Chapter 70 - Acceptance

Azula breathes heavily in fatigue as she stops slamming her extremities into Iroh and looks at the tea spark before her. Her mind calms and her anger subsides due to the influence of the dao. She stops her thoughts of beating her Uncle Iroh in a contest of trading blows and goes back to the very first step: how to overcome his currently invulnerable defense.

Azula lazily squints her eyes, her shoulders slump slightly, and the muscles in her core and legs loosen up. Her solution to beat a powerful defense that can redirect blows is to use the energy of the redirection to power her following blows. To do this, she has to relax her body and fight in a manner that she's never done before.

Nuwa's eyes shine when she sees Azula change her style, 'That's.. Waterbender form!'

Azula's punches bounce off the impenetrable wall of Iroh's single hand, but instead of retracting her fist and arm, she follows through on the missed punch and uses the momentum to pivot on one leg and deliver a sweeping axe kick with her other leg!

Iroh, of course, noticed the tell-tale signs of a switched form in her stance, but he was still caught off guard by Azula's proficiency in combat to be able to try a martial arts style for the first time and use it so effectively. He deflects the kick off its course slightly late, so instead of his head, it lands on his left shoulder with a thump and his left leg sinks one cm (half inch) into the ground.

The fight pauses once again momentarily with Iroh grabbing Azula's leg on his shoulder. Azula is comprehending the fact that her kick had the potential to do massive damage if it was a serious fight and that she had finally won one round.

Iroh is impressed at Azula's adaptability. It only reaffirmed the fact that she has definitely matured since a year ago when she was still a perfectionist who would tantrum whenever she lost in spars to Nuwa and not do anything different the next time.

The audience simply looks at the duo awkwardly because Azula's black panties are on full display beneath her skirt. Nuwa nods sagely at the perfect panty shot moment. 'Cue zoom-in? That reminds me..' Nuwa summons her [Smartphone] and teleports onto the floor in perfect view of a fan service shot of Azula, takes a pic, and teleports back.

Azula wouldn't have even noticed if she didn't hear the [Smartphone] make the camera click sound. She blushes at the thought of the audience seeing that and tries to remove her leg from her Uncle Iroh's shoulder, upon which she remembers that Iroh is holding it. Then her battle instincts kick in, telling her that this is an exceedingly unfavorable position to be caught in.

Iroh notices her alarm and chuckles before he lifts her by the leg, twists his body, flips her over his head, and slams her back-first onto the ground hard enough that the soft rock is indented 4 cm (1.5 inch). Azula grunts as she's slammed viciously into the flat rocky ground.

Luckily, she instinctively used fire thrusters with her hands to mitigate some of the momentum of Iroh's slam, or she would be out for the count with possibly a few broken bones. How was she supposed to know he would pick that moment to launch his first attack?! She quickly releases some fire from her other leg to force him to dislodge his grip and puts some distance between them.

Once she puts some distance between them, she feels her whole body aching and her lungs crying for relief. Iroh hums and presses the tea spark back into his Heart. He says, "Good fight, let's stop here." Azula gets out an "Ok" in between deep breaths. They cup fists and bow again before vanishing to return to their bodies.

Azula takes a deep breath with her mortal body and feels she can breathe slightly better, but she's still aching all over from being spiritually banged up and fatigued from chi overuse. Iroh winces when he moves some of his muscles now that he's back in his mortal body. Azula secretly feels pride that she managed to get in that final axe kick, despite it also being her undoing.

Nuwa exits the Spirit Realm, gets up, and asks, "Dan, can you call Katara? We need a chi-healer."

Dan looks inside and nods.

"How do you feel, Zul?" asks Nuwa excitedly.

Azula deadpans, "I feel like I got thrown onto the ground by the foot. Now, delete that picture."

Nuwa sorrowfully mutters, "But.. but.. I need it.. My precious fan service."

Azula sighs, too tired to argue with Nuwa. Expecting Azula to keep demanding, Nuwa looks up and sees her shaking out her limbs with fatigue. Nuwa slides up to her and tries to massage her. Azula smiles and says, "You know damage to my spiritual body isn't something your massage can fix, right?"

Nuwa furrows her brows and says, "I can chi-block some of your pain receptors to help out, but it wouldn't be healthy to disrupt your spiritual body's pain receptors lest it become a habit and they end up permanently dulled. It's the thought that counts though, right?"

Azula laughs and says, "Ok, maybe I'll feel some of that placebo effect you told me about."

Then her face hardens and she gives Nuwa one of those looks.

Ashamedly looking down, Nuwa asks, "What do I have to do to keep that pic? I'll do anything, pleeeease baby!"

"Is that so?" asks Azula with eyes glowing.

Nuwa caresses Azula's crotch shamelessly despite all the people around, "Anything you want, babe!"

Growing angry with embarrassment again, Azula smacks her hand off. "Humph, I can't deal with you right now. Get me some food."

Nuwa chuckles and doesn't mind being treated as a maid by her lover. She walks off to get some food. She's aware that she can be too much sometimes. Everyone needs some alone time if they spend too long together. Nuwa figures that Azula is bummed out over how much stronger Iroh is than she is. This means that, by extrapolation, Ozai must also be stronger than her, even if he's not as strong as Iroh.

Azula knows that Iroh didn't just outclass her in combat. Putting aside his extremely high attainments in chakra depth, he also outclasses her in his understanding of firebending. Azula hasn't been focusing on her comprehension of her firebending recently, she's more so been focused on becoming a well-rounded person.

In reality, by balancing out her personality, she has unintentionally primed herself to make large gains in her comprehension of firebending. As she was previously, she would have been bottlenecked indefinitely. Spending time with the froggy family was an opportunity given by the Spirit Realm that expanded her horizons greatly.

It was there that she first learned acceptance (regarding Nuwa's baby), and she relearned it during the spar with Iroh (regarding her own weakness). It's a waterbending philosophy. The complete opposite of the extreme path she's always taken to the peak of firebending. And yet, acceptance is the only path that leads forward in both situations.

As she finishes her pondering, she thinks, 'Nuwa, I finally understand why you pursue balance. In this world, those who are balanced always win.' Azula sighs as she lets out this silent lament towards fate itself and her abandoned dao path of "firebending with all her love for Nuwa".

Now that she put that to rest, she perks up with the thought that maybe it was meant to be, since ever since she sought balance, their relationship became much better. She can love Nuwa without having to drive her firebending with passion. Azula smiles with hope.

~ ~ ~

Now that the demon queen has left, June decides to get buddy-buddy with Aiwei. Eventually, she plans to sucker him into simping for her and getting stuff from Nuwa without having to work for it. She still has to guard Katara and Mai for another month before she gets her metal whip. It's a fair trade, sure.

But spending time around Nuwa is too stressful! There's fantastical occurrences everywhere she looks! Heck, she saw that loli girl dent a piece of solid metal with her forehead accidentally when she sneezed! She needs a bit more compensation for her emotional trauma! Convincing a shy, four-eyed kid to give her money can't be too hard, right?

June swings her arm around Aiwei's shoulder and says, "Hey, little bro. What'd you think of the fight?"

Aiwei adjusts his glasses out of nervousness and says, "Er, well.. Uncle Iroh is too strong. There's a big gap between Azula and Uncle Iroh. Midway through, Azula switched to a more flexible style of fighting, which caught him by surprise and managed to get a hit in. But otherwise, she was totally decimated by his invincible defense."

Adjusting his glasses again, he continues, "It's to be expected though, since Uncle Iroh has a stronger chakras, greater chi capacity, bulkier muscles, and more battle experience. Azula can surely overpower him as she grows older, though!"

June blinks and says, "Well, that was more detailed than I expected. You covered pretty much all the bases. If you were going for a full commentary, then you missed the fact that Iroh wasn't even attacking or firebending besides deflection with one hand and his legs, until Azula landed her first hit, upon which he finished the fight in one attack."

"They both have impeccable battle instincts and Azula's only major mistake was to leave her foot on Iroh's shoulder thinking he wouldn't attack her. She must have been so focused on breaking the defense that her own defense slipped her mind. I think Stella is right. That spar was like a lesson on the art of war that Iroh delivered to Azula in a roundabout way."

Aiwei looks up to June with admiration, "Big sis June, are you a fighter too?"

June pats his shoulder and laughs into the air, "Your big sis June is the #1 bounty hunter in the world! I may not be as good at fighting as these guys, but I can work my way around some goons with a whip. Most importantly, I have my trusty shirshu, Nyla, who can sniff down the location of anyone I can find a scent for from over a thousand kilometers (620 mi)!"

Aiwei widens his eyes at the fact that she's telling the truth. "Amazing! The #1 bounty hunter! A thousand kilometers! Longer than the entire Earth Kingdom! That's incredible!"

June puts on a huge smug smile at Aiwei's amazement and basks in his admiration, 'Ah yes. Life is back to normal where people are baffled by my great prowess, unlike where I am blindsided by others at every turn!'

"Hahaha, I know. Please don't praise me too much. Being the #1 bounty hunter in the world isn't that big of a deal!"

Aiwei sees through her lies and continues praising her, to which she laughs smugly again as if she can't get enough.

Xai Bau sits on the side with an awkward smile on his face at the sight of his preteen apprentice buttering up a lady like it's no one's business. 'I suppose I can guess who taught him that trick.'

~ ~ ~

Aang and Zuko head to a training room after watching the spar. They've developed a very good rapport over the course of the past 3 months they've spent together. The main problem was that they goofed off with sex, games, and lazing around too much to squeeze training time in. But seeing the gap between the strongest of them, Azula, and Iroh, they feel urgency to increase their battle power.

Nuwa told them that she approximates that the other old monsters in the Order are halfway between Azula and Iroh in strength. Which means that there could be sleeping dragons awaiting their invasion into the Fire Nation in the shadows, hidden just like the Order!

Aang can firebend comfortably now, so Zuko is mostly guiding Aang through the fire dances. Raava's learned this hundreds of times in her past lives, so Aang picks up the movements quickly. The most difficult part for an Avatar is always tuning their mental state to be able to bend that element adequately.

Now that Aang has a chakra open, Raava can gather chi and with Aang's new connection to the Spirit Realm, she can also gather daons easier. She's already fully recovered from her daon loss to Nuwa, but she's still disgruntled at Nuwa about it. Raava even complained to Aang about how she thought Nuwa would be a great ally because of how attuned she is to Order, until she recovered enough power to detect the inkling of Darkness within Nuwa.

Needless to say, Raava tells Aang she is never going to help Nuwa again. Aang didn't really want his spiritual mothers to have a falling out. His first thought was to go to Nuwa for advice before he realized once again that he's too reliant on her. As he practices his fire dances, he wonders what Nuwa would do. 'Um.. I guess she would trick Raava into trusting her again or offer some benefits to her to be an ally.'

Raava says, "Aang, you know we're connected and I can hear your thoughts?"

(A/N: Azula gets a rude awakening! Uh oh, Aang's in trouble..)