Chapter 92 – Showdown

Zuko remains in the throne room. He’s not strong enough to use fire thrusters to cover the kind of distance they look like they’re going to cover. He turns around and looks at the death-rattled advisors and Hamid. Zuko then speaks with as much dignity as he can muster, “As the Crown Prince of the Fire Nation, I order you to open negotiations for a peace treaty with the rebels.” Hamid salutes with a proud smile and says, “Yes, my lord.”

The Zata Lord catches on to the unfavorable situation of their forces in the city and knows that it’s time to abandon ship, otherwise he will be imprisoned. Among the noble families, he’s one of the few who attached all of his influence onto Ozai and has no connections to less militant factions. He slinks out of the city alone among a crowd of scared refugees fleeing into the countryside, then uses fire thrusters to fly to a remote area where a hot-air balloon with a week of rations is pre-prepared.

Nuwa catches sight of Ozai and the others flying out of the city after the eclipse ends and hurries up her flight with fire thrusters instead of a casual glide. She swoops down and flies by Aang’s side. Nuwa shouts over the sound of the roaring airstream, “Hey Aang, are you ready?”

Aang replies, “A bit more time to learn firebending would have been nice, but otherwise I’m great!”

Nuwa shouts back, “Should I cripple one of his limbs before letting him fight you?”

Twitching, Aang says, “Of course not! Anyway, I have to beat him myself or it wouldn’t feel right!”

Nuwa doesn’t really like Aang’s chances of going up against a full power Ozai, who has a tier 2 soul, by himself. “I don’t think you’ll be able to win without the Avatar mode, Aang.”

Shaking his head, Aang says, “It doesn’t matter. I have to try my best. Even if I am losing, but Raava helps me win with the Avatar mode, my purpose of ending the grudge will still be fulfilled. Sozin killed off the air nomads after Roku’s death to prevent the next Avatar, who would be born in the Air Nation, from stopping his war. Although it will be very belated, as the Avatar, I must do my duty to help end this war. Even if no one sees the fight other than us, I still have to defeat him for my own peace of mind.”

Nuwa says, “Very well. It looks like they’re stopping.” They stop over one of the many active volcanoes on the Fire Nation mainland. This one is not erupting violently. Instead, it oozes out lava continuously in a benign manner, which, over a long period of time, slowly expands the size of the Fire Nation island chain once the lava solidifies upon exposure to air and water.

Ozai must have picked this area strategically, because there is little water nearby and some of the earth here is too hot to earthbend properly. It’s obvious that he’s prepared to fight against the Avatar if necessary. He can’t keep running or else he’ll run out of chi, which would put him at a further disadvantage because Iroh, Azula, and Aang can take turns resting once they all run out of chi for fire thrusters. He also has no doubt that the Avatar can outdo him in aerial stamina with his airbending.

Once they start fighting without chi, then he’ll really be trapped. Now at least, he’s in a favorable region. There’s not enough volcanic gas in the air for it to be poisonous and only firebending and airbending work well. Ozai still holds the belief that he’s stronger than both Azula and Iroh individually in firebending, which is untrue. His fire is strongest in wide-scale destruction, whereas Azula specializes in small-scale complete disintegration and Iroh specializes in calming and soothing. Their individual battle-powers are approximately equal now with Azula’s upgrade in soul tier.

Azula and Iroh get on either side of Ozai, about 30m (100 ft) away, to intercept any further escape attempts. Ozai considers shooting lightning, but he knows that both of them can redirect it when they’re prepared, and doing so would be a waste of chi. Then he sees Aang and Nuwa approaching in midair. He smirks and shoots a few small bolts of lightning at Aang.

Nuwa and Aang both employ evasive maneuvers and dodge. The distance between them and Ozai is far, so he isn’t able to ensure accuracy. It seems to be a distraction, because he shoots a thick lightning bolt at Iroh after that. Iroh isn’t distracted though. He summons his tea spark and the lightning bolt slows. Then, he accepts the bolt into his body with one hand in the typical manner of redirection, but instead of allowing it to flow through his arms and out the other hand, he circulates the lightning in his Heart chakra and the tea spark calms it down enough for it rebalance and disperse into chi again.

Although Nuwa doesn’t catch the full process while landing, she’s pretty sure that Iroh is doing a big flex of his ability to recover his own chi with an opponent’s fire chi. Ozai is confused that his attack had no effect, but he has more to worry about now that he’s surrounded by four enemies.

The air is dreary and quiet with the soft oozing of the lava and only occasional fume bubbles escaping the magma. Nuwa chooses this time to store her own Stella Face Mask in her [Inventory] and winks at the group. She’s confident in the pending defeat of Ozai.

Azula reveals an enamored look and her pussy gets wet. She hasn’t had sex for almost two weeks and it was even more brutal for her than it was for Nuwa. Azula is used to creampieing Nuwa once daily, at minimum. If Ozai had more awareness, he might have noticed that Azula would have been easily defeated at that moment if he had shot a bolt of lightning at her, given her preoccupation with her sexual fantasies.

Nuwa blushes when she senses Azula’s lustful, aggressive gaze on her body and face. Even though she’s out of the range of Nuwa’s daon field, Nuwa can still sense her sexual fantasies through a strange combination of knowing her too well, having been fully acquainted with her life essence energy internally and externally, and a distance boost due to how much they love each other.

There’s a vague telepathic bond slowly forming between them the more sex they have with each other and the more they love each other. The preliminary version of this was Azula’s ‘Nuwa Radar’ back when Azula was only obsessively infatuated with Nuwa. At that time, she was fingering herself daily and lingering Dao ripples of sex from close contact with Nuwa throughout the day were still influencing her soul. Now that bond is becoming stronger.

Ozai squints as Nuwa walks close enough that they are all equidistant with Ozai. Recognizing her, he shouts, “Nuwa? Ty Lee Pea! You’re a bender?! The Pea family has benders?!”

In fact, the Pea family isn’t deemed much of a threat because they are known not to have benders in their main line. They didn’t marry benders either, because if they did have benders, the other families would deem them too much of a threat. It’s exceedingly difficult to hide the fact that one is a bender, so many of the plots against their family in the past were due to firebending spontaneously appearing in heirs of the main family line.

Nuwa smiles sweetly at Ozai and says, “Hello, Uncle..”

Ozai shivers with rage and unexpected arousal, staring at her face and hearing her sultry voice as if she’s whispering in his ear. He always had a good impression of her, considering her a strong warrior since she could square off with Azula. He even considered taking her as his new wife after Ursa’s banishment because her body and voice are inordinately beautiful.

However, her blatantly perverted behavior, which was somewhere between an open secret and a running joke among noble society, meant that he couldn’t be associated with her in any way, otherwise it would besmirch his honor. Ozai felt it was truly a pity at the time, but now he realized that it was all a ploy! Well, to be fair, her perverted behavior was not in any way faked, but it was a distraction from her true self. Her true self is that of a Femme Fatale. She’ll seduce you, then stab you in the back!

Maybe Iroh has convinced the whole Pea family to be spies for the Earth Kingdom! Ozai’s rage at the betrayal of one of the most unassuming Noble families among his former court pushes him into an all-out attack. He boosts himself at Nuwa fist first with the intent to smash her head in with his fist.

Nuwa knows the effect she has on people. After sex, she considers manipulation of others as one of her top strengths. Nuwa clearly knows the effect a shattered good impression can have on others. She taps her elemental node [E-Vibe], transformed into a staff, onto the ground. An earth spike pops up out of the ground in Ozai’s path, ignoring the fact that the earth is hotter than she should be able to bend. The node lets her ‘balance’ the temperature.

Bumping his shoulder on the surprise earth spike, Ozai’s flight path veers out of control and Aang throws a horizontal air blast with his glider so that Ozai doesn’t crash into him. Ozai rights himself in midair with the vertical boost from the air blast and growls, feeling the bruise on his shoulder. He thinks that the Avatar did the earthbending. He’s still mad at Nuwa, but Aang is already on the attack.

Aang spirals up in a jump and does a horizontal air blast with a spiral kick from above. Ozai pulls his arms up to defend against the air and is only pushed back, but his hovering fire thrusters are disoriented by the air currents. Correcting his flight, Ozai and Aang trade fire blasts and air blasts while grappling for aerial dominance for several tense minutes. Ozai preserves his chi while noting that the other three are only watching and spreading out farther to prevent him from escaping. This adds to his stress, because he will eventually tire out, even if Aang’s air and fire blasts are weak. Flight takes a lot more effort for him than it does for Aang.

Ozai starts to zoom around looking for a way out of the encirclement, but Aang doggedly pursues him with his own fire boosters. With frustration building, Ozai waits for Aang to get close and throws a double fist fire blast and then a midair flip with a fiery axe kick to top off the combo.

Prior to this, Aang randomly notices a depressed Momo behind him. No one knows how Momo finds his way to the battlefield. They all assumed that he found some hot lemur chick and left to have a family four months ago because none of them have seen him since then. After all, just like Aang, he too is the last known survivor of the winged lemur race. For him to leave meant that he’s pursuing his dreams. Aang freaks the fuck out and thinks, ‘Why does he look like he got dumped by his girlfriend? Now’s the wrong time, Momo!’

Aang deftly pushes himself out of the way of the first two fire blasts with alternating fire thrusters and light air blasts so that the fire blasts don’t scald him, but he’s forced to take the axe kick to protect Momo. He falls slightly as he blows air upward to nullify the flames on the axe kick so they don’t scald him and switches to fire thrusters as Ozai’s heavy kick makes contact with both of his arms crossed over his head. There’s a heavy thud and Aang crashes onto the ground with a final air blast to slow his descent enough that he falls, but not enough that he is injured further.

Coughing up some dust and caressing his bruised arms, Aang shouts “Get out of here, Momo! Go to Nuwa!” Ozai zooms in his attention on the little pet lemur and realizes why Aang didn’t dodge his axe kick. Chuckling sinisterly, he drops into a dive, during which he charges himself with lightning. Dropping onto an earth platform, Ozai fires a huge bolt of lightning directly at Momo.

Aang intercepts the lightning with one hand, but it’s far stronger than he’s used to practicing with, and he ends up missing his redirect while trying to aim it at or near Ozai. It flubs into the air and Ozai is already diving even closer. “Hurry Momo!”

Momo finally feels the danger of the situation after seeing the lightning and though he’s depressed enough to wish for death, he still takes off as fast as he can manage, which to the powerhouses here is a slow glide.

Aang throws a large air blast at Ozai and follows it with a few fire blasts. Finally he stomps the ground to try to raise a few rocks to earthbend, but the ground here is too hot. If he was on the raised platform that Ozai was on, he would have been able to.

Ozai blocks the air blast with his forearms and increases his propulsion to maintain his initial speed, then he casually swats away the fire blasts while still approaching. He wants to get into a melee with Aang. He outclasses Aang in muscles and firepower, but Aang is too agile. He can tell that Aang and the lemur are similar in that aspect, they’re both slippery. However, the lemur can’t protect himself from large fire blasts.

Now Aang has to bodily protect Momo while he’s retreating, at least until Nuwa can rush over and get Momo out. Ozai dives straight into a point-blank air blast from Aang. In his excitement, he did lose his focus slightly, so he kneels on the ground with one hand, knee, and foot to halt his backward momentum. He pushes off again with fire thrusters and uses two continuous jets of flame to attack Aang.

Aang returns in kind with two continuous jets of air, but as Ozai approaches, Aang feels that it’s more and more difficult to match up to his chi output and power. Finally, Ozai and Aang lock hands and are looking at each other’s faces. Ozai smirks and says, “You’re weak, just like all the other air nomads. Then he looks behind Aang and sees Nuwa rushing with panic towards Momo from 100m (328 ft) away. “Let’s see if you can protect one of the last of your pitiful kind..”

Then Ozai headbutts Aang and while Aang is recoiled, instead of taking the chance to attack Aang with fire or lightning at point-blank range, in a typical anime villain fashion, he shoots a massive fireball out of his mouth at the retreating Momo, who is still close by.

Aang’s eyes widen in utter fear as his head is upside down watching the massive fireball approach Momo, without any way for Momo to swerve out of its way in time. His hands are helplessly held in place by Ozai, unable to help at all. With desperation, he calls into himself, “Raava, I need you!”

The air stagnates and a heavy blanket of spiritual oppression falls upon the battlefield. Ozai’s eyes shrink to pinpoints as he sees the airbender tattoos light up. He knows of the Avatar mode from the Royal family scriptures. The Avatar is a guillotine hanging above the head of every ruler who tries to disrupt the balance. In the past, any ruler who attempted to commit genocides would be ruthlessly killed by an Avatar. It doesn’t matter how large their armies are. A trained Avatar in Avatar mode can wipe them all out.

Just as Ozai lets go, Raava snaps her head up and with glowing eyes and an angry expression, air blasts him with enough power that he shoots off like a cannon. Immediately after, Raava slams both her hands down onto the ground and a huge earthen slope pushes out of the ground at a 45 degree angle far behind her position between the fireball and Momo.

The fireball partly explodes and partly deflects off the thick slab of earth. Momo sweats heavily at the close shave, finally makes it to Nuwa’s bosom, and starts crying in an exaggerated manner. He’s trying to explain his girl troubles, but Nuwa has no idea what he’s talking about, and berates him for being reckless. She’s immune to lemur tears.

Raava, of course, is destroying Ozai. There’s not even a contest. She collects a ring of air, earth, water, and fire around her and floats around like she’s the shit. Nuwa thinks, ‘Well duh you can beat him if you have 10,000 years of experience from past lives.’

She also thinks it’s quite anticlimactic with how everything goes like it goes in canon. Ozai is beaten up, drained of chi due to his escape attempts and attacks, and is restrained thoroughly with earthbending on a wide raised platform. Raava is about to go for the kill with some sort of overly dramatic multi-elemental death ray, but Aang stops her by taking control of his body again. He says to Ozai, “I’m not a killer. I’m not like you, but I will take away your power so that you can’t misuse it to hurt people! You’ll be imprisoned until you understand your wrongs.”

Aang throws an air blast in Ozai’s mouth so that he’s momentarily winded and can’t firebreathe. Then he places his right thumb on Ozai’s Third Eye chakra on his forehead and left thumb on Ozai’s Heart chakra. Ozai enters a semi-conscious state now that he’s drained of chi and two of his chakra points are pressed. Aang begins the energybending technique of Chakra Manipulation.

Both Aang and Ozai’s chakras light up through their bodies and they glow for hundreds of meters. Aang’s chakra glows blue and Ozai’s glows red. Nuwa, Azula, Iroh, and Momo watch in worry. They aren’t sure if Aang has the determination required to pull this off.

Aang feels his chakras merging with Ozai and begins grappling with the malignant nature of Ozai’s chakras and thoughts. The only thing Ozai cares about is strength and honor. He has somehow forcefully expanded his Solar Plexus chakra, which correlates to a personality of strength and determination. He is at a higher soul tier than Aang and, despite his soul being unstable, that one chakra of his is far more developed than any of Aang’s chakras.

Ozai’s powerful will to conquer all under heaven begins to usurp Aang’s persona. ‘If I have so much power, couldn’t I take over the world and rebuild the air nomads much easier? I wouldn’t have to worry about Katara, Momo, or any of my friends getting hurt with so much power. Everything would be easy. I could have a life of riches. I could have hundreds of women give birth to little airbenders. Consent is unnecessary. I can even impregnate Nuw-’

Before he can finish that thought, he’s woken up by a feeling of disgust deep within him for thinking of raping his own mother/big sister/mentor figure. He once again humbly asks for help from Raava to help his willpower overcome Ozai’s domineering Willpower. Raava cannot get involved in the actual energybending process, but she disperses a bit of soul force to further pressure Ozai’s already unstable soul and his Will begins to crack.

Aang swoops in and inserts his own peaceful chakra and Will in the cracks. Slowly, Aang’s Will of Ahimsa overcomes Ozai’s broken Will to Conquer, mostly because conquering relies on winning, whereas he’s already lost. His Will is already shaky. Aang’s blue chakra spreads all throughout Ozai’s red chakra. Only prior to the chakra merger are all the steps difficult. Aang now easily rewires Ozai’s chakra systems to make him a non-bender, and terminates the chakra merger.

Azula and Iroh fly over to the platform and gaze upon the defeated form of Ozai emotionally. Nuwa follows them but checks on Aang’s bruises on his head and arms, then his chakras for abnormalities. Sensing none, she sighs in relief.

Appa flies over with Aiwei and roars in happiness when he sees Momo. Aang laughs at the fact that Appa came over here on his own against Aiwei’s wishes when he sensed Momo nearby. Aang continues laughing loudly and looks towards the south in memory of the Southern Air Temple. He leaks tears of happiness hugging Nuwa with a huge shit-eating grin on his face. He and his friends have completed one of his life’s greatest goals, restoring the honor of the Air Nation!

(A/N: Another long chapter. This isn’t the end of the arc guys.. Sorry for those who are eagerly waiting for ATLA to wrap up. There’s quite a few loose plot threads that I’ll be wrapping up. Also sex scenes. Pretty sure this Fan-Fic is rushed enough as is xD)