The Highest Bidder

Chapter Seven: Thoughts and Considerations

In the morning, the helmsman made a course through the Earth Kingdom waters in search of the Avatar's whereabouts. When I woke from a very pleasant dream, it was exactly daybreak. I went up deck, dressed in Fire Navy armor—courtesy of the armorer who specialized in conforming male suits to a female's curves (which I really don't want to know to this day how he came onto the specialty). The crew members, all twenty of them, had come onto the deck, ready to take on another day. Honestly, it wasn't because they expected a fight from a passing ship or some crazy Airbender to come sailing by to assault us.

No, unlike me, they still had problems dealing with Zuko's ambition to capture the Avatar. They didn't know that his future rested on the Avatar's capture; and it would have helped matters if they did. However, as General Iroh had been the one to inform me of Zuko's true nature, I left it to the retired Fire Nation soldier to give them the story. Truthfully, I didn't want to inform the guards because I seriously wouldn't be able to explain it without wanting to punch an imaginary hole in the ship. After all, my mind was stronger than my physical strength. (Even today, the odds of me being able to strike a hole through solid metal are completely out of the question).

At any rate, as I was coming up onto the landing, Iroh took me aside and told me that we were heading for land again to make a pit stop. We were running low on supplies, and also, the soldiers wanted to relieve themselves properly. I didn't ask to know the last bit, but Iroh was such in a good mood that the acronym 'TMI' really didn't take.

Well, Zuko was irritated with that. The last time they had made a pit stop, they came across my path. Even on a logical level, six months with twenty hungry men and General Iroh would have wasted quite a bit of food. Another month would leave the men starving. I wasn't much of a fisherwoman either on the sea. It took me about ten minutes to explain to Zuko that in order for me to bend—if I could bend at all—was that I had to be in full physical contact with water. To be quite blunt, someone would have had to throw me overboard. I heartily disagreed with the plan the moment one of the soldiers proposed it; though Iroh seemed to partially agree with it. Zuko overruled, finally subsiding into agreeing to the plan of pulling the ship to shore.

When the helmsman cried out that land was just over the horizon of the rising sun, the soldiers joined the helmsman in cheerful delight. I had to laugh, for Iroh had joined in. They, at least, were now in high spirits. I joined Zuko by the bow of the ship.

"You know, Prince Zuko, it might not be a waste of our time if we asked around the town about the location of the Avatar," I proposed smoothly.

"They won't know anything." Zuko said with so much conviction that I narrowed my eyes at him in instant curiosity.

"It can't hurt to try."

Zuko turned to me.

"Mura, I've been down that road before."

"Not with me, you haven't," I said, poking him in the chest. "Look, if we gather supplies for the ship and let the soldiers have a bit of a furlough for three days, it will take the edge off the atmosphere. Your men are tired, sir, and so are you."

"I don't have time for this, Mura."

"Then let me try and you can stay on the ship," I said with a shrug. "You've seen me in action before; let me just walk around town and ask. You don't have to be with me."

He narrowed his eyes at me this time.

"How do I know that you're not going to escape?"

"Escape?" I repeated. I couldn't fight the urge to laugh. "I'm not a prisoner on your ship, Zuko. I'm helping you, remember?"

Zuko didn't smile.

"If it so bothersome to you that I might 'escape', why don't you tag along? And anyway," I added, "the outskirts of the Earth Kingdom are quite enjoyable this time of year. You might just have a little fun on accident."

"You talk too much." Zuko said summarily.

The ship drew up onto the shore.

When a person sees a Fire Nation ship, it usually means two things: 1) Someone has committed a crime, or 2) Taxes are due. Honestly, I have to say that when we arrived on the shore, I didn't expect the villagers of the coastal town to come at the ship as if we were a pariah on the land. These people apparently knew their rights, and they wanted us to know that we weren't allowed to bully them.

Now here's a thing that you need to know before I continue with my story.

When a Firebender gets angry, flames issue from their fingertips, ears, mouth—whatever exerts breath when they Firebend. Waterbenders accidentally break icebergs or cause water to flow at larger amounts. Earthbenders make faults in the earth; and Airbenders almost start a tornado around themselves. All these examples are reactions to stress stimuli: usually, the stressor is anger.

My stimuli are anger and threats. When I'm provoked, or when I'm feeling incredible amounts of rage, my body reacts to it involuntarily. In this case, my defense mechanism is very much like the Avatar State for the Avatar when he's being physically threatened, angered, or if he suffers great depression.

My telekinesis heightens; this means that the things that I can't normally do without fully concentrating actually become quite easy in an inexplicable manner. Anger, or the provocation of death, inflicts the extraordinary fight response in my brain, which causes me to be quite…well, destructive.

So now that you know this, it would not be surprising to you that when the villagers came angrily storming onto the ship with fists rising and weapons in their hands, I flung their bodies aside like useless pencils over the edge of the ship. They didn't attack the soldiers because they couldn't get pass me.

Zuko, who recognized their threat, ordered his men to wait for his command to obtain the so-called assailants. The villagers were disarmed of their sticks, bats, and balls of smashed fruit which all flew from their hands. The bodies that still came to me faced my defenses with increased ambition to fight the crew members; however, growing irritated with their resistance, I concentrated on the bodies of ten middle-aged men, lifted them into the air, and slammed them back down either on the boat's boarding dock or into the water that waded below.

They stopped attacking, breathless and out of air.

Zuko ordered his men off the ship. They carried out his command with ease. Several eyes looked at me wide eyes, awe-struck by my actions. I would have been proud of myself, too, though my head was screaming.

My defenses are carried out by levels of strength that I haven't practiced; it's like punching a concrete floor with all your strength and feeling the aftermath an hour later.

The Fire Navy gathered the assailants from the tide and the shore to herd them in collective group. The rest of the small village that hadn't tried to veer off the ship crowded around the arrests. General Iroh approached from behind me and patted my shoulder with his personal congratulations. Despite the on-going apprehension of the town's citizens, he was quite amused by what I had done.

I would have been especially proud of myself if (1) I had done it on my own accord without the provocation, or (2) the fact that I had a nerve-splitting headache.

Zuko interrogated the townspeople about the possibility of the Avatar making a home there: it was within reasonable logic that the Avatar would have been resting close to the Airbending temples; though I imagined that the only way to get on top of an actual temple was by hitching a ride on a flying bison: quite frankly, I was pretty sure that the Airbenders and the flying bison were extinct from the Air Nomad Genocide. Zuko had been sure that the villagers had something to hide since they attacked us the moment the ship touched base; however, after questioning the actions of the town's people, they explained with reasonable difficulty that the Earth Kingdom towns (and probably the rest of two other nations) didn't take intruders lightly, even if they were a ship of Firebenders.

Zuko made it clear to them that he could arrest them all for attempted assault on the Fire Lord Prince and his crew. He told them that even if I hadn't intervened on the Fire Nation's best interest, the whole lot of them would have suffered severe third degree burns and cost quite a few lives. The Earth Kingdom townspeople reacted when Zuko informed them that the townspeople had attacked a telekinetic; of course, this wouldn't really have mattered if I was a normal being. It was possible that the world discovered my absence and Prince Zuko had made it public that the so-called witch that was traveling with him was the same girl who went missing four years ago.

Now it brought on the unsaid question of why Prince Zuko stowed away a fugitive on his ship. In reference to that, Zuko told the townspeople that if he was in a more foul mood, he would have them all arrested for the attempt on his captain's life. Of course, when he said this, I obviously questioned who the hell he made captain; and if he did, it wouldn't have made sense, considering no one hadn't gotten pass my attacks on the ship.

It took me a whole five minutes to understand that Zuko apparently had given me a title of Captain. I have to be honest here when I say that I seriously do not know when he promoted me from mere fugitive to a high-ranked soldier on his ship. Now that I think of it, I never really asked him when he decided that I was a part of his crew.

Nevertheless, General Iroh persuaded Prince Zuko that the villagers only attacked the ship because it is a widely understood concept that Fire Lord Ozai was not a particularly well-liked man, despite the propaganda that the Fire Nation advertises in pamphlets and animations. Begrudgingly, Zuko allowed the mistakes of the Earth Kingdom villagers to pass, though he warned them that if they attacked another Fire Navy ship (and if he heard about it), he would return and arrest them all.

I didn't take his threat seriously, considering that he had been persuaded to let them go. However, there it is.

We didn't stay long in the town. It's quite awkward to spend an ample amount of time in markets and little shops within the village that had just tried to attack your crew; and then suddenly think that they're going to like you. As I said, we didn't stay long. At any rate, Prince Zuko grew weary from so many pit stops.

According to General Iroh, Zuko had been on the sea for at least two years; in six more months, it would be a third for searching for a myth or legend. So with that mind, the crew came aboard the ship once more, and we set a course. I think I lost track with the orders that came from him after a while. A course due north, a course due south, a course to the east and west—in general, I really didn't think that Zuko knew where he was going; and if he did, by what evidence did he have to decide these routes? Aside from the excruciating interrogation in the previous town, there was absolutely no lead.

Zuko must have realized this, for I found him in his quarters, meditating with five brightly lit candles in a dim-lit room. The flames of the wicks were breathing, which wasn't a surprising concept. Firebenders used the flames of the candles to steady their tempers. As General Iroh had told me, the power of a Firebender was supposed to be drawn from inner strength of the breath, not by the force of the muscle. I believed Zuko had both, though when he exploded into a vile temper tantrum, all thoughts of inner peace went out the window.

I knocked on the door.

"Prince Zuko," I said calmly. "It's been an hour, Sir, and you haven't given your men an order."

"I don't care what they do," said Zuko tonelessly. "The only reason that you should be interrupting me, Captain, is that you have found something relevant to my quest. If you haven't," he said, looking at me, "then you should leave."

"The men are curious about where we're headed this time." I divulged, closing the door.

"Until I find a lead, I'll make that call."

I had an inkling that he was getting frustrated with me, though I wanted to speak to him about his goals in his search. He hadn't instructed his men in a while, and he seemed too calm for his nature. I approached him quietly and sat down beside him. I watched the candles to make sure that I wasn't aggravating him to a full extent. They steadied evenly across the table.

"What are you doing?" I asked him quietly.

"Meditating," he answered. He said nothing for a few minutes then looked at me. "I have a question for you?"

"Fire," I said jokingly, indicating the candles.

He didn't laugh.

I shrugged. Kill joy.

"You can bend earth and water," said Zuko.

"I can't bend," I told him seriously.

He ignored me.

"How do you bend fire?"

"I can't."

"What?" he was surprised to hear that apparently.

"I can't," I repeated. "With earth and water, I usually concentrate on a grain of sand or a drop of water; I can't separate fire, Zuko. And I'm certainly not going to touch it for a long period of time to learn how to 'bend' it." I retorted, smirking. "I'm not an all-powerful sorceress, Prince Zuko, I do have weakness, you know."

"Like your headaches?" he asked.

"Yeah…" I said, massaging my temple.

He nodded.

"It was very impressive what you did back in the town earlier," he said.

I stared at him.

"Did Prince Zuko just compliment me?"

He frowned at me.

"I simply said what I thought," he said curtly. "Don't get a big head."

I smiled.

"Zuko, whatever you're planning in that stubborn skull of yours," I resigned, "I'll go along with it. It's your ship, your crew: you do make the calls. I didn't mean to hurt those people in the town. It simply happened."

"So," said Zuko, "what you did back there was involuntary?"

"Yes."

"But you did it. I saw it."

"It's what happens when I'm threatened," I explained with a shrug. "It's not too different compared to how you channel your anger through your Firebending."

"Why would you feel threatened?" he asked sarcastically.

"I was just doing my duty," I answered.

He smirked.

I rolled his eyes.

"Whatever you're thinking, it's not it," I said roughly. I rose to my feet. "Well, Prince Zuko, your uncle is going to be telling stories in the chow hall if you get bored and want to join me. I'll be there, having fun; and you'll be in here, 'meditating'."