Pre-Chapter A/N: Happy Holidays Everyone. Here's this week's chapter right on time for your enjoyment. As always, the following two chapters are up on pa-treon. There's a handy little December discount on both monthly and annual plans. If you just want to read complete chapters and not my work in real-time, then feel free to purchase this story as a collection on my pa-treon page. It's a nice way to support this story and me while you're at it. Enjoy!

The Dai Li fought like police officers. In the show, I'd been so awed at how skilled they appeared. With their signature rock gloves that they used in apprehending targets. Now that I thought about it, they were probably the inspiration that Toph had leaned on in creating her elite Metalbending police force in the Legend of Korra canon. But all that did not matter because Police officers were police officers-more suited for capturing and chasing criminals than fighting for their lives in a battlefield. They were fast, but not fast enough. They were efficient, but not lethal.

I jumped up, spinning into a backflip to avoid a salvo of rock gloves. I landed right next to one man. He turned to me, and I cleaved his head from his shoulders in the same movement and spun his body around to allow it to take two rocks fists for me before I kicked it onto the man next to him. They were well-trained, but not used to seeing their counterparts fall like dominoes. The more I defeated, the easier it became. Death was new to them, while I was an old hand at dealing with it. "Monster" one managed to cough out as I speared a heated hand through his left lung. The blood that splatted on my face instantly began to boil from the heat on my skin.

That word stuck with me as I spun into a kick that sent an arc of white-hot flames that cut through three men too slow to get out my way. Monster. That was probably what I was. I'd grown up watching this show. This world. They never slaughtered themselves with the same abandon that I did. The more time I spent here, the more I killed. Did Iroh even ever kill this many? I was beginning to doubt.

I heard laughter, and it hit me that it wasn't coming from me, but from Toph. She weilded her power with all the subtlety of a bull in a teashop, but I could see the signs of my tutelage in the way she fought. Every movement was efficient and led to the next. She stomped one foot, creating a row of spikes that stabbed through a few agents before she slid that same foot on the floor, making the earth the spikes had risen from rise into a wall that moved at a rapid pace, slamming into a few more agents.

She was a killer now. A killer, many times over, but she didn't seem to care. Had I done that as well? Did it even matter that I had? It was my mother's voice, I realised. The one that screamed in my head as I kicked a man and felt his ribs give way to my force.

Azula's entrance to the fight was marked by an arc of blue flames. I had wondered whether Long Feng would remain content to hold her in reserve while he watched his men get slaughtered around him. That would have suited my purposes perfectly. As I cut through her flames and prepared myself to face one of the strongest firebenders of this generation, I cursed myself for not learning how to redirect lightning. It was a failing that could bite me in the back here. The only thing I had going for me was that I knew I would be able to use the lightning faster than she could. So if I saw her preparing an attack, I would be able to strike first, even if I started later.

That would surely kill her, so it was a last resort. Losing a Princess would be a bad look, but it was preferable to losing my life. I dodged another arc of flames and shot at her like a cannonball from a canon. She barely managed to roll out of the way in time, and I took the chance to call up my fire whips and dice the men who had been behind her into pieces. She took her stance and kicked a lance of flames in my direction before her foot returned to the ground and advanced as she sent smaller lances from her fingers. I almost chuckled as I took a deep breath and cleaved the first lance in two, allowing either side to pass me by, and then I called on my inner flame and met each of her smaller lances with fire blasts of my own.

She pushed both her hands forward, sending a massive swathe of blue fire in my direction, but she was not even close enough to catching me with such a slow attack. I jetted around the room, taking a longer path to approach her from the side. She spotted me coming and cut off her massive blast to turn around and face me. She lifted her leg to send a blast my way, but I rolled underneath it, and then I was in her space. I held back on the punch I landed on her face, but it was still so satisfying. To her credit, she remained conscious and still continued the fight. She stepped back, dazed for a second, and then tried to punch at me with fire in her fists. My head flashed backward, moving out of the way and in the same movement, my left leg flashed outward to kick her in the shin. She almost tripped over herself in her stumbling to regain her footing, and I slapped her in the face twice. A forehand followed by a backhand in quick succession.

There were tears in her eyes, but she still couldn't recognise me, so I kneed her in the midsection and then knocked her unconscious with an elbow to the back of her head. Thankfully, she was a Princess of the Fire Nation. Even if she remembered this, she would be the one in the wrong for allowing herself to fall so low as to be a tool of the enemy.

The moment she lost consciousness, I extended my awareness to the rest of the room and was not surprised to note that Toph had dispatched the vast majority of whatever Dai Li agents had escaped my attention. In the middle of all this stood Long Feng and his General. Said General was glaring at the man, even as the man seemed to be almost awestruck at the events that had unfolded before him.

I began walking forward, but the woman just raised both her hands and went to her knees. "I am General Kali, daughter of General Lin, Granddaughter of King Bumi of Omashu. I surrender myself into your custody." She said, and I nodded. Even during war, there were some niceties that had to be observed among nobility, and even shocked as I was about her alleged identity, I could not deny her said niceties.

"Toph? I think metal chains will do for these two" When Long Feng similarly went to his knees. She slammed her foot against the wall, and with more concentration than I've ever seen her use in her bending before, she dragged her hands backwards and the chains followed her movement, wrapping around Kali before moving to Long Feng. In a series of movements that belied his age, he pushed himself backwards into a roll and began to flee the room. I sighed and shot through the air, moving after him.

He barely managed to make it three steps away before I landed right upon him, smashing his body into the ground. "Where the hell do you think you're going, Coward?" I asked, and I felt him swallow beneath me as he felt the heat of my body above him.

XXXXXX

I wish I could say the taking of Ba Sing Se was some complex fight worthy of a song. It was not. All the things worth anything had happened in that cavern. Kai's crew had attempted to betray Toji and Maki while they were sneaking into the prison complex holding the Fire Nation Army Azula had brought with her. That proved to be a mistake that hurt the Ba Sing Se defenders more than it hurt my people. Toji was a fighter who was difficult to stop on his worst day. Yesterday was not his worst day. He was said to have fought dozens of men in a running chase, while Maki took advantage of their clumping together to brutalize them with explosions.

By the time they had managed to get their wits about them, Amara had secured the release of enough of the Fire Nation Generals and Officers that the tide was turned. From within the City, I had done my part. The gates to the outer gate had taken no time to fall. The inner gates posed some challenge, but between Toph and I, the gates had been opened. Now, I sat at what had once been Long Feng's desk in the Lake Laogai base. The Earth Kingdom army had turned out to have gained some common sense towards the end of the battle. They'd retreated in good order and cooperated with the palace guards to turn the place into a fortress.

"What say you, Sung?" I asked my war council, a collection of the Generals who I had seen freed. Only the ones that had not shown too much amusement when Azula had paid her insults. For those who had openly laughed (or secretly done so without enough discretion to prevent word from reaching my ears), I delegated the busy work of pacifying the city populace. They would not gain any glory in what was to come. I had freed them. Honour and common sense commanded that they take my orders as law until the city was taken.

"I say the Palace will be costly to take. It was already quite defensible, but with the efforts of the Earth Kingdom Army to transform the steps into a killing field, we will lose dozens forever inch of progress we make. We cannot afford that loss".

"And yet, we cannot afford to leave the Princess in the hands of the Earth King." General Hyo said, tossing in his two cents. He was an old man. The kind of old that emphasized that his worth as a General was more tied to his power as a strategist and not his worth as a combatant.

"Will you be volunteering yourself to lead the charge to save her then?" General Aki, a broad man whose appearance had more in common with that of a peasant than a noble. He was a bastard son who had risen high on his own merits. He was also very popular with his men for not wasting lives.

"Of course not. Do not be ridiculous. The infantry is plentiful enough" He replied, sounding actually affronted.

"They won't be if you put them through that meat grinder of a castle" General Aki again, easily riposting the point made by the older man. Looking around at the generals, I could already see that it was a nearly even split between those who wanted to take the castle, damning the cost to lives, and those who would rather take a more measured approach to things. I mentally noted who belonged on which camp. It was a line with which I could play them against each other. I was their equal, but I presently had the upper hand so they would submit to my will. That was only for now, though. They would seize authority from me the second the chance presented itself.

"We must also consider the city. We have barely enough men to hold the city as it stands. If we lose even a third of them in taking that castle, then our hold becomes even more precarious than it already stands. This is a city made to house millions, and we have scarce thousands of men dedicated to her. We can write for reinforcements, but those are at best a fortnight away" General Aoi said next, bringing up an excellent point. The city's wealthy class in the inner city were the easiest to pacify while the outer rings had already erupted in rioting once today. I had no doubts that another would come. The inner city had been shielded from the war. If there was no war in Ba Sing Se, then nowhere was that statement more true than in the inner city. The outer city had people who had immigrated here from outside the city. The ones who had been touched by the war. The ones who had seen the Fire Nation destroy their peoples and places dear to them.

They were the ones most opposed to our presence here, and if we lost our military might, then we might find ourselves run out of town in time. Azula had done it in the canon universe by supplanting the Dai Li. The only problem with that is that I'd killed the most of them. Not me, but Toph- my little psychopath, if I was being honest. But the facts remained the same. How would I pacify a city without an elite crop of secret police officers?

"We'll give it another two days. We'll maintain a presence around the castle. Surround it. Make sure nothing goes in or out. Hopefully, time spent a prisoner in his own palace will convince the Earth King to come to the table" I said finally.

"So we just sit and twiddle our thumbs?" Hyo asked with a derisive snort.

"No. We will be consolidating our hold on the city in the intervening time. And you and the men you lead will be using the time to move the siege engines from your ships to the inner city. Might as well be ready to storm the castle if it becomes necessary" I said with a smile. A smile that brightened as I could hear him beginning to grind his teeth. I wondered if he would challenge the thinly veiled orders, or my authority to do so. He looked over my shoulder for a second, and then sat ramrod straight. I wondered what Toji had done from my blindspot, but knowing my best friend, it was probably a thinly veiled threatening gesture. I loved Toji like a brother, but he wasn't the most subtle of creatures.

With that, the meeting came to an end and I ushered the rest of them to begin their journey back to the surface. Using the Lake Laogai base as my headquarters had come with more than a few advantages. First of all, it meant that no one was suspicious of the time I spent here. That would have been a much more difficult thing to achieve if I stayed topside and would have had to sneak down here as needed.

I walked out of the room with toji on my tail and after a few turns and doubling back twice to make sure we were not being followed, we arrived at a wall that looked just like any other. I knocked at the wall for a second, and the wall became a door as it shifted aside to permit us entry into the large room. The large room that presently had five occupants; An unconscious Azula, a bound Long Feng, and an alert Maki, Toph, and a focused Amara. With the exception of Amara, the people in this room were what I considered my inner circle. As for the healer, well… She would not be betraying me with Toph on the lookout for it.

"So how's the progress?" I asked.

"I haven't managed to get a peep off him about how the brainwashing stuff works. I've had Amara look into it, and she says it reminds her of some healing stuff that her mother had told her, but nothing concrete. Our best guess is that the brainwashing itself is older than this generation of Dai Li, and they've just been using it to their advantage but didn't actually develop the method themselves," Maki said, and I nodded, walking deeper into the room, towards Long Feng.

"Not a peep, huh? I guess we'll see what happens by the time I'm done with him" I said, and the old bastard had the audacity to chuckle.

"The Dai LI train to resist all sorts of torture, boy. You won't get anything from me" He said instead, and I just chuckled. I wondered why people always felt the need to brag about their resistance to torture. Surely, that did not make them any less likely to get tortured. Like, no one goes, 'Welp, I guess since you say so.' and just gives up on trying. Maybe it was some sort of affirmation thing. Still stupid.

"Torture? No, I would never torture you. Let's call this an enhanced interrogation." I said to him, telling a joke he would never get to understand, before finally turning away.

"Toph? Please come over here. I need you to help me make sure he isn't lying." I said to my apprentice first. And it might have been the inner psycho in me, but there was something cute about the way she hurried on over to help.

"Toji, I need you to help me place him on this board and tie him down. You secured the supplies, right?" I turned to my best friend next, and he just smiled while pointing over at another end of the room.

"Good. Let's work on it" Toji picked him up and moved him towards an elevated wooden platform. Wood, not stone because I did not want Toph to feel his heart rate for what was going to come next. "Turn him around, his head must be lower than his body" I said next as the arrangement went wrong the first time.

"Toji, if you would pass me the rag," I said, taking a hold of the cloth and covering his face with it. His hands and legs were already bound with chains, but we went the extra step of binding him to the platform.

I held out my hand, accepting the pitcher. "So what is going to happen is that I will begin. When you have had enough, you will scream the words, "Hail Ozai," and I will release you if I believe you." I accepted the pitcher from Toji and took a deep breath before I began to pour.

In the end, he lasted two minutes before he sang like a canary and only needed to go under the rag four more times. One for trying to lie, two for trying to obscure some information from me, and the last for calling Toph a bitch when she pointed out the lie.

A/N; The fight progresses as fights do. But is it really a fight? More like a slaughter. Furthermore, as for the waterboarding, three minutes is a lot. Apparently, even 90 seconds is quite impressive. That's the chappy. I hope you loved it. As always, the next two chapters are up on pa-treon. There's a handy little December discount on both monthly and annual plans. If you just want to read complete chapters and not my work in real-time, then feel free to purchase this story as a collection on my pa-treon page- nice way to support this story and me while you're at it. Enjoy!