Chapter 53- And so the Dragons Danced (Complete)

The feeling of the wind through my hair, the icicles shooting past me making death pass me by the barest gaps, the roar of the drums of war in my ears. This was what I had been born in this life for. I twisted and landed on the ground in a standard superhero pose, sending an arc of green flames that tossed the waterbenders and other soldiers near me off their feet. Still, it mattered little as more rushed towards me to replace them. I had shot down faster than my guard, and so I was the only one here. Even worse, I was the only one, and I wore the pin that acted as the crown of the Fire Nation upon my head.

If there were any two things guaranteed to make one a target in these parts, those were them. Good. That was what I wanted. I was going to enjoy it. Green flames poured from my fingers in an arcing net that sliced through a series of icicles. A giant wave under the command of two water benders came my way. I took a deep breath and stepped forward, pushing flames from both my fists.

The fire shot into the water, boiling and evaporating the massive wave in a matter of seconds. And I didn’t even feel tired. I shot at them, green flames from my feet propelling me like a jet thruster into the face of my target. He brought his arm to bear and blocked my punch with ease. I smirked in the face of the young man’s confidence and unleashed flames from the fist that was caught against his forearm. It was like his upper body was replaced with a charred skeleton in a manner of seconds.

I twisted into a spinning kick that sent fire all around me, forcing the water benders to defend themselves and their non-bending compatriots. I took a breath as the next attack came. Once again, I had fallen into the familiar dance that was battle. The ebbs and flows of the tides as the battle moved in a constant series of transitions from attack, to defense and back again. At least it would have, if this was not the day the Comet granted me its power. I gave up on defence almost entirely as I felt the heat around me reach new levels. A set of icicles were sent my way and turned into vapor before they could reach me.

Good. I shot out into the group. The man managed to react on time, sending a whip of water in my direction. I allowed the attack to come as it boiled and evaporated against my heat shield. He himself did not fare well when placed against the heat that followed and clung to me like a second skin., He took a step backward, necessarily, but the wrong move. It allowed me to follow his step into close combat, and in a matter of seconds, the head of what had to have been a Waterbending master— or at least had passed as one in these parts— dropped to the ground.

The next person to step to me did so with water rushing at me from all directions bar one, I turned to the likely culprit right before the approaching water closed in on me. I saw the smug smile on his face and took great pleasure in the way the smile died out as he felt my hand in the space where his heart had been nary a second later. Survival of the fittest, indeed, and that was just the beginning. I pushed the body off my arm, allowing it to fall into the tightly packed snow-covered ground with no fanfare.

I counted those around me, taking note of their positions and actions as the first of my imperial guard landed. They moved to take positions around me as we struck almost as one. “The man who manages to kill more than me gets a castle and lands” I said to them before I jumped into the fray again. My first victim ended up being little more than a boy. He was only two or so years younger than I was, and that meant he wouldn’t be old enough to drive, or even drink, in the world I came from. In this one, he was old enough to die at my hands without a fight. One.

The next was a man with a long ponytail that bent water with a flair that added extra aesthetic value to his moments. It mattered little. My movements were nowhere near as beautiful. I did not flick my wrists with quite the same flourish, and I did not dance from foot to foot as I moved, instead I marched, jogged, and ran. Still, when we clashed, he was the one who fell to the floor with half his body burnt down to the bone. Two. I spread my fingers in front of me, creating a shield of green flames as I had been forced to turn down the heat once my men began landing.

These water benders favoured ice to direct water attacks— most likely as a resole of their experiences in the environment in much the same way as the water benders in the Swampy Forest bent plants rather than water directly. The ice evaporated, and I took the heat of my flames, turning it into a lance, and sending my reverse attack. My would be killer rose a wall of ice before him, showing he was let to learn properly. He would never get the chance to fix that though, as my flame lance cut through the ice and speared straight into his chest. I took a breath and breathed out a torrent of flames, spinning on my feet to make sure the fire was sent in every direction as I noted that the waterbenders had begun to spring the trap they thought they had been leading me towards.

I took another breath even as I noticed that most of them had been able to either shield, dodge, or somehow parry my attack. I smiled before I bent backwards at the waist to avoid a cutting arc of water from a middle-aged man as broad as Sparky Sparky Boom Man had been, but somehow even taller, and much more handsome. I jumped over the next arc, before I flipped in the air and sent fire from my feet in his direction. He took a step forward and someone turned the ground I was about to land on into water and sent that water up towards me with a series of sharp tendrils aiming to turn me into a pincushion. I reacted faster than I could think— flames budding from my feet and shooting me backwards and away from the attack.

I landed in the throes of a building ice block as two men worked in concert to encase me in their newly created trap. Foolish. In one breath, the ice had turned to naught but steam, and I was in their faces before they could do more than blink at the failure of their admittedly crafty trap. The first, clearly a twin to the other, moved to decapitate me with a blade of ice as I stood still before them for a second, deciding which to kill. The second, moved in the opposite direction, trying to gain space from me as he brought his water to bear.

I decided to let Agni decide and spat out a firestorm in their direction. The green flames turned water into nothing, and men into charred husks. I turned to my next target, only to notice that the waterbenders were backing up away from me and trying to avoid being the next to draw more. It was a valiant effort, but a useless one in the end. Not a single imperial firebender had managed to be felled so far. Boosted by the comet as we were, we had become more than firebenders. No longer children of Agni, but sharers in his glory.

—

“And so you are the famed Chief of the Northern Water Tribe” I said, relaxed into the throne that the Northern Water tribe reserved for its leader. The comet had now gone, and while there were a few things that I had begun to figure out thanks to the boost, they would wait for me to finish consolidating my more worldly gains before turning to the knowledge that I had unlocked as a result of the boost and my experimentation as I cut through man after man.

The white haired man looked up from his position, chained and bound as he was, and I could see the defiance even from here. His attempt to spit at me failed pitifully as the glob of spittle splattered uselessly next to my boots. I tilted my head to the side and just gave the man a look.

“You think you have broken us, bastard? Never! The Northern Water Tribe will never submit to one such as you.” I stared at him as he began to rave and bluster, until he came to an abrupt stop as he realised that I looked neither awed, afraid, nor particularly offended.

“You have fallen know. At the sight of two fishes, you surrendered and did not look back. I don’t know what you call that, but I call it submission. Your tribe will bend, and if they do not bend, they will break. What do they tell you I am? I’ve heard it all, you know? Murderer, thief, monster, abomination, and a million things. So many men have fallen at my hands that it would be more efficient to tell you who didn’t. So, you should have been smart enough to realise that your resistance was futile, and wouldn’t even be a footnote in the annals of history.” I said, before I turned my hand against his position.

He screamed when he burned.

The ships came with the men necessary to hold the Tribe in a matter of days, and from there things moved quickly. I worked to make sure the things that were useful were folded into the Fire Nation as quickly as possible. They had specially designed Parkas that let them traverse the coldest weathers, and I made sure that was studied and copied. While the Fire Nation was broadly temperate, we did have a few mountain peaks that had been essentially abandoned for their weather conditions. It would be a good tool for non-benders to begin harnessing the resources in those places, maybe. Then there was the greatest resource they had— waterbenders.

Say what you would about Admiral Rensuke, but he had the right idea after the subjugation of the South. The only issue was that he saw things too narrowly. He was one of those who saw the dream of the Fire Nation to be one where we grew in prosperity at the expense of the others, in the same way Ozai and Azulon before him had. They were all wrong, though. That wasn’t Sozin’s dream. That wasn’t the dream I found myself beginning to support as I grew and lived in this world. It was one of integration. Where the Fire Nation shared her superior technology, prosperity, and means with the other nations.

Already, we had begun working to repair what sections of the city we had damaged in our taking. It would take a while— maybe a generation or two to fully integrate the Northern Water Tribe, but it would happen. I would see it happen, and thanks to what I had figured out during the Comet-enhanced massacre I’d visited on the Tribe, I was certain that that wasn’t just an idle wish. First of all, I reached my thumb towards my mouth and bit hard enough to draw blood. Then, I felt at my inner flame and brought it to my hand, leaving it beneath the skin. Fire was the element of change. I just needed that change to be the change I wanted and not the one I didn’t. My intention was clear, and I stared at the wound for about ten minutes before it slowly began to clot and close itself.

It was too concentration-intensive at this time to be anything more than a neat party trick, but the first time I conjured lightning had only come after I failed to separate the positive and negative energies close to a hundred times. The world might know me as a genius, but I knew the truth, and my success came down to hard work and a borderline suicidal level of stubbornness. I’d pound my head against a problem over and over again until something gave. Even until now, I still dedicate minutes each day to trying to figure out combustion bending, with which I’d had zero luck. This one was something where I had a working proof of concept, I just needed to turn that into something actually useful.

XXXXXXX- TOJI

“So what are you going to do?” Toph asked.

“Throw a party, of course.” He replied, looking over at the comet as it flew past them. Zhufu was busy taking deep breaths as she tried to adapt to the new feeling of overwhelming power, so it was only the two of them who got to just enjoy the comet for what it was— a beautiful natural phenomenon that they could just enjoy with the thought that somewhere under this same sky, Natsu was bringing pain, blood, and tears to their enemies. There was no better feeling.

“A party for what?”

“Conquering the Northern Water tribe” he said like it was obvious because it truly was. It wasn’t like they had much else to celebrate.

“We haven’t even gotten news from Natsu” Zhufu cut in. Toph scoffed, and he smiled. She, at least, understood how things worked. Natsu didn’t lose. It was just one of the few inescapable truths of life. And on a day when firebenders were guaranteed to be at their best? He pitied those who stood in his way even more than he usually did. At least in the past, they would have had a slim fighting chance of escape. Now? Well, inescapable and unstoppable were one hell of a combination. He was even more sure of it as he watched Zhufu rise from her meditative posture and begin to go through a kata.

She moved smoothly and elegantly with a grace that Natsu would never have been able to simulate. Watching natsu had taught him a lot about firebending, probably more than that most people knew. Natsu was flexible, agile, and quick, but he was not graceful. His movements were a display of ruthless efficiency. Not a second was wasted, not a movement was unnecessary as he moved from one motion to the next. Zhufu was the opposite of that. Where he stabbed and jabbed, she poked and prodded. She was not as forceful with her motions as he tended to be, and she was far more inefficient. She added a flair to her bending that Natsu’s lacked. She spun when spins were unnecessary. She jumped when she ought to have remained grounded and covered the distance with two quick steps. She did everything wrong, and yet it was beautiful.

Fire roared into being around her, and she bent massive amounts of flames that he would have never expected from her. Zhufu was a talented enough bender, but she was far from people like Natsu and Maki when it came to raw power. She made up for it with grace, and now under the comet, her power was amplified to a level that he wouldn’t have been surprised to see coming from Natsu. Yeah, he decided mentally. The Northern Water Tribe was doomed. If the comet could turn someone of Zhufu’s calibre to becoming comparable to Natsu’s raw power, then what would it do to Natsu himself? He remembered the comet was said to strengthen firebenders based on their inherent potential. Sozin was given so much power under the comet that he and his dragon had been able to smite the air benders, the original rulers of the skies and their Bison out of the air when they tried to escape his purge.

“We don’t need news from Natsu. I know he’s not going to lose” He said.

“And that solves our problems how?”

“We need Mako to tell us which noble hired him, and there’s no easier way to ensure that every noble and retainer in the capital is in the same place than a big enough party,” he said with a smile. Zhufu ended her kata with a series of three spinning kicks that sent fire screaming through the garden over their heads in concentric circles. So much fire, so beautiful.

“Then let’s do it” Zhufu said after she stopped and took a deep breath to end her kata.

“Good. Time to plan a party”.

A/N: And so the war comes to its natural end. The final arc comes closer and closer to its conclusion.