Pre-Chapter A/N: It's here. The last chapter of the year (for some of us). Some of us are already in the New Year so happy New Year everyone. Here's this week's chapter a tad bit earlier 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!

NOTE: The holiday discount on pa-treon runs out on the 2nd of January (GMT), so hurry while stock lasts.

In the end, the plan was simple. It was a variation of what had actually happened in canon. Azula's memories had been altered so she remembered being knocked unconscious after being taken captive, but nothing afterwards. Instead of springing her up out of nowhere which would have caused no small amount of suspicion to be sent my way, I'd had Long Feng smuggle her into the Earth King's palace of all places. The army was still going to be necessary for pacifying the city and the rest of the kingdom so I was not keen to toss lives into the meat grinder that was the palace at this point.

Luckily, there was another way to handle things.

"So this man of yours, he's trustworthy?" The old man asked for the seventh time today and I could just barely refuse the urge to sigh in irritation.

"Yes, General Hyo. I trust him. And like I said, I'm more than willing to take the risk of moving into the palace alone with my people" I offered, seemingly magnanimously. It was an offer that they unsurprisingly rejected. I had opened the gates and freed them from captivity. I was already the hero of this entire affair. That meant that they would want their own share of the renown that would come of this. The only place any of that would be gained was from the taking of the palace. So that meant I had to deal with creating a plan that would appeal to these people while still being effective enough to work without me placing my hand on the pulse and keeping control over everything at all times.

Sure, I could probably go at it alone. I had enough leverage that none would refuse me. But that would be counterintuitive. Depriving them of the glory of taking the palace was just rubbing salt into the wound and would gain me more enemies than allies.

XXXXXX

In the end, it took another half an hour of talking before all of them capitulated and agreed with the plan. They still didn't trust Long Feng as far as they could throw him- considering they were a collection of lanky and frail Generals, that wasn't very far to begin with. Something about the thought of someone betraying their nation- even if to help us- just didn't sit right with them. It pressed home just how deeply the nationalistic spirit went when it came to the Fire Nation. A pro, and a con in some ways.

Still, they finally relented and now I stood with a collection of troops. I'd lost the bulk of my men in the attack but in the time since taking Ba Sing Se, I'd had people scouring the surrounding land mass and wreckage. Only dozens remained from my thousands, but those dozens still formed the core of the men I'd be taking into the palace. Each General had been allowed to bring their three best, and I'd brought twelve. A not so subtle way to drive home the impression that any glory gained here would be by my will and no other's.

I took a breath in. Long Feng poked his head from the ground and opened up a tunnel. I took a breath out and began to walk in with the others. As always, I led from the front. We'd placed Long Feng through a series off tests to ascertain his loyalty after the brainwashing so I was confident that he was my man through and through. Still, a part of me screamed out that this man was an enemy. Not just any enemy, one-half of those who had come close to defeating me. General Kali, his partner in that had since perished. I'd given her the best possible accommodations while maintaining her status as a prisoner, but it should have been no surprise that part of the army had taken things into their own hands in dealing with her.

I still had no idea who exactly had killed her. I never even got a chance to interrogate her claims about being related to Bumi of all fucking people. She'd just been stabbed through the heart with nothing to show for it. Toji was investigating but I didn't have much hope that he'd get anything. Especially since I couldn't raise much of a stink and definitely couldn't push for enhanced interrogation of suspects at this point.

The tunnel wasn't lit, but I was a fire bender. A flick of my wrist had a steady flame floating above my palm. A steady orange flame, interesting enough. All my attempts to conjure the green fire again had failed. I hadn't yet attempted anything too grand and was saving that till I was more established in my control over the city. Taking the palace would be a good first step in achieving that goal, at the very least.

The wall opened up at a nondescript point and we were in the palace proper. "Lead them to the throne room" I ordered Long Feng while I turned to seek out the Princess with my own troops.

Toph widened her stance and stabbed her hands into the wall in the motion she used when she wanted to extend her senses as far as possible. "I've found the Princess" She said next.

"Good. And the commander of this mess?" I asked.

"Yes. Four floors above us."

"Give Toji the precise directions, please. Toji, take Hiroshi, Aiko, Kenji, Yuki, Sakura, Mizuki, and Amara with you. I'll take Toph and the others." I said, and began turning in the direction Toph gestured the Princess with. My original group of 13, was quickly cut down to four. Just Toph, Takeshi, Maki and I would move to 'rescue' the princess.

We made it down two hallways unmolested, and by the time we had turned into the third, the alarm had been sounded. Either Toji or the Generals had played their hand. My money was on the Generals. Well, this had never been intended to be much of a stealth mission in the first place, I thought with a smile, as I erupted from the tapestry I'd been hiding behind and punched through one of the passing guards while kicking the other's weapon out of his grip.

The commotion that came from the clattering spear was sure to draw more people to our direction, but I found that I did not particularly care. Subterfuge and sneaking around was not my strong suit. This was. Battle sent my heart beating in a way nothing quite did, and now those drums in my ears were louder than they'd ever been. The next person to move in my field of vision was a serving boy that was passing by and decided to run away. I allowed him leave and chuckled internally as Toph made the ground beneath his feet shake a bit and made him almost lose his footing and fall.

We continued the journey to the Princess' room but this time we moved at what seemed to be twice the speed as before as we did not care much about being noticed. Maki and Takeshi were content to leave the fighting to Toph and I as we cut through all those who stood in our way and made I to the Princess' door.

I tried opening it, only to note that it was locked. Nice one, Long Feng, I thought with a sarcastic smile. "Give me some space, guys" I said before stepping backwards and aiming to slam into the door with my leg. Of course, as I pulled back and lashed out, my leg hit nothing but air. I turned to Toph and the girl was laughing. Turning to Takeshi and Maki, I noticed that neither of them would return my look. Takeshi had his hand over his mouth, and Maki wasn't even bothering to do as much as he was to hide her laughter.

"I hate you all" I muttered as I marched through the hole in the wall Toph had opened by bending the earth and moving the entire doorframe to the side.

"Princess, General Natsu here to rescue you"

XXXXXX- TOJI

He stared down at the body as his spear protruded from its back. Another one dead, he thought with a sardonic smile. Natsu was his best friend, and he could not even think of life without him but the man was terrible at watching his own back. That was what left Toji with this burden. This burden to act to defend him from the threats he refused to see.

That was why he'd killed the Earth Kingdom General that had almost cost him his Friend's life. Natsu cared little for revenge, but Toji had learned from childhood that the only mercy one could give oneself was ruthlessness when it came to others. When he had begged for help, for scraps of affection or failing that, even the barest recognition of his existence, he had received nothing but scorn. His father had wanted a firebender. His mother was chosen purely for her bending potential. Two powerful firebenders from two powerful firebending families, and they had given birth to a non-bender as their first son of all things. It would have been humorous if it hadn't meant a childhood of abuse.

It never got physical- not with the adults of course- but they had been more than willing to turn a blind eye when his cousins made him the butt of the 'joke' over and over again. The abuse had toughened him. He'd learned to fight from those days. Eventually, he became so good that even his bender cousins could not touch him. When physical means of showing their dominance failed to be an option, they moved to words. They tried to break his spirit by seeing how much pain they could force him into with their insults. That had hurt for a time and then he had learned to ignore those words. After that had come the isolation. He was shunned by one and all for years and expected much the same when he got into the Academy. Only for Natsu of the Wu family, a prodigy so famous that even Toji had heard of him, to look at him like he was everyone else. To look at him like he was human.

Natsu was more than family to him. That was why he did not mind taking on burdens like this to help him when it was clear he needed it. The body that had once been Amara still had twitching fingers, but he was sure the water bender was dead. He was no stranger to death- to killing. Neither was Natsu, but the man could make nonsensical decisions at times. Letting Amara live was one of them. He knew that Natsu himself knew he was making a mistake but he saw the usefulness of a waterbender and weighed it against the potential threat she held as a proven traitor and found that her usefulness came out victorious.

Toji would have supported the decision had it related to anything else, but there was a crucial part of the calculation that Natsu had gotten wrong. His life was not worth less than the war effort. Natsu Wu's life was worth everything and more. That was why he could not let the betrayal stand. She had put Natsu's life in danger. She had almost cost him everything. There was no chance he would be taking that lightly.

He had given Natsu the chance to get his own revenge, but when his friend showed mercy, he had known that he would have to move to deal with things on his own. All he'd needed to do was find the opportunity to move against her without garnering suspicion. Done with looking at his kill, he got to work, moving the dead bodies of the Earth Kingdom guards that had ambushed them into position to tell a story. Natsu would never investigate- it was not his nature. He trusted Toji wholly just as Toji trusted him wholly. It was how things were meant to be.

He took a step back when he felt he was done. It told a tale of a surprise attack which was what he would tell Natsu. Amara had been stabbed from behind before either of them had even known what was going on, and he'd killed them for their audacity.

X_. _THE WATERBENDING MASTER

"How was it?" She asked, staring at him as he came out of the hole in the wall that he'd been using for his training.

"Just as always. Kyoshi spends as much time teaching as she does scolding me" Aang replied. She turned away from her stitching to stare at him. To really look at him. In the months they'd travelled together, Aang had completely transformed from the boy she'd found in the iceberg. If she knew what the world would hold for them, she would have never left the South Pole. She would have had Aang grow out his hair and hide his tattoos and swear never to bend again. She would have made the same oath if she'd known what elevating to the level of waterbending master would mean for her- for them.

Aang looked like he had aged decades. Like the century of time that he had spent in the iceberg had come down on him all at once. It had cracked him, she felt. The news. Their victory at the North Pole had not mattered when weighed against what Aang had lost. What they had both lost. Omashu had fallen, Aang lost the one human link he had to the time before the iceberg- his best friend. She had lost even more that day. Hakoda, Chief of the Southern Water Tribe, was dead, and the world would never be the same. Sokka was all she had left now, and he had taken the loss even harder than she had. He didn't sleep, barely ate, and tried to spend every possible second training. Revenge was his goal, and it was telling that Aang did not even consider talking him out of it.

General Sung of the Fire Nation would pay, she thought. Sokka might have been the one who spent day and night talking about it, but she was the one who truly had the will and the power to see it to fruition. She knew the man that had seen through her Father's best strategies as Bato had told them and thoroughly outwitted them to the point that her Father's only choice was surrender, would be a tough nut to crack. Sokka could make his plans and train with his boomerang, but when they found Sung, it would be her ice that would take his life from him.

"But she teaches at least? That's better than Roku" She put forward, trying to see some sort of silver lining in their present situation.

"Yeahhh. It is. I wish she could convince him, but it's not like all my past lives get to talk to each other. Apparently, their only link to reality comes from me, and when I draw on one of them the others are blinded. They come together when I'm in the Avatar State, but that's too much of a blended mess of all of them for a conversation to take place" He said with a sigh before stomping both feet on the ground and pushing up an earthen stool. She smiled at the sight. Aang never really understood how much of a genius he was.

It had peeved her back when she had felt like she competed against him to learn waterbending but now that she was a master in her own right and she could see just how useful his talents were. They needed to defeat the Fire Nation as quickly as possible, and the key to that was making sure the Avatar was ready to fight the Fire Lord and bring balance. To do that, he needed to know all elements. They didn't have the decades that Aang said it had taken Roku and Kyoshi. They didn't even have a tenth of the time, and they needed him to be just as strong as the other Avatars had been.

It was a lot to ask, She thought. She drew water from the very air, coalescing it into a bubble tea she boiled with an application of her will to remove whatever impurities might exist before cooling it down again and floating it over towards Aang's mouth. He looked up at her in thanks and opened up for the water to float in. The entire procedure had taken her a minute and then some, she thought with a smile. Progress. Boiling water had been hard when Sokka had first theorized it but now it was getting easier and easier.

Maybe she'd even be able to use it in combat at some point, she thought.

"Have you heard from Bato and Sokka today?" He asked her after chewing on a biscuit that she passed him.

"Still the same- just talk about how we need more allies to join us to assault the capital but nothing about how to actually go about getting anyone other than the Water Tribes to pledge support."

"And anything about the Fire Nation General?" While the Fire Nation had dozens of Generals, there was only one that the world had come to refer to as the General and nothing else.

"Last we heard, he was off assaulting Ba Sing Se" She said, and she saw the way he puffed up to speak.

"Yes, I agree with you that we should be helping them, but this is more important Aang. We could put an end to the war in one swoop"

"I still can't fire bend Katara", he sounded so tired when he spoke.

"Ending the war is still far away. But these are real people we could be helping right now" He said, and not for the first time she didn't have a reply to what he said.

A/N: Ended with a Katara POV to show just a few of the ways that the world around the Avatar has changed. 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!