Chapter Notes: Bit of a long one here, but it's the ENTIRE END AT ONCE because I'm generous like that. At least it's the end for the moment; there is a sequel in my head, and I've written down an outline, which has about doubled the odds I'll write it eventually. This is just the pilot episode, so to speak. :D Anyway, enjoy, and thanks very much for reading!
Chapter 7
Katara doesn't even need to tell Toph to leave the transferred link open and shut off the microphone; they all crowd around her little screen, and watch this Azula person laugh delightedly.
"Zuzu," she says warmly. "It's been so long!"
Toph flicks a switch, and the next screen over displays Zuko's face. He looks like Azula's just told him she'll kill him in the night with no warning, not given him an apparently kind greeting. "How did you get here?" he says.
Azula laughs again, and then smiles indulgently at her screen. "Oh, come now, Zuko - you don't really think Father would let you keep wandering the big bad galaxy alone and unprotected, do you?"
"He didn't seem too upset by the idea the last time I saw him," Zuko says guardedly, but even as Katara watches, something in his face is thawing.
Azula flaps a hand dismissively. "All right, so you had a little disagreement," she says. "That doesn't mean he wants you dead. Be reasonable. He sent me out to find you, and gave me a lovely new ship besides - the navigation system's a little experimental, but it's working wonders so far. After all, we found you in the middle of hyperspace, didn't we?"
"So you did," Zuko agrees. "What do you want?"
"To take you home, Zuzu," Azula says, like it's obvious. "Look at you - heading out toward the dregs of civilization on some glorified garbage scow."
"Oh, she did not," Toph mutters, head cocked close to the speakers; but then she pauses and frowns. "Wait a second - how did she know that?"
"How did she know the Appa's a garbage scow?" Jet says.
Toph rolls her eyes. "He is not," she says. "And I meant that we're headed toward the core now; so how did she know we weren't before? She didn't just find us - she's been keeping tabs on us for a while."
Katara frowns, because Toph is right. It's possible Azula could have found out by checking docking records - but why would she have done that if she hadn't already been looking for them? Either way, Azula hasn't just stumbled across them.
On the screen, she's still talking. "-forgiven you, Zuko, and he wants you to come home."
Katara can't help staring, because Zuko's face looks like it belongs to an entirely different person; his expression's softened into pleading lines, like he wants to believe Azula so badly he almost doesn't care whether she's really telling the truth.
But before he can say anything, Aang's bare head pops up in the corner of the screen, looking deeply dubious. "He's forgiven Zuko? For what? Who fried whose eyelid, again?"
"Shut up," Zuko snarls, one long yellow blade humming to life in front of Aang's face; but he's scowling, distrustful all over again, and Katara's oddly relieved to see it.
Azula keeps smiling for a long moment, but Zuko's glare doesn't waver; and then she drops the pleasant grin, like it was a stone weighing her down, and sighs. "I always hope you'll take the easy way, Zuzu," she says, "but you never do learn, do you? You're just asking for me to take the other eye."
"I can't believe I'm saying this," Toph murmurs, "but I'm drastically re-evaluating how much I dislike Zuko right now."
"No kidding," Katara says, hushed. She can't even conceive of a situation where Sokka would say something like that to her and mean it. An hour ago, she wouldn't have thought things could get much worse. An hour ago, she thinks wryly, she was kind of stupid.
Azula leans forward. "But it's all right," she says, and if Katara didn't know better, she'd think Azula's tone were kind. "We can do it the hard way. That works for me." She crosses her arms, and smirks into the link. "I'll vaporize these ships and everyone on them if you don't come aboard. Actually, let's make that all of you - you, and that boy, and all the rest of them. No point leaving them if I'm just going to have to find them again when it's time to clean up." She eyes Zuko for a moment. "I'm going to take a leap of faith, and assume you aren't stupid enough to think I can't do it; but you can have your pilot run a scan, if you want to be absolutely sure."
Toph's hands are on the keyboard before Azula even finishes the sentence. "It's true," she yells, and on the screen, Zuko glances to the side, toward the hatch - now he knows they're listening in, but he also knows not to hope Azula's bluffing.
Azula just waits, without making any kind of response - the link microphones are pretty terrible, Katara knows, so odds are she didn't hear Toph. Zuko evidently realizes it, too, because he tips his chin up and says, "That won't be necessary."
"Maybe you can be taught," Azula says, generous. "Ty Lee will transmit coordinates; tell your lead ship to drop out of hyperspace there." She smiles again, confident and a little wicked. "See you in a little while, Zuzu."
"So," Azula says. "This is the technopath."
Aang shifts his weight uneasily. Song can sympathize - she'd be uneasy, too, if Azula were looking at her like that.
They'd picked up Azula's ship on the Taikong Jian's sensors almost right away, massive as it was, but they hadn't thought anything of it at first. Ships did pass sometimes in hyperspace, though not usually so close. Sokka had told Teo to keep an eye on it, and then maybe ten minutes later, they'd suddenly gotten a link from a sour-faced Toph, growling out half an explanation and telling them to drop out of hyperspace on the mark she was about to send over. They'd followed her directions to the letter, every one of them conscious that their lives were on the line; and then the second they'd docked, a security team in Confederation red had dragged them up here, to a small room behind the bridge.
Song's had a fair number of adventures since she joined Sokka's crew, she's been shot at and concussed and stabbed, and, memorably, burned; but this is the first time she can remember feeling really afraid.
Teo inches forward, wheels silent on the smooth floor, and squeezes her wrist. "We'll make it," he murmurs, very low, "as long as Sokka doesn't say anything stupid."
"Great, we're going to die," Song mutters back. But it helped; her heart isn't pounding quite so hard anymore.
"What do you want with him?" Katara snaps, and strides forward three steps so that she's standing half in front of Aang.
"I'm not sure yet," Azula says, thoughtful. "Experimentation, genetic manipulation, vivisection - there are so many options."
Aang shudders visibly, and Zuko takes a step forward, frowning. "I thought you were here-"
"For you?" Azula laughs. "Oh, Zuko." She reaches forward, and gently pats his cheek. "You still don't understand. You just aren't that important." She steps back, and puts her hands on her hips. "I lied - I wasn't even looking for you, not really. It was just good luck." She shrugs one shoulder in a graceful arc, and looks at Aang again. "You, on the other hand - you left a trail. Nothing dramatic; only a few stories, an offhand comment here and there about an old junker that runs smooth as silk and never needs its computers reset. It was quite a lot of work to catch up - I wasn't going to lose you to the rim."
"You got that virus set on us," Toph spits.
Azula smiles. "Oh, yes," she says. "The captain of the Lanse Xing was most helpful - he might not have done it for money alone, but money and the chance to keep his hands attached to his wrists was just too much for him to resist. He fed you Ty Lee's virus; he had your nav-fix shaken; and he alerted my agent at Pohuai, just in case you survived."
It's a bewildering amount of effort to go to, Song thinks, just to snare Aang; and a trickle of cold snakes down her back. They're not going to be able to talk their way out of this. If Azula's already gone to that much trouble just to get Aang, she's not going to let him go without a fight.
"And now I have what I want," Azula continues, "which means all there is left to do is clean up."
Song's not sure what she means by that, but she's betting it's not good, because Azula is reaching for the handle of the lightning whip coiled at her hip.
Zuko jerks, startled. "But you said-"
"I said I wouldn't blow them all up," Azula says. "I never said I wouldn't kill them some other way." She tips her head to the side a little. "Not that it should really matter to you - I'm not going to kill you."
Song is far enough to the side to see that there's a really awful expression on Zuko's face, and when Azula's whip snakes out toward the white-haired woman standing to Aang's left, she can tell that for a second he's not sure which direction he wants to go.
But before the blow can land, he's managed to decide, and the spur at the whip's end buries itself in his shoulder.
"I wasn't planning to, that is," Azula says conversationally, and thumbs the button that makes blue electricity flare down the whip's length.
Zuko screams through clenched teeth, dropping to his knees like he can't help it, and the white-haired woman shouts and wraps a hand around the whip's end, yanking it out with a jerk. Song winces, because she knows what that motion probably did to Zuko's shoulder. But she also knows the woman couldn't help it - she can't even unclench her hand from around the whip, now, with the electricity coursing down it.
Azula had their weapons taken from them, but Song knows that On Ji keeps spare laser knives in some pretty terrifying places, so it's no surprise when she pulls one from somewhere, switches it on, and darts across the room, slicing through the whip maybe a foot from the white-haired woman's twitching hand.
"Mai! Ty Lee!" Azula shouts.
The door to the bridge swishes open, and a woman with a long braid pauses in the doorway, obviously startled, before she hurries forward. For a second, Song's confused, because it doesn't look like she has any weapons; but then Song sees her hands.
"On Ji, shock gloves!" she shouts, and then rushes over, because the old man who was standing behind him is trying to cover the wound in Zuko's shoulder, and he's doing it wrong. "Here, come on, let me do it," she says, and the old man gratefully does.
There's a lot of yelling and crackling behind her, and the occasional flash of light, but Song keeps her eyes on what she's doing. Azula unnerves her, sure; but concentrating in the middle of a fight is something she knows how to do.
She gets Zuko responsive and upright, and the white-haired woman is clutching her hand but otherwise fine, so she looks around: Toph is tapping furiously on a console, and Aang is yanking desperately at the hatch next to it.
Song pulls Zuko over, letting the white-haired woman steady him when he stumbles, and grabs the handle next to Aang's hand - Toph hits the console again, a light somewhere on the panel changes from red to yellow, and the hatch reluctantly groans open.
"Back to the hatch!" Teo yells somewhere behind them.
But they aren't all going to fit through there at once, Song knows, and they're going to need a few seconds for Haru to get Teo on his back and fold Teo's chair up. She grabs Aang's shoulder, and pulls until he's staring at her with wide eyes instead of at the hatch. "Distract them," she shouts.
He turns and slams his hand onto the console an inch from Toph's fingers, and all the lights in the room go blinding white.
Toph crawls out of the hatch tube, and immediately turns around to help Haru and Teo out behind her. They managed to get the hatch on the other end closed and sealed again before Azula could recover, and Toph left them a little present when she locked it; but the internal sensors will be able to tell Azula exactly where they are, and there have to be other routes to this corridor, even if they're a little longer.
"This is not good," she says; mostly to herself, but she hears someone turn.
"The docking bay's not that far," Sokka says.
"Azula's not an idiot," Toph says - maybe a little more acidly than necessary, but she's very slightly stressed right now. "She'll seal the decks between here and there, if she hasn't already-"
"But will they stay that way?" Aang says, rhetorical and just a little wobbly; and then Toph hears the swish of at least three nearby doors opening.
"Well," she says. "Maybe we'll live after all."
She knows approximately where the docking bay is; she had her screenreader describe blueprints of Azula's ship model the second she scanned it, and she counts her strides almost reflexively when she's somewhere unfamiliar. They get caught a corridor away by a security team that's obviously been called up to the bridge to help chase them down - Toph trips one who comes thundering toward her and finds Suki's laser fans stuck through his belt, and once the fans get into Suki's hands it's all over.
Suki shoves the fans in one security thug's face, and the woman wisely chooses to keep her nose where it is and tell them where to find the storage room the rest of their weapons were thrown into.
Azula's sealed both their ships into dock with a lock that needs a captain's override - a captain's override or a little sweet-talking from Aang, that is. He takes an extra few seconds, making the panels thrum against Toph's hands, and screws with Azula's navigational systems; Toph can hear the subroutines flailing, it's beautiful.
"She won't be able to come after us for a good long while," Toph confirms, and Aang takes two lurching steps away from the panel and then tumbles sideways into somebody's arms.
"Aang-" Katara says.
"Okay," he murmurs - from somewhere near Katara's elbow, Toph judges. "Just whirly."
"Right," Katara says soothingly, and she and Jet carry him the rest of the way on board.
Toph just about sprints up to the Appa's cockpit, and she's already starting the boot sequence before she's even all the way into her chair, her screenreader chattering rapidly in her ear. Haru is only a hair slower, and she fixes on the Taikong Jian as it peels away from Azula's ship.
A beep from the link lets her know Haru's calling, and she accepts. "Okay, I'm winging it - three, two, one," he says, still a little breathless over the link, and riding smooth over the hitch into hyperspace feels like a bolt sliding satisfyingly home.
Zuko tries to sit up and immediately groans; it feels like his shoulder's just been set on fire.
"Ah, nephew," Uncle says somewhere above him, very gently. "You are awake."
"Careful," Yue adds, nearby. "If you move too much, we'll need to recalibrate, and the regeneration will take twice as long."
Zuko forces his eyes open: there's some kind of smooth white machine curving over his shoulder, and the feeling in it is settling down to something more like pins and needles.
"We dropped out of hyperspace for a minute so Song could come over and set it up," Yue says, "but we really shouldn't do it again for a few more days, until we're further away."
"What happened?" Zuko says blurrily.
Uncle beams down at him. "You did your duty," he says.
Zuko stares at him, and then a flicker of memory comes to him. "Your hand," he says to Yue, without entirely meaning to. He must be drugged with something.
Yue smiles, and lifts her arm; there's a faint, branching redness over the skin, but it looks fine otherwise. "The current wasn't too high," she says, "and it wasn't going through me for long. Song says I was very lucky."
"Did my duty," Zuko repeats, belated. He's definitely drugged, he thinks resentfully. "The right thing."
"The right thing," Yue confirms softly. "Now go back to sleep before you hurt your shoulder again."
"Don't want to," Zuko says, but his eyelids have never stopped feeling heavy, and he's got a sneaking suspicion that it's not up to him.
"It's all right," Uncle says. "Go to sleep, nephew." Zuko's eyes slide shut, but he can still feel the hand Uncle smoothes over his hair. "I am very proud of you."
Like that means anything, Zuko wants to say, because Uncle would say that even if Zuko were a beggar on the rim; but he can't make his mouth move, and a second later he slips away into the black.
"Any sign of them?"
"Not a thing," Toph says confidently, and Katara lets out a sigh of relief. "Aang must have mucked their systems up pretty badly." She taps a key, and then turns her head. "He's still okay?"
"Sleeping," Katara says, and Toph giggles; Aang's been sleeping for about a day and a half now. "But Song checked him out when she came by to set Zuko up, and she said he was fine."
"Yeah? And how's the scarred wonder doing?"
"All right," Katara says, and tries not to let it come out too grudging. Azula was already after them, so it isn't quite fair to say that the whole mess was Zuko's fault; but he certainly didn't do them any favors. Except saving Yue - she's still not sure why he decided to do it, but she's glad he did. "Yue says his shoulder's coming along well."
"Good," Toph says decisively. "I want him in good shape when I punch him in the face."
Katara laughs. "Not too hard," she says, "that regenerator's on loan."
"I'll only make him bleed a little," Toph says, tone benevolent. She presses a few more keys, and her screenreader mutters in her ear. "Still at least a week until we reach Namh Lin."
"Well, let me know if anybody else hijacks us," Katara says.
"Aye aye, Captain," Toph says, laughing. "You never know, it could be boring this time."
Katara reaches out and strokes a hand along the console. "It never is," she says, and smiles.