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.

20. The Clash, Part 2

Alright. Writing again. There'll be a bit of a gap before I start putting up season two, but it shouldn't be too unbearable.

---

The soothing sensation flowing through her head smoothed out what would have been a wicked migraine, but the grogginess, the muscular stiffness, the whole-body fatigue that the electrocution left throughout Katara's body wouldn't be so quickly mended nor swept away. She sat up, rubbing a faint burn at the back of her neck, with almost no idea what had happened to her. Yugoda, the ancient and skilled waterbending healer, helped her keep her balance.

"Good, you're awake," Pakku said. He turned to Yue slightly. "I apologize for my harsh words. This is indeed more important than shoring the walls."

"What happened to you?" Yue asked, huddling close.

"Tui La, where's Aang?" Katara said, trying to get to her feet, but there was still a numbness in her extremities, like she'd slept on them wrong for a week. "Ow... how long was I out?"

"We don't know," Yue said.

Katara struck the ground with futile anger. "I can't believe it! Azula stole Aang right out from under me!" she said, so disgusted with her failure that she almost felt like crying. Pakku shared a raised eyebrow with Yue, probably over Katara's unintentional double entendre, but didn't say anything.

"She could not have gotten far," Pakku said. "Go. Find them. The Deadman Plains are cruel this time of year, and she would have been driven to ground."

"What if she's not taking him to the Deadman Plains?" Yue asked with alarm.

"Where else could she go?" Pakku asked.

"Straight out to sea," Katara said. "They have a boat out there somewhere. If we don't stop her, she'll have Aang on the way to the Fire Nation before sunrise."

---

The door to the broad chamber at the heart of the Summavut Palace slammed open, propelled by righteous rage. There was no fuel under the moon as powerful as a father's will to protect his children, and that will had been set alight. So it was no great surprise when the talking at the great dais at the far end of the chamber came to an abrupt halt as Hakoda stormed through the edifice of the palace. Several fighters lowered spears toward him, but he forced them back with a glare. As none of these were blood drunk or brainwashed, they knew enough from that look, the look of a father's revenge, that they would only survive by standing back. They did, and they did.

But Hakoda didn't think twice about them. The only focus of his anger was at the center of that room, atop his dais like he deserved to be there. Arnook looked up from the gaggle of North Water Tribe social elite, if there could be said to remain such a thing, and his mad eyes drew down into hateful razors. "What is the meaning of this intrusion, Hakoda? You have no place here."

Hakoda didn't say a word. He let his flashing eyes scour the crowd, then reached to his belt, drawing out his whale-tooth knife. With a growl of angry effort, he hurled it down into the ice at the foot of the dais. Several of the politicians – absurd concept as that was – gasped in shock, and backed away from Arnook. Arnook stared down to the knife, then back up to Hakoda, no expression on his face whatsoever. The silence stretched. "You know what that means, don't you?" Hakoda demanded.

"I know what you think it does," Arnook answered. "And you're a fool to think it applies here."

"You might as well have murdered my son, Arnook. And not because he could have made any difference. You killed him out of pettiness and personal spite," Hakoda said, even as he tried to force himself from considering his own words possible. In his heart, he hoped against fate itself that Sokka had some sort of crazy, zany plan, something which would keep his boy safe. "I could demand a blood price for it, but I know you'd sell every one of these people here before the knife came to you. You are a coward and a madman, and you have no place on that dais."

"You have no place to make those accusations," Arnook said. "Remove this traitor."

There was silence and stillness in the hall. Hakoda smirked. Arnook's eyes grew wide, and doubly angry.

"I said remove him this instant! I am your Chief and you will obey me!"

"They're tired of your lunacy, Arnook," Hakoda said. "Since you obviously don't know about as much of my customs as you claim, the knife is thrown down. Anybody who wants to fight for him, may. And I will have to fight every single one to get at you. I'm admitting now, I'm not in the best shape for this; I've lost my nimbleness to injury, and my reflexes to age. So who wants to be Arnook's champion? Who will stand for your Chief?"

Silence and stillness. Arnook's head swung around like mad. Tanuuit meekly pulled away from him, joining the others as they swelled out into a ring around the two High Chiefs, one deserving, the other not. "So you're an opportunist as well. Come to murder me when the soldiers are fighting a war for our very survival!"

"I don't see your guards stepping up to defend your honor," Hakoda mocked. That made a vein bulge on the side of Arnook's head. "Step down, Arnook. You are chief no longer."

"I am chief, now and forever!" Arnook roared, rising to his feet. His eyes seemed to stare well outside anything in reality. "The North Water Tribe will be victorious! We will push the Fire Nation back to black sands and make them eat their own dead! My child shall ascend to the heavens as the Moon Spirit and her power will grant us an eternal conquest!"

Hakoda's lips almost twitched into a snarl. "Now I know you're mad. No father would ever sell his own child," he said.

"Guards, kill this interloper!" Arnook demanded. "Kill him now or your families will be hung from the rafters!"

"Just a hint," Hakoda said with grim humor, "threatening to kill the guards' families doesn't do much to inspire loyalty. Hatred, though..."

Arnook pulled his own knife, and Tanuuit moved back up to him, tugging at his arm. "Please, Arnook, there must be a better way to –"

Arnook cut her off with a backhand which knocked her clear off the dais, pooling her on the floor. One of the guards quickly pulled her to the side, shock on his face directed toward the two High Chiefs. Or rather, the one which now descended from that dais, stopping just before Hakoda's knife. He stooped down, prying it out of the chink in the ice it had formed. He looked it over. "I should have had you executed the moment you stepped into my nation," Arnook said.

"I should have killed you the second I saw what you'd done to your own people," Hakoda answered. Arnook's face twisted into a snarl of madness and hate, and rushed forward, two knives leveled against Hakoda's zero.

Whoever lived this day, by the customs of the Water Tribe, would be High Chief.

---

"Well, what do we do now?" Hahn asked, as Sokka fidgeted with his stolen armor and glanced down the halls of the overgrown, overly-heated, and overly-dark flagship. "We should just go up and kill this Admiral Jo right now."

"Zhao," Sokka said, trying very hard not to loose his temper. "And stop talking! These people hear a word of Yqanuac and they'll kill us in a heartbeat!"

"Well, how else am I supposed to talk?" Hahn asked with annoyance. Sokka palmed his face. Groomed to be the next High Chief, and he couldn't speak any language but his own? Hell, Dad knew that Sokka wasn't becoming High Chief of the South unless he earned it, and still taught he and his siblings how to speak in four languages by the time they were five. He beckoned Hahn to join him moving forward. Since they couldn't wear the skull helmets, they'd had to lay low, sneaking past everybody they saw. It was nerve-wracking and unpleasant.

Sokka heard something approaching, the footfalls of quite a few soldiers. His eyes shot wide, and he grabbed Hahn, pushing him into a closet nearby, closing the bulkhead behind them, and waited, sweat pouring off of him for two different reasons, as they passed. It didn't occur to Sokka for a minute that a fifteen year old shouldn't have to be in this level of peril. This needed doing. If only because this way, somebody from the North Water Tribe would survive, by getting the hell out of it.

"Great. So we're just gonna hide from every soldier that comes our way? Some warrior you are," Hahn said without mirth.

"Dad always taught me that a cunning warrior knows what fights he can win, and only fights those," Sokka said. He sniffed something, and turned. Not just a closet, a garbage deposit. Sokka raised a brow, wondering why they didn't just throw this stuff overboard. Between the hair-clippings of the ship's barber and the other mechanical substances stashed here with wild abandon, it looked like they dropped them here out of simple laziness.

"And how exactly are we supposed to survive if we only pick the easy fights?" Hahn asked. "Sooner or later, you run out of places to hide."

"Not if you do it right," Sokka said, a notion occurring to him as he took stock of the garbage before him. "Fight smarter, not harder."

And then, Sokka began to grin, because he had a wicked idea.

---

Aang opened his eyes, and beheld greyness, heard silence, and felt a cloying sense of something pawing at him. It was like somebody was standing just behind him, a whisper away from laying a hand onto Aang's shoulder, but no matter how the young Avatar turned, he could never spot that stalker. For all senses Aang had at his disposal, he was utterly, utterly alone.

The sky was empty and black. He rose from his squat, and saw that his robes, not a proper yellow and orange, were desaturated into shades of grey. Even his skin had the pallor of a charcoal stain wiped until it had almost vanished, but not quite. He looked around, at the place he was standing. There were twisted bodies, thrusting up out of gravel and split rock. If they had but limbs and leaves, Aang might have called them trees, but here, they were just twisted pillars. Almost organic. Almost not.

"What is this place?" Aang asked. "Is this the Spirit world?"

Silence answered him.

"Irukandji was right. This place is spooky," Aang said. He walked, moving around odd, wrought-iron fences which lay without line or reason throughout the space. As he walked, he found something unusual, though. An egg, roughly as high as Aang was tall, nestled up against what was obviously a Fire Nation lamp-post. Aang raised a brow, stepping close to it. He looked around. The stone was as smooth as any egg shell. And it was humming. Aang leaned in closer, flattening one ear and his cheek against that odd stone.

'ooooohm.'

Aang leaned back for a moment, then back in, trying to see if that was just a trick of his imagination.

'...go away...'

Aang backed off fast, shaking his head. His eyes took in the bleak, lifeless landscape around him once more. A step caused a hitch of pain, and he flinched back, before stooping and picking up an odd shard from the ground, something out of place. He gave a 'huh' at it, but slipped it into his pocket without much more mind, since it didn't seem to be important. No sign, no indicator of what came next. He let out a frustrated sigh. "Come on... what am I supposed to do now?"

And silence answered him once more.

---

Chapter 20:

The Clash, Part 2

---

Irukandji watched as the girl dropped the still-unsettlingly glowing Avatar onto the cold, hard floor. Well into the cliff-face which surrounded the main city of Summavut, this foundry was as remote a place as they were likely to find, and Irukandji wasn't going to wait any longer than this. It would never say so directly, but it was very uncomfortable being this close to the Avatar as he became The Bridge. There was a level of power there that were it arrayed against Irukandji, could evaporate the old and powerful spirit in a heartbeat. And watching a human manhandle him brought a bit of emotion to the spirit. Something between glee and worry. It decided to call that emotion 'glerry'.

The girl in question crossed her arms before her chest, golden eyes glaring into Irukandji's own. "Alright, we're stopped. So what's so damned important that it's keeping me from reaching the boats and getting my glory?"

"Not waiting for your family," Irukandji noted. "Not surprised there."

"Speak or die, unnatural thing," Azula snapped.

Irukandji laughed at that, the kind of gut-splitting laughter which made the human increasingly angry, before it finally stopped. "Oh... girl, you couldn't kill me if you tried. And be careful with that one," she said, gesturing to the Avatar. "Kinda need him intact, don't you?"

"What do you want? You can't be betraying your people for nothing," Azula said. A brow raised in cunning. "Unless... you want to be a part of the winning side. That's it, isn't it?"

"Bitch, you have no clue how little you know about my motives," Irukandji said cuttingly. That made the girl's cheek twitch. "Everything you've done so far has made things more and more difficult. If you keep running out without a leash than you might well destroy everything I've been trying to accomplish. So you're going to stop this stupid little game and get with the me-damned program, are we clear?"

"How dare you speak to me like that?" she said, her fists clenching before her. Irukandji shook its head.

"Now you're just being needlessly difficult," Irukandji noted. "It's not like this isn't in your best long-term interests. You stop this whole 'Fire War' business and we can revisit our original deal. Who knows, there might even be something extra in it for ya'."

"Deal?" she asked with a derisive chuckle. "What state of insanity would I have to be in to make a deal with something like you? I'm leaving," Irukandji's form fluttered, and with a crack of lightning, it was barring the woman's path between her and the Avatar. "Stand aside, whatever you are."

It was about then that the unpleasant reality occurred to Irukandji, and its expression fell and it shook its head with despair. "Oh, you've got to be kidding me," Irukandji said. "You don't remember our little agreement, do you?"

"Move," Azula said, eyes flaring.

"Well, that's just lovely, ain't it?" Irukandji said to itself. "Figures, I got one ace up my sleeve and I can't even play it. Let me take a look at your noodle for a second here..."

"What? Get away from me!" Azula said, but Irukandji easily overpowered her, ignoring her scarlet firebending and twisting her head back, staring down into her eyes, watching the way that the electricity sparked along the nerves leading into her brain. Wrong. It was all wrong. Irukandji sighed, and let Azula drop to the stone.

"Worse than I thought," Irukandji said. "The wall didn't hold at all. Must have crumbled within a day. Well, that's easily enough sorted," it said, and then gave Azula a hard poke in the center of her forehead with a finger. As it did, there was a loud electric pop, and a stink of ozone filled the room. Azula's eyes went blank, her chest fell still, and her body motionless. Then, with a gasp, her back arched, and her eyes flared wide, her brain resetting itself under a new configuration. She glanced around, then sat up, azure flames dripping away from her hands.

"Where am I? Where is Daichi?" she demanded in a language which as far as Irukandji was concerned, didn't really exist anymore. She stopped glaring at Irukandji and started to notice her hands, the flames, and her voice began to shift to wonder. "Tell me where... fire... I'm firebending... How...?"

Irukandji winced a bit. "Oops. Little too far in the right direction. Let's dial that back a bit," it said, and then zapped Azula again. This time, she stumbled back against a wall, clutching her heart in the few beats it would take to get stable again. When she looked up again it was with wrath. "Now, are we in the right frame of mind to have a useful conversa–"

She answered him by twisting her arms around in a sinuous motion, and launching a lightning bolt directly into the center of Irukandji's chest. The impact threw it back, and pain radiated out through its corpus, not just its physical shell. Its eyes bugged slightly at feeling pain for the first time in a very, very long time, and forced itself back to its feet.

"I should have known you'd betray me," Azula said, her words thickly accented with the inflections of a language which never was. Irukandji regathered itself, rising to its proper posture.

"Was it an educated guess that lightning would sting, or did you just get lucky?" Irukandji asked. Azula smirked as her answer. "Look, whatever. We've got a serious problem, one I didn't foresee when this deal began."

"I don't care," Azula said. "You gave me carte blanche. I'm taking it."

"You stupid, impulsive, impatient human! You will listen to me!" Irukandji demanded. Azula took a step back and toward the Avatar, twisting her hand into starting a new lightning bolt.

"Ah-ah-ah... wouldn't want something to happen to the Avatar while he's in the Avatar State, now would we?" she taunted. Irukandji ground its teeth. It really should have seen this coming. "Good. Now. Let's talk about that little deal you and I made. I upheld my end. You've failed to uphold yours."

"You're alive, aren't you?"

"I'm also weak, young, and apparently, banished," she said. "That wasn't what I had in mind."

"Tough," Irukandji said. "I'm altering the deal. Pray I don't alter it further."

"You're hardly in a position to barter strongly," she said, leaning down toward the Avatar, and almost sensuously grasping his neck.

"Then kill him," Irukandji said, calling her bluff. "You'll only be ending reality."

She faltered at that, confusion spreading across her smug face. "If the Avatar dies now, the Avatar is gone forever. That's hardly ending reality."

"And that's how little you know about the world you got dropped into," Irukandji said. It crossed its arms under its bosom. "So sit down and listen, you arrogant monkey. Your little vendetta against this kid is small fries."

She glared at Irukandji, but then idly pushed the Avatar over. "You have something to say, then say it."

Good, Irukandji pondered. Now, to see if there's any salvaging this mess.

---

"That looks ridiculous," Hahn said.

"You're just jealous that you didn't think of it first," Sokka chided. The inside of the ship was much bigger than the last one he'd been on, although, in his defense, the last Fire Nation ship that Sokka spent any amount of time rummaging through was impaled on an iceberg updrift of Chimney Mountain, a model which actually looked a lot more like the Mad Prince's rig as spotted on their flight from Kyoshi than anything more modern.

"You're going to get us both killed."

"No, I wouldn't do that," Sokka said with a chuckle. "After all, it's Arnook who wants us dead."

"Arnook doesn't want me dead. I'm supposed to marry her daughter!" Hahn said with a chest thump for emphasis.

That sent Sokka's good humor right out a bulkhead. "And you're just laughing with glee at that, aren't you?"

"Well, yeah," Hahn said. "Have you seen that chick? Man, I've been with girls, but Yue's got the best perks."

"PERKS?" Sokka snapped, before clapping his hand over his mouth. If he didn't get his head back into the game, he was going to make Hahn right after all. And he was about as willing to allow that as to admit the fortune teller down south might possibly conceivably in some small insignificant manner be almost sorta right about something. "A woman like Yue is wasted on a jerk like you!"

"Whoa, where's this coming from?" Hahn asked. "It's not like I asked for it. Yeah, happy coincidence, but having the High Chief as a father-in-law ain't exactly my idea of good times."

"You... didn't choose?" Sokka said, confused. And his confusion made it so that he'd missed the sounds of approaching footsteps until there was no reasonable way to get away from them. He started, then straightened out of his omnipresent slouch, actually managing to be taller than Hahn by a trifle. So when the Nationals rounded the corner and saw the two of them, they beheld one alarmed looking youth, and a ram-rod straight, flinty eyed man with what they wouldn't guess was a glued on beard and bushy grey eyebrows. "What is this travesty I see before me?" Sokka demanded in, what Dad described as, the most comical Azuli accent that ever bore the ears of decent folk. "Tell me, boy, where is your pride in the uniform, huh?"

"What is the matter here, officer..."

Crap! Sokka hadn't thought of a proper name. His brain whirled for a moment, and his mouth moved before it stopped. "Fire!"

"Fire?" the squatter of the two asked.

"WANG Fire!" Sokka corrected. He clapped a hand on the elder soldier's shoulder and pointed at Hahn. "Tell me what you see wrong with that boy's uniform, good man."

"He's missing his hat, obviously," the man said, a bit confused. He leaned back to his fellow. "Who is this..."

"Exactly!" Sokka broke off, and began to stalk a circle around Hahn, who was muttering confusion, alarm, and fear in single syllables. Luckily, that worked for Sokka quite nicely. "And that's not all. Look at this ridiculous haircut!" Sokka said, making fun of what was essentially his own. "You couldn't tie a proper phoenix-tail in that if you tried! Your barber is as much to blame for this failure as you are, lad," Sokka finished his examination with a light cuff upside the head. Fatefully for all involved, Hahn was so shocked by it, that he didn't default to anger.

"It is a poor haircut. But leave the boy be. You can't blame him for a barber's fumblings," the stout one said.

"But that's only apparent, 'cause he ain't got a hat," the taller one added in, nodding sagely.

"Yes, quite true," Sokka said. "You there, where did you lose your hat?"

Hahn, eyes flitting around, could only emit an "...um..."

"That's what I thought. These new recruits are useless. You'd think the Fire Lord was scooping them straight out of a potato field somewhere," Sokka shook his head direly. The stout one gave a laugh at that.

"Between Montoya and Ozai, it's amazing we've got any farmers left," he admitted.

"And the ones we get are all brash incompetents who embark on half-baked schemes without the slightest thought to consequence and no discipline at all! That's the uniform, lad! Discipline! Instead, we've got lads who can't even find their own hat. And what do we always say about lads who can't find their own hats?" Sokka asked, putting the taller one on the spot.

"They...don't have discipline?" he attempted.

"Exactly, my boy, exactly," Sokka said. He turned to Hahn, then pointed past where the two had come. "Now you are going to come with me and we're going to sort you out, clear?"

"Um..." Hahn said. Sokka grabbed Hahn's armor by the collar and dragged him past. As he did, the two turned to watch them go.

"Hard to believe we've still got his kind left in the fleet," the stout one said.

"I'm just glad I'm not stationed under 'im. What a hardass..." the tall one answered, but Sokka was already past them. It wasn't until they were well past, and near the ladders which led up into the more officer-y parts of the vessel that Sokka stopped.

"What the hell was that?" Hahn asked.

"Fire. Wang Fire," Sokka said, whipping some sweat away from his brow with the back of his head. "They fell for it, so that's what matters."

"What did you even say to them?"

"You heard... oh, you don't speak that, do you?" Sokka asked. "Man, Arnook wants you so dead for some reason."

"I don't know what he's got against me!" Hahn said. "For that matter, what've you got against me? I might not speak like the enemy, but I know when somebody's looking at me like I'm a pustule. I get enough of that from the High Chief."

"I just can't understand how somebody beautiful and kind and sweet would marry... you!"

"Yeah, well, that's probably because you can't understand the complexity of Water Tribe politics," Hahn said condescendingly. "No offense."

"Well, you're just a jerk without a soul, no offense!" Sokka almost shouted back. Man, this having-a-beard thing was going to take some getting used to. It didn't help that Sokka'd more-or-less permanently glued it to his face. If there was one benefit to it, it cushioned the blow of Hahn's incoming fist.

Sokka was sent backward by the attack, and bounced off the bulkhead. He half expected the first blow to beget a second, but Hahn seemed content with that alone. "You think I like knowing that we're fighting a losing war?" Hahn asked hotly, but quietly. "The Chief's off his gourd and we've got nothing left. I'm never going to be Chief. I know that. We'll all be gone before that ever has a chance to happen."

Sokka wanted to snap back at the goon, but the bitterness in Hahn's voice, in his eyes, finally overwhelmed Sokka's reflex toward sarcasm and dark humor. Hahn might be a pretentious prick, who was benefactor of a boon he didn't anywhere near deserve, but he was also looking into a future he knew didn't have a place for him in it.

"Then we'd better make that chance," Sokka said quietly, and unhappily. "Officers are above deck. That's where we'll find the admiral."

"Right. Admiral Doh's time has come," Hahn said, clambering up ahead.

"It's Admiral Zhao!" Sokka corrected, and not even for the second time. With a growl, he started to rise up after the other Tribesman, who clambered with skill akin to Momo; a surprising aptitude to be sure. Soon enough, Hahn had kipped off, but Sokka, trailing behind, wasn't exactly sure on what floor it was. So he picked one at random, stepped off the ladder, and turned around.

And an angry red burn filled his sight. Zhao gave a half-turn toward Sokka, then cast a finger toward him, not with wrath or violence, but impatience. "You, there," Zhao demanded. "Have the men prepared for the breach?"

"They prepare even now... Admiral Zhao," Sokka lied, because he honestly neither cared nor knew; all the while, he made his voice even more Azuli, if that were possible. "But there have been some... slackers amongst the ranks."

"Then schedule a few proper beatings and have them fall into line," Zhao said, distractedly, looking over a map. Oh... just walking out with that tactical map alone would be worth the trip... Zhao turned to him as he took a shuffle forward, and that burned eye narrowed. "But then... your people don't believe in that, do they? I always wondered how you Westerners can keep order in your own homes, let alone your army."

"We have our ways, Admiral," Sokka fabricated, back straight and hands clasped behind him.

"I'm sure you do, soldier," Zhao said. "Have you fought these Tribesmen before?"

"I've had my beard dusted by their knuckles, yes," Sokka answered.

"And yet you're not weeping about going home and staying away from the blue demons? Good," Zhao looked over his map, running a finger straight up the center of the city of Summavut to something near the Deadman Plains. "Have you seen my aide?" Zhao asked. When Sokka was silent, he glanced to him. "Lieutenant Kwon. Have you seen him?"

"I cannot say."

"Pity," Zhao said. As he turned toward the door, Sokka felt his hand sliding toward his knife. Just a few seconds, that's all it'd take to bring justice to Shyu and Jeong Jeong and the ravaged texture of Sokka's once-unmarred hide. As Sokka took his first step forward, though, Zhao turned around. "If you're coming in, bring Movements with you," he said, and then stepped out onto the balcony. Sokka's heart hammered in his chest. So close. Just a few seconds. That's all it'd take.

Sokka grabbed the book Zhao indicated, and glanced toward the stairwell, through the opened bulkhead. Onward, or backward? Backward, he would probably survive. Onward, he might be able to stop all of this insanity right now. He might be able to prove himself a better man than Hahn even to Arnook's eyes. He might be able to get the old man to... reconsider. Driven by his heart and sadly not his brain, he took up the book and stepped forward, past the map and onto the balcony. Over the horizon, far to the east, the sun was reddening.

Sokka stopped, standing out there, as the rational part of his brain told him to stop doing something so monumentally stupid, that Zhao was going to see through Sokka's Fire National impersonation any moment now. His heart, his hope, ignored it with the force of a burning sun. "I'm a rational person," Zhao said, starting toward the sun. "I know what they say about me. That I'm driven by fables and myths. But there is a kernel of truth inside some myths which make them invaluable to those willing to shake the good from the dross."

Sokka moved a little closer, keeping his silence.

"The 'fancies' and 'myths' I've seen have brought me glory and power," Zhao continued. "Azula... Princess Azula to be specific, her words are portents to a world yet to be. I have seen the world she describes, what will come to pass unless somebody with the will, with the strength, appears to change it. It is not a good world. A world where the Fire Nation is weak, ruled by the likes of Zuko, while men of vision are cast out and cast down. I would give much to see that not come to pass. To see a world where Fire can stretch its borders across all of the wide world and call it one Nation."

Sokka remained quiet, but a glance toward the book stilled him. He turned it over, inspecting it a bit more closely. Burnt into the back of the book, there were words, clear to his eyes. 'Sokka, Katara, Aang, no peeking. I'm serious.' Zhao turned as Sokka was agog of it. He nodded. "The Book of Movements. Useful prophecies," he said, then leaned forward, toward the icy wall separating the Tribesmen from the Fire Nation. "Mostly because when I get some time to read it, I'll know how to divert them."

"I...see," Sokka said.

"Sunrise. They gain so much power from the moon," Zhao said. Then, the demon began to smirk. "Of course, that won't be a problem for long. You'd be amazed the things you can learn, if you know where to look. The future, the past... who these barbarians' gods are... how to kill them."

Sokka broke out into a cold sweat. While he'd like to tell himself that Zhao was just full of himself, the fact was, the guy had an uncanny ability to make everybody's life significantly worse. And if he set his sights on the Hold of Yer Tonri, and had actual means to hurt them... Sokka shivered just a little, trying to keep the panic from his eyes. He wasn't sure he succeeded.

---

It was draining him. Aang could tell that much about this place every moment he spent here. Bad enough that he couldn't airbend to make his jumps easier or his path faster; bad enough that he wasn't exactly sure what he was supposed to be looking for; bad enough that it felt like his body was steadily growing colder until it was the same tepid chill as the winds of Summavut. Time and time again, he spun at a tickle across the back of his neck, shrunk at an incorporeal hand reaching across his face. This place was wrong. It was wrong and it was terrifying and for reasons he didn't wholly understand, it wanted to touch him. As if it couldn't get any creepier.

"What do I do? I'm not even sure where to look!" Aang complained. He kicked at a pool of still water which lay in the crook of dead and petrified roots. As it rippled, a visage not his own stared back at him. Aang let out a surprised yelp, but when the water welled up, it was cut short. After all, there could be no more comforting form in this unnatural place than his immediate predecessor. "Roku? Is that you?"

"Yes, Aang," the old man said, his body and robes a desaturated grey. "You are unsettled. What is the matter?"

"I need help," Aang blurted. "The Fire Nation is attacking the last city of the Water Tribe, and unless something major happens, they're going to win! I need the help of the Ocean and Moon spirits, but I don't know where they are... Do you?"

The old man glanced aside for a moment, then sighed. "Those two are ancient spirits," Roku said, obviously urging Aang to be calm. "They crossed from the Spirit world into the physical world a very long time ago. Almost at the very beginning. Only a few spirits remain who would remember, and only one who would speak. Only one... who is old enough and... sapient enough."

"Great!" Aang said enthusiastically.

"Perhaps not," Roku counciled, pointing to a tree which lay at the very heart of this dead, mad garden. "He is ancient, and sapient, but to call him human would be unimaginably wrong. His name is Koh, and he could tell you what you need to know. But beware of him, Aang. He is extremely dangerous, more dangerous than you would believe."

"What do you mean?"

"He has other names," Roku said. As he spoke, the lower parts of him began to melt away, as though he were made of some sort of sticky mud, falling apart from his feet upward. "They call him the Beginning of the End, and the Scorpion Which Straddles The World... but there is one other. A name said in hushed whispers of fear by those with the talent to move across the veil. They call him the Face Stealer. When you speak with him, you must be unbelievably careful; if he sees the slightest glimpse of emotion on your face, he will steal it away from you forever. Not even I would be able to help you then."

"Why does something like that still exist?" Aang asked, but little remained of Roku below the chest. As he shook his head, the dissolution reached his neck

"He can't not. He must exist. That is his purpose. Only he can create the nex

And then he was gone. Aang stared where his mentor had been floating, and even shouted his name a few times, but there was no answer. Roku was gone, and Aang was on his own once more. He glanced at that tree, the great and foreboding mass at the center of the garden. His feet began to move, one foot after another with unpleasant weight and that cloying still playing over the hairs on his neck. He stood at the foot of the tree, staring up its grey roots, to a cleft which went right into its heart. Aang felt that cloying pressing tighter and a shard of panic forced its way into his mind. No. He couldn't do this. It was too much.

And then, he was running. He didn't really have a plan, he just picked a direction and ran, stopping only when he reached an iron fence, as though it could offer him some sort of symbolic protection from his own fear. He caught his breath, a ridiculous notion considering he wasn't actually breathing here, and leaned on the iron. As he did, he noticed it felt oddly warm. And when he did, he could hear... rain? Deluges of it, pounding down just beyond him, but utterly unseen. With a curious lean, he stuck his head through the threshold, and gave a start.

The far side of this gate was the long, steam-shrouded bridge of Crescent island.

With a gasp, he pulled back, shaking his head. This was crazy. And he was terrified. Even as part of him tried to say, no, I can't be the Avatar; this must be some massive mistake, another part of his mind which sounded suspiciously like Sokka smacked that part down. He was the only person who could do this. And people were depending on him.

Despite the whispers so quiet he couldn't make them out, for all they were directly in his ears, for all the soul-cutting chill that ran through him, for all his understandable terror, Aang moved forward. One step before another. Across grey, lifeless soil. Up the cracked, lifeless roots. "Show no fear," Aang said to himself, sweating with the effort it took to keep his expression as blank as a plank of wood. "Show no emotion at all."

Aang pressed his eyes shut, screwed his courage to the sticking place, and stepped into darkness.

After a few moments, his eyes began to adapt to the relative dim. "Hello?" Aang asked, his voice quavering slightly, but he dared not show it on his face. After all, he did kinda like his face right where it was. "Koh? Mister Face Stealer? Are you there? I need to talk to you."

He moved even deeper. Not a sound. It was rather a relief. In his worst predictions, he imagined that there'd be some unplaceable scuttling sounds, or the sounds of metal grinding against stone, or some other deeply unsettling noise. Instead, almost as bad and in some ways worse, utter, utter silence.

"I'm looking for a spirit named Koh," Aang repeated. "I need to speak with you. This is urgent."

Silence.

Aang kept walking, and then halted at the center of the tree. While most of the heart of this tree had rotted out, there was still a pillar of its core still standing, connecting floor to unseeable ceiling. Aang's face sagged just a little as disappointment crossed it, but only for a fraction of a second, before sweat pressed out a little harder, and his face returned to its inscrutable mask. Close one. What if Koh'd been watching? But Koh must not have been home.

"What do I do now?" Aang asked, hoping Roku or somebody like him was listening. "Koh isn't even here."

"That's where you're wrong, kiddo," a woman countermanded him. Aang turned, eyes flaring slightly.

"I...Irukandji?"

"In the flesh," she said with a grin. "Well, not really. It's lucky you're The Great Bridge, or this stunt'd be a lot harder to pull off than it is. As it stands, I'm having to pull double duty with your little girlfriend downstairs."

"My what?" Aang asked, barely able to keep the confusion off of his expression.

"You can drop the mask thing, kid, he ain't watching," Irukandji said.

"How can you be sure?" Aang asked. Irukandji sighed, rolled her eyes, then opened her hand. Lightning tented along her fingers and gave a pool of electric blue radiance which pushed back the dim, and more importantly, let Aang's darkness addled eyes see this place for what it truly was. Most notably, that there was no column in the center of the tree.

Stretching from floor to the unseen heights were loops and loops of chitin and dozens of multi-jointed legs. Stretching away from the end nearest of that spiral of hideous but immobile arthropod was an end to it, tipped with a vicious stinger, but whatever 'front end' this beast contained was lost to the darkness and the distance. Aang stepped away from it, shock clear on his features.

"May I introduce you to Koh," Irukandji said. "Is it just me, or does he seem to get bigger every time I see him?"

"What is that?"

"Koh, dummy," Irukandji said. "And don't worry. He's asleep. That's part of the problem."

"What?" Aang asked.

"If he were awake, then sure, world ends, reality folds up and gets flushed down the toilet, but no big deal. Since he's asleep... we've got a major deal. Major," she stressed.

"How do I wake him up? I need to know..."

"Who the Ocean and Moon spirits are, yeah, I've got that," she said. "Honestly, for a long damn time I was worried that we were all up the river. But you, here, now, means that I might actually know enough to help. Huuni's brain ain't exactly my ideal drawing board, but I've seen this part enough times to know it very, very well. Problem is, there's a lot more going on."

"W...what do you mean?" Aang asked.

"I can tell you who the spirits are, no problem. It's the other part," she said, motioning around to the wasteland of the Spirit world, "that requires a lot more time and attention. And since I know you'd run off to save your precious Tribesmen the second I tell you where Tui and La are, you're just going to sit down and listen a spell, alright?"

Aang glanced up to the unimaginable horror of Koh, then down to the completely imaginable horror of Irukandji. He decided to go with the devil he knew. "Fine. What is it that I need to know?" Aang asked.

---

"You're going to kill the moon?" Sokka asked, not-quite-entirely keeping the strangled sound out of his voice.

"It has a certain... elegance to it, doesn't it?" Zhao asked. "The Tribesmen stripped first of their gods, then of their powers, and then, of their existence. A fitting end to such a smug nuisance."

"They might surprise you," Sokka said, inching a bit closer. This had to stop now, before it was too late. All it would take was one crack upside the cranium with whatever was on hand, then a body tipped over the rail. The book would do, he guessed. Sokka froze as Zhao gave a glance in his direction.

"Don't tell me you admire these insane savages?" Zhao accused.

"Well, I'd say..." Sokka began, trying to hedge his bets. Sadly, it proved utterly unnecessary. The door to the balcony slammed open, and Hahn charged into the breach between the map room and where the admiral was standing. His eyes flit about, until the recognized Zhao, and more importantly, the two-toned burn on his left eye.

"Admiral Choi! Prepare to meet your fate!" Hahn shouted, then rushed forward, knife first. Sokka took a half-step away, clearing the path, since Zhao didn't seem in the least bit ready for the assault. Then, with reflexes that Aang could envy, the scar-faced man twisted just a little bit, caught Hahn's arm with one hand, bent it back, and then flipped the charging Tribesman over the railing and down into near-frozen seas.

"As you were saying?" Zhao asked, as though nothing had occurred at all. Sokka swallowed, and scratched at the side of his head. It felt a bit odd. Sokka pointed after his evicted counterpart.

"Are you just going to leave him out there?" Sokka asked. But Zhao's expression was curdling from smugness to wrath. Sokka glanced down at his hand; grey hair, unglued from where it masked his native hairstyle, had come loose in his hand. Sokka gave a nervous chuckle. "Okay... next time I try that, I'm growing a bit of hair out first."

"So where one obvious assassin fails, a second hopes to take me like a cowardly sneak-theif!" Zhao shouted, and then he started to firebend. If there was one fortunate thing about being the only non-bender in the little team the Avatar had accrued, it was that it forced him to be quick on his feet. Thanks to that, he was able to duck, dodge, and weave around the huge gouts of flame that the enraged admiral cast about with murderous rancor. Sokka dodged as the man systematically and accidentally destroyed all of the furnishings for the balcony, but had Sokka pinned to the rail. A sweep of low fire saw Sokka mount that rail rather than lose his feet.

Sokka, still clutching that book out of panicked reflex, gave a nervous chuckle. "Um... this isn't what it looks like?" he tried.

"Enjoy your trip to whatever afterlife you believe in, savage. I'll make sure you have plenty of company there," Zhao swore. Then, his arms began to twist in a move that Sokka hadn't seen before, and given his precarious perch, wasn't entirely sure how to dodge. When the crackle of lightning began to follow his fingertips, Sokka was pretty sure his heart missed a beat. A glance over his shoulder had him calculating the chances of surviving a fall into ice-cold surf from this height. They weren't good. Finally, with a grunt of angry effort, that hand shot forward.

Sokka's first impulse was to hide behind the book.

Zhao's reaction to that instinct was to have his eyes, even that burnt and glowering one, shoot wide, and a scream of 'nooooooooo!' emit from his lips. But it was too late for either of them. The lightning bolt that Zhao threw – Lightning! How was that even fair? Was that even an element? – struck the book first, and exploded it into burning, ruined pages which fluttered out into the wind. The rest of the impact slammed Sokka, and he felt every muscle in his body turn to stone, jerking then locking solid as his involuntary movement sent him off the rail and down toward the water. Oddly, it wasn't as painful as when Zhao almost killed him last time, but that was slim succor, Sokka thought as he plummeted toward the water.

His last thought before impact was that this was probably going to hurt.

In the only sliver of luck he'd gotten today, he wasn't conscious to find out.

---

Hakoda thought that the fight would be over quickly, one way or another. He was proven wrong. Hakoda's injuries had weakened him drastically, but somehow, it was balanced out by Arnook's utterly indefensible ineptitude at personal combat. Arnook's first charge, with both knives against Hakoda's zero, was negated by a kick to the hand. Arnook recoiled, losing his grip on the knife, but still managed to keep Hakoda at bay with the one he'd remaining. It took Hakoda a few minutes of careful feinting, dodging, and skirting before he could finally reach where the blade, ironically Arnook's, had fallen. That Hakoda had thought the battle essentially ended at that point showed how much he overestimated his own physical capacity since his injury, and simultaneously, Arnook's skill.

The fight was crossing a half-hour long, and both middle aged men were exhausted. Hakoda had doffed his coat, letting the heat from his burning muscles keep him warm. It had the side effect of exposing old burns to fresh air. The sting kept him focused. "I expected better from a man who was systematically sending his entire culture to their deaths," Hakoda said, goading the madman.

"You didn't see what I saw," Arnook said, his chest heaving. They circled each other, Arnook ignoring a gash along his left arm, Hakoda a similar one amongst the ruin that was his burns. "I watched as everything... EVERYTHING... we'd built up for so long came crashing down. It was the only way! I did what I had to do!"

"By selling your own daughter for your pride?" Hakoda asked. "How much of this would have been prevented if your ego hadn't gotten in the way?"

"They were going to kill us all!"

"They didn't exterminate the Whalesh after taking them over," Hakoda said, a smirk coming to his face. "They didn't exterminate the Easterners, a century or a decade ago."

"You know nothing!" Arnook screamed, and lashed forward again. Blades and men danced, the former seeking out the latter, and occasionally finding them. An oddly and particularly cunning feint saw Hakoda reacting to an attack which didn't come, and thus, the next one, which was racing right at his eye could only be deflected up, tearing a long weal across his forehead. Hakoda answered that by a low cut which slashed into the thigh of the High Chief. With that exchange finished, they backed off a moment, Hakoda flicking away the stinging liquid which dripped into his vision.

"What I know is that with even an instant's forethought, you could have prevented all of this," Hakoda said. "Hide the waterbenders, send the civilians away. Let them have an empty city. But no. You had to heed your pride over your own sanity."

"You know not what you speak," Arnook snapped.

"It wounded you too much to lose 'the most spiritual place' in the North to the Fire Nation, so you decided to spend the lives of every man, woman, and child instead. Your ego has cost you hundreds of lives to pointless deaths!"

"Their names will live on in glory!"

"With who?" Hakoda roared. He cast his arms wide for a moment. "Who will be left to remember them? Who will care to? All of your people will be dead, and the only ones left will be the people who you maneuvered into killing them," his arms dropped, and he pointed with his knife, as a chill set into him. "Unless... that's what you wanted, wasn't it? You wanted the glory of this war. You wanted to be remembered forever, as the Last Chief of the North Water Tribe. The man who fought against impossible odds, odds proven right, but damn, if he wasn't heroic in fighting them."

"We will defeat the Fire Nation," Arnook said. "Drive them back to black sands!"

"With what!" Hakoda demanded. A sweep of his arm across his brow, then out amongst the 'nobles' assembled had a side effect of flicking a crescent of scarlet toward them. "With them? Broken, exhausted, and dispirited fighters? An upper class which views you rightly as insane? An entire section of your population looking for any excuse to rebel?"

"What?" Tanuuit asked.

"Shut up, woman," Arnook snapped. "They would never rebel."

"That was why you accepted Pakku's grandson as your daughter's mate," Arnook said. "Not out of any desire to sew peace, but as a concession so that your precious war would go on just a little bit longer."

"You talk and you talk and you talk," Arnook said. "Fitting your liar's tongue brought you here. Your kind have no place on the battlefield."

Hakoda tightened his grip on the knife. "And neither does yours."

And two tired, bloody, middle aged men aped the conflict which surrounded them. Only one of them was aware of the irony of it.

---

"What is this place?" Aang asked, looking over the edge, down into that defile.

"This is the heart of the Spirit world," Irukandji said quietly, her usual scathing tones muted, almost mournful. There was also a lingering, worried light in her eyes. Aang scratched at his head, trying to make sense of what he saw before him. It was a twisted mess, blackened as though by immense pollution, its structures higgledy-piggledy and askew. From how they lay, Aang would have guessed either an earthquake pulled them from their foundations, or else they were thrown together without regard to placement by some petulant god.

"It's so... human," Aang said, striking to the very heart of his confusion. "I thought the Spirit world was way older than us. And that its heart would be... well, older. Like a glade or a mountain or something."

"The Black City," Irukandji said. "It's young. A desperate ploy by desperate hands," she pointed at what seemed like a massive cairn at its heart. "Within that shield of stone lies the beating heart of this realm, its driving mind. Or it did. Nothing has dared enter the Black City in almost a century. Even me. That place is deadly to my kind."

"Why?"

"Because something lives there. Something... hungry. Patient. Powerful," Irukandji said, her nervousness plain just standing here. "I don't want to be melodramatic and say that this is the end of the world... but you can see it from here."

"So why does it look like that?" Aang asked.

"You've got a wicked case of the 'why's, don't ya'?" Irukandji asked, finally turning away from that cairn. "This place was once the strongest place in the Spirit world, the surest and most resilient. Hell, if you'd asked me a universe back what would be the first part of the Spirit world to die, the last place I'd have offered woulda' been here. This is the center of our world, and it has fallen. But it didn't fall instantly. Nowhere did. It could feel its vitality ebbing," she ran a hand up and down a stunted tree nearby. As she did, electricity began to crackle away from her fingertips and make the grey would glow slightly blue. "So it looked below... at you."

"Us?"

"Yup. Dumb move, I wouldn't have recommended it, but hey, it's choice," she shrugged. "It saw that the mortal world was still more or less continuing just fine. It thought that maybe, if it was closer to the way you were, it might stabilize itself, or even heal. So it started to gobble up ideals and notions, structures which never were and wouldn't be. It tried arranging its forests into orchards and gardens. It tried turning its canyons into mines and... other human structures. Bridges, boats, it tried everything. But nothing worked. As it got weaker, it pressed harder, caring less and less where things went, so long as they were part of itself. Thus the fences back in my brother's garden. Its last act was trying to gather as much of it as it could in one spot, as though that'd help."

"It didn't work, did it?" Aang asked, looking over the silent ruin below.

"Not even a little bit. Then, the blowouts started," Irukandji said. She waved away his obvious question. "It's complicated, but I wouldn't recommend letting it touch you. You want to know what you're really fighting, it's what caused all of this," she said, pointing down into the Black City.

"But... what about the Fire Lord, and Sozin's Comet?" Aang asked.

"Don't get me wrong, Sozin's comet's important. Dare say very important. Stopping Fire Lord Child-Abuser downstairs is absolutely vital, if only to keep the situation up here from getting worse. His Sozin Comet plan could unbalance this world completely, and irrecoverably. And if that happens, reality ends."

"You mean the world," Aang corrected. She shook her head.

"No, not even close. Worlds end all the time. No big problem," Irukandji said. As she stepped away from the tree, the blue glow remained, tracing out into its leaves, which curled open behind her. "The problem is that this world is more important than they are," she said. Then, a pause as Aang's disapproving stare sunk in on her. "Oh, don't give me that."

"The mortal world isn't important?"

"No, your mortal world isn't important. A Spirit world without a mortal world is just as doomed as a mortal world without a Spirit world," she shook her head. "For me's-sake, I can't believe I'm the one explaining this to you. Look, think of the Spirit world as a great and encompassing ocean of infinite depth, alright? Terrible metaphor, it falls apart in some places, but it's what I've got to work with. Man, feels weird carrying on two very different conversations at the same time," she said aside, but then shook her head and continued. "In this ocean, mortal worlds float in and atop it like wood chips. Each one with its own people, it's own history. You're one of them. I've been to others. A lot of them."

"Are they different?"

"Of course," she said with a dismissive wave. "Hakoda's alive, so that alone's different than the last one. The point is, any one mortal world can vanish, any one wood chip can disappear, and the ocean remains an ocean. But what happens if all the water is gone?"

"The chips fall... forever," Aang said, and she nodded. "Something's trying to kill the Spirit world."

"Not trying, but definitely succeeding," she said. "It doesn't think. It doesn't plot and plan. But it consumes. And it's close to being strong enough to eat my home whole," she trailed off, shaking her head as though she had a sudden headache. "This thing's about as powerful as anything which has existed, ever, and all because it'll eat anything which gets in its way. Any spirit. The only lucky part is that, for the moment, it doesn't realize it can try eating human souls. It'd fail, of course – I'm pretty much the only spirit which can, and only under some extreme circumstances – but it'd try, and the results would not be pretty," at Aang's baffled look she turned back toward the City.

"First," she continued. "It'd eat me, which would suck, 'cause I'd be dead. Then, it'd eat every human being in the world, but they wouldn't sate 'im. Then, it'd eat you, 'cause you'd have nowhere to hide. Then, it'd eat the rest of the physical world you live in. And then, in one last great pang of hunger, it'd eat the Spirit world, followed ultimately by it eating itself. Then, there'd be nothing, forever."

"That's bad."

"Tell me about it, kiddo," Irukandji noted. She began to rub her brow. "Alright. You heard me out. Now, what you wanted. The Moon and Ocean circled each other before coming here, and continue still. Tui and La are the names the Tribesmen gave them. Their real names are Tyontaa and Vetaa; push and pull–"

Aang's eyes opened. "The koi fish!" he said, puzzling it out. Irukandji gave a chuckle, but it broke off as some sort of black ichor began to ooze from her nose.

"Wow. You figured that out faster than I thought you would," she said, and as she finished, it began to leak from her tearducts as well.

"Are you alright?"

"I'm feeling a bit... odd," she said.

Aang was about to ask her why, but then, he could hear something, just at the edge of his perception. A scream, of wrath and madness, of desperation. It held words, almost vanished and barely recognizable as anything useful, that rebounded through this hollow, lifeless world. Behind them, something in that Black City shifted, and a great metal clunk answered it. Irukandji went deathly pale.

"Oh... oh hell no," she said, her jaw dropping as she stared away from the heart of her realm, almost looking like she was bleeding from her face, if not of any worldly blood.

"What is it?" Aang asked.

"This... ain't good," she answered. With a grasp at his shoulder, Aang felt an electric jolt run through him, and then, both of them, Avatar and spirit, were gone from the cliffs overlooking the Black City. Unseen by either of them, and unheard, the ruins settled back into themselves, and returned to a sullen, malnourished silence.

---

"Sir?" Kwon asked as Zhao left his ship behind, and began to walk the ice.

"I thought there was supposed to be a sunrise today," Zhao said, staring at the east, where the reddening of the horizon receded, against all laws of nature. He shook his head. "It doesn't matter. Whatever trickery these barbarians pulled, I will find a way to counteract it. You all know where to go," Zhao said to his men, who were arrayed in loose ranks behind him.

"Through the opposition like a spear," Kwon answered.

"Exactly," Zhao said, a cruel smirk on his face. "And when we arrive... it'll be just about time to go fishing."

---

"I refuse," Azula countered.

"I'm not giving you an option, human," Irukandji answered, arms crossed under her remarkable bosom. Then again, considering the body this spirit took last time, it didn't surprise Azula too much that he'd opt for something a bit more easy on the eyes. One could only achieve so much being ugly. Azula scowled at the temerity of the thing for thinking it could deny her.

"Your plan is faulty and it runs contrary to our prior agreement. I am going to hold you to it."

Irukandji scowled, throwing up her hands. "Damn it all, girl, can't you think this thing through! You're the best chance this poor little bastard has of surviving!"

Azula turned her gaze over the torpid Avatar, still bound and helpless. She had time to spare. At least this time, she wasn't already suffering a mild concussion. Honestly, Azula should have killed that woman the first time she saw her. "And why exactly would I want him alive?"

"Oh, I don't know, the continued existence of reality?" Irukandji said with biting sarcasm. "The deck's been stacked against this kid and he really needs to win."

"No, he does not," Azula countered. "You promised me revenge and power. You promised me the Burning Throne, all in exchange for... well, I see you've collected as you've needed already," Azula pointed out. "But a savage like her? Were there no other options, or do you just like them dark and exotic?"

Irukandji scowled, but didn't lash out as Azula was half-way hoping she would. "Could you stop being such a selfish bitch for one second and listen to me? The Avatar's necessary. You're not."

"I tend to disagree," Azula said. "The Fire Nation did very well without the Avatar's interference for a century."

"Jang Hui," Irukandji said humorlessly.

"Sacrifices to a noble goal."

"That scary bitch in the woods of Grand Ember," Irukandji continued.

"The very kind of ignorance and violence we've strove to wipe out," Azula countered.

"The Fire Bombing," Irukandji finished. Azula didn't have a good answer for that one. "Face it, bucko over here keeps people from going nuts. Tell me something; what happens when fire burns everything near it."

"It expands," she said.

"Posit that there's nowhere left for it to expand to," Irukandji answered her charge. Irukandji shook her head. "Face it. Fire alone dies."

"You're not making your case," she said.

"I shouldn't have to! Damn it, woman, you've been through this! Are you so pissed off over Chiyo after two decades that you still can't get your head on straight?" Irukandji demanded.

Azula felt that hatred burning in her heart, even now. Especially now. Because she was alive again. One vengeance wasn't enough. "My vengeance gives me power," Azula said.

"No, it's driven you nuts," Irukandji said. "And I can't use crazy, and I've just about run out of patience. Listen here, hateful worm; if you don't do as I demand, then I'll tear you out of that girl's mind and personally pitch you into the Well of Oblivion... if it still exists."

"So you'd kill an innocent little girl?" Azula said with batted eyelashes.

"No," Irukandji said, looming over her. "The girl who's brain you stole will still live, awakening to a patchy memory since she was eight. I'll even do her the favor of removing the other one, who's obviously corrupted you."

"What?" Azula asked.

"Did you ever really wonder what soulbending was?" Irukandji asked. "Have you ever wondered why you couldn't firebend after dingus," a nod toward the Avatar, "got his hands on you a couple years back?"

Azula went slightly pale.

"He tore out that part of your soul which let you firebend. If I took what was left of you and shoved you into this little girl, you'd be just as unable as you were when you died. So sue me, I did you a favor, and repaired what I could."

Azula swallowed. "How many?" she asked.

"Just one other," Irukandji answered. "But that's not important. Are you going to drop this little feud with the waterbender and the Avatar? Hell, he's not even attracted to her in this universe!"

Azula's expression scrunched. "What? How is that possible?"

"It's really pathetic, actually," Irukandji began with a grin, but then, her eyes went wide, and she spun to face the south. There was silence, which Azula took to glance toward the Avatar. Still torpid. Back to Irukandji. Still transfixed. "Oh... oh hell no," the spirit said.

---

The wounds Hakoda had acquired in the last few minutes stung. Those from before had already given way to numbness. In a way, it was a relief, and in another, a major worry. While Hakoda could thank his many journeys throughout the world in his youth with giving him the vigor and hale constitution he taxed to its extreme today, he knew that his vitality was running out. His arms felt leaden, his breath came in ragged, burning pants. One foot dragged, slipping slightly in the slickness underfoot. One arm hung essentially useless at his side, its skin a grey pallor. Arnook was just as harried, one eye swollen shut from a haymaker, his once blue parka turned an ugly shade of purple-brown. And tellingly, he was moving much more slowly than Hakoda was.

"You can still end this," Hakoda offered. "Stand down."

"Never," Arnook said. That mad fire was still burning bright in his one still-open eye. "I will lead us to victory."

"Arnook, please stop this!" Tanuuit called from the fringes. Arnook paused, looking in her direction, but with an expression utterly devoid of marital love. Or even human appreciation, now that Hakoda saw it first hand. The man leaned aside, spitting some bloody spittle onto the floor.

"You should have given me a son," Arnook said. "It would have been so much easier with a son. Not somebody weak and... merciful... like her."

"End this madness, Arnook. You stand alone," Hakoda said, tucking his knife into his belt. Arnook swung his head to him, confusion plain on his face.

"You surrender? You yield?" Arnook asked, as much disdain in those words as there had bene for 'merciful'.

"No. I've won," Hakoda said. Arnook's face twisted into a scowl. Then, with a shriek of murderous wrath, Arnook began to rush the distance between the two men. Hakoda didn't pull his knife. He knew a lot of things. He was a prodigious reader by any standard, and the topics he studied ranged from engineering to medicine. Because of that latter, he knew certain things that he wagered that Arnook didn't. Such as how much blood a human being could survive losing.

Arnook's running advance slowed, as the strength obviously left his body, struggling as it was against its many injuries. But the most telling was that earliest, right at his thigh. How that hadn't killed him outright, Hakoda couldn't even guess. But the staggering advance fell into a stumble, which sent the High Chief of the North to his knees. That mad light didn't die, though, and he crawled, knife scratching along the ground. Inch by struggling inch, he advanced, until he reached back with the greatest and last of his blows. Hakoda shifted his foot a few inches to the left, and the blow buried that blade into the ice underfoot. Arnook fell still but for the ragged hiss of his breathing.

Hakoda slowly, painfully stooped, turning the madman over. His eye was still open, still staring above him. "I don't understand," the High Chief said. "You promised me victory... you promised me glory..."

"Glory and victory can come at too high a cost," Hakoda said, quietly. "What caused this madness, Arnook? You weren't a bad man, you weren't a cruel man. Why!"

Arnook finally focused on Hakoda, and his lips pulled into a sneer. "You have killed the Water Tribe, Southlander. Damn you! Damn you... damn you..."

Then, there was silence in the chamber. Just a moment, as everybody present realized what this meant. Tanuuit's soft sobs could be heard near the windows overlooking the canal. Two men cast down knives, and by the rites of combat and camaraderie, one had been named victor. Two Chiefs fought. One remained. Hakoda slowly turned to those assembled around him. "There isn't much time," He said, his voice still rasping. "We need to..."

The door at the far end of the room banged open, and a wave of black and red armor entered on its heel. One, though, stood ahead of them, no death's-head helmet upon his brow, and a scarlet cape billowing as he strode into the room as though he had any right to be here. Even at that distance, Hakoda could make out the livid burn over his left eye, and knew this man's name. This was Admiral Zhao. That meant that Sokka was defeated, and possibly dead. Hakoda felt cold.

Zhao stopped outside the outskirts of the ring, now marked in blood, as the firebenders spread out and began to take the hallways and stairwells that lead upward and down. He looked over Hakoda and Arnook, and the group of nobility gathered beyond them, and had the gall to chuckle, a smirk on his face. "And here I thought I was going to have to kill him myself," Zhao opined. He leaned back to one other unmasked fighter. "Capture them, kill any who resist. And kill whoever that man is."

With the first clack of footfall, Hakoda had dropped Arnook to the ice. He knew he didn't have much left in him, but he hoped it was going to be enough. With his one good arm, he scooped Tanuuit over his shoulder, drawing a gasp from the bereaved woman, which lasted about a second longer, as that was all the time he had until Hakoda was launching the two of them out of the window and over a long plunge. Behind them, fire began to belch from places throughout the palace, and several others followed Hakoda's example. Of course, they were in far better stead than Hakoda himself, who landed awkwardly and painfully in the frigid water of the canal.

The numbness began to move through him. The weight of Tanuuit, the only person he could reasonably save from that madness, vanished. He blinked, under the brine, trying to figure out where she was. Where he was. Which way was up. The need for air screamed in his already depleted lungs. So Arnook's words rang true. Two men threw down knives. Neither survived.

Then, Hakoda felt something grab his boot, and then, with a great heave, he was accelerating at a vector he wouldn't have predicted, but found himself being dumped unceremoniously into a boat, which was moving through the waters. It took a few seconds for Hakoda's eyes to focus, but when they did, it was on a waterbender drying Hakoda, while an old woman was already tending to the reddened flesh of a burned man. Hakoda grunted, and then leaned over and vomited a stomach-full of water into the canal. He leaned back, feeling utterly spent. "He lives," the waterbender said.

"You didn't check his stomach, did you?" Yugoda, the old healer, asked.

"No, Grandma, I had other things to worry about," the waterbender said. "What happened up there?"

Tanuuit's voice was quiet at Hakoda's back. "He slew the High Chief," she said. "He did it in the Rite of Protest."

"But that means..." the waterbender said.

"We need to go," Hakoda croaked. "Nothing remains here but death."

Yugoda looked to the north, to where that Spirit Oasis lay, then down at the others in the boat. They'd likely been doing exactly that when Hakoda landed in the canal near them. "Tui and La forgive us," the old woman said quietly.

"May they forgive us all," Tanuuit amended. Around them, as they slipped through the unseen places, the Fire Nation pressed through the palace, and beyond it. There was nobody left. It was over.

The North Water Tribe was finished.

And in the south, the sky turned to blood.

---

Zuko ended up having only to follow his ears to find them, after that lengthy and unpleasant search. Avoiding all of the Fire Nation and the Water Tribes as he went was beyond difficult at first... but as this unnaturally extended night progressed, the former moved past him, and the latter became essentially non-existent. But then, through the haze, he heard a scream which caught his attention as clearly as a bell in the morn. With swiftness born of years of preparation and an inexhaustible well of filial concern, he was rushing through the vacated streets, skidding to a halt outside a small smelting building which was part of a foundry, all rough hewn stone. He blinked a few times, getting his eyes to adjust to the relative darkness even against the night, and then ducked inside.

"What the hell is the matter with you?" Azula's words brought a surge of relief to Zuko, but as soon as he saw the scene, that relief died a horrible death. Mostly because she was standing in a wary posture, as though afraid of one of the two other inhabitants. One of them was the Avatar, obviously, but the other was a Tribeswoman, and a damned good looking one. If not for the fact that she was bleeding from her ears.

"Azula, are you alright?" Zuko asked. And when he moved toward her, she twisted and lashed out with a bolt of azure flame that Zuko had to throw himself flat to avoid, because he was fairly sure he wouldn't have been able to block it without forethought and warning. "What was that!"

"Oh, so nice of you to join us, big brother," she said, her accent thick, and her tones full of venomous scorn and hate. "I was wondering if you were going to show up again. Mostly because I'd have hated to miss out on the opportunity to repay you for all the suffocating bondage you'd subjected me to for the last few years."

Zuko pushed himself to his feet, but couldn't really understand what his sister was saying. "What? Azula, are you alright?" he asked, taking a cautious step toward her. She answered by swinging down a brutal axe-kick, sending blue flames with it. It took everything Zuko had to deflect them aside, and even then, he wasn't sure why!

"Oh, I'm better than I've been in years," Azula said, her tones smoky and unshakable. "If only because I'm finally, finally free of you."

"Azula..."

"Change of plans," the Tribeswoman said, turning to face the Avatar. Zuko and Azula alike recoiled at the sight of her. She bled from her nose and eyes, and in fact every orifice she had. With a motion that echoed with electric energy, she slammed a bloody hand onto the top of the Avatar's head, and there was a loud 'zorp' sound. With that, the glow ended from the boy's eyes... and the woman was gone entirely.

"What was that?" Zuko asked. "What did she do to you?"

Azula turned from the gap where the woman vanished to Zuko. "All she did was make me see things for how they really were. You've been in my way this entire time. You've hindered me at every step, kept me away from the Avatar and my glory. But no more," she said, taking a low stance, unlike any she'd favored before, with blue fire flickering along knife-like fingers directed in his direction. Zuko was shocked, and in shock. She couldn't be saying that. How could she know?

"What's going on," the Avatar's voice came groggily from his bound form. Azula turned to him and tutted.

"Well, it might not be as permanent as killing him in the Avatar State, but he'll still be dead, and I'll be closer to my revenge," she said. Zuko rushed to interpose himself between his sister and the Avatar. Her eyes narrowed. "Why am I not surprised you'd choose him over me?"

"I'm not choosing him, Azula," Zuko pleaded. "You're not a killer! We can take him back together..."

"Two things wrong with that," Azula said. "One, you're wrong about about me. Two, you have nothing I wan..." she trailed off, then glanced aside, as though distracted by something, and growled. "I am not going to fall for your tricks, Zuko. Never again!"

And with that, she advanced with fire and fury, and Zuko was forced to fall back. This didn't make sense! Even if they did snipe at each other, there couldn't be this level of hatred. There just couldn't! He loved his sister. And in her spiky way, she did back. But that belief didn't save Zuko from having to deflect waves of incredibly hot flames into rock, which managed to withstand the blows, but started to crack along their rough-cut faces.

"What's wrong with you, Azula?" Zuko pleaded. "Who was that woman? This is her fault, isn't it!"

"Oh, poor Zuzu. So out of his depth," Azula said, sashaying toward him in a manner entirely too provocative for any girl in his family, let alone his long-sickly little sister. "But easily enough dealt with. You won't catch me at my weakest this time."

Zuko glanced past his sister, where Aang was starting to worm his way away. With half a thought and even less time, Zuko snatched a mostly completed skinning knife blade from where it'd been abandoned in a quenching bucket, and hurled it past his sister at the Avatar. Specifically, so that it'd split the ropes. That it nicked the kid was an unfortunate side effect of Zuko's training to keep blades in his hand, rather than dispense them. "Don't even think of running from us, Avatar!" Zuko shouted with a thrust out finger.

"Well, at least your priorities are in order," She raised her hands, tapered into burning points, toward Zuko. Her eyes became dark and wrathful. "I've been waiting for this rematch for far too long... since the last time you stole the Avatar out from under me."

"You knew about..." Zuko almost blurted out. The Avatar, though, was shrugging loose of his binds.

"You know... your face doesn't look right," Azula said, a smirk coming to her face. "Like it's missing something. How about your little sister helps you with that."

With a laugh Zuko tried very hard not to describe as psychotic – and failed at that task – she hurled a fireball at the left side of Zuko's face. He recoiled, dodging away from it, but because of that, was unable to catch his balance in the instant that she'd taken between one assault and the next. If Zuko still believed in the grace of Agni, he would have credited it with the Avatar's timely intercession, breaking the waves of fire with a deflecting gust of air. Aang looked much confused and alarmed at her, just as Zuko was. She glared between them, her dark humor vanishing into cold hate.

"You always sniveled at his boots, haven't you? Played nice so you could have the scraps from his table?" she mocked. With a scream, she lashed out in a wave of fire, which it took both benders their all to push past, if for different reasons. Her precise, surgical style she'd levied against Zuko – and where in the seas of Hell had that come from, Zuko wondered – was instantly overtaken by the whirling, expansive attacks she'd showcased first on Kyoshi Island. Zuko could easily enough hold his ground against even those azure flames, but the Avatar was having a hell of a time, being backed into a corner. It seemed like that style had been tailor-made to fight airbenders with.

"Azula, stop!"

"Never!" Azula shouted. "Not until they're all dead! Not until I can have peace!"

"Please!" Zuko shouted, pressing through her attacks and catching her arm. That was probably the wrong move because she took the opportunity to yank him forward off of his stance and send him chin-first into the stone floor. It rang his head like a bell, obviously enough, and a kick to his chest flipped him onto his back. Then, he could see his little sister, murder in her eyes, vault onto his chest, driving a knee into his lung as she did. The well-developed muscles of her arm twitched as she stared down at him. Zuko had seen that look in his family's eyes before. When Ozai lashed out at him. It was the look of one family member prepared to kill another.

That was why it was so shocking when her fist started to lower, her eyes began to waver. "No. No, you don't die yet," she said, her voice suddenly unsteady. "But thanks to you, we're going to lose the North."

She shoved his head back against the stone roughly to prove her point. The stunned state it left him in prevented him from noticing her rising to her feet, rolling her shoulders. The Avatar was gone, but she knew where he was going. She also knew that if she tried to follow him there, then an enormous glowing koi was going to kill her. Leave that fate for Zhao. "No matter," she said, the accent even obvious to her own ears, now. "I know where he's going next."

And she flexed her hands as she walked to the south. "Not as weak as I remember, actually."

"A lot weaker then you expect," a child's voice said to her. She turned, but besides Zuko's quietly groaning form on the stone, she was alone. With a shaking of the head, she moved to the harbor. It'd be tricky, finding a way to get to the East Continent from here. But then again, she'd done far harder, and under far worse circumstances.

This time, she was going to do things properly. This time, she was going to win.

---

"What do we do?" Ashan asked, pulling back. Nila ran through just about every possible answer in her head, but the only one which made any sense was to reach to Aki's saddle bags, draw her bow, pull back, and let fly. The arrow zipped through the air, slamming into Malu's body right at the center of her neck. Her head flopped back, and she fell off of whatever impossible energy was holding her aloft. Tzu Zi gasped with shock.

"Oh my god, Nila," she said with shock and sadness, dark eyes wide. "You shot Malu!"

"Oh my god," Nila repeated, with confusion and surprise. "I hit Malu."

"What?" Ashan asked.

"There's a reason she didn't use that thing the whole time she was gone. She's utter crap with a bow," Sharif said. "Come on! She's not going to stay down long!"

"But... she shot her in the neck!" Tzu Zi said, even as Sharif easily hoist her up onto Aki's back.

"She doesn't need a neck," Sharif answered.

"Sharif, I don't understand. Why are you talking so smoothly? What happened to your wound?" Ashan asked.

"Less talking more running!" Sharif stressed, then fell somewhat pale as he looked back. Nila tracked his gaze, as did the others. One and all, they emulated him upon seeing what he saw. Rising up on nothing visible, but clearly wrong, was Malu. Her head flopped forward, showing the arrow-head jutting through the far side of her spine. But the wood was beginning to pale and the fletchings crumbled to dust. The arrowhead caught fire, which made no sense since it was steel, and the shaft rotted away, leaving utterly unblemished flesh where Nila had miraculously managed to feather her.

"Where do we go?" Tzu Zi said, Aki backing away with its back-canted knees practically knocking together. Ashan was first to look away, and spotted a bland spot in the wall nearby. He ran toward it, and as he reached it, cast his hand wide as though wafting away a foul odor of significant viscosity. As he did, the sandstone wall bowed to his bending, and moved aside, opening onto the street filled with fighting Dakongese and Si Wongi.

"Through here!" Ashan said. "We need to reach the gates or something!"

Nila nodded. Best news was that the others, Nila included were able to heed him. Aki turned and pelted through that hole in a heartbeat, clearly glad beyond control to have anywhere that didn't contain... whatever Malu had become.

"Get going, I'll catch up," Sharif said, staring at that thing.

"I don't think so," Nila said. Ashan, though, looped an arm 'round her waist and hoisted her up, to her squawk of alarm and disapproval. She flailed lightly, but even as Ashan deposited her outside, and prepared to seal that breach, she could see Sharif was smiling lightly. After he did so, she punched him hard in the arm.

"What are you doing, idiot!" she demanded.

"Saving my friend's sister," Ashan said. He turned, noting the fighting still swirling around them. "Can they not see this madness? Why do they yet fight?"

Nila took a moment to gauge the battle. Both sides were fighting, yes, but it wasn't the kind of fighting she'd come to expect from the stalwart Sipahi or the grizzled Tarkha. Both of them, under that insane and unexplainable red light, looked to be deathly pale, fighting not on discipline and battle-joy, but rather insane, pants-filling fear. "Kill the Nemesis! They have stolen the heavens! End this blasphemy!" came the cry from the Dakongese.

"Kill these fowl-worshipers and their shamans! They've brought this madness to break us!" answered the Si Wongi, although each in their respective tongue, and neither understanding the other.

"Mutual annihilation, lovely," she said, but her sarcasm was in poor form. She pointed well ahead, where Aki was pelting away. "After her! Anywhere's better than here!"

Ashan didn't question her, for which she was both grateful and relieved. Behind her, a voice began to rise up over the screams of men fighting to the death, a sound which rang which sounded like decay and rot, of metal falling into rust, of virtue abandoned and cruelty ascended into madness. They were not words, but every single syllable of it cause a pain in Nila's head, something she almost somehow knew, and yet desperately didn't want to know. She tried running, but didn't make it far, the pain in her head driving away even her capacity for sight.

"Nila!" Ashan shouted, and she found herself scooped up again, only to be unpleasantly dropped after the Si Wongi boy was kicked aside by an angry Patriarch. He got back to his feet after a cry of alarm, having to roll away from a scimitar swinging past him, and the fight between two Dakongese fighters against one Sipahi reigned. She cradled her head, trying to get the pain to stop. Why wouldn't it stop?

Ashan grabbed the beak of the great bird, drawing a wrathful glare from the Ostrich Horse. "I don't care. You're going to take her on your back and run or else I swear by Sobki's Teeth that I will carve you for dinner!"

The bird gave a snort, but didn't kick him again. Lucky for the bird.

Nila felt herself getting lifted once more, and draped across the saddle which was atop Patriarch's back. If nothing else, she wouldn't have to walk. Then, the pain cleared suddenly, as the words in that horrible tongue ended. She groaned, feeling the last ebbing of it, and she was already moving. She gave a squawk of alarm, having to pull in her hands and feet as Patriarch rammed straight through fights, knocking Dakongese and Si Wongi aside with equal vigor and impartiality. For just a moment, she was sure she was going to make it past them, to reach the far side, to escape.

Then, there was just a flick of burning against the back of her calf. She looked down, and saw that an arrowshaft had dug in behind Nila's leg. She looked up at the bird as it started to list slightly. But its head lowered, and it kept running. Then, more buzzing sounds only audible because she was listening for them. Nila glanced back, and could see their provenance. And because of that, was able to roll out of the saddle so they didn't catch her in the spine.

Instead, they caught Patriarch's.

The bird stumbled and fell, sliding and rolling a short distance. She ran over to it, not exactly sure what to do. The bird was obviously in great pain. It tried to rise, shoving itself up with its vestigial wings and trying to catch its balance, but it was obvious one of its legs wasn't working. Nila prided herself on being rational and clear-headed, but she couldn't help but see that it was telling her to keep running, that it was telling her to run or die. She reached down one hand, a cautious pat on its haunch. If it took comfort, she couldn't say. "Fight to the end, Patriarch," she whispered.

She could have sworn it nodded to her.

With out anything else to say or do, she rose, and started to run. A leap and a kip saw her clambering up one of the buildings which overlooked the street. A glance confirmed her worst fears. Men killing each other with wild abandon, as the sky went mad, and lightning rained down despite an understandable lack of clouds. Well, natural clouds, she amended. Those boiling and unnatural masses overhead, capricious and unstable, definitely did not count. Then, there was a great crack in the earth, and the building shuddered. As she watched, an entire district mounted up, the very earth bubbling under it, and then burst, spilling forth lightning and darkness, holding its shape like improperly blown glass.

"Tzu Zi," she said to herself, calling her attention back to what mattered. With a running start, she started bounding rooftops, looking for her friend.

Below and behind, one soldier in particular came to where the great bird had fallen. His armor, rings and plates of the Sipahi, was died black in this hellish light with the blood of the heathens. But their engines of destruction, their waterbenders, they would not stand against them. And their tools, these foul fowl, they would fall all the sooner. The Sipahi drew his blade, reaching down toward where the thing lay, to slit its throat.

A great black eye opened, and the Sipahi let out a clipped yell. But in his armor, he couldn't move vast enough. Even with only one leg to stand on, and bleeding as badly as it already was, the Sipahi couldn't avoid the great bulk of the ancient, massive Ostrich Horse, as it plowed him over, slammed him against a wall, and then leaned in, all of its mass trapping him there and slowly crushing him. A few seconds after that last act of defiance, the heaving of the Ostrich Horse's chest stopped. A few minutes after that, so had the Sipahi's.

---

"Well, I was certainly expecting a grander welcoming committee, but I'm not going to complain," Zhao said, as he calmly sauntered toward the low door which lay against the cliff-face behind the palace. There were only a few soldiers with him, bright eyed Gurkhas all, as the others were behind rooting out any opposition which would likely be centered in that citadel behind the battle line. Heh. As though there were still a battle line.

"You will not get past this spot, firebender," the old man said, oddly in Zhao's own language. His white hair was stringy and singed, but his blue eyes still sharp even with his obvious fatigue. He swept his arms up, and the waters which flowed out of a canal nearby surged forward, lashing at Zhao's bodyguards. Zhao didn't even flinch. The Gurkhas could take care of themselves. Zhao began to smirk, standing still throughout the onslaught as the waterbender continued to bend with fury and vigor, his whips of water and crashing waves of ice managing to tie down four of those monumental fighters from the Far West. It was spectacular. Zhao expected nothing less from the man Azula had identified as Master Pakku.

Pakku changed his tactics, breaking off the attack on the guards, and focusing them inward, at Zhao. Zhao's smirk grew a fraction, and he twisted his fire around him into a brilliant shield, which blasted the water to steam as it approached him. When Zhao let the shield fall, he was perhaps a bit damp, but unharmed in the slightest. "Surrender, old man," Zhao ordered. "We may show you some scrap of mercy."

"You shall not pass as long as I draw breath," Pakku shouted. He began to move forward, skating along the surface of the ice, the water begging to obey him. Zhao didn't move from his spot, but his arms did start to follow an arcing course. Pakku's blue eyes shot wide, but he didn't have nearly enough time to change his direction before Zhao's fist shot forward, and with it, came the thunder.

The blast struck through Pakku's hasty defense without slowing, then blasted Pakku away, dashing him against the stone near the doorway, his body smoking slightly. Zhao's grin grew wider, as he walked past the ex-waterbender. "I accept your terms," he said, and then opened the door. That smirk dimmed slightly as he realized he was going to have to stoop to get into the tunnel. Who was this place build for, anyway? Tribesmen were taller than Westerners, after all. But after only a short distance, he was in the chamber at the heart of the Water Tribe, the island, the pond.

And an angry young girl.

She attacked with a primal scream and water erupted to her calling, slamming one of the Gurkhas down in a fraction of a second. The others spread out quickly, but the girl's second attack was directed at Zhao himself. The impact of it drove Zhao back a few steps, but unlike the first assault, there was no surprise and he could diminish the force with his own bending, somewhat. The girl, that Southerner, that woman written of with only the greatest of vitriol, glared at Zhao with murder on her face, and shouted something at him in her native barbarian tongue. Zhao took a moment to whisk away some of the water which beaded on his armor.

"So you've come to play witness to the end of your culture? How fitting," Zhao said. Then, he motioned for his Gurkhas to take the girl down. After all, he had other things to attend to. She tried to lash out at Zhao once more, but this time, the Gurkhas were ready for her. They intercepted her attack, and began to force her back, between their firebending and their constant, coordinated advances, she was driven back until there was nowhere for her to stand. She froze the water to have purchase, but against three of them, she was only delaying the inevitable. In fact, it was somewhat impressive that she lasted as long as she did against three of those fighters. Finally, as she was slashing out with chunks of ice and whips of water, one of them caught her wrist and kicked out her knee. She fell to one side, but kept fighting, until all three of them had to dogpile onto her.

"Agni's Blood! She's biting me!" one of the Gurkha's shouted in pain.

"Is she secured?" Zhao asked, casually walking around the pond, to where the complementary fish circled each other. He watched their circuit for a brief moment, as the girl was hauled up, her head lolling from where she'd obviously been punched, and her lips bloodied. He didn't doubt that the eye would start swelling up soon, and he didn't care, either. She was the enemy. Even if Azula hadn't pointed it out, her own performance against the Azuli showcased that perfectly. Zhao leaned down, then snatched the lighter of the fish and hauled it above the surface, smirking as it struggled vainly in his hand.

And as he did, that odd red light in the south began to spread like cancer across the entire sky, visible across the span of the entire world, but Zhao didn't notice. How could he? "So this is the vaunted spirit of the Moon?" he inspected that fish idly. As he was, the last Gurkha returned, looking slightly worse-for-wear, but dragging a struggling, white-haired girl with him as he came.

"I apologize, my Lord," the Gurkha said professionally. "I was caught unawares. But I found this one hiding."

"The Princess of the Water Tribe," Zhao said, walking up to her and tipping her chin up toward him with his unoccupied hand. "Such a pretty face. Pity you will have to die in this room. Can't have you disrupting my plans or my victory."

"The Avatar will stop you," she said, in Tianxia, since she probably didn't speak a civilized tongue. Zhao scoffed.

"Oh, but he will not," Zhao said. "After all, I have all the leverage I could ever need. With this stroke, I have become a legend. In a hundred generations, they will know the name of Zhao, the man who ended waterbending across the whole wide world. They will call me Zhao the Conqueror. Zhao the Magnificent. Zhao, the..." and then, he called himself up short.

"...You die because you can't accept anything less than... Zhao the Invincible..."

She was right. He was about to do something stupid. He lowered his hand, letting the fish flop in it, but shook his head. "But this–" Zhao began, but was cut off when he felt something slam into his head, and began to yank painfully at his sideburns. He let out a bellow of anger, swatting at the creature. "Get this damned thing off of me!"

As if heeding a call the creature, a lemur, now that he could see it, departed from Zhao's head and swooped toward the exit, where it landed on the outstretched arm of the Avatar. The boy did not look too impressed. Zhao couldn't help but smirk. Zhao ignited a flame over his palm and held the fish close to it. "I wouldn't bother," Zhao said, forestalling the Avatar at one step forward.

"Zhao, don't do it!" the boy shouted. "You can't disrupt the balance like that!"

"Why not? Because it would threaten the stranglehold you and your infernal lineage hold on the greatness of this world?" Zhao asked. "Because we threaten to advance outside of your individual capacity to control us? I think not."

"Destroying the moon will hurt you just as much as it hurts them," the boy pleaded. "Please, see reason; you don't know the devastation that would bring!"

"He's right, Zhao," the old man's voice came from the back of the chamber. Zhao turned to him, a superior smirk on his face.

"And the treason of the former prince finally appears. Why am I not surprised to see you on their side?" Zhao asked with mild boredom.

"This isn't a matter of sides, Zhao, this is a matter of survival," Iroh said, advancing toward the island and its pond, toward the somewhat-senseless waterbender girl, toward the princess. "We depend on the balance, of the moon and the sun and the elements, just as much as anybody else. We stand to lose far more if it is lost!"

"Your fear of the spirits is well known," Zhao taunted. "How was your last little trip into the Spirit world? Did you find what you were looking for?" after a pause, Zhao turned away, toward the Avatar once more.

"WHATEVER YOU DO TO THAT SPIRIT, I WILL RETURN ON YOU TEN FOLD!" the Dragon of the West roared. "Let it go, now!"

Zhao's smirk turned to a grin. "No."

Iroh's ordinarily placid face transformed into a furrowed figure of wrath, plunging through the Gurkhas with reckless abandon. They all turned inward, fire launching toward the old man, but the Dragon was no child waterbender. He pressed through their attacks, flowing them around him with his own liquid flames, and striking at them as they tried to back off. After all, it was a rare fighter who could take four Gurkhas, and rarer still one which could break them apart. Zhao sighed, and chucked the fish over his shoulder onto the grass, before twisting his arms through the kata, and with a great crack of thunder, a bolt of lightning seared toward the old man. Three enemies of the Fire Nation, dead in a single day.

Only the lightning didn't strike the old general. Somehow, the aged firebender turned that bolt aside, slamming it into the rocks above the outflow of the creak, letting scarlet light pour into the chamber, painting the whole scene as though seen through faint flames.

"Run, children! Run while you can!" the general shouted, and the Avatar immediately heeded the man's words, gathering the concussed waterbender and guiding her and the Princess to the escape route Iroh had created. The boy himself, though, turned back, bringing up his stave, as though it would matter.

"I'm going to stop this insanity," the boy said, but his eyes shone not with determination, but fear.

"No, I am," Zhao said, with a nod toward the doorway. More importantly, to the dozens of firebenders which were filling the cavern past it. With a chuckle, he idly kicked the fish-bound spirit of the moon back into the water. "You see, if I slay that fish, you'll have all the impetus to set aside your precious vows of non-violence and attack me. If you're going to kill me, it will be in cold blood. And you don't have that in you."

"But..."

Iroh backed away from the Gurkhas, who now formed a ring with the incoming firebenders from the front, pressing the two of them toward the outflow. "You see," Zhao continued, "the plan was never to kill the fish. That way is reckless and self-defeating. But to hold them hostage? To claim the mines and lands of the north, to scatter these people across the planet forever? What greater victory over their profane kind is there? I don't need to take one more life, today, to make this an absolute victory."

The old man and the young Avatar shared a worried glance. Both clearly knew he was right. "But, of course, if you're going to offer your own lives, fighting for a cause which you cannot possibly succeed in, then who am I to turn you down?" Zhao asked, raising his fists. With that, Iroh grabbed the boy and pulled him with him as he moved down through that crevasse, even as the boy struggled and complained. So much for the vaunted power of the Avatar. A smile, cold and mirthless, pulled at Zhao's burned left eye.

"Sir, we have pacified the area," a soldier said, even if he was only holding about half a spear as he did so; it had obviously been snapped in half at some point. "What are your orders?"

Zhao turned toward the pool, that smile not dimming. "Send a message to the Fire Lord. Summavut is no more. The Water Tribes are broken. And the Dragon of the West has shown himself a traitor to his nation."

"Yes, Lord Zhao. Three cheers for the victory!"

As they washed over him, Zhao couldn't help but start to chuckle, and it grew into an almost maniacal cackle by the time he was done.

Zhao had not just beaten the Water Tribes. He'd beaten fate itself.

---

To say that Ashan's world had gone completely insane was understatement of highest order. The noise in the sky, between the thunderclaps and the screaming of men fighting, dying... it was all too much. Ashan had never been a fighting man, nor wanted to be. Grandfather had utterly forbade it, and he well imagined that Mother would have as well. But when faced with a saber-wielding Dakongese warrior, that pacifism was put to a test.

Ashan wasn't sure whether he passed or failed, in that he ran away. The man's taunting voice came after him, and the only word of it that Ashan knew was their word for his kind. 'Nemesis', they called the Si Wongi. And now, despite all the madness above and about, he'd fixated on ending one teenager's life. Thus, the sandbender ran. As his legs pumped, his lungs begged for air, he could see that things were rapidly going from bad to indescribable with the battle. The sky pulsed like the still-beating heart of a barely-slaughtered animal, casting all in a horrid, unnatural light.

"Leave me alone! I'm not a fighter!" Ashan screamed as he ran, but the killer behind him didn't listen. In fact, Ashan knew he should have been at Nila's ruined house by now, but as he'd ran, the streets began to fold on themselves, twisting and shifting until he had no clue where on Sentinel Rock he was. The answer to his plea came in a twisted laugh, as that Dakongese swordsman drew closer, his vigorous lifestyle serving him far better than Ashan's sedate one.

With a cry of fear, Ashan twisted behind him, stripping the sand from a wall nearby and slamming it into the soldier, knocking the man to the ground. With a shove, he hurled that man away, sending him rocketing toward the end of the street, where the ground opened up as the man still slid, and he dropped out of sight. An entire section of the fortress began to rise up, forced skyward by unstable and irresistible forces. Fire began to rain down from the heavens in splattering, liquid blobs.

"Where the hell am I?" Ashan asked, his eyes flitting about with fear. Then, he heard a sound which gave him heart; the heaving of bellow pumps. He turned, and looked well up, to the tower which ought be near the gates, but now was closer the center of the settlement. "Grandfather! Is that you?"

The fire-pump stopped momentarily, as the white-haired man quickly leaned over the edge. He stared agog at the boy below. "Ashan! You live! Thank the Host, I had assumed the worst."

"Grandfather, what is happening? Is that the Eye of Terror?" Ashan asked.

"I cannot say, my boy," Grandfather answered. "But I can say that there are enemies in the walls. As long as the pump works, then I shall man it."

"What happened to Grandmother? Where is she?" Ashan asked. Grandfather's silence was an answer of its own. "Grandfather... what do I do?"

"Get away, my boy," he said, leaning back behind the protective plate of the fire-pump. "Leave an old Darvesh to his duty."

"But..."

Ashan's plea was interrupted by something heavy slamming into the building near him. Ashan rushed over to the black-robed form, and gave a start when Sharif waved him back. "I'm alright, I'm alright... more or less," he said.

"Sharif, what happened to you?"Ashan asked. An apt question, considering the state of the teenager.

"Ashan, I tried to reach your mother... I swear I did," Sherif said quietly. "I'm sorry."

"What do you mean, you're sorry," Ashan asked, not quite comprehending. Above, the pump belched back to life, sending down an incendiary rain onto the invaders. "Ashan, what do you mean!"

"She's gone," Sharif said quietly, almost tearfully. "I tried. I really, really tried."

"But..." Ashan shook his head, not able to really get it through his mind. "How could she..."

"We have to go," Sharif said. "Before she finds... oh, blast it all."

It was obvious what Sharif was talking about. After all, it wasn't every day that a teenage girl rose into the heart of a sea of madness, and began screaming solid blasphemy down at them. Ashan began uttering a prayer under his breath, and Sharif shook his head. "Prayer won't be enough, my friend..." Sharif said, then turned, shouting something up to Grandfather. The man's billow ceased, and he leaned down again. The words which came from Sharif didn't sound like language, but more like a manifestation of pure will. The expression on Grandfather's face went still, and he nodded, his weary eyes resting on Ashan one last time.

"Make me proud, son of my daughter," Grandfather said.

"But... what do you..."

And then, there came a sound from Sharif, so imperious and noble and powerful that Ashan was driven back a stride. To his ear, it sounded like the Hosts had come to the world, and spoke as one. Then, there came a terrible, tearing pain, rather like a part of his soul was being torn from him. And when Ashan's vision cleared, and he looked up... he could see the Host. Hundreds of them. Thousands. Their bodies were formed whole of light, burning swords and hammers in their fists. Their head was a brilliant, featureless pyre, and on their backs rotated a mandala of eight golden wings. One and all, they raised their weapons, and tore towards the source of this madness, the girl who he once made three breakfasts in one morning for.

"What is this?" Ashan asked, bewildered, as dust began to waft down from above, settling on his shoulders.

"Faith," Sharif said. "Better now than when it's too late. Come on, we need to go."

"But surely they can destroy this abomination?" Ashan asked, still on his knees. Sharif hauled him up, and began to drag him away, and as Ashan glanced back, he could see why. While they were mighty and glorious, and powerful, and numerous... the wrongness of Malu was far greater. Even as they cut at her with flaming swords and struck her with vengeful hammers, she was tearing them apart. And eating them.

Ashan felt a little less sturdy in his faith just watching that.

---

Say what you would about Mother's nearly insanely paranoid desire to see her daughter be quick, it was coming in handy now, Nila considered. Ever since those beings of light and flames popped into being and began to race in to bring a solid murdering unto Malu, the terrain of Sentinel Rock was changing so quickly and suddenly that she often found herself running along a rooftop, only to find it falling out from under her a moment later, and then back in place a few feet to the side of where she was. It wasn't like any tectonic activity that Nila ever considered possible. She'd almost sat down and tried to figure out what was going wrong, and then she saw a Dakongese soldier below rush through a silvery cobweb which spanned an alley, only to fall to the ground clutching his chest and expire. She'd stopped dead, then. No wonder she had that itching feeling in her guts.

She was in the Dream World again.

Only there were massive differences, which made sense, since she'd not gone unconscious at any point. Well, besides that matter with the painful screaming in her ears. It was no less terrible the second time it happened. And the terror in the skies, as Malu, and whatever that darkness was within her, tore into the horde of what any Whaleshman would call Angels was no less brutal. Nila glanced about, and gave a start when she realized that her home had somehow jumped near to her. It was ruins, of course, but the shack was still intact. She gave a thought to breaking into it, but it didn't seem like a good purchase by time.

Until Malu looked at her. Then, with a scream which sent rusty nails down Nila's spinal cord, she flexed her arms, and a pulse of darkness emanated out from her, blasting those 'Angels' into brilliant motes, which flew into her maw and vanished into darkness. As they did great lines grew up from her back, connecting her to that thing in the sky, more than a dozen in number, and she began to be born down on them as a puppet on its strings. Nila's hands snapped to her bow, and an arrow was flying in a heartbeat, but it would be lucky if it hit the ground. With that out of her system, she turned, and started running. Because whatever foul transgressors had looted Mother's house almost certainly missed something of Nila's.

Even as the ground bucked and swayed under her, bearing the rules and traps of the Dream World, she was running. If nothing else, her bow could be useful in making sure there was nothing between her and her target; hitting nothing with arrows was easy. Hitting something, now that was hard. As the last arrow twanged away from her bow, and she chased it over the edge of a plummet, she gave a moment to look down, then back. "Oh. Plunge to my death. Great," she muttered. The chasm between the yard she needed to enter and where she stood now was so deep that she could see the warren of other homes that were honeycombed into the stone. But there was another way. She just had to have very good balance. And with a force of nature like Malu, and whatever was in her, behind her, she'd have plenty of incentive. She closed her eyes, just a moment, and remembered how Mother put it.

"No matter where you're going, there is always a path. See it, girl," the woman said, standing on the tower near the only piece of high technology this back-water hole had, its naphtha cannon. She pointed out to her house, on the far side of the city. "Go home. And be sure to get there before I do."

"Or what, Mother?" the then thirteen year old Nila asked.

"Don't disappoint me," the woman said as she descended the bridge. Young Nila's eyes went wide, and she glanced back to Sharif, who was making the aged Darvesh shake his head with annoyance. Why didn't he ever have to undertake Mother's insane tests? Oh, right, he was brain-damaged. Given the speed at which Mother walked, she'd be home soon... but a desperate girl, not willing to be punished, perhaps secretly wishing for praise... she saw that there were other ways of getting around.

Nila's eyes snapped open and her feet started running. It was movement with her entire body, not just her eyes and her feet. Every time a shiver started down her spine, she changed her direction. Every time she couldn't make a jump, she bounded off a wall to get a little bit more purchase. A heave, and she was onto a higher roof. A roll, and she was safely to a lower one. And she was getting closer. She didn't look back. She could smell Malu getting closer, slogging through the faltering legions of burning entities, but her attention couldn't be elsewhere. Finally, as she leapt once more, it was onto the charred beams of her former home, and they gave way under her weight. It hurt, as she wasn't ready for the landing by a half, but with a moment to shake the stars from her vision and wipe the soot from her eyes, she was running again. She favored the door to the shed with both feet at full speed, knocking the door open, and dropping Nila flat onto her back.

The shed was picked clean, as she'd noticed days before. Everything of value had been taken, leaving only the work-bench bolted to the corner. But Nila knew first hand that whoever was here couldn't have known where Nila favored to keep her prized possessions. She scrabbled forward on hands and knees, she heaved at the panels which were hidden under an inch of grit. The first opened too easily, and she could see why. It was emptied completely. Of course it was. She'd stopped using that one when she found her water distillery leaked into the ground there. With a growl, she moved further, into the very back, under the table. A great heave, this time weighty and taxing, but with a screech of ill-oiled hinges, the panel lifted, dumping sand into the cavity, but carrying her prize up away from it.

It was a thing of beauty. An idiot, like Gashuin or any of his ilk, would have called it a malformed club, its wood bits too big and its metal bits too small. The truth was, it was the result of years of refining a basic idea. She didn't doubt that others had hit upon better designs. Her first introduction to these things was when she took that ill-fated trip to Ibn-Atal, but her own? There were little things she wagered none could have matched. With hasty hands, she tore it from its bracing, and then dug through the sand, heaving up a heavy leather skin. She tore it open with her teeth as she scooted back against the workbench. She hadn't any idea how much ammunition she had. When she dumped a scant handful of paper cartridges into her hand, her heart sank, just a little.

Then, there was a creaking, a cracking, and the door of the shed was torn away by a whirlwind approaching from without. She put aside her annoyance, dropping all but two of those packets back into the skin, hooking that skin to her belt. The two she didn't she bit hard into the end of, then shoved them into a waiting chamber, which she snapped back into place into the weapon, rotating down the bolt to hold the whole mechanism in place. The instant that Malu's form showed itself, as the roof was ripped away and the walls shook down, Nila brought her own, personally crafted firearm to her shoulder, stared the length of its twin barrels, high and low, and smirked.

"Let's see your spirit magic deal with this," she muttered, and pulled its trigger.

The bark of its awakening after months in slumber was stark, and the impact of it hurling itself back into her shoulder was almost more than her body could take. She was pretty sure she'd have a bruise there tomorrow. But that recoil was only half of a physics equation she knew to an art. The impact her body sustained was proportional to the charge in the explosive powder in the cartridge, but the energy was distributed inequally. For while the force of the explosion moving backward had the whole weight of the firearm to push, its easiest path of escape lay with propelling a steel slug out that reinforced tube, and with a cloud of smoke masking its departure, it took to the air at a speed greater than any arrow fired by mortal hands. The impact of it was so great, in fact, that when it struck Malu in the center of the chest, her blank eyes bugged out, and she was hurled away from her, passing through one of those unnatural clouds. Since an arrow to the throat wouldn't put her down, Nila doubted a metal slug, however empowered by physics, would. But she'd bought herself time.

Time she used to run. Tzu Zi was out there somewhere. Nila would protect her.

---

The stink of something being waved under Sokka's nose caused him to jerk awake. He glanced around, feeling like he'd fallen off of a boat. Then, he remembered that he'd fallen off of a boat after being struck by lightning, so he considered himself remarkably lucky to feel as well as he did. He still allowed himself a groan of discomfort as he forced himself upward. He was freezing, but he was alive.

"Easy there, backstabber," a condescending voice said. "You took a hell of a hit."

"Backstabber?" Sokka asked.

"Well, failed backstabber. Otherwise we wouldn't be in this mess," Hahn said. Sokka's eyes narrowed. "You were out for a while."

"What happened?"

"Zhao moved into the city... then everything started to go quiet," Hahn said, pacing to and fro on the chunk of rock that lay outside the ruins of the Spikerim. Sokka was honestly amazed that Hahn managed to get the name right for once.

"Aang! I've gotta," Sokka said, pushing himself to his feet, however his body denied him. Then, he paused. "What's wrong with the sky?"

"Hell if I know, ask a shaman," Hahn said. "Listen, Soka..."

"'SOKKA', YOU TWIT!"

"Whatever, what's your deal with Yue?"

"I'm..." Sokka trailed off. "Not sure. Anymore."

"Good. 'Cause I'm not having her run off when I... we need her, with some loudmouth punk from the South," Hahn said.

"Listen," Sokka said, leaning toward the sanctimonious ass. "Whatever happens, I'm going to be watching. And if Yue isn't the happiest bride on this whole planet, I will do something about it."

"Heh, like you even could," Hahn dismissed. Sokka stalked away, sitting against the rock. It was amazing that he wasn't frozen right to death. So amazing, in fact, that it wouldn't leave Sokka's mind. So much so, that he had to raise that question, for Sokka was nothing if not inquisitive.

"One thing, though..." Sokka asked. "Why am I not dead?"

"I fished you out after you took a header into the water," Hahn said non-chalantly.

"Why?"

"Because you're a Tribesman," Hahn answered, calmly, quietly, genuinely.

Sokka had nothing else to say at that point. All he could do was nurse his battered body, and wait for this clash of nations to end.

---

The flares of fire into the sky were Nila's clue which direction to go, but when they didn't abate, she got more than a little worried. Hah. As though worried was even a state she could assign herself after the madness she'd seen and navigated in the last hour. She wagered that every single one of the five thousand Sipahi were dead, but for every one of those which fell, thirty of the Dakongese were brought down. Not by the Sipahi, mind, but by the insanity of the Dream World awakened. Some whole streets were dotted by the upper bodies of men who'd sunken into the stone and become affixed there. Other, more viscerally horrifying sights played before her eyes as she followed those flames. She didn't let herself think about them.

She had her own people to save.

It was telling that all of the walking about that she'd done in the last few months had reaped dividends in her stamina. Where at first, merely walking for a few hours left her exhausted, now, she was running for hours and felt only fatigued. Her hands were cold as one stabilized her firearm at her back and the other helped her swung down to the streets below, this one mercifully free of the dead. The sounds of madness everywhere, from screams, to the lightning falls, to the cracking of stone giving way, all played a song in Nila's head, formless and unending, like the melody which Sharif always hummed under his breath.

"Stay away from me!" the voice from ahead perked Nila's attention to the fore, followed by a blast of flames which sent a leather-armored Dakongese man rolling past the intersection. There was a man still shouting obscenities at her, but Nila didn't care to translate them in her head, opting to pick up her pace. She almost reached the intersection when a chill ran through her, and she stopped abruptly, even wheeling her arms to keep from falling forward one more step. She glanced aside, then tipped a bowl of eggs into that unseen field before her. The eggs didn't even try to hit the ground. They rotated through space, into the center of the path, where they were torn to bits, their yolks splattering in all directions. Nila picked up another egg, then threw it experimentally through the window next to her. A splat, but nothing more. Without any further hesitation, she bounded through that portal, into a building which her own memories said should have been half the town away.

She came to a halt as she saw that there was a man, one of their mail-smiths, on his knees on the floor. His eyes stared at nothing, and his mouth moved at an insensate babble. She gave him a shove. "Run you fool! Run with your life!" she demanded. He didn't even react to her presence. With a growl, she abandoned him. Leave the ones who couldn't be helped. Find the ones who could. She kicked the door open, or tried to. Instead of springing open, her foot went through the wood like it was wet paper, leaving her a bit caught out. A few seconds, and she managed to push through that door, finding that it was, in fact, wood, but wood with no properties that would ought have. So the madness reached all corners, it seemed, even physical chemistry? That was distinctly unfair. She glanced one way, then the other, and spotted what she needed to see. Tzu Zi was backed into a corner by an unarmed Dakongese man. She immediately pulled her gun forward, running to intercept him, but that gun dropped slightly when she saw that he wasn't accosting her. He was begging.

"Nila?" Tzu Zi asked, leaping to Nila's side and embracing her tightly. "Why? Why are we back here? I hate this place!"

"I don't know, Tzu Zi," Nila said. "What do you want, invader."

"Please don't flay me, Nemesis," he said, on his knees, tears of terror running down his face. "I swear, I just wanted to protect my family!"

"Then leave while your blood still flows in your veins," Nila said harshly. "Run until the stars hang high in the sky."

He nodded dumbly, and then took off at a sprint. Nila pegged his chances of surviving at about one in ten thousand. She turned to Tzu Zi. "Have you fared well?"

She lifted an arm of her robes, showing that it was now missing, her arm reddened and raw, slathered with some greenish gelly. "For some reason, the ground started spitting fire at me," she said, clearly still in great pain and discomfort. "But I managed to keep Aki safe."

"We need to leave," Nila said. "Get out of the fortress. I'll find my brother."

"But what about Malu?" Tzu Zi asked. Nila turned behind her, pointing into that spot in the sky, high above the mayhem that she hovered, dangling from those wicked black cords.

"Whatever Malu was to us, she is no more," Nila said. "I'm sorry, Tzu Zi, but we need to go. Please."

Tzu Zi's eyes welled with tears, more for a lost friend than a slaughtered people. But Nila knew that she would mourn them, for all their cruelty, on her own time. "I think I know the way, but there's men still there, and I can't firebend well enough like this to get past them," she said, very carefully trying to not touch her burns. Nila motioned the arm toward her, and then swiftly bound it in a layer of bandage. It wouldn't be much, but it would help. Probably.

"Now there are two of us," Nila promised. "But I still have to find my brother."

She nodded, unable to speak for her fear. Understandable. Nila wondered to herself, as she guided the woman guiding an Ostrich Horse down the street that there might be something wrong with her, for she was far too calm with this calamity. Perhaps years of Mother's lessons had given her a cool head. Or perhaps more likely, she was back in a position she knew very, very well; navigating the madness and cruelty of the Dream World, even if the stakes were significantly higher this time.

"How are we even going to find him?" Tzu Zi asked, wincing as Aki's pulling at her reins caused the bandages to shift.

"How are we even going to find her?" Ashan's voice came from a wall which was dissolving into grit as the question still hung in the air. He turned from Sharif, who had his arms crossed on his chest, and gave a nod ahead of them both. Ashan turned, then started. "High Host, Sharif, why didn't you tell me?"

"Because it was funnier this way," Sharif said with a smirk. Nila gaped at him.

"Did you just make a joke?" Nila asked.

"Yeah, I've got years of snark bottled up, and precious few opportunities to release it," he said. He strode past, then looked up and down the road. "Where's Patriarch?"

"Nila, you can close your mouth now," Ashan said.

"But..." she stammered.

"Patriarch? Where is he?"

"He was... shot down," Nila said.

"What!" Sharif turned. "Damn those men and their bows and their war!"

"Is Sharif angry?" Tzu Zi asked. "I've never seen him angry."

Nila knew that wasn't true. The first time Sharif saw Malu, there was hatred in his eyes, simple though they were. "How?" She asked.

"Can we please keep moving? I feel like if I stand here, I'm going to catch an arrow or something," Ashan said, glancing around nervously.

"Please, there's almost nobody left to –" Nila began.

She was cut off when Sharif was hurled to the ground, a white-shafted arrow jutting from his forehead.

---

Irukandji wiped the ichor from its face. She'd been hurt before. Lighting stung a bit, and it'd been struck by lightning. This was like being flipped inside out then set on fire. But it knew what had to be done. The end would come, it knew that better than any creature alive, but that end would not come today. A sarcastic smirk came to its face, as it laid a hand onto the casket of the heart of its world.

"Always wanted to see the big city up close," it muttered. "Pity it had to be like this."

While her body was flesh and blood, its soul was lightning, so sending forward even fatal jolts was as easy for it as breathing was for her host. Which made the slow rotation of her arms, the steady buildup of wrathful electricity all the more potent. "This is going to suck," it predicted, as that energy which was its life's blood and soul began to gather outside of its corpus, to mass, ready to be thrown away.

"Wakey wakey," it said, its face grim. "Eggs and bac-ey..."

She cast out a hand, an electric bolt of a majority of its power, bathing that stone casket in arcing lightning, and Huuni blinked as she looked at what she'd done, even not wholly understanding why. Then, there was a great electric clunk. A voice, whispering in the back of her head gave her one singular order. Run or die. And Huuni, self-centered woman that she was, didn't even think to question it.

Because as she fled, legs carrying her away from the Black City, to the Forest of Koh, that first shudder begat another, and another. Then, the ground began to shake, and the sky, so high above the Black City, began to shift from its sepulchral hue into a golden glory, its edges spreading out like a bruise. As the ground began to spread out, gravel and sand softening into soil. Dead trees livening. One tree, with electric blue leaves, spreading into full blossom. Then, a great thud, something metal the size of a city block slamming into another.

Then, just as it would without outside prompting, the Blowout began to spread.

---

"Sharif! No!" Nila said, surging against Ashan's hasty grapple towards her slumped brother.

"No, Nila. It's too late," Ashan said.

"But... he's not dead," Tzu Zi pointed out. Nila felt her heart lurch for a moment as Sharif staggeringly regained his feet, looking slightly stunned but of a state which no person with an arrow in his skull ought. "How is he still alive?" Tzu Zi asked.

"What hit me?" Sharif asked, rubbing his head near where the missile projected. "Feels like I got hit by a brick."

"Sharif, you have an arrow in your head!" Nila shouted. Finally, she leveled a glare at Ashan, who released her. Sharif, on the other hand, reached a bit higher, touched the shaft, and blanched slightly.

"What? Oh, that's not good," he said. Then, he reached up, and carefully inched the arrow out of the hole it'd entered, finishing the tug with a wet pop, which sent blood moving down his cheek in a rivulet which ran before one ear. He gawked at it for a moment, then gave a nervous laugh. "Wow. If my brain was still there, that probably would have killed me."

"Sharif, what is this sanity which has settled on you?" Nila asked.

"It's a long story," Sharif dismissed, throwing the arrow aside. He paused, rubbing at the injury, which was obviously but the most recent amongst many, for his clothes were torn and scorched, and there was a great bruise which was already puffing up on his other ear. "In essence, because of the superposition of worlds, I can think with an artificial brain."

"The what?" Nila asked, then she paused. Superposition of worlds. "Wait... So that nonsense from before... this place has been crossed with the dream world, and we exist in both, at the same place, in the same time?"

"Clever model, but no. Close enough, though," Sharif said.

"He's... making a lot more sense than I'm used to," Tzu Zi pointed out.

"Sharif, why didn't you tell me you weren't... gone?" She asked, her voice betraying her at the end.

"Because I was," Sharif said in their shared native tongue. He tapped his scar, which she noted was glowing faintly. "I'm still here, but it's locked away. I'm still the brother who put out your hair when you were ten... and when you were twelve. And if I don't ever get a chance to say it, because I frankly hope this never happens again... Thank you. Thank you for taking care of me."

Nila felt a tear in her eye. She tried to convince herself it was because of flying grit. She abandoned that rationalization when Sharif pulled her into a brief hug, and she blubbed just once against his shoulder. Then, she looked up, and her logical mind slammed back into place with the kind of panicked clarity that many were utterly deprived of. Specifically, because Malu had stopped rotating on her strings, and had faced them again.

"Sharif! She's spotted us! We need to run!"

"There is no place we can run to that will save us," Sharif said, stepping away from her. "She has consumed the spirits of faith. Now, a grimmer nemesis."

"Faith?" Ashan asked. "That's what those were? But they looked..."

"Like the Heavenly Host. How else would you conceptualize them?" Nila said, cutting off her brother, who nodded as she'd made his point for him.

"Why?" Tzu Zi asked. "I mean... I didn't see Agni up there..."

"Part of the problem," Sharif said, his eyes pressed closed. "I loosed Faith first, because you need to be alive to have faith. You had faith in the Host, Ashan. They had faith in their animal gods. But do you know what you don't need to be alive to have?" there was a moment of silence, as his green eyes snapped open, and he stared up at what used to be Malu. "Blood."

Then, he cast open both hands, one to a pool of congealing red, almost invisible wetness under the scarlet sky, the other directly into the heart of that heavenly anomaly. And when he spoke, it was with a voice unto thunder.

Sanguinary crimson, nectar of life, harbinger of death;

Bearer of the spark of the soul, fuel of the Life Engine, Currency of the Oldest Pact;

Gear of Blood.

OBEY!

As Nila watched, the blood began to mount up. Then, there was an unspeakable agony from 'twixt her legs, which left her shouting in pain as she crumpled against a building. Tzu Zi and Ashan looked on in absolute horror.

Voice of the Sphere, Ocean of the Forbidden Kingdom, Heed my call;

Aid in my vengeance;

Against the beast of hunger, rapacious and insane

Raise up a vengeful hammer and strike down!

Sharpen my blade, and your destructive might shall flow through me!

Its Mortal sinews and flesh shall part, its Host CRUSHED!

The pain began to ebb, but only because as she watched, a homunculus of malformed proportion and unspeakable substance walked straight out of her body, unlike those of the others nearby. Sharif, though, looked in an absolute rage, as the sky grew darker, and the hordes of monstrosities heeded the call of her brother, rising up from the dead, eyeless but seeing, structureless yet insistent, and utterly focused on revenge. First a few, then hundreds, began to leap into the air, dragging at the form of Malu, who began to smite them apart with but a slash of her hand, to consume what remained of them.

"Sharif, stop this, we can run now!" Nila said.

Guide the edge of my blade to the throat of the Hunger, and cut!

That which betrayed and cast down, let it suffer!

My enemy, into that vortex of pain and suffering, cast!

Meet blood with Blood, Abomination!

"Sharif stop this, please!" Ashan added his voice to the mixture. "This is blasphemy and worse! Don't do this!"

"I have to stop her. I'm the only one who can," Ashan swore, his voice still immense for his form.

"Sharif, end this now!" Nila demanded. "Mourn the dead, but to not join them. I swore I'd bring you to Mother and I will do so if I have to drape you unconscious over Aki's saddle!"

"But..."

"NO!" she screamed. "They are gone, Sharif. Gone. This madness will not return them. Flee with me. At least then someone will remember Sentinel Rock."

Sharif's gaze, turned to her, was wet with angry tears. His face pulled in, and he gave a frustrated, still-angry nod. She glanced aside, to one of the walls nearby. "Ashan, bring that down."

Ashan whipped his arms through his bending motions, sending the wall scattering down, as above, Malu had turned her attention from the four of them to legion which assailed her. Nila looked through the crevasse, and smirked grimly as her gut-suspicion was confirmed. This was the way out. It emptied into a deep crack between two places which were once connected together, and even now shifted at a visible pace. "Through! The sands are clear to us!" Nila said, ushering the others through ahead of her. She turned, giving one last look at Malu. She considered what final words she would part with, but couldn't find any which suited. Betrayal was the best way to describe her feeling. Malu was a friend... and she'd ended human inhabitation of Sentinel Rock. What could even be said?

She started to run, following the others as they raced between the shifting sandstone, across the tops of what were once walls in the honeycombing of chambers below. As she was furthest back, she had the hardest run, racing just at pace with the twisting of the terrain, as the floor tried with every stride to drop out from underneath her. But she was her mother's daughter, and that meant she was very fast on her feet. With a last push, she managed to erupt from the falling path with such velocity to overtake Ashan, and the two of them went rolling down the dune which had built up along the side of the fallen settlement. She forced herself to stop, and quickly checked her firearm. Still intact. Good. She then checked the rest of her now much-smaller party. Still intact. Good.

"What... is that?" Tzu Zi asked, looking back. Nila glanced behind her, and then turned full, because it was a spectacle which warranted a moment's consideration. Whatever that thing was, bubbling and tumorous, its metal burning freely like paper, its stone bulging out like cancers, it was not a human thing. In fact, there was nothing human like about the fortress town of Sentinel Hill left at all. She glanced aside, and could see the Iron Horde to the south. No, not the Horde, there were no standards in that milling group. Those were the Dakongese people. And then, she spotted something which set her blood on fire.

She took off at a run, and in short order, came upon a woman on her knees, staring dumbfounded at the same sight which had so impressed upon Nila. Khagan Khatun's scarred, round face was in terrible awe. She looked like she'd rolled off of an Ostrich Horse, which was mauled and fallen nearby. The sand near her was pocked with glass tubes, flash created from lightning strikes. Her mouth worked, trying to find the words. Nila didn't think about what those dark shapes, sinking into the sand, once were.

"What is that?" she finally asked. Nila answered her by kicking the chest, sending her flat on her back. Then, she pulled that firearm around, leveling it right at the Khagan's face.

"Look at me. LOOK AT ME!" Nila screamed. "My people are dead! This is your fault! Yours!"

"But... I don't understand," she said, not even that stunned from the chest-kicking. In that moment, Nila felt no desire to call her Khagan or Noyan. She was just a frightened, confused woman.

"You wanted to know what was causing our desert to expand? It wasn't us, Borte," she shouted. "It was that!"

She cast a finger back up to Malu, who was scything through those creations of the blood of the fallen. Nila felt a hand on her shoulder, guiding her gunbarrel away from Borte's face. Sharif was standing there.

"She's right. Which is astonishing considering how little information she had to work with," Sharif said. "Everything which has happened in the last three-quarters of a century can be tied back to that thing, and that alone."

"What is it?" Borte asked.

"Imbalance itself," Sharif said. "Let her go, Nila. This is over."

"I didn't know. I... I didn't know," Borte said. Nila let her weapon swing away. "They're gone. I had two hundred thousand... And they're gone..."

"So are mine," Nila said. Borte looked up at the sky, tears running down her face.

"How... how do we even stop that?" she asked.

"I don't know," Sharif said. "I'm not sure anything can."

"Nila, Sharif, it's time to go," Tzu Zi said. Aki, guided by Ashan, gave a wark as they all started to walk north, as there was essentially no other direction go to. They left the supine Dakongese noble in the ashes of her hubris, staring at an answer she could barely bear to ask for.

"I'm sorry," Sharif said, as they walked.

"For what?" Nila asked.

"For not being there when you needed me," he said. Then, there was a metal bang in the sky, causing brother, sister, and firebender to all turn back, all flinching from that familiar and ominous sound which presaged a Blowout, and watching as Malu ascended on those ebon cords into the heart of that maelstrom. Then, it popped like some massively oversized soap-bubble, and in its place, the empty sky of mid-morning. Malu was gone.

"What just happened?" Nila asked her brother.

"I... where am I?" Sharif asked, his words slurred and inexact again, and a confused look settling into his eyes, as the glow faded from his scar. "Did something happen? I don't feel well."

"You can't be se..." she began, but her heart dropped, and a sick feeling settled into her stomach. She knew that look, which had taken over his visage. It was the blank expression of a boy who was incapable of higher thought. As quickly as she'd got him back, Nila lost Sharif once again. "We should go," Nila said, turning him away from the devastation, from the green-and-purple clouds which still boiled over Sentinel Rock, to the twisted place which used to be home. At the back of them, Ashan was silently weeping.

Hundreds of miles north, Nila's mother looked upon the great walls of Ba Sing Se, standing with her back tall and proud, and her trusted companions at her side. She raised a brow at the spectacle, then turned to her comrade and once-lover. "I assume that you have some plan to get us into that city?"

"We might have worn out our welcome from last time, so it could be difficult," Piandao admitted. Bato chuckled.

"How difficult could it be?"

As one, the remainder of his troupe slapped their foreheads.

"You just had to say that, didn't you?" Beifong said.

Thousands of miles west, a teenaged girl sat at rapt attention as a man three times her age read books which by all rights shouldn't have still existed, sparing her no details and censoring no content. She had been so ready for combat, for adventure and the open road. She'd been ready to fight and die for the cause. But it wasn't ready for her. And at least she had something to occupy her time. Toph scowled for a moment, leaning aside as Zha Yu let out a chuckle, ceasing in his narration briefly.

"It's live! It's live!" Teo shouted, holding up a heavy metal device which gave off an ominous electric hum. "With the gods as my witness, it's live! I know what it feels like to be a god!"

"He takes after his father in a lot of ways," Zha Yu said.

"Which one?" Toph asked with a laugh.

"Sweetheart, go stop our boy from doing something damaging. The neighbors are complaining enough as it is," Sul said with the sort of patience that only a mother could exhibit. Zha Yu sighed.

"Fine. And yes, I'll be back when I'm finished," Zha Yu said.

"You'd damned well better," Toph said, clasping her hands behind her head.

A few hundred miles north, a boat was steaming south as fast as its engines would take it. Golden eyes stared ahead, not even blinking as the world returned to normal. She didn't care about atmospheric phenomenon. All that mattered to her was getting to the right place, to be ready at the right time. Azula had waited decades for this chance. And it would not pass her by. Revenge. Justice.

For Chiyo.

Dozens of miles north, the Avatar stared at the paltry fleet which slipped away from the Fire Nation's blockade and cut south, into what all knew would be storming seas. "I don't understand," he said, his eyes reddened from frustrated tears. "How could I lose? I'm supposed to be the Avatar. I'm supposed to stop things like this from happening!"

Hakoda laid a hand on his shoulder. "Even the Avatar can't help everybody. Even the Avatar isn't a god."

"But..."

"It'll be alright," Yue said, taking a place to stand on Aang's other side, adding her own comforting hand to Hakoda's. "Somehow, we'll find a way to make this right."

It really didn't feel like it was going to be alright. If only because of the thousands of refugees who wept openly, giving one last look to their lost homeland, at the crippling defeat which they had no recourse but to survive, for the sake of those around them. The all forced themselves to be strong, because that was what the Water Tribe did. And it was heartbreaking.

A mile north even of that, Zuko pushed himself slowly to his feet, trying to think past a splitting headache and what he was fairly sure was a concussion. Had Azula... no. She couldn't have. But then again, Zuko was more than a bit confused about where he was. He was on a small yacht, the kind the Fire Nation used to hunt pirates in. And left near the helm of the tiny, engined craft, was a note, penned in Uncle's flowing script.

I'm sorry I couldn't keep us all together, Nephew. There was nothing any of us could do. Your sister is a fraud and a danger to everything. Please don't follow me while I stop her. You deserved so much better. – Iroh.

Tears welled in Zuko's eyes, until he pressed them shut, and slammed his fist shut. Fire filled that fist, blasting the message to ashes. No. No he refused. His sister was still his sister. Azula still loved him. They were still family, and he must have just misremembered what happened at the very end. With strength born of outright denial, he fired the engines, and set a course south. He would protect his sister, just like he promised. Nothing would stop him.

A few miles north of that, sitting on an opulent throne which didn't belong to him, Zhao smiled as he opened an old log-book, and ran a finger down a list of names. Shyu, dead. Jeong Jeong, dead. Pakku, dead. He moved a bit back up the page, at one name which hadn't yet been crossed off. Piandao. Still vexingly alive. Lower; Bumi, still alive, but for how long? Still, today was a good day. He was still alive, and he stood victorious. He could deal with this flower cult later. Right now... he deserved some celebration.

Several thousand miles south, a woman washed ashore, her face grinding against black sands, as a boy of perhaps twelve or thirteen years prodded her with a stick. She let out a grunt, finally rolling over. The boy recoiled, dropping the stick and backing away. Blue eyes stared up for a moment, before blinking against the rain which fell pretty much constantly in this part of the world. She sat up, looking down at her tattered, filthy clothes, then up at the boy. "Are you alright, lady?" the boy, Shoji by name, asked. She looked at him with a degree of fear and shouted something which to his ears was inarticulate babble, but to any others would have been:

"How did I get here?"

"Do you need help? Or maybe a place to stay?" Shoji asked carefully. But the Tribeswoman, who was harrowed and gaunt, forcibly turned away, muttering under her breath. If one could understand her words, they would have known she said:

"Irukandji? Where are you?"

---

Ozai looked up as he sensed the presence of another entering the chamber of the Burning Throne. It was not sound which came from her feet as she took her place on the smooth, black floor which shone like a mirror. Her head bowed down, touching her forehead to the stone and her hands out before her.

"Rise, my servant," Ozai ordered.

"News from the North," Yoji said, upon regaining her feet. "Zhao reports complete victory in the North, despite Iroh's treasonous resistance."

Ozai growled under his breath. "General Iroh is a traitor, as Azula was before him. They are cancerous influences on our Prince's mind and thoughts. They must be dealt with. I have a task for you."

"Yes, your eminence?" Yoji asked.

"Remove Azula and Iroh from their poisonous place in the Prince's mind. By whatever means you deem necessary."

Yoji bowed once more. "As you will, Fire Lord."

With that, the ghastly pale young woman departed the room, and Ozai settled back into his place on the Burning Throne. With Iroh dead, Zuko wouldn't have to deal with his pacifistic prattlings. With Azula gone, he would come back to Ozai with open arms.

"Do you really expect it would be that simple?" a voice taunted Ozai. He rose in a flash, turning along that trough of flames.

"Impossible," Ozai said.

"It was sooo~ easy for you to order my death," Azula said, leaning out from behind one of the pillars, a taunting smirk on her face "I wonder what kind of a man that makes you?"

Ozai answered by blasting that entire half of the room in brilliant flames. When he was done, he stalked over quickly, fists leading him. There was nothing there. There'd never been.

But he could have sworn he could hear Azula's contemptuous laughter echoing through the throneroom.

---

The End

of

Book One: Imbalance

---

Two nails. One, Roku and Sozin's mutual hatred, that kept them at each other's throats for decades, and kept Roku's eye away from the Spirit World when it needed him. Second, Azula. She's not an oracle. She's a Peggy Sue. She doesn't predict anything. She just fuzzily remembers something which happened last time.

I said I was rearranging the board; it starts here. Book One teased you with familiar sights and unfamiliar changes. With Book Two, the fallout from the changes starts to drift, and the story shifts with it. Zhao is in a place of extreme political influence, Ozai is relatively weak, and the Order of the White Lotus is being actively hunted down. The allies that the Gaang had now have to come from different sources, if they come at all. Add in the other stories which can come from Team Girlpower (yeah, I chouldn't come up with a better moniker for Nila's group), Book Two: Chaos will be exploring a lot of new ground.

Now, I know that some will gnash their teeth at the inclusion of firearms in their Avatar-verse. To which, I respond; it's pseudo-1850. They have relatively stable explosives and high end metallurgy. Come on, the Fire Nation has tanks, trains, and dirigibles! Somebody's going to invent the damned things. But don't worry; in a world where a man can throw a fireball without any mechanical assistence, and another can build a house with a stomp of his foot, firearms would never become more than a toy for the rich to hunt, or perhaps a mechanical curiosity. If the enemy army can call up a stone wall to block bullets, there's no point in arraying them in combat. They're too expensive, delicate, and hard to make, anyway.

I've heard it said that Iroh has a much reduced role in this story. That's intentional. The relationship which I was focusing on in Imbalance was the one between Zuko and Azula. In Chaos, Iroh becomes a bit more prominent, as he and Azula deal with each other more frequently and more intimately. The initial plan was to have Azula much more aware of what came before, but when I wrote the first chapters, I realized that having her be... incomplete... was much more useful, interesting, and entertaining. It also made it possible for the Zuko-Azula and Azula-Iroh relationships which are going to be important moving forward. Honestly, I kinda pity poor Zuko. So deluded. So in denial. He's not going to be happy next time Iroh talks to him.

Huh. I just realized that I'm probably going to have to run two stories in the Great Divide. I just hope they don't blow like the eponymous episode. Anyway. That's a wrap on Book 1. Leave any questions you have which I can reasonably answer in the review section. I'll try to answer them somehow or another.

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