Hyunji might find the Water Tribesmen to be rather primitive in appearance, but she had to admit their mastery over the waves was on another level above the Fire Nation's navy. Large boats, not even proper ships, made of wood, bone and leather, took Princess Azula's infiltrators into the Fire Islands with such speed and comfort that Hyunji almost forgot that she was at sea throughout most of the journey.
They were dangerously good at being invisible too. On the final approach, the vessels' masts were taken down, and waterbenders would keep a wave up to completely hide the boats from across the horizon. Not that they risked much detection, coming in at night. Fire Nation warships with their reflective metal hulls were far more easily spotted under star and moonlight compared to the more matted colors of the Water Tribe fleet. During the day, the columns of black smoke gave away the positions of patrols.
So it came as no surprise that Hyunji and her colleagues landed on the Capital Island unopposed and undetected. No doubt the other operatives being seeded across targeted islands would have an easier time thanks to laxer security away from the capital. She even managed to keep her shoes completely dry, with how far into the coast the waterbenders guided their boats. The infiltrators snuck into the nearest town under the cover of night, their sharp attires easily buying them the cover of nobles passing through. Thanks to some eavesdropping, they easily bought the innkeeper's confidence by posing as scions eloping in an attempt to dodge the recent draft sweeping the Fire Nation.
It was a stroke of luck, or proof that the spirits were indeed with Princess Azula and Prince Xing, that the innkeeper was a quiet supporter of the princess, and was disapproving of the madness coming from the royal palace. The good man did not raise the price of the rooms as most establishments might, and even gave tips on the schedule of patrols.
They stayed for the night, and then the agents split up to spread across the Capital Island to seek their targets. They had less than a week to prepare for the big day. Mere days to scout out their targets and figure out cunning plans to achieve their related objectives. Most soldiers would balk at having to undertake such dangerous missions with so little time for planning.
A good thing then that Hyunji and her fellow infiltrators were not soldiers, but Princess Azula's palace servants.
Having to act on information almost as soon as it left courtiers' mouths, improvising was their specialty. A few days was a luxury compared to the tight schedules Hyunji had to work with sometimes. Be it feeding messenger hawks laxatives to keep them from flying (and maybe intercept the deliveries), or arranging 'coincidental' meetings with the right nobles leaving the palace to establish long-term sexpionage operations, the handmaidens and common staff have made do with their smaller presence in court politics by being quick and decisive.
The only real obstacle for the princess' agents lay not with the nature of their targets or objectives, but what happened after their mission was accomplished. Princess Azula wanted everyone back alive and in one piece.
"I have no use for corpses," she had sternly briefed them before they were sent out. "I'm sure I hired skilled staff with a good head on their shoulders, not narrow-minded martyrs. There is much work to be done after this excursion, so I expect all of you to be back and ready for more work."
The princess was sweet in how she cared. But it still left the fact that they had to approach their tasks with a bit more restraint. Leong-Si's idea of masquerading as a messenger to take out some of the courtiers during a royal court session had to be shelved, for example.
So it'd be back to the basics, slinking through crowds and waiting for opportunities. If anything, the missions now have mostly become easier. There was no need to hide bodies or evidence of the hand behind the coming destruction. Princess Azula wanted everyone to know that she still had a presence in the home islands, and so that was what her loyal servants would do.
Hyunji and a few comrades spent the next couple of days infiltrating the Capital City, and to her surprise a good chunk of the princess' network remained intact, if somewhat in hibernation.
The crippled veteran standing by the corner of a street was still there, railing with faux-unhinged-hysteria against the Earth Kingdom's evils as a cover for acting as a middleman. The bedraggled man was still tolerated, and was still running up to random passersby to shake them by their collars…and dropping small slips of paper into some of his victims' robes.
Tea houses that harvested information from its clientele remained in business, with no change in staff, though their decor changed to appease the Fire Lord's regime. Interestingly, in many establishments; The serving girls' uniforms became more conservative, with the slit on the side of their cheongsams being halved, while the serving boys sported longer sleeves.
A good number of retired nobles no longer showed up in the Pai Sho parlors, but to Hyunji's relief, those that remained assured her that the few that had been captured only endured mild interrogation before being put under house arrest. The Fire Lord was trying to rule with an iron fist, but as he relied on the nobility now more than ever to strengthen his rule, he couldn't be too callous in how he treated any of them, not without good, solid cause. The noble circles, for all their factionalism and cliques, was a class that was heavily interconnected, and Ozai's grip on power was not so absolute that he could dismiss their concerns.
Even Princess Azula's ardent supporters still had their family estates it seemed, locked down but not forfeited. Their family members were detained, but as far as Hyunji knew, all had been kept under house arrest, with only the few commoners caught acting for the princess being sent to the Boiling Rock prison. Whether they'd serve as bargaining chips or not would remain to be seen. Knowing how political marriages worked though, Hyunji bet that at least a few families were kept in good health simply because they were relatives to some degree to the Fire Lord's court.
It made the handmaiden-turned-saboteur feel a little bad at all the violence she'll be involved in. Well, at least they would be limiting the collateral damage as much as possible. Well, physical damage anyway…
Taking the appearance of a minor noble, Hyunji entered a funeral parlor. The owner seemed uncaring of her presence until she produced a small sack of coins. "I'd like to make several orders."
"Why, of course, ma'am. My condolences on your losses. Are you seeking a ceremonial cremation?"
Hyunji sniffed as she shook her head, putting a believable enough tremble in her movements she thought. "No, just the…just some urns please. The ones that came back from the continent was…inadequate."
The man gave a convincing nod of sorrow, though his eyes remained on the sack of currency. "You have my deepest sympathies, ma'am. What would you require from my humble establishment?"
Hyunji left with her 'servants' with several gaudy cremation urns, and it took the whole night to put the urns to good use. Lady Ty Lee's training was most useful in getting them into places they shouldn't be, not to mention disabling guards before they touched exposed tits or tried to get their stinky lips anywhere on Hyunji. Before this, the agents would have to ready daggers or hair pins, which might be finicky to bring to bear, and often needed the victims to be varying degrees of handsy with them to guarantee an exposed target to strike at. Now all it took was for a quick jab of the fingers to the right spot, and the distracted men crumpled on the ground. Still breathing too, which added another thin layer of chaos to the aftermath.
It was heartening to see that news still traveled quickly even with more guards patrolling the city. Several notable families were in a panic when their patriarchs and matriarchs awoke to find the urns with their name on it. Considering that there were also whispers of a few dying horribly after that, some of the recipients were stupid enough to actually open the urns and trigger the flint and blasting jelly mechanism within.
It was fucking unbelievable. She was sure the simple trap would've been completely avoided. Thanks to overestimating the nobles' paranoia and common sense, she lost a whole month's wage to three fellow agents.
Over the coming days and nights, other clandestine operations were carried out, some to scare certain nobles and wealthy merchants, others to scare their families and friends via blatant assassination. Who died and who got to wake up shitting themselves was dependent on how high they or their courtier relatives were on Princess Azula's shit list. Unfortunately for the nobles of the Fire Nation, Lady Su-Wei's ability to hold onto grudges gave her a very good memory.
By the time the big day came, and Hyunji saw something flying towards the royal palace, most of the nobility residing in and around the Capital City were nowhere to be seen in public, preferring to lock themselves in and hiring more guards to keep the night terrors at bay.
Rather conveniently, it meant that a few operatives got rather comfortable positions patrolling their targets' estates. The postings wouldn't amount to much beyond intelligence gathering, but that wasn't the point right now. What was important was that Ozai's supporters were put on edge, which means some of them (at least half, Hyunji hoped for her next salary's sake) would be compromising their duties to the Fire Lord in favor of ensuring their own continued safety. Lookouts reported notable absences in courtiers heading to the palace, and if the whispers bought could be believed, the Fire Lord was 'most displeased', though he didn't have the manpower to do anything beyond bolstering the palace's security.
Fun times.
As Hyunji and her fellow infiltrators joined the crowd in looking up at the afternoon sky to follow the air bison flying above their heads, she fought hard to keep down a grin. They slipped through the confused cityfolk and headed for their final targets. Once the princess and her prince appeared, some nobles needed their loyalties tested…or their last words remembered.
*****
Zuko was almost comfortable with his routine as a prisoner as the days turned into weeks. Through piecing together the rare whispers he and Mai picked up during the day, they managed to build a good enough picture of what was going on beyond the palace walls. And the picture did not look good for Zuko's father.
Assuming it was not propaganda, most of the colonies were razed and abandoned by the rebels to deny the Fire Nation army a solid foothold on the continent. Would Azula resort to such a plan?
Thanks to their lessons and no doubt her closeness to Xing, most definitely yes. It shouldn't be surprising that practically all the colonies sided with her, though for them to willingly abandon their homes for Ba Sing Se spoke of a devotion that the prince quietly envied.
At the same time, the Earth Kingdom protectorates took the chance to free themselves from the Fire Nation, so that made the borders on the continent interesting. The only saving grace for father's armies was that the self-liberated states opted to lock themselves within their gates to stay out of the civil war. Otherwise, all it'd take was for a few raiding parties to prey on supply routes to slowly starve out certain forces.
Also unsurprisingly, Omashu was leading the push north, breaking through the thinned or outright abandoned southern lines to reclaim the Earth Kingdom.
What was surprising however was the possibility that Xing and King Bumi had hammered out some sort of deal. The whispers were inconsistent about this; either the Scorpion Dragon and the Mad King were allies, or they agreed to stay out of each other's way. Yet at the same time, some rumors are saying that Bumi was in Ba Sing Se, helping Xing fortify the walls.
"Do you think he'd do that?" Mai asked, causing Zuko to pause and really consider it.
Would Xing so easily work with enemies? That really depended. As far as Zuko knew, XIng's duel and victory over Bumi was conducted without any acrimony on either end.
"Probably… More likely they just improvised off an existing scheme."
His time with Azula and Xing via guarding Mai gave Zuko some insight into how the couple operated, and the Fire Nation prince had a growing suspicion that they had - or at the very least Xing had - plans involving Omashu. Maybe it was initially meant to broker peace between Fire Nation and Earth Kingdom. Maybe it was a plan to win over the Mad King.
Regardless, Omashu and Ba Sing Se were friendly now, which got a lot of the palace staff worried underneath their masks of servitude. That worry became more obvious when they began whispering to each other about the defeats trickling in.
Armies were being held up or harassed by colonists. General Sho and General Hwa had joined Azula's cause (that one was quite obvious, Zuko thought) and the War Council was scrambling to figure out how to deal with that impressive army.
Then came news of High General Wulong's demise, and the shattering of his force. And dragons were involved. Real dragons, the increasingly panicked servants shared amongst each other. At least two dragons that burned and devoured men. Wulong had died facing Xing, and it was either out of contempt or respect that the Prince of Ba Sing Se let the surviving officers and their troops flee.
Xing had dragons. How long did he have them? Did Azula know all along as well?
"I'm surprised no one's thinking he faked a dragon," Mai remarked with a worried frown. "He's been known to pull off a lot of tricks..."
As much as Zuko would like to agree with her, shook his head. "Too many eyewitnesses. Bujing's report alone carries the testimonies of several nobles. If Xing made fake dragons, he did a really good job at fooling everyone." He paused for a second to sigh. "And I think…I think there's no reason for him to do that. Xing doesn't need dragons to win. Azula doesn't need dragons to come over here."
"So it's just a nice bonus for them?"
Zuko nodded with another sigh as he recalled his lessons, both from Xing and the palace tutors. "It's one way to really scare a lot of people. It took a lot of people to hunt dragons during my great-grandfather's time. Like, small armies big. It's seen as a prestigious thing because of how dangerous it was."
"And now, Xing has two of them-"
"To go along with Xing himself," Zuko finished, not needing to explain that by now the other prince was probably far more dangerous than the dragons he had with him. He'd not seen the holes in Ba Sing Se, but he could very well believe that no dragon could do what Xing did there.
Mai gave a weary sigh. "And who knows what Azula turned into in the meantime." Which was also concerningly true. Fighting with Xing, she'd likely grow into a monster of her own on the battlefield. Supposedly, she slew several generals by herself in the same battle that Wulong fell.
"Wel-"
A knock on Mai's door made them both freeze for a second before annoyance surfaced on their faces. Again? Wasn't the first stupid test enough of a failure?
Still, better not take things for granted. Zuko slipped out of Mai's bed and quietly stalked over to the door. This time, there was no quivering servant to greet him when he opened it. Instead, a small piece of embroidered red silk was left by the doorway. Zuko carefully picked it up, ignoring the nearly overlooked sound of soft footsteps, and bringing it to the lamps near Mai's bed, he found his eyes going wide along with Mai's at the details of the embroidery.
A black scorpion stood to the foreground, with a yellow rising phoenix in the background. Both Zuko and Mai had only ever heard Azula talking about it, her hypothetical emblem once she was married to Xing. It was a conversation only brought up when Ty Lee prodded her. There was no way that anyone could get those details beyond the idle talks in the privacy of her tent… Mai took the cloth and flipped it over, a simple message sewn onto the back.
"Wait for my people. Will have your family ready. And maybe dum-dum if you still like him. If you do, hope you're not pregnant yet."
It was definitely Azula's message.
Zuko snapped his head to Mai with a sudden urgency. "I'll be back." He snuck off back to his room, and found a similar cloth, but this time on his bed. The message behind the emblem was a little longer.
"Zuzu, Uncle Iroh hopes you're well. If you're with us, throw this out the window. My people will come get you out later. You're worse than father at lying so don't try. You better not have gotten Mai pregnant, dum-dum."
He didn't know exactly how to react to his sister's words. On the one hand, Azula didn't sound…too worried, and Uncle Iroh was still alright. At least that's what Azula says anyway. And she has a plan to bring Mai and her family out of the palace, along with Zuko.
But at the same time, did Azula really have that low a regard for him that she expected him to…make Mai pregnant?
Zuko sighed as he threw the cloth out the window, and was completely unsurprised to find it missing the following morning. News filtered in of chaos now spreading through the home islands, including the capital city, where nobles were waking up with messages by the princess beside them, or not waking up at all. Facilities in the factory islands were razed, as were the holiday estates of wealthier nobles.
In response, Zuko noted how the guards in his palace wing and Mai's were reduced, probably to bolster security elsewhere. The servants going about were also reduced, due to fear of spies.
Zuko might not have seen his father at all, but he could very well imagine the Fire Lord's impotent fury. Far too many men have been sent over to the continent to deal with Xing and Azula. The minimum garrison to maintain peace in each settlement buckled under the string of sabotages and assassinations.
Another round of conscription might be sent out, though it'd be too little too late.
Barely a couple of days later, the servants were running about with fear distracting them in their duties. High General Bujing was dead, as were most of the commanders with him. And with them, the bulk of the Fire Nation's manpower was killed or scattered throughout the continent. Worse, Xing and Azula had taken one of the staging ports and thanks to the sudden defection of Admiral Daeyang and more than half his fleet, they were making their way over to the home islands.
Azula's servants came knocking at Zuko's door on that very evening the bad news sent everyone into a panic. One of her handmaidens he vaguely remembered greeted him with a fluid bow that made her look out of place in the servant's outfit. "Prince Zuko, come with me please. We will rendezvous with Lady Mai and her family and then make our exit."
Taking only his swords with him, it took almost no effort in sneaking past the gossiping guards and servants, and Zuko found Mai, her worried mother Michi, and brother Tom-Tom waiting in a garden with a small group of more of Azula's staff that the prince could just barely remember seeing once.
"Where's your father?" Zuko had to ask, and Mai flashed a scowl.
"Out cold."
It startled the prince that Michi also gave a similar expression. "My husband tried to…tried to insist on us staying. His desire to cling onto his precious position in court has blinded him to the dangers it has put our family in. I will not let my children be used as bargaining chips."
"Well put, Lady Michi," one of the spies remarked. "We'll do what we can to keep Lord Ukano alive, but in the meantime, please follow us."
The agents stomped their feet on the garden soil, and to Mai's family's surprise (and maybe a bit from Zuko) the ground opened up, revealing an underground stairway made of earth.
Right, Xing had earthbenders with him, and Azula didn't care about discriminating against earthbenders in the colonies, so having them working for the couple should've been expected.
A man's head popped up from the impromptu tunnel and beckoned them over. "Right this way, your highness, ladies."
They left the palace and with firebending to serve as torches, followed the tunnel out into a tea house's basement.
"There's beds upstairs on the higher floors," one handmaiden instructed. "This shop's shuttered, so just stay away from the main hall and the rest of the place should be safe to move around in. You just have to be a little patient and wait for a day or two."
"What happens after that?" Zuko asked.
The handmaiden and her colleagues grinned. "Ah right, it's best to brief you about the Day of Black Sun."
Now that's an ominous name…