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.

49. The Cage, Part 1

There was a tick-tock that filled the silence in the room where the two teenaged girls sat. The room itself was nothing to be despised; it reeked of wealth and good taste. While red was its primary color, it wasn't the brutal and garish reds which inflamed the senses and unsettled one's rest. No, these were more subtle and content shades, calming, soothing. Gold also made an appearance, but like the reds of the walls and ceilings, it was a tasteful amount, and not more. Whoever had designed this room had done a superb job of it, in that it was grand without being conceited, impressive without being overbearing, and rich without being gauche.

This didn't alter the fact that Azula wanted to set it all on fire.

"I grow increasingly bored of this place," the Si Wongi girl muttered, as she sat at the edge of a seat, her elbows on her knees and her eyes hard. "Would that they only saw fit to pair non-benders instead of women against men, I have no doubt that I and the Tribesman could have been free by now."

"Kind of the point, I think," Azula said, tapping the jaw which still hurt like hell from where the – now dead – soldier had kicked it. "The Spider is a calculating man. If he put a man and a woman together, the man would be tempted to do something drastic, for he'd feel his honor was impinged upon; that would be unnecessary risk, and an unwanted complication."

"Please. The Tribesman is perfectly aware of his own limitations," Nila told her.

"Yes, but he," she gave a stern nod toward the door which sat locked to the outside world, "isn't aware of that."

"More fool, he," Nila agreed, with a nod.

"Of all those with the Avatar's little group, I have to admit; you are the only one that I don't have several lifetimes worth of experience with," Azula muttered.

"I am a paragon of misfortune and unpleasant opportunity," Nila said with a shrug. "A fortune teller has said as much."

"Bah. Tell me you don't believe in that nonsense," Azula rolled her eyes.

"I wish that I could not," Nila said, shaking her head lightly. "But as I have heard, every other prediction that she has given has played true. Tzu Zi restoring her mother's health, my being the source of the greater part of my own suffering, the issue with Sokka's paramour..."

"You."

"Yes, I," she rolled her eyes as well. "And as I am to understand, she also predicted the arrival of the other Tribesman's future husband."

"Oh, how novel. She managed to succeed on the nine of ten chance that Katara would be interested in men. How astonishing."

"And what has she said of you that makes you so bitter of her?" Nila asked. Azula shot her a look. "I am the first to admit that there is more to the world than I am aware; a charlatan with uncanny accuracy probably has some explanation in facts that I have not seen."

"She..." Azula sighed, and shook her head. "...damn."

"You are realizing she was right, weren't you?"

"...she predicted that I'd fight against a Fire Lord, at the side of the Avatar. She didn't use those words, but the intent was clear," Azula said, very begrudgingly. Azula turned to her once again, after stewing for as long as she could bear at that witch in Makapu. "And what is your part in this? Why have you decided to tag along with this cursed party?"

Nila shrugged. "I seek to liberate my brother," she answered.

"You've said as much."

"He is in a prison within the Fire Nation. Ergo, it suits my needs to travel into the Fire Nation," Nila pressed.

"With the most wanted young man in the world, the second most wanted, and the most wanted woman?" Azula asked, indicating Aang, her brother, and herself with a thumb cast in varying directions down a hall that they weren't allowed to look down. Nila just stared at the ground. Azula shook her head. "Well, if we're going to be trapped in a cage, however gilded, we might as well look for some way to blast our way out of it. As I'm to understand, that's your area of specialty."

Nila gave a chuckle and a smirk. "Would that you only knew," she said. She pointed across the room with a hand that bore a lattice of tattooes which had to have been agonizing to acquire. "Within those cosmetics are three of the five substances I require to make a horrid, aerosol poison. Sadly, the other two are not so easily found in such environs," she glanced toward the tray which had been delivered to them in the morning. "From the leftovers of food, I could create some caustic acids, but without something to bear them in, we would be doing ourselves great harm using them."

Azula found her smirk returning. "If only I'd known you a few lifetimes ago; I probably would have crushed that Aang like a bug."

"I don't doubt," Nila agreed, confident enough, and rubbed at her face for a moment, before leaning back with an almost boyish pose of contemplation. "...I would need citrus to make anything like a bomb, and I fear that when I assaulted Azul's men, he caught wise to my requirements."

"Alright; so if you can't make a weapon, how do you weaponize something we do have?" Azula asked. She opened her hand and lit blue flame into it. "My choice of weapon is obvious, but if we can't act with utmost speed and efficiency, people will die."

Nila shrugged. "Any object with an edge, or sufficient weight, is a weapon. Mother, for all her failings as a parent, did not slack in teaching weapon-handling."

Azula nodded, then leaned forward herself. "What is your mother like, anyway?"

"Aggravating."

Azula raised an eyebrow at the one-word answer, letting the desert-dweller know that she wasn't going to accept that alone.

"She is a hero to the East, one who has begun to believe in her own invulnerability to the point where it caused a humiliating defeat, and the near-death of the Avatar. What else can I say about her? She was certainly no kind parent, no patient teacher, no uplifting role-model. All that I am, I am despite her, not because of her."

Azula felt a churning in her chest, and a sigh escaped her throat. "For what it's worth... I know how that feels..." Azula said.

"As I understand, your mother treated you very well," Nila dismissed.

"...from the other end," Azula finished, her eyes on the floor, as she remembered her own children. A silence descended on the two girls. One that didn't break until the one amongst them responsible for the larger of past explosions cleared her throat.

"We cannot sit idly by. For all we have relative comfort, I for one will not accept bondage, no matter how comfortable," she held up one hand, and showed a bubbling burn in the center of it's palm. "I have some proof to the truth of that."

Azula nodded, then hefted up the remarkably heavy chair and plunked it down far closer to the Si Wongi girl, resting an elbow on the vanity as a common table for the two of them. "Good. I like it when my co-conspirators are motivated. So, here's what I think we can do to get out of here..."

---

Toph tapped her heel insistently against the bricks, feeling the ground out to the street through the wall where she couldn't feel through the floor. Damned Nationals didn't know how to properly build; with stone. Everything was wood with them. Didn't they know that wood was good at... say... burning? "Hey?" she asked of the other, besides Malu, who shared the room with her. The old woman had slept well through the night and into the morning. The men and women, all younger than she, had departed at some point early in the morning, following the call of whistles in the various directions. "You're awake, aren't you?" Toph said, a bit louder when the woman didn't respond.

"Yes," she finally answered.

"Is the fog clear yet?"

"I'm never really sure," the woman responded.

"Well, that's singularly the least useful answer I could have gotten," Toph muttered. She faced roughly toward where the voice came from once more. "If I leave Annoying here with you, will you make sure she doesn't... I don't know, get sold into slavery or something... by the time I get back?"

"Whatever you're going to do, young lady, you'd best hop to it. I can look after the wounded. It's how I earn my meals, after all," she said. Well, if that wasn't lucky as hell; Toph managed to flop in a house with a curb-doctor. Toph gave the woman a nod – well, roughly gave her a nod, as Toph wasn't exactly sure where the woman was – and moved through the doors. As she crossed the threshold, though, the woman spoke up once more. "Just be careful out there. As much danger as the gangs pose, the Spider's far worse... and he touches almost everything."

Toph nodded, and continued walking. Get Zuko out of prison. Business as usual, right? But she had very little money, all the rest of Sokka's 'Team Avatar' was bound up, the one guy she had on the outside was drifting in-and-out of consciousness, and she was supposed to send a letter to somebody... despite the notable shortcoming of being illiterate!

"...If I ever find who runs the universe, I'm going to punch him in the testicles," Toph muttered.

---

Chapter 9

The Cage, Part 1

---

There was a faint clicking, something that occurred just on the edge of her perception even as she had her ear pressed to the door. She couldn't have said exactly when she learned to pick locks. It was probably one of the many skills that Dad had either taught her, or didn't notice while somebody else did, when she was very young. Either that, or she learned it from her brother. It was hard to say how much that the two of them bounced off each other; until last winter, it was usually with low-grade antagonism and constant sniping. Now, they were a perfected machine... sometimes. Katara let out a low growl and waved a hand, trying to soothe raw and abraded fingers. Working the pin and sliver wasn't exactly easy work at the best of times. It didn't help that in terms of actual practice at this sort of thing, Katara had just about exactly none.

"When I find out who put this lock in here, I'm gonna throw him out of a window," Katara muttered under her breath. "A tenth story one, if I can manage it."

Well, not really, but entertaining the notion did give her a moment to rub some of the pain out of stubbed digits, and get her back to her job of undoing the lock which held her imprisoned. It was strange; she actually thought that Azul was going to throw her in the dungeon. Instead, he sent her here. This was the kind of room that she couldn't have asked better than. It had two beds, each the size of the interior dimensions of their old home. The mattresses of those beds were so soft that sitting on them was like being massaged by clouds, the pillows filled with the down of baby turtle-ducks. The sheets were linen, edged in silk; the carpet was lush, and the chairs were overstuffed leather, and built of dark and no-doubt expensive woods.

So why had Azul put Katara, the Water Tribesman, here?

There was a clunk of a different timbre that reached Katara's ear, and her lips pulled into an almost unconscious smile. That felt different than the work she'd done before; it felt like progress. Though her prison was well furnished, her food sublime, she didn't feel like spending one second more than she absolutely had to in this place. Every second was, after all, a death threat toward Aang and everybody that he held dear.

If Azul was to be trusted, it'd already cost one of them. Two, if you counted the Seamstress. But for some reason, even though the Spider so calmly and matter-of-factly declared that the airbender had bled to death in the streets of Azul, Katara didn't believe it. He might have, but Katara... she was starting to think she knew the airbender a bit better than that. And more pointedly, she was starting to know Zuko better than that. Another clunk. Well, this was picking up speed, now wasn't it?

The strange thing about all this was that Katara didn't even know really if Azul was aware she was a waterbender; she hadn't exactly done it in public while she was within the city limits. That he left a basin of water next to her bed at first seemed like a definitive 'no'. But then she gave it a bit more thought, and realized how much of a moron Azul would have to be to not look into Aang's friends, who they were, what they could do.

She didn't like all this guessing, this glancing over her shoulder, this living-in-fear. She'd had enough of it in Ba Sing Se, and here she was in the thick again. A clunk, and then a louder clack. Katara's eyes widened a bit, and she pulled the whole rig out a bit; the door swung with it.

"Thank you, Sokka, for being a little delinquent," she said quietly, before idly tossing the lock-pick away. She glanced out through the door, and found that the halls weren't occupied. Considering the hour, that was a bit odd. Then again, it could be that everybody was as creeped out by Azul as she was. She wouldn't put it past them all. She opened the door a little, and glanced the other way. Still, nothing.

The door opened further, and she slipped past it. It was a bit annoying that every room on the other side of this hall had Western style doors; side sliders. Doors that couldn't be locked. Only hers were Eastern style. Then again, she wasn't exactly a guest in this place.

She moved to the other side of the hall and slipped past the door she found there, as well. This room was actually far lesser than the one she'd been in, which was to say it still was drowned in elegance and taste. She moved straight for the closet, and threw it open. "A part of me wants to ask why he'd keep women's clothing in every closet, but..." she shook her head. The dresses that adorned the closet in her room were of completely a wrong size for her. They were intended for somebody more mature of figure, somebody wider of hip, bust and waist. These were little better, but while their measurements were the same, their cut was different enough that their bagginess might be overlooked entirely. With a scant glance back toward the door she'd shot through, she pulled her own dress off of her, and swapped it for the one on the hook.

A little gesture, but considering Azul expected her to wear what she'd been wearing yesterday, a little gesture might take her a lot farther than nothing at all.

Katara paused, looking down at the cloth. Yes, it looked fine and elegant. Too elegant for what she wanted. Too clean. She frowned for a moment. "This could be a problem," she said. Then, she leaned around the dresser she'd extracted it from. Of course, there was at least one spot which wasn't completely cleaned. She reached into the gap, and swept up and down, until her arm was covered in dust and webs. Disgusting. She then carefully wiped it across the dress, dulling the color and making her seem a lot more grubby. That she actually was a lot more grubby probably helped. "And this could be a solution."

Katara slicked the remaining smut off of her arm and glanced through the door again. The gentle tapping of shoes in the hall caused Katara to flinch, to freeze, but the sound was moving away, and not in a hurry. The Tribesman leaned out the aperture, watching the scullery maid continue her way down the hallway, probably right to the corner at its far end. This place wasn't nearly as big as the Royal Palace of Ba Sing Se, but it wasn't exactly tetchy, to be sure.

She slipped into the hallway, closing the door behind her again, and started to move through the halls. She kept her eyes down, her hands behind her as she'd seen in the maids that she'd passed on her way in. Sokka might be a great lateral thinker, but that didn't mean Katara was a dunce; she came up with a plan to free herself and then rescue the others without any input from the 'idea and sarcasm guy' whatsoever.

She kept closer to the side of the hall with the locked rooms, trying to get a notion of what lay inside them as she walked past. She didn't have a lot of time, and had a lot of ground to cover. They could be just about anywhere.

She didn't hear the patter of feet hitting the cut-stone of the floor, just as she rounded the corner and left her old room behind. And she didn't see the two that dropped down from their spot amongst the dark rafters of the hallway's roof. One of them, a woman, gave a glance after her, and a nod. The other, a man, offered a slight nod, and then pulled the straps over his shoulders a little more snug. After all, the device he had there was heavy, and it was hard enough to sneak without it jostling all the time.

They didn't say a word. They just followed the Tribesman, and waited for the perfect moment to show her who the true master of this house was.

---

Malu blinked, feeling dizzy and headachy and gross. And feeling, above all of that, weak. She thought that she might have gone blind, but from the sensation of something over her face, she was probably just covered up. With a groan and a push, she moved the blanket off of her. She tried to sit up, but only got to about thirty degrees before a wave of dizziness hit, and she almost blacked out. The thud of her head against the floorboards didn't hurt, which was lucky.

"...ooooh, I don't feel good," Malu muttered.

"No great surprise," an unfamiliar voice said from one side. "You had a case of blood-poisoning. Still do, but it'll get better. Damn if those Tribesmen don't hit the nail on the head every now and then with their crusty molds. And speaking of blood, you don't have much, so don't do anything strenuous."

"Who... are you?" Malu asked. The woman was older, now that Malu could see her; her vision was still kinda fuzzy. The woman didn't look back at her. Instead, she just kept prodding at something on a griddle.

"Miss Kankoshi, most call me. Not my name, but who has time for that?" she said.

"Your name?" Malu asked.

"You're asking?" the old woman said.

"Yu...up," Malu said. There was a chuckle, and a half-glance toward Malu. When it happened, Malu was pretty sure her vision was fairly messed up, because her eyes didn't look right.

"...I'm not going to ask how you got an arrow through your leg, or why you walked half the length of the city with it instead of getting it pulled somewhere," Kankoshi said, her tone tired. "We've all got enough trouble without bringing down more on ourselves. My son, he frets," the woman gave a shrug.

"Do you have... something that'll stop the spinning?"

"Time," Kankoshi said.

"...faster?" she asked.

"One thing," she said, then turned with that griddle, and letting the smell hit Malu's nose. Meat. Cooked meat. Malu tried to flinch away, but didn't have the strength to. She looked up at Kankoshi again, shaking her head, but the words fell kind of mute.

"...what happened to your eyes?" Malu asked, light headed enough to not notice that that might be a sore subject. Kankoshi shrugged, and set the griddle aside, to allow the hissing meat to slow.

"They don't work. And haven't for a while, now," she said. She nevertheless flawlessly pulled Malu up by her arm and moved her to a propped-up sit against the corner. "Now your body's run out of heme. It's the stuff that toughens up your blood, makes it come forth fast. But there's ways to get heme back in a hurry."

"I... can't eat meat," Malu said.

"Why not?" Kankoshi asked. "Humans are made to eat meat. Well, we're made to eat whatever can go in our mouths. But meat's definitely part of that."

"I'm a v...egetarian," she paused with a wave of dizziness, and continued when it abated.

Kankoshi gave a frown, and moved from her kneel to an outright sit on the floor, her legs tucked before her in an almost mannish pose. "Whatever your reasons for not wanting to eat animals, this is your option. You can eat the liver, and be back on your feet in a day or two, or you don't, and you're on your back for at least a week. Moral stances don't tend to hold up long in the face of reality, I find. Best to just be pragmatic."

"Did... you lose your eyes in a w...war?" Malu asked. Kankoshi scowled, and then turned, toward the door. A moment later, Malu heard the creaking of the boards out there, and saw a young man with a nevertheless grey beard lean into the room.

"Mother, do you need anything picked up after the late-shift?" he asked.

"More liver," Kankoshi said. "And moonshine; not too much, this time. I don't want the others to get greedy and drink it."

The son gave a nod, then vanished from the doorway. "How did you know he was there? Did you hear him?"

"Yes. Heard him," Kankoshi said. But Malu was pretty sure if she wasn't lying, she wasn't telling the whole truth.

"You didn't... answer m... my question," Malu said.

"Everybody loses something in war," Kankoshi said, distantly. A blink over useless eyes that looked like amber versions of Toph's. "Easterners can be... creative, by times. A lot more creative than we give 'em credit for. Like throwing barrels of glass, crushed down into dust, into the gusts that blew over our camps. I lost my eyes. A lot of other people died, in agony," she took a deep breath, and then thrust a fork into the liver. "Anybody who thinks that war is glorious obviously hasn't been part of it. So be pragmatic, and eat the damned liver."

"But..."

"What are you, some sort of airbender?" she asked, a sarcastic smirk on her face. Malu's eyes quivered, and she was thankful the rest of her didn't. How did she guess that so quickly? Malu knew she had to do something. Trick her, somehow.

"Alright..." Malu said, taking the cooked flesh and moving it toward her mouth. The nurse gave a nod and looked away, giving Malu the excuse to palm it, and hide it behind her. "Mm. Liver-y."

The woman paused, and gave a glance near Malu, before reaching past her and pulling the chunk of meat from the floor unerringly, and with an expression of annoyance. "Don't waste my meat, and don't waste my time," she said simply. "Neither one's free."

"How did you know...?" Malu asked. "I thought you were blind!"

The woman blew some grit off of the liver before eating it herself. "And I thought you had a working brain in your head. Strange how that goes."

The answer dawned upon Malu, a feat which would have probably happened earlier had she not been operating on so little blood. "You see with firebending, don't you?" Malu asked.

"More or less," the nurse said. "It's great for navigating crowds, but I still keep bumping into furniture. And it's better than nothing. Now are you going to accept my help, or are you just going to waste time and space?"

"But..." Malu said.

"Much as I like to help the people in need, there's plenty of them in the city, and if you're not going to do as directed, I can help somebody else," she said, getting to her feet and carefully moving toward the doorway. Malu sighed, then shook her head. She didn't want to eat the meat, because that was wrong. But then again, if she didn't help Aang and the others, that'd be worse. Gyatso often said that sometimes, one must sacrifice what one wishes for what the universe wills.

So she plucked another strip of the flesh from the pan, and popped it between her teeth before it seared her fingertips. The juice was hot, but savory. And it didn't taste half bad, even before chewing it. A part of her was telling her that she was supposed to feel sick even entertaining the idea, let alone having the food physically inside her. But the truth was... it was just food. Yeah, food that used to be alive, but that was splitting hairs since plants, too, were once alive. Even monks couldn't live on sunlight, water, and self-satisfaction.

She swallowed it quickly, trying not to enjoy the eating. Kankoshi turned back to her. "Good," she said. "Eat the rest of it. I'll be back with something that'll get you sitting up without passing out."

Malu let out a mild groan, and then pulled a new piece of liver from the pan. It was fortunate that Sokka wasn't here. He would only pause from his haranguing her over her dietary choices to eat the liver himself. And when she recalled where Sokka was, and why, even that mildly amusing thought withered.

---

Montoya was looking through that book again. Her diary. She'd started it when his daughter was born, and continued for years. He wasn't really sure why he kept rereading the same observations and musings that she'd had, ten years ago and more. He had every single page memorized. But still, he found himself gravitating to the words on the page. Scanning them once and again.

It was almost like he was trying to find something that Akane hid, something behind her words. Something... he didn't know how to describe it. He glanced up as his spymaster appeared from the shadows. "I assume that the Tribesman has found a means of escaping her room?" Azul asked.

"Yes, Coordinator," he answered.

"Keep her in sight. Wait for the perfect moment. She'll learn where she really stands in this city," Azul gave a nod, then looked back to Akane's diary. After a moment, and the Spymaster not leaving, he glanced up once more. "There is something more?"

"Yes," he said. He motioned for Montoya to follow him. There was a moment of tension, between heeding his agent and wanting to continue reading. A moment that he forced down in the spirit of ruthless pragmatism. He left the book, laying open, on the table, and followed his subordinate. "We believe that Princess Azula has decided to act before we thought she would."

"We cannot assume that our information on her was perfect," Azul said. He rounded the corner, and saw the great double doors which lead into the room that she and the Eastern girl now shared. Notably, he saw that there was acrid black smoke curling up from under the seam of the door, and heard the shouts of fear from within. He sighed, and shook his head. "An obvious escape attempt. You've secured the balcony, I assume?"

"Locked and braced," the answer came. Montoya nodded, rubbing at his beard.

"Good," he said. Then turned away from the door. "Let them burn. They are assuming that I am a fool, and that I'll try to put out a fire they started. I, on the other hand, make a much more reasonable assumption that they're not suicidal. The Princess will put out the fire before it causes her pressing harm. And if she can't... well, that's the price of planning on something you cannot control."

"I will barricade the doors, Coordinator," the spymaster said.

"And 'forget' to feed them for a day... or two. That should make their position clear. Has there been any activity from the other Tribesman? From the Prince? Or our other esteemed guest?"

"No, no, and not even to eat, my lord," he said.

"He'll eat. People only choose to die when they have no hope," Montoya said. "So we give them enough to live, but not enough to live well," that was a lesson he hadn't expected to learn. Hisao was a beautiful young woman. Physically, far more appealing than Akane had been. But things... became tense, and cold, very quickly. She plotted against him, so he rebuked and chastised her. She kept plotting, he kept correcting her. Until that rainy autumn morn, when she stopped trying. Until that wet winter solstice, where she doused herself in oil, and jumped into a fireplace.

"We have another missive from Fire Lord Zhao," the spymaster continued. He held it toward his master, but not with any great effort, for both knew that Montoya was going to wave it away. He shrugged, and set it aflame.

"He is as much a legitimate Fire Lord as I am a Storm King," Montoya said, an edge of anger in his voice. "He has no breeding, no lineage; his virtues are so few as to be vanishing against infinity, and his shortcomings so overwhelming as to block out the sun."

"His messengers still require some answer," the spymaster noted.

Montoya knew a lot of ways to send a message. Sometimes, killing the messenger was the message. But this wasn't the time for such gauche and inelegant gestures. No, this had to be more subtle. Something that would fly right over that low-born idiot's head and strike his toadies where it hurt the most; in their honor. He smirked.

"Send him a gift. In gold coin," he said. The spymaster as well smirked slightly at that, before giving a nod, and slipping away. There was a reason why gold wasn't currency in the West. And he doubted that someone so uncultured as Zhao would appreciate it. But others, like the Shinzoan Lord Kurita... he'd know, and it would burn him. He stopped, staring through the windows into the Red Garden from above. In the midst of the chaos, there was a flag of stone, too regular to be an import from nature. It was unadorned, but it didn't need to be. Azul knew what... who... lay there. Why he had no heir.

He still felt hollow, and uncomfortable, as he continued to walk the halls in his robes.

He hadn't been comfortable since Akane died.

---

Toph really hoped that her letter made any kind of sense. Considering she had to word it carefully enough that the postmaster couldn't immediately twig that it was being sent from one Easterner to another, with the purpose of rendezvousing and leading a charge into the walls of one of their foremost political leaders. Add to that that she couldn't even be sure that the words that she demanded were actually on the missive being sent, and that made for a stressed, tense earthbender.

The headache that she'd been developing for days was starting to really crash home. Between a lack of sleep, a lack of even the peremptory baths that she took for granted on her way into this hell-hole city, and the constant stink of the smog, her head was ringing. It was lucky she was already blind. Even the meager light might have been enough to set her off worse, had she the capacity to see it.

"You'd better not not be in a dungeon, getting your ass tortured, Prince Pouty," Toph muttered. Partially because she wanted to believe that she'd have gotten him out by now. Partially because... on a level that she wasn't willing to admit to anybody, she really didn't want Zuko being hurt. Not that he couldn't take it, or anything. And it certainly wasn't that she liked him or anything...

She physically stopped, in the middle of the street, staring ahead. "...yup. My life's one big damned cliché," she said to herself. Leave it to those damned Westerners to make human interaction the weirdest thing possible in their stories. It was almost like they didn't know that the way most marriages started was with a night of heavy drinking. Heck, Toph was pretty sure that was how Mom got roped into staying with Dad! There's no way she'd bother with him if she were sober.

And at that, realizing that she was pondering on the nature of her parents' love-life, she gave a full-body shudder, and continued walking. There were some things that teenaged girls, blind earthbending badasses or not, were not meant to know.

It was a strange feeling, being all alone. She'd thought that she was used to the idea, especially considering the long walk she'd pulled off back in winter. But the truth was, when she had to move through a sea of unfamiliar humanity – most of whom didn't even speak her native language – she couldn't help but feel very, very isolated. Not that she was going to give up just 'cause she was the only one left of Team Avatar who was both free and mobile. She was way too 'Earth Kingdom' to do that. It just meant that it was a harder slog.

She had a lot of experience with hard slogs.

Toph paused, and quickly stepped aside the stream of people, as a voice caught her ear. It was a familiar voice, and one she didn't expect to hear in this part of the city. She leaned against an unoccupied portion of corner and cocked her head toward it, trying to cut out the clamor of daily living in what had to be the filthiest place on Earth.

"...my problem. What is my problem is the damage that got caused," came the words of the Drunken Dragon's proprietor.

"And I fail to see how that's any issue of mine," another, unfamiliar tone said with derision.

"Azul knocked down my doors, blew up one of my rooms, and then tells me I have to thank him for the privilege!"

"Well, that's what you get," the other voice said. Toph's jaw set. So they got sold out by that fat bastard after all? Oh, this might not have been something that could fix her situation instantly, but the desire for some violent revenge did a bit to soothe her headache. All she had to do was get him somewhere where nobody was looking. Wasn't like she had something better to do for the next few hours, she rationalized – ignoring the fact that she was leaving Malu in the hands of a total stranger while she did so – and it wasn't like he was going to be able to get away from her.

She slid into the crowd, darting through the seams in the traffic as she let it sweep her toward him. He, older, slower, couldn't make the time that she did. And that, she felt, would be his undoing.

Completely unnoticed by she, as it had neither mass nor step, a black form pulled itself out of the shadows, opening red and pulsing eyes. Where it stood, in the darkness, only the eyes could be seen, but those that did catch a glimpse of it all flinched and hurried all the harder, trying to erase the impossible and terrifying thing from their minds as they did. The Shard turned its gaze slowly to the north of the human city, seeing through walls and terrain, through brick and mortar and dirt. It could feel one, close by. A familiar one. But that was not this one's purpose, if the Shards could be said to have purpose. It was the other. The greater. The Avatar, that would sate its hunger. He had vanished completely from Imbalance's sight. And as much as something such as It could be said to have patience, it was very shortly running out.

---

Yue gave a look to those that had the audacity, the bravery to follow her. The Spirit World was a dangerous, treacherous place, and when she requested that somebody from the Shamans of the South Tribe aid her in her task, she'd guessed that she might have gotten one hardy soul at her side. Instead, she got all but one of them, and that one stand-out was left behind despite his protestations, because somebody had to keep the rift from Alulbitavut open, so that their path of retreat wouldn't change. "It won't be long now. Wequais, do you think you'll be able to keep up?" Yue asked of the shaman who leaned against a stone egg, holding his side.

"I'll be fine. I'll keep the door open on this side," he said, waving the others away.

"Are you going to be alright on your own?" Yue asked the older man.

"I took a fall. At least it wasn't into one of those caustic pits. That might have ruined my day," he said, tones as dry as ever.

"That's the old man," a girl who couldn't be more than thirteen said with a shrug. "He always was tougher than the rock they cut their homes from."

"You're not getting a cookie for praising your grandpa, little seal," Wequais pointed out.

"I could still try," she said sweetly. There was a crash of lightning, one that illuminated the dead and rotting tree that stood sentinel in the center of this brutalized garden. From out that thunderstrike, Irukandji stepped. Well, most of her, it seemed. Her skin seemed more alight than usual, her eyes crackling with electricity.

"Good, you made it without getting killed," Irukandji said. She then turned from Yue to the others. "...well, that's a turnout I didn't expect. What, did you all make sure to take your suicidal-pill this morning?"

"We know what's at stake, spirit," Wequais said.

"This is probably going to make things harder, you realize. One Tribesman, sneaking through New Bhatti would be tricky. Getting... two dozen? Really? Don't you people have any sense of self-preservation at all?" Irukandji asked.

"Somebody his holding our gods hostage," the only shaman that Yue knew from childhood pointed out. For all he was still powerfully built and not into his elder years, his hair was almost as starkly white as Yue's own. Jantuk looked her in the eye and cast a hand aside. "We're not going to sit idly by when Tui and La are in peril."

"Fine. Be it on your own heads if and when this thing explodes around you all," Irukandji said. She beckoned Yue in particular closer, and manifested what looked like a map out of thin air. It was a map of a place that Yue had once been very familiar with, only now it had been... altered. Perverted, almost. The foundations were the same, but everything else was overtaken by black iron and brutalist architecture. Summavut, no longer. "I didn't manage to get a lot of straight answers from the local wildlife, but this is the best I could do for layout."

"The best you could do?" Yue asked. "This is more than anybody could have asked for!"

"Hardly," Irukandji said. "I couldn't get to the Spirit Oasis, so I don't know what they're using to defend it. I'd imagine quite a lot, since they wouldn't want your kind nosing around."

"We'll find some way through," the girl said. Yue was really going to have to remember her name at some point. There were too many unfamiliar faces, either from her life in Summavut, or the new life she had in Chimney Mountain. It didn't help that Alulbitavut was so far from Chimney Mountain; it was practically on the other side of the continent. Not that that amounted to a terrible distance, over all... really...

Irukandji just rolled her eyes. "Well, have fun storming Summavut. I've got about a thousand other things that need to get done to make sure the world doesn't end tonight. And I'll have to do them tomorrow, all over again," she got a wry smile. "Could somebody remind me why I even bother at this point?"

"Because you're a coward and you don't want to die," Jantuk said, running a whetstone over the head of his spear as he did.

"Nailed it in one. Although points away for insulting your benefactor," Irukandji said. She took in a breath, and with another crack of lightning, she vanished from sight. In her wake, there came a groan in the sky. Not the terrible presage of a blowout, but of something massive settling into position. From that stone egg, Yue was fairly sure she heard a quiet sigh. But that was ridiculous. That was just architecture.

Yue moved to the fore of the group, having to back off and take a new path when she almost stepped into a fire-bomb. Once she took her place, she allowed herself a calming breath of her own, then opened bright blue eyes to the cadre that dared face uncertainty save for horrible and sudden death with her. "We've all come here for our own reasons. Some of you have done this, or things like this before," a nod to Jantuk, "while others have never faced the perils that we stand before now. I can't guarantee that we'll all come home to Chimney Mountain... but I know that in your hearts and in your souls, you will not allow yourselves to fail. And that when we go home, we will do so, with Tui and La safely in our hands."

Jantuk raised a cry, and the others mimicked it a moment later. A call to the spirit world, something beyond language to express, save for the impression it left. Defiance, against the night. And daring the darkness to stand against them. Yue nodded, then turned to the rusted iron gates. One, not far away, rushed with the falling of perpetual rains, while this one whistled for cold and winds. She closed her eyes, and took a step forward, through the rift, and back into the Mortal World.

She opened her eyes.

Yue stood in the corpse of Summavut. And she didn't stand alone.

---

The stink of the burned wood lingered in the air, as the two young women sat on their beds. Annoyance painted both sets of features.

"That was utterly unsuccessful," Nila pointed out.

"I'm aware," Azula said.

"This Montoya Azul is a more clever adversary than you had taken into account," Nila continued.

"I'm aware," she repeated.

"...and that he could unravel the entire scheme at the first knot speaks volumes to how little chance we had on the whole..."

"I'm. Aware," Azula said, darkly. The pile of ash and soot near the door was the testament to their failed attempt. Mocking her. They couldn't even open the window to let the smoke clear out, since they had been barricaded from without. Nila, though, hopped from her bed, and picked her way over to the crater in the floorboards that the fire had created. With a glance to Azula, she pulled a charred bit off, and tossed it over her shoulder. "What is it now?"

"This stone. It is limestone, yes?" Nila asked.

"Only the finest," Azula muttered.

"Good. Bring the refreshment over," she said, a hand cast back blindly. Azula's eyebrows rose at the temerity of her.

"Excuse me? And why do you think you're allowed to order me around?" Azula asked.

"Because attempting to follow your plan ended in resolute failure. Thus, it is my turn to make an attempt, and yours to heed it," Nila said. She glanced back, only then. "Now the refreshment, with some distillation, can create a caustic substance which will eat the limestone. Will you aid our escape, or bicker hierarchy?"

"At what point did you decide that you were going to be leading this little escape attempt?" Azula asked. "Because I haven't seen a great deal of leadership from you."

"Then you have not known me nearly long enough," Nila said, rising and turning from the hole and the charred door beyond it. "While you were being carted around on a ship of fools, as one of its passengers, I was walking the length and breadth of the East. I stared down the leader of my people's arch-nemeses. I put a bullet through the heart of the being which even now seeks to unmake all. And I'm realizing that I'm wasting time that I could better spend doing it myself," she rolled her eyes and strode to where the pitcher of slightly sour beverage rested on the vanity; the table that they'd been afforded was, at this point, a pile of soot and nails. "You have obviously not learned the most important rule of captivity, firebender."

"I think I've learned all that there is to know about captivity," Azula contended.

"Then why, in the name of whatever deity you hold dear, do you antagonize in the face of release?" Nila asked, giving Azula a shake of the head. "The sole duty of the imprisoned is to escape imprisonment. All must be spent toward that end."

"A rule I'm aware of."

"So why do you now ignore it?" Nila asked.

To be honest, Azula didn't have an answer for that. No, wait, she did; pride. Nila rankled her, and she was not a woman to suffer being rankled lightly. Azula looked away, thinking back over the many years that she could remember. Pride had, time and time again, been the source of her greatest misfortunes and woes. And when she stopped kowtowing to her own sense of entitlement, when she stopped bothering what her upbringing and her culture and her birthright demanded that she deserved, and would by some manipulation of the universe gain, she started to actually live a life worth living.

"Because I'm too proud for my own good," Azula muttered.

"In that, I feel we are more alike than not," Nila said, her tone distracted, as she tossed the water from a glass and began to flick it, listening to its chime. She shrugged, and put the cup aside. "As I lack a burner for distillation, I will require a more manual flame," she said.

"Great. I am a portable oven," Azula muttered.

"And in due time, with care and attention, you might even someday become a pressure-cooker," Nila said flatly. Azula raised a brow.

"...was that...?"

"That was a joke," Nila answered. She shook her head. "I cannot see how the Tribesman ever believed that it would be funny. He is a strange beast."

"He's a Tribesman. Of course he is," Azula agreed. Partly because she remembered him, quite well. She opened a flame into her hand. "Do you think that Zuzu is having as much trouble as we are?"

"I don't doubt that he is with the Tribesman right now; the two of them, I am somewhat certain, will be able to escape their durance with minimal fuss," Nila answered her, and began to strain the fluid into the cup she'd selected.

---

Zuko was getting very tired of hanging from chains. He looked around the chamber that they'd brought him to, and he clucked his tongue. "Of course, Azul has a torture chamber. Why would I ever think that he didn't?"

"Eh, you'll get used to this sooner or later," Sokka said, likewise dangling.

"How can you possibly get used to this?" Zuko asked.

"When you've been captured as frequently as I have, trust me, this becomes old hat," the Tribesman said with what would have been a dismissive wave were he able to move more than just his wrist.

"...how are you all not dead yet?" Zuko asked.

"If you want my guess, it's that the universe wants us to choose between being miserable and being dead, and those are the only options available," Sokka said easily. "It's not all bad. We get to travel the world, miserably. Meet new miserable people. Try to reduce the amount of misery where we go and fail miserably..."

"If you keep saying miserable it's going to lose all meaning," Zuko pointed out.

"Doesn't it make you miserable?" Sokka asked, a baiting grin on his face.

"You're lucky I can't set you on fire from here," Zuko muttered.

There was a bang of a metal rod against the cage within which Zuko was suspended. He glanced down to see the jailer walking past. "Shut up! You; barbarian! We're gonna have a few words with you!"

"Great! I was just starting to despair for the lack of meaningful conversation in here," Sokka said.

"Says the guy who kept saying miserable a few seconds ago," Zuko pointed out.

"Don't run your lip," the jailer said, pointing that rod back toward Zuko even as he opened Sokka's cage. "'Less you want to have words with Azul about etiquette. I hear he's still sore about you being so uncouth."

"Tell him to..." he pondered how Toph would put it? "... kiss my ass, right between the cheeks."

"Ew! Good one!" Sokka said, followed by a meaty thwomp as the jailer lashed out at him. Because of the angle and the bars, Zuko couldn't see Sokka, but the blow landed where the Tribesman's voice came from. And it sounded like a hard one. "Alright... no accou...nting for taste."

---

Aang opened his eyes when he heard the door open. The choker that pressed against his throat was uncomfortable on more levels than one. Even as it made it unpleasant to swallow, it left a part of Aang deadened in a way he really didn't like. The Avatar felt a spike of outrage rush through him when he saw the master of this palace enter, with only his spymaster for accompaniment. Aang forced that spike down, hard. Anger was never the answer. Least of all now. "I don't understand what you want from us," Aang said, as Montoya took a seat.

"I want what any master of Azul has ever wanted. Control, authority, and power," Azul said. "You are but one avenue of many that I can use toward that end."

"What happened to you?" Aang asked, as he looked into the older man's eyes. "Azula told me about you, about who you could have been. She told me that she remembers you being... strict, but kind. The kind of man that rewarded loyalty instead of punishing failure. 'Doting' was the word she used. So what happened?" Aang asked.

The disarming look dropped slightly as Aang spoke, and when he finished, Montoya looked as emotionless as a living mask. "You don't know what you're talking about, child. I'm not here to talk about myself."

"But a part of you wants to," Aang said. "You know that there was a time when things were different. When you were a different man. So what changed?"

A delaying action, as Azula would call it, but one that Aang had nothing better to do than use. And to be frank, he was honestly a little interested. As much as the cold dead eyes of Montoya Azul unsettled him, he had to believe that somewhere inside that cold, angry, dangerous old man was somebody who was worth fighting for, and worth saving from oblivion. "We're not here to talk about my past. We're here to talk about the future, and your part in it."

Aang once again reached for the collar that bound him, but for some reason, he couldn't conceive of pulling the band off, of being free. The very idea couldn't congeal in Aang's mind. And that was part of what the Death Ring was. "I think you're wrong," Aang said quietly. "There's not much future to be had if things don't go perfectly right. This isn't about the rulership of the Fire Nation; it's so much bigger than that."

"And the Avatar would of course cite his vaunted 'authority' to try to reclaim some imagined clout," Montoya said. A whisper of a smirk came to his otherwise deadpan face. "You are no different than anybody else. You seek to turn a situation to your best advantage, no matter the cost."

Aang thought for a moment, his hand dropping away from the collar. Something Azula said, when they were waiting for the others to finish with their prison-break on the Boiling Rock. "I think the only reason you believe that is because you can't bear to think of people any other way... not since your wife died."

Montoya rose to his feet, his jaw tight and the sinews of his neck standing sternly against his skin. Even the spymaster seemed surprised at his masters pique. "You have no right nor reason to speak about her," he said, his words dripping with venom. "She has nothing to do with this."

Aang looked at the older man, and couldn't help but feel the heartbreak of him. "She made you want to be a better man, didn't she?" Aang asked quietly. "Because of her, you held all of your worst demons at bay. But you lost her... and you lost hope."

Montoya glared at him, his breathing harsh. But after a long glare, his eyes slid closed. While his expression didn't liven or soften, it became less of a death-threat and more of a death-warning. "I will attempt this again, when you're in a more pliant mood. And when you aren't wasting my time trying to manipulate me."

"I'm not trying to manipulate you," Aang said.

"...said every manipulator since the beginning of time."

"I'm just trying to save everybody from what's coming at the end of summer," Aang finished.

"Save the Easterners and the Water Tribesmen, you mean," he said, turning toward the door.

"No. Everybody. Even you," he said.

"I don't need to be saved," Montoya said, facing the portal to the world beyond. "And if I did, needing it would prove I didn't deserve it."

The spymaster gave Aang an oblique look, and opened the door before Montoya. "Just because she's gone, doesn't mean that every bit of good she did for you is gone with her," Aang offered. Azul turned with a snarl, and even made a lunging step, but the spymaster being in his path caused him to arrest himself. He took a purging breath, and when he looked upon the Avatar once more, his expression was the dead but disarming look that he'd had when Aang first saw him.

"Everything dies, and nothing golden lasts. It's a lesson that everybody learns eventually, when something dear is taken from them. Perhaps I should teach you that lesson, now," he said.

Aang didn't answer him. What could he even say?

Montoya shut the door to the spacious and opulent room, and left Aang curled lotus on its floor.

---

Maya looked annoyed. Of course, Kori didn't much care at this point, because he was being pampered to within an inch of his life. While he had heard stories how the Yubokamin tended to spoil their guests rotten to placate them for anything from musket-point marriage to human sacrifice, he was well aware that those were simply tall tales spread by people who wanted ethnic tensions between ethnic Ghorkalai and Azuli running at a fever pitch. As such, he took the offerings of spicy wine and warm pastries in the spirit they were offered. And he took them with gusto.

"You're eating like a pig-cow," Maya said.

"You're just envious because everybody's paying attention to me," Kori said.

"Why? You're a damned Tribesman!" she said, not able to parse it in her head. Truth told, Kori didn't know why either, but he wasn't about to turn down a delectable treat delivered by a nubile, dark skinned Fire National now, was he? He'd need to be a special kind of idiot to do that. "These people are crazy."

"You do get that we can speak Huo Jian, don't 'cha?" the girl who was hanging off of Kori's arm asked, as she held up another bite of something slightly sticky and very sweet.

"Don't mind her. She's just an uptight prig," Kori said.

"Ain't she just?" the girl answered.

"You're a hedonist," Maya muttered.

"You're just annoyed because they wouldn't let you keep me in chains. Although, I have to admit, I was rather getting used to them. Call me a deviant if you desire, but there's something about chains and leather..."

"Stop! Please," Maya said, a warding hand out toward him.

"I could stand to hear a bit more," the Gork whispered throatily. But from the smirk on her face, she was doing it purely for Maya's discomfort. It worked for Kori either way. Maya gave a shudder, and looked down from where they were now gathered, at the edge of a fairly severe drop. On the horizon, one could barely make out the city of Azul, and its perpetual smog that clung close to it.

"And I'd love to give it, but right now, I'm simply stuffed. Maybe some other time?" he asked.

"Eagerly waiting," she said. She waved, and the two others – both far closer to Maya's shade than Kori's – departed, back into the mobile town built entirely on the beds of wagons. Kori sucked the sweetness of honey and caramelized sugar from his fingertips, and then moved a bit closer to Maya, stopping to lean against a lightning-struck tree. The two of them both stared down over the shadowed ground that stretched toward the city.

"How about we declare a little truce?" Kori said.

"...what?"

"You stop busting my chops, and I promise I'll keep that," he waved behind him, "out of your line of sight."

"...deal," she said with a shake of her head. "Had I known that the Yubokamin would welcome you like a favorite, long-lost son, I would have just handed you to my father, with all the blowback that goes with the deed."

"Surely you can't despise me so much, having only known me for a week or so," Kori said with a dripping tone.

"Oh, but I can," Maya said. "And don't call me Shr-Li."

"Have you given any thought to your options? Running won't last forever, after all."

"It'll last a long while," Maya pointed out.

Kori just turned a look toward her, and she rolled her eyes with a groan.

"Yes. I get it. But your options aren't very good. Fight my father, fight the Fire Lord, or fight with the Avatar. In terms of loyalties, that's the equivalent to giving the option to cut off a leg, a hand, or cut my own throat."

"Leg," Kori said.

"What?"

"Cut off the leg. I've seen some amazing work they're doing with spring-loaded prostheses these days," Kori said.

"That's not the point!"

"Actually, yes it is," Kori interjected. He turned at his spot, facing her down, as a wave of laughter reached them from the 'town' behind them. "When confronted with a preponderance of evil, and your only choices are between evil men, you select the least of those evils. That way, you've caused the least suffering if you succeed, and inflicted the worst harm on the worst person if you failed."

"And who would ever come up with that kind of garbage?" Maya asked.

"Your father," Kori said with a shrug. "That was his rationalization for claiming the seat of the Coordinator, thirty years ago. And to be honest, at the time, yes, he was the least of all possible evils."

"You didn't know him," Maya said.

"Politically, I did," Kori said. "Anzhu would have gone to open war with the Burning Throne, and scorched the earth all the way to Caldera City. Nobody wins. The Old Man would have opened up a three-front war against the few nations of the East that Azulon hadn't already declared war on. His grandson would have turned the whole aristocracy into a toxic morass of betrayal and murder that would put your father's recent actions to absolute shame. Montoya Azul is, admittedly, a monster. But he's a kinder monster than those he opposed."

"...is it too much to ask that we don't have to knuckle under to beasts like him? That we don't have sociopaths in control?" Maya asked, her eyes locked on the horizon and her tone distant.

"Sociopaths have a strange way of gaining power unless you're very careful to exclude them. And a lot of times, they're fairly benign when they get it, surprisingly," he said with a shrug. "But you're not wrong. The Fire Nation's been dancing to the same tune for far too long, in my opinion."

"You're trying to get me to support your Avatar, aren't you, waterbender?" she asked.

"He's your Avatar too," Kori said with a smirk.

"Don't push your luck."

"Sooner or later you'll stop running away from your responsibilities," Kori said. "Hell, it took me thirteen years, but even I did it."

"You're pursuing treason against the Fire Nation," Maya said.

"No, I'm exacting revenge on the nation which sanctioned my theft and the rape of my biological mother," Kori said.

"Seeing things from 'a certain point of view' doesn't make it true," Maya pointed out.

Kori sighed, and stared into the distance to the city of Azul. "...maybe, but it helps me sleep at night."

---

"The first thing which I found attractive was her legs. Definitely her legs; you can write that down. Her legs... and above 'em. Her legs and her hips. And the waist. Basically, the whole region where Tenger Etseg's sword cleaved her, if you catch my meaning," Sokka said with a grin, despite how it hurt his dry, cracked lips. The heat in this room was overbearing, and because it was such a dry heat after so long dealing with wet heat, it was making him crack like a lizard. It didn't help that they kept a lantern shining in his face from about a foot away.

"That wasn't what we asked," the interrogator said.

"And the nose! Big, yeah, but the way it makes her look, it's... unf! Sure, she's got a bad attitude, but that makes her about as unfeminine a woman as you'll ever meet. I've learned to really appreciate when a girl has a 'take charge' attitude. Didn't always, but... she changed my mind about a lot of things," he said with a suggestive chuckle.

"Remain on topic, Tribesman, or you will be corrected again," the interrogator said, tweezing his brow, the annoyance plain. He reached aside and turned on something that looked like a much miniaturized version of the capaciters which were probably still rotting away outside the walls of Ba Sing Se. "What is your plan with regards to the Fire Lord?"

"You see, it's the damnedest thing," Sokka continued, twisting slightly in his copper chains. "I used to think that women were only good for sewing pants and raising kids. But then there was this girl, Suki, on Kyoshi Island. It took a while, but she managed to pound a few lessons into my head..."

"Very well," the interrogator sighed, before flipping a second switch.

The world, for a time which Sokka couldn't immediately name, became agony. The searing electricity burned through his body, locking his joints and spasming his muscles simultaneously. He felt his heart stop in his chest under that onslaught, but that was a distant thing. Yeah, it hurt. And it was weird to think that Sokka, son of Hakoda, Water Tribesman, was starting to get used to being struck by lightning. After about an hour... or possibly fifteen seconds... the surge ended, and Sokka fell limp in his binds. His wrists were burned raw where the chains sent the charge in there; similar burns adorned his shoulders and knees. He pressed his eyes open, forceably, and uttered a cough. As he did, his heart lurched back to life, hammering at his ribs for a few seconds before very slowly starting to wind back down to a more normal rate... for somebody who was in the process of being tortured.

"The Avatar's plan, barbarian. As long as you keep talking, you won't get shocked," his magnanimous host offered.

Sokka considered it.

For about a second.

"You know what's kinda a weird thing? Despite all of the stuff we're doing, saving the world and all that, there's still a chance that we're still going to be exiled when all this is said and done. Tradition is a weird thing. Now, if it hadn't been Gran-Gran who had exiled us, we'd probably have been allowed back by now. But..." he offered a shrug which hurt like hell. And still managed not to hurt as badly as when Zhao cooked a significant portion of his chest, arm, and hip. He couldn't help but smile, for all it hurt all the same. Because if there was one thing that he'd learned in the half-year or so that they'd wandered this spinning Earth, it was that stubborn stupidity would save your life a lot more often than it'd endanger it. Or was it stupid stubbornness? Eh, from where he was sitting, the two looked almost identical. After all, how else would everybody have held on long enough for Aang to get moving again?

The Azuli man offered a groan, which slowly escalated into a growl, ending when he kicked a bucket and sent it crashing across the room and spraying its awful brine to the floor. And when he did so, he hurt his toe.

Sometimes, you had to take pleasure in the little things.

---

Toph moved through the crowds, picking her steps carefully. She knew that it would be child's play for her to keep up with the stooge who'd sold them out, but only if he kept to the street. That meant that the universe of course had to have him cut through buildings instead of the alleys that were more sensible. There was always a moment of tension, as she waited for him to leave the wood and return to the cobbles where she had no idea where he was. He could have been looking straight at her for all she knew.

One of these days, she was going to have to figure out how to see through wood. If earthbending worked on metal, surely there could be some utility to wood as well?

There.

She was moving again, traversing the crowds that pounded through their daily routine of work oneself three-quarters of the way to death, drink something strongly alcoholic in a bid to sleep the six hours that they had if they were extremely lucky, and then repeat ad nauseum. They were predictable. That was damned strange. Well, a lot of things were strange about these Westerners, things that Toph wouldn't have predicted. For one thing, these Azuli were almost as hide-bound as her dad! She heard from that nurse while Malu was conked that for all women were allowed to vote – back when elections were still a thing that happened – it was made needlessly difficult for them. Aristocracy thrived, the 'middle class' was stomped out of existence, leaving only the wealthy and the poor.

It was almost like the thought-processes of the Water Tribesmen and the Fire Nationals had gotten their paths mixed up at some point, and nobody sorted them out.

She'd only gotten about two hundred more feet when he ducked into another building. "You've got to be trying to duck me. Nobody takes that many needless shortcuts."

Toph wouldn't put it past the bugger to be paranoid; after all, he had just handed over the most dangerous people in the Fire Nation, to somebody arguably more evil than the Fire Lord. There was no great certainty that somebody wasn't just going to put a cannon-ball through him and take his money back, bloody or no.

There was a lot on Toph's mind. Zuko was a significant portion of that 'a lot'. Idiot had to go and get himself captured. No, worse; he had to offer himself for capture. There was a lot that Toph would do for the guys, but just head in there with your eyes down and your fists dangling? Not going to happen with Toph Beifong! She wished she'd found some way to convince him to hold off, to come up with some sort of break-out scheme. She wished... but the universe had a way of not giving anybody what they wished for. It was seldom so kind.

She pressed herself in the narrow cleft between two buildings, sliding herself in that narrow gap until it widened out as the buildings were no longer so claustrophobically close. At the far side, she pressed her hand to the building to her left. Then, she groaned. "Wood frame? Are you kidding me?" she muttered. She then squirmed her toes inside her soleless shoes, trying to get a feel that way. The only problem with her vision was that there was a lot of noise, both literally and metaphorically. She focused, though. She'd know him when he appeared out the door again.

Sadly, she didn't think to look up toward, say, a window. And not that it would have helped, because she couldn't see anyway. There was a slight creak behind her, one that vanished before her focus, and then a moment later, a loud thump. That, on the other hand, drew Toph's attention away. She spun, her stance wide and her fists forward. She was half way into pulling some blocks of stone to hurl at the ambusher when she realized that this was the guy she was trying to tail. Great. He'd gotten the drop on her. Not for long, though.

"Why are you following me?" the innkeeper of the Drunken Dragon demanded. His voice sounded slightly different than it had the times that he'd roared at them through the walls.

"You know perfectly why!" Toph answered. "How much did they pay you?"

The innkeeper seemed to wilt a bit, and shook his head. She had gotten a lot of practice, of late, at reading body language. It made fighting ages easier. "...you think I sold Prince Zuko out, don't you?"

"Don't try to deny it," she said.

"Why would I sell the lad? I owe far too much to his uncle for that!" he shouted back at her. He turned, as though glaring in the vague direction of his inn. "But I know who did. Dara, that two-faced bint! Thought she'd have enough pride to stick to the family, but no, greed got to 'er. Greed and vanity."

"Dara? Really?" Toph asked, disbelief plain in her tone.

Then she thought about it.

"...oh crap," Toph said. Dara had always been there. One door over, one corner away. Always barging in when something important, or even borderline incriminating was said. And she hadn't seen a damned thing! Damn it Toph! You're supposed to know when people are lying to you!

"So you see your problem," he said. He took a cautious step toward her. "Their uncle did me a fair turn, one that kept me alive when I ought naught 'a been. Fair's only fair that I turn it back to 'im."

"You're going to help get them out of the Spider's web?"

"Are you insane? God with his burnin' sword couldn't cut out of that morass from th' outside," He started to move past her, and she kept pace. "The only thing I can do – we can do, even – is to get 'em the hell out of Azul if they somehow pull a miracle from 'ere asses!"

Toph blinked a few times at that. "Hell, I'll take it," she said with a shrug. After all, it wasn't often that life gave you lemons, when it knew that you knew somebody who could turn lemons into bombs.

---

She kept moving through the palace, looking as weary, annoyed, and rushed as humanly possible. In a word, she was emulating every other servant that she saw walking the almost vacant halls of this place. Those who weren't servants didn't give her a second glance. That was lucky, because if any of them asked something of Katara, she was pretty sure that her Tribal accent would give her away almost instantly.

But if there was one perk to being the invisible class, it was that she had the run of the palace. And she'd taken advantage of that. She peeked into no less than two dozen rooms, trying to find some of the others of her party. But so far, her luck wasn't in. Not that she'd stop. She just had to change her focus.

The problem with searching a palace, or this palace in particular, was that Azul had given her palatial accommodations. And she was pretty sure that he'd have afforded the others similar treatment. But that wasn't a guarantee, and with every vacant room, or worse, occupied one that she had to slink away from, her guess was that not all of Team Avatar was afforded luxury. And if there was anybody who'd get himself into enough trouble in the three days they'd been here to get himself thrown in prison, it'd be Katara's brother. Which in turn led to her next problem: where the hell was the dungeon?

In Ba Sing Se, it'd been as easy as heading down until you were under the sewers, then follow the green lamps. Metaphorically speaking, anyway. Here? She had no real indicator which way the 'guest' rooms were. But she had an inkling. Somewhere secure. Somewhere far from the exits and the courtyards. Her path brought her inward, to the ring of rooms which surrounded the Red Garden. She peeked into one of them, when there was nobody to notice her. It looked much the same as many other chambers that she'd seen, of the sort that honored guests would find presentable. Well, there was one glaring difference; the windows which looked down upon the Red Garden were warded by cast-iron bars. Some of the bars seemed a little bit... dented.

She slid the door closed, and continued walking. Finding the others was only the first step. Honestly, if she found Azula, that'd be a cause for celebration. Much as everything about that firebender rubbed Katara the wrong way, she knew rationally that there was nobody better to have in a fight. Mostly she'd learned that first hand by being the recipient of Azula's many freak-outs and beat-downs, all barely averted and only by intervention by the Avatar. If she couldn't find him, Katara would settle for her. And in a way, Azula might actually be more useful.

Aang was a sweet kid, but there were lines he would never cross. Azula had crossed them, knew what that felt like, and if needs be, would again.

In that, she had something on Katara. In that, she had something on a lot of people.

Even while trying to hold her disguise, Katara couldn't help but chuckle at the divine irony. After all these months, the only chance that Aang had to save the world was dependent upon Katara, his surrogate sister, freeing Azula, the woman who kept trying to kill him – and in another lifetime actually succeeded at it twice!

Still, her instincts might have been screaming, her nerves frayed to snapping, but Katara had more resolve than that. She had stood beside the dying and the mad at Summavut. She would survive this. She paused, listening to an odd muttering coming through a wall just ahead of her. She cast a glance in every direction, then pressed her ear to the wall. The babbling was in Huo Jian, but probably wouldn't have been understandable even by one of their ilk – it was more a speech to self than a speech to an audience of even one. It was male, and had a smooth tone to it. Zuko, maybe? She rolled her eyes. Maybe he could behave himself enough to not end up in the dungeons. Sokka was still toast, though. Katara reached for the door, and flipped the lock. That it was locked from the outside was a hopeful sign in this instance. She wasn't barging in on somebody who wanted privacy; she was liberating a prisoner.

She stopped and blinked in surprise, though, as the door opening revealed not a petulant and overprotective firebender, but instead a slender, fairly short man with mussed black hair and a narrow mustache upon his lip. He continued to talk to himself as he paced, and occasionally dipped his finger into the oil of his lamp and made an indelible mark on the wall. He was drawing something. Something that seemed needlessly complex, and was marked wholly of lamp-oil. It certainly wasn't a means of escape. To be honest, it looked kinda like the thing that Aang had blown up outside of Ba Sing Se.

"Nomura Sato?" Katara asked.

"Hrm?" Sato asked, his wide and slightly watery eyes turning to her. "Ah! Meal time already? Time does fly when I have my mind on something."

"You're Nomura Sato?" Katara stressed.

"Why yes, my dear, I am," he turned to his wall, rubbing his finger on his chin and thus staining it with oil. He didn't seem even to notice. "To be frank, I would dispense a week's meals for a single ream of paper and a proper mechanical pen! What I'm reduced to is so... inelegant."

"Mister Sato, you're in danger here," Katara said, stepping into the room. He waved idly at her.

"I am in far finer quarters than I could afford a few nights ago. And my meals are blessedly free of weevils!" he raised a blackened finger. Then, he pointed to the window, which he was still ignoring as he bore witness to whatever machine it was he was concocting. "Of course, the monstrosity in the courtyard has cost me some precious sleep, but that is a trifle. Noble patrons are a blessing not to be overlooked!"

Katara silently grimaced and made a strangling motion, but contained herself from making the wish a reality. Were all scientists as nutty as he? Zha Yu certainly had his moments of inventive mania. And, to her detriment, so did Zha Yu's son. "Mister Sato, we were sent here by Zha Yu. The Mountain King says that you won't be safe in Azul. That 'the beast bears many heads, and all of them, however pretty, poisonous'."

Sato straightened a bit. "That does sound like something he'd say..." which was a relief, because Katara wasn't sure she'd memorized it properly. If there was one benefit to this language, as it was atonal, it was harder to screw up. Sato shrugged. "If Zha Yu truly believes my life to be in danger, I will have to respect his perception. He's often seen things that I..." Sato trailed off as he turned to her.

"What?"

"Who is that with you?" Sato asked. Katara flinched, and spun, tearing the water from the sweat which was running down her body and erupting it from her dress in a shiv of ice. But it had only just emerged from its silken durance when a rod of metal tapped her hand, ever so slightly. Then, with a 'zorp' and an agony of all of her muscles rebelling against her, a terrible pain running through her whole body, she seized and collapsed to her knees. There were two Azuli standing directly before her, now. One of them had what looked like a backpack, connected by a rubberized cord to a short rod in one hand. Katara tried to do something other than gasp for breath. The Azuli, cold in his eyes and his manner, reached forward with the prod again, and pressed it into her gut. The pain ramped higher again, and didn't abate until she was given the grand mercy of unconsciousness.

Sato stared agape as the dark complected girl was shocked into unconsciousness, but what he felt was not any great empathy for her in particular, but a wrath that something he had created had been weaponized! "You took my creation and made a weapon of it! I must protest! This is absolutely unnacceptable!" Sato raved. The Azuli with the electrical capacitor strapped to his back gave a glance to the woman beside him. She shrugged. "I will not allow this travesty to continue! When I find out who stole my – AAAARGH!"

Sato was cut off when the Azuli jabbed that electrified prod into his gut as he had the girl's. When he collapsed into torpor – after a far shorter time than the girl had held out – the Azuli turned to his counterpart. "I've wanted to do that for days," he said. She gave a chuckle, but no more than that. "Now help me get this thing off; I feel like I'm crushing my spine!"

---

Aang gave a glance out the window as he heard a clipped scream, then some angry yelling, followed by another shout of pain. The window didn't allow him a great deal of view, so he knew that he wouldn't be able to see what that had come from. But it couldn't be good.

"I hope that wasn't somebody I know..." Aang hoped, and reached for the Death Ring again. And again, there was no concept of removing it present in his mind.

After all, what use was a device to contain shamans, if the shaman himself could pull it off?

---

Sharif breathed deeply, as he walked the short dimensions of his cell within a cell. Even though the Death Ring was 'round his neck, they couldn't deprive him of everything. He was just too intrinsic a shaman at this point; too much of what remained of his mind was devoted to it. It found ways through the sinister hold of the evil device.

He could smell the swirling of void, even if his eyes would not allow him to see them. Even if his ears would not allow him to hear them. He breathed of their corpus, and they spoke to him. Not in words or even ideas. They spoke to him in the logos of reality itself. Something simple, base, but beyond his comprehension. There was only one thing that he, with his wounded mind, could discern.

Fear. They were running out of time.

Sharif stopped, staring up at the spin of the spider fly which took its nest in the corner of the chamber. It was often said by natural philosophers that their webs were each random and unique creations, their spokes and strands aligned according to an imprecise instinct, just effective enough to catch prey, but random nonetheless. Sharif knew it was wrong. The strands spoke the song of the universe. He couldn't hear it. Not with the Death Ring on his throat. But in the strands of the web, he could see the whispers of Void. The message that he'd learned, over so long a time.

Sharif stopped his pacing, and sat down, his legs tucked under him. Distant eyes locked through the door of the cell, and the great iron bulkhead beyond it. The song which could not be heard sung only one thing to him this day.

Be ready, Sharif.

---

"Stop. Struggling... you... bastard..." Odalai hissed as he heaved back on his choke, and the Fire National in his thick winter coat finally gave a last twitch, before falling still. Yue only knew his name because another had said it a few minutes ago; he was a shaman from Rough Lee-Havavut, in the prime of his life but not nearly so educated or skilled as some of the others present. He cracked an uneven smirk at her as he grabbed the man's hood and dragged him into the shadows. Just as he vanished from sight, he whispered. "You'd think these people had something to hide, or something."

Yue kept looking around the scene, but the darkness of night honestly wasn't that dark. The sun never set too far below the horizon in the height of summer. With the Summer Solstice mere days away, night was but a few hours of twilight, before true dark returned once more. It wasn't the light of the barely hidden sun which was the most stark and disheartening thing, though; it was the buildings that rose from the bones of her home. The palace had been torn down and melted away entirely, it's grandeur replaced with an ugly, squat office of metal and concrete rooted to the stone. Few indeed were the buildings not removed, simply repurposed. Only those like the forges, made all of stone since the earliest days, remained. But not in their same state; the Fire Nation had expanded them, and not gently.

"Jantuk? What do you see?" Yue asked ahead, through the dispersed group of shamans.

"I see the doors, mistress," the word reached back to her, passed from mouth to ear along a chain of them. Yue knew that no alarm had been raised yet, but that was no reason to be lax or sloppy. With Tui and La as her witness, Yue was going to bring every one of these people home!

Yue gave a loud click of her tongue, and the sound passed forward, with the others moving with her, albeit along different paths. Hunting signals, developed by the South Water Tribes to not spook animals, had much the same effect on Fire Nation soldiers. Despite their already frighteningly long stay in what was once their homeland, they were still invisible. Yue was, understandably, the last to actually reach Jantuk, pulling up beside him under an arch of soapstone that no longer had anything else built atop it. Her eyes narrowed. "Why aren't there any guards?"

"I don't like the looks of this, mistress," Jantuk muttered. Neither did she.

"Please, don't call me mistress. Not now," Yue asked, but her eyes were swinging. The last of the old familiar faces gave a solemn nod, and then, after a moment of concentration, dashed across the open space to flatten himself against the long-shadowed wall. Every shaman present, old or young, armed or not, held their breath.

Then, a wave of the hand, a begging inward. Yue was the first to rush the distance across that harrowingly open terrain, but she was far from the last. "Locks?" Jantuk asked.

"I've got it," Samo-e offered, kneeling before it.

"We don't have time to pick it," Jantuk pointed out.

"Who said I was picking it?" the shaman, who had only in the week approaching this wild adventure returned from fighting with Hakoda's soldiers, said a with a smirk on his face. He lifted the lock, then poured something into it, something that hissed and smoked, and he moved his fingers carefully to avoid dripping the acrid substance onto himself. Yue's eyes widened a bit as the key-hole of the pad-lock for the bar over the door began to widen, then the lock began to melt completely. "Don't get it on your skin. Hurts like a bastard."

"Mind your tongue. Ladies are present," Jantuk said.

"Please; my wife says far worse," Samo-e answered the older man. He gave the lock a thwack with the but of the short spear he kept at his back, and the lock fell away with barely a clatter. A few moments later, the bar was shifted and the door, open.

Yue was, needless to say, the first one in. She had been in this room so often in her childhood that she knew its every nuance by heart. How the wind would swirl, seldom but predictably, and bring with it the scent of damp humus. The way that the grasses would bend to no wind at all. The lazy way that the light painted the torii and the greenery beyond it, soft and diffuse, coming from no source at all. The warmth of the air that pulled at her skin and broke a sweat under the layers of clothes until she doffed parka and gloves and hood. And the sense of connection to the place. The wholeness and oneness of it.

She didn't feel any of that right now.

"This..." Jantuk said, as he followed her in, but he trailed off, unable to say a single word more. He could only shake his head in shock at what he saw.

It was all frozen.

The grasses, the bushes and tree, they were all covered over in a skin of ice which reflected only in the red light of the false-twilight that peeked in over the roof of the oasis. But even were it not, it was plain to see that all of that once lush greenery was dead. Ice leaves were all that remained of plants which had withered to grey branches and frozen roots. The great waterfall which had fallen down, and given the quiet din of water to the pond, was now a cascade of ice which reached almost to the central island before it was plugged completely. There was no smell. There was no sound but the wind whistling over the opening in the rocks. And there was no light but that which the shamans brought with them.

Yue walked the bridge to the central island, her eyes staring down at the pool at the little island's center. It, like the flow around it, was now a solid block of ice. Yue dropped to her knees, staring down at that cold wet brick, and shook her head. She could see through this ice, clear to the bottom of the pool. She'd never seen the bottom of the pool before. It was so... mundane.

"I don't understand? Where's Tui and La?" Wequais' granddaughter asked, leaning around Yue.

"They're not here," Jantuk said quietly, mournful disbelief in his voice. He shook his head slowly, as though he could deny what his eyes told him.

"How can they just be gone? They're gods!" Samo-e pointed out at a clipped yell.

"Shut up! Do you want those bastards to find us?" Odalai hissed back at him. Yue, though, just closed her eyes, and leaned down.

The words of the others, as they started to argue amongst themselves, washed over her. She didn't listen. Because she was feeling for something. In a way that she could never truly explain to any of the people around her, even the ones that she'd grown up around, her life was a part of these creatures. When they brought her back to life, and marked her body with their signet, it was more than just a reminder of a man's debt to the Spirit World. Part of La lived inside Yue now.

And she knew how to find herself.

"I know where they were taken," Yue said, her bright eyes opening. The others, who were forming lines behind each of Samo-e and Jantuk, fell silent as one, and all turned to regard her. "Zhao, the Scarred One, took Tui and La from this place. Without them, it's just a pond fed by a glacier. They are the power, not this place."

"How could you know where they were taken?" Odalai asked.

"I am closer to them than most. I can feel where they were taken," Yue said. She stepped onto the pristine, clear ice which was once a pond, and held out her hands. One by one, suspicious or no, the others took her hands into a circle. "You will have to trust me. The gods are calling to me..."

There was a moment of hesitation. She turned to face the little girl. "You should go to your grandfather. Tell him to keep the 'Smoke Orchard' gate open. He'll know what that means."

"I will," the girl said, and she broke away. She only took two steps before she vanished into thin air, stepping through a rift into the Spirit World.

"Why aren't we going to tell him ourselves?" Jantuk asked.

"Because we're not going into the Spirit world," Yue said. She didn't know how, but she knew that it would work.

"How is that even possib–" a remarkably attractive young woman from Alulbitavut asked. She was cut off when the whole circle of them dropped through the surface of the water, descending into instant and frigid wetness. But it wasn't a transit into the Spirit World. No, this was something more direct. This was hanging on to a god trying to reunite its own soul.

They hung in space, drowning, for an instant.

Then, with a grunt, the water flooded away from them, pooling at their ankles as they were bombarded by the much warmer rains of an eternal deluge. Yue opened her eyes to a city she never thought she would behold in her life. Jantuk stared in open disbelief.

"This is..." Odalai began agape.

"Caldera City. Zhao has taken our gods prisoner here," Yue said, and turned toward the great palace, where she felt the other part of her waiting.

---

Timing, it was said, was everything. Even in the moment that a brace of Tribesmen transited half-way across the world by means that neither shaman nor bender would have been able to adequately explain, another great impossibility was taking place. This one took the form of a slender girl, every shade of her black save for the scarlet eyes.

It was stalking, but halted at the sensation that there was food nearby. Shaman's souls were a foodstuff that was in very short demand to the Shard, and it was so very hungry. But they weren't Its target, nor its purpose. Still, it was enough to inspire something like rage in It. Its great maw opened, as the beast stepped out of the darkness and into a crowded street. Instantly, there was screaming and panic. Even though mundane humans, benders or not, would have no idea what this thing was, there was an instinct in the backs of their minds that howled at them to run the hell away from It as fast as they could. It was an instinct born in the oldest, most animal times of their species. An instinct of something that knew a dangerous predator had appeared amidst them.

The maw opened and It turned west, and on the other side of the continent, a different shard turned to the east, Its own maw wide in turn. The hunger was great. Unbearable, even, but They had purpose. Find the Avatar. Find the shamans. Feed.

And the frustration was the first human thing that It had felt in a very, very long time. The Shard that stood in Azul City raised Its arms, mirroring Its sister a thousand miles away. From shadows far around each, other Shards began to appear. Dozens. Then hundreds. Thousands, perhaps. They formed a perimeter, each around a city, a band of darkness that swallowed the light and left a sticky black hanging even in the air. Their arms raised, and then clawed down.

And as they did, they ripped through the fabric of reality, and began to give bloody and screaming birth to the Megalopolis.

---

Aang turned when the door opened, giving up on the window for the time being. He was only slightly surprised when he saw that Montoya Azul had returned. What surprised him far more was that Katara was being dragged with him by the spymaster. Aang's hands flinched for a moment, and fire appeared at his knuckles for a moment before he reined himself in. For all Katara was limp, she wasn't lifeless. She just looked... Aang couldn't describe it. Like she'd been struck by lightning or something. It didn't help that she seemed to smoke a little.

"What's going on?" Aang asked.

"A lesson," Montoya said. He motioned his subordinate forward, and the spymaster unkindly put Katara to the floor, holding her kneeling with one hand. She seemed only just starting to get movement back into her hands, and her gaze was... not bleary, but trying to see through a haze of some sort. Probably pain. "Tell me, young Avatar; what is better. To have loved, and lost, or to have never loved at all?"

"Joy isn't undone by sadness. And sorrow isn't undone by happiness either. Karma doesn't balance things that way," Aang said, his eyes always flitting between Katara and the man who had brought her here.

"I thought you might prevaricate on your answer. Storm Kings always do," he said. He pointed at Katara. "She was discovered in the halls, trying to besmirch my hospitality. I had planned simply to remind her that as long as she was under my roof, that I was in control. It is the kind of lesson that pain teaches especially well. But... no. No, I don't believe that's the appropriate lesson in this instance. Wouldn't you agree?"

"Go to hell," Katara hissed through grit teeth.

"Do you love this girl?" Azul asked, his eyes hollow.

"Katara? She's like a sister to me," Aang said, swallowing.

"So you love her," Azul nodded. "And she has brought joy into your life, am I right?"

"I couldn't have come as far as I did without her," Aang admitted.

"And if she were to die, after all of that, would that be better – less painful – than having never known her at all? Having never been in her company? Having never had her as part of your life in the smallest detail? Would the pain be worth it?"

"I don't know... How could I?" Aang asked.

"Think. Think very hard," Montoya pressured. Aang looked away from the intense nothingness beyond Azul's gaze. What did the man want Aang to say? What point was he trying to prove?

"...I'd still rather have had her in my life. It's not about where we end. It's about the path leading toward it."

"So you would rather lose than never have?" Azul asked. "Prove it."

Aang leaned back. "How could I pro–"

He was interrupted by the spymaster flicking a kukri from his sleeve and sliding it under Katara's chin. With a single pull back, the blade bit through her skin, and opened a great rent from her larynx to a spot behind her ear. A great pulse of red jetted out, and her eyes went wide. Aang's were probably wider.

"Katara!" Aang screamed, as she managed to pull away from the spymaster, even as her life's blood pumped headily out of her. She only made it two steps, but those two steps were all it took for Aang to reach her. She fell straight forward, and Aang caught her before she smashed into the floor. He clamped his hand over the thin-edged wound, trying in vain to hold in the blood. "WHY DID YOU DO THAT?"

"To prove a point. You'll remember this for the rest of your life. And you'll know that its better to have nothing, than lose everything. That's the way of the world," Azul said. Then, he turned, departing the room and slamming the door behind him hard enough that it rebounded open slightly. Aang just stared down at Katara, who was steadily growing more grey, her eyes more unfocused and distant. He just couldn't... he didn't have the waterbending skill to hold it all in. Tears pressed out of his eyes, spilling down his cheeks.

"I'm sorry, Katara. I'm so sorry..." he sobbed, staring down at her. The spymaster slowly turned from the Avatar toward the door, dismissing them entirely. Katara mouthed something, unable to get the breath for words. Aang didn't know what she was trying to say. She reached up, though, with her hand. A dying grasp. The grasp reached his neck, getting her fingertips under the band which belted Aang's throat. No. No, she was going to die and Aang couldn't do anything! He never felt so powerless in his entire life.

And never had the wrath, something he'd kicked and stomped down with every fiber of his being, swelled so high. So strong. So undeniable. Katara's fingers flexed, getting under the band. With a grit of her teeth, already red from what was flowing out of her, she pulled hard, even bending her own body to do it. Strength, just enough, to snap the Death Ring off of Aang's neck.

And the instant that it came off, there were no more tears on Aang's face, because the blazing white that poured out of his eyes evaporated them.

He ignited his fingertip, dragging it along Katara's wound, even as the voices told him how to press blood back into her. It flowed up her clothing, back into her neck, even as the Avatar cauterized the wound. Half of Katara was still painting the room... but there was a chance – even a small one – that she wouldn't die. Not today. The Avatar raised its vision from the one who mattered so much, to the one who had levied the assault upon her. "You shouldn't have done that."

The spymaster turned, just as he was about to close the door behind him. Confusion turned to shock when he beheld the Avatar leaping away from Katara, his fists dragging tendrils of flame that baked the walls of the room as they spun. The shock turned to nothing at all when that pillar of hellish blaze, larger even than the man it had been directed at, blasted through him with such intensity that there was not even an ash left behind. Aang's scream of almost inhuman wrath echoed, a dam being broken after creating a reservoir of unimaginable depth.

If anybody who knew Aang were to look at him now, they wouldn't recognize him. Because never had he ever let himself become so enraged. Never had he ever slipped so far beyond the veils of wrath. And never had he ever given over everything to the Avatar State as the price for vengeance. He slammed a foot down, and the palace began to be torn in half.

---

The shudder in the ground threw the man with the electric touch away from Sokka. It was only for an instant, but he was well versed in taking every opportunity given to him. As the jailer pulled Sokka back toward him, trying to steady himself against the shifting of the floor, Sokka put even more of his weight in, and tipped the larger man backward, stumbling ever onward until he smacked into a wall. Knowing full well how much it was going to hurt, Sokka clenched his jaw, and then threw himself straight up, catching the man's chin with his dome. One crack was followed by another as his helmet saved him from bashing himself out against the wall, but that gave Sokka enough leverage to turned and kick him very hard in the groin.

When the jailer went down, Sokka kicked him again, this time in the face. Then he hissed in pain. "Why does everybody have to burn me? This is getting old."

It was awkward as hell digging for the keys on the jailer's belt, mostly because Sokka's arms had been bound behind him. But for somebody who'd taught himself every nuance of the boomerang, using his hands even under such difficult circumstances was a non-problem. He'd almost gotten them in the fifth second of his attempt when another shudder rocked the ground, and a sound of crashing came from somewhere above. Still, he just tried again, and this time managed to unlock his hands from the thick manacles that they'd deemed him worthy of. "Alright, you're not going to be needing these," Sokka said glibly, as he pulled the key loop from the man's belt. "And good luck with the electrocutions, you psycho."

He could see the room that they'd duck-marched him into hours – perhaps days – ago not far away. And as he really shouldn't leave Angry Jerk in the hands of somebody so inherently willing to strike people with lightning, he had his next little task. One key opened the door, into that dreary little hell that they'd called home for a yet-undetermined amount of time. Zuko was, indeed, still hanging from his binds, but his head was down, his hair falling in a great and tangled mass before him. Sokka banged his keyring on the door, causing Zuko to slowly gaze up. That slow rise turned into a fast one when he saw that it was a Tribesman with the keys, and not a demented old bastard. "Rise and shine, 'Zuzu'," Sokka offered, as he started testing keys to the lock.

"Don't call me Zuzu. Only my sister gets to call me that," Zuko pointed out tersely, but still looked a bit surprised. "How did you get out?"

"Quick question; is the Fire Nation notorious for earthquakes?"

"We're a nation of volcanoes. Of course we are," Zuko answered. "Why do you think everything's made of wood?"

Good point, Sokka considered. There was a deep clunk as the lock opened, and a much tinnier one when Sokka managed to undo the winch that held Zuko aloft on only his second try. The firebender landed on his face, and Sokka honestly didn't take even a mote of joy at the fact. After all, it wasn't on purpose. Sokka helped the man who'd tried to kill him six months ago to his feet, wincing at how it pulled at the burns on his shoulders and forearms. "So how do we get out from here?"

Sokka's question was answered with a third, yet louder crack, followed by a cascade of grit, followed by... furniture. A chair and vanity set tumbled through a cleft which had pried open in the ceiling, smashing itself to kindling on the floor. Ask the universe a simple question, and sometimes, it'd give you a simple answer.

"...that wasn't an earthquake," Zuko muttered.

"But you said..."

"Aang," Zuko whispered. Sokka blanched at the implication. And a moment later, both were running.

---

The hissing bubble of the acid on the floor was an odd but interesting sight. Azula hadn't been joking, when she said that she and Nila would have made a spectacular duo. Well, trio when Azula necessarily included Ty Lee, and possibly tetrad if she could still claim any sympathy from Mai. She certainly knew her flammables and explosives.

"How much longer is this going to take?" Azula asked, not bored in her tone.

"I cannot say. It depends upon factors which I cannot take into account," Nila said. "The density of the limestone. The purity. Whether flaws exist naturally within its strata. Bear only that when it is ready, we will be able to merely stomp our way to relative freedom."

"And if we stomp too soon, am I right in assuming that we will lose our boots if we're lucky, and our feet if not?"

"No. Simply second-degree burns," Nila said. She held a hand over it. "It is a process producing great heat."

Azula heard something through the window, something loud and desperate. A scream of terror. She rose from her place leaning against the doorframe to move to the iron-barred window. "What...?" Azula asked. She was answered when a pulse of unearthly light blossomed out of a window at the far end of the Red Garden. The white was followed an instant later by blazing red. "...oh, that is not good."

"Has something happened?" Nila asked, rising from the bubbling cleft in the floor. Because she took a step toward Azula, away from that wound in the floor, when the shakes began, tearing at the structure of Azul's palace, they didn't knock her back into her own chemical soup. Instead, there was a deep crack, and a fissure spread out and away from where Nila inflicted her first wound, spreading up and down the walls. Thin grey daylight began to seep in where the ceiling buckled. But the floor cracked far more powerfully than that, opening a cleft easily a yard across. Nila managed to catch her balance. "What has happened?" she demanded, rather than ask, this time.

"The Avatar has become slightly angry," Azula let understatement be her guide, and turned Nila toward the hole. She could see a room directly below theirs, albeit one which stank of lamp-oil and human urine. "Jump!"

Nila didn't argue. She bounded down through the cleft and landed with a degree of grace that, while still awkward, was still far better than Azula's who came crashing down through a writing desk. That hurt as much as one might imagine. Azula pushed herself to a sit, picking a splinter out of her forearm and burning it to ash rather than throw it away. Nila was the one to help her to her feet, this time. "Now where are –" Nila began. Then, she trailed off, looking at a wall. Azula turned to follow the Easterner's gaze, and saw that there were schematics for an electrical capacitor structure scrawled on the wall in oil. And there was a slender and dazed-looking man trying to sit up straight in his chair and not quite succeeding. "...Nomura Sato?" she asked.

"Wh-yes?" the man said, his eyes bleary.

"We don't have time for introductions," Azula told the Easterner. She held a hand toward the eccentric and hapless inventor. "Come with us if you want to live."

---

The sea receded and the hills bore up, even as the tremors began to shoot through them. The twin rings of Shards raised a wail, its pitch rising ever higher, inaudible to humanity but devastating to the animals that lived nearby. Birds dropped dead in flight. Pets went feral, and fled from homes, into the streets... and then out of them. Mounts bucked their riders and threw their carts, stampeding as quickly as their legs would carry them away from the cities of Caldera and Azul. Those deprived of such opportunities... simply died, their animal hearts and animal minds not able to cope with the unimaginable horror.

In Azul, the Shards looked inward, as They felt the greatest pulse of power that They had felt in a very long time. They knew it as much as They knew Themselves. The Avatar was here. And his anger broke the earth.

In Caldera City, hundreds of miles away, the ground also began to shift. As the veils between the Worlds were torn asunder and the Megalopolis moved to superposition with each of the two metropolises, the rage of a being so far away was transferred whole into a place that he had never seen with his mortal eyes. The earthquake started in Azul, traveled to Caldera City, and the palaces of the rich started to crack and crumble.

Until an even deeper, more dire rumble sounded, bubbling up from the center of the city which had built itself in the mouth of a becalmed volcano. Namely, a rumbling which spoke that the volcano was no longer calm.

In the skies above Azul, grey clouds were replaced by mounting purple and orange and green, lightning bolts of no earthly shade searing at random from out their bodies. And high above it all, a very, very thin line, almost invisible to all, but not simply visible but as apparent as the nose on her face to an airbender girl who stared up and out of the window, slid from horizon to horizon. The Eye of Terror was here. The clouds hid It from most, if not all, but she saw It. It wasn't open, but It was here.

The Veils were torn harder, until a deathly chill fell onto every bender in the two now-linked cities. A chill that spoke of the Spirit World, but not entirely. Those that bent fire in their hands against the darkness and the cold still held their flames, because the Megalopolis was not complete. But time would change that.

And in a cell, in Ashfall Prison, Sharif Badesh bin Seema din Nassar reached out his hand. The ironwood bars had been warded, yes, for every spirit that was commonly known. But there was one that they missed. And it wasn't the only thing that they missed. His other hand reached for his throat, and his fingers hooked around the Death Ring fastened there. If they had checked, been more careful, they might have known that the Death Rings were not indestructible, and were not eternal. For all they were the only objects still in existence older than the fallen Monolith, some were worn, their functions spotty, if not simply absent. Some operated intermittently. Others, lacked certain functionalities entirely.

Sharif's, for example, no longer included the ban against its bearer removing it.

So it was a matter of a sharp tug to rip it from its place. An instant later, Sharif touched the floating mote of silvery light that now appeared before any set of eyes, rather than simply his own; he pulled the Void, which was folded in on itself from a being as large as the city to the spark he saw before him, and pressed it to his head, and he begged a simple request.

"Help me save them," Sharif asked.

The scar over his eye didn't simply glow. It ignited. The same faint iridescence seemed to pulse out of his eyes, not the all-consuming incandescence of an Avatar State, but something smaller, more personal, more private. Sharif, his mind intact, rose from the filthy floor, just as that floor split and the logs were forced apart by the earthquake which rocked the Fire Nation. Miles away, the Jade Toe did not simply go dead. It snapped, and broke.

"It is time," he said, direly.

---

To Be Continued

---

Canonically Aang lost at the Day of Black Sun. That knocked him. Here, Aang loses himself in Azul. That knocks him harder.