Chapter 22 Return To Ash.
August twenty second…
In the early hours of the morning, before the sun broke the horizon, a brilliant light shone brighter and rose faster in the sky. A ball of yellow fire, coming far closer to the planet than any other, turning the sky a rusty orange with its glow, pushed the dark clouds in it's path away, parting them in its wake.
Sozin's Comet had come…
Azula could feel it in the core of her being, the warmth of the comet increasing with it's approach, her inner fire growing steadily with each passing second. The power was like nothing she'd ever felt before, the closest she could compare it to would be a summer solstice spent at the equator, but the feeling of a burning within had already dwarfed that, and this was only the beginning.
Connor had seen the change in Azula's expression once the sky had begun to glow. "Are you alright?" He asked.
Azula was silent for a second, as she took in a deep breath. "I feel… Good. Really good."
Katara crawled out of Appa's saddle and onto his neck, as the top hatch to the airship was opened once again. Zuko joined them. "Room for one more?" He asked, climbing up onto Appa.
"Are we almost to this island base?" Connor asked, helping his friend up, noticing that the boy's skin was warmer than usual.
"That's why I came up here, we should be able to see it in a minute." Zuko said, as Appa stood up. "We go in on Appa and take the further airships, Sokka said he and the others can handle the rest."
"Oh no! The fleet's already in the air." Katara said, pointing out to the southern horizon. True to her word the Fire Nation airships had already taken to the sky, and were flying east.
"Then we don't have any time to waste. Let's go Appa!" Azula said, holding onto the bison's saddle as Katara whipped his reins. Without the usual prompting of "yip yip," Appa groaned, and got a running start off of the airship's exterior, then bounded up into the air.
Outpacing the airships, even at full steam, Appa was able to make an undetected loop behind the formation of fifteen dirigibles, and sweep into the far right of the wedge formation, hovering over the airship on the end. Further ahead, there was a slightly larger ship, with a more pronounced bow crest, and both Azula and Connor shared a look. "That one's my father's." She said, pointing it out to Katara.
"So we should probably avoid it right?" Katara asked, looking over her shoulder.
Connor drew his cutlass and smirked. "Drop Zuko and Azula off first, and then fly me up there. I think I can take it."
"What?!" Zuko asked. "Are you crazy? If you try to fight my father, he'll kill you!"
"I'm not planning on fighting him, just the ship." Connor said, as Zuko Jumped off of Appa and landed on the airship below. And with that, Appa took off to the next airship in the formation.
Far to the east, over the city of Ba Sing Se, the comet had already begun to soar across the sky, as the sun rose on the horizon as if to follow it.
Outside of the lower ring's wall, an army had gathered, composed of rebels from across the agricultural ring and beyond. At their center was the Order of the White Lotus. Iroh could feel the comet's power, but he stayed his hand, conserving his strength and energy for once he had entered the city proper, and the real fighting would begin.
"Hei's late." Xai Bau said from Iroh's left. "The wall should have come down by now."
"All walls fall with enough time, Xai Bau. Hei will open the city for us, and if not, we will find a way to do so ourselves." Jeong Jeong said, before looking up to the sky, as a firework arched over the wall of the city, bursting a bright green, before further, likely over the middle ring, another firework shot up into the air, exploding in a shower of red sparks. In the distance, the echoes of battle could be heard from within the city, and the ground shook beneath the feet of the old masters, as the wall to the inner ring slowly cracked, and then crumbled, falling outwards into the farmland, their foundations weakened by earth benders from below.
The many rebels beside the White Lotus gave a shout of jubilation, before the army in their rows and ranks began to march towards the city, the formations broken up ever so often by ostrich horse drawn cannon's and their crews. As Piandao watched the common man walk by, every one of them armed with a gun in some shape or size, he couldn't help but wonder if the days of old bending masters, and artists of the martial craft were coming to an end. "One day, there will be no more men who study the blade." He said, catching the attention of his fellow Lotus members. "No more men who seek to master the bending arts."
Jeong Jeong glanced at the formation the Piandao was looking down on, and hummed shortly. "We can only hope that is so, if it means that there is peace in the world."
After Azula had been dropped off to contest an airship of her own, Katara ferried Connor towards the Phoenix King's airship, and approaching from below, Connor witnessed Ozai, standing on the catwalk forward of the bridge gondola, ignite a fire in his hand, the small jet of flames pointed at the ground below. Preparing to board the airship, Connor stopped as he felt a shock run through him. The light from the massive plume of fire Oza had created, that reached all the way from the heavens to the earth below, was so bright Connor had to shield his eyes for a moment, and so hot that the flames could be felt from the other end of the aircraft. The sound was like the roar of a dragon, deep, and angry.
Taking his forearm away from his face, Connor watched in complete and utter awe. It was like witnessing God's wrath rain down on the day of judgment… The only thing that was missing were the trumpets sounding… Turning to look behind him, he could see massive blasts of fire, both orange and blue, coming from the two airships Azula and Zuko had taken, before the men standing on the platforms of the airship too unleashed gouts of flames to rival Ozai's own, engulfing the ground below in an inferno, washing the land in hellfire.
"Connor what are you waiting for!" Katara shouted at him, snapping the older boy out of his daze. Connor lept aboard the airship's rear catwalk, and made his way towards the forward gondola, before the entire airship shook violently. Connor had to grab hold of the ship's structural supports overhead so as to not fall. Once steady he saw a blast of fire, enhanced by the comet, that blew out a chunk of the airship above him. The entire ship began drifting to the right, damaged by the attack.
"What the Hell?" Connor asked himself in English, before he looked to where the attack had come from, and saw Aang standing in the distance atop a field of rock spires. "I don't believe it. The son of a bitch made it." Grinning, Connor took off into the forward gondola intent on finishing off the ship as it limped on.
Katara, had circled back on Appa to the main fleet, and quickly made a pass at an airship with water from her pouch, slicing through the wooden propellers of the third ship in the wedge formation, before a concussive boom shook her. Looking over to the airship Zuko had been dropped off on, she could see it covered in flames, the bomb bay having a significant chunk taken out of it. The boy responsible for the blast had jumped ship, and used his fire bending to propel him across the gap between the airborne crafts, landing on the catwalk of the airship his sister had taken. Together, the Fire Nation siblings wreaked havoc on the ship's many flammable surfaces and substances, before the two both jetted themselves away onto the now lagging behind airship Katara lingered near, the one they abandoned bursting into flames, before it dropped out of the sky.
"Need a ride?" Katara asked, pulling Appa down to pick the two up. After the siblings had stepped aboard, their attention was turned to the sound of cannon fire.
Once Sokka's captured ship had come within range of the enemy formation, he'd given orders to his captive crew to man what few guns the airship had, and fire on the nearest enemy craft. (Under Toph's empty threat of shoving them in the cannons, the crew complied.) That wasn't to say that the attack was particularly effective.
His ship's initial positioning was good, flying above the rest of the formation allowed his crew to keep outside of the enemy's cannon elevation, but as the airship drew closer, the enemy ship at the end of the formation recognized that it was being intentionally attacked, and gained altitude before it retaliated in kind. Sokka had still managed to effectively knock out the first airship, which caught fire, and began to fall into the sea below, but his own craft had taken quite a bit of damage, and was slowly losing altitude. Seeing an opportunity, Sokka turned to Suki. "Ram, the next airship."
"Are you trying to get us killed!?" Smellerbee asked.
"Hey, our ship's going down anyway." Sokka shrugged. "If we set this thing up to ram into the next few airships we can probably knock them out of the sky." He reasoned, before grabbing the wheel from Suki and spinning it to line up on a collision course with the next airship in the formation, which had begun to fire on them with cannons as well.
"Now what?" Toph asked.
"Get topside, and fast." Sokka said, before abandoning the wheel, as everyone turned towards the hallway, and took off.
Aboard the Phoenix King's airship, as the tyrant it belonged to departed on jets of fire, the rebel who'd snuck aboard had made his way into the heavily guarded hallways of the forward gondola. He slashed, chopped, stabbed, shot, bludgeoned, beat, and metal bent his way through the airship, killing or incapacitating the dozen men in his way before reaching the bridge. Comet enhanced or not, the confines of the airship interior restricted just how much extra juice the fire benders on board could squeeze out before putting themselves at risk.
Once at the bridge, Connor put his pistol away, then palmed the metal door with his left hand, sword still raised in his right. The iron scrunched up under his grip, and with a hearty tug, the door popped out of it's frame. Fire was blasted at Connor, but with the door in his hand, he was shielded. Entering the room in spite of the fire he was taking, Connor shoved the metal shield he had outwards to the source of the attack, slamming someone into the wall of the ship, before he took the metal in his grip, this time at a distance through his bending, and pulled it across the room, the door colliding with the Captain. The helmsman had turned, fist cocked back in preparation for an attack, before Connor put his hand out towards the man, feeling the thin iron cards of his imperial guard armor beneath the layers of fabric. The guard was pulled into Connor's grip, and once the redhead had his hand around the man's uniform, he was unceremoniously punched by the boy's knuckle guarded sword, his white face plate cracking.
Deep inside of the dirigible's guts, hidden among the engineering compartments, on a complicated spring wound timer, with an ignition made from a cap lock musket, sat a fiery trap. A bomb, big enough to detonate the explosives stored in the ship's bay below and light the ship's own buoyant hydrogen. It was not set to detonate until after Sozin's comet had passed, but destiny had other plans… The fire from Aang's attack had begun to spread through the airship, and heat from burning coal aboard the craft teased the casing of the explosive.
Connor set the helmsman aside, and advanced towards the airship controls. The only familiar device in front of him was the wheel. Experimentally Connor pulled a lever, and the ship began to dip towards the earth. Seeing the slow descent the ship began to take, Connor nodded, and turned to leave, before a muffled explosion rocked the ship. Two more booms could be heard, and with the groaning of steel being pulled apart, the airship's nose tilted towards the ground, before colliding with its own tail. Connor had fallen through the airship's bridge sideways as it tilted, but was able to grab onto a piece of pipe overhead.
As the two halves of the airship dropped out of the sky Connor was hit by a body from the hallway falling into the room, and lost his grip on the pipe. He landed against the ship's controles, and struck his head with enough force to knock him out, sparing him the experience of the airship coming crashing down in a fireball to the earth below.
Toph sent the top hatch of the airship she was in flying off its hinges with her metal bending, before the group held onto the access shaft's ladder for dear life, as the entire aircraft shook violently.
Sokka's aim was a bit off and instead of simply ramming into the nearest ship, their own had bounced off it when the craft began to dip down to avoid the incoming ram. The first ship in the remaining formation was nearly split in half, and the gondolas of the airship they were trying to now get off of had been ripped away. The crew inside lost with them.
As a result of this bump from nearly cutting the first ship in two, the second airship in line had it's rudder taken off as Sokka's now run away airship crashed into it as well, sending the second ship, and his own, into a spin.
The third and final ship of the formation had been well and truly skewed by the bow of Sokka's airship, which dug into the side of the dirigible, and with the engines of both ships still running shoved it against the fourth ship in the wedge.
On top of Sokka's now ruined craft, he along with Suki, Toph, Smellerbee, and Yumi had steddied themselves after the crash, and looked towards the fourth airship, which appeared to still be floating, but slipping away.
"Come on!" Sokka said, pulling Toph along after him, as he and the others sprinted along the metal exterior of the airship, which was rapidly beginning to smoke and catch fire. Crossing onto the impaled airship and then running up it's length, the five had only just managed to jump, before the one they had rammed into blew up, the payload onboard having ignited…
Not everyone was able to make the jump…
Suki, Yumi and Smellerbee were far more agile, and had found footing on the other side of the gap between ships, but Sokka, weighed down with equipment, and Toph, far less physically capable owing to her size, fell short, and slipped down the side of the ship's cylindrical exterior.
The feeling of falling took the two and as Toph screamed in genuine fear, Sokka scrambled for any amount of purchase with his free right hand, his left keeping hold of Toph's forearm. Seeing no other option, Sokka drew his sword in a reverse grip, and jammed it into the side of the ship, the metal screaming as sparks flew. While their fall was slowed, it hadn't been stopped, and it was only some small miracle that Sokka had spun in the air, so Toph was on his chest at the last second, before his back slammed into one of the ship's catwalk cannon platforms.
Sokka screamed as he felt his back flare in pain, but as Toph rolled off of him, falling over the side of the catwalk, he kept his grip on her. "SOKKA!" He could hear, either being screamed down to him by Suki or up to him from Toph. Opening his eyes, Sokka saw imperial guards coming out of the airship, though none had bothered to strap in to their overhead safety system. Below Sokka could see Aang doing battle with Ozai, as the airships they had destroyed continued to add to the field of burning rubble.
With a guard on the firing platforms to either side of him, and a third approaching from his own walkway, Sokka took a breath. Sword still in hand, Sokka flipped it so he could point the blade and the gun barrel attached to it, at his foes. Sokka shot down the guard on his platform with the integrated firelock, before throwing the blade in a back hand at the man to his right, impaling the guard in the chest. The dead or dying man fell over the side of the airship, and Sokka said a silent goodbye to his blade, before falling back on a weapon that had become his last resort. He pulled his boomerang free of its thigh sheath, and loosed it into the air, the sharpened metal knocking out the last man attacking them.
"Sokka!" Toph yelled from below him.
"Yeah!?" he asked, putting his free hand to use by grabbing the catwalk tightly.
"Don't let go, Sokka, please don't let go!" She pleaded.
His grip wasn't fading, but the pain in his back compelled him to close his eyes, and give in. Finding some last bit of strength, Sokka shouted through clenched teeth, as he curled his friend up to him, and tried rolling onto his side. A short second later, Toph had climbed up onto the platform, and sat straddling the water tribe boy, tears in her eyes. "Are you alright?" Sokka asked his friend, before she took either side of his head in her hands, and kissed him full on the mouth.
It only lasted a fraction of a second, but all the same Sokka was stunned. Her face turning red, Toph sat up. "This never happened." She said.
"Yeah, I feel like Suki would kill me if she saw that." Sokka said, trying to sit up, though finding his back didn't want to cooperate. "We've still got eight more ships." Toph stood up, and tried to help Sokka to his feet, but his legs were weak and his back screamed at him to lay back down, and so he did, awaiting help.
After Azula, Zuko, and Katara had disabled and destroyed their three airships, they turned Appa around, prepared to pick Connor up from Ozai's airship, as it was on fire and drifting towards the ground.
"Come on, we need to get him before that thing crashes!" Azula said.
Katara grunted in irritation. "I know, and Appa is flying as fast as he-" A boom cut her off. The pressure wave was felt half a mile away, before two more explosions followed behind. Ozai's airship had been nearly split in two, the engine compartment and bomb bay igniting, leaving a gap in the vehicle wide enough that the two halves could swing into each other as the entire structure began to plummet out of the sky in a freefall.
Azula could only look on in horror, as the airship crashed into the ground, flames engulfing it. She felt a single tear trail from her eye past her mouth, before she wiped it away. "Azula?" Zuko asked, concerned by how silent his sister was. She turned to look at him, before steeling herself, pushing her feelings deep into the corners of her mind, replacing emotion with what she knew to be true.
"Connor's smart… He'll find a way." Azula said, before Katara turned Appa around to go fetch Sokka.
From the rear gondola of the airship Sokka and Toph occupied, Suki, Yumi and Smellerbee burst through the door, an imperial guard stumbling back onto the catwalk, before Yumi cracked him over the head with her carbine stock. "Sokka!" Suki shouted, as the three made their way to the platform he was laying on.
"I'm alright." He grunted, propping himself up with his hands.
"He's really not." Toph said, as the girl's surrounded him.
"What happened?" Yui asked.
"I think I broke something." Sokka admitted.
Suki looked over her shoulder, seeing Appa approaching from the east. "Hang on Sokka, your sister's on the way." Standing, Suki waved down her friend, the bison and it's three occupants pulling up beside the airship.
"I can't believe you survived that crash." Zuko said, amazed that the five had somehow made their way into the middle of the group of airships mostly unharmed.
"We thought we lost you." Katara said.
"Please, Katara, you can't get rid of me that easily." Sokka said, gritting his teeth in pain, as the girls picked him up, and pulled him into Appa's saddle. Zuko swapped places with Katara on Appa's back, taking the reins, and pulling Appa above the fleet of ships to safety, while she tended to her injured brother.
Rolling her brother onto his side, which caused Sokka to yell shortly, Katara sliced open Sokka's shirt with a blade of water, and saw a bulge sticking out of his back in it's center. "This is bad." She said, putting her hands on the bulge and allowing the water coating them to gather her brother's chi.
"How bad?" Sokka asked, unclenching his teeth, as the pain began to go away.
"You dislocated a bone in your back." Katara responded. "I… I can keep the pain away, but I don't know how much water healing is going to do for this. You need to see an actual doctor before anything else."
"Where's Connor then?" Sokka asked, only to see Katara's expression darken. "Oh."
"Well we can't just leave." Zuko said, looking over his shoulder. "The fleet's still in the air, and Aang is facing my father alone."
"No…" Azula said, feeling a tingle creep up the back of her neck. "He's not alone."
On the ground below, ahead of the airfleet, some ten minutes ago, Ozai had come to land on a rock spire a short distance from The Avatar, as his airship limped on, circling the area, the rest of the fleet slowly catching up, and burning the earth below. Fittingly Ozai was the first to speak.
"After two generations of Fire Lords failed to find you, now the universe delivers you to me as an act of providence." Ozai said, holding his hands out to his side.
"Please listen to me." Aang said, loudly so Ozai could hear him. "We don't have to fight. You have the power to end the war here, and stop what you're doing." Aang said, holding a hand out to the airships behind him, their slow approach heating the air.
Ozai grinned. "Yes, you're right, I do have the power. I have all the power in the world!" As Ozai spoke his last word, he let a roar of fire escape from his mouth, as effortlessly as breathing would be.
"Ok, poor choice of words." Aang thought, as he took up a lose stance, before Ozai jumped and punched the rock pillar he was standing on, which sent a large crescent of fire spewing out like a flaming blade in every direction.
Aang jumped over the opening attack, and when he landed back on the rock pillar, grabbed the ground with both hands, and pulled the top layer of stone away, before pushing with his feet to flip the rock, then shove it towards Ozai.
The Phoenix King jetted away from the attack, and threw a burst of fire at The Avatar, before he too spun, kicking a massive trail of flames through the air. On a backfoot, Aang did what came naturally to him, and evaded attacks whenever possible, taking the fight out of the path of the airship fleet. As he did so, one by one, the aircraft began to drop from the sky around them, littering the battlefield with debris.
It wasn't until Ozai's own airship had exploded nearby, sending metal shrapnel across the field of rock spires, did Aang and Ozai pause their fighting, as Ozai quickly jetted behind a stone spire to avoid the blast, and Aang backed himself into a pillar indenting it to create cover in the shape of his body.
Coming out from their cover, Aang and Ozai locked eyes, and the former Fire Lord, now the Phoenix King, glanced around at the destruction being caused. Half of his airships were now gone, the other half having already passed, as his own crashed into the earth as a ball of fire. Deciding to end the game of cat and mouse, Ozai pulled apart the positive and negative energies within him, and cast a bolt of lightning at The Avatar, the current amplified by Sozin's comet.
Aang was fast enough to pull away from the lightning attack with the use of a quickly made whirlwind, that carried him up to the top of the spire he's embedded himself into, but Ozai with his comet enhance jets of fire was able to rocket up to meet him, and cast another bolt of lightning. He missed, as Aang was far swifter, but the heat of the atmosphere being turned to plasma, and the deafening boom of thunder rocked Aang's resolve.
It was fear inducing on a level Aang had never felt. Not even being shot had scared him as much as having to dodge lightning, a phenomenon that Aang once believed only the spirits could cause. Three more times Aang had made massive leaps over burning airship debris, or shrubbery lit ablaze, before landing on a rock pillar near where Ozai's ship had crashed. Ozai himself had landed atop a rock that was higher than Aang's and drew electricity in his fingertips once more, before casting a bolt more powerful than he'd ever created before.
Aang had time to prepare for Ozai's strike, and doing as Zuko had instructed, The Avatar held out his hands, index and middle fingers extended, catching Ozai's lightning. Pulling the energy down his arms, Aang held it for only a moment in his stomach. It felt exactly as Zuko had described. It was terrifying, knowing that if he made one wrong move his heart could stop, but at the same time, it was thrilling, like a high no one was ever supposed to obtain, every muscle fiber in Aang's body was suddenly no longer fatigued, and his heart beat like a rabberoo's.
But all things come to an end, and Aang had to release the energy as quickly as it had come. Allowing it to flow back up out his arms, in a split second decision, rather than strike back at the man who'd thrown the bolt of lightning at him, Aang pointed his hand up towards the sky. Thunder clapped, and the bolt unleashed split the heavens, before it spread through the clouds above, some strands arcing through open air.
Ozai stood in shock for only a moment, having never thought anyone capable of catching lightning. Gritting his teeth, he quickly thrust both hands forward, and sent two massive cones of fire at The Avatar.
Reacting as quickly as he had to the lightning strike, Aang pulled a wall of earth up from the pillar he occupied, but it wasn't enough. The more conventional fire bending attack had broken through the barrier and the blast had sent him flying backwards off the stone outcrop into the burning forest behind the field of stone.
Only momentarily blacking out, Aang regained awareness mid fall. Before he could hit the ground, he spun and put as much power into creating a blast of air below him, which not only slowed his fall to a safe speed, but had snuffed out the burning woods he was about to drop into, the now barren tree's having charred and turned to ash in the wake of the still flying airships. Many charred black logs fell under the force of the gale, and soot was kicked into the air, but all the same, Aang landed safely with a roll, his robe top tearing on a loose branch.
Standing up, Aang looked back to the west where Ozai hovered over the battlefield on four jets of fire, smirking at The Avatar, who clenched his fists. Ozai shouted down to him, his voice echoing across the empty land. "You're weak! Just like the rest of your pathetic race! They did not deserve to exist in this world! MY WORLD!" Aang grit his teeth, feeling something deep down that he hadn't since Appa had been taken from him. His blood began to boil, and he raised his fists, just like Connor taught him. "Prepare to join them Avatar." Ozai said, laughing shortly, as he lowered himself down to ground level with Aang, and charged up a fire attack not too far from what he'd begun burning the earth with. "Prepare to DIE!"
In the Fire Nation Capital, the sky was still dark. The Comet had not yet graced the Fire Nation with it's power. The Royal Court had been called to convene. Most of it's members were already awake, making preparations for the time Ozai and his fleet would return, but when the call went out, many were confused. The generals, admirals, and officials within the ministries, had congregated in the new Fire Lord's throne room, finding Kozato sitting on the steps leading to the throne rather than the cushioned seat itself, the oil fires burning behind him rather than before him, casting him in a shadow instead of illuminating his face, as was the fire's intended purpose.
The young man was not officially Fire Lord yet, as the coronation was to take place when the comet graced the nation during the mid morning. As such, he did not have robes befitting the position just yet, and was instead, wearing his army officer's uniform.
After a series of bows, the men of the court sat in front of him. "Sir…" War Minister Qin started, unsure of if he should call the younger man Fire Lord. "Why have you called us at this hour?"
Kozato glanced up at the ceiling, and then sighed. "The war, gentleman…" No one spoke, and Kozato looked at them all. "The war is not going as it should."
"But… Sir," General Hun said. "We're making history today, removing the savages and the heathens. We've broken the deadlock, we're winning once again."
Kozato grinned, an amused hum sounding with it. "I never said we were not winning… I said, the war is not going as it should."
"I… Don't understand what you mean?" Hun asked.
Kozato stood up on the steps, his tall and somewhat lanky figure towering over the seated men in the room. "The wars we are waging don't work." He slowly walked down the steps of the throne. "Since Sozin's time, one hundred years of war have passed, and it is only now that we come close to anything resembling an end to the force on force conflict, but that does not mean we will have true victory any time soon. Sozin sought to spread the Fire Nation's greatness, but did so through militarized colonization, and was met with resistance from the locals. Azulon assumed responsibility for the war, and turned it into one of destructive attrition against the nation states of the Earth Kingdom, worsening the conflict and too involved the Water Tribes by following Sozin's obsession of finding The Avatar. Ozai made progress where his father faltered, making use of our rapid technological advancement, but his beliefs of racial supremacy backing policies of genocide and replacement are all asinine." Kozato looked around the room.
"None of their plans would ever fully result in victory. Not colonizing without peaceable native relations, not open conflict with two world powers that have a combined population nearly triple our own, and not ineffectual displays of force or impossible attempts at genocide." Kozato took a calming breath, as a mutter broke out in the group, surprised that Kozato would speak so poorly of his own family, so poorly of the Phoenix King. "I have a vision for the Fire Nation, and a plan to end the war and claim the final victory that no other Fire Lord had the acumen to see. A victory where we will win, but need not fight."
At this General Hun softly chuckled. "Your military experience is far outweighed by ours, captain. What rout to victory could you have found that the men of the court could not possibly have considered?"
Kozato focused on Hun now. "While true you've lived to see more than I have General Hun, you've also spent the past twenty years behind a desk, and warfare has changed rapidly in that time, far faster in the past year alone than some can comprehend... And we need to change with it."
The rest of the higher leadership glanced between each other, as Kozato stopped his staring contest with Hun. "First, I must make it clear, to do so, you all must renounce fidelity to Ozai."
"What you speak of is treason!" Qin quickly said, as he stood. "Phoenix King Ozai reigns supreme, and you do not yet have even the authority of Fire Lord to back your words."
Kozato chuckled. "Oh but of course you would have something to say, Qin. And here I thought you understood where your loyalties should lay."
"My loyalty lies with the most powerful man who by birthright still rules the Fire Nation, overseeing you." Qin said.
"You haven't even heard the plan." Kozato said with a smirk. "It starts by cutting away the fat that's holding back our nation." From behind the wooden pillars holding up the roof, Kozato's men spun into view, cocking back the hammers of their caplock carbines. The cabinet of ministers and generals looked around in surprise, and a few in fear, but did not move once the men of Kozato's company pointed their guns at the group.
"Far too many men of this court and beyond profiteer from this war's continuation. Seeing as I intend to end our involvement in open conflict entirely, I can't have anyone throwing wrenches in gears, or getting too brave. Those of you without a spine, or who know that power takes more than one form, should understand following me is the only real choice you have, regardless of if you have to give up a few comfortable office jobs once the fighting is over." As Kozato spoke, many of the generals bowed their heads in submission. "For those of you that actually have principles, or are a part of Ozai's cult of personality, I ask you kindly to make this easy, and not get blood all over the throne room. Please stand and put your hands behind your back, you're under arrest for conspiracy to commit treason. Any sign of resistance will result in your swift execution."
Tepidly, two others stood to join War Minister Qin, the three being cuffed by Kozato's soldiers. Qin spoke nearly through gritted teeth. "I helped you, and this is how you repay me?" Kozato shrugged, as Qin continued. "When Ozai returns, he will kill you for this."
Kozato smirked. "Bold of you to assume my uncle will be able to get within spitting distance of me, if he returns at all." As Qin and his followers were taken away, Kozato walked through the remaining group, his men falling in behind him. "The court is dismissed. We will reconvene and go over my plans to end the war, during the celebration of my coronation."