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RonaldM40196867: Aang's glider-staff maybe?

Zigzagdoublezee: The Fire Nation are certainly up to something...

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Lu Ten looked up from the map as the flap of cloth hanging over the entrance to the tent was lifted and a figure stepped inside. For a moment, they were silhouetted against the bright sunlight, but then she came a little closer and he recognised her.

"Hello Azula," he groaned.

"Relax," the figure replied. "I come in peace, don't worry."

Lu Ten doubted that; but he didn't particularly want to make a scene in the command tent of one of his uncle's armies. In public, at least, the Royal Family had to put up a united front.

"Any luck?" Princess Azula asked, stepping forwards. "I'll tell if you will."

"No luck so far," Lu Ten stepped in front of the map. The Fire Nation general who had been with him, Toshinao, a short, stocky man with a scar he had got in an agni kai running down one side of his face, looked at them curiously- and a little nervously. "We've had one run-in with the Avatar, but she got backup."

"You and me both, then," Azula said. "I had her, Ty Lee had incapacitated her and most of her friends. But that air nomad brought backup and she escaped."

She looked at him.

"Are those snow savages outside with you?"

"Don't say that too loudly!" Lu Ten told her, panicked. "We need them."

"Do we?"

"Yes! They're my team. The Avatar is expecting to fight firebenders, not her own people."

Azula regarded him coolly for a moment.

"Very well," she said. "I've only got Ty Lee with me."

"Only one girl?" Lu Ten asked.

Azula raised an eyebrow at him.

"But what a girl!" She said. "Though I would have preferred to bring Lady Mai too. But Father sent her away and nobody seems to have any clue where she is."

"So between you, you've got about eleven people. Is that what you're telling me?" Toshinao spoke up for the first time.

"They're good people," Lu Ten assured him.

"I don't disagree, but no matter how good they are, the Avatar has an army now. Or something approaching an army anyway. She's found her way to the peasant rabble opposing us. She'll have hundreds, if not thousands of people around her at any one time until she leaves them."

"They're a very well-dressed peasant rabble," Lu Ten pointed out. "And well-armed. I met some very expensive looking cavalry."

"Clearly they do have some money behind them," Toshinao agreed. "But I don't know whose. Otherwise- well, you know what we'd do otherwise."

Lu Ten did. Looting, burning, all the usual activities for an army on the march.

"We must be able to do something," Azula said.

"Even if we got in, we'd never get out again," Lu Ten told her.

"So a one-way trip. I'm sure we could find someone willing to give their life for the Firelord to eliminate his enemies."

"Our job is to capture the Avatar, not kill her," Lu Ten pointed out.

"Father said dead or alive," Azula replied defiantly.

"I think he'd prefer alive." Lu Ten sighed.

"I don't think he'd care."

"I think he will. If we just kill her, a new one will be born in the Earth Kingdom and we'll be straight back to where we started. At least at the moment we know who Avatar Yue is, and she has a distinctive appearance. We may not realise who her successor is until it's too late."

Azula regarded him for a moment, pondering his words. Then she nodded.

"You're right," she said. "Better to take her alive. We'll call off the hitsquad then, shall we?"

"And wait for an opportunity," Lu Ten agreed. "We'll see who gets it first."

But Azula hesitated.

"About that," she murmured. "Do you think it might be better to do this... together?"

Lu Ten was taken aback.

"Why?"

"I tried to get her, and it didn't work. You tried to get her, and failed. There must be a better way."

"Aren't we supposed to be-"

Lu Ten dragged Azula away from the general and lowered his voice.

"-competing?" He asked. "Who wins the competition if both of us do?"

"I guess that would be up to father to decide," Azula replied coolly. "But both of us would get to go home at least."

"I suppose that's true," Lu Ten said thoughtfully. He wasn't sure if he fully trusted Azula, but what she said made sense, and she seemed genuine.

Azula stepped around him and went over to the map, peering down at it.

"Interesting," she said. "Where are they?"

"The enemy?" Toshinao asked. "Everywhere. And nowhere. They do not fight like a regular Earth Kingdom army."

"Because they're not a regular Earth Kingdom army," Lu Ten agreed.

"Indeed. We don't really know where they are until one of our supply lines gets attacked, or we try to take a village and they drive us back again. We roughly know where their main camp is, but we have a hard time trying to reach it."

he gestured to an area of high ground a few miles away.

Azula frowned.

"You say they always turn up to stop you taking villages?" She asked. "We could use that against them."

This seemingly off the cuff suggestion was suspiciously well-rehearsed, Lu Ten noticed. It was almost like she had already come up with this plan.

"What did you have in mind?" He asked, resigned.

Azula gestured to a small village which sat on a crossroads in a valley nearby.

My plan is simple," she said. "We get the bulk of their army to go there, and then we destroy them."

"And just how do you intend to do that?" The general challenged her. "We have tried something like that before, and never managed it.

Azula just raised one eyebrow at him, and then grinned wickedly.