Sorry for the gap. Writing the 'season finale', and it's gargantuan. Also, Skyrim. They took everything I hated about Oblivion and garbaged it. So good, but sooo time consuming.
Nila bolted upright with a yelp, before immediately casting her gaze around her. Confusion was her most primary mental characteristic. Not really surprising, considering the last thing she remembered was a nail-bitingly tense confrontation between her and the most dangerous woman she'd ever met... excluding her own mother. The source of that confusion mostly stemmed from the fact that she was in a yurt. Well, they would have called it a ger, since they were staunch about favoring their own language over even the lingua franca that was Tianxia. She looked around, and let out a second yelp when she beheld a pair of dark-haired and broad featured Dakongese casually looking back at her.
"What did you do with my friends and brother?" she demanded. She then quickly glanced down at herself, and once more was confused, since she was not bound, still dressed in her ad hoc clothing, and she still even had a knife at her belt.
"Oh, good, she's awake," the man said pleasantly. "You owe me five rubble."
The other one, much greyer than the first, let out a sigh, and shifted over toward a wicker chest, muttering about 'stupid wagers' and that she 'didn't have the decency to stay asleep until sundown'. Nila slowly pushed herself to her feet, if feeling slightly lightheaded about it as she did. She rubbed at her temple, as she often did, only this time, the scratching of short hairs accompanied the action. Sooner or later she'd get used to having hair again. Unless she decided to shave it off again. "You speak Tianxia?"
"Do we look like savages?" the Dakongese asked.
"Do you really want me to answer that question?" Nila asked, and a split second later, her brain caught up with her mouth, causing her to flinch with alarm. The Dakongese man stared at her for a long, tense moment, then burst into laughter.
"She's got us there, Adalai," the man said. "The airbender warned us about you. Got a tendency to snap, she said. I can see she wasn't lying."
"Why am I here?" Nila demanded to know.
"Easy, easy," the greyer one placated. "Your friend, the shorter one, she was getting trouble from some of our neighbors. They don't take kindly to Si Wongi, after all."
"And you do?" Nila asked.
"Well, no," he continued. "You shouldn't interrupt. It's rude."
"Then you should take less time getting to the point."
"She's got ya there, Gershom," Adalai laughed. "Well, to make his long story shorter, we took you in because you would have probably been murdered out there."
"That doesn't answer why," Nila said.
"You're awake!" Tzu Zi's glee entered the yurt before she did, and Nila had a scant moment to brace herself before she was being hugged by a firebender.
"I told you she'd be fine, but did you listen? Nooooo," Malu said, sauntering in afterwards, followed shortly yet by Sharif, who was manipulating an oddly wrought bit of iron, with a very distant look on his face.
"You were making bets!" Tzu Zi said with an accusatory tone. Malu just shrugged with a smirk. "I thought you'd hit your head or something. Are you sure you're alright? I was..."
"Tzu Zi, I'm fine," Nila said, cutting off her friend. If only because when she got this way, she tended to launch into run-on sentences which one couldn't penetrate with a battle axe. The firebender finally parted from Nila. "Now could somebody please tell me why these people aren't trying to garrote me?"
"We're Adamite," Gershom said, waving aside to an altar which was tucked into what would have been a corner had the Yurt not been circular. She raised a brow at the plain edifice, flanked by incense and idols of several saints she couldn't name, surrounding a stylized hammer at its heart. Nila turned back to them.
"And why would that matter?" she asked.
"The pagans," Adalai said, gesturing out the door, "think you're killing the world. We know better. Si Wong might themselves be lost souls, but I strongly doubt that they're trying to destroy the world."
"Lost souls? What?" Malu asked.
"You've never met a Dakongese Adamite before, have you?" Gershom asked.
"I didn't even think anybody outside of Great Whales even believed in that stuff!" Malu asked.
"People have a lot of troubles these days. And say what you will about Khatun Noyan, at least she doesn't stomp out religions like Matagosh did, or even Bee-lah. Remember Bee-lah?" Adalai asked. Gershom just nodded grimly. "So when the word went out that she wasn't going to persecute us, we came to her side. Not many at first, but now, I think you won't find a bigger enclave of our faith outside Burning Rock or Great Whales itself."
"I'm just glad they're willing to help us," Tzu Zi said.
"I'm surprised your neighbors haven't come beating at your doors."
"They wouldn't dare," Gershom laughed. "We control the water."
Malu stared at him, kneaded her brow, then asked, "What?"
"There's quite a few actual Whalesh amongst us. And they've got waterbenders. That means we can take water from places most people would dry out and die in," Adalai pointed out. "Why do you think there's so many of us and we're not all keeling over in thirst?"
Nila let out a grunt. "That makes a lot of sense, actually," she mused. "You're not restricting our exit, are you?"
Gershom shook his head. "Us, no. But the word's gone out that you're not to leave the camp. I'm fairly sure that they've got at least a hundred arbans out there keeping an eye on you."
"So you know who I am, too?"
"Only by the enemies you keep," Adalai said. "Khatun Noyan seems..."
"Khagan," Sharif corrected, still fiddling with that iron thing. Nila gave it a closer look, and saw that it was a forged iron puzzle. Heh. Good luck having him solve it, even if he had a thousand years.
"Khagan, Noyan, whatever," Adalai waved his hand. "You can stay here if you like, but I recommend against testing the Khagan's mercies. She did not rise to her place of power by being kind."
Malu rocked on her heels for a moment. "So what do we do now?"
"I'm not really sure," Nila admitted, scowling at the ground.
"Do you guys have anything to eat?" Malu asked.
"We've got bansh," Gershom offered. Malu's eyes lit up for a moment, before she got a cautious look.
"Does that have meat in it?" she asked.
"Of course! Three different kinds!" Adalai said. Malu flinched from it, but her eyes stayed on that pot. Even Nila could tell that she was struggling against accepting it.
"You know... maybe I'll just get some noodles," Malu said, but her fixated gaze put her words to lie. Nila felt her hand get caught up, and Tzu Zi's grin brought even more light into the yurt.
"I know what we could do!" she said with glee. "We can go shopping!"
"Shopping. Really," Nila said. Tzu Zi nodded vigorously.
"I saw some vendors nearby and they have really nice things and you apparently have so much money and maybe we can even find you a pretty dress and some shoes! Oh, you should see the shoes that they have here they're spectacular and..."
Nila then found herself being dragged out of the tent by an enthusiastic National, with barely enough time to lean back through the tent flaps, to address the petrified airbender. "Save me!" Nila whispered with something approaching real alarm, but the call was unheeded. After they left, the only sounds in the tent were quiet conversation in Dakongese, the popping of the fire, and the clattering of iron. Then, one last ping, and the gnarled, twisted iron puzzle parted into two sections in Sharif's hands. He stared at it for a moment, then in a deft move, restored it exactly to its starting state in a matter of seconds.
"That's better," he said with a nod. "I wonder how Patriarch is doing?"
Chapter 15
Emerging Patterns II
After the first hour in the squalid, dark little hut, Aang had taken up weaving to break the boredom. By the time anybody poked their head back in, Aang had finished off making a cloak out of the reeds of his own mattress and had moved on to crafting a pan-hat; as he was no swift weaver, it was a clear indicator of just how much time had passed. As soon as Chey, that Fire Nation soldier plunked himself onto the ground, Aang brightened and let his hat-in-the-making fall aside. "Is he going to see me now?" Aang asked before the soldier got one word in.
"Sorry little guy," Chey said. "He doesn't want to see you. And he's mad that I brought you here. He said he wants you to leave, right now."
"Finally," Sokka said, sitting up from what had been a solid sleep an instant before. "Six days to the North Tribe! Here we come!"
"Sokka," Katara chastised in her own tongue from where she was painting on a pattern onto the completed cloak. "Don't crush his dreams."
"But... I'm supposed to see him!" Aang said. "I even got a message to tell him and everything! Why won't he see me?"
"He says your not ready," Chey answered. When Sokka gave an askance glance at him, he just shrugged. "That's what he said, I don't know what he means by it."
"But how much more ready can I get?" Aang asked. "If I don't learn firebending before summer, it'll be too late!"
"Yeah, and with the earthbending and waterbending he's doing, he might be able to pick up some quick firebending tricks and give the Fire Lord a good stomping before the year is out," Sokka said, clapping Aang on the back.
"I'm not really an earthbender. I'm not really sure how I..."
"Split a volcano in two."
"I'm never going to live that down, am I?" Aang asked.
"He said he knew from the way you walked into camp," Chey clarified. "He can tell about these things. He's a genius!"
"So you've said," Sokka dismissed. "Can we just accept this and move on for once. And come to think of it, I'm not sure if I'm comfortable with you playing with fire. One barbequed sibling in this family is enough, I figure."
"Why does everybody assume I'm just going to flare out of control at the first possible opportunity?" Aang asked, annoyance clear in his tone. He shook his head. "Heck with this. I'm going in anyway."
"You shouldn't do that, little man," Chey warned, but Aang stomped past him with all of the single-mindedness that the blind girl had shown him. As he exited the hovel, he could see glimpses of the other soldiers, wearing similar if much less gaudy straw cloaks and hats to the one Aang had created out of boredom. None of them moved to stop him. Just as well they didn't. Aang wasn't in the mood to put up with people who didn't know the whole story getting in his way. There was another shack, much lower on the hillside, so close to the water that Sokka could probably fish from the door. Aang descended to it and slipped inside.
The first thing Aang wasn't supposed to notice was that a tree was growing inside the building, greedily gobbling up light which shone in through a crack in the roof. What he was supposed to notice was the candles arranged in a circle including that tree, and defining an area around a white-haired man. In truth, his hair looked older than the rest of him did. Like he'd been prematurely aged by adversity. Then again, so had many in the last century. "I..." Aang began.
"Get out," the man in the circle demanded, his voice thick with a familiar Fire Nation accent. It was an old accent, Aang had come to realize, the kind which the current generation, if ever possible, culled out of their words at the first opportunity. Aang flinched a bit. Even though the man hadn't deigned to turn and address him, Aang could feel the 'or else' in the statement.
"Master Jeong Jeong, I need to learn firebending," Aang put it simply sitting down on the dirt floor outside the circle of candles.
"You speak of needs, but no man needs to seek his own destruction. Only a fool would," Jeong Jeong stated. Aang frowned a moment.
"But I'm the Avatar! I need to..."
"Needs and needs and needs!" Jeong Jeong turned to face the boy. His face bore a pair of long scars which ran down the side of his face, one coming very close to lancing out his eye. His entire visage was one which was plagued by hard decisions, harder consequences, and even harder living. "What would a boy know of needs?"
"It's the Avatar's destiny to..." Aang tried to say, but once again, Jeong Jeong cut him off. It was starting to annoy the young Avatar.
"Destiny? And what would you know about destiny?" Jeong Jeong demanded, growing quite incensed. "If a fish lives its life in a river, does it know the river's destiny? Does it know the destiny of another fish in another pond? No! All it knows are the things which are presented to it. It cannot dream of a world outside its own limited perspective and even more limited capacity for control! It cannot understand the pond. It cannot dream of the ocean!"
"What?" Aang asked. "Look, the Avatar is supposed to..."
"And now you would tell me what my destiny is?" Jeong Jeong asked. "Is..."
"That's enough!" Aang shouted. "You interrupt me over and over and maybe I might just have something worth saying!"
"You are a child in a world which cares not for childish things," Jeong Jeong pointed out.
"I am also the Avatar, and the Avatar must master all of the bending disciplines," Aang countered.
Jeong Jeong scoffed. "If you would master the discipline of fire, you must first master discipline itself. But you are impatient and hasty. Your tutelage will end in suffering and tragedy."
"You don't know that."
"What I know, boy, is that you, airbender, cannot learn firebending. Not now. You are too ignorant of the world and your place in it. The elements were not laid in the order they were arbitrarily, but by design, to keep your kind from overreaching yourself! When you add air to flames, what becomes of them?" Aang began to say 'they are snuffed', but Jeong Jeong didn't actually give him a chance to respond. "They are fanned! They grow stronger! And that is why airbenders must never learn firebending first!"
"But it isn't first!" Aang complained.
"Oh, but it is," Jeong Jeong swept his hand over the candle's flames. "Water is cool and soothing. It stabilizes itself, a constant reinforcement of its own status quo. It melts from ice into liquid, and evaporates into vapor, only to return as snow. Earth is constant. It is stubborn, it is stable, and it is indomitable. But fire? Fire is alive! It exists only to consume everything in its path, until there is nothing but devastation and death in its wake! A river will not turn its course without your hand, and a rock will not throw itself, but fire lives to spread forever unless you have the will and determination to stop it! You are not ready, boy! You are too weak!"
And at about this point, Aang got really, really mad.
"Too weak?" Aang asked. "Too weak? Was I too weak when I had to leave my dying friend behind so that I could do my duty to the Avatars past? Was I too weak when I faced down the Fire Lord in his own temple? Was I too weak when I stood before an erupting volcano and made it stop? Don't you have any perspective at all? If I don't learn firebending before the end of summer, that's it! Everybody loses! And you think I shouldn't learn because I'm just a kid? Well, too bad! I'm all you've got! Nobody told me I was the gods damned Avatar! I had to find out myself by complete accident! Do you think I'd have chosen this if I had any other choice at all? You'd better believe I wouldn't! But I don't, so here I am. And you'd turn me away, like the Storm Kings did to the Avatars of their day. You think you're better than me, why? Because you're older than I am? Or is it because I'm not sixteen, like you're supposed to be when the Avatar-ing begins? Again, tough! I'm here, now! And you're going to teach me firebending!"
Jeong Jeong remained stoic during Aang's tirade, only giving the slightest of twitches to the trailing mustaches which hung from the corners of his mouth. "So you know of Sozin's Comet?"
"THAT'S ALL YOU'VE GOT TO SAY?" Aang screamed.
"You show... a choleric temper which I did not expect," Jeong Jeong noted. "Almost as though you had trained under an earthbender. Which would be utterly impossible for you, since you are an airbender, and all find their opposing element almost impossible to work in. But the fact remains that you are a child. If you grew in the West, I could teach you. We instill our children with discipline from childhood, so that the fire does not destroy whole towns as it manifests in the youngest years. But you? You grew wild. You have no discipline. You are not ready, boy. I doubt you ever will be."
"Then you are no traitor against the Fire Nation," Aang said in anger. "You might as well be working for them. I can't believe I thought you were the person I was told to find. The Dragon of the East must be referring to somebody else," Aang muttered as he turned toward the door.
"Wait."
Aang stopped, one hand on the flap, and turned back. Jeong Jeong was staring at him with those intense, amber eyes. "What?" Aang asked, anger still in his voice.
"What was that you said?" Jeong Jeong asked, in a much quieter tone.
"I was told to tell the guy at the other end that 'The Dragon of the East Demands'," Aang repeated. Jeong Jeong's eyes turned to the ground, and the man let out a gravely sigh.
"So she has, so she has," Jeong Jeong said. "Obligation is a tiresome thing. But I do not shirk from my obligations. I never shall. I owe her that much, at least."
"What are you talking about?" Aang asked, his outrage dimming.
"If the Dragon of the East demands that I teach you firebending, then I have no recourse but to agree," Jeong Jeong said, although the way he said it made it seem like the worst idea since self-draining boots – which were boots with holes in the heels, defeating the purpose of them. Still, though, Aang felt a grin grow on his face, not grim or smug, but the sort of innocent excitement which still came so easily to him.
"Really? That's great!" Aang said.
Jeong Jeong palmed his face. Thus began the harsh tutelage of Jeong Jeong.
Ordinarily, she would have made a bee-line directly to where Twinkletoes and the others were being corralled, but Toph had a distinct distraction manifest to her. Namely, as she followed them from a long, discreet distance, she started to hear something behind her. She could tell from the relative cold and the variety of sounds in the perpetual darkness which was her blindness that night had fallen, but unlike her less handicapped ilk – of which Toph could count just about everybody – the night didn't hamper her in the slightest. So when she started to hear the thrum of engines moving up the river, she knew it couldn't be good news. Few traveled the rivers in the dark.
Toph halted in her pursuit, and waited, her eyes cast aside, but her ears cocked carefully forward, to catch any hint of what these engines meant. That was her biggest downfall, it seemed. Water, and everything related to it, seemed to have it out for her. But she could still hear. So when those boats moved toward the far shore of the casually meandering river, she could easily pick out, even at the distance she'd taken, the rantings of the man who emerged from one of them.
"Why are we stopping?" the angry one demanded.
"It's too dark," came a response, in a tone of voice which even Toph could categorize as 'droopy'.
"Oh, forgive me. I'd forgotten that WE'D INVENTED LANTERNS EIGHT THOUSAND YEARS AGO!" the first one roared. "Strike some tinder and continue."
"It isn't so simple, Lord Zhao," the droopy one answered, still in a flat, neutral tone. "This river is treacherous even by day. By night it is suicide."
"Tell me, would the river hesitate to drag you under and drown you to death?" Zhao demanded.
"Doubtful, but pressing on in the darkness is only inviting needless tragedy. Besides, we won't be able to see in the forest in the dark," he smoothly responded. Toph had to hand it to the guy. He had a lot of balls to stand up to somebody so full of their own hot wind.
"Fine. We'll move out in the morning," Zhao snapped, before stomping away. Toph didn't need to 'see' their armor, nor their boats to know Fire Nation when she heard it. Nobody else was that brash. But if the Fire Nation was actually following Twinkletoes, rather than just running them out of Bomei, then she might have a bit of a problem on her hands. Namely, if they spooked Twinkletoes, he could very well abandon her on the ass end of the Northern Earth Kingdoms. Of course, in that moment, her head hung for a moment, as she realized that she, too, had lost Twinkletoe's trail. But she didn't mope long.
"I ain't missing this ride," Toph promised herself, turning from the river's edge and plunging back into the forests that covered the bending river that descended toward the sea.
"Wait, do you hear that?" Zuko asked. Azula scowled at him. "There's somebody else out here."
"Whoever it is, if they get in our way, we can crush them," Azula said. "The Avatar is ahead of us. We cannot be diverted."
"Caution is a virtue," Zuko said, quoting his uncle. Azula rolled her eyes. He then reached back with a scowl and snuffed the flame she kept above her palm. "And you should stop doing that. Most of this forest is dry as an Azuli woodlot. The last thing we need is a wildfire with us in the center of it."
"I am perfectly capable of controlling my own fire," Azula said, reinstating the flame a moment later.
"Then stop it so that people won't see the light," Zuko switched gears. He moved forward through the underbrush a little bit more, wishing to himself that he could have brought his dao. But with Azula along, it would have raised questions. She thought it was the swordsman Piandao who rescued her from Pohuai. Let her think that. The idle wishing came to an end as the brush opened up, and he slowed, looking up the river. "Oh, this isn't good."
"What is it?" Azula demanded, shouldering past him. The very fact that she could spoke to her physical strength.
"Who's your favorite person in the whole wide world?" Zuko asked sarcastically. Azula's flame went dead in an instant, and he could still make out her eyes widening, her face pulling into a rictus of anger.
"I'm going to kill him!" Azula declared, but before she made it one step, he caught her arms and held her back.
"Azula, no!" Zuko said. "We're not here for him, remember!"
She stopped fighting, and let out an angry exhale. "You're right. It's the Avatar who's more important," she said. But truth be told, a part of him really would have rather let her go, pick a fight with Zhao and keep the Avatar out of this. But that was just being a bad brother. Against Aang, she might get embarrassed or slightly hurt. Against Zhao, she could end up imprisoned, or dead. It was the least of possible evils. Not that it made it any easier to make that choice.
"Come on. They can't move in the night. And the way the river runs means that our path will be a lot faster than theirs," Zuko said. And with any luck, they might walk right past where the Avatar was without even realizing it. She nodded, but her dagger-eyes still stared hatred into those boats up the river. Without another word said between them, they moved into the river, Zuko swimming first, and helping Azula keep above the waterline as they moved into the forest at the far side.
These days just weren't getting any easier, were they?
There were a lot of things which Aang remembered fondly about training with the monks in airbending. The horse stance was not one of them. "Widen your stance," Jeong Jeong demanded, to which Aang raised a brow. He shuffled his feet a bit wider apart in the ridiculous pose. "WIDER!" Aang rolled his eyes and moved wider still, feeling the burn begin even now in his hamstrings. Oh, this was not going to be fun.
"What now, Sifu Jeong Jeong?" Aang asked.
"Concentrate," Jeong Jeong said, staring into the sun as it peeked above the treeline, casting down its earliest morning rays. He then turned back toward the shack. Aang made a strangled noise of confusion.
"That's it? Concentrate? Concentrate on what?" Aang asked.
"Talking isn't concentrating!" Jeong Jeong snapped. He turned and pointed to where Katara was reading intently on the scrolls she'd stolen from the pirates, and where Sokka was sitting on a rock with a fishing pole in hand. "Look at them! Is she talking? No! She is intent on her purpose, and her purpose is learning. Even the burnt oaf concentrates on his task."
"Who're you callin' an oaf?" Sokka immediately shouted back.
"But concentrating without an object doesn't go anywhere," Aang complained. "I know all about meditation, but you haven't..."
"You are already failing your first lesson, and the sun has not even cleared the trees," Jeong Jeong said sourly. Of course, there was little the man did which wasn't sour. He cast a hand toward the sun. "Behold the sun. Feel its heat. It is the greatest source of fire, of light and heat, on this entire planet, and yet it exists perfectly balanced against the rest of nature. If you would manipulate fire, first, understand how it exists in balance."
Aang nodded, and began to ponder that. There was some truth in the man's words.
"Wider!" Jeong Jeong snapped as he walked away, and Aang inched into a yet lower stance. Oh, man, he was going to be walking funny for a week if he didn't stop this soon. But the burning in his legs started to work its way up his body, and soon it was in his very mind. Feel the sun. What an odd way to start firebending. But the longer he stood out here, the more sense it started to make. The heat of the sun was paltry this far north, so late in the year. It was anemic, and the sun didn't rise quite as high as it would near the equator. But for all that, the sun still shone. It shone with the same brightness every single day, three hundred seventy two days a year, whether the world could see it or not.
In a way, the sun was a lot like the Avatar. Always there, always sustaining.
And with that, Aang felt both a pang of guilt, and a splinter of understanding. The Spirit World was a lot like this one. It followed different rules, to be certain, but it had rules. Maybe Aang not being there for that missing century... maybe that was as bad to the Spirit World as the sun vanishing from the sky would be for this one? It was a terrifying thought, one which he mulled, his eyes pressed closed, as he contemplated the sun.
It wouldn't have been surprising to see Sharif sitting on the ground outside the Ostrich Horse pavillion with a taloning knife, whittling the bridle bits into something more comfortable and kind from their rough, domineering origins, if one knew the first thing about the way that Sharif's mind worked. However, since that number once and always stood at zero, he drew baffled looks from the Adamite Dakongese of the enclave as he hummed a formless song, and whittled with sure hands and clear conscience.
One bird of all those present was not bound, carried no bridle, and only the saddle blanket on its back. Even despite its advanced age, it stood physically bigger than even the mightiest bull in the pen, and all stayed a respectful distance from it as it nibbled on a bowl of noodles that one of the children had presented to it. People would think the boy mad, the way he burst into laughter at no word spoken, but once again, it was only for not understanding the mind and capabilities of the boy in question. Sharif slowed his laughter. "I'm glad you're enjoying your dinner. Didn't you say you hated these people?"
The bird stopped eating for a moment and flicked a sharp eye in Sharif's direction. Sharif nodded sagely. "True. Not all of them would have survived out there on their own. But what about freedom? You were pretty clear about that when we met."
The bird looked away, then partook of noodles and broth. "Don't worry. I won't hold it against you. Sometimes, even the best of us are wrong."
The bird let out an annoyed squawk. "You were the one who said you'd rather be dead than bridled!" Sharif pointed out. The bird stared at him, right in the face, relating even to one who didn't 'speak Ostrich Horse' that the beast was saying 'And I am not bridled, am I?'.
Sharif went back to whittling, blowing away a fraction of the bone snaffle and found himself distracted as the airbender with the thing inside came upon him. "Well, if it isn't the beast and the brains," Malu said. She reached toward Patriarch's head, as though to pat it. "How are you today, brains?"
Patriarch snapped at her, and glared before rising to its feet slowly and walking back toward the others of his species who had been giving it room out of respect for a greater specimen than they. Malu shook her hand with confusion, staring at the old bird. "He doesn't like you," Sharif said.
"He doesn't like anybody," Malu answered. "You know, one of these days you're going to give your sister a heart attack. Why are you out here? The old-school Dakongese are right over there! There's just a pen full of birds between you and them."
"They won't cross the bird lines," Sharif said. "That's part of their faith. The Ostrich Horse is sacred to them."
"That was... oddly coherent," Malu said. "How busted up are you, anyway?"
"I'm fine," Sharif said, not understanding her question. "Well, I stubbed my toe earlier, but it doesn't hurt anymore."
"You know, sometimes I don't know if you're just putting on a show to mess with our heads," Malu said, fists on hips.
"I'm a terrible actor," Sharif shook his head. "I can't remember lyrics very well either."
"What?" Malu asked. She then shook her head and threw up her hands in defeat. "Never mind. Why here, then? Why not in the house with the friendly people who don't want to crack your head with a rock?"
Sharif ran fingers over the snaffle, and nodded with a smile. Nice and smooth. No longer would it irritate the inside of the bird's mouth as it was driven. Excellent. He set it aside and took up another, repeating the process exactly. "Patriarch was getting nervous," Sharif said. "He doesn't like the Dakongese. They'd captured many of his children and grandchildren. When I met, he said they were monsters who should be driven into the sea. Now, he just doesn't like talking about them at all."
"You see, right there," Malu said. "Talk. Birds can't talk."
Sharif looked at her with a baffled expression, for, to his mind, she'd just said the stupidest thing he could imagine. "Yes they can," he countered, as though it was the most obvious thing in the world. He idly pointed a knife toward a bluebird which chirped on the roof of a yurt. "Some of them have tiny voices. Tiny spirits," he said. He pointed to a random Ostrich Horse. "Some of them don't know how to speak with their Light," he then pointed to Patriarch. "Some of them are... bigger. They know better. They speak with their Light and are clear. I think I understand Patriarch now better than I did when I met him. I wonder why?"
"But... animals aren't sapient."
"Not usually," Sharif agreed. "But sent..sench... what's that word?"
"Sentient?"
"Sentient. Yes. Sometimes, they are sentience."
"Sentient," Malu repeated.
"What did I say?" Sharif asked. He let out a nervous chuckle. "My mind, sometimes it wanders."
"So those things can talk to you?"
"I'm surprised you didn't know that," Sharif said, pointing a snaffle at her. "That thing must talk constantly to you."
"What are you talking about?" Malu asked. Sharif stared at her. To his eyes, he could see her. But there was something else. Just a hint of unnatural darkness in the bare sliver of space between her lips. Hints of a hellish maw, whispers of an unending hunger.
"Shhh. It's sleeping," Sharif said. Malu looked altogether baffled at that.
"You know what? Your sister's right. You're out of your mind," Malu said, rolling her eyes and walking away. Sharif shook his head and swiftly whittled the snaffle into a more pleasing shape, and moved on to a third. Each progressed quicker than the one before it; not surprising. It was a hard press to learn something in his state, but once learned, it clamored for an idiot savant proficiency. He stopped, though, a few seconds into and half way through whittling the sixth when a voice which only he could understand reached out to him.
"No, I hadn't heard of them, why?" Sharif asked, glancing back to where Patriarch was glancing in his direction from the herd. It let out a warbling cry, then turned back to its kind. "Well, that's something. Aren't you kinda old?" another warble, this one almost like an old man laughing. "You should introduce me to them. They sound so interesting."
The Old Bird and Grey Voice weren't too far away, after all.
"Come with me into the hills," Jeong Jeong ordered, just as Aang started eating lunch. The hours under the sun passed much more quickly than even the Avatar could have imagined, but it was still a long slog, and his legs felt like they were about to melt into goop which overflowed his boots. He let out a sigh, set aside his soup for immediate consumption by Lemur, and followed after the old firebender as he walked up the hill that overlooked the river. It was less a hill, Aang realized as he mounted it, and more like a rogue rock which thrust up out of the soil, naked of growth and an island of stone amidst a sea of brown, desiccated plant life.
"Are we going up here so my fireblasts don't start a forest fire?" Aang asked, rubbing his hands together in delight that he was actually going to be doing something for a change.
"No fire!" Jeong Jeong snapped. It often seemed that much of the old man's speech lay in snapping or ordering. Then again, considering the military the man had lived with, it shouldn't be that surprising.
"But you said..." Aang accused.
"Take your stance," Jeong Jeong ordered. Aang wearily dropped into a horse stance, against the violent protest of his inner thighs. "Wider!" he shouted, not even looking Aang's direction.
"But you're not even looking at..."
"WIDER!"
Aang grunted, and moved a bit lower, as much as his legs would allow without sending him onto his rump. "What now?" he asked, weariness in his tone.
"Fatigue is your greatest enemy as a firebender. Doubly so for those in battle today. We are taught to utilize our craft with all effort in our every attack. Our stamina drains quickly, and very few ever remedy this deficit. If you will be my student, then you will learn my lessons. If you wish to be a firebender, then you will be a firebender the likes of which the Fire Nation has not seen in decades," Jeong Jeong said. "Not since... I trained with Ozai himself."
"You trained with the Fire Lord?" Aang asked, rising from his stance.
"I trained with many, to my shame," Jeong Jeong said, stroking his mustaches. "I was in the army with Prince Iroh, when he was still prince. I saw much potential in him, but he was lazy. I then turned to Ozai, thinking I could mould a righteous and mighty firebender. He took my lessons, though, and perverted them. Took their power, but cast the rest of it aside. My last student was my greatest failure. I tried to instill discipline from the start. But he was a canny liar as well as a powerful firebender. He didn't care anything about the lessons I gave him, so long as he could have my techniques, my strengths, and cull out what he thought were my weaknesses. He is power, but there is no restraint in him. No self control," Jeong Jeong said sadly. "He took the power of fire and used it to eradicate all who stood before him. First in the East Continent, then in Great Whales. His shadow still casts long to this day."
"Zhao?" Aang asked.
"How do you know that name?"
"He killed a friend... a Fire Sage who still believed in the Avatar," Aang said. "He tried to kill Sokka. He almost succeeded."
"Then you see why fire exists to destroy all around it. You see why I cannot allow another Zhao, another Ozai into this world. I would slay you with my own hand before that happened. You wish to be a firebender? Then learn control. Stance, boy," Aang rolled his eyes, but moved back into his stance. "Now, breathe in through your nose, and out through your mouth."
"Breath control?" Aang asked, incredulous. "Are you kidding me?"
"What was that?" Jeong Jeong turned slowly, irate.
"What part of 'Air Nomad' doesn't make it pretty clear I know my way around breathing?" Aang asked.
"You irresponsible..."
"My master, Monk Gyatso, would sometimes scare the heck out of the younger novices by going to his bath after calling for them, and then falling completely asleep. Under water. The masters could hold their breath for hours, no matter what. I mean, I bet I could hold my breath for a half hour."
"That is not possible," Jeong Jeong said. "To be human is to breathe."
"How about this," Aang asked. "Ten minutes. If I can hold my breath for ten minutes, will that suffice."
"In ten minutes, you'd be either unconscious and breathing involuntarily, or dead," Jeong Jeong said caustically.
"Ten minutes," Aang said, and took in a monumental lung of air, squatting low, and waiting. This had become a battle of wills, and while Aang was often accused of being lazy, of being naïve, it could not be said that he didn't stand up for himself. And Jeong Jeong had been leaning on him ever since Aang arrived in the camp. Enough was enough. Minutes ticked by, as Jeong Jeong watched the boy closely, even walking circles around him, probably ensuring that Aang wasn't secreting breath. He then flicked out a hand toward Aang, and a gust of flame leapt toward the Avatar.
Aang's eyes widened, and he threw himself back, bouncing off a bubble of air much like his scooter, and hissed anger at Jeong Jeong, but the man was just staring in a calculating way, still circling. Oh, so this was a test too, was it? Not just hold your breath, but hold it when something's trying to kill you? It was a cruel lesson, but Aang was starting to see the old man's logic. As Sokka had pointed out before, there was no shortage of things and people who wanted to make Aang dead. So went the ten minutes, Jeong Jeong trying to startle breath from Aang's lungs, Aang staunchly resisting it. Then, the ten minutes elapsed, and even an eleventh so that the old man couldn't cry foul on some technicality. Aang stood up, crossed his arms before him, and tapped a foot in annoyance.
"Is that good enough breath control?" Aang asked.
"You know your own element. Congratulations," Jeong Jeong said sarcastically. He turned and snatched a leaf caught in an updraft. "I can see you are not going to be patient. Perhaps we should work in fire as an object lesson."
"Yeah!" Aang said, pumping his fist in the air, until he took in the dire look on Jeong Jeong's scarred, weary face. "I mean... Let us continue."
Jeong Jeong impassively pinched the dry leaf, and then handed it to Aang. At its center, the leaf was smoldering. "Keep the fire from reaching the edges of this dry leaf for as long as possible. You must learn control of the flames before you dare try to produce it. To create fire is child's-play. To extinguish it, that is the work of a civilized man."
"How do I even do that?"
"Concentrate!" Jeong Jeong snapped. "Pour your will into the flame and bid it stop. I have kept a candle burning for three continuous days. Surely the Avatar can keep a leaf from burning in the next two minutes?"
Aang didn't like the man's tone, but looked down, and began to focus on that ring of smoldering plant matter, of bidding it right down in his guts, with that earthy tenacity he only recently discovered he had, that it would not burn. Jeong Jeong abandoned him to his task, and Aang's mind lay wholly in the flame. "This guy's terrible," he muttered to himself. "All he does is make me squat and feel the sun and concentrate and breathe for hours."
"Believe it or not, I'm actually extremely well educated. I have the greatest education that money can afford, and there was a lot of money put forward into making sure that happened. My tutors underestimated me, so I went behind their backs and proved them idiots. I probably know more than you've ever forgotten, and forgotten more than you'll ever know. I don't say this to brag, really. If I wanted to brag, it definitely wouldn't be about my mastery of etiquette, my education, or my social status. There's a lot better things to brag about than that. Aren't there? Of course there are. So why, you ask, am I bragging about my education? Well, because it infers something else. I'm thirteen years old, just a little bit past my birthday, and can recite, from memory, the entire of the Divine Ysgrythur, including all of the Morthwyl Llyfr. It takes fifteen hours to read that last one out loud. And I don't even believe in that Adamite nonsense. I figure that probably means I'm smarter than your average mook. So you're thinking to yourself in that little hole I dug for you, did she know what she was doing, or did she just get one really good shot which I didn't expect? Well, I've got only one question to ask you, then. Do you feel lucky? Because if you're really, really lucky, then it was an absolute fluke which sent you into that very, very tight pit. Otherwise, you're stacked up against one of the greatest earthbenders in the world, one that could pop your head like a zit if the mood struck her. So, by all means, give me an answer."
Toph Beifong leaned down to the soldier in the pit, who thought he could ambush, maybe even capture her. How quickly she proved him wrong. "Do you feel lucky? Well, do you, punk?"
She flicked her hand away and the stone which had gagged the ambusher's mouth fell away, allowing him to do more than stare angrily at her, as he had for the last few minutes as she went on her tirade. As much as it was a kind of villainous thing to do, a proper tirade was just good for the soul. "I will not betray my master," the man said stubbornly.
"I don't give a shit about your master," Toph said. "I'm trying to hook back up with the Avatar. He got carted away by you bozos, so you must know where he is."
"We will not serve the Fire Lord, nor any of his lackies," the man spat on the ground. Toph scowled at him.
"Do I look like a Fire Lord lackey to you?" she asked. Although, in his defense, she could very well be wearing black and scarlet right now and she'd be none the wiser. "Somebody needs to keep that little twerp from getting himself killed. Since they don't have a strong male influence in that group..."
"The Tribesman would take issue with that," the man muttered.
"Let him. Since there's no strong male influence in that group, I'll have to be the next best thing. So, are you going to bring me to Twinkletoes, or am I going to have to leave you in that hole, and see if the North has something like Sabertoothed Moose-Lions up here."
"Damn your eyes," the man snarled.
"Too late," Toph noted, squatting down to the man she'd buried to his neck in the soil. "So. Do. You. Feel. Lucky?"
It was a whole different feeling from what she'd felt before. Unlike her brother, Katara was very much one to believe in happy coincidence, and dare she say it, fate; the primers landing in her hands as they did, when they did, could be nothing short of fate intervening. So now, when she set alight the water as it flowed along her skin, it didn't feel like she was going to pass out in a matter of seconds. In fact, it didn't feel draining at all. Such a simple thing laying between life and death, between power and invalidity. So simple she couldn't believe she'd overlooked it. But then again, she had developed healing in a blind panic and solely because she was afraid Sokka was about to die. There ought to be some sort of leeway for being sloppy in a case like that.
"So the darkest rumors were true. You can heal with a touch," a gravely voice came from behind Katara where she sat at the water's edge. She flinched slightly at that, not just the words, but the way they were spoken.
She could have sworn there was envy in them.
"It's not that simple. It's actually..." Katara began, but Jeong Jeong made a dismissing wave, and she found herself quieting. He had an odd power of charisma, that old man.
"I left the Navy a decade ago and more. I thought that the rumors that waterbenders could mend the flesh of the injured and bolster the infirm were only propaganda, to frighten those who remained behind," Jeong Jeong said. "It is said that the same Tribesmen who fought the Fire Nation are still fighting them, to this very day, because the power of waterbending will not let them die," he then let out a slow sigh. "How I wish I had your gifts."
"Gifts?" Katara asked. "You're a powerful firebender. You know things that I will never understand."
"About the element of consumption, of hunger, of destruction," Jeong Jeong shook his head. "There are things of knowledge that none may laud for knowing. Some wisdom is better off lost. Water is alive, as fire is, but brings life instead of death. It sooths and heals. All fire ever does is destroy."
"That's not true. If forests didn't burn from time to time, they would die just as surely as if they had no rain," Katara quoted a long-winded speech from her brother.
"Fire levies upon those tasked with controlling it a dance on a razor's edge. They must constantly war inside themselves between humanity, and brutality," his eyes lowered to the burbling water. "Eventually, we are torn apart."
"I don't think that's true," Katara said. When he swung his eyes to her, it was very hard to keep talking. "I... I know that the Fire Nation has done horrible things to the people of this world, but... Aang says that the people over there are innocent. And I really want to believe him."
"Nobody is innocent in this war," Jeong Jeong said, shaking his head.
Katara scowled. The man really did seem to believe the worst in himself. But she had to believe there was some good in people. If there wasn't, then what where they all even fighting for? And as she thought of that, a smug, smirking face came to her mind. Only, not smirking this time. That down-cast, that weary and exhausted look on his face, that quiet and benevolent act. Much as Zuko and his crazy sister were still the face of the enemy, she knew that he wasn't a monster. He was just an unpleasant human being.
"There's more to a people than a tug of war," she said. "A long time ago, my people tried to do some terrible things, and we were almost destroyed, by an Avatar, no less, because of it. Does that mean that I'm as evil as the conquerors were back then? Does that mean that the things they did are passed down to me? You feel a strain, I understand that. But maybe others don't. Maybe there's... Tui La, I can't believe I'm saying this... but, maybe there's more to fire than that?"
The man let out a weary grunt, a laugh, an acknowledgment that she might have a point. "You see why saying I was a firebending master was no praise. Wisdom comes with time to any who seek it. But control... That is something that some people never, ever gain. My student, Zhao, was one such."
Katara glared away from the old man. "You taught him?"
"I tried. I failed," Jeong Jeong said. "You say there must be some redeeming virtue in my people? Then you must see that some are simply beyond any help. Some people are born evil, and it only grows stronger the longer they live."
"We're losing the trail," Azula muttered as she forced her way through the underbrush with no less difficulty than her brother. It didn't just annoy her that she couldn't figure out the Avatar's bolt-hole, it infuriated her. She had such brave words about knowing where the Avatar was going to be, and then when the time came, it was about as useful as throwing a knife at a map. "Keep up, Zuzu, or I'll leave you behind."
"I think you're mistaking who's falling behind who, here," Zuko said, his own tone tight and focused. He paused in his pushing against the underbrush, almost as though glancing at something. Azula scowled, then shoved him aside – drawing out an amusing squawk of surprise from the elder sibling – and looked where he was looking.
And her mouth dropped.
It was a faint thing, just on the edge of her perception, but her eyes had never betrayed her. It was just a flicker of orange, against the blue of the sky, standing atop a rock which peeked up above the dry forest below. "I'm starting to think you're going blind, Zuzu," Azula said. "The Avatar is there. He's so close!"
"I think I landed in brambles," Zuko muttered, prompting Azula to haul him up to his feet with half a mind and a fraction of her possible effort. There were days when it was wonderful to be as physically fit as most professional athletes, and as strong as a lumberjack besides.
"Stop dawdling. He's right there!" she said. But he shook his head, his golden eyes going wide, and pointed down the river. She followed his point, and then both of them dropped down into the brush. The boats they'd been doing their damndest to stay ahead of were almost caught up, rounding a meander in the river. It took no spyglass to see Zhao standing on the prow, that scar on his face marking him instantly even to casual observation. "Damn it all! How did he catch up!"
"Boats are faster than legs," Zuko offered. She swatted him in the arm out of annoyance, but he smirked at the violence. She turned back to the river, and blinked in surprise when a flight of spears tore through the air, trying to lance Zhao from his proud position. But he almost contemptuously batted them aside, then cast out a huge wave of flame into the woods, instantly setting that tinderbox alight.
"That could be a problem," Azula noted, as black smoke began to billow skyward. "They'll know somebody's coming."
"So we should..."
"Move faster," Azula finished for him. She pushed back into the underbrush, leaving Zuko just enough time to give out one weary sigh, before she grabbed the back of his collar and dragged him after her.
Breathe in.
Breathe out.
And the fire crept another fraction.
Aang hated to fail at just about anything he did. While in some people, like his old academic rival Malu, that would inspire a ruthless drive towards perfection in every area, in lazy, lethargic Aang, it just meant that he refrained from attempting anything he didn't think he'd excel in. And man oh man, was that tendency repeatedly and ruthlessly coming back to bite him where his arrows met. He stared at that leaf like it owed him money, as the saying went. Like it'd done him wrong. And he demanded that the flames slow, with all of his willpower, trying to keep the wild and untamed force controlled.
And he wasn't sure he was going to be able to.
Maybe Jeong Jeong was right about him, he pondered? Maybe he just didn't have the discipline to be a firebender. Maybe he just didn't have it in him. The smoldering of the leaf grew a little bit bigger, and Aang's face tightened in concentration even harder. If it moved much tighter, his face might implode from the effort he was putting forward. But he kept fighting it. Because the people deserved it. Because the world needed it.
And he could smell something else burning.
Aang finally lifted his eyes from the leaf clutched 'twixt his fingers and they fell upon a great wave of smoke rising up out of the forest. He knew from the lay of the land that it was a fair distance from the camp where Jeong Jeong and the others set up, but it was on the same side of the river, and in conditions like this, fire would spread very, very quickly. He flicked away the leaf. It didn't simply fall away, so much as it was instantly and totally consumed in an utterly unnoticed jet of flame, fueled by the chi of the Avatar himself.
If he'd noticed it, he might have been tempted to do something stupid with it.
However, as it was, he still did something not very bright, in that he sprinted down to his shack, past a baffled looking Sokka, grabbed his staff, and took flight into the heart of a wildfire.
At first, there was just a moment of silence between benders, old and young, from cultures as far apart as could be. Then, everything went stark raving mad.
Katara didn't even have a chance to flinch in surprise as fire exploded around her, but it was a testament to Master Jeong Jeong's skill that he burst the inferno in a bubble which seared past them, but only gave them the slightest whisper of its heat. She struggled to her feet, and saw that his eyes glanced hither and yon, seeking out the source of that sudden attack. His eyes favored the river. Katara's, though, took to the forest. Thus, it was she who spotted the attackers first.
"I should have known," Katara said, drawing up the water from the river into a ring which swept around her, as she faced down two sets of golden eyes. Only, they didn't seem to be looking at her in the slightest.
"Master Jeong Jeong, how far you've fallen," Azula mocked as she slunk into view, a vile smirk on her lips. To Zuko's credit, he didn't look very happy to be here at all, but the fact that he was put lie to everything that he had said to her on that boat.
"Princess Azula?" Jeong Jeong's voice was genuinely confused. "I don't understand."
"Then I will make this simple for you, traitor. I'm taking the Avatar, and you're not getting in the way," she said, and ignited globes of golden flames above her hands.
"What madness has infected you?" Jeong Jeong asked. "You were supposed to be our nation's greatest hope!"
"I am," Azula said, and then she vaulted forward into attack. The attacks were brutal and wild, tearing apart the forest and setting it alight where it did not get torn to bits by Jeong Jeong's superior skill and technique. Katara quickly found herself twisting that water in her control through the burning brush to extinguish it. Of course, she hadn't noticed the forest fire already in progress. That momentary task completed, she turned to Azula, prepared to lash out and strike her to the ground, freeze her, or just all out drub her.
And then Zuko was right in her face, thrusting a hand through the flailing of her own and catching her by the neck. How he'd crossed that distance so quickly, she couldn't comprehend. There was a mad fire in his eyes as he slammed her up against a scorched tree. "Don't. Dare. Hurt. My. Sister," he said with brutality in his usually soft tones.
"I guess we know what your word is worth," Katara muttered, trying to subtly call up the water which she'd lost hold of as he pressed through. His grip tightened, though, and the fingers on her neck began to sting with painful heat.
"Why are you doing this?" Jeong Jeong asked in a momentary lull, as the fires of her attack spun away in a self destroying pinwheel. His own stance was low, wary. "You were supposed to be our guiding light! A symbol that we could rise above the savagery!"
"I don't care what you think I am," Azula answered him. "You're a traitor, and I have no intention of being your symbol."
Zuko offered just a quick glance to his sibling, and that was all the opening Katara required. Waterbending could do a lot of damage, but from the position they were in right now, she could think of one thing which would do even more. All it was was a very fast change in where she kept her knee, but the thing about the male genitalia was that they were extremely easy to hurt. And her swift knee to the testicles did just about what she'd hoped, in making Zuko's hand pop from her neck to his own groin, giving her the chance to rip the water up out of the thirsty soil, give it a quick whip, and then smash it into the side of Zuko's head.
Freed, she ran to Jeong Jeong's side. Alone, he could fend the crazed firebender. With her here, Azula was toast.
"You can't win this, Azula," Katara shouted. But it didn't have the effect she hoped for. Azula's head oh-so-slowly turned from Jeong Jeong to her. Then, her face began to turn as read as her fire, and she almost started vibrating in place. She then screamed something at Katara, her chest heaving, and hair beginning to fall free of the bun at the back of her head, adding more trailers to the bangs which framed her face. "...Jums nuzudyti mano dukra?" Katara parroted, as there were very few names words or utterances which got past her ability to remember them.
Of course, that mimicry obviously wasn't the right choice, because the firebender took it as sign to attack Katara. Jeong Jeong started to move to Katara's defense, but flinched when he saw the attack coming toward them wasn't fire as Katara had seen anywhere but once. Kyoshi Island. The electric blue flames which smashed toward her cut through Jeong Jeong's fiery barricade with nary a flicker, and Katara had to heave herself out of their way. When they landed in the woods, it was with a blast which uprooted whole trees and sent them into the water. And the heaving chest of Azula only heaved faster, her face such a perfect reflection of the ideal of hatred that Katara's lizard brain helpfully informed her to start defending herself, or die.
She rose by forcing the water in the shore to push her up, and it served the double purpose of containing the blast which Azula hurled at her, if at the expense of sending Katara into the water. She pushed herself up, and her eyes went wide as there was already a third deadly azure blast screaming toward her. She heaved over herself, freezing the water as she did, and the blast sent cracks all the way through, and Katara could feel the baking heat even surrounded by frigid cold. That the explosion flash evaporated most of the ice over Katara's head was another issue of concern. She spun a whip of water toward Azula, but the girl dodged it with half a mind, almost like she'd fought this exact fight before and was contemptuous that Katara hadn't. Then, Azula twisted a kick from around behind her, creating a dropping curtain of flame which didn't so much target Katara, as everything between Azula and the other side of the river, Katara included. Katara swirled a second dome over herself, but didn't bother freezing it. Instead, she adhered to a trick she heard of from the primer, and created such a difference in pressure that she was shot away from where she'd landed like soap from a slick hand. She rose up from the water, and beheld a wave of blue fire stopping the flow of the river for a second or so, before she let it die, and turned toward the waterbender in the river.
"Is that all you've got?" Katara asked, since clearly it was just as much in her character to tempt fate as it was her in her brother's. Her answer came in the form of an explosion, but this one, not coming from Azula. Katara ducked as a tree landed in the river near her, and turned to see boats, unheard through the pandemonium, approaching the river's edge where the fight was taking place. Steam powered boats. Fire Nation boats.
And when she saw that burned face, smirking darkly from the prow, she felt her heart drop into her feet. "Well, so the oracle and the Avatar in a single day, once again? I'd almost think that the universe was trying to tell me something," Zhao said as the boat scudded up to the shore. He bounded off the deck, and the boats continued past. "He'll be up the river. Find him!"
"The Avatar is mine, Zhao," Azula snapped, her voice almost gravely and coarse, like she'd gargled flint in the minute and a half since she first spoke in this clearing. "Try and claim him at your own peril."
"We should leave," Zuko said. "We're clearly outnumbered."
"And they're clearly outmatched," Azula said. She twisted in a flare of blue fire, letting out two streams. One of them was deftly avoided by Jeong Jeong. The other was smashed aside by Zhao. Katara's eyes flit between the two firebenders, and she had a sinking feeling that Jeong Jeong might not be the strongest firebender in this fight, by a very, very wide margin. Jeong Jeong must have sensed this, too, because he turned to Katara.
"Run and get the Avatar to leave!" he shouted. "Do it now, or you'll all be destroyed!"
"Don't tell me you're going to pass up an invitation, barbarian," Zhao said, staring over his fists at Jeong Jeong, rather than Azula as a sane person would. "I'd hate to think I separated siblings forever."
"Go to hell, Zhao!"
"How do you think I got here?" he asked glibly. Then, he turned, searing out with an arc of flame toward Katara, one which grew so vast as it traveled that in her current, fairly depleted state, she was fairly sure no amount of waterbending was going to ward. But another wall of fire rose up, interrupting Zhao's assault, and above it, she could hear the old man screaming 'run'.
And to her shame, she listened to him.
Jeong Jeong looked at the firebenders who remained. He once held hope for each of them. And either long ago, or this very day, saw that hope dashed for each of them. Zuko, once the best chance to resist the brutality of Ozai, now an unthinking tool of violence. Zhao, once the most powerful firebender Jeong Jeong had ever taught, now lost to cruelty. Azula, once a symbol, a hope for a bright and peaceful future, now lost to... madness? Or was this something else entirely? As Jeong Jeong stood there, his stance not altering one hair, he felt something break inside him. Not so tangible as his heart or his spirit, though. What broke was his hope.
"So look at you," Zhao said, circling so that the royalty stood on one side of the deserter, and Zhao himself on the other. "You used to be so great, so mighty, and now you're living in the woods like some sort of savage."
"Savagery rests in the heart, not upon the skin, Zhao," Jeong Jeong said.
"Lord Zhao, now," he said with a smirk.
"Even a patent of nobility will not protect you from the Avatar," Jeong Jeong swore.
Azula took a step forward, but Zuko's hand on her shoulder held her back. "We should go," the boy said.
"So Ozai's son is a coward as well as a failure," Zhao pointed out with a dry laugh. "However your sister ended up in your care, I have to say, it's a distinct step down."
"I'll show you a step down!" Azula shouted. Zhao smirked at her fire, and turned back to Jeong Jeong.
"You seem to put a lot of faith in the Avatar. Faith which is hardly deserved. He's as much of a coward and a failure as the boy," Zhao pointed at Zuko. "All the Avatar knows how to do is run and hide."
But Jeong Jeong shook his head. "I have never before seen such deep pools of raw power. That boy will be standing above you when you meet your doom."
"Why are you two still talking?" Azula asked. "Kill each other so I can deal with whoever lives!"
"Azula!"
"WHAT!" the girl screamed.
"The Avatar!" Zuko said.
Jeong Jeong glanced between the two sources of mortal peril. Zhao on one side. The bender of those frightening blue flames on the other. Zhao's momentary smirk was all the warning Jeong Jeong got, and his arms began to crane and weave, deflecting and smashing aside the vast plumes of fire which Zhao began to send forth. There was a time when this fight would be nothing for Jeong Jeong. Those days had long past. He was tiring. For all his talk of stamina, he was tiring, and far faster than he should have, because Zhao's attacks were both powerful and relentless. They didn't burn long, but they smashed through his defenses over and over, and forced Jeong Jeong to pull deep with every desperate parry and block to keep from being incinerated completely.
It was too much.
Jeong Jeong fell. He struggled to raise his head, the robes on his torso smoking from the onslaught. Above and behind him, he could see Azula stare down at him, contempt and hatred clear in those eyes. So much hope. So much for it. She vanished from his sight, moving through the dry, burning brush. He decided, as he heard those footfalls approach his searing, screamingly painful frame, that he hated the Fire Nation. That he hated Ozai, and his children, and his family. He hated Zhao. He hated everybody like him. He wanted to see the whole thing burn to the ground. He hated, and if there was one thing he carried with him into the next life, it would be his hatred. Zhao stood over him, his face not smug, but contemplative. The siblings had already taken off into the forest, and Jeong Jeong stared up in defiance at his former student, turned murderer.
"Do it," Jeong Jeong ordered.
A flash of flame.
"Gladly," Zhao said, a smirk on his face. Then, he looked up the river, away from the troublesome firebender who would trouble the Fire Nation no longer. "Now, for the whole reason I came here."
The thump of a body hitting the ground caused her to raise an eyebrow as she turned to the window. She was hardly the kind of person to have to deal with this sort of nonsense on her own, but since things became as they were in this household, she was de facto in charge of piddly little things like money, politics, business, and, most pressingly at the moment, their links to the world of organized crime. She sighed, setting aside the brush and leaving the letter she'd started half complete. It could wait. The bounty hunter below probably would not.
She walked through the dry, hot halls of the home she had grown up in. The servants scurried to get out of her way, which was probably for the best. When dealing with Jun and her monstrous beast, it was best to stay well away. And of everybody still present, only she had the stomach to look that woman in the eye. She paused a moment before a mirror before passing through the door. The face staring back at hers had features which most would consider cute, and would have been, if she put effort into presenting them that way. A wide, expressive mouth, hers was pulled into perpetual frowns of annoyance. Eyes like hers often got described with terms like 'chocolate' and 'melting', where as hers only ever got called 'cold and calculating'. Her hair, unlike her sisters', was fairly short. Had to keep it out of the way, after all. A moment to refine her presentation, and then she was heading down. Yes, she could have been cute, but she had a reputation to uphold.
The door opened to hot, dry wind. Many came to Di Huo nowadays; where once the vacation resort was Lesser Ember, now they came here, if only because this was the safest place one could have both heat and dryness together inside the bounds of the Fire nation. They came here to remind themselves what the Fire Nation was supposed to be like. She didn't have the first clue why things had changed, and honestly, she had no intention of finding out. It was a diversion from things she was better suited to and capable of. As she descended the stairs which connected the balcony to the courtyard, a second thump hit the ground, which caused her to raise a dark brown eyebrow yet again. One was what she expected. Two was not.
"What is this?" she asked the moment she reached the pavers of the courtyard. Jun turned from where she lounged against the massive Shirshu, a stance of casualness which she supposed hid the fact that she was willing and capable of killing everybody in the building if the need arose. Jun shrugged.
"You sent me after one. I found two."
"The last time you brought one home, it was one of Kah Ri's little girlfriends," she told the bounty hunter. "I don't pay for failures."
"Hardly failures," Jun answered, moving to the two tied sacks and tugging at their bindings. "It wasn't my fault that girl smelled like the target. Those sorts of things can confuse Nyla. Can't they, Nyla?" she asked in honeyed tones. The great eyeless beast grunted and ran its barbed tongue along needle-like teeth. The teenaged mistress of the house tweezed her brow.
"Who's in the bag, Jun?" she asked with annoyance. Jun grinned, an odd look on that oddly pallid face, and upended the bag, spilling forth a dark haired, dark eyed girl. She then upended the second and spilled forth a slightly shorter, slightly portlier girl. She then threw something to the teenager on her feet. She caught them easily enough. A pair of spectacles. A glance to the ground verified that Jun had got things right this time.
Aan Jee, who was hogtied on the ground, rolled over from a stream of profanity directed at Jun's questionable parentage and gaped as she saw who else stood above her. "Wait... What are you doing here?" Aan Jee asked. Rather than answer that question, she pointed at Zhu Di, who was not only hogtied, but gagged.
"Why is she gagged?" she asked. Jun shrugged.
"This one, tried to stab me," she nudged Aan Jee. Then, she gave a similar toe-nudge to Zhu Di. "This one bites."
"Really?" she asked with a chuckle.
"Gwen, what the hell are you doing?" Aan Jee demanded. Jun turned to her, and her chuckle became outright laughter.
"Gwen? That's your name? Seriously?" Jun asked. Gwen sighed again.
"Aan Jee, shut the hell up," Gwen said. She pointed at Jun. "Yes, you found two of my sisters. Yes, you'll be getting payment for two of them today."
"I don't even know why you want them all here," Jun said. "Gotta tell you, if I hadn't have interrupted the criminal here," she nudged Aan Jee, to the girl's vocal displeasure, "she'd be rolling in money. Probably enough to bribe me into not taking her."
"But you wouldn't do that. It'd be bad for your reputation," Gwen said flatly. Jun sighed and shrugged.
"I do always get my target," she acceded. "Who's next?"
"Well," Gwen said, pondering. "Ty Lee's probably the only one dumb enough to take the invitation at face value, so I'd wager she's coming back on her own. You couldn't catch her anyway."
"What was that?" Jun asked. Gwen dismissed the question.
"Rai Lee is on a boat all the time, and I doubt that thing can swim in a storm. I'm writing her off unless a miracle happens," Gwen said. "My intelligence places Kah Ri in Ba Sing Se. Tzu Zi could be just about anywhere. Bring them back in, and you'll see twice as much as you did for these two combined."
Jun obviously ran some figures in her head, and smiled at the result. "Consider them hogtied on your porch," she said, vaulting up onto the Shirshu's back. "But try to keep me out of this dynastic murder business. Politics might be my bread and butter, but I prefer to eat it, rather than the other way 'round."
"Just do your job," Gwen said. Jun shrugged, then tugged on the reins, causing the blind monster to move away into the night. Aan Jee struggled until she flopped up onto her side, and glared at Gwen.
"So you're really going to kill your own flesh and blood, for what? Power? Money?" Aan Jee asked.
"Jun hasn't the first notion of what's going on here. Neither do you," Gwen said simply. She leaned closer, melting chocolate eyes meeting with cold and dark. "So I will endeavour to enlighten you."
And when Gwen did, both of her sisters went deathly pale.
Aang's inbound flight was cut short when a new blaze erupted much closer to the camp than the first. He pitched down, landing with all due haste and rolling to a stop on the dry, dry grasses. This whole place was going to go up like a... well, a forest in a drought, if he didn't do something to stop it. He shouted for his friends, but with no response and the roaring of a wildfire growing closer, he had to act and do so quickly. He was half way through beckoning the flow of the river toward him when two things caught his attention. "Oh no," he muttered to himself, as he beheld the boats, scudded up against the shore. All of them Fire Nation steamers. The second was a whistling sound. The whistle presaged a fireball.
Aang ducked under it, and it streaked past to set another part of the forest alight. When he pushed back to his feet, he saw the royalty approaching him. "Gotta hand it to you," Aang said with a degree of calm sarcasm which surprised even him, "you have got a tenacious streak in you."
"I'll show you tenacious!" Azula shouted, before launching forward into another swirling storm of firebending. Aang had his staff, and knew that she wouldn't get through his defenses, but the longer the fight went on, the more of the forest caught, and burned. Zuko started to fan out to surround Aang in the maelstrom, but he didn't attack. Despite the manifold distractions, Aang thought he knew why.
She broke off the twisting hell of fire, since she could probably tell that it wasn't going to work. Now, she watched him, moving like she'd done this all her life, a smirk on her lips as she watched for Aang's every move. It was probably the puberty talking, but he could scarcely find her more attractive than when she was trying to kill him. There was a light in her eyes which he hadn't seen anywhere else, or even in her in those brief moments when they weren't fighting each other. A hunger. A need. If only he could turn it away from violence. After a brief, wary circling, she tipped her head, that smirk growing slightly.
"What is it, Avatar? Have you so quickly given up trying to 'redeem' me?" she asked. "Why no uplifting banter today?"
"You just need some time," Aang said, keeping the vast majority of his attention on her. "You don't understand yet, but you will."
"You are a fool. I am Fire Nation."
"So was I, once," Aang said. Her smirk slipped at that, almost like she took his words as mockery. "The world is more than one nation. That's the way it was meant to be."
"Spare me your rhetoric, Avatar," she said. "If you surrender, I'll let you keep your hands and feet."
"What?" Aang asked. The staff dipped a bit. "You wouldn't really do that would you?"
When he turned the question back on her, she hesitated for a moment. "Of course I would," she then answered too quickly. "After all, you are a threat to my people."
"Why? Why am I a threat?" Aang asked. She stared at him, her fists lowering for a moment, as the light faded from her eyes a bit. Her mouth worked for a bit, as though she were chewing words but none of them could quite make it out. Finally, there was a growl from her throat and she pointed at him. She took in a breath probably to yell something at him.
And then Zuko was flattened by an explosion. Avatar and firebender both turned to the crater, near which Zuko was splayed on the ground, his clothes smoking.
"ZUKO!" Azula shrieked. She then ran toward her brother, which had the unexpected effect of putting her right at Aang's side. She looked from Zuko, up to the one who inflicted that harm upon him, and her fists began to drip a flame which was not scarlet, but sapphire blue.
"Congratulations, Avatar, you've finally done a service to the Fire Nation," Zhao said smugly as he approached from Zuko's rear, a black smirk on his face as he stomped. "First you give me the long-overdue opportunity to rid us of the Deserter Jeong Jeong, and then you even distract the worthless boy long enough for me to strike him unawares. You truly are a friend to the Fire Lord."
"I will carve out your heart with a lug-wrench!" Azula screamed, but her eyes were brimming up, and they kept flicking to Zuko, who only then let out a groan, and began to twitch from the place where the blast had landed him. "Zuko!"
"Surrender, Avatar," Zhao said. "That way I won't have to kill you like I did my old teacher."
"You killed Jeong Jeong?" Aang asked.
"Of course," Zhao said without a whit of guilt. He turned to Azula. "I'll collect you in a moment. I just have one little pest to deal with first," back to Aang. "Now, shall we see what that traitor taught you?"
"I swear, I will kill you," Azula screamed.
"Oh? I thought the Avatar was supposed to kill me?" Zhao asked, then let out a laugh. "If anything, today has taught me one very valuable lesson. That it is possible to defeat fate."
"R...run!" Zuko murmured from the dirt.
Azula gave a glance between Zhao, her brother, and then to Aang, and he could see the thought running through her head. What weighs heavier; her duty to her nation, or her love for her brother?
Her brother won.
Aang felt a smile in him for just a split second. Mostly because that second was split by Zhao hurling a blast of fire at Aang so massive that he could have been forgiven for thinking Azula hurled it. Aang bounded away, drawing Zhao's attention away from Azula as she hefted her older brother on her back like the body of a fallen soldier and began to run with it. If he had more time and wasn't being threatened with imminent death, Aang would have marveled at her sheer physical might. A damsel in distress Azula wasn't.
"Wild shot!" Aang cried out after managing to put another blast past him. And even in his grief, confusion, and panic, what Jeong Jeong had told him drifted back to the surface. No self control. Power without focus. A glance toward the boats, which had disgorged their human cargo and now sat empty. He bounded to the top of one, and waved his bum at the firebender below. "Hey! Look at me! I'm captain Zhao!"
The insult had Aang's intended effect, and Zhao launched a blast of fire at him, around a roar of "I'll show you what a real firebender is capable of!" The blast washed over the boat, and Aang bounded over to the next one.
"Very sloppy," Aang commented. "I thought you were supposed to be better than Zuko!"
Zhao glared at him, and rose his hands. And then he made a motion, as though tearing a tablecloth out from under dishes. The flames which had bathed the steamer were pulled off of their purchase and snuffed in mid air. "I see what you're trying to make me do, Avatar," Zhao said, deflating Aang's hopes. "Jeong Jeong obviously taught you how to run and hide, but not fight. And I have no intention of defeating myself today."
"Good, 'cause I'd hate to miss my chance at it!" A third voice came from the side. And even before Aang could see it source, a wave of stone from the shore lashed up, smashing Zhao to the ground. Then, striding into the clearing like the conquering hero came the blind girl from Makapu. "Did ya' miss me, Twinkletoes?" she asked.
Zhao, though, quickly got to his feet. "Well, this is odd. You're not supposed to be here."
"Ain't talkin' to you, old man," She said, and punched out a wave of stone obviously intended to trip him up. But with nimbleness belying his age, he bounded over it, and kicked a wave of fire back at her. She, obviously expecting her attack to be effective, had to scramble back as the flame came closer. It was Aang who saved her proverbial bacon, by flicking open the tail end of his staff, and blasting a cutting wall of wind so mighty that it stopped the flames before they could reach her. "Okay, might have underestimated Mister Angry Head a bit."
"I'll show you angry, you irreverent snot!" Zhao answered, and began to firebend in earnest. To her credit, Toph did deflect the assaults with hastily crafted walls and barriers, but Zhao's assaults were unending and relentless. Not to say that Aang was idly standing by when this took place. The last of Zhao's blows was snuffed out by Aang's whirling staff, leaving airbender and earthbender side by side, facing down the burned murderer before them.
"So, you know this guy?" Toph asked. Aang nodded, and when he realized who he was with, rolled his eyes and gave a 'yeah'.
"He kills good guys," Aang hastily explained.
"Oh," Toph said. "So... run?"
"Just like that?" Zhao asked, smirk on his face pulling at his burnt eye. "I guess you aren't quite the troublemaker I assumed you'd be."
"Or maybe I just know when the Black Warrior shows up and don't want to be his latest corpse," Toph said, obviously inflecting toward something Aang didn't understand. "So... run now?"
"You're not going anywhere," Zhao said, taking a stride forward. "Blind or not, you're still a threat to our nation. You will have to die just as the others will."
Zhao lashed forward again, and this time, Aang was ready. He craned around him, and pulled up the water from the river into a fat whip, and slammed it through the fire blast which Zhao was launching, nullifying it and rendering it into steam. Aang to a step forward, to follow it up, but Toph grabbed his arm, and shook her head.
"We're surrounded and there's forty of those buggers out there. Can you take him and them at the same time? I might, but can you?" she asked.
Aang glared at Zhao for a moment, harboring a most un-airbenderish hatred in his heart, before turning away with a wince and shaking his head. "We've lost today," Aang said.
"Feeling sucks, doesn't it?" Toph asked. Above, Aang could see the white shape of Appa descending from above Zhao's back. It was time to go.
"I'm not finished with you!" Zhao shouted, as Aang flicked open his staff into its glider form. A thrust of the fists from Toph sent him staggering back, and his shot going wild.
"Hold on," Aang said, and Toph grabbed his shoulders, as he bounded into the sky, and the wind bore him upward. Zhao kipped up and sent an arc of fire after them, but given the distance, it was well wide. Aang landed on the howdah of the saddle, and Toph let go for just about a second, before her hands locked around Aang's waist, her blind eyes went wide, and she started screaming.
"OH GODS DAMN IT WHY DO YOU PEOPLE HAVE TO FLY ALL THE TIME?" she shouted.
"It's faster," Sokka mentioned. "What happened down there?"
"Jeong Jeong is dead," Aang said, slowly pulling Toph from his waist. She sat down in a hurry, latching onto the rail. Obviously, she hadn't acquired the others' taste for flight, yet. "Zhao killed him."
"Damn it all! Why does that guy kill anybody who looks like they're trying to help us?" Sokka railed. A glance to Appa's brow showed that Katara had a very tight expression on her face from where she directed the beast. He then turned to Toph. Then back to Aang. He pointed to her. "On a completely unrelated subject... what's she doing here?"
"That's a good question," Aang said.
"You guys are obviously protagonists of some kind of story," Toph began.
"What."
Sokka's flat word explained Aang's opinion succinctly. Toph shook her head. "Alright, let me rephrase that. Y'all are going to do impressive stuff in the world, and I figure I kinda belong with you. Twinkletoes here ain't much of an earthbender, and that means you'll need somebody like me to teach him, am I right?"
"Toph, the guy who just tried to teach Aang firebending just got killed," Sokka pointed out. "They guy who tried to teach Aang about Sozin's Comet got killed too. I tried to teach him how to be a man, and I almost got killed, all by the same Gods Damned Guy!"
"Yeah, well, that's..." Toph began.
"I... think Sokka has a point," Aang said. "Everybody who tries to side with us suffers for it. We're better off on our own."
"What? That's bullshit and you know it," Toph said. "These two haven't suffered."
Sokka idly unbuttoned the green vest he was wearing and showed the burns which covered about half of his torso. Toph stared half way between he and Aang, and shrugged. Sokka sighed. "I'm badly, badly burned," he said, having only then remembered that Toph was blind. It was astounding how quickly they forgot that.
"There's too much risk," Aang said. "I'm sorry, Toph. I just can't do this to anybody else."
Toph sighed, her gaze dipping. "I get it, I guess," she said quietly. "I just thought..."
"We should bring her back to her family," Sokka said.
"What?" Toph asked, an angry tone returning to her voice. "Oh, hell no. That ain't happening."
"It's the safest place."
"I don't want to be safe, Twinkletoes! I want to be in the action!" she let go of the rails specifically to cross her arms before her on her chest. "I am not going back to my family, and that's final!"
Wind calls like a widow through the pass, long, sorrowful, and constant. Plenty of widows these days. The war had been going on long enough, after all. He stood on the stones, as that widow's cries pressed against his skin and ran through his hair. He allowed himself to wonder what she'd lost, the wind, to make her cry like that. Teo knew all about loss. He'd lost as much as anybody to this war. How many years since his father's death?
The sun was turning the sky red, the color of flames. That seemed to be a constant of this age. To say the Pass became a different kind of place when the sun went down was something of a cliché, but it had to nowadays. This was once the kingdom of the Mountain King. But much like the Fisher King of yore, a wound to the loin had brought the King low. If only it was simple impotence, Teo thought. Years ago, Teo had been the first to tell the old man to fight back. Now, he was as tired as the other. There wasn't any glory left in this fight, not considering what they all stood to lose.
The worst part was, not a one of them had asked for any of this. Calamity had come at them in a great red-and-black swarm, and now, they were all stuck under an interminable weight. It wasn't happy times, in the shadow of the bones of the North Air Temple. Happy days stopped happening about a hundred catastrophes ago, and the point where hope had snuffed out was so far gone that nobody in the family could even remember what it looked like. Teo wanted to think of himself as a hero, standing up to the injustice of the world, but the truth was, he was no hero. He was just a teenager with a crossbow and a pair of crazies for parents. Illusions were a thing of the past. There wasn't time for them anymore.
Teo kicked himself out of his inner thoughts the way most people kick through a stuck door. Three people below, out of any sight but his. Two of them were tall, and dark. Almost like Tribesmen, but the third seemed the size of a teenager. One kick in his own head begat another. Running around inside his own head wasn't doing the people who needed him any good. The old saying went, in the land of the blind, a one eyed man was king. How true the saying was in this place. But the saying never mentioned what happened when you had working eyes and didn't see.
Or maybe it did, and nobody chose to see it.
Teo took off at a sprint, the evergreen needles whipping past him like green snow falling in a blizzard. He had to move fast. Luckily, his legs didn't fail him. That was the one bit of luck he had, it seemed. If he had any luck at all, that was. He delivered a kick to the door of the shack on the mountain that could have sent a Salamander battle tank rolling back three feet, and the door's crash as it opened sounded like a bell, awakening the town to its morning routine. But there was no routine here. Just grief and pressure. "Mom," Teo said, to the woman who sat before the fire. She turned to him, a ray of sunshine in a dreary place. "There's strangers in the pass!"
"Fire Nation?" she asked in her native tongue.
"I don't think so," Teo answered. She'd once been so full of light. How the recent years had pulled at her. Clouds had rose up and blocked out her sun. "Where's Dad?"
"I'll find him," she said. "Stay here. This smells like trouble."
She left Teo behind, and he stared out the window, at the scarlet sky. "Just what we need," Teo said, listening to that widow's cry continue. "More trouble."
I've heard it said that Aang isn't the same wide-eyed kid he was in canon. Maybe it's because I can't write wide-eyed and innocent. Or maybe, as I tell myself so that I may maintain any degree of self esteem (too late...) it's because there comes a point in every adolescent's life when they realize they just have to grow up a bit. Aang was a year older because he didn't run away from Gyatso, which was in turn because Gyatso didn't drop the A-bomb on him. Thus, he had a year's worth more experiences in the PreFireWar world. He's a bit different from the outset. But then again, considering some of the other changes, it seems to be the one which sticks in the collective craw. I guess it's that large changes are accepted at their value, but the little ones stand out because they're unexpected.
I have to say, though, creating an Azula who would prioritize her injured brother over the Avatar is a good sensation. I've only ever seen one other story where that happens, and in that one, she's still friggin crazy. Well, so's mine... but my shade of crazy gets explained. And you can bet that Iroh will know it before you do.
I'm probably going to have a brief sabbatical after the second half of The Clash, but only because I'll actually need to plan the second season. I've got inklings, but not more than that. I need some time to chase butterflies and see where it takes me. But that's not here nor there, just something y'all are going to have to bear with. Also, you're going to have to bear with the fact that you're not getting chapter sixteen before Christmas with certainty, and possibly before New Years. The Clash is large.
Leave a review. Otherwise I won't learn.