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Azula's Lost Chapters OR Azula's New Cook	By : DecieverGod Category: Avatar - The Last Airbender > Het - Male/Female Views: 13899 -:- 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.

Chapter List
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“Your grasp of the obvious amazes me, Captain…” Mai said as she side stepped into a battle stance and adjusted her hidden stilettos.

“Ideas girls?” Azula asked as she dropped into a fighting stance.

“Maybe it’s a friendly… swamp spirit, monster, plant, thing?” Ty Lee started out hopeful but the more she spoke the less she seemed to believe herself.

Mai rolled her eyes and started side stepping away from the group; it wasn’t that she was trying to distance herself from the others so much as she was trying to get a better angle on the angry looking swamp thing. “Ever the optimist eh Ty Lee?” The Goth scoffed a little.

Azula sighed, this was going to be troublesome, she’d never had to fight a monster before, of course if this was a monster, or maybe a spirit, and she killed it. The princess smirked a little at the thought of presenting the creature’s mask to her father. “I was actually thinking more along the lines of ways to kill it.”

“I say we hack it apart till it stops moving.” The captain said with only a trace of sarcasm while pointing his halberd at the beast, creature, thing.

Azula rolled her eyes. “While I marvel at the enlighten insight that suggestions bares.” Her speech on the other hand oozed with sarcasm. “I’m afraid I’ll have to agree with it, aside from the hacking part of course.”

“Of course.” Echoed her team, no one had really expected Princess Azula to hack anything, that would be the Captain’s job.

The battle was short, as are most in all actuality, long battles only serve to draw out the suffering on both sides, Azula actually preferred them. The princess started in first, firing a thin blue stream at the beasts’ bark face. It missed, the creature moving to the side the strike merely grazing its shoulder, though the flames were hot enough to ignite the vines. These new born flames were quickly doused by the creature, raising one arm and splashing swamp water over its back reducing the orange flames to hissing stem from a blade like wound.

Next struck the Captain, he charged at the creature halberd bared at his side. While the beast was busy dousing its shoulder he swept several long broad strikes along its base. Vines snapped and the front half of the creature slipped slack. The beast pulled fresh vegetation from the surface of the swamp. The fresh vines threatened to swallow the Captain up and imprison him within the base of the swamp thing but a wide low sweeping blow from the soldier’s blade cut out an escape.

Ty Lee took the trees almost the moment Azula struck, she jumped flipped and cart wheeled through the branches with easy greater than that of most creatures that lived in them. Mai nearly mirrored her actions only she moved with no flipping or cart wheels. The two closed in from above one on either side of the swamp beast as it replenished itself from the captain’s strike. Mai tossed her arm and out flew a half dozen small knives the goth girl followed up with a kick and sent another six small arrows out to make it an even dozen. The blades passed into the beast’s outer layer but it was doubtful it even felt them due to their relative size. The arrows plunged deeper but still no reaction was yielded from the beast.

The creature finally found a chance to retaliate, tossing its arms up into the tree tops and unleashing a wave of lashing vines upon both girls. Ty Lee jumped and dodged flipping up and down the tree trunks to dodge the lashing vegetation. Mai took a less active approach as she just amputated anything that came within a foot of her, kicking and waving her arms as all manner of small pointy weaponry imbedded itself in the branches and tree trunks around her.

The two benders on the ground however did not let this onslaught last long however. Azula swung her arms up from her sides commanding a long length of blue fire to rise up and sever the creature’s left arm, and at the same time the Captain raked his blade head across the knee deep swamp water, steam rose off it and when he swung down over his head a long cloud of orange flames followed the blade and set the creature’s above arm aflame.

The beast pulled back, raising a large wave of swamp water to splash across its front and douse its vines and any flaming debris that might have fallen from the burning trees above. The girls, and Tatsuya, regrouped. Azula stood where she was; Ty Lee bounced down on the right, Mai and landed with a splash on the left. Tatsuya huffed over behind the princess, he was still carrying the supplies and fighting with them on his back was a bit of a work out.

“Well, I feel useless…” Mai said ringing out her sleeve the creature’s dousing of its arms had inadvertently giving the girl a good soaking.

Ty Lee sheepishly raised a hand while playing with her braid in the other. “Yeah… uh, Azula, I’m not sure I know how to fight giant swamp things…”

Azula looked over at the Captain. He laid his halberd on his shoulder and smirked. “I’m good.” He spun the pole arm around next to him letting it just skim the water’s surface and then crossed it over his chest, readying himself for a second strike.

“Right…” Azula said less than amused. “Mai Ty Lee, retreat to a safe distance, this is a battle for benders. We’ll come and get you once it’s dead.” She smirked a little and her cohorts nodded braking out into a run away from the creature. Azula looked back at the Captain. “How long can you keep it occupied?” A deadly glint behind her eyes revealed her intentions, lightning.

“About a minute, maybe two…” Tatsuya replied adjusting the supplies on his back and his grip on his halberd.

Azula smiled. “It’s enough.” She smirked, and started channeling, waving her fingers in a smooth arch out in front of her crackling lightning following behind them.

The Captain broke out in a dead charge at the looming swamp beast, his feet tossed mug behind him and left deep impressions. He was about to swing at the beast when he suddenly paused and spun, turning around and breaking out strait for Azula.

What happened next occurred too quickly for the princess to grasp it until it had already passed. The creature loomed over above the two benders, its base narrowed and its shoulders spread out, but more importantly, and something that Azula did not realize until afterward, was that the water receded back behind it. That was why the Captain’s boots slung mud whereas before they had just splashed. Tatsuya had realized this; just as Azula was preparing to strike when he grabbed the back of her collar and tossed her in the air. She flipped and landed on the trunk of a tree, digging her armored wristbands into it like climbing spikes to hold herself there. She was going to kill the Captain until she saw why he’d thrown her.

The swamp creature came crashing down, its face just where the Captain was standing, where Azula had been standing not a second ago. The Captain had had to stop to toss Azula out of harm’s way, and with the creature’s viney body came crashing down a tidal wave of swamp water. Tatsuya turned just in time to see the buck of the creature hit, and the wave come crashing over him.

Azula blinked and where she’d been standing but a moment ago was a raging torrent of twisted vines and roaring waters. She scanned the surface for her subordinate. A moment later she spied him, he’d been washed a good fifteen meters from where he’d been, and now had his halberd stabbed into the trunk of a tree, the supplies had been torn from his back along with his shoulder guards. He yelled something to her but over the raging waters and distance Azula couldn’t make out a word.

And then she blinked again, and where he had been was only his halberd, vines tangled about it and white waters attempting to pull it from its post. But the torrent could not, and did not last. As quickly as it had started the waters calmed, receding back to their knee height depth. Most of the vines from the creature had been washed away and those that remained just floated bobbing up and down lightly on the surface.

Azula took a breath, she hadn’t realized it but she’d been holding it after the Captain had thrown her. She flipped herself down, landing with a splash at the base of the tree she’d clung to. She wondered vaguely why she’d held her breath, it wasn’t like she’d cared much if the Captain survived, and after all he was just her subordinate, right?

The princess strode over to where the halberd rested in the base of a tree. It was easily planted three feet above the water level, yet when she’d seen it with the Captain it had been at water level perhaps below. There must have been an incredible amount of water in the torrent to raise the water level three feet. She placed her hand on the weapon’s staff, bushing some swamp filth and vines from it as she tugged on it. It didn’t move, Azula glared at it a little and tugged on it harder. Again it didn’t move, she eventually wiggled the weapon back and forth in its niche before it pulled free. Nearly half the blade had been stabbed into the tree.

Azula spun the blade around once before resting it over her shoulder. She looked around. “Captain?” She yelled not really expecting a response, he was nowhere in sight after all. A screamer bird cried out in response and for some reason the princess’s heart jumped to her throat. She growled at herself and chocked the retched thing back down. “Hmph, fool… He could have survived if he hadn’t tried to save me.” She spat out at nothing in particular. It was true had just run past the princess he might have had enough of a head start to avoid being swallowed so completely by the wave.

The princess looked around once more before walking off, halberd over her shoulder, in search of Ty Lee and Mai. They may have been tossed about by the tidal wave but they were agile, more agile than the Captain that much was for certain, and should have been able to avoid being displaced too greatly by the wave.

It took her some time, but eventually the princess found the other girls atop a particularly large sandbar establishing a makeshift camp under the arch of a tree. Mai’s make up was running and she was attempting to ring her clothes out while Ty Lee failed a making a fire by rubbing two sticks together above a pile of twigs. Azula announced herself by firing a small stream of blue flames just far enough to strike the pile of kindling the gymnast was trying to ignite. The two girls looked over at the princess, and both smirked. “About time…” Mai said, even while smirking she was sullen.

Ty Lee bounced over and hugged Azula. “Azula! I guess this means you won.” She giggled happily before noticing that the princess was carrying Tatsuya’s halberd, and the Captain was nowhere to be seen. “Where’s Tatsu?” She asked blinking.

“Let’s just dry off Ty Lee…” Azula said walking up the side of the root to where the fire was just starting to get really going. She stabbed the halberd into the trunk of the tree beside her so it hung out over the crackling flame. Mai looked down and shook her head, whipping her dripping makeup off with her sleeve.

Ty Lee just stood there knee deep in cold swamp water as the sun slowly sank behind the swamp tree tops. “But… Tatsu…”

It was dark before the three spoke again. Mai was shivering, she’d never gotten very dry, Ty Lee seemed like someone had decaffeinated her, and Azula hadn’t hurt anything. And just because the weather felt like it, shortly after dark it started to rain. Just a slight trickle at first, but it slowly grew into a mild rain storm.

“I’m hungry…” Mai said sounding a little like she’d just realized it herself. Neither of the other two girls responded immediately.

“Tatsu could cook something if he were here…” Ty Lee frowned a little and folded her knees up to her chest as she stared into their fire.

Azula surveyed her friends. Why were they so upset, it wasn’t like Tatsuya had been anyone, he was just another nameless soldier, his lot in life was to live and die for the Fire Nation, and he’d died so that she, the princess, the heir to the Fire Nation’s throne, could live. It was a more than fair trade, he would be known as a hero, if anyone ever learned of his death. “Well he’s not.” She said with a little more anger than she’d meant to give it. She stood up, she was the only one entirely dry out of the tree, Ty Lee was getting rained on ever though she was huddled under what there was of the tree they were camped under, and Mai’s robes had never really gotten dry after the fight. Azula had just bent her armor dry, and even as rain fell it just sizzled away the moment it touched her.

“Come on, it’s not like this is the first time we’ve had to fend for ourselves.” She put her hands on her hips and glared at her lethargic comrades. “Ty Lee you know how to cook.” Azula pointed to the braid sporting girl trying to remind her that they hadn’t always had Tatsuya.

“Well… yeah… I mean, my mother tried to teach all of us how to cook when we were little… but that was a long time ago Azula.” The gymnast coiled from behind her knees to look up at the fire princess.

“And Mai’s pretty talented with a knife.”

“Sure I guess…” The goth shrugged. “But I don’t much like the idea of getting wrist deep in some animal’s innards.”

“The three of us should easily be able to find something edible in this giant muck hole.” Azula glared at her company and marched out into the swamp to go hunt for something weaker than her. Which with the exception of Dragons, probably included the entire animal kingdom. Mai and Ty Lee quickly exchanged glances, and got up to follow their princess.

A few hours later the three returned empty handed. It wasn’t that they hadn’t seen anything that they could eat. It was just that they hadn’t seen anything that looked particularly appetizing, nor did any of the three know how to prepare a Cat-Gator.

They just hmphed back to their dying camp fire, Ty lee threw some twigs on and Azula blasted it again. It crackled and roared back to life. Azula walked around and sat on the far side, her legs tucked under her. Ty Lee plopped down under the tree and pulled her legs up to her chin again. Mai laid out so her head was kinda under the tree while he legs stuck out into the rain a bit more.

“I miss Tatsu…” Ty Lee said somberly.

“Yeah… he did make good food… and the things he knew about animal parts bordered on torture experience…” Mai sighed a little. “Plus he was probably the only guy nuts enough to flirt with Azula…”

It was at that point that Azula actually got interested in the conversation. She glared at her friends a little. “I told you two, he did not have feelings for me. I was his commander and princess, and that was all.”

“Is that really all you thought of him Azula?...” Ty Lee seemed a little sad that her friend hadn’t even considered that the young captain might have harbored feeling for her. In truth it wasn’t that Azula was evil cruel and manipulative that drove boys away from her, they were certainly contributing factors but they weren’t the main reasons. The main reason was that she was cold, ironic for a fire bender, but true. Azula was cold she didn’t every even try to sympathize with others. Ty Lee didn’t mind, it was just who Azula was, but it did often make her worry that Azula would end up alone and unhappy, and Ty Lee didn’t like to think of any of her friends as being unhappy. She avoided thinking about Mai’s future because of this.

“Of course it was Ty Lee, what else would I have thought of him?” Azula crossed her arms over her chest and tossed her head to the side. In all honesty she was kind of glad the Captain was gone, not that she was glad he was dead, but that she was glad that he wasn’t around anymore. She hadn’t harbored him any ill will, it was just that there was something about him that made her feel… off. When he was around she couldn’t behave like herself, it wasn’t his fault, well it might have been but the princess wasn’t particularly keen on blaming others for her feelings, most of the time she just strived not to have them in the first place.

Mai smirked, and this small action drew the attention of her two friends, mostly because Mai never smirked. “You can say that Azula… but if he meant nothing to you, than why’d you bring back his ‘prized position?’” She gestured to the halberd, still stabbed into the tree a bit above the fire.

Azula blinked. She hadn’t really realized that she’d brought back the Captain’s halberd; it was just kind of something that she had done. After all you don’t just leave a piece of equipment rooted in the base of a tree. “Well, so it could be returned to his family of course. They deserve some memento of him.”

Mai shook her head. “I read his file Azula, you did too, and we both know his family could care less about him. The only one who could possibly want to keep a memento of him is you Azula.” Azula raised an eyebrow, she hadn’t been paying that much attention to the Captain’s file, not that it matter much now anyway. She also had to admit Mai was getting her curious about the Captain’s home life.

Ty Lee on the other hand looked back and forth between Mai and Azula, she hadn’t gotten to look at the Captain’s file, and had no idea what Mai was talking about. She blinked at the goth. “Mai, why don’t Tatsuya’s parents care if he’s dead?” She leaned forward like it was story time.

Mai sighed. “Tatsuya Shouhei was the child of a fire soldier and an earth peasant. His parents never married, and his father’s post was moved before he was born. His father was stationed in his home town for about a week… I can hardly believe he met and fell in love with Tatsuya’s mother in that short of time. It’s more likely he forced himself on her, he was a soldier of an occupying force after all.” Azula leaned back a little; she seemed to have recalled something about that, but to hear it put so bluntly by the monotone goth was… chilling. Ty Lee was on the edge of her seat, not because she was egger to hear more, but because she was interested in the story of the young, late, captain Shouhei.

“He enlisted when he was eight, it was noted that he enlisted under ‘special circumstances’ but it didn’t say what those were, it was probably that his mother didn’t exactly dote on him.” It was clear what Mai was implying even to Ty Lee. “There he worked as a cabin boy for three years, never working under the same captain for longer than a few months. He was promoted and became a Fire Bender soldier, after an Agni Kai with his commanding officer. They didn’t say who won, but I doubt he would have gotten promoted if he’d lost.”

Azula smirked, “So he’d beaten his commanding officer into promoting him?” Perhaps that was the tension she’d sensed when she’d asked what he’d done to get assigned to her.

“Probably, after that he was bounced around Bender regiments like he had the plague, no one really wanted him. He was often put on the front lines even when the regiment he was actually assigned to wasn’t. They were most likely hoping he’d get killed. Eventually he’d distinguished himself enough that they had an excuse to promote him to Captain, after that he was basically sent on one run around mission after another.” Mai shrugged a little. “It didn’t seem like the military like him much, at least from his record.”

“Well you can’t away trust the record… after all I’m sure our school transcripts have a few blank spots thanks to our parents. It may be that the people writing these thing down just didn’t like him.” Azula smirked a little as she stared into the fire, it sounded like the best place he’d been assigned was with her. At least she’d treated him like everyone else. The fact that she treated everyone like dirt had apparently been lost on him however.

“Huh…” Ty Lee curled her legs up to her chest again. “Funny… he survives all that, all those battles… and then dies in his first fight with us…”

“Not really…” Mai added in with her somber tone.

Azula blinked. “Well he might not be dead.” She paused as her two friends stared at her like she’d just lit somebody important on fire, again. “What?”

“What do you mean Tatsu might not be dead! Azula, how could you just sit there and let us think he was dead if you don’t know! He could be out there hurt and wounded and looking for us, or looking for his halberd! And we’re just sitting here mopping about his past?!” Ty Lee stood strait up and grabbed a hold of the Halberd. “I’m going to go look for him.” About twenty seconds after she wrapped her fingers around the Halberd’s staff she let go and shook her hand out, it had been sticking out over their fire for a good four hours now, and was pretty hot. “Ow ow ow!”

“Ty Lee look around.” Mai spoke the voice of reason once again. “It’s dark, and it’s raining, plus we’re in a swamp even if we were to search for him it’d be more likely that we’d just get lost ourselves.”

“Mai’s right.” Azula actually spoke, she was a little concerned about herself. She hadn’t thought of looking for the Captain even once. She really shouldn’t have just assumed the wave had killed him, after all if he didn’t hit his head on anything, and kept from getting tangled in the creature’s vines he could have easily survived, but she’d just assumed he’d died. Azula mental shook her head at herself, what had she been thinking. She felt like she needed to have a serious talk with herself, but now wasn’t the time. “We can look for him in the morning, if he is alive out there then he’s probably wounded and bunkered down somewhere to ride out the night storm. He is a fire bender so it shouldn’t be too hard for him to keep dry.”

Ty Lee sat down again, this time cross-legged with her hands in her laps pouting at Azula. “I still can’t believe you just let me think Tatsu was dead…”

Azula chuckled a little, she didn’t actually think it was funny she was just laughing to shake off Ty Lee’s pout. “Really Ty Lee, you should learn not to just assume things, all I said was that Tatsuya wasn’t here.”

Author's Note- I could tell you why I haven't updated in a while, but you probably don't mind why I was gone now that I'm back.
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Azula's Lost Chapters OR Azula's New Cook