XVI: Wait and Conspire
Zuko,
So we've been in contact with our dad, Chief Hakoda, and we've changed up our plans or the invasion. We will strike to weaken the military, and hopefully we'll be able to meet up with each other soon afterwards.
As for us, we're still passing through the Fire Nation. We saw a meteor hit the island we were visiting, and I soon met Master Piandao. I've been feeling less useful in comparison to the other benders, and I've been missing your lessons, so when I heard that your sword master was here, I decided to pay him a visit. I told him that I've taken a few lessons from one of his students, but wasn't too confident in my ability, and he soon saw fit to teach me. After his teachings, he told me to pick out a metal for my own sword, and we used the meteorite to make it. It's a sword like no other, with a black blade.
Sokka
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Zuko gave a quick small smile at the letter before crumpling it up in his hands and incinerating it. He disposed of the ashes in a painted jar, as he had done with all written correspondence between Team Avatar and Iroh. Soon enough, Azula had stepped into the room and spoke: "What have you been up to, Zuko?"
"What do you care?"
"Mai's been in an oddly cheerful mood since you've returned home, but I'm surprised that you haven't been hanging out with her that much… However, that's not my only concern. From what our fleets can tell, there is no sign that indicates that the invasion has been called off. I think that there's still hope amongst those peasants, and therefore, I think that the Avatar's still alive."
"How's that possible? We both saw him fall after you struck him with lightning."
"I've heard that the filthy little Water Tribe bender is a talented healer. Perhaps she's got a special gift for it. So I believe that the Avatar's alive, and I'd like for you to come with me to send someone out to make sure that he's well out of the way." Azula told Zuko.
Zuko nodded.
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Sokka received the new message, and ran to his friends with a look of horror on his face.
"Sokka, what does it say?" Katara asked with worry.
Sokka read aloud: "Sokka, my sister suspects that the Avatar may be still alive, suspicious of the hope that the rest of the world seems to hold. She invited me to come with her to meet a certain individual named… I can't pronounce this! He's a Fire Nation assassin with a mark on his forehead, and he can shoot fireballs with his mind. He also has a metal hand and metal foot, so I can only suspect that Toph will be able to feel him coming. I'm sorry about this, so please be careful, and be vigilant. I can tell you this though: his greatest weakness will be the mark on his head."
"They sent an assassin after us!?" Toph exclaimed.
"We better get moving then." Aang stated.
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Not long after a visit to the Firelord's war room, Azula and Zuko soon found themselves packing their bags to go on a forced vacation to Ember Island with Mai, Ty Lee, and were to be supervised by ancient twins Li and Lo.
The cabin they had to stay at had bedspreads of a nauseating shade of pink and it had the smell of an old folks' home.
They spent their first day on the beach, where Zuko and Mai sat under their umbrella and watched the sea lap up on the shore.
Zuko looked to Mai and thought to himself: This is actually a nice feeling, just sitting with Mai on a lovely day and to just sit back and breathe for a while. Perhaps I should give her a few good memories before I have to turn against the nation.
"Mai, would you like to hear about any of my travels I've been on while in exile?"
"Are these going to be rants of how depressing it was, or do you really have something interesting to tell?"
"The journey was hard, but I've been all over the world; and if I could do it all over again, I think I'd try and enjoy the places I've been to more than I did. However not everything was so bad. So, would you like to hear of some adventures?"
"Yeah, go right ahead." Mai told him. Zuko told he of how he ended up teaming up with pirates to try and capture the avatar, the avatar's companion had stolen something from them, and they were willing to help him out. However when his friends blabbed that they were among the avatar, his quest for honor, and the pirate's quest for money clashed, and provoked a fight that ended up with the avatar and his friends escaping with the stolen property. He also told of how the late Admiral Zhao tried to kill him so he could have the glory of capturing the avatar for himself.
"He tried to blow you up?" Mai questioned.
"He did indeed, it took me a while to recover, but I disguised myself as a soldier, snuck aboard his ship, and hitched a ride to the North Pole with him." Zuko replied.
"What happened to Zhao anyway? I heard rumors of your uncle killing him and him drowning at sea."
"It wasn't any of those things, it happened right in front of my face. The avatar teamed up with the spirit of the ocean and laid waste to Zhao's fleet. After that, the spirit returned to the village and a hand from the spirit took Zhao in its grasp and dragged him down, I don't like seeing people suffer so I tried to help him but he just accepted his fate and the spirit dragged him into the water. I don't know if he's truly dead or if he's lost in the spirit world now." Zuko replied.
"Did you have many encounters with the avatar?"
"Yes… for someone who's mostly just a child, he was a crafty kid. I first found him while I was at the South Pole, apparently the day he woke up after 100 years. There were a few occurrences before the North Pole, and there was a point where we got into a three-way stand off between the avatar, Azula, and myself. His friends and Uncle Iroh came to the scene later, and through all the chaos we all just teamed up against Azula."
"So you started out against Azula, and now you're on her side now?" Mai questioned.
"I felt I had to choose a side… and it was you who was alongside Azula… I didn't think about much over the past few years aside from capturing the Avatar and restoring my honor, but when I wasn't obsessing over that, I often thought back to the good old days, where you would visit the palace." Zuko replied. Mai turned to face him and with a small smile, she gave him a kiss. It only lasted for a moment, but it was a wonderful moment.
Azula later approached to tell her friends that they were going to play a match of volleyball, to which they annihilated their opponents, but despite the crazy that was Azula, it wasn't long after that where they ended up getting invited to a party.
The party was fun and all, but one young man got too forward with Mai, and Zuko swooped in to defend her.
"Hey, back off, you're making her uncomfortable," Zuko told the young man in almost a low growl.
"Bug off, scarface we're just talking." The young man snapped. Zuko produced a ball of fire and held it up to the other guy's face and the young man backed down and retreated to the other side of the room.
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They got bored at the party and spent the night at the beach with a campfire going. A lot of issues were brought up, Ty Lee brought up her frustration of growing up with six other girls that looked just like her. Azula spoke of how she knew that her mother favored Zuko and that she saw Azula as a monster, and although she was apparently right, it still hurt. Mai said that so long as she behaved perfectly she had everything she wanted, but it led to overbearing parents and no room to rebel and little room to do something wildly fun. Zuko retaliated to Azula how hard things were for him after their mother disappeared, as Ozai always seemed to dote on her, and with their mother gone the only persons to support him of recent date were Iroh and Mai.
"Are you actually feeling pity for our traitorous uncle?" Azula asked.
"He's still of our family, and he views the world much differently than you and father do. I believe that his views should be understood and respected. HE may deserve to be in prison right now, but he should at least be treated well in prison."
Zuko got up and took a walk, ending up at the old family vacation house when a messenger hawk flew in and trilled. Zuko took its letter and saw that it was from Sokka. He opened it up to find that it started off throwing him and his sister the foulest insults that Sokka probably knew.
The letter detailed about their first two encounters with the assassin that he and Azula sent after them, and they deemed him 'Combustion Man', it seemed fitting, his real name was actually pretty hard to pronounce. They didn't have much of an opportunity to fight Combustion Man, but they've managed to escape him without harm. Apart from dealing with the assassin, the letter also detailed that at some point they nearly ran out of Fire Nation money, and Toph figured out how to use her Earthbending to create scams to earn some money, it started off with a minor gambling game, but things were quick to escalate. Eventually it led to one of their encounters with Combustion Man. The final thing that the letter detailed was actually something that Zuko found quite disturbing. While they were camping out in the forest, telling ghost stories, an old woman, named Hama, found them and invited them to her inn. It turned out that Hama was a Waterbender from the Southern Water Tribe, the last one to've been captured by the Fire Nation, before she was eventually imprisoned… the last Water Bender of the Southern Tribe until Katara was born. Katara was eager to learn from her, and found out how to pull water from plants and air, and then it was revealed how Hama managed to leave prison. During the nights of the full moon she felt it giving her great strength, and soon she figured out how to use the power to bend water in the human body, she called it Bloodbending. She used her technique to make her guard unlock her cell and she escaped. As revenge for what the Fire Nation did to her, she used her power to drag people into a cave where she locked them up and barely kept them alive in her captivity.
Zuko destroyed the letter, and wrote a reply, telling them exactly what he planned to do during the eclipse, and once they had regrouped: to take Aang to the site of where a tribe of ancient Firebenders used to live, the Sun Warriors, to learn something about the origins of Firebending, then he wanted to regroup with the other benders, and have each bender teach the fundamentals of their bending or order to see if those techniques could translate into other elements. He also hoped that Aang could teach them a way to get in touch with their inner spirits. He knew that Aang saw a guru to master the Avatar State but he wondered if the guru's technique could unlock the fullest realization of ones' element.
Hopefully, the benders that were with them would eventually become the most powerful of this time. For now, it was just a matter of surviving past the Day of the Black Sun.
Zuko sent his letter off, and few days before the eclipse, he was on a ship headed for home.
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