Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Book One: Air
Chapter I: The Girl and the Lake

In Fire Nation propaganda following the genocide of the Air Nomads, several textbooks and scholarly articles describe Air Nomads as “parasitical” and “an infestation”.

Parasitism, in cultural terms, is a highly subjective term: on a biological level, they can be described as either completely isolated or, in fact, reciprocally altruistic. An infestation, however, is another story.

An infestation commonly refers to the invasion or overpopulation of pests or parasites. The latter half is, again, subjective, but the propensity of humanity towards reproduction is well-documented. In fact, expanding the human gene pool is healthy for the species, provided no cultural barriers.

Air Nomads have no such reproductive suppression. In fact, around the time of Guru Laghima, Air Nomads encouraged constant interaction with other nations, in the name of spiritual harmony and understanding. The result of Guru Laghima’s enlightenment and the nationalization of the Air Temples resulted in a cultural shift towards isolationism and enlightenment, but this was not enough to majorly shift the culture of the nomadic population. During and after Avatar Yangchen, airbenders still pursued consistent interaction with the outside world.

With no cultural or physical barrier, and no taboo against the matter, it only follows that airbenders intermingled with the world. This includes genetic admixture. As such, several non-nomad airbenders arose in various populations. This would not last long after the denomination of Sozin's Comet: following Fire Lord Sozin’s rule, the Fire Nation treated the phenotypic expression of airbending as a disease to be purged. The worldwide population of airbenders, Air Nomads or otherwise, were reduced to a dwindling population.

This sudden pressure on population levels meant that only genes with certain characteristics would survive the purge. Although bending is commonly a recessive gene in waterbending and earthbending (although, on a higher level of genetics, alleles aren’t nearly so rigid), airbending has been traditionally dominant and seen in all Air Nomads, thus providing an easy indicator for Fire Nation determinants. A change in the expression of the airbending gene had to occur for the population to continue.

But, as it often occurs in nature, survival occurs even under extreme stress, usually as a result of genetic mutation. In this case, the mutation simply made airbending recessive. In airbending populations adjacent to the Fire Nation itself, the statistically few non-bending offspring could successfully inject themselves into the Fire Nation with minimal discovery. Furthermore, their genotype did not express their phenotype; the mutation had occurred successfully, and the surviving population began to reproduce.

Luckily, the airbender genocide was only about three human generations away; a blink of an eye, genetically. The genetic code didn’t have enough time to mutate into inactivity, and the recessive allele could proceed onwards. Which brings us to the first case of this proposed disease, a female offspring born as part of monozygotic septuplet in the F4 generation of our genotype of interest:

Ty Lee.

--

Like many diseases, it starts with a sneeze.

Usually, the sneeze itself is the main cause of spreading, usually when referring to the airborne transfer of bacteria or other malefactors. For example, the later-discovered epidemiological marvel known as pentapox. However, this sneeze was more than that. It was a phenotype.

The first thing Ty Lee felt was heightened irritation and cranial pain. She’d hit her head on the ceiling, and then her mirror fell over and shattered, and then her scrolls got strewn all over, and this phenotype was doing horrible things to her aura.

The second thing Ty Lee felt was pure, unadulterated horror.

The human crisis response is not well-documented in this world, given the physical distance and socioeconomic difference between educated scholars and those suffering tragedy. Ty Lee surmises she would like to see future research in this area: or, we can infer this, because of her frantic inner screaming of ‘what do I do, oh, spirits, what do I do, I’m an airbender, I can’t be an airbender, they’re dead, we killed them, what do I do’, et cetera.

Immediately, a servant came to check on the loud noise: it would not do for Ty Lee’s parents to suffer a loss in the family this early, given the financial and political repercussions of said mortality. Quickly adapting to the situation, Ty Lee supplies faulty documentation of the matter, citing a ‘backflip gone super, duper wrong’, among other similar falsities. The servant works to clean the mess (Ty Lee offers to help but is rejected) before things are relatively tidy again fifteen minutes later, sans a mirror.

Once the door is closed, our subject uses a relatively healthy coping mechanism, consisting of shoving her face into a pillow and screaming to the extent of her vocal cords. Then, she falls silent and considers her options. She is a well-trained member of Fire Nation nobility, and so looks towards pragmatism in response to trauma.

Before proposing a solution, it is universally acknowledged that all obtainable knowledge of the matter should be accrued in a timely manner. Ty Lee is on summer vacation from the Royal Fire Academy for Girls, but their lessons hold well. So she does not conclude that she is the Avatar. She does not form a plan to escape the Fire Nation, or to claw her way to the Fire Sages to seek answers. Rather, she asks a question, and forms a hypothesis to test (even if unaware of the process of inquiry, herself.)

Are her sisters also airbenders?

If her sisters are airbenders, then they should respond to the same stimulus as she did.

And so Ty Lee experiments.

--

It should be noted that Latin names do not exist for the various organisms of this world. Firstly, because Latin does not exist, and secondly, because every flora and fauna is a hybrid abomination of two completely different organisms. Except the bear, apparently.

As such, the walnut-daisy tree will be referred to as such. It is a flower-tree with absurd amounts of pollen that erupts from its flowers during the summer. The smell is reportedly sweet and pleasant, and thus a common aroma for houses of nobility.

It is also a major allergen for the Ty family, and within forty-eight hours of Ty Lee’s sudden revelation, the entire house is plagued with sneezes while the servants do their desperate best to ventilate the walls of any remaining microgametophytes.

The mass symptomatic response provides plenty of data for Ty Lee to process. To note: she feels awful about doing this. Her sisters all give her the stink-eye, especially because Ty Lee had the spare time to sew a cloth mask for herself. Her parents scold her, because she should know how allergic they all are, and they suspect foul play, and look how dishonorable and unsisterly and borderline rebellious Ty Lee is acting, how dare her. This is intensified by the fact that Ty Lee does not contradict them.

Instead, in her head, she’s reviewing her results. Evidence supports her hypothesis that the other Ty sisters are not airbenders. Ty Lee makes the logical fallacy of accepting this evidence as enough fact to act upon, but given her resources, time constraints, and lack of training in the sciences, this is generally acceptable.

So, she moves onto further hypotheses. Other authors might restate this as ‘Ty Lee starts getting wild ideas about her parentage, about her future, about anything and everything and if her mother had a tryst with an old, bald man in the past’.

She spends a whole week considering these hypotheses before her vacation is over and she returns to the Academy at the age of nine. The mild panic she feels is worsened when she’s greeted by her best friends. Not every firebender has a mutation that allows temperatures hot enough to produce blue, after all.

--

As a well-known yet understudied behavioral phenomenon, firebenders rise with the sun, unaffected by time zones, seasonal changes in daylight hours, light amounts, or even the visibility of the sun itself. They are perfectly diurnal if not behaviorally modified: but this is dependent on the illusion of the sun itself rising, the edge its disk over the horizon, which itself is affected by the refraction of light around air, ironically enough. Although the visual cue of visible dawn dictates firebending diurnal waking, in actuality, the sun has "risen" a few moments beforehand: this is known as astronomical dawn.

Ty Lee, hyper-aware of her new bending abilities, rendered anxious and slightly manic by the danger surrounding her, rises at this astronomical dawn. The edge of day, when a bright orange hue paints the horizon, and the darkest night stays perfectly above it. The stars are still visible during this time, and the sun is not visible, and so the firebenders are still asleep.

At this time, she has an hour – maybe two, if she rises a bit earlier – for herself, before the day starts. Her friends are asleep, so she spends this time taking a small walk to a nearby lake, squinting her eyes to see the path in the half-dark, half-light.

The lake, subjectively, can be described as beautiful. It is called Lake Tennjin. The likeness of similar lakes around this time has been portrayed in scrolls across the four nations. A vast, dark expanse, with brushstrokes of orange reflecting the shallow waves, as the twilight sky hangs above. At this particular lake, in this particular ecosystem commonly found in the Fire Nation, schools of fireflying-salmon float near the surface, their bioluminescence visible to the naked eye.

And then they are eaten. The wild raven-eagles come out during this time to prey on the fish while they are resting, indicated by sonorous war cries of coordination in the murder-convocations. (Ty Lee always thought it unnecessarily warlike, to call a flock of such pretty birds that sort of thing.) They rise, they soar, and then they dive so deep into the water one could surmise they drowned – and then they come right back out with prey in talons.

For the first week of her early mornings, Ty Lee is too busy in thought, trying to come to terms with the new changes in her otherwise princess-adjacent life. She struggles with morality, the best a nine-year-old can. The volume of questions, hypotheses, mental experiments, and unprecedented data is too much for her undeveloped personality to process: issues of ethics, of politics, of religion and of the ultimatums of life. Of her own importance. Of her life, and her death. But she tries.

In the second week, Ty Lee looks up from the muddy shallows where she rests her feet and watches the raven-eagles. How they soar and dive and kill. How smart they are, to bait the fireflying-salmon into leaping out of the water, and then clipping the flying fish as they rise. How free they are, happy to hunt, unchained by the conventions of the Fire Nation, happy to work and eat and play and live.

In the back of her mind, her aura sours with the thought that some of these raven-eagles will die or be chained, either hunted for game or pelts, or captured by falconers to be used in the Fire Army. But she sees them, how careless they are of such facts, how they simply live until they do not, and it feels right. More than anything else in her life.

And somewhere in that second week, she stretches and goes through her katas she learns in the Academy – but begins to change them, mimicking the movements of the birds of prey. The swift cuts, the precision strikes, the flying talons all flow through her veins, unrefined, dirty, and yet as natural as a cat-deer walks from birth.

(In the quiet of dawn, as Ty Lee practices with only herself and her aura and a smile on her face, her ancestors scream and cry as their last known hope commits the greatest sin of any Air Nomad.

She does not learn to airbend from the flying bisons.

Ty Lee learns to airbend from the raven-eagles.)

Chapter Text

Book One: Air
Chapter II: Azula

“You’re getting up early.”

A conversational tone is meant to be a show of agreement, a way to ease into behavioral relations between two individuals. However, this approach is often rendered useless by years of negative reinforcement and application of Machiavellian philosophy, and so Ty Lee’s psychological reaction to Azula is anxious, at best.

“Guess I’m just excited to get my day started!”

But, of course, Ty Lee is an advocate of signaling theory. (Whether or not she knows the term is unimportant.) By acting carefree and happy around Azula, Azula will think she is happy to be here. Although this is usually the case, the recently discovered changes in Ty Lee’s biological abilities have rendered her otherwise.

Azula squints at the airbender from her seat in the mess hall, across from Ty Lee, today. Mai flanks Azula with an apathetic resting expression: the combined duo provide enough intimidation to warn other social circles to stay away, to Ty Lee’s chagrin. The attempted ocular focus on Ty Lee’s face provides no results, and Azula shrugs.

“I should come with you sometime, wherever you go. Don’t you think, Mai?”

A grunt in the negative.

“Whatever.”

“Sure, I’ll show you!”

But both Mai and Ty Lee understand not to disagree with Azula. Partly due to the court politics of their parents, partly due to how controlling the nine-year-old can be. However, Mai knows how to avoid verbiage entirely, and Ty Lee knows how to omit data to provide satisfactory results to a biased party. Azula has fallen prey to the logical fallacy that fear begets control. In truth, fear begets perceived control. In a nation of honor, there is little difference until it matters.

So when Azula and Mai greet Ty Lee in the dead of night, and they hike to the lake, Ty Lee fills her entire verbal report with filler. The beauty of the twilight, the shade of the trees, the brilliance of the fireflying-salmon, the majesty of the raven-eagle. All the components are there, in harmony, a brilliant art piece of one of the finest natural landscapes of the Fire Nation.

But she shows them art. Not science. She illustrates beauty, emotion, the aura and the atmosphere. Her research, her experimentation, her failures and growing strengths remain in the dark.

By the end of the morning, the prognosis is written.

"...This is silly. Come on, Mai, let's go eat breakfast. Perhaps more beauty sleep is in order, Ty Lee."

Azula and Mai both write this off as pointless, because Ty Lee reaches to their hearts, when in truth, they wanted whetstones for their blades. Because art is a necessity for the humanities, a definition of life itself, but the sciences are material, are quantifiable and beautiful and most of all, usable.

When they leave, Ty Lee stays. After six-hundred seconds of clenching her fists and schooling her expression, she finally allows herself to feel agony. The child takes a shuddering breath and the air around her becomes stifling and hard to breathe in, both metaphorically and physically.

(She thought – she just thought – maybe they could see what she sees, maybe they could show some interest in her. Maybe they could have a heart. And then maybe, she’d tell them her secrets.

But there is nobody left to tell secrets to, nobody left to care, except Lake Tennjin and its animals.

Her pink aura has bled out into a suffocating white. It will tinge pink again, but for now, she has no room for red in her heart.)

--

Studies suggest a normal human can maintain about one hundred and fifty cordial relationships, barring any sort of isolation. The stifling occupational role of the Royal Family is a relatively strong factor in the number of social circles any singular member may have. In terms of immediate family, Azula’s friend count of two is statistically high, not considering outliers such as Prince Lu Ten and Crown Prince General Iroh. On fall break, this data is shifted when Ty Lee and Mai are invited to the Fire Nation Royal Palace, courtesy of Azula.

Our subject spends her time practicing cartwheels, splits, and other physical exercises while socializing with Mai and Azula. Meals remain consistent with Fire Nation delicacies, albeit veering towards the dishes of high society: not anyone can afford double-stuffed turkey duck, after all, and some of the fruit is said to be harvested from expeditionary trips to the former Air Temples. Importation and exclusivity remain hallmarks of dictatorial indicators of power through bromatological signalling.

During one of these feeding times, though, Ty Lee notices Zuko dipping away from his nighttime meal early after eating a substandard amount of food. Lady Ursa looks on in concern, as she does a scientifically significant number of times whenever Prince Zuko shows signs of distress. The other members of the immediate family not currently participating in the Siege of Ba Sing Se are disinterested.

Ty Lee blinks and feels empathy rise through her pericardial cavity, and so shoots a quick glance at Ursa before packing her plate in a marvel of architectural engineering and proceeding after Zuko. The disgruntled groan of Azula echoes through the dining chamber before Ursa begins scolding her youngest offspring for being malcontent, but these factors are mere background noise to Ty Lee.

Instead, Ty Lee sets the plate down on a cabinet near the door as Prince Zuko settles into place in his room, surrounded by several candles. The smell of carbon dioxide and steam wafts through the room and out the window, but Ty Lee recognizes the sine wave of increasing and decreasing amounts of the particular scent of fire.

Zuko continues his exercises, until Ty Lee knocks on the lumbered wood on his doorframe. His shock mixes with his befuddlement as he attempts to logic together her presence: however, his patience runs thin, thus making him a less promising candidate for the sciences than Ty Lee herself. Currently, in any case.

"Why are you here?"

"You got up like you were being chased, and your aura's all muddy. This is… a firebending thing, right? Still trying to catch up to Azula?"

"I need to be better! She's lucky, being so good at firebending. You should know that already, with how much time you spend with her."

"Teach me."

And there, Zuko experiences his second pause during this exercise. His lack of focus and patience drives him to continue the conversation.

"What…? But you, uh. Can't bend."

"I can breathe, right? Maybe it'll be easier if you do it with someone."

"But the exercise — urgh, whatever. Just close the door behind you!"

Bringing the plate with her and setting it on Zuko's dressing table, Ty Lee does as instructed, before pulling up a cushion and sitting next to him. After preliminary introductions to the basis of the breath exercise, Ty Lee keeps her eyes open and matches Zuko's breathing — but then, notes how it feels wrong, how he breathes too roughly and too quickly.

And so she creates her own tempo, slow, smooth, feeling the air fill her lungs fully and then escape them completely, her nostrils lacking any flare, her eyes glazing over from her focus. The fire begins to synchronize with her breathing, but instead of growing larger and then reverting to normalcy, they grow smaller with every breath she takes.

Zuko himself does not notice the minutiae, but synchronizes himself to Ty Lee's breathing instead. Slow. Steady. Schooled. The sine wave grows sharper; the flames grow hotter and brighter, but dim colder and darker. Golden eyes flicker to the candles in the room, as if trying to find a difference, trying to see what's wrong or what's right, and as Prince Zuko allows himself to gain hope, that he might finally become what his father desired, his breathing grows erratic, and the hot flames begin to dim, and then finally, they flicker out.

The Prince's silent despair is only met with a strong breeze and the sound of his curtains billowing, but they quickly die down as Ty Lee notes the sudden lack of fire. Her eyes trail to the open window and she sighs, a few hypotheses postulated and subsequently supported or disproven during the frame of a few minutes. ("Funny little ideas", she begins to mentally address them as, openly rebelling against universally accepted terms.)

"Oh. Guess the window shouldn't have been as open: I guess the wind blew the candles out. Well, I hope you feel better. I left some food for you, and —"

"Leave."

"Oh."

"...Please, leave. Sorry."

"Okay. Sorry if I messed you up, Zuko."

And so Ty Lee left, as Prince Zuko desperately tried to recreate the results without her.

(An hour in, Ursa speaks soft words to her son as they share Ty Lee's once-immaculate plate of food, and Zuko loves his mother and listens to her.

"You should try to take care of yourself. That's all Ty Lee wanted, really."

Zuko, years later, will look upon Ty Lee in dawning horror as he remembers these words.)

--

The next time that Azula arranges for her friends' rendezvous at the Royal Palace is during spring break, when the turtleducks are in breeding season. Wild turtleducks migrate across great lengths of land and ocean to lay their eggs on Fire Nation beaches, creating dimples in the sand as laying areas. These infant turtleducks will fend for themselves as they trek towards the mouths of the nearest rivers, where they will then live the rest of their lives.

Domestic turtleducks, however, are trained to avoid this behavior, and are commonly found in rural and urban areas of civilization. Instead, they live in pondlike areas, lay their eggs in safe zones found in these environs, such as reeds or beaches with high volumes of flora, and tend to their young until the offspring reach adolescence. Such turtleducks can be found as decorative fauna in beach resorts, imperial parks, and high-value living spaces usually tended to by servants.

Although Ty Lee surmises that the Royal Palace is neither a beach resort nor an imperial park, she's of the opinion that she can find her fun here either way. So, she does her exercises, makes mild conversation, and does cartwheels. She would love to see the raven-eagles here and practice with them, but she's behaviorally trained enough so as to avoid imminent execution.

And then Azula pushes her over during a cartwheel and points and laughs. Perhaps, if her spirit were more red and less white, she would laugh along with her, but instead, she simply gets up and shoves Azula to the ground in return, feeling cruel satisfaction and mimicking Azula's own sense of humor. Mai seems indifferent, but her eyes shift over to Ty Lee during this transaction.

Azula, internally, debates between maintaining a facade of playfulness or upping the ante in Ty Lee's little games, before spotting Mai's distant gaze at Zuko as he retires from the turtleduck pond with his mother. And then she forgets about Ty Lee for a moment, deciding instead to torment her brother to make herself feel better.

This results in Azula laughing all to herself while Zuko and Mai fluster in awkwardness against one another in the fountain after an attempt to play archer with some fruit on Mai's head. Ty Lee jogs over to help them out, before Azula attempts to push Ty Lee into the fountain, as well. But her legs are far apart, and she has a foot firmly planted, so Azula is only met with disappointment as Ty Lee looks over her shoulder at Azula confusedly before continuing to assist the other two.

(Except, she only seems confused. Ty Lee has an idea of how Azula wants to continue the day, but personally, she isn't having it. Not for Azula, who never saw what she saw in Lake Tennjin.

It's petty, she knows. But she's also nine, and it's in her head, so she thinks it's forgivable.)

Once completed, Ty Lee picks up the waterlogged fruit that had been set on fire. She idly wonders how much force it would take to crush it's hard flesh, and attempts to do so for the rest of the day.

The day continues with a letter of good news from the Dragon of the West, a gift of a doll for Azula, a gift of a surrendered dagger for Zuko, a lifelong lesson of never giving up without a fight, and a disposed-of fruit with the indent of a girl's handprint gripped around it.

Chapter Text

Book One: Air
Chapter III: The Broken Dragon

Organic life has several different prerequisites necessary to differentiate it from nonorganic end material. Maintenance of homeostasis, composition of cells, and the ability to grow, adapt, metabolize, and reproduce are among some of these requirements.

After six hundred days of sieging Ba Sing Se, Prince Lu Ten could not perform these actions as a human being. Thus, as his anatomy began to reach equilibrium with the environment outside his internal system, the definition of life had been revoked. As his body provides nutrition for extant forms of decay, several other humans lose the definition of life, as well.

Loss encaptures the Fire Nation, the moment Prince Lu Ten dies.

Ty Lee did not know Lu Ten, and so does not mourn him as closely as others. However, sorrowful national events tend to cause the mass consciousness to feel likewise, albeit in different gamuts of emotions. To hear that such an esteemed member of the royal family died is still a tragedy, especially for someone so close to said family. Ty Lee does not cry, but she wishes she did, so that perhaps the emotional catharsis would wash away her oncoming dread like isopropyl alcohol washes away organic stains.

Except it does not matter if she can cry purposefully or not, because following Lu Ten's death, the Royal Palace simply does not accept visitors. This is a common practice due to the amount of administrative work that follows the death of an heir, the supposed grieving of the immediate family, as well as the political contention that might occur at times. It is a basic safety that everyone accepts as sensible.

And yet, Ty Lee cannot help but feel concerned. Most are. A governmental lack of trust does not often rest static in the human psyche, and the evidence of absence is not the absence of evidence. Instinctually, as a social creature, Ty Lee understands something is likely to go wrong. Further study of the genealogy of the royal line supports this inference, as well as a personal familiarity with both Prince Ozai and Azula. The observation of a creature in the comfort of their own home often reveals causes and consequences of outside behavior, after all.

(And, Ty Lee surmises, as she mimics the single-taloned strike of a raven-eagle upon a squirrel-toad's head, and the ground itself gashes with the force of air, Ozai isn't above the assassinations, blackmail, or similar treacheries often found in history books.

Usually these sins were reserved for the crucifixion of the Water Tribes, or the Earth Kingdom, but the desperation of the power-hungry is universal. At least, so the gossip goes.)

When Fire Lord Azulon is declared dead, and the glorious rapture of a new Fire Lord enthralls the nation to worship Ozai's name, instead of Iroh's, and there is no Fire Lady during the coronation, Ty Lee's theories become nearly irrefutable. All theories are disputable, however, and so she hopes, hopes with all her spirit, that evidence arises to counteract her theory. She hopes Prince Zuko and Prince Iroh have avoided early cremation. She hopes Azula does not kill her own brother.

Hope. A cruel concept, if Ty Lee ever knew one. Even if the worst has occurred, Ty Lee wishes she simply knew. That the outcome was transparent, cold and cruel and heartbreaking, without censorship or fabrication. And yet, hope made it worse, in a way. Without immediate reports, there is no way to know how dire or how pleasant the situation is, and our subject loathes this. No indicator to grieve. No happiness for lives spared. No closure.

Simply a house burning, and Ty Lee must watch and hope that something comes out.

Hope. By definition, an expectation and desire for a positive occurrence. And as she ponders hope, and the gates of the Royal Palace open for her once more after half a year's worth of time, sees Zuko's red eyes and soot-black expression, sees General Iroh, once Dragon of the West, now broken and grieving behind bottles of liquor and wasting away his fire in the palace, Ty Lee is uncertain if hope is ever worth it.

Because, from the looks of things, hope is like a trickster: instead of a loving mistress, hope is a complication, a monkey's paw, where one might wish for one outcome but receive every unintended consequence.

--

But Ty Lee hopes still, because idealism befits an undeveloped, unscarred mind, and because altruism is a necessity of the human species, even if labelled "competitive" or "reciprocal". And so, when Ty Lee strays away from Azula citing a desire for light gastronomy, she approaches a general seen packing his bags in preparation for a journey of self-discovery.

(In an untouched, closed system, she would simply pass by and indulge in her snackery, but this Ty Lee does not empathize with Azula as strongly. Because this Ty Lee realized something an untouched Ty Lee has not yet.)

"General Iroh, sir…?"

"Young Ty Lee. There is — there is no need to call me general anymore. Nor stand at attention."

"Oh, uh. Prince Iroh, then. Why are you packing your bags? Is…?"

Azula's laughter echoes as Zuko's frustrated stomps tremble across the wooden floors, and Ty Lee's eyes flicker in the direction of the vocal chittering.

"...No. No, Azula's father is not sending me away. Fear not."

"You want to get away, don't you?"

A silence.

"You are a very perceptive young lady. The Fire Nation will benefit from your loyalty."

And Ty Lee can barely taste the venom in his voice. It's like cyanide in an apple, but it's there.

"The Fire Nation benefits from me, but I dunno about the opposite. The energy feels like it would be unbalanced."

Iroh chuckles.

"Any further and I'd have to report you for dissidence."

"I'm just noting the jing, like my teachers said! And you really need negative jing. But for how long…?"

"Until I find it, Lady Ty Lee."

"And leave Zuko with all this positive jing?"

And they look into each other's eyes. Ty Lee nearly flinches under the scrutiny of one of the most dangerous men in the world, but does her best to understand the broken man across from her. After what feels like a universe's lifespan, Iroh does flinch, because he sees steel grey eyes full of confusion. No, not confusion, not even pity: full of questions.

Questions that Iroh isn't strong enough to answer, yet.

"Prince Zuko is strong. I am not. Not right now. So I must leave, to find my strength, and perhaps return to share it with him."

"Can I come with you?"

And that leaves Iroh dry-mouthed and shocked, himself.

"Why?"

"Because you'll be lonely, and nobody should have to find their own strength alone. I'm not much, but I swear, I'm more than I seem! And I can find strength, just like you will."

A million questions and hypotheses formulate, rise, and crumble in Iroh's mind all at once, before ultimately both his logos and his pathos barrel through any secondary concerns.

"No. It is too dangerous, your parents will be heartbroken, and we will both be branded with dishonor for the rest of our lives — for different reasons, but you've proven astute enough to follow along. And, most importantly, because you will leave Prince Zuko to his lonesome, but unlike me, he will not have any choice."

Ty Lee scowls, her eyes falling to the floorboards.

"The entire Palace's aura is dim. Mine, too. It's — it stinks. It's lame. But I get it."

The subject's expression freezes and lights up for a split second, before tentativeness drowns the birth of a bright, unthinkable idea. The hesitation gives Iroh an indication of what Ty Lee could have possibly concocted, and so he raises a hand to cut her off the moment she draws breath.

"I will not make you swear an oath to me, or for Prince Zuko. You must live your life fully and untethered by old men or princes, because you are only young for so long. But now that I know that your loyalties aren't bound to Princess Azula, or even entirely to the Fire Nation, I must ask you — please take care of my nephew while I am gone. Give him warmth where others burn him."

"I… okay. I won't swear by it, no promises, not even pinky promises! But I'll try."

"Thank you, Lady Ty Lee. I will remember you fondly. And, if he ever truly needs comfort, well. Jasmine tea is a must."

"Ty Lee! Are you wasting your time listening to that failure go on about tea? Come on, let's avoid his drunken breath and go play. Mai brought her knives today."

They share one last look. Ty Lee clenches her fists, wishing Azula wasn't everywhere at all times, wishing she could talk more to Iroh, whom she'd never spoken to before. Because unlike the other specimens that surround her, who lack the capacity to either distinguish her from her sisters or simply do not see her as a welcoming subject of interest, Iroh listens to her and responds. But that's about to go away, and Ty Lee cannot clutch change and control it, so she gives him a pleasant spring breeze to comfort him through the window as she walks away.

Azula smirks and eyes Ty Lee over her shoulder, and the Airbender knows that Azula hears everything, knows everything, and either infers or hurts everything else.

"...Really? Friends with Zuko? He really must be losing his mind, between the booze and Ba Sing Se. Nobody wants to be friends with Zuko, and you'd best remember that."

And yet, despite Azula's seeming omniscience for a decade-old girl, Ty Lee plasters on her smile and talks shallowly about how Iroh 'kinda-sorta' made sense, but 'got confusing', and she's 'not sure', and Azula thinks she's won.

Lying gets easier if you practice every day. Ty Lee thinks it a shame that Azula doesn't realize that she's met a fellow practitioner.

(Trailing behind them, Mai looks and listens. Neutral jing. And as positive and negative clash so obviously in front of her, she's not certain who she'll side with, in the end.)

--

Hope is a four-letter word with two characters in this world's language. The principles of calligraphy require that it is not satisfactory that the inscription of characters reflect the meaning of the concept found in the word: the motion, the energy, and the interpretation of each stroke must be as sacred as the concept itself.

Calligraphy ink is made of black carbon molecules suspended in a water-lipid-adhesive mixture and reinforced by resin. And, in truth, none of it is sacred to Ty Lee, when Zuko has spilled about two ounces of said colloidal mixture onto most of her dress.

"You — I can't believe — you're insufferable, you know that?!"

"You don't get to yell at me! You don't have the right, you bone-bending freak! Who even let you into my calligraphy lessons?!"

"I did it to spend time with you! But with how you act, it's impossible! Augh!"

With that, Ty Lee storms out of the room, slamming the sliding door into its frame. A beautiful, pure black drips from her body. Zuko watches her leave, and then grits his teeth, growls like a bear, slams his desk, kicks aside the several failed calligraphy attempts at the characters for 'opalescence', and stomps off in the opposite direction. Like a true prince.

Demonstrating blatant airbending by leaping up two stories onto the roof while nobody looks, Ty Lee performs her best attempt at ceramic percussion with her feet, stomping on the roof with her left calcaneus bone. After that particular act of catharsis, she then does her best impression of a yelping, growling canine, fusing this animalistic impression with various curses, insults, and bouts of confusion.

Our subject dangerously risks spinal cord injury when she falls backwards onto the roof and stares into the sky. She blows a stray hair out of her face and begins an exercise of pareidolia, using the clouds in lieu of the usual Rorschach inkblot test. Ironic, given the earlier accident, and also uncertain, given Ty Lee's lack of psychological training, but nevertheless.

That one looks like a cloud.

That one looks like a bison.

That one looks like —

Iroh.

It is a curious thing, Ty Lee notes, when somebody tries to be a friend out of obligation. Zuko has changed. The trauma of the sudden and inexplicable losses in his life, as well as the negative changes in the Palace is clearly compromising his mental health. Ty Lee does not word her thoughts so explicitly, but the abstract of her mind's eye is described well enough.

In her untrained morality, she should not be frustrated with Zuko. He suffers enough, therefore she should not suffer because of him, and consequently make him suffer. But, as a mental counterargument, if he makes her suffer accidentally, then why should she not suffer? Why shouldn't there be consequences?

Ty Lee's stomach bends at that thought (or, at least, the neurons associated with the sensation do). Her thinking is cruel, although logically sound. Her aura dims into a grey as if stained by the ink on her clothes. Why is it that, after distancing herself from Azula and associating herself with kinder people, she has become crueler?

(Maybe it's because she sees the flaws in good people, instead of accepting the good in flawed people, now. And even if she might be right, it still feels… bad. Everyone nice should be friends with everyone also nice. Arguments, flaws… save that for the mean people, right? Right?

Maybe that's wrong. It's hard for a ten-year-old to fathom.)

An hour later, Ty Lee hears the sound of slow footsteps. As she sits up and looks over, she finds Zuko approaching with a change of clothes, sweet snacks in the form of red bean mochi, and his head hung down low.

"I knew I'd find you here."

He doesn't sound smug about it, though. He looks miserable as he sits down next to her. She looks at him in askance until he opens his mouth again. His voice is small and crackly and it sounds like he's about to be hit.

"I'm — I'm sorry. I shouldn't have blown up like that, it was my fault. I got you clothes, and those snacks you like. If you want, I can —"

"Zuko, it's okay."

The so-far-unscarred prince looks up, golden eyes searching into grey eyes for a reason to doubt. Ty Lee doesn't give him any.

"Huh?"

"Snrk. It's cute when you're awkward like that. I was angry, too. I still kind of am. But right now, I'd like my friend to eat these snacks with me and watch the clouds. Can you do that?"

"Yes. Thank you. For accepting my apology, uh. Ahem."

Ty Lee lies back down as Zuko fumbles through genuine forgiveness (and why would he not, when apology usually merited harsher reprimand?) before he finally takes the cue to lie down next to her. She pops a mochi in her mouth and talks between bites.

"That one looks like a flying lemur."

"That one looks like… a rock?"

"It sure does! By the way, Zuko?"

"Huh?"

"Did you expect me to change my clothes with you still here?"

Judging by the increased capillary blood flow to his cheeks when she asks him, he may not have.

--

During his first visit to the Spirit World, Iroh meets an airbending monk near the end of his journey.

"Good day," the monk says, his face unreadably neutral, "my name is Monk Pasang. It is an honor to speak to a Fire Nation Prince."

The first thing Iroh does is enter a full kowtow, begging forgiveness for his nation's sins. He looks up, when Pasang places a hand on his shoulder.

"Fear not. Your spirit is just, Prince Iroh, and your fire is pure. That much, I can assure you."

And then the Air Nomad's passive expression withers away into displeasure, and Iroh dares not get back onto his feet as he listens to every word.

"I wish I could say the same of the airbender you have met."

Chapter Text

Book One: Air
Chapter IV: The Division

Infanticide is a phenomena in zoology more commonly observed than what the average citizen may think. Although the most common infanticide exists in invertebrate cannibalism, in which excess offspring will be consumed by either adult specimens or other offspring in order to avoid complete starvation, infanticide also exists in more complex species.

For example, when assuming the role of the primary male, male lions (or whatever their equivalent in this world, with its disgusting, chimeric parody of actual species) kill the young cubs sired by their predecessors. This is done to restart the ovulation processes of female lions, which is halted during lactation. From there, the male is able to freely reproduce once more.

Rodents also display infanticide. After impregnating a female, male mice kill any infant mice they find for the duration of the female's three-week gestation period. After birth, the father mice instead assume a paternal role. On the other hand, young gerbils actively kill other young gerbils until they reproduce. Both do so in order to remove any competitors to their bloodline.

The moment Azula displays higher prowess than Zuko, similar behavior is found within the entire royal bloodline. A chain reaction occurs. Ozai favors Azula and wishes to kill Zuko. Ursa protects Zuko, abandoning Azula. Azula abandons Ursa and favors Ozai, and therefore wishes to remove Zuko. Zuko follows, favoring Ursa. However, he is an outlier through his kindness, and does not abandon nor wish to remove Azula or Ozai until later.

Iroh and Lu Ten are strong for the bloodline until Lu Ten dies and Iroh retreats from Ba Sing Se. From there, Ozai proliferates his bloodline by killing the elder male, Azulon, and removing the perceived weak. And so destiny drives forward. All this is, by and far, factual for most observers, and commonly known among those who may be participating in this study. Given prior knowledge of how this system occurs in a contained environment, we may treat this destiny as a positive control.

When observing results, the positive control is qualitatively different from the events that occur upon the insertion of a new independent variable: that is to say, Ty Lee. However, depending on personal beliefs on the ethics of friendship, the difference is not necessarily beneficial in the short-term to anybody within this system.

Azula notes Ty Lee's sudden disposition towards Zuko and sees a traitor and a threat, acting accordingly. Ozai notes Azula's discontent and Zuko's contentment and labels both of them as weakness for both his offspring, acting accordingly. Ursa noted Ty Lee's change and encouraged it, in the little time she had. Iroh instigated this new independent variable in the first place, in hopes for a beneficial change. Azulon and Lu Ten are dead.

And so, the study continues.

--

"You know, Ty Lee, you've been playing around with Zuzu a lot lately."

The topic occurs in the middle of a sparring session in order to retain muscle memory and physical prowess. Azula bends fire wholeheartedly at Ty Lee, overseen by Lo and Li, who search for any fault in Azula's perfection. Ty Lee bends air in her respiratory system, but nothing more, opting to practice her chi blocking techniques instead of sentencing herself to execution.

"He'd be lonely without me, y'know?"

Ty Lee dodges both blue combustion and Azula's probing words, stating a strong hypothesis and nothing else. Azula steps forward to close distance while Ty Lee strafes to the east. Golden eyes keep track of grey as Ty Lee moves and speaks flightily.

"Oh, but I'm lonely too. In fact, my birthday's coming up, so you should come."

A punch. Another punch. Blasts of fire, rapidly heating the air near Ty Lee's facial dermis. Her thermoreceptors set off: Azula's bending is hotter than usual.

Ty Lee does not falter when she lunges to jab.

"Hup! Yeah, I know! What should I get you? Oh, should it be a surprise?"

"Hm. How about some more friends?"

Azula counterattacks ruthlessly, bending fire straight down at Ty Lee's body. For anyone else, this would result in at least second degree burns between the shoulder blades, spreading along the skin on the posterior side. But Ty Lee is faster, younger, and more martially inclined than the average person, and so side flips out of the way, leaving only a pyre to burn on the ground.

Ty Lee still does not falter, repositioning to face Azula.

"How so?"

"I'm planning on inviting your sisters, too. I hear they're very similar to you: your family all practice the arts, don't they? I'd love to finally meet them."

This is a threat. An obvious one. Azula feels confident about her gambit. Ty Lee's individuality is her most valued possession, and her greatest weakness. Her desire to be separate from her family is the first insecurity anyone learns about her: after all, when all seven siblings attend the Royal Academy for Girls, these sorts of things define a person in the worst possible way.

Azula, unfortunately, has decided to rely on an older hypothesis without determining any recent evidence supporting or denying it. As such, her methodology becomes an experiment, in which evidence is gathered rather than results.

"Sure! I'd love if you got along with them."

As Ty Lee's bubbling happiness echoes in Azula's auditory cortex, Azula's stance veers slightly south, her arms a hair too far apart. The princess fumbles in a form, and Lo and Li's cracked, wrinkled lips both thin. Ty Lee sees weakness and lunges in for the kill: one, two, three pressure points disabled, and Azula's arm falls flatly against her side like a dead weasel-snake.

The spar is over, but Azula is still vexed.

"What?"

"I'd be happy to introduce my sisters to you, Azula."

The sentence is calm, unassuming. Ty Lee has nothing but a smile on, and Azula feels like she's losing her mental cognition. She lacks experience in being so beautifully, abhorrently wrong. Ty Lee should fear Azula even touching her family, she should attempt to avoid such an outcome under any means necessary. Even if it means abandoning Zuko, who, in Azula's mind, is as useless as a white lotus tile in terms of bargaining power.

But when one bends the most special element in the entirety of the three remaining nations, their prerogative shifts.

"I'll tell them to come. Anyways, I gotta go spar with Zuko now. See you!"

And with that, Ty Lee bounds off with a cartwheel. Lo and Li watch Azula with steel eyes. Azula's inner fire burns brighter than ever before. When they tell her she has made a mistake, Azula repeats the kata, imagining a braid-tailed acrobat burning blue.

(Azula's birthday comes, and as promised, six additional Tys are attending.

Ty Lee spends her time at Zuko's side while Azula finds a replacement in the form of Ty Lao.

Azula is not satisfied, because there is still one more unknown in her perfectly crafted life.)

--

Later that day, as Ty Lee watches Master Piandao rigorously drill Zuko in his swordsmanship, she decides to spontaneously cease her procrastination. There is one question that causes such acute anxiety that Ty Lee has become nauseous and even downright emetic. For her few years of airbending, she has attempted to avoid these symptoms by avoiding the question entirely. But she figures this would be as good a time as any to consider it, drinking tea poured by Fat, watching Zuko bruise his gluteus for the umpteenth time in an advanced set.

Is she the Avatar?

Several sleepless nights have been dedicated to the topic itself, as well as complete (covert) vandalisms of the very few books that even mention the Avatar either at the Academy or at the Royal Palace. The more Ty Lee considers it and even actively studies it, the less likely it is. And though this would seem like the most likely result: Ty Lee makes an attempt to bend her tea. A few miniscule bubbles fizzle off a fraction of the Camellia sinensis samples at the bottom of the cup, but that's it.

She sighs and lets the water-soluble compounds in her beverage wash over her tongue with a sip.

Thus, the result is inconclusive, as to whether she is the Avatar or not. The safest option is to assume that she is (or, at least, assume others will think that she is), and prepare likewise. Iroh's refusal to emigrate her was unfortunate for her personal safety. The only other well-known deserter is Jeong Jeong, and his case is well-known, given the usual nigh-impossibility of defecting from the military itself.

But her own attachment to Zuko creates its own issues, in her mind. Without her, Zuko's need for a companion will fall to worse company. This single sentence defines Ty Lee's argument towards staying as close to the Fire Lord's bloodline as possible. Maybe if Prince Iroh returns, or maybe if Mai comes around, or maybe…

"Lady Ty? I believe it's time for your participation. Prince Zuko is in need for some training against faster opponents."

Piandao's voice carries a mastery of acoustics as he is heard across the courtyard, and Ty Lee is pulled from her mental attempts to emulate Heisenberg's uncertainty principle. Quickly setting her cup away and jogging over in front of the Prince, Ty Lee assumes her first form.

"...Lady Ty?"

"Yes, Master Piandao?"

"I believe your chi blocking form might be off."

Her face whitens in nanosecond fear. Her feet are too far apart, her weight is distributed along her body and not her feet, and her hands —

Claws, not fists.

Fixing her stance immediately, Ty Lee attempts to break past the involuntary nature of her autonomic nervous system to force her heart to its resting rate. The spar begins, Zuko's training dao less lethal and yet just as complex as Azula's fire.

(For any other young student Piandao, would note Ty Lee's initial stance as a mistake. After all, she is only a child, and a precarious one, at that.

But he also knows the difference between mistake and variance.

And so he studies Ty Lee's form and compares it to others who practice the art. She dodges too much, she still transitions into an open hand at times, and she does not consider her equilibrium nearly enough.

And yet she is not cornered, despite evading frequently. Her attack is still fierce, even without a knuckle. And she does not fall.

There are no mistakes, except when a light breeze brushes over his skin when she strikes with a talon.

And there, it clicks, and Piandao runs his fingers over the white lotus tile in his sleeve.)

--

A year later, our subject busies herself with Mai, throwing origami gliders into the night sky as the latter individual pierces all of them with daggers made of ferrous alloys. They have been dismissed from the Royal Palace for today, given the curfew established in the Fire Nation, and have no important interactions to note. As such, this section of our study will not focus on them.

Instead, we will focus on a different environment. Within the Royal Palace is a tea room reserved for private discussions, placed in the same wing as the royal bed quarters. Here, a solution of ginseng tea is prepared through mortar and pestle by a servant, delicately poured into a taste tester's cup, and then served to Fire Lord Ozai and Prince Iroh.

For our observers, this will be a dangerous masterclass in polite conversation.

"I did not expect you to welcome me directly, brother."

A pleasant surprise. An innocent comment. A definition of battlefield lines. Iroh knows this game well.

"Some news is best heard directly. I understand your sabbatical was enlightening."

Positive jing. Direct attack. Pertinence. Ozai played just as well, but prefers an alternative style.

"Most certainly. The most critical information is often learnt from the enemy themselves."

Negative jing. Compliance. Omission of truth. A technique useful in the royal court.

"Nothing to do with your personal grief?"

Inner fire. Accusal. Emotion. Fire cannot be so easily quelled.

"I feel that I have ascended past my losses."

Dismissal. A display of strength. Omission of time. A memory of twin dragons gone unsaid.

"Good. Perhaps you can teach Zuko. He still clings on, unfortunately."

Personal beliefs. Education. Sadism. Ozai's antipathy towards his eldest shines, and it is his first fault.

"He is still a child, so some faults can be forgiven. Or were you faultless, as a boy?"

Empathy. Appeal to innocence. Redirection towards the enemy. A workable counter, but like a true brother, Iroh also falters.

"I certainly wasn't as enamoured with women. It seems to distract him."

Flippancy. Degradation. Filial difference. One of the few things Ozai knows about Zuko other than failure.

"He still maintains his childhood friends, then?"

Hope. Promise. Filial happiness. Iroh betrays himself, and Ozai is a step up, now.

"Unfortunately. I believe cutting him off will focus him. Don't you agree?"

A threat. A challenge. A bait. A Lord and Prince do not disagree unless an obligation is made directly afterwards. Iroh understands this.

"No, brother. Let him be young. I will help in his rearing, if need be."

Acceptance. Protection. Blame. Iroh now owes Ozai a favor: he offers responsibility for Zuko himself.

"Very well, I'll hold you to that. This blend is strong. I like it."

Satisfaction. Victory. Conceit. Ozai saddles Iroh with the failure, so as to tend to his gifted youngest, and rubs it in his face.

The night goes on accordingly.

Chapter Text

Book One: Air
Chapter V: The Family Found

The next morning, Ty Lee spots Prince Iroh speaking with Master Piandao in the gardens, and nearly stumbles over herself as she jogs over. She is eleven, and thus puberty begins its processes. With rising levels of estrogen comes skeletal growth, muscle leanness, thelarche, and other various hormonal changes in the body. She must grow into her body again.

"Prince Ir-oh! Ahem."

"Lady Ty Lee! Ah, did your voice crack? I see you're blossoming into a lovely woman, then."

Iroh's smile, as with most smiles, creates an effect of positive reinforcement in the group. Ty Lee's vasodilation mechanisms run wild as she recovers from her embarrassment.

Our subject then participates in the interactive ritual known as communication found among humans and other social creatures, in which she notes her observations on Zuko and Azula, and Master Piandao notes Zuko's growth, and Prince Iroh notes his happiness at said growth, and Master Piandao notes how they should play pai sho in an offhand comment.

"What makes you want for a game, Master Piandao? Surely you don't hunger for another loss, do you?"

"Against your blind bag gambit? No. Rather, I came across a rather exotic set and I thought it interesting to play on. Said to be from the Western Air Temple."

"The Western…? How is it special? What's it like?"

Ty Lee's enthusiasm is all but physically palpable. Piandao exchanges eye contact with Iroh. The Dragon of the West continues.

"Oho, are you interested in pai sho all of a sudden, Lady Ty Lee?"

"Huh? Oh, that's not what it is, I'm just, ah, interested!"

"Well, if you're so interested, Ty Lee, I was gifted it by a prospective student. The boards produced by the Air Nomads were said to be massive…"

The conversation continues, and Ty Lee dips away at a certain point to go inform Zuko of the return of his uncle. Zuko, unaccustomed to loved ones returning rather than leaving permanently, trips on himself even worse than Ty Lee, and his voice crackles an average of two-point-five-one times as much.

(Later, Piandao and Iroh converse over a totally uniform table of pai sho, and the white lotus gambit is played. Afterwards, they converse openly. Ty Lee's name is the first proper noun to be formed.)

--

The planet's rotation slows slightly with time due to the tidal effects of the Moon. As such, as a result of Tui and La's intervention, the rotation of the planet currently is about one-point-seven milliseconds slower than the rotation of the planet during the twilight end of Avatar Roku's lifespan. Seven of these rotations pass before Prince Iroh intercepts Ty Lee on her way to the Royal Palace's appointed dinner time.

"Lady Ty Lee."

"Good evening, Prince Iroh."

"I hear you've been working on your chi blocking."

Ty Lee smiles, genuine and without redirection. Iroh is resoundingly embedded in her mind as a friend and someone to be trusted. Theories like this must be tested, however.

"Oh, of course! It's definitely my biggest strength compared to my sisters. I even known the advanced set and everything."

"Good, good. Strong enough to come up with a variant, I also hear?"

And there, Ty Lee's theory is tested. Nobody should know about her "variant". She suspects Piandao immediately, Azula possibly, and not at all Zuko: the nuance of a master combatant, the nuance of a former friend, and the lack of nuance of a current friend, respectively.

(She should lie. She should lie outright with her smile still on her face, and yet. Iroh is a friend and someone to be trusted.

Maybe this one time, she can tell a half-truth. Just once.)

"Yeah, I call it the open palm technique. For if I need to bring someone down without chi blocking them! Seeing people fall over all the time can be a downer sometimes."

A quickly improvised excuse, but an excuse all the same. Chi blocking is infinitely more preferable to concussion, bone-breaking pain, or death itself, which is what most other Fire Nation styles offer. Anything lesser is a pipe dream or pacifism.

"Hm. Come, let's go to eastern training block. You know the way, I presume? I'd like to see it before dinner, since we have time."

In his worldly travels, Iroh has endeavored to learn of the strengths and weaknesses of all four elements. Earth is unyielding, water is binding. If his suspicions are correct, then societal pressure is a wonderful trap for both fire and air.

(It hurts, doing it this way. But if Iroh's grandfather ever taught him anything, it is how to corner an airbender. Every kernel of knowledge can be put to use at least once.)

--

His hypothesis is supported when Ty Lee arrives and begins a chi blocking form reserved for those in candidacy for the title of master, showcasing her prowess like any good student of the Academy. Once completed, he urges her to begin her variant form. Ty Lee hesitates, eyes flickering to the servants in attendance.

Iroh scowls, dismissing them like a grandfather flicking a fly away, before watching her like a grandfather enjoying a recital. The moment his soft eyes return, Ty Lee lets out a slow breath and begins the variant, open claws striking against the air itself, wind rushing along her palms, toes twinkling along the earth rather than violently pushing against it in pronounced lunges.

The elderly prince breathes in focus as he watches her. One by one, the lanterns of the training block flicker out, as well as the lanterns lining the hallways. Only one lantern is left lit, hanging dimly from a nearby tree, as Ty Lee finishes her set. Quietly, Iroh closes the sliding door behind him before speaking.

"Good, good. Now add your bending."

Ty Lee's expression radiates confusion like the sun radiates ultraviolet rays along the inner circle of the solar system. She suspects she didn't hear him correctly, that there must be some sort of auditory failing in either the distance or in her ears itself.

"I don't bend, I'm… I'm sorry?"

"Add your airbending."

The reaction occurs in the amygdala, which invokes a reaction in Ty Lee's hypothalamus. This sends a cascade through every related organ connecting to Ty Lee's fight-or-flight response. Her heart starts beating quickly, her palms begin to sweat, her hands begin to shiver. The primate instincts of her evolutionary ancestors wrestle to the death with her trained sense of Homo sapiens rationalism.

Does she run away? If she does, there is a chance he might alert the entire Fire Nation to her existence, and she would have no chance at survival. Does she try to reason with him? As if, he's Fire Nation Royalty, a prince known to be loyal to the end, the Dragon of the West. He would likely imprison her if she gave him even a moment to spare. Does she hurt him? No, because he would be left alive, and would direct his family into an even more dire response.

Does she kill him and hide the body?

Ty Lee sees no issue with this plan and attempts to do so.

But Iroh is a former Crown Prince, trained since birth to become the most powerful and most lethal firebender in the Caldera. He is a storied Fire Nation General who has killed more earthbenders than most Fire Nation citizens even see in their lifetime. He has studied every element, in their flaws, their strengths, and their weaknesses.

Ty Lee bounds off the ground, and then off a wooden pillar, and then aims to rip Iroh's throat out like the raven-eagles of Lake Tennjin. Iroh steadies his center like a mountain to the earth, before swaying his upper body away, and letting momentum do the work. His forceful grip grabs Ty Lee's outstretched arm as she passes him by, and immediately, she starts panicking the moment her attack fails.

"Let me go, let me go! Don't — Don't kill me, please, I don't know how it happened — I need to leave, I need to —"

"Breathe, Lady Ty Lee, breathe! Struggling uselessly will get you killed. Breathe!"

Ty Lee tries her novel best to calm her breathing, her heart still pounding, her arms still trembling. Epinephrine burns into her veins, acetylcholine levels rising and falling. Iroh uses his free hand to massage his neck, where his esophagus feels slightly bruised.

(Ty Lee did not touch him once. That technique, he surmises, is likely one of many reasons that Monk Pasang seemed so distressed.)

Ty Lee breaks into a sob, letting her feet touch the ground once more as she buries her face into the shoulder of the man who might kill her. Years of pent-up denial escape her body in hiccups and tears, and Iroh risks putting her arm down. His risk pays off when she wraps her arms around him, and he does so for the girl burdened with an incredibly fatal phenotype.

During this, Iroh does what he knows best in times of need. He provides plans, strategies, and concessions, war general that he is. Perhaps in the future, he might be a kind uncle, but for now, he still lives and breathes fire.

"There, there. I did not wish to alarm you. I simply had my suspicions, and my travels led me to peculiar places which provided answers. I do not wish you dead. I do not wish you outed, even. I am on your side, airbender that you are. Please, trust me, or at least trust my love for Zuko, that I will not harm you."

After several earthly revolutions around Agni's pride, Ty Lee finally asks the most important question to her existence out loud.

"What do I do? Oh, spirits, what do I do?"

"You must be cautious. We must wait and plan, listening like the earth. You cannot stay in the Fire Nation for your entire life, I suspect you know. There are few deserters who escape, but when they do, they do so when the opportunity is ripe."

"No, I know, but… Zuko. What'll he do without me? He can't know, ever. And I don't want to do that to him."

And there lies Ty Lee's last earthly connection to the Fire Nation, and Iroh understands why she stays. It is a terrible thing, when his reason for remaining in his homeland is so awfully similar. Particularly, because there is no good justification to deny her that bond, not unless he loses his own integrity. His heart breaks when her teary eyes flutter downwards.

"It will hurt, for him. But as I said, he is strong, and his memory of you will strengthen him further."

Steadying his expression, Iroh instructs her to sit down on an observing bench, letting her tears die down to diaphragmatic spasms and rhinorrhea.

"Originally, I returned to ascertain my nephew's safety. Now, I know it is to ensure yours, as well. I swear by my honor to free you from this gilded cage, one day."

"Shouldn't… shouldn't be tethered by… little girls and princes."

At that, Iroh laughs, his words disloyal to his cause. The only botherment now is the uncomfortable wetness lingering on his shoulder, and he will accept it gracefully.

Soon after, a maid comes to investigate the commotion, after overhearing the sound of a girl's screams and noticing the absence of the elder prince from the royal dinner. Fearing the worst, the attendant's shoulders loosen in relief when she comes across an old man consoling a tear-streaked girl, seated on a bench.

Iroh gives a goofy grin and a horribly outdated excuse.

"Hormones, am I right?"

At dinner, Ty Lee catches Zuko staring at her bloodshot eyes as she eats next to him. They both look away embarrassedly as Azula makes withering eye contact with Mai, who seems considerably upset for reasons unknown to the rational mind.

--

'Calm' is an adjective rarely found in descriptors of the Royal Palace. 'Metallic' seems most appropriate, as does 'fireproofed'. When describing the main populace of the Palace, 'reactive' would be the most accurate, giving the former adjectives credence in their usage. Fire Nation philosophy encourages both emotional reactivity and chemical reactivity, except in architecture, perhaps.

For the next year, however, 'calm' is arguably appropriate as an adjective. 'Divisive', however, would illuminate the politics of the matter more efficiently. There is no acceptable calm as the Fire Lord's expectations continue to break both of his children into further trauma and neglect, but their coping mechanisms might be described as a state of calm.

At this point, 'divisive' comes into play. Rather than suffering under the company of Azula like in the control, the modification of our independent variable causes the societal boundaries to shift into more defined territory.

On one boundary of the Cartesian graph, Azula spends her time strengthening Mai's loyalty and supplying her motivation, as well as cultivating Ty Lao into a suitable replacement. Ty Lao does not see past the manipulation: she did not spend the same amount of time with Azula at the Academy, nor has she undergone a life-changing revelation. As such, the trained usage of positive and negative reinforcement does not register as manipulation at all, to her.

Instead, Ty Lao becomes someone special, finally. Taking Ty Lee's place feels mildly immoral, but the satisfaction of attention snuffs morality in favor of indulgence. Although no master of chi blocking, Ty Lao has learned every dance: including the jian wu, or sword dance. Azula finds herself satisfied with another Ty sister in time, albeit with the flash of a broadsword, rather than the numb of a failing limb.

On the other side of the graph lies Zuko, who trains tirelessly to master a fire that comes imperfectly, to master twin dao that rise to proficiency, to please a father who will never love him. After hours worth of disappointment, training, disappointment, academics, and more disappointment, he falls into an easy respite of Ty Lee's bright presence and Uncle's laziness. The latter would not interest him if Ty Lee had not insisted, admittedly, but he finds that the Dragon of the West still has some helpful tips yet.

At times, their paths cross. The intercepts align at the origin point, either by appointment of the Fire Lord or coincidence. And every time, Zuko would remind himself that Azula always lies and Mai deserves better, and Azula would affirm that Zuko is useless, Ty Lee is a traitor, and Uncle Iroh is a failure.

But it is calm. The turtleducks content themselves with eating statistically average food, and then laying a statistically average number of successfully inseminated eggs and then dying at a statistically average rate.

Ty Lee disguises her interest in an airbending glider as her own interest in history, and Zuko casually makes a snide comment, and Iroh digs up a convenient excerpt from an ancient scroll while the two bicker playfully. Azula takes Mai and Ty Lao shopping sometimes, and their eyes light up (Ty Lao obviously, Mai discreetly) at the open check she gives them to buy armaments with.

Ozai plans genocide, Iroh prays to the spirits, Ursa is elsewhere, Lu Ten and Azulon are dead, and all is peaceful in the royal bloodline.

Unfortunately, we, as observers who are aware of the original instance of this system, know what happens once Zuko becomes thirteen and Ty Lee becomes twelve.

Chapter Text

Book One: Air
Chapter VI: Zuko and Ty Lee

The butterfly effect, although often used in literary works such as this study, is also used in the mathematical and interdisciplinary topic known as chaos theory. Closely associated with the work of Lorenz in our universe, it was originally proposed in Lorenz's study in weather modeling and data. When using seemingly inconsequential rounding methods in initial condition data, it was found to create results that would be unreproducible with unrounded initial data. This effect was then later suspected to occur in quantum physics, in which various quantum systems may or may not be affected similarly, thus leading to chaos theory and the idea of deterministic chaos.

However, the butterfly effect assumes several basic prerequisites for the effect to occur. In Lorenz's study, weather must exist for there to be weather modeling. This requires a sky, oxygen, climate, and other factors which may seem obvious to the layman. Quantum physics requires the basics of mathematics, calculus, and logistics to be at least partially true.

In the closed system that we are currently observing, two aspects of our positive control can be considered enough of a mathematical and physical constant to brook no further discussion beyond reiteration, rounded so succinctly that, numerically, these variables would be integers without decimals. That is:

Zuko is kind.

General Bujing will suggest the sacrifice of the 212th Battalion of the Fire Nation Army in a plan to invade Omashu.

Given these two variables are held constant in our study, it would be logical to assume that the results of these two variables will not change when compared to the positive control. If water is heated to boiling point at sea level, it will boil. If a strain of bacteria exists in favorable conditions, it will attempt to proliferate.

If Zuko is kind, and General Bujing suggests sacrifice, Zuko will be challenged to an Agni Kai by his father the next day.

The butterfly effect does not apply when Zuko screams under his father's cruelty, his skin searing, proteins denaturing, integumentary cells burning up and dying, optical nerves forcefully melted as his nocireceptors function at their highest capacity until they die.

The audience is, of course, made up of a politically important demographic, invitation only. Generals, admirals, royalty. Azula smiles. Admiral Zhao smirks. General Bujing tries to hide his satisfaction. Iroh looks away from the horror.

The last active airbender cannot see the minutiae from the roof where she crouches and hides, but Zuko's screams and cries are sonorous enough to make her draw blood when she bites her arm, holding back her own sobs.

--

Infanticide derives from two Latin words: 'infans', meaning unable to speak, and 'caedo', meaning to cut or kill. Although Ozai did not kill his child, he completed the etymological equivalent. Zuko has been cut from his nation, forbidden from speaking dishonorably ever again: in essence, he has been killed, both societally and in spirit. And from how feebly he lies, unconscious in the healing ward, he looks all the same.

Ultimatum derives from only one Latin word, albeit with two variants: 'ultimatus' or 'ultimus'. Both give a similar meaning: the end, finality, the extreme. Both give Ty Lee the same horrid feeling when Azula corners her on her way to Zuko's room, amber-gold eyes flaring like a war engine as they latch onto Ty Lee's soul and never let go.

"Off to visit Zuzu, Ty Lee? He's going to be gone the next day, you know. Like burning trash."

The only relief Ty Lee feels is the absence of Mai and Ty Lao from this conversation. But otherwise, every articulation that escapes Azula's oral cavity strikes like electrostatic discharge into her back. Ty Lee ceases locomotion, standing inorganically still. The walls show more signs of sentience than her, right now, as Azula decides to maintain her verbal assault.

"I take it you've never had to let go of a pet. It's a shame. Don't worry, I'm sure my Uncle will take him to a lovely peasant farm, like the earth-lover he is."

"I… I get it now. This energy you have."

"My aura? Positively blinding, I assure you."

"No. You're treating me like him. The moment I tried to be his friend, you figured I'd be like him."

Azula nearly exercises her linguistics, but her eyes flicker to the lamps lining the corridor. They're dimmer, as though contained within a beaker such that oxygen supply is cut, doomed to burn themselves out if this state is maintained. She attempts to flare them back to normalcy with her breathing, and yet, the exercise itself does not seem to yield the same respiration as previously indicated. Azula's suppositions are continually called into question, and all of it because of the girl in front of her.

Azula has an unknown in her life. Now, she's glaring right at Azula, molars clenched, phalanges flexed into fists, lacrimation in the corners of her eyes.

Humans, when faced with unexplored unknowns, often abandon logic and rationality in favor of alternative solutions. After all, one cannot apply prior knowledge to a complete enigma, and as such, base instincts and reactive protection are often utilized. The ability to make certain active decisions is muddled.

This is commonly known as fear. Azula violently refuses to acknowledge it as such.

"And you are. Just another weakling, clinging onto other weak things as if it'll save you!"

"Having people to care about isn't weak. As if using other people like tools is anything resembling strength!"

"As if you know the meaning of strength, you're a traitor and nothing more, easily replaced, easily manipulated, nothing special —"

"You're not special, either, you're just a copy of your dad! And —"

Ty Lee freezes in eureka realization. And then she laughs, a light giggle of mild hysteria, and Azula scowls in open vexation as our test subject seemingly escapes Plato's Cave.

"And Fire Lord Ozai doesn't even need to make another kid to replace you. Is that why you hate seeming weak, Azula? Because you're just another issue your dad has plans to deal with?"

Azula's fear and anger escape her body before she even realizes what occurs. The princess barely realizes her trance, her psychological id overriding her entire body as she attempts to pump plasma into the twelve-year old across from her. Positive and negative ions separate at her fingertips and the hallway illuminates with the same lumen count as natural lightning.

And then, suddenly, Azula has lost sensation in all of her limbs, including her larynx. The way she crumples and way the world seemingly slows down is reminiscent of the positive control we know of, but instead of a gondola suspended over a burning lake, these are the safe confines of a healing ward. Instead of two fifteen-year-olds on the verge of culling the Avatar's forces, these are two children with power too great for either of them to handle responsibly.

Like the positive control, Ty Lee looks at her own hands in awe and realization. Unlike the positive control, Ty Lee has time to speak, her voice shaking with covalent sadness and anger, the lamplights finally snuffed out as the air becomes nigh-impossible to breathe in.

(There was nobody left to tell secrets to, nobody left to care, except Lake Tennjin and its animals.)

"Maybe take a page out of your mom's book and kill your dad, Azula. If not, then you're weak in the same way I am."

Ty Lee exits and leaves Azula in the cloistering dark, a mangled mess of voiceless limbs approximating a cadaver. Conveniently, the chi blocking stops Azula from screaming in infernal agony until after Ty Lee's hospital visit.

--

Communication and feedback are necessary components of cooperative altruism: after all, if several individuals of a species act in tandem, this is done in order to accumulate resources or otherwise proliferate the community. Therefore, a species will select for traits that provide indicators for behaviors that positively affect proliferation. From there, cooperativity or detrimentality become palpable concepts to non-sentient beings, in which negative feedback causes an evolutionarily-selected negative neurological response in animals such as canines, primates, or likewise.

An example of a biological feedback mechanism is shame, dictated by the pregenual anterior cingulate cortex in humans. This particular neurological response makes Ty Lee want to crawl into a hole and die there, when she presents her wanted poster to Zuko and Iroh as they sail away from the Gates of Azulon in the direction of the Western Air Temple.

"We started yelling at each other, and then suddenly she's bending lightning at me, and I had to do something! But it still feels awful, and I said the worst things, and the vibes are all just wrong, and, and…"

"What did I say about panicking, Lady Ty Lee? Calm."

Ty Lee forces herself to take a shuddering breath, counting all the lamps in the captain's quarters they're conversing in.

"Ty Lee… you committed treason for me?"

"I mean, she was just so awful about everything else, so yes, I defended you, but she didn't need me calling her weak, or a copy of the Fire Lord, or… right, calm, calm, calmly-calm… o-oh..."

Ty Lee experiences a considerably more difficult time calming down when she observes the way Zuko hangs his head. He's wallowing in his own shame, most likely conducting another round of mental self-flagellation for our subject's own crimes, and it kills her. She sniffles miserably.

Iroh's gaze considers the traumatized preteens across from him and he nearly falls to despair — before Lu Ten's smile reminds him of the most important lesson he's learned in his many years. With hands as firm as carbon-reinforced polymers, he claps them both on the shoulder, and both gold and silver snap out of their sadness to face him.

"Do not lose hope. Either of you. I shall be clear: although you did the right thing, Lady Ty Lee, it is true that this is unfortunate, but we must persevere with both control and dignity in mind. Earth, then fire. The facts first, and then action."

The emotional imbalance in the room deteriorates slowly, but still remains. Zuko, his voice crackling with his own insecurity, speaks first.

"But… But we know Ty Lee can't stay onboard. What if we hide her? Like, like the stowaways in the dramas, where they would hide for months. It should work."

"No, nephew. If you insist on searching for the Avatar, who has remained unseen for an entire century, then that would be tantamount to imprisonment. Torture, even."

"But why? She'd have us. We'd be there for her."

"Zuko…"

"No! I don't want anyone else to leave, not if I can help it. I've lost too much. My honor, my family, my face, it's… it's…!"

Zuko only realizes that tears streak out of one eye when Ty Lee pulls him into a hug, the embrace forcing him into silence and further mental anguish. The only thing preventing him from openly sobbing is the physical pain of her touch on his burnt skin, and the throbbing ache of his damaged face attempting to emote, attempting to cry on both sides, and failing.

"It's… it's bad. I know. I was thinking of it on my way to your ship. Either you turn me in, or everyone on this ship is a criminal, or I leave. I know you won't do the first one, and I'd rather jump overboard than have that many people suffer the second one. Besides, I'm sure the Earth Kingdom isn't so bad."

"I should have never spoken up during that war meeting."

"Never say that, Prince Zuko! Never let go of your ideals. Although all the world seems to burn around us, we are fire. We shall continue to burn brightly and grow strong. Unfortunately, Lady Ty Lee is right. We must deposit her silently at the mainland once we complete our promised course. But I assure you, I will do everything in my power to make sure her absence is only temporary. To that end…"

Reaching into his clothing, the alopecic man reveals a scroll and unravels an intricate piece of cartography. Zuko and Ty Lee latch onto their new assignment fervently, scheduling plans and brainstorming logistical issues. Emotional baggage only appears in intervals, rather than continuously.

(Iroh looks upon them with bittersweet fondness. These are his children, he finally admits. Perhaps not his son, Lu Ten, big and bold and dead, but they are his.

And how opposite they are to him! In their loss, they strategize and claw for small victories and hopeful futures, rather than turning away from the world that has wronged them.

He wonders what his greatest lesson was, from his greatest failure. He wonders if they've somehow stumbled upon it, like finding a forgotten blade in an old battlefield.

He wonders if they'll keep it.)

"Lady Ty Lee? I'd like to speak with you in private, once both of you are satisfied with your plans."

--

The Western Air Temple is a marvel of multiversal architecture. The ability to build pagodas, temples, gardens, and living spaces along a steep valley is wondrous enough: the ability to maintain a similar architectural facade when building in reverse verticality is, by and far, a miracle, bending or not. Structural integrity and architectural physics had to be reimagined from the very first tenants, and an entire culture's worth of knowledge and scientific breakthrough would need to be applied. One might think that it would take either a construction team of master airbenders and earthbenders or at least two Avatars to even begin the project.

In front of the statue of Avatar Yangchen, though, the Western Air Temple would be nothing more than a genocide site and a backdrop for a conversation.

Leaning over the edge of a railing, Ty Lee squeezes a monk's prayer beads, a dead man's mala, massaging the wood in her hands as she blankly memorizes the Air Nomads' symbol. It's big enough to be uncomfortably large around her neck, should she wear it.

(Like a gallow, Ty Lee's mind unhealthily supplies.)

"What if I was the Avatar, Zuko?"

"Don't say that."

"Okay, let me say it in a better way. What if someone you know is the Avatar? Like, someone you care about. I read about it a bit: the Fire Sages only revealed the Avatar if they're sixteen, right?"

"Who would I care about enough to not capture? ...Other than you."

"You."

At that, Zuko stares at her with a singular bug-eye, doing his best impression of a copepod.

"Like, you suddenly start bending air out of nowhere. Or if Mai popped up and started kicking rocks at you. Or if I…"

"Fine, I get it. I told you not to say that. This is a dumb question, you know that?"

"Give me a dumb answer, then."

His piercing eyes falter, and stare into the abyss below.

"...I would talk to them. Try to make them understand what it means to me. And then they'd come with me, and I'd capture them… and then break them out. Secretly. I don't want to lose anyone else, but my honor…"

"Trying to kill a dragon and ride it too?"

"I could pull it off! I have nothing left, aside from my honor. Aside from the people who might care. ...I'd have to."

Ty Lee falls silent, with how broken those last three syllables were. They echo along the natural acoustics of the valley, its walls once designed to house the voices of the plenty. There is a resounding silence that occurs after Zuko speaks, unseeable, untouchable, untraceable, like air.

Like all the dead airbenders before her.

Her grip tightens on the holy symbol in her hands.

"I'm scared, Zuko. For you. Because maybe the Avatar's a good person, or maybe they're not there. That's why I asked."

"...I know. I know too well how easy it is to fail, or be weak. But I can't."

Silence.

"There's another reason I can't join you."

Zuko's eyes pin to her face, looking for any reason to hope, any reason to despair. For a moment, the question Ty Lee asks broils through his head, before he angrily dismisses it as an impossibility, once more committing a logical fallacy. But, perhaps, it is temporarily for the better.

"Your uncle actually forbade me. He'll tell you his own reasons, and they're kinda true, but I think…"

"I swear, Ty Lee, if it's for any spirit nonsense or —"

"I think it's because he can't stand another kid dying on him."

Silence repeats.

"He knows how important this is to you, Zuko, so he's gonna help you every step of the way. But it's not my honor I'm getting back, so with me, he can…"

"...Protect what matters. I'm still mad that you're leaving. That you can't be there when I capture the Avatar. But I get it. At least you'll write back."

"Well, I'll stay safe. But come on, have you ever known me to end on a sad goodbye? I saw a training arena on the way here — let's have one last spar, just like Master Piandao would command."

Ty Lee's smile nearly wipes away the wistful adjective of Zuko's own, and soon enough, Ty Lee's winning with a completely unfair upper hand, given the natural environmental biases of fighting an airbender (or, at least, airbender-locomoting chi blocker) in an airbending arena. By the end of it, Zuko falls on his back, his dao at his sides.

"Sorry about getting rough, Zuko, just wanted to make sure you never forgot me."

"With how you act? It's impossible."

Memories of spilled ink bottles and calligraphy-driven screaming matches and mochi on a rooftop come in photographic flashes to Ty Lee's mind, and her laugh echoes, happiness bouncing off the stalactites in reverberation.

And just like that day, Ty Lee lies down next to Zuko and watches the clouds.

--

Zuko sobs quietly in his quarters, the night Ty Lee disembarks on her own.

Iroh lights incense and prays. He is uncertain if Agni will hear his pleas, and so he prays to Yangchen and Pasang instead.

Ty Lee is rudely accosted by a drunkard as she travels to her one-night inn. The man has twice her body mass and three times her age. He has pigmented a tattoo of a Fire Nation ship across both his pectoralis major, and his pants and boots are those of the Navy. He's also exceptionally handsy and demanding.

In Fire Nation propaganda following the genocide of the Air Nomads, several textbooks and scholarly articles describe Air Nomads as “parasitical” and “an infestation”.

As the larger man slowly chokes on air, reduced to his knees in front of a twelve-year old girl, Ty Lee suspects they might have been correct, in a few ways. She certainly has enough vindication to play the part.

She lowers her talon claw once he is unconscious and kicks him to the side.

--

Air. Water. Earth. Fire.

Long ago, the four nations lived together. Avatar Kyoshi, through her finality and prudence, killed Emperor Chin and ensured harmony through force. Avatar Roku enforced this harmony, maintaining the socioeconomic status quo while simultaneously reaping the benefits of peace.

Such global national success emboldened the Fire Nation into their assault, their industrial boom and technological prowess encouraging a hungry imperialism, fueled by Fire Lord Sozin's personal desire to usurp the Avatar as the dominant power.

Only the Avatar, master of all four elements, could stop them. However, Avatar Roku did not bear the finality or impartiality of Avatar Kyoshi, and so refused to kill Fire Lord Sozin or otherwise sabotage the Fire Nation Army before being murdered himself. As a result of Sozin's increasing ambition, the Air Nomads decided to inform Avatar Aang of his status early, causing the premature adolescent to abandon his people and enter cryogenic stasis, vanishing to the world.

A hundred years passed, and the Avatar is presumed dead or in hiding, given his unwitting absence from his responsibilities, as well as the resulting genocide of the Air Nomads catalyzed by the firebending phenomenon known as Sozin's Comet. But, as it often occurs in nature, survival occurs even under extreme stress, usually as a result of genetic mutation. Ty Lee is born as a fourth-generation airbender thanks to an allelic mutation.

Although her airbending skills are sufficiently proficient, Ty Lee is not the Avatar. She cannot save the world, nor is it her destiny to, from what is observed in the positive control. However, we, as observers, know that she will do anything to save the people who matter.

(Instead of standing upon an airy mountain, looking to the daytime sky, Ty Lee crouches on the edge of a pagoda temple's roof at twilight, eyeing the masses below.

And the moment injustice arises, she dives and strikes.

If you, the observer, are imagining a title card, a red lantern's dim glow may be more appropriate than the sun's hopeful rays.)

END OF BOOK ONE: AIR

Chapter Text

Book Two: Water
Chapter I: The Boat Thief

Although the official epidemiological terminology of a "disease vector" would not be found in scientific publications until the transitional era between Avatar Aang and Avatar Korra, the concept of a pathogenic agent that might infect other specimens has existed since before Avatar Wan. Culturally imposed isolation from plagued communities or individuals was often practiced, and more emphatic historians might go off on a tangent as to potential correlation between the Earth Plague of 4,546 BG and the separation of the Swamp Water Tribe from the Northern and Southern Water Tribes.

We are not emphatic historians. However, we do understand that disease vectors can be amplified by globalization, specifically when both symptomatic and asymptomatic carriers are able to access transport to new, previously sterile locations. In this world, this might come in the form of a ship, or an ostrich-horse, or in later cases, a flying bison.

Ty Lee is not able to access such transport. This presents issues for her continued survival, in the rare cases that bounty-seeking Fire Nation patriots are able to track her down as she travels by foot. In this case, we bring our focus to the hardened faces of the Rough Rhinos, who seem entirely willing and eager to kill this almost-thirteen-year-old girl.

"By order of the Fire Lord, you are to be arrested for attempted assassination and treason against the crown!"

"I'd make a comment about auras, but this is getting ridiculous."

Fire Nation colony architecture values both cost-efficiency and durability, often salvaging metals found in decommissioned warships and using pre-established Earth Kingdom buildings as bases. They are not, however, designed to endure a continuous stream of firebending, arrows, and bolos as Ty Lee leaps from rooftop to rooftop, and thus experience heat sullying and denting as a result.

In the meantime, Ty Lee mentally curses her luck, flipping down to a potted plant, and then launching off a brick wall to chi block Kahchi and Ogodei, before feeling the air split from Vachir's arrow and diving out of the way — towards Yeh-Lu's feet, the man in question holding an explosive charge in preparation for a throw.

She gives the full-armored soldier a smile in an attempt to mentally disarm him.

"I don't suppose you're the friendly one?"

"Actually, yes. But."

Infamously, trinitrotoluene rapidly decomposes into nitrogen gas, hydrogen gas, water, carbon, carbon monoxide, and carbon dioxide, usually as a result of combustion. Practical applications include hydraulic fracturing, morally-reprehensible mining practices, and murder attempts. This happens repeatedly, and the explosions make Ty Lee reconsider her current travel plans.

--

For her thirteenth birthday, Ty Lee decides to purchase a boat.

Purchasing, however, is a very flexible term. It requires the exchange of currency for goods and services. Currency, itself, is a streamlined substitute for the barter system, in which a society opts to exchange durable, valuable, easily carried, and easily quantifiable objects rather than haggle constantly as to fair equivalency in barter. In barter, goods and services are traded for other goods and services.

In truth, this statement can be made more accurate. For her thirteenth birthday, Ty Lee decides to exchange her innocence concerning the felony of grand theft for a boat. In her mind, it's a worthwhile trade. In her personal conclusion, considering the amount of effort the exchange requires from her, whichever boat owner she decides to steal from is getting overpaid for his watercraft.

(For her thirteenth birthday, Ty Lee steals a boat.)

To note, Ty Lee does not know how to drive a boat. However, the boat salesman proved to be very helpful in this regard. He shows her the basic ropes, the sail controls, and provides a manual in the form of an intricate scroll that he only rents out to customers on a premium. He then makes the mistake of allowing her to inspect the ship, and then subsequently looking away.

There is no boat when he looks back.

By the end of the day, Ty Lee vaguely knows how to steer a boat. In truth, she decides to omit half the manual, since she can simply airbend the sails and, if she truly desires acceleration, push the boat with her wind. The most beautiful methodologies are often the most simple.

--

One of the main issues of basic time-management tools is inflexibility. Although mildly resolved in the internet era, in general, rearranging meeting times requires a memo, mail correspondence, or some other method of communication in between meeting times: otherwise, these scheduled dates are assumed unchanged.

Hence, Ty Lee cannot contact anyone on Zuko's ship about learning to pilot a boat, nor can she contact Zuko or Iroh. Which, in all honesty, she would appreciate the ability to do so, but alas, their next scheduled meeting is at the Mo Ce Abbey in six months, given Zuko's recent fixation on scouring the entire western coastline for any possible Avatar hide-outs.

Her original dreams of joining the circus pass her mind, along with the thought of facing potential execution upon returning to the Fire Nation. Although safe from Fire Nation terrestrial forces, our subject now suffers the same affliction that sundered Calhoun's utopian mice populations into behavioral sinks. She is bored.

As such, Ty Lee commits several acts of intrapersonal communication as she attempts to decipher her destiny.

Postulate One: She is an airbender for a reason. (Flawed logic. It is unknown how random or consistent genetic crossover is during meiosis, but she is an airbender as a result of her genetic inheritance. Outside of that, the concept of destiny is too vague to be defined by the sciences currently.)

Postulate Two: She should do something. (Personal opinion. Several beliefs and sects within this world champion meditation, self-reflection, and indefinite inactivity. Neutral jing specifically notes the importance of non-action and observation, but other jings indicate non-action by itself.)

Postulate Three: She is unlikely to be the Avatar. (A reasonable conclusion. Frequent attempts to bend water, earth, and fire result in supported null hypotheses. Ty Lee has spent time ruling out certain phenomena, given the inherent existence of air in all outlier events.)

Postulate Four: Zuko is searching for the Avatar. (A truth based on available information. To her knowledge, Zuko has not ceased his hunt, nor has he indicated any desire to terminate his means of restoring his perceived honor, to her personal dismay.)

Postulate Five: Her family is likely under heavy scrutiny in the Fire Nation and potentially in danger. (A hopeful inference. For all she knows, Azula had them all executed. However, they were still alive when they left, and Ty Lao has still incurred Azula's favor, so she hopes they have only been imprisoned.)

Considering these options, Ty Lee lies on her back on her stolen boat and watches the clouds as she formulates various plans of action based on these postulates.

Firstly: If she is unlikely to be the Avatar, and Zuko is searching for the Avatar, then she should not pretend to be the Avatar. Not only will this reap little benefit, but this might incur undesired results pertaining to hope, the worldwide population, and Zuko.

Secondly: If she is unlikely to be the Avatar, but she is an airbender for a reason, then she should accept her status as airbender. This will give her the physical strength and the mental peace of mind necessary for her continued success as a human being. This mode of action is easy: she remembers the raven-eagles and their freedom, and Lake Tennjin and its creatures. To embrace her ability to airbend may take some secrecy, but Ty Lee is eager to commit to this plan.

Thirdly: If her family is potentially in danger, and she is an airbender for a reason, and she should do something, then she should find a means to confirm the well-being of her family. She knows the Air Nomads have the capability of aeronautical travel, and her family lives in Shu Jing, along the peninsula trailing out of the Fire Nation mainland.

Squinting at a cirrus cloud shaped like a wing, Ty Lee gets on her feet and decides on her next plan of action. If she seeks the aeronautical travel of the Air Nomads, and she is currently near the Fire Nation colonies, then the first place to look is the Northern Air Temple. (The Western Air Temple is closer, but the Mo Ce Sea can be fatal and oversaturated with Fire Nation patrols. Her caution is valid.)

Her hands open into palms as she summons a great tailwind and propels her boat onward.

The fishermen she passes by are wide-eyed, slack-jawed, and frozen in place as they see a luxury Fire Nation cutter fly completely against the wind, blowing past them with billowing sails.

There is one vector that travels faster than any vehicle in circulation, and anyone who can communicate is a symptomatic carrier of gossip.

--

Ty Lee realizes with unpunctuality that she does not know how to dock a boat.

Several dockhands stare openly as she at first subtly attempts to airbend the sails back and forth into harbor, before Ty Lee becomes frustrated at attempting subversion and simply billows the sails forward until applying a large amount of manual air resistance -- and nearly flying off her boat from the Newtonian model of momentum.

Ty Lee also does not realize why said dockhands quietly offer to teach her how to dock a ship.

Later, when the earlier-mentioned fishermen rapidly and expertly dock their ships into the port town of Gong Sui, their maniacal exclamations of reincarnated Avatars and cutters gone against the wind, they are met with resounding lassitude and several offers of liquor from emotionally exhausted portsmen.

Ethyl alcohol, despite its relatively short structural formula, does the opposite of shortening the rumor mill.

--

When Zuko and Iroh make their next stop along the colony coastline adjacent to the Gong Sui, the first thing they hear is about the Avatar. This is usually the expected result, except they are told without any initial prompting, spontaneously, by a geratric old fisherman with a bulging eye and a pegleg, in the form of a hollering "Don't you go looking for the Avatar, sonny, she's already gone fishing!"

Nine hundred seconds of Zuko amateurishly interrogating an old man, Iroh physically holding his nephew back, and said old man completely dismissive of an angry teenager's Nickelodeon-friendly threats, both firebenders decide to investigate the town as a whole and interview as many people as possible concerning the validity of a possible Avatar sighting.

Their results were conclusive. The Avatar did, in fact, appear, here, and in Gong Sui, and in Chin Village, and in Omashu, all on the same day, at the same time. They were simultaneously male, female, and non-binary. They could bend air, fire, lightning, and possibly water, but the verdict was out on whether they bent earth or not. They had a spine made of gum, or was it bones made of metal? The Avatar ranged from the ages of three to sixty-one, but they did get their name.

At this, Zuko leans in, encapsulated at the hope of finally learning the Avatar's name, maybe getting a lead to someone who he might track down. His ears prickle with every syllable the street vendor says, even as the middle-aged man dabs his sweat away and stirs his pot of ramen.

"...They say the Avatar's name is Ty Lee."

And at that, Zuko growls and roars, throwing his chopsticks at a nearby wall and shoving his bowl of ramen into his uncle's arms. He stomps off to go burn something, muttering about peasants who've never seen a backflip before.

Iroh, himself, is mildly irritated at Ty Lee's lack of control, but thankful to the spirits for sullying evidence of Ty Lee's bending with such blatant inaccuracy.

"Prince Zuko, come back! At least it means she's safe and as vibrant and ever. ...And your ramen will get cold!"

--

Now armed with the necessary knowledge to not crash her boat into a port, Ty Lee sails forth. About three days of nonstop bending pass until finally, as her arms burn with lactic acid and her chi falters and her eyes grow heavy with tiredness, the silhouette of the Northern Air Temple is lit against the midnight astrology.

Ty Lee rubs her eyes and takes a second look at that particular descriptor.

Lit? With civilization and fire?

She ventures onward.

Chapter Text

Book Two: Water
Chapter II: War Minister Qin

The Oreamnos americanus, commonly known as the mountain goat, is a cloven-hoofed mammal native to North America in our own iteration of Earth. It is notable for its ability to scale incredibly steep alpines by using instincts honed by millennia of evolution and biological boons such as high-friction hooves outfitted with dewclaws and strict thermoregulation. Most infamously, they are known for searching for high-elevation mineral licks, which provide the sodium and other minerals necessary for a healthy lifestyle. Mountain goats even venture away from their natural habitat to do so, exploring manmade structures such as dams or hiking trails for potential salt sources.

There are no mountain goats in Ty Lee’s environment. However, the roast turkey-duck-chicken and fried rice she’s currently consuming is so heavily salted that she is currently experiencing a similar eating experience. After three days of consuming minimal rations, however, she figures that a dousing of soy sauce will make the dish palatable.

After all, these Earth Kingdom refugees were incredibly polite. This Mechanist especially.

“— And it’s so lovely of you to join us for dinner. We expected the worst, seeing how extravagant your ship seemed, but when you smashed it against the sea stacks, it was obvious you were another poor soul!”

“Hey, I didn’t mean to do that. – Pass me the soy sauce, please? Thanks, Teo. – Anyways, about that. When do you think you can get my ship fixed?”

“Well, thankfully it’s a standard Red Serpent 97 design straight out of the shipyard, and the small size of the cutter is one of its advantages, both in maneuverability and reparations! One or two days, tops. Although, there is the problem of recompense…”

"Aw, c'mon, dad, it's just a ship repair. Even I could do it."

Ty Lee hums, taking a bite out of her turducken thigh and considering it. Her financial situation is, optimistically, nearly bankrupt. Voluntary labor in the kitchens seems most logical, but despite her proclivity towards this population, overstaying would be detrimental to her overall mission.

Sitting back and masticating, Ty Lee crosses her arms and considers the people around her. From their own admission, they willingly came here in search for a home, knowingly and even happily cutting themselves off from the mainland and, she suspects, any feudal tax they might face in their poverty. Therefore, they have also excluded themselves from most forms of streamlined communication.

That leaves only one issue. She ingests.

“How well can you keep a secret?”

“Ah, er. Very well, I assure you.”

Grey eyes stare into the Mechanist eyes, and Ty Lee attempts her best impression of Azula.

“As in, something that could threaten the world as a whole?”

“I, y-yes, I’m certain that I’ve kept – could! Could keep a secret like that!”

The sudden and clipped correction speaks encyclopedic volumes to Ty Lee, and she begins seeking evidence where she wouldn’t before. Originally, she had considered offering her bending skills to an inventor under oath, but now she must consider new confounding factors. He’s clearly in some sort of secret developmental project, but she lacks sufficient evidence as to whether it’s for the Earth Kingdom, the Fire Nation, or someone else.

"Why're you acting so suspicious?"

Ty Lee glances down at her plate. She notes the lack of grill lines on her turducken, and then looks behind her at the kitchen. There is a metal gas stove sitting in a sensible part of the kitchen. Pots and pans surround it, and the sink is filled with the previous cooking utensils used to prepare their current meal.

A gas stove.

A gas stove…

"Wait..."

Ty Lee starts speculating on certain “funny little ideas”, before promptly getting up from her seat. The Mechanist suddenly starts perspiring at an exponentially higher rate, and Teo looks between himself and our subject in confusion. With a critical eye, she slides the stove diagonally at an acute angle and reads the model number of the gas stove. Her shoulders slump. All her presumptions about the situation have been compromised.

The stove is labelled the “Caldera 68 Home Unit”.

“How good are you at keeping secrets from your employers? The Fire Nation ones.”

"Young lady, we have shown nothing but hospitality to you, and I — I cannot believe your nerve, I'm sorry, but I must ask you to leave —"

The Mechanist's eyes widen exponentially as, with a blank face, Ty Lee picks up a knife and throws it slightly into the air. A visible vacuum of air engulfs it as unseeable gas makes itself visible in the form of a sphere, and the knife flips around precariously in the air, hovering over Ty Lee's talon claw.

"There's a reason I came to this temple. So, mister, how good are you at keeping secrets?"

"...I've always done it at a price."

Teo's head swerves from the impossible girl to his father, and sees his expression darken. Identity theft is a real crime, and he wonders if his father is the same caring man he always claimed to be.

"Dad...?"

The Mechanist looks like a man about to make a deal with a spirit. Statistically speaking, this is not an entirely inaccurate simile.

--

Homicide is not often a service offered in bargaining, but it is not the rarest. At the basest level, one of the very few services any human can truly offer is homicide: biblically, the first homicide was done using nothing but a stone, and so the act itself does not hold any inherent difficulty other than the expected struggle of human against human.

The societal taboo of homicide itself decides the difficulty of the matter in any form of civilization, which provides issues for humans, given their social nature. Ty Lee, herself, had hoped to avoid such a taboo, but the Fire Nation Palace is nothing if not grim. During her entire upbringing, she knew that one day she may have to kill someone: perhaps in ordering an assassination as a noblewoman, or perhaps by her own hand as an elite chi blocker of the Academy.

The thought of it sickens her slightly. That night, Ty Lee occupies herself with the mental acrobatics of justifying the deletion of another life. But what else did the Mechanist mean by "get rid of him"? Did he expect a one-girl blockade, cutting the Fire Nation off from the temple — but also cutting the temple off from any other form of society whatsoever? Did he want her to debate in a court session to a system that wants her dead?

Her moral dilemma is her greatest hurdle. She can easily kill someone in this dangerously-situated temple in the clouds. She knows how to get away with it: she does not nearly have the resources to make this look like an accident, but Fire Nation stationary, calligraphy lessons, and an inkwell go a long way when leaving behind a fake calling card.

Ultimately, Ty Lee remembers the raven-eagles. How free they were, how happy to hunt. How they soared and dove and killed. This is for a good cause. The Fire Nation forces the Mechanist to work for them. She is not bound by the laws of the Fire Nation, or any other nation. And if the spirits truly do care, then the enma assigned to War Minister Qin shall make him suffer.

Ty Lee is an airbender. Ideologically, airbenders detach themselves from the coils of the mortal realm to elevate themselves. And so she detaches herself from the illusion of nations, free to realize the law of the jungle and act upon it accordingly.

Her ancestors mourn a second time, for the raven-eagles have taught her war, and the air bisons are hidden away, like the peace they once taught.

--

Assuming War Minister Qin is made of the same material as any other human, and assuming the Northern Air Temple is at a similar altitude as the average mountain, he reaches terminal velocity of about one-hundred-and-ninety kilometers per hour after about twelve seconds. Given how steep the mountain is, War Minister Qin has more than enough time to realize the airbender girl who kills him is Ty Lee, the rumored child assassin who made an attempt on Princess Azula's life.

The six Fire Nation guards with him are able to realize this without splattering into broken coagulation at the bottom of a ravine, and so fire at will once the initial shock wears off. However, they assume War Minister Qin's configuration when they realize that they sought to fight an airbender three meters away from a cliff face.

Weeks later, as more evidence surmounts about the minister's death during his bimonthly inspection, the Qin family and the Bujing family mount innumerable allegations against one another. After all, a perfect Bujing crest was found at the scene of the crime, and it was on Fire Nation papers, and Qin always was a thorn in Bujing's side, especially in their clashes over Earth Kingdom territories and conquests.

(This family feud continues for generations. In the future, Fire Lord Zuko approaches Ty Lee about the matter, and she snorts.

"So, you want me to confess, or?")

--

Ty Lee spends thirty days staying in the Northern Air Temple to ensure no other Fire Nation scouts will approach. With the appointment of a new War Minister who has no detailed records of Qin's personal project, as well as the decrease in Fire Nation authorities, the Mechanist deems the transaction concluded.

"Once more, I'm so sorry you had to go through that dreadful business, my dear. I had hoped that, ah — well. I'm not sure what I had hoped. I hoped maybe you'd be more like the Air Nomads, but…"

"They're dead. Yeah. And this is war. There weren't any better options. Not without..."

Ty Lee meets Teo's eyes, and the message is understood. Teo looks away, but says nothing. The Mechanist sighs.

"This is war. Yes, this is war. At the very least, I can keep the worst of my inventions at bay."

The older man's expression hardens, and he adjusts his monocle in his anger.

"The Fire Nation must not get their hands on the war balloon. To give them such uncontested mobility would doom the Earth Kingdom and Northern Water Tribe! Perhaps they'll have faster tanks, or hardier trebuchets, but no more than that. As for your payment, my dear…"

From there, Ty Lee is led to a garage, carved out of a monastery, where old idols and statues have been pushed aside. Her old cutter is now lined with the same steel that covers warships and barges. The sail takes on a more rectangular shape. Most notably, however, are the thick metal wheels now attached to the side of the boat, outfitted with modified treads.

"I've made improvements to your luxury cutter: this model should be hard to crash into a shoreline, and with your airbending, you should be able to propel the vehicle across water and even land. The wheels and sail fold into the cutter with this lever and this lever, and the treads are entirely replaceable."

"...Woah, neat. And what do you call it?"

"Well, the Landed Sand Shark Cutter 100 Prototype with Airbending Modifications. In the blueprint, anyways."

Ty Lee nods and stands on the precipice of taking the metaphorical keys to this "landshark cutter" and leaving the site of her first murder. But then, she steps back from the precipice, realizing exactly what happened the last time she handled a ship without thinking. She sighs.

"I'll make another deal. I'll stay for another three days to test drive it and any other inventions, annnnd... you write up a manual and a copy of an Earth Kingdom map."

"Might I add further security from Fire Nation forces?"

"Only if you make an airbender staff, too."

"Deal! Teo, it looks like our dark cloud has a silver lining after all: we get to see a true airbender in action!"

--

Despite all evidence towards inherent bending prowess, certain techniques must be learnt through trial. Ty Lee only manages to successfully glide once, but when she does, it is exhilarating to both watch and experience.

Her staff goes through endless modifications after each of her own personal failures. By the end of it, the staff's glider functionality resembles the aerodynamic hang-gliders of our own world rather than the semicircular design found in manuscripts detailing the original airbenders.

Ty Lee leaves bittersweetly, happy to move on, and yet wanting to give the Mechanist and his people a better deal than Fire Nation ministers breathing down their neck. But she is only thirteen, she reasons.

Ty Lee's landshark passes by the cliff where she killed seven men. She thinks she spots a blot of crimson along the cliff, and nearly regurgitates her breakfast as her imagination fills in the gaps. She is already thirteen, she realizes.

--

One week later, when Ty Lee digs into the hull to find a change of clothes, she finds an extra set. Ty Lee's heart stops when she unfolds it.

Orange and saffron yellow, but in the stylings of one of Agni's monks, rather than an Air Nomad's. The stomach and joints exposed, to provide maximum mobility. Blue tattoo ink.

Silently, Ty Lee shoves the new inventory deep into the landshark's bowels and explicitly avoids thinking about how Qin screamed as he fell.

Chapter Text

Book Two: Water
Chapter III: The Avatar Confirmed

Similar to an airborne plague, word of mouth is easily able to spread across a landlocked series of communities and populations, amplified by systems such as postal services or trade lines. Over two years, the Earth Kingdom coastlines experience a bigger wave of sudden energy and rumor-milling than when they were first colonized, along with the rest of the eastern coast of the Earth Kingdom.

As such, several Fire Nation scouting parties find several feasible trails as to the location of Ty Lee. However, due to the inherent transience of memory, they experience logistical difficulties in ascertaining the location of our specimen of interest. The mixture between Gong Sui's initial eyewitness accounts of a potential Avatar, ghost stories involving the Northern Air Temple, and an uncategorizable number of excerpts across the continuous seaboard become more detrimental than beneficent.

Below are several anonymous excerpts collected from such scouting attempts.

"Oh, the girl with a braid? ...Well, there's a lot of them, dearie. There's O-ran down the way, and Kani who sells lobster-crabs…"

"Why no, officer. It's just me, and my nephew, and our crew. Care for some ginseng tea?"

"Ty Lee, huh? Never heard of her. Kinda looks like this one kid, Kazula. Helped us beat some bandits while we were traveling."

"Kazula? Like the Princess? Obviously, that's a fake name. But that poster does look like Ran'Mai…"

"Hm? Lemme see that poster. ...Looks like the girl that travelled with Black Dolomite for a few weeks. Form was terrible until Black Dolomite fixed it. Needed an Earthbender touch. But Black Dolomite ain't no snitch. You ash-makers think you playin'? Huh?! Sui! Suiiii!"

"My, my. Snooping in my city, firebender? Now then, ol' Bumi's just gonna take this poster and… oops! Hope you don't mind a rough ride down! Hah-hah-hah-snrk-hah!"

"In fact? No, I haven't seen someone like that. Perhaps you should ask the spirits. An angry wraith in the visage of an airbender came by recently, they'd be glad to set you straight."

"Hrm, I might be able to offer you the information you seek… for the right price."

"Nah, we've never seen a girl like that. Though, she's a real cutie. Makes me think of a song…"

"I know her! She's the one who stole my cabbages! Here, I'll point out exactly where that cabbage-thief went!"

Et cetera, et alia.

--

About twenty days after supernatural light erupts skyward from an iceberg in the South Pole, the rumor mill shifts violently. So violently, in fact, that the rumor mill erupts into metaphorical civil war on the topic of airbenders, with different hypotheses and purported pieces of evidence thrown left and right between the border extremes of the Earth Kingdom.

The western and northern Earth Kingdom, including the colonies, maintain that the Avatar is a fifteen-year-old girl with a strange ship-tank. The possibility of testimonial bias slightly subtracts from these accounts (i.e. a predominantly lower-income audience claiming to have seen the strange vehicle, the Avatar's reported clothing and accent seeming Fire Nation in nature), but the repeatedly warped story maintains a few constant variables. Thusly: her name is Ty Lee, and she has a full head of hair and a braid.

The southern Earth Kingdom, although initially in compliance with the above, vehemently changes their stance after Avatar Aang spends an inordinate amount of time basking in the attention of Kyoshi Island. They claim the Avatar is a twelve-year old boy with an air bison and full Air Nomad tattoos. Certain accounts are flexible: there is a thirty-three percent division as to whether he travels with a Water Tribe girl, a Water Tribe boy, or both, as well as a fifty percent division as to whether he has a flying lemur or not.

The eastern Earth Kingdom and Ba Sing Se are mostly isolated from these rumors, aside from the whispers in the Lower Ring and the sudden influx of bald, ink-painted imposters and braided young girls at Full Moon Bay.

--

As dictated in the ninth revision of Zuko and Ty Lee's meeting plan, Yokoya Port provides a sodium-infused, aromatically-ichthyological rendezvous point between Ty Lee and Zuko's crew. Currently, Tui and La favor the geographical area surrounding this area, as friction between the air and water create rough waves along the shoreline. Dark clouds begin to roll over the warship.

In the first few months of his banishment, Zuko would sneer at the smell of aquatic ecological decomposition. However, perhaps because of Pavlovian conditioning, the olfactory sensation of bacterial decay brings him a smile as he spots the oncoming form of his childhood friend, knapsack slung over her shoulder. Iroh stands to his side with a smile.

"Ty Lee!"

"Lady Ty Lee, it is a pleasure to see you once more. I believe we have much to discuss."

"Yeah. You found the Avatar, right? I heard he's running around, riding eel hounds or whatever. Did you know people think he's me? I swear, these rumors are starting to really bring down my aura."

At this, Zuko's smile, to speak colloquially, turns upside-down.

"He's a dumb kid, and he shouldn't be tarnishing your name like that, just because these peasants can't wrap their head around your fighting style. It's unbelievable."

As Ty Lee incessantly teases Zuko for his sudden ability to pontificate, and then teases him about his inability to pontificate after he starts stammering, and then teases him about his newfound height, the metal walls of the ship echo with laughter and mock anger and happiness.

--

This changes once the trio settle down for tea, and earnestly begin discussing the Avatar and their hunt. The loud eruption of thunder roars dully past the alloyed hull. Although not the most amicable topic, Zuko and Ty Lee find secret relief, being able to confidently converse about a topic that isn't port prices, navy movement, or Earth Kingdom gossip. It helps, being able to confide in something that doesn't involve traumatic pasts, constant failure, or Ty Lee's burgeoning secret.

"Speaking of, Zuko. How did you know the airbender was the Avatar?"

"Who else would he be? Hiding out in the South Pole, blasting me into my own wall. He wasn't one of those Earth Kingdom wannabes, clearly."

"Well, you know he's an airbender. But how did you know he was the Avatar? What if… what if he was just some airbender from a sect that hid away?"

"…He used the Avatar State. There was a whirlpool of water around him, and he knocked some of our men overboard. Lieutenant Jee had frostbite for a week. I know it's him. I know his face, I know what he and his Water Tribe cohorts look like, and now that I know, we can go home once I —"

"Prince Zuko. You so casually forget how Lady Ty Lee's exile is different from ours. We can go home. She cannot."

"I'll be Crown Prince again! They have to let her back. I'll order them to!"

(Ty Lee has seen a relapse once. Only once. After her paternal grandfather died, her father spent a week drowning himself in sake. Every other time before that, she heard him say the same tired joke about "quitting while he was ahead", usually coupled with how his marriage made him clean. He got worse, all because of that one event, and from how the servants would sometimes talk, it seemed like his relapse was way worse than any other time he was drinking.

Ty Lee sees the same desperation in Zuko's eyes as she did when he was first banished, and for once, she wished she was talking about port prices, or navy movement, or Earth Kingdom gossip instead.)

"Zuko."

Ty Lee shifts her vocal tone and assumes a similar posture as her most dire situations, the posture she saves for her bouts of vigilantism or her worst crimes. Immediately, Zuko's eyes snap to her, his mouth caught in frozen silence.

Iroh sips at his tea quietly, slowly nodding to himself as he stares down at his drink.

"— Remember when I said your uncle had his own reasons for forbidding me from joining you? And that weird question, about what you'd do if I were the Avatar?"

"What…? What do you mean?"

"You know who the Avatar is, now. And we've always talked about the possibility of hidden airbenders. So I guess… yeah. Yeah, I better tell you now."

Vibration is a phenomenon in which force causes a predictable oscillation in objects acted upon. Zuko's hands attempt to recreate this phenomenon in their trembling. In contrast, Ty Lee's entire expression resembles postmortem. Iroh is a mountain, still and steady, ready to bear the inevitable.

--

"By the order of the Crown Prince, you will surrender yourself to my crew!"

The resulting silence allows the last syllable to bounce through the steel hallway. A cup of tea remains spilled across the table they once occupied.

Steel grey meets burning gold.

"Really? You want to do this? Fine. Let's make it an Agni Kai, for old times' sake."

--

"Why?! Why didn't you tell me?!"

"To protect us — To protect you!"

Zuko roars, and Ty Lee moves.

Between the valley-flooding precipitation and eye-watering flashes of ionization, fire and air are blasted in tandem by two children who love each other too much. Hard stomps on the steel deck dance around swift steps. The left half of Zuko's solar plexus has been chi blocked, and Ty Lee has had to discard a burning piece of her arm sleeve. Fire and air are blasted in tandem, again.

Iroh notes how Ty Lee's air is more aggressive, powerful. Eager to rip apart and cut through, as opposed to wisping past or pushing away. Zuko's fire, in the meanwhile, burns as brightly as he's ever seen. He closes his eyes in the rain as the sensation of wind and heat wash over his skin.

The screaming, bending, and crying match is luckily drowned out by the high decibel count of thunder, and so the rest of the crew sleep soundly. Soon enough, Iroh convinces the teenagers to escape the potential hypothermia that results from pouring rain.

As he tucks in their sleeping forms, he mentally creates a resolution to follow through with.

--

In time, Ty Lee leaves the ship with a fresh change of clothes, a memorized codeword, a white lotus tile, and a gamble. Iroh remembered her favorite shade of pink and brown: now, if only he hadn't once more gone with a motsuke-koromo… (At least the hat makes for a nice basket.)

Zuko sails onward, a new burning conviction lodged into his frontal lobe. His place at his father's side is no longer the only thing he fights for. Now, he knows he must capture the Avatar, so that Ty Lee can be free to restore the Air Nomads the right way.

--

"Ma'am, do you know why we've pulled you over?"

"I'm fifteen, if you're trying to flirt."

"No. You were over the speed limit for thirty minutes straight down this road. Can you see why that's an issue?"

Ty Lee's eyes seemingly erupt from their orbital cavities — otherwise known as bugging out — as the Earth Kingdom soldiers list off all her traffic violations while on their ostrich-horses. In the meantime, she does her best to debate against all the ludicrous reasons there would be speed limits, or vehicle specification violations, or license plate issues for a vehicle that's never been made before.

And then the landshark is held aloft by two earth pillars. Not wishing to lose her only reliable method of transportation, Ty Lee allows herself to get cuffed.

"You have the right to remain silent. Everything you say can and will be used against you in Omashu's courts of law. You have a right to an attorney…"

(As she's pulled into the back seat of an ostrich-horse, she really wishes she took Zuko's offer to hunt the Avatar with him.)

Chapter Text

Book Two: Water
Chapter IV: The King of Omashu, Part I

Dementia, unfortunately, is commonly found in most humans throughout the multiverse. Although the set of related symptoms may be manifested by different causes, dementia is commonly ascribed to old age and related disorders, such as Alzheimer’s disease, frontotemporal dementia, Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, and others.

Statistically, age-related diseases that cause dementia are less impactful to the population of the Avatar’s world compared to our own. The cause remains to be tested. Possibly, the level of technology and medicine that are widespread during this area might cause the population to have a lower number of geriatric individuals, and thus less likelihood of dementia in ratio to the total population. The existence and physiological impact of chi and bending may also contribute to this, given the correlation between elderly benders and raw strength: then again, one must consider the effect of age on bending mastery. Other genetic differences may also contribute to this statistic.

Sokka, for his part, hopes that such dementia isn’t an issue for the one-hundred-and-twelve-year-old across from him currently piloting a flying bison, but does not eliminate it from the possible factors that may impair his decision-making.

“C’mon, Sokka, a live airbender! Shouldn’t we take the chance to maybe see if it’s real? I mean, who’d lie about something like that?”

“It’s probably just some backwards rumor about you. That’s how that fire magic guy found out where we are!”

“Aaaand that means we can do the same thing as Zuko to find out where this other airbender is. Besides, if the rumors are true, then that means their cool land-ship-thing must be at Omashu, and I was planning to go there anyways!”

“That’s even more crazy. What type of ship sails on land? And why do you know that guy’s name?!”

“Well, you see, I overheard the crew –”

Katara’s eyes rapidly transpose between her brother and the Avatar, years of siblingship giving her a tolerance to nonsense and angry digressions. The moment there’s a lull on the conversation, she takes initiative.

“Well, I think it’d be good to resupply, and we didn’t really get to switch from Water Tribe to Earth Kingdom coin at Kyoshi. And we should take whatever chance we can to find any other airbenders, right? They might even know how to get to the North Pole faster…?”

Aang’s resulting smile threatens to catch several insects, given the low altitude of Appa’s flight. Sokka emits a low groan, before falling into incomprehensible mutterings.

Katara, unaware of her constant positive feedback loop provided to Aang, feels satisfied in her judgment. Sokka exclaims, attempting to mask his compliance by signaling his falsely-perceived masculinity and pseudo-autonomy.

“Fine! But if it’s a load of dung wash, then it’s not my fault.”

--

“This is a load of dung wash and it’s not my fault!”

“Well, that’s what they all say, really. Would you like tea? A game of pai sho?”

Ty Lee sits opposite of King Bumi at his dining table, covered almost entirely in pink jennamite. Although she would normally appreciate this shade of red, caused by slight imperfections and trace amounts of iron, her current imprisonment does not garner her positive opinion.

“I’d play, but my hands are crystal-ed up, I can’t move my legs, my landshark is in custody, and my vibe is really getting murdered right about now!”

“Well, I can’t help you with that last one, but think outside the box for once, dearie. For someone with such a peculiar invention, your creativity is between a rock and a hard place. Get it? Haha-snrk-hahaha!”

Now challenged to find a solution outside of standard paradigms, Ty Lee falls silent as she glares at the centenarian across from her. She attempts to flex her digits and fails. She then attempts to find any form of looseness around her torso, and due to the imperfect propagation of crystal growth, she finds that she can at least move her waist slightly.

Ty Lee then attempts locomotion in her trapezius, triceps, and biceps, and finds similar freedom of movement. Then, she closes her eyes and focuses.

When taught the basics of bending, most students come to understand chi as a formless, unseeable energy. The chi system, itself, responds to internal neurological receptors similarly to receptors found in the circulatory system: albeit, less physical and more ephemeral, as is the nature of elemental energy.

Ty Lee respirates deeply, and uses the sensation of her own lungs to detect similar expansion and compression in air pockets found in the jennamite. She continues this exercise and attempts to replicate the sensation of her lungs in the air pockets, and King Bumi falls silent as he considers her for a moment before suddenly entering horse stance and summoning a sedimentary wall.

The surrounding guards copy their monarch quickly as jennamite explodes, shrapnel embedding into the walls and furniture similar to a fragmentation grenade. Bumi lowers his shields as Ty Lee stretches her limbs once more and gives a wicked smile.

“I meant more vocally telling a guard what to do, but hey! Props to you, young airbender!”

“Dunno how I feel about having that be public knowledge. – Anyways. Pai sho…?”

“Take a seat, honored guest. Now, you owe me for a bailout, and I have a plan...”

--

Captain Gai adjusts his uniform as the new recruits come trailing in, following a strictly regimented formation that’s been drilled into the greenhorn militia since their first day of training. Today is especially important in terms of military decorum, since King Bumi himself has informed his corps a week in advance that an out-of-city delegation is to join them to observe Omashu’s latest batch of soldiers.

Of course, this is all standard diplomacy, Gai knows. The Earth Kingdom is a confederacy of its own that requires shows of strength and proof of power to bolster trade and solidify alliances, and as a proud commander, Captain Gai is more than happy to show off the quality of his men. As it turns out, the most recent diplomat seems to be a young nun, perhaps from the Mo Ce Abbey. As such, perhaps it’s best for more of a stratagem review and some impressive exercise rather than a forceful show of earthbending.

As the men stand at attention, Gai falls into a practiced ease as he begins introducing their latest diplomat, makes a mild joke to loosen the boys up, and gets to business smoothly. After the initial morning announcements, he begins with their lesson.

“Men, you’ll be going off to combat soon. It’s important that you be prepared for everything.”

And that’s when an air nomad with a lemur on his head and two Water Tribe teenagers bounce off the stone ground in front of him in a mail service cart, the nun curses like a Fire Nation sailor and storms off, and the entire squadron starts laughing like hyena-monkeys.

Even if he is, rationally speaking, justified in his surprise, Captain Gai never lives it down for the rest of the month. Even the recruits get in on the ‘surprise airbender’ jokes, the traitors.

--

(During his super fun super slide detour, Aang notices updrafts where there shouldn't be. Getting him out of the way of a post office worker here, bouncing him away from a pottery studio there, saving a cat elsewhere —

Well, he's having fun, so hey, who was he to question his good luck?

Up until the cabbages, anyways.)

--

From this point onwards, there is only one independent variable that differs from the positive control. As it occurs in unrevised history, Aang, Katara, and Sokka are treated to an impromptu buffet, before Aang is outed as an airbender and subsequently thrown into a refurbished former dungeon. King Bumi prepares his trials as before.

The independent variable is the flighty handmaiden who, from Katara's standpoint, seems to really like Sokka and really hate Aang. And also match the king's outfits — albeit, with a bit of a looser fit.

"She laughed at all of my jokes! How great is that?"

"I'm happy she liked you, Sokka, but we're still in jail! And the way she was side-whispering to the king? I bet she's manipulating him or something. Even making him wear matching outfits with her!"

In an attempt at moral acrobatics, Katara reasons that she is partially responsible for their imprisonment, and so decides to at least try and mend the situation at hand.

"Maybe we should focus on the challenges at hand. And then we can get to the bottom of who that servant girl was. I don't know about 'manipulating', but she was sort of —"

"Stink-eyeing? Mean-mugging? Bison-pumping?"

"— hostile towards you, Aang. ...Bison-pumping?"

"Oh, sorry! Language."

Sokka gives an audible, likely-melodramatic shudder at the thought, before Katara expertly dispels it from her mind and throws a pillow at her brother in an attempt at behavioral therapy. Aang simply blushes and laughs his embarrassment off.

"Well, whatever. Just get a good night's rest, Aang, you'll probably need it."

--

Ty Lee, in general, considers the older population fairly amenable from her own personal experiences. Her increasingly familial relationship to Iroh aside, most elderly people react well to her endorphin-activating demeanor and soprano voice. In return, she receives geratrically-induced positive reinforcement, usually in the form of carbohydrate-saturated candies, universally sound life advice, and delicious tea.

As Ty Lee watches the Avatar slam his face into a waterfall for the third time, she does not consider this very good positive reinforcement, or fairly amenable. His friends — Katara and Sokka, from his voice-crack-addled demands — seem to be of the same opinion, but for different reasons.

"I'm going to be honest with you, your majesty: I don't like this plan."

Sokka, trained for years in hearing the briefest minutiae of wildlife sounds in order to survive the tundric conditions of the South Pole, overhears this. He briefly considers the servant girl somewhat inept for thinking Bumi can hear her, but he keeps his mouth shut when the king actually starts responding.

"Oh, it should be fine. He's learning and adjusting. See? Different angle, that time."

"No, I meant the other part of the plan. Isn't it… kind of a gamble? And really abrupt? I don't know if my first meeting..."

"Personally, I don't see any better way of it happening. At least you get to put on a show."

Aang whacks into yet another stalactite and Ty Lee cringes, as does Katara. Sokka, however, uses this opportunity to edge leftwards, slightly closer to the scheming pai sho players.

"Yeah, I guess, but — won't these trials kind of make him more…"

"Oh, fine. Your type is far too wishy-washy. I'll make the second one a little nicer, and then you can go have your reunion. And you!"

Several inches of jennamite blossom in front of Sokka's left ear, causing him to nearly topple. All he hears is an indignant huff and a mucusy snort.

"Listening in on an old man's secrets, honestly. Don't they teach manners in the South Pole?"

--

King Bumi does not actually make the second trial "a little nicer", and expertly produces a false positive for both Ty Lee and Sokka. This is accurate to this era in the elemental nations, where placebo is the number one therapeutic treatment in the Earth Kingdom.

(Ty Lee does note how… strangely cute Flopsie is. Goat-gorillas, huh?)

--

Performance anxiety is a well-known phenomenon in psychology in which higher pressure, usually by means of peer pressure, results in a sympathetic response and increased nervousness, which then leads to faulty decision making. Test anxiety is an offshoot of this issue, and currently, Aang is experiencing every possible level of stage fright imaginable.

"I…"

Bulging muscles and pristine lion-head armor fill Aang's field of vision, before he sees his own reflection in an executioner's axe.

"Choose…"

An incredibly straight and white set of teeth grin at Aang, as an incredibly shiny and sharp number of blades dangle in the air.

And just then, the trials give Aang an idea. Every time, he had to think outside the box. And the only two people remaining are the king and his handmaiden.

At first, he's tempted to choose the mad king, but Aang pauses and remembers his past. The most powerful benders he knew were the elders: they taught him everything he knew about airbending. His initial thought — that this old man may be frail and old and therefore easy — might be wrong. And, now that he thinks about it, what type of Air Nomad would he be, if he were to lay a finger on a dying old man without much of his mind left?

The handmaiden, at least, is young and strong. And she has some type of grudge against him, so he feels a little less bad. Really, he'll probably just airbend her until she's a bit dazed and then convince her to surrender, so that's not so bad, right?

"Her!"

Ty Lee frowns as though she's swallowed a bitter truth.

King Bumi grins as though he's won the Ba Sing Se lottery.

"Hmhm! Called it."

And that's when Aang has air bended against him, and before he has time to scream, or yelp, or cry, the handmaiden rips off her freakish-looking overcoat and all he sees is a whirlwind of monk's clothing and an airbender's staff and angry grey eyes.

A soprano voice growls a strange warcry before Aang is forced to dodge into the arena from the overhead blow.

"Wrong choice!"

Chapter Text

Book Two: Water
Chapter V: The King of Omashu, Part II

So far, over the course of this study, descriptions of combative bending behavior have been omitted, summarized, or only explored in relation to the main subject at hand. This is partially due to the nature of the study focus, partially due to the repetitive results of the positive control, and partially due to the base simplicity of certain applications of bending. Other sources of media or literature provide better reference for the precision child brutality of Fire Lord Ozai, or the effects of a strong gust of airbending causing several soldiers to reach terminal velocity, et cetera.

In this particular instance, however, we are obligated to provide a deep and insightful understanding of combative bending behavior due to the sheer novelty of the situation. Actual airbending infighting is, by and far, completely undocumented in this reality. The nature of the original civilization strictly disallows such a martial approach, especially between one another. When such disagreements occur in airbender history, these usually result in heated, year-long debates, peaceful protest in the form of work strikes or hunger strikes, unionization, and other non-violent means. The most violent "civil war" in the history of the Air Nomads involved active threats of self-defense and complete segregation between the Northern and Western Air Temples, but no active combat was taken.

Ty Lee, however, is not an Air Nomad, and has never subscribed to their beliefs or their teachings. This is evident when Aang feels a blast of heated air whistle past his head and subsequently propel a large rock behind him into a wall. In his peripheral vision, he sees a guard throw down his staff. However, his self-armament is absentminded, as he's mentally overtaken by the survival of his kin.

"You're the live airbender! I can't believe I found you!"

"Only one I've met until now, and whose fault is that?"

The immediate negative feedback dilutes Aang's initial endorphin rush, and he's forced to send his body into a full-momentum spin as he bends her attacks away from him, uncomfortably hot air turning cool as it grazes along his skin and blows away. His eyes fill with both worry and panic, the emotions compounding into the stimulant known as realization.

"It – It wasn't like that! I didn't want to disappear for a hundred years, it just –"

"Happened? Really, super convenient, Avatar Aang. But that doesn't make things okay!"

Ty Lee bounds off a nearby boulder and Aang barely dodges the tibia aimed at his head. Aang spins a counter-clockwise gust of wind, trained by muscle memory and century-old drilling on the correct form of dismantling an airborne opponent, before his work is undone by a clockwise gust of wind as Ty Lee lands perfectly. Aang's footwork is suddenly jeopardized by Ty Lee's onslaught of staff-based lunges and swings, his own staff clacking, spinning, and deflecting hers.

"Please, listen to reason and let's just talk first. How in the world can an airbender like you be so aggressive? I've never seen anything like this – it feels wrong!"

"No. Really? You think I can survive war through being peaceful? Guess you did, though, and isn't – that – great?"

Each word garners accentuation in the form of a full-weight swing at a ninety-degree angle, a two hundred and twenty-degree angle, and a zero-degree angle (assuming the vertex is at Aang's chest and the adjacent arm is parallel to the ground). Ty Lee expertly maintains the momentum of her staff through rotational inertia, bending her spine, adjusting her stance, and twirling the wood such that barely any kinetic energy is lost upon impact with Aang's staff.

Fearful that his staff will reach material breaking point, Aang creates an air scooter and disturbs the loose sediment of the topsoil underneath, creating a dust cloud to inhibit Ty Lee's senses. Masterful of his tools and creative in his original technique, yet culturally biased towards retreat, Aang utilizes the air scooter to quickly get away before using his newfound horizontal velocity and his bending to extend the wings of his airbender staff and begin gliding.

Both Katara and Sokka allow themselves to feel slight relief, behaviorally trained to believe that Aang's ability to fly allows him to avoid any enemy. Although this is a rational conclusion concerning any land-based combatant, the sudden and violent eruption of Ty Lee's silhouette from the dust cloud denies their comfort.

"I wasn't finished, Avatar!"

Aang lets out a puberty-ridden scream, his crackly voice echoing as he rapidly dives downwards to avoid the glider soaring headfirst towards the apex of his flight. Ty Lee follows rapidly, and the residual effect of both airbenders cutting through air resistance dispels the dust cloud and allows a clear view of the first observed instance of a dogfight in the Earth Kingdom.

Although her limbs are occupied with maintaining the necessary position for gliding flight, one of the core techniques of Ty Lee's airbending variant is breath control, largely in part due to her Fire Nation origins. Taking in a deep breath of air, Ty Lee's diaphragm contracts rapidly. Then, she exhales slowly, forcefully. The resulting linear stream of air is audible and palpable, and Aang sees it fit to perform a break to avoid getting shot down.

Given the novelty of aerial combat and her own lack of expertise in gliding flight, Ty Lee does not think to counter with a barrel roll. Which would be impossible anyways, because the recoil of her airbending attack causes her to stall.

As predicted, Ty Lee folds her wings back into the staff, allows herself to free fall while twisting her body, uses the few milliseconds of low gravitational acceleration to track Aang's flight vectors, and then extends her wings again, creating a burst of air against the rapidly-nearing ground in order to propel herself for an interception, inhaling sharply on her way.

Sokka, observing Ty Lee's controlled fall, drawing knowledge from his understanding of hunting and projectile physics, noting Ty Lee's earlier actions, and recalling his own experiences with Aang's flight abilities, uses this time to yelp out his hasty prognosis.

"She's going to cut you off, Aang, dodge!"

The advice registers in Aang's Wernicke's area just as Ty Lee begins to close in. Her decreasing distance nearly causes him to panic once more, but his eyes widen in realization as the vague, Bumi-drilled concept of unorthodox creativity provides a sudden solution. The moment Ty Lee gets close enough, Aang plagiarizes Ty Lee's work and retracts his wings, utilizing a quick rotational burst of air to stabilize himself – and then latch onto Ty Lee's own airbending staff, hands tightly clamping on her wings.

"Hi! Okay, I know you're mad, and you blame me for a lot of things, and I'd love to talk about it, and you don't, but – just answer one question!"

Ty Lee grits her teeth as the weight of her aircraft is suddenly nearly doubled, and she's forced to adjust her weight distribution and airbending lift on the fly. Veering violently rightwards, Ty Lee makes an attempt to land so that she can resume grounded combat – before her irritation and morbid curiosity wins over.

"What?!"

"Why are you even working for that crazy king?"

As Ty Lee eases into her descent, a series of questions formulate in her mind. Why was she working for Bumi? She agreed to go along with his plan for the Avatar in exchange for her pardon and her landshark. What was her part in the plan? To be an available option for the Avatar to choose to fight. Could she have denied the Avatar once chosen?

...Yes. Why didn't she? Because she didn't like the Avatar. Hated him, on some days of her three-year exile. He is the source of Zuko's obsession, the fuel for her own existential crises, and the most inept person who could possibly be chosen to defeat Fire Lord Ozai and/or subdue the Fire Nation, among other things. As such, she sought physical and verbal retribution and catharsis.

Was she succeeding in attacking? Yes.

Would it be good if she succeeded in combat, denying the Avatar more time to become stronger and possibly cutting him off from his companions, one of whom she suspects is his waterbending teacher? ...No.

Glaring silently at the ground as she touches down, Ty Lee implicitly allows Aang to get off of her glider by not immediately folding the wings. The moment Aang gets off, she puts away her staff, turning around quickly and glowering at him. Aang's expression brightens in hope as she slowly walks up to him, the lack of immediate combat comforting him immensely.

With a bright smile, Aang gives an Air Nomad's bow.

And then Ty Lee chi blocks his left biceps (his left arm goes ramrod straight, and he yelps), his right triceps (his right arm flops uselessly as he flails), his right rectus femoris (as he attempts to run, his right upper leg refuses to bend forwards, and he begins falling), his left sartorius (his left leg then sticks out like a puppet as he spins like a dreidel to the ground), and both of his external obliques (Aang is unable to rotate his torso in his squirming, instead reduced to performing the worm dance).

Her natural human bloodthirst is appeased. Ty Lee raises a hand and turns to the audience.

"He asked a good question. I forfeit."

--

As Aang and King Bumi slide down the mail delivery system for the umpteenth time that day after a tearful reunion, Ty Lee watches the Avatar experience genuine childhood with an unimpressed expression. She bites into her baozi (moo-sow flavor) and munches as she reclines on the bench, seated adjacent to Katara and one person away from Sokka while sounds of glee echo across the selectively-crumbling infrastructure of Omashu.

Katara mildly considers the fact that the airbender is eating meat, before she clears her throat in an attempt to signal a desire for conversation.

"So, uh. Guess the rumors were true, huh?"

"Sorta-kinda. I'm not the Avatar, obviously, but I do airbend. I usually keep that a secret, though: King Bumi just wanted me as an ace-in-the-hole to rattle Aang."

"Yeah-huh. Slrrrrp –"

"Sokka, gross!"

"Hey, the airbender said it was good! Er, Ty Lee, I mean, not Aang. Look, I get why you're mad. A lot of us are. I mean, I know I am, except more at the Fire Nation than at the kid who popped out of an iceberg, but – why was Bumi mad?"

Ty Lee makes a vague noise indicating thought. "He didn't tell me, obviously, but I get the feeling he was kinda mad at Aang, too. Probably had some time to stew over the rumors of his best friend suddenly coming back to life a hundred years younger, and he was, y'know, there for the whole genocide?"

The two Water Tribe members grow uncomfortable at the mention, and Ty Lee raises an eyebrow at them.

"We – we saw the Southern Air Temple. It's – We're sorry. Aang took it the worst."

Ty Lee processes this information correctly.

"Oh. That one wasn't... cleaned up, I take it. I know the Western and, uh, Northern ones are… Anyways. I guess this sort of leads into why I was so angry with him. With the world, kinda, but especially the Avatar. If you want to start attacking me, fine, I figured there was a fifty-fifty of it happening, and I'm really prepared to make an enemy of the Avatar, I am, but –"

Honesty is a policy that seems to be commonly practiced by Ty Lee, and, thankfully, by the two siblings as well. Ty Lee's rambling is cut off by Katara's gentle touch, and Sokka sets down his meal for this revelation.

"...I hope you understand how awful it is, how many years you have to endure being scared, and untrusting, and mad, and maybe thinking you're the Avatar, all in secret – when you're an airbender born and raised in the Fire Nation."

Their stunned silence is cut off by Ty Lee's derisive snort.

"And I had to leave behind siblings. Feel free to start attacking now."

--

Once Aang returns to Katara, Sokka, and Ty Lee, he is met by the sight of a strange boat with wheels and Sokka looking ecstatic. Inwardly, he feels a sense of dread and depressed resignation as he realizes the conversation he must have with his fellow airbender.

(Not an Air Nomad, he sharply corrects mentally, before being surprised by his own sharpness. As an airbender, she feels wrong, she bends wrong, she acts wrong. He berates himself inwardly and recites a mantra of forgiveness and understanding.)

The following conversation does not meet his expectations.

"Aang, we figured out how to keep the Fire Nation off our backs, get us to the Northern Water Tribe faster, save more possible airbenders, and give the Fire Lord a good ol' dishonoring! How about a little detour to Crescent Island?"

In an alternate universe, Sokka becomes a corporate salesman whose name is forever recorded in the history books.

--

Also in an alternate universe, Haru and Tyro have the Avatar's assistance in their prison escape.

Instead, a bleeding heart with a blue mask ensures a select number of cells have their locks loosened, an inconspicuous surplus of coal is left in various areas of the prison rig, and there is now a sizable bounty placed on both the warden and the Fire Nation governor's head with the royal palace insignia, marked for verbal dissent and misuse of military resources.

Potential monetary compensation proves to be a useful replacement for hope.

Chapter Text

Book Two: Water
Chapter VI: Crescent Island

Senlin Village crumbles.

--

The flight time and flight distance of a flying bison largely depends on the bison's health, age, size, and nutrition. If kept well-fed with a consistent schedule of exercise, the average flying bison can easily cover the distance between Omashu and Gaoling within twelve hours. The activation of the sympathetic nervous system in response to potential threats also affects the flying bison flight pattern: the activation of the adrenal medulla and the resulting hormone cascades cause the bison's bodily functions to begin conserving energy and focus calorie burning on high-velocity flight sustained over a long period of time. Even a mistreated flying bison with only a few days of recuperation can make extensive yet accelerated trips, such as, for example, a nine-hour flight from Ba Sing Se to Chameleon Bay.

Appa is at the peak of his health with a month's worth of constant exercise and a nutritious, energy-filled diet, courtesy of Aang. The moment the Fire Nation blockade opens fire on the flying bison, his ability to manipulate his body and outpace the catapult shots is unparalleled.

However, the prodigious movement and physical prowess of a flying bison is not Zhao's current interest.

Instead, he opens his spyglass, spots a braided girl smashing apart a catapult shot with pressurized air, and smirks.

--

Traditionally, Fire Nation vacations are done during either the winter or the summer, usually nearing the solstice times. Fire Nation culture heavily revolves around firebenders, which provides a commonly accepted theory for this sociological phenomenon: as is the case in our world, the days are shorter when closer to the winter solstice and longer when closer to the summer solstice. Given the natural proclivity of firebenders towards the sun, it only follows that seasons of respite would occur at the extremes of day-night cycles. The Water Tribes, historically, also experience similar holidays. However, it is less pronounced in the current era due to the near-extinction of waterbenders in the Southern Tribe and the emphasized utility of non-benders in the Northern Tribe. The Swamp Tribe does not distinguish vacation days, traditionally.

The importance of this cultural phenomenon dates back to the Fire Sage era, when the Fire Lord's primary role was still as the head Fire Sage, and before the segregation of religion and government in the Fire Nation. As such, with the militarization and centralization of government that occurred during and after Fire Lord Sozin's rule, such holidays became government-mandated, with workplace laws and policies distinguishing these days as important.

It is because of this that anyone familiar with the Ty family knows exactly which calendar dates they will be found at their vacation home on Crescent Island. As Ty Lee races on home, Zuko closes his spyglass, having seen a braided girl smash apart a catapult shot with pressurized air, and grimaces.

"Uncle. This just changed in the worst way possible."

Iroh pauses at the surprise, the hurt, and the bitterness in Zuko's voice, and deduces exactly what the worst possible scenario is, in Zuko's mind. And yet, the lack of screaming and crying indicates a glimmer of hope in his nephew. Or, perhaps, denial, but Iroh always did fancy himself as an optimist.

He walks forward and lays a steady hand on Zuko's shoulder.

"Nephew, if you were as close to execution as her family is, I would beg the Avatar for his aid, as well. Worry about the current problem, and the next one will follow."

Conventionally, a popular belief is that the subconscious direction of wandering eyes indicates an inner psychological struggle, such as telling a lie. This is false. However, if one were able to use seismic sense on this metal ship, the variant human physiological response found in this universe would indicate a similar, but not identical, struggle in Zuko.

But his eyes remain forwards, pressing onwards.

"Order the ship to keep sailing. They'll think we're tracking the Avatar. I'll find Ty Lee."

Iroh pauses. And then, his grasp on Zuko's shoulder firms.

"No. We both will."

--

When Ty Lee knocks on the front door of her family's home, Avatar and crew in tow, several events occur. The applied force of her knuckles creates a vibration in the Pinus thunbergii lumber material. The oscillation of the material creates a relatively brief propagation in the surrounding atmospheric medium, which then interacts with the five sets of tympanic membranes in the vicinity, as well as the sound receptors of nearby invertebrates and small avians. This process is repeated thrice, each producing a functionally similar sound, in rapid succession.

And then Master Piandao opens the door. Although Ty Lee and him are, genetically, eleventh cousins, she does not expect him. However, Fire Nation culture seeps through every neuron in her nervous system, and so she bows. With her right thumb facing upwards, the index knuckle of her right fist provides a support for the flat of her open left palm. However, her internal shock leaves her bow a few degrees too deep.

"Master Piandao, I didn't expect to see you!"

"Lady Ty Lee. I didn't expect you back in the country. I see you've committed a few more crimes while you were gone."

Looking over Ty Lee's shoulder, the veteran raises an eyebrow at the two Southern Water Tribe combatants and the Kill-On-Sight bounty standing across from him, all with visible question marks above their head. Ty Lee expels her carbon dioxide in a vexed manner.

"Yes, the Avatar and his friends, I know – look, I just need them to save my family. Who I thought would be there. ...Are they here?"

Piandao also expels his carbon dioxide, but with less vexation and more resignation. He folds his hands into his sleeves, his expression as stony as pure obsidian.

"I cannot help you in my capacity as a private Fire Nation citizen, nor can I offer any information on other citizens to enemies of the state."

"That's ridiculous! Just because you're part of the Fire Nation doesn't mean you can separate Ty Lee from her family like that!"

"Yeah!"

If Koh the Face Stealer were within five miles of the area, Katara's raised voice would already alert him to their presence. From there, Katara would be the first to succumb to eternal facelessness, followed by Sokka, with his verbal addition and angry expression, and then Aang, who would have an instinctual reaction to losing both of his friends.

Just as Aang nearly steps forward to assert himself as Avatar, as Kyoshi Island has psychologically trained him to do, Ty Lee raises a hand in a signal to cease. And so he does. And so Ty Lee stares the grown man down, folding her own hands into her large sleeves.

Three-point-five-seven seconds pass.

"I have eaten the fruit and tasted its mysteries."

Piandao raises an eyebrow, his weight shifting from his core to his left leg.

"And what of the gate?"

"I knew it! Er, I mean – though it is guarded, I shall knock."

Piandao smirks.

"Close enough, for a greenhorn. I'll have to teach you the specific wording, however. You'll find my compatriots in specific areas may be more strict. Let's practice your gambit, and then we can talk."

Ty Lee scoffs.

"I'll get it right eventually. I've only ever done it once, and Bumi cheats, I swear."

"Excuses, excuses. Come in."

At this, Piandao steps aside to let Ty Lee in. The last that the non-Fire trifecta sees of their friend is of her setting up a pai sho table, before Master Piandao uses his anatomically larger body to block their view and force their gaze to his own eyes.

"I'm afraid it's members only. Commander Zhao will be combing the island for signs of you, so I recommend moving your flying bison to the hunting grounds. Do not attempt an adventurous rescue or an impromptu investigation. I know your type."

Before any of them have the chance to retaliate, the oscillation of the door slamming creates a relatively brief propagation in the surrounding atmospheric medium, but with a notably higher decibel count than before.

--

Deferred prosecution is an alternative to adjudication in which the prosecuting party provides amnesty in exchange for certain requirements to be met by the defendant. This process does not assume the defendant is guilty or innocent: in this way, it differs from a plea bargain, in which the defendant admits guilt in exchange for concessions. Although it would be a novel concept in any other nation, the life-long infrastructural efforts of Avatar Szeto have made this a well-known and accepted course of action in Fire Nation courts.

Barring anything unconstitutional or downright illegal, the requirements set by the prosecution can be as many or as few as deemed justified by the presiding court, with a maximum deadline of twenty years down the road. Such examples of possible requirements include the legal disownment of a family member, the conscription of specific able-bodied family members, government annexation of specific family assets, and mandatory government service.

Ty Lee finds out her family has done all of the above, with mildly particular clauses.

"I decided to rent their vacation home on the solstices. Partly because it's good real estate, but… truthfully, it's about the last thing I had, after a good friend left with one of my best students and his favorite sparring partner."

At that, Piandao remains silent. His stoicism is practiced, but he wields it in a different form than he did at the door.

Her initial plans shatter under laser precision and her thoughts are flung through a separation field for hours on end before any detected results can occur. The process is similar to a MALDI-TOF mass spectrometry machine, but with less ionization and more personal angst.

(Her father and mother spending the months in the capital absolving themselves of her existence and deferring to Azula. Her sisters likely all conscripted, donning indiscernible Fire Nation army uniforms – had she ever fought them? She thinks of the bodies at the Northern Air Temple, and her stomach churns.

Ty Lao, laughing giddily as steel sings in her hands. The feeling of losing a sister to Azula.)

A moment passes. The pai sho table sits coldly at her hands.

"...Do I keep my last name, at least?"

(Her family is safe. None of them are airbenders. If Sokka's plan works, then they won't have to think they are. ...But Ty Lee refuses to just be called 'Lee' even if her life depends on it.)

--

Aang watches the raven-eagles fly in the sunset before he falls asleep, the rustling leaves and Appa's soft breathing providing the white noise distraction necessary to sleep in enemy territory.

And then he dreams of a dragon.

--

With two years of theoretical practice and personal study work in Avatar tracking, several weeks of practice in Avatar tracking, several years of practice in Ty Lee tracking, and a nearly perfect (albeit suppressed) memory of conversations and instances that occurred in his briefly happy childhood, Zuko makes an educated guess as to where Ty Lee is hiding the Avatar.

His guess is proven correct, when he and his uncle are greeted by Master Piandao and Ty Lee at the door about fifteen minutes after dawn.

"Prince Iroh. A game of pai sho?"

"You're still too formal as always, Piandao. But I'm afraid I'm here on other business."

The conversation is rushed. Although the Avatar and his friends do not have the instinct or the culturally-enforced circadian rhythm of the Fire Nation, the party of four within the house feel the need to be swift, as prudence dictates. Iroh knows how to make tea in a rush, but still grimaces when his palette hits the result of an apparently premature brew.

Zuko does not mind his hot leaf water until Ty Lee says her first sentence.

"So, uh, I can help you capture the Avatar if you don't capture the Avatar."

Hypocrite that he is, Zuko is not well-prepared to endure others' hasty decision-making, despite his own hasty decision-making. He nearly spit-takes his tea like a neanderthal before composing himself pre-spray.

"I know, I know, I know! Just, hear me out…"

(Zuko's initial response is a resounding no, to Ty Lee's dismay.)

--

"...and so Ty Lee has decided to stay here to smuggle her family out when they eventually arrive, while also distracting Zhao from your…"

"Trip to the Fire Temple! For, uh, my Avatar stuff!"

At this, Ty Lee's hands fly out of her sleeves, and her expression would absolutely get her face stolen by an aforementioned spirit.

"Trip to the what?! I was hoping you'd say escape!"

Master Piandao levels her with a judging gaze, and she sheepishly tucks her hands into her sleeves again and straightens her back. She clears her throat.

"What Ty Lee means to say is that she wishes you well in your endeavors, and she would advise you not to perish prematurely in your attempts to master the Avatar State."

"Yeah. Sure."

--

"Hey, before you head out, Zuko? Are you sure you don't want to go with what I said? Because there's kind of a new development…"

--

The locking mechanism found on the Fire Temple's sanctuary is a technological marvel of its time, but relatively well-understood in our own world.

This is because the Fire Temple sanctuary door is actually a five-cylinder engine, except the crankshaft is attached to the door itself. The mouths of the dragons serve as both the intake valve and the metaphorical spark plug, powered by firebending: the exhaust valves actually extend to the outside of the pagoda, which provides the illusion of Avatar-related mysticism when the sanctuary is opened properly.

The long pipeline to the combustion chamber serves as a failsafe against most non-firebending options: fire must be directly streamed into the combustion chamber at a constant rate that would require the Avatar, five simultaneous firebenders, or one-to-two firebending master(s) to open. This is why Sokka's explosives do not work.

Zhao's attempt to open the door does work. However, his initial methodology of identifying and killing the Avatar goes awry when Avatar Roku emerges from the sanctuary.

And then the volcano explodes.

--

A sense of distant nausea overcomes Aang as he sees the panicked movement of fleeing priests and sages, the glint of Fire Nation soldiers throwing down their lava-dribbling helmets, and the sight of century-old religious architecture burning and topping to the ground. His eyes wish to avert away from these horrid sights, and, perhaps, from destiny itself.

But as he watches the Fire Temple rapidly oxidize, he spots Zuko, scar and all, still standing on the last remnants of the highest floor of the pagoda, even as the very cornerstones threaten to collapse underneath him. Aang stares in unmasked fear as Zuko sends out a series of flames into the sky: three short punches of fire, and then three longer streams of fire, followed by three short punches once more.

Tattooed fists nearly yank Appa towards Zuko to save him – if not for his own monasterial oath to treat all life as sacred, at least to figure out why he insists on firebending at the sky instead of trying to escape the burning building – before the triangular silhouette of a new-age glider zips to the scarred prince and lands next to him. He overhears something incredibly snarky, and yet mostly unintelligible over the commotion and distance. Then, after what seems like an argument, Zuko latches onto the back of Ty Lee's glider and Ty Lee takes off.

("Yeah, 'fully capable of capturing the Avatar', sure!"

"Don't patronize me!"

"Why didn't you just escape while you could?!"

"I didn't expect Avatar Roku to set the entire thing on fire. The stairs were gone!"

"Avatar Roku, what – just get on!")

As the two fly off to the distant smoke stack originating from Zuko's ship, Aang's nausea relapses without remorse. His emotions coalesce into an ugly conglomeration. Part relief for Zuko, part dreading his destiny, part hope for Ty Lee's beliefs, part guilt for Piandao and leaving Ty Lee behind, and one part that he cannot name currently.

(Betrayal is a rare thing in his culture, and so he clings to the hope that Ty Lee merely saved a life.)

--

In the commotion, Zuko's ship leaves unscathed past the blockade, thanks to the relative belatedness of Zhao's orders otherwise.

Ty Lee points her chopsticks at Zuko, mid-meal. Iroh side-eyes his nephew as he sips his tea. Zuko is simply tired.

"Okay, so can we go with my original idea, this time? Please?"

--

Sokka holds up the "AVATAR WANTED" poster in victory, and Aang buries his face in his hands. Sure, it was part of the original plan, but…

"Alright, straight shot to the North Pole! No crazy ships or ponytailed jerks to deal with, woo hoo!"

...As he stares Ty Lee's caricature in the face, Aang resolves to call this off as soon as possible.

--

At times, during an official scientific document such as this, it becomes necessary to summarize information succinctly for the reader's clarification. As such, here is a condensation of results of the orally presented rough draft and subsequent final draft of Sokka and Ty Lee's plan. To note:

Sokka relishes in the belief that Ty Lee will distract Zuko, Zhao, and the entire Fire Nation.

Aang and Katara are tentative, but Ty Lee has convinced them, if nothing else.

Zuko hesitantly agrees to Ty Lee's plan of distracting Zhao, if only so he can realize his goal of capturing the Avatar and restoring his honor.

Zhao vows to capture and kill Ty Lee, having seen her flying overhead as an entire temple burned above him.

Ty Lee can barely believe any of this, and resolves to get some extra rations when she returns to Omashu. She suspects this will be a long journey.

The Order of the White Lotus keeps a watchful eye on its newest potential member.

Azula reads the first mission report containing Ty Lee's name and makes a formal request to the Fire Lord to assist Commander Zhao in his hunt.

Ozai accepts.

Chapter Text

Book Two: Water
Chapter VII: King Bumi's Interlude

Zoomusicology is a field of zoosemiotics which studies the application of music in sound and communication in animals. Most animals create music for the purposes of mating practices and territorial posturing, while a select few animals recreate the sounds of other animals as a form of mimicry.

Human-animal musical interactions are varied. Most animals which replicate human noises do so as part of a more broader form of sonorous mimicry, while other human-animal interactions are incidental to other parts of the animal's behavior: for example, certain pitches and lengths of musical notes have been seen to cause howling in feral canines. In other cases, however, human-based music has a noted effect on animals based on the tonality. Dogs, cows, and tamarins all experience specific reactions to certain forms of music.

"That's nice, but… badgermoles? Really?"

"Really, really! It's quite necessary, actually: the tunnel is atrocious to try and navigate without an Earthbender on hand. Crumbles in on itself all the time, then rocks fall, everyone dies, and then what do you do?"

With the landshark parked in front of the Cave of Two Lovers, Bumi leans in conspiratorially towards Ty Lee, as if sharing a state-classified secret.

"Don't tell anyone I said this, but I think it's on purpose. Oma and Shu were totally prepared to, ah, perpetuate tragedy in order to pursue their love."

"That's, like, a vaguely discomforting yet sound argument, but it still doesn't explain why badger moles like music. Also, your breath smells like rock."

The King of Omashu makes a contemplative face before expectorating a miniature geode from between his teeth into the nearby flora and making a sound of intriguement. With a flinch, the airbender angrily creates an updraft that deposits Bumi off of her ship and onto the ground — all while he doubles over in laughter.

"Bumiiii! C'mon, that's gross!"

"Heh heh heh, snrk, heh! Alright, alright. Onto serious matters."

With that, Ty Lee's social warning systems begin to take effect, and in a show of maturity, she straightens her posture and keeps her eyes trained on her elder. King Bumi slides his hands into his sleeves as he maintains his smirk, but even he has no choice but to impart some levity in his tone.

"This is, unfortunately, where we will part ways: possibly until the very end of this war. Once you get past the Cave of Two Lovers and leave the Kolau Mountains, I implore you to do your best to divert the Fire Nation away from Aang. To do that, you must abandon Omashu."
"But… why?"

"Well. Let's practice our neutral jing to find the answer. Standing where you are, tell me why you must leave my city posthaste."

With great discomfort, Ty Lee slides her hands into her own monasterial sleeves and tries to look for an answer. Her eyes magnetize to Bumi, then to the cave opening, then to the sky.

From there, she receives her answer. Pyrolysis and combustion generate darkened particulates in the air, and that smoke is rising from multiple sources in the far distance. Several signs of telltale steam engine technology are visible on a clear day such as that one, and Ty Lee's heart drops.

The planned siege of Omashu required a year of tactical forethought, several months of resource management, carefully guarded siege weapons, and the constant adjustment of the various military units involved. Before Fire Lord Ozai harnessed the power of aerial combat and ascended to Phoenix Lord in the observed control universe, the original objective of the Fire Nation was to assimilate the Earth Kingdom, rather than destroy it. Without airship technology, the incineration of the mainland continent would be impossible, and so the establishment of puppet cities such as New Ozai would be tantamount to maintaining a steady supply line in the pursuit of world domination.

Specialized inventions were invented for this purpose, most notably being the instant-bridge mechanism, in which valley-wide bridges could be extended from a ladder-like system, as well as long-distance trebuchets and, in the case of a prolonged siege or a successful conquest, prefab makeshift factories that could smelt necessary parts on-location. When considering the observed control, the conversion of Omashu to New Ozai in a single season was nothing short of a technological miracle.

However, all this and more only serves to demonstrate one of the many flaws of Fire Nation tactical philosophy in the current moment: that is to say, the propagation of so many key components requires an obvious approach.

"How big is it?"

"Hmmm. Big enough, I'd say."

"In the worst way possible, then. It'd be a hollow victory for the Fire Nation, and a siege would — would starve everyone in Omashu, let alone —"

Bumi raises a gnarled hand, and Ty Lee ceases her blithering. She looks at him with a throat gone Saharan. His expression is ashen.

"Peace and tranquility, young Lotus. Let me care for my city. You have your own mission you must fulfill."

Silence for a moment, thus doubled, thus tripled. And then Ty Lee bounds off of her vehicle and wraps Bumi in a tight hug. Surprised, as though his centennial brain had finally begun to act its age, the monarch reciprocates slowly, gently.

"You shouldn't have to do it alone."

"But I must. …Thank you, though. I didn't know I needed that. I guess I can be surprised, too, sometimes!"

Letting go of her most elderly friend thus far (given Bumi is actually older than Aang by a year), Ty Lee leaps back onto the landshark.

"Just promise me one thing, Bumi!"

"What's that, whippersnapper?"

"...If all else fails, the Fire Nation usually has decent leaders — and decent people, so long as they don't do the whole Fire Lord worship. So, just, uh… Keep an open mind! And if you see any girls who look exactly like me and are the same age as me, then let me know! And another thing —"

"Okay, now you're ruining the moment. Get a move on!"

A wave of modulated earth accelerates the vehicle into the Cave of Two Lovers like a child would propulse a toy car, and Ty Lee is sent careening into the hollow geological formation with a dopplering shriek.

Bumi strokes his beard and contemplates. In fact, as he walks back at a leisurely pace with the power of his earth surfing, he very distractedly contemplates the entire time.

"Hm… Decent leaders, she says? Divorced from their love of the Fire Lord? Perhaps some positive jing is in order..."

Once he returns to the gates of his own, he cackles and begins planning.

About thirty-seven percent into the cave after several hours' worth of dead ends, Ty Lee is suddenly flanked and cornered by two badgermoles. In any other situation, her initial instinct would be to attempt to maim and murder these creatures should they be in any way detrimental to her health.

But then, following their standard behavior for hunting and territorial defense, the badgermoles bend earth around her and completely prevent her from escaping. For any other creature that wandered into a badgermole habitat, this would mean death within an estimated one to five minutes: and even if they defeated two badgermoles, the creature would be doomed to death in isolation. Ty Lee would be no different.

Then, remembering Bumi's advice, Ty Lee avoids this fate by singing the first song to come to her head.

(She just wishes it wasn't such a sad song.)

"Leaves from the vine, falling so slow, like fragile, tiny shells, drifting in the foam…"

That night, as Fire Nation forces conglomerate in heavily fortified and secure troop formations, with each instant bridge engineering division prepared to unravel their architectural wunderkind inventions onto Omashu, with each tundra tank ready to shred into the mountainside and encroach upon the awaiting Earth Kingdom stronghold, with each crimson-armored soldier ready to shed blood and build walls of corpses, King Bumi looks out at the rising smoke and the distant flames in the darkened distance. He masticates on a lettuce leaf.

"Captain Yung, Captain Gai. Flank me on either side, please."

"Are we off to mobilize the troops, sir? I assure you that Omashu's army shall defend the city to the last breath —"

"Oh, shut up, Yung. You're so melodramatic, like your great-grandfather. I'm just taking a night walk. Hup-ho!"

With that, the ground underneath Bumi and his entourage collapses like paper mache in a circular shape.

Thirty-three minutes later, outside the main Fire Army strategic camp in the rear line of the siege operation, the delegation from Omashu erupts from the earth as though they had simply taken an elevator from the bedrock underneath to the topsoil level.

Stepping off of the circular platform, Bumi looks around at the enemy camp and clears his throat. The two men behind him, currently so fearful of their current location that they may lose control of their excretory functions, follow closely behind, fearing for their own life more than their superior's.

"Oh, wow, something interesting actually happened."

Bumi's attention flickers over to a teenage girl in comfortable noble trappings. The whetstone and blade in her hands are, markedly, not very indicative of privileged nobility. The adolescent regards him with a blank expression, devoid of anything but neutrality.

For all he knows, she is only some general's daughter, come along as either training or here to visit: probably against her own wishes, from her tone. From her clothing, she does not seem to have sworn any soldier's oath, and she does not seem old enough to have (likely) felt any particular love for Azulon and, subsequently, Ozai. Other than that, he can neither know nor infer anything about this girl.

Bumi mentally notes his good luck and begins to observe silently.

"You'll do nicely. Take me to your leader, young woman!"

With that, the teenager shrugs and gets up, expertly concealing her sharpening implement and sharp object. Glassy, old eyes nearly miss their crisp movement up her sleeve and into obscurity. The three Earth Kingdom citizens follow briskly behind the girl.

In one minute and five seconds, Bumi notes several details, taking a left turn. The diurnal schedule of Fire Nation tradition seems to be strongly adhered to within the camp: very few soldiers are awake at this time in the night, and those that are seem to be dismissive of him once they see him following the young lady.

In addition, as he takes a left turn, he finds that the fire nation camp follows a grid-based pattern when possible. And the siege engines seem to be located distantly from this section of the camp, from his estimate, meaning that the attack is likely to be sooner than later.

And then, taking one last left turn, in terms of the placement of the communications and command center…

One minute and six seconds later, Bumi's lopsided grin reveals itself once more. Mentally, his tentative decision is only further finalized by this particular interaction.

He stops, which causes the teenager to stop.

"You're quite cunning, attempting to misdirect me and lead me to the front lines where the night patrols are."

The girl snorts with a dark look in her eyes.

"I have to be. Either I die here or someone important dies there. But I guess the jig's up."

"Unfortunately, I'm quite old, and Fire Nation command center tents have been fairly uniform these past thirty years. Now then, your leader?"

"I assume you can find your own way, old man."

"Oh, no. I insist."

The dark-haired young woman whirls around to glare at Bumi with an expression as cold as the Boomerang Nebula. He smiles back. With that, she storms off in a straight line towards the command center, and he follows.

King Bumi is met with General Ukano, chief operating commander of the planned Siege of Omashu, and thorough zealot towards the cause and favor of Fire Lord Ozai. Several other lieutenants and captains flank Ukano in the late-night strategic conference that Bumi decides to interrupt.

"Hello, General. I assume you're a General? I am King Bumi, lovely to meet you."

Immediately, every able-bodied Fire Nation official in the room leaps to their feet, fists and blades aimed at several of the monarch's vital organs. One particularly enthusiastic and warmongering lieutenant immediately throws himself at Bumi in a valiant, fire-infused flying kick, but immediately meets a wall of earth for his troubles.

Ukano's eyes narrow as Bumi is unyielding.

"Let's cut to the chase and skip the endless slaughter: I'm here to discuss the terms of Omashu's surrender."

"And to discuss these terms, you offer yourself to the enemy camp in the dead of night…? Earth Kingdom diplomacy must be either brainless or incredibly underhanded. Very well, I'll humor you: what would those terms be?"

Having directed the city of Omashu and served as the primary voice of opposition against the Fire Nation for the entirety of the western Earth Nation for just under one hundred years, King Bumi feels confident in his understanding of the Fire Nation modus operandi. From successful annexation to decades-long colonization and assimilation, Bumi is intimately acquainted with the Fire Nation approach to conquerment.

"Oh, the usual humanitarian plea bargain, an appeal to your pride and honor, maybe some semblance of my own mock presence to assuage the people from revolting, but, ah, most importantly —"

Unfortunately for them, Bumi decides not to settle with the usual orthodoxy: not for his city, at least. With that, he points a withered finger at his tour guide, who suddenly pauses in the middle of taking her leave.

"I want her in charge."

Mai, for once in her sixteen years of life, is genuinely and visibly surprised.

"I'm sorry, what?"

Once our subject of interest leaves the Cave of Two Lovers and bids the badgermoles goodbye, she looks out at the horizon of the southern Earth Kingdom, at the distant treelines of the Foggy Swamp biome and the nearby forests.

And then, she grunts.

"Guess I just pick a direction and go."

Chapter Text

Book Two: Water

Chapter VIII: The Montage

Literature and mathematics in the Elemental Nations greatly exaggerate a perceived “Rule of Four”, as opposed to the more commonly known “Rule of Three” native to our western culture. This is in part due to the four elements and their cultural significance, but also a result of the high amount of spiritualism in a spirit-adjacent world and, subsequently, the emphasis on balance found in tradition.

Rather than ethos, pathos, and logos, arguments are made in consideration of yin and yang. Id, ego, and superego later receive a quaternary separation in Elemental psychological studies. Governments and geopolitics are separated in half (such as in the case of the Water Tribes, given the indifference and distance of niche sectors of waterbenders) or in quarters (such as in the Air Nomads, historically). These are only a few of many instances of such coincidence.

This also seems to apply in this case study, in the following report of Ty Lee’s physical and mental state over the course of four episodic events.

In the first: Ty Lee travels at a constant rate for a week in a west-southwest direction and reaches the outskirts of the Foggy Swamp. There, she is halted and subsequently pursued by a squadron of Fire Nation tundra tanks, each of which outpace her landshark vehicle except in naval capacity. Ty Lee comprehends this and attempts to escape downstream by sail. The tundra tanks follow by shoreline.

Ty Lee ultimately finds sanctuary in the form of the Foggy Swamp Tribe, who help defend her from the Fire Nation advance and shelter her in the forest. There, she meets several Swamp Tribe members, and explains her objective as given by the Avatar. In her adolescent judgment, stemming from her desire to complete her perceived mission, she denies their offer to shelter her for several days.

(“At least take one of us with you,” Huu says, the firelight reflecting off the concern in his eyes, “Avatar or not, nobody your age should be alone like that.”

“Yeah, I can come!” A high-pitched drawl pipes up, and a young girl in braids wearing sweet-smelling bark steps forward, “C’mon, Ty, y’know I’m pretty strong. I can help ya, no problem! An’ you don’t want Tho or Due with ya, they smell like monkeyhog all th’ time.”

Twin sounds of objection yelp out from the crowd.

But Ty Lee remembers what she saw in the Swamp, remembers Bumi’s sacrifice and Zuko’s scar and the burning temple, and she steps back.

“No,” and the wind stills, “no, I can’t do that. This is my mission. Sorry.”)

Mentally, Ty Lee is emotionally compromised for the next forty-six hours. The hallucinogenic perception of lost family provides a lasting memory.

In the second: Ty Lee moves as discreetly as possible south-southwest to avoid detection. She reaches Chin Village in ten days and stays there for two days to recuperate her living necessities. The weather is clear with low amounts of precipitation, allowing the fireworks to be clearly visible in the night sky.

Although not quite Avatar Day, the Avatar Festival allows for the ritualistic hatred of the Avatar to be celebrated after the harvest season ends, but without the same manpower and material required to create the yearly effigies. Smaller, mass-produced dolls are available for purchase and subsequent combustion. Alternate solutions include laceration, drowning, boiling, or in one instance, ingestion.

(Ty Lee looks around her, at the happy faces, bright-eyed and gleeful. At parents and children and friends and lovers.

She watches them throw axes at a purchased wooden statue of Avatar Kyoshi, watches a crude drawing of Avatar Aang get used as a dartboard.

She buys a doll of Avatar Roku and burns it for letting any of this happen.)

Mentally, Ty Lee grows mildly disillusioned with the Avatar’s role in society, as well as questioning of the sanctity of civilians. To that end, although she would usually opt to complete odd tasks for variable sums of money, Ty Lee instead steals from village officials and pickpockets from civilians in the mercantile area, allowing her to leave Chin Village with greater capital and less time taken.

She is also run out of town once they realize her status as both the potential Avatar and a criminal. Although their meagre fighting force of pitchforks and obscene language is not able to prevent her escape, the amount of Ty Lee merchandise skyrockets after the fact.

(Aang pouts as after Avatar Roku, a gigantic wooden likeness of Ty Lee is rolled out, adorned in monk’s garb with a mischievous look on her face.

“Well, I guess she did her job,” Katara acquiesced, “and it’s pretty much a 50/50 as to whether people think it’s you or her.”

“Ugh, but still! Avatar Day, and I don’t even get a mention. Man!”

“Hey, guys,” Sokka says weakly, “what’re they doing with those torches?”)

In the third: Ty Lee resupplies at Kyoshi Island. She travels slightly faster than the transmittance of information in this time period, and so her stolen currency is taken without any inquiry as to their origin. Even when Ty Lee openly admits her theft, the local authorities make no move to incarcerate her due to the underlying centuries-old acrimony between communities with polarized views on Avatar Kyoshi.

(Suki raises an eyebrow in disbelief, and Ty Lee mildly fumes.

“I’m really not his sister! We don’t look anything alike!”

“I mean, I got a good look at him. You look pretty similar, minus the hair.”)

However, given her relatively straight pathing and the enthusiastic virtue signaling – and signaling in the literal sense – present in Chin Village, the Fire Nation is in hot pursuit. The tundra tanks are abandoned in favor of a single cruiser’s worth of invasion infantry, armed with one unit of Komodo rhinos, as per standard coastal raiding procedure.

The Kyoshi Warriors are diminished in force due to injuries sustained from Prince Zuko’s earlier assault. Although it became debatable as to whether the local forces could hold back the assault, the decision ultimately came in the form of our test subject’s mental and physical fatigue.

Ty Lee makes several biased assumptions based on immediate experiences. In her compromised state, she assumes the following:

1. She has no ethically acceptable method to consistently maintain companions who can help preserve her freedom or life.
2. Townspeople are, either willingly or unfortunately, unreliable in their ability to help.
3. The Avatar is self-sacrificing despite the ungratefulness of society, so she should be too.
4. She has awful luck.
5. The spirits hate her.
6. Everyone might, possibly, secretly hate her. …Maybe. She feels like it.
7. She should offer herself for capture to spare the citizens of Kyoshi Island.

And so she does. Under great coincidence, the army captain who captures her has some sense of honor and does not immediately begin demolishing Kyoshi Island once Ty Lee is bound and taken into custody.

Suki, leader of the Kyoshi Warriors, provides ample counterarguments to most of the above assumptions mentally. She then decides to sail upwards to Chin Village, steal an eel hound from their pretentious war stables, and track the cruiser as it sails westward along the coast. Incidentally, she meets a braided Swamp Tribe girl with a similar objective to her, and decides to bring her along, since the Swamp Tribe girl is traditionally underage at twelve years old, and by convention should not have been traveling alone with only hearsay.

(“I had to prove myself to Ty Lee! Y’know how she gets, an’ I figured…”

“Fine. Fine! I guess it’s no different from the actual Avatar being twelve. What’s your name, anyways?”

“Bloom!”)

To report: Ty Lee is kept in a tiny metal cell in the ship’s brig. She is physically exhausted by these living conditions. Mentally, she is left isolated with no meaningful human interaction other than mealtimes and jeering visitors, forced to observe the several corners of her room during the silence. Voluntary breathing becomes one of her sole focuses.

She inhales.

She exhales.

She inhales.

She exhales.

She inhales –

In the fourth:

Ty Lee is captured for fifty-one hours. While observed by Fire Nation crewmates, she focuses on her breathing. While alone, she explores and expands upon her physical capabilities with what limited movement she has.

She inhales.

During this time, she enters a meditative state, having sworn to remain silent in the face of hostile individuals for the time being. She has the time to sort through her previous assumptions, and in doing so, undergoes acceptance or denial of each. The more emotionally charged assumptions are either forgotten or revised, but the more jaded theories seem convenient for her to believe.

She exhales.

Our test subject also considers the most immediate problem at hand: her imprisonment. Of the three prison guards that come for mealtime, only one of them keeps the keys attached to a loop in their armor. They have given her limited control of her limbs: the handcuffs on her wrists have been locked since her arrest, and they cuffed her ankles while taking her in. Otherwise, the rest of her body is free. The prison cell bars are too tight to squeeze even an arm through, but she can put her open palm through it. The cell is entirely made of steel alloy. The toilet functions through gravity rather than hydraulics. The prison seems perfectly designed to contain earth, water, and fire.

She inhales.

Traveling with Aang afforded her some insights on airbending. The manipulation of air temperature is a standard traditional practice which allows airbenders a higher level of temperature regulation without adjusting clothing choices. However, unlike her experiences, traditional airbending revolves around outside manipulation of the air around the bender, rather than internal control, which would more align with firebending philosophy.

(“Air comes from… well, the monks called it a communion,” Aang says at Appa’s helm, “you detach yourself from the other elements and dedicate your focus to working with the air, instead of controlling it. Like it’s your friend!”

“Huh. I usually take my air from my breath and, like… from me? It’s hard to explain. I don’t really think of air as someone to work with.”

“Must be because you’re self-taught. Maybe next time, I can teach you my way, and we can compare. Once this whole Avatar Roku thing dies down, of course.”)

She exhales.

The door creaks open. It is mealtime. The guard today is Shang, a recruit who keeps his keys attached to a loop in his armor. He wears a white mask that indicates his proficiency in firebending. He often engages in casual conversation, and our subject often reciprocates. He is the only one out of three guards who does not actively taunt her.

“Ty Lee, hey! Here’s your meal, from yours truly.”

“Shang! So good to see you, good-looking, how’s your day been? I’ve just been hanging around here. As per usual.”

“Oh, total bore. Well, I mean, the crew’s been throwing parties left and right.”

“Mhm? Tell me more.”

““Capturers of the Avatar”, all that. I mean, I kind of had a few drinks here and there, but I swear they think they’re all that, but –”

(“Instinct is a lie, told by a fearful body, hoping to be wrong. When you base your expectations only on what you see, you blind yourself to the possibilities of a new reality.”)

She inhales.

Then she yanks her arms to herself, springing to her feet. Air resistance increases and shifts inwards at record-breaking velocities. Shang finds himself barely able to breathe as his entire body is splayed out across the bars, similar to the Vitruvian man. His body faces the inside of the prison.

“Wh-What?! But you’re – KHH – supposed to be some Air Nomad, th-this – isn’t your nature…!”

Ty Lee presses her forehead to his helmet. Her eyes reflect the lamplight fire that barely survived the pressure shift.

“Nature is constantly changing. Like the wind.”

Her arm reaches out and rips the keys from his side. Then she chokes him out through her airbending, renders him unconscious by flinging him to an iron wall on the other side of the room, and unlocks the barge prison.

The test subject slams the door to the prison shut and presses her back to it to act as a human barricade. In the meantime, the iron chains linking her handcuffs are then placed in her mouth.

She exhales, and there is an extreme heat in the air between her teeth. The iron is changed into a more ductile form.

She inhales, and the heat is replaced by freezing temperatures. The iron is rapidly converted into a brittle form.

She inhales.

She exhales.

She inhales –

One of the chain links snap, and her arms have their free range of motion once more.

Ty Lee makes a sound denoting glee before she tries to walk normally and nearly fractures her head.

“…Oh. Right. Phooey.”

Now with free hands, Ty Lee makes an actual barricade and bends her entire lower body over her torso in order to place the chains on her ankles in her mouth.

When Suki reaches the ship, it is when three Fire Nation soldiers are being thrown overboard with the sound of a hurricane roaring from the deck. The eel hound utilizes electrostatic forces and van der Waals reactions to scale up the side of the ship.

The sight of Ty Lee both relieves her and annoys her as she casually enters the fray.

“Nice sacrifice. Need help?”

“Suki! Wait, and Bloom? And, uh, no! I told you both, I need to do this alone. Why didn’t you listen?”

Suki instinctively concusses a man with a fan and gives Ty Lee an unimpressed look.

“Because nobody’s Plan A should be to knock out or kill the entire crew of a Fire Nation cruiser? Because I’m pretty sure you’re going stir crazy from being alone on Sokka’s accidental suicide mission? Because I’m competent?”

“…You still have Kyoshi Island, and Bloom can’t just –“

A whip of water slams a soldier into the ground, and an annoyed, freckled twelve-year old raises her voice.

“Dang it, Ty, get on th’ eel hound!”

“Okay.”

In summary:

Physically, Ty Lee is initially exhausted from her temporary imprisonment, but she is able to recover within hours. Formal training with Suki during their travels allows her to regain any lost muscle mass or motor control. Reuniting with her air glider (which was left with her landshark) also provides good physical exercise. Her combative bending is improved once she gains Bloom as a sparring partner.

Mentally, Ty Lee suffers from mild trauma, but her recovery is expedited when both Suki and Bloom offer to accompany her on her journey. Self-sacrificial thoughts and depressive episodes have a notable decline once they agree to form a party. On the other hand, death and killing are further desensitized to her moral compass.

The stolen eel hound is hooked up to the landshark to create an eel-drawn-shark (name pending). It also acts as an emotional support animal by the name of “Lung”.

Now with an actual frame of reference in terms of formulating objectives for her mission, the three of them decide to head eastward to Ba Sing Se, such that they can find a safe haven to work towards while leading the Fire Nation on “the wildest gooseduck chase y’can think of!” (Bloom, 99 AG, Year of the Sheep).

In the interim, Zhao rants in circles about how useless his inferiors are in capturing the Avatar. Azula, noting the failure, decides to try and bolster her individual chances by recruiting talented individuals.

A ship is chartered to the recently annexed Omashu, and the newly-appointed Queen-Elect curses under her breath before making preparations.

“Best to wait and listen, Your Majesty,” her Earth Kingdom advisor says, munching on a lettuce, “neither acting nor reacting are likely to help, not with your several burgeoning responsibilities to your city. And I hear those Princesses get really spicy!”

“Yes,” Mai grounds out through clenched teeth, “Yes they do.”