Pre-Chapter A/N: Happy New Year! It's still groovy to say that right? We're only two weeks into the year. Either way, I hope you're all still keeping up with your new year's resolutions. I'm just getting started on mine. Here we go with the second chapter of 2025. Lovely to have you all here, and I hope you enjoy this one. If you do, feel free to head over to pa-treon and read the next two chapters- I update there on a daily basis so there's always something for you to read. It's also a new year, so this is probably the best time to buy an annual membership on my page, if you're the kind of person that would do well with one. Have fun.
I took a deep breath in and then exhaled as I let go of the bow's string. It snapped into place, sending the arrow flying and right into the stomach of my straw target. I twisted my lips at the sight. Especially as Toji began applauding.
"I'd been aiming for the head" I said with audible disappointment bleeding into my voice without my input.
"And just a day ago, you'd been missing the whole body. It's progress. Good progress".
"I have just a month to master this, Toji" I pointed out.
"No. You have a month to become good enough to defend yourself. And for that, you don't need perfect aim. A shot to the stomach is just as fatal as a shot to the head, so what does it matter. I'm clapping because you're making progress and some progress is better than none" He said with wisdom that had me taken aback.
"A month to know how to defend myself then" I muttered the words as I reached for the next arrow.
"I doubt it will come to that, though. Your suspicions about the eclipse are just that…suspicions. If there had been any risk of anything really concrete happening, then we would have been warned to keep an eye out. The letter from the High Command only specifies that we are not to panic when we find firebending to be non-operational".
"When did you become so wise?" I asked while drawing the arrow. He was right, of course. At least as right as he could be without the knowledge I had. In canon, they'd taken the opportunity to attack the Fire Lord. I just hoped that I hadn't changed enough to make them seek me as a target instead.
"I'm bored" Azula's voice whined out as I breathed out and loosed the arrow. It flew right over my target's shoulder, sailing into the empty field behind it and planting itself into the ground. I turned to the Princess with an annoyed expression that I could feel grow in intensity as she smirked and shrugged at me, not even bothering to show any remorse for causing the miss.
"Surely, you do not think that was my fault. You miss often enough without me that you cannot possibly be blaming me for this one" She said, and I sighed, feeling my shoulders slump as I agreed with her.
"Of course" I said, putting down the bow and reaching around my shoulder to take off the quiver and hand it over to Toji. "That's it for me today, I think" I whispered to him as I prepared to attend to the bored Princess before she decided to take her entertainment into her own hands. The last time I had ignored such a complaint, I'd been left dismantling an illegal underground fighting ring made of Fire Nation soldiers who had suddenly got it in their heads that fighting to the death was the best way to prove their worth to the Princess. She denied having anything to do with it, but considering that I'd broken into their venue and found her given pride of place while she cheered at the blood being spilled, I doubted that a lot.
"Let's go spar, Princess" I said to her as I walked past. I did not need to turn around to know the joy that showed up on her face, I could practically smell it at this point. Everything that I'd thought I'd known about Azula from canon told me that she would be the sort of person who would be aggravated at being bested at the thing she was best at, but for some reason, she enjoyed being beaten by me whenever we sparred.
We made our way through the palace, collecting no small number of stares. I knew that by the time we made it to the inner rock garden where this spar would be taking place, word would have spread around the palace, and we'd probably have an audience in a matter of minutes. Governing the city left me with a lot to do, but not having any war to monger left the bulk of the Generals with little and less to do day after day. I'd given Sung the charge of the vast majority of the army and charged him with ensuring that any outpost, village, or town within a sixty-mile radius was flying the Fire Nation flag or destroyed. Whichever he chose did not matter. All that mattered was that I refused to be hemmed in, cut off, and besieged in this position. Turning all my attention to governing the city ran the risk that someone would do to me what we had initially planned to do to Ba Sing Se.
"Ready?" Azula asked from her position across me.
"Hold on" I said, reaching up to my tunic to take it off and expose my upper body to the crowd. The wolf whistling made my cheeks flush and my eyes squint, but they quickly died out as Azula stared daggers into everyone who whistled.
I couldn't blame them to be honest, I knew my body looked good. Anyone else who had seen as much war as I had would be a mess of scars, but there was not a single scar to be found on my body. A combination of Amara's prodigious healing ability and my skill in the battlefield meant that I got to enjoy war toned musculature with none of the common war scars. If I belonged to a lesser culture, then the lack of scars would have been a weakness in and of themselves, but here in the Fire Nation, it meant strength. That was why when Ozai sought to punish his son, he did so by scarring his on his face. A readily visible symbol of his dishonor for all to see…. I wondered how he had managed to rule in canon with such a glaring weakness to be targeted.
Azula shrugged off her own over jacket, exposing a toned midriff. Her sensitive areas were covered in a bra top that did a good enough job of preventing every man here from getting a view. She shot into motion, and I settled and waited. At first, our spars had been easy for me to win. She was a prodigy, yes. But she had only ever fought her trainers in structured matches. I was a war veteran. Slowly, however, she had begun to make me work for it more and more. She was getting better at a consistent pace.
She reached me and attempted a high knee aimed straight at my head. My hands rose and blocked the knee as well as the blue flames that followed it. She landed on the floor and tried to sweep my legs out from under me. I jumped over the attempt and used the force of my flames to boost myself into a backflip that took me well out of her range. I took my stance and punched out in an exaggerated movement, sending a truckload of fire at her that made the crowd gasp in amazement.
From the flash of blue that appeared in the middle of my flames as they were about to reach her, I guessed at her plans and shot from my position right towards her. She came out of the fire, unharmed, after cutting through my flames. I attempted a roundhouse kick once I got close enough, and she dodged underneath it, having learned the hard way not to try blocking my attacks. She tried to stab her fingers into my midsection, and I danced out of the way smoothly. If only Ty Lee knew how much attention Azula paid to her Chi-blocking exercises. That had been one hell of an awakening when she'd used it a week ago to briefly gain the upper hand in one of our spars.
Her next attempt to send fire rushing at me failed as I countered with my fire. Red and blue struggled for a minute, but then red overcame blue and forced her to jump away from the fire blast that hit a statue of some Earth King long passed and blew it up.
"Another one" She sighed, and I resisted the urge to chuckle. The private rock garden in the Earth Kingdom palace contained multiple statues depicting past Earth Kings. When we chose to use this for our spars, we'd not expected them to last long, but the present rate of destruction surpassed even my expectations.
Still, I took advantage of her inattention and forced her into running as I sent multiple powerful fire blasts at her in quick succession. She danced around them, cackling all the while and while I did not notice it then, Toji would later inform me that I had been smiling from ear to ear as the spar proceeded.
XXXX- THE WATERBENDING MASTER
"So you mean in less than a month's time, every fire bender will become unable to bend. Defenseless?" Sokka asked, a fire burning in his gaze as he interrogated Zuko's kind uncle. The fact that the old man had always been kind to them and never seemed to care that much about Aang made it easy for them top accept him into their number after Masters Pakku and Jeong-Jeong had both vouched for him. The fact that the lion turtle had allowed him onto its back was another point in his favour, according to Aang. Katara did not quite understand that, but she trusted her friend.
"Defenseless is a bold term, but in some meaning of the word, yes. All firebenders will lose access to their bending. That would be the perfect time to hold an attack on the Fire Nation Capitol and end the FireLord."
"Does Zuko know you're here, planing on killing his father?" Aang sounded so dejected when he spoke and asked the question. She could see it now, she thought with a shaking heart. Aang had been betrayed by the elders he had looked up to during his time in the Air temple when they hid his identity as the Avatar from him. Of course, he would see something wrong with Zuko's uncle going behind his back.
"Ozai was…is my brother. I love him just like any brother would love their own, but that creature on the throne. The one who commands the commission of so many atrocities. That is not my brother. That is who you must end. You must put an end to the Fire Lord, so a new era can be born in the Fire Nation. That is where Zuko will come in. He and you will teach the Fire nation to become more than we have been for the last century, the two of you working together will change the fate of the Fire nation, but for that to happen, we must do away with the old warmongering era and those who perpetuate it" He said, taking a deep breath and a sip of his tea.
"But does he know about all this?"
"Zuko knows all that he must. Rest assured that when the time comes, he will play his part. All that remains is that you play yours."
"And what is our part to be?" Bato asked, stepping closer to the General, taking a position between the old fire bender and Aang.
"During the Eclipse, you must assemble a team of whatever size and invade the capital nation. That will be the distraction. While you do that, the Avatar and his closest allies will attack the FireLord at the point where he will retreat to during the Eclipse."
"So he will not be in the Palace?"
"No, he will not. This is not the first eclipse in Fire Nation history, and we are not the first to think to take advantage of it. For that reason, there is a general procedure that lays out the points to which various key members of the Nation's governance, including the Fire Lord, are to retreat to prevent the country falling into disorder." He explained, taking another sip of the tea. She hummed and mirrored his actions, noting that the tea tasted surprisingly good.
"You give us the information, and I will see to it that it happens, but what about your plan for General Natsu and the Earth Kingdom?"
"The independence of the Earth Kingdom can only be achieved by putting an end to the Fire Nation occupation of Ba Sing Se…liberating the conquered city, so to speak. The city is under the command of Princess Azula, but my sources tell me that it is General Natsu who gives the commands." The General spoke.
"Part of why I am here is to seek Jeong-Jeong's support. Azula is a dangerous bender, and Natsu is much of the same. The best of our non-firebenders shall be occupied in the attack on the Capital, so my plan is for the two of us to confront them immediately after the eclipse ends. At that point, most of their forces would be disoriented from the eclipse's pass, and we should have an easy enough time isolating them."
"But to what end? We're going to be taking out the Fire Lord, so what do you need to bother them for. Won't the war end once Ozai falls?" Jeong-Jeong laughed at Aang's question, while Iroh took another sip of his tea as he prepared to respond.
"Maybe if the war was against the Earth Kingdom or one of your water tribes" The man chortled, receiving a glance from his older compatriot.
"What Jeong-Jeong means to say is that contrary to what it might seem like from the outside looking in, the FireLord is not absolute. There are basically four major powers in the Fire Nation — the Noble Class, the Military Class, the Merchant Class, and the Fire Lord himself. The Fire Lord is more politically powerful than any single one of the other classes, potentially even two of them working together, but when the three of them come together, even the Fire Lord can be overruled. That is the problem here."
"Why?"
"Ba Sing Se is under control of General Natsu of the Noble Wu Family. He is a bridge between the Noble and Military Classes as his family has a long history of serving in the military, I even served with his father, General Igneel, back in the day. His lieutenant and second in command, is Toji of the Zenin family, a merchant family. And then they have the Princess Azula, who the Fire Lord has more or less recognised as his preferred heir. If my brother were to abdicate today and anyone put Zuko on the throne, we would have a civil war in weeks. That is what Jeong-Jeong and I will be aiming to prevent." He said.
"Civil war?"
"Sozin did not begin this war for no reason. He had been facing the threat of a civil war for years, and the second he started the war, he got the power and excuse to send those who he perceived as threats to the Front line. My people are not a united one by default. Without a war to strengthen our nationalistic spirit, we squabble and fight over scraps until we devolve into war."
"He's right" Aang said next, drawing eyes from everyone present.
"I didn't know you were familiar with the inner workings of the Fire nation" Pakku questioned with a raised eyebrow.
"I once served as the Chief Administrator of the Fire Nation, working closely with the Fire Lord and had to prevent no less than a dozen coups" When Aang spoke this time, there was a weight to his words. Looking closely into his eyes, she was able to notice that they'd gone blank, and then the blank eyes began to glow with eldritch power. The Avatar State, she thought with a gasp.
"Avatar Szeto" Zuko's uncle whispered with awe, and Katara was left gaping as the man fell to his knees in seconds and assumed a full bow in front of Aang. Both Jeong-Jeong and Pakku joined him quickly, and she exchanged a stare with Sokka as Bato began to join the bowing.
"You must not allow the Fire Nation to devolve into civil war. If you fail, dragon will fight dragon, the sky will bleed red, and the world will burn" The voice that came from Aang's mouth was definitely not his. It wasn't even what he usually sounded like with the Avatar state, with his voice being echoed by thousands of others. This was just another voice coming from his mouth. An older, deeper, graver voice.
XXXXXX-NATSU THE ELDER
"How does it fair, North?"
"The Fire Lord remains paranoid and incensed. The coming eclipse does little for his mood at this point. It makes everything seem much more threatening, I think".
"Is he still keen on punishing your Grandson for those lost in the taking of Ba Sing Se?"
"He remains set on that foolish course of action, but I have been able to stall him from making a final ruling until after the Eclipse at this point."
"And are things in place for when he can no longer be assuaged."
"Initial reports that said the Princess held foul feelings towards Natsu have proven premature. My tools tell me that they are often seen in each other's company and have taken to sparring at least once every other day in full view of parts of the army."
"Good. A marriage will happen and quickly once Ozai oversteps and needs to be replaced."
"And the tools for setting him aside?"
"His cupbearer is my man through and through. A subtle enough poison has been procured from the Ember islands. The Fire Sages have offered their support for when we are forced to attack".
"Not in so many words, I imagine"
"Of course not. Those fence-sitters would rather die than give a straight answer, but they will overlook anything suspicious about the death of this Fire Lord, just like they overlooked all that was wrong with the death of his predecessor."
"Then I feel that is the best we can hope for then, South" He said, bringing the topic to a close.
"And how fair the merchants now?"
"They are champing at the bit to sell their wares in Ba Sing Se, and are eagerly awaiting a grant of trading leave for the region"
With that, he allowed his mind to drift off from the conversation that was unfolding.
A/N: And that's the chapter. As you can probably tell, the Eclipse will be the point where everything comes to a head. Will also mark the end of this Arc of the story. Presently torn between continuing here or having a sequel. Sequels tend to be terrible for retention though. As always, the following two chapters are up on pa-treon. 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 so you get to read each chapter after I finish it and not neecessarily the daily updates avalable with a regular pa-treon membership- nice way to support this story and me while you're at it. Enjoy!