" Karo followed Azula into the now abandoned cement and stone foundations of what had once been the Zhao family estate.
Azula let a tree twig swing back and Karo took a blow to the spike that topped his helmet. She answered Karo slowly as if trying to soften the answer, "you would. Can we call it the hunt for truth and justice?"
Karo forgot what sarcastic remark he wanted to make because he had enough trouble keeping his balance on the stumps and rubble that littered the site of the old estate house. "The jungle has taken no time in reclaiming this place," Karo jumped from one large concrete block to another and wondered if he would encounter a large snake or worse, and contemplated his place in the food chain.
Azula pointed and grabbed Karo's shoulder, "there it is!"
"A bank safe?" Karo looked at the two meter tall steel box that had rusted in the weather, had vines growing all over it and struck him as quite likely the most ordinary object except that it sat on an off angle on a block of concrete. "Shouldn't we find a squashed coyote here about?"
"The demolition crew found it but couldn't get a crane up here to move it and so left it here," Azula explained as she pushed Karo forward. "As far as I know, the safe belonged to your father and could contain important parts of your family history, cash and maybe evidence that could lock him up for good."
Karo looked at the safe which had foot thick walls and asked the obvious question, "how do we open it? Do you know the combination?" The combination dial still moved freely but in Karo's mind, that was of little use without a clue as to which on of the sixty trillion combinations opened the safe. "I have no experience with safes."
"Fire bending prowess will get this open."
"I still don't why I have to wear a spiked helmet." Karo griped because he found the helmet heavy and hot, and decided to make his point, "do you enjoy looking like infantry? Do the coconut trees here abouts have plans to drop their nuts on us?"
Azula began gesturing in a delicate dance and Karo used his gift for self preservation as the stubble on his forearms began to follow the invisible force lines of the electrical field Azula had begun to generate. The art of using lightning involved unbalancing the Universe by stripping electrons off the outer shell of atoms which displeased the atoms and annoyed the electrons. Karo knew what followed next – a loud explosion and rubble fell down over his head as a fire ball rose out of the old basement and the trees smoked. Azula flew back and Karo caught an odd expression of surprise on her face as she slid up against him and her helmet spike missed his head by inches.
"Crap," Azula rubbed her eyes and saw the safe largely unscathed.
"Did the physics people suddenly change the value of h bar!" Karo shouted over the ring in his ears as leaves and branches drifted down around him. "They decided to fiddle with the wave function of the electron?"
"Damn physics people," Azula brushed her clothes off and tightened her helmet. "Before I took all those physics courses, I found using lightning so intuitive. Either that or it must be my time of the month – why are you staring at me?"
Karo sighed, "can I get up?"
"Why do I have the same spiked helmet as yesterday and what is the stuff in the bottle resting in the bucket of dry ice?" Karo asked Azula as they struggled over the concrete boulders that formed the remains of the old Zhao palace.
"Nitroglycerine." Azula answered back calmly, "no safe will defy me."
Karo stood on top of a large concrete block looking somewhat aghast, "I heard stories that during the War; the Fire Nation used prisoners to handle this stuff and many of those prisoners were never heard from again. Do you mean to tell me I have had a dangerously unstable explosive? No! Wait!" Karo raised his hand. "How did you get hold of a dangerously unstable explosive!"
"A construction site might have an inventory problem and their guard dog enjoyed the meat I gave it." Azula said calmly then explained the dry ice, "you can buy dry ice from a fish market if you ask nicely."
"Frozen carbon dioxide doesn't really disturb me," Karo remained perfectly still, "but when I die and the funeral home has to use a scarecrow to stand in my place because no one can find my remains; I will come back and haunt you."
Azula walked toward Karo and dragged him by the collar, "you done? I learned how to handle high explosives and you are in no danger unless the dry ice evaporates."
"With the fog coming out of the bucket, I felt like dancing and singing old showtunes."
"Don't!" Azula helped Karo down and guided him toward the burned and rusty safe. "One catchy tune and a dance move, a broken jar of nitroglycerine and you will wind up meeting God. You are in no danger unless the dry ice evaporates, you knock the bottle or something random happens."
Karo put down the bucket very gently as Azula dug a hole under the safe with a stick. "You don't believe in God."
"I didn't bring gloves either," Azula looked into the fog filled bucket, "and that kind of throws a wrench into an otherwise fine plan."
Karo reached into the bucket, felt the cryogenic pain and yelped.
"Yet another reason not to have your children," Azula said. She slowly tipped the bucket of dry ice over with her foot and then slowly moved the bucket away. "What in the name dry ice hinted that it would be not cold or dry!" Azula took her stick and carefully slid the glass jar of explosive liquid into the hole. "You need gloves to protect your hands from the cold – dry ice is well – cold. Katara's home igloo is a subtropical paradise compared to dry ice."
"Ow!" Karo felt Azula pull on his shoulder.
They both retreated to the relative lack of safety provided by a piece of concrete and a chunk of corrugated steel about fifty meters away. Karo could guess the next move and wondered if he should rehearse what to say when he met God. Azula stood up from behind the flimsy wall of steel and aimed a fire bolt at the hole she had made under the safe.
Azula flew back from the shock-wave as if pushed back by a linebacker at ballistic velocity. She had anticipated the explosion but vastly underestimated the scale of the blast and she flew back, pinned Karo against a rock and he let out a high pitched grunt. A large rock flew past her head and she became somewhat concerned because she had lost track of the huge safe. Karo thought for a moment that he would meet God as his wire framed glasses flew back off his head and Azula bowled him over. He decided to ask God whether or not he could come back as a boring bank employee.
The safe crashed to the ground an arms length from where they had sought refuge and landed with a dull thud on its door. Pieces of burning paper fell down all over the old estate while coins of every denomination rained down and pelted down on the ground like currency based hail. Karo figured out the reason for the spiked Fire Nation helmets.
Azula rolled off Karo and decided to lay flat until she had regained her sense of balance. She let out a long sigh and then asked Karo, "are you still alive?"
"We nearly had an eight ton safe land on us," Karo said quietly but with a tremor in his voice, "and as a physicist you are going to tell me that you planned and executed this plan perfectly because you understand the laws governing explosions."
"Sure," Azula spit out a gold coin into her hand.
Both Karo and Azula sustained no injuries although the world looked fuzzy to Karo because he had no glasses. The explosion had made a three meter crater in the ground and scattered a huge amount of dirt, rocks and concrete rubble in an ejecta blanket. Azula brushed her clothes off as she inspected the site and the smoking trees all around her and wore a look of satisfaction.
Karo sat up on his arms and coughed out a cloud of fine dust, "it looks like a meteor landed – the dinosaurs won't be back."
"Let's look around," Azula put her hands on her hips. "You know a meteor didn't kill off the dinosaurs – they went extinct because they smoked to much – everyone knows this."
Karo stood in the middle of the debris field and examined a singed piece of paper. Luckily for both Azula and Karo, explosions did little damage to the contents of the safe although the surroundings had seen far better days and several monkeys, a herd of parrots and something scaly had their innards pulped.
"You never told me your middle name." Karo said as he continued the great gold coin hunt. "I wonder what my biological mother gave me as a middle name? Katara told me very little about her because she finds it difficult to speak of her."
Azula had a map that had the details of the Northern Water Tribe homeland. She replied to Karo in a half interested tone, "that's nice – my parents didn't give me a middle name." She tucked one map under her arm and opened another. "Why would your father have a safe if not to hide ultra secret military documents? Nothing I see in these maps have any military importance. You could have bought these maps in any bookstore in any Earth Kingdom City for a few silver."
Katara felt her way down the jagged landscape until she stood next to Karo and a twitching red feathered parrot. "I heard the explosion and saw the cloud of dust and rushed up here in case something happened to you guys! Why are all these red birds dead?"
"I prefer to use the word 'sudden metabolic deficit' rather than dead," Azula trudged over to Katara. "Don't tell anyone about them. We'd probably have to pay a fine."
Katara looked at Azula and simply shook her head: Azula had all the hallmarks of a sociopath and yet she did have her good side. 'Too bad,' Katara thought, 'that all her talents involve destruction.' Katara looked at the spiked helmet Azula wore and asked, "what is with the spiked helmets?"
Azula held out the map and answered Katara at the same time, "you see all the birds dropping dead around here? A parrot's beak can crack nuts – safety first."
"Like hell!" Karo picked up the remains of an ornate bronze box with a broken lock and silver coins spilled out of it. "When I filled out a life insurance application and wrote in Azula as my common law wife, the life insurance company wrote back and told me – hell no! not unless you have more gold than all Ba Sing Se! We have to consider our shareholders."
Katara held the map up to the light and examined it as the sunlight shone through it, "you have seen nautical charts?"
"Yes." Azula answered. "Why do you ask?"
"When you don't want to make marks on expensive charts, you use a sharp pencil and tracing paper and you write on the tracing paper so as not to mark up the charts. This lets you use them over. " Katara scrutinized the map and could not hide her displeasure, "this map of the Southern Water Tribe lands show a nasty little raid planned on our village." Katara shoved the map back in Azula's arms.
"The Fire Nation seemed to like visiting that village quite..." Azula looked at the map and held it up to the light. "we have a small bit of evidence."
Azula could have made the Buddha utter obscenities and Katara turned on Azula and growled, "Look at the date on the map – my mother died a few days after that." Katara found all of the feelings welling up inside her but her resentment of the Fire Nation had lost its edge for Karo was her brother and Lady Zhao had come to treat her like a daughter. In spite of this, Katara saw all the arrogance and lack of empathy she had come to hate in the Fire Nation in Azula. She had tried to remind herself Azula had no social skills but even that excuse had its limits.
Karo dropped the broken chest and stuttered, "you never did explain why - I mean," he fidgeted and sweated. "Why the Fire Nation murdered our mother. It never made sense to me but nothing about the War ever made sense."
Katara turned to Karo and gritted her teeth as Karo backed up. "My mother died to hide my identity to protect me. The Fire Nation raided the Southern Water Tribe and took all the water benders off to prison to rot and my mom feared that fate for me."
Karo held up a coin he had found in the broken chest, "Water Tribe money?"
Katara grabbed Karo's hand so hard it hurt. "You're right – he was a thief too."
Azula paced the ground thinking to herself. After a moment, she spoke as if she were a detective and wagged her finger, "we have evidence Zhao returned maybe ten years after the first raid and knew he had a daughter. I still don't understand how he knew of a water bender in your village? He would have taken both children had he known."
"Who ratted on the Water Tribe?" Katara gripped Azula's collar, "all loyal – our village had no traitors!"
"Somehow the information leaked out." Azula grabbed Katara's hands and blushed briefly then pushed her hands down.
"He must have suspected," Karo said sadly, "he carried the trait for fire bending and I am a fire bender."
Azula stood back from Katara, "he could have suspected the presence of a fire bender, or a water bender." Azula straightened up her collar, "he knew he had fathered twins and the common wisdom holds that both twins would have the same bending prowess – fire or water. Even if true, only identical twins would share such a trait; you two are fraternal twins but Zhao didn't know this."
Katara stood silently as she digested these speculations, "you mean to say Zhao was behind the murder of my mother?"
Azula said nothing: she wanted more facts. "He would have lost respect among his peers if they found out about his water tribe family." Azula chose her words carefully to avoid a bitch slap. "He had a reason to kill you and your mother and could use the pretext of the presence of another powerful water bender in your village to kill both you and your mother. We know he has no problems with murder – Karo nearly died twice."
Karo held the Water Tribe coin to the Sun – a beautiful, silver, heavy coin with no stamping. Unlike modern coins, these looked hammered into shape rather than stamped; had crude markings and unlike silver, the coin had not tarnished. Karo realized the coin contained platinum – a metal of greater value than even gold. Karo watched his breath condense on the coin, "we have evidence he did plunder the village and he did it around the time of my birth."
"How do you know!" Katara sneered.
"Look!" Karo held out the coin. "I know money," Karo said confidently. "This is a platinum coin – made of a metal as valuable as gold with the same weight. The Water Tribes minted them during the War since they had no gold supplies. These came from the Southern Water Tribe after they lost full contact with the Northern Water Tribe. They melted the coins into these blanks but had no metal stamping machinery to mint them so they used a print to make the print. These coins have dates from before my birth – some date a generation before my time. None have dates later than my birth! Not much but we have a crude timeline!"
"I will kill this man!" Katara said almost hysterically and grabbed Karo by the collar. "Where can I find him?"
"I don't know...he's a dangerous man so maybe the maximum security prison at Murasaki Bay?" Karo could see the hate welling up in Katara's eyes and this scared him. He could feel her hands grow cold and press into his chest and feared what she might do. He gasped with relief when Azula pushed between both of them.
"Kill Admiral Zhao if you must." Azula sounded calm, "but Karo did nothing to your family."
Karo sat on a rock with his own torments. Katara wandered around the site and she did what she did best – organize what she found. She said nothing at all as she sank in her own emotions. She had a pile of coins from the Water Tribe and had found many singed documents – some utterly useless, others showing maps and injunctions to the navy.
"Sackcloth and ashes?" Azula sat on the rock next to him.
Karo had a sadness in his voice that struck Azula as heartbreaking, "I had dreams where I heard the screams of the tormented, the victims. I fear I will go mad someday from the voices of all those people our nation tortured or killed."
"I thought I would drive you mad," Azula placed her arm on Karo's shoulder. "You won't go mad."
"You sound confident."
Azula looked up a a Water Tribe coin, "will you give this money back?"
"Of course," Karo leaned against Azula, "I want to earn my money by being of benefit not through theft. The Southern Water Tribe has every right to have it all returned."
"Do you sleep well?" Azula asked like a nurse.
Karo thought for a few moments as he watched Katara work. "I have still not learned to sleep without the nightmares."
"I went mad because I had no conscience about anything I did or said. I slept calmly and peacefully. If you were truly mad then you would sleep in peace and wake up without regrets." Azula assured her friend. "You have a strong moral compass – this isn't a flaw. You have a sense of right and wrong, good and bad. In the Fire Nation, your strong conscience would have you land in prison and worse. At least you can help fix some of the injustices of the War since you escaped to Ba Sing Se."
"Do you have a conscience now?" Karo asked quietly.
"I don't know." Azula laughed quietly, "but I can ask myself – what would Karo Zhao do? I don't know if sociopaths ever recover."
Karo pulled his arms around his knees, "you are a handful and you don't think of how your actions could affect others. You did nearly blow both of us up on more than one occasion. I love you in spite of all this because at least you think in a novel way."
"Don't get maudlin," Azula hugged Karo.
Katara had succeeded in making much of the mess by the evening although without an Earth Bender, none of the trio could set the safe right. It had landed on the door and weighed too much to lift without a crane. If it contained papers, water and fire bending would destroy them. Katara planned to carry the documents home and sort thought them carefully. Karo held the money in a small bag and Azula had a collection of maps. They began to tramp toward the car Azula had parked on a decent patch of road. Katara knew they had to make several trips and she still felt rage she could not direct at any one person.
"Zuko once said that Fire Lord Ozai told him, you were born lucky, while he was lucky to be born." Katara told Azula as a kind of a barb to strike up an argument.
Azula patted Karo's shoulder and replied to Katara in an oddly dark but to Katara a rather poetic manner. "My father is dead and Zuko is Fire Lord," Azula said as she climbed down to where she had parked the car. "My father was an incompetent military leader and a mindless, angry cruel man."
"You reject what he taught you?" Katara placed a heavy load of singed documents on the hood of the car.
Azula unlocked the driver side door and spoke after a sigh and a look of desperate sadness crossed her eyes. "In life there are only two good things: one is to never have been born and the second is to die as soon as possible. My father achieved the latter."
A week later, Karo found something he truly loved sitting in the living room of the rented house after a day of unloading the cracked safe of the last old papers and plunder. The entire week had depressed both Karo and Katara and Azula found both of them miserable company. Azula knew she could find a way to cheer Karo up with money or shiny stuff. Katara proved more difficult since Katara found children comforting while Azula scared them. Katara, Azula and Karo had levered up the safe with a car jack, rocks and more rocks. Katara wanted to find evidence of more of Admiral Zhao's crimes, Azula wanted more clues to the events of the War: she hated mysteries. Karo wanted to go home and lay on the couch and listen to playoff hockey on Earth Kingdom radio.
"My sofa – Big Red?" Karo stood in front of the old sofa. "My real and not made of tissue paper cushions by a cheap furniture store sofa?" Karo flopped on it and lay on his side, "my baby soft and fits me like a glove and has both our ass grooves sofa has come home!"
"Your mom had it shipped over because she hated the couch we bought, "Azula explained, "and she said something about it looking like some kind of ugly ice sculpture and as comfortable as a Fire Nation interrogation chair so she had it shipped here. I put the radio on a side table so you could relax and listen to hockey games from the Earth Kingdom." Azula put Karo's feet on her lap and tossed the remains of their archeological expedition into the Zhao safe on the coffee table, "Katara was just behind me..."
Katara entered the house with a bundle of papers and looked at Karo and Azula. "That is...Big Red? It came home?" Katara placed the bag of papers she had onto the coffee table.
"Sofas have a curious ability to find their way back to their owners." Azula said.
Katara crossed her arms, "I hate that thing: it looks so Fire Nation and puffy."
Azula tipped out Katara's bag, lifted up Karo's legs, sat down on the couch and began ruminating, "your dad was a rather odd person." She picked up a stack of messenger hawk messages held together with a string, "because Fire Nation military protocol required the destruction of such messages. He disobeyed orders by not destroying these." Azula tossed the messages back on the coffee table and shrugged, "a very odd action for such a consummate soldier to take."
Undisciplined thug!" Karo said in an angry voice but for some reason he picked up the stack of messages and undid the string. He knew little about Fire Nation communications and he could not read the messages. They came in varieties of different handwriting which meant a different person had sent them but instead of characters as he had expected he saw strings of numbers.
"Did anyone find a red book about this thick?" Azula held her fingers apart about a centimeter.
Karo shook his head and Katara sorted through the accumulated pile of paper on the coffee table then shook her head.
Azula scratched Karo's legs as she thought. "Fire Nation messages used a code where a group of numbers stood for a character –123 might mean 'red' for example. To know which numbers stood for what character; you needed a code book. This kept the enemy from reading the message if they trapped a messenger hawk." Azula drummed her fingers on the arm of the sofa, "and every few months they changed the code."
Each message looked about the size of a dollar bill and Karo tied them back together with the string and tossed them on the pile in frustration.
"I'll get Zuko on the phone," Azula lifted up Karo's legs and placed them back on his couch. "The Fire Nation military never threw anything out so the code books must exist somewhere. We published thousands of copies and distributed them everywhere so somewhere we can find them."
"And he shoots...and it bounces off the crossbar! Ba Sing Se loses another powerplay opportunity." Azula retained a certain respect for Karo's ability to follow a hockey game on the radio, carried by a radio signal so weak that she doubted if even a single photon of radio wave energy landed on the antenna. The signal kept breaking into static at random intervals due to the interference of someone three kilometers away turning on a light. She woke up to find Karo in his night gown laying on the couch with his arms behind his head listening to a hockey game through a veil of static.
"We suck!" Karo said confidently. "The Ba Sing Se Bruins only made the playoffs through a fluke. The Omashu Saber Tooth Moose Lions will have the seven game series in four games straight. We never even came close to tying up any of those games – you might think you hear static but that is the sound of hockey suckage. Of course the other Ba Sing Se team sucked worse. Do you know that the Fire Nation fielded a team this year?"
Azula had to work for a moment to translate what Karo had just said and she replied with a simple, "no."
"Yep!" Karo spoke while a commercial for soap played, "the Fire Capitol Flames – an expansion team which of course also sucked and got demolished during the regular season."
A loud knock came at the door. Mitsumi had fallen asleep at Karo's feet but jumped up in the hopes he might meet a new human with food.
Azula answered the door to find a rather official looking man holding a box. "Greetings," he bowed deferentially. "I am a messenger from Fire Lord Zuko and I have brought the old code books as you requested." He held out a cardboard box about the size of a breadbox.
Azula accepted the box and bowed, then she looked at the messenger, "tell Zuko - I don't tip." She slammed the door and put the cardboard box on the coffee table as Mitsumi sniffed it in hope of finding food.
Karo complained about his team being behind by seven to nothing and having only three minutes left in the period. Azula decided to ignore him and began unpacking the contents of the box. She placed the old, red lizard skin bound books on the table. They were indeed the code books of the Fire Nation military and each one had a gold Fire Nation insignia on the front cover, the words Fire Nation Military Codebook – Treason Means Death and a date.
Decoding the messages amounted to little more than doing the sums once Azula, Katara and Karo had found the proper codebook. They sat on the living room floor in a circle and wrote down the contents of each message in proper Chinese. The use of such simple number codes would scramble the efforts of an apathetic enemy but Azula knew the Earth Kingdom and Water Tribe could and did read Fire Nation codes. Only hubris convinced those in command that sending paper messages encoded with numbers on the backs of birds with brains the size of peanuts amounted to a secure communication system. Azula found she could read the messages from a certain codebook without looking things up because she had a head for remembering patterns of numbers and her knowledge of Chinese filled in the gaps with little effort.
This did not imply the messages gave up any useful information. Much was trivial – that the Admiral had requested a shipment of dry ramen hardly counted as a state secret. Azula noted with some amusement that a certain Lieutenant Kije (pronounced Keezhay) had received orders from Admiral Zhao.
Azula knew of Lieutenant Kije as a military hoax set up by a Fire Nation division to improve their standing in the strange hierarchy of the army. He gained a reputation as a hero, great commander, got promoted to General and conquered Omashu. King Bumi had given up without a fight but the reports sent back to the Fire Nation spoke of a great battle and of the final victory of General Kije. Mai's father had plans to decorate him with the Gold Medal of the Twin Dragons – the highest honor in all the Fire Nation. Once the division realized their hoax would be found out, Kije died after falling off the walls surrounding Omashu and being devoured by a platypus bear. The story struck Azula as fishier than a barrel of herring but as long as the army did their job she had no time to investigate fish stories.
"This note is a polite request from Zhao to Kije to send him men from his division to serve in the invasion of the Northern Water Tribe," Karo read out loud. "Kije replied: I can spare no men as we have only just taken the city and must pacify the inhabitants."
Katara looked at one of the messages and turned white and began to cry because she had the order that sent Zhao to her village.
A day later and Katara had curled up on the couch and refused all offers of comfort from her friends. Not to say those offering were any good at comforting a lonely Water Tribe woman. Azula had tried her best to muck up the kitchen by blowing one of the red ceramic teapots to Kingdom Come. She had not intended to blow a teapot up but she succeeded just as Karo came in for a morning cup of tea. Karo told Katara that he had turned out mostly normal and she would as well. Katara told Karo that he was in no way normal – a truth Karo could not deny since he had to admit he loved a girl who blew up a teapot. Katara hadn't moved off the couch since the morning and both Karo and Azula failed to move her in spite of having the afternoon run of god awful soap operas turned up to high volume on the radio.
Azula lifted up Katara's legs and sat on the couch, "you have very little stubble for a girl?"
"Is that supposed to make me feel better?"
"You haven't moved off this couch in a day," Azula said, "and you always hated this couch."
"You are my friend and I love you but you can't imagine how hard it is to find out my father was a mass murdering psychopath." Katara said sadly, "let's face facts, you can't imagine feeling at all."
The door exploded into the house before Azula could work out a reply.
"Toph?"
Karo rushed into the living room from the kitchen, "what the hell!" He held his hands to his hair, "do we have any desire to reclaim the damage deposit on this place? Let me – oof!"
Toph gave Karo a huge hug, "hey pretty boy! I missed you while I was on the road!"
Azula patted Katara's legs. "This girl has the nicest skin of any of the mammals I have met."
"On tour with who or what?" Karo ignored Azula's comments.
"The professional Earth Kingdom Wrestling League," Toph could tell that Azula found great joy in the presence of Katara.
"See!" Azula exclaimed, "you and your brother have the nicest skin – he has back acne and hair in his ears and his pubes..."
"Oh for crying out loud!" Karo yelled in frustration.
Katara stood up and hugged Toph, "as you can guess – a few things have changed. I am the daughter of Admiral Zhao."
"I thought Karo was his," Toph pointed up at Karo, "daughter."
"We're twins."
"You have to see them naked," Azula stretched out on the couch and kicked her feet, "same back hair, same body and same nipples."
"Have you no boundaries?" Karo asked as he lifted the door up to inspect the hinges and voiced his frustration. "Well – no you don't."
"You decided to take your vacation with us!." Azula lay back with her hands behind her head,
"Welcome to Komatsu – Toph Bei Fong." Karo bowed as Katara patted his shoulder.
"I had a hard six months on the road. I visited my parents nad decided to visit you guys because you liven on a tropical island that has never seen snow." Toph plopped herself on the couch, "and I wondered if Azula and Karo had made plans for the big wedding."
Karo grunted as he tried to rehang to door on its hinges, "Uh – oof – well we have had other things to do and the wedding plans have been put on the back burner for now." Karo had forgotten that he had a crossbow bolt through his left shoulder and it decided to give up the ghost and so the heavy door fell on top of Karo. "Help!"
Toph stomped to his aid and she swiftly had the heavy wood door sitting on its hinges. Azula stole the couch back. "What happened to you – pretty boy?"
"One of the reasons for delaying the marriage," Karo slowly got up as Toph held him steady. "My father decided to have a second crack at killing me and sent a crossbow bolt through my shoulder and there were complications and I nearly died." Karo cleaned off his glasses and pushed them up his nose. "Katara healed much of the damage but I have a metal pin holding it all together. In another episode, the Avatar revealed that Katara and I are twins."
"Karo and I share the same father," Katara said sadly, "but not the kind and strong Hakoda but the awful and evil Admiral Zhao."
Toph had grown up isolated but she did have some social skills and decided from the tone of Katara's voice to leave the matter alone. She had long thought Karo a kind of closet Water Tribesman - he had that streak of family loyalty. She had not taken this seriously because Karo did not like nature and loved modern conveniences – he had made it clear he hated any form of camping.
Azula had no trouble accepting the idea that Katara and Karo were twins. This explained why she found both of them attractive and she could see much of Katara in Karo. She shifted back and forth on the couch trying to get comfortable and she felt the need to voice her complaint, "you are my best girl and I love you but you have totally worn my ass groove out of this couch...see Karo and I spent years getting this couch to fit us and – not complaining – you have changed the feel of this couch."
For the first time in over a day, Katara smiled. Azula, for all her faults was often hilarious and her blunt nature and nerd like candor did much to make Katara feel better.
The Pharos was a lighthouse that sat on the granite hill a the end of a slender peninsula that marked the entrance to Komatsu Harbor. It had functioned for two hundred years and become the landmark that distinguished the city. The locals had lovingly restored the old lighthouse and painted it white and red then restored it to its former majesty after the War. It looked like a giant concrete candy cane shining into the evening sunlight. They built a park with a wide spiraling path around the lighthouse, strange strange stairwells through the trees and planted rare and beautiful flowers.
Katara and Toph walked along the wide stone pathways and enjoyed the rhododendrons that covered the hill. Karo thought the park would cheer up Katara and she did find her mood lightening. Komatu had a beautiful harbor and a natural setting unrivaled in all the Fire Nation. Unlike the Fire Nation; these people had a certain love of nature and a relaxed and easy going attitude. Katara watched children with ice cream cones rushing after parents. An elderly couple read the plaques that told of important sights around the rock the lighthouse rested upon.
Toph could hear the lighthouse and the gears that drove the huge arc lamps at the very top. The wide main path that spiraled to the top was carved out of the living rock of the island and Toph could 'see' a good deal. She could feel the footfalls of a great many people enjoying a walk with dogs, children or by themselves. She could hear an unfortunate skateboarder slide off the board and collide with the heavy steel tubing that formed the railing of the paths that spiraled up the rock. The skateboarder sustained no injury and immediately decided to make use of a narrow set of steps carved out of the living rock as a means of getting to the bottom of the mountain.
"What the..." Karo had a preoccupation with the flowers and nearly had a skateboarder run over him as he passed a set of stairs.
Azula enjoyed the sight of a teenage boy as he rolled across the main path and hit the post that had a sign that read 'No Skateboarding on Park Grounds'. The teenager had wrapped himself around the pole and yet for all the pain, had no problem rolling off down the broad path past Katara and Toph.
"No pain no brain?" Azula said to Karo as he examined a rhododendron.
"Indeed." Karo said.
"I see something odd." Toph said to Katara as they walked up to Karo and Azula. "Something under the water to the North."
"That's open ocean." Azula said dismissively. The open sea to the North had become a busy seaway and to any marine mammals and Toph was probably full of noise. "Lots of things make noise in the open ocean."
"But this is under water and sounds like it has a motor." Toph said insistently.
"How is that possible?" Karo asked, "underwater ships don't exist."
"Not entirely true," Azula reminded Karo. "On the Day of Black Sun, the Water Tribe attacked the Fire Nation capitol using submarines. They used water bending to propel them through the water though."
"I hear a motor but its really quiet." Toph stomped her feet, "and its getting fainter as if this is going past the city heading up the coast."
The group began walking slowly along the path toward the top of the hill.
"I can barely hear it now." Toph said.
"How do you its underwater?" Azula asked skeptically. "I see half a dozen large ships and countless smaller boats and so maybe your feet are playing tricks on you?"
"It's gone," Toph said sadly and then added, "I'm telling you it was underwater."