A. N. : I am ! Back ! Today's intermission features gal pals, again, and the running theme of these chapters continues. I think by now it's probably becoming obvious what that theme is... Anyways, on to Azula !

Azula is training.

Or maybe experimenting would be the more accurate term. She has the nails of one hand painted gold while the other wears nothing – the goal is to figure out why lightning comes easier to the first. Even though she purposefully painted her bad hand.

She of course already knew how the lightning would react. But the first step to understanding something is to make sure the premises are correct. Otherwise you end up with a result that doesn't fit the theory – you end up wrong, and that is not acceptable, Azula cannot be wrong, Zuzu joining the Avatar's friends was not supposed to happen –

She wasn't wrong. She could not have predicted this. Zuzu simply – acted out of turn, as he always does. Azula's predictions have nothing to do with this.

Thankfully, she will be able to fix this soon. No need to chase him around the Earth Kingdom anymore. He will come on his own, and she will be waiting.

He weapons need to be perfect. She will erase this disgraceful stain on the royal record. On her record.

But the first step to perfection, birth aside, is research. Work. Understand your skills, know when and how to use them, their strengths and weaknesses, and how to ensure a perfect, instant win.

She will play with the barbarians for eight minutes, then end them in one go. Even if the Avatar was still alive, they wouldn't stand a chance of reaching Father. As they will be, destroying them will be laughingly simple.

She'll keep Zuzu for last. Make him watch his unending failure. Make him pay for making a fool of her.

She won't disappoint Father again.

Azula breathes. In – and out –

The flow of chi doesn't seem to be affected by the nail polish. There is a slight uneasiness in the root and throat, but nothing acupuncture can't solve. She will have Ty Lee's aunt fix this before the eclipse.

A few bursts of fire and Azula has the confirmation that only lightning is affected by the gold. It almost makes her wonder how both elements are related if they are so different in nature.

Almost, because the answer is obvious – chi. Firebending is all about chi manipulation, and lightning generation only takes this further. Gold doesn't help with division of chi between yin and yang, doesn't facilitate the reuniting either, meaning – it is once the lightning is made that gold takes effect.

Gold helps lightning travel through the hand. Gold helps lighting travel.

As of now, Azula cannot guarantee the effects on a larger scale. But she will find out. Gold is far from a rarity in the palace after all.

But that is enough lightning for today. Any more, and she risks experiencing numbness, first in her fingers, then her arms, then – well, she never went farther than that, so she can only imagine.

Azula despises uncertainty, but barely feeling her arms for a week after over-exerting herself has left her quite unwilling to experiment more with the consequences of generating lightning. Perhaps she could convince uncle fatso to do it and report the results.

That would be much more useful than letting Mai interrogate him over nothing. Oh, they didn't talk about it, but Azula knows Mai went to see him, to supposedly get information – but let's be honest, she probably only went to cry over Zuzu. It's disappointing, really, that she would get so upset over him.

Zuzu was always unworthy of her affections – weak and clumsy and so unbelievably stupid – and that Mai took so long to realize this is shameful. And to think Azula always made sure Mai would see how ridiculous and weak Zuzu really is too.

Ungrateful, blind, stupid girl. Maybe they do deserve each other. But in the end it doesn't matter, because Mai is here where she belongs, and Zuzu is –

Zuzu is gone. He betrayed. Like the coward he's always been, and Azula should've seen this coming but she didn't and that's not right Azula is never wrong –

That's not right. That can't be right, but the facts are such and Father is disappointed with her because she didn't bring Zuzu back and she let him tarnish their name –

No, no, again, that's not right. It's not her fault. Iroh, that disgusting traitor, he is the one to blame, not her. Not her.

Azula cannot deny the facts, but she twists the circumstances so they fit the truth she needs. It's a careful balance of facts – she was asked to bring Zuzu back before he made things worse and she didn't and he did – and half-truths – she didn't fail she's not like him –

Azula does not fail. She can't, and she won't.

One last deep breath before joining Ty Lee under the porch – she looks at Azula weirdly, but then smiles her usual dumb smile and offers to pour some tea. There is an unfinished game of shogi next to her and Azula rolls her eyes – Ty Lee is going to lose in two turns, five at best, and the trap is so obvious it's almost offensive.

Ty Lee doesn't like shogi, she almost only ever plays Pai Sho whenever she manages to sit down for long enough. Mai used to joke that she was secretly a grandma.

The board is bait for Azula, to get her to sit down, rest, drink tea, forget about Zuzu, and act like she isn't annoyed at the Dai Li agent pretending to make friends with Ty Lee.

She calls out the ruse, of course, and Ty Lee looks sheepish but unsurprised, of course. That plan was never going to work.

But Azula is done with her research for the day, is slightly dehydrated, and hasn't had a good game of shogi in ages. But that would be letting Ty Lee and Qin win. But depriving herself of a good time in the name of one-upping people she knows she is superior to would be ridiculous and quite unworthy of her.

She will enjoy this moment, and put them in their place later. Qin stops hiding when she sits, and sets up the board while Ty Lee pours tea. Azula takes a sip.

It's refreshing.