Chapter 704 - 14

Holy moly. It's been brought to my attention that this is currently the fanfic with the most favourites on the Youjo Senki crossover board! What a way to celebrate its first birthday! Thank you everyone following this story for your continued support!

Now how about we bring the Omashu arc to a conclusion?

Night had fallen on Omashu.

The city was deathly silent. With the civilians confined to their homes, the only ones out and about were the patrolling guards, who listened warily for the sounds of trouble. Even the governor's palace was quieter than usual now that many of its strongest troops had gone with Tanya to the quarantine zone.

The first sign of trouble came in the form of a single pinprick of orange light appearing from around the corner of an alley. Nothing unusual in itself; patrols often conjured small flames in their hands to help themselves see in the dark. Nor was it unusual to see the second such light appear, or even the third.

But by the time a dozen lights had appeared, the guards were starting to panic. More and more lights appeared by the second, the combined dull glow enough to highlight the silhouettes of a hundred shadowy figures heading their way. The drumming of countless footsteps on the dusty ground grew louder and louder, drowning out the silence.

"Sound the alarm!" One of the soldiers shouted as he turned and ran back inside. "The rebels are coming!"

The clanging of bells erupted across the palace, waking all who slept and warning them to take up battle positions. Red and black soldiers scurried about like ants, grabbing weapons and setting up crude barricades, while those who had been patrolling the perimeter sprinted inside. As the last of the soldiers made it into the safety of the palace, the captain in charge of organising the defence in the foyer looked up to the floor above, where a lone soldier stood before a heavy winch. "Close the portcullis!"

The soldier braced his arms against the handle, leant his weight against it, and pushed. He strained and he strained, the hairs of his luxurious beard bristling as he grit his teeth with effort.

Yet nothing moved.

"What's going on?" The captain shouted. "Private Fire! Get that grate shut!"

"It's jammed, captain! Won't move!"

There was a sudden cacophony outside as the approaching mob reached the stairs, and a hundred voices erupted into furious war cries at once. The pounding of their heavy steps could be felt through the ground.

"CLOSE IT!" The captain yelled.

Private Fire, who was perhaps suspiciously nonchalant about the whole thing if anyone cared to look closely, shrugged as if to say "what can you do?"

Panic flashed across the captain's face as the incoming horde drew ever closer. "RETREAT!"

The fire nation soldiers scattered, fleeing down smaller hallways and corridors. For those who'd been right at the front, such as the captain, there were too many bodies to push their way through to safety in time. Stones and screams began to fly as the Omashu rebels burst through the open doors like a tidal wave and washed into the palace, falling atop the last of the fleeing soldiers.

There was a hectic energy in the air: a feeling of frenzy that promised violence. Yet before it could infect the rebels and lead them to give chase, General Yung's commanding voice cut through the commotion. "Don't get distracted! Hold positions!"

The members who'd once belonged to Omashu's army, disciplined by experience, came to a stop, and once they realised that backup wasn't following the civilian volunteers stopped running too. All eyes turned to General Yung as he stood upon the plinth of a nearby statue to gain some height. He checked to confirm that all the rebels had made it inside, and then nodded towards Private Fire, who still stood next to the winch.

With a cheeky grin, Private Fire pushed the winch, which this time moved easily. The portcullis rattled as it closed, sealing off the palace from the city outside.

The fire nation captain and the other soldiers who'd been captured in the initial incursion howled in outrage as they realised what had happened. "Traitor!" The captain yelled at Private Fire. "You'd sell out your nation to these rebels?!"

Private Fire took off his helmet to reveal the heavily tanned skin of a young water tribesman. "Wrong nation." Sokka replied, twirling the hairs of the fake beard glued to his face between his fingers.

The captured soldiers were bound and gagged as Sokka climbed a ladder down to the ground floor, meeting up with Aang and Katara as the crowd let them through to stand in front of General Yung.

"Okay everyone, listen up!" The general shouted. "As we speak, The Demon of the North is arriving at our headquarters with her most elite soldiers. When she realises we're not there she'll no doubt figure out what's happening and come running back. We can't afford to be caught between her soldiers and the palace guards, so it is imperative that we escape the city before then."

He nodded gratefully towards the Blue Spirit. "Our agent has confirmed that the king's secret escape tunnel has yet to be discovered. All we have to do is make it to the crystal caverns beneath the palace and we'll be in the clear. However, the guards here will have fallen back to secondary defensive positions, and have no doubt also realised that their best chance at winning is to hold out for reinforcements. If their commanders have any sense at all, they'll be trying to block us from progressing forwards along the corridors, where the limited space will prevent us from rushing them all at once. There's no point in us sticking together if we're all just going to get bogged down in a single corridor."

Yung unfurled a map of the palace interior, which had three red lines drawn along it all leading from where they were now to the caverns. "There are three paths to the caves. Everyone here will split into three teams and each take a different route. When one group manages to clear a path all the way to the caves, they send messengers to the other groups to abandon their own fights and join them. That way we only need to win one battle to secure victory. Any questions?"

"Umm-… general!" One of the rebels by the portcullis spoke up nervously. "We may have a problem."

All heads turned to peek outside. Far away, quickly rising in the night sky like a shooting star, was a dot of fire-orange light. As if summoned by their gaze the dot twirled and began heading straight for them.

"It's her! The demon's coming!" Another rebel exclaimed. "She must have left her army to catch up alone!"

"Run!" A younger rebel shrieked.

"No, idiot! Stand together! We outnumber her, this could be our chance to take her down!"

"Enough!" Yung cut in, silencing the panic beginning to spread. "She won't be foolish enough to engage us all as a group. Chances are she's hoping she can delay us. We don't have the time to wait around for her trickery! We press onwards!"

"But she'll attack us from behind!" Someone shouted.

"Then I'll stop her."

Katara stepped forwards, her face set in stone, and her blue eyes blazing with an icy fury.

Yung gave her an appraising look. "Are you sure about this?"

Katara nodded."Yes." She replied tersely. "She and I have a score to settle."

Yung held her gaze for a moment, searching her face for any sign of doubt or weakness. When he found none, he nodded back. "Someone get this young lady some water. The rest of you, let's get moving! We're racing against time tonight!"

The rebels began to bustle around, organising themselves loosely into three groups. As Katara went to wait by the portcullis, a hand reached out and grabbed her forearm.

"What are you doing?!" Sokka hissed, naked fear in his eyes. Aang, standing at his side, nodded in agreement.

"Standing up to her." Katara shot back. "I am sick and tired of running away whenever she turns up."

"She's dangerous, Katara." Aang interjected.

Katara looked at him, her frosty expression curling into a growl. "So am I."

"Then we'll stay with you." Sokka argued. "We'll fight her together."

"No." Katara snatched her arm out of Sokka's hand. "The rebels need you and Blue to lead them through the palace, and Aang needs to go and rescue Bumi. I can handle this alone."

Aang and Sokka shared a worried glance, but it was clear that Katara wasn't going to be swayed. "Alright..." Aang finally relented. "Just please, be careful. Pakku wouldn't have wanted you to get yourself killed in his memory."

"I won't." Katara assured him, a glint of steel flashing dangerously in her eyes. "The one getting hurt this time around won't be me."

There were only a few things that made Tanya absolutely livid.

She was, she insisted, a creature of logic at heart, and liked to think of herself as above the petty emotional reactions most people allowed themselves to be ruled by. The wastrels she'd been responsible for firing back in her first life had often ranted and raved about the unfairness of it all, yet she'd never so much as raised her voice in retaliation. None of them had been worth her time. It took something special to get her worked up by emotions, and the list of things that could do that was small indeed.

Being X occupied the top of the list. The self-proclaimed god was the antithesis of everything she valued: freedom, capitalism, and logic. Trailing close behind him was that sanctimonious, hypocritical harlot Mary; not only because of her slavish devotion to Being X, but because of the amount of comrades she had killed in her personal vendetta against her.

Third place however did not belong to an entity at all, but rather a feeling. Tanya considered herself to be an intelligent person; more so than the average person in fact. She would never claim to be the next Albert Einstein, but it was rare for her to encounter a problem that she didn't feel she possessed the intelligence to solve. Yet perhaps it was because it happened so rarely, but the feeling that someone was outsmarting her set a fire underneath her like little else could. Being thwarted by bullshit divine intervention or brute force was one thing, but the suspicion that someone was smart enough to anticipate her actions and lead her around by the nose with nothing but good old fashioned intelligence was absolutely infuriating!

That was why, when she led a detachment of the finest soldiers in the Omashu garrison down the excavated tunnel, fully prepared to purge the rebels once and for all, only to find that the rebel headquarters had been evacuated no less than an hour ago, she saw red. Violent, bloody red. In hindsight screaming "BACK TO THE PALACE, NOW!" And then rocketing off back through the tunnel and high into the sky had not been a stellar example of leadership, and she was sure she would look back on this moment with shame later, but right now she was too bloody furious to care! Never before in this life, or either of her previous lives, had she felt like this before: like someone was making a fool of her!

Someone was playing her like a cheap violin! Someone had convinced her that there was a plague as ridiculously named as the Pentapox, all to draw her attention to a tunnel leading to their own headquarters, knowing that they could sacrifice it to draw her and her best soldiers away from the palace! They had plans hidden within plans, a great web of masterful misdirection that could have fooled even the finest strategic minds! And she'd been baited! Lured into a trap like a fish on a hook! Now the rebels may well be about to capture the strategic heart of the city under her watch!

Was it Bumi! Was the crazy king so utterly brilliant that he'd been able to foresee her every move before he was even captured? Or was he somehow able to communicate with his rebels even while held in the most secure cell in Omashu? It boggled the mind, but Tanya did not know of anyone else who could be behind this. Had she met her match in a hundred year old madman? Or was some unknown puppeteer pulling the strings behind the scenes?

The cold night air whipped past her face as she soared in a beeline straight to the palace, mind already whirring away to figure out the optimum plan of attack. Ideally the soldiers stationed at the palace would focus on holding the rebels back and waiting for the elite troops she'd taken to come back and reinforce them; trapping the rebels between two sides. With that in mind, the best thing she could do was clear away any obstructions the rebels had left in their path so that nothing would delay the reinforcements. But wait, her strategic nemesis had already proven adept at guessing her moves! What if that was exactly what they wanted her to do, and she was flying headfirst into yet another trap? If that was the case her best bet was to do the opposite of what she'd been planning to do, unless of course her nemesis knew that she would do the opposite of what she'd normally do and that would be playing into their hands and-…

Tanya gave herself a hard slap around the face to silence her spiralling thoughts. What was she doing making rookie mistakes like this? Nothing killed a strategist's effectiveness like self-doubt; if you assumed that your opponent had foreseen every move you made, you'd end up destroying yourself for them. In a situation like this, where the threat of a hidden trap loomed over you, the best option was to keep your strategy simple, straightforward and flexible enough to change on the fly.

And what could be simpler than a head-on attack?

The palace was rapidly approaching, and so Tanya flipped in a front roll so that she was falling towards it feet first, strategically slowing her descent enough to stop herself from breaking her legs. Deciding to be dramatic, as she landed she slammed one fist onto the ground, letting the fire from her hands and feet wash away in a wave of flames all around her. Nobody was watching, but it made her feel damn cool.

As she stood up from her landing pose, Tanya wasn't surprised to see that the portcullis had been lowered to block the front gate. An irritating obstacle, but not an insurmountable one. She walked towards it and ran the palm of her hand across the thick bands of metal, measuring the width of empty square spaces between them. There were few defences as effective in their simplicity as a portcullis, yet there was one little design flaw that few people besides herself were capable of exploiting.

Unfastening the buckles of her armour, Tanya let the thin metal plates slide off of her and clatter to the floor one by one, until she stood in just the plain fire-red under robe beneath the armour. Then she placed both hands against a pair of metal bars, tilted her head forwards, and began to squeeze herself through the gap.

Portcullis' were designed to allow archers to easily fire through them at invaders trying to storm a castle, and because of that the holes between the bars were big enough for a grown man to just about fit both arms through. The gap wasn't big enough for any adult to slip through; unless of course, by some unwanted miracle of divine intervention, that adult happened to have the body of a girl in her early teens who was short even for her age group. As humiliating as it was having to flop around and grunt like a greased pig trying to fit through a catflap, Tanya was eventually able to pull herself through the metal grate and drop down onto the floor of the palace interior.

"At least none of my men saw that." She muttered to herself and she picked herself up again, brushed the dirt off her robes, and resumed walking forwards.

The foyer of the palace was empty, but the mud and dust trampled across the floor and the sounds of raised voices echoing from out of the hallways made it clear that the rebels were nearby. Nobody had stayed behind to keep watch on the entrance; all they'd done was stack a few wooden barrels up against the corners of the room and leave. That seemed a little odd to Tanya. Surely they realised that even a closed portcullis would only delay her reinforcements for so long? It would only take one lucky soldier to find their way to the winch that opened it and her elite rooms would be able to rush in unchallenged. It was idiocy to not even leave a single guard-…

The faint rustle of clothes from above her, so soft she almost missed them, caught Tanya's ear, and instincts honed by decades of war blazed to life.

She threw herself to the side just in the nick of time to avoid the hail of dagger-sharp icicles that would have crashed down on her head, skidding across the polished stone floor to safety. Tanya slipped her hands beneath herself and vaulted upwards, flipping in the air like an acrobat, and as her feet touched the ground she dropped smoothly into a crouched fighting stance. Her attacker meanwhile descended down from the ceiling in a spiralling spout of water like a spider, melting the fractured ice as her feet touched it and bending it around herself like a shawl as she settled into a graceful stance of her own. The air hung heavy between them as the two girls stared at each other in hateful silence, waiting to see if the other was about to attack.

"Well well, look who it is. The Avatar's cheerleader." Tanya taunted as the seconds passed and the waterbender made no move to initiate the fight.

"Better than The Firelord's little lapdog." The waterbender shot back.

Tanya took a slow step forwards, deciding to test how close she could get before the waterbender lashed out, and gave what she hoped was a smirk, but probably came out as more of a grimace. "Who exactly are you anyway?" She questioned, hoping that throwing a few barbs into a conversation might rile the girl up. "Zuko just described you as the ditzy water peasant trailing after the Avatar. It'd be nice to put a name to your face."

To her credit the waterbender didn't react. Or perhaps it was just that her expression was so baleful already that it just couldn't get any angrier? "It's Katara." she replied icily. "Of course I recognise you, mighty Admiral Tanya, even when you're trying to wiggle through the door like a fat seal in an ice hole."

Tanya couldn't help the embarrassed blush that crossed her cheeks. She jabbed forwards, shooting a bullet-fast fireball at Katara's face in the hopes that it would startle her. Yet to her surprise Katara flowed backwards in an easy step and caught it between her hands, quenching the firewall in an instant with the pools of water coating both arms.

"Oh, did I touch a nerve?" Katara asked slyly, raising a mocking eyebrow. Bitch.

Tanya took another step forwards, sinking lower into her stance as she mentally adjusted her strategies for the waterbender's increased skill level. "I don't remember you being able to do anything more than splash a few puddles around before. When did you learn to make yourself useful?"

"Back at the North Pole. I was trained by Master Pakku himself."

"You say that like I'm supposed to know who that is."

"You should." The frostiness of Katara's glare redoubled in intensity. "You killed him."

Silence hung between them again as Tanya stared back at her. Then, with an exasperated huff, the firebender sneered.

"Do you have the slightest idea how little that narrows it down?"

That, finally, provoked a reaction from Katara. The waterbender bristled, her footwork slipping apart by just a fraction. "You really are inhuman! You know that!" She snapped.

"I'm a soldier! This is a war!" Tanya shouted back. "And you, your brother, your rebel friends, and every other fool who has tried to get between me and the Avatar is in my way!"

Katara grit her teeth so hard they looked like they might crack, anger thundering dangerously in her eyes. "You want me gone? Go ahead then! Try and get through me!"

Orange light began to simmer in the palm's of Tanya's hands as the heat built up, ready to unleash fire at a moment's notice. "As you wish, peasant!" Tanya growled. "Let's do this!"

Aang was a blur of movement.

The monks had cautioned many times against using the wind run technique indoors. Running so swiftly that the naked eye struggled to keep up sounded great in theory, until you realised that your own eyes struggled to keep up as well. Many an excited young airbender in the past had run face first into a stone wall, and the results were never pretty. Yet despite the risks, Aang was in too much of a hurry to care right now. He had to free Bumi as quickly as possible! Every second wasted was time that the rebellion might not have!

Doorways and flights of stairs blurred past as Aang ran higher and higher through the palace, trusting in his ability to sense the paths of the flowing air to avoid crashing. He didn't even stop when he came across a fire nation soldier; instead just flowing around them like the wind itself. It wasn't long before he screeched to a halt in front of the heavy metal door Sokka had described, and with a strong swing of his staff he unleash a wild blast of air at the pair of soldiers guarding it, knocking them unconscious against the door before they could even comprehend what was happening.

Aang fumbled around searching them for their keys, before finally finding them and getting to work unlocking the variety of mechanisms keeping the door shut. When the door began to swing open he slipped inside as soon as the crack was big enough to fit through. His eyes immediately settled on the metal coffin propped in the middle of the cell, and a wide smile burst across his lips as he spotted the face of his oldest friend within.

"Bumi!" He explained gleefully, racing forwards to free him.

"Aang, no! It's a trap!"

A blue light flared up behind him, and the wind currents flowing across bald head screamed that something was coming! He whipped around, spinning his staff to create a shield of wind before he even saw the wave of blue fire crash down upon him. The shield protected him, even if it wasn't enough to stop the force of the impact from knocking him to the floor.

"A pity. Zuzu claimed your agility was beyond human levels, and even Tanya admitted that landing a hit on you was like trying to catch the breeze in your hand. I should have known that they were both exaggerating to make up for their own inadequacies."

The rhythmic tap-tap-tap of boot heels on metal echoed behind him, and Aang looked up to find a teenage girl in the uniform of a fire nation soldier approaching from the corridor. Had she been waiting for him to come here? Her cold, self-satisfied smirk was eerily highlighted by the pale blue flame she held in one hand, and something about the features of her face reminded him of someone, though he couldn't place who.

The girl's smirk grew a little wider.

"You are now my prisoner." She declared smugly as she raised the hand that held the blue flame, and made it flare violently in her grasp, casting long, haunting shadows across the cell with blue firelight. "But please, try to struggle a bit first. It makes it more fun when they try to fight back."

Sokka ducked behind a pillar as a jet of fire erupted towards the space he'd been standing in. A second later a volley of rocks rocketed past him in the other direction, colliding with the firebender who'd attacked him with a satisfying thud. When no more fire blasts came hurtling his way, Sokka poked his head around the pillar to take in the battle raging around him.

He had joined with the rebels that took the rightmost path to the caverns, and at first they'd done a pretty good job of bashing their way through the fire nation forces in their way. That had lasted up until they reached what appeared to be a large hall for dining in. The fire nation soldiers had overturned the long wooden table in the middle of the room and were using it as a barrier, which turned out to be made of a wood thick and springy enough to be very resistant to the impact of stones. All attempts to circle around it were met with fierce, concentrated streams of fire.

The rebels here were stuck until they could figure out a way through, and as the self-proclaimed ideas guy it was up to him to do the thinking.

"Let's see here…" He muttered to himself as his eyes scanned the room for anything he could use. There was a humongous glass chandelier suspended from the ceiling above the table. The chains holding it in place seemed pretty thick, but if he could get it loose it'd force the fire nation soldiers to flee.

"Excuse me." He said, tapping the nearest earthbending rebel on the shoulder and pointing to the chandelier. "I don't suppose you could get me up there, could you?"

The earthbender looked up, squinted his eyes a bit as if measuring the distance, and then nodded. "Sure. Brace yourself."

Brace himself? Why? Wasn't he going to use earthbending to make him a ladder-…

The earthbender stomped hard on the ground, and Sokka let out a scream as the stone floor tile he was standing on suddenly erupted upwards, flinging him into the air like a catapult. His arms flailed wildly as gravity started to reclaim him, and as soon as he was within reach of the chandelier he grabbed ahold and latched onto it like a limpet. The chandelier swayed back and forth just a little as he clambered to his feet and balanced like a tightrope walker on one of the metal rods.

"That was awesome! Ten out of ten!"

Sokka jumped in fright, nearly losing his balance, as a voice unexpectedly piped up from next to him. He looked around, and was shocked to find that he was not the only person up in the chandelier. A pretty girl dressed in pink, with long auburn hair tied back into a large braid, was watching him with a bright, cheerful smile. Even as the chandelier shook and swayed she didn't even seem to notice, her body leaning back and forth with it to maintain a perfect balance.

The girl cocked her head to the side as she looked him up and down. "Hmm… you know, you're kinda cute. What's your name?"

Sokka gulped. Was she hitting on him? He wasn't complaining of course, she was a very beautiful girl, but he hadn't been expecting anything like this to happen in the middle of a violent rebellion. "It's Sokka." He replied unsurely.

"Sokka." The girl echoed, seeming to test the unfamiliar word in her mouth. Then her smile grew even brighter. "I'm Ty Lee. Sorry about this, but I'm going to have to capture you now."

Wait… what? "Capture me?" Sokka questioned?

"That's right." Ty Lee replied, advancing towards him without even seeming to notice the effort it took to stay balanced on the thin railing. "Try not to struggle, okay? This'll only hurt a little bit…"

Twin blades flashed out like a pair of snakes, slapping a firebender's fist to the side just as he finished settling into a standard military firebending stance. Flames erupted from his fist, bellowing not into the rebels, as had been the original target, but into another firebender beside him. The first firebender jolted back in shock at his inadvertent friendly fire whilst the the second yelped in surprise, and that second of distraction cost them both as the rebels they'd been trying to hold back surged forwards, knocking them to the ground.

The palace library was one huge, messy melee as both sides fought tooth and nail. Rocks, fireballs and the occasional heavy book flew wildly through the air in all directions, and only a few possessed the awareness to fight and avoid the projectiles at the same time.

Zuko was one of those people.

All five senses were strained to their limit as he ducked and weaved through the hail of danger. His ears pricked at the crackling of wildfire and he weaved like a serpent, letting a fireball sail past inches away from the back of his head. Then his blades shot out again: deflecting a poorly aimed rock into the path of a fire nation soldier.

Duck!

His gut instincts screamed at him, and without pausing to consider why Zuko began to drop low as fast as he could. Milliseconds later a small thud smacked into his masked forehead right above his right eye. The object had been too small for his eyes and ears to pick up amidst the chaos, and if he had moved even a fraction of a moment later it would have stolen his eyeball. His gloves hands reached up to pluck the object from his mask.

It was a tiny stiletto knife, and he recognised the craftsmanship.

He looked up at the direction the knife had come from, already knowing who the thrower was yet hoping against all odds that he was mistaken. He wasn't. Standing atop one of the library shelves, staring down at him with her trademark deadpan expression, was Mai.

Despite knowing that she shouldn't allow her so much as an extra second to throw another knife, Zuko hesitated. Mai wasn't his friend, not really. She was Azula's friend who he'd become acquainted with through her. Yet as sad as it was to admit, Mai and Ty Lee were the closest things he'd had to friends of his own age. Something within him recoiled at the thought of causing her harm, even if logically he knew she was tough enough to take it and dish it back out again with a vengeance. Seeing Mai dedicate herself to mastering a weapon was one of the things that had inspired him to take up swordsmanship.

The moment of hesitation cost him. With an acrobatic leap Mai was in the air, and a veritable shower of knives burst from the folds of her sleeves to rain down upon him. Zuko's twin swords became a blur of flashing silver as he swiped whichever ones he could out of the air and dodged the rest, directing every bit of concentration he could muster into tracking the paths of Mai's knives. One lapse in focus was all it would take to get a sharp blade somewhere between his ribs.

It was when Mai landed on the ground, bringing her hands down to brace against the impact of landing, that Zuko had his opportunity to close the gap between them. Mai was deadly at mid-range, but if he could keep the fight in close quarters he'd have the advantage. He might not be able to firebend without giving himself away, but he had enough skill with swords to hold his own against her so long as he could keep the circumstances in his favour.

Unfortunately Mai was no fool, and had no doubt reached the same conclusion. As he drew closer Mai hopped back, vanishing amongst the crowds of fighting soldiers surrounding them. Zuko pushed through to the point where she'd been standing, but by then it was already too late. Mai was gone.

Another buzz of metal, and Zuko swerved his head as a knife flew at him from the left, brushing past his ear before sinking into the back of a soldier behind him. Great, so they were playing hide and seek now were they? He gave his swords a twirl, then darted off into the crowd after her. Fortunately for him that was one game he was actually pretty good at.

Waves of fire and ice hissed and roared as they collided together, filling the hall with a thick coating of steam.

With a twisting hand motion Katara drew some of the stray vapour to her, condensing it back together into an orb of water to replenish her reserves. A second later she spent it again, flattening it out into a shield above her head to block the trio of fireballs that came whizzing towards her like fireworks. She stepped to the right, her stance flowing down low and her arms dancing in twisting arcs as she smoothly reshaped the shield into a whip, lashing out at a shadow of blonde hair she saw moving in the steam.

This was, without a doubt, the most difficult fight of her life. Despite having crossed paths often recently, this was the first time that Katara had actually fought Tanya head-to-head, and she was beginning to see that Tanya's moniker as a demon was well earned. All of her talent, all her drive, all the power of the moon, and every trick Pakku had ever drilled into her was barely allowing her to keep pace with the furious little firebender.

The refinement of Tanya's technique was matched only by the brutality of her strategy. When she attacked head on she was quick, precise and unrelenting. But the moment you focused too hard on keeping up with the flow of her attacks she'd throw in some misdirection: delayed fireballs sweeping in from behind, bright flares of blinding firelight, or even sudden burst of jet flames that changed the speed and direction of her kicks halfway through the manoeuvre. Katara had defeated powerful fighters and tricky fighters before, but never someone who was both of those things at once.

Yet she refused to lose. Not tonight! Not to her! She'd be damned if she let that devil get away with murdering master Pakku without at least a proper beatdown for payback! It was high time that someone gave the devil a taste of her own medicine, and taught her and her people that they couldn't go around bullying the rest of the world without expecting someone to push them back!

A stream of fire came whooshing out towards her front, and with speed born from constant practice Katara twirled in her stance, spinning her water whip around to gather momentum and launching it like a spear right at the fire stream. Yet even as she did so she kept her awareness focused outwards, wary of an attack from the side or above.

It took her by surprise when the stream of fire parted before the water hit, revealing that Tanya had in fact hidden herself within. The blonde devil jumped up and twisted, letting Katara's water spear pass inches beneath her spine, and her feet burst into bright flames as she rocketed forwards straight towards her.

The surprise only lasted a split second, but that moment of hesitation was enough to put Katara on the back foot as Tanya engaged her in a vicious fistfight. Jabs and stabs wreathed in fire came in from every direction, and Katara had to give ground again and again as she struggled to keep her guard up. Her palm slapped away a fist just before it crashed into her nose, only to wince as the heat scalded her skin. Each new blow she blocked brought a fresh wave of pain, and in a sudden flash of insight Katara realised that that was Tanya's plan! Cause enough agony to her hands and it would weaken her ability to bend! She needed to create some distance again, and quickly!

Thinking on her feet, Katara rolled with the first idea that popped to mind. She had seen firebenders breathe fire before, and there was enough moisture in the air from all the steam for her to gather a decent amount of water just by breathing. She inhaled sharply, pulling a visible cloud of steam into her mouth with her bending, cooled it, and then breathed out a cloud of icy mist so blisteringly cold that it chapped her lips. The move caught Tanya by surprise and struck her in the shoulder before she could fully retreat, ripping a large hole in her red robes and leaving a nasty patch of blistered, frostbitten skin.

"Damn cheerleader, credit where it's due, you really have gotten good." Tanya snarled sarkily as she backed away. "But you realise that it isn't enough, right? It's undeniable that you've spent a lot of time practising, but there's a world of difference between the training matts and the battlefield. Bloodlust, fear, raw instinct… These are things you can only learn on the battlefield. Things you've yet to know."

Katara replied by snapping another water whip at her, making Tanya hop to avoid it.

"I'm more familiar with them than you might think." She shot back icily.

Tanya's lips peeled back into a toothy, wolfish grin. "Is that so? Let's put them to the test then, shall we?"

In a burst of movement she sprinted forwards, coming in for another attack. Wary of letting Tanya get too close again, Katara lashed out with a wave of water to drive her back with. Tanya's feet alighted once again in her signature jet technique to soar up and over the wave.

Only to be swatted from behind by a second wave.

"Wha-…" Tanya grunted as the water splashed her against the wall with considerable impact. Where had that attack come from?

The answer revealed itself when she spotted the splintered wreckage of one of the wooden barrels scattered across the floor. Ah, so that's what they were for! The rebels had taken barrels of water from the kitchens and dotted them around the room to give Katara an advantage. Clever, but a one-time only trick now that she knew about them.

Katara obviously agreed, because with a grasping motion she shattered the other water barrels as well, drawing their contents towards her. The ring of water around her swelled and began to morph into a new shape under her guiding gestures, separating and spreading out into a set of eight large tentacles, like the limbs of a gigantic octopus.

It was at times like this Tanya wished she could shoot lightning. A large body of a conductive substance was just begging for a shock or two. Sadly that aspect of firebending had always proven to be difficult for her, and eventually she'd given up in favour of studying techniques that came more naturally. She was regretting that decision now.

Pulling herself out of the wall and hovering back up into the air, Tanya observed Katara's technique. It was an ingenious design; able to flow at a moment's notice between a strong offence and a solid defence, but like everything it had its limits. That much water was bound to be cumbersome, so agility wouldn't be its strong suit. An idea popped into Tanya's mind, but she needed to test it first.

Cautiously, at only about half the speed she was capable of, Tanya flew towards Katara, and unsurprisingly the moment she was in range the nearest tentacle lashed out to meet her. Immediately Tanya swerved away and backed off, then circled around Katara and, at a seemingly random point, dived forwards again. Again Katara's water tentacle lashed out, and she immediately retreated outside its range again, like a fly darting away from a hand trying to swat it, and continued circling.

Again and again she repeated this process for the better part of a minute, testing the range of movement and attack angles of the tentacles. Dive, dodge, circle, repeat; over and over again as she built up a mental map of the various attacks paths Katara's creature could make. Of course she wasn't the only one learning: Katara could tell that something was up, but she allowed it to happen as it gave her the opportunity to study Tanya's jet technique. She watched each swerve and dive, noting the instinctive movements that Tanya made each time she avoided an attack, and piece by piece put together a profile of how she moved in the air, allowing each snap of her tentacles to grow just a little closer before Tanya could avoid them.

It was an arms race to get a read of the opponent first, and it was neck-and-neck.

After minutes of testing the waters, the pace suddenly ramped up again when Tanya rocketed towards Katara at maximum speed. Katara, her instincts now better honed to Tanya's reactions, lashed out with the nearest tentacle, letting out a meaty thwack as it batted Tanya away with a heavy blow.

But Tanya had been prepared. She'd curled up into a ball before the strike hit, bracing her body as best as she could for the impact and letting the force of it carry her away. It stung something nasty to let herself tank such a powerful hit, but sometimes sacrifices had to be made for victory. Like a human tennis ball she sailed backwards, twisting and spinning to position herself in just the right way, and unfurled at just the moment she came to impact against the wall so that her feet were planted first and her knees could absorb most of the momentum. For a brief moment the force of her velocity kept Tanya suspended standing sideways against the wall, like some kind of spider-themed superhero, before her feet exploded into flames and she pushed off again, charging back towards Katara with maximum thrust.

An average bender might have been taken aback by the swiftness of Tanya's recovery, but Katara was not an average bender. The first tentacle was still out of position from its own momentum, so without a second's hesitation she switched to a second one, curling it forwards with a twist of her arm to slap Tanya down to the ground. Yet again Tanya braced herself and tanked the impact, letting herself be smacked down to bounce off the floor like a pinball before immediately breaking out of her defensive shell again and charging a third time.

Katara switched to a third tentacle, and again swatted Tanya away, only for her to bounce back again with unnerving eagerness. Yet it was as she swung the fourth tentacle that something changed. Rather than tank the blow again, Tanya stuck out both hands and blasted jetfire out of them, propelling herself wildly to the side so as to avoid it. In terms of technique it was an awful move: the sharp change in direction threw her off balance and left her wide open for an attack. It was the aerial equivalent of tripping yourself up.

But Katara didn't press her attack. She couldn't. Tanya had bounced back from her previous attacks so quickly that she hadn't had time to draw the four heavy tentacles in front of her back from their strikes. She reached her arms back to take control of the remaining four behind her, but no matter the training, the human body was designed to face forwards, and achieving the graceful dexterity needed for high-level waterbending was difficult with your arms turned backwards. Katara was quicker than the vast majority of other waterbenders would have been, but that still wasn't quite quick enough against someone as spry as Tanya. By the time she'd been able to bring the water behind her surging forwards, Tanya had regained her balance and blasted forwards again, bringing her up close and into Katara's guard.

Despite the power of the raging water coming up behind her, Katara could instinctively tell that it was too slow to help. The time it would take her to bring a crashing wave down upon Tanya's head was just a split second slower than the time it would take Tanya to blast a fatal stream of fire straight through her torso at point blank range. She had just enough time instead to curve the current around herself in a protective shield rather than launch it forward at the she-devil. Rather than thrusting her palms out towards Tanya, she twisted them in and downwards, as if try to hug herself, and a waterfall-like wall of water crashed down upon her just in time before Tanya planted her feet, extended both arms forwards and unleashed a roaring cannon of fire directly at her stomach from no more than an arm's distance away.

The water glowed a frightening, angry orange as blazing fire fought to drill through a torrential river. A few times stray flickers of flame managed to push their way through, licking out to singe Katara's cheeks. So intense was Tanya's attack that her shield began to bubble and hiss, like a kettle on the verge of boiling. Realising that she'd either run out of water or be boiled alive before Tanya let up on her fire blast, Katara let her knees fold and allowed the current to sweep her away, washing herself to safety along the floor.

Yet to her horror, Tanya had predicted her actions. Before she could begin to scramble to her feet again Tanya fell on her back, one arm coiling around her neck from behind to put her in a choke hold. Katara thrashed about like a beached shark, desperately trying to loosen the smaller girl's surprisingly tight grip or knock her away, but the she-devil would not relent, and pinned down awkwardly as she was there was no way for her to move fluidly enough to bend water with any more ferocity than a splash. Darkness began to creep around the edges of her vision as unconsciousness came to claim her.

"I'll hand it to you, I'm impressed. Few have given me such a challenge before, especially after such a short time of training." Tanya hissed in her ear, her own breath sharp and laboured. "But you aren't in my league just yet!"

"Master Pakku, I'm so sorry." Katara thought to herself as her vision began to dim. "I couldn't avenge you! I-…"

Her head slumped forwards onto the floor as consciousness abandoned her.

This girl was not an ordinary firebender.

If the fancy armour or the pale blue flames hadn't clued him in, it was the sheer precision and skill of her attacks. Aang had gotten a lot of practice at avoiding fireballs recently, yet even so he was struggling to stay one step ahead of the utter onslaught the girl was unleashing at him. It didn't help that the metal prison they were fighting in didn't give him the space to manoeuvre in ways that were needed to use his full potential, and yet he couldn't leave Bumi trapped here.

He ducked as another slash of blue fire came whizzing towards his head. The flames passed over him so closely that if he'd had any hair on his head, it would have set alight. A quick wind-enhanced jump to the side saved him from the fireball that followed after it, giving him temporary cover behind Bumi's metal coffin.

"Aang! You must leave!" Bumi warned him urgently. "Did your friend not give you my message? I am not the one who-"

"This isn't about finding a teacher!" Aang snapped. "This is about saving my friend! The only one I have left from a hundred years ago! The girl in charge here is dangerous!"

"I'm the girl in charge around here, that you very much."

Twin snakes of blue fire shot around either side of the coffin, twisting in mid-air to wrap around it. Aang leapt up, summoning wind to enhance his height, and shot a glance back at his attacker. For the first time since the fight started she didn't look smug, and her voice just then had held a sharp hint of irritation.

"Who are you anyway?" Aang asked.

The girl's arrogant smirk returned. "I am Azula, princess and heir to the throne of the Fire Nation." She announced proudly. "I believe you've already met my dear brother Zuko."

Zuko had a sister?! One who was apparently just as crazily obsessed with capturing him. He could see hints of the family resemblance now that he knew to look for it, but Azula gave off a totally different vibe to her brother. Zuko had been angry, but even at his worst he'd never seemed to enjoy violence. The way Azula had been acting during this fight suggested that wasn't a trait the whole family shared.

"Are you working for Tanya?" He hadn't known that Tanya had connections to the Fire Nation royal family, other than that she had some sort of history with Zuko. Come to think of it, he didn't really know much about Tanya at all.

Azula's left eyebrow gave a sharp, violent twitch. "I do not work for her!" She all but growled, lightning flashing dangerously in her glare. "She works for me!"

Aang's face scrunched up in confusion. "But… wasn't she the one bossing the soldiers around? It sure looks like she's in charge."

"Yes!" Azula hissed through grit teeth. "But I am next in line to the throne! The military serves the Fire Lord, and since I will be the next Fire Lord, that means Tanya serves me!"

Aang frowned. "Then why aren't you the one bossing everyone around?"

"I'm delegating! It's a perfectly normal thing for leaders to do!" Azula snapped.

Aang looked at her sceptically.

"Just shut up and burn already!"

For a moment Azula's face was twisted up in an expression of angst, and in that second Aang could finally see the resemblance between her and Zuko. Then another wave of blue fire came rushing towards him, and he narrowly swerved out of the way in time to avoid it.

"Come on Aang, think!" He muttered to himself. He really didn't want to fight this girl, but he couldn't abandon Bumi, which was problematic considering that he was trapped in a metal box. He needed to find a way to get the box open, or move it somehow. But how could he move something as big as that while someone was spitting fire at him?

Aang began to run away from Azula, enhancing his speed with a gust of wind. The smirk settled back on Azula's face as she watched him flee. "What's wrong Avatar? Scared?" She called. "Running away won't do you any good here."

It wasn't long before Aang reached the walls of the cell, but rather than stop, Aang placed his feet against the metal and ran up it, using the wind to push him upwards so that he appeared to be running along the side of the wall. Faster and faster he ran, looping around the room and building up speed with his wind sprint.

Azula caught on as to what he was trying to do as the air in the room began to swirl in the direction he was running, creating the beginnings of a vortex. Carefully she took aim, adjusting her footwork ever so slightly to account for the speed Aang was moving at and the growing strength of the wind, and fired two precise bolts of blue fire. The bolts sailed through the air, riding the wind currents at the perfect angle so that their flight path would bring them to hit Aang right between his shoulder blades.

Yet it was at that moment that Aang reached out with both hands, seeming to almost grasp the violently swirling winds between his fingers, and changed direction. The firebolts shot narrowly past his shoulder as he rushed back towards the centre of the room where Bumi's metal coffin stood, seeming to push the vortex inwards on itself and condense it down into a smaller bubble.

"Umm…- Aang?" Bumi asked nervously as the strength of the condensing wind began to rock his coffin. "What are you doing?"

But Aang did not reply. His full attention was focused on pulling off the technique that he was improvising on the spot. His muscles strained with exertion as he compressed the gale-force winds into a smaller and smaller ball, similar in nature to his air scooter but on a bigger, more powerful scale.

Bumi let out a sound somewhere between a startled yelp and a whoop of joy as his coffin was lifted off the floor by the force of the winds, rising up into the air and leaning backwards until he was facing up at the ceiling. As the technique finally came together Aang jumped up and perched on the flat surface of Bumi's coffin as if it was one of the surfboards he'd learned how to use at the North Pole. Bumi's coffin now levitated in the air, balancing precariously on top of an extra large air scooter.

Azula eyed the technique critically, torn between being impressed by its power or derisive of its goofiness. Tanya was right; The Avatar's ability to pull unusual techniques out of thin air was not to be underestimated.

Suddenly Aang threw his hands backwards, blasting out streams of wind that pushed the air scooter, and the coffin that balanced atop it, towards her. Azula twirled nimbly out of the way as the coffin nearly rammed into her and settled into a defensive stance, prepared for The Avatar to turn around and try to ram her again, yet to her annoyance he ignored her: instead riding the coffin out through the door and down along the hallway.

"For all his power, The Avatar is surprisingly cowardly." An echo of Tanya's voice spoke in her mind; a memory of a time she'd given a report on The Avatar's combat prowess. "In all his encounters with myself, Zhao or Zuko, his main strategy was always to extract whatever valuable assets he could and then use his superior mobility to flee. The only times when he's stayed to fight was when we had something he couldn't afford to leave behind, but the moment we lost that bait he would turn and run immediately."

Azula frowned, cursing herself for not having expected this. She had fought opponents who'd given up and tried to flee from her many times, but never anyone who incorporated techniques that allowed them to switch between attacking and retreating at a moment's notice into their very style. No wonder such a craven race had folded so easily when the Fire Nation invaded.

Fire erupted from Azula's feet as she used it to propel herself along the ground like an ice-skater, racing off in pursuit of The Avatar. If he thought he could evade her whilst lugging that metal box around, he was in for a rude awakening.

Sokka did not think he'd ever been beaten up quite so gently before.

It was a little embarrassing to admit that he was getting his ass handed to him by a girl as short, slender and generally pink as Ty Lee was, but Sokka could see the writing on the wall. His left after was completely unresponsive after she had jabbed it a few times with her fingers, hitting points that stung a little and then sent the surrounding muscles to sleep. And while he was just barely keeping his balance, she was swinging about the place as if she'd been born on a tightrope. The only reason he'd lasted this long was because she was very obviously taking it easy on him.

"Boomerang!" He shouted desperately as she advanced upon him again, throwing his trusty boomerang. He knew that the chances of it hitting someone so damn nimble were low, but he hoped that she, like so many others, would be caught by surprise when the weapon spun around and came back. As anticipated Ty Lee smoothly hopped from one railing to the next, letting the boomerang whiz past harmlessly, but unlike anyone he'd faced before she actually turned around to watch it with wide, fascinated eyes.

"Wow! It's so pretty!" She complimented cheerfully, and then gave a squeal of delight as it began to turn around mid-air. "And it comes back! That's so cool! With some brighter colours the audience would love these!" She bent backwards like a limbo dancer, letting the boomerang soar over her head as it returned to Sokka, and looked up at him with a bright smile. "Hey, maybe when this is all over you'd like to come back to the circus with me?"

Was she being serious? It was a ridiculous thing to ask, let alone in the middle of a fight, but then again Ty Lee had been incredibly happy-go-lucky this whole time. "Uhh, no thank you?" He replied hesitantly.

Ty Lee pouted cutely. "That's a shame. Guess I'll have to capture you after all."

How exactly she managed to roll from that uncomfortable position into a flat-out sprint while still perched on a thin strip of metal, Sokka could not fathom, but within a second she was on him again. Sokka lashed out, holding his boomerang like a club in his right hand as he swiped at her in the hopes that using something she couldn't poke with her strange jabby-finger technique would help.

It didn't. Ty Lee swayed around the boomerang with agility that would make an airbender green with envy, and struck out with a jab right between two of his knuckles. The boomerang slipped out of Sokka's hand as his fingers went numb, and his instincts suddenly flared in warning as he realised that the sudden change in weight had thrown him off balance. His feet struggled to find purchase on the smooth metal, and Sokka's stomach clenched in dread as he felt gravity grab hold and begin to pull him down.

"Whoops. Careful there cutie. Wouldn't want you to get hurt."

To his surprise, Sokka felt a small yet surprisingly firm grip on his shoulder, and suddenly his fall halted. A glance over his shoulder confirmed the bizarre truth: Ty Lee had stopped his fall.

Ty Lee gave him another bright smile when they made eye contact, and without a word pulled him back up so that he was nice and balanced yet again. She'd even caught his boomerang in her other hand before it could fall. All thoughts of combat were halted for a moment as Sokka stared at her incredulously, and she simply smiled back at him merrily.

"Okay look, I'm confused. Are you trying to fight me or help me?" Sokka asked. "Because I'm kind of getting mixed messages here."

Ty lee grinned sheepishly. "I mean… can't I do both?"

"I mean you are, so I can't deny that. I'm just confused as to why you would want to." Sokka replied. "Don't you work for Tanya?"

"No. Well, I mean yes, but not really. She's my friend, but I don't really work work for her, so much as I work work for Azula, who Tanya also works for but doesn't work work for, they're more like friends, but also not friends, but Tanya hasn't really realised that yet so I guess they're friends-but-not-friends. So I suppose you could say I'm Tanya's friend who work works for her other friend-but-not-friend and works for Tanya by extension?"

Sokka stared at her.

Ty Lee stared back.

"What?" Sokka asked dumbly.

"It's complicated." Ty Lee replied.

"Yeah, sounds like it." Sokka let out a heavy sigh. "So why exactly are we fighting?"

"Because you're part of the rebels attacking Omashu, and Azula wants me to capture you." Ty Lee answered.

"But we're only attacking because we want to leave Omashu. What's so bad about wanting to be free?" Sokka countered. "And regardless of what Azula, whoever that is, wants, do you want to fight me?"

"Well-... uhh…" Ty Lee suddenly looked very uncertain, and just a little bit afraid. For a few seconds she seemed to flounder around insecurely. "I want what Azula wants."

Sokka didn't know who this Azula was, but he didn't like her. It was pretty obvious that this girl really didn't want to be here. Despite being from the Fire Nation she didn't seem to have a mean bone in her body, and yet here she was fighting to put down a revolution because of what someone else wanted. "But you don't want to fight, do you?" He asked.

"I do too!" Ty Lee replied quickly, defensively even. The girl couldn't fib to save her life. "Tanya's always telling me how lucky I am to have learnt such a useful fighting style!"

Sokka grimaced. "Yeah, but she's-"

"- Tanya." They both finished in unison. Ty Lee giggled bashfully and looked away, while Sokka felt a sudden surge or heat flood his cheeks and had the sudden impulse to look up. Ty Lee was kinda cute now that she wasn't trying to poke him, and she had a dazzling smile. If he was being honest with himself, Sokka didn't really want to fight her either. It was too bad that he had to.

Or did he?

"Okay, listen, how about we try solving this diplomatically?" Sokka suggested.

Immediately Ty Lee perked up. "Can we do that?"

"Sure we can!" Sokka assured her. "I mean look around! Everyone below us is too busy fighting each other to look up. I don't want to fight you, and you don't want to fight me, so why don't we just, you know, tell everyone we had a fight, and actually resolve this peacefully?"

Ty Lee thought about it for a moment, but it was obvious even then that she really wanted to say yes. Her shoulders seemed to relax in relief from an unseen burden placed upon them. "Yeah! Good idea! Let's do that!" Then her face scrunched up in dismay. "But wait, what about the rebellion?"

Sokka looked down at the chaos below. Earth and fire benders were slaughtering each other, and now that he stopped to really think about it this fight was kind of pointless. The earth rebels wanted to escape the city, and the fire soldiers would probably have an easier time occupying the city if they did just go away. The only person he could think of who actually wanted to stop them was Tanya, and that was just because she wanted to capture Aang.

"What if you let us escape?"

The words slipped out before he consciously realised he was saying them, and Sokka quickly backpedalled as Ty Lee visibility bristled at the idea of being a traitor. "Not that I'm suggesting you actually betray the Fire Nation of course! I'm just thinking we want to leave, and your side probably doesn't want rebels hanging around in your nice new city, so wouldn't everyone be happier if the rebels managed to get out of here?"

"I suppose so…" Ty Lee replied hesitantly. She wasn't fully convinced, but Sokka could tell that her resolve was wavering. It wouldn't take much more to convince her.

"Not to mention that a whole lot less people would be hurt if you let us go easily." He ventured. "And there's even a way we could stage it to make sure that nobody suspects you lost deliberately. All you have to do is warn the Fire Nation soldier below us that this chandelier is about to fall on them, and they'll retreat. Then I drop the chandelier for real, the rebels push forwards into the crystal caverns and escape, and everyone gets what they want." Except Tanya, but mentioning that didn't strike him as a particularly good idea right now.

Ty Lee considered it for a moment longer, but it was clear that she was coming around to the idea. "Yeah, that could work. And Tanya does always say that it's inefficient to let human resources go to waste. She'd want me to prioritise saving our soldiers over capturing you." She flashed him another one of her sunny smiles. "Okay, let's do it!"

Wow. This was actually working. As someone who'd always wanted to be a warrior, Sokka would admit he'd always been a little bit dismissive of diplomacy before. But if it always worked out this smoothly he'd definitely be trying it again. Aang would be so proud. "Great! I'll go and-..."

A column of flame from the melee below sent a flash of orange light that reflected off the chandelier, and for a second the world around them glittered and sparkling with light, illuminating Ty Lee in a golden glow. With every shadow across her face chased away and her dazzling smile lit up, Sokka was struck by the revelation of how beautiful she looked…

His heart skipped a beat.

Oh no! Oh no, no, no! That wasn't-... But he didn't-... She was the enemy! He didn't feel that way about her, did he?! Surely he couldn't after everything that had happened with Yue?

Suddenly very conscious of the fact that he'd been staring at her wordlessly for a few seconds, Sokka looked away. "Well-... Umm, then I'll go and-... you know, the chandelier?"

"Oh! Oh right!" Ty Lee replied hastily, looking awkwardly away to the side as well. "I'll go and shout down to everyone below."

"Yeah! Good idea!" Sokka turned and fled as quickly as he could without seeming suspicious from the suddenly awkward atmosphere, heading towards the chains keeping the chandelier suspended. Oh spirits, she was going to think that he was a complete weirdo now wasn't she? Idiot!

"LOOK OUT! IT'S GONNA FALL!" Ty Lee shouted down to the soldiers below.

The Blue Spirit was turning out to be unusually hard to kill.

That was as close to a compliment as Mai gave. She didn't meet many people these days who could handle having so many knives thrown at them, but the Blue Spirit was doing an admirable job. Every knife she threw was deflected at the last second by a slash of his blades, and something about the way he moved struck her as oddly familiar, though she couldn't quite place how.

She threw a trio of knives at him from amidst the crowd, only for him to sense them coming and dive away into the mass of bodies, vanishing from view. The Blue Spirit certainly was a slippery one. Mai wasted no time moving away, knowing that the Blue Spirit would be searching the area her knives had just flown from. Sure enough, when she looked back a few seconds later she saw glimpses of a Blue Mask snaking through the crowd after her.

She slipped a crescent shaped knife free of her sleeve and threw it down towards the Blue Spirit's feet, knowing that the way she threw it would cause it to curve upwards towards his chin. Yet the Blue Spirit swiped out with his dao blades again right as it began to curve, seeming entirely unsurprised. Strange. That knife was a custom-made piece of her own design. The only people who should have been able to predict its unusual movements were people who were either also trained to use knives, or those who had seen her fight before.

Suspicion began to worm its way deeper into her gut, but she shook it off. This Blue Spirit was some kind of assassin or secret operative, so it wasn't unfathomable that he'd been trained to fight with knives and other weapons as well as his swords. It just meant that she had to watch out for any hidden weapons he may have concealed.

The Blue Spirit had nearly caught her now, and so Mai switched tactics. In one swift movement she stopped running and doubled back, charging towards him and drawing two long, skewering blades from the folds of her robes, then thrust them out to try and impale him.

But the Blue Spirit was quick to react, and his twin blades fanned up to push the skewers away. Mai drew her hands back and tried to stab again and again, falling into a rhythmic flurry, but each and every time the Blue Spirit deflected them.

But he never tried to strike back. Did he have something against hurting girls? Or was something else staying his hand? Something was definitely off about this guy.

"RETREAT!" One of the rebels suddenly cried out over the din of the melee. "ANOTHER WAY IS OPEN! FALL BACK!"

Another way? That suggested that the rebels were trying to get to a specific place, and they'd already broken through the defences that stopped them getting there. The earth rebels began to run back the way they'd come, a few of them pulling up walls of earth to cover their retreat, and the moment he was able to do so the Blue Spirit disengaged and began to retreat as well.

"Oh no you don't!" Mai hissed, throwing a knife that speared through the hem of the Blue Spirit's trouser leg and pinned it to the floor. However strange this guy was, it didn't change the fact that Tanya considered him too big a threat to let escape. He'd already been able to sneak through an entire fortress and free The Avatar once; as long as he lived, the chances of The Avatar escaping whatever prison he was kept in after he was finally caught rose significantly. She threw another volley of knives towards him as the Blue Spirit made to kneel down and pull out the knife keeping him pinned, forcing him to use his blades for deflection once again. Now all she had to do was keep him trapped here until the rebels all ran away, and the soldiers would be able to surround him.

The Blue Spirit realised that too, and began to tug his leg against the knife keeping it pinned, hoping to rip it out. But Mai's accuracy had been excellent, and the knife was lodged in too firmly to be removed without a good grip. Realising that, the Blue Spirit flicked one of his blades down, slicing cleanly through the fabric of his trouser leg to cut himself free.

But in that split second he'd left an opening. Without both blades focused on deflecting, one of Mai's knife's was able to finally slip past his guard. He tilted his head to the side at the last second, but it was already too late. The knife cut into the left side of his mask, carving off a large chunk of it.

Enough to reveal a heavily burned ear.

Mai froze. A burned left ear. Knows how to use dao swords. Wanted to stop Zhao from capturing The Avatar. Reluctant to fight me. Wears a mask from Love amongst the Dragons play. The evidence came clicking together in her head, but Mai refused to accept it. It couldn't be true! It must all be one big coincidence, or a mistake on her part! There was no way that the Blue Spirit could be…

"-... Zuko?" She whispered.

The Blue Spirit froze.

"Get him!"

A fireball came whizzing past Mai's shoulder toward Zu-... towards the Blue Spirit, breaking the moment of stillness between them. The Blue Spirit swung his swords, batting the fireball away with the flat of his blades, and then turned and dashed to join the last of the rebels as they fled. Instinctively a knife slipped between Mai's fingers.

But for once she did not move.

A few seconds of hesitation was all it took for the Blue Spirit and the last of the rebels to disappear back the way they came, chased by a few of the more foolhardy soldiers. Mai sheathed the knife and turned away.

She couldn't tell Azula or Tanya. Not yet. Not until she knew what Zuko was thinking, siding with The Avatar against his own people. That little boy she remembered so fondly would never betray his nation like this, and Mai refused to believe there wasn't more to this until she heard the reasons why from Zuko himself!

"Aang, I don't think this is such a good ide- aaaggghhh!"

The iron coffin rattled and shook as it slid down the flight of stairs, banging against the handrail like an out of control bumper car and jostling the elderly occupant contained within. Unfortunately Aang was a little bit too distracted trying to avoid the blue fireballs being hurled at them by Zuko's psychopathic sister to pay attention.

A pair of guards stationed at the bottom of the stairs yelped in panic and jumped away to safety as the coffin came barreling towards the bottom of the stairs. Aang waved his arms, adjusting the positioning of the wind sphere so that the coffin continued to surf straight forwards as they reached the floor with only a slight bump. He could feel Azula quite literally hot on his heels as the uncomfortable warmth of her blue flames crashed against the last step right behind him.

It wasn't easy moving something so heavy at such high speeds, even if over such a short distance. Aang could feel the chi in his body rapidly running out; his technique lacked the efficiency of true mastery, but he kept pushing on regardless. All he had to do was get Bumi to the rebel forces and they'd be safe; he had no reason to fight Azula.

Unfortunately, Azula clearly didn't feel the same way.

Lashes of burning blue flashed behind him as he rode through the hallways towards the crystal caverns, hoping with all his heart that the others had cleared the way there already. If not, he really had no idea how he was going to get out of this one.

Fortunately the spirits were on his side.

As he turned the next corner, Aang was relieved to see a crowd of figures in green robes ushering people down the stairway to the basement. Some had taken defensive positions, either shepherding the others rebels along or pulling up barriers of stone to halt the firebenders. Aang's eyes immediately caught a figure in blue leading the evacuation, who had also spotted him.

"Aang!" Sokka called, looking overjoyed at first, then terrified when he noticed the woman riding a sea of blue flames chasing him. He barked commands at some of the rebels, and a few seconds later a volley of rocks came whizzing down the hallway, curving around Aang to hone in on Azula. The princess was insanely skilled, but even she couldn't take on a small army by herself. She was forced to back off, summoning a barrier of blue flames to obscure her as she retreated back down the hallway.

The wind sphere crumbled as Aang was finally given the opportunity to relax, and Bumi's coffin skidded the last couple of feet across the floor before finally coming to a rest at the rebel's feet. A few of them ran forwards to pull it the rest of the way into the crystal caves while the others continued to open fire at Azula's retreating form. Sokka meanwhile ran forwards to give Aang a quick hug, and glanced warily back over at the smouldering corridor he'd come from. "I'm guessing I'm not the only one who was attacked by a scarily competent teenage girl today?"

Meaning there were more of them? Great. Aang followed Sokka as the last of the rebels abandoned their positions and led the way down the staircase and into the crystal caverns. It looked the same as he remembered from Bumi's trials: a wide subterranean cave filled with jutting spears of blue and green crystals. Most of the rebels had fled further in, gathering deeper below around a group of earth benders who were ripping away the crystals covering the escape route.

"Where are Katara and Blue?" Aang asked, realising that he couldn't spot either of them amongst the crowd.

"Blue came through not long after I cleared a path through the dining room." Sokka replied. "But not Katara."

Katara wasn't here yet? But she had been fighting-… A cold, hard ball of despair sunk into Aang's gut. He'd known that it was a bad idea to leave her alone against Tanya. "We have to go back for her!"

"No need."

A fearful chill ran down Aang's spine as a voice he'd hoped he'd never hear again echoed throughout the cavern. All eyes turned back to the staircase, where the first of the fire nation soldiers were rushing in. Leading the pack were a group of girls: Azula, two other teens Aang didn't recognise, and finally the mop of golden hair that never failed to make his stomach clench in dread.

"Tanya!" He spat.

Tanya looked down at him with a mocking smirk. "Hello again Avatar." She called. Then her eyes flicked over to Sokka, and she sneered. "And Wang Fire? You've sold out your own nation? How deplorable. No wonder the rebels were able to predict my moves with you feeding them information from the inside."

"It's no more than you deserve!" Sokka yelled back tauntingly. "And I'm the one who thought up the pentapox too!"

Tanya snarled like a feral wolf. "That was you?! You're the one who's been causing me such a headache?!"

"That's right!" Sokka shot back, grabbing hold of his fake beard with one hand. "For you see I am not in fact Wang Fire! I am-…" He paused dramatically, and tugged on his beard to pull it off.

Yet the hairs held firm.

"I am-… I am-…" Sokka began tugging furiously on the fake beard, but the glue he used was surprisingly tough. "I am-…"

Tanya glared at him sceptically. "You are?"

"I am actually-… gah!" Sokka gave a pained yelp as he tried, and failed, to rip the beard off, but only succeeded in pulling on the skin of his chin painfully.

Tanya crossed her arms, looking thoroughly unimpressed. "Don't try to fool me with any more of your mind games, Mr Fire. I'm wise to your tricks." She raised a hand and, without looking back, made a gesture to the soldiers taking up combat positions behind her. "Bring her in."

Two soldiers stepped forth out of the crowd, holding between them a struggling girl dressed in blue.

"Katara!" Aang and Sokka cried in sync. Even from this distance it was clear that Katara had had a rough time. Her blue robes were singed black in places, and she seemed to be leaning her weight onto one leg. As she was dragged over to her, Tanya roughly grabbed Katara by the hair and pulled her head up, the palm of her other hand glowing orange with the threat of fire as she brought it to point at Katara's throat.

"This rebellion is over! You are to all, immediately, put your weapons down and surrender yourselves to fire nation custody!" Tanya demanded, her tone sharp and clipped with tightly contained aggression. "That is unless you want to see your friend here go the same way as her master!"

She had him! She finally bloody had him!

Tanya wasn't quite sure if she wanted to giggle with laughter or snarl with rage. It had been close at times, but at last she had finally got The Avatar and all his little friends trapped in a situation they couldn't escape from without losing. Either The Avatar surrendered now, or he fled to save his own skin and lost his waterbender, which would make it easier to capture him the next time.

"Aang! You need to run!" Katara yelled, but was cut off with a pained cry and Tanya tightened her grip, pulling some of her hairs out at the roots. Tanya pressed her fire-glowing hand closer against Katara's neck, letting the blazing heat of it scald her skin.

"To be clear, I'm not talking about locking dear sweet Katara here away in any sort of jail." Tanya continued, her cool gaze never leaving The Avatar. "Refuse and I will execute her right here, right now. Don't even entertain the thought that I might be bluffing: we all know I've done it before for crimes far lesser than hers."

She sensed Ty Lee shuffling on the spot nervously behind her. "Hey Tanya, isn't this taking things a bit too far?" She whispered.

Tanya ignored her, unwilling to split her attention for even a fraction of a second. There could be no opportunities for The Avatar to escape this time. "What'll it be, Avatar? Make your choice."

To his credit, The Avatar barely took a second to think about it. His staff dropped to the floor with a wooden clunk, and he held his hands up in surrender. "Okay, okay, we surrender! Just don't hurt her!"

Yes! Finally! As slippery a little bastard as he was, even an airbender like The Avatar wouldn't be able to escape an entire garrison! A savage grin broke out across Tanya's face. "Smart choice. Keep your hands up and come over here."

"I'm afraid I can't allow that."

Tanya's eyes darted around the room, looking for the person who'd spoken. Her eyes eventually settled on the face sticking awkwardly out of the metal coffin halfway dragged across the ground, and her grin turned into a condescending smirk of amusement. "King Bumi?" She replied sarcastically. "Your objection is notes, but I think you're a little… weighed down, to have a say in this."

"Oho, puns eh?" Bumi shot her a crooked smile. "You may find that an old dog still has a few tricks up their sleeve."

Tanya snorted dismissively. "Unless you happen to also be a master of escapology, I don't think so."

Bumi chuckled, and then quickly threw his head backwards. A number of small rocks and pebbles suddenly rocketed towards him like bullets from a gun, smashing at high speeds into precise points in the coffin and warping the metal. Like a tin can being crushed the coffin buckled and bent, until with a metallic twang the lid of the coffin snapped open.

Tanya stared with wide eyes, ever so slightly dumbstruck, as the old king pushed the lid aside and stood up, stretching his arms and cracking his neck to the side as if just getting up from an afternoon nap. Had he been able to do that the whole damn time?! She didn't get it: if he could have freed himself at any point, why had he waited this long to do so?! "How did-… But why did-…" No! Don't get distracted! Tanya redoubled her grip on Katara's hair. "Stay back! Take one step forward and I-…"

Bumi took a pointed step forwards, planting his foot onto the solid ground.

Tanya only distantly remembered what it felt like to be hit by the train that brought her first life to an abrupt end. For the merest shard of a second something large, rock solid and very, very quick had pressed up against his side, and then like a TV screen switching off everything had gone dark. She never expected to feel a sensation even remotely similar to that again, but as Bumi stepped forwards and she made to bring her burning hand to Katara's neck, at the bottom of her vision she saw the rock beneath her shift as something came shooting up at her faster than she could possibly react to.

The next thing she knew she was on her back, staring blearily up at a cluster of shiny green crystals clinging to the ceiling. Why was she in a cave? Who was she for that matter? And why did her mind feel like it was floating just above a ball of bone-deep agony?

A pretty face popped into her vision. She was too blurry to make out clearly, but something told her that this person was familiar to her. The girl was talking to her, and so reluctantly Tanya tried to focus on what she was saying.

"…-ear me? How many fingers am I holding up?"

Well that didn't seem fair. How was she supposed to answer that when the girl kept making her fingers wobble and swim like jelly? "Bleugh?" Tanya replied eloquently.

The pretty face frowned in concern. Wrong answer then. "Do you know who I am?"

Know her? Her instincts said that she did, but thinking was a little too difficult right now, so instead she just mumbled out the first name that came to mind when she thought of pretty people. "Vissshaaa?"

The pretty face looked away. "I think she has a concussion!"

"-… rget her Ty! You're needed over here!"

The pretty face shot her one last look of concerns, and then darted away. Slowly Tanya rolled her head just a little bit to the side, ignoring the spots that swam across her vision, to see where the pretty girl had gone. There were a lot of people in shiny red armour firing pretty fireworks out of their sleeves at an outrageously buff old man, who was throwing gigantic boulders at them while some people dressed in green behind him ran away down a tunnel. Something about the scene made her gut clench in panic, and so for a few minutes Tanya blankly watched the fight, entranced by the colourful displays.

Slowly however her mind and body began to start clicking back together again, and with it Tanya's memories came rushing back in, alongside the throbbing pain. That's right, she was the one who was supposed to be commanding this battle! And everything had been going so smoothly, until King Bumi had shunted a stone battering ram up from the floor right into the face. Tanya could still see the offending rock lying discarded about a hundred feet away, and shuddered to think how far she'd been sent flying.

Every muscle in her body begged her to just stay down. Her neck in particular felt like someone had stabbed a few knives into it, and if she lost focus for even a second her eyes would cross and go out of focus. But among the crowd of rebels who hadn't managed to flee yet, Tanya could still spot flashes of orange and blue robes. The Avatar and his water peasant friend were waiting to get everyone else clear! There was still a chance to catch them!

Through sheer power of will, Tanya began to push herself back up to her feet. Her stomach flipped as if it was about to throw up, and twice Tanya blacked out for a moment as her spinning sense of balance became to much to bear, but fortunately by the time she had one foot up one of her soldiers noticed and rushed over to help, allowing her to sling an arm over their shoulder for support. "Admiral, I really think you should lie down-…"

"No time!" Tanya croaked, already taking her first unsteady step forward. "Can't. Let. Avatar. Escape!"

"But admiral, that old guy-…" The soldier swallowed nervously, and it wasn't hard to see why. The space between the soldiers and the rebels looked like a picture of hell: a cracked landscape of sharp, jutting rocks and stray fires. In the middle of it King Bumi cackled madly like Lucifer himself, swatting aside dozens of firebenders with a barrage of flying rocks. Just like Pakku back at the North Pole he was putting everything he had into keeping the fire nation army back, and he was succeeding. Even Azula, backed up by Ty Lee and Mai, couldn't get close to him before he brought a boulder crashing down on their heads. Why were there so many absurdly powerful old people?

"Bumi! Come on, we've got to go!" Tanya heard Aang shout as the last of the rebels disappeared into the tunnel, leaving just him, Katara and Wang Fire to wait for Bumi.

The old king looked back at him, a complex look on his face. He seemed… sad? No, mournful, and yet happy at the same time. "Sorry Aang. It isn't to be. The paths of our destiny must split here." Bumi replied solemnly.

A sinking feeling settled in Tanya's gut as she realised what he was about to do. "Everyone! Retreat!" She yelled urgently as Bumi raised his hands in the air, grasping out for something above his head, and the cavern ceiling began to rumble and quake. "He's going to bring the cave down on our heads!"

The soldiers didn't need to be told twice. With cries of panic and fear they turned to run back up the stairs as boulders and chunks of crystal the size of cars began raining down from above. The soldier supporting her even swept her up into a bridal carry and made a dash for safety, causing her head to spin as she was roughly jostled around.

Bumi's mad laughter echoed like a haunting spirit throughout the cave as it crumbled apart, burying everything in rubble. Tanya and the last of the soldiers barely made it up the stairs before something finally gave in and the entire ceiling collapsed, bringing down an avalanche of dirt and rock that completely filled the space behind them. The palace groaned and shook as the bedrock it had been built upon sunk, causing much of it to fall in on itself, and Tanya shut her eyes as a huge cloud of dusty dirt came rushing out from the staircase behind them, sending her and the soldiers into a coughing fit.

That crazy son of a bitch! He'd collapsed the entire cave on himself to make sure that The Avatar and the rebels couldn't be pursued! Tanya would have screamed in frustration if her neck didn't still feel like it had shards of glass in it, and so settled for glaring balefully at the rubble as if the mad king was hiding beneath it.

The other soldiers were all gasping for breath, the more wary among them eyeing the now half-collapsed palace around them as if unsure whether it would also fall upon them. The only person who didn't seem ruffled was Azula, who stood with a straight back as she brushed the dirt off her armour. To the average person she might have looked calm and composed, but those who knew her better could tell from her pursed lips and the thunder in her eyes that her temper was also boiling.

"Ladies." She said with forced calm, turning to look at Tanya, Ty Lee and Mai. "There's been a change of plans. Tracking Zuko can wait. Mai, pack your things. Ty Lee, requisition us some transport."

She clenched her fist, and from the cracks between her fingers the ghostly blue light of her signature flames flared for a second.

"We're going Avatar hunting."

Couldn't resist that little Batman beyond reference. Sorry.

And yes, as many people predicted, that's another member of the White Lotus down. After all, you'd have to be an insanely skilled earthbender to survive something like a cave-in, wouldn't you? Yessir, King Bumi is definitely, 100% without a shadow of a doubt, not coming back in this story.

Probably.

This was quite a combat intensive chapter, so I hope you all dont mind that the next one is planned to be a bit more dialogue focused. See you all next time!