Where Words Fail

Book Five: The Invasion of Omashu

Chapter 2: Kick, punch, it's all in the mind

AUTHOR'S NOTE: This story is a fan fiction - nothing more, nothing less. It has been made purely for entertainment purposes, and is not meant for commercial gain. Avatar: The Last Airbender and all characters, places and concepts are copyright of Nickelodeon, Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko. All original characters are copyright their respective owners and are used with their permission. The story has been illustrated by the talented and awesome SioUte.

SCENE DIVIDE

Longshot had never once in his life resorted to something so, so savage, so barbaric, as throwing a punch.

Like speaking, it seemed...unnecessary, just another way of resorting to the lowest common denominator to communicate. Much like how in conversation he preferred to let his body language and scant facial expressions talk for him, in combat he defaulted to the bow and arrow because it A/ not only deferred to his natural talents, but also B/ required a lot more skill and grace.

Not like he had a problem with people who fought unarmed or at least brutishly close to it. Pipsqueak was one hell of a guy and his weapon of choice was a log, and Sneers was a master of unarmed martial arts that certainly served his uses despite his questionable attitude. No, that'd be akin to having a problem with people who exclusively relied on verbal communication to get their point across. That was a whole world of innocent folks right there, as well as a few jerks and bad guys - so, no, there wasn't an issue with others using their fists to get a point across.

(Of course, if it came to a brawl over something irrationally pathetic, like who got the last of the rice balls Skillet made for the Freedom Fighters, then Longshot conceded to the overall futility of the concept. The fisticuffs between Smellerbee, Sneers and The Duke had been amusing, but the archer always called it up as a prime example whenever he wanted to explain his rationality to somebody else.)

Still...his bow would be worth ostrich horse shit if he tried to use it this close to his enemy, who perched on the edge of a stone basin maybe five feet by eight feet (which was a generous estimate) careening down a broad, stone rail. He would have to justify himself later that this fell into the former category of his concept of punching things, he guessed.

Longshot tore through the air with one clenched fist (because 'tearing' was the only appropriate word, how ungainly the attack had been), missing the Fire Nation girl entirely; she jumped over the archer, flipped, reached one hand down above her head, and grabbed the opposite lip of the basin, maintaining her balance by throwing out her free arm and curling her legs over her head. She met Longshot's gaze, and the amicable nature had fizzled away from her eyes. Further adding to how enigmatic she was, she didn't look angry or affronted at the swing; instead her face had transformed to a wary, determined glare, her mocha-brown eyes plastered on Longshot, studying him, trying to determine his next move.

The basin was meant to carry mail, food products or raw materials; with two people inside of average size (Smellerbee being smaller than Longshot, although not by much) inside, one of whom sprawled haphazardly in one corner and immobile, the amount of free movement allowed was at a minimum. He did not like these odds. The fact that Ty Lee could stay perched so precariously on this runaway trolley unnerved him even more.

He had sight fantastic enough to nail shed manticada shells to trees from several hundred yards away without destroying it, and could read people to an extent (though not like Bee could, she was incredible at that stuff). But this girl remained a mystery, and the longer Longshot waited, the less likely he and Smellerbee would escape Omashu with their heads.

He swung again, once from the left, and then again from the right; Ty Lee cartwheeled around both attacks, and Longshot rocked as she kicked one of her feet out at the same time, connecting with his jaw. He grabbed the edge of the basin for support, to keep him from falling out or landing prone on his butt, and glared up at the girl, who now stood upright again with her arms straight at her sides.

"Look, you can make this really simple for yourself," Ty Lee urged - pleading, almost? The fact that she was acting so compassionate about the whole encounter almost threw Longshot through a loop - it was like she wasn't a member of the Fire Nation at all. Ty Lee glanced away, bit her lower lip - odd, this woman. "You're both really hurt and tired and you could get killed if you're not careful. I don't wanna let that happen, even to my enemies. I don't like killing, and if I fail, Azula's definitely gonna come after you. She..."

Azula.

Suddenly, the puzzle pieces fell into place - the female Fire Nation soldier he and Smellerbee had captured, thinking they were so clever and proactive - the fact that she had unnerved him, unnerved both of them, before the blue fire. How she had terrified them, sent them into a tight, ice-cold panic as they tried to escape. It was the same fear he'd felt outside Omashu, staring at the statue of Fire Lord Ozai, but the wildness of their trip in the city had completely made him forget about that up until now. Of course.

Longshot did not doubt the sincerity of Ty Lee's words. She seemed like a good person despite her origin, despite being on the other side, and that she in particular would strive to not kill them felt true enough. But Azula not killing them if Ty Lee succeeded seemed like, well, a long shot. He doubted that the Fire Princess, infamous for her cruelty and cold-blooded nature, would ultimately wind up sparing their lives. They weren't important enough to keep alive. They'd need to do some Avatar-level stuff to be worth that sort of concentrated effort - a nice slice of irony, given what he and Smellerbee had set out to do.

Longshot unclenched the fingers on his right hand, striking out one last time with the left; this punch flew straight and true, but at this point, he should have known Ty Lee would see through him, again nimbly dodging the move by flipping over Longshot's head - this time, she jabbed him sharply three times, once in the crook of the elbow, once underneath his forearm, and once at the ball of his shoulder. Tingling numbness overcame the limb instantly, and it fell uselessly to his side - each attack from Ty Lee, made using her pointer and index fingers on both hands, had hit something, like pressure points or chi lines.

A one-armed archer was useless to the world.

But it hadn't been a total wash - Longshot had at least anticipated her dodge, and while still in the air, he reached up with his right hand and grabbed an arrow from his quiver. She landed on the basin's edge again, just as Longshot whirled and brought the arrow upward; its razor-sharp head bit into her skin, tearing through the fabric of her shirt, making her cry out and wobble. She jabbed Longshot's right arm before she could lose her balance, and his fingers may as well have been wet noodles; the arrow slipped from between them, the tip covered by a scrap of pink cloth stained crimson.

He didn't trust his own balance well enough to try to kick her with two useless arms; he lowered his head and thrust it forward, intending to catch her gut, but the flash of pink and rose from his peripheral vision told him that she'd done another one of those damn cartwheel moves, and another rapid series of jabs in his lower back sent him sprawling face first into the basin. The stone scraped his skin, drawing blood, and he felt Smellerbee's legs pinned beneath his stomach, warm and uncomfortable when jabbed almost against his solarplexus. It was only thanks to the brim of his hat that he didn't hit nose-first and break it, though a quiet, threshy snapt! told him that his poor, precious headgear may not have been as fortunate.

"And that's all I have to say about that," Ty Lee said. Longshot's hat had skewed enough thanks to his fall that he could look at her even in this awkward position; she hopped down from the edge and leaned back against it, a flicker of curiosity working behind her wide, brown eyes. "So you guys are Longshot the Hawkeye and Crimson-Faced Smellerbee, huh? Judging by the face-stripeys on your friend, you're probably the archer. Funny, I imagined you guys being a lot...meaner -looking in real life, but the wanted posters were pretty accurate."

Longshot kept an even expression, struggling - trying to get wriggling muscles to work - but his body didn't want to obey him, like the commands that started in his brain turned into water before reaching his limbs. Even willing a pinkie finger to curl up proved impossible.

"Well, since I managed to get you two, I figure once Azula's done with you guys, she'll probably throw you in prison." Ty Lee tilted her head to the side, her lower lip stuck out in a reflective pout. "It's not so bad compared to the alternative, really."

Longshot felt his brow furrowing. Prison wasn't an option! The world needed saving, and without the Avatar to make that happen, it needed all the help it could get. It needed the Freedom Fighters, and yet Azula would probably have deemed them otherwise. Again, the Spirit of Irony loomed overhead with her arms crossed and a smirk on her face.

Suddenly, from beneath Ty Lee, Smellerbee lashed out at her; in her hand, Longshot caught sight of her knife, a glinting, serrated tooth in the peaking sun; Ty Lee saw it coming as well, and jumped away just as the Freedom Fighter sank the blade into the stone basin with a shower of sparks. But instead of jumping forward, she had jumped back - jumped out! - and Longshot saw her clambering upright already far behind them. She'd landed on the rail and didn't seem very interested in continuing the pursuit.

"Ahh - crap. Ow." Smellerbee settled back down into a seated position and slipped her knife back into its sheath. Her lips peeled away from her teeth, and she gave a low hiss. "Ow ow ow. Are you okay? Ow."

Longshot nodded, a terribly handicapped motion - but one he could nonetheless perform, unlike, well, any motion between his neck and waist. And it's not like he was paralyzed, he could still breathe, and he could feel Smellerbee beneath him. Thank the Spirits for small blessings.

"Good. Ow. Damn shoulder got dislocated." She worked to prop herself up into a sitting position, her legs shifting under Longshot's torso. "Mind getting up? You're heavy enough when I'm not hurt. Fatty."

Longshot snerked and shook his head. He tied flipping himself over, using nothing but his weight, but all he managed to do was wriggle a little bit past Bee's kneecaps. Not entirely the most effective thing he'd ever done.

Smellerbee shook her head and scowled. "That bizarro circus freak did something to you when she poked you," she grunted. "I can't set my shoulder in here - I need a solid wall to press up against, and this tub thing's just too shallow."

Well - it didn't look like they were being followed. Longshot furrowed his brow. At least, from where he laid, it didn't. He couldn't catch a glimpse of Ty Lee's rose-colored, flowing clothes, or of the maroon-and-black armor belonging to the Fire Nation army proper.

"If I flip you over, will that give you a better view?"

It'd be better than staring mostly at the porous, rugged surface of the stone basin that had torn away at the skin on his cheek.

Smellerbee, grunting - biting back the urge to truly cry out (Longshot had dislocated a bone before and he knew how much it hurt, like flames crawling all along the marrow and nestling in the joints) - leaned forward far enough to push Longshot with her good hand. She pulled her knees up at the same time, and the archer flopped over onto his back, his hat jostling so that it covered his eyes - obscuring his vision even moreso. The toes of Smellerbee's boots were pinned under his side still, and she would have been able to pull them out entirely given they had enough room. They didn't, so he guessed it was the thought that mattered more than anything else.

Bee grabbed the brim of his hat between her forefinger and thumb and pulled it free from him, setting it on her knee and sighing. "You're not going to like this, Longshot. That fall put a crack all the way from the brim to the top. You'll need to do some fancy needlework to fix this one."

Ahh well. He rolled his head as if to shrug, a slight grin playing across his narrow jaw. That just meant it was one step closer to displaying all the affection he had for the thing in the first place. After all, a well-loved hat was worth all the gold in Ba Sing Se.

SCENE DIVIDE

"These are the two we're after, girls."

"Hey!"

"Oh...sorry, Zuzu. Girls and girlymen."

There was a time Mai would have snickered at the slight. Ages ago - before love was something that existed outside of fairy tales, when boys still had cooties and Zuko only had to play with her out of obligation to Azula. At fifteen, though, it no longer amused her as much, but rather than call Azula out over it, she simply crossed her arms over her chest and glanced away, feigning disinterest, pretending that her focus had wandered away out of boredom. Spirits knew the genuine article claimed her often enough that she didn't need much practice.

Beside Mai, Zuko bristled, but chose to keep his mouth shut - Azula's childhood nickname for her older brother never ceased getting under his skin, no matter what side of the war each one stood on. Ty Lee hung from her knees from a vertical steam vent that had fallen into disuse shortly after New Ozai's rechristening, her arms pulled taut behind her back, a questioning frown on her lips. Slightly higher up than the rest of the group, she had her back to what was Omashu's industrial district and as such was poised between Mai and Zuko, and Azula. The latter of the quartet stood upslope, her regal black armor with gold-yellow highlights abandoned for maroon with black highlights - that of a regular soldier's. Her sharp face and magmatic eyes were framed by locks of long, black hair. Usually, she kept the hair up into a tight topknot with her bangs well-kept spikes on either side of her cheekbones, but - according to her story - the common soldier's helmet left no room for a proper topknot and hers needed forgoing if she were to persist after their prey. Still - those eyes. Mai had looked into them frequently enough to know that they could eat you alive.

(The thought of Azula's eyes gaining sentience and eating people might have made her snort if Azula looked like she'd been in the mood to laugh too. Mai could only imagine what of the Fire Princess' cruel, calculating personality would carry over to such a beast, and if Azula would actually stand a chance against it if it decided its host was no longer an asset. That would have been - what did Ty Lee call it? Oh yeah. Comedy gold. Mai would risk reputation and noble standing alike for a good belly-laugh there. It'd be worth it.)

Azula produced from her sleeves a pair of wanted posters, scroll paper bearing the likeness of the two people Azula and Ty Lee had encountered. Both looked like boys - one wore a pointed straw hat and wore blue, standing a little taller than the second. The shorter of the two wore brown and had a mop of shaggy hair, with two crimson stripes of war paint on either cheek.

"'Longshot the Hawkeye' and 'Crimson-Faced Smellerbee?'" Mai returned her attention to Azula long enough to scrutinize the posters properly, pulling a face. "Who the hell made up their nicknames? And which part of that is their real names?"

"Apparently, the 'Longshot' and 'Smellerbee' parts," Azula said, her voice strict and to-the-point. "That's how others addressed them. Some troops in Shuishi City overheard them."

"Stupid."

"I know, right?" The Fire Princess tossed back her head and her lips twisted into a cocky smirk. "All they've done is cause some minor trouble, but they've proven slippery enough to escape Ty Lee and myself. I think it would be...interesting to pursue them further."

"Are you suggesting that you're actually bored, Azula?" Mai would have smirked, if the reward had been worth the trouble. It wasn't. Years of keeping a passive face let her remain neutral, if not appearing endrolled by meeting her friends.

"Yeah, the last thing we need is another person being as gloomy as Mai," Ty Lee teased. Mai knew from experience that the joke was much friendlier than Azula's had been to Zuko, and that was the only thing keeping her amber-frosted eyes from sliding over to the hanging contortionist-slash-acrobat. Instead, she just sighed, shrugged, and turned to face the direction into which Azula claimed the Earth Kingdom bandits had fled.

From behind the teen, she heard Azula continue her lecture. "The archer - in Ty Lee's own experience - is very poor at hand-to-hand combat, and witness accounts of his skill with the bow and arrow more than make up for that inadequacy. Some say he even rivals our own Yuu-Yan archers in talent, but let's not be too hasty to compliment the enemy. He is either mute, or remains silent by choice, but this doesn't appear to hamper communication between him and his partner."

"They seemed like they were pretty close friends," Ty Lee noted. Mai, facing her general direction, craned her neck back far enough so that she could make eye-contact with the rose-draped girl, but Ty Lee's mocha gaze had fixated itself to the ground - rolled 'up' in curiosity. "I mean, the way they defended each other and all."

Azula, never one to be one-upped, cut Ty Lee off from further speculation. "Anyway, the other one seems to be the inverse; nobody has seen him relying on long-range attacks, and he carries at least three blades on him at a time - two unique swords with hooked ends and crescent-moon hand guards, as well as a serrated dagger. On top of that, he can apparently improvise weaponry without much quandary, has proven incredibly light on his feet, and knows a variety of close-quarters moves excellent for disarming our troops and stealing their weapons. This would-be archery legend and his swordthief companion are small time...as of yet. Right now, we could crush them if we chose, but you'd have to be blind to not see the potential they have for greatness."

Mai snorted. "Loosen the straps of your world-domination goggles before they cut off the circulation to your brain."

Quite suddenly, the chalky, copper-scented air of New Ozai laid flat, thick over them. It was a nice day despite the gray, woolen blanket of clouds draped over the sky; the breeze had been gentle, warm and coddling, and some scent resembling - life, like new flowers, or fresh air - had been trying to penetrate the cover of corrupted odor. In questioning Azula's sanity and intelligence, it felt like Mai had condemned the atmosphere itself to death, and in its throes of desperation, it clung onto its executors, scrabbling for purchase on their robes. A pathetic, lame way to go out, really.

"I'm sorry...I don't think I quite heard you correctly." Azula chuckled, and Mai felt a mild, burning sickness beginning to rise up in her throat. "Did you just call me stupid?"

"My words were nicer." Even though Azula was at Mai's back and she wouldn't have been able to see, that lifetime of keeping a passive face did have its upsides. Any impulse to frown - to flare her brows - to glare amber fear at Azula went quashed. Those would be the tells that she was actually afraid of the princess, and she couldn't - not now - that'd be dumb, that'd just be like throwing herself naked into the ocean during a typhoon. It had been an honest mistake, really - she'd meant to keep the words in, but they just slipped somehow, and now Mai had to find something to use to her advantage, to come out of this without suffering any permanent physical damage.

Digging - trying not to panic - after what felt like an eternity, the right thing to say popped into her head. Or at least, she hoped it was, and she said it without hesitation, because if she was going to die or get tortured or something, she at least didn't want it to be for lack of effort. "Besides, I wasn't saying you were dumb. I'm just saying that you might be more bored than I am if you think two Earth Kingdom bandits are going to actually amount to something. I'm all for hunting them down and putting them through hell, but there's no need to get melodramatic about it."

A pause. Mai closed her eyes - partially from fear, but she kept the serene appearance on her face and hoped that Azula would take the bait, assuming that Mai had only been playing the role of Lesser-Evil Conscience (because assuming the Fire Princess had a conscience to begin with, the little people on her shoulder did not answer to "good" or "bad," but only to "lesser-evil" and "super-incredibly-evil-evil"). The air still clung heavy to them, that wailing prisoner silenced pending a potential stay of execution...until finally, Azula blew out a heavy sigh and said, "Fine. You're right, Mai. I...guess I owe you an apology."

Huh. Now those were as rare as they came. Even moreso that it sounded sincere.

Sounded, of course, being the key word. But Mai was not too prideful to push for better luck, and she accepted the apology, sincere or otherwise, with a simple nod of the head.

That'd been a close one.

She was tired of living in fear of Azula...tired and, and, just angry. But Azula wasn't something you could just brush off - she could easily kill Mai if she wanted. And right now, the thought of living longer outshone trying to escape the fear.

Maybe the day would come where that'd change, but not now.

"Alright!" Ty Lee said, filling the awkward silence with a rainbow burst of cheer that made Mai want to passive-vomit. The acrobat had remained silent for the argument (if you could associate such a raucous word with such a passive happening, although the tension had been thick enough to cut with a sword), but Mai knew her well enough that she'd been watching - waiting - to see what would happen. With the danger passed, she resumed strawberries-and-happiness mode and flipped from the pipe she'd been hanging on, landing in a crouch on the ground.

(Mai would like to have assumed that Ty Lee would back her up in the event Azula found one or the other dispensable. Hopefully.)

Straightening up, the circus performer beamed and spread her arms wide. "It looks like we've got a game on our hands, then. I paralyzed the archer from the waist up and the other one looked like he'd dislocated his shoulder; they're hurt and tired. Finding them won't be too hard."

"Hmm, good point," Azula murmured, her mind now fully drawn away from the forgotten argument. Her voice took a low, almost sultry tone, and Mai could hear the gears ticking away in the girl's cruel, twisted head. At long last, she turned to face the group as a whole. "It would almost be too easy, then, wouldn't it? The day is young and they're in no condition to escape. I say we give them an hour before we actively start to search for them."

"Sounds good," Mai conceded, nodding and flexing her fingers beneath the wide brim of her sleeves. She could feel the cool metal of one of her throwing knives pressing into the flesh of her arms, and found herself grinning internally. "I really was getting bored here."

Azula and Ty Lee began to march downhill. Mai started to fall in step behind them, but noticed Zuko hadn't moved - in fact, now that she thought about it, he hadn't said anything at all since Azula's insult. The Fire Prince, his hair drawn back into the long, flowing topknot, kept his focus on the ground, eyes golden and intense, the color of a blacksmith forging metal with nothing but hammer and fire. Brow furrowed, his mouth pursed into a light frown, before moving - working over words too quiet for Mai to hear. She inched closer to the Prince, her boyfriend, the extra yang to roll side-by-side with her own (because who needed yin in your life?), and picked up, faintly, the words, "...a girl."

"What're you talking about?" Mai probed, grabbing Zuko around the bicep, squeezing him through his sleeve. "Did you even realize your sister almost went murderous-rampage mode on me?"

"Huh?" Zuko blinked, the focus in him slipping - slipping - gone, melted away. "No, I'm sorry. Something about these two is..."

"Is what?" Ohh, she'd like to hear this. If it was good enough to excuse him missing the last few minutes' of conversation, she might let him off the hook.

"...nothing. A bad dream, is all. From a long time ago." He shook his head and frowned. "Let's go kill some time."

SCENE DIVIDE

"Magma pins stippling up and down the bones, needles digging into the joints - nfh - metal scraping the marrow - Spirits - "

Her jaw and teeth throbbed from being clenched so tightly together. Smellerbee drew a deep, hissing breath in through her teeth and blew it out through her nose. This building was different from the houses - the stone comprising the sides was smooth, almost like glass, with the surface of a lake glistening in the morning sun. Pressing her right cheek and temple into the stone, it was cool beneath her skin - the sun had vanished beneath a woolly cover of steel. If her wrists seethed their rashen forecast for rain, she couldn't tell over the searing, scalding heat in her shoulder.

The bone. The bone wouldn't reset. Oh Spirits, the bone wasn't going back into the socket.

Longshot sat propped back against the parallel building, his legs and arms splayed out in front of him - although Smellerbee had positioned herself around the corner of her building of choice, she had clear line of sight on him. The archer kept his eyes fixed to Smellerbee, and from here, pressed up against the corner of some stranger's storefront, she could see his concern - he was smart about it, though, he didn't make it like she wasn't capable of handling the whole issue. Good. Instead, he tried to mask his worry by wiggling his fingers - slow, clumsy at first, but as the minutes had passed since their disembarking from the basin, Smellerbee could see a little more dexterity in his motions. Whatever that girl - Ty Lee, Longshot said her name was - had done to him wasn't permanent, although it certainly looked uncomfortable.

"Like...like a just-forged dagger," Smellerbee continued, gingerly pressing her bad shoulder to the same wall her face clung to. "Still white-hot off the anvil, tearing through muscle and scalding flesh."

She didn't know what she hoped to accomplish by describing the sensations aloud. Maybe to distract her from the pain, although that theory was faulty at best. Talking about it just made it all the easier to perceive, and her arm hung useless at her side as multiple, invisible colonies of fire ants scrabbled for purchase beneath her sleeve, nipping the skin of her arm and setting it alight with their venomous mandibles. Her vocabulary wasn't colorful or vast enough to find any better ways to explain it, though, and it was enough having a thumb she could dislocate at will.

She hoped the shoulder wasn't another one. Judging by how much it resisted returning to its proper place, she doubted it would be, and all this thunder-crackling intensity was. Not. Worth. It.

Planting her good hand on the perpendicular wall to the building, she grit her teeth again and squeezed her eyes shut. Muscles tense with anticipation, she prepared herself mentally for the starburst ready to rock her body. Even if it didn't work again, it'd still hurt.

"One. Two. Three - "

She thrust, her shoulder smashing hard into the unyielding wall; she heard something foreign, something - unusual - claw into the air nearby, a throaty, cattish yowl, and it masked the loud POP! that would signify she'd done the job correctly. A deep blue color the same pitch as that just before the sky turned black at night yawed just behind her eyes, and she only distantly could think of what that bizarre howl could have been and whether or not her shoulder had been set back into place.

She blinked, and suddenly the cooled stone was not pressed against her cheek, and the steel gray that had been overhead instead sprawled out in front of her; her back and head ached, her brain mired in a thin film of fuzz, and her shoulder throbbed like a chain-linked set of blasting jelly barrels that had been set off and would not stop exploding. Her hair felt matted against the back of her scalp, and the consistent support beneath her sang the full story.

She'd blacked out from the pain.

Cursing, she struggled to get back into a sitting position, and by force of habit moved her right arm to support her weight; she only realized it worked when the residual burning sensation roared back to life and made jagged lightning cracks run down her bones and throttle her joints. Hissing, because that's all she could do, she struggled to get herself vertical again, fighting gravity, the looming ebbing of her energy, pending exhaustion and the desire to want to disembowel that damn blue-fire-crazy Fire Nation girl.

She got the strangest feeling that Jet's swords would have loved the taste of that one's blood, in particular.

And at least her shoulder had finally gone back into place.

On her feet, the ground seemed so far away - too far down for her to stare at it comfortably without something to balance against. Smellerbee shuffled over to a wooden crate set up against the nearest store and plopped down onto it, her breath heavy and hard. How long had she been under? She glanced around - confused, at first, because she'd apparently stumbled away from the corner of the building she'd been leaning against before falling - and found Longshot once she'd gotten a better grasp of her bearings. The silent archer had not moved, but the concern on his face had transmuted, and Smellerbee could see the faintest streaks of outright terror lingering in his eyes, washed away by a calm relief on seeing that his friend was okay.

"I'm sorry," she murmured, shaking her head and blinking slowly, trying to clear away the prickly fuzz sticking to her thought process. "I'm good. How're you doing? How long was I out?"

Still not recovered and about ten minutes, respectively. Longshot's brow furrowed. They'd have to escape, and quickly - he doubted the Terror Twins would just give up their search for himself and Smellerbee, and he didn't want to be too easy to find.

The swordswoman nodded, casting a glance in the direction of the halted mail basin. Although it laid out of sight, the combination of their disabilities meant they had only made it so far before their strength gave out. Rather, her strength - Longshot still couldn't stand upright, even though his legs worked fine. Ty Lee must have targeted some of the muscles in his back, or something. Smellerbee still didn't really understand it, but anybody who could disable an opponent by jabbing them a few times was a bona-fide threat.

Not like the other girl hadn't been, of course.

Longshot's head jerked up in shock; Smellerbee, startled, at first thought he was reacting to something hostile, but his gaze was hot and intense and focused on her, not anywhere else around them, and something told the swordswoman she would not like hearing what he had to say.

That girl with the blue fire was no ordinary soldier.

Smellerbee resisted the urge to snark at him. "I think I said that when we were runnin' from her, didn't I?"

Yes, but that was beside the point. Meeting Longshot's gaze became harder the more it revealed because of the sudden, flaming passion behind them - it almost frightened her, even though his gaze was not meant to be frightening. But as quiet as Longshot could be, even his silent forms of self-expression retained a reserved atmosphere about them. He got this expressive only a little less frequently than he actually spoke (though he didn't hold back as much when it was just the two of them), and it startled Smellerbee to know that something important was going to hit the fan.

That girl - she's no ordinary soldier because she's not a soldier. Longshot's brow furrowed. She's Princess Azula, the Fire Lord's daughter.

"..." Smellerbee felt her jaw gaping open a few seconds after the archer had delivered that revelation, and had to exert manual effort to snap it shut. The bottom of her stomach felt like it had given way to an abyss - hot and churning with acids and monsters whose fingers ended in long, hooked claws.

Perhaps, the statue of Fire Lord Ozai had been more than just intimidating when viewed from outside the city. In retrospect, especially given this new knowledge, Smellerbee should have taken it as an omen and backed off entirely.

Azula. The she-witch that had conquered Ba Sing Se despite the Avatar's greatest efforts. Jet's irrational fears realized post mortem. Between there and here, she and Longshot had heard stories of her cruelty, of how cold-hearted the Fire Princess was, and how loyal, lethal, dedicated she was to the cause of her country.

"Oh, we're so screwed, aren't we...?" As if to concur with the statement - and then to berate her for underselling - her stomach growled a fierce protest. They hadn't eaten since this morning, and all that running around had given her a crazy-fierce appetite. "I can't keep going on like this, Longshot. I'm spent."

He nodded and sighed, his nostrils flaring; he could go for a nap, too. They'd been doing almost nothing but running for the last several hours, and his strength - like hers - was stretched to its limits. They wouldn't get the opportunity to stay here for long, either, since those two girls or the Fire Nation's regular troops would find them sooner or later.

Smellerbee exhaled through her nose and shambled over to the fallen archer, kneeling down beside him, her knees popping. She threw Longshot's arm over her shoulder - her left one, keeping his weight off the right, still tender and throbbing - and stood back up. "We need to find somewhere better to hide. Need to sit down and get some food in our bellies because I'm starved."

Well, if the city was indeed abandoned...Longshot's brow furrowed as he struggled to plant one foot in front of the other, his ability to walk not disabled but certainly hampered. If Azula was telling the truth, then the Freedom Fighters could hide out in any store here - particularly eateries or general store-type places, which would have basements. Lurking underneath the floorboards and hiding in plain sight, it would give the pair enough time to eat some of their rations and rest, regaining their strength. And if they were really lucky, enough time would pass where their pursuers would let their guard down, and they'd be able to slip out of Omashu unnoticed.

"That's a good plan," Smellerbee agreed, nodding. After a pause, she bit her lower lip and asked, "Do you think we should officially give up on finding Pipsqueak and The Duke, then...?"

Longshot's brow knitted together and a light frown tugged at the corners of his mouth. As much as he'd love to stay here and make absolutely sure, they were in over their heads with the Fire Princess and Ty Lee hounding them. It didn't feel right to abandon their family, but if they died now, then there wouldn't be any point to what they were trying to accomplish, you know?

...Except, he didn't feel right being the one to make the call. He wasn't the leader. He'd do what Smellerbee ordered him to do, and nothing different from that.

She sighed. "Okay...well. You're right. We're out of our league. I...I don't think Pipsqueak and The Duke here. And if they are, I don't think we're in any condition to save them. We're making escape our top priority."

He nodded, and she could see the bitterness welling up inside him behind those precious, chocolate eyes. Abandoning teammates was never an easy choice to make.

Smellerbee could do nothing but agree.

As the pair began to move - not in any particular direction, just as long as it was away from the stalled mail basin - Longshot pitched a wide, silent yawn so powerful that his ears twitched. Smellerbee caught herself grinning despite all of the bad news crashing down around them; she loved his ears, how they were large enough to hear the impending enemy attack before any of the other Freedom Fighters on watch could properly see it, how they curved out and away from his head and scooped in all the words offered to him. In exchange for those words, he would offer not further words in reciprocation - he always found them empty unless the situation was appropriate - but instead a place of consul, a person who wouldn't judge you for your mistakes. There was a lot to those ears of his, and Smellerbee had a hard time looking away from them because of it, and their beautiful shape. If the size of a person's heart was proportionate to the size of their ears, Longshot was full to bursting with fluff.

He caught her staring and hiked an incredulous eyebrow. Smellerbee snickered and replied, "No, it's nothing. You're just adorable, is all."

Adorable? Was that all? He smirked. It wasn't a big one, but it had charm - Sneers, in all his cockiness, would have stumbled over his own feet in bristling jealousy.

"Okay, no, not just that." Smellerbee waved her right hand through the air, pushing away the instinct to wince with the motion. "'Adorable' is just the starting point, and it doesn't just stay with your ears. I'd say you got a nice blend about you: one part adorable, one part endearing, one part sexy, one part sensitive. It's a winning combo. Any girl should think herself lucky to have you at her side." She felt her cheeks grow hot, tingling with embarrassment - but a bearable kind of embarrassment, because Longshot wouldn't make fun of her for it. "I...I know I do."

His flush, a wonderful blotch of pink set against his porcelain skin, spoke volumes.

SCENE DIVIDE

"You called off the other soldiers, Zuzu?" Azula cocked her head and fixed him with a cool smirk. "I can't tell if you're a genius, or cracked."

"Maybe both," Zuko murmured, keeping his gaze forward. Meeting Azula's gaze meant falling into her trap, playing her game - he'd spent the better part of her lifetime stumbling like that, but now he knew better than to fall for her bait. "I did it because they have better things to attend to than a pair of exhausted bandits. This is our time to have a little fun."

"So, a genius it is, then," his sister conceded, her tone low and taunting. If disappointed by Zuko's dodge, she hid it well - but then again, she'd always been an excellent liar. The quartet had taken to walking down to the commercial district, and Zuko found himself wondering what, exactly, the next few hours would have in store for him.

"Besides," he said, narrowing his eyes and frowning. "The commercial district is cordoned off. There's no easy escape for them there."

He remembered Smellerbee and Longshot. Not very well, to be honest - they'd been with Jet on the ferry to Ba Sing Se, and between the four of them, they'd managed to secure actual food for other passengers on the cruise - food the captain hoarded to himself, while the others had all been forced to eat slop not fitting for royalty of the Fire Nation. Even in exile, Zuko had eaten less disgusting things.

Longshot had been quiet - that he remembered. Never spoke much...in fact, Zuko couldn't ever remember having heard him speak at all, which is what made the pair's resurgence here more believable, thanks to what Azula's wanted posters had said. And then there was Smellerbee, whom he knew for a fact was female - Uncle had made the mistake of addressing her as otherwise after the food mission, leading to the swordswoman snapping at him and stalking off. Uncle had in earnest attempted to forge small talk with the face-painted warrior; Zuko hadn't understood why at the time. She was just some Earth Kingdom pissant, warrior or not. But Uncle Iroh had his own way about things (they rarely ever made sense to Zuko), and he'd been more than willing to adjust to humility when a new life as a fugitive from his home country came thrust upon them both. He didn't mind making friendly talk with anyone who they encountered along their path.

Smellerbee did not have a curvaceous figure, and her chestplate had obscured any telltale swelling - and, truth be told, she had been a little on the ugly side. Tomboyishness being taken to the degree of full-fledged gender misconception - even on a wanted poster - wasn't that hard to believe. After all, if Longshot was completely mute as the wanted posters suggested, then nobody would know to judge any better - and in a war where some soldiers were unseemly enough to take what they wanted without any regard to whom they stole from, it was perhaps better to be a boy to the mass public. After all - the difference between the ferry ride and now is that, on the ferry, none of them - Zuko and Uncle included - had been warriors. All five had been simple refugees, trying to seek shelter in what was supposed to have been the only safe place left in the Earth Kingdom.

What a crock that had turned out to be.

Zuko had not seen neither Freedom Fighter since the ferry - and, thusly, neither had appeared the night Jet had burst into that tea shop in the lower ring with the intent of exposing Zuko and Uncle as Firebenders. The Fire Prince could only assume the pair had abandoned their leader's quest, but for what reason, he couldn't figure it out; maybe they had taken the temptation of a Second Chance closer to heart than Jet had.

But that didn't make sense. If that were the case, then why would they be here, now, with bounties on their heads? Something, somewhere along the line, must have changed the course of their lives.

If Uncle were here, he'd have spouted off some proverb about fate, and how their paths were meant to cross again. Zuko pushed that notion aside; he'd done too much thinking about Uncle recently, and if he didn't stop, he'd risk dragging himself down into another pitfall of self-inflicted guilt. Mai would have teased him in that blasé manner of hers about how easy he made it to burden himself like that.

So lost in thought, he was only passively aware of conversation taking place around him, above him - just dull buzzing in the background, Mai and Azula and Ty Lee's voices flung back and forth like wasps lofting around in the summer air. It was only when a solid, playful smack to the back of his head that the fog of internal monologue parted, and he was brought back to the streets of New Ozai.

"Zuko's spacing out again," Ty Lee teased, giggling.

"Sorry," Zuko said, placing a hand on the back of his head and shrugging.

"You're being quieter than usual, Zuko," Azula said, her voice full of nothing but faux concern. This time he did let his eyes slide over to her, if only for a moment, but there wasn't a trap for him to fall into this time. "Is there something bothering you about these two children?"

Seeing as how Longshot was somewhere in Zuko's age range, and his sister was two years younger than he, the Fire Prince had no idea where she got off addressing the pair of rebels as children. But that was beside the point, really; if living with Azula had taught him anything, it was that full disclosure on anything usually lead to him being up to his knees in trouble. Confliction, like a riled platypus bear, snarled and raged inside his skull - until he knew exactly what he planned on doing, he would have to keep the full story to himself or lest giving his sister ammunition.

"Nothing," Zuko said, exhaling through his nose, glancing up at the iron-gray sky, the clouds fluffy and bulging, as if the sun itself pressed against the cover in order to break through. The air was dry - there would be no rain, but a whiff of atmosphere could be caught with every inhalation. The rain wouldn't fall today, but a lightning storm seemed impending despite the fact. Lightning without rain was rare but not unheard of, and Zuko wondered if it was somehow significant of their upcoming hunt. "I'm just trying to figure out where they'd go first."

"Hmm, I suppose they would hide to recover their strength..." Azula brought a thoughtful finger up to her jaw and frowned - almost a mimicry of Ty Lee's habit to do the same thing when something intrigued her. "Good thinking, Zuzu. With the archer immobile and the swordsman injured, they won't have gotten far."

Zuko frowned. If he was unsure of what path he was going to take, he'd have to make his mind up soon...