Chapter 77 – Baby Don’t Hurt Me
While the mercenaries are disoriented, June shouts and points to the Commander and Nyla immediately flicks her tongue at him. The Commander is taken by surprise and gets injected by the paralyzing venom on the shirshu's tongue. June snaps her whip and wraps him up, then lifts him with Dan’s aid onto Nyla, who retreats while dodging fire blasts.
Azula deflects a fire blast aimed at June and shouts, “Stop! Engineers, don’t move!”
At this point, Nyla has been directed to retreat behind the engineers, who were frozen in fear at the sudden confrontation. The mercenaries and the gang enter a deadlock. The mercenaries can’t throw fire blasts amidst the engineers, because they would be punished by the family if they are responsible for allowing such a huge loss of intellectuals to happen. They also calm down seeing that Azula is a firebender like them, but did not show any aggression towards them.
Zulrath’s face isn’t well known to the public because she spends so much time indoors and out of the public eye. Stella’s face is actually well known to spies from the Fire Nation. Her priority as a target is on the same level as Toph since they know she’s the shadow ruler of Ba Sing Se and the one who improved the Earth Kingdom military in ways that Long Feng could never have done.
Azula says, “I apologize for taking your commander hostage, but you have two friends of mine that I need returned. I’m sure whatever they were doing or any sort of confrontation you may have had can be smoothed out with some negotiations or money, perhaps? From one Fire Nation family to another, we can always help each other.”
So far none of the members of the gang have employed bending in noticable ways. Toph bent sand when she busted in, but that could be misconstrued as a weak spot in the building. Dan bent blood when he helped pick up the commander, but that could also be misconstrued as June’s arm strength. The commander couldn’t feel anything due to the fast-paralysis venom, so he wouldn’t have realized he was bloodbent either. Xai Bau and Aiwei are nonbenders, so the only one who bent was Azula to deflect fire blasts. This all gave credence to the story that they were part of a Fire Nation family as well.
A rough looking mercenary who Azula recognizes as the second-in-command steps up. He says with a slightly greedy look in his eyes, “Third brigade vice-commander of the Zata family greets you. Who might you be?”
Azula curses internally, ‘Fucking Zatas meddling everywhere and throwing their weight around. Compromise is even less likely when it comes to these idiots. From what Nuwa said she heard from Piandao, we suspect that the Zata family is colluding with either the Polu, Turo, or Siam families. Let me take a random pick.’
Azula blasts a huge fireball into a nearby wall, melting and charring a large 3m wide potion of it to demonstrate her superiority over all the mercenaries there in firebending before narrowing her eyes at the second-in-command and saying, “Secret corps commander of the Turo family.”
The rough man puts on a serious face at the devastation Azula causes without breaking a sweat and his greed recedes to make way for fear and respect. He smiles and chuckles, “Ahaha, well we have no dealings with the Turo family. I’m sure we can work something out. These two were caught sneaking into our forward trading base and damaging our equipment. Would you happen to know why they would do that?”
Azula nods and responds, “They must have thought that this was an Earth military research facility. They’re coming up with strange gadgets these days. Regardless, seeing that our glorious Fire Nation is making headway into the Earth Kingdom is good news for both our families. Did they try to clarify the misunderstanding?”
The rough man squints and can’t remember if they tried to talk, but one of his soldiers comes up and whispers in his ear that Aiwei was dressed a bit too lavishly for a typical Earth Kingdom boy, and a bit too skilled at subterfuge for a typical Earth Kingdom noble. Moreover, the old man was obviously a martial arts ace when he still had his guandao and never went for fatal blows even after he saw the firebending.
Squinting further such that his eyes were thin lines, the rough man replies with an ugly smile, “It seems that we’ve had a misunderstanding Miss Commander. But still, the monetary loss to the equipment and our injured men..?”
Azula offers a disarming smile and says, “Of course, I will cover it. As long as the two friends of mine are returned safely, I will return your commander similarly unharmed as well as pay you. Seeing as we aren’t friends or enemies, we should do this in an absolutely fair manner. I will put this bag of gold coins in your temporarily paralyzed Commander’s backpack.”
She opens it up and gives them all a look at the gold, then shakes it so that they can hear the sound of clinking to estimate the amount. Even a single gold coin is enough to repair all the equipment and several are enough to heal the soldiers, so Azula includes about twice as much as they need, about 30 gold coins.
The rough man’s smile becomes more genuine as he senses Azula’s generosity, but most of the soldiers still have their guard up for tricks. These mercenaries have been through all sorts of scams and perpetrated some themselves, so they’ll remain on guard for as long as it takes until the coins are in their pockets.
Azula continues, “Then, we will move the hostages between the neutral ground of where the scientists are currently standing.” By now, the Zata brigade commander is awake and understands the situation as his paralysis slowly subsides. Shirshu venom doesn't last long. His hands are tied and he’s to be involved in a hostage swap, which is a bit of a humiliation, but nothing compared to keeping his own life.
The Zata commander is stood up by Azula and June, and he’s allowed to pace back and forth with some support from June until he can walk normally. Then he and the captives of Aiwei and Xai Bau are allowed to walk into the neutral grounds unaccompanied. The commander presses down the hate in his heart for these two idiots who caused so much mayhem and are getting away scot-free and rolls his hand across the pouch of gold coins in his pack to calm down.
The moment Xai Bau and Aiwei are near, Azula grabs them by the collar and tosses them on top of Nyla. Azula then cups her fist towards the vice-commander and commander and says, “My apologies again for the misunderstanding. I will train my troops more carefully.” The vice-commander thinks, ‘With all this gold, I’m totally fine with misunderstandings!’ But of course he can’t say that out loud with injured underlings nearby. The commander’s voice is still slurry so he just grunts in acknowledgement and signals his troops to stand down.
June rides Nyla out of the hole that Azula melted earlier. Toph is once again upset that there isn't a fight, but she finds that pretending can also be fun.
A few minutes pass and the commander tries to recall where he saw June’s face before. Then he remembers, “Oh yeah! She’s June, the #1 bounty hunter of the Earth and Fire Nations! Only she has a tamed shirshu to stake down bounties. Was that boy some high value individual? Is that why he had such a powerful bodyguard and that Turo Commander was willing to spend so much money to hire June to stake him down and capture him herself? We could probably have earned hundreds of gold coins if we had sent him to the Zata main base and waited for the proper intelligence!”
The commander slaps the second-in-command on the back of the head, “You idiot! You should have ordered the troops to capture them the moment the swap finished! Gah!” The rough man gives a resentful glance at his superior and thinks, ‘You were the one to order us to stand down! You didn't see the size of that girl's fire blast either!’ The commander shouts, “After them, you fools! They can’t have gone far.”
Unfortunately, the gang and their contingency had already left by the time the Zata mercenaries found a large open space full of eelhound footprints in the sand. The commander stomps on the ground and orders an engineer to draw Aiwei’s face for priority capture. He put all of the blame for his humiliation and imaginary loss of money on poor little Aiwei! If he had known that Aiwei is currently using Nuwa’s breasts as pillows while sleeping and getting healed by Katara, he might have gotten an aneurysm out of rage.
When Azula came back, Aiwei cried and hugged Nuwa immediately. Despite being their first time meeting in real life without her blurry face, Aiwei could recognize the bombshell body of his big sis anywhere. Xai Bau received some paltry first aid from Katara before Nuwa forced her to focus all her healing on Aiwei.
Azula also hurried them up so that if the Zata brigade changes its mind, they do not go to blows with the Dai Li. This would complicate the matter by causing the Zata to think that she’s either not from the Turo family or the Turo family are traitors. Even if the gang captures all of the Zata brigade in its entirety, they don’t have the manpower to move them or hold them. These small-scale skirmishes have to wait until after they arrive to reinforce Omashu where they can get more manpower and transportation. Azula also reminded Gunner to pay a messenger to tell his crew to avoid Misty Palms Oasis and pass through other towns.
On Appa, Nuwa strokes Aiwei’s head as he sleeps peacefully. Azula joins her on Appa this time, letting Dan lead the eelhounds. She hugs Nuwa from the side.
Nuwa says, “Thanks for bringing him back in one piece, babe.”
Azula responds, “Yeah, yeah. I know how much you like him.”
Whining, Nuwa asks, “Don’t you want to protect him? Who could resist this innocent face?”
Azula ponders and says, “Hmm, I only feel that way about you and our baby.”
Nuwa hums in response and says, “I love you” as she rests her head on Azula’s shoulder. Azula kisses Nuwa’s forehead and says, “Me too.”
Meanwhile, Nuwa is [Acting] while deep in thought about the intricacies of how love works. ‘Even though I’m shipping Aiwei and June, I feel like I hate it. I keep having urges that Aiwei should belong to me! Do I love him or is it just the interaction between our Innate abilities?’
‘If I wasn’t born in the Avatar Record, would I have fallen in love with someone else besides Azula?'
'Do destined partners exist?'
'If Azula did not exist, would I have raised an ideal partner from birth for myself?'
'Maybe my maternal love towards my son would have blossomed into romance? All of these sound nice when it comes to satisfying my fetishes, but I can’t imagine my love towards Azula being superseded by anything else, even by my feelings for Aiwei.'
'What is love?’
‘Since canon Azula is supposed to be a crazy bitch, and my presence here changed her, do I only love her due to the time I invested in her, the feelings she’s invested in me, and the trials we’ve overcome together?'
'If my second life was in another Record, and someone loves me just as much as Azula, would I be able to ruthlessly deny him or her my love?’
‘I think I am ruthless enough to deny them that, but it depends on how much I like them. The more I like their personality, morals, habits, and my sexual interactions with them, the more reluctant I would be to deny them my love. If this happens in my next Record, would splitting my love this way be betraying Azula?’
[Bisected Dao Core of Sex ] - Synchronization +3%, Total: 5%
‘Sigh.. just what is love?’
(A/N: Poor Aiwei.. just trying to do his best as an Earth Kingdom spy. Nuwa is deep in the annals of philosophy while feeling odd compulsions towards building a harem!)