Sky bison were awful methods of transportation.
Perhaps he was a little biassed, seeing as how many times he'd had to glare up angrily at this floating ball of fat and hair as it whisked The Avatar away from his clutches yet again, but in Zuko's opinion even his rusted old ship had been better. Sure, being able to fly saved you a lot of time by flying over obstacles rather than having to go around them, but there were trade-offs.
For one it was very, very cold up in the sky. The wind had a sharper chill the higher up you went that constantly bit into any exposed skin, and Appa's saddle provided no sort of barrier to protect passengers from it. Zuko shuddered to think what it must be like when it started raining. Secondly, like any animal, the beast had to stop often for food and rest, and every time they did he could not help but get restless at the thought that their pursuers might be catching up; his paranoia conjuring images of Azula or Tanya bursting out at them from the trees.
But thirdly, and most annoyingly, was the utter lack of privacy. His old ship hadn't exactly been the most spacious model, but at least there Zuko had always had the captain's quarters to retreat to when he wanted to brood-… plan his future strategies privately. Appa's saddle was no bigger than his old cabin, but was now shared by four people and a monkey-lemur without any walls to allow them a sense of space. Any and all conversations became group conversations, and it was difficult to keep your body language from revealing how you were feeling for extended periods of time.
The Avatar was clearly upset by how things had ended back at Omashu. It hadn't taken Zuko long to piece together that Bumi had been some sort of friend of his long ago, and that The Avatar in some part blamed himself for the king's death. Katara also seemed very low: torn between frustration at her defeat at Tanya's hands and her need to comfort Aang. Really the only one in any sort of fit state was Sokka, to whom the task of trying to cheer up the other two had fallen.
For his part, Zuko wasn't exactly feeling great. The thought that his secret could be exposed at any moment had him on edge, which was only made worse since the cramped saddle gave him nowhere to hide when Katara and Sokka finally started asking questions. Who was he? Where did he come from? Why had he been willing to help Aang twice now? Fortunately, because they believed him to be mute and because his mask gave him the look of a mysterious type, Zuko could get away with giving very vague, mimed answers. The fact that he'd already somewhat earned their trust, and that The Avatar seemed keen to support him for some strange reason, made things easier as well. As far as they were concerned he was simply The Blue Spirit, a swordsman from the Earth Kingdom who wanted to keep his name and history to himself, but had a grudge against the Fire Nation.
It was slightly unnerving how The Avatar played along with his lies. The boy was by no means a good actor, and his painfully unsubtle attempts to pretend he didn't know who The Blue Spirit was beneath the mask were enough to make Zuko wince. The fact that he was utterly confused as to why The Avatar was playing along at all only made things worse. Had weeks of chasing him from one pole to the other not made it clear that he was trying to capture him? Who in their right minds invited a repeated attempted kidnapper to come travelling with them? Was this all some strange, elaborate trap?
Still, let it not be said that Zuko was one to let an opportunity slip by. If The Avatar wanted to sleep next to a hungry tiger then he shouldn't be surprised when it bit him. All Zuko had to do was tag along for now, wait until they stopped to rest somewhere near to a Fire Nation encampment, then snatch The Avatar when the others had their backs turned.
It was as Zuko was mulling over such plans, listening with only half an ear as Sokka and Katara bickered about something unimportant, that The Avatar suddenly spoke up. "Hey, do you guys hear that?"
Zuko cocked his head. All he could hear was the whistling of the cold sky winds.
"Hear what, Aang?" Katara asked, sounding just as confused as he was.
"Something is… calling me…" Aang trailed off, then with a small tug of his reins, directed Appa to start descending into the forest below. "I know this is going to sound weird, but I think it's the swamp."
"Is it telling you where we can get something to eat?" Sokka questioned, looking nervously down at the forest. Zuko couldn't blame him for the note of reluctance in his tone; something about the trees sent an unpleasant shiver down his back. There was a strange aura about this place; something decidedly unnatural about it.
"No, I ... I think it wants us to land there."
"No offence to the swamp, but I don't see any land there to land on."
Aang frowned. "I don't know. Bumi said to learn earthbending I would have to wait and listen, and now I'm actually hearing the earth. Do you want me to ignore it?"
As one Sokka, Katara, Zuko and Momo looked over Appa's saddle down at the swamp below. Something about the leaves on the trees seemed reminiscent of thousands of teeth lining a hungry maw, waiting to swallow them up.
"Yes." Sokka replied bluntly.
Katara nodded in agreement. "I don't know. There's something ominous about that place."
Zuko nodded his head emphatically to show his support. His instincts warned him that something spiritual was afoot in this place, and knowing his luck with the spirits he'd probably end up being attacked by killer shrubbery of something.
"Okay, since everyone feels so strongly about this, bye swamp." Aang looked reluctant, but nonetheless cracked the reins to pull Appa back up. It was strange to see someone as powerful as the Avatar conceding to his companions' wishes so easily. Mai and Ty Lee's opinions had never stopped Azula doing whatever she wanted. "Yip, Yip!"
Zuko breathed a sigh of relief, happy to have avoided that potential disaster, and felt the rush of his own warm breath against his mask. Yet, to his surprise, the rush continued even after his exhale finished; turning colder and somewhat stronger. No, that wasn't his breath: it was the wind picking up unusually suddenly, and for some reason moving against the direction it had previously been going in.
He looked behind them, and nearly jumped out of his skin! Katara, Sokka and Aang, alerted by his sudden shift, looked behind as well, and each shouted in alarm at what they saw!
Out of nowhere, a hurricane had risen to life behind them!
If Mai had to describe how Tanya looked right now in one word, it was "sore."
Several cracks in the skull, a thoroughly bruised face, and a splitting headache that lasted for days, suggesting some level of brain injury, was not the sort of thing that anyone, even a soldier as tough as her, could just walk off. The Fire Nation's medical officers were very experienced in treating boulder-related injuries by now, and had told Azula in no uncertain terms that after taking a hit like the one King Bumi had dished out directly to the face, Tanya would be spending the rest of the week resting in bed even if they had to physically strap her to it.
Tanya wasn't exactly in a state to argue with them, given how staying lucid for more than a couple of hours at a time was a challenge in itself for her, but Azula hadn't been happy. The fact that The Avatar had escaped them hadn't sat well with her at all, and as much as she'd hid it behind a calm facade, Mai knew that she was just itching to get hunting after him again. More than once they toyed with the idea of ditching Tanya in Omashu and pressing on without her, but thankfully a solution had quickly presented itself that made doing so unnecessary. Using her royal status, Azula had been able to requisition the prototype of a new ground vehicle being sent to the front lines for testing: a monstrous beast of steel and steam much faster than the regular tanks, that'd been designed to quickly run supplies through difficult terrain. The Tank Train. Tanya could rest inside while she, Azula and Ty Lee rotated between driving shifts. (Though how much rest Tanya could actually get when Ty Lee took the wheel was anyone's guess. That girl was not a natural-born driver.)
However despite being on The Avatar's trail, Azula's mood had yet to improve. Mai was under no illusions as to why. Growing up, she'd gained plenty of insight into the tangled, messy and downright unhealthy relationship that was the friendship, if it could truly be called that, between Azula and Tanya.
Mai was no fool: she'd known from the first day Azula had picked her and Ty Lee to be her friends why the princess of the Fire Nation had singled them out over all others. They were noble-born, and so possessed enough pedigree to be seen as acceptable company for a princess; they both possessed innate talents for skills that Azula lacked the time to truly master herself but would find very useful; and most importantly they were not fire-benders, and so were unlikely to ever surpass Azula's skill in combat. When Azula had grudgingly introduced Mai and Ty Lee to Tanya on the day that the blonde girl arrived at the Royal Academy for Girls, making it clear that she was to be welcomed into their friendship group, to say that Mai was surprised was an understatement. After all, Tanya was the exact opposite of them: born as a dirt-poor orphan; trained in roughly the same skills as Azula; and not only a firebender, but one already capable of fighting Azula to a draw. By all rights she was exactly the sort of person that Azula would consider both beneath her station and a threat to her superiority.
Later, when Tanya had left to explore the school on her own for a while, Azula explained the situation to them in furious whispers: how her father was forcing her to take Tanya into their circle as a punishment for not defeating her at her first tournament. In the privacy of her own thoughts, Mai added this fact to her growing list of suspicions that the Fire Lord was not a good parent.
As they'd all gotten to know her, it soon became clear that the matter was further complicated by the fact that Azula and Tanya were an incredibly bad mix. All of their worst traits: their obsessions with order, strength and control; their perception of people as resources; and of course their respective streaks of cruelty; they saw reflected, rivalled and encouraged in each other. Yet these similarities also made it difficult for them to recognise how other aspects of their personality were different, and thus fail to truly understand each other. Tanya, with her surprisingly lack of social awareness, didn't have a clue that each and every one of Azula's sarcastic barbs were anything more than genuinely friendly comments, and that their repeated spars and contests was more than honest competition. Azula meanwhile was convinced that Tanya was just as sly and manipulative as her, and mistook her attempts at friendship as taunts about a situation Tanya hadn't even noticed.
Perhaps in another world, where neither had been shaped into unwitting rivals and pitted against each other by the Firelord, they could have been real friends? Alas, it would never be so in Ozai's world. Here Azula would always see Tanya as the one challenge she could never surpass, and Tanya would forever remain clueless that her closest friend actually hated her.
The reason why Azula was so frustrated now, and had been so for a while now according to Ty Lee, was that even though she'd been officially put in charge of their group by the Fire Lord, it was obvious that Tanya was still beyond her control. Omashu had made that clear. Even though it had ended poorly, nobody would deny that it had been Tanya, not Azula, who'd been in command of the city. Sure Tanya followed any order Azula directly gave her, but only because she wanted to, rather than because she felt like Azula was actually in a position to boss her around. And when the situation took a turn for the worst Tanya didn't hesitate to step up and assume command for herself without even stopping to ask Azula's opinion.
Because Tanya didn't fear Azula. She never had. She didn't seem to fear anyone beside Ozai himself, and that knowledge burned Azula like no fire ever could.
The vehicle shook and rocked violently as it smashed head first through a row of trees, and the sound of something bumping against the metal floor, followed by a groaning "oww…" echoing from the carriage behind alerted them that Tanya had been thrown out of bed by the force of it. "Oops. Sorry" Ty Lee apologised sheepishly from behind the wheel.
Azula shot Mai a quick glance, her narrowed eyes silently conveying the message "go deal with it."
With a heavy sigh, Mai stood up and went to check on Tanya.
The carriage that Tanya lay in was a VIP guest carriage: used when high ranking officers or noblemen needed to be transported via the tank train. It consisted of four small but well adorned rooms, each of which was claimed by a member of their group. Despite being as well made and luxurious as was practically possible, there was no getting around there simply wasn't much room in a train carriage to work with, and so everything had been packed closely together. Unfortunately for Tanya, that meant that being thrown out of bed by the previous impact had caused her to collide with the door of her room and push it open. Lying face-down on the door, tangled in a mess of bedsheets and a mop of her own uncombed hair, Tanya certainly did not look the part of the dread admiral who struck fear into the hearts of the nation's enemies.
"Visha? What time is it?" Tanya mumbled blearily into the floor.
Mai sighed again. Whenever the effects of her concussion took hold, Tanya kept mistaking her and Ty Lee for someone called Visha. Mai had absolutely no idea who that was, and was beginning to suspect that it was some sort of imaginary friend. "No Tanya, it's me. Mai."
Tanya groaned into the carpeted floor. "I need a coffee."
"You need to go back to bed and sleep, not try and keep yourself awake." Mai countered.
"But there's urgent work to do!"
"Which we've got handled. Stop fretting. We've picked up The Avatar's trail heading towards Ba Sing Se, and with the progress we're making we'll have caught up to him in about half a dozen days."
"You're missing the point!" Tanya growled, trying to push herself up with her arms. Yet her sense of balance was still terribly out of whack, and all she managed to do was slump gracelessly onto one side. That didn't serve to take any of the angry wind out of her sails however. "He's got the backing of those damn spirits behind him! And as long as he does, no matter how many times we catch him or beat him down, as long as there's the slightest possibility for him to escape he'll always slip the net somehow!"
"Calm down. Getting worked up isn't going to help your head heal up any faster." Mai reprimanded stoically. "You know it's funny: for all that you were raised by the fire sages, I didn't expect you to be the type to blame anything on the will of the spirits. You've always been so practical. Sometimes I suspected that you didn't even really believe in them."
Tanya snorted and rolled onto her back, glaring spitefully up at the ceiling. "Oh, I believe in them alright. I believe they're the most selfish, arrogant, manipulative assholes in existence: one of them in particular!"
Mai wasn't often the expressive kind, but even she couldn't help the flash of surprise that crossed her face. Everybody believed in the spirits, and although the Fire Nation had become much more apathetic to them in recent years she'd never heard of anybody actively disliking them before. One or two of the nastier ones, sure, but never the spirits as a collective. "You sound as if you've met them before."
Tanya frowned. "I-... no, ignore me. This concussion is just playing with my head." She looked away, and Mai's instincts flared at the suspicious motion. Tanya was hiding something, she was sure of it. "The only spirits I can say I've ever really met in this life were the ocean and m-..." She trailed off, staring blankly at the wall for a few seconds, then suddenly sat up with a burst of energy!
"The Ocean and Moon Spirits!"
"Wait! Who are you!" The others were right. This swamp sucked.
Aang trod through the murky water, goopy mud clumping thickly around his feet with each step. Although the swamp was wide and mostly open, the humid air and dark canopy above made him feel a little trapped. He didn't get the sense that this place was evil, but nor did he feel like it was inherently good either. It was ancient, beyond caring for humans and their ideas of morality, and though Aang would not begrudge that he also had no desire to stay here any longer than he had to.
But he couldn't leave yet. Every so often he'd see a small girl in a fine dress standing a short distance away, accompanied by a flying pig. He could hear her laughing, yet whenever he tried to get close she would disappear, and reappear elsewhere. She'd tried chasing her through the treetops at first, but even he couldn't airbend forever; particularly in a place like this, where the very air felt sluggish and heavy to move.
The sound of giggling caught his attention again, and this time Aang spotted the girl standing among a set of strangely shaped rocks. "Wait up!" he cried and ran over to her. Yet to nobody's great surprise before he could get close she ran around the back of one of the rocks.
Aang made to follow, but stopped as something caught his attention. The rocks had seemed oddly-shaped before, but now he was closer, he could pick out why: they were all unusually rectangular. They were old, and covered top to bottom in moss and muck, yet Aang had never seen naturally occurring rocks take such a shape before.
He walked over to the nearest one, brushing away some of the dirt that covered it, and found stone underneath. Not natural stone though: cut stone, chiselled into bricks. These were buildings! Was he in some sort of village?
"RRRRWWWAAAAAAAAAGGGHHH!"
Suddenly the very ground beneath him began to rumble and quake, almost throwing Aang off his feet! The leaves from the trees above came tumbling down like heavy green rain, and the buildings cracked and crumbled beneath the force of it! It was an earthquake, but one unlike Aang had ever heard of before. He could swear that alongside the rumbling he could hear the voice of a girl screaming with rage, the sound of her voice synchronising perfectly with the shaking of the earth.
"Where is that coming from?" He muttered to himself, heading in the direction of where the earthquake felt stronger. As he ran, the crumbled ruins of the ancient buildings around him grew larger and most closely packed together, changing from a small rural village to a fully grown city. From the style of them, Aang guessed that they were Earth Kingdom buildings.
Finally Aang arrived at the epicentre of the earthquakes. Right in the middle of the city was a perfectly round circle of clear, barren earth: as if a force of unimaginable strength had blasted everything around it to smithereens. And right in the epicentre of the blast stood a cave, from out of which howled the voice of rage. Painted on the upper lip of the cave in big, bold red letters was a single word.
BERSERKER.
Aang didn't like this. Not one bit. Everything about this cave, and air of wrath that oozed from it, set his hairs of end. Quickly he turned and fled, keen to find his friends and get out of this place as quickly as possible.
"And this is… what exactly?"
"Zhao's trove." Tanya replied dutifully, digging through the messy box filled with old scrolls and folded sheets of parchment. "It's where he kept all his strategies, notes and other documents relevant to his plan to invade the North Pole. After his passing it came into my possession."
Azula raised an eyebrow in a small sign of interest. "Including the scroll that detailed the identities of the Ocean and Moon spirits?"
"Yes, but for once that's not the important part. What we need is this!" Tanya grasped a plain book bound in brown leather that had the faded colour of something regularly sandblasted, and held it aloft as if it were made of solid gold.
"Ooh! What is it?" Ty Lee asked, not at all following what was happening but apparently just happy that Tanya was so active again.
Tanya cracked the book open, revealing pages upon pages of sloppy handwriting within. "Zhao's field journal from way back during his campaigns in the Earth Kingdom. It was around this time that he discovered the spirit scroll in the first place." She flicked through the pages, eyes scanning the dates written as heading for the one she needed. "A lot of it is pontificating over his thoughts on destiny and his early ideas for The North, but some of his earlier entries reference how to get… here!"
Tanya slapped the open page down on the table, gesturing for the others to have a look. Azula, Ty Lee and Mai peered in at it curiously, quickly devouring its contents. "A library in the desert?" Mai deadpanned.
"Not just any library! A spirit library!" Tanya declared passionately. "One that, according to Zhao's entries, has been owned and run by spirits for longer than recorded history, and contains secrets that even humanity has yet to unlock. Normally I'd be doubtful, but I confirmed for myself that the scroll he stole from there was the real deal, so why not the rest of the library too?"
Mai glanced between the journal and a map of the Earth Kingdom posted on a nearby wall, quickly narrowing down the area Zhao claimed that library was located at. "I can't say the idea of crossing the desert thrills me, but we should be able to manage it fairly easily in this vehicle. And if The Avatar is heading to Ba Sing Se, as his trail suggests, then we should still be able to get back on track to intercept him so long as we aren't at the library for very long. What would be the point though? Are you hoping to look for the identity of another spirit to slay?"
"Maybe another day, but we have a more pressing topic to cover at the moment." Tanya replied seriously. "Everything has a beginning, and I do not believe The Avatar simply popped out of a hole in the ground one day. There must have been a first Avatar, or some kind of precursor. If we can find out how The Avatar cycle began, we can understand how it works. And if we can understand how it works we will know how to end it. Permanently."
Ty Lee hummed thoughtfully. "I don't think anybody really knows much about The Avatar, other than that they can bend all the elements and become scarily powerful. Even if we miss our opportunity for an ambush and the Avatar gets to Ba Sing Se, I think the Firelord would be happy to know more about their weaknesses. What do you think, Azula?"
Azula, usually an outspoken supporter of gaining dangerous intelligence on her enemies, had been worryingly quiet so far. She wore a frown, but Tanya couldn't tell if it was a thoughtful one or disapproving. There was a pause as the other girls waited for their leader to give her judgement.
"I think-…" Azula finally answered, "that your insistence on blaming your failures on yet more spiritual nonsense is getting out of hand."
It took Tanya a second to process what Azula had said. Then another to assume that she must have misunderstood, and process it again. Not in her wildest dreams had she expected Azula, the master manipulator and future Firelord, to pass on the opportunity for useful intel. "Wha-…"
"Every time The Avatar has escaped you so far you've given the same excuse: that it's all been the spirits doing." Azula sneered. "But I didn't see any of them trampling around Omashu. All I saw was you throwing your rank around, taking command without any regard for the chain of command, and then getting outsmarted. The Avatar slipped through our fingers because you weren't good enough, not because of any divine providence. And now you want to waste more time, give up on more opportunities to catch our target, chasing a mythical solution to your fantasy problem. Absolutely not!"
Ty Lee and Mai, seeming to sense the spiking tension in the air, took a step back as Tanya stood up, her expression's incredulous. "Azula, you cannot be serious! The Avatar-…"
"Can be beaten, with enough skill." Azula interrupted. "Skill that I possess, but that you clearly do not. Which is why we will be following my plan and continue to track The Avatar."
"It's not a question of skill!" Tanya shot back, frustration leaking into her voice. "I did all I could back at Omashu, better than anyone else could have been expected to! You don't understand-…"
"I understand well enough!" Azula snapped angrily. "I understand that after so long being hailed as some sort of prodigy, you have trouble accepting such a repeated string of failures!"
Tanya stormed forward, and for a moment she well and truly lost control of her temper. Her face was a rictus of fury as she prodded Azula in the chest. "This isn't about me! This is about you! Ever since we were given this mission you've taken issue with everything I do! It feels to me like you're rejecting this plan just because I'm the one suggesting it!"
"Hey, maybe we should all take a second to calm down?" Ty Lee suggested meekly, but neither Azula nor Tanya even acknowledged that she'd spoken.
"You continue to ignore my authority and do whatever the hell you want, in spite of the fact that you were specifically ordered to serve me!" Azula shot back, squaring her shoulders as if preparing for a fight.
"I am serving you! By advising you on The Avatar and utilising my skills as a commander!"
"I don't need your advice, and your much-vaunted command has been severely lacking so far!"
"Umm… girls?" Ty Lee tried to interject.
"Everything else I've done, I've done perfectly!" Tanya roared. "The Avatar is the only exception, which I keep trying to tell you is because of spiritual interference! If you don't listen to me we'll be doomed to keep missing him by a hair's breadth!"
"I will not fail just because you have!" Azula shouted back. "How dare you assume that, because the task is beyond your abilities, it must be beyond mine as-..."
"Girls! Stop! Please!"
Suddenly Ty Lee was between the two of them, and both firebenders became aware that they'd drawn closer to the other without realising, fists clenched and ready to throw. The atmosphere between them was thick and dangerous, and quite possibly would have broken out into genuine violence if not for Ty Lee's timely intervention. Quickly they both stepped back and forced themselves to relax, trying to pretend the near slip in control had never happened.
"This-… discussion, shall we call it, has been more trouble than it's worth." Azula growled out, swiping a single stray strand of hair out of her face. "I am the commander of this mission, and I have made my decision. We will continue to track The Avatar as planned. I won't hear another word about it. Do I make myself clear?"
Tanya grit her teeth, a thunderous scowl flashing across her expression.
"Crystal." She hissed, and stormed away.
Things are getting tense in team Azula.
If you're enjoying this story, consider reading some of the other Tanya Crossover stories out there. I've just been reading another Star Wars crossover called "Count of Serenno" by y1fellas and it's really well done. Definitely worth checking out.
See you next chapter!