The crackling hiss of fireballs whizzed towards her.

Toph could see the way Katara's body arched gracefully through her waterbending stances, noted the direction she was facing, and listened for the sharp hiss as a whip of water shot forwards to slice through a few of the fireballs. A few, but not all. She quickly stomped her foot, and a wall of stone sharply grated upwards in front of her moments before the remaining fireballs crashed into it. Even then the impact was stronger than she'd anticipated, and she flinched as her wall chipped and shattered, allowing a few licks of flame to slip through and peck her cheek.

Though she'd been blind all her life, Toph could never recall feeling of being truly unable to see until now. Her earthbending sense was a great substitute for regular eyesight, and made her uncannily perceptive in ways that few expected, but one of its major flaws was that she could not actually see any attack coming towards her that was not connected to the ground. Even against other earthbenders she couldn't see boulders that were lifted up and separated from the ground, as the vibrations she sensed through her feet no longer reached them.

She'd learned to surpass that flaw by instead learning to read her opponent's body language. Benders relied on stances and katas to guide the energy within themselves in the proper way to create the effect they desired, and though each nation's forms differed in style they all shared the same key rules. To channel your energy in one particular direction, and thus launch an attack in that direction, some part of your body also had to move in that direction. To make attacks that twisted, spun or did other fancy tricks, you had to emulate those tricks yourself. Weaker attacks needed smaller movements, whereas strong attacks required you to really settle into your footwork and move with your entire body. By using her unparalleled abilities at reading an opponent's body, and through a lot of trial and error at Earth Rumble, Toph had learnt to predict the exact size, speed and form of an attack coming her way before her opponent had even unleashed it. Building a solid defence was so much easier when you knew exactly what kind of attack was coming your way.

She'd used to think herself invincible. Then Aang had come along and knocked her off her high horse, and Toph had been forced to realise that the world was much wider than the Earth Rumble ring. She wasn't the only one to develop powerful and unusual skills, and against someone who could walk on air her greatest strength had meant nothing. It was a humbling yet exciting experience. Toph had realised that joining the Avatar and travelling with him would broaden her world-view, and fighting other unusual people would teach her how to become even stronger.

Just her luck then that the very first enemy she met could not only fly as well, but seemed hellbent on slaughtering each and everyone one of them on the spot.

Tanya really was every bit the demon people said she was. Not only had she figured out the trick behind Toph's sight from a single skirmish, but she was ruthlessly exploiting it. For the most part she focused her fire on Katara, but the moment Katara tried to counterattack she would suddenly change target to Toph, forcing Katara to check her own moves and move to assist her teammate. It is humiliating being reduced from a master earthbender to a complete liability through a single trick, but the worst part was that Toph couldn't even ask Katara to stop. If Katara didn't move to defend her, she'd have literally no way of knowing where an attack was coming from before it was too late.

And it was exhausting Katara. Each sudden change in step, each half-completed attack, was wasting her energy. If this continued Katara would collapse eventually, and somehow she doubted that Tanya would be merciful.

"I must say I'm surprised. I thought The Avatar would be searching for a master earthbender to learn from." Tanya mocked, her taunts punctuated by the hiss of a second round of fireball. "Standards must really be slipping in the Earth Kingdom if this is the best a master can do. Or perhaps what they say about earth being the inferior element is true?"

Katara was moving again, and the crack of water colliding with fire signalled that she had intercepted whatever Tanya had thrown at them. With a frustrated growl, Toph stomped her foot hard and sent a wave of sharp shards of stone arcing into the air in the rough direction she'd heard Tanya talking from. She would not stand around while that demon mocked her element! She would not be useless!

"Yikes. Not even close." Tanya's voice rang out again from far to the right. By the spirits she was fast! "And here I'd hoped for something more challenging than your typical rock-chucking brute. Guess it's my fault for raising my expectations."

Something touched the ground. It was not a person, not even a solid, but it was powerful, and spread quickly along the ground and rushed towards them like a wave, incinerating every blade of grass in its path. A flame wave! Toph stomped her foot again, raising a thick wall of dirt in front of her and Katara a second before the fire washed over them. Even if she couldn't see it, she could feel the intense heat baking the air around them.

Katara crouched down against the wall besides her. From her gasping breaths and the thumping of her heartbeat, Toph was reminded how punishing this fight had been on Katara so far.

"Here I thought we'd be getting the easy fight, what with it being two-on-one after all." Toph griped, shrinking hunched closer into herself as the edges of her dirt wall began to crack and fracture under the heat.

Katara ground her teeth together in frustration. "She's exploiting your blindness. It's what she does: find a person's weakness and use it to break them."

A few hours ago, Toph would have kicked off a rampage at the implication that she was the weakness. But after her not-chat with Blue, Toph took a moment to consider that Katara wasn't really saying that. She wasn't slandering her; just pointing out that the circumstances of this fight left her unable to fight at her best, and that Tanya was cunning enough to take advantage of that.

When faced with that humbling realisation, there was only one option left to take.

"I… am holding you back." Toph admitted reluctantly. Ugh! She hated admitting vulnerability. Earthbenders were supposed to be tough damn it! "Until Tanya can be brought down to the ground, I'm doing you more harm than help."

To her credit, Katara didn't take the opportunity to be all sanctimonious. She was in warrior mode right now, and just nodded sharply to show her understanding. "Tanya won't let you escape."

A toothy grin spread across Toph's face. "Don't worry, I have a way around that."

Tanya liked to think that she was an intellectual. Someone who let logic, not emotion, guide their thoughts. Yet even she couldn't deny that crushing Katara so utterly was turning out to be a therapeutic experience.

Perhaps she was carrying a bit of a chip on her shoulder from Omashu, or perhaps the stress of recent events had wound her up tighter than she'd care to admit to herself, but having the opportunity to chuck fire at someone she could admit she genuinely hated at this point was cathartic.

What good fortune it was that The Avatar had picked up the worst possible ally to face her. Tanya had fought hundreds of earthbenders already throughout this war, and in her experience their styles rarely varied. The rigid, inflexible movements needed to create the solid defences they prized were a poor matchup to the agility and manoeuvrability of her propulsion style firebending. The blind girl had demonstrated an immense skill at earthbending in their little skirmish earlier, but once Tanya had questioned how a blind person could even fight at that level and reviewed the memory of the encounter, she'd quickly figured out that the girl could sense movement across the earth. Being able to twist the weaknesses of that ability to hinder Katara had been a gamble, but she'd been right that the Avatar and his companions had bleeding hearts for anyone not from the Fire Nation, and could never bring themselves to leave even a new teammate unprotected.

Deciding that she'd let them sizzle long enough, Tanya stopped the stream of flames she was firing at the dirt wall and began to circle around it, prepping a new fireball to launch at them from an unblocked angle. The moment she caught a flash of blue clothing she threw it, twisting the shot so that it'd curve around the corner of the wall and hit Katara dead in the centre of mass.

It wasn't surprising when a whip of water lashed out at the last minute, slapping into the fireball and causing them both to erupt into a burst of mist.

Tanya continued to circle around, launching volley after volley of fireballs through the mist. With her vision obscured by the mist surrounding her, Katara would struggle to see the fireballs coming and would be hard pressed to react in time to defend both herself and her new friend. The orange flames sunk hungrily into the mist, and Tanya strained her ears to pick up the cries of the girls as her projectiles found their targets.

Yet no cries came. Just the hiss of water spearing through fire, followed by the thickening of the mist.

She'd intercepted them all in such poor visibility? Despite herself, Tanya had to admit to being a little impressed. Katara really was growing stronger at an alarming rate. If she wasn't taken out as soon as possible, she would become a considerable threat to the Fire Nation one day.

All the more reason to kill her here and now.

Tanya closed in, building up a fiercer flame in her palm. With less time to react, and with her attention preoccupied on protecting her friend, Katara would naturally choose to block her next attack again. But a sufficiently hot blaze should be enough to blast through whatever paltry barrier her water could form. One decisive blow in the right spot would sever her life quickly and relatively painlessly. The air around her hand shimmered and distorted in the heat as she drew closer, shaping the fire into a long blade-like shape the length of a broadsword and bearing it before her, turning her whole body into a gigantic arrow.

Suddenly the mist curled.

Illuminated by the firelight, Tanya could swear she could see each little individual droplet of water vapour suddenly turn and twist, as if dragged by a strong wind. Katara, it seemed, was surprisingly no stranger to bending mist and clouds as well. The water swirled back together to form a hefty ball of water in Katara's hand, and more crucially leaving the space between them clear and unobstructed. Katara's eyes widened in surprise and she spotted Tanya charging towards her with a nearly white-hot flaming sword, but with the instincts of a true warrior her body lurched into action without hesitation, reshaping the ball of water in her hand into a matching sword of her own and immediately freezing it to such sub-zero temperatures that a trail of frost streaked through the air in its wake as she brought it up to block Tanya's blade.

Extreme cold met extreme heat, and the reaction was as violent as one would expect. Both blades hissed and spat spat like a nest of snakes in protest at meeting their polar opposite, and uncontrolled shards of stray ice and licks of flame burst out with such ferocity that both Tanya and Katara were forced to immediately hop back in retreat or risk losing an eye to the shrapnel.

For Tanya however, backing off was slightly more difficult due to needing to stay airborne. Regaining balance without touching a solid surface was tricky, and while Tanya was unmatched in the air, even she couldn't shift back to her centre of gravity faster than a trained fighter on the ground could. Katara was faster to regain her footwork, and thus the first to launch into a counterattack with her quickly reforming ice blade that forced Tanya on the defensive.

The blades hissed and crackled like sci-fi laser swords as the two girls duelled, Katara coming at her with renewed aggression, and Tanya struggling to deflect her strikes whilst staying airborne. The sudden switch in tactics from Katara had caught Tanya off guard, and she absently noted out of the corner of her eye that the earthbender had vanished, leaving only a patch up upturned earth in her wake. Clever brat. She'd realised that she'd been doing more harm than help, and so had hidden herself beneath the earth where Tanya's flames couldn't reach her. The threat of a surprise attack from a hidden earthbender at any time, especially if she so much as grazed the ground, had suddenly turned the tables once again and put Tanya at the disadvantage.

Katara made a reckless lunge, and though Tanya threw herself to the side to avoid it she was just a little too slow. The icy blade scraped across from her collar bone to her right shoulder, drawing first blood and leaving a line of ugly, painful frost-burnt skin in its wake. Tanya hissed in pain and channelled a stronger blast of energy to her feet, using the opportunity to escape further upwards into the air and out of Katara's reach. Her fire sword dissipated into sparks as she brought her hand up to the gash, quickly applying heat to it to try and minimise the damage.

Down below, Katara took the opportunity to summon a stream of water from the nearby river, refreshing her immediate reserves. Once again Tanya was struck by the frightening pace at which Katara's skills were increasing. With the circumstances as they were, namely the unseen threat of the earthbender waiting below ground, Tanya was starting to fear she wouldn't win this fight.

A new strategy was required. Fortunately she had a backup plan.

Dart after dart of pale blue flames rained down upon him.

Aang staff spun around him in controlled spirals, smacking each of the darts aside as soon as they entered his reach. Azula's barrage of attacks was relentless, but he was a master of airbending, and had the instinctive hand-to-eye coordination needed to deflect small projectiles like these. The real challenge was keeping up the level of focus for so long, as despite the incredible amount of fire she was throwing, Azula's accuracy never wavered for a second. Every dart was on target to hit a vital area if it wasn't deflected, and a second one was often following right in its wake.

In a match of who could stay concentrated for the longest, Aang had his doubts that he could prevail against the frighteningly intense princess. He needed to break out of this situation. As he swung his staff into the next deflection, Aang turned his whole body with it, spinning on the balls of his feet. The wind moved with his command, wrapping around him like a familiar cloak and quickly whisking his spin up to dizzying speeds. Fire darts bounced off of the miniature hurricane that formed around him as Aang spun like a spinning top, curving towards the shelter of a nearby building.

Azula was not so easily deterred however. In the span of a single breath her mind worked away with streamlined efficiency, making note of the capabilities of this new technique, predicting the Avatar's intentions and calculating a new optimal path for achieving victory. Then, without hesitation, her body moved, sprinting towards the same building. Out of the corner of her eye she tracked The Avatar, but her gaze was fixed on a large hole in the roof of the decrepit house. Flames erupted from her hands as she reached the nearest wall, giving her the additional momentum needed to continue running straight up it without a break in her stride.

As Aang broke out of his spin and ducked for cover inside the ruined house, it was pure luck that he spotted a human-shaped shadow suddenly appear amidst a patch of light being cast upon the wall. Yet it was skill that had him reacting as quickly as he did, swirling around with his staff twirling like a propeller as a fresh stream of blue fire rained down upon his head. The air howled wildly around his staff, thrusting the flames aside, but the aged, rotten timber of the house was the perfect kindling for the stray flames to claim. Azula's flames lost their blue lustre as they caught and hungrily began to devour the house, which in the span of only a few seconds became a flaming deathtrap.

Yet where there was fire, there was smoke. Grey tendrils of sooty wisps began to fill the room, and in them Aang saw an opportunity. He sped up the twirling of his staff, and the spiralling current of air intensified, catching the musty smoke in its wake. The smoke swirled into the propeller that Aang's staff had become and shot forwards in a thick vortex of grey, aimed right at the hole Azula was standing in.

The crown princess of the Fire Nation hacked and coughed as the stream of condensed smoke slapped into her. While not immediately damaging, it stung at her eyes and choked her lungs violently, and it was clear that holding her position was not a sustainable strategy. She leapt back off the roof, back to the ground, and glared balefully at the hole that now belched smoke like a chimney. Would the Avatar use that as his escape route, or try his luck breaking through the flames surrounding him? Knowing airbenders, she expected he'd take the path of least resistance and use the hole.

Moments later her guess was proven correct, as the Avatar popped out of the plume of smoke in one huge leap, sailed through the air, and landed on the roof of the next building across.

There was a momentary pause in combat: Azula playing for time to let her eyes stop stinging, and Aang naturally reluctant to attack first and instigate violence. As the two opponents sized each other up, a crooked grin crossed Azula's face.

"I must confess, you're a slier opponent than I gave you credit for." She called out. "I finally understand why Zuko and Tanya have had so much trouble with you."

"This fight is pointless." Aang called back. "Even if you capture me, what will change? The Earth Kingdom will still continue to resist you."

Azula chuckled mirthlessly. "That's the whole point. Two out of three nations are out, and although they might dig their heels in, the truth is that the Earth Kingdom are only stalling their own inevitable defeat. I highly doubt that even the mighty Avatar can turn back the tide of war at this point, but your freedom presents a threat that might yet cause complications. That is something we cannot allow."

"So you'd lock me away because of something I haven't even done yet? Is that Fire Nation justice?"

Azula shook her head ruefully. "You airbenders are too reactive. That's your problem. You wait until the world is already in motion around you before you do anything, not realising that those who strike first win. We in the Fire Nation understand that sometimes you have nip a problem in the bud before it even has a chance to sprout. If we hadn't launched an invasion of the rest of the world first, eventually someone would have invaded us. History has proven that time and time again."

Aang raised an eyebrow. "So you attack first because you're scared of being attacked by others. That doesn't sound like the brave firebenders of old I remember."

Azula scowled, and with a thrust of her hand unleashed a fresh stream of fire at him.

"… and so he and Iroh set off in their ship to the old air temples, searching for hints that the Avatar was still alive."

Sokka leaned back on the tree stump, frowning to himself as Ty Lee finished her story. So that was why Zuko had followed them for so long. He'd never given it much thought before, and had kind of assumed that the prince had come out from birth as a scarred, angry jerk. To hear that he'd actually been something of a gentle boy by his nation's standards, and had been harshly punished for taking a stand against an act of evil, made Sokka feel a little bit-… strange? He still hated Zuko for attacking his home, threatening his sister and chasing them halfway around the world, yet now there was a twinge of sympathy that took the edge off it. All of the bad he'd done, all of the spite that filled him, wasn't born of some inherent nastiness. He was just desperate to go home.

But The Firelord wouldn't let him. Sokka's frown turned into a snarl. He'd always known that, as the ruler of the Fire Nation, Firelord Ozai was an evil man. But it had been a distant, impersonal evil. He sat at the top of the hierarchy of warmongering firebenders, and while he was certainly guilty of allowing those beneath him to commit atrocities, he wasn't the face associated with them. It was the Southern Raiders who took his mother. It was Tanya who invaded the North. The Firelord had just signed the paperwork that allowed it to happen.

This was different. It had been the Firelord himself who personally burnt off half his own son's face for doing the right thing. Who'd tormented him with false hope by giving him a quest that, as far as anyone knew at the time, could never be achieved. Only a person who was twisted on a deep, personal level would do something like that.

And Aang's destiny was to defeat this person before summer's end.

"I never realised Zuko had it so rough." Sokka murmured ponderously. "But it makes me wonder why anyone, let alone an entire nation, would follow a Firelord who does something like that to his own son."

Ty Lee shifted uncomfortably, looking nervously around their little patch of woods as if worried a spy might be hiding in the thickets. "Well… he has ways of appealing to different groups of people. To those who are ambitious, he promises power and glory. To those who are scared, he promises punishment should they fail. And to those who are simply loyal to their homeland, he promises justification that everything they do is for the greater good."

Sokka raised an eyebrow. "And people believe that?"

"Some more than others."

Sokka turned his eyes on Ty Lee curiously. "And what about you? You don't exactly sound enthused about the cause."

"I-…" Ty Lee fidgeted uncomfortably. "- I do love my nation, really. There is so, so much that's good and beautiful about it. But the war-…" She looked aside. "It does ugly things to people's aura. They fixate on anger, on pride, on all the feelings that make it easier to destroy another person. Once they spend so long hating, some forget how to stop. But Azula, Mai and Tanya are my best friends, and they need my help! So its my job to make sure this war doesn't get to change them for the worse along the way!"

Sokka snorted derisively. "Worse? One is the princess of the Fire Nation, and the other massacred the Northern Water Tribe. I'm not sure you can get much worse than that."

For the first time since they'd met, Ty Lee looked genuinely angry. She glared at him in a way that would have been a cute pout, if not for the dangerous sharpness to her eyes. "You're wrong about them! They're good people! Just-…" she looked away, the anger deflating out of her in a heartbeat and replaced by the tired sadness of someone resigned to a bad situation. "- they don't think the same way other people do."

"Because they're both crazy." Sokka wanted to say, but resisted the urge. It made sense that Ty Lee would be defensive about letting her friends be insulted, even if it was clearly true in his opinion.

"I suppose their definition of good is different from most other people's." Ty Lee continued, her eyes glazing over as her thoughts drifted into memory. "For Azula, good is equal to perfection. Honing your strengths, overcoming your weaknesses and facing new challenges is always a good thing. And not just for people, but for a nation as well. The rapid economic and technological advancements have all been a result of the Fire Nation challenging the rest of the world through war, so from her perspective the war had been a good thing."

"At the cost of a hundred years of misery and death." Sokka challenged.

Ty Lee looked away uneasily. "She'd say that misery and death are an inevitable part of life, war or not. Those who face such challenges become all the stronger for it, and those who let it defeat them aren't worthy of respect."

Sokka frowned unhappily. It didn't seem right to him to look down on people for being any less than perfect, but there was no point in moaning to Ty Lee about it. "And what about Tanya?"

Ty Lee thought about it for a moment, her face scrunching up in mild confusion. "I suppose… I'm not really sure either. Tanya is a person who prizes rationality and logic. She told me once that she wants peace and prosperity above all else, because war is such a-… what did she call it-… waste of human resources. Sometimes I feel like when she looks at someone, she sees numbers above their head according to how valuable they are. In her eyes, good is whatever will raise the total value of the world around us the most."

"That way of thinking sounds cold." Sokka replied. "Heartless even."

Ty Lee didn't reply.

Bullets of fire and water shot wildly through the sky, hissing and crackling as they collided. Down by the riverbank, Katara swerved and twisted like a dancer, artfully avoiding yet another salvo of blazing fire darts, and effortlessly flowed into a counterattack; a barrage of razor thin icicles that whistled like birds as they cut up into the air. Tanya had to throw herself to the side mid-air to avoid the blades, one narrowly grazing her shoulder.

"You really are the most stubborn waterbender I've ever met." Tanya called down, a mocking lilt to her tone. "It's rather surprising actually, given how easily the northern waterbenders folded to occupation."

Katara growled, that temper of hers gnashing at the tight leash she was trying to keep it on. "They would never surrender to the likes of you."

"Oh, to the contrary." Tanya retorted, bringing a smug smirk to her face. "I was there in person when their dear chieftain Yue bowed at the Fire Lord's feet and begged him to bring her people into the fold." A flinch flickered across Katara's face, and Tanya knew she'd hit a sore spot. Given that Yue had really only ever been sighted in the Avatar's company during the siege of the north, it had been a fair guess that she'd become a friend of the group. And damn if that whole group didn't let their immature concept of what friends should be hinder their actions. "It was pathetic really, the way she grovelled. Like a beggar pleading for change. Come to think of it, she never asked for the rights of her citizens to be protected. All she seemed to want was to be kept in comfort in the palace, like a prize pet-…"

Whoosh!

A torrent of water suddenly crashed towards her as Katara stormed forwards like a tidal wave, with a literal wave drawn from the river behind her. Tanya darted backwards rapidly, swerving back and forth like a mosquito around a swatting hand as powerful streams of water speared towards her.

"Wow, that's quite the hot temperament you have. Are you sure there isn't a little bit of fire nation blood in you?" Tanya taunted.

Katara's glare darkened, and the torrents grew in ferocity.

"Come to think of it, weren't a lot of raid parties sent south? Maybe one of those soldiers caught your mother's eye, hmm?"

"Enough!" Katara all but screamed, thrusting both hands down at once. With a roar, the entire wave trailing behind her crashed down, felling small trees and shredding bushes in a wide, furious rage.

Tanya smirked victoriously.

With an intense flare of light she blasted forwards, the wind whipping violently through her golden hair as she pushed her speed to the limit. Her foot skimmed the crest of the wave as she shot past it, zipping just above the humongous weight of the river as it smashed past her and carved a path of destruction through the forest.

Katara growled in frustration, her hands already instinctively moving behind her to grasp more water to wield. Yet as her will closed back around her river, a cold spike of dread shot through her, and she looked back in alarm.

In her temper she had strayed too far from the safety of the river, drawn to follow Tanya and her aggravating taunts. Now that precious source of water which enabled her to fight was far enough a way that it would take a few seconds of concentrated effort to draw new water to herself. In a fight against Tanya, who fought fast and dirty, the chance of getting those few free seconds was almost zero. She'd impale her with a spear of flame the instant Katara lost focus.

Her legs tensed, preparing to dash back to the river, but it was already too late. Tanya was moving too fast, and in a streak of orange firelight the blonde zipped past her. Flames erupted from her hands as she quickly bled her momentum, coming to a halt hovering in the air right between Katara and the river.

"What's wrong? Out of water?" Tanya sneered, her eyes taking on the cold sheen of a killer as all humour drained out of her. "You've been an unwelcome variable for too long. It's time that you were taken out of the game." She raised an arm, building a ball of concentrated, powerful flame in her palm. A killing blow. "Permanently."

Katara gaped at her in wordless dread, the glow of the fireball reflected in her eyes.

Then suddenly she grinned, a flash of vindictive mischief dancing through her eyes, and raised her hand.

Tanya's expression had just begun to twist with confusion when a wellspring of muddy water burst up from the ground beneath her, catching her completely off guard and enveloping her entire body. The muddy geizer spurted high in the air, then, at the command of Katara's hands, arched back downwards and slammed into the ground, leaving a winded Tanya sputtering on the floor.

"Now!" Katara yelled.

The ground twisted again, but not at Katara's beckoning this time. Wet earth clumped around Tanya's limbs, holding her down in place as a figure rose up from the ground like a creature of the swamp.

"Hey there." Toph called cheekily, wiping the mud off her face with one hand. "Good to see you again. I was wondering if you'd ever touch the ground."

"You!" Tanya spat venomously at the blind girl. "You dug tunnels connected to the river!"

"Yep!" Toph replied, popping the P. "What, did you think I was all brawn, no brains or something? You don't beat men three times your age in the ring without using your head a little."

Tanya struggled against her restraints, but her body wasn't packed with muscle and the earth held firm. Toph stomped her heel and the earth twisted again, sucking Tanya down into the mud until only her head stuck out of it.

Katara approached, triumphant but grim. She looked down at Tanya as if the admiral were a disgusting bug to consider stepping on. "We're done running from you Tanya. You can't scare us any more." She declared icily.

Tanya's glare promised fiery death, but her lips pursed into a crooked, sneering grin. "And what will you do with your victory? Are you going to avenge that master of yours? What was his name?"

"Pakku!" Katara hissed, clenching a fist. The moisture in the air around her seemed to thrum in response, promising to exact whatever vengeance she wished at her command. "After what you did to him, and to so many others, it's no less that you deserve!"

Tanya stared back at her in silent challenge.

"-… But I won't." Katara relaxed her fist, and the tension bled out of the surrounding water. "Because he wouldn't have wanted me to execute a foe that's already been defeated. He taught me better than that. And I won't try to justify my cruelty as an act of war."

"Then I'll keep hunting you." Tanya replied, her forced calm of her voice conflicting with the thunder in her eyes.

"And I'll beat you again." Katara replied, turning to walk away. "But I refuse to let myself become like you."

Tanya writhed and struggled, but the ground held firm, and she could only watch helplessly as Katars strode away, with Toph shooting her a cheeky grin before jogging off to catch up. "Ty Lee! Mai!" She yelled. "I need you! Hurry!"

"I need you! Hurry!"

Mai's ears pricked up, her whole body going rigid at the almost panicked note in Tanya's voice. "Tanya's in trouble!" She announced.

Zuko was already slipping his mask on. "Then our time is up. Go to her, I need to get back to the Avatar's team."

Mai nodded and began to run forwards, but after a few steps stopped and turned back. "Remember, find a way to bring the Avatar to the Fire Nation garrison outside Ba Sing Se. I'll make sure they'll be prepared to hold him."

With that she turned and sprinted in the direction of Tanya's voice, pushing branches and shrubbery aside with her hands. It wasn't long before she broke through into the clearing where Tanya was buried, Ty Lee appearing from the trees on the other side not a second later.

"Tanya?" Ty Lee gasped. "They beheaded you?!"

"I'm buried, you muppet!" Tanya shouted at her. "Hurry up and get me out of here, before they-…"

Off in the distance the groaning of a bison echoed, and a familiar white shape took to the sky, bearing the Avatar's companions in the direction Azula had gone."

"… get away. Shit!"

Fifty more seconds.

That was the amount of time Azula estimated it would take to finish this fight. Just fifty seconds. Formidable as a fully realised Avatar could no doubt be, the current one was merely an exhausted child. Not even the great bridge to the spirit realm was beyond the human need for sleep it seemed. Factoring in that there was little water for him to bend, the amount of flammable buildings around them and her own superior skill, Azula could already visualise every possible move he might make, and how she would invariably counter them.

The Avatar skittered to the left, swinging his staff in a wide upwards arc to send a fierce updraught streaking towards her. Azula pivoted to the right, letting only the edges of the draft hit her, where the wind was not strong enough to carry her up into the air. A slight shift of her foot dropped her lower into a crouch, and she thrust her arms forwards like spears, shooting a pair of sharp firebolts back at him.

The Avatar flipped over the attack as he had countless times before, but Azula wasn't disheartened. There was a growing lethargy to his movements that even the adrenaline of battle was struggling to hold at bay, and each of her fire blasts were getting closer and closer to their marks. It wouldn't be long now before she scored a hit, and if she timed it perfectly that one hit was all she'd need to settle this. She swung forwards into a low roundhouse kick, conjuring a wide carpet of flames to sweep across the floor that forced The Avatar to leap high into the air to avoid them.

Forty seconds.

As the Avatar began to fall back to ground he took a deep breath in, then huffed out a wide cone of wind towards her. Azula knew better than to assume it was an attack by now though; more likely his aim was to kick up the dusty soil around them to obscure her vision. Rather than move to avoid it, Azula calmly closed her eyes, letting the wind buffet against her harmlessly. As expected her nose detected the sudden increase of dust in the air, but Azula ignored it to focus on her hearing.

For a while there were no sounds at all. Then suddenly she heard, to her right side, the faintest crunch of a footstep across gravel.

Twenty seconds.

Azula lunged at the sound, her hand open like a claw and five dagger-like jets of blue flame erupting from her fingertips. She heard a yelp of panic, and opened her eyes in time to see the Avatar roll away in the nick of time. She pursued him, keeping the distance between them short enough to pressure him, and formed another fire claw in her other hand as she swiped at him again and again like a cat chasing a mouse. A thin, cruel smile tugged at the corners of her lips at the comparison. She'd always much preferred being the hunter to the prey.

Before long the Avatar had backed up against the wall of a building, and with nowhere left to run he had to turn and fight. Azula lunged for his neck, her fire claws searing five razor-thin grooves into the wall as he ducked beneath them, and then suddenly she was airborne: blasted by a strong gust of wind from below as the Avatar counter-attacked.

Azula did not panic. Panic was for the weak. Her mind instead raced through plans: estimating how high up she was and her current velocity, calculating how much firepower would be needed to negate the impact, and working out how to twist this situation to her advantage. It took only a moment for her sharp mind to figure out the answers she needed, and without a moment of hesitation she arched her back, flipping into a half backflip, and spewed a fan of flames from her own mouth. As high up as she currently was the flames spread out across a wide area, leaving nowhere for the Avatar to dodge to and forcing him to spin his staff around again to make a wind shield. It protected him, but also obscured his vision as Azula landed acrobatically on her feet and immediately sprung forward into her next stance.

Ten seconds.

Her right arm speared forwards, sending out a lance of brightly burning flames that crashed against The Avatar's shield. The force of the wind stopped it, but only barely, and the sheer power of the strike sent the Avatar skidding backwards to collide with the wall behind him; his guard broken and his senses scrambled by the force of the impact.

Azula spotted her opening. Her footwork shifted in a pose she'd practised thousands of times before, her arms each swinging in a perfectly circular arc as she separated the yin and yang energy within herself, and a sharp smirk grew on her lips as she felt her fingertips begin to crackle with a familiar sensation.

Three seconds.

She brought the energy within herself crashing back together, and felt the sharp jolt of lightning building within her core.

Two.

Another step forward, and she guided her energy along her meridians in her arms to reach her fingers. The lightning followed, and sparked violently from her fingertips.

One.

She pointed her finger at the Avatar, her aim locked dead centre through his chest. Tired as he was, The Avatar had yet to recover from the previous impact, and though his eyes were open they were blurry and half-focused. She doubted he would even see the attack coming.

Zer-…

Her foot slipped, ever so slightly shifting her centre of gravity and pulling her arm to the side. No, Azula realised with a start, it wasn't that her foot had slipped! It was that the ground beneath her feet had slid sideways. Lightning was already erupting from her fingers, carving a deep grove in the wall just a little too far to the right of the Avatar's torso, and she was too committed to her stance to shift into a defensive position for what she knew was surely coming next.

A fraction of a second later a wave of earth smashed into her from the side, knocking her off her clean off her feet and sweeping her away down the road.

Aang blinked blearily, the sound of rumbling earth catching his attention. Robes a familiar shade of comforting blue filled his vision, and soon later soothingly cool water pressed against the back of his head where it had bumped against the wall. "Katara?" He croaked.

"It's me Aang. I'm here." Katara replied. Toph stood on guard behind her, her arms raised and ready to unleash a second wave of earth at the slightest hint of movement from where Azula had been carried off too. Katara hoisted one of Aang's arms around her shoulder, and supported his weight against her.

Aang half-staggered, half allowed himself to be dragged away to where he could hear the worried moans of Appa. He was absolutely shattered, both from the lack of sleep and the relentless battle with the fire princess. After what felt like a long and agonising walk, but in reality was probably only a few seconds, Aang felt the soft carpet of Appa's fur against his skin as the girls hauled him up onto the bison's back. Sokka and Blue were already up there, fastening what little supplies they carried down to the saddle straps, and with a quick crack of the reins and a "yip yip" from Sokka they were airborne.

"Will they keep chasing us?" Sokka asked, looking nervously behind them as if expecting to see one furious, golden-haired missile in hot pursuit.

Katara gave a little shake of her head. "No." She replied grimly, the absolute certainty in her voice leaving no room for doubt. "We've earned ourselves a few nights of rest. Even if they do chase us down again, they won't be in shape for a rematch for a while."

Aang's head lolled to the side, looking back at the ruined village that was quickly shrinking on the horizon. Perhaps it was just his rattled eyes playing tricks on him, but he could swear he could see the silhouette of the fire princess standing still atop one of the buildings, watching them flee.

Even before anyone had even said a word, Ty Lee knew this argument was going to be the worst one yet.

She, Mai and Tanya arrived in the village where Azula had been fighting a few minutes after the sky bison had disappeared over the horizon, to find Azula standing motionless atop a building, staring out in the direction the Avatar had fled. They knew she had heard them approaching, and that she had not turned to acknowledge them yet was a silent instruction that they were to wait while she finished thinking. Given that they'd just come back from unsuccessfully capturing the Avatar's friends, and in turn cost Azula her own chance to capture the Avatar, it was easy to guess what Azula was thinking about.

Punishment.

For a good five minutes the painful silence hung between them. Ty Lee briefly entertained the thought of trying to lift everyone's spirits, but fear held her back. The first one to speak would be the first target of Azula's wrath.

Eventually Azula spoke.

"You have failed me." She said calmly. Impassively even, as if she were simply remarking on the weather. She didn't even turn to look at them.

Ty Lee and Mai tensed, looking aside guiltily. Only Tanya held her stare.

"You weren't even fighting the Avatar either." Azula finally turned around, glaring directly at Tanya. It seemed her target for her ire had been chosen; not surprising, given how tense things had been between the two of them lately. "You were up against a peasant who could barely flick a puddle a year ago and a blind girl. Yet you, the feared admiral who conquered the north and has slain earthbenders by their thousands, lost. They didn't just escape you this time. They beat you." She hopped down from the building, landing gracefully in front of them without breaking eye-contact with Tanya for a moment. "Are you going to tell me that this is because of the spirit's interference as well?"

Tanya remained tellingly silent. Her face was cold, but fire still burned furiously behind her eyes.

Azula scoffed. She took a step forward, putting herself within striking distance. "You believe my father placed you here to provide me with advice. Then advise me now. What would you do if you had an employee who, though failing to do their job, caused you to mess up your chance to stop a threat that might one day destroy your entire nation?"

The question hung uncomfortably in the air for a few moments, and Ty Lee clenched a fist so hard behind her back that it hurt.

Finally, Tanya answered.

"I would fire them."

Dread pooled in Ty Lee's gut at the same time a wicked smile flitted across Azula's lips. She made to speak, but the princess beat her to it. "A fine idea." Azula replied, nodding her head. "Just cut the problem out, clean and simple. Yes, I agree."

Azula raised her chin, looking down at Tanya. The golden-haired girl narrowed her eyes in return, but didn't say anything.

"Admiral Tanya." Azula began, her voice taking on the projected, imperious tone of a royal making an announcement at a public event. "For your failures in the line of duty I, Princess Azula, by the power vested in me by The Fire Lord, hereby strip you of your rank and position, and discharge you from the Fire Nation military."

"A- Azula!-…" Ty Lee squeaked, unable to believe what she was hearing! Technically yes, as crown princess it was well within Azula's authority to do this, but she never imagined it would come to this!

Yet if Azula had heard her protests, she chose to ignore them. "You have until the end of the day to gather your belongings from the train." The princess continued, her eyes locked firmly on her rival's. "After that you are on your own: free to choose between returning to the homeland in disgrace, or staying here among the colonies." She sneered. "Let's hope the families of the soldiers you've killed don't recognise you."

And with that Azula walked past her, coming a hair's-breadth away from bashing into her shoulder, and walked slowly away back in the direction of the train.

Ty Lee and Mai looked between the two of them, torn between their duty to follow Azula and their concern for Tanya. "Tanya… I'm so sorry-…" Ty Lee began."

"It's alright." Tanya interrupted, her voice and expression still cold, and her eyes still looking forward: not at Azula, but at the stretch of horizon the Avatar had disappeared into. "I was a fool to not see that this has been coming for a long time. Besides, my ambitions were never to stay in the military forever anyway."

"What are you going to do?" Mai asked.

"What The Fire Lord has commanded of me. Alone, if I have to." Tanya answered. "Once I return home with the Avatar in chains behind me, we'll see what The Fire Lord thinks of his daughter's decision."

"You're going to keep chasing them alone!" Ty Lee exclaimed. "Tanya, that's too dangerous! We're in hostile territory!"

Tanya shrugged. "It's nothing I haven't done before. Besides, I have a plan."

She reached into her pocket and pulled out Zhao's notebook: the one containing the map to the spirit library.

"If there is any record of what the Avatar truly is, I'll find them here." Tanya continued, the muscles in her face tensing as the white hot rage that hid behind her ice cold expression struggled to break free.

"And once I find out his weakness, we'll see if even the universe itself can save him from me."

And we're back! Yikes, and nearly a year after the previous update! Sorry about that. Life finds a way to keep demanding more and more of my time. Thank you all for your supporting comments and PMs. Your encouragement is a wonderful thing.

Speaking of PM's, a few people have messaged me about an author of called Rimanovi on and who has been copying this story and passing it off as their own. To answer your questions no: I am not Rimanovi, and I have not given them permission to do this. I will never ask for payment for this story, because in my mind if people are going to pay you for it then there is an expectation that you continue to provide it to the schedule they have come to expect from you, and unfortunately my work leaves me unable to do that. I'll admit I find it annoying that someone is trying to claim my work as their own, though it is flattering to know that people consider my writing good enough to make money from. If any of you readers also have a Webnovel account and would like to let the people there know that they do not have to pay to see "early releases" of this story it would be appreciated, but otherwise I intend to wash my hands of this matter.

Any-who as the ending to this chapter may have clued you in on, the next chapter (which I do plan to release a little quicker this time) marks the start of a few little twists I have planned for this story.

See you then!