The nurse checked Fan's vitals before helping her change from the linen hospital garments back into her clothes. It was a confusing moment, made even more so by their subsequent journey through the slick tiled halls. Strange beeping noises emitted from the different rooms they passed by, and that gross smell permeated everything; it wasn't a stink, it wasn't even organic, but it was sharp and awful.

They went down a floor to what looked like the lobby. It was essentially a larger scale version of the room before, with a counter and rows of open seating occupied by people dressed in a simplistic fashion the likes of which Fan had never seen. She recognized the style of crossed lapels and robes on some, but they were shorter and lighter than usual, and the majority wore plainer cuts with strange color concepts. As if that weren't enough, their shoes had slits that exposed the toes...

A feeling of dread gripped her as she took in this bizarre scene. This isn't what hospitals are supposed to look like. This isn't how Fire Nation people are supposed to dress.

"Here she is," the nurse said as they stopped by the counter, snapping Fan back to reality.

The person whom the nurse addressed was a man in a strange green jacket. He stood out from the rest with a metal-plated headwrap engraved with a weird spiral symbol and bandages around a thigh that supported a rectangular pouch. His shaggy brown hair obscured one eye, and for some reason, his shirt reached high enough to cover part of his chin.

"Thanks," he said to the nurse. "I'll take it from here." When she left, he gestured at Fan. "Follow me."

His frankness and lack of explanation disquieted her slightly. "Where are we going?" she asked as he headed for the doors. She followed suit, but did so tentatively.

"We just need to ask you some questions," the man said. "It won't take long."

Curious glances followed her, much to her discomfort; strange as these people seemed, she failed to think of how she would appear to them. "I...I have questions too," she stuttered as she sped up to fall in step beside him.

"Good," he remarked. "We can help each other out, then."

They exited the hospital and emerged into the fresher air of a bustling town – or city? – almost like the Captial City but...not quite. It was more colorful, more rustic and crowded. Nothing resembled the refined discipline of the Fire Nation capital; there was structure, but it appeared messier somehow. Perhaps it was the weird lines that spanned over the rooftops, like weaves of string? Or the strange tubes that ran along the walls, like creeping worms?

Then as the man led her through the winding streets, she came to recognize the scroll's curly characters on various signs and papers. No way – was this weird place and the scroll somehow...linked?

The thought burned terribly at the back of her mind, but she couldn't muster the courage to ask the green-jacketed man. His only interest appeared to be in escorting her to their destination and nothing more. When he finally spoke to her again, it was through the doorway of an official-looking building. "This is it."

Its lobby held the same slick appearance as the hospital, but was darker and to Fan, more tasteful. The man led her through a door and into a series of empty, winding halls, before depositing her in a small room furnished by nothing more than a table and two chairs. He directed her to sit at the chair opposite the door and said, "Someone will come in a bit," before leaving her alone in the dim space.

It seemed easy enough for the first several minutes; then as time ticked by, the silence became unbearable. Fan fidgeted in her seat, trying not to think of worst case scenarios. Tiny details in the room started bothering her. It's so gray. And small. Why is there even a mirror? she wondered, staring apprehensively at the large reflective glass at the side of the room.

The doorknob suddenly clicked open, startling her from her reverie. In came yet another green-jacketed man with a metal plated headwrap, and in his hand was the very scroll Chuni had given her.

Fan's eyes widened at the sight of it. "You have the scroll!" she couldn't help blurting out.

"Why, do you recognize it?" he asked as he slid into the chair across from her.

"Yes..." She swallowed. "My friend gave it to me. She said it would help me learn to redirect lightning..."

The man laid the scroll on the middle of the table and nodded lightly. "All right, then. So, uh..." He coughed. "Aherm, sorry. What's your name?"

"Fan...Zhao Fan."

"I'm Hayate."

"Um...nice to meet you, Hayate."

"How old are you?"

These people don't beat around the bush, do they? "I'm twelve."

He nodded again, and reclined in his seat. "So...Fan...you said you got this scroll from a friend?"

"Yes, after the headmistress gave her year end's speech. We were out in the courtyard walking to our family's carriages. She showed the scroll to me and said she bought it from a hawker on Wuyang Lane."

"Uh-huh..." Hayate coughed again. "Scuse me. So, where do you go to school?"

"The Royal Fire Academy for Girls."

"And where would that be?"

"The Capital City..."

"Of what?"

"The...the Fire Nation! Don't you know...?"

Hayate raised an eyebrow. "Around here, we call it the Land of Fire."

"So?" Fan demanded. "That's the same thing, isn't it?" Isn't it?

"I don't know. Is it?" Hayate shrugged. "I've never heard of a royal academy before. The only one we have is the academy here, in Konoha. Besides, the Land of Fire isn't ruled by a monarchy."

"But the Fire Nation is..."

"Sounds like we're talking about two different places, then," Hayate said with finality.

"That's not possible," she argued. "The Fire Nation is one of the most powerful nations in the world! It's in the middle of a war to conquer the other nations, and winning. How can there be another with the same name and I haven't heard of it? Next, you'll probably tell me that the Earth Kingdom and Water Tribes don't exist."

Hayate stared at her blankly for a moment. "They don't."

"This is ridiculous! Do you have a map?"

Hayate sighed and pressed a small black thing at the edge of his collar. "Hey, you there? Yeah, I need a map...make it a world map. No, just shut up and do it."

Fan wondered what talking to his jacket collar would accomplish, but another man came in a moment later with a rolled up map roughly the size of the table.

"I had to take this off the wall," he said to Hayate, "so let me know when you're done, okay? Ibiki's going to be so pissed–"

"It'll be quick," Hayate promised, and unfurled it on the table for Fan to see. "Here you go."

With a frown, she got up out of her seat to get a bird's eye view of the map. Almost immediately, she saw plenty of things wrong with it. "The Fire Nation isn't supposed to be that big! It's not part of a continent, and how is this Land of Wind so close? The Air Kingdom was destroyed a long time ago! The Water Tribes shouldn't even be there, they're on opposite poles! The Earth Kingdom isn't that small either..." She looked up at Hayate. "This must be a hoax! Whoever made this ripped it off from the eastern Earth Kingdom coast and just gave it more islands!"

"What the hell is she talking about?" the other man asked incredulously.

Hayate re-rolled the map and pushed it back into his colleague's arms. "Just ignore it and go back to your job." Once they were alone again, Hayate let out another cough before looking pointedly at Fan. "By the way, we're in a period of peacetime right now. We haven't started a war in years. Does that clear things up for you?"

Fan's heart raced as she thought of the implication. No, that can't be true...if this wasn't the Fire Nation, then where was it? A hundred possibilities started sinking in, but she refused to believe them. "My father is the newly appointed Commander Zhao of the navy!" she exclaimed suddenly. "I want to speak with him. This is all a mistake, and he can clear it up!"

"We don't have a navy."

"I-I don't want to speak any further if it's not with him!"

"Listen, I understand this is a difficult situation..."

But she was adamant in her request and refused to budge. After many attempts to get her to do otherwise, Hayate sighed in defeat and went out the room. Fan watched the door anxiously, wondering what Father would say when he arrived. Maybe he's still in the middle of the ceremony, she thought. He's probably upset with me for missing it and will be even more upset having it interrupted. Not a prospect she relished, but one that seemed infinitely better than being stuck in this confusing place.

Hayate came back after a long while with an assistant to help roll in this weird cube-shaped machine on a trolley that had a tangle of wires sticking out from its rear. Fan watched them in confusion as they did something with the wires, plugging them into this small block thing before plugging that into the wall, and then pressing some buttons that changed the machine's empty black mirror into a series of jolting color and white noise. It shifted every so often with each adjustment of these strange, antennae-like protrusions on top of the machine.

Much to her surprise, the colors focused into the image of an old man – a moving and speaking image!

"Suzuki?" the old man rasped, his voice strangely grainier than it should be. "You ungrateful girl, you've finally decided to come home – wait a minute, you're not Suzuki!"

"You're not my father!" Fan yelled back, shocked beyond comprehension that the image was speaking to her.

"Why are you wasting my time with this?" the old man reproached Hayate, narrowing his beady eyes at him.

"Sorry, Lord Jao," Hayate apologized. "She claimed to be your daughter, so..."

"Well, she isn't!" he spat, and the image cut to black.

Hayate signaled for his assistant to roll the cube machine away and sat back down across from Fan. "Well, I tried."

"That was the wrong man – how did you even get images to talk like that!?"

"He's the only Land of Fire noble with a similar name," Hayate interrupted. "Take it as you will, but there's no one else."

Fan looked down despondently at the table before her, unable to form a retort. No way, she thought. Am I...really alone here?

A moment of silence passed between them, before Hayate broke it by clearing his throat. "Do you know how we found you?" That got her attention, and when she looked up at him again, he continued, "You were unconscious in the middle of a burnt-down forest clearing. The only things our shinobi could retrieve from the scene were you and this scroll. Is there anything you can tell us about that?"

Burnt clearing...Fan frowned, trying to remember when, if ever, she was involved with burnt forests. I remember getting ready for Father's ceremony...something had definitely happened, if she was here instead. Why was it so difficult all of a sudden to remember? But after much frowning deliberation, Fan finally had it. "I...I tried out the incantation on the scroll..."

Hayate opened up the roll of parchment and pointed to the line beneath the hand illustrations. "You mean this?"

"Yes..." She frowned some more. "I practiced really hard at the hand signs, and it took me several days to figure out the incantation's characters. I finally did, and then..."

"And then?"

She shivered as flashes of what could only be described as a nightmare came back to her. "I got stuck in the middle of a circle! There were these chanting people...they tried to burn me alive...!"

Hayate nodded. "I see. Do you remember anything else about them?"

Fan shook her head vigorously. "No, and I don't want to!"

"I understand. Sorry for bringing it up." He coughed. "Have you heard of the Cult of the Hidden Veil?"

"No..."

"We believe that's who those chanting people were," he explained. "They're a group of elementally-focused shinobi who've kidnapped people from our village in the past for a purpose we haven't been able to identify yet. Recent intel led us to that location, and based on what you remember, it's possible they were trying to summon something. My guess is that they were using you for a sacrifice."

The very thought sent chills down Fan's spine. But yet another thing confused her; "What's a 'shinobi'? You mentioned it earlier when you said I was found..."

"You don't know what a shinobi is?" It was Hayate's turn now to sound surprised. "What were you going to an academy for, then?"

"For my education, of course," Fan replied matter-of-factly. "Every noble daughter goes there. We learn literature, music, history, arithmetic, and if we're born with it, firebending..."

Hayate held out a hand to stop her. "Let's backtrack a bit. You said you thought the scroll would help you learn to redirect lightning, and the academy teaches you firebending. How is that not shinobi training?"

What is he getting at? Fan wondered, feeling more baffled by the minute. "I don't know what you're talking about," she said at last, "but some people are born with the ability to bend the elements...like, firebending, or earthbending and waterbending, for example. Airbenders were killed by the Fire Nation when the war started a hundred years ago, though. Then there is the Avatar, who can bend all the elements...but with the cycle broken, I don't think there'll be another one." Do I really have to explain all this to an adult?

"Sounds like the elemental release techniques to me," Hayate remarked. "And according to what you said, you were able to perform the jutsu on the scroll despite the fact that it's pretty much useless."

"Huh?" The scroll was definitely not useless, if she remembered correctly. Besides which..."What's a jutsu?"

"You do know of chakra, don't you?"

Fan blinked. "The scroll mentioned something called 'chakura'..."

"It's what shinobi use to perform jutsu. You know," he added when her face stayed blank, "by molding and releasing with hand seals?"

She frowned. "Are you...talking about chi? Because that's what benders use to bend the elements. You know, like this." She lifted a hand and ignited a flame in the middle of her palm, holding it for a few seconds before closing her fingers to smother it. "Maybe we just have different names for the same thing..."

But when she looked to Hayate again, the man was staring at her as though she'd sprouted tentacles. "How are you using Fire Release so...easily?" he demanded incredulously, the most emotion he'd shown throughout the whole interrogation.

"I don't understand...I just did a basic flame..."

"Do you realize how much skill it takes to mold? And you're performing it without a hand seal..."

"But that was just firebending," she protested. "A lot of my classmates can do it!" At the repeated mention of hand seals, though, something clicked in her head. He had described the cult's shinobi as elementally-focused; he never specified whether the elements were the only things jutsu could manipulate. "Those hand signs on the scroll...they can do things beyond firebending?" Well, obviously they did, if that was how she came here. "Your shinobi...aren't benders, are they?"

"I honestly have no idea what you're talking about," Hayate admitted. "But this is...I'm gonna have a hard time explaining this on my report."

They went through another series of questions, this time aimed at the geographics of where she had come from. Then Hayate asked about benders and the Avatar, but the more she explained it, the more Fan could see the man getting frustrated and confused. In the end, worn and exasperated, he left the room and came back with a bundle of papers and a pen.

"Well, Fan...that ends our questioning for today. Thank you for your cooperation. I just need to fill out a few things before we figure out where to put you."

That took the wind out of her sails, as her slumped posture indicated. "Where will I be sent to?"

"That's what we're working out right now." He clicked on the pen and started writing. The utensil automatically had ink in it, so the characters flowed readily and smoothly from its tip, although they were thin and stick-like with no dimension. Again, the curly characters played a prominent role in the writing. "Let's see...what are the characters for your name? Or I suppose I could just write it in katakana..."

Fan opened her mouth to tell him, but stopped midway as a thought came to her head. "Um, actually..."

Hayate looked up. "Yes?"

"My name...isn't really Fan..."

He shifted in his seat. "What?"

"I am Commander Zhao's daughter," she explained, "but I'm, um...illegitimate. My mother was from the Water Tribe. Fan is just a name he gave me...my real name is Sacora." She chuckled nervously. "Father told me to never tell anyone. But I guess it doesn't matter anymore, does it?"

"I suppose not." Hayate looked back down at the papers. "So, what do you want me to put down? Fan or Sacora?"

She took a deep breath to calm her shaking body, the thought of breaking one of the most fundamental rules Father had laid down overwhelming her with apprehension, and yet, relief. "Sacora, please."

She watched him write the name in a string of strange, sharp characters. It didn't matter what he used to write it down; he could have scribbled gibberish on the paper, for all she knew; she sat quiet and obedient, helplessly watching as her world turned upside-down all over again. What awaited her next was beyond her imagination.

"I'll be out for a moment," Hayate said when he was done, and rose from his chair. "Someone will come for you shortly."

"Well, she didn't lie," Hayate remarked as he came into the room. "Pretty much everything she said corroborated with your report, Inoichi."

The Yamanaka clan head let out a knowing "Hn" as he stared through the window into the little interrogation room Hayate had just left. Kurenai stood beside him, watching the strange girl inside with interest. The kunoichi had no reason to be present, but the invitation had been extended by the Intelligence Force and she was genuinely concerned about the child they'd picked up.

"I just can't believe you saw anything that strange in her head," Hayate went on. "Are you sure she wasn't fabricating these memories somehow?"

"No," Inoichi said. "She doesn't have that sort of talent. In fact, she's not even a ninja."

"Indeed?" Kurenai asked, surprised. "But that flame technique she demonstrated..."

"What I sense from her is chakra," he explained, "but not in any shape or form I can recognize. It's completely different in structure. I've seen these bender people demonstrate it in her memories...it is truly something else. They call it 'chi'."

Kurenai crossed her arms. "She said as much herself. What do you think this means? Where is this place she comes from?"

"I have no idea. Frankly, it's almost as if she comes from another world entirely."

Another world. How ludicrous! Surely there was a better explanation. "And the scroll?" Kurenai inquired. "She doesn't seem to know anything about it, does she?"

Hayate shook his head. "If she'd been able to read it, she would have known that the jutsu was meant to take her to another dimension. Or world, whichever suits your fancy."

"...you can't be serious. The formula is utter nonsense–"

"Our analytics team deciphered a portion which says it can be performed after the moon completes another cycle. Care to try it out then?" Seeing Kurenai's irritated face, Hayate sighed. "Exactly, that's how ridiculous this whole thing sounds. Which brings me to my newest point...there's no possible way we can house this child in the orphanage while we figure out the situation. I don't care how 'different' her chakra signature is, she simply can't be loosed into a group of children with little oversight. Lord Third wants her more directly supervised and reported on."

That was understandable. There was no knowing why the clearing had been so ravaged, after all. No knowing if it hadn't anything to do with her fire abilities, even if a tiny bit...

"So, Kurenai, can you take care of the child in the meantime?"

Kurenai blinked, taken aback. "Me? You want me to take her in?"

Inoichi gave her an apologetic look. "The girl has an attachment to her mother that still affects her. If there's anyone who can be an equally caring and strong figure in a child's life, well, it's you, Kurenai."

She huffed. "Am I supposed to take that as a compliment?" But seeing the importance of the situation, plus the forlorn look on the confused child's face, Kurenai didn't have it in her to say no. "I guess I'll do it," she sighed. "Just give me some time to get my apartment prepared. And while you're at it, tell me what else the Lord Third has in mind for her; if I'm going to be her guardian, I might as well have a say in her activities."

"Of course," Hayate nodded, and made to exit the room. "It'll take some time to get the paperwork sorted anyway. Feel free to go in the meantime. I'll call you when everything's ready."

Kurenai turned to leave as well, giving Inoichi a brief "Bye" before heading for the door. As she stepped through, she turned back one last time to look at the strange child. Sacora, huh? What did the Cult of the Hidden Veil ever want to do with you?

Notes

After looking through images and maps of Konoha, I've determined that it would have been difficult for Sacora to have seen the Hokage monument from the hospital. Then the building she is interrogated at is not the Hokage tower, but rather a separate one they use for interrogation, which I couldn't find on the map so I decided to play it safe. I'll save her reaction to the monument for when she comes closer to the area.

Fun fact: the shinobi world map has roughly the same shape as the eastern Earth Kingdom coast.

Regarding chakra vs. chi- according to the ATLA wiki, chi is referred to as the metaphysical energy that runs through the human body; bending is the ability to manipulate chi to the point where one's energy can extend beyond the body and interact with the environment. Chi is universal and can be manipulated by anyone, even the rare few nonbenders, but (in my observation) appears to have a tendency to be more prominent in the genetics of benders. Chakra has been defined in the ATLA universe as the nexuses of chi within the body, although more in relation to the Avatar than for benders and the first we hear of it is in the episode with Guru Pathik, so I'll assume Sacora doesn't know of it. Therefore, it's not entirely off the mark for Inoichi to describe Sacora's chi in his definition of chakra, just different in structure (given how jutsu and bending are executed).