The Secret Weapon

I chewed solemnly on my rice, staring intently at each individual grain, not letting my attention be diverted elsewhere. This was how I took all my meals. I wasn’t kept in a cell as I was on the boat, but I had my own quarters and I generally ate in a hall. It was a lesser hall than the one the Firelord dined in though, surprisingly, it was the one that Azula dined in as well. When she did join me, as she had done this evening, I did not speak to her. I didn’t even look at her.

“This is unacceptable. Fire the cook immediately!” she yelled from the other end of the table. I wondered what was wrong with her meal this time. “This duck is atrocious. Do you think this is how a princess should eat?” she yelled at the servant, a quiet, frightened looking girl who cringed at every syllable.

“No, Princess. I’ll take it back right away, Princess,” she grabbed the plate and scurried off.

I looked at my duck. It was delicious. There was never anything wrong with the food. The people who worked for Azula knew about her temper- they would never risk serving her something inadequate. It amazed me that she could always lie and find something wrong, just to show her power. Just to be… cruel.

“Of course, I doubt you have a problem with the food. It’s probably loads better than the scraps you were eating in the Earth Kingdom,” she spat. For once, I took her bait.

“Actually, Princess, usually my family just ate the rats we found in our beds that morning. That’s the only real reason we ate so well,” I said sweetly, taking another bite of my rice. Azula’s smirk faded.

“Hilarious.”

This time it was my turn to smirk.

“I hope you’re not too full,” Azula started. She snapped and the guards took the rest of my meal out from in front of me. “We have some evening training to attend to. And this time, I’ve invited a few friends,” she said, getting up and leaving the room. It was always my job to follow her, and besides, with no more food, it wasn’t like I had anything better to do.

***

Azula chose the outdoor arena for training. There were many places for us to train within the palace, and even some we went to outside of the palace. Regardless, it always seemed like Azula’s preference to practice outdoors. I think this was because she didn’t have to worry about burning the building down. Also, it was her way of showing off to the people in the city beneath them.

I was intrigued by these “friends” she mentioned. Often, Azula’s mentors Lo and Li joined us to give instruction, but they were hardly new to me by now. When we reached the courtyard, however, I was startled out of my thoughts when a flying pink blur practically leaped over to Azula and… hugged her.

“Azula! It’s so good to see you again!” a high pitched, oddly happy voice chimed. She released Azula from her vice-grip arms. I half expected Azula to chastise her, or at the very least put her down in some way like I was accustomed to watching her doing. Instead she had a small smile on her face.

“Hello, Ty Lee. It’s good to see you too.”

Then, from the same direction Ty Lee came from, came a voice as monotone as Ty Lee’s was excited.

“Calm down, Ty Lee. It hasn’t been that long,” a tall, slender, black-haired girl glided over to Azula. “Hi, Azula.”

Azula greeted her as “Mai,” and then the three of them looked towards me. It was impossible to tell what they were thinking. Ty Lee just looked confused and Mai didn’t have any expression whatsoever.

“Who’s that?” Ty Lee asked, pointing as if I couldn’t hear her.

“Girls,” Azula started, “This is Sake. She’s a new, powerful ally with some… unique abilities.”

Both of them looked at me, searching me for some clue as to what these “abilities” could be. I crossed my arms and tried to conceal my discomfort. Ty Lee and Mai were both looking at my eyes.

“But she’s not… Fire Nation… Is she?” Ty Lee questioned, confused. My eyes were bright green- a dead giveaway to my heritage.

“No, Ty Lee, she is not. But that doesn’t matter. She will be trained the same that either of us would be and she will behave as a member of our beloved Fire Nation.”

“Right,” I scoffed at Azula’s remark, in spite of my reservation to silence in these situations.

“What was that?” Mai asked, turning to me with a scowl.

“Don’t bother, Mai,” Azula interrupted. “She just needs a little more time,” she smiled at me viciously. “Time to let it… sink in.”

Azula took a seat off to the side, which surprised me. Usually “training” between us was my half-hearted attempt at dueling. Since Azula needed me around and couldn’t kill me, I usually fought back just enough when necessary. Any other time, I let her win as much as she liked. She knew what I was doing, and it just made her angrier. However, Azula, while quick to anger at times, showed a very great ability to adapt. At first her frustrations with me made her sloppy and malicious. As time went on, however, she was trying to play me from a different angle. Unfortunately, as I knew very little of war strategy and she knew a great amount, I feared for the day when my strategy was no longer useful.

This was apparently the day.

“Mai, Ty Lee, you two will be dueling her today. I’m just going to watch,” she said simply, crossing her legs and sitting motionless. Mai and Ty Lee looked shocked at first, but shook it off as if they were used to it (which they probably were).

“Very well. I’ll go first!” Mai said, acting faster than I had expected. She was obviously the angrier of the two newcomers, but I hadn’t pegged her for immediate aggression. That was where I underestimated her.

Without skipping a beat, she hurled two throwing knives at me from somewhere concealed in her robes. Acting just fast enough, I lunged to the side just in time. Then, there was a very short moment where no one moved. It was the moment when two benders take the time to prepare themselves for the next move. Except, I was the only one shifting. It occurred to me that neither of these girls were benders, and that was not something I was prepared for.

Prepared or not, more knives flew in my direction. This time I was ready. I pulled up a wall of earth in front of me and when I knew I could, I stepped to the side of it and kicked mounds of earth at her with my heels. She was ready for it. Each one that landed under her feet she stepped onto and used the momentum of them to boost herself up and flipped onto the low roof over the bench where Azula sat.

I waited for her to throw more knives at me, but I also saw Ty Lee moving out of the corner of my eye. I didn’t know what she was about to do, but I didn’t wait to find out. I used the earth beneath me to boost me up into the tree to my left and onto a branch a bit higher than where Mai stood, prepared to strike again. I leaped onto the roof next to her, narrowly missing a throwing star to my right. She threw another when I landed which tore my sleeve, leaving a shallow cut beneath it. Since this was training, I had a feeling she aimed cautiously on purpose; I had a feeling that in a real fight, I would have been finished.

This made me angry. This made me want to fight Mai and show her what she was dealing with. I’d never felt this way before. All my life my bending was a secret and I never had the reason to use it as a weapon. Never, until right now.

I spun low and stuck my foot out, tripping Mai before she realized what was happening. She rolled off the roof and landed roughly onto the ground. Luckily for her, it was a short fall. Before she got up I shot two fireballs down at her, one on either side of her head. When the ground was scorched and she realized what I’d done, she just looked up at me, confused and maybe a little frightened. I thought I’d won.

Then, out of nowhere, the same pink blur that had bounded over to Azula when we arrived shot up the tree and onto the roof faster than I thought possible. It was Ty Lee. Her fists were balled and she looked angry- an emotion I hadn’t yet seen on her face. She threw two quick punches and, blocking the only way I could think of, I held up my arm in front of me. She hit them, and instead of hurting, all I felt was a great pressure. Then I barely felt anything. I tried to firebend at her when I realized that nothing was coming out of the arm she’d struck. Shocked and confused, I paused, and that was all she needed. She quickly struck my other arm and jabbed me fast in the neck and I was a limp as a butterfly slug. Just like Mai, I tumbled off the roof, defeated.

As I lay on my back, feeling lifeless, Azula, Mai, and Ty Lee, stood above me. All three of them wore that same smirk I’d seen so many times in my stay in the Fire Nation. It was the smirk of power, of precedence. But it was also a smirk that told me they were winning whatever game they were playing.