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Blue Mask	By : PatPat Category: Avatar - The Last Airbender > AU/AR - Alternate Universe/Alternate Reality > Het- Male/Female Views: 11083 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- 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.

Chapter List
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Blue Mask, Two Swords, and Sozin’s Comet
Plans and Katara's Quest
By Pat Squared

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Thanks to all who feed my muse,
She is expecting to deliver another story soon,
So she is in dire need of more food (Reviews),
She will repay you will more stories and more frequent updates.
Please review to feed the muse,
Good or bad – all reviews are appreciated

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The child looked upon the scattered oni (demons) circling about the base of his tree. He was alone. His mother was no where to be seen and if he even tried to call out for her the monsters would know that he is hiding in the tree branches above their leader. So he wept silently. The child did not know how long he spent in the branches but the dryness in his throat and the waves of hunger pains told him that he would soon collapse and fall again to the earth below.

He was too young to summon the flames like his cousin Lu Ten could.

He knew the legends about the oni and their eating habits. All the Fire Nation children knew. Parents told their children for generations that if they did not behave the oni would come for them.

The oni would snap your bones and suck out the marrow while you are still alive. They will render children into soup stock and suck on your eyeballs like children suck on candy.

The child was so scared that he peed in his pants. His father would punish him for being unable to control his pee. If there was anything worst than an oni was his father either drunk or angry.

Memories came unbidden into his mind.

Everyday he had to kiss the rhino crop that his father used on his flesh. He had to count off his blows and ask for extra afterwards. If he did not the punishment would be repeated and then he would undergo another round for failing to accept responsibility. The worst was the salty brine that would be poured on his bloody back to prevent infection. The servants would hold him down and he screamed himself until his throat hurt.

Unlike the other kingdoms, the Fire Nation did not believe in letting nobles use whipping boys to avoid physical punishment.

No, if you were in line for power, no matter how tenuous, a young heir always received twice the beating since you did not only fail your parents, but your people.

In the child's case, his father added a third for failing to maintain the honor of his family. No matter how hard the boy tried to meet his father’s expectation he always failed.

He had failed to perfectly execute the crouching step. It was a hard movement and he practiced it diligently for hours everyday. However, the child could not yet twist his body and make the stance wide enough. He had tried for days, but he failed. Unlike the other times, his father was watching.

“Three lashes.”

That meant nine lashes for the boy. He remembered his unarmed combat tutor reluctantly chaining him to the whipping post at his father’s order.

“Don’t give him a mouth guard. Let him learn to control his tongue the hard way.”

He remembered the flesh being craved off his body as his mind recorded the crack of the whip. He remembered tasting blood in his mouth as he bit his tongue. He remembered whimpering. The tutor flogged him three times.

“Hand it to me, you are too kind on the boy. Unchain him. Boy, come here and kiss it.”

The boy knelt and kissed the bloody whip.

His father struck him in the face with a closed fist.

“You ask for permission, first. Your mother is nothing but a lucky whore. You are weak because of her tainted blood. Pimps, cutthroats, beggars, and prostitutes – that is all your mother’s family is good for. My grandfather was senile when he gave that pimp of your great-father a title. I am going to whip your mother’s weakness out of you. I am going to purge her tainted blood out of you even if it kills you. Now you know what to say and do.”

“Father, may I kiss the whip?”

His father hit him twice across the face.

“The first blow is for not saying please, the second is for calling me father. You are too pathetic to be my son. Your mother must have sleep with one of the street beggars to product something as pitiful as you. She must have dallied with a water bender, no, a damn penguin to product something as pitiful as you. Ask again.”

The child was careful to keep his mouth in the dirt.

“Please, master, may this peasant scum kiss the whip?”

“No. You have not earned the right to this whip. You will have to do with my belt. Kiss the buckle.”

“Thank you master.” The child kissed the belt buckle.

“Count off. Three for the failure to perform the step. Three for forgetting your place. Three for publicly calling yourself my son. Nine times three is twenty seven. Count them off and thank me for each and everyone of them. Remember you are scum and not allowed to even think of yourself as a person let alone my son.”

The belt buckle struck him in the back.

The child knew his line, “Master, this scum apologizes that the Fire Lord has to personally strike it once.”

Again.

“Master, this scum apologizes that the Fire Lord has to personally strike it twice.”

Again and again, he had to apologize to his father as his father struck him.

The child remembered losing consciousness three times and being brought back to endure the pain as the servants poured more brine. He forced himself to remember the count. Twenty seven times he wanted to die that day. Thankfully his father declined when he asked for more discipline. The gardeners dragged the young boy off to his mother who would silently bind his wounds.

However nothing hurt worse than watching the tears in his mother eyes after coming from a punishment session. The tears hurt worse than the belt buckle ripping into his flesh. He vowed to never let her cry again and still every other day; he would have to watch his mother wept because he failed to please his father.

The child looked at the oni gathered below his tree. He relaxed his grip and fell out of the tree to the ground below. He knew that he deserved whatever punishment the oni would inflect upon him.

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It’s not fair!

Sokka hated Zuko.

Seducing his sister was bad enough. Hopefully, if anything untoward happened, his sister drank the special teas that women in illicit affairs during to avoid being with child so there should be no complications. Infatuation was making his sister crazy over the ex-Fire Nation prince turned assassin. She even threatened to use the water whip on him, her older brother. Those two things alone inspired him to hone the blade of his boomerang to a razor’s sharpness.

However what hurt the most was his family’s luck with love. He had to watch helplessly as Yue sacrificed herself to keep the moon spirit alive. Now Katara was stuck believing herself in love with that dying jerk.

Zuko was probably faking it anyway. You cannot trust those lying Fire Nation bastards. Katara is too kind hearted to see through his lies.

Zuko was everything that Sokka secretly desired to be. Zuko was a powerful bender. He might have been a carbon-breathed bastard from the Fire Nation, but he was a warrior who had already craved out two legends. The monster prince and Jian Li, the assassin-magician who conquered the Fire Nation Oni Challenge was already a legend.

All I ever did was to find some great cactus juice and watch Yue, my love drift away without trying to stop her. That and somehow get to play the role of a fool in our journey.

The price on Zuko’s head was nearly a hundred thousand Fire Nation gold talons. That was enough gold to literally pave the streets of the Northern Water Tribe with gold bricks. Aang drew a mere fifty thousand and Sokka was only worth a mere five hundred silver flames alive. Dead he was worth only two hundred. Zuko’s corpse was worth a thousand times what Sokka alive was worth. An ostrich-horse thief was worth more than the bumbling water tribe warrior. That fact only made Sokka angrier at the injustices of the world.

Sokka was sick and tired of being the normal one among this party of powerful benders. He had nothing special to bring to the gang.

Aang was the avatar.

Katara was a master water bender.

Toph was the blind, earth bending master, champion of the underground Earth Kingdom Rumble, and Aang true love. All he ever did was made a fool of himself, hurt himself, and constantly sharpen a boomerang that had yet to slay any of the enemy. That and hunted down dinner and chopped wood. Only a vow made to his dying mother to protect Katara prevented him from striking out on his own.

One day, I will crave out a legend of my own. I won’t be the comic relief. One day, they will speak of the great Water Tribe warrior. Boys will fight to play my role and losers will be crying that they could not be Sokka.

Sokka walked into the grove of bamboo with an axe in one hand and his club in the other.

Katara wanted fuel for a fire for when Zuko died. Sokka did not really care if that waste of flesh was buried, burnt, or left for the animals to scavenge. He sharpened the ax. He spun and swung the axe. The Fire Nation preferred pole arms, swords, and archers. The Earth Kingdom preferred maces and hammers, save for the Kuyoshii Warriors with their fans. The Northern Water Tribe liked picks and crossbows. However, the weapons of the Southern Water Tribe were limited to hunting implements and kitchen cleavers pressed into service. The boomerang was good for hitting birds, but only stunned a man.

Close up, the club was the traditional weapon, but it was too crude and there was something about that was not menacing enough for Sokka.

Sokka examined the axe and then swung it at the nearest bamboo shaft.

With a single swing, the Southern Water Tribe warrior cleaved deep into the bamboo. Sokka remembered the traditional ice axes the men back at the Southern Water Tribe used to chop a hole for ice fishing. If he did a few modifications, he could make the ice fisherman’s axe into a terrifying close up weapon. He hated the Fire Nation. He was not going to return back home. He had nothing to live for when Yue died. Aang was not going to win and he would be spending the rest of his short life fighting a losing war.

He swung his axe repeatedly imaging the bamboo as a multitude of Zuko’s. Every blow severed a limb from the obnoxious prince or ripped into his chest.

A thicker pike on the back side of the blade can allow him to punch holes into their armor and pry open locked doors. Trim off the bottom spike and place a loop...Make the blade heavy enough to break swords and pole arms...Make the blade sharp enough to rip into shields and severe the arm beneath...Keep the weapon short for up close combat. And two of them would allow me to use them for offense and defense...sharpen the lower side of the pike like one of those Earth Kingdom sickles.

Sokka vigorously worked out the details of his new tool of war and how he would employ them against imaginary enemies as he attacked the springy bamboo. Slivers of sharp bamboo flew through the air and nicked him, but he was too involved in his idea to care that he was bleeding from a series of small cuts. With his modified ice axe, Sokka planned to carve out his own legend. He will have two made, because two axes seemed more magical than one. All he needed was a catchy name and soon his price will rival that spoiled brat who tricked Katara into believing that he will soon die.

Die, Fire Nation scum! The Skull Splitter has sent another Fire brat to Bao-Yan-Luo (god of the underworld) for judgment and eternal punishment.

He had the name. Now he had to get the weapon and crave out a legend by actually using it on some enemies.

Soon the grove of bamboo was destroyed.

Sokka was strangely disturbed by the disappearance of more victims to practice his new concept of war upon. He dragged the cut bamboo to the clearing and stacked it. He sharpened the ax. It will be his weapon until he could get his Skill Splitters made. Now he just needed to learn the Fire Nation hanzi (characters) for Skill Splitter and to carve out a mask of the black and white demon that killed seals and unfortunate fishermen in the frozen waters of the Southern ocean.

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Katara looked into her herb collection.

She had collected most of them on her travels, but would occasionally trade with other healers. She spotted a small bottle of venom she had gotten in a trade. In small quantities it was deadly. In smaller quantities it thinned the blood, perhaps thin enough for her to separate the excessive fluid from the blood. It was a medicine that she only heard about second hand. Only the most experienced herbalists in the Earth Kingdom would risk using it, but Katara knew that nothing else was powerful enough to save Zuko. Too much and she will be force to watch the concoction of poisons kill her patient. She boiled a tea and let it cool. Only two drops well mixed in a litter of tea would allow the poison to be diluted enough to work on a fully grown man. Even then, Katara knew that only one thimble-full of the tea could be drunk per day.

She swallowed the bile in the back of her throat and bended the liquid slowly in little drabs into Zuko’s body. The healer looked at the stack of bamboo that her brother gathered for Zuko’s funeral pyre and prayed that it would not be needed for a long time.

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Mai read the reports that her agents delivered to her.

Azula had Mai set up a network of agents in the Earth Kingdom to locate the next avatar when Azula finally killed the current one. Also, she wanted a network that would tell her what the Fire Nation high command was doing operation wise in the Earth Kingdom. Mai had set up the classic false flag network.

Her agents were all loyal Earth Nation citizens and lower ranked military types that believed that she was one of King Bumi’s numerous counterintelligence officers. They not only delivered report on Earth Kingdom military activities but also delivered information on Fire Nation military and local puppet government units. They were motivated by ideology and would be loyal as long as they believed that she was an Earth Kingdom officer in exile.

Before leaving Azula’s service, Mai had started some destabilization operations against the Earth Kingdom.

Despite living in an Earth Kingdom town or more correctly because of it, she knew that mixed bloods were going to be the underdogs when the war was over. The pure-blooded earth benders did not much like the descendants of Fire Nation merchants and soldiers living inside the ancestral homelands of the Earth Kingdom. Knowing history, the Earth Kingdom would seek to purify its lands of the taint the Fire Nation left behind. Mai could not return back to the Fire Nation. However, she could not abide the risk of living in a xenophobic society especially with a son who was starting to already display the traits common to a budding fire bender.

So there was only one solution that would allow her son to live a life without having to live the life of an outcast.

Unite the earth/fire mixed bloods and carve out a kingdom of their own.

Only Mai and Iroh knew of her goal to turn the Earth Kingdom provinces of Hirakou and Yotsuya into a land independent of both the Fire Nation and the Earth Kingdom. Both provinces were flooded with displaced mixed bloods from the old border province of Nishi Tougemichi. Both were easily defensible and had the proper mix of mountains and fertile valleys that would allow the new nation to be self sufficient in both ore and food production. In the pure-blood strongholds of the Earth Kingdom the mixed bloods were view with suspicion and were given the most dangerous assignments on the battlefield and endured the worst living conditions. It would not take much for the mixed bloods to band together and strike off on their own.

Iroh read the scrolls that Mai’s unknowing spies provided her with great alarm. Each scroll detailed the emergence of a pattern. Whenever certain Earth Nation units liberated some territory from the Fire Nation, they started driving out any mixed bloods out of the area. In response the mixed bloods started forming mutual protection societies to protect their families and lands. Blood had been already been spilled and an insurgency was already developing.

Mai was busy raising a very active three year old boy, preparing to give birth to another child in seven months time, and becoming the first among equals in the growing local insurgency movement. She had made small gifts of gems, medical supplies, and most importantly intelligence. Mai’s budding intelligence service gave her power over most of the local insurgency leaders. She had an already established network of couriers and agents who would do her bidding. She grew up watching her father set up and run spy networks for Ozai and how the spy hunters worked. Mai had found her calling. If Azula had not tried to use Tom-Tom as a lever, Azula would have the best spy mistress in history on her payroll. Now Azula would have to contend with Mai on the opposite side of this battlefield of shadows.

Slowly, Mai extended her tentacles into the surrounding communities. She had carefully leaked facts about the persecution. Since this village laid on the historic trade route between the province of Nishi Tougemichi and Chongqing, over the generations, Fire Nation merchant left a large genetic imprint on the town. Most of the townsfolk were starting to support the movement are they would be push out by the Earth Kingdom extremist urge to ethnically cleanse the Earth Kingdom. Mai was smart enough to use the already establish network of matrons and their extended family networks to build up her own fiefdom.

The key to running the village and perhaps the future nation was Uncle Li. Despite his short time in the village, he had been accepted into the village society. Even though he was a story teller, his aura of calmness and command started to convinced the villagers that they had a former, mid-level, military officer in their midst. Mai had him cast as the general who would unify the outcasts of the Earth Kingdom into the Gouzoku no Burakuman (Clan of Outcasts). Iroh demurred, but the rumors of his murky military career grew with some prompting from Mai.

The only issue was Madam Chi. Her granddaughter, Tea Leaf, had diligently tried to bring the pair together. However, Madam Chi could give Zuko a lesion in stubbornness.

Madam Chi was a proud lady and quite bright. She could bring down Mai’s carefully wrought plans with a whispered word. Mai had carefully considered her arguments and tossed most of them aside. Mai was at a lost until she spotted Tea Leaf keeping company with the son of the local smith. The blacksmithing trade was always dominated by fire benders. Only those who intimately knew fire and its power could bend metal to their will. With some prompting, Mai ensure that the relationship between the young journeyman mastering his craft at his father’s forge and Madam Chi’s daughter progressed normally. Hopefully, the dolt of the boy would figure out that he has been trapped and craft the jewelry set that every betrothed Earth Kingdom girl wore. With an obvious mixed blood entering the family, Madam Chi would do whatever it took to protect the mixed bloods of the Earth Kingdom. The only issue was that boys that age were struck with stupidity and would be so struck until they started to grow grey hairs.

Mai curse that slow boy under her breath. In the Fire Nation, Tea Leaf would already seduced the boy, got knocked up, and the pair would have been quickly married off. But Fire Nation girls seemed to mature earlier than Earth Kingdom girls. Also they seemed to crave more excitement than their counterparts. Earth girls seem to want rocks for brains.

Madam Chi would perhaps be the best person to serve as the queen of the new nation. Mai had her argument. All she need was for the dumb son of the local blacksmith to ask Madam Chi’s blessing.

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“Katara, you can not quit now!”

Katara found herself alone. The last thing she remembered was sitting by Zuko, keeping an eye on his breathing. Looking up, she saw an old man fishing by a stream that was not there before.

“Who are you?”

The old man shook his head.

“Seventy years of marriage and you have to ask me that question?”

“But...”

The old man smiled.

“Reincarnations – The gods have their rules. I guess that I am one of the previous reincarnations of your other half. Every time we die an echo of us remains here. Since you are not allowed to talk to your other half directly, you have to visit my shade.”
“So you are Zuko’s...”

The old man laughed at her.

“Sorry. The gods jest with us. I am a previous life and also a distant relative of his. One of your previous lives and I were wed for seventy years. The young man who you love needs you to save him and you will need him to save you.”

Katara wondered if this was a dream.

“But Aang...”

“He tried, but the Avatar’s spirit shines like a beacon. The other spirit swarmed upon him like a plague of locust would swarm on the wheat fields of Kitaguchi. He could not evade them. You on the other hand are like your other half. Both of you are like burglar lamps. You can creep in the shadows unseen. Hurry, your other half has started to enter the underworld. The pain he suffered in life is a drop of water compared to the sea of pain the gods want to inflict on you both. Go and may you be strong enough to spit on the gods and laugh in their faces.

The old man pointed to a ill-marked path, “Stay on the path and do not stay off until you must. On the path, the ones who seek to hurt the both of you can not see you or touch you. Trust not your senses for they will mislead you. Trust only in your heart and ignore your eyes and ears. Alone your powers are nonexistent. Only together can you stand a chance in a running fight. However, once you step off the path, the oni will be after you and they love virgin meat. Once you step off the path, you cannot return via the path, but must make your own way. Remember that the gods are not your friends. Do not pray to them or you will suffer along with the one you seek. Think like an assassin. Strike from surprise. Strike fast, and run faster.”
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Blue Mask