Panic was pretty much guaranteed from the amount of devastation which had erupted in the East, but Aang and those with him on the back of Appa couldn't, for the life of them, figure out where it was coming from. It swelled the further south and east that they went, already reaching a fever pitch less than half way to the long-ago annexed city of Burning Rock. Of course, in that scant distance past the Great Wall, the amount of very-recently deposited rubble increased dramatically, some of the chunks big as houses, suddenly dropped into rice-paddies or onto somebody's front yard.

"I start to question the sanity of moving towards something capable of dislodging such masses," Nila muttered under her breath, but Aang shook his head.

"You didn't hear what I did. It said 'this isn't over', and I've got no reason to think he was lying," Aang said.

"Besides, we all know you were questioning the sanity the moment you got onto Appa's back," Toph pointed out, as the beast in question scudded down and landed next to a carriage which had halted next to a bridge which had half of its structure smashed down by a block of granite, choking the water and closing the road. "Another stop?" she asked.

"Would you rather go into it blind?" Sokka asked, before he realized what he said.

"What do you think, you lanky goon?" Toph asked with a dry roll of her useless eyes.

"Right... sorry."

Zuko cut them all off by dropping off of Appa's flank, slamming his fist several times into the side of the carriage, and waiting with a glare for the door to open. When it did, he reached in and pulled the effete young man out and slammed him against the side of the carriage. "What did you see?" the firebender demanded.

"Who do you think you are, handling me this way?" the young man said with indignation, even as Aang winced and tried to make placating motions to Zuko, but Zuko was having none of it.

"The person who's going to make your day worse if you waste any of his time," Zuko answered. "What did you see?"

The rich young man stared at Zuko, but Zuko's glare in return was a few thousand degrees hotter, so he started sweating, and swallowing nervously. "I... Uh... It came from the sky, after that strange thunder to the south. Scared off my team. I have my man running them down before they break a leg or..."

"South east?" Zuko demanded. The wealthy young man nodded. Zuko grit his teeth, and glanced back to Aang. "Burning Rock is directly east. The only thing southeast of here are villages, and..."

"The Eastern Air Temple," Aang finished for him. Zuko let the youth drop back to the ground, as he'd been holding him off of his footing for that entire duration by his shirt, which was now hopelessly wrinkled. Aang gave a quick glance to his companions, but he didn't like their reactions. Sokka was contemplative, and while strange wasn't disconcerting. It was Toph and Nila who concerned him. Both looked on in their own ways with knowing looks and approving nods. "I don't get it. The East Temple is abandoned!"

"Not abandoned enough," Zuko and Sokka managed to overlap each other. It was the Tribesman who continued, though. "Aang, something major happened down there. Do you think you're up to whatever you find? 'Cause I'm starting to think it's not going to be pretty."

Aang stared at his feet for a long moment, then took a deep breath. "I'm going to have to be," Aang said. "It's the only thing which w–"

Aang was cut off by a lightning bolt landing about ten feet away from them all, lancing down out of a clear sky. He and all others flinched away from it, blinking away the glare and rubbing at ears which now rang furiously. But as soon as the after-image fled and the ringing died down, there was one more in this impromptu gathering of most of Sokka's enthusiastically monikered Team Avatar. One with dark skin and an elegant blue dress. She glanced first to Appa, and to the siblings atop it, before her brow furrowed, and she turned to those who had left it. "Oh, thank me. Do you have any idea how hard you are to track down?" Irukandji asked.

"Irukandji? What are you doing here? Where were you?" Aang asked.

"Had to prevent the end of the world coming too soon. Takes a lot out of a spirit," Irukandji waved the question away.

"This is a Host?" Nila asked.

"Ah, there's my favorite pyromaniac," Irukandji said, grinning at Nila. Then, she shrugged. "Well, second favorite. You're lucky," she pointed from Aang to her. "Most of the time, she's not around."

"We're a bit short on time," Zuko cut her off, ever the pragmatist. "Why exactly were you–"

"Why aren't you at the East Air Temple?" Irukandji asked. And at around that point, there was a glimmer of revelation in Zuko, of recognition. And a growing spark of rage.

"We're heading there!" Aang pointed out.

"Not the issue. Why aren't you already there?" she asked.

"...because I didn't know I was supposed to?" Aang tried. Irukandji rolled her eyes.

"Great. Leave it to Pathik to drop the ball."

"...Brother Pathik is alive?" Aang asked.

The others just shrugged. Zuko, on the other hand, snapped his fingers in front of Irukandji's eyes. "Focus!" he snapped. "I want answers out of you. What did you do to my sister!"

Irukandji caught Zuko's wrathful finger and bent it back, but he didn't flinch as she'd no doubt intended. "I saved her life," Irukandji said darkly. "And she's not even appreciative."

"You made her insane!" Zuko shouted.

"She was already insane!" Irukandji shouted back. She then released the finger and crossed her arms. "The only thing I did was try to fix a mistake I'd made eighty years ago. Forgive me, for trying to eliminate mental illness from your crazy-ass family."

"Excuse me?" Aang asked, a hand raised as though bearing a question to a teacher. "Could you tell me why I'm supposed to be at the East Air Temple, and what it has to do with the big explosion we just heard."

"Pathik's supposed to be teaching you how to get into the Avatar State and wait a second... explosion?" Irukandji asked.

"Not as smart as you like to think you are, are you?" Zuko opined.

"I've. Been. Busy," Irukandji said, before turning her gaze back to the Avatar. "Things are getting worse, Avatar. Namely, the Great Divide is gone."

There were a lot of people staring at her as though she'd just gone mad. Aang wasn't entirely sure she hadn't, with a pronouncement like that. It was the effete man who cleared his throat at that.

"...where did it go?"

"Good question," Irukandji began, turning to him. "Oh, wait, you're not important," before turning back to Aang. "Good question. The answer's pretty obvious if you think about it."

"Nowhere," Aang asked.

"Bingo," Irukandji said. "It's gone. It's not in the Spirit world or this one. It's somewhere between the two. Sort of like those two's," with a finger thrust toward the siblings Badesh, "now utterly defunct home. I need to get my hands on the Host before it's too late. And that means I need you, before the Eye of Terror opens again."

"...it just did," Aang admitted, as though it were some shameful secret. Irukandji, who had been turning away, very slowly turned back. And when she did, her blue eyes were glowing as though tiny lightning bolts were playing across her irises.

"...what did you just say?" she asked with remarkable calm.

"It blew up the Eastern Air Temple, from the looks of things," Sokka said, glancing to the block of granite cratered into the side of the meager stream. Irukandji just stared at Aang for a long moment. Then, he glanced first to the southeast, and then turned straight around and stared as though toward Ba Sing Se.

"...Okay. Change of plans," she said. "If I know Long Feng – and believe me, I've seen this part of the story enough times to know him pretty me-damned well – he's in the process of openly usurping the Earth King right now, since you're all out of the Palace."

"What?" Aang asked.

"Oh, and there's a better than fifty-fifty chance that Azula's going to betray him and conquer Ba Sing Se in his place," Irukandji continued. She found her dress being grabbed in the same uncouth manner by the same person as had interrogated the rich youth, Zuko's face a portrait of barely constrained rage. And when she slapped him in the cheek to the sound of an electric short-circuit, he fell stumbling back, that expression changing to one of utter stunned befuddlement. "Hey, don't get grabby," she warned, before turning to Aang once again. "You'd better get back there. This one's probably not going to just arrest Katara. She'll probably torture and kill her."

Aang shook his head. "No... that..."

"Don't just stand there you big-eared idiot! Fly and save your girlfriend!" Irukandji demanded, pointing her finger north.

"What?" Sokka asked. "My sister isn't his girlfriend. That'd be... ew!"

"I was not even aware that the Avatar had interest in women," Nila said flatly.

"She's right, though," Aang said. "We can't let Long Feng take Ba Sing Se, even if the rest of that is gibberish. We need to go back."

"What about the East Air Temple?" Toph asked with a very dubious gesture as she said the last part.

Aang glanced south, and sighed. "It'll have to wait. Maybe for a long time," he gave a tiny, and unhappy laugh. "Seems like the universe just doesn't want me going back to the Temples, these days."

"This isn't over, spirit," Zuko said, a bit slurringly as it seemed his tongue was numb.

"For all of our sakes, I really hope that you're right," Irukandji said. She pointed at Zuko. "Don't let your sister die. I've got enough problems without that going wrong, too."

"You say that like it's an option," Zuko said. But Irukandji answered him with another thunderbolt, this time rising up from the ground and vanishing into the sky. He stared after it for a long moment, before turning to Aang. "Well, are you just going to stand there? Go save your Earth King!"

"And Azula, if we find her," Aang promised.

"Great. We keep saving the people who try to kill us," Sokka said with rolling sarcasm.

"Is this a frequent occurrence for you?" Nila asked him.

"More than you'd believe, Nila. More than you'd believe."

Chapter 20

Destiny

There was a sensation alien to her, just barely touching her. A slightest pressure of something against the clothes over her skin. She didn't know how to define it except for absence at this point. It was an absence of agony, an absence of terror, an absence of... a number of things, many of them unpleasant. What wasn't missing, though, was the hunger. It wasn't quite as mind-tearingly agonizing, but it was still there. As constant a thing as the breath in her lungs or the wind over the mountains. Her entire body felt strange. Not quite foreign, but close to it. She opened her eyes, but she felt her eyelids drag against something, and the action gave her no vision.

"...whut...?" she murmured past a tingling tongue.

"You are awake. Excellent," the guru's voice slipped into her ears, sounding oddly tinny, oddly loud. "I feared the worst when you opened the Earth Chakra. But you remain, strong as ever."

"I..." Malu said.

"Here. Have some of this," she felt delicate fingers in her hair, guiding her up, and felt a rim of wood against her lips, almost painful for sensitivity. A slow tip poured the familiar slime down her throat. "You have done what I doubted possible. You evicted the abomination from your form. But this was not done without cost."

"I don undersan?" she said, slurring past banana-onion-pickle slime.

"When the abomination entered you, it was a ploy to protect if from any attempt to destroy it. And that ploy left it vulnerable to being sealed away. Within you. Forever," Pathik slowly unwound the bandages which were holding her eyes shut, and the light seared her eyes as it entered, even though it was only coming from a single candle, in a cave, connected to a crater. She blinked the stunning light away. "But as you have released it, it is not possible to bind. You are free, but there is nothing of value without cost. Do you understand?"

She nodded, drinking greedily, before throwing the saucer aside and grabbing the next, already offered.

"My part in your destiny is coming to a close," Pathik said. "But your part in Samsara has not ended. It does not take transcendent wisdom to know that you have a part to play in what is to come. The Avatar will need you, now more than ever. The Shards, once housed in your flesh, resound with you. You will protect him."

"Bu haow? I mide hurd him!" she said, still eating with all of the grace of a shig.

"You doubt yourself, as well you might, given what has happened to you," Pathik said sadly. "But I have faith that you are a tool for good, not evil; balance, not annihilation. The Avatar is the shining light of this age, and you will be there to let him shine brighter. That is your destiny. That is your birthright."

Malu continued to eat, despite the terrible flavor and the sickening texture. She knew that Pathik was telling the truth. It wasn't just that she could be that person, now. She had to be. It was the only way to balance the karma of her cowardice, her ignorance, her terror. If Malu ever wanted to be a good person, after all of the harm she'd done, she would have to do this.

"You are doubtless tired," Pathik said, as he handed her a third bowl, "but there is no rest for the righteous. And when you go, you will need to go quickly. Which is why I have located this."

Malu's eyes went wide as she looked upon the glider staff which he pulled from the ground behind him. It was aged, his wood a delicate brown, and the whorls of the wind were intricately etched into the mechanism which held the cloth wing abroad. She took it, and looked up at Pathik. She knew this glider. This had belonged to Mother, her fairest possession from the time before she 'settled down', and brought Father into the family. She had once roamed the wide world on this glider, soaring above the clouds, laughing at gravity... She'd kept it for as long as Malu could remember. It was never far from her side... until that last day, until those fires. Malu had played with this as a child, started flying long before anybody said she should have under the eye of Mother alone. This was as much a part of Malu as her own spine.

Her fingers slid along its surface, the worn and smooth wood calling memories of laughter and joy. Mother's smile. Father's helpless glee. And the awe of the elders, that somebody so young as she could be so skilled. She looked up at Pathik, as he stared placidly, gently, down to where she was still laying recumbent on the stone. She had her past again. And now, she had a future.

"Do you have anything to say?" Pathik asked her, quietly, as he took the emptied bowl from her, and pulled out another. Malu swallowed one final time, and then looked at it. Then, she looked down at herself, her pristine kavi no doubt replaced from the one she'd saturated with blood from Imbalance's torment. She had questions. How am I alive would certainly be one of them. But there was one thing which pressed out of her lips before even that, something far more important, and profound.

"I'm... full," she said. Pathik smiled, and she let out a sob, tears welling in the corners of her eyes. "I'm full," she repeated, her arms pulling close to herself, before Pathik moved closer, and she grappled onto him as though he were a rock against a raging river. "I'm full!"

"I know, child. I know," Pathik said.

Malu sobbed, helplessly, but for a change, not hopelessly. In fact, for the first time in years, her tears were caused by a surfeit of hope, rather than a dearth. She squeezed the old man, crying into his shoulder, and feeling for the first time that she could remember, that she was not hungry. And it was glorious.

"You don't know what you're talking about," Yoji said, glaring at the man who had the audacity to claim parentage. She felt a distinct desire to burn his face off just for that alone. She knew what her father had done to her, leaving her to die like an unwanted pet.

"I think you do," the Tribesman said. "I think you remember something about your infancy. Some fragment. A song, a smell, a sound, something."

"The only things I remember are in my nightmares," Yoji said. And then, because the man was the perfect distance away, she spat at him. He managed to dodge it, frustratingly. "Even if you were the man who sired me, you have nothing I want. My father left me to die in the snow! Is that the man you're claiming to be? If it is, then you're wasting my time as well as your own with this little... stunt."

"Hikaoh..." the man said.

"Yoji. My name... is Yoji," she stressed. He turned to the Dragon of the West, but the fat man only shrugged.

"If that's what you want to be called, then that's what I'll call you," he said very gently, as though he didn't want to frighten her. As if he even could. He might have the advantage for the moment, but unless he capitalized on it by slitting her throat, she'd find her way free of this sticky bondage soon enough, and make him regret wasting the opportunity. "My daughter was taken away from me, when she was very young. Fourteen years ago, when my daughter was only three years old. The Fire Nation came and took her away. Took you away."

"The Fire Nation saved me, from a certain death," Yoji countered.

"Some part of you knows that I'm telling the truth," the man said. He glanced up to her, looking her in the eyes. "Do you ever remember your mother? Her name was Kya. She died, trying to protect you."

"I don't remember anybody named Kya. And I wouldn't, because I put that horrible place out of my mind the moment I got brought to my new home," Yoji said. "What are you trying to do? Break my loyalty? Sew doubts into my mind? Well, you won't succeed. The only father I need is the Fire Lord. And you are no Fire Lord."

The man seemed visibly wounded by that, but she didn't follow-up. After all, she knew that she was the target of interrogation, of manipulation at this moment. She was certain that this was but another ruse. The fat old man gently bore the barbarian aside. "Regardless of your paternity, I know why you are here. You want to kill the Princess. You probably want to kill me, as well. But you are too late. Your mission is a failure."

"As long as I draw breath, I have not failed," she promised.

"The Crown Prince has cast down his titles and joined the Avatar," the Dragon of the West claimed. "You are pursuing a folly, a waste of time, effort, and life. What more damage can we do to the Prince, now that he has turned his back on the Fire Nation completely?"

"You should take a page from his book," she said, nodding toward the stricken Tribesman. "At least he tries to make his fabrications plausible."

"What you believe, however falsely, is irrelevant," the Dragon said coldly. "The only thing which matters to me is my niece. You have proven a dogged pursuer, so I know you know where she is."

"Assuming I did, why would I give that information to you?" Yoji asked darkly.

"Because you don't want to ever learn why I came to be called the Dragon of the West," Iroh promised, every bit as darkly as she. And despite everything she knew about him, everything she'd ever believed, there was a look in those golden eyes which promised dire and brutal proof of his honesty, if she required it. Still, Yoji made herself give a derisive scoff. "You would do well not to try my patience. Not today."

The Tribesman turned to the Dragon and muttered something in his own barbarian tongue, his tones angry. Iroh just gave a glance toward him, then turned back to her. And for some reason, she could almost... understand... what the Tribesman was saying.

"If it comes to that, then I will answer to you. If it doesn't, I answer to myself," the Dragon answered the savage. The Tribesman glanced between the Dragon of the West, and Yoji herself, and his hand seemed to flinch toward reaching for a weapon.

"You don't have the guts," Yoji said.

"Hikaoh, please," the Tribesman said again, quietly. Desperately. "I know that some part of you remembers your home. Some part of you knows that you don't belong there, a tool for the Fire Lord. Some part of you is still my daughter!"

She swung her gaze to him, finding it a lot hotter than she expected it to be. "Whoever this Hikaoh person was, she died a long time ago. You're chasing a fantasy, savage! I am not who you think I am!"

"Yes, you are," the Tribesman said.

"You have no proof," she said with a roll of her eyes.

"You're missing a toe-nail on your left foot," he said. "You lost it when one of the yaks stepped on it when you were still a toddler."

Yoji swallowed at that. It was as that man said. One of her toes was, indeed, sans nail, and had been as long as she could remember. "You don't know anything about me," she said, despite it.

"You've also got birthmarks on your back, right down the middle," he said.

"I know what you're trying to do. You're trying to convince me to join the Avatar, aren't you?" she asked. She shook her head. "The Avatar is a force for chaos, a destroyer of unity and a rebirth of the Agni-damned Storm Kings. Any who side with him, deserve to be his slaves!"

"I've met the Avatar. He is not the slave-taking type," Iroh said.

"Of course, you'd say that."

Yoji tensed an arm, as she had been doing experimentally since this little strange interrogation began. And each time, there was less and less movement, but she could feel that the bondage was becoming more and more brittle, as well. It was just a matter of timing, strength, and speed.

"Where is my niece?" Iroh asked again.

"Aren't you desperate to know?" she asked with a smirk.

"No. I am beginning to lose my patience, though," Iroh said, pushing her chest against the wall with a stubby finger.

The Tribesman slapped that finger away, and said something harsh to the old man. She wanted to believe it was gibberish, but...

He'd said, "Don't you lay a finger on my daughter."

She wasn't sure how she knew that. Or why, for some reason, she was absolutely sure that she'd heard that exact sentence somewhere before. She fought through that confusion with a blast of fire, directed from her feet, which rocketed her up enough to snap the sticky resinous goop that she'd been affixed to. She twisted in the air, and slammed down with a brutal axe-kick of flame, one which the Dragon of the West had to shove the Tribesman out of the way of, and absorb the impact of with his own skill.

"I'd love to stick around, pardon the pun, but I've got some people to kill," Yoji said, as she flapped the now shattered goop from her wrists.

"Hikaoh..." the Tribesman said from the floor.

"Stop calling me that!" Yoji shouted down at him.

"Never. I know my eyes, and I know my heart," he answered. As Yoji thrust forward with a two-fisted blast of fire, it didn't occur to her that the last interplay had been entirely in Yqanuac. She followed that blast with two more, spinning and twisting to get ever more power into her explosive blows, but the Dragon managed to cut them apart and smash them aside just as easily. She glanced only momentarily to the door. She knew, rationally, that she couldn't do this on her own. The Dragon of the West was a fearsomely difficult opponent, for all his sloth and age. She'd need the others to deal with him. And the only way to tell them so, was to reach them.

"This is not over," Iroh said to her, as she paused in her barrage. Why hadn't he pressed the attack? Was he that convinced of the Tribesman's lies? She let out a howl of angry effort as she blasted both fists forward, and the column of golden flames began to push the foe back, until she had a clear and uncluttered line to the door. When she let off, she was smirking.

"Oh, on that, you're right, traitor. This is only just beginning," she said. And then, with a final fan of flames, she hurled herself through the door, and immediately started bending swiftly into concussive blasts which sent the Dai Li who had overheard either their conversation or her wratful firebending, and sending them flying into opposite walls. She hit the ground running, per se, and didn't stop until two corners and twelve rapidly blindsided Dai Li later, where she found one, on his own, emerging from an interrogation room.

She leapt at him, planting both feet into the center of his surprised and confused chest, and then detonated the air under her bootsoles. The blast, muffled by leather and silk, sent the man rolling back into the room, not completely able to understand what has just happened to him. Yoji had no inclination to allow him to figure it out. She bounded atop him, mounting him and holding his jaw in one hand, with two fingers raised with a lancet of flame before an eye. "I have been wandering through this compound for long enough as it is. Tell me where Princess Azula is, and I'll be able to leave before I have to spend time cutting things off of you."

"You don't have the nerve," the Dai Li hissed against her hand. She moved that hand higher, covering his mouth, and pounding one of his hands against the bottom of the wall, before blasting out a surge of fire and immolating one of his fingers completely off. His scream of shock and pain was hidden under her palm.

"Do I?" she asked. "Now, tell me what I want to know, or you stand to lose extremities you are far more proud of. Clear?"

The Dai Li nodded. How quickly they cracked, when they weren't the ones doling out terror and agony. She shifted her hand, ready to slam it back into place if necessary. "The execution. She'll be there."

"Whose?"

"Long Feng's. It's a trap for the Earth King and the Generals."

She frowned at that. It didn't make sense from what Yoji knew of Azula. But then again, what Yoji knew of Azula had been repeatedly proven incomplete over the last few weeks. She forced that frown into a sickly-sweet smile. "See? Was that so hard? You can rest now."

And with that, she stood and drove her heel straight into his head, cracking it against the floor. He'd probably survive, but he'd have a headache for a while. And that wasn't her problem. Now, she just had to find a way to kill Azula, preferably in such a way that made Ba Sing Se vulnerable to Fire Nation annexation.

"This is going to be a busy day," she said to herself, since the two other inhabitants of the room, for various reasons, were unconscious.

"What do we do now?" Iroh asked.

"I think my daughter has provided for us," Hakoda said, grabbing one of the stunned Dai Li who had been leveled outside the door, and dragging him into the room. He put a knife under the man's eyes. "Tell me what I want to know, or I start cutting things off."

"You don't have the nerve," the Dai Li said, as he regained his composure. Hakoda showed the man just how wrong he was on that point.

"You are allowing your anger to make a monster of you," Iroh said, as he quickly hog-tied the other Dai Li agent.

"My daughter is afraid, confused, and in danger. If being a monster saves her, then that's a price I'm willing to pay," Hakoda said.

Katara scratched at the head of the little brown beastie, who would no doubt grow up to be a massive brown beastie, as she looked to the south. There had been a lot of weird noises earlier in the day. A part of her was more than worried that it might have been something to do with Aang. The message he'd left writ in the floor wasn't exactly clear on when he'd be back, or what he was doing. Or why he had a mentally damaged shaman with him. There were more than enough things about this whole situation which had her on edge.

"You should pay more attention," Qujeck said, as he moved back into a waterbending form. "You're never safe in Ba Sing Se, least of all when you're a waterbender."

"Long Feng is dealt with," she said, getting back to her feet, letting the yet-unnamed saber-toothed moose-lion cub nose its way under her parka and stay there, its stubby brown tail poking out. "And in about a half hour, the execution you're so desperate to play witness to will happen, and he'll be dealt with for good. You should calm down."

Qujeck, ever the ball of nervous wrath, shook his head, his hands flowing through blade-like motions, and the water under his command following suit. "I can't calm down. Not until I know he's dead. Not until I know that there's no more tricks, no more back-up plans, no more ways for him to slip out like he always does. You don't get it, Katara. You haven't lost as much to him as I have. I can't sleep, knowing he's still alive. I need justice."

"This doesn't sound like justice," Katara said, starting to mimic the older waterbender. "It sounds like you're out for blood. Lana wouldn't want that."

"Don't bring my mother into this," Qujeck said, and a bit bitterly.

"It's the truth," Katara said. "You have to know when to let go. If you can't, then this will eat you. Just look at Jet!"

"Wait, what am I doing in this conversation?" the still recovering swordsman asked, where he and his girlfriend were slouching in the shadows.

"He learned that you can't let hate blind you. And he's a better person now. Isn't that right?" she asked.

"Well..." Jet rubbed the back of his neck.

"Good enough," the girl who was actually called Mai pointed out. And then she shrugged. "And if he ever goes back on that... well? I'll stab 'im."

"Aren't I the luckiest guy around, to have a lady like you at my side?" Jet said, pulling her a bit closer to him.

"Flatterer."

Qujeck let out a shout, and slammed the ice blade into a pillar. "I don't know how you can be so flippant! Do you really expect that this time, unlike every other, will somehow manage to go right? Are you really that dense?"

"Easy there," Jet said, as Mai took a step away from him, and began to... well, play with knives. He shrugged, and rolled the sprig of wheat in his teeth. "If you're that focused on the bad-guy getting an axe through the neck, just go and watch."

"That isn't the point. You're just... sitting around, doing nothing. You should be..." Qujeck gesticulated, but couldn't come up with what he wanted, so he just threw up his hands and stalked to the other end of the room. Jet gave a suspicious glance to Mai, and leaned toward her.

"...seriously, was I that bad?" he asked.

"Mm-hm," Mai answered him, not turning from the knives she twirled amongst her fingers.

"You know, maybe we should go to after him," Katara pointed out. Both of the other teenagers gave her a mildly baffled look. "Look, everything about what's going on today leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Somebody's going to die because of something I did. But if I do anything to stop it, everything gets worse. Imagine how Qujeck's feeling right now."

"Angry," Jet said. "Very."

"I was referring to..." Katara began, but Jet cut her off with a shake of his head.

"I know that kind of anger, Katara. It almost killed me. If it weren't for Mai, it probably would have, by now. 'Comes a point where you can't keep hating, but the waterbender hasn't figured that out yet."

Mai raised an eyebrow at him, almost clearly saying 'and?'.

Jet rolled his eyes. "And, even despite all that, I'm still thinking he might be right. You say today feels wrong? Well, I think you're right. But probably no for the same reasons. I haven't seen so much as a whisker of those green robed buggers since Lake Laogai. They're up to something. Or hiding something. But I guarantee, it ain't gonna be good for us."

Katara stared after the vacating Tribesman, and then turned to the recuperating swordsman. She let out a sigh, a vent of willpower she couldn't withhold any longer. "Fine. We'll go. But..."

"Doesn't feel right. I get it," Mai said flatly. She then motioned along, and the others of their little goon-squad seemed to appear out of the woodwork, archer, sticker, and binder in tow as Katara walked with them, but separate from them. She couldn't say it to herself, but there was still a part of her which definitely didn't want to have anything to do with Jet. People only changed so much. She doubted that he could turn his back on hatred and revenge so completely.

He'd be watching Long Feng Die. She'd be watching him.

Long Feng tilted his head to one side, as the door clanged open to the cell. The footsteps stopped just past the threshold, not approaching to accost him or loudly demanding his attention. In fact, it was as though the intruder were quietly awaiting acknowledgment. Which he was. Because Long Feng had trained his people well. He turned his head slightly, to glance over his shoulder. The man beyond was wearing the armor of the Royal Guard, but he didn't doubt that it would be one of his own under that helmet.

"The arrangements are in place, Grand Secretariat," the agent said. "The locations of the Five Generals and the Earth King have been plotted, planned, and prepared for. The necessary contingencies are in place."

"And the Fire Nation Princess is cooperating?" Long Feng asked as he rose to his feet.

"She's taking charge," the agent said with a note of understandable surprise. "I wouldn't have expected this level of ardor from her. She isn't what I'd have expected."

"No," Long Feng said. "She is more capable than her reputation leads one to believe. But that is a piffle compared to the importance of her task. When she is finished with it, she will be dealt with, appropriately."

"Of course, Grand Secretariat. It is time to go," the agent said, motioning that Long Feng was to approach. He did so, and even offered his hands for shackles. But he knew well that the manacles would not be locked, nor the guard composed of any whom he hadn't overseen the training of, nor any actor in the play at hand any but his own. Well, save one. The agent brought him out, and the troupe of his ilk pressed in, as though a force to prevent any escape by bending for the Grand Secretariat. Hardly that.

"The Earth King, I assume, will not be present for the messy business of my 'execution'?" Long Feng asked.

"No. But we have forces in place to neutralize him swiftly," he said. Long Feng let the silence be his query. "The Princess decided to see to that, personally."

Long Feng smiled lightly, as their group finally rose up into the sunlight, which caused that smile to fade into a mild wince as it proved far brighter than he'd become accustomed to. "The useless child should be within her capabilities, even if we still vastly overestimate them. May I assume that we are to rendezvous at the throne-room?"

"Of course. There are other matters that require dealing with than... than..." Long Feng trailed off, because the path that they walked, brought him close to a face that he both did not expect, and desperately didn't want to see him.

Dun.

There were questions flashing through Long Feng's mind. How had he gotten into the Upper Ring? Why would he be here, of all places, at all times? How was he going to explain this to him? The answers to those questions, even with that panicked moment of thought, were clear. He got into the Upper Ring, because Dun knew that's where the Cultural Authority's main headquarters were, and Dun was nothing if not insanely persistent. He was here, because the offices were only a few blocks further in. As for the timing, he could only rail against the universe. But how he could explain this... Honestly, he couldn't.

"Long Feng, what's going on?" Dun asked. He looked at the soldiers pressed around him. "Why are these... are those shackles? What are you doing to him?"

"Dun, I can explain..."

"It'd better be a good one!" Dun said, concern beating out indignation in his voice. "You've been gone for a week! A week! And now, I find you in manacles? What is going on? And for the love of the gods, tell me the truth!"

Long Feng's eyes went down, and the soldiers around him halted, sharing confused glances. But none said a word. Had they, Long Feng would have made an example of them in the most gruesome way, at the earliest possible opportunity. They knew their place. But as for him... Long Feng, for once in his life, had no plan, no contingency, no scheme which would duck responsibility, or ameliorate damage. He just had himself, the binds on his arms, and the soldiers around him, and then Dun. He shook his head, slowly. "I don't know what to tell you..."

"Everything!" Dun stressed. He tried to step closer, but the soldiers knew enough to keep up appearances, and held him at bay. "What is going on? Why are you in chains?"

"I..." Long Feng began, but he didn't know how to finish. The weight of decades of lies, crashing down in one gargantuan heap, crushing him. And he couldn't escape it any more than could the Earth King evade his destiny. He took a breath. "You deserve better than I've been able to give you."

Dun just stared at him. "Why can't you tell me the truth?"

"Because it's kinder this way," Long Feng said. The look on Dun's face was heartbreaking, but Long Feng would rather lose him to heartbreak than lose him to assassination. One, he could live with, if barely. The other, he simply couldn't. The guards around him finally took the cue, and gave him a brusque shove, again keeping up appearances, to get him starting movement again. Long Feng cast a glance, full of shame and regret, toward Dun. Dun just stared back, and looked stricken. Why couldn't Long Feng tell the man he loved the truth?

Because he didn't know how to, anymore. Simple as that. The agent before him had a scowl on his face. "This complicates things."

"Don't," Long Feng demanded simply. "Don't you dare. Don't even finish that thought."

"But he..."

"If you offer one more word down that line of reasoning, you will not be the only one to suffer for it," Long Feng promised heatedly. The agent then, wisely, kept his quiet. And Long Feng's mind ran all the faster, as his heart was wounded. He might lose everything, but he wouldn't lose Ba Sing Se. Not to the Avatar. Not today. That thought gave him far less comfort than he'd hoped it would have.

Qujeck's knuckles cracked and popped as he manipulated them, a nervous habit he'd picked up on that night, all those months ago, which left him alone in Ba Sing Se. He wasn't afraid, not particularly. Ba Sing Se had a way of pounding the scared out of you. But he was deeply, deeply worried. Something was going to go wrong. It always seemed to. He could feel it in his bones that something wasn't right, that things had gone out of control. Or had never been under control to begin with. And that feeling didn't diminish when he beheld the Grand Secretariat, the master puppeteer of the city of walls and secrets, being shoved into the courtyard. It was only one of many courtyards, out of the way on the outskirts of the Royal Palace's grounds, but it was secure, it was private, and it had all the amenities required for a headsman and his craft.

The black-veiled headsman stood to one side, the long, curved blade of his profession resting with its clipped tip lightly touching the stone of the floor. Casual, of course. You could call Si Wongi a lot of things, but nervous didn't tend to be one of them. "What am I not seeing?" Qujeck asked, as his eyes flit around the small crowd, mostly present to prevent escape attempts, and to bear witness to the deed. Qujeck glanced down and aside, and could see Katara, the young and naïve waterbender from the South Water Tribe staring at the man as well. There was a glance, connecting the two warriors from the opposite sides of the planet, and then, he looked on. She had her cadre. His own, was dead, because of Long Feng. And Qujeck still knew that he was overlooking something.

The guards parted aside, and showed Long Feng to the headsman. Hands pressed down on the man's shoulders, bringing him to his knees, and the headsman gave a glance to an official, who stepped forward with a scroll. "Long Feng, you stand accused and convicted of High Treason against the Earth King, Treason against the City of Ba Sing Se, murder most foul, acts of terrorism against this City and its people, sedition of the Earth King's authority, and the Avatar's Violation, as well as the abuse and assault upon the Avatar himself. For these crimes and... countless... others, you are to be struck head from neck, in accordance to the laws of this city-state. Do you have any final declarations?"

"Yes," Long Feng said. Qujeck's eyes widened. Something was about to happen. Qujeck quietly opened the flask at his side. "You have done your job well. Now go away."

"...excuse me?" the mandarin asked.

Qujeck glanced down, as a ripple of alarm came from the minor crowd below... but not all of the crowd. Notably, those who weren't alarmed, were acting as though of one mind, and one will, predetermined. Oh, no.

Katara seemed to sense it, then, and went for her own flask. But she was a moment too late. The guardsman swept low with his pole-arm, and smashed her ankle hard enough to probably break it, causing the waterbender to fall to the floor with a scream of agony, before spinning the weapon and driving the heel of it into the girl's ribs. She reflexively curled fetal to try to protect herself. Qujeck, though, was already fighting. With a whip, he smashed the one turning to him in the throat, hard enough to collapse his windpipe, hopefully. But failing that, it was still more than enough to send the man tumbling off of Qujeck's lofty vantage-point. Another flick, and that whip of water pulled a Dai Li agent down from a pillar, high above, and slammed him into the ground; a save, from the corner of a Tribesman's eye.

Down below, Long Feng casually rose from his place on his knees, casting off his shackles. Qujeck's eyes twitched, a side-effect of frustrated and lunatic fury. "NO!" he screamed. "NOT AGAIN!"

Qujeck wasn't alone in that sentiment. One of the guards, who had somehow penetrated the field of Dai Li infiltrators, was bearing down on the Grand Secretariat, spear leading. Long Feng barely batted an eye. With one hand, he brought up a wall of stone, upon which that spear snapped. Then, the executioner buried a very heavy sword into a very vulnerable chest, and Long Feng continued to walk away.

"Put the waterbender somewhere secure. I want the Avatar to have something besides revenge on his mind," Long Feng said loudly enough to be heard over the tumult. Qujeck glanced down to the girl, who still tried to fight, lashing out with a sloppy but resolute blast of water from her crumpled form, but while it did knock aside one Dai Li agent, the others pounced upon her like a swarm of feral and starving rats. He looked away. She was lost.

Qujeck glanced below. Somebody had to stop this. Now. With a growl of wrath, he twisted the water he was bending into a spiral, one leading down to the ground. He leapt onto it, freezing it to ice and spinning his way to the ground, before taking that entire coil and turning it back into water, then ice once more in a bulwark to prevent those same stone fists as flew about at random from crippling him as well. Then, with a grunt of hatred, he sent the bulwark out, smashing down the enemy before him. "THIS ISN'T OVER, LONG FENG!" Qujeck roared at the departing puppetmaster's back. The man turned, and scowled lightly.

"...am I supposed to know you?" he asked, a smirk on his face. Qujeck's blood boiled in his veins, and it cried out for more to be spilled. He surged forward, but only one step, because after that, he had a hook-sword in his way, catching on his tunic. He spun in a fury, but he had no water to bend at his aggressor. And no aggressor, either. Jet grabbed Qujeck's shoulder and started to pull backward.

"Don't throw yourself away! He's got this one! We need to make his victory bitter!" Jet shouted.

Qujeck snarled at Jet, but he knew, in the rational part of his mind, that the teenage boy was thinking with a far clearer head than he at the moment. And that was what he needed. Mai moved in, eyes sliding through the crowds, and knives between her fingers, as she made sure no Dai Li got close to them. Long Feng? He turned, with a chuckle lost to the din, and continued walking. "We need to get to the Earth King," Mai shouted.

"What?" Qujeck asked.

"That guy will be defenseless, and there's nobody here but us to warn them," Mai continued.

"She's right," Jet said.

Qujeck let out a snort which, had he been a firebender, would surely have lit with fire. "Find the Mountain King and the Dragon of the East, then," Qujeck said. "And find them fast."

Jet nodded, and let Qujeck finally free of the hooks of his blades. Mai, though, stared after the departing Grand Secretariat for just a moment longer, a quiet sigh in her throat. "So much for the Earth Kingdoms," she whispered. Then, she followed after, pausing only long enough to flick a knife at a nearby Dai Li and send him tumbling down a staircase.

Azula was grinning, as she stormed down the corridors, toward the Earth King's throne. Oh, how she would enjoy sitting their once more. Her greatest triumph, repeated without tragedy. And she would even have ample opportunity to deal with Mother, now that she knew where that traitorous woman had secreted herself. This – all of this – would be glorious. She twisted her arms behind her, then surged forth with a blast of azure flame which sent the doors, obviously recently replaced on their frames, bouncing into the throne room, and the Dai Li behind her began to spread out in a great rank. "Well, this is a familiar sight," she said, striding forward with all the confidence that decades of preparation warranted.

And then, she had to heave her body aside, as an arrow almost speared her heart. That wasn't what she expected. There was somebody ahead of her. People she didn't recognize. One of them looked vaguely like the insane King of New Ozai, albeit significantly younger. Another, some Tribesman she didn't recall. The last was a dusky-skinned woman in loose clothing and bearing a bow, as well as a very angry look on her face. Almost slipping under her estimation was of course the Earth King himself. She hadn't taken them into account, so she refused to underestimate them. She glanced to the Tribesman, and twisted her arms, letting lightning gather along her fingertips, before thrusting forward, intending to end likely the most destructive of them in one stroke.

That attempt, and the lightning-bolt which spawned it, went quite wild, as something slammed into her shoulder, throwing her arm up and the lightning raking along the badger-mole baldachin. A glance aside showed that an arrow, from that same woman, had found a target in her chest. She took a step back, and pulled the shaft from where it had embedded loosely into her armor. "You're going to have to do better than that," she promised.

"I intend to," the woman answered, then fired again, but this time in a completely different direction. A half-glance showed that the arrow found its target, one of the Dai Li who was trying to flank her. Azula didn't waste any time. And she didn't pay attention to the blood dribbling down where the point had just pierced a bit further than the armor had allowed for. She hurled herself forward in fire and destruction, only to have a great wall raise up between herself and the Earth King's bodyguards. The stone shattered at the impact of her assault, but it had held long enough for its purpose.

"Take the Earth King and get out of here!" that heterochromatic man shouted, his attention sliding along Azula and her minions. She downshifted her expectation of the Tribesman. A lackey, only. So she focused on the Earth King... No, not the Earth King. The other one. The man with the strange eyes. She shook her head. Focus, woman! This is important!

She surged forward, sweeping her arms forward and down, and bathing just about all of the floor which wasn't holding Dai Li with cerulean flames, but the archeress simply bounded back onto the dais, while the earthbender rose himself above the conflagration. Which put him right in position for her next assault, a barrage of fire bolts, which he had to intercept with stone to keep them away from her. A squad of Dai Li pounced as one at him, but he flicked a hand in their direction, and a great slab of the floor rose up and slammed them all away. He was good. She was better.

She twisted her arm again, but this time, hadn't even gotten the smell of ozone begun when she found herself being knocked to the floor by a very sharp blow to her side. She growled, and took a step before the searing pain caused her to pause. She tapped her side. The armor had been breached, there. Blood dribbled out. She looked up at what had dealt that blow, and her eyes twitched a bit. "So you were a traitor after all, Piandao? Why am I not surprised?"

The swordsman looked haggared, his complexion hardly the rich oaken that she remembered. As well, and most notably, he was missing a hand. But the blade which remained true in the one remaining was lightly stained with red, just at the tip. He looked almost aghast to see her, and confusion was clearly the order of his day. "Wait... Princess Azula? What is going on?"

"I'm taking over the Earth Kingdom in Father's name. And if you want to survive, you'll stop fighting me."

Piandao hesitated, but not long enough. With a twist, he cut apart stone gloves and shoes trying to catch and clobber him, and then with a swift thrust which saw him lunging on one foot, he brought down one Dai Li who had wandered far too close, before twirling back to face Azula, his back to a pillar. "You were supposed to end this war, not make it worse!" he shouted at her.

"I am ending it," she said, with a smirk. "My way. The right way."

She lashed out with flames again, and while Piandao was quick enough to skirt around the pillar and let her assault take it instead of he, the focus she needed distracted her long enough for an up-thrust of stone to smash into her uninjured side. It lifted her from her feet and sent her rolling, but she was quick to push herself away from the ground. That earthbender needed to die. No. He couldn't die, because she wasn't a murderer. Wait, yes she was. Hold on.

There was a tingling sensation in her body, starting on her tongue and radiating into her skull, then down her neck. No. No! Not now! With a snarl of anger and the focus which came with it, she lashed out with a great lash of blue toward the woman atop the dais. She would pick them off, one by one, starting with the annoying ones. The woman in the loose clothing saw the attack and managed to dodge it, but the lash sheared through part of her sleeve, as well as the throne of the Earth King himself. One of the arms simply fell away, melted off in its entirety.

She advanced, and the others retreated, with increasing speed. The Earth King wasn't there anymore. Had they taken him? Of course they had. What kind of thinking was that? Her advance shuddered, and faltered, as she slapped herself hard in the face. It didn't dispel the fuzziness which was clouding her vision, nor choking up her thoughts. "I don't have time for this, you idiot girl!" she snarled. She looked up, and the dais was clear. The flames had died down and the Dai Li were sweeping forward. How long had she been distracted? She shook her head sternly. This wasn't the time to be side-tracked.

"Where are they?" she demanded of a Dai Li nearby.

"They seem to have taken to the lower ruins," the agent said.

"And what about the Generals?" she asked.

"Three of five are in custody," the man continued. She smirked, then, and took a few of the steps up toward the sundered throne.

"Excellent. I'd say today has been a success," she said. She turned, and saw that Long Feng was approaching. Ah, the master stroke. "You are, as usual, late to do any of the heavy lifting. A poor trait in anybody claiming to be a leader."

"I never claim to lead," Long Feng said. He gave a mild shrug. "You must be aware this is the point where I double-cross you, and throw you into prison."

"And I know this is the point where your orders don't exactly see fruition," she countered. Long Feng raised an eyebrow at her. "The Dai Li aren't stupid. They know that the only way they live to see tomorrow is by backing the right leader in the war. And sadly, they know it isn't you. You're a manipulator, one who has done commendable things given his humble beginnings, but you deserve to rule Ba Sing Se less even than the brat you've done all of this to unseat."

"An interesting theory," Long Feng said.

"The Dai Li are waiting, to bow down to whomever sits upon that throne," Azula nodded behind her. She smiled. "So... bow down."

Long Feng looked... not afraid?

Bored.

"Arrest her," he said. And then the chains flew. Snaring Azula's hands, before a mighty heave sent her sprawling forward off of the dais and landing on her chin on the ground. The shock of it sent a jolt through the fuzz which was threatening to overtake her thinking, but she shook it away. What just happened? This wasn't the way it went! Long Feng squatted down before her, and looked her in the eye. She took in a breath, and as she tried to blast it out in flame, a stone hand slammed into her jaw, holding it shut, her teeth clenched. The flames escaped her nostrils, but nowhere near the Grand Secretariat. "One thing you have failed to take into account, Princess, is reputation. For these men, your reputation is... somewhat lacking. What you've shown them over the last few days is only words, in their eyes. Your speeches, your threats? They ring hollow. But as for me? My reputation is more than mere words. My reputation is a force unto itself. It is solid. It is fact. You offer them words. I offer them order. And that is why your hubris fails you."

"No," past grit teeth and a jaw that couldn't open all the way.

"Deny it if you will. It won't change the fact. I rule Ba Sing Se. Not you, nor your father. That will never change, as long as I have blood in my veins," Long Feng said sternly, almost sadistically. "And since you hold so little apparent value to the Fire Lord, I have precious little use for you. For the moment, at least. I know that your mind might be a much disputed minefield of delirium and psychosis, but I have no doubts that I can mould it into something much more useful to me. I broke the Dragon of the East, and I will break you, too."

"I refuse to be outplayed by you," Azula snarled through a clenched jaw. Long Feng laughed, then, and not a kind one. He smiled down at her, in the most patronizing way.

"Princess, you will soon find that you were never even a player," Long Feng said. "Take her away."

And as they did so, Azula howled in futility, in rage.

In desperation.

The city was quiet, as they flew over it. To Aang's ears, too quiet. Irukandji hadn't steered Aang wrong in anything but her presupposition on his romantic leanings, so when she said, as firmly and as desperately as she did, that Long Feng was a whisker away from bursting his bonds and outright taking control of Ba Sing Se, Aang didn't need to be convinced twice to heed. "We're almost there," Aang said, perhaps somewhat pointlessly, as all those present knew that perfectly well.

The bison swooped lower, as they crossed the threshold into the Upper Ring, and Appa's toes practically tore up shingles as they all passed, finally clearing the stately manors and reaching the unrivaled opulence of the Royal Palace itself. Even as they were flying over, Aang spotted a familiar figure below, striding toward the heart of the compound, just as he passed through a forest of pillars. Aang leaned hard to Appa's ear, and whispered a command, before screwing his legs in and bounding off of the bison's bow. The sheer momentum of it caused him to have to scooter or faceplant, and a faceplant at that velocity would have covered a great deal of the Earth King's house in little bits of airbender-skin. Even so, he leapt off of his scooter, and still stumbled a few steps, before turning toward the tall, neatly-bearded General How. "General How! You're in danger!"

How's brows drew down, and he glanced from side to side. "From where?" he asked. It was a relief to have somebody whom didn't need convincing of every little thing.

"Long Feng. He's gotten out of prison somehow!" Aang said. How turned back to him.

"You're sure?" he asked. Aang nodded. "Then we'll have to gather the other Generals and the Earth King before it's too late."

Aang turned, and flinched, hinging his body away from chains which shot past him, clattering against stone. Others, aimed at How rather than Aang, found their mark and locked with a clack. There was a mighty heave from the sources of those chains, but Aang pulled hard and tore down one of the pillars, smashing it down onto the length between How and whatever source there was. He was trapped, with about three feet of movement standing, but How was at the very least, not in the clutches of the Dai Li. For the moment.

"Your timing is, as usual, impeccable," How noted, as he tried to pry the manacles off of his arms and ankles, but had equal success in either – none. "Could you move that stone, now?"

"It's the only thing keeping you here," Aang said, twisting his staff around and trying to see where the earthbenders were lurking. The earthbender in him had him searching the ground, first. But it was the airbender which poked its head in swiftly thereafter, and reminded him that Dai Li weren't exactly typical earthbenders. He looked up. And he found them, scuttling across the high pillars like stupendously dangerous insects. A twist of the staff, and a bolt of wind howled up toward them, but it did no more than ruffle their robes; they were using earthbending to cling to the stone, so what harm could a breeze do to them?

"I can't do much from here," How warned, trying to keep his back to the pillar so he'd have enough room to bend, but even so, Aang doubted the man could do very much, per his word. Aang looked up, and managed to bound aside, just as stone fists almost smashed him in the face. Even as he was twisting, he let his hands drop into fists, hard as stone and brutal as the storm. When the thrust back up, it was not to the movement of stone, nor water – which there was far too little of nearby – but of fire.

He didn't want to hurt the Dai Li, not really, but he had no other options. His bolts of flame were comparatively weak, in that he'd had little practice and little experience, and besides that, he was 'pulling' them to ensure that they didn't burn somebody to death. Still, the flames leaping at his command were enough to get the Dai Li above to scatter, to move. And every time one of them loosed from his rocky perch, Aang was ready to intercept them with a blast of wind, hurling them into the distance to a hard and long landing. A broken bone or five was bad, yes, but one would have to be a monster to intentionally burn somebody.

The Dai Li pressed in, and one of the blasts of scarlet fire launching from Aang's fist was interrupted as his limb was smashed hard, and wheeled him about. He then felt that limb pull back and up, trying to haul him from his feet. It was swift earthbending, causing the very ground beneath him to buck, which prevented him losing his footing entirely. And an iota of bending after that to gain control of the stone glove wrapped 'round his wrist, before smashing it into the ground and causing it to crumble to dust.

"Your left!" How said, and he thrust out a block in that direction. The Dai Li who advanced, hurling himself in a move like a dancer toward them managed to burst through How's attack, but Aang twisted and swept low with a broom of flames which caused the Dai Li to have to bound over, or lose his feet. Then, Aang's next move, tearing a chunk of the fallen pillar and hurling it out with his bending, caught the man mid-air and sent him flopping onto his back. "How many do you see, Avatar?" How asked, his eyes locked on the limited angles he could see. Aang took a moment to bound atop the pillar, and what he saw on the other side disturbed him greatly. Mainly, because he stopped counting at thirty, and there were a lot more than thirty.

"We've got a bit of a problem," Aang admitted, as he jumped down to the General's side. "I'm going to have to cut those chains, somehow."

"Well, unless you know of somebody who can break metal with his bare hands, that could take a while," How pointed out, his humorless tone belying the sarcasm to his words.

"Oh, I do. She's just not here yet," Aang said. How's eyes shot wide, and his lips parted in an alarmed rictus, but Aang didn't have a chance to hear what the General saw. Mostly because something slammed into the back of his neck, and heaved back. Aang was torn off of his feet and sent rolling down the floor of the forest of stone. Fingers, hard as the mountains, began to squeeze, cutting off his wind-pipe and breathing. Oh, this wasn't good. He lashed out, practically blind, with fire-bolts, trying to shake the grip of this hand free. He wasn't so good an earthbender that he could bend what he couldn't see; that was, for the moment, beyond him. So he tried fire. And failing that, he heaved air past the crushing fingers, trying to force something into his lungs. And not really succeeding.

He needed help.

It came with a blast like thunder. The stone crumbled away, and Aang shook his head, breathing deep for the near choking he'd received. He looked ahead, and he could see three Dai Li ahead of him. But one of them was staggering back, stunned, and holding a spot on his chest which was steadily staining black. Then, he tipped back, and fell. "What just happ–"

Aang was greeted by another blast, this one which caused one of the other two Dai Li to spin back, red drizzling away from one shoulder where a bullet burst through it. That one fell to the ground with a shout of surprise and pain, and Aang felt himself being dragged to his feet by an angry Si Wongi girl. Smoke was still curling away from the barrel of her gun-thing. "You are surprisingly often a boy in need of rescue," Nila noted, as she bit off the end of a wad of paper, and then slammed it into her weapon. The Dai Li bolted aside as she raised the weapon and fired; this bullet only blasted shards off of a pillar.

"Where are the rest of you?" Aang asked.

"Fast approaching. I was faster," she said. She glanced aside, and then had to duck under another fist which was seeming to scream through the air and put a hole through her head. That Dai Li advanced right into close combat, and the Si Wongi had to smash his hands away with her weapon. "Go! Save the General and get your Earth King!"

"What about you?" Aang said, as he twisted a blast of wind which sent the Dai Li flying away. She shot a mildly condescending look toward him.

"I am the Dragon's Daughter."

Fair enough, he thought. He moved back to the pillar, but found that it was cracked and splitting. Obviously, somebody didn't want it there, anymore. Just as Aang reached it, there was a blast of exploding stone, one which Aang only evaded by raising a block from the ground before him and deflecting that shrapnel away. He could see the Dai Li beyond, and they were bracing themselves to heave How off of his footing, which itself would be a severe problem for any earthbender. One needed a firm foundation to out-stubborn a stone. Lacking it, well...

Aang landed with a twist, and sent a veritable tornado through that gap, but the Dai Li had rooted themselves, and used the energy Aang expended to heave. Aang felt How stumble into his back, causing the Avatar to have to brace himself, to bring the much larger earthbender to a halt. It wasn't easy; in fact, it tore up the floor under his heels, but he managed to prevent the General's passage. But he couldn't do anything else. And there were plenty of spare Dai Li agents on this side of the fracas.

It was a sigh of relief which Aang didn't know he had in him when a figure in green and blue streaked past, and a black tongue caught against the chains pulled taught. The black, meteoric metal clove through the chains, one after another, with a sound like distant bells, before Aang found himself stumbling backward and almost tipping straight back onto the stumbled earthbender behind him. Sokka rooted himself, the blade out and ready, focus hard in his blue eyes. "Sokka!"

"General, get to the Bison!" Sokka ordered. He twisted and cut a stone glove out of the air before him, but a second set of clangs pulled Aang's attention to a second swordsman.

"I'd listen to the bumpkin, General," Zuko said, his twin dao out and forming a protective web of sharp steel around him. "They can't fly. Yet."

Sokka shot him a glare. "Who are you calling a bumpkin?" he demanded.

"This isn't the time, you idjits!" Toph said as she stomped past, hurling a sizable portion of a pillar at a cluster of green-robed insurrectionists. "You find what happened to his sister," she pointed a finger at Sokka as she stomped by. "I'm getting Mom and her cronies. Great? Great."

"Toph, wait!" Aang called after her as she cut a short-lived breach through the Dai Li. "You can't go in there alone!"

"Watch me!"

Aang stared in bafflement at the blind earthbender, but only for an instant, because the Dai Li weren't so courteous as to allow him any time for bemusement. He started to retreat, blasting the Dai Li who tried to cut him off or chain him down with air and warding them away with fire. Once they reached the edge of that forest of columns, Appa was waiting for them. How bounded from his place at the head of the stairs and the stone catapulted him a bit further, landing with a swing and a clutch onto the furry hide of the ten tonne flying beast. The others weren't far behind Aang, with Nila's exception. She was still in the thick, surrounded on all sides. And she'd not last long.

"Zuko," Aang said, turning to the firebender. "Protect General How. Take Appa up and keep him there until we find Katara and Kuei and the others."

Zuko glanced back. "Azula's in there, somewhere."

"I'll find her, I promise," Aang said. "I swear."

Zuko glared at the Avatar for a long moment. "You'd better keep your word, airbender. If you don't..."

"I will," Aang vowed. Zuko nodded, then, reluctantly, and bounded onto the best, grabbing the ropes Aang had strung for reins. "Appa? Yip yip!"

The bison let out a grumbling bellow, and rose away, just ahead of stones being hurled to prevent that. Aang turned to those who remained. "Sokka, save Nila. Sharif, you... Wait. Sharif?"

"We need to go down," he said, urgently.

"What are you doing here?" Aang asked.

"Helping. We need to go down," he said, his words still slurred and almost illegible. Aang glanced toward Nila, where she just took a stone fist in the face which sent her stumbling to one knee. The ring of green robes got a lot closer. Aang just motioned for all to follow, and clacked open his glider. He took a bound, and as indicated either by practice or by a Tribesman's quick instruction, both teenagers grabbed onto Aang's shoulders as he used his airbending to bear him up and soaring between the stone, before crashing down into the heart of a knot of antagonism, his landing marked by a rippling out of stone which hurled Dai Li from their footing, and landed Nila squarely on her back.

"Need a hand?" Sokka asked as he pulled her to her feet. She glanced in panic around her until she found her weapon, and snatched it up.

"I need a hundred, and a hundred guns to fill them. Yours will have to do... Brother? Are you mad?" she broke off, as she noticed her sibling with her.

"The secrets are below," Sharif said. Aang circled around the three teenagers, his glider staff before him, ready to ward what he needed to. But he didn't doubt that against a dozen and a half Dai Li, he wouldn't last long. They were simply deciding, silently and amidst themselves, who was going to go first.

Aang did, by slamming that staff down once more, and causing the stone beneath their feet to swallow them up.

She crashed down the ramp, rolling to a stop in a room full of green hued light. It emitted from every crystal nearby, the same kind and quality as had been found in the tunnel to New Ozai. Only this was in much greater abundance, so that everything near her was clear as the early dawn. She forced herself to her feet and furiously wiped at the split lip she'd gotten from her first humiliating tumble.

"This is what all of your scheming and preparation has been leading to, you old hag," the girl's voice said from nearby. Azula didn't even hesitate to lash out with fire, searing and blackening the crystals in the direction of that sound. "All of that time and effort, wasted. I could have told you you'd find some way to muck it up. Your entire life is one big failure after another."

"You don't know anything about me!" Azula raved, her head swinging to find out where that girl had gone.

"I know more than you think," the girl said, and Azula caught a glimpse of her. Even though her rational mind would have told her that the girl was a figment, and thus proofed against firebending, at this point, Azula wasn't thinking very rationally, and launched out with another searing blast, coating another brace of crystals with soot. Making the room go a little bit darker. The voice seemed to shift, coming from another direction. "I know that you turned your me into your personal ball of hate against people who you see as your enemies. And you know what? I don't think they are."

"Then you're a traitor as well as a coward!" Azula shrieked, flaring out at her next glimpse of the girl, causing the lights to dim all the further.

"Oh, will you listen to yourself?" the girl chided, and suddenly appearing as though whispering into Azula's ear. "You called yourself a traitor. If only you could hear yourself."

Azula spun and lashed out with fire... but the fire was smoking, guttering, and edging down toward green rather than the pristine blue she'd spent decades refining and practicing. "You're not going to fool me, you useless girl! This is a... a minor setback! I will find a way to rule this city!"

"No, you won't," the girl said, a whisper of movement before the last brace of crystals jutting from the floor. Azula turned and with a howl of wrath, blasted smokey, now scarlet flames at the outcropping, and dropping her into darkness. She ignited an oily yellow flame above her palm, and glared at the girl who now stared back at her, as arrogant as a cutpurse caught. "You've managed to fail in every way possible. I'm not the traitor to my homeland; you are! I'm not the screw up my father cast out; YOU ARE! This is all your fault! If you hadn't have come along, none of this would have happened!"

"You were too weak!" Azula screamed.

"You were too crazy!" the girl shouted back, her fists balled up as her face turned almost as red as her dress. "Everything you've ever done has been to make things worse! If you're all I have to look forward to in my old age, I think I'd rather hang myself!"

"That can be arranged, you little brat," Azula promised, however time-paradox-inducing such a feat would prove to be. And the girl knew it, somehow.

"Listen to yourself. You're out of your mind, and you still think that the universe and everybody in it will bend to your will. You're pathetic! A crazy old bitch with no grasp of reality!"

At the edge of the pool of light, Azula could see another, but that one didn't monopolize her attention as the girl did. That other one was perhaps only as old as she was now, but didn't look nearly so strong or vigorous. In fact, she just hugged her knees to her chest and rocked quietly, staring into the distance.

"I will crush you like an insect," Azula promised.

"You couldn't if you wanted to!" the girl shouted back. "That's your shameful little secret, isn't it? You need me to exist. Well, you know what? I don't need you!"

"Too loud. Too loud," the rocking girl in the edge of the light muttered to herself.

"Oh, please. If you really had any way of getting rid of me, you would have done so ages ago," Azula mocked, and the girl ground her teeth, glaring up with fury at the older version of herself. "The fact is, this is my body now. There's nothing you can do to change that fact. I'll get out of this prison, and when I do, I will burn the world to kill that waterbender."

The girl suddenly was flying at Azula, and punched her in the gut, which drove the woman back, her wind knocked out. She staggered to a halt, and cracked a sadistic smirk. "Oh, is that the best you've got?" she asked. The girl's lips writhed as her fists tightened again. "That's your greatest failure, girl. You've got no resolve. You've got no will to do what needs to be done; and that's why I'm here. To save you from yourself!"

"I'd rather be dead than have you here!" the girl snapped. "You hurt my brother, you hurt my uncle, and you detest my mother! You're nothing like me at all!"

"Too loud!" the other muttered loudly, but both continued to ignore her.

"No, and that's my greatest strength over you. I don't have any of your weaknesses, any of your pitiful sentimentality," she strode up to the girl, glaring down at her. "I will be the salvation of my people, and it will be over your quiet annihilation!"

"You underestimate my power," the girl snapped.

"And you overestimate your chances," Azula answered. "I've been preparing for this for forty Agni-damned years. I'm not going to fail because of some scheming earthbender, and I'm definitely not going to fail to some milquetoast, naïve idiot!"

"I swear on Mother's name that I will find a way to kill you!" the girl screamed.

"And I swear on my daughter's that you're going to fail!" Azula answered back. "And I know with certainty that my word's a lot stronger than yours is. Otherwise, you'd be here, instead of there!"

"This must be why Mother left!" the girl screamed back at her. "The first time I opened my eyes after you squeezed into my head, she saw you!"

"And if your sniveling hadn't side-tracked me, I'd have killed that bitch years ago, and..."

"QUIET PLEASE MAKE IT STOP!"

The scream of the third girl slammed through the other two like a wave of lightning. Azula's body locked rigid, and the air was forced out of her lungs as her diaphragm contracted, to a ghastly and horrid groan. The girl, so struck, seemed to shatter, her scintillating parts flying back as though blasted back by a bomb, before dissolving away into the ground. The girl who emitted that horrible wail too shook herself apart, unraveling like a poorly knit coat, until there was only one, standing in absolute darkness. One, who tipped straight forward onto her face to the crack of a forehead against rock, and began to convulse wildly, destructively.

And nobody was there to help her. Nobody.

A thunderbolt heralded the arrival of a spirit, and did so with a smoking crater rather than a mild sooty stain, as she usually would. Instantly, Irukandji's eyes took in what once was the Eastern Air Temple. Now, there wasn't even a mountain there. It had been blasted down past the bedrock, into the layers beneath it. The lowest levels of that place were now open to the naked sky. She waved a hand through the air, feeling the ephemera of this place. It all felt wrong. Like walking through a room a dozen people had vomited in.

She looked down at the empty vault, and with a flick of thought, she was there, again buffeted by the thunderbolt which bore her. "No," Irukandji said, as she looked at the discarded, shredded kavi which lay neatly folded beside the foot of a statue. "Where is she?"

"Whom do you seek, spirit and host?" a placid voice asked. Irukandji swung to it like a wild-woman; that wasn't too far from how it felt at the moment.

"Pathik, you crazy old hermit," Irukandji said, and not kindly. "You were supposed to be teaching Aang about the Avatar State. Epic fail on your part."

"I had a different destiny," Pathik said serenely, as he slowly packed a bit of food into a bindle and bound it shut. "I helped somebody who was otherwise doomed to torment eternal."

Irukandji blinked a few times. "You didn't," it said.

"I did," Pathik said. "I have freed the girl from the horrible spirit which had overtaken her."

Irukandji stared at the old man for a long moment, then let out a scream which echoed in thunder, before storming to the man's face and howling at him. "You idiot! Having Imbalance inside that girl was the best chance any of us had to survive!"

Pathik nodded. "It was."

Irukandji stared at the old man, chest heaving, and decided to get some good old-fashioned catharsis, namely by punching the contrary old bastard's teeth in. Her first strike was every bit as swift as the lightning which was Irukandji's nature, but when it slammed, it wasn't to an old man's head deforming, but rather, as though she'd punched the spiritual equivalent of a cast-iron mountain. She pulled her hand back, and saw that Pathik had warded her blow with only two fingers, held up casually before him.

"But it was not fair," he continued. "The child deserved better. She did not deserve damnation eternal for something which was no fault of her own."

"Are you out of your mind?" Irukandji screamed, flapping a pained hand. "Without it inside her... I don't even know if there's a way that existence can survive! You just doomed everybody alive, dead, and anywhere in any universe to a horrible consumption – including the girl you just 'saved'! How can you possibly justify that?"

"I do not justify myself. I simply did what was right."

"It wasn't right! Right was saving everybody!" Irukandji snapped back.

"No. That was expedient. The expedient paths only lead downward, into the oblivion you speak of. It will take more to be free, to be true."

"You're not making any sense," Irukandji said. "I'm supposed to be the crazy one!"

"My destiny was set in motion on the day of my birth. I have fulfilled it, at long last," Pathik said, slinging that spartan bindle over his shoulder. "For the first time, I am free. And that freedom comes with trusting that others will make the right choices. As the child has. As you will."

"What the hell are you talking about?" Irukandji demanded, snapping in front of him.

"Everyone must make sacrifices to a noble end," Pathik said. "Some... greater than others."

"I don't sacrifice," Irukandji scoffed.

"Destiny can be a... funny thing," Pathik said, and began to walk, up and out of the crater. Away from the ruins of the Eastern Air Temple. Irukandji just stared at it, shaking its head slowly. What now? That was the question which repeated and baffled its mind. Lucky that Huuni hadn't the responsibility to come up with a solution, because if Irukandji, who was light-years smarter than her, couldn't, then it was a complete toss-up as to who could.

She stared at at the mountains, but they were silent to her. Imbalance had been here, and the spirits had fled en masse. But there was still that feeling. Of something fundamentally wrong with existence here. Irukandji shivered, not from cold nor nerves. A coward always survived, and Irukandji had long been a coward. With another bolt of lightning, Irukandji disappeared.

Not too soon, either. Because reaching toward her back was a hand, formed whole out of utter blackness, extending to an arm, to a shoulder, to a body like a girl in her late teens. Any who had known Malu would say that the body was hers. But the face... Malu had never such a terrible maw, so shrieking with darkness and terror, nor eyes a glowing and virulent red, pulsing with black striations. There were no words in that mouth. Only hunger. The shadows nearby formed others, identical to the first. They all looked inward, at the multitude which was themselves. A silent understanding, something too strange for mortal minds to comprehend. Then, they all faded back into shadows, winking out of existence one after another, as the Shards of Imbalance began to hunt.

It should have been obvious that this was a really terrible idea the moment she said it. But then again, Toph Beifong hadn't exactly been well renowned for her abilities of critical thinking. She had barely made it three halls in before she was under siege. But luckily for her, she was the greatest earthbender in the world. When the Dai Li came, she made sure that they broke their teeth – literally in some cases – against stone and brick. And she pressed deeper. She glanced around her, making note that for the immediate moment, there wasn't actively trying to kill her. So she took that moment to slam her palm against a wall, and feel the vibrations pulsing out from her strike.

The wave propagated out, reflecting around the corners and down into the servant's passages in a way which gave her a 'sight' far greater than anybody with working eyes. At least, far greater in a situation like this, where there was never more than a stone's-throw from another corner, another intersection, another ambush. The wave reflected back, showing more of those snaky buggers, but not moving toward her. Away. Oh, that bore inspection.

She started to run again, her short legs making up in intensity what they lost in distance of stride. She got herself enough momentum that when she came to an intersection she knew was awaiting her glorious presence for an ambush, she was able to drop to her knees and lean back, sliding under the barrage which zipped by over her chest and her sightless eyes. She popped back up with a twist, heaving blocks the size of her head at the foremost of each passage's Dai Li, before hitting the ground running, and running hard.

The matter wasn't that she would get flattened in a single fight. She'd fought plenty of earthbenders. No, the problem, such as it was, was that they were grinding her down with simple attrition. Every time an attack came a bit too close, scraped her a little, bludgeoned her a little, that was a pain which built up. Bruises on top of bruises. Yeah, she could take it. The question was how long. She had outpaced her 'scan' at this point, so she could only sense a few dozen yards ahead of herself with every sprinting foot-fall. Thus, when the wall to her left exploded, it managed to catch her off guard.

She rooted her feet, sliding from her momentum, and slammed her fists up, causing a great wall to leap into the path of the Dai Li who tried to ambush her. She then slammed her foot against that wall and sent it back about ten feet, smashing into the man and hurling him back. She tipped her ear to the path behind her. Yup, they were still following. She ground her foot along the ground, feeling just for a moment the vibrations. There was a clear path, but it wasn't an easy one, somewhere not completely choked with green robed antagonism – as if Toph even knew what 'green' was. It was a path through quite a few walls. That got a smirk onto Toph's face.

She turned immediately and ran through the door which was opposite the Dai Li's ambush, and continued running straight forward, even though there was no door to exit in that direction. Thus, she made one. She barreled through the crumbling rubble even before it settled, and sprinted out of the dust which resulted. Another room, this one with the door on the proper side, but locked. So she went through the closed door itself, causing the lock to fall out and clatter to the ground in her passing. She didn't notice the stone fist shrieking toward her, so it knocked her off of her stride as it landed a glancing punch into her ribs. Oh, that wasn't good. She took a hard intake of breath to get her wind back, and then she pushed forward again, ignoring the source of that attack. There wasn't time. She made herself a hole, one she closed in her wake. It'd slow them down only a moment, but moments were the measure of her quest at this point. She'd take what she could get. She kept running, smashing through walls with all of the couth of a drunken demolitionist. She was outpacing her ability to 'see'. But she knew how narrow her window of opportunity was. She had to use it to its utmost.

A younger her would have just fought any Dai Li agents she found. She'd gotten a lesson on how that goes in the interim. She had to save her fighting for when she couldn't get away, for when it would do the most good. She burst through another wall, this time misjudging her advance and tripping over a thick ridge of carpeting. She managed to turn her fall into a roll, but the shag underfoot and underpalm made it impossible to 'see' what was going on. Who in their right mind would lay out a rug in a place like this? She essentially crawled to the edge, and as soon as she found solid stone, she got back to her feet. She then took one step off of that rug before she realized something pretty important.

Namely, that she was completely surrounded. She didn't turn, as she didn't have to, but she knew that there had to be fifty of them around her, before, behind, to each side. The had flared out as she crawled on her hands and knees to a place where she could see. "This has gone on long enough, traitor. Surrender and we will show a degree of mercy," one of them said, standing in a form which spoke nothing else but readiness of action. Toph didn't glance at him, either.

"We both know how much a degree of mercy is with you guys," she said sarcastically.

"Are you going to resist?" the Dai Li asked. Toph frowned for a moment, then remembered something. She reached into her pants' back pocket, and dug out a squishy feeling sliver. She squeezed it between her fingers a few times, before tucking it behind her ear.

"Buddy, I haven't begun to resist," she said, cracking her knuckles, as she felt her sphere of perception swiftly tighten in. It was a matter of dodging by ear to sweep up a tilting flagstone and block the stone-gloves which tried to catch and assail her. She moved through the melee, honestly, kinda like Twinkletoes did. She was very glad that nobody was around to see her fighting like some fluff-brained airbender, but at the moment, that was what she had. So she slipped through their attacks, breaking those that she couldn't. Shoes and gloves exploded to shards and dust against her fists, against her elbows. Against her feet. That was the one which smarted the most. It was like being poked in the eye, she figured. Her sphere of 'sight' continued to pull in, and the attackers got closer and closer, now lashing out with the prospector's chains, trying to snag and upend her. She let them lock around her wrists, but when the Dai Li tried to heave back, they only pulled back a chunk of metal roughly two feet past their sleeves. The rest belonged to Toph. She quickly twirled the chains, three upon each arm, and used her bending, her metalbending, to fuse them into a heavy stick. All the better to beat an idiot with.

She was slogging forward, and slammed the metal rod in her hand into the face of a Dai Li agent, who was starting to flail a bit at random. The attacks, screaming through the wind, ceased. And the voices of the agents began to rise up, first in alarm, then in panic.

"What's going on? How'd it get so dark?"

"Where is she? I lost track of her!"

"She's there!" one shouted, before launching an attack which smashed one of his compatriots to the ground. "I think I got her!"

"That was me! Are you blind or something?"

"Oh gods. Oh gods I'm blind!" another shouted. Toph's sphere of sight was only about six paces ahead of her, but she didn't run, at this point. She walked. Calmly. Carefully. And every time a man in robes entered her 'sight', she hit him with a rod of metal. The alarm and fear from the agents around her melded into a single din of combat, as she carefully cut her way through the middle of them all. They launched attacks, almost all of which came nowhere near her. She just walked.

As she walked, turning a corner and beginning her way down a corridor, her vision started to expand out again, something she hadn't really expected, but wasn't about to complain about. At first, it was about as feeble as her very first tremorsight had been. Only able to see the stationary and the substantial. But as she moved, swatting Dai Li who got in her way to the ground as she went, it became more refined. Motion. Ahead, she knew that she was in the clear, and not far beyond that would be where she caught wind of whomever else the Dai Li were mobilizing against. She had a fair idea of who. But there was still one Dai Li in her way.

She tried to skirt him, but somehow, he managed to blindly but luckily grab Toph by the shoulder, and heave her against a wall. The impact of it cracked stars into Toph's vision but she shook her head. The Dai Li didn't take chances, opting to raise up a slab of floor to crush her with. Once again, it'd have been a better plan had he not been facing the greatest earthbender in the world. So when that block lurched toward her, she simply set her feet, crossed her arms before her chest, and let the stone burst against her. "Nice try, numbnuts!" she laughed, before almost casually knocking the black and gold hat off of his head with a flick of her rod at his temple. She tapped the floor near where the Dai Li was moaning, but found she couldn't quite get the resolution she needed. She needed to see far. "Well, it was fun while it lasted. Eh, buddy?" she asked, glancing toward the moaning Dai Li agent. When she did, she felt... odd.

Was... that green?

She shook her head, and pulled the sliver from behind her ear. Must have been just her brain acting up after meeting the wall too hard. Blind people couldn't see colors, of course. That was just preposterous. She slipped the sliver into her pocket, and the wave of her earthbending again reached far, showing not only the back of the force of enemy earthbenders advancing away from her... but also the rubble still settling of another Earth Bender fighting them.

"Well, if it ain't the Mountain King," she said as she chucked the rods away so they wouldn't weigh her down, and started running once more. After all, somebody had to pull those old fools out of the proverbial fire, right?

Katara continued to limp on her wounded ankle, trying to keep weight off of it with every step. They'd cast her down into the dimness of this cavern, sealing the way back up behind them; she had no intention of being anywhere for them to find. So she hobbled away, leaning against the wall and moving where the cave would take her.

There was mercy in that she wasn't blind. The crystals down here gave a mild glow of green light. It was similar, if stronger, than the glow which had brought she, her family, and a crazy broken firebender out of the caves under the mountain. She half wondered if there was some connection, this place to that. But at the moment, she just kept hobbling. Usually, it was a terrible idea to get oneself lost in a cave, but usually, those kinds of people didn't have a Toph. She glanced behind her, listening quietly, holding her breath even so that there would be no sounds but those which were cast toward her. Nothing.

With a mild groan, she slid down the wall a bit, curling her wounded leg up onto a rounded bit of crystal, and carefully prodded at the swollen ankle. Painful, definitely, but from the feeling of it, not broken. Slim comfort. She just sat there a moment, taking the time to sweep the flop-sweat which poured off of her brow and using it to start to heal the tenderness of her extremity. That was a skill she was glad she discovered; they may have taken away her flask and much of her water, but as long as she had blood, she was not disarmed. The swelling decreased as she worked the faintly glowing sweat over her foot, until it wasn't a stabbing pain so much as a dull ache. That would have to do. She was something of an expert at triage, at this point; the Spikerim had taught her as much. Now, that she could stand without leaning, walk without hobbling, she needed to keep moving.

"Toph, you better be looking for me," Katara said quietly, before considering what to do with the sweat she'd accrued. She didn't have anything to store it in, after all. She sighed, and just compressed it into salty ice, bringing it with her. No use wasting what might be a finite resource, after all. She walked, slowly at first, but picking up her pace as she saw a place which was partially collapsed, a space barely a foot and a half across between a crystal and the wall, before it narrowed all the further. But she knew she could fit through it. Barely. She took a few breaths, then exhaled deeply, forcing herself sideways through that very narrow gap, if painfully, before coming loose on the other side. It wouldn't slow down something like a Dai Li agent long, but if they didn't know they had to go past it... She reached up and jumped to a rock which jutted out of the crumbling shale and put her whole weight onto it. There was first a grinding, then a more ominous crack, which Katara took as her cue to let go and back away. A few seconds after she did, there was another crack, and that rock she'd held to shifted out of its place in the ceiling, dropping against the glowing crystal and sealing her way back. "That should keep them guessing, at least for a little while."

She turned, and let the illumination guide her way. As she went, she frowned lightly, and shook her head. "I can't believe Qujeck was right!" she said. She threw up her hands and scoffed. "And why am I not surprised? I should have known Long Feng would be all sneaky-snake on us! Ugh, I am such a moron!"

She shook her head, and pushed the hair away from her face. At some point in either their hauling or their unceremonious dumping they'd torn off the ribbon keeping her hair braided, so now it just lay in a wavy heap down her back. She had half a notion to pull a string and tie it back. Only half, though; she needed to keep moving. The area ahead was darker, though. That wouldn't stop her. It just meant there were less crystals lighting it up. In fact, that might work to her benefit. With a resolute smirk on her face, she moved forward into the darkness.

Things had gone so wrong, so fast. She hoped that Aang was coming. But in a way, she hoped he wasn't. Mostly because she was fairly certain that she was the bait for a trap set for him. Aang saw her as a sister, and she knew from experience that Aang'd do anything for family. She slowed her movement as the light died out entirely, and began to edge her way forward, questing with her hands and her toes. Lucky that she had, or she'd have missed the corner and walked straight into a wall. Even so, as she advanced, her toe got stubbed at least a dozen times, cracking into stones unseen on the ground. She glanced up and back, and could see only the faintest outlines of green behind her, and nothing at all ahead. "Huh. I wonder why this part's so dark when everywhere else is so bright?"

She kept moving, trying to find a center to that darkness. She had exactly one handful of water to work with, and she knew that it meant she'd need to have ambush at her side. She kept carefully picking her way forward, but once again, her toe caught on something as she pushed it forward. But unlike the innumerable other rocks her battered tootsies had located, this one had a degree of give, and let out a grunt when it impacted.

Katara stumbled back, until her back thudded against something. "Oh! I'm sorry, I didn't see you there... for obvious reasons."

She could hear breathing in that darkness, breathing growing faster, but nothing but that. No, wait. A scraping of somebody dragging himself across the dirt. She pushed away from the wall, and saw an outline in green, before glancing back. Her hand was covered in oily soot, which she'd rubbed off of a crystal. She reached into her pocket and pulled out the ball of ice. "I'm going to brighten things up a bit. Don't be afraid, whoever you are."

She spread that ice out into her palm and used it to wipe the soot from the crystal, and with each swipe, more light spilled into the room they stood in. Why soot, though? Why would this place have fires and nowhere else? Unless something had been burned here, potentially a long time ago... She didn't have time to worry about those sorts of things. She cleared off the relevant half of a crystal, and recompressed her ice ball. This time, though, it was as black as a coal. Whoever got this thing in the head was going to regret it for days. "Alright, now let's get a good look at..." Katara said, turning to whomever shared this room with her.

She trailed off at what she saw.

"What."

The other occupant in the room was quite familiar to Katara, but not like this. Her clothes, merely a green undershirt and a black vest, and torn white hosery, were all filthy and ragged, as though they'd been ground against stone. Her hands were raw and her fingers bloody, her knees abraded. Dry blood marked by a stain a spot around her lips, and her eyes were so far beyond bloodshot that one of them was entirely red... around a golden iris.

"Azula?" Katara asked, so shocked, so horrified that she actually didn't have enough emotional cognizance left over to be angry. No, wait, there it was. Shock didn't last long, after all. Katara crossed her arms before her chest with a smug look on her face. "Well, I guess you finally got what was coming to you, didn't you?"

The firebender slowly, unsteadily, raised her gaze from the boots to the face, and when she did, she seemed to recoil. Katara smirked all the harder.

"Not so tough now, are you?" Katara asked.

Azula answered by screaming. Katara took a step back, mostly because that scream wasn't hatred or blood-lust. It was abject and animal terror. Azula scooted away, until she was on the very edge of the blackness once again, before pulling her legs close to her chest and huddling against them. Katara blinked a few times, mostly because she needed a few seconds for her brain to recognize that, indeed, that had just happened.

"No. Not real. Not real. She wouldn't be real. She can't hurt me. She's not real," the firebender muttered, but oddly, without any of the accent which had mushed and mangled every other pronouncement of hate and murder that she'd ever given. Katara frowned in bemusement, before taking a step toward Azula. Azula let out a squawk and retreated a bit more, squirming back.

"What are you trying to pull?" Katara demanded.

"She's not really here. She can't hurt me. If I can't see her, she's not really there. Not listening. She can't say anything to me. She can't hurt me anymore..." the firebender continued, a mantra of madness.

"Oh, I get it," Katara said. "This is some little scheme of yours to get your hands on Aang. You..."

"NO! Keep him away! He took my soul! Tore it right out!" Azula howled. But then, she shook her head. "No... No I still have my soul. That didn't happen. It happened to the Old Woman, not to me. I still have my soul. He didn't take it from me. I was already dead."

"I don't believe this little play of yours," Katara said, tapping her foot. "You're just waiting for the right moment to strike. I know that. Clear as polar ice."

"She can't hurt me. I can't hear her. She's not talking to me," Azula litanied, her eyes hard on the ground. "She can't kill me again."

"Kill you again?" Katara asked. She shook her head. "You're not fooling me, Azula. Do you think I'm just going to do whatever you want because you play up the sympathy card? Well, you're wrong! I know what you'd do to us if you had your way! You'd do like you did in Summavut, send my people scattering to the winds!"

"I... no. She's not here. It didn't happen. Zhao died in the North. The North Stands. She's lying to me," and then, a brief sob, before a wracking breath. "Don't cry, you stupid girl! You're better than that! You're supposed to be perfect!"

Katara leaned back, her hands out and to her sides. "Tui La... you're not playing are you. You're really this crazy."

"I'm... I'm not perfect? Why couldn't I be perfect? Why did they leave me? Why did they abandon me?" she asked, sobbing more with each question. Then a growl. "No. They're gone. Mai is dead. Ty Lee is dead. And I am... why am I not dead? She killed me. Killed me under Sozin's Comet. I remember dying... Why am I not dead? I don't understand..."

"W...who killed you?" Katara asked, leaning down toward her. Golden eyes flicked up toward her, and she spat what Katara was fairly sure was blood onto the stone.

"She did. The Avatar's whore. No, not that one. The Avatar's... I don't know what she was to her. She did it, since my brother couldn't."

"Zuko tried to kill you?" Katara asked. That didn't sound like Zuko at all. Tui La, Zuko practically worshiped the ground Azula walked on. Trying to hurt her at all just didn't sound right. And then, Katara started to put the pieces together, and the shape they took surprised her. "Wait a second. Killed you under Sozin's Comet? That's not for another three months!"

"It's already happened. I... Years? I don't understand. I was dead, and then there was a girl, and Mother, and Zuzu, and..." she shook her head. "It doesn't make sense. It's not right. That isn't good enough!"

Katara thought about that for a long moment. "Azula... how many of you are there?" she asked, carefully.

"So loud. They won't stop screaming at each other," she said, her fists pressing into the sides of her head. "Quiet please! Make it stop!"

"We're lost, aren't we, Aang?" Sokka asked in the relative darkness.

"No, I'm just not sure exactly where I am," Aang said. Nila let out a growl at his back.

"I should have taken my chances with the Dai Li," she muttered. Then, there was a pause, as she glanced toward her brother who ambled essentially helplessly forward. "...if certain factors had not intervened."

"I've gotta give Aang my support on this one," Sokka said. "I can deal with one, two if I'm lucky. But twenty? That's just a death-wish."

"So we are consigned to wandering fruitlessly the sewers under the Royal Palace," she said. "Have you not even bothered to mark your passage?"

"With what?" Aang asked.

"With what, asks the earthbender," Nila said caustically. Oh.

"Well, it's all kinda moot, as I still don't know where to even start looking," he said.

"Katara's probably in some place they can keep an eye on her," Sokka said, taking a moment to lean on the wall of the sewer and rub his chin. He wasn't happy going through sewage, but then again, who in their right mind would have been? Only Sharif, who was without smell or taste, was immune to the funk. Who knew that rich people could be so smelly?

"We are looking for somebody?" Sharif asked, blinking slowly. All turned to him, but he was at this moment staring through Aang's head. "Why didn't you just find him? Her? It?"

"A task more easily said than done, brother," Nila pointed out.

"You know Form. Use it. Find what you seek," Sharif stressed. Sokka gave a glance toward Aang, and gave a shrug of bewilderment.

"Would... would that work?" Aang asked.

"All is one. You know where she is. You just haven't seen it," Sharif offered with a shrug.

Nila glanced between Aang and Sokka. "I assume this makes some form of sense to you?"

"It kinda does," Aang said. He ushered Sokka aside, so he had room to actually squat down on the pavers which lay just above the level of the effluence. His legs tucked under him, he pressed his fists together, joining arrows at the knuckles and pressed his eyes closed. Form was one of the hardest things he'd ever done, in terms of spirits. It was like a drawing on a piece of paper suddenly realizing that there was a world of depth, as well as height and width, and trying to see into a place its eyes had never been intended for. Somehow, Aang had done it. Sharif had done it. Others had done it before him. Others would do it after him. So he first opened the World Eyes, and then, opened them further.

A flash of green light. A crone, a child, and a traumatized wreck, somehow all the same person, tearing herself apart.

Freedom, a gust of wind, bearing a body upward which once feared eternity on the ground.

Rage, inconsolable, as the tsunami swept through stone and flesh with equal apathy.

Confusion, as a child tried to deny herself, even as she struggled to hold onto what she was.

This wasn't getting Aang what he wanted. He needed to see finer, with more resolution. He needed to know what was going on beyond the symbols. He needed Form. He needed the meaning. He took in a deep breath, and forced it out slowly, and as he did, there was a tingling throughout his body, as a power seeped into his being, one he neither truly understood nor currently controlled.

As he focused, symbols became clearer. Faces became distinct. First, he thought he saw exactly what he needed to. He saw Katara's face... only for some reason he knew in his soul, it wasn't her. The hair was wrong – no loopies – and Aang strongly doubted that Katara would ever look that murderous. Nor so conflicted. A glance back. A glance forward. And then, the not-Katara forged ahead, vanishing into shadows.

He recognized the tsunami, taking a hateful delight in the brutality he visited on the vague green shapes which flitted into the edge of the vision. A Tribesman with no home, who had given up his family in exchange for revenge. But he wasn't alone. There was a lifeline, holding him back. A hook of steel.

The next confused him. A scape of sky, with a figure soaring through it. Red wings, and an orange body. Not a bird, though. Was this some sort of image of his future? No. He somehow just felt that this was right now. So it had to mean something beyond the obvious, because the only airbender besides Aang was a crazy cannibal lady.

Then, the last. First, a girl, golden eyed, gouging at the face of a grey-haired, hardbitten woman with her long fingernails. The woman held the girl just out of reach, her rough hands squeezing the girl's neck shut. Standing between both, hands clutched with murderous intent onto either throat was... Azula... but not an Azula that Aang knew. This was was thinner. Less strong and muscular. And her eyes didn't look right. She was screaming. Aang could hear her words. Quiet. Please. Make it stop.

All three were her. He didn't know how, but all three of them were Azula. He focused his attention in, onto that last vision, and demanded more. The three became one, who was... huddled on the floor in a place so dark that it only shone with a faint green light. And another was near her. The power, the pain in Aang's head began to ramp as he forced himself to look even closer, to see what she could see, to feel the connection between all things and know.

Aang's eyes slammed open, and a faint white light faded away around him. "I know where Katara is," he said, managing to substitute 'Azula' for 'Katara' at the last possible instant, although both were accurate since both were in the same place.

"What? Really?" Nila asked, skeptical.

"It's Avatar-shenanigans. You get used to it," Sokka waved her questions away. "Where is she, Aang?"

"Down. Far down," Aang said, as he spun and slammed a hole into the side of the sewer, one which began to descend steeply. "Down in the bones of the first city of Ba Sing Se, buried under layers of city stretching back five thousand years."

"Five thousand years? That is before even the Monolith," Nila said. Aang nodded earnestly, and sparked a light above his hand as he descended. Nila raised a brow. "I am lesser a student of history; was there a city those milliennia ago?"

"Yup," Sokka said. "Although it belonged to weird looking folk who made a point of getting really frickin' angry all the time."

"And you know this..."

"Because I'm how Doctor Toph Beifong knows about the Wiqing," Sokka said with a bit of pride.

"...so why is she the doctor and not you?"

Sokka deflated a bit at that. "You know, that's a good question!"

"Down is a dangerous direction," Sharif said. "It is... dark down there."

"You are old enough that you need not fear the dark. Come, Sharif!" Nila chastized, and dragged her brother down into the hole which Aang was preparing to extend. They had far to go. And honestly, Aang wasn't sure what exactly he'd find when he got there.

"Come on, get up!" Bato shouted, as he scooped Piandao up from where he'd stumbled, his teeth grit in pain. Both looked battered and bloodied, as the Dai Li knew who the most important targets were. "Sati, is the Earth King still... here?"

Sativa took a few moments to catch her breath, not something she needed to do frequently, and took stock of her situation. Whatever brainwashing that Joo Dee had been under fatefully hadn't triggered again, and for that reason alone did they bear her presence. That, and the understandable wrath of an impressively and impossibly powerful young earthbender. She didn't look well, and didn't say much once the fighting started. The Earth King was still in their grasp, but with her own quiver empty and nothing but knives in her hands, they lacked range. With the Mountain King starting to finally show his wounds as well, they would soon lose defense as well. And Sati honestly didn't have a plan for what to do from this point. Everything she had was improvisation, spur of the moment actions to prevent a complete and instantaneous catastrophe.

"He is here," Sati said. "Zha Yu. A moment. I need counsel."

Zha Yu, of all of them, looked the most beaten, and conversely, the most ready. If there was a single spot on his body not either playing host to a bruise, a laceration, or a hard stone scrape, then she was a Tribesman and her children were heirs to Summavut. But even as he fought to keep his wind, and tried to rotate some mobility and sensation into aching arms, he had a look of resolution to him. He wouldn't be the first to fall, that much was clear. "What is it?"

"What now?" she asked simply. Zha Yu raised a brow, then shrugged. He wasn't about to make a joke in a time like this.

"And I thought you'd rather die than accept the advice of somebody with testicles," he said with a chuckle. Never mind that, he obviously still was able to make a joke at a time like this. He shook his head at her death glare. "Getting Kuei out is our priority, but we need to find a way to get as much of the Council of Five out as well. Don't leave Long Feng with anything."

"We can assume that Jong-Uu, Qing, and Fong are firmly in Long Feng's clutches," Sati said, motioning others to follow her. Zha Yu gave Kuei a mild shove, and the squirrelly, immature man meekly obeyed. "That leaves How and Sung."

"Leave Sung," Zha Yu shook his head. "He's a useless tactician and strategist."

"On the contrary," Sati said, shaking her head. "He is a logistical genius. That man could land an army upon the face of the moon, and somehow find a way to give them two hearty meals and a warm blanket each day. If we fight an international war, we shall need that."

Zha Yu gave a hesitant nod. "You might have a point."

"Of course I do. If I know one thing well, it is war," Sativa pointed out.

"Wait!" Kuei said, freezing still and causing Zha Yu to walk into him. "What about Bosco?"

"Your pet? He is of no great consequence," Sativa said dryly.

"I'm not going anywhere without Bosco!" Kuei said, folding his arms petulantly before him. Sativa stared at this contrary man, and sighed, rubbing her brow with tattooed hands.

"You do realize that if we side-track, even so far as to find your pet on our first attempt, we make it effortless for Long Feng's men to capture us?" she asked. Kuei, though, was as adamant as somebody who looked like he did could be. She ground her teeth, and thrust a finger toward him. "Stay here. Piandao?"

"I couldn't say," the faltering swordsman admitted. "It is conceivably possible to reach where Kuei's pet would be... but we'd have no exit strategy."

"We currently have no exit strategy," Bato pointed out, limbering one arm which'd had to be popped back into its socket fairly recently. He did so tentatively and gingerly, even as Joo Dee now supported Piandao's slumped form with his handless arm over her shoulders.

"What about the Avatar? Could his bison not bear us up?"

"With a bear on its back?" Piandao asked with a pained laugh. He shook his head. "It doesn't matter how well, the young man has tamed it, nothing is domestic enough to let a bear ride it over the horizon."

"I... might have a way out," Zha Yu said. All turned to him, and he pulled an orb out of his jacket. It was black and white, stripes drifting lazily across its surface. "It'll be a tight fit, but this will recycle in the next hour or so. Rough trip, and we might not land where we want to, but we'll be far away from here. That's what matters in this case."

"You are mad," Piandao said. "That thing almost killed Llewenydd!"

"It only does that one time in a hundred, and if you're fast enough, you can get out of the way," Zha Yu said. He shrugged. "Its our only way out, period."

The Dragon of the East nodded. "Very well. The Avatar is safely out of Long Feng's clutches. It is time to be bold. You shall have your pet, but thereafter, you will swiftly find yourself in exile, far away from your splendors. Do you understand this?"

"I... I guess so," Kuei said haltingly.

"There is no guessing, Earth King. You either understand, or you do not. You will be as a peasant, a stateless man amongst the East. You will have but the clothes on your back, and that which others deign give you. Do. You. Understand?"

Kuei couldn't answer with words, so opted to simply nod. She nodded as well, and then pointed up. "Zha Yu, it is time to do something insane. If you would indulge me?"

"I most certainly would," Zha Yu said, and then, he gathered them all close together, before bearing them upward, through the floors of the Royal Palace atop a pillar of stone.

A little more than a minute later, a dirty and angry blind girl came to a skidding halt, before slamming a palm into that same pillar. "Oh, you crazy old bastard," Toph Beifong said, a smirk nevertheless coming to her mouth. "Ready or not, here comes the Toph!"

And then, she was borne upward as well.

"Is this beast supposed to be flying like this?" How shouted from where he clung desperately to the bison's pelt. Zuko didn't dare flick a glance back to him, because it took every whit of his effort to keep the creature from bolting out of his control.

"You're asking the wrong person," Zuko snapped over his shoulder, "but I'm guessing, no!"

Zuko couldn't be blamed for this, of course. While Aang had told him to get How out of harm's reach, even several hundred yards in the air was a reasonable assumption of 'out of harm's reach'. It wasn't like he was facing down against Storm Kings or firebenders; earthbenders were slaves to the dirt. It was for that reason that the black streaks shooting up toward them were such a surprise.

"We seem to be losing altitude," How shouted forward.

"I'm aware!" Zuko shouted back, even as he sawed on the reins and tried to dodge between those black streaks. The bison might have been a resilient and implacable brute, but like anything large, a sufficient number of bug-bites could kill it. And each 'bug-bite' in this case, was a stone glove, compacted into the beast's shaggy hair like a mat of mange. Each a bit more weight, slowing the beast down a bit more, so more gloves could catch hold, and slow it down all the further.

"The ground's coming up fairly fast!" How said, alarm clear in his voice.

"You're not helping," Zuko snapped over his shoulder, even as he dodged the occasional boulders which were launched to try to intercept the bison in its path. He heaved back on the reins, but the bison didn't pull up. Probably because, at this point, it couldn't. Zuko glanced aside. "If I'm very lucky – and I tend to be – I might be able to get you near the Middle Ring at this rate."

"As long as I'm in Ba Sing Se, I might as well be a dead-man," How shouted against wind. "What's your other plan?"

Zuko shrugged uncomfortably, the reins biting into his palms. "I'm still working on that," he said, quietly enough that the old general couldn't hear him. Another barrage of black, this time plowed through because the bison became more sluggish with each attack. Zuko muttered various angry things at the incoming projectiles, and then hoped that his luck was on the upswing right now. Because he'd need it. He stood on the beast's brow, hooking the reins 'round one of his calves, and then began to blast out with bolts of fire, golden and swift, a counter-barrage smashing through the gloves as they approached. He blasted down first a dozen, then a score. It would have been impressive, had there not been a hundred streaking upward. One of them slammed shut around his sleeve, its momentum carrying him backward despite his swordsman's balance, and a second latching onto his ankle dumped him onto his back. And without a level or stable surface, that meant he started to slide.

He'd only made it two feet before the reins arrested him, but it left him dangling just beside the bison's eye, and he couldn't reach his boot to pull himself up. The bison let out a bellow, which to Zuko's desperate ears was a warning, and then started to rotate. First slowly, then with adding speed until Zuko had something to grab onto – Appa's black lips – and force himself around and back into place. "I guess I owe you for that one," he said on his way back 'twixt the horns. He shot a glance back. The white fur of the bison was slowly vanishing, under weight upon weight of dark stone, locked into place. If Zuko didn't care about Appa's long-term condition, he could just blast the stone pods off, but... that would probably cripple it. And the weight was only increasing.

"You almost threw me off of this monster!" How shouted forward.

"You're welcome," Zuko snapped, before taking the reins back in hand. He looked around, and could see nothing but buildings, and a quick estimation of drop over distance told him that there was no way but down. And he couldn't leave the others behind. Not after he'd gone this far. Without the Avatar, Ozai would be on the Burning Throne forever... or long enough to do irreparable harm. Without the Avatar, there was no way to make his homeland safe for his sister.

And to be honest, it just didn't feel right, leaving the others behind like that.

"We're going down. What's a defensible courtyard?" Zuko shouted. How frowned for a moment, but then pointed, to one which was at the heart of a somewhat spartan looking structure. Likely the Royal Garrison. Zuko pulled the reins over, but the bison resisted him. "You're going to have to trust me on this one, bison," Zuko muttered under his breath. And the bison answered with a bellow. Or at least, a naïve part of Zuko's mind ascribed that bellow as an answer. Appa then began to turn, even as its toes smashed through the highest adornments of the outer buildings, knocking over statues and dropping grotesques and waterspouts to clang or shatter against the courtyard as their material demanded. The beast spread its legs out wide, but even so, when it hit the ground, it did so at a slide which sent ornate mosaics flying out of their seat.

"Why did we land?" How asked, as he slid off of the beast's back.

"I thought it'd be obvious," Zuko cast a thumb at the coat of Appa, which was now almost salt-and-pepper for the hanging adornments weighing it down. "Seal this place up. I need to let the Avatar know I'm h–"

Zuko was cut off when something struck him in the back of the head. He was thrown from his feet, and the impact sent him hard onto his face on those mosaiced cobbles. He slowly pushed himself up, rubbing the back of his head, and feeling the sting, there. Yes, as expected, something hit him hard enough to split his scalp. Luckily, it wouldn't ruin this shirt. Red didn't show blood very well.

"Prince Zuko! Look out!" How shouted. Zuko glanced from the general to where he was facing, and saw that there were a pair of Dai Li sliding down the roofs and landing with soft patters. One of them launched chains at How, but this time, the General only allowed one to catch him. The other, hurled another glove at Zuko.

Zuko kipped straight up, allowing the glove to pass just underneath him, and then rolled aside. There was no time to be bleary. He had to send the signal, that he'd agreed on. But to do that, he'd need a few seconds more than these green robed ghosts were going to allow him. He looked ahead of him, and saw his swords where they'd been dropped. No point in leaving those down there. Zuko punched forward with bolts of fire, but the Dai Li had that well in hand, raising blocks to shield himself, before sending those same blocks in attack toward Zuko. He quickly found himself pressed onto the defense, as the overwhelming offense of the clear-headed Dai Li agent trumped the slightly concussed cognition of a defensive firebender. He needed an edge. Both figuratively and literally.

Zuko fought his way forward, using the Dai Li's attacks to give him gaps for advancement. Just a few more feet. He didn't even pay attention to the insane earthbending duel between the general and the Dai Li agent, both of whom were on different sides of the same chain. He had to focus on his own problems. Zuko swept low, a sweeping kick which sent a rippling wave of fire at the Dai Li's feet, and then twisted his entire body around a second time to level a second right on the heels of the first, but noticeably higher. The effect intended was that the Dai Li would bound to avoid the first, and be perfectly placed for the second. Only the Dai Li had better reactions than that, and twisted mid-air, passing above one and below the other. But he'd been thrown off of his balance, just for a moment. A moment Zuko used. He hurled himself to the blades, very near the still recovering Dai Li, and slammed his fingers around the double hilts, and pulled up.

Only to have a boot slam down onto the scabbard, an instant before he could draw. Zuko glanced up, but didn't have any limb in the right position to bend flame. The Dai Li twisted his arm back, and then began to thrust forward, a stone glove preparing to fly down and smash in the Fire Nation Prince's face. Only it didn't, because of a different streak zooming through the air. This one, white.

With a screaming and chattering that Zuko honestly didn't think that he'd have to endure again before the whole 'boy in the iceberg' business, a lemur shot down out of the heavens and attached itself to the Dai Li agent's face, pounding, scratching, pulling, and generally being an overwhelming distraction of an animal. The Dai Li took a step back, and Zuko turned his attention to the other. Two grown men, tied together, and lashing at each other with earthbending at essentially zero range. Zuko glanced to the one which was now wheeling, trying to claw Momo off of his face, and deftly pulled his blades, letting the motion clock the man in the back of the neck with the pommels, dropping the man to his knees, before Zuko's boot to the back of his head finished things, leaving a somewhat irate looking lemur flapping about, and a Dai Li agent with a scratched and bruised face and a broken conical hat.

"Go do that again for him," Zuko ordered the Lemur. It stared at him, flapping itself in place and chattering insensibly. Unlike with Appa, Zuko felt no inclination to believe that the lemur was understanding what he was saying. Zuko rolled his eyes, and then ran behind the Dai Li, the stiff scabbard in his other hand with the twin blades in his right, and clouted the man in the ear with the blunter of the two objects. That gave How plenty of time to loop the chain around the Dai Li agent's head and choke him right out.

"Now what?" How asked, as he heaved on the chain.

Zuko took a breath, trying to screw his focus to the sticking place and shake off the stars in his vision. He had to do this right. And more importantly, somebody had to be listening. He twisted his blades and his arms with them through a familiar mudra, but as they did, the blades began to hum, as though there were some life and song to them. But that was only because of a side effect of his bending. They hummed louder, a sound quite unlike any otherwise heard in the world, until the energy that he'd torn apart inside himself came crashing back together, and he thrust a sword straight up. A bolt of lightning, crisp and utterly out of place, shot straight into the sky. "And if they didn't hear that. We do it over and over until somebody does.

"I could just clear the bison," How said, still struggling with the resilient Dai Li agent. Zuko shook his head. The bison was battered and beaten. It panted as though it had just flown half-way around the world, and its posture was listing and its eyes, glassy.

"Won't help," Zuko said. "It's on the Avatar, now."

Iroh halted, turning toward a window, which caused Hakoda to falter as well. "What is it?" the Tribesman asked, looking around in alarm. Their disguises had, for the moment, held, so they weren't accosted as they swept the Palace, looking for his niece and the other man's daughter, but that was little help. The Palace was every bit as large as Iroh had imagined it. That was working against him.

"Zuko has given his signal," Iroh said.

"What signal?" Hakoda asked.

"One he agreed he would only use in utmost peril. He is trapped, and in danger," Iroh said. He glanced to the hall ahead of him, then back to Hakoda. "I am sorry, but I have to help my nephew. I cannot divide myself against my family, and my nephew, at least, is in that direction."

Hakoda seemed to have something on his tongue, but he held it in. He shook his head for a moment, but finally gave a nod. "I understand. Go. I'll find Hikaoh."

"Just be prepared," Iroh warned. "You have seen what has become of her, and regaining it... might break your heart completely."

"That's a price I'm willing to pay," Hakoda said.

"So often said, before the bill comes due," Iroh muttered with a shake of his head. He patted the Tribesman on the arm. "Good luck, and swift passage. I fear you will need both."

"Are you sure this is the right way, Jet?" Smellerbee asked, and not for the fifth time.

"I'm telling you, this is the way that the guy kept coming from," Jet answered.

"That leaves a lot of ground," Bug answered.

"Don't split up. It'd be suicide," the waterbender pointed out. "We'll either find him or we won't, but if we stay here much longer, we're going to face a lot more Dai Li than we've been seeing so far."

"What makes you think that?" Jet asked.

"Because these ones are just the Dai Li that haunt the Middle and Upper Rings. The plain-clothes agents match their number combined, and would be coming in from the Lower Ring by now," Qujeck pointed out.

Jet did a bit of math in his head, and when that failed, he gave a querulous shrug to the others with him. Longshot's look simply said 'a lot'. Mai nodded at that assessment, and added her own. "More than a lot."

"Yeesh. Could be a problem," Jet said mildly. But even as his next flippant remark was being born on his tongue, it promptly died and was replaced by an expression of utmost solemnity, his eyes flashing hard and sharp like chert as he waved a hand to cause the others to halt or else get a sword through their shirt. The others looked at his back, and waited. "We're not alone."

"News, that is not," Qujeck muttered, but quietly.

Jet ignored the Tribesman and edged his way toward a threshold which lead from one ward of the Earth King's Palace to another, demarcated mostly by shifts of decoration. He waited, and he listened. He could hear the whisper grinding of stone being dragged along stone, but lightly, and he started to send his eyes through the fluted columns which made up the atrium amidst these wards. Every pillar held statues, or plinths with ancient relics. A larcenous part of Jet wanted to have a run through of this place before he left, but that part of him was slapped thoroughly down by the part of him which fancied himself a patriot. If he was going to steal from his own people, then he'd might as well be one of Ozai's brutes.

He couldn't see him. Jet knew that there was a Dai Li agent up there. While he didn't doubt that if there were only one – itself not a sure bet – they could take him, ambush could swing things pretty starkly, and very quickly. They were using the tactics Jet favored. Hit and fade, never stay still, and never fight when the opponent is dug in. That sort of fighting had worn them all down, since that so-called execution. They were starting to slow down. Even the young only had so much stamina, after all. Jet cast a glance back to Longshot, and the quiet archer caught his silent meaning, stalking forward on gum-soled shoes, silent on the stone. He didn't even look. He just slowly turned his head, left to right, and back again, as he with great deliberation pulled an arrow from the quiver at his hip. The one at his shoulder was long empty.

Longshot's sweeping halted, and his thick brows drew down, in focus. Then, he turned to face in one particular direction. He leaned a bit back and to the side, and nodded. Then, in a smooth and single motion, he brought up the bow, drew back the arrow, and let fly, a snap of bowstring and the hiss of fletchings sounding across the room, until there was a clack as it hit one of the pillars. Jet gave Longshot an alarmed glance, as it wasn't like Longshot to miss, but the archer just flicked him a glance. 'Wait for it'. The next sound to be heard was a meaty thwack as the deflected arrrow slammed into something, followed by a clipped but not-completely-stifled shout of pain, followed by a cry of alarm, followed by an impact of body against floor. 'You can say it'.

"That was a hell of a shot, Longshot," Jet said, and he nodded into the room again. Longshot shok his head, clearly 'I didn't hear anybody else. If there are, they're good at hiding'. Then, Jet led them all forward once again.

"You know your sniper well," Qujeck said.

"Yeah, he's a real chatty one," Jet said with a chuckle, as he pressed forward into the pillars. Whoever decided that this would be the architectural theme of the Royal Palace should have been dragged into the streets and beaten with dead elephant rats. All that it did was make it incredibly easy for people to ambush folk. He passed the Dai Li agent, who was clutching at his leg, where the arrow had neatly punched through his kneecap. Jet knew from experience just how much that hurt, so the fact that he wasn't moaning in pain was a bit remarkable. The agent's eyes shot wide, and he pulled stone out of the column behind him, to hurl it in brick form at Jet, but even as he was trying to haul it out, a lash whipped around he and the pillar both, binding his arm up by his head and his other down at his side. Bug then leaned around the pillar, scowling lightly.

"One of these days, you're gonna do that and somebody's gonna waste you," his resident master weaponizer of all things ropey pointed out sourly.

"Never gonna happen," Jet said. He clucked his tongue as he walked past the Dai Li, and toward the first glimmer of sunlight he'd seen since fleeing the courtyard where Long Feng was supposed to die. "Glad I'm not him. That's got to be a career ending injury."

Behind him, unnoticed by the teenagers, Qujeck paused by the Dai Li, and glanced down at him.

"How right he is," Qujeck muttered, then quickly pulled the arrow out of the man's knee. The man let out a groan, but not more than that. Qujeck quickly pulled the water, balling it around the whole arrow, and drifting the thing to the center of the man's chest. Then, with a subtle but powerful twist, slammed that arrow straight in, nailing the man to the floor. Qujeck then turned, pulling his water back to himself, if a little redder, and following after the others. Unlike even the professed freedom fighter, Qujeck held no illusions that the revolution would be civilized.

Hatred and rage had changed to pity, and she wasn't sure how or when. Azula just shivered, staring at Katara in outright terror, until she didn't. Until there was a tremor running through her, and she let out a terrible groan and started to twitch helplessly. Even Katara's much announced – usually by Sokka during the old days – vindictive streak wasn't enough to keep her standing by and letting somebody suffer, even if it was somebody as crazy and dangerous as Azula.

Azula couldn't use the water in her pocket on Azula; she knew it'd be too impure by now. But Azula was sweating a lot, and bleeding quite a bit as well. It was almost an experiment, to see if she could still bend blood, but it proved just as viable today as it had on that desperate battlefield. And strangely, healing seemed all the easier with it. Not that she could do much. Close the wounds in Azula's tongue where she bit it to shreds. Repair muscles torn by heedless and helpless jerking. But when she tried to soothe the mind, she didn't feel any change for the better. Just an endless swirl of chaotic and self-destructive energy.

The eyes flit open, after that long spell of catatonia, and she blinked a few times as though in confusion. "Wh..where..."

"You're awake?" Katara asked.

Azula's face pulled into a humorless scowl. "...course awake. How else... would I ask that question?"

Katara slowly moved away from her. "You're not going to scream at me again, are you?" she asked.

"Why? Who are you supposed to be, other than a filthy peasant?" Azula muttered. And without that accent, again. She worked her jaw for a moment. "Wait. Why can't I feel my legs?"

"You should," she said, growing more suspicious by the moment. "There's nothing wrong with your neck or your back."

Golden eyes flit around, but they didn't rest on anything for very long. "I... I can't move..."

"C... I can't believe I'm saying this, but calm down, Azula," Katara said.

"What has happened to me? Have I been poisoned?"

"What are you doing?" Katara asked. "Don't you have any idea what's going on?"

"Yes. I was... Trying to capture the Avatar... for some reason... Why would I do that? He's been missing for a century," she seemed confounded. But those eyes flit to Katara once again. "Do I know you? You seem familiar. You are one of Mai's friends, aren't you? You've go the look of a Gork about you, if you don't mind the term."

Katara shook her head for a moment. "Seriously. Hatred, terror, and now indifference? Can't you make up your mind about me?" she asked, and only half serious.

"Don't be absurd. I am not afraid of anybody," She said with a roll of her eyes. Then, she stopped. "Wait. Uncle. There was a ship... and Zuzu. And a pillar of light."

Katara shook her head, and moved so that both she and Azula were in the same pool of greenish light. "Since you're not wolfbat-shit crazy," Katara said, borrowing a term from her brother's more vulgar library, "I need to know why there seem to be three of you."

Azula blinked a few times, and then stared straight up at the ceiling. Then, those eyes widened. "Agni's flame... I'm not alone in here," she said with a note of disgust. "Who did this to me? Who are these people?"

"Does your brother know about your madness?" Katara asked. Azula glared a hateful look at Katara, so she shrugged and amended that, "or at least, this specific madness?"

"I am perfectly sane," she said venemously. "It's the others who are crazy."

Katara leaned forward, "...and who are the others?"

"I think that th.. ta... oh sar... sar... no I can fau..." she let out a groan of annoyance. "Qua... My worv – woorrv – damn it!"

"What's happening?" Katara asked, and Azula's response was another of those brutal groans, her body pulling in, her eyes rolling back, and then she started to thrash and flail once again, trapped in the grips of a spastic fit. All Katara could do was keep her from smashing her head against rocks as she did so.

"This is absolutely crazy," Katara said.

And then, the wall slammed down, and orange light poured into the room. Katara blinked against it, being able to see in useful color again. And it took her a moment to realize that she didn't need the ball of black water she had in her palm, because that flame was lit over the palm of a tattooed hand. "Katara! You're alright!" Aang said with obvious joy and rushed to give her a tackling embrace which drove her a couple of steps back from where Azula had dropped from thrashing into catatonia and twitching. "I was so worried, and everything's going wrong, and people are getting hurt, and Irukandji said that Long Feng got out and his Dai Li are taking over Ba Sing Se and OH MY GODS YOUR DRESS IS ON FIRE I'M SORRY!"

Katara looked to her sleeve and noted that it was, indeed, smoldering from Aang's firebending, but she slapped it out with a moment of shock before he took a few steps directly backward, and didn't heed Sokka's warning, so managed to trip over Azula and land on his back, legs splayed over her. "I assume from his shouting that he has found your sister?" Nila's voice came from the tunnel above, but Aang's eyes were locked onto Azula.

"What happened?" Aang said, pulling his legs off of her. "Did you...?"

The way he looked at her, that this was a question he didn't want to ask but felt he had to, hurt just a bit directed at Katara. "I'm trying to help her, but there's something wrong with her," Katara said, trying to explain herself. "She's having thrashing fits and even when she's not, she's not in her right mind. She was either terrified of me, or didn't know who I was. This is bad, Aang."

At the Avatar's back, Sokka was joined by the Si Wongi girl, and then her brother for some reason. Aang looked positively beside himself, staring down at Azula, and Katara had no idea why. Sharif, though, stared down at Azula. And that was worth noting, since he most definitely was focused on the girl, rather than a thousand yards beyond her.

"One and one and one... is one. But it doesn't fit," Sharif said. He looked up at Aang. "Where is the fourth?"

"This is not the time to yammer, brother," Nila said, stooping down to pull Azula's arm over her shoulder and bear her up. "If we are here to save the wayward prince's sister, we have done so. Now let us leave this city before it kills us."

"What about your Mom?" Sokka asked, as she reached him, heading up to the inclined tunnel Aang had come down through.

"I have no doubts that she will escape this coup," she muttered.

"She didn't escape last time Long Feng set his sights on her," Sokka pointed out. Nila halted, hung her head, and sighed.

"Damn you and your faultless logic. We shall save Mother, as well, then. And damn you for forcing me to."

"Better damned than orphaned, I think," Sokka said with a shrug. He turned to Aang. "Are you gonna be alright?"

"Everything's going wrong so fast," Aang said, despairing. "I... I thought things would be different, this time."

"They will," Katara promised. "We've still got hope."

"Hope is precious little succor when your foe has a blade to your throat," Nila shouted from above.

"And we've got us, and we've got you," Katara continued. "I'd back us against Fire Lord Ozai and anything he's got to throw against us any day of the week."

"Besides, I've already started working on a back-up plan for the day of Black Sun," Sokka said. "Come on. I'll tell you on the way up."

"Really?" Aang said, brightening a bit. He nodded, and started to ascend, serving as the group's light source as they moved to an upper chamber. Sokka, though, turned to Katara, and beckoned her toward him.

"So, have any adventures while I was out in the Reaches?"

"Got proven wrong by a paranoid nutbag," she said. "Also learned that Azula can talk without a weird accent."

"Should I even ask how you got away from the Dai Li?" Sokka asked.

Katara slowly shook her head. "I'm not really sure that I did."

"General Sung, I presume?" Piandao said dryly as he helped the old and laughable logistician to his feet.

"What is going on?" Sung asked, even as Sati deftly popped the locks on the manacles and released his arms and legs from bondage. The Dai Li on the other end of those chains were for the moment stationary, and cutting off hands to free the chains was both messy and a bit brutal, in Zha Yu's opinion.

"We're saving your life. Where are the other Generals?"

"I don't know," Sung said, even in terror apologetic. "When... when I asked, they said I was 'the fourth', so I think they've got them already. Dai Li! This is treason most high!"

"Long Feng seems to be in a treasonous mood right now," Sati said with a roll of her eyes, and leaned slightly to look past Zha Yu, to see Bato and Kuei jogging down the hallway. Followed by a ton of brown fur topped in a jaunty green hat.

"I take it you have found clear to prevent your pet from becoming a coat?" Sati asked. Kuei looked a little aghast at that, but the Dragon of the East was already turning to the Mountain King. "Now that we have run out of pointless side treks, it is time to leave."

"I couldn't agree more," Zha Yu said. "I heard the Prince's panic signal a few minutes ago."

"What? He is in the city again? Is he a fool, or just foolhardy?"

"Unlucky, more likely," Piandao offered, rotating his one good arm trying to get the feeling back into it.

"We've got a problem," Joo Dee said, where she was until then standing silent, her hands pressed against the stone of the walls. "We've got Dai Li starting to converge on us... and somebody big is coming with them."

"Then we must flee," Sati said.

"A tactic which would have been most useful months ago," Bato pointed out with utter monotone.

"You can mock my hubris later, when we are not on the cusp of dying or worse!"

"We're always on the cusp of dying or worse. I think you do it just to keep people from being able to criticize you," Zha Yu pointed out.

"Enough!" Sativa said. "How much time do we have?"

"About two minutes," Joo Dee said, then she halted. "No, wait. Less."

All that Zha Yu needed to hear. With a thrust, he smashed down the walls and formed his own hallway into the distance, cleaving through rooms and servants passages with utter disdain for purpose, and with that new path opened, all began to flood into it. Zha Yu wasn't the only one, he wagered, who was exhausted. Sativa looked on the verge of simply slumping against a wall and sleeping for an hour or twelve. Fighting, or at least, fighting on this scale for this long, it was a young person's game.

They didn't so much run as briskly jog, as it was the best speed they could manage, and as they went, Zha Yu could hear others coming closer. Walls crumbling as unkind hands wanted ways through them. They wouldn't follow directly in the group's wake, because the Dai Li weren't idiots. But they had ways of making up time.

"Get down!" Piandao's shout was followed immediately by the swordsman tackling the Dragon of the East to the floor, as a web of chains began to shoot from both perpendiculars, trying to snare them in a cross fire. Zha Yu flicked up with his toe, hurling a brick first at one side, then the other, but with the sheer amount of dust and debris which choked sight and lung, he couldn't hit worth a damn. The two on the ground rolled forward until they were out from under the net, and then began to sprint. Joo Dee, though, raised up her hands toward the center of that metal morass and bent, a spoked and jagged pillar rising roughly to chest height, before it started to twist, catching all of that metal in its juts and grooves, and hauling inward. First, there was a bit of resistance, but resistance proved futile, and the bearers of those chains came stumbling and sliding into view, being dragged to and then trapped against the capstan of her bending.

At that, Zha Yu couldn't help but give a bit of a paternal smile of approval. She wasn't much of a human being when they first found her, but as works-in-progress go, she turned out fairly well. Smart, inventive, and quick on her feet. And despite his worst fears... some of that was still there.

Zha Yu bounded over them, pulling a section of the floor with him as he did, encasing them as mired as they were inside a cocoon which held them utterly in place. There were very few people who could bend without motion. He supremely doubted that any random agent of the Dai Li would be that special somebody. As he ran, he caught the arm of Kuei with one and the arm of Joo Dee with the other. "Alright, we're not out of the woods yet," Zha Yu said.

"Woods? I thought we were still in the palace?" Kuei asked alarmed. Bosco just gave a burbling grunt and sauntered along with them, clearly the calmest of anybody in the room. Then again, the bear had little to fear from recapture.

Zha Yu had almost caught up with Sati and Piandao when ahead of them, he could see Bato, who was sprinting back toward them. Zha Yu skidded to a halt. "Not that way!" the Tribesman said with alarm burning through his legendary composure. Zha Yu turned to the servant's pass which he was closest to, and made it only two steps before black stone gloves hurled at him, trying to catch his throat, his wrists, anything to slow him down. Instead, they caught a brick, which he snapped toward it in a moment of remarkable luck and reaction time, which turned both to dust. Not that way, either.

"We've got somebody coming from behind?" Joo Dee asked.

"And from the sides," Bato said, ducking back around the corner just as something slammed into the stonework, causing it to splinter and clatter to the floor.

"Wait... I think I know who that is," Joo Dee said, her eyes not focused on anything.

"This isn't the time for reunions, you daft woman!" Sativa snapped, pulling her knives back into hand. "We must stand here, until they break in the slightest, or we do."

"We could just go down," Zha Yu hazarded. Joo Dee shook her head. "What? Why not?"

"Take a guess, Papa," Joo Dee said with a look of exhaustion.

Bato let out a mild sigh, into the crumbling, the rumbling, and the destruction. "Well, it was nice knowing you. Oh wait, it wasn't," he contracted with a scowl.

"You loved it," Zha Yu pointed out.

Bato was stony for a moment, then the slightest smirk broke his facade. "It's certainly been memorable."

Zha Yu's witty rejoinder was cut off by a brick slamming into his shoulder. It hurt as much as any he'd taken over the years, with the added detriment that he probably wouldn't heal as well from it and the fact that he was surrounded by people who'd see fit to deny him even that opportunity. Surrogate daughter and surrogate father stood, back to back, waiting for the waves to crash. And oh, how they did.

It went from silence to pandemonium in a blink of an eye. A white blade danced through metal chains, slashing them down every time that one managed to affix a limb. A short, faintly blue spear moved through the men, who tried to stay mobile, but they couldn't keep up with a spectre of death from the South Water Tribe. Sativa's blades ended any who got close enough, usually in one deft thrust. And Zha Yu, and Joo Dee? They fought. They fought, working a circle around the cowering and terrified Kuei, walls rising out of the floor to their will, bricks flying at near-random. But it wasn't enough.

Until an unexpected voice joined the melee.

"Comin' through, old guys!"

And with that, Zha Yu found his back being vaulted, and bare feet slammed down on the ruptured and shattered stone before his eyes, before the teenage girl rolled up, and when she did, she cast out both hands toward Kuei. But the wall she called into being was well beyond him, and slammed forward along the hallway, until it started to crest and break like a storm-thrown wave. Toph Beifong took two steps forward before being snared by a chain, but with Piandao nowhere near enough to help her. So she helped herself, twisting that chain around and doing that seemingly impossible metalbending, tearing those chains apart with her bare hands. Two Dai Li tried to flatten her with rams hurled from opposing directions. Toph just brought the floor up starkly and abruptly enough that it's appearance, a square column in the center of the floor, sent her flying into the air. When she landed, it was with a fist leading, which split that pillar in two, before a furious twist of both arms sent the bisected block flying in both directions.

It was glorious. It was every bit what Zha Yu should have expected from a child of Joo Dee. "You're not doing a good job of getting out of here," Toph pointed out, as her feet slid along the cratered floor like she was skating upon a smooth pane of ice, weaving through the attacks of the Dai Li and sending precise and focused counterattacks which they could neither dodge nor counter. Not effectively, anyway. She thrust her hand to one side. "Sparky's having some trouble that way; Twinkletoes will know to go there."

"Who?" Kuei asked.

"Move your feet, you sorry sad sack!" Toph roared at the Earth King, and the man let out an eep and started to move as she'd indicated. "I figure it's time to show the old guy's how this is done."

"And won't that be an education?" Sativa asked with sarcasm in her tones. But Zha Yu knew better. He knew that it would be an education. One he was eager to observe.

Aang had barely reached the open plaza of a long buried market when he could feel something tickling the back of his neck. Something foul, destructive, and wrong. And because Aang was an airbender and not, say, a firebender, he had the reactions to be able to get out of the way as a perversely glowing hand swept toward him, driving him back and hinging him back. The next, trying to sweep down onto him, was deflected when Aang kicked up with a foot and blasted the green-robed... waterbender?... from his feet and sent him rolling.

"Whoa! What was that? Sokka asked, where he was now essentially draping the Princess over his shoulder. Sokka was answered with flame, which Katara dutifully moved in front of, and tore water from the standing pools around the lost site to snuff it into a great billow of steam. She then twisted that water a bit further, and sent it hurtling forth at something unseen by Aang, but obviously not be she, and the crisp crack told the Avatar that she'd connected with something.

"Can you not go four minutes without being attacked?" Nila asked, raising her gun to her shoulder and aiming it at the waterbender. Blue eyes under a conical hat went wide, and he hurled himself aside, but Nila's aim was undone by a block smashing into her back, which sent her to her knees with a quite unfeminine grunt of pain.

Aang turned, Katara taking his back, and the three encircled them, one appearing out of the mist of an aborted flame, blue eyes blazing and the most focused, hating look on her face. On a face which could have been Katara's own, but those hands, they did not dance with water, but rather, naked golden flames. What was this? "Who are you?"

"The Avatar and the Princess. That's one target away from a perfect day," the girl said, with so-much-like Katara's voice.

"Hikaoh, you can stop this," Katara said. The firebender's eye flitted in what seemed a nervous twitch.

"Don't. You. Dare. Call. Me. That," she said, and then she launched forward with flame. Aang shifted places with Katara, and blunted that attack with a blast of airbending... but it wasn't working, so he halted his twirling motions and moved lower, pulling the stone up in flakes and flecks, sending them through the fire and sapping the heat enough that while the silica did burn into glass, the wind could hurl the whole mess back and away from him.

"That's your sister?" Aang asked. "But she's a firebender!"

"I am not your sister," Hikaoh shouted. Aang's next question was cut off as he could see water whipping toward him, so he snapped it away with his own waterbending, wresting control of that whip and then flicking it back at its creator. But the waterbender was good; Even as Aang controlled the whip, the waterbender was controlling him, maneuvering him through his defense into a place where Aang had to let out a clipped yelp of alarm and hurl himself to the floor to avoid being leveled by a significant portion of a nearby wall.

"Can we make this quick?" the waterbender asked Hikaoh and the earthbender. "I'd like to be out of here before people realize that we don't belong here."

"Slim chance of that, Kori," the earthbender jibed, and then began to move with the others, sending out a barrage of attacks which Aang was barely able to shield Katara from, and he took quite a few of those hits himself in her stead. Fitting, since Katara had the full and undesirable attention of her sister who somehow was a firebender and wanted to kill her. Aang had a decent notion that this was something which had happened while he was a 'guest' of the Dai Li, and nobody'd filled him in on it. He hated that feeling. Not as much as he hated the feeling of a rib breaking, now that he could say for certain that he knew the comparison between them.

"I'm surprised you managed to dodge my ambush. Azula never could," Kori, the waterbender said, in tones almost conversational but for their subject matter. "Kind of a pity that she's got to die. She might be a bit beefy, but she's stil cute as a b–"

Kori was cut off when he was hit in the face with a boomerang, which sent him stumbling back a few steps, a stunned look on his face. Sokka caught his returning weapon, and then faced the others down. "Why is it nobody ever pays attention to me? My boomerang is plenty deadly."

"You... are insane," Nila pointed out. And then, she raised her gun and fired at the earthbender. His eyes went wide, but even before he could get the wall up, there was a crack and he was falling back, barely keeping himself from landing on the floor, and those robes quickly started to turn black. "That is how you do it."

Hikaoh's eyes, which were already filled with murderous intent... somehow became worse. Her assaults faltered, fire still nonetheless pooling in her hands, and her lip quivered a bit. "O...Omo!"

The earthbender, Omo by name, let out a groan, trying to take his feet, but stumbling and sinking to his knees, a look of abject agony on his face. And Hikaoh's whole attention, almost to the point of utterly ignoring Aang and Azula and Katara all, was on the Si Wongi. "You die now, whore!" she screamed. In Yqanuac.

And then, there was flame. A lot of it. Aang managed to slam forward his fists, with water and air together into a slurry of ice which rendered that flame into steam, but that wall of steam was getting closer with every second, and she didn't seem to want to stop. Aang couldn't do a damn thing to stop Kori, the waterbender, from lashing out with a whip of water which slammed Sokka and by extension Azula to the ground with the thwack which promised intense bruising at least, and broken bones at worst. Kori, unlike Hikaho, wasn't focused on murder, though; he was clearing a path to the gun-shot earthbender. That path lead straight through Aang and Katara.

Aang tried to get out of Kori's way – as Aang didn't want 'Omo' to die any more than they did – but Katara was too focused on her sister, and notably keeping said sister from barbequing Nila, so one waterbender collided with another as Katara took a step back. Both tumbled to the stone in something of a heap, and the wall of flame moved closer as it fell to Aang alone to hold it back. On the ground, Kori's arms began to glow, the water coating them taking on a sickening, pus-like florescence. He slammed that hand into Katara's face, but she caught that hand and twisted, the water now coating her hands blazing purest white, as she pushed him off of her and rolled so that she was now mounted atop him.

"Let it be known that I don't like hitting girls," Kori said, tension in his voice even as he tried to force his destructive and wrong waterbending upon Katara. Katara got a bit of a frown on her face for a fraction of a moment before Kori's other fist jabbed up into her ribs, stealing her breath. He then twisted that same arm starkly up and cracked her in the forehead with his elbow, which sent her sprawling back, and giving him room to move.

Aang knew he wasn't going to hold this conflagration at bay with wind nor water alone. He had to do more. Stone wouldn't cut it. She'd just move around it and start again. So he focused on the heat which rested in his belly, the pool of Chi that Zuko and his uncle had so ceremoniously called, and grasped hold of the flame inside him, before making it the flame outside him.

Gold met gold, and for the first time since the onslaught began, he was gaining ground. Flames, fanned by wind, were stronger than flames alone. The only reason that she was holding against Aang's push was because he was a rank novice with firebending, and she, obviously, was a long-practiced expert. She cut the flames and ducked aside, letting his torrent sear past her, and launched herself with a rocket of flames behind her toward Aang, and beyond him, toward Nila. Aang could only sweep stone around him to root him in place, but that just gave Hikaoh a place to land her feet, and when the explosion ripped through the stone armor he'd crafted, it sent him skidding along the floor.

That left Nila essentially at Hikaoh's mercy – which was obviously quite scant. Nila, though, didn't try to run behind rocks nor reload her gun which had at some point been coated in a deluge by the waterbender (a canny notion, given even the little which Aang knew about how a firearm worked). She got into Hikaoh's face, and started to move almost like an airbender. But not really. Airbending was an art aped from the bison, borne from the practice of circle-walking. This was more like a dervish in the desert. Hikaoh's flame lanced, violent, wrathful, unabated, but innaccurate. Every thrust of the fist and attendant blast of fire was marked with Nila getting out of its way, standing inside the range of Hikaoh's punches. A rocket-kick was forestalled with a stomp to the top of the rising knee. A crescent kick, warded with the metal of Nila's rifle to the back of her calf. At that point, Nila had the notion to kick the side of Hikaoh's standing knee, which caused the firebender to tip and fall. Aang would have called that a victory, if Hikaoh hadn't blasted with a bolt of flame from her foot even as she fell, which caught Nila squarely in the chest and sent her flying backward.

Kori was only a few paces away from where Omo was on his hands and knees, bleeding onto the stone, when he suddenly reversed momentum with no warning and great speed. He fell onto his back, a cloud of black dust rising from the pulverized stone glove which had cracked and burst against his chest. Aang didn't have time to glance, but he knew that it could only mean one thing. The Dai Li had come. Hikaoh launched herself through the air, landing next to where Nila was trying to shake the stars out of her vision and ignore the cracked, blistered skin of her belly which showed through the burnt shirt. She raised a hand, with a chop which seared with fire. But it was Sharif who came to Nila's rescue. He didn't attack. He just stepped over Nila, one hand raised, and held it before Hikaoh's face. His eyes focused on hers.

"Do you know who you really are?" he asked, his voice as calm as ever, and even a bit more legible. Hikaoh's dark face seemed to go black with rage, and then she brought that fist back and down, and gave Sharif a haymaker which, in Aang's currently mildly befuddled state, seemed to hit Sharif so hard that he fell out of reality. Aang blinked, and noted that yes, Sharif had indeed vanished after that punch, but it had given Nila time enough to slam her heel down onto the top of Hikaoh's foot, rise while slamming her rifle into Hikaoh's liver, and then bound past, landing somewhat ungracefully but leaving a firebending Tribeswoman with a rictus of something between pain and inconsolable wrath.

"Come on, we've got to get out of here!" Sokka shouted, which dragged Aang's attention to the way that they'd come. True to the expectation that Kori's ambush had instilled, the Dai Li were coming out of the stonework, swamping them with dozens upon dozens of agents, as well as equally as many men in shabby clothing who no doubt were simply Dai Li of a different uniform.

"Sister, you can come with us!" Katara shouted, and Hikaoh glared at them all.

"You have nothing I want," the firebender snarled, and then something started to happen with her hands. It wasn't like when Zuko was demonstrating lightning. This was much more primal. The bolts of electricity seared along the loosened strands of her hair, and ran up between her fingers as she bent back, probably pulling the power from within herself, and then bearing it forward. At Nila, again.

Aang didn't think twice. He just hurled himself into the path of that lightning bolt, something which filled the subterranean chamber with a deafening din. But he didn't just intend to give that bolt an easier target. He tore up the ground, in a line between Hikaoh, Aang, and Nila, and started raising it. The bolt tore through the stone even as it was brought into place. The wall was quickly at Aang's head's height, but even with just his bending, he could feel it being unmade in the instant he raised it, so that he didn't even have a chance to hit the floor before the stone directly before his grasping hands exploded, sending Aang, Nila, and Katara all rolling away from it, a fresh bang and cascading stone clear in his sight.

Aang shook his head again, trying to clear his vision, and prepare for Hikaoh's next assault. But it didn't come. Instead, a dark hand seemed to reach down and scoop him to his feet. Aang glanced back, and was a bit startled to find Hakoda there, knife in his other hand, pulling them toward a corner of the room. "Wait, when'd you get here?" Aang asked. "And where'd Hikaoh go?"

"Wrong time to be asking those questions," Hakoda said, and upon facing the direction Hikaoh had been, he could see why. A legion of Dai Li agents was advancing on them, and they didn't seem to have friendly intentions. Of the trio of assassins, only the gut-shot one remained, and he was being pulled from the ground and dragged away by other green-robed people even as the army advanced toward them.

"Is Azula alright?" Aang asked.

"Is she alright?" Nila asked, indignant. Then, her eyes widened, and she tipped to her hands and knees, causing their whole group to halt in their retreat. With a gag, she seemed to cough up some bile, and her eyes became bloodshot.

"What is it, Nila?" Katara asked. Nila glanced around, panic clear on her face.

"Where is he?" she asked.

"Who?" Hakoda demanded, still retreating before the horde, but now hauling her as Aang was on his feet.

"Sharif! Where is he! I can't tell where he is!" she swung her gaze like a madwoman, but she seemed more frantic than ever Aang'd seen her.

"Nila, we either flee now, die, or worse," Hakoda pointed out. "What would you prefer?"

Nila's snarl was her answer. But her savage turning-away hid the fact that she was on the verge of tears.

"What's going on? Where am I?" Yoji demanded, as she was not standing on grey stone lit by odd trees. She turned, and fastened her glare on the Children's resident shamans, Hisui and Hai. "What..."

"You were about to get killed. The Fire Lord doesn't want that," Hisui said.

Yoji stomped up to the shaman, and grabbed the gorget of the red and gold armor. "Omo is back there! I need to save him!"

"Get ahold of yourself," Hai shouted, pulling the two of them apart. He glared at Yoji, his amber eyes meeting her blue. "If Omo comes here, he'll die, sure as the sunrise."

"Kori can heal him," Yoji said, a touch too desperately for her liking, but it was too late to change that.

"This is the Spirit World. It's the only place that's safe from the Avatar, and you can't bend here!" Hisui snapped at Yoji.

Kori, who limped up beside Yoji, nodded, making bending motions with his flask, but to no avail. Yoji's lips writhed, and she lashed out with a bolt of flame, but it wouldn't come. It was like the pool of chi was empty, here. She vigorously shook her head. "There's got to be a way to save him! We can..."

"If we bring him here, he will die. That is a fact, Yoji," Hai shouted at her. "Up there, he's got a slim chance. Down here, he's got none. Do you understand?"

Yoji trembled, turning back the way she'd come, as though she could get one last glance of Omo, but the Spirit World was not so kind. All she could see was a cliff-face of desaturated grey stone, and the twisted, gnarled trunks of bizarre, purple-glowing trees. She turned and faced the Shamans again. "I am never going to forgive you for this."

"I can live with that," Hai said. He motioned for his sister to attend Yoji, while he himself reached behind a tree-trunk and hauled a Si Wongi youth to his feet. His eyes were blank and hollow, like they had been carved from green glass, and his body seemed to be listless and powerless. There was a thin, green band which was latched tightly around his neck.

"Who is this?" Kori asked.

"The Fire Lord's got a bounty on him, and a fairly big one," Hisui answered. She gave a sigh, and an apologetic glance to Yoji. "There's no reason this has to be a total loss."

"Azula is still alive..." Yoji began.

"And is obviously dying. We didn't just pop in to save you from the Dai Li. We watched her. She's falling apart. Her mind is crumbling completely," Hai pointed out.

"And it's all moot in the fact that Zuko is a traitor to the Fire Nation," Hisui followed up, sounding slightly bitter. Yoji shook her head. "I'm serious. It happened. Damage done. Yoji... let's go home. We've all done enough."

Yoji turned away from them all, and launched a scream into the black heavens, wrath and loss and desperation... and loneliness... All of the things she wasn't allowed to show. That she couldn't afford to show. But right now, she couldn't help herself. Omo was dying, and she couldn't help him.

That brown bitch was going to die for this.

Finding the Earth King coincided with the Dragon of the East, which itself was part and parcel with the other firebender amongst Mai's former friends. Well, current friends, but current after a long period of estrangement. Getting there? Remarkably easy. Nobody was specifically looking for them, after all, so even the few Dai Li who did spot them at a distance never gave so much as a token pursuit. Only those who stumbled upon them up close, likely upon recognizing Qujeck out of all of them, bothered to try and kill them. It was a little insulting, actually. She considered herself entirely worth murdering by the East Continent.

"How many?" Mai asked again, as Zuko glanced around a corner, then lashed out with a blast of fire which no doubt sent the Dai Li, who were trying to breach the stone fortifications which General How and the blind girl were constantly rebuilding from Dai Li assault, scattering.

"A lot," Zuko said with a degree of grit. "Where's the Avatar? I know I can't keep this up much longer."

"One way or another," Mai agreed. She'd run out of knives ages ago, all since taking part in the siege, and only had the ones not specifically balanced for throwing left. They were longer than most knives, and weighted differently; they were made for brutal slashes which parted limbs from bodies, or heads from necks. No great surprise that a native of Azul would keep khukris on her person at all times. That was just civilized.

"Why aren't we flying away? I thought that bison could fly!" Kuei shouted from where he cowered against Bosco, who despite his ursine nature, also seemed to be cowering.

"If it does, it won't reach the Middle Ring before its heart explodes," Qujeck pointed out. "We make our stand here."

"Well, that's grim," Bug noted, still keeping an eye out, acting as the spotter for Longshot's longshots. That he didn't miss was handy.

"Don't be idiotic," the Dragon said. "All we can do here is die. We must collect the Avatar, and find a way to flee."

"I've got it," Zha Yu pointed out, tapping the side of his jacket. "We're just waiting on the Avatar."

Mai peeked 'round the corner and gave a scowl at what she saw. "They seem to be regrouping. Or perhaps, planning something," Mai said.

"Probably the latter," the Dragon of the East offered.

Toph, though, swung her head about, ceasing in her bending in resistance to the earthbenders without, and started to 'stare' down, her eyes wide and focused somewhere beyond her feet. "Uh, guys? We've got a lot incoming from below!" Toph shouted.

"How many's a lot?" Zuko shouted.

The answer came in the form of part of the wall, and then part of the palace beyond it, crumbling as it was torn apart from something rising up below it. Mai wished she could have said she wasn't shocked and a bit surprised, but such things were beyond her in hard times. They could scarcely be harder. She clutched her khukri's tighter, but that would do little against an army of earthbenders.

"Wait... Is that Aang?" Zha Yu asked, staring through the gaping hole in their defenses, and the destroyed section of the sub-palace they were in the heart of. True enough, the Avatar was one of the people lurching out of that hole. But he and those with him weren't the only, and there was a wall of Dai Li between the Avatar and the bison. Zha Yu cast a hand toward him. "Get over here, Aang! It's the only way out!"

"Impossible. There are too many, and his are too injured. We will have to retrieve him," Sativa said. Zha Yu nodded, and he glanced her way. Mai shrugged, as she wasn't best spent throwing her life away on a rescue mission against overwhelming odds. She was just here to stab idiots. Jet glanced at her, and gave a shrug, as though asking.

"Ugh. Fine," she said, and then went to save the Avatar.

It felt like weeks since they'd started fighting, and every part of Katara demanded rest, respite, and a day's worth of sleep. Since she wasn't about to get any of that any time soon, she soldiered on, but it was getting worse with every step. She was already light headed and her vision was blurring. With the added weight of the nearly insensate Nila and the totally insensate Azula, they were barely able to stumble.

"Come here! You have go get over here!" Zha Yu's voice called out across the mayhem, but there was no end in sight. Not with the Dai Li surrounding them, pressing in on them. Katara had to drop Nila to the ground, and pull every drop of water – which wasn't much – into an anemic Octopus Form to keep the multitude of attackers at bay. Even then, she could do not one whit more. Still, if she just held on long enough, Toph and the others would reach her.

Aang, who was trying valiantly to blast the Dai Li away with blasts of wind, was slowing down, his eyes looking increasingly hollow. "Don't know... how much... more of this... I can manage," he said, exhaustion his tone of voice.

Katara wanted to answer him, but a flick from the corner of her eye beheld an arrow, streaking toward her. Reflexes born of the Spikerim slapped the projectile away, but she was baffled by it nonetheless. Had somebody's shot gone wrong? No, the answer was more dire than that. Men in rough clothing were manning the outer walls, and they carried bows rather than stone gloves. They must have been sick and tired of people dusting their projectiles. Katara glanced forward, to where Toph was trying to smash through the Dai Li facing Aang's group, and her eyes widened as a streak shot low, almost missing Toph. But not quite. It skewered right through one of her feet. The earthbender let out a horrible cry of agony, her run ending abruptly and with a faceplant, but she rolled immediately onto her back, clutching the impaled extremity with a rictus of anguish upon her face.

"Toph!" Aang shouted.

"Damn it! Toph!" Zuko's voice came from somewhere within the maelstrom, and flame marked his approach, but dimly compared to the other things around him. He burst through the wall of humanity, his swords slashing through the air...

...only to be smashed down, his body hurled to the ground by a pair of earthbenders and pelted with kicks and stones. He was struggling to stand, a begrudgingly given testament to his resilience, but he could only get up as far as one knee. Another flick of motion, but this time, Katara couldn't deflect it, and it slammed into and penetrated Sokka's gut, causing him to drop Azula and stagger back, slowly dropping to his knees.

They were losing.

They were getting slaughtered.

And Aang's tattoos were glowing.

"NO MORE!" he announced with the voice of the legion, as his eyes blazed with light. His hands raised, and with them, came the stone. Every stone. The Dai Li faltered, and took a retreating step, but it wasn't enough to placate the Avatar's wrath. He flashed forward those hands, and the rubble hurled itself at the Dai Li, robed or not. Some it smashed unconscious. Some... Katara was fairly sure they were worse off than that. "NOBODY WILL HURT MY FRIENDS."

With the Dai Li parted, Zuko managed to regain his footing, just in time to be overtaken by Bato, the Dragon of the East, Jet and Mai. Aang floated, his feet hovering above the ground, and he turned his eyes down. With a blazing hand, he gripped the shaft of the arrow through Sokka's gut and pulled it out. Her brother gave a cry of alarm and pain, but no further blood dribbled out of the wound, and Sokka had a look of shock and surprise on his face even as Jet hauled up Azula and draped her over his shoulder like a bag of oats. "That... hurt less than I thought it would."

"Run you fools!" the elder Badesh coached, but she paused, as she beheld her daughter on the ground. Just a glance, one of tension, between duty and family. With a flinch, she ran to her daughter's side, letting Katara keep up the defensive. "Nila? Are you alive, Nila?"

"She's pretty badly hurt," Katara told the woman. "And Sharif is gone."

"What? How could she do this? He was..." Sativa began.

Katara cut her off by slapping her.

"Nila gave everything to save Sharif! Don't you dare insult her for failing something which couldn't be done!" Katara roared. Sativa turned back to her, not even rubbing the welt on her dusky cheek.

"This isn't the time for this," Sokka shouted, as he stepped between the two of them and scooped up Nila a great deal more gently than had Azula been. The hiss of pain and sallow complexion told Katara that Sokka was doing the girl a favor being so delicate. Zuko, though, seemed now torn between Azula and Toph. He decided on Toph, as Azula had her own carrier, but it was a decision long and precious seconds in the making.

Katara cut off her glare on Nila's mother to look to the path. It was quickly closing in again, and another group had pressed in on their backs to surround the Avatar. But since he was in the Avatar State, that meant things were going to be going very wrong for Long Feng's terror-troops. Aang, and all of his past lives, raised a hand. "STAND ASIDE IF YOU WISH TO LIVE," the legion declared.

Glances were exchanged on all sides, but the rings of soldiers stood their ground, however tentatively. There was a very slow blink, as Aang brought his arms to his sides, and with a flex, caused lightning to arc from his fingertips. "SO BE IT."

"Aang, no!" Katara shouted up to him, halting in her advance toward the great mound which was Appa, and all those with it. "Don't do it!"

Aang raked out a hand, and lightning surged with it. But the Dai Li weren't stupid, nor slow. Every one of them brought up a protective barricade to halt those bolts. But only just. They were sent flying by exploding stone, and the Avatar State gave Aang a power so far beyond theirs it wasn't even funny. The first rank buckled, showing the second. And within the second, even Katara could pick out the bald head of Long Feng. Aang's eyes focused on him, turning his back to Katara and the others.

"YOU ARE THE SOURCE OF THIS MISERY," the Avatar declared. "IT WILL DIE WITH YOU."

This time, Aang's fist smashed forth with flame, which sent the Dai Li scrambling ahead of their master, building up a bunker before him. The stone quickly turned red under the Avatar's assault, and started to melt, until the Dai Li abandoned their defense and simply hurled themselves away, to safety. Aang rose higher, propelled upward by a wind which defied gravity. Long Feng was lying on the ground, and between the blocks of stone now orbiting Aang's body and the lightning dancing down his tattooed arms, he had to know that his end was nigh.

"SO ENDS THE TYRANT."

Long Feng's desperate eyes flicked to Katara. She wasn't sure why. He then took a deep breath.

"Sativa Badesh! The Earth King has invited you to Lake Laogai!"

Katara was baffled why Long Feng thought that would save him.

"I would be... honored to accept the invitation," Sativa's answer was all the more baffling.

"Kill the Avatar!" Long Feng shouted, as Aang's hands finished the circling gesture which preceded lightning. And fast as the flash which Aang was summoning, Sativa picked up the bloody arrow which had been in Sokka's chest, put it to her bow, drew, and released. Straight into Aang's back. The arrow streaked up, to Aang's blindside, and slammed through the middle of his spine, sinking in almost its whole length. The white glow which marched up the back of his head dimmed and became blue, the lightning frizzed and crackled away, and Aang tipped back, the winds no longer carrying him, with an arrowhead jutting through from where it obviously transfixed his heart.

And then, Sativa had the most confused look on her face, and dropped her bow in horror. "What have I done?" she asked.

Katara didn't even listen. She gathered up every drop of water and bent it into a wave which she used to bear herself up, and then downward slowly as she caught her falling friend. His eyes were wide, and his mouth worked soundlessly, his hands clenching and unclenching. "I can't... it hurts..." Aang said.

"It's going to be alright," Katara lied. If she had time, she could heal this; she'd done better with worse in Summavut. But that was the problem. Katara didn't have time. Long Feng got to his feet, and dusted off his robes.

"Sativa, kill the girl as well," Long Feng ordered, and Katara turned to the Si Wongi woman. Sativa's face was writ large with hatred, a glare first on Katara, then to the knife in her hand, then to Long Feng himself.

Katara was baffled how quickly Sativa hurled that knife. So quickly that nobody would have been able to dodge it unless they knew for a fact it was coming. Thus, it slammed into Long Feng's shoulder without a twitch of resistance. "Go to hell you katil picsz!" She then grabbed Aang by his kavi, and started to drag. Katara held him in place. "Don't be stubborn, girl! I cannot undo what he has made of me, but I can at least thwart his ills!"

"You shot Aang!" Katara said, balling up her water and using it to level Sativa to the ground. He was dying, and it was that woman's fault. The lines were closing in. It was over.

The lines were closing in, and it seemed like it was over. All of the actors were spent, the play preparing for its denouement. All but one, and one who streaked down from the sky in a bolt of yellow and orange.

She landed with a thud of displaced air, before swinging her mother's glider in a broad arc before her, twisting the wind even as she sent it out in a wave to roll and toss all who encountered it. She had no idea who these people were, but they were trying to hurt the Avatar, and airbenders had to look out for each other, these days. It was the least she could do. The green-robed men were sent flying.

The hiss of arrows streaking toward her caused her to whirl her staff around her, creating an impenetrable bubble of wind around herself, Aang, his Tribesmen friends, and some Si Wongi woman who looked vaguely familiar. "Man, talk about your impeccable timing," Malu quipped, as the arrows were deflected away, and she then sent that shield tearing away in a gale which caused a big, beefy looking fellow to bowl down several of his cohorts. This was easy, she'd just managed to think, when something stone-hard took a grip of her hair and started to pull it back. She couldn't see anybody behind her, though. A groping hand into her messy black locks found... a glove made of stone. Dai Li? They were real? She guessed that whoever had done that was standing behind her, so she sent her blast of wind in that direction, and a moment later, the grip loosened enough that Malu could pull the glove free of her hair.

The Tribeswoman looked at Malu in shock. "Who are you and..." she began, but was cut off when Malu slashed with her staff over her head and deflected more inbound arrows. "Right, no time..."

"Go," Aang said very quietly, where he was on the ground with an arrow through his heart. "...run..."

"I'm not leaving you here, Aang," the Tribeswoman promised.

"...already gone... just don't accept it, yet," the Avatar said with a very sad laugh. Malu, though sent out a whirl of airbending above their heads, driving everybody back, and touched Aang's skin. It was clammy. And cold, right there. It was a sensitivity like having one's skin blasted by desert sand. The Spirit World howled at her, and all things of it called out in song. Something on Aang's body was singing loudly. She thrust her hand into the pocket of Aang's ripped and singed kavi, and her hand closed on a nail, covered in frost.

"Katara, why are you taking so... Oh gods that isn't good," a bulky older man with eyes respectively green and brown shouted as he approached, his stance low. Probably an earthbender. "Oh..."

"Do you trust me, Tribeswoman?" Malu asked.

"I don't know who you are!"

"We met... briefly... in the Divide," the Tribeswoman flinched. "It was a bad time for me! I'm better now. Do you trust me? I can save him!"

She stared at Malu, then down to Aang, then back up at the earthbender nearby. "How?" she asked, blue eyes fierce. Malu held up the nail. She heard its song. She knew what it meant. The earthbender's eyes went wide.

"That's a Bright-Nail," he said. "Where did you find that?"

"In his pocket," Malu said. She stared at the Tribeswoman. "Trust me, and don't stop me."

"Why? What do you do with..." the Tribeswoman asked, but was cut off when Malu raised that nail high above her, and then slammed it down, directly into the center of Aang's forehead, right at the tip of the arrow upon his brow. Instantly, his skin gained a sort of icy sheen, and became as cold as an arctic wind. "ARE YOU INSANE?"

"That's what the Bright-Nail does," the earthbender instructed. "It makes things fr–"

He was cut off when a block of stone smashed into his arm and struck with a terrible crack of shattering bone. He let out a howl of pain, and Malu could see that the Dai Li were closing in once more. And doing so swiftly. She couldn't hold them all off. But she could try. And maybe, that'd be enough to earn her at least some small redemption. Not an entire one, but a little.

She spun to her feet, twisting the wind with her along her stave and letting it lash out as a tornado, rumbling away and sweeping the encroaching horde to the winds. But that left her wide open for a green robed man, who had launched himself in at her flank, his hands covered in shining obsidian and ready to rake her throat to shreds.

He was interrupted, and launched backward, by a blaze of golden flame. The earthbender gave a start of surprise at seeing the old, squat, balding man with the grey beard among them. "Iroh? What are you doing here?"

"Saving the Avatar," the old firebender said. He looked at Malu, a moment longer than he ought have, but he seemed to take her measure and find it sufficient. The slightest nod, and he turned and cast out flame in bolts and arcs, holding the Dai Li at bay. "Take him away before it is too late! I will keep them away from you!"

"You don't need to do this!" the earthbender shouted.

Iroh, whoever that would be, sent a blast of fire right past Malu's shoulder, which intercepted and smashed back another attempt to blindside her, and he looked to the earthbender. "Yes, I do, Mountain King. Get the Avatar to safety. Even I pale compared to that."

"You heard him: go!" Malu shouted, causing the Tribeswoman to flinch.

"No! You've got Imbalance inside of you!"

"Not anymore, I don't," Malu said. "It's a long story, one I can't tell here."

"Katara, please. This is our only chance," the grandiosely named Mountain King said, his tone tight with the pain of his broken arm. The Tribeswoman grimaced, but gave Malu a nod, permission for the other airbender to pick up the other of Aang's icy-cold arms and start to bear him toward the bison in the midst of rubble. The earthbender, despite his broken arm, paused briefly to pick up the fallen Si Wongi woman, which caused Katara – the Tribeswoman – to go wrathful over her shoulder.

"What are you doing? She's the one who did this to him!"

"Long Feng did it to him," the Mountain King answered even as he jogged with her under his arm like a keg of rum. "He just used her body to do it."

"We can't trust her!" Katara countered. At that, the Mountain King could only give a pained shrug with a wounded limb. They fell back, and Malu offered one last glance, to the insanely brave firebender who was saving the Avatar's life. Whoever he was, he was a hundred times more heroic than she. She only glanced back for a moment. He lashed out with flame, driving some of the Dai Li back, always back. But while he spun and blasted with his flames, he couldn't defend himself from all angles at all times. Blocks of stone burst through his defenses, smashing into him and knocking him back, but he always retook his footing. Barely. Each brick that slammed into the old man's ribs was a subtle destruction of his ability to fight back. The Dai Li got closer. Then, one of them got close enough that he could latch a stone-glove to the firebender's wrist, which he locked to the ground where the grey-bearded man had fallen to a knee. His resistance spent, the Dai Li began to fall upon him with vengeance such as she couldn't bear to watch any longer.

The group that they moved toward was in almost as bad a shape as Aang was. Some were pierced by arrows. Others burnt. Some, bludgeoned into near-unconsciousness. But Malu's eyes went widest when she saw an old friend amongst the fallen. "Nila! Nila, are you alright?" she asked, letting Katara shoulder Aang's weight now that they were at Aang's bison's side. Nila looked positively ashen, and Malu could tell just from a touch that it wasn't because of the burns on her belly. No, there was a wound imprinted on her soul, a tether rudely severed at a moment of critical vulnerability. She didn't know more. Only that a friend was hurting.

"It's time to go," the Mountain King announced.

"No! I'm not letting Long Feng win," another Tribesman, probably in his mid twenties, declared.

"He's already won," Katara told him.

"No," a broad eared youth with a bow and a ratty pan hat interrupted. Almost all looked at him in shock and surprise. Malu alone didn't know that Longshot wasn't a man of many words. "We can still help the city. This is important."

"Longshot, are you sure about this?" a battered, wild haired youth with hookswords in one hand asked. Longshot gave a nod, and two women, one pretty, the other not, stood behind him, nodding in agreement. The wild-haired one gave a grimace, but clapped a hand onto Longshot's shoulder. "Make me proud."

"Get into contact with Bai," the Mountain King instructed them, as he fished an orb out of his pocket. "He'll know how to go from here. Go to Bai, got it?"

Longshot gave a silent nod, and his cadre backed away from the others, who were grouped tightly around the lathered bison. One handsome young man rose from the side of an obviously ill girl who could be his sister, and looked out onto the battleground. "Wait... is that Uncle?"

"Yes," the Mountain King said, his eyes pressed closed, that orb against his brow. Malu could hear its song. Dirak, the ocean outside of what is. The path, and the traveler. That handsome man threw a hand out toward him.

"I've got to help him!"

"It's too late, Zuko. He made his choice," a one-handed older gentleman said softly. "And you've made yours."

A glance to the supine young lady. Zuko, as he was called, gave a glance toward his uncle, who was even now being beaten down by the Dai Li. More Dai Li had broken off, though, and were approaching their hardship-weathered group at great speed. Zuko gave a shout to the sky which lit with flame, before he panted, and gave a glance to the one-handed man. "You're right. I hate it, but you're right."

"How are we supposed to get away?" Katara asked.

"Quickly," the Mountain King answered. He opened his eyes, and raised the sphere high over his head. There was a whisper, his thoughts passing through the sphere and audible to anybody who knew the tune. It was a plea, a quiet one, a desperate one, and a clear one.

"...take me somewhere safe..."

The sphere grew in the Mountain King's hand, despite remaining the same size. It quickly enveloped first the earthbender, then those immediately around him, growing wider and wider until it slid past Malu like a soap-bubble. When it did, the world didn't so much become dark, as became void. There was a nothingness around her, one which others shared, until they, too started to fade away, leaving only that sphere, floating before her. She lost any sense of gravity. There was a lurch in her stomach, but she swallowed it. There was a buzzing in her soul. That, she turned and faced.

In the void, a red line appeared, stretching from infinite horizon to infinite horizon, before it opened into the familiar, red and black Eye of Terror. It stared. Malu stared back.

YOU CANNOT RUN.

"Watch me," Malu said to it, a smirk on her face.

Then, with a fresh lurch, her weight settled into her boots once more, and she was standing atop cracked mud at the foot of what appeared to be a stellar observatory. The others were with her, all standing exactly as they had been. The stone under their feet, unlike Malu's, was the mosaic cobbles of that courtyard, though; she had drifted off of them in transit, somehow. She didn't question it, not at the moment.

"Where are we?" the hookswordsman asked.

"This is... my old home," the Mountain King said with a bit of confusion.

"Whatever it is, you will need to take anything you cannot bear to lose and leave quickly," Malu warned. All eyes turned to her.

"Why?" he asked.

"Because the Shards of Imbalance know this place, and they'll be here soon," Malu said, knowing its truth despite having no real evidence even of herself to back it. She just knew it, like she knew that song of the spirits.

"What about Aang?" Katara demanded, from where she remained at his side.

"He could remain like that until the sun blows up in the sky," Malu said. "That's what the Bright-Nail does. It puts you in a state of stasis until it's removed. He can't die right now."

"Hate to be the one to ask the stupid questions," the arrow-lamed girl with the eyes which spoke of blindness pointed out, where she leaned against Zuko in a bid to keep the weight off of her impaled foot, "but what in the tides of hell are we supposed to do now?"

It was the other Tribesman, the youngest of the three men who looked to the West. "We still need to invade the Fire Nation. I guess we're doing it without the Earth King's help."

"Hey, I can help!" an effete looking man piped up. That young Tribesman looked at him.

"No you can't," he said dismissively. Malu, though, had a bit of a query. She leaned toward the bearded Tribesman directly beside her.

"What is that brown thing?" She asked.

"That's the Earth King's bear," he answered distractedly.

"...just bear?" she asked. The Tribesmen all shrugged.

He felt a bit of weight off of his shoulders. Not much, but a little. Having the Grand Secretariat placated, even for the short while he would, was a great deal of a relief. He strode through the hallways of the great Fire Palace, the crown jewel of Caldera City in particular and the Fire Nation in general, and did so with some renewed vigor. He, of course, intended to betray Long Feng at the first possible opportunity, but Ozai was confident that when that betrayal came, it would be so crushing as to grind the little man into the dust. He felt a bit like celebrating. So he rapped on his own doorway, something that few would think him do. But still, there were appearances to uphold. But there was no answer. He scowled, and pushed the door open. "Akemi? Where are you, my sweet? I have such wonderful news to tell you."

The answer came from a maid who was cleaning the corner of his bedchamber. She bowed low, her brow upon the stone. "I am sorry, Fire Lord, but Mistress Fujitsuna departed Caldera City several days ago."

Ozai scowled. "When is she due to return?" he asked. This wasn't like her. Especially not since the child was still in her crib. He'd checked.

"I do not know, Fire Lord," the maid said, her voice quivering.

"Leave. I have no need of you," he said, his disappointment outweighed by the suspicion gnawing at him. Where had she gone? Not to Azul, certainly, but barring that... where?

Half a world away, Long Feng sat on a throne that had been vacated for him, his chin on his knuckles, and he stared down onto the floor and tried to ignore the pain of the stab-wound on his other shoulder. He heard footsteps approaching him, not the subtle glide of stone against stone. He glanced over, and gave a start as he beheld Dun standing next to him. "What are you doing here?"

"What am I doing here? What are you doing there?" he asked, pointing at the throne. He let out a long-suffering sigh. "Why didn't you tell me any of this? Didn't you trust me?"

Long Feng let out his own sigh at that. "I did. But... this was the only way I could think of to keep you safe. That was what was important to me," he stood, and turned to face the wall. "I will understand if you don't wish to speak to me again."

There was a long moment of silence, and then, he felt a hand in his. "Then you don't understand me very well," Dun said gently. Long Feng felt himself pulled into an embrace that, frankly, he needed, even ignoring the pain of the still angry tear in his shoulder to take it. But even then, a part of his mind was contemplating how best to betray the Fire Lord's cease-fire. There was only so human a man like Long Feng could afford to be, after all.

Somewhere roughly in the middle, an arrow was torn out of a teenaged boy's chest, waterbending furiously into the wound which knitted itself closed, as a nail degraded into rust upon its extraction. The teenaged boy in question's eyes snapped open, and he took a deep breath, but then they rolled back, and he slipped back into unconsciousness. "Aang!" Katara shouted, before turning on Malu. "You said he'd be alright!"

"He is... more or less. It's a shock to his system," Zha Yu pointed out. "Give him time. He'll wake up."

Katara gave a nod, but a glare toward Malu, before she moved over to the others who needed healing. Malu, though, squatted down beside Nila. Her eyes looked diseased and bloodshot, but they locked onto her quickly enough. "Nila... I'm..." Malu began, only to be slapped in the face by a tattooed hand. Malu slowly turned back toward Nila, understanding completely. "I get it. You don't have to forgive me for wh–"

Malu was again cut off, as the still-ill Nila nevertheless pulled Malu into a very tight embrace. One Malu returned eagerly. Desperately. Because she wasn't alone.

And far to the north, amidst soot and black iron where once great ice and soapstone structures lay, a king over a savage land leaned forward on his own, impromptu throne. It wasn't much, just a place to sit... maybe a bit more gilding than strictly necessary, but considering the victory he had won here, he wagered he'd deserved a bit of finery. It was the guest before him which had him mildly confused.

"Forgive me, but I hadn't expected you to arrive in person," Zhao said, the burn on his face pulling one eye into a suspicious glare that his other mimicked. "And especially not bearing gifts."

The gift in question was a painting, by Princess Azula, no less. The one which she'd painted and repainted every time it was destroyed. A horde of Tribesmen and green armored Easterners, rampaging through the streets of Caldera City, while a black sun hung overhead. Azula's warning of what was to come, what was to be avoided.

"I sensed a change in the tides. I do not intend to sacrifice myself for a hopeless cause," she answered him.

"And you see me as the greatest of your options?" Zhao asked. The woman before him gave a mild shrug. She was a shrewd one, shrewd enough to know that he appreciated cold honesty over mindless flattery. Appreciated now, of course. There had been a time where he was much less... experienced. "And what of the Fire Lord?"

"I believe I am sharing the room with him," she said with a small smile. They were in the throne-room alone, not surprising given the late hour of her arrival, so such a statement wouldn't be taken... askance.

Zhao smirked all the wider. "Then... as the next Fire Lord, I welcome you, Akemi Fujitsuna, to New Bhatti. I'm sure that things will be to your satisfaction," he said.

She smiled, quietly, patiently at that. "I have no doubt that they shall."

The End

of

Book Two: Chaos

Destiny, as Iroh has often said, can be a funny thing. It might not repeat itself, but it often rhymes, twisting back on itself as a helix. The same symbols come up again, and again, but their meanings don't necessarily stay the same.

Unlike Canon, where they got a victory in book one, and a major defeat in book two in which they fled with absolutely nothing more than what they started out with, not so much in this one. They were instead dealt the overwhelming defeat in book one, while in book two, they managed to get out with both the Earth King and two of the Council of Five. Add to that a standing, independant Omashu, and you're looking at a different kind of war. One that, honestly, they can't afford to lose.

With the release of the Shards into the world - a direct side effect of exorcising Imbalance from Malu - the Earth has gone from teetering on the precipice of disaster to outright sliding down it. Without any mortal flesh to constrain them to the rules of reality, they are free to rewrite them. And they're not exactly kind in how they do so. In terms of threat, I'd say they're pretty high.

I found myself tearing through this chapter a bit haphazardly when I first wrote it. I had to go back and flesh a few things out a bit, which caused it's fairly monumental length that you might have noticed. Now, I'm going to keep writing, and burn through to the end of Book Three, because as soon as I do that, I can take off half of my nightly writing allotment, and proudly say that i've created something half again as big as War and Peace, in a single work. This is my smug face.

And finally: Aang's in for a bit of a shock when he wakes up. Because guess who's going to be waiting for him?