Pre-Chapter A/N: I think we're at the point where it is officially no longer cool to say Happy New Year! Either way, I hope you're all still keeping up with your new year's resolutions. I'm just getting started on mine (still). Here we go with the fourth 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 laughed. I could not help it. I laughed, and not a chuckle or a snigger, but a full-blown laugh that had me doubled over and struggling to stand.
"If you think that is an offer worth anything, then you clearly failed to listen when Jeong-Jeong told you about me. I am Natsu Wu, General of the Fire Nation. Heir to the Wu family. I do not surrender. I do not retreat. I do not lose. You will fight me, you can resist for a time, but you will fail. When I kill you here, I will send your head to your Nephew, and I will invite him to come see the heads of these friends of yours as I display them on the walls of Ba Sing Se as a warning to one and all. There is no offer you can give me. There is nothing you can do to mitigate what is coming for you. All you can do now is pray that I make it quick" I said, dead serious as ever.
"Listen to reason, Natsu." Jeong-Jeong said.
"Enough with this talking. Toji, I want that man's head and I want it yesterday" My best friend turned to look at me and I smiled at the easy smirk on his face.
"Just the head? I think I'll keep the hands for myself" Piandao, perhaps upset at the casual way Toji was speaking about dismembering him, sent on the attack. A straight, sweeping slice that cut naught but air as Toji leaned backwards to avoid it and retaliated with a forward thrust of his spear. At the same time, Toph sent a pillar of straight stone right at Pakku. The water-bending master, with fantastic economy of motion, created a cutting wave of water that sliced through the pillar and continued towards her. She stepped to the side, allowing the attack to pass her by.
Both Iroh and Jeong-Jeong were stood watching the fights, useless as they were in the present condition. I scoffed silently and rerouted my position to go back to the office in the hopes of finding my bow. Of course, I was not allowed to move unaccosted as both the old men began to chase after me.
"Let them be" I ordered Toph and Toji as I ran backwards to the office. Without their bending, they would struggle to represent anything even resembling a threat. Of course, I was much the same. Besides the part of me that had given that order to prevent them from getting distracted and thus losing their fights to their opponents who were not slouches, the rest of me had given the order because this was a good thing for me. It meant I wouldn't have to worry about the White Lotus as a threat after today, and I was still going to get the chance to test myself against these two.
I entered the office, aware that they were chasing me and considered using the bow to get rid of them, but my aim was barely passable if I was being honest, and it felt like a copout. I turned to the hourglass and noted that it was a bit more than halfway done. Good. I walked to the table as both men ran in behind me.
"Let's sit for tea and discuss while we wait for this situation to come to an end so we can get on to properly killing ourselves, shall we?" I asked as I began to take out the tea cups from the Earth King's set.
"Do you have jasmine?" I heard one of their voices ask out, no need to guess who it was.
"I do. Let's sit and have tea, General, Admiral" I said before taking my own seat and turning to the flask off to the side of the desk. Shaking it, I was disappointed to note that the water had gone cold. Toji was the only one who regularly drank tea, and he had me heat the water for him most of the time.
"Well, that was an idea, but sadly the water is cold" I said, to laughter from the silver haired man. Both Iroh and I turned to him, and he just shook his head as he said- "Three powerful firebenders in this room and not one of us can heat some water for tea" He said.
"Give it a few minutes." I said, looking at the hourglass again.
"A magnificent contraption. Designed to measure the length of the eclipse?"
"Yes. Had to do some complicated calculations and measurements to get it in place, but the artisans of Ba Sing Se do love a challenge" I said idly, even as I kept part of my attention on my internal flame, trying to do anything to stoke it into being if possible. I had given up on fighting the eclipse's power, but I still wanted to be able to react the second the eclipse went down. Ozai had been able to send lightning right at Zuko at the end of the eclipse, and I'd need that kind of speed if I wanted to get the better of these two.
Besides, if I distracted them with the hourglass and left them focused on it, then all the better for me. The hourglass hadn't been flipped until a few seconds after the Eclipse itself had begun, so it was going to be a precious few seconds late.
"I must ask, General Iroh, what has brought in the company of a traitor such as him" I said, not even bothering to spare my former Master a look. The man had had everything at his fingers, the Nation for his taking, and he just turned his back on it all. He would surely be Grand-Admiral at this point already, if he had had the common sense and foresight to stay.
"Well, Jeong-Jeong is an old friend of mine"
"So was my father" I could no longer hold in the outburst that had been building on the tip of my tongue since I saw him walk in here like nothing had happened between us. Like we could be mistaken for friends by any fucking means.
"Your father- I spoke up for your father, Natsu-"
"General" I cut in.
"General" He conceded, before continuing. "I spoke up on your father's behalf when the time came and what ended up happening to him is one of my greatest regrets. I apologize for your loss, but I did save his life".
"At the cost of his hands. There was no life for him after that. You and your father might not have pushed him off the ledge, but you sure as hell tied the noose and gave him a nice stool to stand atop. I hate the both of you for that" I said, feeling a weight leave my chest as I finally got to say my piece on the matter. My father's death was something that I had never dwelt on. I'd told myself that it didn't matter- Grandfather had been the father I needed, after all, but since our falling out it had gotten harder and harder to pretend that the promise of a father had not meant anything to me- the promise of what he could have been, to be honest.
"I see. Then would you forgive me if I asked for it? We are sons of Agni, alike in all the ways that matter. I did try my best, but my father would not listen, too taken by rage at the perceived insult" He said.
"My hatred of you doesn't come from your failure to contain Azulon. It comes from your failure to lead to my father's actions in the first place. You failed to take this city." At the end, I was snarling, and he flinched back like he had been struck, and I could not deny the vicious satisfaction that flowed through me at that even as Jeong-Jeong watched the confrontation, unmoving.
"I had-I lost my son" He said, and his voice sounded so weak for it.
"And so? You were a General. You had the Fire Nation on your back. How many sons and daughters had been lost in the siege already. Retreating due to your grief, meant every death, even your son's meant nothing. You are weak, Iroh. A stronger man, a true son of Agni, would have taken Ba Sing Se in his son's name—Would have made the streets of Ba Sing Se run red with blood for the affront" My words poked a nerve, I could see before I was even finished, but it was too late to go back, not that I was so inclined.
"You failed. You failed my father. You failed your army. You failed the Fire Nation. You failed Lu Ten" And that was the straw that broke the back, he roared with rage, and his fire roared with him. I felt my own fire rise in response as he dove right at me.
He hits like a train, I thought to myself as I felt my body crash through the previously unyielding stone that had made up the wall behind my desk. I flipped in the air and spread my heat all around my body before I managed to stab my hand into the ground and arrest my momentum.
"Well, that saves me the trouble of suggesting a different venue" I said as I pushed off the ground and slammed into the old general as he crossed the hole in the wall he'd punted me through. Even moving as quickly as I was, Iroh still managed to react on time and grabbed a hold of the knee that I wanted to rearrange his face with before he tossed me out of the room and into the hallway with one push. Fuck. I guess that answered the question of whether that was fat or muscle under those flowing robes. I took a deep breath in, and before I could send a lance at Iroh, I was forced to abandon the attempt and draw up a fire shield that did a good enough job of preventing Jeong-Jeong from blowing me up.
His attack still sent me sailing through the air up until the end of the hallway. Looking at the pathway of destruction, I could tell that Toph and Toji hadn't held back much in fighting their opponents. I could see the direction they had taken and consciously chose to follow the opposite route. The garden wasn't far from here, I thought, burying the pity I had for whichever poor sod would have to fix this mess when the Fire Lord finally picked a governor for this place. I jumped backwards and turned and began to run, making my way for the garden.
"Are you running now, boy? Where was the brave man who wanted to fight?" I spun around the corner, pausing for a second and allowing two more to pass before I heard his heavy steps approaching as he chased me down, before I pushed off against the corner I was hiding behind to nail him in the face with a clean hook. He stumbled backwards, one step, two steps, and I stomped on his left foot with mine to hold him while I tried to punch his head off.
Showing why he had been given his epithet, the Dragon of the West, breathed out an inferno in my face with no warning. I rolled backwards, allowing the fire to miss me before I was forced to keep running as a wave of rolling flames threatened to cut off my route to the gardens. I mimed the motion for lightning generation and smirked as Iroh abandoned the attack he was preparing to stand in front of Jeong-Jeong. Feint successful, I turned and kept running for the gardens.
I could feel the heat of their venomous stares as I finally arrived at a window overlooking the garden and jumped straight in. I rolled and took up my position near the middle.
"Done running, boy?" Iroh asked.
"Running? I wasn't running from you. I just wanted to face you somewhere worthy of a painting" I replied with a shrug. I couldn't fight in confined spaces as well as others could, and had no doubts that both experienced veterans would be ready for that. Instead of dealing with that, I'd moved the both of them to a venue I'd been sparring in for months.
"A painting?" Jeong-Jeong asked, also jumping out the window and taking his stance in front of me.
"This duel we are about to fight—you think it ends with the three of us. No, this is one that is going to go down in history."
"How arrogant" Iroh said, jumping out of the window as well and joining Jeong-Jeong and I in the Earth king's Rock garden. I silently noted the way they stood apart from each other, their stances not quite coming together in the way it would have if they had trained to fight as a team. They hadn't. They had wholly different styles of fighting, I noted.
Iroh prepared Sozin's style—long sweeping movements and powerful blasts of fire. Jeong-Jeong? Well, Jeong-Jeong fought like an artist. It was his thing. He believed that fire could be more than a tool for destruction, and that showed in the way he fought. Both their stances showed their preferences, just as I was certain that mine showed my own preference for direct combat and tendency to switch between any of the established forms and katas at will. That was the difference between them and me. They were both most assuredly powerful benders, but I had an advantage they didn't. I was born a firebending prodigy, and that meant there wasn't a single firebending style known to our people that I hadn't learned.
Iroh moved first, jumping in the air for a second before landing with his left foot forward. His left fist left its position near his waist to lash out in a punch that sent a lancing flame bullet my way. I spun into a kick and blocked his lance with a fire sweep of my own. Like that first exchange had been a signal, we erupted into movement at the same time.
XXXX- TOJI ZENIN
He stared down the man, Piandao. He was a skilled fighter, the wily old man. Not as good as he used to be, though, and it showed.
"You've come far, Toji" the man said, sword still stubbornly clutched in his hands.
"So have you. Differently, perhaps."
"You mock me" The man's anger still remained just as sharp and as focused as it had ever been. Easier to rouse as well.
"I do. What're you gonna do about it?" Toji said, almost casually leaning against his spear.
The man rose like a vengeful spirit and sliced through the air with his sword faster than most would have been able to follow. Not Toji though, he stepped backwards to allow the attack miss before spinning his spear and shoving the blunt end into his former Master's midsection. The man fell to his knees, clutching at his stomach. But his grip around his sword remained tight.
'Never drop your weapon' along with the sound of a wooden sword smashing into his wrist rang through Toji's head as he watched the man who had taught him so much fail to mount a proper defence.
He came again, indomitable as ever, but a sweep of his spear later and Toji had sent the man into the ground. He spun his spear around one last time. They'd been fighting for about fifteen minutes now. It was a testament to what the old man had once been that he had managed to even last that long, but their bodies were human in the end, and age came for them all. He took a step closer and moved his head to the side to allow the throwing knife the old man hid in his sleeves to pass his head instead of sinking into his eye.
"I would have enjoyed fighting you in your prime. Maybe Natsu himself would have even managed to get a good fight out of you, but we're long past that. Goodbye" He said, taking a final step closer and lifting his spear to deliver the finishing blow. Things went wrong instantly as Piandao's legs lashed out with a strength Toji did not expect the older man to still possess and tripped him down to the floor. Both men wrestled on the ground for a few seconds until Piandao froze suddenly. He stared down at his former pupil with shock in his eyes as the blade that Toji hid in his own sleeve stabbed through his ribcage and into his heart.
Toji pushed the body off of him before the blood could stain him further. He pushed himself to his feet and stared down at the body, silently saying a prayer for the man's soul. Toji knew that one day that would be him. He knew the kind of person his best friend was. Natsu was a warrior, the kind of person who was happiest when killing and under the threat of being killed. War would never end for a man like that, he knew. And if war never ended for Natsu, then war would never end for him.
He could see it already, the two of them fighting side by side for the rest of their lives until they grew too old, and the world grew too wide for them. They'd meet their match one day. A threat that they would have crushed like ants in their youth, but too much for their older selves to deal with. That would be the point where everything would come to an end, and they would finally get to rest.
But that was miles and years away. For now, he had to go find his friend. The eclipse had come to an end, so that meant that he had to be fighting the old fucks somewhere in this palace. Toji just had to follow the explosions.
A/N; How does it feel? I considered showing more of Toji vs Piandao, but the last bits seemed sufficient to show the dynamic of things. A thousand words of Piandao being worn down doesn't seem that appealing. 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!