Chapter 52 – Serious Talks
Iroh and Piandao both speak, “You know when it will be?”
Nuwa nods, “It will take place 160 days from today and will only last 8 minutes long. During that time, we should aim for a full army to breach as far into the capitol as possible.”
Piandao asks curiously, “How did you come about this information and how accurate is the source?”
Nuwa replies, “It should be accurate, and I know about it from Wan Shi Tong’s library.”
Expressing affirmation, the group pauses in thought.
Iroh rubs his head at the thought of the wanton destruction that enraged waterbenders and earthbenders could cause upon innocents in the Fire Nation Capital. “We could do something more targeted towards the Royal Castle.”
Piandao also preferred this strategy, but Pakku disagrees and shakes his head. “Iroh and Piandao, my friends, I understand you want to prevent the loss of innocent life, but the Fire Nation needs a thorough beatdown prior to the end of the war or else independent militant factions will spring up out of the woodwork to continue the job.”
Xai Bau concurs, “Leniency on the genocidal will doom our future generations. Returning the world to balance is not a peaceful affair. We should specifically attack large military bases along with the Royal Palace though. Iroh, it should be you who fights your evil brother, not the Avatar. Don’t you also share blame in this tragedy?”
Bumi shakes his head in agreement, “Aang is not yet strong enough.”
Iroh ashamedly looks at Piandao and Pakku looking for some input. Pakku states, “Although I think it should be the duty of the Avatar to restore the world to balance, we also have to help him right? It shouldn’t matter all that much if we’re extra helpful.”
Piandao chuckles, “I think our old General Iroh had this idea of a final showdown between Ozai and Aang to represent a symbolic fight of balance and compassion against tyranny. If we win before Aang steps in, wouldn’t the world feel they don’t need the Avatar any more? They waited 100 years for the Avatar to return and we finished the Fire Lord off by ourselves.”
Nuwa ponders before responding, “Although the symbolic value of the people’s belief in the Avatar holds meaning, what should matter more is how closely the people can embody the values of balance and light within themselves. If people are always waiting around for the Avatar to save them, wouldn’t we be relegated as permanent babysitters?”
“Obviously, not everyone can have powerful abilities like Aang. They might not even be a bender, but they can still spread light and balance in this world through small actions. Maybe, all it would have taken was a few hugs and caring words for Ozai not to become obsessed with power as he is now.”
“...”
Breaking the long silence following Nuwa’s monologue, Azula chuckles and says, “Um.. for me, it took love and lots of attention.”
Xai Bau looks at Nuwa with great appreciation, “You are wise beyond your years, child.”
Iroh thinks sorrowfully at how the brotherhood between Ozai and himself was twisted by his father’s militant values and ruthlessness. Ozai soon became an even more extreme version of his father in an effort to make him proud.
In fact, Azulon loved both his sons, but he never showed it because he was too proud to display his feelings so openly. However, by doing so, he created a tyrant. Even though Azulon waged war upon the world and had no limits to the lengths he would go to bring prosperity to the Fire Nation, he would never stoop to abusing his own children. At most, he was guilty of emotional neglect and setting a bad role model.
Ozai was fine with verbally abusing Zuko about how inferior he was to Azula. He seemed to relish in Zuko’s indignation and rage, treating his son like a toy to entertain himself and to get back at Ursa.
Iroh calms down his turbulent mind and says, “Yes, spreading balance is one of my goals when sharing tea with strangers.”
Xai Bau looks at him unconvinced, “How’s a cup of tea supposed to change minds?”
Iroh looks into the distance with fond remembrance, “It changed mine. Maybe, it can change theirs too.”
Bumi slams Iroh’s back, which fully empties his lungs, “Hahaha! It’s all about the mindset! You’ll definitely succeed, young man!”
Every time Bumi calls him “young man”, Iroh feels an urge to cough, but then again Bumi is more than double his age, so It’s hard to argue about that.
Piandao pitches in, “That’s why he’s the Grand Lotus, is it not? There’s a certain charm to his philosophy that anything can be solved when we sit down and have a cup of tea with each other.”
Pakku adds, “That’s right. Iroh is great at tea-mbuilding.”
Bumi gives a big belly laugh while pointing at Iroh, “WAHAHAHA, let’s not TEA-se him too much guys!”
Everyone starts laughing, except Nuwa, who is trying to come up with some words with tea in them for the sake of memes. No one notices though, because Nuwa automatically starts up her [Acting] when the awkwardness hits. Her [Acting] makes her do some kind of strange action that resembles the ending of a long laugh despite not starting the laugh.
Aiwei turns his head to Nuwa with fear when she starts her [Acting]. Aiwei was born as a truth seer. He never reveals this because it tends to get him isolated from those around him. The best cover he can come up with is that he’s trained himself to listen to heartbeats to be able to tell the truth.
In reality, Aiwei has what he considers a sixth sense for truth that he knows no one else has. Whenever someone is lying, he sees a red aura around them. He’s just gotten used to living a normal life with his ability by mostly pretending it doesn’t exist. If he blocks out his reactions when people lie, then they won’t feel so uncomfortable around him. The problem was that when Nuwa laughed just then, he saw a towering red inferno rising to the heavens over her head.
The moment Nuwa notices Aiwei’s fear, she gets cold sweat down her back. “He knows! There’s no other explanation! He can tell when I’m [Acting]! If I’m not careful, he can expose everything to Azula and Iroh!” Nuwa tries to regain enough calm for her to be able to stop [Acting], but every time she tries, she thinks of the worst case scenario and her [Acting] starts up again.
Aiwei calms down and tries to figure out why Nuwa’s aura is so red. She can’t be a traitor to the Order because she wasn’t lying when she talked about invading the Fire Nation and she wasn’t lying about finding out the Day of the Black Sun from Wan Shi Tong’s library. In fact, she displayed total honesty up until now.
Aiwei didn’t understand what these things were, but he noted them down as important when he heard them. Internally, he’s thinking, ‘It could be that she’s a habitual liar, but temporarily working on behalf of the Order for her own interests. She’s a dangerous person, so I’m definitely not allowed to be attracted to her that way. But.. dat ass, dem titties..’
As Aiwei’s vague sexual fantasies start transmitting to Nuwa’s consciousness through her Dao Core of Sex, Nuwa finally manages to calm down knowing that she can manipulate the shit out of Aiwei if needed. Just for safety, Nuwa lets two sex daons orbit around Aiwei so that his perversion passively increases without affecting his character.
Aiwei coughs and asks, “What is the Day of the Black Sun?”
Piandao adopts a severe expression and says, “In the ancient scrolls of the Fire Nation, it is said that the first Day of the Black Sun was the darkest day in Fire Nation history. What we know is that firebending does not work during these events and they occur hundreds of years apart.”
Xai Bau breathes rapidly in excitement hearing the details. He assumed that there would be some strategic advantage, but he thought it would just be something like waterbending working better at night, not disabled firebending!
Pakku, Bumi, and Iroh keep their calm. Azula says, “There’s nothing to get too excited over, Xai Bau. Like Nuwa said, firebending will only be disabled for 8 minutes. Even though the Fire Nation will be weakened throughout the day, they will still be a formidable force of destruction once they regain their bearings and take homeground advantage. Most of their powerful weapons will still function that day if they double up on the firebenders manning them. We will not be able to destroy them all in such a short time.”
Nuwa nods, “There is also the matter of what to do after the war. The Fire Nation colonies that have expanded into Earth Kingdom are already too far outside the grasp of either the Fire Nation or Earth Nation to rule.”
“To avoid tensions over which Nation gets custody of the land or a restart to the war over this issue, it’s better that the colonies be recognized as a neutral trading and negotiation ground for all Nations. It can be an independent Nation recognized by all Nations and a representative of true unity and balance. I have Lord Beifong’s support in building this city already.”
As everyone shows hope and optimism, Xai Bau displays some doubt, “Who would be leading this Independent Unified Nation? What’s the guarantee that they won’t build an army of earth, water, and firebenders capable of using teamwork to destroy any opposition?”
Nuwa smiles and nods, “You’re right. They can create an army to be reckoned with, but that is the prerogative of the people. We can only do our best to instill values of balance. This is our best option to disperse the hatred of the Fire Nation and continue mediating the differences between the Nations in a controlled manner otherwise there will be an endless cycle of war. With an independent trading Nation, at most there would be a few gangs. All-out genocide will assuredly be a thing of the past.”
Although Xai Bau doesn’t seem fully convinced, he agrees that it’s a good option to stop the fighting. After some silence, Xai Bau looks at Aiwei with a signal.
Aiwei asks hesitantly, “Nuwa, do you think kingdoms or rulers need to exist in order to have balance?”
Xai Bau adds, “I believe as long as a ruler class exists, society will always have suffering.”
Piandao sighs and shakes his head.
Nuwa takes a moment to think and decides she’s going to generalize based off of what happened with Kuvira following Zaheer’s assassination of the Earth Queen and what happened during the French Revolution.
She takes a deep breath to prepare for a monologue “It depends on your definition of balance. When we speak of balance, we mean maintaining enough peace for the commoners of the world to be able to live comfortable lives. When insane people speak of balance, they may define it as returning society to the times when it was the law of the jungle and the strong eat the weak.”
“As for the topic of the ruling class, if we assassinate every topmost ruler right now, every Nation would run into a civil war. Nobles would fight amongst each other by paying the peasants to wage war on their behalf. Once the peasants got tired of waging constant war, a strong enough ruler with charisma would come along to unite them all through war.”
“Despite these rulers being strong and charismatic, they would typically be dictators who deprive the people of their freedom due to their distrust in their own people. They have distrust because if one person has all the power, it also attracts plenty of greed. Therefore, they will try everything to gain even more power and take away power from those below them.”
“If we removed rulers in favor of giving the people freedom, then it would ultimately leave them with stronger rulers and lesser freedom.”
“The reason that societies automatically organize themselves into commoner-and-ruler classes is a more complicated topic. Removing the entire ruler class given the current state of the world and opening anarchy would lead to humans devolving into animals who commit every sort of sin imaginable simply because they can. In a way, the ruler class imposes structure on the commoner class who cannot afford to think about the rules while they are starving or suffering. If we had an educated commoner class, they too can take over this role of upholding the rules.”
“I take these concerns into account as part of my precepts for founding the Independent Nation. The elected rulers of the Nation would themselves be commoners and have strict term limits to prevent them from abuse of their position which would be the likely result of long-term grasp over power.”
Xai Bau freezes up. He’s secretly considered becoming a militant anarchist and honestly thinks that eliminating the ruling class would naturally return power to the people. He never considered the fact that most people WANT to be part of a structure where they are told what to do and what not to do because that structure is what gives their lives stability.
Aiwei is shook inside. Nuwa was telling the truth the entire time! She dismantled his mentor’s philosophies like paper! He sees Xai Bau giving him a glance at him and makes the “truth” signal by adjusting his glasses with one finger on the bridge.
Xai Bau is not an idiot. Seeing the wisdom in Nuwa’s words compounded with the confirmation that Nuwa is not fooling him, he slumps with defeat. His thinking has been twisted by years of extremist beliefs so hearing about the plan of returning power to the people slowly through elections in an Independent Nation doesn’t excite him like anarchy does.
Aiwei, on the other hand, is extremely excited. ‘I’ve met an incredibly smart woman! She’s in the same Order as me! We might meet every night! She’s mysterious, but kind! Is.. this love?’
He seems a bit too easily affected by the sex daons. It’s hardly his fault though, seeing as he is just 14 in the prime of puberty and Nuwa is a total bombshell who licked her lips at him earlier.
While Aiwei is hiding his raging boner at her intellectual prowess, Nuwa is hoping that her speech helps Xai Bau reconsider his decision to create the Red Lotus.
In fact, Nuwa thought a lot about the political science of the Avatar Record while she was bored growing up. She thought about the kind of world she wanted to help shape. She doesn’t crave fame or political power. Nuwa wanted to leave a mark on this world before she left, in a way that she was unable to do in her first life.
For Nuwa, that means having big accomplishments that she can brag about, lots of fun adventures, a place in the history books, and maybe even a child or two. As her mind comes around to leaving a legacy on this world, Nuwa caresses her belly unconsciously.
The old-timers further discuss the intricacies of Nuwa’s earlier monologue with praise and agreement. Meanwhile, Nuwa zones out with a strange feeling of gratitude towards the [System]. For all its scheming to increase her power and fucking around with her emotions, she owes it for getting a second chance at life, finding love, and being able to leave behind a legacy that she can be proud of.
Unlike in the first life where the [System] taught her many things and acted as a surrogate parent, mentor, and friend, the [System] rarely speaks to her in this life. It seems to be content letting her experience life without its constant nagging. Out of impulse, Nuwa suddenly starts a conversation with the [System] for the first time in her second life.
“Hey [System], remember that time when I cosplayed as Krystal McCloud and I caught John fapping to furry porn on four different occasions over the next two months?”
*Yes.*
“Did you tell me to cosplay as Krystal knowing that would happen?”
*Yes.*
“That was fun, I’m glad you told me to do so.”
*It was part of Host’s training.*
“...Will you always take care of me, [System]?”
*System will facilitate your Goddess training.*
“I know.. But I also know that learning the Dao includes suffering. [System], promise me you won’t involve Heza’s baby in your schemes. Whatever they are, just leave the baby alone. Please, I’m begging you.”
*Ok.*
“Really? You agreed just like that?”
*Yes.*
Nuwa exhales a big sigh of relief audibly as she grabs Azula’s hand with a smile. Azula turns to see Nuwa with her other hand to her belly smiling at her adorably. Even though her face was blurry, she intuitively knows that something about Nuwa is different from her usual demeanor. Somehow, she seems more “real”?