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.

25. The Hunt

Damn it, now I'm writing two different fics at once. This will end in flames. Well, for me at least.

---

Golden eyes scanned along the remnants left behind. Debris and detritus, left to rust in the night air. Weapons abandoned in a reckless flight. It was untidy, cowardly, and wasteful. In the days leading up, he'd passed whole columns of Fire Nationals streaming north from the battle at Omashu. Despite losing almost none, they were a broken host, and were willingly facing military justice, possibly death, over what was behind them.

The Avatar had come to Omashu, they all said. The Avatar was real, and whole. He didn't care. The Avatar could tear his father's palace down brick by brick for all it mattered to him. The one thought which kept looping like a voice out of madness in his mind was that he had to find his sister. His hair, once long and pristine, had become ragged and rough. His face was set with a permanent scowl of pressure and worry. But he didn't stop moving. He'd almost lost her trail at the mountain, but a day shifting rocks, and he followed her, all the way through that dark, wolfbat-infested cave, right to where the soldiers passed him by. No sign of her, after that, but he had other worries.

Like the fact that he hadn't eaten in almost a week.

Zuko was often the kind of person to trust his instincts. They were somewhat clouded at the moment, though, between the starvation and the fatigue. So he looked for a place to deal with those petty concerns. Uncle was right. A man couldn't think on an empty stomach, or at least, not think properly. So he continued up the thick, stone bridge which spanned the gap to the tri-point city of Omashu. As he reached the point where the bridge ended and the walls of Omashu began, he was stopped by a lone guardsman, who was bathed in the light of two flickering braziers. Zuko quickly calculated how quickly he could dispatch this thug if need be. The answer was not quite quickly enough.

"Hold on, there," the guard at the edge of bridge and wall said. "What's your business in Omashu, young man?"

"I'm just trying to get something to eat," Zuko said absently.

"Do you live out in the fields? Try one of the villages," the guardsman said.

"Tried. They didn't have anything," Zuko said. Not for any price.

"Well, the King has ordered increased guard, so I can't just let anybody in. Could be Fire Nation spies," he said with a shrug. Zuko scowled, and flicked away the hair on the left side of his face, showing the bubbling scar across his neck and ear.

"I've had my own trouble with them," he said, and not entirely dishonestly. The guard gave a wince at that.

"Yeah, you didn't get that from a waterbender, that's for sure," he glanced fertively about, then leaned in. "You know what? Let's just say that nobody came through. Anybody asks, you just didn't get spotted during last night's headcount."

"I see," Zuko said. The guard gave a stomp, and a narrow slit opened through the wall. Zuko trudged through that tiny gap, and it sealed behind him, leaving none nearby the wiser. As it was, they all had their own business to attend to. Zuko kept walking, past the earthbending-powered mail-system, past the streets which either dug into the hill or ran up it in stairwells, and followed his nose. Food, then Azula. His sister needed him, after all.

He kept telling himself that, because if he didn't, he might stop believing it.

---

Uncle and niece stared at each other across that brief distance. She hadn't the foggiest idea how he'd gotten into the room. But from the way the bed creaked under his weight, it was obvious he was no figment of her imagination.

"...what I am?" Azula asked incredulously.

"Yes," Iroh answered, running a smoothing hand over his beard. "You have done well to present yourself as powerless and dependent, but obviously the ruse has grown tiresome. I wonder what your ends were, but that is not the issue at hand."

"Why, Uncle, don't you know your own beloved niece?" Azula said, entirely too innocently.

"You are not her," Iroh said firmly. "At first, I believed that you were a host to a spirit, that you'd opened a door better left closed. But you are as much a shaman as I am the Avatar. Considering you also do not have the smell of the spirit around you, that places you as something else."

"I am the Crown Princess."

"That is true," Iroh said. "You are. Now. But not always, I assume," the girl stared at him warily, like a predator who didn't quite know the measure of another predator before it. "I pondered of many paths, many possibilities, and the one which keeps coming back into the fore is that you do not belong here. You are too old."

"Too old? Coming from you?" she asked with a laugh.

"The way you talk, the way you move when you don't think people are watching; they are the ways I move, the way I talk. You are no spirit, but something else. Something which was skilled enough at taking the place, the mask, and the voice of my niece that she could fool almost anybody. But not me. I am not fooled."

She crossed her arms before her chest. "Then indulge me in this mad little fantasy. What does that make me, then?"

"Azula," Iroh answered. She smirked. "Another Azula, from another place."

The minute twitch in her eye was the only sign she gave that he'd managed to strike the truth as squarely as a nail upon its head.

"An Azula which is older, much older. Perhaps as old as I," Iroh continued. "An Azula who had children. One of which was named Chiyo. A daughter, one quite beloved, but a relationship filled with regrets and mistakes. A daughter slain by an old enemy, igniting a vendetta long buried. You spoke with such bile of the girl waterbender, so I can only assume she is this hypothetical murderer of this hypothetical child. Does this sound familiar?"

Her face was stricken, but she summoned the nerve to pull a smirk onto her face. "Why, Uncle, I believe you're beginning to lose your wits to senility."

"If I have, it doesn't change the facts," Iroh said. "Where is she?"

"Who?"

"Azula. My Azula. The girl born of my brother, the sister to my nephew," Iroh said.

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"Do not lie to me, girl. I have confronted greater liars than you," Iroh said. She scowled. "You can deny for a year and a day, and I will still know that I am right. What do you want?"

"What do any of us want? The supremacy of Fire, our enemies cast down," she said snidely.

"And revenge," Iroh said. "You might not think it, but I've broken a few cyphers in my day. I read the journals you made when you were young. They read as prophecy or mad ramblings, but looking back, I know them for what they truly are. That was your life, wasn't it?" Iroh leaned a bit closer. "Hating your brother, despising me, clinging to Ozai for any scrap of positive attention, and in denial that he couldn't offer even that. Losing your friends. Losing your mind. You lived a life where the Fire Nation was defeated in this war, and it has burned in you for decades."

Her lips writhed at that. "It's not going to happen this time," she snapped, before falling silent again. Iroh nodded.

"Indeed, it cannot," he admitted. "Between Zhao's survival at Summavut, my brother's loss of prestige, and the Dragon of the East's survival to the present day, what happened to you cannot happen again."

"Wait..." Azula said cautiously. "You're believing this?"

"I have seen many things, Azula," Iroh said. "Some beggared my imagination. This is... new... but not so strange that I cannot accept what my mind and my eyes tell me."

"And you're going to stop me," she concluded, "so that your precious Zuko can be Fire Lord again."

"No," he answered, which struck her back a pace. "My wife, Qiao..."

"Shou," Azula corrected. He raised a brow at her. "Wait a minute..."

"It is as it sounds," Iroh admitted. "She made it very clear that I was being a bad uncle to you, not supporting you when you needed it, ignoring you for favor to your brother. I have taken her lessons to heart," he rose to his feet, and moved away from the bed, opening up a book which had been left amongst a stack of its ilk on a table. "The world you feared would come to pass cannot, not again. But to oppose somebody who has seen a version of events, that would be folly."

"What do you want from me?"

"To see what you will do," Iroh answered bluntly. "If killing that waterbender girl will give you the peace you need to release your hold on this girl, then do it. I will not stop you; I might even guide you to her path. I find myself humbled in Zuko's wisdom; family is the most important thing. You have taken away a part of mine, so I will do what I can for her, and you, until I can have her returned."

"You'd help me fight the Avatar?" she asked, but she paused, and glanced aside, as though trying to ignore something said to her.

"Somewhere inside that mind is the girl who fell ill six years ago. I will do what I can to protect her."

"And what about Zuko?" she asked with a sneer.

"I taught Zuko well enough that he will survive on his own," Iroh chuckled for a moment, warm memories clear in his head. "You have been a positive influence on him. Taught him the value of responsibility and love. Those are virtues I feared once he would never really understand. He will understand what his role in this conflict, in his life, is. It will come in time."

"I am not going to fight for you," she pointed out.

"I expect you to fight for yourself," he said.

"And what about your flower-arranging friends?" she asked. It was Iroh's turn to flinch at that. "I might not have put that down, but a few years before that woman killed my daughter, I was approached by one of your flunkies. I will not be bridled by those people, either."

"The path you walk will be your own. Must be," Iroh placated. "But you walk a dangerous path."

"Don't we always?" she asked with her smirk, the same smirk she'd always had. The same smirk she lent to her brother.

"Very well. Be patient. The time of your freedom will come," Iroh said. "You live in interesting times."

"Again," Azula added, then muttered under her breath, something which Iroh couldn't understand, but Zuko would have interpreted as "...would it have killed that zappy-bastard to let me skip puberty, though?"

---

Chapter 5

The Hunt

---

Most people knew well to stay as far away from the battle arena as possible when its events could be heard from the outside world. Buried as it was near the very center of the greatest peak of Omashu, the sound of crashing and calamity had to reach through almost three quarters of a mile of stone to reach open air. Needless to say, the slamming, the crumbling, and the cracking that echoed out into the streets of Omashu today told everybody not just to stay away from the arena, but from the Royal Palace which held it. As one moved deeper into the mountain spike, jutting above the canyon which was littered by the long eroded bones of cities thousands of years dead – Omashu each and every one of them – the sound amplified, until one could be forgiven for not really understanding how the mountain was holding together. The simple answer was that it had a lot of help.

In the arena itself, dust was settling. It was bereft of spectators, which was for the best, since the amount of shrapnel flying in every direction made for hazardous viewing. There were only two present, one the source of the shrapnel, the other the target of it. One a hulking, muscle-bound supercentenarian, the other a lithe, nimble, technical supercentenarian with the physical traits of a teenager. In that particular order, of course.

Aang panted, trying to get wind into his lungs. Even with his subconscious airbending, it was like trying to suck a brick through a straw. His every limb burned, either from the minor bludgeonings he'd received, or from simple, honest exhaustion. "I don't think... this is working..." Aang panted, leaning against a boulder which now lay embedded in the floor of the edifice.

"Well, that's odd," Bumi said, scratching at that grey sprig of beard. "This is just exactly how my earthbending teacher taught me."

"Really... and you lived?" Aang asked, somewhat unnecessarily.

"Oh, she was always of the opinion that if you couldn't survive the worst the world had to throw at you the moment you walked in the door, you probably might as well go home," Bumi said. "It took seven concussions to show her that I wasn't going away. Might not have been the quickest student, but I was definitely the most tenacious."

"Seven... concussions?" Aang asked, still trying to get his breath.

"Yes, before that she didn't even bother learning my name," Bumi said with a grin and a cackling, snorting laugh. "Some of her other students said that I took one too many blows to the head in training. Well, I've outlived every single one of them! How about that?"

As Bumi launched into another ocean of cackles and snorts, Aang finally got enough air into him that he didn't feel like passing straight out on the floor. It was lucky he'd suffered as he had the long run in the mountains, and the long days of steady combat in the North, before coming here. If he'd tried to hold this kind of pace back then, his heart would have probably quit, taken its hat, and exited his chest with a complaint in writing about unsafe working conditions. Once again, Aang paused even inside his own mind, and shook his head. Sooner or later, he was going to figure out this whole 'creating a metaphor' thing properly.

"Maybe if you tried easing me into this, I might be able to..." Aang began.

"Ease in? That's no way to earthbend," Bumi said. "Earthbending is head-on, all the time."

"Yeah, but what about people who don't have a clue how to earthbend?"

"Then they shouldn't be in an earthbending class, now should they?" Bumi asked, neatly completing the circularity without the slightest whiff of shame or irony. "Besides, from what I heard from your blind friend, you've already punched a volcano in half. This should be old hat for you."

"Like I told her, I don't know exactly how I did that," Aang said. He sighed. "You know, I think you were right when you warned me last year that you wouldn't be a good earthbending master."

"Aang, I've done many things in my life. Some of them I've even done well," Bumi said, tones comforting, if still reedy. "But I've never been much of a teacher. Never had to be. I know you'll find somebody more appropriate, somebody who can teach you what you need to know. Somebody who's mastered Neutral Jin."

"...what?" Aang asked.

"Oh, ask Momo. He knows," Bumi said, before turning on his heel and walking through a wall. Aang stared after his old friend, and shook his head lightly. There were a lot of things he dearly loved about the only person who had survived from his old life into his new one, but at the same time, there were quite a few things which drove him to distraction. And the said could probably be said about Aang himself, now that he thought about it. Since he didn't feel like thinking about it for any length of time, Aang decided to leave the arena, with one airbending-empowered bound sending him to the gaping hole where once stood a balcony which overlooked the grounds below it. He moved through that dark passage, lights only indicating that there was in fact something at the end of it. Any other sources of light had been extinguished in the maelstrom which Bumi probably fully thought educational.

As he walked, he thought about how quiet things had gotten. Not just since the end of combat – although there was a ringing in Aang's ears which wouldn't go away – but day to day as well. The whispers of the Avatars before him used to be a quiet but constant presence, only really discernible when Aang was so scared out of his wits that he'd grasp at any straws they offered. Now, there was quiet. Deep, personal, slightly worrying silence. Ever since he talked to Korra, there'd been nothing. He often wondered if he should tell Katara or Sokka about that. Well, not Katara since she'd want him to ask her things, and not Sokka, because he'd probably go off on one of those tangents about 'causality' or something. Not Toph, either, since she was practical to the point of stolidness. Yup. Just as he'd come to realize before; there was nobody he could talk to about this.

Maybe Azula.

Only she wasn't in a mood to talk to anybody.

It didn't help that they'd essentially imprisoned her for a week since Aang got here. He grumped his way out of that palace, more or less ignoring the bureaucrats who zipped around him like dragonflies above a pond. It wasn't until he'd reached the outer balcony, beckoning the staff from where he'd set it nearby, and taken the sky that the knots of frustration and worry began to come loose. Yes, Omashu was safe and he couldn't be happier for that, but even thought Bumi had his crown and Aang had a safe place to learn earthbending, he just couldn't seem to do it. It was like everything in the world was conspiring against him, to keep him from moving that stupid stupid rock!

Aang banked 'round the skies which overlooked Omashu, his eyes taking in the white, cloud-like shapes in the sky which could only be Bison. After all, for reasons he still hadn't entirely figured out, once one got as far into the East Continent as they were, the rain just stopped falling. There were at least a dozen of the things, lazily paddling the air as they moved north from their nesting grounds in the islands surrounding the South Air Temple. Even that brought a smile to Aang's tired face. No matter how hard they tried, nobody could wipe out the Air Nomads. Heck, there was even another one out there, somewhere.

A half-hour's gliding did much to settle Aang's nerves, as much as they could be settled, and he began to swoop lower, diving down through the ring which marked the peaks of the two smaller prominences of Omashu. Unlike the great pointed spire of the Palace and the rest of the city above it, these structures were built by hand centuries ago, a way of giving the expanding city of Omashu a bit more room to grow before having to stretch down into the gully or across its protective gap. Omashu was rightly considered one of the eight wonders of the artificial world, because both of those smaller structures were, in defiance of Aang's understanding of engineering itself, completely hollow. Each opened up swiftly, light pouring in in some amount into the chamber at its center. The one he'd dived into was called the Fog Garden, since it had a pond at its heart and – once again – for reasons Aang didn't understand, had a standing fog around its dim, shaded walkways in all but the brightest of noon sunlight. Aang pulled up, breaking his descent and landing amidst the vaguely swamp-like gardens in the center of the massive structure, overlooked by hundreds and hundreds of rooms which poked out in a thousand eyes of glass, watching as the sun filled the garden a few hours a day, the falling dim once more.

Aang couldn't have lived like that, having only a few hours of natural sunlight a day. Then again, he couldn't live on the tenuous inner surface of a hollow pyramid, either. But it was pleasant enough to visit. Aang tucked in his glider and sat on top of a rock, breathing in the damp air, feeling the cool of it. He closed his eyes, for a moment, calm.

Only a moment, though.

"Think fast, Twinkletoes!"

With a cry of alarm, Aang managed to vault away from the stone just as it was launched most of the way to the opening which let light spill in. Aang instantly had his staff back in hand, ready to fight somebody off, even though he knew fairly well he wouldn't have to fight the blind earthbender. Aang let out a strangled noise of shock and dismay, only to be answered by slow clapping, and braying laughter.

"You shoulda seen the look on his face!" Sokka exclaimed.

"I'll just have to enjoy it vicariously," Toph said. "You got good reflexes at least."

"You could'a killed me!"

Toph smirked, and stomped a foot on the turf, just as that boulder landed, causing the humus to quake and catch the falling stone with a great deal more comfort than it would have gotten unaided. "Eh. You'd have made the best of it," she said. "So, what brings you to this little nook of a cranny?"

Aang shook his head. "I'm beginning to think that I might never figure out earthbending."

"With an attitude like that, you definitely won't," Toph said. "Come on, Twinkletoes, you stared down a volcano! How is moving a rock that hard?"

"I had the Avatar State helping me that time and..." Aang trailed off. "What are you doing here, Sokka?"

"Oh, yeah," Sokka said. "She got a bug up her butt about that rubbing I took in Oma's cave, so she's been getting me to read it to her."

"Well, yeah," Toph said, as though it was the most obvious thing in the world. "That's probably the oldest writing left on this planet. It's probably the only writing which predates the Monolith, period!"

"On the plus side, I think I'm starting to learn a dead language," Sokka said evenly. "Bato would be proud."

"So, you're havin' trouble with earthbending, are you?" she asked, a grin on her face. "May be that the problem might be in having a terrible teacher?"

"Don't talk about Bumi that way," Aang said peevishly.

"She's not wrong," Sokka leaned in. "It takes him forever to explain anything."

"But... he's my friend," Aang said.

"Yeah, well, that might be immaterial to the important crap, namely, learning how to send rocks flying around," Toph said. "So buck up. If you can't learn anything from King Crazy, maybe I can beat some knowledge into you."

"I think I've had enough beatings for one day," Aang said warily.

"There's your first problem," Toph said, striding over to him, nudging him about. "You've got no muscle, no root, and no stamina. You want to work the rocks, you're gonna need all three."

"You don't have muscle," Aang said with confusion.

"I'd surprise ya," Toph said with a chuckle. "Now get on your feet, earthbending student! You want to play with rocks, you gotta be like a rock yourself!"

"Oh, mother..." Aang whispered, as he felt himself being passed from one brutal teacher to another.

---

The eyes opened with a snap, and a moment of confusion as he had no idea where he was. He could hear voices through the walls, but he didn't know who they belonged to. Only that he was in a hostile place. As the fog of unpleasant dreams departed slowly, that panic fled with it, and sensibility returned. He'd come to the city a little while ago, trying to find his sister. He'd lost her trail here, which meant she had to be nearby. And then, he spent his time scrounging money for food. That he awakened in this building was a pleasant change; he usually slept in a dark corner of the Shade Garden, where if it was not warm, it was at least mercifully dry.

His stomach growled, reminding him that the little he had ingested thus far was hardly enough to offset a week without. He got to his feet, checking his personal effects. They were not many. His blades had been taken from his belt, but set aside with an array of other bundles on a table near the door, likely belonging to other inhabitants. A furtive glance given to the momentarily empty room, then he grabbed what was his, pausing only a moment to peek into those other bags. Clothes, ratty and filthy, were the chief product of them. Probably the bundles of homeless people. He moved to the door, opening it a crack.

"I don't care what you say. Those swords at least'll fetch a fair coin. Maybe a whole Weight if we can find a willing buyer," a voice came from within. His eyes narrowed. So they'd intended to rob him? Then why not just leave him in the streets? And how had he not awakened? His hearing was so acute that he could hear when Azula stopped snoring, even though a bulkhead had separated them.

"I don't know. He looked like he might know how to use them," a woman's voice, gruff and raspy, said.

"The gully's deep enough. He won't wake up before the vapors wear off," the first answered.

Well, that explained the headache. He opened the door more fully and slipped out of the room. They didn't even bother locking the doors. They must have real faith in that concoction of theirs. He slipped through the kitchen, moving behind the backs of the two who stood, facing the fire. He didn't make a whisper of sound, but then again, he'd infiltrated far tougher compounds, so exfiltrating some robbers' kitchen was hardly the height of suspense.

He reached the door silently, and even deigned to take the cloak from the peg by the door before slipping out into the hallway beyond it. He shook his head, ignoring the quite timely grumble of his stomach, and pulling that dark green cloak around his shoulders. He glanced to and fro, and realized he was probably inside one of the apartments of the lesser spires. From the looks of things, and the way it was laid out, he'd just exited one of the dwellings which overlooked the gardens. Must be how they managed to spot him.

He moved out through the structure, and he could feel the approaching of the sun before he could see it. A final corner, and it filled him with a bit more energy, banishing the fatigue and muting the pain which rattled in his skull. So it was day time? Perhaps they were right to have faith in that drug. He always rose with the dawn, so the noon sun told him that it'd probably worn off hours before it should have. He took his path through the streets, surrounded by drab stone, until he spotted one of the pan-helmed guardsmen on his patrol. He paused, halting that constable in his march.

"Have you been having some problems with missing people?" he asked.

"What do you mean, civilian?" the soldier asked.

"I think the people in 205," he said, casting a thumb over his shoulder, "might have something to do with that."

"I...see. Thank you, citizen," the guard said. Zuko smirked. He didn't need to see it done to know that payback would be had. He also extracted his hidden hand from the cloak, and tossed the purse of that guardsman up in the air, gauging its weight. Not much, but certainly enough for a good meal. He didn't feel remorse for his pickpocketing. After all, he was just an Easterner.

Feeling a bit more steady as he moved, he picked his way up the stairs, to roughly a third of the way up Omashu's slope. He knew very little about this city, since he'd been too young, stubborn, and stupid back during the first and final time the ship made landfall near to it to have had the foresight to scout the city from within. Several days had gone well toward that oversight, but it shouldn't have been an oversight to begin with.

A smirk came to his lips as he spotted the place he'd been looking for. Of the five meals he'd had thus far, the one provided here was far-and-away the best of them. He ducked through the door, keeping his eyes low. Still, a perky serving girl glommed onto his arm within three steps. "Well hello there, sweetie, do you have a table you prefer?"

"Sweetie?" Zuko said with a note of confusion, but shook his head. "Just anywhere will do."

"Alright, I've got just the place for you," she said with great chipper-ness, guiding him toward a little spot which was set up for two. Zuko shook his head at the absurdity of having located an Earth Kingdom Ty Lee. "Now, you're all settled in. What can we get for you t'day?" she asked.

"Noodle soup would be nice," he said. "And quickly. I'm starving."

"For a cute guy like you, I'll put it right at the top of the list," she said, winking before sashaying her way into the kitchens. Zuko just shook his head at it all. He had much more important things to worry about. Such as how to find his sister, what he would do when he found her, and what he would do after that. Sooner or later, Azula was going to find out the truth about Ozai. When she did, it might destroy her... unless he took steps to prevent that from happening.

Thus Zuko began to consider some decidedly treasonous thoughts.

However flirtatious the girl was, she was true to her word, in that Zuko got his food long before he by rights should have. Of course, had he been a bit less obsessed with his family and more care free – more like his uncle, to be said simply – he might have explored that flirtation a bit more thoroughly. As it was, the only thing he felt a need to explore was his soup bowl.

"She needs my help," Zuko said to himself, a mantra against disaster. He ate his soup, and he hoped that he would find her before it was too late. He had to.

"Well, your loss, Brain. This place has awesome eats," a familiar voice said from the doorway which led out into the sun-bathed streets. His golden eyes went wide, spoon halted on the way to his mouth, as he beheld a dark haired girl walking backwards into the restaurant. He knew that voice... but from where? She turned, and instantly, he knew. The blind earthbender from Merchant's Pier. He turned away, covering his face in an instant, but realized a moment later how pointless that was. As long as he didn't say anything, it wasn't like she could recognize him, anyway... "Hold on a second. Is that who I think it is?"

Zuko swallowed, which caused a moment of sputtering because there was an unchewed noodle in there.

"Hello there, sweetheart," the serving girl said. "Are you looking for your parents?"

"Buzz off, mayfly," Toph said with a back-handed dismissal. "I can order my own food."

"Why, I never..." she said, before leaving in a huff. Toph, though, grinned for a moment, then walked up to the slightly raised eating area, nearer the kitchens. Zuko released a sigh of relief. That would be a complication he really couldn't deal with right now...

And he damned near fell backwards off of his stool when Toph vaulted the railing and landed on the stool opposite him, a squawk of surprise sending some soup flying. He stared at her. She didn't bother staring at anything.

"I thought I recognized you," Toph said. "You're lookin' mighty skinny there, Lee."

Zuko glanced around, but her use of his pseudonym was a hopeful sign. "Things haven't exactly turned out well for me," he said.

"Obviously," she said. She sniffed. "You smell like you've been sleeping in a pit."

"I have been," Zuko said testily.

"Good for you. Give you some character, put some hair on your chest," she said, reaching across the table and slugging him in the arm.

"What was that for?"

"It's how I show affection," Toph reminded him. "Gods, you're one clueless mark, you know that?"

"What are you doing here?" Zuko asked, his alarm still raised, but for the moment focused in enough that he could continue to eat. "Last I heard, you were trying to match some appointment in Bomei."

"Yeah... that didn't turn out as well as I'd hoped," she said uncomfortably. "I ended up getting dumped with my lame-ass father for more than a month while the rest of them got to have fun. Ah, well, that's life for you. At least I got to kick around with the Mountain King for a bit."

"The Mountain King?" Zuko asked. "I thought he was dead."

"Nope. Although he's lost two houses just in the time I've known him," she gave a chuckle at that. "So what are you doin' in Omashu? And come to think of it, where's Cool Old Guy? I thought you guys would be together."

Zuko stared into his soup. "Uncle and I had... a disagreement."

"That's a shame. He's one of the more awesome men above the age of sixty that I know of."

Zuko couldn't help but chuckle at that. "I should get back to my dinner."

"I'm confused 'bout a couple of things," Toph said, arms crossed before her. "You're pretty much heir to the throne over in the West..."

"Could you say that a bit louder? I think the Earth King didn't hear you," Zuko snapped quietly.

"Eh, these people wouldn't know what to do with ya," Toph said with a dismissive wave. "'sides, my point is valid. Why are you bumming around penniless in Omashu? Shouldn't you be... I don't know, terrorizing the Avatar, or eating fancy dinners in your pop's palace or something?"

"I have more important things to worry about," Zuko said, forcefully scooping up some noodles. "O... My father only wants me because it makes him stronger. I'd prefer to be a part of a family which actually wants me, rather than what I represent."

"How's that goin' for ya?" Toph asked.

"Not. Well," he answered angrily. "Uncle lies to me. Azula is... I don't even know."

"You're still looking for your sister?" she asked. He looked across at her like she was daft. It made it lucky that she was blind, so she wouldn't get insulted.

"I lost her up North. I've been trying to catch up to her since," Zuko said.

"Well, you've come to the right place," Toph said. Zuko's eyes bugged. "Oh, don't pull a muscle thanking me..."

"You're sure? She's alright?" Zuko asked, swiftly.

"Well, she was pretty banged up when she dropped a cave onto her own head, but Twinkletoes sorted that mess out," she chuckled for a moment, leaning in a bit. "He doesn't know how good my hearing is down that far."

"Cave in?" he asked. Then, he shook his head. "Never mind. Where is she?"

"Oh, she's up in Bumi's palace. Sugar Queen seems to have a real problem with her, and from the sounds of it, it's mutual. What'd that waterbender ever do to your sis, anyway?"

"I'm... not sure," Zuko said. He'd heard what Azula shouted outside Bomei, he knew what it meant. But how Katara could have killed a daughter of Azula's, something wholly impossible since Azula was quite definitely a virgin, beggared his imagination. "I need to see her."

"Well... shouldn't be too hard to get in," she said with a shrug. "It's not like you've personally declared war against any Earth Kingdom sovereignties while I wasn't paying attention, am I right?"

Zuko gave a laugh at that, but it was a nervous one. His sister was safe, and she was close. That was all that mattered.

---

"You're worried," Nila said, breaking the quiet, but not quite enough to broadcast to Sharif and Tzu Zi, who were traveling ahead of them, into the cool wind. Ashan gave a raised brow.

"There must be terrible obviousness if even you can see it," Ashan said. She gave a glare back to him, and he gave a chuckle and a ward against evil with his hands. "I joke, I joke."

"As I try to be... friendly, you mock me. I vividly recall why I so frequently wanted to strangle you," Nila said. "Why are you troubled? I ask mainly because you will whine until somebody picks at the wound," he gave an equivocating gesture, but before he could speak, she cut him off. "And I will not ask a second time, let alone a third, so speak or hold silence about it."

Ashan looked her way, then sighed. "I should suppose you would not. It is the sand. Or rather, the end of it."

"Is there something wrong with the sand?" Nila asked. Her eyes widened in momentary alarm. "We haven't wandered into the Rotting Expanse, I'm sure of it!"

"Oh, nothing so dire," he said with a dismissive gesture. That was for the best, because no matter how much Nila read on the subject and centuries upon centuries of explorations, there was no consensus as to what the Rotting Expanse was, or why it caused the vomiting and slow, painful death that it inevitably did to anything which tried to cross it. And most eerily, why such dead, long turned to bones in the sand, glowed with an orange light. Some still wanted to see what was at the heart of the Expanse, but even airbenders avoided it like plague victims; the killing fields extended as far up as they did out. "Rather, it is that soon, there will be no sand at all."

Nila scowled. "You're worried about leaving the desert? It is not so difficult. The ground is solid, the grasses are pleasant, and you can smell something besides sweat or perfume."

Ashan shook his head. "That is not it, either. I trust you and your firebender friend to ward such difficulties from me. No, it is that... well... I won't be able to bend anymore."

She scoffed. "You're an earthbender. What is the problem?"

"Sandbender," Ashan corrected. "How could you have forgotten? Have you struck your head? Or drunken the juices of the barrel peyote?"

"I am sober and sane, Ashan," Nila said. "Earthbenders and sandbenders almost identical, according to what I've read."

Ashan scoffed. "I'll trust what you read when it makes a difference," he said, then mulled for a moment, before raising a finger with an 'a-ha!' "I know! I'll carry 'round a great jug, filled to its brim with sand. That way, anywhere I go, I'll always have something I can bend on hand!"

Nila halted in place, staring at him. "That has to be the stupidest idea I've ever heard," she muttered in Tianxia, and then she started walking again, shaking her head and scratching at the hair which now started to hang over the back of her neck. Ashan sighed, then followed after her. After all, he needed those women right now a great deal more than they needed him.

A mile of sand behind them, a skimmer pulled to a halt. A lens met an eye. "Is that them?" Adin asked from his place on the helm of the borrowed skimmer. Both knew what would be in store for them if this one were to break; Sheik Ali was not even as forgiving as Ibtihaj al'Adin was, and her fierceness was well known. Udu nodded as he stared through that lens.

"Traveling in the day. They must have lost their wits," Udu said.

"Or they're getting ready for the Divide," Adin said. Udu stared back at him. "You have not been into that great cleft. The night is as dangerous as Re's harsh gaze, and far more watches to snatch your life in the Divide than mere heat and dehydration."

"If I wanted a lesson on Divide ecology, I would have asked one of Wahid's librarians!" Udu said, throwing an empty bottle of water at the sandbender. "Keep your head on your task, or would you rather it left your shoulders? After them, before they leave the sand!"

Adin offered a sigh, and then began to spin his arms forward again, and the skimmer began to slide along sand, after the targets of two vendettas, and one crime against the Host.

---

There was a stroke of the brush, and she erased another stretch of skin. Bit by bit, she removed, expunged, and destroyed another part of herself that she hated. It was deeply shameful, that face she had to see when she woke up in the morning. It was a face of somebody who didn't deserve to belong here. A face of somebody lesser. She took great effort to destroy that face, every single day.

"Running a bit low," Omo said, giving a glance toward her depleted jar of make-up. "You're going to have to find a replacement, unless..."

"They aren't waterproof," Yoji pointed out, quickly settling the spectacles before her eyes, before her fellow Child could see what lay behind them. "The slightest rain, and..."

"I don't see why it's so bad," Omo gave her a smile. "From what I've seen, it's smooth, flawless. Might be a bit d..."

"That is immaterial. I choose to be as I am," she said.

Omo frowned. "Why don't you just take the specs off. You'll blend in better."

"She never takes her specs off," Kori piped up flatly from where he lazed.

Omo turned to her, his green eyes questioning. She nodded. "If you wish to see me, then this is the me you shall see."

"You need to take a break, Yoji. Not everything is mortally serious," Omo pointed out. He cricked his neck a few times, then turned to face the great mound of Omashu. "Astounding that it stood the battle. I really thought it'd have broken like an egg."

"You sell your people short," Yoji said. "Say what you will about them, they are strong and... resilient."

"We are that," Omo acceded. "The trail leads within, correct?"

"I'd stake my reputation on it," Kori said from the ground.

"So you'd wager nothing?" Omo said.

"Hah hah," Kori offered sarcastically.

"Don't fight. Save it for the Princess," Yoji said. "She is here."

"So she is," Omo said, standing beside her. "You look... remarkably like one of them."

She did, in fact. The years of burying what she was born under layers of makeup had made her somewhat expert at its application. Instead of the usual bone-white she usually adopted, she'd used the last of her make-up to make herself a parchment complexion, much like those who lived in this region. Much like Omo himself, to be plain. "Part of the plan," she said.

"It's good. Then, all we'll have to do is find the Dragon, and..."

"That will be a challenge for another day," she answered him precisely.

"Oh will you two just knock it off and mount each other, and get the whole thing over with?" Kori groused. Both turned to him, eyes wide.

"Mind your tongue, you..."

"Don't be ridiculous, she'd never..."

She paused, turning to him. "I'd never what?"

Omo glanced from Kori, who was now obviously grinning, to her. He swallowed. "You'd... Nevermind."

"No, I'm interested to hear this," she said, fists on hips.

"My work here is done," Kori said, getting off the ground and striking the dust from his back. "You two love-birds can thank me tomorrow after your night of wild passion."

"There will be no wild passion," Yoji said.

Omo sighed, and leveled a look of scorn at the former Tribesman. "You are a shit-disturber."

Kori just grinned at that.

"Let's just kill the Princess before our fellow Child does something idiotic," Yoji said angrily.

---

"Bumi? Are you in here?" Aang asked, quietly rapping at the door. He opened it, and was faced with an enormous, off-green, slitted eye. That eye was encased in a head of a creature which defied classification, as odd as the man who owned it. Flopsie, as Bumi had named the beast which was nudging open the door and quickly pulling Aang into a bear-hug, had all of the strangest features of a goat-lion, a boarcupine, a bunny, and a bison, melded together with such disregard to common sense that it would make a biologist's head hurt. The end result was twelve feet and eight hundred pounds of Flopsie. Aang couldn't contain his laughter as the great beast swung him around like a doll even as he was clutched to the great thing's wall of a chest.

"Flopsie, let them go. You can't just hug anybody," Bumi's reedy voice came from inside the chamber. "Some people have boundary issues."

The beast let Aang drop to the ground before pelting over on back-canted legs and fore-limbs like a primate toward the only being in the world as strange as it was. Bumi and Flopsie were obviously a match made in the heavens. Aang bounced back up to his feet, and dusted off the grey hair and dust that the hug had coated him with. "I'm alright. Lucky Momo wasn't in there, or it might have gotten a lot more than it expected."

"See? That's what happens when you don't think things through," Bumi chastized the great... thing... and it wilted slightly at his admonishment. Bumi sighed. "Ah, well. No harm done this time."

The beast perked back up, wagging its stunted tail.

"Look," Aang said. "I need to talk to you about something."

"You want to let me down softly that you're going to find another earthbending teacher?" Bumi asked. Aang stared at him, agape. "I might be a bit distractable, but there's a reason I got to be King," he said with a snorting cackle.

"Look, I'm really sorry, but I don't think I'll be able to learn from the way you do things," Aang said. "I can't figure out how to earthbend if I'm constantly in terror for my life!"

"Well, that's strange," Bumi said. "That's how Zao taught me. But you're not an Easterner, now are you?"

"No, no I'm not," Aang said. "I'm sorry."

"Oh, don't be sorry," Bumi said, stomping the floor and manifesting a stool for Aang to sit on nearby. "I never was a very good teacher. It's why I never got 'grand' in front of my name, you know?"

"...no?"

"Oh, well, maybe you'll figure it out in time," Bumi said. "You see, you need a teacher who's good at listening, and waiting. Somebody who hears what the stone is trying to tell her. Or him. Or it! Isn't that right, Flopsie?"

"Flopsie?" Aang asked. "He's a natural earthbender?"

"No, but he knows a few things about neutral Jing."

"What is that, anyway?" Aang asked. He rolled his eyes, and added sarcastically; "And before you ask, I tried asking Momo, but he didn't feel like telling me."

"Oh, well," Bumi turned away from the desk of paperwork, and thrust a pointy finger at Aang. Aang leaned out of the way. "That was negative jing. Energy spent in defense. What I did was positive jing..."

"Energy spent in attack, yeah, I know that much," Aang pointed out impatiently. Bumi smiled. And did nothing. "What?"

"Neutral Jing," Bumi said somewhat muffledly, somehow without even moving his lips. "The energy is stored, and its action, is inaction."

"So doing nothing is neutral jing?" Aang asked. Bumi nodded eagerly.

"Indeed! Find somebody who's mastered neutral jing, and you'll find your earthbending master. Somebody besides me, of course. Or Momo. I don't think he'll be too willing after the way Flopsie talked to him."

Aang shook his head. "Even though this didn't work out, I'm glad you're alright. If I hadn't come when I did..."

"Oh, I'd have probably opened the gates," Bumi said off-handedly. Aang's eyes widened at that. "It would have saved the lives of my soldiers, after all."

"You've got a unique way of looking at things," Aang said simply.

Bumi's answer was as it usually was; cackling, snorting laugher.

---

"You'd better not be naked in there," arrived before the source of it did, which drew a scowl of annoyance from Azula, where she sat idly sketching the otherwise pristine valley where her plans to usurp her brother's throne reached their ultimate end. While it was vexing to have so little to do that she had to fall back on her artistic hobby – the one which allowed her to eat and have a roof over her head for about two decades – it was something of a relief that her skills hadn't atrophied from lack of use.

"You wouldn't be able to tell if I was," Azula said idly.

"Why do you let her talk to you like that?" the girl asked.

"Because she is an old and trusted ally," Azula said. "When the world turned against me, she did not."

"Yeah, but you said..."

"Things change, and so do people. Sometimes," Azula broke off as the wall began to slide open, and not in the spot she expected it to.

"Why would she naked?" a voice at a whisper said. "And do you need to shout?"

"If she were naked, she'd need a warning," Toph said, stomping into the room. She tilted her head aside, not bothering to look in Azula's direction, but that wasn't surprising, considering the girl didn't need her eyes to see. "We-e-ell... you're lookin' a bit more chipper this morning."

"What do you want?" Azula asked, not harshly as it would have been with most anybody else.

"I got a surprise for ya'," Toph said. "Come on, mopey-pants, get in here."

Azula rolled her eyes, and because of that, was about a moment behind noticing the wiry teenaged youth who entered after her. Eyes much like her own fell upon her, and her brother's face was overtaken with disbelief. Then relief. And then, he was moving toward her.

"Azula, thank Agni," he said in a rush. "I heard you were hur..."

Azula stiff-armed her brother straight in the chest, knocking him backwards over the bed. "Stay away from me!" Azula shouted, instantly on her feet, fists closed and bathed in flame.

"Yeah... should'a warned you. She's not too happy with what you did," Toph said.

"Did? I didn't do anything," Zuko said, getting back to his feet and rubbing at his chest where she'd shoved him. "Azula, what's wrong?"

"Don't take one more step," Azula warned.

"What are you doing?" the girl demanded, standing between Azula and her brother.

"You know what he took from me; my throne, my dignity," Azula snapped. At that, Zuko looked all the more confused.

"I haven't taken anything from you," Zuko answered carefully. It was Toph's turn to be confused, as well as Azula's. As far as the firebender knew, those little conversations she had with her other half were silent... weren't they?

"That's what that muttering means?" Toph asked. "I just thought she had terrible erudition. Not surprising, given how she talks."

"Azula, we need to go, before the guards come," Zuko said, changing tracks with a shake of his head.

"Whoa, wait a minute," Toph began.

"I'll keep you safe, I promise," Zuko had an odd sort of desperation to him. But Azula wasn't fooled.

"I don't need any help from you, besides what you've already given me. An open door," she said. "Now stand aside. I have to kill the Avatar."

"We can deal with Aang together," Zuko said.

"Now just one damned minute," Toph said. "You're doin' what now?"

"Don't drag the earthbender down with you. We both know you're just waiting for the right time to betray your people," Azula said. "Now do I have to kill you, or are you going to stand aside?"

"Azula..." Zuko said, as though he couldn't come up with anything else to say. Azula's lips twitched into a smirk, and her fists began to move, fire crossing the distance between two siblings. Zuzu's eyes shot wide, and brilliant golden flame guided her azure away. Toph bounded back, fists forward, but unsure whom to target. After all, to the earthbender's mind, Azula was rancorous but personally harmless, while Zuko was sweet, but a dope; neither one really demanded a Toph-style ass-whuppin'.

"What are you doing?" Zuko shouted.

"What I should have done a long time ago," Azula said, twisting an arc of flame around her from her heel. "Dealing with the worst traitor in this generation."

Zuko fell back, and Toph moved off to a side. "Damn it all, stop this craziness!" Toph finally shouted, having seen enough. With a spread of her hands, both siblings were hurled to opposite walls as the ground rebelled against them, and then trapped there when the wall reached out and cocooned both 'round the chest. "Zuko, what'd you do up in Summavut?"

"I don't know," Zuko exclaimed. "Let me out of this!"

"'Zula?" Toph tilted her head toward the other firebender.

"I don't need to explain myself to you."

"Since I'm the one holding y'all to the wall, I'd say you do," Toph contested.

"I don't know what happened," Zuko said. Then he looked up. "It must have been that bleeding Tribesman! The one in the burnt blue dress! She must have done something to you!"

"You don't know what you're talking about," Azula said.

"Tribesman?" Toph asked.

"Azula was just fine, until Uncle held me back, and said those... crazy things," Zuko shook his head bitterly. "By the time I found her, she'd taken the Avatar, but she was... different. Like this. So much angrier. It's like she doesn't even know who I am."

"I know you too well," Azula snapped. "Always Mother's favorite..."

"What?" Zuko asked in confusion.

"She spent all of her time with precious, fragile little Zuzu. But at least Father took the time to make me strong," Azula shouted, condemningly.

"What the hell are you talking about?" the younger Azula asked. "Mother was hovering around me all the time. It was unbelievably frustrating. I could never have any real fun!"

"I... She wasn't..." Zuko stammered.

"I know what she said about me; that I was a monster," Azula said.

"She... never said anything like that," Zuko now moved from desperate to concerned. "Azula... do you even remember Mom?"

"I remember her," Azula said coldly. She remembered the last time Azula visited her, in that shack on the island. The look on her face, constant tension, constant wariness. As if she knew that Azula was going to attack her, but the only question was when.

It didn't help the brother-sister relationship that Ursa didn't survive the journey home. Doubly cruel because Azula had nothing to do with her demise.

"So do I," the little Azula said. "Zuzu's right."

"Somethin' weird is going on here. I think we're gonna need to talk to somebody who knows spirity-crap a great deal more than I do," Toph said. "Y'all just stay put, and I'll go get the Avatar."

"Damn your useless eyes!" Azula shouted.

"Don't bring him into this," Zuko also agreed, which surprised Azula somewhat.

Toph sighed, and pointed at Azula. "Look, firecracker, if I don't bri–"

She was cut off when another section of the wall exploded inward, covering the burning beds in rubble and extinguishing the worst of the fire. Walking out of the dust and detritus came a Tribesman, but it certainly wasn't the Avatar's lackey, nor was it that girl. He seemed a bit baffled, coughing and waving the dust out of his way. A second joined him, a strapping, muscular lad in a green hanbok. The easterner looked at the Tribesman, and then at Azula.

"Well, I guess you were right. Third time really is the charm," he said.

"Validation, how sweet you are," the Tribesman answered. Azula felt her skin start to crawl. She knew those voices.

"Don't just stand there, finish this mess," the last she knew with absolute clarity. While the face didn't conform to her expectations – parchment colored skin rather than ghastly bone-white – the blackened spectacles were a clear sign that it was the very same.

"Wait a second, who the hell are you?" Toph asked, stomping her way into the center of the room, even if that did mean kicking a bed out of the way to do it.

"Stay out of our way, and you'll never have to find out," the disguised firebender said. "Kill her now."

"Oh no you don't," Toph snapped, backpeddling and hurling out a wave of stone. But the easterner was right atop that, and stopped the wave before it could bowl them over, over which that Tribesman lashed out with a crescent blade of ice, which slaced at Toph and spun her back as it struck her shoulder. She pulled back bloody fingers, rubbing them against each other. "You cut me!"

"And I'll do more than that if..." the Tribesman began amiably.

"Tribesman, just shut up and kill the Princess," the easterner said with a cuff upside the Tribesman's head. The Tribesman rolled his eyes, then turned toward Azula, who could neither move nor defend herself. And doubly so against the slashing blades of ice and the wave of fire which seared toward her.

She looked upon this as the moment she died, again, and knew bitter regret.

Somehow, though, it wasn't. Stone erupted out of the floor, breaking that onslaught. Then, the binds which held her dropped away. Instantly, Azula was pushing off of the wall, and through the crumbling stone, rolling to a stop near where Toph was now readied for whatever was coming. Lucky that she was, because she had to raise a second wall to stop a second barrage of fire, while Azula had to fry the water which lashed out with it. There was another crumbling of stone, which Azula barely noticed, because she had to move quickly to avoid a spike which erupted from the floor, obviously intended to transfix her heart.

"These guys got some teamwork," Toph said, her eyes emotionless – or rather, as emotionless as sightless orbs could be – as she continually reworked the stone of the chamber to keep the attacks of the three assassins from finding a weakness. As they moved as though of one mind, it was a constant struggle.

"Then it's a good thing we do, too," Zuko piped up, from where he'd arrived, unnoticed at Toph's and Azula's other side. Azula gave him one glance, felt a twitch in her left eye, and then, fire began to flow, electric blue and furious.

At Zuko.

The assault was so unexpected by all present that the assassins actually paused in their probing attacks, flinching as one. Zuko, though, managed to duck away with a yelp of alarm and some singed hair on the left side of his face. There was a flick of eyes between those assassins that she was too wrapped up to notice, an understanding between them. Then, their attack redoubled, all of it at her.

It was a three way fight. Azula against the Assassins, Azula against her traitor of a brother. Toph was sadly an unwanted and unintended pawn in the game, trying to keep one side from killing the other, that other from killing the third, her duties so staunch that she had no time to do anything else. Sweeping flames cleared the blind earthbender's head, and lashed out at the assassins, as she twisted and back-kicked those same brilliant blue flames at her brother, who dodged away. But never struck back.

"What the hell are you doing?" Toph roared.

"What I was born to," Azula said. And she tore her arms through a spiral. The Assassins all recoiled as one.

"HIT THE DECK!" the Tribesman screamed.

"That can't be..." Zuko managed.

She turned, the energy crackling along her body, lightning as blue and deadly as her fire, but so much more pure. A thing born of focus and drive. She smirked as she turned her fingers toward her brother. Time seemed to slow, as that lightning demanded its release. Her fingers thrust forward, to where Zuko was staring in awe and concern.

"NO!" her younger self screamed. "YOU WILL NOT HURT MY BROTHER!"

And then, Azula felt a wilting in her, an ebbing of strength, as though a veil was moving forward over what made Azula Azula, and in its place, an alien control. Her arm moved further, past one Azula's intended target, and onto another's, this one high above the heads of all present, the thick, claustrophobic ceiling which hung over them. The lightning finally slipped Azula's grasp. The power of it drove Azula back a step, twisting her arm as it left her, but its effect was staggering, blasting away a huge section of that stonework and sending a blinding fall of rock, dust, and plaster into the cell.

"You will regret doing that," Azula promised.

"And you will regret anything you do to my brother," her other half promised. Azula shook her head. She'd been in this room too long as it was. Operating purely off of spatial memory, she turned, and started running, only stopping when she reached a flat wall, quite unlike the circular edge of her prison chamber. Then, she picked a direction which felt slightly less unpleasant, and started running. First, freedom; then and only then could she deal with her, the Avatar, and those fools who thought they would murder her.

---

Their retreat from the crumbling room was anything but orderly, but since none of them were smashed flat, it was successful.

"This is going to be a major problem," Omo said, shaking the plaster dust from his hair.

"He knows us, and our goal," Yoji said, striding along that corridor of Omo's creation, letting the two teenaged Children join in her wake. "But he must not know our allegiance. So I will alter my plan. I am not his ally, I am Azula's enemy, a petty thing. Nothing that will be linked back to our master."

"But when he's Fire Lord..." Kori pointed out the obvious.

"Then I will have to make my atonements, secure in that I've done what was right for my nation," Yoji said. "As will you."

"This is starting to sound worse by the minute. Why did I agree to this again?" Kori asked.

"Because you love the Fire Nation," Omo said sarcastically.

Kori paused for a moment, staring after the striding earthbender, a scowl on his face. "You don't need to say it like that, you meat-head."

---

The song of canyon crawlers in the distance, the loud, popping grinding sound that at such distance was only a low drone echoing through the twists of the Divide, filled the night with a low ambience which soothed like a lullaby. Quite ironic considering its source. If those creatures were anything like close to the teenagers from their two respective deserts, there would be a distinct cause for concern. As it was, distance was friend to the travelers who had broke from their path north. After all, in the Divide, sight was far more important than preservation from the heat. And as they moved further through the Divide, heat would no longer be a concern.

The snoring in the camp was mostly consigned to one side of it, the side dominated by the firebender and the ones who'd traveled so far with her. It was not that Ashan didn't feel himself part of that group, rather, the he'd been raised from birth to keep his difficulties to himself, and the nights were the hardest part of the day. The firebender's Ostrich Horse was all the companionship he needed in the night, anyway. It didn't ask questions. It would be harder, now that they were just... sitting about during them. Most Si Wongi were at least partially nocturnal. It was the way things worked on the Sands.

He rolled over, looking at the gaping maw of the Great Divide. He'd never been outside the desert in his entire life. Even the feel of baked dirt under him instead of sand was a very unsettling sensation. Even while he was living on Sentinel Rock, the greater portion of his life in fact, it was always a comfort that if he moved a few hundred paces in any direction the sands would return to him, and he could feel them once more. Now, he felt alienated, out of his element, and out of his Element as well. Were he an idiotic or vindictive man, he'd have blamed Nila for it. But she wasn't to blame. That thing, that devil which hid behind Malu's eyes... that was who deserved the blame for this.

He felt that there would be no sleeping tonight, or at least not at the moment. He wormed his way out of that bag which had seemed ridiculous to carry before, but now he could see its use. The night air was not refreshing, here at the edge which demarcated Northern Earth Kingdoms from Southern, it was cutting and cold. So he shook slightly, getting his blood moving through his veins as he walked away from that 'sleeping bag', and made his way toward the Divide itself. They'd stopped here because this was the last place before they followed the Yejim Tajih down into the gulley. It's water was sweet and welcome, and an abundance which Ashan had never before seen. Nila's smirk at that had been quite smug.

"If you think that is impressive, wait until you have set your eyes upon the ocean. Your poor little head will explode," she jibed, then as they were setting up this campsite.

And perhaps it even might. He gave a glance behind him at where Nila was splayed out, lit by the fire and snoring quietly, whereas her brother and her companion were snoring with increasing volume, respectively. Contrary to what idiots like Gashuin said, she was not an unattractive girl. She took herself too seriously by a half, and had a tendency to say perfectly the wrong thing, but she had a good heart. The lengths she'd gone for her brother were only proof of that. Ashan allowed himself a smile as he looked upon her. He'd often wondered what she had seen when she suddenly left the fortress. Now, he would be living it.

He turned back, looking up at the moon overhead. It beamed down full and bright, bathing the Divide under bluish light. It was always the greatest of mysteries to Ashan why the Host never invoked a Host of the Moon. It was there, after all, staring down from the Heavens. The Sun had a Host, as did the Sands, the Snake and the Ibis, the River and the Bowl, but not the Moon. He pondered on that. This was one of the things he could so seldom do, back home. Grandfather had answers, but asking about the Host was not done. Answers were answers, no matter what question they were given for. And for the longest time, Ashan hadn't even been aware that Nila knew the Host, thinking her some heathen atheist. It was a stunning freedom, and a stunning responsibility, to be on his own. He had to think for himself, now. Grandfather's answers had fallen silent. Ashan's faith was now in no other hands but his own.

"Probably for the best," Ashan whispered. He got to his feet, staring for a moment longer at the Moon. Whatever compelled his people to exclude that body from the Heavenly Host, Ashan would find it; it would be his answer, not an answer of the Darvesh nor the Caliphs. He struck the sand from his back, and turned back toward the camp, walking slow, keeping the warmth moving through his hands by flexing them open and shut. He walked a circle, keeping the blood moving, getting the fatigue settled upon his shoulders like a cloak, as the drone of the canyon crawlers serenaded the sky.

He reached the foot of his sleeping bag when he noted something odd. The crawlers' chitinous calls had drowned out something in his mind, and he didn't think to turn, looking past the slump of rock which gave him shade from the blaze of the fire. The snoring had stopped. And when he looked past that obstruction, he could see why.

"Nila?" Ashan asked. "Sharif? Tzu Zi?"

Their bags were empty.

Ashan's hand went to his hip, clawing for the cleaver that usually hung there. However, as he was supposed to be sleeping, and sleeping with a belt of knives was just asking to filet one's own thigh, he'd doffed them for the moment. "Who goes there! Show yourself!" Ashan then shouted.

The music of the crawlers continued, but he focused his hearing past it. He had missed something, and now he was paying for it. Nila was right. He was absolutely helpless out here. He only prayed to the Host that his imperception had not doomed them as well. It almost doomed him. There was a crunch of stone underfoot, and Ashan managed to remove himself from the snare of a net which draped only over one arm, quickly extricated. There was a Si Wongi man, eyes nervous and fitful, clutching at that net with a desperation Ashan was in no position to understand.

"What did you do with Nila, and the others?" Ashan demanded.

"You'll join them soon enough," the Si Wongi said, but it was far too unnerved to be fearsome. This man was obviously no bandit – their kind were as hard as the desert made them, not squirrelly and furtive as this man was – but Ashan didn't like his intentions any more for that. Notably, since in that brief tussle, Ashan now stood on the bags of the others, he was far from his knives. He could see the butt of Nila's firearm, but he disregarded trying to use it, as at best he'd probably shoot off his own toe. So Ashan swept his arms down, then up, then surged them toward the assailant, bending with all his might.

The net-bearer flinched and recoiled.

But nothing happened. Ashan's eyes went wide, then he looked down, and remembered that they now stood on dirt and stone. The sands had been left behind, if even just a few hundred yards behind them. Ashan looked up at his attacker, and gave a nervous chuckle. "How about we just call this a draw?"

Ashan's answer came in the form of a blow to the back of the head. Ashan fell to one knee, and a second blow dropped him to the ground, letting out a low moan before becoming utterly insensate. Udu smirked down at the bastard son from where he'd gotten the drop on him. "Is there anything quite so pathetic as a sandbender on stone?" he asked, then reached down, caught the teenager's boot, and started to drag him back toward the sands. Adin, who was still holding that net, gave an incredulous shrug.

"I'm standing right here," he said with annoyance.

---

"I'm glad that you understand," Aang said. "I was worried that you might be insulted."

"Oh, I'm not insulted," Bumi said in his usual, pleased way. "I think the young lady will be a fine teacher. But I do wonder if she has the patience to put up with city living. She has been seeming somewhat skittish recently."

"Really?" Aang asked. "I hadn't noticed."

"The things you don't notice could fill a book," Bumi said with a cackle. "Ah. But seriously, though. Have you given thought on what you'd do next?"

Katara looked up from where she was re-reading her waterbending scrolls, the last teacher which existed for her to master her art. "He's right. We managed to get this far, but where do we go from here?"

"Well..." Aang scratched his head, as the waterbender set her tomes aside and joined the two old friends. "I do need a firebending master, but I don't know if Azula is going to be willing to help me. Or even if she can teach; she's not much older than I am, after all."

"Yes, and from what I hear of her, most of her efforts were directed in areas other than the martial arts," Bumi said fadingly, running fingers down the sprig of his grey beard. "Aang, I'm going to recommend something, and I want you to explore it with an open mind."

"Of course," Aang said. Katara gave a concerned glance, but Aang's laugh diffused it. "Why wouldn't I? I know you might not be the most normal in thinking, but you always have a way of seeing things differently."

"There might be..." Bumi began, but was cut off with an explosion of stone, and one of the king's guards flying out of what was a wall a moment before, his clothes smoldering. Bounding out of the hole thus created came a figure practically white, clothes and hair covered in thick plaster dust. But the broad shouldered and golden-eyed visage of Azula was hard to mistake for anything but she. Aang's eyes widened, not really understanding why she would be standing here, so close to the courtyard, and covered in dust besides.

"You!" Azula's voice clamored with rancor, and blue fire erupted from her hands, baking the dust into crystals which crumbled and fell away.

"Her!" Katara declared, flicking the water out of the flask at her hip in an instant.

"Wait!" Aang said, trying to get between the two teenaged ladies.

"Sandwich?" Bumi offered, standing back from the stand-off. Nobody took him up on his offer.

"Finally, just the two of us," Azula said.

"Four," Aang corrected.

"Make that nine," Toph shouted, bursting through the wall Azula had holed a moment before. "Wait a second. What'd you do that to that poor bastard for?"

"He was in my way," Azula said. "And so are these two."

Azula exploded into motion, fire searing out from her fists in brilliant, electric blue whips which crossed the great sweeps of the room and had to be pushed back – only with great difficulty – by the combined waterbending power of the two in the room. But Azula was advancing, and the two whips from her hands were joined by a sporadic third, snapping from her heel as she felt the opportunity arise. It felt a lot longer than it lasted, so furious was the onslaught, but it was checked for a moment when Toph made the slightest of motions, and the floor shifted out from under Azula, causing her eyes to shoot wide, and then her body to fall gracelessly to the stone.

"Pickin' fights with the assassins is all fair and good, but..." Toph began.

"Assassins?" Aang asked, wiping the sweat from his brow.

"Azula!" a familiar scream sounded through that hole, and Aang felt his world get a little bit stranger as Prince Zuko hurled himself into the room, moving toward his sister. "Are you alright?"

She answered him by throwing a ball of fire at his face, so Aang had to assume 'no'. Azula spun her way to her feet, generating a cyclone of fire to keep all around her at bay, until she was on her feet. There was a moment of pristine tension and confusion. Zuko just looked like he wanted to run to his sister, to help her, but the glances she shot in his direction were far too hateful. Katara seemed fine with how this worked out, but Toph was shaking her head in dismay.

"Can we do this some other time when there aren't..." Toph began, only to be cut off, her eyes shooting wide, and then kicking forward. The stone erupted near Azula, and a meaty fist grabbed her throat, attached to an equally meaty arm, terminating with a meaty, unadorned, unaligned, teenaged earthbender. Even as Aang's hands began to sweep the air into play, Azula moved faster, slamming both fists into the man's chest and letting a detonation carry him past the Avatar and the King, rolling to a stop at the top of the stairs to the courtyard. Instantly, the meaty earthbender was replaced by a stocky built Tribesman, from out the same hole. This one latched a hand onto Azula's wrist, and the firebender let out a horrendous cry of pain, her eyes rolling back into her head.

"I got 'er!" he shouted.

"Not a chance!" Toph answered, as that ripple finally reached the point the first had vacated, and hurled a cubic foot of flooring straight into that Tribesman at remarkable velocity. The crunch was unsettling, and the landing every-bit-as-much-so. "Who the hell are those guys?"

The answer came in the form of a jet of flame, scarlet and relentless, searing out of the hole which Azula had first created. It was Zuko who parried that fire aside, and it bathed the decorations of Bumi's royal home in flames. Much was sparked ablaze. Much food was burnt. Aang didn't have to guess twice about what concerned Bumi more. But still, the ancient king remained standing idly by, eating a sandwich, as a donnybrook erupted in his foyer. Finally, the flames ended, and a figure dropped from the hole, likewise dusted with plaster, but the spectacles on her face were black rather than white.

"Get out of my way, firebender, this is between me and the Princess," the girl shouted, and unnoticed beside the Avatar, Katara flinched.

"What do you want with my sister?" Zuko demanded.

"That's none of your concern," the filthy firebender answered.

"You can't have her," Aang declared, whipping his staff around. "She's under my protection!"

The girl swung her head toward him, and a sarcastic smirk came to her entirely-too-red lips. In its way, it was somehow familiar. "The Avatar? Now that just isn't fair. Didn't anybody ever tell you to pick on people your own size?"

"I don't need anybody to protect me!" Azula declared, and launched three attacks, at three different targets. The first was at the girl who was trying to kill her, obviously. The second was at Aang himself, which was mildly baffling. The third was at Zuko, which confused the hell out of him. While the girl launched into a counterattack the moment the first wave of azure fire was dodged, Zuko and Aang both contented themselves on blocking the attack, and nothing more. Each had their own reason for not wanting to hurt her.

"Alright, that's enough of this," Bumi said with mild annoyance. He then twisted his arms sidewise, and to Aang's great shock, the floor at the far side of the room started to raise. Then, as the sense of balance which was vital to an airbender's art kicked in, he noticed that it was not just the floor rising, it was the floor tipping. The entire room accelerated, until everybody that wasn't an earthbender was sliding down the floor out of the great doorway, and spilling out onto the patio which overlooked the courtyard. Aang managed to grab Katara and bound through that opening first, landing on the stairs which led down. "If you can't play nice, then you can play outside!"

Azula, who'd ended up in a pile with her brother, launched herself up with such vigor that her brother was thrown bodily aside. The other firebender didn't even bother pausing from the slide, as she landed on her feet, to continue the attack. But this time, she split her attention, between Azula, the obvious target of her rancor, and Aang, probably a target of opportunity. Much as Aang believed in the Fire Nation's essential goodness, he had no doubts that there were probably no shortage of people who would see fortune in beating him.

"Azula, I'll watch your back!" Aang offered. And got a blast of fire directed at him for his trouble. From inside that palace came a great thud, as the floor was returned to its native position, and an unamused looking Toph jogged out. Now fending attacks from two directions, Aang didn't understand this whole situation. Who was the earthbender, and that Tribesman? Aang got his answer when the Tribesman hurled himself up from the mound he'd been in before, and grabbed onto Toph's foot. Instantly, she let out the most agonized scream that Aang had ever heard from her, her body curling up into a fetal ball. The Tribesman rose to his feet, gave the blind earthbender a look, then a nod. "What did you do to her?"

"Saved her life, probably," the Tribesman said amiably.

"Why won't you shut up and kill the Princess?" the earthbender who was now at Aang's back asked.

"'Cause there's a perfectly good Avatar standing right there?" that Tribesman pointed out. The earthbender looked at Aang, then nodded. Aang's stomach dropped.

Obviously sick of being out of the focus of all the attacks, Azula launched herself on jets of fire, landing down on the grass at the foot of the stairs, and hurled fire upward at all that overlooked her. Aang dodged under that fire hinging backward such that he was fairly sure he could have slunk under a door-crack. Katara had to make do with a swift cocoon of ice to brace that attack, one she instantly turned into a long whip which Azula bounded away from.

Then, things got really hairy.

Even as the earthbender and the waterbender worked as one to focus their attacks through Aang, and Aang had to give everything he had to dodge flying stones and slashing blades of ice, Zuko seemed to have lost his poor little mind. With a wordless roar, he slammed his arms around in a swift spiral, and when his fist pounded forward once more, it was not with flame, but with lightning.

The lightning bolt tore towards that other firebender, but she'd obviously seen the assault coming and hurled herself out of its path. How, Aang couldn't conceive. He hadn't even known that firebenders could bend lightning! But her counter was directed at Aang, seeming to prefer the Avatar over her attempted murderer. Zuko didn't seem to care about anything else. His gaze was transfixed, and his face was a visage of wrath. But that other firebender was quick, and knew how to string him along.

"Who are these guys?" Katara shouted, having only just beaten back a wall of ice-spikes hurled in her direction by that other waterbender.

"I don't know! But they're obviously trying to kill us!" Aang offered. Of course, as he was, he was focused on the three unidentified attackers, who were arrayed in front of where he and Katara had their backs to the courtyard. Mostly that was for the worse, because as they moved ever closer, trying to push past him to the girl he was trying to protect even against her professed desire, he didn't see that Azula's arms began to turn through a spiral as well.

At least, not until that last moment, when he looked over his shoulder, and saw her smirking... and saw the lightning which followed her fingertips.

---

There was peace.

There shouldn't have been. After all, Sharif had known a moment of intense fear when the bludgeon came down and struck his head. That he was still sitting here, and not walking on the grey sands of the Sea of Souls told him that he had, for the moment, not succumbed and passed into eternity. But even his damaged mind knew that ambushes in the night were seldom good tidings. Sharif sat, his mind stranded in the Outer Sphere where he'd been contemplating moving further, contemplating completing his brain and knowing something, for a change. But instead, he was knocked unconscious, while unconscious. It was a strange state he was only capable of because he was a shaman.

The droning of the canyon crawlers still fell on him, but it had a different sound in the Outer Sphere; there, it was a constant, low buzz, omnipresent and always just above the threshold of hearing. Here, it was music. They spoke to each other in music, telling what they had done under the sun. Food found. Members of their packs injured, sick, or dead. Much as polarbear dogs would howl toward the moon, or wolfbats would shriek in great bursts through the night outside of caves, the crawlers let their voices be heard, speech without mind, communication without consciousness. It was a thing of animals, for animals. Shamans, though, had a bit of animal in them, as well.

Sharif reached toward an air spirit which lazily wafted past him, and it stuck to his finger. "Don't be afraid, this won't hurt, and it won't last," Sharif said. The spirit whispered that it was not afraid. They never were. He moved it toward the scar on his head.

Don't do that, Scarred Child.

Sharif looked up from where he was sitting, the remnants of his camp still under him even if his body was no longer present. "Why not?" Sharif asked in confusion. "I can't help them like this."

This is the only way you'll help them, Patriarch said, black eyes affixed to the south. Help is coming. They will be depending on you to show them the way.

Sharif nodded, and let the air spirit drift away. It still stayed in a lazy orbit around him. "I don't understand. Why are you so much louder, now?"

My body perished, and yet somehow, a part of me lives on, Patriarch said with a puzzled tone. I suspect that your prolonged presence did this to me.

"Why?" Sharif asked.

The bird glanced back in his direction. Now, while it was still recognizable as the ancient, powerful stallion it had been, its black feathers were smooth and laid unmatted across its flank. Its thighs, once atrophied enough to be noticeable, now stood proud and wide, so much so that it would have been almost impossible for any man to ride atop his back. This was Patriarch as he had seen thirty summers, a paragon of endurance and power. It is a thing which happens when your kind interferes in mine, or those beasts like me. You make us like you. You make part of us endure, rather than fade in death. I cannot say more; I do not know more. But heed! Help is coming, Scarred Child. Do not waste it.

"But how will I know them? What can I do?" Sharif asked. After all, he was doubly unconscious, and wasn't sure where his body was.

You will know The Old Bird and Grey Voice easily enough, Patriarch explained patiently, as though to one of his own chicks. They are legends even in the Great Grass. And for the other; I suppose I have one last ride left in me.

Sharif smiled, and rested his brow against the muscular flank of the mighty Ostrich Horse. "Thank you, Patriarch. I will honor you in my dreams."

Honor me by surviving, Scarred Child, the bird commanded, and stooped low enough that Sharif could hoist a spectral leg over the mount's spectral back, and then, with a war cry from the great fowl, the bird took to a sprint. And as they moved, the spirits, great, small, and helpful all, moved with them.

---

While Aang didn't know precisely how screwed he was as Azula's hand began to dart forward, lightning twisting around it as it went, he still felt, in his ignorance, a profound sense of relief when something got in its way. That something was squat, fat, and had a great grey beard. It took the Avatar a moment to recognize the man as Iroh, the Dragon of the West, if mostly because the one meeting he'd had with the man was when they were all captives aboard that pirate vessel, and Aang wasn't exactly in a state of mind to pay attention to faces at that point. How he appeared out of nowhere beggared Aang's mind; something shaped like that simply shouldn't be able to move so quickly. However, seeing the former Fire Nation General in action was giving quite a bit of credence to those rumors so often told about him. In an instant, the Dragon of the West clamped a hand over Azula's thrusting fingers, and spun away, the lightning which had threatened to explode away from her grasp as Zuko's had from his flowed out of Azula, then into Iroh. But then, defying Aang's expectation and understanding of how lightning worked, it then flowed out of Iroh's other hand and lashed into the distance, a great crash of thunder announcing its birth, and a shattering as it brought a great ornamental flower-pot to an ignominious end.

Azula's eyes grew wide, but Iroh was already hip throwing her to the ground. She glared up at him.

"How dare you!" She screamed. Aang's next instant was taken by him being pushed over the edge of the stairs, and only hasty airbending and his own impeccable sense of balance kept him from tumbling all the way down. Zuko was rushing down the stairs toward his sister, four steps at a time. Had she lashed out at Aang with that lightning, it was likely it'd have hit both of them.

"Aang look out!" Katara shouted, and his attempts at balance were proven for naught, because Katara was tackling him to the ground, and sending both of them tumbling quite painfully down the stairs, with a curtain of fire and slashing ice nipping at their backs as they did so. The two benders landed in a pile, and Katara had obviously taken the worse of it. Aang managed to force himself to his feet, if unsteadily, and found that his staff had clattered down not far from him. A whisper of airbending and it jumped back to his hand, just in time to knock aside a block of the patio which had been earthbent at him. The three of them, those three benders from all nations, descended as one organism, their eyes locked on the trio of brother, sister, and uncle. Well, all but one set. The flashing blue eyes of the Tribesman flicked toward Aang, just for a moment.

"I've had a thought," he said.

"And what would that be?" the firebender, obvious leader of the group, asked.

"Your little score with the Princess is all well and good, but isn't the Fire Lord offering some sort of monumental bounty for the Avatar?" that waterbender pointed out. The earthbender glared at him.

"This isn't the time for..." that earthbender snapped.

"No, I believe he's right," the firebender cut the hulking teenager off. "Something to consider."

"Do I know you?" Iroh asked, his eyes narrowed suspiciously.

"Uncle, what are you doing here?" Zuko asked.

"Keeping my family safe," the old man said, as Aang helped Katara to her feet, and quickly moved her aside of the showdown.

"She was imprisoned for a week!" Zuko shouted, face rapidly turning red.

"And she was safe in that week," Iroh said. "Who are you?"

"Oh, I doubt we've met," that firebender said. "After all, I wouldn't want it known I'd kept the company of a noted traitor."

Zuko's angry, Huojian-comprised tirade was brought to a halt, and he turned to the firebender, fists still toward her. "Traitor? Since when is Uncle a traitor?"

"Haven't you heard?" she asked, smirking darkly as the three of them reached the bottom step. "The Fire Lord declared him an outlaw for attacking his envoy at Summavut. As I understand it, his loyalty to the Fire Nation has been in doubt for some time."

"Can we please move this along, I'm sure he can get news from his homeland somewhere else," the waterbender said with a tone of boredom. Then again, of the three of them, only he wasn't in a fighting stance. Aang was not fooled by his ease; with one touch, he'd put Toph down and out.

"And you are right again. Let's finish this, you worthless rebel," that firebender said, before lashing out in fire toward Azula. Zuko tried to get in her way, but she managed to simultaneously defend herself and attack Zuko, which was thwarted by Iroh smashing her attack aside and kicking the feet out from under her. The old man stood beside his nephew, who still looked like he didn't want to believe what was happening.

"Perhaps you should face somebody more your skill level," the Dragon of the West offered.

"I'll show you skill level," Azula promised, and rushed the old man, only to be caught and pitched to the ground once again, and in a flash, the old man was facing the assassins once more.

"Yeah, she really did, didn't she?" that waterbender noted.

"Do us all a favor and shut up!" that earthbender snapped.

"Uncle, what are you doing?" Zuko shouted, eye twitching like a hummingbird's wing.

"If you hadn't noticed, this young girl keeps trying to kill you," Iroh said caustically.

"She's just..."

"Confused? Or perhaps she isn't who you think she is?" Iroh demanded. It was about at that point that Aang reached a reasonably safe place, and let Katara slump to the ground.

"Are you going to be alright?" Aang asked.

"I can taste burning," Katara said. "My head hurts."

"Just stay here. I'll won't let anything happen to you," Aang promised, before getting back up and moving in at an angle on the assassins.

"Let's try talking this out," Iroh said, his eyes still flinty, but his hands opening, in a placating motion. Both towards the would-be-assassins, and toward his niece. Azula, though, flicked her eyes to the side, and a smirk was the only warning before she kipped to her feet and took off at a sprint. Zuko called her name, but Aang was far faster than even her own brother, and while he didn't catch her before she took a flying leap over the rail, at least he knew exactly what she was doing.

Omashu had been built a very long time ago, running up a mountain spike which loomed out of a gully. This had a number of uses over the years, but the most ingenious, entertaining, and fun of them was the way they designed the mail-system; sleds would shoot down from the mail offices at the top of the city, as far as they needed to, before earthbenders managed them into their proper destinations. And earthbenders also returned those same carts upward, to be used again. So as Azula jumped, there was a cart passing below, and she landed with a wet crunch into a load of fresh produce.

Aang's descent was somewhat marred by the absence of a cart for him to ride. But while she was beholden to sliding stone, Aang had airbending. So when he reached the level of the slope, there was already a compressed scooter of air under him, and his momentum was almost perfectly preserved, shooting down the mail system after her. She poked her head up, throwing away cabbages in the process, her attention focused on the path before her. But then, as Aang was approaching, she glanced back, and her eyes went wide. With a roar of angry effort, she hurled a spiraling pinwheel of blue fire which tore at the stone even as it tried to lash at him. Only by bounding off that scooter could he avoid that terrible assault, which saw him plummeting toward the streets.

Of course, he wasn't just some novice airbender; for all he'd ignored the most important lessons on airbending he was ever going to receive, he was not an idiot, nor prone to panic. So with a flick of his wrists, the glider snapped open and Aang's plummet became a glide. He swept through the supports of that mail-system, shooting closer to the firebender who had once again returned her attention to the fore. This time, Aang didn't face the same ill luck, and with a clatter of cloth and wood, snapped his glider shut, letting his velocity carry him lightly onto the back of the same cart she was riding down.

"Why are those people trying to kill you?" Aang shouted against the grinding and the press of the wind. Azula turned with a backhand which burned blue. Aang easily dodged out of its way. "I'm trying to help you!"

"Like you 'helped' keep me prisoner?" Azula demanded. "Like you 'helped' take my fire from me?"

"I don't know what you mean!" Aang protested, even as their one-sided fight turned into something which could be forgiven for appearing a dance, if one involving copious amounts of open flame. But then again, from what Aang had seen of Fire Nation dances back when he still visited them, some of them did. Azula only broke off when they'd reached their initial positions, and this was to let out a frustrated growl and roll her eyes.

Azula shouted something which Aang couldn't translate but from the context roughly interpreted as 'will this never end?', and a glance over his shoulder told him that they were being pursued. Bright golden fire seared behind another cart, this one moving so fast that even though it was stone against stone, sparks flew from its passage. A rocket propelled it, generated by a desperate brother, as Zuko fought with all his might to catch up. She half-twisted to send an assault past the Avatar, but instantly had to recoil and defend herself, though not from an attack. She flicked blobs of fire upward, and they exploded against the stone of a transverse rail, not quite bringing the thing down. Aang first wondered if she was trying to bring it down onto Zuko's head, but when he actually glanced up, he noted that even they three were not the only ones on the mail-system this fine day.

The Dragon of the West rode with them, standing with one foot braced against the cart's lip, his grey beard streaming sideways in the wind as he watched piercingly. Azula sneered up at him. "So enemies and traitors corner me at last, do they?" she asked. Aang shook his head, about to say her wrong, but as his attention turned over her shoulder, his own eyes became quite wide.

"END OF THE LINE!" Aang screamed, and with a resounding crash, marked by the shouts of alarm of the earthbenders who worked the rails, the cart shot past where it was supposed to grind to a halt – which it couldn't due to Azula's imparted velocity – and skipped once against the floor, before screaming toward the lip of the wall, and a long fall to oblivion beneath it. It was somewhat easy to heave Azula out of that cart after that first tooth-rattling jar; for all her density, an airbender could keep something airborne far easier than one could make something so. A wall of spongy wind caught the two of them before they joined the cart, which plummeted away, reddish dust following after it like some sort of contrail, as it vanished into the vertical distance.

Of course, this rescue had the unintended benefit of landing Avatar and Princess once more in a pile, this time with his face mashed into her chest. While he certainly wasn't going to complain about that, he only had a split second to enjoy it, because after that Azula was obviously regaining her bearings, and she looked in a less-than-forgiving mood. Aang kipped back. "It was an accident. I was trying to save..."

She answered him with a bolt of blue flame which he had to bound out of the way of. Another grinding, this one ending with a similarly calamitous crash, heralded the arrival of her brother, who landed with a grinding of rubbered soles against stone, sliding almost to the precipice himself, though his eyes never left Aang and his sister. "Azula, what is going on with you?" Zuko cut to the chase.

"Hello, brother," Azula said, that second word the paragon of sarcasm and scorn.

"I've tried to see what you're doing, but it doesn't make any sense!" Zuko stressed, limping slightly as he started to cautiously move toward them. "It's like ever since that woman at the North Pole, you've been a completely different question!"

As Azula glared at her sibling, a grinding sound hit the air, and the third cart came to a gentle halt, the Dragon of the West riding it as gloriously as... well, at the moment, Aang couldn't come up with an appropriate metaphor, so he just didn't bother. But he stepped off that cart and landed at the last point of a square which had formed around all those present, and like all of its members but one, the gazes of those present were directed inward, at Azula.

"You are more right than you know, Prince Zuko," Iroh said, eyes hard and unhappy. "She is not the same person at all."

---

"And that's for smiting my eyes, you little shit!" the much more vile of the pair screamed, as he lashed out with a boot into the still-unconscious form of Sharif. Nila winced with every blow. A year ago, she wouldn't have. Now, though, she knew that her brother was still in there, somewhere. The whole lot of them had been dragged to the sands once more, deposited just outside the twin-hulled sand skimmer which these people obviously used to catch up with them. And of the lot of them, Ashan had been bound most tightly, so that he could not even speak.

"Leave him alone you psychopath!" Nila screamed.

"Yeah, pick on somebody your own..." Tzu Zi began, and trailed off when she realized that Sharif was roughly this man's size. "Stop being so damned evil!"

"This isn't what we're supposed to be doing, Udu," the other, who had much of a face in common with one of Ibtihaj's brood, commented. "Just finish the bastard and let's put this terrible time behind us."

"What, have you become so soft?" Udu demanded. "Was it not you who asked me to help you find the woman who ruined your standing with your family? Well, there she lays! What are you going to do about it?"

"This isn't right," Adin said. "He's done no wrong."

"His drawing of breath is a wrong," Udu answered. "You're starting to sound like one of those pampered gits from the Earth Kingdoms, so weak and oozing of heathenish mercies!"

"Well, pardon me for trying to understand my customer base!" Adin shouted.

"Are you two going to snipe at each other all night or are you going to kill us?" Nila asked flatly.

"Nila," Tzu Zi said with a tone of disappointment. "What have we said about antagonizing the people who've captured us?"

"Don't," Nila supplied.

"And what are you doing right now?"

"She's right," Adin said. "You are laying boots to a simple boy. What revenge is there in that? Fate could have as easily smote his eyes as yours!"

"Well, Ubasti decided to make me suffer, so I pass that suffering onto her agent. It is only proper," Udu said.

"You sick freak!" Nila shouted. Instantly, Udu turned to face her.

"What did you call me?" he demanded.

"You are a freak. So incompetent that you had to side with a soft-hearted sandbender to have any kind of revenge; what Si Wongi must reach upward to his lessers?" Nila demanded.

"Nila, for the love of Agni..."

"Hush, Tzu Zi, I have a plan," Tzu Zi quickly snapped in her tongue. Tzu Zi didn't look convinced, but let her speak. "And the failures must only be a sign of some dark fortune which has befallen you. Who have you outraged so that they would affix such misfortune to your head? Have you spurned the Host, or were you just born feet-first?"

"My birth has nothing to do with this!" Udu shouted. Nila smirked, even from where she was bound hand and foot. She knew that there were a lot of things that her backwards people considered lethally grim omens, and breach-birth was one of the darkest. Most of those children were abandoned to the sand within days of their difficult entry into life, on the belief that only so would the rest of the family be spared the misfortune that came with it. Needless to say, Nila was borne breach, and Mother stabbed one of the midwives for even mentioning that option. It was one of the few warm feelings that Nila felt toward her matriarch. "I have but one task to reclaim my honor, whole and true. And only two need die for it. I am not a monster, I will not..."

"So the child who was born without the decency to face the sands calls himself a man?" Nila asked, her condescending smirk aimed right at this man's buttons. She pushed with all her might. "Well, then perhaps that explains your lack of surname... Oh, I see..."

"One more word will have your tongue cut from your head," Udu warned.

"You weren't just born breach, you were abandoned," Nila said with a laugh. "Such fate that follows you! No wonder Adin is reduced to such circumstances! No doubt your grandmother, Ibtihaj, would forgive whatever failing you offer, but his serpent words have fouled you..."

"Nila, you're just making him angry," Tzu Zi whispered in her native tongue.

"Exactly my intention," Nila answered her. "So please, slash at my tongue if that will make you the better man. Spill the blood of a bastard who yet has better breeding than you!"

Doubly a lie, but it didn't matter, since the man's face had turned bright read, and he advanced with his knife out before him. With a hateful yell, he thrust it down at her, but she kicked upward as he did, and even as his blade slashed through her bonds, she slammed her heel down hard against his membrum virilae, which caused him to recoil in shock and pain, even if he didn't release the knife. So she charged. With a spring, she kicked him flush in the chest, knocking him onto his back. But her victory was short-lived, as Adin quickly clamped his arms 'round her middle, turning her aside so she couldn't stomp his feet nor elbow him to any effect. Udu took a moment to regain himself on the ground.

"You think you're so smart?" Udu asked. "I ought slash your tendons, girl, so that you will spend the rest of your life at a squat. It will be fitting, since that is how your kind should live anyway."

Even as he stalked toward her, Sharif bolted forward, his eyes wide. "They come!" he said, even as that look of cogency vanished from his face. Udu gave a glance back at him, trying to see what he meant. Azula, though, continued to struggle, to find some purchase. She glanced down to Tzu Zi.

"If you have anything you can do to help, now would be a proper time for it!"

"I can't move!" the firebender said. "If I can't move then I can't..."

The firebender trailed off, and looked down at the ropes which bound her hands. They were moist and stretchy, yes, because they were a sort of gut which would tighten to utter immobility as the dry air wicked them away. But the firebender had no intention of leaving them there, not one moment longer. She breathed out over them, first, a breath of dry, hot air. She screwed her face in concentration, then tried again, eyes wide, almost bloodshot with effort.

And her breath became fire.

With a snap, she freed her hands, and a moment and a flash of fire later, her feet as well. She rose, fists forward. "Let her go, Heathen, or I promise I'll burn you right up."

"Try something a bit more threatening next time," Nila said with mild concern. Udu pointed his knife at her.

"A firebender, here? So you are a traitor to your homeland as well as to your birth?" Udu demanded. "The Sultan will hear of this blasphemy!"

"The Sultan is well aware of it, you twit," Nila answered.

"Why does my stomach hurt?" Sharif asked pathetically, rubbing at his injured torso.

"Lower your hands, or your friend gains a new smile," Udu said, pressing that knife to Nila's neck.

"You have not the will, breach-birth," Nila said.

Udu turned to her, eyes filled with hate, and she felt the slightest twist of the blade against her throat, the beginning of a long cut, then a short death. But it didn't go so far, because with a bodily 'whoomp', Udu was flying forward through the air, the knife away from her neck.

"What was..." Nila began.

"Grey Voice!" Sharif said with a pleased voice. Adin gave a clipped scream of alarm, and Nila found herself dropped to the sand whence they'd all been dragged. Standing just behind where Udu had been threatening was an Ostrich Horse, its every feather as grey as iron. Its head was down, its great beak open, but instead of any war-cry, its voice came out like a lion-turtle's roar. Well, if such a thing even existed, Nila admitted.

"Beast! Get away from me!" Adin shouted, backing from the fowl. It was surprising, as this thing hadn't half the size of Patriarch, and had the same sort of 'ears' as Aki, proving her not just another breed, but another species of Ostrich Horse, but even with Nila's unpracticed eye, she guessed that this bird was every bit as old as that cantankerous old stallion. And she was not alone.

Adin backed from the first of the great steeds, and into a second, this one standing with neck craned high, its one eye glaring down at him. This one was as mangy as Patriarch was, though it unlike its 'sister' was still brown rather than grey. Its beak opened and it let out a croaking sound, before lashing forward and headbutting the Si Wongi, which sent the sandbender to the ground, scrabbling away on his hands and feet.

"Old Bird!" Sharif said with enthusiasm. The appropriately named 'Old Bird' turned toward him, then back to the Si Wongi, who now moved so that they stood united.

"Was this part of your plan?" Tzu Zi asked.

"No, my plan ended when you freed yourself. I expected you to take initiative, rather than let him put knife to neck," Nila said. Tzu Zi flinched at that. "Understandable enough. You're new at this."

"Sorry, Nila."

"Keep your beasts at bay, heathen!" Udu swore. "Do it, and I won't use this!"

He reached back into the hull of the sand skimmer, and pulled forth Nila's firearm, holding it at the hip, but close enough to properly aimed that it would probably hit... something. "That's my gun," Nila said with quiet anger. "Give it back to me, now."

"Stay back. The only one who has to die here is him," Udu nodded toward Ashan. Nila tipped down, glaring up under her brows at them.

"So you do this at Ali's behest? If you do the work of monsters, you shall feel the succor of monsters," Nila warned.

"Keep your beasts back!" Udu screamed. Grey Voice, though, was taking a moment to tear the binds from Sharif's hands and feet, and allowing the shaman to stand.

"Thank you, honored eldest of the sunset brood," Sharif said with a bow. The bird spat the binds onto the sand, and stared at Udu. "No, that won't be necessary."

"Stop with this spirit magic, bastard! This is unnatural!" Udu ranted.

"Actually, it happens all the time," Adin tried to correct.

"SHUT UP!" Udu roared. And Nila took that fraction of a second to reach into an under-searched pocket, down 'twixt her thighs, and pull out what she kept strapped there. She'd learned the lesson of not keeping all of her weapons in easily found places, so this one, round object, hidden within the a pouch she'd had Sharif sew in the gap between her wide hips, was oft-overlooked. And it shouldn't have been. With a tear and a heave, a miscolored lemon streaked through the air, bouncing against Udu's head, and recoiling upward, twirling almost static in the air, right at the level of his head. Nila had just enough time for her expression of concentration to mature into a smug smile – and Udu's rage and bafflement dawn into outright horror – before the lemon detonated in the air, and sent out a cloud of oily pepper directly into the faces of the two Si Wongi hatchetmen.

"AH! MY EYES!" Udu screamed. "WHY IS IT ALWAYS MY EYES?"

"I will give you the same advice I gave the last hunter after bounties which came after me," Nila said, taking her firearm from the sand, and the knife from the hull of the skimmer, with which she started cutting Ashan loose. "Find another bounty, because if you don't, I will make it a personal goal to destroy you so completely that your precious Host could search for a thousand years and not even find the remnants of your soul. Am I perfectly clear?"

"YES!" Adin shouted even through his weeping and pain. "YES MA'AM!"

"Good," Nila said. "Sharif, please tell these fowl to destroy their skimmer. Stupidity should not go unpunished."

"Yeah, it really shouldn't," Tzu Zi agreed readily. "Ashan, are you alright?"

Ashan looked most shaken by the night. "Does this happen all the time with you?" he asked, as the three of them moved south, leaving only the shaman and his two... she would not call them thralls, as that was not accurate... to do what karmic justice demanded.

"Frequently enough that it has become tiresome," Nila noted.

"You live a far too interesting life," Ashan said wearily.

"Welcome to it," Nila said, patting his back. The sun was rising, the drone of the canyon crawlers was falling to a close, and the Great Divide was awaiting them.

---

"What do you mean, she's not Azula?" Zuko asked.

"She looks the same," Aang chimed in.

"Shut up, Avatar!" Zuko snapped at him.

"Stop this, now, Azula," Iroh ordered. She scowled at him, and glanced behind her. With Aang on one side, Iroh on the other, and Zuko directly at her fore, the only direction she had was behind her, and that way lay a plummet into oblivion. She fumed for a moment, then slowly raised up her hands.

"Surrounded by traitors and enemies again... A princess always knows when to surrender," she said. But, unnoticed to Aang's innocent eyes, she was just waiting for the opening she'd need.

"Maybe," Zuko said. "But the Azula I know never would."

"Zuko, I have been patient with you, and more than patient with your sister. You know that I do not say things to be hurtful, or rashly. This is not something you should have to do," Iroh said, his eyes locked on Azula. Zuko glanced toward him.

"You keep saying that, but you don't tell me why! Why can't you ever explain anything, instead just spouting riddles and nonsense?" Zuko raged. "Isn't there anything simple in that head of yours?"

"If I gave you everything simply you would derive no worth of it," Iroh said. "Look at the things you learned by my giving you a piece of the puzzle, so that you could deduce the rest yourself. But now, when shown a completed cypher, you refuse to see it! Look at her!"

Zuko glanced at his sister, then back to his uncle. Aang saw a twitch of a smirk, and one of her hands flinched downward, but as it did, she suddenly became quite pale and stumbled from her perfect poise slightly, even as Iroh, who had been noting her intensely, moved into an outright combative pose. "I don't see what you – what are you doing, Uncle?"

"She's trying to attack us when our guard is down," Iroh said simply. "I'm only surprised that she has not yet."

But Zuko only saw her now, as she tried to pull her quaking hands to stillness, swallow past what appeared to be a boulder in her neck. "I don't know what's worse, that you've become so paranoid that you're suspecting your niece, my sister got swapped with some kind of doppleganger, or that you were going to try to do something about it without me. See her now? That's Azula! She might be confused, but I've suffered her confusion before!"

"This is something far worse," Iroh said. Then, with a glance at Aang, he nodded, and began to move closer to the princess. She really did look quite worse-for-wear. "Zuko, you must trust me now, more than you ever have before. Can you do that?"

"But you still haven't..."

"Some things cannot be said," Iroh said. "Can. You. Trust. Me?"

"But... my sister."

"Your sister may well be no more," Iroh said sadly, standing before that firebending prodigy. "I am sorry it came to this."

Aang felt a tremble in the stone, and his instincts screamed at him to run away. He wasn't sure if it was a whisper of proto-earthbending which Bumi managed to teach him in that brief, unpleasant span, or if his paranoia was starting to manifest almost as readily as Sokka's, but he knew that there was a block of stone flying at him, and only because of that did he manage to heave the wine from the cart the Dragon of the West rode in on into a blade, cleaving that hulking slab in twain along a razor's edge and letting it crash on either sides of Avatar and firebending prince. Instantly, all attention was the direction that they'd come.

"Nowhere left to run," that bespectacled firebender pointed out. "You might as well make this easy for yourself."

Zuko looked about ready to explode. "Whoever you are, you will die before you hurt my sister!"

"Uh, boss?" the earthbender at her side pointed out. "Isn't this what you'd call a suicidal situation?"

"Stay back, or the Dragon of the West dies first!" Azula shouted, causing all to turn, and behold that Azula had grabbed Iroh 'round the neck and was holding a lancet of blue flame to the side of his head. A thrust and he'd get a whole new personality.

"Azula, what are you doing?" Zuko asked, shock replacing wrath on his face.

"I'm leaving," Azula said. "And Uncle here is coming with me. You can do what you want with Dum-Dum there."

"B...but..." Zuko's expression was heartbreaking.

"And how exactly are you going to get out? The gates are controlled by earthbenders, you know?" that yet-unnamed firebender pointed out.

"Stay back, or I'll destroy him," Azula warned.

"And why would I..."

"That's the Fire Lord's brother," the waterbender said with stress and clarity. "He might not look it, but he's important. We should let her go."

"Are you mad?" the earthbender contended. "He's a traitor!

"But he is still Fire Nation royalty," the waterbender contended. The two men shared a glance, and the larger of them let out an aggravated sigh.

"He's right," the firebender said, staring at whom Aang could not tell, for her eyes were hidden behind blackness. "This isn't over, Azula. You've cost me more than you could ever hope to repay."

"Father always told me that smart rulers never incur debts they'll have to pay themselves," Azula pointed out. "Start walking, Uncle. Wouldn't want to mess up that brain of yours, would we?"

The clamoring of alarms began to sound throughout the city, as it had since this stand-off began, but now it reached its crescendo, bathing the group that remained. Eyes began to turn on Aang, and fists began to raise. "Well, no point in making this a pointless run," the waterbender said. "Fire Lord's money is as good as anybody else's."

"That it is, Tribesman, that it is," the earthbender agreed.

"Or we could escape with our hides intact," the firebender prodded. After all, with Azula and Iroh vanishing down the stairs, only Zuko, they, and the Avatar himself remained. "I don't relish the idea of rotting in an earthbender prison just because of my homeland."

"You're not going anywhere," Zuko snapped, fists back up and at the ready. That firebender only smiled, a wistful, cunning smile.

"That's where your wrong, Prince Zuko. I can go where I must. Boys?" The two with her nodded their heads, and then, as one body, they sprinted past where Zuko and Aang were standing, and hurled themselves bodily off the precipice. Aang gaped after them for a moment, then ran to the edge himself. But as he looked down, he could not see what became of them. As his glance returned upward, he could see that Azula was already forcing her uncle across the great bridge that separated city from the rest of its nation. Aang wasn't quite astute enough to give a thought to how she bypassed the gates. He just took it as fact that she had. He turned to Zuko, and then past him, as green-and-gold clad soldiers began to surround both, but with their weapons trained solely at the latter.

"She's... she's really gone?" Zuko asked, tears beginning to well in his eyes.

"I'm sorry, Zuko. I don't know what happened to her," Aang said.

"Don't talk to me, right now," Zuko said, slumping against the stone, his eyes on the ground beneath him. "Just leave me alone."

"It shouldn't have happened like this," Aang said.

"Firebender, you are under arrest for the crime of espionage," that guard intoned. "Resist and we will be forced to subdue you; cooperate, and you will not be harmed."

"I just... don't care," Zuko said, and remained where he was. Overburdened by all of this madness, Aang did as airbenders did best when the going got tough; he ran away. He didn't stop until he was at the lawn of Omashu's king's palace, to find sister joined by brother, and a blind earthbender moving gingerly about. Bumi, though, looked as steady as ever.

"What happened up here?" Sokka asked. "I see fire on the mail system, and I correctly assume that you've got something to do with it. I come up here, and find my sister hurt and Toph paralyzed..."

"Gods day-um that hurt," Toph noted, rubbing at her leg, which was broken out in hives and a terrible bruise which somehow seemed to reach up to her neck. "How'd he put me out like that? I can take dozens of hits a lot harder than that! He barely touched me!"

"It was waterbending," Katara said. "He was using healing to hurt. Why would a waterbender help a firebender?"

"Why wouldn't he?" Aang asked. "Maybe they're just friends, like you, me, Sokka, and Toph are. Friendships don't know national boundary."

"Yeah, well, any friends that do this to my family ain't friends of mine," Sokka said harshly. Aang had to nod at that.

"I know this has been a difficult day, but I have some good news," Bumi piped in. All turned to him.

"What is it?" Katara asked.

"You all have to leave!" he said brightly. All continued to stare at him, a silence which was broken by Sokka clearing his throat.

"And how is that good news?"

"Well, if you're moving, then the chances are that any assassins which come after you won't be able to ambush you again!" Bumi said simply. "Besides, I'm fairly sure you've found your earthbending master."

Aang turned to Toph. "Really?" he asked.

"You tryin' to back out on me?" Toph asked, thrusting a finger at him. She half-turned to Bumi. "Don't you worry, I'll have this guy chuckin' rocks in two weeks, tops."

"That's the kind of steadfast dedication I expect from the Avatar's sifu," Bumi said. "Good luck, have fun toppling the Fire Lord, and Nightmare Rook Offensive takes Bastion."

It was telling that Aang now knew what that last part meant. "I'll make you proud. I am going to stop this war."

"Of that, I have no doubt," Bumi said, giving the youth a brief but heartfelt embrace. He was going to end this war alright, so people like Azula, or Katara, or Toph wouldn't have to suffer under the tyranny of evil men. He would find a way.

He was the Avatar, after all.

---

History Lesson Time!

The Fall of the Monolith, Adam, and the Storm Kings:

To call the fall of the Monolith catastrophic would be akin to calling the Si Wong desert 'a touch arid'. There was such a backlash against the Monolith that every mention of it was destroyed. This had the regrettable side-effect of causing a reversion of technology and culture practically to the stone-age. This also made it impossible to know why the Monolith was so reviled, how long the empire lasted, or even what its actual name was; the Monolith was a title given to it by its detractors, and the only descriptor left to name it after the empire fell. Even the Avatars from that point forward never spoke of what transpired during the Monolith Era, leaving it the greatest historical mystery of the planet. Only three things remain that can be tied directly back to the Monolith, being Ba Sing Se (their capital city, and the first to be reclaimed from it), the game of Pai Sho, and, to a select few, the Order of the White Lotus.

Which started out as a group of botanists trying to monopolize the sale of certain flowers. Funny how things change.

The Dark Age that followed the Monolith's fall lasted almost a millenium, as the formerly forced-together nations resegregated themselves into their current homelands. Only the Storm Kings, long-time slaves to the Monolith, chose no homeland to call their own. The other nations gave them leeway, since the Storm Kings were so instrumental in defeating the Monolith, and an unstable equilibrium was reached. It would take a long time for the knowledge to swell enough to bring the world out of that rut it'd punched itself into.

Besides the formal formation of the Storm Kings, another event of note in the fall of the Monolith was the Prophet Adam. The descendant of Monolith soldiers, Adam took up arms himself, but against bandits and raiders, as he was born almost a century after the fall. Based out of the island of Kad Deid, he lived an uneventful life, until he approached his fortieth year. Then, he was 'struck by a revelation', and turned away from his career and his family, preaching that there were not many gods or spirits, but one. At first, the idea gained some traction in the larval Fire Nations, but they lost interest when he denied that the prime diety was Agni, the unconquered sun. The greatest act of Adam, though, was cessation of the human sacrifices done by the Faithful of the Eel, a waterbender cult which revered the Leviathans, water-serpents like the Unagi. This caused a great deal of tension, and a schism in both his followers and the nation he lived in. It culminated in his arrest by Zuriel, who dragged Adam back to Kad Deid for slow execution. But on the way, Adam converted Zuriel away from Eel worship. When the sentence was handed down, in stark defiance of justice, Zuriel ignored their demand of a brutal death by being smashed from his feet up with hammers, and took a carpenter's ball-peen, and smote down Adam in two blows to the head, an act of mercy. He then went on to overthrow the old regime, changing his name to Zeruel, and becoming the first emperor until his death fourty years later.

The Storm Kings, on the other hand, started with the best of intentions. They were born with a schism already in place, between those who felt gods and spirits a pointless waste of time and energy, and those who still venerated the unseen. For a great many years, the two factions managed to live in a degree of harmony. In fact, this balance between secular and spiritual was integral to the Storm Kings efforts to bring humanity out of its dark age. But things began to tip, as the soldier class of the Storm Kings began to accrue undue political influence. They began to make their policies more bellicose, and more expansionistic. Rather than simply guide the grounded cultures, they would direct it personally. The change was slow enough that almost nobody noticed it happening, until it was too late, and the Storm Kings had transformed at their highest levels into the thing which they were born to oppose. When their lower classes decried this evil, they were enslaved under threat of violence and destruction. The Storm Kings were brutal to their own, true, but from the outside, they were seen as very harsh, but at least fair. For that reason, the Storm Kings managed to hold onto global power for quite a while, before factions under them started to chafe. There is something to be said for safety and security, after all, even if it does cost you some liberty.

And right there, I wish there was a punctuation mark indicating sarcasm. Sokka would use it frequently as well.

I liked the flow of this chapter better than the one before it. The weakness in the chapter was, I assumed, that the A-reel didn't seem to move very elegantly. Since I wrote that chapter, I've come to the belief that it was a mistake to assume Aang and company were the A-reel. Much like in The Beach, they were there, but they weren't the critical force in the chapter. Sometimes you just have to twist how you think of a chapter, I guess.