A/N- So sorry this is coming about four days late. Haven't had the best week and this story has arrived at a really stressful point in its plot here I can't afford to get anything wrong. Expect the next update on Wednesday next week, and know you could skip the wait and read the next two chapters as well as continuous updates on Pa-treon right now. Since I now qualify as an unemployed member of society, all subscribers on my pa-treon are much appreciated. If you enjoy my writing, then please don't hesitate to support it if you can. For Pa Treon, you can remove the hyphen between Pa and Treon and Google it, then search for my username—Oghenevwogaga. Or you could copy the link in my bio and remove the spaces before pasting it in your address bar. Please subscribe to my pa-treon using the website directly instead of using the IOS app. It's cheaper on the website.
Important Announcement: Changes made to my pa-treon structure mean its now cheaper to read the very next chapter with a lower-tier subscription. I'll be placing a discount on yearly memberships for a week or so to support this.
XXXXXX
I ducked underneath a boulder sent for my head and cut through the next two before jetting across the ground that separated the two of us. Just as I moved, she did the same. Her feet shoved themselves into the ground and the very earth itself dragged her farther away from me. I landed where she had just stood with a smile on my face.
"That's a good one" I said, bringing an end to the brief spar.
"Yeah, I knew you'd say so. Needed a way to keep up with your dancy feet." She said. I smiled in reply and walked forward and stretched out a fist.
She met my fist with hers.
"We'll be heading out tomorrow" I told her.
"You want me to go hiding again?" She asked. She had not appreciated being kept out of the view of the Princess, even if it had been for her own good. To her, it felt too much like cowardice, and so she had been pissed.
"No. Tomorrow, you will ride at my side." I said, getting a bright smile from her. It was difficult to see when watching the show, but now that I lived with her on a daily basis, she felt just like a child did.
"Before you do, though, there's something we have to talk about" I'd delayed the conversation for too long.
"What's up?" She asked and I smiled at the phrasing. There was no one I was more unguarded with than Toph. And because of that, even more phrasings from my first life had been shared between the two of us. The young blind girl picked them up with ease and seemed to have a fun time trying to figure out the meaning of phrases I used from the context and nothing more. So far, she had an impressive accuracy rate and was getting better with time.
"So the Fire Nation soldiers and Generals outside of those under me will have a way of reacting to you. A way that you must be prepared to deal with".
"You mean they're going to be mean? I'll beat them up if they're mean, Natsu. I won't take it lying down" She said.
I smiled at her and reached out to ruffle her head before I reached into my pocket and handed her a token for getting that one right.
"Knew it" She whispered to herself as she pocketed it.
"I'd never ask that. Anyone who disrespects you was asking to be dealt with, and you should feel free to do so. Anyone but the Princess, I mean. But I doubt you'll get much of her attention with a Siege of all things going on. No. What you might not realize is that when I took you in, I needed a way to protect you. Standard procedure for captured benders is for them to be sent to breeding camps-"
"What are breeding camps?" She cut in and flushed once she realised what she'd done. I stretched out my hand, and she passed the token back and I slipped it into my pocket.
"Nothing important for now" I said quickly. So quickly that I knew that even without the ability to hear my heartbeat, she probably knew that I was lying, but I didn't care. I would not be giving Toph the talk.
"That's cap"
"So? That's not the critical bit. What you need to know is this- I adopted you."
"Adopted me?"
"I mean as far as the Fire Nation is concerned, you're my daughter. This doesn't affect your life in any way, and you will, of course, be free to return to your parents whenever you want".
"Oh okay then. So why are you telling me now?"
"Because you being my daughter makes you technically fire nation nobility, and you will need to be ready to deal with the reactions people have to that fact"
"So I have to learn stuffy noble stuff?"
"Just basic manners and nothing more." I said, trying to get her to agree quickly.
"What's in it for me?"
"Not making a complete fool of yourself?" I tried.
"Nuh-uh. Me making a fool of me would make a fool of you. That means we're at an impasse".
"Fair point. Didn't get the word, though" I said, making her facepalm before she brightened up as I continued.
"What do you want? Be reasonable."
"Move my curfew back by three hours?"
"Nice try. You'd be much too tired the next day for the lessons to have any effect. Thirty minutes".
"That's barely anything. Manner lessons will cut into my day, so I need to be contemplated for the extra time. Three hours thirty minutes."
"You mean compensated, not contemplated, for one. For two, your negotiation is terrible and that's not how it works. Forty-five minutes".
"Thank you. I won't take less than four hours."
"That's not how any of this is supposed to work" I said, palming my face.
XXXXXX- LONG FENG
He stared at her. To his eyes, there was only one thing she seemed to represent. That was danger. Danger of a sort that could scarcely be compared. She had surrendered, as had the majority of her forces. He had them dead to rights, but still somehow he felt like he was not the one fully in control of the situation. It was the paranoia from his training, he told himself. The Dai Li were the best in the world at what they did, and with the remnants of the Earth Kingdom army acting as willing tools, he was more than enough to contend with the best that the Fire nation had to offer.
And yet, she still maintained that smirk. Like she knew something he did not. "I could kill you, you know. March you out of here and behead you before the sun goes down" He said finally, resorting to threats when his preferred tactic of waiting in silence for his opponent to speak had proven ineffective. Maintaining the staring contest with the girl any further would have done nothing to move his goals forward.
"I strongly doubt that. For one, whatever power you think you have will not last long. If you touch even a single head on thy hair, the full force of the Fire Nation Army will land on your shores. They will tear your walls down brick by brick and your city in the walls will burn. It will be nothing but ash in no time. Have you not the slightest idea who I am?"
"Princess Azula of the Fire Nation. Yes, we had more than enough opportunity to hear you give orders to your men before we sprung our trap." He replied with a sigh. Just like he'd come to expect from nobility. Spoiled and useless.
"Speaking of that trap, I just want to know. How did you get the jump on us?" She asked with a gleam in her eyes that he could not quite place.
"My people have been watching your people from the very beginning. It was not a matter of how, but when" he said, enjoying the way she frowned at his words. His predecessor had had a true talent for saying words and never making it clear what he meant by them. That was the same talent that he was using to his advantage here.
XXXXX
"Are you sure about this, General?" Long Feng did not much like General Kali, but there were a few things the woman had going for her. She was a powerful earthbender, she had a no-nonsense approach to training her troops so they were easily the most well-trained unit in the Earth Kingdom's military, and perhaps most importantly, she was the only one that still commanded anything that looked even similar to an army on the side of the Earth Kingdom. All the others had done good jobs of either getting themselves killed or captured.
Jinpei was only the most recent in a long line of idiots to fall before the might was the Fire nation war machine.
"As sure as anything. The Princess and her Generals surrendered without contest once they saw just how outnumbered they were. This man? I have studied his every action. What spies we have in the Fire Nation have reported of his time in the Military Academy. Every single piece of information we have about him tells us that he's the type that will not surrender."
"What does that matter? We just kill him then".
"Wrong. He's dangerous. He killed Bumi, and that alone should be enough to make you fear him. Fong might have been an idiot, but he and his men were well-trained, disciplined as all hell, and dangerous. This man made short work of them. A survivor from that massacre testifies that he saw him cut men in twain with no blades held in his hands. No, it is simply too dangerous to give him the room to cut down dozens if not hundreds of my men to capture this one fucker," He gritted his teeth at the tone being directed at him but did not dispute her words. She was the warrior here, he would trust her strategy, even if he did have reservations that had to be handled. Not the least of those reservations were the significant amount of resources being shunted into this project of hers.
"And so your fear of him necessitates this?" He asked, waving his hand around them to indicate the construction going on. They stood atop a wall that was at least a dozen feet high and had not existed there a scant few days ago. It was just his luck that Kuei was such an idiot. Very few of his predecessors would have failed to notice such a massive project taking place right at the outskirts of their city. Large as Ba Sing Se was, it was not so large that whispers would not have made their way to the Palace in any other administration. At least with this one, the staff of the palace answered to him above all else, and those who would have considered bypassing his authority had been weeded out with ease. Kuei ended up reporting them himself more often than not.
"Yes. I will see his ships sunk before he even manages to land. I will see his army ended in the sea before it can be a scourge to us over land." She declared, looking at the massive trebuchets being constructed with a fire in her eyes. The fire of a zealot. The fire of a true believer. That was what Kali was, a true believer.
"And when I do see his threat ended, I expect you to fulfill your end of the bargain" She said.
"Like I told you earlier, the Earth King has no interest in meeting a General with no victories. Rid Ba Sing Se of this threat, and you will find him more than willing to give you an audience" He said, lying through his teeth just as he had been taught. The second this General Natsu was dead, he would be ridding himself of this woman and what she represented. He saw a pathway to finally saving Ba Sing Se. He would end the Fire nation Army's bulk of veterans and skilled soldiers here.
And then he would use the Princess as a negotiating instrument. He would trade her life for a treaty that would ensure the City of the Walls would not find itself disturbed by this pesky war any further. Peace in his time. Long Feng could almost taste it.
XXXXXXXXX- Natsu Wu
The ships cut through the water like a hot knife through butter. He just thanked his gods that he was not motion sick. "Urrghhhhh" He chuckled at the sound of his apprentice retching over the ship's edge. She did not take well to their present conditions at all. For one, like all the other ships in the Fire Nation Navy, this one was made entirely of metal. That meant she had no chance of feeling vibrations to see. Of course, I'd seen this coming and hoped that it would serve as a training opportunity for her. She was one hell of a talent and in canon she figured out sand after being tossed in the deep end, so I just hoped this turned out to be a terrible thing.
"She's still not getting used to it?" Toji asked, moving to stand next to me at the helm of the ship.
"Not even close. She's barely been able to get any sleep either, so sooner rather than later, I might have to have Amara take a look at things".
"Good idea?" He asked.
"She's been punished already. And my daughter or no, I doubt she has it in her to harm a child. Killing those three men probably scarred her for life" I said in response to the question he left unasked.
"If you say so then. How do you feel about a spar?"
"I'm more than ready. That's why you came up here, isn't it?" I asked with a smirk that he easily returned. In the gap between one second and the next, he had tossed one of the sticks he was holding at me.
I caught it and twirled it around a bit to test the balance. It was well-made. Made by him, I suspected. The one he weilded was eerily similar. Just like the training spears with no tips we'd used back when we were boys at the academy. Of course, Spear training was one aspect of our scholastic careers that Toji far outshined me in. I came second to him in those classes, but I would have been lying if I called it a close second. It was almost like there was no contest between us when I had my bending put off the table.
Of course, I had come a long way from there and now there was no true way for my bending to be out of the picture. Not since heat became my friend. I took a hold of either of end of the staff and tested the balance again, tossing it in the air and catching it at its centre before spinning it on that point and then catching it once more.
"You ready, Show off?" Toji asked with a chuckle and I nodded.
I took a breath in, heating it up and spreading it all across my body. I barely moved my staff in time to block Toji's first hit. The second came to the left, but I ignored the feint and blocked the real attack that came from the right. His staff searched out for my feet, but I danced out of the way with a chuckle. He joined me and I struck first this time. A powerful overhead blow forced him to lift his staff to block it. I repeated the blow twice, and on the third, he spun out of the way and my staff his the steel deck.
It was out of position for only a second but Toji took advantage of it and landed a powerful blow that walloped me across the face. "Thwack" the hit sounded in the silence that the ship had fallen into.
I took two steps back and lifted my hand to check at the wound. It wasn't bleeding. It just hurt like a motherfucker. It was going to bruise, I knew almost instantly.
I stepped back again, and looked up at Toji's smirking face. I could see Toph behind him listening to the whole thing with rapt attention. I wondered what she could tell without sight and vibrations to lead her through. I held the staff on either end and brought it down to my knee in a sharp movement, breaking it in half.
"I'll help you make a new one" I told Toji even as I tested the grip of my new weapon, or was it weapons? He neglected to answer, instead moving in on the attack. I ducked underneath and overhead sweep and pounced on him with my weapons. First I came from the left, forcing him to block.; My right stick lashed out and struck his knee, forcing hum to grunt and take a step back. That step backwards ended up being the one that decided the spar because he'd essentially given the initiative to me and I would not be returning it. I attacked almost faster than even I could think, acting the part of a storm better than I'd ever done at being a human. Every time I forced him to block, my other weapon was striking somewhere unguarded.
Of course, I only ended up being able to land half a dozen clean hits before Toji adapted. Now, he pushed against my attacks to give him the time to move his staff to block the next one. When it came to fighting, he was a genius with little in the way of equals, and I enjoyed hacking him on. The back foot. In the end, my advantage did not last long. I pressed down on him with both sticks from above for a few seconds and right as it seemed I was about to break through his attack, I was forced to take a step back to avoid a staff that struck where my head had just been.
"You too?" I asked with a faux irritated tone that failed to reach my eyes.
"Couldn't let you boys have all the fun" Maki replied before charging right at me. I sighed and prepared myself.
XXXXXXX
"What is that?" I asked, passing the telescoping eye back to Captain Hiro, the one charged with ferrying my army down to Ba Sing Se.
"A wall, General"
"Yes. But not a wall that one would expect to see this far out from the city, aye? They've walled off the entire beach head." I said with a scowl.
"Any chance of us sailing around it and getting them from behind?"
"Nope. The beachhead is the only place ships have any hope of landing. And if you look over there you can see that those are Fire Nation ships parked there. That means the Princess is there. That means we must sail right ahead into this mess." I said with a scowl.
Of course, it was just my luck that the second I spoke, all hell broke loose.
Important Announcement: Changes made to my pa-treon structure mean it's now cheaper to read the very next chapter with a lower-tier subscription. I'll be placing a discount on yearly memberships for a week or so to support this
A/N: Finally finished the chapter. Added some slice-of-life stuff just because, and to deepen the relationships between the characters just a bit. That's the chapter. Like I said earlier, you can either wait till Wednesday next week for the next chapter or skip the waiting and read the next two, as well as continuous updates as I write on pa-treon (same username as up here- link in bio). Both are equally valid actions, so no rush. For Pa Treon, you can remove the hyphen between Pa and Treon and Google it, then search for my username—Oghenevwogaga. Or you could copy the link in my bio and remove the spaces before pasting it in your address bar.