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A cloud of fog rolled in against the wind, right on schedule. “It’s the invasion!” Sokka called from his lookout perch above the bay. Toph and Aang quickly bent enough piers for a half dozen ships as the rest of the Gaang took their places to greet them.
The first one out of the flagship was Chief Hakoda, looking a combination of proud and perplexed. He raced forward and caught Sokka mid-leap in a hug.
“Sokka, it’s great to see you! We got everyone you wanted us to pick up and then some, but I’m a little worried. Some of these men aren’t exactly the ‘warrior type’.”
He side-eyed the next two men to disembark. One was tall and gangly, the other stout and marginally smarter-looking, and neither of them wore more clothing than a loincloth of leaves.
“Ooooh-whee!” said the taller of the two. “This place ain’t nothin’ like the swamp! You sure yer from here Zu?” he called behind him to a third person, still on board the ship.
Sokka looked quizzically between the tall one—Due—and his father. “Wait, you brought somebody from the Fire Nation with you?”
Hakoda shrugged.
“Naw, he been with us since he was a sprout,” said the shorter Tho, “Can’t bend worth shit, but he can blow things up like a lemoo with blasting jelly.”
“Y’all shoulda seen Big Stink Marsh when he was through with it. Whoo-eeyy!” Neither Hakoda nor Sokka’s expression changed. Due cleared his throat. “Now c’mon, git out here Zu. They askin’ ‘bouchu.”
A third tribesman—a teenager, with a paler complexion, golden eyes, and just as many clothes as the other two—shuffled out. He scratched his shaggy hair awkwardly. “Hiya, Zuko here. Can’t wait to kill my dad with ya.”
Sokka stared at him for a good fifteen seconds before recovering. “Great! Greeat. Love the enthusiasm bud. Glad to have you on the team. But we’re trying to take down the Fire Lord today, not—”
“Yeah, that’s my dad. My ma got me out if it was the last thing she did. Now you mention it, it was the last thing she did.”
Sokka’s jaw dropped to the floor.
***
The submarines and torpedoes had got them into the harbor flawlessly; the tanks were shrugging off fireballs on their way through the royal plaza; Aang was scouting and Katara was healing and Sokka was leading.
Zuko— Prince Zuko, Sokka had to remind himself—was here for the same reasons as the rest of them. To end the war. To stop the Fire Lord. He’d already taken out a spearman with his bare hands, so it was clear he wasn’t useless in a fight.
The fact he was technically the crown prince was just… a bonus Sokka was having trouble accounting for.
In his defense, what the heck was he supposed to do with him? The guy was a pawn who could be queen, but nobody could figure out (well, maybe Sokka’s dad could, but it’s not like he was thinking too hard about that from the medic station) how to promote him. Where could they put him where he didn’t get into too much trouble? Keep him with the swamp benders, despite not being a waterbender? That’d endanger the actual benders and himself. Send him with the warriors? He wasn’t even wearing pants, let alone armor! Bring him with… them…
Sokka cursed under his breath. Even with the invasion making progress, it wouldn’t matter if the Avatar didn’t get at the Fire Lord. And that streak he’d seen in the sky was Aang flying back towards them looking like a kicked isopuppy.
“Nobody’s there,” he moaned. “The whole city’s abandoned. The Fire Lord must have known we were coming today.”
The sound of not-so-distant explosions filled the silence as Sokka thought through his opponents’ moves. It was simple, he assured himself, like pai sho if the enemy lotus tile could breathe fire. “The Fire Lord wouldn’t just abandon his people with a war going on—”
(“I dunno ‘bout that. He seems pretty possum-chicken to me.”)
“My instincts tell me that he’d be commanding from somewhere nearby. We can still win this if we can just get to him in time. He probably has a fortified location that he can give orders from, and if the whole city’s built on a volcano...”
“If y’all need it, I can blast ya in.” Zuko tapped his hand on the bandelier he’d wrapped around his chest. It was a leather belt with a half dozen animal bladders(?) full to the point of bursting with…air?
“Or we can use an earthbender.”
Zuko sighed. “Or you can use an earthbender.”
***
They used an earthbender.
It was the best thing they could do with a strict deadline, even if Zuko ended up pouting as he followed behind them. And it went great until they dug deep enough that they hit lava tunnels.
The war minister they’d ambushed had pointed them towards a lava lake and it was too late to backtrack.
“Hold on tight!” Aang called, flicking open his new glider and looking towards Sokka, Toph, and Zuko expectantly.
Sokka was just about to tell him what king he was emulating a little too closely when Zuko spoke up, “Can’t be much harder than swamp skiing.”
“Wha—” Zuko grabbed the rope from Sokka’s bag—the good rope —and wrapped it around his waist. Then he handed the other end to Aang expectantly and turned towards the other two.
“Hold on, y’all. I’ll be your skis.” He bent down low and picked up Toph as if giving her a piggyback ride.
This was insane. Three people flying on Aang’s back would have been less crazy. Heck, letting Aang go fight the Fire Lord solo would have been less crazy. So why was Sokka climbing on the gangly swamp guy, too?
Before Sokka could reconsider, Aang took off. He was obviously trying to fly fast and high enough that they’d never have to find out if Fire Princes were lava-proof, but there wasn’t much room above and he couldn’t bend it higher while keeping both hands on the glider.
They were about half-way across the lake when Sokka realized they were going to be skiing on ex-Fire Prince. “Aaaang!”
Zuko glared up at where Sokka was perched on his shoulders. Out of either madness or spite, he smirked and dropped himself lower, feet touching down on. Top. Of. The. Lava. He had his bare(!) feet out to either side, concentrating hard to maintain surface tension as—and Sokka couldn’t stress this enough—he glided along the top of the lava and used some kind of magic fire to keep him and his stupid leaf loincloth from catching on fire.
Aang was panic-airbending them faster, Toph was screaming, Sokka was screaming, Zuko wasn’t melting (and also screaming). And then they were all crashing in a giant ball of limbs and hair and sweat, finally skidding to a halt at the start of another tunnel.
Zuko was on his feet first, burning away the rope and smiling down at him. At least Sokka had figured out a place where he’d made a difference. The Foggy Swamp Fire Prince offered a hand, which Sokka grudgingly accepted, and then they were off again.
***
Aang took a deep breath as they reached an ornate door. Forty-five seconds until the eclipse kicked in. “Are you ready?” Sokka asked.
Toph butted in. “He better be. Swampy’s gonna—”
Suddenly the door was being kicked off its hinges by a gungho firebender. The room behind was massive, with a throne at the far end, and nobody but—
“Azula.”
She’d obviously seen them too. A bolt of blue fire blasted its way towards Zuko’s head as soon as he took a step over the threshold.
He windmilled his arms and deflected her blue fire into the ceiling above. “Whoa. We ain’t here for you. Unless you’re my dad. Or he died and you’re in charge. Or—” Sokka wasn’t sure if public speaking lessons would help the kid or make him even more hopeless. It might have been the eclipse preventing firebending from working that kept Sokka from combusting from second-hand embarrassment.
“You’re—” Azula cut off mid-thought as her air supply was consumed by laughter. “Ha, hahahaa. You’re haaaahhhahaha. You’re ZUZU?!” She covered her face as tears trickled from her eyes. “Oh dear Agni I’ve gotta see this. Dad’s all the way at—hah—the end of the hall. I’ll—hahaha—I’ll open the secret door for you. Hahahahaha!”
“You’re my baby sister?!” Zuko was grinning ear to ear, clearly ignoring the mocking tone of her voice. “Thanks Sis!”
Azula wheezed .
***
Sokka expected Azula to lead them to a second lava lake but push them in this time.
That would have made sense. What didn’t make sense—at all—was being led straight to Fire Lord Ozai by the girl who had lied her way into a nearly bloodless coup of Ba Sing Se, while the Fire Lord was still bending-less for the next four minutes. There had to be a trap.
Sokka just couldn’t see what it was. The chamber was smaller than the previous one, with torches lining a series of columns leading up to a dais. The Fire Lord, who looked disturbingly like a Zuko who never skipped leg day, was seated at the top, behind a line of at least a dozen elite spearmen.
“Fire Lord Ozai!” Aang called, staff gesturing forward aggressively, trying to remind the world that he was the main character. “Your days of tyranny are over!”
“Azula,” he smarmed from his pedestal, firmly ignoring the Avatar’s reminder, “Why have you brought a bunch of peasants to my chambers during an eclipse? Is there something you want to tell me?”
She smirked. “Is that how you talk to family, Father? Zuzu’s going to be so offended!” She gestured towards Zuko, who was looking downright murderous.
He kept a poker face better than Azula did, but there was barely disguised contempt burning in his eyes. After a moment of silent deliberation (probably about who he’d rather ignore), he turned his attention towards Aang for the first time.
He motioned his guards away. “If we are to negotiate, Avatar, then we will do it as civilized peoples do. Weapons away, if you please.”
Aang looked uncertainly towards Sokka. They’d all been expecting a fight. Talk of disarming was an obvious diversion—they knew first-hand that the royal family looked down on the use of weapons outside of their bending. But Aang was still a pacifist at heart, and pretending to talk things out was like waving seal jerky in front of a polar leopard.
Zuko once again took charge. “Aight,” he said as he slid his bandelier across the floor at the Fire Lord’s feet. Sokka was just glad the leaves stayed on.
Aang dropped his staff and Sokka his boomerang. Toph covered her eyes and pretended like that changed anything.
“Fine. Let’s talk. The war has to end. The Fire Nation will give back Ba Sing Se and Omashu and all the earth- and waterbenders you’ve stolen from their homes. You will redirect the resources going to war to help rebuild the people and places you’ve neglected here in the Fire Nation and—”
“And what do I get out of this?” Ozai said, unmoving from his seiza atop the dais. He looked amused .
“Aang,” Sokka whispered urgently, “He’s trying to waste your time.”
“I know, but I have to try.”
“Even if it wastes us all our time?”
Aang winced at the reminder. “Yes.”
He looked at Ozai, who was waiting with one eyebrow raised. “You—” The poor kid clearly hadn’t thought this through. His eyes flittered around the room like he was looking for ideas. “You’ll make your son proud of you…?”
Ozai belly laughed, marginally less unhinged than his daughter had been. “Why would I care about such a weakling? I was going to throw him off the palace walls when he was an infant. He had no spark . When he still didn’t spark when he turned four, I wasn’t going waste any more time on him. His mother found out, and she tried to run away with him. If she’s not here to kill me herself, then I can only assume she never survived her parting gift.”
Zuko lunged forward, forcing Sokka to stop him before he blew up the negotiations for everybody. The eclipse was almost over anyways—scratch that, it was over.
Ozai’s hands ignited with fire, equal parts demonstration and show of aggression.
As he was moving his hands forward in the universal signal of ‘I’m the Fire Lord you dumbass what do you think I was going to actually negotiate?’, the overfilled skins of Zuko’s bandelier caught fire from a stray ember. Toph raised a wall of rock to stop the fire, but not before Sokka heard the bandelier explode with incredible concussive force and a fireball of its own.
The room rocked so much not even Azula was taking advantage of it. The sound of pillars crashing and rock falling and… magma oozing? And that was definitely the Fire Lord screaming.
Zuko grabbed Aang in his arms to keep him from breaking down Toph’s earth wall to try and help the Fire Lord. The wall was the only thing keeping their half of the chamber standing at all.
Unsurprisingly, Azula was the first one to recover. “Congratulations, Avatar. Looks like you didn’t have to kill my father after all.” Aang threw up.
***
Azula’s coronation was a week later. Everyone was invited.
Zuko even wore pants for the occasion.