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Phoenix of the West	By : PatPat Category: Avatar - The Last Airbender > FemmeSlash - Female/Female Views: 3846 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own Avatar: The Last Airbender, nor any of the characters from it. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.

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Phoenix of the West
“Don’t Let Her Out of Your Sight”
By Pat Squared

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Rated: Mature LATER CHAPTERS due to graphic violence and explicit sexual references! Kids sorry, you got to go someplace else.
This is a reincarnation fiction set in my version of the Avatar Universe. Enjoy.

312 Years after the Death of Jian Li
313 years after the Defeat of Ozai the Mad

Eight year old Li Ling was always a very precocious and head strong child.

According to her father, she was every bit her mother’s daughter with additional excessive interest when it came to having a fiery temper. Her reddish-brown hair and golden eyes announced to the world that she was a fire bender with the ability to maintain a temper that was unique in the known universe.

Yet unlike her mother, Li Ling would not immediately lash out, but wait for an opportune moment to unleash her temper on her unsuspecting victims. Setting up this proper moment was why she was standing in the cab of the locomotive, instead of gossiping with her agemates.

Li Ling stared at the rising cloud of vapor as the engineer opened the valve to release the superheated steam from the boilers into the pistons of the locomotive. The fire tender and the engineer’s apprentice tossed in two more shovelful of purified coal into the burning inferno. The big brass bell was clanging and the engineer let out nine blasts of steam out of the steam powered whistle to summon the dragon’s good fortune on this journey.

Li Ling was not supposed to be up here in the cab of the steam locomotive. She was supposed to be with the other carefully selected female companions of her station to preen and act like one of those spoiled fairy tale princesses. The young girl hated the concept of station. To Li Ling, a station was the place where the trains stopped to pick up more fuel, water, cargo, and passengers.

Despite years of training to the contrary, Princess Li Ling could care less about following proper decorum.

Unlike her older sister, Ming, Li Ling could care less about finding some noble brat or wonder what were the latest fashions to come out of the workshops of the Fire Nation’s most talented dressmakers. She was interested in taking things apart and seeing how things worked. Li Ling’s mother and sister would complain that she never outgrew the ‘Why?’ stage.

For Li Ling, being hidden out of site in a locomotive cab only fueled her urge to discover all the why’s that make the steam beast work. However, the young girl resisted the urge to touch the gauges and levers. She knew that she was only a guest here and to touch the controls of a locomotive was an honor that she could only dream of one day earning. Not even a queen would dare touch a lever and defile the wondrous creation that whisked travelers all over the western world.

Li Ling smiled at the young engineer’s apprentice who she talked into taking her here.

If the young girl had a choice of what to do with her life, she would willingly trade places with this young boy even if she had to single-handedly bend the flames and use up her own qi to keep the boiler pumping steam to travel around the world. There was something magical about steam and the new 4-8-2’s steam engines could travel in an hour what once took a day on a fast horse.

The young boy’s face was dirty from the grime and coal soot that normally collected around the engine.

Li Ling could care less about grease and soot on her new dress. She was a tomboy and spent her time trying to dodge the numerous etiquette instructors who tried to civilize her.

Li Ling could not see why.

She did not burp at the table. She did not just grab anything that struck her fancy, but learned the ask and say the proper words of gratitude. She knew how to eat with chopsticks without dropping food on her clothing. More importantly to her, she had carefully mastered the dirty fighting techniques of using them to strike an unsuspecting foe’s weak spots. However, the last tutor who she demonstrated the trick upon erupted in fury.

Unfortunately Li Ling’s parents heard the tutor’s screams all the way in the Fire Nation thrown room. Her mother acted like it was the end of the world that Li Ling could think such shameful things that only an assassin would think off. Her father sent her to spend the rest of the day copying those ancient scrolls that lay in the old library shelves adjoining what was one Fire Lady’s Azula’s quarters. They complained that she was a princess, not some disgraceful assassin in training.

Yet our nation’s greatest hero, Jian Li, was a disgraceful assassin and notorious womanizer, she replied.

That reply earned her ten lashes.

Li Ling then had to copy some of those old scrolls using the old style of Fire Nation calligraphy. She hated the task of laboriously copying the old scrolls. Unlike the simplified modern script used today, there were old symbols that no one used for centuries and every symbol seemed to have many more strokes then its modern counterpart.

Worst yet, was the messages contained in the old scrolls

A proper lady is meek and invisible.

A proper lady takes care of her husband and children without any though of reward.

A proper lady is grateful when her father selects any man to be her husband for she could have been only a mere concubine.

A proper lady walks to the left of and two steps behind her husband for she is her husband’s property.

No wonder why Fire Lady Azula the Seer tried to repeatedly kill the Mad Fire Lord Ozai. He probably tried to marry her off and make her walk two steps behind an idiot husband.

Li Ling resisted the urge to throw up when she had to copy those lines from the century old Fire Nation etiquette primer for girls. The rules only became more insane with every line.

If anyone was stupid enough to attempt to enforce these old rules today, just about every wife would be dragging her husband into the Agni Kai arenas and making their men walk two steps behind them once they recover from being burnt by their angry wives.

Li Ling had to read her share of ancient Fire Nation history, but could not relate to being treated like some idiot merely because she was a girl.

The old tradition of foot binding girls was outlawed out five centuries ago and the old laws prohibiting women actively participating from public life died out during the Element War three centuries ago. Today, ladies of the Fire Nation weild just as must power as their male counterparts.

Li Ling’s mother was the current Fire Lady in her own right and no one thought her weak because she wore a skirt. Her mother had fought in her youth and two Eastern Earth Kingdom admirals learned that even females could be master military strategists the hard way and paid with their lives. Li Ling’s father was merely a prince consort who her mother seduced away from Kyoshii Island.

The women of the Fire Nation and other fire bending enclaves in the West were so independent that Eastern Earth Kingdom curse now went, “May you marry a Fire Bender woman!”

Like any sane person raised Fire Nation, Li Ling would never willingly kow tao.

She would never lay on the earth and bang her forehead on the earth eight or nine times, for anyone, not even a god – unlike the nobles of the Eastern Earth Kingdom who would have to kow tao to a used napkin just because their emperor blew some snot into it. Not even the poorest waif in the gutters of the Fire Nation would kow tao for any amount of coin. Pride and face was second to only family loyalty in this place. Li Ling may have been only eight, but even she would not think twice about retaliating if someone outside her family insulted her.

And that was the crux of Li Ling’s problems.

Princess Sedna, the daughter of the Southern Water Tribe’s Ambassador to the Fire Nation and the granddaughter of the reigning chieftain of the Southern Water Tribe, was Li Ling’s confidant and best friend for the past three years.

Last month had played a joke on Li Ling. The water bender merely iced one of the steps and ensured that Li Ling would slide down the stairs and into one of the senior servants during a state dinner. Li Ling had not only lost face in public, she was sent to her room without supper and force to copy those old scrolls for a month. The only consolation prize was that Li Ling had found a pair of swords and an old oni mask behind some scroll and claimed them as her own. However, those items did not put Li Ling one up on Sedna.

Being tricked was bad. Worse, was losing face in front of her older siblings and her parents. Worst of all, Sedna had managed to pull it off without getting caught!

It was a game that the old two friends played. Get the other in trouble without getting caught. Sedna was tied and Li Ling would be damned if she let Sedna believe that she could get away with this prank and actually pull ahead of Li Ling.

Li Ling had her prank planed. It was simple, but effective.

In the Fire Nation, there is a traditional game of Hot Foot played by children and some young adults. Slowly heat the earth or the soles of the opponent’s foot until they yelp in pain. To play you had to be a fire bender and you had to be good at heating your opponent’s foot while preventing your opponent from heating your foot. With good fire benders the game has lasted as long as two days. Li Ling had to set things up so that Sedna got the soles her feet burn and put the blame on someone else.

Li Ling's plan was simple, by her standards.

Stage One – Set up the mark. There were always dances and princesses were expected to dance. Li Ling would ensure that Sedna got to break in a new pair of dance shoes and that would explain away the blisters to an adult. Li Ling would help the process by slowly heating Sedna’s feet.

Stage Two – Burn the soles of Sedna’s feet until she cries about some blisters.

Stage Three – Make sure there is no fresh water around so Sedna can’t just heal herself and had to endure some pain for a while. It was stage three that Li Ling was setting up. She had to ensure that the water tanks would not work properly. It would mean that the water closets and lavatories’ were not working, but Li Ling would make any sacrifice to win. Li Ling would win the unspoken contest and the price was just a kiss.

Li Ling motioned the boy over once the locomotive got moving.

“Thank you. Remember our deal.”

Luck Boy nodded. Li Ling hugged him and gave him a quick peck on the lips. If one of the chaperones spotted her, let’s say Agni would be lucky to find one non-bruised part of her flesh when her mother was done with her. The only archaic remnants of the old Fire Nation were the Agni Kai and the liberal use of the lash upon a certain erring princess.

Lucky Boy will be forever able to truthfully brag that he once kissed a princess. Too bad no one will believe him.

Li Ling flipped a golden talon, five days wages to the engineer and another to the fire tender.

Besides, Lucky Boy is kind of cute and smart, unlike the nose pickers at the dance.

All it cost was to give some lucky boy a couple of kisses. It was not the first time she traded a kiss for a favor, nor would it ever be the last.

As a little girl, Li Ling perfected on her father and older brother, Crown Prince Iroh. No mortal man had a chance of saying no to her once she delivered a will-sapping butterfly-kiss and the sad, puppy dog eyes. Now if only her mother and chaperones were not immune. It did not work on certain females.

To get even, Li Ling had pick-pocketed one of her chaperones to get the flying money (paper bills) to bribe the other staff on the train. It was fair for after all everyone down to the rat catchers in the Fire Nation palace knew to never let Li Ling out of their sight. The chaperone turned his back on her and he was one wallet and forty-nine gold talons lighter in the pocket – Well, forty-nine gold talons lighter as she knew from prior experience not to hang unto the evidence of one’s crimes. She left the wallet on the seat, just like it came out when he was sitting.

Li Ling smiled over the small victory. She wouldn’t be hurting for spending money for a while. Things like that just came naturally to Li Ling, like she was a thief in one of her past lives. Because of her trickery, she was being fostered to some distance cousin in the Outcast Clans for the next year meant that she would have a new round of marks against which to practice her skills.

Li Ling smiled and kissed the boy once more. From the smile on his face, she knew that she had successfully mush the boy’s brain into something as intelligence as bean curd. He would never tell as he hoped for a third and forth sometime down the line.

Li Ling snuck back to her changing room just in time to change for the tea ceremony. Ever since she was small, she hated the damn drink. Being born two-months premature meant that there were healers were always forcing the damn stuff down her throat claiming that it would build up her strength. Even eight, almost nine years later, there would be a healer stationed nearby to ensure that there was herbal teas on hand just in case she had an attack of the lung flux. It did not matter if she went three and a half years since the last attack of the lung flux, her mother was overprotective.

Li Ling smiled for soon there would be no more water and thus no more tea being forced down her throat. For that she would willing go without a bath for two days.

One last, tea torture session, and she would suffer no more for the duration of the train trip.
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Phoenix of the West