Chapter Text
Sozin tied his hair into the signature topknot, making sure that not a single strand was out of place as he carefully put on his headpiece.
After making sure that his clothing had no visible marks, he exited his room, making no sounds as he closed the door behind him.
He stopped by the kitchen to grab some food: slices of bread with cheese to eat immediately and a few bags of fire flakes to snack on during his visit.
He walked with a regal air towards the infirmary. The fire flakes were hidden in his clothing so as to not ruin his image.
Of course, there was no one watching him. He needed the practice though.
He spotted the guard at the entrance, looking as if he'd nod off any second.
Even with his exhaustion, the guard still turned to make a perfect salute to Sozin: his posture was perfect. It was no wonder that he was chosen as a palace guard. They were the ones responsible for defending the royal family when they were at Caldera.
"Prince Sozin," The guard spoke in a clear but subdued tone. "I apologize for my current state, I've been running around for half the night."
"Why?" Sozin said, confused. "Was there an issue that arose?"
"Not a major one," The guard said, stifling for a few seconds. He must've been holding back a yawn. "The esteemed guest has taken an interest in the books you've left him. He requested that I bring paper for him to write. I believe he was on his twenty-seventh page the last time I checked.
"Did he sleep at all?" Sozin asked, raising his voice in disbelief.
"I apologize Prince Sozin," The guard bowed his head in shame. "Our guest kept asking for more ink and paper, he wrote that he didn't feel tired."
After taking a few deep breaths to calm himself, Sozin responded, "In future instances, I implore you to follow your common sense and understand the need for rest." He turned the knob and opened the door.
The boy was sitting on his bed, calmly writing on a sheet of paper. Surrounding him were various sheets of paper: every inch of every paper has characters on them. Fifteen empty inkwells were on the cabinet next to the bed.
He looked up, his orange eyes staring at Sozin, his hand paused mid-character.
Sozin took a few seconds to study the child: His body showed no signs of fatigue or lethargy with his back in a perfect posture. His face showed no emotion.
"It's time to visit the factory," Sozin spoke. "Change into the clothes you were given and meet me outside the room."
A few minutes later, Sozin and the boy were walking down the hall. The guard had gratefully accepted the day off that Sozin offered him, already walking to his room in the barracks to get some much needed rest.
The boy was carrying his papers with him; he clenched them to his chest as he walked, his hat (Sozin requested it to cover his bald head) dipping slightly towards the front of his head.
He took one of the papers from his pile and handed it to Sozin before straightening the hat. He pointed to a sentence in the upper-left corner of the paper.
Picked a name for me. Senji.
"So quickly?" Sozin raised an eyebrow at Senji. "I would imagine choosing a name to take much longer than that."
Senji flipped through his papers with astonishing speed, taking another one from the pile and handing it off to Sozin.
Don't particularly care.
Sozin sighed, "Well, Senji is a good choice, regardless of your indifference towards it."
Senji nodded as they reached the carriage, the door open and the driver ready to go.
Sozin went into the carriage first before giving a hand to Senji. After Senji got in the carriage, Sozin signaled the driver to take them to the manufacturing district.
"Currently, the Fire Nation is in the midst of an economic revolution," Sozin said as the carriage rolled on the road. "We're also expanding the settlements in the uninhabited continent to the west of the Fire Islands. Those settlements send raw materials such as iron and coal. We send back manufactured goods to the settlements. My father, Firelord Retsen, is planning on industrializing the settlements once the population there grows big enough."
He paused to take a breath. "I'll ask for some ink and paper when we get there. You can write down what I tell you."
Senji handed him another piece of paper.
Steam Engine, Coal, Electricity, Metal, and more. These were all terms for industrialization.
This was the first piece of paper that he gave to Senji. "Yes, all of this is involved in industrialization." He continued after Senji's nod which confirmed what he thought was being asked. "We'll be visiting a refinery. Factories such as these produce the iron we need to build weapons for the nation. These weapons also play an essential role in protecting our settlements to the west."
The carriage began to slow.
"We've arrived, quite conveniently I may say." Sozin turned to Senji. "Make sure you don't get anything caught in the machinery. I've heard of workers losing fingers or even limbs to the machines."
Sozin stepped off the carriage with Senji following behind him. Much to Sozin's chagrin, Retsen had assigned three imperial guards to follow him. These guards followed behind Senji, their helmets masking their expressions.
The party walked towards the factory which was billowing a noticeable amount of smoke. People on the streets stopped what they were doing and bowed their heads to Sozin. After a few seconds, they raised their heads to look While Sozin received the most attention, a noticeable amount of the onlookers were looking at Senji. He stood out with his hat obscuring his face and small frame.
They reached the entrance of the factory; its looming height dwarfed the visitors.
A woman was waiting for them. She bowed to Sozin before speaking, "Welcome, Prince Sozin. We are humbly pleased to have you visit us today." She straightened herself. "My name is Li Wen, I'll be your escort today."
"Take me to the factory floor," Sozin said immediately. "I wish to see how the goods are produced."
Li Wen bowed again before walking through the entrance. Sozin and the rest followed her with Senji following right behind Sozin-much to the guards' suspicion.
They entered a dimly lit room. People were wheeling in large carts of coal and iron, other workers were carefully tilting the egg-shaped furnaces to remove the steel from inside, blue flames roared from the opening of the furnace. To Sozin, who'd lived his life with all of the benefits of a royal, the environment was quite displeasing, no matter how many times he saw it.
Upon taking a closer look, he saw that these people looked tired and ragged. Their clothes and skin were dirtied with coal dust, their backs were hunched and crooked, and he saw a few of them coughing in the corner; it was most likely from breathing in the coal dust.
Senji tapped his back.
Sozin turned his head to see the guards tensing up, shifting into their attacking stances.
Senji held out a sheet of paper, pointing to a sentence.
How long do they work?
“Fourteen to sixteen hours a day,” Sozin said. “They get a thirty-minute lunch break in between.” The guards, confused at the interaction, relaxed as they saw that the prince was in no immediate danger.
For the first time, Senji’s expression changed; his eyes widened ever so slightly as he took another look at the workers.
”We generally don’t want to stop production at any time in the day or night.” Sozin explained, looking at Senji “The workers accept it, so there are no reasons to change it.”
Senji nodded, looking at the workers.
——
“The workers accept it, so there are no reasons to change it.”
Senji saw one of the nearby workers clench their hands. It relaxed a few seconds later before the worker slowly picked up their shovel and put in more coal.
It didn’t seem like the workers were happy about the conditions they were living in, even if they didn’t publicly announce it.
He glanced back to see if the guards had seen the worker: they hadn’t. They were looking ahead to Sozin, ready for any threats. He saw one of their helmets tilt at him for a second.
The group reached an office at the very back of the room. Li Wen took out a key and unlocked it before stepping back.
“Please use our resources to your heart's content,” She said. “The reports on yesterday's business are on the desk.”
Senji began to follow Sozin who walked towards the door.
A hand grabbed his shoulder.
”This is a matter for Prince Sozin.” A guard, the one in the middle, spoke for the first time. “You aren't—”
”I allow it.” Sozin immediately said, not turning around as he opened the door.
The guard let go of Senji’s shoulder, nodding to Sozin.
The two entered the room, closing the door behind them, away from the view of the guards. Sozin walked over to the desk which with the many-paged production report, conveniently had paper and ink.
“Write down any characters you don’t recognize.” He said to Senji as he opened the report, sitting down on a chair. “You can find the meaning in your dictionary when we get back.”
The first page of the report contained information on the material production and revenue made from the factory.
“This isn’t that important,” Sozin said, skimming the page before flipping to another. “This is what we should be looking through.”
The page held a number of deductions: costs on transportation, purchases of iron and coal, orders for replacement parts, and more.
Senji pointed at one of the transactions, his eyes catching something.
“Reparations?” Sozin said, “Remember how I told you about workers losing their limbs? We pay them for their troubles so they aren’t left with nothing after they’re released from service.”
“Anyway,” Sozin continued. “I want you to look at all of these costs. After you’re done with that, tell me how much the factory made in profit.”
Senji slowly picked up his pen before writing the revenue, then the costs. Subtracting those two led him to answer.
”Good,” Sozin said, impressed. “You took care to remember the revenue even after I told you it wasn’t important. You also know subtraction, which means you’ve had an education from wherever you were from.”
Senji looked at Sozin for a few seconds. Was he being tested?
Not wanting to fail whatever Sozin set for him, he wrote down the exact amount of iron that was smelted from the first page.
Sozin nodded before turning to the last page.
This page was different. It was a map showing a series of islands. Sozin quickly wrote numerous arrows on it, each having a number accompanied by a positive or negative sign.
”Now,” Sozin said, his voice in a more serious tone, ripping out the page. “You have five hundred gold coins, five ships, and two-hundred tons of iron. It’s all on this island over here,” He pointed to the biggest island. “The red signifies the cost of transportation while the green is the money you’ll make from selling. It’ll cost two gold coins and take one day to smelt one ton of iron, there are no limits to the tons of iron you can smelt in a day. Every ship can hold five tons. Assume that it'll take one day to get from island to island, regardless of distance. You have 9 days. How should you sell the iron so that you can make the biggest profit? You’re allowed to use the money made from selling iron for transportation.”
Sozin stood up from the chair. “Use the seat and carefully think this through. You have seven minutes.”
Senji felt Sozin watching him from his shoulder as he took off the hat so that he’d be able to see the paper.
Senji didn’t move at first, thinking of the best plan. He began to work, writing down the maximum amount of iron he could smelt and sell before time ran out. It was one hundred tons. One day to smelt the iron, eight days for four trips, and five ships for twenty-five tons a trip.
He was going to write the answer down before Sozin spoke from behind. “I forgot to mention this, but every extra ship that you have on an island at one time will cause the transportation cost to increase by five percent from the original. Any number over three will cause the cost to increase by fifteen percent rather than five.”
Senji paused before writing down a list. He sorted through the various islands to find the maximum amount of money that could be made, then he narrowed down his choices by eliminating the islands that showed the least profit.
In the end, he sold his iron to three islands: two had two ships sent to them while the third had the last ship. After multiplying his results by two, he came out with a profit of seven hundred thirty-six gold coins—not including the iron he’d need to buy to go back to his original number. The price wasn’t in the problem though, so he’d have to leave it out for now.
He turned his head to see Sozin reading from the report.
Sozin looked at him surprised. "Only four minutes? That's impressive." He set aside the report to pick up the paper, "This is perfect. There are no mistakes on this anywhere. I didn't learn how to do problems like these when I was ten. Are you sure you don't remember where you learned this?"
Senji shook his head. He pulled the paper to the table before writing a few characters.
Just comes to me. No memory of before.
"Well, wherever you came from, you must've been from a prominent family. They could afford to educate you to this extent." Sozin put down the paper to quickly skim through the last few pages of the report. "Would you mind if I try to find out where you originated from?"
Senji shrugged. He didn't really care.
Sozin nodded before picking up the hat and putting it back on Senji. He tucked the report under his arm before making his way to the door. "Let's go. I've finished what I needed to do here. We should be able to make it back to the palace in an hour or so.
Senji quickly put the map page with the rest of his paper. He followed Sozin out of the door.
They came out to the guards who were standing by. Li Wen was nowhere to be seen. She must've only been instructed to take Sozin to the factory, not out of it.
"I'm ready," Sozin said to the guards.
With that, they set off towards the exit of the factory.
As they walked, Senji heard an odd sound. He looked up at the pipes that went across the room. The sound was traveling across the pipes, eventually stopping at one of them where an echoing sound occurred. Every second that passed caused the sound to grow louder.
One guard looked at the pipe before looking back down after he saw what made the noise, assuming that it was normal.
Sozin just walked under the pipe when a horrid screech rang out.
The areas around the pipe blew up, sending shrapnel flying toward Sozin.
One particularly sharp piece was about to go right into Sozin's head.
Senji's legs moved.
----
Sozin felt something barrel into his back, sending him flying forward. His vision turned towards the ceiling as whatever hit him fell onto the ground, taking the impact for him.
He immediately rolled off, heart beating in his chest, as he stood up to survey the environment.
The workers stood there petrified, confused and afraid of what might happen. The guards sprung into action: one began to drag him away from the pipes. Senji was on the floor-why was he on the floor?
"Your highness, we must leave!" The guard dragging him said in a panicked voice. Another one of them helped Senji up.
'Wait." Sozin shoved the arms of the guard off. He walked to Senji. "How did you move that fast?"
Senji blinked. He looked back to the shrapnel embedded into the ground as if that would answer the question.
By now, everyone was looking at him: the guards and the workers. Even with this, Senji showed no outward reaction. He simply walked to his papers which he'd dropped on the floor and picked one up. He handed it to Sozin, pointing at a phrase.
Sozin's heart dropped.
I don't know.