Focused Fire (ATLA)

“Still nothing from the continent?” 

“Nothing,” Zuko answered with a rueful shake of his head as he sat on the bed. Beside him, Mai’s usual mask of indifference cracked for a split second to reveal her irritation and worry. It might be barely a month since Azula, Xing and uncle Iroh were declared traitors, but even so Zuko would’ve expected a trickle of updates from the Earth Continent.

The last bit of news they’ve gotten was the majority of the colonies joining Azula in rebellion and evacuating their homes, but not before scorched-earthing the towns and villages in a ‘despicable act of self-sabotage’. Zuko remembered that being one of the contingencies against an Earth Kingdom resurgence, he should’ve expected it to be used against the Fire Nation as well.

It was a more effective tactic here as well, since the Fire Nation would have to rely on sea routes to establish supply lines, and with how the colonies were spread out, that’d be a lot of lines to safeguard. Should the Earth Kingdom or Water Tribes finally wise up to that fact, it would take very little to cause a dent in the punitive forces supply chain.

And no doubt Xing would have his own plans to exploit the stretched Fire Nation navy. He knew how the navy worked just as well as the army, and the loyalties of the admirals were not as heavily considered as the generals. A careless mistake caused by a careless assumption on his father’s and his advisor’s part. Zuko was sure that once the month was over, if the sea lanes were still running untouched, it would only be because Xing saw it fit to leave them alone.

“So it’s just another day of nothing?” Mai asked, her annoyance leaking through her facade.

“Not exactly,” Zuko answered with a shrug. He glanced to the door and windows, and further softened his whisper. “You could say that no news is good news for Azula…” Mai leaned in, and with the candlelight accenting her features, the prince had to make an effort to not drop his train of thought in exchange for just staring at her.  

“Uh, I mean, my father’s court will surely seize any victory to bolster support and legitimacy, and reporting any defeats would work against public sentiment...”

Mai nodded in understanding. It made her dress shift rather…nicely against her frame. “So, either nothing’s really happening, or whatever’s going on is not something the palace wants to know.”

“Exactly.”

The usually dour girl broke into a rare, spite-filled smile. “I guess it serves them right for underestimating your sister.”

Zuko heartily agreed. The time he spent in the 11th further enlightened the prince to how Xing operated, which, by extension, was how Azula did as well. They were not ones to just roll over and die, unless that gesture was meant as a grand trap. Azula might’ve lost her temper at their father’s ridiculous accusation against Xing and Uncle Iroh, but the fact that a quarter of the palace’s staff vanished with her, with not a single ‘conspirator’ caught yet up until now, showed just how deep-rooted her preparations were.

Some in the Fire Lord’s council worried that she might have more agents sown across the islands. Zuko took that for granted. His sister did not laze around during her tenure as colonial minister. Her influence in the capital was limited, but only in the royal court. Beyond the palace walls and within the city, Zuko’s short time with her told him that she operated a variety of ‘cells’ that looked into keeping an eye on and occasionally undermining political rivals.

There was no doubt that those cells were still around. Just because none of them were acting up simply meant that Azula hadn’t activated them yet. She could incite a city-wide riot, a string of assassinations, even poisoning the water and-

“What are you thinking?” Mai’s question snapped Zuko out of his thoughts, and he shrugged weakly at her.

“Just wondering what will happen once she returns here.”

The look she gave him was more curious than doubtful. “Nothing good?”

“If we’re lucky, she’ll come with company, and they’ll hold her back from doing her worst.”

There was a few seconds of silence as Mai digested the words, and then she of course asked, “And if we’re not lucky?”

“A lot of people are going to die.” Probably slowly, too. “Your father might be one of them.”

“It’d be what he deserves,” Mai huffed, though Zuko knew she didn’t mean it. Despite blaming Ukano for having her family kept as prisoners in all but name in the palace grounds, Mai still loved her father enough that she didn’t wish him dead. Exiled, maybe, but not dead. Especially not by Azula’s hands.

Or Xing’s which is definitely worse.

Zuko still remembered the stories the soldiers shared of the Young Dragon’s time before being colonel. There were a lot of nightmarish castrations and eviscerations in them.

“Well, on the bright side, at least she should know we’re not involved.”

Zuko didn’t bother hiding his enthusiasm in his nodding. “Yeah. That’s one thing we-”

A noise from the door caused both teens to freeze up and snap their heads towards it. Zuko shared a tense look with Mai before he quietly got up and stalked over. He was sure that him sneaking into Mai’s room these past few nights was noticed by the palace sentries and tolerated by the Fire Lord, but considering what led to this point, things could dramatically change.

Zuko edged closer to the door, thanking the 11th’s night training for keeping his movements utterly silent, and carefully placed his ear against it. 

Not a sound.

Then he slowly brought his head down to the bottom of the door, peeking through the gaps in it. He saw dark shapes of feet shifting skittishly.

He got up, and after gesturing for Mai to move away from the door’s immediate line of sight, Zuko quickly opened it…and found a young woman in a servant’s dress staring in surprise at him.

“Who are you?” Zuko whispered harshly, eyes darting about for guards and finding none. This servant must’ve waited for the patrols to clear the area.

“M-Message, for Lady Mai,” the woman simply said, offering up a folded piece of paper. She too looked about, and after pushing the paper into Zuko’s hands, scampered off with surprising quietness.

Zuko looked at the note before closing the door and heading to a very curious Mai. “What is it?”

He unfolded the paper and as expected, found a message within. Passing it to Mai, they both huddled together (and Zuko did his level best not to think too much about it) to read it beside the candlelight.

“Remember the turtleducks, the flying komodo rhino. When the laughter stops, see to the dawn…”

It was a jumble of words strung together to form nonsense. But then both of them figured out the underlying pattern. It was a cipher that used particular brushstrokes of each character to hide the true message.

One of Azula’s ciphers, that both Zuko and Mai were familiar with in their travels with the princess.

“Half-moon,” Mai read out in the barest of whispers. “The pond garden. Escorts come.”

A simple enough message. Mai looked to Zuko with a glint of hope in her eyes, but he regrettably crushed it.

“It’s a trap.”

“What?”

Zuko sighed, and thanked the spirits that Mai didn’t crack as badly as he expected her to. “It’s Azula’s cipher, and written in the same style, but she only used it for communicating with the colonies, remember?” Mostly for updating on news, not for anything important.

Admirably, Mai caught on immediately, and nodded with a dark frown. “And it’s the only one whose manual she keeps lying around.”

As bait.

“They must’ve found it,” Zuko said needlessly.

Mai gave an ugly scowl as stared at the letter. “A test?”

“Likely so.” And a very bad one, too. Using a servant was a nice touch, but in hindsight Azula would not have needlessly risked her people in a high security place like this. And at night of all things, when it was arguably the riskiest for a servant to be out. She’d probably have the message delivered in their food or something instead. Maybe even use the 11th’s cricket song.

“So what do we do?”

Zuko was in his room and heard the news from a guard the next morning. Mai brought it up with the guards, making a show of pointing out their lousy security that allowed some madman to drop her a nonsensical letter. It meant that security was increased to the point that it took Zuko twice as long now to sneak into Mai’s room (a whopping forty minutes), but hopefully it’d also sell the fact that the two of them were ignorant of Azula’s inner workings.

Beyond that, nothing much else changed. Zuko was still confined to the palace wing his room was in, Mai was on the opposite end with her family just barely tolerating the presence of her father, and neither received any information about the world beyond the walls. Zuko had not seen his father ever since his captivity, and the constant shuffling of servants and guards ensured that he couldn’t establish any rapport to build up an information network.

It was a strong gilded cage that he was stuck in, especially with the use of Mai and her family as a shackle. But the prince could barely feel despair. Compared to the tribulations he faced during his exile, the oh-so-close victories that were turned into bitter defeats, this was nothing. He’d been stuck on a ship for years in a fruitless search for the Avatar.

Being confined to his room would be nothing.

And besides, it wasn’t like he didn’t know what the outcome would be. Xing would be landing on the capital city to depose the Fire Lord, Zuko was sure of it. The question was whether Zuko was prepared to lose his father. 

Well, there were plenty of days left to consider that matter, and maybe even grieve beforehand.

*****

With the once prosperous colonies falling into civil war, business was bad all around. Except for certain areas. While most traders either fled to Ba Sing Se or the newly freed Earth Kingdom states to rebuild, Je-Choi found himself in a unique position of profiting while contributing to his patrons’ cause.

The Cabbage Food and Logistics Company had built itself an impressive network of depots and stores throughout the colonies and the neighboring Earth Kingdom states, almost entirely thanks to the generosity of Princess Azula. The lack of trade tariffs within the Fire Nation territories meant that Je-Choi had the luxury of investing in transportation and storage technologies to maximize his profits.

His company’s fleets of wagons and carts and civilian-grade tanks that once ensured mass transportation of perishable goods to their destinations in a timely manner now served as the trading backbone of Ba Sing Se. Goods were exported and imported in long trains to and from the states aligned with Omashu. From what Je-Choi understood, King Bumi was keeping his hands off further interactions with Ba Sing Se beyond the peace treaty, but that also included not stopping or encouraging trade.

Ba Sing Se offered its massive surplus of grains in exchange for other foodstuffs, and the gold that one decorated the palace and nobles’ homes in the Inner Ring were offered up to purchase metal and leather and textiles. Even the deposed Earth King’s wardrobe was sold off, there was enough gold thread separated from green and yellow silks to make several tightly wound spools.

The resources Prince Xing imported would either go on to elevate the populace’s diet, or feed the new industry of war. Metal ingots were transformed into spear- and arrowheads, leather and silk were woven into light armor, even animal dung was refined into manure or the infamous naphtha.

It was a pity the Cabbage Food and Logistics Company had no naval department, otherwise Je-Choi could have better insight into Ba Sing Se’s trade relations with the Northern Water Tribe. Apparently a portions of the weapons and armor made in the city were sent north, in exchange for an influx of blubber and furs and seafood. A northern branch would definitely be worth exploring…once the fighting was all done with, anyway.

In the meantime, Je-Choi kept organizing his caravans, and occasionally led convoys to evacuate the few towns and villages still untouched by the invading Fire Nation brutes.

Which could lead to unfortunate situations.

“Leave the caravan and be thankful that you have contributed to the Fire Nation’s cause!”

Situations like this one.

Je-Choi sighed as he ordered his men to comply with the rude demands. Nothing more than terrorists, these Fire Nation soldiers, not like the more courteous one the princess had roaming the roads during her reign.

The trade magnate watched bemusedly as the soldiers swarmed his caravan full of food, barely keeping a scowl of his face at the thought of their grubby hands getting on provisions meant for the needy and the desperate. He calmed himself by listening to the crickets around him sing.

“What’s a rich merchant like you doing around these parts?” the commander sneered as he marched up to Je-Choi.

“Food delivery,” he answered curtly, biting back his own sneer as he kept an ear on the crickets chirping.

The commander with the stupid looking skull helmet tilted his head in mock amusement. “That so? I don’t see any major colonies along this road.”

“It’s for selling to the settlements along the route.”

“Heh. And which bountiful farms did you get all of this from?”

Je-Choi stared the man right in the eyes. “The farms of Ba Sing Se, realm of Prince Xing and Princess Azula.”

The commander reacted by going stiff and gurgling, as two arrows shot through his neck, and three more bounced off his helmet. Other boorish soldiers fell by the wagons, some managing to cry out in surprise as the arrows studded their necks and exposed underarms.

With the ambush triggered, the trader drew his own blade, hidden in his voluminous sleeves, and jammed it right into the eye hole of a soldier standing beside the fallen commander. His staff too burst into action, revealing daggers and short swords to lunge at the confused looters. Normally, for all the bravery, such an ambush would be disastrous due to the fact that it was mere civilians against a larger group of soldiers.

Thankfully for Je-Choi, the civilians like him were only the (very well protected) bait.

Bolts of fire joined the arrows in picking out the enemy, and then the comforting forms of the 11th burst out of the ground and down from the treetops to swarm their prey. The mail-veiled figures charged in like a wave of violence, sometimes literally pouncing on their victims to bury their blades into necks or faces. 

Je-Choi barely had time to watch as his own victim’s comrade turned his spear at him, because the earth under the potential attacker folded up and crushed him into a gory paste. Just off to his side, another poor brute screamed as he fought against a wagon driver pinning him down, while the driver’s assistant bit on a cleaver and struggled to liberate the soldier of his helmet. The helm came off seconds later, and the cleaver came down several times after that.

The convoy staff and the soldiers of the 11th worked together to bring a quick and bloody end to the fighting, resulting in no losses on their end save for a few crates of vegetables being stained with blood and gore. Ah well, the losses were still well within the margins.

“Another successful run,” Captain Weikong greeted with a smile as the corpses were being looted.

Je-Choi smiled back. “Very much so. Only four crates of food lost.”

“Mhm. So, four ambushes in, you’re hesitating far less.”

“Indeed.” Je-Choi did have his doubts after he recklessly volunteered his services in a fit of loyalty and bravado. But now, after killing his…eighth? After killing his eighth foe, the trader had to admit, it was rather…satisfying repaying the prince’s and princess’ generosity this way. Prince Xing had saved him from a bloody end once, it was only fitting to repay blood with blood, as the old proverb goes. 

Plus, it got Je-Choi’s old resentment out of his system, all those times being pushed around by both Fire Nation and Earth Kingdom bullies…

“Here’s to hoping we get stopped again before we reach our next stop,” Je-Choi remarked sincerely.

“I’ll have the scouts keep a lookout for choice prey,” the captain replied with a chuckle.

Je-Choi bowed his head in thanks. “While we’re waiting for your men to finish their task, should I have mine prepare a light snack?”

“Cabbage and lotus root soup?”

Ah, how good it was to have such an eager customer who appreciated the classics. “With tofu and ostrich horse bones.”

Captain Weikong smirked. “You spoil us with such luxury, cabbage merchant.”

For better or worse, the rest of the journey was uneventful, though the refugees that replaced the crates of food in the wagons on the way back still made the trip worthwhile. Saving a future customer base was an investment that was sure to pay off in the future.