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.

30. The Performer

Yue's hands flew to her mouth in shock. "Oh, he didn't!"

Zha Yu shrugged. "Oh, but he did."

"No man could be that stupid," Hakoda said around a chuckle.

"I never claimed he wasn't a moron. Just that he thought he could get young Aang into the Avatar State. A failure complete, of course. And a failure which demolished another of my houses," the Mountain King finished with a grumbling tone. Yue's expression shifted from amused disbelief to confusion.

"Another?"

"That would be my seventh," he shook his head. "Every time I set down roots, something tears 'em up again. You'd think I did something stupid like throw a lewd gesture at Fate itself, the way things keep turning against me," he let out a long-suffering sigh.

"You can't lose hope," Yue said. "Someday, things will change."

Zha Yu shook his head at that. "The universe can tear down every building I erect until I'm living in a paper-box, but it won't bother me. Home isn't walls and ceiling and floor and hidden magical workshop. It's the people we care about, who we are, and what we're fighting for. Even as I stand right here, I am home."

"That sounds very lonely," Yue said.

"Not really," Zha Yu said. "My wife, her son, and our daughter are all somewhere relatively safe. And the Dragon was right, in that I can't just let this fight slip me by," he gave another chortle. "And with the way things are going, they may be better off if I'm out of the house for a while. One mad scientist is enough for a household, if you ask me."

Yue turned to Hakoda, and with a laugh, asked. "Is it true that a man as mad as he could get married?"

Hakoda couldn't help but laugh aloud at that. "Yue, I've never seen this side of you," he answered in their shared language.

"What? What's going on here?" Hahn asked, bewildered and on the sidelines.

"Your wife just made a joke at somebody's expense," Hakoda answered. Hahn looked surprised. "Yes, I'm shocked as well."

"It wasn't that bad, was it?" Yue asked, instantly shifting back to concern and embarrassment. Hakoda sighed, and patted her shoulder. "I should apologize to him..."

"You do remember I speak Yqanuac, don't you? Ah,well, I'm not being insulted, so it can't be that bad," the earthbender said, leaning into the fire which popped lazily in the center of the house. It was one of hundreds which had been formed overnight, pulled into shape by the waterbenders from the North Tribe... Well, now that he thought about things, there was no North Tribe. Just the Water Tribe. Hakoda stared into the flames, and remembered the stories his father and Qejay would tell, the quiet hope of unification, of one Tribe rising to might and power once again. Their stars would go dim in the heavens to see how their dreams came to fruition.

"I'm sorry. It's just that before you, I'd never heard of anybody but a Tribesman learning our language." Yue said.

"Well, I figured I should at least know enough to know when I'm being insulted. That's pretty much the important bits, anyway."

Yue gave Hakoda a glance, and he could only shrug. Zha Yu was an odd turtleduck at the best of times. "So you were saying yesterday... about that thing...?"

"Oh, this?" he pulled out the orb once again. It was still black, but the white lines which stretched across it like the stripes of a tiger-dillo were now moving lazily across it. "Yeah. I've had this thing collecting... well, not dust, since it doesn't get dusty... for years. Figured this was as good a time as any to use it. They say Spirit Artifacts aren't telepathic, but I know for a fact that if they aren't then they've got some unthinking way of messing with ya'. Case in point, I get dropped by this thing here, instead of Ba Sing Se."

"Why are you going to Ba Sing Se?" Hakoda asked. The Mountain King leaned to and fro, before leaning in conspiratorially. Even Hahn mimicked the motion, even though hew as utterly unable to understand what the Easterner was saying.

"Let's just say that I heard a voice through the thunder that Sati's gotten herself into a peck of trouble."

The two Tribesmen stared at him. Well, three, but two of them understood him. "...how much is a 'peck'?" she asked.

"Roughly one mind-erasure and use as a political puppet, I'd guess," Zha Yu said. Hakoda leaned back.

"...pretty big peck," Yue noted.

"Mind erasure? That..." Hakoda wasn't sure what to make of that.

"You'd be shocked and horrified at the things that the true master of the Eternal City has at his disposal," Zha Yu said, his usual humor utterly absent. He scowled, a growl in his throat. "I told her not to go back there. Not with Joo Dee in tow."

"What?"

"Joo Dee tried to kill us once," he said. "We tried to deprogram her, but even to this day, I'm not sure we got all of that brainwashing out of her. If anybody smart enough back there realizes that, they could be in a lot of trouble."

"She's the Dragon of the East. She seems like she can take care of herself," Hakoda said.

"You've met her?" to which Hakoda nodded. Zha Yu scoffed. "Seems is the operative word. When I knew her, she was a force of nature. But at some point in the last couple of years, she's gotten lazy. She's letting her reputation do all of her lifting for her. And worse, all of her thinking for her. She was always a ball of hubris and barely contained frustration, but when I first met her, she would at least admit that she could be wrong. Now? Not so much. That kind of attitude gets people killed, and doubly fast in a place like Ba Sing Se."

"You seem awfully critical of her," Yue said.

"Nobody else seems willing to be," Zha Yu answered, an edge still in his voice. She leaned away from him as though he'd profaned her. He shook his head, tenting his fingers and staring into the flames. "She's become bitter, and in her bitterness, she's allowed herself to become stupid. If I can save her from herself, I will, but I'm not going to sacrifice myself and my family for her. She's not worth that. Not to me."

"Man, this guy got real angry in a hell of a hurry," Hahn noted from his place on the other side of the fire. "What's he going on about, anyway?"

Hakoda ignored him for the time being. "You said that this... Dirak?" Zha Yu nodded, and Hakoda continued, "brought you to the South Pole for a reason. Why?"

"Very likely, you," he answered. Hakoda stared at him.

"Me?"

"Yes. Just like the Artifacts like to mess with me..."

"The bees?" Yue asked.

"Yes, the bees," Zha Yu said, but turned back to Hakoda, "they also know something that I don't. The smartest thing I have in my brain is the ability to accept that there are things I don't understand. So I've been giving it a bit of thought. You still have soldiers up in the north. Well, the East, but it's well north of here. Am I right?"

"They were ordered to skirmish the Fire Nation at Chameleon Bay, but that was months ago," Hakoda said. "I don't even know if Ogan can hold them all together."

"He'll have to," Zha Yu said. He held the Dirak up to Hakoda. "This thing is counting down. When it's safe to use again, I'm going to have to go immediately. And I think you're going to have to come with me."

"Why?"

"Because we're going to need your men to save the Dragon from the snake," Zha Yu said with utter solemnity. "You know, little stuff."

---

His body felt a dozen pounds lighter as consciousness returned to him in a wave, his aching joints no longer dragging at his every movement, his head no longer feeling stuffed with wool, his nose no longer running like a river. Besides the fairly unpleasant coating of flop-sweat that he found upon him with his waking, he felt fine. And that was a vast improvement over yesterday.

He rose, cracking his joints as he did so, flopping his way out of his sleeping bag, and ran a hand over his head, feeling the stubble which was beginning to prick along his scalp. He'd have to deal with that sooner than later. It was starting to obscure things. He finished his cricking and cracking, even popping his toes in his socks, before letting out a mighty yawn. And that finished, he scratched his butt, and wandered out of the tent which had been erected over him.

"Well, look who's finally living again," Toph said, her back to him still. "See? Told ya he'd be fine."

"I didn't doubt it for a second," Katara said. "Still, that was a strange disease. I was told that waterbending could deal with illness as well as injury."

"Maybe you just didn't learn this one," Sokka said, before continuing to recite from the massive rubbing that he'd taken way back in the Tomb of the Founders. Katara gave a shrug, since as far as Aang knew, Sokka was right.

"Still, you had us a bit worried," Katara said. "Do you think you're up for traveling?"

"I do, but I'm kinda at a loss of where we go from here," Aang admitted, rubbing the back of his head. It felt entirely too scritchy. He was definitely going to have to shave that before he left. "I mean, we got that intelligence from Korra, about the Day of Black Sun, but not when. And that's really inconvenient, 'cause we can't use it if we can't predict it."

"I've been giving some thought to that," Sokka broke in, causing a mild look of annoyance from the blind earthbender, if because it kept interrupting her 'reading'. "Seems like we need to find a planetarium, an Observatory, or maybe a university. Now, according to future-you, the best planetarium is choked with sand in a spooky spirit-library full of crazy ghosts. And most of the universities in the East are actually under Fire Nation control, since they've got both Gaoling and Burning Rock. So that leaves either hunting down that Observatory Teo mentioned a couple months back, or else the university at Ba Sing Se."

"Would Ba Sing Se University have that?" Katara asked.

"Definitely," Toph answered. "They've got the biggest libraries in the world. Watching sky-stuff would probably have a bigger selection than the books you've seen in your life."

"That's a lot of books," Katara said.

"Yup. Still, that Observatory sounds like a better bet to me," Toph said. She reached over and gave Sokka a slug in the side, with a frown on her face. "Come on, Brain. I can't read that on my own."

"Yeah, yeah," Sokka said, before continuing his narration. Aang turned from them, and leaned down to scoop up the little moose-lion cub which had accompanied them on their flight from the Great Divide. There had been a great gnashing of teeth regarding its name, since Sokka wanted to call him 'Tenger Etseg', after one of the Tribal deities. Katara, on the other hand, wanted to call him 'Pookykins', while Toph, ever the pragmatic, just wanted to call him 'Toothy'. Aang wasn't sure if they should even be naming it. It was a wild animal, one rescued out of desperation. Which, come to think of it, described their relationship with Momo fairly well also.

A wild animal that one of Aang's school-friends ate the mother of. He shivvered at that, and walked away from the people of the camp, scratching at the cub's belly as he went. He found a pleasant rock, and kipped atop it. Crossing his legs under him, he sat down, and set the cub beside him. It sat down, its stumpy tail waggling, and bleated up at him. He continued to scratch between its ears, as he stared out into the distance.

He wasn't sure how long it was before he heard footsteps approaching him. A glance showed Katara slowly scaling the rock, and sat opposite the cub, lending her hand to its back. It seemed quite contented, between two caring humans. "You look like you need to talk to somebody," Katara said.

"What was that thing?" Aang asked. "Back in the Divide, before I got sick all of the sudden?"

"The woman?" Katara asked. She shook her head. "I don't know, Aang."

"I mean... she looked like her. She sounded like her. But an Air Nomad wouldn't do things like that! It doesn't make sense."

"She was an Air Nomad? Really?" Katara asked. "Well, she certainly didn't act like you. Or are you just a weird Air Nomad?" the last coming out with a prodding smile, as though she were trying to be Sokka in that moment. Not entirely succeeding, though.

"Yeah, but she was about as straight-laced as they came. Always serious, always cold, always focused on airbending. There was a reason we all thought she was the Avatar, after all. She was just that good."

"So what happened?" Katara asked.

"Well, she certainly didn't get frozen in an iceberg. I would have noticed if she had," Aang said. "...wasn't very big in there."

"Maybe she had her own iceberg?"

Aang shrugged at that. "Yeah, but the only reason I didn't... you know, suffocate... was because the Avatars were sustaining me. For a while, I asked why I had to be Avatar, why I was the Avatar I am in a world like this. But the more I think about it, the more it seems like this was the way things had to be. This was the world I had to be Avatar in. It was a world which needed me, needed somebody who thinks the way I do," he fell silent for a long moment. "Katara?"

"Yes, Aang?"

"Can you promise me not to freak out?"

"I don't know. I can try," she said honestly.

"I think... Malu has Imbalance inside her," Aang said. She looked confused. "Capital 'I', Imbalance."

"Yeah, you've already said that. But if it's true, then... I can't imagine anything more horrible."

"Yeah," Aang said. "That might be how she lived so long. Irukandji lived for almost a century, and he wasn't anywhere near as powerful as Imbalance is. But why would she do that? Why would she let something that... wrong... inside of her? Didn't she know what it would do?"

"Maybe she didn't," Katara said. "Maybe she thought she was the Avatar, just like you did."

"What do you mean?" he asked her.

Katara leaned forward, clasping her fingers together. "Aang, what does it feel like just before you go into the Avatar State?"

"I'm... Losing myself," he said. "I can't hold on. And more than that, I don't want to. It's... terrifying."

"That sounds a lot like dying," Katara said solemnly. She turned to face him square, her bright blue eyes pools of compassion. "Aang, imagine if you were so hurt, so afraid, and so angry, that you wanted to let it go, to release what you think is your birthright, to make things right. But you don't have the birthright. You don't have anything. So when you unleash it, all you're doing is leaving yourself open. And if something bad is waiting, watching..."

"Oh... that's horrible," Aang said. He glanced away. "And you're probably right. She didn't even know she was letting it in," he sighed, his grey eyes dropping to grey stone. "Oh, Malu... you deserved better than that."

"Aang."

"Yes, Katara?"

"What happens if Malu dies?"

"Imbalance won't let her," he said.

"But if she did. What would happen?"

"I don't know," Aang said. "And frankly, I'm afraid to find out."

---

Chapter 10

The Performer

---

Nila scowled as hard as her face could contain, as she looked over the implements which were arrayed in the shop which overlooked the divide between Lower Ring and Middle. Because of its placement, there were services here which could be found nowhere lower, but many places higher. And the most salient of those services were providing scientific apparatus which Nila had been hoping to replace for months! And what does she find, instead of distilleries and retorts, alembics and calcifiers and dessicators? Books on 'alchemy' and pseudoscience, snake-otter oil being sold for its 'miraculous medicinal properties'. And not one worthwhile tool outside of a set of bellows which any idiot could have slapped together in an hour using scrap lumber and a pig-cow hide.

"This selection is disgraceful," Nila said. "You call yourself a chemist?"

"If you're not impressed with our curatives, purgatives, and elixirs, then I challenge you to find better, and for comparable prices," the shop-keeper said defensively. He was a middle-aged man, and from the smoothness of the skin of his hands and face, somebody who had never worked with a fortified acid in his life. To this day, Nila still had the bumpy mark on her palm from when she'd jury-rigged a powerful base to escape a pirate.

"That you offer such frippery is shameful. Where is your equipment?"

"What you see is what I offer," he said. "I can't be giving away all my secrets, after all."

"Secrets? This is not magic, you daft man; it is science! Science does not run on secrecy!"

"Well profit does!" he said. "I suggest you leave. I have no desire to sell to you."

"You have nothing I'd desire to purchase, you charlatan," Nila stormed out. The most frightening thing was that this was not the first 'chemist' which she'd ducked into. The last transition yard they'd attempted an hour and ten streets back had a similar venue, and was even worse. She was beginning to think that 'chemist' had a very different meaning in Ba Sing Se than it did in Si Wong. She also considered the unpleasant but likely possibility that she was going to have to create all of her own tools in this place. It wasn't an issue of if she could, but mostly that it was a monumental hassle.

She moved out into the street, and noted without expression that the side-street which she and Tzu Zi had talked about was now absent of guards. There was something refreshing about being clear of her brother for a while. Familiarity, it was said, bred contempt, but while Nila had actually learned to not revile her brother, there was only so much taking care of him that she could handle at a stretch. That stretch had been pulled taut a long time ago. She vanished into the crowds, just as Mother taught her. She'd even left her firearm at home, so that she was just another face in the crowd, invisible to any who wasn't specifically looking for her. And she kept an eye out for those that were.

The crowds milling about gave her plenty of opportunity to break off, duck through that opening between the buildings, which were supposed to be watched over. That it wasn't was a firebender's doing, and not in the way that most Easterners would expect. Tzu Zi had a very persuasive way about her, and Nila didn't ask how the girl was going to clear the path. She just took for granted that the girl would. And since she had, it had obviously been faith well placed. The path didn't move through the wall; that would have been too easy after all. But it did lead behind buildings, and those buildings broke easy line-of-sight from the post of the guards to her. So she had only to be patient, and wait while a particularly sizable clump of merchants and their laborers were waved through, and then quickly slip into their midst unnoticed, before she was through the gate and the wall which separated the Lower Ring from the Middle Ring.

Instantly, the quality of life jumped up by about a thousand gold Weight a year, that much was certain. While the buildings nearest to the gate were still of low quality, the street took an abrupt turn to the right, and as soon as one could no longer see the poor and the teeming masses of the destitute, the buildings turned to middle-class opulence – as much as those two terms could be bound together – well maintained and proudly decorated. A stark change from the Lower Ring, where if something didn't smell like urine, it was stained by it.

She was also beginning to see what that Tribesman was talking about. Ba Sing Se seemed to be the ultimate stratified society. Much as both the Dakongese and the Si Wongi were established from Caste societies, this one remained so, and then instilled its values right down into the rocks upon which they built. A perfect structure from which the high could exercise absolute control of the low. But there was something else. Nila didn't see it, at first, but she could feel it.

There was a lot of fear, up here.

"Hey, you there!" a voice came from behind her. She felt a start well up in her, but she forced herself to continue walking, not balk like a terrified animal. There were many beasts which would only chase if their prey fled. There was certainly no more obvious way to draw attention to herself. But the voice came closer. "You! Girl! Stop right there!"

And at that point, fleeing would have been more noticeful. She stopped, turning, and saw the man approaching from the turn she'd just abandoned. And her eyes deadened a little when she saw that he was dragging Tzu Zi with him. She let out a weary sigh, but managed not to knead her brow. The plan seemed so perfect, too. Well, it was proof positive that no plan was perfect, and that she needed to come up with a better one next time.

"Is there some issue?" Nila asked.

"I saw you slip through the guard post. That's against the law unless you have transit papers," he said. "So I figure you're some sort of wall-jumper."

"And why would you believe that?" Nila asked, calmly as possible.

"Because I saw through your little temptress' deception," he said, pulling Tzu Zi ahead of her. Her eyes were low, and her lip pouting.

"I'm sorry, Nila," she said. Nila sighed, and finally gave herself permission to palm her face. But then she looked from her friend, to the guard, and then back to her. She was wearing lipstick today, something she did infrequently – notably, it was a particular shade of pink. And she could see just a little bit of that same color on the side of the man's neck.

"I'm going to have to take you into custody," the guard said.

"Very well. I will tell your companions that you were engaged in lewd and lascivious behavior with a fourteen year old girl," Nila said idly. He paused, confusion painting his face. "You are of thirty years, yes? And if I am not mistaken, in Ba Sing Se at least, there are laws protecting the virtue of the young? Well, then I'm sure you will be quite willing to explain your actions with my friend."

"You can't be fourteen," the guard said, confused, at Tzu Zi. The girl nodded. He turned back to her. "She isn't..."

"Yes, she is. She is no few months my younger," Nila pointed out. Her face turned to a smirk. "So by all means, report us. And we can then report you."

"I... Think this is better kept between us..." the guard said, letting Tzu Zi go. "Just don't do it again."

"Do what, guardsman?" Nila asked.

"...never mind. I'm going to go... boil a few things," he said, sounding quite distressed. Nila reached forward and grasped Tzu Zi's hand, drawing her forward and away from the guardsman. Tzu Zi still stared down at the flagstones under her feet.

"I only asked you to distract him. That was unnecessary."

"I got desperate," she said. "He was going to see you!"

"Then we could have tried again. You had no need to sully yourself on my behalf."

"Well, I'm not exactly sullied. I do feel a bit icky, but I could be ickier, I guess," she said, embarrassment now replacing shame.

"So you offered him less than I feared? Good. I hear that only sadness comes from casting about without foresight," Tzu Zi shrugged. Nila raised a brow. "Did not your mother teach you such things?"

"My Mom always taught me to follow my heart," she said.

"Your heart is a pump for blood. Listening to it would tell you nothing but 'wub-dub, wub-dub, wub-dub'."

"You know what I mean," she said, giving Nila a mild shove. Nila smirked at that. Much as she was glad that Tzu Zi took the time to give her a sense of humor, Nila was likewise glad that the firebender was beginning to develop a sense for sarcasm.

"Indeed. Following your heart is risky behavior, because the heart, as I understand things without being entirely literal, does not think. I prefer to follow my brain."

"That's just 'cause you've never been in love," Tzu Zi said.

"Of course not," Nila pointed out. "I am of only fifteen years! Who in such a short time could I have met who would inspire such odd behavior?"

"Well, there was that time in the desert..."

"I was confusing close friendship with romance. And you swore you wouldn't bring that up again!" Nila snapped.

"Right, right," Tzu Zi said. "Well, you're never too young to love. And never too old, either. I bet one day, you're gonna meet somebody and just fall head over heels for them."

"...my head is over my heels."

"It's a saying from back home. And now that you point it out, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense, now does it?" she asked. Nila shrugged, and took a moment to glance into another 'chemist' as she passed it, hoping that the shoddy merchandise and idiotic ideas were a product of being parked in the Lower Ring. Sadly, from the glance, they were not. Luckily the crowds had thinned mightily, leaving them with much more room to walk through the people who went about their daily business. No longer was it shoulder to shoulder, at worst, only elbow to elbow.

"I don't know if I'm capable of that. You know how much I think about things. Romance just doesn't seem like it's... well... possible for me. All this 'defying explanation' and lofty talk just falls blankly in my ears," Nila admitted. "I am no romantic, that much is readily clear."

"Oh, say that again when you've met the right guy," she said.

"Can we please stop talking about hypothetical, unlikely love interests and return our attention to the task at hand?" Nila asked. After all, she was beginning to feel like those vapid bitches who made it a daily game to taunt her in her youth. It was not a comfortable sensation. "Now, where is the Ghong Theatre?"

"Yeah, it shouldn't be too far from here," Tzu Zi said, switching tracks almost instantly. "I picked these gates 'cause they were the closest, after all. It should only be a few streets that way. And true to her word, it was barely a few minutes of easy walking before they reached the edifice which stood proudly above the roofs of the buildings nearby. It seemed to be a structure of nine sides, which raised Nila's brow for her. Eight was the lucky number. What was nine to these people? Well, whatever the case was, she was going in.

"It's been so long," Tzu Zi said.

"It shall not be much longer, I think," Nila said. She paused. "Was this the manic one or the melancholy one?"

"No, Ty Lee's the hyper one," Tzu Zi answered. She paused, right at the doors, which stood open to workers who moved in and out with bundles of wood and cloth. Then, her courage screwed to the sticking place, she pressed on, and moved into the theatre.

---

There were some perks to being the Fire Lord's mistress. She had been training for the position since it became clear that Azulon's mind was going, a prospective courtesan from the time she was barely sixteen years old. Of course, while she had worked to great lengths to keep herself desirable and perfect for entertaining her master, she also made sure that once she'd attracted one, that she become indispensable to him. In its way, it was a stroke of utmost luck that Prince Iroh would fall from both favor and succession. As he both preferred his wife to all other feminine presence, and was a weak-willed man, she knew for a fact that she would only follow him to her own destruction.

And Akemi was not about to get herself killed for a fool.

She played the quiet, restful song on the flute, as her patron, national leader, and recent-times lover sat, straight backed, atop the Burning Throne. She sat two spots to his left, the position usually occupied by an heir left vacant. Tellingly, Ozai's right was also vacant, leaving she and the Fire Lord on the dais alone. His attention was forward, on the delegation from Azul. She made it seem like she was paying no attention, while surreptitiously noting everything they did, said, implied, or neglected. After all, she had to be indispensable, and the best way to do that was to be sharper than any sword, and far more deadily for it.

"When I say that we cannot offer more troops to redeploy into the East, I mean it as it is said. We cannot," the Azuli said. Ouzen was a politician to his toenails, one who had probably sat at the table with the Azul family for all of his formative years. The things the man said which could be trusted without first sifting it through a sieve could probably be counted on one hand, and not even reach the ring-finger. "There is not enough manpower to secure our borders and maintain our infrastructure."

"Then you should privatize your infrastructure," Ozai answered. "This is not a request, ambassador. It is a notice of action. You will deliver on your master's promises."

"Those promises were made six years ago, when you were supposed to be sending our forces to 'an easy victory in the North'," Ouzen answered. "See how well your end of that arrangement held up."

Akemi paused in her playing. "You would be wise to speak with more respect, ambassador," she said, in honeyed tones, before continuing the tone. The frown on Ozai's face grew a bit deeper.

"That the Tribesmen had more fight in them than was expected is immaterial. If we wish to be victorious in this conflict, we must leverage our full strength. I've been hearing a lot of rumors about the Far West, Ambassador. Dark and traitorous rumors. The kinds of rumors which could cause untold havoc and destruction, if left unchecked. As I understand it, there are dissidents within Azuli borders, and their influence needs to be nipped."

"Fire Lord, threats are neither necessary nor appropriate," Ouzen said, showing a placating gesture. "It is a matter of reality, not politics."

"Then send the Ghurkas," Ozai offered.

"We cannot send them," Ouzen remained staunch. "Their numbers are still depleted from your brother's assault on Ba Sing Se, and..."

"You will not speak about that man in this room!" Ozai snapped, which almost made Akemi miss a note in her tune. That was not what they'd discussed. He was supposed to rein in his emotions, so that he could reign over the shrew-minded, cold-eyed neighbors to the west. Akemi could see the calculation in Ouzen's eyes, at that outburst.

"I humbly apologize, Fire Lord. I will not utter it again," but the courtesan could see that Ouzen was filing a chink in the Fire Lord's armor away for later use. If there was one thing she could depend upon form those people, it was that they never gave up a vulnerability, once they'd discovered it. And Ozai was showing more than she'd ever known.

It was disconcerting.

There was a moment of silence in the vast chambers, but as she watched, she could see him twitch just a fraction toward her. No, not necessarily toward her. Simply to his left. "I grow tired of your disingenuous assertions, Ouzen. If you will not speak but the lies your masters force into your skull, then I have no use for you. I will have those men. You will provide them. That is not optional, it is not something you can dissect and litigate. It is an order from the master of your Nation. You will obey it."

"As the Fire Lord wishes," Ouzen said, bowing low enough that his forehead met with the shining obsidian of the floor. Then, with a whisk of his robes sliding with his abrupt rise, he turned and walked decorously out of the throneroom. Akemi let her song wind down, and when the silence was appropriate, she sat in it, her expression one of concern and annoyance. That might not have seemed it to a layman, but it was a victory for Azul's position. She knew what the law demanded of her offspring, and that Azul had more than a year to make a move against her patron before Tsuru could be officially declared a legitimate heir. It was a frustrating bind, that her daughter with this man be locked in this purgatory. Worse still, that it left him vulnerable, and by extension, herself vulnerable also.

And the most irritating of all things was that she was beginning to doubt her decision to grant him her first child.

She forced those thoughts out of her mind. Tsuru would cement Ozai's place, if she could keep Azul from the gates long enough. Tsuru would also give Akemi the leverage to ascend to Fire Lady. But failing that... she had other plans. Only a fool placed complete hope in a single endeavor.

"...not real..." she heard, at a whisper, from her patron, as he stared straight ahead.

"Pardon?"

Ozai gave a slight twitch, which in any other would probably have been a white-faced start of fright. He nodded toward the doors in the distance, through the trough of flames. "What is your opinion of this?"

"He leaves in a stronger position than he entered," Akemi said. After all, she had to be useful, and flattery was everything but. "You should coach yourself against your outbursts, even if they involve traitorous blood."

"You are right," he said, his tone masking his weariness. "Your recommendation?"

"There are several paths," she said. "He cannot be killed; his position in Azul's hierarchy is too low for it to be worthwhile. Another could easily take his place, and the Westerners have little fear of death. Pressure Azul's interests. Either attack their ability to produce in their capital through sabotage, or inflate the price of iron."

"I see," Ozai said. He grasped what she intended. Economic pressures could work both ways. Even though sabotaging what were essentially their own production facilities was a self-destructive turn, the wound of it would fall much harsher on Azul and its influence than it would upon Ozai and the war effort. And expensive iron meant that everything cost more over there, causing economic hardships, and discontent amongst their lower classes. Any or all of which would serve to keep Azul's attention on its own problems, and away from Ozai's. "Arrange both."

"As you wish, Fire Lord," she said.

She rose from her place, kneeling at her master's side, and he parted the flames for her. Appropriate, since she was no firebender herself. She walked with discrete steps toward the side entrance usually reserved for servants and messengers. She was patient enough to wait for when she could use the same passages as her patron proudly. The day would come, after all. As long as any man with a beating heart and a working penis sat upon that throne, she would be Fire Lady.

"...you're not really here."

The urge to pause, to question whether she'd actually heard those words come from her patron's mouth was staggering, but she was a creature of poise. She did not allow it to halt her step. But there was not enough poise on this Earth to keep her from feeling a niggling fear in the back of her mind. That perhaps, as she feared, Ozai was not so sure a means of advancement as she had supposed. She slipped into shadows, where she could do her work.

---

The place was a maze. From the worker's entrance, they had the relative fortune of nobody paying them any mind, with the exception of one person giving Nila an order for some sort of beverage which she could scarcely pronounce, and had forgotten most of by the time he finished talking. Considering the amount of instruction which went into simply describing it, it must have either been the most technical drink in existence, or the recipient absolutely deserved not to get it for being such a snob. Of course, Nila considered, it was more than likely that Kah Ri had something do with it.

"This is going a lot better than I worried it would," Tzu Zi said cautiously. Sooner or later, Nila would break her of the habit of tempting fate. Not today, it seemed.

"The answer is obvious. Kah Ri is identical to you, is she not?" Nila asked. Tzu Zi nodded. "Obviously, if one sees you, they assume of her. And given her proclivity in partner, having her wandering through the back of the building with an appropriately aged girl is very much keeping to her character."

"Wait... are you saying they think you and me are...?"

"It is a fabrication they form inside their own minds, and serves us greatly. Let them keep it," Nila said with a wave of her hand.

"Yeah, but I thought you didn't like..."

"Do stop trailing off. It is a weakness of speech," Nila said. The stink-eye Tzu Zi gave her was refreshing. One of these days, Nila would also make a strong woman out of her. Even if not today, it seemed. "As for what I want, what should I care what others think of me? They do not prick me, so I do not bleed. They do not blaspheme me, so I shall not revenge. If I must avenge every wrong thing thought about me, then the world would be nearly empty before I would be allowed to stop."

"Oh... That makes sense, I guess. I figured you'd be more defensive about it."

"There are things I'm much more defensive about, and for much better reasons," Nila said. She poked her head through another curtain, and ducked back in quickly when she saw that there were a good number of costumers chatting idly in there. As much as she trusted the ruse to allow them easy passage, somebody who knew Kah Ri as intimately as her wardrobe-masters would be able to pick her from her identical sister with ease. "For now, we should find something to conceal you. We may walk the guts of this place, but an edifice of this scale is not easily combed. Better to find your sister amongst the rabble, then follow her."

"Are you sure you should be calling them rabble?" Tzu Zi asked.

"Not important," Nila said. She paused, noting a ochre and green robe, obviously done in some parody of Si Wongi style, which was hanging from a line. She pulled it down and handed it to Tzu Zi. "This should get you into the crowds without incident."

"Ew... it's still wet!" she said.

"Have you a better solution?" Nila asked. Tzu Zi scowled, and grumbled, but slipped the robes over her clothing. Between the voluminous robes and the veil across her nose, there was almost no part of her visible. A complete disguise, if not a subtle one. She also felt an urge to palm her face at the design of the robes. Clearly, they were made by somebody trying to create 'authentic Si Wong' without ever having been there or seen what her people wore. For one thing, the sleeves were completely off. She shook her head. More important things to think about.

With that, she gave one last glance around, then ducked into another path, this one running past a line of latrines which was used in great force by the audiences during intermissions. "Do you have a plan to contact Kah Ri, too?"

"Your voice should be sufficient," Nila pointed out. Even with just her eyes visible, Tzu Zi visible brightened.

"Oh yeah! That's really easy."

"Sometimes the best plans are," Nila said. "So long as she doesn't assume that you are... what was her name again?"

"Gwen."

"Absurd name."

"Tell me about it," Tzu Zi said. The passage opened into a path, which showed a stairwell, twisting up in two directions, into a sort of ring which brought spectators to a second level of seating. Nila began to guide Tzu Zi toward the lower doors.

"We will be best staying low, amongst the many," Nila said.

"Hold on, have you become lost, mistress?" a voice called to them, causing Nila to flinch slightly. She glanced around her, but she and Tzu Zi were the only ones moving through the hall. The doorman up on the stairwell was focusing on them in particular, as well.

"This place is confusing of layout," Tzu Zi said, emulating Nila's accent, badly.

"A forgivable mistake. Your seats are waiting up here, mistress," the doorman said with a bow. Nila gave a glance toward Tzu Zi, and then to her robes. He didn't even now that these clothes were a prop? Then again, he seemed much better paid than the ushers and doormen of the theatre. Perhaps he was a private security man. And in that case, doubly the fool, for not knowing who was permitted. "...Pardon, but she will have to retake her seat with the others."

Referring to Nila, of course. Tzu Zi shook her head daintily. "Please forgive my friend's unorthodox dress. She is a friend from many years, having fallen upon difficult times. Her sufferings would make a man weep. Please, I must give her at least some comfort in this difficult time. Pray she come in with me?"

Did Nila really sound like that?

The guard thought for a moment. "Well, there can't be much harm. She doesn't look like she's going to hurt anybody. Just stay clear of miss al'Jalani. She is in a foul mood."

"Forgive my asking. Who is al'Jalani?" Nila asked, since Tzu Zi would be assumed to know. He looked to Tzu Zi, and Tzu Zi motioned for him to answer.

"Khalisa bint Seema al'Jalani," the guard said. "She is the ambassador from your homeland."

"Ah, I had forgotten," Nila said with obsequious tone. "Forgive a foolish friend?"

"Easily," Tzu Zi said magnanimously. The guard opened the door, and allowed them into the private booth. But calling it a private booth did not mean it was small. There were seats enough for five dozen people, and a good many of them were occupied. "Wow... look at this place," she said at a whisper.

"Someone from on high has invested much to bring such splendor here," Nila said, moving around the back row, to the seats somewhat closer the front at the far edge. Nila shook her head. "You were having entirely too much fun in the mocking of me, I think."

"What?"

"I don't sound like that."

"Yeah, you kinda do," Tzu Zi said with a grin which Nila could perceive straight through a veil. Nila shook her head, and took her seat.

"He didn't even get the name right. Her name would be Khalisa al'Jalani bint Seema," she shook her head. "These rubes know nothing of my culture."

"To be fair, you don't know a whole lot about it, either," Tzu Zi pointed out.

"Point taken."

"Shhh. We're trying to enjoy the music," the inhabitant of the seat beside Nila rebuked. Nila stared flatly at him, then shrugged. The music was quite pleasant, in its way, an Eastern song in a very old style. She didn't know its subject matter, because it was in a dialect of Tianxia too far removed from her understanding of it. It must have been some obscure offshoot of the Omashu dialectical family. But she had a fair understanding of the players on the stage, and what they represented.

"What's happening down there?" Tzu Zi asked at a whisper.

"It appears to be the origin tale," Nila said. "That would make this the Song of the Founder."

"Neat. I wonder who they have playing the lead?" she asked.

Nila didn't guess twice.

While Nila had never been particularly interested in history, and every bit as not-interested in the history of earthbending, she had learned enough through intellectual osmosis to know the players. The general, who started the war. The warrior king, who escalated things. The farmer's son, who climbed a mountain to escape it all. They were actually at that scene right about... now.

"And the universe plays with loaded dice in three, two..." Nila said idly, drawing confused glances from both sides.

Because when the player depicting Oma appeared at the crest of that 'mountain', earthbent in especially for this scene, one could be forgiven for thinking that Tzu Zi had mastered some form of teleportation, and was now acting opposite her male counterpart. Even the height and the distance didn't occlude that the two of them were practically identical in every respect. The eyes, the face, the body – which was too developed for her age – the only thing which would tell them apart was a generous dollop of makeup and a glamorous wardobe. Kah Ri began the song, as the two actors began to dance 'round each other at the crest of the 'mountain', and Nila nodded smugly.

"Oh my... That's her!" Tzu Zi said excitedly, drawing another shush from those sitting nearby. She restrained herself. "Did you know about this?"

"I moved from an place of educated assumption," Nila said. The universe did seem to enjoy toying with her, after all. It stood to reason that every now and again, the universe would inadvertently let something good slip by easily as well. Nila smirked. "Delicious irony, do you see?"

"...not really?"

"Oma, the founder of earthbending, portrayed by Fire Nation nobility," Nila chuckled. "Irony, yes?"

"I guess so..."

"Well, we know where she will be for at least..." Nila pulled out a chronometer she kept in a pocket. Blast, she'd forgotten to wind it again. A few twists and it was ticking again, if several hours off its proper time. "Forty minutes of an hour. We can intercept her at our leisure as she leaves."

And beside her, Tzu Zi was smiling brightly enough to make the rest of the room dim. It was a good feeling, sitting there. Nila had, as Tzu Zi would have put it, 'done good'.

---

The door creaked as it opened, which was not a hopeful sign. Still, Sokka was trying to be 'Mister Positive' today. After all, they'd survived Yu Yan archers trying to kill them all, then survived almost getting eaten by a deranged airbender, and then, to top it all off, Sokka managed not to get sick off of whatever Aang had gotten. Well, the real topper was that Sokka's half-remembered directions to the place Teo used to live with his actual father actually bore out. The place was obviously the right one, because the building had a massive hole in it, and the whole region was flooded. Still, something might have survived.

"That isn't a good sign," the Avatar said.

"Ugh. Why'd they have to make this thing out of metal?" Toph said, giving the building a boot with her calloused foot. "You have fun rustling up whatever you're looking fore. I'll stay out here with fuzzy, flighty, and Destroyer."

"We're not calling her Destroyer," Katara countered.

"It's a male," Toph said. "I think."

"Are you sure? I can't really tell. There's not much to look at," Sokka said, scratching at his head. Ever since he'd stopped shaving the sides of his head, it was a quite cathartic experience to scratch there when he was puzzled. The itch was quite pleasant to sate.

"Whether it's a male or a female isn't important," Aang said. "I'll bring you out something to listen to if I find anything."

"Yeah, yeah," Toph said, dropping onto her back in the dried, cracked mud. Momo took one look at her, and did likewise, while the cub decided that it would prefer to wander over to Appa and chew on the pelt of its tail. Appa was a remarkably patient beast to put up with that. Sokka returned his attention to the ruined observatory. The landscape around it had once been lowlands, and there were still ruins of an old, defunct levy which poked up from the mud which marched right up to the door. Sokka also presumed that the Observatory was much higher than the surrounding lands; even still, that mud pushed against the door, and had to be cleared away by Toph before the door could budge. There was more of that mud within. The levy had broken, and flowed into the building unimpeded. Not surprising, considering the massive hole in the structure. In fact, Sokka considered as he scratched his wonderfully itchy head, that only the typically Earth Kingdom overengineering of this structure kept the gaping wound from causing the whole thing to collapse on itself.

"I don't think we'll find anything down here even if we dump all this muck back outside," Katara said, and the Avatar nodded with something between disappointment and acceptance. She was right. While a Water Tribe scroll might – might – have survived under the muck for all these years, the Easterners used paper, and water destroyed paper as surely as the landscape of Azul killed the stupid. There was another floor, built of some metal which Sokka couldn't identify at distance, but only knew wasn't particularly ferrous since it wasn't rusty, that hung above the whole thing, and formed the top of the rift which gutted the wall.

"What even happened to this place?" Aang asked.

"Teo said that when he was little, there was a terrible flood nearby," she explained. "The farmers tried to shore the levy against it, but it kept failing, despite any amount of work or earthbending they put into it. Finally, Teo's father – his real father, I mean – asked everybody to flee to higher ground, while he worked some kind of motorized pump to give them the time to leave."

"Yeah, I think this is a piece of it," Sokka said, picking up a cracked, nearly decomposed half-ring of rubber.

She nodded, looking at the hole, now mounted up with long dried mud. "Teo's Dad and Zha Yu worked for hours, trying to keep the pumps working, so that the people in the valley could escape. But the longer the pumps ran, the more they started to overheat, or something. I don't remember what exactly went wrong," she gave a shrug. "Teo went to a whole other level of technical when he was describing it. I kinda zoned out. But the thing eventually started coming apart at the seams. They'd almost gotten everybody, but Teo's Dad wasn't going to leave until they were all gone. Zha Yu tried to convince him that he'd done enough. I guess Zha Yu failed, because the engines blew up. Something about the fuel being unstable. Teo's Dad didn't even try to escape. The Mountain King had to save the man's family, slog them out through a flood."

"Wow," Aang said. "Teo's Dad was really brave."

Katara nodded, and Sokka felt an urge to do likewise. It was one thing to be heroic when your back was to the wall. It was quite another to make sure that if only one person didn't make it out alive, it was going to be you. Especially for a man smart enough to know what was coming, to know with razor clarity. Dying in hopeful ignorance had its bravery, but dying when you knew that there was no other way, with nothing but the cold certainty of inevitability? Sokka wasn't sure he had the stones to pull something like that.

"If we're going to find anything, it'll be upstairs," Sokka said, breaking the moment of silence. The others nodded, but kept looking at the hole for a moment. Clearly, much as Sokka had consigned the 'leadership' of this little band of merry – not so merry in Toph's case – adventurers, he was going to have to move through the nostalgia and navel-gazing today. He idly pulled his boomerang from his case and spun it around his finger as he slowly ascended the stairwell. He paused, though, as he felt an odd sensation as he mounted those stairs. It was just a moment, like something wasn't entirely right in the world. But he shook his head, and moved up the stairs, still spinning his boomerang on his finger, and not looking down.

If he'd looked down, he'd have seen there was no way that the structure of the stairway under his feet could have supported his weight.

And yet, for reasons only two Si Wongi children knew about in all the world, it did.

He left that impossible staircase behind him, and started leaning around corners. The structure of the building seemed to have held up well. Suspiciously well, in fact. Sokka kept twirling that boomerang on his finger, as he started to rub at his chin. The upper floor of this place was obviously not the uppermost. There was at least one higher than this, probably the one which held the telescope and its mechanism. This place almost seemed laid out as a living area, if a ruined one.

Something was wrong. The more he walked, silently, through the hallways, peeking into the rooms, the more he was sure about it. It wasn't the 'something is going to kill me' wrong, which he felt in the North, nor the 'the universe is going to make me miserable in five seconds' wrong which he felt much more frequently. This was a quiet unsettlement, a sensation in the center of his gut like he'd eaten a lead weight, and it kept pulling him down, a quiet but consistent reminder that something was off.

He spent a moment thinking about that sensation, trying to quantify it.

In a thousand other lifetimes, he would have pegged it instantly.

In a thousand other lifetimes, he would have stood with Yue as she died in the Spirit Oasis.

So focused was he on trying to peg that sensation that he actually had his boomerang slip from where it was twirling on his fingertip, and it bounced across the metal floor, clattering enough to break him out of his own bit of navel-gazing. Heh, just when he'd decided that it was up to him to keep that sort of behavior to a minimum, he found himself engaging in it himself. Well, it wasn't important. He had to find something which would tell them when the Day of Black Sun was happening. He stooped to pick up his boomerang, but as his fingers approached it, there was a snap, and something flicked out of the darkness, striking its blueness away from Sokka with a ping of metal bouncing off of metal once again. A few months ago, Sokka would have confined himself to a girlish scream of shock and terror. While that same scream more or less did appear in Sokka's throat, it was accompanied by a machete instantly at hand and borne toward the only source of that bolt which could have been possible.

The darkness parted, as some sort of light emitting device was leveled upon the Tribesman. But it wasn't like anything Sokka had ever seen before. It didn't seem to have a flame, and while bright, seemed to project much less light than a lantern.

"Put it down or the next one goes through your... Sokka?" the voice beyond that darkness ordered, but trailed off in bafflement.

"Teo?" Sokka recognized the voice. "What are you doing here?"

The light dropped, so it wasn't burning directly into Sokka's eyes. Now that he wasn't blinded by glare, he could see that it was a heavy, brick-like object with a tiny lens throwing that yellow light. And it certainly didn't seem to be a lantern. "Sokka? Is that really you?" he asked, and Sokka could now see that the other hand of the aspiring mad-scientist was clasping that crossbow. Only this one seemed to be a hellish-bodge of two weapons into one, to the dismay of both. Sokka didn't doubt that he could fire it a couple of times to a wind, though. Teo, to Sokka's relief, was grinning, though. "Is Katara here?"

"What? No 'how have you been?', no 'You look good Sokka', no 'remember that time we almost blew up my house', just jumping right to my sister?" Sokka said, putting his machete away, but begrudgingly. "You've gotta work on that tact, man. Besides, as her older brother, I reserve the right to pound on you a bit if you ever do anything stupid around her."

"Point taken," Teo said. He shrugged. "I hear this used to be my home. I was too young at the time to remember it, but Mom said this place should be a safe place to lie low."

"Hold on, I should probably tell Aang and the others to come up," he said.

"Oh, you can't go that way," Teo said. He then paused, that pool of light dipping a little lower. "Come to think of it, how'd you even get up here?"

"I used the stairs?"

"Sokka, there are no stairs over there," Teo said. Sokka's eyes widened for a moment, then he nodded behind him, still feeling that sensation in his gut. He expected to find his senses betrayed him, that he would find a gaping hole.

Instead, he found impossible stairs.

"Huh," Sokka said.

"Wait a minute. These weren't here yesterday," Teo said. He glanced to Sokka. "You should use the rope ladder to get down. I don't trust these. And I'm gonna tell Mom that you're here. I don't want her to worry."

"Yeah, you do that," Sokka said, finally seeing what had eluded him before. He scratched at his head, at that wonderful itch, because right now, more even than the Day of Black Sun, he had a new problem to puzzle through.

---

The play was sliding easily through its denouement, the music from the flanks of the stage winding down, as the lights were snuffed one after another, until only the actress on the center of the stage was left alone, surrounded by darkness. She had to admit, the girl was a better actress than her sister was. Then again, in order to be a Fire National living in the most hostile place on this planet to her, she would have had to be. While Nila was often the kind to be bored when forced to endure anything not up for academic scrutiny, she felt no need to sleep through this experience, which was akin to another spending an hour at rapt attention.

"There, she should be..." Nila began.

"Shh!" her neighbor hushed more loudly than Nila had herself spoken, bringing twice a bout of confusion from the Si Wongi girl. The play was over, after all. All that remained was the applause and the needless affectation of the playwright's and players' egos.

"Yeah, it's not done yet," Tzu Zi whispered. Nila raised a brow at that, but turned back to the stage. Quietly, a woman wearing red moved to the edge of the light. Kah Ri, portraying Oma, turned toward her, an almost palpable grief weighing upon her, and she spoke in that argot tongue. And the woman in red answered her, in an old but still understandable dialect of Huojian.

"You are the woman who moves the stone? I come from the West, and believe you have much to teach me," she said, bowing her head, before the last light was snuffed, and the curtain was drawn over the stage. Nila gave a grunt at that.

"Yeah, that part never makes sense," her neighbor pointed out.

"Nila, was that?"

"I cannot say," Nila cut her off, despite being fairly certain who that last figure was. "We should go down into the crowd for when they aggrandize themselves. She will more easily hear you so."

"See, I was doing your accent perfectly."

"You were mocking me and I know it," Nila said without humor. Tzu Zi laughed, which drew the attention of others in the balcony.

"Who is this girl who brays to such propaganda?" the sour faced Si Wongi asked, and in Altuundili to make it all the harder for the subject to understand. She wasn't yet middle aged, but would be approaching it soon, and had a face which made it clear that her native expression was a disapproving scowl. Nila wagered heavy that this would be the ambassador herself.

"She speaks on another subject," Nila answered. al'Jalani rose an eyebrow at that.

"And she does not speak to her own actions?"

"She would not, to you," Nila replied. With a smirk, she gave a nod. "Thrice thanked for your hospitality and an open seat. We shall take our leave," she turned to Tzu Zi. "We should leave, now."

"Not one step, Child of the South," al'Jalani demanded, rising to her feet. She wasn't very tall, though she had half a head on Mother. "Who are you to demand of my hospitality without my permission, and expect no repercussions? I should have you hung and flogged for this!"

"The Sultan would think poorly on that," Nila answered. "Go. Now."

"Guards, stop her!" al'Jalani shouted. Which caused a flip to switch in Nila's mind, from mild entertainment to the cold, calculation of survival, the same sort of impassive, unfeeling sense she had when she was in naked captivity on a pirate ship. What had she on hand? Very little; her gun was at the apartment. She had one explosive lemon, but that was insufficient to deal with the guards, spaced apart as they were. But there was something else. Tzu Zi's robe.

With a heave, she pulled the green robes off of Tzu Zi, leaving the firebender to squawk with surprise, before tying in a fraction of a second the end of one sleeve to the rail which kept fools from toppling down to the lower level, and then, grabbed Tzu Zi's arm and threw both of them over that precipice, hanging from the sleeve which was unbound. Their momentum was arrested, turning their drop into a swing, before the robe started to tear loudly. Nila released her grasp on the screaming firebender, and dropped her back-first onto the cushions of the seats, which had been vacated by the applauding audience. With the tearing continuing, Nila had no recourse but to brace herself for the drop, which happened a second later than she'd feared, and meant that her feet were under her when gravity took its due.

It was somewhere between dumb luck and muscle memory which saw Nila land straddling the backs of the chairs, unstable but upright, to hop into the aisle which ran toward the stage. A glance back showed al'Jalani screaming above, and the ushers which were preparing to direct foot-traffic now deputized to capture the Si Wongi girl.

"Couldn't you just have been nice for one minute?" Tzu Zi asked. "It'd be a lot simpler!"

"But less amusing," Nila said flatly, her eyes on that usher, who was moving in an eddy, as the people started to flare away from both she and the one who might be instigating a level of physical violence. The usher reached forward, trying to catch Nila by the arm, as though that would have instantly rendered her incapable of any defensive or hostile action. Instead, she leaned back, looping that grasping hand with the ruins of Tzu Zi's stolen robe, yanking him further, and then twisting him off of his balance so that he careened into the second usher who was attempting to do the same to Tzu Zi without that girl's knowing. "Don't just stand there! Rush the stage!" she urged, and Tzu Zi nodded with focus.

The crowd made no attempt to get in her way. From the looks of shock on their faces that Nila noted with a cold sort of clarity as she moved, it seemed as though they were utterly aghast that somebody would do such a thing. Not because it was heinous, but because it was against decorum. Nila vaulted the pit where the orchestra dwelt, even now still in the process of packing their music in, and landed with barely her toes on the stage. A brief moment of balance, and she turned, to help Tzu Zi make that same bound. And to a degree of frustration to the Si Wongi, the firebender made it without assistance. Powerful legs, that girl had. Unbeknown to her in that moment, it was a trait which ran in the family. "You should..."

"KAH RI!" Tzu Zi screamed, which neatly fulfilled Nila's recommendation. But as the two of them pushed aside the curtain, they found not the doppleganger of her greatest friend, but instead an assortment of baffled players, actors, and stagemen.

"You're not supposed to be on stage," the man who had portrayed Oma's lover said, now looking quite well since they'd erased the makeup which they'd used to make him appear brutalized.

"The lead. Where is she?" Nila asked.

"Who are you?" that player asked.

"Wait... How is that possible?" the one-line wonder who'd played the first Avatar asked, pointing at Tzu Zi.

"I asked a question. Answer it," Nila pressed.

"I don't know. When the commotion started, she ran back to her dressing room," he said. When Nila started in that direction, he caught her sleeve. "Wait, you can't go back there, it's not all-whoa!"

His assertion interrupted by a hip-throw, of course. Nila was in no mood for any further delays nor impediments. The other players flinched away from her, huddling into protective groups. Nila was actually rather surprised that no other man amongst them tried to strike her down for that. But she didn't care. She nodded, and Tzu Zi was already following her. "Nila, slow down!"

"I will slow down when I am not in danger of incarceration," Nila answered.

"If you'd just been nice, none of this would have happened," Tzu Zi pointed out critically, ducking under the same drape which lead into the 'tunnels' which moved toward where the actors prepared themselves.

"It was wasting time."

"There's always more time, Nila! If you just calmed down and thought about things..."

"Thought about things?" Nila spun to the firebender. "I do little else! My mind is in a constant whirl! It feels years since I have been able even to sleep!"

"Is that why you're so angry all the time? Why don't you just rest?" Tzu Zi asked.

"B-because if I relent in the slightest, everything falls apart! I must advance, or fail, and there is no time for this now!"

Nila was walking again, but this time, when Tzu Zi tried to halt her, she kept going, dragging the firebender behind her. "Nila, just stop!"

"Do you not wish to see your sister?"

"Yeah, but not if it means you snap and go all a-bibbledy," Tzu Zi said. That was enough to cause Nila a moment's pause.

"...a-bibbledy?"

"You know what I mean," Tzu Zi said. "Something's wrong, and you're not talking about it. Well, fine. But you can't hold it in forever. It's like those things you talk about, made of brass, lots of steam?" Nila supplied a guess, "Yeah, pressure cookers, that's the thing. You've been bottled up for so long that you're gonna blow if you don't let off some steam."

"Then I shall do so when we are not under threat of arrest. Does that suffice?"

"Well, not really but I don't see..."

"I think they went this way!" a voice came from their back, driving Nila to start running again. Only after about six strides, she came to a halt, and backpeddled, looking at a door with an interchangeable plaque resting upon it. She looked at it a moment, and turned to stare upward at nothing as she thought.

"Nila, what are you..."

"Yes, that's how they'd spell it," Nila said, and then gave the door a sharp kick, sending it off its rails and flat onto the floor. Nila stared down at it for a split moment. She'd really expected the door to turn, rather than slide. Oops. A shake of her head, and she bore the two in.

"Did you need to do that to the door?" Tzu Zi asked.

"Your sister will forgive me," she said. This was her dressing room. While the transliteration between languages was never exact, it did follow some rules. And names were the trickiest business, since they were phonetic rather than symbolic. Only Whalesh and Altuundili of the languages Nila knew of were phonetic, able to translate proper names perfectly. Otherwise, there was a degree of linguistic shift. Namely, that Kah Ri Baihu, became Kali Ba-u.

The room was vacant of the one they had hoped for, which drove a pang of frustration into Nila. She'd hoped that this would have simplified matters. The forgiveness of so indispensable a portion of the play would have done much to ameliorate the harm that Nila had done on impulse and reflex. Tzu Zi glanced around, and let out a sigh of despair. They were running out of time. Nila's mind, though, remained at its manic whirl. She picked out a hundred details. Chocolate, very dark. Not a gesture, from its simple packaging, something she just had for her own sake. Energy? Perhaps. No personal effects. The walls undecorated, unadorned. She felt no need to personalize this place, to make it her own. Why? A feeling of impermanence? Three coat pegs. Two bearing identical drab cloaks. The one in the center absent. Green eyes ran over the walls. And then saw an odd shadow.

She moved to that spot on the wall, running her fingers along its edge. And surely enough, she found a bump. A finger slipped along the seam in the drab panels of the wall, until she felt something in her way. A twist, and came a click. The panel swung in, showing a rat-way which seemed to dive under the theater.

"A secret passage? Why would that be there?" Tzu Zi asked.

"Who cares? Get in it!" Nila ushered, and pulled the firebender in after her as she moved into the darkness, kicking the panel shut behind them. Less than five seconds later, she could hear footfalls in the room behind them. Nila instantly clapped a blind hand over what she assumed would be Tzu Zi's mouth, but found instead, as the universe tended to mock her, Tzu Zi's chest. The 'gack' was enough to reorient the Si Wongi to the proper place to keep the firebender from asking anything, or speaking at all.

"Where did they go?"

"Wait, where's Kali?"

"Do you think they kidnapped her?"

"We should call the guard!"

Nila felt a sinking sensation. Great. She'd tried to engineer a reunion between two sisters, and now found herself very likely the focus of a city-wide manhunt.

"I made a mess of this, no?" Nila asked, her focus draining into exhaustion.

"You tried," Tzu Zi answered quietly. "That counts for something."

"We should find what's on the other end of this," Nila said. "That might get us out of the Ring before the noose closes. I will find another way."

"I know you will, Nila."

Nila nodded in the darkness, turned, and walked straight into a metal-clad wall. She grumbled to herself, which prompted the firebender to undertake her craft, igniting a flicker above her palm. The path, once revealed, was quite easy to follow, but didn't soothe Nila's mind. Her impatience and her pride had pulled defeat from the jaws of victory. Tzu Zi was right in that Nila's qualities included many things, but starkly excepted 'talking to people' from their number. She'd decided to walk in silence, and as the walk dragged on an unreasonable length, she started to wonder at the wisdom of that decision.

She also started to wonder where in the name of the many gods she personally disbelieved this rat-way was going.

It was only after that unreasonable length that the path finally stopped in its right-angle turns and sudden drops and rises, terminating at a ladder, its rungs all forged of long-tarnished bronze. Still, they seemed to hold her weight readily enough, so she ascended. She pushed up on the ceiling above her head, and it raised as a panel, showing the cellar of a dingy and drab building, much like the tenement house she was boarding in. But it was not her own, as the laws of coincidence couldn't be stretched that far, no matter how the universe loved to mock Nila. She pulled the silent firebender up behind her, sliding that panel back into place.

"Where are..."

There was the sound of a door closing not far away, and Nila's instincts started to whir again. Without proper care, she moved away from Tzu Zi, and to that door. It was not locked, sloppily enough. When she opened the door, it was apparent why; the lock was broken, wedged in its open state. She looked out into the hallway, and just preparing to slip out of the door, into the crowds beyond, was somebody wearing a cloak identical to those which had been hung on the pegs in the theatre. "With haste!"

Tzu Zi flinched, but Nila was already running, managing even to catch that door before it latched shut, and explode through it. That had the unfortunate effect of making her almost tumble down a rickety set of stairs. The building she had exited from was, indeed, a Lower Ring tenement building, if one in a different section of the Ring from where they were based. She cast her glance around, but the street was too crowded. She couldn't pick out that one cloak amongst all the madness. She panted with frustration, trying to give it a useful outlet, but it just crammed tighter, into a ball of frustration.

"Kah Ri!" the firebender screamed as soon as she cleared the threshold. A great many heads turned her way for a moment.

Only one head remained locked in their direction once that moment had passed. A head, with a face, which but for a dash of glamorous make-up and a hairstyle which probably cost more than Nila's entire outfit, looked exactly like Tzu Zi's.

"Sister?" she asked, confusion in her dark brown eyes. "...how?"

And at that point, Kah Ri Baihu was tackled by a hug by a squealing firebender.

---

"I'm actually surprised that you all came here," Sul said, as usual in her native Whalesh, which left of their group Katara baffled. "I thought this place was a bit further away from... well... anything than it seems."

"Oh, trust me, it's every bit as far away as you thought it was," Aang said. The 'blonde' woman gave a shrug and a roll of the eyes, before leaning a glance toward her daughter, who sat, talking to stuffed animals and dolls, pouring them tea. "And come to think of it, what are you doing this far from anybody? It's gotta be miles to the nearest town. It'd take all day to reach Shen Shen on that road."

"I don't use the road," Sul said simply. She glanced back to the balcony which ran 'round the edge of the building. "Is not young Toph going to be joining us?"

That question was answered by a rumbling, and a pillar of mud rose up until it was level with the rail, and a proud looking blind earthbender confidently hopped onto the metal platform, and then immediately her confident expression transformed into one of utmost annoyance. "Oh come on! Why's every-damn-thing made of metal these days?"

"Would you like some tea, Toph?" Sul asked.

"Black and bitter, as I like it," Toph answered, very carefully picking her way into the room which was being used as a kitchen by the family. But then again, from the look of it, it probably had always been a kitchen, which raised a question about who had lived here first. From what Aang had seen of the way Zha Yu lived, he would never be this practical, or focused on the homely essentials. Toph, though, picked her way along the wall until she tripped over a small chair which was used to seat one of Cho'e's dolls, causing the girl to chastise Toph, and Toph to start swearing quietly under her breath, which caused Sul to frown with dismay.

"The future will be less than kind to her kind, I fear," Sul said.

Aang leaned back, confused. "What?"

"People are using more metal than stone nowadays. She sees with earthbending, and metal is not earth. Pah. But what would I know? I've always looked up, not down," she shrugged. Then, an airy laugh. "Fitting that I start my life fascinated by the heavens, and spend my adult life struggling to enter them."

Aang leaned back from that. "Wait, are you saying you were the scientist here?"

"I wouldn't call myself a scientist. Just a very enthusiastic amateur," Sul said humbly. She then leaned aside. "Cho'e, don't touch that, you don't know where it's been!"

Aang followed the woman out of the kitchen and into the open area which Toph was blindly navigating. For the reasons of her blindness, she wasn't looking into the heart of the chamber, which held the remnants of what was observation equipment, but now, held a whole other sort of device. It almost looked like a gigantic slingshot, if one not currently pulled taut. The glider Sul favored was resting in a place which would probably be easily caught by the pulled bands. "Oh... I think I see how you get around," Aang said. "That's pretty ingenious."

"What are y'all looking at?" Toph asked, as they passed her. "Am I missing something?"

"How do you land the glider, Sul? I mean, there's no way you'd get it up here from below," Aang asked.

"Very carefully," she said with a chuckle, taking Toph's hand, and guiding the blind earthbender with her. "Come on, Toph."

"I don't need your help," she said defiantly, but notably didn't let go of the woman's grasp. "At least we didn't go to that library. That'd be worse. Somehow."

"Wan Shi Tong's library?" Aang asked. "It's still an option, I mean if nothing else works."

"Personally, I say leave all that spirity-crap if you can," Toph opined. "Spirits usually demand a price for what they give you, and I'm pretty sure any canny spirit would levy a price for 'saving the goddamned world' that sits pretty high. Don't want to think of what they'd try to get out of a clueless mark like you."

"Do you know much about the spirits?"

"I know a couple dozen stories, and the fact that certain motifs tend to be pretty consistent. Other than that, you should talk to that guy who doesn't exist; he knows a lot more about spirits."

"Who doesn't ex... Oh, Sharif," Aang nodded. "Yeah, I'm gonna have to find a way to get in contact with him. But he said he was heading for Ba Sing Se, so we might see him there if our path takes us east."

"Planning ahead? What a shocking development out of you," Toph said sardonically.

"Hah hah, Toph."

"I got my moments," she said. "So, Sweetness, you done getting buttered up by the mad scientist yet?"

"What?" Aang asked. Toph leaned over and planted a boot onto a door, sending it crashing open, and spilling the scene before Aang, but not the one Toph's introduction had prepared him for. Katara and Teo were indeed in that room, but Sokka was too, and any activity within was confined to the two young men, who paused from frantically constructing something metal and complicated looking. Both stared back like they'd been caught doing something naughty. "Ummmm."

The two young men shared a glance.

"You saw nothing," Sokka declared, and slammed the door shut. Toph leaned back.

"...the hell?" she asked.

"When it comes to Science and Sokka, I find it's best to just get out of the way," Aang said with a 'hands off' gesture. "So, Sul, you know this place pretty well, right?"

"I know its every inch. My mother had this place built decades ago, back when my family still had money and... well... respectability," Sul said. "What do you need, young Avatar?"

"Do you have records of stellar events? Like, something that could tell us when the next eclipse is going to take place?"

"Solar or lunar eclipse?" Sul asked.

"Does that matter?" Aang asked.

"Did somebody mention the eclipse?" Sokka asked, instantly at their side, through a method Aang could not identify, but left a door swinging open.

"Sokka, I-it's falling!" Teo's voice came through that doorway.

"It's alright, I got it!" Katara answered. "Tui La, this thing weighs a tonne!"

Sokka glanced back, then shrugged, as the problem had sorted itself. "So somebody's finally going after the whole 'day of Black Sun' business? Where do you keep your records?"

"That is the problematic part," Sul said. "We kept them downstairs."

Sokka stared at her, agape. "But you put them in a safe place, at least."

"Possibly."

"Whew. For a second there, I thought that this might have been bad," he said. He glanced through a hole in the floor. "Hey, Toph, there's a gap right there. Think you could give us an easy elevator?"

She leaned aside, pulling her hand away from her golden-haired guide, and made as though to look down the hole. An odd gesture, considering Toph never needed to 'look' at anything. But with an inelegant stomp, quite unlike her usual style – more akin to what she taught Aang than what she used in a fight – the mud and ground rose up into the gap, and she stepped onto it, instantly loosening the tension she'd been under since she stepped onto metal flooring. Sokka and Sul filled out the rest of the platform's capacity, and with another shift, the trio dropped out of sight. Aang hopped down the hole easily enough, his subconscious airbending giving him a whisper-light landing at their backs.

"So you kept predictive manuals somewhere safer than here?" Sokka asked, motioning to the mud which, upon Aang's stark realization that roughly half the height of this chamber was now submerged under silt. Sul nodded.

"We kept most of our paperwork back here, near the... why is there a staircase here?" Sul asked.

"I thought you said you knew this place," Toph asked.

"I did. This was not a staircase. It belongs over there," she pointed behind her, to another hole in the ceiling. But before them was a stairwell, one which Aang had seen exactly once before.

"No way. That's impossible," Aang said, kipping over to it, and feeling the cold metal under his fingers. It was a structure defying physics, obviously enough, but it was the look of the stairs which arrested Aang. The way that every step seemed to be a lattice of veins and arteries, all formed of rounded iron, dull but not rusted, and still very strong.

He'd walked these steps before speaking to Avatar Korra the first time.

"Something about this place is weird, I get that. Now the manuals?" Sokka pressured. Sul gave the stairwell one more glance, then shrugged and bade the others follow her. The chamber within was compacted closed, its door crumbling to rot, but the fact that the door still stood was telling.

"All of the truly important literature we kept in here. Our almanacs, our reference manuals, our sales-receipts, that kind of thing," Sul said. "Toph, could you help us with the door?"

"I'll do ya one better," she said, and idly kicked the wall near the door. With a 'shunk' the wall slid aside, giving them a clear path into the room. The mud was inside as well as out, but at a much lower level, roughly standing at around where Aang's calves would have been were he actually on the original floor. And the small room still had standing shelves, bursting with literature. Sadly, while mud had not inundated this place, water had obviously made its way in, and only the top most shelf was intact, and even then, those shelves didn't look in the best condition.

"So what are we looking for?" Aang asked. Sokka just moved to that uppermost row, the one obviously not smudged to illegibility by a decade of water, and started to run his finger along the spines of the tomes in turn. His face showed greater and greater strain as he went, until he stopped stock still, and then retreated, tearing a book from the shelves with a triumphant laugh. "Is that?"

"Astronomical almanac!" Sokka said. He tore it open, and started to flip through it. "This thing'll have the predictions we need!"

"That's great," Aang said. "Although, now we gotta figure out what we do with that information. I mean, it's not like us and a rag-tag assortment of our friends and allies is going to be able to invade the Fire Nation's capital in less than ten minutes."

"I'm sure you'll come up with something," Toph said. But Sokka didn't look quite as pleased anymore. In fact, his flipping through pages was becoming quite frantic, until he finally flipped to the very end, and then turned to Sul with a disbelieving look on his face. Sul stood without speaking, quietly shaking her head, as Sokka went various shades of pale grey and red, as he seemed to vacillate between disbelief and outrage.

"What?" Aang asked.

"I didn't remember how far that almanac went," Sul said.

"The last prediction was three years ago," Sokka said, his voice very, very tense. With a sudden shout and a heave which sent the book flapping and fluttering in its rapid transit to the dried mud, he stomped to a corner, leaning against it with his brow. "Damn it all! Why is it that every time we find a way to make one step forward, the universe punts us a dozen back?"

"It'll be alright," Aang said comfortingly, and Sokka deflated a bit.

"Ba Sing Se," Sokka said. "I guess that's our last real option."

"I guess so," Aang echoed.

"Alright. Then we better get moving. We don't know how much time we have," Toph said.

"We can spend a night, at least," Aang said.

"Really? Here? With all the... metal?" Toph asked.

"I'll go tell Katara and Teo what we found," Sokka said.

Aang nodded. Sul watched the Tribesman and the earthbender leave, then turned back to Aang. "And how do you feel about this?"

Aang shook his head. "Sokka put it best. It's like the universe doesn't want me to win."

Sul shook her head. "Any victory not earned in blood and tears has no weight nor value. Even if you don't believe you can do this, Avatar, others believe. I believe. Don't make a fool of my faith."

Aang smiled at that. "You've got a way with words," he said. Sul shrugged.

"My husband must be rubbing off on me. Come upstairs; you should have some dinner before nightfall. Then, I can show you something really spectacular," she said, before moving through that ad hoc doorway. After a moment in that musty, muddy room, Aang followed. He couldn't stay in darkness and regret forever, after all.

---

"What are you doing here?"

"What are you doing here?"

Two identical girls with identical voices managed to ask in perfect unison. There was a blinking moment where both of them had no idea which was supposed to answer first. Nila, though, took a moment to stretch, cracking her joints and feeling a small measure of her tension release. After all, she'd managed to not completely bungle up something for a change.

And the fact that she could assign blame for bungles to herself was a relatively new development.

"I promised I'd visit and it's been almost a year and a half..."

"I thought you were a tax-collector or worse one of those goons which tried to kidnap me a couple weeks ago and..."

"Wait, kidnap?" Kah Ri broke off, as her sister had caught a thread which bore further inspection. "What's going on, Kah Ri?"

"We should go to my home," Kah Ri said, her dark eyes flitting furtively around. "I don't like being in the open."

Then you picked the wrong profession, Nila thought. And managed not to say aloud, if only with great difficulty. One girl led the other, but the first paused and glanced back as Nila followed after them. "What's she doing?" Kah Ri asked.

"She's a friend."

"Do you trust her?"

"With my life. Why, what's going on?" Tzu Zi asked. Nila rolled her eyes. She was beginning to think everybody in this family was insanely paranoid with Tzu Zi's sole exception. But then again, considering her sample-size discounting anecdotal evidence was, at the moment, three, she might have to reserve judgement for the time being. Kah Ri pointed to a building across the courtyard. She guessed that they were probably a mile or so from the tenement which all four of them had piled into, which while a tiny distance to travel out in the world, was a massive gulf once inside the Impenetrable City. There was a strangeness of scale which Nila was trying to really get her head around. The numbers, for example.

Two million. A population base so massive that it was only possible to maintain it through exhaustive farming in the Reaches. And considering how two was now considered a severe low-ball of the actual population of Ba Sing Se, she wondered how a city would be able to sustain itself on this level perpetually. Finding space was as simple as setting aside the naked rock buildings which all used for ease of construction and repair, and using metal frames, or concreted stone, and then using vertical reach to make up for horizontal spread. It would remain a logistical nightmare, though, until they implemented something like the Grand Fire Railway. Earthbending monorails could only take you so far. Untiring steel, and the physics of momentum would fare far more effectively.

But then again, she was hardly in a position to do anything about these things. These were just the winding, whirling thoughts of a girl with too much on her mind and lacking a focus to effectively latch on to.

The literally innumerable crowds swirled, and she was dragged with them, at the tail of two sisters. So was she swept up in a crashing wave of humanity upon the shores of the stoop of the building, which the resident fumblingly worked the lock. It wasn't until all were inside, the storm of strange faces and electric atmosphere of busy people had subsided that the actress calmed slightly, leaning her back against the door which Nila was the last one through. She seemed to breathe deep, then step off of the door, moving toward one of the closest apartments, her hands much steadier on the lock this time. Nila allowed her a moment to regain herself, but she could not be dissuaded from speech, not eternally.

"You have an unusual nervousness about you. Have you gained someone's ire?" Nila asked.

"She sounds funny," Kah Ri said.

"Don't be like that," Tzu Zi said with annoyance. "She's from the desert."

"So she's a stuck-up fearmonger like al'Jalani?" Kah Ri demanded. Tzu Zi sputtered at that, while Nila raised a brow.

"I'm standing right here."

"I'm well aware," Kah Ri doffed the robe and dropped it onto the peg on the wall. Nila turned attention from the girl to the room the girl lived in. While she was living there alone, it was almost like the place was untenanted. There was nothing personal in the building. While Tzu Zi clamored for girlish nicknacks to bring with her and 'decorate' with any time they stopped for more than twelve hours, this place was as barren as a prison cell. A glance into her bedroom proved the same. No pictures of family members, obviously enough, but also no trinkets from home, nor signs that anybody lived here at all. It even smelled musty, unused.

"My question stands. After all, there was a reason you brought us to your safe-house."

"Safe house? This is my apartment," Kah Ri said. She turned to her sister. "She's a bit weird, isn't she?"

"Yeah, but in a good way," Tzu Zi answered. Nila quickly reevaluated her opinion of this place. If this was not a bolt-hole, to escape to and therefore holding no sentimental value, then why was it so stark? Even Nila's room back in Sentinel Hill was a place that any who'd known her could point at a glance and know that the space was hers. Ashan was doing much the same with their tenement, which baffled Nila to no small degree. They were going to move on when Nila found out where Mother was.

And then a notion occurred to her. Maybe when they moved on, Ashan intended not to.

She would have to speak to him on that.

"My question yet stands," Nila pointed out in an awkward silence.

"Yeah, answer her, Kah Ri," Tzu Zi said.

"What do you want to hear? That I've inspired the wrath of a triad and am living in fear for my life?" Kah Ri asked.

"No, I would prefer something approaching the truth," Nila said, looking around. Ashan would probably have seen more, but Nila saw enough. "You make a wage which would have any one of those on the street spit with envy, but live in squalor. And deliberately so. Where springs your poverty? You are in a profession which would give you ample choice of pleasant company, but eschew it. Where springs your solitude?"

"Look, that's none of your business, stranger," Kah Ri snapped.

"Then tell me! I'm your sister, and I think I deserve to know at least," she said. Kah Ri turned from her doppleganger to the Si Wongi girl, then back. And then, as though a cord at the top of her head had been cut, she slumped, all of her grace and poise dissolving away as she slumped into a chair. Her eyes, which had been snapping and sharp, became dull and lifeless.

"I'm tired, alright?" she said. "I've... I've done so much. Everything I always wanted. I could have anything. But... I can't make myself care. I mean... I should be happy, shouldn't I?"

Tzu Zi's hands rose to her mouth. "What do you mean?"

"I just feel... empty. Everything I do is meaningless. No matter how good I am, it's all fraud and lies. Everything I see is grey. It's all so dark, and dirty, and wrong, and there's nothing I can do to change it. No matter how hard I try. I'm going to fail. As sure as the sun rises," her chin lowered to her chest, and she stared at her feet. Tzu Zi stood in pained silence.

"You were wrong. She is the melancholy one," Nila said. "I have seen such behavior. It comes in waves."

"You don't know anything about what I'm feeling," Kah Ri said bitterly.

"Perhaps not in this moment. But I do know solitude and I do know futility. In that, I may not be able to sympathize, but empathize definitely," it was awkward, trying to speak gently. But Nila had already managed to botch up one conversation to a spectacular degree. She was fairly sure the universe was throwing an opportunity to level that balance directly at her face. "There are days when I feel as though the world has grown too noisy, and no matter where I go, there is no escape of it. A thousand and five score ideas pound at my head, and I feel my must express them or suffer a bursting. I may not know the bleak as you do, but I do know the helplessness."

"You never said..." Tzu Zi said, a hand upon Nila's shoulder.

"I felt no need to burden you of it," Nila said defensively. A person's problems should be their own, after all. If one could not steel oneself, then one deserved what came of being a weak link in a strong chain.

"Well, you should have," Tzu Zi opined. She turned to her sister. "It's alright, you know? This will pass."

"So you claim," she said. "What if it doesn't?"

"It will," Nila said, pushing the only other chair at the table and sitting upon it. "I do not expect that you know much of the workings of thought, but all that you are lays not in your body, but your brain. And your brain, and my brain, they are not like those of so many others. They run to a different cycle. Yours burns low, sometimes, a candle flickering before the wax can be taken up and bolstering it again. Mine... is more like a thunderhead, a thousand sparks and great noise, but little direction unless I force upon it. But the candle waxes, and the storm passes. That is the way of things. Were it not, nei' you nor I would be having this dialogue."

Kah Ri was silent.

Nila turned to Tzu Zi. She sighed, and forced a small smile onto her face. "It's going to be alright, Kah Ri. I'll be here until the clouds go away, alright?"

"Really?"

"Of course," she said. "You're my sister," and with that, she sat on the edge of the table. "So I bet you're just salivating at the thought of everything your sister's been up to since I dropped you off at Full Moon Bay..."

The actress finally looked up from her shoes. "What happened to that bird? You couldn't have brought it in here."

"It has been stabled out in the Reaches," Nila said. More quietly she added, "and is much of the reason we live in squalor."

"Oh, I guess that makes sense," Kah Ri said.

"Well, when I went south, I passed through the Great Divide, and on my way, I ran into these two groups of refugees who were fleeing from the north for some reason. One of them were all rich and fancy, and the other were dirty and poor and stuff, so I got to talking with them, and..."

Nila leaned back in her own chair, and took the long story – which both she had heard and was not terribly interesting – to just look at what her mind was doing. Still spinning, but a bit slower. It had been a rough day. But as she had said, without a lie, the storm would pass.

But still, she was not one whit closer to finding Mother, and handing off her duty. She needed a better plan than 'wait and hope'. That never favored anybody. And as the ideas whirred, one of them popped out wholly on its own, and without any context which would have allowed her to figure it out in any circumstance but this. How. Specifically, a general named How. Mother had spoken of him quite a few times in the past, referring to him as 'the only working brain on the Wall, besides my own'. Mother might be difficult to track, doubly so if she was in the Upper Ring, but How would be close to the military, and the military kept to the Walls.

Nila could reach the Wall.

The beginnings of a new plan were conceived, even if it might be a while before she could really put effort of thought into them. After all, she was having a rough day. But that would pass.

---

He paced, his feet bare and damp against the stone, his bath-robe pulled tight as he made a hither-and-yon circuit across the floor of the bath-chamber. As he walked, he stole glances to one side, where a roughly fifteen year old girl sat idly, legs crossed over the knee, filing at her nails. And he kept pacing, muttering under his breath, trying to work the nerve to disrobe, to bathe. But he couldn't summon it. He flexed his fists. One, with five fingers curling into a tight ball. The other, reddened, and missing several digits.

Azula was watching him.

"Don't tell me you're shy," Azula's mocking voice came, above the risk-risk-risk of her file. She paused, raising her hand to her mouth in a sarcastic gesture. "Could it be that the great Fire Lord Ozai actually has some shame after all? Well, who would have thought it?"

"You are not real."

"And yet you speak to me as though I am," Azula answered. "Why would that be?"

"You are a figment of my imagination. An errant fancy, probably brought on by stale mustard on my dinner... or lack of sleep," Ozai said.

"And you wish to believe that strongly enough, and like the fish through the Dragon Gate, it might just come true," Azula said with that sing-song sardonism. She sat back. "Face it. You are losing control. Not just of your nation, but of yourself."

"I am in control!"

"Said the man to the figment of his imagination," Azula said with a smirk.

Ozai answered with a blast of flame, which slammed through the girl's body with tremendous force, but she sat, staring at her fingernails as though nothing were the matter. Because, of course, nothing was.

"You... are not real."

"And yet you continue to speak to me," Azula said.

"I am going to have my bath, and you are not going to stop me," Ozai demanded.

"What have I done to stop you so far?" Azula asked sweetly, and coldly. Then, the risk-risk-risk again, as she continued to file her nails. "You should face the facts, Father. You're a failure of a Fire Lord as much as you've ever been a failure as a parent. No matter how hard you try to tighten your grip, it all slips through your fingers. Imagine what would be if you hadn't been so childish, and threw out your children the moment they displeased you. Why, you might even still have control of the Ghurkas!"

"You know nothing of politics!"

"And you know nothing of parenting, so we're both in the dark," she said idly.

Ozai seethed, and glared at her. "What do you want, girl?"

"What does any child want from her father? To be loved and approved of. And yet you were incapable of the slightest whit of that, now weren't you? If I wasn't your mindless tool, then I had no use whatsoever. No wonder Mother left you. You were never really even human. Just a political machine wearing the skin of a man."

"Do not speak of that woman," Ozai warned.

"Or what, you'll burn more furniture at me?" Azula asked, with a chuckle. That chuckle went to a very dark place. "You need to face the fact that you are the source of every whit of your own woe. I could have been the daughter you always wanted, the heir you always wanted. But you had to be petty and cruel. So you forfeited everything. Wake up and smell the ashes, Father."

"I did what was best for the Fire Nation!" Ozai roared.

"And you cost them a thousand needless deaths in the North, and their souls far more than that. Have you ever actually looked into the eyes of one of those soldiers?" Azula asked, rising form her seat an sidling toward him, her hips sashaying in a manner more befitting the girl's mother than the girl herself. "Have you seen the horrible things that reflect in them? Seen what they feel they had to become to survive it? You tried to win a political point, and you cost men their souls."

"And what would you have done? Let them sit there, smug and secure, waiting to attack us?" Ozai demanded.

"I wouldn't have been an idiot about it," Azula said mockily. She turned away. "Uncle would have been twice the Fire Lord you are."

At that, Ozai could no longer hold his temper. With a scream and a blast of flame, he lashed out at her again, screaming, "I am a greater Fire Lord than my brother would ever be!"

When the flames and smoke cleared, he was alone. And there were sooty stains and a burning chair to mark his tantrum's passage. His chest heaved, and he could feel cold sweat crawling down his face. But he was alone. With a forced sort of ease, more a show of comfort than any real comfort, he doffed his robe and slipped into the water.

Outside, awaiting his entrance into the bath, Akemi was sweating as well, but for a different reason. She'd heard what he'd said. It was half of a conversation, but it couldn't have been more disturbing than if she'd heard all of it. Her mind started to balance things out, to see what belonged where. And the new equation was becoming clear as day to her. It would just be a matter of timing. Silently, she slipped inside the bath chamber. Until then, though, there were expectations upon her, and if she was wrong, far smarter to play all sides.

But she wondered why Ozai kept talking about his banished daughter. Dangerous thoughts lay that way.

---

The night was cool, but the view was spectacular. "This is amazing. You can see everything up there," Katara remarked, prompting a smirk from the youth beside her. "I've never seen this many stars before!"

"Oh, you lie," Sokka said. "We see plenty of stars back home."

"Yeah, but they don't look like these ones," she said, pointing to the glimmering cloud which easily slid along the rich, dark indigo of the sky. Teo nodded.

"That's why this observatory got built," he said. "This place is far enough from everybody with a lantern that there's no 'light pollution'. I'm pretty sure this is one of the only places on Earth where you can see the moon with the naked eye."

All present, mother and blind girl excluded all turned to him with disbelieving looks on their faces. "Um, anybody can see the moon," Aang pointed out.

"Yeah, just not tonight, since its a new moon and all," Sokka clarified somewhat pointlessly.

"No, I'm talking about the actual moon," Teo pointed to a spot in the heavens, which all followed. They all looked back at him. "It's right there."

"That's no moon," Aang said.

"Well, it's certainly no battle-station," Teo countered. "That's probably the last chunk of our honest-to-spirits moon which was left from whatever catapulted it into Big Demon thousands of years ago."

"That's just a theory," Toph said, staring to everybody's left. All turned to her. "What?"

"I'd ask you why you weren't looking up, but the answer's obvious," Sokka said.

"You've seen nothing once, you've seen it a thousand times," Toph answered with a shrug. "And claiming that a tiny chip of rock in space with miniscule weight and pathetic albedo is a moon is like calling Brain here the Avatar."

"..." Sokka stared agape.

"What? It was one of Keung's pet peeves," she said uncomfortably. "I prefer stuff I can touch."

"It is beautiful, though," Katara said. "...the maybe-moon notwithstanding."

"Yeah, I figured that you could use a sight like this before heading to Ba Sing Se," Teo said. "You don't get a sky like this in the city. Something like this is good for reminding you where you stand in the scale of things. It's important to have that kind of perspective. In fact, I'm starting to think that's maybe why people get in over their heads so much when they build up like that; they loose sight of the sky, reminding them that they're still a small part of a bigger whole."

"You might be right about that," Aang said. He looked to the East, his mind's eye filling in the impossible distance to the Walls themselves, the walls which, if Toph's ramblings were any indication, had held out every army since the fall of the Monolith. "We might not have gotten what we wanted here, but we got something that we needed."

Toph let out a stretch and a yawn. "Yeah, and I'm bored. I'm goin' to bed."

Aang nodded. "I should probably go too," he said. "It'll be an early morning tomorrow."

"Which means I'll probably have to turn in early as well. Still, you and I should talk about that thing you're doing," Sokka said, pointing a finger at Teo, which caused Katara a moment's pause. What were the two of them up to? Teo shrugged, but nodded.

Sul, on the other hand, said something in Whalesh which Katara couldn't follow, and planted a kiss on Teo's crown, which he complained and waved away almost immediately in the same tongue. Obviously something he found embarrassing. One of these days she was going to have to do as her brother demanded and just learn the language. But then again, considering the trouble she had reading Huojian, learning two at once might just be unreasonable.

That also left just the two of them up on the deck of the observatory, Katara realized.

"So..." Teo said.

"...so..." Katara answered.

"...some night, huh?" he asked.

"...yeah...pretty."

"...do you like... stuff?" he asked. She turned to him, and he winced away.

"What are you asking?" Katara asked. "Is something wrong?"

"It's just... we're alone. And it's lovely out..." he motioned, as though trying to explain himself, but Katara just stared blankly at him. "...and we're alone..."

"And?" she asked.

"Gods, it's like the universe is out to get me," Teo muttered. "Look. I like you. A lot. But I'm getting some pretty mixed signals out of you. I wanna know if I'm even wasting my time, here."

She leaned back. That was unusually direct for him. Usually, he tried some poorly veiled innuendo, got lost in his own metaphor, and then went off on an excited tangent about something about as divorced from romance as possible. He was an informative if unusual kind of conversationalist. "Wasting your time?"

"Damn it, that wasn't the right way of putting it, wasn't it?" He shook his head. "This is like that time when Dad farted and blamed it on Mom, even though they were the only two in the room."

"That wasn't very smart."

"I know! And every time you show up, I feel that same kind of stupid!"

"I make you stupid, do I?" Katara asked, leaning against her hand.

"That's not what I meant!"

"Then what did you mean?"

"I... You... Girls are impossible," he threw up his hands and got to his feet. She finally let out the laughter which she had been bottling up since he'd started talking. That got him to turn and look at her like she'd lost her damned mind. "What? Am I funny to you now?"

"A little bit, yeah," Katara admitted. She sat up, still giggling lightly. He just stammered at her. "Oh, calm down. You don't need to give me a stink-face."

"I'm very confused right now," Teo admitted.

"Look, you're a good guy..."

"...buuuut...?"

"Not but, and," she said. He leaned back. "And the only reason you've been picking up 'mixed signals' is because your receiver-thing is obviously out of... broken."

"...whut?"

She rolled her eyes and decided to make things clear enough even a thicky would be able to understand them. And since for the moment he seemed to have been struck stupid, it was probably the only thing he could understand. So she smoothed out her thin, blue blouse, rose up, dusted her legs, and then grabbed his head and rode him all the way to the ground, a lip-lock which would likely have gotten her arrested in Si Wong.

"I...wha...bluh?" Teo said.

"Does that clarify things?" Katara asked.

"...not really, could I hear that last part again?" Teo offered with an uneasy grin. She got off of his chest and laughed. "So... are we going out?"

"Technically, we should be going in. Sokka's right, it'll probably be an early morning."

"You're leaving?"

She smiled back at him. "I'm the only waterbending teacher Aang's got. And even if I wasn't, Aang still needs me."

"Oh..." Teo said. He got to his feet, still a little unsteady. Tui La, they weren't kidding when they said that'd bring a man to his knees. Then again, unlike Sokka, Katara had many female role models to speak with after Dad and the other men left; those women tended to be extremely forthcoming on many, many subjects. "...Confused. But happier now."

"That's nice," she said. "You're going to have to meet my father at some point."

Teo nodded. "Yeah, Dad told me a lot about him. Wait, why?"

"Well, most marriages are arranged in the Water Tribes," she said. "And he'd need to get your measure to see if you're a worthy match. Don't worry, though. I'm pretty sure he'll at least give you a spear for the ceremonial mole-r bear hunt."

"What."

"The marriage, dummy," she said. She laced her fingers behind her back and swayed in place at the doorway. "After all, I'm almost of marriageable age."

The way Teo's questioning finger wilted, the way he went deathly pale, she couldn't help but let out another uproar of laughter at him, before shaking her head and turning. "Oh, Teo, you are absolutely clueless."

"Apparently," he said with a strangled tone. Katara walked into the darkness of the ruined Observatory. She'd only made it four steps before she felt something slam into her arm with painful force in the blackness, almost sending her sideways into the other wall.

"That was a good one, Sweetness," Toph's voice appeared out of that void. Of course. She didn't need light to see. There was a shiff-sound as she carefully moved back through the metal halls.

"Yeah, it was, wasn't it?" Katara asked.

"Gotta say, out there, for the first time I can actually believe that you're Brain's sister," Toph said, still moving in the black.

"Thank...you?"

"No problem, heartbreaker," she said, chuckling to herself.

---

Ashan glanced to the bow case again, and then with a sigh, shrugged, and picked it up. Nila wouldn't notice if he examined it, after all. She probably wouldn't notice if he burnt it and stuck it back together with Ostrich Horse glue. But he was careful. It was a good weapon, he guessed. He'd never had much contact with them, not like Nila or her mother did. The tools of his trade were meant to spill myoglobin, not blood. Still, he tested the draw, and found it a bit slack. Still, he could get the thing bowing back as it should. He glanced toward the door again, and then pulled out a pair of arrows he'd brought back on the way home.

In a smooth motion, he nocked the arrow and drew the line to his cheek. A whisper, and it was away. A long moment later, far longer than anybody trained more than his remedial way in the bow would have accepted, he'd drawn the second, sighting down it, and released. It zipped through the air, and landed with a thunk less than an apple's breadth from the first in the laundry pole at the corner of the building. He shrugged. While he was no soldier by any stretch, it was good to know that Grandfather's lessons still held. He let out a sigh, and slipped the bow back into its leather case.

"You're not supposed to touch that," Sharif said from the tub, which he sat in quietly. Apparently he was overdue his bath, and since Ashan was certainly not going to be the one providing it, he was content to sit in an empty tub until somebody did. But there was another on the roof, a quiet fellow with dark eyes and big ears. The way he looked at Ashan was gauging and contemplative. It was almost like he was saying 'that was pretty good', but without saying a word. After that silent compliment, he returned to doing his own laundry, hanging from the other end of the line which stretched along the rooftop.

Ashan reached over to Sharif, laying a hand upon his shoulder. "She is not yet returned. We should go inside before the darkness is upon us."

"I need my bath," Sharif said stubbornly. Ashan sighed, and was about to press the issue when the door to the roof opened, and Tzu Zi stepped onto the 'pavilion' of sorts which existed up here. Nila followed after her, followed thereafter by Tzu Zi again.

That last part had Ashan somewhat confused, but only for a moment, before he started spotting differences. One was Tzu Zi, obviously enough. He knew his companion of these past few eventful weeks quite well. But the other was physically identical of proportion and feature, but had a different way about her. She seemed to hover somewhere between haught and misery, her eyes tired. Those eyes also bore remnants of make-up. So this would be the girl's actress sister? Ashan put a smile onto his face.

"So they had luck in finding you? Splendid," Ashan said. "Welcome to our shelter and shade for the moment. I am Ashan, and this is Sharif. I have no doubt you have spoken at great length with your sister and my friend?"

"This... is a lot more public than mine," she said.

"Ah, but this must be a step down from your accommodations in the Middle Ring. Please, join us inside. I have left a stew on, of thick pig-beef and hearty barleys," Ashan said. "Sharif, rise from that tub with haste! We have guests!"

"I need my bath," Sharif said, still stolid.

"Please, forgive my friend and the kind mistress Nila's brother; he is afflicted of mind," Ashan said.

"Wow, he doesn't let you get a word in edge-wise, does he?" the actress asked.

"I could not silence him with a gunshot," Nila answered.

"...it'd be nice having dinner in a full house," she said quietly. Ashan glanced from the actress to her sister, and then to Nila. Ah, so there was something off with her? Sad, but he knew a path to the end of it.

"Come inside. I also prepared some soothing tea and a cake of chocolate."

The actress perked up a touch upon hearing that. "Chocolate?"

"How'd you find chocolate in the Lower Ring?" Tzu Zi asked. Ashan shrugged.

"A little chocolate is worth much meat when coin is scarce. I see this as a proper use of it."

"I like chocolate," the actress said, happiness finally entering into her tones. Tzu Zi beckoned, and the two of them zipped back inside. Ashan made to follow them, but was caught by Nila. He gave a raised brow to her.

"She is stricken by a melancholy. Strange that you did not alienate her."

"I told her I was beset by a similar affliction," Nila answered in Altuundili.

Ashan leaned back. "...are you?"

"No. My mind might become crowded, but it is a boon, not an affliction," she said. She turned to Sharif. "Come have dinner. Your bath can wait."

"But..."

"Do not argue with me in this, Sharif! Dinner, now!"

"Yes, sister," Sharif said neutrally, getting out of the tub and wandering back indoors.

"You have something else on your mind," Ashan pointed out.

"'There is no war in Ba Sing Se'," she quoted. "I have been distracted from it, but it remains with me. Something is afoot in this city. And with my luck, I will soon find myself upon the center of it."

Ashan sighed and shook his head. "You are the plentiful font of your own misfortune, Nila."

She smirked. "You say that as though it were a detriment," she shrugged. "I must ask of you to again look to Sharif. I must head out of the city in the morning; there is a soldier I must speak with."

"Regarding your mother?"

She just gave him a neutral glance to answer his question. In a way, she shared the same quality of speechless communication that the other fellow on this rooftop had. Not that Nila had recognized him; her attention was elsewhere, and Ashan would not know him from a stranger on the street, of which there were quite many. "Keep him safe. I depend upon you for this," Nila said. And Ashan nodded gravely at it. When that was said, she let out a breath she probably wasn't aware she was holding, then headed back into the building. Ashan watched her leave. He was somewhat ashamed to admit to himself that his gaze tracked her backside as it descended before turning out of view. It was a fine sight. He turned to the fellow with his laundry. "Women, such a painful delight, yes?"

The fellow tenant's easy shrug said something to the tune of 'what else is new in the world?'.

---

The flight toward Ba Sing Se was swift. Doubly so since, unlike as Fate would have demanded upon so many other circumstances, they could make it upon the back of a bison. The lands around Ba Sing Se were simply called the Wasteland for obvious reasons; until they gave way to the Pillars of Heaven, and beyond those Wulong Forest, they were miles upon miles of sun-blasted, wind-tossed stone and scree, baked out of life by a complete lack of rain. Aang had once passed close to Ba Sing Se in his youth, and seen in the spring lush grasses swaying defiant in the winds, before the summer came and baked it into dust. But this was spring, and the grasses were nowhere to be seen.

Yet another sign that the world was dangerously out of balance. It could not even hold to its own cycles anymore.

But Aang's attention was focused more on what he could see ahead of him, in the light of the late-morning. That there was a lot of smoke rising from the world ahead of him. That smoke put sweat onto his brow, and a tension into his reins. Appa took his subconscious command to rise higher, to get a longer line-of-sight. The others, sitting and talking amongst themselves mostly about Katara's hilarious seduction of a mad scientist, were oblivious to what Aang could see clear as day. And as the world turned under him, smoke became stacks. Stacks became engines. And finally, Sokka was the first to turn his gaze down, and when he did, his blue eyes shot wide.

"What is that?" Sokka asked.

It trailed behind it a great, split tail which lay black against the burnt-ochre of the stone beneath it, all of those many lines mounting upon each other, growing fatter, thicker, until it finally reached into the back of a machine. At first, it seemed simply a larger version of the Salamander Tank which had seen precious little use at Omashu. But upon its back was... something strange. Something which cracked and snarled with electric malice. And even as Aang soared, he could tell, that foot by foot, it was moving forward. And it was not alone. It stood amongst a dozen of its kin.

Slowly creeping toward the Wall of Ba Sing Se.

---

"A letter for you, Lord Zhao," Kwon's voice broke Zhao out of his concentration. He considered rebuking the man, but Kwon was worth more than a cuff upside the head. So he just gave the man a scowl, and snatched the folded letter from him. Kwon could have come at a better time, or a worse one. He was in the process of refining Azula's Gambit, with which he could destroy the resistance to the Fire Lord once and for all. Her attempts were... effective, but crude. They lacked the logistical framework which would have made them spectacular. Why have a victory, when you could instead have an overwhelming victory?

Zhao glanced to the seal of the letter, and raised his one remaining eyebrow when he beheld that it bore the seal of the Fire Lord. "You could have told me a Black Ribbon message had arrived."

"It was not sent Black Ribbon, my lord," Kwon said. Strange, Zhao thought. He leaned back in his seat, breaking the seal and opening the letter.

At once, he could tell it was not in Ozai's hand. While Zhao had little to compare it to, he knew for a fact that Ozai's script was precise and cutting, not the elegant and flowing hand which he beheld before him. As he started to read it, it minced no words in that.

"My dear Lord Zhao, Viceroy of the North and master of New Bhatthi, I hope this message finds you well," Zhao muttered to himself, before giving a glance toward Kwon.

"It was delivered with haste by private messenger from Hui Lo," Kwon said. "I will leave you to it."

From Hui Lo? That meant that somebody wanted it delivered quickly. That it wasn't Black Ribbon meant that somebody wanted it delivered quietly. Zhao raised an eyebrow, his only one, and turned back to the page, and lo, it revealed much.

"You and I have had scarce chance to converse in the past,

but I have tracked your achievements with interest in recent years.

I am Akemi Fujitsuna. You would likely know me as the Fire Lord's

personal courtesan and mistress, if you were to know me at all. I have

contacted you with dire and important news, which I fear calamity

would befall if they were to slip into the wrong hands. Thus, I could not

send it by military priority: Azul's spies are many and deeply situated."

Zhao grunted. "Clever girl," he said, as she'd just confirmed many of his suspicions.

"In the months since your victory against the barbarians of the Water

Tribes, the Fire Lord's health has taken a turn. It is nothing that can be

Spoken of publicly; only I know the whole of it. I come to you, as you

are likely the best recourse in what will be increasingly troubled times.

To be frank and blunt;

I believe the Fire Lord is losing his mind."

---

MUAHAHAHA! Watch as I sink your favorite ships with extreme prejudice! No canon pairing is safe! HAHAHAHAH!

Nila continues to be self-defeating when left to her own devices. Her main problem is that she honestly expects that she's the most intelligent in any room she enters. While strictly speaking this is true, she's also unpleasant, which means that given any situation with a social component, she's gonna piss people off. A perfunctory apology would have gotten her out of the balcony in a heartbeat. Instead, she decided to action-hero it, and almost lost Tzu Zi's sister as a result. This is kind of Nila's fatal flaw. It's also refreshing, since she doesn't fall into any of the pitfalls 'traditional' female protagonists do. She doesn't define herself romantically, she carries her own narrative, and she has flaws which don't make her cute - she's not 'clumsy' or 'too beautiful'. Honestly, when she grows up, she'll have the same body type as Tali'Zorah from Mass Effect. No, her big flaw is that she's damned unpleasant. Sweet if you get to know her, in a bitter, salty kind of way, but unpleasant if you don't.

The relationship between Iroh and Azula has always been tense. Bear in mind that even in the flashbacks, Iroh and Azula didn't get on well. He's been trying to be closer to her, in accordance to Qiao's last wishes, but their personalities clash. Now, especially, they have more common ground, but her added antagonism has tempered any added empathy that would be gained from each losing a beloved child. What Iroh wants out of this is to give Zuko back his sister. By proxy, that means that he wants Azula back to the way that she was. Pity he might not ever see it.

Finally, the death of Chiyo is something which will be mentioned obliquely in Book 3, but I'll give you one hint about it; by the time Katara killed Chiyo, she was justified in doing it.