Chapter 22: The Fruits of Victory

About an hour after the culmination of Azula and Xisheng's duel, the group of covert Fire Nation natives had not left the place they had slept that night. Naturally, this reality had left both Mai and Ty Lee in an awkward situation. They'd both warned Xisheng against bothering Azula so soon after their fight, but their warnings had been in vain. Considering that Xisheng hadn't returned from the Overlord after some time and there had been no blasts of Firebending or anything, the two girls had assumed that things weren't going as poorly as they potentially could have, but either way they had been left alone and had little to do.

Mai had settled on target practice, having spent most of the last hour burying sharp metal things into one unfortunate tree that she apparently hadn't liked the look of. Considering that Mai hardly needed practice, it was obvious to Ty Lee at least that the usually reserved young woman was actually anxious. Her aura had revealed as much, at any rate. If someone like Mai was worried about the outcome of a situation, chances were everyone should have been.

As for Ty Lee, she hadn't really been in the mood to do any practice of her own to pass the time. Instead, she'd settled for wandering quite some ways from the Overlord, mostly so she could have her thoughts to herself. After all, she'd had a few unpleasant things to think about as a result of Xisheng and Azula's duel.

She hated to admit it, but Ty Lee had actually felt a great deal of satisfaction seeing Azula get walloped in the face by Xisheng. It was weird to say that she both hated and enjoyed something at the same time, but it was the truth. On one hand, she didn't like violence, and even though Azula was being extremely... 'testy,' Ty Lee didn't like her friends being hurt. But on the other hand, the acrobat felt vindicated by the reality of Azula being beaten for once. She was all high and mighty, acting like she was above everyone else, but there she was, flat on her butt, just like anyone else. On top of that, Ty Lee's technique had almost done her in. Sure, Xisheng had messed it up... but the opportunity had existed. If Xisheng had a little more experience with the art he would have defeated Azula with it.

Naturally Ty Lee was happy about that notion, since she was a little tired of Azula looking down on her or just treating her like she had nothing to offer to Xisheng in general. Today's duel had very much proved otherwise.

Which led to the other issue Ty Lee had with the whole scenario. All things considered, she would have thought Xisheng would feel a little vindicated himself, or perhaps on her behalf even. And yet, a mere ten minutes after he had bested Azula, he was rushing to her side to tend to her wounds. Some petty, but not altogether small part of Ty Lee wished the man had been a little more condemning of the Princess. After all, she was the bad guy in this whole situation. She was the one treating everyone badly, and threatening to destroy relationships just because she was jealous of something. The fact that she had gotten what was coming to her shouldn't have been deserving of pity.

Maybe it was silly, but she had just been expecting a different reaction out of him. More of 'hooray, I get to stay with Ty Lee and Mai,' and less of 'I should check on Azula.'

Coming to the edge of the woods she had been walking through, Ty Lee dragged her attention from her thoughts long enough to identify how the terrain had changed. The trees ahead of her gradually gave way to a shallow bank, which swiftly turned to a gently flowing river. It looked like the river curved away from the direction she had come from on both sides, so it was no surprise that the group hadn't come across it in the Overlord.

Though she hadn't come out here for such a purpose, Ty Lee made a mental note of the river's location. Mai and Azula may have had some qualms about bathing out in nature, but she certainly didn't. The chance to really thoroughly clean oneself didn't come often while traveling, so she saw little reason to forego any opportunities that came their way.

Either way, with no reason to go any further in this direction, Ty Lee had no choice but to turn around and head back towards the Overlord, something she wasn't particularly happy with. But then again, she couldn't just be off in the wilderness when Azula decided it was time to move on again. Knowing her temperament, she would find that a perfect excuse to ditch her 'useless' so-called friend.

Put into a significantly dour mood by that thought, Ty Lee sulked most of the way back to the Overlord. Between her discomfort with her own pettiness and actual frustration with how this day had turned out thus far, she really didn't have much to smile about. By the time she had made it back to the Fire Nation vehicle, the acrobat was effectively scowling, which was rare for her indeed.

Not helping was the state she found things in upon returning. Mai had apparently finished her target practice, as she was nowhere to be seen. Likewise, Xisheng couldn't be seen anywhere. The only person who could be seen was Azula, leaning against a tree with her eyes closed and arms crossed, and now sporting a large white bandage across her face. Naturally Ty Lee wasn't happy about the fact that she was the only one here.

The brunette attempted to move by the Princess without giving herself away, but of course this didn't work. Azula noticed, and more unfortunately, she cared to interact, for reasons Ty Lee couldn't fathom. She really hoped she wasn't about to be berated for something again: she didn't know if she could tolerate that a second time, especially with how she had already been mistreated.

The way Azula started the conversation didn't exactly get Ty Lee's hopes up.

"It took long enough for you to meander your way back here."

Sensing already that this wasn't going to be a pleasant exchange, Ty Lee frowned, not even trying to put up a façade reminiscent of her usual self.

"Can I not even walk where I want to now?"

Azula leveled a clearly displeased look at the tone Ty Lee was speaking to her with, but for some reason she didn't comment on it. Ty Lee would have liked to believe it was because Azula realized her ire was justified, but somehow she doubted that. Either way, instead of condemning her response, Azula said something else entirely.

"I was merely lamenting how long I had to wait for you to return. I don't like waiting around."

"Then why are you?"

Azula grit her teeth, but only for a moment since the action caused her face to hurt in its current state. Xisheng made all of this sound a lot easier than it was. That being the case she avoided her purpose here a moment longer.

"I... require your presence for something."

Needless to say, Ty Lee was a little confused about where this was all going at this point. Azula was behaving very oddly.

"Something?"

"Something important, of course. Everything I do is important, which is why... why you should appreciate what's about to happen."

Unsure of what was 'about to happen', Ty Lee said nothing. She didn't know what to say considering the situation. Hell, Azula looked like she was struggling just to say what she wanted to say. Rarely did she have such issues just talking. What was with the deep breath and the furrowed brow of consternation anyway?

"I'm sorry."

Silence was the only thing that followed Azula's words. Probably because Ty Lee was busy trying to acknowledge what just happened. She couldn't imagine that she had heard right. Because if she had, then Azula had just apologized for something, and that was quite literally impossible.

Since she had closed her eyes to avoid directly looking at Ty Lee, Azula cracked one open to see why she hadn't been responded to. She had gone though some serious stress to say these words, what did Ty Lee think she was doing being so quiet?

Unfortunately looking at her friend's face revealed only genuine confusion and a frown. Needless to say, Azula was a little irritated by that reaction, but admittedly, also a little embarrassed: because Ty Lee's countenance only reminded the Princess that she was not used to doing this.

"W-well, don't just stand there! Graciously accept my apology before I rescind it! The nerve..."

Azula's ire served to bring Ty Lee back to reality, if only because she was much more familiar with it. That said, she wasn't at all familiar with this nervous aura around the Princess. Then again, even if the colors didn't give it away, the incessant tapping of her index finger on her arm and the shifty gaze did so anyway. Seriously, what was going on here?

"What... what exactly are you sorry about?"

Azula made a very disgruntled expression, probably something alone the lines of 'how dare you make me say it,' and yet she did explain herself.

"For the things I said. You know. Implying that Xisheng's time was wasted with you. He didn't make it work when we fought, but... had he mastered your technique to a degree of competence, I'd have been paralyzed and defeated. As much as I hate to admit that failure on my part, denying it would be the choice of a deluded fool. Point being, I daresay the potential effectiveness of something he learned from you is irrefutable evidence that I was mistaken."

While Azula initially thought this explanation more than sufficient, it was clear that Ty Lee found it a little lacking. After all, the practicality of spending her time with Xisheng hadn't been what had insulted her so much. Picking up on this, Azula mustered the will to continue. All of this humility was seriously taxing for her.

"Moreover... I can understand why you would be displeased about being told who you can or can't spend time with, indirectly or otherwise. It's my right as Crown Princess to do that if I wish, but... just because something is within my power, doesn't mean doing it is necessarily justified. It's a lesson in leadership that I... only recently experienced. A leader should trust those that are loyal to her, at least as far as how they spend their free time goes."

Now certain that she had said everything that needed to be said, and inwardly relieved that she didn't have to admit anything else to get her point across, Azula was nevertheless dismayed to see that Ty Lee was still frowning at her. Seriously, what more did this girl want?

Frowning herself, Azula was about to express her ire at Ty Lee's reaction considering how rare this situation was for the Crown Princess of the Fire Nation, but before she could the acrobat broke into a smile much more reminiscent of her usual cheer.

"I never thought someone could be so uptight about saying sorry. You couldn't have been more awkward about that if someone was holding you at knife-point."

In a very unusual moment for her, Azula blushed, unused to being made fun of so blatantly. It didn't help that Ty Lee was right.

"I-is that any way to thank me for apologizing? I didn't have to do that, you know!"

"Azula, you don't thank people for apologizing to you. That implies they went out of their way to do something that inconvenienced them."

"I very much did. Exactly so."

Ty Lee grinned, amused by the reaction and actually feeling quite happy now that this had happened. She could tell by both Azula's aura and her behavior in this exchange that she really was sincere. Who knew that you really could knock some sense into someone? That said, it was probably too much to expect Azula to be a little more humble about the whole thing. Baby steps, she supposed.

Now that she was in a good mood, Ty Lee recalled something she had encountered while sulking in the woods earlier.

"Say, Azula... we're not in a huge rush to be anywhere, right?"

Glad to have the conversation directed away from the embarrassment that was hers, Azula provided a swift response.

"If you're asking whether or not we need to leave right now, no. But what does that matter?"

"Well, I found a river while I was walking around in the woods. I was just thinking, it's been awhile since we really had a chance to clean up to that extent..."

Mention of a river reminded Azula of the time Xisheng had brought forth such a notion. She wasn't any fonder of the idea now than she had been before.

"You're really suggesting that a Princess bathe in a river?"

"Wouldn't going a long time without cleaning yourself be even less befitting for a Princess? I mean, when's the next time we're actually going to have a chance to do this? Cleanliness is next to godliness, or something like that."

Mentally calculating the next few moves she had planned to orchestrate in their journey, Azula realized that Ty Lee had a pretty good point. There were no plans to stop by another major settlement anytime soon, and they had foregone a bath house in Gaoling in the interest of time. Needless to say, personal care had to be left to more spartan means while on the road. Taking that into consideration, Ty Lee was right about what was more unbecoming for an individual of her stature...

"Ugh, fine... I suppose you have a point. We can spare an hour. I should probably put those things I bought in Gaoling to use anyway..."

Glad to have her proposal accepted, Ty Lee was well and truly back to her old self. Funny how all it took was what had transpired in the past fifteen minutes...

"Great! I'll go round up the others, then."

Azula leveled an icy glare at her companion.

"I think you misspoke, Ty Lee. 'Others' is plural."

With a sheepish grin, Ty Lee tried to lend some credence to her argument.

"Come on now, Azula. Gohan's gotta bathe too."

"Not at the same time as us, you harlot!"

Ty Lee took no offense at the insult since it wasn't really serious on Azula's part.

"Alright, alright, I was only joking. No need to get so embarrassed."

"We're not all as eager to get naked around men as you are."

"Which is probably why I'll be happily married before either you or Mai, don't you think?"

With that, the brunette made her exit to find Mai, leaving Azula to shake her head as she left.

"More like why you'll likely catch some horrific disease..."

---

Some time after finishing the treatment of Azula's wound, Xisheng finally returned to where the Overlord was parked. He had elected to go some distance from the machine, and by extension all of the girls, in order to tend to his wounds. He was certain Azula wouldn't have really cared much for the damage he had suffered, but it was possible that Mai and Ty Lee would be bothered by the array of burns on his torso.

The good news was that the burns themselves hadn't been that severe. As powerful as Azula's flames were, Xisheng had only been subjected to them for a moment, and his armor, fire-resistant by design, had mitigated most of the heat. Only a few of the burns he had suffered would blister.

The bad news was that, while the injuries were mostly minor, there were a lot of them. The majority of Xisheng's torso was reddened and stinging. Serious or not, it was far from a pleasant sensation. All in all, it had taken him a bit of time to treat all the burns, even though he had only bandaged the moderately more serious ones. There was no telling when they would manage to resupply, so he didn't want to waste what they had now. Of course, Azula's injury wasn't really serious enough to bandage, but he had made an exception in that case.

Either way, the problem was taken care of now, so he had returned to camp to discern what Azula wanted them to do next. However, a quick glance over the area revealed that no one was currently present, either in or around the Overlord itself. Needless to say, Xisheng was mildly concerned about the development: not that he thought anything bad had happened, what with the lack of signs indicating a battle. It was just odd that everyone had up and disappeared on him without telling him anything. They could have at least left a note.

Moreover, he couldn't really imagine what everyone had left together for. If there was some errand or chore to be done, it was guaranteed that they would have just waited for Xisheng so he could do it. And the car containing the Mongoose Lizards was still closed, so it wasn't like that was the cause.

Curious more than anything else, Xisheng elected against just sitting around and waiting for them to return. After all, if all three of them had gone somewhere together, it must have been something moderately important. Maybe they needed his assistance, or would appreciate a hand with whatever it was at the least.

Deciding that, Xisheng set off into the woods opposite of the way he had come from, since he was sure he would have noticed the girls if they had gone that way. Unfortunately, he didn't really have anything to do other than search blindly: there were no real signs of where the girls had gone. Well, maybe there were footprints in the fallen leaves or disturbed twigs or something, but Xisheng didn't have the training to pick up on any of that. He was an Army combatant, not a pathfinder.

With that being so, he mostly just walked straight, scanning left to right in a wide radius as he went, just in case there was an obvious clue somewhere along his aimless path. Unfortunately, there wasn't, so he had no reason to alter his course five minutes into his walk through the woods.

This ended up being a good thing however, as apparently straight was exactly the direction Xisheng needed to go. Though he didn't lay eyes on his companions, he could hear their voices in the distance somewhere ahead of him. They weren't talking all that loud, so they couldn't have been far off. That said, he could still make out the conversation. Ty Lee was speaking at the moment.

"Seriously Mai, where were you hiding this?"

"In my clothes, obviously. Hey, don't touch it!"

Cocking an eyebrow as he continued walking forward, Xisheng couldn't help but wonder why Ty Lee would be asking about Mai's knives. The acrobat hadn't really expressed any interest in them before. But he couldn't imagine what else they could be discussing considering the dialogue.

He was also confused because the words didn't really clear up what they were doing out here. He still didn't have any clue as to what reason they could have for disappearing on him all at once.

So he kept going. The easiest way to answer the question was to just ask right? He could find no flaws with that logic.

When Xisheng passed the next tree, his vision was graced with a river. It was at the bottom of an incline, so he hadn't seen it prior to reaching the edge of the slope. Moreover, it was a very gently flowing river, with no discernible rapids at this part of it, so hadn't heard the running water over the voices of his friends and the ambient sounds of the forest.

In the back of his mind, Xisheng subconsciously acknowledged what the situation probably was. The girls had all come to a river together, without inviting him along. It wasn't hard to connect the dots on what they were doing here. And yet, while that subconscious thought manifested quite readily, it didn't have time to make it to the front of his thoughts before he was scanning the area. He was a soldier, surveying his environment was a reaction, not a conscious thought.

So he looked left as soon as he stepped beyond the obscuring trunks of the forest. And he laid eyes on his companions. All of whom were bathing, and all of whom were, by extension, naked.

Ironically, the first thing he noticed was actually the fact that Azula's hair was a lot longer than it really appeared to be. He supposed her usual hairstyle gave it the impression of being short, but when let down for a thorough washing it went decently past her shoulders.

Of course, following that, he noticed everything else. He was able to confirm something he already knew: Ty Lee was definitely the best endowed among her friends, at least on the top end of things. This had always been more than a little obvious, but without the obscuring nature of clothing, it was clear that she was at least twice as 'hefty' up top as either of her friends.

He was also able to learn some things that he didn't know: Ty Lee had certainly not been referring to knives in regards to Mai. Apparently what she had hidden in her generally loose clothing was a very attractive posterior that Xisheng would not have anticipated prior to now. Big and round wasn't really what he would have guessed if someone had asked him whatever weird question would have required such an answer.

Xisheng's brain told him that he was doing something he shouldn't have been, that he should have immediately averted his gaze because that would be the decent thing to do, but his body failed to do that. Or maybe it just didn't agree with the sentiment. There was a veritable paradise of soft curves and the forbidden imagery of the female form before him, slender shoulders and lovely thighs included. Not appreciating the moment for at least a few moments was surely impossible, even for an upstanding and morally upright fellow like Xisheng. Surely.

Of course he also realized that he should probably keep the gawking to a few seconds at most. All three of the girls in view had the means to kill or maim him if they got in the mood. And of course Azula was the Crown Princess of his country, so there was no telling what punishment would await him if she realized this was happening.

Thankfully, both Mai and Azula had their backs turned to him, so he had a moment to retreat back from whence he had come. Unfortunately, Ty Lee was more sideways relative to his position, and thanks to some whim of fate, she looked in his direction while he was still standing there. Xisheng inwardly cursed the world as they locked eyes, certain that she would give him away, unwittingly most likely, which would lead to a swift demise or worse.

But while she was clearly shocked to see him there, the most Ty Lee did was blush a very deep shade of crimson: thankfully, there was no gasp to alert her friends. Xisheng would have assumed that the next logical step was for her to cover herself, but instead she actually smiled shyly, linking her arms behind her head as she posed in a way that accentuated her curves even beyond their natural state. This was accompanied by a coy wink, but the ultimate outcome was Xisheng being locked in place for a moment longer. He knew that Ty Lee was boldly flirtatious, but this was a tad extreme, wasn't it?

Maybe she was a bit more serious about things between them than he had initially thought.

Too stunned to leave while the going was good, Xisheng panicked when Azula spoke, beginning to turn towards Ty Lee as she addressed her.

"Ty Lee, where-"

Ty Lee's expression rapidly changed to one of panic as well, probably because she realized that Xisheng would get into some serious shit if Azula spotted him gawking at them in the nude. Thankfully, she was pretty quick to distract her friends before either of them turned around. All she had to do was interrupt them and direct their attention elsewhere.

"Whoa, what kind of bird is that!? It's so pretty, check it out!"

The brunette pointed in a direction directly opposite of Xisheng, prompting both Mai and Azula to follow the prompt, though there was of course no actual bird to be spotted where she was pointing, something Azula commented on pretty quickly since she had been interrupted.

"What bird? I don't see anything."

With the two of them suitably distracted, Ty Lee glanced back at Xisheng, making a shooing motion with her hand. The soldier almost missed it since he had an excellent view of the rear aspect of heaven from all three of them. Even so, he was not so lost in admiration as to waste his chance to escape unscathed, so he quickly turned on his heel and made himself scarce.

Passing on the opposite side of a tree he had encountered on the way here, Xisheng saw that the girls had left their clothes hanging over a branch. Well, that would have been a good indicator of the situation before he was thrust into it, if only he had actually seen them. Passing the clothing now, he was also able to finally get an answer to the tentative question from before they had entered Gaoling: the lacy ones were apparently not Ty Lee's. They were actually Azula's. Something about that notion was as adorable as it was confounding.

Beating it back to the Overlord as swiftly as possible, Xisheng tried to clear his mind of what he had just witnessed, if only because he wasn't sure if he'd be able to function properly if he was still thinking about it when the girls came back. Instead, he tried to focus on the still stinging pain of his burns, though he had treated them well enough that said pain wasn't that distracting. He could try to focus on a Firebending exercise of some sort, but honestly Xisheng didn't think he'd be able to do that with any control or finesse.

Xisheng spent the better part of fifteen minutes coming up with various ways to try and put his mind on other things, which, ironically, did a better job of distracting him than actually doing those things. Unfortunately, being distracted within that time frame didn't really help when his three companions actually returned to the vehicle.

"Walking in circles, are we? Don't you have anything productive you could be doing?"

The frazzled soldier looked over his shoulder as the girls re-entered the clearing, fully dressed and not in any way scandalously exposed. However, that truth didn't erase the image his mind was conjuring up in its place. It was probably going to take more than barely half an hour for him to not think of that glorious moment every time he saw the three of them.

Even so he knew that he couldn't act too suspicious, and he was pretty quick with words: and excuses.

"J-just keeping my muscles loose, Princess. Lay down for too long and they're bound to get stiff after the exertion they faced in our duel."

Accepting him at face value, something that Xisheng felt pretty bad about considering that he had just talked to her about trust earlier, Azula merely shrugged.

"Fair enough. Well, we should probably get underway..."

Surprisingly, both Mai and Ty Lee gave the Princess a sort of mildly condemning look. Apparently Azula got their telepathic message, since she amended what she had to say.

"Ugh, fine. There's a river back that way. If you must tend to your hygienic needs, try to be somewhat swift about it. I'd like to leave within an hour."

Content that Azula was going to offer their last companion a decent service, Mai merely made her way to the Overlord silently, probably to take a nap. She'd only really gotten up early this morning because of the duel. Ty Lee, on the other hand...

"Oh, you'll really like it, Gohan. I think you'll agree that the view was incredible."

Azula didn't notice the intentional phrasing of 'was' as opposed to 'is.' Xisheng naturally did, which was why he knew Ty Lee was not talking about the scenery at the river. She had no shame at all, teasing him about it right in front of the others, did she? But hey, even mentally reeling as he was, he could totally fight back against this. He wasn't a total mess even at a time like this.

"Yeah, I'm sure it was definitely incredible. Most incredible thing anyone could ever see."

Since she was in on it, Ty Lee blushed and smiled. Since she was not, Azula merely cocked an eyebrow.

"It was just a river. How low are your standards...?"

Feeling slightly more emboldened at the moment, Xisheng responded to Azula, but his words were really meant for Ty Lee.

"They're pretty high, actually. And I'm sure they'll be met. Positively certain."

Needless to say, Azula was none the wiser to his meaning. Of course, Xisheng was glad for that, taking many factors into consideration. Ty Lee on the other hand looked quite happy to hear it, but since Azula had put Xisheng on a timetable, she simply gave him a wink as the two girls retreated to the inside of the Overlord.

As soon as they were behind him, Xisheng's increased confidence dropped back down to normal, and he felt incredibly embarrassed all over again. Weird, how that worked. But since he too understood that Azula wasn't going to wait around for him to take his leisurely time, Xisheng made for the river where he had been blessed. There wasn't enough time to wash his clothes, but he could go as far as to wash his body.

Upon reaching the waters, Xisheng decided to swiftly remove his armor, noting with a degree of unhappiness that he had just covered himself in bandages earlier. Thankfully, he had only deemed it necessary to cover the worst burns, which were mostly centered on his sternum where Azula had hit him. He could wash the rest of himself without getting the bandages wet, if he were careful.

That being the case, he wasted no time in getting in the running water once he was disrobed, noting that the cool temperature felt quite pleasant on his currently toasty skin. One would think a Firebender wouldn't mind being warm: but warmth and burning weren't the same thing. Even people who could control fire had no fondness for the pain associated with a burn.

Aside from that, being in the exact spot he had witnessed an extremely flustering scenario from less than an hour ago didn't help him take his mind off of it. Though, now that he was the one nude in the water, his thoughts shifted more towards that. What if the situation had been reversed? Society had this weird stigma that only women were mortified to be caught in the nude unwittingly, but Xisheng was almost certain he would have been just the same. He was fairly confident he would not have reacted as boldly as Ty Lee had.

More importantly though, he couldn't help but wonder if the girls would enjoy the reversed scenario: Xisheng knew, even as humble as he was, that he had an attractive body. He was a soldier after all. His career was very physical and he was constantly going through rigorous training, so he was toned and sported plenty of lean muscle. Despite his lack of personal experience, it was his understanding that girls generally liked that kind of thing.

But he also had a lot of scars, and he didn't know how any of the girls would have felt about that. Some of them were small of course, like an assortment of minor burn scars: a Firebender almost never made it to the end of their life without a few of those. Training, sparring, chaotic battlefields... with fire being so prevalent in every aspect of a Firebender's life, getting a few related scars was practically guaranteed.

However, those burn scars were small and minor, barely noticeable at all unless someone was looking really closely. He did have a few nasty ones though. There was a long gash across his abdomen from the first and last time he had underestimated a non-bending soldier on the battlefield. The 'he's not an Earthbender, no big deal mentality' had very nearly seen him eviscerated with a polearm. It had almost seen him dead, too.

He had a very similar scar, but vertically on both sides of his left shoulder, from an actual Earthbender. Clever bastard, figured if he took a piece of stone and fashioned a wedge with a really sharp edge, he could effectively guillotine his enemies into the afterlife. He was probably right. Thankfully the vertical strike hit Xisheng in the shoulder, where it had to go through two armored pauldrons and a jerkin. It did go through them, but not as much as it would have elsewhere. Still, the injury had split bone and put Xisheng in the field hospital for months.

Finally, there was a small but very prominent scar on his right pectoral that looked kind of like the hole a sword would leave: probably because that was in fact the cause. Though it was friendly fire, on a technicality. On one of the occasions that Earthbenders had burst out of the ground into a temporary encampment for an ambush, Xisheng had found himself grappling face to face with one of his enemies because he had sprung up too close for either of them to bend right away. One of Xisheng's comrades saw him in trouble and ran the Earthbender through from behind with his sword: a bit too enthusiastically, since it kept going and pierced Xisheng, who hadn't been wearing his armor while off of the battlefield.

Everyone in the platoon called that guy 'Kebab' after that.

Really, whenever Xisheng thought about these scars, he usually considered how lucky he was to be alive, which was probably more important than whether or not girls would be put off by them. But that didn't really stop him from thinking about the latter right now. After all, he'd already had plenty of time to be grateful that he had survived all those incidents. He didn't have to think about it every day now.

Where the soldier's thoughts may have gone after that was a mystery. Said thoughts were interrupted when he felt something soggy press up against his back. Worried that something unpleasant had washed downstream, Xisheng warily glanced down at the foreign substance to identify whether or not he should be disgusted, but all he found was a very large tuft of white fur.

He may have dismissed that as nothing important, but the fact that it was white got his attention. There weren't too many wild animals in the forest with white hair during this time of year. And even if there were a few, this fur was several inches long: much too long for any animal's coat to be with winter pretty far away.

It was a stretch, he knew. Before even thinking it, he knew it was a long shot. But the coincidences did line up kind of conveniently. It was very unlikely that this hair was from a local animal. And even if it was, if said animal had entered the river at some point and was shedding, there would be a lot more than this one tuft of hair flowing downstream. It was logical to assume that this hair had fallen into the river then, likely from above it: and the Avatar just so happened to ride a flying animal foreign to this area that had long, white fur.

Of course, it was extremely unlikely. And even if it was true, one tuft of hair from the animal didn't help them figure out where their prey was or where they were going. But if there was more of this, scattered about in the general direction their target was going... well, it was more information than they had before. And so, Xisheng cut his bath short to throw on his clothes as swiftly as possible, before taking off upstream to see what he could survey.

The first few minutes didn't provide any success. Maybe this fur had floated from so far upstream that it would be impossible to make even an estimate on where the animal that had dropped it had gone. But he was going to check the riverbank and the bordering forest for at least a mile or two. He could manage that in but a few minutes.

After a few more minutes of running, Xisheng nearly decided that it was fruitless after all. But around the time he thought that, was around the time fortune smiled upon his search. Caught on the branches of a pine tree ahead of him was another tuft of fur, easy to see thanks to the white against green. A little deeper into the forest, there was another tuft, caught on some vines wrapped around a trunk. Even further still was one more simply lying flat against the forest floor.

Three in a row: it was enough to consider a trail. It was enough to start following. Maybe Xisheng's conclusions were totally wrong. Maybe this had nothing to do with the Avatar at all, and it had been left by some other creature entirely. But he was a good soldier: instead of writing this off as some coincidence, he'd leave the decision on what to do to his superior. All he had to do was find a way to mark this location so they could get back to it: and also figure out how to get back to the Overlord.

In light of all this, he was kind of wishing he was an Army pathfinder. For all the shit they got for barely ever fighting real battles, it sure would have made his life a lot easier right about now.