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.

47. The City of Smoke and Fog

You wanted more scenes between Aang and Azula? You're going to get 'em.

---

"Why was it they called this place the 'Fire' Nation again?" Katara asked.

"Very funny, Katara," Sokka said, as he walked afoot, soaked utterly. Then again, everybody was, as any bending which would have sheltered them from the rain would peg them immediately as interlopers. The weather had taken a turn for the better, in a way. The rain fell, but always in sheets, with periods of relative dryness in between them. Sure sign, according to Zuko, that they were reaching the coast. "I'm pretty sure we're going the right way. I mean, the rails lead right in here."

"We're heading the right way," Azula said, nonplussed for all she looked like a drowned rat. Well, a muscular, fetching drowned rat that Sokka in some alternate timeline had sex with, but still, drowned rat. "We haven't been attacked by anything larger than ankle-gators for two miles. The City drives out anything wild. It's why it's safer there than in the country. From the animals, at least."

"Is there any part of Azul which isn't trying to kill me?" Aang muttered in a moaning tone, tugging the knot of his headband so it wouldn't slip.

"No," everybody but the Tribesmen answered.

"I don't know why were all going in there. It's just another city, and trust me, I've had enough of big cities for a lifetime," Toph followed up with a roll of useless eyes. Likely bravado. "I mean, somebody's gotta stay back with Appa, Momo, and... what did you call that thing?"

"Kuchiku-Can," Azula said easily.

"What does that mean, anyway?" Katara asked.

"Destroyer," Zuko said, with a smirk. Sokka's sister scowled for all she was worth, but Sokka got a great laugh out of it.

"Yeah, somebody should stay with Kuchi and the rest of 'em. I mean, the little guy can't even fly! How'll he get away from the blood-beetles, the brain-boilers, or the rock-tigers?"

"Or the anomolokia for that matter," Malu pointed out.

"Could we stop giving the blind one more ammunition?" Nila asked, obviously the most miserable one of the walk, for all she was an avowed desert dweller and this should have been heaven for her. "All are required if we are going to find the mad inventor in a decent time. Given the setbacks..."

"Yeah, we're going to have to find him pretty quick if we're going to keep up with the schedule," Sokka said, tapping the case which held it away from the rain. He took in a breath. It smelled mildly sooty, but then again, much of the Fire Nation did. "How could you possibly hide a city down here, anyway? I know it's no Ba Sing Se, but come on!"

"A trick of light and fog," Nila said.

"Yeah, it really is this way," Malu pointed ahead of them. "But honestly, I get a bit of a bad feeling about this place."

"Oh, that's just being surrounded twelve deep in people who've been trying to kill you for a century," Sokka dismissed. Malu gave a glance to Nila. Nila glanced at her, then took a double take.

"What?" she asked.

"What?" Malu asked.

"You were staring at me."

"I was... Wow. You're the least girly-girl I know," Malu shook her head. Nila, though, cracked a smirk of her own.

"That is a profound compliment," she said quietly and a little bit smugly. Sokka could only smile at the oddity – and to Sokka's perception the awesomeness – of his girlfriend, so bereft of the usual pitfalls of the female gender at his age. When he looked forward, though, there was a blast of flame that leapt up from the fog in the distance, a point of light that seemed to emit from the sky. "Ah. We overlook it even now."

"I don't see anything," Aang said, trying to look into the distance, but the thick, deep bank of fog which pooled starting only a few feet below the outcropping they stood upon – when it didn't deign to simply mount over and wash around their knees.

"Oh, I get it," Toph said. "The outlying buildings start a quarter mile from here," she said, pointing directly into the heart of that grey-brown massing.

"That's the city of Azul?" Katara asked, looking at the smudge in the world. "...did Imbalance eat it or something?"

"No, it always looks like that in the morning," Zuko said, but his voice was muffled. When Sokka turned back, he saw why. The firebender had tied a bandana over his nose and mouth, cinched it tight behind his ears. Azula was in the process of doing likewise. "You're going to want one. Otherwise, you'll probably choke."

"What is that fog? It doesn't look right," Malu said.

"Not fog. Smog. Smoke and fog together in a suffocating mixture," Azula said. "It would be best if we get out of the streets quickly. We can start looking by mid-day when it burns off."

"What could possibly put out that much smoke?" Aang asked.

"You'll see, soon enough," Zuko promised. Then, with a motion toward Toph, she gave the shelf of stone a stomp, and steps began to descend it, down into the grey, and from the grey, beyond it, into the smog.

---

"...so, when are you going to untie me?" Kori asked.

"When I feel that you aren't going to immediately betray me every night," Maya answered him easily enough.

"You do realize that this puts us both in statistically greater danger of being eaten by something if I'm in ropes and chains every night," Kori said.

"Don't act like you don't enjoy it," Maya said with a smirk.

"That's beside the point," Kori replied smoothly. "I'm not so blind as to not notice that we're heading south. That means we're heading back into mainland Azul. And why would that be?"

"You ask too many questions, Child," she muttered, as she pulled away the tarp and let the downpour drench the fire out for her.

"I'm simply looking to my own long-term best interests."

"The Prince and his sister are in Azul. No doubt, they're going to try to recruit my father against the Fire Lord. That would be a bad decision."

Kori raised a brow at her vehemence. "I wouldn't have thought you'd see Montoya Azul on the Burning Throne as a bad thing."

"They don't call him The Spider without reason," Maya said coldly. Then, she reached down and pulled the knot open enough that Kori could work his wrists out of their bondage on his own. "Father will eat the Prince whole, and I doubt Azula would ever again see the light of day. Father is not a kind man. And besides, I would rather have the future Fire Lord owe me a favor. Call it enlightened self-interest."

"I think you're selling Azula short on this one," Kori said, as he followed her into the rain.

"So you keep saying. I'm sure you're infatuated with the poor girl, but that's your little head thinking, not your big one," she said condescendingly.

"I spoke to her at some length. Whatever afflicted her isn't an issue any more."

Maya looked back at him. "Odd."

"If Ozai hadn't been such a tyrant with her, she'd probably be at his side right now," Kori offered.

"So she'd be imprisoned with him," Maya said, continuing forward. Kori missed a step, but didn't let one become two, as there was nothing more dangerous than being alone in a forest in Azul.

"Hold on a second. What do you mean by..."

"Oh, that's old news," Maya waved it away as she plowed forward through the tall, waving ferns which grew up between the trees and bamboo to remarkable heights. "Some admiral he brought into his inner circle betrayed him and usurped the Burning Throne. I thought you'd know that already, seeing as you're his servant."

"I've been kind of busy the last week or so," Kori said direly. His mind immediately jumped to Yoji. If one'd asked Kori what Zhao would do with the Children – and Kori did assume she was talking about Zhao – a year ago, he'd immediately guess 'execute them on sight'. While Zhao had developed some trifle of restraint and a fleeting grasp of long-term repercussion, he would not be nearly so indulgent as Ozai would be; if Yoji pressed her luck with him, he'd come down hard. With a hammer. Made of fire. Made all the worse, because Zhao was exactly the kind of person that Yoji tended to press her luck with. The rest of the Children...

Come to think of it, the rest of the Children would chafe pretty quickly under Zhao as well. He'd be surprised if they weren't one-and-all preparing for some sort of counter-coup. Then he remembered that there were members of the Children who enjoyed the perks of their status more then loyalty to a figure. It'd be the organizational equivalent of a civil war. That did not sit well with him.

His distraction wasn't much, but it amounted enough that a bullet-vine, as it swung in the tumbling of the rain, ever-so-slightly tapped his shoulder. And the instant it did, one of the spiked pods on its length exploded, tearing into his flesh and hooking, before the vine started to 'reel itself in' toward its mother plant. With no more than a grunt of pain, he pulled himself off of the vine, leaving it with no more than a coin-sized chunk of his skin for its trouble which was pulled toward the hulking – and carnivorous – kaiju tree.

"You're in Azul. Pay attention," Maya said, not even bothering to look back. His glance up to her showed that she was in the process of chopping through another bullet-vine ahead of her with her machete. "Unless you'd rather get eaten by a tree."

"I hate Azul," Kori muttered.

"The only people who don't are Azuli. And that's because we're insane," Maya said with a shrug, and then continued on. There was a lot to think about, and not a lot of time in which Kori could think. Agni – or whatever Tribal gods he was supposed to believe in – damn it all, this was about the worst thing that could have happened.

---

Aang pounded on the door again. "Are you sure this is the right place?" he asked, his eyes stinging and his throat burning. He could barely see Sokka – and Sokka was only standing about two paces away from him – through the acrid smog that blanketed the city.

"I know that symbol. It's a public house. I just don't know if they're..." Zuko began, but was cut off when the door swung out and knocked Aang completely off of the step and landed him in a pile at its base.

"Well, that's a fine mess," a distorted voice came. When Aang turned, he gave a start at the visage which stood to him. It seemed long snouted, bug-eyed, and of a charcoal complexion and texture, all sitting atop a human woman's shoulders. It took Aang a moment to recognize the facial mask for what it was. And after that moment, he was still mildly baffled at what he was looking at. "An entire group of homeless children on the streets during Smog Hours. Senseless, senseless."

"The Smog was worse than we thought it'd be when..." Zuko began.

"Shut your gobs and get inside before you choke out and brown up your lungs," she said, beckoning inward, into a tiny room which would hold all of them and no more than that. Aang found himself being hauled to his feet by Azula and pushed forward into the room first, with the rest of them piling in after. Toph, who'd been guiding them through the streets as her 'sight' was scarcely hampered by the fog at all, was the last in, closing the door behind her. The woman in the strange mask gave a stern pound on the door at her back, and a panel slid open. "Got s'more street-rats out in the smog."

The bright eyes on the other side of the slit sighed, then turned away. "We've got some room, but don't make a habit of this. You're not in your caravans anymore, so start acting like it."

After that, there was a loud thunk, and the door opened inward, giving the whole group a chance to move and spread out slightly. As stated, there were other seeming unfortunates who were gathered before the fireplace, or soaking old bread in water to later eat. The keeper of the house was a somewhat jowly Azuli man, black of hair and bright of eye, who picked out Zuko as their supposed leader. "It'll be ten sparks for the privilege. You can pay it or you can take your chances in the smog."

Zuko scowled, but did pull several silver coins from the purse that they'd been gifted with before their flight to the Far West. The master of the house gave a slightly surprised grunt, then nodded sternly toward the woman in the odd mask. "Get 'em some bread and some cheese. And keep 'em out of the way of our real customers."

"As you say," the woman said. He turned away, and the woman pulled at the mask, until it finally came loose, spilling forth great mounds of wavy, dark brown-hair, which met skin scarcely paler than Sokka's. Aang looked between the two, and couldn't quite make sense of it. "You should know better. On-dawn to near-noon is Smog hours. Must be new the the city, ain't ye?"

"Um..." Aang began

"Yes," Zuko cut in. "Trying to find somebody we lost. We heard he'd came here."

"All kinds of people come to Azul. Not all 'ah 'em leave, if you catch my meaning," she said, and waved toward the benches. "Must say, 'been a while since you were in these parts, m'love. How's that ole Uncle 'yours doing?"

"Not well," Zuko said, and she shook her cloud of hair sadly in response.

"Well, you'll get the best I've to offer. Friends of the house and all that. I'll have something to nibble on while you wait for the sun or the rain to clear the air. And don't wander; there's a rope leadin' to the privvy, but don't go anywhere else, 'less you feel like dying. You know the drill," she finished, giving Zuko a bat across the arm.

And with that, and a spin of fluffy brown hair, she was gone. Aang blinked. "What was that?"

"She's one of the Yubokamin. Most call them 'Gorks'," Zuko said. "And we're lucky she was the one who opened the door."

"You knew her, didn't you?" Katara asked. "She called you her love."

"That's just the way she talks," Zuko said, pointedly not looking back at Toph. "This place will be safe as long as the money is good. The owner's greedy, but trustworthy. He'll keep his silence as long as we pay for it."

"Well, that's... good, I guess," Malu said with a shrug.

"It is. That means we have a place to start looking for Sato," Azula said, swiping a chunk of bread from a cup, and eating it to the dismay of the man who'd been patient enough to wait for it.

---

Chapter 7

The City of Smoke and Fog

---

"Well, you've just come up like fresh bamboo, in't ya?" Dara asked, instantly as invasive of Zuko's personal space as a human being could be while they still had clothes on.

"Three years will do that to a man. Would you mind taking a step back?" Zuko asked, carefully pushing the woman who was probably eight to ten years his senior back slightly. Dara scoffed and shook her head to an avalanche of brown hair.

"Y'r ne'r going to get a lady if you're so stodgy all the time. You've got to loosen that sphincter a' yours; let some fun in," she joked.

"And I see you haven't changed in the slightest since the last time we came through here," Zuko muttered, not allowing himself to be baited, as he watched the street from the window at the end of the highest floor hallway. The dim had been brightening for a while, but it still had a ways to go before the sun would be strong enough to cut the smog.

"What's t'change? I'm pretty much perfect the way I am," she offered with a grin.

"So you keep saying," Zuko muttered.

"So, what'cha lookin' for in this fine city?" she asked.

"A man," she said. She gave a mockingly shocked look, hand to chest.

"Oh, a man, he says. For business or pleasure? The latter'd explain a lot 'bout ya'," Dara joked. Zuko just turned a look onto her, and she returned to her usual broad and toothy grin. "Some day, I'm gonna get a laugh out of you. Just you wait."

"Sure you will," Zuko said, rolling his eyes. He turned toward the room that they'd managed to barter out of the innkeeper after several hours of haggling; he'd had it open, but wanted the most he could get out of it for the day. Typical Azuli, really. Dara was right on his heels until he stopped, and turned, and stared her in the eye. "Are you going to bear witness to my bathing, too?" he asked.

"Is that an invitation, m'love?" she asked.

Zuko just shook his head. There was no getting around how Dara acted; you either bore with it or you snapped and screamed at her – as Zuko had last time – which she would consider no more than a passing hilarity. He slipped through the door and locked it immediately behind him, continuing to shake his head. "Is there any stranger beast than an Azuli?"

Zuko then looked up, and saw each of Malu and Aang trying to balance standing atop a chair which rested on only one leg, with expressions of extreme concentration on their faces. "Well, that answers that question," he said to himself.

"So is your girlfriend still stalking you?" Toph asked dryly.

"She's not my girlfriend. She's just being... weird," Zuko said. There was a thunk, as Malu's chair descended to two legs, still balancing on those, but now her attention was on Zuko. "As weird as she always is," Zuko amended. Malu gave a nod, and then tipped the chair so that she was balancing it on a single leg once more.

"I vaguely remember her. She was all over you when we left for the West Air Temple three years ago," Azula said, sitting demurely in the only other chair in the room, a news-reel open before her. "I always felt a need to check my pockets and purse after talking to her."

"That's just 'cause you're racist," Sokka said smoothly.

"Says the barbarian."

"Proving my point," Sokka continued.

"I have a concern. I will not be of much aid in the search in this place," Nila said. She rose her hand, then pointed to her eyes. "Both of these mark me as quite the outsider."

"Not as big a problem in Azul City," Zuko said. He walked up to Aang's chair, and considered doing something slightly evil. He looked up at the Avatar, then across to his opponent. Then, with a shrug, he kicked the standing leg so that the chair slid into Zuko's waiting hand, and dumped the Avatar painfully but harmlessly to the floor. Katara perked up with a look of outrage immediately, but was cut off by everybody but she and Zuko laughing at the Avatar's pratfall. He took his chair and spun it so he sat with his back to the wall. "There's a lot of different kinds of people in this city, from all over the world. It's probably the only place in the Fire Nation where you could openly get away with being an Easterner. I wouldn't push my luck with earthbending, though. And while people might toss any Tribesmen they find into the bay – which would be fairly awful but not immediately lethal – the only ones who'd be killed upon discovery would be those two," he pointed at Aang and Malu, "because of Azul's old and very deep enmity against the Storm Kings. As long as he keeps his arrows hidden, you'll pass for locals, though."

"So what should we do? Take aliases?" Toph asked.

Zuko rubbed his crisped left ear for a moment, then pointed at the Tribesmen. "Sokka works. Katara, you'll have to pronounce a bit different. I'm already Li, here. Malu, you should take a local name," he pointed at Aang. "You too."

"What about your sister?" Aang asked, concerned. Zuko leaned back, and played the odds. He took a deep breath.

"AZULA!" he shouted.

Everybody in the room flinched as one, Azula excepted.

"WHAT?" two womens' voices from two different rooms answered.

"NOT YOU!" Zuko shouted in response. Everybody now looked a bit baffled. "Azula's about the most common name for a woman in this part of the country. She'll be fine."

"STOP YELLING OR I'LL THROW YOU TO THE SMOG!" the innkeeper's voice joined the madness, before all went silent from beyond the door.

"Okay, so names," Aang said. He shrugged dismissively after a moment. "Eh, I'll come up with something."

"God help us," Zuko rolled his eyes.

"So how are we supposed to find Sato in this place? Azul is pretty big from what I can feel of it," Toph asked.

"We use what we know about him. He's probably the smartest man alive, invents world-altering devices as a pass-time, and has all of the streetwise of a particularly simple child," Zuko rhymed off, ticking points off of his fingers. He then added one more, "And he always stays where he can find work, because if he didn't, he'd be broke and on the street inside two weeks."

"Strange. One would assume so canny a man would have a veritable stockpile of wealth, for all he creates," Nila mumbled.

"One would also assume he didn't manage to lose money in every way humanly possible, short of women and wine," Azula added to answer Nila's point. "Brilliant, yes, but useless with money. Exactly why Father managed to get so many innovative designs out of him 'last time'."

"You had a Nomura Sato too, huh?" Toph asked.

"Indeed. His son was an ass," Azula said with a note of spite. Zuko raised a brow. "Very long story."

"So we need some place with workshops. Not so big that they'd make, say, ships, but not so small that somebody prototyping wouldn't have room," Sokka summarized. "How hard could that be to find?" he asked. And on the tails of his question, a beam of light cut through the window, laying against the floor. To those who'd not come into the presence of Agni, it was the first direct sunlight they'd seen in almost a month. One and all, they crowded around the small window, looking down and into the street, up through the breach in the clouds that extended not so very far out to sea, at the rapidly dwindling top of the off-brown fog. And as it parted, the scale of Azul became obvious.

"You're looking for one master engineer in a city of master engineers," Zuko said. "And almost anywhere could house him."

And as they saw the almost innumerable factories that belched their smoke into the sky from their stacks even at this relatively early hour, they finally understood what kind of task this would be.

---

While Yoji could be called loyal and dependable, a coward she was not. So when she was ordered to flee for her life from Caldera City, she of course took the unstated option and remained within its boundaries. Half of the reason she offered herself was because out in the country, she'd have a lot less of a network to draw upon. The rest of her... well, she just felt stubborn. No one man, even the so-called new Fire Lord, would displace her from her home. She'd already lost one...

No, she hadn't. The Fire Nation saved her. Her people left her to die. She shook her head at the notion of thinking anything different, and then looked at the letter that was open in her lap. More false starts and dead ends. What she wouldn't give to have Maryah's ear for just a few minutes. For all her prancing about and worship of the knife, she was as skilled with raw information as one could be. So she flexed her fingers, intending to ignite a blast of flame from her palm and burn the correspondence to ashes so nobody would be able to read it. And as so often she did, these days, she didn't create so much as a wisp of smoke.

She let out a snarl, and hurled the paper away, and then hurled herself out of the bed, casting a fist forward, intending to slam down the damned wall with her fire. Nothing came. But every lantern and candle in the room flared, drifting sideways from her punch. She stood, her chest heaving, as she tried to understand. Why couldn't she firebend? Well, that wasn't strictly accurate. She twisted her hand, and the flame from the candle on the desk extended and pooled into her hand before it twisted up into a golden sphere, just as effectively as if she'd ignited it there. But it didn't feel right.

It didn't feel like firebending.

Yoji scooped up the letter and fed it into her fire, consuming it. Another day wasted, and she was no closer to Ozai or his children. How ironic that she'd been tasked only months ago with killing the Princess, and now, if she even still lived, she was one of the only options for a clear and smooth succession. Of course, Zuko being both first-born and not struck simple would be a more ideal choice. So those were her tasks, as she saw them. Get Ozai back onto the throne, or replace him with Zuko. And failing that, replace them with Azula.

If only her firebending would listen to her.

"I am better than this. I am a firebending master," she muttered.

But was she always? Honestly, she had no real memory of her early years. She'd been trained in firebending since she was four or five. As she twisted the flame that still orbed in her hand, she couldn't help but think. And those thoughts were not welcome. But they did give her an idea.

"...so maybe this is just a new technique I haven't mastered yet," she told herself. If only because that was the only way that she'd be able to deal with the consequences, as the alternative was, to her, unthinkable.

---

"Do you mind if I ask you something?" Aang asked, as they navigated the soot-stained and nearly-identical walls which made up pretty much all of the factory district of Azul City. Malu, the only one currently with him, gave a shrug. "Why didn't you ever get the arrows? You were always the better... bender."

Malu gave a shrug, as they skirted past some very busy an distracted looking people, some of them pulling carts of metal, coal, or grease behind them in their haste. "Honestly, I never thought I reached the level of 'master'. There was always a new lesson to learn. A new skill to uncover. New history; new anything."

"But you've earned it. You were better than a lot of the elders," Aang admitted. "And you were the only one who could beat me at my own game."

"Yeah, not easy, but that's because you cheat," Malu said with a smirk and a shrug.

"I do not cheat!"

"Yes, you do. And you know how you cheat," she said teasingly. And skirting around the point which would have had the two of them lynched if it'd been voiced aloud. She shook her head. "You know, I was always annoyed that you got yours so early. You were barely twelve!"

"Hey, I was plenty good enough to be a master!" Aang contended. "I just..."

"You got impatient, didn't you?" Malu asked.

"...kinda."

"You can't rush that sort of thing," Malu said, pausing to look down a street, then shaking her head when there wasn't anything worth seeing down there. "The way I saw it, if I took the mark, I'd have been found years ago, probably killed, and the world would be a better place. Wait, that's not what I meant to say..." Malu trailed off when she started to realize she was defeating her own purpose.

"I don't think it's that simple. Somebody would have let Imbalance in. It just happened to be you," Aang said, giving her hand a squeeze as he did. A little smile appeared on her face at that.

"You're probably right. And if I died way back then, assuming that the big I went all super-monster like he did this time, then you'd have been killed by what's-her-tattooes, the Earth King..."

"Mountain King," Aang corrected.

"There's a difference?" she asked.

"A big one," Aang confirmed. She rolled her eyes.

"...would have gotten whooped, probably taken prisoner or killed. Your friends would be right there beside him. Badness in every direction but down, which is even more badness. So yeah. Thank your lucky stars that I showed up when I did."

"That still doesn't explain why you didn't get your..." Aang tapped his brow, where it was hidden this day under both a bolt of off white cloth and a stained wrapping over it. In its way, it looked like Aang had a bandaged head, but given the locals, it wasn't entirely out of place. A lot of the people that the two airbenders were walking past were working wounded.

"Honestly?" she asked. Aang answered. "The only answer I have, is that I wasn't ready for 'em."

"Are you ready now?"

"I'm not sure," she said. She looked around, down the slowly twisting street with its loose cobbles. Aang had half expected a city of this layout and level of pollution to be festooned with refuse and garbage, but the rains probably saw to that enough that they might as well have a Ba Sing Se-esque sewer. At least they weren't going to trip and fall in something stinky. That was a plus.

"Malu?" Aang asked. She held up a warning finger.

"Mina," she corrected. Right. Probably not even the fourth time that she'd had to correct him. And sooner or later, he'd have to start actually reacting to his pseudonym of 'Anil'.

"Is it just me, or do there seem to be a lot of very worried looking people around here?" Aang asked.

"It's not just you," Malu said quietly. "I think we might be heading into a bad part of town."

"There's a good part of town?" Aang asked.

"Yeah, probably about as far from here as there is in city limits," she answered with a shrug. "We should go back to the Drunken Dragon. I don't think Sato'd be here."

"That's starting to sound like a good idea," Aang said. There was a harsh whistle, and a billow of steam appeared over a roof, to the sound of metal clacking against metal. And then, rising from a factory not a hundred yards away, a ship from out the visions of Avatar Vajrapata began to ascend, obviously incomplete but possessing all needed to ascend, navigate, and depart toward the hills to the northwest. From the fact that the workers in the streets weren't gaping in awe at the sight, this was obviously not the first time anybody'd seen this spectacle. And from the complete apathy of those going about their work, it meant that there'd probably been quite a few of these things hit the skies. "Oh, that's not a good thing."

"Airships..." Malu said, shaking her head in mild disbelief. "Have you ever seen anything like that?"

"Once," Aang said quietly. "A very very long time ago."

"We've got to stop this. If our guys show up and they've got an entire fleet of these things..." Malu let the end of it go unsaid.

"Yeah, but if we just run in there and break stuff, they'll catch us for sure! And then they'll give us to the Fire Lord!" Aang whispered urgently to her. Malu gave a sigh, and a nod. "Let's think this through. If we don't somebody might get hurt."

"Are you sure you're the 'Anil' that I used to know?" Malu asked with an eyebrow raised. "'Cause you don't sound much like him right now."

"What? I've matured," Aang said, puffing out his chest.

"Says the kid who had to stay in a cave for a day with a sick stomach because he couldn't help but eat all of the sweets that Sokka'd rationed out for the entire trip here, in the second day."

"That wasn't my fault! If I didn't eat them, they'd go bad! And they were delicious!"

"The very portrait of maturity," Malu said with a grin. But that grin faltered as a horn sounded from the airship as it skudded toward other factories out of sight, vanishing from the horizon of the rooftops. "You're not wrong, though. We've gotta warn the others, if nothing else."

"You got that right," Aang said, and he turned to retrace their steps. He'd gotten less than a dozen steps before somebody had an iron-hard grasp of his arm. He turned, expecting Malu holding him, but she wasn't anywhere to be seen. And then, with a hard yank, he was pulled both from his feet and into an alleyway. The thud of his back against a wall knocked the breath from his lungs, and the glint of light on steel kept it out. There was a hand over his mouth that prevented both cries for help and a lot of his airbending. And apparently, Malu'd been taken in just as quickly. She looked more surprised then terrified, really.

"They stand out, don't they?" the one pinning Malu to the wall asked. There was a third, a woman with her hand over Malu's mouth. "Don't belong down here."

"Not from around here, are you?" the one with the knife in Aang's face asked. Aang's eyes tracked the tip of that blade as it worked little circles, before he summoned the nerve to shake his head. "Almost had me fooled with the head-wound, but you're too clean. The clean don't come down here. Ain't a thing clean in the gutters."

Just like that? All of the effort they put into hiding themselves, and the two of them were recognized as airbenders and enemies of the state because they were 'too clean'? How as that fair? The woman looked Malu up and down.

"She doesn't seem like she's the one with the money," she said. She leaned into Malu. "If you scream, my brother 'ere'll stick you. Let you bleed quiet, real slow. You don't want that, do you?" Malu shook her head against the dirty, dull-haired woman's hand. "I know what you are, so I have something I want from you."

A bounty to the Fire Lord, Aang assumed.

"Which chapter sent you in here? Who's money jangles in your pockets? 'Cause this part of town is our Jag's, and nobody else's."

Wait... what the heck were these guys talking about?

"I don't have any money," Malu said.

"Fei hua, you don't," the woman said, pressing her knife up under Malu's jaw. "You're worth somethin' to somebody. Worthless folk don't end up all scrubbed and pretty and pink. Somebody's got money in you, if only money for soap."

"You figure she might be one of Skanda's girls?"

"Too clean. Probably his little woman. He likes 'em fresh, I hear," the one holding Aang answered the other man's query.

"I don't know who Skanda is. I just want to go. I'm not going to tell anybody about this," Malu said.

"Shut up," the woman said.

"Why do I always have sharp things in my face?" Malu asked with a rising tone.

"I said, shut up!" the man holding Aang said, and his balance shifted. He could say many things about Azula's training style – that it was harsh, brutal, favored crippling blows and outright brutality, seemed to demand a level of paranoia held only by murderous psychotics, and was exhausting to boot – but if there was one thing it taught Aang, it was how to turn almost any leverage into a wide-open gap. So when the thug gave Aang enough leverage to get a foot free, he instantly heeded a lesson drilled into muscle memory by a firebending phenom, and slammed his foot in a firebent arc which landed with a wet pop into the side of the thug's knee. He went down in a heap with a clipped scream of pain.

"I'm really sorry!" Aang said, even as he was dropped to the ground. The woman backed away, holding the knife to Malu's bottom eyelid. "I just want to go! Just give me Ma.. Mina, and I'll go! I won't tell anybody that you tried to stab us!"

"Fat chance, gutter-runner. I've got money in her. You go tell your boss that I have what's his. He wants it? He can pay," the woman said, backing up, the other following her retreat. What was Azula's lesson for this? He knew that she'd given it. Oh, right. If the enemy gives you only a head as a target, you aim for the head, and you stop being such a wuss you cowardly airbender.

"Just let her go, and this doesn't get bad," Aang tried to impersonate Azula's most dangerous tone, and failed miserably, by how Malu gave a baffled look which overrode her knife-point terror, and how the woman holding said knife burst into laughter. If Aang had the opportunity, he'd be mildly insulted. Instead, he lashed forward with a knife-edged chop, and flame seared with it. It scoured the edge of the building they were next to, not biting through the heat-retardant bricks, but leaving a long stain as it curled toward Malu's neck. Or rather, just to the left of it. Malu heaved herself away, causing the knife to nick her throat just a little, but put the wave of fire directly bound for the woman standing behind her. That woman let out a shout of alarm and hurled herself down, giving Malu the time to bound forward and out of her grasp.

The man with her let out a roar of angry effort, and cast out a fist and a bolt of flame with it. It was a movement that Azula had pounded into his head to twist, deflect the flame up with his own fire, and strike even in the same motion, a concussive bolt of heat that caught the man in the center of his chest and sent him flying back after the bang. He'd be singed, but probably not meaningfully harmed. The woman was back on her feet by the time he stopped rolling, though, and her knife-arm was cocked back as though ready to hurl.

Aang just stood, staring up under dark brows, his headband keeping the sweat from dripping into his eyes, and stared her down. He let the flame play over his fingers and pool over his knuckles. While he wasn't very good at the 'actually hurting people' part of intimidation, he'd picked up the 'look like you can actually hurt people' well enough. Well, terribly all things considered, but right now, he was on the verge of angry enough that somebody tried to hurt the only other airbender alive that he wasn't in a loving and all-forgiving mood. For a change. "Do you really want to keep going?" Aang asked, and without even realizing it, managed to hit Azula's tone precisely. The woman glanced from Malu, who was now bounding to her feet, clapping a hand to the weal on the side of her neck, to the two toughs who'd accompanied her. One was lying on the ground cradling a hyperextended knee, the other groggily sitting up wondering how he ended up at the other end of the alley-way.

She didn't say a word. She just let out a short, sharp whistle, and started to back away, one hand out before her. The closer of the toughs began to rise, limping away while shooting a muted warning glance over his shoulder. The farther was pulled to his feet by the woman, and all three then vanished into the next street. Aang felt no compunction to follow them.

"A... Anil, that was..." Malu said, obviously almost slipping.

"We should get back," Aang said to her.

"Damn right you should. Mokutan will be steamed if he hears somebody's roughing his guys," one of the workers said, barely pausing to say it.

"Who?"

"He's the Jag of the Coke Streeters. If you value your hide, you'll stay away from 'em," he said. And then, with a glance up the street, he dropped back down to grab his cart of charcoal and started to pull it toward whatever destination he had in mind. Aang didn't have time to wonder, as much as he'd want to. He took Malu's hand and started to pull her now against the crowds. And because they were both trained in circle-walking, made better time than if they were moving with it. But because Aang was leading the two of them, he couldn't see the look on Malu's face.

She was watching him like he was something she didn't entirely trust. And if he'd seen her, he'd not have been able to blame her.

---

"That's three times that somebody tried to mug me," Zuko said as he kicked the thug who'd made a grab at his money in the face, sending him down in a pile. "Do I have a sign over my head that says 'victimize me' or something?"

"Hey, they never went after me," Sokka pointed out, sliding his own jet-black sword home. In truth, the weapon was a bit too effective; for all Piandao and Zuko had trained him in how to use the weapon in unorthodox ways, it still slashed through flesh as quickly as it did metal. And one of the pair of toughs who thought that a couple of teenagers were an easy mark was now bleeding into the gutter. And it didn't sit well with Sokka. Yeah, pound a guy if he's being a dink, but... Killing was a bit severe. It wasn't something to be done lightly, or to just anybody.

"That's because you look like a Gork. Anybody who goes against a Gork has about a one in five chance of getting made dead," Zuko pointed out, rotating his shoulder. He'd probably pulled it in the brief but exciting skirmish with the second group a half-hour ago. This recent fight would have just aggravated it.

"Those are pretty good odds," Sokka gave a shrug.

"The other four in five are simply getting a limb cut off. The Yubokamin can be harsh if you try to hurt them," Zuko finished.

"They sound kinda like Tribesmen in that," Sokka said with a smirk.

"They do, don't they?" Zuko said, letting the question linger. Sokka had half a mind to call him on it, but honestly, at this point, discussing the anthropological similarities between a Fire Nation subculture and the Water Tribes was a lot more effort than he had to expend. "Do you think the others found anything?"

"If the universe is any indicator, my sister's probably already found him, been captured, and then got rescued by Toph and Nila, exposing some massive conspiracy in the city," Sokka said. Zuko turned a gawk at him. "What? We tend to find these things."

"You're almost as paranoid as an Azuli," Zuko shook his head. "There's only one conspiracy in Azul, and it's name is Montoya. He won't allow anybody else to have one. He's kind of monopolistic like that."

"That sounded almost like a joke," Sokka elbowed Zuko lightly in the ribs.

"Then you misheard me," Zuko said with a flat tone. While the firebender – jerkbender as Sokka would still frequently call him were it not for how quietly terrified of Azula he was – did in fact have a sense of humor, it was an alien thing compared to the Tribesman's. But some things, such as sarcasm and irony, tended to translate.

The Drunken Dragon, as their new accommodations happened to be called, appeared 'round a bend in the street. Unlike the other cities of the East, and a lot of the cities that Sokka had encountered in his travels elsewhere, Azul City didn't seem to have any sort of order or design in how its streets ran, or where its buildings rose. They just clamored for space against the monoliths that were the factories that belched smoke into the sky and made dim a summer day. Made it oddly cold, too. Sokka actually had the forethought and presence of mind to bring along a thicker coat today; the air cold enough to qualify for early spring in the East made him glad he did. Wasn't this place supposed to be so hot it'd boil you from the inside out? It was actually warmer when they came here in the dead of winter! The clouds broke and parted, lines of sunlight beginning to pour down into the streets once more after the long hours of dreariness and grey, and the stinky, oily rain that fell from time to time.

"Figures. Just when we're coming back, it gets nice," Sokka muttered.

"Yeah. Timing," Zuko sounded a bit distracted. They entered the airlock, and found the inner door opening to the broad, toothy grin of Dara within. Zuko sighed.

"Well, there you are at last! Did you find what you' 'er looking for?" she asked brightly.

"No. Could you get us something to drink?"

"Whiskey it is!" she declared.

"Something that won't make us lurch around like idiots," Zuko clarified. Dara seemed genuinely confused.

"...beer?"

"Do you have tea?" Zuko finally asked her.

"Well, of course we do, but why would anybody want..." she seemed flummoxed and baffled.

"Tea will be great," Sokka cut her off.

"Gotta say, it's mildly refreshing being offered liquor for a change. Usually people are all, oh, you're too young and little. It'll stunt your growth," Toph's voice came from a table tucked into the corner. Sokka leaned around a corner, and saw all of the women had beat the two of them back here, with the sun not even really setting for the evening yet. Toph had a bag of ice pressed to her nose, but was otherwise quite content with her feet up on the table. Nila, though, looked more disheveled and one of her arms was pulled from her sleeve and had Katara doing her waterbending healing thing on it. Nila gave Sokka a glance, then returned her attention to her tight grip on the table's edge.

"Are you alright?" Zuko asked of the table.

"Just dandy!" Toph said with a grin. "Nobody cared that I pounded the snot out of three guys! And they didn't even know I earthbent to do it!"

"She is quite the thug, this one," Nila admitted, her voice tense.

"What happened to you all?" Sokka asked.

"We were accosted," Nila said. "To answer your more pressing question which you have vexingly left unasked, no, we were not able to locate Sato. He is an enigma amongst this group," she shook her head.

"Just stay still. And stop gripping the table," Katara said. Nila rolled her eyes, but obeyed. "She got it dislocated stopping herself from falling off a roof."

"...what were you doing on a roof?" Zuko asked.

"That is a tale long in the telling," Nila said. "Foolishness, to put it shortly. Useless foolishness, to give some explanation."

"What about Aaanil and Mina?" Sokka asked, managing at the last instant to substitute in aliases.

"We're not sure. They weren't here when we got back," Katara said.

"Oh, there's the young lad with his steely eyes! But, oh my, what happened to y'fair dame?"

"I'm fine, really," Malu's voice came from the airlock in answer to Dara's exuberant question. The door outside opened again, from the sound of it.

"And there's the young mistress! Have you found the weather to your liking?"

"Sun? In the Fire Nation? What an alien concept," Azula's voice came, which caused both Zuko and Sokka turn turn to see Dara stepping aside and letting the two airbenders and the firebender enter the public room.

"Azula, where'd you go? I thought you said you'd stay here!" Zuko said, pointing to the floor.

"No, you said that I'd stay here. I never agreed to that," she said with a dismissive wave. Of all of them, she alone looked like nobody'd so much as touched her.

"Hey guys. We should probably go up to the room," Aang said, pointing toward the stairs.

"Oh, you're afraid for your privacy? Well, we've got a back room right over 'ere for your tea and whiskey."

"Just. Tea," Zuko said, with a tone of strained patience. Dara threw up her hands and shook her head.

"You've got no sense of adventure," she complained idly, before spinning and vanishing into the back. Sokka watched her leave, then turned to Zuko.

"Are all of the Yubokamin like her?" he asked.

"I sincerely hope not."

They began to slowly move toward the back room, before Aang got in front of them, and shook his head. "This is really a bedroom kind of talk," he said. Sokka shrugged, and bade him lead the way. After all, this was right here, and a chair for his bum. Upstairs, he'd either be sitting on the edge of the bed, or on the floor. And it was four stories up, so... Yeah. He'd have preferred to stay down here.

"I assume this has something to do with the gash on Mina's neck?" Zuko gave a nod toward Malu.

"Not really," Malu said, even as Aang went over top of her with;

"Kinda, yeah," and then the two paused, shook their heads, and continued up. "Airships."

"Storm King airships?" Zuko asked.

"Fire Nation airships," Aang clarified. "They're building them in the city."

"That stands to reason," Zuko said, even as they continued up. This was the kind of talk which was free enough in the open, Sokka figured. After all, they were just talking about airships. It's not like the Fire Nation was going out of their way to hide their launch. "Azul City's got almost as much industrial infrastructure as the rest of the Fire Nation combined."

"That's still so weird," Aang said. "I mean, those things haven't flown in a long time. And now, they're just going up and around like it's not anything special!"

"Technology marches on," Azula said with a mild shake of her head. "When I was older, those things were everywhere."

"Really?" Sokka asked, a grin on his face.

"Yes. Stop smiling like that."

"So that's going to be Ozai's big weapon," Aang said, looking a bit disturbed at the notion. Then again, having the dark and shameful history of the Air Nomads coming back to bite you in the blubber couldn't exactly be a pleasant sensation.

"No," Zuko said, as they all reached the door. All turned to him, somewhat surprised, but he ushered them inside before continuing. Which was probably smart on the firebender's part. Once Toph had strolled in – by which Sokka meant was escorted in by Zuko since she was truly blind on the wooden floor – he shut the door and leaned his back against it. "Ozai's not going to be the problem. Not anymore."

"What are you talking about?" Aang asked. "I thought..."

"He's not the Fire Lord anymore. He was usurped," Zuko said quietly. Sokka nodded. He'd been surprised as all hell when he heard the news, which to the locals was apparently old news.

"I'd heard that myself. But I didn't press any further," Azula said, her tone distracted.

"There's more, and I'm pretty sure you're not going to like it," Zuko said. She shot him a look, and he rolled his eyes at her. "Take a guess who kicked Father from the Burning Throne?"

"...It wouldn't be Montoya, would it?" Azula asked.

"Not even close. Zhao," Sokka answered her. She glanced between the Tribesman and the firebender, disbelief plain in her face.

"That's not possible," she said.

"Why not?" Toph raised the obvious question. "From what I hear about the guy, he had a lot of friends in the right places to pull it off."

Azula's jaw set. "I knew that man three times, and in all three, he's a smug, sanctimonious jackass. In two of them, I set him on fire myself," she added. Zuko chuckled and nodded.

"Good times," he murmured. That sounded like something Sokka was going to want to get the whole story on. "Well, he must have done something different, if he didn't usurp Ozai last time."

"Yes. He survived," Azula said flatly. She moved to the tiny window at the back of the room and looked out it, to the cold but merely cloudy day.

"Whatever the case, our mission hasn't changed," Katara piped up. "I'm pretty sure that Zhao isn't going to let Sozin's Comet pass him by without incident. I mean, does having the big-bad at the head of the Fire Nation be Zhao instead of Ozai change anything? Really?"

"It means that we've got a lot more resistance ahead of us," Azula said direly from the window. She turned to face them. "Zhao has foreknowledge of a certain flow of events. He knows about the Day of Black Sun. But he's not an idiot – unfortunately – so he's probably going to adapt the plans that I made to defeat you," Nila raised a brow. "Last life time. Not this one."

"I see," she said, but otherwise, just crossed her arms. Probably to help support her strained shoulder.

"He'll expect treachery and a surprise attack. We need to be more surprising than he is adaptive," Azula said, striking her palm with a fist. "And for that, we need an advantage he does not have."

"Any idea what that might be?"

"...I'm drawing a blank," Toph said.

"The Avatar?" Katara said.

"We can't base our entire strategy around him," Zuko said, turning to the airbender. "If we had one lynch-pin that could be snapped and caused everything to fall apart, anybody with half a brain would see it, and attack it first."

"Thanks. I guess," Aang said, dubious. He then perked up."If we find Sato, he'll have something that could level the field," Aang pointed out.

"Maybe," Azula said. And then, a devious little smile came to her face. "Or we could take advantage of the rebellion our friends started in Ember."

"Wouldn't the army and the navy just smash that flat?" Malu asked with a shrug.

"...because of the coup, all of Zhao's military might was concentrated here. It's running roughshod," Zuko said, realizing what he should have when they'd first gotten the message from Mai several days ago. "If he'd been able to address it two weeks ago, yes, he could have crushed it. Now... it might just be a bit more useful."

"Fantastic. Now I need to remember an entirely new Fire Nation history. I'm fairly certain there was no 'Blue Turban Rebellion' last time," Azula muttered.

"Anything else?" Aang asked. There was an uncomfortable silence. "Soooo... Dinner?"

"That sounds like a plan!" Sokka instantly agreed. While he might be a Tribesman of unusual education and purpose, he was still a Tribesman, and that meant that he went where his stomach willed. He was first through the door, skirting around the firebender. He paused, though, when he noted Nila joining him. "So, what happened to you?"

"I broke a man's arm and nose," she said, a note of pride in her voice. "It was not without cost."

"So you're telling me 'I should see the other guy'?" Sokka asked. She gave a shrug. They'd only reached the top of the stairs when their duo became a trio, with the other airbender joining them and looping an arm over either of their necks. This pulled a hiss from Nila, and that in turn had Malu withdrawing slightly.

"Right. Sorry. Can I talk to you for a second?" she pointed at Sokka. He gave a shrug.

"Sure. Why not?"

"Aaaaaanil. Great guy, don't get me wrong, but does he ever strike you as... well, needlessly violent?" Malu asked. Both of them turned to her and gave her a look of incredulity the likes of which she'd probably never gotten before in her life.

"Him?" Sokka asked. "The airb...kid who huddled in a house in Kyoshi for three days in fear when he first learned he was what he was? The kid who shot down every plan that had a chance of causing serious harm or death to somebody on the other end of it? That guy? Or are we talking about some hypothetical mass-murderer 'Anil'?"

"Not funny," Malu asked.

"It is a little bit, yeah," Sokka said with a laugh. Malu glared at him.

"What about you? What's your gauge on him?" she asked Nila.

"A milquetoast pacifist with unrealistic optimism," Nila answered. "Why do you ask?"

"Well, when I was out there with him, he beat down three guys like it was nothing," she said. "I mean, handed them their own backsides, beat down. Served them their own pride on a silver platter, beat-down. And he looked like he'd have done more. Sounded like it," she shook her head.

"He's had a very rough go of the last few months," Sokka said. "And let's face it, the only one who didn't get attacked by somebody today was Azula."

"I believe she also was, but fared far better than we," Nila pointed out.

"You know, I think that she's a bad influence on him," Malu said. Both looked to her. "When he was learning how to firebend from 'Li', he was coming along nicely, and he didn't break peoples knees and blast people down alleyways. It's not until Azula comes along that he gets all... crush-kill-destroy on people."

"So she managed to teach him something of worth? Surprising, but fantastic," Nila said.

"You're not hearing the dangerous part!" Malu said.

"We're hearing it, but you are misunderstanding what you're seeing," Nila said, as they left the stairwell, and turned into the tea-room that they'd been shepherded toward earlier. If nothing else, it'd be a nice place to eat without a bunch of rough and greedy people leering over them. "There are realities in place that you must be aware of. Ones I thought you had learned in our journeys to Senlin and then to Sentinel Rock. Violence is the illness of the age, and all have contracted it. The only question is who will succumb, and who will overcome."

"But... he's just a kid," Malu said.

Sokka sat her down and finally gave the airbender a nod. "Yeah. He was when Azula pried him out of that big ball of ice. He was born in a different kind of world. The one that you probably remember pretty well. So it was a shock to his system to have to awaken to a world like this. He had to grow up, to face the way things are."

Malu crossed her arms. "I don't like how things are. The way things are rewards thugs and psychopaths."

"For now. But the pendulum, as it often does, swings back sooner or later," Nila gave a nod. The door was kicked open, and all flinched as Toph leaned in.

"Can I assume that there's room to sit down?" she asked with a shit-eater smile under a nose which showed a reddened edge where somebody'd probably punched it hard enough to break. Sokka pushed a chair aside, and Toph managed to carefully move toward it, her steps short on the wood underfoot. "So. What's the topic of conversation?"

"'Anil's becoming a thug," Malu said.

"About damned time," Toph said, kicking her feet up onto the table. "I said that he had to toughen up sooner or later!"

"She has. For quite a while, now," Sokka nodded.

"Am I the only one who sees this as a bad thing?" Malu asked.

"Probably," Toph answered. She cocked her head aside. "Hey! What's-your-accent! Could we get a pot of tea in here?"

"Tea? Of course! I'll bring it right in," Dara's cheerful voice rounded the corner. Malu didn't look too happy. But then again, everybody had a lot on their minds. And Sato was just the most obvious part of it.

---

The sun setting on Azul City meant that everybody with sense who wasn't working the 'doomsday' shift was off of the street, their doors locked, their windows shuttered and plugged up with wax. Of course, in the last twenty years or so in Azul, apparently, only the truly foolish opened their first-story windows at all. The smog would likely come back in the morning, after all, and if it got into the house, it would choke the family within as surely as if one slept outside in it. But there were other kinds of Azuli, he'd been told. Either ones without sense, or ones whose livelihoods depended on the silence and darkness of the night.

Even as Aang dreamed, he knew that he was in no less danger here, in his sleep, than he would be out there in those streets. Because when he opened his eyes, he was staring at an impossible bridge, stretched over a steep-sided chasm. He blinked a few times, and took exactly one step forward, before there was a crack of wood against wood, and he was sent flying back and tumbling to a stop on gray, cracked mud.

"...ow," Aang muttered. He pushed himself up to his knees. "So I'm in the Spirit world? Why would I be..."

"Good, you've finally shown up," Korra's spectral hand clapped onto Aang's shoulder, and then bore him to his feet. "I was starting to think that you'd forgotten about me."

"Honestly, I kinda did," Aang said, rubbing the back of a head which was, in this place, still shaven and bare. "Did something happen since the last time we talked?"

"Something?" she asked, mildly incredulous. "You have no idea."

"Was it something ba–"

Aang was cut off when Korra flinched, and slammed her hand across his mouth, before dragging him behind the twisted and cracked trunk of a dead tree which was askew in the mud. She didn't even whisper for him to be silent. But when she leaned out, and looked across the bridge, Aang had no desire whatsoever to make a noise.

It walked out of a shadow, its form lithe and nimble, but crafted of blackness. Only the eyes, of which only one could currently be seen, broke that standard with their pulsating redness. It halted, swinging its head to and fro, sweeping it along the area of the bridge, before its focus settled onto the tree which stood abloom with the white and glowing leaves. Aang's eyebrows rose as it stalked forward, and ran a hand up into the leaves. They gave a hiss as the white touched the black, but the smoke that rose didn't seem to dissuade the Shard from its task. It lashed forward with a fist, and sank its fingertips – like inky construction nails – into the flesh of the tree. The tree... screamed.

It wasn't a sound, as such, but Aang could nevertheless 'hear' it. A cry of anguish and agony, rising as the Shard lent its other claw into the wood. A corruption, foul, and gray, and oily, began to seep up the trunk, and the leaves shuddered, before exploding away, before drifting toward the cracked mud. The Shard turned, and opened a maw into oblivion. The leaves – every one of them a spirit of Void, Aang somehow knew – spun into a great vortex, which the Shard ate in a single gulp. The pale light died, and then, the only way that the Shard could be seen for the distance was because it somehow remained blacker than the darkness beyond it. Smoke, more natural by far than anything else about the Shard, drifted out of the maw, and its body, for a moment, became more... grey. More ossified. But that passed.

Korra's hand over Aang's mouth drew tighter, as those eyes swept past them. They didn't halt, or lock on, though. For that, Aang was very grateful. There was a sound, almost like the gurgling of a dying man trying to gasp for a breath through sticking mud, and the maw pulled closed, leaving only the eyes distinct from the blackness of the Shard. It stepped toward the bridge, and at instant that the land became the bridge, it disappeared. Korra nevertheless remained silent, cautious, for a solid minute after the Shard vanished.

"I've seen something kinda like those before," Korra whispered, finally letting Aang go. "They were bad news too. I'll assume that these are, as well."

"Shards," Aang said. Korra just gave a nod, and beckoned that he follow her through a crack in the stone, following it down toward a river which now burbled and splashed with a significant current, but somehow, still silently. "They're the eyes and teeth of Imbalance. Or so Malu tells me."

"They're made of blackness and have red eyes and skulk about. It doesn't take a skilled shaman – or a genius – to know that they're as evil as something comes," Korra said. "How's the burn?"

"What burn?" Aang asked.

"Where Azula hit you with a lightning bolt," she said, giving a playful tap at the center of Aang's back. He just shrugged. "...so that didn't happen, did it?"

"I got shot by an arrow, if that counts," Aang said.

"An arrow? Please, that's nothing."

"It impaled my heart," Aang said patiently. Korra paused, blinking.

"Okay, I retract my mockery. That'd suck," Korra said. "Well, if you weren't burned, I have to think you'd be in the Fire Nation right now. Am I right on that?"

"Yeah, but..."

"Now all you have to do is find a firebending master. If you want my advice – which is technically your advice, when you think about it – you couldn't do better than Prince Zuko. Good guy. He lives a long damn time," she shook her head. "I actually met him. He's that old."

Aang nodded. "Zuko's good. But Azula's a lot better than he is."

"Yeah. He's going to have to give his A-game to beat her. I'm not sure how he did it in my time. Didn't ask him either, since he was probably bitter, what with her dying around the same time I was born," Korra said.

"Azula's on my side," Aang said. Korra stopped, a step from entering the current, and turned to him. "I know you want to help me by warning me about what's going to happen, but like Toph says, chances are everything that you know to warn me about isn't going to happen this time. What you remember isn't the way it is. Not this time."

"...oh," Korra said. She gave a shrug. "Well, forget I said anything."

Aang gave a shrug, and followed in the wake of the Tribeswoman as she waded through the waters that now pulled at Aang's feet with every step up the river. "So where are we going?"

"A place which surprised the hell out of me when I found it," Korra said. "It's safe, though, so you don't need to worry about the traps and craziness."

"...and why are we going there?"

"Because it's time to start teaching you how to fight like an Avatar," Korra said with a smirk cast over her shoulder.

"Why does that fill me with a distinct sense of dread?" Aang asked quietly. But not so quietly that Korra couldn't hear, and laugh at him.

---

Zuko looked out over the streets, light only by the uneven and untrustworthy light of street-lamps not very well tended, from the safety of the window at the top of the stairs. It'd been a long time since he'd come to Azul. There was a time, when he was young, that he'd come this way fairly often. Lu Ten, it had to be said, had a taste for the finer things available in the city, and the family followed where the Royal Heir's heir passed. He'd seen the other half of Azul long before he saw this half.

There was splendor here, but it was behind gates and doors, and didn't tower into the skies as it would in Caldera City or Ba Sing Se or Omashu. This was a jealous and greedy sort of city, and its wealth was shown in jealous and greedy ways. He could remember the room that positively glowed with amber, as it reflected off of gilding and outright amber that had been carved into panels which lined every wall and even the ceiling. He remembered the great hall, lined with sculpture and art, and those tiles of black and white stone imported from Ember. The gates, all wrought iron and standing tall and severe, to establish the boundary between those who had, and those who didn't.

"Why did I expect that I'd find you still up?" Katara's voice came from behind him. And for a change, it didn't sound scathing or hateful. Just tired. As they all were, already.

"I don't sleep very well. Never said I was a good firebender," Zuko said with a shrug. The streets below had been an education to him when he came through this city, his head covered in sanitary bandages from the blast of flame which ruined his left ear, on his way to his exile. Not to Uncle, though. "I keep remembering the last time I was here. How much of a... a brat I was."

"You don't like this city either, do you?" Katara asked, looking out onto those streets.

"No. This city isn't what the Fire Nation is supposed to be. Everybody's afraid. Everybody's divided. Everybody keeps their eyes down, their ambitions quashed, and their dreams so small that nobody will even care if they succeed. Its sickening," Zuko said, shaking his head. "...it reminds me of Ba Sing Se. Only not quite as bad."

"Really?" she asked.

"Yeah. At least here, everything's honestly trying to kill you," Zuko said with a smirk. Katara rolled her eyes. "You've got something on your mind."

"No I don't," she denied. He just stared at her, and she let out a sigh of resignation. "Alright. Alright... I'm worried about Aaaanil. Mina said that he beat down a couple of street-toughs without missing a stride."

"Good for him," Zuko said flatly.

"That's not like him, though! I'm starting to think that Azula might actually be corrupting him!"

"She isn't," Zuko said. "She's a better firebender than me. She has been since she was a kid. The only reason that I got better than her, was because for a while, she could barely feed herself, let alone practice. And now, she's effectively six times my age... So of course she's got skills that eclipse mine."

"You're awfully calm about that," Katara said. Zuko couldn't help but smile a little.

"For the last five years, the only fear I had, really, was that something was going to happen to my sister and that I wouldn't be able to protect her. Now that I know beyond any shadow of a doubt that she can look after herself... it's a relief. I'm relieved," he said, leaning against the other side of that window.

Katara nodded. "Until the winter, I never thought I could feel that way about my brother... Then Zhao burned him, and..." she looked at him. "I understand that kind of fear. I really do. But I'm still worried for Aang..."

"-nil."

"Anil, right," she shook her head. Sooner or later she'd have to get that right or the wrong person would overhear them, and that'd be the end of it. "Not because I think that she's going to hurt him, but because I think she's leading him down a path that he shouldn't go. A... He's not a warrior. And he shouldn't be trained like one."

"But he does have to be trained like one," Zuko pointed out. "Because how else is he going to do what he has to do?"

Katara stared out the window. "Doesn't mean I like it," she said. She glanced in his direction. "Maybe you should take a more active role in teaching him. You took your time with him. Forced him to slow down. Azula just shoots along as fast as he wants to go. And he could make a mistake or..."

"You're sure this isn't because he's got a crush on my sister?" Zuko asked. She fell silent, and glanced at him more flatly. "I've known about it since winter," he said with a shake of his head. "And I think a part of her is returning the crush."

"How could you say that? The only interaction she had with him was trying to kill him!"

"I'm a big brother. She talks to me. And sometimes, she doesn't even need words to do it," Zuko gave a shrug.

"...and you're alright with that?"

"I'm her brother, not her owner. Even if I do think that he's a blundering idiot with way too much riding on him, it's not my call," Zuko said. And that he wasn't impressed by that fact was not lost on the waterbender, apparently.

There was a silence in that darkened hall once again. But Katara was the one who broke it. "I'm done, you know."

"Hrm?"

"Ever since we got exiled from Chimney Mountain, I always blamed you. You and Azula," Katara said. "And every time I thought about the Fire Nation, about our enemies, the face that the horde had wasn't the Fire Lord; it was you, and her. I'm just so used to you two being our enemies."

"Yeah. I get that a lot," Zuko said flatly.

"But I'm done. Even I can see that the only thing that you've done for Aan..." he shook his head sternly, "...nil was help him. I should have accepted that you're on our side now, and that you have been for a long time. And for what it's worth, I shouldn't have been so unpleasant back at the Temple."

"Huh," Zuko said.

"What?"

"You just apologized. I must be dreaming," Zuko said with a glance back to the window. That got Katara steamed again, but this time, she packed it down rather than explode as he'd both expected and somewhat wanted to see.

"Truce?" she asked.

Zuko nodded. "Truce. Until this is all over, then you can hate me to your heart's content."

Katara flashed a grin at that. "I'm counting down the days."

---

"I fail to see how this is going to teach me how to bend. I mean, I'm not even bending. I'm asleep, aren't I?" Aang asked, as he moved through a form once again.

"The movements lend to certain styles. This one is water and earth," Korra said, flowing low and rooted, her movements an admixture of water and earthbending. Every movement was supple and strong, and she looked in those moments like she was not even out of her teens. "You use this, and you'll never come off your feet, I guarantee it."

Aang, though, stopped with the movements, and leaned against the 'fort' which had been made of several stacked wooden beds, hung over by sheets. The entire section of the Spirit World was the oddest yet, in that it had nothing natural about it at all. Instead, it was straight lines – even if those lines betrayed spacial awareness, peeling wall-paper, pictures hanging on the wall behind glass, each so sun-bleached that only a faint wisp of the blue remained. "I know how important knowing how to fight is, but... there's so much more I need to be able to do. Like go into the Avatar State at will. Could you teach me how to do that?"

"Come on. I'm trying to give you some useful pointers here," Korra complained. She'd tried to give an explanation of this place, how it closely resembled architecture and building-plans from the later years of her life. How there were great cities teeming with buildings that reached toward the sky, festooned with a maze of chambers such as this one. Well, not like this one exactly, because Aang knew that the dimensions didn't quite add up. Aang shook his head, and Korra sighed, her years starting to return to her. "Fine. You're right. I should try to get down to the tacks on this one."

"Really? You're just going to show me how to get into the Avatar State?" Aang asked, a little suspicious.

"Not that easy," Korra said with a finger raised. "Every 'primary' has a different way of entering the State. Airbenders and waterbenders are different," she had Aang sit down, and the airbender crossed his legs under him, his fists coming together. Korra stared at the floor directly in front of him, from where she was in a nearly identical stance. "When I was young, I was a bit of an idiot. I couldn't bend air to save my life, and I couldn't enter the Avatar State to save anybody-else's. I could never surrender to the power of it, give myself to the enormity of it. I thought that I was stronger than the Avatar Bequest itself."

Aang chortled at that.

"Yeah, I know. Young and stupid," Korra said. "You were the one who told me, that in our lowest moments, at the times of greatest despair, we are the most open to change. For me... that meant admitting defeat. That I was beaten, mind, body, and soul. I'd had my identity stripped away, my pride thrown onto the rocks. He tied my soul into a knot, and then got himself killed so he couldn't be forced to fix it."

"That sounds horrible," Aang said. Korra simply nodded.

"I was on the edge of a cliff. And I thought... if I just take two steps forward, then I could..." she trailed off. Then her eyes closed, and she faced Aang more flatly. "...If I died, then the Avatar Cycle could continue, without a broken, worthless Avatar wasting decades that could be better spent," she shook her head slowly at that. "It was a fight I couldn't surmount. And I knew it. I accepted it. And the moment I did... I knew how to enter the Avatar State. I knew how to let the power fill me, tear through the wall that he'd put into me. I was whole, healed, and strong again. I never forgot that feeling, though. Because without it, I would never have been an Avatar worth having."

"Being defeated taught you how to go into the Avatar State?" Aang asked. "Well, I get beaten all the time, and I can't go in and out when I want to!"

Korra raised a hand. "Like I said, it's not that simple. I don't know what's keeping you from diving in. Mine was my pride. You? You never told me, so I can't help you there. You've got to find what's holding you back. What's crippling you. If you can find that... Well, you might find a way to go 'glowing badass' in time to save the world."

"And if I can't?" Aang asked.

Korra stared at Aang, and with a mildly patronizing look on her face, she reached over and patted his head. "You'll find a way. You've just got to have a bit more faith in yourself."

The airbender gave a sigh, but nevertheless rose and gave a bow to his teacher. "I don't know if it was a help, but understanding is never without value. Thank you, Korra."

"The way I see it, is if I teach you how to knock heads, that means I get to knock heads harder when I come around," Korra said, rising in a smooth motion and noogying her previous incarnation. And try as Aang might, even though she was all of dead, not yet born, spectral, and technically himself, Aang couldn't for the life of him get loose of her grip.

---

Nila was awakened to a stretching fist to the face. She let out a dire mutter, and immediately spun so she could kick the Tribesman in the ribs for the interruption of her sleep. His stretching was cut off by a grunt of the air being knocked out of his lungs by her toe, before she pushed herself away from the bed that she and Sokka shared with Toph, of all people. There was no privacy in this place. And precious little room.

"Oh. I guess I woke you, didn't I?" Sokka asked.

"You woke me too, you doofus," Toph said, before kicking him in his other side.

"Come on! Why am I getting kicked by everybody?" Sokka asked.

"Because you punch every woman you're around," Azula said from where she was sitting at the table with the saber-toothed moose-lion cub in her lap, their backs back to Nila. When had that thing gotten into the city, he wondered? And wondered only briefly, because he was still groggy, so his mind couldn't linger on it. "Trust the voice of experience in that they don't appreciate when you do that."

"Wait, did somebody ever do something like that to you?" Katara asked.

"Someone tried once," Azula said casually. Then, Nila could see the dark smirk grow on the firebender woman's face. "Once."

"Okay, note to self, don't batter Azula, it won't end well for me," Sokka said. Nila gave him a look. "What? I prepare plans for every eventuality."

"No you don't," she countered. He shrugged.

"Yeah, well... I'm going to start!"

"See how long that lasts," Zuko said dryly from where he read the morning news-reel. The light coming through the window wasn't strong, but certainly more present than it had been for most of their wet and frigid slog through the needlessly deadly lands of the Far West. "The sun's burned the smog, so we can get an early start today."

"Great. An early morning," Sokka said, dropping back down onto the pillow. "How about you guys wake me up in an hour or four and tell me how that turned out for you?"

"Get up," Nila demanded, and he waved her away. So she grabbed that waving hand, braced her feet against the bedframe, and pulled, until she was laying on the next bed, and Sokka had been pulled out onto the floor upside down. "You are going to get up."

"Oh, come on! Let a man have his rest!" Sokka complained, even as he got up and started to begrudgingly dress.

"I know full well that if we were to allow you a 'manful rest' whenever you asked it, we would still be in the Hui Jungle right now," Nila said with her arms crossed before her. Sokka stared at her, somewhere between annoyed and amused.

"She's got you on that one," Toph said with a guffaw, before clapping Sokka on the back hard enough that she sent him forward a step. The blind earthbender took a spot near the door. "So who's going with who today?"

"I will go with Sokka," Nila said. When Sokka started to grin a bit, she then continued, "...and Mina. We will cover the most ground, I believe."

"Alright. I'm with Prince Pouty and Sweetness," Toph said.

"...I am not pouty," Zuko said. Then, he stopped, and did math in his head, before slowly looking to the only two who hadn't been partnered up. Azula, and Aang. "Veto."

"Nobody said you get veto privileges," Toph said, giving him a stern nudge and making her cautious way to the door. Sokka, for all his grumbling and complaining, did dress with a great deal of speed, such that in the five minutes it took her to swap old sweaty clothing for new sweaty clothing, he was likewise prepared and waiting for her in the hallway outside the room. Of course, it helped his expediency that Tribesmen of Sokka's ilk were utterly shameless on the subject of nudity.

"You know, it's days like this where I can't decide whether you're being a great girlfriend or a terrible one," Sokka said with obvious ambivalence. "I mean, why are we bringing Mina?"

"I have my reasons. After all, how else will I protect my virtue?" she asked with dry sarcasm.

"Sorry to say it, Nila, but it wouldn't matter if you put the Walls of Ba Sing Se around your virtue, since I'm pretty sure there's not much left to defend," Sokka grinned.

"You defame me, and spit on my honor!" Nila said. Teasingly. Or at least she hoped it came out teasingly. When Sokka laughed, she had relief in that her attempts at 'banter' had for once not erupted into flames. "Regardless, my intentions are for the better. I cannot pass with male company alone, not with these," she raised her tattooed hands, "in this city. And simultaneously... were we alone, I doubt that we would get much done."

"Alright, that's too much information about my friend's love-life," Malu said as she seemed to appear behind them. "But on the other hand, I could always stand to hear more."

"You are a pervert," Nila said flatly.

"You are a prude," Malu answered that charge. Then she paused, looked to Sokka, and gave a chuckle. "Well, alright, maybe not a prude, but..."

"Can we please stop talking about this? It's embarrassing," Sokka asked. Malu then turned to him with a wide grin.

"Why? Have you done something you're embarrassed about? Did you cry at the end?"

"Mina?"

"Yes, Nila?"

"Go die in a hole," Nila said concisely. That got Malu giggling enough that she couldn't needle the young pair, which was a victory in Nila's eyes. "The issue at hand is as it was; how to find Sato," Nila said, rounding the last bend of the starwell and entering the common room. "It should be easier than it is, as he would not be taking pains to hide himself. But to find one mad genius in Azul City is to find a single pin, in a pile of nearly identical pins which are all coated in deadly poison. We need something more telling than a name, a description, and a proclivity toward inventive madness."

"Well, hello there, m'wee ones. Did the night see you well? No nightmares, I'd hope? Then, staying out of the Smog is a fine dream all its own," Dara broke in happily as soon as she came into view, and didn't desist from it when Nila gave her most warding of glares. "Would y'stay for a breakfast? Perhaps a brunch? I hear the weather's getting nicer out; more sun, less cold. Damned but it seems colder than it ought be, eh?"

"Yeah, it does," Malu said. She glanced toward the breakfast of fried cakes and sausages. She gave the meal a considering eye, before finally shaking herself and sticking out her tongue. The disgust was mostly feigned, Nila was fairly certain; Only the most devout of vegetarians could ever truly go back, once they had feasted upon flesh. And Nila never considered herself a vegetarian to start. "We're going to have to take a pass on that breakfast, though. We've got a busy day!"

"Oh, how lovely! Were only more young'ns like you, so full of fire and verve. Then we wouldn't have quite so many layabouts and wastrels choking the streets and starving the farmers," Dara went off on a rant, shaking her head as she continued back through the swinging door into the kitchen, talking all the while.

"We should probably leave while we don't have dark-of-skin-and-frizzy-of-hair looking over our shoulders," Malu said quietly. Nila felt no desire to disagree with her.

The door opened to an upkick of grey-brown smog, pulled from its mat at knee-level by the suction of the door. While it didn't slow them down, and in fact, formed into rippling eddies in their passage, it was a constant reminder that, no matter how good things got in Azul City, it was always waiting for an opportunity to kill you. In a great many ways, the city was a microcosm for the entire country, from the Hui Jungles all the way Crook End, and all the mountains that shut off Azul from Shinzo, the Midlands. At least, at its current lay, they didn't have to choke through the stink of it.

"Keep your strides small," Malu said quietly, still smiling, "...and don't let go of anything you don't want to lose."

"How cynical of you," Nila said.

"Hey, I was just thinking; If I was a pickpocket about this tall," she held her hand at the level of the top of the smog, "what would I do?"

"Choke to death."

"Well, besides that."

"Do you have any idea where we should try for Sato today? I mean, this isn't Ba Sing Se; it's not that big!" Sokka stressed. Malu scratched her hair for a moment, then gave a gander to the south west. Notably, toward the piers.

"This Sato guy... he's supposed to be bad with money, right?" Malu asked.

"That's what everybody says about him," Sokka answered.

"What's the cheapest property in town?" Malu asked.

"What is your meaning?" Nila asked, but Sokka brightened.

"Malu, you're a genius," he said.

"What? How is she a genius?" Nila asked, mildly annoyed.

"The cheapest properties are on the docks, every single time," Sokka said. "And if you've got no head for money, and waste it all in weeks, where are you going to end up? Where you can eke out a living for pennies a day. He's probably at the docks right now!"

"Should we tell the others of this inspiration?" Nila asked.

"Eh, they've got their own things to do, I'm pretty sure," Sokka waved them away.

"And we might be jumping the wrong direction off a cliff, right now. It's an idea, it's not a guarantee," Malu hedged her bets.

"It is more than we had a few minutes ago, and for all the threat it puts on us, better to go in awares, than unawares."

Malu gave a mild grimace at that. "Oh, yeah. Docks are a pretty rough part of town, aren't they?"

"Thus the inexpensiveness of the properties," Nila said idly, and they walked forward through the swirling of the fog that pooled 'round them like a slow moving brook.

---

"Hey. You two," a voice pulled Mai's attention from the boatman who was otherwise trying to keep his eyes down and his attention minimal. She couldn't blame him. After all that'd come here in the last few days, the locals were going to great lengths to avoid the attention of the Blue Turban forces – such an aggrandizing name for a rabble of peasants, farmers, toughs, bandits, and fishermen that rolled forth in a wave of anger and resentment. The Blue Turban had put to torch quite a few buildings on Lesser Ember; true, most of them had been the holdings and summer homes of the rich, the powerful, the noble, and the hated, but some hadn't. And those were the ones remembered.

"What do you want?" Mai asked, instantly reaching back to wave Jet's attention from immediate offense to something a bit more discretionary. It wouldn't be the first time that one of the Fire Lord's sneaks were sent into the movement to try to gut anybody they could in its 'upper ranks'. Not that the Blue Turban Rebellion had upper ranks. Jet nevertheless rose to join Mai's side, leaving the stooped man in his little boat out of their shared attention.

"I've been watching you," he said. "You're not like the rest of these people."

"I don't know what you mean," Mai said to the strong, sharp eyed man under his dark blue headwear. Even as she did, she slid a knife down into her fingers which were out of his sight behind her back.

"You're not going with the mob," he said, glancing toward where a knot of Blue Turbans were gathered in a roofed gazebo that overlooked the water, drinking stolen wine and telling rough stories. A part of Mai wanted to be over there, to hear them; a noble heritage, once eschewed, was not so easily restored. "Every time the mob turns off, you stay back. When it's going west again, you go with it. I'm not stupid, and my eyes aren't dull. You're not like most of the others. That's pretty clear."

Another thing that Mai had accrued over the last few years, living in the wilds, was a knowledge that uncommon talent could be found in the most unexpected places. Sometimes, dare say, it could even be found amongst nobility! That the fisherman had noticed her was, while annoying, not shocking. "And what's your business with me?" she asked.

He gave a glance toward the others, then cast a finger at his chest. "Boto. I was here from the start. So were you. Don't think I didn't notice you."

"And what do you want, Boto?" Jet asked, letting the stalk of barley spin amidst his teeth.

"Answers," Boto said. He gave a stern nod, to a three-sided shack that was built into the pier that they stood on. The wind, and the cold rain with it, were shut off immediately once they got under the roof, and the brazier inside did wonders to hold off the chill. That there was chill, here, now, was itself troubling. He stood with his back to one wall, holding onto the gaff which he'd had bent into a proper – if barbed – spear at some point. "I'm not an idiot. I know that somebody wants this rebellion to happen, otherwise Ozai'd have stomped it. For a while, I thought you might be Zhao's. But he'd have stomped us by now, too. So I've got to wonder... who's pulling these strings. Who's pulling yours?"

"Why do you think I'm the one controlling this?" Jet asked.

"I didn't mean you," Boto said, turning his look to Mai. Jet let out a chuckle at that. Mai, though rolled her eyes and shook her head.

"I have better things to do than organize a rebellion. I just saw safety in numbers, even if those numbers were a bloodthirsty anarchist mob," she said, her tone flat.

Boto's hand tightened a bit on his spear. And at that, Mai's hand on her knife tightened a bit as well. She could tell from Jet's posture that he was getting ready to spin into combat in a heartbeat. And from the look on Boto's eyes, he was just as aware of what they were as they were. "Miss, I don't like being lied to. And if there's one thing I've learned in the last few weeks, it's that the one with the pointy bit of metal in the right spot has a lot more authority than anybody'd bother telling. So tell it to me straight and true. Who started this little fight?"

Mai gave a glance toward Jet. From the look in his dark eyes, he was seriously considering dropping Boto into the sea with a rock attached to his feet. Mai therefore nudged him in the ribs hard enough to get his long-festering hatred of the Fire Nation out of his focus, and to look at the big picture as she was going to have to. He took a deep breath, and returned her look. Once more, Mai regretted that both he and she lacked the singularly expressive ability to communicate whole paragraphs through a look that their sniper, Longshot, gained. After all, this was the kind of thing that required a lot of talking over.

And since they were bereft of that opportunity, they'd have to make due without.

"Fine. You're right. We're here because somebody wants us to be," Mai said.

"...who?" Boto asked.

That was the question which would see one of them dead, if answered incorrectly. So she endeavored to get it right. Who would cause the least damage? Who would be the most believable. Who would piss them all off the least if it got out?

At the point where she considered that point, a new one came to mind; who would do the most good if people rallied behind them?

"The royal heir," Mai said. Jet's eye twitched toward her, but she shook her head at him, and gave him a gentle touch on his hand with the one holding the knife. Asking him to trust her, just a little bit. He snorted out a purged, annoyed breath, and let her speak.

"...Zhao ain't got any heir," Boto said. He stared at them for a moment longer. "You mean Ozai's, don't you?"

"Yes."

Boto chewed his words for a moment longer. Then he glanced toward the others, before turning his attention back onto the two intruders onto a land which once was her playground. "And from the fact that you're not here with real soldiers... I guess that means you're not fighting for Zuko."

"I suppose not," Mai said noncommittally.

"I heard Azula was sick," Boto said, his words softening a bit.

"So had I," Mai let that rest as it would. After all, the message from the others, that the Avatar and the rest'd had to flee the West Air Temple ahead of some apocalyptic threat only reached them a few days ago, and with it, the shocking news that Azula had made a full recovery. If an odd one. "But that's not the case any more."

"So she's fighting back against her father?" he asked. He gave her a shake of the head when she feigned confusion. "Don't try to pull one on me. I can do basic math. This," he motioned around, "started before Zhao put Ozai out the door. Which means she's fighting him. And since it's still going, that means she's fighting Zhao, too."

"You don't sound surprised," Jet said.

"Or angry," Mai also noted.

Boto shook his head, and cupped his chin. "Princess Azula... she's a lot more like us than anybody's been up there in Caldera City for a long time. She's gotten shit on by the Fire Lord more than anybody else in that rats-nest of a family. Shit on as much as some of us little people. And she's... different from them. She's not a soldier or a fighter. She's... softer. She doesn't think in wars."

"I had heard that," Jet said, shooting Mai the most incredulous of looks. But since Boto's attention was currently on his own navel, she didn't rebuke him instantly for it. Everybody slipped sooner or later, but right now, the stakes were just too high.

Boto looked up at them. "Why haven't you told anybody?"

"Would they have believed it?" Mai asked.

"I guess not. Not at first," Boto gave a nod. He looked her square in the eye, amber to silver. "But this ain't the first, anymore."

"No, it isn't," Mai admitted. "Now that you know, what are you going to do?"

"Ruminate on this," Boto said with a frown. "It's a lot to take in."

"It is, that," Jet said with a nod.

Boto turned from the shack, pulling his spear with him. "Better news than I feared though. A lot better," he admitted, then headed back out into the drizzle. Mai turned to Jet, and he chuckled at the look on her face.

"What?" she asked.

"You look like you're about to fall over or something," Jet said, draping a wet arm over her neck. He didn't stop grinning. "That was lucky, wasn't it?"

"I don't believe in luck. But that was useful. I just wonder how useful," Mai gave a shake of her head. Maybe they'd stay with the Rebellion a little bit longer; after all, what better way to land unnoticed on Grand Ember than with a rebel force pulling all attention to it, for whatever duration it lasted?

---

The crowds around them grew thicker as they sauntered down the gentle slope, toward the sea. Not surprising, given the amount and localization of the work that was done in the harborfront region. Where else could you launch a warship, after all? What did surprise Azula was how little attention they were gathering. Sure, Azula had a much more informal hair-style, with the vast majority of her locks hanging free down her back rather than gathered into a bun, but such small changes did not a specter make. And if she wasn't recognized, why weren't they set upon by thugs and hooligans? Azula considered that question, until the answer came when the airbender monk beside her flinched slightly when her gaze swept over him.

It turned out, without even realizing it, she was glaring murder at everybody they passed.

"I bet it's nice to be back some place familiar," Aang offered. Azula tutted.

"Azul isn't familiar. At least, not this part. I might have been frequently a guest of Azul and Loyo Lah, but my parents would have to have been unforgivably lax to allow a seven-year-old to walk the streets of this city."

"...Well, I guess it must be nice to be back in the Fire Nation, then," Aang said.

"Leading the force that is here to conquer it," Azula answered him.

"...you're not happy to be here, are you?" Aang asked.

"No," Azula admitted. "There are political ramifications of what we're doing that will take decades to echo out, and as they won't follow the template I'm familiar with, whoever has to deal with them will be grasping in the dark. The Fire Nation will be defeated on Fire Nation territory. The last time that happened, we were fighting the Storm Kings."

"Yeah, those guys," Aang scratched the black hair at the back of his head. "You know, with ancestors like those, it kinda puts perspective on why you guys killed the airbender monks. It doesn't excuse it, not even close, but... I can kinda understand it."

"Fear is the great motivator of politics," Azula said, shaking her head, slowly. While she'd lived a long time, that seemed to keep rising back into prominence as a tautological truth. "If you can manipulate fear, you can manipulate people. If you do it well, you become a leader. If you do it well enough, you can spawn an empire that will outlast you for generations, built on a core of distrust, fear, and hatred."

"You can't believe that," Aang said, slightly aghast.

"I've seen it happen," Azula answered him. She gave a glance around, at the dingy and run-down storefronts which were growing fewer and fewer in number, replaced by warehousing that stretched toward the docks, before a great mountain of iron rose up from the rooftops and tried to block out what sun they got. "It happened to the Storm Kings; it happened to the Fire Nation; and I have a fair degree of confidence, it happened in Republic City, too."

"Then I'll have to find a different way. A better one," Aang said. Azula shook her head, but couldn't contain the quiet laugh. "What?"

"You've got an optimism that just won't stop talking, don't you?" she asked.

Aang grinned.

"I'll take that as a yes," Azula shook her head. While he was sweet, he was, to be put simply, naïve. Aang's grin slid away as he heard a distant whistle, and a dark grey shape of an airship appeared above the rooftops, heading toward that great grey hump near the docks.

"Where do they keep going?" Aang asked.

"Probably to The Factory," Azula told him.

"What factory?

"The. Definitive article," Azula clarified. She gave a nod toward the metal mass, which let out a barely audible rattle of metal in the distance, and that airship began to descend into the metal, even while another rose out, looking a bit less benuded. "That place has been building our Fire Navy ships since the World War began. It stands to reason that they could just retool it," Azula said.

"I've got a question for you," Aang said.

"Which would be?"

"How are you so calm all the time?" Aang asked. "I mean, if I had to go through what you did, I'd be biting people's heads off!"

Azula got a smile on her face, a genuinely happy one, if a distant one. "I've got a lot of perspective," she said. While she was a single person, and knew that at an intrinsic level, she had the perceptions, the understandings of the three which 'preceded' her. "One of me was sixty years old, when you killed her."

"I can't believe I'd actually kill somebody," Aang said, sounding disturbed.

"You didn't want to. Not until I gave you no other option," Azula said. She stared ahead, as the memory arose to her. "I'd seen you in many states, but never like that. Never so hopelessly angry."

"Oh, well, I don't get angry," Aang said.

"Of course you do. Everybody does," Azula countered him. Aang just shrugged. "Never?"

"Well..." Aang trailed off. She leveled a look at him. "I don't like getting angry. When I do, I... I want to hurt people. And that's – that's terrible."

"Some people need to be hurt. Some people need to die. Others need to live."

"I didn't take you for a Samsaran," Aang said with a laugh. That was news to Azula, and she indicated so with an 'a what'? "You believe that there's a destiny for everything, immutable and unchanging, to which we only play our parts."

"That's foolishness. I am free to, if I so desired, punch," she caught a worker by his collar and raised her other fist, "this man in the face. What would your Samsara do to stop me?"

"Nothing. Either you hit him or you don't, but Samsara already knows which it will be."

"That's..." she let the man go, and he quickly scrambled away, for all she was probably a third of his age. "What's the point in believing in determinism? You're just trying to assuage your guilt for the things you regret by calling them 'inevitable'. That's a sad, sick way to rationalize your decisions, and I won't stand for it."

"Wow. That's sounds a bit more like you," Aang said with a smirk.

"And how would you know what I'm supposed to sound like?" Azula asked.

"Z...Li would never stop talking about you," Aang said. At that, a silence descended upon the two travelers, as they wove through the human tide that nearly sprinted through their chores of daily living. She could remember a different Azul city, a quieter, cleaner one. The factories were far fewer, but The Factory remained, as implacable a road-post in destiny's purported design as the appearance of the Avatar himself at the South Pole. But that Azul City wasn't part of a country operating with only lip-service to the Burning Throne; that one was owned, mind, body and soul by Ozai, and Zuko after him. So what was different this time? "I've got another question."

"You never seem to run out," Azula muttered.

"If the world wasn't going to end... would you still be here? On our side?" he asked, so quietly. Almost like he didn't want to heave to hear the answer. And that was a question which, honestly, Azula hadn't given a lot of thought to. Thought which she gave now, in full.

"...yes," Azula said, after that long contemplation which brought them into the heart of the factory district, such that they now stood in the cold shadow of The Factory. "I'd be here. For all the wrong reasons, but I'd be here."

"Sometimes doing the right thing for the wrong reasons is a lot better than doing nothing at all," Aang pointed out.

"I'm well aware of that," she answered him, but not harshly. That was a lesson she learned very well in her years. A part of her liked that Aang knew to ask these kinds of questions, that somebody was showing interest in her despite her royal upbringing, instead of because of it. Of course, one of her past lives was crippled beyond the ability to form any but a mutually deficient relationship with those around her, and the other made jaded by decades of difficulty and trial. The last... never got to be old enough to wonder. But still, in a part of Azula that was still young enough to be fit for her body, a part of her that remembered how to be a teenager... she liked the attention. "You know... looking back, I never had a good reason to hate you."

"Thanks... I guess," Aang said.

"You didn't deserve what I did to your friends, or to your wife, or to you," Azula said, aloud. Let it hit the air.

"I can't believe that there's some sort of universe where me and Katara were... ew," he gave a shudder.

"And I can scarcely believe that there was a universe wherein Ty Lee was the Avatar. Existence is a strange and inexplicable thing. You didn't deserve what I did to you, because you tried so often, and so hard, to be kind to me. We met, you know? Before Chiyo died," Aang's attention perked up to her. "I was just a face in the crowd. One of ten thousand. But when you spoke to them... when you talked about 'forgiving old grievances', about 'a fresh start for all peoples'... you were staring right at me. You knew I was there."

"I did?"

Well, technically not, because that never happened, but Azula felt no need to ruin her meager attempt to be something other than the monster she'd, for so long, believed herself to be. "You could have said something. Told your metalbending friend to detain me. Instead... you believed what you said. You lived it. I think, if Chiyo hadn't died..." she just shook her head, letting the lie trail off in, honestly, a convincing manner.

"I... that other me, anyway, must have known that you earned some peace," Aang said. Azula shrugged.

"I do know that every time I attacked Katara, you begged me to calm down, see reason. Grieve Chiyo without causing more grief," Azula admitted, this time not lying at all. "And I, as usual, made a hash of that chance."

"You lost your daughter. Why wouldn't you be angry?" Aang asked. One of the workers who passed by in that moment gave Azula a very odd look, pausing in his transit.

"We're rehearsing a play," Azula said flatly, her tone daring him to disbelieve the obvious fabrication. His start and his swift return to his duties told her that it was a dare beyond his desire to undertake. She gave Aang a prod. "You need to watch what you're talking about."

"I'm still trying to get my name-thing right," Aang said, as he pulled his headband a little tighter. And good that he did. It was the only thing standing between he and a murderous mob. He gave a bit of a twitch, then pointed toward a street off of the boulevard that they were following. "That place looks a bit dingier and more run-down than this one. He might be down there," Azula gave a shrug of ambivalence, while Aang's assertion could indeed be correct.

"Then lead on, Anil," Azula said smoothly. It didn't surprise her that of the group, only Zuko, herself, and Toph were able to use the aliases fluidly. What did surprise her was how the other airbender found it so difficult. "I have to say, it's refreshing to meet a version of you, at this age, where you aren't an absolute flake. In the last one, at this point, you were a slightly more hyperactive Mina, without the zen."

Aang gave a sigh. "There is a time for games and childish things. And then there's a time to put those childish things away. The world needs me the way I am, not the way I was. Maybe when the War is over, the childish things can return. Not just for me, but for everybody," Aang said. He turned a look to her, those grey eyes remarkably old, soulful. Wise. "There's an entire generation that had to grow up too fast, Azula. They deserve better than that."

Which called to mind Azula, who became a warrior at the age of six, in every world that she could recall.

"You might be right about that," Azula admitted. And a fraction of a second later, her hand lashed back and caught somebody by the shoulder, and she hauled him to a stop. One fist rose, bathed in flames that she purposefully kept golden, leveled at the dirty, rail-thin and dark complected man. "Give me back my money or you'll lose the hand that took it," Azula said coldly. The would-be pickpocket tossed the purse onto the ground and outright sprinted away when Azula released him. Even as she stooped to reclaim their precious funds, Azula had a striking thought.

Why had she let him go?

"You know, you can be really scary when you want to be," Aang said with a bemused look.

"Story of my life," Azula answered him. He was already starting to dart in and out of the workshops that lined the street, though. Often, he darted back out without a word said. Mostly because Aang had been told, with no uncertain terms, that Sato would not be working on locomotive engines, naval ships, or anything directly to do with weaponry. The first two were a matter of personal preference for the tinker, she'd come to learn, while the third was a conscientious objection. "We might not be on the right street."

"No harm in looking, though," Aang said. "So... what am I like when I'm older?"

"Bearded," Azula said, her tone distracted as she spotted a knot of people moving at the far end of the tiny street they were on. The only reason they caught her attention at all was because they were moving against the tide. Still, they were far too few to constitute a threat, and far too obvious to be the hands of the Coordinator.

"Really? I never thought I'd have a beard," Aang said with a tight-lipped grin.

"Still bald, though," Azula continued. "I thought it looked a bit ridiculous."

"It's my beard and I'll wear it how I want to!" Aang contended, once again drawing looks from those who were doing their jobs in the outermost areas of the workshops. Mostly painting and lacquering, from the smell of it.

"We're..." Azula began. Then she smirked. "He's touched in the head."

They all gave a nod, and went back to their jobs. Aang didn't look too pleased at that. "I never said anything like that about you."

"You keep blurting things which, without proper context, sound insane. How else am I supposed to deflect suspicion?" she asked, having to skirt an empty cart which came within a hair of bashing her knee.

"You still didn't answer my question," Aang continued.

"What am I supposed to say? That you nearly caused a riot after the trial of that bloodbender? That you almost got into a one-man war against the Earth King?" Azula asked. "Because I wasn't paying very close attention to either of those. There's not much point talking about a future which, from the looks of things, won't come to pass. The Earth King is in exile, Long Feng rules Ba Sing Se, and Yu Dao is sitting squarely on a border which hasn't shifted in fifty years. And this will all be moot if the world ends before next autumn."

"I'm surprised you don't talk more about the things you saw," Aang said, by way of explanation. "I know that some of it doesn't sit easy with you. Like your son, Daichi, and how your relationship with him was so strained. You don't need to keep that bottled up."

"If I were to release everything that wounded or annoyed me in this world, Anil, I would never have any time to get anything done," Azula pointed out, and turned the corner and moving with the traffic of workers, citizens, and ethnic Yubokamin that pulsed through the city's streets. And much like the blood they emulated, they had a way of spattering any time the vessel was punctured. And clotting, when something got in its way. There was such a clot that they had to skirt the edge of – Azula having to physically grab the Avatar and drag him away from it to do so – so that they weren't pulled into whatever mischance and foolishness saw a man knocked senseless and dragged into the archway of a spite-house that was no more than seven feet wide.

"I don't know why you won't let me see," Aang muttered.

"Because you are easily distracted," Azula told him. She nodded forward. "Especially with so hopeful a signal directly in front of you."

The signal, such as it was, was a cart that had two spools of copper cord weighing it down. Aang stared at it for a second, before he understood it as she did. "When I broke my right hand, I had to work nine-hours-a-day in a powerplant. The first one built, if I recall correctly. So I know what electrical cables look like," Azula said flatly.

"Power plant?" Aang asked, but he let the idea fall to the notion of finding Sato and the opportunity to head out into the country. True, in the countryside of Azul, the animals, the plants, the landscape and the weather were actively trying to kill you, but they were a different kind of threat than Azul City provided, one that the Avatar's cohorts had a great deal more experience surviving. While they would doubtless have to head back into Azul City if they were going to find 'the seamstress', whom Sokka mentioned as a woman of interest in their plan, that would be something for later.

"Excuse me?" Aang asked of the man who was tidying up the shop which smelled of hot lead solder and the acrid stink of cooking rubber. "Is there somebody named Nomura Sato living near here?"

"Sato? I had a Sato living upstairs. Worthless bum," the hirsute, vest-clad man said with a spit onto the floor. "Didn't pay his rent but once every other week."

"So he lives above the workshop?" Azula pressed. "We were told that he was a man of some imagination and knowledge. Who better to learn the trade from?"

"The door's around the side," the... foreman, she decided, said, as he pulled out a thick cigar and lit it from his fingertip. "If you steal anything, I'm taking it out of your hides. That property's still mine, no matter what crazy he's put into it."

"Fair enough," Azula said.

"What happened to that man in the street?" Aang asked.

"It doesn't matter. Let's go," Azula cut him off and pulled him out of the shop, then to the alley which ran behind it. "Considering how easy you were to hunt down last time, it's obvious that nobody ever taught you the value of laying low."

"I just wanted to know. There's nothing wrong with asking questions," Aang said defensively as they started to carefully pick their footing through what garbage was simply too heavy to be washed away with the frequent storms.

"Yes. There is. If you ask the wrong question, or to the wrong person, you'll see just how dangerous they can be," Azula said.

"Azula?"

"What?" she asked, rolling her eyes.

"Why are you still so angry?" Aang asked. She stopped at the door, and turned to him, her eyes heated even if not in rage nor wrath.

"I am not angry."

"You're giving me an angry look," Aang pointed out.

"I am not angry," She reiterated. "I'm just trying to make the best of a terrible circumstance."

"You should have more fun with your life," Aang decided.

"Oh, spare me," she said with a shake of her head. "I am a creature of purpose. I always have been. When deprived of it... I don't like what happens. Fun is something to fill time, time that at the moment we simply do not have."

"You could always make some," Aang said with a shrug.

"...how are you not dead, yet?" Azula asked flatly.

"You know, your brother asked me that exact same question," Aang said.

"And your answer to him?"

Aang shrugged. Which was probably the same answer as to Zuzu. Azula just rolled her eyes and opened the door. That the experimental tug she gave caused the door to swing out caused her a moment's concern. That moment became more than that, as there were a great many wet footprints going up these stares. And some, coming down.

"We might have a problem," Azula said. She chose to be the first up, because of the two of them, she was by far the greater in the only element which was permissible to bend in this part of the world. The stairs lead up in after a right angle turn, opening into a loft. The entire place looked to have been ransacked.

"...We definitely have a problem," Aang agreed, as he reached the head of the narrow staircase behind Azula.

Azula looked through the mess, the dusty feathers from the pillows, the torn paper on the floor. Much looked like it had been scooped up and carried away. Azula found her way to a work-bench, which sat not-too-far from the bed. Its surface was pitted and scarred by molten metal dripping onto it, and the stink of rubber was stronger here. But of the tools, and what they were making, there was no inkling.

"Are we sure that this was Sato's place?" Aang asked.

Azula got a notion, and reached behind the desk, down into the space which was left dark by its presence. She fumbled with questing fingers, until she felt paper digging into a fingertip. She would suffer the paper-cut later. For now, she caught the paper between her fingers, and bore it up, before setting it onto the table. "Does this look familiar to you?" Azula asked, of the concept art which had been torn in half at a diagonal, which looked like some sort of electrical device. Aang blinked a few times, and then held it up before him.

"These are the towers that they tried to use to clear the Great Wall," Aang said. He then looked around the tight space that they stood in. "This was Sato's room... so where's Sato?"

"And most importantly," Azula said, leaning over to blow out a lantern which hung over the desk, "who felt a need to take everything from him, in broad daylight, less than two hours ago?"

---

"Tell me that you guys didn't have a bust like we did?" Sokka pleaded. The airbender leaned toward him.

"Ah, you're just sour 'cause I didn't give you any alone time with your girl," Malu teased.

"Die in a hole," Nila said flatly, as was her ritual. Aang and Azula, the last two to return, looked less disheveled, but more exhausted and spent than most of the rest of them did. Which didn't speak well of what they found.

"Tell me you guys found more than we did," Toph said from her spot at the table, which she was now hunched and prodding a black-eye over. That Zuko had a similar shiner was telling about how their foray into the city went. How citizens survived this place was, frankly, beyond Sokka's comprehension. After all, he was born and raised in a place which had never heard the old credo 'the farms breed people for the cities to consume'.

"I wish we didn't," Aang said, his down-spirit casting a gray pall in the room when he said it. Everybody turned to him, even Katara, who returned from the bathroom repairing the various bangs and bruises she'd limped in with. She'd doubtless find time to share that largess with the others, but not in public. Waterbenders were, understandably, verboten here.

"What does that mean?" Toph asked, she alone unaffected by the decline in mood, as she couldn't see its source.

"We found where Sato lived," Azula said flatly. Lived. That was a problem. "And I don't doubt that if we could have been an hour faster, we might have found him..."

"I'm sorry, Azula..." Aang said.

"And at what point was his abduction your fault?" Azula asked with a shake of her head. "But wherever he is now, he didn't go quietly, nor willingly," she pulled a torn schematic from a pocket, and let it unfurl onto the table.

"Wow! How informative!" Toph said with mock surprise.

"That's those arc-towers," Sokka said. And distressingly, the blueprint was ripped in half. "Who would have taken him?"

"I can think of a few names of people who might," Azula admitted. "And a lot of them are outside our ability to recover. The few who we could... it would cost us dearly. Our cover, certainly. Our lives, possibly."

"So what do we do now?" Katara asked.

"The only thing we can do," Zuko said with a sigh. "We try to find the seamstress."

"But what about Sato?" Katara asked.

"He's outside of our hands. And he was never essential in the first place," Zuko told her. Sokka knew that it was true. While extremely useful, Sato wasn't critical. But without the 'seamstress' whomever she was, they were sunk. Katara looked a bit crestfallen. "You know that this is the sensible thing to do."

Katara stared at him. Not glared, which was a change. "I still feel like I'm abandoning him to a fate worse than death, or something."

"Yeah. It does feel like that sometimes," Zuko admitted. He let out a sigh, and dropped into the seat beside Toph and Malu. "But we have to take the options we have. Or else you know what'll happen."

Sokka's witty and mood-raising joke was cut off when the door slammed open. Everybody flinched, some of them moving into bending poses, but all were forestalled when Dara backed into the room, four kettles held amidst her two hands, and pulled a tray of drinking vessels with a toe as she came. "I saw y'all come back in. Thought you might want a mild refresher. Hear it can be a bit rough out in the city for the young. I can say I wouldn't want someone so cute comin' to harm," she said, managing to time her cheerful banter just so that she emptied a hand of kettles just in time to pinch Zuko's cheek. He waved her away, and she laughed her way to the other table, set the kettles down, and moved back to the door. "Now if any 'ya need something, don't be afraid to give a shout. We pride ourselves on customer service, don't y'know?"

"Great," Sokka said. Then a notion occurred to him. "Do you have anything cooking in the kitchen?"

"Duck-bacon-fried-hippo-steak," she answered brightly, before moving out into the main sitting room. Sokka almost had a meatgasm at the prospect of lunch.

---

The trilling shriek sounded, and the hot breath sprayed in his face, almost to the point where the beast's spittle landed on his unshod feet. But however it surged, it could not break the heavy, iron binds which held it in place. It was often believed that the symbol of Azul was a spider. It certainly made sense, given its stylized depiction, blazened under the weight of the three-point-flame. Eight legs and spines did call to mind a spider. And of the current master of Azul, where he stood with bare feet against wet stone, it was even more appropriate. While the title he was born to, and worked to preserve was 'Coordinator', he was well aware that, despite a firm opinion to its opposite, that he was more often simply called 'the Spider.'

How little they knew. The eight legs, the spines, they weren't of a spider, but instead, of the purple, golden eyed beast before him now, which snarled and snapped on its chains. The anomolokia.

"Coordinator?" a voice came from his back. He deigned only give a slight glance to the retainer who stayed near the door of this chamber, which was open only through bars at the ceiling. Any such room had to be open; for all the anomolokia's many strengths and virtues, it would smother very quickly if not kept in some place very well aerated. Not surprising that the lower class would fear such beasts. They were dangerous, but only to something less dangerous than they.

"What is it?" he asked, continuing to watch the new beast which had been brought, replacing the old one which he'd broken years ago, and kept as something of a glorified pet... and a threat to any who ever thought of opposing him. The other problem, beside their fatal aversion to thin air – and their utter inability to swim – was that they didn't tend to live very long. Nature, it had to be said, gave few and slim kindnesses in the lands of the Far West. Thus, one had to take what one could find.

"The information that the informant gave was good. Sato was brought in, less than a quarter hour before somebody else came to meet him," the retainer said, visibly uncomfortable in the presence of one of the most feared and evil creatures of the Azuli wildlife. Not that the Coordinator bothered to look back. The man was of low breeding and class. Of course he was afraid.

"Good. You have rewarded the informant?" he asked.

"When the information was proven valid, yes," the retainer said. Well, needlessly explained. He knew how this was supposed to work; he was the one who designed the system himself! "But there is new information."

"Really?" he asked. Finally turning from the raging anomolokia to walk back toward the relative dry and relative warm of his palace. He pulled the red-and-purple robes a little tighter around himself, tucking them tight around where his grey beard began, before locking silver-hued eyes on the brown eyed serf who was given a position at the highest level that one such as he would ever attain. "And what would that be?"

"That Ozai's exiled children, Zuko and Azula, are in the city incognito," the retainer – whom Azul had made no efforts to remember the name of – answered. "And that they're seeking allies against the Burning Throne."

Montoya Azul paused at the door, then looked back at the beast within that so typified both this land and the people who dwelt upon it. Dangerous, vicious, brutal, and effective. Then, back to the man who'd never crossed the threshold. "Interesting," he said. "I will have to bear that out."

"I will inform the steward immediately," he said with a deep bow.

"No, you won't," Azul said. "Do you consider yourself a fearful man?"

"Excuse me, my lord?" he asked.

"Fearful. Are you a slave to your fears, or do you seek to rise above them?"

"I'm not sure I know what you mean," he said. Azul nodded, and fluffed lightly at his beard. Then, he took a step forward, turned, and kicked the retainer in the stomach hard enough to send him staggering back several steps. Into the anomolokia's chamber. Azul then started to swing the door closed.

"Perhaps this will do you a world of good," he said, before letting the last crack close, and dropped the bolt down into place, just before the muted thudding of a fist against the door started. "Shameful display," he muttered to himself. It wasn't like the serf was in any real danger. After all, it was chained to the wall, half a room away, he considered as he went to take direct control of this unusual and unexpected turn of events. He didn't spare another glance back at the chamber, nor the man within it. Nor even when the muffled shouting started. One conquered one's fears, or the fears conquered you. Even a child knew that. And as for those chains?

Those chains didn't break... very often.

---

Remember how I said that there was only one evil character in this story? This guy, right here. And the reason he's beyond help... tragedy, that in almost any other world, wouldn't have happened.