Chapter 40.2- And so the Dragons Danced

_ The rest of my preparations for the eclipse consisted of ensuring that the non-benders in the army were the ones posted at key locations on the day of the black sun. Hiding the eclipse itself would be beyond the realm of possibility, but that isn’t mean I could jot hide its effects/ Long experience with people told m that not much was known about bending and benders by people who didn’t have the gift. Even at that, earthbenders knew little about firebending, the same way that firebenders knew little about earthbending. I’d been trying to remedy that with Toph here, expanding my horizons so to speak, but the average person was basically clueless. That meant that as long as we did not make it obvious that the eclipse meant anything to our power, then no one would ne any the wiser. No one except the Avatar and his cohorts of course, I hadn’t heard anything about them going into the desert, and Long Feng hadn’t seen any bison up for sale even with keeping an eye out so it was possible that they wouldn’t know, but I would not count on it.

The second stage of my preparations related to my own personal seecurity. Mine and Azula’s if I were to be honest. Azula would have a rotating guard of the most skilled non-benders in the army for the whole day, so that when the eclipse came, she would be more than secure. She also had her own ability to fall back on just in case. As for me, I’d be spending the day in my office with Toji and Toph nearby. With the both of them, I was basically guaranteed to be safe. Nothing short of the Avatar and his team would manage to take out the both of them in the eight minutes that the eclipse would last for, and even that was a toss up. Sure, there was a chance that they would be overcome and he would be killed but he had his doubts that they would manage that- especially with just how much progress Toph had made with her metalbending in the last few months. Lava was still a fair ways away, but metal had become close to second nature at this point. She was still not yet at the smooth level of metal bending that was the norm in the Legend of Korra series and the metalbending police, but I could see the signs there- For one, she no longer needed physical contact with the metal to make it obey her will. She still needed to sense it so no pulling airships out of the sky just yet, but all would come with time.

“And how goes the unification?” I asked Toji once I signed off on the last bits of my plan.

“The people are still resistant but we feel we have given them enough of a waiting period that they won’t get aggressive until it’s really close by. I still can’t see why you’d want to do this” He said.

“Hmmm. Good. Ba Sing Se only needs a single set of walls for its security. The other walls are there to divide the classes, and that is what I have an issue with. If I were going to be staying to rule as Governor, then maybe I would be forced to play nice and maintain the status quo for a bit longer, but the aftermath will not be my problem”

“You’re still going to piss of whoever gets the city”

“They’d thank me in the long term. What passes for upper class in this backwater does nothing to contribute to the local economy. They just sit and horde wealth across generations. If we force them back into closer quarters with the middle and the lower classes, they’d have to spend some of that money or find some other way to move it around”

“Or it would all get stolen” He interrupted.

“And the thief will spend it, thus stimulating the economy” I replied with a shrug. “Nothing good comes from wealth being hoarded”