Chapter One - Push and Pull

NOW:

Shin grinned maniacally.  He felt the sweat running down his skin as he moved to a defensive stance.  He felt the breeze on his bare chest as he shifted weight on his feet.  He watched his opponent soar towards him over the rubble.

There was a constant, agitated murmur from the other nobles in the grand hall as they watched, amazed and trying not to show it.  Not a one of them could understand what was happening here, what had built to this.  This was something for him and his foe alone to share.

Joyously, he raised his arms to prepare a defense.  His left arm throbbed where a fire blast had hit it.  He chuckled as she came: it was far from his first clash with Princess Azula, but it was definitely the most thrilling.

THEN:

"That is enough!" Azula snapped, her glare passing briefly to a pair of young retainers who had taken a moment from their duties cleaning the Palace's main corridor to stare at the two of them.

"I only asked a question," Shin responded conversationally, though his grin betrayed his real feelings.  "Would you like an escort to the Fire Lord's gathering tomorrow?"  He leaned a little closer -- a little too close, socially.  "You never gave me an answer."  Azula's eyebrow twitched.

Her hand moved quickly, and Shin found Azula's index and middle fingers pressing up into the skin under his chin.

"I'm afraid this isn't an area of palatial protocols I've encountered bef-"

"What I'm doing right now," Azula growled, lips smiling cruelly and eyes blazing, "is trying to make it clear how little I want to be here talking to you.  I am a princess.  I have better things to do than let the irksome scion of the Fire Nation's most abashed, disconcerted 'noble' family delay me from speaking to my father."

Shin assessed the situation in his head. She was now in a battle stance, and her hand was at his jugular. Predictably and regrettably, it was obvious that the Fire Princess was not pleased with him, and that his first impulse of taking her offered hand in his just to see her reaction wouldn't be a prudent move.

He decided to try for earnestness instead and see if for some reason it worked this time.  "If my family was really the maligned embarrassment you say it was, why does your father our Fire Lord continue to send his best soldiers to be trained by our master at arms?  Why do we retain our command?"  His maddening grin softened, and his peculiar, alien eyes lowered.  "And I think we'd enjoy each other's company at what's sure to be a really boring gathering a lot more than the company of a bunch of old sycophants and politicians.  You're my princess, Azula.  I'm at your command."

Strangely, it wasn't the familiar use of her name that angered Azula, it was the way he would never, ever take offense at anything she said to him.  Most troublesome underlings she could control with the simplest of words or threats.  Shin, the firstborn son of the Fire Nation's Blue Tiger family, however...

Nothing she could say or do to him ever seemed to meet with his disapproval.  It infuriated her.

A new approach, then.

"Very well," she said, removing her hand and taking a step back.  Her face, to Shin's concern, was smiling pleasantly.  "Prove yourself.  Show me the strength of the great Extinguished Family."

The move was a thing of grace and cold beauty.  With a wave of a hand, a blue plume of brilliant, angry flame leapt through the corridor and right at Shin.

Shin threw his arms up as he ducked, dropping the sleeves of his black silk robe to reveal the long leather bands that wound from his hands all the way to his biceps.  His arms blocked the remainder of the blaze from striking his face, and a wave spun him clear and redirected the blast into the wall.

Azula crossed her arms triumphantly.  "You're not even a firebender, Shin," she said pityingly, cruelly.  "What possible use could I have for you?"

And she turned on her heels and walked away.

Shin simply watched her go, smiling warmly.

NOW:

Azula's strike had the force of an explosion behind it, but Shin had maneuvered around the attack and into the safety of the air with far too much flair for her taste.  Shin arched his body around and over her, and as he landed he brought down his fist in a swing aimed squarely at Azula's center mass.

Her dodge was too narrowly completed for her taste, as well.  The stone floor of the great hall exploded into a plume of dust where Shin's fist struck it with a powerful cracking sound, an effect which puzzled her for the split second she could spare for it: how did he do that...?

Zagging like a fork in a rushing river, Shin charged forward with a jab aimed at her jugular, but this time Azula was ready for him.  A simple blow turned the attack aside harmlessly, and brought her around for a roundhouse kick which launched another ball of swirling blue flame.

It was Shin's turn to hide his surprise.  The leather gauntlets covering his arms saved him from the full rage of his Princess's blazing attack, but the sheer force of the blow sent him skidding back on the heels of his steel-tipped boots.  He felt a searing pain along his shoulders and wondered idly if it would scar.

Shin nodded his approval and took another stance Azula couldn't identify before charging her with a quickness she hadn't expected.  One step flowed into the next with a dynamic grace that Fire Nation styles didn't normally exhibit.  She pressed her attack but found herself unable to land a solid strike.  Shin was moving faster than she'd ever seen him.  How was it possible?

How long had he been hiding this from her?

THEN:

It was a particularly interesting war briefing, Azula admitted to herself.  Admiral Zhao's messenger hawk had delivered a plan for invading the Northern Water Tribe's capital stronghold which Azula found to be as bold as it was ill-advised.  Any other leader proposing such a plan would probably have been dismissed outright.  The message offered few details and its cryptic references to the phase of the moon annoyed far more than they enticed, but for now Zhao held her father's favor and the Admiral was clearly taking every advantage of it he could, while he could.

The simple request for the Fire Lord's approval to organize and deploy an invasion fleet was too delicious an opportunity for Azula: pointing out the fact that her brother Zuko's own ship would be near enough to answer the call to arms delighted and impressed her father.  The Fire Lord authorized the crew's reassignment to Zhao's fleet personally.

The way she could speak up in front of the entire war council, and watch these great warriors of the Fire Nation fall silent at her words, pleased her.  There wasn't one among them who would look her in the eye.  Her father approved.

She left the war chambers with a satisfied air.  It was no challenge wrangling these fools anymore, generals playing at being politicians, each one of them happy to rise at each other's slightest provocation and yet unwilling to challenge the barest whims of the girl sitting at the side of the Fire Lord.  She walked through the royal courtyard smugly, trying to picture the look on her brother's half-charred face when Zhao came to take his royal procession from him.

As usual, they were waiting for her.  As usual, they did not bow.  They never did.  Li and Lo, elderly, grey-haired, and perpetually grimacing.  Her teachers, her advisors.  Perhaps the only voices aside from her father's she allowed herself to hear with something approaching humility.

It would be a heartful day, Azula mused, when their usefulness had ended.  When the last of their secrets were were mastered, Azula knew there would be nothing left to keep her from finally expunging the pair of irksome fossils.

"We have taught you the circling form of the cold-blooded fire," one of them stated.  Did they realize that she never knew or cared which one of them was which?

"You have perfected the stances," the other declared.

"But do you understand the technique?"

Azula spread her feet into a roundhouse stance, waving her hands in a downward sweep.  A thousand sensations ran through her at once as she lifted her left hand in a slow, circular motion that started at at her stomach and climbed past her body and over her head.

Flashes of light and the unmistakable crackle of lightning filled the courtyard as the motion completed, and her right hand began a mirror's image's climb.

"The force you are now seeking to command is the essence of yin and yang.  Opposites, forces of direct opposition," one of the interchangeable crones declared.

"And the power of this force is the power that pulls opposites together," her sister continued, but Azula had no more time or interest in their prattle as she felt the resistance begin to build between her hands.

"The stronger they are pushed apart, the stronger the resulting pull," they concluded together, just as the fingertips of Azula's hands rejoined, bringing together the turbulence she had conjured.  With an effort too tremendous for her to hide she completed the form, forcing her arm forward, and releasing all that pent-up power.

Rewarding her exertion, a lightning bolt leapt from Azula's outstretched hand at the apex of her strike, and lanced into the huge, ancient stone capping the center of the courtyard.

And in the unpaved seclusion of the Blue Tiger family's own training ground, Shin stared intently at the crude stone carving of a man, and the charred, blackened mark freshly scored into the center of it.  Smoke trickled from the still-sizzling wound in a thin, lazy stream.  Almost hypnotically, Shin watched it changing its course second by second in waves, but never losing sight of its ultimate destination.  Like a river.  Like water.

"You practice with such conviction, son."

Shin smiled and left his fighting stance.  "I talked to Azula today," he replied as he donned his black silk shirt again.  "You'll never believe what she said."

"And I'm sure you'll tell us all about it at dinner," his father Makoto replied happily as the two walked together.

"Why can't I bend fire, dad?"  The question was so frank, so blunt, that it could only be rhetorical.

"Because you didn't learn the Fire Nation's bending style," his father answered proudly.  "When your grandmother married into our family, the styles she brought with her changed the way our family fights and trains."  He put a hand on his son's shoulder.  "You've become a great master of the Blue Tiger style.  But you've mastered it so well, made it so much the core of how you fight, that the art of firebending is an art lost to you."

"I tried, I really did," Shin said.  "You know that, right?  I sat with the best teachers and warriors the academy could provide for years.  But I just can't do it."

"Son, what you've done only makes me proud," the elder said.  "You don't need fire to-"

"-to defeat a firebender," Shin finished, nodding.  "I guess I've proven that.  Dad, why did grandmother ever choose to marry into this?" he asked, waving his arms about in a gesture to the royal steeples and roofs of the great capital.

He chucked.  "Mother saw, in my father, something that even he couldn't see himself.  She loved that part of him, that spark of what he could become, and she fanned that spark into a flame brighter and more pure than any firebending."

"What did she see?" Shin asked with a wide-eyed smile, suddenly very curious.  "You've never told me this story before."

"Well, your grandfather wasn't always the man he is now, you know."

"Yeah, Xin was a great general," Shin replied.  "A war hero, even.  A conquerer."  Shin didn't speak the word with reverence.

"She saw what he could be, without being that," his father explained.  "She saw what he could be if not for the Fire Nation, and helped him see it too."

"They were just so different, though," Shin said.  "And... he hated her.  Nearly killed her, once."

His father nodded.  "Well, one thing you should understand better than most is that there are forces that pull opposites together as well as push them apart.  And that the harder you fight it and force it back, the harder it comes crashing down on you in the fullness of time."

"And just like that, the Red Tiger became the Blue Tiger," Shin finished, absentmindedly fingering one of the four long, blue tiger stripes sewn into the left side of his black shirt, "and went from being the most favored family in the Fire Nation to being its biggest embarrassment."

"And would you have it any other way?"

"Oh, heck no."

"That's my boy."

NOW:

Shin's arms moved in a wave, and Azula found her attack diverted around him and into the pillar behind him.  Completing the spin, Shin's leather-gloved hand swung forward.

Azula evaded the blow completely, bending her back to a seemingly impossible extent before finally reaching out with her hands and leaping backwards into a somersault that freed her legs to swing again at Shin.  But he dismissed this new assault as fluidly as the previous one, and lunged.

It was another closed-fisted strike, and as Azula spiraled out of its way she again witnessed the impossible sight of Shin's blow shattering stone into a cloud of powder with a crack.  The boy didn't pause for even a second, racing after her with arms outstretched in a manner that reminded the Fire Princess of her childhood friend Ty Lee.

Shin's attacks were coming faster all the time.  A fist, a foot, a jab, a sweep, Shin's whole body was flowing from strike to strike like... like water, fittingly enough.  And to her wonder, through the fury of the battle Azula suddenly recognized a familiar smell, the stale, alien scent often found hanging in the air after a thunderstorm, as Shin's blows narrowly missed her.  Suddenly Azula realized she was on the defensive.

"You're amazing," he suddenly whispered to her with complete, obvious honestly.

Her retaliatory strike fused the skin of the stone column behind Shin into a sheen of glass, but the Blue Tiger had sidestepped the blast with a grace that stoked Azula's anger even further.  She saw his smile, growing wilder with every move.  And when his palm struck, it moved with the speed and force of a raging river.  It didn't even knock her off her feet, just forced her back a few steps.

She couldn't imagine being more enraged even if it had, though.

THEN:

"And he didn't even flinch?"  Mai wasn't surprised -- she never was -- but she could effect this tone of incredulity that did the same job that surprise did for normal people.

"With my fingers at his throat," Azula answered evenly as the two walked slowly through the great hall.

The sun was setting on the great capital of the Fire Nation, and the lazy orange rays of light slowly retreating into the West made the palace gleam like solid gold.  Dignitaries from every noble family in the Fire Nation were arriving, being announced, and mingling; generals and diplomats, the noble and the wealthy.  Tonight their Fire Lord would tell them what would be expected of each of them as the war enters its next phase.  Sozen's Comet was coming; the Fire Nation must be ready to take advantage of it and every one of Fire Lord Ozai's subjects would be expected to contribute.

Where Azula and her schoolyard playmate passed, they received practiced, cautious glances to the sound of whispered questions in hushed tones.  She had eschewed traditional royal garbs for a set of military robes.  Gold trimmed and flowing, Azula knew what the tone of this meeting would be and was going to assure that everyone else would be taking their cues from her tonight.

"But you didn't..?"

"No, I dealt with him in a much more satisfying way."  They both smiled at that.

"Shin hasn't changed at all since we were little, " Mai mused flatly.  She did everything flatly, of course.  "Even back then he always wanted to hang around with us."  She almost smiled.  "With you, really.  I wonder why."

Azula wasn't sure she liked the idea that it was common knowledge she and Shin had been bumping into each other.  "I have no idea."  And for some reason added, "I hate it."

"So why has my whole family been summoned to this stupid gathering tonight?"  Very few could talk this way and not irk Azula.  Mai was one of them.  Exactly why this was confounded the other members of the court who knew them.

"My father has a special job for yours," Azula answered honestly.  "You won't like it.  It involves travel."

Mai almost brightened.  "Really..?"

"To Omashu."

"...Oh."

The latest arrival was announced and Azula turned her head: the Blue Tiger family was entering the great hall.  The patriarch of the family walked with his wife arm and arm, allowing their son to lead the way.  The way they moved through the crowd seemed so out of place.  Their smiles were broad, but were the smiles of those who knew all eyes were on them, and could afford not to care.  After a moment Azula placed it: they were prowling, stalking... like a tiger.  She frowned.  How could a family carry such a shame and still move through the most powerful and influential of her country with so much... dignity?  So much pride?

Shin's father was like Shin: tall and thin with every wiry muscle like a bundle of steel cables seemingly ready to snap at any moment.  Even their hair was the same dark brown color.  While Shin's father and mother both wore formal robes in the Fire Nation's colors, Shin himself was still in his black silk shirt and blue trousers.  And did more than one young lady's head turn at the sight of the beautiful Blue Tiger son as he lead his family's precession into the great hall?  Azula frowned.

"They both have those weird eyes,"  Mai said, looking at Shin and his father.

And Azula pursed her lips in calculating thought for a moment.  "They do, don't they?" she asked, loud enough to catch the attention of everyone nearby.  She approached, effecting the friendly smile she wore when she was about to pounce.

"...Azula..?" Mai whispered in a tone saying "What are you doing?"

"The mighty Blue Tiger!" she announced, and they bowed to her.  Even Shin, though his smile to her never wavered.  His eyes -- those unearthly eyes of that strange, surreal color -- met hers and seemed to soften, and she could see him sigh.  She wondered -- a bit more uncomfortably than she felt she should -- if Mai could see it too.  Her eyes narrowed.  "We were just discussing your family," she continued, "and those curious eyes your lord and son have."  The frozen silence waving over the crowds was sweet music to Azula's ears.

"We wear all our marks proudly, my Princess," Shin's father responded in the conversational tones of one speaking in earnest, taking her hand and bowing.  Just like Shin; everything she said glided off him like water off a turtleduck.  Azula accepted the gesture with the arrogant smugness only royalty can command.

"Yes, like a tiger, I imagine you believe," she dismissed, inspecting her hand as if looking for mites.  "Do you know, my friend here doesn't know the story of why your family's eyes are such an odd color?"

Shin showed no reaction, nor did his father.  His mother Hinako, though, flinched for the barest of moments.  It was all the provocation Azula needed to continue.  "You see," she announced to the whole crowd, "she's apparently never heard the story of General Xin the Red Tiger and his Eastern campaign.  Or how his elite one hundred knew no defeat until they clashed with the sea forces of the Northern Water Tribe."

Her eyes narrowed.  "Or how he 'fell in love' there in the North," she continued, sing-song'ing the phrase the way someone would talk to a child, "and returned home with a new bride."  She laughed.  "A Water Tribe bride.  The Red Tiger became the Blue Tiger, and water doused fire blood to produce the Fire Nation's great Extinguished Family."

She turned back to Shin, took his chin in her hand, and looked into his ethereal, lavender eyes the way a jeweler would appraise a cheap stone.  "And your grandmother's mark certainly is upon you, as your father says.  Your eyes aren't noble Fire Nation gold or common Water Tribe blue.  They keep trying to be both."  She feigned a pout.  "But wind up being neither."

Shin's expression was a thing of beauty to Azula:  she had finally wiped that accursed smile off his face.  "Your poor mother," she pressed, making sure everyone could still hear.  "At least you can simply claim to be a victim of circumstance.  You had no choice but to carry this mark.  But her... she somehow chose to marry your half-breed father."  She shook her head.  "And it wasn't even an arranged marriage.  The shame of it..."

Azula had already turned and walked away through the stunned silence of the gathering families.  Every whisper, every tiny chuckle, made her smile wider.

Shin sighed and shook his head with a sad smile, but she didn't see.  The brilliant flames surrounding Fire Lord's great throne had ignited, and Ozai, Lord ruler of the Fire Nation, was now presiding.  All heads turned and bowed.

And naturally it was his beloved daughter that the Fire Lord called upon to begin the ceremony.  She stood before the gathered elite of society and felt no apprehension.  She performed the ritual and ignited the lanterns in a show of sheer perfection.  She completed the kata with all eyes fixed on her.  She felt their awe, knew their hearts.  They would all learn to fear her every bit as much as they did her father.  And in the respectful murmur that followed as she stepped to the ending position...

...A single bold, arrogant voice ruined everything.

"I notice your feet missed their mark on the stone.  Was that intentional, princess?"

The sharp silence would have split the night, if not for a quiet, polite chuckle from Makoto.  He placed a proud hand on his son's shoulder.  Azula scowled.

Her father said nothing.  He was waiting to see how she handled this upstart.

"Approach, then, Blue Tiger," she called out, and gestured to the space beside her on the dias before her father's throne.  "Please, show us."

And Shin obeyed, joining Azula on the dias and readying his stance just as she had before.  He began the first maneuver, a defensive routine... and Azula casually, calmly tested his defense.  The plume of blue fire totally enveloped Shin.

Her smirk lasted only a bare instant; Shin had removed his shirt and used it to deflect the blast.  He tossed the burning silk fabric to the ground and took a strange stance mixing Water Tribe and Fire Nation form, and stretched out his arm to her with a grin of pure joy.

His hand waved her towards him.  He winked.

And with a roar, Azula gave up on being fancy and lunged at the boy.

NOW:

And the great hall was now littered with torn tapestries, burning furniture, and crumbling rubble as the gawking nobles of the Fire Nation witnessed their Fire Princess and the son of the nation's greatest warrior family clash.  Azula careened through the air.  Shin dashed himself along the wall.  They struck, glided apart, touched down, and struck again, and to Azula's growing astonishment, no matter how hard she pushed, Shin's responding pull was just as strong.

And as they came together again, she struck, he dodged, he lunged, she blocked, and the pattern continued.  As their arms locked, close enough to whisper, Shin's haunting, deep purple eyes looked into hers.  "You're brilliant, Azula."

Her kick forced them apart, and he spiraled away hand over foot over hand.  He glided backwards through the air, bouncing off a great stone pillar and leaping forward towards another one.

It was the pillar Azula had already hit with her firebending before, she realized, and its base was half-melted and weakened.  She drew in the deepest breath she could muster and struck out at the stone structure with both hands.  The force of the turbulent firestorm toppled the pillar, tipping it away from Shin like a tree and lodging itself into the wall.

His momentum spent, Shin twisted and landed on the prone pillar, the steel tips of his boots scraping across them and throwing sparks.

Checkmate.  This match was over.  Azula had the pieces positioned exactly where she wanted them.  She took a roundhouse stance, waving her hands in a downward sweep.

Shin had spun himself around on the pillar, touched down, and was now sliding down it on his boots at her, his smile having every seeming of a victory grin.

Azula raised her left hand in a circular motion, and then the right, as the flicker of angry electricity erupted around her.

Shin crouched, ready to strike, as he raced down upon her.

And Azula's hands came together and just as quickly flew apart, her right hand stabbing forward and lancing a bolt of lightning right at Shin.

The explosion shattered the pillar and threw dust and chunks of stone in all directions.  Shouts and cries from her unwitting audience filled the chamber at the amazing spectacle of the Fire Princess's death strike.  Her aim was flawless.  In one heap, the rubble collapsed, crushing, leaving nothing of the boy to be found but the remains of his tattered shirt.

Azula stood motionless, as if unable to leave her stance.  Her eyes were wide, her mouth uncharacteristically agape.

"Very good, Princess Azula," echoed the voice of her father from the flames of the royal throne.  "The power you command impresses us all."

And who present could dare disagree?  She blinked, and instantly composed herself.  There was no sense in contradicting her father now, after all....

And just like that, at the Fire Lord's command, the scene was dismissed.  The crowds settled.  Azula took her place beside her father without another glance.  Matters of state and duty were addressed and discussed with not so much as an errant word spoken of the state of sheer calamity her tantrum with Shin had left the great hall in.

To their credit, the Blue Tiger family stayed for the entire procession and accepted their Fire Lord's  command for a greater tithing along with all the others.  Azula watched the two of them with an unfamiliar feeling of wonder.  Did they know?  They had to; Makoto was clearly aware of his son's abilities.  Supported his son's decisions.

How had they produced a warrior so...  Powerful?  No, that wasn't the word.

Fascinating?

Thoughts like these did not appeal to Fire Princess Azula.  She commanded them away, and away they stayed, until finally, hours later, her father drew her from her reverie.

"I was very pleased with you tonight, daughter."

"Thank you, father," she replied surely, dismissing her thoughts, as Fire Lord and Fire Princess walked together through the private halls of the royal palace from the great hall.  "You've always told me to answer dissent in the gravest manner possible."

"Indeed."  Her enigmatic father looked skyward.  "And at the same time you've demonstrated to the entire noble procession that you wield the cold-blooded fire that only the royals and dragons are known to command.  You are one with the forces that pull and push Yin and Yang, and they know it.  They fear you now, more than ever."

"Good," Azula answered with a steely look.

"It's a pity the boy had to be dealt with so harshly," the Fire Lord observed to Azula's surprise.  "His expertise in facing you was... unexpected.  He could have been useful to us, once he came of age."

Azula felt a sensation she never had before.  It was cold, and icy, and crept slowly up her spine.

"I suppose."

"Perhaps there could be some advantage, were he to have survived."

Azula very rarely failed to read her father, but this time she couldn't see what he was driving at.  He had been watching from a distance like everyone else had when she threw the lightning bolt at Shin.  He couldn't have seen what she saw.

He couldn't know what she knew.

THEN:

And Azula's hands came together and just as quickly flew apart, her right hand stabbing forward and lancing a bolt of lightning right at Shin.

As the cold-blooded fire leapt from her fingertips there was that same stale smell, and Azula finally realized that it was the smell of electric air that she had sensed when Shin struck.  The same power she focused into her lightning bolt, he had focused into his blows.  BENT into his blows.

In the split second it took, she watched the shaft of shimmering, crackling electricity fly directly towards him as he skidded down the half-toppled pillar.  She saw his triumphant smile.  She saw his eyes meet hers with that same inexplicable tenderness.  She saw him take a waterbending stance...

...and bend the deadly bolt of raw energy from its path, safely around his body, and into the pillar beneath him.

Her father had nothing to worry about.  Azula knew full well that Shin the Blue Tiger was very much alive.  And she knew with a strange certainty in her dark heart that just as she had forced their destinies apart today, for better or worse he would pull them back together in the fullness of time.

draegos1 (at) gmail.com
05-04-2008

Avatar: The Last Airbender and all associated characters are copyright Nickelodeon and are used here for entertainment purposes only at no profit.  No challenges to their rights are intended herein.  All additional characters and content in this story are the property of the writers.