Zuko didn't bother to play along with the man, so he silently shot at a pair of Dai Li, who greeted him with rock spikes and flying boulders, but that wasn't enough to stop him, not now.
Keeping up with his breathing, Zuko dodged the incoming attacks, the ones he couldn't were again controlled by Petra, who sent them back to their place of origin.
In a way, it was strange to have an Earthbender on the team, but the others had Petra to thank for keeping them from being surprised with attacks they couldn't see or dodge.
"A rat bastard like you doesn't deserve the gift you were born with," said one Dai Li, who had gotten close enough to Petra to render her Earth control ineffective.
"At least I'm not a pitiful man like you," Petra returned the insult, accepting the silent invitation to hand-to-hand combat.
Soon the two of them entered into hand-to-hand combat in which the Dai Li's technical superiority was demonstrated, thus ending the support the other young men had received, but Petra's tenacity and the strength brought by her earth element allowed her to withstand the worst and absorb the knowledge the Dai Li displayed.
Without knowing it, the Dai Li had ironically become Petra's whetstone, who gradually began to resist his attacks, to defend herself better, to counterattack at key moments, and even when she was covered in blood and bruises, her olive eyes shone with concentration.
"Annoying rock skin," muttered Ty Lee, who had tried to block a Dai Li's Chi only to feel discomfort in her finger.
"Do you think we would attack you without investigating you a bit? Although you are not a concern, you have been under our attention for a long time," Dai Li said arrogantly as he covered his fists with sharp stones, increasing the risk of his attacks.
"Then you should fire your spy because he seems to have stayed on the surface," Ty Lee replied with a small teasing smile on her lips.
Small white specks began to emerge from the girl's outstretched hands, her Chi swirling around her hands. The girl glanced at Dai Li's aura, deduced his impending attack, and prepared to respond.
She dodged the spikes that appeared beneath her feet with a leap that carried her forward, her speed even higher than before, her body hunched to reduce the air resistance, her hands at the ready.
The Dai Li created a small mound of earth that he pushed towards her to trip her, but she used it as a foothold to jump over it and land in front of the Dai Li, who was crouching, covering his body with his rock-covered arms.
But instead of using her fingers, Ty Lee struck with her fist and a grin appeared on the girl's face as she heard the familiar crunch of the stone breaking.
Taking the Dai Li by surprise, Ty Lee flexed her legs to propel her body upward in a leap, using her left fist to strike with a ferocious hook. Her body rose, her fist completely shattering the stone protecting the Dai Li, she swung his arms away and spun in mid-air to strike the man in the face with her knee.
"I don't just know how to block Chi, you fool," the girl said before continuing to attack the man with the bloody nose, who had already recovered, showing off his experience and toughness.
"Piece of cake," one Dai Li said after creating a wall of earth to defend himself from the small blades Mai had thrown at him.
The man gave her a grin before creating two huge earthen palms connected to the ground that quickly moved towards Mai, who nimbly jumped back to avoid the grip.
She knew that as an assassin, she was good at recognizing danger, and to be caught by those hands was to become the human equivalent of mosquitoes, so as she threw needles, blades, and even steel balls at the Dai Li, she kept dodging.
Until one of the marbles thrown by Mai exploded into a black smoke that covered Dai Li and herself. In such a situation, Dai Li quickly bent down to touch the ground, trying to feel the seismic waves propagated by her enemy's footsteps, but he could not perceive anything.
Out of instinct, he turned around and struck the ground hard, creating curved spikes, but there was nothing there, only black dust. Dai Li was not alarmed, he was used to fighting in the dark and his ears were sharp enough to perceive everything around him, but there was nothing.
It was as if the girl was not in the area covered by the smoke, but what had he created her for? It wasn't until he felt a small uncomfortable sensation in his chest that he realized it was just a special smoke bomb, not that he was poisoned.
He didn't mind dying, but the Dai Li didn't want to waste his life in this place, in the hands of a brat, so he chose a direction where he could hear his companions fighting and ran towards them.
Only to feel a terrible pain in his Achilles tendon, his body stumbled and when he tried to touch his limb, he felt blood, his blood. Then, for the first time, he heard the voice of his enemy.
"You won't get out of here," Mai said in front of Dai Li, coming out of nowhere and scaring the man a bit, who wasn't used to this situation.
It was his people who always came out of the shadows and tormented the others, not the other way around, such a situation, contrary to what he was used to, made him fall into a state of mental chaos, and although it took him a short time to recover with his training, Mai had long since disappeared from his small field of vision.
Zuko used his left hand to send a concentrated stream of fire at the rock wall that stood in his way, shattering it with the concentration of the flames.
Maybe he couldn't beat Azula in terms of intensity or fire spread - blue fire was an extremely good flame at that - but he'd found his way. Firebending had the peculiarity that, under certain circumstances, he could turn the fire into pure impact power.
Why would that happen? If fire was, in a sense, almost as elusive as air, but even air can become "hard" or heavy, Zuko understood, then he explored this characteristic of fire to the fullest, creating a unique style for himself.
It was not the lush hot flames of his sister or the intense fire of his uncle or father, it could not even compress as much as Shisui's water or be as solid as rocks, but for him... it was what he needed to complete his own path.
The sword in his right hand was covered in flames that gradually took on a fixed shape, no longer waving randomly driven by the wind or his sudden movements but clinging to his weapon like a warm cloak.
And when he swung his weapon at a huge rock that flew at him, he could easily cut it, leaving both sides of the projectile scorched. It was demanding, but he wasn't here to conserve energy.
Zuko would end up including 3 people in his body count! The Prince slashed and smashed everything in his path, spikes rising from the ground, walls, waves of earth, rocks, arrows, stone hands, everything.
When he was near a Dai Li who tried to step aside and engage in hand-to-hand combat, his mind focused as he held his weapon with both hands. Chi fueled his fire not only with emotions but with his own will, his knowledge, and his experience.
His fire did not change, it was still the same as everyone else's, but the Dai Li saw Zuko's sword coming closer, even though he managed to turn a stone he held close to him into a needle that he shot at the prince, and even though his companion did not hesitate to attack, knowing that he could hurt him, Zuko did not stop his attack.
A gigantic rock thorn pierced the Dai Li from behind, threatening to impale Zuko as well, the stone needle piercing the prince's left shoulder, but his sword had already been released, it had already taken shape.
A red arc of fire slashed upward from below, rising several feet into the air, slicing everything in two, Dai Li's body and the stone thorn that was inches away from plunging into Zuko's abdomen.
Zuko felt his injured shoulder, he thought about leaving the stone in there, but it could be used against him, so he pulled it out and cauterized his wound. With the sword raised in his other hand and still connected to the fire bow, the prince swung it at the other Dai Li, the one who had used his partner as cover for his sneak attack.
The Dai Li dodged, the attack was especially slow and he was far enough away to see it coming. But the ground was left with an indentation that radiated heat and glowed red.
Zuko caught his breath as he fanned the flame on his weapon, it was an experimental attack, but it served his purpose. Ever since Shisui had told him how some swordsmen could create "wind" by waving their weapons, he had wanted something similar.
Sure, he could shoot fire bolts through his weapon, but nothing substantial so far. And even though he knew that his sword would suffer structural damage from what he was doing, it wasn't the weapon he held in his hand that mattered.
"What matters is the sword I carry in my heart," Zuko muttered before resuming his attack on the Dai Li, who was visibly more cautious and tried to group with others, but Zuko wouldn't let him interrupt the others' fight, not when Azula and Shisui seemed to be having fun.
They had to clear much of the battlefield because of Azula, who was fighting two of the best Dai Li who had come on this mission, who could make Earth creatures tough enough to stop the brutality of their blue fire.
But that was exactly why the princess had opted for the area and indiscriminate attacks, moving swiftly across the terrain like a shooting star. Each attack was always accompanied by a large amount of blue flames, flames they had to protect themselves from.
Until the Dai Li looked at each other for a few moments before making the same movements, it was ground style, but there was something different about it, light movements, as if they were trying to float.
"Airbending?" Azula recognized, moving towards them to stop them from doing what they were planning, but the Dai Li were much faster.
A tornado of earth emerged from the ground, not only spinning wildly but seeming to have considerable suction as it attracted Azula's blue flames, which were scattered across the field.
The tornado took on a reddish hue from the heat and temperature, but Dai Li's concentration kept it spinning faster and faster. It was like a giant earth-shattering drill, and this thing was headed for Azula.
"Is this what ShiShi meant when he said each element can learn from others, even its opposite?" muttered Azula as she watched in awe as the giant earth and rock creation headed toward her.
Azula was very stubborn about some things, preferring a very brutal fire style and focusing purely on power, not thinking so much about the relationship between fire and the other elements.
That's why she took a dim view of Zuko's attempts to emulate Earthbenders to harness the power of fire; she thought her Azula Flames were better than that; if anything, she emulated some of Shisui's actions that made her flames more malleable, but nothing more.
But in the face of something she might never see an Earthbender do so easily, she recognized it and even felt a little foolish for acting a little immature when of all the people she knew, Shisui had chosen to learn from other elements and incorporate them into his style.
'I'm a fool too,' she thought to herself as she focused on the impending threat, it was never too late to try new things, especially when she had already practiced what she was about to do.
She wasn't going to fight it, no, she was going to attack the source of the problem directly. Azula shook her body with a softness inspired by the waterbenders, and embarrassment appeared on her face as she remembered how she laughed when she saw Zuko clumsily imitating Petra's movements.
Now she was directly imitating Shisui, whom she had watched train since they were young children, his actions etched in her mind and with her talent, she was able to make them her own.
Her index and middle fingers of both hands outlined a subtle trajectory in the air; if Shisui bothered to look, he would recognize the Yin-Yang in these gestures. Blue sparks, different from her flames, erupted from her hands, her energy splitting into two different strands, but trying to come together again.
Under her guidance, their chi collided and their fire transformed into something else. The sound of thousands of flying birds echoed, and a thick blue beam flew from her hand toward one of the Dai Li at such a speed that it was unable to defend itself.
The rock vortex collapsed in front of Azula, and she hurried to avoid being crushed by the pile of hot rocks. The Dai Li she had attacked was on the ground, shaking from severe burns on his body, and the other looked at her in fear.
Not to be outdone, although it was known that the royal family could create lightning as a sub-element, they never thought that Azula would learn such an ability, let alone so fluently and quickly as to use it in battle.
'I still have time to learn more about the other elements before Shisui graduates.' With such a thought, Azula was very upset that she would have to wait two years before seeing Shisui again, who would be leaving for the army right after school ended.
So her fire was amplified as she leaped at the fallen Dai Li, her right hand sending out a pillar of fire from the soles of her feet that twisted into a serpent of flame that flew at the fallen enemy and burned him to a crisp.
A stone spear flew toward Azula, who had turned her back, but she gently waved her hands, creating a dome of blue fire that partially deflected the spear, just enough to avoid hurting her.
"Now I feel more desire to burn you," Azula said, noticing that her control of the restless blue flames became even better with each movement she imitated from Shisui, reminding her even more of the early separation.
Azula would take her time to integrate Shisui's movements and then do the same with Petra's, as she had seen it was good for her, why continue to be stubborn?
Maybe then she would have more to talk about with Shisui, they could even spend more time training together. This thought brought a smile to Azula's face, making the Dai Li uncomfortable as she saw the princess laughing as she stepped over a charred corpse.
Not even the Dai Li were as sadistic as the princess, but the man had no fear of death. He could see it now, they were going to lose this raid, and their leader's attempt to capture a sage in the heart of the Fire Nation now sounded like what it was, the delusions of a madman.
A bit of human sensibility shone in Dai Li's eyes as he questioned his life while trying every way he could to stop Azula. Maybe in the end, he could die like a real person and not a puppet.