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.

31. The Weapons of the Fire Nation

"This is... complex."

"Our initial designs called for a bore, but Sato quickly pointed out that there were too many interrelated points of failure," Qin said, his eyes flitting back and forth from the scene before him and the unexpected guest of honor who had graced the camp. Far be it to say that Qin was a nervous man. After having to deal with the Mountain King, he was fairly sure that any fear which existed in his body had been ground into dust, and blown away on a stiff breeze. But still, there was an understandable amount of trepidation considering who stood, eyes cold and wrathful, staring across the great rocky wastelands.

"So break one thing, the whole machine fails," he asked, his eyes blinking too slowly, as though it were taking effort of restraint to do only that. Qin shook his head, trying to dispel the nervousness and he pointed out the nearest of the machines to the wall. "Why are they tethered?"

"They are not tethered. Those are their power-feeds," he said. "Sato's personal design; they allow a gargantuan amount of electricity to be fed through the machine at once, and do so safely."

"And what exactly are they supposed to do?"

Qin moved to the telescope, which he used to view the Wall in detail. Notably, there was a massing of earthbenders quite near the towering machine. He could see one of them raising a hand for a signal, likely to begin hurling boulders at the approaching tower. "They are here to clear the walls," Qin said. "Observe."

Qin raised a hand, and a quarter of a mile away, a group of workers began to furiously work, toggling switches and rechecking lines. Until there was one last, loud clunk. Then, the deafening and deadly 'zorp' of a thunderstorm's worth of electricity being directed along the lines from the capacitor, through the lines, up the tower, and then lashing out into the air, toward the closest source of non-insulated ground. And the distance was perfect so that the headiest burst of that human manufactured lightning slammed into one of the earthbenders on the Wall, sending him flying back, before it's roughly wrist-sized arc bolted to another, then another, faster than the eye could track, leveling a dozen in less than a second. The arc ended, and the capacitor began to hum again, louder, louder. Louder. Then, a fresh 'zorp'. The machine continued to advance, but the earthbenders, naked to the world's very first directed energy weapon, could only flee outright, hurling a token assault of stones at the towers. The assault rebounded off of the rubber cladding the vast majority of the tower without incident or damage.

"...and what does this accomplish? There's still a wall in the way."

Qin tutted, before he remembered who he was talking to. "Well, each of them that makes it to the wall will deny a further degree of it to the enemy. Then, we can follow through on the same plan that your Uncle did years ago: We sap the wall, and pour through, protected by lightning."

The cold, golden eyes of the Crown Prince turned from the wall, to Qin. "You put a lot of faith in your machinery," he said, his voice as flat as the wastelands.

"And rightly so," Qin pointed out. "There is no safe approach to the towers. Even the Avatar wouldn't be able to get close to them. Sabotage is a practical impossibility. The weapons are invulnerable as long as they are active, and we have no reason to shut them down. We can be through the wall in less than a day."

Zuko stared, almost so still as to appear dead, then turned very slowly toward Qin. "You said Sato was here."

"Yes, I'm keeping him back with the generators. He would only get in the way at this point."

"I see," he said, facing the wall once more.

"If I might ask... where did you come from? I wasn't appraised of your return to the Fire Nation."

"I haven't informed the Fire Lord yet," Zuko said flatly.

"Well, forgive my confusion, but I believed that you were still... well... exiled," Qin said, well aware how far he was pushing his luck. But sometimes, luck had to be pushed; If he was abetting an enemy of the Fire Nation, knowing or not, he would face far worse than another two years babysitting the Mountain King.

"My father... changed his mind. He needs a solid heir," Zuko said without emotion. Hard as iron, and every bit as heartless. "I am needed. I can't turn away from the call."

"Well, that's a proper sentiment to hold," Qin said. He would have to confirm that, which meant a Black Ribbon letter to the Fire Nation, preferably delivered before the hour was out. That meant that he would have to find a way to keep the Prince close enough that he wouldn't be able to bolt if he turned traitor, but not so tightly that he would chafe should his 'return' be genuine.

Damn it all, now Qin was starting to think like a damned politician.

"Please, enjoy some light refreshment. Today, we breach the walls of Ba Sing Se, and succeed where the traitor Prince Iroh failed," Qin said. Zuko just nodded slowly, eyes locked so very far ahead of him. Qin revised his estimate from 'within the hour' to 'within the next five minutes' for that Black Ribbon message.

The soldiers knew Qin well enough, after having served with him up in that Agni-forsaken mountain, that he was on-edge enough that they should guard his former guest. He snapped his fingers and beckoned over a man in a death's-head mask.

"You there," he said. "Black Ribbon to the Fire Lord. Zuko is at Thunder Dragon. Claiming return. Advise."

"At once, Minister Qin," the soldier said, bowing briefly, and then moving away swiftly. Qin, on the other hand, had a destination in mind. He moved back, following the thick, rubber-wrapped cords which connected the generators to the capacitors, from the capacitors to the arc-towers. He moved swiftly, having to pull up the knees of his robes so that he wouldn't trip over them. There was one fly in this ointment that he had to keep an eye on almost as much as the possibly returned Prince.

Nomura Sato.

The man himself was a somewhat light-set lad, and had the expression of an overexcited squirrel-dog most of the time. Even though his eyes were a dull shade of amber, for some reason they almost seemed to shine in his childlike glee. He was not much past the age of twenty, a mechanical wunderkind the likes of which hadn't been seen since the start of the Fire Nation Renaissance. A great many people had vested a lot of the hopes for the end of the war, and the continued dominance of the Fire Nation, on those narrow shoulders. And Qin knew that he was not exactly the sturdiest set.

"Ah! There you are!" he said brightly. "I've discovered a way to increase burn efficiency in our electrical dynamos by almost one point four eight percent!"

"One percent?" Qin asked, having been preempted of his own question.

"One point four eight percent!" Sato corrected. "All I needed to do was tear the thing apart and scrape off some of the burrs on the innermost burn-chamber, rebuild them, and use Petroleum Grease on the seals. We should implement these changes at once!"

"But... Do you have any idea how much time that would take? And how much any amount of Petroleum Grease costs, let alone enough to do all of that? No. Make due with what you have." One point four eight percent of a hog-monkey's eye, more like. Qin finally regathered his temper, which was always sorely strained when Sato was nearby. "Have you come up with any solutions for the capacitor problem?"

"Of course. Just string a line of moderate flow cable between their frames," Sato said with an off-hand motion, his attention now returning to a device schematic he had pinned up on a frame. Some sort of hoist, it looked like. Thus, was utterly pointless to Qin's purposes. With a clawed hand, Qin tore down that schematic, crumpling it into his palm. Sato's look became almost comically hurt. His thin-moustached upper lip quivered for a moment. "I was..."

"What we are doing now is more important than your pet projects, Sato. Remember that you are a loyal citizen of the Fire Nation. Try to act like it for once!"

"I understand, but could I have that back now...?"

"I don't think you do. You've got your head in the clouds like some sort of Storm King, and..."

"Did you get the new schematics I sent for the airships?" Sato asked, instantly bright and chipper again. Qin was taken aback.

"Yes, but..."

"Hot air wasn't the solution, just like I believed it would be. Light gas! All we have to do is industrialize Mifunoto's Process and we'll have enough to float a palace up there!" Sato said. "And electric engines! We would be able to fly all the way around the world on a single engine's load of coal!"

"Can we please remain at the task at hand?" Qin asked, his impatience showing again. Sato was about as easy to herd as a thousand cats.

"Ah, right right right, the generators. Well, I found a way to increase their efficiency by one point..."

"NO! NOT AGAIN!" Qin shouted, causing Sato to flinch. "The capacitor solution. Will it work?"

"Capacitor? Oh, yes, the capacitors. As long as there's an outlet from their frames, they'll be able to dump overflow into a neighbor. You'd need to have a simultaneous overflow from the entire network, or more energy than you'd get in an ocean storm, to blow the system then! Think of it as an emergency circuit!"

"I have no idea what you're talking about. But it will work. That is what is important," Qin said, tossing the man his precious, precious schematic. Sato quickly uncrumpled it, and let out a disappointed sigh, running a hand through unruly dark hair. "Keep yourself focused on what's important. The generators, the capacitors."

Sato nodded for a moment, before pausing. He glanced to Qin. "You know, I'm wondering what we've been generating all this electrical power for. I mean, there's probably enough here to light up Azul or Caldera City for months, and we've only been burning for two days. What's going on over there?"

"That's none of your concern."

"It's my design; of course it's my concern!" Sato complained.

"Then it is classified above your clearance for secret information," Qin responded. He leaned down at the man. "You will do your part for the victory and glory of the Fire Nation. Other than that, you will not ask questions, and you will not get in the way. Is that perfectly clear?"

"Um... yes?" Sato said, his eyes, once brimming with enthusiasm and glee, now were muted and fearful.

"Good," Qin said. If only all geniuses were this easy to cow. "Now get back to work, Sato. We can't have that... brilliant... mind resting on its laurels."

"I... I guess so," Sato said, carefully re-pegging his wrinkly schematic back into place. It was no secret whatsoever that Sato was only given the opportunities he was because of patronage by wealthy and powerful people. Without that, he would be back in the gutter where they found him. Qin gave him a last look, to be sure he knew his place, and then turned back toward the front, ignoring the black smoke billowing out behind him. Energy generation was a dirty business, after all.

Unnoticed by Qin, though, a pair of golden eyes was watching from the distance. His guards likely not even aware that he'd slipped from their sight. That gaze turned passionlessly from Qin, to Sato. And in the mind of the Crown Prince, the boy who had for months only needed to speak a word and be welcomed home in glory, he formed a plan.

---

Chapter 11

The Weapons of the Fire Nation

---

"I'm sorry, my girl, but you'll need authorization to speak to General How," the soldier said with an apologetic tone.

"Authorization? And where would I get such a thing? It took a day riding those rails to even find one who even knew the whereabouts of the man!" Nila exclaimed.

"Please, calm down," he said. "You're not helping your case."

Nila glared, and pointedly held her tongue before she said something disruptive, self-defeating, and stupid. She had to. Tzu Zi was spending the day catching up with her sister, and Ashan was at his new employment, which meant Nila had to undertake this little errand on her own. "I am calm," she said, forcing herself to be so. "To what end is this General How busy? May I suspect it has something to do with the curtain of smoke on the western horizon?"

The soldier palmed his face for a moment, and she knew that she was starting to annoy him. Which was not ideal, since she had neither leverage nor status over him. "Will you at least relay my message to him?"

The soldier sighed, but shrugged. "Well, it couldn't hurt," he pointed at her. "But if I do this, you must swear to leave me alone."

"I offer only to bother someone else if this fails," Nila offered.

"...well, that'll do," he said with a rolling of green eyes and a turn on his heel. The man himself was not visible, but it was clear he was in the wall's watchtower which dominated a stretch of the already landscape dominating Wall. The smoke was drifting with the wind, and likely would bypass the city entirely, but only an idiot would be so blind as to miss it all. And there was odd sounds somewhere to the north, something just on the verge of being audible, but not quite. Were there not so much wall in the way, she might be able to see more clearly. But she relegated herself to leaning back against the wall, shifting her gun out of her way so she didn't bend something.

All things considered, even with the annoyance of being utterly unable to unearth even the slightest whisper of where her Mother had secreted herself, Nila was, for a wonder, content. Yes, she'd had to custom-order a new laboratory's worth of equipment, and had no doubts that it would arrive in poor trim. Yes, she was living in a cramped apartment with little privacy and beholden to Ashan of all people for even that luxury. Yes, she was still caring for her brother long after she'd believed she'd have had to. She briefly wondered why she was content, before it occurred to her again. She was free. She remembered, as she leaned back there, something her mother had said to her, in a time of her utmost embarrassment and failure. Something which, in retrospect, was actually rather uplifting.

Nila was still dragging the blade along her scalp, letting the last of the singed hair fall away. Good riddance, she thought, as she ran a hand over her now smooth head. Now, she'd never have to worry about it catching fire again. She stared at the reflection in the polished silver mirror. She still had the face she would have in the modern day, if with a bit of baby-fat still rounding her out. Of course, she wasn't even a teenager at that point. The scene behind Nila shifted, as the door to the lavatory opened, and Nila quickly found herself turning, hiding the razor behind her back. As if in shame.

Mother was staring at her. She didn't say a word. And she didn't scowl. She just stared at Nila, her head slowly tilting, as though to get a better view of what Nila had done to her own head. Nila quickly found herself slightly squirming under that sort of scrutiny. Then, Mother's fist fell upon her hip, and she cleared her throat.

"What is this?" she asked, her tone not angry or threatening.

"I... it caught aflame again," Nila admitted, her eyes down. "This seemed simpler."

"You were forbidden playing with those substances. You disobeyed me," she said.

"I can do better next time! I swear it!"

"You will do better next time?" Mother asked. "You stand before me with the price of your folly as clear as the shape of your head and you boldly claim that you feel no regret, and will do again in the future? What must you lose before you finally abandon this lunacy?"

"I made a stupid mistake, and I'm not going to make it again," Nila stressed.

Mother sighed, palming her face with tattooed hands. "Archeophthese preserve this scientific idiot," she muttered. She pointed at Nila. "If I forbid you again, you will only flout my will again, and this time, likely blast yourself into orbit instead of losing your hair. So I can do nothing but rescind my censure. It will do no good as it stands."

"So you support me?"

"I have little other option," Mother pointed out with a growl. She thrust her finger under Nila's nose. "You are too stubborn to follow any path but the one you set. Then so be it!" she turned away. "If nothing else, you will at least write larger your name upon the writ of history than any other girl-child in this forsaken rock. The universe would have nothing less."

Mother's words, delivered in annoyance and anger, they seemed to be proving somewhat predictive. In the few months since Nila's departure from Sentinel Rock, she had been party to the Avatar's defeat of a spirit beast, been prisoner of the Dakongese Khagan, seen the fall of the last great citadel of South Si Wong... she wondered what else would befall her. If history were any indication – and the scientific method demanded it was – then her future would only be more spectacularly dangerous. But she would rise to meet its challenges. Fifteen years living under the foot of her mother had done nothing for her social graces, but she wagered no other Si Wongi would survive what she had. Hell, drop her naked into Azul and she would outlast a legion. Not that she'd enjoy it, of course.

She broke away from her ruminations when she felt a loud 'whump' and a buffet of wind press her clothes to her. She glanced up, and saw that a bison had landed atop the wall, which caused Nila a moment's confusion. Bison tended to avoid places like the Wall, since there was nothing to eat there, and the bison wranglers were based out of the central Reaches so that they could manage their semi-feral 'flocks' without having to bounce in and out of the city all the time. So why was one up here, and so remarkably nonplussed by the many soldiers around it. She quickly moved to where a telescope sat on its bracket, and brought it to her eye. She immediately scowled, and had to pull the thing apart, pouring out some grit, and wiping the lens. These people were the barbarians, not she – a Si Wongi would never allow technology to fall into such disrepair!

The view through the lens the second time was better, but still not of Fire Nation precision. Still, she was able to pick out that the bison was saddled. Saddled! And more tellingly, there were people descending from its back. She could only see three, because the soldiers were swarming around the first who had dismounted. Of the three which remained, one was wearing blues, the other two greens and yellows. The three behind managed to move without the swarm, which followed the first. Nila gave a glance around, and noted that all of the soldiers' attention had been shifted to the bison and its passengers. She glanced toward the tower, and then back to where she had been waiting.

And she sighed, because she was fairly sure she was about to make a stupid decision.

With a shake of her head, she reduced the telescope again, hooking it into her belt. If they couldn't properly care for it, they didn't deserve to have it. It wouldn't have helped anybody in its previous state anyway. They lost nothing. That was the litany she told herself as she started to glide forward through the soldiers, all of them leaning and craning about to see who was ahead of them more clearly, and paying no attention to the teenaged girl now slipping through their midst. The tower grew closer, and she started to hear whispers.

"Is it true? Was that the Avatar?"

"I don't know, I just saw the Bison. But do you know anybody else who flies around on one of those wild beasts?"

"It can't be the Avatar. The Avatar was killed at Summavut!"

"No he wasn't!"

"Well, how could they have lost if he didn't?"

"Summavut?" Nila asked. That was a word which was on exactly none of the lips of the people in the Lower Ring. Which was surprising, since she'd seen a few who had the very look of Tribesmen about them, Qujeck Shacktson aside.

"Yeah, you remember? Fire Nation took the North? Renamed it's capital to something about ovens," a soldier said, not even looking at her. Probably not even aware that she wasn't supposed to be here. And here she thought that people really believed that 'there was no war in Ba Sing Se'. It must have been an impressive display of double-think to believe that, and yet have to fight them.

And then she remembered Iuchi. Maybe these soldiers just... never came home.

She moved further, until she was ducking through a gap between a fat soldier and a fatter soldier, and then through the door which both were arguing over who would go into first. The room itself was broad and open, a swelling of soldiers around a raised pavilion, upon which rested some display she couldn't adequately see. There were two older men. One of them was stern and lantern-jawed, bearing a well trimmed beard, standing straight backed and vigilant. The other was much older, but not quite aged. He had a simpering way about him, and even the way he stood seemed to scream apologies. And both of them were giving audience to a boy who would not be more than thirteen.

"Well, the universe is making fun of me," Nila said lightly.

"We've already lost almost a hundred trying to retake the captured portion of the Wall," the simperer said. "No matter how hard we push, they just keep blasting us back!"

"That's because you're running them into a meat-grinder," a vaguely familiar voice piped up. The source of it was a Tribesman wearing faded greens, his hair tied back, and his eyes clearly annoyed. "This thing isn't a bender; it's a machine. It doesn't get tired. It just kills as long as somebody keeps it turned on."

"Then we will turn it off. I have dispatched the Terra Team, and..." the weaker of the two men piped up. He was cut off as a runner moved past the airbender monk and his cronies, bowing and handing a message to the taller, the prouder of the two men. To General How. How opened the scroll, and when he read it, his lips pulled into a frown.

"The Terra Team has been wiped out to a man," How said, tension clear in his voice. The other wilted completely at that "Casualties are stark and brutal. This isn't a battle; this is a slaughter."

"What is their plan?" the girl Tribesman asked. "I saw what those things did from the air. You can't tear down a wall with lightning, after all."

"But you can keep people away from where you don't want them to be," the Avatar finished for her. The Tribesman nodded, stroking at his chin.

"This is a technology that we have never faced before, a weapon the likes of which I have no idea how to counter," How admitted. "I must humbly ask you, Avatar. Can you stop it?"

"I don't know, but I'm going to try," the Avatar swore.

"You'll just get yourself killed if you try to destroy the machine without understanding it," Nila said idly, rolling her eyes.

And she didn't know how, but How managed to hear her. He turned to her. He pointed at her. Her fight-or-flight reflex was staring to kick in, to tell her to beat feet until the Wall vanished over the horizon. But his words forestalled her. "I was wondering when you'd show up, Dragon's Daughter. I'd just learned you were in Ba Sing Se."

"So you know of me?"

"You? No. But I know of your mother, and if you're a fraction as clever as she was, then I could use your council. Let her through," he ordered. Nila tipped up her chin, something like a smirk on her face, as she moved up the dais, forming a third point between the parties of the Avatar, and the garrison of Ba Sing Se. Now that she could see the table, she could see that it was laid out with both a Wall schematic showing the point of attack, and some obviously panicked renditions of the weapon in question. It wasn't until Nila compared three and noted the elements in common that she could discard the notion that it was simply uneducated fighters outright panicking. "Have you seen anything like this before?"

"As I have not yet seen 'this', I must say no," Nila said. She pointed to the Tribesman. "You observed the machine from the air, yes?" he nodded, about to say something. She cut him off. "Sketch me a portrait of it. I must know what I am dealing with by uncontaminated eyes."

"That's... not a good idea," the Tribesman girl said.

"Why not?" Nila asked.

"He's... well, kinda terrible at drawing," she answered. Nila stared at her.

"I think he draws just great," the smallest of their group offered with a grin. When Nila looked upon her, it was fairly clear that as Sharif was struck smitten of mind, this girl was struck smitten of sight, her green eyes covered with a milky glaze, and bearing no pupil to speak of. The Tribesman broke out into a grin.

"Why thank you Toph, why don't the rest of you ever..." he began, then trailed off, his grandiose gesture wilting away. He stared annoyed at the blind girl. "Why do you always do that to me?"

"Because it's friggin' hilarious," she said with a quite unfeminine chortle.

"Avatar, have you met the Dragon's Daughter?" How asked.

"Briefly," the Avatar said. "I think I can draw what I saw. I got a pretty good look at it."

"Sufficient," Nila said. "The first step to dismantling this beast is to know how flows its blood. In Si Wong, there is a saying. 'Bu olebilir, o damlar eger'. In Altuundili, it roughly means 'what bleeds, can be slain'."

"Then please hurry. The longer we take to defeat this thing, the more of our soldiers die."

"A problem which would go away if you stop throwing soldiers at it," The Avatar stressed. "Pull back. Don't sent people to die when you have an option of just falling back."

"We cannot give them the walls! They're our most potent defense!" the weakling protested. The blind girl scowled mightily at that.

"No they're not, you idjit. Your soldiers are your strongest defense. The Wall is just a speed bump! Hell, give me an afternoon and I'd have the whole thing in rubble," She claimed, crossing her arms before her. Nila didn't bother restraining a laugh at that. She like this one. The Avatar did well to collect her.

"The young mistress is correct. We pull back from the lost wall," How said with a nod.

Nila wasted no time rounding the table to the others. "It has been a strange path," she said. "What sees you within Ba Sing Se?"

"Not much, just trying to save the world," the Avatar said brightly. Nila blinked in bafflement at that. She then turned to the Tribesman.

"You... Wait, yeah, you're that girl who quizzed me in Senlin," the Tribesman said. And at that, Nila finally recalled his name, mostly because she remembered an embarrassing conversation about him a while back. Sokka, son of Hakoda. He shrugged. "Gotta say, you look better with hair."

"It was cut off since it kept catching alight with my work," Nila said flatly.

He gave a chuckle. "Ever consider just tying it back? Or not leaning over something that can catch fire?" he asked.

She prepared an angry answer, but even inside her own mind, it was incredibly stupid once put to words. Doubly so, because he was right. Her simplest solution wasn't exactly the easiest one.

"Can we please turn to the task at hand?" she asked forceably. After all, somebody had to keep Ba Sing Se from falling. And she was the only Badesh in the room.

---

"If that's what you really want," she said, patting the beast on its nose. The eyeless creature let out a whining noise, like it wasn't exactly sure of its own decision, but she couldn't fault it. It was the one setting her path, at the moment.

She looked to the north, across the great expanses of fields and orchards and woodlands. All of it was painstakingly maintained by the government of the city, because they had no desire to need anything they couldn't produce themselves. The only imports to the city were precious metals, because the mines under the city had long, long since been plumbed clean. She trusted the senses of her guide, and she trusted in herself her purpose. Nobody got away from her. It wasn't just a job; it was her reputation at stake. Since she'd not told anybody about the two that got away, that reputation was, for the moment, unblemished. Still, she knew. She remembered. And she wanted a nice, easy capture to prove she was back on her feet.

And if the easy way proved impossible, she had other ways.

"Alright, Nyla. You've rested long enough. Let's get going!" Jun said, bounding up onto the saddle of the shirshu, and began to tear her way along the expanses of the Reaches, following the unshakable nose of the tracker beast, hunting the most difficult of prey in the most hazardous of environments. Hunting one particular human being, in the guts of Ba Sing Se.

---

The chamber was quiet, lit by pale green fires. It made for difficult reading to most, but he had adapted well enough to it over the years. It was a startling thing to realize that one had spent more than two decades dedicated to a cause, one which would see him through to his dying day, with all likelihood. He took it with aplomb, though. It was something which desperately needed doing. The city would not remain orderly and peaceful, unless forceful steps were taken.

"Grand Secretariat," a woman said, bowing briefly as she entered the room. She was an attractive woman, he supposed, but it was much the same as saying to a deaf-man that a particular song had a lovely melody. Well into her middle age, she was as dedicated to the cause as he was, and was the only one who'd spent more years than he. They both had to be dedicated. The alternative was chaos. "I have preliminary reports that there is an incursion by the Fire Nation at the wall overlooking the Western Reaches."

"How preliminary?"

"A few words on the wind amongst the soldiers at the South Gate. I've taken steps to curtail its spread, but..."

Long Feng set aside the scroll he'd been scanning, and faced the woman squarely. "Please be perfectly clear, Joo Dee. Assault, or incursion."

Joo Dee scowled, and shook her head. "I could not hear more, Grand Secretariat. The Fire Nation has had years to regroup; their losses in the North are more spiritual than military. If they've turned their attentions back upon us, they could do so in force."

Long Feng rubbed at his chin briefly. This was something which required a deft hand. Too little response when much was needed would cause a calamity which would take years and innumerable resources to repair. Too much response when little was needed would have inspired the people to panic and possibly riot against his authority. It was a balancing act, one he had to do blindfolded, since he could not be awake every hour of the day, and even if he could, there was only so far he could extend his network.

There were days he felt almost powerless, even as he pulled the strings of the greatest city on this Earth. Oh, the things a man would do for love.

Then, a thought occurred to him. "The garrison of the Lotus district. It houses known dissidents, does it not?"

"Several," she said with a nod.

"Solve two problems with one stroke. Mobilize the district garrison into the Reaches. If this is a false-alarm, then nothing is lost. If it's genuine, then we spend traitors and anarchists to give us the time to mount a meaningful defense," Long Feng ordered. Joo Dee nodded, without the mindless obedience of those who now bore her name. In a real way, she was the first among them, the 'template' from which the others had been molded. A distasteful practice, but both knew the costs of inaction.

"I will send word at once," she said. But she hesitated at the door.

"What else is there, Joo Dee?" Long Feng asked.

"Rumors only," she shook her head. "They say that a manned bison was seen landing on the Western Wall."

"Ludicrous. Only airbenders could ride those beasts," Long Feng said. But he paused. "But this could be a sign of things to come."

"Sir?"

He pondered, most notably on the point that the Avatar was an airbender. "Keep the lines of communication open, but quash anything from the Western Reaches. I want to hear what is happening outside my city."

"Of course, sir," she said with a nod, and departed. Ironic that when they had first met, he had been reporting to her. Of course, the vagueries of fate and destiny were best left to other, less useful minds than his. He picked up the scroll, and reread it again. No appreciable improvement in the conditioning of the Dragon. Her companions were remaining likewise non-compliant. It was more than vexing that the enemy would be every bit as disciplined and adept at resistance as he wagered his own were, and as dedicated to their cause. But a new option was opening to him. While he knew that leashing the Dragon of the East was only a matter of time, the Avatar could upset that. Unless...

Unless Long Feng attached a leash to the Avatar as well.

---

Earlier

Kori walked well ahead of where the others had stopped. He was probably the best adept of all the Children at navigating by night, due in no small part to the fact that his elemental patron was only really visible in the darkness. Ordinarily, he curtailed his night-owl-bear tendencies since he had to travel with the group. But with the Dragon and the Princess' trail vanishing toward the Walls of Ba Sing Se, they had to get creative. The two of them could vanish into the Rings like a drop of water into the ocean. And it would fall to Kori to come up with a plan to locate them again. Which was doubly difficult, since they first had to find a way past the walls in order to do it.

He emerged from the grassland on the north shore of Chameleon Bay, watching as the barest sliver of the moon appeared, a bright sickle just above the reach of the water. A breath pulled in humid air, a luxury he had felt precious little of since he came to this drought-afflicted continent. While he certainly put on an air of the lazy ne'er-do-well, it was much like Yoji's makeup. A front to show the world. He cared deeply for his sister, and for his nation, but in that order. Given the option between his duty and his family, he couldn't honestly say that he would hold true. It was something which kept him awake at nights, sometimes.

Amongst other things. It was almost a blessing that the rock-head got picked for this. For all Yoji could be a force of nature, she needed something to ground her. Now, Kori didn't have to shoulder that burden alone. And if getting regular sex put Yoji into a better mood, well, then that was just an added benefit.

"Man, when you put it that way, it's almost like I'm pimping my sister," Kori said to nobody with a chuckle. He shrugged, and started walking again. The bay was wide and deep, and rumored to be home to all manner of nasty beast. This was one of those cases where the rumors were true, though; reports of sporadic attack by Water Worms showed up from time to time. He wondered about them. Mostly whether he could take one in an honest fight. After a brief consideration of his martial prowess, he decided it'd be a slaughter, and that if he was extremely lucky, he might make it cough a bit as it ate him. A shake of his head, and he tried to refocus on the problem at hand. The Wall. How to get past it.

He walked, and he pondered, and he kept his eyes to the next bend. Because of that, he saw a flicker of movement as he rounded a stand of rocks which jutted into the water. Even as he tried to shake the surf out of his boots, he wondered what it was he'd just seen.

His answer came in the form of a spear hurled at him.

With a clipped yelp, he bent the water up out of the bay into a tendril, which caught the spear and flicked it aside, before he twisted forward, lashing out blindly in the direction it had come from. He waited a long moment, dark blue eyes flicking about trying to find his assailant. But nothing happened. In fact, the silence was so crisp that only the sounds of the wind and Kori's own heart were clear. Then, he heard speaking.

And for a reason he could have understood if he'd asked the right questions, he almost understood what they were saying.

"There's clearly been some sort of mistake," Kori said in Tianxia. "I've got no money, I'll just be on my way."

The words came out again, this time louder, as though they were no longer trying to hide themselves. And somebody appeared seemingly out of the stone. But it was not earthbending, because it was silent as a grave. No, the man was simply very well camouflaged. Another joined him, dropping out of a tree. The two of them eyed him warily, their weapons still firmly in their hands. They were weapons made of the parts of dead animals, the weapons of savages. Only one thing, a boomerang which one motioned toward him while speaking, was made of metal. The distinctive blue alloy of the Water Tribesmen.

"Is there going to be some kind of problem?" Kori asked, glancing between the two. Water Tribe pirates? Well, there were certainly enough of their kind fleeing that some of them would have descended to banditry. He flexed his fists, readying for the assault, and for his defense. He might not be the greatest fighter of the Children, but he still wagered he could take on two non-benders.

"...one of us!"

Those were words he knew. It was like trying to read a book through sooty glass from across the yard, but the way that those sounds came together seemed to gel inside Kori's mind, forming something meaningful out of the meaningless.

"Who are you?" Kori demanded.

They shared a glance between them, and then one of them scowled. "...not...North...speak...?"

"How about we just do this in Tianxia?" he asked.

Another shared glance. "Do you not speak Yqanuac, stranger?" the man with the boomerang asked, if quite awkwardly.

"Perhaps I simply prefer a challenge," Kori said with a smirk. The boomerang man leaned back. "What?"

"Where from? North? South?"

"Somewhere around the middle," Kori said with a grin.

"...not...look like...Misty Swamp!"

"Could you try that again in a coherent language?" Kori asked.

"Sajuuk doesn't speak this language. You are far from home, yes?" Kori nodded, finally letting the water relax, but not drop completely. Draw them in, in case this was still a trap. "You will like having familiar things. Please, come with us. Our camp is ahead."

"You'd bring me into your camp without even hearing my name?"

"We have no names in the darkness. Only by the fire are they known," he said, as though Kori had made some sort of joke. The other said something which sounded suspicious and cautious, but the other shook his head vigorously. "Sajuuk thinks this strange. I told him that Tui and La act as they will."

Kori shrugged. "I guess they would," he offered. Let them act as they wanted. They were in an aquarium in New Bhatthi right now.

"Please, follow," the still unnamed of the two beckoned. Kori glanced at the other, then back the way he'd come. This better not take long. They were waiting on him, after all. He didn't take much seriously, but the same couldn't be said toward Yoji. The unnamed man moved forward, past a cleft in the rocks barely two arm-spans across, a pool of water so cramped that Kori would have likely walked clear past it without a second thought. The walls of this tiny fjord snaked to and fro, but soon enough, Kori could see light ahead of them.

The last twist brought a widening to Kori's eyes, because he simply couldn't believe that so many ships had made it up that twisting waterway, and cramped up the pool of water at its source. They were all the wood and hide hulls that had been engaged in phantom-attacks for the last few years. Was this the vaunted Ghost Navy? Well, this information alone was worth the trip in the darkness.

"Sajuuk...didn't...not...of..."

"...one of us. He...out...not..."

Kori's mind was whirling, trying to keep up with the rapid speech which was bandied about between the horde of Tribesmen which seemed to appear out of every direction. Most of them only showed themselves to give the newcomer a glance. A few kept a watch, forming a wall of dark faces and darker demeanors.

"Uh...what's going on?" Kori asked. One man shouldered his way through the crowds. This one was built like a wall, his arms thick, his neck thick, his trunk thick. His head was shaven, and his eyes a very dark blue, and he looked the infiltrating waterbender up and down.

"I hear you don't speak Yqanuac. What kind of Tribesman doesn't know the tongue?" this one asked him.

"One that's been away from home for a while," Kori said with a sardonic tone.

"They say you're a waterbender. Prove it," he said.

"Or what?"

"Or we tie you to a rock and throw you into the deep. One way or another, you waterbend," he said with a shrug. Kori sighed, and then easily plucked up a strand of water, bending it into a blob which he levitated between his fingers. The others gave a gasp at him. The bald one, though, just nodded. "Good. Welcome to the camp."

"That's it?" he asked. "I walk up and bend some water and I'm part of your secret club?"

"Any waterbender is an enemy of the Fire Nation. That makes them a friend of ours," he offered. "My name is Ogan. I'm in charge here. You've already met Hajgiir, my second-in-command, and his brother in law, Sajuuk."

"Kori."

Ogan looked Kori up and down, a smirk coming to his face. "Make yourself at home. You're among friends at last."

Oh, how little they knew.

---

"So now you see our problem?" Sokka asked, pointing at the behemoths which rose above the blowing dust. Their noise was lost to the distance, becoming only a low rumble, with occasional pops as a particularly meaty bolt of electricity made its appearance. His companion in this sojourn was the Si Wongi girl, as the others had remained behind, either to heal those that could be healed, or else to try to figure out some way of tricking the Fire Nation. That was wasting time, mostly. The Fire Nation had a good strategy, and following it would lead to victory, unless somebody did something to counter it. They were not going to be tricked.

"Indeed," the Si Wongi girl said, handing up the telescope again. "And I believe I know their strategum."

"Oh?"

"Advance the lightning engines to the Wall, clearing it of defenders," she said, striking the dust from her pants. "Then, shut off the middle generators, giving them a naked expanse of wall to destroy by bombs, mortars, and undercutting. If the earthbenders try to do something uncharacteristically clever, they can turn the central towers back on with a moment's notice. Well thought out. And showing a deep understanding of a physical theory."

"Don't tell me you're admiring them," Sokka said sarcastically. She turned to him, somewhat suspicious, but she must have been able to tell that he was being sarcastic, if after a moment's consideration, so she shrugged.

"Their invasion makes finding Mother more difficult. I have not the patience for such difficulties," she said. She scratched at her hair, and from the way she did, he could tell she was still getting used to having it. All told, it was almost as short as Sokka's. Nah, not that dramatic upon any sort of inspection, but still, it was the shortest hair he'd seen on a woman. "Do you know the engineering of electricity?"

"Just what I learned from Zha Yu," Sokka said. "That guy has a way of turning any conversation into the most enthusiastic lesson you've ever seen."

"Zha Yu? The Mountain King?" she asked. She then scoffed. "I had heard him dead."

"No, but he does lose houses on a suspiciously frequent basis," Sokka said with a shrug. She chuckled at that. Sokka paused. "Wait, I've got his research guide."

"He gave you his...?"

"Yeah, I told him that the Universe acting as it does to mess with me personally, I'd have a chance to give it back to him before the spring was out," Sokka said, digging through the bag which hung from one shoulder. Then, with a triumphant laugh – which sounded almost identical to his other laughs – he hoisted a badly battered, poorly bound collection of notes and scribblings into the air. The sun seemed to shine off of it, which was impossible since the thing was bound in tea-stained wood. Nila's eyes shot wide at that, and before he was even ready to hand it to her, it was in her hands. He wasn't even sure how she snatched it so effortlessly.

"This is remarkable. That's wrong. I am told that Mother once traveled with him but – that's wrong, oh wait, he noticed it – I had not known he yet lived. You live a strange life, Tribesman."

"Sokka, please," he offered.

"Whatever," she said. She read in silence for a long moment, muttering to herself in the language of Altuundili, which Sokka couldn't understand but could recognize by sound.

"Sooo... How'd you end up in Ba Sing Se?" Sokka asked.

"I walked. It was a very long journey," Nila said, still flipping forward

"I mean in a more general sense," he said. "I mean, the whole reason that me and my sister are out here is because we kinda got exiled."

She paused, looking up to him with bright green eyes. She gave a chortle, then looked down again. "Fitting that the Tribesmen would banish the only of them with a brain."

"Yeah, well... some sort of sexist joke back at you!" Sokka said, and then palmed his face. Had he really said that?

"Did you really say that?" Nila asked. "You are an absurd man."

"Says the girl who took it upon herself to fight the army of the Fire Nation."

"That's different," she claimed.

"Please, you're like a female me," Sokka said with a shake of his head. "We're both smarter than our siblings, we're both normal where they're weird, and we've both got a target on our back from fate itself."

"You assume much."

"Do I assume correctly?"

Her dark grumble was all the answer he needed in that one.

"The only real difference between us is that I've learned to face this garbage with a sense of humor. You've gotta learn to laugh at things."

"I laugh... enough."

Sokka couldn't help but bray at that. She shook her head, serious and focused on the pages again, reading with remarkable speed. Then again, she was probably just skimming at the moment. She let out a 'hrm', and flipped back.

"Find something?" Sokka asked.

"What do you mean?"

"Your 'hrm' implied it."

"I was pondering that such power must be released in jolts, for otherwise, it would be far too weak," she said. "That means they have a capacitor – a device for buffering a great pulse of power before release."

"Even I know that's a drastic simplification," Sokka said.

"You know your engineering. Good. So keep up. These capacitors are the flesh of the beast, showing 'tween its impenetrable hide. If you would have this beast bleed, your bullet must land there, and nowhere else."

"My what?"

"Bullet," she said, tapping her gun. He decided that would bear scrutiny at another time. "Like trying to strike down a Buzz-ard, timing will be key. Destroy the capacitor as the charge is weak, you have struck the beast a pin-prick. Destroy that same capacitor as the charge is strong? Cataclysm."

Sokka started walking back toward the tower, and she followed, her eyes still down on the book. "It's almost a shame to destroy the thing. If it wasn't a deadly death-beam, I'm pretty sure I'd hesitate."

"Deadly death-beam is redundant," she said.

"Yeah, well, from the looks of it, I'm pretty sure it warrants some redundancy," Sokka offered. So how are we supposed to get close enough to bust open the capacitors? And what do the capacitors even look like?"

"You need only follow your ear. They produce a hum quite unlike any the world can otherwise produce," she pointed out.

"So we don't need to look at 'em? Bonus," Toph said, instantly at their side. Nila fell still, and stared at the girl.

"And what manner of girl are you?"

"The badass kind," Toph answered. Nila stared for a moment longer, then shrugged.

"Very well. Yes, the capacitors could be of many shapes, but no alteration in shape can hide the smell of ozone nor the sound of the power within it. Find those, and you will find your weak point. My great concern is that there will be more than one."

"What's wrong with that? More stuff to break," Toph said, punching her palm.

"You may fluke and destroy a first, but they will defend a second against all comers," Nila pointed out.

"Yeah, we've gotta find a way to make sure all the capacitors go down at once. But what about the engines, the towers?"

"Without the lightning, they are toothless," Nila said. "They can be smote at your leisure."

"Heh, smote," Toph said.

"And what do you contribute to the Avatar, again, girl?" Nila asked. "It is obvious that this one provides the intellect, and his sister succor and comfort. What does that make you?"

"I'm his earthbending teacher," Toph said, mildly insulted. Sokka had a feeling Nila did that a lot to people.

"...I see."

"So who's gonna be on this team?" Toph asked.

Nila glanced between them, as they waited expectantly. "Don't be mad. I am no saboteur."

"Come on, you came up with the brilliant plan. Are you saying you didn't want to see it through?" Sokka cajoled.

"Only a foolish general leads from the front lines, and I will not have you imply towards my foolishness."

"I didn't imply anything," Sokka said. "A woman tells a man she's not wearing underwear, that's implying something. I just thought you were..."

"I'm not wearing underwear," Nila said with a note of confusion. "I have worn none since they were stolen by pirates. What could that possibly imply?"

"You're not wearing underwear?" Sokka asked.

"Your underwear was stolen by pirates?" Toph asked.

"Yeah, answer that one first," Sokka amended. Nila looked quite annoyed, either by the fact that they were inquiring as to the state or absence of her undergarments or that she was forced to recall a harrowing tale involving pirates. And underwear.

Yeah, that was probably going to be on his mind all day, now.

"I was kidnapped several months ago. They wanted my bombs. I said no. I had not the time to recover my robes. As I had departed from my home thinking my journey to be a short one, I neglected such luxuries as extra clothing. I have no doubt that my underwear burned when Tzu Zi set fire to their ship."

"...Yeah, I'm gonna want to hear the long version of that at some point," Toph said with a grin.

Nila glanced at him. "She loves stories."

"Hrm."

"That's what I thought," Sokka said. "So you're not going to help us bloody the Fire Nation's nose?"

"I have no quarrel with the Fire Nation. Only that they would make finding Mother more difficult, if not impossible. In fact, my best friend is a firebender," she pointed out. "Besides, I am not some hero out of myth; myths are often only that. I will account myself where I am most useful, and that is not down amongst soldiers and lightning."

"Eh, suit yourself," Toph said. "You're missing out on a... you know a firebender?"

"Yes, Tzu Zi. My friend."

"Hey, Brain, are you thinking what I'm thinking?"

"Possibly, but where would we find twenty inflated bladders on such short notice?" Sokka asked. Both turned to him, confounded. He grinned.

"Twinkletoes needs a firebending master. Her friend's a firebender..."

"Yeah, I figured that out."

"What?" Nila asked.

"How'd your friend like to teach the Avatar how to firebend?" Sokka asked.

"I don't know. You'd need to ask her," she said simply. Fair enough, Sokka thought. Nila walked past them all, into the tower which rose above the bulk of the wall, opening the door with her foot so she could continue reading. Sokka offered Toph a shrug, and followed after her.

"I like her," Toph opined.

"Thought you might," Sokka said.

"So... you and she gettin' physical?"

"You're kidding right?" Sokka asked. "We've had two conversations in the entire time we've both been alive."

"Yeah, but your bodies are telling a different tale," she said, she slapped a hand against the stone. "I might not be able to see colors, but I know if somebody's blushing or if their heart's racing. And the two of you got pretty... excited... back there."

"Of course I was excited! I've finally got somebody who I can talk to about this kind of high-end engineering!" Sokka exclaimed. "Do you have any idea how often I've seen Dad's eyes glaze over when I talked about stuff back before he left Chimney Mountain?"

"I literally have no idea what you're talking about," Toph said flatly, and Sokka sighed, heading in after the Si Wongi girl.

"We've got a plan," Sokka announced as he reached the table. He pointed at How, who was turning away from the Avatar. "Do you play Pai Sho, How?"

"From time to time," he said.

"Then you know what a Big Fat is?" Sokka asked.

"A unit or units which are a sufficient threat that they cannot be ignored, but constitute a small portion of your or your opponent's forces. Why?" How asked, tugging at his beard.

"That's what we've got here," he said.

"The Tribesman is correct," the Si Wongi said, setting the book aside. "The towers are acting as the Fire Nation's Big Fat, which gives them mobility unquestioned. If we are to defeat them, we need to eliminate that capacity. They will have to fall back, as we will be able to respond freely once it is gone."

"Sokka."

"What?" Nila asked.

"The Tribesman's name is Sokka."

"Whatever," she said with a flick of her tattooed hand toward him. He could only roll his eyes at that. "We must send somebody into the heart of that army, to destroy the capacitors of the Arc Towers before they have cleared the walls. This will likely be a suicide mission, but..."

"I'll do it," Aang piped up.

She stared at him, then turned to face the other soldiers. "As I have said, it will likely be a suicide mission, so you must select only your best and most stalwart."

"I said, I'll do it," Aang said.

"And are you having difficulty understanding the meaning of 'suicide mission'?" Nila asked.

"No, but enough people have gotten hurt because of me; I can't just stand aside, and I certainly can't run away," Aang said, his fists tightening on his staff. "Where will the capacitors be?"

Nila sighed, and said, had any in the room been able to understand her 'may fortune smile upon the stupid, for we seem to be many this day'. "Very well. If you are so eager to die for the cause, then this is what you must do..."

---

Her first plan failed before it began.

She had once been renowned for her ability to nest plans within plans, parallel to plans, and divorced from plans entirely, an ever-whirring and hellish symphony of predetermination. After years of that, and a short lapse of insanity, she'd gotten... well... lazy. That's what part of her called her life after her escape from prison. Others might have called it 'sensible', being as she had an infant daughter to raise, but for quite a few years, she simply couldn't comprehend that politics was a game that nobody could play forever. Once she came to that decision, she started learning improvisation, and when she did that, her ability to plan long-term essentially flew out a window.

Her second plan to breach the walls of Ba Sing Se was aborted after only a few minutes, as it had become apparent that continuation would only result in failure and possible capture. While incarceration by the Dai Li was an important step of her later plot, it would have to be at the proper time, when the pieces had assumed their perfect positions. Doing so too early would just have her rotting in a cell.

Her third was crossed off the list as she retreated from the second; the doom of the second doomed the third. Through it all, Iroh didn't say a word. It was lucky he hadn't. If he had, she probably would have snapped and hurled lightning at him, which would have been pointless, since he could just redirect it. That was a frustration and a half. And all the more vexing since she wasn't even sure if he actually taught her the secret of it.

That brought the two of them, a day later and a day hungrier, to the fourth plan, which was moronic for its simplicity.

"Reason for entry into Ba Sing Se?" the teenaged clerk asked, eyes down and on his work. It wasn't until plan five that she would have to seduce him. Lucky that she was the one involved and not that clueless girl; she remembered how catastrophic her even furtive attempts at seduction had been when she was this age. If there was one thing that the years had taught her, it was how to not terrify a man out of his wits.

Unless that's what he wanted.

"We're war refugees," Azula said, trying very hard to make her voice sound dull and boring, and in doing so, somewhat managing to hide the accent of a language which never existed in this world. "This is the only safe place. If they find us, they'll kill us. So we have to make sure they don't find us."

"Criminal or political?"

"My parents were on the wrong side of a war," she said. "Uncle here stayed out of it, but..."

"Political asylum?" he shrugged, and started hammering away at forms with a bevy of rubber stamps. "References?"

Oh... that was something she hadn't accounted for. Casually, she leaned forward, tugging at her neckline to help start to free some cleavage; it was a resource which she had precious little of at this tender age. Oh, but to have her maternal breasts again! "Are you sure you need that? I'm no threat to anybody," she lied sweetly.

"I'm sorry, ma'am, but I can't..." the clerk began, vexingly looking her in the eye. Then again, as she'd admitted to herself, there was little cleavage to catch the boy's attention.

"Aimei! I told you not to run ahead!" a familiar voice came from behind Azula, causing her eyes to dart wide and her head to swivel. Iroh silently turned, and took in the young couple whom Azula had abandoned on the road. Her expression flicked into confusion, and then alarm. They could ruin everything! But Ying, infant Daichi in hand, moved up to the clerk with a look of maternal forbearance that Azula couldn't have lied better in emulating. She made a note of it for later, if at some point in the next ten years she needed to pull off a con such as this again. "You'll have to forgive my younger sister. She gets ahead of herself sometimes."

"She's your sister?" the clerk asked. "And that would make him?"

"Than is my husband. I am Ying. You must have met Aimei and Mushi? Is something wrong here?"

"I need references for her claim of political asylum. Who would vouch for you?" he asked.

"Well... We know a scholar named Keung in Gaoling, but we don't know if..."

The clerk leaned back and pulled out a book roughly as thick as Azula's torso, flopped it open at around the middle, and scanned through pages, until his finger fell upon one in particular. "Ah, yes, Professor Keung has returned to Ba Sing Se University almost a month ago. And he'd vouch for you?"

Than nodded vigorously. "He taught us how to read and write. I'm sure of it."

The clerk looked down at a form, and sighed. "Bugger it. Fine, instead of have to fill out a desk-full of paper-work, I'm just going to say that he's given his voucher. Tell noone."

"Your secret is safe with us," Ying said sweetly. Another flurry of stamps, paperwork filed away, and he tugged a set of green cards with brown rings upon them.

"Your request has been filed and will undergo appeals by the Cultural Authority but I don't see any real problems. These are provisional visas granting access to and freedom of housing within the lower rings. In the event that an audit occurs, be sure to answer the summons promptly and have your voucher ready and willing to offer his support for best possible results. Welcome to Ba Sing Se, citizen."

"Excellent," Iroh said. He then immediately turned away from the queue and the booth and ran down a tea-vendor whom he'd had his eye on for the last ten minutes. Azula, on the other hand, walked briskly toward the tram-cart which would lead into the city. Last time, she didn't need to go through so much time-consuming nonsense. Of course, last time, she had an impervious disguise and the 'good word' of the Avatar himself to see her into the City. She stepped into the empty tram, moving right to the front, and turned, facing the two Easterners and their offspring as they moved in behind her.

"What do you want?" Azula demanded, allowing her accent to return, since repressing it took more effort than it was worth.

"What do you mean? You needed help, and those people looked like they weren't going to let you in," Than said.

"Besides, this way, we get into Ba Sing Se before supper-time," Ying pointed out. "That line was moving so slooooow!"

"Cutting the queue notwithstanding," Azula snapped. "You want something from me. This was a ploy to put me into your debt, wasn't it?"

"Maybe we're just repaying the favor of you bringing our boy into this world?" Than asked. He shrugged. "Look, you're paranoid. I get that. I mean, If I was a..."

"Than," Ying said with a warning tone.

"...outsider like you," Than continued, "then you'd have every right to be. But I've only got one question, and I want you to answer it honestly. Are you here to spy on the city?"

"No," Azula said honestly. She wasn't here to spy. She was here to conquer.

"So I've got no duty to stop you," Than said. "The world isn't as bad as you think it is Aimei, or whatever you call yourself. There are good people out there. You just need to give 'em a chance."

She stared at him, then to his wife, then to Iroh, who wandered into the tram with a look of disappointment on his face.

"Best tea in Ba Sing Se? Bah. More like coldest tea in Ba Sing Se," he complained, taking a sulking seat near Azula, not even acknowledging the others nearby.

"You keep your enemies close so that you can stab them in the back. Distance solves everything," she declared. Ying sighed.

"...if you really believe that, then you must be a very lonely person," she said sadly, and then guided her husband toward the back of the tram.

And the worst part was, Ying wasn't wrong.

---

The Tribesmen burst into raucous laughter once again, leaving two in their midst silent. One was silent purely by dint of understanding neither the joke, nor the language which it was spoken in. The other was silent because, well, Kori wasn't sure. Just that the bald, blocky man didn't laugh very much. The sun had risen hours and hours ago, but he knew that they were watching him like a firehawk, and that his egress would not go unnoticed. And, unlike most who would have found themselves in this situation, he wondered why.

"Sajuuk was just telling of the time when he was a lad, and he snuck into Qejay's hut. Trying to steal his imported wine," Ogan relayed seriously. "If you'd ever tasted Tribal Hunt-Wine, you'd understand why. Have you?"

"Can't say that I have," Kori said.

"Well, he sneaks in, and finds Qejay with his mistress. So..."

"I imagine there was some screaming," Kori smirked.

"More throwing and cursing. Qejay chased him all the way out into the Little Slide, naked and hairy as a bison, before he gave up and turned back. Wife kicked him out when she heard of it. Wasn't the first time. Woman had the patience of an Adamite saint. Daughter did, too."

"I wouldn't put up with that, were I in her shoes," Kori said, glancing toward a gap in the rocks which might lead him away. They would be looking for him soon, and his path would lead them blundering into these barbarians. That was not an outcome he was going to allow. Ogan shrugged.

"Tribesmen put up with a lot for family," Ogan said. Around the ashen pit which had held last night's fire, the men were talking again, but this time, of an almost funereal tone. On some of the faces of those men, tears glistened. "You must not remember much of your heritage to not know that."

"I've been... away from home for a while," Kori said.

"I can well imagine..." he turned to the men, and stomped a foot on the ground, breaking one of them off mid sentence. "No. I... son... one of us, now... alone... wife, Sedna... girl, looks like..."

Kori got to his feet and skirted away from his ignorant captor, toward that cleft in the rocks. A cavern would be less than ideal, but even if he could separate them out a bit, pick them off and knock them out, he could escape against a diminished force. Just not all of them, and certainly not all at once. He had to get back to the others, before it was too late. These people might think him a Tribesman, but no matter the source of his blood, his heart lay with the people who saved him from early and horrible death. He darted into the shadows between the rocks, and began to grope his way through. There was one thing fortunate about being in the Fire Nation, it was that one learned how to adapt to darkness very quickly. For all it was the nation supposedly blessed by Agni, and purported to once boast as many as three hundred days of sun per year, it was a dark place to live these days.

His path started only at the tips of his fingers. But as his eyes adjusted, he quickly came to the understanding that this was not an escape route, and his nose confirmed that suspicion. He'd tried to escape by ducking into the Tribesmen's privy-pit.

Kori kneaded his brow. Of course, things had to be difficult now, didn't they?

With an irritated groan, he turned and moved back out of the cleft. Just in time to see Tribesmen commiserating with each other. He just raised a brow at it. Ogan glanced his direction and got to his feet. "They mourn the loss of their children."

"Big family?" Kori asked, not really interested.

"No, many small ones," Ogan said. "I know the feeling."

"Illness, I take it?" Kori asked, still looking around for a way out.

"Stolen. By the Fire Nation," Ogan answered, just as sternly as ever. Kori frowned at that, since it didn't make a whole lot of sense.

"Why would the Fire Nation steal your children?"

"Don't know. Just know that it did. Must have been trying to cull waterbenders again. Isn't the first time," Ogan said with a grim nod. "Sajuuk lost two. The Chief lost his daughter. Same as Bato. They took my son, and one of the bastards 'left' a daughter behind," he said.

"You took his child?"

"He..." Ogan struggled to find a word, "was unpleasant to my wife. My daughter resulted from it."

Kori took a moment to think about that; while it was known that the Fire Nation pursued a course of war against the South Water Tribe in the earlier years of the World War, that was because it was believed that the Avatar had been reborn into the Water Tribes, and they were trying to prevent the enemies of the Fire Nation from indoctrinating him against the only real beacon for civilization and advancement in this world. However, as the years dragged on, and the Avatar didn't appear on the world-stage, they figured that they might have imprisoned him until his death, likely not even realizing they'd had him in their hands, before bringing war to the Earth Kingdoms, which would logically bear the next of them. That the Avatar turned out to be an airbender struck everybody by surprise.

So why would the Fire Nation attack the South Water Tribe again?

What would they have to gain by it?

Who would have ordered it?

"Well, I am sorry for your loss, but I can't say I feel any real empathy for you," Kori said honestly.

"Never thought I'd see my son again," Ogan said, staring out over the men, and the trickle of stream which brought this 'bay' to the true Chameleon Bay. Kori leaned back a bit.

"So you've managed to reunite with him?" Kori asked. "Which is he?"

"He's standing right there," Ogan said, nodding past Kori. Kori turned, but there was nobody there.

"There's nobody..." Kori fell silent. "You're talking about me, aren't you?"

"It's been a while."

An uneasy smile came to Kori's face. "I'm afraid you have me mistaken for somebody else," he said.

"Nope. Know my son."

"I was abandoned by my family a long time ago. I've come to terms with that. When was your son supposedly taken, anyway?" Kori said, trying to keep heat out of his voice. Heat he wasn't sure why it was even there. The man was wrong, and that was that.

"When you were three years old," Ogan said evenly, not displaying the sort of obsessive exuberance that a man should show when reuniting with a son lost perhaps forever. "Be around thirteen years ago. No... Fourteen, since the month changed."

...which was right around when the Fire Nation claimed to have found them. Down to the week.

"I don't know what to tell you, Tribesman. I'm not your lost son."

"May be that you don't believe it. Don't make it untrue."

"It's absurd and it's wrong," Kori said. But tellingly, he didn't believe it even as it came from his mouth.

He'd had his doubts before. Doubts he didn't air with others, but doubts nonetheless. Some of the things that his foster-parents had claimed didn't quite jive once one looked deeper. Of course, there weren't many of the Children who had foster-parents; Only a select few such as himself and his... well, chances were she wasn't his sister if this was true, but Yoji, and Omo, and... Yeah. All of the benders. Particularly, the benders who didn't work in fire.

Except for Yoji. That was the part of the puzzle which didn't make sense, but for a different reason than before. The entire board had shifted, with her remaining the same, and the reasons for her incongruence couldn't be more different.

Kori kneaded his temple. There were days when it was damned unpleasant to be just about the only one in the Children who was capable of seeing the big picture. Mainly, it was because sometimes the big picture was made up of little pictures that you didn't expect, and didn't know how to react to. "Look, I need to get back on the road. Some of my friends are going to be passing this way, soon, and I should..."

"Ogan! …two...down...firebender!"

Kori turned to the blocky man who claimed to be his father. "Hajgiir says there are two walking along the bay. One looks like she might be a firebender."

"Maybe I should deal with this. Yoji, my friend, she has a strange sense of fashion," Kori said swiftly.

"If you say," Ogan said. "Bring them here. Better than being out on the road."

"We're heading into the City. We can't dawdle here," Kori answered, moving through the men and past the boats. Several Tribesmen gave wary nods toward their commander as he saw the boy through the lines. Ogan scowled at the last part, until Kori realized there was a word the man didn't know how to translate. "You know what? Just see me to the edge of camp. I hope you find your son. Your real son. The one which isn't me," Kori amended. Ogan just watched him.

"Talk to your friends," he eventually said, nodding ahead of him. "I'll make sure we don't gut 'em."

"Like you even could," Kori muttered under his breath. He didn't look back after he moved through the rocks, the Tribesmen giving him no contest to his passage. But at their back, Ogan watched.

"Are you sure that was your boy, Ogan?" Sajuuk asked.

"Positive. He has my eyes, and Sedna's skin," Ogan answered. "I would recognize him were he a skeleton in Si Wong."

Sajuuk scowled. "Then why did he not recognize you? Why does he not speak our tongue?"

"You know how young our children were when they were taken. May be that he just doesn't remember. May be that he got away from the Fire Nation, lived in Great Whales a spell," Ogan said.

"But you don't know," Sajuuk pressed.

"Nope. Doesn't matter. My son's alive," Ogan said stonily.

"I thought you'd be happier," Sajuuk said.

Ogan turned to him, the slightest wisp of a smile coming to that broad, dour face. "My child returned to me. I am the happiest man alive," he said. And then he looked out to the water again. "And may be that yours might be as well. It's a good sign. Tui and La are with us."

"I worry about these 'friends' of his," Sajuuk said.

"Then we bring them in, like I was planning to," Ogan ordered, before turning back to his tent, and to the attention of things that a year ago, he would never have thought himself capable of.

---

The ground of the Wastelands was lit with grey light, as the sun passed through no small amount of coal-smoke before it could reach the baked earth. These were lands which hadn't seen appreciable growth of plantlife in three hundred years, since Chin the Conqueror's legendary siege of Ba Sing Se. Like the Dragon of the West would later, it ended in failure, but only after years, and after stripping the countryside so bare that nothing could ever grow again. Even the spirits avoided the Wastelands, except for spirits of violence, anger, and blood. While poppies might grow on battlefields, sometimes, a place could simply be too soaked in it. And that described the lands outside the Great Walls precisely.

It was a boon and a bane to attackers. It afforded no cover from attack from the wall, but offered no obstacles for assault. Line of sight was clear and easy, but without a logistical genius working on the back lines, the soldiers would quickly starve; there was not much to eat out here. The only things that these Fire Nation soldiers had seen since their arrival – barring the semi-feral bison which paddled around the air near Ba Sing Se – were a pair of ancient, rickety looking Ostrich Horses who didn't even appear to be worth the effort to butcher. It was grim, dirty, hungry, and bleak. Just like always.

"SAPPERS!" the cry went out, which caused a blind earthbender to growl and then pound her feet, causing the cracked earth to blossom out, showcasing a small cadre of earthbenders, one waterbender, and one Tribesman with a boomerang.

"Figures they'd be listening," Toph muttered, before flicking forward with an almost off-hand gesture, which rose a slab of stone that caught the engineer across the gut, sending him flying and groaning. Aang quickly glanced around.

"Are we there yet?" he asked, his staff lowered to ward off opposition.

"I swear, if you ask me that one more time, I'm turning this tunnel around and going back to Ba Sing Se!" Toph shouted. The earthbenders all moved out, forming a protective detail around the Avatar and his similarly young cadre. Not too many, just around twenty. Sokka, on the other hand, was already looking around.

"No, we're in the cord-bundle," he answered, gesturing toward the great black serpent, almost as tall as he was, which coiled past them before slowly splitting down into dozens of more modestly sized cords. "Which means that's probably the capacitor."

Aang looked ahead of him, through the lines of soldiers, to something which rose above their heads. It was painted bright white, a clear sign of how dangerous it was, and stood out starkly against the curtain of smog which lay behind it. "How do we get there?"

"How do you move a rock, Twinkletoes?" Toph asked.

"I don't think that's gonna work here," Sokka said.

"With all due respect, Avatar, can we start moving? We're sitting turtle-ducks out here," the actual soldier before the Avatar piped up.

"Sorry. Right. Move toward the white capaci-whatever!"

"Well cut a path," the soldier said. "Tribesman, bring that monster down."

"If it bleeds I can kill it," Sokka quoted. Then, the soldiers, as one, stomped the ground, forming a set of stone blocks, which they then immediately tackled into, and started to rush the distance. Fire Nation assaults, be they fireballs or mortar-shells, exploded across that bulwark, causing the earthbenders behind to falter, but not fail. It was impressive. And it was sign that the youths had to advance quickly.

Obviously, Aang was the fastest of them. He whipped the air into a scooter which gave him speed and maneuverability the likes of which nobody present could match. Even as the earthbenders advanced, forming a blocking line, dragging attention away from the Avatar's intended target, Aang was shooting past them, off on a tangent, zipping past the artillerymen and engineers and soldiers. No few times, Aang had to either hop off of his ball to avoid a slash of the spear, or rebound his scooter off of somebody's face to keep from getting trapped in a knot of them. Finding the line was not easy, and he didn't doubt that the chaos he left in his wake would not last even long enough.

But it didn't have to. While Katara was slower than he in absolute terms, she didn't care about things like 'people standing in the way'. While the Wastelands were dead as rocks, they were not as hopelessly dry as most of the East. So she skated forward on a plane of ice she made as she needed. When she ran out of water, she pulled more from one of many brackish pools that dotted the landscape in the lee of rocks and scree. And if people tried to stop her, she froze them in a wall of ice, and kept on moving, not even hesitating, not relenting, just advancing, without pity or pause. And because of that ruthless advance, when Aang found himself in truly deep water, metaphorically speaking, with soldiers converging from every direction save up to trap him, she was a welcome sight.

It was odd to think that she'd once claimed she wasn't a fighter. The way she moved now put lie to that claim. It wasn't as graceful as the movements that Aang had seen out of Master Pakku, but it was no less effective. Her movements were brutish, but powerful, and when she flicked out a whip of water, the target not only felt it, but probably accounted it the last thing before he or she was knocked unconscious. Aang released the ball, and took up some of the water that Katara was offering, twisting it into whips of his own. While Katara was, of them all, the undisputed mistress of water, he was only a timely application of effort behind her, and tellingly, Aang was Katara's pupil.

Strange, how his mind seemed to have divided into four at some point. He couldn't exactly say when it happened. Maybe it was always like that. Maybe now, he just saw it, and understood it. There was a time for defense, a time for attack, a time for flight and a time for surrender, but that time could be any or none, and switch in an instant. He had to think with four brains to be the Avatar everybody wanted him to be. The trick was, he still had no idea how to think like a firebender. 'Hold your ground' the earthbender in him would say, 'let them break their teeth for a while'. But then, the airbender would answer 'No, we gotta keep moving', while the waterbender would break in 'why not try both?'

And in what had to be a wounding of the prides of roughly two dozen National soldiers, two teenagers were breaking their line. And when that internal airbender broke in with 'Path's clear, run for it!', Aang didn't hesitate. Instantly, he was bending air again, though not into a scooter. This time, it was heaving air out of a great tube, and bunching it behind him. With a thump of nature complaining about the inequity, Aang found himself catapulted forward by the laws of physics themselves, and as those smart people always said back in the South Temple, momentum was easier to maintain than impart. So once an Avatar was in motion, it tended to stay in motion. A glance back confirmed that Katara had broken free of the soldiers as well, and Aang was on a direct course with the Capacitor. It was getting quite close.

With a skid which sent the detritus he'd picked up in his sprint racing before him, Aang came to a stop, punctuated by a flick of his staff which took an air blast and hurled it at a bewildered looking mechanic, which sent the man bowling away down a gentle slope. Aang then turned to the monstrocity before him, and he finally paused, as all four sections of his Avatar mind all had one simple question.

What the heck was he supposed to do with this thing?

"Man that thing looks complicated," he said to nobody in particular. If there was a benefit to being small, fast moving, and surrounded by chaos, it was that he had a moment to consider before anybody would notice that he didn't belong there. There were dozens of cranks and knobs and dials, all showing things which Aang hadn't the first clue what they meant. So he stood for a moment, scratching at his pate. A moment needed for Katara to finally catch up.

"What are you doing just standing around here for? Break the thing!" she shouted.

"Yeah, but how? I don't even know what I would do to break it," Aang pointed out.

"Just hit it with a rock or something," Katara offered, glancing around to the chaos surrounding them. Why weren't there more people here?

"That'd be a bad idea," Sokka answered to both's surprise. They turned, and saw him riding up on a Komodo Rhino. Both leaned back in confusion.

"Where did you get that thing?" Aang asked.

"How do you even know how to ride that thing?" Katara bettered.

"Long story, funny story! Well, story for later," Sokka bounded off the beast and gave it's haunch a swat, sending it running away into the Fire Nationals. "Me and Nila have given this some thought, and we're pretty sure that if you weld that thing wide open, it won't break the capacitor, but it'll make all the towers useless. They won't be able to arc more than five feet!"

"So how do we 'weld it wide open'?" Aang asked, casting a hand toward the great white, rubber-clad behemoth. "I can't even see what I'm supposed to be working with!"

"Grim terror laying within darkest day, harbinger of a thousand screams, Violence glorious and sanguine; heed!"

"The ghosts of the battlefield of a century's conflicts, awaken, and return to the nightmares of times best forgotten!"

Aang turned, as the voices almost fell over each other. There were two, one a girl, the other a lad, both roughly Sokka's age. But he couldn't see them. "Did you guys hear that?" Aang asked.

"I can't hear anything over all this shouting!" Katara answered. Aang looked around again. Still nothing, but there was a sensation on the back of his neck, like the fine hairs there were trying to stand on end.

"Furious fortunes brought once more to bear, and bearing the gifts of ten thousand battles, red and slick and true!"

"Breaker of blades! Shatterer of shields! Scales of honor observe! Alight upon the field and show the land the pinnacle of battles! The truest of swords..."

"...the avatar of Vengeance."

Aang had a sinking feeling. So he closed his eyes, and tapped into that understanding that Sharif had once showed him. And when he opened his eyes once more, he was seeing into two worlds. He could see the Inner Sphere, his friends, the battle, the capacitor... but he could also see the Outer. And there were two more in the Outer that he hadn't seen before.

"Oh... this could be bad," Aang muttered, as the two of them gave a start, glancing to each other. They looked enough alike that they would have to be siblings, and were dressed in identical uniforms, red and gold, with differences only in the basic dimensions of a teenaged girl versus a teenaged boy.

"Is he seeing us?" the boy asked.

"Don't lose focus! Keep going!" the girl snapped. He shook his head.

"Rise from your ignoble graves for a final battle..."

"...and let your mettle be known," the girl finished, and as she did, Aang could see motes of orange color rising up out of the ground, and gathering together.

Katara let out a scream, as the eye that looked in the Inner Sphere beheld what those orange spirits were forming. It was a sort of golem, almost, forming from the inside out, made entirely out of rust and broken bronze weapons. It had no face, no voice, no eyes, but he didn't need to any of that to know that it was as thinking and cunning as any spirit was.

They'd called a spirit of Violence to the battlefield. And the gods have mercy on anybody nearby.

With the only shriek it was capable, that of metal grinding against metal, it began to rush forward, its only thought and intent bringing slaughter to first the Avatar, and then doubtless anybody else it could find.

---

Nila watched the battle from on high with her telescope. They'd certainly gotten of to a good start, which hit an immediate snag, which they then recovered from. She should have known that they'd be listening for subterranean travel; the Fire Nation didn't get to their current place of martial might by being a collective of fools. So she watched as the earthbenders appeared in the midst of that battle line, near the great cords which fed the beast. And she watched as the Avatar moved ahead.

"This plan is audacious. Do you really believe it will work?" How asked her.

"I cannot know until it either has or has not," Nila pointed out. But she could see something troubling. "Take this."

"What?" How asked, even as he took the lens. "What is it?"

"That man is preparing to kill the Avatar," she said. She pulled her rifle around. "Tell me where this bullet lands."

She then sighted down her barrel, directly at the target she'd intended, and pulled the trigger. With a mighty bang, the gun recoiled into her shoulder. She brought the weapon back to her shoulder, and waited. "It's about..."

"Be precise!"

"Ten feet short, and twenty feet left," How said. Nila ran the numbers in her head, even checking the fluttering of their standards, before turning her rifle up and aside. She looked down, at the mortar which was about to drop a shell directly onto the hapless demigod's head, held her rifle pointing a different direction from it, and then pulled the trigger once more. It twisted her badly, causing her to swear lightly with discomfort. Whatever else she'd done with this gun, she'd made it kick three times harder than it should have. There was a moment of silence, and then, in the great distance, there was an explosion. Not a huge one, by any standard, but enough to tear an artillery-piece apart as its shell was detonated inside the barrel.

"That was... incredible," How said. She had to give an appreciating nod herself at that.

"I was not sure if it would work," she admitted. She then looked back much closer, to where the Avatar was now stationary beside the capacitor. She took the lens and held it to her eye. And waited. "What is your failure of understanding, Avatar? Destroy the thing!"

"What is it?" How asked.

"He is hesitating!" she muttered, handing off the scope again. She heaved back on the lever, allowing the firing mechanism to open, before biting and sliding a pair of fresh slugs into place. "His hesitation will be the end of him!"

"Wait, is that..." How began. He gave a grunt. "Well, that was remarkable."

"What was?"

"The Tribesman just stole somebody's Komodo Rhino," How said.

Nila beckoned and the general gave the lens back to her. "As I have no place here, I cannot demand of you, but should you not be preparing to retake the lost wall and scuttle the towers?"

How gave a small smile, and nodded. "Everything is waiting for the Avatar and our team on the ground. Until then, all we can do is wait."

She rolled her eyes. Even with all those years of patient experimenting under her metaphorical belt, she still loathed little more than waiting. She brought that lens up again, and gave a concerned frown. Only this time, there was no Eastern general to question why. And with the shot much closer, she didn't need somebody to spot the bullet's fall.

At least, she hoped not.

---

The Avatar's reaction was, understandably, to stand in shock. The others, much less grounded in the metaphysics of spiritualism and more versed in the fine art of 'gettin' crap done', as Toph would so eloquently put it, were not so afflicted. In fact, the girl herself launched into the scene surfing atop a slab of stone, which she slid off and let the momentum carry into the golem's middle. It barely made the thing back off two steps.

"Holy crap is that one of the blood things?" Toph immediately roared, even as she tore more blocks of stone up past the cracked mud to hurl at it.

"It's made of metal!" Sokka answered. He hurled his boomerang at it, but it just spanged off the 'head' with no ill effects whatsoever. When he caught it, he gave himself a groan. "And why did I honestly think that'd do something?"

Katara was next up, lashing forward at the now advancing automaton spirit with wickedly sharp blades of ice, hurled with precision and power, first biting into the rust, then through it. Aang felt a moment of heartening, before those wounds, existing only for a moment, filled in with a substance which looked like liquid rust and burnt wood, sealing the gaps as though they never were.

"This isn't your fight," Aang said. "Find a way to take down that machine! I'll deal with the spirit!"

"It's a spirit?" Katara asked, backing away as her attacks were rendered moot.

"Hell with that. It's got a body, which means I can slow it down," Toph offered, and began to send waves of stone at the thing, raising up walls between the humans and the spirit made manifest. Aang, though glanced past it, at the two siblings in red-and-gold armor.

"You shouldn't have called this thing! You can't control it!" Aang shouted.

"Holy crap he can see us," one of them said with a degree of nervousness.

"Calm down, Hisui, you've faced Blowouts before. This is just one kid."

"It's the Avatar, Hai!"

Hai glanced back at Aang, then to his sister. "Good point."

"What the hell is Twinkletoes..."

"There must be shamans out there somewhere," Sokka answered over his shoulder. "Let him deal with the mystical spookiness. Just keep big, rusty, and angry from slaughtering us!"

And with that, Aang pressed his eyes closed, and did what his once-teacher demanded of him. He cleared his mind, and let the words come.

EMPOWERING PRIDE, VAINGLORIOUS AND TRANSGRESSIVE, TRANSFORMATIVE AND AWESOME;

GEAR OF THE MIGHTY.

LOOSE THE SHACKLES WHICH BIND TO THE SMALL, AND BECOME SOMETHING LARGER.

AS THE BEHEMOTH SMASHES AGAINST YOUR WORKS, YE MIGHT, STAND PROUD AND DENY!

AS DESPAIR BOWS YOUR HEAD AND LEADENS YOUR STEPS, RENEW AND ENERGIZE!

AND AS BRUTAL AND UGLY VIOLENCE VISITS UPON YOUR GLORY, RETALIATE!

TO THE VICTOR GO THE SPOILS, AND TO WHOM DESERVES IT, ETERNITY!

Aang immediately thought that might have been the wrong spirit to evoke, though, as doing so caused Toph to shriek in agony, her entire body tensing as though electrocuted from the inside. Quite a few of the soldiers nearby did as well, and Aang could see why. Wisping out of their bodies came something like a wind of light, which began to swirl and blow across the baked mud, which immediately turned black and humus-y, glistening as though bearing specks of gold. It lashed out, hurling itself bodily at Violence, but the golem was not so easily rebuked. While Pride was being pulled from the living hearts and minds of those around, and would vanish as they did, Violence had a mass, a weight of time and bloody conflict behind it. And more troublingly, in order to maintain Pride, Aang had to keep it in his left hand.

Toph tried to get to her feet, probably feeling like a part of her soul had been torn out – because in a real way, it had – as Violence advanced, bringing ruin where its feet fell, turning that fertile, gold-laced humus back into lifeless clay as it stomped. One of the earthbenders General How had sent with them moved too close, and with its arm extending to make the distance, it smashed the man aside, sending him spinning through the air. Katara, still backing up until she bumped into where her brother was fiddling with controls, had her eyes wide. "A-a-aang... Do something!"

"Don't just stand there, do something!" Hisui coached.

"He's using Pride... What's the counter to Pride?" Hui said.

"We don't have... wait, we just might," Hisui answered. "Leaden weights and iron shoes, chains of gold upon the back, damnable Sloth lurch forth!"

"Sloth! Right!" Hui cleared his voice. "As your greatness stands at the gates of glory, let it turn away. As your finest stands in triumph, he shall falter. As your wisest ponders, silence take his tongue. As your cunning thinks his strategy, let him hesitate!"

Aang instantly felt his entire body start to go numb, as Sloth personally targeted him. Of course it did; of those in his group, he was easily the laziest. And since somebody knew that, they were using it against him. Even as his mind raced to find something to counteract the lethargy and the apathy which was beginning to overtake his body and mind, his focus began to slip. His eyes became leaden, drifting half-closed, as his stance started to falter. And while Violence advanced, only partly hindered by Pride, he couldn't bring himself to care.

"Aang, what's going on back there?" Sokka asked, still furiously working the machine. Aang, though, couldn't see why he bothered. He just wanted to lie down. He just wanted to sleep. He stumbled from his stance, landing on his butt on the peat. So soft. So comfortable. Might as well take a nap.

"Wake the hell up Twinkletoes! We're dyin' out here!" Toph shrieked. She had overcome the agony of having her soul flensed to empower a spirit, and was now the only thing visible holding back the golem of Violence. But Aang couldn't see anything, anymore. His vision had gone gray. His face was slack and expressionless. "Come on, Twinkletoes! Don't you dare give up on me!"

"Toph look out!" Katara screamed.

Wet against his skin. Aang's head drifted downward, as he prepared to slump into unconsciousness. But those almost unseeing eyes finally saw something. Blood. Not his. That caused what felt like the first beating of his heart in almost a minute, as he could finally shake off that hideous apathy, that fatigue, and look up.

And behold Violence, standing entirely too close, its head tilted to one side, as it held Toph aloft. The earthbender was impaled onto one of its short-sword claws through her upper chest. Aang's eyes widened. How could he let this happen?

---

Hundreds of yards away, a Si Wongi was staring down iron sights. Her breathing slowed, the sweat flowing down her brow the only bother she even noticed. The gun wasn't in her hands anymore, not really; she was the gun. And she knew it every inch as well as she knew herself. So as her finger tensed tighter, tighter, every tense coming between her heartbeats, she had no doubt as to the shot's destination.

With a crack, and a massive recoil, the bullet was away, tearing across distance with remarkable precision. It had to have precision; its target was both very small, and quite far away. It was the shot Nila would speak of for the rest of her life, one the likes of which only many more years of experience would allow her to replicate or better. It was almost as though every whit of terrible luck she had ever suffered in her misfortunate life had been weighing up a scale, waiting for this exact moment, for everything to go perfectly, perfectly right.

And a ball of hard steel, traveling hundreds of yards per second, smashed into the brittle bronze of a sword which made up a golem's talon, snapping it off and sending an impaled earthbender to the ground. Nila brought the gun back to her cheek, and barely hesitated, just waiting between the heartbeats again, to send another one down the vast ranges, to make that thing regret trying to oppose her plans. The scales had spoken though. A lifetime's worth of luck had been poured into a bullet. Her previous bullet.

And the weight of the balance came crashing down with her second attempt. There was only the slightest hint that something was going wrong before everything did. Guns were an imprecise science at best. She had been only five years old when she was first introduced to the device; the braggadocio of a trader from Ababa, wagering his weapon against the marksmanship of the Sipahi. They Sipahi had taken their shot, and proved their capability. She had been eagerly awaiting what the trader had to offer against them. He raised that gun to his shoulder, pulled the trigger, and blew his own head off. The gun had malfunctioned, causing all of the vast forces of the weapon to erupt backward rather than be guided as directed. Even seeing that, at her so-young age, fascinated her. Grimly, of course, but fascinated. She wanted to do better. And she spent the next ten years doing just that, step by step. Which was why, for example, her firing mechanism opened sideways.

When the misfire exploded in her gun, it belched out to the side, scattering the guts of the gun across the Wall of Ba Sing Se, and only burning and lacerating Nila's cheek and hand.

Nila recoiled from her own weapon, dropping it and flapping the pain in her hand for a moment. Then, she looked down at what had been her greatest weapon, once. She gave a weary sigh. The barrel was peeled and the most intricate works were utterly defunct. "Such a pity," she said, scooping up the ruined weapon with her unwounded hand and chucking it over the wall, into the Wastelands. "I can help you no more this day, Avatar. Your victory can be only on your own head."

---

Watching Toph drop to the ground was what snapped Aang completely out of the spell the others had placed upon him. And when it did, he was leaping to his feet, and already invoking with all the fury that watching a friend being hurt could instill in him.

BURNING WRATH, ARBITER OF SCALES, JUSTICE MADE BLIND AND DEAF;

GEAR OF RETRIBUTION.

STAND AGAINST THE VIOLATOR, THE DEVASTATOR OF WHAT IS RIGHT!

RESIST THE CARNAGE, THE THOUGHTLESS BRUTALITY OF THE UNTHINKING, THE UNFEELING!

REBUKE THE THOUGHTLESS SLAUGHTER AND REVENGE THE BLOOD SPILLED UPON THESE BRUTALIZED LANDS!

REVENGE AGAINST THE GODS OF DEATH WHICH CAN ONLY CAUSE A WORLD OF AGONY AND SUFFERING!

Aang's right fist, raised up as he felt a wrath the likes of which he could barely understand, glowed white. He wasn't even entirely sure how he was sliding into the Avatar State, only that he was, and he wanted more than anything else for people to stop hurting his friends!

Katara raced past Aang, grabbing 'hold of Toph and dragging her away from the golem which now turned its 'head' toward Aang, only to find a black fog rising up around its feet. Even as the two shamans in the Spirit world exchanged terrified glances, that fog began to split out, a dusting of grey falling upon the ground. Ashes. And from those ashes, fire rose up. It wasn't firebending, nor even strictly flames. They were white and heated as Agni in the sky, unforgiving as a Polar blizzard, and relentless as a Fire National with what he thought was a good idea. Violence struck at those flames, but every time it did, the flames melted it. Its claws turned to pools of orange metal. Its flesh cracked and split as its body was first re-smelted, and then, heated beyond until it turned into a puddle. And this was not just an assault on the body of a golem. On its most basic level, Aang was attacking the Violence of the Wasteland itself.

If he wanted to, he could have banished the concept from this part of the world forever.

He had the power.

But he had... something like control. It wasn't so much directing the Avatar State, since he was barely even aware that he was in it. The words in his head, crashing like waves against the shore, they were white noise. He thrust both fists toward the two shamans standing back from the fray.

SPHERES WITHIN SPHERES, CIRCLES WITHIN CIRCLES, WORLDS WITHIN WORLDS;

GEAR OF 'IS'.

BEFORE YOU STAND BLASPHEMERS AND TRAITORS AGAINST YOUR MAJESTY.

BEFORE YOU STAND SABOTEURS IN YOUR GREAT ENGINES, VANDALS TO YOUR GREAT DESIGN.

THEY HAVE NO PLACE WITHIN YOUR SIGHT.

REMOVE THEM.

The two shamans exchanged a worried glance, and then started to make to flee, but the realm bent around them, holding them in place no matter what effort they expended, even turning them so that they would face the Avatar once again. With a wrath which filtered more from a hundred lifetimes of pain and loss than any he could summon inside himself, he gave a nod.

And the Outer Sphere twisted on itself, like a bubble-breaking, only inside out and backwards. Then, with that anti-pop, the two shamans were gone. Aang didn't know where.

Most terrifyingly, he didn't care.

With that Bequest of power still thundering through him, he turned toward the machine, which was the source of all this woe and anguish. With a howl which sounded of a thousand throats, he clawed a hand upwardly, and with it, came the stone. But this was not just a rock, something to be bandied about and set aside when finished; this was larger than a house, solid and granite and dense, his instrument of utmost revenge.

He barely even aimed it. With that howl still on his lips, he slammed the rock down, sheering it through the top half of the capacitor, missing Sokka's head by about a foot. He barely noticed, let alone cared. The capacitor split open, and then let out a great and ear-splitting 'zorp' as it could no longer contain its charge, instantly rendered defunct. The Avatar looked upon what it had done... and it was content.

Aang, though, wilted to the ground like his bones had melted.

"Avatar, are you alright?" the first voice he heard was one of the soldiers, who had propped the boy upright. Aang blinked away confusion, and a wave of quite natural fatigue, and glanced over to Toph.

"What happened to her? Is she alright?" he asked, scrambling toward the blind earthbender. Katara was waterbending furiously, but Toph looked incredibly pale. "Gods, no!"

"It was alright. You busted it good," Toph muttered.

"She's bleeding internally," Katara said. "I don't know if I can..."

"Katara! You have to save her!" Aang pleaded.

"Even if I stop the bleeding, none of it's where it needs to be! It's all around her lungs and heart! She'll suffocate even..." Katara trailed off. She stared for a moment, which saw Aang growing all the more terrified.

"Katara, you're scaring me!"

"I'm an idiot," Katara said distantly. Her gaze flicked to Aang. "When I say, pull that out."

"I thought you weren't supp..."

"Just do it on three!" Katara snapped. In Aang's opinion, 'three' came far too early, and when it arrived, Toph screamed in pain at it. Aang could see why. It couldn't be pleasant having a sword pulled out of you. Katara's hands grew quite stiff, her eyes pressed shut. Whatever she was bending, it wasn't obvious, not at first. Then, like a puppeteer drawing up strings, she pulled, and from that wound came a great blob of blood, which Aang immediately lurched to cover. "No, it's alright! I've got it."

"You've got it?" Aang asked. "That's her blood!"

"There's water in places you'd never expect," Katara said, her eyes still pressed closed, drawing that blob up. It was quite large, and Toph looked quite pale. "In our sweat, in our urine, and even in our blood. I can bend water, Aang. Any water. And I can put it back."

She pressed downward with those stiff-fingered hands, and the blob drew into the wound, which gave Toph a shiver; itself, more sign of life than she'd showcased recently. "What..."

"You've figured out healing? Heal her!" Katara said, face now fixed in concentration. "I don't know how long I can hold her blood in."

Aang started, and then pulled some of the ice Katara had left abandoned, pulling it to his hands. He knew he'd done this before. He could remember doing it. And as he focused back, to when he helped somebody else in pain and trapped and alone, almost the exact same feelings came back, for the girl on the ground. She was hurting. He could make the pain stop.

In healing terms, it was the equivalent of taking a sledgehammer to remove a hangnail.

The light on his hand didn't glow with pail evanescent light, as Katara's would. It blazed like the sun. It blazed like the Avatar. Because he was not going to let his friend die. He pressed that glory to her wound, and the water flowed, pulling the wound from its deepest reaches, urging it to mend, giving of the Avatar to save another. From the outside inward, flesh knitted. Arteries closed. Katara gave a grunt of relief, as she finally released her brutish grasp of Toph's blood supply, and allowed it flow again. Aang pulled back, the wound not closed on the surface, not yet, but Toph was already trying to get to her feet, despite being so dizzy that only Aang and Katara together could get her to a sit.

"Oh... that sucked," Toph noted. Katara's eyes opened.

"She's stable, but we need to get her out of here," Katara said.

"I feel fine," Toph obviously lied.

"Your blood vessels are weak. I'm not going to let you hurt yourself," Katara said. Aang beckoned over to the soldier who had given them some space. In fact, the entire battle had given them some space.

"What happened?" Aang asked.

"They saw you going in the Avatar State, and they weren't suicidal," the soldier offered. "They'll probably have some stern words with you, now that you've stopped glowing."

"Guys, we've got a bigger problem," Sokka announced from the ruins of the capacitor.

"What could be worse than Toph dying?" Katara demanded.

"I'm dying?" Toph asked with confusion.

"Not anymore," Katara answered. "Help her up."

"Don't you dare pick me up you..." Toph began, before the soldier scooped her up despite it. "Alright, but if you drop me, I swear I'm kickin' your ass!"

"Taken under advisement, ma'am."

"You're gonna want to see this, Aang," Sokka said, his tone quite bleak. Aang gave a nod to Katara, then to the soldier, who was quickly moving to regroup with what remained of his fellows, before bending the air and sending himself up to where the Tribesman had perched himself. The Avatar followed the pointed finger of his surrogate brother, to the wall. Where the Arc Towers were still advancing, an still arcing. And now, Aang could see that the great cable coming out of this capacitor was not the only one. He could see three others.

"This was... We barely did anything," Aang said.

"So do we go back or do we press forward?" Sokka asked.

"I've gotta go back with Toph," Katara said. "She's still in a delicate state..."

"WHO YOU CALLIN' DELICATE?" Toph's roar could be heard even above the bursting of shells and the crashing of machinery, and even at the distance it was quickly accruing.

"I'm sorry, but if you have to do this, I won't be able to help you," she said. She moaned. "We have to go back."

"No," Aang said, as the earthbender inside him put its metaphorical foot down. "If we go back, we won't be able to get back to where we are now; they'll have more soldiers and defenses. If we're going to stop this weapon, it has to be now."

"I'm with Aang on this," Sokka said, even though his eyes obviously told that he didn't like his chances. Katara had tears in her eyes as she pulled Sokka into a desperate hug, and then another for Aang.

"Whatever happens... come back," she demanded of them.

"I wasn't aware I had another option," Sokka said with an unsteady smirk.

---

Qin was in a fine bluster by the time he reached the generator stack where Sato was bustling. "Tell me your fix was more than a 'theory'!"

"Excuse me?" the little man asked, distracted. "I was in the middle of a..."

"I don't care if you were having tea with the Fire Lord. The Avatar has destroyed a capacitor! Will the others hold?" Qin shouted. Sato flinched back.

"Well... not the Fire Lord but..." Sato said, gesturing past him into the structure which blocked Qin's sight.

"What!" Qin shrieked.

"Qin wants to know if three capacitors is enough to supply power to the Arc Towers," the Prince's flat tone came from that structure, before the melancholy royal showed himself, almost appearing out of darkness itself.

"Well, as long as they weren't attached to the one which went down, there should be no collateral at all wait a minute what do you mean, Arc Towers?" Sato said, changing his tone from placation to confusion over the course of a word.

"That's classified above your..." Qin snapped.

"They're using your capacitors to feed massive towers to throw electricity at the defenders of Ba Sing Se's Great Wall," Zuko said. Qin stared aghast at the deadpan royal.

"But... What... Why would you do that? That's incredibly dangerous. Somebody could get hurt!" Sato said, rubbing at his eyes and fidgeting in confusion.

"There are things about this operation you don't..." Qin once again tried to head the man off, but Zuko shrugged.

"They're using you to design weapons. Big surprise," he said.

"Weapons? WEAPONS?" Sato screamed. "I refuse to be a weaponsmith! I am an inventor! I'm using science to help people, not kill them!"

"Shut your idiot mouth, Sato," Qin barked. "Did you even give a moment's thought as to why this was happening outside the fortified city of our greatest cultural enemies?"

"I wouldn't call them enemies," Sato offered.

"Shut up! SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP!" Qin shouted. "How could somebody so brilliant be such a moron? You can't honestly say you didn't know what was going on here. You can't be that dense!"

"Well, now that I do know, I will be no part of this," Sato said stoutly, crossing his arms in a show of defiance. "I don't care what you do to me. I will not make your weapons."

"This is an act of treason against the Fire Nation," Qin said. "I am ordering you to..."

"Actually, he's not a part of any military command, so you can't order him to do anything," Zuko pointed out. "While he can be lauded for using his brilliance for the good of our nation, he can't be punished for withholding it, unless he uses it against us."

"You are not helping!"

Zuko shrugged in a lethargic manner. "The Avatar is going to attack the next closest capacitor. I'll go out there and deal with the situation personally."

With that, the royal unbuttoned the bright red cloak and let it fall to the ground, before walking with increasing pace toward the battleground, before vanishing into the milling groups of artillerymen, engineers, and soldiers. Qin seethed, and turned his attention back to Nomura Sato.

"This is not over, Sato. You cling to your 'moral victory' all you want, but I promise you, the repercussions of this will echo long and loud."

"I've already risen once," Sato said. "They don't call me the Phoenix Child for nothing."

Qin paused, turning to face him again. "Who ever has called you that?"

"I did. Just now. Isn't it catchy?" Sato asked, brightly. Qin could not resist the impulse, so he palmed his head with a crisp slap which echoed across the generator stacks. Sato was going to be the death of him.

---

"You know, you're looking a lot more bright and chipper today," Tzu Zi said, as she moved up through the hallways of the apartment. Kah Ri nodded lightly.

"Maybe... I just needed to be reminded that I still have family out there," she said.

"Well, whatever the reason, it's good to see you smiling. Again. For a change," Tzu Zi said.

"I smile all the time."

"Yeah, but that's you pretending to smile. I like when you just, you know... smile!"

"Not everybody goes through life with a grin on their face like Ty Lee," Kah Ri pointed out.

"That's no reason why people shouldn't smile when the mood takes them. I don't know about you, but this past year, away from home and all the people who wanted stuff from us... it's been the happiest of my life. What about you?"

Kah Ri was silent for a moment, pausing on the steps. "I really don't know. I mean, I'd barely started to figure out who I was before I ran. What if we're just trying too much, too fast?"

"Not possible," Tzu Zi said confidently. "Would you rather look back on your youth and regret the things you did, or the things you didn't have the courage to do?"

"What kind of question is that? The stupid things you do stay with you forever," her identical sibling answered.

"And we learn from them. As Nila would say, in doing nothing, we learn nothing, and we learn it well."

Kah Ri rolled her eyes. "What is her deal, anyway? Does she have a thing with Ashan?"

"I don't think so, but I know he's got a crush on her," Tzu Zi said, and the two continued their ascent.

"And she's just stringing him along? That's just cruel."

"I'm pretty sure she doesn't even know about it," Tzu Zi said. "I mean, as smart as she is – and she is pretty much the smartest person I've ever met – she can be pretty oblivious to some stuff. You know, acting like a human being kinds of stuff."

"How did you ever manage to become friends with her?" Kah Ri asked, and then paused. "Oh, wait, you're Tzu Zi, and you'd be friends with the Avatar if he gave you a chance."

"You know, I probably would," Tzu Zi said. "From the things I hear about him, he sounds like a sweet guy."

They reached Tzu Zi's floor, and she almost without thought moved to the door which opened into the apartment they shared. "You know, Mom would probably kill us if she knew what we were doing. You, admitting you'd be friends with our national enemy; me, acting and pursuing romance with my own gender. She'd just blow a fuse."

Tzu Zi couldn't help but laugh at her sister's observation, pushing open the door easily and walking into the room. "She probably would. Have you been keeping in touch with her?"

"How? It's not like these people use messenger hawks," Kah Ri pointed out. Then, the door clicked closed.

Tzu Zi might not have been the smartest of her brood, but she was smart enough to know that the door didn't do that. Not on its own. She spun, fire dripping from her fists, as she faced a grown woman sitting in a chair in a spot which was obscured by the door when it opened. Tzu Zi felt herself chill a bit, even go slightly pale, as she beheld somebody whom she distinctly hoped she'd never see again.

"Hello, ladies," Jun, the bounty hunter said.

"What are you doing here?" Tzu Zi demanded.

"How did you get in here? And who are you?" Kah Ri added.

"I never lose a payday," Jun said. "Here I thought it'd be a hell of a task getting ahold of you, and it turns out your trails converge here. How convenient."

"You'd better not try that again. This time, I promise, I won't be so nice," Tzu Zi said.

"Ooh, I'm shaking in my boots," Jun said sarcastically. She then leaned forward in the chair, smirking. "If I wanted you paralyzed and helpless, I would have brought Nyla in through the window. But that'd mean I'd have to pay the damage deposit, since yours definitely wouldn't cover replacing a wall and window both, and that just seemed like a huge hassle."

"What do you want?" Kah Ri demanded, then. Jun turned her smirk to the actress.

"She wants to capture us, and bring us to Gwen," Tzu Zi answered that question.

"Gwen? Why would... Oh. So she's gone full-evil, has she?" Kah Ri asked.

"I don't know. I'm pretty sure she's the only one who didn't leave," Tzu Zi said. Then she shook her head. "It doesn't matter. I'm not going back there, and definitely not with you!"

"You know, there are two ways that this can go down. You can either come with me for the reasons I offer, or you can get stung, tied up, and dragged back," Jun said patiently.

"What reasons could you possibly have for us to go with you willingly?"

"Ordinarily, I don't get invested in a hunt," Jun said, inspecting her fingernails. "Never pays off to put your pride in there. But this time, I did a bit of snooping around on your family. I think you'll come willingly."

"Try me," Tzu Zi said, her usually bright and friendly face pulled into anger and imminent violence.

"Your mother is dying," Jun said simply.

The fire went out.

"That can't be true," Kah Ri was the one with the strength to voice the opinion of both sisters.

"If it isn't, then somebody's doing a lot of very careful and resource consuming lying," Jun said. "From the doctors I beat some truth out of, she's got about a month. Maybe two. At the longest, she'll survive until the start of summer."

"But... that means that Gwen..." Tzu Zi said, confounded.

"Wants you home so you can say goodbye to your mother?" Jun finished for her. "I don't know why she didn't just send a sparrow-rat. It'd be a lot simpler, and it would mean I didn't have to go into Ba Sing Goddamn Se."

"Tzu Zi, if this is true, we have to go," Kah Ri said.

"If," Tzu Zi countered. "And... I don't think I can. I mean... Nila needs me."

"Mom needs you!" Kah Ri answered.

"I don't know!" Tzu Zi threw up her hands. "I can't make this decision, not now!"

"Well, make it fast. I'm pretty sure Gwen will decline to pay me if I don't bring you in before your mom bumps off," Jun said idly.

"Look, just give me a day or so," she said. "Can you do that?"

"Eh," Jun said with a shrug. "There's a couple of decent bars around here. But if you try to run, remember that I can track you to the other side of the planet."

"I'm done running," Tzu Zi said.

If Jun was telling the truth, then she had to leave.

If she wasn't, then Tzu Zi was being an idiot for even considering it.

Jun didn't seem like she was lying. Tzu Zi needed help on this one. And there was only one person she knew smart enough to see this for what it was.

If nothing else, it'd give Tzu Zi a chance to say goodbye to Nila.

---

The sun was quite high in the sky before they even considered leaving camp.

"Do you think he knows?" Omo asked, as they moved through water-eroded rocks and scree which marbled the edges of northern Chameleon Bay.

Yoji shot him an exasperated look. "I wouldn't be surprised if he went on 'long recon' just to make it happen. I swear he thinks I'm a child, some days."

"That... wasn't child's play," Omo said, with a chuckle. Once again, Yoji was glad for what makeup she had, in that it hid an embarrassing blush. As they'd run out of the waterproof variety long ago, she'd had to make due with what she could steal from the region, and that tended to be more... well, Eastern colored. While she definitely didn't look like a local, different in face and figure, at least she didn't show the skin she was born with.

Well, not now, anyway.

"So-o-o... Should we talk about what just happened?" Omo asked.

"What is there to talk about?" Yoji asked.

"Well, breaking rules, your own points about divided loyalties," Omo began ticking them off his fingers, "the insufferable smugness of Kori, and the off chance of pregnancy."

"Please, you know me better than that," Yoji said with a shake of her head. She would have children when she was older, slower, and less useful. "That was a pleasant diversion, one I might have to visit again in the future."

"You'll find no complaints from me," Omo said with a broad and toothy grin, the kind he just didn't show around people. It was genuine and heartfelt. That she was the source of something so rare and wonderful sparked something inside her that she really didn't know how to classify. It was a good something, at least. That grin dropped to a distant smirk. "You're right, though. We've got to stay focused on the task at hand. Namely, how we kill Azula and Iroh."

"Lightning would solve many problems," Yoji pointed out with a tone of annoyance. "Oh, but I do harangue myself for not pressing the Fire Lord for instruction."

"You don't need to kick yourself about that," Omo said. "After all, it's not like the Fire Lord is about to hand over the most terrifying firebending technique in the world to just anybody..."

"So I'm just anybody, now?" she asked, an eyebrow raised.

He scowled at her. "Don't start with that. You know what I meant."

"You have no sense of humor," she muttered.

"Said the caldron, remarking on the hearth's blackness."

"You are insufferable after sex, you know that?"

"No, I can honestly say I didn't," Omo said, grinning once more. Yoji was torn between wanting to punch him in the stomach, and kiss him. Either would have stopped the grin. Strange how he'd had a sense of humor hiding in there all this time. No wonder he and Kori didn't get along. Kori was just a more easy-going version of the earthbender, when you got down to it. "So... where exactly did he say he was going?"

"Who? Kori, right," she shook her head. It was hard to dispel the images which were burnt into her memory. Like how good he looked without – back on the task at hand, she chastised herself. She was not some lovesick schoolgirl, after all. She was one of the most skilled and trusted agents of the Fire Lord. She took a breath, and then nodded ahead of them. "He left an obvious trail, so he must have expected to double back to rendezvous with us. Of course, if he'd found a way into the city, I would like to think he'd have returned to us before now."

"Unless he got his fool self captured," Omo said, his tones now serious again. Good to know that they could keep their minds on the pressing. Well, not that kind of pressing. Damn it brain! That was a notion, as Omo had raised, that was a troublesome one.

"What do you believe the likelihood of that to be?" she asked.

"Well, there's captured, and then there's 'captured'," Omo said. "Knowing Kori, he's probably the latter, and just waiting for a way to slither his way out."

"That was almost an endorsement of his capabilities," Yoji noted.

"A mistake I'll not repeat in the future," Omo said seriously, but with an undertone of obvious sarcasm.

She was about to continue their jibing and entirely-too-easy insults on their fellow Child, but she heard something ahead of them. Omo froze solid, and flicked an eye toward her. She lowered into a more combative stance. "They are fanning out," she whispered.

More noise, this coming along the rocks and scree, and it a pounding of feet. She leaned back, prepared to summon and hurl flame with a single sinuous motion, to launch into combat for her life. Well, for somebody else's life, but she would certainly be in the heart of it. It was almost a disappointment when she beheld Kori skidding around the corner on the pebbles and gravel. Yoji's eye twitched a moment behind its dark spectacles, then turned to the rocks overlooking the three. "Who is following you?" she immediately asked in the Hui Temple Tongue.

"Whatever you do, don't firebend," Kori blurted out. It was an understandable 'secret code', in that it had enough in common with both Eastern and Western tongues that it sounded like it could be from either or neither. Given the polyglot nature of Tianxia, it sounded just another dialect. She gave him a scowl, but opened her hands. "You can come out, they know you're there."

There was more shiffing and grinding of people moving across hard rock, and a small group of Tribesmen appeared, overlooking them all with spears held easily, but their eyes sharp. As soon as they revealed themselves, Yoji almost ignored Kori's instruction, to hurl fireballs at them. But they didn't have the soulless, glassy eyes of the North Tribesmen, that horrible living-undead demeanor which would close only when their bodys began to rot. These were watching the Children with wary curiosity. There was expression on those faces, soul in those eyes. They talked amongst themselves. One of them said something which caused several others to chuckle.

And for some reason, it was familiar.

"It's rude to talk a language they don't speak, Sajuuk. And what the hell are you doing following me?" Kori demanded in Tianxia, annoyance clear in his tone.

"My orders," a voice came from the back of that group of Tribesmen. This one was broad, bald, and looked like he ate rocks for a hobby. "Had to make sure you didn't get... lost."

"Well, I didn't. These are the friends I was talking about," Kori said.

"Leave it to Kori to fraternize with the enemy," Omo whispered. Yoji gave him a level glance than turned back to Kori.

"I assume you have an explanation for this?" Yoji asked.

"Got lost, found some Tribesmen. Then, proceeded to spend a day eating meat and hearing about their troubles. Very engrossing, also quite time consuming. But I assume you barely noticed I was gone, am I right?" Kori finished with a smirk which beggared Yoji's ability to avoid punching him. And since she'd avoided that reaction enough today, she offered him a swat upside the head. That smirk turned to Omo. "Feisty in the morning, isn't she?"

"You are a pervert," Omo said flatly.

"Beside the point," Kori said.

"An earthbender and a... Dakongese? You make strange friends," the broad Tribesmen noted.

"That's the way my travels took me," Kori answered the man.

"Who is that?" Omo asked quietly.

"Some tribal leader I think," Kori replied. He clasped his hands behind his back. "If that's all you're here for, we really need to be heading into Ba Sing Se."

"Then join us," the leader said. "We need to resupply. Cracking the fleet is a nearly impossible task. Need more food, bandages. Little things."

"They're attacking us?"

"Not at the moment," Kori answered Yoji's indignant question. "Forgive my confusion, but I think I'll have better luck heading in alone. The Earth King probably doesn't relish the idea of having a horde of Tribesmen inside his walls..."

"Nonsense. We're welcome all the way to the Lower Ring," the leader answered. Yoji gave a glance to Kori, one of cunning and warning. Essentially, a glance of 'don't screw this up'.

"Well, if you wish us to join you inside the Walls, how are we to refuse?" she asked. The leader nodded, and was about to say something, but then turned to her, his dark blue eyes scrutinizing her intensely. She stood in silence, and a bit of concern, as he watched her. Then, he shook his head.

"Good. We leave at sundown," the leader said. The other Tribesmen nattered amongst themselves, heading off out of sight, that leader being the last to turn. After all, he was the one who made sure that the others followed them back.

"You know, if I didn't know you better, I'd say you arranged this," Omo pointed out.

"I'm good, but I'm not that good," she said. But then she shrugged, a smirk coming to bright red lips. "But sometimes in life, it's more important to be lucky than to be good."

"Excellent. Fish and cheese for everyone," Kori said with exuberance. They all stared at him. "What?"

"You are an ass, Kori," Omo said.

"A fine ass," Kori corrected. Some things, well, they never changed.

---

The host of the Fire Nation grew thicker as the two teenagers approached the bright white mass of the next capacitor. Two against thousands. Still, as long as Aang had his staff and Sokka his boomerang, they would have to try. If the Fire Nation won here, then there wouldn't be much of a world left to fight against the Fire Nation when the Day of Black Sun hit.

"I... don't think we're gonna win this," Sokka said, his tone hushed.

"Not unless I go into the Avatar State!" Aang shouted, casting his arms wide, and waiting for the power, the glow to suffuse him.

Nothing came.

"Um, Aang? You do know you're not glowing, right?"

"I said... AVATAR STATE!" he shouted again. And again, noting stirred inside him. That was confusing on top of his exhaustion; the instant Toph got a claw through her, he was glowing like the sun. But now that he needed that power, it eluded him.

"Yeah, I don't think that's working," Sokka opined. He stared at the men, and at the burbling which moved through their ranks as something approached. "Got any bright ideas?"

"I was about to ask you that," Aang admitted.

"So that's a no, then?" Sokka asked.

"I guess it is," Aang answered.

"Well... it's been fun," Sokka said, hefting his boomerang, and standing his ground. Toph might be the toughest blind girl he knew, Katara the bravest 'non-fighter', but when it came to untamed grit, Sokka had them beat.

"I guess so," Aang answered. Finally, that rippling of the soldiers erupted, as men moved pointedly out of the way of somebody approaching. Aang's eyes tightened into a squint, and then widened as they recognized the person in question.

"Oh, now how the hell did he pull that off," Sokka asked.

Understandable, since Prince Zuko was standing in the open ground between the capacitor and the Avatar. He gave a glance over his shoulder, and those Fire Nation troops all backed off a bit. Beyond them, that capacitor looked different than the one Aang split in half. There were more cords attached to it, leading to other white behemoths in the distance. Finally, Zuko's golden eyes turned back to Aang.

"So they weren't just panicking," Zuko's voice carried the distance, despite his soft tones and not really trying to project too hard.

"What are you doing here, Zuko? I thought you... weren't like this!" Aang said, throwing a hand wide in confusion.

"A word," Zuko said. "That's all I would have needed to go back. A word, and Father would welcome me back to the Fire Nation as his heir. Glory, prestige, power. Control. How could anybody turn something like that down?"

"Why are you talking to him? Kick his ass!" Sokka interrupted.

"Shut your mouth, peasant!" Zuko snapped, before turning back to the Avatar. "I want you to understand exactly why I'm standing here. Why things have to be the way that they are. I want there to be no misunderstandings. I am going to be absolutely clear."

"I'm sorry, Zuko. I'm sorry I was wrong about you," Aang said. "And I'm sorry about your sister."

Zuko's face seemed to tighten, even at that distance, at the mention of Azula. "So you know why I have to do this."

"You have to protect your family," Aang said. And before him, Zuko's arms tore wide and fast, and from his splayed fingertips came great streamers of lightning, gathering in first respectable, then prodigious, then finally terrifying amounts. It roped up his arms, crackling behind his head and seeming to give him some sort of electric aura. Even though Aang knew less than nothing about lightningbending, other than it was apparently a thing which existed, he knew that what Zuko was holding in right now was far more than any human being should have been able to contain. Enough to cause bodily agony and damage. Aang leaned onto the balls of his feet, ready to dodge as he needed. Wondering if he could avoid it all.

That wonder was somewhat moot, though. Because Zuko turned, and with a roar of incredible wrath, he lashed out with both hands, and two great bolts of lightning seared over the heads of the scattering soldiers, slamming into the side of the white-shelled capacitor, before melting through that shell and bathing the guts of it. The bolt continued, not weakening in the slightest, that scream continuing unabated. And then, there was a great bang, as the top of the capacitor burst with a belch of greenish smoke. The lightning bolt from Zuko's hands cut off instantly, but the devastation continued. It moved down the line which connected it to the other capacitors. Sokka would have told him that the 'release line' would have served to prevent short-circuits, a dangerous event which would have destroyed the device. But the machine would only be able to contain so much power at a time, before the thing was simply overwhelmed on all fronts, and the safety mechanism became a portal for even more destruction. Aang didn't know this. All he knew was that one after another, the capacitors popped like corn kernels.

There was utter silence on the battlefield, as the Avatar and the Tribesman were too far to hear Zuko's heavy, exhausted breathing.

"The Prince has gone mad! Run!" a call came out, and the soldiers began to dissolve away, moving back toward the sources of all that black smoke which choked the horizon. Zuko watched them leave. Aang watched Zuko, before walking the distance to stand at the young man's back.

"...why?" Aang asked.

"Are you going to destroy the Fire Lord?" Zuko asked, his tone very tight and angry.

"If we have to," Aang said.

"Aang, why are you..." Sokka said, standing well back.

"Good," Zuko responded. He turned, and his face was one of cold and despondent wrath. "I've lost my family. I don't have anything left. Now, I'm a traitor, and my father will have to disown me."

"Yeah, I think Aang's 'why' is a good question right about now," Sokka opined.

"You want to destroy the Fire Lord, and I'm going to help you," Zuko said flatly. He looked off into the western distance. "Because when you do, then maybe Azula will have a place to return home to."

"You didn't have to..." Aang began. "You could have stayed with your people."

"Those stopped being my people the moment they threw my sister out of her home," Zuko answered. "Now are you going to accept my aid in ridding the world of my father, or aren't you?"

"You want to kill your father?" Sokka asked.

"Don't you?"

"Yeah, but that's different," Sokka answered. "I mean, he's not my father."

"And if your father banished your sister, erased her from your family, would you feel so warmly about him then?" Zuko asked, walking past. "Where are you quartered?"

"The Wall," Aang said. "Zuko wait! What happened to you? You've gotten so angry and..."

"The world showed me how cruel and indifferent it really was," Zuko answered. And without another word, he walked toward the Great Walls, as the generals of the Fire Nation army started to get their force back under control. Aang knew it was time to leave. He wasn't a soldier, after all. The battle had turned, but it was far from over.

As he moved toward the wall, staying behind the angry firebender, he gave a glance to Sokka. "Yeah, firebender," Sokka said quietly in Yqanuac. "But are you sure this is a good idea? I mean, he seems a bit more psychotic than the last time we met him."

"He'll calm down. He's in a lot of pain right now. But that'll pass," Aang offered.

"I can speak Yqanuac, you realize?" Zuko's tense voice came from their fore.

The rest of the walk was in silence.

---

Zuko had returned to the Fire Nation. The message still sat in the Fire Lord's hand, as he sat in his study, pausing in his stamping of official forms. The message was quite brief, but to the point. Zuko had rendezvoused with Qin's force at Thunder Dragon, their newest assault on Ba Sing Se. That meant that Ozai had an heir. That meant he could finally see an end to the interminable deadlock with Montoya.

"You're so hopeful, aren't you? Isn't that sweet?" Azula's words mocked him. He studiously ignored them. The news was good. He could suppress her. Ignore her. After all, his son was returning home. Without Iroh or Azula to sully him.

"Fire Lord, new messages have arrived," a page said, bowing very low at the door.

"Stop wasting my time and bring them here," Ozai snapped. The page rose, eyes averted to the floor and set the various scrolls onto the table, before moving away just as quickly. Ozai shook his head, a smirk on his lips. Good news. It was so rare in appearing these days. He scanned over the scrolls, seeing various markers of intent. Tax. Tax. Petition. That one he burned outright. But after that, he saw one with a black ribbon, fallen under the others. He checked its source. "Thunder Dragon. Excellent."

It was only a few hours since Qin's Black Ribbon message had arrived with that relieving news. This was probably confirmation of that, a second sent in case the first didn't make it. He snapped the ribbon and unfurled it, a mere formality at this point. But when he did, he could see Qin's script on the message, and it looked... furious.

And as Ozai read its contents, he could feel his blood boiling in his veins. With a snarl and a flash of flames, he smashed that missive to the floor, then blasted it with a gout of fire until even the spools it was carried on were reduced to ashes.

"So Zuko has formally thrown in with your enemies?" Azula asked, leaning past his shoulder. "You put so much faith into him, and this is how you're repaid. You have no right to be indignant, since this was all your fault to begin with."

"Shut up."

She smirked, painted lips pulling aside. "After all, it was your decision to invest so much effort into wooing him, so much time and pride and hope. All because you didn't want the girl to be the next Fire Lord."

"That isn't true. I needed somebody strong!" Ozai snapped at his daughter.

"I was strong," she answered humorlessly. "Do you remember what I shouted at my brother's Agni Kai? Do you? I think you do, because it certainly caused you to hesitate then!"

"That is irrelevant."

"I shouted 'Kill him, Father; kill him now!'," she answered. "It would have solved so much, if you had. I could have been the heir you wanted. But you did the expedient thing. Instead of being a father, you opted to be a politician. And now, what do you have to show for it?"

"I am still Fire Lord!" Ozai shouted.

She shrugged, stepping back into the darkness. "But for how long?" she asked.

And Ozai was alone with his wrath, as he lashed out with flames against the walls.

---

It was a matter of willpower that he didn't break out into a sprint. The source of that willpower was the simple understanding that anything out of the ordinary would raise questions, and questions were the last things that he needed following around like hungry ghosts. He had made promises to many, some long ago, but not a single one of them held a candle to the one he was trying to keep now.

The crowds of Ba Sing Se were thinning, as the evening grew longer and the skys began to purple and dim, which gave him ample room to walk. But as he'd mentioned, he'd have been sprinting had he thought he'd get away with it. That made it all the more aggravating when a young woman in green robes sidled up and began moving with him. He shot a glance to the young woman with the vacant stare and empty smile.

"What do you want, Joo Dee?" Long Feng asked to the puppet.

"I was told to deliver a message," the puppet said.

Long Feng sighed, not pausing in his advance. "What is it, Joo Dee?"

"General How sent word to the Earth King that the Fire Nation is attacking the Western Wall. The mobilized troops in the Reaches were able to hold them back, and repel the invasion force from the walls. Also, the Avatar has arrived in Ba Sing Se."

"What?" Long Feng asked, then shook his head. She couldn't elaborate if she wanted to. If How said that the Avatar had entered Ba Sing Se, then How honestly believed that the Avatar had entered Ba Sing Se. Long Feng came to a halt at a corner, rubbing his forehead. He cast a glance back toward the offices of the Cultural Authority. This needed a direct and firm hand. But... he'd made promises. "Never mind. Joo Dee, return to the Secretariats with the following orders. 'Do not engage the Avatar'. 'Track the Avatar'. Also, 'reconnoiter the Avatar'. Is that clear?"

"Of course, Minister," Joo Dee bowed, her tones still that hollow sing-song that all of her like had pounded into their skulls. "Do you need any other assistence?"

"Go away, Joo Dee," Long Feng snapped, which caused him to take a moment to collect himself. She was already walking away, but it didn't really matter. There was no apologizing to them; as well apologize to a tree-stump. They were just another cost of trying to maintain this city from anarchy. So much was. The costs seemed to only get steeper the longer he went. He had to be more careful, more cunning, and patient as a spiderfly. Then, he gave a start, as he realized he had somewhere to be.

Doubtless, when he returned to his offices tomorrow, he would be buried under a deluge of the Avatar's actions over the hours he'd been absent; if there was one thing which Avatars absolutely excelled at, it was stirring up a preponderance of trouble. Managing that sort of devastating influence would take subtlety. That was the great trial of his position. He had to react to everybody, and could expect only hatred and revulsion if anything about him was made public, while his enemies had the freedom to act as they would in the light of day.

Twenty years with the Authority, and so much remained exactly the same.

Finally, with his feet beginning to ache in his shoes, he reached what appeared to any outside observer to be a perfectly ordinary Middle Ring dwelling, a small house, independent of its neighbors, but sacrificing size for that luxury. Unlike just about everything else about the Grand Secretariat's life, this one trifle managed to be exactly what it appeared. He took a breath, then slid open the doors.

The candle on the table was mostly a pool of wax, which told him much of what he needed to know about the situation. He let out a sigh, and leaned slowly aside to where the other occupant of this house would be sitting, reading under a lantern.

"You're late," he said.

"I know."

"You didn't come home last night," he further pointed out.

"I know."

"But that pales to the fact that you're late."

"I know."

He slowly closed his book, and turned to face Long Feng. He was only two years older than Long Feng himself, and unlike the latter, managed to keep all of his hair – although, it was much greyer than Long Feng's by a strong margin. "Is that all you're going to say about it? 'I know'?"

"What am I supposed to say?" Long Feng asked.

"'I'm sorry, I was late for our important dinner', or 'my employer is a slave-driving tyrant, and I was thinking about you the entire time', perhaps?" he said, smirking sarcastically. Long Feng sighed. Dun rolled his eyes. "Oh, don't start with that."

"For what it's worth, I am sorry," Long Feng said. Dun rose, setting his book aside.

"You need to confront that manager of yours," Dun said gently. "He's working you to death, and I will not abide that. He needs to understand that the city of Ba Sing Se isn't going to crumble to dust the moment you're not at your desk."

Long Feng couldn't look Dun in the eye. "Sometimes, I wonder if that's true..."

"Oh, there you go again," Dun shook his head. "I swear, you work like you're the Earth King trying to keep Chin at bay. The world won't end if you take a day off. In fact, I think I'm going to have a word with that manager of yours."

"Dun, please, don't do that," Long Feng said. How had it ever gotten so easy to lie to him? Oh, right; years of necessity.

Dun took Long Feng's hand. "At this point, I'd rather you unemployed than you dead from exhaustion. I can tell, even now, you're bringing your work home with you. You promised that you'd stop doing that! Something has to change."

Long Feng could only nod. Dun was the reason all of this began in the first place. Twenty years, trying to turn Ba Sing Se into a place which would celebrate their love. Instead, the only thing he'd ever managed to do was to make it no longer illegal. If he were less of a human being, he would have abandoned the relationship which, if revealed, would only be subject to revulsion and scorn. But he had Dun, and in Dun, he had purpose. "Maybe soon," Long Feng said. "But..."

"Not right now," Dun finished for him. "I understand."

There was a silence between them.

"I'll warm up the dinner," Dun said quietly, moving back into the kitchen, leaving Long Feng in the study. Two decades trying to change a system which didn't want to be changed, until he'd reached the point where he could change anything, but finally understood why he shouldn't. And he could not tell a soul. And now, the Avatar was in the city.

This was going to be a long night, devoid of pleasant dreams.

---

You wanted to know where Zuko was? There he be. It's a lot easier, now that everybody's in the same place, to drive their narratives together.

In retrospect, I've noticed that every time that I write a knock-down drag-out fight, where the teeth are flying and bones are creaking, I tend to do so from a female point of view. Usually, that point of view is Azula, but I've done so with Katara as well; you'd almost think I had some kind of fetish. It's probably because I have a great deal of confidence that somebody like Azula can give as much as she takes. And usually more. Pity that as long as she's in Ba Sing Se, she's relegated to using her fists, feet, and forehead since firebending would get her Dai Li'd.

You might be a bit confused by Sato. No, he's not Hiroshi. Intentional, I assure you. Nomura is Hiroshi's father. Himself, a genius inventor, but having absolutely no head for money, economy, or common sense whatsoever. He's a classic case of having somebody have all of the intellect in the world, being able to see the writing of the gods in the heavens, and then tripping over his own feet. Where Hiroshi was... well, kinda a dick, Nomura is principled and good, just an utter flake. Genius Ditz, I guess you'd say. He's the kind of guy who lives celebrated in his era, and manages to die penniless in a tenement house.

Guess the cat's out of the bag on Kori, though. Whoever guessed who he was was spot on. The problem is, he still doesn't believe it. Kori, of the present three, is the only Child who looks at the Big Picture. Omo keeps his eyes low. Yoji's too busy trying to plan their next move. Only the waterbender bothers looking at the context of that they're doing. And the context is increasingly unsettling to him. There's only one monster in this Fic, and they're not him. Even Long Feng's not a complete asshole. He's doing everything because he believes that he's the only one who can, and because he honestly believes that the alternative is far, far worse. I kind of feel sorry for him.

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