Three years had passed since Autumn was adopted by the Hummingbird Queen and the Fruit Bat King and she had since taken up the alias Ai around the kingdom. Autumn had picked the name because she said it 'sounded familiar' to her. Tempest also took up the alias Sokka because he would say, "I'll Sokka them in the mouth if they mess with us.", but everyone inside the castle still called them by their true names. If there was ever a formal event and Autumn had to attend she would wear silk gloves and a jeweled headband that covered her marks in case there was a spy among the guests. Another few changes Autumn went through physically were her hair and eyes. Autumn's hair had started changing colors with the ends of her dark red hair fading into a bright yellow as she learned more about her magic. Same would happen with her eyes, which had started dark green but now had flakes of gold around the pupils. Tempest didn't change much in the past five years, only gaining the ability to grow five times his normal size at will.

Speaking of growing, Autumn's magical abilities had grown significantly during her studies with Jilipa. Although casting mental magic was still difficult for her, Autumn found a way around her shortcomings. Using small pieces of paper and ink she would create little tags with the spells on them and ignite them with a little spark of energy. It came in handy one day when the bear army returned, only this time they had back-up. Chameleon tanks shot at the walls at the city and while the thick brambles cushioned the impact they wouldn't hold out indefinitely. High Roller himself was sitting on top of Chameleon Queen watching the chaos of the battle unfold.

"Give up Jilpa and the moon brat now or face total annihilation!" he declared through his megaphone, only to be met with a giant angry cloud of hummingbirds and fruit bats led by their king and queen.

"Never! Hummingbirds, fruit bats! ATTACK!" Shuǐguǒ ordered.

Hummingbirds and bats flew directly into battle with the bats using sonic screeches to confuse the bears. The hummingbirds used their immense speed to lodge sticky balls of berry goo into the chameleon's canons, thus jamming them up and making them explode. Huā went straight for Brear Stomp and began jabbing him in the weak spots of his armor with her beak. Her beak acted like a small syringe, injecting small amounts of lion fish poison into the bear king to cause mild paralysis and slow him down. With her small size and fast speed Bear Stomp couldn't hit her, and neither could High Roller with his fly swatter. Unfortunately she was distracted by the sound of part of the wall crumbling down and High Roller got a lucky swing and hit her, causing her to crash into the bell Chameleon Queen used as a shell.

"Bye bye birdie." He said as he began to step on the helpless queen, only to be hit in the head by a balloon filled with pink paint.

"Keep your feet off my mother you lowlife, scum sucking, spineless waist of human life!" Someone yelled from the wall.

On top of the wall stood two figures, a giant coyote and a female figure wearing a dark peacock green gi, matching fingerless gloves and an ornately painted fox mask. In one hand she held a small paper charm and the hilt of a katana.

"I won't tell you again," She said.

"Or what?" High Roller teased as he slowly began to step on the queen.

The girl launched the paint balloon at the tiny wanna be dictator, hitting him hard enough to knock him back, giving the king enough time to grab his wife and fly away. Now that her parents were safe the girl slammed down the charm, causing the vines of the brambles to grow rapidly.

"Hummingbirds, bats, fall back!" She ordered.

The army soon fell back behind the wall as the vines over took the bear and chameleon armies, forcing them into a retreat. In one desperate last attempt to claim some sort of victory, High Roller shot one last cannonball at the girl. With the projectile mere feet from hitting her the katana hilt suddenly gained a long glowing yellow blade and in seconds the cannonball was split in half and laying at the girl's feet.

"AG! You may have won the battle but you haven't won the war!" Highroller yelled as he ran off.

Tempest smirked and turned to Autumn. "I guess he underestimates the small victories, huh Autumn? Autumn? Ah, geeze you overdid it again."

The redhead had torn her mask off and was now throwing up over the side of the wall. One of the drawbacks with her abilities was if she used too much of her magic during the day it would drain her rapidly and make her sick. During the night there was a much smaller chance of this happening. Tempest, ever the loyal friend, went over and grabbed her hair in his mouth until she was done. Once Autumn had emptied the contents of her stomach onto the ground below, she slowly stood up and wiped her mouth and pulled her hair back into a ponytail, revealing the golden circlet under her hair.

"We need to go see mom," Autumn declared.

"You need to rest and brush your teeth girly, your breath smells like death." Tempest said before picking her up by the back of her shirt.

"Tempest put me down!"

The oversized coyote paid her no heed and ran towards the castle in the center of town.

Over at Big Green Apetrully sat in an empty room with Parrot King and Jilpa. The monkey king had discarded his disguise for this meeting, since he was meeting an old friend.

"In conclusion I have determined the best course of action is for the hummingbirds and fruit bats to join Big Green. The princess would come as a representative and I will be accompanying her." Jilpa stated. "The king and queen would stay in their kingdom to keep the illusion that she and I are still living there."

Apetrully looked at Parrot King. "What do you think?"

"To be honest I don't think it's a good idea. The princess is still learning magic and from what little knowledge I have about moon magic, it does become more volatile with extreme emotion." The parrot said thoughtfully.

"I have that handled, Autumn is wearing a magical inhibitor so that her emotions don't affect her powers."

"But what does Autumn think about all this?" Apetrully asked.

Jilpa rubbed the back of her neck awkwardly. "Well, to be honest we haven't really discussed it with her yet. But! Before you get on my case this is only because we didn't want the news to get out in case we have a spy in the castle. I've noticed lately that there have been more attacks when I leave for the day then if I stay around. I think someone is reporting straight to Twin Masters. Who it is, I'm not completely sure."

"Oh dear, maybe it would be best if you sent Autumn to live with the panthers, or perhaps I could take her to the monkey kingdom." Apetrully said.

Jilpa sighed. "I want to send her to them too, but Autumn is a very emotional person and very close to her parents and being put in semi isolation from them may make her depressed. Luckily we have a plan to help her get to know all the key players in this."

Jilpa took out two scrolls from her bag and handed them to Apetrully. The monkey unrolled the scroll and read it aloud.

"You are cordially invited to Princess Ai's 18th birthday party

The party is to take place next week on the first of the month

Guests are allowed 1 plus one and are kindly asked to dress accordingly."

"I would like First and Second to attend and for you to attend as yourself. The Panther King and Queen will be coming with their son as well as some allies of both Big Green and our kingdom. I will be there but undercover, just in case the traitor shows themselves." Jilpa said.

"I will send Woo with First and Second Squad too, and if anyone asks, tell them I had a family emergency." Apetrully said handing the two scrolls to his long time friend. The parrot nodded and flew out of the room to deliver the invites. Jilpa sighed and sat down across from Apetrully.

"It's getting harder every day Blayze… I don't think I'm long for this world." She said in monkey language.

Jilpa rolled up her sleeves to reveal black veins spreading through her arm. Blayze yelped in surprise.

"High Roller did this to you, didn't he?" He asked as he examined his friend's arm.

Jilpa sighed and nodded. "Back when he killed the emperor and his son and daughter in law I refused to join him and he injected black widow venom into me. My magic has significantly slowed down the venom's effects but the more magic I use, the faster it spreads."

Blayze whimpered softly and nuzzled his friend's arm, a sigh of sorrow among those in the monkey kingdom.

"Do you want to talk to Aiguo before you leave? He is your husband, no matter how much time you two have spent apart, he still loves you."

Jilpa sighed deeply and nodded. Blayze quickly got back into his costume and headed for the First Squad meeting room. Luckily the one person he needed to talk to was sitting alone, soaking his feet.

"Mr. No-Hands, could you come with me? There's someone who wants to talk to you."

—

Back at Humming Bat castle Autumn couldn't sleep and walked around her room, unable to get her mind to settle down. She couldn't leave her room, Tempest was at max size and blocking the door while he slept. Sighing, she decided to do the only thing she could think of and went over to her desk and started painting. Autumn wasn't a very traditional painter, preferring abstraction to realism but there were some paintings of her's that differed drastically from all the others. While most of her paintings were fantastical and dream-like reimaginings of times she had spent with her parents and Jilpa there were shocking realistic portraits of people Autumn had seen in her dreams; an older man and three young men who shared some similarities with each other and Autumn. Jilpa had theorized that they were Autumn's biological family and that some of her memories might be coming through in her dreams, but one painting neither could make heads or tails of.

The painting was of a young man, somewhere around Autumn's age, with long black hair that was tied up in a top knot with a gold hair pin in the shape of a phoenix sticking out the top. He wore imperial gold and red robes and had dark, chocolate brown eyes, well.. Sorta. Originally she had painted the sclera black and the irises yellow but Autumn had changed them because, "He didn't used to look like that."

Autumn rubbed her head in frustration. Memories came back in bits and pieces but they were more fleeting than a snowflake on a hot stone and she had only seen the last guy in a recent dream but it hadn't felt like a memory, it felt like a message, like someone was reaching out for her.

Suddenly Autumn heard the light humming of wings and quickly turned around and saw a black hummingbird sitting on her night stand.

"You should be resting, princess." a voice said behind her.

"Onyx, you startled me." She said, "How's mom?"

After Tempest, Jilpa and parents Onyx was her closest friend and lady in waiting. Onyx, like her name suggests, was a completely black hummingbird with black eyes. When they had first met Autumn thought Onyx was a bat, but had soon corrected.

"Your mom is going to make a full recovery, but how are you feeling? Would you like me to grab you any food or something to drink?"

Autumn shook her head and sat on the nest of pillows and blankets she called a bed. "No, thank you. I swear you're trying to fatten me up or something, you're always bringing me food."Autumn laughed.

Onyx smiled coily and poked the princess in the tummy. "Guilty as charged, princess." She jokingly confessed.

Autumn smiled. "Thanks for checking up on me Onyx, I really appreciate it."

The hummingbird nodded and flew upwards. "If there's nothing you need I will see you at dinner." She said before flying out of the room.

Autumn sighed and laid down on her bed. "I just need to relax… just relax…" She muttered as she fell asleep.

Autumn walked along a stone path, her footsteps echoing in the eerie quiet. There was nothing but inky blackness around her and the soft sound of dripping water. As she walked she soon came to a door with a bright light behind it. As she reached out to open the door she heard a voice from the other side.

"Hey, you're back!"

But before she could open the door Autumn was jolted awake by the sound of someone poking her in the face.

"Autumn, wake up!" Tempest said. "Your mom wants to see you!"

Autumn sat up, feeling more tired and stressed out than she did before falling asleep. Tempest, noticing how tired his human was, sat down next to her.

"You okay? The door dream again?" he asked.

Autumn nodded and slowly stood up. "Let's go see mom."

Author's note:

So…. Its been a while and I am so sorry! Life happened, I got sick on and off for a while, broke off a long term relationship and never had the energy to continue Moon Soldier. I'm in a much more emotionally healthy place now and trying to keep my physical and mental health balanced.