Three Families

by James Golen

Three Families seek the Avatar. Three Families find the Avatar. Three Families use the Avatar. The story of how three sets of siblings are changed by the Avatar, amidst an endless war. AU, Want of A Nail.

42. The Fourth Soul

The water continued to rain down before the Western Air Temple in the vast sheet, stretching easily as far as the temple and beyond, even though the rain had surely let up for the moment; after all, Azul got a lot less rain than the Midlands or Ember. Still, it was a din which crashed over the long abandoned monastery, and those hiding themselves within it. One in particular, the only one who could currently boast that he was a firebender with a straight face, felt weaker than he had for quite a while. It wasn't distance from sun, but rather, being so inundated, surrounded by water on all sides. It was distracting. But not as distracting as the dark girl who kept using that infernally loud contraption every minute or so.

"Can you stop firing that thing for ten minutes? I'm trying to think!" Zuko snapped at her.

"No," she answered him crisply across the courtyard, before rechecking her firearm and then reloading it.

"I don't know why you waste all that time with a weapon like that," Zuko grumbled, more out of frayed nerves than any real spite toward her chosen implement. Nila seemed to understand that without a word being said, and left him to his mulling. He certainly had a lot to mull. He stared out at the sheets of water, and tried to think of some way to narrow down their search. If the answer was in Ember, then it would take a week to get there with any sort of discretion, and then however much time it took to actually find Agni...

Why hello, Agni, it's Zuko here, he thought with a roll of his eyes. Even as the thought, he scratched at his left ear, curled and burnt ruin that it was. It seemed a ridiculous notion, to try to physically find what the Fire Nation universally accepted as their one driving divinity. The idea that their god was a spirit didn't sit well with Zuko, but not out of any theological dogma. It just meant that for thousands of years, the Fire Nation has been striving towards the ideals of a being which, in human terms, is utterly insane.

Thinking of Agni got Zuko thinking about Uncle. About the things that Uncle used to tell him, about his travels in his youth. "You," Zuko said, glancing toward the riflewoman. She turned to him with an unimpressed expression.

"I do have a name," she pointed out.

"And what was it again?" Zuko asked. She glared, and Zuko didn't feel like pressing the joke. "Your mother, how did she get her name?"

"I imagine it was given to her by her mother," Nila said sarcastically. Zuko stared flatly at her. "If you mean her appellation, it seemed appropriate even by Fire Nation standards. Your kind slay a dragon, and name its vanquishers 'the dragon' of whatever place they deign to call home. My mother 'slew' your uncle, metaphorically speaking, doing what no other could. Thus, she 'conquered a dragon'. I am surprised you had not heard the story," she said with a shake of her head, before turning, raising that gun to her shoulder, and firing again. The crack echoed throughout the Temple, but was lost into the water so it couldn't even reach into the canyon. A split second later, an old and hopelessly cracked pot she'd set on a spot two towers away burst into chips and dust. Nila looked at it with a nod, then slowly started to disassemble her rifle again, no less than the third time this morning.

"Why do you keep doing that?"

"I am trying to design the perfect firearm. That takes experimentation," she said. Without looking up, she continued. "Why do you find yourself so curious as to your uncle's humiliation?"

"It's not his humiliation," Zuko said. "I just kept thinking that... there was a group of people. Some called them the Sun Warriors. They were the oldest firebenders on the planet. The very first. It's said that they were Agni's chosen people."

"I see," Nila said.

"You do?"

"No, I just hoped you would cease your prattle," Nila said, pulling a new tube from a cloth-covered array of them that she'd spent the last week and a half working on, since their rapid flight from Ba Sing Se.

"I can see why only airbenders can put up with you," Zuko muttered.

He leaned forward onto his knees, trying to think. Agni's chosen people. There was something he was missing there. He thought back, to all of the lessons that Uncle had taught him. The ways, the methods. The forms. There was something fundamentally different from Uncle's method than Zuko had ever been taught before. It seemed to flow better. But at the same time, Zuko seldom found himself using it, because it seemed the more angry he got, the less he could get out of them. There was something there that he wasn't thinking of, and he couldn't quite put his finger on it.

"Your brother, the shaman," Zuko said. Nila flinched just a little, before turning to him with a dark expression in her eyes. "He was able to talk to anything with a spirit. Including dragons, right?"

"I can well imagine. He was certainly an attractor of every creature in the desert, it often seemed," Nila said, her tones far less scathing than they would have been a month ago. Of course, a month ago, Nila knew where her brother was, and if he was even still alive.

"And he could talk to the spirits of dead beasts?"

"How would I know?" she asked.

"Did he..." Zuko gesticulated for a moment, "seem to talk to something which you knew was already dead?"

"Patriarch," Nila said, something dawning in her eyes. "As we fled north through the desert, he often spoke of his Ostrich Horse companion as though it were both still alive and present."

"I was hoping you'd say that," Zuko said. "You're a genius."

"Of course I am. Why?"

"Because you might have just saved my sister's life," he said, even as he got to his feet and started walking briskly toward the tower toward the back of the complex, near its walls and without any scenic views, where they all slept in darkness and relative cold. He saw the two Tribesmen first, and only one of them favored him with a glare as he passed, but even that was a far lesser thing than it had been in the past. Katara knew that Zuko was in every bit as much danger being here as she was. Toph, though, lounged. She was obviously of a mind that the road ahead would be hazardous, and to take what rest she could as she could take it. Zuko paused at her foot, though. "Toph, where'd the other airbender go?"

"Oh, she flew toward town," Toph gestured vaguely. "She figured that as the only one who a) had the mobility, b) had no arrows tattooed on her, and c) wasn't obviously a Tribesman or a Far Easterner, she'd get a lot less hassles buying what we can't get on our own."

"I see you've already got your clothing picked out," Zuko said with a raised brow. It was all red, and frankly, it all suited her. It was the kind of clothing that a girl could get into fights in. The kind of clothing which Azula had favored in her youth, albeit scaled and cut differently to suit a young woman in her teens rather than a child roughly half that. The Si Wongi was also dressed for the West, having bought properly hued clothing months ago, for some reason. Probably because she had a firebender picking her clothes for her. The others, though?

"I know! Can you believe that they tried to put me in shoes?" Toph asked, proudly displaying the defunct footwear, bereft of soles so that she could 'see' in them. Zuko shook his head, and headed past her. To where Aang was sitting with his sister. She was sleeping, but covered in sweat, as though she was in the height of a fever. Which, given the circumstances, would have been a godsend. Aang perked up and turned toward him.

"This isn't... I was just worried that..." Aang began.

"Can you talk to dead dragons?" Zuko asked point blank.

"Um... Yes?" Aang seemed skeptical. "I mean, I talked to Roku's dragon back during the Winter Solstice. I honestly thought I'd see more of them around. The Fire Nation was teeming with them when I was a kid..."

"Not the point," Zuko said. "The dragons were said to be Agni's first creations on this planet. We learned our firebending from them. So if anything's going to know where Agni is, it would be the dragons."

"...why did you say 'were'?" Aang asked.

Zuko didn't turn away. There was no denying something like this. "The dragons aren't around anymore. That's why you're going to have to talk to their dead."

"Okay... but you do realize that they still might not know?" Aang said.

"I thought you were supposed to be the one of us with a positive attitude?" Zuko asked wryly. Aang slumped at that, since Zuko was nothing but right. "I've thought about that. The oldest of the dragons would have been the ones around during the days of the Sun Warriors," Zuko said.

"...and if their spirits are still around, they would probably be able to point us at Agni," Aang said, slowly gaining enthusiasm.

"Going on an archeological expedition? Well, you'd better load up on Toph," the aforementioned earthbender said through the wall, before cracking it with a fist and sending it crumbling down so that she was now plainly visible, lounging in the next room which wasn't so next anymore.

"Toph, this might not be anything..."

"Where's this Sun Warrior place supposed to be, Sparky?" Toph asked.

"Right in the middle of the Hui Jungle. The deadliest part of Azul," Zuko said. "The reason that nobody's stepped there since the Storm Kings is because nobody's been able to reach them, and return to tell the tale."

"Wait, a site untouched by nosy hands for centuries? Oh, I'm so there," Toph said eagerly, rising to her feet and rudely cuffing the dust off of her short-pants as she did so. Zuko nodded.

"There's a good chance that we'll be able to find the spirits of the truly ancient dragons near that place," Zuko said. "It won't be easy, and it's not a sure thing, but it's the best chance we've got."

"Alright! So we have a plan!" Aang said. And then he paused, turning to Azula. She mumbled something, and stirred slightly in her sleep. "But... what are we going to do with Azula?"

"Bring her with us," Zuko said. Eyes turned to him. Not Toph's, but certainly Aang's. "As long as we're out there, we need to make this in one trip. That thing said Azula doesn't have much time. I'm not going to waste a single minute of it. Aang looked at Azula, then to Zuko.

"Let's do it," he said. "Appa's probably up to carrying four. I mean, me and Sokka and Katara and Toph pretty much flew all over the world, and he didn't have a problem..."

"ROAD TRIP! WHOO!" Toph shouted, fists in the sky. Zuko could only shake his head mildly, at the absurdity of it. But there was a kernel, the tiniest part of his being, which dared to hope. That this would be the first step toward helping Azula to a brighter future. To finally prove to Mom and Uncle and Azula that he could take care of his family. To honor a promise, made long ago.

---

Chapter 2:

The Fourth Soul

---

They were dreams of fire.

Ordinarily, these kinds of dreams didn't disturb Yoji, but for some reason, there was a dread to those flames, a horror which transcended mere burning and pain and death. There was evil in those flames. She walked, but it felt as though her every step was weighed down by leaden chains, her every movement awkward.

"Where is she!" a voice in the fire, red erasing the white under her. The voice was familiar, but she couldn't say why. "Where is my daughter!"

"Kya, get back inside!"

"No, I've got to find my daughter!"

Yoji pushed herself up... out of snow. Why snow? And why didn't it feel cold? She tried to move, but she was an insect on the battlefield of gods. Every one of them towered so high above her that she couldn't even see their faces. She only saw two colors. Red, and blue. Fire leapt out, and the blue retreated. Then, with shouts of anger and pain, the blue surged forward once more. Yoji could see red, a familiar color to her, moving toward her. She finally got to her feet, and turned to face it. Red meant Fire Nation, and firebenders. In her dreaming mind, she was already taking a step toward them, to get to the safe side of the line.

Only she didn't walk. No, she slunk backwards, a dread welling up in her, and she glanced over her shoulder, to the blue which managed to reach just behind her. "Who is that?"

"Ogan, you have to save her!"

"Ked? KED!"

"Kya, don't! I'll get her!"

Yoji's dread only increased, as the red came closer. And then, there was a massive arm, scooping her up and holding her against a great and blue chest. And in that instant, despite Yoji definitively knowing better, the fear began to ebb.

"Are you alright, Hikaoh?" a voice asked her, deep and secure.

"I'm..." not Hikaoh, "...okay Bato..."

Yoji scowled, even as she felt herself being dashed away from that place of flames. "Kya? Where are you?"

"Right here," the Tribeswoman answered. Yoji found herself being handed to a middle-aged Tribeswoman who instantly crushed her against her chest. Yoji squirmed, trying to get free of these mammoth barbarians. And she could see that the woman was weeping.

"It's okay, Hikaoh. I'm not going to let them take you..."

With a gasp, the fire, the smoke, the snow and the savage all disappeared, and Yoji was sitting bolt upright in her bed. A glance outside showed that, while the rain had for the moment stopped, the clouds still hung oppressively close, promising more soon. Yoji sat there, sweat coming off of her in sheets, as she tried to get her heart back under control. What the hell was that? She'd had nightmares before, certainly, but she didn't remember them. And the ones she had, they were always the standard fears; death, dishonor, humiliation, reporting to the Fire Lord for an important task only to find herself bereft of pants. This... was worse.

She swung her legs over the side of the cot, and looked around the room. Her cot was in the corner, surrounded by diaphanous curtains, a luxury which most of her brothers and sisters lacked. Then again, she had, over the years, earned a certain degree of luxury. She breathed in, and finally got her breathing normalized. Blinking away the lingering sensation of dread, she got to her feet. She certainly wasn't going to be going back to sleep right now, with that still on her mind. She pushed the curtain aside, and started to pace up the rows of the other Children. While this wasn't the only barracks, it held enough of them. But one cot remained empty that shouldn't have been. Kori's was empty, of course, but that was because he never seemed to sleep. No, the one which should not have been vacant was Omo's. She stared at it for a moment, before letting out a sigh which she really didn't want to.

"I heard about Omo," Juryo said from nearby, and quite quietly for all of the others who were sleeping. Yoji turned a glare to the earthbender and made her annoyance be known. Juryo was a fairly heavy young woman, but what she lacked in svelte physique she made up for in brute earthbending strength. Had Omo not been more useful for his talents, Juryo was Yoji's distant second in that area. "Just saying, it's never easy losing one of yours."

"And you would know?" she asked. Juryo shrugged, and got up, following Yoji as she took her wander out into the halls.

"My squad lost Hiraki about a month back," Juryo said, nodding grimly. "He got stuck by an Azuli on his way out. We didn't have a chance to get him staunched before the pale-eyes were on us. So... he blew himself up to hide our involvement. Maryah doesn't like talking about it."

"I thought Maryah knew better than to lose a man," Yoji said. Juryo just shook her head.

"Sometimes, you lose people. And there's nothing you can do about it," she said. She looked at Yoji, and raised a brow. "Starting to lay off on the makeup, eh?"

"What?" Yoji asked, and then she flashed a hand to her face. As the fat girl said, she was bereft of her usual mask from those around her. That was odd. She usually put it back on before even considering to leave her cot. "Sleeping with makeup on rots your skin. I'd like to not look like a leper."

"Eh, you've got something to lose in that regard," Juryo said. Yoji just rolled her eyes, and the two continued to walk.

"I have a question," Yoji said, her words somewhat faltering. Mostly because she wasn't sure if she wanted to hear the answer. "Do you remember your life before you came here?"

"A bit," Juryo said with a shrug. "My parents were poor and desperate, and I was... I think the seventh mouth to feed. So they sold me to a pirate, telling them I'd be a good 'cabin boy', neglecting to mention the," she gave a point at her crotch, before shrugging. "Long story short, pirate gets dead, and I get saved by the Fire Nation. Why do you ask?"

"I just find myself wondering," Yoji said.

"About what?" Juryo asked. "Face it, Yoji. We've got it a lot better than we'd have ever had it where we came from. Me? I'd probably be starved to death by now. I hear yours abandoned you on an ice drift, so you probably wouldn't have even lasted as long as I did."

"Of course not, it'd take a while for you to starve to death," Yoji said flatly. Juryo just gave a chuckle at that. If there was one thing that the earthbender had a good humor about, it was her weight. After that chuckle ended, though, she glanced to each side, before leaning in. Yoji frowned, but mimicked.

"Although, I hear that there's a couple of the Children who didn't arrive in the city willingly. Just a rumor, but..." she shrugged.

"You're being absurd. All of the Children want to be here."

"Now, they do," Juryo pointed out. "But back then? I can't say."

"You'd do well to ignore these kinds of whispers, Juryo. They don't bode well for your health."

"I'm just repeating what I've heard. You can't blame a girl for doing that," she said.

"Somebody else might."

"So what brought this on? I haven't exactly known you to be the introspective type," Juryo asked, pausing with fists on wide hips.

"What does it matter?" Yoji asked. Juryo didn't alter a hair. "I know where my loyalties lie. I just... wonder about things."

"You? Wonder? Never," Juryo said. "Are you sure you didn't hit your head falling out of bed or something? You don't sound like the Yoji I know."

Yoji rolled her eyes and turned away from the earthbender, moving back whence she came. And under her breath, without the firebender even realizing it, she muttered, in Yqanuac, "I'm not even sure I am the Yoji you know..."

---

"Boy am I glad I don't have to walk," Toph said as soon as the bison landed in the midst of the vegetation choked ruins that climbed up toward a mountain with a cleft peak. Aang's face tightened into worry, though, since the pods on the vines started tracking her as she walked past them. "This place would have chewed you up and eaten you alive, Twinkletoes."

"Um, Toph, could you step away from that wall?" Aang asked.

"What? Because of this?" she asked, and then flicked her hand toward those pods. An instant after she did, though, she stomped a foot. Thus, when those pods erupted with a stream of glistening darts, they slammed into stone, not Toph. She turned somewhere near him and shook her head. "You worry waaaay too much."

Azula, who'd gone from sweating out pints to shivering as though she were back on the South Polar glacier where Aang had found her, was now walking slowly beside Zuko, with he providing much of the support for her. He looked around with all of the wariness of a small and delicious animal in the presence of a... well, in the presence of Sokka. "These buildings are clearly ancient, but there's something... oddly familiar about them," Zuko said, and Azula let out a babble of nonsense, before growling and falling silent.

"Did you catch any of that?" Aang asked. Zuko just shook his head slowly.

"There was nothing to get," he said quietly.

"So what? This is a look into your super-deep past or what?" Toph asked. She paused, and tapped a hand to a wall not choked with predatory vines. "Hm."

"What is 'hm', Toph?" Aang asked.

"This wall isn't solid. And neither's the floor. And the ground feels... bubbly. Like back at Makapu, but not as bad."

"Ugh, Makapu," Zuko muttered. Azula likewise let out a string of anger, ending in her kicking a rock into a flower, which snapped around it and dragged it inside. "But still... I can tell that the Fire Sages' temples are descended from this type of building."

"Great, so now we're learning about architecture," Toph muttered.

"Don't worry, Toph, we'll find something we need," Aang said.

"I'm not worried about she-of-lightning-and-crazy. She'll survive this," Toph dismissed. "I'm just worried that this place might all be eroded stone and bad memories."

"Don't tell me you're giving up on this place already?" Zuko said sardonically.

"Do I ever give up when I want something?" Toph asked, thrusting a finger at him without turning even as he walked slightly behind her. "Who, between the two of us, broke a fundamental rule of bending?"

"You did," Zuko said with resignation.

"And who's the greatest earthbender in the world?"

"You are," he continued, obviously having done this sort of thing while Aang was unconscious. He scratched at the hair which was growing in more rapidly than he remembered. He desperately wanted to cut it, but he knew that Sokka was right. If he didn't hide his arrows, then this whole plan was doomed before it started.

"Dang straight," Toph said with a nod. "The past will tell us something of use, if I have to punch it into submission to get it."

Aang only shook his head, but as he walked, he felt something tug at his ankle. He looked down just as a grinding of stone sounded, and the floor before him dropped down almost a yard, and long shards of sharp black stone stood there, ready to let gravity impale him upon them. Aang let out a shout and blew down hard, bending the air enough that he threw himself straight back into Azula and Zuko. Zuko caught him. Azula muttered something annoyed and pushed him forward so that he stumbled to a stop right in front of that abrupt pit. "Guys... I think the past is trying to kill me," Aang said, his voice shaking a bit.

"No way," Toph said, bending down to run her fingers along the floor and the wall next to it. "I was wondering what those were. Guys, this whole place is laced with stone mechanisms. Gears and weights, I can feel. There might be others we can't."

"I can't believe that these booby traps are still working after thousands of years," Zuko said.

"They aren't that old," Toph said. "Even stone doesn't last that long, not unless somebody's tending it."

"Wait... the Sun Warriors could be alive?" Aang asked.

"I didn't say that," Toph said. "Only that somebody's setting traps in their ruins."

"Well, who else could survive this deep into the jungle?" Aang asked, as he pointed down a street, to where a wild eel-hound scuttled from one shadow to another, only to have something small and furry bound after it. There was a squeal of something dying in that shadow, and then, something small, red, and furry walked out into the open, glanced a few directions, and then went back to eat what it'd just killed.

"Gorks," Toph said.

"I was about to say Hillmen, but that works," Zuko agreed. Azula muttered something, and then swatted Toph in the shoulder and pointed at the pit.

"Alright, alright, I hear you... more or less," Toph said, and then bent the stone back up, creating a bridge over the trap. "But don't get too comfortable with this. I've got no idea what I'm messing with here. And if I break something, I can't unbreak it. That's history lost forever."

"Noted," Aang said. He pointed ahead of him, as he crossed that bridge. "If there's one bit of good news, though, it's that I think we're on the right track."

"...and why?" Zuko asked.

"Because you don't build traps unless you have something worth protecting," Aang said confidently.

Zuko leaned toward Toph, where he and his sister were following after her. "He has heard of graverobbers, hasn't he?" Zuko asked at a stage-whisper.

"I don't take anything for granted at this point," Toph said, her expression wan. Aang ignored them and moved further into the city. "Um, Twinkletoes, how much vines do you see?"

"Well, there's less ahead of us," Aang said.

"I get it," Zuko said. Aang paused, turning back to them.

"You get what, Zuko?" he asked.

"Think about how much these vines grow. Think about how old this city is," Toph said, weighing each metaphorically in a hand. She balanced them out for a second, then dropped the 'city' hand practically to her knee. "Thousands of years is more than enough time for a desert to creep over a city like this, let alone a jungle. Somebody or something is keeping the vegetation in check."

Aang turned, and saw what she meant. "Maybe there's herbivores?" he asked.

"The only thing which would eat those vines would be Quill-Buffalo," Zuko said, tensely. Aang raised a brow. "You don't want to run into a Quill-Buffalo."

"But they're herbivores, right?"

"Nothing's a herbivore in Azul. Even the plants eat meat," Zuko cast a thumb aside to another low-lying plant which was surrounded by tiny, undigested bones.

Aang took that under advisement, and turned once more. This time, there was a click as the stone under his foot sunk in. Instantly, he was twirling his staff, as he could hear the wip-wip-wip of darts zipping toward him, only to be blocked by his glider. Not by the airbending, though. When he stopped his twirl, he found almost a dozen black stone blades lightly dug into the wood. He gave a flinch at that, and reached to pull them out.

"Not with your bare hands, you don't," Zuko said, walking past him. "Toph, I'm starting to think you're right. That trap should have been sprung centuries ago. Unless somebody reset it, and recently."

"So the Sun Warriors could be alive?" Aang asked, as he tried to rub the obsidian shards off of his staff onto a shattered pillar. It was more or less effective.

"It doesn't have to be them, Twinkletoes."

"We can still have a positive attitude!" Aang offered, and then he bounced ahead of them to a wall, which stood intact at the top of a brief stairway. There was something carved into it, but time and weather had made it too subtle for his eyes to really detect. "Guys? Can any of you see what this means?"

Toph walked right up to it, and ran a hand across it. "It's pretty eroded, but I can feel the impact fractures from when they first carved it in the stone. My guess is that it would have looked... like... this."

Toph twisted her hand, and there was a rain of grit, and an image appeared, spreading out from her fingertips, until it was a mural carved shallowly into the drab stone. The central figure was a man, his hands open and at his sides, as a great conflagration raged around him. But as the image spread out, Aang saw that it wasn't a conflagration, per se. It was the breath of a pair of dragons, who curled around him and spewed forth directly at him. "Oh, man," Aang said. "I thought the Sun Warriors were friendly with the dragons."

"So did I," Zuko said, staring agape at the mural which Toph had dragged back out of the uncounted centuries. "I don't understand. Everything I ever knew about them, everything Uncle ever said about them... It made them sound like they were in harmony with the dragons. Maybe that harmony wasn't as peaceful as Uncle made it sound."

Aang looked at it, and the rest of the mural which depicted a procession of firebending figures, their hands and the fires within them directed up and at the dragons which dominated the mural. "Zuko... something happened to the dragons, didn't it?"

Zuko glanced to him, but didn't speak. Toph gave a quiet nod.

"There were so many of them around when I was a kid. But now, there's none left. What happened?"

"Sozin happened," Zuko finally answered. He glanced to the side of the wall, and pointed. "That looks a bit more promising."

"What does?" Toph asked.

"It's... still shiny?" Aang asked. He tried to figure out how something so old could still be shiny, but he then refocused his mind onto the real issue at hand; today's utter dearth of dragons. "Zuko, you're going to have to explain that last part."

Zuko nodded, pausing only to blast a gout of flame at a tigorilla who looked like it was about to pounce. The brutish, muscular and striped beast let out a hooting roar, even as it fled down the streets and vanished around a corner. Azula muttered something, and shook her head, but stayed close to Zuko. "My great-grandfather was the one who invented the idea of hunting dragons for glory," Zuko said, a bit bitterly. "They were the ultimate firebenders. If you could best one, then it proved that you were a man or woman straight out of legend, and you earned the honorary title 'Dragon'."

"Wait, does that mean that the cool old guy...?" Toph asked. Zuko nodded, slowly, as he continued toward that taller ziggurat in the distance.

"The last dragon in the world was slain by Uncle, when he was only a bit older than I am," Zuko said quietly.

"I thought Iroh was... you know... good," Aang said.

"He had a complicated past," Zuko muttered, and then offered a dry smirk. "...must be a family tradition."

"But the dragons, they can't be extinct," Aang said.

"If they aren't, they're hiding a lot better than the people who go after them," Zuko said snippily, as they started to ascend that plateaued pyramid. Aang pondered for a moment, and in that moment, he didn't notice the vines starting to contract around his ankle. It wasn't until he took his second step that he found he was bound. He let out another scream of alarm, which grew louder when a ripple of red spines began to pop out of the vine, running down its length in a wave. He threw down his fist and ignited with fire, only barely managing to burn it off of him before those spines slammed into his foot and delivered whatever unpleasant dose they were carrying. Aang staggered back a step, and then tripped over the stairs and landed on his back. He stared straight up, which was directly at Toph and the firebenders.

"Wow! You weren't kidding about everything trying to kill me!" Aang said, still breathing deeply.

"That's Azul for you," Toph said with a shrug, and then she stomped her step which caused the one under Aang's back to pop up, dropping him rudely on his feet. "Now keep up, Twinkletoes. You're kinda the linchpin in this whole thing."

Azula was staring ahead, her head shaking as though she were trying to dismiss a concussion, but there was something in her gaze as it locked onto the structure ahead of them that even Aang could tell was much more... aware... than she had been for the last day. Like she recognized what they were moving toward. Aang kipped up to Zuko's side, and pointed at his sister. He turned a confused glare to the airbender, then to Azula, and back again.

"I think she knows this place," Aang finally outright said.

"How is that possible? She's never been h– oh, right," Zuko cut himself off. "The other Azula."

Aang zipped around into Azula's face. "Do you know this place?" he asked her. And for his trouble, he got a straight-arm into the center of his chest.

"Ow. Okay, don't invade her personal space," he said, as Azula lowered her arm, with a comment which was intended to be snarky but didn't arrive due to her word salad. "Azula, do you know this place?"

Azula glanced ahead, and said something haughty and a little condescending, before nodding and continuing up the stairs. "I don't think I'm going to get used to this," Zuko said, his voice small.

"If what we're looking for is up there, you might not have to," Aang promised. Zuko watched after his sister for a moment, then held his hand down to the airbender. Aang took it, and was hoist up.

"Alright. Touching man-moment come and gone. Can we get moving?"

"Do you feel anything here, Toph?" Aang asked.

"Like you wouldn't believe," she said. "This place is layered in mechanisms. I wouldn't know where to go in without breaking something."

"In?" Zuko asked.

"There's space in there. But like I said, I don't want to break anything; this crap's probably older than Omashu!"

"Fitting, that the only thing which melts her heart are things tough enough to last several millennia," Zuko said deadpan.

"Not the only things, just the main ones," Toph said daintily, and continued up. Aang, though, being both an airbender and an eager person, beat her to the top, and found Azula standing in the center of the penultimate plateau. Only there was no stairway to the last level. Only a great and gleaming door, set with a red stone at its apex. "Now this? This looks like something I can handle."

"A golden door," Aang said, describing the scene. Azula looked mildly baffled at that. "Azula? Was that open when you remembered it?"

Azula shrugged, and said something, but nothing of note. She looked around, and started to fixate on a minaret raising up to the east. Toph, on the other hand, confidently walked up to the doors, cracking her knuckles as she did so. "Um, Toph? Are you sure this is a good idea?"

"It's a metal door! It'll take more than that to keep Toph Beifong away from history," she said, and then she waggled her fingers, set her feet, and thrust both fists forward into the metal, which resounded with a loud bang.

Followed by Toph stepping back and flapping her hands in pain. "Ow! Damn it! What the hell's in that thing?"

"Gold," Zuko said. "Have you ever bent gold before?"

"Why should that be any harder than iron?" Toph kept rubbing her knuckles.

"It's about four times as dense," Zuko pointed out. Toph set her jaw, and returned to the door. With a set of her feet, she thrust her fist forward once again. And again, to a bwong of impacted metal, and not a whisper of deflection. Only the sound of a blind earthbender cursing in confusion and pain, echoing across an ancient, dead city.

---

"You know, we never had a chance to catch up," Malu said, plunking herself down beside Nila as she continued to work in extreme focus and concentration on the weapon that she was obsessed with. "I mean, I notice that Tzu Zi isn't around anymore. What happened there?"

"Do you really want to 'catch up', or are you simply beside yourself with boredom?" Nila asked, not looking up from her work.

"...yes?" Malu admitted.

Nila gave a glance to the airbender. She didn't look any different, in terms of the gross physicalities, to the woman who Nila had last seen rising into the heavens above Sentinel Rock, before she destroyed it utterly. But there was a difference, one even somebody as insensitive to the ephemeral as Nila could discern. There was a zen to Malu, now. Even as she admitted boredom and stir-craziness, there was a calm. A purpose. Nila sighed, and moved to Malu's side, dangling her legs and bare feet over the edge of the tower, staring out into the now dribbling 'cascade'.

"Tzu Zi has returned home," Nila said. "She joined me to Ba Sing Se, and then an emergency with her family called her to return. And if the truth is not as I described it, I have sworn to kill a particular criminal."

"What?" Malu asked.

"There is much more to that story," Nila admitted.

"Maybe we should start a bit further back," Malu said. "After I... you know... what'd you do?"

"Ah. Ashan joined us to the north," Nila said. She shook her head, in mild amazement at her own travels. "He... was a willing if mildly helpless traveling companion. He did not deserve what came of him."

And so, Nila told her everything. The walk north. The Great Divide and Full Moon Bay. Ba Sing Se... that took more time than anything else. And was the hardest to talk about. Still, Malu didn't press or tease. She just listened. Nila intended to keep the descriptions clinical, clear, concise. But... once she got to Lake Laogai... she just couldn't. It was infuriating, even as it hurt; She wasn't this kind of weak and stupid girl, this temperamental sap beholden to feelings instead of good sense. But Malu didn't mock, and she didn't jibe. She just laid a comforting hand onto Nila's shoulder, while she got through the hardest parts. Past Ashan, in particular. Gods, existent or not, it hurt to think about him.

"You've been busy," Malu finally said, upon Nila's offering of 'and that's when you dropped out of the sky and saved the Avatar', neatly wrapping up Nila's long and rambling story. "And it doesn't sound like you've been letting yourself enjoy it."

"What do you mean?"

"Nila, you were on your own. You had nobody ordering you around, and what's the first thing you did? You hunted down somebody to order you around," Malu pointed out. Nila just scowled at that, accurate though it might have been in some oblique fashion. "You're younger than I am. You're supposed to spend these years having fun, being an idiot and making bad choices. Learning from your mistakes..."

"I can learn from the mistakes of others well enough," Nila said grumpily, which was a damn sight better than being on the edge of sobbing once again. "After all, I assure you that Mother's fate will not be my own."

"See? That's a... fatalistic kind of optimism, but bully on you to get it," she said, pumping a fist as she did. Nila just gave her a wan look, and Malu leaned in a little closer. "So... did anything ever happen between you and Tzu Zi after that whole cuffuffle? Or did you find some other nice young lady to latch on to?"

"I am not attracted to women," Nila said flatly.

"Your tongue down Tzu Zi's throat tells a different story," Malu pointed out.

"...die in a hole, airbender," Nila muttered. Malu laughed at that, open and outright. "That was a momentary lapse in... preference. While I find the male gender on the whole staffed with insufferable and witless specimens, it still appeals more to my sensibilities."

"On the whole?" Malu asked. "So you've found somebody who isn't insufferable and witless?"

"Of course," Nila admitted. "Zha Yu is an intelligent man, and grounded for his experiences. The Avatar is roughly half of that, as he is understandably insufferable. The Prince, though something of a comparable fool, does not grate on my senses," she shrugged.

"What about that Tribesman Tzu Zi said you were flirting with in Senlin?" Malu asked.

"I was not flirting with Sokka," Nila said, her throat hosting a growl as she did.

"He didn't seem witless, and you seemed to get along well with him," Malu teased. "Heck, even just the time on that boat, you and he were about as close as the waterbender over there," she pointed at Katara, who was trying to bathe the small brown creature they had insisted on bringing with them, "was with her boyfriend."

"Sokka is not my boyfriend," Nila pointed out.

"Why not?" Malu asked.

Nila raised a finger, to start in a tirade of reasons why he was unsuitable, but even as she reached them in her mind, she was discarding them. Patient enough to put up with her. Smart enough to keep up with her. Strange enough to interest her. Familiar enough to empathize with her. Humble enough to not belittle her, and in fact praise her own faculties where they outshined his own – that was a trait that Nila had learned was a very infrequent one to find amongst the male gender. That finger drooped, and she started to go even further. Attractive, not clashing of personality, decent taste in food, knew what it was like to have a dim-witted sibling, had a similar breadth of experience of life, starting from an almost identical starting point and reaching to today.

By Archeopthese! Sokka was essentially the male her.

"I find I am without worthwhile reasons not," Nila admitted.

"Well, have you talked to him about it?"

"And what would I say?" Nila asked scathingly. "'Remember how we once spent four hours brainstorming a bomb which could flash-freeze magma within a dozen yards? Good, now you are a suitable mate."

"I wouldn't be that blunt," Malu pointed out.

"I am not renowned for my tact, airbender. That has not changed since I shot you in the neck and chest."

"Well, if you just sit there, you're going to miss out."

"Miss out, on what?"

Malu grinned. "You know."

Nila stared back at her. "Apparently I do not."

Malu's grin curdled a little, before she laughed and nudged Nila in the ribs. "Oh come on. You totally know."

Nila shrugged in confusion.

"If a man and a woman like each other, they..."

"Sex? Seriously?" Nila interrupted. "You have a filthy mind."

"Hey, I wasn't going to say..." Malu sputtered.

"You are absurd and your advice is going to get me killed one day, mark my words," Nila said. And then she leaned aside, and shouted across the gap to the next hanging tower. "Tribesman!"

"What?" Katara answered also at a yell.

"The other Tribesman!"

"You called?" he answered at a shout.

"I am making dinner tonight!"

"I'm there!"

"Hey, I was making dinner, Sokka!" Katara complained.

"If it's vegetarian, I'll eat it with you!" Malu shouted to her.

"Why are we all yelling at each other?" Sokka shouted.

"Because we are all lazy and spread out!" Nila answered. Then, a smirk came to her face. "Tribesman!"

"What?" Sokka shouted again.

"I'm not wearing any underwear!" There was the sound of a crash and something breaking in that other tower, and Nila chuckled lightly. Malu, though gaped at Nila. Nila turned to her, confusion clear at Malu's expression. "What?"

"...You said you didn't know how to flirt?"

"I have better things to do than flirt," Nila said, and she got back to work, leaving a baffled airbender to get up and leave her to her task. After all, there was only so much crazy that even an airbender who was host to the doom of the world could withstand in one sitting.

---

"You know, you probably should have stopped punching after the first twelve times didn't make it move," Aang offered, as the water under his hands glowed brightly, slowly mending the flesh and the crushed knuckles of an overly persistent earthbender.

"I don't get it. Metal is of earth. An earthbender should be able to bend it," Toph said. Zuko shrugged and pulled out a small, ovoid, dark grey blob from a pocket. It was pierced with a hole on both ends, and Aang recognized it pretty quickly as a fishing sink. Which meant, it was probably made of lead. Zuko tossed it to Toph.

"Try metalbending that," Zuko said. Toph rolled her eyes, and then flexed her fingers, with the blob sitting in her palm. It didn't so much as twitch. She scowled, and tried again. When that failed, she switched hands. When that failed, she put it on the ground, rooted her feet, and trust upward with both hands. Then, she stopped, flopping down onto the step which overlooked the overgrown city as noon approached evening, and let Aang continue healing her.

"Okay. Learned something about metalbending. It's hard as heck to bend dense metals."

"It didn't look like you could do it at all," Aang pointed out.

"It's a difference of degrees, Twinkletoes."

Zuko, though, turned away from Aang and looked at the promenade which stretched from the minaret to the great golden doors. "I feel like there's something I'm not seeing, here."

"What do you mean, Sparky?"

Zuko looked at his sister, and how she was walking, her eyes cast downward. Not in any confusion or shyness – as though she even could be – no... she was looking for something. "Toph," he asked. "Do you feel anything on the stone of the floor?"

Aang had to step back as she rose to her feet and started to stride across that expanse, her eyes forward but her feet questing. Then, there was a pause, and she stooped down, patting her fingertips along the dull rock. "Well, I'll be."

"What is it, Toph?" Aang asked, his excitement building.

"There's another mural, carved down here. Just give me a second to... get it back into focus..." Toph said, and then, she reached up and slammed her fingers down, before twisting, and there came a shudder which threw dirt up into the air, and back down, spreading outward in a shallow wave. Toph blinked a few times. "Huh. Well, that's something. I have no idea what it is, but it's something."

"I don't see anything," Zuko said. Aang, though, moved to a spot he'd seen the dirt jump, and blew sternly there. The grit wafted up and out of a chiseled crack which had appeared there. A grin came to his face, and he took in a massive lung-full, and blasted it down sending everybody's clothes a-flapping and sending the grit searing over the edges of the plateau, finally revealing the nature of this roof to the heavens for the first time in untold centuries.

It was a sundial. Azula said something confidently, and then pointed to the minaret, but Zuko was already a step ahead of her. "Aang, that lens isn't just there for show. It's projecting a beam of light onto the dial," he said. He then pointed up to the red orb at the apex of the door. "My guess is, when it hits that day-stone, the door opens automatically."

"Well, how long's that going to take?" Aang asked, a little apprehensive as to the answer.

"If they're anything like the Fire Nation is now, my guess would be the Summer Solstice," Zuko said.

"But that's weeks from now! If we wait that long, we won't have nearly enough time to do all the other stuff! And... I don't think that..."

"I know," Zuko cut him off. Neither was sure that Azula would last for several weeks. He then glanced up, ignoring Azula where she said something insensible and looking at the spot of light where it fell. "But I've got a feeling we won't need to wait that long."

"You think they'll come back and open it for us?" Aang asked.

Zuko answered him by drawing his blades. Aang flinched at that, and immediately went to the alert. Azula and Zuko, though, didn't seem perturbed by it. He calmly walked to the side of that spot of brighter light on the ground, and intercepted it with his blade, slowly angling it up and into the redness at the top of the protal. "Come on... I know this is what you want..."

Toph's eyes went a bit wide. "You got it!" she said with a degree of glee, before reigning herself in. It wasn't until a second later that Aang started to hear what Toph sensed first. There was a clunk, and grinding of metal being swung open. The doors started to part, and light began to spill into the chamber beyond it.

"You know what, you're a lot smarter than people say you are," Aang said, giving Zuko a nudge as he passed. Zuko smiled for a moment at the compliment, until he caught the back-hand of it.

"Hey!"

Aang bounded through the gates ahead of everybody else, even though Toph had a head start, and Azula started far closer. He only landed, though, before he saw a rictus staring back at him. He gave a start, before opening his gaze, and seeing that the rictus was only one of a ring of statues, each rendered in greater-than-life size, showing men in various positions, each side mirrored with the other. Aang looked around, as Azula shoved her way past him, muttering under her breath.

"That's... not what I expected," Zuko said.

"What did you expect?" Aang asked.

"The bones of dragons," Zuko answered. He cast a thumb over his shoulder. "The text on the floor said 'the resting place of the chosen'."

"You could read that?" Aang asked.

"Ty Lee's not the only one who had an interest in dead languages," Zuko said with a shrug. He scratched at his left ear, looking around in bafflement. The scenes on the wall, rendered so only certain shades remained after the thousands of years, showed what Aang took to be a culture that revered the dragons, but not in a warm and fuzzy-way. No, they seemed to pick out sacrifices, giving them an offering of fire, and sending them to the dragons to be consumed in their fire. It all made Aang wonder if everybody was as barbaric back then? They might have been; there wasn't an Avatar back then to rein them in. "I don't get it. This doesn't make any sense. The name said..."

"Zuko, what does this say?" Aang asked, where he dusted off a bronze plaque, with writing in iconographs similar to Huo Jian, but clearly much more crude and simplistic. The firebender walked over, and leaned down.

"The dancing dragon," he said, and trailed off.

"The dancing dragon what?" he asked.

"That's all it says," Zuko told him. Azula, though, barged in, shoving him aside, and grabbing Aang's arm. Aang let out all of the usual utterances of confusion as she dragged him to the other side of the ring, and crudely set him into place. She then pointed at the statue he was behind, and babbled for a long moment. Then, she walked away. Aang started to follow her, but she turned, glared at him, and shoved him back into the exact place he'd been before. Okay... so she wanted him to stand here.

She then ushered Toph and Zuko away from where Aang had been standing before. Azula then rose up on one foot, mimicking the pose of the statue before her. She looked over her shoulder, and shouted something at Aang, which sounded impatient. She then pointed at the statue again, and resumed her balance. At that, Aang's eyes widened. She wanted him to do what the statue's did?

He rose up onto one foot, and when he did, there was a grating click as a panel sunk into the ground under his weight. Toph tensed for a moment. "Guys, something's moving down there."

"The dance is the key!" Aang said. Azula rolled her eyes and muttered something which spoke of sarcastic relief. Then, after a moment, they started to move, miming the forms of the statues they shadowed. Aang could tell, even as he was doing the motions, that they were all part of a firebending form. The way he moved, he could tell, this would be powerful if he could keep his mind clear and steady. His footing secure. This wasn't an act of rage and hatred. This was fire as the dragons themselves would have embodied it. Every time they matched a statue, a form, there was another click, and they continued their way around the circuit. Until they met in the center, and Azula thrust her fists forward, almost bent sideways to do so. Aang matched her motion for motion, and their combined weight depressed a final panel.

"Something big's about to happen," Toph warned them. Aang's knuckles tightened around the staff, but there was another ominous creak, this time in the glider itself. Aang didn't have time to really notice it though, as his eyes were trying to see in every direction at the same time. Then, there was another grinding, stone against stone, and the floor began to iris out in a circle. Finally, a plinth began to rise up from under the floor, coming to a rest level with roughly Aang's chest. Atop the plinth, its metaphorical shining jewel, was a big egg, solid gold from the look of it, that almost seemed to give off a faint, mellow yellow light.

"That was... less than what I expected," Toph said, as she walked up to the plinth.

"Maybe this thing is connected to the dragons some way," Zuko said. "You might be able to contact them with this."

Zuko reached out a hand, letting his fingers trace along the egg.

"Zuko, that's a seriously bad idea!" Aang blurted out. "Hasn't anybody ever told you that you can't trust a golden egg on top of a suspicious altar?"

Eyes turned toward him. "And how exactly would he get that needlessly specific lesson taught?" Toph asked. Aang wilted a bit, and Zuko reached for the egg, this time clearly with an intention to scoop it up. Aang let out a puff of breath in relief as Azula slapped his hands away, blabbering something annoyed and a bit condescending, before making ushering motions. Zuko stood his ground until she physically shoved him, and she began to gather Aang and Toph along with him, yammering and shoving until all three of them were standing just outside the golden doors. Then, she pointed sternly at the ground, and gave a command which was gibberish, before sighing, turning, and heading back inside.

"What's she doing?" Toph asked.

"I'm... not sure," Zuko said.

"It's like she's been here before," Aang said. And then he paused. "And honestly, she just might have been."

"Well, it's a shame she can't tell me what the heck's going on here, 'cause I'm starting to get annoyed."

Aang turned from Toph, to Azula, and immediately flinched as she slapped herself very hard in the face. "Azula, what are you doing?" Zuko asked at Aang's side, but Aang warded him, tentatively, from moving toward her. She seemed pretty adamant that they stay here, after all. Then, after a breath, Azula picked up the egg, and immediately set it down, at the foot of the plinth. The instant the clunk of the gold hitting stone sounded, she was sprinting like a shot, and there was good reason for it. Because the instant the egg moved, the doors started to swing shut. She raced toward them, racing against the doors which Aang tried to slow down by raising up blocks in their path; the mechanism obviously was built strong, because it broke the meager obstacles that he created without so much as a shudder.

The whole thing proved slightly moot, as Azula managed to get through the closing doors while they were still more than two feet apart, even if she had to skirt sideways to do it. Then, she slowly stumbled to a stop, hands on knees. Not breathing deeply, but swaying slightly as though she wasn't quite sure of her balance. Zuko took this opportunity to move to her side. She shoved him away, and then toppled sideways onto the stone, before growling something which was obviously intended to be foul and profane, but was lost in a muddle. When Zuko scooped her up again, she didn't resist him.

"So... what just happened?" Aang asked, as the final clunk sounded of a door being locked closed.

Toph, though, started to grin.

"What is it?" Aang asked.

"I'm glad I'm not standing in there," she said with crossed arms and that smirk growing broader.

"Why is that T–" and then, Aang was interrupted by a massive 'Blort' sound, and the doors shuddered slightly as though something massive and blorty had hit it from the other side. A few seconds later, Aang turned away from that door, to the blind earthbender next to him. "..oph?"

She just grinned.

"That doesn't help us very much," Zuko said, moving the now slightly-green looking Azula to a seat where she could rest. "We still don't know how to contact the dragons. Unless their spirits are just floating around this city, and I know from experience that even I'm not that lucky."

And as he finished talking, there was one more grinding of stone, and one of the steps beside Azula dropped down, showing a lever set into it. Zuko glanced to Toph, then Aang, and then to the lever.

"What's the worst that could happen if I pull this?" he asked, looking up as though demanding an answer of the universe. The universe answered him with a distant thunder roll. There was a storm blowing past to the south; from the way the winds went, it probably wouldn't hit them, but it promised that the guys back at the Air Temple were in for a wet night. Well, wetter. Zuko let out a groan, taking that noise for a bad omen, and then pulled the lever anyway.

A metallic ping, and then a grinding of metal against stone, this time muted. The doors slowly forced their way open, but this time, it was resisting a liberal coating of some thick, greenish goop which surely had the properties of a particularly nasty form of glue Aang had run afoul of in his childhood. And sitting near a goop-covered plinth, there was just the slightest hint of gold showing through the muck.

"So..." Toph said. "Who's going to get it?"

"Not a chance," Zuko said. Azula just shook her head, still looking nauseous. Aang hung his head.

"Fine, but if I get stuck, you're coming in to help me!" Aang said, pointing his finger at Toph.

"Yeah, maybe eventually," she said, sitting down on Azula's other side. Aang's face couldn't have gotten any more dire. So he rolled up his sleeves, tucked his pants into his boots, and prepared for a mess.

---

"So... we're wanted, basically?" Sokka asked, as he sat in the warmly lit room, its door pointing straight out to the cascade which had redoubled since the arrival of the thunderstorm. It was just the two of them there, since each of Katara and Malu had decided to take their own meals independent of each other. Not surprising considering how Tribesmen, man, woman, or child, all basically consisted upon meat and meat-like products. It didn't surprise Nila that Malu tried to stay away from that.

Nila nodded, as she jabbed her food with a fork. "Indeed. I am told there are even wanted posters. There are even rumors that the Avatar has died amongst the people."

"Malu really dived deep in there, didn't she?" Sokka asked.

"She has wandered farther than any of us, I believe," Nila said with a shrug. Oh, and where was her nerve now? She continued to eat, both because it was more than palatable with the spices Malu had returned with and because it gave her time to either think or summon will. "Your sister's poster and description are purportedly uncanny. Uncanny, for a style she no-longer maintains," she clarified at Sokka's mildly alarmed look. "Fine clothes, a new style of hair, and distracting company makes for easy infiltration."

"Do you really think that we'll pull this off?" Sokka asked.

"I must hope that we do," Nila said. "The alternative is a far worse thing than death, after all."

Sokka, though, leaned forward, fist under chin and elbow on knee, as he chewed. "I just have to wonder, though, what started all of this? I mean, fighting the Fire Lord and ending a century long war, that'd be an accomplishment in and of itself, but we've got to ensure that reality continues running on top of that? That's a lot to juggle."

"I have seen how you juggle, Tribesman," Nila said, but regretted it as her tone was mildly mocking, and his expression told her that he took it as such.

"I'm plenty good with my hands," he said. He then leaned back, prodding his meat with a deliberation which honestly made Nila pause. Mostly because up until now he had been making a remarkable amount of the meat vanish, almost bereft even of chewing. He shook his head. "I'm just thinking about how much this is costing. The people who didn't make it," he said.

Nila could only nod at that. She had lost as many or more, seeing as her entire birth-place had been scoured to its lowest. "There are costs which have to be paid, no matter how lofty."

"Still," Sokka said. "First Zhao seems to target literally everybody who can help us. We lose the firebending master, we lose Pakku, we lose Summavut, and then Ba Sing Se happens..." he trailed off. "And you know what? I've been thinking about Ashan, too."

It was Nila's turn to lean back at that. "Really?"

"Yeah. How he shouldn't have had to pay the price for a fight he wasn't a part of. He died because he was in the wrong place at the wrong time, and that just isn't fair," Sokka pointed out.

"Life is not. After all, your minx in the south is married to another man," she said, and then inwardly kicked herself with an iron-toed boot. Good job, Nila, bringing up the other woman at a time like this!

Sokka frowned for a moment, and then clued in. "Yue?" he asked. Nila looked up at him, that self-kickery slowing. "I haven't thought about her in months... I wonder how she's doing back home."

Hopeful signs abound. "You seemed quite smitten by her before. Perhaps passions do dim with time," she said, once again defeating her purpose with an off-hand remark. More and more, it seemed like that witch in Makapu was as accurate as a prediction of the coming sunrise; Nila was indeed the source of much of her own hardship and anguish.

Sokka gave a bit of a nervous chuckle. "I guess... Part of me just really wanted it to be true. I mean, there was this crazy fortune-teller, back in a town at the foot of a volcano, and she said..."

"Makapu? You have withstood the superstitious madness of that place? I can only sympathize," Nila said with a laugh.

"Yeah, well, she said that I'd 'find my equal in the lady of blue', and guess what Yue was wearing when I first saw her?" Sokka said. Nila's stomach lurched a bit.

"Blue?" she asked.

"Yeah, why?"

Nila seriously considered how this path was going to go if she walked it. Honestly, this was a realm beyond the horizon of her knowledge. And even as it left her apprehensive... she wanted to see. She wanted to learn. She wanted to be... in some small way... normal.

"You have heard countless times how Nila is not truly my name," she pointed out. Sokka shrugged. "It is a sobriquet, one earned long ago," he started eating again, which let Nila know that his attention was back on the present rather than the unpleasant past. "I was perhaps of four years, and had just seen a man accidentally decapitate himself with his own weapon. Needless to say, my fascination with explosives had been freshly kindled. So I flouted Mother's desires, and took some of her money to an alchemist living on the far side of Sentinel Rock. I asked for the ingredients for explosives, as I had read the night before. The alchemist, though, was wise to my intentions, so what he gave me was not quite what was needed."

"How did he know?"

"I was four. Also, Sentinel Rock was not a large place. The far side of it seemed an epic journey when I was small. Not so much, now," Nila muttered. She shook her head. "So I returned and hid the supplies in my room, until I had worked up the nerve to attempt it. I..."

"You tried to make a bomb when you were four years old?" Sokka asked.

"Yes. Were you not paying attention?" the Si Wongi asked, a little annoyed.

"Yeah, paying attention, just a little surprised. Most four-year-olds are pretending they're heros of ancient myth, playing with dolls, or sledding on peng– right you don't have penguins."

"My interests were quite different," Nila summed up. "So I finally began to craft, and at first, things seemed to be progressing apace. But as I worked, I ought have noticed that the substance I was working with was not green, but rather a more azure hue; in a word, it was not blasting jelly. Or at least, not blasting jelly enough."

"So when you lit the fuse, nothing happened?"

"Worse," Nila said, her lips pursing. "When I completed it, I smuggled it out to a corner of the walls where nobody lived, and sought to see how large a hole my 'masterpiece' would make. And detonate it did... although, not with either force, nor speed, nor fire. No... it detonated with a wave of blue slime, just hard enough to knock a stupid four-year-old onto her back and coat everything nearby. I ran home, desperate to try to clean off the mess before Mother found out," Nila shook her head mildly, even as a somewhat nostalgic smirk came to her lips. "In case you do not care to wager where Mother was... it was directly in front of the front door. Waiting for me."

"She knew," he said with a laugh.

"The alchemist had told her. She had been waiting, patiently as a spider-fly, until I finally traipsed off to play bomber. Still, I can remember yet the look on her face as I came back, stunned and covered in that foul substance. Mother was not often given to laughter, but she laughed then. So much, in fact, that Sharif was roused from his slumber, and he looked down from his window, and declared 'Look at my sister! She's all covered in nila!' Of course, he always mispronounced it. Long 'E', not long 'I', but the word spells the same, and means the same."

"So your nickname is 'slime'?" he asked.

"No, that is not the meaning of nila," Nila said. "It rather means blue."

"Oh," he said, somewhat mollified. Then, he got a puzzled look on his face. "What is your name, anyway?"

Nila told him. He nodded briefly.

"I can see why you go by Nila," he said.

---

Aang didn't like the look of Azula. Ever since her little run from the goop, she slowly looked worse and worse. Not that she was in danger of dying; Aang's mind wouldn't allow that possibility. Rather, he was simply unwilling to let anybody suffer around him, not when he had the capacity to help. So even though his clothes were now so mired in gunk that he'd essentially abandoned them – he'd have to borrow somebody's when he got back to the Air Temple – he rested the golden egg on his lap, and closed his eyes, pressing his fists together.

"So... what happens now?" Zuko asked.

"I guess he goes all 'glowing badass' and talks to the dragons," Toph offered.

"I didn't think that he had to go into the Avatar State to do that," Zuko said.

"Why are you asking me about spirity-stuff? Do I look like an authority?"

"Guys, I'm trying to concentrate here," Aang said flatly, not even opening his eyes.

"Please, you've concentrated through worse," Toph dismissed his plight. He would have given her a dirty look, if he knew exactly where she was, and was willing to open his eyes. He knew that the egg was something important, something powerful. Even Zuko had agreed in the brief time that he handled it that it didn't feel like gold. There was a life to this egg, something vibrant and vital which was clear to Aang's senses. He couldn't see it with the World Eyes, so he decided to go deeper.

He could feel the smooth edge of the egg near his folded fingertips, and feel the tiny heartbeat present inside of it. In a lot of ways, this egg felt like a spirit-artifact. They had a way of beating like hearts as well. And since he'd learned about Form, he learned quite a bit about artifacts. Like the one Toph continued to hide, and how it pulled perception itself away from those near it, and fed that perception to its host. How the Dirak was an ocean outside of the bounds of existence, beyond the reaches of time and space, where one could pass infinite distance in an instant, or a single inch in a lifetime, and both were essentially the same. How the Jade Toe sought freedom, in an abstract sense but useful in its way, and would bend destiny itself to grant it. Only one tug per destiny, though.

The rules didn't often make sense, but they were knowable. So he pressed deeper, and tried to find the Form of this egg, and what it meant. As the layers parted, and a perception beyond his eyes and his hands began to drift into his mind, the goldness of the egg vanished. The roundness of it disappeared. Even the warmth slipped away. Now, he was looking beyond it. Into what made it. Into what it meant.

And he still heard the heartbeat.

He delved deeper, and tried to see its nature. But that heartbeat seemed to be its whole nature. With a hand and a belief not of body, but rather of undiluted spirit, he prodded that heartbeat, trying to know it better, to get it to unfold. But it remained, solid as ever, a heartbeat, insistent and patient. No, that was something he figured out. The egg, it was waiting.

Distantly, there was a rumble, one which Aang didn't register more than a mild tremble. He didn't notice how the others flinched and worried, looking toward a mountain that Aang couldn't see. He was focused on the egg, that waiting force, vibrant and alive, and enigmatic. He felt... it had a connection to the dragons. Wasn't sure how. So he reached through it. He let his voice reverberate through the beating, and carry beyond.

"Are any of you listening? I need your help. Please," Aang said. His voice, for all its pleading, was gentle, and calm. The rumbling continued, and finally, his World Eyes began to see something. It was the Outer Sphere, barely in his perception, but close enough that he could see it. A fog began to rise up, out of the streets which now prowled with deadly creatures. It blanketed them, smothering them from sight. But that floor of fog rippled and undulated with unseen passage, even as it swelled up all the higher, starting to hide whole buildings under it. And the movements became stronger. Bits of fog snapping up and off of the crest like the spray of a wave. It rose. And then, at the base of that plateau, it came to a halt, hiding the whole of this lost city.

The child.

Barely a whisper, but Aang could hear it. "Who is the child? Are you the lost dragons? Can you help us?"

He has taken the child!

A mortal has taken the child!

Aang's eyes opened, but couldn't see the mortal world, couldn't see the Inner Sphere and how smoke began to billow up black and foreboding from the cleft-peaked mountain. "I did not mean to harm your child. I only needed to talk to the dragons."

Destroy him!

He is like the others! He hunts, for folly and glory!

Destroy him! Destroy him!

ENOUGH.

The last caused the undulations of the fog to fall still, for just a moment. Then, with a burst, easily a hundred of the long and sinuous bodies of dragons long dead seared straight up out of that impenetrable barrier, shooting perfectly perpendicular to the ground, rising toward the sky, their blue bodies wriggling with haste. Aang blinked. Whatever had done that, was obviously far meaner than a dragon was. And that had Aang more than a little concerned. He swallowed nervously, unwilling to let his focus falter long enough to even wipe the fearful sweat from his brow.

"Twinkletoes, 'you mind telling me what you just did?" Toph asked, her eyes on her toes.

"That didn't feel right," Zuko said, and Aang could hear the fwoosh of flames entering his hands. Aang was more than a little concerned that even somebody as good at firebending as Zuko would be hard pressed to deal with a dragon, or worse, something that made dragons afraid. Then, he felt stomping. Or rather, they all felt stomping, but only one could see why. The fog mounted up, as something old, something powerful, and something beyond pressed up against it.

AVATAR?

"I am," Aang said to it. "Are you the spirit of the dragons of old?"

NO.

Aang's heart dropped a little at that. "Well, do you know where I could find..."

He was interrupted by a draconic roar, and then the fog split apart and was blasted away by the sweeping of massive wings, the great, whiskered face rising even as it stared down at Aang, borne into the sky. Zuko shouted something in surprise, as Aang finally saw that there was now a scarlet fire coming from the top of the cleft-mountain. Aang watched the blue, spectral one before him, though. That one had his full attention.

"Wait, you said you weren't a dragon spirit!" Aang said in bafflement.

I AM NOT.

The Dragon rose higher, its body coiling as it rose into the sky, circling around the ziggurat as it did. Aang rose, and turned, cradling the egg as he did so. Just in time, indeed, to see that fire in the distance shatter like glass. Streaming out of it, corkscrewing toward them with wings every bit as broad as the blue dragon from the fog, was a scarlet dragon which roared even as it approached them. Zuko instantly put himself between Azula and the Dragon, but the effort was somewhat moot, because the blue one clawed at the air, and when it did, Aang felt a tearing in more than just wind. It had ripped open a hole in the veil, and pushed itself through. Aang didn't keep the World Eyes open, as it was somewhat pointless at this juncture; one wouldn't need it, to see that the ziggurat was now flanked on both sides by a pair of nearly identical dragons, larger than he'd ever seen. One red. One blue.

"You're the dragon itself, aren't you?" Aang asked. The blue one leaned in closer.

SHAO.

Aang turned to the other, which gave a slightly more muted, more gentle gesture than the other. RAN.

"Ran, Shao, I need your wisdom," Aang said.

RELEASE THE CHILD.

Aang looked at the egg in his arms, and then very gently put it down. The dragons both watched him with eyes like razors the entire time. When it was carefully nestled in place, stopped from rolling by the incisions Toph had renewed in the sundial, and Aang finally stepped back, the blue one leaned down toward him.

WHAT?

Aang nodded for a moment. Then realized that he was just nodding dumbly at a dragon who looked like he – no, she. He knew that instinctively, somehow – could eat Aang in one bite, so he stopped. "Shao, I need the wisdom of the dragons. Agni has hidden itself in the mortal world. If I can't find it, a friend is going to die!"

The other leaned forward, the male of the two, and in a blink, had coiled around all four of them, staring down at those contained in its long body. Shao joined Ran a moment later, coiling atop the lower, then amidst him, until they were a blue and red wall of scales, and two heads glaring down even as their foreheads almost touched.

YOU LEFT.

"I didn't mean to," Aang said honestly, earnestly.

THE OUTER HOME IS GONE. BECAUSE YOU LEFT.

"I know," Aang said, his head starting to hang. "I just want things to be alright again. For spirits and people both."

Ran leaned in closer, and Shao retracted slightly. Not a withdrawal of her looming threat. Just giving her mate more room. WHY SHOULD WE HEED?

"Because I need help, and you're my only hope," Ran's eyes narrowed at that weak explanation. "Because I owe her better than what she's gotten," Aang tried again. Ran leaned even closer, so that his whiskers were practically touching him. Aang knew he only had one more chance. "Because I want her to be alright."

Ran retracted completely, and the two broke apart, moving to their starting positions on the edge of the ziggurat. "Twinkletoes, what exactly did you tell these guys? 'Cause honestly, I'm not sure I could kill these things if I wanted to!"

"Trust me, you don't want to," Zuko said, still trying to protect his sister, who was now slowly pushing herself back to a sit, if a groggy and green-faced one.

Aang looked between the two great dragons, hopefully and pleadingly. The two dragons shared a look, a communication so far beyond the Uou they deigned to dummy themselves into using to speak to him that it beggared his imagination. Then, they looked back down upon them. "Will you help us?" Aang asked, plainly and in Huo Jian.

The two dragons answered by blasting forward with breath of searing azure flames. Aang only had time to gasp in shock, not even to yelp in terror, before that conflagration swept over him. But it didn't burn him. Because even as it came, it was clipped by the scarlet fire of its mate, spiraling it down and around them, cutting – by fate perhaps – into the outer lines of the sun-dial they had all bunkered in the center off. As the flame collided, slid past, slid around, it erupted into colors. Ten thousand and more of them, a spectacle so vivid that even Zuko had to lower his fists and stare in awe. Even in this raw state, Aang could see its meaning. Fire, to create and destroy, united in one purpose, united in one form. Everything that Aang had been saying about the Fire Nation since he got out of that iceberg, in fact! It even told Aang something, something he didn't believe until now. That this war, this World War of a century, it couldn't end until the world screamed for it. Not the East, or the Tribesmen, but all of the world. It would be the Fire Nation that stopped the Fire Navy, the Fire Armies; no other way would work.

"Where..." Aang asked, so quietly against the crashing of flames.

And in the colors, there came an understanding. One all present could gather, Toph excluded. That Agni was at the beginning. Agni was at the fires which burned eternally. The dragon-fire finally called to a close, revealing the sights of the ruined city once again, even though it did take a few blinks to clear the after image. And when Aang did finally clear his vision, he could see something he hadn't really noticed before, both because they arrived with noon and it was now approaching sunset, and because it was yet further beyond where they'd come. Specifically, he noticed that one of the towers was still alight, blazing with a fire just out of sight. The dragons pulled back.

"Uncle didn't kill you, did he?" Zuko finally asked. "He let you live, and hid your secret by telling the world you were extinct."

Shao nodded. Zuko let out a sigh of relief. Obviously, this was something which had long rested upon Zuko's soul, such that its release was unexpected but a relief he clearly couldn't describe. Aang nodded. "I think he learned the lesson that Ran and Shao just showed us. That's why he's the way he is."

"The way he was," Zuko said.

He was immediately cuffed upside the head by an earthbender. "Hey! Until you see the body, he ain't dead! That clear?"

"Stop hitting me!" Zuko complained.

"Only when you stop being whiny!" Toph answered.

The dragons glanced at each other, so clearly a look of elders witnessing the squabblings of the very young. Aang pressed a fist into his palm, a Fire Nation greeting, acknowledgment and farewell, and bowed to each in turn. "Thank you. Your aid means more than I can ever express."

SAVE US.

Not a plea. An order. Aang nodded. And with that, the two dragons took to the sky with twinned roars, searing upward, the fire they breathed searing through the clouds and carving a column for the sun to shine down, even if it was at an angle, and vanishing into the cover above. Zuko turned to Aang. "Well?"

"I know where Agni is," Aang said.

"How far?" Zuko asked, even as he helped Azula to her feet. She still looked quite ill. Aang pointed. "Yeah, that's great, but how far?"

It was Aang's turn to grin, now. "Right over there," he said. Zuko turned, as did Toph, although she blindly.

"...you've got to be kidding me," the firebender said. Then, with a sigh, he started walking. Toph leaned toward Aang.

"You knew about that before the dragons, didn't you?" she asked.

"Um..."

"You know what, doesn't matter," she said, and started walking after Zuko. Aang just shook his head at what had transpired. But then, he remembered the importance of his purpose here, and hurried after them. If Azula was to be well, she would be well today.

---

"So then, I have nowhere else to go but to jump up onto the balcony-rail, and he's got me in a corner. Nowhere left to run, and he starts doing that thing where he throws lightning at you," Sokka continued, somewhat humbly considering the subject matter. She had to admit, it was somewhat more than she'd have expected. If she'd bothered actually listening to his tales in Ba Sing Se instead of obsessing over first her mother, and then the loss of Ashan, she probably would have known the whole thing by now. "All I've got in hand is that book, the one Irukandji wrote about us. So I..."

"Throw it at his head?" Nila asked.

"No, I hid behind it like a terrified child," Sokka said with a laugh. Nila leaned back. Now that certainly wasn't something she'd expect from a tale of derring-do; did not men tell such tales to aggrandize themselves? "I can honestly say that I don't fear pain or death anymore, since I've both been burned nearly to death, and struck by lightning in a two month period. Well, not so much not fear, as don't worry so much about. It's all relative, you know?"

"I doubt any pain shall better that of having my eye gouged out," Nila said, and even as she did, she subconsciously rubbed at it, almost as though she were reminding herself that it had been restored. But of course not. Because she wasn't that foolish.

"You haven't had a kid, yet, so I'd be careful about that claim," Sokka said.

"Please. Of all of you, besides myself, only Malu has the functions of womanhood upon her," Nila pointed out. A vitriolic way of telling him that she was mature, and ready. Which upon immediate inspection, didn't land as intended in the slightest. Blast! She needed a lot more help on this sort of thing.

"Ew. You know, I'm glad I'm not a girl. I wouldn't want to have to put up with... that."

"It is hardly a problem," she said. "I devised something when the bleeding first came to me, to prevent befouling my underclothes..."

"When you still wore them," Sokka needled. Nila smirked slightly.

"...which functions well to bypass mess on those days. Tidy, clever, and not hampering my mobility in the slightest."

"...Nila, why are we talking about this?" Sokka asked.

"I am not sure. The topic seems to have swung," she said. She also kicked herself for not using a discussion of her nethers to launch into something more convivial before it lapsed into disgusting territory. "So you had been struck by lightning?"

"Yeah," Sokka said. "Yue's husband? He was the one who fished me out of the drink so I didn't freeze and drown. It's hard to stay mad at somebody'll who do that for you. Especially considering what else he's gone through," he started to lean forward, staring through the door and leaving what remained of his meal forgotten; since it was already cold, he was missing little. Nila had already cleared her platter away. "Some days, I wonder if we're actually going to win this."

"You have said so," Nila answered him.

"No, you said so. I just asked," Sokka said. He sighed, slumping slightly. "Sometimes, I just feel like this is all too big. I mean, what am I? I'm not a bender! I'm not a shaman! I'm just some guy with a boomerang from Chimney Mountain! I mean, it wasn't even a real town when I got exiled from it..."

"Tribesman," Nila said, trying to interrupt his tirade.

"...and to think that all of this got dumped onto our laps? I've learned a long time ago that cursing the universe is just a good way to make your life miserable, but I honestly have to wonder what the universe was thinking when it decided to put the future of any possible futures onto the backs of guys like Aang and me!"

"Tribesman!" Nila tried to break in. Mostly because she only had one idea left to try to turn this to a direction she would want, and his attention was notably off of her.

"And don't get me started on the losing streak we're on," Sokka continued, waving a hand broadly. "First we land in the North Pole just in time for Zhao to knock down the Spikerim and bring down Summavut. Then, we tried to get a massive army for the Black Sun Invasion, only to have Aang almost brainwashed, your friend killed, and all of us having to flee to a place where the buildings are upside down! I've heard of losing battles to win a war, but this is just getting ridiculous! And the only..."

"Sokka!" Nila shouted.

But Sokka seemed on a solid ramble, "...that we have to really work with is as crazy as a – wait a second, you just said my n–"

She interrupted him, the instant he turned toward him, by tackling him, pressing lips to lips, and letting gravity to much of the work for her. He was locked rigid under her weight, but after a moment, loosened a little bit. And frankly – odd as it might have seemed to be able to think about it while in the midst of an embrace of passion – she did notice that it was a very odd sensation having somebody else's tongue in one's mouth. Not unpleasant. Just odd.

She pulled back, straddling his stomach where he was now pinned to the floor. He blinked a few times, in utter bafflement. "Wh... what was that?" he asked, a bit befuddled. Nila sighed, and wilted a bit.

"Of course, I try to make myself clear, and once again have levied upon a target uninterested," she muttered.

"I didn't say I was uninterested. I just... what was that?" he asked.

"You have never been kissed before, Tribesman?" she asked.

"So it's back to Tribesman, now?" he asked with a nervous laugh. "And yeah, I've been kissed. Lots of times!"

"Obviously not. You panicked," she chided lightly. "I know panic when I see it."

"I wasn't panicking! I was just surprised!"

"Panic is a terminal form of surprise," she said. She leaned back a bit, so that she was still atop him, but no longer leaning down toward his face. "So. Have I misplaced my expectations, or are you welcome to a proper wooing?"

"'A proper wooing?' You haven't done this part before, have you?" Sokka asked, a laugh in his voice even though he still looked a bit paralyzed in place. Nila scowled.

"You know perfectly well that I have not!" she impugned.

"Look... could you get off of my chest?"

"No."

"Right," Sokka continued, and got a considering expression. Nila, though she would never admit it, really really hoped that this wasn't going to go the way that she feared and expected it to. "I don't see any reason why we can't try."

"Oh, very well. I suppose it was too much to expect," Nila said, before even registering what he'd said. "...wait."

"And here I thought I was a pessimist!" Sokka laughed. Nila shifted aside, and let Sokka get back to his seat, if only so she wouldn't have to contort so she could cuff him upside the head. "Okay, no more taunting."

"We both know that is outside of your ability to control," Nila said. She looked down at the space next to him, and carefully slid in. It was also odd having somebody so close to her. In her 'personal space', as it were. Sokka, too, didn't seem entirely sure what to do with himself, so he awkwardly draped an arm around her shoulder and pulled her closer to him. Which made the thing seem all the odder. Nila remained silent for a long moment. "I honestly have no idea what we are expected to do next."

"Oh, great," Sokka said. "And I was expecting you to know that."

"Hah," Nila said flatly.

"Seriously," Sokka said.

Nila turned to him, close as his face was, and raised a brow. "You would seriously accept the mandate of your woman above your own desires?"

"I think it's pretty clear that in Team Avatar, we have a tendency to defer to the pushy women," Sokka said with a shrug. "Besides, it just means that it's one less thing I have to think about."

"I see," Nila said. She squirmed a bit, until she finally found a position which was comfortable. "This will progress badly."

"Probably," Sokka said. "Smart as we are, we're both kinda idiots."

Nila pondered for a moment, letting the thunder outside the room fill the silence. Then, a notion occurred to her. "I have a plan," she said, pulling away and facing him more squarely. "We are fools to our respective culture's mores and timetables, yes?"

"Tribesmen have a schedule?" Sokka asked with a grin.

"I see," Nila shook her head, and got back onto her point. "Therefore, it is in our best interests to find where best we stand. Even a matter of simply judging at which point we are no longer comfortable. From that point we can begin to press on in this endeavor."

"It's a relationship, not a small business," Sokka pointed out.

"Many concepts work between them," Nila waved the objection away.

Sokka nodded, and his mouth pulled into a thoughtful frown. "So how do we start?"

"I have found a comfortable position against your side. Now, we shall have to determine what else strikes my fancy that you can reciprocate, and visa versa, until we each know where we stand."

Sokka nodded. "Yeah, that'll work. We each find the other's comfort zones. It's idiotproof!"

"Of course it is," Nila said, proud of herself at the notion. "First, let's see about this."

And this time, when she shoved her tongue down his throat, while still odd, it was quite a bit more pleasant than she expected.

She also resolved to stop calling it, even within her own mind 'shoving her tongue down his throat'. That madly rational part of herself, hovering above the madness, railed that romance was the most inefficient mangler of words that ever existed. The rest of Nila told that rational part to, for the moment, shut the hell up.

---

The tower they'd mounted was much more narrow than the ziggurat they had left before. The dragons had vanished back into wherever it was they were sleeping, but the humans still felt that they were under intense scrutiny. Zuko didn't like the feeling. What he liked less was the way that Azula swayed even as he tried to help her stand. If they'd just taken the bison to this place, it'd have at least been a lot faster.

"This stuff never stops itching, does it?" Toph muttered, scratching at her shins and then at her hand which did the scratching. Their trek through that part of the city ran them afoul of some nasty Azuli brambles, and Toph blundered straight into them.

"You know how to kill the itch," Zuko pointed out.

"No, because that's disgusting," Toph said with a scowl. Zuko rolled his eyes.

"It's also the only thing that'll work," he said. Toph growled, but didn't say anything else. Zuko then turned to the Avatar, who was looking around the great, etched bronze wall which formed an arc around a blazing scarlet flame. "I'm not seeing any spirits or gods here, Avatar. Just a bonfire."

"A bonfire which has no source," Aang pointed out. Zuko glanced at him, then scrutinized the base of the conflagration. True to the Avatar's perception, the base of the flame was sitting in an unremarkable bowl of stone; no wood for burning, no holes for natural gas to seep up and keep a present flame eternally alight. For all Zuko could see, that fire should have burnt out within seconds; still, it burned, furious and bright and hot.

Zuko blinked at the fire a moment longer. "Do you think that the flame is Agni?"

"No... no it's a bit more complicated than that," he said. He moved to the edge of the fire, such that the flames seemed to be trying to lick the hair from his head, and squatted down, finally curling his legs under him, taking in a deep breath which obviously had to sear his lungs as he took it. Then, he pressed his fists together, and whispered.

The litany the Avatar uttered caused the fire to pull back on itself, burning no less bright, but far less chaotically. Like it was recognizing his presence. Like it was giving him room. Zuko continued to try to peer the flames, to see what it was that Aang was communicating with. Just fire. Just heat. "This part always creeps the crap out of me," Toph muttered.

"Because you don't know what he's saying?"

"Nah; because everything he talks to is invisible to me," she said. With a stomp, she caused a chunk of the tower to split and start rolling down the slope toward the hostile ground. "Would it kill a spirit to not float or slink or... Damn it it's so itchy!"

She then launched back into a fury of scratching, trying to relieve the sensation. Zuko knew that she wouldn't though. Scratching would make it worse. He turned to his sister, who was staring at the fire as a chicken-snake hypnotized by a straight line. "Are you alright, Azula?" he asked. She didn't answer him. She just stared into the flames. Zuko was getting tired of being the only one capable of conversation.

"What are you saying?" Zuko asked, as Aang's litany slowed, and came to a halt. Aang turned toward him.

"Do you remember how your sister found me?" Aang asked, his tone very distant.

"By blowing open an iceberg. Why?" Zuko asked.

"I've just poked Agni's iceberg," he said.

"What do you mean by that?" Zuko asked. His answer was cut short by the ball of flame instantly leaping into a pillar, one which seared up through the 'chimney' hole and in to the sky, tearing through the clouds and blasting them away for miles. The mellow, red light of the sunset now poured in wholesale, bathing the city as though the whole place were set ablaze. Probably what the builders intended. Zuko, for all his comfort around flames, recoiled from that blast, and the unearthly howl that it created as it did. After a half-minute which felt like a year, the column stopped shooting skyward, and slammed back down, cracking the stone as it landed, creating a bed of broken, half-molten rock which ended just short of the Avatar's knees.

And kneeling upon that burning mat, back and thighs ram-rod straight, was a woman. Or rather, something that looked like a woman. Zuko blinked a few times. It was obvious she was naked, but at the same time, she revealed nothing, as fire and smoke clothed her. Her hair, too, was an unnatural shade, a bright red which was tied into a complicated braid which seemed to noose her neck before descending down her back. Her eyes were an even brighter, more reflective gold than Zuko's, or even Ozai's. And she never, ever, blinked.

"What is..." Zuko began.

"Agni," Aang said. Zuko sputtered a moment at that.

"What? That's not Agni! Agni's a man!" Zuko said.

"Says who?" Toph pointed out.

"Says... right. The Fire Sages, who were founded when we were a bunch of sexist idiots," Zuko said, his tone drifting into begrudging sarcasm as he finished. Agni, if it truly was Agni, didn't turn toward him, but was staring at him, and Zuko felt as though he was being surrounded by a burning house. The heat was so great. It's head tilted slightly, deliberately. And while the mouth didn't move, words were clear.

WHO CALLS ME?

Aang rose to his feet, and bowed toward the spirit. "I have. I need..." Aang began. And then, was halted as Agni was now standing at the edge of the incandescent pit, offering no motion between, staring down at Aang with those wide, burning eyes.

YOU PRESUME MUCH, SMALL THING. THE AVATAR IS A MOTE ON THE WIND BEFORE ME.

Aang recoiled at that. And Zuko stepped forward. "Well, if he's a mote, then I'm probably less, but I don't care because you're going to listen to me!" Zuko shouted. Instantly, while Agni still loomed over Aang, her head was twisted to face Zuko. He could feel indignation coming from the being before him. And he didn't care. Zuko reached down, and pulled off his boots, chucking them over his shoulder, took a deep breath, and then readied himself. Agni watched, as he stepped unto the half-molten rock. That head tilted once more.

YOU ARE A CHILD OF FLAMES. I SHALL ACCEPT YOUR TRIBUTE.

"Your tribute will be your continued existence," Zuko said, ignoring the pain which was starting to work up through his feet, even despite his iron-willed firebending to blast the heat away from him. As it pressed in from every direction, not simply down, it was a losing battle. Agni leaned back, her brow shifted for the first time since she appeared before him. And then she did another first. She laughed.

Her laughter was harsh and brutal, like a hammer beating upon an anvil, driven by compulsions beyond human ken or logic. And then, in an instant, the laughter was gone, and she was staring once more.

GREATER THAN YOU HAVE THREATENED. FAR GREATER THAN YOU HAVE FAILED. EMBRACE FIRE, IMPUDENT ONE.

"Zuko isn't threatening you, he's warning you!" Aang shouted. Even as he did, Agni was now standing before Zuko, a hand extended, and Zuko knew that if that hand touched him, no amount of firebending in the world would protect him from it. "Imbalance walks the living world. If I can't find a way to stop it, everything ends. Even you," Aang said.

Agni was now facing away, toward the Avatar, while her hand hovered a hair'sbreadth from touching, and thus destroying, Zuko.

YOU SPEAK NONSENSE. IMBALANCE WILL BE SMOTE. IT IS POWERLESS BEFORE ME.

"No, it isn't, and you know it," Aang said. "Otherwise, you wouldn't have hidden yourself away."

Agni stared, and then that fist slowly closed, recoiling from his brow. But with a flash of movement beyond any human capacity to notice, she shoved hard on Zuko's chest, sending him flying out of the circle of cinders. Zuko landed hard on his back, rolling before he could slow his momentum and come to a halt, just before a long and unpleasant tumble down more than a few stairs. He felt himself being hauled to his feet, and even in his slightly concussed state, noted Toph at his side.

"What the hell is that thing?" Toph demanded.

"God," Zuko said, of the spirit before him which looked down at Aang with something like shame. "More or less."

YES. YOU SPEAK TRUE. IMBALANCE IS... TOO POWERFUL. IT'S DARKNESS ECLIPSES MY LIGHT. SO I HIDE. THE LONG DARK APPROACHES. I CANNOT SEE THE DAWN.

"I can help you," Aang said. "But to do that, I'll need some help of my own."

Agni tilted her head slowly, a question unvoiced. Aang waited, and then glanced to Zuko. His clothes were still smoking from that brutal heat, and he was pretty sure his feet were going to blister in the next few minutes. Aang then faced Agni once more. "You have the power to restore a mind, the mind of somebody dying," he said. Agni then was staring upon Azula, who was on the floor, her eyes wide and locked on the spirit god. Not in worship or fear. Just that she wasn't even entirely aware of what was in front of her. That made Zuko... more than a little worried.

SHE IS OF FIRE. HER MIND BURNS. HER HEART BURNS. HER PART IN THIS WAR MUST BE GREAT, TO RISK MY WRATH.

"She's the most important thing on the Earth," Zuko said, his eyes locked on the luminescent being before him. Agni continued to stare at Azula, still unblinking and focused beyond anything possible of humanity. Then, she slowly, gradually nodded.

"So what are you going to do? Have..." Aang began. Agni interrupted him by exploding into a blast of white, glaring shards, which streaked out in every direction, before slowing and coming to a halt outside the edges of the tower. Zuko looked back, as the shards began to slip back in, toward the center, gathering near Azula in a great and sweeping current, leaving Zuko more than a little alarmed, baffled, what-have-you. He felt... out of his depth. But that sensation fled into terror, when that stream twisted up, out, and then back in, slamming into Azula's eyes and dragging itself into her body.

Azula tipped straight back as though her vital cords had been cut. And she obviously wasn't breathing. Zuko pulled free of Toph and ran to Azula's side. "Azula! AZULA!"

"I..." Aang began. Zuko let Azula slide down, and grabbed the Avatar, hoisting him by his shirt.

"YOU SAID YOU WERE GOING TO HELP HER!" the prince raged, his vision going red.

"She is being helped!" Aang shouted back, and blasted him back with a bolt of air into the chest. Zuko snarled, but didn't press any further. "I can see it, inside her mind. She's not dead. She's just... waiting."

Zuko looked back to Azula, who now stared unblinking as Agni had been toward the sky, blasted clear of clouds for the first time in who-knows how long. With a scream of futile rage, he lashed a whip of flame with smashed a decorative pillar into chunks and sent it crashing down the side of the ziggurat. "You'd better be right," he said to the Avatar, his voice raw.

---

Between the crash of the water falling over the edge of the cliff, and the discontented chattering of a testy lemur, Katara wasn't getting much sleep. That meant she had a lot of time to sit, to listen. She'd had a talk with the airbender, Malu, while they ate. Honestly, for all she once tried to eat Aang, it was hard to stay angry at her. There was something so genuine, so desperate to do right, that Katara couldn't help but believe that Malu was on their side, for the long haul. But a part of Katara kept asking, how long was the long haul?

As for Malu, she was all questions. With Nila not around to be a conversational partner, she latched onto the next person around – Katara obviously – and then began to run through her entire life's story. And the longer that Katara let her go one, the less like language some of the things she talked about were. For example, Malu's description of one of her daring escapes from thirty second century Fire Nation continued into describing a dodge which sent her flying over a cliff as a 'zoop-argh!-blort', most likely describing the sounds that came from her as she plummeted into mud. Enthusiastic, yes. And at the same time, it was easy to see how she and Aang could have come from the same culture. The same way that Aang sometimes had moments of pristine clarity and wisdom, something far beyond his age and innocence, sometimes Malu showed a sort of calm, a zen that belied her fast-talking way. That she'd seen the worst day of her life, and that she could only go up from there.

It was unpleasant to think about, and something that the airbender never described in detail, but Katara was courteous enough not to press. What Katara wasn't courteous enough to do was to remain silent as Momo continued to chatter and tug at her hair-loopies. "Momo, go to sleep," Katara said through exhaustion. Momo, as lemurs were wont to do, ignored her completely, and continued to play with her hair. "Momo! Go. To. Sleep!"

Momo looked at her, those big eyes showing just a bit of the light which managed to peek through the window. Then he crawled onto Katara's face. With a sputter of annoyance, Katara lifted the lemur off of her and set it onto the floor. "Go away. Let me sleep, Momo," she muttered, and tried rolling over so that the little creature would get bored and wander off. Instead, it just provided a challenge to the Avatar's pet. It crawled up onto her shoulder, and reached across her face to pick her nose with one of its little fingers. Katara grunted, and elbowed the lemur off of her. "Go away, Momo!"

It let out an annoyed screech at her. So she flapped her hand once more at the thing, a part of her reaching out with her bending trying to hurl a cup of water at the lemur to get it running away at least for a few minutes. Instead... she felt something different. Like she was grabbing hold of something far squishier than water. And when she finished her motion, it was Momo who went flying directly out the door. Katara sat up at once, thoughts of sleep fleeing her, as Momo scrabbled to its feet, let out a terrified shriek at her, and then flew away. Katara stared at her hands.

"...did I just... bend... Momo?" she asked. Needless to say, she didn't sleep well that night.

---

There was a darkness. But in that darkness, she was not alone. There were two. Three, technically, but only two of note. Even as the darkness gained definition, it would not become anything like a real place. That wasn't how these things worked. They stood on nothing, but it supported them as the very earth would. And they were staring at each other.

The first was a girl, eight years old at the most. Her hair was black and shining, precisely styled. Eyes, golden and large, making her almost seem cherubic, were she not so frequently prone to random acts of cruelty. Wide, innocent eyes had gotten her out of quite a few problems she couldn't blame on somebody else. Her clothing was appropriate to her appearance, the nearly formless robes of a pre-pubescent.

The second, a very old woman, who had lived hard and that hardship was plain on her face. Her hair was uniformly gray, hanging down limp and lusterless and without care of attention, parts of it uneven where it had been torn out by the roots and left to regrow at its own pace. While her eyes were golden, they were rheumy, old spheres with mottled edges, and her whites closer to pallid grey. Her lips were cracked and pulled tight over more than a few missing teeth. She was somebody who had given up on appearance long ago, and given over every scrap of energy she'd dedicated in that pursuit, as well as just about every other pursuit, to the insatiable maw of hatred.

"You look like hell," the girl snarked.

"And you look weak," the crone answered.

Because both of them were Azula. They began to circle each other, eyes locked on each other, as flames began to flicker from the fingertips of the younger. With those flames, sparked others, slowly turning the void into the belly of an unending, eternal, and omnipresent flame. One which burned bright, pure, and did not sear. The older, her bending having been stripped from her years ago, pulled out a jagged, ill-maintained knife. "You know what's the worst thing?" the younger asked, her glare hard and angry. "I've figured out how to kill you. Tear your grasping hands from my body. And if I'd figured it out months ago, none of this would have happened!"

"You're right. It'd have been far, far worse," the old one answered. The younger, unable to bear that thought, hurled herself at the elder, fists guttering with weak red flames. The older slapped the girl aside contemptuously, causing the girl to land flat on her face. She rolled to her feet swiftly, but the elder wasn't quite to the point of ruthlessness, not yet. "Everything that I've done, has been done to prevent the supremacy of a weak, foolish ruler, as a lapdog to an enemy of the Fire Nation as a whole."

"Since I've gotten to know how you think – twisted and insane as it tends to be – I know you're talking about Zuzu and the Avatar. And what, I ask you, was so bad about it? That you didn't get to sit on the Burning Throne? Or was it because you couldn't accept that the lowest common denominator of your misery was you?"

"You don't know anything!"

"I know more than you think," the girl snapped back. "I know that my mother cared about me. I know that my brother would have died for me."

"She never even bothered to visit after she killed Grandfather," the crone pointed out.

"Did she?" the girl asked. The void changed, and the two/three of them were now standing somehow both within and divorced from Azula's old room in the Royal Palace. It was dark outside the windows, which were damp at their edges, and the buckets left under their sills, nearly full. There wasn't thunder, that night. But more than enough rain. Both could see the bed, occupied by a girl who was tightly curled, lying on her side. Bandages brightly red marked her neck and her nose. Not even once replaced. She wasn't alone, though. Another was pacing the room with her.

He didn't look like much, the Zuko of that age. For all Azula was years younger than him, she didn't seem it then. Or rather, he hadn't grown to fill the distance yet. He kept glancing toward Azula, and toward the door, unable to come to a decision, unable to move on. One of her knew that it was a divide that had been instilled in him from a very young age. Half of him wanted to envy her. Half of him wanted to despise her. But between those halves, as was in any practical situation, there was something else, a sliver of filial love that hadn't quite been crushed out of him by a father who wanted the strongest to succeed him, or a mother who couldn't help but chose one over the other.

The door opened.

"...Zuko?" a woman's voice asked. Both of Azula turned, leaving one in the bed and one yet other to not pay attention. "What are you doing here?"

"Mom?" Zuko asked. He glanced to Azula, then back to her. "I... I wasn't..."

Ursa, though, didn't demand explanations, nor offer condemnations. She just moved to Zuko and pulled him into an embrace. One he flinched from at first; Ursa, while free with physical affection, was seldom so forceful with it. After a second, he relaxed, taking the embrace as he should. "I'm sorry, Zuko. I came as soon as I could. Something's happened."

"Mother, what are you saying?" Zuko asked, instantly more alert than he had been before. Ursa turned from him, looking out onto Azula, where she lied in bed.

"How... is she?" she asked, her words halting. Uncertain. Of course they were. Azula had screamed and flailed at her when she tried to rush to the girl's side. Zuko just shook his head. "Listen to me. Listen, Zuko! Everything I've done – Everything! – was to protect you. You and your sister. No matter what anybody ever tells you, I did this to protect you. Don't ever forget that. Don't forget who you are."

"I don't understand," Zuko said.

"Protect your sister," Ursa said. Zuko leaned back. "Please, Zuko. This is the most important thing I've ever asked of you. I know you can do this. Please, promise me you will."

"But, she doesn't..." Zuko said.

"Please."

Zuko's eyes welled up, and he nodded, unable to trust his words. Ursa whispered something to Zuko alone, something which Azula couldn't have heard from her place in the bed. And then, she flipped up her hood, turned, and left the room, the palace, the city. Forever.

"See? She wanted to say goodbye to Zuzu, not you," the crone snapped.

"Then why did she seem surprised to see Zuko in my room?" the girl shouted. "She was saying goodbye to me! And what did your mother say to you? Oh, wait, I have a fairly good idea. She said 'there's something wrong with you'. That 'you're a monster'."

The crone shrieked and slashed forward with that blade, and the girl had to duck and weave away to stay out of its jagged arc. With one dodge, she didn't quite make it away, and it slashed across the bridge of her nose. A gash less than a fingernail's-depth deep, but enough to get blood flowing. And the instant it did, the girl grew slightly taller, and the hair on the crone's head started to darken. "See? You're making my point!"

"You have no idea how I've suffered! I deserve this chance!"

"Why?" the girl asked, the flames which pooled in her hands now far stronger than they had been a moment earlier. "You wasted your chance. And you've done your very best to waste mine!"

"I could have saved us!" the crone screamed, and slashed again. This time, the girl was ready, and when the knife came close, the girl bent out of the way, almost as limber as an acrobat she was once the closest-of-friends with, driving her foot up behind her head in a swift arc and circle-kicking the crone in the chin. The crunch of teeth against boot was met with, rather than teeth being expelled, teeth returning. And the girl grew a bit taller still.

"All you've ever done is make things worse!" the girl shouted, and lashed forward with a blast of fire. One that the old woman caught, and smashed apart, flames sputtering to being in her own grasp. First, a smokey, oily red. The girl pressed again, and this time sent a blast which the crone couldn't quite withstand, and the force sent her staggering back, her hair returning to a more lustrous black, her back raising from a geriatric stoop.

The crone – now a middle-aged woman – stood staring down the girl who now seemed for all appearances twelve rather than the eight-year-old that had been before. "I tried to keep the same mistakes from happening again. My daughter..."

"Is never going to be born," the girl snapped at her. "You can't just justify everything you've ever done by saying 'it's for my daughter'. That runs out of worth. And it runs out of sanity. You're doing this because you're too stupid to find a better path than slow suicide."

"You do realize you've just insulted yourself," the woman told the teenager.

"If I grow into being you, then I deserve the insult," the teenager snapped. She thrust forward again, and this time, while the flames started golden, after an instant, they blossomed into the searing azure that one of her had been so proud of in her later life. The girl was shocked by the heat, the intensity of the blaze. Because of that, when the woman slammed through those blue flames with blue fire of her own, it caught the younger completely unawares, and slammed her in the chest, knocking her flying back. The room shattered into void as she passed through its bounding wall, and she rolled to a stop, her clothes smoking.

The girl who pushed herself up, ignoring the pain, now looked roughly fifteen, but not the same sort of fifteen-year-old that they all inhabited. This was a more lithe, more weak version of herself. A version that the younger thought of as her future. The blaze which settled between them parted, and an Azula of perhaps twenty five years strode out, her body everything which Azula now had, only matured and ripened. It was insensible to envy oneself. Doubly so when that oneself was trying to kill... oneself...

Another her, off to one side, laughed lightly, distantly, at the confusion.

Azula got to her feet, as the woman slowed. Blue fire blazed around her fists, and her eyes seemed every bit as alight. "I need to finish this," the woman said.

"You don't even know what you're finishing," the girl answered her. "You're out of your depth. You're fighting enemies which don't exist. Stand down."

"Make me,"

The teenaged Azula smirked at that, scarletted lips pulling up at that. "Challenge accepted."

She twisted her arms through a form she knew well – though from where she could not say – and when she did, she felt energy being torn apart inside of her. It stoked ever higher, begging for her command. So when she released it, to do as it would, it was simply opening the sluice of a dam, and letting the flood rush forth. The bolt of lighting crossed the distance with a terrible boom of igniting air, despite the fact that, in this place, technically there was none. Still, lightning made noise. Some things had to be preserved. The girl Azula smiled, even as that bolt launched. She thought it would be the end of things.

Not so much, then, as the older seemed to catch it with her hand, and pull it into her. The lightning arced along her shoulders, into her hair, and between the buttons of her blouse, as the glow of the bolt seemed to bend lower, running through her stomach and then up into her other arm. The girl's smirk started to die, and the woman's was borne of its ashes, as the elder began to thrust a hand forward, two fingers leading.

The girl barely managed to leap clear of the bolt which she herself had launched. It scoured across the nothingscape, causing it to... harden and ossify where the lightning touched. But there were no scorches. No burns. Azula turned from the passage of the bolt, back to the woman who had reversed it. "Not possible," the girl said.

"You would be surprised," she said. She took an aggressive step forward. "Stand down, girl. I am going to save us."

"No," Azula got to her feet. "I am. This is my body. This is my mind. You don't belong in either."

"Then stop me."

Azula answered that by hurling herself at Azula. The woman swept the younger's arm aside, and elbowed her in the teeth as she did. The girl then pulled hard on the hair running down the woman's back, getting a grip, and then kicking the woman's knee sideways. The woman shouted, and hooked her arms so that when the woman fell, it was to drive the girl face-first into the ground. That caused stars to flit through the girl's vision, but when she rose, she was stronger.

Azula rose, and when she did, it was to a body the younger never truly had, nor expected, but appreciated. A body layered in carefully built muscle. Power and mobility and speed. Fists as hard as rocks. Lungs of an airbender. Legs of a waterbender. And another her was standing directly in front of her. There were no words at this point. Just blows. They didn't even bother firebending. Two of them, identical in every physical respect, exchanging perfectly mirrored blows. A woman fighting her shadow, fighting to a draw.

The differences between the two had become academic. One caught a knee in the ribs, which was grabbed and thrust back, to deliver an identical rib-creaking impact a moment later. A right hook sent one to a back spin which caught the other in its arc. Front kicks, launched in the same instant, connecting in the same instant, crossing themselves and driving both women back as they impacted in equally muscled abdomens.

One had been a child, naïve and foolish. The other had been a crone, bitter and hateful. Now, they were mirrored. Mirrored in body. Mirrored in stance. Mirrored even in injury. In perfect unison, each reached up to wipe blood away from a split lip with the back of a hand. In perfect unison, they breathed deeply, shoulders rising and falling. And with perfect unison, they launched forward with identical screams, into a haymaker punch which would have split a mountain in two. The two punches, identical in every way, landed on two jaws.

Azula stumbled back, stars in her eyes and a sharp pain running through her. After a few steps back, to regain her balance, she opened her eyes, shaking away the sensation of closing vision... to find that she was no longer squared against herself. There was a moment of confusion. Azula stopped, turned, golden eyes flicking, trying to see where her brutal doppelganger had gone. She took a step... and then hesitated. She looked down. She felt her lip.

No blood.

She blinked a few times. "Who am I?" she asked. And after a moment, she had an answer. "I am... Azula."

The answer was simple. She was Azula. Both of her. It wasn't painful, just odd. Feeling how memories now interlocked with each-other, how two lives now sprang to mind with equal proficiency and ease. How two people were two people no longer. She opened her hand. Nothing. She focused her will into that hand. Yet, nothing. No fire. No flame. She blinked at that. All of this, a union within herself, only to be made lesser for it? "This is unacceptable."

"...never good enough," Azula's voice came from somewhere outside her throat. Azula turned to it, and began walking that void, until she found a slightly darker place in it. A corner of her mind that had been cordoned off. She reached up, feeling the gossamer that hung there, a wall of nothingness. She gave a rip, and tore down the last vestige of the wall inside her mind. She looked upon the last of her.

"So this is what could have been," Azula said.

The room was literally full of crazy. And not the dangerous kind of crazy, which was all the more depressing. Unlike the featureless void behind her, this had a definite structure. The pristine white, well lit environs of a Fire Nation sanitarium. Every square inch of the floor, walls, and even the ceiling was scribed with phrases, oft repeating, and never kind. Now that she saw with the right set of eyes, she finally knew what those mad scribbles were. Epithets, condemnations. Hatred, bile, and recriminations, hurled at the inhabitant, by the inhabitant. Azula stepped over the vile diatribes, the insults, the slander, and stood before the woman who dangled in the room. Her arms were bound 'round her, to keep her from harming herself, to keep her from firebending, in a secure jacket. Her hair fell before her face, and there were great chains which held her gently swinging off of the floor.

"I'm... not good enough," the ragged voice said. Azula lifted the head, and looked into her own eyes. Only bloodshot, underset by dark circles as one who had seen little sleep nor comfort in recent weeks. This was everything Azula had sworn not to become. A her who despised herself more than any other. A her who, by the look of the ragged edge of the wound in her neck, chose death the first opportunity it came. Even just holding this Azula's head up told her what had happened. How the waterbender, trying to save Zuko's life from a desperation-maddened Azula, struck out with everything she had. That Azula had driven her back. Made her desperate enough. And that Azula's madness, her lack of focus, gave the waterbender the instant of opportunity.

Azula could see, through the memory of the hanging one, the look of shock, the dismay in the waterbender's face when the spike of ice hit the throat rather than the armor. She tried to heal that Azula. Azula drove her back with her dying breath, lashing with fire, even as her blood pounded out. Because she was...

"Tired..." the hanging Azula said. "I couldn't fight her. She was... my friend, once. I don't want to be here anymore..."

"You don't have to be," Azula answered her. Ty Lee, that was who this one fought. And Azula even knew why, as absurd as it seemed to the two who comprised her.

"I don't fit," she said.

"Perhaps not. But you're me. And I'm nothing, if not self-centered," Azula said snarkily. The hanging her offered a chuckle at that, something so long awaited that it seemed to be painful to her.

"Will it stop? Will it all stop?"

"I have no idea," Azula told herself. "But nothing will be the same."

The hanging her, now left to dangle, nodded, her unevenly-slashed hair bobbing as she did. "Anything... anything... is better than this."

Azula reached out a hand, cupping what was essentially her own cheek. She had suffered. She had struggled. She bowed her forehead down, touching her hanging self's brow in a silent recognition that she deserved better.

All of her did.

When she leaned back, the room remained. The markings were gone, though. Bile and hatred, vanished. There was a contentment in her. Something more, though. She tried to feel the edges, where one her ended and another her began. But even as she walked away from the now empty room, and back into that empyrean chaos, she found that there were no edges to find. As her memories now seamlessly flowed into one another, three of her all joined into one story, so too did her being. There was not an old Azula, and a young Azula, and a mad Azula.

There was only Azula. An Azula who was different than the sum of her parts.

She stopped, and turned. There was a woman standing next to her, scarlet of hair and clothed in fire. Golden eyes, staring. "Who are you supp–" Azula began.

THE FOURTH SOUL HAS COME.

Azula leaned back, but without any motion, the strange nude woman was holding Azula's chin in a beyond-iron grip. She was lifted from her feet, those eyes still staring at her, not so much as a blink marring their sight. The grip tightened, not out of threat, but... Azula could almost sense a desperation there. Something peeking through the layers of pride and conceit. That was a sensation she knew fairly well, by this point.

DO WHAT IS NECESSARY. MAKE HIM SAVE US.

And with that, the void was gone. With it, any sign that there had been more than one Azula, and in fact, Azula herself.

---

The luminescence winked out in a heartbeat, turning the body of the firebender from the light-bulb which had held back the night, into a blanket of utter darkness in faster than a blink. Both of those who had the eyes to see the fire leaking out of Azula's eyes and mouth knew that whatever was going to happen, happened.

"Azula, are you..." Zuko began, but trailed off as the flame oozed longer, mounding into a burning pyre many time's Azula's size. Then, with a spark, true flames began to pour off of it once more, and it returned to its place in the center of a mound of cinders. Zuko didn't even pay it very close attention. Like Aang, his attention was on the girl on the floor.

"Are you alright, Azula?" Aang asked. And then he paused, and realized something mildly horrifying. She wasn't breathing.

"Well... Do something about it!" Zuko shouted at him when he was informed of that fact. Aang pressed a hand to her brow, and another onto the top of her ribcage, trying to think of what he could do to get her heart beating once again. There was so much about healing that he just didn't know! The seconds dragged out into hours, his fingers playing idiot dances, his mind turning in circles without form nor purpose.

"I..." Aang began, and then was cut off, as Azula's chest heaved, and then she let out a cough, pulling into a fetal position. The relief on Zuko's face was palpable. The relief in Aang's heart, probably more so. She trailed off her coughing with a mild groan, before opening her eyes and taking in those around her. There was a moment of confusion, mostly when her gaze switched from Zuko to Toph, but when it moved to Aang, the expression became one of annoyance. "Azula? Do you know where you are? Can you speak?"

"I would if you weren't staring at me like an invalid. Let me get up!" Azula snapped.

Her voice was clear, legible, and utterly without accent. Zuko seemed taken aback by that, but offered her a hand up even as he rose. Toph just took it in with mild bemusement, tapping her toe-tips to the stone. "Azula, thank Agni that you're alright," Zuko said; even Aang could tell that he was holding himself back.

"Literally, in this case," Toph said.

"I know why you're here," she said to her brother, "and I have a fairly good idea why you are. But as for you...?"

"Great. You don't remember me," Toph said. But the smirk on her face promised mischief rather than annoyance.

"Oh, I know exactly who you are. It's your presence here which has me confused. And secondly, what has become of this place?" she asked, looking around.

"You've been here before," Zuko said.

"Indeed. Several decades ago," she said. She shook her head. "And this place wasn't uninhabited."

"It seems pretty uninhabited to me," Toph offered. Zuko, though, tried to bring Azula's attention back to him.

"Azula, are you alright. I mean really?" he asked.

"If you persist in asking me that, I'll have to set you on fire," she said flatly. Zuko leaned back, a stricken look on her face. But her lips pulled into a smirk. "You always were too easy a mark. No wonder you and Uncle got along so well."

"So you're the old woman?" Aang asked.

"I'm Azula," she said, peevishly. "Everything that the old crone was, everything that the child was, everything that the broken girl was, they're a part of me now. So yes, Zuzu. I'm alright. Stop asking."

Aang gaped for a moment. "This is the fourth soul," he said.

"That was mentioned to me," Azula said, as she took a step toward the edge of the ziggurat.

"You're the fourth soul!" Aang pressed.

"And here I thought it would be blatantly obvious from the erudition of my speech. Whoever taught you simple deduction is probably spinning in his grave from shame," Azula said. Toph laughed.

"I like the new Azula. She doesn't let you get away with anything," Toph declared.

Zuko, though, was just standing there, staring at his sister. "Azula, I tried for so long to help. I really did."

Azula turned back to him. Then at the others. With a mild sigh, she walked up to Zuko, her hands limbering at her sides as though she were about to slap him. But to everybody's shock, she pulled her brother into a hug. "I know, Zuzu. And trust me, I appreciated it."

"Aaaaw..." Toph mocked.

"Don't start something you can't finish, earthbender," Azula snapped around Zuko's shoulder.

"What, you think you can take me?" she asked. "I'm the greatest earthbender in the world!"

Azula just rolled her eyes.

"Did... did Agni say anything to you while she was inside your mind?" Aang asked.

"A few things," Azula said. "There's... a lot to go over. I'll need a bit of time to get it sorted out. But there was one order it had for me. One that, frankly, I feel a great desire to discharge as quickly as possible."

"Which was?" Toph asked.

"Make him, save them," Azula said, pointing first to Aang, then to the flame. "Because if you don't, then I've been born with less than three months to live. And that's just terrible."

"Really?" Aang asked. Azula now looked at him – really looked – and her brow rose sharply.

"Why are you not wearing pants?" she asked.

"That's a bit of a long story," Aang admitted, scratching the back of his neck.

"My feelings on the new Azula are now somewhat fuzzy," Toph said grumpily.

"If it matters, you're one of the very few people I didn't kill last time," Azula said, moving toward the stairs.

"What?" Aang asked.

"You were last," she sing-songed. "Only Zuzu and the blind one had enough common sense to stay out of my way."

"Could you explain at least why you kept trying to kill us all?" Aang asked.

"Later. Right now, I am positively starving," Azula said. Then, before descending, she hesitated. "Although, I recall that we are in Azul, and Azul is ridiculously dangerous. Call your beast so we can leave."

"It's not a beast. It's name is Appa!" Aang said with a defensive note. Azula gave a mild shrug.

"It won't matter if his name is Hiroshi Sato; if you don't call him soon, then we aren't leaving the jungle. As I am given to recall, the really dangerous creatures come out at night."

"She ain't wrong, Aang. I can feel a lot of things coming at us," Toph pointed out.

"Azula... are you still angry at Katara?" Aang asked.

Azula turned back to him, and let out a sigh. "No," she said. "The only thing this waterbending peasant has ever done was humiliate me. And that was after she saved my life from pneumonia, so I find myself somewhat torn between righteous indignation and begrudging praise. As I said, there are things I'm going to have to work out within my own mind."

Aang nodded, then pulled the bison whistle up from the thong around his neck, giving it a stiff blow. A quiet bellow sounded in the distance, from where Appa was munching on the canopy of the jungle. A glance around this comparatively needle-like tower told Aang that Appa wouldn't try landing here. But there was a plaza below which seemed more suitable. Aang led the way. Before he'd taken five steps down, though, there was a powerful hand on his arm, arresting him. Aang had half a thought that it was Zuko. Instead, it was once again Azula. She was as strong as she looked, and she looked damned strong.

"One more thing," she said. "The spirit had another message for you. 'When the time has come, I will be ready'."

"Oh. Thanks, I guess,"

"Don't thank me. I'm just the one stuck between you two," she rolled her eyes. Aang gave a glance up to Toph and Zuko, receiving either a shrug or a baffled shake of the head as his answer. Aang rolled his eyes, and turned forward once more. But when he did, it was to catch the barest, faintest glimpse of movement ahead of them. His eyes widened. He knew what he'd seen. That wasn't an animal. That was a man.

"Wait here, I have to check something," Aang said, bounding down the steps ten at a time. He rounded the corner, and saw movement ahead of him, a bobbing light racing toward where the city dropped off into an abrupt crevasse, one almost invisible from the air. Aang raced after him, his speed making it so that even when he tripped traps, he wasn't present in the kill-zone when they activated. Blades slashed, arrows flew, and pits opened with wild abandon, but always a pace behind the airbender in question. He was gaining ground, though.

The man who was running glanced back, and Aang got his first good look at him. He looked middle aged, but far darker than a National usually was. Aang couldn't see the eyes, for the distance and the poor lighting, but from the general complexion, the Avatar would have sworn that this man was a Tribesman, were there not a ball of fire hovering above his hand. His clothes, too, didn't fit in with National style. They didn't fit with any single style Aang knew of.

Aang's listing of qualities was obviously taking longer than he'd given credit, because the man bounded, setting his feet even with a back-slide, and thrust forward both fists, bereft of any grunt of angry effort. From each fist came a twisting rope of brilliant golden fire, which filed the whole of the street between the abrupt levels of the surrounding ziggurats. Aang let out a clipped scream of surprise and fear, before remembering that he was both an airbender and an earthbender. The former kept the flames back from him long enough for the latter to create a sheltered lee which the flames could not scour. The burning blast continued for almost a second, before winking out. Aang, now suddenly back in darkness with his dark-vision fouled by the bright, was practically blind. But still, he ran in the direction he'd seen the man going before, trusting that the direction would bear fruit.

He'd just started getting his sight back when he saw the man hurl himself off of that precipice, and vanish into the distance below. Aang rushed to the edge, trying to see where the man was falling. But it was too dark, and the man, too far. Aang was pulling back in defeat when he felt the slightest of impacts against his head, like somebody'd clipped him with a pebble, and he backed off. He tapped a hand to his head, rubbing the spot and finding it more painful as he did so. And then, his hands seemed to grow wet. Aang lit a flame in his own palm. He saw that his fingers were slightly bloody. He gaped at that for a moment, then heard a click as something landed near him. A glance, to a dart made of supple wood, sinew, and knapped obsidian. Aang looked down once more, to the creek turned river turned gorge. Of the man, there was no sign.

Aang reached into his pocket and pulled out the headband that Sokka had foist upon him. He stared at it a moment, then tied it over his brow, mostly to staunch the bleeding. What had just happened?

"So he got away?" Azula asked from directly behind him. Aang let out another yelp of alarm, not expecting in the slightest for her to have crossed that distance at all, let alone so quickly. She sighed, and rolled her eyes. "Typical. You never could finish what you started."

"Hey, he tried to kill me!" Aang said.

"You're in the Fire Nation, Avatar. Nine people out of ten want to kill you," she said humorlessly.

"I think you need to lighten up a bit," Aang murmured. Azula just shrugged and nodded after.

"Your beast is waiting. I have had enough of this place for two lifetimes. Fitting, since that's true," she paused, looking at him. "I suppose you want to know what I mean when I talk about 'the future', and..."

"Oh, Toph figured that out," Aang said. "You've been 'transposed from a later narrative reality, folded back and shoehorned into a new timeline and spent your time borking it up'. Her words, not mine."

Azula blinked at him.

"That was... remarkably close," Azula admitted. A faint scowl. "And here I thought I would have the delight of seeing you all baffled and senseless."

"You really need to get new sources of amusement," Aang said.

"Oh, I intend to," she said with a smirk, and a brief glance at his barely-clothed self which ended in an eye-roll. For some reason, that pronouncement made Aang more than a little worried.

---

The rain had slowed to a drizzle, which was... nice. Well, not so much nice, as less unpleasant than it had been when it was pelting down hard enough to almost knock the two of them off of their feet. "How much farther?" Jet asked.

"We need to cross the Jang Hui river," she said. "The major port is on the far side of the island. I'd rather take a proper ship in this weather."

"And here I thought we'd have the easy trip," Jet griped.

Mai was about to offer a sarcastic comment, but the wind suddenly shifted, and the drizzle that fell like blood suddenly became very, very cold. The kind of cold, in both the wet and the wind, which cut through clothing like she was standing naked. The kind of cold they got down in Chin, when the weather was at its worst. The kind of cold that, had she been to either Pole, she'd know as an arctic breeze.

She shivered, in that unexpected and unexplainable chill, before the wind shifted once again, and the drizzle returned to its heat and pressure, slapping against her cheeks and her hood like slow, methodical fingers. She glanced to Jet. "Did you feel that?"

"Like it suddenly decided to be Summavut for about five seconds? Yeah," he said. "Is Fire Nation weather always this unpredictable?"

"No. It's completely predictable; always cloudy, usually raining," Mai said. But never, ever cold. She dismissed the notion for the time being. They had a job to do. One that she and Jet were quite suited to undertake. "We should keep moving."

Jet just nodded, and followed with her. After about a minute, he started sniffing. She turned a glance to him, an eyebrow raised.

"I just smell something," Jet said. "Something stinks!"

---

I decided that there'd been enough crazy-zula. Thus, Nu-Zula enters the fray. One of the things which bugged me about this chapter's analogue was a complete inability to understand what a thousand years was. A thousand years is enough time for the English language to happen. A thousand years saw the inception, rise, pinnacle, and fall of the British Empire. Hell, seven hundred was enough to zip past the birth height and death of the Roman Empire! And years, once they hit the quadruple digits, tended to be most unkind to the works of the people who made them. The pyramids were once smooth and capped in gold; now they're something straight out of Minecraft. Chichen Itza one spread through the Yucatan for miles. Now only about twelve buildings remain, and most of them are complete reconstructions based on what was reckoned to be there. And that's only been abandoned for half a milennia!

What I'm saying here, is that if you leave a building for two thousand years, and nobody takes care of it, it disappears under vegetation, or is worn down to dust. So the city of the Sun Warriors had to be either obviously inhabited, secretly maintained, or utterly annihilated. I chose the more interesting of the three options.

Before you ask, yes, I did steal Agni's appearance from The Void. Yes, Katara discovered how to bloodbend utterly independantly of Hama. Yakone did it in Canon without a teacher, and Katara knows more about healing by far than she did in the original time line. So blundering upon bloodbending seemed appropriate. No, you're never going to learn Nila's actual first name. And yes, these chapters do seem to be getting longer. Weird about that.

---

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