Chapter 48: Disappointment (Final)

Zuko’s attack couldn’t simply be ignored. Azula believed the incident should be reported to the Fire Lord. A letter was sent to him with a detailed description of what happened. Special attention was paid to the part where Prince Zuko’s actions helped the Avatar escape. After some time, a response was received from Ozai.

No matter how one looked at it, the message carried a distinctly negative tone. The Fire Lord blamed not only Prince Zuko but his own daughter for the Master of All Elements’ escape. He wrote that she certainly had enough skill to stop her brother and the Avatar. Furthermore, the Avatar was just a pathetic boy. Azula was also reprimanded for the purges that had occurred in Omashu.

Earlier, when we were in that city, we were actively being sought. Our duo was lucky, but many other Firebenders, who had spent years preparing a quiet coup to bring one of the key Earth Kingdom cities under the Fire Lord’s control, were not. Several dozen agents were discovered right at their base during a secret meeting. Soon after, they found themselves in prison. The underground network of Omashu was exposed. The operation, which had taken time and precious resources to prepare, had failed.

It seemed only Ozai and the involved agents knew about its preparation. If the princess and I had known about it, we would have acted according to a different scenario.

Ozai also brought up the fact that after Azula’s contact with Zhao, the latter had unexpectedly stopped replying to his letters. The princess’s father subtly hinted in his reply whether Azula had gained access to the Wan Shi Tong’s Library, the Spirit of Knowledge, and was now using it for her own benefit, having completely forgotten about the Fire Nation and her loving father.

But the blow to Azula was not Ozai’s accusations. The princess dropped the letter when she read the line that explicitly stated she was permitted to dispose of her own brother. And if Iroh interfered, he could be eliminated, too.

It would be a lie to say that Azula harbored warm feelings for her relatives. She only wished to look good in her father’s eyes, to earn his praise… Now, Ozai showed that family meant nothing to him. And if he could so easily dispose of his own son, his firstborn, then what would stop him from doing the same to Azula someday?

After reading the letter. those very lines where Ozai calmly spoke of eliminating Zuko, Azula fell into thought for several hours. She was so deeply withdrawn that she didn’t even notice me taking the letter and reading its contents.

Understanding what the princess was distressed about, I gently hugged her and began stroking her head. Azula’s relationship with her father was complicated. She herself had told me that when she failed to win her mother's love, she started trailing the future Fire Lord like a shadow, compensating for the lack of affection from her other parent. Over time, she stopped doing that. But it seemed somewhere deep inside, Azula was waiting for Ozai to embrace her again and say a few kind words. It appeared the princess hoped that to the Fire Lord, she was not merely an object of pride, but family.

“Even if I gain my freedom, the right to choose my own destiny, what chance is there that Father won't want to get rid of me just like Zuzu?” Azula asked after a while, looking at her reflection.

She shook off my arms and jumped to her feet.

“That will not happen! I am better than Zuko!”

While the princess devised a plan that would prove she surpassed her brother in every way, a letter arrived for me from the Fire Lord. He demanded a report on Princess Azula’s actions during the time we traveled together. I detailed all the events that had transpired between us across ten pages. I wrote it "truthfully." After all, Azula couldn't lie to her own father, could she? That was my thinking. My message was an elaborated and rewritten version of Azula's letter, attempting to whitewash her in Ozai's eyes. I had decided to place my bet on the princess. I had no future with the Avatar, much less the Fire Lord. The Avatar had disappointed me after the information I learned from Azula. Ozai did not inspire trust. He was far too willing to dispose of his own son, and I was nothing to him.

****

The captured Kyoshi Warriors were delivered to one of the Fire Nation’s many prisons. Azula harbored a grudge against the island's defenders, so we deviated slightly from our route, and our prisoners ended up not in the nearest prison, but one where there had previously been no female inmates at all, and the mortality rate among the prisoners was almost the highest…

“Order the course to be set for the capital,” The route surprised me a little, as by Ozai’s decree, the princess was forbidden to appear in her own country’s capital for a full year while she was in exile. But I didn't argue about the chosen course. Perhaps Azula would find the friends she was counting on in the capital, who, without knowing it, would become participants in her plan not only to capture the Avatar but also in her attempt to prove that the princess was superior to her brother. I wanted to see the girls she relied on so heavily.

On our way to the capital, we were stopped by a patrol ship, which regularly cruised from base to base for inspections. There was nothing unusual about this. Azula had swapped the royal family’s ship for a faster vessel to respond quickly to the Avatar's appearances. Therefore, the Fire Nation border guards didn't know whose vessel they were about to inspect, and we were quite often "pulled over." Fortunately, as soon as they saw Azula, their desire to conduct a thorough inspection vanished. And our ship would quickly weigh anchor and continue on its way.

Only this time… Something about the patrol commander did not sit well with me. Whether it was his dark complexion or his blue eyes, which were uncharacteristic of the Fire Nation. And his uniform seemed to fit him strangely… As if he wasn't accustomed to wearing it.

“What are you transporting, and where are you sailing?” he inquired the moment he stepped aboard our ship.

Members of his crew followed him. This was standard and acceptable practice, as we could be, for example, pirates in disguise. But he didn't stop at just a couple of soldiers. A whole dozen ended up on our ship, which was already considered poor form, and their numbers continued to grow.

The lieutenant’s self-preservation instinct sounded the alarm, allowing him to notice something he wouldn't have given proper attention to under normal circumstances. He reported it to me.

“They are all dark-skinned,” the lieutenant whispered quietly in my ear.

I calmly nodded, simultaneously checking the soldier’s words. It was true. The entire patrol team consisted of people with a noticeable tan. Fire Nation people tan very poorly. Sometimes, darker-skinned representatives of our nation appear, but they likely have someone from another nation tucked away in their ancestry somewhere. But for mixed-race people to be on one ship in such numbers… The probability of such an outcome was infinitesimally small. So much so that my reply was completely different from what I had originally planned.

“Coffins for the enemies of the Fire Nation.”

My words startled the crew of the patrol ship. I used the second of confusion effectively: I engulfed the enemy in a wave of flame. The few who were still climbing onto our ship fell into the water. The nearest enemies suffered burns.

After the attack, I noticed that there wasn't a single bender among the opponents. The entire crew of the "patrol ship" consisted of ordinary people.

The lieutenant hastily raised the alarm to our crew, shouting for miles.

While the front rows of the enemies pulled out weapons characteristic of Fire Nation warriors, the rear rows seemed less concerned with camouflage. Their weaponry screamed that we were facing people from the Water Tribe. Besides the swords and spears found in every nation, excluding the eradicated Air Nomads, who only used Airbending for self-defense, the enemy pulled out boomerangs, clubs, machetes, axes, and some even had shields. Most of the enemy's armaments were the traditional Water Tribe blue color.

The battle ensued. We had few forces on the deck. A patrol inspection didn’t assume a fight to the death, so the crew members were at their posts or resting. The lieutenant and I prevented the enemy from breaking our forces and pushing past the deck. To my surprise, the lieutenant turned out to be a decent bender. Fighting back-to-back with him, we slowly but surely reduced the enemy's numbers.

The commander of the enemy detachment, whose face was still singed from my fire, realized that he had run into far from the easiest target and ordered a retreat. He was probably most impressed that he had lost many more subordinates than we had since the start of the battle. Firebenders and regular Fire Nation soldiers began to appear on the deck. After this, the enemy was almost instantly pushed off our ship.

“Board them!” the lieutenant immediately shouted once no living enemies remained on our vessel.

After some time, with her hands clasped behind her back, Azula came onto the deck. Examining the signs of the battle carefully, she raised an eyebrow and asked,

“What did I miss, Long?”

“Nothing worth your attention, Princess,” I replied, helping to tie up the prisoners. “But unfortunately, I must inform you that we have to deviate from the route to deliver these unexpectedly acquired prisoners to the nearest prison.”

“Hakoda, ha! You’re still alive? Amazing!” The lieutenant's voice made us turn our attention to him. He was holding the helmet of the enemy leader. “Now I see why I didn't like your face right away.”

“Lieutenant, do you recognize this man?” I asked, approaching the soldier.

“Affirmative, Captain Long!” The lieutenant immediately stopped gloating and stood at attention. “I've told you that I once served in the Southern Raiders unit. One must know the enemy by sight, so I remember the leader of the Southern Water Tribe. This is him, Hakoda.”

I looked at the lieutenant and the middle-aged man with the burned face anew. Hmm, Prince Zuko ran into trouble somewhere in the South. And the Avatar is traveling with teenagers from the Water Tribe. I doubt they are from the North.

“Do the names Katara and Sokka mean anything to you?” I asked the captured enemy. He couldn't keep his face impassive. It gave him away. At the very least, those children were familiar to him.

“No, nothing. This is the first time I’ve heard those names,” the enemy leader lied rather poorly.

“Lieutenant, kill that prisoner over there,” I pointed to a completely random man.

The lieutenant showed dedication and was next to the bound Southern Water Tribe representative in a second, with a flame ignited in his hand.

“Stop! That’s treacherous! Don’t you dare torture my people!”

A crooked smile appeared on my face:

“You must have misheard… I didn't say torture, I said kill.”

A second later, the lieutenant incinerated the man I had indicated. The enemy leader and his subordinates stared at me in horror.

“You demon…” the prisoner uttered. As if they are so merciful that they simply imprison the captives taken during their raids. Or was this the first time they went to sea disguised as our soldiers?

“Lieutenant, the enemy still hasn't spoken,” I addressed the soldier.

“Whose life should I take next, Captain?” he immediately inquired. The lieutenant clearly doesn't much care for people from the Southern Water Tribe. Perhaps he lost too many comrades during his service with the Southern Raiders.

“That prisoner over there,” I indicated the next victim. “I recall that during the fight, he was the one who killed three of your subordinates.”

“Understood,” the lieutenant replied with a grim expression, heading toward the prisoner.

“Stop! Stop!” one of Hakoda’s men suddenly screamed. “Don’t kill my brother! I’ll tell you everything. I’ll tell you!”

“Be silent, Samar!” the enemy leader cut off his subordinate, for which he received my boot to the face.

“Katara and Sokka are Hakoda’s children!” the brother of the condemned man rushed to continue.

Azula approached me.

“It seems you were mistaken, Long.” The smile on her face did not bode well for Hakoda. “There is something interesting here after all.”

“My apologies, Princess,” I said, giving a slight bow.

“Do you think the Avatar’s friends love their father?”