Burn My Dread FES
By Iain R. Lewis
Disclaimer: Characters and concepts belong to Nickelodeon, some of the concepts are similarly inspired by Persona 3 and Persona 4, property of ATLUS games.
Author's Note: This chapter has a rather intense moment near the end. Reader beware... Persona 3 fans may figure it out, though.
"Daremo ga hitori ja nai kara, waratte mata tsuyoku nareru. Dakara mayou toki wa itsuka mi ta sora o omoidashite. Sagashite i ta kotae wa yumemi te ta ano basho ni aru.."
("No one is alone, just by smiling we can be strong again. That's why when you find yourself lost, remember that beautiful sky you once saw. The answer you've been searching for is in the place where your dreams were.")
- Found Me
Yumi Kawamura
Chapter 27: Happiness is a Warm Gun
Ba Sing Se had settled into an unnatural stillness. A pin could drop it was so silent. The Lower Ring, the city the refugees of the last great war had built up, was meant to be full of throngs of people, crowding like the lifeblood of the city.
The red haze sat undisturbed. No one passed. Not even an insect stirred.
Then, carried on a breeze, there was the sound of distant thunder. A low growling noise that grew ever louder. Like a tsunami to the desert, the city that had been devoid of noise soon drowned in it. The vehicle had grown massive from the metal it had slowly cannibalized. Its frame now resembled more of a tank than a car, and the front seemed like a spider's face. Eight headlights flashed, and a ninth just flickered and died.
It destroyed the buildings in its path. It didn't even slow down to pass through a decrepit structure.
The Chariot Scion wouldn't stop, wouldn't slow, and Azula Houou, its tenacious prey, wouldn't have expected anything less. With her school uniform covered in dust and her hair somewhat frazzled, she seemed as if she'd been running for hours. Behind her, her young charge seemed thoroughly exhausted. Xiao's expression clearly spoke of a girl who had just had enough.
"We've been running forever!"
"We'll keep running until I find what what I'm looking for." Azula didn't seem remotely concerned about Xiao. She just continued fleeing into the street. It was getting nearly impossible to escape this one. However, she hadn't found precisely what she was looking for.
"What are you looking for anyway?"
Azula's eyes lit up, and she pointed straight forward, "That!"
She pointed to the foundation of what used to be a rather large community center. It was now a massive hole, covered in debris and stone. "What are you talking about? All I see is a bunch of nothing."
"Precisely!" Azula answered.
"Azula, it's right behind us!"
Azula stopped and slid across the dusty street, her feet tracing a line in the ground and with a thrust of her hands, she pushed an avalanche of rock forward into the scion's path. "There, I've bought us some time." The car veered as the rock came up underneath it, forcing it to veer. "This way!"
She broke into a sprint that Xiao couldn't quite keep up with. The girl's breathing was so heavy as it was, and she felt like her lungs were about to explode. And Azula had already reached the commuity center and was busy clearing away the rubble. Debris was flying everywhere as Azula worked. "Azula?" she called down the pit.
"Yes?" Azula asked. leaping up. "That ought to do it. Now I just need to wait." She wouldn't be waiting long. The engines roared loudly as the scion charged down the road towards her. Azula steadied herself. No more running.
"Azula! What are you doing?"
"Ending this right now."
"But you're going to get squished!"
Azula smirked. "Something's about to get flattened, that's for sure." She fell into her stance easily. The car would be on her in a matter of seconds. Xiao watched the scene terrified. Azula moved at a moment's notice. Not a second hesitation slowed her. The rocks under her feet rumbled and a large earthen spike shot out from beneath the vehicle's wheels. The car veered, narrowly avoiding swiping Azula in the process, and she just stared at it as it came by, unfazed.
What followed was a cacophony of machinery noise as the scion righted itself on the ground, swerving wildly as it tried to regain control. Any normal car would have been without its suspension the way it jangled and clanked.
And Xiao held her breath as it came back for Azula. She watched it serenely. Playing chicken with a monstrous creature born of nightmares was hardly the sort of game normal people would play. Azula relished in it.
The way the headlights glared in her eyes, she was navigating blind. The noise was deafening. And all the same, she never once looked one little bit afraid. In fact, if anything, Azula looked anxious, even impatient. Xiao whimpered fearfully.
The Chariot Scion's engine roared. Its wheels moved so fast they seemed to be burning up. And Azula simply jumped. In an instant the vehicle's wheels screeched to a stop, its breaks smoking at the sudden stop. Azula landed behind it. "I've had enough of you." She kicked a volley of stone from the ground and with a series of quick spinning kicks propelled it at the stalling vehicle, pushing it ever closer to the gaping chasm until its front wheels were pushed over the ledge.
"Go Azula!" Xiao cheered, the tension breaking enough that she could safely breathe again.
The vehicle kicked into reverse, its wheels spinning wildly at the sudden shift. If swerved wildly as it tried to pull itself back from the brink. "Oh no you don't." Azula stomped the earth, kicking up a large spike. The wheels impotently turned, treading the air as the scion's tail rose high into the sky. "Whatever gate you're guarding, whatever you're keeping me from, I will seize it from you regardless," she shouted, allowing her frustration to bleed out, "And I won't slow down for even a second."
The gust of wind she released was the tipping point. Already unstable, already tipping into the chasm. the force of wind was the straw that broke its back. It descended into the pit, and landed on its hood.
Azula stepped over to the edge and gazed down. "It's finished."
"Amazing!" Xiao cheered. "You're simply the best there is, Azula. So! Cool!"
Azula brushed aside the comment. "Let's keep moving. We're off course as it is."
"One more to go! One more guardian to go!"
Azula scoffed. "Don't be cocky. We need to find this guardian first, and even then, we don't know what this one is capable of."
"But you beat them all!" Xiao whined.
"And I am every bit as confident I will defeat this one as well, but there's no point in congratulating yourself before you've even met the enemy. So stop being foolish. We have a long way still to go. And who knows what's waiting for us past these guardians."
"Who indeed," Xiao added, mysteriously. "The center of the maze at long last, though. You must be so excited to finally see what's there."
"I suppose my curiosity is piqued. Whatever this creature is that's created this maze is immensely powerful."
"So very strong! Nothing's beat it yet!"
"I intend to."
"You can do it, Azula!"
"Still," she said with some hesitation. "Still, I wonder what's become of the others. There are still circumstances I'm not so certain on. If I could get in, why could you not get out?"
"There's a perfectly reasonable explanation for that, I'm sure, but I don't get it at all. I'm just a kid, y'know?"
Azula studied Xiao, and smirked. "I learned a long time ago that people underestimate children because they're small. Still, I suppose if I'm at a loss, I can't very well expect you to understand your circumstances." She studied Xiao for a moment longer before turning back to the road. "Let's start walking. If we are quick, we should be at the school momentarily."
"Okay, Azula, and - just so you know, you know - if I did know where the others are, I would tell you. You know that right?"
Azula glanced at her sidelong, silent for a moment, before she said, "Of course I know that."
"I'm glad you trust me, Azula. It makes me feel like you're really going to be there for me no matter what."
Azula just stared at the ruins of Ba Sing Se. This was all an illusion, elaborate though it was, but it was so familiar. She knew these streets so well, she'd walked all of them at some point or another, always carrying herself on the certainty that she was heir apparent to all of them. The Lower Ring, though full of people, was little better than a slum. She despised how people lived there, wallowing from day to day in squallor, unable to understand how unimportant they were in the grand scheme of the universe.
And this was where the Spiritless congregated more than anywhere else. Their lifeless eyes staring blankly at those who passed by, too destitute to afford to lock them up in the hospital with the rest of them.
"Azula?"
Xiao's voice came like a jolt. "What is it?" she asked, turning her eyes away from the ruins.
"I just thought that the school was this way, not -"
Azula stopped dead in her tracks and reasserted her bearings. Xiao was right. She was going down the wrong fork. The road split, and the way she went would lead deeper into the Lower Ring, where the gangs used to run. Delinquint students who wasted their time claiming influence over her city - they were the worst of the lot. "Yes, let's not go down this way. It's an unpleasant slum."
"Not anymore. Now it's just flattened," Xiao laughed. Then she tapped her head. "It's not real, remember?"
"Of course, I know that."
But it's difficult sometimes to tell what's real and what isn't. It's not a new sensation, either. Like getting lost in the music coming in through her headphones, sometimes, the only thing that's real is what's right in front of her.
The thoughts in her head told her that this was fake, but she could not deny that it felt and seemed awfully real to her. The stones and the rubble that piled up high in the streets where cars were left to rot and decay forgotten by their owners in some made rush to safety - that's what felt real right now.
Reconciling that with the truth seemed quite difficult for whatever reason.
Wandering a post-nuclear apocalyptic Ba Sing Se was not where she thought she'd be at this point in her life, either. Life was often full of little disappointments like that. "What are you going to do when you're free?" Xiao asked.
"What do you mean?"
"When you're out of here, do you have any plans?"
"I have school that I must catch up on, and I am expected to attend an exclusive university when I graduate. With my grades where they were, I expect nothing but the best. I was being courted by most of the top five universities in the world at one point."
"Oh. But, what do you want to do?"
"What are you talking about? One can't simply go off and do whatever they want. People have expectations of me, and I'm fully capable of exceeding them. We do what we must."
"That's really sad, Azula. You're making me sad."
"What? What's so sad about that? I'm merely looking out for my future. We all have things we have to do, Xiao. You'll understand when you're older."
"I understand now!" With a moment's hesitation, Xiao clearly regretted snapping like that. Her fingertips traced a pattern on her shoulder. "Since it's you, I'm going to apologize. You know better than me, I guess, but, don't you have any dreams?"
"What are you talking about? Dreams - are you trying to ask me if I have any such childish goals like being an astronaut or a superhero? Quite frankly, I think I've already accomplished the latter."
Xiao didn't answer. Something Azula said weighed down on her. That much was clear. What it was, she couldn't even begin to figure. Still, Azula thought back, she once dreamed things like that. Silly things, honestly, but girlhood flights of fancy were not uncommon. She couldn't recall what it was she dreamt to be, or whatever she wanted to do.
Dreams were fleeting, they had no substance and as such, no value. The only thing that accounted for anything was working towards a goal. In that, she knew she excelled. She was confident. Traveling through the corrupted Ba Sing Se, there seemed to be no more dangerous shadows lurking in the alleyways.
The whole place returned to its emptiness, and that was enough to keep Azula on edge. Nothing was ever so empty and quiet that one could let down their guard. "We're almost there." She said it more as an observation, but Xiao responded quite excitedly.
"I can't wait to see the school. Is it big? What do you learn there? Are you in any clubs? What about sports, do you do any sports?"
Azula sighed. "I suppose it is big," she answered, tiredly humoring the younger girl. There wasn't anything else to do until they arrived unless she wanted to continue to dwell on her thoughts. "And I was president of the Student Council last semester. I intend to challenge whoever took my position this coming semester should I get out of here alive."
Which, of course, she would.
"You're so cool! So that's all you do? No sports or nothing?"
"I did look for a sports club to join the beginning of first year, but the challenge seemed lacking. There was just no competition. What's the point in crushing your opposition beneath your heels if they don't even squirm?"
"So, you didn't join any club?"
"The fencing and the soccer clubs both petitioned me to join, but I declined. If there was a marksman club, maybe I would consider joining one."
"You sure remember a lot about school -"
"I suppose I do." Despite the fogginess in her mind, school remained clear and fresh. Azula could recite her schedule by heart, even the upcoming school functions were as certain as they were before. "I suppose that's a little strange."
"Maybe?"
"I can remember things like what classes I took or when the school's field trips were, but when I try and remember what happened in them, I get lost in the fog."
"The Labyrinth takes away all the bad memories." Xiao shrugged. "There must have been something really painful you don't want to remember, Azula. Since it's you, I won't pry, though." Azula thought on that. She wondered what could have been so painful she didn't want to remember it.
Her memories were no use. They seemed faded like an old photograph, to the point that all she could remember were the outlines. Places, faces, names all blurred together. A lifetime of memories slowly eroded. It was strange how much time one lost to forgetfulness.
By the time they approached the school's gates she'd given up. The general quiet of the city had extended to Xiao for the rest of the trip. She appeared to respect Azula's privacy enough to let her think on it. But when she saw the rusty old metal gate she broke into a gleeful laugh. "We're finally here!" she bragged, "I know you could do it!"
"The school - my school." Azula glanced up at the building in the distance. It stood relatively unscathed by the destruction around it. The school grounds were a mess. The walls had been blown to pieces and the plants had died, but the building and its cold, modern design stood unbroken. The windows had been broken from the inside, but the walls were unmarked. The school was the tallest point in the city now that the Phoenix Group Tower had fallen, its broken husk an ominous shape on the horizon.
From the roof, she could see the whole city. She could see it and know it was hers.
"Bring back any memories?"
"None." She approached the gate. "We just need to find this last guardian and that's the end of that, correct?"
"As far as I know!"
It was growing difficult to get a read out of Xiao. But regardless of what lay ahead, and what little warning she'd get of it, she pushed forward. The gates blew in the wind. They sighed a lonesome creak that came long and softly across the breeze.
The grounds of the school had long since deteriorated. The trees were gone, and in their place, sharp knives had been thrust into the ground. Azula's eyes followed them with an increasing sense of ill-ease. This was an unusual sight in this fake city. "I think the guardian is near." She said it for Xiao's sake, but she could tell the girl had already come to the same conclusion. She followed a few steps behind Azula, peeking forward apprehensively.
The clockface on the main building had fallen from its spot, and had landed in front of the front door. Pieces of clockwork jut out of the hole it left behind, a mechanical disembowelment that would have been altogether more gruesome to a wind-up soldier than a real girl. Azula shrugged it off without a second thought. Sometimes things broke.
"This place is giving me the creeps, Azula." The courtyard was completely empty besides, and yet there was a sense of something being wrong, though what it was she could not quite place. The knives cast long shadows on the barren ground where the grass once grew, the rich green turf that had been so lovingly maintained had been replaced with blood red dirt and mud.
The knives' shadows read like a sundial. Five, seven, eleven, and two: they all kept their own time.
She made a note to keep her distance.
The clock tower chimed the time. Sixteen distorted rings sounded from the speaker system.
From behind the clock face, something moved, placing between the hands with apparent care a white ceramic mask: the mask of the Magician Scion. Azula responded lethargically, her hands moving through the air like it were molasses.
"A-" the syllable hang for what seemed like an eternity, "-Zu-" Xiao's eyes were wild in fear and confusion. "-la!" Azula turned her body. Her hands still reaching slowly for the handle she'd grown well acquainted with. Xiao's warning continued in a slow and distorted voice. "The -"
Her mind was working overtime. What was she trying to say? "- Guar-"
The guardian was moving. Azula saw it from the corner of her eye as she tried to move. Long arms erupted from the shadows made by the knives. They stretched high into the bright red haze of the sky, their gnarled fingers flexing. Then they grabbed the knives by the handle and pulled them free. "Dian- is a- ttacking!"
Xiao put a hand on her mouth after she finished. "What just happened?" she asked from behid her fingers.
"I don't know." The guardian juggled the knives between each other, and the mask on the clockface was now obscured behind a wall of spinning steel. "Was it this guardian's power?"
"Azula, I don't like this."
"So it can slow us down? It doesn't matter. Nothing is stopping me."
She had only a handful of bullets left. She had to make the shot count, but, with the speed the knives were flying it was a risky proposition. If she could get a clear shot on the mask, though, the things would be a different story.
She turned her attention to the arms. They were monstrously huge, but they didn't seem remotely aggressive She readied herself into a stance. "Xiao, this will be over in a matter of seconds." The hands however seemed to disagree. They stopped their juggling and thrust the daggers back into the ground.
As they did so, the clock face spun wildly and the bell buzzed endlessly.
Everything felt brittle. That was the best way Toph could describe the sensation to someone who didn't see the way she saw. Everything had a texture and a consistency to it, every vibration they sent had a sensation.
Humans tended to be rather squishy, compared to rocks. Their vibrations were softer, but it was a pleasant sensation. Knowing you weren't alone always made things feel better. She missed it right now. Without Azula, the rest of the school felt devoid of the footfalls of people coming and going.
The school itself usually felt solid, smooth, and long. It extended as far as her feet could sense through the ratty old uniform shoes she wore. It was why she had left one on the ground beside her, and extended a bare foot forward. The ground felt brittle, and so did the air - it did not feel right.
There was another sensation, one that gave her some trouble in describing. Cramped, perhaps, or, more accurately, crumpled. Everything felt like it had been compressed around her like an accordion.
"Hello?" she called out, even knowing full well that no one would answer. "What's going on?"
She could feel a sensation that extended out just beyond her reach. It was like a voice calling her name in the crowd, though she could not truly see it, it prickled at her toes. It grew ever closer. It felt like sand, dimming her perception to its barest limits. And as it drew closer, she could sense less and less of the world, it all became tangled up in the feeling of everything turning to dust.
She backed away, but it came from all around her. There was no escaping whatever approached her. "Whatever you are, I'm not scared!" she protested. But she wasn't so fearless that a tremble could not sneak into her voice.
But the sensation came upon her all the same, under her feet, she could feel so clearly the ground falling apart like sand through the space between her fingers. And then, all too suddenly, the only sensation she felt was the air around her as she descended into the empty expanse.
Well, empty to her. She could be missing so much for all she knew, but strangely, she felt calm about it. Her heart pounded like a drum, but she was all right with that, too. It always had a way of working out in the end.
Which was why she was not at all surprised to feel the sensation of pavement under her feet. It was there just as sure as it wasn't there the minute before. But she welcomed it. The pavement itself was unstable, she could feel it. Uneven streets, buildings half the size they should be, if even that, the very earth underneath felt wrong. The soil was lifeless and parched. The vibrations were enough to cause a sinkhole to spontaneously form. It was distressing to say the least.
She could sense nothing else moving, so she followed the road. The pavement radiated warmth through the soles of her shoes, like it had been sitting under the sun on a summer afternoon. The air felt thick in her lungs, and the breeze had a dry and unwelcome edge to it. The place was thoroughly inhospitable.
Which made the other sensations she received all the more bizarre. The way the paved roads led, and the position of the buildings all seemed to be familiar, like the old shopping district. She went there a lot to get away from the ridiculously expensive tastes of her parents. Now it all seemed to be rubble.
"What happened? Did I like fall right out of the maze into the future or something?"
No one answered her. She didn't honestly expect anyone to. Still, she kept her eyes open. People or monsters would doubtlessly exist in this desolate post-apocalyptic city, but whether or not the people had become strange lemur-men, she wasn't quite ready to say.
Azula always thought it would be wonderful to be able to speed up time. It would certainly cut down on the tedium and the process and leave only results, and there was nothing she loved more than results. She'd never considered, much to her embarrassment, there was a singular and yet altogether obvious problem with this.
What it came down to was that Azula couldn't hope to process the information she received fast enough. No one could. The hands weren't spinning because the clockface was going haywire, oh no, they were spinning because that was precisely how quickly time was moving. Azula nearly knocked herself out cleanly with her hand when she moved to brush a loose lock of hair back.
"Azulalookout!" Xiao shouted.
The long shadowed hands already reached down to once again draw the sharp blades. This time she could barely make out the strain of doing so. Everything moved so quickly, it was like watching the entire world stuck in fast-forward. It all seemed so comical. Azula didn't find it funny.
But it wasn't as if she could aim properly. She needed more than a split-second to tell her arm to move and when to stop. All she could do was hope when she dodged the long, sharp knife that flew through the air like stock footage from a low-budget cartoon she didn't end up misjudging the distance and end up caught under another.
When she leapt, she collided with a burnt out tree trunk that had been a good three feet away.
"Ho'inf'ri'tin." She perhaps should have spoken slower. Instead, her words tumbled out so quickly they collided together. They just ended up getting lost in the din of the electronic bells anyway, she reasoned, and it wasn't as if there was any real wisdom in them to begin with. After all, it was just an old trunk of a long-dead tree, and not some horrifically deadly implement.
Speaking of which, they were being volleyed about between the hands again. This time diagonally as well. Now not only were the boxed in, but they were moving ever closer to outright slaughter. She could sense some malevolent glee coming from the scion. It was enjoying this. Enjoying watching them squirm as it wound time up faster and faster, or slowed it to a crawl.
All of these scions had a malevolence to them. But it was getting stronger the closer they went. She could feel it in her bones. She was called a monster, and it's an assessment that she agreed with. But Azula was human, and humans were complex. These things were not. They were a singular emotion or thought, gone wild through guilt or pride or grief.
It actually gave her some relief. Though ruthless to be certain, this thing would not try to kill them quite so outright, at least, not until it got bored. "Xiao." She intentionally paused between each word for a second. "Stay. Perfectly. Still. This. Is. A. Trick."
"Likemagic?"
"Exactly." Sleight of hand and illusions. As long as they kept a cool head, they'd be all right. Unfortunately, a cool head was easier to maintain when the world didn't seem to be passing by too fast for her eyes to follow. She was getting a headache just trying to process everything she was seeing, and the face on the clockface was smiling at her.
The sadistic freak knew she'd figured it out and was just enjoying it all the more! These things were monsters, pure and simple.
She wouldn't wait any longer. She'd just have to take a shot. She readied her weapon and hoped that when she moved, she would't misjudge the distance her arm had to move, or how long it would take.
She moved her arm and shot, but to her surprise, the bullet went flying far overhead. She saw it move. Altogether too clearly, in fact. The knives had been thrust back into the ground, their shadow telling various times despite the thick haze that obscured the red eyed sun from casting its shadows on them.
And the arms on the clock had slowed to a stop - no, not quite accurate. She saw the minute hand move backwards for an extended moment out of the corner of her eye, before it slowly, and loudly, moved forward again.
The bullet really should have been further away than it had been. Calculating its acceleration, she shouldn't have even been able to see it. Time in that equation did not account for the alterations in its flow. Time had slowed to a crawl again and Azula for one was quite sick of it. Especially since the arms seemed free to ignore the sudden crawl altogether.
This thing had them at its mercy. It knew that. But Azula knew something it didn't seem to know, even though it should: no one defeated Azula Houou.
It would learn that the hard way as soon as her arms decided to listen to her brain and move.
No one walks quite the same. It was how Toph recognized people. The differences were mostly subtle. She couldn't really tell apart complete strangers, but she could get a vague sense of them by the way their stepped. Their posture, their mood, their very way of life affected it. But for the people she did know, she was quick to pick up on the subtleties.
Katara walked with a careful and steady pace. She never slowed even when it was clear her feet were blistered and tired, because she always had to be the one putting on the strong face. Next to her, quite literally, Zuko's footfalls were a mark difference. He moved like a wounded tiger, full of fury and pride, but none of the arrogance. Rigid posture, rigid footsteps that moved just a bit more quickly than the others. It was a miracle he didn't outpace everyone the way he moved.
And behind them, she couldn't mistake Yue's dainty footsteps. Tip tapping across the ground, they always seemed to get lost in the crowd, but she learned to pick up on it. She moved with grace, with perfect posture, and never seemed the least bit snooty about it.
And they walked with a careful pace. Apparently something spooked them. "Hey!" she shouted as loud as she could, and the reaction she could feel even at this distance. The footsteps stopped, the postures changed, and she sense they were looking for the source of the voice. "Over here!"
They moved closer at a much more swift pace. "Toph!" Katara's voice sounded relieved, and Toph had to admit, just knowing that they were all right made her feel a lot less lonesome in this strange and arid city. "Are we glad to see you!"
"I'd say the same but -
"Well, I'm sure it's good to hear us, or sense us however you feel." Yue was a born diplomat. She defused the bomb that wasn't even there without even missing a beat of good humor. She was kind of scary in that regard, Toph thought, but kept that sense mostly to herself. "You haven't sensed Sokka around, have you?"
"You think Snoozles is here too?" She shook her head. "Ain't been around here, that's for sure."
"Oh."
"I - I hope he's here, but, yeah, okay, let's look for him!"
"What do you mean, you hope he's here." There were times she thought the stoic Fire Nation boy was fairly dim, but that came up to bite her in the rear far too often for her to believe that. "What happened after we -"
"Whatever that thing that we've been chasing is - it had him and then he told me to run. He's probably okay, as I think about it. Almost definitely! He was okay-ish. The thing tossed me into nothing and I ended up like six months or so ago."
"Just great."
"Relax, Zuko, it's fine. I mean, we need to be positive about this. Toph's probably right."
"Probably right about being possibly okay? Yeah, really confident."
"Everyone, please calm down." This time she intervened in time. Zuko and Katara's expressions turned from bitter and frustrated to that of a pair of children being scolded by their mother. "I have some good news. Azula's nearby."
"Great!" Katara smiled brightly. "How close is she?"
"She's there." She pointed towards a building in the distance. It was the only one still completely intact. The Phoenix School. It looked increasingly menacing as the red haze shifted hues from a bright, blood red to something darker.
Was night falling in this corrupted Ba Sing Se? It looked almost like a fortress in the shadows of the fog. "There is some bad news, too," Yue admitted, shyly.
"Figured it was too good to be that easy."
Zuko received a weak backhanded slap from Katara for that, but he didn't even flinch at it. Yue stuttered helplessly for a second as she tried to get her thoughts together. "It's more that." She paused again, reconsidering her words. "It's just -"
"Just say it!" Toph shouted.
"Okay, okay. That big evil presence I felt is closer than ever. Azula's nearly right on top of it."
"Just great. Azula's wandering blind into some big trouble. We need to hurry."
Yue was quick to agree. At the back of her mind, something nudged her to speak, but she fought against it. Already there's enough reason to worry, they don't need to worry any more, she argued to herself. But it still bothered her that she couldn't speak about it.
And it bothered her that she wasn't certain, even this close to Azula. She'd been noticing, even before now, that there would be times she could sense a faint, distant presence around Azula. Now, it was close, but all the same, just as illusive. It was trying to hunt a white antlered hare amongst the tundra - it got lost in the same all-consuming void that was Azula Houou.
Every time she was certain it was there it would vanish, throwing her back into doubt.
She would speak about it when she was certain. They've got enough reason to worry, she consoled herself again. She still didn't believe it, but it helped if she pretended she did.
Again the sluggishness of response nagged at her temper. This was no time for anything short of controlled and, yes, perfect coordination, and the sudden shift from high-speed over-stimulation to the mind-numbing slowness of time was like going from a runaway tram screaming to a full reverse. She was just glad the analogy didn't carry over into the whiplash or she'd be in the market for a new neck.
The hands were closing in their circle around them, they still flipped and juggled the knives between each other. They were getting closer on the diagonal throws, she noticed. She was beginning to wonder how far this guardian was willing to take its sadistic little power play. Talking was pointless. By the time she said anything, time would either speed up or return to normal. She just gave Xiao a reassuring glance.
The first order of business was to do something about those knives.
She didn't fail to notice the ritual they followed each time the passage of time shifted. They would always slam them into the ground, and each time they would rotate through the hours like a sundial.
That was her opportunity. She had to take it. The funny thing about the slowing of time is it gave you a relative large amount of time to think. The synapses fired off at about the same rate no matter how you looked at it. If anything, she was thinking faster the slower everything got. Relativity was a wonderful thing when put into perspective.
The knives whirled through the air, their rotations may have slowed, but they moved at about the same speed. The shadowy hands would do little flourishes with the knives when they grabbed them. They swam through the ground, and repositioned themselves.
And then slammed the knives into the ground. Now! the thought came along with a sudden return to normal speeds as the shadows spun wildly around the blades. Her foot came down, twisting just a bit, and with this aggressive gesture, the ground underfoot started to quake. The fissure she formed cut the very earth in two around the knife, and with a slow and firm step forward, she lifted her hands up and assumed a ready stance.
Like any bit of earth, it complied, rising up with her hands and floating in wait. She dashed forward with her arm extended, and stopping short, she punched the thing through the space of an inch. The tiny, almost invisible motion had enough force behind it to send the stone flying, hurtling one of the knives into the distance. The hand seemed to panic, gesticulating madly as it reached for its blade. Finding none, it soon returned to the ground and with a fizzling noise, the puddle of blackness soon evaporated.
"Got it."
It had only taken her a matter of seconds. She could already feel time change. The noise was becoming obnoxious, like a siren that wouldn't stop. Xiao's mouth was already going a mile a minute, words crashing into each other like a pile-up on the intercity expressway into Ba Sing Se. Azula ignored it. Three more knives to deal with.
They were swapping them about in the formation of a triangle. The knives were still getting closer, but now she knew she had to be more precise than her mind would let her be. She was now thinking slower, which was troubling. Events occured at lightning speed. The knives were barely thrown into the air by the time she realized they'd been passed off again.
She couldn't quite see the mask behind the flurry of steel, but she liked to imagine it was beginning to get nervous. That was good. It should be. It shouldn't have toyed with Azula Houou. She would teach it the proper respect.
Lightning would have been a great help. But she would look to the other side of the storm. Anyone who grew up in the Fire Nation knew to fear and respect the lightning, the rain, and, of course, the wind.
It didn't need to be precise. She couldn't be precise. It was an elegant solution. And the speed with which she moved made the gale force seem all the stronger. She pushed it against one of the shadowy claws, and she pushed hard. The winds swept through it like a typhoon through a beach tree.
Its fingers curled tighter against the knife's handle, but Azula knew even through her ever increasing headache that it couldn't hold. She stopped for only the briefest of moments and unleashed another gale with renewed force. She could see its fingers unfurling slowly under the force. She could see the knife rattling as the winds threatened to blow it away.
She knew she'd won.
The knife didn't take long to slip from the creature's increasingly flimsy grip. It spiraled off towards the rooftops with an incredible speed and the hand convulsed in terror as it slowly melted back into an evaporating puddle of slime.
Two left, and she was certain that the scion would get the message now. It couldn't toy with Azula Houou, and now it would try to end things. The knives that remained thrust into the ground. "Azula, we gotta do something, fast! It's going to slow everything down again!"
Azula nodded. "I've got it under control." She could feel the words tumble out slower as she spoke. The next time they tossed those knives they would be getting close enough to cut, if not finish her off completely. Timing was everything.
She knew she had to plan everything minutes in advance, every motion had to be accounted for. They were already moving. She slammed her foot into the ground hard.
It was an incredible maneuver, one that would have been all the more impressive if she had an audience, but she would settle for Xiao's lavished praises afterwards. Earth moved slowly, even when a bender called it up out of the ground. The knives moved quickly, despite the sudden slowing of time around them. The hands aim was good. If she hadn't anticipated it, she would have likely moved into one of the knives, likely piercing her lungs at the very least.
Instead, they pierced the ground. The earth rose up on either side of the girls to meet them. Her timing was perfect. Even as they collided with the stone, the arms panicked. Time returned to normal and Azula thrust her arms out. The pieces of earth shot across the ground and smashed to pieces against the walls.
"That is, as they say, that." She drew her gun. "I'm tired of these diversions." She drew a bead on the clock face as the hands slowly faded away into nothing. Walking forward, she could see its expression was one of absolute terror. She relished it. She was standing mere feet away. Point blank range, as they say, when it would feel the fire of the gunpowder as well as the piercing bullet.
If it felt anything, she added with disgust. It was a monster, after all. She didn't have any witty one-liners, and she really never cared for such movies. So she turned off the safety and fired.
The clock face shattered around her, the mask was fragmented and soon enough gone into the same misty shadow as its hands. The last guardian was dead, and the door it guarded was right before her, waiting to be thrown open.
"You did it, you really did it."
Azula turned back to Xiao. She expected, any second now, for the other shoe to drop. "Where to?"
"The roof, of course. You can see the entire city from there."
"Of course." She expected something more, somehow, something else to happen. She wasn't disappointed, but at the same time, she wasn't exactly relieved. There still was quite a way to go until they reached the roof. The school's doors swung open with surprising ease in spite of the rust and grime that covered them.
"Are you coming or not? Slowpoke."
"Eager to be free?"
"More than you can even tell," Xiao answered. "But we got a lot to do before that. So much to do, Azula Houou, more than you can even know."
The building was thrown into chaos. The lockers had been overturned, and there were desks thrown into the halls like barricades. But the stairs were still open. They were sturdy, strong, and they didn't feel at all like they would give way. Xiao ran up them with a great burst of speed.
Azula checked her gun before following. She was down to her last bullet.
Somehow that didn't surprise her. She'd been in the maze for too long, there was no time to pick up anymore bullets, and even if there was, was anything in the maze actually real? No, she would have to make due with her wits and her bending for now.
She'd been suspicious, of course. She'd had lots of suspicions over the years and most of them proved correct. However, she couldn't quite figure out the angle. It was like any scam, drawing on things like ego and pity, but they didn't account that Azula was numb to both of these things. Since it's me, she repeated in a mocking voice inside her mind.
No, since it was her, she would suspect. "Xiao, I don't exactly see any exit to this maze here."
"It's here. There's just a teensy tiny detail I forgot to mention." The girl was on the school roof looking at the world behind rusty chain fences. They were there for protection, to stop children from falling to their deaths on the ground below, but right now, it seemed almost like a prison cell for her and Xiao to share.
"I assume that detail is that I won't be leaving with you."
Xiao sniffed and broke into a rain of crocodile tears. "Why would you think that? I wouldn't abandon you! Not like you were going to abandon me! You're always leaving everyone behind, aren't you Azula? Are we just tools to you? That's it, isn't it? People are just tools to you."
"Don't play this game with me. I've suspected for some time that you were omitting key details in our little chats. Furthermore, you have been, how to put this - mostly invisible to my associates. Mostly, but not completely."
"That stupid moon girl! She could see me? Impossible!"
"Your cries of abandonment aren't completely unfounded, I suppose, but it's not in the same way as, say, the others. They couldn't face it, because they failed to acknowledge those parts of themselves. No, I know full well who I am, Xiao. And as such, I know who you are."
Xiao just burst into a fresh tantrum of tears.
He wasn't quite certain how he knew, but Sokka could tell that the entire world as he knew it had been shot. It was probably the sense that there was a great big hole everywhere around him. Bullet wounds tended to be circular, as a matter of course, but one tended to miss that detail when stuck right in the middle.
The entire world around him was now more accurately a large circular hole in reality, which was, he had to admit, something that occured just far too often in his life to panic about. He had other things to worry about.
She'd been scared, for example. We could have - should have done something - was another. Half thoughts, built without full context because the moment had been striking enough to take all of that and throw it down into the fire.
He wondered if she would have burned up in the heat of Agni's flames, or simply fell until she couldn't fall anymore. He couldn't decide which possibility was more frightening, but he was certain Azula knew. People tended to remember that sort of detail no matter how hard they wanted to forget.
Now it was his turn to fall. He didn't really have much else to hold onto, considering everything that remained from the tower's destruction had been shot, and was slowly bleeding out into the vastness of space and time.
Space and time, usually viewed separately, were vast or infinite, together they were vastly infinite. Which was a hard concept to wrap one's head around when forced to stare at it. Sokka's first thoughts were simply, Well, this is certainly a long way to fall. The sensation was already catching up with him. Like a blood vessel to the world outside, the terrible cost of freedom was the absolute certainty of death.
And as he was gushing out of a bullet wound, that meant he was a blood vessel with a brain sharp enough to actually understand that concept.
And then he wasn't falling and the vastness of time and infinite stretch of space were once again separate concepts that played well together but kept separate rooms. Which was all well and good to Sokka Floes, whose brushes with these outlandish concepts were, at best, hazardous to his health.
"I really hate it when space and time mix up together. I mean, I really, really hate it."
He wasn't sure who he was talking to, but the only answer he got was a loud bang. Gunshot, he'd heard it all before, somber sobriety set in and he was already rushing to the school's door. He didn't care how he got there, after all this time he just accepted it and moved on. It made things easier.
"Sokka!" someone called out. He glanced behind him. The entire entourage of his friends were rushing up to him, mixtures of relief and fear playing on their faces. Katara was leading them. "We heard a gunshot - Azula -"
Sokka nodded as he threw open the front door. "I heard it too. What's going on?"
"We don't know. We think we're near the center of the maze."
"And Azula?"
"Your guess is as good as mine."
"We don't have time to get into the details," Yue said, "But it's very important we get to Azula now."
"Where is she?" Sokka asked, looking down the hallways. So much destruction, it was like something out of a dream. No school today, on account of absolute nuclear destruction. Funny enough, he always imagined the school would just be a crater.
"The roof!" Yue paused before adding, "She's not alone. There's something else there. Someone else."
"What sort of someone?" Zuko spoke in raspy grunts, usually getting to his point by projecting it as far as he could with a grumpy glare.
"It's hard to explain. I thought my senses were being confused or distorted by the labyrinth itself, but now I'm certain - someone's been following Azula this whole time."
"You mean, in this weird Ba Sing Se?" Katara asked. Yue shook her head.
"At least since you saved me from my other side - oh no."
The thought aligned very swiftly in Yue's head, seizing upon her the importance of her words, and Sokka picked up on it. He stopped and turned back at the frozen Moon spirit. "Oh no. Oh no, no, no. You got to be kidding me. You mean she's had one this whole time?"
"What are you babbling about?" Toph asked. She tapped her foot irately. ":And why are we stopping."
"I, I think Yue means Azula's 'Stranger' or whatever they're called has been following her the entire time."
"That's mostly accurate, yes. They're just parts of us, so it almost feels like, at a glance, there are two of us. Two Kataras in the desert, two Sokka's in his little video game, two Zuko's in his space fortress - but they've been right on top of each other this whole time."
"You mean the entire labyrinth is her maze?" Toph shouted. "You mean she's the one responsible for this?"
"I suppose that's true."
"Just great!"
"But it's just as much us," Yue said. "She didn't create everything in this maze."
"But this part's all her, right?" Toph muttered. "She's still crazy after all this time. I guess some things never change."
"No!" Yue protested, "She has changed! Can't you see?"
"No. No I can't."
"Oh. Well, yes, but, I meant that metaphorically and rhetorically -"
"I think I get it. You couldn't sense her clearly at first because they weren't all that different. Inside, she's been changing." Sokka growled, angrily. "This is bad! She's going to tick it off, I just know it! And I don't want to fight Azula's bad side. She's scary enough as it is."
"Well, let's stop standing around and get her before she does something stupid!"
The last flight of stairs was cleared quickly and they flew out onto the rooftop, piling through the door in the process. Azula glanced up at them as they did.. "You made it." She seemed calm, actually composed. "I'm glad. I think it's time to leave."
Opposite of her, for the first time, they saw Xiao. Yue's eyes widened in surprise. There she was, eight years old, all over again. She wore a black dress and a red bow in her hair. Those same gold eyes filled to the brim with tears was throwing a tantrum. An eight-year old Azula Houou.
"Azula, you're going to leave me after all of this?"
"Don't be ridiculous. Aren't you trying to provoke me? To make me deny you're part of me? I know that."
"But, but, but-"
"Whoa. She made hers cry." Sokka whistled, it was an impressive sight. The girl was rubbing her eyes frantically.
"Don't make fun of me! I just don't want to be left alone."
"Shut up, it's unbecoming of you. Now, let's go. We're close to the center of the maze, if I'm not mistaken. We shouldn't waste time. We have to finish this."
And Xiao's crying stopped. "I know why we abandon people. We run away so no one can leave you again. Because no one wants to be around Azula Houou, because we're monsters."
"Don't be ridiculous."
XIao bawled out her eyes again, "But we're the same. We've both been abandoned so much. First our mother, then Zuko, then our father, and finally -"
Azula's eyes widened and she turned around. "Do not dare say that name."
It's incredible what one spark could do. With the proper care, a tiny spark could wipe a city off the map. With the proper care, a spark can become a fire, and a fire can grow larger. In this city of Ba Sing Se, a reflection of Azula Houou herself, a small spark was lit. And Xiao knew how to foster it.
"What name?" Xiao asked innocently.
"It doesn't matter."
"But it does. You were in lo-o-o-ve, and he abandoned you because he liked someone better. That's why you killed him!"
"Shut up!" Azula snapped. "I have no idea what you're talking about."
"Oh, right. Because you wanted to forget. So you threw all of those bad thoughts into me. So you could forget. That's why people come to the Labyrinth of Lethe, to forget all the things that cause them grief. So you wanted to forget him, but I can't."
"Azula -" Katara called out, but Zuko raised his hand to silence her. "But, she needs us-"
He shook his head. "This is something she needs to face herself. We just have to be ready to pull her out of the fire when the time comes."
"You mean you want to fight her other side?" Sokka shouted.
"No. But we have to. Azula needs this, more than any of us did."
Azula made no motions to silence them because she was too focused with her own problems. By the furrow of her brow, anyone could see her wrestling with something. She was confused, but she was logical. She'd approach it carefully. "You're not real. You're a figment of my subconscious created to torment me. I know this.":
"But knowing is different than accepting it. I used to think you were so great, but you kept building me up with all of the things you didn't want to think about. You were running away and you were going to abandon me. Just like Aang did."
"No. That's not true."
"But, Azula, if you give up too much of yourself, don't you become me, and I become you? Aren't I more real than you? Here's a secret about memories and time - they're the same thing. You've been giving me all your time and you're just about out."
"That's ludicrous, couldn't possibly be true."
"Azula Houou, who are you?" Xiao asked. Something about her seemed, for want of a better word, peculiar. The shadow she cast under the red sun seemed to flicker. Something about her burned her eyes, but the burn was cold.
"I'm the daughter of, uh - and - and-" All black - why was it all black? She knew she had known this literally seconds prior, as she was beginning to speak. But it was all leaking out now. She didn't know why, and she suddenly wished she did.
"You don't remember do you?"
"I'm tired of you." Azula held up her gun with a shaky hand. "I should have rid myself of you to begin with."
"You missed last time," Xiao taunted. She kicked the flattened bullet out of the way. "What makes you think you can hit me now."
"You don't know anything about me. You are never going to replace me. I'm the only Azula Houou. You're nothing but a pretender!"
The gun slipped from her hand and fell with a bang and Azula could feel herself drifting away. She tried to hold on. She would not be defeated like this. Xiao seemed to undergo a transformation. Her clothes, her arms, her legs, all of them seemed to mature and grow as the shadows of Ba Sing Se flocked to her. The city seemed to come to life as a fire burned wildly out of control, seizing the entire city in its grasp.
And Xiao stood up. At first glance, she resembled Azula completely. Every detail was the same, except for the red of her eye. But a little closer, one could see the lines. They were like a wound that hadn't quite healed right that extended from her temple. She still wore a black dress like the one she'd been wearing before, but this one was more suitable for a teenage girl. She looked beautiful in it for a given value of beautiful. There was something one-dimensional about her. She seemed like Azula, but that was the extent of it.
She smiled. "I am the shadow, the true self," she declared and reached for the gun. The others prepared themselves as Xiao picked up the weapon and examined it. Something about it fascinated her. She glanced up over it and waved it around. "I hate you all so much." Her voice was chillier than the South Pole in the dead of winter: frigid enough to sear. "I hate this city, I hate this entire world and I'm going to see it burn at my feet."
She drew a bead on each of them, until she finally came over Katara. "Especially you."
"Me?"
"Be careful, something's not right!" Yue warned. This other Azula glanced at Yue briefly, before an unsettling smile crept on her face. A chilly chuckle built in the back of her throat, coming out almost like a croak.
Katara drew out some water and settled in a ready stance. "I'm ready for her."
Xiao shook her head and pulled the gun back, and casually brought it to her own head. Her voice gained a hard edge, wonder setting into her entire being at the sensation of the barrel brushing against her head. "I hate everything."
She pulled the trigger.
To be continued.