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.

48. The Spider

"Hikaoh? Sokka? Come inside. Dinner's ready!"

The girl who once was turned, a big grin on her face, but that grin turned devious, as she took advantage of her younger brother's distraction to blast him in the face with a snowball, sending the three year old stumbling back and falling onto the ground. "Hah! Told ya I'm better at snowballs than you are!" she said with a laugh.

"Girls aren't good at snowballs. You cheated!" The jug-eared child said. It had been something of a curse to Hikaoh that her younger brother learned to talk as early as he did; at the age of two, he was already talking almost as good as Hikaoh was at her third year. People always drew comparisons. Why aren't you growing up as fast as Sokka? Why can't you read yet? Yes, a three year old who could read. If Hikaoh had any real sense of justice, she'd have said that there was none of it.

The large, broad and bald man pulled Sokka out of the snowbank that he'd fallen into, and turned dark blue eyes at her. "Shouldn't pick on your brother. Doesn't set a good example."

"Sokka's stupid! And he deserved it!" Hikaoh shot back, before running into the leather sided tent that she had – to her pride – started helping to set up each evening and take down each morning as the clan went through their travels, following fish, seals, and whales. Gathering food, and more importantly burning blubber, for the winter that was coming. Father had stressed that she know that, for some reason. She didn't understand why. But she did know that Father was trusting her with something. She liked that feeling.

The sound of crying instantly sapped Hikaoh's smile, at having to return to one of her baby-sister's frequent and annoying wailing spells. "Can't you make her quiet? She's being too loud," Hikaoh said, with all the gravitas and solemnity that a four year old would be expected to have – too much and simultaneously not enough.

"She's just being fussy," Mother said, handing a bowl to Father, before sitting Hikaoh before the tiny fire at the center of the tent and putting a warm bowl into her hands as well. "Now eat your sea-prunes. They'll make you grow up big and strong," she said, and then patted the girl on the cheek.

"I don't wanna be big an' strong. Make Sokka eat them!" Hikaoh said, prodding the floating, distasteful vegetables around with a finger, before pulling out the strip of fried brain and munching on that instead.

"Make me eat what?" the post-toddler asked brightly as he barreled into the tent. "Ooh brains!"

"See? Why can't you eat like Sokka does?" Mother asked.

"Sokka's gross," Hikaoh said, and stuck her tongue out at her younger brother.

"Mom! Make her stop pickin' on me!"

"Hikaoh, stop teasing your brother," Mother's voice had the resigned tone of somebody who'd had to weather this exact exchange dozens, if not hundreds, of times before. And Katara continued to cry in that shrieking, colicky way that she did.

"Did you hear from Bato?" Father asked. Mother turned to him. "He said that he saw smoke to the north. Black smoke."

Mother gave Father a glance. "How far north?"

"At the edge of the sheet, on the horizon," Father said. Mother glanced out the door... and she looked nervous. But the four year old girl hadn't a clue why.

…

"What is your name?"

"My name is Hikaoh."

"You're wrong! Hikaoh is a bad child. A stupid child! She is a child deserving bad things! Do you really want to be that child?"

"I don't understand..."

"And you will speak in a civilized language, or you won't speak at all. Is that clear?"

"I want my Mom..."

There was a sigh, one of patience sorely strained. "It seems that you don't choose to grasp what we are trying so hard to teach you. We're very disappointed in you–"

"Miss Yoji?" a voice intruded on Yoji's dreams, and caused her to flash awake, tearing fire from the lanterns in a movement that was, in no stretch of the imagination, firebending, but held it in a coiling loop that threatened nonetheless at the intruder that dared awaken her from her slumber. The room-cleaner – a task sorely underperformed in this establishment – let out a peep of alarm and flattened herself against the door which stood open to the hall. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to intrude. I'll go..."

Yoji, though, let her fire drain away, snuffing out in the air. "What do you want?" she asked the woman before her. Despite the intruder being as much as twice Yoji's age, she was shaking like a leaf. "Well? Out with it!"

"I... Um... There's a message that got sent for you today. W-w-we put it behind the accounting desk," she said, pointing out into the hallway.

"Good," Yoji said, but she still felt groggy. Leaden. And her skin felt like it was seething over her muscles. The nightmares could be bad enough; the terror, the screaming, the fire, that was a fear that she understood. But recently, her dreams had taken a turn for the strange, for the inexplicable. She dreamed of...

Something impossible.

"Is there something else?" Yoji asked, flatly.

"No, ma'am," she said.

"Then why are you staring at me?" Yoji asked.

"You... Forgive my implication, but you look much like one of those Tribesmen that Hideki talked about. I just..."

"Get out," Yoji said.

"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to offend y–"

"GET OUT NOW!" Yoji screamed, and the woman did exactly that. She had no idea why that had made her so unbelievably angry. There was no denying that she had a lamentable Tribal heritage. She'd gone to great pains, over a great many years, to erase it. But now... it seemed like she didn't have the effort. She shuddered for a second, and leaned against the desk which she kept empty of the correspondence she gathered for simple purpose of denying others intelligence. "What is happening to me?" Yoji asked, of the reflection in the mirror of polished bronze which hung from the wall.

"You're a Tribesman, Hikaoh," her reflection seemed to answer her, mocking her. But she turned away from it. The Tribe lost any right to claim her when it left her to die. She would forge her own path, in the Fire Nation. No matter what.

---

"Have you ever done something you later really regretted?" Toph asked.

"A few times," Zuko answered, deadpan.

"I'm getting a feeling that this might be one of those things," Toph said with a sigh of defeat from inside the wooden cage that they'd stuffed her in. Zuko, on the other hand, was an obvious firebender, and thus got chains.

"You were the one who wanted to 'plumb the criminal underworld' for the seamstress," Zuko agreed.

"That was an error in judgement," Toph said miserably.

"Not entirely," Zuko admitted. "If we'd been anywhere but Azul, it might have worked. But you keep forgetting rule one about Azul..."

"'Everything's trying to kill you'," Toph quoted. She shook her head. "If I could just... Why couldn't they put me in chains? It'd be easier that way," she shook her head. She then tilted her head. "Or if they let me touch the floor."

"You're asking if anybody's watching us right now, aren't you?" Zuko asked.

"And here I thought I was being subtle," Toph snarked.

"Subtle for you, maybe," Zuko answered. "And no. At the moment, we're all alone."

"Great," Toph said. She flexed the hands which were wedged close to her knees, and felt with her bending for the metal which held Prince Pouty off of the floor himself. She then started to tug on the chains themselves, ratcheting them down, down, down, until there was a creak. Then, a ping, as Zuko dropped to his feet, unsteadily. He wasted no time flicking out a finger which caused heat to swell near her forehead. Probably firebending the cage away. It was enough, though, that Toph could push her legs forward, and cause the front of her cage to fall with a clatter to the floor. The instant her feet hit the stone, she could 'see' again. There were other chains in this room, and other cages apparently, but all were empty. And she could tell where Zuko was still fettered to the wall, so she dealt with that with a shift of her foot and a grasping motion, causing the chains to snap off of the anklets. Freedom of motion, of a type.

"Great. Now we should probably..." Zuko began, but Toph's eyes widened, as she heard somebody else coming this way from above. She hated that the Fire Nation built so much out of wood; only here in the basement did she have worthwhile 'vision'.

"Sh. Incoming," Toph whispered. Zuko heeded her instantly, and flattened himself against the wall that stood at the base of the stairs, itself on the other side of a wooden door that Toph only knew was present from the proximity of its metal hinges. She took the other side, and gauged her response. Getting out was easy; there was a sewer running not six feet away from the edge of the foundation. It wouldn't be big on dignity, but when did that ever matter to one Toph Beifong?

The door swung open with a squeal of rusty metal rubbing against itself, a familiar sound from when they tossed her, box and all, into the room. "Alright, dearie, let's get Skanda a look at ya'. Might be to his t..." the criminal trailed off, when he saw that the cage was smoldering, and the chains were snapped. Whatever other words he felt like forcing out of his word-hole, he didn't get a chance to, since Zuko swung a brutal chop right into his larynx, causing him to wheeze and recoil. Toph took the opening that Zuko made to drop the idiot five feet into the stone, then lock it in a mound that held his mouth shut.

"No thanks. Older men are great and all, but not when they've got grey hair," Toph said with a smirk.

"Skanda didn't have grey hair," Zuko said.

"You saw him?" she asked. It shouldn't have been surprising, since she was captured trying to save him.

"Yeah. Too much jewelry," Zuko said with a shrug. "It was like he was trying to impress somebody."

"Well, still my beating heart. I simply must have tea with the man," Toph said with mocking melodrama.

"Creepy, too," Zuko added.

"He's an ephebophile. Of course he's creepy," Toph said. She then thrust her hands out and to the side, tearing open a hole into the sewer system that ran under Azul. When she took one sniff of it, and it stank of what had to be strong acids, she closed the hole. "Alright... need a new plan, because that one'll kill us."

"Out the front door?" Zuko said. Toph smirked.

"I like it when you read my mind."

"What can I say? I'm starting to get your measure," Zuko said, flexing his hands and causing heat – fire – to erupt in them. And since they were a bunch of criminals, nobody'd care what Toph did to them. Say... earthbending...

"Gotta say, I really needed to let out some aggression for a while," Toph admitted, cracking her neck. "This is gonna be fun."

---

Chapter 8

The Spider

---

"This was a long time coming, but this is it," Zha Yu said, as he looked over the fleet of ships which was docked off of an otherwise unremarkable shore, somewhere northeast of Kyoshi Island. They ranged from stolen Fire Nation cruisers and freighters, to the hearty fishing ships, built by the natives that took their hard living from the sea – boats which were to the standards of seamanship of the Water Tribes, apparently – to the few of those same Water Tribe vessels that remained after a portion of Chief Hakoda's force split, and the veterans and the old stayed with the force. It was rag-tag, certainly. But every ship was capable of sailing on the hellish oceans, no matter the weather. For that reason alone, they had to actually send a portion of their strike-force back; there just weren't enough ships that weren't the fragile, coast-hugging junks to bear them across the waves.

"I can't help but worry about what we'll find there," Hakoda answered the Mountain King. The Earth King was, wisely, remaining in Omashu for this. A symbol like him didn't have any place on the battlefield, less so when that symbol was as martially inept as Kuei was. Needless to say, Bumi was coming with them. "But that's something we're going to have to face when we come to it."

"Papa, can I ask you something?" Yingsue asked, looking somewhat perturbed when she approached. Hakoda gave them a nod and departed, letting surrogate father and surrogate daughter a time in private.

"You look upset. Is something wrong?" he asked. Yingsue took a deep breath, then a small nod.

"You remember how I got a message from my husband, that he was coming south to collect me?" she asked.

"I vaguely recall," Zha Yu said. Well, he recalled calling Lao a dumbass for thinking that Yingsue needed collecting even in the worst of times.

"...he's here," she said, pointing to the road which led into the army camp. Zha Yu let out a sigh of his own, and patted a hand on her shoulder. "What am I supposed to say to him? I don't remember anything about our lives together. I mean..." she shook her head, anxiety etched onto her features. She looked as confounded and terrified as she had been when Zha Yu first took her under his wing, more than twenty years ago. "...how can I even look him in the eye?"

"You'll do it, because the Yingsue I know isn't going to back down just because something scares her," Zha Yu pointed out. She glanced away, and he rotated her shoulders so she was looking at him again. "Ah-ah. If you don't have memories of your life before... consider this an opportunity to make some new memories."

"How can I tell him what happened to me?" she asked. "What I became? What I am...?"

"Do you need to?" Zha Yu asked. He shrugged. "I hear that a blow to the head, delivered with enough swing, can erase decades of your life. Hell of a hit you took, baobao. Lucky you even survived it."

"He'll probably know I'm lying to him," Yingsue said. Zha Yu smirked, and shook his head.

"Please. I met the guy. He wouldn't know what his mustache was doing unless he looked in a mirror," Zha Yu said. He gave her a smile. "You'll be fine. If everything else fails, just don't let him ask questions."

Yingsue chortled at that, and nodded. "Thanks, Papa. For... for everything, really."

"Be safe, my iron blossom," he said, placing a kiss onto her brow, then turning her toward the husband who was staring, flabbergasted, at the army that had accrued in this place. Zha Yu also set off in vaguely that same direction, albeit to a different purpose. "How, how long will it take to get them to sea?"

"The tides will be right in the next ten hours," How said. He sighed, shaking his head under the grey, coastal sky. "I don't like having to sail at night, though. Even if it's just to the first way-point."

"We all do what we have to. What about the soldiers?" Zha Yu asked. Sati clucked her tongue from her place not too far away, the one handed swordsman ever at her side.

"A minority of them are aboard already," Sati said, as she knelt on the damp earth, a wind-map open on her knees. "The rest will be aboard when the anchors are hauled, or else never."

"You still feel up to this?" Zha Yu asked. Sati gave Zha Yu a look of derision.

"Please. If there were nothing else in the world that I know, I know war," Sativa said. She then tweezed the bridge of her nose. "What I would not give for a proper source of light. This gray shall be the death of my eyes."

"So we're pretty much ready?" Zha Yu asked. There were a few nods, and one stern shake of the head from Sung. "Ready with everything that we can account for at this moment," he said with a slightly annoyed tone. Sung had been vocal – to the point of being annoying – about how the supply-lines would be stretched to snapping if they spent any more than a week ashore in Azul. At that point, Sung gave a reluctant nod.

"Good," Zha Yu said. "I'm going to go harass my son-in-law."

How and Sung shared a baffled look, but Piandao only offered a mild chuckle at that. After all, if the Mountain King couldn't have some enjoyment at the discomfort of others, then what was the point of it all? He pressed through the line of men who were... holding Lao Beifong at bay. Which was not what Zha Yu expected.

"Is there some kind of problem here?" the Mountain King asked.

"For some reason, this oaf won't let me talk to my wife!" Lao said.

"It's not the whiny one that has me concerned," the plate-armored Sipahi said with a gentle tug upon his saber. "It's the small army he's got behind him."

Zha Yu glanced past the slender, soft man and to the group gathered behind him. He'd assumed that that was an outcrop camp. Huh. "Let him closer," Zha Yu said, nevertheless. Yingsue moved to the side of Zha Yu, probably still seeking some sort of confidence in his presence. She'd been so skittish in those first few months. So it seemed again.

"Thank you. At least somebody here has good se... se..." Lao trailed off when he saw who he was talking to, and remembered the 'excitement' which happened last time they'd crossed paths. Lao cleared his throat, then turned to his wife. "Yingsue, sweetheart... I have to apologize," he said.

"Really?" Yingsue asked, her tones demanding even if Zha Yu knew that she was, inwardly, anything but.

Lao gave a placating gesture. "I know, I know. It was your decision to make, and I ought respect it. But I couldn't understand it. I tried, sweetheart, I really did," Lao said, and he shook his head. Then he sighed. "But I'm not built for this. I'm not some... warrior. But as much as I'd prefer you not be, too, I have to accept that you, that Toph, you're different. You're going to do what you need to do, whether I approve or not," he said. Zha Yu chuckled.

"Your disapproval might be part of the fun," he pointed out. Lao, instead of looking insulted, only nodded, dumbly.

"I know that I'm not much of a help. That I wasn't nearly perceptive enough as a husband, nor as a father. And I can't expect that one gesture will mean much but... I want to help you, what you believe in. So I hired the mercenaries," he said, pointing behind him. "It took a fair bit of my savings, but I did it."

"Which mercenaries?" Zha Yu asked, as he saw at least four different company standards in there.

"All of them."

Zha Yu blinked at the bald faced audacity of the claim. Then he looked out to the coast, and saw the red-sailed ships that scudded out from the horizon of the choking forest. Yup. That was... a lot of mercenaries. And ships to take them.

"So... Will you forgive a blind fool for not seeing his wife for the woman she really was?" Lao asked. Yingsue looked down for a moment, then sighed. She placed a hand on Zha Yu's arm, and gently pushed him aside, so that she could walk up to her husband. Lao had the most hopeful look on his narrow little face.

A look which became utter shock when Yingsue kissed him hard enough to almost bend him backward. Zha Yu couldn't help but laugh at that. Maybe she wasn't so skittish this time, after all. "I knew there was a reason I married you," Yingsue said, when she pulled the bleary-eyed Lao back to his feet.

---

"Can I ask you where exactly where we're going, now?" Kori asked as the woman closed the door of the way-house, and cut them off from the rain.

"Do you really believe that you've deserved it at this point?" she countered.

"Are we going to continue answering each others questions with more questions?"

"Would that annoy you?" Maya asked with a smirk.

"Why must I be a prisoner of such a sadist?" Kori asked the universe.

"Was I supposed to entertain you?" Maya asked.

"Alright, seriously, stop," Kori muttered. He was quickly starting to understand why so many people hated him; if he was a quarter as annoying as Maya Azul was, then he deserved it. "Your path so far has been somewhat obvious. South. But now we're heading west, which would tell me that we're heading to Azul City, but I know you better than that, I'd like to think."

"And why would you say you know me?" Maya asked, as she cranked up the oil in a lantern, and used its flame to start the stove. At least that would cut the chill, soon enough.

"Really?" Kori asked. He shook his head. "I'm a Child. It's my job to know everything about everybody who would want to depose the Fire Lord. While admittedly we might have dropped the ball on that one, it doesn't negate the fact that you've got we've got a ledger on you about so thick," he said, holding his finger and thumb an inch and a half apart. "And yes, I did actually read it."

"I feel my privacy violated, retroactively," Maya said with a shake of her head.

"I got you not answering questions with questions. I consider that a victory," Kori said.

"Fine. You want to know where I'm going? Anywhere that Father can't find me. I thought that the Air Temple would be remote enough that nobody would ever go there," Maya shook her head, sitting at the stool near the door and staring into the growing flames of the stove. "That you got in there proved that my estimation wasn't exactly accurate. That you were there because others were there... that was troubling. There's little point staying in a place that had seen so much recent traffic. So I'm going to somewhere else that Father won't look for me."

"Outside Azul City."

"I know some Yubokamin. I'll be fine. You're dead, but I'll be fine," she said with a shrug.

"Really? I hear that the Gorks love Tribesmen," Kori said with a grin. "That's a lot of effort to get away from a man. Which makes sense, given the rumors I've heard about him."

"Whatever you've heard, it's not true, only because the truth is worse," Maya said. She shook her head. "Father is a monster, and I'm not blind to that. Since I don't want to follow in his footsteps, I'm going to just put as much distance between he and I as possible. Safer that way."

"It seems to be something of a trend that the daughters of powerful Fire Nationals are rebelling against their asshole parents," Kori noted. She shot him a look. "Azula. Fun story, turns out she's not actually an oracle."

"I thought she was just insane," Maya said.

"It does speak to the quality of the Fire Nation's ruling class," Kori leaned against the rough-cut wooden table, that wobbled a bit under his weight. "It makes you wonder how this country managed to keep a war going for a century."

"War feeds itself," Maya noted.

"Hiding from your father doesn't sound like it's going to solve many of these problems," Kori pointed out. She just stared at the fire. "And honestly, that doesn't sound like something that you'd do."

"If you know me so well, then why don't you tell me what I should do?" Maya asked, glaring at him.

Kori saw the obvious bait, but opted to 'fall for it' anyway. He rubbed at his chin, pensively. "Well, if I were the heir designate of the most belligerent portion of a coalition that stretched back for just shy of a thousand years, placed with the unenviable position of being stuck between a crazy parent figure and the knowledge that doing something against said crazy parent figure would be a betrayal of both family and state... I'd probably opt for something outside of the choices provided for me," he said with a grin. She stared at him.

"What other choice is there?"

"A few, actually," Kori pulled the chair from the table and sat in it, crossing his ankles before him and twiddling his thumbs. "For example; join the Blue Turban Rebellion," he gave a shrug. "As far as I've heard, Zhao's not had a chance to crush that, and with some real leadership, it might actually amount to something."

"Pass."

"Throw in with Princess Azula and her brother," Kori continued. "They've got no real problem with your messed up family; instead, they're pretty focused on their own messed-up family. Still treason against the state, but your family's out of it."

"Pass," Maya repeated.

"You are simply impossible, you know that?" Kori asked, shaking his head. He puffed out a breath, making it seem like he was reaching for a long-one, but in actuality, it was the first one he'd come up with. "The other alternative is siding with the Avatar."

"The Avatar is dead," Maya said.

"He was only mostly dead. He got better," Kori corrected. She raised a brow at him. "If you're looking for a path which doesn't involve either you or somebody else depopulating the royal family of Azul, nor acting in open opposition to the Fire Nation under the Burning Throne, then your best bet would be the Avatar."

"You're insane."

"So people keep declaring," Kori gave a shrug. "The Avatar is beholden to no nation, and represents all. You could even say that, in resisting the Burning Throne, he's presenting a higher authority even than the Fire Lord. I guess it just depends on who you consider your immediate social superior. Is it your father? Fire Lord Zhao?"

"Don't be insulting," Maya said flatly.

"Then who?" Kori leaned forward. "It's not my fault if you hem yourself in through your decisions, but if you try marching me to my death, you'll swiftly find that you're walking alone, and have been talking to yourself for the last half-hour."

"You really think you can out-sneak an Azuli?" she asked.

"I don't think I can. I know I can," Kori said, grinning. It was not a kind grin. Maya just glared. "I understand if you need some time to ruminate on your options. I've got plenty of time."

Maya leaned back on her stool, shaking her head lightly. "I should have let that anomolokia eat you."

"I bet you say that to all the boys you like," Kori chided. Her snarl of annoyance brought a long-overdue laugh to the waterbender. If nothing else, he lived to needle stuffy people.

---

"I'm starting to wonder if this seamstress even exists," Katara muttered into her tea, as the Yubokamin puttered around 'twixt the tables, talking to, if not the patrons around her, very enthusiastically to herself.

"I'm sure that we'll find her soon," Aang answered, rubbing at the binding that concealed his brow. "I mean, we know what she looks like. What she does for a living. There's only about five more places we can look."

"Unless she's sensible and keeps moving, doing jobs piece-meal so that nobody can track her," Azula pointed out as she took an emery stick to her nails. The grinding sound of it rattled the Tribesman's teeth with every draw.

"Do you really need to keep doing that?" Katara asked.

"Dactyl hygiene is not something I intend to give up for anybody on this planet," Azula told her. She continued to whisk away at her nails, irritating the waterbender further. Why did she bother? They didn't look noticeably different from Katara's! "We can sit her, drinking tea and blathering about failure, or we can go back out there and spend the last three hours before sunset doing something that might propel us toward victory," she waggled the emery stick at Katara. "Your choice."

"It was so much easier when I could just hate you," Katara muttered. That got Azula cracking a smirk. Damn her. "But I don't know how safe it is to go out there with night coming in so soon. I mean... The others haven't gotten back, yet."

"Make whatever rationalizations you need to, but don't blame me when this seamstress of yours slips through your fingers because of your lackadaise," Azula said. She got to her feet, tucking that hateful little rasping rod into one of her pockets, and pointed at Aang. "You. Get up. There's one place I know we can look and be back with plenty of time before the sun goes down. Does that mollify your over-prudence?"

"I am not overprudent!" Katara snapped. "I fought at Sum... some battles that you probably never even heard of! Don't you dare call me a coward."

"Prudence and cowardice share a great many features," Azula gave a shrug. "Not all, but many."

"Guys..." Aang began.

"Oh, that's it. I've had enough of your snide little accusations you firebending witch!"

"You know, even with all that I've gone through, it never ceases to amuse me how easily it is to rile you," Azula said, smirk plain on her face.

"Azula, please!" Aang said.

"What?" a woman asked from the table behind him. Katara flinched, and looked back at the dark-eyed girl in her early twenties who looked mildly baffled.

"Not you," Aang said. The other Azula rolled her eyes and returned to talking to the two people who might have been siblings. "Let's just go while we still can."

The last, delivered at an annoyed whisper, sounded like it should have come from the bellicose firebender, not the free-wheeling airbender. Katara had a fairly good idea of who was responsible for that, as well. They all bombed out of the dining area, with a shouted farewell from Dara as they went.

The air which hit them as they stepped out of the door was, shockingly, hot. Hot, and clear, and not raining. Instantly, the Tribesman had sweat beginning to ooze across her; she had a fairly good notion that she was never going to be completely used to the heat. It was just fortunate that the Fire Nation seemed to have this false-starter of a summer, and keep things nice and manageable for her.

"It's been a long time since I saw a day like this," Azula said, nodding with a distant smile on her face. "Smells terrible, but the warmth is nice."

"I feel like I might melt. We should get this done quickly," Katara said. Aang, too, didn't seem too badly effected by the heat. It must have been something he got from learning how to firebend. Katara turned her attention away from Azula, and tried to keep her mind on dodging through the crowds on the street. But when she actually looked around her, the streets seemed almost empty. "...guys? What's going on?" Katara asked.

Azula gave a glance to Katara, then to the streets now that she wasn't also fixated on tormenting a waterbender. "That is strange," she said, her brow furrowing. "We should be fighting to the death for room to put our elbows."

"...This place seems almost abandoned," Aang said, looking around. Yes, there were a few, occasional people hurrying around, but the hurry they had wasn't the stone-faced, focused hurry that she'd seen in their forays for Nomura Sato. This had a great deal more urgency to it. "Do you think that there's something going wrong somewhere?"

Aang was answered by a blast of a steam-whistle from a distant part of the city, only audible for the lack of din between they and it. Had there not been buildings in the way, Katara was fairly certain that she'd have been able to watch an airship float out of its moorings, toward wherever they put its weapons on. "If nothing else, this means we'll be able to get there and back faster," Katara chose to be pragmatic in that moment. Azula nodded, but kept her silence. Katara glanced between the Avatar and the firebender who'd so often tried to kill him. "How?" she asked.

"Hrm?" Aang asked.

"How could you possibly be attracted to her? Even when she's not crazy, she's evil!" Katara pointed out. "And when she's trying not to be evil, she's almost just as evil!"

"That's not true and you know it," Aang responded in her own native tongue.

"What are you two yammering about?" Azula asked.

"Yes, she might be pretty, but that doesn't excuse the things that she's done to you over the last few months. I mean, you can't reject the fact that she worked very hard to kill you in Omashu, or in Ba Sing Se," Katara pressured.

"I don't appreciate being left out of conversations," Azula's tone grew annoyed, and her scarletted lips pulled into a scowl.

"That was because she was still angry over her daughter. She's not, anymore. She even apologized to you!" Aang pointed out.

"When? At what point did she apologize for getting me exiled and making my life hell for half a year?" Katara asked, her arms crossed sternly. Aang blinked, and turned to Azula.

"You said you were sorry for what you did to Katara, didn't you?" Aang asked in Azula's native tongue.

"I said that I might have been overreacting when I tried to murder her," she responded.

"See? She wouldn't admit responsibility for pain nor money!" Katara continued.

"And for what it's worth, you never deserved my ire," Azula continued, obviously pointedly ignoring that Katara had been speaking. "You weren't the one who killed Chiyo. And you have done little but help me over the last few months. Frustrating as it is to admit, I do have a debt to you. One I wish to see expunged as quickly as possible so I no longer need to think about it," Azula finished with a deeper scowl.

Aang leaned in closer. "See? Told you she wasn't evil."

"She is soooo evil," Katara retorted.

"If you two don't stop that, I'm going my own way and letting the city eat you," Azula said, her tones gray and humorless.

"Sorry, Azula," Aang said. Azula gave him a nod, then continued walking. She hadn't even expected one from Katara, which was fitting because Katara had no intention of giving one. It was Azula's fault if she couldn't speak Yqanuac. She started looking into the alleys as they passed them, trying to figure out where all of the people had simply disappeared to. But just as the streets, the alleys were empty. And slightly more filthy than usual, as there hadn't been a stern rain in a while to wash them clean.

They'd just reached an intersection when Azula took a step straight back, grabbed both Aang and Katara by the collars of their shirts and hauled them back as well, flattening them both against the wall of the building at the corner. She made a silencing gesture, then leaned cautiously, to see 'round the corner with only the slimmest profile of her eye. Katara shot Aang a querulous look, and Aang could only shrug.

"It seems that the streets aren't completely empty, after all," Azula said. She motioned to Katara to look around, but when Aang tried, Azula pushed him with stiff fingers back to the wall. Katara didn't understand why, but she looked around the corner.

There were soldiers in the street. A knot of them, perhaps a dozen in total. They seemed to watch in every direction, while exactly one of them loomed over a homeless man, saying something which, even for the relative quiet of the city, couldn't reach quite as far as they. At first, Katara didn't have a clue who these people were supposed to be; they weren't wearing the armor and skull-mask of a Fire Nation soldier, after all. Purples beat out reds. But when she caught a glance of one of them, as dark skinned as she and doffing a helmet in exchange for a broad-brimmed hat that sat at a precise angle on his head, she had a pretty good idea.

"That's a Ghurka," Katara whispered.

"Those are the Coordinator's men," Azula confirmed.

"What are they doing here?" Aang asked.

"They live here," Katara said with a shake of her head.

"No, Anil is right. The army only comes into the city during riots or if somebody needs to die... or disappear," Azula said. She leaned to the corner once more. "...from the looks of things, they're looking for somebody. We have to assume that it's us."

"How?" Katara asked. "Nobody knows who we are!"

"If there's two things that Azul creates in droves, it's lethal wildlife and spies," Azula said with a scowl. She glanced behind then, to an alley which was all of three feet wide between two buildings. "We have to go around."

"Are you sure we can't just cross the street really fast?" Aang asked.

Katara shook her head. "It's really easy to spot something that's running. Even I know that."

"We go around, or we don't go at all," Azula said. Aang gave a nod, after what was at least a moment's consideration. At least, for all his insane choice of romantic interest, he wasn't giving up the use of his brain for it. And, story of the last few months, they found themselves squeezing into a dirty crevasse to avoid the attention of people trying to kill them.

Only now, Katara had to do it while sweaty.

There was no justice in the universe.

---

"Well... I'm guessing that isn't her," Malu said, staring at the conflagration before her.

"Or at least, I hope it isn't her," Sokka agreed. Nila just watched the factory that burned, its flames reaching up and driving against the heat which was actually much more like the Fire Nation he remembered from his brief and unpleasant stay during the Winter Solstice. Of course, it also meant that the people had to form a bucket brigade instead of just letting the regular downpours do the fire-fighting for them. And this wasn't the only fire today. The dry and the heat weren't wholly blessings, it seemed.

"If it even was the one we seek, she would not be amenable to speaking with strangers now," Nila pointed out quietly, her voice pitched low so that her accent was less apparent. She sighed, and pulled the Tribesman and the airbender away from the blaze, even as those who worked there, and in the buildings surrounding it, fought to contain the blaze with water, or firebending, or whatever they had on hand. A part of Sokka felt for them, he really did. Fires didn't care who they burned, after all.

"Well, we can look on the bright side," Malu said. "We didn't get robbed today. Nobody even held a knife to my neck!"

"You say that like it's some sort of grand achievement," Sokka said.

"For her, it seems to be," Nila murmured with a smirk of her own.

"That's not funny," Malu muttered darkly.

"It kinda is," Sokka said. The airbender girl shot him a look which was a legitimate glare, letting him know how thin the ice he was standing upon was.

"The sun would be setting soon," Nila said, and she was answered by the loud grumbling of Sokka's stomach. "Our portable clock has warned us as much."

"I'm used to days being a lot shorter than this at this time of year," Sokka said.

"And I'm used to 'em being a lot longer," Malu agreed.

"Twelve hours of light is all you get in the Fire Nation or Si Wong. The former, if you're lucky, the latter, if you're not," Nila pointed out. From the way that the sky was turning red, they were running out.

"Well, better to get off the streets before the smog comes up," Sokka said.

"I've got a question," Malu said, her hand raised as though she were in a classroom instead of the most deadly city on Earth, bar maybe the Royal Palace in Caldera City. "Doesn't it seem like somebody constantly knows our moves before we do?"

"You believe that we are being spied upon?" Nila asked. Malu nodded. "Good. Then you are finally learning."

"But... why would they? I mean, wouldn't that Azul guy want whats-his-scar out of the Burning Throne?"

"Only because he would want himself upon it," Nila pointed out. "And barring that, he prefers the status quo, as that status quo favors him with a great many luxuries and freedoms."

"I never knew you were into politics," Sokka said.

"I listen," Nila said defensively. "Even when the subject matter is irrelevant, I listen."

"So the big question is, who's got their ear to our door?"

"I bet it's that innkeeper," Malu said, her jaw set. Sokka gave her a 'continue' gesture. "He's got shifty eyes."

"So you suspect the owner of our accommodations because of a facial feature? Would you suspect... for example, 'Li' of heinous evil were his burn plain upon is face rather than hidden under his hair?" Nila asked.

"I'm just saying," Malu muttered. "There's something about that guy that isn't what he claims. I know he's been paying closer attention to us than most of the others under that roof."

Nila mulled over that. "Perhaps," was all she said to it, though.

"I just can't wait until we get something to eat," Sokka said. "I thought this place was the land of spicy-meats. Instead, it's the land of noodles and shame."

"Meat is expensive, and we live with the poor," Malu pointed out.

"We got lots of money!" Sokka complained.

"And ten thousand thanks for shouting that in a city where even the cobbles want to murder and rob you," Nila said, clouting Sokka in the shoulder as she did.

"Right. Sorry."

"Do you think the others had more luck?"

"We must assume that they didn't," Nila said.

"No we shouldn't. We're supposed to be upbeat and happy, and let the happy bring more happy to us," Malu said. "I mean... yeah, we've had a few setbacks, but that's not going to stand in our way forever, right?"

Sokka and Nila shared a concerned look.

"...right?"

Sokka didn't have the heart to tell her, just how much the universe loved to kick them while they were down. So he let them finish the walk back toward the inn with silence. He'd almost made it back when a rare civilian bumped into him rounding a corner. "Hey, watch where you're going!" the man snapped.

"Hey, I got every right to be here," Sokka said, his arms spread.

The man just shot a baleful look at Sokka, and continued on. Sokka cast a thumb over his shoulder, and shook his head in wonder. "There is a level of ethnic tension in Azul, as you might imagine. You look like a Yubokamin, after all," the airbender pointed out.

"...great," Sokka said. "Even in the place I fit in perfectly in disguise, I still get kicked down."

"Hah. Were we on the other side of this landmass, I would be hung from a rafter as soon as seen," the Si Wongi amongst them said, once again pointing to bright green eyes with tattooed hands. She gave her head one final shake, and raked at the hair which still didn't reach her shoulders, before pushing open the door to the Drunken Dragon.

The inner door opened as they were just closing the outer, and thus Sokka got shoved into the two women from the shock and force of it. On the other side of it, the dark, expressive face of Dara blinked a few times in surprise at them, before her usual toothy grin returned into place. "Well, another day sees you home safe and sound! I take it y'haven't taken to the roofs like so many others?"

"...no. Why would we?" Malu asked.

"Well, it's sunny and warm, for one thing," she said, then shook her head. "But how I ramble on. Shake off y'r boots and come on in. I've got something roasting that might put a bit of meat on the skinny one's bones," Dara said as she turned to head into the kitchen.

"Why would I need more bulk on my frame?" Nila asked.

"I was talking about t' pretty one," Dara said over her shoulder as she pushed through the door. As it swung, though, Sokka could see that the innkeeper was, indeed, looking at them. In that split second he was visible through the swinging of the door, his dark eyes... not weighing or waiting. Just noting.

"...you know? Maybe we should take lunch when we're all back safe and sound," Sokka said.

"I have that impression as well," Nila agreed.

The hairs were starting to stand up on the back of Sokka's neck, even as he went up the stairs to where their room was situated. "...I seriously don't like this," Malu whispered.

"Then you are amongst august company," Nila pointed out. The others were going about their business, such as they could in the four-story boarding house, but there was something in the air. Something besides massive amounts of pollution and at least a little vitriolic acid. The Tribesman and the Si Wongi shared a look as her hand fell on the door. Tension, at its highest and utmost. And there wasn't a damned thing they could do about it.

"...Last time I was this nervous there were four hundred firebenders combing a forest for me," Malu noted.

Sokka nodded, and he reached for the spot where Space Sword was concealed under baggy clothing. Truth told, he still felt a little naked without his boomerang at his back, but that would as much as scream 'hey, I'm a Water Tribesman' to anybody who so much as looked at him. For all Zuko claimed that Sokka was advancing remarkably as a swordsman – utterly unbelievably, Zuko had said – the ebon edge didn't give him nearly the same level of comfort that a pound of honed, Tribal Steel could.

Nila opened the door, reaching even then for the explosive lemon she kept perilously close to her groin. And when the three of them barged into their room... they found nothing at all out of the ordinary.

"I think we're starting to get paranoid," Sokka said.

"I wouldn't be so confident of our safety. Not while we are on this side of the continent," Malu said, nevertheless. Nila bee-lined for the wardrobe that secreted her rifle, checking to make sure that it was still intact and untampered with. Honestly, she babied that thing more than most new-fathers babied their daughters.

"Can I give a suggestion, just off the top of my head?" Malu asked.

"Could we stop you?" Sokka asked.

"...short of shooting you?" Nila finished.

"Don't do that again. It's creepy," Malu said. "I'm thinking that we should find a new boarding house. This place has a feeling of dead-wrong now, and it didn't feel that way before. We should pull up stakes and run while the running's good.

"That is elementary," Nila said. "But if we flee with reckless haste, then we abandon the others to whatever fate, real or imagined, that we have skirted."

"So we wait until nightfall, when everybody gets back, and then run like somebody set our backs on fire," Malu clarified. She gave a nod, then a glance to the window. "It's good... I kinda thought that I was the only one getting creeped out."

"Hardly the only," Sokka muttered. He moved to Malu's side, looking out into the reddening light that dropped suddenly right after suppertime here in the Fire Nation. From this perspective, he could just barely see people on a lower rooftop, across the street. And when he did, he raised an eyebrow. "Nila?" he asked.

"What?"

"Why are the people on that roof across the street naked?" he asked. Nila stared at him like he'd grown a new head, and then barged to Malu's side to see what Sokka had seen; that there was a group that amounted to two families, sunning themselves in the day's last rays, with nary a stitch upon them. Nila shook her head and grumbled.

"Of course, it would stand to reason," she said. "The Fire Nationals receive little enough sun; when it does make appearance, they intend to enjoy it to its utmost. And that would, apparently, require nudity."

"I thought all Fire Nationals were prudes," Sokka muttered, taking in the scene nonchalantly until Nila gave him a prod. As though he were only staring at the teenaged daughter.

"I'm getting a feeling that Zuk... Li and Azula are hardly typical specimens of a National," Malu said. She shook her head. "That's just crazy. They could get a sunburn like that! In a place you really don't want to get a sunburn!"

"The ankles?" Nila asked, glancing down toward her own boots.

"...there too, I guess," Malu said. Sokka rolled his eyes and turned.

And saw that there was one more person in the room than there should have been. The intruder, slender but obviously wiry rather than spindly, had some sort of hooked stick, which he immediately thrust toward Sokka, probably intending on tearing flesh from bone, or at least snarling clothing hopelessly. It was an action without thought to kip aside, and tear Space Sword from its hiding place, bringing it up and through that catching-pole, the arc of the swing continuing up and toward the man's face. It got no deeper than an inch, but drew that inch from cheek to cheek, and through the nose that separated them.

The man's scream of surprise – and pain – caused an explosion of movement. The door slammed open, and a man in thick, utilitarian armor was standing in the doorway. He opened his mouth to say something, only to be beaned in the head by a lemon... which detonated an instant later. Sokka clapped his hand over his eyes and nose, and dove blind for the bag which held those few things he couldn't replace – his boomerang chief amongst them. He dove out of the stinging, stinking gas to the window, only to find upon opening his eyes that Nila had drop-kicked the man back into the hallway, and used the fact that she was now on the floor to pull her rifle out of its hiding place, before rolling to her feet and backing toward those who had gone before her.

"This is bad! This is really bad!" Malu said. She then twisted and slammed a hand toward the window. Despite not actually touching it, the glass exploded outward, probably burst by a blast of air shaped to detonate the portal from its moorings. "Drop everything and run!" Malu shouted.

She was the first one to bound across the level of the roofs, to the one which was a story lower next door. She got only half way there when a black streak zipped out of a window across the street, and impaled through her calf, she too surprised by its unexpected existence to ward it. As such, it was unelegantly and painfully that Malu slammed to a rolling stop on the next roof.

"Don't just stand there! Help her!" Nila shouted. Sokka gave a nod, and jumped through the window himself. A second later, behind him, there was another bang, another of Nila's 'grenades' going off and blinding somebody. The impact of jumping down a story hurt his knees more than he'd have thought; of course, it probably didn't help that he had people like Aang and Zuko, who each seemed to have springs for calves, as his references. He nevertheless rolled to a stop somewhat less brutally than Malu did. The airbender was pulling herself slowly to a stunned sit, before she let out a groan of agony and reached toward the arrow which had snapped off part-way, yet was still clean through her leg.

"No, don't touch it! You'll just make it bleed faster," Sokka said as he quickly ducked under the side with the arrow, and pulled her to her feet. They quickly hobbled past the low wall that the downward stairs made, just an instant before the thap-thap-thaprattle of other arrows either snapping against the masonry, or skittering off if struck shallowly enough.

"Take it out take it out take it out take it out," Malu was saying in litany.

"Don't touch it!" Sokka snapped. He heard a fresh bang, followed by Si Wongi cursing. He looked to the window behind and above them, and saw Nila go through it. Backward. She landed flat on her back, and for a second that lasted a thousand years, she was utterly still and silent at the end of it. Only after his initial surge of panic, did her limbs start to pull in, and her face form a rictus of pain and incoherence. There was a metallic clatter nearby, and Sokka could see the tines of a hook pulled tight against the lip of the roof. With a growl, he slashed forward at it, the momentum carrying him straight to the edge. Therefore, he had the mixed pleasure and dread of watching a man fall three stories off of his sundered line. He landed a great deal less gently than Nila had.

He turned, to see another man much like him, raising something toward him. He flinched back, but it wasn't nearly enough to clear the path of the arrow, which slammed into his sword-arm's shoulder, causing him to drop Space Sword from suddenly numb fingers. He still scooped it up as quick as he could with his left hand; one was as good as the other for him. He backed away, an arrow sticking out of his chest – the upper right portion of it, at any rate – and fell back toward Malu, as there were more metallic clanks. And more sounds of approach. There was a last thud, of somebody landing with greater grace than any of the teenagers, and then the hiss of metal being pulled from scabbard. Sokka looked 'round the corner, to where Nila was still on her back, barely conscious. There was a man there, his face painted ghoulish red, his eyes stark and severe.

"If you value your friend's life, you'd best drop the sword," the soldier said, pressing his own edge to Nila's throat to prove his point. The shuffling of people moving continued to mount, until Sokka could see others, as red-painted as the first, surrounding they three. All but that first had a bow drawn, an arrow directed straight into somebody's heart, if they felt a need to release.

Malu's eyes were tearing up for terror, but Sokka... he just let out a sigh, even with the pain of having an impaled clavicle. "What do we do?" Malu asked, her voice tiny.

"...I hate getting captured," Sokka muttered. And then, he let the sword clatter to the rooftop.

---

"What? What's taking so long?" Toph asked at Zuko's back. But he remained silent. "Come on, Li, this isn't funny anymore."

"Just stay quiet for a second," Zuko said, as he watched the knot of Yu Yan mercenaries throw the hog-tied Tribesman onto the street in front of the array of the Coordinator's men who'd gathered just outside the Drunken Dragon. The words that each said to the other were lost to distance, but just seeing it was enough to tell Zuko everything that needed saying.

"Don't tell me that we're going to have to get into another scrap," Toph said, sounding somewhat begrudging. "...I think I pulled something beating down all those criminals back there."

"No, we're not," Zuko said.

"You don't sound good. What do you see, Li?" Toph demanded.

"They've got Sokka, his woman, and Mina," Zuko whispered.

"What?" she shouted.

"What part of 'stay quiet' don't you understand?" Zuko whispered harshly in answer to that.

"We've gotta stop 'em," Toph said, trying to surge past Zuko. But for all Toph was stronger than she looked, she was still a thirteen year old girl, and as such, lacked the leverage that Zuko could muster. "Hey! Let me go, you butt-hole!"

"Toph listen to me," Zuko said directly into her ear. "You can't see what I see. There are fifty Yu Yan watching this street for somebody to try. The Coordinator has this entire neighborhood cordoned off and set in perimeter. If we try to rescue them, we'll just get captured like they did, and then Azula and the others are in real trouble."

Toph gave a last struggle, but it was probably purely symbolic, before she thrust a hand into her pocket, and pulled out something which looked like a squishy shard of metal. "I can blind 'em, and make off with them in the confusion."

"The Yu Yan are trained to fight blind," Zuko said, turning her to face him. "So are the Ghurkas. We can't win this one."

"We should still try!" Toph snapped at him.

"Sometimes doing the wrong thing is a lot worse than doing nothing at all," Zuko told her, neatly inverting what Aang so often said, because in this circumstance, it was absolutely true. "We can hide now, survive, and rescue them later. This isn't surrender, it's just a tactical retreat."

"Retreat. Yeah," Toph said, not sounding very happy with it all. But less than an outright loss. Her blind eyes were locked around her feet, where they were hidden inside partial shoes. "...is anybody watching us?"

Zuko gave a glance around. "No," he said, and braced himself. Because of that, he wasn't taken by surprise when the blind earthbender opened the alleyway under them, and dropped them into a cellar.

---

Aang squinted at the sight before him. The sun wouldn't be up much longer, but unless those guys were everywhere on the path from here to the Drunken Dragon, then they'd be fine to get back. And the whistle that sounded, first from one factory in the distance, and then a plethora more, sounded the end of one shift of the work-day, and summoned forth the next. After all, unlike Ba Sing Se, the city of Azul, it seemed, never allowed itself to sleep.

"I don't like the way this smells," Katara said.

"Then you obviously haven't gotten nearly used enough to Azul," Azula pointed out. "Everything stinks in this city."

"I was referring to the fact that what's-his-face's soldiers are in the streets... streets which are otherwise mostly abandoned," Katara corrected.

"I don't think that the Coordinator, for all his pull, could empty his city so quietly," Azula pointed out.

"Then where is everybody?" Aang asked, as the first significant knots of people they'd seen all day began to emerge, blinking, from the factories and bask in the sunlight and warmth.

"Likely sunning themselves for all they're worth," Azula said with a dismissing wave of her hand. "It's probably the reason why Di Huo has eclipsed Ember Island as a vacation spot for the Embiar. For a lot of my people, it's been a long time since we saw the sun."

"This whole thing's got me a little confused, honestly," Katara said. "Why does it always rain in the Fire Nation? Why doesn't it rain in the East?"

"And why's it so cold here in the dead of Fire Nation summer?" Azula added, a frown on her face.

"This isn't cold."

"It is for summer," Azula said. The crowds grew larger as they pressed toward the textile factory that had been provided by Zuko and Sokka's reconnaissance from the days before.

"I... might have an answer for that," Aang said.

Both young women turned to him, obviously wanting him to go on but not slow down from their advance.

"Azula, how's the Fire Nation supposed to be? From the other times you remember it?" Aang asked.

"Bright, sunny, hot, and dry," Azula rattled off easily.

"And what do you remember about your time in the East... you went to the East back then, didn't you?"

"Of course I did; I had to chase after you and my brother," Azula shook her head. "Wet, cold, dreary and..." she trailed off.

"...did the world just trade weather from one continent to the other?" Katara asked.

"No, not just that," Aang said, now having to weave through the people who were very quickly making their ways home. There were very few hours of daylight left, but no doubt they wanted to enjoy what had been stolen from them by having to work indoors. "The big problem with the world, with reality itself, is Imbalance, with both big and little 'I'. The world's been trying to correct that any way it could. Rain in the Fire Nation, drought in the Earth Kingdoms. But it's never enough."

"Then why is it so frigid?" Azula asked, her tone still guarded.

"It's not frigid," Katara noted, sweating profusely.

"Because Imbalance is loose," Aang said. "There's no balancing act anymore. Now, it's all sliding down. It's probably cold everywhere," he said, not particularly happy that he had to put to air the thoughts which had plagued him since their run-in with Agni. "...and it's probably going to get worse."

"So it'll be comfortable here? Great," Katara said.

"Don't be ignorant," Azula said unkindly, but there was a concern to her tone and to her face that she probably wouldn't admit to having. After all, Azula was many things but sensitive was not one of them. Or at least, she didn't want anybody to know she was sensitive; to those she cared about, there was nothing more important. That was why Ty Lee, the acrobat who would either later become an airbender or possibly was always the Avatar, meant so much to her. Why one of her could never forgive herself for letting harm come to the girl, and why the other would rather die than keep fighting her.

The streets were already starting to empty somewhat, not completely but thinning greatly. Thus, it was far easier to actually reach the outside of the textile mill which sat beside a channel that ran foul-smelling and oily water toward the bay. Aang had a fairly good notion that if he tried to bend that water, it wouldn't work quite right. Probably because it was only about half actually water.

"So you remember who we're looking for?" Katara asked.

"...not really," Aang admitted.

"I do. That's all that matters," Azula said. The waterbender gave her a bit of a stink-eye, but proceeded no further than that. It was for the best; Aang didn't relish the notion of having to keep the peace inside his own little gang, added to the problems of trying to solve the problems of the world, the Spirit World, and existence itself. It was a daunting mess, and he wasn't sure how he was going to balance it all if push came to shove.

Thus, Aang was left somewhat baffled when the two women combed the workers – mostly women – who exited the mill, feeding some sort of stiff paper cards into a pneumatic punch as they went. As much as he wanted to help, lend his eyes to scrutinizing those who streamed past, his own gaze ended up on Azula time and time again.

Gods help him, but this really wasn't a good time to be a hormonal teenager. And he really wasn't helped by the fact that Azula was sculpted like some sort of deity figure.

"Stop staring at me," Azula said, tone distracted, as she continued to keep her gaze sternly away from him. How had she even known?

"I wasn't..." Aang began.

"Yeah, stop it. It's weird," Katara added, likewise not even looking in his direction.

Did women have eyes in the back of their heads or something?

Azula broke Aang's baffled ponderance with a quiet grunt, then a nod toward somebody in particular. Katara answered that nod with one of her own, and the two moved forward to intercept the woman as she moved with the crowd down one street, the Avatar trailing behind the three women involved like a lost puppy. It didn't help that, for all intents and purposes, he had about as much agency as one in this instance. There were a lot of problems that he could solve as the Avatar, but right now, any attempt to do that would result in blood, fire, screaming, and scowls of disapproval from Azula.

"Excuse me? 'Did you drop your spool'?" Katara asked the woman as they approached. She locked rigid for a moment, then cast a glance back at those who followed her. She was of a darker complexion, somewhere between that of Azula and Katara, and her eyes were a flat gray much like Aang's.

"No. I keep a close eye on those things. You must have me mistaken with somebody else," the woman said, her tones quiet and clipped. Azula, though, got a suspicious look, and grabbed the woman's shirt. The woman's face pulled into a rictus, one of alarm rather than confusion, and that expression didn't change as Azula leaned in to sniff at the woman's clothing.

"Smoke," she said. "You work at the other factory, the one that burned this morning."

"I work wherever there's a check..." the woman claimed.

"Most people would take their place of employment burning to the ground as a chance to go home," Katara noted.

"Well, things aren't like up in the hills; if you don't work, you don't get to sleep where the smog won't choke you," the woman claimed.

"You went from there, to here," Azula said. She shook her head, then, "and you didn't do it for money."

"I..." she began.

"Stop. Now," Azula said. "We know who you are. And we know what you can offer, so stop this dancing around and admit it."

The woman gave a glance, to the alleys, then to the street. "Would it kill you to be a bit more discrete?" the Seamstress hissed at them.

"Discretion is a luxury that is in very short supply these days," Azula said.

"It's not a luxury, it's a necessity every bit as much as food or shelter," the Seamstress said. She nodded briskly ahead of her. "Follow me. We can at least get in before the smog comes."

"We've got a place you can stay for one night," Katara pointed out.

"No, you don't," she said. She continued to look around, but her strides meant that they either had to keep up, navigating through the exhausted sea of working women, or be left behind and out of the conversation entirely. "The Spider's men have been combing the streets since yesterday. He knows that somebody important is trying to hide in his city. And he doesn't like it when other people intrude on his territory."

"We saw them earlier this afternoon," Azula said. "We won't be staying in the city long."

"Too long already if you've found me."

"Who do you work for, anyway?" Katara asked, as both she and Aang were somewhat in the dark as to what this woman's agenda really was.

"Two textile companies, three trading houses, and a spy network as old as the Monolith. Which would be par for the course for any Azuli worth the name," the Seamstress pointed out, but she didn't crack the smirk that the almost-joke warranted. "The question you should be asking is 'has the Spider been following us?' And I think I know the answer to that."

"Of course he hasn't," Aang said. "Who's the Spider? Is he some sort of criminal?"

"He's the Coordinator," Azula said. "...apparently."

"Why do they call him the spider? That doesn't seem a very noble title," Katara asked.

Whatever answer the Seamstress was going to give was cut off by a knife slamming into her side and digging in about an inch. It was enough to cause her to flinch back and let out a clipped scream of shock and pain. The crowd instantly let out a scream of pandemonium of itself, and tried to flee in every direction.

"Where did that come f–" Azula began. Then, a boot from a man leaping down from a second-story window caught her in the face and knocked her sprawling to the street. Aang twisted into instant firebending, a blast of force which kept the man from landing with any grace and sent him rolling down the street. Azula, thought, struggled to get back up, her eyes slightly bleary. She shook her head, and looked at Aang. No, passed Aang. Her eyes widened, and she slashed forward with a chop of flames that shifted from blue at their origin to ruddy scarlet at their tip, one that Aang had to lean aside from so it didn't cut him in half on its way to send another pair of men in garish, purple-and-red armor scattering before it. Instead of helmets, they had some sort of rubber mask that hid their features entirely, save for glass lenses over their eyes. How somebody managed to stay inconspicuous in those outfits utterly beggared the imagination of the Avatar.

But he didn't stay confounded long.

The firebending forms hammered ruthlessly into his head by Azula were at hand in an instant; after all, he couldn't use any other without instantly drawing attention to the fact that the Avatar was both still alive, and completely surrounded. He twisted low, into a new blast of explosive force at one of the soldiers, but this time, before it landed a telling blow, the soldier twisted fire into a cutting arc, one that deflected the power of the explosion straight up into the sky, before twisting hard, and letting the arc lash out toward the Seamstress and Katara.

If there was one good thing about airbending, it was that sometimes, it could be very subtle; it wasn't easy, but he repositioned himself to snap that lash before it burned the Water Tribesman who was at the arrow-feathered older woman. Because of that, he was in the perfect position to get a sap crack against the back of his head. He twisted with it; it hurt, but it didn't drop him directly into unconsciousness as the bearer had probably hoped. Thus, Aang was able to spin an axe-kick of fire toward him, slamming him into the ground with its force. It wasn't until after he finished that he considered that the axe-kick was a good way to kill somebody. That he still breathed and looked like he was slowly going to retake his footing didn't negate the fact that Aang, the Air Nomad, a pacifist from a peaceful time... almost killed somebody.

And he didn't have time to think about it.

Azula pushed herself up to her feet, but before she even rose from a kneel, she had to ward off a man with some sort of catch-pole. She stripped it past her, and sent her fist into the man's relatively armored throat. She turned with the pole, probably to throw it at somebody, but was interrupted when a door exploded outward in shards, followed by a fresh explosion that blasted into Azula's back and propelled her to the other side of the street, bashing her head against a lamp as she did so.

Still, groggy and singed or not, she was trying to get to her feet. Aang got exactly one step toward Azula to try to get her moving again, when there was a sound of shattering glass, and a thick white smoke began to rise up in a billow from where it'd landed. Another crash, and another cloud, cutting Aang off from Azula. A third arced down from the roof of a warehouse opposite the housing, and Aang had to hurl himself at it to keep it from bursting right at Katara's feet. He could already feel himself start to tear up involuntarily from the wisps that reached him from that distance, and those drifting from the top of the bottle. He set it down, but his efforts seemed for naught, because his rise was cut off by somebody searing flame toward Katara.

A bender who couldn't bend was in a rough situation, and Aang could only do so much. He slipped to the other side of them, hoping against hope that Azula would be alright on her own. The crowds had erupted into outright panic, now, and those that had been too close to the glass bottles that fell earlier were now on their hands and knees, crawling away from it, coughing and weeping from badly irritated eyes. Aang warded the blast of fire up; the second one, which was intended to capitalize on a predictable defense, had to be slammed into the wall of the warehouse out of sheer reflex. Azula always said that reflexes were something that were hard to hone, but he had reflexes enough to share.

The next strike was one from the other side of the veil of acrid fog. Azula stumbled backward, rolling to a halt, unsteadily on her feet with her fists out before her even as her eyes leaked profusely for the gas. Those eyes looked almost as glassy as the vials containing the vile substance. She wasn't doing well.

"Azula, we need to..." Aang began, but was clobbered in the face by what felt like a brick. Katara shifted her attention from the bleeding woman to the bleeding Avatar.

"Aang! Are you al- gack!" Katara too found herself cut off, but this was by a strap of leather that looped over her head, and pulled against her open mouth, gagging her, even as she was heaved over a man in armor's shoulder and slammed head-first into the street. Aang pushed himself up.

"Stay away from my friends!" He shouted, as white began to intrude on his vision.

His eyes... no. No! Hold it off! DON'T DO THIS!

The effort to keep from slipping into the unbridled Avatar State in this moment and in this place was monumental, all-consuming, and, sadly, not instantaneous. The distraction that pushing that white, those whispers away probably lasted for all of a second and a half as he stood unsteadily, fire over his fists... but a lot could happen in a second and a half.

Like a hard-soled boot appearing out of the fog, directed at a drop-kick directly at the side of Aang's face. The whiteness fled, but only because Aang was sent sprawling by the blow, too stunned to be angry. He pushed himself up, and when he breathed out, the breath came out wet. He felt, through a sense of tremor in the ground, that somebody was approaching him, even as the fog rolled to him and burned his eyes and throat. If he'd been half-way cogent at least, he would have subtly blown it away.

Aang lashed out explosively as he tried to rise, but his balance wasn't in after that brutal blow which probably left a boot-print on his face. The blast of flame went wide. Azula, who'd been barely warding off the blows of the three firebenders who had chosen to square against her, finally succumbed as the drop-kicker slid past Aang and drove a haymaker over hardened knuckles directly into the back of Azula's head. She dropped like a sack. Aang almost did exactly like her, save the loss of consciousness thing. He tried to see how many there were, but with the horrible sting of that gas in his eyes, it was quickly becoming lost in the water of involuntary tears. Aang could only see shapes. Purple and red shapes. Other shapes curled up on the ground, trying to protect themselves. And the people that Aang cared about were only shapes now as well. His head was spinning, his face hurt like anything, and his body felt leaden. But he got to his feet, slowly as he did. He'd have to... to take them all on.

In his current state of mind – addled – he actually thought he might pull it off.

That thought was quickly dispelled when just one of the three who'd been holding off Azula sent out a blast of flame. Aang tried to ward it, but that was beyond him at the moment. He stumbled back, before his balance, compromised by the repeated head-blows, gave out, and he tipped back to the pavers, with enough force that he was finally given an unconsciousness which was about as big a problem as could exist, albeit one that Aang was in no position to rectify.

Neither was he the fact that his headband had come off after the first face-kick, and now lay in a useless loop on the street.

---

"What does it mean?" Hisui asked the dark-skinned Easterner, who sat on the floor of his cell, the only motion he bothered to give the shifting of his chest. "I know you know something I don't. Where did those people go?"

If she didn't think that he might make a break for it when she opened the cage, she would have, just so she could shake him until answers fell out. The Si Wongi blinked, but remained silent.

"Look, you've got to know that this isn't personal," she said, imploring him. "People are missing. They might even be dying, and you're just going to sit there and let it happen, when I know you can help them?"

"You can't," the Si Wongi said, his eyes still glassy and distant.

"I've trained my entire life to keep the spirits at bay. I've learned under the Fire Sages since I was three! Tell me what's doing this!" Hisui shouted at him.

"...I don't wish to kill you," the Si Wongi prisoner said, before swallowing against the choker that locked his shamanic abilities away.

"Fat chance of that happening," Hisui muttered. "You know, and I'm going to find out, so I can stop it."

"You can't," he repeated, a certainty in his vague and ephemeral voice. "... you don't have the eyes to see. Don't have the hands to strike. They would kill you, and it... it would be my fault," he said with a slow nod. A few more blinks, then he finally turned to the pale shaman. "When you see it, you will know. And when you know, run. Or die. I don't want you to die."

"...what are you talking about?" Hisui asked. "A shaman can face down any spirit that exists. And I'm a pretty good one."

"And if your enemy doesn't... doesn't exist?" he asked, his words slurring enough that even he knew he had to repeat himself.

"Then there's no problem," Hisui said, but as she turned toward the door, a notion hit her. Talking to this guy was like trying to play tag with an Azuli assassin. But there were things that you could focus on, like... "This thing you say will kill me? Does it exist, or doesn't it?"

Wait for it.

"Yes," the Si Wongi answered, still watching her, after a fashion.

"Something can't exist and not exist at the same time. That's impossible," Hisui pointed out.

"Yes. It is," the Si Wongi agreed. Then he shook his head. "Even... even when It isn't."

Hisui stood, her back to the door. "Is it a spirit?"

"Yes."

"Which stands in some sort of state between existing and not?"

"Yes."

"And why would it want to kill me?" she asked.

"It wants to eat you. It's so hungry. It will eat everything... it's already eaten the heart..." he trailed off, and fell silent, his eyes drifting down to where the bars plunged under the stone, probably at the cracks that the mason's left when they cut the holes. Hisui wished she was annoyed. That she could dismiss all of this as pointless hokum and paranoia. But just as he'd said, she knew what she felt, and it... it didn't feel right at all.

But, fortunately for Hisui, she also didn't feel a heartbeat begin, as a small stone of jade rolled against gravity out of the bag which held it, a mile away in the Dragon Bone Catacombs. The Jade Toe glowed ever so faintly, only noticeable because it was slightly less black than the room around it. The heart at its center, the essence of what it was, it beat, and it waited. Destiny could be a funny thing.

---

The door was thrown open, and Malu was pushed roughly forward; as one of her legs still had an arrow through it, she had little recourse but to fall onto her face, as her hands were still tied behind her back. A few seconds later, Sokka and Nila were given much the same treatment, though those two managed to soften the blow by turning sideways as they fell. Malu wormed her way up to a kneel, trying to shake the stun from her head and the stars from her sight. "What's going on?" Malu asked.

"Mawu? Id dad oo?" Katara's voice came from a form whom Malu now noticed, one of four with bags over their heads. One was rail-slender, and had hand-covering manacles on. Aang? That was not good. The next after Katara, a feminine form built for strength. The last was a stranger, with a more mature and world-worn posture.

"Katara?" Malu asked, then looked to the others, who were likewise forcing themselves slowly up, while others passed their possessions to a table that sat in the room. It wasn't a very large room, but it managed to impose nonetheless. Besides the soldiers, there was one other, and he looked nothing the soldier.

He was older, his hair greying from his temples and running like a fall of salt down his fluffy beard. Eyes, lined for age, flicked toward those who were presented to him, as he continued to eat some sort of cooked fowl. "So these are the intruders on my realm?" he asked.

"And their personal effects," the soldier said, setting down Nila's rifle last. He blinked at it a few times, and wiped his mouth with a napkin, rising up to stand on bare feet and rounding his table. "May I ask your orders, my lord?"

"In time," their master, obvious from his demeanor and his carriage, said with a dismissive flick of the hand. He picked up the rifle, and looked it over.

"Put that down, you..." Nila began, and was slapped upside the face for her trouble. Sokka let out a growl, and lunged, only to get kicked in the stomach. The master didn't so much as bat an eyelash at what happened below.

"...wh...who are you?" Malu was the one to ask.

He turned toward her, still holding Nila's weapon. "Really? I had thought my face would be all of the introduction that I needed, especially to one of my race," he said. Even his voice seemed placid and calm, for all its depth and timbre. But it was the eyes that held Malu's attention. Someone said, long ago, that the eyes were the portal to the depths of the soul. If that were the case, then whoever this man was... he was practically empty. "But that assumption was probably premature, and you could well come from Whalesh stock," he shook his head. "For all the virtue of their monotheism in this world of mass and indiscriminate worship, they just had to be heretics. But dinner is no time to speak of religion," he said turning back toward the table, and beginning to stare down its sights at a window. "I am the Coordinator, and at this moment, your lives are in my hand."

"...my leg really hurts," Malu murmured despite herself.

"Good," he said, still staring down Nila's weapon. He then tilted it and started to manipulate it's mechanism. "Pain is the sensation of weakness leaving the body. You can either surmount pain, or succumb to it, and it is a very good guide to the nature of a man," he took a step toward them, finally levering open the firing mechanism. "You can talk to a fellow for a decade, on every subject and topic... but pain has a way of cutting to the truths that most matter," he paused, and pulled one of the paper shells from Nila's stolen bag. He idly unwrapped it until he saw its nature, and nicked its top off with a knife which he seemed to produce from thin air, before shoving that bullet into place.

He nodded. "Extraordinary. The mechanism holds the shell in the perfect spot to avoid misfires," he then looked up at the Si Wongi on the floor. "Where did you find this masterpiece?"

"I built it," Nila said direly, spitting out a dribble of blood from her split lip.

"I see," he said. "The sighting is of most interest. How precise a weapon is this?" he asked.

"Very," Nila answered. He raised the gun to his shoulder, looking down it at a pillar in the corner of the room.

Then, he swung the gun toward the last bag-headed person in the room, and let the gun emit a terrible bang, a cloud of gray smoke, and screams from everybody capable of them. Including Sokka, Malu noted. The red splat slammed into the wall behind the woman, and she tipped over forward, the only sound coming from her being fading, pained and anguished moans. "I see you speak truly," he said. "Remove the bags. Not hers. She deserves to die with the anonymity that she lived."

"Zhe'z zdill alaib!" Katara shouted past what had to be a gag.

He nodded. "Possibly, though doubtless not for long," and fell silent until the bags were pulled from Katara, from Azula, and from Aang. And showed the blue arrow there to everybody who cared to look. "And there he is, in his very person. To think that I would play host to the Avatar himself," he said, setting the rifle aside, and pulling up a sort of scarf from a chair which had sat unused for the entire conversation. Ungently, he tied it around the boy's brow, tucking it back so that it formed something of a turban that lay low across Aang's brows. "And that's not something I feel like announcing to the world. Not yet, anyway," he turned away.

"Why ah oo ooin' yiz?" Aang said around his gag.

"Another precaution, child; I know that you think your vaunted 'state' can give you the power to break your bonds at any time you please. If you do that, you will instantly find the lives of your companions forfeit. I might not be able to stop you... but I have a fair notion that you are capable of stopping you."

"What... do you want... from us?" Sokka asked, still recovering from the kick he'd received to stop his shouting of alarm after the wanton murder that happened right before Malu's eyes.

"The complete set," he said with a smirk. He stooped down in front of Azula, and she glared at him. Her gag, unlike those for Aang and Katara, was made of iron and rubber; not something that she could burn. "After all, one royal sibling just doesn't have the same aesthetic. They truly must be paired."

"Shall we take them to their rooms, my lord?" the soldier asked.

"Hrm? On, no, not quite yet," he said with a dismissive wave. He turned to Aang. "I must warn you, if you do anything to reveal..." he tapped the middle of Aang's brow with a fingertip, "...through action, word, or omission, then anybody whom you reveal it to will have to die. Simplest way to keep a secret, after all."

"C...Coordinator, are you saying..." the most verbose of the soldiers asked, and was cut off when a garrote wire looped over his head and pulled taut. Malu let out a squeak of terror, noting that the other six who were in the room had also, somehow without Malu – or anybody – noticing, been dispatched. The young man with the cold grey eyes gave Azul a nod before twisting his garrote one final time, and silently setting the soldier onto the floor.

"There. The circle is closed. And if I cannot trust my spymaster," he motioned to the man who couldn't yet be in his thirties, "then who can I?"

"...I don't know why you're doing this," Malu whispered.

"To prove a point," Azul said with calm and placid tones, rising to his feet. "Everything that has come up to this moment is finished. Whatever your plans, they are over. The only plan in this country, is my plan. And you will serve your places in it. Your only options are obedience, or pain, followed by obedience. You know, and have seen, that I am willing to kill those valuable to me as a simple demonstration. So consider what I would sacrifice to prevent any sort of ill-conceived rebellion against my will. It will be swift, certain, and I can guarantee that you will regret your intransigence."

"I... I..." Malu whispered.

"Calm yourself," Nila muttered under her breath.

"I suggest you listen to your outlander friend," Azul said with a conversational tone, returning to the table, and now hefting up Sokka's 'Space Sword'. "...and a Piandao blade. Remarkable."

He pointed that blade at Malu. Even despite the great gulf of distance between them, she leaned away. It hurt to do so, but she could as soon not as tear off her own skin and dance in her bones. "You," he ordered in particular, "are going to find the Royal Prince and bring him here."

"Wh.. why me?" Malu asked.

"Dnn oo drr..." Azula warned through an iron bit.

"Numerous reasons," Azul said. He leaned forward on the blade, toward her even with the distance great. "Chief amongst them, that if you don't succeed, I will kill everybody you value in this room," he said. Then he paused, and turned to the gagged contingent. "Perhaps not those two. Those two have worth, but the rest?"

"You evil whore-son!" Nila snapped.

"I will forgive insults to my name, but bear in mind that my forgiveness is not infinite," Azul said, his tone still calm and unwavering. He then locked her with a stare that made even stalwart Nila flinch. "...and even if she does complete her objective, you can still make me weapons without the use of your legs."

Nila fell silent, but Malu could tell that there were a thousand things she wanted to call him, and none of them polite.

"The next reason why I send you, you nobody person, is that I have a fair assumption that you won't be able to get very far if you for some reason decide to wash your hands of your friends and compatriots," he moved closer, and leaned down to up her chin, clamping her jaw shut under a remarkably tight hand. "Finally, the last reason I send you," he said, then gave a glance toward Sokka, "instead of, say, him, is because you have until this time tomorrow to fulfill my requirements, and one of your sex will have ample motivation to return to the safety of my bosom quickly."

"But that's..."

"A reasonable enough timeframe, I think," Azul cut her off. "I find that pressure tends to cause people to act quite in excess of themselves. If you do not return with the Crown Prince by my dinner tomorrow, I will send my servants to find you, and they will bear with them an insignia of your failure, in the flesh of those you failed. Each day thereafter, the penalty will grow more severe. But I guarantee you, they will not die unless I want them to," he said.

"Wahg dah heh habban doo oo?" Azula burbled, the look in her eye... almost uncanny. Like she couldn't believe what she was seeing. And the Coordinator's expression, at that question, ceased to be the placid and pleasant mask that it had been, converting to an expressionless but absolute anger.

"That... is none of your concern," he hissed through grit teeth. When he turned back to Malu, his composure was, for the most part, restored. "I suggest that you move quickly, girl. The smog will be rising, soon, and that will no doubt make the search far harder than it otherwise would be. And you can't cover as much ground as you might like."

He pulled Malu to her feet, and gave her an idle shove backward. She went face first into the door. She felt something at her hands, and after a click and a tug, they were released from their bondage. The look on the assassin's eye told her that she had less than no chance of effecting a release of the others. Not now. So she bit down the tears that were welling up in her eye for the shame, the failure of this, and started to limp out of the palace, the shaft of the arrow tearing at her leg with every step.

The only reason she even could, was because this hadn't a shade on how much it hurt to cleanse her soul.

---

"Come on, come up with a plan! That's what you're supposed to be good at!" Toph lambasted him, as the two of them squatted with about a dozen other poor, stinking and exhausted looking people in the condemned building. The fog had rolled in, and done so with a vengeance. For all that Zuko could see, the world ended one floor below where he now resided. And there was every chance that the fog would rise.

"I'm trying to," Zuko said as he sat, his legs dangling out of the burnt-out window that was split right down to the floor. "I'm... I just don't know what to do."

"Well, we gotta do something! They got our guys! We can't let 'em run off with Brain and Boomgirl and Annoying... well, they can keep Annoying, but the first two I kinda want back."

Zuko looked across the fog, toward where structures rose out of the grey-brown sea below them. The mansions of the rich and the powerful, daring only show a portion of the wealth that lay within. "Well... We're going to have to get them out, that's obvious," Zuko admitted. "But the question is how? He's got ways of coming at you from every angle. There's no sneaking in. And there's no barging in, either."

Toph wilted at that last fact, and shook her head with a growl. "Come on! We're s'posed to be kicking ass right now! Why is it that everybody seems to capture us?"

"As I'm given to understand, that's been a frequent problem for the group," Zuko said, scratching at his hair. Between not having the facilities to wash it, and not giving himself the time to since they left the Western Air Temple, it was now a long and hellish tangle. It'd take more work than he was frankly willing to offer to set it right, but for the moment, it made him seem the desperate vagrant that was easier to hide in Azul City. "We've got to do this smart..."

He thought hard. Who could even help with something like this? Who would even try?

"...Or we could do it dumb with a lot of speed and power," Toph said.

"No offense, but I doubt that the Avatar Himself could break out of there without a lot of help," Zuko said. It was second nature to him to broach dangerous topics with hypotheticals and obliques. Thankfully, Toph saw the logic in it too. After all, it had been conclusively proven today that there was no telling if somebody was friend or foe in this city, until it was far too late. He pondered for a moment longer, then snapped his fingers. "I think I have somebody... it's not much, but it's a start."

"Who?" Toph asked, leaning toward him.

"Suki," Zuko said. Toph raised a brow. "She's a Kyoshi Warrior. And from what I've seen, she's very good at what she does. The Tribesmen would help their own, I think. But getting them here... That's the problem."

"Where did they land, anyway?"

"One of the less populous islands out to the west," he motioned his hand toward where the sea began at the far edge of the city. "If we could get a message to them," he paused. "When I get a message to them, that's a task force that might give us an edge."

"We need more than an edge. We need a battle-axe," Toph groused. Then, she perked up. "...what the hell?"

"What is it?" Zuko asked, rising from his spot and moving to where Toph sat on the floor with her back to the naked bricks.

"I feel Annoying out there," she said. "But that's impossible. She got ganked!"

Zuko stared at her, then down into the fog-bank which swirled a little bit more near the heart of the street, but offered no more than that. "Toph, is there anybody else out there watching her?"

"Do I look like a mind-reader or something?" she asked.

"I wouldn't put it past you," Zuko offered with a smirk. He didn't notice the mild blush that the odd compliment leant to her. "This could be a trap."

"Of course it's a trap. The only questions are; who's springing it, how, when, and how do we kick them into next week?"

"Who's obvious; with extreme force; as soon as we reach her, and; I'm not sure that we can," Zuko said. Toph let out a grunting sound.

"What?"

"She's limping. Bad," Toph said. She held out a hand toward Zuko that smacked him in the knee incidentally, giving a frown at her not being sure where he was. "I need your shirt."

"My shirt?" he asked. She made a beckoning gesture at him. For an ill-considered second, he thought that she just wanted to see him shirtless. Then he remembered the obvious. He sighed, and pulled it off of his back. "I can't see why you'd need..."

"'Cause I don't want to die when I do this," she said. She quickly wrapped his shirt around her head and face, got to her feet, and hurled herself out the window, vanishing into the fog. One of the squatters gave an alarmed look at him.

"She won't be able to see. She knows that, doesn't she? She won't be able to find her way back," the grey-bearded man who couldn't be more than thirty one years old said.

"She'll be fine. It's the other one out there that we're worried about," Zuko said. The older man sighed, and shifted, turning over on the hard floorboards. There was nothing to sleep on that wasn't softer than planks up here. Still, it was better than sleeping on bricks, or worse, sleeping in the smog. The eddying in the streat began to mount, before bucking down. Zuko raised a brow, before the eddying began to mount up again. Zuko could swear he heard some muffled words down there. Not what they said, though. Then, the eddies began to beeline for the condemned building.

Zuko took that as his cue, and picked his way through the dozen in this room, then over the next dozen who slept in the hall lining its walls so that there was a place for others to walk. He'd seen poverty before. But to see it in the Fire Nation, to see people this desperate and deprived... it sickened him. In a just and fair world, Montoya Azul would be brought to account for allowing something like this for happening. There was a reason rulership was so delicate a fraternity; the low had to respect the high, yes, but the high had to protect the low. That relationship was obviously not present here.

A thought occurred to Zuko; perhaps that Imbalance that Aang went on about so often and for so long manifested in this way, too. If that was the case, then... well, things were worse than Zuko had realized.

He waited at the bottom of the stairs to the next floor down, his feet buried in the thin fog that pooled 'round his ankles, as the uneven thumps of somebody ascending to his level sounded below. At least they hadn't taken long. There was a rippling of the smoke at his feet, and then it blue away, leaving the floor clear. Zuko leaned around the banister, and saw Malu dismissing a sphere of wind that had held her safe against the poison around her.

"Mina? What happened to your leg?" Zuko asked. Malu let out a moan, and sat on a table built against the wall, heaving up a leg which even now dribbled a bit of blood through her torn pantleg.

"Can I take it out, now?" she asked. Zuko winced slightly, seeing the broken-off shaft that protruded from badly inflamed tissue. Zuko nodded to her.

"This is going to hurt, but it'll help," he said. He grabbed the shaft with one hand, and then wiped the hand off on his shirt before grabbing it again as it proved slick. "You might not want to look at this."

Zuko didn't wait any longer, though. With a yank, he pulled the arrow straight through the wound, and instantly bent a flame into the wound, cauterizing it to a hiss of sizzling flesh and a gasp of pain from Malu. He'd expected that she'd do a lot worse. He lifted her leg, and repeated the process on the other side of the injury, once more eliciting a far lesser response than he predicted. She was breathing deep, and looked a bit pale, but she wasn't screaming, thrashing, or cursing. "Lets get her up where it's safe," Toph said, moving herself under Malu's uninjured side, so that Zuko could do the steadying and the lifting. He didn't really consider how much of Malu's blood was getting onto him, outside of wondering how much she had left inside of her. It didn't take long to get Malu upstairs, and into the room with the others. Upon entering, the bearded man glanced at them, let out a low whistle, and the men in the room all gave groans, before rising and leaving with him; only the one older and hard-bitten looking lady remained with them.

For all they were the destitute and the desperate, there was more virtue in these beggars than Zuko warranted in the entire Azuli House.

"How did you get away?" Zuko asked.

"I didn't," Malu said, as she was laid out on the floor. Zuko's shirt was peeled off of Toph's face, and found itself balled up to support Malu's wounded extremity. "The... that guy... he wanted me to find you. I didn't think I could do it."

"What? Why?" Toph asked.

"If I don't bring you," she pointed at Zuko, "to him... he's going to hurt Nila and Sokka and..." she could only shake her head. There was such tension and terror on her face, but it didn't boil over into desperate sobbing. No, she had more grit than that.

"He's going to kill them all, isn't he?" Toph asked.

"E...eventually," Malu nodded. She looked at them. "I... don't know what to do. I'm a vagabond, I'm not... I don't know how to do these political things, these assassin-y things. I can't hand you over to them, but if I don't..."

Zuko leaned in. "They have Katara? Do they have my sister? Anil?"

Malu nodded, her face white as the moon which was currently hidden in the clouds. "He knows... who Anil is. That he was going to use him against Zhao somehow. And then, he killed everybody else who served him that did, so..."

"So that he could keep it a secret," Zuko finished. He shook his head. "Typical of the Spider."

"We should just tell everybody that he's got the... person of interest, and that he's not handing him over to the Fire Lord. That'd weaken him up a bit."

"No, that would just result in him killing everybody we told, after torturing them to figure out who told them; he doesn't care if he burns his city to the ground. As long as he's in control of doing it," Zuko said. "There was a reason I didn't want to come back here. This place is poisonous."

"Then what do we do?" Toph asked.

"I thought it was obvious. I'm going to him," Zuko said, slowly but surely. Toph's blind eyes widened.

"Are you out of your damned mind?"

He shook his head resolutely. "I'm not leaving my sister in his hands. Not as long as I draw breath."

Malu tried to pull herself up, but Zuko pressed her back down onto the floor. "But... I've got to..."

"You're in shock and I'm amazed you lasted as long as you did," Zuko said.

"There's no way you're going in there," Toph said.

"There's no way I can't," Zuko countered. He gave his head a shake. "I know what he'd do to the ones who had 'no value'; it's not something I'd wish on enemies, let alone friends."

"You finally said we're your friends..." Malu said with a quirk of smile, even as she looked blearily up.

"No, I didn't. You're hallucinating," Zuko said. Toph raised a brow. "What?"

"You're being an idiot."

"I'm being a brother."

"Sounds the same to me," Toph pointed out. She shook her head sternly. "I ain't walking in there. I've had enough of walking into traps that I feel rather strongly against springing 'em when I know they're there."

"Probably for the best. You've got to stay here," Zuko said. Now the other brow rose, completing the set which reached toward the leaky roof.

"Excuse me?" she asked. Zuko took a few steps away from Malu, and pitched his voice low into Toph's ear.

"Look at her. If we bring her back, she'll be dead in a day. Out here, there are clinics for people like her. We can't move her, not now."

"I don't like this," Toph said grimly.

Zuko leaned back, standing to his full height which well overtopped her own. "You think that I do?"

"Point taken," Toph muttered. "What do you want me to do while I'm out here?"

"What else?" Zuko asked. "Find a way to get me out of the obvious trap I blundered into."

"I seem to be doing that a lot these days," Toph noted. She gave a glance roughly at Malu. "What about her? Won't this 'Spider' of yours be pissed that one of you didn't come back?"

"He doesn't know Mina's talents, otherwise he wouldn't have sent her. She has no value to him, except that she might bring me to him. If that happens, then he has no reason to follow through on his threats. He's a psychotic bastard, but he's an honest one," he paused. "Sometimes."

"This... this sucks," Toph muttered, and she kicked at a floor board.

"Hey," he said, tipping her chin up. "If anybody's gonna be able to get me out of that hell-hole, it'd be you," he said, even managing to catch her cadence.

"Flatterer," Toph whispered. And blushed a little.

---

He sat, stooped forward, looking over the pristine and verdant glory of the Red Garden. The name didn't exactly seem to suit it; there was almost nothing that grew within that had a scarlet hue. No, its name was more for what it represented. Every plant here was one of the Hui jungle, every call of bird one that fought for space in the skies over Azul. This was Azul, red in tooth, claw, and spine. And from time to time, he even let the feral anomolokia wander in what was nearly its natural habitat.

He didn't inform the groundskeepers, as a rule, when he did.

The shudder at the doors pulled his attention from the natural beauty before him, and he turned to the servant who opened the gilded portal to this oasis of sanity in the midst of the chaos that so often became Montoya Azul's life in the city which bore his name. "What is it?" he asked, not really annoyed that somebody had interjected on his personal time, as they, by now, knew that doing so without good purpose tended to end poorly. It meant that he very seldom had what time he set aside interrupted.

"He has come," the servant said, before offering a bow, and turning to leave the room.

Azul straightened his back, and beheld the young man in the blood-stained undershirt who was escorted in by a solid dozen of Montoya's personal Ghurkas. Firebenders all, professionals all, veterans, all. Azul took a few strides closer, so that a a scant yard separated the old man from the younger one. "Prince Zuko. You grace me with your presence at last."

"I'm here," Zuko's tones weren't petulant; rather, they sounded to have the hard edge of anger to them. "You don't need to torture the others."

"That's my prerogative, not your mandate," Azul said. He looked past him, to the hallway that stretched back toward the body of the Royal Palace. "Where is the girl whom I tasked to find you?"

"Dead," Zuko said.

"Really?" Azul asked, looking the young man in the eye.

"She lost a lot of blood," Zuko said, staring back; his burnished gold eyes seemed to flare in the early morning sunlight through the glass roof. The sun wouldn't last, though. "I don't even know how she managed to get as far as she did."

"Well, the girl's purpose was served," Azul dismissed her utterly.

"She had a name!" Zuko shouted, taking a stride forward, only to have four Ghurkas twist into positions before him, their fists burning with anticipation. An unexpected outburst. Perhaps he and that peasant were closer than their relative stations required?

"Everybody has a name, for a little while," Azul said.

"She didn't deserve that," Zuko's words were hot, and his glare, hotter.

"I believe she did," Azul said, turning to walk to the rail again. There was another surge, this time, he was physically held back by the eight Ghurkas behind him. Azul picked up the book that he was paging through out here as he watched the beauty. The book was half empty, and the rest, flowed with a leisurely script on paper which was starting to yellow for age and wet. There was a part of him, a part that he really didn't know how to name, that wanted in the same moment to burn that book, and to encase it in a cage that could last eternity. But instead, his fingers simply closed on it, and he looked upon it, before turning back toward Prince Zuko. "Any rights you believe that you have are simply the privileges that I have deemed fit to grant you. As the banished children of a deposed Fire Lord, you're doubly outlaws. By law, I can do anything that I see fit to you, and there is no court of justice in these lands, nor figure of authority, that can do anything to gainsay me. But that is simply a possibility that may never come to pass. Sit," he motioned to a bench near the door.

"I'll stand," Zuko said, his fists clenched. "Where's my sister?"

"Safe enough. After all, I have use for both of you, and your friend 'Anil'."

"Why?" Zuko asked. Azul chuckled at his baffled expression and tone.

"If I told you, it would ruin much of your worth. And the surprise of it, as well," Azul said. His face then grew very flat, his tones dangerous. "Sit."

Zuko stared back at him. "No."

That was a startling turn, one that felt... off. Out of balance. Off kilter. Somebody denied him. Nobody denied Montoya Azul. But he didn't let it show on his face. "Very well, if you choose to be obstinate, I can summon you at my leisure when you're more prepared to be civil. Until then, I think I'll keep your influences away from your sister for the time being. She's being much more pliable at the moment."

"I will destroy you," Zuko said quietly, causing Azul to look back at him. "I will find some way to burn into the heart of whatever it is that you still hold dear, and make it crumble to ashes around you. I will find a way to hurt you."

Montoya was, honestly, somewhat surprised by that reaction. He expected Zuko petulant, angry, and obsessive. But cold? The older man smirked, pulling at the grey of his beard. "Good luck," he offered.

And a small part of him meant it.

---

Canon had its Day of Black Sun, Part 1 and Part 2. Mine has... something thematically quite similar, but on a much more personal scale. As I said, Montoya Azul is, in this world, an irredeemable bastard, but for reasons that are unique to it. In every other world, he has reason not to be, even though he still wants to be. Imbalance, though? That's a force of nature. Is fire evil, because it burns your house down? Is the ocean evil, for swamping your ship? Is the ground evil, for providing something very hard for you to impact against because you fell off a cliff? As is so frequently said about It throughout the narrative, Imbalance and the Avatar are similar concepts in that they both are, irrespective of any outside interferences. The Avatar can be a force for good - Vajrapata, Kyoshi, and Aang - or a force for unforgivable evil, as evidenced by the now-locked-away incarnation who started the Monolith, the tyrannical facist-state for which a dark-age and a generation of starvation and terror was preferable to their rule.

Imbalance is, and it wants not to be. And the only way that it can not be, as its nature demands, to make there be nothing, at all, ever. This isn't Doctor Doom we're talking about here. This is Galactus.