MG Reads Embers: Chapter Sixty-Five
Feb. 10th, 2024 02:44 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
masterghandalfWarning: This chapter contains a battle scene.
Chapter Sixty-Five
We open with a brief author note. A/N: Azula warning. Not a lot of gore, but mindgames ahead! The chapter proper begins with Sokka reminding himself that nothing happened to Kyoshi on the eclipse while watching his dad rally the troops. He briefly wonders what would happen if his dad learned he’d been “adopted” by Temul and thinks it would probably end with a three-way stare down between Hakoda, Piandao and Temul herself, and he has no idea who’d win that. He’d like to bet on his dad, but he knows Temul – he thinks Hakoda might need help from Piandao, and that wouldn’t end well. He wonders if helping people from different nations understand each other so they can live in peace is what the Avatar is supposed to be doing. He thinks it’s a good thing he doesn’t have to be in Aang’s place, and after today it should all be over – during the eclipse, Ozai will be helpless. Then again, dragons don’t do helpless. Sokka doesn’t know what all they could do to prepare for the eclipse, but he’s got some plans of his own. He’s interrupted by imagining what Temul would say if she appeared and asked exactly what his plans are. He’s reminded of how thoroughly Ozai and Azulon searched for all the Air Nomads Temul and Kuzon hid from them and thinks that says scary things about how determined their family is. It makes him wonder again just what Ozai might be planning. He tries to picture the whole thing as being like sparring with Piandao, just on a much larger scale – then realizes that without bending, Ozai isn’t Piandao, Aang is. Centuries ago, the Fire Nation’s lords failed their people by not protecting them from Kyoshi. Ozai can’t be seen to fail against the Avatar, again, or it might shame him enough to start breaking peoples’ loyalty. Aang just showing up could remind people of Kyoshi, even if he loses, which Ozai can’t risk. The Fire Nation want revenge on the Avatar but go for their traditions of vendetta in those contexts, and Ozai isn’t just the Fire Lord, he’s the great name of the Caldera, which means he has responsibilities to defend his people. Sokka idly reaches for a rock to toss into the ocean and accidentally cuts himself on a glass shard; he thinks someone lost their glass net weights and should have sent a diver after it – which makes him think the Fire Nation’s waters are warm, they have lots of divers here… here in this cove, they’d see the smoke of warships approaching long before they got here, but what if the enemy isn’t coming in warships? Something splashes on the water, and Sokka yells for Katara and the swampbenders as something surfaces and explodes…
We cut to Azula, watching from the edge of the cliffs with an onmitsu named Anshin. Apparently, the attack has started early, but the divers were ordered to begin if they saw anything unusual about the Water Tribe fleet, and apparently, they did. Azula wishes Ty Lee was here, but she’s still recovering from her earlier near-death experience, with Mai watching over her. Meanwhile, Anshin was pleased that Azula saved the life of one of his people, so for now he's following her. She hopes once Ty Lee recovers, she can help her turn the onmitsu against their elders, but for now she needs them for the invasion. Meanwhile, with the blasts providing cover, Azula’s troops can move in. We cut to Toph as she tries to make sense of the vibrations through the explosions, and senses someone on the cliffs. She tries to warn everyone; the Boulder makes a comment about pretty ladies, and Toph realizes who she’s sensing and calls out a warning – Azula! We cut to Sokka watching Azula charging; he remembers Iroh killing General Gang and that the Fire Nation likes to target leaders and runs to help his dad. He throws his sword, and it gets blasted out of the air as Azula’s lightning hits it. Hakoda thinks the blast couldn’t have been Iroh, and Sokka tells him to meet Zuko’s sister. Azula blows the mast off a ship with another bolt, and Hakoda thinks that explains so much. We cut to Katara thinking the Fire Nation can’t be here – she thinks Shidan must have betrayed them, and that Toph’s lie-detecting needs work. Aang is trying to calm Appa down, while Katara is suddenly attacked by a girl who looks a lot like Ty Lee. And there are more people like her coming out of the sea. Katara freezes some of them, but her attacker charges. We cut to Azula as she worries her onmitsu are going to die; she turns to the crew of the one mini-trebuchet her troops have managed to assemble, and orders them to fire.
We cut to Aang as he tries to calm Appa down, but when a fireball lands near his nose, Appa leaps into the air. Aang wonders how this is happening, but looking down he realizes it’s not a whole army – it’s not very many people at all. Maybe a few dozen soldiers, plus another dozen onmitsu, and Azula and a tall man in grey with her. He wonders what Azula’s doing and why she’s just sniping with lightning from a distance and not fighting. She seems to be deliberately ignoring him, which he doesn’t get. He tries to blast Azula with a jet of air, but she and the man in grey are barely rumpled by it, and Azula’s not even looking at him. He wonders how she’s doing that, but thinks that she’s in charge, and he can stop all the fighting by stopping her. Aang lands and blasts Azula back, but she just takes it and smiles, and then while Aang’s distracted someone punches his side and back, blocking his chi and making him collapse. Azula compliments Anshin on his good work; Anshin doesn’t think she should use herself as bait, but she says Aang had to see what he wanted to see, and for a monk, he really does seem to hate her. Though she has tried to kill him… Aang promises he’ll stop her, but she wonders with what, since he has no bending. Aang calls for Appa, but Azula chases him off with a fireblast – she says she made sure he was afraid of fire. Aang calls her a monster, and Azula thinks he ought to have tea with her mother, and that she hadn’t known Aang had it in him to say something so hurtful. Maybe the war has done him good after all. Aang says she’s not human, and Azula goes still. Anshin warns her that if she kills him, her father won’t be happy with her. Azula admits she’s not going to kill him – right now, everything is going according to plan. She asks Aang if he knows what she’s going to do, and while he desperately hopes for someone to help him, she says she’s going to do nothing. Right now, all of Aang’s friends are hoping he’ll save them, but right now, he’s not the Avatar, just a scared, helpless little boy. And the world doesn’t care about scared, helpless little boys. She knows. The chi-blocking will wear off eventually, but there’s only so much time before the eclipse, and does Aang really think he can take Ozai in a fair fight? It’s not like Aang’s ever fought fair. He’s the Avatar – fair is for everyone else.
Aang insists that’s not true, but Azula says he was about to unleash his “barbarians” on her city, to attack her people, when they had no bending and when Agni himself couldn’t see or help them. She calls Hakoda a pirate and tells Aang to ask him what he does to seaside colonies some time. If the Fire Nation are monsters and murderers for attacking the other nations, what does that make Aang for attacking them in their home? Aang yells that the Fire Nation started the war and he’ll end it, but Azula is unimpressed. She wonders if Aang’s going to tell Sokka how helpless and worthless being unable to bend makes him feel. If that’s how Aang feels about himself without bending, what does he feel about Sokka? Aang says she’s lying, but Azula wonders. Aang spent so much time in Ba Sing Se looking for Appa – Appa’s an animal, but at least he’s an airbender, so as far as Aang’s concerned, he matters. Aang insists that she lies all the time, and Azula thinks that’s just what Zuko used to say and look at what happened to him. She turns to walk off, Aang helplessly calling her name after her. We cut to Katara fighting the onmitsu girl; she thinks she’s good, but chi-blocking only works if you get close, and she doesn’t think the onmitsu can stand up to a real fight. The onmitsu comments that the Water Tribes can’t even read maps; Katara, insulted, promises her that once she’s done with Azula, she’ll go after her grandfather next. The onmitsu has no idea what she’s talking about but thinks that sounds like proof Shidan’s a traitor. She then drops smoke bombs to cover herself as she retreats back towards the water, and Katara hears the sound of Fire Nation water-riders approaching. Even though she can’t see them through the smoke, she waterbends towards the sounds and grabs one of them, but once the smoke clears, she realizes she’s come up empty. We cut to Toph as she breaks the glass Azula’s lightning created from the beach’s sand off Sokka’s sword. She asks Sokka where Aang is but neither of them knows, and last time Toph felt him, he was going off to fight Azula. Hakoda promises they’ll find him, and Katara has the Mechanist. The Mechanist is impressed by Sokka using his sword to deflect lightning, but worries Azula got what she came for. Katara says they’re fine, but Hakoda notes that the invasion force is a wreck. Azula’s divers burned most of the ships and some of the subs. Meanwhile, most of the Home Guard Azula brought are dead and the survivors are being chased down by their Earth Kingdom troops. Katara thinks that Azula got all those people killed for nothing, since chi-blocking wears off, but Toph thinks it’s not good that Azula brought onmitsu. Sokka realizes they have to get up those cliffs – that’s got to be where Aang is.
We end on a brief author note: A/N: Before anybody jumps me about Aang, remember two things. 1) Azula always lies. 2) The most damaging lies are those with a high amount of truth.
Since a lot of you have asked... I've only seen a few minutes of one episode of "Legend of Korra", and I don't anticipate seeing more any time soon. So if you think you see something from LoK reflected in Embers, it's more likely convergent evolution than anything else. (Though, Zhao's Seal of Approval... snrk.)
Some may recognize inspiration from "Pennsic War IV" in this chapter. "And an ambushed ambush isn't very nice..."
MG’s Thoughts
This chapter is mostly action, but I still have some issues with it. This may be a nitpicking, but Sokka’s thoughts about Ozai at the beginning feel like more great name shilling – like Ozai has to abide by obligations to protect his people not only from a tyrant’s pragmatic need to preserve his subjects and his image for his own power, but because great names are just that awesome (and I’ll note he only comes to that conclusion after he thinks of Ozai as a great name, not as Fire Lord). The actual battle… is almost comically one-sided in the Fire Nation’s favor, as even though they get driven off Azula gets exactly what she wants while everyone else is pretty helpless against them until she decides she’s done. On that note… Aang. Yes, Azula’s words were deliberately chosen to be hurtful, and Vathara admits that she always lies… but she also says that Azula’s lies have a high degree of truth, and Aang’s feeble responses, and the general characterization of Air Nomads in general and Aang in particular throughout the fic, can’t help but support that. But I can’t help but think that Aang’s relationships with Appa, Sokka, his status as the Avatar, and his own bending abilities are so badly misrepresented that they wouldn’t get under his skin the same way (I also can’t help but feeling… in this AU, Zuko and Katara healed Aang’s chi after Azula blasted him at Ba Sing Se – Azula is very lucky her tormenting Aang didn’t trigger the Avatar State!). Also, I couldn’t help but notice that Katara is the character who consistently and in every way misreads the tactical situation, from Shidan’s involvement on down. Another possible nitpick, but… Azula didn’t have anything to do with Appa being afraid of fire (she noted he already was when they had their encounter in “Appa’s Lost Days”) – it was the abusive circus trainer who did that.
Also… not really surprised that Vathara wasn’t interested in Korra (or, I’d imagine, any further Avatarverse entries). I can’t help but imagine that it would only further underscore how off-base she was in her interpretations of… a lot of things, tbh.
Chapter Sixty-Five
We open with a brief author note. A/N: Azula warning. Not a lot of gore, but mindgames ahead! The chapter proper begins with Sokka reminding himself that nothing happened to Kyoshi on the eclipse while watching his dad rally the troops. He briefly wonders what would happen if his dad learned he’d been “adopted” by Temul and thinks it would probably end with a three-way stare down between Hakoda, Piandao and Temul herself, and he has no idea who’d win that. He’d like to bet on his dad, but he knows Temul – he thinks Hakoda might need help from Piandao, and that wouldn’t end well. He wonders if helping people from different nations understand each other so they can live in peace is what the Avatar is supposed to be doing. He thinks it’s a good thing he doesn’t have to be in Aang’s place, and after today it should all be over – during the eclipse, Ozai will be helpless. Then again, dragons don’t do helpless. Sokka doesn’t know what all they could do to prepare for the eclipse, but he’s got some plans of his own. He’s interrupted by imagining what Temul would say if she appeared and asked exactly what his plans are. He’s reminded of how thoroughly Ozai and Azulon searched for all the Air Nomads Temul and Kuzon hid from them and thinks that says scary things about how determined their family is. It makes him wonder again just what Ozai might be planning. He tries to picture the whole thing as being like sparring with Piandao, just on a much larger scale – then realizes that without bending, Ozai isn’t Piandao, Aang is. Centuries ago, the Fire Nation’s lords failed their people by not protecting them from Kyoshi. Ozai can’t be seen to fail against the Avatar, again, or it might shame him enough to start breaking peoples’ loyalty. Aang just showing up could remind people of Kyoshi, even if he loses, which Ozai can’t risk. The Fire Nation want revenge on the Avatar but go for their traditions of vendetta in those contexts, and Ozai isn’t just the Fire Lord, he’s the great name of the Caldera, which means he has responsibilities to defend his people. Sokka idly reaches for a rock to toss into the ocean and accidentally cuts himself on a glass shard; he thinks someone lost their glass net weights and should have sent a diver after it – which makes him think the Fire Nation’s waters are warm, they have lots of divers here… here in this cove, they’d see the smoke of warships approaching long before they got here, but what if the enemy isn’t coming in warships? Something splashes on the water, and Sokka yells for Katara and the swampbenders as something surfaces and explodes…
We cut to Azula, watching from the edge of the cliffs with an onmitsu named Anshin. Apparently, the attack has started early, but the divers were ordered to begin if they saw anything unusual about the Water Tribe fleet, and apparently, they did. Azula wishes Ty Lee was here, but she’s still recovering from her earlier near-death experience, with Mai watching over her. Meanwhile, Anshin was pleased that Azula saved the life of one of his people, so for now he's following her. She hopes once Ty Lee recovers, she can help her turn the onmitsu against their elders, but for now she needs them for the invasion. Meanwhile, with the blasts providing cover, Azula’s troops can move in. We cut to Toph as she tries to make sense of the vibrations through the explosions, and senses someone on the cliffs. She tries to warn everyone; the Boulder makes a comment about pretty ladies, and Toph realizes who she’s sensing and calls out a warning – Azula! We cut to Sokka watching Azula charging; he remembers Iroh killing General Gang and that the Fire Nation likes to target leaders and runs to help his dad. He throws his sword, and it gets blasted out of the air as Azula’s lightning hits it. Hakoda thinks the blast couldn’t have been Iroh, and Sokka tells him to meet Zuko’s sister. Azula blows the mast off a ship with another bolt, and Hakoda thinks that explains so much. We cut to Katara thinking the Fire Nation can’t be here – she thinks Shidan must have betrayed them, and that Toph’s lie-detecting needs work. Aang is trying to calm Appa down, while Katara is suddenly attacked by a girl who looks a lot like Ty Lee. And there are more people like her coming out of the sea. Katara freezes some of them, but her attacker charges. We cut to Azula as she worries her onmitsu are going to die; she turns to the crew of the one mini-trebuchet her troops have managed to assemble, and orders them to fire.
We cut to Aang as he tries to calm Appa down, but when a fireball lands near his nose, Appa leaps into the air. Aang wonders how this is happening, but looking down he realizes it’s not a whole army – it’s not very many people at all. Maybe a few dozen soldiers, plus another dozen onmitsu, and Azula and a tall man in grey with her. He wonders what Azula’s doing and why she’s just sniping with lightning from a distance and not fighting. She seems to be deliberately ignoring him, which he doesn’t get. He tries to blast Azula with a jet of air, but she and the man in grey are barely rumpled by it, and Azula’s not even looking at him. He wonders how she’s doing that, but thinks that she’s in charge, and he can stop all the fighting by stopping her. Aang lands and blasts Azula back, but she just takes it and smiles, and then while Aang’s distracted someone punches his side and back, blocking his chi and making him collapse. Azula compliments Anshin on his good work; Anshin doesn’t think she should use herself as bait, but she says Aang had to see what he wanted to see, and for a monk, he really does seem to hate her. Though she has tried to kill him… Aang promises he’ll stop her, but she wonders with what, since he has no bending. Aang calls for Appa, but Azula chases him off with a fireblast – she says she made sure he was afraid of fire. Aang calls her a monster, and Azula thinks he ought to have tea with her mother, and that she hadn’t known Aang had it in him to say something so hurtful. Maybe the war has done him good after all. Aang says she’s not human, and Azula goes still. Anshin warns her that if she kills him, her father won’t be happy with her. Azula admits she’s not going to kill him – right now, everything is going according to plan. She asks Aang if he knows what she’s going to do, and while he desperately hopes for someone to help him, she says she’s going to do nothing. Right now, all of Aang’s friends are hoping he’ll save them, but right now, he’s not the Avatar, just a scared, helpless little boy. And the world doesn’t care about scared, helpless little boys. She knows. The chi-blocking will wear off eventually, but there’s only so much time before the eclipse, and does Aang really think he can take Ozai in a fair fight? It’s not like Aang’s ever fought fair. He’s the Avatar – fair is for everyone else.
Aang insists that’s not true, but Azula says he was about to unleash his “barbarians” on her city, to attack her people, when they had no bending and when Agni himself couldn’t see or help them. She calls Hakoda a pirate and tells Aang to ask him what he does to seaside colonies some time. If the Fire Nation are monsters and murderers for attacking the other nations, what does that make Aang for attacking them in their home? Aang yells that the Fire Nation started the war and he’ll end it, but Azula is unimpressed. She wonders if Aang’s going to tell Sokka how helpless and worthless being unable to bend makes him feel. If that’s how Aang feels about himself without bending, what does he feel about Sokka? Aang says she’s lying, but Azula wonders. Aang spent so much time in Ba Sing Se looking for Appa – Appa’s an animal, but at least he’s an airbender, so as far as Aang’s concerned, he matters. Aang insists that she lies all the time, and Azula thinks that’s just what Zuko used to say and look at what happened to him. She turns to walk off, Aang helplessly calling her name after her. We cut to Katara fighting the onmitsu girl; she thinks she’s good, but chi-blocking only works if you get close, and she doesn’t think the onmitsu can stand up to a real fight. The onmitsu comments that the Water Tribes can’t even read maps; Katara, insulted, promises her that once she’s done with Azula, she’ll go after her grandfather next. The onmitsu has no idea what she’s talking about but thinks that sounds like proof Shidan’s a traitor. She then drops smoke bombs to cover herself as she retreats back towards the water, and Katara hears the sound of Fire Nation water-riders approaching. Even though she can’t see them through the smoke, she waterbends towards the sounds and grabs one of them, but once the smoke clears, she realizes she’s come up empty. We cut to Toph as she breaks the glass Azula’s lightning created from the beach’s sand off Sokka’s sword. She asks Sokka where Aang is but neither of them knows, and last time Toph felt him, he was going off to fight Azula. Hakoda promises they’ll find him, and Katara has the Mechanist. The Mechanist is impressed by Sokka using his sword to deflect lightning, but worries Azula got what she came for. Katara says they’re fine, but Hakoda notes that the invasion force is a wreck. Azula’s divers burned most of the ships and some of the subs. Meanwhile, most of the Home Guard Azula brought are dead and the survivors are being chased down by their Earth Kingdom troops. Katara thinks that Azula got all those people killed for nothing, since chi-blocking wears off, but Toph thinks it’s not good that Azula brought onmitsu. Sokka realizes they have to get up those cliffs – that’s got to be where Aang is.
We end on a brief author note: A/N: Before anybody jumps me about Aang, remember two things. 1) Azula always lies. 2) The most damaging lies are those with a high amount of truth.
Since a lot of you have asked... I've only seen a few minutes of one episode of "Legend of Korra", and I don't anticipate seeing more any time soon. So if you think you see something from LoK reflected in Embers, it's more likely convergent evolution than anything else. (Though, Zhao's Seal of Approval... snrk.)
Some may recognize inspiration from "Pennsic War IV" in this chapter. "And an ambushed ambush isn't very nice..."
MG’s Thoughts
This chapter is mostly action, but I still have some issues with it. This may be a nitpicking, but Sokka’s thoughts about Ozai at the beginning feel like more great name shilling – like Ozai has to abide by obligations to protect his people not only from a tyrant’s pragmatic need to preserve his subjects and his image for his own power, but because great names are just that awesome (and I’ll note he only comes to that conclusion after he thinks of Ozai as a great name, not as Fire Lord). The actual battle… is almost comically one-sided in the Fire Nation’s favor, as even though they get driven off Azula gets exactly what she wants while everyone else is pretty helpless against them until she decides she’s done. On that note… Aang. Yes, Azula’s words were deliberately chosen to be hurtful, and Vathara admits that she always lies… but she also says that Azula’s lies have a high degree of truth, and Aang’s feeble responses, and the general characterization of Air Nomads in general and Aang in particular throughout the fic, can’t help but support that. But I can’t help but think that Aang’s relationships with Appa, Sokka, his status as the Avatar, and his own bending abilities are so badly misrepresented that they wouldn’t get under his skin the same way (I also can’t help but feeling… in this AU, Zuko and Katara healed Aang’s chi after Azula blasted him at Ba Sing Se – Azula is very lucky her tormenting Aang didn’t trigger the Avatar State!). Also, I couldn’t help but notice that Katara is the character who consistently and in every way misreads the tactical situation, from Shidan’s involvement on down. Another possible nitpick, but… Azula didn’t have anything to do with Appa being afraid of fire (she noted he already was when they had their encounter in “Appa’s Lost Days”) – it was the abusive circus trainer who did that.
Also… not really surprised that Vathara wasn’t interested in Korra (or, I’d imagine, any further Avatarverse entries). I can’t help but imagine that it would only further underscore how off-base she was in her interpretations of… a lot of things, tbh.
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Date: 2024-02-12 01:36 am (UTC)