Three Families

by James Golen

Three Families seek the Avatar. Three Families find the Avatar. Three Families use the Avatar. The story of how three sets of siblings are changed by the Avatar, amidst an endless war. AU, Want of A Nail.

8. The Storm Kings

You wanted action? You'll get action.

---

Another sneeze, and Malu was glad she was an airbender. If she wasn't this would be utterly interminable. As it stood, there was still enough dander getting through her bubble to have her eyes start to water and her nose start to itch. While she hadn't lied to her hostess, in that cats really were great, they didn't get on well with Malu. That was somewhat surprising, actually. Malu had played with Elder Tengeh's cat all the time, and never had anything like this happen to her. Of course, the other facet of the situation was that all of the cats were watching her, all of the time. Even she couldn't stand up to that kind of brutal scrutiny. Not like she was a mouse they were ready to pounce on, though. They stared at her like she was something bigger, meaner, and angrier than they ever could be. They huddled in a distant corner, and watched in fear.

"You made short work of breakfast," the old lady said. "Did you forget to chew?"

"Nah, I was just really hungry," Malu answered. And truth be told, she still was. The portions had been enough to feed a grown man, and they barely put a dent in her hunger. Ah, well, she'd gone hungry before. But even as that rationalization came to her, she found herself asking. "You wouldn't happen to have more, would you?"

"I'm not about to let a guest eat me out of house and home," the woman said in her crotchety way. She wasn't too bitter, the lady, but she was worried. There was a bad storm, and her husband hadn't come back yet. She feared the worst. It was good to talk to people again. Malu had been up in the Eastern Mountains so long that the words started to falter her sometimes. It was only herself, and a few birds that came around, that she had any conversation with. And talking to yourself was a sure sign of catching the crazy. "I suppose you'll be heading on, now. Off on the road again."

"Well, I'm a long way from home," she said, honestly. An entire continent, more or less.

"It's good to have young people traveling about. Gives them some perspective. A lot of the young don't have that nowadays. They're just lazy and shiftless," she said. After a moment, she turned back. "No, don't claw at that! Bad Foo-Foo Cuddlypoops!"

"You come up with the weirdest names," Malu noted, around a mouthful of food. She glanced down, and saw that she had grabbed one of her host's breakfast rolls without even realizing it. She quickly hid it behind her back as the old lady turned.

"It keeps the boredom away," The woman responded brightly, a cat dangling from her arms. She paused once more. "Say, you've been around? Is it true what people have been saying?"

"About what?" Malu asked.

"That the Avatar has come back?" she asked.

Malu frowned for a moment. While her hands and brow didn't bear the marks of airbending mastery – entirely because she hadn't decided that she was yet worthy of them – she was the last airbender alive. She wasn't a fool. She knew the attention that she'd garnered from all of the elders, and the dreams she had in her childhood weren't simple dreams. "Well, I don't know what to say about that," she said carefully. A rogue airbender was enough for the Fire Nation to empty an entire garrison to swat. But a rogue Avatar? "I mean, nobody's heard anything from the Avatar in years."

"I know," the woman said, chucking the cat into a room where it let out an angry squawk, before she closed the door in its face. "And then, all of a sudden, there's all this 'Oh, the Avatar is on Kyoshi Island!', and 'The Avatar is allied with Omashu!' It's all nonsense."

"What was that?" Malu asked, as though the bottom had fallen out of her world. She was the Avatar... Wasn't she?

"I'll believe the Avatar's really back when I see him with my own eyes," the woman said starkly.

Malu stared for a moment. "Him?" she asked.

"The Avatar! Haven't you been paying attention?"

"I've been kinda distracted lately," Malu said, scratching her hair. Gods, but it felt good to wash it; how many weeks had it been since she last had access to a proper basin? And when she woke up in that ditch, it seemed even dirtier, like she'd taken a nose-dive into a sty! "But you know what? If I find out anything about the Avatar, I'll send you a message. I know a few pidgeons who are willing to work for me."

"Well isn't that a thoughtful gesture?" the old woman said, as she slowly guided Malu to the door. "The world would be a better place if there were more people like you in it."

Oh, you don't know the half of it, Malu thought. She stepped out into the dim, dreary morning. The rattling winds which succeeded after that lull in last night's storm had more or less passed, but now a cold rain was falling. Not hard, just enough to be dispiriting. "Ah, well," she said to herself, finishing her proffered roll in a single bite. Her stomach growled loudly at her. "I just fed you! How can you still be hungry?"

She shook her head, walking out to the pier and hanging her feet over the edge. Until she got proper footwear, it was going to be an uncomfortable walk back east. She considered for a moment. What point was there to going back east? She really didn't have anything holding her back anymore. She could visit the temples again, if she wanted to. But, she had to admit to herself, that would be somewhat hampered by the facts both that she hadn't managed to wrangle a sky bison long enough to tame one, and that at some point during that blackout, she'd misplaced her staff. "Man, Tengeh would have hided me for that," she muttered to herself. Never lose your staff was one of the first things that the elders taught. It was more than just a tool for airbending. It was a part of an airbender's soul.

But she was free. As free as any airbender could ever wish to be. She was the last. She was the Avatar. And she wasn't finished. She stood, resigning herself to her decision. She would head north. As much as the Water Tribes could be sexist prigs, they would teach the Avatar. And besides, on the way, maybe she could scrounge up a staff from the North Air Temple? That'd just work like candy and pie.

Now, she just needed to figure out a way to get there. The North Air Temple was very far away, and for the first time in her life, she was completely grounded. She looked out to the sea, at the boats which seemed to be limping into harbor, and nodded. A boat would do nicely. Next would come the tricky part. How to get them to let her stow aboard without handing her over to the Fire Nation. This was either going to be a lot of fun, or very, very sad. And she couldn't wait to see which it was. She'd laid low long enough. Her parents – in that terrible night of fire and fear, the last she would ever share with them – begged her not to get involved. But she couldn't stay out of it anymore.

Rumor or not, the Avatar was back.

---

Chapter 8

The Storm Kings

---

"Long ago, the five nations lived together in harmony. Then, everything changed when the Fire Nation attacked. Only the Avatar, the master of all four elements could stop them, but when the world needed him most, he vanished."

"I know this story, lady!" the child interrupted. "It's why th' Fire Nation invaded and did bad stuff!"

Katara rolled her eyes, and gave a patient smile to the boy in the tiny green hanbok. "Yes, you probably have. But what you didn't hear was that after a hundred years, my brother and I discovered the new Avatar. He's an airbender named Aang," she said, giving a glance to the person in question, who was gabbing animatedly with other, younger children. He really seemed to be in his element out there. Well, his element being air, hardly surprising, given their altitude. "He's the last airbender, and he is our last hope for peace."

"He doesn't look like much," the petulant youth stated. Outside, Aang pulled air into a ball, and began to scoot around on it.

"Well, his airbending skills are great, but admittedly, he's got a lot to learn before he can save everybody. Be that as it may, I believe that Aang can save the world."

And to punctuate her words, Aang managed to scoot face-first into one of the many stone heads which littered the landscape. He made an impressive pratfall, which she was sure wasn't entirely staged. The children outside took it with great humor, though, laughing uproariously.

"I never thought I'd ever see an airbender again," the old woman at the back of the room said. "My, it's been so, so long. The last airbender, the last real one, anyway, that must have been fifty years ago. It's hard to worry about the world, my child, when there's so much else in the way. If he's the Avatar..."

"Oh, he is," Sokka commented around a mouthful of food. "Glowing tattoos and everything."

"...Then he chose to ignore his duty for the last century. Look at what became of it," she said, with a note of bitterness. "We were once affluent and prosperous. Now, we live on a hill with strange heads on it. Three generations lived in fear and poverty because of the Avatar's laziness."

"Aang isn't like that! He didn't have a choice!" Katara interrupted. "It wasn't his fault he was frozen away."

"And if it isn't his fault, then who's?" the elderly woman asked. "Can he look into the eyes of the war orphans this war left, or the mothers who will never see their sons, and tell them that he was just and right in not intervening for a century?"

"Aang needs our support, not condemnation," Katara pointed out. "He's pretty much the last hope any of us have got."

The woman looked up, and the light caught against that one grey, blinded eye. "Then I hope for all our sakes that your faith is not misplaced, little girl."

Katara scowled at the old crone, and took her feet. "Come on, Sokka. It's clear we aren't wanted here."

"But I'm not done eating!"

"Can you please not think with your stomach for five minutes!" she answered him. He looked at the plain but plentiful fare with a sigh, and allowed himself to be dragged out of the hut on the hillside. "I can't believe that old hag. Who does she think she is?"

"Well, she's kinda got a point there Kat..." he trailed off when she shot back a glare at him. "Never mind. Keep erupting."

"Aang is the most selfless and brave person we know! It's not like he chose to run away, after all."

Aang perked up a notch higher as Katara approached, seemingly ignoring her grim mood. "Hey Katara! This place is great!"

"We're leaving," Katara announced. Aang frowned slightly at that.

"Why? We were having fun! I was going to show them that whirlwind trick I've been working on."

"Well, maybe they can see it if you come back," Katara said. "We can't stay here. That woman said some very unkind things."

"But..." the Avatar complained.

"That's final," she said. Both her brother and the airbender shared a look, but in truth, she didn't want to go back there. It had been surprisingly common to find reactions like this. While most were jubilant to have the Avatar alive once again, a fair number resented his absence so long from the world. As though all of the blame for the last century of warfare fell on his narrow shoulders alone. She quickly tossed those things of her's she'd brought down back into the howdah, but when she tried to clamber up Appa's leg, the bison shook her off, sending her onto her back.

"Appa, what's wrong?" Aang asked. The bison let out a low bellow, taking a step back from the decline. Aang glanced back. "Oh, wow, that storm's really pressing up here."

"I thought we outran it," Sokka asked.

"Storms have a way of finding you. We need to reach higher ground," Aang said. He scanned the skyline, grey and bleak thought it was, and smiled as he beheld his target. "Over there! That hill goes above the clouds. The storm could never follow us up there."

"But what about Appa?" Katara asked, rubbing her bum.

"You understand, don't you buddy? That we're going above the storm?"

The sky bison let out a grumble which didn't seem entirely willing, but even the beast could see its options were between standing during a storm and heading for unknown pastures. It seemed positively glum about it, though. They all quickly scrabbled up its pelt while the going was good, and Aang bounded onto its brow with a single jump. "Alright, Appa. Let's go some place nice and safe. Yip-yip!"

The bison rose from the ground with a level of begrudgedness that even Katara could feel, moving toward that peak. It tried to turn away, but Aang corrected its course. "He doesn't do that very often, does he?" Sokka asked, leaning against the front of the howdah next to her. "He's usually glad to go wherever."

"Who said Appa was a he? Appa's obviously a girl," Katara interjected.

"Says who?"

"It's a woman's intuition. We share that in common. She must think there's something wrong with that peak."

"Or maybe he is just trying to vie for dominance, like the elk do," Sokka contended.

"Guys, do you see what I see?" Aang asked. Both turned, and couldn't... at first. But as the dim grey parted and more came into focus, it became obvious what Aang was talking about. The mountain up there was perpetually wreathed in clouds, which made it almost impossible to see its top. And that was because its top was clearly sculpted by Man's hands.

"Have you ever heard of anything like this?" Katara asked. Her brother was always one to read Dad's books whenever he brought them home. He just shook his head. The peak had been cut into an overhang, but atop that, was a fortress. A fortress long beset by the forces of time and erosion, but a fortress obviously even still. Appa seemed to grow more and more sluggish the closer it went to that place, more and more unwilling. Even Momo seemed off-put by it, clinging to Katara's neck, its ears folded back on its head.

"Appa, what's wrong? Are you scared, buddy?"

Appa just let out a deep whimper as an answer, before landing at a parapet on the outer wall. It groaned under the weight of bison and cargo, but held up. Sokka was the first off of the beast. "What is this place?" he asked. The question had been snatched right out of Katara's mind. The structure was massive. Far larger than this mere landing area, and cut right into the stone of the mountain. She looked to one side, and her eyes widened.

"Aang look at that!" she pointed. "Doesn't that look like the stables back in the South Air Temple?"

Aang looked as she pointed, and found himself nodding. "Yeah, they really do. What is this place? Why is it so... familiar?"

"Maybe one of your past lives had something to do with this?" she offered. "It could be a memory of a different Avatar."

"Guys, I found something," Sokka's voice rose above the winds. Appa had curled up on the ground, obviously miserable, leaving the others to move around it and to where Sokka had made his discovery. He was still moving rocks when they found him, but the source of his outcry was clear. Above where he was standing, a great wound stood in the stone-work. Something had fallen down, and become buried under scree. Scree which Sokka now worked to displace. As he did, shining gold revealed to the sky. It was a half-circle, with something like a whip coiled at its center, all rendered in gold.

"I don't recognize that symbol," Aang said, but Sokka kept excavating, and it became clear that the half-circle was actually a whole one, and that the whip was joined by two others. He took a step back, and Sokka met Aang's eyes. Aang started breathing deeper and deeper, stepping back until he bumped into Katara.

"What is it?" Katara asked.

"Remember the necklace that Monk Gyatso's statue had?" Sokka asked. Katara thought back, and when the image came to her, it was a bolt of lightning. They were identical. The only difference was what were whorls of wind in one iteration were cruel scourges in this one. Aang looked at them.

"What is this place?" he asked, worry clear in his voice.

"Maybe we should find out," Sokka said, and sparked a torch, before heading into the darkness of the keep.

---

"What do you mean, you're kicking us out?" Lao's voice was half scandalized, and half whiny. Toph knew the various tones that her father could produce, but this was new to her. She sat, off to the side, ignored by all present, her chin on her fists, as her life got laid out without any say-so from her. Pretty much business as usual, actually, even though the family home was burnt to the ground and Dad was trying to make for his holdings in the north.

And not very successfully.

"I'm not kicking you out, Loa," Keung said gently. "I have my own people to think about you realize?"

"You owe me better than that," Lao, his tone pouting. Toph just shook her head. Keung had been one of the best supporters that the Beifong family could ask for. In fact, he'd been the only one who stuck his neck out for them when it became obvious that Lao and his money had become parted. It was startling to see how many of Dad's friends were just in it for the cash. More than even Toph had realized, and she was a fairly good judge of character. It came with not needing eyes; it was likely why she treated Keung as well as she did. He was an ugly bugger by most people's professing, but since she couldn't see that, it didn't matter. In a way, her blindness was a capability that most lacked; she could judge a man by the content of his mind and his actions rather than the layout of his face.

If she'd judged Keung as most would, they'd have been sleeping in bushes from the day Gaoling burned.

"Lao, this is the best I can do," Keung said more sternly. "If I shelter you any longer, they're going to find you. I know this man, Zhao. He is the kind of man to make examples. If he gets ahold of you... of your daughter..."

Toph could 'see' her father glancing her way, his heart missing a beat. She shook her head. It was bad enough that she managed to save her entire family from a schizoid firebender, but when she tried to explain what was going on, her father just treated her like he always did; like she was made of delicate glass, and would shatter if mishandled in the slightest. Never mind that she tore a hole in the house. No, that was the sort of thing which wasn't spoken of.

"You're right, Keung. You're right," Lao admitted in defeat. He shook his head, sighing. "What am I going to do?"

"I don't know what to tell you. Only that you'd better go now," Keung gave Dad's shoulder a squeeze. "Maybe, you'll make it north between storms. It's supposed to be good weather up there, I hear. And nobody uses the Mountain King's pass anymore."

"I swore I'd never go back to the Heel," Dad said dejectedly.

"There is a war on, and we all have to do things we'd rather not," Keung said. Keung looked toward Toph, then released a sigh of his own. He reached down and pulled something from his belt. He laid it in Lao's hand. "Now this isn't a hand-out. My finances are being screened with a fine-comb, but a bag of gold-dust can slip through. It isn't much, but it should afford you something."

"This wouldn't last a day," Lao said with a tone of annoyance, before realized he was insulting the scholar. "I mean... It's more than I could have asked for."

"Take care of Toph," Keung said.

"Don't worry. I'll find some way to keep her safe," Dad said determinedly.

Keung chuckled at that. Of all the people who knew Toph existed, he was just about the only one who knew the truth about her. "For some reason, I'm fairly sure she'll be keeping you safe. Good luck, Lao. May the spirits be kind to you, the heavens placid, and the roads easy."

"I think I'll need all the help I can get," Lao said as he turned, pitched low enough that Keung wouldn't be able to make it out. Only Toph's splendid hearing could make it out. For some reason, this whole situation called to mind the three act play. A few weeks ago, they'd been in the first act, life as they knew it. Now, she was thrown heedless and against her will into the second act, with drama, tension, and apparently, poverty. It was going to eat Dad alive, she could just predict it.

She tipped her head for a moment, trying to imagine what the third act would hold. Father finally admitting that his delicate, frail, weak, fragile, blind little girl was not just an earthbender, but a great one? Her departing her family on some grand quest and adventure, perhaps to save the world? Or maybe it would be a much more personal narrative, and it would come down to her against that insane girl who burnt the house down. After a moment's consideration, Toph scowled. No, that was too obvious. Only an idiot wrote so blandly. A brow arched as she considered instead that crazed firebender for some reason ending up on her side. Now there was a twist for the third act.

"Has he been robbing Keung blind again?" Mom's voice interrupted Toph's dissection of the situation, with such suddenness and unexpectedness that Toph practically jumped out of her skin. Toph hadn't 'seen' Mom coming. She could always 'see' everybody coming. Her senses, not through eyes but by the vibrations of the ground, could see everything, in every direction, all the time.

"Gods, Mom, where'd you come from?" Toph asked, before continuing at a mutter. "Almost gave me a damned heart-attack."

"Saying goodbye to the rest of his parents and family, thanking them for their hospitality. The wife's duty," Poppy said. But the way she said it seemed to indicate she held a different view of things.

"How did you sneak up on me?" Toph asked.

"You must not have been listening. I can be very sneaky," she said, pinching Toph's cheek. Toph angrily waved her mother away.

"Ugh! Enough, Mom! Bad enough we've got to live off four pounds of gold-dust for the next however many months, but I've got to get pinched, too?" Toph complained.

"Four pounds?" Mother's countenance changed for a moment, her back hunching down slightly, a more skulker's pose. But the change was momentary, only. "And he complained?"

"When doesn't Dad complain about money?" Toph asked snarkily.

"Well, I'll have words with him about this," she promised. She took a step away, then turned back. "Did he give you the purse?"

"What? Why would he?"

"How did you know it had four pounds of gold-dust in it?" she asked, her tone idle, but Toph could, not so much 'see' as utterly sense that there was a weight behind that question utterly unrelated to the different scales for precious metals versus non-precious resources.

"Lucky guess?" Toph offered. But even she could tell Mom wasn't buying it. Man, what was up with her family today?

"Come on, Toph, we have a long journey ahead of us," she said, reaching back and directing Toph forward. But oddly, she didn't try to take Toph's hand. The gesture was negated almost instantly when Dad did in her stead.

"Dad, you don't need to..." Toph began.

"It's all going to be alright, Tuofu, I promise," he said, worry plain in his voice. "I'll keep you safe."

Yeah. That was exactly what Toph wanted. To be safe. Heh, and flying pigs could swim, too.

---

A winning smile wasn't working out as well as Malu had hoped. In fact, it had slipped quite a bit as the conversation went on. "Yes, that's nice, but could you tell me when the next boat is heading north?"

The interrupted man, wearing a floppy hat which almost covered his almost-Tribesman-blue eyes, looked mildly offended. "North? Nobody goes north anymore. Storms are too frequent and too bad to go north unless you've got a better ship than I've got."

"But you came from the north!"

"I came from my fishing grounds. I can make it there in a day, and come back in a day. Enough places to hide from a storm besides. But past that? That's utter suicide."

"So in this entire pier, there's no place where a girl could get a ride north?"

"Well, you could ask them," the man pointed down the pier, but had to step aside as a pair of almost identical girls sauntered between the fisherman and the airbender. One of them was talking a mile a minute, and the man shook his head at the sight, before pointing definitively. "But I don't like their element. They make me nervous."

"Well, maybe they just need somebody to brighten their day," Malu said, trying to force some positivity into the universe. Whether it wanted it or not! She bowed, unsure whether to thank him as one would a Tribesman or an Easterner, so she did a little of both. He seemed utterly confounded, but Malu was already moving along the long docks which abounded this place. Well in from the protective rocks, the wharf was lined with shops and stalls, some of them continuing down the streets which followed the sweep of the cliffs until they parted onto easier terrain, and the town as a whole grew, leaving the wharf behind. The town wasn't splendid, nor pretty. In truth, everything seemed a bit... seedy. A bit run down, dirty, and desperate. But that was something for a different time. She had a duty to the world at the moment, and she was going to see it through.

She took a few steps before jostling somebody. It felt more like she walked into a wagon than a person. For all she grunted and reacted, Malu could have sworn she'd walked into a wagon. "Watch where you're going!" the girl said, a Si Wongi accent punctuating her obviously very Si Wongi appearance. The shaved head was a bit odd, though.

"I'm sorry, I was a bit distracted," Malu said. "I'm Malu. What's your name?"

"None of your concern," the girl said, turning toward the vendor. "I know how much this is worth. You won't find this for even four times what your asking anywhere outside the Fire Nation."

"Yeah, and how do I even know it works?" the man asked, rubbing an unshaven chin. "For all I know, it's just paper and wax."

"Paper and wax? Paper and wax, he says," the girl said, turning to Malu as though to prove her point. "And you'd be the expert on paper and wax, I suppose? Well, tell me, does paper and wax do this?"

She reached up, tapped the top of that thing she was carrying to a torch, then full-arm heaved it toward the water. It landed with a plorp, and there was a moment of silence. Then, a massive boom sounded across the harbor, and the water erupted up in a pillar of foam and waves. The girl turned back. "That was a demonstration. My price just went up ten percent."

"And I'll take whatever you've got," the man said, obviously awed. The girl reached into her robes, and then set out four sticks like the one she'd hurled onto the man's table. She received a pittance of coins, but Malu's eyes practically bugged out when she beheld that those coins weren't copper, like she'd expected, but gold.

"That's a lot of money," Malu said.

"Mother was right. I made due."

Malu had a notion, though. "Aren't you worried about what he's going to do with them?"

The girl shrugged idly. "As soon as I got the cash, it was no longer my problem."

"What if he uses them to hurt somebody?" Malu asked,

"Not. My. Problem," she answered.

"Well... what if he uses them to try to hurt you?"

"Then he's an idiot," she offered with a smirk. "I know my own bombs."

"Are you going to keep up or not?" one of the two identical girls shouted. Then, there was a pause. "Oooooh, who's your new friend?"

"She's not my friend. She's a blathering moralizer," the girl tried to contend, but the more active of the two twins came rushing back to them.

"Aw, you're so adorable when you're trying to be stubborn," the bubbly one said. "I'm Tzu Zi. That's my sister Rai Lee over there."

"I'm Malu. She hasn't said her name yet," Malu offered.

The dark girl rolled her brilliant green eyes and shook her head. "Fine. I am Nila Badesh bint Seema din Nassar. Does that assuage your curiosity?"

"How much of that was your name?" Malu asked. "'Cause I'm just Malu."

"All of it is my name," Nila answered as though it were both obvious and odd that somebody would ask. Then she glanced toward the closer of the sisters. "Although you do raise a valid point. You never mentioned your surname."

"Oh, it's not important," Tzu Zi said dismissively. "You don't look like you're from around here. Are you lost? What happened to your shoes? Isn't it cold walking around like that? Was that your stomach growling? When was the last time you ate?"

Malu leaned back from the barrage of questions and turned to Nila, who could only offer an idle shrug. "She gets this way sometimes. Just stare flatly at her long enough and she eventually stops."

"You're kind of unpleasant, sometimes," Malu said.

"And you're saccharine and naïve," Nila said without malice. She turned to Tzu Zi. "Can we go now? We've got enough for feed."

"Already? What did you do, rob a merchant?" Tzu Zi said with a nudge from an elbow.

"No, she sold weapons," Malu said.

"Nila?"

"I don't carry weapons. I carry tools," Nila contended. Tzu Zi reached out and tugged at the case which hung at Nila's hip. Nila scowled at that. "It wasn't my choice to bring that."

"Anyway, Malu, have you been here long?" the brown-eyed girl asked with genuine interest.

"No," Malu answered. "I'm just trying to charter a boat north. But nobody seems to be going."

"Oh, they wouldn't be. Not from here. You'll need to get all the way down to Hanyi before you can find transoceanic ships. And most of those are chartered from the Fire Nation."

Malu cringed a bit at the thought of having to share a boat at sea with the Fire Nation. Well, Fire Nation military, anyway. A National trading boat wouldn't be so bad. "So I have to go south to go north?"

"Pretty much," Tzu Zi nodded. "You should show us around. It's not like we're going to miss anything poking around in the shops!"

"Sometimes, I really wonder if you're paying attention to me at all," Nila said with a roll of the eyes, following after the girl. Malu, having not strictly been rejected, opted to follow along. This was good. She was with people again. She was still hungry, but having people around her took the edge off of that. Her years of solitude were over. They had to be. Avatars couldn't afford to live in the hills like hermits. She paused inwardly at the thought of that. She was going to be a celebrity. She wondered what that was going to be like.

---

"Guys, I'm really not comfortable about this," Aang's voice carried forward. Sokka, though, was leading. A year ago, he'd have said he was up here because he was a man, and men were leaders. Now, he was just at the front because he had the presence of mind to rig a torch, and no other connotations occurred to him. "I mean, Appa's really scared and to tell the truth, I am too."

"It's alright, Aang," Sokka shouted back over his shoulder. "It's just an abandoned keep in the mountains."

"What if it's haunted?" Aang asked.

"No such things as ghosts," Sokka said plainly.

"But what about Nini?" Katara asked.

"That didn't happen," Sokka answered.

"Gran Gran says she saw her."

"Gran Gran must have been hallucinating," Sokka retorted, turning to them. "Do the math, Katara. There are about two and a half billion people on the world, right? And the population is increasing at a rate of what? One and a sixteenth births per death? Simple mathematics says that if the souls of the dead could interact with the world in a meaningful way, the world would be absolutely buried under billions upon billions upon billions upon billions of dead people. Since that isn't the case, there must not be ghosts."

"Just because you haven't found something, doesn't mean it doesn't exist," Katara said. "We found a living airbender, after all, and everybody said they were extinct."

"That's different," Sokka dismissed.

"How?" Aang asked.

"You weren't dead."

"Real comforting, Sokka," Katara said.

"Math is on my side," Sokka remained resolute and peeked down another corridor. This one, luckily, fell into scree and a dead end within the pool of light the torch cast. That meant one less wild goose-hawk chase. "Is it just me, or does this place feel like a fort?"

"Gee, and I wonder if all the ramparts and gates were somehow clues to him?" Katara asked Aang sweetly.

"Why would somebody make a fort up here?" Aang asked, obviously missing Katara's barb at Sokka. "I mean, how could they even reach it? It took me and Appa to get up here. Anybody who's quartering an army wouldn't have bison."

"Then why were there bison stables?" Sokka asked. Aang seemed to be preparing an answer, but it died in his throat. "Anyway, whoever left these ruins is long gone, and as long as they didn't leave boobytraps, we should be fine."

"You do realize that you just demanded the universe put a trap in front of us," Katara asked nicely.

"This is a military installation. You don't put traps in them unless you're trying to establish a killing zone," Sokka said.

"How do you know so much about military stuff?" Aang asked.

"Whenever Dad and Bato talked, I'd always listen. Bato knew some interesting stuff," Sokka said. He paused, having almost walked past a closed door. He scrutinized the panel which hung over it, but it didn't appear to be any language he knew. "Aang, can you read that?"

"I... Can't," Aang said, with a note of wonder in his voice. "Wow. That doesn't happen very often."

Sokka gave a glance to the kid with the arrow tattooes, then delivered a stiff kick to the door. The net result of this was one door remaining stubbornly closed, and one Water Tribesman flying backward through the door opposite it. The laws of motion could be a harsh mistress. Sokka picked himself up off the floor of the room he was in. It was more like a cell, quite small and dark. There wasn't even a sconce in the room, so Sokka wondered how it was supposed to be lit.

"Hah! Good one Sokka," Aang offered, before poking his head in. "What's this?"

"I don't know," Sokka said, dusting himself off. Luckily, even the spider-webs were ossified, and not particularly sticky. He looked at the tiny dwelling, and had a notion. The cot seemed a bit askew. He handed the torch to the Avatar and heaved upward, and grunted with appreciation when his suspicions were confirmed. There was something in this place. He hooked it out with a toe, then leaned down. "It's a book. I wonder how old it is?"

"Careful with it, Sokka," Aang said. Katara joined them, standing in silence as he carefully turned the cover, and winced as several of the pages, stuck together, came with it. It seemed to be the way of things; if they weren't smudge to illegibility or ruined by tears, the sheets were so long dry that they dissolved if looked at funny. "Hey, that looks like Huojian," Aang cut in, leaning closer.

"This place was Fire Nation?" Katara asked.

"No... no this is weird. It looks like Huojian, the symbols and stuff... but it seems to be put together like Whalesh. It's all left to right instead of the proper way. Let me see... 'Broke another one. Had to put it down," Aang said. He shook his head, and bade Sokka turn the page. This one managed to not crumble as it flopped over. "Two more over the cliff, and one of my handlers. Need to find a better way. The beasts are unreliable."

"What was he talking about?" Katara asked.

"I don't know. That word 'beast' isn't like the Fire Nation write it. Fire Nation beasts are all scaly, and the symbol reflects it. This is more... pilous than it is squamous."

"What?" Katara asked.

"Furry, not scaly," Sokka clarified. "You can tell that just by looking at the word?"

"Huojian's a fun language. You should give it a try some time."

"I know enough," Sokka said uncomfortably. "Can we move on?"

"I still don't like this place."

Sokka noted Aang's opinion, but moved on. That door still bugged Sokka. Something was past it, he could just feel it. He knocked on the door, and glanced into the key hole. He let out an 'a-ha!' when he saw that there was something in the lock. He stuck a daub of stick-paste onto a twig and jammed it into the lock, waited for a few seconds, then gave a heave. There was a loud clunk as the locked, jammed for the key broken off inside it, finally gave way and opened.

"That was kinda impressive," Aang admitted.

"Thank you, thank you," Sokka took a bow.

"Leave it to my brother to showcase how good a criminal he'd be," Katara said sweetly as she moved through the door."

"You're welc...Hey!" Sokka shouted. She loved to yank him, she really did.

Aang moved out ahead of him, bearing the torch and throwing light into the chamber. This place was half-collapsed, which did little to disguise how massive it had once been. By Sokka's estimation, if one went on a straight path through one of the piles of scree, one would arrive right outside. "This is amazing," Katara said.

It really was. While much of the gold had fallen from the stone, especially where the stone itself had given way, enough of it remained gilded to the walls, to the ceiling, to leave them standing in awe. Sokka noted a more proper torch, if one long dried, sitting against a block of fallen roof. A quick dollop of lamp-oil and Sokka had a second source of light. It was truly impressive that, despite how much of the room gave way, it was neither exposed to the heavens nor reduced to pitiful size. Half of it was probably gone, but the half that remained was big enough to make King Bumi's throne-room seem like a closet. As well, chains, almost lost completely to rust, littered the floor in seemingly random piles.

"What is this place?" Aang asked.

"Maybe those have something to do with it," Katara offered, pointing to one of the walls. Sokka moved closer. The paint on this wall was badly faded; only the blues remained vibrant, and for that reason alone could Sokka figure out what the mural was communicating. There were Air Nomads depicted, shaven headed and blue arrowed, but they seemed to be toiling, and oddly dressed people cracked whips above them. The picture was quite incomplete. This section had only survived because it was so far away from the devastation.

"What does this mean?" Sokka asked.

"I don't know," Aang said, but he looked quite disturbed at seeing his people seemingly enslaved.

"I don't remember ever hearing about something like this," Katara said. "Was this part of the Fire Nation's plan?"

"I don't know," Aang's voice became more agitated.

"I don't think this was the Fire Nation," Sokka said, as much as he hated saying the words. "I mean, look at this place. There isn't a scorch anywhere. And this place was like this for a lot longer than a century, I can tell you that much. Aang, did anything else happen to the Air Nomads before the Fire Nation..."

"I DON'T KNOW!"

Both siblings took a step back, because when Aang shouted, it was with a chorus of a thousand voices, and the blue arrow on his head flared white for a moment.

"It's alright, Aang," Katara quickly set in. "We don't know either. But we're going to help you find out, alright?"

The white light faded, and Aang seemed to slump a little. Wow. This was affecting the kid a lot more than Sokka would have guessed. Since he was fairly sure anything he said at this point would just make things worse, he wandered to where the scree started, cutting the room in half. He shook his head. How many wonders like this were lost to the modern age, because people never bothered to write about them? As he turned, his eye caught just a glimmer of reflection. He turned back, and noted yes, there was metal. Carefully, he moved up that scree, and found that when he stepped, it was with a metallic clank rather than a stony crackle. Where his footsteps left, bright bronze showed through from centuries, perhaps millennia of dust. He took a step back, then began to wipe the surface with his hand. Under that dust was masterful bronzework, still intact after all these years. At first, he thought it a dome, if one with a weird growth near one side of it. But then, he found the holes, leading under it.

"Katara, Aang, take a look at this," Sokka said, leaning down to see what was underneath.

"Can it wait, Sokka?" Katara asked.

"I don't know," Sokka said honestly. He heard them approach, and cast a glance at them, "Aang, how big would you say Appa's head is?"

"About as big as..." Aang said, beginning to point toward the dome. "Wait..."

Sokka pointed into the blackness which ran under it. All looked down and beheld what he had: A bridle. A bridle for something massive, with a furry, round head.

"Correct me if I'm wrong," Sokka said, resting a hand on the bronze, "but doesn't this look like a war-helmet for a sky bison?"

The three siblings in deed, if not in blood, all pondered that in silence. The room seemed to get a bit smaller as they did.

---

It was galling how that strange girl in the patched yellow clothing had so swiftly overtaken them. One moment, she was hovering over Nila's shoulder while she made herself some cash, and the next, she was horning in with the sisters and joining their conversations like she had some sort of right to be there. She wanted to say it was because she didn't like the idea of somebody sticking their nose in where it didn't belong. But the truth of it was, she just didn't like being pushed aside again.

It had quickly gotten to the point where that Malu girl had gotten both of the twins... wrong term, Nila, she thought to herself. Two of the septuplets, rather... off ahead, an arm around each, talking with a sort of animation and energy which was usually ascribed only to lemurs and earnest drunks. That left her, trailing behind, further as the girls drifted ahead. Nila could have caught up if she wanted to, but that would have made her appear desperate. And she would not appear desperate. She had her pride.

Pity her pride was consigning her to loneliness again.

She sighed, glancing toward the south again. She knew that Sharif was that direction somewhere. How she knew, she couldn't say for the life of her. She hadn't seen any physical trail of him, nor any description in the longest time. But then again, very few were willing to talk to her. Something massively destructive and unpleasant had occurred in this town not too long ago, and had left the locals rattled. And yet she knew her brother was South. For all she was a believer in science and the observable, that she unswervingly put her faith into what was nothing more tangible than an intuition ought have aggravated her to profanity, but for some reason it did not. To her, it was as immutable as the laws of mathematics. Numbers made sense, and Sharif being south made sense.

"I guess I'm on my own again," Nila said with a fairly unexpected note of despondency. To tell the truth, she had come to truly enjoy Tzu Zi's presence. It was something that she'd never had before; a friend and a peer. Somebody who, even in disagreement, could be civil, kind, and considerate. And now, Tzu Zi had found somebody better. Nila wasn't about to fool herself and believe she as an easy person to get along with. That Tzu Zi had stuck so far was a matter of lack of options. And now, Nila had been replaced. Well, good for her.

In time, the bitter taste in her mouth would go away, right?

She turned from the street where she could now barely see the brightness of that girl and her only friend ahead, and began to put the sun to her side, and to walk. She had already walked miles upon miles, and done so alone. So she would again. It wouldn't be that hard.

"Is that her?" a voice asked in the shadows of the alley.

"Yeah, the lippy one," a familiar tone answered. Nila turned.

"What do you want?" she asked, taking a step back. Straight back, in fact, into a man's chest.

"Doesn't look like much of a bombsmith," that first voice said again. Nila turned and reached into her robes, pulling out a roughly rust-colored lemon.

"Don't do anything stupid, boy," the well-built man said.

"I'M A GIRL!" Nila shouted, and then hurled the lemon at him. It bounced off his head, which stunned him for the moment it took to detonate and sent a cloud of curry powder into his face. He fell with a snarl, clawing at his searing eyes, and she bounded over him. This had gone from bleak to dangerous faster than she had predicted, and things went from dangerous to deadly faster still.

Stepping out from the mouth of the alley she'd ducked into came two others. One of them was a wiry man in a green, somewhat shiny vest. He had a patchy mustache and womanish lips and eyes. The other hosted a broad scar crossing most of his face. Both had weapons drawn. She reached in for another lemon.

As her hand came out, there was a screech, and something green and fast slammed into her hand, knocking it away. Nila pulled back, trying to throw the lizard parrot away from her face before it could claw her eyes out, but the distraction proved long enough that a thick hand leveled upon her shoulder, and she felt her legs get kicked out from under her. She managed to land with her nose to the lemon she'd just dropped, and at the proper instant for it to explode into her face. Her first reaction was to let out a scream of pain, but that was cut off when that same thick hand covered her mouth.

The pain was outstanding, but not unfamiliar. This wasn't the first time one of her incendiary lemons had gone off in her face. But quite alarmingly, she was having a very hard time breathing, because her mouth was covered. That she was effectively blinded only made the whole situation worse. A level of panic began to well up in Nila. She had to find a way to get free, but now her arms were being torqued up and bound, and she was finally heaved up off of the muck.

"I hear you can make explosives. I like what I see," the threatening voice in her face said. She considered herself somewhat lucky that she couldn't smell right now, even if it was due to unspeakable pain and a state of loss-of-breath that might become terminal if he didn't remove his hand soon. "I have need of somebody with your skills. I can offer you a pittance for your troubles, if it's to your liking."

He finally removed his hand.

"Go to hell," Nila spat at him.

"So that's your answer?" the man asked. "Pity. Then I guess I'll amend my deal. You either make explosives for me, or I kill you."

"Open my veins, lohtri, I am not afraid!"

"Not yet, maybe," he answered. "But we'll see about that."

---

Aang had reached a point of cold, numb sweat as they plumbed yet deeper. He couldn't deny what Sokka had found. A cursory excavation showed that the rest of a bison's armor was buried near the helm. That raised implications which Aang not only thought impossible, but desperately didn't want to think about. Airbenders outfitting for war? It was inconceivable!

"Aang, are you alright? You look a big green," Katara asked, moving the torch a bit closer to him. "Do you need to sit down? Or is this that altitude sickness you were talking about?"

It wasn't altitude sickness. Aang could practically fly into outer space, if it weren't for the cold and the need for Appa to breathe in order to fly. "I just don't like this place," Aang said simply, and quietly. They couldn't be airbenders. They simply couldn't.

"Guys, I found something else," Sokka called from ahead, in the darkness. Katara reached to him, and gave his hand a comforting squeeze.

"Don't worry. Whatever it is, we're right here for you. You don't need to be afraid," she said. He nodded, but that numb feeling didn't leave him. This wasn't right.

He followed the calls of Katara's brother, and swiftly noticed that they were entering a place much brighter than the forges behind them. This one was open to the air, and glacial snow heaped out of a doorway, marred by the tracks of a scrabbling Tribesman. Aang, his humor and patience at dangerously low levels, simply lashed out with a blast of wind, and smashed the snow out of the doorway, if at the cost of spreading it quite a ways back the hall as well. There was a lot of snow, apparently. Katara pulled him up, more than stood with him, because whatever was up here, he wasn't sure if he could stand to see it.

Which was why he blinked in confusion when he beheld an all too familiar sight. Pillars of wood, so soaked in creosote that they were intact, notably black, and possibly petrified after however many years facing the elements, poked up in a recognizable pattern from the snow. Aang guessed that they were probably twelve feet off the surface of the ground. A glance to either end of the open space showed that there were rings of bronze spiked into the stone. Aang brightened a bit at the sight. "Airball?" he asked. "There's airball here? This place must have been a Temple, once!"

"Aang, that isn't all I found," Sokka said, his tone grim. He pulled something out of the snow and held it at arm's length. At first, Aang thought it was just another ball for the game, but the gingerly way Sokka held it told him otherwise. The hollow sphere was not hardened leather stretched over yew wood, but razor-sharp bronze. He wagered if he sent that spinning and somebody didn't catch it just right, it would take a hand off.

"Why would somebody make something like this? It's a hazard!"

"I think I'm starting to see a pattern here," Sokka said quietly, setting the dangerous play-implement aside.

"Sokka," Katara said in a warning tone

Her brother didn't even get indignant. He just looked at her, like he knew that something was going to go wrong, and knew that he was being cruel for remaining silent. "Come on. The storm is blowing past below. We should probably go back."

The Avatar returned, as an airbender's child.

At that moment, Aang didn't much like those voices that whispered in his mind. Part of him wanted them to just be quiet. Another part wanted them to tell him what they knew. It was confusing. It was confusing and painful, and Aang really didn't know whether he was better off with a painful truth, or wandering in ignorance.

There were airbenders before the Air Nomads.

"Since when?" Aang asked. Both siblings turned to him.

"Since what?" Sokka asked.

"Never mind," Aang dismissed, rubbing the back of his bald head. He moved down the snow-caked airball field, trying to put this madness behind him. It would be so simple to open his glider and run away. Every whit of his being demanded it. But there were those voices, those quiet voices, that demanded no. That demanded resolve. That demanded endurance. But still, he was practically shaking as he walked under another of those tri-scourge standards, wrought in long forgotten gold, and returned to the fortress in the mountain.

"Aang, you don't need to do this alone," Sokka said.

"Sokka, leave him alone. He's..."

"He needs to see this," Sokka said. "Obviously he believes it too, or he'd have said otherwise, right?"

"I don't know what all this means," Aang said, walking the claustrophobic stone halls. No airbender would live like this. To be enclosed was to be in hell. It was why the greatest blasphemy which could befall an Air Nomad was burial; to be encroached by earth against their skin for all eternity? There could be no greater indignity. It was why the Air Temples were all so open, so broad. Even if they did get unreasonably cold quite often, the fact that nobody was ever hemmed in was far more important than how much wood needed to burn to keep the little ones warm. Everything that he knew about himself, about his own culture told him that this had to be some sort of hoax. He almost passed a broad corridor before stopping, and letting the light from Sokka's torch cast more clearly. No. It couldn't be.

Our greatest sin. Our greatest failure.

This time, it was one voice in particular that stood out. A voice of a woman. A voice ashamed. He walked toward the ornate boss, practically identical to the one which had adorned the heart of the South Air Temple, its horns and sweeping colors knotting around the door. This time, though, the colors were not soft and warm, but sanguinary and harsh. His face drew into a scowl, and he took a launching stride forward, and released a roaring wind which slammed up those horns. Where the song of the South was a trill of a bird announcing the arrival of spring after a long winter, the song which played here, as the locks popped open one-by-one was a cadence for war.

The door swung open.

This was an airbender fortress.

"Aang, I thought the Air Nomads were peaceful," Katara said, concern plain in her voice.

"We are. We were. I am!" Aang said, not really sure which tense or plurality to employ. "This doesn't make any sense! We were pacifist monks; we cared about enlightenment and spirituality, about completeness and peace. Not... this," he waved around him broadly.

"Then what is going on here?" Sokka asked. "I saw that mural. Were the Air Nomads ever enslaved?"

"I don't know," Aang said.

"You don't know your own history?" Sokka asked.

"I slept through a lot of history courses," Aang said, walking to the threshold. "It used to drive the Elders up the walls. Now I... I wish I hadn't."

The smell of this room was musty and dull. The fire's light reached the walls, but only just. And only then, to show that this place, unlike the heart of the Temple of the South, was not a spiritual center. It had a very clear function. A function made absolutely certain by the thick, crumbling chains which hung from great rings dug hard into the stone of the mountain. Even so fallen to rust, Aang wagered that it would take all three of them to lift one degraded link of such a chain. It was a chain meant to restrain something of unbelievable strength and size. Sokka moved off, and the light grew dimmer around him. This was a prison. For bison.

"It's alright, Aang. We're here with you."

"I just don't understand," Aang said, tears fighting very hard to get out of his eyes. He'd never been this confused in his life. The Air Nomads were peaceful! They never fought anybody!

I did what I had to do.

"Now I can read this," Sokka announced. He started to flip through a book which he'd plucked from an assortment shelved, carefully of course since it was in about as bad shape as the previous tome. "Man, this is crazy dialect. Um... Yeah! 'Cow eighteen gave three. One worth keeping. The rest culled," Sokka said.

"Culled?" Aang asked, his stomach rattling about his feet.

Sokka just gave him a glance, which told him that he really didn't want to know. He turned down to the book again. "'Cow five had a null litter. Her third. No longer producing usefully. Cull her. Cow eleven produced two bulls. Sent for battle-hardening."

"No," Aang said, moving to Sokka. He turned the book over, looking at the binding. He knew that skin. The leather backs of the books was the skin of a bison. "No airbender would ever treat the bison like that."

"Aang, calm down!" Katara stressed, taking his hand.

"This is a lie! It has to be!" Aang's voice now echoed a chorus.

"Oh, crap. Katara, he's starting to glow again!"

"WHAT DOES THIS MEAN?" the chorus demanded, and the world faded to white.

But it was not a complete white. This time, there was another with him. A woman, dressed in a wrapping dress of violet and red and gold, with a hood pulled forward over her brow. Her skin was dark, like a Tribesman's, but there was something quite different about the shape of her face. Something... somewhat familiar. A chain ran from a ring in her nostril to a second ring in her ear. Red markings peeked from the neckline, a pair of scarlet arrows with their points touching right at the base of her neck. Her eyes were very, very tired.

"The great shame of the airbenders," the woman said. "My great shame. And your history, young Avatar."

"Who are you?" Aang's voice echoed, quite unlike hers, in that blank expanse.

"I am Avatar Vajrapata," she said, raising dark grey eyes, much like his own. "The final Avatar of the Storm Kings."

---

Tzu Zi stepped away from the stall, gleefully nibbling on the candy-on-a-stick that her sister's money had provided. Of course, Rai Lee was being as quiet as usual, so it was actually Tzu Zi and the new girl, Malu, who dominated the conversation. "And then, I'm running from a mob of angry, superstitious villagers, trying to keep a badger hare balanced on my head and holding my pants up with one hand, and it occurs to me... Where did I leave my walking stick?" Malu let out a peal of laughter at that, before aggressively biting into her own confection. "That had to have been one of my crazier afternoons."

"Um, g-girls? What happened t-to Nila?" Rai Lee asked, her dark eyes flitting around.

"What do you mean? She's right behind us," Tzu Zi said, but when she turned, it was obvious that she wasn't. There wasn't nearly enough crowd to conceal her, but there was no evidence of her despite that. "Oh. Oh, she's not behind us. Who saw her last?"

The two girls, despite their differences in height, complexion, and coloring, both sported almost identical expressions of contrition. "Are you telling me we lost our friend?" Tzu Zi asked.

"Friend?" Malu asked. "Are you sure she's your friend? She had some fairly harsh things to say about you."

"That's just Nila's way. She's like a puppy who never learned a better way to show affection than to bite people. If you understand her, she's actually really sweet."

"I'll take your word for it," Malu said. "Hm... Maybe the buildings are in the way."

"If only T-Ty Lee were here, she could get a b-bird's eye view of the whole t-town!" Rai Lee bemoaned.

"That's a great idea!" Malu perked up. Then, she twisted on her ankle, and shot up an impressive distance, straight up in the air, spinning a full turn before drifting down toward the ground, far slower than she should have. She shook her head. "I don't see her, girls."

Tzu Zi just stared at her, agog. "You just jumped... and went fifteen feet in the air!"

Malu scratched her hair, looking up. "Really? I thought it was more like twenty."

"How did you do that?" Tzu Zi asked, but Rai Lee grew a bit pale.

"She's... are you an airbender?" the quiet girl asked.

"Maybe," Malu said. "Well? Are we going to stand around, or are we going to save your vitriolic best buddy?"

"Can't disagree with her enthusiasm," Tzu Zi noted.

"I'm... I'm sorry, but I c-can't," Rai Lee said, taking a step back.

"It's alright, little sister," Tzu Zi said, pulling her twin into a hug. "I know how much this stuff freaks you out. Just let me and... the airbender... work it out. Besides, we had our visit, didn't we?"

"It was g-great seeing you. I wish K-Kah Ri could come my way more often. I miss her, t-too."

"We all do, Sis. We all do," Tzu Zi kissed her sister on the cheeks. "Good luck, and try to stay away from the storms."

"And t-try not to get yourself k-k-killed," Rai Lee said helpfully, before moving back toward the wharf where her boat was docked. Tzu Zi turned to Malu.

"I can't ask you to come along. I've only known you for... well, about an hour, but..."

"It's my job to help people," Malu said plainly, nibbling on the now benuded stick which once held a candy the size of a grapefruit. Tzu Zi hadn't even licked a hairsbreadth off of hers, yet. "Besides, if I can't help people who need me, then what kind of example and I showing?"

"Well, I appreciate your help. The question is, did she get lost, or get kidnapped?"

"Probably the second one," Malu said. Tzu Zi paused, turning to her.

"What makes you think that?"

"Have you met her?" Malu asked. A frown came to her, when she realized that her food was gone. "Why am I still hungry?"

"Well, if she was kidnapped, who could have been involved? She didn't do anything after leaving the ship!"

Malu shook her head. "No, she sold bombs to that man on the docks. Maybe he knows something. He might have been the last one to see her."

"Well, it looks like we've got a lead!" Tzu Zi said, her enthusiasm returning with gusto.

---

Nila blinked past tears which she didn't wish to create, but flowed freely from her wounded eyes. Everything was blurry, so she could make out the shapes of the people, but none of the fine features. She could also feel the heavy manacle which circled her neck and the chain which secured her to the wall. Her breath came at a wheeze, since quite a bit of that powdered pepper went up her nose, and since they had been quite unkind about not providing her with milk to ease the burn, it was remarkably unpleasant to be her at this moment.

"Good gods, look at all of this booty," the pirates said, their backs to her. Which was probably for the best, because they hadn't left her a stitch to wear, and she'd had to drag a tattered blanket over herself for some semblance of decency. That they immediately went about pillaging and ransacking her stockpile of explosives, combustibles and volatiles which she kept strapped under her robes spoke to her that their greed was in far excess of their rapacity, a fact that she was quite thankful for at the moment. "We could sell this and be in wenches and grog for years!"

"Yes, and we have a source for more," the captain, obvious for the broad hat if nothing else, intoned. He walked over to her, causing her to clutch that blanket a bit closer. "Now, have you changed your mind? Working for us won't be so bad. And if you agree now, we might give you something more than a moldy blanket for those cold, cold nights."

"I spit on your grandfathers' graves!" Nila said. Her hands hitched higher, exposing the tattooes which started at her fingertips spreading up her forearms like an untempered fire, licking at but failing to reach her elbow before they finally tapered to nothing.

He stared at her for a moment, the complexity of his expression lost on her wounded eyes, before a hand flashed out of nowhere and smashed her across the face. "Alright. Since you're not going to listen to reason, I'll just let you stew for a bit. After that, I'm going to ask you again, and if you still say no, then I'm going to start taking things away from you," he pushed her head back against the wood behind her. "Since somebody's already got your hair, I'm probably going to start with that blanket and work from there. So think nice and hard, little girl."

Nila glared, as best she could with running eyes, at the man, until he gave her one last shove which pushed her off onto the floor. He laughed as they ransacked the pinnacle of her alchemical career, and for nothing but profit. And most gallingly, not hers.

If she were a more introspective woman, Nila would have wondered why she cried on one boat and not another. Or perhaps not, because the two ships were wholly different. There, it had been a crisis of heart. This was simple bondage. She felt no need to weep, here. She would fight to the bitter end, without consideration to dignity or shame; she had something to prove. She was stronger than the worst the world had to throw at her. And she would endure what came.

Because above all other things, all other attributes, all other descriptive words that happened to start with 's', Nila was stubborn, and she would survive this. She caught a whiff of something. She moved to the end of her chain, and sniffed again. One of the barrels of ale had gone off, turned to malt vinegar. She looked behind her, as a stubborn smirk came to her face. She wouldn't just survive this. Now, she had a plan.

---

Toph wasn't about to complain about walking. To have bare feet against earth was a particular and often-neglected joy of hers. Shoe-edness was a trial that she had managed to avoid by simple luck, on the part that Dad didn't manage to find any of her footwear in his mad, panicked dash from their burning house. Of course, he'd left behind most of everything. It had been Mom who made sure they had enough to make it even to Keung's abode, on the outskirts of Gaoling. That surprised the hell out of Toph, to be honest. She'd thought her mother would fall absolutely apart when the slightest misfortune befell them. Instead, she just... changed.

"Toph, have you finished eating?" Mom asked.

"Yes, mother," Toph said idly.

"Have you seen your father?"

"I haven't seen anything," Toph answered sarcastically, before part of her brain lurched to a halt. Why would Mom, of all people, ask her that?

"Well, do you know where he went? He was complaining about his feet a moment ago," she said. Toph idly pointed to where she could 'see' him, talking to another man at great volume and vivacity. "Thank you."

"Mom," Toph quickly interrupted. "Are you alright?"

"Why do you ask, my dear?" Mom asked.

"You just... You're taking this a lot better than I thought you would," Toph said.

"Lao would probably say the exact same thing about you," Poppy Beifong said, running a hand down Toph's hair.

"You're dodging my question, Mom," Toph said, without humor.

"No I'm not," she said. And it was a lie. Toph could tell a lot of things with her unique 'vision'. She could see everything near her, from the Ostrich Horses all the way down to the ants under the ground. She could see in every direction at once. And she could tell when somebody was trying to lie to her.

"Mom..." she said, intolerant.

"Well," Poppy answered, leaning down before Toph. "Between you and me... I've done this before."

"What? When?"

"I wasn't always a trophy wife," she intimated. "I wasn't even always Yingsu."

"What?" Toph asked.

"I know," Mom said, and then turned away. The way she said that, the intonation, the surety, struck Toph. She couldn't mean what Toph thought she meant. There was no way fragile, delicate, frail Yingsu Beifong – no way Mom – could know. No way she could have even come to know! "Oh, I swear to gods, what is he doing?"

"He's talking to a valet," Toph said, picking out the gist of the conversation.

"A valet? He's... Oh, gods, he's going to rent a carriage, isn't he?" she shook her head, palming her face.

"Four pounds of gold isn't going to take us very far, is it?"

"The next town," Mother confirmed. "Well, it looks like I need to put my foot down."

Oh, there was no way Toph was going to miss this. After her mother stormed toward Dad, Toph crept a bit closer, keeping an ear toward them, if not her eyes. Mostly because her eyes were only useful to sense the changes of the wind.

"Lao, what are you doing?" Mother asked, annoyance plain in her tone.

"I'm getting us passage north," Dad said patiently. "You don't need to worry. We'll get to..."

"To what? We won't even reach Pojiu De Shangren if we rent that thing," Mom pointed out.

"Well, I'm sure I can come to some agreement with..."

"And what about food, Lao?" Mom asked. "Is the wagonneer going to feed us as well? And what if we become ill, or hurt? Is he going to tend to our wounds and illnesses?"

"I don't understand, Poppy. What's brought this out in you?"

"Lao, as much as I do love you, there are times I want to strangle you," Mother said in a kindly tone. "You are good with vast sums of money, but with a pittance, you are hopeless."

"Well... Are you saying you could do better?" Lao asked, somewhat insulted.

To answer Dad's question, Mom turned to somebody not too far away, who was hitching a pair of birds to his own cart, and addressed him, switching from the metropolitan dialect of Ba Sing Se Tianxia to the atonal, local Gaoling version. "Excuse me, are you heading north?"

"Yeah, back to my home in Makapu," the stranger answered.

"Would you mind if we ride in the back? My daughter is blind, and I don't know if she could make the journey on foot," Toph could feel the lie in that. Wait... did that mean that Mom knew Toph was fully capable of legging it from one side of the continent to the other? All earthbenders trained for stamina, and she was no exception. But how did Mom know that?

"Is that her?" the stranger asked, pointing at Toph. Toph made a point of looking good and helpless. Mom nodded. "Well, it'd be criminal not to. Go ahead. Lots of room, just try not to crush the cabbages. I had enough trouble getting them. The vendor is a touchy old guy."

"Bless you, good sir, bless you," Mom said, bowing to him. She then took a few steps back to Dad, crossed her arms before her bust, and stood defiant. "There. Transport to Makapu village for nothing. We still have four pounds of gold for food, medicine, shelter, and everything else that could go wrong."

"But... we'll be riding in the back of a cabbage wagon," Dad said weakly.

"Would you rather walk? Would you rather Toph walked?" Mom asked. Dad seemed to wilt at that.

"No, dear," he said. She leaned forward, and patted him on the cheek.

"See, all we have to do is make some little sacrifices, and we'll be at our estate in the Heel before we know it."

"But what about Tuofu? Won't this hurt her constitution?" Dad asked. Oh, thanks, dad. I'm so weak that even riding would kill me. Toph stuck her tongue out at her father from that place where Dad couldn't see her.

"Toph will be alright," Mom said calmly. "She's tougher than she looks. After all, she is my daughter."

"That doesn't reassure me," Lao said quietly.

"Then believe me. She'll be fine. We'll all be fine," she said, leaning closer. "Trust me."

"I do trust you," he said. "I just... Don't know what I'm doing right now."

"That's alright, beloved," Mom said. "I do."

---

The hunger was setting her on edge. There were no two ways about that. But she had to focus. Tzu Zi was a sweet girl, and Malu had promised to find her friend. Malu kept her word, as often as she could, anyway. Tzu Zi's dark eyes managed to be somehow – oxymoronically, even – bright as she scanned the region of the harborfront where Malu had first bumped into them. Even though she was fairly sure she'd been here before, the place had gotten big. It sprawled without rhythm or plan, that much was obvious. "What about him?" Tzu Zi asked, the tenth time so far.

"No, he had a better complexion than that," Malu said. "I'll know him when I see him. Just calm down."

"I can't calm down. I'm worried about Nila."

"Nila's a big girl; she can take care of herself," Malu said. After standing on her tip-toes for a moment, she broke out into her own grin. "Ah, that's the one! Right over there."

"What if she can't, though?" Tzu Zi asked.

"How long have you been out in the world?" Malu asked.

"A bit more than a year. I miss my home, but I can't go back there," Tzu Zi said.

"Yeah, Ember can be a bit oppressive sometimes," Malu admitted, as she moved closer to the vendor whom she had hovered over the Si Wongi girl, hours before. She'd made it more than half way there before she realized she was bridging the distance alone. She turned back, and Tzu Zi had gone pale as an Azuli. "What's wrong? Did you see a centipede?"

"H...how did you know?" Tzu Zi asked quietly when Malu returned to her.

"I've known a lot of Nationals," Malu said. "A lot of them tried to kill me. Since you haven't, I have to assume you're one of the good ones."

"I...see..." Tzu Zi said. "Are you going to tell anybody?"

"Why?" Malu asked. "You're not hurting anybody, are you?"

"No."

"Then I've got no problem with you," Malu said brightly turning away. "And be glad. The last thing you want is someone like me mad at you."

"I can well imagine," Tzu Zi said, patronizing. She walked up to the man, who was in the process of closing his shop, even though the others looked like they could go another hour or so with the light as it was. "Hello. Have you seen a friend of mine? She's about my height? Really dark skin? Shaved head?"

The man glanced up at her, before shaking her head. "No. Never saw anybody like that," he answered, before ducking back down. Malu glared at him.

"That's a lie," Malu said. "You spoke to her for quite a while, and she even came within a foot of blowing up somebody's boat thing out there," Malu cast a finger behind her.

"I don't remember," He said, blithely lying to her face. On most days, she would have sparred with him, cracked his story apart piece by piece. The monks had taught her all of the tools of logic and rhetoric for just that reason. But today, there was a hunger threatening to eat her stomach right through her spine and out the back of her, and that made her testy. She cleared her throat, causing him to stand again, before casting forward a hand, and with it, a blast of wind. He was blasted back into his wares and pinned there while she quickly vaulted the counter. She clenched her fists, and when she did, the air solidified into bonds far stronger than any steel produced by Man, holding him in place, silencing him.

"Whoa, that's some stuff you got there," Tzu Zi noted, bounding over after the airbender.

"He does have some interesting trinkets," Malu noted.

"I was talking about you," Tzu Zi said. "I've never seen an airbender... airbend... before."

"That's odd," Malu muttered. She turned, and her keen eyes spotted what the man had been trying to hide, likely for resale after the two of them had left. It was a tube, as thick as two thumbs and as long as her handspan. On its surface were symbols in the flowing letters of the Si Wongi language, but since alchemy was one of the few areas which Malu had felt no need to attend to, their meaning evaded her. She held the stick up. "And so is this. Does this look familiar, Tzu Zi?"

Tzu Zi's dark eyes widened. "Ag... She had that under her robes!" she exclaimed. She turned to the vendor, who was still helplessly pinned. "Tell us the truth! Did you see what happened to her?"

He shook his head furiously, and as Malu watched, a change swept over Tzu Zi. Sweetness and light gave way to heat and wrath. The warm smile had given way to a heated glower. "I wouldn't lie to her again. I can't guarantee she won't snap," Malu said, releasing the bar of solidified air which had clamped his mouth shut.

"I didn't do anything to her," he said.

"You see, I don't believe that," Malu said. Tzu Zi took one step closer.

"Not myself! I just told the captain about her!" he stressed.

"What captain?" Malu asked, something of a growl behind her voice as her stomach rumbled for sustenance. Gods, it was like she hadn't eaten in years or something!

"The captain of the Emperor Chin's Revenge," he blurted. "He wanted somebody to making blasting jelly. The girl had something better. I took his money and I looked the other way."

"Where is that ship?" Tzu Zi demanded, righteous rage plain in her still otherwise perky voice.

"It's probably too late. He's likely into the shallows by now. You won't catch a rig like his on open water."

"Try me," Malu said. She chucked the stick of explosive to Tzu Zi. "And word of advice? Don't prey on strange girls. You might find they have powerful friends."

"I got my eye on you," Tzu Zi promised, pointing from her own eyes to his, and managing to scowl her way back out of the stall, as though scowling had become a means of transit. When she did, she let out a weary, desperate sigh. "Oh... what do we do? We can't follow them out to sea!"

"Why not?" Malu said. "We've still got light, he can't be more than two or three miles away."

"But the water! I don't know about you, but I don't think I can swim faster than a sail-ship."

"Oh, right," Malu said. "Man, losing my staff keeps coming around to bite me in the butt," she looked at the stall again, and an idea occurred to her. She leaned back in, grasping the tarpaulin which formed a goodly section of the roof. The proprietor was barely getting to his feet, and flinched back in terror when she returned. "One more thing. I'm going to have to borrow this."

"Borrow what?" he asked carefully. She answered him by heaving down, and stripping the tarp away from the frame which supported it. He let out a yelp of alarm as the structure teetered, and then fell in on him, burying him under a light scree of his own greed.

"What are you doing?" Tzu Zi asked.

"You're going to want to hold onto my waist," Malu said, flapping and folding the tarp into the proper shape. She'd never tried this exact trick before, but she wagered it would work. To her credit, Tzu Zi complied immediately and without question, locking her wrists around Malu's waist. The airbender twisted, gathering up the air into a ball hard enough to put through a brick wall, which she then hurled back against the stone which lay between two stalls. The stone cracked a bit with the impact, but the ball of spinning air stalled just a bit, as she needed and wanted it to. "Oh, and you're going to want to not look down for a little while."

"Why not?" Tzu Zi asked, glancing up with one big, brown eye.

The answer came when the spinning of the ball finally slowed just enough to launch it back off the wall, into the waiting bag that Malu had rigged of the tarp. Instantly, inertia became momentum, momentum which Malu angled upward as the two of them streaked above the water, held aloft by a ball of air in a cloth trap, the ingenuity of an airbender, and the screams of the two girls riding it. One of them screamed with delight, the other terror.

After the first minute, both had turned to overwhelmed laughter. And Tzu Zi didn't let go.

---

"Avatar Vajrapata?" Aang asked. The woman nodded once, before shifting back the robe which had concealed part of her face. Her head had been shaved, and on her dark flesh a sweep of scarlet lines seemed to descend from behind her ears, meeting on the collar bones before their points converged at the base of her neck. "You're one of my past lives?"

"There are many like me, you will come to find," Vajrapata said evenly. "Avatar Geet or Yangchen might be more familiar to you, perhaps?"

"I know that last one. She was the last airbender Avatar, wasn't she?" Aang asked. "She was an Air Nomad. What are you?"

"Weren't you listening, child? I am a... Well, I was a Storm King," she answered, somewhat testy that he had forgotten. Or not understood. "You stand on the bones of a dead empire, child, one which the world held no mourning for its passing. Many great evils once took place here. Many great evils were perpetrated in its name. I was the first of my kind to stand against the indignities, the insanities which took place here. And that opposition cost me much."

"Wait... If I'm talking to you," Aang began, and then he clutched at his face. "Oh gods! I'm in the Avatar State right now, aren't I? What am I doing?"

"Relax, child, the others stay your hand," Vajrapata placated, showing that the arrows on her arms held a tight spiral, and split to point down her thumb and smallest finger, rather than ending on the back of her hand. She seemed to gaze somewhere else a moment. "But the one you find a sister in is also doing much to bear away your confusion and fear. It is good that you found one such as she, child. The path is bleak indeed for those who cannot."

"So I'm not hurting them?" Aang pressed.

"Do you want to?" she asked.

"No!"

"Then you have your answer," Vajrapata stated.

Aang shook his head. "What are the Storm Kings?"

"We are a reaction against what came before us, just as you are a reaction against what came before you," she said. "You admire peace above all other things, you live in harmony with the beasts of the land. We... Did not."

"This place is a fortress," Aang said. "A fortress for airbenders."

"We had many," she nodded. "Most lost to time. And unmourned. As the passing of evil should be."

"If you were one of them, how did you become Avatar?"

"The Avatar was born a Storm King, not the other way around," Vajrapata said with a grunt of annoyance. "Did you not learn anything of your history?" when he just shrugged sheepishly, she palmed her face. "I see. We were a blight on the world, created from a promise never to be enslaved again. This is what became of that 'lofty' goal. From slaves to slavers, from prisoners to wardens. Because of the tyranny of the Storm Kings, five of the eight avatars before and after me had almost no use of airbending at all. We guarded our secrets jealously, vehemently. But in me, an unexpected thing occurred," she said.

"What?"

She opened her eyes, and they blazed with brilliant white light as a new arrow came into being, pointing white and strong down from the center of her brow. She closed her eyes, and the arrow went away. "The Avatar was born as the daughter of slaves."

"Wait, that's an airbender's mastery! But... What do those mean?"

"These are markings of war," she said, showing her hand. "I had little choice but to take them, to slough my proper heritage, to abandon my mother and my father, even my very name. I was a daughter of a bison-keeper, not a prince, nor a warrior. And that meant that others saw in me a chance for change. A chance I took."

"What kind of change?"

"I struck the wound which festered until it destroyed the Storm Kings," she said. "I freed the slaves. I let the underclass, the bearers of the reviled Blue Mark, be free. And they took with them the secrets the Storm King needed kept. It withered, and it died. Because I demanded my people be free. The name of my birth was once an ironic thing, but in time, proved to be quite apt. Because I did bring freedom to my people. Your people, Aang."

"Are you saying that you're my ancestor?"

"Perhaps, although probably not," she admitted. "But the Air Nomads, those peaceful monks, they are my children in more ways than simple biology."

"My people were enslaved," Aang said. "By other airbenders, even."

"Your path is one that other Avatars have walked, the liberator, the chain-breaker. You will bring down a tyrant, and you will do so soon."

"But I don't know anything about being the Avatar," Aang said, shame in his voice and the down-cast of his eyes.

"You will learn, child. We all learn," she said, gazing down at the markings on her own hands. "No matter how much it costs us."

---

Nila looked up as she heard a rattling at her the door to the cell. Her hand closed, shifting under her, as the other pulled that stinking blanket to her chest. The captain stepped in, preceded by his hat, and looked upon her with eyes impassionate. For a moment, it was like the way that Mother would look at people she found irrelevant. It could have been far worse. Simple calculation was a good thing, in Nila's situation. Lust would have been far worse.

"You've had some time to think things over," the man said, tucking his thumbs behind his belt. "We're now far enough from shore that nobody could catch us unless they were riding the very winds, so you can forget whatever rescue you thought was coming for you. Your options are dwindling."

"And yet you still deign to give me a choice," Nila said, trying to get to her feet, but the chain around her neck prevented it, so she could only manage a stoop. "Do you believe yourself a good man, pirate? Or at least, a fair one?"

"If I did, I would have taken another job," the man said with a smirk.

"Which baffles me," Nila said, one hand still pressed closed behind her. "Why even offer? And then, why offer something against something so light as humiliation?"

The captain scowled, tilting his head. "Are you trying to make this worse for yourself?"

"I'm just confused. A pirate would have demanded I work for him, or he'd strip me naked and throw me to the scant mercies of the crew. And yet you offer me payment first. Why is that? What do you have to prove?" Nila asked.

"You've been mulling, but not about the right thing," the captain said.

"I do all my best mulling when I'm in chains," Nila answered sarcastically.

"Then maybe a few more would be to your liking?" he countered. Then, a slow smile spread across his face. "Oh, I see what you're doing. You think stalling will somehow, magically make help appear? Well, you're out of luck. Like I said, we're at sea. You're all alone. And all the stalling in the world won't change that."

A bead of sweat began to slide down Nila's temple. So he figured her out, did he? Well, he missed one very important thing, and when he took a step toward her, she readied herself to use it. Just one crunch, and then the burning would begin. She just had to make sure she wasn't the only one who got it. She had just about started when the captain paused, leaning back behind him.

"What is that racket?" he shouted behind him from the door.

"Helmsman's not at his post," the answer came from that womanish one outside.

"Then find him!"

"Aye, captain."

The captain turned back to her. "Now, where were we on the matter of my new weapons?"

It was all about timing. And Nila had excellent timing.

---

The ship was quiet. Just the way that sailors liked it at night. They were a superstitious lot, but considering the state of the oceans these days, superstition or not, anything which brought them home from the wild seas was accepted with open and willing arms. There had been a time when just about any man could turn to the sea and earn a living upon it. In recent decades, that number had been winnowed down to the barest, hardiest of numbers, men with brine in their veins and the sea in their souls. Men and women who, even with their thousand years of ancestry in the Earth Kingdoms, were but one whit away from producing waterbenders. Pirates were no less, and in many ways more than those fishermen and traders; not only did they have to brave the seas which were wrathful and cruel at best, they had to endure the cruelties of man atop them, forgoing safe harbor in storms for fear of the gibbet. Thus, it could not be said that pirates did not keep an eye to the horizon.

But they never looked straight up.

One of them was standing next to the helm, his hand upon the wheel as he checked the chart which rest under waxed and air-tight glass. Sailing these shallows was treacherous in the day. In the night, it was a whole other nightmare. If they ran aground, there was practically no hope of getting dislodged before another storm came to swamp them. So his focus was keen, and careful. But even so, it was not so absolute that he didn't hear the thump of something moderately light landing behind him.

He turned, with a querulous expression, and saw a girl with black hair regaining her balance, a bucket in her hands. She looked down at the bucket, then back to him, and a guilty smile came to her face. "Wow," she said. "This ship really does rock about, doesn't it?"

The man took a deep breath, preparing to shout 'Intruders' no doubt, so Tzu Zi beat him to the punch by smashing him in the stomach with a paddle from the boat that they'd landed in the first time Malu touched down on the ship. The blow knocked the air from the pirate's lungs, enabling Malu to succeed in her second attempt to bucket the man's head, before sweeping her arms in a broad motion, and the wind howled briefly as a springboard of air flipped the man over the rail and into the waters.

"See, I told you we should have just done that first," Tzu Zi said.

"He would have shouted," Malu pointed out.

"He almost did anyway!"

"Shh!" Malu said. "Oh, bugger, I think they saw him go..."

"Man overboard!" the call raised up.

"...Bugger!" Malu hissed. She took a deep breath, obviously forcing calm into herself so that her face became a mask of tranquility. "Alright. This is good. They'll be distracted looking for him."

"We need to find Nila," Tzu Zi stressed. "We can't skulk about all night. Can you imagine what they're doing to her?"

"Then we'd better get moving," Malu said. "At least they haven't seen us yet."

"Who's that at the helm?" a man's voice came from the center of the ship.

"...BUGGER!" Malu shouted. Once again, she calmed herself. More quietly, she whispered. "Alright. This is good. They'll be looking for me and they won't notice you when you look for your friend."

"Are you going to be alright?"

"I survived the Day of Fire. I can survive some pirates," Malu said. "Go!"

Tzu Zi nodded. "Thank you," she whispered, before she darted out of sight as the sound of footfalls began to stamp up the stairwell leading up to the helm deck. With almost complete silence, she slid off the overhang opposite the stairs, watching as two of them stomped up to Malu.

"Excuse me, could you help me? I think I've gotten a bit lost. Was I supposed to turn left to reach Ba Sing Se?" Malu asked.

Oh, you cheeky girl, Tzu Zi thought as she slipped through the door. The guts of the ship were probably filled with loot and booty... if there was a difference between the two, she didn't know for sure... but Tzu Zi would be searching for human cargo. That she hadn't found Nila lashed to the mast or tied over the catapult was a good enough sign to start with.

"Maybe there's some sort of hold for prisoners?" Tzu Zi said to herself, as she heard a loud thump above her. Well, it looked like diplomacy had failed. She needed to go deeper. She spotted the first ladder heading down and glanced down it. She could hear people rising from below her, and she quickly ducked around a corner, back flat against the wall.

"Well, the captain wants it looked after, so we look after it," a man with a voice like a parrot said.

"If he's drunk and fell off again, I'm going to leave him, I swear to the Deep," came the response, in a hoarse voice, almost like its range of tones were restricted to whispering loudly.

"If he's drunk and riled the Captain, he might let you."

The second let out a guffaw at that, before she heard a door close to the deck. She quickly glanced about, before descending that ladder. She turned, seeing hammocks lining behind her, people talking. People who slowly looked to her, and fell silent. She glanced over her shoulder. The door to the inner hold was open, and she could tell something lay beyond it. She put on her most innocent smile.

"Oh, I'm sorry. I thought this was the way to the bathroom," she said.

"Stowaway," One pirate said.

"GET 'ER!" a chorus sounded, which Tzu Zi could only respond with a panicked 'eep' before darting into the hold. The thunder of their footsteps as they followed didn't help her navigate through the forest of cargo. Once again, she wished she had Ty Lee's nimbleness. That acrobat would be across this morass in a matter of seconds, but Tzu Zi's training had come in a different course. She ran, and she could hear them spreading out. Penning her in. She skidded to a stop on the slime and murk as the path she was running turned into a dead end.

She spun, and immediately started running back the way she came, even as she gauged by ear that one was right in front of her. She let out a growl, one foot digging into the lip of a barrel and throwing her up. She bounded at the near-toothless pirate, feet at face-level, and remedied the 'near' part of his descriptor with two feet to the mouth. She landed awkwardly, and with such momentum that she shoulder checked into a second one, which in the unsteady footing sent him to the deck. She quickly gathered herself and started sprinting in a new course. This one revealed itself after two snap turns to be the right one, and she felt her hopes soar.

Until an arm shot out like a beam and caught her across the chest, with such power that it reversed her course and sent her flat on her back, sliding through the muck of the bilge. She took a long moment to start breathing again, which she did with a hard gasp. Mostly because she was fairly sure that her heard stopped beating for a moment, there.

"Well, looks like we found another pretty," a gravely voice said from behind her.

"Ghm Mamn namn bemn teef ghem!" one answered.

"...What?" the first one said.

"Sh' kck mnm teef!"

"See a dentist, seriously."

"Where is Nila?" Tzu Zi asked, slowly pushing herself up, as she beheld that she was surrounded on three sides by large men with short but sharp weapons.

"What, the ugly girl?"

"She's not ugly!" Tzu Zi contended. If Nila had hair, she'd probably be kinda cute, for a girl, anyway. "What have you done with her?"

"Captain's... talkin' to her right now. Maybe she'll be in a more... agreeable mood when he's done."

Tzu Zi felt something sparking in her. All her life they said she'd never be any good at what she did, because she didn't have the right mentality for it. To bend, you needed to have the proper spirit, they said. Tzu Zi figured that meant that earthbenders had to be stubborn in her time abroad. But her problem wasn't stubbornness, because she wasn't an earthbender. Her problem was that she never got angry, truly angry, at anybody. While she could learn the little things, they would always be weak, because without understanding rage, she could never understand fire.

In that moment, she felt rage.

And the rage lit her scream into a wildfire.

The eyes of the pirates near her widened as she twisted and thrust out a fist with a roar of angry effort, and felt the chi flow through her freely, smoothly, openly, and easily for the first time in her life. And from before her knuckles washed the flames, golden and pure as Tzu Zi's righteous anger. The blast struck a pirate in the chest, blasting him back, but failing to set anything alight in the damp of the hold. She ducked, on instinct more than training, and heard a cutlass slash into wood where her neck had been a moment before. She lashed forward with a foot, and caught the offender right in the stomach. An instant after she did, the chi flowed again, and an explosion in the air went off in that slim space, sending him flying back and into a third, sending both down in a heap.

Tzu Zi twisted with another shout of anger, and an arc of flame followed her fist, causing the target to duck low under it. He struck forward with lightning speed, some sort of trident hooking one of her arms and pinning it to the bulkhead behind her. But she wasn't about to lose now. Not to this. Not to them. Not after what they did to her friend.

She twisted her feet, using the leverage of being pinned to the deck to send a wash of flames down two of the paths that the pirates tried to converge on her from. Some of the pirates got away. Others didn't, and were thrown aside by her wrath, personified in golden fire. She clasped her free hand on the haft of that pole, and inside, willed it to heat. The wood began to smoke, as her dark eyes locked on the similarly dark eyes of the pirate trying to hold her down. His eyes began to dart between her, and her hand. How it smoked. How the wood beyond her began to smolder, burst into naked flame. Finally, she wrenched down, and the weapon snapped apart, her fist closed around nothing but ashes. With a heave, she pulled her hand free of the tines and then let out one last shout, before launching a wave of fire forward, smashing the man down and bathing the rest of the hold.

Tzu Zi breathed deep of the stinking, foul air. She'd never done that before. She'd practiced plenty, but actually bending fire to hurt people? That was new. And she didn't feel the slightest bit of regret. She looked up, and noticed that much of the hold had caught afire for her little struggle. Okay, maybe a little regret, but not for the anger and not for the firebending per se. "Nila," she croaked. She then cleared her throat and repeated it louder.

"Back here!"

A grin shot across Tzu Zi's face, as she raced toward the voice. Maybe today wasn't unsalvageable after all?

---

"What is that noise?" the captain muttered.

"Alright," Nila said, her voice low. "I'll make your stupid bombs."

"What was that?"

"I said I'd make your bombs," Nila said, her eyes to the floor. He would think it shame. She was actually just biding her time. She needed to do this right, or she might lose a hand.

"Good to see you're finally seeing reason," He said.

"Could you... undo my neck," she asked.

"What? Are you stupid or something? No. You're staying right there," he said.

"I can't make bombs from this... hole," she said.

"You'll make bombs wherever I want you to," he said, taking ahold of her chain and pulling her face up toward his. "And if I want you to make them in a hole, you'll make them in a hole."

"Like this hole?" she asked, a bright grin pulling across her face despite herself.

"What hole?" he asked, angrily.

She answered him by slamming her hand into his face, managing to drive the hand full of unmixed volatiles she'd managed to scrounge from the pittance of dinner they'd given her and some interesting growths on the wood. It wasn't much, but it was strongly alkaline, and when mixed by her mashing them against the sweat on his skin, became utterly caustic. And now, it was playing party to the captain's eye.

He reeled with a shriek of pain, clawing at his face. Nila took the opportunity to strain her utmost, and hook the stool at the other side of the room with a toe and drag it to herself. When he turned, it was only to receive a stool to the face. He crumpled, and she followed the first blow to his head with two others. He still fought her, showing a remarkable amount of resilience, and caught her arm. She heaved on his arm, and tore his sleeve off before prying his fingers loose, then smashing him a fourth and final time, this time driving his head into the bench she had been squatting on for the last few hours. That finally took the fight from him.

She smirked smugly, for just a moment. Then, she let out a shout of pain. Her hand felt like it was on fire! She grabbed at his key loop, but to her great chagrin it was stitched to his belt. She fumbled it loose, and in her haste to get the keys to her neck, she somehow managed to pants him. She twisted, and the manacle at her neck fell away. She ran, her good hand still clutching pants and sleeve as she fought to press through the pain, and threw open the door. It was lucky that the other pirate had left, because at the moment, the only thing she could see was that one runny barrel. She favored its sagging wood with a kick, and holed it, stink wafting out. Without a hesitation, she thrust her hand into the acid, and her eyes practically rolled with ecstasy at feeling the pain ebb, at the alkaline burn being neutralized.

"Oh, that's so much better," she said. She looked down at herself, and realized that at some point in her struggle, she'd lost that towel. She still had his pants, though. She pulled them on one-handed and cinched the belt three times tighter than it likely had ever been before to keep them on her hips. But that still left her half-naked.

Nila pulled her hand out of the vinegar. Yeah, it was probably going to sting in the morning, but the mild acid burn would certainly be far kinder than the severe base burn she would have suffered. She looked at the sleeve in her hand, then down at herself. Well, it wasn't much, but the long sleeve, with some tugging, knotted at her back and covering over her bosom, afforded her a measure of decency. Well, a prostitute's measure of decency, but it was better than none.

"Nila? Nila!" a familiar voice called. Did her ears decieve her? She thought she'd have to find a way off of this ship on her own.

"I'm back here!" She shouted. She sniffed the air again. Was that smoke? Burning creosote? Tzu Zi came skidding to a stop near Nila a few moments after Nila tore off the captain's other sleeve, since it was the cleanest cloth she had on hand, and began to wrap her burned hand with it. Tzu Zi was a sight to behold. Her hair was stuck to the sweat on her face, her chest heaved with breath, and her clothing was singed in places. But when Tzu Zi beheld Nila, she loosed the brightest smile Nila had ever seen. Then, she crashed into Nila with a hug which knocked Nila back a step.

"I was so worried! And I shouldn't have been because you managed to get out and I hope you gave that pirate a nasty beating oh you did well I'm sure he deserved it we need to get out of here because there's others and I don't think I took care of..."

"Wh...whoa, what?" Nila asked. "I can only hear so much in a three second period, Tzu Zi."

"Oh, I'm so glad you're alright," Tzu Zi said with another hug. She then grabbed Nila's hand. "Come on! The ship caught fire in the fighting! We need to get out before we choke!"

"Suffocate," Nila corrected, before regretting opening her mouth because the smoke began to fill it. Nila looked around and a thought came to her. "Wait, my things!"

"We don't have time!" Tzu Zi stressed, pulling her past the groaning, crawling forms of pirates in the spaces between the cargo.

As they ran, though, Nila suddenly stopped, tearing her hand away from Tzu Zi's... however much a part of her mind moaned at the loss of contact. "Wait a moment!" she snapped, then hauled herself up a stack of tumbled debris, and managed to tip a leather case back down to herself. She flipped the lid open just a moment, and confirmed that the recurved bow was still inside. "Alright, now we can leave," Nila said, and was dragged once more through the wreckage. And there was a lot of it. Well, Tzu Zi must have had some talent to pull this off. And Nila had a suspicion that her earlier beliefs had been... incorrect. But this wasn't the time for that kind of thinking. She effortfully turned off the dissecting part of her mind and let instinct take over. And thus, she was dragged up through the ship, until cold, wet air bathed her when she emerged onto the deck. Pirates were ringed around the stairs leading up to the upper deck, but every time one of them tried to mount it, they were unceremoniously cast down. Nila's eyes widened as she beheld Malu, that interloper girl, twisting about with a paddle in her hands. And as she moved, so moved the winds.

"She's an airbender!" Nila said with surprise.

"She's also our only way out," Malu said, pointing behind them. "Into the boat!"

Nila glanced over the rail and beheld that there was, indeed, a skiff in the water. She bounded into boat, Tzu Zi's presence the only factor which prevented her from wussing out and staying on the deck. She really didn't want to lose contact with the other girl right now. The situation in the boat was like on the ship, but worse. She felt like any movement at all would send her right into the water. Since she could swim about as well as a hammer, she didn't like that idea one bit. "Do you know how to use this thing?" Nila asked.

"Who doesn't?" Tzu Zi asked, taking the oars. While Nila had read about them, how they operate, it was a far cry from actually doing it. Within moments of paddling, a gulf began to grow between the pirates' ship and the craft. Nila looked up.

"Wait, what about Malu?"

"She'll be..." Tzu Zi's answer was interrupted when a great hoot of glee came through the darkness of the night, and a flash of orange and yellow struck through the air, before landing easily as a feather on the seat next to Nila. Malu actually had a smile on her face as she turned, seemed to gauge something, then reached back with one hand. With a snap of the wrist, like throwing a knife, a ripple seemed to dig across the water, before splintering the base of the rudder. Malu smiled at that, then sank down into the seat next to Nila.

"Man, that takes me back," Malu said with a level of enthusiasm that seemed utterly out of place.

"To what? Fighting pirates?" Tzu Zi asked.

"Hm? Oh, yeah. Not my first time," Malu said.

"You're weird," Nila said.

"You're weird," Malu retorted, giving Nila a shove. Nila just took it, though, because Malu did save her life, and she was too tired to fight back. If she were a traditionalist, she would have had to swear some sort of life-debt to Malu, but Nila didn't buy into that cultural claptrap. Probably for the best, too. Being life-bound to somebody like Malu was probably a death sentence. She was an airbender after all. The Fire Nation was looking for them with a burning passion, if she could forgive an internal pun. That just raised more questions. She started shivering, as the cold spray and the night air started to afflict Nila for her near nudity. "Yeah, you're showing a lot more skin than you did before. How 'bout you take this for now," Malu said, pulling the dark orange cloak from her back and settling it on Nila's shoulders.

"...Thank you," Nila said grudgingly. She couldn't have done it alone. She knew that. She was so tired. But at least she wasn't alone. Her eyes drew down, and she slowly fell into sleep, rocked on the waves, as three girls... three friends... slowly paddled back to land.

---

It felt like they'd forgotten how to breathe for the longest time. When Aang's eyes finally stopped glowing, and he slumped down a bit before each sibling arrested his fall, the air finally returned to them. It was lucky, in Sokka's humble opinion, that he hadn't gone as starkly Glowing Badass as he had the first time. That time, there'd only been one building over them. If he'd done the same here, it'd probably have buried them so completely that Yer Tonri the Farmer could have dug for ten thousand years and never found their bodies. "See? We're right here with you," Katara said. "You don't need to be afraid."

"I'm not afraid," Aang said, his voice small. "I can't believe what happened here."

"What did happen here? You freaked out, and then you didn't do anything," Sokka said, letting Katara support the Avatar as he moved to regain his torch.

"I... I spoke to one of the other Avatars," Aang said.

"You can do that?" Katara asked.

"Apparently," Aang said with an uneasy smirk. "Her name was Vajrapata, and she..."

"You were a woman in a past life?" Sokka said. And then he stopped, and mentally kicked himself. "Of course you were. You were Kyoshi and Yangchen, too."

"Yeah, it kinda alternates," Aang said. "Except after the fire Avatar... it's a cycle inside a cycle."

"What did this Vajrapata tell you?" Katara asked. It never failed to astound Sokka that she could rattle off names like that. Of course, she'd also managed to repeat 'Pipinpadaloxicopolis' without a second breath, so it wasn't that surprising.

"You were right. The Air Nomads were slaves, once. They were the underclass of these people. They were called the Storm Kings," he said.

"That name sounds vaguely familiar," Sokka rubbed his chin.

"They were bad. Like, worse than Fire Nation bad," Aang said. "And apparently, I'm running out of time for some reason."

"What do you mean, Aang?" Katara asked.

"I don't know for certain," Aang's brow drew down in annoyance. "She said the truth would come soon, and my task would be at hand. I tried to get more out of her, but she said she was not the guide I needed, that another would make himself known."

"Him?" Sokka asked. "Well, if you can talk to your past selves, then that's probably either Kuruk or Roku. I'm hoping the former."

"Yeah, I can see why," Aang said with an uneasy laugh. He looked around the rooms, abandoned so long to the ravages of time. "We don't belong here. We should leave."

"Yeah, the storm should be breaking soon, if it hasn't already," Katara said. "Let's go."

Aang nodded, and allowed himself to be led down the paths which reached out into the stables for the bison outside. Sokka, though, lingered for a moment on something that caught his eye. Like most of the art in this place, it was badly faded, but there was still enough of the red left to see what the thing was trying to communicate. Men with whips upon the backs of bison, and below them, fire. These Storm Kings were bad news, that was obvious. He'd just about walked past when he looked a bit closer. The flames weren't going down, it seemed. They were flying up. A rebellion by the Fire Nation against these Storm Kings? He took a step back, and saw an odd red smudge near the top of the picture. Hm. It was probably just water damage. Whatever the case was, the group was leaving, and considering what Aang said about this place, good riddance.

"With any luck, we'll be in Senlin by the time the next storm hits," Sokka said, as darkness and emptiness returned to the lost hall of the Storm Kings.

---

"Final reports are in," Kwon said, humorless voice plain as always. "There are no further uprisings in the outlands. Gaoling is now under Fire Nation control."

"Excellent," Zhao said, looking down at the two books arrayed one in his lap and the other on the table before him. "And what of the assets?"

"The Beifong family's assets have... mysteriously vanished, Admiral Zhao," Kwon answered. But the way he said it made it sure that there was no mystery there at all. "I'm sure they will turn up in due time."

Zhao grunted, and returned his attention fully to the journal in his lap. Piecing together Azula's ramblings was an arduous task, one which had no translation key to default to. He'd had to carefully piece everything together, several times even, since new information sometimes disrupted what he'd thought he'd managed to decrypt. But decryption wasn't really the nature of this task. It was more like transliteration.

"Are you making headway with the girl's writings?" Kwon asked, his flat tones concealing any curiosity he did hold.

"I will let you know if anything comes of it," Zhao said. In recent days, the pain had dimmed significantly on his face. Now, he could prod at it without feeling like he'd been set afire anew. It felt like rough leather, that skin. Azula had unwittingly given him a valuable lesson,. Don't be complacent. Don't be ignorant. So he worked, slowly working between two books, and making notes in a third. He raised an eyebrow as one particular word came into focus. Solstice. That word meant solstice. He looked into the distance for a moment as his mind cast back over the many things of Azula's that he'd read over the years. That word was central to one of them.

Zhao pushed away from the desk, throwing open the door and stomping into the hall not far behind Kwon. The lieutenant turned, raising a brow in question if Zhao wanted something, but Zhao didn't answer him, instead throwing open the next door in the ship. While he would have preferred the comforts of bivouacking in Gaoling, he couldn't bring all of his work with him. And now, it was paying off. He lit a fire in his hand, small and controlled so it wouldn't set ablaze the flammable contents of the room. It was piled high with replications of everything Azula had ever made since she was eight years old. He ran a finger down the spines of her journals, one of her older ones, from the year before her exile. With a smirk which pulled tightly at the burn over his left eye, he pulled that journal out, and flipped to a part near the back of it.

His lips moved as he translated her ramble, her nonsense language back into something useful. He looked up again, that smirk turning into a grin.

"Azula, you magnificent girl," he said. He snapped the journal closed and stepped back out of the records room. Kwon was, as Zhao had fairly expected, standing right there. "Kwon, what was the last known location of the Fire Lord?"

"His itinerary has him visiting the Fire Academy on Grand Ember for the next two weeks," Kwon said without hesitation. "Graduations."

"Set a course to Grand Ember, all possible speed, and send a hawk ahead of us to inform him of my return," Zhao ordered.

"To what effect, sir?"

Zhao smirked. "I'm about to hand him the Avatar and his worthless exile of a son at the same time."

---

Nila and her mother both share one specific character flaw; they both think that they are right. All the time. Now, this belief has caused almost all of Sativa's trials and tribulations which happened over the course of the last fifteen years, and was much of the reason why the bad things which happened before did. They were mitigated by the presence of others who could beat her with the clue stick, but the problem of believing oneself more intelligent than those around one - even if that is a valid belief - is that one seldom listens to very good advice. If Sativa had listened to good advice a long time ago, she wouldn't have been a single mother. If Nila listend to good advice, she wouldn't alienate people and get captured by pirates. The great thing about youth, though, is that it gives a developing mind a chance to weigh whether a trait is adaptive or maladaptive. Or to put it another way, if Nila gets hit with the clue stick often enough, she might start to listen to it.

Tzu Zi is something which doesn't happen very often. Because of the way the Fire Nation works at present, there is a constant stream of propaganda which turns ordinary and pleasant people into sneering imperialists. They are fed hate until they start to regurgitate it, fed anger until the start to burn with it. While the ordinary person doesn't bear much of this treatment, those who get sent into military positions have to put up with rather alot. There is a notion of elemental superiority in fire, as espoused by Zhao in the Blue Spirit, which says that they're better than everybody else. Tzu Zi doesn't see it that way. She's too warm to be a firebender. It isn't until she learns how to be angry, really angry, that she starts firebending 'right'. She's a very innocent person, and it shows in a lot of things she does, namely how willing she is to befriend, and how much she's willing to put up with from Nila. Innocence and firebending don't really go together very well, until they don't.

One more thing: Malu holds two mistaken beliefs. One is that she's the Avatar. The second is what year it is.

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