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.

14. Emerging Patterns I

This and the next chapter were supposed to be one, but I split it for two reasons; one, it was getting way too long, and; two, that way I'd still have twenty chapters to Book 1. Sorry about the gap. I lost a week to Assassin's Creed.

---

It was a familiar heat which pressed down on her skin. Di Huo was one of the only truly desert islands left in the Fire Nation, and even then, it wasn't nearly as harsh as even the outer reaches of Dakong, which they now entered into. It wasn't really surprising. These days, it might rain two days a year – usually consecutively – and then be baking and dry for the other three hundred and seventy on the island. Of course, that was a veritable flood compared to how it used to be; before the clouds rolled in over the Fire Nation, Di Huo could see a solid three centuries between rainfalls. Tzu Zi and her family were long inhabitants of that desert island, and it had left its mark on them. Such that, even now, she felt much more at home, and simultaneously homesick, than she had for the many months since her leaving the big house on the cliff.

"I know that look," Malu said at her side. "You're thinking about your home, aren't you?"

"Yeah. It's been a long time since I've been there," Tzu Zi said.

"Why did you leave?" Malu asked.

"I don't like hurting people," Tzu Zi answered. Malu gave her a raised eyebrow. "People who don't deserve it, anyway. Dad wanted me to go into the military. He's got some fool notion since he never had a son that one of his daughters has to 'keep up the martial tradition'."

"Really?" Malu asked, confused. "Since when do they let girls into the army?"

Tzu Zi shrugged. "I really couldn't tell you. All I know is that they do now," she said, looking out over dry, waving grasses that stretched to the impossible horizon.

"Ever since Sozin's war ate up the manpower," Nila cut in from the side of Aki, as she dug through the saddle bags. "You can't fight a war if you don't have soldiers. On the plus side, it made them a model for gender equality that the rest of the world could do well to heed."

Malu turned back to the Si Wongi. "Don't tell me you actually admire Sozin," she asked, eyes snapping. Nila turned to her with an angry look.

"Just because I can appreciate the side-effect of his policies doesn't mean I approve the policies themselves," Nila said, pointing a tattooed finger at her in warning. "Don't put words in my mouth, airbender."

"I like this place. It's very alive," Sharif said, smiling distantly from the back of that great brute he called Patriarch. It wasn't hard to see why the name got chosen: the bird, for all its obvious advanced age, could still keep up with Aki no matter what pace Tzu Zi set. Of course, of the lot of them, only Sharif was welcome on Patriarch's back, so the pace didn't tend to be very quick.

"You have a strange idea of alive, brother."

"Sometimes," Tzu Zi said quietly, staring toward the horizon, "I wonder what I would have been if I never left home. What kind of person I'd be, if I'd have had friends, things like that."

Malu shook her head, almost bitterly. "There's no point wandering down that path, my friend. Nobody can tell what might have been. I've thought about it a lot myself. If I disobeyed my parents, what would have happened? Could I have saved them? Could I have saved everybody? But the truth is, I don't know, and I will never know. So I've just got to do the best with whatever I've got."

"Come to think of it," Nila said, flipping the saddlebag on the stallion closed, and turning toward Malu, "why are you still here? Didn't you say you were heading north?"

"It's not like I've got a schedule to keep," Malu said with a sarcastic tone. "The Tribesmen will still be in the north when I'm ready for them."

"We'll see about that," Nila muttered off handedly.

"What was that?" Malu asked, but Nila was already walking past them, through the grass, and Patriarch started to follow her. Malu shook her head. "Sometimes, I really wonder what's going on in that girl's head."

"She just needs somebody to be a friend," Tzu Zi said.

"Well, that's not exactly easy," Malu said. Then she chuckled. "But I do see why you like her so much."

"She's very sweet when you get to know her," Tzu Zi said.

"I'll bet she is," Malu laughed aloud at that. Tzu Zi raised a brow at the comment, but didn't feel like following it up. Instead, she spurred Aki into Patriarch's wake. That was the way of things. Even when Patriarch was still hobbled, he was the one at the front. It was almost like Aki refused to try to lead him. Considering the comparative difference in size between the great Dakong stallion and her own Ru Nanni mare, she could see why.

"See? That wasn't so bad. You're almost back home," Sharif said, patting Patriarch's neck.

"Whoop di-doo," Nila said flatly.

"You can still come with me, you know, after you bring Sharif to your mother," Tzu Zi offered. Nila just nodded at that.

"You know, I've never really given much thought to Dakong," Malu said from Tzu Zi's side as they walked. "I mean, I've been over it quite a few times in my life, but it just seemed like miles upon miles upon miles of nothing. Hence the name."

"It's a lot less empty than you think," Nila answered, her tones slipping away from that despondency which made Tzu Zi very uncomfortable, and into something more even, more confident. Tzu Zi called it Nila's Schoolmaster Voice. "This place is home to one of the greatest remaining nomadic peoples, after the reasonably extinct Air Nomads, and the Gorks."

"Don't call them Gorks, Nila," Tzu Zi interrupted.

"Why not?"

"It's kinda an ethnic slur."

"Noted. It might not look like there's much here, but if we cross over that horizon, we might stumble upon one of the great clans of Dakong, or even one of the Noyan's Keshigs readying for war against my people, or the others in the Southern Earth Kingdoms. Even when the war against the Fire Nation was at its most acute, they always held a relatively myopic view of the world, and operate at a constant state of hostility if not outright warfare with the rest of the continent."

"That's a great history lesson, but what are they really like?" Malu asked. Nila turned to her, annoyed to be dragged off track. "I mean, I can see why you'd believe the worst in them. They do keep fighting your people, so you're bound to have a poor opinion. I'm just saying, history's great, but it only tells you how people used to act. Not how they do right now."

"The present will in all likelihood resemble the past," Nila said.

"Why should it?" Malu asked.

That stopped Nila dead. "There is no why," she said, annoyed in the extreme. "It's a law. It's one of the laws which makes science possible!"

"So science can't answer why it is that science is better than the alternative?"

"It should be self evident!" Nila shouted, before continuing her rant in her native tongue.

"Malu, you should really stop baiting Nila," Tzu Zi said, weary. Malu just laughed though, and Nila's incomprehensible spiel continued on despite them. Unnoticed by any of the three, Sharif took a moment to stare to the north, as though something far in the distance had caught his attention, and not in any pleasant way.

"I know, I can feel it, Patriarch," Sharif said quietly enough that the girls didn't hear him. "Maybe we'll find some safe place before it's too late."

The bird grunted aloud.

"There will have to be," Sharif said. "There's always shelter from the storm. It's just this storm isn't rain or lightning."

He fell silent as they padded through the grasslands of Dakong, the only companions to his thoughts the whispers of the spirits, and the argument between his sister and the girl who so thoroughly enjoyed angering her at his back.

---

Chapter 14

Emerging Patterns

---

"Admit it, you're lost," Katara said.

"We're not lost."

"We wouldn't have gotten lost if we were flying," Aang said in a far-too-sweet voice.

"We're not lost!"

"Why did we stick to the ground again, Sokka? Did it have something to do with your instincts?"

"I'm telling you, we're not lost!" Sokka shouted.

"Sokka's instincts have no sense of direction," Aang complained.

"If what Tso said was true, than this part of the East Continent is swarming with Fire Nation. And what's going to catch their attention faster than a big, saddled fuzzy flying beast?" Sokka asked. "I'm not just being rhetorical here? Can either of you think of anything that would get their attention faster?"

"That sounds awfully rhetorical to me," Katara muttered.

"That's what I thought," Sokka said. He pointed ahead of them, to a sheltered kiosk which sat where two roads met. "That thing'll show you that I know exactly where I'm going."

"Now taking bets between the universe and Sokka's instincts!" Katara called.

"You are such a brat," Sokka muttered. The lot of they all walked up to the kiosk, and Sokka allowed himself an extremely smug look on his face, as he thrust out a finger to the arrow pointing down the road, blazoned with 'Bomei' in clear script. "I think my instincts deserve an apology."

"Oh, man, look at this!" Aang piped up, all excitement as he feasted his eyes on another advertisement on the kiosk, still bright and whole for the complete absence of rain in this part of the continent. "There's some sort of festival in Bomei!"

Sokka examined it a bit more closely. The ad was for something called 'Fire Days Festival', and professed to have brought in cultural exhibits all the way from the West, with entertainers of various sorts. Sokka's eyes were immediately drawn to the notably well illustrated figure showing acrobats, wearing frilly pink get-ups which showed a lot more skin than Sokka was used to. Not that he was complaining in the slightest. "That's nice," Sokka said, painfully tearing his eyes away from the image and promise of flexible girls and walking past, "but we are kinda on a schedule. We could be in the North Pole before the month is out."

"But this could be a chance for me to get a look at firebending close up!" Aang complained.

"No offense, but you see plenty of firebending close up, because it's constantly getting chucked at you," Sokka pointed out. He turned to continue his point, but what he saw spoke for him. He cast a finger at the back side of the kiosk, where a set of wanted posters were plastered. Amongst a bunch of dour and angry looking men, there was one lanky, bald, teenaged and tattooed airbender monk, staring off the page like he didn't really know what was going on. When the real lanky, bald, teenaged and tattooed airbender monk came around the kiosk with a look on his face like he didn't know what was going on, Sokka felt a distinct urge to palm his forehead. They'd really managed to capture his essence.

"Oh, hey, I'm on a poster," Aang said, and then wilted a bit. "A... wanted poster."

"See, we should just find your friend as fast as we can and move on."

"But what if he's in Bomei?" Aang asked, carefully peeling down the poster and rolling it up. Sokka raised a finger of contention, but it drooped when he realized he actually didn't have a worthwhile answer.

"He's got a point, Sokka. And besides, with all the hubbub of the festival going on, we could probably be in and out of Bomei before anybody even realized we were there."

"Yeah, because that always happens to us," Sokka said sarcastically. "Trouble doesn't hit until after we're safely away."

"Appa, Momo, you might want to sit this one out," Aang said, patting the big beast on the nose, and the little beast on its head. Both gave their respective noises and trundled and kipped off, respectively, into the dense, if dry and sickly, woods outside of Bomei.

"So how are we going to disguise ourselves in there?" Sokka asked. Both looked at him askance. "What? They know what you look like! Do you really think a bunch of Fire Nationals and firebenders all fired up on their... fire... are going to let you just walk around unmolested?"

"We'll think of something," Katara said, starting down the road. Aang shrugged and followed her.

"By which you mean I'll think of something," Sokka corrected, before following after them.

---

"...so then I gave a twist, and the whole arena floor gave a quarter turn, which was just enough to have that guy hit his partner instead of me!" Toph broke into laughter. "Oh, that was one pissed off waterbender. They really should run tournaments like that more often."

"That sounds barbaric," Azula muttered from the rail, as the ship slowly steamed up to the wharf. The town of Bomei didn't hug the water, as many towns had to, nowadays. It was an old town, born long before the drought, back when water came easily to the East. And it was also mostly Fire Nation nowadays. The drought and the Fire Nation's arrival here couldn't have been coincidental to the young earthbender's mind. But she didn't harp on that.

"That's actually quite impressive," Zuko said. That she hadn't known he was lying when he gave the name Lee was a bit of concern to her. She was very good at spotting liars. But this time, she knew he was telling the truth, because he was far too calm, too casual. "You must be a lot stronger than you look."

"Looks can be deceiving," Toph warned.

"Tell me about it," Both siblings said in unison, Zuko with a faint chuckle, Azula more bitterly. Zuko continued after that with. "But how did you even end up alone? Weren't there supposed to be teams?"

"Yeah, well mine was a dumbass who got smacked out of the ring in the first five seconds," Toph shook her head. "You can never find good help these days, especially in a fight."

"It really depends on where you look," Azula pointed out.

"You're right about that," she said. A grin then spread on her face. "You know, you and me should go into the next Earth Rumble tourney; I'm pretty sure they're going to try to keep this 'Mixed Elemental Martial Arts' thing going, 'cause it draws a huge crowd."

"I will have far better things to do," Azula said quietly, staring at the town up on the hill, in all likelihood. Toph herself had never been to Bomei, and the fact that she couldn't 'see' it meant she couldn't pass judgment, but even without the eyes to spot it, she could tell that Azula was staring with a degree of homesickness.

"Well, I gotta say, it was a lot more fun than I would have guessed," Toph said, slugging each of the siblings in turn as she moved toward the ramp. "But this is where I gotta get off."

Zuko rubbed his arm where she'd hit him, since she'd intentionally slugged him a lot harder than his sister; proof of concept that she was stronger than she looked. "You know, we could use the help of somebody like you in our..."

"No, no we don't," Azula snapped in her own native tongue. Zuko faltered at that, and Toph paused in her descent onto dry land.

"She can find anybody in any situation. And if she's half as good as her stories, she could be extremely useful in our search," he said, but somewhat halfheartedly. Not that he didn't believe in her, but that there was something else that was dragging him down.

"She is friendly now, but give her a few months, and you'll see where her allegiances lie," Azula said quietly, and almost sadly. Toph really didn't know what to make of that.

Since Toph was standing on metal, she couldn't 'see' Zuko's reaction, but the long pause summed it up well. "Well," he said, returning to her language. "I guess this is where we part company for the time being."

"Yeah, so it seems," she said, using her hands to guide her down the rail. But before she made it off, that hand was caught in one of Zuko's

"Maybe we will see each other sooner than you think," Zuko said. "I'm always looking for new talent."

He then patted the back of her hand in a very, very warm way. Toph found herself blushing a bit, and covered it up by wrenching her hand away and elbowing him in the stomach. There was no way this was turning into some harlequin romance, not on her watch! "Yeah, well, you couldn't afford my rates," Toph said dismissively. "Try not to burn the town down while I'm in it!"

As soon as she got off the metal of the gangway, 'vision' exploded into her, soil and stone sending the reverberations up into her perception in a much more familiar way. While she was on that boat, she was practically blind. Well, since her eyes were useless, she was utterly blind, but being on metal exasperated an already dire existing condition. She could feel something, but it definitely wasn't earth-sight. So return to the soil was a welcome respite.

Even if the days on the boat had been good company, decent food, and extraordinary tea... Toph cast those notions aside, though, and strode down the road to the culturally assimilated Earth Kingdom town of Bomei. As she walked, she punched her palm. "Now, let's see if I can find Twinkletoes before he does something nice and stupid."

---

"Oh, great. We try coming in with disguises, and they're not even the right kind," Sokka complained. Aang didn't see why he was focusing on the negative, though. The sights and sounds which abounded in this town reminded Aang almost painfully of the outstanding winter he spent in the Fire Nation when he was ten. Usually, most elders kept their pupils on a very short leash when they went abroad, but since Aang had already by then become a reasonably adept airbender at disciplines usually expected of students six years older, Gyatso decided to act with a light touch. The town of Bomei was much like that town they'd landed in, with its great fire-fountain, burning night and day fed by a tapped vein of natural gas. Here, though, lacking the gas vein, they had to make due with massive and plentiful bonfires. The town pulsed with heat even despite the winter trying to press in on them, and the people wore little in their revelry. Less then they usually would, because their faces were adorned with masks which could keep any humility to a minimum and give a welcome excuse to the shy to cut loose a bit. Sokka waved toward the plethora of masks. "Where are we supposed to get masks like those?"

Aang turned and pointed at a stall nearby, tended by a man who was quite notably distracted talking to a local girl whose outfit could be better described as an impression of an outfit. Sokka, though, didn't seem to fixate on the girl so much as the masks. "Well," Sokka said uncomfortably. "That was unusually easy."

Katara was actually the one to lift the trio of masks from the not-so-wary eyes of its vendor, and quickly slid them home over the Avatar and her sibling. Aang looked up at Sokka, whose mask showed a bright grin. Katara seemed to think better of her choice and swapped Sokka's and Aang's, which left Sokka wearing a stylized glower. Her own looked a bit like the one Zuko had worn when getting Aang out of that prison, albeit much more brightly colored and cheery.

"I thought you said you weren't going to steal anymore," Aang said.

"Desperate times," she said with a shrug. He was going to have to keep an eye on her. It seemed that her fingers got a bit sticky, sometimes. "Now what exactly are we going to look for?"

"Acrobats," Sokka said with a distracted tone.

"No, firebenders!" Aang corrected, but when he turned, he saw that Sokka had his mind in a completely different place, and was staring at a stage covered in pink-garbed, incredibly flexible girls. Aang had to admit, his eyes did linger there for a moment, but he chastised himself that he had better things to do right now. "I think we've lost your brother," Aang told Katara.

"Food and women. Great, my brother is a walking stereotype."

Aang shrugged, and stopped at a second vendor. He pulled out the last copper bit that he had with him, and slid it across the shelf, receiving a steaming basket in return. "What we have to do now is find the firebenders, and I can see if I can learn anything off of them... you know, when I'm not scared out of my mind 'cause they're trying to kill me."

"It'd be a change of pace," Katara said. Aang came to a halt near a puppet theatre, which displayed a capering form which was roughly modeled on the Fire Lord. The puppet didn't nearly do the terrifying man justice, though. There was a look in those golden eyes which almost made Aang wet himself the moment he came up those stairs, almost made him agree with the demands levied out of pure terror.

"The North is oddly peaceful today," that puppet said in a raspy voice. A moment later, a second puppet, dressed in blues and carrying a wicked, if impractical looking spear loomed up behind him, and the children watching shouted 'behind you' and 'Look out!', only to have the puppet turn and barbeque the puppet, to which they cheered. Aang gave a glance to Katara, who looked a bit grey at that.

"They weren't always like this," Aang said, munching slowly on his snack. "They used to be so much... well, they were different."

"I don't like that they all see us as the enemy," Katara said. "I mean, even if you weren't here, they might well lynch me if they thought they could get away with it."

"That's not true," Aang said. "The people of the Fire Nation are probably just like any others. They don't hate the people of the other nations. They just don't really have a choice. They were born were they were born. They bend what they bend. It's not like they chose to have him be their Fire Lord."

As he was talking, though, he noted her quickly snatch a handful of his snack. "Well, I'll believe that when I see it. HYAAH!" she shrieked, sputtering and coughing, spitting out her proffered snack onto the stone. Some of the others turned and gave a chuckle at her.

"Fiery Fire Flakes," Aang said. "A bit hot."

"Why didn't you warn me?"

Aang smiled behind his mask. "And this is why you don't steal."

He was glad he couldn't see her expression, because if he could, it might have struck him dead. He sauntered ahead, and she quickly caught back up with him. "So you've actually been to the Fire Nation. Are they actually like this?" she asked, motioning around.

"A lot, actually," Aang said. "I never really thought that an Earth Kingdom town would actually become... well, Fire Nation. But here it is. The only real difference is the buildings. They don't build like the Easterners do. But they're all the same people."

Katara seemed pensive for a moment. "Tell me about them."

"Well, there was this one other airbender student was from the Fire Nation, but she and I never got along. And then there was Kuzon. He was a kid on the island of Grand Ember. We hit it off like rivers and fish. See, I was supposed to be living in the Western Air Temple with Monk Gyatso; I never figured out why he brought me there when I was twelve, but it didn't last. Anyway, I meet up with Kuzon again, and he's acting real suspicious. He won't open up, so I end up having to follow him out into the woods, way away from civilization. And I find out what he was keeping secret. Dragon eggs."

"Dragons? I thought they were extinct," Katara asked.

"They might be," Aang said quietly. "But back then, there were still a few. Have you ever seen a dragon's egg, Katara? It's like a ball of solid fire. I asked Kuzon why he was so paranoid about the clutch, and he told me it was because somebody was poaching the eggs, for sale on the black market or something. He didn't want to see dragons in chains. And I agreed with him. So we ran off the poachers the next time they came around. After that, the Fire Lord personally sent somebody to protect the hatchery," Aang shook his head slowly. "I can't believe that back then, I thought Sozin was an okay guy."

"Well, you had no idea what he was about to do," Katara said warmly.

"I should have. I mean, I was the Avatar even when he shook my hand, and I should have known! I should have done something!"

"Wait, you met Sozin?"

"Yeah," Aang said, uncomfortably. He scratched at the back of his head, indulging a nervous habit. "He was crazy old. Still kinda tough looking. I didn't have a clue that he would have just as quickly killed me dead as thanked me."

"Some people are very good liars."

"Yeah," Aang said quietly.

"I love this town," Sokka broke in with a broad grin, sauntering over with a bare head and his mask on a pink-clad acrobat whom his arm was currently encircling the waist of. Her outfit might have been somewhat modest compared to some, such as a woman who was probably old enough to be Aang's mother, but was parading around in three patches of cloth connected by string, but it still exposed a taut midriff, and a brown braid fell down the girl's back. "So, have you found who you were looking for yet?"

"Who's your friend?" Aang asked.

"She thought I was cute," Sokka said.

"He is!" the girl agreed in a very perky voice.

"Sokka, we're not here to play with the locals," Katara chastized.

"Is she your girlfriend?" the acrobat asked.

"Sister," Sokka said flatly.

"Oh. Well, you don't need to worry about that. I'm not a local!"

"I thought you said you wanted to see... that friend of yours?" Katara nudged Aang.

"Oh, right, the... friend... yeah. That guy."

"Well, whatever it is, you'll probably be able to catch the firebenders on stage before your super secret hush-hush thing," the acrobat prompted, tipping up her mask for a moment. Aang had to admit, Sokka did know how to pick 'em. She was the kind of bubbly cute which Aang got along well with, if didn't exactly run after. That, and she did look really, really familiar, but Aang just couldn't quite place her. Of course, thinking about girls in general turned his memories to a pair of golden eyes on the snowy glacier, almost an entire planet away from where he now stood. But he pushed those thoughts aside.

"That's what that thing was?" Sokka asked. "A crowd that big, I figured it was an execution."

"What was that?" the girl asked, flipping that scowl mask onto her face.

"Nothing! I was just kidding! Seriously," Sokka said giving a 'help me' glance to Aang. Aang forced out a laugh, which sounded a bit nervous to his ears. Katara just shook her head at the foolishness and walked away. Aang followed after her pretty much immediately. "Soooo... you got a sister?"

"I can't believe that goon'd put us all in jeopardy like that!" she complained.

"He's a teenager. We're lucky he thinks with his brain as much as he does!" Aang pointed out.

"Oh, please. It's not like you have that problem," she countered.

"...Well..." Aang trailed off, but the distraction which he so desperately required arrived with perfect timing. It came in the form of fire, filling the sky in bolts and streams, flowing around a man at their heart such that Aang could be forgiven for mistaking it for pyrotechnic waterbending. "Oh, wow. Look at that guy go!" he exclaimed, watching as the routine became more and more elaborate, more and more complex. It continued, blurring into a vague sphere of fire, until he cast it up, and it burst into a flare, which shot into the sky and exploded high over head, to the chorus of 'ooooooh' from the crowd. "I've gotta learn that trick," Aang said.

"It's just showmanship," Sokka dismissed.

"It's firebending!" Aang said.

"Your little buddy's a firebender?"

"Kinda?" Sokka answered the girl. Katara rolled her eyes at the situation, but remained silent.

"Alright, for my next act, I will need a volunteer from the audience," the firebender on stage said. Aang quickly thrust his hand in the air, and had to restrain himself from jumping up and standing on somebody's shoulders to make himself more visible. The man's hand swept toward him, and Aang's hope rose, until he pointed directly at Aang's left. At Katara. "How about the sweet girl in the front?"

"No, thank you," Katara said.

"Oh, let's give her some encouragement," the man cajoled, and Aang watched as the crowd actually pushed her up onto the stage. "See? This won't be so bad. What's your name, little lady?"

"I think I'd rather just get down..."

"Oh, right. You can't say your name," he said. "That's the Fire Days for you. Freedom from yourself. Now sit down right here. I call this act, the Taming of the Dragons!"

"Ooh, this is a good one!" the acrobat said enthusiastically, tossing the mask aside to show a very wide grin.

Aang, though, turned his attention back to the firebending. The man flicked his hands up, reciting a story about dragons of old. Much of it was the kind of stories that just about anybody with a passing familiarity with the Fire Nation would have heard. Well, in Aang's day, anyway. All bets were off if it applied nowadays. As he told of their grace and power, the flames he conjured took the sinuous form of the flying serpent. It looked like Fang, reborn in fire, moving through the sky. But then, the narrative turned, as he told that the dragons suddenly became wild and violent, and their rage caused untold hardships in the Fire Nation. So it was, that they had to be controlled. As he reached that part, he lassoed the fire dragon with a stream of flame that emerged from his hand. While others lost themselves in the spectacle, in the story, Aang just stood there, racking his brain, trying to figure out how this guy was doing that. Sooner or later, Aang was going to have to figure out firebending. And he couldn't do that reactively. Then, the story turned that controlling the dragons proved fruitless, and they lashed out in rage at the West. As he did, the lasso dissolved, and the great beast surged toward Katara. Aang took about one step toward her, every synapse in his brain screaming 'protect her!', but after that one step, he was caught up by Sokka's hand on his collar.

"It's just part of the act, silly," the acrobat said.

"Yeah, don't do anything stupid," Sokka warned. Aang still felt like a traitor as he stood by and did nothing though. But the girl proved correct, because as the beast was feet away from searing Katara as badly as that 'Zhao' had Sokka, the firebender lashed forward and cast a bolt of flame at the 'dragon', causing it to explode into confetti.

"And from that day forward, any man who could do his duty to the Fire Nation, and destroy one of the mad beasts was given the highest of praise and honors, and the title... Dragon."

The crowd erupted into applause at this, but Aang felt a little bit ill. Dragons were actively hunted? In what universe did that actually make sense? The firebender thanked Katara, and she started off the stage. Aang was about to ask her how he'd done it, but he felt something holding him back again. He glanced to his right, but it wasn't Sokka. He then glanced back, and saw that a grown man had grabbed his arm. Aang let out a bellow of alarm and blasted him away with a panicked fit of airbending, driving him back into the wall of the crowd. There was a sudden hush from all around him.

It was probably because the gust of wind he created tossed his mask a good distance away, and left him standing in an airbender's stance, having just airbent somebody.

"Wait a minute," the firebender on stage said. "That's... That's the Avatar! RUN! The Avatar's come to destroy us!"

"No I haven't!" Aang pleaded, but the crowd would not be swayed. The cloaked man made a grab at Aang again, but this time, Aang managed to duck aside. But as he did, the acrobat gave him a jab in the arm, causing the man to shout in alarm, and his limb fall limp.

"Hey, no snatching kids, pervert!" she shouted.

"We should probably leave," Sokka said, helping Aang back to his feet.

"Aww," the girl moaned.

"The Avatar is here! Stop him!" the general cry went up, and a quick glance in several directions showed that it was followed by the town guards flooding into the square.

"Run!" Sokka prompted, and sent the three of them running away. The cloaked man seemed to vanish into the crowd, leaving the acrobat girl all alone, to wave merrily above her head at their retreating backs.

"Write me!" she shouted.

---

To call Zuko homesick at the sights of Bomei would be a drastic understatement. The scarlet and gold, the flames licking into the air and casting out the seasonal chill from this northerly latitude, all of it served to remind Zuko that he was not home, and that this was likely as close as he would ever get, for the remainder of his life. "It's been a long time," Zuko whispered.

"What?" his sister shouted over the din. A glance to her showed that her eyes were rolling around in her head like marbles, trying to watch everything at once and, to her credit, almost succeeding. "You're going to have to speak louder!"

Zuko shook his head. It wasn't relevant. In truth, he was torn. If she was right, and the Avatar was here, then he couldn't fight the boy. If he did, there was a chance he'd win. If he didn't fight, though, he'd be betraying his sister's faith and her trust. There had been a few choices in his life which had pincered him, but never so neatly. The crowd swayed with oooh's and aaah's as the performer on stage went through his routine, spreading the propaganda which Grandfather used to legitimize the wiping out of a majestic species, speaking with the exact intonation, the gestures, the words, stipulated and mandated by Azulon's laws. When Zuko left the Fire Nation, he'd respected Grandfather greatly, believing him a powerful and just Fire Lord. Two years on the sea pointedly proved otherwise.

"How are we supposed to find the Avatar amidst this rabble?" Azula asked loudly.

"You shouldn't call them rabble. These are our citizens."

"Please," she dismissed. "There are more green eyes than amber."

"Fire Nation is more than the blood in your veins, Zuli. It's also the burning in your soul. Do I need to remind you of Burning Rock?" Zuko asked.

"No, you don't. And don't EVER call me Zuli!" she snapped. But it brought a smirk to Zuko's face, and that was a welcome change. The narrative on the stage reached its crescendo, and the 'dragon' was 'slain', to uproarious applause. Zuko couldn't help but feel a little bit ashamed. "He's around here somewhere, and if I know anything about meddlesome types like him, he will make himself obvious very, very soon."

Zuko raised a brow. "Why?"

She looked back at him like he was stupid. "Because meddlesome types live to meddle, and he is meddlesome."

"That's a bit circular, Azula."

"Shut up."

The jibing which Zuko was about to launch into was cut short when an alarmed scream came from the front of the crowd, right near the stage. The crowd milled, growing louder and louder, pressing out from several figures. One of which, Zuko was fairly sure he recognized from their childhoods. "Wait a minute," Zuko said, pointing to the teenaged girl in question. "Azula, doesn't that look like..."

"It's him!" Azula said, indicating someone quite different from Zuko as her voice rose and a grin burned on her face.

"Somebody get the guards! The Avatar's here and he's going to kill us!" one of the plebs screamed as she ran away. That caused Azula's grin to wilt fairly severely.

"Oh, no. I'm not losing the Avatar to a half-trained militiaman! Come on, Zuko!" she shouted, dragging Zuko away from the figment which flitted from his mind without a second consideration. In truth who that one was was utterly immaterial. All he had to do was keep pace with his sister. Not that she was giving him much of an option at the moment. It was odd that he could feel so protective of a girl who, in an honest fight, could probably beat him to death without strenuous effort, but her strength of body was actively betrayed by her frailty of mind. He wanted to drag his feet, but that too was out of the question.

As the siblings broke away from the crowd, the lane between they and the Avatar's lackeys became clear. Azula released Zuko's sleeve, and used the freedom of mobility to give a half-hop, and then thrust forward toward them with a motion which looked more earthbending than firebending. When she did, a wall of fire blasted away from her, searing along the painted stone walls of Bomei's buildings, and causing the Avatar to have to bound away and drag the two Tribesmen with him, lest they all be immolated. When Aang landed, he turned back, casting out a blast of wind, which Azula burned through with a small, focused flame. It was about then that the boy finally realized who he was up against, and that they weren't mere guardsmen.

"No, how can you be here, too?" Aang asked.

"Maybe you're more predictable than you ever suspected," Azula answered him, her tone so far from confused and weak that it shocked Zuko. In truth, it almost sounded... a bit sultry. With a smirk on her painted lips, she then launched into an axe kick which seared down the other side of the fairway, cutting off the three as they prepared to escape down an alley. This proved a bit more penetrable, and the Avatar forced a way through the fire, fleeing aside. "Don't just stand there, Dum-dum! After them!"

Zuko didn't say a word, just following in Azula's wake as she gave hot pursuit of the Avatar. Could he even attack them, now? He realized even as the thought came to him, in this charged and frantic chase, that of course he could. He even would. Because that's what his sister needed from him. Azula rounded a corner, only to be knocked off her course by a blast of airbending. She was most of the way to her feet in an instant, but that instant also saw a surge of water slam out from the wells and water barrels. Zuko rushed 'round that corner and answered in fire, a sweeping attack which started near the tops of the stone walls, then swooped down like the wings of some mighty phoenix. Katara proved her mettle, though, in retracting her attack to shell her companions from Zuko's assault. There was a moment of silence, blue eyes meeting golden, as Azula pulled herself up. She'd come along very, very quickly from who she was when Zuko had ran them down on Kyoshi Island. Well, Azula had run them down, but seeing the waterbender now, as compared to then? She was a different person. Stronger. Angrier. And currently in the midst of an attack.

Zuko had to vault aside when she twisted the shield she'd sheltered behind into a ram, one she sent out with tremendous force. So much, in fact, that the impact of it cracked the walls of the building behind the siblings. Azula had rolled clear, but the obvious attempt on her life lit a fire in Zuko, one that one would do well by not lighting. Because now, somebody had tried to hurt his sister. And that would not stand.

Even as Azula began to send volleys of scarlet flames at the group, Zuko was advancing in an implacable wave, of golden fire and filial outrage. He'd given them every chance to just run away, and they insist on hurting his sister? How dare they! Even as he attacked, some small, rational part of his mind could recognize the acrobatics required to end up with that conclusion, but the truth was, he was too angry in this moment to fight it. He wanted to burn something. They would do.

Fire pounded in his lungs and in his legs as he closed the distance, smashing through the waterbender's defenses with raw and untempered flame, until he'd come within a few yards of her. Then, the Avatar swept in from behind her, and spun his hands very low. Zuko's footing went right out from under him as he landed on a rotating disc of air, a scant inch from the ground. The disc started spinning him with it. Zuko lost all track of direction and what his enemies were doing, such that it was actually a bit of a relief when the Avatar sent Zuko skyward, catapulting him up and embedding him into a less well-tended part of the roof. While the brittle tiles did break his fall, it was not gently, and it was not painlessly.

"Ooooh," Zuko moaned as he forced himself to a sit, and realized that he was now about five yards higher from the ground than he'd started. He blinked away the nausea, and shook away the stars in his head. Yeah, he really couldn't take hits like that very often, not without incurring some serious brain trauma. He got to his feet, limpingly of course, and looked down. Azula was holding her own against both the Avatar and the waterbender, but she wouldn't be able to do it for long. Zuko considered jumping right down, but a broken ankle on top of a concussion didn't sound like his idea of a good plan. Doubly so when he heard a cutting in the air and had to throw himself supine on the tiles to avoid worsening his concussion via boomerang. So the Tribesman thought that trick would work twice? Zuko felt as though he should be outraged at that presumption. In truth, he just hurt.

Zuko slid to the edge of the roofing and kipped through a window, landing on a kitchen table of a family of four. They all stared at him. He stared back at them, then down at their dinner he was spanning.

"Food and Public Health inspector," Zuko lied, pulling an official looking form from a back pocket which was in fact Uncle's receipt for a tsungi horn. "You seem to have a decent diet and keep a clean house. There is no issue here."

"Oh... Very well... thank you?" the patriarch said with a baffled expression. Zuko hopped off the table, pocketed 'the credentials', brushed off some of the tile which had caught in his shirt, then walked out the door. Zuko paused on its other side, rubbing his aching head.

"Man, am I good at lying," Zuko noted. And then a second thought occurred to him. "Man, are those people dumb!"

With that out of the way, Zuko took to a run again, getting out of the house at ground level via a second story hall window. While the impact did jar his legs, it was far better than a suicidal plunge from the roof. He found Azula a few streets away, still fighting the three of them. Zuko rushed forward, adding himself to the fray... well, as best as he could. Because now, there were spear-armed militiamen who seemed to be appearing out of the woodwork. Many of them still had their celebration masks on, and only a scarce pair were in armor, but the thicket of sharp steal on long poles held a threat all its own. Azula was smirking at the Avatar and his comrades. "You'd might as well surrender, Avatar," she said, in that smokey, almost seductive way that she was. It sounded... really weird, a bit off, and majorly creepy to Zuko, but he wasn't about to say anything. Not now.

"You are to be remanded in custody and brought to the Fire Lord for judgment," one of the spearmen announced. Azula gave him a hot glare.

"You will do no such thing. I have trapped him. He's mine to bring before F... Ozai."

"There's more than enough bounty to go around," the spearman said casually. "Hell, we could spread it amongst the whole of Bomei and it'd still be a... what's that sound?"

Zuko looked down at the ground between Azula and that militiaman, and saw that there was a hissing grapefruit there. While the absurdity of it galled even Zuko, he knew he had to interpose himself between Azula and that thing. He was already twisting a fire-shield into existence when the citrus detonated, and sent up a vast plume of what smelled like powdered oil-pepper at the guards. The stink of it burning was welcome, given the alternative, which befell many of the militiamen, was breathing in and having eyes coated in the horrid stuff, resulting in choking and blindness.

Zuko let the shield die and turned, only to have a blast of wind knock him onto his back. A man in a cloak bounded past the struggling, flailing, gasping soldiers, and bowed to the trio at the end of the dead-end.

"Please, come with me, I know a way out!"

"You tried to kidnap me!" the Avatar accused.

"You didn't let me explain! I need you to leave Bomei now, before it's too late," he said. Zuko wouldn't have trusted that for an instant, and was mildly annoyed that the boy gave a nod, and the man led the trio out, past Zuko and away from the place they'd almost gotten knicked. Zuko glanced above/behind him, and saw that Azula had two grown men pinning her down, albeit involuntarily since they were on the ground wheezing, and she had the misfortune of being the lowest on the pile. Zuko elected to play unconscious, and let the group pass. When they were about a minute gone, Zuko forced himself up, as though unsteady on his feet. It was more than half true, that. He staggered over to Azula, and rolled the soldiers off of her, pulling her to her feet.

"Where the hell were you?" Azula shouted, giving Zuko a punch in the arm to punctuate her outrage. "We could have had them!"

"He embedded me into a roof!" Zuko answered back, anger in his own voice. "What was I supposed to do? Bounce off like my spine was made of rubber?"

Azula looked like she wanted to explode further on him, or in fact anybody, but she turned, looking toward where the edge of town lie. "They can't have gotten far. Keep up, Zuzu. I'm not letting them get away again!"

---

This was a hell of a night. While Toph had landed in Bomei without a penny to her name, now she had cash in her pocket. All because she kinda-sorta lied on a first wager, which she couldn't have gotten wrong if she tried. An hour of not-strictly-legal bet tampering, and she had a bit of scratch to play with. If she was in a play from about two hundred years ago, she'd have a reason to be concerned – since back then, any illicit gain had to be directly punished in the narrative – but since she was fairly certain her life wasn't a morality tale, she just got enough for tea and dinner, and took a seat at a small, relatively sedate eatery just outside the eastern gate of Bomei.

In truth, her gambling hadn't been just for money and cheating's sake. There'd been a fair bit of reconnaissance going on as well. That was why she didn't sit on the western gate; it was too small, and the crowds around it too thick. The east, on the other hand, was much more sparsely populated, both of revelers and mostly-slacking guards. If there was one thing which Toph Beifong knew about people who stylized themselves protagonists, its that when a festival appeared, trouble was sure to follow. And since they would not head south to where the Fire Nation was berthed, they would most likely come streaming out of this gate when the time came.

Of course, that was her reasoning before she remembered that they've got a big, fuzzy flying thing. Her dense knowledge of literary tropes didn't really give her insight into how to account for that little variable. After that, her smugness dissolved into a glum sulk and she sipped lethargically at her tea. "You look like you've got problems, little lady," the shopkeeper said.

"I'm just fairly sure I missed the most important rendezvous in my life," she muttered. She then gave a half turn to the couple who was whispering somewhere behind her. "It doesn't help that I've got to 'see' everything that these people are doing all the frickin' time."

"You should try just enjoying the sights," the shopkeeper said.

"Yeah, that'll work out," Toph muttered.

The man shrugged. "People your age aren't usually on their own. Not when they have pocket money, anyway. So who is he? He your boyfriend or something?"

"What? No!" Toph said. "You know what, just shut up and give me more tea."

"As the lady wants," he said with a sigh. "You'd get a lot more young men in your wake if you were a bit nicer, though."

"And why would I want that?" Toph asked, knocking back the remainder of her tea in one great gulp.

Toph turned from the serving bar and took a few steps away, out from under the 'protective' awning. Like it'd need that. It hadn't rained in this part of the East for decades. She opened her useless eyes wide, and took a deep breath. It smelled so... different... from Gaoling. She shook her head. What was she thinking? That she could just meet up with the Avatar and demand a place at his side for the glory which was to come? What gave her that right? And come to think of it, why would he even accept her? She was blind after all, and that was a fairly significant drawback to have to deal with. And then there was the wolfbat from Makapu. Yeah, Twinkletoes did respect her, but the thought of being romantically entangled with that naïve, idealistic ingenue did not sit well in Toph's stomach or mind.

Maybe this was all just a mistake. Maybe Dad was right. Maybe she wasn't up for this kind of thing.

"Come on, they're not far behind!" somebody shouted from the area of the gates.

"I know! I can see them!" came the reply, and this one in a voice which Toph instantly recognized. It was the Sugarqueen, no doubt about that. There was a sound of crashing water and then a gale of wind tugged at Toph's dress slightly, as though she were far on the outside of something impressive. Just in that moment, Toph had envy for the sighted, because whatever Twinkletoes and Sugarqueen did, it must have been damned impressive. "Alright, that'll buy us some time. Who are you?"

"No talking, more running!" the grown man said, and then they were taking off. Toph tried to elbow her way past the crowd which had blocked her off from them, but they were already sprinting past by the time Toph resorted to angry earthbending to create a hole for her to walk through. By then, they were long past, and even Toph screaming at them to turn around didn't register in the slightest. Toph stood there for a long moment, then sighed.

"Yup. This is going to be awesome," she said sarcastically. She half turned to the vendor behind her. "You can keep the change."

"But you haven't paid me yet?" he answered.

"Fancy that," Toph said, and started walking, vanishing from his meager eyes into the crowd. In that moment, she had no regret for her blindness, because it meant that while Twinkletoes and the others might be out of sight, they weren't out of her minds-eye. Not even close. And she knew she had a lot of walking left in her before she was even tired.

---

The rumble started so slowly that she didn't even notice it. Then again, when she was up to her figurative neck in a problem and trying to reason it out, her house could burn down around her and she wouldn't notice. Thus it was that it was the annoying airbender who had to bring it to Nila's attention that there was a noise approaching. Her eyes flicked up to the horizon, and she kicked herself for being so oblivious.

"Well, what is it?" Malu asked.

"Remember how I said that the Big Empty wasn't very? Well, those would probably be the inhabitants. If we're careful and quick, we might be able to find some way to hide from them," Nila said, scanning the surroundings. Besides the small hillock about a mile away which broke the horizon, there was nothing but swaying, drought bleached grass.

"And why do we want to hide from them again?" Tzu Zi asked.

"Because they'd like to kill us," Nila answered. "Damn it all! We're trapped in the open!"

"Why would they kill us?" Malu asked.

"You, because you're outsiders. Me and my brother? Because we're The Nemesis," Nila said. "If we drop everything and stop coddling that old cockerel, we may... may be able to outrun them."

"They wouldn't be so brutish," Malu said confidently. "Come on, Tzu Zi. It's not like they're going to hurt us."

"Doesn't anybody listen to me?" Nila shouted. "They're Dakongese! They live for battle! They held one of the two bastions against Chin the Conqueror centuries ago by being too violent to tame!"

"Yeesh, you're making them sound like they're Gurkhas," Tzu Zi said with a shake of her head.

Nila had to see her point. "Well, not Gurkhas, but still, better to hide and let them pass. Even if it takes all week. Trust me."

"Too late," Sharif said from that bird's back. Nila turned to where the dust was rising over the horizon, but nothing had crested yet.

"What did you see?"

"Anger, fear. Some greed and hunger," he shrugged, then cast a placating hand toward Malu. "Not like yours. Normal stuff."

"Not like... what the hell is he talking about?" Malu asked, brow raised in bemusement.

"He is Sharif. That is the way he speaks."

"We can still run. Their birds are strong but we have firepower," Nila said, giving glances toward Tzu Zi and Malu.

"What about that bow on your hip."

"You think I could outshoot a Darga? Are you mad?" Nila asked. She turned as the thunder reached its crescendo, and the first of many crested that hill. Nila felt a cold surge wash through her, the sour inevitability of defeat. When another forty joined the first, she just opened the case at her hip, and drew out the bow. There was no outshooting forty of the Darga, but she would not die begging on the ground like a dog. She quickly bent the bow back, slipping the string into place for the first time in... well, months at the very least. Then, she waited. The path of the bird had been slightly askew of them, heading toward the nearest bend of a shallow river that Nila and the others had forded first thing in the morning. "Wait for my sign, then fight 'till you see the breakers of Hell."

"We can still end this peacefully," Malu said calmly. She slipped off of Aki's back and strode toward the horde, which was now diverting toward them. Sharif just watched with the detached, disinterested look which he held for most events. Tzu Zi looked scared enough to wet herself. There was an odd calm in Nila, though. She'd done all she could. Nobody could say any different. She nocked an arrow, and waited. Malu held her hands out to her sides. "We come in peace! We seek only to pass through your lands and ACK!"

The 'ack', Nila noted, was Malu jumping back as an arrow landed near her foot. The Ostrich Horseman let out a clipped laugh. "That's far enough, outsider," he shouted in his own guttural tongue.

"What did he say?" Tzu Zi asked.

"Just get ready for the fight of your death," Nila said, noting how none of the riders ever really stopped moving. It would be hard to get a good shot off. The others began to circle 'round them, but no other arrows fell.

"Um... Who speaks for your people?" Malu asked, in a dialect of Dakongese which Nila was fairly sure was argot and probably had been subsumed decades ago. One of the riders slowed, and leaned forward over the neck of the grizzled bird.

"So the little girl speaks," that one answered. The first one who'd spoken shot him a glance. He was waved aside by the latter. "Your kind are not welcome in these lands."

"The Air Nomads are welcome everywhere," Malu noted, a nervous flick of her eyes the only indication she realized how dangerous the situation was.

"The Air Nomads were. Now, they are gone," he answered. "Since you can't speak properly, you'll speak to me instead of the Cherbi. Surrender your arms."

"We mean you no harm," Malu said, forcefully.

"You keep company with The Nemesis. That makes you enemies of Dakong."

Malu gave a glance back. "The what?" she asked quietly.

"They blame Si Wongi for the drought, and for the Si Wong Desert slowly getting bigger," Nila said, her eyes flicking between potential targets. "It's because we have sandbenders while they have proper earthbenders. They think our existence blasphemous."

Malu turned back to the Darga. "These people are not of The Nemesis. They have no part in your drought."

"You think me blind and stupid, girl? I know what my eyes see!" he shouted, knocking an arrow. Nila quickly drew her own. "We should just slaughter then now."

"Hold your nock, Taishi," the Cherbi said with an annoyed tone. He glared across the distance which the circling warriors described around them, then pointed at Sharif. "You there, boy. Where did you get that bird?"

"I got it from... wait, he can't speak Tianxia, can he?" Sharif asked. "I... Had bird from... The open... old."

"Just tell me what you want to tell him," Nila snapped.

"Oh... Patriarch helped me. Isn't that right, Patriarch?" Sharif said, patting the bird's neck, utterly oblivious to the fact that he was very likely going to be dead in a few seconds. Nila rolled her eyes and scoffed.

"He and that bird have been inseparable since I found him. My brother is simple, and I think that is why the bird tolerates him. He certainly won't let any other on his back," Nila shouted. "Now kindly lower your bow."

The Cherbi chuckled a bit at that, but made a lowering gesture. "That is a proud male. Look at him. He must have seen thirty summers on the steppes."

"Forty," Malu countered.

"Forty makes him an old bird indeed," he stared at them. "I see his broken talon. I once tried to break such a bird in my youth. He kicked my ribs in and escaped. It was the only bird I ever lost, and it was not a hatchling even then. You must have a liver of butter to calm that hellish beast."

"Are you going to kill us or argue animal husbandry?" Nila asked.

"Are you insane?" Malu hissed back at her. "We're actually talking! That's a good thing!"

"The girl is fiery," Taishi laughed.

The Cherbi, on the other hand, looked a bit more closely at her. "You ring a reflection in my eyes. I have seen your likeness before. From whom do you spring?"

"I am Nila Badesh bint Seema din Nassar, daughter of Sativa, granddaughter of Salwah and Iskandar," Nila shouted at him. "And if I die, I die on my feet."

The Cherbi leaned back in his saddle with that, and gave a signal to his men. Nila tensioned that string back a little harder, the point at the Cherbi. She would not last long, but he would last even less. "Unstring," the Cherbi ordered. "The Noyan will want to see these ones."

Malu turned back to her. "What was that?" she asked. "I didn't catch all of it."

"I didn't catch any of it," Tzu Zi said, worrying her fingers before her.

"We are taken prisoner, it seems," Nila said. She relaxed her draw and slid the bow back into its case. "So much for a quick death."

"Are you always this fatalistic?" Malu asked.

"I make bombs as a hobby," Nila said.

"That isn't an answer."

"You'll find that it is," Nila responded, as the circle began to converge, and she felt a very patriotic anger burning in her. Prisoner now, perhaps. But not for long.

---

The panicked sprint had slowed to a more sedate jog, and then to a steady, if brisk, walk. "Man, you really know your explosives," Sokka noted as they navigated the extremely thick woods, which hugged the river desperately. The man let out a chuckle, which Aang didn't really get.

"I'm familiar with their use," he said. "I liberated that little gem from a pirate vessel not far from here. A little reverse engineering and a lemon becomes a grapefruit."

"How do you know so much about explosives?" Aang asked. The man tossed down his hood, and glanced over, tired amber eyes falling upon the Avatar's visage. Aang gasped. "You're from the Fire Nation!"

"I was," he said. "My name's Chey, and I defected a couple of years ago, after the chaos of Ba Sing Se."

Aang felt himself pulled aside, and Sokka got before him, machete out and brandished. "What do you want with the Avatar?" he demanded.

"Whoa, whoa," he said, placating. "I'm not trying to kidnap him or anything."

"You tried to snatch me from the audience," Aang pointed out.

"I thought you were going to do something... Avatar-y." Chey said. Sokka frowned at him.

"Something Avatar-y? Like his reasonable reaction to being kidnapped?" Sokka asked.

"Oh... Yeah, I hadn't thought about that," the man admitted, scratching his unshaven cheeks. "But the fact was, you weren't safe in the city. Not like you would be out here."

"Why would he be safer out here?" Katara asked.

"Well, that's the thing," Chey said. "I serve this man. Well, he's not really a man, more like a legend. But he's real!"

"You've been drinking that Cactus Wine during the festival, haven't you?" Sokka asked.

"Nah, man. That stuff messes with your mind!"

Sokka facepalmed loudly.

"He's a living legend," Chey returned to his earlier track. "Jeong Jeong, the Deserter! He was a Fire Nation Admiral – or was it general? Maybe he was a colonel?"

"We get it, he was very highly ranked," Sokka said from within his palm.

"You better believe it," Chey said. "Something happened to him, though. He couldn't take the craziness anymore, and he split! He was the first one to escape the Fire Nation alive! They say he's mad, but he's not! He's a firebending genius!"

Aang felt a light turn on in his soul. "Maybe that's who I as supposed to meet!" Aang said brightly.

"Oh, no. We are not waltzing right up to a crazy firebender in the middle of the woods," Sokka shook his head vigorously.

"He's not crazy, he's enlightened," Chey corrected.

"That's great, but we should probably head for the North Pole. We're so close," Sokka began, but this time, it was Katara who cut him off.

"But Aang needs to learn firebending, too," she pointed out. "How likely is it that we're going to find a firebender who's actually willing to teach him?"

"That's exactly what I meant," Aang said. "If this is the 'friend', then it might be my only chance to learn firebending from somebody who knows what he's doing. I mean, how likely is it that some other firebender is going to be fighting against the Fire Lord?"

"Well, I guess it depends on where you look," Chey said helpfully.

Aang nodded. "And what's the harm of talking to this guy?"

"You said the same thing about the festival! Why doesn't anybody listen to me!" Sokka shouted, before wilting. "There's no convincing you away, is there?" he asked.

"Sorry, Sokka."

"Alright. Let's see what catastrophe awaits us now."

"Might be a bit late to tell you all, but we're already most of the way there," Chey said in that slightly inebriated way he talked. Despite his statements to the contrary, even innocent Aang thought that the man had tipped back a few jars of something during that festival.

"Really? That's oddly convenient," Sokka said with suspicion. Of course, there were a lot of things which Sokka viewed with a fairly unreasonable amount of suspicion.

"Of course! You didn't think I was just running in the woods, did you?" Chey asked. "In fact, I think I see somebody now."

Aang craned his neck to see who Chey was talking about, but let out a yelp when a bush rose up and brandished a spear at them all. Sokka already had a machete out and did some brandishing of his own, until that one spear-armed bush became a spear-armed most-of-the-underbrush. Upon closer inspection, they were people, men and women both, in topiary disguises and grim faces. Obviously they hadn't been to the festival, Aang considered.

"Li Quan! Good to see you!" Chey said brightly. The woman in question just glared at him.

"What did we tell you about picking up strays, Chey?"

"You know this person?" Katara asked.

"Don't move, girl," Li Quan snapped, turning her spear toward the waterbender. "Be thankful our master is a cautious soul, or your blood would be quenching the forest's thirst," she turned back to Chey. "You were warned against seeking out the Avatar. Jeong Jeong himself forbade it."

"Why would he do that?" Aang asked, his heart sinking.

"We don't question why Jeong Jeong wills as he wills," Li Quan said. "Come on. Move!"

"Where are you taking us?" Katara asked defensively.

"Probably to see Jeong Jeong," Chey said distractedly.

"But she just said..." Sokka began to point out.

"He will determine what to do with you," Li Quan said, distaste obvious in her tone. "So walk!"

"See? We'll talk to Jeong Jeong and then everything will be just fine. He's a great man after all; great man!" Chey stressed. Sokka's only reply to that was to slap himself hard on the forehead in dismay, as they crossed the last distance through the woods.

---

Zhao was smirking. People didn't tend to like when Zhao smirked. Kwon was, as always, his constant shadow as he stomped into the heart of the festival. That Bomei was in a general uproar meant that he had read and deciphered Azula's prophecy correctly. He came upon a group of guards, of which only a single of them was wearing the armor which they ought have. "The Avatar disrupted this festival," Zhao announced as soon as he stopped walking. The guards all snapped to uneasy attention, glancing amongst themselves.

"How... how did you learn so quickly, Lord Zhao?" one of the peons asked. Zhao made a harsh dismissing gesture, punctuated by flame.

"Immaterial. The facts stand that the Avatar was within these walls and your incompetence let him slip away!" Zhao shouted. The armored one, probably their commanding officer, swallowed nervously.

"But other than that, the festival went on without a hitch," he placated. "No real fights. Theft is way down."

"I don't care about your petty crime rates!" Zhao roared at them. They all took a step back. "You can consider this month's pay forfeit for your indolence and stupidity. Another screw-up like this and you'll find decimation in your future."

"...but, we're not Whalesh," he said, as though that was an adequate excuse.

"You'll find those orange haired heathens have all manner of... interesting... punishments," Zhao intimated. "Pray you don't discover the culture I discovered in the south. It would be to your benefit."

"Yes, Lord Zhao," they said.

Zhao turned to his aide, and in a much quieter tone, spoke. "They will have taken to the woods. Prepare the river boats."

"To what end, My Lord?"

"They've come seeking my old teacher," Zhao said. "I fear some dire fate is about to befall that old traitor."

"Very good, My Lord," Kwon said without enthusiasm nor hesitancy.

The guards stood stock still for a long moment. "What about us?"

"At what point did you assume you mattered? Go away," Zhao said. That smirk returned. "The Avatar and the Deserter in one day. My life is on a definite upswing."

---

"So what's going to happen to us?" Tzu Zi asked quietly as the crowd watched them get ushered through the crowd. The firebender was understandably and justifiably worried, and the way she seemed to flinch from every incisive pair of eyes further punctuated that. There was no doubt that it was for the best that the girl never got shoe-horned into the military. She was far too kind for that sort of life. Nila found herself smiling for just a moment before she discarded such notions and focused on the grim reality.

"That really depends," Nila answered. Malu shot a glance at her.

"Depends on what?" the airbender asked.

"On what Noyan we're being taken to," Nila said. "If it's Ambaghai, then we'll be summarily executed. He was always a stickler for efficiency in his slaughter."

"You say that like it's the good option," Malu pointed out with confusion.

"It is. He'd just kill us. Oghul would skin us alive, first. They really go down-hill from there. You do not want to know what Taghan did when he swept through Arg-e Chongha. It was our sturdiest fortress after Nassar was blown to bits, and when he broke its walls, he was not kind, nor swift, nor merciful."

"Are there any of them who'd let us off with community service?" Malu asked, now understandably nervous.

"Any that would would be swallowed up by one of those that didn't," Nila said. "Thus is history in the ass end of the Earth Kingdoms," Nila paused for a moment, then turned to the two girls with her. "Although, if it's Taghan or Oghul, there's a chance you could survive. You're not Nemesis, after all."

Malu halted for a moment, and had to get shoved to keep pace again. She stared at Nila for a second, a frown on her face. "You wanted to see me celebrate at that, didn't you?"

"I'm genuinely surprised you didn't," Nila said.

"This place is oddly hungry," Sharif noted, ruffling the hair of one of the children they passed by. The child's mother shrieked and smashed him in the face with a broom handle. He fell away, looking a bit confused but none injured, and rubbed his face as he got back up and kept pace with the others. "And they're not very friendly, too."

"Keep your filthy hands to yourself, Nemesis," the Cherbi said. "Lest we cut them off before they spread their taint."

"What was..."

"Sharif, if you touch them again, they're taking off your hands," Nila translated.

Sharif looked completely flummoxed by this. "Well, that's an odd way to treat visitors," he noted. Nila shook her head. The procession had been long, and direct. Those two things together gave Nila a quite unpleasant portrait of what was going on here. This very likely wasn't even one Noyan. It was possibly several of them. And the only reason that more than one Noyan ever agreed about anything long enough to stop fighting each other, was to launch a crusade against the Si Wongi. If there were less than two hundred thousand soldiers, and a million civilians in this horde, then Nila was a Water Tribesman.

"The Noyan awaits inside," the Cherbi announced, and bade the soldiers shove the four of them inside the large, ornate ger. For a moment, Nila was blinded, such was the change from blinding noon to shadowed twilight. The ribbed tent was alive with heat and music, though, as flutists and bonfires belched forth music and warmth, respectively. She blinked at the splendor of it for a moment, the workmanship obvious in every aspect of this ger, every cushion on the ground, every trunk and every object displayed within them. And the weapons of course, were the like that could rival Mother's own.

"So... hello?" Malu asked.

There was a flicker from the back of the room, of a spark catching on a piece of twig, and it being lowered into a bowl of a pipe. A few puffs to stoke the flames, and then the twig was cast aside. The bearer of that pipe took a second breath, letting the smoke linger, before passing back out past wide lips. Nila felt a moment of alarm in her. "Well, I was told we had important 'visitors'. Ligdan has good eyes," the woman at the far end of the tent said. "Come closer. I don't bite. Often."

"We come in peace, and hope to negotiate a peaceful exit," Malu said.

"Silence, girl," she snapped, leaning forward. "You don't interest me."

"Wh... why not?" Malu asked.

"Because you are nobody," the woman answered. She pointed that pipe's stem at Nila. "She, on the other hand?"

"Well, maybe I'm more important than you believe," Malu said defensively.

"Unless you're the Avatar in a bad wig, I don't care," the middle aged woman shouted. She turned to Nila again. "You know who I am, don't you?"

"Khatun Noyan," Nila said. "From what I heard of you, I'm surprised you're not dead."

"I'm a remarkably hard woman to kill," Khatun said. "But 'Noyan' is a somewhat outdated title, as you have no doubt been shirking your recent history. There are no other Noyan but me. There is no Dakong but me, and no Dakongese but those that follow the Iron Horde."

Nila took a step back.

"Don't be so afraid. I thought you'd be happy to be present at the birth of a new nation, under its new Khagan. One such as you would do well to recognize the nation you see before you. This long war is finally coming to an end."

"Wait, really?" Malu asked. "Good, because I'm supposed to be 'the great mediator', and..."

"This worm keeps interrupting," Khatun said, turning to one of the Tunghaut nearby. "Cut out her tongue."

"Don't you dare!" Nila snapped, before she could stop herself. Khatun paused, eyebrows rising, a smile coming to her round, scarred face.

"A backbone has she?" Khatun said. She leaned forward again, and the light from the fire cast gruesome shadows upon her visage. "And what is she to you, that she's earned that privilege?"

"She is a friend."

"I have friends. Some of them deserve parts removed from them," Khatun countered.

"She is also an airbender."

Khatun leaned back at that. "Truly?" she asked. Nila nodded sternly. "And I suppose that little girl who is huddling behind you is a long-discovered Storm King?"

"Malu?" Nila asked. Malu nodded, and then twisted away, blasting out with her hands, and a smash of wind whipped at the flames, sending the whole skin of the ger twisting on its rack, until part of it opened up and let a beam of sunlight drop down and bathe her. When one of the Darga snapped a panicked arrow at her, she swept it aside with a twist of her hand, and it deflected straight into a piece of wood next to a flutist, who hit a sour note, then continued playing as though nothing happened, if with a heavy wash of flop-sweat. Malu looked positively smug in that pool of light, so Nila turned back to Khatun and waved a hand toward her. "Does this satisfy your requirements?"

"A real airbender? So the Avatar was not alone?" Khatun said, slipping into her own language. She turned to one of her advisors and shouted. "Why was I not informed of this! Do you want me to appear the fool?"

"We did not know, Khagan!" the man pleaded. He gestured toward Malu. "As far as we knew, the Avatar was the last airbender!"

"I am not pleased," Khatun noted. Malu looked at Nila, as though expecting her to translate. Nila just shrugged, to which Malu rolled her eyes.

"That was cool," Sharif noted.

Khatun scowled for a long moment, then waved off her guardians. "Very well. I should well expect that the Dragon's Daughter would have such varied and impressive bodyguards."

"The what?" Tzu Zi asked.

"Ah, so you haven't told them who you really are, have you?" Khatun asked, hunching forward again.

"What haven't you told us?" Malu asked.

"She's not very good at keeping secrets," Sharif pointed out.

"This is an important girl you happen to travel the East with. Surely you must know about the Dragon of the East, the woman who broke and humiliated the Fire Lord's general, Prince Iroh of the Fire Nation," Khatun said, puffing of her pipe. "The saying in the West is that only those that bring down a Dragon earn the title. Well, burn my hide for saying it, but Sativa did exactly that at Ba Sing Se."

"That is my mother's reputation, not mine," Nila said firmly.

Khatun smirked, then spoke again. This time, it made Nila flinch solidly as the word struck her. Malu and Tzu Zi both frowned. "What does that mean?" Tzu Zi asked quietly.

"Where did you hear that?" Nila demanded, taking a harsh and perhaps ill-advised stride forward. She, for the moment, didn't hear the creaking of bows drawn and ready to fire. Khatun just smirked. "That is a meaningless word! Empty syllables and worthless phonemes!"

"Or is it that you're alarmed that my ears hear so much?" Khatun asked.

Nila glared at the leader of not just this army, but ostensibly the entire Dakongese people. "You know who I am. Better than most it would seem."

"She didn't say it right," Sharif pointed out.

"Shut up, brother!" Nila snapped.

"I know many things. And so must you. I doubt the Dragon of the East would be so incompetent as to let her daughter, her very spitting image, go about without a vital task."

"Wait... your mom's the Dragon of the East?" Tzu Zi asked.

"The what?" Malu asked.

Nila turned back to her. "How haven't you figured that out by now?"

"Well, I heard the name, but it never really clicked," Tzu Zi admitted. "Agni's blood, now I know how Ty Lee feels."

Nila turned to Khatun again. "I suppose this is the part where you ransom me to my mother? Get her to stand down in exchange for my life? Well, you'll find she might not take that bargain," Nila said.

"I wouldn't offer it," Khatun said. "I freely admit to hating your mother, but that does not mean I don't respect her. She is a hard woman, and drives hard bargains. But as for ransom; no. I am not suicidal," Nila shared a glance of confusion with her fellows. Khatun tapped out the spent tobacco in her pipe and started to refill it. "If I storm Sentinel Rock today and bring the war to her doorstep, then it is nothing personal. It is... how would that bookish bitch put it? Ah, yes... a Synthetic Dialectic. Nothing but 'thesis' and 'antithesis' clashing together, to see who is valid. I say she is Nemesis, and she is poisoning the world. She claims she is not. Our war will prove who is correct. I believe the result would be called 'synthesis'. It would be bloody and raw, yes, but it would not be personal."

She rose, standing eye-to-eye with her fellow Darga, an uncommon stature of an Easterner. "But if I harm so much as one of the short hairs on your head, then this becomes a personal thing to that woman. There are many stories of your mother, girl. Few of them unimpressive. And I know very well what that woman is willing to spend in barter for revenge. If I do you harm, then she will return it upon me ten thousand fold. Simply put, I have no desire to wake up with a quarter of my soldiers dead one morning, and by mid-afternoon crumple out of my saddle for the subtle knife she left lodged in my guts that dawn."

"You make her sound like some sort of demon spirit," Tzu Zi said.

"I'm not wholly convinced she isn't one," Khatun answered the firebender. She turned back to Nila, who drew strength from those around her. She needed it to not flinch away from those black, terrible eyes. "You are Nemesis. You are poisoning this world with your tainted element, gobbling up the whole of the East for your 'sandbenders'. You are a taint, a cancer which must be excised. But I cannot harm you. Because in harming you, I prick the side of a mighty beast and leave myself no place to run. So you will face no punishment by my hand, or by any hand which I can control or influence. I value my continued existence at least that much."

"So respectful hatred, then?" Nila asked, trying to keep her voice level. It was a lot harder than anybody ever told her it would be.

"An interesting term. I think I shall use it in the future," Khatun said. She shook her head. "Your presence is a foul odor I cannot expunge. Exit my ger immediately."

"A pleasure," Nila said, with a bow, and a sarcastic smirk. Khatun's eyes burned into her head as she did so, and motioned the others to come with her.

"I wonder why he's so angry," Sharif asked, looking at one of her advisors, before Nila reached back and dragged him away by the collar. "What? Did I say something wrong?"

They all emerged from the mobile palace and into the sunlight. Malu wiped the sweat from her brow. "Wow. That was hairy. Who knew you were some sort of princess, eh?"

"I am no princess," Nila countered. "Mother has about as much noble blood in her as she does," she said, pointing a thumb at Tzu Zi.

"Um... Might not be the best time to tell you this, but I'm actually Fire Nation nobility," Tzu Zi admitted.

Nila stared at her. "What."

"Yeah. My family owns the island with the biggest coal mine in the Eastern Fire Nation," Tzu Zi said carefully. She turned to Malu, who had a sympathetic look on her face.

"And let me guess, you're some sort of..." Nila began.

"You know what, we'll get into that when it doesn't look like you're about to pass out," Malu said.

"Look at that! A bluebird!" Sharif said happily.

"I think I need to lie down," Nila said, all of the stress, terror, confusion, and, well, everything else all piling in on her thoughts until they became one jumbled, white, buzzing mess. Then, there was a snap, like a lightning bolt's strike in the instant before the thunder begins. And then she passed right out where she was standing.

Sharif watched her fall, then turned to the girls. "...Was... was I supposed to catch her?" he asked. Malu and Tzu Zi both palmed their faces in unison.

---

To Be Continued

---

Aaaah, worldbuilding. It's delicious. The great thing about Nila and Company is that they get to see parts of Avatar-World that surely exist, but by simple dint of the camera following certain parties, couldn't get shown. Even as far back as the mid nineteenth century, pretty much any place on the planet that could have people on it did, and bearing in mind that my Avatar World has about 5,000 years of history which will only be touched on by offhand comments of people like Toph (she knows her history, that girl), the cultural divides even amongst people on the same continent could well be vast.

That, and Cartoon Mongols. Taken seriously. Sometimes, when chasing butterflies (Ozai shifts war away from the East and toward the North, therefore Zhao conquers Great Whales), something else gets disturbed, sending out shockwaves across the planet (Refugees from the war which only happened because something else happened have to go somewhere). Given that Adamism isn't exactly popular with the polytheists and the animists or even the Fire Nation monotheists, there's only one place they could land.

Yes, I did give Ty Lee a cameo. You're going to meet all of them before the end of Book 3. And yes, I did steal a line from Blazing Saddles. Don't look at me like that. Tying all of this stuff together in Book 2 is going to be tricky, but fun.