Damascus (A:TLA)

[drakensis]

This story is so awesome, I registered here just so I could comment on it.

The main attraction is the Mai and Toph partnership, of course. They're fantastically well-written, with all their nuances and shades of gray intact and out on stage entertaining me. I've long pondered the idea of the two forming a sisterhood, and I can now rest easy knowing it's been done with the highest quality. I love the way the two cover their love for each other with banter and sardonic commentary, but they aren't afraid to actually say how they feel every now and then. The recent confrontation between Mai and Zuko really highlights how her actions aren't as noble as she likes to present, but that's just so Mai. And Toph is that right mix of strength and vulnerability.

The other really great thing about this fic is the AU nature. Often, these "for want of a nail" stories only boast one or two changes, and seek to ground every difference in a logical and fully explained extrapolation from whatever the original "nail" was. Damascus' nail is set far enough back that it allows a lot of freedom, and the plot has so far made great use of this. It's the Avatar world we know, but it's different in so many ways- the mystery is back, like I haven't felt since my first viewing of the original cartoon.

I'll definitely keep following this fic. If it's ever posted on fanfiction.net, I'll gladly add it to my highly exclusive Favorites list. I've been passing the link around on the quarters of the Avatar fandom I inhabit, and hopefully a lot of people will see this gem for what it is.

Sorry for being a bit late to reply to this and thanks for the praise.

I will be posting it to ff.net eventually, once the story's been finished and then cleaned up a bit.

edit: as I've just pushed over a page, there is an update at the bottom of the last page.

[drakensis]

"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.

[drakensis]

"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 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."

[drakensis]

"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.

[LadyTevar]

Zuko and Yue? Ok, that's cute. Although if she has to become the Moon Goddess again, that's going to really give Zuko his fire-bending rage back.

"M. Bison"
Yeah, no obscure reference there, not at all

On the plus side? The open water near the Southern Water Nation will be a boon to them, as the warmer water will start drawing in plankton, which will draw in the fish that feed on plankton, then the fish that feed on them, etc. If the Water Nation is careful, they could soon have a nice fish-rookery going.

[drakensis]

"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."

[drakensis]

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.

[LadyTevar]

*laughs* That last bit about Azula is priceless

However, I have to wonder what Piandao learned while he was playing the girls. Enough that he trusts them with a White Lotus. The spar between the three of them was very well-written, but I am damn sure that Piandao knows where they learned their fighting, and the 'didn't know they could be thrown' was BS.

Great chapter. Can't wait for the next one

[drakensis]

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.

[LadyTevar]

Heheh. Nice timing, showing up during the Eclipse.

[drakensis]

"Very diplomatic," Mai noted as fire hurtled towards them from a half-dozen of the angrier looking firebenders. She watched impassively as the flames guttered away before reaching them. "Good reaction."

"That wasn't me," Toph said bluntly. "There's something happening to their firebending." She paused. "And mine, I think. Something bad."

Mai nodded and stepped forwards to look out of the door where more than twenty sun warriors were trying to force fire from their hands. "So I see," she said, and then her composure cracked as she glanced up at the sky. "Oh Spirits."

"What?"

"The Day of the Black Sun," Mai whispered. "It's happening again!"

"That... doesn't explain anything," complained Toph, joining her sister at the doorway. "Although I guess by their abject panic, we aren't going to be talking to you guys?" she asked the nearest of the sun warriors, the one who had shouted led the attack.

"Die, outsider!" he shouted, and tried to grab hold of her.

A pillar of rock smashed up from the ground and hurled him back. "No," Toph replied dismissively.

The blackness had consumed almost a fifth of the sun. Mai forced her attention away from it and reached into her dress, pulling out a whistle that the bison herders of the Water Tribe had given to her. "Don't try anything," she warned the fire benders, holding the knife in her other hand to remind them that without their fire bending she and Toph were the only ones armed. She blew into the whistle, creating no sound that she could detect although annoyance flickered across Toph's face as her sharper ears picked up a sound right on the edge of her ability to hear it.

"It's a solar eclipse," Mai explained hurriedly. "For fire benders it's the worst possible omen. We'd better leave and come back when it's all over and they've calmed down."

Above this conversation, the spot of light above the doorway faded as the sunlight being focused upon it was no longer sufficient and the stone doors responded by closing up behind the two girls.

"Over?" Ham Ghao shouted as he scrambled to his feet. "Your meddling with the sunstone is destroying the sun, outsider!"

"Not if this is the Black Sun," his Chief corrected him grimly, stepping forwards. "Such has happened before and the sun has always recovered swiftly. Which does not explain why the two of you were inside the sanctuary. It's clear from your clothes that you are from the southern cities."

Mai relaxed slightly as reason seemed to be breaking out. It seemed lighter as well, the sun not having shrunk any further.

"We came from there, anyway," Toph admitted. "As for being in there, it seemed as good a place as any to wait until your ceremony was over. We didn't know -"

There was a mighty bellow from above and M Bison plunged down onto the little plaza, diving out of the sun in response to Mai's earlier whistle. Unfortunately for all concerned, this resulted in him landing directly in front of Mai and Toph... more or less on top of the sun warrior's chieftain, who was bowled over and left stunned on the ground.

In fairness to Ham Ghao, it wasn't him who screamed: "It's a monster!" In reflex however, he did try to bend fire at the new arrival and to his delight sparks responded. Up in the sky, the darkness that had touched the sun was now moving away from it, never having covered more than a quarter of the disc, and his fire bending was returning.

"Drive the beast away!" the sun warrior shouted, "Capture the intruders!" And absent any other idea of what to do, the rest of the celebrants obeyed, hurling what little flame they could manage at the bison, setting fire to his fur. Annoyed, but not yet hurt M Bison whirled upon them, not waiting for the girls to climb aboard him and threw himself into a short climb that scattered the greatest bulk of his tormenters, flinging several of them down to the next level of the pyramid with bonecracking force.

Mai groaned. "They made him angry," she complained, fanning throwing knives between her fingers.

"Let's just try not to kill anyone," Toph suggested. "Maybe we can still sort this out."

Her sister looked at the sun warriors, now hurling fire with abandon as the sun resumed it's full strength, and then at M Bison, who was roaring down on another cluster of the sun warriors. "Sometimes I really wish you could see what you're talking about," she said, putting her knives away and producing her war fans in time to deflect a punch which was thrown at her by one of the more muscular sun warriors. Bringing up the other fan she managed to sweep the man off balance and hurl him face first into the wall beside her.

The sun warrior rebounded off, blood spilling from his face. Not killing anyone still left her with a considerable scope for mayhem.

Toph raised up a wall to deflect fire being directed at her. "I don't think I want them getting reinforcements up here," she decided and gestured towards the steps. With a crunch, the stairs tilted to form a steep slope and there were startled cries and yells of pain as a half-dozen men trying to make their way up it tumbled back to the next level.

Ham Ghao gestured for two of the other sun warriors to flank him as he forced his flames to concentrate to greater heat. "Ha!" he shouted, driving his hands forward and sending a fiery column up at the rampaging mass of M Bison. Unlike the previous attacks, between the sun being uncovered and Ham Ghao's concentration, this was enough to cause more than incidental scorching to the sky bison and he roared in pain... and even more anger.

"Wow. I didn't realise that he could actually get angrier," Toph said calmly as she sank a pair of sun warriors almost knee deep in the stone slabs.

"Just get out of the way!" snapped Mai and pressed herself back against the wall as M Bison barrel-rolled across the plaza still on fire. Ham Ghao and his companions were swept aside easily and then the aggressive sky bison turned around for another pass. The fire benders seemed to be somewhat at a loss as to what to do about this: he was already on fire, what more could they do?

The sun warrior Chief, spared because he was already on the ground, crawled towards the wall, not far from Mai and Toph. "If that is your creature, then call him off!" he demanded.

"He'll calm down in a while," Toph said and reached out with both hands for a moment before drawing them suddenly backwards, the flames leaping away from M Bison's fur - which was now noticeably darker and thinner than before - and coalescing into a globe between her hands. "I'd suggest having your people play dead until he does." She hurled the fire out over the city, causing it to burst like fireworks.

"You're a fire bender?" he gasped. "But..." His eyes looked at where two of his warriors were lying on their backs, unable to flee due to their feet and calves being embedded in the paving. "The Avatar!"

Toph smirked. "Yep. I didn't come here to fight you guys." There was a howl from the level below and M Bison swooped up above the lip of the plaza with a triumphant bellow. "...although I guess that he did."

The Chief glared at her and then raised his voice. "Everyone lay on the floor and play dead until the beast has calmed!" he shouted, his words laced with such authority that not even Ham Ghao, then clinging desperately to the lip of the plaza, a long if not sheer drop to the level below all that awaited him if he released his grip, was inclined to argue. "Even if you are the Avatar, you have no right to interfere in our customs," the man told Toph.

"That was never our intention," Mai told him. "Toph and I came here seeking a fire bending teacher. Her previous instructor proved unsuitable, so we were seeking remnants of the ancient sun warriors. With the extinction of the dragons, their knowledge of fire bending would be the purest remaining source of the art."

He stared at her for a moment, then around at M Bison, currently floating in the air and looking around angrily for prey. "Do you have this effect everywhere you travel?"

Mai shook her head, not in disagreement but in sympathy. "You have no idea."

.oOo.

In the end it took most of the day to settlee M Bison and he was still hufffing irritably towards any sun warriors who came into view when the sun set over the jungle. Most of said men and women found this a reasonable justification to stay clear of where Toph and Mai had relocated their campsite to: a space between two buildings across one of the ruined highways of the city from the buildings occupied by the sun warriors during their residence in the home of their ancestors. It was clear, however, that the distance would have been maintained regardless.

It was also clear that the buildings were effectively a campsite, albeit a regular one. There were no children in the little settlement, and very few married women. Wherever the true home of the sun warriors was, it was not something that any of them would share and while some of the tribe were relatively affable, Mai knew without Toph telling her that this was a veneer over deeper suspicion.

"I'd say we made a bad first impression," Toph observed quietly as she helped to groom M Bison, carefully removing damaged hair that would otherwise tangle unpleasently as it grew out.

"Your powers of deduction are growing," said Mai, deliberately not softening the sting of her words by adding 'little sister'. "I suppose we should have realised that the room would be considered important. Then again, I'm not sure if they wouldn't have reacted as badly to our presence outside the pyramid, given the eclipse."

"Yes, and what was that?" asked Toph. "They seemed to think that the sun was dying."

Mai swallowed. The sun was important to the Fire Nation, even to those who did not bend fire. "It looked very much like that," she explained. "A blackness, somewhat like a shadow, crossed over the sun, blocking part of its light."

Toph nodded her head, sending her bangs sflapping over her eyes. "Okay, so that's why I couldn't say anything. And because it affects firebending it's considered unfortunate?"

"Unfortunate doesn't cover it," her sister told her. "This was merely a partial eclipse, lasting a moment or two. On the Day of the Black Sun the eclipse was total and lasted several minutes longer, covering might of the Fire Nation. Long enough to turn the tides of empire if those moments were as fatefully timed as they were then."

The younger girl did not pause in her grooming but her lips pursed as she combed through her memory of history lessons, limited somewhat by the fact that she could not study scrolls herself but only work by what was read to her. "How long ago was it?"

"A little over six and a half centuries," Mai told her and let the girl work out the timing for herself.

It only took a moment: "The fall of the Dragon Princes."

"Precisely," agreed Mai. "No one remembers now if the timing was deliberate, opportunism or sheer mischance that the uprisings began that day, but at least a dozen of the princely strongholds were under attack when the sun failed. Thousands of firebenders were killed, unable to defend their princes, and the resultant power struggles almost tore the Fire Nation apart. It took the combined efforts of the Avatar Xatlan and the Order of the Fire Sages to end the wars and most of a hundred years for my people to recover. According to some of my teachers, there are parts of the ancient firebending lore that were lost forever."

"Although..." Toph said thoughtfully. "The sun warriors predate that, so maybe they can fill some of those gaps. Surely someone came looking for you before now," she added, turning to look at the Chief as he crossed the street towards them.

"They did," he agreed coolly. "The Masters read their hearts, their souls... Those they judged as being unworthy - likely, for example, to advertise our survival here - were destroyed. Those who they spared either kept our secrets, or simply remained here. By all accounts as happily as they would have anywhere else."

Mai tilted her head to one side. "The Masters?"

He nodded confirmation. "In the morning, we will take you both before them. If you are worthy, then they will teach you that which you will need. If not..." He shrugged. "In any event, it's rather too late for you to turn back at this point."

.oOo.

Somewhat before the crack of dawn the next day, a rather sleepy Toph - who had stayed up entirely too late trying to figure out where the Masters were - followed Mai towards a shrine on top of one of the smaller pyramids scattered around the ruined city. The two of them were surrounded by dozens of sun warriors, under the direction of Ham Ghao. Pragmatically speaking, Mai was fairly sure that they could have hopped onto M Bison at any point and just left...

But what would that have accomplished?

An archway at the centre of the shrine was occupied almost entirely by a smokeless fire. Mai had noticed that one of the buildings near the foot of the pyramid showed more sign of habitation than the camp - presumably for attendant to the shrine.

"This is the eternal flame," the Chief instructed them - as much for the benefit of the warriors around the two girls as for them. "The first fire given to man by the dragons, we have kept it alight for thousands of years."

He beckoned to the girls, who stepped forward. "All who go to meet the Masters carry with them a part of it, to show their commitment to the sacred art of firebending."

Mai cleared her throat. "I'm not a firebender," she pointed out. "I don't suppose that you have a lantern or something I can use to carry it?"

"No."

"Oh."

The sun chief refrained from smirking as he turned towards the flame and drew a modest globe of fire forth, dividing it between his two hands. "This ritual illustrates the essence of sun warrior philosophy. You must maintain a constant heat. The flame will go out if you make it too small but make it too big and you might lose control." The firebender held out his hands towards the two of them.

Toph extended her own hand unerringly and the chief placed one flame into the girl's small hands. Almost immediately she giggled. "It tickles," she said in a surprised voice. "Almost like... like it's alive."

"Fire is life," asserted the man. "Not just destruction." He turned his gaze towards Mai, who warily extended her own hands towards the flame, bracing herself to be scorched when the Chief released his control over it.

To her surprise the fire did not explode when the firebender removed his hand, nor even fall upon her fingers. Instead it simply remained hovering above her hands, fading slowly until it had reduced itself to nothing.

"That," said a caustic voice from behind them - Ham Ghao's, Mai recognised - "Was a bad start."

"Those are keen powers of observation that you have, Ham Ghao," she said, not looking back. "And also a very large mouth."

There was a ripple of amusement from the other sun warriors and even the Chief's expression softened slightly. "You must now take the fire to the cave of the Masters, beneath that rock." He pointed at where a hill reared up outside the city, capped by two mis-matched fangs of stone.

"Come on Spiky," Toph said, turning towards the stair down the pyramid. "I'll share my fire when we get there."

The Chief and Ham Ghao exchanged looks as the two girls descended.

"A very bad start," Ham Ghao conluded. His chief shrugged noncomittally.

.oOo.

"Are you alright?" Mai asked as Toph paused at one of the tougher patches of the hill to climb. The younger girl was frowning at nothing in particular - her blindness giving her little reason to point her face in the direction of whatever was irritating her.

Toph didn't reply at first, instead shifting her feet in a awkward rendition of her usual earthbending. The ground shuddered and then shifted grudgingly into a stair over the obstacle. At the same time, the flame in her hand flickered alarmingly. "Earth bending while I'm fire bending is harder than I expected," she admitted once the fire in her had had steadied.

"Well its impossible for the anyone else, little sister," Mai pointed out. "We're going to have to add that to your training. It's all very well being able to bend all four elements, but if you can't use them all at once then you'd be no better than a mixed squad of benders."

"Hey!"

Mai smiled slightly. "Which would be unacceptable, of course."

"Of course," Toph agreed, perfectly aware of Mai manuevering the situation and playing along. "I'm sure that fitting it in between the firebending lessons from these Masters, practising water bending on liquid water, trying to learn air bending from scrolls I can't read and keeping my earth bending up to scratch... all that will be easy!"

"That's a great idea," Mai agreed drily. "Where do you want to begin?"

"Earth bending while fire bending, of course," declared Toph and started to force a path into existence up the hill, the fire crackling in her hand as she wound the path back and forth up the slope, creating a slow and easy route. It wasn't as if they were in a hurry, after all.

As a result of the slow and sometimes circuitous route that the two took, the sun was low in the sky by the time that they came around a low hillock between them and the twin peaks and found that most of the sun warriors had beaten them there.

"Finally," muttered Ham Ghao, probably louder than he intended, from behind the Chief. Now unmasked by the terrain, Mai could see a high bridge connecting the two peaks to a broad pillar. A broad, steep stair of stone descended from the top of the pillar to an elaborately paved court where the sun warriors were standing. The sun was just descending behind the bridge, casting long shadows towards them.

"Facing the judgement of the fire bending masters will be dangerous for you," the Chief warned Mai. "It is very rare for anyone not a fire bender to come this far. Also, the decline of the dragons is the work of the Fire Nation, and anyone can see that you are of their ancestry." He turned towards Toph. "That your predecessors did not protect the dragons may also displease them."

Toph shrugged. "I met a dragon in the spirit world," she told him. "He gave me a headache."

The Chief seemed unsure what to say about that. Instead he raised his ceremonial spear (which was capped by an ornamental golden flame motif that would probably be of little use doing anything more that herding leopard goats... baby leopard goats at that) and brought the butt down sharpy, jamming it into a small hole in the paving. Reaching out he took part of the flame from Toph and used his own chi to strength it before dividing it in two. Ham Ghao and the other sun warrior flanking the chief reached out and took the flames from his outstretched hands.

Around the paving, the sun warriors spread out into a circle, passing the fire one to another. Alternate members of the tribe retained enough to spark fiery circles that they held in front of them, while those between them knelt and began to beat upon drums, sending up a simple but evocative beat as the three sun warriors before Mai and Toph led them to the bottom of the stair.

"Are you afraid, little one?" Ham Ghao asked under his breath as Toph walked past him. Mai winced internally at the thought of Toph breaking up such a clearly important ceremony to take sudden revenge for the insulting query, but instead of breaking into a destructive earth bending move, the younger girl seemed to ignore him completely and started to walking up the stairs beside her sister. After months of travel, the taller Mai didn't have to think about adjusting her pace to Toph's shorter legs.

"That was very mature of you," she said quietly once they were above easy earshot of the sun warriors.

Toph smiled broadly. "Earth benders know all about waiting for the right moment," she said just as quietly. "And that wasn't the right moment." Unspoken: that moment would come and be damned to any threat at the top of the steps.

Someone less disciplined than Mai would have grinned. This was getting interesting.

As the two stepped from the stair onto the top of the pillar, the drums stopped suddenly. The platform that the pillar created was somewhat wider than the bridge extending in either direction. Speaking through a huge curved horn - the size of a sungi horn, Mai thought - a booming voice from the circle of sun warriors announced: "Those who wish to meet the Masters Ran and Shao shall now present their fire."

Toph touched the flames she carried to the cloak she was wearing and the front of the material lit immediately. Mai's eyes went wide and she snatched the garment off Toph's shoulders, almost tearing it as she yanked it out of the young Avatar's belt.

"I was going to give you it anyway," Toph told her drily and turned to her left, facing along the bridge and holding out what remained of the fire, drawing upon her chi to restore it to its previous size. She could feel a cave at each end. Presumably the Masters would emerge from the openings. Mai sighed heavily and held out the bundled garment, fire rising from it, in the opposite direction.

"Sound the call!" roared the chief, clearly audible even without a speaking horn.

Some short distance from the court, a lone sun warrior placed his mouth to a twisted horn, so long that it had to be rested upon the floor, and sounded it, a deep sound that shook stones from the surfaces of the two peaks either side of the bridge.

"I felt that," Toph growled. Then her eyes went wide. "Oma..." she whispered as she felt something truly massive moving beneath the two peaks.

"Do I want to know?"

"Whether you want to or not, you're about to find out," Toph told her.

Toph couldn't see the yellow eyes gleamed in warning before one of the Masters emerged but she could easily hear the hissing snarl as a gigantic red dragon shot out of the cave in front of her, only bending off at the last minute to start circling about the two girls. The dragon was so huge that even circling so widely that it almost brushed both peaks, it was quite literally chasing its own tail.

There was a second rush of air as another dragon, this one blue, emerged from the other peak and began circling.

"Oh. Dragons."

Toph was momentarily more impressed with her big sister's sang froid than she was by the dragons.

[drakensis]

"So are they going to question us?" Mai continued evenly as the dragons continued to circle. Firebenders had killed creatures this huge? She was actually a little impressed.

"Roku told me that dragons talk with their minds," advised Toph. "Maybe they already are. What are they doing?"

"Circling."

"Is that good or bad?"

"I have no idea."

Toph shook her head. "Well I'm not going to just stand here. They already know I can do that. Come on, Spiky. Let's fire bend."

"Aren't you forgetting something?"

"I know, I know. But even if you can't bend fire, they're perfectly good moves for kicking someone's ass. You do remember how, don't you?"

"You're unbelievable," Mai sighed and shifted into the starting stance for the simplest of the forms that she knew, trusting Toph to recognise it. "From the beginning?"

"Yeah, let's show them everything," Toph said and Mai anticipated by the shift of her breathing when to begin her own movements. The two girls set out, mirroring each other as they began the first and simplest kata that the Fire Nation taught to fire benders. Neither hurried. This wasn't battle were speed was second only to accuracy in importance. It was a demonstration: showing these two fire bending masters what the two of them were capable of... and what they were not.

Ran and Shao continued to circle, watched distantly by the sun warriors below as the two fire maidens moved through the almost dancelike forms of fire bending as the sun descended below the horizon.. The forms that the pair used had shifted over centuries from the traditions that had begun in this very place but that were still rooted here. As darkness fell, the only light was that of the fire wheels held by the sunwarriors kneeling below - sufficient for Mai to still make out the edges of the pillar.

"Feeling better?" Mai asked as they came to the end of one of the more advanced kata that she knew - which wasn't close to reaching the limits of what Zuko had taught to Toph during her short apprenticeship.

"Yes." Toph said. "We should keep going, I think they like it."

Mai didn't turn aside but the next time her line of sight intersected with the poorly illuminated face of one of the dragons, she saw no signs of it. "How can you tell?" she asked.

"We aren't dead."

"Yet," Mai told her as she jumped and kicked. A firebender would have hurled fire a dozen yards from the force behind the move. She was hard-pressed to keep hold of the now uncomfortably warm cloak, little left to spare her hand from the fire. "I don't know much beyond this."

"Then we'll improvise," Toph decided. "Remember the statues in the pyramid?"

"I don't know that form either." Mai sighed as she finished the form. The last, most advanced form that she had been taught. "So we'll learn it together."

Toph laughed. "That's the spirit!" She had maneuvered to stand next to Mai as they completed their last form and both rose to stand on one foot, the stance used by the first statues in the circular arrangement they had found the previous day.

When they finished, standing on the far side of the platform, fists almost touching, Mai was almost embarassed at how clumsy she had been. The form was different from those that she was used to and she had almost stalled twice, hesitant over how to transition between the stances. Give her honest steel any day. She looked up and froze. The face of one of the dragons - the red one - was only a few feet ahead of her own, eyes fixed upon her own. She could feel its hot breath against her faith.

Behind Mai there was a soft thump of flesh on flesh and an affronted growl that could only be from the other dragon. "Little... did you just attack the dragon?"

"Punched it in the nose," the younger girl said somewhat triumphantly.

In unison the two dragons landed upon the sides of the pillar, gripping it with their talons, heads just barely above the bridge. The sound was shockingly loud. They drew back their heads, breathing in.

As if it would be any use, Mai dropped into a defensive stance against the fire that rushed out at her. It was not the orange flame she had expected, or even the famous blue flames that Azula favoured. These flames were golden, with traces of other colours threaded through it in a rich, roaring tapestry. Dragons' fire was clearly very different from that of human benders. And why should it be the same? she wondered.

Shouldn't I be dead?

Behind her she heard Toph slump to her knees as the flames came to an end and Mai whirled to catch her sister as the small girl keeled over to the side, eyes wide... and somehow more empty than she had ever seen them before.

.oOo.

Ran and Shao coiled, serpent-like, and then each darted back inside the caves that they called home.

"Well that's it," Ham Ghao said with some degree of vindication as he saw that the two girls were no longer standing on the pillar. "I'm surprised they weren't eaten. I guess the dragons thought that they might be poisonous."

The chief shot him an irritated look. "Maybe. Or maybe Ran and Shao spared them." He smiled. "Go up there and check."

Ham Ghao pouted and then made his way up the stairway as behind him his fellow sun warriors extinguished the firewheels and prepared to leave. Their mood was solemn - even if it was their duty to place intruders before the Masters for judgement, it seemed a shame for two such young women to have been found unworthy.

Their mood was lightened when several of the steps ceased to be steps, causing Ham Ghao - then standing upon them - to fall flat on his face and then tumble back down the floor when his feet suddenly lost their purchase upon the stone.

"That was the right moment," an amused voice announced from above them and a light kindled at the top of the stairs (which promptly resumed their usual shape), revealing Toph holding a palmful of flames. The small girl was leaning heavily against Mai, who half-carried her down the steps.

"You don't say," the older girl drawled, steadying Toph as she reeled slightly, legs still not steady under her.

"I do!" Toph said brightly. "I showed that dragon a thing or two!" Then her chin dropped to her chest and Mai had to support her full weight as the young Avatar went limp.

The Chief couldn't resist joining the rest of his tribe in laughter as Mai lifted the scrappy little earth bender in her arms. "You have a remarkable little sister," he noted as Mai reached the bottom of the steps and made a point of stepping on Ham Ghao on her route towards the chief. The sun warrior grunted in pain but sensibly did not actively protest.

"Yes, she's sure to regularly remind me of it," agreed Mai coolly. "So. What now?"

"Now that you have learned the secrets and you know about our tribe's existence... we have no choice but to -" He looked at her face and decided against joking on the matter. "- trust that you won't tell anyone."

"Just like that?"

"If the Masters like you, who are we to argue," the Chief said expansively. "And since we aren't mourning your foolish and pointless deaths, there will be a feast to honor the fact that you're alive. Although we might want to wait until your sister wakes up."

"Are you sure that you don't want us to be gone before she wakes up?"

"I do," Ham Ghao mumbled from behind them.

The Chief laughed and retreived his ornamental spear. "What sort of feast would it be without the guests of honour?"

.oOo.

"I didn't get a chance to say this earlier," Lu Ten said pleasently as he stood by the rail of the ferry. "Congratulations on your conquest of Ba Sing Se."

Azula smiled pleasently. "Well there was nothing else for it, cousin. If it had taken any longer then I wouldn't have been able to attend your wedding."

"It wouldn't have been the same without you," the Prince Admiral assured her. "Ty was ecstatic to hear you would make it." Traditional Fire Nation weddings - and as a member of the royal family Lu Ten's wedding had had to be very traditional - had only the immediate families in attendance for the ceremony itself, which was carried out by the bridegroom's immediate feudal lord - in this case the Fire Lord himself. As a result, while Ty Lee's parents and sisters had filled the bride's side of the ceremony entirely, Azula's presence had doubled those on Lu Ten's side.

"Since we're talking business," the princess added, "Between all the ceremonies, I wasn't able to catch up on your reports from the south. Have any traces of my brother been found?"

Lu Ten shook his head. "There has not been a single sign of him. In fact, the entire Water Tribe appears to have disappeared. We combed the entire coast of the South Pole and couldn't find a single village, not even that where Zhao claimed he had fought Zuko. The only clue we found were traces of some temporary settlements on the islands around the Southern Air Temple."

Azula frowned. "The Water Tribe are much diminished, but I hardly think that they would be so accomodating as to simply disappear from history."

"That's one reason that I won't be returning to the south immediately," her cousin explained, turning to lean his hips against the wooden rail. "I established a garrison near the southern temple to alert us if the Water Tribe return there and the same must be done for the other temples. I myself will take my fleet and search the coastline of the North Pole in case the Water Tribe have returned there. They will not stray far from open water, wherever they have settled."

"I see." Azula tapped her chin. "With the fall of Ba Sing Se, the pressure upon our armies in the Earth Kingdom has been reduced. It should be a simple matter to redirect them to search for signs of the Water Tribe, in case they have found refuge there somehow." So once the honeymoon was over, Lu Ten was going to be surrounded by loyal sailors and officers. That would make it significantly more difficult to get an assassin close to him.

Oh well, so much for Ty Lee enjoying the full two weeks of her honeymoon on Ember Island. Azula would have to send for the assassin directly.

"Are you two talking business?" asked Ty Lee, emerging onto the ferry deck, barefoot and wrapped in a light robe. "This is supposed to be our honeymoon, Azula. I'm not going to let you steal Lu Ten away to the war just yet."

The two cousins laughed. "I'm sorry sweetheart," Lu Ten apologised, sweeping her into his arms. "No more talk of the war. Look, isn't that Ember Island up ahead?"

Ty Lee squirmed in her husband's arms, although Azula wasn't sure if she was looking for the famous resort or just rubbing against Lu Ten. Wait a minute, yes she was sure. "I'll leave the two of you alone," she said, retreating towards the door, suddenly grateful for the fact that she would be borrowing the relatively modest cabin used by her teachers Lo and Li, rather than sharing the royal residence with the newlyweds.

.oOo.

Toph was firebending in the saddle. Mai could tell without even looking back from the saddle, the crackle of the flames something she was hypersensitive to after the encounter with the dragons. Probably that would wear off around the same time as the dreams where the dragonfire had been intended to kill them. She had to admit it though: between the dragons and a few days coaching from the sun warriors, Toph's firebending had come on by leaps and bounds.

"So, are you a master firebender now?" she asked, not looking back. Having been burnt by the sun warriors, M Bison was understandably a little concerned about having a fire bender on his back and Mai considered it prudent to keep a very close eye on his more aggressive tendencies.

Toph snorted. "Not even close, Spiky. Ran and Shao pointed me in the right direction but it's going to take a while. Still - it is better. If we can find somewhere I can train, somewhere remote where no one will spot us, I figure I should be passable with fire and water before Sozin's Comet arrives."

"Passable," Mai said thoughtfully. "But only in three elements. How is air coming along?"

"Not well." Toph confessed. She was silent for a long moment and then snuffed out the fire with a click of her fingers. Mai flinched. "It's kind of annoying and reassuring at the same time. I'm proud of how good I am at earth bending. Thinking that that was all being the Avatar would be annoying. But comparing it to air bending... it's not the same. Being Avatar might make me strong... but skill? That takes work."

Mai chuckled. "You're philosophical today."

"I must have hit my head when they decided to poke around it it."

There was a shuffling as Toph began to work on her air bending katas. Perhaps having evolved for that very purpose, it was actually possible to perform them on the back of a flying sky bison. "Where are we going?"

"Somewhere we can pick up supplies. There aren't many places way out in the middle of nowhere in the Fire Nation," Mai explained. "Most of the islands are too populated for your sort of training to go unnoticed. Volcanos are rather obvious after all."

"That was just the once. And you didn't need to tell the sun warriors about it." The chief had been very enthusiastic about their need to move on after hearing that story from Mai. "Their island would have been fine for training."

"Not until they invent soap. Anyway, Ember Island isn't all that far."

"Never heard of it," Toph told her. "What's it like?"

Mai shrugged. "A resort town. Lots of brainless boys and girls looking to impress each other. They'll be too absorbed in each other to notice if M Bison landed right on the main beach. My family has a summer house there that we can use while we stay. It's closed up while they're in Omashu."

"Do you miss them?" Toph asked.

"Do you miss your parents?" Mai shot back and regretted it immediately.

"I miss them being my parents, not my jailors," answered Toph, breaking off from her form and climbing forward out of the saddle to stand behind Mai, hands on the older girl's shoulders. "I miss when I didn't know that they never told anyone they had a daughter. When they weren't ashamed of me."

Mai placed one of her hands over Toph's. "I'm sorry."

"Eh, I'm pretty much over it. I've got a sister, right. Who else do I need?"

"Same here. Why would I miss my parents when I've got you?"

M Bison grumphed beneath them.

"You don't count, fuzzball," the two girls told him in unison.

.oOo.

"Do you think anyone will recognise you?" Toph asked as M Bison flew over Ember Island late in the evening. Mai had timed the approach carefully, to arrive when the sun was not in the sky and the thousands of lanterns illuminating the town for the revellers would make it almost impossible for them to see anything in the sky above them. Fortunately, the moon was only a crescent, but even so, Mai had picked the route carefully to avoid coming between it and the town as they flew towards her family's summer house.

"It's unlikely," she replied. "There might be a few of my former schoolmates on Ember Island but none of them have seen me for years and I was only close to two of them."

Toph chuckled. "The famous Princess Azula being one of them?"

"I think she mostly enjoyed having me around to use against her brother," Mai noted. "But yes. I don't think she leaves the capital often, and then only on missions for the Fire Lord. I can't think of any reason she'd come to Ember Island."

"That's almost a shame," Toph admitted. "You said she was some sort of fire bending prodigy, almost as good at that as I am at earth bending. If we weren't enemies then it would be interesting to meet her."

"If only because the two of you would be enemies within minutes of you talking to her," agreed Mai drily. "If I'd known you were interested, I would have got you one of the propaganda scrolls detailing her many virtues. Of course, then I'd have to read it to you, so perhaps its best not."

"Your commentary alone would be worth it."

M Bison landed in one of the side yards of the house, one that had doubled as a stableyard at one point and was now more or less storage for anything not likely to be damaged by the weather. Without any significant light to guide her, Mai misjudged the landing slightly and M Bison crushed a table beneath one foot as he landed. She winced at the sound but there was no apparent reaction from the house.

"Well, if anyone is here, I think they would have heard that," Toph told her and slid down M Bison's side, landing on the paving. She rubbed her feet against the ground and shrugged. "No, we're the only ones nearby. Nice place, by the way."

"It's terribly gaudy and my mother decorated it in the most extraordinary bad taste," Mai told her. "Somehow, I was sure that you'd approve." She rose to her feet and walked back along M Bison to the saddle. "My usual rooms are upstairs, but there's a lounge in the wing on the left with a tiled floor and some couches. The room with the fountain."

"Got it," Toph agreed. "Seems to be some pretty big furniture there - couches?"

Mai unstrapped the bags with their belongings from the saddle. "I'm not as fond of sleeping on bare earth as you are," she explained and slung the bags carefully to the ground. "Take the bags there while I get the saddle off M Bison and then we can get some sleep. We've got a lot to do tomorrow so we'll have to be up at the crack of noon."

"What, first thing in the afternoon?" Toph objected. "That's a bit early isn't it?" Neither of them were particularly early risers by preference, although Mai had having restless mornings lately.

"Most visitors shop early and then enjoy the beaches during the day," explained Mai. "If we shop during the heat of the afternoon, there won't be so much of a crowd and less chance of running into someone I've met before."

Toph picked up the bags - neither was huge, as the girls hadn't managed to hold onto all that many belongings between the two of them, but in combination they were a hefty load for the twelve year old. "And if you do run into someone you know?"

"Then my name is Kotare, and your name is Ilah and we have no idea who Mai and Toph might be. And then we get off Ember Island fast and I don't care how obvious it is."

.oOo.

Mai groaned and dragged her the cloak she was using as a blanket up over her face as the sun streamed through the gaps between the window shutters. The sun had dragged her awake - why hadn't she remembered that this room faced east? - after only a few hours and since then the fire maiden had been too restless to get back to sleep. She'd heard Toph wake - raised by the sun, as if she were any other fire bender - but the smaller girl had had no difficulty curling up again on the floor in her nest of blankets. Probably because she couldn't see the sunlight.

Later on, Mai blamed lack of sleep on her part and an over-abundance of that on the part of Toph for what happened next.

Which was the sound of the door to the room being pushed open and two small feet pattering inside before closing the door. Mai was sleepily shuffling blankets aside to look at who the feet belonged to before she had fully processed the situation and a shot of adrenaline yanked her awake at about the same moment that she locked eyes with a surprised small child, the toddler's still thin black hair forming a familiar scalplock.

"Mai!" Tom-Tom declared in delight, beaming at her.

"'s called Kotare an' we're leavin'," Toph mumbled from her blankets and rolled over, without waking.

"Mai!" repeated the girl's infant brother, even louder.

"...wake up," Mai snapped harshly, hoping that her tone would get through to Toph. She was rewarded when the girl stretched, rolled... and kipped to her feet.

Sensitive to the tone of voice, if not the meaning of Mai's words, Tom-Tom stared in confusion at his sister. His chubby cheeks began to redden with emotion and he toddled towards her, tears forming at the corners of his eyes.

Another familiar voice spoke from outside the door. "Tom-Tom! Tom-Tom! Where are you?"

"Are we still sticking with the Ilah and Kotare plan?" Toph asked very quietly, grabbing up her bag.

Before Mai could say anything in response, the door swung open and an immaculately made up Fire Nation noblewoman wearing mourning colours entered, followed by two harried looking servants. The woman's eyes settled first upon Tom-Tom and then, inevitably, upon the focus of the toddler's attention. Her skin, already fashionably creamy, paled further and she visibly swayed, one of servants seizing her elbow to support her. The other pushed past the stricken woman and snatched up a startled Tom-Tom, who objected with a loud wail.

"No," Mai decided regretfully. "...I'm guessing there are a lot more people around us than when we went to bed."

Toph grimaced. "Lots and lots of them. Some of them are heading for where M Bison is sleeping. And now some of them are heading here."

"M-Mai?" asked the woman. "Little Toph? You're alive?"

Mai looked resigned. "Yes mother," she admitted.

Her mother stepped forwards, actually breaking out of the dignified shuffle expected of a highborn woman and threw her arms firmly around her daughter. "Oh thank Agni! You're alive!"

The girl's eyebrows rose and she slowly - reluctantly - returned the embrace, patting her mother gently on the back. That wasn't exactly the reaction that she had anticipated, still less the tears that the woman was shedding.

[LadyTevar]

YAY! More Story!

AirBending is going to be fun...

[Setzer]

That will cause problems. Are they going back to the Fire nation? Are they going to run away again? Tune in next chapter, same Avatar time, same Avatar channel.

[Muzicfox]

I adore this fic and joined this site in order to review it. I have actually been aching for something that has interactions with Mai and Toph without making them out of character, and this seems to be exactly what I was looking for. I look forward to your next update.

[MrRigger]

Like several others, I registered to the site just to review. Great story, and I really love the characterization you have for Mai and Toph. I also like the little looks at Azula and Lu Ten. Now to figure out how to subscribe to this thread.

MrRigger

[Themightytom]

Aw dude you started out with a necro? You don't post in threads that are over two weeks old, you'll get crucified.

And they don't use a hammer for the nails.. the use a wrench. Its messy.

[Mayabird]

Silence, peon! I'm the one who approved the post. I thought about if I should call it a necro or not and then disapprove it (yes, that's one of our mod jobs), but this story was still on the front page and I was feeling generous, so I let it slide.

Yeah, in general better not to necro too hard.

[Rawrl]

Speaking of necro, 'zis dead, or what? It's been a little over two months since the last update...

[drakensis]

My Avatar mojo is clearly not from the water tribe and winter has done bad things to it. I do intend to get it finished up at some point.

[drakensis]

What followed couldn't be called an awkward silence, given Tom-Tom's cries and his mother's grateful sobbing, but the servants looked unsure of what to do and Toph didn't want to say anything in case she got targeted for a similar hug to the one that Mai was enduring. The impasse was broken when two guards looked cautiously into the room.

"My lady," the older in appearance of the two guards spoke. "There is some great beast within the old stable yard. The servants are afraid to enter the area."

"Just leave him alone and he won't disturb anyone," Toph told the man. "On second thoughts, put a guard there to prevent any children from wandering in. I don't think he eats meat, but he might stand on someone by mistake."

Lady Seung drew back in slight concern as the younger guard left, obedient to his superior's nod. "You brought a monster here?"

"He isn't a monster, mother," Mai explained somewhat wearily, even though she'd barely said anything to the woman yet. "He's just... rather large and inconsiderate."

"You almost sound fond of him, Spiky."

"He's the most dangerous animal I've ever seen, little sister - which is quite impressive. Of course I like him." Mai tried to subtly break her mother's grip, with no success.

"D-dangerous animals?" Seung asked tremulously tremulously. "Oh Mai! What have you been doing? And how could you worry us so? We all thought..." She sobbed slightly and drew Mai closer with one arm before letting go with the other to try to pull Toph into her embrace. "Thought you had both been killed."

Toph backed up. "No hugging," she warned.

Seung gave her a motherly look. "It's alright Toph. I know you must have had a frightening time but you're safe now. Your parents will be so proud of you. They were beside themselves with grief when they came to Omashu."

The girl's lips parted but no noise came out at first, her distraction testified to by the fact that she was firmly entrapped in the hug before she could gather her wits. "They went to Omashu?" she gasped out as Mai's mother squeezed her.

"Of course," Mai's mother confirmed. "Your father wanted to know everything about your time living with us. He couldn't believe at first that you had been - are - a fire bender. The two of you must be very close. He'll probably come all the way here when I tell him you're alive."

Toph's eyes went wide in absolute terror and Mai quickly locked her own free arm around the younger girl and lifted her off the ground before she could start earth bending. "Let's all sit down," she suggested firmly and pulled deliberately back from her mother, forcing Toph to take a seat next to her. "We can have tea and you can tell me all about what you've been doing since I last saw you."

"What a wonderful idea," Seung agreed decorously and beckoned imperiously for the servant to hand over Tom-Tom. She seated him in her lap as she settled onto the opposite couch, cooing over her 'brave little soldier boy' until he stopped crying. "After you..." she paused and dabbed gently at her eyes with a handkerchief, "...after you vanished, your father decided that Tom-Tom and I should live somewhere safer than Omashu."

"And you came here, rather than the capital?"

Seung lowered her face. "I persuaded your father than Ember Island would be safer. Prince Zuko's disappearance left our family open to criticism within the court." She sighed. "I only returned to visit the capital a few days ago, for the royal wedding."

Mai raised her eyebrows. "The royal wedding? Don't tell me that Azula found a man who could put up with her?"

"Not Princess Azula, dear. Prince Lu Ten and your old friend Ty Lee. She was such an adorable bride and he looked so handsome." Seung sighed. "Just think, if Prince Zuko hadn't vanished, you could also be joining the royal family."

"I didn't feel that way about Zuko," Mai said straightfacedly. She wasn't even lying any more. "Is he dead do you think or just missing?"

Seung shook her head sadly. "I'm sorry Mai, I know that you're very fond of him but as he hasn't reappeared by now the consensus is that he's dead. It's only to spare Lady Ursa's feelings that no funeral has been held yet. The poor woman is a wreck, only Princess Azula was able to bring her out of her shell when she returned home for the wedding. Goodness knows how she's doing now that Azula has come here."

Mai's heart almost stopped beating. "Azula's here?"

"Why yes, dear. She was travelling with the happy couple when they set out on the honeymoon so she'll have been here for a few days now. The Fire Lord sent her here to rest after having to spend so long in Ba Sing Se, she must be exhausted." Mai's mother brightened. "We can invite them all to a dinner! Your friends will be so glad to find that you're alive, and its years since you've seen Prince Lu Ten. We can write the invitations as soon as I've written to your father and to Toph's parents." She turned to Toph. "You'll adore Azula, everyone does."

Toph lowered her face demurely. "I'm sure that the Princess and I could be great friends." Butter would not have melted in her mouth. "But would it not be insensitive to celebrate our return when her own brother remains missing?"

Oh, that was a good try, Mai noted. Although knowing her mother...

With a wave of her hand, Seung dismissed the objection. "Nonsense, Toph. Good news like this will surely lift her mood. Now, you'll have to tell me where you've been and what possessed you to let your hair down like that. It's a terribly daring style."

She didn't ask why we left, Mai noted in surprise. Why not? "It makes us less likely to be identified," she said. "What Toph is trying to avoid discussing is that we are facing a political problem."

Seung paled. "Oh Mai, I thought I taught you better than that. Politics is for men, dear. We shouldn't get involved in that sort of thing."

"We haven't been given the choice in that," said Mai bluntly. "If we're found, we will be killed. If it is learned that you know that we are alive then you -" she looked at the servants and the remaining guard "- all of you will probably be killed. Including Tom-Tom."

Her mother gasped and drew the little boy closer. "Mai!"

"So you see, it would be best not to invite old friends - old friends who are highly connected and would draw all sorts of attention."

"But surely they would help you," offered Seung hopefully. "You know Princess Azula has her father's ear and the Prince Admiral is also highly influential. Whoever your enemies are..."

Mai thought quickly. "I don't think that you understand how highly placed these enemies are, mother. The entire incident at Omashu was a trap for Prince Zuko, arranged by elements inside the Fire Nation who wanted to remove him from the succession," she lied. "There are two obvious people who could benefit from that, and whichever of them it is, they must be aware that the Fire Lord would never tolerate that level of infighting within the royal family." Another lie, this one so ridiculous that only someone so determinedly averse to politics as her mother would believe the facade of unity within the royal family that Ozai went to pains to present.

"You -" Seung almost squeaked. "You can't possibly be saying that Princess Azula or Prince Lu Ten would conspire to murder Prince Zuko?"

"What's not to believe?" Toph asked bluntly. "When Sozin's Comet comes back, the Fire Nation will win the war. Whoever rules the Fire Nation at that point will be the most powerful person alive. In political terms, that's about the highest prize that exists. You think people wouldn't fight for it?"

Seung sighed and looked away, wrapping her hands around her son's small fingers. "That's not something that's ever spoken of," she said after a moment and then turned to the servants, both pale-faced, and the guard, who was staring into the middle distance, apparently pretending that he had heard none of the conversation. "It is not something that has been spoken of today," she told them in a commanding tone that Mai had virtually never heard her use. "Because my daughter... my daughters are not here and this conversation did not happen. Please ensure that my son and I are not disturbed in this wing."

The functionaries mumbled understanding and retreated gratefully from the room, leaving near silence that Tom-Tom filled with cooing towards his sister.

"He missed you," Seung said sadly. "So did I. And we're going to miss you again, aren't we. Since you aren't staying?"

"We'll be quiet about leaving," Mai said, somewhat caustically. She wasn't quite as surprised by the flood of tears this time.

.oOo.

"What do you think of this?" Ty Lee asked, picking up an ornamental tea pot from a market stall and showing it to her husband. It was bronze and heavier than it looked, but the extensive ornamentation suggested that it wasn't intended for its ostensible purpose anyway.

Lu Ten ran one callused hand across the ornamentation. "It's excellent workmanship," he approved, "And from what you have said, Lady Seung would be pleased with it. But you said that she has a young son?"

"Yes, he must be two years old by now. I bet he's adorable," confirmed Ty Lee.

"No doubt. But the ornamentation on this is sharp edged," the prince warned. "If he got his hands on this, he might hurt himself." Lu Ten replaced the tea pot on the stall and lifted another, this one with less prominent ornamentation and some brass fittings. "How about this one?"

His bride clapped her hands together. "It's perfect!" Then her eyes narrowed. "But we should get a present for the little boy as well! How could I have forgotten? What do little boys like?"

Lu Ten grinned and swept her up in a hug. "Much the same as larger boys," he told her giving her a discreet squeeze.

She squealed but did not resist instead teasing her husband. "Well perhaps I should let him have a play then."

"Ah no," he said hastily. "I'm going to have to exert my jealous husband privileges. Perhaps give him a stuffed toy - a rabbit monkey or the like perhaps."

"That would be so adorable!"

Yes, Lu Ten noted to himself, he was a tactical genius. Ty Lee would buy a cute stuffed rabbit monkey - perhaps two, one for herself and one for her dead friend's baby brother - and then the shopping would be over and they could go back to the mansion to freshen up before visiting Lady Seung. And before they freshened up, they might get a little sweatier. I love this girl, he admitted. She makes me feel sixteen again.

They were examining a stall of stuffed rabbit monkeys and Ty Lee was apparently intent on testing each and every one of them for cuddliness when a shadow passed across her eyes. If Lu Ten hadn't been studying her face affectionately then he would have missed it, but he was and he had to force down instinctive reaction to what it meant.

Danger.

Instead of sweeping her up and throwing her to safety behind the stall before turning to confront whatever threat was behind his back, the Prince Admiral took a measured step forwards and rested one hand upon his wife's shoulder. With his other hand he scooped up the stuffed toy that to his eye had received the most positive response from Ty Lee. "I think this one is the best," he suggested firmly and then lowered his lips to her ear, whispering: "What's the matter?" so softly that even the shopkeeper wouldn't be able to overhear.

The girl clutched the toy with ostensible agreement and reached for her coin bag, her face innocent of anything but pleasure at her husband's attention. “The man with a tattoo on his forehead,” she whispered.

Lu Ten’s lowered face would make it hard for anyone to see that his eyes flicked around to check the area in front of him. No such tattoos were in evidence, so whoever the man was, he was behind the prince. Between them and the royal holiday home.

“He’s an assassin,” Ty Lee whispered, very careful not to let the shopkeeper hear her.

Lu Ten stepped back from her and half turned, apparently casually looking around. “We should clean up before dinner,” he suggested. There – a bald, broad-shouldered man with a stylized eye marked above his nose. For a moment the young Admiral wished that his training had entailed avoiding assassins, it would make it easier to keep Ty Lee safe. But his uncle’s teachings were straightforward: the best way to handle an assassin was to eliminate him, ensuring that others would fear to attack you.

Ty Lee nodded enthusiastically and rubbed her face against the toy rabbit monkey before tucking it into her satchel and seizing Lu Ten’s elbow. Her face betrayed no trace of fear and he reflected for a moment on his good fortune. But that was a distraction and he set that thought aside as they wove through the crowded street towards their temporary home and the man in their path.

He watched the assassin only out of the corner of his eye. Timing would be everything here. Giving the man advance warning would almost certainly lead to his death.

The two were still outside optimal range for a sudden firebending strike when Lu Ten saw the assassin's real eyes lock onto his. Damn. He knows that I know he's...

There was a crack like thunder as ki ripped across the street towards the Prince Admiral.

.oOo.

To Azula's annoyance the crowd responded to the sudden display of firebending, albeit the unusual form used by this assassin, by feeling like panicked sheep. For once the concern was less national pride (the Fire Nation were a nation of warriors, by Agni!) and more to do with the fact that she was jostled and her view of her cousin blocked at the critical moment.

By the time that she had managed to discreetly convince the fleeing shoppers that she should not be jostled - and three of them were limping as reminders to be more courteous to incognito princesses in the future - Lu Ten lay on the floor, Ty Lee apparently pinned to the ground by her husband's body across her legs. It was ridiculous to think that someone as agile would have been caught like that unless she had deliberately been tangling her feet with Lu Ten's, which meant...

Either Lu Ten had avoided the attack and Ty Lee had loyally tripped him to leave Azula's rival open to a second attack or Ty Lee had pre-emptively tripped Lu Ten to move him out of the path of the attack. Either way, Lu Ten was not dead yet. Azula's lips curled. Was she going to have to take care of this personally? No, wait, the assassin was moving in for a certain kill.

Of course, by doing so, the man was abandoning his advantage of greater range and the instant that he was inside Lu Ten's range Azula's cousin sprang to his feet, his dynamism such that Azula could almost feel his ki. He was impressive, she admitted. If he hadn't been close kin, hadn't been as ambitious as she... The smirk on her lips could have been for the irony of the thought or more probably at the startled expression that crossed his face as flames failed to rush at the assassin, or to manifest at all. It would seem that Ty Lee had come through after all.

Turning away, the princess ran for the nearest side street. It simply wouldn't do to be spotted on the scene of her cousin's oh-so-tragic demise. While dramatically appearing to strike down the assassin would clean up several loose ends, it would also arouse suspicion. No, better to tidy matters up out of sight and to leave no sign that she was ever anywhere near the scene of the crime.

She was at the corner before she registered that there had not been the sizzling report of the killing attack upon her defenseless cousin. Half-turning she saw Lu Ten slam a kick into the assassin, the larger man blocking with his forearms and then striking down at the shorter prince with one metal-clad fist. What was that idiot doing!? Why wasn't he... Why was it suddenly so dark? Worse than having a cloud pass in front of the sun.

Glancing skyward, Azula saw a dark disc across the face of the sun.

When she looked down again, mind furiously calculating the consequences and likely outcome, she was looking straight into Ty Lee's eyes.

[LadyTevar]

Day of the Black Sun...

What a great day to make an assassination attempt, Azula! Now, let's see how Ty Lee takes you apart.

[LionElJonson]

LOL. Right after Mai informed her mother that Zuko was killed by infighting in the royal family, too.