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.

"Nightly dance of bleeding sword (just about now, I'm gonna make you dance) reminds me that (know what I mean, going crazy tonight) I still live (just like that.)"

- P3FES

Lotus Juice feat. Yumi Kawamura

Chapter 30: The Corridor of Broken Memories

I can't sleep.

Azula had never wrestled with insomnia before. Her body was rebelling, and she couldn't even bring herself to get a wink of sleep. And so she was left alone with her thoughts. This didn't offer much comfort either. Thoughts mixed together like a putrid cocktail of fear and grief and guilt inside her head.

She'd never had heartache before - no, that was a lie. There were so many lies and tearing them down left her wondering exactly what she was trying to hide but a wormwood heart. She needed to do something. But everyone was tired. She could read the exhaustion in their eyes. She could feel it in her bones.

But she needed to take her mind off of these things, and so her feet had led her to stare down at the black mass that was blocking Aang's door. How strange to think that before now, simply leaving this maze would have been enough. Any yet...

Her other side, the Stranger she hid - or was that the thing she'd been but no longer wanted to be? - whatever it had been, facing up to it had left her with a new perspective. She had to make it right.

And through this door there was a place where Time and Memory were one and the same, and she had to get there. But how? She couldn't just break down the barrier with force, could she?

She hadn't actually tried it.

The shadows - if they really were shadows - sucked in light like a black hole. There was nothing but an unending sea of black. Her hands steady and her breath even, she gazed into the abyss and prayed that it didn't stare back.

Azure flames flew through the sky, and collided with the door like a concussive blast. The force was strong enough that it wouldn't have incinerated a door so much as splintered it. It was good to have firebending back. She felt whole again.

And despite the force, despite the power, the door held firm. But the shadows seemed to be crawling towards the wall, away from the blast. As Azula's breath wore down, so did the blast, and behind it, slightly charred but not broken, was a door. The shadows quickly began to surround it again. It was almost as if it was alive.

She reached out to the door and the substance, viscous and black, seemed to leap up at her fingers. She drew her hand back quickly as a sensation, neither hot nor cold, burnt her fingers. "What are you?" she wondered in a low whisper.

The darkness reached out again, only this time the formless mass seemed to resemble carnivorous teeth. It lashed out and coming together in a bone-crushing snap. Azula jumped back, but the teeth kept snapping and biting. More and more emerged from the door. Jagged teeth and steel jaws probed around inches in front of her face. And across the floor, the shadows reached out. The blackhole of matter guarding the door seemed intent to suck her in as well.

However, Azula stood perfectly still in the face of this, and brought her hands up, tracing a line of air that seemed momentarily to stand still before it lit. The azure blaze trailed after, and moving it like a gymnast's ribbon, she leapt backwards, cutting the air with fire.

"You're afraid of it, aren't you?" she asked the door, as its shadowy tendrils kept its distance. "You learned that fire burns, and now you know to fear it." Perhaps she gave it too much credit, she amended silently, perhaps it was just some facsimile that it had acquired. Still, the door was crawling away from the fire. "How unfortunate for you."

She twisted her finger into position. Some distant memory seemed to be calling to her, but she dismissed it. Now wasn't the time for suicide. She wasn't in the right state of mind for that memory to come back yet.

She kicked off the ground and charged at the door. Her finger left a trail behind her of azure that lit up the room. Did this creature know fear? It certainly acted cowardly. It was running from her, but she wouldn't allow it.

Like a razor wire, the air she bended around her finger and the fire she bended into it, sliced through the receding tendrils. They flopped to the ground and returned to the state of black matter before evaporating in a thick cloud of smoke.

The rest of the door made a high pitch sound that rang in her head more than through her ears. She backed away, but twisted the fire around in her hand as she did. "Whatever you are, if you can hear me, let me make one thing perfectly clear. You won't stop us."

Like a volcano erupting, or the sun itself, she mustered up the force of fire in her hands and shot it out. The hall was bathed in azure light as the flames collided with the door. Whatever writhing mass remained became nothing more than smoke as the flames collided with it.

Like the tide, it receded. She stared at the door. What it had left behind didn't look any different from the other doors, but in her eyes, still unfocused from lack of sleep, it looked special. It looked almost like it emitted a soft glow of hope. It wasn't Aang's room, but a door like any other in the labyrinth. It was labeled XXI.

This was it, the last door.

She let loose a mad giggle. "Finally..."

She would probably have even let out an insane cackle if not for the noise of every door in the dorm simultaneously opening. She turned around and watched her friends pour in with expressions of worry and annoyance all over their faces. "Azula, why are you up?" Zuko asked, his face carefully neutral.

"I found the door," she said, weakly. Suddenly, she didn't feel so confident.

On memories...

Memories are like glass. Fragile, beautiful things that can be altered, shaped, and forged by heat into whatever we make of it. That perfect moment, that beautiful lie that a memory will last a lifetime - a memory is little more than a lie we tell ourselves.

Observe it, and see it changed, the reflections in the glass are countless memories and all of them struggle for someone to remember them. And that's the danger. We take out these memories only briefly, and the damage is never apparent. We change it to be perfect.

This is the lie.

A summer day ignored the sweltering heat of the sun, replacing it with pleasant shade, and winter quick forgets the chill and the dirtied snow and replaces it with a comfortable blanket of white. These memories come here, damaged, broken, untrue and unwanted.

Like shattered glass, they are dangerous. Because a memory is but a snapshot of the past, and when we change a memory, in a very small way, so does the past. In this way humanity makes a fool of time, or perhaps... just maybe, time makes fools of us all.

Here, especially, the memories are strong. They're different here than in the rest of the labyrinth. The discarded passages that have been all but forgotten come here, the memories that most want to be remembered. The memories it most desires.

Here, among these broken memories, a shape recoiled. It seemed uncertain of its own reaction. Pain was not a native concept. No, to say it felt pain would be inaccurate, but it is something similar. Its borrowed shape stared mystified at the source of this brand new sensation. It felt something drip from its arm.

It wasn't blood - the creature had no use for such a thing - but it acted in much the same way. It ran down its arm and puddled on the ground, dripping inside the broken glass of another memory. It was the darkness of a cave, corrupt and obscuring and transformative. Everything it touched became darkness.

Around it, like a jagged, perfect nightmare the corridor stretched out. The deceptive hall went on for miles but it only took a minute for it to cross. This was the first door. Like a wounded animal returning to its den, the beast returned to its home.

A hand pressed against the door, and then sunk into it. The beast's shape seemed to dissolve into the door. Behind it, the memories churned and something emerged. These broken memories would give it shape, and it writhed and fussed and the darkness wrapped around it as it took shape.

A skeletal shape - not made of bone but something that seemed alive - reached into the mirror and pulled from it a plain white mask.

Azula looked - well, she looked bad. But she was driven. "Couldn't sleep," she muttered to no one in particular as the rest of the group came around in a semi-circle facing the door. Only Katara had the decency to wrap a blanket around Azula's shoulder.

"You look very tired."

"I couldn't sleep," she repeated tiredly. "There's still a little further."

"You're not going to do anyone any good if you keep pushing yourself like this, Azula."

"Always fussing over everyone," she muttered, "Katara, you are an old lady."

"And you are probably insane, Azula Houou. But we don't hold that against you," she said, before amending internally, Anymore.

"So let's just open it," Toph said. Frustration was evident. She'd had enough waiting. It felt like months since they'd done anything last. She wanted to get in there and find out just what was goig on. "Azula's ready to go, right?"

"Ready," Azula muttered.

"She's in no state."

"I can do this, Katara," she said, drawing herself upright, "I can. I just need a few minutes to compose myself. We've wasted enough time. Whatever it is that's been leading us on is in there, and it's getting stronger."

"She's correct. Something powerful is inside," Yue said, "I think we should proceed quickly, Katara, as soon as Azula is ready. I believe she knows what she is doing, if it's any consolation." Katara looked wearily at the others.

"Let me guess, you agree?"

"We've been here long enough. We've faced worse odds, too," Sokka said. "We can beat this thing if we know how."

"And do we?"

"Yes, Katara, we do. It's simple, really. It feeds on negative emotions. We can use that against it. We'll draw it in and take it down on our own terms."

"But how are we going to do that? Sokka, this thing has to be impossibly strong. Who knows how long it's been here."

Zuko grunted. "Doesn't matter. We beat it, no matter what. Azula got given Aang's powers for a reason, guess it's time to put them to use." He crossed his arms. "Azula, you do know what to do, right?"

"I suppose I do," she said, weakly. She wasn't so certain of that, "Still, we don't have time to make certain. Let's go. This thing wants the world to end, and I can't allow that." But why not? Because of him, even if she couldn't admit it to herself, she could feel it in her bones.

Katara sighed, "We've sacrificed too much to let the end of the world happen - again."

"We sure do get to avert a lot of apocalypses."

"Shut up, Snoozles, let's face it, we're too awesome to let this happen. So let's get going. You got the key, right, Spice Girl?"

The key that she'd been given by Lee - it was still here. It seemed to change for every door they entered. This wouldn't be any different. She approached the door and she placed the key where the keyhole should be. It sunk inside and was gone. The door opened slowly, revealing a corridor of broken glass.

"Let's go," Azula said. Weariness could wait. She knew somewhere at the end of this passage waited the place where time and memory intersected. And there she could make everything all right again.

She stepped forward because she couldn't turn back.

There was no source for the light, but it seemed to come from everywhere. The mirrors reflected and distorted it, casting prismatic beams about. There was silence, but as they walked further in, the sound of birdsong and distant melodies

Inside her head, Azula felt her mind drift. It was late summer, and the skies were beginning to turn dark as another tempest came upon the small island. It made her think of when she was a small child who hid from the thunder under her sheets and -

That never happened. She was probably beginning to have nightmares while awake. That made sense, as much as anything did. She'd never been this tired before. "Guys?" Toph's voice quivered, "Did anyone else get a really odd feeling?"

"Another attack?" Zuko grunted. Yue shook her head.

"There's nothing here but these mirrors."

"Memories," Azula said, "They're memories just like everywhere else in this maze. There's nothing to be alarmed about. We're in a place that isn't real and is more real than real all at once."

"That doesn't make any sense."

"So? It is what it is, and that's all there is to it," Azula said. It was rather embarrassing looking back. She had opened her mouth and put her foot in there well and truly -

Stop, that wasn't real either. Whoever felt that way had never met Azula Houou. There was nothing here but memories, so Yue said, there was no attack. This wasn't a trick, it was something else.

"There are so many memories," Katara breathed in wonderment, "More than we've seen."

"It took this many to make this labyrinth and all the memories we traveled through," Sokka said, "So many people who remember these things."

"No," Azula interrupted, "So many people who want to forget."

The memories screamed out at once. It was morning and - late evening seemed to fill the sky with stars like diamonds - he was wearing the stupidest grin, and her fist just flew without consulting her brain - and then the meteor shower filled the empty expanse - as the morning wore on -

"Stop it."

- he was on the ground - she felt like she was all alone, a speck in the universe - the morning that went on forever, with the promise of work on the horizon as the clock ticked another solitary second -

"Shut up, that isn't right at all!"

They were in her head. The memories were trying to steal her mind and take them over. They wanted to be remembered and they didn't care who did the remembering. She felt waves of sadness, and moments of joy, and the overwhelming wait of shame and grief all at once, all fighting for her brain and they didn't care what was destroyed in the process.

She stumbled forward as the memories overrode her senses. She could only see the past, and the present became something dimly on the horizon. Stumbling into glass, she could hear it shatter in the background of the chatter of the memories, until, at last, there was silence.

"I - everyone all right?" she asked. But the silence wasn't broken. Her eyes took time to adjust to the light. Rainbows criss-crossed in front of her. She could feel no scratches but there was a distinct sense she should have been hurt. She'd fallen through glass hadn't she?

She glanced behind her. The corridor stretched endlessly forward, she turned forward and was greeted to the same. In fact, every direction seemed to go on endlessly, reflected in each shattered sheet of glass was another reflection. She felt uncomortable here.

And her reflection - she looked pale and insane. Her eyes were not the eyes of a sane woman, that was certain. But she was sane enough to know it, and that was little comfort. She'd always been straight as a corkscrew. That was fine, sometimes a corkscrew was what you needed. But she never thought of herself as broken.

"I'm going to make it right," she told herself. Her lips didn't move. The reflection just stared forward. "That has to count for something, doesn't it?" she pleaded with herself. "That counts for something!"

This wasn't real. The memories were doing this. They were still inside her head. Quieter now, but still there crawling for purchase. She wasn't insane. She was tired, she was at her limits, but she wasn't - was she? A lifetime of certainty had never prepared her for how to deal with uncertainty. If the cat is in the box, is it alive or dead; is it somewhere in between?

She had to keep moving. Footstep after footstep, the memories got louder. She could feel the gunshot wound in her chest, her heart breaking in two, feel knives lacerating her brain, and while they scuffled for dominance, all she could feel was a thousand lifetimes of guilt and regret mixing together again, that vile cocktail.

And on the ground she saw the blood.. No, not blood, not quite, but something just the same. She fought back against the memories as she looked closer. If it was blood, it was more than enough that whoever bled it would be dead somewhere around here. She saw her friend's prone form and knew immediately - no, she didn't. She didn't see that, she didn't ever!

Whatever the liquid was, it seemed to react. Azula watched it carefully. Clearly it was responding to her mental state, but why. She wanted to touch it, just to get a sense for how it felt. It was drawing her in, and it looked so inviting.

Which is why she instead made a fist and blasted it with fire. She wouldn't be had - not by whatever that was. She stared, her fists still poised in the follow-through. Breath after breath, she watched the smoke clear.

The substance was still there, but now it let out a terrible screech and Azula fought for purchase as her mind became overwhelmed with primal memory. Next she knew, she could feel the grass between her fingers and the sun on a warm summer day on her back.

"Where - what happened?"

She wasn't sure who she was asking, but she could feel someone nearby. She could remember countless days like this, but only in the barest of details. Memories of younger days, before everything became horrible. Before the accident, before her father's ambition ruined everything - here, she felt safe.

"Was I ever so naive?" she wondered aloud, "I doubt it."

The Fire Nation - her home in the Fire Nation no less - just as she remembered it. And waiting for her with open arms was her mother. Common sense screamed at her to run away, but like a moth to the flames, she could only be drawn in.

The beast had no form but what it borrowed, the same could be said for what it threw off. So the form of the Scion in the white mask became what it could steal. Here it felt the screaming memories of a thousand faceless human lives that had been cast into this oblivion. It drew its strength from it.

And if it couldn't become it could at least assume a shape from the strongest memories. Along the length of its web, it could feel people stumbling. These were different memories. Intrigued, it followed them. They blindly stumbled in all directions. Confusion set in. Then, hunger. The Scion was but an infant, newly born. It acted on instinct and followed them blindly.

The one with the white hair was different. From the various memories it had absorbed into itself, the Scion could tell. White hair, but young, eyes that shone with a light - different, very different, and dangerous too. It didn't like different. Different could mean anything. So instead it had gone after the one with a pleasant enough shape, attractive - not beautiful, though, but sharp, perhaps? Composite memory was somewhat tricky to parse.

It borrowed a shape from the deepest, strongest memories. As the girl, who muttered to herself from time to time, drew nearer, it could feel those very memories give it form. It was tall, slender, elegant. The shapeless black mass it called a body stretched, limbs extended off from its body, and with them long, defined fingers. Hair spilled out from behind its mask and cascaded down its back.

And the girl's eyes lit up. "Mother?" The newborn Scion cocked its head to the side in confusion. The girl seemed smaller now. She moved towards her like she was being drawn closer. Into the web,

She reached out those strange appendages called fingers towards the girl, but the face was impassive as the mask underneath. Inhuman, predatory instincts took hold.

And Azula walked forward like a lamb to the slaughter, unaware of the bony appendages that were slowly emerging from the Scion's back.

Azula, listen to me. Whatever you believe, this- this thing isn't your mother.

She was calling her closer, beckoning her with her finger. There was no denying it. There was her mother, so welcoming and warm like the days of summer that waned around them both; a precious moment lost in time. She'd thought she'd never experience anything like this again.

No worries, no fears, only comfort.

And yet...

Please, Azula, don't do this. I - I don't know if you can even hear me, but you must, you simply must listen to me! This isn't real.

The woman smiled in a distant, loving way. Like everything around her, it seemed so far away. Come closer, she seemed to say. and Azula hurried to comply. It was so strange her her legs felt tangled together. It must have been her imagination. Why was it so hard to think?

Look at her, Azula. That thing - that thing looks nothing like your mother!

But she looked just like she remembered! How could that voice think otherwise. She was so... so motherly. Her hair was long and black, like hers, and she had elegance and grace like Azula had always envied about her. She was so tall, and beautiful and perfect and -

Focus, Azula, please. I'm frightened. Everyone's separated and I don't think we can do this without you.

Who was that, that voice that seemed to be coming from the wind? It was trying to disturb her happiness. She had to silence it. It was lying. Everything was wonderful, and it would stay wonderful forever and -

"This is wrong."

The land around her that she recognized so readily moments before seemed alien, and the woman she had so certainly thought was her mother now seemed a distant giant. Like a small child looking up at her mother, the woman was huge, and the face was nothing like the kind face of her mother.

"You're not her. You're nothing like her!"

The woman froze.

"I don't know where you took me - or if you took me anywhere at all. But bring me back right this instant!" She felt something electrifying running down her spine, and fire burst to life in her hand. She was prepared to fight, but her legs wouldn't respond. She stared down at the threads of black that bound her tightly.

The woman lurched forward, its back breaking at the center, and from its torso, shredding its way outwards, many bony shaped hands. It almost looked like a spider wrapped in black, and on its face was a simple white faced mask made of porcelain. It wore itself like a tiara.

Tearing off the remainder of the memory it skittered towards Azula. She couldn't look away from the mask. There was no traces of humanity in it.

The monster was made of the same substance as the thread. It was neither cloth nor liquid, but it seemed to have qualities of both, and it writhed all over. A great noise like the buzzing of thousands of insects droned, but the frequency got into her head and pulled her in thousands of directions. Their singular purpose was to turn her mind into the thing of nightmares. It felt like the bugs were crawling around inside her.

It took her everything to stay focused. She had to breathe. She had to feel the balance, and she had to keep breathing and let the fire breathe through her.

She aimed not for the monster with its exo-skeletal appendages, but for the threads at her feet. The fire blazed blue, At first the monster ignored it, focusing only on its prey in desperate struggles. But the fire drew ever nearer and it could do nothing but escape.

It leapt to the ceiling, skittering along on its bony appendages, it found a reflection at seemingly random before diving into it. The reflection turned black and then reflected nothing at all. The fire ate away at the inky thread, and she pulled her legs free.

"Thank goodness," said the voice in her head, and Azula realized that the speaker was behind her. "I was so worried when I found you -"

"Yue, calm down. What happened?"

"Well," Yue said, her eyes drawn to the blaze that was slowly dying away even as Azula pulled her feet out of it, "That's to say, I believe we all got split up and you were the first one I found. It's dreadful, Azula, that monster came out of nowhere and you were calling it 'Mother' and I thought you were going to die."

"Yue, I told you, I'm fine. Thank you."

"Um, you're welcome," she said, with a smile. "But that thing - what if it has the others?"

"I nearly guarantee that at least Sokka will find himself caught," she said, coldly, "Even if we warned him about it. No doubt he would see some massive pile of meat and stumble towards it like the moron he is."

"You're very cruel to Sokka, sometimes."

"Isn't everyone?"

"Well, yes, I suppose," she said, "But he takes it well."

"How did we get separated, Yue? Precisely, sil vous plait."

"The memories here are different. I'm sure you've already noticed, but they want to be remembered. They desperately want a home, and they're seeing our heads as a convenient place to stay. It's making finding my way around a hassle, let me tell you."

"So that's why you took so long to find me?"

"I'm sorry."

"Don't apologize," Azula answered. She wondered what it must be like for the goddess who sensed things for what they were, hearing the memories crying out for a home. She wasn't entirely sure whether to envy her or not. "Can you sense whatever that thing was?"

"Even through this noise. In fact, I think a lot of those memories have taken residence inside it. They're like little insects, don't you think?"

"That's what came to mind, too," she responded. "Like a trashbag full of bugs." The image ran a shiver down her spine. "Anyhow, as distasteful as it is, I think we'd best follow it. If it's left more webs like that hidden in this corridor, who knows who stumbled along blindly into it."

"Toph."

"Metaphorically."

"Oh."

It could grant every desire, as long as it could find it in someone's memory. Thousands of strands of thick, black web ran along the corridor, most of them invisible in the blinding light the corridor gave off. They trembled delicately as the wanderers.

The web ran throught the memories themselves, and it disturbed them. The Scion enjoyed destroying memories. The ones it like, it consumed. Consumption came easily to anything that came from the beast.

Summers become winters, and everything alive whithers and dies. The web runs deep in these memories, catching those that wander through them unaware. The Scion ran its web through, looking for the happy memories to lie in wait.

It waits to take the knife, to plunge it deep, but then it lets the prey twist it.

The Scion clung to the ceiling, grabbing at the edges of memories and gazing down at the web. It had been spun long and wide It twisted its head around like an owl, gazing into each of the memories in turn, information that would have overloaded a human brain was processed in minutes.

Then, it felt a tug, and if it had any concept of emotion, it would have felt a rush of excitement. Instead, it detached from the ceiling and dived into the floor. There was a splash, and then, for a moment, everything was quiet.

But only the briefest of moments.

It emerged with a shape that wasn't its own.

She'd never been to the circus. Growing up, Azula made sure not to get herself involved with things like that. University always seemed to be a first priority. Traveling abroad to broaden her horizons left her with very little time to enjoy silly, childish things like the circus. Ty Lee spoke at length about it, though.

In spite of never going to one in her life, due to the incessent shrieking of the memories as they struggled to escape, she knew exactly what one was like. The sights, the noises, the - oh Agni - the smells.

She remembered a fun house mirror - someone else's memory, no doubt. It deformed the reflection in such a way to make it seem funnier. Fatter, skinnier, taller or shorter - there was no end to the strange shapes the bend and contortion to the reflective glass could create.

But they also obscured more mirrors. Reflections reflected passages that didn't exist. Wandering this deep in the maze was like going through a mirror house. She wasn't sure what was real until she collided with it.

It smarted, too, especially when the memory she slammed into made a terrible noise like it had been struck.

"Perhaps I should take the lead?"

"Yes, I think that's a good idea," Azula answered. Yue graciously said nothing, but weaved through the mirrors to the empty spaces. If the light caught it just right, she could see the gossamer strands that ran through the maze. It was getting bigger, stronger with every passing second. How couldn't it? The memories wanted a home, and the monster wanted to eat them.

"Are we close?"

"Yes."

"Good, I don't want to waste any time."

Yue bit her lip, nervously, "There's something wrong," she answered, "I can sense Toph ahead, but there's a problem." She rounded a corner and glanced around. Mirrors in every direction, not a single passageway.

"Which way?"

"I don't know."

"Just pick one!" Azula snapped. Yue lifted a trembling finger. Fire streamed from behind her and she nearly screeched in shock as it struck the mirror she pointed at with intense heat. "There, we've made a path - you must be joking!"

The mirror was gone, shattered into a thousand pieces. The memory was screaming, but it still held together by strands of gossamer. They were so thick that the inky threads seemed like the trunk of a tree.

"It doesn't want us to approach."

"I had not reached that conclusion, Yue," Azula muttered. The sarcasm rolled off her tongue thick as the night is black, "Amazing deduction, as always. Is there another way to her? Anything?"

"Um, well," she paused. "This may take a moment. Like I said, all of these memories are making it very difficult to see."

"Why is that, exactly?"

"Oh, that's actually very interesting!" Yue's eyes shone brightly. "You see, the problem since we've come here is that the maze is actually infinite. Literally, infinite, which is completely different from either of our worlds."

"Uh-huh, you really wanted an excuse to talk about this?" Azula asked in measured tones. It was difficult to feel angry with Yue with the bright smile on her face. "Why is it infinite?"

"Because the memories are also part of the maze. That's why we were able to travel through to what seemed like the past. Here, with so many memories active like this, it's likely that they lead to and from each other."

"Wait, what?"

"They could act like little tunnels if you knew where one came out."

"Can you do that?"

"I think I could, given time, but like I said, it's hazy because there are so many. It's really hard to describe in three dimensions."

"You keep reminding me," she answered. "Just make it quick!"

"Yes, Azula, I'll be as fast as I can."

And to her surprise, it didn't take long. One was there at the forefront, and it pervaded her senses even now, as an outside observer. It was just a matter of finding where the right reflection. She pressed her hands against one and stared inside. Then, she moved to another, this time with more certainty.

"What are you doing?"

"I think I know how we can reach Toph. I'm just a bit nervous about where it will come out."

"We don't have time."

"I know, I know, but Azula -"

"Which way do we go."

Yue thought of protesting. She could explain it pretty quickly, and in terms that would ignore such things as multi-dimensional causality and other terms that were as plain as height and width were to a completely normal human being.

But Azula didn't seem to be in the mood. Yue just pointed at the fragmented glass, Azula nodded, and dived in to the spectacle of the circus.

To be continued.