Focused Fire (ATLA)

“Are you out of your mind?!” Azula hissed harshly once they were within the relative privacy of her study room. “What were you thinking, Xing?”

The colonel didn’t waver, and only shrugged at her growing wrath. “There’s something that needs to be done. I’m just making sure we get to profit off it.”

“‘Something’?”

Xing gave a soft sigh, and for a moment, the reckless and carefree attitude flickered, revealing deep concern underneath. Azula paused when she noticed the hollowness behind his gaze, and realized how forced his smile was.

“How bad is it?” she asked, anger quickly replaced with worry. “Is it like Zhao?”

Her colonel met her gaze for a silent second before shaking his head, his shoulders slumping a little. “Not so bad…though it’s a relative thing.”

Azula stared thoughtfully at the boy who had proclaimed such a suicidally foolish task, and wondered once more about the spirits that communicated with him. “Did they put you up to this?” she asked, softer this time.

Xing shook his head. “No.”

“But you were told of it.”

He shrugged noncommittally. “I know what’s probably going on and roughly where, but I thought to take a crack at it before someone else gets to it.”

“Someone else…like the Avatar?”

“Yeah. I’d rather not let him bumble around to fix it. Plus if I get there quick enough, I could get him to owe me another one.”

Azula caught the meaning of his last sentence, and her eyes narrowed. “Another one?”

“Well, he sorta owes me for keeping the Water Tribe’s fishes alive.”

“I…see.” There was definitely more to it, but this wasn’t the best place to talk about it. As loyal and competent as her staff were, Azula did not fully trust the walls around her. The faster they left the palace, the better.

A nagging question floated to her mind’s surface, and Azula found herself suddenly fighting back a stammer. “Was…was the thing about the engagement…”

Xing’s gaze was intense as he took a step towards her and gently held her hands. His grin sent a warm, reassuring tingle down her back. “You have it the other way around, my princess. Ba Sing Se was a convenient excuse. Consider me…youthfully impatient. And being able to prove my…eligibility to you at the same time is a big plus, no?”

Azula searched his eyes, and found that he meant the words, however playfully he put it. The doubts and uncertainties melted away, and she leaned forward to gently bring her lips against his.

“Don’t you dare do something stupid like die until you secure our engagement, you idiot.”

“Considering it’s our engagement and subsequent…intimacy I’d be missing out on if that were the case, you can consider Ba Sing Se yours, my princess.”

Xing’s arms pulled her in, and Azula felt her breath become shallower as her body pressed against him. It was truly a shame that they could only settle for a restrained kiss, considering that the walls were thin and her servants might be coming in any time now. Still, she savored every second of their exchange, right up until someone politely knocked on the door.

Pulling away, Azula was panting slightly, and for better or worse Xing’s hands had been chaste enough to leave her barely disheveled. “Do not disappoint me, Xing.”

Her Xing bowed, imparting a last kiss, on the knuckles of one hand this time. “I’ll see you next in Ba Sing Se, my dear princess.”

It took several minutes after he left before the princess met with her agents. Even then, Azula was sure that her diligent operatives were polite enough to not comment on her clearly flushed cheeks, or her lingering smile.

*****

“Sir-”

“Don’t worry, Koshi. I promise it’ll be alright.”

Koshi sighed as he kept up with his charge. “No offense sir, but you’re taking on Ba Sing Se alone here.”

“That’s not exactly accurate.” A ghost of a smirk flashes across the colonel’s face, causing the lieutenant to hold back another sigh.

Yan shook his head. “It’ll at least reassure us if you could provide us further details about what you’re doing? So we could better support you.”

Xing stopped walking to turn towards his bodyguards, mild exasperation peeking through his expression. “Look… The presentation is also important. I need to be the only one in sight when I bring down the walls, and seize the palace. I can’t have it be said that I used the regiment in any way to get me there.”

“Fucking politics…” Bofang muttered, and the rest of the bodyguards agreed with him.

Yet their colonel only grinned. “It’s a shit game, but like all games, it has rules that can be exploited. And since this needs to be done, might as well not hold back on leaving an impression.”

“I still do not like leaving you by yourself out there,” Koshi relented.

Xing nodded once. “I appreciate all of your diligence, I truly do. You men have been looking out for me practically from day one. But this needs to be done this way.” He rolled his eyes. “If it’ll help, I’ll make sure Azula reserves a spot for the 11th in the vanguard. Then you can catch up with me in a reasonable amount of time.”

“As you say, colonel.”

They resumed their walk, and the bodyguards held back their curiosity as Xing headed for the markets. Eventually, after witnessing Xing’s first few purchases, Bofang gave in.

“I’m sure we have better blades in our armory.”

“We do,” Xing agreed. “The 11th does. But I made a promise to personally deal with the matter, and not use military resources. So to be a spiteful little shit, I’m making sure everything I’m taking there is privately owned. Which means doing some shopping right now.”

Kwan quirked up an eyebrow as he lightly shook the small crate in his hand. “So what does a whole stall’s worth of metal chopsticks have to do with that?”

Koshi rolled his eyes as he saw his colonel grin. “As I said before: Presentation. Hm… Now where do I go for some blasting jelly?”

*****

Zuko stood at attention as Captain Ren and the other instructors stood before him. “Congratulations, private,” the captain said wryly. “It seems that your royal upbringing was worth something after all. As much as it pains some of us to say it, you’ve done a sterling job at cruising through training.”

‘Cruising’ wasn’t the word he would’ve used. ‘Crumpling ever forwards’ seemed more appropriate, considering the grueling ordeal. While Zuko’s lessons back in the palace had given him an advantage in fighting, the styles he learned and favored had been almost exclusively for working alone. 

He’d been trained as a prince back then, and relearning how to fight as a soldier was a uniquely torturous experience. Swords were looked down upon in the 11th, who preferred spears as their primaries and daggers for anything that got too close. 

Zuko learned how to stop seeking out opponents to duel and how to instead lead or follow along in tackling enemies in pairs or trios. He learned how to seize the initiative by blasting himself forwards to occupy the enemy to give the non-benders in his squad time to use the momentum. He learned the importance of having daggers properly sheathed for quick draws, and when to throw away his spear in exchange for burying the short blades into his opponent’s weak points. He learned to heat up the metal tips of his weapons before jamming them into the enemy, to maximize the incapacitating agony.

And then there were the ‘live fire’ lessons, where Zuko and his fellow trainees blooded themselves with their first kills on condemned criminals. None of the methods they were instructed in were quick. The prince soon learned how to stamp down the horrified look of a man he was slowly burning to death, or the muffled screams of desperation from the gagged men he was stabbing up the armpits or down into their eyes.

Apparently the ‘targets’ he practiced on were pirates that his sister had captured and had been responsible for blowing up his ship and almost killing him.

It didn’t make their terror feel any more satisfying.

For all their discipline, the Princess’ Fire Lancers did not like fighting like soldiers, and they were proud of it.

“We are not sent out to die for the Fire Nation,” an aging instructor, a former captain who survived Uncle Iroh’s siege of Ba Sing Se, had hammered in. “We are sent out to make sure that our enemy dies for their Earth Kingdom or Water Tribe! The rules of war instructs us how to behave around and beyond combat, but while we’re stuck in it, while we fight, we’ll do anything and everything we can to win! And the best way to keep winning, is to not act like a fucking fool by dying!”

It was a far cry from the songs about heroic sacrifices. The instructors here emphasized staying alive, particularly to the squad leaders and officers. Zuko was relieved to not be made sergeant. The amount of scrutiny they suffered for every choice they made during squad training was a different nightmare in itself.

A few noble born especially had been demoted for tactics that were considered acceptable in conventional Fire Nation doctrine, but were deemed loathsome in the 11th. Those that ordered their men and women to sacrificial runs in the training grounds were heavily chastised, and for every failure, every trainee leader and commander were told to write letters of condolences for those that ‘fell’ because of them. 

In pristine cursive script - the kind that the upper nobility wasted hours on writing out just a few pages - and in rhyming verses. A single brushstroke out of line, a character written just a bit too large or too small, and the letter would be burnt before their eyes and they’d have to start from scratch again.

Not surprisingly, quite a few commanders from every level could become excellent calligraphers if they wanted to.

“You are the caretaker of the men assigned to you! Their lives are the regiment’s just as you are, and you’re in charge of investing wisely in them! If you’re going to send someone to die for no reason, save all of us the trouble and send yourself!”

It was heartening to know how the regiment valued its troopers’ lives, and Zuko saw how such a doctrine boosted the morale of the recruits. There was no bravado, only a deep trust in the upper echelons in knowing what they were doing. Even the few (un)lucky aspirants to the exclusive Han unit strictly stuck to their orders despite how outlandish some of their routines were. 

Zuko was in awe like every other recruit at the first real display of the flammenwerfers, and it explained why the Han recruits practiced with funny looking water buckets and hoses first. And because the 11th believed in delivering trauma in a safe space, the recruits were all treated eventually to watching another batch of condemned criminals being put on the wrong end of the fire-spewing war machines. Nobody mocked the few recruits that turned vegetarian after that.

Once more, the disgraced prince was happy to settle for being a mere private. And hopefully that state of affairs would continue after this.

Zuko stared into space as his superior officers regarded him from across Captain Ren’s plain but spacious office. The captain glanced to the instructors to her left and right, speaking in a formalized manner that was very out of character for her (not that he’d say that to her face).

“Are we agreed that Private Zuko has accomplished a level of competency that is beyond merely passable?”

Silent nods answered her.

“Are there any objections that Private Zuko should not be deployed right now?”

They shook their heads this time. Finally, the captain fixed her gaze on him.

“Private Zuko. Do you have any objections to your training? Are there any specializations you might prefer going into instead of being deployed?”

“Ma’am, no ma’am!” He’d leave the scouts to drag themselves through the dirt, or the strike teams with their reckless rocketing through the air. Zuko was happy with his spear and unconventional firebending.

Captain Ren nodded with satisfaction. “Good. Then as we’re all agreed, you, Private Zuko, will be deployed…” Zuko’s stomach curdled when he realized she wasn’t going to finish the sentence the way he imagined.

“...however a special request has been made for you, by Colonel Xing, and approved by our patron, the crown princess.” The prince didn’t like how the edges of Captain Ren’s lips were tugging upwards into a smirk. She leaned back against her desk to reach for a slip of paper, and brought it up to him. 

Zuko fought not to fidget as the captain squinted dangerously at him. “These are your orders, Private Zuko. You will follow them until new orders override them, do you understand?”

“Ma’am, yes ma’am!”

“Good.” She offered the paper to him, and Zuko mechanically stepped forwards, his legs feeling heavy and his throat feeling dry, to receive his first orders. At her quiet nod, he opened the folded slip and read it.

Captain Ren and her officers expressed varying displays of amusement as the prince’s jaw dropped and the letter almost fell out of his hands. 

“Congratulations, private. You’ve done well enough that the crown princess deems you fit for bodyguard duty. Do your job well, and you might receive a pay raise to match.”

Zuko couldn’t look away from the contents of the paper in his hand. “...to serve as a guard for her royal highness, Crown Princess Azula’s entourage, particularly to be of service to Lady Mai…”

Was this Xing’s doing, or Azula’s?

“I suggest you close your trap and start packing,” Captain Ren drawled, bringing him out of his mild shock. “Ship’s leaving tomorrow. Say your goodbyes, and enjoy seeing to the wellbeing of your sister’s friend.” Zuko nodded dumbly and turned to leave, but as he exited her office, the captain’s last words almost sent him tumbling past the doorway. 

“Oh, try not to look too…deeply into their wellbeing. Azula prefers her friends to be able to continue traveling with her for some time yet, not be laden with a pregnancy. And it’d make Xing look bad if his soon-to-be brother-in-law gets tangled up in such a scandal.”

Brother-in-law?