Chapter 102 – Iroh meets the Twins

Nuwa stands before Azula with guilt and says, “Sorry babe. That wasn’t me just then.”

Mildly frustrated at the cloudy memories of what occurred, Azula replies curtly, “I know.”

Ever the pragmatist, Nuwa asks, “Can you tell me how it felt, so I know what it does to others? Maybe we can understand its powers better that way.”

Azula nods and says, “It felt like being under a sleepy haze similar to when you wake me up with a blowjob. Whatever waking focus I had was placed on Nuwavatar. I wanted to fuck your body badly, but I couldn’t move under the spiritual pressure.”

Shuffling with a bit of discomfort, Azula says, “I even.. wanted to worship your body.”

Nuwa gasps and rubs Azula’s back apologetically, “Ah! Sorry for putting you through that. I’d never make you worship me, babe. Others maybe, but never you.”

Azula hums and kisses Nuwa on the cheek, “I know. Let’s get back to training?”

Nuwa nods with determination, “Yeah!”

~ ~ ~

+440k LEE, Total: 3488k LEE

[11 days later - 6 days until the arrival of Sozin’s Comet]

Through mountains and rivers, Iroh journeys on eelhound. He’s looking for the dragons and he knows the Zata have been hunting them. He’s searched the Fire Nation already and now he’s searching the northern reaches of the vast Earth Continent for traces. However, he didn’t see any signs of airship activity.

Zuko began his airship trip soon after Iroh left to pull the majority of his troops to the shores and all military activity in the Fire Nation colonies appeared to be winding down. The opportunists, bandits, and colonial nobles are eagerly awaiting the military to fully retreat, having received the news of the end of the war and peace talks. Iroh knows that this is only a temporary lull and that a storm will follow upon the Comet’s arrival, but he doesn’t understand why there’s no sign of dragons until now.

It’s an exceedingly ominous feeling for him to lose track of a whole species when he had already known their most likely hiding places and areas of nesting. The area is a woody tundra with few animals around. It is here that he finally picks up a scent in the chilly wind. It’s a bloody scent; the same scent that he remembered came from Moira’s crystal. He gets off his eelhound quietly, takes out his armor, food, and some water, and sends his ride off in the direction that he came in. The eelhound senses something foul and loyally offers to stay, but Iroh reassures him and pats him off.

Iroh dons his armor and leaves his supplies up on an evergreen tree before approaching the source of the blood essence stench.  There is a small nook cut out of the bottom of a cliff up ahead. It’s too small to be considered a cave. A pot hangs over a campfire. He sees two women busying themselves with mundane tasks. One is stirring the pot and the other is sharpening her sword.

Needless to say, two women in the remote tundra are extremely suspicious. Nevertheless, Iroh believes that he should always be kind, even to his enemies. He approaches them, announcing his presence with loud steps, but they show no sign of noticing him. Iroh calls out to them, “Hello, do you have a place for a weary traveler at this camp site?”

Even now that he is footsteps away from the campfire and asks if they will host him, they still show no reaction. This puts him in a hard spot. Basic courtesy doesn’t allow him to disturb them if they haven’t offered him a seat.

Now that he has a clearer look on the women, he can make out that their figures are superb. The light isn’t enough for him to see their faces clearly though. They both wear thin red robes that hug their figures and push up their sizable bust. It has full body coverage other than their cleavage, hands, and face. They have fashioned the same material into shoes to adorn their feet.

Iroh tries to pinpoint where the smell of blood essence came from, but it disappears as he approaches the campfire, drowned out by the pleasant smell of soup. After Iroh waits patiently for a minute, the lady sharpening her sword nods belatedly and points to a nearby log close to the campfire.

Iroh approaches and takes a seat on the log. He sighs comfortably and asks, “You don’t happen to have any tea do you?”

Lo pauses her stirring and replies with her own question in a mellifluous voice, “Traveler, we sisters have made ourselves very hard to find.”

Li pauses her sharpening and asks in a regal voice, “Traveler, having found us, do you still want our tea?”

Iroh closes his eyes and feels like something about the two beautiful ladies' voices are familiar, but cannot make it out. He replies, “Sharing tea with a fascinating stranger is one of life’s true delights. Somehow, I feel you are familiar. Maybe we count as old friends, which would make sharing tea all the more delightful.”

Lo and Li begin chuckling lightheartedly. Ignoring him, they talk to each other as they go back to their tasks. “Ara ara, how quaint!”

“He is indeed the chosen one.”

“Fu fu, the fat is mostly gone.”

“Yes, he would be delicious.”

“How unfortunate that we cannot have a taste.”

Iroh coughs and blushes at what he believes to be old acquaintances discussing taking him for a ride. “Sorry, I have a wife. Do we know each other ladies?”

Li looks up at him, revealing her features to the campfire light. She has sharp brows, slightly slanted eyes, a rounded nose, and thin lips. Her skin was unusually unblemished and clean for being outdoors camping this far away from civilization. She says, “Yes, but not as well as we would like.”

Lo giggles in a cutesy manner revealing identical features as she looks up from her pot, “We could have had lots of fun. Is there any way we sisters could be graced by your favor?”

Iroh blushes again at the invitations of the two mature women. He should have known who they were with a simple surface level soul reading via his deep connection to the Spirit Realm, but the only thing that comes up in his mind is that they are weak women that he’s never come across before. The situation doesn’t make sense to him because they knew that he was fat, meaning they have met before, but if they did, he would surely recognize them. Another possibility is that they are lying that they knew him and figured out that he used to be fat through some clues, like the sag in his facial skin. But what motivation would they have to lie? Ultimately, he decides he’d rather have some tea to clear his thoughts.

After that short pause, he coughs again and replies, “Apologies, young ladies. My Heart is occupied. How about I offer you some of my own tea instead?”

Li says with marked interest, “Very well.” Lo agrees, “Please.”

Iroh reaches into his armor pockets and fishes out three miniature teacups, opens his water canister, pours some into each cup, then pulls his tea spark out, and changes the water into tea. Lo and Li watch the process with rapt attention and clap when the water changes into tea.

Lo squeals, “Wonderful!”

Li nods calmly with appreciation, “Truly splendid.”

They each receive the teacups from Iroh’s hands and take a sip. Iroh also sips and feels glad when Lo and Li continue their praises of the tea’s lovely flavor and calming scent. They all savor the tea slowly without much speaking. Seeing as the tea is almost over, Iroh gets around to the purpose of his expedition, “Have you two misses seen any signs of soldiers or large flying creatures in the area?”

Lo and Li look at each other, then at him, and then at the sky. Iroh is curious why they didn’t respond, but follows their eyes to see a fast black figure moving horizontally in the sky. It looks like a bird at first, but its speed is abnormal. He stands up to get a closer look when the figure veers around in its course straight at them. A large trail of fire appears behind it as it picks up speed in its dive.

Iroh senses that it intends to smash into him. In fact, it’s entire existence feels vile and maniacally destructive, the exact opposite of his own. Iroh’s pupils shrink when he realizes what sort of impact that figure would have if it landed anywhere nearby.  The two acquaintances next to him would be vaporized by the shockwaves! He shouts without looking backwards, “Ladies, run!”

If he had looked backwards, he would have noticed that they were already out of sight, along with the pot. Iroh uses his own fire thrusters to meet the black figure in midair and hopefully distance the shockwaves from the ladies and the campfire. He pulls out his tea spark and prepares himself for a heavy impact even with all the redirection he can manage. What he doesn’t understand is how this black figure itself would survive the impact? Some sort of suicide attack? He didn’t understand why such a powerful being would sacrifice its life to kill him.

Pushing these thoughts aside, he focuses all of his effort on defense. A second away from midair impact, he gets a good look at the black figure. It has the rough shape of a human, but everything else about it is dragonified. It has black scales all over its body, glowing red reptilian eyes, and massive sinewy muscles. It has a tail the length of its body, no wings, and a dragon’s head. Fire thrusters come out of its clawed feet and tail, but the fire chi is starting to show signs of being calmed by his tea spark. It’s arms are down to its side to reduce drag. Iroh pinpoints that the creature’s method of offense for this attack is a meteoric headbutt.

The ideal way to deal with this scenario would be for Iroh’s arms to wrap around it and boost them both towards the sky in hopes of countering the downward acceleration with an upwards acceleration. Unfortunately, the creature is moving too fast for Iroh to grab. A layer of Iroh’s armor and possibly skin would be taken off by the sheer friction of his attempt to wrap his arms around the creature. Neither can he swap directions fast enough to cradle the creature’s crash upon the ground. He had gone over the earlier scenarios prior to this moment and ruled them out. The only way to save the ladies behind him and give them time to run away is to redirect the blow head on.

A fraction of a second away from impact, Iroh momentarily pauses his foot thrusters and flips into a midair somersault with hand thrusters. Halfway through the somersault, three of his limbs fire thrust sideways at an angle to push his body into a rapid rotation with one of his legs extended in a roundhouse kick like a sideways swinging hammer.

The foot and leg make contact with the creature’s head to the sound of a muffled, sickening crunch. Iroh winces in terrible pain, but he’s glad to see that the creature’s path is diverted 30 degrees from its initial trajectory. He also doesn’t catch sight of the ladies, so he’s thankful.

Checking his leg in midair, he can guess that all of the bones in it are shattered. Thankfully he swung the leg so hard that the ball of his femur came out of his hip socket, sparing the rest of his body from the majority of the residual energy of the impact. Iroh lowers his altitude and floats above the ground with soft fire thrusters to check on the creature’s landing site. For the sake of sparing his leg and body from additional pain, he doesn’t touch back down to the ground.

There’s a crater with the length and width of a normal sized house on the tundra. The ground of the tundra is heavily packed with soil and ice, so the crater isn’t deep. The deepest point is the creature’s landing spot which is 5m (16 ft) in depth. The rest of the impact’s energy shatters the ice and crumples the ground around it, resulting in the tundra looking like bulletproof glass after it catches a bullet.

Iroh approaches the creature cautiously and is amazed to find that it’s still alive, only unconscious. Surviving such a thing should be impossible for anyone but the Spirits! Maybe Aang in Avatar mode could survive the impact if encased in enough layers of insulating rock, but this creature did this with its own head!

Iroh finds himself struggling to make a choice. Here he has an unconscious creature that is very powerful, while giving him a vile and destructive feeling, but he doesn’t have any evidence of it having animosity towards anyone but him. His principles tell him that all life deserves a chance to return to balance, but his Dao is telling him this creature is an exception. It tells him that he cannot ever coexist with this creature and to put it down for good. He even feels the pull of the Spirit Realm urging him to kill it.

Sighing, he lowers himself into the crater to put it down for good. He understands that compromises must be made for the good of the World. Iroh stands on one leg next to the creature’s upside-down, head-buried body. He reaches out with the intention of pouring as much fire chi as he can into melting the creature’s heart from within its abnormally hard shell.

Before he can begin, he spots a lady in his peripheral vision. By the time he turns his head, Lo and Li are already there expressionlessly in front of him. ‘Oh, their speed is definitely faster than that of weak women’ is all he could react to before Li reaches out to touch his unprotected forehead and Lo reaches out to poke his uninjured foot.

With Iroh’s Third Eye Chakra and Root Chakra disabled, he immediately falls into an unconscious stupor. Li catches him by the back of his collar and heaves him on her back, lifting his entire weight casually with a single arm. Lo does the same to the dragonified Zata Lord.

The World’s Will, enraged at Lo and Li’s insolence for tarnishing its champion, triggers a mild earthquake as a warning. The sisters ignore it and jump out of the crater and then begin walking back to the campsite. They have no intention of harming Iroh, nor the gall to go against the entire World.

Lo asks cheerfully, “Wasn’t he dashing?”

Li deadpans and says, “Ok, but that dumb Zata..”

Lo hums and says, “Yeah, he lacks intelligence. The soup is ready though. Don’t worry.” There is silence for a moment between the two sisters.

Li’s perpetually stoic face cracks a smile as she remembers the taste of the tea. She offers, “Why don’t we give Iroh some soup too? We owe him twice over. Once for the tea and once for protecting us, even if it was a misunderstanding.”

“Ohhh, sounds like you have a little crush.” teases Lo.

A miniscule blush colors Li’s cheeks. She looks up at the stars, then shakes her head. “It’s impossible.”

Lo sighs regretfully and scolds her star-gazing sister. “Why’d you have to check? You already knew. At least you’d have hope if you didn’t check. You always do that.”

Li grunts in acknowledgement and dismissal.

The sisters make it back to the campsite and drop the two on the ground. Lo pulls the soup out of her spatial ring and sets it down. She pulls a ladle and cup out of her ring and pours the cup full. When the fluid exits the pot, it resumes its original appearance and smell of dragon blood essence. Li takes the cup from Lo and leans Iroh’s head on her lap.

She feeds the cup to him carefully avoiding any spillage, then taps on pressure points to make sure it goes towards healing his legs and has no other effects. There’s another mild earthquake triggered by the rage of the World’s Will, but it quickly fades away when Li ensures that the vile concoction is only for healing.

The rest of the broth goes into the mouth of the unconscious Zata creature, who is given no help from Lo to mitigate its side effects of heartburn and dragonification. Lo picks up the Zata creature and urges, “Let’s go, he’ll wake soon.”

Li seems disgruntled and says, “You go ahead.”

Lo softens and says, “Ok.” She jumps up 15m to the top of a tree pulling the Zata creature along and pushes off the tree to propel herself into the distance.

Li looks down at Iroh’s face in her lap and sighs before kissing his cheek. She whispers, “In another life, I would have claimed you as mine and been yours alone.” She lays him down gently and dashes up to follow Lo.

Iroh wakes up twenty minutes later and abruptly shoots to his feet. He looks around and finds himself back at the campsite. Then he looks down at his leg and finds it miraculously recovered. “Those ladies?” he twitches slightly as he mutters, “They are strong.. It seems I misunderstood. They must be powerful enough to avoid my soul reading. They said we’ve met, how strange. I didn’t even get their names.”

Iroh sniffs the air, but can’t make out any blood essence scent. ‘That creature must be the cause of the blood essence scent. Only blood essence can create something so vile as that being. Those ladies.. must have taken it away. I can only hope they destroy it. Such a thing should not exist in this world.’

With a hint of worry, Iroh trudges off to pick up his supplies and decides to go to Ba Sing Se for the Comet’s arrival in one week. If another one of those creatures exist and is employed by the Zata, their priority target where they can do the most destruction during Sozin’s Comet will assuredly be Ba Sing Se. Aang is still in Capital City and Iroh is pretty confident that Aang can handle something like the creature with his Avatar mode, so he puts down his worries and whistles for his loyal eelhound. He blushes when he notices the lipstick stain on his cheeks later. “Those ladies sure are something.”

(A/N: These milfs give mixed messages on whether they’re good or bad!)

(A/N: https://discord.gg/VD3C2BFPAu)