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Hrm... so what happens if Toph wins or loses the Agni Kai? BTW, wonder if Zuko (that is Zuko, right?) will recognize his student.

Zuko stared at the bizarre apparition that challenged him. For a brief moment he thought
that a spirit had emerged somehow from the shrine, but then he recollected the decoration of one of the wooden statues and realised that the child - a girl he
presumed - was wearing a costume. Part of the village's ridiculous festival no doubt, dressing their children in reflection of past Avatars.



"I have to wonder where you heard that phrase," he said, the words echoing
strangely from the mask that he wore. "But you are clearly too young to understand its significance. The Agni Kai is a duel," he strode forward,
intending to slap down the insolent child, "between firebenders."



Before he could reach arm's reach, the child cupped her hands before her and a flame
sprang to life within them. "I don't see the problem," she said. "Unless, of course, you fear such a contest."



Instantly Zuko's irritation flared into fury and he was glad that his mask disguised his
reaction. The girl was mocking him, he realised, starting at her lidded eyes. "Very well then," he said when he was sure he could control his voice.
"I presume that you are familiar with the forms. As you do not appear to have a second, I will not call one forth."



"If you're sure you don't need the assistance," the girl said casually,
turning her back and walking towards the clifftop. At the edge facing away from him, she dropped to one knee.



Zuko glared at her and then turned away, walking to a suitable place for his own mediation.
Before kneeling, he unstrapped his swords and threw them onto the grass of the amphitheatre. A moment later, his boots and armour joined it. For this conflict,
on a battlefield, he saw need to also remove the close fitting shirt beneath. The village was still burning in front of him and he realised that as a result,
his vision would be less adjusted to the darkness behind his opponent. Happenstance? Or strategy? Was his opponent truly a child?



No. He could not waste thought on such matters. This was the Agni Kai, no matter how
irregular. These last moments were for the calming of his mind, readying himself to bring forth fire. Readying himself for death also, if that was his fate. He
almost laughed at the idea, but that emotion also had no place here. This could be an assassin. He would not put it past the Earth Kingdom to hire one of his
more mercenary countrymen to kill him. I have made them howl, he thought with dark satisfaction. If it is so, then they have truly shown their weakness,
recognising that only a firebender can hope to challenge me.



There was no signal to mark the beginning of the Agni Kai. It was unnecessary.
Instinctively, both combatants rose to their feet and turned to face each other. Zuko opened aggressively, hurling a wave of fire at his opponent, testing her
defenses. The girl's counter was simple, but efficient as she pushed aside that portion of the wave that approached her, seperating it into two walls that
rushed harmlessly past her. Rather than launching her own attack, she held herself ready to respond to his next attack, leaving the initiative in his hands.
Poor strategy.



Zuko held the distance open, switching to more focused attacks, hammering at her with
precisely aimed fireballs. The girl's defense was unorthodox, meeting the fire with her own flames, bending a globe of fire into her hands, sweeping it to
intercept each of his attacks, drawing their heat into her own flame and leaving them ineffectual. The fire globe grew hotter and more intense until the girl
suddenly threw it aside, so heated that the stones it landed upon bubbled and melted like ice, creating for a brief moment a fire pit.



The Prince scowled behind his mask. That fireball would have destroyed him if she had struck
him with it. He would have dodged it, obviously, but the fact that she didn't even try to hit him was... dismissive. As if she had no need to resort to
such an attack against him. Alright then, if she wanted to play that way, Zuko decided, he would see whether she was ans confident up close.



Running forwards, he kicked out, aiming for her feet with a fiery torrent. Break the root,
he imagined his teachers telling him. Himself teaching Toph. Fresh rage flowed through him at the memory of his student, so much potential simply crushed out
of existence by a cowardly attack. Even here, he had not found any trace of Jet or of his conspirator, 'the Boulder'. The girl stepped aside, drawing
her feet away and swept her hands around, drawing the fire up and around, sending it rocketing back at Zuko's face with a cocky grin.



He
blocked it sharply with his forearms, then dropped to the floor, sweeping at her legs. She jumped up above his sweepkick and he had to roll aside sharply to
avoid an axe kick to his head. Her reflexes were good - if her limbs were longer he might not have been fast enough but she had to come closer to him than an
grown adult would have.



Springing to his feet he launched a powerful punch towards her, fire springing into
existence at his knuckles. The young firebender - and he saw too few marks of age on her hands or feet for her to be a stunted adult - avoided the attack, but
as he had expected, she did so by moving back against the shrine and he whipped his hands outward, using fire prevent her from slipping aside, thrusting his
head forward as he exhaled. A tongue of fire blazed across the space between Zuko and his enemy.



There was no escape to either side, but the green-clad girl had another route in mind.
Collpasing forwards onto her right shoulder, she rolled like a ball between Zuko's legs launching her own fire at his rear before kipping up to her feet.
He turned and caught the attack on his right hip, snuffing it out with a slicing gesture, but the fact remained that she had been the first to land a blow.
Finishing the turn, he brought his hands sweeping down and to the left, hurling scorching fire towards her skirts.



While the girl was swift enough to avoid the fire herself she was not quick enough to save
the long green robe and flames caught on it, climbing towards her waist. Jumping into the air she placed her hands behind her waist and then slashed them
forwards, crossing them before her. A line of fire raced around the skirt and died almost as quickly, folds of cloth falling away, thousands of threads cut
away by the sudden fire, leaving the skirt to hang no lower than her knees.



Zuko didn't say anything - it was generally unwise to speak during an Agni Kai, as it
might disrupt one's breathing and that practicality had hardened into tradition over the centuries - but behind his mask his lips curled. Point and
counterpoint. He barely found time to congratulate himself before she ran forward and entered his reach, twisting aside from his reflexive attack and landing a
kick on his left knee. Zuko grunted at the impact and snatched for her hair only for her to fold over gracefully, the raven locks flowing just outside his
reach, and jab a knife-hand to the side of the same knee.



With cry of surprise, Zuko toppled sideways, barely catching himself on one hand and turning
the fall into a spin. He backed up a pace favouring the injured knee as he created fire whips in each hand, flicking them back and forth to ward off attacks
while he took a measure of the degree of impairment. Fortunately, although painful, the blows had only been bruising. He knew that had they been even slightly
harder he could have been left with fractures to the joint.



Enough, he thought, seeing uncertainty creep into the posture of those of his soldiers he
could see. None of them had expected their leader to be pressed so hard, much less to face such a challenge from a child. I have underestimated her skills, but
here is an end to it. With a roar he charged forwards, hurling fire with every step, ignoring the pain that tore through his knee. His opponent backed up, not
losing her balance, bending away the flames as they approached her.



She only bent them away when they came close, Zoku noted. Never did she try to meet his fire
head on with her own. Despite every trick and cunning attack, she did not match strength against his strength. Unlike Azula or Lu Ten when the deigned to train
against him, she could not match him directly. Which made his strategy to do exactly that.



Zuko feinted to throw more fire and then flicked his wrist, using a firewhip to destroy the
orb of fire that the girl was using to deflect his attacks. She was able to recreate it almost immediately, but fire favoured the offensive and with Zuko
pressuring her constrantly, she had no choice but to give ground. He looked for fear in her face and saw only the emotionless mask of her make-up, distorted
slightly where sweat had begun to run through it. She had been pushed back to the limit of the paving, but she would not yield to defeat.



With a hollow laugh, Zuko copied a move he had seen Azula move, raising fire in a circle
around them. The flames leapt higher and higher and then he began to contract the circle, forcing her to close in towards him. She came willingly, flames
dancing at her command, but he met her head on, his own fires brushing hers aside. This was what an Agni Kai should be like, the fire rushing through his veins
and he cried out out in exultation as she was hurled violently back against the grassy verge, through the ring of fire, her clothes smouldering.



"This is over," he declared, striding towards her. "Tell me who sent you
here, and I will spare your life."



She coughed - her throat must be dry after all the heat, he realised - and brushed her
forehead with the back of one hand, scraping away more of her make up. "Is that hot air I hear?" she said scornfully. "Land one hit and all of a
sudden you think you're the Fire Lord Ozzy."



"That's Ozai," Zuko growled.



"Whatever," she said dismissively. "Now, are you going to get serious or
shall I?" She took a stance, not one that Zuko was familiar with, something that looked more like some of Toph's stances had before he'd corrected
them. Interesting, so her style had been influenced by the Earth Kingdom's. Maybe when he was done here, he should seek out whoever was corrupting the
firebending arts with such nonsense and put a stop to them.



But first, he had an opponent to deal with. Fortunately, he'd fought earthbenders and he
knew the weaknesses of their art. It was balanced, well suited to both offense and defense, but it was not a style that encouraged dodging - she'd just
made the mistake of being too rooted. Moving quickly he charged at an angle, lashing at her with a fire whip and forcing her to turn to maintain her defense,
blocking his whip with small gouts of fire but compromising her own footing to do so. Then she made a jerking move and the ground shifted suddenly below his
left foot, throwing Zuko off-balance. He turned the tumble into a handstand and flipped himself upright, seeing that she had used the opportunity to dash past
him towards the cliff.



Glancing at the ground where he had stumbled he saw nothing to show what had caused him to
trip - the ground seemed as solid as ever. Had he imagined it? Had it been his knee that had been at fault?



The girl did a shuffling little dance and then walked over to the shrine, taking up a more
proper firebending stance. Clearly she had learnt her lesson. "Hey Chin," she said, tapping irreverantly upon the shrine's wall. "Do you
want to give this guy some courage? Between you, me and the audience, I think he's a bit...
lacking."



With a bellow of rage Zuko charged towards her, intent upon driving her off the ridge, but
this time she was waiting and caught his first fire blast, using it to parry the next two and then flinging it into the roof fo the shrine, which erupted in
flames. A second later and she darted behind the cover of the little building. Zuko rounded the corner to see her vanish behind the next, one step ahead of his
fire blast. Infuriated, he ran after her, ignoring the peasents scattering up the slope and away from the duel, his soldiers distracted and unable to stop all
of the sudden rush. Two of the red-armoured men were tumbled to the ground in the rush.



The next corner and he saw only a corner of her skirt vanish from view, the fourth and not
even that. A cry from one of the soldiers caught his attention and he looked at the man, then at where the soldier was pointing. Standing barefoot upon the
stone wall of the ruined shrine was the girl, raising the fires from the roof into a single mass that she held between her hands. For a single shocked moment,
Zuko failed to react and then she lobbed the entire mass - not at him, but at two of the Komodo Dragons.



"This isn't all we have at the circus!" she catcalled to the soldier suddenly
dragged off his feet as panic spread among the animals. The fireball had diminished almost visibly after it left her hands but it had been enough to scorch the
massive beast's faces and they were bellowing fit to burst. "Why don't you play with the wild animals!" Then she dropped over the shrine on
the opposite side from Zuko.



He
shouted in fury, ignoring the disturbance behind him and smashed one fist, wrapped in fire, against the stone structure, smashing it apart, hurling the bricks
across half the plaza. Panting deeply he stared across the stones for a sign of his enemy. Nothing. Nothing.
Nothing...



"I'll give you points for that," she said, kipping up from behind the stone
stump that was all that remained of the shrine to Chin the Conqueror. "I'm almost impressed."



So
furious that for a brief moment he couldn't even concentrate enough to bend, Zuko nearly messed her hand whipping around, a ball of fire inside it that
hurtled towards his face. Barely in time he managed to snuff the fire out - which did nothing at all to the chuck of brick about the size of the girl's
fist that had been inside the fireball and smashed into his mask. With a howl of pain he tumbled backwards, his hands flying to his face.



The mask had absorbed some of the impact, but it was still brain-rattling and the prince
staggered drunkenly as he foght to stay upright. The first touch revealed that the mask was shattered and he hastily yanked at the straps holding it to his
face.



"You've got a tough face," the little girl's voice lilted as he discarded
the mask. "Did you just peel it off... oh, it was a mask." She sounded slightly disappointed.



Red rage struggled against the fuzziness of Zuko's mind. She's trying to make me
angry, he realised. Using it against me.



With a unbelievable effort he brought his breathing back under control and took up his
stance again. Despite the ringing in his ears, he could see her there, standing ready to parry his fire. So sorry, kid. You're not going to be brushing
this aside, he thought, moving his arms as the chi began to flow through them. With a snapping sound, the first sparks began to flash around his hands. The
young girl frowned turning reduce her profile, apparently unsure of what he was doing.



That's right, just stand there and wait for it, he thought. He hadn't used the move
since Omashu. Frankly, he hadn't wanted to risk trying it when his anger was so great. But now, forcing all that away, he felt it again. The thrill of the
lightning forming between his hands. "You want my anger?" he demanded. "Have it!"



"Dodge!" came a horrified shout from somewhere up the slope but the lightning was
already in motion.



He'd already known that the girl's reflexes were cat like, but Zuko was beyond
impressed that she managed to dodge fast enough that the bolt of lightning smashed not into her fourth chakra, over the heart, but the third, behind the solar
plexus. Not that it made any difference in the short term: the small firebender was smashed off her feet, hurled two dozen yards across the aphitheatre to
crash into one of the stone seats.



She lay very still.



Zuko had just enough time to realise why the warning shout had sounded like someone he knew
when the same voice gasped: "Toph!" and a impact to his left temple sent him tumbling into the blackness.
D for Drakensis

You're only young once, but immaturity is forever.

Hrmm... doesn't Mai have a crush on Zuko? I wonder if Mai or her companion knocked Zuko out. Probably Mai. If so, she's harsh on her crushes.

As far as I know Zuko's got the hots for her too, which is why he went all 'grim avenger' after her and Toph's 'deaths'. I'd guess it was Mai simply because it looks like he was only KO'd, not killed.

Although, depending how much he remembers when he comes to, he's gonna have a lot to think about. Like the fact he may have killed Toph himself.

Toph gonna have some things to think about when she wakes as well. Such as the fact that she just showed 2 other Kyoshi Warriors that she's a firebender, when they already know she's an earthbender. If they report that to Suki, she'll have more proof that Toph's the Avatar.
___________________________
"I've always wanted to be somebody, but I should have been more specific." - George Carlin

Mai didn't wait for the firebender to hit the paving slabs courtesy of her thrown fan
before she was racing down the the amphitheatre towards Toph's fallen form.

The soldiers, distracted by ten rampaging komodo rhinos and the fleeing women and children,
had actually fallen prey to the Kyoshi Warriors with startling ease. In fact, they probably hadn't even noticed that they were under attack until Mai's
desperate cry of warning to Toph, by which time eight of them were already down - a pair of them literally trampled by fleeing women and children, two of them
recipients Mai's knives, Shu-Lin throwing one unfortunate off the cliff, two flat on the ground with concussions thanks to June and one crushed between the
two komodo rhinos he was trying to control.

As
she ran, Mai unloaded a full salvo from her dart launcher into a firebender trying to block what looked to him like an attempt to finish off the prince, and
then spun her remaining fan into one of a pair of soldiers who was fighting off Shu-Lin entirely too close to where Mai's sister lay. Now faced with only
one opponent, the Kyoshi Warrior smoothly cut him down with her sword and then moved to aid Jun.

Scrambling down to Toph, she rolled the small girl over onto her back, flinching as she saw
the terrible burn scorched through both the armour and the robes. The metal plates had been almost vaporised over the wound and blackened cloth and flesh were
literally smoking before her eyes. Fearfully Mai pressed her fingertips against Toph's throat and was relieved to feel a pulse - weak, slower than she
would like, but Toph's heart was still beating. When she looked closely she thought she could see a slight movement of the younger girl's
chest.

Pulling out three of her throwing knives, Mai rose and stalked over to the man who had
hurled lightning into her little sister. Another fire bender made the mistake of trying to stop her and fell to the ground, one of the knives buried in his
throat. Reaching her target, Mai kicked the stunned man over onto his back and had drawn back her hand to finish him off when the light flickered giving her a
clearer view of his face. Her eyes went wide and the two throwing knives slipped from suddenly nerveless fingers.

"A little help here, Mai!" called June from where she was holding off three of the
remaining firebenders from the back of a komodo rhino. One of them had already managed to catch her with a small bolt of fire, marked by the flames still
rising from her sleeve.

Mai straightened and without turning her head fired one of her remaining dart launchers
three times. One of the soldiers crumpled with a scream, clutching at his knee where a dart had punctured the thinner protection behind the joint. A second
simply fell to the ground like a sack of potatoes, the tail-feathers of a dart barely visible where it had buried itself in the armpit. June's eyes crossed
as she tried to track the third dart, which passed within a few inches of her face... and punched between the open lips of the third firebender.

"Scary girl," the one time bounty hunter sighed, kicking the one survivor of the
three in the face to ensure he stayed down. Then she looked around for the next opponent, casually beating out the flames now that she had a free
hand.

Down in the amphitheatre, Mai came to a decision and used the front of Zuko's shirt to
pull his shoulders up from the stones. His eyes opened blearily and failed to focus upon her squarely. "Mai?" he muttered.

"Jerk," she replied tersely and punched him across the jaw with the heel of her
free hand. The prince's head bounced off the ground and he lay still.

Shu-Lin dove under a stream of fire and thrust upwards with her sword into the firebender
before rolling to her feet. Suddenly the three Kyoshi Warriors were the only ones still standing. June and Shu-Lin coverged upon their leader's
position.

"How's the runt?" June asked bluntly.

"Alive," Mai reported bluntly. "Your arm?"

"Nothing to worry about," the older woman insisted.

Mai looked around at the wreckage. "We need to tidy this up. Shu-lin drive off the
komodo rhinos. June, throw the enemy soldiers off the cliff. The tide will dispose of them."

"What about the wounded?"

Mai stared at her blankly.

"Right." June reached for Zuko but Mai shook her head.

"Not this one. We're taking him with us."

"You know him?" Shu-Lin asked. "And since when was Toph a
firebender?"

"I'll tell you on the boat," decided Mai and headed back towards
Toph.

.oOo.

Getting down the cliff with an unconcious Toph and Zuko proved to be complicated. In the end
it proved necessary to improvise a sling and lower them one at a time directly over the cliff with Shu-Lin climbing down alongside Toph to ensure she
didn't come to harm. They weren't quite as careful with Zuko since his injuries weren't as likely to be aggravated and frankly, none of them were
particularly bothered about adding more bruises to his collection.

"So," Shu-Lin asked as June pushed the canoe off from the shore.
"Explanations?"

Mai didn't look up from her paddling. "His name is Zuko. After Toph discovered she
was a firebender, he was her teacher for a little while."

The other two looked at each other. "A little more detail could help," suggested
June. "I've seen Toph Earthbending. She's never been... all that great, honestly. And now she's firebending as well?"

Shu-Lin was practically glowing as she paddled. "She's the Avatar, isn't she?
Why didn't you tell anyone?"

Mai made a frustrated noise. "She was attacked by her parents." She ignored the
hiss from Shu-Lin. "They didn't want their blind little girl to be a bender, so they had someone do something to her. I don't know the details,
but something to do with her chi. You've seen her bending... that's as much as she can do."

June was the one to put it together. "The Fire Nation's been looking for the next
Avatar ever since the Battle of the Three Dragons. Right now, they know she must only be a child. If they find out she's blind, that she only has a limited
ability to bend... they'll know that they don't have to fear her any more. And morale in the Earth Kingdom would collapse: they've been hoping for
a powerful, aggressive Avatar to lead them against the Fire Nation."

"You said 'her parents'," Shu-Lin said slowly. "Not 'our
parents'. You aren't her sister, are you?"

"After she was... hurt, she ran away," Mai said carefully, "My parents took
her in. She didn't tell anyone she was an earthbender and everyone was thrilled that she was a firebender."

"So you're from the Fire Nation." There was an ugly undertone to June's
conclusion. Both of of the other Kyoshi Warriors had their issues, Mai knew. Shu-Lin's were with parents, but June's were with the Fire Nation.
"Why would one of them choose to throw in her lot with the Avatar?"

"She's my sister," Mai said. "Blood doesn't matter. Women are
expected to join other families and be as loyal to them as they were to their parents. Marriage, or adoption, it doesn't matter. Would you abandon a
sister?"

June clenched her fist, but Shu Lin stopped paddling for a moment. "Kyoshi Warriors do
not leave their sisters behind," she reminded the other woman. "Would you have left Toph and I after she challenged him to that
duel?"

"...no," June admitted grudgingly. She looked down at Zuko. "What about this
one? He'd be a very ugly sister. Why spare him? He already almost killed Toph. When he finds out she's the Avatar..."

Mai shrugged, feigning indifference. "He's important within the Fire Nation. Too
important to just vanish without anyone looking for him. Suki's going to need to decide what happens to him."

"Does she know?" asked Shu-Lin. "About Toph, I mean?"

"I haven't told her. But I'm sure she suspects something."

They paddled in silence the rest of the way.

.oOo.

She could feel the cold stone beneath her feet, but it seemed cold and dead, no vibrations
to tell her anything more than what she was touching. Cold terror seemed to paralyse her. Had her earthsense deserted her completely.

Toph felt a small hand touch hers.

"Hello Toph. I've been looking forward to meeting you." A boy's voice,
young, from in front of her.

The smack of her fist touching flesh was startling and her hand was empty once more.
"Who are you!? What have you done to me!?"

"Ow!" Indignance more than pain. "You didn't have to hit
me!"

She could hear him, she knew his approximate location and sank into an earthbending stance.
"Answers!"

"I didn't do anything!" the boy protested quickly. "You're in the
spirit world, no one can bend here."

Whatever she'd expected, this wasn't it. "I'm... dead?"

There was the pad of light feet on stone and she could hear his breathing, closer now. Not
quite in arm's reach. He feared her. Good.

"Not quite. It could still go either way." He sighed. "There's someone
who wants to speak to you. Come with me?"

"I'm not going anywhere," Toph retorted automatically. "Not with someone
I don't know, who just sneaks up on me."

"Really I'm a friend," the boy promised. There was a whoof of air from his
direction and Toph heard heavier footsteps, far too heavy to be a person and... six legs? Sounded like whatever it was must be as large as a badgermole,
perhaps larger. "And this is Appa. He's a friend too, aren't you boy?" There was an agreeable rumble from the animal.

"I've not been having the best of luck with friends lately," Toph pointed out
warily. "In case you didn't notice, the reason I'm here is that my former firebending teacher decided to hit me with some freaky
attack."

The boy hesitated. "You realise that he didn't know who you were?"

"I guessed when he didn't realise I was a firebender," Toph shrugged. "I guess all that facepainting must really work
afterall."

"It really does," he agreed cheerfully. "So, come on. Your spirit guide
awaits."

Toph glared. "You're my spirit guide?"

"Well, no. She sent me to bring you to her..."

"So you're what? The hired help?" Toph asked incredulously. How gullible did
he think she was? For all she could tell he might be about to feed her to that big Appa of his. He hadn't even told her his name!

"No, I'm Aang!"

Okay, now he'd told her his name. Wait... Aang? "Eew! I knew that Bumi guy was
creepy, but having fun with a little boy? That's just sick."

"You know Bumi?" Aang sounded surprised. "Wait, what do you mean sick.
He's a great guy. We used to play on the mail slides when he was a kid."

"When he was a kid?" exclaimed Toph. "But he's ancient and you're
like, eight or something."

"I'm a hundred and twelve!"

"Months, maybe."

Aang groaned in frustration. "I'm dead, alright? People stop getting older when
they die. I was only twelve when I died. Bumi's been alive the whole time, that's why he looks older than me." He took her hand again and started
pulling at her again, but couldn't shift her from her stance.

"Listen, lightweight, no one takes me anywhere I don't want to. Bumi says hi, he
misses all the fun, now buzz off."

"Oh really?" There was a mischievous sound to Aang's voice. "Appa, give
me a hand here, buddy." The big creature mooed accomodatingly and Toph braced herself, for all the good it did when several tons of herbivore butted her
gently but firmly off her feet. Grabbing blindly for something - anything - to break her hold, Toph latched onto something long and smooth, only to be lifted
clean off the ground when it moved upwards.

"Good work, boy," Aang said cheerfully. "Now, yip yip!"

There was a whoof of air and Toph screamed in mingled fear and indignation as her stomach
advised her that she was being lifted higher and higher off the ground, dangling from the horn of the sky bison as it ascended into the air.

.oOo.

Suki was waiting at the dock when the canoe arrived. After months of practise Mai could make
out the emotions beneath the mask of warpaint and she could tell the leader of the Kyoshi Warriors was concerned by the fact that only three figures were
visible above the gunwhales of the boat. "What happened?" she asked immediately, catching hold of the rope that Mai threw her from the
bow.

"Toph is injured, and we have a prisoner," Mai said, indicating the two prone
forms lying in the bottom of the canoe. "Chin Village has been destroyed. The women and children were fleeing the area, last that we saw of them. They
only saw Toph and other than this one, all the Fire Nation soldiers are dead."

"Shu-Lin, go fetch a healer," Suki ordered quickly. "June, take the prisoner
and secure him. Don't do anything to him until I hear Mai's report. Is he a bender?" When she heard confirmation she nodded firmly. "If
necessary, ask the healers for a sleeping draft. Better he doesn't wake up until I make a decision on what to do with him."

The other two Kyoshi Warriors climbed onto the jetty, June carrying Zuko over her shoulder.
Suki looked down at Toph and shook her head. "I shouldn't have let you take her with you."

Mai said nothing, instead lifting her sister gently up so that Suki could take her. Beneath
her make-up Suki paled at the wound. Toph seemed to weigh almost nothing and her breathing was so faint that only a slight warmth to her body showed she was
still alive. "I know, you know. That she's the Avatar." There was still no response from Mai as the girl jumped up onto the jetty. "Who did
this?"

Toph's sister pointed to where Jun was barely visible in the distance.

"If she dies, he dies," Suki swore. "What sort of monster would do this to a
child."

"She'd be offended to be called a child," Mai said, her voice betraying
uncertainty as to what to feel about the matter. "Toph challenged him to a duel. I don't know why he accepted."

Suki shrugged and started towards the shore, careful not to shake Toph around. "I meant
what I said there," she added flatly. "I don't care how valuable he might turn out to be..."

"He's the Fire Lords's son."

"He's the wha-!?" Suki half-screamed, then lowered her voice to a whisper.
"What do you mean he's the Fire Lord's son?"

"I mean that Ozai is his father. What else would I mean?"

"Are you sure?" asked Suki, nervously. First the Avatar, and now a Prince of the
Fire Nation? What next, the Earth King arriving on a dancing bear?

"Pretty much," Mai said. "I lied about being a merchant's daughter. My
family is an old one in the Fire Nation. I went to school with Zuko's sister, so I saw him every now and then."

If
Suki hadn't been carrying Toph she would have slapped Mai, so she did the logical thing. As soon as she put Toph down on the grass at the end of the jetty,
she cracked a backhanded blow across the taller girl's face, knocking her from her feet.

"I probably deserved that," Mai conceded numbly, sitting up.

"So what's Toph's story? Your father's byblow?" Suki asked angrily.
"Is she even your sister at all?"

"Toph's a runaway," Mai said quietly. "Family means more than blood in
the Fire Nation. When my parents took her in, she became my sister in every way that matters. When my brother was abducted, Toph risked her own life to save
him. When I learnt she was the Avatar, I left my parents to protect her from the Fire Nation. I've given up everything else in my life, even..." She
shook her head. "Don't ever say she isn't my sister."

Suki stared down at her. "I should probably lock you away with your firebender
friend," she said at last. "For the Avatar's sake, I won't do that. But if you ever give me even the slightest reason to doubt you again, one
deception... I'll think of a way to explain your death to her."

.oOo.

"Here we are!" Aang announced happily as Appa's feet touched the
ground.

"Great," Toph grumbled and let go of the horn, landing lightly on dusty stones
that felt somewhat like a path to her feet. Feeling the sky bison whuffle against her, she used her hands to feel her way across his face and then grabbed the
huge beast by the nostrils and tugged downwards. "Don't ever do that again!" she roared at the top of her voice.

Appa squealed and tried to back away from the crazy small person. When that didn't work,
he opened his mouth and blew, trying to dislodge her but he had to stop when she refused and the pulling on his sensitive nose grew too painful.

"Leave him alone!" Aang protested, running around and grabbing Toph's ankles,
trying to pull her away. As she was still refusing to release Appa, this let to a bellow of protest from the unfortunate sky bison. "Let
go!"

"You let go!"

Another bellow from Appa was followed by a torrent of water descending upon them all.
"You can play later, children," a new voice declared. Older, female. Not an accent that Toph recognised. Aang obediently dropped her
ankles.

"Who are you?" the young earthbender demanded, not letting go yet.

"She's your spirit guide," Aang hissed.

"So why did you send muppet here to come get me." Toph asked, letting go of Appa,
who prudently backed away. She felt Aang brush past her as he rushed to comfort his companion.

"I had several reasons, Toph," the woman said in a grandmotherly tone. "Come,
sit with me."

Grudgingly, Toph obeyed. But only because she wanted to anyway!

"Unlike my two predecessors, I do not have a spirit companion to carry me across the
world," the old woman told her. "And I felt that you might prefer to be met by someone your age, rather than by an lady of a certain
age."

"You aren't old, Kanna," a man's voice said from nearby. "Not
compared to Kyoshi, anyway."

"Don't you have anywhere to be, Roku?" the woman's voice - Kanna,
presumably - asked pointedly.

Toph jumped to her feet. "You're... you're Avatars!" she burst out,
backing away. "What do you want with me!"

She heard the man approach and then he paused and she heard his robes rustling on the
ground. He's... kneeling? What? "For myself, Toph, all I wish to do is to apologise on behalf of my great-grandson."

"Who?" she blurted.

"My grand-daughter is wed to the Fire Lord Ozai," Roku explained. "Therefore
Zuko is my descendant."

Toph shrugged. "You aren't to blame for what he did," she said reasonably.
"If you're responsible for what he did then I'd be responsble for what my - yeah. Never mind."

"You are not to blame for your parents' actions."

"Well if you know that, then what are you bringing it up for?" Toph
asked.

Roku chuckled and then she could hear his robes brushing around his knees as Kanna cleared
her throat. "Yes Kanna, I'm done now," he promised.

"I'm sure you have many questions," Kanna said gently to Toph. "I asked
Aang to bring you here so that I can answer them."

Toph sat down cautiously. "You're the one with the plan, why don't you
start."

"Very well then. You are the Avatar, Toph. Roku, myself and even Aang are your past -
just a few of the thousands of lives that you have lived, protecting the balance between the four elements, and between the mortal world and this one. And you
have never been more badly needed. The Fire Nation is badly out of control. Unless they are checked they will use the power granted by Sozin's Comet to
catastrophically destroy all balance between the elements. I know that it is not fair for you to carry that burden so young, but I believe that you can restore
the balance."

Toph shook her head. "That doesn't make sense. I mean, I know the history - Sozin
destroyed the Air Nomads, but the world didn't collapse because of that. It's not as if all the air vanished when the Air Nomads were wiped out. I
don't want the Fire Nation to conquer everyone, but it's not going to destroy the world."

"In that you are wrong," Kanna said quietly. "The Fire Lords' ambitions
know no bounds. When they struck at the Northern Water Tribes, they not only destroyed the civilisation there, they also attempted to kill the spirits Tui and
La, the Ocean and the Moon. The consequences had they succeeded would have been disasterous for all concerned. It was only with a great deal of luck that I was
able to save them and to spirit away a few survivors to a refuge near the South Pole." She chuckled drily. "That was a joke: 'spirit
away'?"

"Yeah, keep trying."

"For much of my life," Kanna continued, "I devoted my attention to repairing
the damage caused by the Fire Nation. I did not confront them directly - perhaps I was influenced too greatly by the customs of my own people, who believed
that women should use waterbending only to heal. I found the more confrontational ways of earthbending very difficult to learn and fire even harder. By the
time I was ready to study airbending, the Air Nomads had been extinct for almost half a century. Because of this, the Fire Lords have been free to ravage the
world for generations. When I finally challenged them, twelve years ago, I was too late. Too weak."

"And now you are the Avatar. Unlike myself and Aang, you have a warrior spirit, Toph.
Indomitable, irresistable. The world needs you to do what we could not."

Toph shook her head. "I don't know if you've noticed, but I'm not exactly
in fighting form."

"You did very well against Roku's descendant," observed Kanna.

"I lost. That's not good enough," Toph told her. "Unless you have any
ideas how to repair the damage to my chakras I won't be making the Fire Lord Ozai tremble in his pointy boots."

.oOo.

Mai stared down at Zuko. The prince had been stripped of his finery and chained to a wall in
one of the few stone buildings of the village. He had been kept sedated for several days, but the healers had warned that continuing doses would be damaging
and so Suki had decided to allow him to wake. In case he tried to break loose - and not only Suki but also several islanders familiar with bending had
questioned Mai intensively on his capabilities - two Kyoshi Warriors were assigned to guard him at all times.

She had not been trusted with that responsibility. Mai had barely left Toph's side,
sleeping on a mat in the same room where healers kept the younger girl under constant supervision. Toph had not woken in all that time, slipping into a coma.
None of the healers had been tactless enough to comment within Mai's hearing on the likelihood of Toph never waking, but Suki had relayed their estimations
with brutal honesty.

"Stop brooding about Toph," Suki ordered. Zuko was expected to wake at some point
that afternoon and the leader of the Kyoshi Warriors intended to interrogate him immediately, so she was waiting in the same building, taking the opportunity
to read reports from the various detachments around the island. "I know what the healers said, but I've sent word to some allies of ours. They have
excellent healers and I'm sure that they'll send someone able to help her."

Mai hmmed noncommittally and looked away. She would feel better if Suki was willing to tell
her who these allies were, but she supposed that it was too late to look for trust between the two of them. After a moment she looked again at Zuko. Stubble
was visible across his head but the locks that had been part of his topknot were still obvious in contrast. Mai could not think what he had been thinking to
start wearing his hair in that ridiculous fashion.

Because she was looking at him, she was the first to see his eyelids flickering.
"He's waking up," she warned and stepped back, allowing the two guards to stand ready with a clear field of view towards Zuko.

Nonetheless, when his eyes opened they focused almost immediately upon her. Emotions raced
across his face: shock, followed by joy and then bitter anger. Mai felt her own face stiffen into immobility in response. Carefully, testing his limits, Zuko
shifted to a sitting positon, grimacing when he realised that the chains were too short for him to be able to stand. Slowly, he looked around the room,
measuring all four of the Kyoshi Warriors.

"So you have me prisoner," he concluded. "What now? You must realise that you
have a dragon by the tail, safe only as long as you can hold on." He took a deep breath, centring himself and then caught Mai's eye. "Perhaps not
even then."

"I've given serious thought to killing you," Suki admitted candidly. "You
are Prince Zuko of the Fire Nation, or so I'm told. I've heard a great deal about your recent activities on the mainland. Most of it does not lead me
to believe that your death would be a tragedy."

"I thought I heard someone call Toph's name," Zuko noted, "Just
before I was knocked out. Is she alive too?"

There was a deadly silence.

"Thus far. No thanks to you," answered Suki.

"Wh-" Horrified realisation crossed Zuko's face. "That was her? Damn you
Mai, it wasn't enough that you'd betray m- your people, you dragged her into it. You let me fight her?"

"Let?" Mai asked, coldly. Mockingly. Was this the Zuko she thought she knew.
"You don't know Toph as well as you think, your highness."

"You should know," Suki added, taking the advantage of Zuko's consernation,
"That if Toph does die of her wounds I'll be burying you next to her." Her smile was horrible. "If I'm feeling merciful, maybe I'll
kill you first."

Zuko looked at her in surprise and then nodded his head slowly. "In that case, I offer
my services as a healer." His lips curled. "I certainly have ample motivation to want her to survive... and I'm a firebender. Treating burns is
something I'm used to."

Suki shook her head. "We'll see. For now, I have some questions for
you."
D for Drakensis

You're only young once, but immaturity is forever.

Hadn't thought about this before, but I assume she's not going to be going into the Avatar State until those chakras get fixed?

---

Pronounced "shy guy."

I spotted a couple typos,

Suki was waiting at the cock when the canoe arrived.

I don't know if Suki was supposed to be waiting at 'the rock' or 'the dock', but what you have currently is definatly wrong. 8P

When that didn't work, he opened his mouth and blew, trying to dislodge her but he had to stop when she refused and the pulling on his sensitive nose

looks like you're missing the end of the sentence.
___________________________
"I've always wanted to be somebody, but I should have been more specific." - George Carlin

Thanks for spotting those typos. And yeah, if Toph can't manage her own powerful chi right now then Supreme Cosmic Power isn't working either.
D for Drakensis

You're only young once, but immaturity is forever.

"What do you mean my cousin is missing?" Lu Ten demanded.

Zhao chuckled and poured himself another cup of tea. "Exactly what I said. Prince Zuko is missing, presumed... well. Missing. He and his
entire force disappeared almost without a trace."

Lu Ten reached over and forced the cup away from Zhao's lips. "Don't play games with me, Admiral. I can read your face like a
scroll. You have more information and I suggest that you share it before I decide that your withholding it is an indication of complicity."

"Well, since you're asking so nicely." Zhao relinquished the cup. "Patrols sent out to find Prince Zuko did find some of
the komodo rhinos that his soldiers had been mounted upon. They were roaming loose near the coast. The nearest village, some pathetic hamlet whose name I
forget, had been burnt almost to the ground and there was some evidence that two firebenders had duelled." He smiled. "I have ordered my men to
report any other information, but at this time... we must consider the possibility that your cousin is dead."

"An agni kai. Interesting," Lu Ten observed. If that was so then Zuko might well have been killed, but it was far less likely to be
the result of factional conflict within the Fire Nation than that a firebender would side with the Earth Kingdom. And while Zuko's skills were not on par
with Lu Ten's, he was nonetheless among the most powerful firebenders alive and escorted, at last report, by a score of elite soldiers.

The most likely explanation was that Zuko had been eliminated as part of a move against either Lu Ten or Azula. While the young prince had
not committed to either of them, his death would sow suspicion between them and if evidence were to appear painting one or the other as responsible then the
Fire Lord would almost have to take action.

And Admiral Zhao was almost certainly aligned with Azula. How truly good, Lu Ten thought drily. Any evidence that turned up would be used to
her advantage, not his. Well, there was more than one way to handle that.

"When you're done with your tea, Admiral," he ordered. "Detach a squadron and take control of the southern region again.
Turn every rock you have to in order to find my cousin, or his resting place. And that includes shaking down any remnants of the Water Tribes you can find. If
there's any resurgence of oppostion on either side of the Southern Ocean I want you to stamp it out."

Zhao's smile grew feral. Lu Ten knew that the Admiral had cut his teeth in the fighting against the Northern Water Tribe and had
campaigned vigorously for increased raiding against what little remained of the Southern Tribe. Until now, however, the Earth Kingdom had been the
priority.

"In your absence, those elements of the Southern Fleet still in the lakes will answer to me," Lu Ten added casually. The addition
would place more than half of the Fire Nation's Navy under his direct control, strengthening his own position.

The Admiral's eyes narrowed at that addition but the reasoning made sense: he couldn't pull most of his ships away from their places
blockading the lakes without undermining the overall strategy for Ba Sing Se, something that would cost him his rank, if not his head. And it was nonsensical
to think that he could direct operations here while he was in the Southern Waters.

"Of course, your highness," he agreed. "I'm surprised that you don't want to handle the matter
yourself."

"Tempting," admitted Lu Ten. "But I've spent my whole career with the Northern Fleet, whereas you know the area. No,
it's best overall for you to handle this. And you'll certainly seem more action down there than you'll find here."

Zhao laughed sharply. That was true, the Earth Kingdom had made no more than token efforts to contest the inland lakes that cut the continent
in half. "Of course. I will find your cousin, if I have to depopulate the whole south pole to do it."

Both men had already written Zuko off as dead.

.oOo.

The spirit world, in Toph's opinion, was very boring.

"What's taking so long?" she wondered out loud to Aang, who was trying to walk her through the basics of airbending. It was
proving challenging for both of them, since without her earthsense Toph simply couldn't tell what he was doing unless he was literally pressed against her
and she thumped him soundly any time he tried to manhandle her into position. Treating her like a doll was simply not acceptable. "Surely I should have
either died or recovered."

"I don't know," the youthful Avatar admitted. "If the lightning had struck any one of the other chakras, you would have
died almost instantly: the third chakra is the only one that can survive a strike by that much chi. If you'd been struck anywhere other than a chakra, the
lightning would have grounded itself through you - again, probably fatally since that would tend to take it through the fourth chakra, your heart. You need to
move more lightly on your feet. Stop putting your heels down."

"That puts me off balance," Toph protested, but she obediently rose up slightly, balancing on the balls of her feet. "So I got
hit the one place that wouldn't kill me. What's the problem?"

Aang hesitated before replying. "Well I only know the theory - Lightning is one of the most difficult forms of the firebending arts and
I never met anyone who had mastered it," he qualified. "But from what I understand, once the lightning wa there, you could have redirected it out of
you safely."

"It sounds like waterbending," Toph said, walking - mincing almost - through the kata that Aang was trying to instruct her in. It
didn't actually involve bending air, since she couldn't learn that in the spirit world, but he seemed to think that her defence could use the
help.

"You'd probably know more about that than I would," admitted Aang. "I never learnt how to waterbend. I barely mastered
airbending before I left the temple. I don't think you've quite got it. You're too stiff. Stay flexible, ready to move away before you're
struck."

"You must be wrong anyway, I never got any chance to redirect anything. The lightning fire hit me and -" she clapped her hands
sharply "- I'm in the Spirit World with you sneaking up on me."

"I was not. And you didn't have to hit me."

"Hah. Ask anyone who knows me and they'd tell you that you were just asking to get pounded, sneaking up on me. I bet that's why
Kanna sent you instead of coming for me herself."

Aang sounded dismayed: "She wouldn't do that!"

"Are you sure?" Toph grinned, knowing that she'd gotten under his skin. "You got set up, and you didn't suspect a
thing."

"You're wrong!"

Toph blew a raspberry. "Don't worry. I'm sure there's some nice girl here who'll cosset your delicate ego. Some girls
like gullible boys. Don't ask me why."

"You're wrong," Aang said sadly.

"I'm more of an authority figure on girls than you are, twinkle toes."

"Not that." She heard Aang turn away. "There aren't any girls in the Spirit World. Normal people are only here long enough
to be reincarnated. Only the past lives of the Avatars are here for long and none of them are anything close to my age. And most of them don't want
anything to do with me."

Toph judged by the sound of his voice where he was and stepped closer, leaning over him, both hands on his shoulders. "Why not?
You're a bit annoying sometimes, but you aren't a bad guy."

"Because it's all my fault," Aang said softly. "I ran away and let the Fire Nation do whatever they wanted. I didn't
have the courage to do my duty. Roku and Kanna are the only Avatars who'll have anything to do with me." He sounded on the brink of tears.

Toph frowned and then smacked him across the head. "You're a hundred and twelve years old," she reminded him. "Grow
up!"

"Ow!"

"Do you think any of them would have done any better? I know people who worship Kyoshi's sandals but I'll bet you she made as
many mistakes as a kid as any of us. But she didn't get handed the world on a handbasket and told to make it right when she was twelve years old! Sure, she
kicked Chin the Conqueror's butt - when she'd had years to learn and prepare! If you'd stayed where you were, the Fire Nation would have been there
long before you'd learnt anything more than you know now. You'd have been just another dead airbender!"

"But -!"

Toph squeezed him, careful not to crush his carotid or air pipe (assuming that she could do so at all in the spirit world, which she
didn't particularly care to find out). "You just remember this: most of them have been here hundreds of years. In all that time, you think no
one's come up with any new ideas? You probably know moves none of them have even heard of, or is that master's tattoo on your head just a
decoration?"

"I guess... maybe..."

"And let's face it. It isn't gonna be more than a couple of centuries, tops, before I'm here full time. I'm counting on
you to whip them into shape so I have an actual challenge."

.oOo.

In the end it was agreed that Zuko would be allowed to advise in Toph's treatment. Rather than release him however, Toph was carried to
the same building and placed in the same room. Suki also doubled the guards, just in case Zuko decided sacrifice his life in order to kill the girl he still -
as far as they could tell - did not know was the Avatar.

Zuko paid the guards as little attention as he would the servants of the Royal Palace back in the Fire Nation, directing Mai as she ground up
leaves for an aloe that Zuko thought might help with the burn. He himself admitted though that the direct damage caused by the lightning was a secondary
problem at this state. Toph's body was slowly starving despite the thin broth that the healers were feeding her on. His best guess was that the damage to
the chakra was impeding her ability to digest the food.

"Why did she challenge me?" Zuko asked quietly. "She had to know she wasn't going to beat me. She's brilliant - I
don't deny it - but she could never muster a knockout blow against me."

"I don't know," Mai replied, not looking up from the mortar and pestle.

"How can you not know?" he protested. "You were -"

"We'd split up," Mai cut him off. "Her orders... my orders... were to watch. Or listen, in her case. To find out if you
were a threat and to report. Not to take you on in some crazy duel."

Zuko glared at the back of her head. "You're the one who said you know her better than I do, guess!"

Mai paused in her grinding. "Maybe she thought you were being such a jerk that you needed your head rattled," she said venomously.
"Suki was quite thorough in going through all the towns you've burnt since we last met."

The prince's face paled in anger. "If you're going to lay blame, maybe you should remember that I thought I was avenging
you!"

"Well don't I feel special."

"Do you have any idea how much it hurt your parents to lose you? To lose Toph?" Zuko demanded.

Mai snorted derisively. "My parents have Tom-Tom, the son they always wanted. One surplus daughter and an adoptee will be forgotten
quickly enough."

"Funny, that's not the way it looked to me." He looked at her hands. "Is there some reason you stopped
working?"

She started grinding again, imagining that it was his face.

"You saw what your mother was like when Tom-Tom went missing. Well she was ten times worse when I came back without the two of you. Your
father had half the garrison digging through the hill - if he could have found an Earthbender he could trust he'd have had them there as well. When we
didn't find any trace of you..."

"Shut up."

"...she locked herself in her room for days. Your dad was trying to hold himself together for Tom-Tom, but I could see his heart break
every time your brother asked where you were. He'd stay up late, reading reports of what guerillas did to captive Fire Soldiers. Praying that you'd
died cleanly, that Jet hadn't got his hands on you..."

"Shut up!"

"Don't tell me to shut up!" Zuko roared, eyes blazing. The two nearest guards, who had been trying to pretend that they
weren't listening, wheeled as he pulled against his chains. "You tore the heart out of your own family for no reason that you're willing to tell
anyone! Your father told me that you went up that hill because your first loyalty as a fire maiden was to your family, and then you spat on that and
wa-"

There was a sharp crack.

"I left to save my sister's life," Mai told him, arm still poised from the slap. "From
you."

She stalked out of the room, leaving Zuko staring at her in mute incomprehension, fighting back the impulse to demand to know why she thought
he would kill Toph. Exhibit One was in the same room, after all.

"Wow, you Fire Nation guys are so smooth," one of the guards observed sarcastically. "I'm amazed you ever manage to have
children."

.oOo.

"Oyaji, I hope your allies haven't abandoned us," Suki told the old man as they stood outside the shrine. "The healers are
uncertain how long Toph will last."

"Do not fear," Oyaji assured her. "They are distant from us, and it will naturally take some time for them to receive the
news. I am certain that they will send us all the aid they can, however. I made it very clear that time is of the essence."

Suki nodded reluctantly. "It's hard to wait," she admitted. "Not being able to do anything..."

"You are doing something," the old man pointed out. "You're fretting. Everyone can tell that you are gravely concerned
about Toph."

"Not just her. The firebender as well," admitted the young woman. "What should I do with him? Sooner or later, someone is
going to come looking for him. As soon as they speak to one of the Chin Villagers, they will realise that we must be involved somehow."

Oyaji nodded. "That is a problem. Can you simply release him?"

"I don't think that that will protect us." She snorted. "We've injured the most sensitive part of him, his pride. I
fear he is the sort of man who would raise an army to take revenge upon us for the indgnity of being a prisoner, even briefly."

"Ah. Well, that leaves the other alternative."

Suki grimaced. "We'll have to ensure that no one ever finds him. The Fire Nation don't believe in much that I can think of, but
I'm sure that the Fire Lord would take a horrible revenge for the death of his son, just out of principle."

"And if the Avatar lives, as we all hope that she will?" asked Oyaji pointedly. "You are not the only one who has spoken to
your friend Mai. And don't deny that she is your friend. Only one close to your heart could have injured it so deeply with a lie. I have no doubt that you
- or she - could end Zuko's life while caught in the rage of grief. But to kill him, in cold blood? Harder. Much harder, even were I sure what Toph's
reaction would be."

"Don't underestimate any of us on that score," Suki told him. "Do you know what Mai's criteria was for her team when
they set off? Killers. Her, June, Shu-lin and even Toph. I don't think that it would be as hard as you imagine."

Oyaji's shoulders hunched in upon him, aware of the true question. "I know little of June, but it does not surprise me. Shu-lin...
there are often suspicions when a fisherman known to drink more heavily than is wise suffers an accident at sea. If it is true, then perhaps her father's
neighbours chose not to see other reasons for the occasion. Mai... well, you have told me what she reported and I did not see you disagree with her decisions
there."

Suki nodded reluctantly and turned to look back at the shrine. "And Toph."

"Suki, remember that Kiyoshi did not hesitate to kill Chin the Conqueror and she was far from the first Avatar to stain her hands in
performance of her duties. It saddens me to hear than a child of Toph's age has shed blood, but I am not truly surprised." He shook his head.
"You think that you understand what the war is like, but in your heart you do not. For Toph to have survived on her own is remarkable. To have survived
and remained entirely innocent would have been a miracle."

"I suppose you're right," Suki admitted.

They watched the sunsetting for a moment and then Suki squinted. "That's a funny shaped bird," she noted, pointing to the
south-west. "Have you ever seen one like that?"

The old man squinted. "I'm not quite sure I see... Wait, yes I have." He clapped Suki on the shoulder. "That's no
bird, it's our help arriving. Have the cooks drug Prince Zuko's food again - we don't want him learning that our allies even exist, much less any
details. Once he's out, bring Toph here."

Suki stared at him, half convinced that he was losing his mind.

"Stop dawdling," Oyaji demanded and ran into the shrine, leaving Suki little alternative but to shrug and obey.

.oOo.

"Toph," called Kanna. "It's time for you to go."

Toph sat up from where she was lying on the bank of a stream, her bare feet dangling in the water. "Finally. I was beginning to wonder
if I would ever get out of this dump," she said, waving one hand to indicate what Kanna personally considered to be a rather idyllic scene.

"I'm sure Aang will miss having you here," she told the girl encouragingly.

"I'm sure he won't miss the bruises," Toph snickered, sprining to her feet. "So, what tells you that my visit is
over?"

Kanna shook her head, knowing that the incorrigable girl would guess at the gesture. "A healer has arrived on Kyoshi Island to treat
you," she answered. "It's best that you return to your body now, so that you are there to awaken. If they try to force you to wake when your
spirit is not present, then it could endanger you."

"So they have a healer there to fix me up... and I have to be there or she might kill me by mistake. Lovely," Toph concluded
sarcastically. "I'll be sure to let them all know of your deep confidence in them." She sniffed at the air. "I don't smell Appa, so I
take it I'm not being flown there."

"Oh, but you are," Kanna smiled. "Appa seems curiously reluctant to carry you..."

"Because he's smarter than most," Toph noted smugly.

"...so I enlisted another to take you to Kyoshi Island." Kanna smiled serenely. "Please do not manhandle him, as you did
Appa."

"That depends on who..." There was a rumbling growl from far above Toph's head. "Oh I do hate you."

"That's nice, dear," Kanna smiled. "Say hello to Fang."

Toph looked upwards, in almost the right direction. "Hello Fang, hello Roku. I'm warning
you in advance that if either of you try carrying me anywhere in your mouth, I'm going to pull both your beards out."

"Why would I carry you in my mouth?" asked Roku from the back of his dragon
companion

"Just covering for all the possibilities," the girl told him and then stepped aside
sharply as Fang lowered his neck towards her. "No squashing me either."

The dragon growled softly, something that Roku had long since learned to recognise as the draconic
equivalent of a laugh and nudged gently at the girl.

Who promptly clutched at her head and fell over.

"Fang?" the one-time Avatar enquired with forced calm. "What did you just
do?"

Dragon's are not well-suited to looking sheepish but there was a general sense of such as Fang
shared an image of Toph and Zuko throwing fire at each other, overlayed with two roaring dragons.

"Ugh... weird shapes," Toph grumbled, rising to hands and knees as Kanna moved to assist
her. "What happened?"

Roku cleared his throat. "I fear that Fang was perhaps a little enthusiastic in greeting
you," he said a apologetically and reached down for Kanna to lift Toph up to him. "Did you see anything when he touched you?"

Toph moved her hand back and forth in front of her face, eyes not tracking it at all. "Is that
a good enough answer?" she asked snidely.

"I meant in your mind," the old Avatar explained, lifting her easily to sit before him on
Fang's neck. "Dragons speak directly from their mind to that of those they wish to address. I believe that he wished to deliver a compliment of sorts,
that you and my great-grandson fought like dragons." He did not feel that it would be wise to mention that Fang's implication had been 'like
mating dragons'. "However, for one unaccustomed to sight, it must have been disconcerting."

"That was sight?" Toph asked incredulously. She shook her head. "You can keep
it."

.oOo.

Mai eyed the white-haired woman suspiciously as Toph was carried into Kyoshi's Shrine on a
litter. Her face didn't suggest that she was much older, if at all, than Mai and her long, elaborately ordered ivory hair and dark skin made her look like
a reflection of the pale-skinned and raven haired fire maiden. Her heavy garments were a mix of blues and whites, the latter mostly fur and announcing her
origins more clearly than anything else: one of the Water Tribes, and clearly not the hidden band from the swamp.

But after generations of raiding outlying settlements and the all out invasion of the Northern
Tribe's citadel towards the end of Azulon's reign, the polar tribes had almost ceased to exist. Scattered groups were known to have withdrawn into the
interiors, away from the seas that allowed the Fire Nation to attack them but were also their principal source of food. This woman's appearance did not
speak of a hardscrabble survival however.

"You must be the Avatar's sister," she greeted Mai warmly. "My name is Yue. Oyaji
has told me much of you."

"Nothing good, I'm sure," Mai replied. "You can help her?"

"I hope so." Yue gestured towards a part of the floor. "Please place her here,"
she requested, unstoppering a waterbag.

Mai stepped back reflexively. "You're a waterbender?"

Oyaji placed one hand on her shoulder comfortingly. "The women of the Water Tribes learn to use
their waterbending skills to heal. Their abilities are unparalleled."

Water poured upwards out of the waterbag, forming what Mai could only describe as some kind of
floating puddle above Yue's hands. Kneeling over Toph, the water tribe woman brought the water down upon the savage scarring inflicted by Zuko's
lightning and it slowly sank into the girl's body, Yue closing her eyes in concentration.

"Is she bending water... inside Toph?" Mai asked, incredulously.

Oyaji nodded solemnly. "That is how they heal," he explained.

Mai could see by the expression on Suki's face that the other girl was thinking along the same
lines that she was, flinching at the thought but at the same time unable to stop considering how such a technique could be used as a weapon. Fire Nation
propaganda painted waterbenders as using their water like a whip, flogging ineffectually at armoured soldiers. This painted a very different picture
however.

The techniques might be too slow for use in open battle, but Mai could imagine dozens of ways that
it could be used in raids, harassments and assasinations: a perfect tool for a guerilla war. And the polar ice - or the depths of the Foggy Swamp - would put
all advantage in the hands of a flexible defense of that nature. Somehow, Mai thought, I don't think that the Water Tribes are going to be wiped out as
easily as the Air Nomads were.

Yue exhaled strongly and lifted her hands, drawing the water out of Toph. Mai could see that it was
stained, no longer as clear as it once had been. Rather than returning it to the bag, Yue let it spash into a basin and sat back on her heels. "The
physical damage is healing," she reported. "She will bear the scar for the rest of her life, but it is forming cleanly for the most part and I have
removed any traces of infection that I can find. As for the chakra within..."

She looked over at Mai. "I gather that something was done to her chakras before this injury?
What can you tell me about it?"

"I'm not a bender," Mai warned. "And I wasn't there, so all I know is what
Toph has told me."

"I understand," Yue nodded. "Tell me what you can."

"As I understand it, her parents disapproved of her bending. She said that they hired someone
to tamper with her chi, to prevent her from using it. It was done when she was asleep, so she doesn't know exactly what was done - I would guess something
involving pressure points but as I understand it, those would only have a temporary effect."

"Usually, yes," Yue agreed. "Most likely several techniques were used in combination.
What were the effects?"

"It didn't completely seal away her bending, but it weakened it considerably. She told me
it took as much afterwards to bend two handfuls of sand as it had before to throw boulders hundreds of yards. This was before we discovered she could fire bend
so I can't compare the other arts, but according to her firebending teacher, she was above average in her ability to control and sense fire, so I presume
that those were less affected."

"The third chakra, where she was struck, is sometimes referred to as the seat of power,"
mused Yue. "What you're describing would almost have to follow from some damage to it. Add in the attack and the Avatar is incredibly lucky to have
survived."

"Can you help her?"

In response, Yue lifted a second waterskin from the floor, this one more elaborately decorated, but
also carefully reinforced and with a far stronger seal upon the stopper"The only thing that I can think of that would is this: water from the Spirit
Oasis."

Oyaji exhaled. "I thought that it had been destroyed."

"It was," Yue confirmed. "My parents and the Avatar carried Tui and La south with
them and rebuilt it for them but it will take many more years before it we can impose upon them for more water. However, we also have a small supply of the
water from the original." She weighed it gently in her hands. "This is half of what we have left." Slowly she began to undo the seal. "I do
not know how potent it will be, but if this cannot heal the Avatar then nothing will."
D for Drakensis

You're only young once, but immaturity is forever.

Zuko groaned as he opened his eyes. His head was pounding as if he'd spent the night drinking, which certainly was not the case he
thought looking around the confines of his prison. A shock went through him, momentarily relegating his headache to secondary concern as he realised that the
pallet on the far side of the room was empty of Toph.

The guards were also reduced in number, with only two of them present: one by the door, the second watching him from but well out of his
reach. Neither of them looked as if they were going to be particularly forthcoming, but he wasn't overwhelmed with alternatives: "Where is Toph?"
he demanded as politely as he could.

Two pairs of eyes tightened but neither of the white-faced warriors said anything. Zuko dragged on the chains, trying to find enough slack to
stand. "Answer me!"

The door opened and Suki entered the room. "Stop shouting like a hog monkey," she ordered him, glaring and then looked over at the
nearest guard. "June, unchain him from the wall. He and I are going for a little walk."

"I'm not going anywhere until you tell me where Toph is," Zuko insisted, drawing back to block access to the pins that secured
him to the wall. Somewhere at the back of his mind, he knew he was being childish, but at the same time, it was the only bargaining tool that he
had.

The look that Suki directed at him was eloquent in how unimpressed she was with his attempt to negotiate. "You have exactly two
choices," she warned. "You can co-operate and walk out of here, in which case you'll get to see Toph today. Or you can continue to make a fool of
yourself, in which case you'll be dragged out of here to the nearest cliff and thrown off, in chains the whole time. Well?"

Zuko stared up at her for a few moments and then grudgingly moved aside. One of the guards - June, presumably - disarmed herself and moved
closer, watching him as if he were wild animal that might turn and bite her at any moment. She unlocked the chains one at a time, legs first and then arms,
ensuring that his ankles were still secured to each other, with just enough slack to walk; and his wrists although chained in front of him were loose enough
for comfort but not far enough for him to use more than a few of the easier firebending forms.

She saw him test his limits and her lips curled unpleasently before she propelled him towards Suki with a hard hand at the small of his back.
This close he realised that the make up disguised what would otherwise be prominent facial burns. "You aren't the first firebender I've had in
chains," she told him. "Don't make the mistake of thinking I don't know exactly what you can pull off with that much slack."

"Once burned, twice shy?" Zuko shot back and the extra force when she shoved him revealed that the needle had struck
home.

"Play nicely or you won't get to play at all," reprimanded Suki, although Zuko wasn't sure if she was talking to him or to
June.

Zuko blinked in the sunlight as he was escorted out of the building and he felt himself relax slightly, a tension that he had barely been
aware of fading at the gentle warmth. There were two more of the white-faced soldiers waiting for them and the squad paused to reorganise itself - a pair in
front of him and a pair behind while Suki walked beside him. None of them seemed inclined to say anything to him or to each other and Zuko took the time to
look around as they followed an uphill path.

The trees and other vegetation didn't seem very different from those near Chin Village so it would seem that he wasn't all that far
away. He'd been concerned when he guessed that he had been drugged - there was no way to know if he had been carried half way around the world as he slept
- but there was a good chance that search parties would find this place if it wasn't too far. Much as it would gall Zuko to require a rescue, it was
certainly preferable to some of the alternative outcomes. He hadn't seen any of these warrior women bending, other than Toph, and judging by their
movements he suspected that none of them were. If it weren't for the chains, five of them might not be impossible odds.

As the path wound its way through the trees Zuko saw glimpses of the sea. Coastal or an island then: even better. Most of the remaining Earth
Kingdom territory was inland, harder to attack without the fleet to provide logistical support to an army. That could be harder to escape from, but if he could
make his way to the water then it would be difficult for any earthbenders to contest with him. Of course, he was being marched away from it, but the
possibility remained.

"So what's the story with the face paint?" he asked after the silence began to become oppressive.

Suki looked sideways at him. "It's traditional amongst our warriors," she said shortly.

"So Toph's one of your warriors?" he asked. "Even in the Fire Nation, no one is called to military service until
they're fourteen."

The young woman glared at him for a moment. "Joining our number is an honour," Suki told him. "Not something that anyone is
called to except by their own heart. Toph's heart simply called rather louder that most's."

Zuko's gaze dropped to the floor, remembering Toph's laughing face as she practised in Omashu... and the tiny body laid on a pallet
opposite his prison. "Yes," he said when he was sure that his voice would not break. "It always did."

.oOo.

Although Zuko would have died rather than admit it, he was weary when the little column halted at the top of the hill. More than a week
chained to a wall with no chance to exercise had dulled his condition and he was painfully aware that it would probably take him twice as long to regain his
edge.

There was a simple building of stone and wood on the summit, its isolation speaking far more of its importance to these people than any
grandeur of design. Another village was visible in the distance, connected by another snaking path, and the sea was visible in that direction as well. Either
an island or a penninsula then.

Suki looked around the clearing and then pointed at a pine not far from the crest. "That will do," she said calmly, and peeled off,
heading for the building. The other four warriors led the captive prince over towards the tree, spreading out to watch him from all four directions.

"What are we here for?" he asked. "I thought you were taking me to Toph."

No matter which he looked at, impassive faces met his questioning stare, even June not smirking at his question. Turning towards the
building, he saw that Suki did not enter, instead pausing at the doorway and then stepping back to allow Mai to walk out and join her. The fire maiden was
wearing a well worn red and black outfit that Zuko recognised as the clothes she had worn when they fought Jet; and carrying a simple spade, clearly a
peasent's tool. Only as she came closer did he see that her eyes were red-rimmed although her composed face gave no other indication that she had been
crying.

Maybe she does feel guilty after all, he thought. Good.

Suki did not say anything as the two rejoined the group. Instead she took the spade from Mai and started marking out a rectangle on the
ground underneath the tree, perhaps three feet wide and - after a speculative look at Zuko - just about twice as long. She then returned the tool to Mai who
marked her own rectangle with what appeared to be less confidence than the auburn haired girl - not quite as wide and well over a foot shorter, no more than a
long stride from the first.

"Now," Suki said, holding the spade out to Zuko, handle first. "Start digging."

"You said you were bringing me to Toph," he replied, not accepting the tool. "Where is she?"

Suki scowled and he saw Mai turn her face away from them. "I told you that if you co-operated, you would see her today. Unless you would
rather take that final step I mentioned, in which case there is a suitable drop only a few minute's walk here. Over deep water, so once you sink no one
will ever find you."

They matched stares for a moment and then Zuko lowered his gaze, reaching out to take the spade. "So what, you want me to mark out
another rectangle?"

The women looked at him as if he were cretin. "No. Dig out the ones that we carved," Suki ordered. "I'll tell you when
they are deep enough."

Zuko frowned. What did they want a pair of pits for? And why make him dig them? Had they run out of men to boss around here or something?
With a grunt, he drove the spade through the sod and rapidly cleared the overlayer from first one rectangle and then the other. With that done he looked at
Suki but she gave no indication of satisfaction so he shrugged and started to dig deeper. He hadn't really thought that she'd be satisfied by
that.

It didn't take long for him to build up a sweat, but he stubbornly refused to rest. The sooner he was done, the sooner they'd take
him to Toph and he could find out what this was all about.

The smaller hole was waist deep when Suki called for him to stop digging. "That's deep enough," she told him. "Make the
other one a little deeper."

"And then what?" he asked. "You want me to do your laundry as well?" He scrambled out of the pit and then lifted the
spade again. "What do you need these holes for, anyway?"

The girls looked at each other and Suki sighed. "I'd have thought you would have remembered, Prince Zuko. This is the Earth Kingdom.
We bury our dead."

Zuko stared at the grave he had just dug in utter horror, realising the significance of its dimensions. His gorge rose at the thought of the
girl dead, of her cold body lying in it as earth was piled over her, food for worms. It was only after he was on his knees, dry heaving, that a second thought
struck him: 'if Toph does die of her wounds I'll be burying you next to her'
'you'll get to see Toph today'. The second, longer
grave would be for him.

"No."

"No?" Suki asked with malicious mildness. "Is something the matter, Prince Zuko? Your
accomodations not to your liking?"

Zuko looked up pleadingly. "I don't care what you do to me," he offered. "But
don't bury her. Toph was a firebender. Let me give her the rites she has earned."

"You are not in a position to bargain, your highness," Mai said coldly. "You struck
her down with lightning, which ended any rights you have towards her."

"I'm not bargaining," the Prince of the Fire Nation clarified, still on his knees,
lowering his face to the ground in supplication. "I'm begging you. Let me do her this one service before I die."
D for Drakensis

You're only young once, but immaturity is forever.

The guards were also reduced in number, with only two of them present: one by the door, the second watching him from but well out of his reach.

Missing a word when describing the location of the second guard.
___________________________
"I've always wanted to be somebody, but I should have been more specific." - George Carlin

"Mai," Suki said, "Toph is your sister. I will let you decide this."

Bitch. Mai would admit to herself - and maybe to Toph if it was possible - that she was conflicted
on what to do about Zuko. On the one hand, he was the boy who she'd liked since - perhaps before - he'd knocked her into a fountain trying to protect
her from burning fruit (long story). On the other hand he was the man who'd ridden across a sizeable chunk of the Earth Kingdom, punctuating the journey by
burning towns, to avenge her apparent death. Azula might have found that flattering, but Mai had to admit that it left her somewhat cold.

And then there was Toph. Who had seemed to quite like Zuko at Omashu, and had been electrocuted by
him at Chin Village. Oddly enough, Mai suspected that the young girl wouldn't have been as upset by the latter as Mai was. She couldn't imagine Toph
entering a fight without sublime confidence that she would triumph, however misplaced, or facing defeat with anything by a bloodthirsty enthusiasm to repay it
with interest.

Would Toph kill him?

Since leaving Omashu, Mai could recall weighing options on the arguements of 'What would Azula
do?' and 'What would Ty Lee do?' but this was the first time that Toph had entered into that line up. And there was something deeply unhealthy
about using your twelve year old sister as a moral compass, so she had better never mention this to anyone.

Toph would kill Zuko. But not like this. There would be fire, earthquakes and possibly
screaming. But not like this, with him grovelling in shame and apparently willing to die as long as some obscure point of honor was resolved to his
liking.

With a reluctant sigh, Mai walked over to Zuko and grabbed the loose locks of hair that had once
formed his topknot. "Stand up," she ordered abruptly, yanking him upwards. The clueless expression on his face wasn't half as cute as she had
thought when he was younger. "Just to make it official, I do not forgive you and I never will." She turned and started walking towards Kyoshi's
Shrine.

Bemused, Zuko looked after her. "What?"

Since Suki was too busy looking disappointed to answer, it was June who replied by prodding him
forwards. "Did you get dropped on the head when you were a child? Follow her."

He obeyed, trying to puzzle out what was happening. Zuko had expected either to be killed - because
he was damned if he was digging another spadeful now that he knew what those 'holes' were for, or to be allowed to send Toph to Agni properly by
cremation. He hadn't expected a... non-answer. Was he being taken to Toph's body or to a place of execution?

The door loomed large and he entered, the Kyoshi Warriors close behind him, then paused to let his
eyes adjust to the dimmer light inside. The single chamber was spartan, a handful of racks displaying items from the uniform of one of the warriors. The only
decoration was a large painting at the back, of what subject he could not tell at a glance.

Besides Mai the room had three occupants: an old man who seemed startled and concerned at his
presence, a white-haired woman who seemed surprised but not alarmed, kneeling over the pallet that held the last person.

"Toph?"

"You should not have brought him here," the old man declared angrily. He moved to block
Zuko as the prince strode towards the pallet only to find that an elderly man with no martial training isn't even an obstacle to a sixteen year old soldier
twice his side. Zuko brushed him aside without breaking stride and would have done the same with the woman, had she not moved aside to let him reach Toph.
Absently he noted that other than her hair she appeared to be little more than his old age, but the bulk of his attention was upon pink cheeks and half-lidded
eyes of milky jade.

"You've really let yourself go, Sifu Broody," Toph choked out. "I guess you need
me around to keep you on your toes."

"You crazy little fool," Zuko choked out and started hugging her against him in a most
embarassing fashion ignoring the affectionate way she was pummelling his ribcage and demanding to be released.

"Who is he?" Yue asked Mai, behind him.

She shrugged. "Her firebending teacher... and the one who nearly killed
her."

"He should not be here!" the old man said, apparently in the belief that no one had heard
him the first time. "What were you thinking, Suki?"

The Kyoshi Warrior looked down at Zuko and Toph for a minute before turning to him. "I'm
thinking that he's a man, not a monster, Oyaji. A man who's made his mistakes, perhaps, but also a man who was willing to face up to them out
there."

"Do you think that that matters? You know what he could bring down upon us."

"If he does so, then in a number of ways it would because we - because I have not acted justly
towards him," Suki told him. "I'm beginning to suspect that Kyoshi would not have approved of what I just did to him."

"I take it that it has something to do with the chains he's wearing?" asked Yue,
eyeing Zuko with new suspicion at learning he was a firebender.

Briefly, Suki outlined how she had tested Zuko, and his response. Yue's face tightened as she
listened and then she shook her head. "I know little of the Avatar Kyoshi," she admitted, "But I think that the Avatar Kanna would have been
furious at treating anyone like that." Only Toph noded Zuko's ears pricking at the use of the name.

"You knew her?" Suki asked. "You would have only been a little
girl?"

"She was close to my parents," Yue reminded her. "And she always had time for
children. Looking back, I think she regretted most that her duties had kept her from being a mother herself. Mother told me once that she had spoken at times
of a man in her past, a waterbender named Pakku, but that would have been before she learnt that she was the Avatar."

With a grunt, Toph finally managed to wriggle free of Zuko. "Well some Avatar's have
kids," she told them. "Roku did."

"So did Kiyoshi," confirmed Oyaji. "She was my great-great-great-great
grandmother."

"Really? I wonder if that make's you two relatives?" Toph asked, looking between the
old man and Zuko.

"Why would it make us relatives?" Zuko asked, while Oyaji spluttered at the very notion.
"I'm absolutely certain that I'm not descended from Kiyoshi. I'm sure it would be a very great honour," he added quickly, "Although
one I wouldn't want to advertise in the Fire Nation, but -"

"Not Avatar Kiyoshi," Toph told him smugly. "Avatar Roku. He told me himself
he was your great-great grandfather."

Zuko stared at her for a moment. "Uh, Toph, he's been dead for... about a hundred and
twelve years.How could he tell you anything?"

She waved her hand casually. "I was in the spirit world for -" She broke off as the sudden
alarm in four hearts caught her attention. "Ah... I hadn't had a chance to mention that yet."

"The... spirit world?" Zuko asked cautiously. "Toph are you sure that you weren't
dreaming? No offense, but I know one of my ancestors -" He paused, looked at Yue and shrugged resignedly. "I'm Sozin's
great-grandson and I'm reasonably sure he'd never have allowed a marriage between the royal family and the family of an Avatar."

Mai rolled her eyes. "Setting aside Toph basing her arguement on information received in the
Spirit World, Sozin died quite a long time ago. He probably had no say in the matter."

"He died after Lord Azulon was married," Zuko told her definitely.

"Well who would that leave as a possible connection?"

Zuko's face went red. "You're saying that my
mother...?"

"It isn't exactly an insult around here," Suki told him sharply. "The Avatar
Kyoshi created this island as a sanctuary for her people. You're standing in a shrine to her memory. You firebenders may object to the Avatars preventing
you from pillaging your way across the world, but the other nations appreciated it."

"And look where it left you," Zuko argued. "So weak that without the Avatar you were
helpless. At least the Fire Nation stands on its own two feet!"

"I'm sure that that really helps when you're beating up twelve year olds," Suki
told him irritably. "Do you want to go back outside and finish what we were doing? Mai seems to think you should have a second chance, but you're
right on the edge of using that up."

Zuko froze. Mai had given him a second chance?

The girl interpreted his expression correctly and her lips thinned. "Don't mistake it for forgiveness," she told him
harshly.

"I see." He lowered his gaze and then his eyes narrowed. "Wait, a twelve year old?" He turned to Toph. "It's
only been a few months since Omashu..."

"I guess," the little girl said cheerily. "I can't read a calendar."

"You lied?" Zuko demanded in disbelief. "You're twelve years old?" Reaching down, he grasped Toph by her upper arms.
"Toph, tell me that you aren't an earthbender," he pled, panic rising.

"Don't tell him!" Oyaji blurted.

There was a disbelieving silence as everyone stared at him.

"Great denial," Mai deadpanned.

.oOo.

"So what happens now, Spiky?" Toph asked, after Yue had shooed everyone out of the shrine
to let Toph rest. The waterbender had also tried to persuade Mai to leave but had finally found something colder and frostier than the centuries old ice of the
south pole and had eventually settled for Mai's agreement not to let Toph overexert herself.

The older girl sat crosslegged at the head of the pallet, her fingers meticulously untangling
Toph's hair from the knots that had managed to form since the girl awoke. "We can't stay here, little sister."

Toph grinned. "Getting bored already?"

"Yes," admitted Mai unabashedly. "But more importantly, there will be search parties
for Zuko, if they aren't here already. And now that he knows that you are the Avatar, we cannot allow him to be found."

"You think he'd try to kill me?" Toph asked thoughtfully, apparently
unconcerned.

"No," Mai answered. "But I believe that he would try to imprison you. To prevent you
from threatening the Fire Nation's agenda. He would probably tell the Fire Lord that killing you would simply result in the birth of a new Avatar, but that
holding you captive renders you harmless."

Toph hunched in on herself. "Keeping me in a box like Bumi," she said.
"'Protecting me' the way my parents did."

Mai continued to run her fingers through Toph's hair. "I said that he would try," she
said, emphasising the last word. "If we give him the chance to."

"You have some sort of devious plan," concluded Toph, slowly relaxing. "So what do we
do?"

"After your secret adventure in the Spirit World, maybe I should keep it to myself?"
suggest Mai, tugging lightly on a lock of hair.

"Look, it's not my fault that you weren't there when a huge sky bison carried me
off."

"No, but it was your idea to challenge Zuko to an Agni Kai," Mai said harshly, the words
slipping out. "Do you have any idea how close you came to dying?"

Toph crossed her arms across her chest. "I'm not a little girl," she warned. "I
knew what I was doing."

"Our orders were to investigate and to report," Mai reminded her. "Not to get into a
fight."

"I was investigating," Toph shot back. "I was investigating why Sifu was being a
colossal idiot."

"And I suppose throwing rocks at him helped with that?"

"Do you know a faster way into his head than cracking it open?"

Mai couldn't help but smirk at that. "He has a very thick skull," she said at last.
"But don't you ever do that again. I'd have smacked you around the head if you'd won, for being so reckless."

Toph reached up and caught hold of her sister's hands, stopping them from combing for a moment.
"I can't promise you that," she said seriously. "I'm the Avatar. I believe that now. And that means that I'm going to be doing
dangerous things."

"I didn't come with you because I thought it would be safe," Mai reminded her.
"Just remember to invite me along next time."

"That depends. Are you going to invite me along on this clever plan of
yours?"

Mai grinned. "Well, just remember, you're the one who wants to be part of
this."

"I don't like the way that you're saying that," said Toph
warily.

"Yue invited us to come and stay with her," Mai explained. "And if we take Zuko along
with us, then we can be sure that he isn't getting up to any mischief - he'd be hard pressed to bend all that much fire when he's surrounded by
mile after mile of ice, and there will be a whole tribe of suspicious waterbenders on hand to keep him under control."

"Mai, you are a brutal, nasty woman and I am so proud that you are my sister," Toph
smiled. Then her face scrunched up. "Wait, when you say ice, you mean covering the ground, right?"

Mai smirked. "The south pole is a huge mass of ice floating on the sea," she explained.
"There's no earth for hundreds of miles and it's so cold you'll have to wear furs and boots or you'll start freezing
yourself."

"I hate it already."

"Just think of it as an incentive to master waterbending," Mai told her.

.oOo.

"Is that a sky bison?" Zuko asked in astonishment.

"A sky... oh hell no! I'm walking," Toph protested, backing up.

Yue frowned. "I thought that you had ridden a sky bison in the Spirit World, Avatar Toph,"
she pointed out. "And the south pole is across the ocean, you cannot walk there."

"Firstly, yes I did: why do you think that I want to walk? Secondly, I can waterbend enough to
walk on water, I think."

"I thought that they were extinct," Zuko murmered, not paying any attention to the two
women's conversation.

"Yes, yes, sky bison and dragons, that makes two species your people have tried to
exterminate," Toph called to him. "If you guys go after the badgermoles then I'm going to go all Avatar on you." She could hear the way his
heart beat, the way his breathing altered in response to the fear that washed over him and frowned. "That was a joke. Well, sort of. I'd certainly do
something about it."

"You can't walk across the ocean to the south pole," Yue insisted. "It's too
far."

She's stubborn enough to try, Mai thought. "Toph, by the time you found the South Pole
we'd have all died of old age. There aren't any landmarks out there for you to navigate by."

Toph looked honestly surprised - proof of her growing skills as a liar. "There
aren't?"

"You've tried navigating in the water before," Mai reminded her. "It was amusing,
but this isn't the time. Get on the flying buffalo."

"Bison."

"Whatever."

Toph mumbled something and then walked over to the bison. "What's his name?" she
asked, touching his side and then walking along him, one hand running through his winter coat of hair.

Yue smiled angelicly. "He's called Kuku. He likes being rubbed under the jaw," she
added tolerantly.

"Thanks," said Toph and then grabbed hold of the corner of Kuku's mouth and pulled his
head around to face her. As the bison's head was significantly larger than her, she had to use both hands. "I know you understand me Kuku, so no
playing a dumb animal. The first time you dangle me from your horns will be the last? Got that?" Kuku mooed tolerantly and Toph nodded. "Great,
pleased to meet you," she said and gave him a good rub under the jaw.

"You have a unique way with animals," You told her in a strangled voice.

"It only works with those smarter than the Boulder," Toph confessed and then grinned.
"Fortunately, most mussels are smarter than he was."

Zuko looked intrigued. "Uh... was?" he asked cautiously.

"What?"

"You referred to the Boulder in the past tense," Mai explained. "He's asking if
the Boulder is dead."

Toph rubbed her face with the heel of her hand. "You couldn't have just said that?"
she asked the prince. "Yes, he's dead."

"You're sure?" Zuko asked brightly.

"Your highness," Mai said icily. "I'm sure that a man of your military experience
can work out that there are only two possible individuals in the world who would have made sure of that." She rested one hand on Toph's shoulder.
"And I didn't."

Zuko's face went red, then an unpleasent shade of green, and at that point he decided that he
had pressing business on the other side of Kuku and went off in pursuit of it. Of course, then he had to join Mai and Toph in the saddle, so it didn't help
him very much.

"Oh stop that," Mai said irritably. "If you're going to jump off and kill
yourself, we aren't high enough off the ground yet and we aren't going to let you run away, so stop looking like you're about to throw yourself off
the saddle."

"It's quite alright to be nervous, your highness," Yue said formally from where she
was sitting crosslegged on Kuku's neck. She snapped the reins lightly and with a mild "Yip, yip," prompted the sky bison to lumber forward a few
steps and then rise steadily into the sky.

Mai looked over the side of the saddle with detached interest at the bird's eye view of Kyoshi
Island. It was somewhat... not interesting, but novel. She noted that Zuko was very determinedly not looking down and on impulse asked Yue: "What would
happen if someone fell from here? Assuming they landed in the water, I mean."

"Oh it wouldn't make any difference," Yue said calmly. "From this height,
they'd be falling so fast that hitting the water would be as bad as hitting a thousand yard deep iceberg." She looked back and added kindly,
"Don't worry, it would take so long to fall the distance that there would be plenty of time for Kuku to dive down and catch
you."

Neither Toph nor Zuko seemed greatly comforted.

.oOo.

The cold winds of the southern oceans were an unpleasent surprise to the three first time visitors.
Toph and Mai pulled on the robes of their Kyoshi Warrior uniforms over their everyday clothes and still shivered. Zuko, who simply had no other clothes with
him, made do with a thick blanket and almost constant meditation to keep his internal temperature up.

"This isn't cold," Yue said in bemusement. She hadn't even bothered to don the
heavy parka that was rolled up in a bundle at the back of the saddle and was behaving in general as if she was enjoying a balmly summers day. "It's
just getting comfortable again after that hothouse weather Kyoshi Island has."

The three 'northerners', not that they had previously grouped themselves that way, stared at
her. Kyoshi Island was pleasently temperate at best. "We're going to need warmer clothes," Mai told her. "Much
warmer."

Yue nodded. "There's a small village not that far onto the ice, I used it as a waypoint on
my journey north," she offered. "We can get you furs there. Until then I suggest that you huddle together and try to stay out of the
wind."

Mai looked at where Toph was already pressed against her side. It wasn't clear yet what the long
term effects of the spirit water had been, Yue had forbidden any active bending until the chakra had had time to stablise, so the smaller girl could not warm
herself the same way that Zuko could.

"I mean, all of you," Yue added, looking back towards Zuko, who was sat on the far side of
the saddle, which meant that his feet were within inches of Mai's. "When it comes to sharing body heat, you probably have more to offer than the rest
of us, Prince Zuko. Sit next to Toph."

"Don't have any sudden impulses towards martyrdom," Mai warned the young man as he
grudgingly crawled across Kuku's back and sat gingerly next to Toph. She hated the way that she could feel Toph relax slightly at the addition of another
warm body, although young earthbender remained loyally pressed against her.

"You tested that out of me back on Kyoshi," Zuko said tiredly.

"And you were willing to die if it meant doing what you thought was honorable," pointed
out Mai bleakly.

"Murdering someone in their sleep -"

"Oh yeah, like you could do thatt," gibed Toph from the middle of them. "Spiky, if
Broody gets even slightly aggressive back there, I'll know. Trust me. Broody, shut up and make with the heating. You're supposed to be warming me up
back there."

"Agni preserve me," Zuko muttered. "I never met the real you at
all."

"You met part of me," Toph allowed, still not turning to face him. Although there would
have been little point in doing so, from her perspective. "More of me than my parents cared to meet. Now you get to meet the rest of
me."

"I feel so lucky."

Yue laughed musically from Kuku's head.

.oOo.

"There it is," Yue called, pointing ahead where the horizon was beginning to show as a
line of white.

"Land?" Toph asked hopefully.

"Icebergs," the waterbender corrected. "What passes for the shore of the south polar
is mostly made up of icebergs. As we go further and further south they'll get larger and larger until they all merge into one."

"I don't think I've ever come across ice," Toph mused. "It's an odd idea,
solid water. What does it feel like?"

"There are lots of different forms of ice," Yue told her. "Much like earth, I
suppose. It's cold of course, and hard. Sometimes it's smooth, but it can also be rough. And then there's snow, which is soft and feathery, wet and
-"

"Cold?"

"Yes," Yue chuckled. She reached out with one hand and felt for moisture in the air.
"Here, I'll let you find out for yourself," she told Toph and condensed some of the moisture into water and then into ice. She passed the more or
less egg-sized chuck of ice back to Mai, who winced and dutifully handed it on to Toph.

The blind girl ran her hands over it enquiringly and then sat up, to rub it across the sole of one
foot. "Ouch, that is cold," she admitted. "It's turning back into water though. Is that normal?"

"When it warms up," Mai told her. "You're probably holding it too close to
Zuko," she added, indicating the sleeping firebender.

"So he's not just a bedwarmer, he's an ice melter?" Toph asked and was intrigued
by the way that both Mai and Yue choked. A thought crossed her mind. "Where did you get this from? Did it fall out of the sky or
something?"

"No, the air is damp enough that I was able to pull water out of it and freeze it," Yue
explained.

"And you can do that in reverse?" probed Toph.

"Of course. It's one of the most common used for waterbending - most of our construction
techniques revolve around it. Why do you ask?"

"And there was water in the air?" Toph said, ignoring the question.
"It's not rain or anything like that?"

Yue gave her a blank look, then remembered that Toph couldn't see her. "No. Is there a
problem, Avatar?"

"So water becomes solid when it's colder and stops being sold when it's warmed up? And
water can be in the air..." Toph mused. "No, no problem, just about half my ideas about how waterbending works are wrong but that," she decided,
"Is totally awesome. Because it's giving me whole new ideas about what I can do with it. Now I really want to learn it."

"You're thinking of mayhem, aren't you?" Mai said resignedly. Even the prospect of
being able to see in whatever icy hellhole they were heading for hadn't aroused this much enthusiasm in her sister.
D for Drakensis

You're only young once, but immaturity is forever.

The water tribe village was tiny. Mai thought at first that it was simply a temporary camp - crude ice walls around tents built over simple
wooden floors. But the populace evidently weren't a fast moving hunting group - out of the dozen or so adults, more than half were clearly elderly and only
one of them was male. The population was filled out by a more or less equal number of children.

"Princess Yue," called man raising one arm in greeting as Kuku set down in almost belly deep snow. He was tall and lean, cutting an
impressive figure in blue dyed furs, dark hair bound up in a topknot. Were it not for his blue eyes and dark skin, he would have fit seamlessly into any any
circle of Fire Nation military officers. "You've returned sooner than expected. I hope that your patient is well."

"She is well," Yue replied pleasently and looked back at her passengers. "My friends, I would like to introduce my good friend
Chief Bato of the Southern Water Tribe. Bato, I would like you to meet Mai, Zuko and Toph."

"Princess?" Mai asked curiously.

Yue made a face. "My father, Arnook, is Chief of the Northern Water Tribe who relocated here. It doesn't really matter since the
title isn't hereditary, but it doesn't stop people from calling me a princess or trying to pair me up with Bato as some sort of symbolic unification of
the tribes."

Bato shrugged. "I keep telling you, Princess. If you want to quiet the gossips then find yourself a young man."

"It doesn't quiet them that you're out here with your harem of war widows," Yue smiled, "So I have my doubts. I'm
afraid my companions had to leave their current residence without winterwear. I'm sorry to impose..."

The man waved his hand dismissively. "Yue, your father is an interfering busybody, but you are an ornament upon the Water Tribes and any
service I can do you is a delight. I'm quite sure we can outfit the three of them for a trip south." He looked up at them all measuringly. "Come
into the village and enjoy our hospitality for the night."

"Ground? Great!" Toph said and made to jump off Kuku, only to be restrained by Mai catching hold of the back of the green
dress.

"Toph, you aren't getting off the bison until you have boots on," she declared flatly. "I've heard about frostbite and your feet
won't see anything every again if all the flesh on them is frozen solid."

Yue stood up to help Mai restrain the headstrong girl. "Could you bring some boots first, Bato?" she requested urgently.

Toph struggled - more out of principle than any desperate need to reach the ice, which would be a poor substitute for honest ground - to
escape. "It can't be that bad," she protested.

"It's as bad as fire in its way," Zuko said quietly from where he was sitting. "Veterans call it iceburn. There's a
reason that our soldiers cover every bit of their bodies when they enter cold climates."

"Really?" Toph relaxed suddenly and Yue let go of her, reassured. Mai, better acquainted with her sister, did not but for once Toph
was not feigning her switch of attention. "Is it quick?"

"I've never seen it myself, but it is said that a few moments can cause crippling injuries. Even brief contact can cause serious
damage unless it is treated immediately," Zuko said, not looking up.

"What sort of injuries?" Toph asked curiously.

"Mildly?" Zuko asked. "Scarring and loss of sensation in the exposed part of the body. At worst? Quite often they become
infected and have to be amputated. A lot of soldiers lose noses or fingers after serving in this part of the world."

Toph looked genuinely impressed. "I'm gonna have to figure out how to do that to people," she observed. Yue looked genuinely
appalled. "Bad people," Toph clarified. "People who deserve fates worse than death."

"Here," Bato called from below Kuku. Apparently he had hurried, or Toph had been more distracted by the prospect of burning people
with cold than she had expected. A boot came sailing up over the side of the saddle, followed by the partner. "They should be around the right size, if
not we can pad them."

Yue passed the boots to Toph and then jumped down to talk urgently to Bato in a low voice, obviously unaware that the blind girl couldn't
have failed to overhear her if she had been trying to. Which she was, because hearing a recital of the scandalous history of the three people still on Kuku -
or as much of it as Yue knew - was boring. Bato's reactions weren't all that much more interesting although she was pretty sure that he was genuinely
not romantically interested in Yue.

Instead, she wrestled the unfamiliar footwear on. And then off again, because she figured that they were so uncomfortable that she must have
them on the wrong feet, and Mai hadn't said anything because she thought it was funny. However, the other way around was worse and with a deep feeling of
despair, Toph accepted that the previous discomfort was the normal sensation of wearing boots and stripped them off again.

"Are you going to keep playing with them until the sun sets?" Mai asked, her voice bored.

"It won't set for months now," Zuko told her. "It happens when you're too far north or south. I think these parts of
the world are broken some how."

Mai thought about that and then decided not to as it was making her head hurt. "The question stands."

Somewhat unsteadily, Toph stood up with her feet inside the boots. "I can't feel anything at all through these," she warned and
then clambered over the side of the saddle and slid down Kuku to the snow. She sank past her knees into the snow and was glad that the boots were long enough
to reach the bottom of her pants. Spirits, the stuff was cold!

Not known enitrely waht she was looing for, she reached out the way she had for water, back on the beaches of Kyoshi Island. This was water
too, so it shouldn't be so very different. Harder with cloth and fur between her and it, but not different. Not entirely.

Snow was ice, she realised in surprise. Tiny little flakes of it. Different arrangement, same thing. About as distinct from the almost
rock-like chunk of ice that Yue had given her, as sand was from good honest stone but on a very fundamental level the same thing. She stomped her foot her foot
experimentally.

"If your bending talent burns out becauuse you push it, I'll let Ty Lee pick your wardrobe," Mai warned her dispassionately,
landing in the snow next to Toph. Everything that Toph had heard about Mai's other friend suggested that this would result in pink. From the way that Mai
used the word, it was unclear if she meant the colour or some other meaning of the word. Maybe a fruit, like an orange.

Toph shook her head. Focus. What had it felt like when she stamped? She did so again.

"What's she doing?" asked Bato from somewhere.

"Bending," Mai replied.

The water tribesman sounded puzzled. "Bending what? Nothing's happening."

"Herself, for all I know," said the fire maiden with a bored look on her face.

Yue pinched the bridge of her nose. "Toph, I told you not to bend until I was sure that your fourth chakra had recovered.

"I'm not sure where you got the idea that I take orders from you," Toph told her. "I'm grateful and all that, but
giving up bending is a bit much."

Yue's eyes tightened. "If your ability to bend is permenantly impaired," she pointed out angrily. "The consequences would
be dire. I am telling you this for your own good."

"That was what my parents said when they tried to permanently obliterate it," Toph retorted hotly, the snow melting slightly around
her. "I'll decide my own good from now on."

"Toph," Mai observed. "It may not be your own good to firebend on ice that's floating on very deep
water."

The avatar paused, nodded, and stepped away from the puddle that she had inadvertantly created. "I'll listen to suggestions,"
she said in grudging concession.

.oOo.

Zhao stared through the telescope. "Well, well, well," he mused triumphantly. "And I thought that there wouldn't be any
excitement down here."

The Fire Nation Admiral's squadron were drifting south, carried by a current that they had learned off from a captured Water Tribe map.
From long experience, Zhao knew that the smoke from his ships while under power could be detected before he could reach his targets. Where possible, he would
use the engines only in darkness where the columns of smoke were almost undetectable, but it was the wrong time of year and so he was letting the elements
carry him closer, until there would be no time to react when he raised steam.

And what a prize there was, Zhao chuckled. The huge creature outside the pathetic water tribe village had to be a sky bison. There hadn't
been a confirmed sighting in decades but there had been rumours for years that a few remnants of the Air Nomad's favored mounts had survived in remote
areas. And if the Water Tribe village knew where one was, they might know where to find more.

Sky Bison weren't exactly prey on a level with Dragons, but since the 'Fire Lord' Iroh had inconsiderately killed the last
Dragons when Zhao was a boy, he'd settle for this. The fur would make an excellent trophy and if any of the water tribe women were captured, it would be an
even better bed for demonstrating his domination of their people on.

"Signal the other ships," he ordered. "We have a target and for the moment, they haven't spotted us."

The captain standing on the bridge gestured sharply and a signaller started forming small flames inside a specially shielded lantern, each
little sequence of fire bursts signifying a particular code phrase. "If I'm any judge of the weather, it appears that there will be a heavy mist
rolling in," he told the admiral. "That will cover our approach."

"Good. Very good. Four ships will hold back as a reserve in case this is some kind of trap," Zhao decided. "We'll take the
other two ships in. There can't be more than a couple of dozen warriors in a small village like that, and three ships will be more than enough to overwhelm
that."

"As you command, Admiral," the captain agreed, following rules one and two of 'dealing with Zhao', as passed down in the
oral tradition of the Fire Nation Navy: 'use his rank, a lot' and 'never argue with him'. "What formation would you
prefer?"

"Are you an idiot?" Zhao sneered. "Trident formation, of course. I will lead our warriors directly into the village while
those of the other ships encircle it, to capture those who turn and flee." He slapped the rail. "It's been too long since we reminded these
savages of the might of the Fire Nation. They've grown complacent, building one of their villages here on the sea."

"And if they have information regarding Prince Zuko, Admiral?"

Zhao chuckled. "Do you really think anyone cares about one inconsequential princeling? Everyone knows that he wasn't as strong as
his sister or his cousin. Either one of them got their claws into him and the other reacted, or perhaps Ozai himself decided to get rid of an incompetent. In
either case, no one wants him found." He looked through the telescope again. "No, we're just here to make a show of searching for the little lost
prince, and because Prince Lu Ten wants to gain every last bit of glory he can at Ba Sing Se to counter Princess Azula's triumph."

.oOo.

Zuko was taking great comfort in the small blaze that crackled at the centre of the tent that the travellers had been loaned. In these frosty
climes, the smoky fire needed almost constant attention to keep it alive, fed with scraps and only the most useless of waste, so most tents only had lanterns.
Those would not suffice for warmblooded visitors however, and allowance was made for what was obviously a sign of weakness in the eyes of the village
women.

"Benders and their elements," Mai sniffed but she didn't make more than the barest pretense that she wasn't as glad of the
source of heat as any of the rest of them. Toph had stripped off the hated boots at the first opportunity and was sitting with her feet pointed towards the
fire, close enough to risk a scorching.

"We'll have to stay a little longer than I hoped," Yue said, laying down the bundle of possessions that she had carried from
Kuku. Bato had been erecting a tent around the animal to shelter him while he rested, not willing to assume that the creature's long winter fur would be
enough protection for the rare sky bison. "There's a mist rolling in, and flying over ice can be dangerous enough when it's
visible."

"What's so dangerous about it?" asked Mai and since it was she asking, rather than Toph, Yue concluded that it was a genuine
desire to understand rather than cocky derision.

"Ice formations can be deceptive. Without a frame of reference, it's easy to assume that something is large and distant when
actually it's much smaller, but right in front of you. Kuku has good instincts, but he isn't infalliable about these things." Yue shrugged.
"Besides, he is tired and while we could press on, I think a night out here will let you acclimatise before it gets really cold."

"Really cold?"

"Oh yes," Yue nodded regretfully. "This is fairly mild. If it weren't for the fire nation, most of the tribe would be
living here on the coast. As it is, we have to make our homes further inland. Even we find it chilly."

Zuko shivered and drew a blanket closer around his shoulders. "Being buried alive on Kyoshi Island is sounding better and better,"
he muttered.

"It's not too late to throw you into the sea," Mai offered coldly. "From what you said about frostbite, that should kill
you almost instantly."

Toph picked at her nose. "That was cold, Spiky." She examined the tip of her finger, before flicking the residue into the
flames.

The flap of the tent pushed aside and Bato stepped inside, his face grim. "There are fire nation ships in the area," he told them.
"You'd better leave, even if you have to do so on foot.

"What?" she called, but he had left again. "Get packed up," the waterbender ordered, and pushed out of the the flap
herself, not waiting to receive confirmation from the three northerners.

Zuko started obediently shuffling into the parka that Bato had offered him in loan, mind churning. If Fire Nation ships were
near...

"You're thinking about running," Toph told him flatly, as she wrestled the boots back onto her feet.

"If they picked me up then they would have to leave, to take me home," offered Zuko weakly.

"At best they'd send one ship back with you while the others keep coming," Mai contradicted. "Particularly once you tell
them about Toph. No Fire Nation commander would pass up the chance to capture the Avatar."

"I..." Wouldn't tell them? But it's my duty! Why wouldn't I tell whoever isn't in command there about Toph being
the Avatar? "I..." Capturing the Avatar would make my name, make father proud of me. But she's not just the Avatar, is she? She's also
Toph.

"It's touching that you'd hesitate about it, Sifu Broody," Toph told him, "But it isn't getting your clothes on.
And if I have to drag you, I'm going to be rough about it."

"You seem to forget who lost our Agni Kai," snapped Zuko angrily, rising to his feet.

"And you 'seem to forget' who wound up being chained up afterwards," Mai cut in. "You're in just as much danger as
the rest of us, your highness. Chances are pretty good that the soldiers on that ship will notice you're a man in blue furs a lot sooner than
they'll notice that you don't look all that much like one of the water tribe an it'll be hard for anyone to tell the difference once you're a
charred corpse on the ground."

Zuko blanched and made to remove the parka.

"Uh-uh," Toph told him, smacking his hands as she clambered to her feet. "If I have to suffer in this then so do you."
She had almost crawled into her own parka, which was clearly too large for her, hanging to her knees and covering her hands entirely.

"How can you tell what I'm doing?" he protested, conceding for the moment.

"I'm blind, not deaf. And this wood is so old it's almost as solid as rock," Toph told him. "Earthbender, remember?
Everytime you shift posture it's sending vibrations through the boards. Granted, wouldn't mean much to most, but I've had a lot of
practise."

"If you two benders are done exchanging notes, we need to go," Mai told them and pushed her way out of the tent.

Toph yelped an incoherent protest and barrelled after her, almost getting tangled up in the tent flaps before forcing her way through.
"What?" Mai said a moment later, clearly audible through the tent. "You want to hold my hand?"

"I can just about figure out what's around me in these things," Toph said, stamping her boots as Zuko followed them out of the
tent. The smaller girl had grasped Mai's left hand with her own right, in the process, capturing the firemaiden's entirely within the cuff of the
earthbender's parka. "That's not the same as knowing where I'm going."

"I'm not a great deal better off," Mai warned and Zuko could see her point. The other tents, only a few dozen yards away at
most, were reduced to featureless domes by the mist and the ice block ramparts around them was almost entirely invisible. The sisters didn't release each
other's hands though.

Bato was collapsing the canvas over Kuku as efficiently as he had raised it. "I know you can't fly in this," he told Yue,
overriding her objection. "But the children can't travel fast enough on foot to stay ahead of fire nation soldiers and we need to go now. They've
learnt not to just strike for the villages, but to surround them. Which means we all have to move, fast and now."

Yue stared at him and then looked at the children being led towards her by their mothers, clearly bundled out of their beds with little to no
explanation. Tired, understanding just enough to be scared and far too little to know what to be scared of. "You're the expert," she surrendered
and reached down for a moment before pulling her hand up from the ice. A simple stairway rose up after her hand, leading from the ground up to Kuku's
saddle. "Now then," she asked the children brightly. "Who wants to be the first to ride the bison?"

.oOo.

The cold bit into Zuko as he trudged alongside Mai and Toph in Kuku's footsteps. The massive sky bison was leaving an unmistakeable trail
through the snow, which was useful for the purposes of keeping the little column of villagers on the same course despite the mist, but would also make it
almost impossible for the fire nation soldiers behind them to mistake where they were going.

Despite Mai's worlds, Zuko was still wrestling with the question of whether this was good or bad news.

On the one hand, as a loyal son of the Fire Nation (and the Fire Lord) it was his clear duty to assist a Fire Navy expedition into foreign
and hostile lands. The fact that he was in immediate proxmity to one Water Tribe Chief, the daughter of the other Chief and the Avatar only made that
obligation more urgent.

On the other, it was difficult not to look at the line of women ahead of him, or to think of the children drowsing on Kuku's back,
without seeing other women and children. Those he had seen during his march through the Earth Kingdom. The women he had widowed, the children he had
orphaned... and in some cases those that his soldiers had killed. And then there were more personal attachments: Mai had been a friend, potentially more than
that; now she was a traitor to the Fire Nation. Yue had never wronged him - despite the fact that their nations were enemies she had actually shown more
kindness to him than Mai had since they were reunited. And if Toph was not entirely the somewhat shy girl he had taught to take joy in her firebending, she was
the spirited child he had sensed inside her: passionate as fire, stubborn as the earth and somehow he suspected as perfectly suited to the other elements in
her way.

It was hard to see enemies as people, and not as faceless beings as impersonal as the toy soldiers he had played with as a boy.

There was a whooshing sound in the distance behind them and Zuko half-twisted around to look, doing so complicated by the hood of his
borrowed parka. He thought he could make out orange lights rising and falling in the distance: catapult shots. The ships were probably bombarding the empty
village in preparation for - or in support of - an assault. It would depend how aggressive the commander was: would he hold his men back until the barrage
softened up the objective or push them forward under its cover, risking them being hit by their own catapults? Both approaches had their adherents, but Zuko
suspected that anyone willing to take time to harass such a tiny settlement would be very aggressive. There was a crash which he interpreted as a tent being
struck directly by one of the flaming projectiles. The village had been evacuated just barely in time.

There was a grunt of surprise from beside Zuko and he turned his head again, seeing that Toph had halted for a moment and was stamping her
feet deeper and deeper into the snowy ground. Mai, a half-step ahead of her sister, had also come to a halt. "This is no time for a toilet break,
Toph."

Toph shook her head. "There are... people walking..." she said slowly and then used her free hand to point ahead and to the left,
then to the right. "Heavy, they're either really huge guys or carrying a lot of weight. I can feel the vibrations through the ice."

"They must have sent forces out to encircle the village," Zuko guessed.

Mai looked at the women ahead of them. The column was already moving as fast as the oldest woman could walk. "Will they intercept
us?" she asked Toph bluntly.

The girl considered. "There's an ice formation that will block the group to our left," she concluded. "Whichever way they
go, they'll be behind us, but they'll see the trail. The other group will catch us though... unless, of course...?"

"Unless someone stops them," Mai concluded grimly. "You're not going to do anything, little sister. Fighting a battle is
different from fighting a duel. Get the women moving as fast as possible: carry them if you have to." She released Toph's hand and stepped away,
breaking into as near to a run as she could in the snow.

Toph automatically lunged after her, almost overbalancing in the unfamiliar boots. Zuko grabbed her by the shoulder of the parka, which
almost slipped off of the girl as she tried to keep going. "No!" he shouted. "Mai knows what she's doing and she's trusting you to do
your part."

"You tell them," Toph spat. "I'm going after my sister."

"Then I'll go with you," Zuko offered. The column would escape the group to the left, and he could order the group to the right
to withdraw, with Mai and Toph in custody...

Toph reversed the hold suddenly, twisting to break his grip on her parka and reaching back to catch his wrist. "No chance. Mai's
also trusting me to keep you from running off, that sneaky witch!" She pushed him forwards after the last woman in the column. "Let's
get this column moving." Ice began to move underneath her, almost clinging to her feet.

Zuko recognised the move as resembling the 'wave' of Earth that some earthbenders used to travel: the ice flowing forward following
the leg movements but far faster. Not anchored in the same way to the crest of the ice, he had to run on the moving ice to keep pace with the little girl,
something that was complicated even more when the ice wave scooped up the rearmost woman in the column and Toph handed the elder off to him to
support.

Mai had disappeared into the mists and Zuko felt the same fear that had touched him outside Omashu when she and Toph had vanished from his
sight there.
D for Drakensis

You're only young once, but immaturity is forever.

"Hello the Navy!" sang out an unfamiliar voice from outside the shattered village, distracting Zhao momentarily from his fury. Who
precisely had bungled his plan to catch the village unaware, he was not yet certain, but there could be no other explanation for the fact that the place had
been evacuated before his force had reached it. The fact that one of his flanking forces had taken casualties subduing one lone woman, had markedly shortened
the fuse of his temper.

"Whoever that is, find out which sentry he got past and have him flogged," the Admiral ordered harshly, striding towards the
nearest breach in the village's wall.

What he saw was a young girl, details lost in oversized winter gear, arms pinned behind her back by a broad-shouldered young man in a water
tribe parka the hood thrown back to reveal a familiar but unexpected face. "Admiral Zhao," Zuko said calmly, as if there was nothing remotely out of
the ordinary about a royal prince emerging from a frozen wilderness with a captive child. "Your attack came at an opportune moment."

"How nice," Zhao replied insincerely. "I trust we didn't interrupt you doing anything important," he added with a nod
towards the girl.

Zuko's lips thinned at the implication that the older man was making, but he bit back a hot response. "I suppose that that would
depend on what priority my father places on capturing the Avatar."

Zhao's eyes widened. Killing the Avatar would win any man great renown in the court of the Fire Lord, but that would be as nothing to
someone bringing the Avatar before Ozai. After all, a dead Avatar would simply be reborn but a captive Avatar could be kept alive for decades, removing their
interference for at least a generation. And that was besides the enormous damage that the news would do to the morale of the Earth Kingdom. With the Earth King
a recluse inside his palace, the notion of an earthbender Avatar leading the war against the Fire Nation had captured the imagination of the remaining free
kingdoms. For the Avatar to be brought to her knees would have shattering effect.

"This is the Avatar?" he asked, feigning scepticism. "She doesn't look impressive."

"Well she would only be twelve," Zuko pointed out coolly. "And unless you have another idea how she could bend both fire and
ice...?"

"Far be it from me to cast aspersions upon your accomplishment," Zhao conceded. "I've set up my headquarters here until we
find the villagers." There's no way I'm letting this spoiled brat make a triumphal return to the Fire Nation on the back of capturing a
half-trained little girl. He gestured for Zuko to walk alongside him back into the ruined village, the younger firebender forcing Toph to stumble in front of
him, bent over

Zuko frowned. "Yes, I gather that you didn't manage to establish a perimeter to catch them?"

"One flank was intercepted by a defector," explained Zhao. "By they time they had her subdued, the villagers were past them.
We have a trail though, and they can't have made it far."

"Far be it from me to interfere in your hunt for water tribe peasents," Zuko assured him with a smirk, turning Zhao's words
back upon him. "I'm requisitioning one of your ships to return to the capital, so you may want to call in reinforcements. There must be almost a dozen
of them: I wouldn't want you to feel... disadvantaged. After all if one woman can cause so much difficulty for you, I hate to think what your losses would
be against ten times that many."

Zhao could almost imagine seeing Zuko through a film of red, temper provoked by the obvious taunt. "Well this was a very special young
woman," he told the young man. "A defector, as I said. It was obvious from the moment we got a good look at her that she was from the fire nation,
perhaps even highly born." His lips thinned. "No doubt her family will be disgraced when it is learned that she was fighting on behalf of the water
savages."

"Oh?" There was the faintest flicker of emotion on Zuko's face. "Do you know her identity?"

Zhao paused a moment. What led Zuko to hesitate? Did he know who the girl was? It would make sense if there were two Fire Nation nobles
somehow down here at the south pole then they might know of each other. Might even be leverage against each other. "Not yet," he said. "No one
has recognised her face. Of course, once she awakens we can simply extract the information. There are ways to loosen a woman's tongue." Definite
emotion. The little princeling had some scruples it seemed. How convenient. "We cannot allow treason of this nature, your highness."

"I am aware of that," Zuko confirmed somewhat hollowly. "Perhaps I should take a look: after all, I have met quite a number of
the nobility so I might know her face."

.oOo.

"Where's the Avatar?" Yue blurted the moment that Kuku settled to the ground next to the villagers.

Bato shook her head. "She turned back to look for sister. I couldn't exactly drag her..."

Yue's face fell. "That willful girl! Doesn't she listen to anyone?"

"Just her sister, I think," Bato admitted ruefully. "The fire bender went with her."

The waterbender hopped down from Kuku's back and began creating steps for the remaining children and their mothers to climb aboard. It
would take at least two trips to evacuate the rest of the village, but without Kuku walking with them, at least the trail they were leaving was less
remarkable. Bato had also led them off at an angle that did not lead towards the ice field he had picked out as a refuge. "I'm not sure if that's
good or bad: Mai knows him best and she has some serious doubts about his loyalties."

"The two of you talked about him?" Bato asked curiously. "I thought that women only did that about men that they were
interested in."

"Well he is a bit of a character..." Yue admitted and then glared at him. "Wait a minute! When you say interested, what
exactly are you implying?"

"Just... 'interested'," Bato said with a little smirk. He'd known Yue since she was a little girl, after all and while
she hardly told him everything, he was fairly sure he didn't recall her ever talking about a boy her own age before. And it was kind of amusing watching
her blush over the suggestion that she might be interested in the... Fire Lord's... son...

Okay, no, that wasn't amusing at all.

"It's a bit strange just talking to someone from the fire nation, much less one of their soldiers," he dodged. "I
don't suppose anyone from either of the water tribes has done that since the war began."

"That's true," agreed Yue. "Apparently the fire nation are taught that they started the war to share their prosperity and
culture with the rest of the world. Did none of them think that it might be better to do so through talking, rather than waging war?"

"I don't claim to understand them," Bato shrugged. "Perhaps that's what the Avatar is here to do."

The two of them looked at each other and tried to envisage Toph as a diplomatic bridge between the water tribe and the fire nation. The image
did not come naturally to either of them.

"Perhaps not," Yue said. "And she may never fulfill her destiny if she dies out there."

Bato shrugged his shoulders and helped the last child up the steps. "Yue, how do we know that going out there isn't
Toph's destiny? Assuming that she has one and isn't just muddling through life one day at the time the way the rest of us do?"

"Bato, she's the Avatar! Of course she has a destiny."

"So was it the Airbender's destiny to abandon us all for forty years and allow a hundred years of war?" Bato asked. "Or
was the war the punishment levied for his refusal to face his destiny? It seems a little extreme."

Yue stared at him. "It was his duty, his destiny, to prevent the war," she declared. "He turned away from that: we cannot
allow Toph to make the same mistake."

"Well at least she's heading towards a fight," quipped Bato and waved the now much diminished column - almost exclusively the
old now - to start walking again.

"But will she manage to walk away?" Yue wondered out loud, and then yipped to urge Kuku into the air once more.

.oOo.

Mai looked up from the post she was tied to when Zhao returned to her field of vision. Ironically, the pole had been part of the same tent
that she had rested in earlier. The Fire Nation soldiers were unfortunately thorough: they'd stripped her of dart launchers and almost every knife on her
person. Only the fact that stripping her completely would have killed her too fast for the Admiral's liking had allowed her to still hide a pair of small
knives and neither was somewhere she could reach while bound. As such she'd forced herself to relax, to preserve her strength for what opportunities might
arise.

The procession that followed Zhao made clear just how important those opportunities would be: he was escorted by four soldiers but it was the
other two figures that caught her attention. Zuko, forcing Toph before him, fingers cruelly tight about her wrists. Zuko just barely caught the slightest
movement betraying her surprise - Zhao, not knowing her so well, didn't.

"Well here's our traitoress," he boasted, glaring down at her. "You've earned yourself a traitor's death, girl.
And I may pass you around my men, in repayment for those you injured."

"She's familiar alright," Zuko observed. "One of my sister's schoolmates... one of her especial cronies in fact...
Have you offended Azula lately, Zhao? I wouldn't put it past her to have arranged this to get an assassin close to you."

Zhao shrugged. "To the contrary, your sister and I are on excellent terms, " he protested. "And the girl was stripped of all
weapons when she was captured."

"Are you sure of that?" asked Zuko and pushed Toph towards the Admiral. "Hold onto the larger prize for a moment,
Admiral." He waited until Toph was securely held before striding over to Mai and thrust one hand boldly into her clothes.

Involuntarily, Mai gasped in anger and fought down the urge to use her limited mobility to try to kick him. She didn't have the reach or
the leverage and she knew it. It would be undignified to fail. Masked from sight by Zuko's torso her eyes widened perceptibly as she felt the last of her
knives moving in their hiding place.

A moment later, Zuko removed his hand, holding one of her remaining knives. "Perhaps your men are less diligent than you expected,
Admiral. Intentionally perhaps?"

Zhao examined the weapon in Zuko's hand. "Perhaps. A fortunate escape for someone. I seem to be having a day of mixed fortune. All
things considered, the good outweighs the ill perhaps. Particularly, as you put it, the greater prize." He tightened his own grip upon Toph and she broke
the sullen silence she had maintained so far with a pained gasp. "My prize."

"Your prize?" Zuko snapped, dropping the knife. "Remember your place, Admiral. The Avatar is
mine."

"You think I'll let a dead prince take the credit for this?" Zhao sneered. "Secure him," he ordered the soldiers.
"I wasn't sent here to rescue you, your highness," he explained as the four firebenders. "Just to punish those who had killed you. I
don't see any reason to confuse the issue by having you return from the dead. Tidier to let the water tribe take the blame... and to take the credit for
capturing the Avatar myself."

Zuko spread his feet and glanced around the four soldiers spreading out around him. "You think you can simply murder the Fire Lord's
only son? Are you insane?"

"Are you protesting or quoting some line from a second-rate romance scroll your mother read to you as a boy?" Zhao asked him.
"I think your next line would be: 'You'll never get away with this, Zhao'? Try it out, see if you like saying it."

"I will kill you," Zuko grated, shifting postion to try to keep the four soldiers in view. Mai reached for the last knife. Zuko
snatching the other had moved it just enough that she could touch it with the tips of her fingers. Carefully she teased it towards her grasp.

Zhao smiled smugly. "Now now, don't be like that. You wouldn't want -" he twisted Toph's arms cruelly and she cried out
again. "- the Avatar to get hurt, now would you?"

"So this is the great Admiral Zhao," Zuko snarled derisively. "Hiding behind a little girl. Disgraceful." He turned and
so deliberately that it didn't occur to anyone to stop him, hurled a powerful blast of fire into the soldier working around his left side, hurling the
stunned man back through the wreckage of one of the tents. "You're going to need more soldiers," the prince advised grimly.

"I have more soldiers," Zhao returned. "RALLY ON ME!" he roared and commotion arose through the camp as fire
nation soldiers rushed to obey. The knife finally came close enough for Mai to grasp and she started working at her bonds, careful to keep the motion hidden
from the two opposing firebenders.

The three soldiers already on the scene converged upon Zuko, who took to the offensive, jumping forwards to kick the one between him and Zhao
firmly in the face. The metal mask probably saved the hapless soldier from losing several teeth but he went over like a skittle and didn't stand up.
Landing on his hands, Zuko whipped his legs around and smashed a wave of fire into the other two soldiers: not enough to fell them now that they were alerted
but buying him time to flip to his feet. Grabbing the collar of his parka, he used the sharp dagger to slash through the thick material, creating a rent along
the front. A savage yank tore the bulky garment open and he shrugged free of it. He'd need his mobility if he was going to survive the coming
battle.

Zhao prepared to back up with his prize when the Avatar suddenly shifted in his hands, pulling her knees up against her legs. Her body
pivoted on her shoulders and he barely recognised what she was doing in time to release her, rolling with the impact as she jack-knifed, driving her soft-soled
boots back into him. His armour protected him from serious injury, in fact the strike barely pushed him back a half-step but the much smaller Toph almost
rocketed forwards, driving herself face-first into the ice at Zuko's feet.

"Graceful," Zuko noted, backing up to give her room to stand. Behind him, Mai felt the ropes part and tested her
freedom.

"Shove it," Toph spat, climbing to her feet. "So, are you over your conflicting problems yet or does Zhao need to drive the
nail in further?"

"You're the one who claims to be the great judge of character," he said. "You tell me."

"Tell us," Mai said shortly, rising to her feet and joining them as more soldiers closed in, forming a rough circle around
the three of them. She was gratified to see Zuko flinch when she moved closer, then turned her back upon him, watching the encircling troops and wishing she
had more than just the one knife.

Toph grinned. "You're with us," she said confidently. "Not very flattering that it took a death threat to get you to pick
a side, but I'm feeling generous." She swept an arm around to indicate the soldiers. "Speaking of which:" the earthbender raised her voice.
"If you boys turn around and run away right now, we might spare your lives."

Zhao laughed. "I know you're only a child," he replied. "But surely you know how to count. Look around you - I have you
outnumbered twenty to one."

Toph waved her hand across her face. "Blind," she explained. Only Mai noticed how the hand-gesture distracted attention from the
way that Toph was moving her feet, or the way she was balanced.

The Admiral's eyes went wide. "You have a talent for lost causes, your highness," he called to Zuko. "First you
actually imagine that you're a rival for your sister and cousin in the succession, and now you throw in your lot with a blind Avatar? How
humiliating."

"You're forgetting history, Admiral," Mai told him, not looking back from where she was watching for the first moves of attack
amongst the soldiers at their backs. The three of them would have to react instantly and aggressively for any attack, for a passive defense against firebenders
was suicidal: they would be bathed in fire from all directions. "It took three entire armies to bring Avatar Kanna to bay, and three Fire Lords to bring
her down. And you're no Fire Lord."

"That may change," Zhao told him. "Your sister may be in the market for a consort after all. But enough about me." He
took a firebending stance. "Your young Avatar is a child, blind and half trained. What took the supreme effort of the Fire Kingdom was a fully realised
Avatar, quite a different matter."

"You're right," Toph admitted candidly, lowering her face. "I'm not Kanna. And this is different." She shuffled
her feet.

"Toph..." Zuko said, trying to think of some encouragement to give her. This was no time to crack up.

"Kanna was all a waterbender. They're all about retreat and counterattack," Toph continued. "I'm an Earthbender... my speciality is
neutral jin: to wait and to listen for the right moment." And then she crouched suddenly, slamming both palms into the ice either side of her.

For a moment nothing happened.

And then forty Fire Nation soldiers disappeared into the ice with startled cries, the ice sheet collapsing into deep pits beneath them,
frigid arctic waters surging up the holes to meet them. Weighted down by their armour, they sank rapidly. Toph rose smoothly into a wide-legged stance and as
her hands lifted, the ice closed over the soldiers, condemning them to their icy graves.

Fear swept elation from Zhao's face and in that instant, Zuko hurled himself forwards at him. Mai also leapt forwards, towards the
nearest soldier than Toph hadn't caught in her ambush, having already identified the weak spots where even her small knife could pose a lethal
threat.

For her part, Toph remained where she was. Her smile was chilling. "Who else wants some?" she asked quietly, barely audible as the
fight erupted around her. One of the soldiers took a step towards Mai's back and Toph's finger lunged to point at him. "You, well
volunteered." She stamped her foot and a boulder of ice literally leapt out of the ground in response. A thrust, starting at the hips and ending with her
hand sent the boulder hurtling into the soldier, who was smashed from his feet by the deadly projectile.

"Next?" she asked in a little girl voice. Most of the fire nation's soldiers were made of sterner stuff than to flee even this
threat, but two younger men proved to be exceptions, racing for the edge of the village nearest to the three ships. "Wrong answer." The perimeter
wall of ice flowed - first closing the breaches and then growing taller and thicker - as Toph concentrated upon her bending.

.oOo.

Zhao allowed Zuko to push him back. Even to himself he refused to admit that the younger firebender was proving a challenge. No, this was a
tactical move. Clearly the young Avatar was a formidable opponent and it would be best to take her measure via his more expendable soldiers (and compared to
himself he couldn't think of any of them that weren't expendable) and wear her down a little before he faced her.

And first he'd deal with the upstart princeling, he decided, punching out towards Zuko, who ducked aside from the fire that flowed out of
Zhao's hand. Not that stopped the young man from focusing his fire into a whip and sending it crackling through the air to snare for an instant one of
Zhao's ankles. The fire was too diffuse at that distance to scorch through the larger man's books, but it brought his retreat to a sudden halt as he
was yanked from his feet. Rather than resisting the fall he threw himself into it, rolling to his feet and facing his enemy.

"You're a fool Zhao," Zuko spat. "You're a perfect match for the pit of vipers that father keeps around him and
you're equally worthless. If the high command didn't waste their energy fighting each other we'd have conquered the world in my grandfather's
day!"

"It's you that's a fool. Conflict makes us strong," asserted Zhao, catching his breath. "A man who fights his way to
the head of the Fire Nation's army will find it easy to defeat mere earth or water benders!"

Zuko shook his head. "If you'd been able to resist the urge to bite at me just once, the Avatar would be a prisoner, not carving her
way through your men. Tell me that you think that that is an improvement!" He raised his fists. "Alright. Enough talk. We'll do it your
way."

Zhao easily brushed aside the burst of fire that the prince threw at him. "Your sister has mastered blue fire. And even lightning. You?
Was that all that you can do?" He hurled his own attacks forward and Zuko twisted his upper body to avoid them, letting the heat flow past him into the
air. Vaporised ice was beginning to form a mist of steam within the confines of the walls as the remaining firebenders amongst Zhao's men drew upon their
fire to combat their three opponents.

The two continued exchanging blows, fire marking their blows. Zhao relied on his greater mass and experience to break apart Zuko's
attacks while the younger man chose to rely more upon his agility, staying clear and refusing to commit close enough to allow his larger opponent to land any
telling strikes.

Of course a side effect of this difference in styles meant that Zhao's relatively static position was warming up nicely since all the
heat from attacks he broke up had to go somewhere, while Zuko who let them go past him, was still relatively cool despite his exertion. As a result there was
an actual shine of sweat on Zhao's forehead despite the cold.

"Are you a firebender or an airbender?" the Admiral taunted. "I thought you were going to fight me, not dance around like a
lemur."

Zuko said nothing, instead throwing himself into a wheel kick that hurled trailers of fire, no more than a nuisance to Zhao who batted it
away with trivial ease, extinguishing it in the slushy ice at his feet. "Take this seriously!" he roared and gathered his strength, raising walls of
fire either side of Zuko forcing the flames to sustain themselves from his chi in the absence of any fuel. Penned in, Zuko held his ground and with a deep
breath raised his own line of fire behind Zhao, creating an open-ended box around the Admiral with himself standing at the open end.

They paused for a moment, silently wrestling for control of the intersections where their two fires met. Zhao was pleased to finally find
Zuko committing his strength to the contest... but he was less happy to find that the Prince's strength sufficent to seize control of the corners and bend
them into a semi-circle around the older firebender. In response Zhao brought the ends of his own walls together, closing the circle behind Zuko. Fire
surrounded them and Zhao then filled the gap between them with more fire, controlling the walls with his hands while he kicked out, hurling a ball of fire at
his adversary.

Zuko hurled himself into a forward somersault, fire gathering at his feet and then hurtling towards Zhao as he kicked his legs out. For an
instant the Admiral thought that the younger man had mistaken his timing, unleashed his fire when he had rolled too far, the flames crashing down short of
Zhao. And then, too late, he realised what struck the ice was not only Zuko's fire, but also his own, hurled back by the greater fury of the prince's
flames.

Before his feet could hit the ice Zuko thrust his hands down and fire roared downwards, hurling him upwards and over Zhao's fire wall
like a rocket. And inside the circle of fire the ice melted, dropping Zhao waist deep in tepid water. Fearing the same water grave that had welcomed his men,
Zhao lowered his guard to wade desperately for the edge of the ring.

In that opening, Zuko came down on him like a meteor, fire roaring around him. It was the sort of overly dramatic move that only an amateur
would risk - and therefore the last thing that Zhao expected. He was smashed flat against the bottom of the water pool, air driven from his lungs and replaced
by water as he gasped reflexively. Almost as debilitating was the water that flooded through his clothes - submerged completely - soaking him to the
bone.

Zuko sprang forwards out of the water, his leap driving Zhao harder against the ice, and rolled through the guttering fires of the encircling
walls that were now collapsing without the attention of the firebenders. He drew on his inner fire to heat himself as much as he dared, almost scorching his
legs as he bent the remainder of the fires that the two of them had generated to dry his trousers and boots before the cold could cause him injury.

In the water, coughing and choking, Zhao was unable to match the feat. Wet clothes and armour dragged him down and the water was already
beginning to solidify around him. Unable to breathe properly, he could not fire bend.

Looking around, Zuko could see no obvious threats to concern himself. Two fire nation soldiers were in view but neither looked particularly
threatening, lying unmoving on the ground. Judging by the bloody snow beneath the neck of one of them, they might never move again. The massive walls of ice
around the village continued to rise, indicating that Toph was not only still active but apparently felt so unthreatened that she was playing to test the
limits of her recovering strength. As the village was now almost covered by a dome of ice easily forty metres across, it wasn't clear if she had
any.

Zhao stared up at the prince he had belittled, now the only person who could possibly save him. He would not beg. Not even if it meant his
death.

Zuko stared down at the admiral he had brought low, wondering if the man would ask for aid. And if he would offer it if it was
requested.
D for Drakensis

You're only young once, but immaturity is forever.

"Are you done playing?" Mai asked Toph when the dome over the village was complete... and not incidentally, the only moving beings
inside it were the two girls and Zuko.

Toph grinned in a disturbingly happy way for someone who had just dismembered a small raiding party's worth of the Fire Nation's
navy. "I'm not playing, I'm bending," she said with manifest insincerity.

"My mistake." Mai looked around and saw Zuko walking towards them. "I'm going to have to thank him," she said
grudgingly.

"Don't feel obligated," advised Toph. "He was seriously tempted to take us home in chains. If Zhao hadn't decided to
grab for power, even I don't know what he would have opted for."

"Most people would say 'even he didn't know', little sister."

"Yes, but I'm awesome like that," Toph reminded her sister. "It's not like you to forget things like that, are you
feeling well?"

Mai frowned. "Clearly I haven't spent enough time with you."

Toph took her hand, much as she had done when they were walking south only a few hours before. "Well, I'm sure that Yue and Bato are
worried so let's go and explain how silly they are," she said lightly. "Did you find your pointy toys?"

"Yes, thank you," Mai said, using her free hand to adjust the sheaths that she had returned to their proper places. The dart
launchers were wrapped in a bundled cloak from one of the soldiers - one of the incompetent barbarians had dropped them in snow and now she would have to
disassemble them entirely and clean them before they could be relied upon. She reached across her body and returned Toph's own dagger, which the little
girl solemnly returned to its sheath.

Zuko joined them as they walked to the edge of the village. Rather than simply opening a hole in the dome, Toph started drawing ice up into
steps along the side.

"Uh... what are you doing?" the fire bender asked. "Why not just go through the wall here?" He pointed at it.

"Feel free to," Toph shrugged. "But it would be polite to wait until Mai and I are above the level of the water
outside."

Zuko stared at the wall, then at the ice beneath his feet. "Water outside? Why would there be water out...side...? You
didn't?"

Toph grinned cockily. "You don't think I could just move all this ice without consequences did you? The entire village is a separate
iceberg now - we're still surrounded by the old ice sheet for now, but there's a decent gap and I wouldn't be surprised if parts of that come apart
as well."

"And we've sinking?"

"Just a bit," Toph assured him calmly. "There's something odd about how ice floats on water, I haven't figured it out
yet but moving ice up to form the walls pushed the ground down... odd, but useful since it's probably the main reason that the ships haven't managed to
hit us with their catapults yet."

Mai blinked. "Catapults?"

"I guess so. It's either that or the birds around here have really huge droppings."

Zuko nodded slowly. I'm beginning to understand why her parents were scared of her bending. It was wrong, yes, but I have to admit: Azula
would have been much more bearable at this age if mother could have removed her fire bending or at least held the threat over her head. And Toph must be even
more of a prodigy than Azula if she's this good at water bending without any formal training.

It only took a few moments for Toph to finish the stairs but by the end Mai could feel the slightest of tremors in the fingers she held
clasped in her hand. While Toph had recovered much of her former strength, or perhaps more - it was difficult for Mai to compare, having never seen Toph in her
Blind Bandit days - it was clear that bending such huge masses had been something of a strain for her.

Taking the height of the steps as a guide, Zuko gulped at the realisation that had he opened a hole in the dome with his fire bending, the
inside of the dome would have flooded to well above his head height with frigid water. Mutely he followed the two girls up to the small platform Toph had
created against the inside wall. With a degree of artistic flair, Toph pressed one hand briefly against the ice and an arch formed, the ice that had previously
filled that part of the wall tilting over to form a bridge most of the way to the ice outside. A moment later, the far side of the moat that had formed around
the village deformed and rose into the other end of the bridge.

The ice scape was much as it had been when Zuko walked across it to reach the village, Toph in semi-captivity in front of him. There were
even a couple of soldiers in Fire Nation red watching them in disbelief. A couple of blackened rocks embedded in the ice, still smoking from the flames applied
to them before launch from a catapult, were new additions though.

"Just leave," Mai told the two soldiers in disgust and the two men stared at her for a long moment, expressions hidden behind their
metal facemasks, before they broke and ran off to the left, clearly planning to circle the village and make their way back to the ships.

"Merciful," observed Toph.

"They didn't see anything," Mai explained. "It's obvious that there was a powerful water bender here, but no one can
report who you are, with Zhao and all the immediate troops dead." She noted a guilty expression flit furtively across Zuko's face. "He
is dead, isn't he?"

Zuko looked away. "Yes," he lied. How he'd managed to survive in court without learning to tell a convincing untruth escaped
Mai's understanding.

"Leave him," Toph ordered contemplatively. It was not a tone that Mai was used to hearing from her sister and she looked down at
the smaller girl, voicelessly requiring justification for the decision. Toph smiled - less cocky but perhaps more confidently that the smile Mai was more
accustomed to - and elaborated. "I'm not the one he betrayed. If Zuko prefers he be left alive to claim Zuko is a traitor then I'm fine with
it."

"Don't substitute tactics for strategy," Mai warned, a chill going down her spine as they continued to walk away. Zhao alive,
the Fire Nation alerted to a new Avatar, to Toph's name and to her face...

Toph nodded her head. "Let them know fear," she said with what could pass for tranquillity to one unfamiliar with the signs that
the young Avatar was experiencing pleasant anticipation. "Besides," and she looked sideways at Zuko, "It's nice to know that now that
he's made his choice he will stick to it."

Mai nodded her understanding. With all witnesses gone, Zuko might still have been able to return home. But Zhao would no doubt blacken the
prince's name out of sheer spite. Whatever else happened, the rift between Zuko and the Fire Nation had become known and irreversible.

.oOo.

The grand hall of the Northern Water Tribe's city (located further south than any of the relative handful of Southern Water Tribe
settlements was crammed with members of both tribes as Yue recounted the encounter with the Fire Nation, or more precisely as she prodded Mai, Toph and Zuko to
relate their various parts in the story.

None of the three were natural orators but in some ways the very understated nature of remarks such as: "just bent the ice out from
under them while Zuko was trash talking with Zhao" made more impact than any exaggerated bragging could have. Plainly, none of them felt any need to
embroider the story - Zuko in fact seemed outright reluctant to talk at all and Toph was amused at the female hearts beating faster when Yue persuaded him to
explain how he had defeated Zhao.

There were two seats on the broad dais, one occupied by the erect, regal Chief Arnook, who seemed torn between paternal pride and the urge to
ground Yue on hearing of how - once all the villagers were all safe - she had returned almost to the village on Kuku, in order to retrieve the three
travellers. Slouched on the other throne was Bato, who amused himself by watching the reactions of the gathered crowd.

"I believe I speak for my fellow Chief when I welcome you to our city," Arnook said solemnly. "Your victory over the Fire
Nation will inspire all those who stand against their tyranny."

Zuko winced.

"Your own deeds, Prince Zuko and Lady Mai, offer hope of eventual reconciliation between the four nations," the aged Chief
continued diplomatically. "Naturally, the full resources of the Northern Water Tribe are at your disposal, Avatar Toph. How may we serve
you?"

"My plans are a little unrefined," Toph admitted. "For now, I need to improve my bending as far as possible. Yue has kindly
offered her assistance as an instructor in water bending and there's Sifu Broody over here to work with me on fire bending but that leaves one of the four
bending arts and I'm not enthused about herding sky bison to pick up hints about air bending. Sozin's Comet is only a few months away."

Gasps arose from the gathered audience and Bato straightened on his throne. "You're sure?" he asked amusement falling
away.

"You didn't know?" Zuko answered, his surprise obvious. "It'll be in the sky at the end of the summer. I imagine that
it will be the cornerstone of my father's campaign plans for this year."

"Astronomy isn't a great concern of our people," Arnook said, somewhat defensively.

"I'm taking everyone's word for it," Toph said with the by now familiar wave of her hand in front of milky-green eyes.
"What matters is that at the height of the summer - the northern summer, anyway - when fire benders are at their peak strength anyway, they'll have a
few days when their power rises sharply. Everything I've ever heard about Ozai suggests he'll go for some grand gesture with that power to end the war
on his terms. And his terms are going to involve phrases like 'utter subjugation' and 'complete extermination'."

"It was with such power that the Air Nomads were destroyed," Arnook reminded everyone mournfully. "Should he seek to commit
genocide once more, an attack here could end the Water Tribes forever."

Toph shrugged. "He may have other things on his mind," she declared. "Me, for one thing."

"You'll protect us from the Fire Nation? On your own?" asked a sceptical voice from the crowd.

"Nope," Toph said cheerfully. "No one wins a fight by waiting for the other side to hit them. I'm going to go after
him."

Bato reached over and grabbed Arnook's arm before the older chief could object to the plan. "She's right," he said in a low
voice that would not be heard by those on the main floor. "And even if she wasn't, she's the Avatar. We don't haven the right to tell her what
to do."

Yue looked at her father who nodded slightly. "We have a small cache of air bending scrolls that the Avatar Kanna left with us,"
she revealed. "I believe that she created many such caches, placing them in trusted hands, for use by her successors in situations just like
that."

.oOo.

Azula walked up the gang plank of Lu ten's flagship in something of a temper. "You've just pulled me out of a very delicate
stage in the negotiations with Long Feng."

"You've been at 'a very delicate stage in the negotiations' for over a month," Lu Ten said and smiled at Ty Lee as the
acrobatic young woman arrived at the top. "Ty, it's good to see you."

She bowed and saluted him formally before breaking with formality and bouncing forward to hug him. Around the deck, the crew of Lu Ten's
flagship either looked discreetly away from the scandalous display of affection or smiled approvingly.

"Tell me that you didn't bring me all the way out here just so the two of you could make out," demanded Azula, crossing her
arms across her chest and trying not to sound petulant.

"I didn't," assured Lu Ten, a grim look crossing his handsome face despite the delightful armful that he had. "Your father
has sent an urgent message. There has been a serious development in the south and I'm pulling the entire Northern Fleet out of our forces here to respond
to it."

"What!" Azula screeched. "Do you have any idea how badly that will undermine my position?"

"The orders of the Fire Lord are not open to debate," Lu Ten reminded her, just a little smugly. "We'll discuss this
inside." He led them into the conning tower of his flagship, opening the door of the map room for the two ladies to precede him inside.

Azula claimed Lu Ten's usual chair at the table for herself but Lu Ten went to the other end, holding out a chair for Ty Lee before
taking the seat at the far end, placing his lover at his left hand in a non-too-subtle reminder to Azula of that particular point he had supposedly scored over
her. Once they were all seated, Lu Ten lifted an unremarkable looking message scroll from the table and slid it over to the princess who examined the broken
seal, recognising the two halves as bearing the discreet markers that indicated it originated directly from the Fire Lord.

She read it silently, ignoring the fact that Ty Lee had taken Lu Ten's hand in hers or the none-too-discreet way that their legs were
moving against each other. It was rather nauseating in her opinion, although the ease with which Ty Lee was leading her cousin along was confirming many of
Azula's long held opinions on the handling of men. The contents of the scroll quickly grasped her attention however.

"This is ridiculous," she declared when she reached the conclusion. "Father can not be taking Zhao seriously. Even
aside from the notion that he would be defeated by someone as inept as Zuzu, my brother has always taken loyalty to ridiculous extremes. For him to find common
cause with a water bender, much less the Avatar - who would be all of twelve years old, for Agni's sake..."

"Quite," Lu Ten agreed. "I've received my own reports from the south, although copies of Zhao's despatches have not
arrived yet." Not even to you, cousin, at least through the formal lines of communication. Lu Ten had compromised Azula's mail as a matter of course
after she was safely distracted dealing with Long Feng. However, he was sure that she had arranged informal ways for her private correspondence to reach her
just as automatically, which was one reason that he had not used the access to tamper, instead simply remaining informed.

Azula nodded thoughtfully. "Zhao is a proud man," she admitted thoughtfully. "He wouldn't report the incident if he could
avoid looking weak. Which raises the question of what he was covering up." She looked questioningly at Lu Ten.

"If his ships were damaged then it had been made good before they reached port," the seafaring prince told her confidently. "I
think we can accept that Zhao encountered some serious resistance on the ice - there were dozens of casualties, out of all proportion to what must have been a
fairly small battle all things considered. Not much more than a skirmish but it's clear he didn't win it. As a commander, or as a warrior, since
he's so badly injured he had to relinquish his command until he recovers."

"What about my brother or the Avatar?"

Lu Ten shrugged. "Hard to say. As you say, the new Avatar would only be a child and half-trained at best I can't see him making the
claim if there's any chance that the Avatar might later refute it. And we've always known that there is a new Avatar. Sooner or later, we would
encounter her."

"You don't say anything about my brother, I notice."

"It's awfully convenient for a capable fire bender - and while he might not be on the level of you or I, Zuko wasn't what most
would call incompetent - believed to be dead to be suddenly helping the Avatar. I wouldn't be precisely surprised if we never heard anything of Zuko again.
As you say, it would be very much out of character for him to turn traitor. Now if I do find him..."

"I don't see anything on here about you taking half the navy after the Avatar," Azula commented. "The presence of ships
blockading Ba Sing Se is one of the visible threats I can use against Long Feng. Removing them will undermine my position, cousin."

Lu Ten spread his palms. "I'll need a large number of ships if I'm combing the entire South Pole for the Avatar," he
pointed out. "I'm leaving several squadrons here under War Minister Qin's command." And not under yours, dear cousin. "They
have orders to make themselves very visible - and they'll be alternating their identification flags periodically to give the impression that there are more
ships present than there actually are."

"I see," Azula said, reluctantly. Lu Ten's instructions gave him that much authority, however little she liked it. "So
your orders are to capture them. Harder than killing them."

"But also more rewarding," he pointed out. "A captive Avatar removes her as a threat for as long as she lives: and we've
been working out how to keep an Avatar alive and subdued ever since your grandfather confirmed the existence of Avatar Kanna fifty years ago. And once the war
is over, she can simply... die, and the next Avatar will be born within the Fire Nation. Raised as one of us... and never, ever allowed to realise what they
are."

.oOo.

"Will you do it?" Ty Lee asked quietly as she sat across Lu Ten's lap, head on his shoulder, several hours later. Azula had
offered to allow her companion to accompany the prince, in case her talents for blocking chi were of use in apprehending his prey.

Despite the temptation to have her at his side, Lu Ten had declined. While Ty Lee was exceptionally skilled, she was far from the only master
of those particular arts and he had pointed out that Azula would be in even more need of protection if Long Feng were to discover that the blockade had been
weakened. Still, he would enjoy her company now, and hope to do so again in the future. Perhaps for many years, he thought, admitting to himself that he did
more than merely enjoy her company.

"Do what?" he asked her, resting his arm casually around her waist. "Capture the Avatar? Marry you? Kill Azula? We have so
many balls in the air, I'm beginning to think I won't be able to keep track of them for much longer."

"Marry me?" Ty Lee's eyes went wide. "Lu... is that a proposal?"

"Agni..." he murmured, realising what had slipped out. "I fail at romance forever." Unbidden, he moved his hand
to rub gently at her back. "Yes... yes it was. Or rather: Ty Lee, you are by far the most wonderful woman that I have ever had the good fortune to meet.
Would you do the honour of sharing the rest of -"

His proposal was cut off when she sat up straighter to kiss him on the lips. It felt like acceptance to Lu Ten, and he leaned into it, a
small part of him wondering if this was how his father had felt about his mother. Everything that Prince Iroh had told his son about his marriage had suggested
that it was a love match, that even as the heir to the throne, Azulon's firstborn son had managed to marry the woman he desired, not merely the most
politically astute choice. It was a rare feat, even rarer under Ozai's rule. Lu Ten hoped his parents had been this happy: right now he wasn't sure if
he would have cared if Ty Lee had elected to take the chance to follow Azula's instructions and assassinate him.

All too soon they had to part their lips, gasping for breath. "- our lives?" Lu Ten finished with humour in his eyes.

Ty Lee giggled and pressed her face against his neck. "Yes," she whispered. "Yes I will."

It was a while later before he asked: "So what were you asking if I would do?"

The girl rubbed lightly at his chest with one hand thinking back. "Zuko. Are you going to..."

Lu Ten closed his eyes for a moment. "If it is him, if he really is alive... I'll do what I can for him, but you know what the
sentence is for treason." Death by fire, as slow as could be managed, which with fire benders in attendance could mean days. "If it comes to it,
he'll die 'attempting to escape'," he promised. "It isn't much, but at least I can spare Lady Ursa having to watch."

It would have been the perfect moment for Ty Lee to kiss away his regrets, to tell him that they didn't matter. But that would have been
a lie. Instead she shifted to sit on the table so that he could rest his head against her for a few precious moments, running her fingers through his hair. The
regrets were a part of him, the most private part that she had found, and denying their weight would be to deny a part of her lover, her fiancé.

"Zuko's my favourite cousin," Lu Ten admitted after a long moment. "I suppose favourite doesn't sound like much when
I'm comparing him to Azula but after... twelve years ago, when Lady Ursa took me into her household, he was almost a younger brother. But I found it easier
to deal with the idea that he'd died on some unimportant battlefield than that he would be fighting with the Avatar against us."

"Lu," Ty Lee whispered, gently pulling at his top knot to make him look up at her. "People grow apart. I haven't talked to
some of my sisters for more than two years, not even written to them. And it's natural that you find the idea of fighting against your cousin harder than
the notion he was dead."

"I've spent years considering Azula's death," admitted the prince slowly. "At first I had to steel myself. After all
this time, after seeing the sort of woman she's grown into, it has become very easy to contemplate the deed. Now I can plan how to kill Zuko, whose love
and respect I have never questioned, and I find that it is not only Azula who has changed."
D for Drakensis

You're only young once, but immaturity is forever.

Drakensis, I'd just like to say that this is one hell of a story you've got going here. 8)
___________________________
"I've always wanted to be somebody, but I should have been more specific." - George Carlin

Indeed. I really enjoy it as well. It needs a bit of polish, but nothing a good prereader can't fix.

---------------

Epsilon

"There's earth under here," Toph said in astonishment as she walked with Zuko outside the city. While her lessons in water
bending took place inside the city, where spaces had been set aside for training in those arts, there was enough uncertainty about what she would manage to do
working with fire and air that Chief Arnook had very diplomatically asked that she practise outside the walls for now.

Thus far it hadn't been a concern. Learning from scrolls had certain obvious difficulties for Toph so progress on her air bending had
been very slow. In fact, Zuko suspect that he, Yue and possibly even Mai were further along in mastering the forms even if they couldn't actually air bend,
as a consequence of walking through the motions described on the scrolls for Toph to watch. "Really?" the fire bender asked, looking down at the ice.
"I thought that the whole pole was just ice over water."

"I guess it must be an island or something," speculated Toph. "It's fairly deep, not the sort of thing anyone would come
across unless they were looking for it." She smirked. "Or, of course, the world's greatest earth bender walked over it."

"Of course," Zuko agreed drily. "But we're here to work on your fire bending so let's get to that."

Toph pouted a little but obediently took up the stance that Zuko indicated and started moving through the forms with him. Although she had
the bedreock of her previous experience gathered at Omashu, she hadn't made much more progress with her fire bending than she had at air bending. The
extreme cold made it difficult to maintain any sort of heat and even without her previous handicap, she was producing only marginally stronger flames than she
had back in Omashu.

Then again, Zuko had to admit, his own fires were nothing to be proud of these days. Since he had fought Zhao he had found it harder to
produce the powerful flames needed in combat. He still wasn't sure what the problem was: despite the cold, he could still fire bend well enough to light
fires, lanterns or to warm himself - which was a useful accomplishment in the frigid city, but the driving anger that he had been taught to draw from, that had
pushed him to the levels of mastery he had shown during his campaign through the southern Earth Kingdom, now eluded him.

"This isn't going well," he admitted after working through the full sequence of forms that made up the core of the fire bending
art. "You've adapted well to the forms, but the bending itself..."

"Are you sure that you aren't forgetting anything?" Toph asked. "Knowing that you fire benders have to stay angry all the
time explains a lot, but that's not working for me."

Zuko frowned. "I don't think it's quite what you're thinking. I've seen you get frustrated or irritated, but what
firebending draws from is more like... well, rage I suppose. It's more passionate." He made a face. "Sometimes I wonder if Mai would have been a
firebender if she wasn't so controlled all the time."

"So you'd like it if Mai was more passionate?" Toph asked suspiciously and then snickered when Zuko blushed and stammered what
was probably intended to be a denial but was actuallycompletely incoherent. "Don't worry, I'm pretty sure that if there's one woman in all the
city who's immune to your charms, it would be Mai."

"Thanks, I think," Zuko grumbled once his breathing was back to something approximating normal. "Well, if you think I'm
missing something, why don't you ask another fire bender, if you can find one?"

Toph pulled one arm out of the sleeve of her new, better fitting parka and slipped it across her chest to scratch at an itch. "Sometimes
even you have good ideas, Broody," she concluded.

"I was being sarcastic," he pointed out. "There aren't any other firebenders around to ask."

"Of course there is," Toph told him patronizingly. "I'll just ask your great-grandfather."

"My great... you mean Avatar Roku?"

The earthbender grinned broadly. "Well I don't mean Sozin. Having all those old goats hanging around in the spirit world is a bit
annoying so they can make themselves useful for once." She took a few steps out across the ice, away from Zuko, then shifted her angle slightly and took a
few more. "I'm going to get some earth to meditate on," she explained. "You might want to stand back a little."

Zuko gave her a nervous look and backed up a few paces. Then he reconsidered, turned around and ran about a hundred yards closer to the city
before turning around to watch her. He just knew that she was laughing at him, but at the same time, he had a suspicion that watching Toph earthbend was
something done best from a safe distance.

At first, to be honest, he wasn't very impressed. Toph was moving almost painfully slowly through an earthbending form he didn't
recognise. Not that he was an expert, but he'd fought a few earthbenders since his first arrival in the conquered territories. If she was raising a boulder
through all the ice - no one seemed to have any idea how thick it was here - then she might be at it for a while. He turned around and looked at the city that
so far as he knew, no one in the Fire Nation even suspected existed.

Zuko's first warning that Toph might be thinking on a slightly larger scale than he had anticipated was when the ice began to crack
behind him. The noise drew his attention - it was hard to miss a crevasse longer than a fire navy cruiser forming almost instantly.

It was impossible to miss five such cracks forming in the ice.

"Toph!" he bellowed over the sound of shattering ice. "Whatever you're doing, stop!"

"Can't!" she called back, apparently unconcerned by the fact that boulders of ice larger than she was were being sent tumbling.
She added something else but Zuko couldn't make it out as the section of ice he was on began to shake threateningly.

With a shout of frustration he ran - towards her, not the presumed safety of the walls. Mai hadn't said that there would be consequences
if he returned from training without Toph. Then again, sometimes it was the things that Mai didn't say that mattered most.

If Toph hadn't been blind, he thought that she would have had her eyes screwed shut in concentration. As it was, her feet scraped on the
ice, never breaking contact as she focused on whatever she was doing, far beneath the ice... although presumably not so far below as before. Her hands seemed
to be working in opposition to each other, one moving upwards and the other downwards, then swapping roles.

"What are you doing?" he shouted as he closed in.

"Earth bending!" Toph yelled back happily. "Isn't it wild!"

"You're insane!" Zuko told her. Calmly. Rationally. At the top of his voice. "At this rate you'll destroy the
city!"

"Don't be a worrywart. The hot rock is all over here, well away from the city."

Zuko's blood chilled. "'Hot rock'? What do you mean 'hot rock'?"

Toph grinned. "I found out working with Yue that it's easier to move water when it's water, not ice. And water's basically
hot ice. So I'm heating up the rock to make it easier move it up through the ice. It's kind of odd - I'm losing a lot of heat when it melts the
ice, but it's also rising almost all on its own now."

"When you say hot rock," asked Zuko, certain he wouldn't like the answer, "Do you mean hot enough that it flows like
water?"

"Well almost."

"Toph, there's a word for rock when it's that hot: lava."

"Lava?" Toph rolled the word around her mouth. "Never heard of it."

"Here's another new word for you: volcano. It's what you're creating right now, right underneath us. You
have to stop this right now!"

To Zuko's relief, Toph stopped bending before asking: "What's a volcano?" The ice lurched alarmingly and she started
bending a little. "Oh and that rising almost on its own? It's started rising entirely on its own. Lava's really enthusiastic."

"Do I want to know what's happening down there?"

"Ice turning into water. Water turning into steam. Lava rising and turning into... feels sort of like glass." She shrugged.
"It is slowing down but it'll break the surface."

"Can you move it further away?" Zuko asked hopefully, envisaging the ice melting away beneath their feet, dropping them through
boiling water and scalding steam onto molten lava... He grimaced.

Toph frowned and started making pushing gestures away from the city. "Alright already. It's not like it's going to be that hot
when it's done coming through the ice."

"Define hot," Zuko pointed out. "Rock has to be a lot hotter than ice does before it starts to melt."

"I figured that out myself," Toph agreed. "That's why I'm using ice to cool it. What do you think I am, stupid?"

"You were creating a volcano right underneath your own feet."

"And you keep saying that like it's a bad thing."

"Agni help us, no wonder the tradition is not to tell Avatars who they are before they're sixteen. I'm not sure if the world
will survive you passing through puberty." The ice cracked again and Zuko realised that the section that they were standing on was now floating freely.
"Did you do that?"

"No."

"This is bad."

Toph started waterbending. Zuko was of two minds about the results: on one hand, the ice floe was moving towards the city, through what was
rapidly turning into a small lake; on the other, it was tilting alarmingly as she created a wave beneath it. "You probably don't want me to tell you
how fast it's melting then."

Behind them, a black shape rose above the water. At first Zuko thought that it was simply a rolling of the dark water but then it rose higher
and he saw steam rising from it. Volcanic rock, cooled by the water but still hot enough to boil the water against it. He was relieved not to see rivulets of
lava coming from it. "Can we go any faster?"

"Water's not as easy as ice."

Zuko sighed and eyed the water and the distance to the nearest remaining solid ice, which was only a quarter of a mile or so from the edge of
the city. "I hope the water's warm enough for us to survive swimming in it. A thought struck him. "Can you even swim?"

Toph dug her boots into the ice. "I can float a bit."

"Just for the record, if Roku has any idea at all about where you might get another fire bending teacher, I'm going to quit. I
swear, you'd burn water if it was remotely possible."

.oOo.

"I never thought I'd see open water this far south," Bato observed from where he and Arnook stood on the wall of the
city.

The older chief shook his head in disbelief. "I don't remember Kanna being this destructive."

"She was older," pointed out Bato. "And she had her head filled with all that sexist nonsense your waterbenders
believe."

"Maybe," the northern chief agreed grudgingly. "I think there were some stories about Roku flooding half of... half a city
when he was learning waterbending."

They looked at each other. "She can't stay here," Bato voiced what they were both thinking.

Yue arrived - she had been on the other side of the city, consulting with her own teacher on what to instruct Toph on next - in time to hear
that. "Who can't stay?" she asked and then looked out over the wall. "Tui and La! I thought that the guards were exaggerating!"

The city could now add 'lakeside' to its description with water sprawling out in a more or less egg-shape to the south. Near the
centre of the wider end, the furthest from them, a loaf-shaped mass of black rock had risen, creating an island. Squinting, Yue could see slight threads of
red-gold running through it, steam rising from the water wherever the threads - which must be several yards across to be visible from here - reached the
lake.

"We were just thinking that it was time for the Avatar to move on," her father clarified.

"But she has so much to learn," protested Yue. She pointed out onto the water where Toph was propelling the shrinking ice raft
towards the shore. "She hasn't mastered waterbending yet, and she's barely begun airbending."

"And if her current lesson had been just a little closer to the city, we might have to rebuild it. I think that our people will consider
that possibility unwelcome, daughter." Arnook looked pained. "If she is an example then I do not believe that Earth Kingdom little girls are like
those of the Water Tribes. When you were that age, you used your waterbending to make your dolls dance. She..." He gestured helplessly at the
lake.

Dozens of the water tribe had gathered on the shores of the new lake, two waterbenders carefully reinforcing the ice to provide some measure
of safety. Slightly apart from the crowd, one woman stood alone. Despite the concealing blue furs of the Water Tribe, Yue recognised her immediately as
Mai.

"Well, at least with some open water here I can give her a few lessons before she leaves," Yue said, trying to find at least some
good in the situation. "You aren't sending her away immediately?"

"A few days won't hurt," Bato assured her. "And she can stay in one of my people's villages for a while, as well,
although that has it's risks. The Fire Nation Navy is growing frisky."

"And then?" Yue asked. "Where can she go then? Where will be safe for her to hide and to study her bending?"

The two men looked at each other. There really was no answer and to avoid an awkward silence Bato turned it into a joke. "Safe for her
or safe for those around her?"

.oOo.

Almost a week later, Toph lay on the stones she had so dramatically raised out of the ice and meditated. In her usual disregard for
convention, she had scorned the traditional lotus position and was instead resting with her back against the ground, knees bent to place her bare feet likewise
upon the stones, arms spread wide and her head pillowed only by her parka.

It should have been foolish to the point of suicide for her to lie out on the ground so far to the south. However, while the waters of the
new lake had ceased to bubble they had not frozen over. Zuko had speculated that the rocks below were still warm, that the lava continued to flow to some
degree. Toph's earthsense told her that he was right, that there was flow of warm lava rising that was balanced by cooling lava sinking and that the two
had reached an equilibrium that maintain a temperature on and around the island that was merely uncomfortably cold, not lethal.

And, so, with the earth that she had raised up to meditate upon available and even - bliss! - in skin contact with her, she closed her eyes
slept.

Or meditated. It was a blurry line, even for her.

At some point she grew aware of another presence on the island. Her earthsense revealed nothing, but her ears were as good as ever and she
had heard that particular breathing before. "Kanna?"

"Are you sure that you can't see when you're here?" the retired Avatar asked mildly.

"Would you believe me if I said no?"

She heard Kanna's braid swish from side to side as she shook her head. "You are so sharp that you will cut yourself," she said,
almost proudly, and then sat down at Toph's head, somehow replacing the parka with her lap so smoothly that Toph barely noticed the transition. "I
admire your island, dear."

"It'll do," Toph replied dismissively. "Not sending one of your minions to fetch me this time?"

Kanna chuckled. "No. That was something of a formal occasion. I'm a little surprised though: I expected you to have questions about
air bending, not fire bending."

"And I expected you to have Roku wrapped around your little finger by now," Toph sniped back. "Are you losing your touch,
woman?"

"What makes you think I haven't?" Kanna asked archly. "But aren't you changing the subject?"

"Sifu's strength are the basics," explained Toph straightforwardly. "The forms, he can teach me. The heart of firebending,
that's something he's not so good at teaching. I want to go back to the roots. Of course, the dragons are dead."

Kanna ran her fingers through her successors raven dark hair. "The first fire benders were an ancient people in the islands that became
the Fire Nation," she told the girl. "Ask your Sifu about the Sunwarriors."

Toph filed that thought away. "Any suggestions on airbending? Some of the older water benders seem to think I can't possibly master
water bending until I have a good grip on airbending, but it's slow."

"Normally, yes. Traditionally that would be the correct order to learn them," the old woman agreed. "But sometimes a tradition
is just a tradtion. Air bending will be the hardest of disciplines for you to learn, for its precepts are counter to your instincts, just as fire bending came
hard to me. Air benders, after all, preferred to avoid fights."

"Boring," Toph said dismissively.

"It may take some time for you to learn it," Kanna confirmed.

"Well, learning not to fight isn't exactly a priority, I've got a Fire Lord to deal with," said Toph dismissively.
"Maybe I'll just have to get along without it."

"I don't recommend that," advised her predecessor. "I found it very useful fighting the Fire Lord of my day. It kept me
alive more than once."

"Running away often does."

"That's the point, child. She who fights and runs away, lives to fight another day."

Toph crossed her arms across her chest. "The number of days before Sozin's Comet returns isn't all that large."

.oOo.

"Sunwarriors?" Zuko asked in surprise. "Yes, I've heard of them. They raised an empire that covered almost half of the
modern Fire Nation, but it collapsed after the secrets of fire bending became more widely known. They've been dead for centuries."

Toph waited for a beat. Then: "Is that all you know?"

"There was a city - it'll be all jungle by now," Zuko sighed. "Let me guess, we're going there now."

"In that form of we that excludes you," Toph told him. "Can't go taking you back to the Fire Nation, can
we?"

"What?" asked Zuko, his voice sounding quite hurt. "I thought that you trusted me!"

Mai rolled her eyes. "You have a recognisable face, your highness. The minute you set foot on the Fire Nation some sappy little girl
with a crush on you will see you, tell her friends and the local garrison will know within the hour. Besides, don't you have things to do over here?
Persuading Arnook to accept you courting his daughter?"

Yue and Zuko's cheeks pinked, instantly. "Little pitchers have big ears," Yue guessed after looking between the two
sisters.

"Just think of me as your chaperone," Toph said airly. "All those long, private, moonlit walks. I can testify, hand on heart,
that my Sifu's are being perfectly proper. After all, if you wanted to be secret from me, you'd have found somewhere to go where I couldn't feel
the vibrations of you walking. Kuku's back perhaps."

"I'm feeling a whole lot more comfortable with not accompanying you to the Fire Nation, you little voyeur," Zuko said, face
red, although Yue seemed rather interested in the suggested discreet place to do more than simply walk together.

"It's not voyeurism unless you were doing something naughty," Toph said piously. "I was kind of hoping you'd get to
the good stuff actually. A girl's got to learn somewhere."

Yue scowled uselessly at Toph, unsure if the young girl would even be aware of the expression, and then gave up and laughed. "Why
don't I fetch a map for you, Zuko? I presume that it will be rather a long flight for Kuku."

"The island I'm thinking of is tropical," Zuko told her. "And practically on the far side of the Fire Nation. Even on
Kuku, it will take weeks - you'll have to stop for food and forage."

"Are you sure that you want to go?" asked Toph seriously. "We're talking about more than a month away from Zuko - more if
we need a lift elsewhere. Do you want to leave him alone and unprotected among all these war widows?"

"They are all war widows," Yue pointed out. "And if our relationship, such as it is, can't survive a little competition
then it has no future anyway." She gave Zuko a pointed look and he wisely met her gaze evenly and silently.

Mai raised an eyebrow. "Well at least he can be trained," she said disdainfully. "Toph is correct for another reason however:
in all honesty, Yue, you're almost as eye-catching as Zuko, if for different reasons. A sky bison being seen in the sky will cause concern: a woman so
obviously of the Water Tribes will become the focus of suspicion almost immediately. Toph and I can pass for fire maidens easily enough, but any halfwit who
sees your hair or eyes will know you aren't from the Fire Nation."

"You seem to have an endless stream of arguements to have the two of you travelling alone," noted Yui. "I don't recall
either of you being gifted in the handling of animals - particularly you, Toph. Do you think you can persuade a sky bison to accompany you. They're not
fools you know - even if they can't speak, they're as smart as we are in their way."

"In which case I am sure that they will respond to reason," proposed Mai confidently. "I have spent some time in the stables
you know, and I've handled enough stupid riding beasts over the years - mongoose dragons and komodo rhinos to name two - that an intelligent creature such
as Kuku provides novelty."

Zuko looked between them. "Why don't you fetch that map, Yue," he requested. "And maybe we should ask Bato if there is a
discreet village for Toph to have a few more waterbending lessons while Mai courts herself a sky bison."

.oOo.

"So what will you name him?" Yue asked as Mai and Toph loaded their belongings onto the saddle of Mai's new steed. She had
flown the two girls north to one of the islands around the Southern Air Temple, where most of the sky bison herd foraged when possible. While Toph had wrestled
with the still difficult concepts of bending liquid water, Mai had assisted the bison herders, an activity that seemed to mostly consist of brushing the huge
beast's fur and ensuring that their... waste... was suitably disposed of. Of course, the latter meant dried out somewhere discreet for eventual transport
back to the South Pole to use as fuel for fires.

The fire maiden had finally 'befriended' the animal that the herders assured her was the most ornery and unpleasent of all the
herd's bulls - given the tenuous survival of the species, risking a cow was simply not done - a comparatively darkly furred beast whose arrow markings
almost blurred into the rest of his hair. According to the herders, the sky bison had never mated that they were aware off and had taken what they considered
to be regrettable delight in dumping riders off his head from barely survivable heights on at least three occasions.

Mai had her own ideas about how to handle bad tempered creatures, notions quite at odds with the almost reverential methods of the Water
Tribe. While the younger herders had seemed shocked at her use of an improvised riding crop to establish dominance over the sky bison, a substantial number of
their elders - most probably those with personal experience of the 'swarthy' sky bison - had watched with undisguised glee.

"Bison," she replied pragmatically. "It's what he is."

"You can't just call him Bison," Yue said in a shocked tone. "It'll confuse all the other Bisons. They can understand
everything we say to them, you know."

"Mai's Bison," suggested Toph from the saddle, where she was tucking the modest bundles that they would carry with them away
where even she could find them easily. "Except for Mai it would be 'My Bison'."

Yue shook her head disapprovingly. "He's not a thing, you know. He's a person."

Mai sighed and walked round to the bison's head, staring it down when it mooed at her. "From now on, your name is M Bison," she
told it firmly. Yue slapped her forehead. "Can we go now?" Mai asked her.

"As long as you've got everything important," Yue told her. "I'm sorry we can't provide you with more money, but
Fire Nation coins aren't all that common here at the South Pole."

"We'll manage," Mai said confidently. "You've equipped us fairly well otherwise and we still have some Earth Kingdom
coin left that we'll be able to exchange - enough to get us started at any rate. We'll make some stops before we reach our destination, so we can
obtain money and clothes there if it looks as if we'll need to disguise ourselves to fit in."

"I don't want to know how you'll get them, do I?" Yue asked. Life on the harsh ice cap demanded that a community hold
together. Theft, which undermined that trust and might deprive someone of of a vital resource, while not unheard of, was rare and frowned upon. For the two
girls intending to covertly cross the Fire Nation, larceny seemed to be the logical option for them to employ.

"It's almost certainly not as bad as you think," Toph laughed. "Casual labour, gambling, maybe luring someone into trying
to mug the 'helpless blind girl'. We'll be trying not to draw attention to us, remember?"

"That means no creating volcanos, you understand?"

"No, it means not getting caught getting creating volcanos," disagreed Toph.

Mai nodded agreement, although she didn't specify who with.
D for Drakensis

You're only young once, but immaturity is forever.

Haha. M Bison.

------------------

Epsilon

Is this a Boxer M. Bison or a Dictator M. Bison?

EDIT: I guess what I'm really asking is whether we should be more worried about a Buffalo Headbutt or a Psycho Crusher.

"My cousin asked you to marry you?" Azula asked mildly. "You really do have him wrapped around your finger, Ty Lee." She
smiled but the little gymnast was not so foolish as to mistake it as a sign of happiness. "You accepted, of course?"

"I could hardly refuse Azulon's grandson," the younger girl pointed out. "Not to mention..."

Azula waved her hand dismissively, "Yes yes," she agreed impatiently. "It wouldn't do to create a rift in your
relationship with Lu Ten at this point. I suggest you enjoy the courtship because the honeymoon is unlikely to be memorable." She leant on the balcony
rail - progress in the negotiations with Long Feng could almost be measured by the incremental improvements in habitation for the Fire Nation embassy - and
looked out over Ba Sing Se. "Did he let anything slip?"

"If your brother is really collaberating with the Avatar, I don't think he'll be taken alive," Ty Lee confided. "One
part protection of the royal family's reputation, one part sentiment for your lady mother and perhaps some rebellious urges towards the Fire
Lord."

"Rebellious?" Azula's eyebrows arched. "Really? Interesting choice of words there. Are you suggesting that he might be
inclined to hurry the succession along?" She privately considered the pros and cons of Zuko's survival for a moment and then dismissed them.
Delivering him dead wouldn't really hurt Lu Ten's credibility in Ozai's eyes and Azula was honest enough about her father to admit that.

Ty Lee pressed her fingers together. "He's still studying accounts of the Battle of the Three Dragons," she explained.
"Not that I give him time when we're together, but he has three new scrolls on the subject since I last saw him. Two of them from the Earth
Kingdom." Which was frowned upon, though not illegal, in the FIre Nation's military. Of course, as a Prince, Lu Ten was unlikely to be brought to task
for such a trivial matter.

Azula's lips tightened. "Let me guess, he's still chasing that ridiculous theory of treachery at Serpent's Pass? Even if he
was right, there would hardly be evidence in some scroll somewhere. There was only one survivor and if father did decide to settle the succession after Kanna
was dead, he would hardly have left a written confession of it."

"Did he? Decide the succession, I mean."

"I haven't a clue," Azula responded. "What would it matter? Well, to anyone without a sentimental connection to Uncle
Iroh?"

"I guess," Ty Lee agreed. "So, what do you want me to do now?"

"I'm surprised that you have the energy to do anything, from what I hear about your recent activities," smirked Azula.
"Were you going for a record? Most exercise ever carried out in bed?"

Lu Ten's fiancee smiled back. "Oh we weren't just in bed, " she clarified.

"So you weren't just doing...?" Azula asked, sounding a bit disappointed.

"Well we were, but we didn't restrict ourselves to bed," explained Ty Lee. "You'd barely left before he threw me up
against the wall of the map room and -"

"Stop!" commanded the princess. "I'm sorry I asked," she added under her breath. "I want you to open him up for
an assassin, not to kill him yourself through exertion. Granted, he'd die with a smile on his face and no one would ever suspect foul
play..."

.oOo.

When she heard the shout of outrage Mai was just leaving the store where she had parted with almost a third of their remaining money in
return for what she hoped would be enough food for the next leg of their journey along the chain of islands that extended north-east from the heart of the Fire
Nation. Fire Fountain City, with its famous fire-breathing statues of the Fire Lords Azulon, Iroh and Ozai, was their second stop since they had left the
Southern Fire Nation.

It wasn't until the second cry, once she was clear of the door entirely that Mai could make out the words: "Stop! Cheat!" It
didn't surprise her to find out that Toph was not dutifully waiting outside for her to come back with the food. Looking around didn't betray what might
have distracted her little sister, but then, Toph wasn't limited to line of sight for that sort of thing and the cries were coming from a tangle of side
streets.

Toph did not run out of the streets but a scrawny man with a headband and an ugly looking mustache ran out, looking around angrily.
"You, young lady! Did you see a girl in a green dress run out here? She had milky eyes, like she was blind."

Mai gave him a long look and then jerked her head back towards the store, glad that she was wearing her old red and black pants suit, not the
Kyoshi dress. "I just came out, I haven't seen anyone," she said honestly. "Besides, I think you'd hear a blind girl running - every
person she collided with would complain."

"I don't think she's really blind," the man said, looking around at the crowded street. "She scammed me in a game,
cost me a pretty penny too!"

"You were playing a game, for money, against a little girl that you thought was blind?" Mai asked him. "That doesn't seem
very fair."

"I told you, she wasn't blind," he told her. "Besides, it's supposed to be luck. No reason a blind girl couldn't
get lucky."

Mai frowned. "I don't see anyone in a green dress," she told him. "And how could she have 'scammed' you in a game
of chance?"

"Ah! Now I've figured that out," he said triumphantly. "She made like she was blind, see, so she had to check which shell
the stone was under by hand. She musta shuffled another stone in to them without my seeing. Slick."

More likely she was winning even after you thought you'd shuffled the stone out from any of the shells, Mai thought. "I'm not
familiar with the game," she lied, knowing that the conversation could only reach one destination at that point unless the man was very shrewd about
picking his marks. Wait, he'd gambled with Toph. Couldn't be all that bright.

On no more encouragement than Mai's monosyllablic responses the man set up a little table - not much more than a tray - on top of two
convenient barrels and explained in a well-practised patter how the game worked. Given that he was offering a two to one return on a one to two chance, odds
were that an honest game would break even in the long run, which made Mai wonder why anyone would believe that someone running the games as a living would be
honest.

"I see what you mean about luck," she said, sounding dubiously, "But it doesn't seem to be a very exciting
game."

"Oh, it's at least a thousand times more interesting when money's involved, young lady," the gambler assured her. "But
I couldn't ask a proper young lady like yourself to..." Mai produced a silver coin. "...well, if you insist."

Having introduced Mai's coin to his own pair of silvers, the man placed a humble fleck of stone under one of the bowl-sized shells and
started moving them quickly back and forth through an energetic and confusing pattern. Mai didn't bother to watch his hands - any half-competent grifter
would be used to hiding movements of his hands. Instead she watched his eyes, something that seemed to discomfit him somewhat.

"So, young lady, pick yourself a shell," he suggested.

If he was a poor swindler, he'd have removed the pebble and go for the win now. If he was a clever man though, he would ensure her win
now to hook her in for a larger wager. Hmm. In either case... "The centre," Mai said, and before the gambler could lift the shell she reached over
and flipped the two side shells over revealing that there were pebbles under both of them.

"Wha!" he exclaimed.

"Very deft," Mai told him drily. "I see that you are well versed in deft cheating at this. A pebble in each to let me win at
first, and then remove all the pebbles."

The man swallowed nervously as Mai started to delicately pick a tiny speck of dirt out from under one fingernail with a throwing knife that
seemed to appear magically in her fingers. "What is it worth to you that I should forget all about this conversation?" she asked blandly.

.oOo.

Toph was repacking M Bison's saddle when Mai returned to their secluded campsite outside of Fire Fountain City. It was a sheltered beach
far enough from the city that it was unlikely that they would be stumbled over by chance, not as comfortable as Mai would have preferred, but not so unpleasent
that it was unmanageable for a few days. She did not miss the substantial bag of coin that lay on the ground next to their other belongings.

"A productive day?" Mai asked casually.

"Hustled some guy who was scamming the locals," Toph confirmed calmly. "I don't think he'll make trouble, but it's
not like we were planning to hang around anyway."

Mai threw her own coinbag down next to Toph's. It was noticably larger and heavier and the look on Toph's face was clear evidence
that she was aware of that. "Hustled some fool who got cheated by a blind girl," she explained, pulling the straps of her food basket off her
shoulders and setting it down. She stretched to relieve the ache of her muscles. "We should probably pick up some fresh clothes in the next town we visit.
Kyoshi Island greens are a touch visible on a Fire Nation street."

Toph waved her hand in front of her face. "I'll take your word for it. What town is it likely to be?"

"Shu Jing," Mai said, eyeing the water. "I'm going to get cleaned up before we go. It's another long leg up
there."

Toph kept loading as Mai stripped down to her underwear and only a handful of her most essential weapons. The older girl plunged into the
warm waters - this late in the day, even river water wasn't cold enough to shock, particularly after experiencing the bitter cold at the South Pole - and
started efficiently scouring at herself with a rag. She had to duck her head to get soak her hair - long hair was a tremendous bother when travelling but if
her little sister could manage then Mai would too (she was unaware that Toph refrained from cutting her own long hair in self-concious imitation of
her).

"So what's special about Shu Jing?"

Looking up, Mai saw that Toph had efficiently tidied the campsite away, leaving only Mai's green dress and her weapons for her to change
into after her bath. "Nothing particular, it's just a convienient town to use as a jumping off point for the flight to where Zuko told us the
Sunwarriors came from."

"Just a name on a map?" Toph asked, sounding slightly disappointed.

Mai racked her mind for any other facts about the town. "I believe it's home to the swordmaster Piandao," she said at
last.

"Oh?" Toph sat down on the riverbank, water rippling below her in response to a casual movement of her hands. "Does he make
swords or use them?"

"Both," explained Mai. "He was a famous swordsman and commander in the army before he retired, but his swords are considered
works of art. Wealthy patrons pay huge sums for them. My father commissioned one after my brother was born, so that Tom-Tom will have a Piandao sword when
he's old enough to join the army, but there are so many orders for them that we only had word that it was delivered to our family home in the capital after
we were in Omashu."

"Sounds like he does well for himself. Is he a great firebender."

"Actually, he isn't a firebender at all," Mai revealed. "It's the only reason he managed to leave the army - the Fire
Lord can't look so weak as to merely request a non-bender to rejoin the army, and the last time someone demanded that Piandao return to the
banners they took a hundred soldiers with them. He defeated them all."

"Neat! Maybe we'll meet him when we're in Shu Jing," Toph suggested. "I've never met a swordmaster before. I
wonder how he moves."

Mai shook her head. "It would be better to avoid him. Even if he did leave the army, that might not mean that he'd turn a blind eye
to you. Remember, if Zhao survived to make a report there's probably at least a decent description of you in the hands of anyone important in the Fire
Nation." She finished washing herself down and waded up onto the beach. "Would you mind?"

Toph swept one arm up and around, the water on Mai streaming obediently off her body and into a long trail towards the young girl's hand.
She shaped it into something resembling a sword and slashed at the air inexpertly, the way that Mai had seen boys too young for war training play with toy
swords. Of course, this sword was as sharp as Toph's will so even a poorly delivered cut might be fatal.

M Bison mooed irritably, shrugging at the saddle. Bored, probably, Mai concluded as she fastened her dress and started picking up her
weapons. Hard to blame him, with nothing to do here but graze. "Alright, let's go. We can get a good distance before the sunlight
fades."

.oOo.

Shopping for clothes was something that Toph had laughably little experience of. The only clothes she had ever bought for herself were for
her fighting identity in the Earth Rumble tournaments and she had found that enough of a struggle not to get conned or look like a clown at the end of it.
"Whatever you get, get me the same for my size. We're the same colour and what-not, right?"

"You'll still need to be here so that you can be measured for them," Mai told her patiently, reviewing what was on the racks of
the tailor's shop now that she knew she was buying for both of them. While there were some differences in their colouring, Toph was right that they
weren't all that great. Of course, the 'what-not' covered the considerable difference in shape imposed by the four year age gap - althoug Toph was
probably more developed than Mai had been at that age. Still, wearing the same style would make some degree of sense - it wouldn't be unreasonable to
assume that a younger sister would have clothes that her elder sister had outgrown.

"Why don't you pick out some hairpieces," she suggested, pointing towards the table at the back of the store where the
storekeeper's wife could keep an eagle eye on the relatively valuable merchandise.

Toph nodded agreeably and wandered in that direction, holding her arms extended so that she could touch each garment on the racks she was
between as she walked. A flash of colour caught Mai's eye as the clothes swayed back into position and she took a few steps to examine the wine-red dress.
Plain and shoulderless, reaching only mid-calf, it would be more comfortable than heavier fabrics in the warmth of the Fire Nation.

Still, as it was, it wasn't quite suitable for someone of Toph's age and it would be... eye-catching on a young woman of Mai's
age. While the latter might be flattering, it wouldn't be very practical under these circumstances. She started looking through the tops to find something
complimentary.

"So who are you buying for?" she heard the middle-aged woman ask indulgently.

"For me and Mai, of course," Toph replied bluntly, running her finger around one of the hairpieces.

The woman gasped, not angrily. "Oh my, you won't want one of those then. Those are for men, dear. Here, let me show you something
more feminine."

"Does that mean delicate?" Toph asked diplomatically. "I'm not so good with that. Blind, you see."

"Oh, goodness," the woman said in a shocked voice. "I really couldn;t tell, dear. You manage very well."

Toph picked up one of the head-pieces, a plain but rather nicely worked cuff of bronze two finger-widths across, with two dragon wings
jutting upwards. Mai thought that it must be a concious imitation of the traditional headpiece of the crown prince - lost for centuries - but far less fine of
course. "This is rather nice, do you have another like it?"

"Well it would certainly be sturdy," the shopkeeper's wife agreed reluctantly, running her eyes across her merchandise. "I
don't have another of those, but perhaps you'll like these?" She lifted the hairpiece out of Toph's hand and replaced it with another, this
one with silvery trim and more elaborate side pieces wrought in the shape of rearing dragons.

Toph made a disgusted noise as she turned it over in her hand. "This just isn't sturdy enough," she said dismissively.
"And there's something about the metal... is that silver? It must cost twice as much."

"You've caught me," the motherly woman admitted shamelessly. "But really, you have such lovely hair. It deserves
silver."

The blind girl laughed bluntly. "What would I care about what it looks like? Something more like the first one, please."

Mai shook her head and then picked out tunic like top, open at the sides but hanging long at front and back. It was the wrong colour, but it
would cover up their shoulders.

.oOo.

The storekeeper's wife was more than happy for the two girls to change their clothes in a small cubicle set aside for that purpose and in
exchange for a small additional payment made some minor alterations to the fit - more for Mai than for Toph, who could be expected to grow into her new
garments. And when they walked out of the store, they both had their hair pulled back into loose ponytails secured by simple brass hair-pieces, engraved such
that dragons snaked around the circumference. Only their bangs were left unsecured, Mai's neat fringe and Toph's less regular eye-obscuring locks of
hair.

"So, where next?" Toph asked curiously.

Mai glanced along the street. "A weapon shop. I want to replace a few lost knives, and the Water Tribe didn't have any metal
suitable for them, even if there was a sufficiently skilled weaponsmith there."

"Weapons?" Toph's smile broadened. "Nice. Do you think I should get something?"

"Well, a lady can never have enough knives," counselled the older girl as they walked down the street. "But it's important
to find weapons that work for you."

The weapons shop - a veritable temple to the regrettable brevity of life and the tools that could further abbreviate it - was not busy. The
proprietor, a grey haired man with shoulders that suggested he might well be the smith responsible for making some the various deadly implements, was
conversing quietly with a lean, well-dressed man.

Mai made her way directly over to the trays of knives stored at the back, with Toph lagging behind and stamping her feet - now in fashionable
thin soled moccasins that she had been assured were intended for dancing - every few paces to make absolutely certain she wasn't about to walk into
something with sharp edges. The earthbender stopped at a rack of swords and ran her hands very carefully over them before selecting a dao and giving it a
tentative swing, the rings set along the back edge clinking as she did so.

The awkward move caught the attention of the man speaking to the storekeeper and he half-turned towards Toph, who was partly obscured from
his sight by the weapon rack. "Let me guess. you've come hundreds of miles from your little village where you're the best swordsman in town and
you think you deserve to learn from Master Piandao?"

Toph returned the weapon to its place on the rack. "That's amazing! You got every single little detail wrong! How did you manage
it?"

The man blinked and then smiled ruefully as he took a step sideways to get a clearer line of sight towards her. "It's a knack,"
he admitted. "My apologies for the remark, young lady. It was rude of me."

"Whatever," Toph lifted another sword, a straight jian and then replaced it immediately. The light weapon was not to her taste.
"You hear that story a lot?"

"Oh, quite often," he admitted. "You're looking for a sword?"

"I dunno," Toph replied shortly. "A girl has to defend her honor sometimes, but I've never tried using a sword
before." She grinned. "I've never seen a sword after all."

"Never?" the man asked in surprise, walking around the rack to look at her. "Ah, I see." He walked like a fighter:
purposeful, controlled. "You manage well - I could tell immediately that you are a fighter, but not that you are blind."

Toph grinned. "Thanks. My sister taught me everything she knows."

"Not even close," Mai observed from where she was examining a throwing knife. The storekeeper moved in her direction, more
interested in a propsective paying customer than in the Toph's conversation partner.

"I see," the warrior said, lifting the jian and essaying a few thrusts before returning it neatly to its place. "Well, I
don't think that this would be your sort of weapon. A sword is a little more involved than merely being a knife writ large."

"Do you have any suggestions?

He frowned and rubbed at his beard. "Well, you've not really got the reach for a pole arm. Have you ever used a hook
sword?"

"What's a hook sword?" Toph asked.

"Jet used two," Mai told her, not looking up from the knife she was weighing in her hand.

"Jet?" asked the man. "A friend of yours?"

Toph made a face. "Not hardly. He was a real creep, but I know what you mean now. Are there any here?"

"I believe so." He reached higher up the rack and brought down a pair of swords.

When Toph took them, she could tell that the points curved back on themselves. Thinking back, she tried to move them the way Jet had, all
those months ago when he fought against her and Zuko outside of Omashu. Her impaired earthsense had only shown him to her when he was close thought, and she
quickly realised she was degenerating into random fumbling. "I don't think so."

"I think you could be quite good with practise," her advisor observed, "But I agree, you aren't too deft with them at the
moment. Still, you seem to have some experience in wielding paired weapons."

"You're pretty good at this," Toph admitted. "Yeah, I learned to fight a bit with metal fans a while back. It was some
sort of traditional women's weapon where we were living."

"Well let's see if we can find any here. It might be better to build on what you already know." The man set off into one of the
back corners of the shop. "I believe I saw something of the kind here on my last visit."

"How come you're so good at matching people with weapons? Are you a shopkeeper too?"

He laughed. "In a sense, I suppose I am. I suppose I should introduce myself: my name is Piandao."

"Oh." Toph could hear Mai's heart start to beat faster at the revelation that this was the famous swordmaster. "I'm
Toph."

"I'm pleased to meet you, Lady Toph. Saddened that so young a lady needs to defend herself, but it is a sad world at times."
Piandao pulled a fan out from a crate in the corner, snapped it open and held it in a menacing position where it would be effectively useless and then frowned.
"No, that's not right." He offered it to Toph. "Only one of them, unfortunately. Why don't you show me how it's
done?"

She accepted the weapon and fell back on her lessons from Kyoshi Island, moving through a kata designed for use with a single fan - although
the Kyoshi Warriors were issued them in pairs, it wasn't uncommon for one to be lost. It surprised her for a moment how rusty she was, but then, she
hadn't really practised since her injury at Chin Village. "I used to be better at this," Toph grumbled. "I guess I'd really better buy
this and get back into practise."

"Practise is usually a good idea," Piandao agreed amiably. "And I'll just undermine my old friend's bargaining power
by pointing out that it was in the discards box."
D for Drakensis

You're only young once, but immaturity is forever.

Mai was very careful not to make any complaint as she and Toph followed Piandao up to his home, which was a palatial looking castle overlooking some of Shu
Jing's admittedly spectacular scenery. It was very generous of the swordmaster to offer two young women dinner while they were staying in the area -
suspicious in certain ways, but Piandao's reputation on such matters was as stainless as could reasonably be hoped for - and refusing would give offense.

There was a minor concern that someone might stumble across M Bison, of course, but this late in the day it wasn't really any more likely than it had been
while the two of them were in Shu Jing and if someone did... Mai shrugged slightly. Too bad for them. The dark furred sky bison was so aggressive that she
sometimes half-expected him to start flying via firebending not airbending.

The gates into the castle bore a lotus symbol and the one on the left swung open as the three of them approached, revealing a dignified, rather stout man of
around Piandao's age. "Ah, Fat," Piandao said brightly. "As you can see, I have guests for dinner today. I hope I'm giving you enough
warning."

The man - Fat presumably - frowned but nodded and glanced up at the sun, now low in the sky. "Of course Piandao," he said with exquisite courtesy.

"Mai, Toph, this is my old companion Fat," Piandao offered in introduction. "We've been together many years and I would be quite lost
without him."

The girls bowed their heads towards Fat and saluted after the Fire Nation fashion. "I am Mai, and this is my sister Toph," Mai introduced herself,
glad that in their new clothes they looked reasonably respectable.

Fang returned the bow and then stepped aside to allow them all the enter. Inside it's defensive wall, the castle was clearly more residence than fortress,
functional buildings lining the interior of the wall and a luxurious looking pagoda residence that probably screened the castle's private gardens from the
entrance. Everything was built of the finest materials and Mai guessed that for all the huge prices charged for a Piandao sword, the man must have spent
staggering sums to build a house worthy of the highest nobility.

"Wow, your house looks magnificent," Toph said in an awed tone.

"Why thank you," Piandao replied and then paused to pinch the bridge of his nose. "That's your favorite joke, isn't it?"

"It never gets old," confirmed Toph with a nod of her head. "But someone told me recently that I should keep in practise."

"Sounds like a wise man," observed Piandao with a twinkle in his eye. "So, Lady Mai. Are you also skilled with war fans, like your sister."

"It's considered ladylike," Mai answered absently. "And our mother was always very concerned that we should know how to act like
ladies."

"Another weapon in your arsenal, no doubt," chuckled the man. He gestured for them to follow a path around the side of the mansion rather than up the
stairs to the front door. "Perhaps the two of you would be so good as to give me a demonstration of your skills before dinner. I find that a sparring
session sharpens the appetite."

Mai looked at Toph, who shrugged and tapped her new fan, where it was thrust through her belt. The message was clear: fans only. Mai nodded agreement and
produced her own pair from a fold of her own dress. One disadvantage of the new clothes was that they didn't allow her to conceal dart launchers in her
sleeves, but she had made up for it by hiding some thin blades in the soles of her shoes - which were much thicker than those of Toph's moccasins - so that
with a little adjustment the tips would extend just past her toes. That would be a nasty surprise to anyone she kicked.

Of course, in order for it to be a surprise, she would have to keep it in reserve. Like a lot of things, it was better a secret.

The back of the mansion, as Mai had suspected and Toph had known before she even entered the gates, did indeed face a private garden, on a sunken level well
below the back of the house. Between them was a paved terrace, suitable for any number of activities, including - obviously - weapons drills.

Piandao took a few steps out onto the yard and drew the sword that was so much a part of him that Mai had barely noticed he was armed when they were in the
shop. "If you would be so good?" he invited, holding the scabbard of his sword in his offhand.

Three fans snapped open in unison and the two girls... did nothing else.

They were already placed closely enough to support each other, already ready to move to defend or counter-attack accordingly. Offense was not even considered:
against a renowned master of the sword, they would want to know what they were dealing with first.

Piandao gave them a little lesson in that. For all his years, the man was fast and his wrist flexible. Mai's pair of fans gave her the best defenses of the
two, and he came very close to breaking through them with rapid thrusts of his sword. Toph automatically closed in from the swordsman's left, trying to get
inside the sweep of the sword, only to find her fan blocked by the scabbard in Piandao's left hand.

Toph's own left hand locked onto his wrist - not enough to prevent him from moving the arm, she was simply too small for that, but enough to hinder him and
Mai moved to exploit the opening only to find that there was no opening when Piandao uncoiled like a serpent, the jian's pommel coming within a
hairsbreadth of striking her squarely on the point of the jaw. At the same moment, Piandao forced his arm out in the simplest and most powerful of moves, a
punch that Toph's grip could do no more than divert past the side of her head at the cost of losing her grip.

She spun, arm jabbing out for Piandao's belly, feeling the vibration that showed he was stepping back beyond her reach, right arm sweeping around. Toph
ducked, the sword cutting a few strands of hair from her pony tail, and Mai, temporarily seperated from Piandao by her sister, flung one fan in a spinning arc
over Toph's head. The swordsman brought up his sword to parry the weapon and his scabbard down to deflect Toph's foot as she rolled between his legs,
one foot thrusting upwards like a spear towards his pelvis.

She rolled free of course, bounding to her feet with Piandao bracketed between the two of them. He stepped aside, towards the garden, parrying in two
directions, glad that Mai was missing a fan and had elected for whatever reason, not to produce any of the other weapons that he knew she carried.

"To parry and to cut," Piandao commented as they broke, the three of them moving around, seeking opportune positioning to resume the spar. "I
had expected that - also thrusting, which is not your habit, I see. I confess I had not considered the use of a fan as a thrown weapon."

"Nor do a lot of people," agreed Mai and dodged around a cut towards her leg, too low for her fan to reach down and parry. That was one problem with
the weapons: lack of reach. Behind Piandao, Toph scooped up the fan Mai had thrown and ran towards the swordman's back. He wheeled right, using his sword
to intercept the attack and keeping his scabbard pointed towards Mai.

The wood of the ornate scabbard cracked as Mai took the opportunity to crack a sharp blow against it., driving it aside and then lunging closer while Toph
pushed Piandao's sword up above her head with one fan, slashing with the other.

The three of them all came to a halt. Mai's fan was almost touching Piandao's left eye, but she knew he had released hold of the scabbard to drive a
punch that had halted just barely in contact with her throat. On the far side of him, Toph had the edge of the fan pressed into his thigh, perfectly placed to
sever the major vein there, but he had recovered from her parry with such swiftness that the edge of his sword lay against her ribs.

An approving smile crossed the swordmaster's face. "Most formidable. I applaud you both." He withdrew both sword and hand, relaxing.

After a moment, Mai closed her fan, Toph following suit and stepping around Piandao to return Mai's fan to her. Both bowed to Piandao. "Thank you for
the lesson," Mai told him.

"Not at all," he assured her. "Thank you both for the demonstration."

From the door leading into the mansion, Fat cleared his throat. "Dinner," he announced, "is served."

.oOo.

If the meal served for them by Fat was typical of how Piandao ate, then his diet had a great deal in common with his tates in architecture: the food was of
excellent quality but rather simple fare overall. Rice, with boiled vegetables and fried beef made up the main course after a thin and heavily spiced soup
starter that Toph found rather hotter than she had realised, cooling her mouth with iced tea provided by Fat, who diplomatically refrained from smirking at the
girl's expression.

"Not to your taste?" Piandao asked from where he was kneeling at one end of the low table.

Toph shrugged. "I didn't each much soup when I was younger, it took a while to learn how to eat it. I didn't realise this one was quite so
spicy." She took another spoonful and washed it down with more tea. "It is good though," the young earthbender admitted, nodding in
acknowledgement to Fat.

Piandao chuckled. "Indeed. Cooking is one of the arts where I humbly recognise Fat as being the true master in this household. Are either of you inclined
towards that particular art."

Mai's lips twitched. "I'm not particularly domestic," she admitted. "Toph seems to follow my example in that as well."

"Nor am I," the swordmaster admitted. "I'd been living of army slop for years, so eating my own cooking didn't seem like much of a
sacrifice when I first moved here. But then Fat offered me his home-cooking if I'd take him on as a student. I was convinced after the first bite."

"I take it that you negotiate more forcibly over your swords," Mai observed. "Considering the prices you charge."

"Oh well," he said, giving the impression he would be waving dismissively, if he wasn't holding a bowl of rice in one hand and chopsticks in the
other. "I only charge so much to try to discourage so many people from asking me for swords. It's all very well to make them, but there is only so
much time in the day and after I started selling swords to pay for all this, well, I barely had time to do any of this until I set the prices to where they
are." His lips quirked. "Of course, now most of my customers buy the swords as decoration or as talking points, rather than using them as
weapons."

"Is that some reference to some sort of philosophy?" Toph asked.

Piandao swallowed a mouthful of rice. "I suppose it is," he said thoughtfully. "A sword is a weapon, the most versatile of weapons. Any fool
could make a sword-shaped piece of metal to hang on a wall. I like to think that my swords are more than that."

Toph used her own chopsticks to feed herself some beef. "Bloodthirsty," she observed before she'd finished chewing on it. It was hard to tell,
with her mouth full, but Mai suspected that there some ambivalence on her part as to whether she approved or not.

"I would rather that they were treated as weapons of war," Piandao said drily. "That is not quite the same as desiring that weapons of war be
made use of. Then again, my customers are paying dearly for the privilege of not following my wishes on the matter, so I suppose that it not in my hands."
He signalled for Fat, who was sitting at the bottom of the table, to refill their tea cups, the level of which was below the median point. "So, what
brought the two of you to Shu Jing?"

"Trying to avoid Toph being drafted into the army," Mai lied smoothly. Since Piandao had departed the Fire Nation's army on his own terms, it
didn't seem likely that he would be particularly offended by the notion of a family not wanting their younger and blind daughter to be compelled to serve
the Nation, as all fire benders were unless they could obtain an exemption. Such exemptions were typically granted only to noble families concerned about
keeping a line of blood descent safe from combat and almost invariably required bribes almost as great as the cost of purchasing one of Piandao's swords.

"I'm still not convinced that they'd bother," Toph objected half-heartedly. "What would the army want with a blind fire bender?"

"In my experience it would be less a matter of wanting you to be in the army than it would be a matter of not wanting to set a precedent of rejecting a
fire bender due to a disability," Piandao explained. "Bureaucrats are generally reluctant to innovate without a significant financial incentive, in
my experienced. You realise that refusing a summons to serve is a criminal offense?"

"Failure to receive a summons is not," Mai explained. "If we cannot be located, we cannot receive notice that Toph has been called to serve and
therefore cannot be held to be in refusal of a summons."

Piandao nodded thoughtfully. "But no one can run forever, young ladies."

"And if no one knows where we are headed, no one can share that information with bureaucrats," answered Mai.

To his credit Piandao did not seem offended by the implied lack of trust. "It is a sad day when such caution is required between countrymen," he said
simply. "But it must also be admitted that there have been many sad days of late." Before the mood could become gloomier, he proved his bona fides as
a host and changed the subject. "So, do either of you play Pai Sho?"

"A little," Mai conceded.

Toph visibly weighed her options before admitting: "As long as you don't mind me touching the board to keep track of the tiles." Unsaid was the
fact that most players would reasonably fear that Toph would - intentionally or otherwise - move tiles while doing so. There was a degree to which her earth
sense could guide her - most tiles and boards were stone - but she would hardly admit that under these circumstances.

"Then perhaps, after we are done eating, we can play a game or two," Piandao offered hospitably. "I am sure that a warrior so skilled with a war
fan will make no careless mistakes upon a mere Pai Sho table."

.oOo.

"An interesting man," Mai threw back over her shoulder as M Bison flew through the barely pre-dawn sky. They would be out of sight of land before the
sun was high enough to give a good chance of spotting them, and this leg of the journey would keep them out of that sight for longer than she was entirely
comfortable with. The charts that she had were either from the water tribe, relating largely to currents that she couldn't track from the air, or copies of
Air Nomad charts that were a hundred years old and based on air currents that she was barely aware of when she was in them.

"Does Spiky have a crush?" asked Toph sleepily from under a blanket where she was curled up inside the arc of the saddle. She had seemed distracted
during and after the walk from Piandao's castle to their campsite - while accepting the swordmaster's hospitality would have allowed them to sleep in
actual beds for once, no properly brought up fire maidens would have done so - and as she had been awake when Mai roused herself, it was possible that she had
yet to actually sleep. Oh well, it wasn't as if daylight was liable to keep her awake.

"I'm not the one who monopolised him all evening," Mai replied. While she had accepted defeat after two drubbings on the Pai Sho table -
humblingly while Piandao was playing Toph on a second board - and accepted the offer of some light reading from Fat (who appeared to be addicted to an
seemingly endless series of cliched romance scrolls that had entertained the marginally literate of the Fire Nation since Mai's mother was a girl); the
younger girl had played against the swordsmaster well into the evening, apparently undeterred by his unbroken string of victories against her.

Toph grumbled something unintelligable and rolled herself over to find the edge of the blanket. Upon success, she extended one hand directly upwards, holding
something small for Mai to see it. "He gave me this when we left."

With the rising sun coming from behind them, Mai had to squint a little to make it out. "A white lotus tile?" A chill went down her spine and for a
moment her mind took her back to a tower cell in Omashu. "Little sister, for the first time I really wish Zuko was here."

"I don't think he knows anything more than we do really," Toph told her. "When he talked to Bumi he was fishing for information and I
don't think he got anything significant."

"That doesn't mean that he didn't know anything specific." Mai rubbed at her face. "His uncle had a white lotus tile, Piandao gave you a
white lotus tile and both Zuko and Mad King Bumi seem to consider white lotus tiles to have some significance. What, you think there's a secret society of
Fire Nation Pai Sho players?"

Toph wrapped the blanket closer around her. "Maybe not just the Fire Nation." A moment later, when Mai didn't reply, the twelve year old began to
snore softly.

Mai watched the sky, the sea and the compass she'd bought in a Fire Nation port as soon as they'd reached civilisation. The water tribe and the air
nomads could follow currents as much as they wanted, she wanted something that reliably pointed the same direction at all times.

Half a year or so ago, she'd turned her back on her birth family and boredom in favour of an adopted sister and what promised to being interesting and
possibly an adventure. She'd certainly not envisaged trying to navigate over the trackless ocean via flying bison after spending an evening sparring with
and then getting trounced at Pai Sho by a famous swordmaster, but Mai had to admit: it wasn't boring.

She looked back at Toph, a surprisingly small bundle of blankets and child, long black hair spilling from one end and then thought back to the last time she
seen the Fire Lord Ozai, on one of his rare public appearances. The Fire Lord had cut an imposing figure in long, heavy crimson robes and a gold-trimmed black
breastplate and while his mastery of fire was known more by legend than by public demonstration, it was beyond doubt that he had years of experience wielding
it.

And then there were the almost endless numbers of the Fire Nation's army, raised from it's teeming population, and the weapons of war designed by its
traditional artificers before being copied in hundreds of factories.

Well, if dramatic convention required adventurers to face a seemingly unstoppable enemy, the spirits would appear to have provided such to Toph.

.oOo.

Hundreds of miles away, the Fire Lord had risen with the sun and was now breaking his fast over reports that had arrived over night from his spies within the
capital.

Ozai ate alone. His wife, Ursa, had not shared his bed in over a decade and had departed the palace entirely to enter seclusion in one of the royal
family's many small lodges upon the first news that her eldest child had vanished. Her husband could not recall off-hand where she had even gone, although
it would appear in reports from further afield than the capital if she had left, or done anything else of note.

Those reports would wait until later. Only events within the city that sprawled around the palace of the Fire Lord could be reported swiftly enough for him
consider them in any sense urgent. All else he would either need to react to with orders that would again be delayed in transit, or anticipated and therefore
covered already by the existing instructions he had given.

Ozai's orders upon the reports of Zuko's reappearance had merely been assign responsibility. The outcomes - if Zhao was reporting truly or if he was
not - were equally predetermined and the notion of mitigating the death sentence of Zuko, were he a traitor, or of Zhao, were he maligning a member of the
Royal Family simply did not occur to Zuko's father.

Zhao had returned to the capital the previous day and was currently ensouced in his family home, being treated for his frost burn. The prognosis was that while
he was in no real risk of dying at this point, it would be most of a year before the Admiral was restored to fighting form. Ozai made a note to see if there
was some tedious bureaucratic task to foist off on the man. Something to divert at least some of his attention away from politicking.

There was a discreet knock at the door and a servant entered on silent feet, carrying a tray stacked with more scrolls. Ozai didn't look up - the knock was
not a request for permission to enter, it was a confirmation from one of the guards outside that the servant was recognised and not a possible assassin. Such
signals were part and parcel of the Fire Lord's life.

The servant sorted the scrolls neatly into the space left by those that Ozai had already examined and collected those that had been discarded. Ozai picked up
the first scroll she had brought and cracked the seal, noting that it was his daughter's. The servant flinched at the harsh chuckle behind her as she left
the room.

Ozai set his dishes aside for a moment and examined the letter again, reading between the lines. So Lu Ten had shuffled more of the fleet under his own control
and Azula was feeling the pressure. Good. His family did their best work when there was a threat to motivate them and it wouldn't do for his daughter to
succeed in Ba Sing Se too quickly or easily. She still had much to learn and a canny opponent such as this Long Feng, would be an excellent way for her to
learn.

The Fire Lord was hardly unaware of the conflict raging between his daughter and his nephew over the succession. Indeed, he approved wholeheartedly when that
same contest could be turned to his own benefit. In this case, Azula would be desperate to secure Ba Sing Se and the attendant glory in order not to be
overshadowed should Lu Ten succeed in capturing her traitor brother or the young Avatar.

Either one of the pair would be a notable victory for the young admiral. Not that either or even both would be enough to persuade Ozai to name Lu Ten as the
heir apparent: it was bad enough that the presumption that Zuko, as his eldest child, was the heir had ruined the boy. No, as far as Fire Lord Ozai saw, there
was no reason at all to make any such declaration. The two contenders could fight that out until one eliminated the other and whether they did so before or
after his own eventual demise was a matter of indifference to him. For that matter, he was not an old man and if it was ever convenient to do so, some
additional heirs might very well make their appearances. Twenty or thirty years from now, who could say what offspring he might have.

Not via Ursa though, Ozai thought, setting the letter aside at last. Azula was promising, but Zuko was clear evidence that Roku's bloodline could not be
relied upon for strength or for loyalty. Still, there was no lack for other noble families who would be happy to receive his favour through a marriage. For
that matter, maybe it was time to think about Azula's suitors... or rather, the abysmal lack thereof.

Honestly, the way that she had been pouting about Lu Ten's choice of bride, Ozai was beginning to think that his daughter batted for the other side.
D for Drakensis

You're only young once, but immaturity is forever.

*SNRT!*

Despite being hairer than anything Mai had ever come across before, M Bison did not appear to be particularly bothered about the tropical
heat of the island that - as best she could tell - was the one Zuko had marked on the map. The sky bison had shed an astonishing amount of hair as they flew
through the equatorial regions, but had made not the least complaint more than he had done at the south pole. Then again, sky bison had apparently travelled
the world routinely with Air Nomads back in the day, so perhaps that indifference came naturally to his kind.

"This place reminds me of the swamp," Toph said as they set up camp on the beach. "Something about the
trees..."

Mai glanced around and then nodded. There were some similarities between these trees and the mangroves of the Foggy Swamp. Fortunately, the
ground seemed to be considerably more reliable. "If you get the chance, perhaps you can figure out Huu's trick of bending plants," she suggested.
"It could be useful if the buildings I saw from the air are this overgrown."

"That bad?" the younger girl asked. She could trace the roots of the trees through the soil inshore of the sands, but the leaves
and branches were far harder to make out at this distance.

"Bad enough." Mai finished unstrapping the saddle and stepped back to let M Bison work his way out of the heavy leather assembly.
Normally he would sleep while saddled allowing for a swift departure at need, but where possible Mai had been encouraged to give him the chance to rest or even
graze without it. Whatever they wound up doing on this island, the lack of population made it unlikely that they would need to depart in any sort of haste.
"I'm astonished the buildings were even visible, now that I get a closer look at these trees."

Toph used her earth bending to steepen the dunes around their campsite, sheltering them more from any winds. Between that and the mass of M
Bison, the only real risk was that of rain and Mai had brought canvas for that very reason, along with bamboo poles that could be used to suspend it above
them, warding that away from where they would sleep.

"What do you think you'll find here?" Mai asked as she laid out a fire pit. Tonights supper would not be as fine as that Fat
was no doubt serving to Piandao at this hour, but it would be warm and probably more edible than military rations in the armies of the Earth Kingdom and Fire
Nation.

"I'm not sure," admitted her sister. "Scrolls would probably have rotted away long ago, or simply be taken. But there will
be something here that will help with my fire bending."

Mai nodded, not voicing further doubts. "And then?"

Toph sat quietly for a moment. "Then I make war. It's summer now, not much more than two months before Sozin's Comet is in the
sky. When that happens, I need to have the Fire Lord and his soldiers focused entirely on something other that obliterating another nation. And the only thing
more pressing than that will be the Avatar."

"You've been thinking about it then?"

"Ever since I was playing Piandao at Pai Sho. Strategy, tactics, call it what you will. I need a plan that beats the Fire Lord's
plan and all the timing rests on -" and here Toph's voice grew amused "- something I'll be hard-pressed to notice without someone to tell me
it's in the sky."

"Do you have any candidates for that someone, little sister?" drawled Mai. She stepped back from the fire pit and Toph blew a plume
of fire over the driftwood that they had gathered. It lit up almost immediately and Mai placed the pot, already half filled with clean water from their
waterbags, on the fire to heat.

Toph grinned. "Let's keep it in the family," she proposed. "Older sister."

"What did you call me?" Mai asked, raising the ladle menacingly.

"The hearing is often the first thing to go. Have any of your hairs turned grey yet?"

.oOo.

It wasn't hard to believe that the city was thousands of years old, Mai thought as she and Toph entered its streets. Paving was cracked
and worn more by the elements than by human feet. The buildings, built to a somewhat truncated pattern, the walls angling in towards each other, wider at the
ground than the ceilings, suggested ancient building practises, as did the lack of any mortar holding them together. Nothing more than stones piled upon each
other. Mai suspected that any Sunwarriors not killed in the wars as they expanded their empire had migrated to more civilised settlements the first chance they
got, leaving nothing more than an empty capital when uprisings tore that nation apart.

Toph liked it, of course.

Rather than risk flying over something important, the two of them had elected to walk through the overgrown streets of the ruined city. Toph
had experimented with the trees as Mai hacked her way through the outer layers of the jungle, finding that under the canopy layer of the trees, there was much
less undergrowth. By the time they crossed the nebulous boundary between city and jungle, she was able to move aside at least the lighter growth, although they
still had to work around the heavier, more established trees.

"This place is a wreck," Mai observed.

Toph pushed another tree branch around so that they could progress further down an alleyway between two small buildings that were almost
certainly houses. "Let's be fair. Your room back in Omashu probably looks this bad and we've not even been gone a year."

The thought of her room in Omashu - a room that she'd hated the whole time she was there - sent an entirely unexpected pang of guilt
through Mai. Her mother had kept putting potted flowers there as id they would make it better. Of course, for all her supposedly love of plants, Mai's
mother didn't exactly have a green thumb. It wouldn't be at all unlike her to have forgotten all about them, leaving a maid to water them while they
grew until the entire room was consumed by green.

They crossed into a wider street and Toph turned towards the centre of the city. "There's something larger down that
way."

Mai squinted, trying to see past the trees. The buildings did seem higher there, although it might simply be a hill. "That would be
fairly near the centre of the city. I suppose important buildings would be there, and probably larger than these ones."

They turned and started walking down the street. For whatever reason, it seemed to be less cluttered. While trees still occupied parts of the
road, having forced their way through the paving, but unlike the narrower routes, there was almost always enough space for the two of them to go past without
Toph having to force the branches away or - as she had twice so far today - level a building to create a path.

"Stop." Toph held out an arm to block Mai from continuing.

The older girl looked down at her. "What's the matter?"

"I wondered what these were," Toph murmered, kneeling and pulling on a section of vine that crossed the road. Now that Mai saw it,
the way it hung was suspicious - just off the ground, around ankle height. A tripwire?

Toph yanked on it sharply and a sizeable section of paving immediately in front of her bare toes sank promptly, by about six inches. The
metal spikes that had been hidden between the paving didn't sink though. Mai could envisage someone tripping on the vine and tumbling face first into the
spikes. It wasn't a pleasent vision.

"That worked rather smoothly for something centuries old," she observed.

Toph exhaled slowly and made a pushing gesture before standing. "It's been maintained," she guessed. "Someone else is
here. Or has been, in the last few years." She stepped down, carefully placing her feet between the spokes as she crossed the depression. "I've
blocked this one, it's safe. But keep your eyes peeled. Where there's one trap -"

"- there are bound to be more."

.oOo.

The building at the centre of the city was further away than it had looked. It was also larger than Mai had realised at first, rearing up
over the city. Rather than a smooth, or at least regularly stepped exterior, it was a profusion of terraces and stairways. Every vertical surface was carved
and ornamental dragons were everywhere, interspersed in some depictions with firebenders but predominantly alone.

"Impressive," Toph conceded. "This must have taken forever to do."

"The great earth bender is impressed? Now I have seen everything."

Toph shook her head. "Sure, I could build something like this. But this isn't the work of an earth bender. Not even of an army of
earth benders. This was done by hand. That's quite a project. This must have been a palace or a temple of some kind."

Mai nodded. That made sense. She couldn't think of anything else that would occupy such a central and clearly important location.
"Let me guess. Anything important will be right at the top?"

"Either that or underneath it," Toph agreed. "And I can't feel any catacombs down there." She stamped her feet and
frowned.

"What's wrong?" A knife dropped into Mai's hand from sheer reflex.

"Something - maybe someone, maybe just an animal - moving in the distance." Toph sighed. "It's the right size for a
human... of course, I wouldn't be surprised if a place like this had giant monkeys wandering around."

"Apes."

"What?"

"Not giant monkeys, apes."

"Whatever." Toph set off up the steps and then paused as she felt another vibration through the stone. "That was
human feet. Lots of human feet. Up near the top of this thing!"

She set off running. Up the stairs, of course.

Mai smiled thinly and followed. She didn't let go of the knife though. Humans here might represent a link to the long dead sunwarriors,
to whatever secrets of firebending lore Toph had been directed here to find... but they were far more likely to represent a threat to her little sister. Or,
the world being what it was, both.

Toph's pace slowed as she came closer to the top. Not from exhaustion, although the climb - carried out under the sweltering heat - would
be wearisome for someone less energetic. Her concern - and that of Mai, whose longer legs made up for the fact that being post-pubescent she no longer had
limitless energy to work with - was of stealth.

The front of the pyramid projected forwards, creating a seperate building linked to the main structure by a bridge. The bridge was guarded.
The main structure - specifically the area at the other end of the bridge, previously shielded from their view - was occupied by firebenders. Quite a number of
firebenders, evenly divided between male and female. The latter was easy to tell, even at this distance, because -

"Does every hidden tribe in the world abhor clothing?" Mai asked under her breath, knowing that Toph would hear the words easily.
"First those swamp rats and now this lot."

"Well at least Yue's people wear clothes. I don't care how warm my island makes their city, they'd freeze without
them."

Mai chuckled, taking the measure of the two warriors at the near end of the bridge. Young and to judge by the spears, probably not fire
benders. Most benders didn't see the need for weapons other than their elements. "I imagine Zuko would be very happy if Yue did adopt the
practise." And that possibility didn't hurt any more, how about that?

"Why?" Toph asked with feigned innocence. Then again, nudity probably meant very little to her, Mai admitted privately.

Instead of answering, Mai looked at the benders. They were standing in a circle, passing flames - each in a stylised shape - around it. There
was presumably some significance in their eyes and Mai wondered who they were. Some long lost remnant of the Sunwarriors or a more modern cult who merely
imagined that they were? "What are they doing?"

"I'm not sure." Toph placed one hand against the stones, fingers spread. "I think we can get closer it we approach from
below the bridge."

Mai looked at the guards, neither of whom could possibly see anything that was directly beneath the bridge that they were standing upon, and
the firebenders, who seemed entirely absorbed in their ritual. "Alright. I take it that you have a route down to the base of the bridge?"

Toph smirked and placed her hands together before drawing them apart sharply. A pit opened directly beneath her and the girl dropped silently
through it. Mai sighed and hopped into it, what she hoped was a safe distance behind, discovering that the pit was actually the entry to a chute that seemed to
spiral around the inside of the pyramid. It was also very fast, reminding Mai entirely too much of Omashu's mail system, and pitch black. By the time she
reached the bottom, which thankfully levelled out a bit slowing her to the point that the landing at the bottom - on the paving beneath the bridge - wasn't
too noisy. Which wasn't the same as it being painless. Mai shot an irritated look at the back of Toph's head as the other girl opened a hole in the
first pillar supporting the bridge for them to walk through.

It only took a few moments to cross the divide, with Toph neatly closing up the holes behind them as leaving evidence of their presence would
be almost as bad as being spotted themselves. The murmer of voices above above them was clearer but Mai still couldn't make out any words.

"Do you think we should introduce ourselves?" Toph asked.

The corners of Mai's lips curved upwards. "I don't think they'd appreciate the interuption," she said. "And if we
do approach them, it might be best to be above them."

Toph nodded, a grin appearing her face. "Let's take the stairs," she suggested, slapping the wall in front of them.
"They're right here." The wall opened smoothly, revealing stairs that led a few yards up and inside the pyramid to bare earth. Once they were
inside, the wall closed up behind them and Mai followed her sister up the stairs, not concerned when they didn't walk into the earth she'd seen at the
head of the stairs as Toph extended the stair upwards ahead of them, closing it behind them as they ascended.

"Earth bending has it's uses," the knife-wielding fire maiden noted.

"It does," Toph agreed. "It's definitely the greatest of all four bending arts."

"Isn't the Avatar supposed to be about balance, and fairness between all four elements?" Mai asked.

"And that's why you know I'm being fair and unbiased."

Mai rolled her eyes in the darkness. "Of course you are. Well, sneaking around like this and avoiding a fight probably counts as helping
you with airbending philosophy at any rate. Now if you can figure out how to sense vibrations in the air, you'll be all set."

Toph chuckled from a step ahead of her. "Not really practical. Air's just too unstable for that to work."

"That's a shame," Mai conceded.

"It isn't totally useless," admitted Toph, "It's just too easily distorted to be relied on for anything more than
generalities." She stopped walking and Mai, unwarned, took another step upwards before she halted. Two steps ahead of them, the stairs halted, this time
against a stone wall she disovered, reaching forward to touch it with one hand. "Someone's sneaky."

Mai frowned. "What's on the other side of this?"

"A mechanism of some kind," Toph told her. "Pressure balanced stones, very complicated. I'm not sure what all of it does
but if I try to go through that I could set something off without meaning to."

"Such as?"

"Well," and Mai could have sworn she could hear Toph grinning, "There's a vat of some kind of gluey liquid.
Enough to fill a good-sized room. If that starts flooding into a confined space like this..."

Mai shuddered. "I take your point. So, do you think we can work around it?"

Toph started walking again and Mia followed up the last two stairs and then into a tunnel that led off to the right. "Probably the
simplest way is just to go around it," the earth bender decided. "There isn't anyone around the back of the pyramid right now, so we can just go
up onto the back terrace and climb up that side."

"It sounds like more traps like the one you found earlier," Mai observed. "Which raises the question of what's behind
them. Does this fill up all of the top of the pyramid?"

"No, there's a room up above," Toph told her. "Sealed up tight, stone doors and everything."

Mai considered. "Let's see what's up there," she suggested. "It could be important."

A few moments later Toph opened up the ceiling of their route, leaving Mai blinking at the sudden sunlight pouring through the opening. Toph
closed up the hole by simply raising the ground beneath them until they were standing on the terrace behind the upper levels of the pyramid. True to Toph's
words, there was no one in sight, which seemed odd to Mai, given the guards on the bridge leading to the Pyramid.

"The stairs are all on the other side," Toph told her when the older girl voiced her concerns. "They probably haven't seen
an earth bender in generations, as far away from everywhere as you told me this island is, and anyone else would find the sides of the pyramid almost
impassable." She raised steps leading up to the next terrace for the two of them, careful to use stone from the floor, not from the walls which might
suffer damage to their intricate carvings.

There were similar carvings upon the uppermost level of the pyramid. The apex was as large as a good sized house and capped by a dome, the
rear wall marked by two huge dragons carved in reliet, breathing fire towards the centre of wall where the shape of a human had been carved, engulfed in the
fiery wrath of both.

"How are you going to avoid damaging that?" Mai asked wryly.

Toph smirked and set her feet, taking a deep breath. A moment later and she swung the entire rear wall open like a huge door. "After
you, Spiky."

"Show off," Mai murmered and obediently walked inside, with Toph closing the wall behind them. The room within was lit via an
opening at the top of the dome that was covered only by a metal grid and while it was dimmer than the light outside, Mai found that a relief, her eyes still
adjusting from the darkness inside the pyramid. As it was, she almost gasped at the menacing shapes positioned around the room before realising that they were
merely statues and restrained herself from open reaction. "I'm not sure what I was expecting, but this isn't it," she admitted.

Toph stalked around the room's floor of interlocking red marble stones until she reached the opening in the circle of statues, by the
door. "The stones that move as part of the mechanism are all inside the circle," she told Mai as she entered the area, making it obvious that she was
avoiding certain slabs.

Mai looked at the statues. Each was of a man, face obscured by an gruesome mask, wearing the garb of an ancient Sun Warrior and probably one
of high stature to judge by the elaborate nature of the clothes and mask that had been sculpted. The two sides more or less mirrored each other, as far as she
could tell, each statue positioned in unstable looking poses that were either intended to look as foolish as possible or... well, it could be something to do
with bending perhaps. That looked fairly silly when there wasn't fire involved, and sometimes when it did.

"What do you think these are for?"

Toph looked up. "Some sort of fire bending form perhaps. It's also a key."

"A key?"

"The pressure plates are all aligned with where the statues stand. I'm pretty sure that it's activated by having two people
execute out the form at once, standing on each pressure plate in turn." Toph frowned and then pointed to the centre of the chamber. "Opening a
compartment there although I think there's more to it than that. Whoever came up with this was a mad genius."

Mai shrugged. "Well, are you going to open it up or do you want to approach the celebrants of that little festival
outside?"

"They're heading up the pyramid now," reported Toph before answering: "Let's wait for them. I wouldn't like
someone going through my super secret hiding places if I had any and we might be asking them for favours."

"Are you learning diplomacy, little sister?" asked Mai.

"I can be diplomatic when I want to. I just don't bother much," Toph said and shrugged.

.oOo.

Ham Ghao was proud to lead the procession of Sunwarriors up the pyramid towards their destination. Every year, a member of the tribe who had
distinguished himself was allowed the honour and this was the second summer solstice that he had been granted the right.

It didn't occur to Ham Ghao that the leader of the procession was the only man amongst them who didn't walk next to anyone. Or that
the rest of the tribe considered his smugness over the honour to be an entirely acceptable excuse not to have to walk alongside him for upwards of an hour,
listening to what the most sympathetic of ears in the tribe labelled as 'whining and bitching'.

They were nearing the end of the climb now, coming up on the archway that marked the top of the stairs, and the self-absorbed fire bender
noticed that the light from the sunstone was now tracking across the keystone to the ancient door that led into the Great Pyramid. Hastening his pace, Ham Ghao
led the procession towards the door, each line of Sunwarriors breaking away to form a circle around the lines laid out on the stones.

As they took position, the keystone reacted to the carefully focused and redirected sunlight; the stone doors slowly sliding open. Because
Ham Ghao had lingered to saver his position at the head of the group, he was the first one to see inside the sanctum.

There were two girls inside, facing the doors. Alive, in a chamber that had not been opened for a year. They were alike in appearance - pale
skinned with long dark hair in high ponytails, wearing burgundy dresses. Trespassing where even the sunwarriors, the heirs to the legacy of a thousand years of
the sacred art of firebending would hesitate to walk. One was clearly still a child in years, the other young but evidently a woman.

"Intruders!" Ham Ghao shouted in warning, calling fire to his hands.

But for the moment he did not attack. He was not unreasonable: the trespassers would be given a chance to surrender themselves.

Behind him, he heard gasps and the fire around his fingers wavered. Turning to look back Ham Ghao saw the light of the day begin to dim. In
the sky a black arc of the sun began to vanish, as if being devoured by some terrible beast.

"They've desecrated the sanctum!" he shouted, appalled and pointed through the door. "Kill them!"

Fire lashed out towards the startled pair.
D for Drakensis

You're only young once, but immaturity is forever.

Nice.

The bit at the end doesn't add up though, unless something's happened to change the course of celestial events. In canon, there was at least a week
between the Summer Solstice and the eclipse. The outright death and replacement of the Moon Spirit wasn't enough to alter the timing of the eclipse in
canon, so something really major must have happened to push it forward this much.
-----
Stand between the Silver Crystal and the Golden Sea.
"Youngsters these days just have no appreciation for the magnificence of the legendary cucumber."  --Krityan Elder, Tales of Vesperia.