Damascus
- Thread starter drakensis
- Start date
Zuko groaned as he opened his eyes. His head was pounding as if he'd spent the night drinking, which certainly was not the case he thought looking around the confines of his prison. A shock went through him, momentarily relegating his headache to secondary concern as he realised that the pallet on the far side of the room was empty of Toph.
The guards were also reduced in number, with only two of them present: one by the door, the second watching him from but well out of his reach. Neither of them looked as if they were going to be particularly forthcoming, but he wasn't overwhelmed with alternatives: "Where is Toph?" he demanded as politely as he could.
Two pairs of eyes tightened but neither of the white-faced warriors said anything. Zuko dragged on the chains, trying to find enough slack to stand. "Answer me!"
The door opened and Suki entered the room. "Stop shouting like a hog monkey," she ordered him, glaring and then looked over at the nearest guard. "June, unchain him from the wall. He and I are going for a little walk."
"I'm not going anywhere until you tell me where Toph is," Zuko insisted, drawing back to block access to the pins that secured him to the wall. Somewhere at the back of his mind, he knew he was being childish, but at the same time, it was the only bargaining tool that he had.
The look that Suki directed at him was eloquent in how unimpressed she was with his attempt to negotiate. "You have exactly two choices," she warned. "You can co-operate and walk out of here, in which case you'll get to see Toph today. Or you can continue to make a fool of yourself, in which case you'll be dragged out of here to the nearest cliff and thrown off, in chains the whole time. Well?"
Zuko stared up at her for a few moments and then grudgingly moved aside. One of the guards - June, presumably - disarmed herself and moved closer, watching him as if he were wild animal that might turn and bite her at any moment. She unlocked the chains one at a time, legs first and then arms, ensuring that his ankles were still secured to each other, with just enough slack to walk; and his wrists although chained in front of him were loose enough for comfort but not far enough for him to use more than a few of the easier firebending forms.
She saw him test his limits and her lips curled unpleasently before she propelled him towards Suki with a hard hand at the small of his back. This close he realised that the make up disguised what would otherwise be prominent facial burns. "You aren't the first firebender I've had in chains," she told him. "Don't make the mistake of thinking I don't know exactly what you can pull off with that much slack."
"Once burned, twice shy?" Zuko shot back and the extra force when she shoved him revealed that the needle had struck home.
"Play nicely or you won't get to play at all," reprimanded Suki, although Zuko wasn't sure if she was talking to him or to June.
Zuko blinked in the sunlight as he was escorted out of the building and he felt himself relax slightly, a tension that he had barely been aware of fading at the gentle warmth. There were two more of the white-faced soldiers waiting for them and the squad paused to reorganise itself - a pair in front of him and a pair behind while Suki walked beside him. None of them seemed inclined to say anything to him or to each other and Zuko took the time to look around as they followed an uphill path.
The trees and other vegetation didn't seem very different from those near Chin Village so it would seem that he wasn't all that far away. He'd been concerned when he guessed that he had been drugged - there was no way to know if he had been carried half way around the world as he slept - but there was a good chance that search parties would find this place if it wasn't too far. Much as it would gall Zuko to require a rescue, it was certainly preferable to some of the alternative outcomes. He hadn't seen any of these warrior women bending, other than Toph, and judging by their movements he suspected that none of them were. If it weren't for the chains, five of them might not be impossible odds.
As the path wound its way through the trees Zuko saw glimpses of the sea. Coastal or an island then: even better. Most of the remaining Earth Kingdom territory was inland, harder to attack without the fleet to provide logistical support to an army. That could be harder to escape from, but if he could make his way to the water then it would be difficult for any earthbenders to contest with him. Of course, he was being marched away from it, but the possibility remained.
"So what's the story with the face paint?" he asked after the silence began to become oppressive.
Suki looked sideways at him. "It's traditional amongst our warriors," she said shortly.
"So Toph's one of your warriors?" he asked. "Even in the Fire Nation, no one is called to military service until they're fourteen."
The young woman glared at him for a moment. "Joining our number is an honour," Suki told him. "Not something that anyone is called to except by their own heart. Toph's heart simply called rather louder that most's."
Zuko's gaze dropped to the floor, remembering Toph's laughing face as she practised in Omashu... and the tiny body laid on a pallet opposite his prison. "Yes," he said when he was sure that his voice would not break. "It always did."
.oOo.
Although Zuko would have died rather than admit it, he was weary when the little column halted at the top of the hill. More than a week chained to a wall with no chance to exercise had dulled his condition and he was painfully aware that it would probably take him twice as long to regain his edge.
There was a simple building of stone and wood on the summit, its isolation speaking far more of its importance to these people than any grandeur of design. Another village was visible in the distance, connected by another snaking path, and the sea was visible in that direction as well. Either an island or a penninsula then.
Suki looked around the clearing and then pointed at a pine not far from the crest. "That will do," she said calmly, and peeled off, heading for the building. The other four warriors led the captive prince over towards the tree, spreading out to watch him from all four directions.
"What are we here for?" he asked. "I thought you were taking me to Toph."
No matter which he looked at, impassive faces met his questioning stare, even June not smirking at his question. Turning towards the building, he saw that Suki did not enter, instead pausing at the doorway and then stepping back to allow Mai to walk out and join her. The fire maiden was wearing a well worn red and black outfit that Zuko recognised as the clothes she had worn when they fought Jet; and carrying a simple spade, clearly a peasent's tool. Only as she came closer did he see that her eyes were red-rimmed although her composed face gave no other indication that she had been crying.
Maybe she does feel guilty after all, he thought. Good.
Suki did not say anything as the two rejoined the group. Instead she took the spade from Mai and started marking out a rectangle on the ground underneath the tree, perhaps three feet wide and - after a speculative look at Zuko - just about twice as long. She then returned the tool to Mai who marked her own rectangle with what appeared to be less confidence than the auburn haired girl - not quite as wide and well over a foot shorter, no more than a long stride from the first.
"Now," Suki said, holding the spade out to Zuko, handle first. "Start digging."
"You said you were bringing me to Toph," he replied, not accepting the tool. "Where is she?"
Suki scowled and he saw Mai turn her face away from them. "I told you that if you co-operated, you would see her today. Unless you would rather take that final step I mentioned, in which case there is a suitable drop only a few minute's walk here. Over deep water, so once you sink no one will ever find you."
They matched stares for a moment and then Zuko lowered his gaze, reaching out to take the spade. "So what, you want me to mark out another rectangle?"
The women looked at him as if he were cretin. "No. Dig out the ones that we carved," Suki ordered. "I'll tell you when they are deep enough."
Zuko frowned. What did they want a pair of pits for? And why make him dig them? Had they run out of men to boss around here or something? With a grunt, he drove the spade through the sod and rapidly cleared the overlayer from first one rectangle and then the other. With that done he looked at Suki but she gave no indication of satisfaction so he shrugged and started to dig deeper. He hadn't really thought that she'd be satisfied by that.
It didn't take long for him to build up a sweat, but he stubbornly refused to rest. The sooner he was done, the sooner they'd take him to Toph and he could find out what this was all about.
The smaller hole was waist deep when Suki called for him to stop digging. "That's deep enough," she told him. "Make the other one a little deeper."
"And then what?" he asked. "You want me to do your laundry as well?" He scrambled out of the pit and then lifted the spade again. "What do you need these holes for, anyway?"
The girls looked at each other and Suki sighed. "I'd have thought you would have remembered, Prince Zuko. This is the Earth Kingdom. We bury our dead."
Zuko stared at the grave he had just dug in utter horror, realising the significance of its dimensions. His gorge rose at the thought of the girl dead, of her cold body lying in it as earth was piled over her, food for worms. It was only after he was on his knees, dry heaving, that a second thought struck him: 'if Toph does die of her wounds I'll be burying you next to her' 'you'll get to see Toph today'. The second, longer grave would be for him.
"No."
"No?" Suki asked with malicious mildness. "Is something the matter, Prince Zuko? Your accomodations not to your liking?"
Zuko looked up pleadingly. "I don't care what you do to me," he offered. "But don't bury her. Toph was a firebender. Let me give her the rites she has earned."
"You are not in a position to bargain, your highness," Mai said coldly. "You struck her down with lightning, which ended any rights you have towards her."
"I'm not bargaining," the Prince of the Fire Nation clarified, still on his knees, lowering his face to the ground in supplication. "I'm begging you. Let me do her this one service before I die."
The guards were also reduced in number, with only two of them present: one by the door, the second watching him from but well out of his reach. Neither of them looked as if they were going to be particularly forthcoming, but he wasn't overwhelmed with alternatives: "Where is Toph?" he demanded as politely as he could.
Two pairs of eyes tightened but neither of the white-faced warriors said anything. Zuko dragged on the chains, trying to find enough slack to stand. "Answer me!"
The door opened and Suki entered the room. "Stop shouting like a hog monkey," she ordered him, glaring and then looked over at the nearest guard. "June, unchain him from the wall. He and I are going for a little walk."
"I'm not going anywhere until you tell me where Toph is," Zuko insisted, drawing back to block access to the pins that secured him to the wall. Somewhere at the back of his mind, he knew he was being childish, but at the same time, it was the only bargaining tool that he had.
The look that Suki directed at him was eloquent in how unimpressed she was with his attempt to negotiate. "You have exactly two choices," she warned. "You can co-operate and walk out of here, in which case you'll get to see Toph today. Or you can continue to make a fool of yourself, in which case you'll be dragged out of here to the nearest cliff and thrown off, in chains the whole time. Well?"
Zuko stared up at her for a few moments and then grudgingly moved aside. One of the guards - June, presumably - disarmed herself and moved closer, watching him as if he were wild animal that might turn and bite her at any moment. She unlocked the chains one at a time, legs first and then arms, ensuring that his ankles were still secured to each other, with just enough slack to walk; and his wrists although chained in front of him were loose enough for comfort but not far enough for him to use more than a few of the easier firebending forms.
She saw him test his limits and her lips curled unpleasently before she propelled him towards Suki with a hard hand at the small of his back. This close he realised that the make up disguised what would otherwise be prominent facial burns. "You aren't the first firebender I've had in chains," she told him. "Don't make the mistake of thinking I don't know exactly what you can pull off with that much slack."
"Once burned, twice shy?" Zuko shot back and the extra force when she shoved him revealed that the needle had struck home.
"Play nicely or you won't get to play at all," reprimanded Suki, although Zuko wasn't sure if she was talking to him or to June.
Zuko blinked in the sunlight as he was escorted out of the building and he felt himself relax slightly, a tension that he had barely been aware of fading at the gentle warmth. There were two more of the white-faced soldiers waiting for them and the squad paused to reorganise itself - a pair in front of him and a pair behind while Suki walked beside him. None of them seemed inclined to say anything to him or to each other and Zuko took the time to look around as they followed an uphill path.
The trees and other vegetation didn't seem very different from those near Chin Village so it would seem that he wasn't all that far away. He'd been concerned when he guessed that he had been drugged - there was no way to know if he had been carried half way around the world as he slept - but there was a good chance that search parties would find this place if it wasn't too far. Much as it would gall Zuko to require a rescue, it was certainly preferable to some of the alternative outcomes. He hadn't seen any of these warrior women bending, other than Toph, and judging by their movements he suspected that none of them were. If it weren't for the chains, five of them might not be impossible odds.
As the path wound its way through the trees Zuko saw glimpses of the sea. Coastal or an island then: even better. Most of the remaining Earth Kingdom territory was inland, harder to attack without the fleet to provide logistical support to an army. That could be harder to escape from, but if he could make his way to the water then it would be difficult for any earthbenders to contest with him. Of course, he was being marched away from it, but the possibility remained.
"So what's the story with the face paint?" he asked after the silence began to become oppressive.
Suki looked sideways at him. "It's traditional amongst our warriors," she said shortly.
"So Toph's one of your warriors?" he asked. "Even in the Fire Nation, no one is called to military service until they're fourteen."
The young woman glared at him for a moment. "Joining our number is an honour," Suki told him. "Not something that anyone is called to except by their own heart. Toph's heart simply called rather louder that most's."
Zuko's gaze dropped to the floor, remembering Toph's laughing face as she practised in Omashu... and the tiny body laid on a pallet opposite his prison. "Yes," he said when he was sure that his voice would not break. "It always did."
.oOo.
Although Zuko would have died rather than admit it, he was weary when the little column halted at the top of the hill. More than a week chained to a wall with no chance to exercise had dulled his condition and he was painfully aware that it would probably take him twice as long to regain his edge.
There was a simple building of stone and wood on the summit, its isolation speaking far more of its importance to these people than any grandeur of design. Another village was visible in the distance, connected by another snaking path, and the sea was visible in that direction as well. Either an island or a penninsula then.
Suki looked around the clearing and then pointed at a pine not far from the crest. "That will do," she said calmly, and peeled off, heading for the building. The other four warriors led the captive prince over towards the tree, spreading out to watch him from all four directions.
"What are we here for?" he asked. "I thought you were taking me to Toph."
No matter which he looked at, impassive faces met his questioning stare, even June not smirking at his question. Turning towards the building, he saw that Suki did not enter, instead pausing at the doorway and then stepping back to allow Mai to walk out and join her. The fire maiden was wearing a well worn red and black outfit that Zuko recognised as the clothes she had worn when they fought Jet; and carrying a simple spade, clearly a peasent's tool. Only as she came closer did he see that her eyes were red-rimmed although her composed face gave no other indication that she had been crying.
Maybe she does feel guilty after all, he thought. Good.
Suki did not say anything as the two rejoined the group. Instead she took the spade from Mai and started marking out a rectangle on the ground underneath the tree, perhaps three feet wide and - after a speculative look at Zuko - just about twice as long. She then returned the tool to Mai who marked her own rectangle with what appeared to be less confidence than the auburn haired girl - not quite as wide and well over a foot shorter, no more than a long stride from the first.
"Now," Suki said, holding the spade out to Zuko, handle first. "Start digging."
"You said you were bringing me to Toph," he replied, not accepting the tool. "Where is she?"
Suki scowled and he saw Mai turn her face away from them. "I told you that if you co-operated, you would see her today. Unless you would rather take that final step I mentioned, in which case there is a suitable drop only a few minute's walk here. Over deep water, so once you sink no one will ever find you."
They matched stares for a moment and then Zuko lowered his gaze, reaching out to take the spade. "So what, you want me to mark out another rectangle?"
The women looked at him as if he were cretin. "No. Dig out the ones that we carved," Suki ordered. "I'll tell you when they are deep enough."
Zuko frowned. What did they want a pair of pits for? And why make him dig them? Had they run out of men to boss around here or something? With a grunt, he drove the spade through the sod and rapidly cleared the overlayer from first one rectangle and then the other. With that done he looked at Suki but she gave no indication of satisfaction so he shrugged and started to dig deeper. He hadn't really thought that she'd be satisfied by that.
It didn't take long for him to build up a sweat, but he stubbornly refused to rest. The sooner he was done, the sooner they'd take him to Toph and he could find out what this was all about.
The smaller hole was waist deep when Suki called for him to stop digging. "That's deep enough," she told him. "Make the other one a little deeper."
"And then what?" he asked. "You want me to do your laundry as well?" He scrambled out of the pit and then lifted the spade again. "What do you need these holes for, anyway?"
The girls looked at each other and Suki sighed. "I'd have thought you would have remembered, Prince Zuko. This is the Earth Kingdom. We bury our dead."
Zuko stared at the grave he had just dug in utter horror, realising the significance of its dimensions. His gorge rose at the thought of the girl dead, of her cold body lying in it as earth was piled over her, food for worms. It was only after he was on his knees, dry heaving, that a second thought struck him: 'if Toph does die of her wounds I'll be burying you next to her' 'you'll get to see Toph today'. The second, longer grave would be for him.
"No."
"No?" Suki asked with malicious mildness. "Is something the matter, Prince Zuko? Your accomodations not to your liking?"
Zuko looked up pleadingly. "I don't care what you do to me," he offered. "But don't bury her. Toph was a firebender. Let me give her the rites she has earned."
"You are not in a position to bargain, your highness," Mai said coldly. "You struck her down with lightning, which ended any rights you have towards her."
"I'm not bargaining," the Prince of the Fire Nation clarified, still on his knees, lowering his face to the ground in supplication. "I'm begging you. Let me do her this one service before I die."
"Mai," Suki said, "Toph is your sister. I will let you decide this."
Bitch. Mai would admit to herself - and maybe to Toph if it was possible - that she was conflicted on what to do about Zuko. On the one hand, he was the boy who she'd liked since - perhaps before - he'd knocked her into a fountain trying to protect her from burning fruit (long story). On the other hand he was the man who'd ridden across a sizeable chunk of the Earth Kingdom, punctuating the journey by burning towns, to avenge her apparent death. Azula might have found that flattering, but Mai had to admit that it left her somewhat cold.
And then there was Toph. Who had seemed to quite like Zuko at Omashu, and had been electrocuted by him at Chin Village. Oddly enough, Mai suspected that the young girl wouldn't have been as upset by the latter as Mai was. She couldn't imagine Toph entering a fight without sublime confidence that she would triumph, however misplaced, or facing defeat with anything by a bloodthirsty enthusiasm to repay it with interest.
Would Toph kill him?
Since leaving Omashu, Mai could recall weighing options on the arguements of 'What would Azula do?' and 'What would Ty Lee do?' but this was the first time that Toph had entered into that line up. And there was something deeply unhealthy about using your twelve year old sister as a moral compass, so she had better never mention this to anyone.
Toph would kill Zuko. But not like this. There would be fire, earthquakes and possibly screaming. But not like this, with him grovelling in shame and apparently willing to die as long as some obscure point of honor was resolved to his liking.
With a reluctant sigh, Mai walked over to Zuko and grabbed the loose locks of hair that had once formed his topknot. "Stand up," she ordered abruptly, yanking him upwards. The clueless expression on his face wasn't half as cute as she had thought when he was younger. "Just to make it official, I do not forgive you and I never will." She turned and started walking towards Kyoshi's Shrine.
Bemused, Zuko looked after her. "What?"
Since Suki was too busy looking disappointed to answer, it was June who replied by prodding him forwards. "Did you get dropped on the head when you were a child? Follow her."
He obeyed, trying to puzzle out what was happening. Zuko had expected either to be killed - because he was damned if he was digging another spadeful now that he knew what those 'holes' were for, or to be allowed to send Toph to Agni properly by cremation. He hadn't expected a... non-answer. Was he being taken to Toph's body or to a place of execution?
The door loomed large and he entered, the Kyoshi Warriors close behind him, then paused to let his eyes adjust to the dimmer light inside. The single chamber was spartan, a handful of racks displaying items from the uniform of one of the warriors. The only decoration was a large painting at the back, of what subject he could not tell at a glance.
Besides Mai the room had three occupants: an old man who seemed startled and concerned at his presence, a white-haired woman who seemed surprised but not alarmed, kneeling over the pallet that held the last person.
"Toph?"
"You should not have brought him here," the old man declared angrily. He moved to block Zuko as the prince strode towards the pallet only to find that an elderly man with no martial training isn't even an obstacle to a sixteen year old soldier twice his side. Zuko brushed him aside without breaking stride and would have done the same with the woman, had she not moved aside to let him reach Toph. Absently he noted that other than her hair she appeared to be little more than his old age, but the bulk of his attention was upon pink cheeks and half-lidded eyes of milky jade.
"You've really let yourself go, Sifu Broody," Toph choked out. "I guess you need me around to keep you on your toes."
"You crazy little fool," Zuko choked out and started hugging her against him in a most embarassing fashion ignoring the affectionate way she was pummelling his ribcage and demanding to be released.
"Who is he?" Yue asked Mai, behind him.
She shrugged. "Her firebending teacher... and the one who nearly killed her."
"He should not be here!" the old man said, apparently in the belief that no one had heard him the first time. "What were you thinking, Suki?"
The Kyoshi Warrior looked down at Zuko and Toph for a minute before turning to him. "I'm thinking that he's a man, not a monster, Oyaji. A man who's made his mistakes, perhaps, but also a man who was willing to face up to them out there."
"Do you think that that matters? You know what he could bring down upon us."
"If he does so, then in a number of ways it would because we - because I have not acted justly towards him," Suki told him. "I'm beginning to suspect that Kyoshi would not have approved of what I just did to him."
"I take it that it has something to do with the chains he's wearing?" asked Yue, eyeing Zuko with new suspicion at learning he was a firebender.
Briefly, Suki outlined how she had tested Zuko, and his response. Yue's face tightened as she listened and then she shook her head. "I know little of the Avatar Kyoshi," she admitted, "But I think that the Avatar Kanna would have been furious at treating anyone like that." Only Toph noded Zuko's ears pricking at the use of the name.
"You knew her?" Suki asked. "You would have only been a little girl?"
"She was close to my parents," Yue reminded her. "And she always had time for children. Looking back, I think she regretted most that her duties had kept her from being a mother herself. Mother told me once that she had spoken at times of a man in her past, a waterbender named Pakku, but that would have been before she learnt that she was the Avatar."
With a grunt, Toph finally managed to wriggle free of Zuko. "Well some Avatar's have kids," she told them. "Roku did."
"So did Kiyoshi," confirmed Oyaji. "She was my great-great-great-great grandmother."
"Really? I wonder if that make's you two relatives?" Toph asked, looking between the old man and Zuko.
"Why would it make us relatives?" Zuko asked, while Oyaji spluttered at the very notion. "I'm absolutely certain that I'm not descended from Kiyoshi. I'm sure it would be a very great honour," he added quickly, "Although one I wouldn't want to advertise in the Fire Nation, but -"
"Not Avatar Kiyoshi," Toph told him smugly. "Avatar Roku. He told me himself he was your great-great grandfather."
Zuko stared at her for a moment. "Uh, Toph, he's been dead for... about a hundred and twelve years.How could he tell you anything?"
She waved her hand casually. "I was in the spirit world for -" She broke off as the sudden alarm in four hearts caught her attention. "Ah... I hadn't had a chance to mention that yet."
"The... spirit world?" Zuko asked cautiously. "Toph are you sure that you weren't dreaming? No offense, but I know one of my ancestors -" He paused, looked at Yue and shrugged resignedly. "I'm Sozin's great-grandson and I'm reasonably sure he'd never have allowed a marriage between the royal family and the family of an Avatar."
Mai rolled her eyes. "Setting aside Toph basing her arguement on information received in the Spirit World, Sozin died quite a long time ago. He probably had no say in the matter."
"He died after Lord Azulon was married," Zuko told her definitely.
"Well who would that leave as a possible connection?"
Zuko's face went red. "You're saying that my mother...?"
"It isn't exactly an insult around here," Suki told him sharply. "The Avatar Kyoshi created this island as a sanctuary for her people. You're standing in a shrine to her memory. You firebenders may object to the Avatars preventing you from pillaging your way across the world, but the other nations appreciated it."
"And look where it left you," Zuko argued. "So weak that without the Avatar you were helpless. At least the Fire Nation stands on its own two feet!"
"I'm sure that that really helps when you're beating up twelve year olds," Suki told him irritably. "Do you want to go back outside and finish what we were doing? Mai seems to think you should have a second chance, but you're right on the edge of using that up."
Zuko froze. Mai had given him a second chance?
The girl interpreted his expression correctly and her lips thinned. "Don't mistake it for forgiveness," she told him harshly.
"I see." He lowered his gaze and then his eyes narrowed. "Wait, a twelve year old?" He turned to Toph. "It's only been a few months since Omashu..."
"I guess," the little girl said cheerily. "I can't read a calendar."
"You lied?" Zuko demanded in disbelief. "You're twelve years old?" Reaching down, he grasped Toph by her upper arms. "Toph, tell me that you aren't an earthbender," he pled, panic rising.
"Don't tell him!" Oyaji blurted.
There was a disbelieving silence as everyone stared at him.
"Great denial," Mai deadpanned.
.oOo.
"So what happens now, Spiky?" Toph asked, after Yue had shooed everyone out of the shrine to let Toph rest. The waterbender had also tried to persuade Mai to leave but had finally found something colder and frostier than the centuries old ice of the south pole and had eventually settled for Mai's agreement not to let Toph overexert herself.
The older girl sat crosslegged at the head of the pallet, her fingers meticulously untangling Toph's hair from the knots that had managed to form since the girl awoke. "We can't stay here, little sister."
Toph grinned. "Getting bored already?"
"Yes," admitted Mai unabashedly. "But more importantly, there will be search parties for Zuko, if they aren't here already. And now that he knows that you are the Avatar, we cannot allow him to be found."
"You think he'd try to kill me?" Toph asked thoughtfully, apparently unconcerned.
"No," Mai answered. "But I believe that he would try to imprison you. To prevent you from threatening the Fire Nation's agenda. He would probably tell the Fire Lord that killing you would simply result in the birth of a new Avatar, but that holding you captive renders you harmless."
Toph hunched in on herself. "Keeping me in a box like Bumi," she said. "'Protecting me' the way my parents did."
Mai continued to run her fingers through Toph's hair. "I said that he would try," she said, emphasising the last word. "If we give him the chance to."
"You have some sort of devious plan," concluded Toph, slowly relaxing. "So what do we do?"
"After your secret adventure in the Spirit World, maybe I should keep it to myself?" suggest Mai, tugging lightly on a lock of hair.
"Look, it's not my fault that you weren't there when a huge sky bison carried me off."
"No, but it was your idea to challenge Zuko to an Agni Kai," Mai said harshly, the words slipping out. "Do you have any idea how close you came to dying?"
Toph crossed her arms across her chest. "I'm not a little girl," she warned. "I knew what I was doing."
"Our orders were to investigate and to report," Mai reminded her. "Not to get into a fight."
"I was investigating," Toph shot back. "I was investigating why Sifu was being a colossal idiot."
"And I suppose throwing rocks at him helped with that?"
"Do you know a faster way into his head than cracking it open?"
Mai couldn't help but smirk at that. "He has a very thick skull," she said at last. "But don't you ever do that again. I'd have smacked you around the head if you'd won, for being so reckless."
Toph reached up and caught hold of her sister's hands, stopping them from combing for a moment. "I can't promise you that," she said seriously. "I'm the Avatar. I believe that now. And that means that I'm going to be doing dangerous things."
"I didn't come with you because I thought it would be safe," Mai reminded her. "Just remember to invite me along next time."
"That depends. Are you going to invite me along on this clever plan of yours?"
Mai grinned. "Well, just remember, you're the one who wants to be part of this."
"I don't like the way that you're saying that," said Toph warily.
"Yue invited us to come and stay with her," Mai explained. "And if we take Zuko along with us, then we can be sure that he isn't getting up to any mischief - he'd be hard pressed to bend all that much fire when he's surrounded by mile after mile of ice, and there will be a whole tribe of suspicious waterbenders on hand to keep him under control."
"Mai, you are a brutal, nasty woman and I am so proud that you are my sister," Toph smiled. Then her face scrunched up. "Wait, when you say ice, you mean covering the ground, right?"
Mai smirked. "The south pole is a huge mass of ice floating on the sea," she explained. "There's no earth for hundreds of miles and it's so cold you'll have to wear furs and boots or you'll start freezing yourself."
"I hate it already."
"Just think of it as an incentive to master waterbending," Mai told her.
.oOo.
"Is that a sky bison?" Zuko asked in astonishment.
"A sky... oh hell no! I'm walking," Toph protested, backing up.
Yue frowned. "I thought that you had ridden a sky bison in the Spirit World, Avatar Toph," she pointed out. "And the south pole is across the ocean, you cannot walk there."
"Firstly, yes I did: why do you think that I want to walk? Secondly, I can waterbend enough to walk on water, I think."
"I thought that they were extinct," Zuko murmered, not paying any attention to the two women's conversation.
"Yes, yes, sky bison and dragons, that makes two species your people have tried to exterminate," Toph called to him. "If you guys go after the badgermoles then I'm going to go all Avatar on you." She could hear the way his heart beat, the way his breathing altered in response to the fear that washed over him and frowned. "That was a joke. Well, sort of. I'd certainly do something about it."
"You can't walk across the ocean to the south pole," Yue insisted. "It's too far."
She's stubborn enough to try, Mai thought. "Toph, by the time you found the South Pole we'd have all died of old age. There aren't any landmarks out there for you to navigate by."
Toph looked honestly surprised - proof of her growing skills as a liar. "There aren't?"
"You've tried navigating in the water before," Mai reminded her. "It was amusing, but this isn't the time. Get on the flying buffalo."
"Bison."
"Whatever."
Toph mumbled something and then walked over to the bison. "What's his name?" she asked, touching his side and then walking along him, one hand running through his winter coat of hair.
Yue smiled angelicly. "He's called Kuku. He likes being rubbed under the jaw," she added tolerantly.
"Thanks," said Toph and then grabbed hold of the corner of Kuku's mouth and pulled his head around to face her. As the bison's head was significantly larger than her, she had to use both hands. "I know you understand me Kuku, so no playing a dumb animal. The first time you dangle me from your horns will be the last? Got that?" Kuku mooed tolerantly and Toph nodded. "Great, pleased to meet you," she said and gave him a good rub under the jaw.
"You have a unique way with animals," You told her in a strangled voice.
"It only works with those smarter than the Boulder," Toph confessed and then grinned. "Fortunately, most mussels are smarter than he was."
Zuko looked intrigued. "Uh... was?" he asked cautiously.
"What?"
"You referred to the Boulder in the past tense," Mai explained. "He's asking if the Boulder is dead."
Toph rubbed her face with the heel of her hand. "You couldn't have just said that?" she asked the prince. "Yes, he's dead."
"You're sure?" Zuko asked brightly.
"Your highness," Mai said icily. "I'm sure that a man of your military experience can work out that there are only two possible individuals in the world who would have made sure of that." She rested one hand on Toph's shoulder. "And I didn't."
Zuko's face went red, then an unpleasent shade of green, and at that point he decided that he had pressing business on the other side of Kuku and went off in pursuit of it. Of course, then he had to join Mai and Toph in the saddle, so it didn't help him very much.
"Oh stop that," Mai said irritably. "If you're going to jump off and kill yourself, we aren't high enough off the ground yet and we aren't going to let you run away, so stop looking like you're about to throw yourself off the saddle."
"It's quite alright to be nervous, your highness," Yue said formally from where she was sitting crosslegged on Kuku's neck. She snapped the reins lightly and with a mild "Yip, yip," prompted the sky bison to lumber forward a few steps and then rise steadily into the sky.
Mai looked over the side of the saddle with detached interest at the bird's eye view of Kyoshi Island. It was somewhat... not interesting, but novel. She noted that Zuko was very determinedly not looking down and on impulse asked Yue: "What would happen if someone fell from here? Assuming they landed in the water, I mean."
"Oh it wouldn't make any difference," Yue said calmly. "From this height, they'd be falling so fast that hitting the water would be as bad as hitting a thousand yard deep iceberg." She looked back and added kindly, "Don't worry, it would take so long to fall the distance that there would be plenty of time for Kuku to dive down and catch you."
Neither Toph nor Zuko seemed greatly comforted.
.oOo.
The cold winds of the southern oceans were an unpleasent surprise to the three first time visitors. Toph and Mai pulled on the robes of their Kyoshi Warrior uniforms over their everyday clothes and still shivered. Zuko, who simply had no other clothes with him, made do with a thick blanket and almost constant meditation to keep his internal temperature up.
"This isn't cold," Yue said in bemusement. She hadn't even bothered to don the heavy parka that was rolled up in a bundle at the back of the saddle and was behaving in general as if she was enjoying a balmly summers day. "It's just getting comfortable again after that hothouse weather Kyoshi Island has."
The three 'northerners', not that they had previously grouped themselves that way, stared at her. Kyoshi Island was pleasently temperate at best. "We're going to need warmer clothes," Mai told her. "Much warmer."
Yue nodded. "There's a small village not that far onto the ice, I used it as a waypoint on my journey north," she offered. "We can get you furs there. Until then I suggest that you huddle together and try to stay out of the wind."
Mai looked at where Toph was already pressed against her side. It wasn't clear yet what the long term effects of the spirit water had been, Yue had forbidden any active bending until the chakra had had time to stablise, so the smaller girl could not warm herself the same way that Zuko could.
"I mean, all of you," Yue added, looking back towards Zuko, who was sat on the far side of the saddle, which meant that his feet were within inches of Mai's. "When it comes to sharing body heat, you probably have more to offer than the rest of us, Prince Zuko. Sit next to Toph."
"Don't have any sudden impulses towards martyrdom," Mai warned the young man as he grudgingly crawled across Kuku's back and sat gingerly next to Toph. She hated the way that she could feel Toph relax slightly at the addition of another warm body, although young earthbender remained loyally pressed against her.
"You tested that out of me back on Kyoshi," Zuko said tiredly.
"And you were willing to die if it meant doing what you thought was honorable," pointed out Mai bleakly.
"Murdering someone in their sleep -"
"Oh yeah, like you could do thatt," gibed Toph from the middle of them. "Spiky, if Broody gets even slightly aggressive back there, I'll know. Trust me. Broody, shut up and make with the heating. You're supposed to be warming me up back there."
"Agni preserve me," Zuko muttered. "I never met the real you at all."
"You met part of me," Toph allowed, still not turning to face him. Although there would have been little point in doing so, from her perspective. "More of me than my parents cared to meet. Now you get to meet the rest of me."
"I feel so lucky."
Yue laughed musically from Kuku's head.
.oOo.
"There it is," Yue called, pointing ahead where the horizon was beginning to show as a line of white.
"Land?" Toph asked hopefully.
"Icebergs," the waterbender corrected. "What passes for the shore of the south polar is mostly made up of icebergs. As we go further and further south they'll get larger and larger until they all merge into one."
"I don't think I've ever come across ice," Toph mused. "It's an odd idea, solid water. What does it feel like?"
"There are lots of different forms of ice," Yue told her. "Much like earth, I suppose. It's cold of course, and hard. Sometimes it's smooth, but it can also be rough. And then there's snow, which is soft and feathery, wet and -"
"Cold?"
"Yes," Yue chuckled. She reached out with one hand and felt for moisture in the air. "Here, I'll let you find out for yourself," she told Toph and condensed some of the moisture into water and then into ice. She passed the more or less egg-sized chuck of ice back to Mai, who winced and dutifully handed it on to Toph.
The blind girl ran her hands over it enquiringly and then sat up, to rub it across the sole of one foot. "Ouch, that is cold," she admitted. "It's turning back into water though. Is that normal?"
"When it warms up," Mai told her. "You're probably holding it too close to Zuko," she added, indicating the sleeping firebender.
"So he's not just a bedwarmer, he's an ice melter?" Toph asked and was intrigued by the way that both Mai and Yue choked. A thought crossed her mind. "Where did you get this from? Did it fall out of the sky or something?"
"No, the air is damp enough that I was able to pull water out of it and freeze it," Yue explained.
"And you can do that in reverse?" probed Toph.
"Of course. It's one of the most common used for waterbending - most of our construction techniques revolve around it. Why do you ask?"
"And there was water in the air?" Toph said, ignoring the question. "It's not rain or anything like that?"
Yue gave her a blank look, then remembered that Toph couldn't see her. "No. Is there a problem, Avatar?"
"So water becomes solid when it's colder and stops being sold when it's warmed up? And water can be in the air..." Toph mused. "No, no problem, just about half my ideas about how waterbending works are wrong but that," she decided, "Is totally awesome. Because it's giving me whole new ideas about what I can do with it. Now I really want to learn it."
"You're thinking of mayhem, aren't you?" Mai said resignedly. Even the prospect of being able to see in whatever icy hellhole they were heading for hadn't aroused this much enthusiasm in her sister.
Bitch. Mai would admit to herself - and maybe to Toph if it was possible - that she was conflicted on what to do about Zuko. On the one hand, he was the boy who she'd liked since - perhaps before - he'd knocked her into a fountain trying to protect her from burning fruit (long story). On the other hand he was the man who'd ridden across a sizeable chunk of the Earth Kingdom, punctuating the journey by burning towns, to avenge her apparent death. Azula might have found that flattering, but Mai had to admit that it left her somewhat cold.
And then there was Toph. Who had seemed to quite like Zuko at Omashu, and had been electrocuted by him at Chin Village. Oddly enough, Mai suspected that the young girl wouldn't have been as upset by the latter as Mai was. She couldn't imagine Toph entering a fight without sublime confidence that she would triumph, however misplaced, or facing defeat with anything by a bloodthirsty enthusiasm to repay it with interest.
Would Toph kill him?
Since leaving Omashu, Mai could recall weighing options on the arguements of 'What would Azula do?' and 'What would Ty Lee do?' but this was the first time that Toph had entered into that line up. And there was something deeply unhealthy about using your twelve year old sister as a moral compass, so she had better never mention this to anyone.
Toph would kill Zuko. But not like this. There would be fire, earthquakes and possibly screaming. But not like this, with him grovelling in shame and apparently willing to die as long as some obscure point of honor was resolved to his liking.
With a reluctant sigh, Mai walked over to Zuko and grabbed the loose locks of hair that had once formed his topknot. "Stand up," she ordered abruptly, yanking him upwards. The clueless expression on his face wasn't half as cute as she had thought when he was younger. "Just to make it official, I do not forgive you and I never will." She turned and started walking towards Kyoshi's Shrine.
Bemused, Zuko looked after her. "What?"
Since Suki was too busy looking disappointed to answer, it was June who replied by prodding him forwards. "Did you get dropped on the head when you were a child? Follow her."
He obeyed, trying to puzzle out what was happening. Zuko had expected either to be killed - because he was damned if he was digging another spadeful now that he knew what those 'holes' were for, or to be allowed to send Toph to Agni properly by cremation. He hadn't expected a... non-answer. Was he being taken to Toph's body or to a place of execution?
The door loomed large and he entered, the Kyoshi Warriors close behind him, then paused to let his eyes adjust to the dimmer light inside. The single chamber was spartan, a handful of racks displaying items from the uniform of one of the warriors. The only decoration was a large painting at the back, of what subject he could not tell at a glance.
Besides Mai the room had three occupants: an old man who seemed startled and concerned at his presence, a white-haired woman who seemed surprised but not alarmed, kneeling over the pallet that held the last person.
"Toph?"
"You should not have brought him here," the old man declared angrily. He moved to block Zuko as the prince strode towards the pallet only to find that an elderly man with no martial training isn't even an obstacle to a sixteen year old soldier twice his side. Zuko brushed him aside without breaking stride and would have done the same with the woman, had she not moved aside to let him reach Toph. Absently he noted that other than her hair she appeared to be little more than his old age, but the bulk of his attention was upon pink cheeks and half-lidded eyes of milky jade.
"You've really let yourself go, Sifu Broody," Toph choked out. "I guess you need me around to keep you on your toes."
"You crazy little fool," Zuko choked out and started hugging her against him in a most embarassing fashion ignoring the affectionate way she was pummelling his ribcage and demanding to be released.
"Who is he?" Yue asked Mai, behind him.
She shrugged. "Her firebending teacher... and the one who nearly killed her."
"He should not be here!" the old man said, apparently in the belief that no one had heard him the first time. "What were you thinking, Suki?"
The Kyoshi Warrior looked down at Zuko and Toph for a minute before turning to him. "I'm thinking that he's a man, not a monster, Oyaji. A man who's made his mistakes, perhaps, but also a man who was willing to face up to them out there."
"Do you think that that matters? You know what he could bring down upon us."
"If he does so, then in a number of ways it would because we - because I have not acted justly towards him," Suki told him. "I'm beginning to suspect that Kyoshi would not have approved of what I just did to him."
"I take it that it has something to do with the chains he's wearing?" asked Yue, eyeing Zuko with new suspicion at learning he was a firebender.
Briefly, Suki outlined how she had tested Zuko, and his response. Yue's face tightened as she listened and then she shook her head. "I know little of the Avatar Kyoshi," she admitted, "But I think that the Avatar Kanna would have been furious at treating anyone like that." Only Toph noded Zuko's ears pricking at the use of the name.
"You knew her?" Suki asked. "You would have only been a little girl?"
"She was close to my parents," Yue reminded her. "And she always had time for children. Looking back, I think she regretted most that her duties had kept her from being a mother herself. Mother told me once that she had spoken at times of a man in her past, a waterbender named Pakku, but that would have been before she learnt that she was the Avatar."
With a grunt, Toph finally managed to wriggle free of Zuko. "Well some Avatar's have kids," she told them. "Roku did."
"So did Kiyoshi," confirmed Oyaji. "She was my great-great-great-great grandmother."
"Really? I wonder if that make's you two relatives?" Toph asked, looking between the old man and Zuko.
"Why would it make us relatives?" Zuko asked, while Oyaji spluttered at the very notion. "I'm absolutely certain that I'm not descended from Kiyoshi. I'm sure it would be a very great honour," he added quickly, "Although one I wouldn't want to advertise in the Fire Nation, but -"
"Not Avatar Kiyoshi," Toph told him smugly. "Avatar Roku. He told me himself he was your great-great grandfather."
Zuko stared at her for a moment. "Uh, Toph, he's been dead for... about a hundred and twelve years.How could he tell you anything?"
She waved her hand casually. "I was in the spirit world for -" She broke off as the sudden alarm in four hearts caught her attention. "Ah... I hadn't had a chance to mention that yet."
"The... spirit world?" Zuko asked cautiously. "Toph are you sure that you weren't dreaming? No offense, but I know one of my ancestors -" He paused, looked at Yue and shrugged resignedly. "I'm Sozin's great-grandson and I'm reasonably sure he'd never have allowed a marriage between the royal family and the family of an Avatar."
Mai rolled her eyes. "Setting aside Toph basing her arguement on information received in the Spirit World, Sozin died quite a long time ago. He probably had no say in the matter."
"He died after Lord Azulon was married," Zuko told her definitely.
"Well who would that leave as a possible connection?"
Zuko's face went red. "You're saying that my mother...?"
"It isn't exactly an insult around here," Suki told him sharply. "The Avatar Kyoshi created this island as a sanctuary for her people. You're standing in a shrine to her memory. You firebenders may object to the Avatars preventing you from pillaging your way across the world, but the other nations appreciated it."
"And look where it left you," Zuko argued. "So weak that without the Avatar you were helpless. At least the Fire Nation stands on its own two feet!"
"I'm sure that that really helps when you're beating up twelve year olds," Suki told him irritably. "Do you want to go back outside and finish what we were doing? Mai seems to think you should have a second chance, but you're right on the edge of using that up."
Zuko froze. Mai had given him a second chance?
The girl interpreted his expression correctly and her lips thinned. "Don't mistake it for forgiveness," she told him harshly.
"I see." He lowered his gaze and then his eyes narrowed. "Wait, a twelve year old?" He turned to Toph. "It's only been a few months since Omashu..."
"I guess," the little girl said cheerily. "I can't read a calendar."
"You lied?" Zuko demanded in disbelief. "You're twelve years old?" Reaching down, he grasped Toph by her upper arms. "Toph, tell me that you aren't an earthbender," he pled, panic rising.
"Don't tell him!" Oyaji blurted.
There was a disbelieving silence as everyone stared at him.
"Great denial," Mai deadpanned.
.oOo.
"So what happens now, Spiky?" Toph asked, after Yue had shooed everyone out of the shrine to let Toph rest. The waterbender had also tried to persuade Mai to leave but had finally found something colder and frostier than the centuries old ice of the south pole and had eventually settled for Mai's agreement not to let Toph overexert herself.
The older girl sat crosslegged at the head of the pallet, her fingers meticulously untangling Toph's hair from the knots that had managed to form since the girl awoke. "We can't stay here, little sister."
Toph grinned. "Getting bored already?"
"Yes," admitted Mai unabashedly. "But more importantly, there will be search parties for Zuko, if they aren't here already. And now that he knows that you are the Avatar, we cannot allow him to be found."
"You think he'd try to kill me?" Toph asked thoughtfully, apparently unconcerned.
"No," Mai answered. "But I believe that he would try to imprison you. To prevent you from threatening the Fire Nation's agenda. He would probably tell the Fire Lord that killing you would simply result in the birth of a new Avatar, but that holding you captive renders you harmless."
Toph hunched in on herself. "Keeping me in a box like Bumi," she said. "'Protecting me' the way my parents did."
Mai continued to run her fingers through Toph's hair. "I said that he would try," she said, emphasising the last word. "If we give him the chance to."
"You have some sort of devious plan," concluded Toph, slowly relaxing. "So what do we do?"
"After your secret adventure in the Spirit World, maybe I should keep it to myself?" suggest Mai, tugging lightly on a lock of hair.
"Look, it's not my fault that you weren't there when a huge sky bison carried me off."
"No, but it was your idea to challenge Zuko to an Agni Kai," Mai said harshly, the words slipping out. "Do you have any idea how close you came to dying?"
Toph crossed her arms across her chest. "I'm not a little girl," she warned. "I knew what I was doing."
"Our orders were to investigate and to report," Mai reminded her. "Not to get into a fight."
"I was investigating," Toph shot back. "I was investigating why Sifu was being a colossal idiot."
"And I suppose throwing rocks at him helped with that?"
"Do you know a faster way into his head than cracking it open?"
Mai couldn't help but smirk at that. "He has a very thick skull," she said at last. "But don't you ever do that again. I'd have smacked you around the head if you'd won, for being so reckless."
Toph reached up and caught hold of her sister's hands, stopping them from combing for a moment. "I can't promise you that," she said seriously. "I'm the Avatar. I believe that now. And that means that I'm going to be doing dangerous things."
"I didn't come with you because I thought it would be safe," Mai reminded her. "Just remember to invite me along next time."
"That depends. Are you going to invite me along on this clever plan of yours?"
Mai grinned. "Well, just remember, you're the one who wants to be part of this."
"I don't like the way that you're saying that," said Toph warily.
"Yue invited us to come and stay with her," Mai explained. "And if we take Zuko along with us, then we can be sure that he isn't getting up to any mischief - he'd be hard pressed to bend all that much fire when he's surrounded by mile after mile of ice, and there will be a whole tribe of suspicious waterbenders on hand to keep him under control."
"Mai, you are a brutal, nasty woman and I am so proud that you are my sister," Toph smiled. Then her face scrunched up. "Wait, when you say ice, you mean covering the ground, right?"
Mai smirked. "The south pole is a huge mass of ice floating on the sea," she explained. "There's no earth for hundreds of miles and it's so cold you'll have to wear furs and boots or you'll start freezing yourself."
"I hate it already."
"Just think of it as an incentive to master waterbending," Mai told her.
.oOo.
"Is that a sky bison?" Zuko asked in astonishment.
"A sky... oh hell no! I'm walking," Toph protested, backing up.
Yue frowned. "I thought that you had ridden a sky bison in the Spirit World, Avatar Toph," she pointed out. "And the south pole is across the ocean, you cannot walk there."
"Firstly, yes I did: why do you think that I want to walk? Secondly, I can waterbend enough to walk on water, I think."
"I thought that they were extinct," Zuko murmered, not paying any attention to the two women's conversation.
"Yes, yes, sky bison and dragons, that makes two species your people have tried to exterminate," Toph called to him. "If you guys go after the badgermoles then I'm going to go all Avatar on you." She could hear the way his heart beat, the way his breathing altered in response to the fear that washed over him and frowned. "That was a joke. Well, sort of. I'd certainly do something about it."
"You can't walk across the ocean to the south pole," Yue insisted. "It's too far."
She's stubborn enough to try, Mai thought. "Toph, by the time you found the South Pole we'd have all died of old age. There aren't any landmarks out there for you to navigate by."
Toph looked honestly surprised - proof of her growing skills as a liar. "There aren't?"
"You've tried navigating in the water before," Mai reminded her. "It was amusing, but this isn't the time. Get on the flying buffalo."
"Bison."
"Whatever."
Toph mumbled something and then walked over to the bison. "What's his name?" she asked, touching his side and then walking along him, one hand running through his winter coat of hair.
Yue smiled angelicly. "He's called Kuku. He likes being rubbed under the jaw," she added tolerantly.
"Thanks," said Toph and then grabbed hold of the corner of Kuku's mouth and pulled his head around to face her. As the bison's head was significantly larger than her, she had to use both hands. "I know you understand me Kuku, so no playing a dumb animal. The first time you dangle me from your horns will be the last? Got that?" Kuku mooed tolerantly and Toph nodded. "Great, pleased to meet you," she said and gave him a good rub under the jaw.
"You have a unique way with animals," You told her in a strangled voice.
"It only works with those smarter than the Boulder," Toph confessed and then grinned. "Fortunately, most mussels are smarter than he was."
Zuko looked intrigued. "Uh... was?" he asked cautiously.
"What?"
"You referred to the Boulder in the past tense," Mai explained. "He's asking if the Boulder is dead."
Toph rubbed her face with the heel of her hand. "You couldn't have just said that?" she asked the prince. "Yes, he's dead."
"You're sure?" Zuko asked brightly.
"Your highness," Mai said icily. "I'm sure that a man of your military experience can work out that there are only two possible individuals in the world who would have made sure of that." She rested one hand on Toph's shoulder. "And I didn't."
Zuko's face went red, then an unpleasent shade of green, and at that point he decided that he had pressing business on the other side of Kuku and went off in pursuit of it. Of course, then he had to join Mai and Toph in the saddle, so it didn't help him very much.
"Oh stop that," Mai said irritably. "If you're going to jump off and kill yourself, we aren't high enough off the ground yet and we aren't going to let you run away, so stop looking like you're about to throw yourself off the saddle."
"It's quite alright to be nervous, your highness," Yue said formally from where she was sitting crosslegged on Kuku's neck. She snapped the reins lightly and with a mild "Yip, yip," prompted the sky bison to lumber forward a few steps and then rise steadily into the sky.
Mai looked over the side of the saddle with detached interest at the bird's eye view of Kyoshi Island. It was somewhat... not interesting, but novel. She noted that Zuko was very determinedly not looking down and on impulse asked Yue: "What would happen if someone fell from here? Assuming they landed in the water, I mean."
"Oh it wouldn't make any difference," Yue said calmly. "From this height, they'd be falling so fast that hitting the water would be as bad as hitting a thousand yard deep iceberg." She looked back and added kindly, "Don't worry, it would take so long to fall the distance that there would be plenty of time for Kuku to dive down and catch you."
Neither Toph nor Zuko seemed greatly comforted.
.oOo.
The cold winds of the southern oceans were an unpleasent surprise to the three first time visitors. Toph and Mai pulled on the robes of their Kyoshi Warrior uniforms over their everyday clothes and still shivered. Zuko, who simply had no other clothes with him, made do with a thick blanket and almost constant meditation to keep his internal temperature up.
"This isn't cold," Yue said in bemusement. She hadn't even bothered to don the heavy parka that was rolled up in a bundle at the back of the saddle and was behaving in general as if she was enjoying a balmly summers day. "It's just getting comfortable again after that hothouse weather Kyoshi Island has."
The three 'northerners', not that they had previously grouped themselves that way, stared at her. Kyoshi Island was pleasently temperate at best. "We're going to need warmer clothes," Mai told her. "Much warmer."
Yue nodded. "There's a small village not that far onto the ice, I used it as a waypoint on my journey north," she offered. "We can get you furs there. Until then I suggest that you huddle together and try to stay out of the wind."
Mai looked at where Toph was already pressed against her side. It wasn't clear yet what the long term effects of the spirit water had been, Yue had forbidden any active bending until the chakra had had time to stablise, so the smaller girl could not warm herself the same way that Zuko could.
"I mean, all of you," Yue added, looking back towards Zuko, who was sat on the far side of the saddle, which meant that his feet were within inches of Mai's. "When it comes to sharing body heat, you probably have more to offer than the rest of us, Prince Zuko. Sit next to Toph."
"Don't have any sudden impulses towards martyrdom," Mai warned the young man as he grudgingly crawled across Kuku's back and sat gingerly next to Toph. She hated the way that she could feel Toph relax slightly at the addition of another warm body, although young earthbender remained loyally pressed against her.
"You tested that out of me back on Kyoshi," Zuko said tiredly.
"And you were willing to die if it meant doing what you thought was honorable," pointed out Mai bleakly.
"Murdering someone in their sleep -"
"Oh yeah, like you could do thatt," gibed Toph from the middle of them. "Spiky, if Broody gets even slightly aggressive back there, I'll know. Trust me. Broody, shut up and make with the heating. You're supposed to be warming me up back there."
"Agni preserve me," Zuko muttered. "I never met the real you at all."
"You met part of me," Toph allowed, still not turning to face him. Although there would have been little point in doing so, from her perspective. "More of me than my parents cared to meet. Now you get to meet the rest of me."
"I feel so lucky."
Yue laughed musically from Kuku's head.
.oOo.
"There it is," Yue called, pointing ahead where the horizon was beginning to show as a line of white.
"Land?" Toph asked hopefully.
"Icebergs," the waterbender corrected. "What passes for the shore of the south polar is mostly made up of icebergs. As we go further and further south they'll get larger and larger until they all merge into one."
"I don't think I've ever come across ice," Toph mused. "It's an odd idea, solid water. What does it feel like?"
"There are lots of different forms of ice," Yue told her. "Much like earth, I suppose. It's cold of course, and hard. Sometimes it's smooth, but it can also be rough. And then there's snow, which is soft and feathery, wet and -"
"Cold?"
"Yes," Yue chuckled. She reached out with one hand and felt for moisture in the air. "Here, I'll let you find out for yourself," she told Toph and condensed some of the moisture into water and then into ice. She passed the more or less egg-sized chuck of ice back to Mai, who winced and dutifully handed it on to Toph.
The blind girl ran her hands over it enquiringly and then sat up, to rub it across the sole of one foot. "Ouch, that is cold," she admitted. "It's turning back into water though. Is that normal?"
"When it warms up," Mai told her. "You're probably holding it too close to Zuko," she added, indicating the sleeping firebender.
"So he's not just a bedwarmer, he's an ice melter?" Toph asked and was intrigued by the way that both Mai and Yue choked. A thought crossed her mind. "Where did you get this from? Did it fall out of the sky or something?"
"No, the air is damp enough that I was able to pull water out of it and freeze it," Yue explained.
"And you can do that in reverse?" probed Toph.
"Of course. It's one of the most common used for waterbending - most of our construction techniques revolve around it. Why do you ask?"
"And there was water in the air?" Toph said, ignoring the question. "It's not rain or anything like that?"
Yue gave her a blank look, then remembered that Toph couldn't see her. "No. Is there a problem, Avatar?"
"So water becomes solid when it's colder and stops being sold when it's warmed up? And water can be in the air..." Toph mused. "No, no problem, just about half my ideas about how waterbending works are wrong but that," she decided, "Is totally awesome. Because it's giving me whole new ideas about what I can do with it. Now I really want to learn it."
"You're thinking of mayhem, aren't you?" Mai said resignedly. Even the prospect of being able to see in whatever icy hellhole they were heading for hadn't aroused this much enthusiasm in her sister.
The water tribe village was tiny. Mai thought at first that it was simply a temporary camp - crude ice walls around tents built over simple wooden floors. But the populace evidently weren't a fast moving hunting group - out of the dozen or so adults, more than half were clearly elderly and only one of them was male. The population was filled out by a more or less equal number of children.
"Princess Yue," called man raising one arm in greeting as Kuku set down in almost belly deep snow. He was tall and lean, cutting an impressive figure in blue dyed furs, dark hair bound up in a topknot. Were it not for his blue eyes and dark skin, he would have fit seamlessly into any any circle of Fire Nation military officers. "You've returned sooner than expected. I hope that your patient is well."
"She is well," Yue replied pleasently and looked back at her passengers. "My friends, I would like to introduce my good friend Chief Bato of the Southern Water Tribe. Bato, I would like you to meet Mai, Zuko and Toph."
"Princess?" Mai asked curiously.
Yue made a face. "My father, Arnook, is Chief of the Northern Water Tribe who relocated here. It doesn't really matter since the title isn't hereditary, but it doesn't stop people from calling me a princess or trying to pair me up with Bato as some sort of symbolic unification of the tribes."
Bato shrugged. "I keep telling you, Princess. If you want to quiet the gossips then find yourself a young man."
"It doesn't quiet them that you're out here with your harem of war widows," Yue smiled, "So I have my doubts. I'm afraid my companions had to leave their current residence without winterwear. I'm sorry to impose..."
The man waved his hand dismissively. "Yue, your father is an interfering busybody, but you are an ornament upon the Water Tribes and any service I can do you is a delight. I'm quite sure we can outfit the three of them for a trip south." He looked up at them all measuringly. "Come into the village and enjoy our hospitality for the night."
"Ground? Great!" Toph said and made to jump off Kuku, only to be restrained by Mai catching hold of the back of the green dress.
"Toph, you aren't getting off the bison until you have boots on," she declared flatly. "I've heard about frostbite and your feet won't see anything every again if all the flesh on them is frozen solid."
Yue stood up to help Mai restrain the headstrong girl. "Could you bring some boots first, Bato?" she requested urgently.
Toph struggled - more out of principle than any desperate need to reach the ice, which would be a poor substitute for honest ground - to escape. "It can't be that bad," she protested.
"It's as bad as fire in its way," Zuko said quietly from where he was sitting. "Veterans call it iceburn. There's a reason that our soldiers cover every bit of their bodies when they enter cold climates."
"Really?" Toph relaxed suddenly and Yue let go of her, reassured. Mai, better acquainted with her sister, did not but for once Toph was not feigning her switch of attention. "Is it quick?"
"I've never seen it myself, but it is said that a few moments can cause crippling injuries. Even brief contact can cause serious damage unless it is treated immediately," Zuko said, not looking up.
"What sort of injuries?" Toph asked curiously.
"Mildly?" Zuko asked. "Scarring and loss of sensation in the exposed part of the body. At worst? Quite often they become infected and have to be amputated. A lot of soldiers lose noses or fingers after serving in this part of the world."
Toph looked genuinely impressed. "I'm gonna have to figure out how to do that to people," she observed. Yue looked genuinely appalled. "Bad people," Toph clarified. "People who deserve fates worse than death."
"Here," Bato called from below Kuku. Apparently he had hurried, or Toph had been more distracted by the prospect of burning people with cold than she had expected. A boot came sailing up over the side of the saddle, followed by the partner. "They should be around the right size, if not we can pad them."
Yue passed the boots to Toph and then jumped down to talk urgently to Bato in a low voice, obviously unaware that the blind girl couldn't have failed to overhear her if she had been trying to. Which she was, because hearing a recital of the scandalous history of the three people still on Kuku - or as much of it as Yue knew - was boring. Bato's reactions weren't all that much more interesting although she was pretty sure that he was genuinely not romantically interested in Yue.
Instead, she wrestled the unfamiliar footwear on. And then off again, because she figured that they were so uncomfortable that she must have them on the wrong feet, and Mai hadn't said anything because she thought it was funny. However, the other way around was worse and with a deep feeling of despair, Toph accepted that the previous discomfort was the normal sensation of wearing boots and stripped them off again.
"Are you going to keep playing with them until the sun sets?" Mai asked, her voice bored.
"It won't set for months now," Zuko told her. "It happens when you're too far north or south. I think these parts of the world are broken some how."
Mai thought about that and then decided not to as it was making her head hurt. "The question stands."
Somewhat unsteadily, Toph stood up with her feet inside the boots. "I can't feel anything at all through these," she warned and then clambered over the side of the saddle and slid down Kuku to the snow. She sank past her knees into the snow and was glad that the boots were long enough to reach the bottom of her pants. Spirits, the stuff was cold!
Not known enitrely waht she was looing for, she reached out the way she had for water, back on the beaches of Kyoshi Island. This was water too, so it shouldn't be so very different. Harder with cloth and fur between her and it, but not different. Not entirely.
Snow was ice, she realised in surprise. Tiny little flakes of it. Different arrangement, same thing. About as distinct from the almost rock-like chunk of ice that Yue had given her, as sand was from good honest stone but on a very fundamental level the same thing. She stomped her foot her foot experimentally.
"If your bending talent burns out becauuse you push it, I'll let Ty Lee pick your wardrobe," Mai warned her dispassionately, landing in the snow next to Toph. Everything that Toph had heard about Mai's other friend suggested that this would result in pink. From the way that Mai used the word, it was unclear if she meant the colour or some other meaning of the word. Maybe a fruit, like an orange.
Toph shook her head. Focus. What had it felt like when she stamped? She did so again.
"What's she doing?" asked Bato from somewhere.
"Bending," Mai replied.
The water tribesman sounded puzzled. "Bending what? Nothing's happening."
"Herself, for all I know," said the fire maiden with a bored look on her face.
Yue pinched the bridge of her nose. "Toph, I told you not to bend until I was sure that your fourth chakra had recovered.
"I'm not sure where you got the idea that I take orders from you," Toph told her. "I'm grateful and all that, but giving up bending is a bit much."
Yue's eyes tightened. "If your ability to bend is permenantly impaired," she pointed out angrily. "The consequences would be dire. I am telling you this for your own good."
"That was what my parents said when they tried to permanently obliterate it," Toph retorted hotly, the snow melting slightly around her. "I'll decide my own good from now on."
"Toph," Mai observed. "It may not be your own good to firebend on ice that's floating on very deep water."
The avatar paused, nodded, and stepped away from the puddle that she had inadvertantly created. "I'll listen to suggestions," she said in grudging concession.
.oOo.
Zhao stared through the telescope. "Well, well, well," he mused triumphantly. "And I thought that there wouldn't be any excitement down here."
The Fire Nation Admiral's squadron were drifting south, carried by a current that they had learned off from a captured Water Tribe map. From long experience, Zhao knew that the smoke from his ships while under power could be detected before he could reach his targets. Where possible, he would use the engines only in darkness where the columns of smoke were almost undetectable, but it was the wrong time of year and so he was letting the elements carry him closer, until there would be no time to react when he raised steam.
And what a prize there was, Zhao chuckled. The huge creature outside the pathetic water tribe village had to be a sky bison. There hadn't been a confirmed sighting in decades but there had been rumours for years that a few remnants of the Air Nomad's favored mounts had survived in remote areas. And if the Water Tribe village knew where one was, they might know where to find more.
Sky Bison weren't exactly prey on a level with Dragons, but since the 'Fire Lord' Iroh had inconsiderately killed the last Dragons when Zhao was a boy, he'd settle for this. The fur would make an excellent trophy and if any of the water tribe women were captured, it would be an even better bed for demonstrating his domination of their people on.
"Signal the other ships," he ordered. "We have a target and for the moment, they haven't spotted us."
The captain standing on the bridge gestured sharply and a signaller started forming small flames inside a specially shielded lantern, each little sequence of fire bursts signifying a particular code phrase. "If I'm any judge of the weather, it appears that there will be a heavy mist rolling in," he told the admiral. "That will cover our approach."
"Good. Very good. Four ships will hold back as a reserve in case this is some kind of trap," Zhao decided. "We'll take the other two ships in. There can't be more than a couple of dozen warriors in a small village like that, and three ships will be more than enough to overwhelm that."
"As you command, Admiral," the captain agreed, following rules one and two of 'dealing with Zhao', as passed down in the oral tradition of the Fire Nation Navy: 'use his rank, a lot' and 'never argue with him'. "What formation would you prefer?"
"Are you an idiot?" Zhao sneered. "Trident formation, of course. I will lead our warriors directly into the village while those of the other ships encircle it, to capture those who turn and flee." He slapped the rail. "It's been too long since we reminded these savages of the might of the Fire Nation. They've grown complacent, building one of their villages here on the sea."
"And if they have information regarding Prince Zuko, Admiral?"
Zhao chuckled. "Do you really think anyone cares about one inconsequential princeling? Everyone knows that he wasn't as strong as his sister or his cousin. Either one of them got their claws into him and the other reacted, or perhaps Ozai himself decided to get rid of an incompetent. In either case, no one wants him found." He looked through the telescope again. "No, we're just here to make a show of searching for the little lost prince, and because Prince Lu Ten wants to gain every last bit of glory he can at Ba Sing Se to counter Princess Azula's triumph."
.oOo.
Zuko was taking great comfort in the small blaze that crackled at the centre of the tent that the travellers had been loaned. In these frosty climes, the smoky fire needed almost constant attention to keep it alive, fed with scraps and only the most useless of waste, so most tents only had lanterns. Those would not suffice for warmblooded visitors however, and allowance was made for what was obviously a sign of weakness in the eyes of the village women.
"Benders and their elements," Mai sniffed but she didn't make more than the barest pretense that she wasn't as glad of the source of heat as any of the rest of them. Toph had stripped off the hated boots at the first opportunity and was sitting with her feet pointed towards the fire, close enough to risk a scorching.
"We'll have to stay a little longer than I hoped," Yue said, laying down the bundle of possessions that she had carried from Kuku. Bato had been erecting a tent around the animal to shelter him while he rested, not willing to assume that the creature's long winter fur would be enough protection for the rare sky bison. "There's a mist rolling in, and flying over ice can be dangerous enough when it's visible."
"What's so dangerous about it?" asked Mai and since it was she asking, rather than Toph, Yue concluded that it was a genuine desire to understand rather than cocky derision.
"Ice formations can be deceptive. Without a frame of reference, it's easy to assume that something is large and distant when actually it's much smaller, but right in front of you. Kuku has good instincts, but he isn't infalliable about these things." Yue shrugged. "Besides, he is tired and while we could press on, I think a night out here will let you acclimatise before it gets really cold."
"Really cold?"
"Oh yes," Yue nodded regretfully. "This is fairly mild. If it weren't for the fire nation, most of the tribe would be living here on the coast. As it is, we have to make our homes further inland. Even we find it chilly."
Zuko shivered and drew a blanket closer around his shoulders. "Being buried alive on Kyoshi Island is sounding better and better," he muttered.
"It's not too late to throw you into the sea," Mai offered coldly. "From what you said about frostbite, that should kill you almost instantly."
Toph picked at her nose. "That was cold, Spiky." She examined the tip of her finger, before flicking the residue into the flames.
The flap of the tent pushed aside and Bato stepped inside, his face grim. "There are fire nation ships in the area," he told them. "You'd better leave, even if you have to do so on foot.
"What?" she called, but he had left again. "Get packed up," the waterbender ordered, and pushed out of the the flap herself, not waiting to receive confirmation from the three northerners.
Zuko started obediently shuffling into the parka that Bato had offered him in loan, mind churning. If Fire Nation ships were near...
"You're thinking about running," Toph told him flatly, as she wrestled the boots back onto her feet.
"If they picked me up then they would have to leave, to take me home," offered Zuko weakly.
"At best they'd send one ship back with you while the others keep coming," Mai contradicted. "Particularly once you tell them about Toph. No Fire Nation commander would pass up the chance to capture the Avatar."
"I..." Wouldn't tell them? But it's my duty! Why wouldn't I tell whoever isn't in command there about Toph being the Avatar? "I..." Capturing the Avatar would make my name, make father proud of me. But she's not just the Avatar, is she? She's also Toph.
"It's touching that you'd hesitate about it, Sifu Broody," Toph told him, "But it isn't getting your clothes on. And if I have to drag you, I'm going to be rough about it."
"You seem to forget who lost our Agni Kai," snapped Zuko angrily, rising to his feet.
"And you 'seem to forget' who wound up being chained up afterwards," Mai cut in. "You're in just as much danger as the rest of us, your highness. Chances are pretty good that the soldiers on that ship will notice you're a man in blue furs a lot sooner than they'll notice that you don't look all that much like one of the water tribe an it'll be hard for anyone to tell the difference once you're a charred corpse on the ground."
Zuko blanched and made to remove the parka.
"Uh-uh," Toph told him, smacking his hands as she clambered to her feet. "If I have to suffer in this then so do you." She had almost crawled into her own parka, which was clearly too large for her, hanging to her knees and covering her hands entirely.
"How can you tell what I'm doing?" he protested, conceding for the moment.
"I'm blind, not deaf. And this wood is so old it's almost as solid as rock," Toph told him. "Earthbender, remember? Everytime you shift posture it's sending vibrations through the boards. Granted, wouldn't mean much to most, but I've had a lot of practise."
"If you two benders are done exchanging notes, we need to go," Mai told them and pushed her way out of the tent.
Toph yelped an incoherent protest and barrelled after her, almost getting tangled up in the tent flaps before forcing her way through. "What?" Mai said a moment later, clearly audible through the tent. "You want to hold my hand?"
"I can just about figure out what's around me in these things," Toph said, stamping her boots as Zuko followed them out of the tent. The smaller girl had grasped Mai's left hand with her own right, in the process, capturing the firemaiden's entirely within the cuff of the earthbender's parka. "That's not the same as knowing where I'm going."
"I'm not a great deal better off," Mai warned and Zuko could see her point. The other tents, only a few dozen yards away at most, were reduced to featureless domes by the mist and the ice block ramparts around them was almost entirely invisible. The sisters didn't release each other's hands though.
Bato was collapsing the canvas over Kuku as efficiently as he had raised it. "I know you can't fly in this," he told Yue, overriding her objection. "But the children can't travel fast enough on foot to stay ahead of fire nation soldiers and we need to go now. They've learnt not to just strike for the villages, but to surround them. Which means we all have to move, fast and now."
Yue stared at him and then looked at the children being led towards her by their mothers, clearly bundled out of their beds with little to no explanation. Tired, understanding just enough to be scared and far too little to know what to be scared of. "You're the expert," she surrendered and reached down for a moment before pulling her hand up from the ice. A simple stairway rose up after her hand, leading from the ground up to Kuku's saddle. "Now then," she asked the children brightly. "Who wants to be the first to ride the bison?"
.oOo.
The cold bit into Zuko as he trudged alongside Mai and Toph in Kuku's footsteps. The massive sky bison was leaving an unmistakeable trail through the snow, which was useful for the purposes of keeping the little column of villagers on the same course despite the mist, but would also make it almost impossible for the fire nation soldiers behind them to mistake where they were going.
Despite Mai's worlds, Zuko was still wrestling with the question of whether this was good or bad news.
On the one hand, as a loyal son of the Fire Nation (and the Fire Lord) it was his clear duty to assist a Fire Navy expedition into foreign and hostile lands. The fact that he was in immediate proxmity to one Water Tribe Chief, the daughter of the other Chief and the Avatar only made that obligation more urgent.
On the other, it was difficult not to look at the line of women ahead of him, or to think of the children drowsing on Kuku's back, without seeing other women and children. Those he had seen during his march through the Earth Kingdom. The women he had widowed, the children he had orphaned... and in some cases those that his soldiers had killed. And then there were more personal attachments: Mai had been a friend, potentially more than that; now she was a traitor to the Fire Nation. Yue had never wronged him - despite the fact that their nations were enemies she had actually shown more kindness to him than Mai had since they were reunited. And if Toph was not entirely the somewhat shy girl he had taught to take joy in her firebending, she was the spirited child he had sensed inside her: passionate as fire, stubborn as the earth and somehow he suspected as perfectly suited to the other elements in her way.
It was hard to see enemies as people, and not as faceless beings as impersonal as the toy soldiers he had played with as a boy.
There was a whooshing sound in the distance behind them and Zuko half-twisted around to look, doing so complicated by the hood of his borrowed parka. He thought he could make out orange lights rising and falling in the distance: catapult shots. The ships were probably bombarding the empty village in preparation for - or in support of - an assault. It would depend how aggressive the commander was: would he hold his men back until the barrage softened up the objective or push them forward under its cover, risking them being hit by their own catapults? Both approaches had their adherents, but Zuko suspected that anyone willing to take time to harass such a tiny settlement would be very aggressive. There was a crash which he interpreted as a tent being struck directly by one of the flaming projectiles. The village had been evacuated just barely in time.
There was a grunt of surprise from beside Zuko and he turned his head again, seeing that Toph had halted for a moment and was stamping her feet deeper and deeper into the snowy ground. Mai, a half-step ahead of her sister, had also come to a halt. "This is no time for a toilet break, Toph."
Toph shook her head. "There are... people walking..." she said slowly and then used her free hand to point ahead and to the left, then to the right. "Heavy, they're either really huge guys or carrying a lot of weight. I can feel the vibrations through the ice."
"They must have sent forces out to encircle the village," Zuko guessed.
Mai looked at the women ahead of them. The column was already moving as fast as the oldest woman could walk. "Will they intercept us?" she asked Toph bluntly.
The girl considered. "There's an ice formation that will block the group to our left," she concluded. "Whichever way they go, they'll be behind us, but they'll see the trail. The other group will catch us though... unless, of course...?"
"Unless someone stops them," Mai concluded grimly. "You're not going to do anything, little sister. Fighting a battle is different from fighting a duel. Get the women moving as fast as possible: carry them if you have to." She released Toph's hand and stepped away, breaking into as near to a run as she could in the snow.
Toph automatically lunged after her, almost overbalancing in the unfamiliar boots. Zuko grabbed her by the shoulder of the parka, which almost slipped off of the girl as she tried to keep going. "No!" he shouted. "Mai knows what she's doing and she's trusting you to do your part."
"You tell them," Toph spat. "I'm going after my sister."
"Then I'll go with you," Zuko offered. The column would escape the group to the left, and he could order the group to the right to withdraw, with Mai and Toph in custody...
Toph reversed the hold suddenly, twisting to break his grip on her parka and reaching back to catch his wrist. "No chance. Mai's also trusting me to keep you from running off, that sneaky witch!" She pushed him forwards after the last woman in the column. "Let's get this column moving." Ice began to move underneath her, almost clinging to her feet.
Zuko recognised the move as resembling the 'wave' of Earth that some earthbenders used to travel: the ice flowing forward following the leg movements but far faster. Not anchored in the same way to the crest of the ice, he had to run on the moving ice to keep pace with the little girl, something that was complicated even more when the ice wave scooped up the rearmost woman in the column and Toph handed the elder off to him to support.
Mai had disappeared into the mists and Zuko felt the same fear that had touched him outside Omashu when she and Toph had vanished from his sight there.
"Princess Yue," called man raising one arm in greeting as Kuku set down in almost belly deep snow. He was tall and lean, cutting an impressive figure in blue dyed furs, dark hair bound up in a topknot. Were it not for his blue eyes and dark skin, he would have fit seamlessly into any any circle of Fire Nation military officers. "You've returned sooner than expected. I hope that your patient is well."
"She is well," Yue replied pleasently and looked back at her passengers. "My friends, I would like to introduce my good friend Chief Bato of the Southern Water Tribe. Bato, I would like you to meet Mai, Zuko and Toph."
"Princess?" Mai asked curiously.
Yue made a face. "My father, Arnook, is Chief of the Northern Water Tribe who relocated here. It doesn't really matter since the title isn't hereditary, but it doesn't stop people from calling me a princess or trying to pair me up with Bato as some sort of symbolic unification of the tribes."
Bato shrugged. "I keep telling you, Princess. If you want to quiet the gossips then find yourself a young man."
"It doesn't quiet them that you're out here with your harem of war widows," Yue smiled, "So I have my doubts. I'm afraid my companions had to leave their current residence without winterwear. I'm sorry to impose..."
The man waved his hand dismissively. "Yue, your father is an interfering busybody, but you are an ornament upon the Water Tribes and any service I can do you is a delight. I'm quite sure we can outfit the three of them for a trip south." He looked up at them all measuringly. "Come into the village and enjoy our hospitality for the night."
"Ground? Great!" Toph said and made to jump off Kuku, only to be restrained by Mai catching hold of the back of the green dress.
"Toph, you aren't getting off the bison until you have boots on," she declared flatly. "I've heard about frostbite and your feet won't see anything every again if all the flesh on them is frozen solid."
Yue stood up to help Mai restrain the headstrong girl. "Could you bring some boots first, Bato?" she requested urgently.
Toph struggled - more out of principle than any desperate need to reach the ice, which would be a poor substitute for honest ground - to escape. "It can't be that bad," she protested.
"It's as bad as fire in its way," Zuko said quietly from where he was sitting. "Veterans call it iceburn. There's a reason that our soldiers cover every bit of their bodies when they enter cold climates."
"Really?" Toph relaxed suddenly and Yue let go of her, reassured. Mai, better acquainted with her sister, did not but for once Toph was not feigning her switch of attention. "Is it quick?"
"I've never seen it myself, but it is said that a few moments can cause crippling injuries. Even brief contact can cause serious damage unless it is treated immediately," Zuko said, not looking up.
"What sort of injuries?" Toph asked curiously.
"Mildly?" Zuko asked. "Scarring and loss of sensation in the exposed part of the body. At worst? Quite often they become infected and have to be amputated. A lot of soldiers lose noses or fingers after serving in this part of the world."
Toph looked genuinely impressed. "I'm gonna have to figure out how to do that to people," she observed. Yue looked genuinely appalled. "Bad people," Toph clarified. "People who deserve fates worse than death."
"Here," Bato called from below Kuku. Apparently he had hurried, or Toph had been more distracted by the prospect of burning people with cold than she had expected. A boot came sailing up over the side of the saddle, followed by the partner. "They should be around the right size, if not we can pad them."
Yue passed the boots to Toph and then jumped down to talk urgently to Bato in a low voice, obviously unaware that the blind girl couldn't have failed to overhear her if she had been trying to. Which she was, because hearing a recital of the scandalous history of the three people still on Kuku - or as much of it as Yue knew - was boring. Bato's reactions weren't all that much more interesting although she was pretty sure that he was genuinely not romantically interested in Yue.
Instead, she wrestled the unfamiliar footwear on. And then off again, because she figured that they were so uncomfortable that she must have them on the wrong feet, and Mai hadn't said anything because she thought it was funny. However, the other way around was worse and with a deep feeling of despair, Toph accepted that the previous discomfort was the normal sensation of wearing boots and stripped them off again.
"Are you going to keep playing with them until the sun sets?" Mai asked, her voice bored.
"It won't set for months now," Zuko told her. "It happens when you're too far north or south. I think these parts of the world are broken some how."
Mai thought about that and then decided not to as it was making her head hurt. "The question stands."
Somewhat unsteadily, Toph stood up with her feet inside the boots. "I can't feel anything at all through these," she warned and then clambered over the side of the saddle and slid down Kuku to the snow. She sank past her knees into the snow and was glad that the boots were long enough to reach the bottom of her pants. Spirits, the stuff was cold!
Not known enitrely waht she was looing for, she reached out the way she had for water, back on the beaches of Kyoshi Island. This was water too, so it shouldn't be so very different. Harder with cloth and fur between her and it, but not different. Not entirely.
Snow was ice, she realised in surprise. Tiny little flakes of it. Different arrangement, same thing. About as distinct from the almost rock-like chunk of ice that Yue had given her, as sand was from good honest stone but on a very fundamental level the same thing. She stomped her foot her foot experimentally.
"If your bending talent burns out becauuse you push it, I'll let Ty Lee pick your wardrobe," Mai warned her dispassionately, landing in the snow next to Toph. Everything that Toph had heard about Mai's other friend suggested that this would result in pink. From the way that Mai used the word, it was unclear if she meant the colour or some other meaning of the word. Maybe a fruit, like an orange.
Toph shook her head. Focus. What had it felt like when she stamped? She did so again.
"What's she doing?" asked Bato from somewhere.
"Bending," Mai replied.
The water tribesman sounded puzzled. "Bending what? Nothing's happening."
"Herself, for all I know," said the fire maiden with a bored look on her face.
Yue pinched the bridge of her nose. "Toph, I told you not to bend until I was sure that your fourth chakra had recovered.
"I'm not sure where you got the idea that I take orders from you," Toph told her. "I'm grateful and all that, but giving up bending is a bit much."
Yue's eyes tightened. "If your ability to bend is permenantly impaired," she pointed out angrily. "The consequences would be dire. I am telling you this for your own good."
"That was what my parents said when they tried to permanently obliterate it," Toph retorted hotly, the snow melting slightly around her. "I'll decide my own good from now on."
"Toph," Mai observed. "It may not be your own good to firebend on ice that's floating on very deep water."
The avatar paused, nodded, and stepped away from the puddle that she had inadvertantly created. "I'll listen to suggestions," she said in grudging concession.
.oOo.
Zhao stared through the telescope. "Well, well, well," he mused triumphantly. "And I thought that there wouldn't be any excitement down here."
The Fire Nation Admiral's squadron were drifting south, carried by a current that they had learned off from a captured Water Tribe map. From long experience, Zhao knew that the smoke from his ships while under power could be detected before he could reach his targets. Where possible, he would use the engines only in darkness where the columns of smoke were almost undetectable, but it was the wrong time of year and so he was letting the elements carry him closer, until there would be no time to react when he raised steam.
And what a prize there was, Zhao chuckled. The huge creature outside the pathetic water tribe village had to be a sky bison. There hadn't been a confirmed sighting in decades but there had been rumours for years that a few remnants of the Air Nomad's favored mounts had survived in remote areas. And if the Water Tribe village knew where one was, they might know where to find more.
Sky Bison weren't exactly prey on a level with Dragons, but since the 'Fire Lord' Iroh had inconsiderately killed the last Dragons when Zhao was a boy, he'd settle for this. The fur would make an excellent trophy and if any of the water tribe women were captured, it would be an even better bed for demonstrating his domination of their people on.
"Signal the other ships," he ordered. "We have a target and for the moment, they haven't spotted us."
The captain standing on the bridge gestured sharply and a signaller started forming small flames inside a specially shielded lantern, each little sequence of fire bursts signifying a particular code phrase. "If I'm any judge of the weather, it appears that there will be a heavy mist rolling in," he told the admiral. "That will cover our approach."
"Good. Very good. Four ships will hold back as a reserve in case this is some kind of trap," Zhao decided. "We'll take the other two ships in. There can't be more than a couple of dozen warriors in a small village like that, and three ships will be more than enough to overwhelm that."
"As you command, Admiral," the captain agreed, following rules one and two of 'dealing with Zhao', as passed down in the oral tradition of the Fire Nation Navy: 'use his rank, a lot' and 'never argue with him'. "What formation would you prefer?"
"Are you an idiot?" Zhao sneered. "Trident formation, of course. I will lead our warriors directly into the village while those of the other ships encircle it, to capture those who turn and flee." He slapped the rail. "It's been too long since we reminded these savages of the might of the Fire Nation. They've grown complacent, building one of their villages here on the sea."
"And if they have information regarding Prince Zuko, Admiral?"
Zhao chuckled. "Do you really think anyone cares about one inconsequential princeling? Everyone knows that he wasn't as strong as his sister or his cousin. Either one of them got their claws into him and the other reacted, or perhaps Ozai himself decided to get rid of an incompetent. In either case, no one wants him found." He looked through the telescope again. "No, we're just here to make a show of searching for the little lost prince, and because Prince Lu Ten wants to gain every last bit of glory he can at Ba Sing Se to counter Princess Azula's triumph."
.oOo.
Zuko was taking great comfort in the small blaze that crackled at the centre of the tent that the travellers had been loaned. In these frosty climes, the smoky fire needed almost constant attention to keep it alive, fed with scraps and only the most useless of waste, so most tents only had lanterns. Those would not suffice for warmblooded visitors however, and allowance was made for what was obviously a sign of weakness in the eyes of the village women.
"Benders and their elements," Mai sniffed but she didn't make more than the barest pretense that she wasn't as glad of the source of heat as any of the rest of them. Toph had stripped off the hated boots at the first opportunity and was sitting with her feet pointed towards the fire, close enough to risk a scorching.
"We'll have to stay a little longer than I hoped," Yue said, laying down the bundle of possessions that she had carried from Kuku. Bato had been erecting a tent around the animal to shelter him while he rested, not willing to assume that the creature's long winter fur would be enough protection for the rare sky bison. "There's a mist rolling in, and flying over ice can be dangerous enough when it's visible."
"What's so dangerous about it?" asked Mai and since it was she asking, rather than Toph, Yue concluded that it was a genuine desire to understand rather than cocky derision.
"Ice formations can be deceptive. Without a frame of reference, it's easy to assume that something is large and distant when actually it's much smaller, but right in front of you. Kuku has good instincts, but he isn't infalliable about these things." Yue shrugged. "Besides, he is tired and while we could press on, I think a night out here will let you acclimatise before it gets really cold."
"Really cold?"
"Oh yes," Yue nodded regretfully. "This is fairly mild. If it weren't for the fire nation, most of the tribe would be living here on the coast. As it is, we have to make our homes further inland. Even we find it chilly."
Zuko shivered and drew a blanket closer around his shoulders. "Being buried alive on Kyoshi Island is sounding better and better," he muttered.
"It's not too late to throw you into the sea," Mai offered coldly. "From what you said about frostbite, that should kill you almost instantly."
Toph picked at her nose. "That was cold, Spiky." She examined the tip of her finger, before flicking the residue into the flames.
The flap of the tent pushed aside and Bato stepped inside, his face grim. "There are fire nation ships in the area," he told them. "You'd better leave, even if you have to do so on foot.
"What?" she called, but he had left again. "Get packed up," the waterbender ordered, and pushed out of the the flap herself, not waiting to receive confirmation from the three northerners.
Zuko started obediently shuffling into the parka that Bato had offered him in loan, mind churning. If Fire Nation ships were near...
"You're thinking about running," Toph told him flatly, as she wrestled the boots back onto her feet.
"If they picked me up then they would have to leave, to take me home," offered Zuko weakly.
"At best they'd send one ship back with you while the others keep coming," Mai contradicted. "Particularly once you tell them about Toph. No Fire Nation commander would pass up the chance to capture the Avatar."
"I..." Wouldn't tell them? But it's my duty! Why wouldn't I tell whoever isn't in command there about Toph being the Avatar? "I..." Capturing the Avatar would make my name, make father proud of me. But she's not just the Avatar, is she? She's also Toph.
"It's touching that you'd hesitate about it, Sifu Broody," Toph told him, "But it isn't getting your clothes on. And if I have to drag you, I'm going to be rough about it."
"You seem to forget who lost our Agni Kai," snapped Zuko angrily, rising to his feet.
"And you 'seem to forget' who wound up being chained up afterwards," Mai cut in. "You're in just as much danger as the rest of us, your highness. Chances are pretty good that the soldiers on that ship will notice you're a man in blue furs a lot sooner than they'll notice that you don't look all that much like one of the water tribe an it'll be hard for anyone to tell the difference once you're a charred corpse on the ground."
Zuko blanched and made to remove the parka.
"Uh-uh," Toph told him, smacking his hands as she clambered to her feet. "If I have to suffer in this then so do you." She had almost crawled into her own parka, which was clearly too large for her, hanging to her knees and covering her hands entirely.
"How can you tell what I'm doing?" he protested, conceding for the moment.
"I'm blind, not deaf. And this wood is so old it's almost as solid as rock," Toph told him. "Earthbender, remember? Everytime you shift posture it's sending vibrations through the boards. Granted, wouldn't mean much to most, but I've had a lot of practise."
"If you two benders are done exchanging notes, we need to go," Mai told them and pushed her way out of the tent.
Toph yelped an incoherent protest and barrelled after her, almost getting tangled up in the tent flaps before forcing her way through. "What?" Mai said a moment later, clearly audible through the tent. "You want to hold my hand?"
"I can just about figure out what's around me in these things," Toph said, stamping her boots as Zuko followed them out of the tent. The smaller girl had grasped Mai's left hand with her own right, in the process, capturing the firemaiden's entirely within the cuff of the earthbender's parka. "That's not the same as knowing where I'm going."
"I'm not a great deal better off," Mai warned and Zuko could see her point. The other tents, only a few dozen yards away at most, were reduced to featureless domes by the mist and the ice block ramparts around them was almost entirely invisible. The sisters didn't release each other's hands though.
Bato was collapsing the canvas over Kuku as efficiently as he had raised it. "I know you can't fly in this," he told Yue, overriding her objection. "But the children can't travel fast enough on foot to stay ahead of fire nation soldiers and we need to go now. They've learnt not to just strike for the villages, but to surround them. Which means we all have to move, fast and now."
Yue stared at him and then looked at the children being led towards her by their mothers, clearly bundled out of their beds with little to no explanation. Tired, understanding just enough to be scared and far too little to know what to be scared of. "You're the expert," she surrendered and reached down for a moment before pulling her hand up from the ice. A simple stairway rose up after her hand, leading from the ground up to Kuku's saddle. "Now then," she asked the children brightly. "Who wants to be the first to ride the bison?"
.oOo.
The cold bit into Zuko as he trudged alongside Mai and Toph in Kuku's footsteps. The massive sky bison was leaving an unmistakeable trail through the snow, which was useful for the purposes of keeping the little column of villagers on the same course despite the mist, but would also make it almost impossible for the fire nation soldiers behind them to mistake where they were going.
Despite Mai's worlds, Zuko was still wrestling with the question of whether this was good or bad news.
On the one hand, as a loyal son of the Fire Nation (and the Fire Lord) it was his clear duty to assist a Fire Navy expedition into foreign and hostile lands. The fact that he was in immediate proxmity to one Water Tribe Chief, the daughter of the other Chief and the Avatar only made that obligation more urgent.
On the other, it was difficult not to look at the line of women ahead of him, or to think of the children drowsing on Kuku's back, without seeing other women and children. Those he had seen during his march through the Earth Kingdom. The women he had widowed, the children he had orphaned... and in some cases those that his soldiers had killed. And then there were more personal attachments: Mai had been a friend, potentially more than that; now she was a traitor to the Fire Nation. Yue had never wronged him - despite the fact that their nations were enemies she had actually shown more kindness to him than Mai had since they were reunited. And if Toph was not entirely the somewhat shy girl he had taught to take joy in her firebending, she was the spirited child he had sensed inside her: passionate as fire, stubborn as the earth and somehow he suspected as perfectly suited to the other elements in her way.
It was hard to see enemies as people, and not as faceless beings as impersonal as the toy soldiers he had played with as a boy.
There was a whooshing sound in the distance behind them and Zuko half-twisted around to look, doing so complicated by the hood of his borrowed parka. He thought he could make out orange lights rising and falling in the distance: catapult shots. The ships were probably bombarding the empty village in preparation for - or in support of - an assault. It would depend how aggressive the commander was: would he hold his men back until the barrage softened up the objective or push them forward under its cover, risking them being hit by their own catapults? Both approaches had their adherents, but Zuko suspected that anyone willing to take time to harass such a tiny settlement would be very aggressive. There was a crash which he interpreted as a tent being struck directly by one of the flaming projectiles. The village had been evacuated just barely in time.
There was a grunt of surprise from beside Zuko and he turned his head again, seeing that Toph had halted for a moment and was stamping her feet deeper and deeper into the snowy ground. Mai, a half-step ahead of her sister, had also come to a halt. "This is no time for a toilet break, Toph."
Toph shook her head. "There are... people walking..." she said slowly and then used her free hand to point ahead and to the left, then to the right. "Heavy, they're either really huge guys or carrying a lot of weight. I can feel the vibrations through the ice."
"They must have sent forces out to encircle the village," Zuko guessed.
Mai looked at the women ahead of them. The column was already moving as fast as the oldest woman could walk. "Will they intercept us?" she asked Toph bluntly.
The girl considered. "There's an ice formation that will block the group to our left," she concluded. "Whichever way they go, they'll be behind us, but they'll see the trail. The other group will catch us though... unless, of course...?"
"Unless someone stops them," Mai concluded grimly. "You're not going to do anything, little sister. Fighting a battle is different from fighting a duel. Get the women moving as fast as possible: carry them if you have to." She released Toph's hand and stepped away, breaking into as near to a run as she could in the snow.
Toph automatically lunged after her, almost overbalancing in the unfamiliar boots. Zuko grabbed her by the shoulder of the parka, which almost slipped off of the girl as she tried to keep going. "No!" he shouted. "Mai knows what she's doing and she's trusting you to do your part."
"You tell them," Toph spat. "I'm going after my sister."
"Then I'll go with you," Zuko offered. The column would escape the group to the left, and he could order the group to the right to withdraw, with Mai and Toph in custody...
Toph reversed the hold suddenly, twisting to break his grip on her parka and reaching back to catch his wrist. "No chance. Mai's also trusting me to keep you from running off, that sneaky witch!" She pushed him forwards after the last woman in the column. "Let's get this column moving." Ice began to move underneath her, almost clinging to her feet.
Zuko recognised the move as resembling the 'wave' of Earth that some earthbenders used to travel: the ice flowing forward following the leg movements but far faster. Not anchored in the same way to the crest of the ice, he had to run on the moving ice to keep pace with the little girl, something that was complicated even more when the ice wave scooped up the rearmost woman in the column and Toph handed the elder off to him to support.
Mai had disappeared into the mists and Zuko felt the same fear that had touched him outside Omashu when she and Toph had vanished from his sight there.
Aang learned pretty fast once he was tought. At first, Katara didn't really know enough to teach him, it took much of the second season to find Toph and then event concipired against him having a break to learn, and it took a quite some time into the third seaon for them to aquire Zuko, and his fire bending 'departed' him at first, further stalling Aang's lessens.
It IS true that both Aang and this fic's Toph learned much much faster then Avatar Roku. Added to the fact that Toph is a more millitant bender then either, and it's easy to see why she comes across so impressive, but she really isn't doing any better then Aang did.
It IS true that both Aang and this fic's Toph learned much much faster then Avatar Roku. Added to the fact that Toph is a more millitant bender then either, and it's easy to see why she comes across so impressive, but she really isn't doing any better then Aang did.
As far as learning curve goes, it's worth mention that Toph spent at least a couple of months on Kyoshi Island trying to figure out waterbending from scratch and managed only fairly trivial bending. Then she's had a couple of theory lessons from Yue that corrected some major misconceptions she had about it and now she's working with ice - and she's essentially handling it by adapting Earthbending it to the job. Of course, when you don't know something is 'impossible' there#s no reason not to try it...
Traditionally of course, she should finish mastering firebending first, then cover airbending before waterbending. Then again, Toph isn't particularly traditional.
Traditionally of course, she should finish mastering firebending first, then cover airbending before waterbending. Then again, Toph isn't particularly traditional.
"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.
"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.