Chapter Text
Zuko stared at Nia’s grey face. His mind was racing. Spirits. The Avatar.
"Get me a hawk," Zuko snapped. "I need to send a message to the South Pole."
Yura looked at him with pity. "My Lord... a hawk will take four days to reach the South Pole. Even if the Avatar leaves immediately on his bison, the return trip is two weeks. She does not have two weeks, she barely has two days."
Zuko froze. He looked at the map on the wall. The distance between the Capital and the South Pole was an ocean. It was a math problem. Distance = Velocity x Time. Variable X = Nia’s fading heartbeat. Result = Death.
"Inefficient," Zuko whispered, realizing he was using her word.
He slammed his fist against the wall. Smoke hissed from the impact. "Think, Zuko! Think!"
He looked at the flame in the oil lamp. It flickered. Fire is life, Uncle Iroh had told him. It is not just destruction. It is the sun. It is energy.
Who taught Iroh that? Who taught Zuko that? The Masters.
Zuko looked at the map again. The Ancient Sun Warrior Ruins were not across an entire ocean. They were hidden in the Fire Nation archipelago. By airship, at maximum velocity? They would only take 6 hours.
He turned to Yura. "She doesn't need a Spirit bender," Zuko said, his eyes narrowing. "She needs a jump start. She needs the Source."
"My Lord?"
"I'm not waiting for the Avatar," Zuko said, scooping Nia up into his arms. She was terrifyingly light. "We are going to the Dragons."
Yura gasped. "The Dragons are extinct! Your family hunted them all down!"
"Not all of them," Zuko said, heading for the door.
He looked down at Nia’s face. "Hang on," he whispered. "I know two guys. We're going to get your fire back."
***
The engines of the airship roared, a deafening, rhythmic thrum that vibrated through the steel hull. Zuko stood on the observation deck. The wind at this altitude was brutal, whipping his hair back and stinging his eyes. He stripped off his bloodstained ceremonial armor, leaving him in just his tunic and trousers, but he didn't feel the cold. He was burning with adrenaline.
Below deck, in the captain's quarters, Nia was wrapped in six wool blankets. The room was sweltering. Zuko had ordered the engineers to divert heat from the engine exhaust directly into the cabin, turning it into a sauna. The crew was sweating buckets, while Nia was still shivering.
"Altitude dropping, Fire Lord!" the Captain shouted over the comms tube. "We are approaching the coordinates… but... sir, there's nothing here. Just jungle and ruins."
Zuko looked out the window. Below them, rising from the mist like jagged teeth, were the ancient Ziggurats of the Sun Warriors. "It’s not nothing," Zuko muttered. "It’s the beginning."
"Prepare for landing!" Zuko ordered. "Set us down on the beach. If you snap a strut, I don't care. Just get us on the ground."
The massive airship descended, its shadow swallowing the ancient stone beach. The propellers kicked up a sandstorm. The landing gear hit the sand with a heavy THUD that shook the entire frame.
The ramp lowered. Zuko didn't wait for his guard. He walked down the ramp, carrying Nia in his arms. She was a dead weight, her head lolling against his shoulder.
He stepped onto the sand. The jungle went silent. The mechanical roar of the airship engines died down, leaving an eerie quiet.
Thwack. Thwack. Two spears hit the sand directly in front of Zuko’s boots, crossing to form an X.
A dozen warriors emerged from the foliage. They wore gold and red clothing, along with red ink patterned in their faces. They held flames in their palms, not the angry orange of the modern Fire Nation, but a deep, controlled crimson.
"Halt!" the Sun Warrior Chief barked. "This is sacred ground. Return to your metal bird, Outsider, or burn."
Zuko didn't flinch. He didn't drop Nia. He dropped to one knee. A Fire Lord bowing to a tribe that officially didn't exist.
"I am Zuko," he announced, his voice cracking with exhaustion. "Student of the Dragon. I stood before Ran and Shaw. I carry their mark." He looked up, his golden eyes desperate. "I am not here as a ruler. I am here as a beggar... She is dying."
The Chief stepped forward. He tilted his headpiece. He looked at the girl in Zuko’s arms: pale, grey, and lifeless. He felt the unnatural cold radiating off her, chilling the tropical air.
"She has no fire," the Chief observed. "She is a husk."
"She gave it away," Zuko rasped. "She used it all to save me. Please… She needs the Source."
The warriors murmured. They looked at the massive steel airship far away from Zuko, a symbol of the world that had forgotten them, and then at the boy kneeling in the sand. The Chief looked up at the Eternal Flame burning at the top of the great pyramid.
"The Masters will decide," the Chief said. "Bring her to the Altar."
The pyramid was steep. Hundreds of steps carved from volcanic rock, reaching toward the sun. Zuko carried her. His legs burned. His lungs screamed. He hadn't slept or eaten in hours, but he didn't stop.
Step.
"You aren't quitting, Nia."
Step.
"Inefficient."
Step. "I am carrying you up a mountain. You better appreciate this."
He reached the top. The plateau was open to the sky. Two massive caves flanked the area. In the center burned the Eternal Flame, a fire that had been kept alive for thousands of years. It swirled with colors: blue, green, purple, gold.
"Lay her down," the Chief ordered.
Zuko placed Nia on the warm stone altar. She looked terrible against the vibrant life of this place. She was a black-and-white sketch in a color painting.
"Her Chi is stripped," the Chief noted, hovering his hand over her heart. "She practiced the cold art: the lightning."
"Plasma," Zuko corrected breathlessly. "She calls it Plasma."
"It matters not what she calls it," the Chief said. "She emptied her vessel to hold the bolt. Now the vessel is cracking." He looked at the caves. "We cannot fill her, Zuko of the Fire Nation. We are but keepers, only the Masters can breathe life into a void."
The Chief turned to the drummers. BOOM. BOOM. BOOM. The sound vibrated in Zuko’s chest.
"Face the caves!" the Chief commanded.
Zuko stood by Nia’s head. He gripped her freezing hand. "Please," he whispered to the darkness. "Don't eat us. Just help her."
A low rumble shook the mountain. From the left cave: Ran, The Red Dragon: Massive, winding, scales shimmering like rubies. From the right cave: Shaw, The Blue Dragon: Sleek, terrifying, eyes glowing with ancient intelligence.
They swirled around the plateau, their bodies creating a vortex of wind. They landed on either side of the altar. They looked at Zuko. They recognized him. The boy who learned the Dancing Dragon. Then, they looked at Nia.
They hissed. They recoiled. To a dragon, cold was death, because it was anti-life. Nia felt like a hole in the world. Ran opened his maw, smoke curling out. Shaw growled, stepping closer, teeth bared.
"They sense the Void," the Chief warned, stepping back. "They reject it. They perceive her as a threat to the Flame."
"No!" Zuko threw himself between the dragons and Nia. He spread his arms wide. "She isn't the Void! She isn't empty!"
Zuko looked the massive blue dragon in the eye. "She is full! She is full of math, and maps, and stupid laws about tariffs! She likes bad theater! She worries about farmers she’s never met!"
Zuko’s voice broke. Tears streamed down his face, evaporating instantly in the heat of the dragons. "She is the warmest person I know. She just... she forgot how to show it. She gave it all to me." He fell to his knees beside her, grabbing her hand. "Don't reject her. Please. She's my... she's my balance."
The Dragons paused. They looked at the boy who was willing to fight the gods for a ghost. They looked at each other, and Ran and Shaw nodded.
They moved. They began to spin. A double-helix of red and blue scales. They opened their mouths. They didn't breathe fire, they breathed Light.
A stream of rainbow energy—gold, purple, green, white—poured from their maws. It spiraled down, surrounding Zuko and Nia in a tornado of pure life force.
"She is a closed vessel!" the Sun Warrior Chief shouted over the roar. "You must open the circuit, Zuko! Connect her Chi to yours!"
Zuko didn't hesitate. He didn't kiss her, because that would be too small and inappropriate for the moment. He crawled onto the altar, straddling her legs to shield her body with his own. He placed his right hand directly over her heart. He placed his left hand on her forehead.
Then, he lowered his head until his forehead pressed against hers: The Fire Sage’s Bow. The sharing of the mind. The sharing of the breath.
"Breathe," Zuko whispered against her skin. "Come on, Nia. Breathe with me."
Zuko inhaled. He didn't just breathe air. He inhaled the Rainbow Fire swirling around them. He pulled the ancient energy into his own lungs, superheating his own blood until he felt like he was burning alive. He became the filter. He became the transformer.
He exhaled. He didn't blow air on her. He pushed the energy out through his hands and his forehead. He forced his own Chi to jump the gap.
ZAP.
It wasn't lightning. It was a spark. A visible arc of gold energy jumped from Zuko’s forehead into Nia’s. Another jumped from his palm into her heart.
The Void inside Nia fought back. It was cold. It was vast. It tried to eat the heat. Zuko gritted his teeth. He poured more. He showed her the memory of the boat. He showed her the blanket fort. He showed her the look on Shinu’s face when she destroyed him with math. Feel this, he projected into her mind. This is life. Logic is cold. Life is messy and hot. Take it.
The Rainbow Fire intensified. The colors began to bleed into Nia’s grey skin. Violet seeped into her veins. Green knit the bones of her ribs. Gold flooded her heart.
Thump.
Zuko felt it under his palm. A single, strong beat. The cold shattered. Nia’s back arched off the stone, her mouth opening in a silent gasp as the air rushed back into her lungs.
Her eyes flew open. They weren't just gold anymore. For a split second, they swirled with the Prismatic Fire, a galaxy of color in her irises, before settling back into a deep, molten amber.
Zuko pulled back, gasping, his own energy drained. He slumped sitting back on his heels, his chest heaving. The Dragons roared one last time and spiraled up into the clouds, their job done.
Nia lay there, breathing hard. Steam, actual steam, was rising from her skin. She blinked, looking at the sky, then at Zuko. She felt... full, not just alive, but overcharged.
She sat up, slowly. Her ribs didn't hurt, and her lungs didn't wheeze. She looked at her hands. They were glowing faintly with a residual warmth.
She looked at Zuko. He was a mess. His hair was wild, he was shirtless (having used his tunic to wipe her face earlier), and he was crying silent tears of relief.
"Zuko?" she whispered. Her voice wasn't raspy. It was clear, resonant.
Zuko let out a choked laugh, wiping his eyes with his wrist. "You're inefficient," he managed to say, his voice thick with emotion. "You are the most inefficient Minister I have ever met."
Nia looked at him. She reached out, she placed her warm, hot, hand on his cheek. She wiped a tear away with her thumb.
"The calculation was flawed," she admitted softly, a small, genuine smile breaking through her mask. "I forgot to account for the variable of... stubbornness."
Zuko closed his eyes, just breathing in the fact that she was warm. "Don't do it again," he whispered. "That's an order."
"Yes, Fire Lord," she whispered back.
They stayed there on the altar, high above the world, bathed in the warmth of the sun, neither of them daring to move, letting the silence say everything the politics couldn't.
***
Nia sat on a stone bench, wrapped in a blanket she no longer needed. She was drinking herbal tea from a clay cup, and she held her hand up to the sun. She didn't just feel the warmth; she felt the vibration of it.
"Fascinating," she murmured. "My cellular regeneration rate has accelerated, and the residual energy in my Chi paths is acting like a hyper-charged battery."
Zuko, who was sitting on the ground next to her eating a mango, rolled his eyes affectionately. "You just came back from the dead, Nia. Can you stop being an accountant for five minutes?"
"I am a scientist, Fire Lord," she corrected, taking a sip of tea. "And this data is anomalous. I need to understand it."
The Sun Warrior Chief approached them. He didn't bow, he just looked at Nia with intense curiosity.
"You are the Cold One," the Chief said. It wasn't an insult; it was a categorization.
Nia set her cup down. She stood up, a little shaky, but dignified. She bowed formally, the way she would to a High Sage. "I am Minister Nia Tang. Thank you for... the recharge."
The Chief chuckled. "Recharge. You speak of the Spirit as if it were a machine."
"Is it not?" Nia asked. "It has inputs, it has outputs, and it has a capacity limit." She touched her chest, where the lightning had almost killed her. "I exceeded the limit. I calculated that I could strip the ionization from the air to negate the bolt, but I failed to account for the thermal draw on my own body."
The Chief raised an eyebrow. "Strip the ionization?"
Nia’s eyes lit up. She loved explaining this. "Standard lightning generation requires the collision of Yin and Yang energies to create a bolt," she explained, using her hands to demonstrate. "It is explosive, projective."
She brought her hands together, palms facing but not touching. "My technique is reductive. I do not crash the energies, I separate them. I strip the positive charge from the atmosphere, creating a vacuum of pure negative plasma." She looked at the Chief intensely. "It is highly efficient. It requires no wind-up, but... it is endothermic."
"Endothermic," the Chief repeated, tasting the word.
"It absorbs heat," Nia translated. "Since the air has no heat to give in that split second, the reaction pulls it from the nearest source." She pointed to herself. "Me."
The Chief stared at her. Then, a slow smile spread across his face. "The Hungry Fire," he said softly.
Nia blinked. "I beg your pardon?"
"In the ancient days," the Chief said, sitting down on the bench opposite her. "Before the Fire Nation forgot its ways... there were those who sought to bend the fire without the sun. They sought to pull it from the dark." He traced a circle in the dust. "They created a fire that did not burn fuel. It burned the bender. It was cold, it was white. It was... hungry."
Nia leaned forward. "Did they survive?"
"No," the Chief said simply. "They froze. Their hearts stopped. Just as yours did." He looked at Zuko, then back at Nia. "You are the first to survive the hunger, because you had a life before to feed you."
Nia looked at the diagram in the dirt. "So, my 'Plasma' is historically documented?"
"It is a shadow art," the Chief agreed. "You found it through mathematics, our ancestors found it through greed, but the result is the same." He looked at her with new respect. "You have a dangerous mind, Minister Tang. You looked at the lightning, the weapon of the Royal Family, and you decided to take it apart."
"Actually," Nia admitted. "My father could do the same thing, but he could also bend fire. He only showed me the plasma once."
“He was a prodigy, too. He mastered all styles by age eight. He was faster than everyone else, hotter than everyone else." She traced the rim of her clay cup. "One day... I was watching him train in the courtyard. He was practicing a standard form, but he moved too fast. He stripped the air. For a second... the fire didn't turn orange. It turned white."
Zuko froze. "He could do it?"
"He stopped immediately," Nia said. "He looked terrified. He grabbed me and told me never to move that way. He said, 'Nia, fire must breathe. If you choke it, it eats you.'"
She looked up at the Eternal Flame. "He knew, Chief. He knew the Hungry Fire. And he spent his whole life holding it back."
Nia felt a tear slip down her cheek. "He was killed by Azulon," she whispered. "His own men killed him. If he had used the Plasma... he could have vaporized them. He could have saved himself."
"But he would have lost himself," the Chief corrected. "The Hunger takes the soul before it takes the body. He chose to die a man, rather than live as a monster."
Nia wiped the tear away. "Inefficient," she muttered, but there was no bite in it. Only pride.
The Chief nodded solemnly. "It is a burden of the blood," the Chief said. "Some are born with a spark. Some are born with a void. Your father carried the void, and he chose not to feed it. That makes him a Master of a different kind."
He reached into his belt and pulled out a small, carved obsidian stone. He handed it to her. "You carry his blood, Minister Tang. You carry the Hunger. But now, you carry the Dragon's Light as well." He closed her fingers over the stone. "Do not be like your ancestors who froze in the dark. Be like your father. Know the Hunger, but choose the Sun."
Nia gripped the warm stone. "I will," she promised.
Zuko watched her. He realized he didn't just save his Minister. He saved the daughter of a man who was a hero in more ways than one. He reached out and took her other hand. "We're going to figure this out," Zuko said firmly. "The hunger, the plasma, all of it. You aren't doing it alone."
Nia smiled at him. "Hypothesis accepted."
***
Location: The Beach (Near the Royal Airship). Time: Sunset.
The crew was prepping the airship for departure. Nia stood by the water’s edge. She was wearing a loose linen shirt. She looked healthy, her cheeks were pink, and her eyes bright.
However, she was staring at her hands with a deep, brooding frown.
"Nia," Zuko called out, walking down the ramp with a basket of fruit. "We launch in ten minutes. Stop staring at your hands. You aren't going to spontaneously combust."
"No," Nia murmured. "According to the Chief's theory, I should spontaneously freeze." She turned to Zuko. "I need to test the output."
Zuko stopped chewing his mango. "No. Absolutely not. You just got your pilot light back. We are not blowing it out."
"Zuko, listen," Nia said, her voice dropping into that rapid-fire lecture mode she used when explaining tax brackets. "The Dragons refilled my Chi reserves. They introduced a high-frequency energy (The Rainbow Fire) into a system designed for negative-pressure generation (The Plasma)." She held up a finger. "If I don't vent the system, the pressure could build up. It is safer to test it in a controlled environment than to explode during a cabinet meeting."
Zuko groaned. He hated when she made sense. "Fine," he pointed to a cluster of wet rocks by the tide line. "Aim at those, but you get one shot. If you turn blue, I'm carrying you back to the altar."
Nia stood before the rocks. She took a deep breath. She felt the warmth inside her, the Dragon Fire. It felt different than her old fire. It felt heavy and anchored.
She decided to try the standard firebending punch. She rooted her feet, and she punched. Phhhht. Nothing happened. A tiny puff of grey smoke, like a blown-out candle. "Null result on standard combustion," Nia noted. "My Chi still refuses to ignite via friction."
"Okay, good," Zuko said. "You're a non-bender. Let's go home."
"Option two," Nia said.
She shifted her stance. She dropped her center of gravity. She moved her hands in the reductive motion, separating the air, stripping the charge. The move that broke her ribs. The Plasma Stance.
"Nia, don't," Zuko warned, stepping forward.
Nia ignored him. She focused on the air between her palms. She pulled. She expected the crushing weight on her chest. She expected the cold to bite into her marrow. She expected the Void to eat her alive.
Instead... she felt a hum. A deep, resonant vibration in her chest, like a purring cat. The Dragon Fire inside her didn't fight the cold; it fed it. It wrapped around the vacuum like a containment field.
SNAP.
A ball of fire appeared between her hands. It wasn't orange. It wasn't the jagged, unstable white bolt she used in the plaza. It was a perfect, spherical orb of Silver-White Plasma. It didn't flicker, or didn't crackle. It hummed.
The air around the orb froze instantly. Moisture in the tropical air crystallized, falling as snow, but Nia? Nia was warm.
She stood there, holding a ball of sub-zero devastation between her bare hands, and she felt fine.
Nia stared at the orb. She blinked. She wiggled her fingers.
"What..." she whispered. She pushed her hands forward. The orb launched. WHOOSH. It hit the wet rocks. There was no explosion. No fire. The rocks simply vanished—or rather, they were flash-frozen and then shattered into dust by the thermal shock. A cloud of ice fog rolled over the water.
Nia stood in the steam. She checked her pulse. Thump-thump. Steady. She touched her face. Warm.
"Inconceivable," Nia whispered.
Zuko ran over to her, checking her face, grabbing her hands. "Are you cold? Are you dizzy?"
"I'm... functional," Nia said, looking at her hands in utter confusion. "My core temperature didn't drop. My heart rate is stable." She looked at the pile of frozen dust that used to be a boulder. "I just stripped the ionization from some air, created a zero-point energy reaction, and... nothing happened to me."
"The Dragons," Zuko breathed, looking at the ice fog. "They insulated you."
"Insulation?" Nia scoffed, pacing back and forth in the sand. "That defies thermodynamics! Energy has to come from somewhere! If I'm not providing the heat, where is it coming from?"
She stopped. She touched her chest. She felt the hum again: The Rainbow Fire. "They turned me into a perpetual motion machine," she realized, horror and awe warring in her voice. "Zuko... I'm a battery that recharges itself."
Zuko laughed. He sounded a little hysterical. "So, you can shoot the death-fire, but it doesn't kill you anymore?"
"Apparently," Nia said, looking at a palm tree. "I am a stable reactor." She looked at Zuko. "This is statistically improbable, and... extremely efficient."
They walked back up the ramp. The crew stared at the disintegrated rock, and decided not to ask questions.
As the airship lifted off, banking west toward the Capital, Nia stood by the window. She held the small obsidian stone the Chief had given her. She thought of her father, Shareen. He had died trying to repress the Hunger. She had survived because she had found a source that was stronger than the Hunger.
"Zuko," Nia said, not looking away from the horizon.
"Yeah?"
"When we get back... I need to draft a new budget proposal."
Zuko groaned, leaning his head against the wall. "We just defied death, Nia. Can we not talk about the budget?"
"No," Nia said, turning to him. Her golden eyes were sharp, glowing with that new, strange energy. "We need to increase the funding for the Arts, and... I want to rewrite the Fire Academy curriculum. No more suppressing dangerous techniques. We teach them control, and we teach them the physics."
Zuko looked at her. The Shoji Shark was back, but she wasn't cold anymore. She was electric.
"Okay," Zuko smiled. "We'll rewrite the curriculum. But first... noodles."
"Agreed," Nia nodded. "Noodles are a necessary fuel source."