Chapter Text
The first thing he became aware of was the ringing in his ears. Then came the pounding headache, like a sabretooth moose-lion was trying to break out of his skull. He heard someone talking, but he wasn’t present enough to make out the words yet. He opened his eyes with a groan. His other headache felt more like a moose-lion cub, and this was its mama. Could the ringing in his ears kindly cease? Regardless, his senses were assaulted with a feeling of wrongness he’d never experience before, and befuddled, it took him a moment to figure out why. The world was wrong.
The buildings were so high he could see them rise up in the corners of his eyes. The street he was laying on was made of rough and evenly spread stone, instead of dirt and weeds. The roar in his ears had abided, making way for an entirely different roaring and hum that vibrated through the ground, into his fingers. “The sun,” he croaked. The person next to him straightened and made a questioning word. “The sun is different. Where am I?” he asked them. “You’re in Musutafu City, near Aldera High. What’s the last thing you remember?” The person, male by his voice, was making literally no sense. “Use normal words. What are you, a spirit?” They spluttered something, but he forged on and talked over them like he hadn’t heard. He’d gotten a lot of practice in, after becoming Fire Lord. “The last thing I remember is going to sleep last night. Yesterday the Water Tribe United Delegation tried to get me to sign their treaty again, but they were so busy arguing about North and South that I never even got to read it. I already know what’s in it, obviously, because I got myself a copy, but still, you know?” He was rambling, so he made himself stop.
“Sure, man,” the person(?) replied. “Hey, let’s make sure you stay awake, alright? I have a feeling you’ve got a concussion.. My name is Midoriya, but you can call me Izuku, alright? What’s your name, buddy?” “I’m Zuko, son of Ozai and Ursa, crowned Fire Lord by right of combat. But you just call me Zuko, because all my titles make me feel old,” he added. “That’s some chuuni bullshit, man,” a new person said. Zuko wanted to look at the newcomer, but his body wouldn’t cooperate. “The fuck is your deal, huh? Get up already, asshat. If you’ve got the energy to run your mouth, you’ve got the energy to stand. Go on,” he jeered. As always, spite did wonders for Zuko’s recovery.
He dusted himself off for show, once he got himself off the ground. Finally able to look, he turned his head. The young man who’d talked to him first was short, muscled, had green hair so bright he put most vegetables to shame, and smiled as bright as the sun when their eyes met. Izuku, right. His clothes were a dark blue, yet Zuko thought the boy couldn’t possibly be Water. Too pale, too.. green.
The young man behind Zuko had blond hair, spiked into a hairstyle that defied gravity, and sneered at him. Unimpressed, he looked back at Izuku. Now what? Izuku looked at something over Zuko’s shoulder, and began to wave. “Mr. Aizawa, this way!” The sudden volume startled him, but he intentionally did not flinch. Fire Lords were above such things.
‘Mr. Aizawa’ was a man wearing loose black clothing and a long, thin white scarf. His hair, also black, was unkempt and tangled. His eyebags, while large, were still smaller than Zuko’s. It gave him a weird sense of pride. Stupid concussed head.
“Midoriya, we talked about this. No picking up stray high-schoolers.” Aizawa’s eyes raked over Zuko’s appearance. “Not even strays in weird clothes.” “I’m choosing to ignore that, actually. Where am I?” Aizawa looked unimpressed. “Musutafu, Japan. Why?” Zuko looked around him, shuddering at the sheer height of the stone buildings around him. Far away, metal square heaps were barrelling down the road at astonishing speeds; the source of the vibration in the ground. “Any of you know where Caldera City went? Was just there yesterday. Went to bed and everything.” Aizawa only sighed in response. “God,” he said, “don’t you just love memory-based quirks?” Zuko could only shrug. “What is it with you people and speaking words that make no sense? Spirit World bison-crap, I swear. Aang can clean up his own whatever-went-wrong-yesterday next time.” “Sure,” sneered Blondie, “we’re the ones not making sense.”
Zuko put to work every ounce of patience and Royal mannerisms he’d ever been taught, and did not blow fire at blondie’s blond hair. It was a near thing, though. He still felt on-edge.
Aizawa sighed so deeply his shoulders sagged with it. “You’re coming with me, kid.” “I’ve literally been an adult for three years already, but sure.” Aizawa walked him to a metal heap, square-ish and gleaming in the sun. He opened a door by a handle Zuko hadn’t realised was there, to reveal the cushioned seats inside. Sure, why wouldn’t he get in the metal death-trap? Surprisingly, the metal heap of doom turned out to be a carriage without horses that steered smoothly. Aizawa controlled the thing via mechanisms unknown and drove by rules only he knew, but they arrived at wherever Aizawa had wanted to take Zuko without any trouble at all. He wondered how fast these things could go. He wondered if Toph could build one, and then immediately shivered at the imagined consequences. Better leave that one in dream-spirit-whatever realm. The spirit realm.. where he could firebend. Right.
Inside the building were people in uniforms milling about, and even in spirit-wherever Zuko could recognise military when he saw it. Crisp cloth and golden insignias tended to give such things away. Zuko was wary of Aizawa and the military men, but here was a filter of dissonance over the world that kept him from feeling overly worried. Rather, overly anything at all. Nothing but casual acceptance or indifference, save for blondie and his aggravating way of speaking.
“I need to see Tsukauchi,” Aizawa told the nearest woman. “I’ve got a case of a memory or mental Quirk and I need to figure out how deep that shit goes,” he added. The woman looked at Zuko then, but respectfully averted her gaze after a moment. “Certainly,” she said. “You know where to go, he’ll be with you shortly.” Aizawa thanked her and took off, and with nothing better to do, Zuko followed. Aizawa opened a door and waited for Zuko to walk into the room before he closed it.
The room had beige carpet, white walls, a bright ceiling lantern and simple wooden furniture; nondescript in every possible way, devoid of even the bland and non-characterised standard knickknacks, like brown clay vases and off-white candles. Zuko took a seat, without waiting to be offered, on one of two wooden chairs across a desk. There was a third chair on the other side of it that looked too specific for Zuko to occupy. After a moment’s silence, he asked, “How come there’s no fire in this lantern?” Aizawa did a double take. “What do you mean, no fire? You forget about electricity?” So the people here harnessed lightning? He wondered if they caught it out of the sky, or if there were simply more people capable of generating it in the future. Oh, yes, he’d come to accept this spirit-or-whatever-world was in many ways more advanced than his. Perhaps this wasn’t his world’s future, but rather a future. Weird stuff. In the contemplative silence that Aizawa didn’t attempt to fill, Tsukauchi arrived. “Shota, pleasure as always. What did I hear about mental quirks?”
Tsukauchi seemed to be a man who moved at his own pace. “Yeah, about that. Problem Child called me over, so I come look, only to find some bored-looking teenager in a yukata in the middle of a crater the size of a car, asking me where ‘Imperial City’ went.” He made a motion with two fingers on each hand in the air. Zuko had the distinct and familiar feeling that he wasn’t being taken seriously at all. “Seriously, we walked in here and he goes ‘how come there’s no fire in the ceiling light’. Are you kidding me?” “He is also sitting right here, thank you,” Zuko couldn’t resist. “Thanks, Shota, but what does that have to do with me?” “Listen, man, I’m not here because I want to be. I need you to hear this kid out and determine how deep whatever hit him goes. If we can figure out what kind of quirk he’s under, we might figure out how to nullify it, or whether it wears off on its own,” Aizawa droned. “That sounds like a plan, Shota. So, kid, why don’t we start with your name? Be aware that everything you say is being recorded for later reference. The only people authorised to access this recording are police officers and in some cases judicial officials. Is that clear?” Zuko nodded.
“Sure. As I told Izuku, call me Zuko. Fire Lord blah blah, crowned whatever. My titles don’t mean anything to you anyways.” He frowned. Sokka was rubbing off on him. “Truth,” said Tsukauchi. “So where are you from, Zuko, and what do you remember?” He cast his mind back, and talked. “I currently reside in the Fire Lord’s wing of the Imperial Palace, at the heart of Imperial City of the Fire Nation. Yesterday, as I told Izuku, delegations from the Northern and Southern Water Tribes argued amongst themselves so much I never even got to see the treaty they were supposed to jointly present. Yes, I have my own copy, I am not an utter fool, but the fact of the matter is that they wasted an entire day on talks that went nowhere at all, when I could have spent that time revisiting my nation’s tax distribution. I went to bed with a headache from the stress, somewhere in the middle of the night, after the changing of the guard. I woke up here, because the sun felt wrong.” He made a conscious effort to behave and speak more like himself. It helped dissolve some of the cobwebs in his mind that separated him from the world. “Truth,” said the officer.
“What do you mean, when you say the sun feels wrong?” he asked. “I’m a Firebender. I know what the sun is supposed to feel like. Agni calls upon me to wake in the morning, and attempts to put me to bed in the night. She cradles my inner fire as she cradles every single Fire Nation citizen. I know what Agni’s warmth feels like. That-” he pointed in the direction of the sun, past its highest point but still well off from setting, “is not Agni.” The officer’s eyebrows climbed higher and higher with his every word, and when Zuko pointed, Tsukauchi looked, as if trying to see the sun through the ceiling. “Utterly unhinged, and truth. Damn, son. Do you remember anything strange, like dreams, or suspicious people, or odd feelings?” Zuko tried, he really did. He thought back methodically over his entire week, counting off the days on his fingers.
“On Metal’s day I entertained the Earth Kingdom Delegation and tried to reason with them about the colonies. That went nowhere, of course, and tensions were high, but his Highness had brought his pet bear into the room and that helped dissolve things. Nobody looked at me more contemptuously than usual, and the servants all acted normal. After our thankfully poison-free dinner, I sat in my rooms and tried to draw up a treaty that the Earth Kingdom might agree to. On Tui’s day, I spoke with the Earth Kingdom Delegation again, but since his Highness’ bear had fallen ill, they had to leave for home earlier than expected. The rest of our communication has been slow going, by way of carrier hawks. The other half of Tui’s day, I had tea with Uncle, and dug around the Royal Library for sources about taking care of orphans. For a country that’s been at war for literally one hundred years, my family sure didn’t care what to do with the people it left behind.” Against his will and training, his face crumpled in disgust.
“Luckily,” he continued, wiping his face of expression and keeping his eyes trained on his hands, “some Earth Kingdom philosophy on taxes and money systems made its way into the Library, filed under ‘foreign literature’, because even our spirits-damned filing system is outdated and xenophobic. Some Earth philosophers said you should tax the people according to their income and existing wealth because taxing everybody a flat rate just ends up overburdening the very farmers I’m trying to help. So, new tax system in hand, I went and tried to shuffle our national funds around to make space for some Fire Lord funded orphanages. And you know what my ministers said? ‘That will be unpopular, Fire Lord Zuko,’ ‘Cease your wishful thinking, Fire Lord Zuko, you are an adult.’ Sometimes I wish to banish all those old goats. Fine, so upheaving the tax system wasn’t going to work. Wan’s day morning it is.”
He ticked off the next finger. He was distantly aware that he was not only rambling, but also pouring his life’s burdens over people who really did not want, need, or deserve to be saddled with them. However, he had been wishing for an opportunity to spill it all out. If he hadn’t been spirited away like this, he would have given himself a scarce few days before he snuck out of the palace and into the nearest field he could scream in without being overheard. Much.
“Wan’s day morning was spent readying for the afternoon’s talks with the Avatar. Since Aang is my friend, those preparations didn’t take very long. We talked of the matter of the.. disappearance.. of the Air Nomads. Aang says the world is unbalanced without a fourth Nation. Even if the people in a new Air Nomad’s Temple can’t actually Airbend, the very fact that there’s four nations again is supposed to somehow help balance the world. I do not pretend to know how or why Aang is so certain of this, I just follow his guidance. We decided to offer all Fire Nation citizens the chance to migrate to the Western Air Temple completely no strings attached. They would receive housing, food and a new people to include themselves in, and all they had to do in return was give up on eating meat. Aang was going to ask the Earth Kingdom and the Water Tribes to do the same, but the Fire Nation was supposed to do it first, as a gesture of goodwill and genuine intent. We didn’t set a date for when to break the news, and I got spirited away before we could make a decision on that. Wan’s evening I returned to the orphanages. There are so many orphans in my nation, you wouldn’t believe.” He took a breath.
“Thunder’s day I had to prepare for the Water Tribe Delegation I mentioned. I read up on Water etiquette and had my cooks study Water Tribe cuisine. I spent the day practising my bow, eating barely passable ocean cumquats and yet again trying to convince my ministers that we need to address the nation’s orphans and, for that matter, all our other major problems, too. Old goats refuse to even acknowledge the fact that our nation is weakened by our poor and underfed population, greedy old-money nobles too concerned with shoving their family next to the Fire Lord’s throne by way of tying me to a Fire Lady of their house, a lack of exports besides decommissioned armour and warships that fall apart if you look at them sideways, and the fact that nobody outside the kingdom really likes to acknowledge me as rightful Fire Lord, seeing as how the crown changed hands thrice in about as many days, my father is still alive and so is Azula, and everybody prefers Uncle anyways. Spirits,” he gasped. “Nobody looked at me wrong and I didn’t remember any dreams upon waking.”
“Fire’s day,” he prattled on, aware in the corner of his eye that Aizawa opened his mouth to speak and talking over him, because spirits, he needed this. He hadn’t realised just how much weight had fallen onto his shoulders the past week alone, and now that he was aware he needed it out.
“Fire’s day is when the Water Delegation arrived on my doorstep, faces sour like they’d bitten an unripe sea prune. Turns out the Northern and Southern officials don’t see eye-to-eye on very much, despite Sokka and Katara’s best efforts. North mostly wanted to be left alone, while South desperately needs trade to survive. Truth be told, they called it trade, but what they proposed was a handout by any other name. Like us, the Southern Tribes have very little, if anything, to trade besides, perhaps, fishing and hunting rights. Why on Agni’s green earth anybody thought it was a good idea to make two peoples from literal polar opposites enter a joint treatise, I will never know. Of course, North didn’t want to sign over hunting and fishing rights, and South insisted that if North didn’t sign, neither did they, pleading North all the while to spare a thought for their Southern sisters. I did propose the tribes draft separate treaties, but for some spirit-forsaken reason the delegates are absolutely dead-set on a joint treaty instead. I have no idea when our talks will go anywhere at all. We’re completely deadlocked in literally all of our peace treaties, and all the while I need those things signed so that I can actually give the order to pull our troops back and into harbour. No treaty, no peace, technically, and even the Agni-damned Fire Lord himself isn’t allowed to pull our troops back home so long as the war’s still on. It’s been three years, Agni rain fire upon them, and still I’m not allowed to dissolve all our frontiers. Of course I’ve been shipping troops away as much as I can, all that’s really left on our borders are skeleton troops barely big enough so that the fortresses don’t fall to ruin, everybody knows it’s peace and the Fire Nation is in no position to make any sudden movements or swift strikes, but technically, technically, those thousands of people can’t see their families yet and I’m not allowed to even think about changing our economy. ”
The silence that fell when he was done was an uncomfortable one. The cobwebs in his mind that had coddled and protected him had cleared, and the full force of his situation was dawning on him. Tsukauchi was about to speak. “And this is the future. Maybe not the future of Raava’s world, but the future nonetheless. I have no idea if anyone is on my throne right now, patching the holes in my nation even as it falls apart, for long enough so that I can take my crown back.” The crown that, incidentally, he happened to be wearing. The familiar weight was a comfort. With that, he was finally done. He slumped back in his seat, ignoring all royal decorum as the weight of the listing of his troubles pulled on his shoulders and make his spine slouch. There. Now Tsukauchi could speak.
“..Truth,” he said, after a moment’s hesitation. “All of it, Shota. Not a single fudged truth or white lie. This kid’s got a world on his shoulders, and it’s not ours.” For his part, Aizawa gave another heavy, trademark sigh. “Join the Problem Children Club, kid.” “I really wish you would stop doing that,” Zuko said, a little petulantly. “I am nineteen years old, Fire Lord of my nation and three years out of childhood. Address me as such, please,” he added, tone as regal as he could make it on such short notice. Aizawa didn’t look impressed, but obliged anyways. Zuko could have hugged the man for it. “Whatever you say, Zuko,” is what he settled on.
Aizawa and Tsukauchi spoke into a rectangular little box, and a voice came spilling out, clear as day. Zuko was too tired to marvel at the sorcery of it. A man who they addressed as ‘Nedzu’ chittered as he listened to them explain Zuko’s situation in less than three full sentences. “Very well, we will house him for the time being,” he said. “But only if you send me the recording of your full interrogation, Shota. I insist!” Aizawa sighed but agreed, and he guided Zuko back into the metal carriage.
“We’re taking you to Yuuei,” he said by way of explanation. “It’s a school for hero kids with impeccable security, dorm rooms and teachers who know how to shut their yap. I teach there. It’s the best place we’ve got for you right now,” he added. Zuko understood about a third of those words, so he didn’t protest. “We’re gonna house you there until we figure out how to.. send you back, or whatever.” Getting back home was somehow quite low on Zuko’s current list of priorities, after procuring himself, food, clothing and shelter. Once he got his bearings, he would allow himself some time to panic. He wasn’t the Avatar, after all, so it wasn’t like he could meditate for a bit and ask this world’s spirits to kindly put him back where he belonged. Sometimes he was jealous of Aang’s abilities, right before he remembered what life had been like for the boy and immediately felt bad for it. Zuko did not need to be saddled with that extra kind of responsibility at age twelve, let alone the destruction he could cause for simply being a Fire Nation royal and an Avatar. Rather than dwelling on things he could never do, like commune with spirits, he focused on what he could.
His Inner Fire, gift of Agni and his breath of life, thrummed in his blood, strong even under this unfamiliar sun. He let the presence of his bending comfort him, and he lost himself in the feeling of steering his chi through his body.
All too soon, the carriage slowed and stilled in front of a massive wall and gate. For all of Aizawa’s assurances, Zuko felt the security here was more lax than he’d expected. There weren’t any guards stationed on the wall, nor was it reinforced with spikes and other things to keep Blue Spirits from climbing over it. The wall was actually rather low, and the gate was made of metal bars that were easy to climb and even easier to see through. No, Zuko was not impressed. “Game face on, Zuko. Rat bastard is probably already watching your arrival, so wipe that weird sneer off your mug and be polite. Last thing you need is Nedzu’s interest and attention on you even more than you already do.” “What did I do to warrant this person’s interest?” he asked. “The simple fact that you came to our world from a different one via mechanisms unknown to us at this time makes you a lovely new subject to study. If you’re rude to him, he’ll label you a problem student or something, and use the excuse to shadow you day and night. You wanna be followed into your bedroom by a rat? No? So behave.”
Zuko very much did not want to meet this Nedzu person, but seeing as they were headmaster here, he really had to. No matter, he’d sat through dozens, if not hundreds of unwanted meetings. He would survive this one.
Aizawa led him over the schoolyard and through a side door. “Classes are on right now, so we probably won’t meet any students. Let’s leave that for Nedzu to handle.” The hallways of the school were eerily clean and straight, straighter even than an Earthbender could have made them. The floor was made of white ceramic tiles and the ceiling lanterns lacked fire again. He found he disliked the feeling of light without fire. The tiled floor reflected his grimy kimono back at him. At least his crown still sat straight. Enough.
The door to the headmaster’s office opened on its own before Aizawa could knock on it, and he sighed. He muttered a rat bastard under his breath, but not softly enough. Aizawa walked into the room without bowing to the headmaster, so Zuko didn’t either. The sight of the man(?) nearly knocked him over. The man(?) was a badger mouse-like being, ninety centimetres tall at most, with a tail and paws and a scar over one eye. “Oma and Shu,” Zuko breathed. The headmaster chittered, and Zuko recognised this to be the sound over the rectangular speaking box from earlier. “Master Nedzu?” he tried. “Welcome to my school! Zuko, was it? Take a seat, young one, take a seat!” said the headmaster.
So the badger-mouse talked, and he was a man.
Zuko swallowed, took a breath, and sat. He mentally categorised the man’s appearance as some kind of spirit-touched, which helped soothe his mental distress. If he understood the man a little better, even in the form of a lie he told himself, he felt like he had some control over the situation. Seated, he looked at Aizawa for an explanation, or an introduction. None came.
“So, Zuko,” began Master Nedzu, “I understand you have arrived here at my school under some unusual circumstances.” Zuko nodded. “That is correct, Master Nedzu. I do not know what manner of spirit-magic brought me here, but I know for a fact this world is not my own. As of right now, I have nowhere to go,” he summed up. “He’s aware,” interrupted Aizawa. “I’m absolutely certain he’s already somehow gotten a hold of the recording Detective Tsukauchi made and analysed the whole thing. Stop dancing around what you want to say, Rat,” he told Nedzu. Master Nedzu, rather than punish Aizawa for his manner and words, chittered. The laughter made his whiskers vibrate. “Aizawa is correct. I already know of your circumstances, Zuko, I merely wanted to give you a moment before barrelling ahead. So,” he sat up straighter and steepled his fingers (paws?). “Come study with us, Zuko. Yuuei will house you, feed you, clothe you and provide you with funds for your expenses, and we will keep you hale and whole until such a time as your return to your home world.”
Zuko recognised a skilled talker when he saw one. Master Nedzu was a cut above the rest. He shifted his bearing more towards Politician-Zuko, instead of Away-from-home-Zuko, and asked, “What are your terms?” He was not one for fishing for answers, and much preferred to ask his questions boldly. Nedzu appeared to appreciate this. “From what I gathered in your conversation with Tsukauchi, you have a lot of experience handling tense situations. From what I gathered during our conversation, you have the bearing of a fighter. I would have you study under Yuuei, if you taught my students in return. They are strong, but reckless, even for their age. They would benefit from a guiding presence from amongst their peers. What do you say?”
So, in essence, study here and socialise. Yes, Zuko could do that. He had no doubt the headmaster wanted other things from him besides counselling some youngsters, but he would cross those rivers when he came to them. “I say we are in agreement, Master Nedzu.” Zuko bowed lightly, remaining seated and refusing to make the Sign of Fire. The headmaster was deserving of respect, but not that much. Nedzu chittered as if he understood perfectly well what Zuko was doing.
Next to him, Aizawa suddenly stiffened in his seat. “Absolutely not,” he said. “I know what you’re about to say, and I don’t want to hear it. I don’t need another punk in my class. Give this one to Vlad, or something. Nedzu, no,” he growled, but Nedzu looked undisturbed. Aizawa took on a pleading tone. “Doesn’t Nem still have room for a protégée? Or Mic, his homeroom has space for one more, doesn’t it?” Nedzu only chittered.
Aizawa was still tense as he led Zuko to the dormitories. The building was massive in a way Zuko was coming to recognise was pretty much standard in this corner of this world. Aang would have loved all the high-up places to stand on, and jump off of. Zuko did not dwell on the stab of worry in his gut when he thought of his friend.