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.

46. The Dragon

"...I did not see this coming," Hai said, his hands tied before him and rubbing at a black-eye which was quickly swelling up to cover almost a quarter of his face.

"I don't think anybody saw it coming," Maryah offered from Hai's immediate right.

"Hell, Azula didn't, so why should we?" Hisui asked from Hai's immediate left. The Children, as elite a bending force existed in the Fire Nation, were limited in one very specific regard; there were only so many of them. Under the sheer weight of manpower that Zhao could and had levied against them, they crumbled within minutes. But they were very interesting and painful minutes. Hisui ran an eye along the ranks of kneeling Children. "Does anybody see Yoji or Kori?"

"They must have gotten away before the noose tightened," Maryah said with a shrug. Unlike most around her, Maryah hadn't been brought down by a smack in the head or by being blown out a window or some such; they'd captured her straight out of the bath. Which was one of two times when an Azuli woman isn't armed. Needless to say, Hai was enjoying the view of a barely clothed Maryah perhaps a bit too much for their working relationship.

Of course, tomorrow there might not be a life-expectancy, let alone a working relationship. If today isn't ripe for a peek, when possibly would be?

"Eyes up, shaman," Maryah said calmly, her own gaze locked straight forward, or at least until she sent a sly glance in his direction. "I assume you have a way out?"

"Not a good one," Hai said.

"We could go into the Spirit World, but we're overdue a blowout. Long overdue," Hisui clarified, which was to say, didn't explain a thing to Maryah. Hai sighed, and rubbed the bridge of his nose with bound hands.

"If we go there, there's a pretty good chance we'll get killed," Hai did a better job of explaining their problem.

"Pretty good is better than absolute certainty in this case," Maryah said. "At at least that'll mean we don't all get executed."

"Kinda moot, as there's no rifts anywhere near here," Hisui said, darkly. That, at least, Maryah seemed to grasp well enough.

"If they were going to execute us, they'd probably have done it two days ago," Hai also pointed out.

"True enough," Maryah agreed. Then, fell silent as a man in simple but serviceable red and black armor stepped out of a hallway, making his way to the fore of the assembly of teenaged benders from 'round the world. Hai's teeth ground slightly when he noticed the livid scar over the man's eye, and knew exactly in that moment who'd orchestrated all of this carnage.

Zhao, captain-cum-admiral-cum-Lord, and now, apparently, usurper of the Fire Lord. He came to a halt, standing before the assembled mass of the Children, struck low and bound before him. A professional part of Hai was outraged, as he'd never thought that he's die on his knees. A more pragmatic one wondered why he was still alive. The usurper looked across the crowd, hearing the quiet murmuring which despite the orders to silence still came from the hundred and more benders and other impressively skilled teens. He cast out a hand, and like obedient pupils, the Children fell silent. Hai had half a mind to say something very, very crude right then to prove a point. But then again, he could see a skull-masked Royal Home Guard standing right over there. And he didn't feel like getting hit in the face again.

"Children," he said. "Your service to your Fire Lord was admirable. You had a doomed cause, that honor dictated you fight to the end. And you did honor to yourselves in pursuing it to its conclusion. The Fire Lord you served is no longer the master of the palace, nor Caldera City, nor the Midlands, nor the Fire Nation. So your fealty to him, as of this moment, is broken."

Hai gave a glance toward Maryah, who rolled her eyes. Obviously she knew what was going on, and neglected to fill him in. Not like she could right now.

"As I see it, that leaves you with two options. You can remain foolishly loyal to a man who no longer deserves nor commands your loyalty, or you can remain loyal to what you served from the day that you were saved from the filth that lies outside our borders; the Burning Throne itself," Zhao strode forward, standing right before the front rank, which was some four ranks ahead of where the three of them were on their knees uncomfortably on the cold, rain-drenched stone. "If you swear to the latter, then you can face no punishment. You did your duty, as it was expected of you. And as long as you continue to do that duty, to the Burning Throne above all else, you will reap the rewards and honor that is deserved of it," he announced, before turning to walk around the perimeter of them. "If you swear to the former, however... You will find that my mercy is distinctly less absolute. You will be a traitor to the Fire Nation, and depending on the immensity of your crimes subject to immediate exile, or execution."

"Not much of a choice," Hai muttered under his breath. But somehow, that scar-faced bastard managed to hear him. And he grinned, unkindly.

"We all have choices. That doesn't mean we get to enjoy them," Zhao said. "You have two minutes to make up your minds. Did you serve Ozai, or did you serve the Burning Throne? You will want to choose wisely."

Zhao continued to circle around them, as silence turned into light rattling, as the rain which had been falling frigid cold started to sting against Hai's face. When he reached the front of the crowd once more, he turned. "Your time to ponder is up. Make your decision."

From the front row, there came a quiet, but resolute voice. "We serve the Burning Throne."

Zhao looked from Junyo, who'd made that pronouncement, to the others arrayed behind her and to her sides. "Anybody else."

"I figure I speak for everybody here," Juryo said. She turned back to face those behind her. "Tell me if I'm wrong?"

Silence.

She turned back toward Zhao. "We are the Children. Our lives are owed to the Fire Nation. That has not changed."

Hai's teeth were still grinding though. "You don't like this, do you?" Hisui asked him. He looked to his sister.

"No, I don't," he said.

"Well, if he lets us in, it'll be all the easier to stab him if the need arises," Maryah said with an almost inaudibly quiet whisper. Hai had to stifle a chuckle at that. The stinging got worse though, and when Hai glanced to the puddles that many were kneeling in, he could see... tiny chips of ice floating in them. Hail was falling in the capital of the Fire Nation, and thunder rumbled with it.

---

"This place looks like it might be a bit more helpful," Malu said, still trying to get the dark red blouse she'd had to knick from a laundry-line to rest on her properly. It was too baggy in the chest, and too constricting in the waist. Whoever originally owned this must have been a very popular woman. Still, it was the proper color, and wasn't as ridiculous an outfit as had originally been offered her. Much as she was proud of her airbender physique, she would rather not go around with her belly out all the time. Sokka, the Tribesman and Nila's paramour gave a bit of a shrug, where he walked at her side.

"I warned you that this'd be a chore in itself. We can't navigate by dead-reckoning, and the way the weather's holding, we're going to have to until we hit the mountains," Sokka said, rotating a map slightly, no doubt doing math in his head.

"You've got to have a bit more faith. I've been navigating storms since I was ten."

"So's Aang," Sokka gestured vaguely toward the trees, where the rest of them and the obviously easily spotted bison they flew in on were currently concealing themselves. Of the lot of them, Malu was the best infiltrator for all she was more Whalesh than Azuli – grey eyes were grey eyes, by most people's understanding – and Sokka drew the proverbial short straw to go with her. Malu didn't mind who went with her. Zuko, she wanted to have a few words alone with. Likewise, Sokka. The Tribesman in question turned to her. "Just let me do the talking. I've got the accent down pat."

"And I don't?"

"You sound like a Midlander," Sokka shrugged.

"So. You and Nila, huh?" Malu asked, a grin coming to her face.

"Yup. Didn't see that one coming. She's got a way of blindsiding people, hasn't she?" Sokka asked without the sort of love-struck tone that she'd honestly kind of expected.

"I've always believed that Nila was an intensely passionate girl, with absolutely no idea that she was so passionate. Good to see that she's finally managed to be honest with herself."

"Oh, trust me, it wasn't an issue of honesty," Sokka said, rolling his eyes.

"What's that supposed to mean?" Malu asked.

"Huh? Oh, nothing. Not a thing. Funny weather we're having, isn't it?" Sokka changed the subject.

"Oh no, you're not getting away that easily. What do you know that I don't?"

"I'm not sure she'd be happy with me talking behind her back. Particularly when I'm pretty sure I'm currently right to her face," he gave a glance back toward the tree-line.

"She can't hear us. Trust me," Malu said. "So. Nila. What's her..."

"We had a... a thing," Sokka said. Malu blinked a few times, pausing next to the thick, spiked iron fence which surrounded the innermost plot of land. It was a cruel piece of architecture, but given what Malu knew about the wildlife of Azul, it was the bare minimum. As it was, she could see tufts of hair and a crusting of orange ichor caught on the points of more than a few of the spikes. After that mildly unpleasant sight, her brain clicked to what Sokka meant by that.

"Really? When'd you start going out?"

"...remember when Aang and jerkface were off getting Azula un-crazied?" Sokka asked.

"That was two weeks ago!" Malu said. She then gave a grunt of surprise. "Man. Didn't expect my little Nila to move that quick. She's growing up so fast," she said with a feigned tone of motherly nostalgia.

"...not the only thing she does fast," Sokka said. He waved to her. "We're slowing things down, though. Neither of us was really happy with things... Well, we're both fifteen! I mean, what would happen if..."

"Oh, she wouldn't let herself get pregnant. I know her better than that," Malu said, opening the gate and proceeding up the stone-flagged walkway.

"Given your own recent un-crazying, I'd say I know her at least as well as you do," Sokka pointed out. Malu had to admit, he had a point. The two of them passed the garden plots and paused before the nearly-black door of the stone-wrought house. "Alright. I'll do the talking. You try to look helpless and keep an eye out for deadly critters."

"If it moves, I'll warn you about it," Malu affirmed.

Sokka nodded, then turned to give a knock on the door. In a flash, he both rechecked that his sword was tied concealed behind his back, and his boomerang secure in its holster, before holding the map out before him again. The door opened, and Sokka looked straight down at his map, as though confused and a little ashamed to have to ask.

"Excuse me? I'm a bit lost right now. I was told that Azul is to the south, but I think I might have overshot it," Sokka said, pointing vaguely at his map. The man in the doorway, though, took one look at the Tribesman and went deathly pale. Sokka noticed the silence, and glanced up. "I'm sorry. Did I go to fast for you? I'm a bit lost, and..."

"AAAAUGH!" the man screamed, pointing a finger at Sokka. Sokka, likewise shocked, responded in kind.

"AAAUGH!" Sokka screamed back, his fists crumpling into the map, and it was clear he wasn't sure why he was screaming, only that he wasn't alone in it. Honestly, Malu felt a little bit of an impetus to do likewise.

"What is it? Who's out there?" a woman's voice came from the back room.

"YOU! WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE?" the man screamed.

"I DON'T KNOW! WHO AM I SUPPOSED TO BE?" Sokka screamed back.

The man screamed over his shoulder. "RIKU! THEY'RE HERE!"

"What! Are we being pressganged?" that woman shouted again, and there came a pounding toward the door, before it was pulled open, and a somewhat tougher looking woman took her place beside the man. The two shared the same height and rough build, but there was no doubt in Malu's confused mind that if there were only one set of pants to be worn in that household, she would be the one wearing them. Riku, as she was very likely called, took a look at Malu first, concern but not alarm in her eyes, before spotting Sokka. Then, she let out a scream as her companion did, and fire burst into being on her fists. "The Tribesman!"

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

"Go away, and I won't try to kill you," Riku offered, and from the look on her face, she meant it. "Taka, get inside."

Taka, as he was likely called, took only one step back, so that she dominated the doorway. Sokka's alarm turned into dawning realization. "Tui La, you're those guys from the North Air Temple!"

"Come to finish the job, eh Tribesman?" Riku asked.

"What job? What are you two talking about?" Malu asked.

"These guys kidnapped the Mountain King's daughter!" Sokka said.

"No, Qin kidnapped her. We just made sure she wasn't terrified out of her wits," Takeshi offered over Riku's shoulder. She shot a glance back at him. "Right. Shutting up, dear."

"We're not here to cause any problems. I'll just go," Sokka said.

"You'd better. I'm not letting anybody ruin my honeymoon. Again," she said, direly.

"You're a newlywed?" Malu asked. "Congratulations!"

"...thank you?" Riku asked, her posture softening. Exactly Malu's intention.

"Um, I've got a question," Malu said. "Which way is it to Azul? I only ask because this one doesn't have any head for maps at all!"

"Do you have any idea who you're traveling with?" Riku asked.

"...A cute Tribesman?" she asked, reaching over and grabbing Sokka's ass to corroborate her falsehood. Sokka looked positively shocked by the goosing. Riku, who'd now passed from martial alarm to confusion, and from confusion into annoyance, let her fists drop and her fires extinguish. "It's not a crime to have a thing for tall, dark and handsome, is it?"

"No, but it's a crime to have things for Tribesmen," Taka said.

"Taka, honey? Shut up," Riku said.

"Shutting up, dear," Taka said, and it was obvious he wouldn't keep that up long.

"Your Avatar is dead, isn't he?" Riku asked. Sokka just dropped his eyes to the ground. "That's the rumor I'd heard. So now you're just trying to survive? Well you could have picked a better place to do it."

"...I don't really have any other options," Sokka lied impressively. Riku shook her head, kneading her brow.

"Look. I've just got off of my tour. I'm mustered out. For that reason, and that reason only, I don't give a damned who you are or what you're doing, as long as you don't bring trouble to my door."

"Well, do you know what'd get us away from your door all the faster?" Malu asked. She pointed at the map still in Sokka's hands. "Which way is it to Azul City?"

Nila would probably have words with the way Malu got out of the sticky situation. But at the moment, Malu wasn't much to care. Mostly because they were that much closer to where they needed to go.

---

Chapter 6

The Dragon

---

"It makes you a bit sick to your stomach to watch, doesn't it?" Maryah asked quietly, from the ranks of the Children who were flanking the slowly concluding coronation.

"Didn't know you were such a patriot," Hai said with a smirk. "What with your heritage and all."

"Azuli or not, this is a little bit disgusting," she answered him. "This flies in the face of all tradition and sense. It's a coup, and everybody's treating it like a succession. It's... crazy."

"The Fire Nation hasn't exactly been a bastion of sanity in recent years," Hai gave a shrug. The two of them continued to stand at attention, side by side, as the Fire Sages declared Zhao, born of no house at all, the Fire Lord, ruler of the Fire Nations of Ember, Shinzo, and Azul. "Well, there goes thirteen generations of one family on the throne. Wasn't that some sort of record?"

"For the Fire Nation," Maryah gave a nod. "The Earth King's still got us beat by about forty generations."

"As much as I enjoy standing here, listening to you two yammer on about history and rules of succession, we still have to wonder what this is going to mean for us," Juryo said from before them, facing the same direction as they. "Ozai wanted us because we were his crowning achievement. Proof of a single order, heedless of element. Zhao... he probably sees us as a bludgeoning tool."

"I'm still a little surprised you stood up for him," Hai mentioned to the fat earthbender. "Didn't he crack your ribs a bit during the coup?"

"My family needed help. I can swallow my pride for that," Juryo said with a shrug.

"How long do you give 'im?" Maryah asked.

"Two months. Three, tops," Juryo nevertheless answered. "The only question is, who'll be taking his place? Ozai, or one of his kids?"

"That would depend on whether Ozai is still alive or not," Hai said. He then let out a sigh as Zhao launched into a long-winded speech about the 'new course for the Fire Nation', which he promptly tuned out. "He'd be back on the Burning Throne in a heartbeat. And he'd spin on his pyre if his son or elder daughter took his place. But... The rules are the rules. It'll be one or the other of them."

There was something of a ripple in reality, and Hai casually leaned over with the World Eye open, to see his sister leaning on the fabric of the Outer Sphere, peering into the mortal world without showing herself to those unable to see as they did. "Much as I'd love to stay here and listen to you ninnies talk about Fire Nation rules of succession, I think I've got a bigger problem that needs to be sorted out," She said sarcastically, her voice carrying to her brother alone.

"Do you think they'll notice if I leave?" Hai asked.

"Zhao? His head's too far up his ass to see anything but his own sphincter," Juryo said, with her usual masterful command of the Huo Jian language.

"Hisui is here, isn't she?" Maryah asked. She smirked. "Got room for one more?"

"I'll ask her," Hai said. He half turned toward where Hisui was camped on the other edge of a layer of reality. He only opened his mouth when she cut him off.

"I can hear them, you dolt," Hisui said. "Be thankful I'm so good at this, or she'd be standing in the rain with the rest of 'em. Aaaand... there's a rift right there. Ready?"

"If you would?" Hai asked, offering Maryah his hand. She rolled her eyes, but took it. And with a sense of suction and displacement, Hai felt himself being pulled through a rent in what was, which puckered closed behind them. Instantly, they were standing in roughly the same place, but the sounds were tinny and distant, the light suffusive and desaturated. And the rain, which had been drizzling directly into their faces, now passed through them effortlessly. Maryah took a brief look around.

"So, this is your Spirit World, huh? Not really impressed," Maryah said.

"This isn't the spirit world," Hisui said. "Come on, brother. I'll show it to you."

The shaman and the assassin followed Hisui as she walked effortlessly through the crowds, not skirting around anybody as there was no need to. They stood as thin as air. Their path led out of the Royal Fire Court, and then out of the palace grounds, and from there, toward the outer edge of the Noble District. "Alright, are we going to walk all the way to Ashfall? Because if we are, I'm going to want to get my better shoes," Maryah said.

"Not much further. Keep your underwear on," Hisui said, and began to descend the slopes of the volcano. Since she seemed entirely willing to just hurl herself down a cliff, and Hai did so a moment after her, Maryah gave a shake of her head and a sigh, and followed after, leaping off of a cliff in a manner which ought have killed her immediately. All of them landed at a slide with the tenderest of jolts, and slid down on their feet of the sharp descent. Hisui moved from sliding to walking easily enough. Hai, on the other hand, managed to catch his toe on something and face-plant onto the spiritual dust, sending up greenish motes of tiny spirits into the air, before they settled like dust back to their home.

"Good thing we don't use you for assassinations. You'd be dead before you got half way into your first job," Maryah said with a chuckle, pulling Hai up. He dusted himself, mostly because that was what one did after face-planting, not because there was any dust on him. And there wouldn't have been on the ground, either, since it was constantly raining. Still, habits. Hisui beckoned for the two of them to follow, and they started to move through the warren of alleys of the Trade Quarter. Also called the Lower Quarter, for obvious reasons, this was the portion of Caldera City where the least wealthy lived, and still in less abject poverty than he witnessed in Ba Sing Se. Hai almost walked into his sister's back, but when he did, he saw why she'd stopped. He held out an arm to block Maryah walking past him.

"What the hell is that?" Maryah asked, looking past the two shamans.

That, as it were, was a crack. It ran up from the ground along the edge of a building, until it peaked several feet above its roof, before taking an abrupt turn through the air, and terminated in an almost perfectly round hole. The hypotenuse described... didn't look right. Hai opened his World Eyes again, and when he did, he gaped slightly.

"That's... not in the World," Hai said.

"You see the problem then," Hisui said.

"I can see it here, but not in the mortal world. How is that possible?" Hai asked.

"Excuse me, what?" Maryah asked, playing with her knives as she did when she got annoyed.

"Alright, the twenty-second version," Hai said. "There's three layers of reality. The inner sphere, or mortal world, the Outer Sphere, which we're standing in right now, and the Spirit World, which is more dangerous than Azul..."

"I find that hard to believe," she chuckled.

"...anyway, is there a rift here, sis?" he asked. Hisui pointed at the crack in reality. Hai gaped at it. He knew his sister was better at finding rifts than he was, but still. "You must be joking."

"Nope," she said. "That's a rift. And it just swallowed somebody's house."

"It shouldn't be able to do that," Hai said.

"I'm well aware," Hisui told him.

"...Where did the family go?" Hai then asked.

"Therein lies the problem. I'm not sure," Hisui told him. "This leads somewhere, but I'm not sure where, and I'm reluctant to find out. And this thing has been sitting here unnoticed for almost a week, apparently, and nobody mentioned to us because the husband is purportedly a five-bottle man and not the most reliable. They're almost certainly dead by now. But I can't express strongly enough how dangerous these things are. And..."

"It's getting bigger," Maryah said. Both turned to her, then looked back. There was a tiny shudder, and that spherical hole twitched a little bit to the side, widening the rift inside it a little bit more. "That's not good news."

"No, it really isn't."

"So what do we do about it?" she asked. "Go through and find out what's punching holes into the Fire Nation?"

Hisui shared a glance with her brother. "Nope. Not going to happen," he said. "We already walked through an unending oblivion once. I'm not in any hurry to do it again. The Fire Sages will be able to zip this thing up. And if they aren't... well..." he could only shrug.

"You don't fill me with confidence," Maryah said.

"Welcome to being a shaman. The worst paid, least appreciated job in the world," Hisui chimed in dryly.

The three of them watched the rift where it stood for a moment longer. Maryah was the one to break the silence. "...still better than listening to Zhao spout off."

"Yeah, you've got that right," Hai agreed, a smirk coming to his face.

---

The fat pirate managed to move with surprising nimbleness, given his frame and his age. Qujeck was honestly a bit surprised by him, how he managed to make fools of Dai Li agents half of his age and corpulence, before putting bullets in them. Kill them, sure, but playing with them was a pointless excess. Bai twisted back, slapping the final one across the face with the back of his hand, causing the earthbender to twist back under the force of it, and be unable to bound away when Bai's other hand produced that 'pistol' and let another crack of explosives going off sound, and another Dai Li tumbled back with a hole in him.

"How long do you think it'll be until somebody finds them?" the rather wild looking, dubiously female teenager asked.

"Long enough for us to get past the barricade," Qujeck said. "They'll probably come running toward all the noise you made."

"Exactly my point, my boy," Hua Jin Bai said with a slightly gap-toothed grin. "They leave their posts, and we shoot through the void they leave."

"That's hopelessly simplistic," Qujeck pointed out.

"Might work, though," the other teenager pointed out as she recoiled her meteor hammer. "What do you think, Longshot?"

The archer, standing on the rooftop, gave a glance down at them. In the weeks that they'd had to fight together, Qujeck accounted himself a fairly decent reader of that young man's complex, heavily loaded glances. This one seemed to be saying, 'It won't matter much if we're still standing around here when they arrive.' Or it was just an impatient grumble. One of the two.

Nevertheless, they had a job to do, one which Qujeck found incredibly distasteful, but needed doing. "How long until their plain-clothes get here?" he asked.

"A moot point if we hurry," Bai said, before hustling such that it belied his corpulent frame. How a man that fat could be so quick defied explanation. Then again... Qujeck shook his head and the idea out of it. This wasn't the time to contemplate the unusual physiology of an old pirate. This was time to vault the wall to the Upper Ring. The alleyways that they walked in now were quite reminiscent of the open streets in the Lower Ring. That was how things seemed to scale. What was once open to the world was then tucked out of sight, and something brighter offered in its place. From what Qujeck had seen of the Upper Ring in his brief time there, the same applied there; the neat but crowded alleys were the equivalent of Middle Ring streets. At least if they kept between buildings, they wouldn't run afoul of the constables and the Dai Li.

At the moment, the two were effectively interchangeable.

Qujeck managed to keep ground with Bai, while the younger of them made their way by vaulting along the back-edges of rooftops. Out of sight from the street, yet still giving them the high ground. Useful for a sniper. There was only one street to go, and Bai motioned everybody to a stop before the alley opened into the last road before the High Ring Wall. "What is it?" Qujeck asked.

Bai made a silencing gesture, and all fell quiet as the sound of footfalls sounded outside of their hiding spot. Qujeck tucked himself into a nook, the shadows obscuring him, as voices rose above the din. "Which way did that noise come from?"

"Two blocks that way. I think," the answer came.

"If this is another wild goose-hare chase..."

"Would you rather tell Long Feng that you think it's a waste of time?" the second pointed out.

"What do you think I am? Insane?"

"That's what I thought. We should cut through here. It'll be faster."

Qujeck groaned quietly. Of course they would cut through the passage which he and the others were using. Qujeck glanced over to Bai, and noted that the thin-haired fat man was grinning. Of course he was.

The sound of boot-leather clacking against cobbled road faded instantly when they crossed off of the street and into the well packed dirt of the alleyway. Still, Qujeck had cut his teeth in the Deadman Plains, hunting tiger-seals while they hunted him. This was nothing. A glance to the rooftop. The three teenagers all readied their weapons, either nocking and drawing a bow, loosing the strand of a meteor hammer, or carefully setting a knife into the teeth and pulling two more to each hand, respectively.

"I don't know what's going to kill us first at this rate, our boss or the guys our boss hates," the first voice muttered.

"You really need to see the bright side for a change."

"Pessimism is a survival trait, Quei. I don't intend to be stupid."

Yeah, pity about that. They passed where Bai somehow managed to hide himself and into the cross fire of three armed teenagers, a waterbender, and a bomb-obsessed madman. Qujeck struck first, flicking out a lash of water aimed sternly at the head of the nearer to him. The man managed to flinch low enough that it cracked the helmet off of his head instead of leveling him to the ground as the waterbender had intended. He then turned and snapped forth with a small crossbow, launching a bolt into the air. Qujeck had to flinch and recall that tendril, freezing it around the bolt about a hand away from lancing his own neck.

The speedy one was then shot in the back of his shoulder with a much larger arrow, causing him to spin down and scream in pain. The second looked up, and dodged aside the lash of the meteor hammer which was intended to knock him out in one flick. He noted Bai appearing from the darkness, and hurled himself backward to the ground, just barely dodging the boarding axe that the fat man threw at him. He then hurled something straight up. The knife-wielding girl was at exactly the wrong place at exactly the right time for what looked like an explosive lemon to go off in her face and blind her with pepper grease.

The stink and sting of it drifted downward, and even managed to sear at the archer who hissed in pain and tried to focus through it enough, even with one eye burning and raw, to get another shot. Bug, as she was so frequently known, managed to be saved by Smellerbee's face-full of pain. They were evolving, the Dai Li were. That was a problem.

Qujeck hurled himself forward, underneath the descending cloud of green-grey, painful fog, and heaved the water he controlled over his head, then smashed it straight up into vapor. A second later, he pulled it back to him, recondensing it into water, before hurling that torrent at the man he'd almost put unconscious with his first blow. The water, impregnated with stinging chemicals, slammed him into the wall where the alley switch-backed, and Qujeck took the opportunity to freeze him into place, mouth held shut with stinging water.

Longshot managed to find his aim through the pain, and launched an arrow which slammed into the crossbow the Dai Li agent in his rough, nondescript clothes produced. It tore the bolt in half and lodged into the firing mechanism. Hell, even half blind, Longshot was a miracle worker. Bai took the opportunity to shoulder past where Smellerbee was writhing on the floor to deliver a stomp to the face of that one, putting him down. Bai turned to the most stricken of them. "You should probably get her up and fighting again. I don't figure this for a four-man job."

"Bee? Are you alright?" Bug asked as she kipped down from the rooftops to Smellerbee's side. Qujeck simply knelt beside her.

"Everything tastes like burning!" came the obviously agonized answer.

"Get her hands away from her face," he ordered. Bug shot him a mildly indignant look, but he didn't suffer it. She pulled Smellerbee's hands away, obviously not with any ease, so that Qujeck could work his waterbending. He hadn't been a healer when he left the North Tribe for his 'grand adventure'; this had been before Arnook and Pakku's mandate that all waterbenders be both healers and warriors. Any training he'd gained in healing was purely by necessity, and often, not until after he most desperately needed it. Thus, it wasn't pretty, when he did his work. It probably hurt just as much as the grease did. But after just shy of a minute, Smellerbee was able to stop groaning, and even open her eyes – bloodshot though they were – on her own. "There. How many fingers?"

"As many as I have," she answered, smacking the waterbender's hand away as the other pulled her up. Bai was looking up and down the road. He gave them all a stern nod, then bolted across the street into the alley at the far side. Qujeck was second across, as Longshot had asked no aid. He just grimaced and bore with it, with a level of stoicism which the Tribesman found honestly admirable. The others followed shortly after they two. With the last breach crossed, Qujeck took the last turn for buildings unevenly situated, and then craned his neck upward to the High Ring Wall which stretched up before him.

"I assume you have some way of getting through the wall?" Qujeck asked sardonically.

"It'd be a poor plan if I didn't. Weren't you paying attention?" Bai asked somewhat peevishly.

"Honestly? No."

"And I thought I had anger issues," Bai responded blithely, before breaking into a grin and producing a much larger crossbow than the ones used by the Dai Li from under his over-jacket. "I guess it's lucky I had a profession which allowed me a lot of outlets for it!"

In truth, Qujeck had been listening, although spottily. They'd picked this part of the High Ring Wall because it was one of two places in the Middle Ring where the wall couldn't be overlooked by at least one guard tower. The other of the two positions opened into a broad, wide open area that anybody who cared to look could see they cross. This one opened into somebody's small, neatly tended backyard. Bai raised the weapon, fitted with a quarrel not intended for penetrating flesh but rather bearing wide, back-canted tines to catch in edges of stone. A grappling hook on a launcher. How the marvels never ceased with this mad pirate.

There was a meaty snap as the hook was launched upward, arcing out of sight over the edge of the wall. Bai immediately grabbed the rope dangling from it and pulled hard, before setting his boot to the wall and taking a step up, preparing to make that climb. He immediately fell onto his back as the hook pulled free and started to fall. But it did not fall alone.

With a shout of pain and terror, a Dai Li agent whom the hook had snagged fell the near-hundred and fifty feet to land with a thud which inspired a note of empathy even from cold-hearted Qujeck. Bai turned, forcing himself up to his knees, before pushing himself up. He nudged the Dai Li with his toe. "...what are the chances of that?"

"I couldn't tell you," Qujeck said. Bai shrugged, and pulled the rope back to him, before loading the hook back onto it's launcher. "Wait, you just..."

"As slim as the chances of that happening were, I should say that the same thing happening twice would be almost astronomical," Bai informed him, and started to haul his corpulent form up the wall to prove his point. Qujeck just shook his head. Oh, for the day when he wouldn't have to pray for the hundred-to-one shot, since all other odds were worse. That'd be a very nice day, he figured. He just wondered if he'd ever live to see it. Bai made the distance upward with surprising speed, and Qujeck followed him up.

Well, if Bai's fat ass could make it up, then Qujeck had no excuse not to ascend.

---

Green eyes scrutinized the scene before him, rubbing at neatly trimmed mustache on his face. That was something that he'd not had the chance to really cultivate, with all of the flurry of heedless activity in the last month; personal hygiene had taken a significant downturn. However, with the Avatar gone, possibly dead, and his plans for bringing down the Fire Nation from its highest levels already apace, he could take time for the little things. And the not-so-little things as well; exactly why Long Feng was here, under the Royal Palace of Ba Sing Se, in the dark, with two others.

One was dressed much as Long Feng was, in green robes. But outside of a shared uniform, the two were quite different. He wasn't much older than Long Feng, but he certainly looked like he had at least a decade on the Grand Secretariat, in grey hair, weathered skin, and the fact that one of his eyes was missing. Han was a capable underling, though. He knew his business, and that business at the moment was the other in the room, who sat still and locked into place with stone binds to a chair, as the torch ran circuits around Han, his bright eyes not so much defiant, as content.

"The Fire Lord is an enemy," Han said calmly, gently, "and it is your duty to resist him. If you cannot defeat the Fire Lord, then your life will be in eternal peril."

"Has there been any progress?" Long Feng asked. Han glanced twice, first with his blind side and then having to turn the whole way 'round the other to spot his master.

"It is very hard to tell," Han said quietly, letting the earthbending grind to a halt and the lamp halt with it. He lifted the rail away and stepped out of the ring it described. "I believe he's using some sort of method to barricade his mind from my influence."

"Much like the Dragon of the East did," Long Feng said.

"Exactly my thoughts," Han gave a nod. He gave a glance back to Ozai's brother, who was technically being exposed to a form of torture that would be classified by most as a very sound foundation for war. So useful, that armistice that Ozai had offered; it gave Long Feng time to get all of the pieces into position. "And if she is any indication, then we need simply wait him out. Nobody's willpower is endless."

"'Waiting him out' does not fill me with confidence," Long Feng noted.

"It is the best that I can offer," Han said, stepping out of the door with his master. He gave Long Feng a mildly concerned look. "If I may ask, what are your intentions with Badesh? Her programming might be spotty, but she could still be of use."

"I have her well in hand," Long Feng said. A partial truth. "When I require her, I will have her."

"Forgive my confusion, but you put a lot of faith into the procedure. It isn't foolproof. Your shoulder is a testament to that," Han pointed out, but wisely didn't prod the Grand Secretariat to prove his point. That would have been unwise.

"She can be nudged. That is all that I require for my longest goals. A nudge, in the proper direction. After that, she will be obsolete."

Han nodded. "Would you do the same of the Dragon of the West?" he asked.

"Far swifter," Long Feng confirmed. "As valuable as he is as a commander of soldiers, she proved herself by besting him. As we always have, I will use every tool available to us," Long Feng paused, and leveled a glare upon his subordinate. "You are not often taken to asking these sorts of questions. Are you certain that you are capable of the task of leashing the Dragon?"

"I am capable and willing," Han said. But his frown was troubled. "I simply wonder if..."

"If what, secretariat?"

"...if we're not focusing on the wrong issues," Han answered. Long Feng's eyebrow rose. "Two more wells in the Lower Ring went dry. And three in the Upper. At this rate, before the end of summer, we'll have to pipe in Lake Laogai to keep the city from dying of thirst."

"Then I suggest you delegate somebody to constructing an aqueduct," Long Feng said. "Your attention is better served here, rather than on issues which are not your concern."

"...one of those wells was mine," Han said quietly. Long Feng stared at him. "The drought is getting worse. I can't tell you to mobilize against the dry as you would against the Fire Lord, but... if we crush a tyrant to return to an empty city, what will we have achieved?"

Long Feng nodded, slowly. "You are not wrong," he said. This was why Long Feng valued the council of men like Han and women like Joo Dee. They so often were not wrong. He pondered briefly, but the answer always came up the same. He faced the one eyed secretariat. "Choose one you trust. He will have every resource required to bring water to the city. And for that purpose only."

"At once, Grand Secretariat," Han said with a nod, before moving through the halls, to make his selection. He probably had one picked out already. Long Feng, though, simply added this to the veritable mountain of other things that he needed to lose sleep over. If it wasn't the Fire Lord, it was the world itself trying to unseat him. But if the universe wanted him crushed, then he would defy the universe itself. He had before, and he would until his dying day if needs be.

Even as Long Feng took his own path, to one of the hundred other things he needed to do, strapped to a chair, the Dragon of the West spat out a blast of fire which tore the gag from his mouth, giving him, if not freedom, a bit of comfort. He blinked, and then gave a contemptuous look to the lantern on the railing.

"Trying to brainwash a firebender using light-conditioning? Amateur," Iroh said with a scoff of annoyance, wishing that he could shake his head at their idiocy. But then again, as long as they tried this, Iroh was in no risk. Just bored. By Agni's Flame, Iroh was soooo bored.

---

"These clothes suck," Smellerbee complained. Longshot just gave her a look which said 'if you didn't want them, you can trade with Bug.' Smellerbee, catching his silent meaning, glanced to the outfit that Bug was wearing. Mostly because unlike Smellerbee's form concealing robes, Bug's left her midriff bare in an almost scandalous fashion. Well, scandalous if you were as uptight as some of the people that Longshot had grown up around. Long, as he had been called back then, couldn't have been more religiously coddled outside a nunnery than how he was born. In a way, it was a stroke of fortune that the Fire Nation had burned that commune of fundamentalist nuts to ashes in his youth. He'd have hated to have to grow up into somebody like his father.

Dad just would not shut up.

"Eh, you're just jealous 'cause I can pull it off and you can't," Bug said with a smirk, tugging her clothing into final place. Longshot had honestly expected some sort of pecking-order to establish between the two women, as Bug and Smellerbee were, in the past, often at loggerheads. Now, though, they simply deferred to where the other was stronger. It was strange, but a good kind of strange. She turned to Longshot, and grinned. "How do I look?" Longshot shrugged and gave her a thumbs-up. His own clothes were... much like Smellerbee's in a way, that they were loose and shapeless. Maybe that was the source of Smellerbee's ire. She hated when she was mistaken for a boy, and in these clothes, she was sure to be.

"Can we hurry this up?" Qujeck broke in, reefing upon his collar trying to make the servant's livery anything but terribly uncomfortable. Longshot knew that it would take a far more drastic act than some tugging and stretching to achieve that ends. "Where is Bai, anyway? Not that I'm not glad I didn't have to see him undress, but he's holding everything up!"

"Hasn't anybody ever told you? If you speak of a demon, it's sure to appear," Bai said, rounding the corner of the yard in his finery. His functional if pirate-y garb had been supplanted by clothes much like those that he'd favored before throwing in with the lower crust. In essence, he looked normal for his social strata and body-type. Everybody else, Bug excluded... were valets. Bai gave a smile toward Bug. "Ah, the very portrait of a precocious noble scion. You'll draw eyes everywhere but where they need to be."

"So can we get moving, now?"

"Only one more thing," Bai said, producing a pamphlet from his pocket. It bore a gilded ring on it, which caused Longshot's brow to rise. An Upper Ring Passport. Those things weren't easy to get. He knew. He'd tried for a month to get one. Not for any price. "I believe this belongs to you."

Bug smirked and took the passport, and gave it a glance before shoving it into her pocket. But when she did, she stopped, and looked at it again. She looked at Longshot, then back down to her papers, which had Longshot giving a 'there's obviously something wrong; what is it?' look. "The name," she said, pointing it out. Smellerbee likewise leaned around Bug's shoulder to look at it.

"Yeah, Kori Morishita. What's the big deal?" she asked. Longshot sighed, and did as he very, very seldom did.

"That's her name," he said aloud.

Qujeck glared in their direction. "That's a Fire Nation name."

"It's a long story," Bug said with jaw set, before putting the paper away. Longshot gave Smellerbee a shrug which declared 'I told you that Shadow wasn't the only one'.

"You didn't say a damned thing!" Smellerbee shot back at him. Which technically was true.

"This is all great," Qujeck said, with his tone obviously stipulating that he thought it anything but, "but we're kind of in the deepest, most dangerous part of enemy territory. Can we get a move on?"

"Of course. As long as you understand that we are only here at our lady's patience and pleasure," Bai said with obsequious tones. Bug didn't look too impressed. Longshot knew why. She didn't like to talk about her mother, how she'd 'turned her back on her own people' by marrying a Fire Nation viceroy. It was petty, but they all had their reasons for being here. Petty didn't mean much in the long-haul.

"So how exactly is she supposed to get us to that certain man?" Qujeck asked. Longshot wholeheartedly agreed with the proviso that they should never say either the name or the title of their target. The walls had too many ears up here.

"She's a diplomatic presence. More, she's unknown to Long Feng."

"You aren't," Bug pointed out.

"Of course. I can find my own way into the Palace," Bai said dismissively. "It's just that I can't do this rescue alone."

"So we walk in the front door. That's suicide," Qujeck said, flatly. "It's insane. And it might work."

"That's the spirit! I knew you'd start to see things the way we do one day," Bai said.

"Your flower-arranging friends are all as mad as you are," Qujeck snarked. White Lotus Society. Longshot didn't know much more than that there was such a thing, and that all of Bai, the Mountain King, Sativa Badesh, and the Dragon of the West were amongst its members. Having great hearing and an excellent memory made for a well informed archer. What all of this meant... that was for time to tell. Longshot gave an ear to the alley, then leaned out of the nook they were all concealed in within the back yard of some bureaucrat, to get a look at the street. He gave a quick nod outward. 'The way is clear', that nod said.

"Well, I guess I'm leading the way," Bug said, obviously not happy with her part in the charade. Bai just gave a look to Longshot before the archer moved after his 'mistress'.

"How do you do that, boy?" Bai asked him.

Longshot shrugged easily. 'It's a talent', that shrug said, and then he followed amongst the other servants and valets of their noble lady. Yup. This day was going to get either weirder, worse... or possibly both.

---

The chains were a bit much. While Kori had to admit that rope probably wouldn't have held him for very long, the fact that she locked him to his squalid, cold, and mildly damp local was problem enough; she'd even boarded the windows so Kori couldn't see outside. In so doing, she'd cut off his ability to call in outside water to cut his shackles. And then, she left. Two days ago.

"Yup. This was a great decision," Kori muttered to himself. His stomach reminded him, as it had for the last little while, that even Tribesmen – which Kori wasn't sure he had the right to call himself, given the circumstances – had to eat sometime. Of course, he would probably die of dehydration, first. And wasn't that a laugh? Dying of dehydration in the Fire Nation of all places. "I should have just grabbed Yoji and ran. Better for everybody involved."

He didn't know what Maya Azul was doing here, but he had his theories. His speculation fell to the wayside, though, as the second day of his lonely durance dawned. Lacking food and water could do that to a person. But now that there was a not insubstantial chance that she'd abandoned him to this death, and he had nothing better to do than contemplate the pain of his stomach eating his spine, he turned his thoughts back to why the Coordinator's daughter was so far away from his palace, so far away from the Ghurkas, and most notably, so far away from civilization.

It was a question he turned over a few times as the sun reached its zenith, such as it would. If there was one mercy, it was that this summer was turning out to be remarkably mild. If he'd been sweating at all, he'd be dead by now. And still, he wondered. Maya had to consider this the only reasonable choice if she was going to default to this, which meant that all other alternatives were grim indeed. Given what he knew about the Coordinator, he could believe many of them. There was very little that Montoya would do to keep his stranglehold on Azuli politics intact. There were rumors about how his son died. And why his second wife committed suicide. She was running away from home, that much was obvious. That she lasted as long as she had, royalty that she effectively was, was probably down to that even the highest and most coddled Azuli was still an Azuli, and as likely to stab something trying to kill her as a Embiar would run to her mother.

So why was she running? Unknown. Why did she run here? Isolation, most likely. What were her plans? Well, that stood to be seen. If possibly not by him. Kori let out another yawn, pretty sure he could hear his stomach rumbling out of his throat when he did, and leaned into a slightly more comfortable position. As she'd chained him in a spot with no chairs, beds, or blankets, he just had to make due with his own backside. And he'd almost settled himself for another nap, when he started to hear clacking.

Kori perked up, and looked toward the door. "If that's you, my dear, if you'd only let me explain, you'd see that the girl had fallen on a land-urchin. That's why my lips were there!"

"Do you always try to deflect life-or-death situations with poor jokes?" Maya's voice came from outside the room.

"Is it working?" Kori asked with a smirk on his face even for the separation between them.

"That remains to be seen," she said.

"So, my dear, would you mind telling me what took you two days – which you left me without food or water I might add – to do?"

"I had to find a rock-tiger. It proved a lot harder than I thought it would have. The cold must be making them skittish," she said, leaning around the corner into sight, probably checking to see that his chains were still in place. The clicking continued in that room she was in. And when she leaned, there was a waft of a very pungent, none-too-sweet aroma that followed her. It made Kori cough a bit, and be glad that he had no dinner to upchuck.

"You might want to tone down your perfume. It does not suit," Kori said, waving chained hands before his face.

"For this? It most certainly does," she said. She vanished from the doorframe, and continued to speak, as the clattering became swifter. "Can you surmise why I had to find a rock-tiger, Child?"

"Well, their meat isn't very tasty, they're utterly feral," Kori rhymed off. "They're ugly, untrainable, and don't produce anything of worth economically other than hardship and occasional maulings. What else, what else..."

"Why a rock-tiger, specifically," she asked, teasing.

"Hmm," Kori frowned. What did rock-tigers have that other species of deadly flora and fauna lacked. "Well, if you wanted to farm some anomolokia for some reason, you'd need," and he trailed off. He listened, and heard the ticking of something hard against stone once more. "...you didn't."

The ticking picked up its pace, until something pink and gangly, its body more a collection of spiky bits and claws than anything sensible, lurched into the room. It locked its wide-set, forward-focused and practically glowing yellow eyes on Kori, and then with a high-pitched squeal, tore the ground between the door and the chained up Tribesman, who, not for lack of pride, screamed like a terrified girl at it's approach. When it was about two feet away, its neck snapped back, and it was pulled off of its chitinous, spiky footing by a strap of leather around its neck. It snarled and mashed its dark purple mandibles at him, swiping at him with the fore-claws, only the tips of which were that same dark violet hue. Maya, standing with its leash in her hand, smiled. "Yes. I did."

"Get that thing away from me!" Kori shouted, trying to haul himself away from the most heinous of the wildlife Azul had to offer, and failing for the chains holding it in place.

"In a way, I'm doing you a favor. This thing is a newborn. It can't lay its eggs in you. It can just eat you and kill you. And it'd probably do it in that order. So I suggest you not lie to me," she said smoothly.

"Wh... How..." Kori asked. The anomolokia surged against her restraint, and she yanked it back.

"It finds the smell of heppel-oil so repulsive that it's the only stuff that'll curb its appetite. And they do have a ravenous appetite," she said with a dark smile. She then looked up to Kori. "How much does my father know?"

"He doesn't know anything," Kori said. She scowled, and let an inch of leather leash slip. Kori screamed and ducked back from the slashing claws of the anomolokia. "I'm telling the truth!"

"Since you know what this thing is, I don't have to inform you of their eating habits. The young aren't like the mature specimens, though," Maya said, with all of the professionalism of an academy tutor. "Their carapace is still soft, to allow for moulting and growth. Once they're mature, they're practically unkillable. So too are their eggs. Only three things in Azul can host their parasitic offspring..."

"Yeah," Kori said, still watching the thing which strained toward him. "Bison, rock-tigers, and people."

"So you did pay attention," she said with a mirthless smile. "Once they get their eggs in you, you're pretty much dead. They go in spherical, but as soon as they sense that they're in a good environment, they grow calcified shards, spearing your guts and locking them into place. There they sit, poisoning your brain for the week it takes to hatch. Then, they eat their way out of you. And to some degree, you're still alive when they do it."

"Get that thing away from me!" Kori shouted.

"You see, I really don't think that a Child would have come this far if not for a chance to ransom me against my father. Call me cynical," she said. She let another inch slip, to another scream from a Tribesman and another wailing snarl from the anomolokia. "How many others?"

"There is no plot! I'm not here for Ozai!" Kori shouted. Agni, or whatever gods technically looked out for Tribesmen abroad, please don't let that thing eat him, he prayed.

"That strikes me as a bit hard to believe," Maya said.

"Ozai had his men kidnap me when I was a child! He's been lying to me my entire life! Why would I hold any loyalty to that?" Kori beseeched. Another inch, another string of terrified swearing as the dark purple claws slashed within inches of him.

"So if you're so angry at Ozai, why not kill him?" she asked.

"That'd be suicide. He might be going insane, but he's still eight times the firebender that I am a w..."

"A waterbender. I'm aware," she said. She pulled back on the leash, giving Kori a bit of room to breathe. "I'm going to ask you a simple question, and you're going to answer it."

"You bet I am," Kori said, still shaking as that ungodly thing stared at him, its mandibles clicking in hunger as it tried to find some way that a leash wouldn't hold it back.

"Do you, or do you not, want Shinzo dominion over Azul?" she asked.

"This is the most honest I've been in my life: I seriously don't give a shit."

She stared at him a moment longer. "Alright, new question..."

"You said one!"

"Who's got the anomolokia on a leash?" she asked. Kori swallowed. "That's what I thought. Who did you think you were talking to when you barged in on me?"

Kori swallowed hard. This answer could get him killed, if true. And if she knew he was lying, which at the moment was an almost certainty since he could barely think straight let alone lie, she'd just let go of that leash, and about half a second later, the most evil creature in Azul would be eating its way into his intestines. "A Tribeswoman..."

"Booring," she said.

"And her brother, and an earthbender and..."

"You're not giving me the entire truth. And my arm is getting awfully tired," she said.

"Alright! I expected Azula and Zuko! Is that what you wanted to hear?" Kori asked. She stared at him.

"You're serious aren't you?" she asked.

"I'VE GOT AN ANOMOLOKIA STARING AT ME! OF COURSE I'M SERIOUS!"

"Huh," she said. And then she started walking toward Kori, winding that leash as she came so the monster gained no slack. Until she reached it, whereupon she pulled the long knife from her belt and buried it into the back of the anomolokia's skull. The creature let out a hiss, and orange ichor poured out of the wound, as it slumped to the ground. She pulled the blade, and wiped it off on Kori's pant leg. "Be glad it was a newborn. If it were a couple weeks old, I'd not have been able to stab it."

"So you believe me when I said that I wasn't here for you," Kori said, relief strong enough that he almost felt dizzy for it. Then again, he was pretty sure he wet himself, so... yeah, there was no dignity in this situation.

"Yes, and now you've got my interest. So the children he banished have returned to the Fire Nation, and into Azul of all places. I don't like the smell of this," she said.

"Well, you're not exactly fragrant right now," Kori found himself saying around a terrified laugh, despite himself. She shot him a very flat look. "I have this thing I do when I should shut up, but don't..."

"Obviously," she said. "What did they want?"

"They want to unseat Ozai, to end the World War. They claim something a lot worse is going on. Don't know if I believe them but... could you unchain me? Or at least give me something to drink?"

"Fine," she rolled her eyes, and flicked a key to her fingers which unlocked the pad on the floor, and let his chains slide free. "So what's got the Prince and Princess in such a snit?"

"...You probably won't believe this, so I'm glad that thing's dead," Kori said. She scowled at him. "How much do you know about spirits?"

---

Qujeck's jaw was positively grinding as the man in the green, concealing robes slowly looked over the dubiously identified 'Bug', who seemed to be doing her best to seem both bored out of her mind and impatient as well. It took every whit of Qujeck's willpower not to simply open an important artery in that Dai Li bastard. A rational part of him knew that not all Dai Li were responsible for the deaths of those he cared about, but that rational part wasn't very loud when there was green in his sight. A sane part of him reminded him that going into all-out and unmitigated warfare with them would result in exactly the same that he'd gotten for the last few years; as close to nothing as to be vanishingly small.

"Yu Dao. I thought that place was taken over by the Fire Nation years ago," the Dai Li said, reading 'Bug's identification. She rolled her eyes like a petulant brat.

"Well, duh," she said, caustically. "I swear, sometimes, I think my mother's just out to make me miserable. 'Go to Ba Sing Se', she said, 'get an education', she said. 'Learn something useful for a change', she said. Does your mother ever get on your case?"

"From time to time," the Dai Li said.

"I bet it must drive you up the wall," she said, doing a remarkable impression of an airhead.

"Not so much. She died when the Rannoh Flu came through four years ago," Bug swallowed at that statement. The Dai Li didn't glare at her though. "Of course, that just meant that I exchanged a hellion of a mother for a demon of a mother-in-law. 'Way she'd say it, I was an utter failure just because I'm not the Grand Secretariat by now."

"Oh, I know! Parents can be such a pain!" She tapped a finger to her cheek. "Say, do you think we'll be able to visit the Earth King while we're here?"

"Doubtful," was all the Dai Li said. He then looked up at the 'valets', Qujeck in particular. "This checks out, but they don't. What are you doing with a Tribesman in your entourage?"

"Oh, he's a mercenary. Daddy thinks that I'll be dragged into an alley and murdered the moment that his precious little girl doesn't have a big, burly man to protect her, and who better than a big, scary Tribesman?"

"Still. Tribesman," he said, looking Qujeck up and down. Qujeck's jaw set, and he slowly started to uncap the flask that was hidden behind his back, under his robes.

"Her father... makes odd choices," Longshot said, his words obviously begrudging and weighted for their infrequence, before offering a shrug which clearly said 'hell if I know what was going through his head'.

The Dai Li gave one last glance toward Qujeck, before handing the passport back to Bug. "I suppose he just might," he muttered. "There are some mandarins in the administrative wing that can see to your accommodations for your stay. They'll also arrange for access to the university, and for a chaperone and guide to join you for the duration. Welcome to Ba Sing Se, mistress Morishita."

Bug gave the man an indulgent smile, and then walked past him. The moment that her back was too him, though, she got a look of outright disgust on her face, and shook her head ever so subtly. Perhaps there was only so far that a Fire National was willing to lie as well. A glance back showed that the Dai Li was still watching them go past the ornamental out-walls and into the exterior buildings of the Royal Palace. That glance only ended when they took a turn, and broke the line of sight. "You're a hell of an actor," Smellerbee praised, though thankfully quietly.

"I left home when I was twelve. You can get a lot of up-tight-asshole stuffed into you by then. Trust me," she rolled her eyes. "I swear, I could feel part of my brain dying just talking like that."

Longshot chuckled at that, and gave the impostor a glance which said 'really? You sounded pretty natural to me', to which she shot a glare back. "Laugh it up, Longshot. See how well you do when you wake up with no bow-string," to which Longshot just rolled his eyes.

"Can we get back onto task?" Qujeck asked, as they took a turn into the botanical gardens which flourished in direct opposition to the drought which choked the entire continent, and the water-rationing which had stood for the last month. We've got to find the entrance to their new fortress. Tell me if you spot anything suspicious."

"We're in the Royal Palace. Everything's suspicious," Bug said.

"And we still have an enormous amount of ground to cover," Smellerbee pointed out. "This palace is bigger than the town I was born in, and that was not a small town. They could be anywhere!"

"Not quite anywhere," Hua Jin Bai's voice cut in, causing all, Qujeck shamefully included, to emit yelps of alarm. They all looked around, trying to see where the fat old pirate had appeared from, but all were at a loss. Bai gave a smirk at their confusion. "If I told you all of my secrets, I wouldn't have much of an advantage, now would I?" he said, further confounding them. Qujeck leaned closer.

"How'd you get past the guards?"

"I've got my ways," he said with a dismissive wave of his hand.

Longshot pointed idly toward one of the long-unused storm drains which ran along the edges of the botanical displays. It'd probably been sixty years since they saw any desperate use, and probably ten since they saw any at all. And that water had to go somewhere. Bai, noting Longshot's observation, gave something of a petulant expression.

"You delight in ruining these things, don't you?" he asked. Longshot shrugged. Bai then waved the whole affair away. "Regardless, we have a task to perform and very little time in which to do it. Follow me, closely."

"Where?" Qujeck demanded, grabbing the pirate's arm and hauling him to a stop. Bai shot a scandalized look back. "If we have to split up, we need to know where we're going. And if you get captured, we've got to be able to pull this out of the fire. This is no time for theatricality and games, Bai. Where. Are. We. Going?"

Bai sighed, and nodded. "You're right, you know. So used to the old days, when villains had a certain margin-for-error attached to them. But what am I saying? The entrance is, by process of elimination, attached to the sub-basement of the Pantheon. It makes a sort of sense," Bai shrugged. "They see themselves as untouchable by the hand of man, so where else to hide but under the view of the gods?"

"If you're wrong about this..." Qujeck said.

"You have to trust somebody sometime, or you'll never get anything done," Bai chastised. He pointed to the wing of the building that sat to the east, itself fairly smaller than the others which comprised the Royal Palace. Qujeck knew from... a lost friend... that it had been built the largest structure in the Palace when the Palace was first conceived and created. However, over the years, every other building but it was constantly redesigned, expanded, and inflated, until it looked comparatively puny. It showed how much real deference that these Continentals had for their gods. Even Qujeck probably showed better lip-service to Tenger Etseg and Yer Tonri than these did to their chthonic deities.

The odd procession made their way through those frankly insulting botanical gardens, toward the squat dome which comprised the Pantheon. Sure, it was obvious that this was once a place of importance and grandeur – as there was still gilt on its unweathered edges and its proportions were properly awe-inspiring – but the centuries and millennia since it's creation had seen a lot of neglect, benign though its intention. Corners, obviously once crisp and clean, were now rounded by untold years of rain... although none of it in the last half century. A mosaic plaza, once depicting the hooded stone which had been simplified to its current iteration as symbol of elemental earth, worn to barely distinct nubs by countless feet. A younger Qujeck, a kinder and gentler and more poetic Qujeck, would have said that this building was much like looking into the face of a very old woman who had been so beautiful in her youth as to break your heart. There were still glimmers, echoes of it, but...

"Why do I get the feeling like I'm not supposed to be here?" Smellerbee asked.

"Because you're a godless heathen," Bug answered quietly and sarcastically.

"Says the monotheist," she cut back.

"Do you mind? We're trying to not get killed here. Shut the hell up," Qujeck hissed at them. Bad enough that this place dragged up parts of himself better left behind, but it made them snippy and detectable as well.

"Do you think we're going to have trouble getting in?" Bug asked.

"You? No. Him?" Bai pointed at Qujeck, "possibly. Me? Most certainly... if I was using the front door."

"Not a fan of front doors, are you?" Qujeck asked.

"Not as a rule. They tend to be too well defended," Bai answered. Smellerbee started to chuckle at that, even as Bai took a turn behind a hedge far narrower than his frame, and then seemed to vanish completely.

"What's so funny?" Qujeck asked.

"I'll tell you when you're older," she said condescendingly. It was lucky that Qujeck had some self control, otherwise he'd not be grinding teeth, so much as his lower jaw against his upper. The temple eunuchs – a ridiculous title considering they were all intact – let the entire group in without so much as a second glance, through the darkness of the entrance hall, and then into the central chamber which had been subdivided into eleven sections. One for each of the Earth Kingdom's foremost gods.

"Irony, thy name is Earth Kingdom sculptor," Qujeck muttered, as they began to circle the chamber, their eyes scanning for anything out of the ordinary. Of whom he spoke was Muut, rendered as a platypus bear with the head of a man. The fool-king, god of purpose and failure. The others gave him an askance glance as he walked past, but that was his to consider, not theirs. The next... that was Bo-a-chi, the slender, legless maiden with her eyes turned to the sky, chains dangling from her fingers. Goddess of loyalty and betrayal. Funny, how those two would be the first he passed.

"Makes you really think, doesn't it?" Bai's voice came from around Yu Di, the golden Ostrich Horse – god of bravery and reckless abandon. "Once we all believed in these gods above all others. Funny how times change."

"You might want to keep it down. Eunuch or no, they might smite you for blasphemy if they find you here," Qujeck said.

"Quiet conversation would not go amiss. I don't know how you pray, but our gods like to hear our voices," Bai said chastising. He then lent his eyes to the others, trying to find that thing out of place, that sign of an entrance to somewhere out of sight. Next in the circuit of the Pantheon was Naut, the Painted Bull. Not a creature that Qujeck had ever seen, something all muscle, horns, and bad attitude. Quite possibly, something that had never had a mortal equivalent. Not surprising, considering it was god of both control and chaos.

"I'm not seeing anything," Smellerbee muttered. She gave a glance to the others. "I'm going to check the other way..."

"Just stay with us. No point getting separated. That's a good way to get captured or something," Bug said with a wave of her hand as she made a strong scrutiny of the corners, where shadows fell.

Qujeck didn't spare too much attention to Hoenir, the blob-of-a-man who sat, staring upward and weeping. Why would the Easterners think they had any right to worship a god of surfeit and dearth, compared to... say... the Water Tribes? Fitting that such a hedonist would be depicted suffering for his excesses. The juxtaposition of Ka-Loh – the gambler – next to him, nubile and seeming ready to leap from the stone he was carved from, only made him all the more pathetic. A lot of these gods were old; that Qujeck knew. Older than Ba Sing Se itself. So who could even say what cultures these figures had been taken from, in the long-lost mists of time.

"Is that..." Bug asked, leaning to peek behind Ever-Staring Jeva, with his two faces young and old. Longshot shook his head. Just a shield, and nothing more. "I'm not even sure what we're supposed to look for," she muttered.

"You'll know it when you see it," Bai said cryptically. Qujeck ignored him, turning his attention to Hlin, the Queen In Rags. Smiling sublimely with her skin cut to ribbons. Qujeck never really understood what she was supposed to represent. And the mere sight of her brought back some very, very unpleasant memories. Needless to say, the Tribesman's attention turned to Hlin's sister, Qia-mi very quickly. After all, the goddess of loss merely looked wistfully, longingly, toward the distance. A far kinder sight than the ruined woman beside her.

"We're running out of spots to search," Qujeck pointed out, as they'd almost done a complete circuit. They passed by Li Ming, the Mason, supposedly he who brought earthbending to the world by creating the badgermole out of clay. He was depicted as always trying to built a wall of bricks that always toppled behind him. And that was them, back to the start.

"I think I see it," Longshot said, quietly as was his way, and he pointed past a railing, to the statue of the man who dominated the center of the dome. A tall, broad and bearded man, but with one eye put out and carrying a scales in one hand and a spear in the other. Wodur, father of the gods. God of Destiny, fair and foul. And there was one eunuch who was... lazing about next to the indistinct dead creature that Wodur had his sculpted foot atop.

"Think they'll mind if we take an up-close look at the annals of history?" Bai asked.

"That was a rhetorical question, wasn't it?" Qujeck answered his question with a question. The old pirate grinned, and hopped over the railing onto the finely raked pebbles which spread out toward the statue of the God-Father at its heart. The crunching brought the eunuch's attention quickly enough, despite any attempts at stealth that could have been made.

"What are you doing here? These grounds are off limits to the lay," the shaven-headed man said, scandal in his tone.

"We thought we might have a closer look at your god," Qujeck said.

"Please, this is most uncouth. Please, leave," he said, ushering them toward the rail that they'd vaulted, back along the footprints that they'd left. When they continued toward him, Qujeck noted that he didn't look afraid or intimidated. In fact, he looked angry. "If you don't stop this at once, I will have to inform the guard."

"We both know that's not going to happen," Bai said, and the 'eunuch' turned his full attention to the fat pirate. He blanched. As though he recognized somebody who was a dire and immediate threat. "You have the choice of shutting up and staying out of our way, or being removed."

The eunuch punctuated Bai's last word by thrusting forward his hands, and having the grey pebbles which formed a veritable sea around the feet of Wodur launch as a geyser of abrasive stone toward the pirate and those with him. Qujeck only had time to sweep his water up and vault himself up and over the assault, if even to send himself so high that he lost control and landed harshly on his face off to one side. It still beats getting rock-tumbled, he figured.

Even as Qujeck was pushing himself to his feet, and Bai was being blasted off of his feet, it was the noble who reacted fastest. Not having to paw for a knife or unlimber a bow, she simply whipped out a hand, and a long line with a weight at its end shot out at her behest. It swept around the false-eunuch's neck and when she dug in her feet and hauled, there was just enough power in her that she caused the man who was already overbalanced to tip forward, and fall onto the gravel. Then, another flick of her hand, twisting it around what looked almost like a dancing kick, and the weighted end spun at great speed through the air, before smashing down onto the top of the attacker's head. The earthbending assault ended abruptly as the man lost consciousness from the blow.

Bai slowly pushed himself up from the mound of small stones that he'd essentially been buried under. He blinked a few times, and even leaned his head and tapped on one ear, causing dust to fall out of the other. "Much as I appreciate you saving the integrity of my hide, I fear that might have been... premature," he said. Qujeck dusted the grit off of him, and shot the pirate a confused glare. Longshot, who moved past where the eunuch – Dai Li agent, most likely – had been standing, and shook his head with a small sigh. Qujeck joined the archer, and saw what the lad meant. There was a scuff in the ground leading into the back of the 'beast', out of sight between Wodur's back leg and the walls which soared up to his flanks, that looked like it was to be moved. Probably by earthbending.

"Oh, great. Now they're going to hear us when we blow our way in," Qujeck muttered. Smellerbee, though, shook her head. "What?"

"Bug? If you would?"

"Do I really have to?" the girl who was recoiling her meteor hammer asked. Longshot turned a glance which said 'do you see anybody else here who can?' to her. Can do what, Qujeck wasn't sure. Bug nevertheless sighed, and shrugged. "Fine. I'll do it. But if I pull something, I'll kick your butt!"

"You are such a girl," Smellerbee said with a roll of her eyes. Qujeck glanced to Bai, the question clearly on his face, but Bai just coached the Tribesman to silence, and pointed. Bug faced the slab which was clearly supposed to be earthbent aside, and held out two fists in its direction. She closed her eyes, and her legs dropped wide into a low stance as her breath was pulled in harshly. Then, with a grunt which almost sounded painful, she heaved her arms back and to one side. With a great lurch, and a rumbling of stone, the slab slid about four feet from its initial place, followed immediately by Bug hissing in pain.

"She's an earthbender?" Qujeck asked. "But she's a National!"

"Yeah, she's an earthbender. She just sucks at it," Smellerbee chided. Bug shot her a death glare. As she flapped her hands as though she pulled something in them with even that small a show of bending.

"All rather moot, to the fact that we have a way down," Bai said, pointing down the ladder which descended into the sub-palace. It was a long way down, at the bottom of that shaft glowed with green light.

"...that takes me back," Qujeck said unhappily.

"You and I both," Bai agreed. Qujeck was the first to break his reverie, though, and the first to begin the long descent.

---

"Yoji?" Hai asked in no small degree of confusion, as he came to a halt in the cold rain that pounded down through the streets. "What are you doing here?" he asked.

She turned toward him, blue eyes glaring. The weather was terrible enough that the streets were all but empty, but also struck down hard enough that it chilled Hai to the bone the likes of which he'd not felt since the Avatar dropped them in that arctic hell, albeit not one any of this Earth. Yoji didn't even seem to notice. "What are you doing here?" she countered.

Hai's thick brow drew down, as the former Fire Lord's favorite amongst the Children stared at him... or in a way, through him. "I'm doing my job. You, on the other hand, vanished for five Agni-damned days!"

"It's been five days?" she asked, her eyes turning down. Whatever she'd been doing for all that time, it certainly hadn't been taking care of her personal appearance. While she did have some remnants of her customary makeup remaining, they stood as pointed strips which grew as they approached her neck, almost seeming that she'd suffered some sort of bizarre scar or burn that bleached her flesh to a sallow shade all the more stark for the dark complexion around it. And the fact that there was so little of the makeup remaining served to reveal that she didn't look to have slept. Probably in five days, now that Hai thought about it. "It doesn't matter. I had something that needed to be dealt with."

"You should probably leave the city," Hai said quietly, leaning in toward her. Her distant look turned into one of annoyance as she faced him.

"And why in Agni's name would I want to do that?" she asked.

"Are you daft? There's been a coup!" Hai hissed, guiding her under the edge of a rooftop if only so that they wouldn't both have to stand in the frigid rain. "Zhao's turned the nobles against Ozai and usurped the Burning Throne from him. All of the Children have had to swear fealty to him, since he let it not be said but strongly implied that if we didn't, he'd just execute us. The only ones who haven't are you and your brother."

"Kori isn't my brother," she muttered.

"Yes, I know how annoying he is at times, but that's not the point!" Hai said. He gave her shoulders a shake. "As long as you're in Caldera City, you're a target. Even if you walk right up to Zhao and offer him allegiance on your knees, there's no sure way to know if he'd even accept it!"

"I. Am. Not. Leaving,' she told him.

"Yoji, please, be reasonable!" Hai said, intercepting her as she moved out into the rain. She glared at him and muttered something with some volume... but no sense. She was talking some other language, one that Hai didn't know how to speak. "Your brother knew what was coming. That's the only way I can rationalize why he left when he did. You still have all of the resources you've socked away. Don't look at me like that, I know you did," Hai said.

"I don't know what..." she began.

"We need somebody to figure out what happened to Ozai. He might have had his demons, but given the choice between him and an anti-rationalist who believes in prophecy and oracles... I'll take a madman, any day of the week," Hai said.

"I never knew you were so secular," Yoji said flatly.

"I've had a very informative couple of months," Hai said. He gave her a shrug, then focused his attention more squarely. "You've got a lot more autonomy than most of us do right now. Me and Sis have an out since we aren't restricted to the Inner Sphere, but the rest of us... we're under a microscope, and Zhao's the one with his eyes to the lenses and the scalpel in his hand. Ozai had pride in us. Zhao doesn't. He'll use us up, if we don't do something to stop him. And right now, you're the best chance that we've got of getting a better Fire Lord back on the Burning Throne.

Yoji stared into the distance for a moment, then nodded. "You have a point," she acceded, but not happily. "I don't like it, but you have a point. Where would he have been taken?"

"My first guess would be Ashfall, but they've built that place down to the bedrock to make sure rifts don't happen there, and we're restricted from mundane access until he starts to trust us again, which by my reckoning would be never," Hai said, starting to walk with her as she picked a new path which headed north, away from the switchback road which lead to the Noble Quarter. "You, on the other hand, have a way with getting into places you don't belong. If he's there, find him. Then... Well... we'll have to come up with a plan," he said.

"Not a problem," Yoji's unpainted yet still dark lips pulled into a smirk. "I'm good with plans."

"So goes your reputation," Hai said. He paused, and turned. Yoji halted almost immediately as well. "Did you feel that?"

"Did I feel what?" she asked.

"It felt like somebody was standing right behind me," Hai said. He stared, and even opened the World Eyes to be sure, but there was nothing in either of the Inner nor Outer Spheres. A chill nevertheless ran through him, one not borne of cold rain and unseasonably chilly winds. "I don't like this. I've just got a... a bad feeling."

"You're a shaman. It's your job to have bad feelings," she said flatly, and continued walking. Hai looked into the empty street behind him again, but nothing jumped to his attention. With a final shake of his head, he turned, and followed after the wayward firebender.

It wasn't a case, though, that there was nothing to be seen. Rather a case that Hai didn't have the wherewithal to see it. A shadow, flickering from a guttering street-light cast an edge for a split second, before a creature born of something darker than shadow was standing where that boundary had been. Red, pulsating eyes burned toward the shaman, and an unearthly hunger tore at it. But this Shard was not to simply sow chaos. It had a purpose writ into every fiber of its being.

Find the scarred shaman. Eat the scarred shaman. The eyes swept the street, peering into every window, every crack of the door, even as the body which held them managed to stay still. The rain which fell around that grim shadow crackled as it hit the ground, boiling hot even as it flashed into a steam of ice. Cobbles cracked and weathered, assaulted by the laws of physics and matter collapsing in the presence of the Shard of Imbalance.

The scarred shaman was not here.

So with a last crack, the wind surged in all directions and none, wailing and snapping without purpose but great fury, before a final clatter. Every raindrop within a half mile had been frozen solid, and fell as tiny flecks of hale. But the Shard? The Shard was gone.

---

"Alright, so how do we find him in here?" Bug asked, as she looked throughout the complex they now found themselves standing in the shadows of. Unlike the much vaunted Lake Laogai internment camp, this one was much more open; a great promenade, replete with fountains and a pale but sufficient green light from luminescent crystals standing between stands of buildings. The buildings had been cut into the very stone. From the look of them – and Bug had taken a look while the others were catching up to her and the waterbender – they had been dug out by hand and tool, rather than earthbent. Why? Who could say?

"It should be easier than finding the Avatar in the other fortress," Qujeck said. "If nothing else, there's a lot less places to look."

"Less? Look at the size of this place? You could search for days down here and not even find your own feet!" Smellerbee said.

Everybody shushed her harshly. Stealth, at this moment, was their greatest friend and the only chance that they realistically had. "Qujeck is correct. I've been into this place before," Bai said. He gave a shrug. "It's a long story. Suffice to say, there was a time when the Dai Li and I were not on so unpleasant terms," he sighed, and shook his head. "Strange, how there was a time two decades ago when I would have called Long Feng a friend. I must have been blind."

"Stupid, more like," Qujeck muttered. Longshot, though, shot him a look which clearly said, 'Not appropriate, not now'. Qujeck swallowed a growl. "Fine. If you know this place so well, where is Iroh?"

"Before Lake Laogai, they only had one place in the guts of Zutara City – the ruins in which we now stand – that they considered secure enough to interrogate their subversives," he said. He then pointed across the promenade, to a large building which dominated much of that wall. But not at its main doors. No, he was pointing at what seemed more the entrance to a privy than anything of note. "Down those stairs and through a lock-wall," he briefly turned to Bug, "and how fortunate it is that we have you with us, given your talents..."

"Can we not talk about my earthbending right now?" she asked, a bit uncomfortable with the whole thing. It was a significant bugbear in her parents' marriage that one of them had been a firebender, the other, an earthbender. The fights had been legendary. When they stopped shouting, even more so. More than half the reason she left Yu Dao to join the vagrants under Jet and Mai was so that she'd actually have something like a family life which didn't involve nightly screaming matches, weekly brawls, and sickeningly frequent 'make-up' liaisons. Mom should have just used her wiles to seduce some trader or aristocrat. It'd have been simpler that way.

Longshot gave her a shrug, clearly offering, 'wasn't my intention to bring it up at all,' but then again, Longshot was always a polite one. He didn't barge where he wasn't supposed to. Bai, who had taken her interrupting with no more than a mild shrug, continued, "...is the descent toward a series of cisterns. They're clad in lead, which in retrospect might explain why the Wiqing were so pissed off and crazy all the time..." Bai tapped a finger to his chin.

"The cisterns?" Smellerbee refocused him.

"Ah, yes. They can't be bent out of, and their doors can only be opened from the outside. Perfect place to lock anybody, really. And all they'd need to do to punish you was lock the doors for a few hours, until you start to suffocate. That'll take the fight out of almost anybody," Bai finished. "So... how do we get over there?"

"Run?" Smellerbee asked.

"Do you think you can make that distance before one of them," Qujeck pointed out the men in green robes milling about on the far side of the promenade, "spots us? If you can, then I'm an airbender."

"Run discretely?" she asked.

"And discreetly," Bug added.

"...Very funny," Qujeck said, after the mental moment it took him to translate the homonym. "And if we get spotted?"

"Oh, if they find us, they'll probably just kill us," Bai said. And then, he flashed a grin. "But first, they have to find us."

---

"Is it just me, or do we get side-tracked... like, really easily?" Sokka asked, as he faintly limped back into the trees that they'd left behind hours ago.

"Huh? I wasn't aware that this was a common thing," Malu said.

"More than you'd think," Sokka muttered. He tilted his back in that painful direction, just long enough for it to emit a somewhat grotesque crick, before turning a glance back toward 'civilization', such as it was. Nobody seemed to be watching. And honestly, standing next to the woods was a worse idea than standing directly in them when one was in Azul. Inside, at least your eyes could adapt enough to see the horrors that were constantly trying to kill you. "Of course, we wouldn't have had to bother if you hadn't been all... helpful!"

"What's wrong with being helpful?" Malu asked.

"We've got a schedule to keep!" Sokka complained. "A very meticulously drawn-up, in depth and absolutely vital schedule that can't afford to have us wasting time in it! Hell, I had to slot in our dinner time around when Toph needs to go to the bathroom!"

"...why Toph?"

"Tiniest bladder," Sokka said with an off-hand wave. He paused, and then gave a bright orange flower a very wide berth. Probably a good idea, given that those creatures which enjoyed the company of the flower – and indeed the flower itself – were very territorial and tended to lash out at anything unwelcome that moved too closely.

"Wait. The reason we've only gotten two meals a day was..."

"You probably shouldn't think about it too hard," Sokka said. "It's just that we don't have the time to keep bouncing around. I mean... what if Aang got attacked by a rock tiger while we were out traipsing with the locals?"

"It wouldn't be the rock-tiger I'd be worried about. It'd be the anomolokia that were trying to pod it," Malu said.

"You see? That just proves my point!" Sokka said.

"I assume from your irate tone that we're still flying blind and by dead reckoning?" Toph's voice came from through the forest. The flashes of light against the canopy gave Sokka a bit of relief. As ludicrously dangerous as the wildlife here was, even they gave fire a healthy respect. And the angry-jerk teaching Aang how to firebend gave them a lot of reasons not to come close. Of course, when Sokka pushed through the last layer of greenery – and dragged his forearm through some tearing nettles in the process – it was not the melancholy Prince who was moving with Aang, but rather, his crazy-ass sister. Not that he'd say so to her face.

"Nope. We've got a heading!" Sokka held up the map case in triumph.

"Fi-nally," Toph muttered, and stomped a bowl from the ground nearby into her hand before she tipped it back and drank whatever was inside in one great gulp.

"No, no no!" Azula snapped, as she came to a halt, fists on her hips. "It was bad enough when Zuzu was making a hash of it. If you do it like that in a real fight any self respecting firebender will do this," she said, snapping into a motion that took a fraction of a second and terminated with a blast of blue fire which fell just short of melting the Avatar's face, "and that'll be the end of your precious 'quest for balance'. So do it right! Like this!"

"I'm guessing she's been like that for a while?" Sokka asked, from the look on Aang's face which clearly illustrated how out of his depth he was. Then again, compared to Zuko, Azula technically had forty more years of firebending mastery to call upon, if her ramblings had any basis in reality. A year ago, Sokka would have dismissed that out of hand. Now... Well, he'd seen some strange stuff. Like a soot-encrusted Si Wongi who was sitting looking mildly stunned near the campfire in the center of the burnt-out clearing that Zuko had made yesterday.

"Since you left, just about. She said 'Zuzu's training was what almost got you killed last time. You should learn from somebody better'," Toph said, raising air-quotes above her recumbent form.

"I'm not that bad a teacher," Zuko muttered in quiet annoyance from near the blind earthbender.

"Still, better to learn from the best firebender present. At the moment, that's your sister," Toph gave a shrug from her place on the ground. Katara, though, had taken Sokka's side and pulled the map-case from the strap on his neck.

"So which way are we supposed to be going?" she asked.

"That's the thing. We've been heading in the wrong direction. We need to head pretty much directly west from here," Sokka said. Katara scowled, but it wasn't at him, he figured. Probably the universe in general for making it so hard to navigate the Fire Nation. What Sokka wouldn't give for a map of this continent which had been penned by somebody who'd actually set foot on it...

"Hah! I did it!" Aang proclaimed from where he stood in the last motions of a kata. Azula grumbled, palming her face.

"No. You didn't. Try doing it to me."

"B...but I might hurt you."

"Trust me, you won't," she said flatly. Aang looked a bit annoyed, but took his place, fists forward. With a shout, he bounded forward, surging forward burning kicks at her. Azula, though, simply sidestepped the assault, hooked one arm under his flailing knee, and then chopped him in the chest with the other, sending him flat onto his back in the mud. An instant later, she had a burning fist levied down toward him. "You're fighting like an airbender. You jump too high. You keep forgetting that fire burns up, not down. Let it do the work for you, and you won't end up buried."

"...I never thought of it that way," Aang said, mildly in wonder.

"I'll start preparing Appa," Katara said, as she tucked the map back into its waterproof case. Even a terrible map was better than no map, Sokka figured. He turned to Malu, but found her up a tree-limb for some reason, looking at something almost out of sight. "What is she doing?"

"I don't bother asking, these days," Sokka said.

"There's something dead up here," Malu said.

"Of course there is. This is Azul, red in tooth, claw, and ovipositor," Zuko said sardonically. Malu pulled the dead thing from its perch, though, and showed the mangled and mostly eaten body of a... of a messenger hawk. Sokka's brow rose at that. It was tied with a rough strip of blue cloth, the same shade as the clothes which Katara'd had to abandon on the ship. The message case was somewhat mangled as well, but whatever ate the messenger obviously didn't see any nutritive value in oiled leather. Who knew how long that thing had been there. Or who it had been addressed to.

Malu, though, popped it open without a second thought. "Hey! Aang! This is for us!" she declared.

"Really?" Aang said, as Azula picked him up from the mud again with an ease that was a bit unsettling to see in a girl. "What does it say?"

"...The first part's mangled, but I can see what... Oh! This is from that mopey girl who sighed a lot."

"Mai," Zuko said.

"Yeah. The first part I can actually make out says, 'You won't believe what we just did in Ember...'"

---

"What the hell?" a voice came from above, as Bai stumbled to a halt. "Who is that?"

"So much for quick on his feet..." Qujeck muttered. The pirate didn't face them, just gave a glance toward where the other teens and the one waterbender with them had gathered in the shadows of the entrance to the cisterns. "We need to go," he said.

"But..." Smellerbee cast a hand back toward Bai, who gave a minute nod, then turned to face the Dai Li who were out of sight.

"As I understand it, you've been looking for me!" he shouted up at them. "Well, I decided to be a bit sporting about it, since you were doing such a terrible job on your end."

"We need to..." Smellerbee began, but Longshot shook his head. Bug nodded and pulled the girl deeper down the path.

"He's made his choice, and given us a chance," Bug said. "Let's not waste it."

"Your 'mistress' speaks with uncommon sense. Let's get the Dragon out of here," Qujeck said with sarcastic tone. He was already counting the corners down. Bai's instructions had better be good, or this would be a very, very short rescue attempt, and all the sadder for it. Finally, at the third descending right turn, Qujeck held them up short, and pointed at the wall. "Kori, do your magic."

"Don't call me that," Bug muttered, but did obey and shooed him out of her path. She held both fists toward the stone of that back wall, and her eyes pressed closed. She muttered something, quietly so that the waterbender couldn't quite hear it, before she thrust her hands forward. Nothing. So with a growl, she pulled them back. This time, she was rewarded with the noise of grinding rock, before the block of it slid out about a foot. That left it several inches embedded. "Oh, great. You might not want to stand behind me, Quj."

"...Quj?" Qujeck asked.

"Just move," Smellerbee instructed him. He saw no reason not to. Doubly so when Bug's next attempt to move the stone was significantly more successful, and saw the block lurch free of its hole and go crashing down the stairs beyond them, with quite a bit of noise. Qujeck flinched at that, until he heard something of an explosion reach down from the melee above.

Had Bai planned this? Had he gone in from the outset knowing that he'd be a sacrificial lion-turtle, a distraction so they could do their work?

Qujeck doubted it. If nothing else, it was a lucky coincidence, and nothing more.

The path beyond shone with green light, showing that it wasn't nearly as abandoned as the cistern they currently stood in, though not for long. Sconces burned every few yards, sending out flickering but smokeless green light. Panels of dark, lusterless lead started to appear, but they were plain for only a short time. Soon, lines of rough, crisp-lined symbols began to run down in a band that followed their descent. "What are these, anyway?" Smellerbee asked.

"Ask a historian," Qujeck said.

Bug, on the other hand, felt like actually answering. "Wiqing runic script. Couldn't tell you what it meant. Or why they used lead, since I thought Wiqing predated earthbending."

"Kinda moot at this point..." Smellerbee muttered. Longshot made a hissing sound, very short, sharp, and to the point, then pointed ahead of him. There was a split, with the green light flickering across a 't' junction. Qujeck leaned from the corner to get a look down both paths.

"Damn it. He could be down either of these," Qujeck muttered, his last word punctuated by a blast from above them all.

"Quiet," Longshot whispered. The waterbender gave the archer a confused look, but heeded the request. Longshot turned big ears down both directions, panning slowly and with suspicion in his eyes. After a few moments, the only sounds that Qujeck could hear being the muffled sounds of explosions above – Bai's handiwork all – he stopped, and pointed straight ahead of them.

"What is it?" Bug asked. He gave a crisp nod toward a lead plate. Qujeck and Bug both moved to the panel which formed the back wall of the intersection. And after a moment, he tried pressing his ear to the lead. And when he did, he heard humming. The sort of dry, quiet humming from an old man with nothing better to do. "I hear it... But where's the door?"

"You're looking at it," Longshot said with a roll of his eyes, and he ran his fingers around the panel, showing how the lines of runes were hiding a seam that ended higher than anybody in their group stood by about a foot. Whomever built this door, built it for a very tall denizen. Qujeck gave a confused grunt, then shoved the panel. Surprisingly, it slid back, before emitting a click. A section of the runes which had simply looked a 'complete sentence' slid out, forming something like a handle that he could grab. It still took all four of them to open the door. It was also not meant for easy access.

"I hadn't expected you back so quickly," a man in green robes said, his back to the door that they were entering from. All could see the grey-bearded and portly Dragon of the West beyond him. "I have continued the procedure as Long Feng directed, and..." he turned. At that point, his eyes widened upon seeing that those approaching were not his master. But even as he lashed forward with a stone glove – one which Qujeck cut apart with his flask of water, Smellerbee was already bounding a step into the room. She flicked from her waist and forward, and a shine of metal spun through the air before catching the man in the center of the chest. He staggered back, shocked, from the knife which now stood directly beyond his heart. He staggered back, and Longshot drew an arrow. It was Smellerbee, though, who finished what she started, taking the lantern that was coasting to a stop next to her and hurling it at the Dai Li agent. It slammed into the handle of her knife, driving it a half inch further. Just far enough, Qujeck figured.

"That... Really... hurt." he said. He spun with his other fist launching away, a stone glove forming a bullet which only missed Smellerbee because Bug pushed her aside and took the brutal blow to the chest in her place. The Dai Li was ignoring the knife in his heart. In its twisted way, that was rather impressive. Less so that he was now spinning his shoes toward the archer, who had to break off his attack to burst one of them as it flew toward him. The other caught him flush in the neck, and then wrapped 'round to choke him to death. He very quickly went red in the head. Qujeck knew that from the amount of water he had in his flask, he wouldn't be able to do anything crazy right now. So he needed to do the most harm with the least amount of force in the fraction of a second that he had.

He lashed out with a whip of water, and the Dai Li dodged it with contemptuous ease. But he did so in a way that put the knife right where Qujeck wanted it. He recalled that water, snap-freezing it 'round the handle, and then pulled it from the wound. The Dai Li let out a fresh hiss, and thrust his hand into a pocket, his hand now coming out covered in beyond-razor-sharp shards of obsidian glass. He stared them down, his fingers dancing inside their deadly glove. But then, as he took a step forward, his balance departed him, and he stumbled. Then, slowly, he looked down.

And he saw the jets of blood that pumped straight out of his heart, and spread around him in a pool. He went pale, and dropped the glass from his hand. It still cut into his skin, but there wasn't very much blood there at the moment. He fell to his knees, his hand pressed over the wound, but that only served to have it spray down his side instead of straight away from the front of him. Qujeck watched him, without the horror, the revulsion of the others. Both Smellerbee and Kori both stayed to the edges of the room, as though terrified that touching his blood would befoul them in some way, or burn them to ashes. Longshot just shook his head mildly, rubbing at his throat from where the collar which had been choking him fell away.

"The Dragon of the West, I presume?" Qujeck said, ducking under the rail then stepping over the fallen earthbender. He lashed out with a flick of waterbending or five, cutting through the stone which held his head in place and his mouth closed. When it did, the Dragon worked his jaw for a long moment.

"You took your time in coming," Iroh said.

"There were complications. You should be happy I came at all," Qujeck countered.

"Where is Hua Jin Bai?" he asked, next.

"...Upstairs," Bug said.

"Dying," Qujeck finished. He turned to her. "Would you mind? This'd be a hell of a lot faster if you helped."

Bug gave a glance toward the dead Dai Li nearby, shuddered, and then turned to the Dragon instead. "Do I know you from somewhere?" Iroh asked of her.

"I don't see how," she answered, as she pulled the granite manacles away from his arms, and then did attempted to do likewise to his feet, until she found that they were actually chains. Chains that Qujeck was already working on.

"Is your father Hiroshi Morishita?" Iroh asked. Bug took a step back from him, shock on his face.

"How..."

"You have much of the look of him in you," Iroh gave a nod. She scowled.

"Of course you'd know Fire Nation despots. Considering you were one of them," she spat.

"That is not your anger speaking. Or rather, it is not an anger speaking wisely," Iroh said, with the last clang as his foot finally came free of the chair binding him. He gave a wide yawn, and stretched his arms and legs like a rousing cat, before taking his feet and rubbing his backside. "Your father might not be amongst The Society, but he was always generous to it. He understood that the world is a better place unified than split apart."

"Can we stop talking about this intellectual prattle and get away before Long Feng's cronies kill us?" Qujeck interjected, physically turning the Dragon's attention to him.

"If an old man can't engage in intellectual prattle from time to time, then what's the point of getting old?" Iroh said peevishly. He waved his hand. "Very well. If the young wants so badly to be moving, we can move. I grow tired of Dai Li hospitality. They never give me the kind of tea I like."

"Wait," Longshot said, causing all to turn to him. He motioned toward the rail, and the shattered lantern. His nod and shrug was a clear question of 'how do we know that he hasn't been twisted up like the Dragon of the East was?' or something like that.

"They used fire to try to dazzle my eyes. Obviously they've never had to try this on a master firebender," Iroh said with a degree of contempt. Easy to see why.

"What did they want from you?" Bug asked, as they began to follow him up out of the room.

"To lead an army against my brother," Iroh said. "It seems that they agreed to an armistice with Ozai, with the intention of betraying it upon the Day of Black Sun, and they wanted a capable military leader. How little faith he shows in his own men," the fat man scoffed. Well, not so fat, now. Obviously, they hadn't been feeding him nearly as much. "I think that Long Feng is slightly more desperate that he would like others to believe."

"Good. Anything which has him desperate is good news for us," Qujeck said. Iroh turned a golden eye back to him. "What?"

"One day, if you do not quench the wildfire of that hatred inside you, it will consume all that you are and leave a shell of a man in its wake, a delicate and brittle thing that will crumble at the slightest hardship. You are better than that. Start acting like it," he said humorlessly.

"You don't know what you're talking about, old man," Qujeck muttered.

"Maybe I don't," Iroh shrugged, as they reached the 'beginning' of the runes in lead, "...but of the two of us, who is the happier in this moment? The man who was just tortured for several weeks, or the man who came to rescue him? And why?"

It wasn't that Qujeck didn't feel like answering. It was more that he didn't have an answer worth giving to that question. So he did as he often did when people threw profundity at him. He scoffed, rolled his eyes, and readied himself to dole out some appropriate and well-apportioned violence.

---

He couldn't keep the grin off of his face. It wasn't exactly the most jolly of grins; as it'd come with the blood of fools and sycophants, it was hardly a kindly day. It didn't help that the blazing fire throughout the hall of the Burning Throne only served to keep the temperatures tepid, rather than their expected blazing heat. No, he was smiling, because he had not only defeated an ignominious destiny, and in so doing, proved that a foul future could be fought, but had ascended higher in doing so than all of his victories to date. He could feel the five-point flame wrought in electrum and gold that rested in his phoenix tail, held in place by a pin of alumin bought from the frigid mines centuries ago when they weren't at war with the Water Tribesmen. Now that they controlled those mines directly, the lustrous, light and strong metal could now flow all the more freely. No more would barbarians choke progress. It all seemed to come back to that, Zhao figured. Because he'd defeated his destiny, he could chart a new path for the Fire Nation, one bereft of the weakness and failures that Azula had pointed out in her grim prophecy.

"I have gathered you here because you are exceptional at what you do," Zhao said, looking down on the unsorted gathering of intimidating faces that the Fire Nation had access to. There were even some Easterners who'd accepted the call, their loyalty to cash much stronger than any allegiance to blood. And in the future that Zhao envisioned, those would be the only allegiances that would keep their kind alive. "Trackers. Thieftakers. Pirates. Bounty-Hunters. Mercenaries. And I have no doubt a few criminals of dire repute," he said, as he swept his eyes past individuals who instantiated each. Those at the end of the line gave a hard glance to the others, but Zhao magnanimously raised a hand, "but whatever you've done in the past is of no concern of mine. With the emptying of the Burning Throne, a new day has dawned in the Fire Nation. So old wounds... let's just say that they can be left to heal."

"So did I seriously get dragged out of my favorite bar in this town to listen to the new boss go on, and on, and on?" the pale huntress from the underworld of Azul asked, her arms crossed before her chest and her face etched in annoyance.

"Patience, Jun," Zhao said patronizingly. "You'll want to hear what I have to say..."

"Then why not simply say it?" she asked. Zhao's grin curdled a little bit. He glanced to his left, to the woman who knelt two spaces down from him. Akemi shook her head minutely. A reminder not to be goaded, not to be drawn. Restraint was a hard lesson that Zhao'd had to learn to last this long. And the fact that he had, in fact, lasted this long was proof of its worth. So he shored up his grin, and rose to his feet. He stepped down toward the forces from in the darkness who, whether they knew it or not, were already under his payroll. He parted the flames, and slowly descended from the dais toward them.

"You are going to have a task, monumental in scope, vital in importance, and life-altering if successful," he said. "The reward is the same for all who complete the task. It will not be shared, nor divided amongst the successful. You will get the reward I mandate, neither more nor less. So..."

"And why would that interest us?" the short, somewhat pudgy Easterner woman asked from where she stood beside a pair of Si Wongi of all things. At least she had the civility to ask the question in a civilized tongue.

"Because the reward is substantial," he said. The mountain of a man with a tattoo of a flaming eye on his brow turned a suspicious eye toward him, a question unasked by voice but not by context. "Two hundred thousand, in silver. Enough to live lives of luxury in the Fire Nation, or, if you are of lesser taste, anywhere in the world," he said, with a pointed glance toward the Easterners.

"That's a lot of money," the one-eyed pirate said, as he shoved the lizard-parrot back into a less obtrusive spot. "You want us to go after the Coordinator, don't you?"

Zhao shook his head. "The Coordinator is a trifling concern compared to the figure that you are being mobilized against. Ladies and gentlemen, your target... is the Avatar himself."

"I heard he was dead," the short Easterner woman said, confusion plain on her face.

"Oh, he is far from dead," Zhao said. "The other reason I chose you for your task was because you have shown discretion in your pasts. The Avatar is hiding in the Fire Nation at this very moment. I know not where. That is your job to find out. Find the Avatar, and destroy him. Is that clear?"

"Not very," Jun said. "The Fire Nation is kinda piddly compared to the East Continent, but that's still a lot of land that they could be hiding in."

Zhao snapped his fingers, and three pages ran into the room. One of them plunked a table between their master and his prospective employees. The other two began to lay out printed posters with artists renditions. "The Avatar is not traveling alone. These people are his known associates. A waterbender, named Katara. Her brother, a bendingless peasant called Sokka. The blind girl is not to be underestimated; she is an earthbending master despite her young age."

"Wait a second. Is that who I think it is?" a man who wore the headress of the Yu Yan, but notably not the facial paint, asked as he pointed out the poster which had just opened.

"Indeed. Prince Zuko, son of Ozai, is in the company of the Avatar even now. He turned his back on the Fire Nation and his father both. The latter is easily forgiven, but the former? Unforgivable. He is a more canny opponent than he once was. He has not spent the last year idle.

"Hold on. Who's that?" Jun asked, leaning forward. The last poster was a much rougher impression, as it was not one that Zhao had heard of in Azula's visions and script. One whom never appeared in that text, but rumor had her placed directly in the Avatar's inner circle.

"A relative unknown," he said, tapping a finger to the dark-skinned, very angry looking girl with fairly short hair. "The name which is most often associated with this face is Nila. And I..."

"Nila Badesh? The Dragon's Daughter? Hell with this nonsense! I value my eyes far too much for any amount of silver!" the Si Wongi in the middle of the Eastern group spouted, before turning.

"Udu? Where are you going?" the woman with them asked in the same language.

"If it's all the same, Bi-yu, I'm with Udu on this one. The only thing that'll come of us going after the Dragon's Daughter is a face full of pepper-grease," the other said, and began walking out after the first grumbling Si Wongi. The Eastern woman gave Zhao a confused shrug, and then practically jogged to catch up with the two of them as they now all three made their exit. The whole scene was honestly somewhat baffling to him.

"Well. No matter," Zhao picked up where he left off. "Her capabilities are unknown, but we have to assume from her lineage that she's..."

"With all due respect, Fire Lord, I'm going to have to let this one sail past as well," the Pirate said. He rubbed at the patch which covered his eye. "Let's just say that she's left a... bad impression on me. One I don't feel like revisiting."

The massive mute turned to watch the pirate stride out the door. Jun let out a sigh, and pushed off of the pillar she'd been leaning against. "You're going to have to count me out as well. Nila and I? We got a little agreement going on. And since I don't want to force her to take over a continent to build a machine she'll kill me with, I figure it might be for the best if our paths didn't cross."

"...build a machine..." Zhao asked, baffled beyond even his new-found capacity for self-control to quell it.

"Honestly, from what I've seen of her, she's just like her mother. And that means, if she really wanted to, she could probably do it. And she'd probably pick your continent to conquer," she gave an off-hand gesture toward Zhao. His grin was now not only dead but rotting in an unmarked, shallow grave at the bottom of a gully. From its ashes like the mythical phoenix, a scowl had taken its place. But its effect was lost on her, as she was already walking away. Zhao forced himself to take a breath which ended with a snort of smoke. Then, he turned to the others.

"Is there anybody else who has been terrified to the point of cowardice by this unknown girl?" Zhao asked. Those that remained all gave each other looks, but shook their heads. "Good. So you will have the courage to face the great enemy of the Fire Nation, and reap the rewards that such bravery deserves."

The mute firebending assassin gave a nod. The others actually voiced their agreements. The Yu Yan, though, cleared his throat. "Is there some way you want it done? Quiet? Slow? Painful?"

"Lethal. Other than that, your devices are limited only by your imagination and your capability," Zhao said. He snapped his fingers again, and the pages hustled forth from the room at the side of the chamber of the Burning Throne once more, this time two of them with a strong-box held aloft between them. They did not move quickly. Probably because the strong-box was quite heavy. They set it atop the table, smashing flat the renditions of the Avatar's minions. He opened it with a flourish, showing the pouches of silver, each stamped with the symbol of the Royal House, that rested within. "And to show that this is not a fool's errand warranting a fool's reward, an offering in good faith. To those with the courage to accept it," he said, letting the sneer that he'd wanted to express since the first of them approached enter his voice. They took it to mean those who'd left early. Honestly, he thought they were all scum. But even scum could be of use, from time to time.

Every gem was a rough-stone once. So too, with criminals. It only took one trusty and useful tool to forge a future. He had Azula already, in word and spirit if not in body. But for the more mundane, the more practical, the more immediate tasks? Well, that would remain to be seen.

---

Honestly, there was a time and a place for old men to play young-men's games. Often, they were either a prelude to or an escape from the introduction into a fetching maiden's bed. Hua Jin Bai'd had many stories about both, sometimes both ends upon the same tale, but those were from when he was thirty years younger and about a hundred pounds lighter. What was not a time for old men, was in a fight-to-the-death. Mad King Bumi might say otherwise, but then again, there was a reason why his most common nickname was 'Mad King Bumi'.

The crack of a fist across his jaw called all of that into focus as he stumbled back, pulling the butt of a rifle out in front of him to smash into the side of a Dai Li agent's neck. It wouldn't stop him, but it'd hurt, and it'd slow him down. His entire body burned. Both from the activity – it was hard to run with your gut getting in the way – and the impacts of stone fists and bricks. In its way, there was one small benefit to being so fat; getting hit didn't hurt quite as much as it used to. The flip side of that was that, compared to when he was young and svelte, he got hit far, far more often. But Bai was nothing if not adaptable. It'd kept him alive on the lunatic seas. It might do the same here.

He took the blow across the chin and spun with it, letting a hand fly out with a handful of dust into the eyes of the Dai Li who'd done it. Dust against an earthbender was, as one could expect, only a temporary inconvenience, but Bai was living on temporary inconveniences at the moment. Another blow, this one straight into the center of his chest. That one he had to pull back from, as he hurled the spent rifle at the Dai Li he'd momentarily blinded; the crack of wood and metal against face heralded an unconscious thug.

"You think this is a fight? I could tell you about the time when..." Bai nevertheless declared, loudly and with a voice which oozed heedless cockiness.

"Why won't you just shut up and die!" the one-eyed one shouted, as he continued to circle with the others. His guns were all spent, and lay discarded at random where they'd been used as hurled bludgeons. If there was one man present that Bai desperately needed to kill, good or bad, it was him. Han Hua was Long Feng's right-hand-man, and the most skilled brain-crusher in Ba Sing Se. But at the moment, the only thing which kept them from advancing was the fact that Bai didn't let them surround him. Not after the first time.

"Where would be the fun in that?" Bai asked. "Although, probably safer that you don't want to get inside my head. My ex-wife tells me it's a bit spooky in there."

"I don't know what you were trying to accomplish with this. It won't succeed," Han said, still keeping to the outside of the fan of Dai Li who pressed him ever backwards through the higher structures at this side of the promenade. It'd been a mobile fight from the beginning. Like all of his best were. Bai, though, spared a glance toward the lower level. Not focusing on anything. He couldn't afford to give them the notion that he was paying something attention. That glance was enough to see the last of them, the old man with the long gray beard finally reaching the far side. He turned, and seemed to stare at Bai. Perhaps pointedly. Bai couldn't tell, because he had to let his glance sweep onward.

"Sooner or later, you're going to have to take something I do on faith, my friendly secretariat," Bai said, with a retreating bow. "Did it ever occur to you that perhaps I just wanted to see the looks on your faces when I put bullets into you?"

"No. You're not so stupid."

"But I am that crazy," Bai said with a bloody grin. A couple of the Dai Li gave looks back to Han, and even mildly agreeing shrugs and noises, but Han silenced them with a glare. "So are you going to fight me, or are we going to continue dancing all day?"

"I don't have to," Han said. He glanced above Bai. Bai just let out a slightly disappointed sigh. Of course, they'd send somebody above him, crawling around like a spider. He put one of his hands into his pocket, then through it's false bottom, and braced himself for the impact.

The Dai Li landing on him hurt, since he threw himself down with quite a bit of force. Still, Bai was fairly adept at redirecting force, so the slam which should have shattered both of his shoulders instead merely bruised his back-ribs. And since they were already bruised from before, it didn't amount to much more than already had come from the Dai Li before him. Bai even managed to maneuver the man to a point where he tucked the fellow's head under his armpit, and fell straight backward introducing his face to the floor. The crack was probably not lethal, but quite satisfying.

It also gave the other Dai Li all the opportunity they needed to pounce. They all bounded forward, their arms twisting as bands of stone locked his legs to the floor, then his chest, then his head. The Dai Li swarmed upon him as ants on a picnic, layering more stone onto him, to lock him into place. Pity for them, he had all the mobility he needed. The only part of his body he could move was his jaw. Han stepped closer, leaning down toward him. "I may yet get inside your skull, Hua Jin Bai. If only to find out how you managed to evade us since the coup."

"Pity, I will have to decline," Bai said.

"You don't have that option," Han said with a frown. Not smug. He was many things, but never smug.

"I think that I might," he said, with a flick of his fingers, a scrape of metal against flint. "You might want to open my coat. It's getting awfully warm in here, and I do get sweaty. It's the extra weight, you know?" he said, still smiling. Strictly speaking this was his second choice. If given his first, it would have been a heart-attack after a three day 'marathon' with the Li-Dah twins. Fetching lasses, they. Han's frown grew more intense, and he shifted aside some of the stone, and flopped open the outermost of Bai's coats.

And saw all of the fuses, leading into all of the bombs.

"White Lotus claims Bastion," Bai whispered.

While it wasn't his preferred choice of death, an explosive finale which took a bunch of his enemies down with him was a remarkably close second.

---

"Wait, aren't we going back for Bai?" miss Morishita asked, pointing back toward the cavern which they had all barely escaped. Iroh, at the back of the pack, shook his head slowly.

"He doubtless had his own intention for being here, beyond saving me. And we will hear it, soon," he said.

"What are you talking about?" the Water Tribesman demanded. Iroh tilted his head toward the path back. A second or so later, the great blast echoed to them, a faint waft of breeze coming with it.

"So it is with the Lotus. So many sacrifices," he said. At its outset, the White Lotus Society had been formed by the poor and the desperate to dismantle the Monolith in ages far and long past. Their duty as assassins vanished when the Monolith did, but they were forced to take up a new mantle, to try to hold onto what fragments of wisdom the Monolith did hold, to try to hold out against a dark-age which would last a hundred lifetimes. So had the White Lotus gone full circle, it seemed, if on a smaller scale. "We should leave now, while they are in disarray. I doubt we'll get another opportunity like this one."

"He's... he's dead, isn't he?" the girl with the knives and the wild hair asked.

"Yes. But he did not die quietly, nor alone. As was, I think, his wish."

And with that, Iroh began to shepherd them forward, out of the darkness and the terror. Not into the sunlight, but... There would be time for that, later. Eventually.

Hopefully.

---

"Thirty dead. Another ten injured, one maimed beyond recovery. The Dragon of the West stolen from right under our noses!" Long Feng said, glaring at the report. "And the most damning of all, we've lost Secretariat Han. How. Did. This. Happen?"

The secretariats of the Lower and Middle rings could only shrug nervously, in their ignorance. Joo Dee, the definitive article, shook her head, kneading her brow with all of the stress and aggravation that Long Feng was feeling, no doubt in her efforts to try to find some way to mitigate this. But Han Hua was not something which could be salvaged, nor mitigated.

She gave a sigh, then turned her eyes on him. "We'll find some way to recover from this."

"Not quickly," Long Feng muttered, hurling the report into the fire in a rare self-allowance of pique. He leaned against the mantel, sighing. "And not completely."

"We will endure. That's what the Earth Kingdoms do. That's what Ba Sing Se is," Joo Dee said. She shook her head. "Han's loss is regrettable, but at the moment, we have to focus on the tasks at hand. Water, and war."

"Yes. You are right," he admitted, and he turned to the table once more. So much needed doing. If he was going to save Ba Sing Se from the depredations of the Fire Lord, he would have to do much to see it through. Anything could be sacrificed to that end.

Well... almost anything.

---

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