Not a real update... but a promise that book 3 is on the way... if not very soon...
A teaser for Nijimura, written for a tumblr anon who guessed me in MD 2015.
The buzzing of the mess hall, full of jolted-awake cadets rushing to bolt their breakfasts, rose and fell like waves.
It was an emergency- no, it had been an emergency, and now it wasn't anymore: now senior cadets were running about looking harassed and the academy staff were nowhere to be seen, civilians excepted. The etiquette and outreach program teacher was calmly and primly overseeing the two lower years of the United Republic Fleet's officer cadet school at their meal as they speculated on what had happened to clear their schedules and have them all ready to move out (but not too far away, or for too long, they'd not been told to take or leave anything) so suddenly, so soon.
"It'll be grunt work," said a girl, her clear voice cutting through the noise. "They never give new recruits anything interesting." She made a face: for those privileged enough to bypass the rank and file of the fleet by enrolling with the school, the insistence on rigid discipline and public service- emphasis on the service- had been a difficult adjustment.
"I heard someone say that they carried in Nijimura-san!" someone else said. "The healers are with him now!"
This changed things. Nijimura Shuzou had been in Ba Sing Se- no, at the Eastern Temple, no, he'd broken open a spirit gate in the Swamp, or that one out over by the North Pole? HQ would have handled if it was the one in Republic City, they wouldn't have had to call him in-
"Yeah," said one boy, dark-skinned, his hair cropped close to his head. His mouth was very full. "But they'd do it anyway, right? He's got the experience! You want him watching your back."
This piece of news was accepted and incorporated. There had been flares set off last night- but no, all kinds of ships carried flares, even the air nomads on their bisons used distress flares, to signal everyone in sight. Was it really him? (Eyes like thunderclouds, like really you see them and think I'm fucked.) Where could they have been? Did you hear the explosion, which rocked the docked warships and disturbed the air?
Did you see it, do you know him, were you there?
Akashi Seijuurou, dark circles under his eyes and a smile, very small, very satisfied, on his face, asked the girl across from him to pass the eggs.