masterghandalf | MG Reads Embers: Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Fifteen

We open with Shirong as he waits at the tea shop to talk to Iroh. Apparently, he was one of the Dai Li agents who watched Zuko fight off the attacking boys last night and was very impressed by how easily he did it, and the waterbending he used – but he also thinks he saw signs of something that wasn’t waterbending, and that’s what he’s now investigating. Finishing his tea, Shirong waits for Iroh to go out on break, pays, and then slips out after him. Iroh recognizes who he is from Zuko’s description, and Shirong explains that when he leant Zuko that scroll, he expected him to practice but didn’t expect bending like he saw last night. So, based on everything he’s seen and pieced together, the question is – what are two Fire Nation colonials doing in Ba Sing Se? Iroh comments that they got here very carefully and left the Fire Nation behind long ago; Shirong says he only picked up on it because of how aggressive Zuko’s waterbending is, which is very different from the more conventional styles he’s observed. Iroh says that despite what he’s heard of the Dai Li, he doesn’t think Shirong wishes them harm – still, he wants to know what he was doing spying last night. Shirong admits he was actually watching Min, wanting to see how he’d handle being unexpectedly attacked by classmates looking to get revenge on him for showing them up, especially since the other kids are nobles and Min isn’t. This leads Shirong to wonder if it’s true that Fire Nation generals aren’t always nobles; Iroh says they often are, since many generals are powerful benders and many of those are nobles, but leadership ability, bending, and noble blood don’t always go together in the same person and the Fire Nation recognizes that, so yes, it’s not uncommon for generals to be of common ancestry. Iroh says that he can see why Shirong and Zuko get along – they’re both interested in peoples other than their own, and in what the world might be like if there wasn’t any war.

Shirong wonders exactly how “Lee” was born who he is, all things considered. Iroh, without technically lying, says that Zuko’s mother concealed her true heritage, and he only learned of her healing abilities after a difficult birth and kept her secret. He does explain that their exile had nothing to do with Zuko’s bending abilities, but his character. Shirong tells him they could get arrested for being spies, but Iroh assures him that they aren’t, just refugees. Shirong studies him for a while, concluding that Iroh is an interesting man and wonders who he really is, and tells him he hopes they can talk again. Iroh makes a comment about Shirong’s choice of tea, which makes him realize he’d been watching him for a while and had been very observant. Shirong leaves, wondering more about Zuko and Iroh, who they really are and where they really came from, and if they really could be spies. On the other hand, he still wants to recruit “Lee” for the Dai Li and decides not to tell Quan what he’s discovered just yet. Apparently, Dai Li brainwashing doesn’t work properly on Fire Nationals – you can implant orders or even false memories, but the moment you try to force them to go against loyalty, they drop dead. Which means that Shirong has two options – trust Zuko, or kill him, no middle ground. But apparently the Dai Li have also found it useful to recruit those who are unusually resistant to their brainwashing in the past, and if you look far enough back in their family trees, they usually have some Fire Nation ancestry. Shirong remembers Zuko desperately trying to deflect when he asked about his family history, and chuckles. Still, while Quan, Shirong’s immediate superior, might be able to be talked into taking in a waterbender with Fire Nation heritage, Shirong isn’t so sure about Long Feng. The thought bothers him; Long Feng is the head of the Dai Li, but Kyoshi created them to serve the whole city, not to be loyal to one man. Long Feng earned his position – he led the fight against a horde of invading spirits decades ago and turned them back. Amaya had to heal many of the Dai Li after that battle, and some of them still bear the scars, Shirong included. Shirong doesn’t doubt Long Feng’s ability to lead, or that he deserves his rank, but even though questioning his leader makes him uncomfortable, he’s still aware that Long Feng focuses too much on the capital and not enough on the kingdom as a whole, and he doesn’t think the situation with the Avatar is being handled well. Maybe the generals have plans that Shirong, a simple agent, isn’t privy to – or maybe not.

Still, Shirong decides that he has to follow Long Feng, who led them to victory in a battle he thinks of as even worse than the Fire Nation siege. Iroh, at least, fought cleanly; Shirong doesn’t’ know what happened to him after the siege, but assumed it wasn’t good, since Azulon disinherited him afterwards and named Ozai his successor – and Ozai’s troops don’t fight clean. Shirong thinks to himself about how much he hates the Fire Nation under Ozai for the destruction they’ve wrought – and yet that hate has also driven him to want to understand the Fire Nation better. And he found that according to the writings of Kyoshi herself, the founding principles of the Fire Nation are honor, duty, benevolence, respect, courage, honesty and righteousness. Learning that didn’t make Shirong any less determined to protect Ba Sing Se from the Fire Nation, but it awoke something in him nonetheless that he can’t describe. He wonders what it means that an exiled waterbender like Zuko is truer to the Fire Nation’s values than its own rulers are. Still, coming back to his original thoughts, he thinks he can convince Quan to consider Zuko. Long Feng, though – Shirong has seen him interrogate prisoners, and he hates the Fire Nation, to a degree that makes Shirong uneasy. For the moment, Shirong wants to keep an eye on Zuko – and he also has some other rumors to investigate.

We then cut to Syuin Wen, having just been thrown by Zuko, as he comments that it’s very clear neither she nor Jinhai can focus today. Zuko wonders if it’s about what happened last night, and Tingzhe comments from nearby that his uncle was very evasive about some things last night, with the Dai Li potentially listening in. Zuko gives a brief rundown of how spirits don’t seem to like him much, how Amaya healed him when he came to the city and it nearly caused him to drown, and how afterwards, water has started to respond to him. Tingzhe is stunned, and Jinhai wonders if he can learn to freeze people too. Suyin comments that ice is waterbending, but that gives Zuko an idea and he runs off to get a pot of water. He tells Jinhai to focus on it, but that they want heat, not flames. The water starts heating, and Zuko explains that if you’re ever frozen, this technique can save your life. He adds that this is a way firebending is different from other elements – the others require moving your body, but fire requires moving energy, which can sometimes be done while you’re physically still, and that can be an advantage in some circumstances. That’s how Zuko broke out of the tiles last night, and so long as you can surprise your opponent, no matter how strong they are, you have a chance. Suyin wonders if the Fire Nation is so strong because they never give up; Zuko takes out his knife with the “never give up without a fight” inscription, and shows her where it says that it was made in the Earth Kingdom. He tells her that Iroh has always told him you should draw wisdom from many sources. Suyin should be proud of both sides of her heritage. Tingzhe comments that Iroh is a very unusual man. Meanwhile, Jinhai’s got the pot of water hot, and Zuko bends the water out of it into the air. Tingzhe thinks it’s waterbending, but Zuko corrects him – it’s firebending. Zuko’s not bending the water right now, he’s bending the heat in the water. If Jinhai masters this technique, he can pass himself off as a waterbender rather than a firebender – and it was Suyin who gave Zuko the idea. Hot water is harder than fire, and a real waterbender will be able to tell something’s wrong, but it’s still a lot better than nothing. But for now, the lesson is done.

We cut to a later point, as Suyin asks Zuko if he was scared when he started to feel water. He briefly wishes he had a sister more like her, and admits that he was, but his world’s fallen apart before, so he kept going. But more than that, he was just tired, which he says Iroh has told him happens to soldiers who’ve been in combat for a long while. He’s telling Suyin this because she’s a very good student – she may not want to be a soldier, but she does want to protect Jinhai, and if something happens, she may need to fight. Privately, he thinks she really is Fire Nation at heart, but doesn’t say it out loud. He goes on to say that violence is hard and painful, even if you win, and she needs to be ready to deal with that. He tells her that her mother knows what that’s like, and to ask her if she has any more questions. But for now, Zuko’s next step will be teaching Jinhai how to use his breathing exercises with hot water. We cut to Amaya’s clinic, as she continues to work with Zuko’s scar. She says that the surface appearance hasn’t changed, and won’t, but she’s healing some of the internal damage. Besides, she reassures Zuko that in the Water Tribes a scar is a badge of honor – it marks a survivor. Zuko just thinks he wasn’t worth killing. She decides he doesn’t need her sympathy, and Zuko awkwardly excuses himself to check on a duck. When he’s gone, Iroh tells her that it’s hard for Zuko, sometimes, to be in his position while being so young. She wonders some more about their travels, and Iroh promises to tell her someday, but not yet. Amaya decides that what Zuko needs more than sympathy is revenge and wishes he’d been born Water Tribe – the Water Tribes know all about the best ways to take revenge on someone even without killing them. Though she wonders if Zuko’s plan to create a new sanctuary might count as revenge on someone, since lots of powerful people won’t be happy about that. As for Amaya herself, she helps those in need, even if they’re from the Fire Nation, and thinks that destroying the Fire Nation would be no more just than the Fire Nation destroying the Air Nomads was.

Amaya comments about how it’s good that Zuko has an uncle with him, and Iroh deduces that she’s from one of the smaller villages, not the Northern Water Tribe capital – in the cities, the Water Tribes trace descent primarily through the father, but in the villages, aunts and uncles are more important. Iroh wishes he’d been Ursa’s brother, and not Ozai’s, and the two discuss whether Zuko’s sanctuary would mean a blood feud with the rest of their family. Amaya tries to get Iroh to promise to tell her who he really is if he’s forced to leave the city; Iroh is noncommittal, and the two of them are left wondering where Zuko is. We cut to Shirong as he and another agent, Yunxu, overhear someone cursing and recognize the voice as “Lee.” Turning down an alley, they find Zuko having frozen Jet to the wall; Jet demands Zuko unfreeze him and fight him, but Zuko tells him he’s not a “freedom fighter,” he’s just a troublemaker. If Jet wants to fight someone, he can join the army, but in any case, he needs to leave Zuko alone. Jet calls him murdering Fire Nation scum; Zuko strikes him with a water whip and tells him that if he was really “murdering scum,” then how is Jet still alive? Zuko turns and stalks off, and Yunxu comments that he should have killed Jet. Shirong asks if Yunxu thinks they should take Jet in, but Yunxu doesn’t think so – the spirit they’re tracking is drawn to violence, so why waste good bait? Especially someone who’s already tangled with someone who’s been touched by the spirits. Shirong isn’t pleased but agrees to go along with it. We cut to Smellerbee as she and Longshot try to cut Jet free, while Jet himself boasts that Zuko was clearly too scared to finish him off. Longshot flicks him on the forehead, and Smellerbee says that Zuko was about as “scared” as Sokka was when he tried to stop Jet from attacking the old man. Jet protests that the man was Fire Nation, and Smellerbee says he was harmless, just like Iroh clearly is. Suddenly, a sense of darkness and chill fills the alley; Jet thinks he hears his father’s voice, but knows that can’t be true, since his parents have been dead for years. A shadow comes creeping down the alley; Jet manages to break free of the last of the ice, and Smellerbee grabs Jet’s arm and they run for it,

We cut to Quan accusing Yunxu of falling asleep on duty; Yunxu admits he has no excuse, but Shirong thinks he knows what happened – he smelled seaweed, which means they’re dealing with a water spirit of some sort. While all water spirits are unpredictable, sea spirits are the worst, and one powerful enough to force a Dai Li agent to sleep – Shirong realizes they’re dealing with a man-eater, drawn to Ba Sing Se by the promise of prey. Worse, all the waterbenders by the docks are gone, apparently without a struggle. Whatever the spirit is, the agents guess that it’s probably a shapeshifter – something very smart and very dangerous. If it’s really after waterbenders, they’ve gone ahead and put a watch on Amaya’s clinic, but Shirong is more worried about Zuko. Shirong complains that they have the Avatar in the city and he hasn’t done anything, but Quan says he’s a kid, and a monk – Long Feng had to beat him over the head with it before he realized the Earth King was a figurehead, after all. Besides, malevolent spirits probably avoided the Air Temples. The Dai Li, on the other hand, aren’t monks, precisely because you have to have fought actual spirits before you can sense dangerous ones properly. Quan is going to reassign more agents to deal with this matter and keep an eye on Jet – Shirong is to keep an eye on his potential recruits. We cut to Zuko as Shirong leads him into the catacombs under Ba Sing Se, noting that he’s not normally asked to bring his swords to healing sessions. Suddenly, Zuko realizes that there’s water down here, and that’s why Shirong wants him armed, in case something should show up. They emerge into a large chamber where a number of Dai Li potentials are training against each other. At Shirong’s instruction, Zuko sits down to watch, out of sight. He’s surprised to notice Min among the trainees and thinks his presence might make things harder. Suddenly, someone screams.

Shirong has already noted four trainees who won’t make the cut and are now being treated by Zuko, and one who can go to the army, when suddenly Min marches over. He’s angry to see Zuko here, but Zuko only congratulates him on making the cut. Shirong says it’s lucky Zuko’s here – next up is one-on-one, and they’re one short, so Min’s getting paired with him. Min is surly about it but accepts the order; Zuko asks if they’re sparring with weapons or bending, but Shirong says anything goes, as long as they don’t seriously injure each other. He gives the signal for them to begin, and we cut to Zuko and Min in mid-duel. Zuko thinks Min’s a good earthbender, but clearly has no idea how to handle himself in a real fight. After they exchange a few more blows, Zuko manages to win… but when he’s waterbending he can sense something that’s urging him to finish Min off. He calls out to Shirong that the spirit is here, and he can feel it trying to reach for him and bring him under its influence. Zuko tries to practice the breath of fire to force the cold away, not caring if he gets caught, but Shirong interrupts him and demands to know where the spirit is. When Zuko says it’s in the water, Shirong calls for him to get out of here. Against Zuko’s protests, they manage to get him outside, under the sun, away from the spirit’s influence. Outside, Min asks if Zuko’s going to be all right; Shirong says that he should be fine, and the spirit’s influence on him is broken; hopefully, he’ll soon be coherent enough to describe what it did to him. Finally, Zuko manages to describe it as a creature of darkness and cold, from the ocean’s depths. It got to Zuko when Min struck him during their sparring, transmitting its influence through subterranean water, away from the sun. When Zuko realizes exactly how the spirit was trying to use him, he bursts out into a string of curses – and Shirong, bemused, recognizes them as archaic Fire Nation court language.

Zuko reveals he has seen something like this before – at the North Pole, when Aang merged with the Ocean Spirit and destroyed the fleet, though he doesn’t name names, just calls them a waterbender and a spirit. He starts ranting about how the fleet had no warning and no escape, and at least the Fire Nation armies that besieged Ba Sing Se let their enemies surrender. Shirong comforts Zuko and warns Min not to breathe a word of this to anyone. Min doesn’t understand and wonders why they can’t capture the spirit and turn it against the fire Nation; Zuko grouses that he doesn’t know the laws of war; Min protests that war doesn’t have laws, and Shirong corrects him that it does – the Fire Nation wrote them down, and mostly follows them. Shirong tells Min that his idea is terrible and would only invite retribution. Zuko says that spirits usually stay out of human wars, and humans usually honor them and stay out of their way otherwise, and that’s a working arrangement. If a human dishonors a spirit, that spirit is supposed to go after that human specifically, not anyone else, but apparently spirits haven’t been sticking to their end of things lately. Shirong jumps in to add that if Min carried out his idea, the Fire Nation – who must not know the details of what happened at the North Pole, or they’d have sought revenge already - would assume the Water Tribes were making a habit of using water spirits against them and would annihilate the North Pole in retribution and kill every waterbender they could find. That would be the end of the Water Tribes. Min protests that the Water Tribes were defending themselves, and Zuko snarls that he wasn’t there and doesn’t know what he’s talking about. The Water Tribes just got lucky. More practically, Shirong says that spirits don’t care about collateral damage, and could just as easily hurt the side that tries to use them – who knows how many waterbenders died in that battle, too? Min doesn’t see if there’s a difference between dying to fire or dying to spirits, but Shirong tells him that there are things much worse than death.

Recognizing that Zuko’s firebending meditation is helping him recover, Shirong thinks he’s deduced the spirit’s identity. A Haima-jiao, a shapeshifting, predatory sea spirit that doesn’t like fire or light. To keep it away, burning lamps will help. Meanwhile, Shirong has a question for Zuko – who’s the waterbender he was talking about? Zuko won’t say, and Shirong wouldn’t believe him anyway. But Shirong has already deduced that it must be the Avatar – and right now, he’s here, in Ba Sing Se, in the inner ring. And Shirong is outraged that the Avatar, who is supposed to protect humans, would let a spirit use him like that. But he has no idea what he can do about it, so instead he just offers to take Zuko home. Zuko wants to go to the clinic instead – especially since Iroh is still there. Shirong agrees, since that way Zuko can return his scroll, which Zuko admits to having found very useful. Shirong, in turn, leads Zuko down a wandering path into a secret chamber below the city, filled with bending scrolls of all kinds. Apparently, Kyoshi left them for the Dai Li to aid them in their duties, and Zuko wants to know if they’ve copied them – they should have caches all around the city! Shirong is impressed and asks if Zuko is really hanging around the Wen household to learn from Tingzhe, and he lets slip he’s actually teaching Jinhai. He manages to cover for himself, implying that Jinhai is a waterbender rather than a firebender. Shirong, meanwhile, reveals that the Dai Li have not only made caches, they’ve made print blocks, so they can make exact copies of their scrolls – and he’s not going to let Zuko leave here unarmed, with a spirit on the loose. There is still one thing he hasn’t figured out, though – just what was Zuko doing at the North Pole?

We cut to Zuko and Iroh having dinner, with Zuko addressing his uncle as “Mushi” to let him know they’re being observed and need to speak carefully. They discuss Zuko’s encounter with the spirit, and Iroh realizes that as a spirit of darkness and emptiness far from its usual home, it hates and hungers for light and life… and fire. Zuko hadn’t realized spirits could affect people like that, and Iroh tells him most can’t, but a few are powerful enough to do it. And only powerful benders are that vulnerable. Zuko insists he’s not powerful, but Iroh tells him his spirit and will are stronger than his body. Zuko wants to know how he can fight it, and Iroh says that fire, and light, and family can hold it back – Zuko has made friends here, and he’s not as alone as he thinks he is. Zuko, though, has one more thing to admit, and starts telling Iroh about what he saw when Amaya healed him, and he nearly drowned…

The chapter ends with a short author note. A/N: Haima-jiao - "sea horse-scaly dragon". Loosely based off the Celtic each uisge (water horse). Very nasty critter.

MG’s Thoughts

Okay, on the one hand, this chapter is pretty much a straightforward monster-of-the-week story, and I don’t have much to say about its actual plot. On the other hand, there are some pretty serious issues that are going to continue to plague the fic going forward that crop up here, so let’s get to it. First off, we have the issue of the Dai Li. I think this is the chapter where Vathara really starts trying to whitewash the Dai Li. Shirong, spoilers, is going to end up being one of the fic’s major “good guys” and a key ally for Zuko going forward, and in general he fits the vibe the fic seems to have for most of the Dai Li – honest, honorable men doing hard, unappreciated duties to keep their city safe. The increasing implication that the Dai Li’s real purpose is to fight spirits, not oppress people, plays into that. Sure, Long Feng is still a villain, but the general implication is that the Dai Li are only “bad” because one bad apple is in charge, not because their organization is rotten to begin with (and even Long Feng gets a war hero backstory he didn’t have in canon). And sure, I get the appeal of greying things up a bit – but I don’t think the Dai Li are an organization that particularly should be morally grey. Then again, I’m inclined to think that an organization of secret police who kidnap and brainwash people in the name of order and aren’t accountable to anyone but their own leaders are kind of inherently a bad thing. Speaking of Long Feng, I’m not sure where Vathara gets the idea that he especially hates the Fire Nation; canon!Long Feng always seemed like a cold fish motivated more by cynical, cold-blooded calculation than any sort of particular hatred for anyone (and he had no problem working with Azula, certainly). But I guess that’s how we know he's a bad guy – Long Feng is evil, and he hates the Fire Nation; Shirong is good, and is coming to grudgingly regard the Fire Nation as worthy opponents.

Speaking of the Fire Nation, we’ve also got the chapter extolling their founding virtues, and how apparently they were the ones who codified the laws of war and usually follow them. Oh, and they apparently also allow commoners to rise all the way to general and do it often enough that a guy like Shirong has heard about it, even though, in my opinion, that doesn’t make sense with the Fire Nation society as Vathara presents it. Long story short, warrior aristocrats tend to guard their class privileges jealously, and military bodies tend to reflect the civilian societies that created them – in real life, societies with a strong noble/commoner divide tend to create militaries with an equally strong officer/enlisted divide, where commoners don’t have much opportunity to advance up the ranks. In some ways the treatment of the Fire Nation recalls what the fic does with the Dai Li, though the reality is a bit more complicated (Ozai isn’t whitewashed at all in the fic, if it’s not obvious already – he’s just as villainous as his canon counterpart – so you certainly have some of the “one bad apple in charge messing things up” at play, but the Fire Nation is allowed to have institutional problems - except that those problems are, as we’ll see, not intrinsic to the Fire Nation’s system but the result of someone who wasn’t Fire Nation coming in and ruining things for everyone… but more on that later). Still, the fic is going to increasingly be not very shy about trumpeting how awesome traditional Fire Nation values are at every opportunity. But this chapter is also where we get a lot more of the “Koizilla was the worst thing ever” bit, with a side order of subtext that it would have been better for the Water Tribes to just let themselves be conquered than win that way, which bothers me, a lot. And yeah, there are lines that shouldn’t be crossed, but… Koizilla was attacking a military force that was actively engaged in trying to conquer its people (it wasn’t targeting civilians or even unrelated military forces) and it did allow what was left of the Fire Navy to retreat, so I really don’t think that line was crossed here. But it does play into something that the fic is about to start doing – essentially, that Vathara will make up a reason for why the Gaang were wrong about something in canon (ie, they don’t know how spirits work, they don’t know that the Dai Li totally have a noble purpose), then have them blasted for not knowing, when there was no way they could have known because those concepts didn’t exist in canon when they took those actions… and it really just feels like the author is stacking the deck against them.

Also, between the Welsh law that inspired the fic, and the Celtic-inspired spirit that shows up here… I have to wonder why Vathara keeps using things from Northern Europe in an East Asian inspired fantasy setting. It’s not really a criticism, just something I think is kind of weird. And we continue in this chapter with our regular humiliation of Jet; that just felt worth pointing out.

MG Reads Embers: Chapter Fifteen

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