And now for something completely different

[resonance_and_d]

So I've been working on this fic, with the premise that it was much more than 100 years between the time Aang was frozen and the time Katara and Sokka found him. So we have the same characters, and there's still bending, but the level of technology is at the level of present-day Earth.

And... I was doing it because I was procrastinating on my other stuff, but now it's 12000 words long and I think I'd better start posting it or I'll start losing momentum.

BUT: It is written in totally random snippets, which are not in chronological order. I'm talking 25 separate drabbles or oneshots so far. I don't think I want to post them together, but posting them all separately would result in massive spamming.

Thus... I am going to follow the format of some memes I've seen, and put the drabble-length snippets in the comments of this post. Then I'll make another post where I figure out what order everything should go in and archive it.

Confused? So am I. But I'm going to try it anyway.

Comments

Prison Break (1/2)

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“It wasn't meant to be a weapon,” Aang said, looking almost ill. “It was for spiritual healing. But he- it twists you, if you use it wrong.”

“Father was pretty twisted to begin with,” Azula pointed out, gesturing towards Zuko's face. “Somehow I don't think that was much of a problem for him.”

Zuko scowled at her, but didn't say anything.

Aang paced. “To bend another's spirit, you have to be unbendable,” he said. “That's what the lion-turtle said.”

“Then be less bendable than he is,” Katara suggested. “Don't be frightened. Don't give in.”

Azula shot her an irritated look. “It isn't that easy,” she said. “I would know.”

Katara raised an eyebrow. “What?”

“He took my bending for a while,” Azula said, trying to pass it off casually. “When I'd failed one too many times.”

“That's awful,” Aang said, with a look of horror.

Azula shrugged. “He gave it back,” she said, and wondered why she was trying to make excuses for him. She didn't owe him any loyalty anymore.

“I can't even imagine,” Katara said, and Azula wished she hadn't said anything. Aang's horror had been understandable. Katara's compassion, though, was unpredictable and unwelcome. Katara imagined that she could tell what people were feeling. Katara thought she understood. But her attempts at kindness just made everything worse if they did anything at all. Azula didn't trust kindness.

“I'm fine,” Azula said, because that was the fastest way to get Katara to leave her alone. “Let's stick to the issue at hand, shall we? His ability to take away bending is only an issue if he captures us. I have no intention of letting that happen.”

The look in Katara's eyes didn't fade. Azula wanted to hit her, to make it go away.

She took a breath, instead, and looked away. “We need to infiltrate the compound. Quietly.”

She pulled out a sheet of paper. The plans of the compound, as best she remembered them. Which was pretty well. She'd been paying attention, after all.

“There are guards at the entrances,” she said. “They'll have guns, and knives as well. None of them will be benders, though, and none are especially well-trained in hand-to-hand combat. If we can disable the guns, they'll be easy targets.”

“What about inside?” Sokka asked. “More guards?”

“Of course,” Azula said. “They patrol the hallways at regular intervals. There are also security cameras, but I plan to disable those before we attempt to enter.”

“How?”

“The compound doesn't have its own generator. I'll take out the power. A quick bolt of lightning to the lines outside should look natural enough. There's a storm predicted in two days.”

Sokka nodded, satisfied with that part of the plan. “How many guards did you say were inside?”

“Approximately twenty,” she said. In truth, there were more like ten, but she would rather they prepare for the worst. Father could have increased security since she'd left. He'd had time to recruit- and his cause was popular, these days. He wouldn't have any trouble finding willing volunteers.

“How many prisoners?” Toph said. “Can we count on them to fight for us? Could we start a prison riot?”

She looked entirely too excited at the idea.

“The number of prisoners varies,” Azula said. “It isn't easy to capture benders. And they're mostly cleared out when father comes through. There might be five, or there might be fifteen. Maybe as many as twenty if we're lucky. But none of them will be in a condition to help us. If they're still benders, they'll be in chains. If they aren't, then it really depends. They might be able to walk out under their own power. But that's about as much as we can count on.”

She didn't look at Katara, because she knew she'd see pity there.

“We can free the prisoners once we've disabled all the guards,” she continued. “The nearest reinforcements should be about an hour away. We'll have to hurry, but we should be able to get the prisoners out.”

She pulled out more paper. “The next question, of course, is where to keep them after we've rescued them...”

Prison Break (2/2)

[resonance-and-d.livejournal.com]

There were actually fifteen guards, and they were easily dispatched. After the first two, Azula figured out that they couldn't shoot if she suppressed every spark of fire she could feel in their guns. That made it harder to bend, of course, but she had backup.

They tied the guards up, and worked on releasing the prisoners. Toph got rid of the chains; Father hadn't' been through here lately, and most of the benders still had their bending. There were about thirty prisoners, which was excessive. Azula hadn't realized that Father's operation had increased its speed.

Uncle was in one of the rooms at the top of the building. But Ty Lee was nowhere to be found.

When she'd made absolutely sure that they hadn't missed a room, Azula went back to the guards, grabbed one, and ripped the gag from his mouth.

“Where is Ty Lee?” she asked, grabbing his arm and digging her nails in hard enough to make him bleed.

“Who?” he asked.

“She was a political prisoner,” Azula said. “She didn't have any bending. Your records say she was being kept here, but she's gone. So where is she?”

“Her?” he said. “She's-”

She dug her nails in harder, because she could tell he was going to lie.

“You may be under the impression,” she said, “that I want to let you live. It's an understandable mistake, because we've tied you up instead of roasting you like a pig-monkey. However, rest assured that the only reason that I am not staring at your charred carcass is that I need information from you. If you lie to me, or if I even think you're lying to me, there are fourteen other men in this room who could just as easily give me the information I need. Are we clear?”

He nodded. “I- She escaped.”

“Escaped,” she repeated. “You're telling me that your facilities- facilities sufficient to keep dozens of benders contained- were inadequate to keep one non-bending teenaged girl from escaping?”

“She was a bender,” he said. “She hid it, but she was practicing in her room, and we didn't know until too late.”

So Azula's firebending lessons had finally paid off. “I thought she'd never figure it out. Good for her.”

He gaped at her.

“Did she burn her way out, then?” Azula asked with a vicious smile, trying to picture it. “A firestorm? Or did she just quietly melt the locks and slip out?”

He stared at her as though she were mad. “As far as we can tell, she made a makeshift glider and flew out her window.”

It took a moment for that statement to process. Hadn't her father made Ty Lee a firebender? But then, maybe that wasn't how it worked. Maybe he couldn't pick. Maybe Ty Lee had just been too airbender-like to learn firebending.

“You've been helpful,” Azula said. “So I suppose I won't kill you.”

She thought for a moment, then added: “Have you told Ozai yet, about her escape?”

“No,” he said. “No, we were still trying to think of what to do.”

She smiled at him. “I think it would be in your best interests if he thought she escaped today, don't you? There's no need to complicate the story further. After all, he isn't likely to look kindly on two failures of your security.”

He nodded. “Of course.”

“And you won't mention anything about her bending. It isn't like airbending is even that dangerous.”

He nodded again, more slowly. It would be wiser to kill him, she thought, and all the other guards. It was ensure their silence. But Azula wasn't a murderer yet, and she wasn't going to waste that. Not on him.

She found the others, who were still working to free the last of the prisoners.

“Ty Lee escaped on her own,” Azula told them. “We'll have to find her another way. Later.”

Re: Prison Break (3/3)

[resonance-and-d.livejournal.com]

They made their way away from the prison, and Azula found herself forced to carry two small children.

“Don't they have parents?” She asked Katara. “They smell.”

Katara glanced back at the wounded- the ones who weren't benders anymore. “No,” she said. “Not ones who can carry them.”

Katara was leading two slightly-older children by the hands. They couldn't have been more than six. They had golden eyes, and Azula decided, with little justification, that they were firebenders.

“Ty Lee is an airbender,” she said. “They didn't know, so they didn't have her under as tight of security. She made a glider. That's how she escaped.”

“You didn't tell us that before,” Katara said. There was mistrust in her voice again.
“I just found out,” Azula said. She shifted the toddlers slightly. They'd fallen asleep and suddenly seemed to weigh twice as much. “Father tried to make her a firebender. I thought it just didn't take. Here, this is where we turn.”

They walked down an alleyway, and Toph easily picked the lock of the door of one of the buildings.

The garage was dark, and Azula didn't want to take the time to find a light switch. She made fire, and held it in the air. “This way,” she said, loudly enough for the group behind her to her to hear. “Follow me.”

In the corner of the garage was a group of tour buses.

Sokka came running up behind them, with a jingling sound that let Azula know he'd been successful in acquiring the keys from the main office.

“Wonderful,” Azula said.

Katara turned to face the crowd. “We're going to take this bus far enough away that Ozai won't know where to look for it. If any of you have a place you think you'll be safe, we'll help you get there. And if you don't, we have places you can go.”

“Someone's going to trace the bus,” a man in the back of the crowd said. “They'll find us.”

“We're only using the bus for a little while,” Azula said calmly. “And the one we've chosen wasn't scheduled to be taken for another week. If we're lucky, no one will notice that we've taken it until we've finished with it.”

She helped everyone file on to the bus, and put the sleeping toddlers on seats next to responsible-looking adults. Responsible-looking adults who were far, far from her seat.

The plan had been for Zuko to drive. He was the only one of them old enough to have his driver's license. But Uncle was well, and a much less suspicious-looking choice, so he took the wheel.

“Is everyone fastened in?” he asked.

There were a couple of clicks as belts fastened.

Uncle was a careful driver. That was good. This escape had been more than risky enough.

Azula sat back in her seat, closed her eyes, and started planning her next step. Where could Ty Lee have gone?

But then someone nudged her shoulder. It was a woman, thin and wasted. Azula could tell she'd had her bending taken from her. There was a sort of hollow look in her eyes.

Azula knew that look.

“Yes?” Azula said.

“It's your fault I was in there,” the woman said. “I know you.”

Azula shrugged. “If it wasn't me, it would have been another of Fa- of Ozai's agents. You'd be in the same position.”

The woman did not look like she appreciated the logic of that statement.

“The only difference,” Azula said, “is that some other agent wouldn't have broken you out again.”

“It doesn't matter,” the woman said. “They already took what they wanted from me.”

“He did it to me, too, you know,” Azula said. “He took my firebending. But I got mine back.”

There was hope in the woman's eyes, suddenly. “How?”

“The Avatar met with a spirit who gave him the power to restore bending to those who have lost it,” Azula said. This had the benefit of being absolutely true, and having nothing whatsoever to do with the question the woman had asked.

“Would he do it for me?” the woman asked.

“I don't know. But you can ask him.”

Aang hadn't practiced his spirit bending. It was unlikely that he'd be willing to try it on this desperate woman. But it gave her hope, and it got her to shut up, so that Azula could think more.

Azula settled back into her planning. But between the soft seat and the gentle bumping motion of the bus, it wasn't long before she drifted into an uneasy sleep, full of uncontrolled fires and broken gliders tumbling to the earth.