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.

23. The First Earthbender

This chapter contains a scene that I've wanted to do for about two years. Now, I finally get to do it.

---

"Are those two gonna be done soon?" Toph asked peevishly from the shore, nodding toward where Sokka's sister and her counterpart the Avatar were deep in training. Sokka sighed and shrugged. "I mean, playing with your puddles is all fine and good but didn't you guys say that you were on a bit of a time crunch?"

"Don't listen to her," Katara said. "You need to train in waterbending, and I'm the best teacher you've got. Now let's see your octopus stance," Sokka raised his loose hair from his face, getting a glance at the two benders wading in the waters. Aang's stance was broad, while his sister's was narrow. Katara sighed, shaking her head. "No, you're too spread out. Let me show you," she moved to him, altering the set of his arms. "If you keep your hands toward your core, you can defend yourself better. Doesn't that feel better?"

Aang looked mildly impressed. "Yeah, it kinda does."

"Can you believe those two?" Toph asked.

"It's what they do," Sokka said boredly. "She pushes him around, then he shows her up and she storms off in a huff."

"I do not huff!" Katara complained from the waters. Sokka let his hair fall again and returned to basking in the heat. Since they crossed the equator again, they'd passed from what was winter in the north back into summer in the south. The only downside was that the heat wasn't what it would have been last week, and that would have been lesser than the week before it. There was no way around it. Even with the seasons essentially backwards compared to the 'civilized world', autumn always pushed summer aside. Winter would not be long in following it. And at the end of that winter, the world ended. Lovely.

"She's huffing, ain't she?" Toph asked.

"Don't even need to look at her," Sokka confirmed. Katara turned away from her brother and went back to training the Avatar, for what good it would do. They'd all suffered a huge setback in Summavut, obviously enough, and Aang wasn't the only one feeling a bit stomped on. In fact, Aang had it a bit easy, in that while he had lost the battle, at least he hadn't lost the girl, too.

"You're sounding a bit more mopey than I remember," Toph pointed out. "And you've been mopey for a while. This have somethin' to do with that girl you were going on about?"

"Her name was Yue, not 'that girl'," Sokka said at a snap.

"Gods, don't bite my head off. You might break a tooth on me," she said. "And I can see that I managed to hit the nerve. You do realize that chances are, you're gonna win out in the end, am I right?"

"Why?" Sokka asked.

"That's the way these things go," Toph said with a shrug.

"You might not have noticed, but things don't tend to go 'the way things go' around us," Sokka pointed out. "The way things go would have been us winning at Summavut, and... and..."

"And what?" she asked.

"You need to stop treating this like it's one of your stories," Sokka said simply. "It's not. People die, and it's not fair, and it doesn't make sense. This is real and trying to treat it like it isn't isn't just wrong, it's also sad."

Toph flinched a bit at that. "Well..."

"Not bad, you make an excellent octopus," Katara said from the water, prompting Sokka to lean up from his basking spot and see the Avatar frolicking about the stream at the center of a tentacled mass of water. Sokka chuckled at that, recalling something from his youth that Dad really wouldn't have wanted him to see.

"Something funny?" Toph asked, not even looking remotely in the right direction. And then he rolled his eyes. Of course she wasn't. She was blind. It was remarkable how easy that escaped him.

"Aang being a kid and Katara trying to be everybody's mother. Basically, we're back to business as usual," he said lazily.

"Why aren't we going?" Toph asked. "Yeah, I get that you have to get out of the saddle or you'd go nuts, but isn't Omashu just a couple hours away?"

"Appa needed rest, so we rest," Sokka said, rolling his head toward where Appa was laid out in an almost identical pose of sloth, six legs splayed out and head tipped back.

"Gotta say, your Appa doesn't have as much go in him as I'd like," Toph said.

Sokka sat up at that. "Appa's a magical flying fuzzy six legged monster almost the size of a building. That's about as much go as anything'd need."

"Yeah, but he's got no fortitude," Toph pointed out. "Eight hours in the air and he's tired. Ten and he's drop-dead exhausted. Now an Ostrich Horse might not fly, but you can run them flat out for ten hours and they'll just squawk at you 'till you gave them a big dinner, then do the same thing the next day. Hell, a Badger Mole can dig for eight days straight before bothering to sleep, through rock as hard as bronze."

"And how would you know that?" Sokka asked.

"I've got a very good source on Badger Moles," she said daintily. She got to her feet, striking the dust off of her green and yellow clothes. She'd brought more than any one of the rest of them in terms of clothes and cash, but then again, she'd had a lot more to work with from the start. And it meant that they could bee-line south without worrying about being hungry or such. "You know what? I'm thinking we might need to whip Fuzzy here into shape as well. Get some stamina under its belt... or whatever those leathery things on its belly are.

"That's called 'Appa's Belly'," Sokka helpfully pointed out.

"He's big and he's lazy," Toph declared. She gave a half turn toward Aang, who was now out of martial training and was trying quite unsuccessfully to emulate Katara's skill at healing. "Considering his master, hardly surprising."

"Oh, give the big guy some slack. How many other creatures make round trips from one side of the planet to the other and then back in a four month period?" Sokka said. Toph sighed and gave a nod, and was about to say something else, when she turned, concern plain on her face.

"Wait..." she said.

"What is it, Toph," Sokka said, getting up and reaching for where his boomerang-case – along with the rest of his clothes – was.

"Oh, no," she said.

"What!"

"We've got weapon's-grade stupid incoming, and annoying rides with them," Toph said, a glare settling onto her expression.

Sokka drooped somewhat, a confused frown on his face, and he scratched his head with his weapon. "And what's that supposed to mean?" he asked.

His answer came in the form of a song.

"Don't fall in love with the traveling girl; she'll leave you broke and broken hear~ted..."

Sokka's eyes went wide. "Guys, wake up Appa. We've gotta leave!"

"Fire Nation?" Katara asked, the glowing water from her hands dropping away back into the river.

"Worse," Toph answered.

"What could be worse than Fire Nation here?" Aang asked.

Toph gave a nod toward where a fisherman's path cut into the rocks, as the first of them, carrying an ill-tuned pipa in his hands, and wearing the most disorienting array of clashing colors, approached. "Gonzos," she answered flatly. Sokka gave her a frown, not knowing that word. "Let's just say that smelling their breath might send you on a trip you didn't plan for."

The vacant faced man brightened as he spotted the group of them. "He~y... river people!" he cheerfully exclaimed.

"What's a 'gonzo'?" Katara asked.

"Ask Sokka that in about fifteen minutes," Toph said direly.

"We're not river people," Aang pointed out.

"Then... what kinda people are ya?" the nomad asked, not standing all too steady on his feet.

"We're just... people," Aang said.

"...Far. Out," the man said in awe.

"And who are you supposed to be?" Sokka asked, pointing his boomerang at the man.

"That's a fine question, my naked friend," he answered. Toph half-turned to him.

"You're naked?" she asked.

"How could you not..." Katara began, and then kicked herself for the same reason Sokka had.

"The weather was nice," Sokka defended himself. "So, answer that 'fine question'."

"We're nomads!" the man said.

"We?" Katara asked.

"Yeah, me – I'm Chong – and my wife Lily and Moku and..." he turned around. "Oh. They're not here. That's nutty, man. Ah, well, they'll figure out where I am eventually."

"You're a nomad?" Aang asked with a smile. "I'm a nomad too!"

"Really?" the nomad asked with an excited smile of his own. "What are the chances? I'm a nomad too!"

"What," Sokka said flatly.

"And that's what a gonzo is," Toph answered concisely. Sokka palmed his head with a crisp clap of palm to forehead. "We should probably leave before they make Sokka's head explode."

"Oh, we're not into head-exploding, not since we laid off the barrel peyote. Gotta be careful with that stuff. It'll shake your head," Chong said as though passing along a secret.

"It... exploding head?" Sokka asked.

"I got better," Chong said.

Another crisp clap, another slight reddening of his forehead. Toph went over to Sokka' sister and started to physically drag her toward where Appa had only now rolled over, grunting in that confused way that it did at the doubtless bizarre smelling individual now in their midst. Sokka could tell that Appa had instantly decided against licking this stranger, since doing so would possibly give it a toxic overdose of something from the man's sweat alone. Aang, though, still looked excited.

"So where have you been?" Aang asked.

"We've been everywhere. And where we haven't been, we've heard stories about," Chong said with a far-reaching gesture, as though trying to prove a point, and not grasping that he'd just contradicted himself. Sokka and Toph managed to share an exasperated glance even despite her blindness.

"I'd love to hear about it," Aang said. And at that Toph wilted.

"He does this all the time, doesn't he?" Toph asked, upon releasing her drag of Katara.

"Pretty much," Sokka agreed.

There came a crunching through the underbrush and a woman in fine robes littered with sticks came trundling through. "Chong, I found a shortcut, only it took longer than the path. I think I broke the laws of time and space!"

"And this is my wife, Lily," Chong said. "And Moku and... Oh wait, they're not here, are they?"

Another clap of the forehead.

Lily obviously wasn't the intended owner of those clothes, because they were of two different styles and hardly well cared for. She turned through the group before her and gave a gasp. "Man, I shouldn't have drank that tea, man... I'm seeing naked people and clouds with eyes on the ground!"

"This is going to be a very long day, isn't it?" Sokka asked flatly. Toph could do nothing but nod grimly at his assessment.

---

Chapter 3

The First Earthbender

---

"You're exhausted," the girl said.

"No, I'm not," Azula answered. Then, she paused. "And you should know that."

"No, I don't mean physically," her younger self corrected. "What happens when you pop the Avatar's head like a pimple? What then? Father wanted the Avatar in chains, not his head on a pike."

"Then," Azula began, but trailed off. "Then it will be over."

"Oh, that's just lovely, isn't it?" the girl asked with rolling eyes and a singsong tone. "Kill my one chance to prove to Father that I'm worthy of his love and then sulk in a corner somewhere. Brilliant plan."

Azula paused from where she walked down that road, turning past the cliff face so etched in eldritch symbols that the symbols themselves almost formed into art. "This isn't about Father," she said.

The sarcasm fled the girl's face in a heartbeat. "Yes, it is," she answered. "And you're lying to yourself if you're saying anything different."

"I should be the authority on when I'm lying," Azula pointed out.

"You'd think that, wouldn't you?" the girl asked snidely, before heading up the road, leaving the older Azula scowling after her.

"And what's that supposed to mean?" she finally asked, catching up to the girl in two great strides.

"You think you're in control, don't you?" the girl asked, her tones once again singsong, but behind it there was a darker edge to it. "You push me out and take over, and you think I'm just going to sit here and let it happen? Well, you're dead mistaken, of course. You think you've been fighting for a long time, well, so have I. And tell me something, if you even can; when did you ever descend to the level where you would pick your nose?"

"I never..." she began, but realized that she was doing exactly that. Her hand whipped away and she glared murder at what was essentially herself, who smiled cherubically. "How did you do that?"

"Boredom and practice, in equal measure," she said flatly. "So don't get any bright ideas. If I don't like what you're doing, I will not hesitate to shut you down."

"Am I being threatened by myself?" Azula asked.

"It's the only thing you understand, isn't it?" she asked sweetly. Azula direly wished she could smack the girl. If only, if only.

Azula stomped past the girl, who would find a way to keep up, as sure as the sun set in the West. She was close, she knew that from her memories oldest of all. It'd taken her years to compile where that troublesome brat had gone in his long journey across the face of the earth in that dire, ill-omened year. In fact, the first decade of her freedom was split between Chiyo and trying to understand her enemy, as though that would make a difference at that point. Of course, she hadn't known that this opportunity would present itself, so much had slipped away by the time she could put it into use. But there were things which stood out, memories which would not be erased for time or plenty.

Meeting old friends – when she still had such – stood head and shoulders above that pack.

"Where are we even going?" the girl asked.

"Do you remember lugging a barrel of blasting jelly to a cave-mouth in the Southern Earth Kingdoms, it would have been about two years ago?" Azula asked idly.

"Vaguely. Why did you do that, anyway?" the girl asked.

"That's our destination."

The girl scoffed. "There are far easier ways to get your hands on some explosives. Walking across the length of the South Kingdoms hardly seems worth the effort."

"Oh, the explosives are just a little spice on this platter. The main course will be the Avatar, and a heaping helping of crushing rocks."

"You're not planning these things very thoroughly," the girl said outright. "That's going to be your downfall."

"Shut up... me," Azula said.

"Yeah, it sounds fairly ridiculous when you say it out loud, doesn't it?"

Azula grumbled to herself and kept walking. With any luck, she would deal with the Avatar this time before she was even due for his second appearance. She considered bragging to Mai about her epic long-term planning. And then she remembered.

Mai was long dead. That put a damper on her ego, if nothing else did.

---

He laid out a bowl before the dark skinned beauty, who glared at him as though she was certain he was going to stab her or knock her unconscious and drag her to the garrison. "I don't know if you usually eat this kind of stuff, but it's the best I can do at the moment," Shoji said. Blue eyes narrowed, and she muttered something in a language he couldn't speak. It was the tongue of the Water Tribes, obviously, but beyond that it was impenetrable. Shoji slowly leaned down and mimed drinking the stew, but she inched away as he did so.

"You know, you're not making this easy for either of us," Shoji pointed out. Her eyes flit from the stew to him, then back to the stew. He finally got what he thought she was thinking about, and took a spoon full of the food and ate of it himself. "See? Nothing wrong with it at all. Now will you please eat something?"

As he backed away from the bowl, she took it up with both hands and drank it like soup, showcasing just how hungry she'd become. He knew for a fact that she'd raided the lizard-chickens next door for eggs to sustain herself, but she was about as surly a houseguest as Shoji could think of. And it was all the more annoying because her kind were about as unwelcome on this island as Storm Kings would be. If he could get her eating regular food, he might be able to do something else. Maybe get her talking a real language?

There came a tap on the door, and the woman glared as though Fire Lord Ozai himself had burst through the threshold, flinching away as she did so. Shoji rolled his eyes and moved to the exit of his fairly tiny house. It was more than lucky that Shoji was the youngest of his family, and that the others had all long since moved away; when Shoji was a lad, there were six of them piled into this three room house near the sulphur mines. The whole island stank of eggs, outsiders would say. Not surprising. Shoji opened the door, and a girl about his age flapped closed a oiled-canvas umbrella, ducking in out of the beating rain. "On-Ji, what are you doing here?" Shoji asked.

"I thought I'd see how our guest was making due," she said, flashing a big grin at the Tribeswoman in the corner. She turned back to Shoji, and her eyes flicked slightly. "Is she...?"

"She's eating people food for a change," Shoji answered. "But she still hasn't even given me a name. Do you think she's a fugitive?"

"No," On-Ji shook her head. "She's way too young to be an Illegal Bender."

"She could be one of their kids," Shoji pointed out. On-Ji thought about that for a second, then nodded.

"Yeah, she might... but that doesn't mean we should punish her because her parents broke the law. That's just not fair," she leaned in a little closer, as though the low volume was the only thing standing in the way of that Tribeswoman eavesdropping on them. "Do you think she's a... you know... waterbender?"

"She hasn't shown it so far," Shoji said. "She's soaking wet every time she comes in from the bathroom."

"What if that's just part of her ruse?" On-Ji asked worriedly, squeezing at her hair and getting some water out of it as a side-effect.

"Oh, you're just being paranoid," Shoji said. She gave a shrug, and the two of them listened to the rain beating against the walls and roof for a long moment. In her corner, the Tribeswoman had decided to multitask, glaring at the two teenagers and eating simultaneously. "So, as long as you're here... did you bring it?"

"Well, I managed to grab something," she said, opening up the cylindrical case she carried with her. "It's kinda out of date, but it's got the whole world on it, not just the Fire Nation. I thought they didn't even make maps like that nowadays."

"They do," Shoji said with some authority. "But they tend to stay with the military. What's that about, anyway?"

"I wouldn't know," On-Ji said. "Aren't your parents in the military?"

"Yeah, Dad's a cook and Mom works with the mechanics aboard the Jianghu," Shoji said with a nod. Then, he turned to the Tribeswoman and laid the map out on the ground before her. Blue eyes flit from the map to the teenagers, then back up again. "We... are here," he said, pointing to all of them, then to the island of Spring Prince, near the middle of the Ember Archipelago. "You... are from here, right?" he said, pointing to the Tribeswoman, then to the North Pole. The Tribeswoman gave a nod, slowly, cautiously, perhaps even grasping what he was trying to get at.

"Does she even know how to talk?" On-Ji asked. "I heard they treat their women horribly up in the North."

"She says plenty," Shoji assured her. He then turned to her, pointed to her, then ran a circle 'round the map. "You... need to go where?"

The woman raised a brow, shaking her head. On-Ji caught his shoulder and pulled him away from the map for a second. "This can't be a good idea," she said. "She could be a criminal or something."

"I just said..."

"Well, she's certainly no colonist!" the girl stressed. "I mean, why are you helping her?"

"She washed up on the shores covered in bruises and dressed in rags," Shoji said. "Why wouldn't I help her?"

Shoji turned back to the woman, only to find her knelt more closely before the page, eyes locked onto it, and hands splayed out over it. "What's she..." On-Ji asked, but then the woman began to speak. Though the words were in a language he didn't speak, somehow, against all faculty that Shoji knew about, he could understand what she was saying.

Blessed Irukandji, walker of the thousand-path, speaker of the thousand-tongue;

He of Eternity.

I awoke alone, devoid of thy energy and glory.

Show me the path, so that we may be made whole again.

Show me the way, that we may become strong again.

"What was that?" On-Ji asked.

"It was a... prayer," Shoji said.

"A what? That didn't sound like any prayer to Agni I've ever heard," On-Ji said. "And how'd you even know it was a prayer? She could just be yammering like their kind do."

Shoji was about to ask her how she possibly couldn't hear those words for what they were, but as he did, there was a pop in the air, just the slightest snap as a tiny arc of electricity zapped down from one of the woman's fingertips, searing a pinprick hole into the map. On-Ji's eyes shot wide.

"NO! You burnt my map!" she said. "Agni's blood, Hide's gonna kill me when he finds out about this!"

"You really should break up with him," Shoji said staunchly. "He's a bad kid."

"But it's still his map!" she stressed. Shoji managed to get between the distressed National and the tired looking Tribeswoman. "Hey! Let me past! I need to..."

"What is that?" Shoji asked, pointing at the mark, right near the center of the largest island in the Archipelago. Grand Ember, the 'capitol' of this 'country', and so long subsumed by the Midlanders culture and power that it might as well be a province. From the look of the mark, though, it was probably right in the woods between the Two Cities. "What does that mean?" Shoji asked.

"It means she's ruined a perfectly good map," On-Ji stressed with definite worry in her voice.

The woman pointed a finger at the mark, and then looked up Shoji. "This is where you need to go?" he asked, miming the motion with his hands. She nodded. "What is at this place? Why do you need to go there?"

She pointed at that mark, and said something, but the only word which he could pick out was 'Irukandji'. He pointed more powerfully at that mark. "So you're looking for this 'Irukandji', and you'll find him there?" he asked, miming once more. She worked through his miming, and then nodded. He smiled. So he could communicate with her. With difficulty, but it was possible.

"Shoji, tell me you're not going to..." On-Ji said.

"Do you need help?" Shoji asked over the girl's warning. The Tribeswoman sighed, glancing away, and nodded. "We'd be happy to," Shoji said. On-Ji's eyes went wide at that.

"We? When did this become we?"

"Come on, school doesn't start for a few more weeks. Grand Ember's only a boat-ride away, and a safe one at this time of year. What's the harm?"

"Jee, let me think about it. Two thirteen year olds in the woods with a strange barbarian. What could possibly go wrong with that?" On-Ji asked, arms crossed 'crossed her chest. Shoji grinned.

"I knew you'd see things my way," he said. She sputtered at that.

"I was being..." she said.

"Come on! Pack your stuff! No reason to laze about!" Shoji said, overrunning her and grabbing some things he was sure he was going to need for the upcoming trip. On-Ji, left behind with the strange woman, shook her head with a sigh.

"This is a terrible idea," she said.

"This is a terrible idea," the Tribeswoman said bitterly in her own tongue, uninterpretted by the girl before her. "But It's not like I've got a better one. Where are you, Irukandji? This isn't what you promised me!"

---

Say what you would about her temper, Katara did look quite content, getting flowers braided into her hair. So content in fact, that it was starting to drive Toph and Sokka up the wall. Aang didn't mind though, as having some calm in the group was a welcome respite. They'd had enough suffering, by a long shot.

"Hey, Sokka," Aang called out from where he was laying on Appa's paw. "You've gotta hear some of the stories these guys've got."

"No~ thank you," Toph said from her place behind a rock.

"They say they're gonna show me a spectacular cave which was carved by hand before recorded history!" Aang stressed as Sokka paused, raising an eyebrow. That eyebrow spoke more to disbelief than interest, though.

"And on the way, there's a waterfall which creates a never-ending rainbow!" the fat man in the pink robe said. Moku was ever the gleeful one.

"First of all, that's impossible," Sokka said. "Rainbows only happen when the sun, you, and the water make a straight line. Second, and I realize that I'm not usually the wet blanket around here but Katara's obviously busy so I'm going to have to pick up the slack..."

"Hey!" Katara complained from one of Appa's other paws, where she was being braided and flowered by the yet-unintroduced lady who'd joined with Chong and his own brand of nomads.

"And we're right next to Omashu and if we stop blithering around like idiots we can get there in a matter of hours. That means no more side-tracks, no caves, and no rainbows!"

"I'm with Wet Blanket on this one," Toph pointed out, leaning past that rock.

"Why thank you T... Why must you do this?" Sokka asked at Toph's sarcastic grin.

"Seriously, though. I don't even know what a rainbow is," Toph said.

"You've never seen a rainbow?" Moku asked.

Toph 'stared' at him for a moment longer. "I've never seen anything."

"Whoa, man... That's heavy," Moku said.

"Sounds like the formerly-naked-guy has a bad case of destination fever," Chong said lazily. "You gotta focus less on where you're goin'."

"Right. You should focus less on the 'where', and more on the 'going'," Lily said, from where she was braiding Appa. Luckily, Appa seemed content enough being fussed over. Sokka stared at the lot of them, and Aang could swear he could see a vein starting to throb on the Tribesman's head.

"O...MA...SHU," he said loudly and deliberately.

"I hate to say it, but Sokka's right," Katara said from her otherwise blissed out place. "The sooner we get to Omashu, the sooner Aang can start learning to earthbend in safety."

"Thank you," Sokka said.

"WHOOYEAH! Headin' for Omashu!" Toph said, bounding out from behind the rock with her fists pumped in the air.

"Hey, it sounds to me like you guys are heading for Omashu," Chong noted. As one, Toph and Sokka both palmed their heads, strongly and loudly. "You know, there's an old story about a passage... right through the mountains!"

"Right, is this thing supposed to be real, or a 'legend'?" Toph asked, hand still upon forehead.

"Oh yeah, it's a real legend, alright," Chong said. Sokka and Toph 'shared a look'.

"I'm already palming my head. Where do I go from here?" the blind girl asked.

"I just shake my head and grind," Sokka said with despairing tones.

"It's as old as earthbending itself," Chong went on, then began to strum at his pipa, "Two lovers, forbidden from one another, a war divides their people; and a mountain keeps them apart..."

"Just shake and grind," Sokka said. Toph took his advice.

"...built a path to be to~gether..." he trailed off. "Yeah, I forgot the next couple of lines, but then it goes SECRET TUNNEL!"

Toph let out a 'gack' a the sudden increase in volume, and the fact that somehow the rest of the group had spontaneously and instantly burst into song.

"SECRET TU~NNEL! THROUGH THE MOUN~TAAAAINS! SECRET SECRET SECRET SECRET TUNNELLLL! YEAH!"

"I've heard bad music. Now I think I've heard the worst," Toph said.

"Look at it this way. Now you've got a zero-mark to compare them against," Sokka said. "Look, we've got better things to do and not nearly enough time to fart around in secret love-caves."

"Sokka's right. Besides," Aang said. "Appa hates going underground. And we try to do whatever makes Appa most comfortable."

Sokka's eyes went wide for a moment. "Oh, no..." he said.

"What?" Aang asked, and Sokka pointed to the north. Just as he did, the whoosh of air made Sokka's point painfully clear. Aang looked, and he gave a 'gack' of his own. It was telling that the Tribesman had spotted it at all, but then again, Sokka tried to learn everything, and meteorology was important to any sea-faring people. So each could instantly see what was coming.

"What? What is it?" Toph asked, annoyed, checking herself against that sudden gale.

"I don't think we're going to be flying," Aang said. "There's a windstorm coming."

"Coming? Are you sure it isn't here?" Toph asked.

"Oh, trust me, it's going to get worse," Aang said, squinting against the force of the oncoming air. He'd actually gotten so relaxed that he'd let the bubble of protective airbending slip, so he took a moment to put it back in place, no doubt to Sokka's chagrin.

"Appa's flown in worse," Sokka said fairly desperately. "I mean, we can get ahead of it, right? Right?"

"This is your fault somehow, isn't it?" Toph asked, her hands now hanging limply in defeat.

"Somehow, I think it is," Sokka admitted. "Fine. Secret love-cave. Let's go."

"Well, it could be worse," Katara said. All eyes not currently inebriated on something turned to her with disbelief or anger. "I mean, it's not like the Fire Nation's hiding to ambush us out here."

"Yeah, Sugarqueen's got that one," Toph admitted. With that, Appa rose from where it had squatted, and started to saunter, leaving the nomads on the ground. "You hippies aren't going to follow us, are you?"

Katara gaped for a moment. "Sugarqueen?"

"Nah," Moku said pleasantly past Katara, if only because it would have taken a tornado to dislodge him. Toph let out a sigh of what had to be relief, probably for the first time since those nomads appeared to them in the morning. Momo huddled inside Aang's Kavi, big ears tucked back, peering out with big green eyes, as they all started pushing south against the winds, heading up through a switchback in the mountains.

---

"Can you read it?" Kori asked from his place at the back of the pack.

"It's too weathered, and it's in the Southerner's tongue," Omo answered. "Whatever it said, it's gone now. It probably didn't have anything to do with us anyway."

"Of course, now that you've said that..." Kori began.

"Enough," Yoji cut him off. "We stand at a crossroads. She is doubtless heading for Omashu, and will doubtless take the shorter road. The question is, do we even attempt to stop her before she gets there?"

"I haven't seen sign nor hair of her in days," Omo muttered.

"Hey, you were the one who wanted Yoji 'fully healed' before setting out. Lightning injuries are nasty business. It's not just burns," Kori said calmly. "I also had to coax some nerves into regrowth, and that's a slow process."

"I think you were just wasting time since there was a roof over our heads," Omo said but without as much bile as one would assume. After all, it had been a very, very close call that none had seen coming. "That she controls lightning at all gives me worry."

"The Fire Lord's directive is clear and absolute," Yoji said. She glanced down the two paths. "We will not beat her to Omashu. And from the look of the storm bearing down from the southwest, we would only die trying to catch up to her on the shorter course. We are no use to our master dead. We will have to make up time another way."

"We're making a lot of assumptions here," Kori pointed out.

"The Princess is still the Princess, certain assumptions are safe," Yoji said. And with that, the three Children of the Fire Lord struck inward into the continent, away from the storm-lashed shores and into the dry heart of the East.

---

"Gods damn us! We should just hide until this goes away!" Toph shouted against the howling which screamed overhead, cutting along the gap between the defiles and making its presence quite known. The wind had grown from the gale to what Aang learned Easterners now called Hollow Cyclones, tornadoes manifesting out of clear skies, and the change in conditions from bad to worse was not the only thing on Aang's mind. A part of it was also on how completely and terribly wrong things had to be on the other side to make the physical world react like this.

"You? Hiding?" Katara joked. "I didn't think you had it in you."

"Yeah... well... Shut up!"

"Guys, I think I've found it," Sokka shouted from their fore. They turned one more corner in that maze of rubble and scree, and found a gaping wound in the mountain, plunging inward. "Doesn't look like any 'love-cave' that I've ever seen."

"Well..." Katara said, shrugging at it. Sokka looked back at her, then burst out laughing, causing the earth- and air-bender to frown at the siblings, completely left out of the joke. "Yeah, I have my moments. How do you know this is the right one?"

"Well, even if we're just out of the wind, it should be better than out here," Sokka pointed out. Appa let its agreement be heard with a deep bellow which even for its volume was almost lost in the winds. They all shuffled into that cleft, the sky bison bringing up the rear. As it reached that crevasse, though, it balked.

"It's alright, Appa, come on," Aang said. "It'll just be a little while."

Appa looked about as skeptical as a six-legged, ten tonne herbivore could. It started moving forward, but slowly. Aang almost walked past something, before stopping. Sokka turned back to him. "What're you looking at?" Sokka asked, sauntering back over to him. Aang pointed to the boss which was carved into the very stone. Sokka leaned back for a moment. "Wow. That looks pretty old."

"I'm sure it does," Toph said flatly as she kept on walking. She paused, staring as though through the roof with an expression of distaste, before shaking her head.

"What does that say?" Sokka asked.

"I'm not sure," Aang admitted. "I mean, it looks like it's part of Tianxia, but it's... It just doesn't look right."

"J...jia... Han... Kiu..." Sokka enunciated slowly, continuing until he'd hit all of the symbols, which amounted to gobbledygook.

"You're saying that wrong," she said, swinging her attention back to the Tribesman from the surrounding walls. "It means 'Those who defame this place face eternity in blackness'."

"What?" Sokka asked. "You can't... I thought you couldn't read."

"I can't. But I know Monolith-era Tianxia when I hear it mangled," She said. "Try the next line."

"What next line?" Sokka asked.

"The one buried in the floor," she said. Then, with a stomp, she dragged the dirt away from the cartouche, revealing its base. "That one."

Sokka struggled with it for a moment, where Aang could see Toph growing more and more impatient. "What's going on?" Katara asked.

"Sokka's reading to Toph."

"Oh. That's nice," she said. "Come on, Appa. There's nothing scary in here."

"Long 'O's, not short. But it says 'Trust in love and you'll find your way in the dark'," Toph said.

"I think we've found the love-cave," Sokka said with a snicker. Katara joined him. Toph shot a glance half-way toward Aang.

"Is there something goin' on here that I'm not aware of?" she asked.

"I really can't say," Aang admitted.

"Oi! Tribesman!" Toph dragged his attention away from his chuckles. "Is there any more of this?" he answered to the negative. "Shame. Finding Monolith-era stonework is pretty much a once in a lifetime-thing."

"Monolith?" Sokka asked.

"You ever wonder why the Storm Kings became the Storm Kings?" Toph asked.

"How did the Storm Kings become the Storm Kings?" Aang asked.

"Long story. The short version is that at the beginning of recorded history, they helped bring down a bunch of world-spanning earthbender despots," Toph said off hand. "That was a long time ago. My question is what's it doing here? And why didn't the folks in Omashu ever find it?"

"Perhaps they were too busy grubbing around in the dirt," a new voice came from their rear. The siblings were wide eyed with shock and fear, while Toph only showed mild confusion and consternation. Aang, though, felt something of a mixed bag of emotions, somewhere between terror and attraction. There was only one voice which sounded like that. One voice in all the world with that particular accent.

"Azula!" Katara shouted, water out of her flask and on hand in an instant.

"What the hell're you doing here, angry-chick?" Toph asked, without any of the fear of the others.

"Stay out of this, earthbender, and you don't need to get hurt," Azula said. She was standing right at the mouth of the cave they'd entered, and her hair was still ragged from the wind she'd had to trudge through. Her clothes looked like they hadn't been cleaned in a long while, and she looked like she hadn't eaten in at least a couple days.

"No offense, Azula, but you're on your own against the Avatar, a pretty skilled waterbender, and a badass earthbender," Toph gave a smirking 'thank you' at that last part, "so I'd probably rethink this whole 'berserk attack' strategy you've been running on," Sokka pointed out.

"Says the man with the plan," Azula said, walking forward. And as she did, she cast her hands to her sides, and flooding over her fists came brilliant blue flames. Aang saw Katara retreat a step when she saw that. "But, you should probably know that I've been planning too, for a rather long time."

"So... I take it you've got some sort of beef with the Princess here?" Toph asked, mildly confused.

"She keeps trying to kill us," Sokka answered non-chalantly as he pulled his boomerang from his back. "We all know this is only gonna end one way."

Her smirk was all the warning Aang got before she began to flow into attack and flame. With a bass cry of alarm, Appa smashed into the side-wall, trying to stay away from the flames, as Azula advanced. Katara didn't even seem to try to attack, focusing her whole effort onto defense, and from the look of things, she was wise to. Her waterbending only managed to parry the queer blue flames that Azula now used, not snuff them entirely. Even as Aang tried to cut the flames off with his own air- and waterbending, Sokka let fly his boomerang, which Azula dodged with such ease and simplicity that she didn't even break her attacking stride.

It was at about the fifth blast of fire that Aang had to snuff with a twirl of his glider staff that he realized how far back she was pushing them, even though she fought in three directions simultaneously, and was surrounded. Of those present, only Toph wasn't actively engaged in fighting, and that was solely because Azula had not sent any offense in her direction. "What in the hell is going on?" Toph shouted, fists before her, her eyes on the ground.

"Isn't it obvious?" Azula said in a momentary pause. "I'm going to win the War."

"Four on one isn't exactly good odds," Sokka said snidely.

"Sokka's right. You can't win this fight," Aang said.

"I don't need to," she said. "I just need you standing in the right place."

All three leaned back slightly, but Aang was the most surprised when Azula launched an attack clearly not aimed at any of them. Instead, it struck a mound of dark earth... which caught and burned. As it did, spolling away in chunks, it showed that, underneath that peat was a dark red barrel, marked with a three point flame. "Bomb!" Sokka shouted as the fires reached into the barrel.

Aang could have done many things. If he were a firebender, he could have snuffed that flame as soon as look at it. If he'd had water on hand which wasn't in Katara's desperate embrace, he could have quenched that fire. But as it was, he was an airbender first, and that meant he was predisposed to trying to solve problems with airbending. And the unfortunate thing about airbending flames is that if not done just right... it made them worse.

The barrel, which had to have been sitting in this secluded spot for years, went off with a terrible detonation and a percussive blast which lifted Aang off his feet and dashed him against the far wall, his skin feeling like it'd been torn by a hundred tiny cuts, even though he was fairly sure he wasn't in fact bleeding. A ringing sounded in his ears, and all others were muted and dull. He blinked up at Azula, who smirked darkly.

"A trap two years in the making. Good job, me," she said smugly.

"Get out of the cave!" Toph shrieked. The two Tribesmen didn't look back to her, though. "The rock is unstable! That blast'll send the whole thing crashing down!"

"But Aang...!"

"I can't lift a damned mountain!" Toph said, as the first chunk of the ceiling made a harsh introduction to the floor, startling Azula out of her smugness, and causing her to glance upward with real concern in her golden eyes. That first stone was quickly joined by many others, and the two Tribesmen were being pelted as they tried to cross the distance toward the Avatar. Appa, though, had fled the cave utterly, and when Toph reached Katara, she began to make sure the others did too. Sokka gave a sorrowful glance back at Aang, before following his sister at a dead run, mostly because the earthbender girl was strong enough to drag Katara away at such a pace. But Azula was trapped in the epicenter of that collapse.

That, Aang would not abide. He forced himself to his feet, and started to stagger, then run. As he did, a chunk of that stone struck Azula on its way to the ground, and she let out the most horrid cry of surprised pain, trying to find a path which wouldn't get her killed. Aang provided one. He bull-rushed Azula away from that death-zone, carrying her away from the spot of her death and into the darkness, as the earth rumbled ominously, and the path from the outside world vanished under thousands upon thousands of tonnes of collapsing rock.

---

Appa pawed at the stone piteously, trying to dig through so much mountain that it had practically erased the site which they'd discovered. "It's no use," Toph said. "They're trapped."

"What just happened?" Katara demanded, staring in shock at the collapse.

"I was going to tell you to be careful, and that the mountain was unstable, but did anybody ask? Nooo~o..." Toph said.

"Aang could be hurt in there! Or worse!" Katara shouted.

"Yeah, I didn't see Angry Bitch leaving a bomb under peat as a probable strategy!" Toph shouted back.

"Well, open up the mountain," Katara said, pointing at the collapse. "We need to help him before he suffocates, or before..."

"Weren't you listening, Sweetness? The mountain's unstable. It's like the whole place is begging for an excuse to collapse. I haven't see rock this tenuous since the mines outside Gaoling."

"So, you're an earthbender, right?" Katara asked. "This is what you do!"

Toph palmed her forehead, right in the slightly red mark which was left from having to put up with those singing nomads for so long. "Alright, I'm only gonna say this once. I'm a badass earthbender. I ain't the Avatar. I can move the stone to make a path into that mountain, but if I do that, the rest of the mountain comes tumbling down onto what I bend. I can't hold up a mountain. Can you? Didn't think so!"

"Guys, calm down!" Sokka said. "The mountain's too unstable here to reach Aang, am I right?"

"Darn-tootin'."

"Well, then we'll just have to find a spot that's more stable!" Sokka said. "The entire mountain can't be this fragile, or the whole thing would have crumbled away millenia ago. We find the first spot that can handle your mojo, then in we go to save Aang."

"See? That's a sensible plan," Toph said. "But if we do this, I won't be able to feel where he is. I'll need to search for him all over again."

Katara perked up at that. "Wait... you can still feel Aang through all this?" she asked.

"Barely. Just his heartbeat," Toph said, pressing a hand against the rock. "Wait... yeah, there's heartbeats in there. But other than that, nada."

"Then we'd better get moving," Sokka said. He turned to the big bison. "Can you follow us up the mountain on foot?"

Appa answered as it was wont to do.

"Then let's move! Twinkletoes ain't gonna last too long without guys like us to keep him from doing something stupid," Toph pointed out. And with that, they began to scale the mountain.

---

"She looks ridiculous," On-Ji said.

"She does not!" Shoji said. "In fact, I think she wear's Mom's stuff pretty well."

"Well, it looks kinda ridiculous on your Mom, too," On-Ji said. Shoji gave her a glance. "Right. No insulting your mother. Got it."

The Tribeswoman didn't look much as she had before, but then again, getting what was obviously a Water Tribeswoman onto the ferries between the islands would have been about as easy as a prison break at Boiling Rock. She was caked in make-up which hid her dark complexion, wore long white gloves to cover her hands, and a slightly out-sized dress which was obviously designed for a woman of less bosom and hips. Keeping the rain away was a full time job for the bonnet atop the Tribeswoman's head; Mom hadn't exactly sprung for the expensive stuff, being military support staff, and the makeup she did get wasn't water-proof.

"I can't believe you talked me into this," On-Ji said.

"You need to lighten up," Shoji said. "We're having an adventure! We're helping somebody in need! What could be better and more true in the eyes of Agni than that?"

She had to sigh at that. There were few things more in vein with the Virtues of Fire than what he was doing now. "It's just... I've never been off the island before. I'm nervous."

"You don't need to worry. It's just a trip to Grand Ember, and then we drop off... whatever her name is... and then we're on our way back home!" Shoji said excitedly. The grin widened for a moment. "And you'll have something to rub in Motoko's face when you get back."

On-Ji smiled at the thought of that. Both of them knew Motoko well enough from their previous years at school to know her to be more a caricature than a real person, someone so full of privilege and self-righteousness that she practically oozed. Having something like this to one-up her would sit very well with the girl to Shoji's left. "Yeah, that's a good point," On-Ji said. She blinked up at the rain which fell in its usual, prodigious amounts, attempting to swamp the ferry even as the smoke-stack belched grey smoke and the thrum of engines bore them along. Lucky that this ferry didn't go into the open ocean. It'd probably get smashed to rivets and scrap in an hour out there. "I've had about enough of this rain for one day. I assume you've got us all different rooms?"

"Not... quite," Shoji admitted. "I got two, so you should probably bunk with... what's-her-name."

"Me? Sleep with a barbarian in the same room?" On-Ji asked with clear and honest nervousness.

"Would you rather switch with me?" Shoji asked.

"Yeah," On-Ji instantly said. Shoji gaped at her.

"I didn't think you'd answer that quick," he said.

"Girls need to think fast," she said with a smirk, reaching out and taking the waxed paper ticket and heading inside, leaving Shoji outside in the rain with the Tribeswoman, who sat, muttering to herself as she stared over the waves. It was also lucky that she looked as she did. With her too-small dress and ample characteristics, she managed to keep attention on her cleavage and not on any other part of her.

"So... does this feel like home?" Shoji asked the woman. The woman glared up under the brim of the bonnet. "Yeesh... Sorry to ask."

The woman said something which sounded bitter, then paused. She turned to him, and poked him in the chest, saying something else, a single word. "Ow, what was that for?"

She did it again, repeating that same word.

"Shirt?" Shoji asked, tugging at his damp clothes. She rolled her eyes, then shook her head and poked him in the head, right between the eyes, repeating the word again. "Forehead?"

The woman sighed, then pointed at herself, said that word, then another, before pointing back at him. "Man? Boy?"

The woman shook her head, as it was clear he still didn't know what she was saying... but this time, as she muttered to herself, despite Shoji's utter lack of fluency in Yqanuac – to the point where he didn't even know that the Tribesman's native tongue was called Yqanuac – he could... feel... that there was meaning in them.

"Irukandji help me! I am surrounded by fools who cannot even tell me their names!" she said, staring into the clouds.

"Name? Name!" Shoji said. He pointed at himself, repeated that word she said. "Name. Shoji."

She turned to him, somewhat surprised, and then gave a sigh and a nod. She pointed back at herself, and this time, since he knew what he was listening for, he could understand the gist of what she was saying.

"My name is Huuni," she'd said. Well, this might actually work out after all, the young National thought to himself.

---

Consciousness returned as it often did, nowadays: with pain.

"Argh... damn it," she muttered to herself, trying to push herself up, and immediately regretting it and letting slip a shriek of pain as any amount of weight onto her right hand caused horrible agony to course through it. She flopped back down to her side, and a rational part of her mind noted that her hand must be broken. She tried to reach over, to confirm it, but even the attempt was almost as painful as the attempt at standing, in the other arm.

"You're alright?" a high but ragged voice asked in the blackness which was the whole world around her. Azula let out a groan, and her head beat against the ground just once, a punishment atop punishments for not only failing to kill the Avatar, but to now be in the unenviable position of being his prisoner. "Thank the gods, I thought you might be dead."

"Stay away from me," she said, trying to kick firebending toward the source of his voice. While a brilliant blue flare did paint the air, and briefly illuminate the torn and battered looking airbender, the attack was well wide, and resulted only in yet a third pain, radiating up through Azula's foot. Damn it all, she thought, what part of me isn't broken?

"Azula, calm down," the boy said, and the grinding of stone and scree told her that he was approaching closer. "I'm not going to hurt you."

"I bet you say that to all the ladies," Azula said darkly. "I know what you did."

"What he did?" her younger self asked. "What did he do?"

"He stole my fire!" Azula snapped at her other self.

"Uh... no he didn't. You just firebent. That's gotta mean something," the girl said. And Azula just glared at her.

"What was that you just said?" Aang asked. "I didn't catch that."

"Stay out of my business, Avatar. So what will it be? Ransom? Or a tidy execution?" Azula demanded.

"Wait-what? Execu... No! Nobody's dying today, or tomorrow or the day after that, not if I have anything to say about it," the boy said.

"Imprisonment, then. How darkly familiar," Azula said flatly.

"Why are you so sure that I want to hurt you?" the Avatar asked in the darkness.

"You are my enemy. You will always be the enemy of the Fire Nation in general and me in particular!" Azula snapped back.

"Wait, the Avatar's got a point," her younger self pointed out. "Why aren't we trying to convert him? Wouldn't he be more use to us on our side?"

"Never!" Azula snapped.

"Look," the Avatar said placatingly, and she could sense that he was very close to her now. Just a few more words, so she could focus in on him... then a lightning bolt would see his end. "You're hurt. I don't know how badly, and I won't be able to help you unless you let me. I don't want you to die down here. You deserve better than that."

Azula started to smirk. She had him, and when she reached forward, despite the pain of her broken collar-bone to smite him with fire, a paralyzing numbness ran through her limb. The fire which came, as Azula tried to see the obstruction, revealed that the eight year old girl Azula was holding Azula's arm in place firmly, and a humorless expression was upon her face. "Don't be an idiot," the girl said. "You'll have plenty of time to deal with him, after you're not going to make us die in a hole."

Azula had to admit, she did have a point. The Avatar watched her for a long moment, then moved slightly closer, and looked her over. It was as uncomfortable as anything Azula had ever done. Even her morally dubious escape from prison was less distasteful than this. Although admittedly a great deal more entertaining. The Avatar started to take stock of her injuries.

"It's lucky you got those funky shoes on," the boy said from her feet. "You're gonna lose some toenails and it'll be hard to walk, but at least you'll keep the toes."

"What?" Azula asked.

"Some of those rocks that fell were pretty big," the Avatar said. Then he sighed. "Monkey Feathers! Why couldn't I figure out healing sooner!"

"Just a matter of time," Azula muttered to herself. Her other half had moved back, though, and now stared at the Avatar with a gauging look. "What?"

"He seems... very earnest," the girl said.

"Of course he seems. That's what their kind do. They seem."

"Yeah... but he doesn't look like any Storm King that I've ever read about," she said.

"What's a Storm King?" Azula asked.

Her younger self stared at her, then sighed and palmed her face. "Agni's blood, I grow up to be an idiot."

"I'm going to immobilize that arm, alright?" the Avatar asked. Azula glared at him, but didn't oppose him as her good arm on her bad side was bound up, and the pain greatly reduced at her shoulder. She could still keep a flame burning, keep light in this cavern, but between her crushed toes and shattered hand, she was in no sort of fighting shape. "And probably make a splint for that hand," he paused, staring into the darkness. "Wow. I'm amazed I even remembered how to do all this. It seemed so... pointless back then."

"Back when?" Azula asked more out of boredom than any interest.

"Back when I was born," he said. "It was a hundred years ago."

"That's impossible. He's not much older than I am," the girl said.

"I'm still older than he is," Azula answered herself humorlessly.

"I just don't understand one thing. Why? Why would the Fire Nation attack the Air Nomads? We were no threat to anybody?"

"I couldn't..." Azula began, but her younger self shook her head and whispered into her ear. It wasn't words that came... it was like whole memories started to unfold in Azula's mind. Memories of a childhood never had. A mother and a father at constant loggerheads, and Azula living in a state of tension, trying to please a distant father and a critical mother both. An education she never received. "The Fire Nation does not recognize Air Nomads. You're just Storm Kings with a different tattoo and some high-minded speech about 'peace' and 'nonviolence'. We know what you're really doing. Waiting, for your chance for revenge."

"We weren't! We really weren't," the Avatar said with an almost pleading tone. "I didn't even know what the Storm King's were until I stumbled onto them a couple months ago."

"A likely story," Azula said, barely noticing that she was now alone with the Avatar, that the walls had lost those strange carvings. "Great Grandfather knew what would happen when a new Avatar was born from the womb of a Storm King. His foresight prevented another tyrant rising which would put the Monolith to shame!"

"We were just peaceful monks," the boy said, almost begging her to believe him, even as he bound her hand rigid in a splint made from the broken remnants of some sort of toy the boy kept on his person. "All I ever wanted to do was see the world, to meet interesting people. To ride the Elephant Koi at Kyoshi Island, and race Appa in the Divide Championship. I just wanted to live a normal, happy life."

"Then why did you become Avatar?" Azula asked.

"I didn't have a choice," the Avatar said sadly. "And some days... I wish I wasn't. I wish I didn't have all this power and this responsibility, and all these people's hopes, all on me. Do you know what that's like? Having these expectations around you all the time, and not knowing how to fulfill them? Not even knowing if you can?"

Azula glanced away, even as the memories started to diffuse back into murk and mist. "More than you'd know," Azula answered quietly.

"That's all I can do for you here," Aang said. "I need to get you some place safer than here."

"You're not taking me anywhere, airbender," Azula snapped.

"Please, see reason," the boy said. "This place has been... shifting... since I woke up. I don't know how much longer until another chunk of the ceiling gives way. At least let's try to find a way out of this cave?"

Azula grumbled to herself. Her younger self was right. There would be plenty of time to kill him later. "If you betray me, your death will not be swift," Azula said through gritted teeth as the teenaged Avatar so-carefully pulled Azula to her feet, painful though that was.

"You can trust me," the Avatar said solemnly. "Too many people have been hurt because of me already. I'm not going to let you join them."

She tried to take a step, but found it only a painful shuffle. The Avatar moved to her side and tucked his shoulder under her broken-handed arm, steadying her, and driving an unimaginable scowl onto the firebender's face. "I'm still going to beat you," Azula said.

"Maybe," the Avatar said. "But it won't today, and it won't be underground."

Azula couldn't help but laugh at that, at the irony of it. He gave a confused glance up to her, but shrugged and started bearing her forward, one slow step at a time, and her blue light saw them forward. As they moved, Azula finally caught sight of her younger self. "Well, you've been awfully quiet."

"He's... oddly nice," the girl said, confusion clear on her face. After that, Azula just resigned herself to grunting with pain every other step, as two clear enemies lurched forward together into the darkness.

---

"I set my fire, you build a wall; I set my fire, you build a wa~ll. Some day, that wall is gonna fall..."

The strumming of the instrument was the only sound besides the rumbling of the engines toward the back of the ship. Everybody else had long since gone to sleep, leaving Shoji and the Tribeswoman Huuni alone in the room. The Tribeswoman, though, had claimed the bed as her personal fief, and even without proper words, made it clear that she was not going to be sharing it. Shoji didn't know who was singing, but she had to be somewhere nearby, probably one of the other rooms, singing a child to sleep. The song wasn't that old, he heard, but it had a nice tune to it.

Shoji, though, had his attention more clearly on the Tribeswoman, and not just because he was any teenager's wet-dream come true. "How come I can understand you sometimes, and not others?" Shoji asked. She flicked a suspicious glance toward him. He grumbled to himself for a moment, then tried something he'd never thought he'd have to do. He spoke Yqanuac. "I know you words sometimes. Why?"

She leaned back at that, and rattled off something which Shoji could only roughly translate as 'you can speak my language?'

"Not having good. Didn't know could," Shoji labored.

She scoffed. 'You know more than most of your kind' was the gist of her answer.

"Uh... Why you in water?" Shoji asked. She scowled at him. "On sands by water?"

She looked like she was about to dismiss him and turn her attention away, but she paused, and Shoji could hear a whisper in the room, past the music, like something was trying to talk to her, but didn't count on her not being alone. "What was that?" Shoji asked, but she wasn't paying attention to him. Her eyes glazed, and she started to reach across the short expanse between the bed and the uncomfortable chair he was sitting on. Just a tap of her finger to his nose. Then, there was a tiny tingling, like when he'd been on Di Huo and ran around in wool socks for hours, then touched a door-handle. He leaned back, and she did likewise, as that tingling worked its way back from his nose, past his sinuses, then up and into his brain.

"Gon' build that wall until it's done; Gon' build that wall until it's do~one. But now you got nowhere to ru~un."

"Build that wall, and build it strong, 'cause we'll be there before too long..."

Finally, the tingling which raced across his synapses dimmed, and the music fell into a woman's melodic humming. "What was that?" Shoji asked.

"Irukandji? Was that you? Where did you go?" Huuni asked with obvious alarm. "What did you do with him, boy?"

"I didn't do anything! I... why can I understand you?" Shoji asked. Then he realized he was speaking fluent Yqanuac, without pause or moments of poor inflection. "What happened?"

"I asked Irukandji to free me from this interminable prison, and he moves to you! Give him back!" she demanded.

Shoji leaned away. "I... didn't take anything, I swear!" Shoji said.

"You are a liar, young shaman! Give him back! He promised me eternity! He promised me power and beauty!" She hissed.

"I'm... not a shaman," Shoji said. He couldn't be. Shamanism was banned by the Fire Lord.

"You are a liar and a thief! Return Irukandji or I swear I will open your neck!" she said.

"Please, I'm not lying... I don't know what just happened. Why can I..."

Huuni slumped back, bitterness on her face. "One of Irukandji's many gifts is one of holding many tongues. How could he forsake me? I did everything he asked!"

"SHUT UP IN THERE!" a man shouted from across the hall, which set off a baby's crying further down the hall. There came a sigh from that singer before, and the song began anew.

"I set my fire, you build a wall; I set my fire you build a wa~all. Some day that wall is gonna fa~all..."

"I wanted to stay like this forever. No age... no grey hairs, no wrinkles, just young and beautiful forever. Was that so much to ask?" Huuni asked.

Shoji wanted to say yes, but at the same time he did value his own continued existence. "Look... when we get wherever we're going, I'm sure we'll be able to sort this out. After all, why wouldn't this Irukandji want somebody like you?"

She smirked at that. "You have a point, young heathen. He will come back."

"Now... would you mind giving me at least a bit of the bed? This chair's really uncomfortable..." Shoji angled.

"No. You can sleep on the floor if you want to be in my presence," Huuni said, pulling the blanket over herself and turning toward the wall. Shoji stared at her for a long moment, before, in his own tongue, muttering. "What a bitch!" to himself. He slipped off of that chair and padded out of the room, down one to where On-Ji was sleeping. He rapped on the door lightly.

"Go away," a muffled voice came from within.

"It's me, Shoji. Could I come in?"

"Is it morning?" that muffled voice asked.

"No, but..."

"Come back when it's morning," she said. He banged on her door again.

"It can wait," she said one more time, then after a few seconds of pause, he could hear her snoring within. And as he grumbled to himself, the song looped behind him again. This was some adventure, all right. Now all he needed was to get dropped naked onto the shores of Azul and it'd be just perfect!

---

"We're lost, aren't we?" Azula's voice grumbled from his side.

"I... Don't think so," Aang hazarded.

"You don't think so?" she asked scathingly, before muttering in that language she did. Ever since he'd found her, her accent was almost indecipherably thick. "I'm beginning to think you're trying to get me killed."

"And what good'd that do me?" Aang asked. "Without your firebending, I'd be blind as a wolfbat."

Azula glanced down to the pittance of flame which hovered over the palm of her immobilized arm. "I hate this. This isn't the way things are supposed to be."

"I know what you mean," Aang said.

She glared at him like he'd called the sun a lantern. "How could you possibly know what I mean?"

"I know about your father," Aang said slowly. "I know what he did to you."

"My father... he just wants me to prove myself," Azula said. "But that doesn't matter. Not now."

"I think it does matter," Aang said. "I never knew my parents, but I could easily see from how Sokka and Katara were with Hakoda how much family means. You might act like it doesn't hurt, but somewhere inside, it does. It is a wound, being without family, one which aches every day."

"You know nothing about my family," Azula snapped.

"I know your brother would do anything for you," Aang pointed out. He frowned for a moment as he tried to shift the support of the very attractive firebender to a more comfortable stance. "I don't understand why you treated him like you did in Summavut. What happened between you two?"

"He took something which belonged to me," she said coldly.

"That's it?"

"That's all it required," she said. "I do not appreciate betrayal."

"But he's your brother," Aang said. "You can't hate your own brother."

"Father managed to hate Uncle well enough," Azula said with snark, but then took in a hiss of breath when her shoulder shifted just the wrong way. "My family is constantly at each other's throats. That's the way family works."

"Not a good family," Aang said.

She scowled for a moment. "Who is Hakoda supposed to be, anyway?"

"...Their father, remember?" Aang asked.

"Impossible. He died years ago," she said with a concentrating frown.

"Nope. Alive," she seemed confused at that. Aang, though, took that silence bar their shuffling to look at the walls they were passing. Not all of them were stone, cut through the world like an insane worm through an apple. Some were like this, clad in bronze reliefs. And these reliefs told a story. "Do you know what that says?"

"Do I look like I speak dead tongues?" Azula snapped.

"I was just asking," Aang said. It was probably in... what had Toph called it? Right; Monolith-era Tianxia. But the images were clear enough. A man wandering the forests of a mountain, ascending to its peak trying to find something. A woman journeying up the mountain just to see the skies. The two met, and embraced. Then, the man was falling, struck down by arrows. "You deserve better than what you've gotten."

"So you repeatedly tell me. It doesn't change what is," she answered.

"Why not?"

"Because you are my enemy. You can yammer all you like when I am helpless to forbid it, but that doesn't make it less the case. You want to destroy everything I hold dear, like you and your kind have in the past."

"My kind were peaceful monks!" Aang stressed. "I never did anything to hurt you!"

"You humiliated me. You took away my dignity!" she shouted back.

"What? How could I... I don't know what you're talking about," Aang said, shaking his head. But Azula seemed like she didn't want to expand on that point. A glance toward the brass relief showed the woman, enraged, at the peak of the mountain, obviously crying for vengeance. Then, some sort of round animal.

"Why are you so angry all the time?" Aang finally asked after a long stretch through the darkness.

"I have a right."

"Yeah, you might, but why? It can't be a good way to live."

"It was the only way I could live," she said coldly, with the weight of long years in her words. She turned toward him, an angry glance through golden eyes. "And what will you do, when this cave is done for? Deliver me in chains to your allies in... Do you even have any allies left? Or will you just let your little Tribesman kill me where I stand?"

"Nobody's going to die today," Aang stressed. "And definitely not you!"

"Everybody dies," Azula said quietly. "Even princesses; even Avatars."

Aang felt a bore in his heart. What had happened to this young woman to make her so angry, so bitter, so cynical? It had to tear at her like a barrage of arrows. "But its what we do before we die that matters," Aang said. "I believe you're a good person."

"Then you're an idiot," Azula said. "My own mother said I was a monster."

"..." Aang said.

"She was right, but it still hurt," Azula answered perhaps a bit too quickly.

"Then your mother was wrong," Aang said. "I believe in you."

She snorted at that, but didn't say anything more, because a shadow had passed over her eyes at the mention of her mother, one which Aang was fairly sure he ought not broach. The two walked, slowly, and in silence, in a tiny pool of light, along the branching paths. At her insistence, always turning left, although he had no idea why. They walked, her in a great deal of pain, he in somewhat less; for all his airbending had kept the worst of the rocks from smashing him during the cave-in, he still got a proper battering.

"Azula... I..." Aang began.

"What's that sound?" Azula asked. Aang promptly shut up. "Now it's gone."

"I don't know what you're talking about..." Aang began, then he could hear something as well. The sound of leather and movement. The clattering of keratin on stone. "Wait, I hear it."

"It's coming closer," she pointed out.

"Yeah, it is," Aang said. "Which means we should probably get out of its way."

"Where? Shall I dig out a hole with my teeth?" Azula snapped.

The clattering rose to a fervent pace, and Aang quickly pulled Azula – eliciting no small amount of angry muttering from her – to the wall clad in brass and glanced to and fro, trying to source that sound, now that he could see both directions in the darkness. Then, the clattering stopped.

"See? There was nothing to worry about," she said acerbically, but her eyes started to widen, and Aang quickly turned to see what she'd noticed. About a fraction of a second before roughly a hundred pounds of angry slammed into him at chest-level. The light guttered as Azula let out a grunt of surprise, but Aang didn't have time to worry about that, since he was now rolling along the floor, teeth slamming and gnashing just before his face, foul slather spraying onto his face as the thing tried to pull him just a few inches closer.

Finally, with a blast of airbending from his lungs, he managed to launch the thing away, whereupon it landed with a flare and utter precision on its four legs, growling at Aang with its dark red eyes. It started to circle, growling as it did, and the flaps of leathery skin which made up its wings seemed to pinion back into its flank. It was about as hideous a creature as Aang had ever seen. It was a wolfbat.

It slowly turned its attention toward Azula, and Aang jumped between them. "No... you just keep your attention on me," Aang said, his arms out and toward it. "No culling the weak today."

"Who are you calling weak?" Azula snapped.

"You have one useful foot and no unbroken arms," Aang answered over his shoulders, his eyes locked on the beast before him. "I'm pretty sure this thing knows that."

"Then it's lucky that there's just one of them," Azula said.

"That's the bad news," Aang said. He glanced to the edge of Azula's pool of light, and showed that, as the saying went, where you found wolfbat, the other was a stone's throw away. Two growling beast stared at Aang. Aang stared back. And the whole world stood still.

---

"Have you found anything yet?" Sokka asked.

Toph rolled her eyes and considered throwing something at the Tribesman. But after a moment's consideration, she opted against. After all, she'd gone through hell to get here, so alienating the rest of the Avatar's little cadre was decidedly sub-optimal. And besides, she was pretty sure she could understand his impatience. They'd lost a dear friend. And also possibly a mortal enemy.

"I can't search any faster and be sure I've found everything," she said peevishly. "Gods, it's like this entire mountain is shot through with tunnels! I can't find anywhere which'll get us more than a few dozen yards in before the whole thing becomes a card-house."

"Why did he go in?" Katara asked. "He could have run after us. It doesn't make any sense."

"You know Aang. He's not about to let people die because of him, even if it's their own fault," Sokka pointed out.

"Yeah. I'm not sure what her big deal is, anyway."

"You've met her?" Katara asked.

"Yeah, she burned my house down," Toph said off handedly.

"It's like that woman is evil incarnate!" Katara muttered.

"Eh. Wasn't as big of a problem as I'd thought it'd be," Toph said. "If she'd never showed up in Gaoling, I'd never have known my Mom was awesome. That'd just be a shame, now wouldn't it?"

"She burned your house down, and you're okay with that?" Sokka asked. Toph shrugged. "Wow. I figured you'd be the one to carry a grudge."

"She's not that bad when you get to know her," Toph pointed out, before kicking a rock and expanding the stairwell she was building as they went to make the ascent toward some more stable spot a more pleasant one. Katara stammered at that.

"Get to know her? All she ever does is try to kill us!"

"Kill you," Toph clarified. "Whatever you did to you, you might wanna 'pologize while you still can."

"I didn't do anything to her!" Katara complained.

"You wouldn't believe that to talk to her," Toph said with a chuckle. "The way she'd tell it, you'd killed her first born child or something."

"Maybe she's just crazy," Katara said.

"I haven't discounted that," Toph admitted. "Honestly, though, I thought she and I would be rivals or something. Instead she's gunning for you. That's mildly insulting, when I think about it."

"Oh, I'm so sorry to have offended," Katara said flatly.

"Eh, I'm a big girl. I can take it."

"You are not," Katara said. Toph shot a scowl in Katara's general direction. "You come up to my mouth!"

"You wanna see how big I really am?" Toph said, turning toward Katara, fists out.

Sokka, who had been watching the unfolding scene with amusement so obvious that a blind girl could 'see' it, quickly noticed the change in atmosphere and got between them. "Whoa, there. There's no reason to be fighting over who Azula hates more. Come to think of it that's possibly the most insane thing anybody's ever fought over! Come on, we're trying to rescue Aang, here! You know, the Avatar, His Glowing Badasshood who shall deliver us from the Fire Nation?"

"Brain has a point," Toph said.

"Brain?" Sokka asked.

"Would you rather take over Twinkletoes from Aang?" Toph asked with a smirk.

"Brain it is," Sokka answered blithely. Katara still 'looked' to be in something of a huff, but Toph put the waterbender out of her mind. It was hard to hear much in the distance, because of the brutality of the winds, but her other senses could still pick out Appa, trundling up the mountain after them casual as a physics-defying monster would.

Toph continued upward, stomping a sense of the rock under her feet as she went, but it just kept painting and repainting the same picture, which was both annoying since Toph had never actually meaningfully encountered a picture and it drove a deeper and deeper worry into her mind. "I don't get this," Toph muttered.

"You don't get what?" Sokka said, petting the lemur who was clinging to him against the wind.

"These tunnels, they should have collapsed a long time ago. I've only ever seen ones like this in one place before..."

"Where?"

Toph stared downward for a moment, then clapped her head right on the reddened mark which she had no idea was there. "Gods, I'm such a moron. Keung would be ashamed at my stupidity! Of course they're here!"

"What are?" Katara asked, growing more annoyed.

"I know what's made this rock unstable, and I've got a fairly good idea where we can safely breach it," Toph said. "We just need to reach the center of their den."

"Den?" Katara asked. "What are you talking about? What caused the tunnels?"

"Earthbenders," Toph answered, starting up toward a spot she guessed would be near the peak. "The oldest earthbenders on this planet."

---

Sweat pounded out of Aang's head, stinging where it ran across the abrasions on his face. The two beasts tried to circle him, but he managed to keep both of them away from their obvious target. "I know what you're thinking," Aang said. "But as long as you stay behind me, I'll keep you safe."

"Safe?" Azula asked with nervous disbelief in her voice. "You would keep safe the woman who keeps trying to murder you?"

"I'll protect anybody who needs it," he said, his head swiveling quickly between the two targets which tried to circle past him, but were stymied by his constant repositioning. Wolfbats were ugly as sin, but had the sharpest hearing of any beast in the world, Azul included, and were patient as a proper general. They knew they just had to wait Aang out. "I'm not going to let them hurt you."

"I don't need..." she began, and then caught herself. "What do you want from me?"

"Just stay there," Aang said, misunderstanding her intent to the question. "I'll find... some way to deal with these things."

Soon as said, the one which had skirted closer to Azula while Aang was speaking made a bound at her. Aang moved with all the alacrity his training had given him, creating a blob of air and hurling it at the brass relief right beside where Azula was casting the whole scene in light. She flinched from it, but just when Aang needed it to, it bounced off of the etched metal and slammed into the flapping wings of the wolfbat, sending it careening into the far wall. The other, in that moment of opening, had taken this opportunity to launch itself at Azula. Aang once again tried to pull the same trick again, but there was another thing to wolfbats which made them so dangerous. They were clever as a cutpurse. This one ducked under the bolt of air and then heaved itself directly at Aang's chest. This time, Aang had to hold the best away with his hands while twisting, getting an air-scooter crafted under him using only his feet, and locking it exactly the wrong way as he'd done when he first invented the technique, so that when he balanced atop it, he was not stationary, but instead spinning at an incredible speed. Finally, the beast lost the purchase of its cunning foreclaws, and was hurled aside. Aang dropped to the stone, somewhat dizzy for the trick.

"Whao... Stop the world, please, I think I'm gonna be sick," Aang muttered.

"They're coming back," Azula said, not quite with panic but obvious alarm. "Stop playing with them!"

"Playing with them? What do you think I'm trying to do!" Aang shouted back.

But he could see her point. Airbending wasn't doing it. And there wasn't enough water to waterbend. He needed something else. The clattering of claws against stone rose to a crescendo once again, and they bounded back into the light, flying at head level, their gaping maws, filled with needle teeth, wide.

Then, his vision of them was cut off when Azula limped in front of him. The Aang tried to reverse their place quickly, but the wolfbats reached her before he could blink, let alone react. But it didn't go how he'd thought it would. Rather than maul and descrate her, the one which hurled slammed into her only knocked her back a step, and even if it did draw a clipped yell of pain from the firebender, the shrieking yelp of pain from that wolfbat was far clearer. She pulled her unbroken hand back in, as the fire she'd bent into the thing's chest flickered, and the smell of burnt hair filled the tunnel. The wolfbat rolled along the floor for a moment, then skittered like the wounded beast it was back into the darkness. Azula took a few more clench-teethed breaths, ignoring the pain of a broken arm being unpleasantly jostled, and stared down the other beast.

"See?" the firebender asked. "That's how you run off a feral beast!"

The other one snarled at her, but began to retreat from the flames which flickered above her palm. Then, with a snort, it turned and followed its counterpart away from the site of their attempted attack. Aang turned to her. "Azula, are you out of your mind? You could have been hurt!"

It was telling that she didn't shoot him a glance at that, rather, slumping somewhat, her face a rictus of restrained agony. The flames guttered out completely from her hand, and the whole tunnel became dark.

And the darkness rumbled quietly.

"Azula... are you alright?" Aang asked.

"What do you care?" Azula asked, not igniting her fire.

"I care. Why does it matter why?" Aang said.

"You... I don't know your game. But I will," she said. She made a sound, which sounded like disbelief and alarm.

"What is it?"

"Why didn't somebody tell me it was so hard to bend with broken limbs?" Azula snapped.

"I thought it stood to reason," Aang said. "If you tie up an airbender, you've taken away about ninety percent of his airbending ability, but an earthbender's almost perfectly fine. Maybe firebending's the same way?"

"Don't speak about something you don't understand," Azula said in the blackness.

"I think I understand a bit about fire," he said. "It's got two sides. It can destroy, but it can also create. That's what the Fire Nation was for a long time. It was always the people who created. Art, music, and yeah, technology. But somewhere... somewhere in the last century or so... things changed. People forgot that what destroys can create. They forgot that fire was more than a weapon."

"Oh, spare me your prattle," Azula muttered. "I know fire better than anybody alive. I am fire. And..."

"And you're an artist, and a poet," Aang cut her off. The silence from that was probably a death glare. "You know it in your heart, even if you can't admit it to your head. You're trying to find balance in yourself."

"I don't need balance."

"Everybody does," Aang said. "And we all find it, eventually. Or else."

She shook her head. And Aang started back upon realizing he'd noted her shaking her head. He glanced to where her hands were, but they were still black against black, darkness deep. She paused, and turned toward Aang. "What is this? What are you doing?"

"I'm not doing anything," he said. Then, the both of them looked up.

Running along the corridor though the mountain, at the peak of the path, were crystals, thousands in number, which glowed with a very faint green light. It was precious little, but he could see Azula well enough not to bump into her. Azula slowly pushed herself back to her proper stance.

"I... don't remember this," she said.

"It must only light up in the dark," Aang said. He pointed to where it took one right-hand fork and forsook a left. "And I think it's pointing the way toward something."

"Ingenious," she said with begrudging tones. "Only an idiot would go in here without a torch, and those that did would lose the trail and get killed by the wildlife."

"This must lead to something. Maybe it's a way out?" Aang offered. Azula stared at him for a moment then sighed, and gestured forward. "It'll be alright. I promise."

"Just walk, Avatar," she said, weary.

---

"I don't understand him," the girl said.

"There's nothing to understand. He's the enemy," Azula answered her, as they followed the glowing green path.

"Why are you so sure of that?" the girl asked. "The way he talked about our home was... oddly complimentary for somebody who wants to destroy it. What if..."

"Don't follow that line of thought," Azula ordered.

"...Li and Lo weren't telling the truth," younger Azula answered anyway.

"There is no truth," Azula said.

"Well, that's nihilistic," the girl said with a raised brow. "And... what's that?"

"What's that?" Azula echoed her younger self, looking at what lay before them. It was the end of the line, as it were, with the glowing path terminating at a great, circular stone cap. Writing ran around the closed portal, but she couldn't understand a word of it, and not only because it was too dark by a half.

"Azula, could you give me some light?"

"No," she answered. He stared at her. Her younger self did, too.

"Do it," the girl said.

"But..."

"Agni's blood? Who's the eight year old, here?" she snapped. Azula scowled, but ignited that wisp of flame above her hand, throwing bluish light to replace the greenish light from above. It was somewhat stronger, though, so the Avatar turned back to his task.

"What does it say?" Azula said with disinterest.

"It's not as old as the other stuff at the opening," the Avatar answered. "I can actually read this. It says... Love is brightest in the dark."

"No, photoluminescent crystal is brightest in the dark," Azula retorted. He gave her a wan look. She smirked.

"Well, the one at the entrance said 'love will show the way'," the Avatar opined. "Maybe... the only way to open this thing is to... well..."

"Well what?" Azula asked.

"Kiss?" he attempted.

"What." younger Azula asked.

"Are you out of your mind?" the older Azula asked.

"Well, the legend says..."

"There are legends which say if a fish swims through the right gate, it turns into a dragon!" Azula snapped. "That doesn't make them true!"

"But..."

"There will be no kissing in this tunnel. And least of all with you," she said, turning away.

"W...would it really be that bad?" the younger Azula asked. Older Azula just leveled her younger self with a death-glare to make her opinion very, very clear.

"So you'd rather die than kiss me?" the Avatar asked, arms crossed before him.

"Well, at least it would have some dignity," she said primly. "Besides, what mechanism could possibly be activated by that frippery? No, this thing is a plug, and from the look of it, it's supposed to roll away."

"Wh... Yeah, I see what you mean," the Avatar said, wilting slightly. Azula rolled her eyes, but felt a numbing jab at her hip, where her younger self had prodded her hard with a stern look on her face.

"As much as I like psychological warfare, that was just unnecessary."

Azula turned her back to the plug and leaned against it, getting all the weight away from parts of her body which were broken, bruised, or smashed. "If you continue like that, I'm going to start doubting your commitment in this... My commitment in this," she shook her head. "Your existence annoys me."

Her younger self blew a raspberry at her, which caused Azula to pause with concern. Had she ever been that immature?

"Well... I guess we should look for something to move the plug, then," the Avatar said. Azula let out a laugh, then pushed hard with her heels, and ignoring the ache which moved through her back. At first, there was nothing. Then, the slightest sound of something grinding. When her feet started to slip, she'd managed to move it all of an inch, but it was an inch further than it had traveled in unknowable centuries. The Avatar's eyes lit up and he put his own weight into the effort of her second push, which amounted to very, very little.

"You should be ashamed, letting the crippled girl do all the pushing," Azula jibed across grit teeth.

"This thing's really heavy!"

"And you are really weak," Azula finished. Finally, with a squawk, her feet stopped supporting her, because the block lurched about a foot back and down. The Avatar instantly caught her, even though it was almost too much for his spindly form to take. She quickly pulled herself upright, glaring away from him, an odd warmth that she had no accounting for in her cheeks. A glance toward her younger self saw the girl spinning her toe on the stone, eyes on her shoes. The Avatar was likewise looking away, laughing uncomfortably.

"Well, the door's open," he pointed out the obvious. The door slowly began to roll down its track until the space beyond was revealed. But against the hopes of all in the room, it did not flood their room with light, but rather, plunged into a new blackness. "Wait... This isn't an exit."

"What was your first clue?" Azula snapped. She limped to the first of a short flight of steps, and flicked a pittance of fire out over the edge. The spark flew through the air, and landed between two great mound shapes, all carved of black stone. She knew that shape well enough. "You've managed to find us a tomb. Congratulations."

The Avatar bounded down the steps, though, and began to look over the mounds, and finally light began to bloom up in the darkness. The Avatar lifted up a torch which had been left however long ago, lit by Azula's dying spark. "At least we won't be blind down here," he offered. She rolled her eyes, and began her extremely uncomfortable descent. She looked up at the stonework, here in this tomb. There were two figures, obviously man and woman, kneeling side-by-side, their hands clasped together. She raised a brow at it. It might have been old, but it wasn't bad.

"Hold on a second... I can read this, too," the Avatar pointed out, pointing out a golden plaque which was almost black with dust. A puff of his wind and it was shining again. "Its... It says that this place was the resting place of The Lovers, those who brought earthbending to the human race. That must mean this tomb is five thousand years old!"

"Fascinating," Azula said flatly.

"It is!" he answered with enthusiasm, missing her flat affect. "Way back then, there were these two warring nations. But a man and a woman, one from each side of the mountain and of the border, they met while climbing the mountain. They fell in love, and..." he trailed off. "And then the man was slain in the ongoing war. She was so enraged that she almost destroyed all of them before she could calm her grief. Man. She must have been scary."

"So that bronzework was just retelling this?" Azula asked.

"This must be much more recent than that stuff," he said. "I can't make out the names, though. This place... I bet nobody's seen it for hundreds of years. Maybe thousands!"

"And as far as the world cares, nobody yet has," Azula said. She sighed, and continued singsong. "Ah, well, at least my body will be interred when I die of thirst. I'd hate to think of it being torn apart by wolfbats."

"We're going to be alright," the Avatar placated. "We just need to take the other door out and follow the crystals on that side. Like it says here, they build this maze to meet in secret, so it must lead from one side to the other."

"That's... actually not a bad plan," Azula had to admit.

"See, I told you he isn't an idiot," the girl beside Azula opined. Azula shot herself a death-glare.

As he began to move toward that door, though, there was a trembling, which Azula could feel quite acutely with her very-tender toes. She stopped, staring down. "Did you feel that?" Azula asked.

"Feel what?" the boy asked.

"The ground," Azula said, falling silent. After a moment, it came again, just the tiniest tremble through the stone, the most minute rattle of the pebbles on the floor. And the slightest rumble in the mountain. "What. Was. That?"

"I... I'm not sure," the Avatar admitted. "But it sounds like it's coming from... this way."

Azula watched him go, not wanting to cover any more distance than she would absolutely have to. And she was thankful she waited. Mostly because while the Avatar was roughly half way to the far wall, said wall collapsed down into dust and rubble. And something very large and very angry was making its way through that hole.

Azula didn't scream like a girl. The Avatar took up the slack in that regard. In a flash he'd retreated from the collapsing detritus and was at Azula's side at the foot of that dais, their backs to the dead. "Is that what I think it is?" Azula asked, her voice trembling slightly. It couldn't end like this. Not now.

"It's... a badgermole," the Avatar confirmed. "Stay back! I'm the Avatar and I order you to stay back!"

"Does that ever work?" Azula demanded.

"There's always a first time," he answered at a panic. The beast trundled into the chamber, its body the size of the house she'd raised her family in, it's claws each as long as the Avatar was tall, its eyes wholly grey and sightless. And its mouth was open wide in a snarl. "Leave us alone, or I will call down all of my Avatar-y might to stop you!"

"It doesn't speak Tianxia, idiot! It doesn't know you're threatening it!" Azula shouted.

"Well, what else am I supposed to do? Hope that help drops out of the ceiling and saves the day?" the Avatar asked. Azula shot him a glare.

And then, since the universe worked that way, help dropped out of the ceiling to save the day. Of course, it came in the form of a plug of stone roughly the size of an air bison – fitting because it was the platform for one – which dropped out of the darkness and slammed into the floor, the impact of it knocking Azula and the Avatar both onto their backs against the dais, throwing up detritus. Instantly, she could see a Tribesman rolling off the chunk, nursing a lower-leg injury as the light from the torch failed and returned the chamber to darkness.

"I can't see a thing in here!" that girl's voice said in the pitch blackness.

"Oh no, what a nightmare," Toph's response was mocking and sarcastic.

"Why didn't you warn me you were gonna do that?" Sokka's whining hit the blackness.

"'Cause I didn't have time to," Toph's reply came as Aang managed to get the embers of his torch to fan and cast scarlet light back through the chamber. As soon as he did, he could see her she bound off the chunk and confront the beast, which snarled at her threateningly. It slammed its paw against the stone, sending ripples like a drop into a still pool, rock surging toward the blind girl. With a growl of her own, Toph stomped the wave flat with one foot. She then pounded the ground with that foot a few more times, slowly beginning to circle the great beast, which turned its attention from the others, directly and exclusively onto her.

"What is she doing?" Azula demanded.

"What is she doing here?" that girl asked in counterpoint at Azula. Azula wanted so hard to kill her that it was physically painful that she couldn't. Added to the physical pain which caused that inability, Azula was subject to quite a state of misery.

Beifong continued the circle of the beast, until they'd gone a whole loop to their original places. Then, with a roar, the girl took an abortive charge toward the massive badgermole. The beast turned and fled into the hole it had entered the chamber in, even going so far as to seal it in its wake. Toph turned, grinning smugly, as she sauntered back toward the Tribesmen.

"What was that?" Sokka asked.

"Bull males are real territorial, especially in mating season. They assume anything they hear is a threat," she explained.

"And how did you run it off?" the Avatar asked.

"There's one thing bigger and meaner than a bull male, and that's the queen bitch," Toph stopped, and thrust both thumbs inward at herself. "Who 'da queen?"

There was long silence, punctuated by the Tribesman coughing.

"I'm not going to say it," Azula pointed out.

"Katara, Azula's hurt and she needs our help," the Avatar said instantly as soon as the spell was broken.

"No," that girl said, her arms crossed before her.

"Hey, don't be a bitch," Toph snapped. "She's pretty busted up. I can tell from here."

"Well, good," the waterbender said in a huff.

"You enjoy seeing me suffer, don't you?" Azula snapped, trying to get into the waterbender's face. "Well, you won't get the gratification of it, not today..."

"You mind explaining something to me?" Sokka said as an aside to the Avatar. The boy shrugged. "Why exactly did you feel you had to rescue the girl who keeps trying to kill us?"

"It was the right thing to do," the boy offered.

"I don't know what your problem is," Toph said, levering herself between the two women, "but whatever it is, it can wait. It's not like she's gonna be able to murder us in the condition she's in. Hell, I doubt she can bend more than a spark, am I right?"

Azula grumbled and turned away, not wanting the answer to hit the air.

"See? So there's not going to be any more corpses in this room, is that clear?" Toph demanded.

"What?" the waterbender asked. Then, she turned toward the wall, and squinted up at the writing. "Sokka... Do you recognize this?"

The Tribesman brightened at that. "Of course! It's just like that stuff at the entrance! Let's see..." And he began to recite some gobbledygook which in turn made the blind earthbender grow more excited.

"What is it?" the waterbender asked over Azula's sullen silence.

"This is the Tomb of the Founders," Toph said. "I thought this place was just a myth! This..." she gave a toe-prod to one casket, "is Shu, the Fallen Lover, and that would make her Oma, the First Earthbender. This chick was the first person to learn earthbending from the badgermoles! Gods! I'm standing in the oldest archaeological site on the planet!"

"Shu and Oma?" Sokka asked. He then swept off another bit of the great wall of text and engravings. "You've gotta be kidding me. When Oma died, her descendants built a city in her honor, and to honor the peace she enforced. And take a wild guess at what they named it."

"Omashu?" Azula hazarded flatly.

"Exactly, and..." Sokka broke off, and looked at her for a moment, then shook his head and continued facing the others. "That means that Omashu is the oldest city on this planet!"

"Well, oldest city name," Toph said. "There's been a city called Omashu for five thousand years? Huh. If only it hadn't been burned by the Storm Kings, or wiped out by the Monolith before that, it'd be even older than Ba Sing Se."

"This is fascinating," the waterbender said disingenuously, "but we're overlooking the fact that the girl who keeps trying to kill us is standing right there..."

"We can get back to that," Toph said with a dismissive wave. "Brain, could you get a rubbing of all of this? This could be huge man, HUGE!"

"I don't see why not," Sokka said, setting about copying the etchings.

"I think Katara's right. What do we do now? I mean..."

"She's not going to stop. Are you?" the waterbender asked. Azula's death-glare was all the answer the firebender felt like offering. "Well... We could bring her to Bumi in Omashu. He might know what to do."

She smirked at that. She knew what they'd find.

"Yeah, that's a great idea," the Avatar agreed. Azula muttered to herself, and gave a clipped yelp when she turned, and found herself face to nose with a ten tonne beast. She looked well to the right to catch one of its eyes, and it was scrutinizing her deeply.

"Um..." Azula said, uncomfortable around the creature.

And it answered her as it answered everything it didn't know particularly well: with a tongue upside the head.

---

It was telling how injured Azula was that nobody bound her. Sokka hadn't wanted to be cruel, and it was obvious that nobody was going to bring it up. And with the wind and the height of the bison's back working against her, Azula couldn't get far anyway. "Well, that was mildly horrifying, extremely irritating, and longer than it needed to be," he said. "But now, we finally see what it was all for."

"Yeah, a crazy old bugger in a city with an awesome mail-system," Toph agreed with a grin.

"May I present to you," Sokka said as he crested the last peak between him and a clear view, "the Earth Kingdom city of Om... my gods..."

At that, Katara ran up to Sokka's side, leaving Aang with the princess upon Appa's back. Down in the valley between peaks, they expected to see the plains, and then standing proud amidst a gully, the city of Omashu. But the plains were hardly unoccupied. They were black with smoke, and iron, and red with sooty flames. Fire that streaked across that gully toward the golden walls. "Oh, no..." Katara said.

"The Fire Nation's reached Omashu," Sokka summed up the worst of their combined fears.

---

The clash of metal against metal filled the air, and a wind from a place without wind sounded across the undefined distances, and at their heart, gold rose up from the shuddering heart of the world. An outpouring of such power and life that it could fill up the whole world in a single day, streaming blind and dumb out of the last living place in the Spirit world. And it was right there to eat its fill and more. Brilliant energy, chromatic and invisible, tried to bloom across the blackened sky and return it to its golden hue. Instead, it only found the Maw, and oblivion beyond it.

It hungered still.

With a shift, that unthinking thing which still lived in this lifeless place did as it always did when its attempts were thwarted. It railed and rebelled, and a shockwave was launched away from that stymied pillar of light, a directionless but all-encompassing counterattack, an attempt to drive off anything which tried to curtail it. But it was energy too, and the Maw ate what it could there, as well, before that which it couldn't reach rumbled as a wave across the landscape, moving without pity or thought across the span of the spirit world. The heart of the world went silent, and the winds which were no winds died.

And it hungered still.

It had no cunning but an animal's cunning, no thoughts beyond its own hunger, and its desire to be sated. To consume until it need no more. But it was alone. Even in its atrophied mind, it recognized that it was like no other thing in existence. They all had body and soul, they had form and function. It just... was. It hungered. And its hunger could not be sated here.

So it turned its eyes inward, and outward, across the impossible distances, which could amount to trillions of light-years or a plank-unit of distance, or neither, or both. The worlds it saw held no interest. It just wanted food. Things it could eat. It couldn't eat humans; it gained no sustenance from them. But its hunger grew, and perhaps in time, its hunger would destroy that memory, and it would eat souls once more. So it turned back to the closest of them, the strand which shined brightest.

And it found the meat-thing – its chosen meat-thing – which could bring it food.

Malu's eyes opened from a nightmare of darkness and terror, and she coughed, spitting out mud and worse substances onto the ground. She sat up, and instantly regretted it, because the sun was directly in her eyes, and she had a headache which threatened to torque off her skull and beat her to death with it. The stink of death was upon her, suffusing her nose and her mouth. It was all she could taste; rotting meat. Hers, though she hadn't realized it. She slowly sat up.

"Wh... where am I?" she asked. The wind in the Divide was all the answer she got. "Nila? Tzu Zi? Where are you guys?"

Silence, but for the wind, and the snarling of a famished stomach.

"What happened?" Malu asked, and then started to brush off her clothes. Then, she saw the hole. Her fingers probed it, and her eyes widened as she found the tiny circular void in the center of her kavi, right atop her heart. She then reached back, and found an even bigger torn hole at the back of her robes. But the skin under that hole? Smooth as the day she'd been born. But she hungered.

"Wait..." Malu said to herself, after trying again to spit out the fetid rot. "Borte was there, and then the soldiers were invading, and then I..."

You are not the Avatar, they had said. I met him, and he is not you, she said. But how could that be possible? Ninety nine years out of date, they said! What did it mean? But she showed them the Avatar! She showed them the power of her birthright...

Hadn't she?

Another twist in her guts, and she clutched her stomach, a rictus of pain on her face. The hunger was worse than it had ever been before. It tore at her body in waves, demanding food, food, food. Any food. All of the food. No longer the whisper at the back of her mind, it was all she could hear. "So hungry," Malu whispered to herself. Desperate grey eyes swung around the barren western of the Great Divide, trying to find something to quell that starvation pain. "There's gotta be something around here I can eat..."

And with that, Malu, smelling of the corpse she'd been for three weeks, limped along the floor of the Divide, her hunger growing stronger and stronger. More and more painful. More and more unnatural.

---

You wanted to see what became of Malu? She got shot in the heart. That ordinarily kills people, and for a while, she was fairly ordinary. Unfortunately for all involved, she also has a really unpleasant passenger rididing shotgun. One of the main perks of being a Host is that an sufficiently spirit can not only halt aging, but repair bodily damage. Ordinarily, they can't bring people back from the dead, because as soon as the Host dies, they get booted out. Imbalance doesn't care about rules. The presence of Korra in this universe proves that.

Obviously, this was a situation which having access to Toph would solve almost instantly in normal circumstances, so I had to come up with a good reason why she wasn't deus ex machina. Namely, she might be a baddass mofo who can hold Wan Shi Tong's library inside reality, but she can't lift a mountain. Also, playing Azula against Aang in a position where she can't realistically harm him was too fun for words. Only it wasn't, because there are obviously a few thousand of them where she's doing such a thing.

I lost a couple days of writing due to a bout of moderately severe illness, and a bit more to apparent waning readership, but this story demands writing, and I will write it. It's just a matter of dealing with the half-deafness and the feeling like hell to do so. Come on, folks, speak up. I like knowing that somebody out there is reading, if not enjoying, my work.

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