The Mercenary
Jet kicked the doors to the old dojo open and rushed in ahead of Azula, who, despite her roundness, was quite quick on her feet in the heat of battle.
All around them, piles of printed issues of the Fadmon leaflets stood in stacked towers as tall as a man or taller. Only a single lamp illuminated the vast space, the blinds having been drawn and the window shutters closed and boarded up tight.
The scuffle of a foot made Jet spin around.
"Whoever's there, show yourself!" he bellowed. "The fight's over. Your fangirls are defeated!" (Okay, that wasn't quite true) "Our armies outnumber you twenty to one!" (Also not true.) "Come out or we'll set the whole place on fire!" (Which they'd do anyhow, but only after they'd exited the building.)
The deep brown shadows shifted. Azula's senses pricked and she automatically sent a jet of flame toward the figure. It ducked, and the fireball ignited a tall stack of paper behind their attacker.
The shadowed man slowly stood. Jet and Azula both gasped. His silhouette was unmistakable.
"You!"
"Your majesty!" Hakoda joined Zuko, punching through a throng of lovestruck fangirls who kept gabbling the word dilf like a bunch of quacking turtle-ducks. "We have to fall back!"
"We need to hang on a little longer!" Zuko argued loudly over the chorus of fangirl wails. "My sister and Jet are taking out the HQ. We just need to hold out."
"Zuko, it's no use. We can't overcome, even if the Fadmon head is struck off. Don't you see?" He gestured at the carnage all around them. Fangirls had piled atop the fallen, humping the life out of the prone soldiers. Aang and Appa had somehow managed to encase themselves in another protective sphere of ice, despite the bevy of fans trying the melt the globe with their glomping; poor Smellerbee was being given a makeover; Pakku's snide remarks and disdainful sneer did nothing to repel his attackers; and The Duke was being tossed through the air like a beach ball. Hakoda's voice broke in despair. "It's hopeless!"
Zuko had never heard him sound so defeated—and the man had been crapped on plenty in his lifetime.
No. If nothing else, he would not allow this fight, this ridiculous shenanigan, of all things, to break the proud Water Tribe warrior!
"Where are those damn dogs?" Zuko cried. He couldn't lose this war!
Hakoda pointed towards the trees, keeping his eyes averted in shame. Maiko and Kataang, it turned out, had discovered they could lick their own… Well, suffice to say they were preoccupied by their new discovery, and were being butchered by the gleeful Zutarians, who stabbed mercilessly at them with barbs of loathing.
The Fire Lord's heart sank at the loss of his ace-in-the-hole. This was not how it was supposed to end. Zuko refused to be defeated. He would not shame his family, his wife, his nation by entering into this war without an exit strategy!
At that moment, The Boulder strolled past, grinning, invincible. The girls who trailed him were trembling weakly, their eyes glazed and mouths hanging open. When they tentatively reached out to touch him, they almost immediately collapsed, stricken, to lie twitching in the earth.
"Boulder…" Zuko couldn't believe what he'd just seen. "How…what?"
"The Boulder is not surprised the fangirls are struck by his magnificent muscles," Boulder said, flexing a juicy bicep. He winked at Zuko. "The Boulder knows the ladies—and some boys—like a good show." He growled and made his pectorals dance for a group of approaching enemy girls. They stopped in their tracks, dazed, and fell promptly to the ground, foaming from the mouth.
A good show…
In an Iroh-clear moment, Zuko realized there was a way to save them all.
He looked at Hakoda, slumped in defeat. Stared around at the other soldiers, strapping, boundless men and women devoted to their cause, to their nation, to everything that made their world great.
Yes, he could save them all. But it would require a great sacrifice.
"Princess." Haru stepped forward, his long, auburn mane reflecting the red-orange of fire, his green eyes glinting with cool calculation. He gave an obsequious bow and glared up at Jet. "And do I have the pleasure of addressing you as 'Your Highness' yet?" he asked sneeringly.
"Don't be ridiculous, Haru," Azula snapped. "What are you doing here? Why did you leave the palace?"
"Why?" The fire behind him flared. Glowing ash and embers flitted around them like demonic snow. "You have a gall to ask me why?" Angry lines carved Haru's face. "Azula, I love you. I've always loved you. But then you got with child and you didn't so much as look at me when the question of the baby's paternity came up."
"But I don't know who the father is!" she shouted back, her voice choked with frustration.
"And that's exactly the problem." He paced slowly around the pair like a panther-snake sizing up its prey. "I gave myself to you a hundred percent. Played all your mind games, let you do terrible, wonderful things to me. And in the end, you treated me like a discarded toy!" He slammed a fist against a tower of paper, knocking it into the growing blaze behind him. The fire expanded, sending heat waves rippling across Haru's broad shoulders, bathing him in the angry light. His hair, usually so glossy and picture perfect, came alive beneath the scorching air, rising and writhing like snakes around his head. "No one else has been as loyal and faithful to you, Princess. I'm your dog, and I allowed you to make me your dog. That's why I left. I had to prove to everyone I was a man, that I was more than the chained concubine in the princess's chamber. I've found my way in the world now, Azula." His voice had calmed so it was as deep and deadly as an undertow.
"Doing what?" Jet interrupted, gesturing around the dojo. "Printing lies? You're the one behind Fadmon!"
"Actually," a new voice broke in, "he's just the hired help."
Azula turned and recoiled in shock. "You!"
His peasant clothing had been replaced with luxurious silk robes, the scruffy goatie tamed into a finely combed point. He looked diabolical, and not just Long-Feng diabolical; really evil-genius diabolical.
Jet stared. "Waitaminit....is that...the cabbage merchant?"
"I have a name!" Cabbageman huffed indignantly. "It's—"
"You can't be the ring leader behind Fadmon," Azula interrupted, waving a dismissive hand.
"Oh, but I am." He cackled and rubbed his hands together in the way only evil geniuses did. "See, when the Fire Lord eloped with his lovely wife a few days before the royal wedding, I was there to witness the ceremony after he accidentally crushed my cabbage cart. He paid me enough shut-up money to start this little enterprise. I vowed that day would be the last time anyone hurt my poor, defenseless cabbages! So I—"
"Zuko and Katara eloped?" Jet said incredulously, interrupting Cabbageman's evil-plan revelation speech. "Those little sneaks!"
"Zuzu wouldn't have left something like that off the books," the princess reasoned skeptically. "He's just too anal with the coffers."
"It would be under kitchen expenses," Cabbageman pooh-poohed, a touch miffed no one seemed to be taking him seriously. "A lifetime's worth of cabbages is in the palace budget. What, did that never strike you as strange?" He cackled at the stricken look that had popped up on the princess's face. "Who eats that much cabbage? I mean, really! Do you know how long those things last?"
"So all this time, the Fire Nation has been funding the enterprise they're now seeking to destroy." Jet mused over the irony. What a twist!
"And no one's going to take it away from me. The world owes me for all the suffering I've been through! All the indignity! I will reap my vengeance and destroy the pride of all those who dared to besmirch the name of—"
"Not if I have anything to say about it." Azula swooped her arms in twin arcs and gathered a ring of crackling lightning around her. Her skin tingled with sparks and she focused it at Cabbageman. "This ends now."
A jagged bolt of blue-white light raced outward from her fingertips, only to splash harmlessly against a thick wall of stone that jutted out from beneath the wood plank floor.
"Stop right there, Azula," Haru intoned with deadly calm. "You're not going to harm him."
The princess regarded her former lover incredulously. "And who's going to stop me?" she asked on a half laugh. "You?"
"Yes."
Cabbageman hooted. "He works for me, Your Highness. My hired mercenary, my very own Earthbender bodyguard." His gaze almost lovingly caressed Haru.
"You're no mercenary," Azula scoffed at the pretty Earthbender. "Now stand aside."
"I don't want to hurt you, princess." He took a defensive stance. "But I will if I have to."
"Guys, take it easy, c'mon," Jet cajoled lightly, eyes darting between the two. He could feel the tension mounting in the blazing room like a lion-turtle about to take a big, stinking dump. "It doesn't need to come to this—"
"It does," Azula replied evenly. She smiled wickedly up at Haru. "You think you can stand up to me? You think you can defeat me?"
"I am." Haru planted his feet apart. "I will."
"Talk is cheap." Blue fire burst from her hands. "I'm going to enjoy burning you, love. I always do."
Jet flinched as rock met flame. The epic battle that ensued flung molten slag and superheated earth and stone in all directions. In all her ultra-competitive glory, round with baby and glowing with the light of challenge, Azula threw fireball after fireball at Haru, who matched each punch, kick and flame with the strong, powerful, graceful moves of a master Earthbender. Solid. Unyielding. Patient. He truly had morphed from molehill to mountain. Towers of tinder-dry paper lit up into mini infernos, and the air grew thick with ash and smoke and hot, dry grit.
Cabbageman inched away from the fray, but Jet couldn't let him escape. He skirted the pillars of flame and pounced on the old man. "Wait right there!"
"Saurerkraut punch!"
A weak, wet, flabby fist smacked Jet square on the bridge of his nose. He was momentarily stunned, then irritated by the stupid attack. He gathered Cabbageman up by the lapels of his shiny evil suit to show him what a real punch should feel like.
And then a burning started behind his eyeballs. Jet tried to blink the pain away, but it only got worse. Soon, stinging tears ran down his cheeks from puffy eyes soaked in vinegar. As befitted a truly malicious villain, Cabbageman kicked the Freedom Fighter in the groin, and as Jet squeaked and fell to his knees, the merchant-turned-antagonist fled.
"Azula!" Jet just barely managed to croak. "He's getting away!"
But the princess was too engrossed by her fight with her old lover. This new side of Haru intrigued her—his spirit was pumped to white-hot intensity, his supple, firm musculature primed by his ferocious confidence.
She'd snuff it out like a cinder beneath her heel.
"You can't beat me," she called languidly, teasing Haru with another series of fireballs aimed at his feet. He danced lithely away, his jade-green eyes never leaving hers. "Moreover, you won't."
"Don't push me, princess." Haru yanked a disc of rock from the ground below, sending a shower of wood chips up from the floor. It rained fire in return.
"I'll push you however I want, however much I want," Azula taunted with grim satisfaction as she folded her arms across her chest. Her relaxed stance would fool any other combatant into thinking she'd let her guard down. But with her very pregnant belly sticking out and taunting Haru, it was clear she was goading him. "You never retaliate, Haru. You never fight for what you want. You run, you bow to the wishes of others, you wait until someone else leads you to battle. But you never initiate, do you?" She laughed a little harshly. "That's why you were always my favorite. So easy to manipulate."
"No." Haru shook his head in denial, a curtain of hair obscuring the pain on his face.
"You didn't step up as the father of this baby," she accused. Deep lines of hurt appeared around her mouth, her eyes. "You didn't fight for me. You left, Haru. Not me."
"No!"
Fire engulfed the rafters, greedily eating up the timber. They were surrounded by blazing tongues of flame, hell on earth. Jet screamed, blind, feeling and hearing the roaring inferno inching ever closer, but he couldn't be heard.
"It's always easier to do nothing, to cave to authority, to ignore your real problems, to run," Azula shouted hurtfully at Haru, the ache in her heart threatening to burst her chest. "And that's what you always do. That doesn't make you a man, Haru. It makes you a coward!"
"Shut up!" The disc of rock flew straight at Azula.
She dodged easily, but Haru whirled his great, angry strength, bowing the stone frisbee's trajectory.
It crashed through a load-bearing pillar. The blazing roof creaked, shuddered, gave.
Jet's vision cleared just in time. He cried out with all his wretched heart and soul as flaming timbers tumbled down from the ceiling and right on top of the pregnant princess and her horrified lover.
Sorry this chapter took so long--I have a lot going on, and this part of the story needed to balance ha-ha with uh-oh. Thanks to everyone for 1000 reviews and for sticking around!